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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault%20Mirage%202000
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Dassault Mirage 2000
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The Dassault Mirage 2000 is a French multirole, single-engine, fourth-generation jet fighter manufactured by Dassault Aviation. It was designed in the late 1970s as a lightweight fighter to replace the Mirage III for the French Air Force (Armée de l'air). The Mirage 2000 evolved into a multirole aircraft with several variants developed, with sales to a number of nations. It was later developed into the Mirage 2000N and 2000D strike variants, the improved Mirage 2000-5, and several export variants. Over 600 aircraft were built and it has been in service with nine nations.
Development
Previous projects
The origins of the Mirage 2000 could be traced back to 1965, when France and Britain agreed to develop the "Anglo-French Variable Geometry" (AFVG) swing-wing aircraft. Two years later, France withdrew from the project on grounds of costs, after which Britain would collaborate with West Germany and Italy to ultimately produce the Panavia Tornado. Dassault instead focused on its own variable-geometry aircraft, the Dassault Mirage G experimental prototype. The design was expected to materialise in the Mirage G8, which would serve as the replacement for the popular Mirage III in French Air Force service.
The Mirage 2000 started out as a secondary project tentatively named "Delta 1000" in 1972. Dassault was devoting considerable attention to the Mirage G8A, a fixed-geometry derivative of the Mirage G8 that served as the competitor to the Panavia Tornado. The Mirage G8, which was envisioned as the "Avion de Combat Futur" (ACF or Future Combat Aircraft) of the French Air Force (Armee de l'Air, AdA), did not align with the service's conception of its future aircraft. The AdA wanted a Mach 3 fighter, not an interdictor aircraft incapable of dogfighting that was the Mirage G8. As such, Dassault redesigned the Mirage G8 into the two-engine Super Mirage G8A that would prove to be ambitious and expensive, being two and a half times the price of the Mirage F1 and over-engineered, especially compared to the F-16 that had just won orders from a number of European countries. Consequently, during a meeting of the National Defence Council on 18 December 1975, the Super Mirage was cancelled.
The ACF was a strike aircraft first and an interceptor second, while the Delta 2000 was the reverse, but the single-engine Delta 2000 was much more affordable. At the same National Defence Council meeting, a redesignated Mirage 2000 was offered to the AdA, and three prototypes were ordered. The AdA in March 1976 issued a set of official requirements whose parameters matched those of Dassault's performance estimates of the new fighter. The aircraft's primary role was interception with a secondary ground-attack capability; the AdA had a commitment for 200 aircraft. The first aircraft was to be delivered in 1982. This was a return to the first-generation Mirages, but with several important innovations that tried to solve their shortcomings.
Production
The production of the Mirage 2000 involved three construction sites, two of which located in Bordeaux, that specialised in different components. The wings were built at Martignas, and the fuselages were fabricated at Argenteuil (NW of Paris), with final assembly taking place at Bordeaux-Merignac. The first prototype, Mirage 2000 No. 01, though, was hand built at St Cloud, before being moved to Dassault's Istres facility for assembly. At the hands of Jean Coureau, No. 01 made its first flight on 10 March 1978, a mere 27 months after the programme go-ahead. During the 65-minute flight, Coureau took the aircraft to Mach 1.02 without afterburner, before climbing to more than 12,000 m and accelerating the aircraft to Mach 1.3. By the end of May, the aircraft had surpassed Mach 2 and an indicated airspeed of . On the other end of the speed spectrum, the Mirage 2000 proved to be a capable low-speed aircraft, as demonstrated at the Farnborough Airshow in September 1978, during which Dassault pilot Guy Mitaux-Maurourd raised the aircraft's nose to 25° angle of attack (AoA) as the aircraft slowed to . Later tests showed that the aircraft could attain 30° AoA while carrying fuel tanks and weapons.
The second prototype, No. 02, made its 50-minute first flight in September 1978 at the controls of Maurourd. The aircraft was to test some of the avionics systems and the carriage of weapons. Due to a flame-out while on a landing approach, the aircraft was lost in May 1984. No. 03 made its first flight in April 1979; equipped with a complete weapons system, it was used for radar and weapons trials. After 400 hours of flight, they were sent to Centre d'Essais en Vol, flight tests centre. Although three prototypes were ordered in December 1975, Dassault constructed an additional fourth single-seat demonstrator for its own purposes, which embodied lessons on the earlier aircraft, namely the reduction in fin height and an increased fin sweep, redesigned air inlets, and an FBW system. The only dual-seat Mirage 2000B of the test programme first flew on 11 October 1980.
The first production Mirage 2000C (C for chasseur, "fighter") flew on 20 November 1982. Deliveries to the AdA began in 1983. The first 37 Mirage 2000Cs delivered were fitted with the Thomson-CSF Radar Doppler Multifunction (RDM), and were powered by the SNECMA M53-5 turbofan engine. The 38th Mirage 2000C had an upgraded SNECMA M53-P2 turbofan engine. The Radar Doppler à Impulsion (RDI) built by Thales for the Mirage 2000C entered service in 1987. It has a much improved range of about 150 km, and is linked to Matra Super 530D missiles, which are much improved compared to the older Super 530F. Look-down/shoot-down capabilities are much improved, as well, but this radar is not usually used for air-to-surface roles.
Further development
The Mirage 2000N is a dedicated nuclear-strike variant, which was intended to carry the Air-Sol Moyenne Portée (ASMP) nuclear stand-off missile. Flight tests of the first of two prototypes, Mirage 2000N 01 (the eighth Mirage 2000) began on 3 February 1983. During the 65-minute flight, the aircraft reached a speed of Mach 1.5. The variant entered operational service in 1988, initially operating from Luxeuil Air Base with the 4e Escadre de Chasse. Closely derived from the Mirage 2000N is a dedicated conventional attack variant designated Mirage 2000D. Initial flight of the Mirage 2000D prototype, a modified Mirage 2000N prototype, was on 19 February 1991. The first flight of a production aircraft occurred 31 March 1993, and service introduction followed in April 1995. Seventy-five and eighty-six Mirage 2000Ns and Mirage 2000Ds were manufactured, respectively.
By the late 1980s, the Mirage 2000 was beginning to age compared with the latest models of F-16 fighters. In particular, attention was drawn to the aircraft's inability to engage multiple targets simultaneously, and the small load of air-to-air missiles it could carry. Consequently, Dassault in April 1989 announced that with the cooperation of Thomson-CSF, it would be working on a privately funded update of the Mirage 2000C, which was to be named the Mirage 2000-5. A two-seat Mirage 2000B prototype was extensively modified as the first Mirage 2000-5 prototype, and it first flew on 24 October 1990. A Mirage 2000C prototype was also reworked to a similar standard, making its initial flight on 27 April 1991. The first front-line aircraft variant to have been designed specifically in response to the export market, Taiwan was the first country to order the type in 1992, followed by Qatar in 1994. The type was first delivered in 1996 and entered service in 1997.
Domestically, Dassault needed an order from the AdA to help promote foreign sales, and in 1993, the AdA decided to upgrade 37 of their existing Mirage 2000s to the 2000-5 specification as a stopgap before the arrival of the Rafale in AdA service. The upgraded aircraft were redesignated Mirage 2000-5F, and became operational in 2000. They retained the old countermeasures system with the Serval/Sabre/Spirale units and did not receive the ICMS 2 system. A two-seat version was developed, as well, whose rear seat has a heads-up display, but not an associated head-level display, and lacks a built-in cannon, although cannon pods can be carried.
At the urging of the United Arab Emirates, Dassault worked on a further modification of the Mirage 2000-5. Initially dubbed Mirage 2000-9, this variant had the upgrade of the radar and the associated avionics, the change of weapons configuration, and the extension of range.
The last Mirage 2000 was delivered on 23 November 2007 to the Hellenic Air Force; afterwards, the production line was shut down.
Design
Overview
The aircraft uses retractable Tricycle landing gear by Messier-Dowty, with twin nosewheels and a single wheel on each main gear. A runway tailhook or a fairing for a brake parachute can be fitted under the tail, which can operate in conjunction with the landing gear's carbon brakes to shorten landing distances. A removable refueling probe can be attached in front of the cockpit, offset slightly to the right of centre.
Its aircraft flight control system is fly-by-wire.
Cockpit
The Mirage 2000 is available as a single-seat or twin-seat multirole fighter. The pilot flies the aircraft by means of a centre stick and left-hand throttles, with both incorporating HOTAS controls. The pilot sits on a SEM MB Mk10 zero-zero ejection seat (a license-built version of the British Martin-Baker Mark 10).
The instrument panel (in the Mirage 2000 C) is dominated by a Sextant VE-130 head-up display which presents data relating to flight control, navigation, target engagement, and weapon firing, and a radar screen located centrally below it.
Engines
The SNECMA M53 afterburning turbofan was developed for the ACF, and was available for the Mirage 2000 project. It is a single-shaft engine of modular construction that is relatively light and simple compared to those of the British or American designs. The M53 consists of three low-pressure compressor stages, five high-pressure stages, and two turbine stages. With the development programme consisting of 20 engines, the M53 sans suffix was first bench tested in February 1970, and became airborne on a Caravelle testbed in July 1973. Dassault conducted flight tests of the M53-2 version using its Mirage F1E testbeds starting in December 1974; this version produced in afterburner. The Mirage 2000 itself was powered by two versions of the M53—the M53-5, which equipped initial operational aircraft, was rated at of thrust with afterburner. The definitive version of the engine, the M53-P2, which equipped the majority of the type, is rated at in dry thrust and in afterburner.
Payload and armaments
The Mirage 2000 is equipped with built-in twin DEFA 554 autocannon (now GIAT 30–550 F4) 30 mm revolver-type cannons with 125 rounds each. The cannons have selectable fire rates of 1,200 or 1,800 rounds per minute.
Differences between variants
Mirage 2000-5
The Mirage 2000-5 is a major advancement over previous variants and embodies a comprehensive electronic, sensor, and cockpit upgrade to expand its combat ability, while reducing pilot workload. The centrepiece of the Mirage 2000-5 overhaul is the Thomson-CSF RDY (radar Doppler multitarget) with look down/shoot down capability. The multifunction radar is capable of air-to-ground, air-to-air, and air-to-sea operations. In the air-to-ground mode, the RDY has navigation and attack functions that give it deep-strike and close-support capabilities. Capable of automatically locking onto multiple targets at first contact, the radar could detect flying targets travelling as low as 200 ft. The introduction of the radar allows the aircraft to use the MICA missile, up to six of which could be fired simultaneously at targets due to the advances within the radar. Despite the increase in offensive capability, pilot workload is compensated for by the introduction of a multidisplay glass cockpit, based on the development of the Rafale. The aircraft has the ICMS Mk2 countermeasures suit, which contains three radar detectors and an infrared sensor that are linked to active jammers and chaff/flare dispensers.
Improvements over the Mirage 2000C included the Thales TV/CT CLDP laser designator pod and the multimode RDY, which allows detection of up to 24 targets and the ability to simultaneously track eight threats while guiding four MICA missiles to different targets. Updates to defensive systems included the ICMS 2 countermeasures suite and the Samir DDM missile warning system. ICMS 2 incorporates a receiver and associated signal processing system in the nose for detecting hostile missile-command data links, and can be interfaced to a new programmable mission-planning and postmission analysis ground system. Avionics were also updated, using a new night vision-compatible glass cockpit layout borrowed from the Dassault Rafale, a dual-linked wide-angle head-up display, and HOTAS controls. The Mirage 2000-5 can also carry the oversized drop tanks developed for the Mirage 2000N, greatly extending its range.
Mirage 2000-5 Mk 2
Enhancements to offensive systems included a datalink for the targeting of MICA EM missiles, the addition of the Damocles forward-looking infrared (FLIR) targeting pod, and a newer, more stealthy Thales RDY-2 all-weather synthetic aperture radar with moving target indicator capability, which also grants the aircraft improved air-to-ground capability. The avionics were further updated with higher resolution color displays, an optional Topsight helmet-mounted display, and the addition of the modular data-processing unit designed for the Rafale. A new Thales Totem 3000 inertial navigation system with ring laser gyroscope and GPS capability were added, providing much greater accuracy, higher reliability, and shorter alignment time than the older ULISS 52 navigation system it replaced. Other upgrades included the addition of an on-board oxygen generation system for the pilot and an ICMS 3 digital countermeasures suite.
Operational history
France
The first aircraft entered service in July 1984. The first operational squadron was formed during the same year, the 50th anniversary of the French Air Force. About 124 Mirage 2000Cs were obtained by the AdA.
French Mirage 2000s were used during the Gulf War, where they flew high-altitude air defence for USAF U-2 spy aircraft, as well as in UN and NATO air operations during the Bosnian War and the Kosovo War. During Operation Deliberate Force, on 30 August 1995, one Mirage 2000D was shot down over Bosnia by a 9K38 Igla shoulder-launched missile fired by air defence units of the Army of Republika Srpska, prompting efforts to obtain improved defensive systems. Both crew members were captured and later released through mediation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
French Mirage 2000Ds later served with the International Security Assistance Force during the conflict in Afghanistan in 2001–2002, operating in close conjunction with international forces and performing precision attacks with laser-guided bombs. In the summer of 2007, after the Dassault Rafale fighters had been removed from the theater of operations, three French Mirage 2000s were deployed to Afghanistan in support of NATO troops.
The Mirage 2000 is being replaced in French service by the Dassault Rafale, which became operational with the French Air Force in June 2006.
French Mirage 2000s were committed to enforcing the no-fly zone in Libya as part of Opération Harmattan in 2011.
On 14 April 2018, four French Mirage 2000-5Fs participated in a joint military operation against the Syrian government with the UK and U.S. during the Syrian Civil War.
Egypt
Egypt became the first export customer of the Mirage 2000 when it ordered 20 aircraft in December 1981. The $890 million order encompassed 16 single-seat Mirage 2000EMs and four two-seat Mirage 2000BMs, as well as options for 20 more aircraft. The aircraft were delivered between June 1986 and January 1988. One was lost in a training accident.
India
In 1980, the Indian Air Force (IAF) learned of a successful approach by Pakistan to the US that year to purchase F-16A/B fighters, delivery of which was to commence in 1982. By late 1980, the IAF had quickly convinced the Indian government to purchase an equally potent aircraft, as its MiG-21s and MiG-23s were inferior to the F-16. When evaluating the Mirage F1 earlier, it became aware of a high-performance prototype of the Mirage 2000 in the flight-testing phase. No other aircraft of this potential was being offered for export. An internal assessment of the Mirage 2000 was carried out and the Indian government felt that the French plane was more advanced and a superior response to the F-16s that the US was to supply to Pakistan, and approached France for 150 Mirage 2000s. In October 1982, the country placed an order with Dassault for 36 single-seat Mirage 2000Hs and four twin-seat Mirage 2000THs (with H standing for "Hindustan") with the possibility of a follow-on purchase of nine aircraft (eight single- and one twin-seater aircraft) as war, maintenance and attrition reserve. The purchase of 150 aircraft, could well have paved the way for joint production with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, but the number of aircraft ordered (40+9) was too small for such an arrangement. India nevertheless had the option to produce a number of Mirage 2000s under license that was later scrapped due to the country's close relationship with the Soviet Union. This led to the induction of the MiG-29 instead, overriding reservations expressed by the IAF.
With the delivery of the first seven aircraft on 29 June 1985 to No. 7 Squadron, the Battleaxes, the Indian Air Force (IAF) became the first foreign user of the type, which it renamed the Vajra (, for Lightning, Thunderbolt). The service's early aircraft were powered by Snecma M53-5 engines (so were designated Mirage 2000H5 and Mirage 2000TH5), which were quickly replaced by more powerful M53-P2 engines. The second unit to convert to the type was No. 1 Squadron (the Tigers), which was formally designated a Mirage 2000 unit in January 1986. Within 12 months of the first delivery, the IAF had received all 40 aircraft ordered. The follow-on order for nine aircraft was signed in 1986. Five aircraft were delivered by 1990, two more in 1992, and the last two aircraft were delivered in 1994. As such, full unit establishment was not achieved until 1990.
The Mirage 2000 fleet encountered other issues during its first decade of service, which were largely operational and maintenance-based. In 1995, the Indian government's comptroller and auditor general reported delays in the construction of overhaul facilities and a shortage of spare parts, which had led to the fleet being unable to meet its required flying hours. India also purchased ATLIS II pods and several Matra Bombe Guidée Laser (BGL) Arcole 1,000 kg laser-guided penetrating bombs for the Mirage. The ATLIS II pods have an inherent limitation in that they are unusable at high altitudes. In its place, the IAF has bought a number of the cheaper US Paveway II laser-guided bomb kits for use with the Israeli Litening laser designator pods (LDPs), but certain parts of the Paveway kit were not available, as they were under US embargo. The aircraft were heavily modified in a short time frame to drop laser-guided bombs as well as conventional unguided bombs. Due to a lack of enemy air action, aircrew quickly became highly proficient in dropping dumb bombs. IAF Mirage 2000s have reportedly only used the Paveway LGB on eight occasions, mainly for the destruction of enemy command bunkers.
In 1999, when the Kargil War broke out, the IAF was asked to act jointly with ground troops on 25 May. The code name assigned to their role was Operation Safed Sagar and the Mirage 2000 flew its first sortie on 30 May. This multi-role aircraft, the most advanced in the IAF, performed remarkably well during the whole conflict in the high Himalayas, and was considered the game changer in the two-month war. During Operation Safed Sagar from May to July 1999, the two Mirage squadrons flew a total of 514 sorties with only three drop outs. No. 1 Squadron flew 274 air defence and strike escort missions, while No. 7 Squadron conducted 240 strike missions during which it dropped of ordnance.
During the 2001–02 India–Pakistan standoff, IAF Mirage 2000s were used to destroy Pakistani bunkers with precision-guided bombs.
The morale-boosting service of the Mirage 2000 in 1999 prompted the IAF to consider the acquisition of a further 126 aircraft. Instead, the Mirage 2000-5 became a contender for the IAF's Indian MRCA competition in competition with the Mikoyan MiG-35, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and JAS 39 Gripen. In 2004, the Indian government approved purchase of 10 Mirage 2000Hs, featuring improved avionics, particularly an upgraded RDM 7 radar; they were delivered in 2007 for a total of 50 aircraft. Dassault replaced the Mirage 2000 with the newer Rafale as its contender due to the impending closure of the Mirage 2000 production line.
As India placed its third Mirage 2000 order, the government announced its intention to upgrade the existing fleet, as well. A period of protracted negotiations followed for the next several years, during which India and Dassault came close to signing a contract several times.
In July 2011, India approved a $2.2 billion upgrade package for its Mirage 2000s. Valued at $43 million per aircraft, it upgrades the fleet to Mirage 2000-5 Mk. 2 standards, with provisions made for the use of a night vision-capable glass cockpit, upgraded navigation and IFF systems, an advanced multimode multilayered radar, and a fully integrated electronic warfare suite, among other updates. In addition, the inventory of Super 530D and R.550 Magic II missiles would be replaced by MICAs, an order for which was placed in 2012. The first of the two IAF Mirages sent to France to be upgraded made its first flight in October 2013, marking the start of a test campaign that would encompass 250 flights, culminating in the handover of the first aircraft in March 2015. The single-seat version was redesignated Mirage 2000I and the twin-seat version Mirage 2000TI.
On 26 February 2019, 12 Mirage 2000s were used to strike an alleged Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp in Balakot, Pakistan. This engagement was the first time since the 1971 war that IAF fighters had entered Pakistani airspace. All aircraft were armed with one Israeli Spice 2000 (one-tonne) bomb.
The next day, IAF Mirage 2000Is, Su-30MKIs, and MiG-21s were used against Pakistan Air Force JF-17s, Mirage IIIs, and F-16s, whose aim was to target Indian Army ammunition dumps and other infrastructure near Srinagar, Poonch and Jammu area, according to Indian government officials. However, Pakistani officials say that air strikes in India by Pakistan Air Force jets were meant to demonstrate Pakistan's capability and Pakistani jets were ordered to drop their bombs in open space to avoid any human or collateral damage. This led to a dogfight and a confirmed shootdown of an IAF MiG-21. Pakistan also claims that an additional IAF Su-30MKI was also shot down in this dogfight. However, India denies the loss of any of its Su-30MKIs and instead claims that a PAF F-16 was shot down in the dogfight by its Mig-21. Pakistan also denies the loss of any of its F-16 in the battle. The only confirmed losses of the engagement were that of the MiG-21 and an IAF Mil Mi-17 helicopter shot down by friendly fire.
During the 2020 China-India standoff, India deployed Mirage 2000Is along the line of actual control, particularly after the Galwan Valley skirmish near Pangong Tso in the Ladakh region.
In September 2021, France agreed to sell some of its retired Mirage 2000 airframes to India, at a price of €1 million per plane. Out of the 24 fighters to be bought, 13 are in complete condition with intact engines and airframes, and eight of these shall fly after servicing. The remaining 11 fighters are partially complete but with fuel tanks and ejection seats, which will be scavenged to secure parts for the IAF's two existing Mirage squadrons.
Peru
In December 1982, Peru placed an $800 million order for 14 single-seat Mirage 2000Ps and two two-seat Mirage 2000DP trainers, with an option for eight and two more aircraft, respectively. Although the contract was signed in 1985, the Peruvian government, due to the country's financial issues, renegotiated the number of aircraft to be reduced to 10 single-seaters and two two-seaters. Handover of the first aircraft occurred in June 1985, although the first deliveries to Peru were not made until December 1986, after the initial training of pilots in France had been completed.
The Peruvian Air Force ordered a set of munitions similar to that ordered by Egypt, along with ATLIS II targeting pods. The Peruvian Mirages flew combat air patrol missions in 1995 during the Cenepa War.
Peru's Mirage 2000s underwent an inspection and partial electronic modernisation programme following a $140 million deal in 2009 that involved Dassault, Snecma, and Thales. The aircraft are expected to be retired by 2025.
United Arab Emirates
In May 1983, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) placed an order for 36 Mirage 2000 aircraft. The order consisted of 22 single-seat Mirage 2000AED, eight unique single-seat reconnaissance variants designated Mirage 2000RAD, and six Mirage 2000DAD trainers, which collectively are known as SAD-8 (Standard Abu Dhabi). The order specified an Italian-made defensive avionics suite that delayed delivery of the first of these aircraft until 1989.
In November 1998, the UAE signed a $3.2 billion contract that consisted of an order for 30 Mirage 2000-9s, as well as the deal to upgrade 33 of the surviving SAD-8 aircraft up the new standard. The contract was later amended so it would encompass 32 new-built aircraft—20 single-seater Mirage 2000-9s and 12 two-seater 2000-9Ds—and 30 upgrade kits for original aircraft. The aircraft were equipped with a classified countermeasures system designated IMEWS. Although deliveries were scheduled for 2001, the first aircraft arrived in the spring of 2003.
The UAE's Mirage 2000-9s are equipped for the strike mission, with the Shehab laser targeting pod (a variant of the Damocles) and the Nahar navigation pod, complementing the air-to-ground modes of the RDY-2 radar. They are also equipped with a classified countermeasures system designated IMEWS, which is comparable to the ICMS 3. Emirati Mirage 2000s are armed with weapons such as the PGM 500 guided bomb and the "Black Shaheen" cruise missile, which is basically a variant of the MBDA Apache cruise missile. All 30 survivors of this first batch have been extensively refurbished and upgraded, bringing them to the same standard as the Mirage 2000-9.
UAE Mirage 2000s flew in the Gulf War of 1991, but had little action. Six Mirage 2000s were to participate in the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya.
As part of the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen on 14 March 2016, a United Arab Emirates Mirage 2000-9D crashed in the southern Yemeni city of Aden during a combat operation in the early morning hours, killing its two pilots. The Arab coalition claims the Mirage crashed due to a technical fault. Other sources reported that the Mirage 2000-9D was shot down by Yemeni Al-Qaeda militants using a Strela-2 MANPADS while flying low.
On 2 July 2019, during the 2019–20 Western Libya campaign, an airstrike hit the Tajoura Detention Center outside Tripoli, Libya, which was being used as a holding facility for migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe, was struck from the air. A storage hangar being used as a residential facility was destroyed by the attack, killing at least 53 people and wounding 130. The Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) initially claimed that the airstrike was conducted by the Libyan National Army (LNA), but later attributed the attack to a UAE aircraft. A January 2020 report by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that the strike was likely to have been carried out with a guided bomb fired from a non-Libyan aircraft, again suggesting that a foreign Mirage 2000 had been used.
Greece
In July 1985, Greece signed a contract for 40 Mirage 2000s comprising 36 single-seat aircraft and 4 two-seat trainers. The order came as part of a larger defence acquisition programme that saw the country, for political reasons, proceed with an order for the F-16. The $1.38 billion Mirage contract also consisted of weapons and equipment, as well as industrial offsets that permitted HAI to produce the M53-P2 engines. The first aircraft were delivered in June 1988 and the last, by the end of 1989. They featured an "ICMS Mk. 1" defensive countermeasures suite (DCS), an updated version of the standard Mirage 2000C DCS, characterised by two small antennas near the top of the tailfin. Initially armed with R.550 Matra Magic-2 missiles. During the "Talos" modernisation project of the 1990s, carried out by Hellenic Aerospace Industry and supervised by Dassault and Thompson-CSF, the aircraft received: a vastly improved RDM-3 radar set; the ICMS 1 DCS; the ability to carry the Super-530D medium-range missile and the AM39 Exocet Block II anti-ship missile. After "Talos", the aircraft were renamed Mirage-2000EGM/BGM.
In August 2000, Greece placed a $1.1 billion order for a batch of 15 new Mirage 2000-5 Mk. 2 fighters, and had 10 existing Mirage 2000EGMs upgraded to Mirage 2000-5 Mk. 2 standard. The upgrade meant the addition of the RDY-2 radar and ICMS-3 DCS, and the ability to deploy SCALP cruise missiles and both versions of the MICA instead, an order for which was placed. All Greek machines (Mk 2s and EGMs) feature the TOTEM-3000 INS of the Mk2 instead of the Uliss-52 and have hose-and-drogue aerial refueling capability.
On 8 October 1996, seven months after the escalation of the dispute with Turkey over the Imia/Kardak islands, a Turkish F-16D jet crashed into the Aegean Sea after interception by Greek Mirages. The Turkish pilot died, while the co-pilot ejected and was rescued by Greek forces. In August 2012, after the downing of a RF-4E on the Syrian coast, Turkish Defence Minister İsmet Yılmaz claimed that the Turkish F-16D was shot down in 1996 by a Greek Mirage 2000 with an R.550 Magic II near Chios island. Greece denies that the F-16 was shot down. Both Mirage 2000 pilots reported that the F-16 caught fire and that they saw one parachute.
On 12 April 2018, a Greek Mirage 2000-5, part of a two-ship formation, crashed into the Aegean Sea north of the Skyros air base after being scrambled to intercept two Turkish F-16s that were in the disputed airspace. When the Mirage pair arrived in the area, the Turkish jets had already left. The Greek pilot died in the crash, which was attributed to Saharan dust in the air; both Mirage pilots were flying low in poor visibility.
Taiwan
In response to mainland China's purchase of the Su-27, the Republic of China (Taiwan) began talks with the US and France about the possible purchase of new fighters. While the US opposed Taiwan's acquisition of the Mirage 2000 and instead pressured it to procure the F-16, the Republic of China Air Force became the first customer for the Mirage 2000-5 in November 1992. The order for 48 single-seat Mirage 2000-5EIs and 12 Mirage 2000-5DI trainers was condemned by China. The order also included 480 Magic short-range air-to-air missiles, 960 MICA intermediate-range air-to-air missiles, auxiliary fuel tanks, ground support equipment, and monitoring equipment; total costs amounted to US$4.9 billion, of which $2.6 billion was for the aircraft. The MICA missile provides the Mirage with a degree of BVR capability needed for its role as front-line interceptor. In addition, a set of ASTAC electronic intelligence (ELINT) pods was ordered. A number of centerline twin gun pods with DEFA 554 cannons were also acquired and fitted on the two-seaters, as they do not have an internal gun armament.
Taiwanese Mirage 2000s were delivered from May 1997 to November 1998, and are based at Hsinchu AB. The RoCAF's Mirages have suffered from low operational readiness and high maintenance costs; the harsh environment and high operational tempo have caused higher than expected wear and tear. After cracks were detected in the blades of the aircraft's engines in 2009, Dassault worked with Taiwanese authorities to successfully rectify the issue and provided compensation for the engine damage. By the following year, normal training hours of 15 per month had resumed and the fleet's operational readiness had been restored, after having reportedly dropped to 6 hours per month because of the engine troubles. In addition, there were considerations of mothballing the entire Mirage fleet because of its high maintenance costs. Although the aircraft's maintenance costs more than that of the AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo and the Lockheed F-16 Fighting Falcon, the fleet was reportedly still being maintained adequately because of its popularity. Yet plans to upgrade the fleet have not been carried out, as costs for doing so in France would be very high.
Qatar
In 1994, Qatar became the second export customer for the Mirage 2000-5 as it ordered twelve aircraft to replace its Mirage F1EDAs. Designated Mirage 2000-5DAs, the aircraft ordered consisted of nine single-seaters (5EDA) and three two-seaters (5DDA), and the first delivery was made in September 1997. Qatar also purchased the MICA missile and the Apache stand-off cruise missile. The aircraft would be used sparingly, and by the mid-2000s, under pressure from the US to dispose of the aircraft and with most of the aircraft's operational life still intact, Qatar offered to sell the aircraft to Pakistan and later India. Such a deal would not materialise.
In March 2011, Mirage 2000s were deployed to an airbase on the Greek island of Crete as part of Qatar's commitment to assist in the NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya. The aircraft would soon jointly enforce the no-fly zone along with French Mirage 2000-5 aircraft.
In January 2023, Qatar sold 12 Mirage 2000-5 to Indonesia for $795.14 million; the aircraft will be delivered within 24 months.
Brazil
Dassault participated in a competition to replace the Brazilian Air Force's aging Mirage IIIEBR/DBRs with a Brazilian-specific version of the Mirage 2000-9 that would have been developed in collaboration with Embraer designated Mirage 2000BR. However, due to Brazilian fiscal problems, the competition dragged on for years until it was suspended in February 2005. Instead, Brazil in July 2005 purchased 12 ex-French Air Force Mirage 2000 aircraft (ten "C" and two "B" versions), designated F-2000, for $72 million. Deliveries began in September 2006 and concluded on 27 August 2008 with the delivery of the last 2 aircraft. According to Journal of Electronic Defense, the figure was $200 million, which consisted of a significant number of Magic 2 air-to-air missiles, and the AdA would provide full conversion training in France and full logistical support. The ten single-seat fighters and two twin-seat combat-trainers were drawn from operational squadrons Escadron de Chasse 1/5 and 2/5, based at Orange AB, respectively. The first delivery was made September 2006 to 1º Grupo de Defesa Aérea (1º GDA – 1st Air Defence Group) based at Annapolis. They were primarily used in the air-defence role and were equipped with Matra Super 530D and Matra Magic 2. Brazil officially retired its fleet in December 2013, just before the maintenance contract with Dassault concluded.
Potential operators
Indonesia has considered in acquiring used Mirage 2000s for the Indonesian Air Force. 12 Mirage 2000-5s from Qatar is reportedly chosen by Indonesia. In November 2022, the Ministry of Finance of Indonesia approved foreign loans to fund several Indonesian Air Force procurement programs, including the ex-Qatari Mirage 2000s proposal. In June 2023, an Indonesian Ministry of Defence official confirmed a contract was signed with Czech company Excalibur International, acting as the provider for the aircraft, earlier this year to procure Qatar's fleet of Mirage 2000 aircraft.
Ukraine has expressed interest in the Mirage 2000, and it has been reported in March 2023 that France has been training Ukrainian pilots on this aircraft in possible anticipation of sending some of the fighters to Ukraine.
Variants
Mirage 2000C
Upgrades include the addition of the Non-Cooperative Target Recognition (NCTR) mode to the RDI Radar to allow identification of airborne targets not responding on identification friend or foe (IFF), and the ability to carry air-to-ground stores such as rocket pods, iron bombs and cluster bombs. Some variants, especially those equipped with the RDM radar (mainly used in export models) have the capability to use the Exocet anti-ship missile.
Mirage 2000B
The Mirage 2000B is a two-seat operational conversion trainer variant which first flew on 11 October 1980. The French Air Force acquired 30 Mirage 2000Bs, and all three AdA fighter wings each obtained several of them for conversion training.
Mirage 2000N
The Mirage 2000N is the nuclear strike variant which was intended to carry the Air-Sol Moyenne Portée nuclear stand-off missile. The variant was retired on 21 June 2018.
Mirage 2000D
The Mirage 2000D is a dedicated conventional attack variant developed from the Mirage 2000N.
Mirage 2000D RMV
Mirage 2000D Rénovation Mi-Vie (Mid-Life Upgrade). It updates the avionics, integrates a CC422 gun pod, the GBU-48, and the GBU-50, along with allowing use of MICA missiles in the place of Magic missiles.
Mirage 2000-5F
First major upgrade over the Mirage 2000C. Replaces most cockpit displays with several large multi-function displays, and upgrading the stores-to-aircraft interface for the use of targeting pods and a wide variety of guided air-to-ground weapons, as well as a radar upgrade to provide guidance information for MICA missiles.
Mirage 2000-5 Mk 2
The improved "Mk 2" variant of the Mirage 2000-5 features the more advanced RDY-2 Radar (replacing the RDM Radar), the new multi-data processing unit (MDPU) replacing the old MC1 & MC2 Main-Computers and a new TOTEM 3000 INS using lasers (instead of the mechanical ULISS 52 INS). The mainly analogue Cockpits were replaced by more modern "glass Cockpits". Another Upgrade (at least the Hellenic Air Force's) M2000-5 Mk2 received is a new ICMS "advanced type MK3" System.
Mirage 2000E
"Mirage 2000E" was a blanket designation for a series of export variants of the Mirage 2000. These aircraft were fitted with the M53-P2 engine and an enhanced "RDM+" radar, and all can carry the day-only ATLIS II laser targeting pod.
Mirage 2000EM
The Mirage 2000M is the version purchased by Egypt. Two-seat Mirage 2000BM trainers were also ordered.
Mirage 2000H, 2000TH
Designation of two-seat trainers and single-seat fighters for India. Indian Mirage 2000s have been integrated to carry the Russian R-73AE Archer missile as of 2007. The Mirage 2000TH is a twin-seat trainer version.
Mirage 2000I, 2000TI
It is an Indian specific version single/twin-seater fighter for the Indian Air Force similar to Mirage 2000-5 Mk2 equipped with Indian French and Israeli avionics and weapon packages. Its contract was signed in 2011 and first upgraded aircraft was delivered in 2015. Dassault aviation will upgrade initial few planes Mirage 2000H, 2000TH to 2000I, 2000TI later by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
Mirage 2000P
Peru placed an order for 10 single-seat Mirage 2000Ps and 2 Mirage 2000DP trainers.
Mirage 2000-5EI
Of the 60 Mirage 2000s Taiwan ordered in 1992, the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) would receive 48 single-seat Mirage 2000-5EI interceptors and 12 Mirage 2000-5DI trainers. This version of Mirage 2000-5 had the mid-air refuel ability as well as its ground attack ability deleted.
Mirage 2000-5EDA
In 1994, Qatar ordered nine single-seat Mirage 2000-5EDAs and three Mirage 2000-5DDA trainers, with initial deliveries starting in late 1997.
Mirage 2000EAD/RAD
In 1983, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) purchased 22 single-seat Mirage 2000EADs, 8 unique single-seat Mirage 2000RAD reconnaissance variants, and 6 Mirage 2000DAD trainers, for a total order of 36 aircraft.
The Mirage 2000RAD reconnaissance variant does not have any built-in cameras or sensors, and the aircraft can still be operated in air combat or strike roles. The reconnaissance systems are implemented in pods produced by Thales and Dassault. The UAE is the only nation operating such a specialised reconnaissance variant of the Mirage 2000 at this time.
Mirage 2000EG
In March 1985, Greece ordered 30 single-seat Mirage 2000EGs and 10 Mirage 2000BG two-seat trainers, equipped with RDM radars and M53P2 engines, mainly for interception/air defence roles, although the ability to use air-to-ground armaments was retained. After the Talos modernisation project, during which variant aircraft received updated sensors and avionics, as well as new anti-ship and air-to-air weapons, and were redesignated Mirage 2000EGM.
Mirage 2000BR
A variant of the Mirage 2000-9 for Brazil that did not materialise.
Mirage 2000-9
Mirage 2000-9 is the export variant of Mirage 2000-5 Mk.2. The UAE was the launch customer, ordering 32 new-build aircraft, comprising 20 Mirage 2000-9 single-seaters and 12 Mirage 2000-9D two-seaters. A further 30 of Abu Dhabi's older Mirage 2000s will also be upgraded to Mirage 2000-9 standard.
Operators
Specifications (Mirage 2000)
Notable appearances in media
See also
References
Citations
Sources
Journal articles
Books
; printed in Italy by Peruzzi.
.
External links
Official Mirage 2000 family website
Dassault Mirage 2000 explanatory video
1970s French fighter aircraft
Mirage 2000
Single-engined jet aircraft
Tailless delta-wing aircraft
Relaxed-stability aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1978
Fourth-generation jet fighter
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusters%20%28British%20game%20show%29
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Blockbusters (British game show)
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Blockbusters is a British television quiz show based upon an American quiz show of the same name. A solo player and a team of two answer trivia questions, clued up with an initial letter of the answer, to complete a path across or down a game board of hexagons.
The programme premiered on 29 August 1983 on ITV and ran for ten series, ending on 19 May 1993. It has since been revived for four additional series, the most recent of which was a comedy version hosted by Dara Ó Briain, which aired on Comedy Central from 21 March to 5 December 2019.
Background
Blockbusters was created by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions and originated as an American series in 1980. The UK version was created after Central Independent Television producer Graham C. Williams spotted the show in 1981 and produced a pilot in 1982. The difference was that instead of adults, who appeared on the American edition, the UK edition was produced for sixth formers.
Bob Holness was the original presenter staying on for the first ten series of the first incarnation and a 1994 revival on Sky One. Holness commented in 1988: "When Central TV were looking for someone to host Blockbusters I was thought of. It was remembered that I'd done TV programmes of much the same sort, such as Junior Criss Cross Quiz which I compered in the 1960s and which was also a question and answer show. One led to the other." A 1997 edition featuring adults was produced for one series on BBC Two with Michael Aspel presenting. Sky One brought Blockbusters back under its original rules in 2000 with Liza Tarbuck at the helm. The Challenge series was presented by Simon Mayo, and the Comedy Central series was presented by Dara Ó Briain.
Contestants were allowed to do a hand jive during the end credits of the Friday episode of each broadcast week. The hand jive first appeared in 1986 after one of the contestants was bored while sitting through filming several shows a day waiting for his turn. It lasted for the rest of the original series' run. The hand-clapping sequence was referenced by Half Man Half Biscuit in their 1991 song "Hedley Verityesque".
The original game board was powered using 40 slide projectors, each with its own set of slides for the different Letters and Gold Run questions, and took up the entire height of the studio. Slides were preloaded onto carousels with enough slides for about 3 – 5 shows. Carousels took about 30 minutes to change over. There were 15 different board combinations (5 sets X 3 games per match) which meant the same letter combinations would reappear. The letter 'Q' was only on one board, the letter 'Y' on two boards. All 15 boards followed in the same sequence; if the same player/team won a match with victories in the first two games, the third one was skipped and the projectors were advanced directly to the Gold Run.
In 1987 and 1988, readers of TVTimes voted the series the most popular quiz show on television.
Theme music
The original theme music was written by Ed Welch, who also updated the music for the second Sky series in 2001. The first Sky series kept the same opening titles used from 1987 on the original ITV run (as it continued to be produced by Central). The original theme in C major was an upbeat pop track incorporating piano, strings, drum machine, and various other 1980s synthesized sounds reminiscent of the day – the four-note opening motif of Beethoven's 5th Symphony is mixed into the theme at the precise moment the composer's head appears on a flipping hexagon in the 1983 opening sequence (this sequence was replaced in 1987, see below).
The BBC version in 1997 used a piece of music written by Henry Marsh and Paul Boross. It is said by some that the theme is similar to the original theme with notes swapped around but for unknown reasons, the BBC either couldn't or wouldn't use the original theme; therefore, they composed a theme as close to the original as possible but different enough to avoid possible allegations of copyright infringement.
Rage Music created the version used by Challenge, which is an updated version of the original theme, primarily using an electric guitar.
Marc Sylvan and Richard Jacques updated the original theme for the Comedy Central version.
Title sequences
The original 1983–87 title sequence featured flipping hexagons with various images on them running down an encyclopedia page. The title sequence used from 1987 to 1993 is a city, paying homage to science-fiction films such as Metropolis (1927) and Blade Runner (1982). In the 1994 Sky series, the opening titles were cut short, not featuring the hexagons flying over the studio like the 1987–93 titles.
The title sequence used in the 1997 series with a completely different theme tune (although as mentioned above, it might have been similar to the original theme but with several notes swapped around) featured a golden head with hexagons showing clips. The title sequence used in 2000–01 featured people throwing and catching the letters that spell "Blockbusters" using the Ed Welch theme again.
The 2012 title sequence featured references to all previous title sequences, mainly hexagons – but also with more subtle features like the golden head (as seen in the 1997 BBC version), the planet Earth and a city-like structure as seen in the popularised 1987–95 versions. The 2019 title sequence featured hexagon outlines on a hexagon landscape.
Main game
Like the 1980 U.S. version, a solo player competed against a pair of contestants. The game board consisted of 20 interlocking yellow hexagons, arranged in five columns of four. Each hexagon contained a letter of the alphabet (except X and Z, although letter Z appeared occasionally during the Gold Run). A contestant would choose one of the letters and would be asked a general-knowledge trivia question whose correct answer began with the chosen letter. (A typical question might be, "What 'P' is a musical instrument with 88 keys?" The answer would be a piano.) The phrasing that contestants would use to ask for a letter has entered the language and is frequently heard to this day. It is also the source of a pun – "Can I have a 'P' please, Bob?"; 'having a pee' being slang for urinating.
The game board is designed in such a way that a tied game was not a possible finishing result. Even if all 20 hexagons were filled (which did occur at least twice, once in the very first series, and once in the first Sky version) there would always be a winner.
The game began with a toss-up question to play for control of the board, starting with a letter that was chosen at random. The teams or players could buzz in during the middle of reading a question. If a player or team got the correct answer, they gained control of that hexagon and were given the chance to choose another one. If the contestant answered incorrectly, the opposing team or player was given a chance to answer it after the host re-read the question. If nobody answered it correctly, the host asked another question whose answer began with that same letter. Each correct answer won £5. In the case of the two-player team, each player won whatever money the team accumulated.
The solo player attempted to complete a vertical connection of white hexagons from the top of the board to the bottom; that required at least four correct answers. The pair attempted to connect a path from left to right with blue hexagons (purple during the Aspel era), requiring at least five spaces. The first side to connect their path won the game. The first player or team to win two games won the match. When either party was one correct answer away from completing their path, the hexagons forming their path would flash to indicate this. If both were one correct answer away, all lit hexagons on the board would flash, indicating that the situation was effectively "Blockbusters either way" (later referred to as a "mutual space" on the board), and the next player to give a correct answer would win the game unless the contestant chose a panel which would not give them the win, which was sometimes used as a safety tactic to avoid handing the initiative to the opponent in case they gave the wrong answer.
All players received a "Blockbusters" Concise Oxford Dictionary and sweatshirt in the original ITV series. By 1985, the Blockbusters computer game was added. Within a year, the sweatshirt had been replaced by a "Blockbusters" branded cardigan in a choice of colours and a "Blockbusters" embossed filofax accompanied the dictionary (replaced by an electronic organizer by 1988). In the first Sky One series in 1994, it was a Blockbusters Encyclopedia and T-shirt. In the BBC Two 1997 series, it was a fountain pen. In the second Sky One series, it was a Blockbusters Dictionary and a Britannica CD-ROM. In the Challenge series, it was an Elonex E-book reader. In the Comedy Central series, it was a Blockbusters-branded hoodie and "reusable cup".
Gold Run
The winner of the match went on to play the Gold Run bonus round; if the pair won, only one player on the team could play, with the turns alternating at each Gold Run. The board consisted of a pattern of green hexagons similar to that of the main game, but the hexagons had 2 to 4 letters inside them; those letters were the initials of the correct answer. (For instance, if a contestant chose "BS" and the host said "Where people kiss in Ireland", the correct answer would be "Blarney Stone.") When the contestant guessed correctly, the hexagon turned gold. However, if the contestant passed, it turned black, blocking the player's path; it was then up to the contestant to work around it. The object was to horizontally connect the left and right sides of the board within 60 seconds (or before blocking off all possible horizontal connections).
If the players were successful they won a special prize. If the Gold Run was not won, each correct answer paid £10. Defending champions could keep going for up to five matches undefeated, in order to win an even bigger prize. From the seventh ITV series, it was reduced to three, so that more contestants could take part over the course of a series. In the first Sky One series this was changed back up to five matches and reduced to three again on BBC Two. In the second Sky One series, it increased to five again. For the Challenge series, the maximum amount remained at five matches.
A famous short piece of music (three sharp notes on a synth-like horn in a slapstick style) was played if a contestant ran out of time on a Gold Run, often producing amused reactions in the studio; the same three notes played on an electric guitar act as the time's-up buzzer on the Challenge version.
Champion Blockbusters
4 series of Champion Blockbusters were made from 1987 to 1990, in which gold-run winners were invited to return to battle against other gold-run winners.
Other versions
Sky One
In 1994, Sky One created a new series with original host, Bob Holness. It was produced by Central, which had made the programme since 1983, and sponsored by Thomas Cook. This series featured a bonus question for any player who chose a particular letter and correctly answered that question, thereby earning the right to answer a £5 follow-up question. Sky One brought the series back again in 2000, this time produced by Grundy (which owned the format) and presented by Liza Tarbuck, but it did not capture the same degree of popularity as the Holness incarnation. The format stayed the same in both versions, and both versions involved sixth formers.
BBC Two
BBC Two used adult contestants, instead of sixth formers. This version was broadcast in 1997 and presented by Michael Aspel; the show stayed with the same format. Famous contestants included Stephen Merchant.
This is the only version to use purple hexagons; all other versions still used blue to represent the pair of players. The solo player still played white hexagons. The Gold Run used a blue background in this version and the Liza Tarbuck version.
Champions in the Apsel era were limited to three wins before retiring undefeated.
Gameshow Marathon
On 14 April 2007 at 20:40, Vernon Kay hosted a networked edition of Gameshow Marathon on ITV1 in which celebrity contestants revived the classic 1980s Holness version of the show. It also featured an edited version of the show's opening titles.
Challenge
It was announced on 10 November 2011 that game show channel Challenge would revive the show in 2012, under the name "All New Blockbusters", with adult contestants rather than students. Forty episodes were recorded from 9 to 19 February 2012 with Simon Mayo hosting the show.
The series started airing on 14 May 2012, with the first episode dedicated to the memory of original host Bob Holness, who died on 6 January 2012. The series also featured contestant Claire Scott who made her third appearance on Blockbusters.
The show aired at 20:00 every weekday with an omnibus showing split over Saturday and Sunday mornings, plus a repeat showing of the previous night's episode at 17:00. The series was put on hold for a few weeks and resumed transmission on 9 July 2012, starting with a celebrity special featuring Konnie Huq (who had previously been on the original Blockbusters) amongst others. During the break, the first 20 episodes were repeated, with the "All New" removed from the title. Subsequent repeats also removed the "All New" prefix.
Comedy Central
On 22 October 2018, it was reported that Blockbusters would return once again. Produced by Thames TV with the same format. It was announced on 3 December 2018 that Dara Ó Briain would host the revived version for Comedy Central. Twenty new episodes, broadcast over two series, were recorded in the winter of 2018 and included two celebrity specials. The first episode aired on 21 March 2019.
The format has been changed so that each episode is a standalone contest between a complete panel of three contestants. The prize money has been increased from earlier incarnations to £20 per correct answer in the main game (£100 for the celebrity edition) and £50 per correct answer in an unsuccessful Gold Run (£150 for the celebrity edition). Spot prizes exist in this series, occurring once per episode when a certain hex is selected. If each side wins one game each, the deciding game of past formats has been replaced with a sudden-death playoff entitled the Hexagon Standoff. The two teams try to answer one question, if they get it correct, they go to the Gold Run, however, if they answer incorrectly the opposition goes through. In the Gold Run, the contestant has a choice of two categories for their question board. This version uses a white background during the Gold Run and passes turn the space dark blue.
Merchandise
Blockbusters spawned a number of items of merchandise. 12 quiz books were released from the show which also led to a spin-off: "Blockbusters Gold Run Volumes 1–5" being produced.
In 1986, Waddingtons created a board game version of the show, which was named Game of the Year in 1986 by The British Association of Toy Retailers. This led to several successful spin offs; a "Gold Run" Card Game, a Junior Blockbusters board game (a children's edition) and a Super Blockbusters board game (essentially, a second edition standard game with its own set of "Gold Run" cards). A computer game version of the show was also created for the Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.
In 2006, a DVD game based on the show was released by Circle Studio under license from FremantleMedia, with Bob Holness reprising his position at the helm. The DVD is based on the same format as the TV show, with a virtual set design and game graphics matching the original version of the programme.
In 2012, FremantleMedia's gaming division launched an online slot game based on the British game show. The game is featured at many of the UK's leading gambling sites, including Sky Vegas and Bet365.
Transmissions
ITV series
Series 2 & 3 were actually merged into one with the first 71 episodes as Series 2 and the last 49 episodes as Series 3.
Later series
Champion Blockbusters
Regional transmissions information
Blockbusters was one of the first British game shows to run in a 'straddling' format, which allowed for games to last a different length of time, meaning that episodes would often begin and end mid-game, and matches often crossed over into two episodes. The show was generally screened at 5:15 pm Monday to Friday, filling the half-hour timeslot between Children's ITV and the ITN News at 5:45, with a similar timeslot allocated on Saturdays for a while. The show was always aired on the ITV network, although the first series was repeated on Channel 4 during the summer of 1984, in the Countdown slot. Blockbusters was never networked across ITV's sixteen regions, this meant that it was occasionally possible to retune the television to a neighbouring region and watch a different episode. Blockbusters did share its time slot with other game shows such as Ask No Questions, Connections, and Winner Takes All. Episodes were recorded in two blocks one during the summer and another during November.
1983
All regions aired Series 1, some stations moved Blockbusters to an earlier slot because the 5:15 pm slot was taken up by soap operas.
Border, Central, Granada, HTV, TVS, UTV and Yorkshire: Started on 29 August and finished on 4 November 1983. Mondays to Fridays at 5:15pm.
Anglia, Channel, Grampian, Scottish, Thames, TSW and Tyne Tees: Started on 5 September and finished on 11 November 1983. Mondays to Fridays at 3:30pm.
1984–88
Border, Central, Granada, HTV, Tyne Tees, UTV and Yorkshire: Mondays to Fridays at 5:15pm and Saturdays at 5:05pm.
Anglia, Grampian, and Scottish: Wednesdays to Fridays at 5:15pm and Saturdays at 5:05pm. Mondays and Tuesdays were filled with Emmerdale Farm. STV for the first 5 weeks in 1984 had the series at 3.30 as Crossroads held the 5.15 but that was changed by 10 October 1984. In 1987 Series 5 was held back until 12 September. In early 1988 Anglia moved the series to 6 days a week, completed the series in March, while Grampian and STV completed the series on 19 April 1988
Thames/LWT: Wednesdays to Fridays at 5:15pm and Saturdays at 5:05pm. It was then changed from September 1985 on Mondays to Wednesdays and Fridays to Saturdays at 5:15 pm.
TVS: Wednesdays to Fridays at 5:15pm and Saturdays at 5:05pm. Mondays and Tuesdays were filled with Sons and Daughters. From Series 5 (September 1987) TVS switched to Mondays to Fridays at 5:15 pm and Saturdays at 5:05 pm.
TSW: Most of Series 2 was not transmitted at all because the 5.15pm slot was taken up on all dates with Crossroads, The Young Doctors and Emmerdale Farm, which was later moved into early peak time in 1985 (as it was on Thames). 49 episodes of Series 2 did air in the mornings during the summer holidays (Mondays to Saturdays) from 1 July to 24 August 1985. Series 3 aired on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 5:15 pm. Series 4 and 5 aired on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 5:15 pm.
Channel: Same as TSW's schedule until January 1986, it was then switched to TVS's schedules. This meant that approximately 16–20 episodes were skipped as TVS were further ahead.
1988–89
All regions expect TSW broadcast the show from 2 September 1988 to 10 February 1989. Mondays to Fridays at 5:15 pm and Saturdays at 5:05 pm. However, Anglia and Scottish aired some episodes on Sundays instead of Saturdays.
TSW: Started on 3 October 1988 and finished on 10 February 1989. Mondays to Fridays at 5:15 pm and Saturdays at 5:05 pm.
No episodes aired on ITV between 19 September to 3 October due to the 1988 Summer Olympics.
1990–92
The show was delayed by all ITV regions until January 1990 as no slots were available to air the show. This was because Home and Away took over the 5:10 pm slot and Emmerdale was now being aired at 6:30 pm, before it was moved to 7:00 pm in January 1990. Anglia, Central and TSW were airing repeats from September to December 1989.
Anglia, Central and Thames: Blockbusters aired three times a week from January 1990 onwards on Mondays to Thursdays at 5:10pm and aired Home and Away at 6:00pm. Days of the week changed and additional episodes were added as well to make it four per week on occasions.
LWT: No longer aired any episodes from this point onwards.
Scottish: Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 pm from 3 January to April 1990. From May 1990, it was moved to a daytime slot around 1:30 pm, with the number of episodes fluctuating from none to up to four from this point onwards.
Grampian: from 3 January 1990, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 pm.
Border, Granada, HTV, TVS, TSW, Tyne Tees, UTV and Yorkshire: Tuesdays to Thursdays at 6:30pm.
Granada moved the time slots around during this period, In Autumn 1990, the series was moved to 5:10 pm, on occasion moved 15.25 to allow episodes of Families to have the 17.10 slot. The series was moved again to 6:00 pm from Wednesdays to Fridays in 1992. UTV reduced its time slots to one episode a week from January to October 1992, then from 26 October 1992, it was aired at 3:20 pm from Mondays to Fridays. TVS reduced its time slots to two episodes a week for most of 1990, but during 1991–92, it went back to three episodes plus an additional episode around Saturday lunchtimes. TSW also dropped its time slots to two episodes per week every so often; however, in a bid to catch back up the series, it was moved to 5:10 pm from Mondays to Fridays in September 1992. For around 18 months in 1991–92, Tyne Tees started airing more local output in the 6:30 pm time slot, which resulted in fewer episodes per week. When Tyne Tees and Yorkshire decided to merge their scheduling in January 1993, Tyne Tees increased its episode output to catch up (In November 1992, it was airing four times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays), but had to drop over 50 episodes.
1993
A number of new ITV companies come into being, with Westcountry and Carlton having hour long news, while most of the other area wished to have more local programmes in the early evenings which resulted in some areas, moving the series back before CITV.
Anglia and Central: Mondays to Wednesdays at 5:10pm, then switching to Wednesdays to Fridays at 5:10pm. Completed on 19 May 1993, although repeats were transmitted until Christmas.
Carlton: Mondays to Fridays at 3:20pm. Completed on 4 June 1993.
HTV: Mondays to Thursdays at 1:45pm. Completed on 2 August 1993.
Scottish: Continued to air the series between two and four times most week until 1 September 1993. Reappeared daily at 5:25am over Christmas period from 18 December 1993 finally completing the series on 7 January 1994.
Westcountry: Mondays to Fridays at 1:45pm. Completed on 3 September 1993.
Border, Tyne Tees and Yorkshire: Continued on Tuesdays to Thursdays at 6:30pm. Completed on 28 September 1993.
Grampian: Mondays to Fridays at 1:45pm. Completed on 21 December 1993.
Meridian: Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 6:30 pm. Completed on 14 December 1993.
Granada: Aired 2–3 episodes most weeks at 5:10pm. From April to August, it was moved to 3:20 pm. Completed in January 1994.
Ulster: Mondays to Fridays at 3:20 pm until August 1993, then switching to Saturday lunchtime until completed 15 January 1994.
1994–95
After the tenth series, Blockbusters was no longer networked on ITV. But it continued for one more series on the satellite channel Sky One. Five ITV regional channels showed this series.
Sky One: Mondays to Fridays at 7:00pm from 18 April to 30 September 1994 before moving to 6:30pm from 28 November 1994 to 17 February 1995.
Anglia and Central: Mondays to Wednesdays at 2:50pm from 18 April 1994 to 12 July 1995.
Meridian Wednesdays from early June until early September 1994
Tyne Tees and Yorkshire: Around 70 episodes; Tuesdays to Thursdays at 6:30 pm from 11 July to 29 December 1995.
Border: Around 50 episodes aired up to twice a week at 5:10 pm.
Reruns
Challenge TV aired Blockbusters starting from September 1996 during the final months of The Family Channel and was the first game show broadcast on the relaunch from the Family Channel to Challenge TV on 3 February 1997 showing reruns from Series 9, it was repeated in February to June 1997, January to May 1998, September 1998 to January 1999 and May to September 1999.
In 2004, Saturday Night Takeaway showed clips from a 1992 episode with a contestant in the audience who did not get very far on the show and only won £10. Following requests on the (now "defunct") Challenge forums to air the show, Challenge managed to acquire Blockbusters from June 2004 to June 2006, but they only showed the first 25 episodes from Series 10, which generated low ratings. Carlton Select also showed old shows while that channel was still operational.
Challenge reacquired Blockbusters but this time, they acquired 72 episodes from Series 10, and broadcast them during 2011. On 8 May 2014, they acquired the very first series, which aired from 26 May. On 4 January 2016, Challenge began showing Series 11 (the first Sky One series), acquiring 179 of the 180 episodes in the series.
Notable contestants
Mel Giedroyc
Tim Harford (1991)
Jesse Honey (1990s)
James Humphreys (1984, 1987)
Konnie Huq (1992, 2012)
Daniel Kitson
Naomi Long (1989)
Kerry McCarthy
Stephen Merchant (1997)
Ian Payne (1990s)
Richard Lloyd Parry (1986)
Jon Tickle (1991)
Other countries
The format has been remade in a number of countries during the 1980s and 1990s:
– The Australian version of Blockbusters, hosted by Michael Pope, was broadcast on the Seven Network from 1991 to 1993. It had schools competing against other schools. Additionally, it also had an intro that looks similar to the Holness era from the UK version, although the theme song was different.
– A German version called Supergrips (originally called Grips before it) aired from 1988 to 1995 on the Bavarian TV network. Frank Laufenberg was the show's original host from 1988 until 1990, then was later replaced by Ingo Dubinski from 1991 until 1995.
– The French version was called Parcours d'enfer (Course of Hell) aired on TF1 and hosted by Pierre Bellemare.
– The Indonesian version called Aksara Bermakna (Meaningful Letters) aired on two networks, first on TVRI from 1989 to 1996 with Kepra as host, then on antv for a brief period from 1997 to 1999, this time with Anton Gemilar as host. It was created by Ani Sumadi.
– The Israeli version, called Nuts, ran on Israeli Educational Television from 1985 to 1994 with teenagers playing. Hosts of the Hebrew version were Shosh Atari, Avri Gilad, Ito Aviram, Anat Dolev, Mennachem Perry and Nahum Ido. An Arabic language version, called Paths (masarat, مسارات), aired on the same network in 1996.
– The Italian version is called Doppio Slalom (Dual Slalom) aired on Canale 5 from 1985 to 1990, originally hosted by Corrado Tedeschi from 1985 to 1990. Followed by Paolo Bonolis in the 1990 series.
– The Jordanian version is called Lo3bet Al-Hourof on Amman TV with Zaid Zghoul.
– A Dutch version of the show called Blokletters (Block Letters) ran for a brief period from 1986 on AVRO with Fred Oster at the helm. Its set with a mix of half light and dark colours and gameplay is very similar to that of the short-lived 1980–82 U.S. original.
– In Paraguay, called Blockbuster, like the Australian version, where two schools competed against each other. It aired on Telefuturo for a brief period in 1999, its hosts were Clari Arias and Leti Medina.
– The Saudi Arabian version is called ABC Program/Competitions Letters, hosted by Ibrahim al-Qasim, Majid Cub, Ghanem Al Saleh, and Ghalib Full. The network for this version in particular aired on First Channel Saudi Arabia from 1987 until 1994. Then it was revived again three years later from 1997 until 1998. Twenty years later, a version hosted by Salman Al-Otaibi aired in 2017.
– SVT in Sweden had their own version very similar to the UK one. 2 mot 1 (2 to 1) was a weekly afternoon programme forming part of SVT's youth output. The programme was produced in Malmö airing from 1998 to 1999 and was hosted by Stellan Sundahl until he died from a heart attack in 1999 at the age of 52.
– The Swiss version, also called Blockbusters, was hosted by Sven Epiney and aired on SF from 1997 to 2000.
– The Turkish version called Haydi Bastir (Let's Print) aired on Show TV from 1992 to 1993, the host was Mim Kemal Öke. Additionally, its set (and intro) looks similar to the original Holness era.
– Blockbusters (the UK edition) was such a sensation with the entire English speaking expatriate community in Dubai, U.A.E, that the city nearly came to a shutdown during its evening broadcast on Channel 33. Although there was no separate local TV version, the local paper, Gulf News, ran a yearly Blockbusters quiz competition, often hosted by Holness himself, between 1988 and 1994. The Gulf News Blockbusters show was telecast on Dubai TV too and was broadcast as a month-long event, with the heats during Ramadan and the finals after Eid al-Fitr.
After a 14-year-long hiatus, the contest was revived in 2008 as part of the newspaper's 30th-anniversary celebrations. It was also held in 2009 where the team "Anonymoys +3" whose members included Rahul Menon and Aayush Rajasekaran of The Indian High School, Dubai stood first place. This marked the second year that a team from the Indian High School defeated one from long-time rivals The Modern High School to claim first place.
– The original American version of Blockbusters aired twice on NBC. Originally from 1980 until 1982, hosted by Bill Cullen with the "2 in 1" format. This was followed by a brief return of the show in 1987 hosted by Bill Rafferty which dropped the "2 in 1" format and had single contestants instead.
Other foreign versions of Blockbusters have aired in and .
References
External links
Official Website for the Comedy Central version
Blockbusters (UK) at BFI
Champion Blockbusters at BFI
1980s British game shows
1983 British television series debuts
1990s British game shows
2000s British game shows
2010s British game shows
2019 British television series endings
BBC television game shows
British television series based on American television series
British television series revived after cancellation
Comedy Central (British TV channel) original programming
English-language television shows
ITV game shows
Quiz games
Sky UK original programming
Television series by Fremantle (company)
Television series by ITV Studios
Television series by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions
Television series by Reg Grundy Productions
Television shows produced by Central Independent Television
Television shows produced by Thames Television
Television shows shot at ATV Elstree Studios
Television shows shot at BBC Elstree Centre
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph%20Yarborough
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Ralph Yarborough
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Ralph Webster Yarborough (June 8, 1903 – January 27, 1996) was an American politician and lawyer. He was a Texas Democratic politician who served in the United States Senate from 1957 to 1971 and was a leader of the progressive wing of his party. Along with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, but unlike most Southern congressmen, Yarborough refused to support the 1956 Southern Manifesto, which called for resistance to the racial integration of schools and other public places. Yarborough voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1968, as well as the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. Yarborough was the only senator from a state that was part of the Confederacy to vote for all five bills.
Born in Chandler, Texas, Yarborough practiced law in El Paso after graduating from the University of Texas School of Law. He became an assistant to Texas Attorney General James Burr V Allred in 1931 and specialized in prosecuting major oil companies. Allred was later elected governor of Texas and appointed Yarborough to a judgeship in Travis County. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, Yarborough repeatedly ran for governor, opposing the conservative faction of Democrats led by Allan Shivers. Price Daniel resigned from the Senate after winning the 1956 gubernatorial election, and Yarborough won the special election to serve the remainder of Daniel's term. He won election to a full term in 1958 and was reelected again in 1964, defeating Harris County Republican Party Chairman George H. W. Bush in the latter race.
Yarborough was known as "Smilin' Ralph" and used the slogan "Let's put the jam on the lower shelf so the little people can reach it" in his campaigns. He staunchly supported the "Great Society" legislation that encompassed Medicare and Medicaid, the War on Poverty, federal support for higher education and veterans, and other programs. He also co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and was the most powerful proponent of the Big Thicket National Preserve. Yarborough criticized the Vietnam War and supported Robert F. Kennedy in the 1968 presidential election until the latter's assassination.
In 1970, Yarborough lost re-nomination to fellow Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, who campaigned as relatively more conservative. Yarborough attempted to win the 1972 Democratic primary for Texas's other Senate seat, but lost the primary to Barefoot Sanders. Yarborough did not seek public office after 1972.
Early life
Yarborough was born in Chandler in Henderson County west of Tyler, the seventh of nine children of Charles Richard Yarborough and the former Nannie Jane Spear. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1919 but dropped out to become a teacher. Yarborough instead attended Sam Houston State Teachers College and transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. Yarborough graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1927 and practiced law in El Paso until he was hired as an assistant attorney general in 1931 by the state Attorney General and later Governor James V. Allred. From 1923 to 1926 he served with the 36th Infantry Division of the Texas Army National Guard, reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant. After attending teaching school he taught for three years in Delta County and Martin Springs. He spent one year working and studying foreign trade and international relations in Europe, mostly as assistant secretary for the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, Germany.
Yarborough was an expert in Texas land law and specialized in prosecuting major oil companies that violated production limits or failed to pay oil royalties to the Permanent School Fund for drilling on public lands. He earned renown for winning a million dollar judgment against the Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company for oil royalties, the second largest judgment ever in Texas at the time. After Allred was elected governor, he appointed Yarborough judge of the 53rd Judicial District serving Travis County, the county seat of which is Austin. Yarborough was elected to a four-year term later the same year. Yarborough's first run for state office resulted in a third-place finish in the Democratic primary for state attorney general in 1938 against the sitting lieutenant governor. Yarborough served in the U.S. Army during World War II after 1943 and achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Before being elected a senator, Yarborough served on the Lower Colorado River Authority's board of directors and lectured on land law at University of Texas School of Law in 1935. He also served as a presiding judge for the Third Administrative Judicial District of Texas. From 1947 to 1951 he was a member of the Texas Board of Law Examiners.
Political career
Running for governor
Yarborough was urged to run again for state attorney general in 1952, and he planned to do so until he received a personal affront from Governor Allan Shivers who told him not to run. Texas Secretary of State John Ben Shepperd resigned in the spring of 1952 and was elected attorney general that year. He served two two-year terms. Angered at Shivers, Yarborough ran in the gubernatorial primaries in 1952 and 1954 against the conservative Shivers, drawing support from labor unions and liberals. Yarborough denounced the "Shivercrats" for veterans' fraud in the Texas Veterans Land Board of the Texas General Land Office and for endorsing in 1952 and 1956 the Republican Eisenhower/Nixon ticket, instead of the Democrat Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. Shivers portrayed Yarborough as an integrationist supported by communists and unions. The 1954 election was particularly nasty in its race-baiting by Shivers as it was the year that Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and Shivers made the most of the court decision in order to play on voters' fears. Yarborough, however, nearly upset Shivers.
In 1956, Yarborough made it to the primary runoff for governor against U.S. Senator Price Daniel. Texas historian J. Evetts Haley ran in the primary to the political right of both Daniel and Yarborough but lost. After being endorsed by former opponent and former Governor W. Lee O'Daniel, and making aggressive attacks on the Shivers-backed candidate, Yarborough looked to win the runoff, but instead he trailed Daniel by about nine thousand votes. It is believed (by Yarborough, his supporters, and biographer) that the election was stolen because of irregular voting in East Texas and that Yarborough really won the runoff by thirty thousand. Nevertheless, Yarborough's runs for governor had raised his stature and popularity in the state as he had been campaigning for six straight years for office.
Becoming a senator
When Daniel resigned from the Senate in 1957 to become governor, Yarborough ran in the special election to fill the empty seat. With no runoff then required, he needed only a plurality of votes to win. Ironically, his many runs for governor made him the best positioned candidate. Yarborough won the special election with 38 percent of the vote to join fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson in the Senate. The runner-up in the race with 30 percent of the vote was U.S. Representative Martin Dies, Jr., known for his investigations into communist infiltration. A Republican lawyer from Houston, Thad Hutcheson, ran third with 23 percent of the ballots cast.
James Boren served as Yarborough's campaign manager and chief of staff. In office, Ralph Yarborough was a very different kind of Southern senator. He did not support the Southern Manifesto opposing integration and supported national Democratic goals of more funding for health care, education, and the environment. Himself a veteran, he worked to expand the G.I. Bill to Cold War veterans. Yarborough's first major legislative victory was the successful passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which began federal funding of loans and grants to universities and their students.
In the 1958 Democratic primary, Yarborough easily defeated the conservative William A. Blakley, a millionaire businessman from Dallas who was backed by Daniel. Blakley had been the interim senator from January to April 1957 but did not run in the special election in which Yarborough defeated Dies and Hutcheson. Instead Blakley was appointed senator again in 1961 and ran in another special election, only to be defeated by the Republican John Tower.
In the nationally Democratic year of 1958, Yarborough cruised to victory in the general election over the Republican nominee, publisher Roy Whittenburg of Amarillo. During his first full term, Yarborough worked for a bill signed by President John F. Kennedy to designate Padre Island as a national seashore. While serving in the senate he was a member of the Interparliamentary Union Group from 1961 to 1970 and a member of the board of directors of Gallaudet College from 1969 to 1971.
Wrestling with Thurmond
Shortly after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on July 9, Johnson nominated former Florida governor LeRoy Collins to a position in the Community Relations Service, which was designed to mediate racial disputes. Strom Thurmond, the most senior southern member of the Commerce Committee, bitterly opposed Collins's nomination, based on a speech that Collins made in Thurmond’s home state in which he said that southern leaders’ “harsh and intemperate” language unnecessarily stoked racial unrest. Commerce Chairman Warren Magnuson was aware that he had the votes in favor of the nomination, but had failed to get the required quorum. Thurmond, aware of Magnuson's struggles, stationed himself outside of the committee door, physically blocking any entry by later-arriving senators.
Later, Yarborough arrived, and was blocked from entering. The only southern senator to have voted for the Civil Rights Act, Yarborough joked to Thurmond, "Come on in, Strom, and help us get a quorum." Thurmond responded, "If I can keep you out, you won’t go in, and if you can drag me in, I’ll stay there." Thurmond and Yarborough were both 61 years old, but Thurmond was 30 pounds lighter and much fitter. After some light scuffling, both senators removed their suit jackets. Thurmond overpowered Yarborough, whom he managed to bring to the floor. "Tell me to release you, Ralph, and I will," said Thurmond. Yarborough refused. Another senator approached, suggesting that they stop before one of them had a heart attack. Eventually, the fight was broken up by Magnuson, who growled, "Come on, you fellows, let’s break this up." Yarborough said, "I have to yield to the order of my chairman." Thurmond and Yarborough composed themselves and entered the committee chamber.
Collins was nominated by a vote of 16 to 1.
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Yarborough rode in the Dallas motorcade in which John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. He was in a convertible with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson (who sat between Yarborough and Johnson), United States Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, and Hurchel Jacks of the Texas State Highway Patrol. From the start of the President's tour of Texas, Yarborough considered that he had been slighted by some of the arrangements and so, in the early stages, refused to ride with Johnson, despite repeated pleas by Youngblood. His decision, underpinned by a long-standing feud with Governor Connally, an old friend and erstwhile ally of Johnson, caused embarrassment to both the President and Vice President and drew considerable diversionary attention in the press. According to Johnson, Kennedy considered Yarborough's behavior "an outrage" and there is some evidence of a heated exchange between Kennedy and Johnson the night before Kennedy's death. According to Johnson's biographer Robert Caro, the next morning in Fort Worth, Kennedy intervened directly with Yarborough, making clear that, if he valued his friendship, he would ride with Johnson when the party reached Dallas. Then, during the short flight from Fort Worth, Kennedy persuaded Connally to give Yarborough a more prominent role in some of the later functions planned in Austin. In the ensuing motorcade, the car carrying Yarborough and Johnson was two cars behind the presidential limousine carrying Kennedy and Connally (who was seriously wounded during the attack). In a later interview, Yarborough called the event "the most tragic event of my life." Shortly after Johnson became president, Yarborough telephoned him in conciliatory and supportive terms.
Reelection to Senate
In 1964, Yarborough again won the primary without a runoff, and won the general election with 56.2% of the vote. His Republican opponent was George H. W. Bush, who attacked Yarborough as a left-wing demagogue and for his vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yarborough denounced Bush as an extremist to the right of that year's GOP presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, and as a rich easterner and carpetbagger trying to buy a Senate seat. It has since been learned that then-Governor Connally was covertly aiding Bush, against President Johnson's wishes, by teaching Democrats the techniques of split ticket voting. In the same election, Connally defeated Bush's ticket-mate, Jack Crichton. In 1967, Yarborough was the first U.S. senator to introduce the first bilingual education act.
Although Yarborough supported Johnson's domestic agenda, he went public with his criticism of Johnson's foreign policy and the Vietnam War after Johnson announced his retirement. Yarborough supported Robert F. Kennedy for president until his assassination, then Eugene McCarthy until his loss in Chicago, finally backing Hubert Humphrey in his 1968 campaign against Nixon. In 1969, Yarborough became chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.
Defeat
In 1970, South Texan businessman and former Congressman Lloyd Bentsen defeated Yarborough in the Democratic primary, when Yarborough was focusing on an expected second general election campaign against Bush. Bentsen played on voters' fears of societal breakdown and urban riots, made an issue of Yarborough's opposition to the Vietnam War, and called him a political antique. Bentsen said, "It would be nice if Ralph Yarborough would vote for his state every once in a while." He defeated Bush in the general election.
In 1972, Yarborough made a comeback effort to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate to challenge Senator John Tower, who as a young man had once circulated Yarborough stickers. Yarborough won the first round of the primary and came within 526 votes of winning the primary without the need for a runoff. He again made accusations of vote fraud from the conservative wing. He lost in the primary runoff to a former U.S. Attorney, Barefoot Sanders, in an anti-incumbent sweep after the Sharpstown Bank-stock Scandal despite neither being an incumbent nor involved at all with the scandal.
From 1973 to 1974, Yarborough served as a member of the Constitutional Revision Commission of Texas. From 1983 to 1987, he served as a member of the State Library and Archives Commission of Texas. He practiced law in Austin from 1971 until his death in 1996.
Death
Yarborough died in 1996 at his home in Austin. He is interred at the Texas State Cemetery there beside his wife, the former Opal Warren, a native of Murchison in Henderson County, Texas. The Texas State Cemetery is sometimes called "the Arlington of Texas". Yarborough left a legacy in the modernization of the state of Texas and achieved political power when Texas had a native son, Lyndon Johnson, in the White House. He was combative with the dominant industries of oil and natural gas and pushed for the petroleum industry to pay a greater share of taxes. Their son, Richard Warren Yarborough, a lawyer since 1955, died on March 5, 1986, at age 54. Ralph and his wife Opal were survived by three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Legacy
Yarborough was one of the last of the New Deal Democrats and powerful liberals in Texas state politics. (He was followed by more conservative senators such as Bentsen and Phil Gramm). Yarborough is remembered as the acknowledged "patron saint of Texas liberals". Supporters and former aides who have since risen to prominence include Jim Hightower, Ann Richards, and Garry Mauro.
The University of Texas at Austin Press published a biography, Ralph W. Yarborough: The People's Senator, by Patrick L. Cox. It features a foreword by Senator Edward Kennedy.
The Yarborough Branch of the Austin Public Library was named in Yarborough's honor.
In October 1966, Yarborough introduced Senate Bill 5–3929 to establish a 75,000-acre national park to preserve the remaining natural and undisturbed areas of the Big Thicket in southeast Texas. Due in part to opposition from the lumber industry in the region, as well as vague and disputed definitions of what and where the Big Thicket actually was, it took seven years and another 27 Big Thicket bills until Congress established the Big Thicket National Preserve in 1974.
Yarborough was well known for his commitment to science. He favored the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and in 1957 was on a subcommittee that began the investigation that resulted in NASA's creation. The next year, he voted for the National Aeronautics and Space Act, citing the impact he believed the agency could have on his hometown of Houston.
Yarborough advocated more education in science and technology in schools throughout the country. In his biography, he wrote, "NASA helped push ahead progress in technology. The country's schools should be oriented towards developing technology and teaching science."
References
External links
Photographs of Ralph Yarborough, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
East Texas historical newspaper column
“Eyes on the Prize; Interview with Ralph W. Yarborough" 1986-05-15, American Archive of Public Broadcasting
1903 births
1996 deaths
Texas state court judges
Texas Democrats
Texas lawyers
American anti–Vietnam War activists
Witnesses to the assassination of John F. Kennedy
United States Army personnel of World War II
University of Texas School of Law alumni
Sam Houston State University alumni
Politicians from Austin, Texas
Politicians from El Paso, Texas
People from Henderson County, Texas
Military personnel from Texas
Burials at Texas State Cemetery
Democratic Party United States senators from Texas
Texas National Guard personnel
United States Army officers
20th-century American lawyers
20th-century American politicians
20th-century American judges
Liberalism in the United States
Non-interventionism
Gallaudet University trustees
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck%20Owens
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Buck Owens
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Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens Jr. (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and band leader. He was the lead singer for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, which had 21 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country music chart. He pioneered what came to be called the Bakersfield sound, named in honor of Bakersfield, California, Owens's adopted home and the city from which he drew inspiration for what he preferred to call "American music".
While the Buckaroos originally featured a fiddle and retained pedal steel guitar into the 1970s, their sound on records and onstage was always more stripped-down and elemental. The band's signature style was based on simple story lines, infectious choruses, a twangy electric guitar, an insistent rhythm supplied by a prominent drum track, and high, two-part vocal harmonies featuring Owens and his guitarist Don Rich.
From 1969 to 1986, Owens co-hosted the popular CBS television variety show Hee Haw with Roy Clark (syndicated beginning in 1971). According to Owens' son Buddy Alan, the accidental 1974 death of Don Rich, his closest friend, devastated him for years and impacted his creative efforts until he mounted a comeback in the late 1980s.
Owens is a member of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Biography
Owens was born on a farm in Sherman, Texas, United States, to Alvis Edgar Owens Sr. and Maicie Azel (née Ellington) Owens.
In the biography About Buck., Rich Kienzle writes: "'Buck' was a donkey on the Owens farm." "When Alvis Jr. was three or four years old, he walked into the house and announced that his name also was "Buck." That was fine with the family, and the boy's name became "Buck" from then on." He attended public school for grades 1–3 in Garland, Texas.
Owens' family moved to Mesa, Arizona, in 1937 during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. While attending school in Arizona, Owens found that while he disliked formal schoolwork, he could often satisfy class requirements by singing or performing in school plays. As a result, he began to take part in such activities whenever he could.
Early career
A self-taught musician and singer, Owens became proficient on guitar, mandolin, horns, and drums. When he obtained his first electric steel guitar, he taught himself to play it after his father adapted an old radio into an amplifier. Owens quit school in the ninth grade in order to help work on his father's farm and pursue a music career. In 1945, he co-hosted a radio show called Buck and Britt. Co-host Theryl Ray Britten and Owens also played at local bars, where owners usually allowed them and a third member of their band to pass the hat during a show and keep 10% of the take. They eventually became the resident musicians at a Phoenix bar called the Romo Buffet.
In the late 1940s, Owens became a truck driver, a job which took him through the San Joaquin Valley of California, where he first experienced and was impressed by the town of Bakersfield. He and his first wife eventually settled there in 1951. Soon, Owens was frequently traveling to Hollywood for session recording jobs at Capitol Records, playing backup for Tennessee Ernie Ford, Wanda Jackson, Tommy Collins, Tommy Duncan, and many others.
Using the pseudonym "Corky Jones" to prevent the recording of a rock 'n' roll tune from hurting his aspiring Country Music career, Owens recorded a rockabilly record called "Hot Dog" for the Pep label. Some time in the 1950s he lived with his second wife and children in Fife, Washington, where he sang with the Dusty Rhodes band.
In 1958 Owens met Don Rich in Steve's Gay 90s Restaurant in South Tacoma, Washington. Owens had observed one of Rich's shows and immediately approached him about collaborating, after which Rich began playing fiddle with Owens at local venues. They were featured on the weekly BAR-K Jamboree on KTNT-TV 11. In 1959, Owens' career took off when his song "Second Fiddle" hit No. 24 on the Billboard country chart. Soon after, "Under Your Spell Again" made it to No. 4 on the charts and Capitol Records wanted Owens to return to Bakersfield, California.
Following their success, Owens tried unsuccessfully to convince Rich to accompany him to Bakersfield. Instead, Rich opted to go to become a music teacher at Centralia College. While there, he tutored on the side but continued playing local venues. In December 1960, however, he left to rejoin Owens in Bakersfield.
"Above and Beyond" hit No. 3. On April 2, 1960, Owens performed the song on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee.
Career peak
In early 1963, the Johnny Russell song "Act Naturally" was pitched to Owens, who initially didn't like it. His guitarist and longtime collaborator Don Rich, however, enjoyed it and convinced Owens to record it with the Buckaroos. Laid down on February 12, 1963, it was released on March 11 and entered the charts of April 13. By June 15 the single began its first of four non-consecutive weeks at the No. 1 position, Owens' first top hit. The Beatles recorded a cover of it in 1965 with Ringo Starr as lead singer. Starr later recorded a duet of it with Owens in 1988.
The 1966 album Carnegie Hall Concert was a smash hit and further cemented Buck Owens as a top country band. It achieved crossover success on to the pop charts, reinforced by R&B singer Ray Charles releasing cover versions of two of Owens' songs that became pop hits that year: "Crying Time" and "Together Again".
In 1967, Owens and the Buckaroos toured Japan, a then-rare occurrence for a country act. The subsequent live album, Buck Owens and His Buckaroos in Japan, was an early example of a country band recording outside the United States.
Owens and the Buckaroos performed at the White House for President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, which was later released as a live album.
Between 1968 and 1969, pedal steel guitar player Tom Brumley and drummer Willie Cantu left the band, replaced by JayDee Maness and Jerry Wiggins. Owens and the Buckaroos had two songs reach No. 1 on the country music charts in 1969, "Tall Dark Stranger" and "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass". In 1969, they recorded a live album, Live in London, where they premiered their rock song "A Happening In London Town" and their version of Chuck Berry's song "Johnny B. Goode".
During this time Hee Haw, starring Owens and the Buckaroos, was at its height of popularity. The series, originally envisioned as a country music's version of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, went on to run in various incarnations for 231 episodes over 24 seasons. Creedence Clearwater Revival mentioned Owens by name in their 1970 single "Lookin' Out My Back Door".
Also between 1968 and 1970, Owens made guest appearances on top TV variety programs, including The Dean Martin Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jackie Gleason Show and seven times on The Jimmy Dean Show.
In the early 1970s, Owens and the Buckaroos enjoyed a string of hit duets with his protege Susan Raye, who subsequently became a popular solo artist with Owens as her producer.
In 1971, the Buckaroos' bass guitarist Doyle Holly left the band to pursue a solo career. Holly was known for his booming deep voice on solo ballads. His departure was a setback to the band, as Doyle had received the Bass Player of the Year award from the Academy of Country Music the year before and served as co-lead vocalist (along with Don Rich) of the Buckaroos. Holly went on to record two solo records in the early 1970s, both were top 20 hits.
Owens and Rich were the only members left of the original band, and in the 1970s they struggled to top the country music charts. However, the popularity of Hee Haw was allowing them to enjoy large crowds at indoor arenas.
After three years of not having a number one song Owens and the Buckaroos finally had another No. 1 hit, "Made in Japan", in 1972. The band had been without pedal steel since late in 1969 when Maness departed. In April he added pedal steel guitarist, Jerry Brightman, and Owens returned to his grassroots sound of fiddle, steel, and electric guitars, releasing a string of singles including "Arms Full of Empty", "Ain't it Amazing Gracie" and "Ain't Gonna Have Ole Buck (to Kick Around no More)". Owens' original version of "Streets of Bakersfield" was released in 1972.
Death of Don Rich
On July 17, 1974, Owens's best friend, the Buckaroos' guitarist Don Rich, was killed when he lost control of his motorcycle and struck a guard rail on Highway 1 in Morro Bay, where he was to have joined his family for vacation. Owens was devastated. "He was like a brother, a son and a best friend," he said in the late 1990s. "Something I never said before, maybe I couldn't, but I think my music life ended when he died. Oh yeah, I carried on and I existed, but the real joy and love, the real lightning and thunder is gone forever." Owens would never fully recover from the tragedy, either emotionally or professionally.
Business ventures
Before the 1960s ended, Owens and manager Jack McFadden began to concentrate on Owens' financial future. He bought several radio stations, including KNIX (AM) (later KCWW) and KNIX-FM in Phoenix and KUZZ-FM in Bakersfield. During the 1990s, Owens was co-owner of the country music network Real Country, of which, the Owens-owned station KCWW was the flagship station. In 1998, Owens sold KCWW to ABC/Disney for $8,850,000 and sold KNIX-FM to Clear Channel Communications, but he maintained ownership of KUZZ until his death.
Owens established Buck Owens Enterprises and produced records by several artists. He recorded for Warner Bros. Records, but by the 1980s he was no longer recording, instead devoting his time to overseeing his business empire from Bakersfield. He left Hee Haw in 1986.
Later career
Country artist Dwight Yoakam was largely influenced by Owens' style of music and teamed up with him for a duet of "Streets of Bakersfield" in 1988. It was Owens' first No. 1 single in 16 years. In an interview, Yoakam described the first time he met with Owens:
We sat there that day in 1987 and talked about my music to that point, my short career, and what I'd been doing and how he'd been watching me. I was really flattered and thrilled to know that this legend had been keeping an eye on me.
Owens also collaborated with Cledus T. Judd on the song "The First Redneck On The Internet" in 1998, in which Owens also appears in the music video.
The 1990s saw a flood of reissues of Owens' Capitol recordings on compact disc, the publishing rights to which Owens had bought back in 1974 as part of his final contract with the label. His albums had been out of print for nearly 15 years when he released a retrospective box set in 1990. Encouraged by brisk sales, Owens struck a distribution deal with Sundazed Records of New York, which specializes in reissuing obscure recordings. The bulk of his Capitol catalog was reissued on CD in 1995, 1997 and in 2005. Sometime in the 1970s, Owens had also purchased the remaining copies of his original LP albums from Capitol's distribution warehouses across the country. Many of those records (still in the shrinkwrap) were stored by Owens for decades. He often gave them away as gifts and sold them at his nightclub for a premium price some 35 years later.
In August 1999, Owens brought back together the remaining members of his original Buckaroo Band to help him celebrate his 70th birthday at his Crystal Palace in Bakersfield. Owens, Doyle Holly, Tom Brumley, and Wille Cantu performed old hits from their heyday including "Tiger by the Tail" and "Act Naturally".
Long before Owens became the famous co-host of Hee Haw, his band became known for their signature Bakersfield sound, later emulated by artists such as Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, and Brad Paisley. Buck inspired indie country songwriter and friend Terry Fraley, whose band "The Nudie Cowboys" possessed a similar sound. This sound was originally made possible with two trademark silver-sparkle Fender Telecaster guitars, often played simultaneously by Owens and longtime lead guitarist Don Rich. Fender had made a "Buck Owens signature Telecaster," and after his death paid tribute to him. In 2003, Paisley blended creative styles with this guitar and his own Paisley Telecaster, creating what became known as the Buck-O-Caster. Initially, only two were made; one for Paisley himself and the other presented to Owens during a New Year's celebration that Paisley attended in 2004.
Following the death of Rich, Owens' latter trademark became a red, white and blue acoustic guitar, along with a 1974 Pontiac convertible "Nudiemobile", adorned with pistols and silver dollars. A similar car, created by Nudie Cohn for Elvis Presley and later won by Owens in a bet, is now enshrined behind the bar at Owens' Crystal Palace Nightclub in Bakersfield.
Owens would hand out replicas of his trademark acoustic guitar to friends, acquaintances, and fans. Each would contain a gold plaque with the name of the recipient. Some of these guitars cost $1000 and up.
Personal life
Owens was married four times, three ending in divorce and one in annulment. He married country singer Bonnie Campbell Owens in 1948. The couple had two sons, one of whom was Buddy Alan, and separated in 1951, and later divorced.
In 1956 Owens married Phyllis Buford with whom he had a third son. In the 1970s he had a relationship with Hee Haw "Honey" Lisa Todd and appeared with her as "Buck Owens and his gal Lisa" on the TV game show Tattletales. In 1977 he wed Buckaroos fiddle player Jana Jae Greif. Within a few days he filed for annulment, then changed his mind; the couple continued the on-and-off marriage for a year before divorcing. In 1979 he married Jennifer Smith.
Owens had three sons: Buddy Alan (who charted several hits as a Capitol recording artist in the early 1970s and appeared with his father numerous times on Hee Haw), Johnny, who now follows in his fathers footsteps & sings at the World famous Crystal Palace In Bakersfield Ca. & travels the world keeping his dad's legacy alive through his music, and finally, Michael Owens, one of his two sons from first wife & some say love of his life-Bonnie Owens.
Owens successfully recovered from oral cancer in the early 1990s, but had additional health problems near the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, including pneumonia and a minor stroke in 2004. These health problems had forced him to curtail his regular weekly performances with the Buckaroos at his Crystal Palace. Owens died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack at his ranch just north of Bakersfield on March 25, 2006, only hours after performing at his club. He was 76 years old.
Owens was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. He was ranked No. 12 in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003. In addition, CMT also ranked the Buckaroos No. 2 in the network's 20 Greatest Bands in 2005. He was also inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The stretch of US Highway 82 in Sherman, Texas, is named the Buck Owens Freeway in his honor.
Biographies
In November 2013, Buck Owens' posthumous autobiography Buck 'Em! The Autobiography of Buck Owens by Buck Owens with Randy Poe was released. The book has a foreword by Brad Paisley and a preface by Dwight Yoakam.
In a 2007 authorized biography Buck, historian Kathryn Burke gives a positive account of Owens.
In Buck Owens: The Biography (2010) investigative journalist Eileen Sisk offers a critical account of Owens and the shortcomings in his private life.
Discography
Covers of Owens songs
Vocalist–guitarist Johnny Rivers recorded a rock version of Owens's "Under Your Spell Again" on his album Meanwhile, Back at the Whiskey A GoGo in 1965.
Country music singer Emmylou Harris recorded a version of Owens's "Together Again", which was released on her 1976 album Elite Hotel.
The Beatles and, later, Ringo Starr recorded versions of "Act Naturally". The Beatles recorded the song in 1965, two years after Owens released it. Starr recorded it as a duet with Owens in 1988, which received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration in 1989.
After his death in 2006, a medley was played by the Buck Owens All Star Tribute, which included Billy Gibbons, Chris Hillman, Brad Paisley and Travis Barker.
Country artist Dwight Yoakam has cited Owens as an early influence in his career and recorded several of Owens's songs. He recorded a duet with Owens of the song "Streets of Bakersfield", originally recorded by Owens in 1973. In 2007, Yoakam released a tribute album, Dwight Sings Buck.
Mark Lanegan included a cover of "Together Again" on his 1999 cover album, I'll Take Care of You.
Cake covered "Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)" on its album B-Sides and Rarities.
In 2007, Austin-San Marcos, Texas band The Derailers released Under The Influence of Buck, which featured 12 covers of Owens songs, including "Under the Influence of Love".
In 2011, Ben Gibbard covered "Love's Gonna Live Here".
In 2011, country singer and songwriter Brad Paisley covered "Tiger by The Tail" for his studio album This Is Country Music.
Footnotes
References
Fenster, Mark. (1998). "Buck Owens". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Ed. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 399–400.
Flippo, Chet: "NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Buck Owens' Supercharged Music"' cmt.com, March 30, 2006
External links
Original site of Buck Owens' studio to close on 4/1/08
BuckOwensFan
Buck Owens at Country Music Hall of Fame
Buck Owens Sears-sold 'American' model guitar at Silvertone World
1929 births
2006 deaths
American country guitarists
American male guitarists
American country singer-songwriters
American male singer-songwriters
Country Music Hall of Fame inductees
Singer-songwriters from Texas
People from Sherman, Texas
Starday Records artists
Capitol Records artists
Sundazed Records artists
Bakersfield sound
Musicians from Mesa, Arizona
Musicians from Phoenix, Arizona
20th-century American singer-songwriters
Musicians from Bakersfield, California
20th-century American guitarists
Singer-songwriters from California
Guitarists from Arizona
Guitarists from California
Guitarists from Texas
Country musicians from California
Country musicians from Texas
Country musicians from Arizona
20th-century American male singers
Singer-songwriters from Arizona
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough%2C%20North%20Yorkshire
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Scarborough, North Yorkshire
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Scarborough () is a seaside town in the district and county of North Yorkshire, England. With a population of 61,749, Scarborough is the largest town on the Yorkshire Coast and the fourth-largest settlement in the county.
It is located on the North Sea coastline. Historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the town lies between 10 and 230 feet (3–70 m) above sea level, from the harbour rising steeply north and west towards limestone cliffs. The older part of the town lies around the harbour and is protected by a rocky headland which extends into the North Sea.
The town has fishing and service industries, including a growing digital and creative economy, as well as being a tourist destination. Residents of the town are known as Scarborians.
History
Origins
The town is claimed to have been founded around 966 AD as by Thorgils Skarthi, a Viking raider. There is no archaeological evidence to support this claim, which was made during the 1960s as part of a pageant of Scarborough events. The claim is based on a fragment of an Icelandic Saga. However, due to coastal erosion over the years, evidence may have been lost to the sea. In the 4th century, there was briefly a Roman signal station on Scarborough headland, and there is evidence of earlier settlements, during the Stone Age and Bronze Age. Any settlement between the fifth and ninth centuries would have been burned to the ground by a band of Vikings under Tostig Godwinson (a rival of Thorgils Skarthi), Lord of Falsgrave, or Harald III of Norway. These periodic episodes of destruction and massacre means that very little evidence of settlement during this period remained to be recorded in the Domesday survey of 1085. (The original inland village of Falsgrave was Anglo-Saxon rather than Viking.)
Roman period
A Roman signal station was built on a cliff-top location overlooking the North Sea. It was one of a chain of signal stations, built to warn of sea-raiders. Coins found at the site show that it was occupied from until the early fifth century.
In 2021 an excavation at a housing development in Eastfield, Scarborough, revealed a Roman luxury villa, religious sanctuary, or combination of both. The building layout is unique in Britain and extends over an area of about the size of two tennis courts. It included a bathhouse and a cylindrical tower with rooms radiating from it. The buildings were “designed by the highest-quality architects in northern Europe in the era and constructed by the finest craftsmen.” Historic England described the finds as “one of the most important Roman discoveries in the past decade.” There are plans to revise the housing development layout, recover the remains and incorporate them in a public green area. Historic England is to recommend the remains be protected as a scheduled monument.
Medieval
Scarborough recovered under King Henry II, who built an Angevin stone castle on the headland and granted the town charters in 1155 and 1163, permitting a market on the sands and establishing rule by burgesses.
Edward II granted Scarborough Castle to his favourite, Piers Gaveston. The castle was subsequently besieged by forces led by the barons Percy, Warenne, Clifford and Pembroke. Gaveston was captured and taken to Oxford and thence to Warwick Castle for execution.
In 1318, the town was burnt by the Scots, under Sir James Douglas following the Capture of Berwick upon Tweed.
In the Middle Ages, Scarborough Fair, permitted in a royal charter of 1253, held a six-week trading festival attracting merchants from all over Europe. It ran from Assumption Day, 15 August, until Michaelmas Day, 29 September. The fair continued to be held for 500 years, from the 13th to the 18th century, and is commemorated in the song Scarborough Fair:
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
—parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme....
Resort development
Scarborough and its castle changed hands seven times between Royalists and Parliamentarians during the English Civil War of the 1640s, enduring two lengthy and violent sieges. Following the civil war, much of the town lay in ruins.
In 1626, Mrs Thomasin Farrer discovered a stream of acidic water running from one of the cliffs to the south of the town. This gave birth to Scarborough Spa, and Dr Robert Wittie's book about the spa waters published in 1660 attracted a flood of visitors to the town. Scarborough Spa became Britain's first seaside resort, though the first rolling bathing machines were not reported on the sands until 1735. It was a popular getaway destination for the wealthy of London, such as the bookseller Andrew Millar and his family. Their son Andrew junior died there in 1750.
The coming of the Scarborough–York railway in 1845 increased the tide of visitors. Scarborough railway station claims a record for the world's longest platform seat. From the 1880s until the First World War, Scarborough was one of the regular destinations for The Bass Excursions, when fifteen trains would take between 8,000 and 9,000 employees of Bass's Burton brewery on an annual trip to the seaside.
Maritime events
During the First World War, the town was bombarded by German warships of the High Seas Fleet, an act which shocked the British (see Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby). Scarborough Pier Lighthouse, built in 1806, was damaged in the attack. A U-boat assault on the town, on 25 September 1916 saw three people killed and a further five injured. Eleven of Scarborough's trawler fleet were sunk at sea in another U-boat attack, on 4 September 1917.
In 1929, the steam drifter Ascendent caught a tunny (Atlantic bluefin tuna) and a Scarborough showman awarded the crew 50 shillings so he could exhibit it as a tourist attraction. Big-game tunny fishing off Scarborough effectively started in 1930 when Lorenzo "Lawrie" Mitchell–Henry, landed a tunny caught on rod and line weighing .
A gentlemen's club, the British Tunny Club, was founded in 1933 and set up its headquarters in the town at the place which is now a restaurant with the same name. Scarborough became a resort for high society. A women's world tuna challenge cup was held for many years.
Colonel (and, later, Sir) Edward Peel landed a world-record tunny of , capturing the record by from one caught off Nova Scotia by American champion Zane Grey. The British record which still stands is for a fish weighing caught off Scarborough in 1933 by Laurie Mitchell-Henry.
On 5 June 1993, Scarborough made international headlines when a landslip caused part of the Holbeck Hall Hotel, along with its gardens, to fall into the sea. Although the slip was shored up with rocks and the land has long since grassed over, evidence of the cliff's collapse remains clearly visible from The Esplanade, near Shuttleworth Gardens.
Scarborough has been affiliated with a number of Royal Navy vessels, including HMS Apollo, HMS Fearless and HMS Duncan.
Landmarks
The town has an Anglican church, St Martin-on-the-Hill, built in 1862–63 as the parish church of South Cliff. It contains works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown. A young Malton architect, John Gibson, designed the Crown Spa Hotel, Scarborough's first purpose-built hotel.
Notable Georgian structures include the Rotunda Museum, Cliff Bridge and Scarborough Pier Lighthouse. Victorian buildings include the Classical Public Library and Market Hall, the Town Hall, Scarborough Spa, the Art Gallery, the South Cliff Methodist Church, and Scarborough railway station. The architecture of Scarborough generally consists of small, low, orange pantile-roofed buildings in the historic old town, and larger Classical and late Victorian buildings reflecting the time during the 19th century as it expanded away from its historic centre into a coastal spa resort.
A notable landmark in the town is the Grand Hotel on St Nicholas Cliff. Designed by Cuthbert Brodrick of Hull, it was completed in 1867; at the time of its opening, it was the largest hotel and the largest brick structure in Europe. It uses local yellow brickwork with red detailing and is based around a theme of time: four towers represent the seasons, 12 floors the months, 52 chimneys the weeks and the original 365 bedrooms represented the days of the year. A blue plaque outside the hotel marks where the novelist Anne Brontë died in 1849. She was buried in the graveyard of St Mary's Church by the castle.
An amount of 20th century architecture exists within the main shopping district and in the form of surrounding suburbs. Buildings from this century include the Futurist Theatre (1914), Stephen Joseph Theatre, Brunswick Shopping Centre (1990), and GCHQ Scarborough, a satellite station on the outskirts of the town.
Geography
North Bay
The North Bay has traditionally been the more peaceful end of the resort and is home to Peasholm Park which, in June 2007, was restored to its Japanese-themed glory, complete with reconstructed pagoda, a new boat house was added in 2018. For many years a mock maritime battle (based on the Battle of the River Plate) has been regularly re-enacted on the boating lake with large model boats and fireworks throughout the summer holiday season.
Northstead Manor Gardens include the North Bay Railway and three other attractions: a water chute, a boating lake with boats for hire during the summer season and the open-air theatre. The water chute is now grade II listed and is one of the oldest surviving water chutes in Britain, with the ride of today being the same as when it was opened in the 1930s. The North Bay Railway is a miniature railway running from near Peasholm Park, through Northstead Manor Gardens to the Sea Life Centre at Scalby Mills. The North Bay Railway has what is believed to be the oldest operational diesel-hydraulic locomotive in the world. Neptune was built in 1931 by Hudswell Clarke of Leeds and is appropriately numbered 1931.
Castle on the scar
The most striking feature of the town's geography is the high rocky promontory pointing eastward into the North Sea with Scarborough Castle on the top. The castle was bombarded by the German warships and in the First World War.
The promontory divides the seafront into two bays, north and south. The two bays are linked by Marine Drive, an extensive Victorian promenade, built around the base of the headland. Both bays have popular sandy beaches and numerous rock-pools at low tide.
South Bay
The South Bay was the site of the original medieval settlement and harbour, which form the old town. This remains the main tourist area, with a sandy beach, cafés, amusements, arcades, theatres and entertainment facilities. The modern commercial town centre has migrated north-west of the harbour area and above it and contains the transport hubs, main services, shopping and nightlife. The harbour has undergone major regeneration including the new Albert Strange Pontoons, a more pedestrian-friendly promenade, street lighting and seating.
The town was badly damaged in a 98 plane bombing raid by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, on 18 March 1941. Twenty eight civilians were killed and hundreds were injured and over 1,400 buildings were damaged.
The South Cliff Promenade above the Spa and South Cliff Gardens has wide views of the South Bay and old town. Its splendid Regency and Victorian terraces are still intact, with a mix of quality hotels and flats. The ITV television drama The Royal and its recent spin-off series, The Royal Today were both filmed in the area. The South Bay has the largest illuminated 'star disk' anywhere in the UK. It is across and fitted with subterranean lights representing the 42 brightest stars and major constellations that can be seen from Scarborough in the northern skies.
Mere and mount
To the south-west of the town, beside the York to Scarborough railway line, is an ornamental lake known as Scarborough Mere. In the 20th century the Mere was a popular park, with rowing boats, canoes and a miniature pirate ship – the Hispaniola – on which passengers were taken to 'Treasure Island' to dig for doubloons. Since the late 1990s the Mere has been redesigned as a natural space for picnics, fishing and walkers. In 2012 a new snack bar was built alongside the Mere. The lake is now part of the Oliver's Mount Country Park and the Hispaniola now sails out of Scarborough harbour during the summer season.
Surrounding the River Derwent as it flows into the sea are high hills with tall, dense grasses and fertile soil, due to the stream 'Sea Cut' leading from the River Derwent to the estuary at the North Sea. The area has flourishing and vibrant flora and crop growth.
Nearby places
Climate
The climate is temperate with mild summers and cool, windy, winters. The hottest months of the year are July and August, with temperatures reaching an average high of 17 °C and falling to 11 °C at night. The average daytime temperatures in January are 4 °C, falling to 1 °C at night. The station's elevation of is far above sea level compared to the immediate coastline, where the climate is likely slightly milder year round.
Economy
Scarborough's fishing industry is still active, though much reduced in size. The working harbour is home to a fish market including a shop and wooden stalls where fresh, locally-caught seafood can be purchased by the public. A seaweed farm has been in operation since 2018, with a licence to go into a large-scale commercial operation from 2019. SeaGrown have an intent to move into the bioplastics market.
The tourism trade continues to be a major part of the local economy with Scarborough being the second most-visited destination in England by British holidaymakers. While weekend and mid-week-break trade are tending to replace the traditional week-long family holiday, the beaches and attractions are busy throughout summer, a contrast to quieter winter months.
Scarborough's town centre has a multiple boutique shops (such as on Bar Street and St Thomas Street) with a main pedestrianised shopping street and a shopping centre with many major chains. The town also has an indoor market hall with a large range of antique shops and independent traders in its vaults, and a smaller market on the South Bay. Boyes (based on the town's outskirts in Eastfield) is a discount department store chain which has over 70 stores across the north with a flagship shop on Queen Street.
Industries
Manufacturers based in Scarborough include the Plaxton Company (a division of Alexander Dennis) which has been building coaches and buses since 1907. Sirius Minerals, which is developing a potash mine near Whitby, has its headquarters in Scarborough. McCain Foods has a factory in the town for over 50 years, and sponsored the previous football stadium. Scarborough power station supplied electricity to the town and the surrounding area from 1893 to 1958. It was owned and operated by the Scarborough Electric Supply Company Limited from 1893 to 1925, then by Scarborough Corporation until the nationalisation of utilities by the Attlee ministry in 1948. The coal-fired power station had an electricity generating capacity of 7 MW prior to its closure in October 1958.
Creative industries
Creative industries have been cited as playing a vital role in the regeneration of Scarborough; a report in 2005 estimated that they comprised 19% of the town's economy. They were also a major focus of Scarborough's winning entry in the 2008 Enterprising Britain competition, with representatives from Woodend Creative Workspace and Scarborough-based Electric Angel Design representing the town in the Yorkshire and Humber regional heats. In the finals in London on 16 October 2008, Scarborough won the title of Britain's Most Enterprising Town, and subsequently went on to win the European Enterprise Awards as Great Britain's representative, on 13 May 2009 in Prague.
In 2010 the town was the winner of the 'Great Town Award', as nominated by the Academy of Urbanism, beating Chester and Cambridge respectively.
Healthcare
Scarborough Hospital is the local district general NHS hospital. It is run by the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and is the largest employer in the area employing over 2,400 staff. A review of acute healthcare in the town in 2019 identified problems recruiting staff at the hospital but promised to maintain the site's Accident and Emergency department.
A new £47 million Emergency Department is under construction and is due to open in early 2024.
Demography
The town's built-up area population was 61,749 in the 2011 UK census, most of the Newby and Scalby civil parish population was included in the area. Its unparished area has a larger population than the rest of parished areas of the wider Borough of Scarborough, including the coastal towns of Whitby and Filey.
The borough as a whole has a population of around 108,000; during the peak season, tourism can double these figures. 7.5% of the population are aged over 60, compared with an average of 20.9% nationally. Only 21.9% of the population are aged between 20 and 39, compared to 28.1% nationally.
Transport
Road
Scarborough has four major roads serving the town; these also link it to other major towns and cities:
A64 – starting at the town centre, it links the town with Leeds (through York, the A19 and the A1(M)) and is the main tourist route to the town. The road is dual carriageway standard for some of its route, between the A1(M) and Malton.
A165 – coastal route south to Hull, through Bridlington. In 2008, an Osgodby bypass was created re-routing the assigned name.
A170 – starts at Scarborough and heads west to Pickering, the A19 and Thirsk.
A171 – a coastal route starting in the town and heads north through Whitby. It then passes through the North York Moors and Guisborough, terminating in Middlesbrough.
Bus
Scarborough has 25 main bus routes, operated by Scarborough Locals, Arriva North East, Shoreline Suncruisers and Yorkshire Coastliner. These link the town centre with its suburbs, the North York Moors and local towns and cities such as Bridlington, Whitby, York, Hull, Middlesbrough and Leeds.
The town is also served by two Park and Ride services, with locations on the A64 and A165. Buses run from each terminus to the town centre and South Bay at least every 12 minutes, seven days a week, with stopping points around the town centre. Buses from the Filey Road terminus on the A165 also stop at the University of Hull's Scarborough campus. Open top tourist buses, branded Beachcomber, also run along the sea front and Marine Drive, linking the South and North bays.
Railway
Scarborough railway station is close to the town centre and runs services from , , and on the North TransPennine Express route and from Hull on the Yorkshire Coast Line. It has the longest station seat in the world at 152 yards (139 m) in length. The town used to be connected to Whitby, via the Scarborough and Whitby Railway along the Yorkshire coast, but this closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts. There is also Seamer railway station in the suburb of Crossgates.
There are two operational funicular railways, both situated on South Bay. An additional funicular exists on the South Bay but no longer operates and two funiculars on North Bay have been demolished.
An electric tramway service with six routes was provided by the Scarborough Tramways Company between 1904 and 1931, after which it was bought by the council and replaced by omnibuses.
Waters
Although the town has no ferry services, there are transport links to Hull which runs frequent services to northern Europe.
Culture
Media
Scarborough receives its news and television programmes from BBC Yorkshire and ITV Yorkshire via the Oliver's Mount TV transmitter.
Local radio stations are BBC Radio York on 95.5 FM and community radio stations Coast & County Radio which broadcasts to Scarborough on 97.4 FM. and Radio Scarborough which broadcasts on 107.6 FM.
Scarborough was home to local commercial radio station, Yorkshire Coast Radio, in August 2018 the station achieved the highest weekly reach of any radio station in England with a 53% weekly reach.
However, in August 2020 YCR ceased broadcasting as it was bought out by Bauer Media and rebranded as Greatest Hits Radio Yorkshire Coast. The radio DJs and staff were made redundant. Some of the YCR team have since launched a new local station for the area, This is The Coast broadcasting online and on DAB.
The Scarborough News, is the weekly newspaper for the town and local district. It was first published on 31 May 2012, as a relaunch of the former daily publication, The Scarborough Evening News. The first newspaper recorded as printed in the town, was in 1876
Live theatre
Dramatist Alan Ayckbourn has lived in Scarborough for many years. He has produced seventy-five plays in Scarborough and was formerly the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where almost all his plays receive their first performance. Chris Monks took over as artistic director in 2009, followed by Paul Robinson in 2016.
The Open Air Theatre, at the Northstead Manor Gardens, originally had a seating capacity of 6,500 (now 8,000). The Lord Mayor of London opened the theatre in 1932 and audiences flocked to see Merrie England, the opera was the first work to be staged at the outdoor venue. Productions were performed during the summer seasons until musicals ceased in 1968 after West Side Story, apart from a YMCA production in 1982. In 1997, the dressing rooms and stage set building on the island were demolished and the seating removed. The last concert to be held at the open-air theatre before it closed in 1986 was James Last and his orchestra. The venue was restored and officially opened by The Queen on 20 May 2010. The venue is now a prime concert locality.
The YMCA Theatre is an amateur theatre seating 290. It hosts some 35 productions a year, including musicals and dance shows.
Cinema
, Scarborough has two cinemas, the Hollywood Plaza and the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
A third, the Futurist Theatre, closed in January 2014 when the operator's lease expired. The building was later demolished. A new multi-complex cinema development is planned for the town at The Brunswick Centre site, but full approval is yet to be confirmed.
Creative arts and museums
Scarborough has a long-established museum and visual-arts facilities. Wood End, the former home of The Sitwells, was converted into the Woodend museum, a creative centre including workspace for artists and the digital cluster, plus an exhibition space. The Rotunda Museum underwent a multimillion-pound redevelopment to become a national centre for geology. 2006 also saw the formation of a creative industries network called 'Creative Coast' comprising artists, designers, writers and other creatives with the shared vision of a culturally vibrant economy on the North Yorkshire coast.
The Rotunda Museum nowadays forms part of the Scarborough Museums Trust. The other part is the Scarborough Art Gallery, which houses the collections of fine arts since 1947. This gallery is based in a Grade II*Italianate villa, Crescent Villa, that was built in the 1840s.
For a short time, a walkthrough attraction called 'Millennium' operated at the end of Sandside near the Harbour. Created by local amusement owner Henry Marshall in a former sail loft, the attraction depicted 1000 years of Scarborough's history. It opened in 1993 but closed in 2002.
Scarborough has a considerable graffiti culture, with as many as 20 artists currently active. There are two areas where graffiti art is legal in Scarborough: Sainsbury's basketball courts / all-weather pitch and Falsgrave Park wall. Both have seen many collaborations and murals.
Music
The Grade II listed Scarborough Spa complex is home to the Scarborough Spa Orchestra, the last remaining seaside orchestra in the UK.
The globally successful pop / soul singer Robert Palmer spent his teenage years in Scarborough, attending Scarborough High School for Boys'.
During the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, Scarborough band Little Angels were one of the best known hard rock bands in the UK. Their third and final studio album, Jam, peaked at No. 1 on the UK charts in early 1993. Chris Helme of The Seahorses, Eliza Carthy, Ashley Hicklin, Oliver Knight and Sophia Wardman, also attended schools and colleges in the area.
'Acoustic Gathering', a free one-day music festival, has been held annually in Peasholm Park, since September 2005. This features over 20 bands and singer/songwriters from all parts of the UK including a number of local groups and musicians, all performing from the bandstand in the centre of the lake.
Finnish idols winner Koop Arponen filmed his video for the song, "Young and Foolish" in the town, and One Night Only shot the video for their hit Just For Tonight, mostly along Scarborough foreshore.
Location for filming
The films Little Voice, Possession, and A Chorus of Disapproval were filmed on location in Scarborough and surrounds. Also shot in the Scarborough (borough) & North York Moors are over 90 films, documentaries and various TV programmes. Films include An Inspector Calls, Miranda, Dancing Queen, Beltenebros, The Brides in the Bath, Screwed, The Damned United, Scarborough, A is for Acid and Saint Maud. Television series filmed in the area include Heartbeat, its spin-off series The Royal, CBBCs All at Sea, BBC1's Rosie, BBC1's Remember Me, German TV crime drama, The Search, scenes from the second series of Five Days and an episode each of Barbara, Coronation Street & Last of the Summer Wine. The 2015 series of The Syndicate starring Anthony Andrews, Melanie Hill and Lenny Henry also filmed scenes in Scarborough. A sitcom named Scarborough was filmed in the town in 2019. The show being the brainchild of Derren Litten the creator of ITV hit Benidorm was based on a group of friends who meet up for Karaoke nights in the town. The show first aired on BBC1 on 6 September 2019 in a primetime Friday night slot (9:30 pm) the day before transmission the first two episodes were given a 'world premiere' to an audience at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. The third series of reality TV show Celebs on the Farm, was filmed on location in the outskirts of the town, in 2021.
Notable eventsSci-Fi Scarborough – Since 2014, Scarborough has hosted its own "Unconventional Convention" at The Spa Complex. It is usually held in March or April each year. Sci-Fi Scarborough is a mix of Sci-Fi Convention, Comicon, and gaming convention.Seafest – Seafest is an annual festival which takes place at West Pier and around the harbour area in July. It celebrates the region's fishing history and hosts a large gathering of folk singers, shantymen and musicians, drawing artists from all over the U.K. and from other nations including Senegal, Sicily, Canada, Éire, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Brittany, and the USA. In addition, there are children's entertainments and a 'Sea Fish Cookery' marquee where visiting chefs demonstrate seafood preparation. The event celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018.Heroes Welcome UK – Heroes Welcome is a movement which originated in and is administered from Scarborough to encourage communities to demonstrate support to members of the armed forces. In 2008, a hand-drawn poster stating "Heroes Welcome Here" was displayed in a Scarborough seafront restaurant. From this gesture has evolved a national network of towns, cities and counties. Businesses are invited to display a sticker extending a special welcome to service personnel. Member communities are located as far north as the Oykel Valley in the Scottish Highlands to as far south as the Falkland Islands. The Rock of Gibraltar joined in February 2013. The Heroes Welcome event in Scarborough has become a regular part of Armed Forces Day and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2018.Armed Forces Day – Since 2009, Scarborough has hosted the armed forces day event on the last Saturday of June which includes a display of army vehicles and weapons along the South Bay. The event also includes air displays from various aircraft and ends with a parade along the road. In 2020, Scarborough was due to be the host town, for the national Armed Forces Day event, which was subsequently postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The town successfully hosted the occasion on 25 June 2022.Tour de Yorkshire – Scarborough is the only town to have hosted either a start or finish event in every edition of the Tour de Yorkshire. Scarborough Cricket Festival – An annual cricket festival at North Marine Road.Big Ideas By The Sea'''. In its third year, this festival is organised by a local historian and artist. It includes a wide range events across venues relating to archaeology (most famously the 'Big Dig'), music, science, visual arts and literature.
Twinning
Scarborough is twinned with:
Cahir, Ireland
Scarborough is affiliated with HMS Duncan.
Education
The four main state secondary schools in Scarborough are Graham School, George Pindar School, Scalby School, and St Augustine's Catholic School. Raincliffe School formally closed on 31 August 2012, merging with Graham School (the Raincliffe site closed completely on 23 June 2017). In September 2016, Scarborough University Technical College (UTC) opened for 14- to 18-year-olds. The campus is part of a £47 million pound development including Coventry University Scarborough Campus and a sports village in the Weaponness Valley.
Scarborough is also home to one private school, Scarborough College (for ages 3 to 18 years). Scarborough College abolished A-levels and has been an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School since June 2006. Ranked within Top 50 independent schools by The Times based on post-16 results, 2017.
Scarborough International School of English, established in 1968 is accredited by the British Council and members of English UK and English UK North. The school offers English Language courses to students from around the world.
There is also a private international language school called Anglolang, established in 1985, which teaches the English language to overseas students, companies, educational institutions, organised groups and individuals.
Education in Scarborough has been notable for its commitment to the digital economy, particularly with the formation of the University of Hull's School of Arts and New Media, at the Scarborough Campus in 2006. This made Scarborough one of the UK mainland's first wireless campuses.
In 2015, Coventry University Scarborough Campus opened in the town with a small first cohort and moved from temporary accommodation to a purpose-built site in September 2016. Ultimately, the university will cater for 3000 students studying an innovative, intensive pattern of study. Further Education is provided by Scarborough Sixth Form College and Yorkshire Coast College, which took over the University of Hull's campus in Scarborough in 2016.
Sport
The Scarborough Amateur Rowing Club was founded in May 1869, and is the oldest surviving rowing club on the north-east coast. For more than 100 years, sea rowing has taken place on the Yorkshire coast between the Tees and the Humber. Beginning with friendly rivalry between the fishermen and the jet miners from Blyth (the German Ocean Race), the sport has progressed to what it is today. More recent successes for the club include Bob Hewitt, who now competes as a lightweight rower for the national team. In 2006 the club finally won the acclaimed Wilson Cup, until then held by rival clubs in neighbouring town Whitby for over eighty years. Rowing takes place throughout the summer months.
The Blue Riband event for Scarborough Yacht Club, is the annual 210 nautical mile race, from the town, to IJmuiden in the Netherlands. The Yacht Club is based in the old keepers' accommodation adjoining Scarborough Pier Lighthouse in the harbour.
Scarborough is home to the Oliver's Mount racing circuit. This track is composed of twisty public roads and has played host to domestic motorcycling and rallying events for many years. Noted motorcycle racers who have raced at Oliver's Mount include Barry Sheene, Ron Haslam and Guy Martin. The town was the home of the 2nd RAC Rally in 1952. In March 2019 newly formed motorcycle racing club, Two Four Three Road Racing Association was granted a lease to run road races at the venue, and they restarted road racing at the venue in July 2019 after a year's absence.
Scarborough Cricket Club have won the ECB National Club Cricket Championship at Lord's, on five occasions between 1972 and 1982, a record number of victories. The club also hosts the annual Scarborough Cricket Festival, and Yorkshire play at North Marine Road, in a selection of home fixtures throughout the season. The club has competed in the Yorkshire Premier League North since 2016. The club won the former Yorkshire League on thirteen occasions and seven regional titles, prior to that league's installation.
The former Scarborough Football Club enjoyed a career in the Football League during the 1990s before being relegated to the Conference North in 2006, and to the Northern Premier League the following year. One of its greatest achievements was winning the FA Trophy at Wembley Stadium on three occasions and being runners-up on one. They were also the first club to win automatic promotion to the Football League, when in 1987 they were promoted as champions of the GM Vauxhall Conference. In 2007 a new club, Scarborough Athletic, was formed and they play their home matches at the Flamingo Land Stadium.
In 2007, the town hosted the World Thundercat Championships (for inflatable powerboats), and similar events in 2008 and 2015. Scarborough Rugby Union Football Club moved to a new £4-million ground development, on the outskirts of town in January 2009 (Silver Royd), the club is very ambitious and reached the semi-finals of the RFU Intermediate Cup, in 2015. The venue is also home to various sports facilities and partly the home of Scarborough AC (Athletic Club, formerly Harriers),who also utilize the Bramcote Athletics track, opened in September 2023. The nationally achieving Scarborough Gymnastics Academy, has a highly developed specialist facility in the west of the town. The former Scarborough Sports Centre was a past venue for the Slazenger Pro Championships, attracting such stars as Fred Perry, Rod Laver and Pancho Gonzales. Scarborough Bowls Centre, on the site of the former Floral Hall, is utilized for a variety of events throughout the year.
The town has two principal golf courses, North Cliff and South Cliff, plus some smaller ventures. Ganton Golf Club, which has hosted tournaments such as the Ryder Cup and Walker Cup, is situated approximately to the west of Scarborough.
George Pindar School, which is based at Eastfield, is a Sports Community College, and is home to Scarborough Pirates ARLFC, Scarborough Seahawks Basketball and formerly Scarborough Hockey Club, who are now at Scarborough College. The centre also has a tennis facility. Scarborough Table Tennis Centre is located at Graham School.
A national martial arts organisation, The Empire Martial Arts Association, is based in Scarborough.
The Tourist Information Centre in the South Bay is the finishing point of The White Rose Way, a long-distance walk from Leeds.
Scarborough was the finishing point, for Stage 1 of the inaugural 2015 Tour de Yorkshire, hosted on 1 May, and has hosted a stage finish every year since.
A sports village based in Weaponness Valley, that is now the home stadium of Scarborough Athletic, was opened in July 2017.
In recent decades, due to frequent low pressure systems in the North Atlantic, Scarborough has also become home to a thriving cold water surfing scene with numerous surf shops and competitions taking place including the King of The Point, a big wave contest designed to show off the quality of surf the North Yorkshire coast can receive.
Notable people
Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 1939), playwright.
Florence Balgarnie (1856–1928), suffragette, speaker, pacifist, feminist, temperance activist.
Frederick Barkham (1905–1992), cricketer
Anne Brontë – (1820–1849) novelist and poet, died at Scarborough and buried in St Mary's churchyard.
Richard Dunn, boxer, British, European & Commonwealth Heavyweight Champion (1975–1976).
Sir Edward James Harland, 1st Baronet (1831–1895), shipbuilder and politician, co-founder of Harland and Wolff.
Dick Hewitt (1943–2017), Moorthorpe-born footballer.
Susan Hill (born 1942), novelist.
Florence Hooton (1912–1988), cellist, was born in Scarborough.
Paul Ingle (born 1972), former IBF featherweight champion.
Sir Ben Kingsley (born 1943), (b. Snainton, 1943), Oscar-winning actor.
Charles Laughton (1899–1962), actor, screenwriter, film producer and director.
Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton (1830–1896), painter and sculptor.
John Hick (1922–2012), philosopher of religion.
James Paul Moody, (1887–1912), sixth officer of the ill-fated RMS Titanic.
Bill Nicholson, (1919–2004), footballer and manager.
Mikey North (born 1986), Coronation Street'' actor.
Jake Pratt (born 1996), actor.
Benjamin Pulleyne, Oxford don and headmaster of Gresham's School
Jimmy Savile (1926–2011), media personality and prolific sex offender. Resided in Scarborough and is buried there in an unmarked grave.
Robert de Scardeburgh (died c. 1351), Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
John Senior (born 1960), survivor of the Lakonia disaster and founder of Heroes Welcome UK.
The Sitwells, (born late 1800s), artistic, musical and literary family.
William Smith, known as "The Father of English Geology", lived in Scarborough where he suggested the design for the Rotunda.
Dame Penelope Wilton (born 1946), actress.
Robert Palmer (singer) (1949-2003), went to school in Scarborough.
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society
Official tourism website
This is The Coast Scarborough News
The Scarborough News
Towns in North Yorkshire
966 establishments
Populated places established in the 10th century
Seaside resorts in England
Bays of North Yorkshire
Ports and harbours of Yorkshire
Populated coastal places in North Yorkshire
Viking Age populated places
Beaches of North Yorkshire
Rally GB
10th-century establishments in England
Unparished areas in North Yorkshire
Borough of Scarborough
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eir%20%28telecommunications%29
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Eir (telecommunications)
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Eircom Limited, trading as Eir ( ; stylised eir), is a large fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland. The now privatised company, which is currently incorporated in Jersey, traces its origins to the Ireland's former state-owned monopoly telecommunication provider Telecom Éireann and its predecessors, P&T (the Dept. of Posts and Telegraphs) and before the foundation of the state, the telecommunications division of the GPO. It remains the largest telecommunications operator in Ireland and has overseas operations focused on the business and corporate telecom markets in the United Kingdom.
The company was in majority state ownership until 1999, when it was privatised through a floatation on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges.
Eir is currently majority owned by Xavier Niel's Iliad SA and his Paris-based NJJ Telecom Europe investment fund. The group includes French telecommunications provider Free and Iliad Italia.
Eir operates a wholesale fixed-line network through its Open Eir unit, providing copper and fibre based access products to a wide range of Irish telecommunications companies. Its services include next generation access products, such as FTTH, FTTC (VDSL) and legacy copper based services, including ADSL and classic digital circuit switched products like PSTN and ISDN. It also offers a range of legacy leased line services.
The company's retail division markets these services directly to homes and businesses, and includes value added services like Eir TV and voice over broadband for home users and a wide range of digital services tailored to business customers.
Eir operates a national mobile network both under its own Eir brand and GoMo, a value-focused, online-only sub-brand. The network provides 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G services and ancillary services such as WiFi Calling and VoLTE.
Market share
In the third quarter of 2019, Eir accounted for 39% of the Ireland's fixed voice market retail revenue and 45.3% market share by fixed-line retail and wholesale revenue and 19.1% of the mobile market (excluding mobile broadband and machine-to-machine subscriptions) or 15.6% of total subscriptions. Eir had 31.4% of fixed broadband subscriptions (comprising FTTH, FTTC/VDSL and ADSL) and 42.7% of FTTP subscriptions.
Its main fixed access infrastructure owning competitors are Virgin Media Ireland (which operates a cable TV and broadband network) and SIRO, a joint venture between publicly owned energy supplier, ESB and Vodafone. SIRO operates a FTTH network using ESB's physical infrastructure to carry fibres to individual homes and businesses. Imagine Communications, Digiweb and several other smaller ISPs also operate their own wireless networks using various technologies. Eir also faces retail competition from Vodafone, Sky, Digiweb and a large number of smaller ISPs using a mix wholesale access from Open Eir and SIRO to reach their customers.
Eir also faces competition from mobile operators and MVNOs both for its own mobile services and also as fixed line replacement products. All mobile operators are capable of offering very competitive voice services and high speed 4G and increasingly 5G connectivity, which can often be faster than fixed services, particularly first generation NGA products using VDSL and fibre to cabinet, which can only offer a maximum of 100Mbit/s. ADSL services which are much slower again. 4G and 5G fixed-mobile services, using routers and external antennae have also become viable competitors in many rural and quasi rural areas. These offer ample and affordable data plans and very high speeds and a number of operators have designed products targeting homes and businesses using both existing mobile and dedicated LTE and 5G networks.
Services
Eir operates the largest fixed-line telecommunications network in Ireland, under licence from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg). Most homes and businesses in the state are dependent on their network. A range of telecommunications services is provided on the network including Business IP, its MPLS platform. Eir have also completed a wholly owned fibre network ring around Northern Ireland and another around Belfast. Their ISP division, Eir Net, provides dial-up services, as well as broadband services (see broadband roll-out, below). Any alarm-monitoring products using SMS are "hardcoded" to work with Eir's SMSC, so will not work on Digiweb, BT, Smart, UPC or Magnet phone networks. DECT SMS handsets are also preprogrammed for Eir's SMSC. Any competing phone service that is not just carrier pre-selection (CPS) of Eir must provide their own SMSC, but even when they do, consumers may be unable to migrate from Eir due to SMSC numbers in equipment that cannot be reprogrammed.
Eir's mobile arm provides a full range of 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G-based mobile communication services throughout Ireland. Its GSM network operates at 1800 MHz and 900 MHz ranges, as the earlier GSM licences fully utilised the 900 MHz band. GPRS and EDGE data services are also available. Eir mobile provide both bill pay (contract) and prepay (non-contract) plans and has approximately 19% of the Irish mobile market, with 1,032,000 cellular subscribers on the Eir Mobile network. The company has used EDGE technology on its network and has received a 3G (UMTS) license, formally removed from Eir's competitor, Smart Telecom.
As an operator with significant market power, Eir is required to provide a number of wholesale products to other operators and to switch calls onto other phone networks. Many broadband products offered by other operators are resales of the Eir product.
A series of telephone directories is available for purchase and an online version is also available. The six annual directories list numbers in the local dialling area (01, 02, 04, 05, 06 or 07/09), regardless of whether the telephone service to the number is provided by Eir or by one of its competitors. Mobile numbers are not listed. ComReg has designated Eir as the organisation that has the obligation to provide a National Directory Database (NDD) and a Universal White Pages (UWP) directory; the unit within Eir responsible for providing these is the National Directory Information Unit (NDIU).
History
The company was formed in 1984 as Bord Telecom Éireann, under the Posts and Telecommunications Act 1983. (This article deals mainly with the post-privatisation Eir; for details of the company during its time as a state-sponsored body, see Telecom Éireann.)
From 1991 to 2013, Eir's subsidiaries included Phonewatch, then known as Eircom Phonewatch, which provides home monitoring services, monitored burglar-alarms, fire alarms, CCTV systems, and medical alert devices. In May 2013, it announced that Phonewatch had been sold to Oslo-based company, Sector Alarm Corporation.
From 1999 to 2006 sponsored RTE Weather and from 2000 to 2008, Eircom sponsored the League of Ireland.
Although EU laws required the opening of the Irish telecommunications market, Ireland had a derogation from competition until 2003. Telecom Éireann was privatised, this was very controversial and subject to much debate. The process began in 1995, and by July 1999 the government had disposed of virtually all of its shareholding. Eircom plc was then floated on the Irish, London and New York Stock Exchanges on 8 July 1999, and small/first-time investors were encouraged by the Irish Government to buy shares. The share price was set at €3.90, later reaching a high of €4.80, a 23% increase. Those initial investors who held onto their shares, until July 2000, received a 4% bonus-share allocation.
The Eircom flotation is considered to have been an example of a stock market bubble — after the initial hype of the flotation died down, the stock price fell rapidly. Many of the 500,000 small investors were angered by the significant financial loss they incurred, blaming the government for not sufficiently warning them of the risks inherent in stock-market investment.
Since privatisation, Eir's penetration of landlines has fallen from 82% to 69%. During this period, there has been a large increase in mobile phone ownership and a significant rise in line rental to the highest in Europe.
Disposal of Eircell, going private and reflotation
In 2001, Eircom sold its mobile subsidiary Eircell to Vodafone. The company was transferred to a separate entity, Eircell 2000 plc which was then sold to Vodafone through a share swap. Eircom shareholders got Eircell share in a 1000/1 ratio. The conversion rate was then 0.9478 Vodafone shares for every 2 Eircell 2000 shares. This left the Eircom shareholder with shares in both Eircom and Vodafone.
After the sale of Eircell, Eircom itself was believed to be undervalued and became the subject of a bidding war between two consortia: the E-Island consortium headed by Denis O'Brien, and the Valentia Consortium headed by Tony O'Reilly, the chairman of Independent News and Media. Eventually in November 2001, the company agreed to a recommended offer of €1.335 per Eircom share. Eircom Plc was delisted from the stock exchange, became Eircom Limited, a private limited company by shares and a subsidiary of Valentia, and O'Reilly took the reins as Executive chairman.
On 19 March 2004, the company returned to the stock market (although the company being listed, Eircom Group plc, was in fact a new holding company, and was registered in England and Wales rather than in Ireland). The company floated at €1.55 a share, but dipped on initial trading before recovering to trade above its float price.
Return to mobile, acquisition of Meteor
In early 2005, several Irish newspapers reported that Meteor Mobile Communications, the third mobile phone operator, was up for sale by its owners, Western Wireless. It was considered that this afforded Eircom an opportunity to re-enter the mobile communications market. On 9 July 2005, The Irish Times reported three bidders for Meteor: Eircom, Smart Telecom, and a consortium led by Denis O'Brien. On 14 July 2005 RTÉ News reported on their business website that Denis O'Brien had withdrawn from bidding, and that it was understood that Eircom was the top bidder at €410 million. On 21 July, it was announced that Smart Telecom had also withdrawn, leaving Eircom as the sole bidder. Eircom announced the agreement to purchase it on 25 July 2005 at a cost of €420m. As of 31 December 2012, Meteor had over 1,086,000 customers and a market share of 20%, offering both GSM and 3G mobile telephony and broadband services.
In May 2006, Eircom announced its sale to the Australian investment group Babcock & Brown as part of a deal worth €2.4 billion. The Employee Share Ownership Trust, which represents workers at the company, was to remain a minority shareholder. The sale was approved by shareholders on 26 July 2006, and at close of business on 17 August 2006, the shares were delisted from the Official Lists of the Irish Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, ending Eircom's second period on the stock markets. The same day, Phillip Nolan resigned as chief executive of Eircom, and on 1 September Rex Comb was officially named as the new CEO. Tony O'Reilly resigned as chairman and was replaced by Pierre Danon, previously of BT Group plc and JP Morgan Chase.
Babcock & Brown have since collapsed as a company and their BCM vehicle, which owns over 50% of Eir, broke all ties with the former parent and rebranded themselves as Eircom Holdings Limited.
Eircom was also successful in bidding for a 4G LTE License from Comreg, which permitted Meteor and eMobile to launch 4G services in 2013.
In September 2015, Eircom announced that it would re-brand as eir as part of a new imaging campaign developed by Moving Brands. Described as being "dynamic and modern", the new brand was adopted across most of Eircom's businesses (excluding Meteor), and an advertising campaign was introduced to promote the new name and slogan, "Live life on eir".
In December 2017, Iliad SA announced that it would be acquiring a 32.9% stake in the company with an option to take control of the Irish operator through a call option, which is exercisable in 2024.
Acquisition of Setanta Sports and launch of Eir Sport
Eir Sport commenced broadcasting on 5 July 2016 following the takeover of Setanta Sports by Eir. Two Irish commercial stations, Eir Sport 1 (formerly Setanta Ireland) and Eir Sport 2 (formerly Setanta Sports 1), join BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2, BT Sport Europe and BT Sport ESPN to make up the 6 channel Eir Sport pack. Setanta Sports was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to international audiences.
In May 2021, it was announced that eir Sport would cease operations by the end of 2021.
Businesses
Eir Mobile
As part of their mobile strategy, Eir launched eMobile, a complementary service to the now discontinued Meteor division (mainly used by residential wireless customers). Eir Mobile is a former pseudo-mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) which uses the now discontinued Meteor branded network for its services to residential and business customers, to complement the residential and business mobile services offered by Meteor. In September 2017, Meteor Mobile was merged into the Eir Mobile operation by its parent, Eir. The company said in a statement "By focusing on a single mobile brand and reducing the duplication of supporting two brands, we can offer better value and increased innovation." As of September 2017, Eir Mobile has 96% 4G coverage, as well as 99% 3G population coverage. Eir also use 4G+, available in many cities and urban areas, to increase data speeds and capacity. Eir Mobile also utilises Wifi calling to allow customers to call and text over a Wi-Fi connection when mobile coverage is limited.
Eir Business Ireland
Eir Business Ireland is the corporate and SME operations in the Ireland. Eir Business sponsored Irish sporting events including the "Dubai Duty Free Irish Open" in the K Club. It secured business contracts with Druids Glen a Golf Resort in County Wicklow. Customers include University College Dublin (UCD), Ordnance Survey Ireland and Dublin City Council.
Eir Business NI
Eir Business NI is the name of the company's operations in Northern Ireland. With the division based in Belfast, Eir own and operate a fibre-optic network ring around Belfast and Northern Ireland, linking into the national Eir Network in the rest of Ireland. Eir Business NI have won significant contracts thus far, the largest being the €70m "Network NI" contract for the Northern Ireland Civil Service, with other significant contracts as operator of choice for Northern Ireland Schools and Libraries, NIE, Viridian, Wright Group, Chain Reaction Cycles and many more large enterprise brands. The company in Northern Ireland provides services to local government and SME sectors.
Television
As Telecom Éireann, Eir owned 75% of the cable operator Cablelink (the other 25% was owned by RTÉ). Cablelink was sold to NTL in 1999 and subsequently bought by UPC.
As Eircom, Eir joined a consortium with TV3 Group, Arqiva, and Setanta Sports called OneVision to apply for the Commercial licence for DTT. On 1 May 2009 Fintan Drury, chairman of the OneVision consortium, announced that OneVision was to enter negotiations with the BCI, with the view to take over operations of the Irish pay DTT service. It was hoped that the launch of OneVision would happen in late 2010/early 2011 at a proposed operation cost of €40 million. OneVision aspired to offer 23 channels coinciding with the free-to-air channels. However, OneVision subsequently dropped out of negotiations with the BCI.
In 2013 Eir began providing a TV service along with its Eir Fibre service called Eir Vision.
Competition
Eir retains a virtual monopoly of around 70% on fixed-line telephony in the State (the only exceptions being those operated by Virgin Media Ireland (formerly UPC Ireland), Digiweb Metro and some fibre offerings from BT, Magnet Networks, Smart and Digiweb). Chorus had offered wireless telephony but failed to renew their licence. Eir is required to allow carrier pre-selection (CPS). Introduced in Ireland in 2001, CPS allows subscribers to use an alternative provider for all their calls, without the need to dial indirect access codes or numbers, although they still receive a bill from Eir for line rental. Under a wholesale line rental scheme, it is possible for customers, to have a single bill from an alternative provider, for example, Vodafone, including the cost of Eir line rental, rather than continuing to receive a separate one from Eir for this cost. It is not yet possible for operators in Ireland to buy the lines from Eir and charge their own rate for line rental, should they wish.
Controversy
After the privatisation of Telecom Éireann, the highly profitable mobile phone division, Eircell, was sold to Vodafone. Some consider this act to be asset stripping by the large investors with interests in what later became Eircom.
Eircom announced in June 2007 that from 30 July line rental charges would increase by €1.18 bringing line rental charges - already the most expensive in Europe - to a total of €25.36 per month for a PSTN analogue line, one source indicated it was the highest line-rental charge in the world. Also announced was an increase of between 4.8 and 4.9% on local and national calls.
In March 2011, Eircom pleaded guilty to a breach of the Data Protection Act at the Dublin District Court.
On 12 April 2018, Eir announced that they would cut 750 jobs. This would mean that 10,000 jobs would have been lost since its peak number of jobs of 13,000 The job cuts came just days after the takeover of the company by French entrepreneur Xavier Niel.
Copyright enforcement
Blocking of the Pirate Bay
On 21 April 2008, Eircom rejected claims by four major record companies that it, as the largest broadband internet service provider in the state, must bear some liability for the illegal free downloading of music by computer users. Eir have thus far managed to come to an agreement with the companies involved, stating that they will be working in conjunction with these companies to prevent large amounts of copyrighted material being shared through the ISP. This in turn raised concerns over internet privacy, since presumably this would be enforced through the monitoring of IP traffic associated with Eir's customers. It is not known whether or not this bears any significance on the Meteor Mobile network, a mobile broadband supplier acquired by Eir. Eircom has reportedly signed an out-of-court settlement with said companies and are initiating a program to clamp down on piracy, within their network, by instituting an IP monitoring service, accessible by the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) and allowing up to three warnings before disconnection of service.
As of 5 December 2013, Eir users who try to access The Pirate Bay receive the following message:
"On the 24 July 2009, an Order was made by the High Court requiring Eircom to block or otherwise disable access by its subscribers to the website thePirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs. The Court was satisfied that on the basis of the evidence presented by the record companies that the PirateBay website is a website that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted sound recordings without the consent of the copyright owners.
"Eircom recognises the legitimate rights of the owners of copyrighted material and believes that individuals who share or download copyrighted material without the authorisation or the permission of the copyright owner are acting illegally.
"The Order further provides that should the PirateBay website content be legitimatised in the future, then Eircom has liberty to apply to the Court to have the Order vacated and access to the PirateBay website enabled."
Disconnection
Eircom agreed to a controversial deal with the IRMA to activate a "three strikes system" so that users would be banned from the Internet for seven days if they appeared to be downloading copyrighted content through peer to peer filesharing networks.
Examinership
Eircom notified the public in February 2012 that they had decided to no longer honour their debt, had entered default status and would not continue as a going concern. Eircom gave notification that they had cancelled a mandatory interest payment on their publicly-traded senior corporate bond, then due to mature in 2016.
On 29 March 2012, a number of companies within the Eircom Group presented a petition to the Irish High Court for the appointment of an examiner.
See also
Telecommunications in the Republic of Ireland
References
External links
Telecommunications companies established in 1999
Companies formerly listed on Euronext Dublin
Telecommunications companies of the Republic of Ireland
Internet service providers of the Republic of Ireland
Private equity portfolio companies
Irish companies established in 1999
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby%20Face%20Nelson
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Baby Face Nelson
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Lester Joseph Gillis (December 6, 1908 – November 27, 1934), also known as George Nelson and Baby Face Nelson, was an American bank robber who became a criminal partner of John Dillinger, when he helped Dillinger escape from prison, in Crown Point, Indiana. Later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that Nelson and the remaining gang of bank robbers were collectively "Public Enemy Number One".
The "Baby Face Nelson" nickname derived from Gillis being a short man with a youthful appearance; however, in the professional realm, Gillis's fellow criminals addressed him as "Jimmy". A violent bank robber, Lester Joseph Gillis killed more agents of the FBI than has any other criminal. FBI agents fatally wounded and killed Baby Face Nelson in the Battle of Barrington (27 November 1934), fought in a suburb of Chicago.
Early life
Nelson was born Lester Joseph Gillis, a son of Flemish Belgian immigrants on December 6, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois. He was arrested on July 4, 1921, at the age of twelve, after he accidentally shot a playmate in the jaw with a pistol that he had found. He served over a year in the state reformatory.
Criminal career
Gang affiliation
By the time he met his future wife Helen Wawrzyniak, Nelson was working at a Standard Oil station in his neighborhood which doubled as the headquarters for a group of young tire thieves, known colloquially as "strippers". Nelson fell into association with the strippers, and acquainted himself with a number of local criminals, including one who employed him to drive bootleg alcohol throughout the Chicago suburbs. Nelson became associated with members of the suburb-based Touhy Gang.
Armed robbery
Within two years, Nelson and the gang were involved in organized crime, especially armed robbery. On January 6, 1930, the associates forced entry into the home of magazine executive Charles M. Richter. After trussing him up with adhesive tape and cutting the phone lines, they ransacked the house and made off with approximately $205,000 worth of jewelry (equivalent to approximately $ million in dollars). Two months later, they carried out a similar robbery at the bungalow of Lottie Brenner Von Buelow (on Sheridan Road). This job netted approximately $50,000 worth of jewelry. After the crime, Chicago newspapers nicknamed the group "The Tape Bandits".
Bank robbery
On April 21, 1930, Nelson robbed a bank for the first time, making off with approximately $4,000. A month later, he and his gang netted $25,000 worth of jewelry from home invasions. On October 3, Nelson robbed the Itasca State Bank of $4,600; a teller later identified him as one of the robbers. Three nights later, he stole the jewelry of the wife of Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson, valued at $18,000. She described her attacker, saying "He had a baby face. He was good looking, hardly more than a boy, had dark hair and was wearing a gray topcoat and a brown felt hat, turned down brim." Nelson and his crew were later linked to a botched roadhouse robbery in Summit, Illinois, on November 23, 1930. In the ensuing gunfight, three people were killed and three wounded. Three nights later, Nelson's gang robbed a tavern on Waukegan Road, and Nelson committed his first murder of note when he fatally shot stockbroker Edwin R. Thompson.
1931–1932
Throughout the winter of 1931, most of the Tape Bandits were rounded up, including Nelson. The Chicago Tribune referred to their leader as "George 'Baby Face' Nelson" who received a sentence of one year to life in the state penitentiary at Joliet. Nelson escaped during a prison transfer in February 1932. Through his contacts within the Touhy Gang, Nelson fled west to Reno, where he was harbored by William Graham, a known crime boss and gambler. Using the alias "Jimmy Johnson", Nelson went to Sausalito, California, where he worked for bootlegger Joe Parente. During his San Francisco Bay area criminal ventures, Nelson met John Paul Chase and Fatso Negri, who later became close associates. In Reno the next winter, Nelson first met the vacationing Alvin Karpis, who in turn introduced him to Midwestern bank robber Eddie Bentz. Teaming up with Bentz, Nelson returned to the Midwest the next summer. He committed a major bank robbery in Grand Haven, Michigan, on August 18, 1933; his first in the area. The robbery was not lucrative, though most of those involved made a full escape.
Gang leader
The Grand Haven bank robbery convinced Nelson he was ready to lead his own gang. Through connections at the Green Lantern Tavern in St. Paul, Nelson recruited Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, and Eddie Green. With these men and two other local thieves, Nelson robbed the First National Bank of Brainerd, Minnesota, of $32,000 on October 23, 1933 (equivalent to approximately $ in dollars). Witnesses reported that Nelson wildly sprayed sub-machine gun bullets at bystanders as he made his getaway. After collecting his wife Helen and four-year-old son Ronald, Nelson left with his crew for San Antonio, Texas. While there, Nelson and his gang bought several weapons from underworld gunsmith Hyman Lehman. One of those weapons was a .38 Super Colt pistol that had been modified so it was fully automatic. Nelson used this gun to kill Special Agent W. Carter Baum at Little Bohemia Lodge several months later.
On December 9, 1933, a local woman tipped off San Antonio police regarding the presence nearby of "high-powered Northern gangsters". Two days later, Tommy Carroll was cornered by two detectives and opened fire, killing Detective H.C. Perrin and wounding Detective Al Hartman. All the Nelson gang, except Nelson, fled San Antonio. Nelson and his wife traveled west to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he recruited John Paul Chase and Fatso Negri for a new wave of bank robberies the following spring.
Partnership with John Dillinger
On March 3, 1934, John Dillinger made his famous "wooden pistol" escape from the jail in Crown Point, Indiana. Although the details remain in some dispute, the escape is suspected to have been arranged and financed by members of Nelson's newly formed gang, including Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, Eddie Green, and John "Red" Hamilton, with the understanding that Dillinger would repay some part of the bribe money out of his share of the first robbery. The night Dillinger arrived in the Twin Cities, Nelson and his friend John Paul Chase were cut off by another car driven by local paint salesman Theodore Kidder. Nelson lost his temper and gave chase, crowding Kidder to the curb. The salesman exited his vehicle to protest, whereupon Nelson shot him dead.
Two days after this, the new gang (with Hamilton's participation as the sixth man uncertain) struck the Security National Bank at Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In the robbery, which netted around $49,000 (figures differ slightly), Nelson severely wounded motorcycle policeman Hale Keith with a burst of sub-machine-gun fire as the officer was arriving at the scene. The six men were soon identified as "the Second Dillinger gang", due to Dillinger's extreme notoriety, but the gang had no official leader.
On March 13, a week after the robbery in Sioux Falls, the gang robbed the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa. Dillinger and Hamilton were both shot and wounded in the robbery, where they made off with $52,000. On April 3, federal agents ambushed and killed Eddie Green, though he was unarmed and they were uncertain of his identity. In the aftermath of the Mason City robbery, Nelson and John Paul Chase fled west to Reno, where their old bosses Bill Graham and Jim McKay were fighting a federal mail fraud case. Years later, the FBI determined that on March 22, 1934, Nelson and Chase abducted and killed the chief witness against the pair, Roy Fritsch. Fritsch's quartered body was said to have been thrown down an abandoned mine shaft and was never found.
Little Bohemia
On the afternoon of April 20, Nelson, Dillinger, Van Meter, Carroll, Hamilton, and gang associate and errand-runner Pat Reilly, accompanied by Nelson's wife Helen and three girlfriends of the other men, arrived at the secluded Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, for a weekend of rest. The gang's connection to the resort apparently came from previous dealings between Dillinger's attorney, Louis Piquett, and lodge owner Emil Wanatka. Though gang members greeted him by name, Wanatka maintained that he was unaware of their identities until some time later that night. According to Bryan Burrough's book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34, this most likely happened when Wanatka was playing cards with Dillinger, Nelson, and Hamilton. When Dillinger won a round and raked in the pot, Wanatka caught a glimpse of Dillinger's pistol concealed in his coat, and noticed that Nelson and the others also had shoulder holsters.
The following day, while she was away from the lodge with her young son at a children's birthday party, Wanatka's wife informed a friend, Henry Voss, that the Dillinger gang was at the lodge, and the FBI was subsequently given the tip early on April 22. Melvin Purvis and a number of agents arrived by plane from Chicago, and with the gang's departure imminent, attacked the lodge quickly and with little preparation, and without notifying or obtaining help from local authorities.
Wanatka offered a one-dollar dinner special on Sunday nights, and the last of a crowd estimated at 75 people were leaving as the agents arrived in the front driveway. A 1933 Chevrolet coupé was leaving at that moment with three departing lodge customers, John Hoffman, Eugene Boisneau and John Morris, who apparently did not hear an order to halt because the car radio drowned out the agents yelling at them to stop. The agents quickly opened fire on them, instantly killing Boisneau and wounding the others, and alerting the gang members inside.
Adding to the chaos, at this moment Pat Reilly returned to the lodge after an out-of-town errand for Van Meter, accompanied by John Hamilton's girlfriend, Pat Cherrington. Accosted by the agents, Reilly and Cherrington backed out and escaped under fire.
Dillinger, Van Meter, Hamilton, and Carroll escaped through the back of the lodge, which was unguarded, and made their way north on foot through woods and past a lake to commandeer a car and a driver at a resort a mile away. Carroll was not far behind them. He made it to Manitowish and stole a car, making it uneventfully to St. Paul.
Nelson, who had been outside the lodge in the adjacent cabin, characteristically attacked the raiding party head on, exchanging fire with Purvis, before retreating into the lodge under a return volley from other agents. From there he slipped out the back and fled in the opposite direction from the others. Emerging from the woods ninety minutes later, a mile away from Little Bohemia, Nelson kidnapped the Lange couple from their home and ordered them to drive him away. Apparently dissatisfied with the car's speed, he quickly ordered them to pull up at a brightly lit house where the switchboard operator, Alvin Koerner, aware of the ongoing events, quickly phoned authorities at one of the involved lodges to report a suspicious vehicle in front of his home. Shortly after Nelson had entered the home, taking the Koerners hostage, Emil Wanatka arrived with his brother-in-law George LaPorte and a lodge employee (while a fourth man remained in the car) and were also taken prisoner. Nelson ordered Koerner and Wanatka back into their vehicle, where the fourth man remained unnoticed in the back seat.
As they were preparing to leave, with Wanatka driving at gunpoint, another car arrived with two federal agents – W. Carter Baum and Jay Newman – as well as a local constable, Carl Christensen. Nelson asked the agents who they were and upon the agents identifying themselves, Nelson quickly opened fire with his fully automatic pistol, severely wounding Christensen and Newman and killing Baum, who was hit three times in the neck. Nelson was later quoted as having said that Baum had him "cold" and could not understand why he had not fired. It was found that the safety catch on Baum's gun was on.
Nelson stole the FBI car. Less than 15 miles away, the car suffered a flat tire and finally became mired in mud as Nelson attempted unsuccessfully to change it. Back on foot, he wandered into the woods and took up residence with a Chippewa family in their secluded cabin for several days before making his final escape in another commandeered vehicle.
Three of the women who had accompanied the gang, including Nelson's wife Helen, were captured inside the lodge. After grueling interrogations by the FBI, the three were ultimately convicted on harboring charges and released on parole.
With an agent and an innocent bystander dead and four more severely wounded, including two more innocent bystanders, as well as the complete escape of the Dillinger gang, the FBI came under severe criticism, with calls for director J. Edgar Hoover's resignation and a widely circulated petition demanding Purvis' suspension.
Nelson as public enemy #1
At the time of the Little Bohemia shootout, Nelson's identity as a member of the Dillinger gang had been known to the FBI for two weeks. Following the killing of Baum, Nelson became nationally notorious and was made a high-priority target of the Bureau. The focus on him and the murdered agent served to deflect some of the intense criticism directed at Hoover and Purvis following the Little Bohemia debacle.
A day after the Little Bohemia raid, Dillinger, Hamilton, and Van Meter ran through a police roadblock near Hastings, Minnesota, drawing fire from officers there. A ricocheting bullet struck Hamilton in the back, fatally wounding him. Hamilton reportedly died in hiding on April 30 or May 1, 1934, and was secretly buried by Dillinger and others, including Nelson, who had rejoined the gang in Aurora, Illinois.
On June 7, gang member Tommy Carroll was killed while trying to evade arrest in Waterloo, Iowa. Carroll and his girlfriend, Jean Crompton (who had been captured and tried with Helen Gillis after Little Bohemia), had grown close to the Nelsons, and his death was a personal blow to them. Nelson and his wife went into hiding during the ensuing weeks, and although they were in the Chicago area, their precise movements in this period remain obscure. The Nelsons reportedly lived in various tourist camps, while continuing to secretly meet with family members whenever possible.
On June 27, former gang errand-runner and Little Bohemia fugitive Pat Reilly was arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota.
On the morning of June 30, Nelson, Dillinger, Van Meter, and one or more additional accomplices robbed the Merchants National Bank in South Bend, Indiana. One man involved in the robbery is believed to have been Pretty Boy Floyd, based on several eyewitness identifications as well as the later account of Joseph "Fatso" Negri, an old Nelson associate from California who was serving as a gofer for the gang at this time. Another rumored participant was Nelson's childhood friend, Jack Perkins, also an associate of the gang at that time. (Perkins was later tried for the robbery and acquitted).
When the robbery began, policeman Howard Wagner had been directing traffic outside. Responding quickly to the scene and attempting to draw his gun, he was shot dead by Van Meter, who was stationed outside the bank. During the shootout that followed, Nelson exchanged fire with a local jeweler, Harry Berg, who had shot him in the chest - ineffectively, because of Nelson's bullet-proof vest. As Berg retreated into his store under a return volley from Nelson, a man in a parked car was wounded. Nelson also grappled briefly with a teenage boy, Joseph Pawlowski, who tackled him until Nelson (or Van Meter) stunned Pawlowski with a blow from his gun. When Dillinger and the man identified as Floyd (unconfirmed) emerged from the bank with sacks containing $28,000, they brought three hostages with them (including the bank president) to deter gunfire from three patrolmen on the scene. The policemen fired nonetheless, wounding two of the hostages before grazing Van Meter in the head. The gang escaped, and Van Meter recovered. In the constant and chaotic exchange of gunfire, several other bystanders were wounded by shots, ricochets, or flying broken glass. It was the last confirmed robbery for all of the known and suspected participants, including Floyd (unconfirmed).
During the month of July, as the FBI manhunt for him continued, Nelson and his wife fled to California with associate John Paul Chase, who remained with Nelson for the rest of his life. Upon their return to Chicago on July 15, the gang held a reunion meeting at a favorite rendezvous site. When the meeting was interrupted by two Illinois state troopers, Fred McAllister and Gilbert Cross, Nelson fired on their vehicle with his converted "machine gun pistol", wounding both men as the gangsters retreated. Cross was badly wounded, but both he and McAllister survived. Nelson's responsibility was uncertain until verification came later in the form of a confession from Chase.
On July 22, 1934, Dillinger was ambushed and killed by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park, Chicago. The next day the FBI announced that "Pretty Boy" Floyd was now Public Enemy No. 1. On October 22, 1934, Floyd was killed in a shootout with agents including Melvin Purvis. Subsequently, J. Edgar Hoover announced that Nelson was now Public Enemy No. 1.
On August 23, Van Meter was ambushed and killed by police in St. Paul, Minnesota, leaving Nelson as the sole survivor of the so-called "Second Dillinger Gang".
In the ensuing months, Nelson and his wife, usually accompanied by Chase, drifted west to cities including Sacramento and San Francisco, California and Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada. They often stayed in auto camps, including Walley's Hot Springs, outside Genoa, Nevada, where they hid out from October 1 before returning to Chicago around November 1. Nelson's movements during the final month of his life are largely unknown.
By the end of the month, FBI interest had settled on a former hideout of Nelson's, the Lake Como Inn in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where it was believed that Nelson might return for the winter. When the Nelsons and Chase did return to the inn on November 27, they briefly came face to face with surprised and unprepared FBI agents who had staked it out. The fugitives sped away before any shots were fired. Armed with a description of the car (a black Ford V8) and its license plate number (639-578), agents swarmed into the area.
Death
A short but furious gun battle between FBI agents and Nelson took place on November 27, 1934, outside Chicago in the town of Barrington, culminating in the deaths of Nelson, and FBI agents Herman "Ed" Hollis and Samuel P. Cowley.
On the morning of November 27, Nelson, along with his wife Helen Gillis and associate John Paul Chase, headed south in a stolen V8 Ford towards Chicago on U.S. Highway 12 (now US-14). Nelson, always keen to spot federal agents, caught sight of a sedan driven in the opposite direction by agents Thomas McDade and William Ryan. Both parties simultaneously recognized each other and after several U-turns by both vehicles, Nelson wound up in pursuit of the agents' car. When Nelson's powerful Ford caught up to the agents' slower sedan, Chase opened fire on the agents. Ryan and McDade returned fire, sped up, then pulled into a field and awaited Nelson and Chase, who had stopped pursuing. McDade and Ryan were unaware that one of their bullets had punctured the water pump of Nelson's Ford. With Nelson's Ford rapidly losing power, a Hudson automobile driven by Hollis (who had been given credit as one of the agents who fired the fatal shots that killed Dillinger the previous July) and Cowley, began pursuing the Ford.
With his pursuers attempting to pull alongside, Nelson skidded into the entrance to Barrington's North Side Park. Hollis and Cowley overshot Nelson's car by over , and stopped at an angle. Upon exiting the vehicle's passenger door, the agents took cover behind their car. The ensuing shootout was witnessed by more than a dozen people.
Nelson yelled to Helen to take cover in a nearby ditch, then he and Chase opened fire on the agents. Both Cowley and Hollis returned fire from behind their vehicle. A single .45 slug from Cowley's machine gun struck Nelson in the lower abdomen. Nelson leaned on the Ford's running board, then wordlessly exchanged weapons with Chase. In the din of the gun battle, Chase heard Nelson complain that his weapon was jamming, and the wounded Nelson swapped it out for either a .351 Winchester or a Colt Monitor automatic rifle. Despite his grievous wound, Nelson moved from behind the car and advanced toward the agents while firing his weapon. Two of his bullets struck Cowley. Several buckshot pellets from Hollis's shotgun then struck Nelson in the legs and knocked him down.
As Nelson regained his feet, Hollis, possibly already wounded, moved to better cover behind a utility pole. As he drew his service pistol, Nelson fatally shot Hollis in the head. Nelson staggered over Hollis's body, aimed his weapon at the agent's fallen form for a moment then limped toward the agents' Hudson. Nelson drove the car over to the disabled Ford. After loading the agents' car with the Ford's guns and supplies, Nelson let Chase get behind the wheel of the agents' car and the two men and Helen Gillis fled the scene. Nelson was shot a total of nine times; a single (and ultimately fatal) machine gun slug had struck his abdomen and eight of Hollis's shotgun pellets had hit his legs. Later news reports inaccurately gave his number of wounds as 17, possibly due to a memorandum release by J. Edgar Hoover stating "seven to ten wounds" to Nelson's body. After telling his wife "I'm done for", Nelson gave directions as Chase drove them to a safe house on Walnut Street in Wilmette. Nelson died in bed with his wife at his side, at 7:35 p.m.
Hollis was pronounced dead soon after arriving at the hospital. At a different hospital, Cowley lived for long enough to confer briefly with Melvin Purvis and have surgery, before succumbing to a stomach wound similar to Nelson's. Following a telephone tip from a Chicago Telephone Company employee, Carl Fyhrie, who was working on the telephone lines and saw a body on the ground, Nelson's body was discovered wrapped in an Indian patterned blanket by FBI agent Walter Walsh, in a ditch on the northeast corner of the St. Paul's Lutheran Cemetery in Skokie, and taken to Haben's Funeral Home, both of which still exist. Helen later stated that she had placed the blanket around Nelson's body because, "He always hated being cold".
Newspapers reported, based on the aggressive wording of an order from J. Edgar Hoover ("find the woman and give her no quarter"), that the FBI had issued a "death order" for Nelson's widow, who wandered the streets of Chicago as a fugitive for several days, described in print as the U.S. first female "public enemy". After surrendering on Thanksgiving Day, Helen, who had been paroled after capture at Little Bohemia, served a year in prison for harboring her husband. Chase was apprehended later and served a term at Alcatraz.
Burial
Baby Face Nelson and his wife Helen are buried at Saint Joseph's Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois.
Fictional portrayals
Nelson has been portrayed multiple times onscreen. These include:
Baby Face Nelson, a 1957 film starring Mickey Rooney
The FBI Story, a 1959 film starring James Stewart, with William Phipps as Nelson
Dillinger, a 1973 film featuring Richard Dreyfuss as Nelson. In this film the shootout between Nelson and FBI Agents Cowley and Hollis is depicted as taking place during the Little Bohemia raid.
The Kansas City Massacre, a 1975 TV movie featuring Elliott Street as Nelson
Baby Face Nelson (1995), a 1995 film starring C. Thomas Howell
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a 2000 film featuring Michael Badalucco as Nelson. He is portrayed as working mostly alone, until meeting up with the main characters and having them along as he robs the next bank in quick succession to break a record. When he last appears he is being taken by an angry mob to meet his death in the electric chair. The film is set in Mississippi in 1937, three years after the real Nelson's death.
Public Enemies, a 2009 film starring American actor Johnny Depp, with Stephen Graham as Nelson. In this film, Nelson is portrayed as being killed by Melvin Purvis alongside Van Meter and Ed Shouse at the Little Bohemia shootout, and thus does not become Public Enemy Number One after Dillinger's death. However, the film still portrays Nelson as getting up and continuing to fire immediately after being shot several times.
In the A&E drama series Baby Face, produced by Kerry Ehrin and Freddie Highmore with the latter taking on the role of Nelson.
In Team Fortress 2 there is a primary weapon for Scout called the "Baby Face's Blaster", it is a lever action shotgun similar to the .351 Winchester that Nelson used during the shootout that ended his life.
See also
List of Depression-era outlaws
References
External links
FBI: Lester Gillis "Baby Face" Nelson
Crime Library biography
A Brief and Violent Life; Evil behind a 'Baby Face'
1908 births
1934 deaths
Criminals from Chicago
Depression-era gangsters
American murderers
American bank robbers
American outlaws
American people of Belgian descent
Articles containing video clips
People shot dead by law enforcement officers in the United States
Deaths by firearm in Illinois
People from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Burials in Illinois
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr.%20Kildare
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Dr. Kildare
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Dr. James Kildare is a fictional American medical doctor, originally created in the 1930s by the author Frederick Schiller Faust under the pen name Max Brand. Shortly after the character's first appearance in a magazine story, Paramount Pictures used the story and character as the basis for the 1937 film Internes Can't Take Money, starring Joel McCrea as Jimmie Kildare. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) subsequently acquired the rights and featured Kildare as the primary character in a series of American theatrical films in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Several of these films were co-written by Faust (as Max Brand), who also continued to write magazine stories and novels about the character until the early 1940s. Kildare was portrayed by Lew Ayres in nine MGM films. (Ayres was drafted in 1942 and served as a non-combatant medic until 1946.) Later films set in the same hospital featured Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore). Ayres returned to voice the Kildare character in an early 1950s radio series. The 1961–1966 Dr. Kildare television series made a star of Richard Chamberlain and gave birth to a comic book and comic strip based on the show. A short-lived reboot of the TV series, Young Doctor Kildare, debuted in 1972 and ran for 24 episodes.
Magazine stories and novels
Original series
The author Frederick Schiller Faust, writing as Max Brand, created the character of Dr. James Kildare as a fictionalized version of his college friend, Dr. George Winthrop "Dixie" Fish, a New York surgeon. He first introduced the character in a short story, "Internes Can't Take Money", that appeared in the March 1936 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. A second Kildare story, "Whiskey Sour", was published in Cosmopolitan in April 1938. In these early stories, Dr. James "Jimmy" Kildare is an aspiring surgeon who leaves his parents' farm to practice at a fictional big-city hospital, and through his work, comes into contact with underworld criminals. The first Kildare film, Internes Can't Take Money (1937), based on the short story of the same title and made by Paramount, followed this version of the character.
In 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) contracted with Faust to acquire the rights to the Kildare character along with Faust's services as a film story writer. Faust then made major changes to the character to fit MGM's idea for a new movie series, including changing Kildare's specialty to diagnostics rather than surgery, introducing the character of Kildare's superior Dr. Leonard Gillespie, de-emphasizing the criminal elements, and restarting the story from Kildare's first arrival at the city hospital. Faust (as Brand) collaborated with MGM on its Kildare film series starting with the first MGM series release, Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and continuing through The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941). During this time, Faust wrote several original Kildare stories which were first published in magazines, later republished in novel form, and made into films by MGM. The stories were written prior to the films being made, and were not published as movie tie-ins.
After The People vs. Dr. Kildare, Faust and MGM parted ways. Faust was not involved in Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day, Dr. Kildare's Victory, or any of the subsequent films featuring Dr. Gillespie, although Faust (as Brand) continued to receive a credit for creating the characters. Faust's last two Kildare stories, "Dr. Kildare's Hardest Case" (published in 1942) and the unfinished story "Dr. Kildare's Dilemma" (posthumously published in the early 1970s), were not made into films. In 1944, Faust was killed in Italy while working as a war correspondent.
Dr. Kildare story list
This table lists the Max Brand-authored Kildare stories in chronological order of first publication. Due to the continuing popularity of the characters in film, radio and television series, many reprints, different formats, and different versions of the original Kildare books have since been released.
Aside from the Kildare stories, Faust (as Brand) wrote only one other medical story, "My People", which appeared in the August 1940 issue of Cosmopolitan. "My People" featured a character, "Dr. Maynard", who was similar to Dr. Kildare. MGM acquired the rights to "My People" as a possible concept for a Kildare film, but it was never developed.
Television tie-ins
The popularity of the 1960s Dr. Kildare TV series and its star, Richard Chamberlain, resulted in a number of contemporary tie-in novels by several different authors. Several were released in mass-market paperback form by Lancer Books, while titles aimed at preteen and young teen readers were published by Whitman Publishing. The covers featured photographs of Chamberlain as Kildare, or artwork using his likeness. Known titles are listed below.
By Robert C. Ackworth:
Dr. Kildare (Lancer, 1962)
Dr. Kildare: Assigned to Trouble (Whitman, 1963) (with Robert L. Jenney, illustrator)
By Norman A. Daniels:
Dr. Kildare's Secret Romance (Lancer, 1962)
Dr. Kildare's Finest Hour (Lancer, 1963)
By William Johnston:
Dr. Kildare: The Faces of Love (Lancer, 1963)
Dr. Kildare: The Heart Has an Answer (Lancer, 1963)
Dr. Kildare: The Magic Key (Whitman, 1964) (with Al Andersen, illustrator)
Films
Internes Can't Take Money
The character of Dr. Kildare first appeared on film in the 1937 Paramount film, Internes Can't Take Money, based on Max Brand's previously published short story of the same name and starring Joel McCrea as Dr. Kildare. The plot focuses on Dr. Kildare's attempt to help a young female ex-convict (played by Barbara Stanwyck) locate her child. Paramount did not plan any further Kildare films, probably because box-office returns did not meet expectations.
MGM film series (1930s–1940s)
MGM had noted the popularity of the Kildare character in pulp magazines and, following the release of Internes Can't Take Money, saw an opportunity to obtain an undervalued property and develop a successful film series. In 1938, MGM entered into a deal with author Faust (Brand) to acquire the rights to Dr. Kildare and have Faust work with MGM on developing stories for a film series. Seven Dr. Kildare films were subsequently made by MGM based on stories originally written by Faust. After The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941), Faust and MGM ended their collaboration and MGM continued the series using stories by other writers, though Faust still received a credit for creating the characters.
In the MGM series, the Dr. Kildare character (played by Lew Ayres) first appears as a medical intern newly arrived at a New York City hospital, where he attracts the attention of a respected older physician and skilled diagnostician, Dr. Leonard Gillespie (played by Lionel Barrymore). After becoming a physician, Kildare faces a number of professional and personal challenges in the course of his work, while being mentored by Gillespie.
In 1942, during the making of the tenth film in the MGM series, originally titled Born to Be Bad, Ayres was drafted to serve in WWII and declared himself a conscientious objector. The resulting negative publicity caused MGM to cut Ayres from the film, eliminate the character of Kildare, and change the film's focus to Barrymore's character Gillespie, eventually releasing the revamped film as Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942). Dr. Kildare simply vanished from the series, without explanation, and for Calling Dr. Gillespie the character of a young doctor mentored by the experienced Dr. Gillespie was played by Philip Dorn (as Dr. John Hunter Gerniede). MGM made several more films featuring the Dr. Gillespie character mentoring various young doctors played by Van Johnson (as Dr. Randall "Red" Adams), Keye Luke (as Dr. Lee Wong How), and James Craig (as Dr. Tommy Coalt). After leaving the series, the character of Kildare was never seen, heard or so much as mentioned in any of the subsequent films.
MGM Dr. Kildare films
Young Dr. Kildare (1938), which introduced Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare and Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Gillespie
Calling Dr. Kildare (1939)
The Secret of Dr. Kildare (1939)
Dr. Kildare's Strange Case (1940)
Dr. Kildare Goes Home (1940)
Dr. Kildare's Crisis (1940)
The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941) – the last film made with the collaboration of series creator Frederick Schiller Faust (Max Brand)
Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day (1941)
Dr. Kildare's Victory (1942)
MGM Dr. Gillespie films
Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942), with Dr. John Hunter Gerniede (Philip Dorn) replacing the character of Dr. Kildare (Ayres), who was retired from the series
Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant (1942), which introduced Gillespie's new assistants Dr. Randall "Red" Adams (Van Johnson) and Dr. Lee Wong How (Keye Luke)
Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case (1943), with Dr. Randall "Red" Adams (Johnson) and Dr. Lee Wong How (Luke)
Three Men in White (1944), with Dr. Randall "Red" Adams (Johnson) and Dr. Lee Wong How (Luke)
Between Two Women (1945), with Dr. Randall "Red" Adams (Johnson) and Dr. Lee Wong How (Luke)
Dark Delusion (1947), with Dr. Tommy Coalt (James Craig) (replacing Johnson's character) and Dr. Lee Wong How (Luke)
Home media
Warner Bros. released the complete set of MGM Kildare films on DVD as the "Dr. Kildare Movie Collection" via their Warner Archive Collection in January 2014. The set also included, as an extra, the 1960 unaired pilot for the Dr. Kildare TV series starring Lew Ayres. Previously, some of the individual Kildare films had been released individually on DVD through distributors such as Alpha Video, Roan Archival Group, FilmRise and Genius Entertainment.
Warner Bros. also released the complete set of Dr. Gillespie films on DVD as the "Dr. Gillespie Movie Collection" via Warner Archive Collection in November 2014.
The single Paramount Kildare film, Internes Can't Take Money, was released on DVD by Universal as part of "The Barbara Stanwyck Collection" in April 2010.
Radio
The Kildare character first appeared on radio on October 13, 1938, when Lionel Barrymore and Lew Ayres performed a scene from their soon-to-be-released film, Young Dr. Kildare, on MGM's Good News of 1939 radio program.
In the summer of 1949, MGM reunited Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore to record the radio series, The Story of Dr. Kildare, which used the concept and characters of the earlier Young Dr. Kildare story and did not include any of the young doctors who had replaced Kildare in the later films featuring Dr. Gillespie. By this time, Ayres had returned to public favor after serving in WWII as a medical corpsman. Episodes were scripted by James Moser, Jean Holloway, Les Crutchfield, E. Jack Neuman, John Michael Hayes, Joel Murcott, and others. The supporting cast included Ted Osborne as hospital administrator Dr. Carew, Eleanor Audley as receptionist Molly Byrd, Jane Webb as nurse Mary Lamont, and Virginia Gregg as nurse Evangeline Parker, labeled "Nosy Parker" by Gillespie. In addition, many prominent West Coast radio actors made recurring appearances, including Raymond Burr, William Conrad, Stacy Harris, Lurene Tuttle, Barton Yarborough, and Jack Webb.
Each radio episode was developed as a stand-alone program rather than a serial. Episodes typically focused on Dr. Kildare dealing with a particular medical issue while jousting with eccentric patients and/or hospital administrators. The medical information presented was up to date for its time, and sometimes taken from real life; for example, an episode in which Dr. Kildare is forced to perform an emergency appendectomy on himself was based on a news story. At least 60 half-hour episodes were produced.
In addition to airing on the MGM-affiliated New York station WMGM, The Story of Dr. Kildare was originally syndicated to over 200 outlets in the U.S. and Canada, mostly Mutual Broadcasting System stations. The earliest known broadcast of the program took place on September 27, 1949, on Mutual station WGN in Chicago, prior to the WMGM premiere episode on October 12, 1949. In the early 1950s, MGM offered the show to stations as part of a multiple-program package for a price lower than purchasing each program individually. However, starting in 1952, stations began to lose interest in such packages, preferring to develop their own local programming to better compete with television. Consequently, despite the show's popularity with audiences, no new episodes of The Story of Dr. Kildare were produced after 1951, although rebroadcasts of old episodes continued to air in syndication for several more years.
Television
Dr. Kildare (1950s)
In 1953, Lew Ayres was approached to play Dr. Kildare in a television series, which would feature Dr. Kildare having finally taken over the practice of a retired Dr. Gillespie. After two pilots were filmed, Ayres refused to work further on the project unless the television studio refused to allow cigarette companies to sponsor the program. Ayres later explained, "My feeling was that a medical show, particularly one that might appeal to children, should not be used to sell cigarettes." The studio would not agree to reject lucrative advertising, so the project was abandoned.
Dr. Kildare (1960s)
Lew Ayres reprised his role as Dr. Kildare in an unsold and unaired 1960 TV pilot directed by John Newland (with Joe Cronin as Dr. Grayson)
The second attempt at a Kildare TV show premiered on September 28, 1961. The series was a top-10 hit with audiences and ran until April 5, 1966, for a total of 191 episodes in five seasons. The first two seasons told the story of Dr. James Kildare (Richard Chamberlain), working in a fictional large metropolitan hospital while trying to learn his profession, deal with his patients' problems, and earn the respect of the senior Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Raymond Massey). In the third season, Dr. Kildare was promoted to resident and the series began to focus more on the stories of the patients and their families. The success of the show (along with ABC's contemporaneous medical drama Ben Casey) inspired the launch of numerous other television medical dramas in the ensuing years.
Young Dr. Kildare (1970s)
In 1972, MGM Television created a short-lived syndicated drama series called Young Dr. Kildare, starring Mark Jenkins as Dr. James Kildare and Gary Merrill as Dr. Leonard Gillespie. The series was not a success, and only 24 episodes were produced.
Comics
From 1962 to 1965, Dell Comics published a Dr. Kildare comic book based on the 1960s Dr. Kildare television series. The first issue was released April 2, 1962, as No. 1337 in Dell's Four Color Comics line, and featured a story involving a gambler checking into Dr. Kildare's hospital to hide from a hit man. Dell subsequently continued the comic book for a total of nine issues, with the final issue appearing in April 1965. All issues had photo covers featuring Chamberlain, the star of the TV series.
A Dr. Kildare daily comic strip based on the 1960s television series, distributed by King Features Syndicate, and drawn by Ken Bald also premiered on October 15, 1962. Bald was required to base his drawing of Dr. Kildare on photos of Richard Chamberlain, but made up his own drawings of other characters, including Dr. Gillespie. The daily strip, drawn by Bald, ran for over two decades until April 21, 1984, outlasting the television series (which was cancelled in 1966) by nearly 18 years. A Sunday strip also ran from April 19, 1964, to April 3, 1983. Bald retired after the cancellation of the daily strip.
Franchise rights
The underlying rights to the Kildare film and television franchise are owned by Warner Bros. (via Turner Entertainment Co.), with the exception of the 1937 film Internes Can't Take Money, currently owned by EMKA, Ltd./Universal Television, keeper of Paramount Pictures' pre-1950 sound library.
See also
Doctor (novel series), a British dramatic comedy series of novels, films, and serialized television programs
List of fictional doctors
Medical drama
List of medical drama television programs
References
Further reading
Decter, Midge. "Who Killed Dr. Kildare?" in Culture in Crisis and the Renewal of Civil Life (ed. T. William Boxx and Gary M. Quinlivan). Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, pp. 49–56. .
Marchessault, Janine. "Men in White, Women in Aprons: Utopian Iconographies of TV Doctors", in Figuring It Out: Science, Gender, and Visual Culture (ed. Ann B. Shteir & Bernard Lightman). Univ. Press of New England, 2006, pp. 315–335. .
External links
Dr. Kildare comic book archive at Comic Book Plus
Literary characters introduced in 1937
1940s American radio programs
1950s American radio programs
American radio dramas
Mutual Broadcasting System programs
Kildare
Kildare, James
American film series
American comic strips
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK%20Partizan
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FK Partizan
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Fudbalski klub Partizan (, ; ), sometimes known as Partizan Belgrade in English, is a Serbian professional football club based in Belgrade. It forms a major part of the Partizan multi-sport club. The club plays in the Serbian SuperLiga and has spent its entire history in the top tier of Yugoslav and Serbian football, winning a total of 46 official trophies, finishing in the Yugoslav league all-time table as second. Its home ground is the Partizan Stadium in Belgrade, where the team have played since 1949. Partizan holds records such as playing in the first European Champions Cup match on 4 September 1955, as well as becoming the first Balkan and Eastern European football club to reach the European Champions Cup final, when it did so in 1966. Partizan was the first Serbian club to compete in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League.
The club has a long-standing rivalry with Red Star Belgrade. Matches between these two clubs are known as the Eternal Derby ("Večiti derbi") and rate as one of the greatest cross-town clashes in the world. Partizan also has many supporters in many of the former-Yugoslav republics and in the Serbian diaspora.
Their popular nickname 'The Steamroller' (Parni valjak) was originally used in the press report after the 7–1 hammering of Red Star at the 13th Eternal Derby on 6 December 1953. This nickname was later embedded in the lyrics of the club anthem.
Partizan Youth Academy is one of the most renowned and export-oriented in Europe. CIES (University of Neuchâtel International Centre for Sports Studies) Football Observatory report of November 2015 ranks Partizan at the top place of training clubs out of the 31 European leagues surveyed. CIES report of 2019 confirmed Partizan as the most productive training club in Europe, with 75 of their academy graduates currently playing across 31 European top divisions.
History
Founders and origins
Partizan was founded on 4 October 1945 in Belgrade, as a football section of the Central House of the Yugoslav Army "Partizan", and was named in honour of the Partisans, the communist military formation who fought against fascism during World War II in Yugoslavia. The club was formed and initially managed by the group of young high officers of the Yugoslav People's Army and veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Among them were Koča Popović, Peko Dapčević, Bogdan Vujošević, Mijalko Todorović, Otmar Kreačić, Božo Švarc and Ratko "Čoče" Vujović – elected the first president of the club. Two days after its establishment, Partizan made its first step on the football scene, with the friendly match against selection of Zemun that ended 4–2. Silvester Šereš entered the record books as the first goal scorer in the history of Partizan, while goalkeeper Franjo Glaser was simultaneously the first club manager. Just three weeks later, Partizan went on the first of many international tours, travelling to Czechoslovakia where they beat the selection of Slovak Army with 3–1. At the time, just months after the World War II in Yugoslavia ended, no organized football competition was yet restored, so Partizan played only friendly games and tournaments both home and abroad. The club's first international engagement was a meeting against another army side, CSKA Moscow from what was then Soviet Union, on 6 December 1945 in Belgrade.
Partizan's babies – the first European final (1958–1966)
By the mid-1950s, the first big Partizan generation was well over its peak. Only two titles and four cups in its first 15 years of existence were not enough for a club of Partizan's stature, ambition and popularity. In 1958, the club left way behind 13 years of playing in blue-red kits and adopted the now famous black and white colors. The change in the club's image and appearance was followed by radical changes in the playing squad. The number of young players, offspring of Partizan's own youth ranks known as Partizanove bebe (The Partizan's babies), soon emerged into one of the best generations Europe's ever seen. The rise of the generation began with Milutin Šoškić, Fahrudin Jusufi, Jovan Miladinović, Velibor Vasović, Milan Galić, Ilija Mitić, Zvezdan Čebinac and Vladica Kovačević. Very soon, they were joined by Lazar Radović, Velimir Sombolac, Ljubomir Mihajlović and Mustafa Hasanagić, and finally Ivan Ćurković, Josip Pirmajer, Branko Rašović and Radoslav Bečejac. Managers Illés Spitz, Florijan Matekalo and Stjepan Bobek monitored and guided their development. The decision to rely mostly on talented youngsters scouted from all over the country quickly gave results – Partizan took three consecutive championship titles, in 1961, 1962 and 1963, the first title hat-trick in the Yugoslav First League. Efficient and attractive performances earned the club its popular nickname "Parni valjak" ("The Steamroller"). In 1964–65, the team added the fourth title in five years (interrupted by city rival Red Star during the 1963–64 season). As early as the 1960s, a fierce and intense rivalry grew up between Partizan and Red Star.
The 1965–66 European Cup campaign was the crown of this generation's career. After eliminating French Nantes (2–0, 2–2) and German champion Werder Bremen (3–0, 1–0) in the first two rounds, Partizan were drawn against Sparta Prague in the quarter-finals. In the first leg, held in Prague, Partizan suffered a hard 4–1 defeat. Although they were not given any chances in the return leg in Belgrade, Partizan pulled off a convincing 5–0 win in front of 50,000 spectators, and with aggregate score 6–4 qualified for the semifinals. The semi-finals would see Partizan taking part in an emotional tie that would bring Manchester United, in their first season back in the European Cup after the Munich air disaster, returning to the scene of their final game, at the JNA Stadium, before embarking on that fateful journey home (on the way home from a European Cup quarter-final victory against Red Star, which was played at JNA Stadium, the aircraft carrying the Manchester United players, officials and journalists crashed while attempting to take off after refuelling in Munich).Manchester United, led by George Best and Bobby Charlton, awaited finally them on the last step to the finals. Partizan won the first leg at JNA Stadium 2–0, and resisted the heavy pressure on Old Trafford, conceding only once; with a 2–1 aggregate scoreline, they eliminated the English giants. Partizan's babies achieved the greatest success in history of Partizan, a place in the 1966 European Cup Final against Real Madrid. The final game was played on 11 May at Heysel Stadium, Brussels. Until the 70th minute, Partizan was 1–0 up through a goal by Velibor Vasović, but ultimately lost to the Spaniards 2–1. Partizan may have come close to a famous victory, but they had now missed their chance as the side was immediately broken up with their star players heading west. Still, Partizan became the first club from the Balkans and Eastern Europe to have played in a European Cup final.
The brief return – the first European trophy (1976–1982)
On 11 July 1976, in Ljubljana, Partizan played the last game of the season against Olimpija and needed a win to clinch the title ahead of rivals Hajduk Split. In the last second before the final whistle, Nenad Bjeković scored the winning goal and Partizan won 0–1. The seventh championship trophy was finally won, after full decade of waiting, by the new generation of players, such as Momčilo Vukotić, Bjeković, Rešad Kunovac, Ilija Zavišić, Refik Kozić, Ivan Golac, Radmilo Ivančević, Boško Đorđević, Nenad Stojković. Partizan then won its eighth title in 1977–78, enforced with Nikica Klinčarski, Petar Borota, Slobodan Santrač, Aleksandar Trifunović, Xhevat Prekazi and Pavle Grubješić. That same year, Partizan won its first European trophy, the Mitropa Cup. The Black & Whites finished first in Group A, ahead of Perugia and Zbrojovka Brno and defeated Hungarian side Honvéd in the finals, 1–0. Its manager was Ante Mladinić. Unexpectedly, the following 1978–79 season turned out to be the worst in Partizan history: they finished 15th in the league, barely avoiding relegation with a 4–2 victory against Budućnost in the last fixture. The new crisis was serious, which reflected in the results next season, when Partizan finished 13th. It took a two more seasons, but Partizan eventually recovered.
Memorable years (1982–1991)
When Momčilo Vukotić, Nenad Stojković and Nikica Klinčarski were joined by Ljubomir Radanović, Zvonko Živković, Zoran Dimitrijević and Dragan Mance, another great generation was formed. Partizan became champion for 1982–83 season, in large part due to extraordinary performances of a young Dragan Mance. He helped Partizan win the league by scoring 15 goals, and immediately became a fan favourite. He also led the club in their 1984–85 UEFA Cup second round tie against Queens Park Rangers, one of the most memorable matches in the club's history. QPR won the first leg 6–2, but Partizan advanced after a 4–0 return victory. A goal which Mance scored against the English side is considered one of the most remarkable goals in the history of Partizan. That match was voted 70th among the Top 100 greatest matches in the history of football in a poll organized by Eurosport in September 2009. On 3 September 1985, the players tragically lost their teammate and the fans lost their idol – Mance died in a car crash on Novi Sad-Belgrade highway. He was only 22 years old, and at the peak of his popularity. Even today, Mance is considered to be the greatest club legend by the fans of Partizan. In his honour, the street next to the club's stadium in Belgrade has carried his name since 2011.
In 1985–86, Partizan won the title with a 4–0 win over Željezničar due to better goal difference than second-placed Red Star. However, Yugoslav FA President Slavko Šajber decided that the entire last round of fixtures had to be replayed after accusations that certain results had been fixed. Partizan refused to replay its match, after which the game was awarded 3–0 to Željezničar, and the title was given to Red Star, who thus got to play in 1986–87 European Cup. Because of these events, 12 clubs started the next 1986–87 season with a deduction of six points, Partizan among them. Vardar, who had not been deducted six points, won the title and subsequently participated in 1987–88 European Cup. However, after a sequence of appeals and lawsuits which eventually led to Yugoslav Constitutional Court, the original final table of 1985–86, with Partizan as champions, was officially recognized in mid-1987. Also, the points deduction from 1986–87 season was annulled and the title was given to Partizan, who headed the table without the deduction. These controversial events prevented the generation of Milko Đurovski, Fahrudin Omerović, Zvonko Varga, Vladimir Vermezović, Admir Smajić, Goran Stevanović, Nebojša Vučićević, Miloš Đelmaš, Srečko Katanec, Fadil Vokrri and Bajro Župić from showing their full potential in Europe.
Partizan spent the final years in Yugoslavia undergoing significant organizational changes. In 1989, former goalkeeper Ivan Ćurković became club president while Mirko Marjanović became the president of Partizan's executive board. Most important, Partizan players in these final years were Predrag Mijatović, Slaviša Jokanović, Predrag Spasić, Dragoljub and Branko Brnović, Budimir Vujačić, Vujadin Stanojković, Darko Milanič and Džoni Novak. However, this great generation was overshadowed by their crosstown rival Red Star and its rampage through domestic league, Europe and the world. Partizan only won the 1989 national cup, 32 years after the last victory in that competition. The last trophy won before the breakup of Yugoslavia was the 1989 Yugoslav Super Cup, the first and the only one organized. Also in the same season 1988/89, Partizan won the prestigious international tournament Uhrencup, which is played every year in Switzerland and to this day. That year, Partizan took three trophies which is a club record in one season. In 1987, Partizan signed Chinese national team players Jia Xiuquan and Liu Haiguang and they entered history as they, along Xie Yuxin and Gu Guangming, were the first Chinese footballers ever to have played in Europe.
Dark decade and domestic success (1990s)
After the death of President Josip Broz Tito in 1980, ethnic tension grew in Yugoslavia, with the follow, that in the early 1990s the Yugoslav state began to fall apart, and the civil war broke out. At the end of May in 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions against the country, which led to political isolation, economic decline and hyperinflation of the Yugoslav dinar, and finally dislodged Yugoslav football from the international scene. The disintegration of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav wars from 1991 to 1995, the resulting difficulties, as well as the sanctions had hit all Yugoslav clubs hard. After the breakup of SFR Yugoslavia in 1991, a new Yugoslavia was formed out from Serbia and Montenegro and was named FR Yugoslavia. Notwithstanding, Partizan won during the war two titles in a row, in 1993 and 1994. The next two championships Partizan won came in 1996 and 1997, but after only few years of peace, the Yugoslav clubs stood again before difficult times. Between 1998 and 1999, peace was broken again because the situation in Kosovo worsened with continued clashes between Yugoslav security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. The confrontations led to the Kosovo War and finally to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which started four days after the 112th Red Star–Partizan derby, and this without a UN Mandate. The bombing campaign was criticized, especially for the number of civilian casualties that resulted from the bombing. By this time, Partizan won in 1999 a further championship title, again during a war.
During these turbulent 1990s, the club won also several national cups, this in 1992, 1994 and 1998. The key man for these trophies was Ljubiša Tumbaković, who became the most successful manager in Partizan's history. In 1997, Partizan was reintroduced to European competitions following the lift of the UEFA ban on clubs from FR Yugoslavia, but while the national team continued where they had stopped in the spring of 1992, the clubs had all their results erased and were treated as the beginners in the European competitions. The decision met with incomprehension among the club officials of the Yugoslav clubs. That decision will have long-term catastrophic consequences for Partizan – instead of enjoying the merits of its own many-year work, they would get harder opponents from the start and the competition would start already in July. This decade has been marked by numerous team changes and the circle of selling the best players to richer European clubs after just a couple of seasons of first-team football and replacing them with fresh young talents. Many players are credited with the successes of the nineties, such as Predrag Mijatović, Slaviša Jokanović, Savo Milošević, Albert Nađ, Dragan Ćirić, Zoran Mirković, Saša Ćurčić, Branko Brnović, Goran Pandurović, Dražen Bolić, Niša Saveljić, Damir Čakar, Budimir Vujačić, Ivan Tomić, Gjorgji Hristov, Đorđe Tomić, Ivica Kralj, Mateja Kežman and many others.
The new beginning (2000–2007)
The new millennium has arrived, but the goals remain the same. In the last 12 years, Partizan has won eight national championships, four cups and managed to qualify two times for the UEFA Champions League and five times for the UEFA Europa League. Led by Ljubiša Tumbaković, the club won two championship titles in a row, in 2001–02 and 2002–03. In Europe, Partizan did not have much success in those seasons, though the next one would become its best season in Europe after 1965–66, where it reached the 1966 European Cup final.
The club's management took the 2003 season very seriously, appointing as its new coach the former World Player of the Year Lothar Matthäus, and brought some top and experienced players like Taribo West from 1.FC Kaiserslautern, Ljubinko Drulović from Benfica and Tomasz Rząsa from Feyenoord. For the first time in its history, the club played in the UEFA Champions League after eliminating Bobby Robson's Newcastle United. In Belgrade, Partizan lost by 0–1, but in rematch at St James' Park, they won by Ivica Iliev's goal in regular time and reached the group stages after a penalty shoot-out. Later on, Partizan was drawn in a tough group with Real Madrid (the previous year's Champions League semi-finalist), Porto (the winner of the 2002–03 UEFA Cup and the eventual winner of the competition) and Marseille (the eventual runners-up of the 2003–04 UEFA Cup). The Partizan Stadium was a tough ground for the opposition and the team did not
lose a home game, playing out a 0–0 draw with Real Madrid's famous Galácticos, which included players such as Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Luís Figo, Roberto Carlos, Raúl and David Beckham; a 1–1 draw with Porto, led by coach José Mourinho; and Marseille, with its superstars Fabien Barthez and Didier Drogba, while playing some inspired football in the away match in Madrid (0–1), Marseille (0–3) and Porto (1–2). They are the first Serbian team to qualify for the main draw of this elite European club competition since its inception in 1992.
Playing in Europe was reflected in the championship, and Partizan lost the title. New coach Vladimir Vermezović taken the charge of a team and he superiority won the championship in 2005. Also, he became the only coach who has managed to take the team to the knockout stage of a European competition since new format. That happened in the 2004–05 UEFA Cup, where Partizan reached the round-of-16. Later on, he was eliminated by CSKA Moscow, the eventual winner of the competition. Poor results in domestic and international competitions in 2006 prompted the club's officials to look for a new head coach. First, Jürgen Röber was brought in, then later Miodrag Ješić, though neither succeeded in winning the domestic title. Although Partizan has managed to qualify for the 2006–07 UEFA Cup group stage, that season was viewed as a failure.
Contemporary history (2007–2020)
Former Partizan player Slaviša Jokanović were appointed as Partizan's new head coach, with the club also adding a new sport director in Ivan Tomić. The club strengthened its squad with some foreigners like Juca, Almami Moreira and Lamine Diarra. The 2007–08 and 2008–09 season will remain as one of the most successful in club's domestic history. In 2008–09, the club successfully defended their league and cup double from the 2007–08 season, the first time this occurred its history. But in Europe, Partizan suffered a real shock: UEFA expelled Partizan from the 2007–08 UEFA Cup season and fined the club €30,056 due to crowd trouble at their away qualifying match against Zrinjski Mostar, which forced the match to be interrupted for ten minutes. UEFA judged travelling Partizan fans to have been the culprits of the trouble, but Partizan were allowed to play the return leg while the appeal was being processed. Partizan's appeal, however, was rejected and Zrinjski Mostar qualified for the next round, although Partizan beat them by an aggregate score of 11–1. Next season, the club enforced its squad with Brazilian striker Cléo; Partizan demolished Welsh champions Rhyl with a score of 8–0 (12–0 on aggregate) on 21 July 2009. This score is their largest ever winning margin in European competitions. After relegation from the Champions League, Partizan qualified two times in a row for the second tier of UEFA competition. The Black & Whites played in the 2008 UEFA Cup and 2009 Europa League group stage but as the same in 2007, the club did not advance any further.
Unfortunately, even though a good European season was behind them, the club ended the season trophyless.
After Jokanović, the club decided to give a chance to the young coach and former Partizan footballer Aleksandar Stanojević. He became the youngest head coach in the history of Partizan. Stanojević took over the club in very difficult period and managed to win the championship in 2010, although Partizan was 10 points behind from the 1st placed Red Star Belgrade. In the 2011, the club won the double. In UEFA competitions, Partizan qualified for the 2010–11 UEFA Champions League after beating Anderlecht for the second time. At the Partizan Stadium the result was 2–2. In Brussels at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium result was also 2–2. The key man was Cléo, who scored two goals against the Belgians. After penalty drama, Partizan reached again the UEFA Champions League group stage. Now, the draw for the group phase decided that Partizan will play in group H, alongside Arsenal, Shakhtar Donetsk (the winner of the 2008–09 UEFA Cup) and Sporting Braga (the eventual runner-up of the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League). On the matchday 1, Partizan lost against Shakhtar on Donbass Arena in Donetsk (0–1). Next game Partizan played against Arsenal at Partizan Stadium and lost 1–3 after they played inspired football with a 10-man team in the last 30 minutes of the match. In two matches against Sporting Braga, Partizan failed to score and they lost both games (0–2 in Braga; 0–1 in Belgrade). The last two rounds in the group have also brought inspired football, but unfortunately it wasn't enough so Shakhtar Donetsk and The Gunners defeated Partizan once again, 0–3 in Belgrade and 1–3 at the Emirates Stadium.
In the following season, the elimination during the 2012 Europa League qualifying stage, didn't affect the club in national championship, but after the half-season, Stanojević was released. Partizan then signed former Chelsea manager Avram Grant, who was able to preserve the lead from the half-season. He led Partizan to their fifth consecutive league title but lost three times against fierce rivals Red Star. Grant resigned and former Partizan manager Vladimir Vermezović returned to Belgrade in May 2012. Partizan did not qualify for the 2012–13 UEFA Champions League, but did gain a place in the 2012–13 UEFA Europa League group stage. Because of poor results in the second part of national championship, Vermezović was dismissed and replaced by Vuk Rašović. Following the victory in the eternal derby and in pre-last round, Rašović secured a sixth consecutive title, a total of 25th in history of the club. As a champion of the Serbian SuperLiga for 2012–13 season, Partizan managed to equalize a national record by the number of championship titles won.
In summer of 2013, Partizan eliminated Shirak (1–1, away goal) and lost against Ludogorets Razgrad (1–3 on aggregate). In play-off round for 2013–14 UEFA Europa League, Partizan played with Thun. Partizan beat Thun 1–0 in Belgrade, but lost 0–3 in Thun and failed to get in Europa League. Without a single trophy and group stage of some European competition, the season was the worst in last ten years.
After a year of absence from the European scene, Partizan entered at the 2014–15 UEFA Europa League by beating Neftchi total score 5–3 (3–2 at home and 1–2 away). Partizan is after the draw, placed in Group C with Tottenham Hotspur, Beşiktaş and Asteras Tripoli. Partizan began the Europa League in excellent form and remained undefeated against the English giant Tottenham, but in the next four games, the club were defeated. The 2014–15 season was a successful for Partizan, winning the Serbian championship and securing passage to the group stage of the Europa League.
After falling out of the play–off for the Champions League in the summer of 2015, Partizan has directly entered the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League. The club was placed in Group L alongside Athletic Bilbao, AZ Alkmaar and FC Augsburg. Partizan made three victories in group stage (3–2 at home and 2–1 in away against AZ and 3–1 in Augsburg against same team), but he failed to get in Round of 32. Partizan failed to defend the title, but won Serbian Cup after five years, without conceding goal. Partizan is first team who managed to win the Serbian Cup without conceding goal in history.
A few days after the sixth double in club history (on the 2016–17 season), coach Nikolić left the club and signed with Hungarian club Videoton. A couple days after Nikolić's departure, Miroslav Đukić returned to Partizan. In the second qualifying round for the 2017-18 UEFA Champions League, Partizan eliminated Budućnost Podgorica (2–0 on aggregate), but in the third round they were eliminated by Olympiacos (3–5 on aggregate). In the play-off round for 2017–18 UEFA Europa League, Partizan played against Videoton and ex coach Marko Nikolić. After a 0–0 draw in Belgrade, Partizan defeated Videoton 4–0 in Felcsút and reached the group stage, where they were drawn in UEFA Europa League's Group B alongside Dynamo Kyiv, Young Boys and Skënderbeu Korçë. Partizan drawn 1–1 with Young Boys in the first match of Group B. Partizan later played against Dynamo Kyiv; after leading 2–0 at half-time, they lost 3–2. The next two Partizan matches were against Skënderbeu Korçë; in Korçë, they drew 0–0, and then won 2–0 in Belgrade. Partizan then beat Young Boys 2–1 at home, and secured a place on the knock-out stage. In the last match of the group, Partizan lost 4–1 to Dynamo Kyiv in Kyiv, although they were already qualified. Partizan ranked second in the group with eight points (two more than Young Boys and five less than Dynamo Kyiv). In the round of 32, Partizan played against Viktoria Plzeň; in Belgrade, they took the lead, but then conceded a late goal, which came from an offside position, thus ending the match with a 1–1 draw. In Plzeň, Viktoria won 2–0, and Partizan were eliminated from UEFA Europa League at the round of 32. The result was 3–1 for Viktoria on aggregate.
At the start of 2019–20 season squad was strengthened with Israeli international Bibras Natcho, Japanese international Takuma Asano and talented Nigerian striker Umar Sadiq. In July and August 2019, Partizan secured their ninth participation in the group stage of UEFA Europa League. Under Savo Milošević's leadership, Partizan knocked out Connah's Quay Nomads F.C. (1–0 and 3–0), Yeni Malatyaspor (3–1 and 0–1) and Molde FK(2–1 and 1–1) in the qualifiers. On 30 August, Partizan was drawn on Group L of the 2019-20 UEFA Europa League alongside Manchester United, FC Astana and AZ Alkmaar. On 19 September, Partizan opened the group stage campaign with a 2–2 home draw against AZ. Due to UEFA sanctions, this game was played behind closed doors with only U15s allowed to attend – official attendance at the game was 22,564. Partizan beat Astana (2–1 away) on matchday 2, but lost the two following games against Manchester United (0–1 in Belgrade and 3–0 in Manchester). They still managed to draw in Alkmaar against AZ (2–2) and beat Astana 4–1 at home on the last two games of the group. However, this was not enough to get through as they finished third in the group just one point behind AZ. In the SuperLiga, Partizan won second place with 14 points less than Red Star. In the Serbian Cup, Partizan defeated Red Star in the semi-finals with a score of 1–0 after the 58-th minute goal by Bibras Natcho. In the final at the Čair Stadium in Niš, they met Vojvodina. After the regular time, it was 2–2, as Partizan equalized in the last moments of the match with a spectacular goal by Strahinja Pavlović. However, Vojvodina was better after the penalty shootout with 4–2, so after a long time, Partizan finished the season without a trophy.
The third decade of the 21st century
The third decade, a new challenge Partizan debuted in the inaugural season of the newly formed competition UEFA Europa Conference League 2021–22. In Second qualifying round Partizan knocked out DAC Dunajská Streda (1–0 and 2–0). The draw for the third qualifying round decided that Partizan would face Sochi. In the first leg played on Fisht Olympic Stadium result was 1–1, in the return leg in Belgrade the two sides once more played a draw this time it was 2–2. Because of the new rule that away goals no longer count after
thirty minutes of extra time the match went into penalties which Partizan won 4–2. The last opponent in the qualifying Play-off round was Portuguese Santa Clara, Partizan lost 2–1 in the first game in Ponta Delgada but won 2–0 at home and thus advanced to Group stage. Partizan was placed in Group B together with Gent, Anorthosis Famagusta and Flora. The Serbian team finished second in the group with eight points and secured a place in knockout phase. After the draws in Nyon, Sparta Prague was chosen as Partizan's next opponent, this is the first meeting between the two clubs since 1966. In the first game played on February 17, 2022, Partizan won 1–0 at Stadion Letná with a goal by Queensy Menig. Fantastic ball by Saša Zdjelar. He employed Menig, who escaped the defense and brilliantly lobbed Dominik Holec for the lead. In the second leg a week later, Partizan won 2–1 with two goals by Ricardo. And after seventeen years, Partizan reached the Round of 16 in some UEFA competition. In the round of 16, Partizan suffered a heavy defeat against Feyenoord 2–5 and 1–3, who ended up playing in the finals against Roma. In the 2021–22 Serbian SuperLiga season, Partizan finished second to Red Star after leading for most of the season. As a result, Aleksandar Stanojević resigned after two seasons without winning the championship trophy.
Crest and colours
In October 1945, Partizan adopted as their first crest a blue disc with a yellow bordered red five-pointed star in the middle, which symbolized communism, and contained the abbreviation JA (Jugoslovenska Armija, The Yugoslav Army) inside it. Later on, the central circle became white with a red five-pointed star in it. It was surrounded by a larger blue circle in which the words "the Yugoslav Army" were written, while both circles were bordered by a yellow circle with a green wreath over it. At the bottom of the emblem was a shield with red and white lines, and on the top were five torches, each representing one of the five nations of Yugoslavia (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins). This was a clear reference to the National Emblem of Yugoslavia.
In the early 1950s, Partizan was separated from the Yugoslav Army and for the first time the team's name was written in the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. The inscription of the Yugoslav Army was removed from the crest, along with the green wreath, and was replaced by the words Sportsko Društvo (Sports association). Partizan used this emblem until 1958, although it changed its equipment colors of blue and red to black and white a year before. The crest was also changed to be completely black and white, and Sportsko Društvo was amended into Jugoslovensko Sportsko Društvo (Yugoslav Sports Association), while the five red torches and the five-pointed star remained. It was slightly redesigned after 1963 by adding a sixth torch to reflect the change of the official state emblem, which now included six torches representing six Yugoslav republics, instead of the previous five representing the nations. The crest remained unchanged until the breakup of Yugoslavia.
By 1992, with Yugoslavia fragmenting, instead of "Jugoslovensko Sportsko Društvo", the word "Fudbalski klub" ("football club") were inserted and this crest remains in use to this day. The author of the crest was academic painter Branko Šotra. In the 2007–08 season, Partizan won its 20th national championship and added two stars above their crest, symbolizing the 20 titles won. However, there is an alternative crest, which Partizan supporters call the "shovel" but it is never used in official matches.
For most of its history, Partizan has played in black and white striped jerseys, but during its earliest days it used entirely dark red, blue or white jerseys. In 1950, Partizan briefly had an all-white shirt with a blue diagonal stripe, besides an all blue shirt. From 1952, the first red-blue striped and quartered jerseys appeared. In 1957, the club was on tour in South America and after a friendly game with Juventus, a president of the Italian club, Umberto Agnelli, donated the club two sets of black and white jerseys. Since then, Partizan has played mainly in black and white striped shirts, with black or white shorts and socks. But there were exceptions, like in 1974, when they wore a black and white hooped shirt, and 1982, when they have played in a plain white jerseys with a thick black stripe across them. In 1990, the red and blue jersey returned after more than 30 years, in an away match against Hibernians during the UEFA Cup campaign. All this time, the away shirts have been mostly either all white or occasionally red-blue striped, but in recent years an all-black strip is usually used.
Stadium and training ground
The stadium's name is Partizan Stadium, although it was known as JNA Stadium (, "Stadium of the Yugoslav People's Army") for most of its history, and even today, a lot of football fans in all countries of the former-Yugoslavia call it by its old name. Partizan supporters sometimes call it "Fudbalski hram" (The Temple of Football).
The stadium is situated in the Savski Venac municipality, in central Belgrade. Designed by architect Mihailo Janković, the ground was built on the site of BSK Stadium. It was officially opened on Day of Yugoslav People's Army on 22 December 1951. The first match ever played was between Yugoslavia and France on 9 October 1949. The stadium had a capacity of 55,000 until it was renovated in 1998 following UEFA security regulations. This led to the conversion of the stadium into an all-seater reducing the capacity to 32.710, currently the second largest stadium in Serbia, behind the Red Star Stadium.
The ground has also been used for a variety of other sport events since 1949. It was used from the mid-fifties until 1987 as the final point of yearly festivities called the Youth Day. Also, it was the host of the 1962 European Athletics Championships, a place for various concerts and it hosted many times the Yugoslav Cup and Serbian Cup final.
Partizan youth school and affiliates
The Partizan youth school, called Youth School Belin – Lazarević – Nadoveza, was founded in the 1950s and named after former Partizan players Bruno Belin, Čedomir Lazarević and Branko Nadoveza. The club is well known for its dedicated work with youngsters. Its training philosophy is not only the development of football players, but also to care of their growth and personality forming, while also teaching the sporting spirit. There are around 400 youngsters classified by age categories. There are six age groups, four compete at the level of the Football Association of Serbia, the U17, U16, U15 and U14, while the U13 and U12 compete at the level of the Football Association of Belgrade. Below U12 level there are no official competitions, but players do play in tournaments and friendly matches.
Partizan is the club with the most league titles and cup wins in youth competition in Serbia. The youth teams also participate in numerous tournaments around Europe and also organize an U17 international tournament with participation of some of the top European clubs. Partizan also organizes football camps for children in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Australia and the United States. Many of the best youth-academy players move directly to the Partizan senior side, or to the affiliate club Teleoptik Zemun.
All of Partizan's youth categories train at the Partizan sports complex named SC Partizan-Teleoptik, along with Partizan's seniors and the players of Teleoptik.
Partizan has won several awards for its youth work, including "Best European Youth Work" in 2006, and the club's youth school has been declared the second-best in Europe after that of Ajax. Partizan's academy has produced numerous professional football players or Yugoslav and Serbian internationals. Notable players from the recent past include Saša Ilić, Savo Milošević, Danko Lazović, Stefan Babović, Miralem Sulejmani, Stevan Jovetić, Adem Ljajić, Matija Nastasić, Lazar Marković, Miloš Jojić, Andrija Živković, Nikola Milenković, Aleksandar Mitrović, Strahinja Pavlović and Dušan Vlahović.
Two Partizan youth academy graduates (Dušan Vlahović and Strahinja Pavlović) are featured in UEFA.com 'Fifty for the Future' selection in 2020.
Recently, players born after year 2000 like Filip Stevanović, Marko Milovanović and Samed Baždar (who made it into the Guardian's 'Next Generation 2021' shortlist') are showing class for their age and having great potential.
Supporters
According to a 2008 domestic poll, Partizan is the second popular football club in Serbia, behind Red Star Belgrade. Although fewer, focus groups show that Partizan fans are considered to be more devoted to their club. The club has a large fanbase in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina (especially in the Serb entity of Republika Srpska). They also have many supporters in all other former-Yugoslav republics like North Macedonia, Slovenia, and among the Serbian diaspora, especially in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Malta, the United States and Australia.
The organized supporters of Partizan are called Grobari ("The Gravediggers" or "Undertakers"), which were formed in 1970 and situated mainly on the south stand of the Partizan Stadium; therefore, they are also known as Grobari Jug ("The Undertakers South"). Even some ordinary Partizan fans often refer to themselves as Grobari. The nickname itself was given by their sporting rivals Delije of Red Star, referring to the club's mostly black colours which were similar to the official uniforms of cemetery undertakers. The other theory is that the name comes from a misinterpretation of the name of the street on which Partizan's stadium is located – "Humska" ("humka" roughly translates as "grave" or "entombment"), when actually the street was named after Serbian medieval land of Hum, nowadays part of Herzegovina and South Dalmatia. The Grobari support all clubs in the Partizan Sports Association and in the course of time they have become recognizable by their noisy and constant cheering as well as their devotion and loyalty to the club. The basis of their cheering is referred in the Serbian fan scene as the principle of "srce, ruke, glas" (heart, hands, voice) or "glas i dlan" (voice and palms), along with songs in distinctive style. The Grobari as a whole maintain a close friendship with the organized supporters of PAOK, CSKA Moscow and CSKA Sofia, which started originally because of the two supporters' common Orthodox faith and similar founding backgrounds. It has been suggested that "many ultras took part in the armed conflicts and carry their scars today, translating the tribal nature of the Yugoslav wars to their clubs and ultras groups".
Grobari have also a traditional friendship with Juventude Leonina, the main ultras group of Portuguese side Sporting Clube de Portugal. The direction boards of both clubs have also good relations which was kept ever since the 1955–56 European Cup edition, which on 4 September 1955, in Lisbon's Estádio Nacional, put head-a-head the two teams in what was considered the opening whistle of the UEFA European club competitions. The game finished with a 3–3 draw, with Sporting later losing in Belgrade in the second hand by 5–2, however the club boards of both teams regularly meet from time to time to mark the occasion of this historic event.
Celebrity supporters
Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav revolutionary, military leader and statesman
Boris Tadić, Serbian politician who served as the president of Serbia from 2004 to 2012.
Tomislav Nikolić, Former politician who served as the president of Serbia from 2012 to 2017
Rasim Ljajić, Serbian politician
Ivica Dačić, Serbian politician
Duško Radović, Writer, journalist, aphorist and a poet
Dobrica Erić, Writer and poet
Dušan Kovačević, Playwright, scriptwriter, film director and academic
Emir Kusturica, Film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and musician
Dragan Bjelogrlić, Actor, director and producer
Srđan Dragojević, Film director and screenwriter
Rade Šerbedžija, Actor, director and musician
Lazar Ristovski, Retired actor, director, producer and writer.
Sergej Trifunović, Actor, comedian, singer, politician and citizen activist.
Branislav Lečić, Actor, director, academic, writer, politician.
Bora Todorović, Actor
Srđan Todorović, Actor and musician
Mija Aleksić, Actor
Tanja Bošković, Actress
Vanja Bulić, Journalist and author
Teša Tešanović, Journalist and TV host
Eddy Grant, Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
Marija Šerifović, Singer
Željko Joksimović, Vocalist, composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer
Nele Karajlić, Musician, composer, comedian, actor, writer and television director
Zoran Kostić, Rock musician
Dragoljub Đuričić, Drummer
Ana Stanić, Pop singer, songwriter, composer
Niggor, Hip-hop and electronic artist
Slobodan Ninković, Actor
Petar Strugar, Actor and presenter
Marko Živić, Actor and comedian
Zoran Cvijanović, Actor and producer
Viktor Troicki, Former professional tennis player
Ana Ivanovic, Former professional tennis player
Marko Bulat, Pop-folk singer and musician
Ljubomir Bandović, Actor
Mihailo Janketić, Actor of theater, film and television
Tihomir Stanić, Actor
Katarina Radivojević, Actress
Maja Mandžuka, Actress
Goca Tržan, Singer, actress and television personality
Nada Topčagić, Folk singer.
Rivalries
Partizan's biggest rivalry is with Red Star Belgrade. The matches between these rivals have been labeled as the Eternal derby (Serbian: Вечити дерби, Večiti derbi) or Belgrade derby. The rivalry started immediately after the creation of the two clubs. Red Star was founded for Yugoslav youth and Partizan as the football section of the Yugoslav People's Army. The rivalry is also intensified by the fact that both clubs have their stadiums situated only a few hundred metres apart. The Eternal derby is particularly noted for the passion of both supporters groups. The stands of both teams feature fireworks, coloured confetti, flags, rolls of paper, torches, smoke, drums, giant posters and choreographies, used to create visual grandeur and apply psychological pressure on the visiting teams, hence the slogan, "Welcome to Hellgrade". Some fans also use trumpets, similar to the supporters in South America. This creates for the region a typical and distinctive Balkan Brass Band atmosphere. Both sets of supporters sing passionate songs against their rivals, and the stadiums are known to bounce with the simultaneous jumping of the fans.
The duel is regarded by Bleacher Report as one of the greatest football rivalries in the world. Along with the Old Firm, the Rome derby and the Istanbul derby, the Belgrade derby is known as one of the most intense rivalries in European football. The largest attendance at a derby match was about 100,000 spectators (90,142 with paid tickets) on 7 November 1976 at the Red Star Stadium. The biggest win was 7–1 for Partizan on 6 December 1953 at the Partizan Stadium but the club with the most victories is Red Star.
During the Yugoslav era between 1945 and 1991, Partizan maintained a rivalry with other members of the so called "big four". Along with Partizan and Red Star, the "big four" included Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split. Results in the table include domestic championship and cup games Partizan played against other members of the Yugoslav "big four" up to and including the season 1990–91:
Other rivalries include regional rivalry with Vojvodina with whom they contest the Derby of Serbia, minor derby with neighbouring Zemun, and Belgrade derbies with Rad and OFK Belgrade.
Seasons
Partizan in European football
Partizan's best European performance was in the 1965–66 season, when they reached the Final of the European Cup/Champions League.
UEFA Team ranking
Updated 9 December 2021.
Honours
Overall, Partizan have won 46 official titles including 27 national championships, 16 national cups, 1 national supercup, 1 national champions league and 1 Mitropa Cup.
Domestic competitions (45)
League – 27
Yugoslav First League
Winners (11): 1946–47, 1948–49, 1960–61, 1961–62, 1962–63, 1964–65, 1975–76, 1977–78, 1982–83, 1985–86, 1986–87
Serbia and Montenegro First League (record)
Winners (8): 1992–93, 1993–94, 1995–96, 1996–97, 1998–99, 2001–02, 2002–03, 2004–05
Serbian SuperLiga
Winners (8): 2007–08, 2008–09, 2009–10, 2010–11, 2011–12, 2012–13, 2014–15, 2016–17
Cups – 16
Yugoslav Cup
Winners (6): 1946–47, 1951–52, 1953–54, 1956–57, 1988–89, 1991–92
Serbia and Montenegro Cup
Winners (3): 1993–94, 1997–98, 2000–01
Serbian Cup (record)
Winners (7): 2007–08, 2008–09, 2010–11, 2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18, 2018–19
Super cups – 1
Yugoslav Super Cup
Winners (1): 1989
National Champions League – 1
Yugoslav Summer Champions League
Winners (1): 1969
International competitions (1)
Mitropa Cup
Winners (1): 1978
European Cup / UEFA Champions League
Runners up (1): 1965–1966
Friendly tournaments (7)
Trofeo Mohamed V (1): 1963
Torneo Pentagonal Internacional de la Ciudad de México (1): 1970
Torneo Pentagonal Internacional de la Ciudad de Bogotá (1): 1971
Trofeo Colombino de fútbol (1): 1976
Lunar New Year Cup (1): 1984
40th Anniversary FK Partizan (1): 1985
Uhrencup (1): 1989
Club records
Partizan's record-holder by number of appearances is player Saša Ilić. He played 874 games in two turns, from 1996 and 2005 and from 2010 till 2019. The goal-scoring record-holder is striker Stjepan Bobek, with 425 goals. Over 150 footballers from Partizan have played for the Yugoslav and Serbian national football teams. Stjepan Bobek held the Yugoslavian national team record with 38 goals, with second place being shared by Savo Milošević, Milan Galić and Blagoje Marjanović, who scored 37 goals each. Aleksandar Mitrović holds the Serbian national team record with 52 goals as of late 2021, this means four out of five national team top goalscorers have been Partizan players.
Partizan are record-holders of the Yugoslav First League in terms of points acquired during a campaign, with 107, and are the only league-winning team to have gone undefeated during one season (in 2005 and 2010). Partizan became the first champion of Yugoslavia in 1947, the first Yugoslav Cup winner, also in 1947, and therefore also the first double winner in the country. They won three consecutive championship titles, in 1961, 1962 and 1963, the first title hat-trick in the history of the Yugoslav First League. Partizan won the most national championships since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, becoming champions 13 times. They are the only Serbian club ever, since the first nationwide domestic football competition in 1923, to win six consecutive national titles, a feat they achieved between 2007 and 2013.
The club holds records such as playing in the first European Champions Cup match in 1955, becoming the first Balkan and Eastern European club to play in the European Champions Cup final in 1966, and becoming the first club from Serbia to take part in the UEFA Champions League group stages in 2003. The club's greatest victory in European competitions was 8–0 against Welsh champions Rhyl in qualifying for the 2009–10 UEFA Champions League.
Players
Current squad
Players with multiple nationalities
Kristijan Belić
Svetozar Marković
Aleksandar Šćekić
Aleksandar Jovanović
Siniša Saničanin
Bibras Natcho
Queensy Menig
Xander Severina
Aldo Kalulu
Ghayas Zahid
Nathan de Medina
Other players under contract
Out on loan
Notable domestic players
To appear in this section a player must have played at least 80 matches for the club or made at least one international appearance.
Flags indicate the national teams the players played for. Players that played for two different national teams have the flags of both national teams.
Radomir Antić
Aleksandar Atanacković
Stefan Babović
Mane Bajić
Zoran Batrović
Radoslav Bečejac
Bruno Belin
Nenad Bjeković
Stjepan Bobek
Miloš Bogunović
Miroslav Bogosavac
Dražen Bolić
Petar Borota
Miroslav Bošković
Darko Brašanac
Branko Brnović
Dragoljub Brnović
Nenad Brnović
Miroslav Brozović
Zlatko Čajkovski
Damir Čakar
Vlado Čapljić
Srđan Čebinac
Zvezdan Čebinac
Ratko Čolić
Dragan Ćirić
Milivoje Ćirković
Saša Ćurčić
Ivan Ćurković
Milan Damjanović
Aleksandar Davidov
Božidar Drenovac
Ljubinko Drulović
Igor Duljaj
Miloš Đelmaš
Borivoje Đorđević
Nenad Đorđević
Svemir Đorđić
Vladislav Đukić
Milko Đurovski
Ljubomir Fejsa
Vladimir Firm
Milan Galić
Franjo Glazer
Ivan Golac
Mustafa Hasanagić
Jusuf Hatunić
Antun Herceg
Edvard Hočevar
Idriz Hošić
Brana Ilić
Radiša Ilić
Saša Ilić
Ivica Iliev
Đorđe Ivanović
Vladimir Ivić
Lajoš Jakovetić
Miodrag Ješić
Marko Jevtović
Jovan Jezerkić
Stanoje Jocić
Miloš Jojić
Slaviša Jokanović
Miodrag Jovanović
Nemanja Jović
Fahrudin Jusufi
Tomislav Kaloperović
Srečko Katanec
Ilija Katić
Mateja Kežman
Nikica Klinčarski
Božidar Kolaković
Vladica Kovačević
Refik Kozić
Ivica Kralj
Mladen Krstajić
Danko Lazović
Marko Lomić
Milan Lukač
Saša Lukić
Adem Ljajić
Dragan Mance
Nikola Malbaša
Lazar Marković
Svetozar Marković
Florijan Matekalo
Branislav Mihajlović
Ljubomir Mihajlović
Prvoslav Mihajlović
Predrag Mijatović
Jovan Miladinović
Darko Milanič
Nikola Milenković
Nemanja G. Miletić
Nemanja R. Miletić
Goran Milojević
Savo Milošević
Milovan Milović
Aleksandar Mitrović
Bora Milutinović
Miloš Milutinović
Aleksandar Miljković
Zoran Mirković
Albert Nađ
Nikola Ninković
Džoni Novak
Ivan Obradović
Bojan Ostojić
Ognjen Ožegović
Dejan Ognjanović
Fahrudin Omerović
Bela Palfi
Goran Pandurović
Danilo Pantić
Milinko Pantić
Blagoje Paunović
Veljko Paunović
Gordan Petrić
Strahinja Pavlović
Radosav Petrović
Vlada Pejović
Josip Pirmajer
Aleksandar Popović
Dževad Prekazi
Radovan Radaković
Ljubomir Radanović
Lazar Radović
Miroslav Radović
Miodrag Radović
Branko Rašović
Vuk Rašović
Nemanja Rnić
Antonio Rukavina
Slobodan Santrač
Niša Saveljić
Božidar Senčar
Kiril Simonovski
Admir Smajić
Milan Smiljanić
Velimir Sombolac
Predrag Spasić
Vojislav Stanković
Vujadin Stanojković
Alen Stevanović
Goran Stevanović
Filip Stevanović
Slavko Stojanović
Ranko Stojić
Nenad Stojković
Vladimir Stojković
Miralem Sulejmani
Đorđe Svetličić
Bojan Šaranov
Slađan Šćepović
Marko Šćepović
Stefan Šćepović
Petar Škuletić
Milutin Šoškić
Franjo Šoštarić
Đorđe Tomić
Ivan Tomić
Nemanja Tomić
Zoran Tošić
Aleksandar Trifunović
Goran Trobok
Slobodan Urošević
Zvonko Varga
Marko Valok
Joakim Vislavski
Velibor Vasović
Vladimir Vermezović
Fadilj Vokri
Dušan Vlahović
Vladimir Volkov
Budimir Vujačić
Simon Vukčević
Milan Vukelić
Zvonimir Vukić
Todor Veselinović
Momčilo Vukotić
Miroslav Vulićević
Ilija Zavišić
Saša Zdjelar
Branko Zebec
Miodrag Živaljević
Andrija Živković
Zvonko Živković
Notable foreign players
To appear in this section a player must have played at least 30 matches for the club or made at least one international appearance.
Flags indicate the national teams the players played for. Players that played for two different national teams have the flags of both national teams.
Branimir Bajić
Darko Maletić
Nenad Mišković
Goran Zakarić
Siniša Saničanin
Cléo
Juca
Leonardo
Everton Luiz
Ivan Bandalovski
Valeri Bojinov
Ivan Ivanov
Predrag Pažin
Filip Holender
Macky Bagnack
Pierre Boya
Eric Djemba-Djemba
Aboubakar Oumarou
Léandre Tawamba
Andrés Colorado
Ricardo Gomes
Patrick Andrade
David Manga
Liu Haiguang
Jia Xiuquan
Dominic Adiyiah
Prince Tagoe
Seydouba Soumah
Fousseni Diabaté
Hamidou Traoré
Almami Moreira
Ilija Mitić
Scoop Stanisic
Bibras Natcho
Takuma Asano
Mohamed El Monir
Mohamed Zubya
Marjan Gerasimovski
Gjorgji Hristov
Aleksandar Lazevski
Milan Stojanoski
Viktor Trenevski
Darko Božović
Mladen Božović
Marko Ćetković
Andrija Delibašić
Nikola Drinčić
Uroš Đurđević
Petar Grbić
Marko Janković
Stevan Jovetić
Nebojša Kosović
Milorad Peković
Srđan Radonjić
Stefan Savić
Aleksandar Šćekić
Igor Vujačić
Ifeanyi Emeghara
Obiora Odita
Umar Sadiq
Taribo West
Tomasz Rząsa
Gabriel Enache
Marc Valiente
Queensy Menig
Lamine Diarra
Mohamed Kamara
Gregor Balažic
Branko Ilić
Zlatko Zahovič
Kim Chi-woo
Joseph Kizito
For a list of all FK Partizan players with a Wikipedia article, see :Category:FK Partizan players.
Affiliated clubs
FK Teleoptik
Club management and technical staff
Managerial history
Below is a list of Partizan managers from 1945 until the present day.
Club presidents
The full list of Partizan's presidents is given below.
Ownership and finances
Partizan operates as a sports association, as part of Partizan Sports Association, which includes 28 clubs in different sports, but it has complete independence regarding organisation, management, finances, material goods and facilities. In 2010, the club's non-consolidated operating revenues amounted to €21.2 million and EBITDA amounted to €3.5 million.
Shirt sponsors and manufacturers
*Only European and Domestic Cup matches
See also
FK Partizan in European football
References
External links
FK Partizan at UEFA
Partizanopedia Unofficial website, about history and statistics of FK Partizan (in Serbian)
Football clubs in Belgrade
Football clubs in Yugoslavia
Association football clubs established in 1945
1945 establishments in Serbia
Military association football clubs in Serbia
Savski Venac
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta%20Air%20Lines%20Flight%20191
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Delta Air Lines Flight 191
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Delta Air Lines Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled Delta Air Lines domestic service from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Los Angeles with an intermediate stop at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). On August 2, 1985, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar operating Flight 191 encountered a microburst while on approach to land at DFW. The aircraft impacted ground over short of the runway, struck a car near the airport, collided with two water tanks, and disintegrated. 137 people died and 25 others were injured in the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the crash resulted from the flight crew's decision to fly through a thunderstorm, the lack of procedures or training to avoid or escape microbursts, and the lack of hazard information on wind shear.
Involved
Aircraft
The aircraft was a Lockheed L-1011-385-1 TriStar (registration number N726DA). It was delivered to Delta on February 28, 1979, and had operated continuously since then. Three Rolls-Royce RB211-22B engines powered the aircraft.
Crew members
The crew consisted of three flight crew members, and eight cabin crew members. Of the 11 crew members, only three flight attendants survived.
The captain, Edward Michael "Ted" Connors Jr., age 57, had been a Delta Air Lines employee since 1954. He qualified to captain the TriStar in 1979 and had passed his proficiency checks. The NTSB report mentioned that past flight crews who had flown with Connors described him as a meticulous pilot who strictly adhered to company policies. The report stated that Connors "deviated around thunderstorms even if other flights took more direct routes" and "willingly accepted suggestions from his flight crew." Since his qualification in 1979, Connors had passed all eight en route inspections that he had undergone; the NTSB report also noted that he had received "favorable comments" regarding "cockpit discipline and standardization". Connors had logged over 29,300 hours of flight time, 3,000 of them in the TriStar.
Flight 191's first officer was Rudolph Przydzial "Rudy" Price Jr., age 42, who had been a Delta Air Lines employee since 1970. Delta captains who flew with Price described him as an "above average first officer" who possessed "excellent knowledge" of the TriStar. Price had logged 6,500 flight hours, including 1,200 in the TriStar.
The flight engineer, Nicholas Nestor "Nick" Nassick, age 43, had been a Delta Air Lines employee since 1976. He had logged 6,500 hours of flight time, including 4,500 in the TriStar. Fellow Delta employees described him as "observant, alert, and professional".
Connors had served with the U.S. Navy from 1950 to 1954 and fought during two tours in the Korean War. Price had served with the U.S. Navy from 1964 to 1970 and fought in four tours in the Vietnam War. Nassick had served with the U.S. Air Force from 1963 to 1976 and fought in four tours in the Vietnam War. The pilots were based in Atlanta, the flight attendants were Miami/Ft. Lauderdale based.
Passengers
Of the 152 passengers, 128 were killed by the crash. Twelve of the 24 survivors were seated in a cluster near the tail of the aircraft. The NTSB report lists 126 passenger fatalities rather than 128, but notes that two of the passengers listed as survivors died more than 30 days after the crash, on September 13 and October 4, 1985. Of the dead, 73 originated from the Miami metropolitan area; 45 were from Broward County, 19 were from Palm Beach County, and 9 were from Dade County. One of the passengers was Don Estridge, known to the world as the father of the IBM PC; he died aboard the flight along with his wife. Two IBM summer interns, four IBM employees from the IBM branch office in Burbank, California, and six additional family members of IBM employees also perished.
Flight
History
Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, with a scheduled stop at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The flight departed Fort Lauderdale on an instrument flight rules flight plan at 14:10 Central Daylight Time (UTC−05:00). The flight's dispatch weather forecast for DFW stated a "possibility of widely scattered rain showers and thunderstorms." Another dispatch weather alert warned of "an area of isolated thunderstorms ... over Oklahoma and northern and northeastern Texas." The flight crew reviewed these notices before takeoff.
As the aircraft flew past New Orleans, Louisiana, a weather formation near the Gulf Coast strengthened. The flight crew decided to deviate from the intended route to make the more northerly Blue Ridge arrival to DFW. The flight held for 10–15 minutes over the Texarkana, Arkansas VORTAC. At 17:35, the crew received an Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS) broadcast for weather on approach to DFW, and the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) air traffic controller cleared the flight to the Blue Ridge, Texas VORTAC and instructed the flight to descend to .
At 17:43:45, the Fort Worth ARTCC controller cleared the flight down to . The controller suggested they fly a heading of 250° toward the Blue Ridge approach, but Captain Connors replied that the route would take them through a storm cell, stating, "I'd rather not go through it, I'd rather go around it one way or the other." After a brief exchange, the controller gave the flight a new heading. At 17:46:50, the controller cleared the flight direct to Blue Ridge and instructed the flight crew to descend to . The captain expressed his relief that the controller did not send them on the original trajectory. At 17:51:19, the second officer commented, "Looks like it's raining over Fort Worth." At 17:51:42, the Fort Worth ARTCC controller transferred the flight to DFW Airport Approach Control, which cleared the flight to descend to . Two minutes later, the controller asked the Delta flight to deviate by 10° and to slow their airspeed to . The flight acknowledged the request. As the flight descended, the crew prepared the aircraft for landing. At 17:56:19, the feeder controller cleared the flight down to . Nine seconds later, the controller announced that rain was north of the airport, and that the airport would be using instrument landing system (ILS) approaches.
At 17:59:47, Price said, "We're gonna get our airplane washed." Around the same time, the captain switched to the arrival radio frequency and informed the approach controller that they were flying at . The controller replied that the flight should expect to approach Runway 17L (later named 17C). At 18:00:36, the approach controller asked an American Airlines flight that was two aircraft ahead of Flight 191, and on the same approach, if they could see the airport. The flight responded, "As soon as we break out of this rain shower we will." At 18:00:51, Flight 191 was instructed to slow to and to turn to heading 270°. Flight 191 was instructed to descend to at 18:01:34. One minute later, the approach controller turned the flight toward Runway 17L and cleared them for an ILS approach at or above . Half a minute afterward, the controller asked the flight to reduce their speed to , which the flight crew acknowledged. At 18:03:30 the controller advised, "And we're getting some variable winds out there due to a shower ... out there north end of DFW." Several seconds later, an unidentified flight crew member commented, "Stuff is moving in."
Just ahead of Flight 191, a Learjet 25 was on the same approach to Runway 17L. While on final approach, the Learjet flew through the storm north of the airport and encountered what was later described as "light to moderate turbulence". The Learjet encountered heavy rain and lost all forward visibility, but was able to continue its ILS approach and land safely. When later asked why he did not report weather conditions to the tower, the Learjet's captain testified that he had nothing to report because "the only thing that we encountered was the heavy rain." The tower controller handling landings on Runway 17L saw lightning from the storm cell after the Learjet landed, but before he saw Flight 191 emerge from the storm.
Crash
At 18:03:46, the approach controller once again asked Flight 191 to reduce its speed, this time to , and then handed the flight over to the tower controller. Twelve seconds later, the captain radioed the tower and said, "Tower[:] Delta one ninety one heavy, out here in the rain, feels good." The tower controller advised Flight 191 that the wind was blowing at with gusts up to , which the captain acknowledged. The flight crew lowered the landing gear and extended their flaps for landing. At 18:04:18, Price commented, "Lightning coming out of that one. ... Right ahead of us." The captain called out that they were at at 18:05:05. Fourteen seconds later, he cautioned Price to watch his airspeed. At the same time, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured the beginning of a sound identified as rain hitting the cockpit. The captain warned Price, "You're gonna lose it all of a sudden, there it is." At 18:05:26, the captain told Price, "Push it up, push it way up." Several seconds later, the CVR recorded the sound of the engines spooling up. Connors then said, "That's it." At 18:05:36, Connors exclaimed, "Hang on to the son of a bitch!" From this point, the aircraft began a descent from which it never recovered. The angle of attack (AOA) was over 30° and began to vary wildly over the next few seconds. The pitch angle began to sink and the aircraft started descending below the glideslope.
At 18:05:44, with the aircraft descending at more than the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) sounded. The captain responded by declaring "TOGA", aviation shorthand for the order to apply maximum thrust and abort a landing by going around. The first officer responded by pulling up and raising the nose of the aircraft, which slowed but did not stop the plane's descent. At 18:05:52, still descending at a rate around , the aircraft's landing gear made contact with a plowed field north of the runway and east of the runway centerline. Remaining structurally intact, Flight 191 remained on the ground while rolling at high speed across the farmland. The main landing gear left shallow depressions in the field that extended for before disappearing and reappearing a few times as the aircraft approached Texas State Highway 114.
The aircraft struck a highway street light, and its nose gear touched down on the westbound lane of Highway 114, skidding across the road at at least . The aircraft's left engine hit a Toyota Celica driven by 28-year-old William Mayberry, killing him instantly. As the aircraft continued south, it hit two more street lights on the eastbound side of the highway and began fragmenting. The left horizontal stabilizer, some engine pieces, portions of the wing control surfaces, and parts of the nose gear came off the aircraft as it continued along the ground. Some witnesses later testified that fire was emerging from the left wing root. Surviving passengers reported that fire began entering the cabin through the left wall while the plane was still moving. A survivor stated that he watched passengers attempt to escape the fire by unbuckling their seatbelt and try to flee, but were sucked out of the plane, while others who stayed caught on fire due to leaking jet fuel. He only survived due to being doused by rain from openings in the plane. The aircraft's motion across open land ended when it crashed into two water tanks on the edge of the airport property; the aircraft grazed one water tank about south of Highway 114, and then struck the second one. As the left-wing and nose struck the water tank, the fuselage rotated counterclockwise and was engulfed in a fireball. The fuselage from the nose rearward to row 34 was destroyed. The tail section emerged from the fireball, skidding backward, and came to rest on its left side before wind gusts rotated it upright.
Postcrash response
All airport fire and emergency units were alerted within one minute of the crash. Forty-five seconds after first being alerted, three fire trucks from the airport's fire station No. 3 arrived at the crash and began fighting the fire. Additional units from fire stations No. 1 and No. 2 arrived within five minutes, and despite high wind gusts and heavy rain, the fire was mostly under control within 10 minutes after the alert was sounded.
The first paramedics arrived within five minutes of the crash and immediately established triage stations. In later testimony to NTSB officials, on-site EMTs estimated that without the on-scene triage procedures, at least half of the surviving passengers would have died. Most of the survivors of Flight 191 were located in the aircraft's rear smoking section, which broke free from the main fuselage when the aircraft hit the water tanks. Authorities transported most of the survivors to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
The cockpit and passenger section forward of seat row 34 had been completely fragmented by impact with the water tanks and postcrash fires; all but eight of the occupants in this section were killed. The remainder of the surviving passengers and crew were in the rear cabin and tail section, which separated relatively intact and landed on its side in an open field, and most of these were in the center and right portions of the fuselage from seat row 40 rearwards. Overall, the disintegration of the Tristar was so extensive that the NTSB investigation was quite difficult. Survivors reported that fire broke out in the cabin prior to hitting the tanks and began spreading through the aircraft's interior, which is consistent with the right wing's collision with the light pole and fuel tank ignition. Some of the people in the tail section were unable to free themselves due to injuries, so rescue crews had to extricate them. Most survivors were also soaked with jet fuel, further adding to the difficulty of exiting the wreckage.
Two of the passengers who initially survived the crash died more than 30 days later. On the ground, an airline employee who assisted in rescuing survivors was hospitalized overnight for chest and arm pain. The crash ultimately killed 137 people, including 128 of the 152 passengers and eight of the 11 crew (including all three flight crew members), and the driver of the car.
Delta Air Lines Flight 191 has the second-highest death toll of any aviation accident involving a Lockheed L-1011 anywhere in the world, after Saudia Flight 163.
Investigation
Numerous public safety agencies responded to the crash, including the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Department of Public Safety, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Irving Fire Department, the Irving Police Department, and all available third-watch personnel from the Dallas Police Department's Northwest Patrol Division and the Northeastern Sector of the Fort Worth Police Department's Patrol Division.
After a long investigation, the NTSB deemed the cause of the crash to be attributable to pilot error (for their decision to fly through a thunderstorm), combined with extreme weather phenomena associated with microburst-induced wind shear. The NTSB also determined that a lack of specific training, policies, and procedures for avoiding and escaping low-altitude wind shear was a contributing factor.
The NTSB attributed the accident to lack of the ability to detect microbursts aboard aircraft; the radar equipment aboard aircraft at the time was unable to detect wind changes, only thunderstorms. After the investigation, NASA researchers at Langley Research Center modified a Boeing 737-200 as a testbed for an onboard Doppler weather radar. The resultant airborne wind shear detection and alert system was installed on many commercial airliners in the United States after the Federal Aviation Administration mandated that all commercial aircraft must have on-board wind shear-detection systems.
The NTSB was also critical of the airport for failing to notify emergency services in surrounding municipalities in a timely manner. While the airport's on-site emergency services were notified almost immediately, the DFW Department of Public Safety (DPS) Communications Center did not begin notifying off-site emergency services until nearly 10 minutes after the crash and did not finish its notifications until 45 minutes after the crash. During notifications, DPS also failed to request ambulances from the adjacent communities of Irving, Grapevine, and Hurst; however, Hurst responded with ambulances after personnel at its ambulance company overheard the airport crash report on a radio-frequency scanner. The NTSB concluded that the overall emergency response was effective due to the rapid response of on-airport personnel, but found "several problem areas" which under different circumstances "could affect adversely the medical treatment and survival of accident victims at the airport".
Legacy
Reforms
Following the crash and the ensuing NTSB report, DFW's DPS made improvements to its postcrash notification system, including the introduction of an automated voice notification system to reduce notification times. In 1988, following the crash of Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 while taking off from DFW, DPS completed its notification of nearby emergency services in 21 minutes; the NTSB described this as a "significant improvement" over response times after the Delta Flight 191 crash. Based on the improved response times, the NTSB issued a Safety Recommendation on January 9, 1990, calling for airport executives nationwide to consider the benefits of using automated voice notification systems for their emergency aid notifications. Pilots were also required to train to react to microbursts and to quickly take evasive action in order to safely land the plane.
Trial
The Delta Flight 191 crash resulted in the longest aviation trial in American history, lasting 14 months from 1988 to 1989 and presided over by Federal Judge David Owen Belew Jr. of the Northern District of Texas. The trial featured the first use of computer graphic animation as substantive evidence in federal court. While the use of such animation later became routine, its use in the Flight 191 litigation was sufficiently novel that it became the cover story of the December 1989 ABA Journal, the magazine of the American Bar Association. Preparing the animated video for trial cost the Department of Justice around $100,000 to $150,000 (inflation adjusted $ to $), and required nearly two years of work. The court found that both government personnel and the Delta flight crew were negligent, but that Delta was ultimately responsible because its pilots' negligence was the proximate cause of the accident, and the ruling was upheld on appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Dramatization and media
The crash was the subject of the television movie Fire and Rain.
The Discovery Channel Canada/National Geographic television series Mayday dramatized the crash of Flight 191 in a season-five episode titled "Invisible Killer". The crash had previously been discussed in the Mayday season-one episode "Racing the Storm", which covered the weather-related crash landing of American Airlines Flight 1420.
The crash was featured on an episode of When Weather Changed History and Why Planes Crash on The Weather Channel, and the episode "Deadly Weather" of Survival in the Sky on The Learning Channel.
The crash was mentioned in the feature film Rain Man.
Working as a reporter for the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel in 1986, future renowned crime fiction author Michael Connelly and two other reporters conducted extensive interviews of survivors of Delta Flight 191 and wrote an article detailing their experiences during and after the crash. The article explored the topic of survivor guilt and earned Connelly and his co-writers a finalist position for the Pulitzer Prize.
Memorial
Ten years after the crash, survivors and family members of victims gathered in Florida to recognize the tenth anniversary of the crash. In 2010, 25 years after the accident, a memorial was installed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport's Founders Plaza in Grapevine.
See also
Aviation safety
Turkish 1951
Bhoja Air Flight 213
Eastern Air Lines Flight 66
Pan Am Flight 759
Pan Am Flight 806
USAir Flight 1016
Martinair Flight 495
1956 Kano Airport BOAC Argonaut crash
Aeroméxico Connect Flight 2431
List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
1950 Air France multiple Douglas DC-4 accidents
Notes
References
External links
Pre-accident photos from Airliners.net
"DFW Delta Flight 191" – Essay from Mica Calfee, a firefighter-paramedic who responded to the crash
NTSB executive summary report
Alternate link at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University
Delta 191 In Their Words
Animation of the crash, indicating wind vectors and synchronized to voice recorder data (description here )
- Created by Z-Axis Litigation for the U.S. Department of Justice
- Smithsonian Channel
Airliner accidents and incidents in Texas
Airliner accidents and incidents caused by microbursts
Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1985
Airliner accidents and incidents caused by weather
Accidents and incidents involving the Lockheed L-1011
191
1985 in Texas
1985 meteorology
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
August 1985 events in the United States
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1985
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index%20of%20Canada-related%20articles
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Index of Canada-related articles
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The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to Canada.
0–9
.ca – Internet country code top-level domain for Canada
49th parallel north
60th parallel north
100 km isolated peaks of Canada
102nd meridian west
110th meridian west
120th meridian west
141st meridian west
150th anniversary of Canada
1500 metre prominent peaks of Canada
1958 Jim Mideon 500 - a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing event that took place in Toronto
4000 metre peaks of Canada
A
A few acres of snow
Aboriginal peoples in Canada
Abortion in Canada
Acadia
Access copyright
Addition Elle
Adjacent and neighbouring countries:
Denmark (Greenland)
France (Saint Pierre and Miquelon)
United States of America
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B
Baffin Bay
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C
CTV Television Network
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:Category:Bibliographies of Canada
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:Category:Transport in Canada
commons:Category:Canada
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D
Davis Strait
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Dumont, Yvon
E
Early Canadian Newspapers
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F
Family Compact
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G
Geography of Canada
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Grits
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H
Haida Gwaii
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Huron Tract
I
Ice hockey
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Info Source
Inside Passage
Intendant of New France
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381678
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%20River%20%28Hudson%20River%29
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North River (Hudson River)
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North River is an alternative name for the southernmost portion of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City and northeastern New Jersey in the United States.
History
Name
In the early 17th century, the entire watercourse was named the North River by the Dutch colonial empire; by the early 18th century, the term fell out of general use for most of the river's 300+ mile course. The name remains in limited use among local mariners and others and on some nautical charts and maps. The term is also used to describe infrastructure on and under the river, including the North River piers, North River Tunnels, and Riverbank State Park.
The origin of the name North River is generally attributed to the Dutch. In describing the major rivers in the New Netherland colony, they called the present-day Hudson River the "North River", the present-day Connecticut River the "Fresh River", and the Delaware River the "South River". Another theory is that the North River and East River were so named for the direction of travel they permitted once having entered the Upper New York Bay.
At various times, North River has referred to:
The entire Hudson River
The approximately 160-mile portion of the Hudson below its confluence with the Mohawk River, which is under tidal influence
The portion of it running between Manhattan and New Jersey
The length flowing between Lower Manhattan and Hudson County, New Jersey.
The river's history is strongly connected to the shipping industry in the Port of New York and New Jersey, which shifted primarily to Port Newark in the mid-20th century due to the construction of the Holland Tunnel and other river crossings and the advent of containerization. Throughout this multi-century history, the name for the lower portion of the river has remained interchangeable with both North River and Hudson River used to describe it.
19th century
In 1808, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin issued a report of proposed locations for transportation and communication internal improvements of national importance. The North River figured prominently among his proposals as the best route toward western and northern lands; similar routes were chosen for the Erie Canal and other early canals built by the New York state.
Gallatin noted the following in reference to the North and Hudson Rivers, writing:
20th century
In 1909, two tunnels were under construction: one was called the North River Tunnels, the other, the Hudson Tubes. That year the Hudson–Fulton Celebration was held, commemorating Henry Hudson, the first European to record navigating the river, and Robert Fulton, the first man to use a paddle steamer in America, named the North River Steamboat, to sail up it, leading to controversy over what the waterway should be called.
Much of the shoreline previously used for maritime, rail, and industrial activities has given way to recreational promenades and piers. On the Hudson Waterfront in New Jersey, the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway runs for about 18 miles. In Manhattan, the Hudson River Park runs from Battery Park to 59th Street.
North River on maps
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's current charts call the lower river the "Hudson", and the United States Geological Survey lists "North River" as an alternative name of the Hudson River without qualifying it as any particular portion of the river.
Hagstrom Maps, formerly the leading mapmaker in the New York metropolitan area and known for occasional quirky and anachronistic names, features, and artifacts on their maps, has labeled all or part of the Hudson adjacent to Manhattan as "North River" on several of its products. For instance, on a 1997 Hagstrom Map of Manhattan, the stretch of river between Hudson County, New Jersey, and Lower Manhattan, roughly corresponding to the location of the North River piers, was labeled "North River", with the label "Hudson River" used above Midtown Manhattan.
On a 2000 map of "Northern Approaches to New York City" included in Hagstrom's New York [State] Road Map, the entire river adjacent to Manhattan was labeled "Hudson River (North River)" with the river further north at Tappan Zee labeled the "Hudson River".
North River piers
Piers along the Hudson shore of Manhattan were formerly used for shipping and berthing ocean-going ships. In shipping notices, they were designated as, for example, "Pier 14, North River". As with the river, the name "North River piers" has largely been supplanted by "Hudson River piers", or just by a pier and number, e.g., "Pier 54". Pier 40 is located at Houston Street, and the numbering of the piers to the north correspond to the nearest numbered street plus 40 – thus, for example, North River Pier 86 is at West 46th Street.
Most of the piers that once existed in lower Manhattan fell into disuse or were destroyed in the last half of the 20th century. The remaining piers are Pier A at the Battery and piers ranging from Pier 25 at North Moore Street to Pier 99 at 59th Street. Many of these piers and the waterfront between them are part of the Hudson River Park which stretches from 59th Street to the Battery. The park, a joint project between New York City and New York State commenced in 1998, consists of several non-contiguous parcels of land and piers totaling , plus another of the river itself. Several piers were rebuilt for adaptive re-use as part of the park project, with approximately 70% of the planned work complete by 2011.
Status
Pier A is a designated national and New York City landmark. The building on the pier dates to 1886, and was used by the city's Department of Docks, Harbor Police, and was later a fireboat station. The pier was closed and renovated from 1992 to November 2014, after which it reopened as a restaurant.
What little remained of Piers 1 through 21 were buried under landfill from the World Trade Center construction project in 1973 and turned into Battery Park City.
Pier 25 is a sports and docking facility at the foot of North Moore Street with a mini golf course.
Pier 26 was rebuilt over 2008–2009 and is home to a new park designed by OLIN and Rafael Viñoly and opened in September 2020, featuring a sports court and an engineered wetland.
Pier 34, at Canal Street, contains a ventilation shaft for the Holland Tunnel.
Pier 40, at Houston Street, was built as a terminal for the Holland America Line in 1962, and now contains various playing fields, long-term parking spaces and the Trapeze School of New York on the roof (during the summer).
The term "Christopher Street Pier" usually refers specifically to Pier 45 opposite West 10th Street in Greenwich Village. However, it refers to three other piers as well, between Piers 42–51. Pier 51 houses a water-themed playground, part of Hudson River Park.
Piers 52 and 53, also known as Gansevoort Peninsula, were formerly a New York City Department of Sanitation facility used for shipping trash out of Manhattan. They are being converted into a public park, expected to be complete in 2023. Also at the end of Pier 53 is the FDNY's Marine 1 fireboat facility, occupying a new building completed in 2011.
Pier 54 and Pier 55, part of Hudson River Park since its creation in 1998, was closed in 2011 when it was deemed structurally unsound. Plans were unveiled in November 2014 for a new park designed by Heatherwick Studio and costing $130 million. The project was temporarily canceled in 2017 after costs had grown to $250 million, but was later revived as part of an agreement to complete the remainder of Hudson River Park. The new park, dubbed "Little Island," took the place of the now-dismantled Piers 54 and 55, and opened in May 2021.
Pier 57, at 15th Street and 11th Avenue, formerly served as a terminal for shipping and storage of cargo for the Grace Line. Between 1969 and 2003, Pier 57 housed the Hudson Pier Bus Depot for the New York City Transit Authority. After its abandonment, plans created in 2009 called for an improved pier design for commercial use, initially dubbed the SuperPier by its developer. The renovated pier reopened to the public in April 2022, featuring office space for Google, a food hall, and a rooftop park.
Piers 59–62 are used as Chelsea Piers, which were originally a passenger ship terminal in the early 1900s that was used by the RMS Lusitania and was the destination of the RMS Titanic. The Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex opened at the site in 1995.
Pier 63 was the location of a Pavonia Ferry terminal that opened in 1869. The terminal was demolished in 1942, and the pier then housed a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad transfer barge. In the late 1980s, boat enthusiast John Krevey converted an old railroad barge on the Hudson River to a floating jetty.
Pier 66 is part of Hudson River Park, It is located at 26th Street and is used for sailing and paddle sports.
Pier 76, formerly the NYPD impound lot, was reopened by the Hudson River Park Trust on June 9, 2021 as a park and cultural space. The $31 million project also includes environmental abatement, repaving, interpretive panels relay the history of the area, including the indigenous Lenape people of Mannahatta and the evolution of the city’s shipping industry. The pier also features a 30-ton propeller from the passenger liner SS United States, which in 1952 set the Atlantic crossing speed record for passenger liners.
Pier 78 is the only Hudson River pier that is privately owned, and is used for sightseeing cruises.
Pier 79 is the West Midtown Ferry Terminal used by NY Waterway and NYC Ferry. Pier 79 connects to an Art Deco style ventilation shaft for the Lincoln Tunnel.
Pier 81 is site of North River Lobster and World Yacht
Pier 83 is used by Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises.
Pier 84 served as a concert venue from the former Schaefer Music Festival. The pier also houses a water-themed playground within Hudson River Park, is a stop for New York Water Taxi, and has a bicycle rental shop and other businesses serving primarily tourists.
Pier 86 at West 46th Street is home to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, the centerpiece of which is the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that served from World War II to the Vietnam War. This pier once served as the passenger ship terminal for the United States Lines.
Piers 88–92 are part of the New York Passenger Ship Terminal, used by numerous modern cruise ships and ocean liners. In 1942, the USS Lafayette (formerly SS Normandie) caught fire at Pier 88, remaining capsized there for a year. Pier 92 was subsequently used as an exhibition space, but closed in 2019 after the pier was found to be unsafe.
Pier 94 was formerly also part of the Passenger Ship Terminal, and until 2020 housed the "UnConvention Center", the second-largest exhibition hall in New York City. As of 2023, it is slated to be redeveloped into a film studio.
Pier 96 is part of Hudson River Park. It is the home of Manhattan Community Boathouse, an all-volunteer non-profit organization that offers free kayaking to the public each summer.
Pier 97 is part of Hudson River Park. It was until 1975 the home of the Swedish American Line passenger ship terminal. The terminal was demolished some time after 1984 and the pier has since been used for various purposes, including many years as a Sanitation Department parking lot and a brief period as a live event venue sponsored by JBL and Live Nation. In November 2019, it was announced that the pier would be converted into a park, with construction expected to start in September 2020. As of September 2020, the pier is now expected to reopen in March 2024.
Pier 98 is used for Con Edison employee car parking, a training facility and delivery by barge and storage of fuel oil.
Pier 99 houses the West 59th Street Marine Transfer Station, used by the New York City Sanitation Department.
Pier I and most of Riverside Park South were originally part of the abandoned Penn Central railyard between 59th and 72nd Streets. These lettered piers were built at a 55-degree angle to the shore to facilitate the transfer of rail cars from their tracks to a waiting barge. Pier I is the only remaining rail pier. The 69th Street Transfer Bridge of the New York Central Railroad is still extant and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2003.
Railroads and ferries
Prior to the opening of the North River Tunnels and the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tubes in the early 1900s, passengers and freight were required to cross the river for travel to points east. This led to an extensive network of intermodal terminals, railyards, ferry slips, docks, barges, and carfloats. The west shore of the river from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century was home to expansive facilities operated by competing railroads. Most are now gone, allowing for public access to the waterfront at piers, parks, promenades and marinas along the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. New ferry slips and terminals exclusively for pedestrian use have been built.
Communipaw Terminal was in operation from 1864 to 1967. It was owned by the Central Railroad of New Jersey and also hosted trains of the Baltimore and Ohio and the Reading Company. The CRRNJ's main ferry ran to pier 11 at Liberty Street. The historic landmark is now a major feature of Liberty State Park and ferry terminal for service to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. The terminal is adjacent to the Big Basin of the Morris Canal (used to ship anthracite from the mines of Pennsylvania) which entered the harbor at the river's mouth.
Pennsylvania Railroad Station was the location of the first waterfront terminal in 1834, and its larger successor was used until 1961. Regular ferry service from Paulus Hook had begun in the early Dutch colonial period. The original station was built by the New Jersey Railroad to meet the world's first steam ferry service which had been initiated in 1812 by Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston. During the Pennsylvania Railroad era in the 20th century the station was called Exchange Place, local nomenclature for the streetcar terminus and Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tube station. The main ferry ran to Cortlandt Street. The district is now sometimes known as "Wall Street West" due to the concentration of financial concerns and skyscrapers located there. Today ferry service travel to Battery Park City Ferry Terminal, Pier 11 at Wall Street, and the West Midtown Ferry Terminal.
Pavonia Terminal operated from 1861 to 1958. The terminal, completed in 1889 by the Erie Railroad, was at the end of the Long Dock which extended into the partially landfilled Harsimus Cove. The Jersey City Terminal was also used by the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway, but was called by the name given to the seventeenth century New Netherland settlement of Pavonia. Ferry service began in the 1840s. The main Pavonia Ferry later ran to Chambers Street and 23rd Street. Pavonia's Erie trains were moved to Hoboken Terminal between 1956 and 1958, and the ferries and terminal abandoned. The terminal and yards have now been developed into the residential and commercial district of Pavonia-Newport.
Hoboken Terminal is the last of the Hudson River terminals still in use and is now operated by New Jersey Transit. Regular ferry service was started in 1834 by John Stevens. Train service began in 1863 by the Morris and Essex Railroad and was taken over by Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, which built the terminal in 1908. The DL&W later consolidated with the Erie to create the Erie Lackawanna Railway which, after becoming part of Conrail, operated until the state takeover in the 1970s. The main routes of the Hoboken Ferry ran to Barclay Street, Christopher Street and 23rd Street; these ferries operated until 1967. Today New York Waterway ferries travel to the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal, Pier 11 at Wall Street and the West Midtown Ferry Terminal.
Weehawken Terminal operated from 1884 to 1959 as the terminus for New York Central Railroad's West Shore Railroad division as well as for the New York, Ontario and Western Railway. The extensive Weehawken Yards also handle freight for the Erie Railroad with the New Jersey Junction Railroad. The New York Central Railroad 69th Street Transfer Bridge is now a historic site. The main Weehawken Ferry travelled directly across the river to 42nd Street and for a time was part of route of the Lincoln Highway. Other ferries included those to 14th Street and Cortland Street. The original tunnel under Bergen Hill is now used by the Hudson Bergen Light Rail. Ferry service is now provided from Weehawken Port Imperial to West Midtown Ferry Terminal, BPC Ferry Terminal, and Wall Street.
The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway terminus in Shadyside, Edgewater was opened in 1894 for the shipment of coal and other products. This led to extensive landfilling and industrial growth including plants of Hess Oil and Chemical, Lever Brothers, Alcoa, and the Ford Motor Company. Many workers from Manhattan used the ferry from 125th Street to reach their jobs. The factories of Edgewater have been demolished, the brownfields redeveloped for residential, retail, and recreational uses. The ferry now travels from Edgewater Landing to West Midtown Ferry Terminal.
Fixed crossings
The last crossing to be built was the south tube of the Lincoln Tunnel in 1957, but in 1962, another deck was added to the George Washington Bridge. Since 2003, various proposals have been made to add a new train line. This includes an extension of the completed 7 Subway Extension, the canceled Access to the Region's Core, and the proposed Gateway Project.
See also
List of bridges, tunnels, and cuts in Hudson County, New Jersey
List of ferries across the Hudson River to New York City
List of New Jersey rivers
List of New York rivers
New York Harbor
New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary
Timeline of Jersey City area railroads
References
External links
A Guide to a Hudson River Park Walk from Battery Park to Riverside Park
Wired New York - Hudson River Piers
North River Historic Ship Society: Historic Vessels of New York Harbor
Borders of New Jersey
Borders of New York (state)
Hudson River
Piers in New York City
Port of New York and New Jersey
Redeveloped ports and waterfronts in the United States
Rivers of Hudson County, New Jersey
Rivers of Manhattan
Rivers of New Jersey
Rivers of New York (state)
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381699
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard%20Motor%20Company
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Standard Motor Company
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The Standard Motor Company Limited was a motor vehicle manufacturer, founded in Coventry, England, in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay. For many years, it manufactured Ferguson TE20 tractors powered by its Vanguard engine. All Standard's tractor assets were sold to Massey Ferguson in 1959. Standard purchased Triumph in 1945 and in 1959 officially changed its name to Standard-Triumph International and began to put the Triumph brand name on all its products. A new subsidiary took the name The Standard Motor Company Limited and took over the manufacture of the group's products.
The Standard name was last used in Britain in 1963, and in India in 1988.
History
1903–14
Maudslay, great-grandson of the eminent engineer Henry Maudslay, had trained under Sir John Wolfe-Barry as a civil engineer. In 1902 he joined his cousin Cyril Charles Maudslay at his Maudslay Motor Company to make marine internal combustion engines. The marine engines did not sell very well, and still in 1902 they made their first engine intended for a car. It was fitted to a chain-drive chassis. The three-cylinder engine, designed by Alexander Craig was an advanced unit with a single overhead camshaft and pressure lubrication.
Realising the enormous potential of the horseless carriage and using a gift of £3,000 from Sir John Wolfe-Barry, R. W. Maudslay left his cousin and became a motor manufacturer on his own account. His Standard Motor Company was incorporated on 2 March 1903 and he established his business in a small factory in a two-storey building in Much Park Street, Coventry. Having undertaken the examination of several proprietary engines to familiarise himself with internal combustion engine design he employed seven people to assemble the first car, powered by a single-cylinder engine with three-speed gearbox and shaft drive to the rear wheels. By the end of 1903 three cars had been built and the labour force had been increased to twenty five. The increased labour force produced a car every three weeks during 1904.
The single-cylinder model was soon replaced by a two-cylinder model quickly followed by three- and four-cylinder versions and in 1905 the first six. Even the first cars boasted shaft drive as opposed to chains, and the engines were not merely "square" but had 6" diameter pistons with a 3" stroke. As well as supplying complete chassis, the company found a good market selling engines for fitting to other cars, especially where the owner wanted more power. Although Alex Craig, a Scottish engineer, was engaged to do much of the detail work, Maudslay himself was sufficiently confident to undertake much of the preliminary layout. One of the several derivations of the name "Standard" is said to have emanated from a discussion between Maudslay and Craig during which the latter proposed several changes to a design on the grounds of cost, which Maudslay rejected, saying that he was determined to maintain the best possible "standard".
In 1905 Maudslay himself drove the first Standard car to compete in a race. This was the RAC Tourist Trophy in which he finished 11th out of 42 starters, having had a non-stop run. In 1905 the first export order was also received, from a Canadian who arrived at the factory in person. The order was reported in the local newspaper with some emphasis, "Coventry firm makes bold bid for foreign markets".
The company exhibited at the 1905 London Motor Show in Crystal Palace, at which a London dealer, Charles (later Sir Charles) Friswell 1872-1926 agreed to buy the entire factory output. He joined Standard and later was managing director for many years.
In late 1906 production was transferred to larger premises and output was concentrated on 6-cylinder models. The 16/20 h.p. tourer with side-entrance body was priced at £450. An indication of how much this was can be gained from the fact that a draughtsman earned £3 a week. In 1907 Friswell became company chairman. He worked hard to raise its profile, and the resulting increase in demand necessitated the acquisition of a large single-storey building in Cash's Lane, Coventry. Even this was inadequate after the publicity gained when a fleet of 20 cars, 16/20 tourers, were supplied for the use of Commonwealth editors attending the 1909 Imperial Press Conference in London. In 1909 the company first made use of the famous Union Flag Badge, a feature of the radiator emblem until after the Second World War. By 1911 the range of vehicles was comprehensive, with the 8-horsepower model being produced in quantity whilst a special order for two 70 hp cars was at the same time executed for a Scottish millionaire. Friswell's influence culminated in supplying seventy 4-cylinder 16 hp cars for King George V and his entourage, including the Viceroy of India, at the 1911 Delhi Durbar. In 1912 Friswell sold his interest in Standard to C. J. Band and Siegfried Bettmann, the founder of the Triumph Motor Cycle Company (which became the Triumph Motor Company). During the same year the first commercial vehicle was produced, and the 4-cylinder model "S" was introduced at £195, the first to be put into large-scale production. 1,600 were produced before the outbreak of the First World War, 50 of them in the final week of car production. These cars were sold with a three-year guarantee. In 1914 Standard became a public company.
First World War
During the First World War the company produced more than 1,000 aircraft, including the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12, Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8, Sopwith Pup and Bristol F.2-B in a new works at Canley that opened on 1 July 1916. Canley would subsequently become the main centre of operations. Other war materials produced included shells, mobile workshops for the Royal Engineers, and trench mortars.
1919–39
Civilian car production was restarted in 1919 with models based on pre-war designs, for example the 9.5 model "S" was re-introduced as the model SLS although this was soon superseded by an 8 h.p. model.
In the early 1920s saloon bodies were first offered; previously all cars had been tourers. The bodies had, since the move to Bishopsgate Green, been made in Coventry by the company itself, but it was not until 1922 that they were mass-produced, using a wooden track along which they were pushed by hand. The company was justifiably proud of the modern factory at Canley, boasting in its advertisements "It is a beautifully lighted and well-aired factory standing on the edge of a breezy common away from the city din and smoke, that the finishing touches and test are given to the All British 'Standard' Light cars which issue there to almost every quarter in the world".
It was about this time during the early 1920s that the slogan "Count them on the road" appeared on every advertisement. By 1924 the company had a share of the market comparable to Austin Motor Company, making more than 10,000 cars in 1924. As the immediate post-war boom faded, many rival marques were discontinued. Cars became steadily larger and more elaborate as manufacturers sought to maintain sales. During the 1920s all the models were named after towns, not only near the factory such as Canley and Kenilworth but also further afield – Teignmouth, Falmouth and Exmouth.
By the late 1920s profits had decreased dramatically due to great reinvestment, a failed export contract and bad sales of the larger cars. In 1927 the inadvisability of matching the larger more elaborate trend became apparent and the 9 hp Fulham with fabric body was introduced at £185. Production was concentrated mainly on one basic chassis with a 9 hp engine. The importance of standardisation was now appreciated and only one alternative was offered. In 1929 John Black, a joint managing director of Hillman, took up an appointment at Standard as joint managing director.
Standard Swallow and Jaguar
Black encouraged the supply of chassis to external coachbuilders such as Avon and Swallow Coachbuilding and Jensen. The coachbuilding company of Avon during the early 1930s commenced producing cars with a distinctly sporty appearance, using as a foundation, a complete chassis from the Standard Motor Company. These chassis were ordinary production units, used because of their sound engineering design and good performance. Known as Avon Standard Specials they catered for a select market too small for Standard themselves.
It was not until 1930, after the replacement of artillery wheels by spoke wheels that the distinctive radiator shape first used on the 6-cylinder models in 1906 was finally abandoned. In 1930, before the worst of the Depression, the Big Nine was introduced which together with the 6-cylinder Ensign and Envoy constituted the complete range. Here standardisation was taken a step further with the bodies on 9 hp four-cylinder and 15 hp six-cylinder being almost indistinguishable except for bonnet length. The Big Nine was soon followed by the Big Twelve and sales for the second six months of 1931 exceeded those of the whole of the previous year. In 1932 there was a Royal visit to the Canley works by the Duke of Gloucester who came to open the Canley Pavilion outside which he took delivery of a new 6-cylinder model.
Founder and Chairman Reginald Maudslay retired in 1934 and died soon afterwards on 14 December 1934 at the age of 64. Charles James Band 1883–1961, a Coventry solicitor and a Standard director since 1920, replaced him as chairman and served in that capacity until the beginning of 1954 though Sir John Black briefly held the appointment before he retired. 1935 saw all production transferred to the Canley site. Extensive re-organisation occurred including a continuous track being laid down in the paint shop on which the cars were completely painted.
Through the 1930s, fortunes improved with new models, the Standard Nine and Standard Ten addressed the low to mid range market. At the 1935 Motor Show the new range of Flying Standards was announced with (semi) streamlined bodies. The Flying Standards came to the market in 1936 with their distinctive streamlined sloping rears virtually replacing the existing range of Nine, Twelve, Sixteen, and Twenty. The Flying Standards were so-called because of the major radiator shell change to a waterfall grille topped by the Union Jack badge apparently streaming backwards in contrast to its previous forward-facing position.
In 1938 a new factory was opened at Fletchampstead. That year, Standard launched the Flying Eight. The Flying Eight had a new four-cylinder engine smaller than that in the Flying Nine, and was the first British mass-produced light saloon with independent front suspension. The Flying Ten and Flying Twelve were also given new chassis with independent front suspension in 1938.
The aero engine plant at Banner Lane, a shadow factory, began construction in mid 1939 and production began in 1940. It was managed by Standard for the Air Ministry. After the war Standard leased Banner Lane and, in partnership with Harry Ferguson, used it for the manufacture of Ferguson tractors.
By the beginning of the war, Standard's annual production was approximately 50,000 units.
Second World War
The company continued to produce its cars during the Second World War, but now mainly fitted with utility bodies ("Tillys"). However, the most famous war-time product was the de Havilland Mosquito aircraft, mainly the FB VI version, of which more than 1100 were made. 750 Airspeed Oxfords were also made as well as 20,000 Bristol Mercury VIII engines, and 3,000 Bristol Beaufighter fuselages.
Other wartime products included 4000 Beaverette light armoured cars and a prototype lightweight "Jeep" type vehicle.
Post-war years
With peace, the pre-war Eight and Twelve fitted with 1776cc engine sold as 14 hp cars were quickly back in production using tools carefully stored since 1939. Of greater significance was the 1945 purchase, arranged by Sir John Black for £75,000, of the Triumph Motor Company. Triumph had gone into receivership in 1939, and was now reformed as a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard, named Triumph Motor Company (1945) Limited. The Triumph factory was near the city centre and had been completely destroyed in the blitz. A lucrative deal was also arranged to build the small Ferguson Company tractor. This arrangement was considered primarily by Black as a means to securing increased profits to fund new car development.
Ferguson tractor
In December 1945 Standard Motor Company Limited announced that an arrangement had been made to manufacture Harry Ferguson's tractors and the Air Ministry's shadow factory at Banner Lane Coventry run by Standard during the war would be used for the project. These tractors would be for the Eastern hemisphere, Ferguson tractors built by Ford in America for the Western hemisphere. Production was expected to start in 1946. Implements would be sourced separately by Ferguson who would also merchandise the tractors and the implements.
Standard Vanguard
A one-model policy for the Standard marque (alongside a range of new Triumphs) was adopted in 1948 with the introduction of the 2-litre Standard Vanguard, which was styled on American lines by Walter Belgrove, and replaced all the carry-over pre-war models. This aptly named model was the first true post-war design from any major British manufacturer. The beetle-back Vanguard Phase 1 was replaced in 1953 by the notch-back Phase 2 and in 1955 by the all-new Phase 3, which resulted in variants such as the Sportsman, Ensign, Vanguard Vignale and Vanguard Six.
Standard Eight and Ten
The one-model policy lasted until 1953, when a new Standard Eight small car was added. This was introduced at £481. 7. 6. the cheapest four-door saloon on the market, yet it boasted independent front suspension, hydraulic brakes and an economical O.H.V. engine. At the same time in another part of the same building Standards were producing a very different engine, the Rolls-Royce Avon jet aero engine of which 415 were made between 1951 and 1955. In 1954 the Eight was supplemented by the slightly more powerful Standard Ten which featured a wider chrome grille.
Engines
The Phase II Vanguard was powered, like the Phase I, by a 2088 cc 4-cylinder "wet sleeve" engine, now with a modestly increased compression ratio, and producing 68 hp. This engine could be modified by using an additional intake system and two single-barrel Solex carburettors, producing 90 hp. Typically, the Phase II engine was one Solex carburettor, with 85 mm by 93 mm pistons. Standard Motors at the time supplied many of these engines to Ferguson Tractor distributed in the United States.
Standard Pennant
The Ten was followed in its turn in 1957 by the Standard Pennant featuring very prominent tail fins, but otherwise little altered structurally from the 1953 Standard Eight. An option for the Ten, and standard fitment to the Pennant, was the Gold Star engine, tuned for greater power and torque than the standard 948 cc unit. Another tuning set, featuring a different camshaft and twin carburettors, was available from dealers. As well as an overdrive for the gearbox, an option for the Eight, Ten and Pennant was the Standrive, a semi-manual transmission that automatically operated the clutch during gearchanges.
Triumph TR2
During the same year that the '8' was introduced, another car was displayed at the London Motor Show. This was the Triumph 20TS, a sports two-seater with a modified Standard '8' chassis and a Vanguard engine. The 20TS's lack of luggage space and unsatisfactory performance and handling resulted in production being delayed until the next year when the chassis and drivetrain were developed and the body was restyled to incorporate a generous boot. The car was badged as a 'Triumph' rather than a 'Standard' and the Triumph TR2 was a winner. Ken Richardson achieved on the Jabbeke Highway in Belgium in a slightly modified car. As a result of the publicity, small manufacturers, including Morgan, Peerless, Swallow, and Doretti, bought engines and other components from Standard Motor Company.
Standard Atlas van
In 1958 the Standard Atlas panel van and pick-up was first marketed, a cab-over-engine design. It initially used the 948 cc engine from the Standard 10, making the resulting vehicle woefully underpowered, even with its 6.66:1 final drive ratio. In 1961, the Atlas Major was introduced, and sold alongside the original 948 cc Atlas. This variant was powered by the Standard 1670 cc wet-liner engine, as used with different capacities in the Vanguard cars, and the Ferguson tractor. The same engine was also used in Triumph TR2, TR3 and TR4 sports cars. To use this larger engine, a substantial redesign of the cab interior and forward chassis was necessary. The vehicles were of a high standard but not priced competitively, which resulted in relatively few sales. In 1963 the Atlas Major became the Standard 15, with a new long-wheelbase variant, with 2138 cc engine, which became the Standard 20. Later that year, the Standard name was dropped by Leyland, and these models were rebranded hastily as the Leyland 15 and 20. By 1968 when production ended in the UK, all variants were powered by the 2138 cc engine and badged as Leyland 20s. These vehicles were badged as Triumphs for export to Canada, and possibly other overseas markets. The van's tooling was also exported to India after UK production ceased, where the resultant vehicle continued in production until the 1980s.
Triumph Herald
By the later 1950s the small Standards were losing out in the UK market to more modern competitor designs, and the Triumph name was believed to be more marketable; hence the 1959 replacement for the Eight, Ten and Pennant was badged as the Triumph Herald; with substantial mechanical components carried over from the small Standards. Despite the separate chassis and independent rear suspension, the differential, hubs, brakes, engine and gearbox were all common to the last Standard Pennants. In order to build the Herald the company invested £ million in a new assembly hall extension at the Canley plant which Standard had acquired in 1916. The builders of the three-storey building excavated 250,000 tons of soil and rock. Inside the building were three 1300 ft assembly lines equipped to be one of the most modern car assembly plants in the world. This turned out to be the company's last investment on such a scale at Canley: investment decisions after the merger with Rover would favour the newer plant at Solihull.
Overseas plants
Overseas manufacturing plants were opened in Australia, France, India and South Africa. Overseas assembly plants were opened in Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.
Sir John Black
During the year ended 31 August 1954 Standard made and sold 73,000 cars and 61,500 tractors and much more than half of those were exported. Since the war Standard had made and sold some 418,000 cars and 410,000 tractors and again much more than half were exported. Appointed to Standard's then ailing business in 1929, director and general manager since 1930 and appointed managing director in 1934 energetic Sir John Black resigned as chairman and managing director of Standard that year following a serious motorcar accident. He was advised (after consultations with his wife and close friends) to relinquish his offices of chairman and managing director and his membership of the board of directors. His deputy and long-time personal assistant, Alick Dick 1916–1986, took his position as managing director. Air Marshal Lord Tedder was appointed chairman, Tedder would hold that position until the Leyland Motors takeover at the end of 1960. Alick Dick resigned in August 1961 when the board was reorganised by Leyland in view of the substantial losses Standard was accumulating.
The company started considering partners to enable continued expansion and negotiations were begun with Chrysler, Massey-Harris-Ferguson, Rootes Group, Rover and Renault but these were inconclusive.
Standard's Vanguard engine
The Vanguard's engine, later slightly enlarged, powered two saloons, a tractor and three sports cars
Leyland Motors
The Standard-Triumph company was eventually bought in 1960 by Leyland Motors which paid £20 million and the last Standard, an Ensign Deluxe, was produced in the UK in May 1963, when the final Vanguard models were replaced by the Triumph 2000 model. Triumph continued when Leyland became British Leyland Motor Corporation (later BL) in 1968. The Standard brand was ended on 17 August 1970 when a sudden announcement said that henceforth the company was to be known as the Triumph Motor Company. The Standard name has been unused in Europe since then and the Triumph or Rover Triumph BL subsidiary used the former Standard engineering and production facilities at Canley in Coventry until the plant was closed in 1980.
BMW
BMW acquired the Standard and Triumph brands following its purchase of BL's successor Rover Group in 1994. When most of Rover was sold in 2000, BMW kept the Standard brand along with Triumph, Mini and Riley. The management of British Motor Heritage, gained the rights to the Standard Brand upon their management purchase of this company from BMW in 2001.
There was talk of a possible revival of the Standard name by MG Rover for its importation of the Tata Indica. However, for reasons relating to the ownership of the brand by BMW, the car was finally launched as the Rover CityRover.
Standard in India
The Standard name had disappeared from Britain during the 1960s but continued for two more decades in India, where Standard Motor Products of India Ltd manufactured the Triumph Herald badged as the 'Standard Herald' and with the basic 948 cc engine during the 1960s, with increasingly local content and design changes over the years, eventually producing additional four-door and five-door estate models exclusively for the Indian market by the late 1960s.
After 1970, Standard Motor Products split with British Leyland, and introduced a bodily restyled four-door saloon based on the Herald known as the Standard Gazel in 1972, using the same 948 cc engine but with a live rear axle, as the Herald's swing-axle was not liked much by Indian buyers and mechanics alike. Allegedly India's first indigenous car, the Gazel was built in small numbers – it has been suggested that it did so to keep its manufacturer's licence – until 1977. With the company concentrating solely on producing commercial vehicles based on the Leyland 20 model, badged as "Standard 20", production of Standard cars ceased until the Standard 2000, a rebadged Rover SD1, was introduced in 1985. The car was higher and had a slightly modified old 1991 cc Standard Vanguard engine, as the company could not procure the licence to use the original Rover engine on this car. Being expensive and outdated it was not successful, apart from the reasons that it had competition from cars with Japanese and other newer, fuel-efficient technology in India. It ceased production in 1988, with the factory in Perungalathur near Chennai also closing its operations at the same time, around the same time that the last examples of the SD1 left British showrooms (production had finished in 1986 but stocks lasted for around two more years). After feeble efforts over successive years to revive the company, the premises were auctioned off in 2006 and Britain's Rimmer Bros. bought up the entire unused stock of SD1 parts. This also signalled the end of the Standard marque.
British car models
Pre World War 1
(Sources—Standard Motor Club and Graham Robson Book of the Standard Motor Company, Veloce, )
1919–39
1945–63
Military and commercial
See also
Australian Motor Industries
List of car manufacturers of the United Kingdom
References
External links
Standard Motor Club
Standard Flying V-Eight
Hari's Motor World—Indian cars
Catalogue of the Standard archives, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United Kingdom
Former defence companies of the United Kingdom
Defunct companies based in the West Midlands (county)
Coventry motor companies
Luxury motor vehicle manufacturers
Car brands
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry%20Craig
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Larry Craig
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Lawrence Edwin Craig (born July 20, 1945) is an American retired politician from the state of Idaho. A Republican, he served 18 years in the United States Senate (1991–2009), preceded by 10 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Idaho's 1st District (1981–91). His 28 years in Congress rank as the second-longest in Idaho history, trailing only William Borah, who served over 32 years in the Senate. In addition to serving in Congress, Craig has been a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association of America since 1983. Craig was selected for induction into the Idaho Hall of Fame in 2007, but was not inducted.
Born in Council, Idaho, Craig was raised on a ranch in Washington County. He attended the University of Idaho, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the university in 1969, and later briefly attended George Washington University before returning to Washington County in 1971 to work in his family's ranching business. Following a brief stint in the Idaho Army National Guard, Craig ran for and won a seat in the Idaho Senate in 1974, and was re-elected in 1976 and 1978, before his successful first run for Congress to represent Idaho's 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives in 1980. He won reelection four times before running for the U.S. Senate in 1990, defeating Ron J. Twilegar in the general election and winning reelection in 1996 and 2002.
On June 11, 2007, Craig was arrested for indecent behavior in a men's restroom at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport; he pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct in August 2007 and paid less than $600 in court fines. The arrest remained unknown to the public until the Washington, D.C.-based newspaper Roll Call disclosed it in an article, drawing widespread public attention as well as charges of hypocrisy against Craig, as he had been an opponent of LGBT rights in the United States. Despite stating that he was not and never had been homosexual, Craig announced, on September 1, 2007, that he would resign from the Senate, effective September 30, 2007, but later reversed this decision and decided to finish the remainder of his term, although he chose not to run for re-election in 2008.
He was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor and former Governor Jim Risch, who won the seat in the 2008 election. Craig subsequently co-founded the consulting firm New West Strategies and became a lobbyist.
Early life and family
Craig was born in Council, Idaho, the son of Dorothy Lenore (née McCord) and Elvin Oren Craig. He grew up on a ranch outside Midvale in Washington County. In 1969 he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Idaho. At the University of Idaho, he was student body president and a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. He pursued graduate studies at George Washington University before returning to his family's Midvale ranching business in 1971. Craig was a member of the Idaho Army National Guard from 1970 to 1972, attaining the rank of Private First Class (E3), after which he received an honorable discharge.
Craig married Suzanne Scott in July 1983 and adopted the three children she had from a previous marriage. Through his adopted children, Craig has nine grandchildren.
Political career
Craig was elected to the Idaho Senate in 1974 and reelected in 1976 and 1978.
In 1980, Craig was elected to an open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Idaho's 1st Congressional District. He succeeded Republican Steve Symms, who was leaving the House to run for election to the Senate against incumbent Democrat Frank Church. Craig was re-elected four times, serving until 1991. While in the House, he supported President Ronald Reagan's push to expand vocational education. Craig was not a major force as a legislator during his time in the House.
Allegations of cocaine use and sex with male teenage congressional pages by unnamed congressmen were pursued by investigators and journalists in 1982. Craig issued a statement denying involvement. Craig stated "Persons who are unmarried as I am, by choice or by circumstance, have always been the subject of innuendos, gossip and false accusations. I think this is despicable." Craig served on the House Ethics Committee. In 1989 Craig was reported to have led an extended effort that pushed for more severe punishment of Representative Barney Frank for his involvement in a gay prostitution scandal.
U.S. Senate
Craig announced his candidacy for the 1990 Senate election for the seat vacated by the retiring James A. McClure. Craig defeated Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones in the Republican primary. In the general election he defeated Democratic former Idaho Legislature member Ron J. Twilegar with 61 percent of the vote.
In 1995, Craig formed a barbershop quartet called The Singing Senators with Senators Trent Lott, John Ashcroft, and James Jeffords.
Craig was reelected in 1996, with 57 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Walt Minnick. He was reelected again in the 2002 election with 65 percent of the vote, when he spent $3.2 million to defeat Alan Blinken.
In 1999 Craig became sharply critical of U.S. President Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Speaking on NBC's Meet The Press, Craig told Tim Russert: "The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy – a naughty boy. I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy."
Craig served as Senate Republican Policy Committee chairman from 1997 until 2003. He then became chairman of the Special Committee on Aging. After the Democrats gained control of the Senate in the 2006 Congressional election, Craig became the ranking member of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs and a member of the Appropriations Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He served as the ranking member of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. Amid the controversy surrounding his arrest, in August 2007 Craig temporarily stepped aside as ranking member on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and two subcommittees.
Craig is a longtime advocate for a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.
In May 2003, Craig put a hold on more than 200 Air Force promotions in an attempt to pressure the Air Force to station four new C-130 cargo planes in Idaho, saying he received a commitment from the Air Force almost seven years earlier that the planes would be delivered. Defense Department officials said the reason the C-130s had not been sent to Idaho was that no new aircraft were being manufactured for the type of transport mission done by the Idaho Air National Guard unit where Craig wanted the planes delivered.
Craig supported the guest worker program proposed by President George W. Bush. In April 2005, Craig tried to amend an Iraq War supplemental bill with an amendment that would have granted legal status to between 500,000 and one million illegal immigrants in farm work. The amendment failed with 53 votes (60 votes were needed because the amendment was not relevant to the underlying bill). A version of the AgJOBS legislation was included in the Senate-passed immigration reform bill in 2006. Craig, the principal sponsor of AgJOBS, continues to support amnesty for illegal immigrants who are "trusted workers with a significant work history in American agriculture." This position has been sharply criticized by anti-illegal immigration activists. On June 26, 2007, Craig reiterated his support for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.
In October 2005, Craig suggested that flooded sections of New Orleans should be abandoned after Hurricane Katrina had hit and was quoted on a Baton Rouge television station as saying that "Fraud is in the culture of Iraqis. I believe that is true in the state of Louisiana as well."
On December 16, 2005, Craig voted against a cloture motion filed relative to the USA PATRIOT Act; the motion ultimately earned only 52 votes, and so a Democratic filibuster against extension of the act (due to expire at the end of 2005) was allowed to continue. On December 21, 2005, Craig backed a six-month extension of the Act while further negotiations took place. On February 9, 2006, Craig announced an agreement among himself, the White House, and fellow Senators John E. Sununu, Arlen Specter, Lisa Murkowski, Chuck Hagel and Richard Durbin to reauthorize the Act.
In 2006, Craig posted to his Senate website all the earmarks he had inserted into federal spending bills since joining the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1998.
The American Conservative Union rated Craig's 2005 voting record at 96 out of 100 points, while the Americans for Democratic Action rated him at 15 points. Craig supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, which barred extension of rights to same-sex couples; he voted for cloture on the amendment in both 2004 and 2006, and was a cosponsor in 2008. However, in late 2006 he appeared to endorse the right of individual states to create same-sex civil unions, but said he would vote "yes" on an Idaho constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages when pressured to clarify his position by the anti-gay rights advocacy group Families for a Better Idaho. Craig voted against cloture on a 2002 bill which would have extended the federal definition of hate crimes to cover sexual orientation. This legislation was passed in 2007 in both the House and the Senate as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. Craig voted against the measure. The LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign issued guides to candidates' voting records in 2004, giving Craig a 0 rating.
Prior to the nomination of Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, Craig was mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed Gale Norton as United States Secretary of the Interior in March 2006.
In June 2012, the Federal Election Commission sued Craig for repayment of $217,000 of campaign funds which he used to pay for his defense in his criminal case. In an August 2012 filing, Craig's lawyer Andrew Herman wrote "Not only was the trip itself constitutionally required, but Senate rules sanction reimbursement for any cost relating to a senator's use of a bathroom while on official travel"; the filing cited an FEC ruling that allowed former Congressman Jim Kolbe to use campaign funds for his legal defense in the Mark Foley scandal. A federal court in Washington, D.C. found him liable for the full sum, and on March 4, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment.
Committee assignments
Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
Subcommittee on Homeland Security
Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans' Affairs, and Related Agencies
Committee on Environment and Public Works
Subcommittee on Public Sector Solutions to Global Warming, Oversight, and Children's Health Protection
Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests
Subcommittee on Water and Power
Committee on Veterans' Affairs
Special Committee on Aging
Idaho Hall of Fame induction
In 2007, the Idaho Hall of Fame Association inducted Larry Craig into the Idaho Hall of Fame, one of many politicians inducted throughout the decade.
In 2014, Craig was the Idaho Republican Party financial chair.
2007 arrest and consequences
On June 11, 2007, Craig was arrested at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport for lewd conduct in a men's restroom, where he was accused of soliciting a male undercover police officer for sexual activity. During the resulting interview with the arresting officer, Craig insisted upon his innocence, disputing the officer's version of the event by stating that he merely had a "wide stance" (Craig states that he said he was a "wide guy") and that he had been picking up a piece of paper from the floor.
Craig was charged with interference with privacy, a gross misdemeanor offense, and a disorderly conduct misdemeanor. Despite his statements of innocence during the police interview, Craig pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct by signing and mailing a plea petition, dated August 1, 2007, to the Hennepin County District Court. Including fines and fees, he paid $575. Craig signed the petition to enter his guilty plea, which contained the provisions, "I understand that the court will not accept a plea of guilty from anyone who claims to be innocent... I now make no claim that I am innocent of the charge to which I am entering a plea of guilty." Craig mailed his signed petition to the court, and his petition to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge was accepted and filed by the court on August 8, 2007. In an August 28, 2007 press conference, Craig regretted filing the guilty plea, stating "In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously".
At a news conference on September 1, 2007, Craig announced his intent to resign, "with sadness and deep regret", effective September 30, 2007. On September 4, 2007, a spokesperson for Craig indicated that he was reconsidering his decision to resign, if his conviction was rapidly overturned and his committee assignments were restored. The following week, Craig's attorneys filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that it "was not knowing and intelligent and therefore was in violation of his constitutional rights." The motion was ultimately denied, upholding the initial guilty plea. The controversy forced Craig to step down from his position as liaison to the Senate on the Romney campaign. Craig was vehemently adamant that he was not homosexual, stating "I am not gay. I never have been gay."
Following the ruling, Craig announced that despite his previous statements to the contrary, he would serve out his Senate term. He stated that he intended to "continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee—something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate." Craig did not seek reelection in 2008 and left office on January 3, 2009.
Both the 2009 documentary Outrage and the magazine Newsweek (June 7, 2010 issue) listed Craig, among others, as a conservative politician with a record of anti-gay legislation who was caught in a gay sex scandal.
In a lawsuit by the Federal Election Commission, it was determined that he improperly paid his attorneys in this matter from his campaign funds, and Craig was ordered in 2014 to pay the Treasury $242,535. On March 4, 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment.
Post-Senate
After his retirement, Craig opened the consulting firm New West Strategies with his former chief of staff Mike Ware, focusing on energy issues. The consulting firm was shut down in 2019.
Election history
1988 Idaho 1st District United States Congressional Election
1986 Idaho 1st District United States Congressional Election
1984 Idaho 1st District United States Congressional Election
1982 Idaho 1st District United States Congressional Election
1980 Idaho 1st District United States Congressional Election
See also
List of federal political sex scandals in the United States
References
Further reading
External links
Article about the Larry Craig scandal on Time.com
Idaho Statesman study of Craig
The Smoking Gun — Minnesota v. Larry Edwin Craig, Case No. 07043231, Police interview (audio and transcript), police report, criminal complaint and plea agreement
State of Minnesota v. Larry Edwin Craig, Case No. 070403231, U.S. District Court (4th Dist., Hennepin County, MN)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike%20Enzi
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Mike Enzi
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Michael Bradley Enzi ( ; February 1, 1944 – July 26, 2021) was an American politician who served in the United States Senate from Wyoming as a member of the Republican Party from 1997 to 2021. Prior to his tenure in the United States Senate he served as mayor of Gillette, Wyoming, in the Wyoming House of Representatives from Campbell County, and the Wyoming Senate from the 24th district. He was the longest-serving senator from Wyoming since Francis E. Warren.
Enzi was born in Bremerton, Washington, raised in Thermopolis, Wyoming, and educated at Sheridan High School, George Washington University, and the University of Denver. He served in the Air National Guard, and held positions in the American Legion Boys State, DeMolay International, and United States Junior Chamber. He entered politics with his election as mayor of Gillette after being convinced by Alan Simpson to run and defeating incumbent Mayor Cliff Davis. He was elected to the state house in the 1986 election and served until his appointment to the state senate in 1991.
Enzi was elected to the United States Senate in the 1996 election after defeating future senator John Barrasso in the Republican primary and Secretary of State Kathy Karpan in the general election. During his tenure in the Senate he served as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Budget committees. He served in the Senate until Cynthia Lummis succeeded him in the 2020 election after his retirement. He died in 2021 following injuries resulting from a bicycling accident.
Early life and education
Michael Bradley Enzi was born on February 1, 1944, in Bremerton, Washington, to Elmer J. Enzi and Dorothy Bradley. He was raised in Thermopolis, Wyoming, and graduated from Sheridan High School in 1962. He graduated from George Washington University with a degree in accounting in 1966 and from the University of Denver with a Master of Business Administration in retail marketing in 1968. He served in the Wyoming Army National Guard from 1967 to 1973. On June 7, 1969, he married Diana Buckley, with whom he had three children, and moved to Gillette, Wyoming.
Enzi was criticized by multiple people, including Wyoming Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander Bill Saunders, for attempting to equate his service in the Wyoming Army National Guard with that of those who served in the Vietnam War although Enzi stated that his comments were misinterpreted.
Enzi was elected to serve as a city councilor in the American Legion Boys State in 1961. He was selected serve as a junior councilor in the Wyoming DeMolay International organization in 1963. In 1970, Enzi was appointed to serve as vice-chair of the nine-member Public Health Nursing Advisory Committee in Gillette. He was elected to serve as president of the Wyoming United States Junior Chamber in 1973. He served as chair of the First Wyoming Bank-Gillette.
Career
Local politics
Enzi defeated Mayor Cliff Davis in Gillette's 1974 mayoral election after having been convinced to run by Alan Simpson and won reelection without opposition in 1978. He announced on July 7, 1982, that he would not run for reelection.
He filled two vacant city council seats in one month in 1976, following the resignation of Ed Geringer and Jack Babcock with Jack Edmunds replacing Geringer and Robert White replacing Babcock. Gillette's Planning and Zoning Commission was created during Enzi's tenure, and he appointed six of the seven positions on the board upon its creation. A water pipeline was built during Enzi's tenure as mayor and prior to its construction water was rationed in Gillette. During the 1978 United States House of Representatives elections he supported Treasurer Ed Witzenburger for the Republican nomination.
He was appointed to serve on the National League of Cities' community development committee. Enzi served as vice-president and president of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities. Enzi's term as president of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities was meant to end in June 1983, but he left office in January so John Nickle was appointed to serve the remainder of his term.
Wyoming Legislature
Enzi ran for one of three seats in the Wyoming House of Representatives from Campbell County in the 1986 election as a Republican and was elected alongside incumbent Republican representatives Dick Wallis and John Hines. All three representatives won reelection in the 1988 election against Democratic nominee Rebecca Claar. All three representatives were reelected in the 1990 election against Democratic nominees Claar, Dave Stueck, and Chuck Tolar.
Enzi was speculated as a possible candidate to replace John Ostlund in the Wyoming Senate in the 1978 election as Ostlund was running in the gubernatorial election, but he instead announced that he would run for reelection as mayor on July 17. Senator Kelly Mader resigned on December 9, 1991, due to him having moved his family to Denver, Colorado, and starting a business there and Enzi was selected to replace Mader on December 13, while David Shippy was selected to replace Enzi in the state house. He faced no opposition in the Republican primary or general election in 1992.
During his tenure in the state house he served on the Education, Corporations and Elections, and Mines and Minerals committees. He served on the Joint Appropriations committee and served as the chair of the Revenue committee in the state senate. He lost his position as chair of the Revenue committee and was replaced by Grant Larson in 1996, as senate rules prohibited statewide candidates from serving as chairs of committee.
United States Senate
Elections
Senator Simpson, who was first elected in 1978, announced on December 3, 1995, that he would not seek reelection in the 1996 election. Enzi announced on April 9, 1996, that he would run for the Republican nomination to succeed Simpson in the United States Senate. Enzi won a straw poll conducted at the state convention with 159 of the 457 votes. He went on to win the Republican primary, defeating eight other candidates; one of those candidates was John Barrasso, who would later be appointed to the Senate in 2007. Enzi garnered support due to his pro-life stance, while Barrasso, who had been expected to win the primary, identified as pro-choice at the time. Enzi defeated Democratic nominee Kathy Karpan in the general election.
Enzi announced on March 22, 2002, that he would run for reelection in the 2002 election. Dick Bratton served as his campaign chair. Enzi defeated Crosby Allen, a county commissioner from Fremont County, in the Republican primary and Democratic nominee Joyce Corcoran, the mayor of Lander, Wyoming, in the general election. During the 2002 election Enzi raised $1,443,925.00 and spent $1,130,628.00 compared to Corcoran who had raised $8,488.00 and spent $8,467.00.
Liz Cheney initially opposed Enzi in the Republican primary during the 2014 election, but polling showed that Enzi would defeat her. Cheney dropped out of the race, citing family health concerns.
On May 5, 2019, Enzi announced that he would not seek reelection in the 2020 election. Cynthia Lummis won the Republican nomination and defeated Democratic nominee Merav Ben-David in the general election. He was the longest-serving senator from Wyoming since Francis E. Warren.
Tenure
During Enzi's tenure in the Senate he served on the Labor and Human Resources, Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committees. In 2001, he was given Jim Jeffords' position on the Foreign Relations committee after Jeffords left the Republican Party to become an independent. Enzi served as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Budget committees. He also served as chair of the Banking Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance, and the Labor Subcommittee on Employment, Safety, and Training.
Scott Ratliff, a former member of the Wyoming House of Representatives, served on Enzi's staff for issues about the Wind River Indian Reservation.
In 1997, Enzi asked to be allowed to bring his laptop onto the Senate floor as it was easier than carrying multiple briefcases, but the Senate rules prohibited all mechanical devices that could distract senators unless the Sergeant at Arms ruled that those devices were necessary and proper for the conduction of official business. Sergeant at Arms Gregory S. Casey conducted a three-month study and said that the rules of the Senate allowed members to use laptops on the floor, but not if they were connected to an outside network. Senator John Warner, the chair of the Rules Committee, sent the report to all 100 senators for consideration in September. Robert Torricelli opposed allowing laptops onto the floor stating that it would lead to staff instructing senators how to vote and Robert Byrd also opposed it stating that the sound of typing would be irritating. Senators Wendell Ford, Dianne Feinstein, and Kay Bailey Hutchison also opposed allowing laptops onto the floor. On November 5, the Rules Committee voted against allowing Enzi to bring his laptop onto the floor with Rick Santorum being the only member voting to allow laptops onto the floor. All personal electronic devices are still prohibited from the floor.
During the 2000 presidential election he praised George W. Bush's selection of Dick Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate stating that Cheney was "an outstanding selection" and that he was "excited not just for Wyoming, but for the whole country". Following Trent Lott's resignation Enzi lobbied for Bill Frist to become the Majority Leader of the Senate.
He was given the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 1999, making him the first Wyomingite to receive the award, after being nominated by the Central Wyoming Council and the Boy Scouts of America. Enzi and Representative Cliff Stearns were awarded the Stuart Symington award, given for outstanding civilian contribution in the field of national security, by the Air Force Association, which was their highest civilian award, for co-founding the Congressional Air Force Caucus.
Death
On July 23, 2021, Enzi broke his neck and multiple ribs in a bicycling accident near his home in Gillette. He was flown to a hospital in Loveland, Colorado, where he died on July 26.
Political positions
Enzi opposed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, voted to sustain a filibuster against it stating that it violated the First Amendment rights of interest groups to contribute money in 1997 and 1998, and voted against the legislation while sixty members of the Senate voted in favor of it in 2002. He returned campaign contributions given to him by Enron following their scandal. In 2000, Enzi asked Senator William Roth, the chair of the Finance Committee, to implement geographic equity for Medicare spending in order to give money to rural healthcare.
Crime and guns
While in the state legislature Enzi and Senator John Perry cosponsored legislation to make the assault and battery of people above the age of sixty-five a high misdemeanor. He supported capital punishment. Enzi asked Attorney General Janet Reno to make assisted suicide illegal as the Drug Enforcement Administration had ruled. He voted against the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.
Enzi initially supported the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Act to reduce crimes committed by juveniles, but withdrew his support stating that the legislation infringed on the Second Amendment. During the votes on amendments to the Juvenile Justice Enforcement Act he voted against requiring background checks for firearms sales at gun shows and flea markets, regulating the transfer of firearms through the internet, and banning the importation of high capacity ammunition magazines. Enzi was one of two senators who voted against an amendment to the Juvenile Justice Enforcement Act which prohibited juveniles from purchasing or possessing assault-style semi-automatic weapons without the consent of a parent.
Enzi was given repeated "A" ratings by the NRA Political Victory Fund. Enzi introduced legislation in 2001, which would have required law enforcement to destroy the records created by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of people who passed a background check for a gun purchase.
Enzi supported the creation of an amendment prohibiting the desecration of the flag of the United States. In 2000, the Senate voted sixty-three to thirty-seven, with Enzi in favor, in favor of an amendment prohibiting flag desecration, but it failed to receive a two-thirds majority. In 2006, the Senate voted sixty-six to thirty-four, with Enzi in favor, in favor of an amendment prohibiting flag desecration, but it failed to receive a two-thirds majority.
Economics
In 1994, the state senate voted twenty-nine to one, with Enzi as the only vote against, in favor of placing a moratorium on the sale of state land. Enzi voted against an amendment to raise the minimum wage by $1 over the course of two years in 1998. In 1999, Enzi and twenty-two other senators wrote a letter to Clinton asking him to implement tariffs to protect lamb production in the United States. He supported a ruling by the United States International Trade Commission which would allow tariffs on wheat imports from Canada.
Enzi supported the creation of a balanced budget amendment and stated that without the amendment the president could use "smoke and mirrors" to circumvent requirements for a balanced budget. Enzi was given a Taxpayer's Friend award by the National Taxpayers Union in their 1999 report. Enzi opposed the estate tax and criticized Clinton for vetoing legislation to phase out the estate tax at the federal level over the course of ten years.
Enzi opposed a ballot initiative that would allow counties in Wyoming to legalize gambling and he served as director of Wyomingites for a Better Economy Today and Tomorrow which opposed the initiative. Enzi introduced an amendment to legislation for the United States Department of the Interior's spending in the Senate to prohibit the approving of new Native American casinos without state approval. The Arapaho and Shoshone tribes criticized Enzi for introducing the legislation without consulting them. He later asked for Bruce Babbitt to overstep his authority as Secretary of the Interior for tribal gambling issues. Ron Allen, the president of the National Congress of American Indians and chair of the Klallam tribe, criticized Enzi for attempting to limit the power of Native Americans to negotiate gambling contracts with the federal government.
Environment
Enzi and Senator Byrd co-sponsored a resolution calling for President Bill Clinton to not sign global climate agreements if they harmed the interests of the United States or if they failed to include developing nations with the resolution being in response to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Enzi opposed the Kyoto Protocol and he attended the conference where the participants did not agree with his the United States Senate's view on climate change. The Public Interest Research Group gave Enzi a zero percent rating for votes on environmental legislation conducted between March 1997 and March 1998. He supported drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Equality
Enzi was given a zero percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America in its 1997 report. He was given a F rating by the NAACP in 2002. Enzi cosponsored a resolution expressing support for Judge Roy Moore's attempts to have the Ten Commandments displayed in his courtroom.
Enzi led the effort to create the Sacagawea dollar to honor Sacagawea and replace the Susan B. Anthony dollar despite other members of the Senate who wanted the coin to depict the Statue of Liberty, Clara Barton, Shirley Chisholm, Rosa Parks, Pocahontas, or another figure. Enzi wrote a letter to Treasurer Robert Rubin asking for the coin to be unveiled at Fort Washakie. Enzi opposed the creation of federal hate crime legislation and attempts by President Clinton to expand federal hate crime legislation. Wyoming later made the Sacagawea coin its official state coin.
Enzi supported legislation in the state senate to declare all same-sex marriages, including those conducted outside of the state, void in Wyoming. He supported the Boy Scouts exclusion of gay scouts and leaders and supported legislation to end federal aid to schools which prohibited the Boy Scouts due to their refusal to admit gay members. Enzi supported Santorum's comments on Lawrence v. Texas in which Santorum stated that sodomy laws should be upheld. In 2004, the Senate voted fifty to forty-eight, with Enzi in favor, against the Federal Marriage Amendment which would have prohibited gay marriage. Enzi released a statement following the murder of Matthew Shepard in which he denounced the murder and expressed sympathy for his family, but he later voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Foreign policy
Enzi supported the International Monetary Fund's bailout of South Korea during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He opposed sending soldiers to Kosovo to participate in the Kosovo War and stated that "there was no exit plan built in". Enzi voted to express Congressional approval for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Yugoslav Wars.
He voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001 and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Enzi praised Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address stating that he had made solid arguments against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the need to disarm Iraq and later stated that Saddam Hussein must be overthrown to disarm Iraq. He stated that he still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction despite no weapons of mass destruction being discovered following the invasion of Iraq.
Enzi opposed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty stating that the United States needed to test its nuclear weapons as one-third of the nuclear weapons were detected to have flaws from 1945 to 1992. He supported either amending or leaving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Enzi supported legislation to end the blockade on food and medicine sales and donations to Cuba in 1998, and later asked Bush to lift restrictions on selling American food and medicine to Cuba. Enzi stated that the United States Congress should not become involved with Elián González. In 2003, he and Senator Max Baucus called for travel restrictions to Cuba to be lifted. He and Senator Byron Dorgan introduced the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act with other Democratic and Republican senators to allow Americans to travel to Cuba in 2009, and supported other legislation to allow Americans to travel to Cuba.
Impeachment
The Senate voted seventy to thirty, with Enzi against, against calling Monica Lewinsky to testify in the impeachment trial of Clinton. He voted to convict Clinton on both articles of impeachment, but neither article received enough support to remove Clinton.
Enzi, along with 51 other Republican Senators, voted against convicting Donald Trump on both articles of impeachment in his first impeachment trial. As a result, Trump was acquitted of both articles.
Judicial appointments
In 2005, the Senate voted seventy-eight to twenty-two, with Enzi in favor, in favor of appointing John Roberts to serve as Chief Justice of the United States.
Electoral history
References
External links
Michael B. Enzi papers at the University of Wyoming – American Heritage Center
Enzi statement on the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%20Franck
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James Franck
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James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in 1906 and his habilitation in 1911 at the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of professor extraordinarius. He served as a volunteer in the German Army during World War I. He was seriously injured in 1917 in a gas attack and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.
Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became professor ordinarius of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. While there he worked on quantum physics with Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. His work included the Franck–Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom. He promoted the careers of women in physics, notably Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hilde Levi.
After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, Franck resigned his post in protest against the dismissal of fellow academics. He assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a year at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, he moved to the United States, where he worked at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then the University of Chicago. During this period he became interested in photosynthesis.
Franck participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II as Director of the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory. He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which is best known for the compilation of the Franck Report, which recommended that the atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning.
Early life
James Franck was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 26 August 1882, into a Jewish family, the second child and first son of Jacob Franck, a banker, and his wife Rebecca née Nachum Drucker. He had an older sister, Paula, and a younger brother, Robert Bernard. His father was a devout and religious man, while his mother came from a family of rabbis. Franck attended primary school in Hamburg. Starting in 1891 he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, which was then a boys-only school.
Hamburg had no university then, so prospective students had to attend one of the 22 universities elsewhere in Germany. Intending to study law and economics, Franck entered the University of Heidelberg in 1901, as it had a renowned law school. He attended lectures on law, but was far more interested in those on science. While there, he met Max Born, who would become a lifelong friend. With Born's help, he was able to persuade his parents to allow him to switch to studying physics and chemistry. Franck attended mathematics lectures by Leo Königsberger and Georg Cantor, but Heidelberg was not strong on the physical sciences, so he decided to go to the Frederick William University in Berlin.
At Berlin, Franck attended lectures by Max Planck and Emil Warburg. On 28 July 1904 he saved a pair of children from drowning in the Spree River. For his Doctor of Philosophy (Dir. Phil.) under Warburg's supervision, Warburg suggested that he study corona discharges. Franck found this topic too complex, so he changed the focus of his thesis. Entitled Über die Beweglichkeit der Ladungsträger der Spitzenentladung ("On the Mobility of Ions"), it would subsequently be published in the Annalen der Physik.
With his thesis completed, Franck had to perform his deferred military service. He was called up on 1 October 1906 and joined the 1st Telegraph Battalion. He suffered a minor horse riding accident in December and was discharged as unfit for duty. He took up an assistantship at the Physikalische Verein in Frankfurt in 1907, but did not enjoy it, and soon returned to Frederick William University. At a concert Franck met Ingrid Josephson, a Swedish pianist. They were married in a Swedish ceremony in Gothenburg on 23 December 1907. They had two daughters, Dagmar (Daggie), who was born in 1909, and Elisabeth (Lisa), who was born in 1912.
To pursue an academic career in Germany, having a doctorate was not enough; one needed a venia legendi, or habilitation. This could be achieved with either another major thesis or by producing a substantial body of published work. Franck chose the latter route. There were many unsolved problems in physics at the time, and by 1914 he had published 34 articles. He was the sole author of some, but generally preferred working in collaboration with Eva von Bahr, Lise Meitner, Robert Pohl, , Robert W. Wood, Arthur Wehnelt or Wilhelm Westphal. His most fruitful collaboration was with Gustav Hertz, with whom he wrote 19 articles. He received his habilitation on 20 May 1911.
Franck–Hertz experiment
In 1914, Franck teamed up with Hertz to perform an experiment to investigate fluorescence. They designed a vacuum tube for studying energetic electrons that flew through a thin vapour of mercury atoms. They discovered that when an electron collided with a mercury atom it could lose only a specific quantity (4.9 electron volts) of its kinetic energy before flying away. A faster electron does not decelerate completely after a collision, but loses precisely the same amount of its kinetic energy. Slower electrons just bounce off mercury atoms without losing any significant speed or kinetic energy.
These experimental results provided confirmation of Albert Einstein's photoelectric effect and Planck's relation (E = fh) linking energy (E) and frequency (f) arising from quantisation of energy with Planck's constant (h). But they also provided evidence supporting the model of the atom that had been proposed the previous year by Niels Bohr. Its key feature was that an electron inside an atom occupies one of the atom's "quantum energy levels". Before a collision, an electron inside the mercury atom occupies its lowest available energy level. After the collision, the electron inside occupies a higher energy level with 4.9 electron volts (eV) more energy. This means that the electron is more loosely bound to the mercury atom. There were no intermediate levels or possibilities.
In a second paper presented in May 1914, Franck and Hertz reported on the light emission by the mercury atoms that had absorbed energy from collisions. They showed that the wavelength of this ultraviolet light corresponded exactly to the 4.9 eV of energy that the flying electron had lost. The relationship of energy and wavelength had also been predicted by Bohr. Franck and Hertz completed their last paper together in December 1918. In it, they reconciled the discrepancies between their results and Bohr's theory, which they now acknowledged. In his Nobel lecture, Franck admitted that it was "completely incomprehensible that we had failed to recognise the fundamental significance of Bohr's theory, so much so, that we never even mentioned it once". On 10 December 1926, Franck and Hertz were awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom.".
World War I
Franck enlisted in the German Army soon after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. In December he was sent to the Picardy sector of the Western Front. He became a deputy officer (offizierstellvertreter), and then a lieutenant (leutnant) in 1915. In early 1915 he was transferred to Fritz Haber's new unit that would introduce clouds of chlorine gas as a weapon. With Otto Hahn he was responsible for locating sites for the attacks. He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, on 30 March 1915, and the city of Hamburg awarded him the Hanseatic Cross on 11 January 1916. While in hospital with pleurisy, he co-wrote yet another scientific paper with Hertz, and he was appointed an assistant professor in his absence by Frederick William University on 19 September 1916. Sent to the Russian front, he came down with dysentery. He returned to Berlin, where he joined Hertz, Westphal, Hans Geiger, Otto Hahn and others at Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, working on the development of gas masks. He was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, on 23 February 1918. He was discharged from the Army on 25 November 1918, soon after the war ended.
With the war over, Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute now returned to research, and Haber offered Franck a job. His new post came with more pay, but was not a tenured position. It did however allow Franck to pursue his research as he wished. Working with new, younger collaborators such as Walter Grotrian, Paul Knipping, Thea Krüger, Fritz Reiche and Hertha Sponer, his first papers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute examined atomic electrons in their excited state, results that would later prove important in the development of the laser. They coined the term "metastable" for atoms spending an extended time in a state other than that of least energy. When Niels Bohr visited Berlin in 1920, Meitner and Franck arranged for him to come to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute to talk with the younger staff without the presence of the bonzen ("bigwigs").
Göttingen
In 1920, the University of Göttingen offered Max Born its chair of theoretical physics, which had recently been vacated by Peter Debye. Göttingen was an important centre for mathematics, thanks to David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Hermann Minkowski and Carl Runge, but not so much for physics. This would change. As part of his price for coming to Göttingen, Born wanted Franck to head experimental physics there. On 15 November 1920, Franck became Professor of Experimental Physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics, a fully tenured professor ordinarius. He was allowed two assistants, so he brought Hertha Sponer with him from Berlin to fill one of the positions. Pohl, a gifted teacher, headed the First Institute, and handled the lectures. Franck refurbished the laboratory with the latest equipment using funds from his own pocket.
Under Born and Franck, Göttingen was one of the world's great centres for physics between 1920 and 1933. Although they published only three papers together, Born and Franck discussed every one of their papers with each other. Gaining admittance to Franck's laboratory became highly competitive. His doctoral students included Hans Kopfermann, Arthur R. von Hippel, Wilhelm Hanle, Fritz Houtermans, Heinrich Kuhn, , Walter Lochte-Holtgreven and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz. In supervising doctoral candidates, Franck had to ensure that thesis topics were well-defined, and would teach the candidate how to conduct original research, while still staying within the limits of the candidate's ability, the laboratory's equipment and the institute's budget. Under his direction, research was carried out into the structure of atoms and molecules.
In his own research, Franck developed what became known as the Franck–Condon principle, a rule in spectroscopy and quantum chemistry that explains the intensity of vibronic transitions, simultaneous changes in electronic and vibrational energy levels of a molecule due to the absorption or emission of a photon of the appropriate energy. The principle states that during an electronic transition, a change from one vibrational energy level to another will be more likely to happen if the two vibrational wave functions overlap more significantly. The principle has since been applied to a wide variety of related phenomena.
For his work during this time period, Franck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1929.
Exile
This period came to an end when the Nazi Party won power in Germany in an election on 2 March 1933. The following month it enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which provided for the retirement or dismissal of all Jewish civil servants, along with political opponents of the government. As a veteran of the First World War, Franck was exempt, but he submitted his resignation anyway on 17 April 1933. He once commented that science was his God and nature was his religion. He did not require his daughters to attend religious instruction classes at school, and even let them have a decorated tree at Christmas; but he was proud of his Jewish heritage all the same. He was the first academic to resign in protest over the law. Newspapers around the world reported it, but no government or university protested.
Franck assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a brief visit to the United States, where he measured the absorption of light in heavy water with Wood at Johns Hopkins University, he took up a position at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. He needed a new collaborator, so he took on Hilde Levi, whose recent thesis had impressed him. His original intention was to continue his research into the fluorescence of vapours and liquids, but under Bohr's influence they began to take an interest in biological aspects of these reactions, particularly photosynthesis, the process by which plants use light to convert carbon dioxide and water into more organic compounds. Biological processes turned out to be far more complicated than simple reactions in atoms and molecules. He co-authored two papers with Levi on the subject, which he would return to over the following years.
Franck found a position at the Polytekniske Læreanstalt in Copenhagen for Arthur von Hippel, who was now his son in law, having married his daughter Dagmar. He decided to provide financial security for his children by dividing his Nobel Prize money between them. The gold medal itself was entrusted to Niels Bohr for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark on 9 April 1940, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold medal, along with that of Max von Laue in aqua regia to prevent the Germans from taking them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prize medals.
In 1935, Franck moved to the United States, where he had accepted a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. The laboratory there was poorly equipped compared to the one in Göttingen, but he received $10,000 for equipment from the Rockefeller Foundation. A more intractable problem was that the university had no money to hire skilled staff. Franck was concerned about his family members remaining in Germany, and needed money to help them emigrate. He therefore accepted an offer from the University of Chicago, where his work on photosynthesis had attracted interest, in 1938.
Franck's first paper there, co-authored with Edward Teller, was on photochemical processes in crystals. Hans Gaffron became his collaborator. They were joined by Pringsheim, who escaped from Belgium after the German invasion. Franck arranged a position for Pringsheim at his laboratory. Both his daughters and their families moved to the United States, and he was also able to bring out his elderly mother and aunt. He became a naturalised United States citizen on 21 July 1941, so he was not an enemy alien when the United States declared war on Germany on 11 December 1941. His daughters still were, though, so they were restricted from travelling, and could not take care of their mother when she fell ill and died on 10 January 1942, although they were permitted to attend her funeral.
In February 1942, Arthur H. Compton established its Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. As part of the Manhattan Project, its mission was to build nuclear reactors to create plutonium that would be used in atomic bombs. The Metallurgical Laboratory's Chemistry Division was initially headed by Frank Spedding, but he preferred hands on work to administration. Compton then turned to Franck, with some trepidation owing to his German background. Compton later wrote:
In addition to heading the Chemistry Division, Franck was also the chairman of the Metallurgical Laboratory's Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which consisted of himself and Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns and Leó Szilárd. In 1945, Franck warned Henry A. Wallace of their fears that "mankind has learned to unleash atomic power without being ethically and politically prepared to use it wisely." The committee compiled what became known as the Franck Report. Finished on 11 June 1945, it recommended that the atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning. In any event, the Interim Committee decided otherwise.
Later life
Franck married Hertha Sponer in a civil ceremony on 29 June 1946, his first wife, Ingrid, having died in 1942. In his post-war research, he continued to tackle the problem of explaining the mechanism of photosynthesis. Meitner saw no break between his early and later work. She recalled that
In addition to the Nobel Prize. Franck was awarded the Max Planck medal of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in 1951 and the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work on photosynthesis in 1955. He became an honorary citizen of Göttingen in 1953, was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1944, and elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1964. He was also an International Member of the American Philosophical Society.
He died suddenly from a heart attack while visiting Göttingen on 21 May 1964, and was buried in Chicago with his first wife.
In 1967, the University of Chicago named the James Franck Institute after him. A lunar crater has also been named in his honour. His papers are in the University of Chicago Library.
Notes
See also
List of Jewish Nobel laureates
References
Further reading
External links
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck on 9 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session I
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck on 10 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session II
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck on 11 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session III
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck and Hertha Sponer Franck on 12 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session IV
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck and Hertha Sponer Franck on 13 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session V
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck and Hertha Sponer Franck on 14 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives - Session VI
including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1926 Transformation of Kinetic Energy of Free Electrons into Excitation Energy of Atoms by Impacts
1882 births
1964 deaths
Nobel laureates in Physics
German Nobel laureates
Scientists from Hamburg
Experimental physicists
20th-century German physicists
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Foreign Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Jewish American scientists
Jewish physicists
Manhattan Project people
Quantum physicists
Spectroscopists
Winners of the Max Planck Medal
Recipients of the Iron Cross (1914), 1st class
Heidelberg University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
Academic staff of the University of Göttingen
Johns Hopkins University faculty
University of Chicago faculty
German Jewish military personnel of World War I
People educated at the Wilhelm-Gymnasium (Hamburg)
Max Planck Institute directors
Members of the American Philosophical Society
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagaan
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Lagaan
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Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India () is a 2001 Indian Hindi-language epic musical sports drama film written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker. The film was produced by Aamir Khan, who stars alongside debutant Gracy Singh and British actors Rachel Shelley and Paul Blackthorne. Set in 1893, during the late Victorian period of India's colonial British Raj, the film follows the inhabitants of a village in Central India, who, burdened by high taxes and several years of drought, are challenged by an arrogant British Indian Army officer to a game of cricket as a wager to avoid paying the taxes they owe. The villagers face the arduous task of learning a game that is alien to them and play for a victory.
Produced on a budget of , Lagaan was the most expensive Indian film at the time of its release. It faced multiple challenges during production: Khan was initially skeptical to star in a sports film, and later, prospective producers called for budget cuts and script modifications. Eventually, the film would become the maiden project of Aamir Khan Productions, and mark Khan's foray into film production. Gowariker was inspired by aspects of the sports drama Naya Daur (1957) in developing the film. The language featured in the film was based on Awadhi, but was diluted with standard Hindi for modern audiences. Principal photography took place in villages near Bhuj. Nitin Chandrakant Desai served as art director, while Bhanu Athaiya was the costume designer. The original soundtrack was composed by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics written by Javed Akhtar.
Lagaan was theatrically released in India on 15 June 2001, clashing with Gadar: Ek Prem Katha. It received critical acclaim for Gowariker's direction, Khan's performance and the film's anti-imperialist stance. With earnings of during its initial release, the film was the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2001. Lagaan was screened at numerous international film festivals and garnered multiple accolades. It was the third, and as of 2023 the last, Indian film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film after Mother India (1957) and Salaam Bombay! (1988). Lagaan became the most-awarded film at the 47th Filmfare Awards with eight wins, including Best Film, Best Director for Gowariker and Best Actor for Khan. At the 49th National Film Awards, the film won eight awards, including Best Popular Film.
Plot
The farmers of Champaner village in the Central India Agency depend on monsoon rains for their livelihood. A delayed start to the monsoon has them worried and they head to the ruling British cantonment, to ask the King of Champaner, Puran Singh for an exemption from the year's land tax (Lagaan).
A cricket match is underway between British officers. A young farmer named Bhuvan, provokes them by calling cricket a "childish game". Following the match, the local Raja (king) rejects the farmers' plea, but Andrew Russell, the captain of the British regiment, steps in. He offers a wager in exchange for the farmers playing against his team in a match of cricket. Should they win, he would cancel their tax for the next two years. Bhuvan is made to decide for the village, and agrees when Andrew raises the stakes.
The village elders are nervous at the prospect of losing the game and being required to pay triple the usual tax. Bhuvan refuses to apologise to Andrew or retract his decision, so the match must be played. Andrew's sister, Elizabeth, takes pity on the farmers. She offers to teach them the game in the interest of fairness. Bhuvan starts gathering a team of players for the match.
An unruly competitor, named Lakha, is part of Bhuvan's team. He has a grudge with him for their common interest in Gauri, daughter of the village medic. He informs Andrew of his sister's actions. Andrew forbids Elizabeth from leaving the cantonment. He is unaware that she has grown attached to the farmers and is also developing romantic feelings for Bhuvan. She continues sneaking out with the aid of local staff, and even attends a village festival. Gauri, who is secretly in love with Bhuvan, starts to grow envious of her.
The match-day dawns and the ground fills with spectators from neighbouring villages. The British team bat first (see also: Rules of cricket). The farmers must score one run more than the British before the match ends in three days. Smith and Burton begin well, with Smith getting a reprieve due to a Deva no-ball. However, the farmers fight back with Bhura running Smith out and Goli bowling out Burton. Andrew and Brooks bat well and end the day at 182/2. The farmers find out about Lakha's betrayal and he is almost killed, before Bhuvan saves him. Lakha takes a diving catch to dismiss Brooks on the second day. Their inexperience shows, however, as their batsmen start getting dismissed early on while playing rashly. Bhuvan steadies the innings and takes the match into the third day. On the final morning, the farmers must achieve the score with weak batsmen remaining. Bhuvan plays sensibly, and the match enters the last over. Kachra, the striking player, scores one run off the last ball, but it is not enough to win. The British field umpire signals a no-ball (illegal delivery), causing it to be replayed. Bhuvan scores six runs off the next ball and wins the match for the farmers.
Elizabeth rushes to the grounds to find Bhuvan. She is heartbroken when she sees him tightly embracing Gauri, and returns to the cantonment. In the next few weeks, the British Empire orders disbandment of the regiment for the humiliation caused by losing to commoners. The tax collection is cancelled for three years, and Andrew is relocated to Central Africa for his improper management of the Treasury's funds. As her caravan departs, Elizabeth steps out to meet the villagers for the last time. Bhuvan remains unaware of her feelings for him, but thanks her for her help. She bids the villagers farewell and returns to England, choosing to remain unmarried, while Bhuvan marries Gauri in a grand ceremony in the village.
Cast
Aamir Khan as Bhuvan Latha (captain and all-rounder)
Gracy Singh as Gauri
Rachel Shelley as Elizabeth Russell
Paul Blackthorne as Captain Andrew Russell
Suhasini Mulay as Yashoda Maa, Bhuvan's mother
Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Raja Puran Singh Chawla
Rajendra Gupta as Mukhiya Ji
Raghubir Yadav as Bhura (fielder)
Rajesh Vivek as Guran (all-rounder)
Raj Zutshi as Ismail (batsman)
Pradeep Rawat as Deva Singh Sodhi (all-rounder)
Akhilendra Mishra as Arjan (batsman), the blacksmith
Daya Shankar Pandey as Goli (seamer), the man with the largest piece of land
Shrivallabh Vyas as Ishwar (wicket-keeper), the vaidya (doctor) in the village and Gauri's father
Yashpal Sharma as Lakha (batsman), the woodcutter
Amin Hajee as Bagha (batsman), the mute drummer
Aditya Lakhia as Kachra (spinner)
Javed Khan as Ram Singh, Indian who works with British and helps Elizabeth in translating villagers language
A. K. Hangal as Shambu Kaka
Amin Gazi as Tipu
John Rowe as Colonel Boyer
David Gant as Major Warren
Thor Halland as Captain Roberts
Jeremy Child as Major Cotton
Chris England as Lt Yardley, an English fast bowler. England also wrote a book about his experience making the film titled Balham to Bollywood
Howard Lee as Lt Burton, English wicketkeeper batsman
Ben Nealon as Lt Patrick Smith, Deputy and English all-rounder
Simon Holmes as Lt Brookes, an English batsman
Ray Eves as Lt Willis, an English fast bowler
Jon House as Lt North, an English batsman
Neil Patrick as Lt Harrisson, an English all-rounder
Jamie Whitby Coles as Lt Wesson, an English all-rounder
Barry Hart as Lt Benson, an English spinner
Alex Shirtclliff as Lt Flynn, an English batsman
Production
Development
Lagaan was inspired by Naya Daur (1957), a sports drama film directed by B. R. Chopra, written by Akhtar Mirza and Kamil Rashid, and starring Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala and Ajit Khan.
Director Gowariker has stated that it was almost impossible to make Lagaan. He went to Khan, who agreed to participate after hearing the detailed script. Khan had initially rejected the idea of a "sporty" film, but was "himself in tears" upon hearing the full dialogued script. Even after securing Khan, Gowariker had trouble finding a producer. Producers who showed interest in the script wanted budget cuts as well as script modifications. Eventually, Khan agreed to Gowariker's suggestion that he would produce the film. Khan corroborated this by saying that the faith he had in Gowariker, the story and script of the film, and the opportunity of starting his own production company inspired him to produce Lagaan. He also said that by being a producer himself, he was able to give greater creative freedom to Gowariker. He cited an example:
"If the director tells the producer that he wants 50 camels, the latter will probably say, 'Why not 25? Can't you manage with 25 camels?' Whereas, if he is telling me the same thing... I will not waste time asking him questions because I am also creatively aware why he needs them."
Jhamu Sughand co-produced the film because he liked the emotional and patriotic story. Lagaan was made on a then-unprecedented budget of (), the highest for an Indian film of the time.
Casting
Gowariker first thought of having Shah Rukh Khan, Bobby Deol, Hrithik Roshan and Abhishek Bachchan for the role of Bhuvan. After Bachchan chose to enter cinema with J. P. Dutta's Refugee (2000), Khan was approached with the idea.
Several actresses had offered to act in the film, but Khan needed someone who matched the description of the character given in the script. After considering Rani Mukerji who did not have dates to accommodate the film, Sonali Bendre, Nandita Das, Shamita Shetty and Ameesha Patel were approached for the role, Gowariker selected Singh for the female lead because he was convinced that she was a good actress and dancer and resembled actress Vyjayanthimala. Singh, a newcomer, devoted all her time to the film. Since the script also demanded a British cast, Gowariker and Khan hired Danielle Roffe as one of the casting directors. After Danielle and Gowariker screen-tested many, Shelley and Blackthorne were chosen for the prime roles. Overall, the film cast 15 foreign actors.
Raghubir Yadav played the role of the legendary Haji Nasruddin in the teleplay Mullah Nasiruddin and has given many memorable performances such as Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne. Yadav was selected for the role of Bhura, a poultry farmer, based on his performance in Earth (1998). He had undergone an appendectomy operation in-between the filming schedule and returned to complete some of his scenes. Rajesh Vivek, who played the fortune teller Guran, was spotted by Gowariker in the film Junoon (1978). His liking for cricket helped him in his role. Raj Zutshi friendship with Khan and association in several films brought him the role of Ismail the potter after auditions. Pradeep Rawat's association with Khan in Sarfarosh (1999) brought him the role of Deva, a Sikh ex-sepoy, which was initially intended for Mukesh Rishi. Rawat claimed that it was the highest ever compensation he received in his career. Daya Shankar Pandey, who preferred the role of Kachra, was known to Khan and Gowariker through previous films (Pehla Nasha (1993), Baazi (1995) and Ghulam (1998)). Pandey credited Gowariker for his acting in the film as Goli, saying that Gowariker and he would discuss the required emotions and expressions before shooting.
Yashpal Sharma was chosen by Gowariker for the role of Lakha, the woodcutter, after his portrayal in Samar (1999). He said it was a good experience working with Khan and Gowariker during the film. Amin Hajee earlier worked in a film with Gowariker. The friendly association brought Gowariker to him with the script, which he liked, and thereafter he successfully auditioned for his role of Bagha, a mute drummer. His knowledge of mute people and some assistance from a music band helped him better prepare for his role. Gowariker, who believed that Amin was like Sylvester Stallone, would refer to him as Stallone during filming. Aditya Lakhia's association with Gowariker in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1993) and Pehla Nasha (1993) brought him the role of Kachra, the untouchable. He read the book Everybody Loves a Good Drought by P. Sainath to better understand and portray his character.
Pre-production
One of the first members to join the production team was Nitin Chandrakant Desai, the art director, with whom Gowariker set out for extensive location hunt throughout India, to find the setting for the fictional town of Champaner, in late 1998. After searching through Rajasthan, Nasik, UP, they zeroed in on an ancient village near Bhuj, located in Gujarat's Kutch district, by May 1999, where the film was primarily shot.
The script demanded a dry location: an agricultural village where it had not rained in several years. To depict the 1890s era, the crew also required a village which lacked electricity, communication and automobiles. Kutch faced the same problems at that time and hence the village of Kunariya, located a few miles away from Bhuj, was chosen. During the filming of Lagaan, it did not rain at all in the region. However, a week after the shoot finished, it rained heavily bringing relief to Bhuj, which had a lean monsoon the previous year. The typical old Kutch hamlet was built by the local people four months before the arrival of the crew. The 2001 Gujarat earthquake devastated this region and displaced many locals. The crew, including the English, contributed to their cause by donating , with further contributions during the year.
Avadhi, which is a dialect of Hindi, is primarily from a region in Uttar Pradesh. It was chosen to give the feel of the language spoken during that era. However, the language was diluted, and modern viewers can understand it. The dialogues, which were a combination of three dialects (Avadhi, Bhojpuri and Braj Bhasha) were penned by Hindi writer K. P. Saxena.
Bhanu Athaiya, who won an Oscar for her work in Gandhi (1982), was the costume designer for the film. With a large number of extras, it was difficult for her to make enough costumes. She spent a lot of time researching to lend authenticity to the characters.
Filming
The film took approximately a year to plan, which included ten months for production and one month for the development of Khan's character, which the first-time producer found tiring. Khan obtained a crew of about 300 people for six months. Due to the lack of comfortable hotels in Bhuj, he hired a newly constructed apartment and furnished it completely for the crew. Security was set up and a special housekeeping team was brought to take care of the crew's needs. Most of the 19th century tools and equipment depicted in the film were lent to the crew by the local villagers. Initially, they did not want to part with their equipment, but after much coaxing, they gave in. They then travelled to different parts of the country to collect the musical instruments used in that day and era.
During the shooting, Gowariker suffered from a slipped disc and had to rest for 30 days. During this period, he had his bed next to the monitor and continued with his work.
The filming schedule spanned the winter and summer, commencing in early January and finishing in mid-June. This was physically challenging for many, with the temperatures ranging from . The actors had to drink frequently and sit in the shade. The schedule was strict. The day began at 6 am, changing into costumes and getting onto the actors' bus, which took them to the sets in Kanuria. The actors, including Khan, all travelled on the same bus. If anyone missed it, it was up to them to reach the sets. One day, Khan was late and missed the actors' bus. That day, his wife Reena, the executive producer, reprimanded him for being late. She told him he had to set an example for the rest of the crew. "If he started coming late, how could she tell the others to come on time?" While on the sets, the actors were given call sheets with the day's timetable such as breakfast, hairstyling, make-up, costumes, etc.
Music
Release
Before its worldwide release, Khan kept a promise to screen the film to the locals of Bhuj. Lagaan clashed with Anil Sharma's Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, starring Sunny Deol and Ameesha Patel, at the box-office. The film made it to the UK Top 10 after its commercial release. It was the first Indian film to have a nationwide release in China and had its dubbed version released in Italy. With favorable reviews from the French press, Lagaan premiered in Paris on 26 June 2002 and continued to have an unprecedented nine weeks of screening with over 45,000 people watching. It was released in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Africa and the Middle East with respective vernacular subtitles. The film took a cumulative of $2.5 million at the international box-office and at the domestic box-office.
In 2001, Lagaan had a world premiere at the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) weekend in Sun City, South Africa. The Locarno International Film Festival authorities published the rules of cricket before the film was screened to a crowd which reportedly danced to its soundtrack in the aisles. Lagaan was shown 4 times due to public demand as against the usual norm of showcasing films once at the festival. It subsequently won the Prix du Public Award at the festival. After the film's publicity in Locarno, the director, Gowariker said that distributors from Switzerland, Italy, France, Netherlands, North Africa, Finland and Germany were wanting to purchase the distribution rights. Special screenings were held in Russia, where people were keen to watch the film after its Oscar nomination.
Apart from these screenings, it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Cairo International Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. The film is available on Netflix.
Home media
There were two releases for the DVD. The first, as a 2-DVD set, was released on 27 May 2002 in limited regions. It contained subtitles in Arabic, English, Hebrew, Hindi, Turkish and several European languages. It is available in 16:9 Anamorphic widescreen, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, progressive 24 frame/s, widescreen and NTSC format. It carried an additional fifteen minutes of deleted scenes, filmographies and trailers.
The second was released as anniversary edition 3-disc DVD box after 6 years of the theatrical release. This also included Chale Chalo which was a documentary on the making of Lagaan, a curtain-raiser on the making of the soundtrack, deleted scenes, trailers, along with other collectibles such as 11 collector cards, a collectible Lagaan coin embossed with the character of Bhuvan, a 35 mm CinemaScope filmstrip hand-cut from the film's filmstrip were bundled with the film. After its release, it became the highest-selling DVD in India, beating Sholay (1975). Chale Chalo – The Lunacy of Film Making, won the National Film Award for Best Exploration/Adventure Film.
A comic book, Lagaan: The Story, along with 2 colouring books, a mask book and a cricket board game were subsequently released to the commercial market. The comic book, available in English and Hindi, was targeted at children between the ages of 6 and 14. At the book's launch, Aamir Khan said that they were keen to turn the film into a comic strip during the pre-production phase itself.
In March 2002, a book titled The Spirit of Lagaan – The Extraordinary Story of the Creators of a Classic was published. It covers the making of the film, describing in detail the setbacks and obstacles that the crew faced while developing the film from concept to its release.
Reception
Box office
The film initially grossed worldwide in 2001. This made it the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2001, behind Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha.
Domestically, Lagaan grossed in India. Its domestic net income was , equivalent to () when adjusted for inflation.
With an overseas gross of 10.84 crore (US$2.2 million) in 2001, it was the year's second highest-grossing Indian film overseas, preceded only by Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.... Lagaans overseas gross included £600,000 in the United Kingdom, US$910,000 in the United States and Canada, and US$180,000 in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
In China, where the film released on 16 May 2003, it grossed ¥3million, equivalent to 1.71crore (US$362,500).
Including the film's China collections, the film's total worldwide gross was (). At a ticket inflation rate of 5.5 times in 2016, the film's total gross is equivalent to approximately () when adjusted for inflation in 2016.
Critical reception
Lagaan was met with critical acclaim.
Sudish Kamath of The Hindu suggested that "the movie is not just a story. It is an experience. An experience of watching something that puts life into you, that puts a cheer on your face, however depressed you might be." The Times of India wrote, "Lagaan has all the attractions of big-sounding A. R. Rahman songs, excellent performances by Aamir Khan... and a successful debut for pretty Gracy Singh. In addition, there is the celebrated David vs. Goliath cricket match, which has the audiences screaming and clapping."
Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars and wrote, "Lagaan is an enormously entertaining movie, like nothing we've ever seen before, and yet completely familiar... At the same time, it's a memory of the films we all grew up on, with clearly-defined villains and heroes, a love-triangle, and even a comic character who saves the day. Lagaan is a well-crafted, hugely entertaining epic that has the spice of a foreign culture." Derek Elley of Variety suggested that it "could be the trigger for Bollywood's long-awaited crossover to non-ethnic markets". Somni Sengupta of The New York Times, described it as "a carnivalesque genre packed with romance, swordplay and improbable song-and-dance routines". Dave Kehr, another New York Times film critic, called Lagaan "a movie that knows its business -- pleasing a broad, popular audience -- and goes about it with savvy professionalism and genuine flair." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times argued that the film is "an affectionate homage to a popular genre that raises it to the level of an art film with fully drawn characters, a serious underlying theme, and a sophisticated style and point of view."
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described the film as "a lavish epic, a gorgeous love story, and a rollicking adventure yarn. Larger than life and outrageously enjoyable, it's got a dash of Spaghetti Western, a hint of Kurosawa, with a bracing shot of Kipling." Kuljinder Singh of the BBC stated that "Lagaan is anything but standard Bollywood fodder, and is the first must-see of the Indian summer. A movie that will have you laughing and crying, but leaving with a smile."
Lagaan was listed as #14 on Channel 4s "50 Films To See Before You Die" and was the only Indian film to be listed. The film was also well-received in China, where its themes resonated with Chinese audiences. It was ranked #55 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In 2011, John Nugent of the Trenton Independent called the film "a masterpiece ... and what better way to learn a bit about India's colonial experience! History and great entertainment, all rolled into one (albeit long) classic film."
Awards
Khan and Gowariker went to Los Angeles to generate publicity for the Academy Awards. Khan said, "We just started showing it to whoever we could, even the hotel staff." About India's official entry to the 2002 Oscars, The Daily Telegraph wrote, "A Bollywood film that portrays the British in India as ruthless sadists and Mafia-style crooks has been chosen as Delhi's official entry to the Academy Awards." It added that the film was expected to win the nomination.
On 12 February 2002, Lagaan was nominated for the best foreign language film at the Academy Award nominations ceremony. After the nomination, Khan reacted by saying, "To see the name of the film and actually hear it being nominated was very satisfying". Post-nomination reactions poured in from several parts of the world. USA Today wrote "Hooray for Bollywood, and India's Lagaan". With Sony Pictures Classics distributing the film and Oscar-winning director Baz Luhrmann praising it, Lagaan had a chance to win. The BBC commented that the nomination raised Bollywood hopes that Indian films would become more popular in the US. In India, the nomination was celebrated with news reports about a win bringing in "a great boost for the Indian film industry" and "a Bharat Ratna for Aamir Khan and the status of a 'national film' for Lagaan".
When Lagaan lost the award to the Bosnian film No Man's Land, there was disappointment in India. Khan said, "Certainly we were disappointed. But the thing that really kept us in our spirits was that the entire country was behind us." Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt criticised the "American film industry" as "insular and the foreign category awards were given just for the sake of it." Gowariker added that "Americans must learn to like our films".
The film won a number of awards at Indian award ceremonies including eight National Film Awards, eight Filmfare Awards, eight Screen Awards and 10 IIFA Awards. Apart from these major awards, it also won awards at other national and international ceremonies.
See also
List of Asian historical drama films
References
Further reading
Bhatkal, Satyajit (March 2002). The spirit of Lagaan. Mumbai: Popular Prakshan. pp. 243. .
External links
Lagaan at Bollywood Hungama
2000s Hindi-language films
2000s English-language films
2000s historical drama films
2001 films
Cricket films
Films about cricket in India
English-language Indian films
Films directed by Ashutosh Gowariker
Films scored by A. R. Rahman
Films set in 1893
Films set in the British Raj
Films set in Gujarat
Films shot in Gujarat
History of India on film
Indian historical drama films
Indian sports drama films
Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment National Film Award winners
Films whose production designer won the Best Production Design National Film Award
Films that won the Best Audiography National Film Award
Films that won the Best Costume Design National Film Award
Films featuring a Best Choreography National Film Award-winning choreography
2000s sports drama films
2001 drama films
Sony Pictures Classics films
Films about the caste system in India
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20I%2C%20Prince%20of%20Cond%C3%A9
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Louis I, Prince of Condé
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Louis I de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (7 May 1530 – 13 March 1569) was a prominent Huguenot leader and general, the founder of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Coming from a position of relative political unimportance during the reign of Henri II, Condé's support for the Huguenots, along with his leading role in the conspiracy of Amboise and its aftermath, pushed him to the centre of French politics. Arrested during the reign of Francis II then released upon the latter's premature death, he would lead the Huguenot forces in the first three civil wars of the French Wars of Religion before being executed after his defeat at the Battle of Jarnac in 1569.
Early life
Born in Vendôme, he was the fifth son of Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme. His mother was Françoise d'Alençon, the eldest daughter of René, Duke of Alençon, and Margaret of Lorraine. His older brother Antoine de Bourbon married Jeanne d'Albret (Queen of Navarre). Their son, Condé's nephew, became Henry IV of France. Condé's cousin through his father (who was the brother of Antoinette de Bourbon) was Mary of Guise.
Reigns of Henri II and Francis II
Reign of Henri II
As a soldier in the French army, Condé fought at the Siege of Metz in 1552 where Francis, Duke of Guise successfully defended the city from the forces of Emperor Charles V. He, and his brother Enghien were responsible for the section of walls from Saint-Thibaut gate to the river Seille. He would also fight at the disastrous Battle of St. Quentin in 1557. Despite his military participation, neither he nor his brother would hold significant office during the reign of Henri, the king choosing instead to lavish it on his favourites Anne de Montmorency and Francis, Duke of Guise leaving Condé comparatively poor.
Reign of Francis II
Death of Henri
The sudden death of Henri II changed the landscape of French politics overnight, and Condé was present at his brother's negotiations with the House of Montmorency and House of Bourbon-Montpensier as they sought to negotiate who would be the powerbroker for the young king. Ultimately the family would be outmanoeuvred by the Guise, who bought Condé off with a promise that he would receive the governorship of Picardy which his family claimed as a hereditary right, and a cash gift of 70,000 livres. Despite this bribe, opposition would grow to the new Guise administration from various factions, and Condé would find himself drawn to it. When his brother declined the Amboise conspirators' request for him to be their prince of the blood figurehead, they turned to Condé's weaker claim as a junior prince of the blood, hoping he would lead them. As rumours of a conspiracy began to reach their ears, the Guise quickly came to suspect Condé's involvement, and his governorship of Picardy failed to materialise.
Conspiracy of Amboise
In February the Guise finally had the proof of conspiracy they'd been looking for, from a conspirator who had got cold feet, and they moved the court to the secure castle of Amboise, and summoned the senior nobility to the castle including Condé, so that they might aid in the defence. As the conspirators were crushed over the following days, Condé could do little but watch from the battlements. Eager to avoid suspicion, Condé lingered at the court in the following days, angrily denouncing the rumours of his involvement that were swirling as the product of 'scum.' He followed this up by calling anyone who would accuse him a liar, a serious rebuke in aristocratic circles, and offering to duel anyone who would dare accuse him to his face. While convinced of his guilt, the duke of Guise was conscious for the moment he lacked the necessary evidence, and assured Condé that no one doubted his honour. During his reassurance, his brother, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine studiously looked at the floor. On 18 April, while Condé was attending the King's levée, the Guise had his apartments raided for evidence, but, finding nothing, made no move against him. Very much aware of how much suspicion he was under, Condé took the opportunity to depart from court.
Lyon, arrest, release
Despite the failure of the attempt to seize the king at Amboise, disorder continued throughout the kingdom, as independent armies raised in support of the effort marauded in a guerrilla war. Condé continued to intrigue, planning to send troops to Lyon to seize the city and use it as a nucleus of opposition to the Guise. The uprising in Lyon was however discovered before it could begin, and the Guise suspicions of Condé and Navarre's involvement was seemingly confirmed when the Guise captured an agent of Condé's with papers that implicated him. Furious, and at last holding firm evidence, the brothers were invited to attend the upcoming Assembly of Notables. Conscious that they would certainly be arrested if they came, Navarre and Condé remained in the family powerbase of Vendôme. Hoping to isolate the Bourbon-Vendôme from their prince of the blood cousins, the Guise created two super-governorships controlling much of the country, giving one to Charles, Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon and the other to Louis, Duke of Montpensier. They then began assembling an army of 40000, warning the renegade brothers of what was to come if they did not present themselves at court for the Estates General of 1560-1. Possessing only 6000 foot soldiers between them, the two travelled north without a fight, and Condé was promptly arrested on 31 October.
The Guise set about arranging a trial for Condé on the charge of treason. Condé tried various methods to filibuster the proceedings, refusing to recognise the authority of his judges and demanding a trial by his peers. Despite this, he would be found guilty, and given an indeterminate prison sentence likely at the dungeons of Loches. Condé would not however languish in prison long, and soon the death of the young Francis II would sever the Guise's link to political authority, opening the way for a regency government under Catherine de Medici. Conscious that the estates might prefer Navarre's rights to the regency, Catherine used the leverage of Condé's imprisonment to buy him off, promising to release him and annul his sentence in return for his support of her governance.
Reign of Charles IX
Restoration to favour
Condé was released from his captivity 15 days after the death of Francis II, on 20 December 1560. Navarre argued virulently on his behalf in council, making coded implications that revolt would break out if his brother was not restored to favour. Catherine managed to get him to withdraw his threat, and he submitted his recognition of her regency, excusing himself as only wishing to protect his brother from the charges of the Guise. Condé meanwhile, on parole, was waiting up in Picardy for news related to his case, keenly desiring revenge for his prosecution. Catherine oversaw the reconciliation of Navarre and Guise, and informed them that their personal reconciliation would be valid for their whole families. This accomplished, Catherine invited Condé to court. Condé set off with a force of 600 horse, however he was ordered by Catherine to disperse his retinue and come with no more than 25 horse. He arrived at Fontainebleau on the evening of 9 March. Not quite appreciating his situation, he immediately caused an incident by saying he would refuse to meet with the king until the duke of Guise was dismissed from his presence. Eventually he agreed to meet with them on the condition he need not say anything to Guise. On 13 March Condé swore in front of the court that he had never conspired against the king and the council formally absolved him, with an ordinance by Charles denoting this fact to be registered in Parlement.
The court hoped this would be sufficient for Condé, however he remained curt with Guise, and sought a further validation of his innocence, a formal judgement from the Parlement that had convicted him, and a denunciation of his accusers. On 17 March he left Fontainebleau still threatening vengeance on his accusers and proceeded to Paris. On 1 April with a large retinue of 500 he attended a Calvinist service in the apartments of Coligny. The Parlement was consumed in its opposition to the Ordinance of Orléans and the Edict of 19 April and did not come to address the matter of Condé's guilt until 13 June, when, under pressure, it declared his innocence. Catherine used the occasion to force the Duke of Guise and Condé to reconcile publicly.
First War of Religion
Road to civil war
The religious direction of Catherine's government increasingly isolated it among the grandees of the kingdom, with first Guise and Montmorency alienating themselves from the crown and departing court, and then Navarre entering opposition after the publishing of the landmark Edict of January. In this tense political moment, the duke of Guise, while travelling back to Paris at the request of Navarre to aid in his opposition, oversaw a massacre at Wassy. Continuing on to Paris with his retinue of 1000 men he crossed paths with Condé, accompanied by a retinue of 500, on his way back from a service in the suburbs. Catherine, conscious of the dangers of both being in the city, and angry at Guise for his troops conduct at Wassy, ordered both to vacate the city, but only Condé complied.
While Catherine appealed to Condé for support he departed to Orléans, allowing Guise to take possession of the young king and regent. There, he seized the city on 2 April, and issued a manifesto in which he denounced the "cruel and horrible carnage wrought at Vassy, in the presence of M. de Guise". Several days later the Calvinist synod in the city proclaimed him the protector of all churches in France.
Civil war
Condé's strategy was to seize strategic towns across France, and leverage them for a favourable settlement. To this end local Huguenots across France were encouraged to rise up, and successfully did so in Tours, Rouen, Montpellier and Blois among other cities. Condé failed to seize on the initial momentum however, and was in Orléans in May when Catherine sent François de Scépeaux to negotiate with him, offering the deprival of Guise and Montmorency of their offices and the sole command of the French army by his brother. Condé, confident in his position, rejected these terms, demanding instead full religious freedom for Calvinists. Catherine was unwilling to entertain these terms and withdrew the marshals.
When in June the royal army was at last assembled, it marched on Orléans, seeking to pin Condé's forces in the city. Condé, eager to avoid a siege, dispersed his forces into the surrounding country, ending his threat to the city of Paris. With a free hand, the royal army subdued first Bourges, and then upon hearing of Condé's negotiations with Elizabeth I in the Treaty of Hampton Court exchanging Le Havre for military support, moved on Rouen to stop the English linking with Condé. While his brother Navarre would be killed at the siege, the city would be subdued. In an attempt to reduce his numerical inferiority, mercenaries were recruited in Germany and brought into France to supplement Condé's forces. The royal command tasked Marshal Saint André with intercepting them before a linkup was established, he was however unable to do so and, troops in hand Condé began a march on Paris.
His drive on the city would be frustrated, and he was brought to battle as he retreated north at the Battle of Dreux. Condé led the Huguenot forces throughout much of the battle, however during a retreat of his cavalry he was captured, and after his forces lost the battle, he would be the Duke of Guise's captive. Guise, magnanimous in victory, offered even his bed to the captive prince. However with the death of the duke, assassinated as he tried to subdue Orléans, the crown which had seemed on the precipice of total victory would lose all momentum. Condé would be summoned, along with Montmorency, by Catherine to negotiate a peace. The Edict of Amboise would confirm a degree of toleration, though more restricted than the sweeping Edict of Saint-Germain in 1562. It largely favoured the aristocratic elements of the Huguenot party, with provisions allowing freedom of worship on the estates of the nobility.
Uneasy peace
Removing the English
With the end of the civil war, the matter of the English occupation of Le Havre and Dieppe became a concern for the crown. Catherine decided that a combined army retaking these cities would help heal the wounds of the previous year. While Coligny and Francois de Coligny d'Andelot refused to participate against their former ally, Condé joined in the crown's effort. The forces under the command of Condé, Charles de Cossé, Count of Brissac and other leaders brought the cities back into submission by August 1563.
Feud
Meanwhile a feud had been developing between the Guise and Montmorency family, the former of whom blamed Montmorency's nephew Coligny for the assassination of the duke of Guise, the latter of whom had brought his nephew under his protection. Seeking advantage in this quarrel the Cardinal of Lorraine reached out to Condé aiming to build a non-confessional basis of support. This was buoyed by the death of his wife in July 1564, which severed his kinship ties to the Montmorency. The two had a friendly meeting at Soissons where the Cardinal offered him a Guise princess as a new wife. Failing in this, but assured of his goodwill, the cardinal planned to enter Paris in force, his retinue clashing with those of the Montmorency on the streets of Paris in January 1565. Coming out the worse, the Cardinal and the young Henri Guise were forced to flee. Turning to the war of words the Guise proclaimed to Condė and the other princes that they were the protectors of men of true rank, against the upstart house of Montmorency.
Surprise of Meaux
Condé would however drift away from the Guise in the coming years, as they abandoned their non-religious approach and began championing the Catholic ultras in pursuit of their vendetta. In particular modifications to the Edict of Amboise which reduced its terms, and a meeting between Catherine and the Duke of Alba were met with disquiet by Condé and Coligny. When a further modification was made to the edict of Amboise in 1567, expanding the ban on Protestantism in Paris to the Ile de France region, at the same time as Alba began marching north to the Netherlands, Condé got into a shouting match with the king, and then decided to withdraw from court. Writing from his estates he protested to Catherine about the hiring of Swiss mercenaries to protect France from Alba's troops, seeing them as a tool of Huguenot extermination. Catherine tried to reassure him and invite him back to court but he was uninterested.
Away from the centre of power, the leading Huguenot nobility began plotting what course of action to take, meeting at Coligny's chateau to discuss details. Condé, Coligny and the Count of Montgomery were in attendance among others. Eventually it was settled on to kidnap the king and the queen mother at Meaux, and assassinate members of the court who opposed them, specifically the Cardinal of Lorraine. The conspiracy was a better kept secret than that of Amboise, and when they struck on 28 September the court was caught off guard. It was able to recover however and quickly make for Paris; Condé, surprised by the speed of its withdrawal, gave pursuit with only 1/3 of the forces he had intended to assemble. He charged three times, but the phalanxes of Swiss mercenaries were able to repel him and the court made it to Paris.
Second civil war
Civil war
With their coup a failure, Condé and the other leading plotters decided to besiege Paris, hoping to starve the king out before the crown could assemble the full force of its army against them. Much as with the first civil war, they were aided by subsidiary risings across France, which took the cities of Orléans, Valence and Auxerre among others. Condé negotiated aggressively with those sent out to meet him, demanding a free exercise of religion, the expulsion of Italian financiers and the repeal of all taxes created since the time of Louis XII. The crown rejected these demands, and slowly began building up its forces, and seizing bridges. Misjudging his situation, Condé sent off subsidiary forces to take nearby towns, leaving his encirclement of Paris thin. This done, Montmorency struck out from Paris in November, besting Condé in the bloody battle of Saint-Denis though dying on the field himself. Condé withdrew from Paris, making his way east, conscious that his position was critical, but that the death of Montmorency had bought him some time while the royal army reorganised. Having successfully linked up with mercenaries and other Huguenot armies in the country, he turned back, and decided to besiege Chartres seeing it as a rich target to pay his restless troops. The siege dragged on, in part due to Condé's poor placement of the cannons, but before it could conclude, negotiations between the two sides brought a truce on 13 March. Peace was signed at Longjumeau on 23 March 1568.
Short peace
The Peace of Longjumeau largely represented a repeat of the terms agreed in Amboise several years prior. It would be uneasy, neither side holding much faith in its survival. The balance at court shifted from the moderates who had negotiated the peace, towards hardliners who desired its overturning. Meanwhile Condé and the Huguenot leadership disregarded the prohibition on foreign alliances, coming to terms with Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands to aid each other against 'wicked counsel'.
By September Lorraine had a majority on the council for the overturning of the peace, eager to take up Pius V offer of financial assistance in return for a war on heresy. Condé, Coligny and the Huguenot leadership, having been warned of a plan to arrest them by Gaspard de Saulx, sieur de Tavannes fled from the court southwards, making their way to the safe haven of La Rochelle where they took arms to defend themselves. On 28 September the Edict of Saint-Maur revoked Longjumeau and declared Catholicism the only religion of France. On 6 October the Duke of Anjou took the field.
Third civil war
Not having the benefit of uprisings in northern cities, Condé and Coligny would reorientate the axis of the third civil war to a defence of the Huguenot heartlands in the south. His forces, and those of Tavannes, circled Loudun in late 1568, seeking to find good ground to attack the other. Eventually the Crown's forces broke off to winter, and the Huguenot forces, after trying and failing to seize Saumur likewise settled into camp. In March 1569, hearing reports that Condé intended to lunge south and seize Cognac, Tavannes decided to take advantage, crossing the Charente on the night of 12 March, and coming upon the Huguenot rear. The royal vanguard, under Montpensier, fell upon the Huguenot rear-guard under Condé, and he was unhorsed. Though unarmed and under guard, there would be no gentlemanly capture for him this time and he was executed on the duke of Anjou's orders. While the majority of the Huguenot army got away unscathed, Condé's corpse would be paraded through Jarnac on the back of a donkey to the jeers of the populace.
Marriage and children
Condé married in 1551, to Eléanor de Roucy de Roye (1536–1564), heiress of Charles de Roye. She brought as her dowry the château and small town of Conti-sur-Selles, southwest of Amiens, which would pass to their third son, progenitor of the princes de Conti. They had:
Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé
Marguerite de Bourbon b. 8 Nov 1556
Charles de Bourbon b. 3 Nov 1557
François de Bourbon, Prince of Conti b. 19 Aug 1558
Charles de Bourbon, Cardinal, Archbishop of Rouen, b. 30 Mar 1562
Louis de Bourbon b. 30 Mar 1562
Madeleine de Bourbon b. 7 Oct 1563
Catherine de Bourbon b. 1564
On 8 November 1565, a widower, he married Francoise d'Orleans, Mademoiselle de Longueville, they had:
Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons b. 3 Nov 1566, Nogent le Rotrou
Louis de Bourbon b. 1567
Benjamin de Bourbon b. 1569
He allegedly fathered a son by his mistress Isabelle de Limeuil, who served as Maid of Honour to Catherine de' Medici and was a member of her notorious group of female spies known at the French court as the "Flying Squadron". He vigorously denied paternity much to Isabelle's chagrin.His son, Henri, also became a Huguenot general and fought in the later wars of religion.
Depiction in media
Louis Condé is played by British actor Sean Teale in the TV show Reign. He has an affair with Mary, Queen of Scots and leads a coup against the monarchy.
See also
Bourbon family tree
Château de Condé
Notes
References
Sources
1530 births
1569 deaths
People from Vendôme
French generals
French people of the French Wars of Religion
House of Bourbon-Condé
Princes of France (Bourbon)
Princes of Condé
Dukes of Enghien
Counts of Soissons
Huguenots
French military personnel killed in action
Court of Charles IX of France
Converts to Calvinism from Roman Catholicism
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne%20de%20Montmorency%2C%201st%20Duke%20of%20Montmorency
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Anne de Montmorency, 1st Duke of Montmorency
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Anne de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency (–12 November 1567) was a French noble, governor, royal favourite and Constable of France during the mid to late Italian Wars and early French Wars of Religion. He served under five French kings (Louis XII, François I, Henri II, François II and Charles IX). He began his career in the latter Italian Wars of Louis XII, seeing service at Ravenna. When François, his childhood friend, ascended to the throne in 1515 he advanced as governor of the Bastille and Novara, then in 1522 was made a Marshal of France. He fought at the French defeat at La Bicocca in that year, and after assisting in rebuffing the invasion of Constable Bourbon he was captured at the disastrous Battle of Pavia. Quickly freed he worked to free first the king and then the king's sons. In 1526 he was made Grand Maître (Grandmaster), granting him authority over the kings household, he was also made governor of Languedoc. He aided in the marriage negotiations for the king's son the duc d'Orléans to Catherine de Medici in 1533. In the mid 1530s he found himself opposed to the war party at court led by Admiral Chabot and therefore retired. He returned to the fore after the Holy Roman Emperor invaded Provence, leading the royal effort that foiled his invasion, and leading the counter-attack. In 1538 he was rewarded by being made Constable of France, this made him the supreme authority over the French military. For the next two years he led the efforts to secure Milano for France through negotiation with the Emperor, however this proved a failure and Montmorency was disgraced, retiring from court in 1541.
He spent the next several years at his estates, relieved of the exercise and incomes of his charges, and removed as governor of Languedoc. He allied with the dauphin, the future Henri II during this time in his rivalry with the king's third son. Upon the dauphins ascent in 1547 Montmorency was recalled from his exile and restored to all his offices, with his enemies disgraced. He now found himself opposed at court by the king's mistress Diane de Poitiers and her allies the duc de Guise and Cardinal de Lorraine. He led the crushing of the gabelle revolt of 1548 and then the effort to reconquer Boulogne from the English which was accomplished by negotiated settlement. In 1551 he was elevated from a baron to the first duc de Montmorency. In 1552 he led the royal campaign to seize the Three Bishoprics from the Holy Roman Empire, though was overshadowed by the glory Guise attained in the defence of Metz. Montmorency led the inconclusive northern campaigns of 1553 and 1554 and was increasingly criticised for his cautious style of campaign. From 1555 he led the drive to peace that secured the Truce of Vaucelles in mid 1556, however the peace would be shortlived. In 1557 he was again tasked with fighting on the northern frontier, and was drawn into the disastrous battle of Saint-Quentin at which he was captured and the French army destroyed. Guise was thus made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, while Montmorency tried to negotiate peace from his captivity. The king supported him in this from late 1558 and in April 1559 he would help bring about the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis which brought the Italian Wars to an end.
When Henri II died in July 1559, Montmorency was sidelined by the new Guise led government of François II, which relieved him of the office of Grand Maître. He would not participate in the Conspiracy of Amboise that attempted to overthrow the Guise regime however. When François in turn died in December 1560, he was recalled to a central position in the government, though subordinate to the role granted to the king of Navarre who was made lieutenant-general by the new king's mother, the regent Catherine. He quickly became disenchanted with the new government and entered opposition alongside Guise and Marshal Saint-André, forming an agreement known to history as the 'Triumvirate' in 'defence of Catholicism'. When the French Wars of Religion erupted the following year, he and his Triumvirate colleagues secured the royal family for their cause and fought against the Protestants led by Navarre's brother, the prince de Condé. In the climactic battle of the war at Dreux Montmorency was again made prisoner, and from his captivity negotiated the peace with the likewise captive Condé. During the peace, he joined Catherine and the court for the grand tour of the kingdom and feuded with his former ally Guise. In 1567 the Protestant aristocracy led a new coup against the crown and Montmorency led the defence of Paris against their army. Pushed to confront the Protestants, Montmorency died as a result of wounds sustained at the battle of Saint Denis on 12 November 1567.
Early life and family
Anne de Montmorency was born in 1493 at Chantilly, the son of Guillaume de Montmorency and Anne de Saint-Pol. His parents named him for his godmother, Anne, queen of France. Guillaume held a senior position in the household of the future king François I (at that time, comte d'Angoulême).
The Montmorency family prided itself on being the 'oldest barons' in France. Indeed, Montmorency's son would later boast to the English ambassador that the barons of Montmorency existed before there were kings of France. Despite these boasts, Montmorency was not a prince, and therefore his rivals the Lorraine family had a greater pedigree than him. Montmorency would however fire back that he was a true born Frenchman, while the Lorraine family were 'foreign princes'. This criticism stung his rivals, who were pleased to see the barony of Joinville raised to a principality in their favour in April 1552 so that they would no longer be 'foreign princes' but 'French princes'.
Marriage and children
Montmorency married Madeleine de Savoie, a cousin of the king François I on 10 January 1527. Their marriage was sumptuously celebrated by the king during a period of extravagance at court which contrasted with the relative paucity of funds at the disposal of the household of the king's captive children in España. This marriage brought Montmorency into the royal family and going forward the king's mother and sister referred to him as their nephew. Madeleine brought with her to the marriage family lands in Picardie. Her brother, Montmorency's new brother-in-law was Claude de Savoie, comte de Tende the governor of Provence. He was thus afforded a relation with powerful interests near his governate of Languedoc that he lacked in terms of personal feudal control. Together they had the following issue:
Éléonore de Montmorency (1528–1556), married François III de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne in 1546 and had issue.
Jeanne de Montmorency (1529–1596), married Louis III de La Trémoille, duc de Thouars in 1549 and had issue.
François de Montmorency (1530–1579), Marshal (1559), duc de Montmorency (1567), governor of the Île de France (1556). Married Diane de France in 1557 without issue.
Catherine de Montmorency (1532–1595), married Gilbert III de Lévis, duc de Ventadour in 1552.
Henri I de Montmorency (1534–1614), duc de Montmorency (1579), governor of Languedoc (1563), Constable of France (1593). Married Antoinette de La Marck in 1559 and had issue.
Charles de Montmorency (1537–1612), sieur de Méru then duc de Damville. Married Renée de Cossé in 1571 without issue.
Gabriel de Montmorency (1541–1562), sieur de Montbéron.
Guillaume de Montmorency, (1544–1591) sieur de Thoré. Married Léonore d'Humières in 1561 without issue.
Marie de Montmorency (1547–1572), married Henri de Foix-Candale in 1567 without issue.
Louise de Montmorency, abbesse de Maubuisson.
Several of Montmorency's sons were afforded the privilege, by his senior station at court, to become enfants d'honneur (children of honour), which meant they were raised alongside the royal children. For his daughters, Montmorency secured prestigious marriages into esteemed families, including La Trémouille, Ventadour, Foix-Candale, and Turenne. These were all great lords in the south west of France, important in Poitou, Limousin and Auvergne respectively. He provided his daughters with suitably grand dowries, the eldest three bringing 50,000 livres to their marriages, while the last brought 75,000 livres. His sons meanwhile were all introduced to military careers by their father, with none destined for the church.
His eldest son, François transgressed against his father's plans for his marriage into the royal family by exchanging legally binding paroles de promesse with Jacqueline de Piennes. In reaction to this 'betrayal', Montmorency got a law passed in 1557 that allowed a father to disinherit a son under the age of 30, or a daughter under the age of 25 who married without their parents permission. The law was retroactive, thereby obliging his son to annul the arrangement. He further had Jacqueline confined to a convent. His intended marriage of his son to Diane would go ahead on 4 May 1557, thereby further uniting the Montmorency with the royal family.
The death of his daughter Éléanore and her husband left Montmorency with the responsibility to raise the future Marshal of France, the vicomte de Turenne.
Relatives
Unlike the Lorraine family he would not take advantage of his power to put many of his relatives into senior positions in the French church, this left the field open for his rivals to dominate the senior positions of the French clergy.
Montmorency's sister Louise de Montmorency was an early secret convert to Protestantism among the great nobility and married Gaspard I de Coligny. Her husband died in 1522, and therefore Montmorency and his sister would jointly raise his nephews, who would all be drawn towards Protestantism. Montmorency was greatly attached to his lineage, and thus despite his strong religious convictions did not formally oppose them for some time.
Through his sister, Montmorency had three nephews who would go on to play an important role in the early French Wars of Religion. Gaspard de Coligny, Odet de Coligny and François de Coligny all converted to Protestantism and led the movement with zeal. The first, would become Admiral of France, the second most senior role in the French military, while Odet would become a Cardinal at the age of 16 due to Montmorency's influence. Montmorency's sons would not follow his nephews into Protestantism.
Religion
In religious temperament Montmorency, and his wife, were firmly Catholic, and were displeased by the Protestantism Montmorency's sister and nephews adopted. Montmorency's four sons would share his Catholicism, though both Thoré and Méru were sympathetic to Protestantism at one point or another. During his political ascendency, he received concerned reports of the growth of Protestantism in south-west France. Montmorency's Catholicism was not Ultramontane but rather highly Gallican in disposition. It was therefore with Montmorency's encouragement that Henri II flirted with the possibility of schism with the Papacy. He objected to the political program that often existed alongside Protestant movements in France, which advocated radical reforms. Despite this, the realities of Protestant opposition to the power of the Lorraine family in the 1560s meant that Montmorency was drawn in a more tolerant direction by his sons. He would have great affection for his nephews despite his disapproval of their religious persuasion. For Montmorency it was understood that the war on heresy that he supported was not meant to target members of the social elite (such as his nephews). So long as they publicly conformed it was no ones business what they did in their private chapels.
In his later years, Montmorency was afflicted with Gout.
He had a reputation as a taciturn man, something which contrasted with some of his more refined contemporaries in the French court. He was described by contemporaries as a 'bluff soldier' and conservative in temperament.
Wealth and estates
With many offices to his name, by 1560 Montmorency enjoyed an annual income from his various positions of 32,000 livres (pounds). This direct income from the crown did not include the revenues he received from his many estates and territories across the kingdom. With his various estates factored in, Montmorency enjoyed an income of around 180,000 livres in 1548, which dwarfed the income of the Bourbon-Vendôme princes of the blood that sat at around 71,000 livres. At the end of his life in 1567, Montmorency enjoyed pensions totalling 45,000 livres, alongside his income from the office of Constable which was around 24,000 livres, and an income from his land of 138,000 livres.
Indeed, by land the Montmorency were the wealthiest non-royal family in France. It was said that they had more than 600 fiefs to their name. Alongside his great wealth, the Montmorency family could count on more clients than any other 'private' family in the kingdom. Montmorency had great landed interests in the Pays de l'Oise, Vexin, Picardie, Bourgogne, Normandie, Champagne, Angoumois, Berry and Bretagne.
Châteaux and residences
The Montmorency family had great landed estates in the Île de France, including the famous Châteaux of Écouen and Chantilly.
The Château of Écouen was built under his direction beginning in 1538, meanwhile Chantilly was restored at his request from 1527-1532. Écouen was a testament to the new architectural style of the period, and was renowned for its beauty, it featured sculpture work by Jean Goujon (such as the sculpture of victory wielding the sword of the Constable, which hung over the fireplace) with the architecture overall led by Jean Bullant. Écouen featured two statues by Michelangelo that had been gifted to Montmorency by François I (originally destined for the tomb of Pope Julius II), along with mosaics of coloured stones and an elaborate courtyard. The emblems of Henri II, Catherine de Medici and his own would be strewn throughout the château. Chantilly was so grand it rivalled a royal palace, the original feudal centre of the château renovated inside in the style of the Renaissance. Beginning in 1524 Montmorency added a long gallery to the château. A small châtelet (gatehouse) was added at the level of the pond.
These were two of the seven principal châteaux belonging to Montmorency, the others being Thoré, Mello, La Rochepot, Offémont and Châteaubriant. The royal family would occasionally stay at his châteaux, as when in 1565 Catherine and Charles IX spent time at Châteaubriant during the royal tour of the kingdom. Henri II also had occasion to stay at one of Montmorency's baronial residences of Fère-en-Tardenois in both 1547 and after the campaign of 1552. In 1531 François was pre-occupied staying at Chantilly with Montmorency when his mother died, and therefore did not come to her bedside.
In Paris itself he had four hôtels (grand residences), one of which featured a room devoted to listening to music to emphasise his 'cultured nature'.
Patron of the arts
Montmorency was also a patron of the arts, and commissioned the famous painter Léonard Limousin who produced an enamel dish which depicted a scene inspired by Raphael in which the various Greek gods were used as representations of the king, queen and his mistress. The artist Rosso Fiorentino produced a rendition of the Pietà for him in 1538. This work is now housed in the Louvre. His châteaux also boasted libraries filled with books acquired from Roma. Montmorency was a collector of antiques, and arms, which he stored in his châteaux.
Childhood
In his youth, Montmorency was a playmate of the comte d'Angoulême future king François I. The two played racket sports together alongside another future royal favourite Philippe de Chabot.
Early career
Ascent of François I
Montmorency saw his first military service in 1511 in the campaigns of king Louis XII and fought at the famous battle of Ravenna in the following year.
When François I ascended to the throne in 1515 he was keen to reassert the French claims to Milano. Montmorency therefore joined the campaign into Italia and distinguished himself in the service of the king at the battle of Marignano in 1515.
Around 1516, Montmorency already enjoyed the privilege of being the captain of 100 lances, even though he was only 23 years old. At this time he was made governor of the Bastille and governor of Novara in Italia.
With relations declining between France and the Holy Roman Empire in 1518, a rapprochement was undertaken with England. Admiral Bonnivet led an embassy to England accompanied by 80 young 'gallants'. The product of this embassy was a series of treaties. Tournai was to be returned to France, in return for 600,000 écus (crowns). Cardinal Wolsey was further financially compensated for the loss of his see (Tournai), and eight French nobles were dispatched to England as hostages pending the final settlement between the two countries. One of the nobles who spent time as a hostage in England was Montmorency.
This was not the end of his advancement early in the reign of François, and around 1520 he was established as premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi (first gentleman of the king's chamber), giving him privileged private access to the king.
When an Imperial army invaded France in August 1521, Montmorency helped lead the defence of Mézières during a siege.
Marshal
In August 1522 he became one of the Marshals of France, was made a councillor of the king, and was inducted into the Ordre de Saint-Michel (Order of Saint-Michel) as a chevalier (knight).
Montmorency enjoyed poor relations with the comte de Saint-Pol (the count of Saint-Pol) brother of the duc de Vendôme (duke of Vendôme). This complicated matters when Montmorency was established as commander of the garrison of Doullens in 1522 under the authority of Saint-Pol. Saint-Pol refused to depart the province, claiming this would be to his dishonour in their dispute. Saint-Pol enjoyed some support in his push for Montmorency's removal, but the Marshal was not without his own allies.
La Bicocca
In that year, Montmorency fought in Italia under the command of the vicomte de Lautrec (viscount of Lautrec). He received communications from his father at court, who informed him of the efforts the kings councillors were making to ensure the royal finances were in order. Lautrec commanded an army of Swiss, French and allied Venetians. He faced off against the condotierri Prospero Colonna, who commanded the Imperial forces based in Milano in front of Pavia. The arrival of Colonna's army near Pavia forced Lautrec to back off, much to the irritation of his Swiss forces, who were eager to be paid. Colonna (with his army of 18,000) shadowed Lautrec as he pulled back from Pavia, and established himself at Bicocca. Lautrec understood La Bicocca to be a highly defensible position, but the Swiss troops argued in favour of battle which was therefore given.
Lautrec gave the Swiss permission to charge the enemy, while French nobles, under the command of Montmorency followed them on foot in the hopes of gaining glory. Lautrec took the final portion of the army around the right flank hoping to enter the Imperial camp that way. The frontal assault of the Swiss was a bloodbath, the French nobles with Montmorency suffered equally badly and the two groups would constitute a large part of the 3000 dead. After the defeat, the Swiss soon left the army, as did the Venetians, Lautrec himself returned to France where he received a cold reception from the king.
Bourbon's betrayal
To compound the misfortune of the disaster at La Bicocca, France was hit with the treason of Constable Bourbon, who signed a treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V on 18 July 1523. Around this time England, which had previously allied with France against the empire decided to declare war on the kingdom, invading Picardie and the coasts of Bretagne and Normandie. While this situation was developing, Montmorency was charged with raising a new royal army for a southern thrust. He found mercenaries willing to fight for the crown, and with new artillery also assembled, Montmorency brought them to Lyon for a push into Italia. François then travelled south to join the army at Lyon in August, only to be hit by an illness, word of the English attacks in Picardie and the knowledge of Bourbon's betrayal.
François felt it necessary, with Bourbon's betrayal to abandon his plans to join the campaign, and he returned to court to secure the kingdom, leaving the army under the direction of Admiral Bonnivet who led the 30,000 men Montmorency had assembled towards Turin in September, however the army was ravaged by disease and was forced to retreat from Italia in April 1524. On the retreat, Montmorency led the vanguard of the army but became so ill from the plague that racked the army that he had to be carried in a litter. Upon re-entering France, the Swiss troops formerly under Bonnivet's command went their own way vowing never again to work with the French, while the French never again desired to trust the Swiss.
The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was keen to revenge himself on France for their campaigns in Italia, and to this end appointed the 'traitor' Constable Bourbon to lead an army out from Italia into France in Autumn 1524. Bourbon hoped to invade in coordination with an army under the king of England and the Emperor, however neither would join him in the endeavour. Having invaded Provence, Bourbon became bogged down besieging Marseille while François mustered a strong army at Avignon. On 29 September Bourbon recognised his efforts were hopeless and began a retreat. Montmorency pursued with his cavalry, meanwhile François restored French control over Aix which had fallen to Bourbon. François followed in Montmorency's wake and continued the campaign back into Italia, entering the ducato di Milano (duchy of Milano). Under Montmorency's command were the dauphin and the future royal favourite Saint-André. The dauphin found himself reliant on Montmorency, particularly due to his increasingly difficult relationship with his father François.
Pavia
François decided to put Pavia to siege, and settled in for the winter around the city. The Imperial army, conscious that if they tried to wait the French out their army would dissolve for lack of pay, decided to force a battle with the French. The battle of Pavia was an unmitigated disaster for the French. François, Henri II, king of Navarre, the comte de Saint-Pol, the comte de Tende, future father in law of Montmorency and Montmorency himself were all taken prisoner. The Imperial army was almost overwhelmed by the number of prisoners that they took.
Montmorency and François were held captive in Pizzighettone, alongside other great nobles such as the future Admiral of France, Philippe de Chabot. Montmorency was granted permission to depart his captivity in the service of raising funds for his ransom in early March. Montmorency met up with the royal family and assured them the king was in good health, and urged them to write often, as news of his family was François' greatest joy. After his return to captivity the Papal Nuncio, who had visited the king, would remark that Montmorency was the king's main source of comfort in captivity.
Captive king
Montmorency would not be in captivity long, and was exchanged for Ugo de Moncada. François at first remained captive in Pizzighettone, before proposing to his captors that he be transferred to España. The Imperial viceroy Lannoy agreed, but to stop any mischief by the French fleet requested several French galleys be involved in the transfer. Montmorency therefore arranged with the regency government for 6 galleys to be handed over. The fleet left Genoa on 31 May. Montmorency then travelled to Toledo where he appealed for safe-conduct for François' sister Marguerite to come and negotiate a peace in España and that a truce be declared while negotiations were ongoing. The Emperor allowed all this, and Montmorency went to the regency government to obtain the powers to agree the truce. Philippe de Chabot travelled to Toledo soon thereafter and signed a truce on 11 August.
In exchange for peace, the Emperor demanded that France cede Bourgogne, recognise Imperial control of Artois and Vlaanderen and relinquish their claims on Napoli and Milano. This was too much for François and his mother Louise de Savoie who led the regency. From his captivity in Madrid, François first considered escape, and when frustrated in this, abdication in favour of his eldest son so that the Imperials would no longer possess a valuable captive with which to extort France. In the event of his release, François was to be restored to the crown with his sons regal powers suspended until the formers death. Montmorency and Cardinal de Tournon witnessed the sealing of the decision. Montmorency brought the decision of the king from Madrid to the Paris Parlement (highest court in France) to register, but they refused to consider the king's abdication, moreover the Emperor was not fooled by the manoeuvrer which only alerted him to the value of the king's children. In the treaty which released him from his captivity in January 1526 his release was contingent on the captivity of his two eldest sons as a guarantee that he would cede the land he committed to (including Bourgogne). Montmorency brought the news of the treaty back to France.
In fact the treaty provided two options for the king, either he cede the dauphin and twelve of the kingdoms military leaders (among them Montmorency, the duc de Guise, Lautrec and Admiral Chabot) or he cede both his first and second son. It was this latter course which was pursued the regent little desiring to deprive the kingdom of its military leadership.
Ascent
Grand Maître
Montmorency was appointed to the position of governor of Languedoc on 23 March 1526. The post had formally been occupied by the traitor Bourbon. In the same year he received this honour he was made Grand Maître (Grand-Master), and therefore given supreme authority over the kings household and the court. In this office he replaced the king's uncle the comte de Tende, who had died of the wounds he sustained at the battle of Pavia. As Grand Maître, Montmorency enjoyed a position as head of the king's councils, which convened under his auspices. He also held authority over appointments in the royal household, court expenditure and security. This authority over the king's household gave him an important intermediary position as regarded the two young princely hostages that had been delivered to the Imperial camp, and it was through him that all correspondence with them would be conducted. For the management of the king's material household, he had at his disposal deputies, including the premier maître d'hôtel (first steward).
Bourbon's sack of Rome in 1527 had the effect of fostering a greater understanding between England and France. King Henry VIII feared that the captive Pope would not be able to sanction his divorce. Therefore Wolsey met with François to talk business in August 1527 at Amiens. It was arranged for Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry to marry the duc d'Orléans and Henry retracted his objection to François' marriage. If war began again with the Emperor, English merchants would maintain their privileges in France. To celebrate the newfound accord, Montmorency was dispatched to England, to award the Ordre de Saint-Michel (Order of Saint-Michel) on Henry, while Henry in turn awarded the Order of the Garter to François.
Captivity of the princes
In December 1527, François convened an Assembly of Notables with the aim of raising 2,000,000 écus to either pay the ransom of his sons, or if the Emperor attached the return of Bourgogne to the ransom, the money would be used to prosecute a new war against the Empire. The Assembly responded positively, with the clergy offering 1.3 million livres in return for the rescue of the Pope, destruction of Protestantism and protection of Gallicanism. The nobility likewise promised their goods and lives. The prévôt des marchands (provost of the merchants) agreed Paris would pay part of the ransom. The promises needed to be converted to money, however the nobility proved less than willing to deliver what they had agreed. Montmorency took responsibility for securing the money required from the Boulonnais but was frustrated that they would only grant him a fifth. He was so upset at their 'insolence' that he did not even pass their offer on to the king. He told the sénéchal (seneschal) that nothing would be accepted from the region until they had committed themselves the way other regions had. Eventually the Boulonnais complied. Due to the 'stinginess' of some parts of France, the king would be obliged to take loans, using Montmorency as the guarantor.
A sensitive matter arose in 1528 as the English king Henry sought a divorce from his wife, the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor. François was keen to support the English king in acquiring it but was sensitive that open support would be politically dangerous, given his sons were still in Imperial captivity. Therefore he worked on the theologians of Paris through a proxy, and Montmorency took it upon himself to rebuke a syndic named Noël Béda who objected to the divorce, however Béda remained firm. Béda would indeed go on to sabotage the debate at the faculty of theology, much to the disquiet of the English ambassador.
Montmorency had an important role to play in the negotiations that were conducted, beginning 5 July 1529 between Louise de Savoie and Margarete von Österreich. Montmorency assisted the king's mother Louise alongside Chancellor Duprat and the queen of Navarre. Together they would establish a peace agreement known as the treaty of Cambrai or Paix des Dames (Peace of the Ladies). An enormous ransom of 2,000,000 écus would restore the liberty of the princes, while François would have to abandon his suzerainty over Artois, Vlaanderen, Milano and Napoli, but would be allowed to maintain Bourgogne, Auxerre and Mâcon.
During his first period of ascendency in the 1530s, Montmorency ensured the disgrace of the vice-admiral of France (and governor of Le Havre) Charles de Moy. His relations with the vice-admiral would remain poor for decades, as typified by his ensuring that his nephew Coligny would receive the office governor of Le Havre upon the accession of Charles IX in 1560.
As far as the execution of the terms of the treaty was concerned, François delegated responsibility to Montmorency and Cardinal de Tournon. By 29 April 1530, Montmorency was able to show to the Spanish finance-general a large pile of gold already assembled for the Emperor. By May the money assembled would be ready, and handed over to the Spanish delegation. It would however take until June for the entire ransom of 1,200,000 écus to be paid off. By this time Tournon had taken over responsibility for the provision of the money, while Montmorency went to receive the hostages from their exile in España from the condestable (Constable) de Castilla, as well as François' new bride the sister of Charles V. The crossing over of the princes to France and the money to España was scheduled for 1 July to be overseen by Montmorency. The Condestable of Castilla was suspicious of a trap, and halted the advance of the royal children when he received word that a large party of French horsemen were nearby, fearing that the French may take the children and then intercept the ransom. As the hours passed, Montmorency was increasingly concerned that the party of the Condestable had not yet appeared and sent an envoy to find them. Upon reaching the Spanish camp, the representative was told of Castilla's suspicions of a trap, which caused the representative to challenge Castilla to single combat. The new queen of France took it upon herself to threaten Castilla with disgrace if he did not continue with the transfer. Finally it began, Montmorency and the French money departing in a boat from one side of the river to a pontoon in the centre, while Castilla and the royal children did likewise from the other bank. The Condestable provided his apologies to the two young princes for the conditions of their imprisonment, only the dauphin responded graciously.
Guardian of the princes
In the years that followed, it would be Montmorency who devoted himself to the needs and time of the young princes, supervising their days from dawn to dusk in his capacity as Grand Maître, and winning their affection with his attentions and provisions. He oversaw the education of the dauphin and duc d'Orléans (as the king's second son was known at that time), planned out their days and instructs them in the courtly ceremonies in a way the king lacked time for. To support him in providing for the young princes, Montmorency relied on three men, Humières, Saint-André and the comte de Brissac. Several of his nephews (Coligny and Andelot) would be among the enfants d'honneur (children of honour) who had the privilege of being raised alongside the royal children.
Montmorency was close with the new bride of the king and supported her at court. He remarked that 'Frenchman should thank god for giving them so beautiful and virtuous a lady'. This was in contrast to François himself who was more infatuated with his mistress Anne de Pisseleu. Éléonore, sister to the Emperor thus had to content herself with being overshadowed. It would be Montmorency who supervised the arrangements for her coronation, which was undertaken on 5 March at Saint-Denis.
The successful outcome of the payment of the ransom and return of the king's children elevated Montmorecy in the esteem of the court with Montmorency receiving many congratulations. While the court travelled back to the capital, he went to spend some time in his estates at Chantilly.
Picardie
After the treason of Constable Bourbon in 1523 it had become necessary for the duc de Vendôme to devote himself to affairs at court. This meant Vendôme could not fulfil his responsibilities as governor of Picardie. The Parlement of Paris demanded that the province be governed in his absence. To this end in May 1531 Montmorency's brother the seigneur de La Rochepot was appointed to fill the office. The appointment of his brother was a victory for Montmorency in his battle at court with the Admiral Chabot at a time when the hatred between the two men was barely being contained by the king. Montmorency would defend his brothers financial interests in front of the Chancellor of France and supported his methods of raising money for his role as governor at court.
The families control of Picardie was aided by the presence of two Montmorency clients in subsidiary governorships, that of Péronne and Boulogne. Jean II de Humières the governor of the former accompanied Montmorency in 1527 on his embassy to England, the governor of Boulogne Oudard du Biez meanwhile received a 10,000 livres bounty thanks to the efforts of Montmorency to push the sum through the chambre des comptes (chamber of accounts). Both men reported on their efforts to raise funds for the crown in 1529, the nobility of Péronne refused to shoulder the tenth that Humières proposed, leaving the governor to write to Montmorency for advice on how to proceed. The nobility of Boulogne meanwhile offered a twentieth forcing Montmorency to write to du Biez that such a sum was not acceptable to the king. Du Biez protested that the land was ravaged by the effects of war.
As for Montmorency personally, he had lands around Boulogne, and therefore the presence of his client in the governorship of the centre aided him greatly in the extraction of revenues.
Diplomat
A meeting took place in October 1532 between the English king Henry and François. Great gifts were exchanged between the two monarchs. Alongside the gifts, the duke of Norfolk and Suffolk were made chevaliers of the French Order de Saint-Michel. Meanwhile Montmorency and Chabot became knights of the Order of the Garter. Alongside the gift giving an alliance against the Osmanlı İmparatorluğu was established, however this was a smokescreen for their plans to resist the Emperor in Italia.
The Grand Maître had an important role to play in the marriage alliance concluded between the Papacy and France in 1533. The king's second son, the duc d'Orléans (future Henri II) was to marry the Pope's cousin Catherine de Medici, duchessa di Urbino (duchess of Urbino). Back in September 1530, when negotiations had begun for the marriage, the king had turned to Montmorency for advice on the political clauses of the marriage contract. Montmorency prepared Marseille for the Pope's arrival on 12 October to seal the union. He sailed among the Pope's flotilla as it approach the city in a frigate of his own decorated in Damask, and after greeting him on the shore, escorted the Pope and duchessa di Urbino to the king's garden near the abbey Saint-Victor where four French cardinals (Cardinal Legate Duprat, Cardinal de Bourbon, Cardinal de Lorraine and Cardinal de Gramont) and various other senior churchmen were waiting to receive him.
On 26 October there was a banquet for the assembled dignitaries. The following day, the marriage contract was signed in the Pope's chambers, after which Orléans was led into an audience hall. It was Montmorency's responsibility to bring his new bride, Catherine, into the room where, after Cardinal de Bourbon affirmed the consent of both parties, Orléans kissed Catherine and the celebratory ball began.
Orléans would prove cold towards his wife, with his real romantic interests directed towards Diane de Poitiers, the comtesse de Brézé (countess of Brézé) from 1537. Montmorency had long enjoyed a close relationship with the Brézé, often taking himself up to their Château d'Anet to discuss matters of state with her and her husband Brézé. Montmorency played an important role in facilitating the young princes romantic indiscretions, allowing for the rendezvous' to transpire at his Château d'Écouen. By 1538, Diane would however have assessed Catherine as her preferred match for Orléans, now that the alternative of the son of the duc de Guise had been suggested and therefore worked to keep her lover and his wife together. Catherine's security was further enhanced by the rivalry between Montmorency and Guise, whose attempts to introduce his daughter to the dauphin were a considerable threat to the Grand Maître's position.
An ordinance of 24 July 1534 authorised the raising of 6,000 soldiers from Picardie as a 'legion'. Montmorency was given the responsibility to raise this army, and issued commissions to the six gentleman who were to command the force. François personally inspected the raised force in an elaborate ceremony the following year. The legion would see much use in the following years, overall though the force proved ineffective and prone to ill discipline.
Departure from court
The Emperor sent the graaf van Nassau (count of Nassau) to France in October 1534 to present two proposals to the French. The first was that the duca di Milano (duke of Milano) should provide a pension to François' son Orléans in return for François renouncing his claim to Milano and Genoa. His second proposal was a marriage between the king's third son, the duc d'Angoulême and the king of England's daughter Mary. Montmorency, who received the proposals, dismissed the first out of hand, the Grand Maître writing a reaffirmation of France's claims over Milano to Nassau. Montmorency was however far less quick to dismiss the second proposal, and therefore the Emperor decided to take it further. François therefore dispatched Admiral Chabot to England with the latter proposal but received only counter-proposals from Henry and departed the country unsatisfied.
While the Emperor was occupied with his campaign into al-Ḥafṣiyūn controlled Tunis in June 1535, François did little to take advantage of his rivals absence. Montmorency had promised the Imperial ambassador that France would not exploit the Emperors absence. Admiral Chabot and the war party at court were incensed, and Montmorency found it necessary to retire to Chantilly, leaving Chabot ascendent by default. François could have found himself in a diplomatically challenging position if he had followed the advice of the war party to attack while the Emperor was fighting the Muslims.
His departure was not however a disgrace, and he remained in all his titles and pensions. In October he oversaw the convening of the local Languedoc Estates. He conducted an inspection of the legion of the province and ensured Narbonne's fortifications were up to an appropriate standard.
After the French seizure of Savoia in early 1536, tensions skyrocketed with the Empire, northern Italia descending into an unofficial war. Chabot was made lieutenant-general of French controlled Piemonte. However Montmorency now returned to the centre of government, arriving on 7 May. Soon thereafter Chabot was removed as lieutenant-general of Piemonte, replaced by the marchese di Saluzzo (marquis of Saluzzo). Saluzzo would not long be the French lieutenant-general as he defected to the Empire on 17 May. Humières became the lieutenant-general of Dauphiné, Savoia and Piemonte, meanwhile the Emperor decided to invade Provence. A day after his decision to launch an invasion on 14 July Montmorency was made 'lieutenant-general' on both sides of the mountains with powers that included troop mobilisation, the command of the forces on the ground and the ability to negotiate peace.
Provence campaign
On 24 July 1536, an Imperial army, under the command of the Emperor invaded France from Italia, proceeding by the coast through Nice, crossing into the kingdom at Var. Concurrently an army under the graaf van Nassau invaded Picardie. Montmorency led the defence of the south, and François' attentions were focused in that direction. The king's council successfully convinced him not to lead the army, and leave it to the command of Montmorency. Montmorency's force assembled at Avignon, and by 25 July totalled 30,000 men. A month later this had ballooned to 60,000. Montmorency adopted a scorched earth strategy and devastated the lands of Provence to deny his enemy supply. He inspected the fortifications of Aix and Marseille and determining that Aix's were inadequate without at least a months work and 6000 soldiers, he therefore had Aix evacuated. Marseille by contrast had recently been reinforced and had played a key role in the defeat of Bourbon's invasion in 1524, and therefore was not subjected to the destruction that was put upon Aix. The Emperors goal was the capture of Marseille, and towards this end he captured Aix on 13 August. All roads to Marseille were blocked by French forces, and as his army sat near Aix it began to collapse to disease. The army was also in great want of food and water which they struggled to acquire in the devastated landscape. Foraging parties that sought to acquire food were sometimes set upon and butchered. By 2 September Montmorency estimated the Emperor had lost over 7000 men to dysentry and famine. The new dauphin Orléans (François' second son) received permission from François to join the army in the defence of Provence. By 11 September Charles decided to withdraw from Provence, Nassau made a similar decision up in Picardie around the same time. The invasions had been a failure. François joined the army at this time, but decided against ordering a pursuit, contenting himself to ordering a harassment of the retreating army by the light cavalry.
In the spring of 1537, Montmorency engaged in a campaign on the northern frontier of France, and was rewarded with great successes. The king had declared Artois, Vlaanderen and Charolais which he had ceded in the peace of Cambrai to be confiscated in January, and tasked Montmorency with advancing in the north. To this end Montmorency was made lieutenant-general with the responsibility to recover Saint-Pol and Artois. Montmorency and François captured Auxy-le-Château, then besieged Hesdin. On 6 May Saint-Pol was occupied by the royal army, threatening the Imperial supply line through Lens and Arras. Montmorency prepared to disband the army and send 10,000 soldiers to join Humières in Picardie. While demobilisation was ongoing, the Emperor launched a lightning offensive, threatening to surround Thérouanne. Saint-Pol and Montreuil fell quickly back to the Emperor. François dispatched Orléans the new dauphin to join Montmorency and conduct a counter-offensive, the young prince arriving in mid-June. A cavalry force under the duc de Guise also arrives to bolster the royal forces in Picardie. Montmorency was pleased with the effect the dauphin had on the army. In July they secured a favourable truce in the theatre and prepared to move south to where the war was continuing in Piemonte, Montreuil had been successfully regained and Thérouanne would remain in French hands, only the conquest of Saint-Pol had been reversed.
François had orchestrated a counter-offensive back into Italia in 1537, though with many troops tied up in other theatres it was limited in scope. A small army under the command of Humières, the lieutenant-general of French Piemonte had invaded Piemonte in April and made an unsuccessful attempt on Asti, and successful attempts on Alba and Cherasco. François secured a truce in the northern theatre thanks to the efforts of Montmorency and Orléans so that he might bring force to bear on Italia, in the meanwhile he urged Humières to hold firm and dismantle fortifications he could not hold. The Imperial commander del Vasto had little intention of waiting around for a new French army to show up, and began a counter offensive.
Entry into Piemonte
Montmorency arrived in Lyon, and was established by the king as the new lieutenant-general of French Piemonte. He had with him a force of 10,000 French infantry, 10,000 Italians, 14,000 Swiss, 12,000 landsknechts and 1400 men-at-arms. The force was technically under the command of the dauphin Orléans, but Montmorency led the army in actuality. By this time, October, France only held Turin, Pinerolo and Savigliano in Piemonte, the towns were being besieged by del Vasto. Montmorency left Besançon on 23 October towards the pass de Susa which was held by Cesare Maggi with 6000 men. Montmorency forced the passage. This success caused del Vasto to break off his sieges of the final French held towns and cities. The combined French army then began sieging back the towns of Piemonte, with François himself joining the army soon thereafter. He had by now had success in negotiations with the Emperor, and wanted to secure as much of Piemonte as possible prior to a truce coming into force. By November del Vasto had been compelled to retreat across the Po. On 27 November 1537 a three month truce was declared in Italia, del Vasto and Montmorency met to discuss the minutiae and agreed that each side would maintain in Italia the troops necessary to garrison their respective towns, and send other forces away.
This truce would last more than three months, being twice extended while the two sides argued over the specific arrangements of control that a more permanent peace settlement would entail in Italia. Montmorency and the Cardinal de Lorraine met with envoys of the Emperor at Leucate and agreed that the ducato di Milano would be given to the king's third son the duc de Angoulême as a dowry for his marriage to the daughter of the Emperor. However dispute arose between the king and Emperor over how many years the king would be able to administer the duchy for his son. Unable to achieve a consensus over the destiny of Milano, François and the Emperor compromised by agreeing to an extension of the truce for 10 years, during which time each side was to maintain what they currently possessed. Montmorency provided assurance that neither party would ever declare war over claims to Milano again. While the talks were ongoing, Montmorency directed a young Monluc, future Marshal of France to spy on the fortifications of Perpignan.
The king was greatly pleased with Montmorency, and met with him in Montpellier on 31 January to provide him his pay for the campaign, which totalled 158,000 écus, the court thronged around to celebrate him upon his entry to Lyon.
Ascendency
Constable
On 10 February 1538 several important appointments were declared by the king which benefitted the Montmorency family. His brother La Rochepot was appointed governor of the Île de France and therefore departed from his charge in Picardie. Most importantly however, Montmorency was established as Constable of France. The office had been left vacant since the treason of Constable Bourbon. In a ceremony on that day, ironically celebrated at a château that had once belonged to Bourbon, Montmorency was escorted by the sister of the king, the queen of Navarre from the kings private chambers to the great hall, where the king gave him the sword of the office. The Constable of France was the most senior commander of the French military, and he and the Marshals of France, whose concurrent number would total four by the 1560s held overall responsibility for France's land forces. On the battlefield the Constable outranked even princes du sang, and had the right to lead the vanguard even when the king was present. The most prestigious elements of the military under his authority were the gendarmerie of heavy cavalry, which was composed of ordinance companies of 30-100 men-at-arms. By this time, the French military possessed continually standing components, which greatly contributed to the kingdoms tax burden. The Constable also enjoyed advantageous apartments in the royal residence of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, right next to those of the king and queen. By this appointment, Montmorency effectively became lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
As Montmorency was ascending to the office of Constable he was no longer a Marshal, and therefore the king appointed two new Marshals, Claude d'Annebault and René de Montjean.
His elevation to the office of Constable was in part, a reward for his leadership in the defence of France against the invasion of Provence that had been conducted in 1536. The great benefits he received from the king also felt like a victory to the dauphin, who saw them as a reward for his own successes on campaign. Montmorency and Orléans had become very close during the campaign. During the campaign Orléans had undertaken an affair with Filippa Duci which had resulted in a pregnancy. Montmorency was informed of this and ordered that she be watched for the duration of the pregnancy, and kept the dauphin appraised with updates, filling the young man with pride. The child of this affair, Diane de France would first be married to the duca di Castro, grandson of Pope Paul III, with the marriage contract signed for the king by Montmorency, Aumale and the chancellor Olivier. The Pope committed to providing his grandson 200,000 écus to spend on land in France, and the ducato di Castro (duchy of Castro). After Castro's death, Diane would go on to marry Montmorency's eldest son.
Milano
In July of 1538, talks were conducted between the Emperor and king of France at Aigues-Mortes. For these important discussions Montmorency was among those granted an Imperial audience. The devolution of Milano to Angoulême was again discussed, in return for François committing France to a war against the Osmanlı İmparatorluğu. The two men agreed to co-operate going forward in the 'defence of Christendom' and reunification of the church behind Catholicism. Montmorency was delighted at the success of the meeting, which astonishing contemporaries insofar as the two bitter adversaries now appeared to be friends. While some at court were sceptical of this new friendship, Montmorency assured the court that the peace between the two men would last their entire lives. For his part, Montmorency ensured that France honoured the truce with the Empire.
Montmorency would be completely ascendent in the direction of French foreign policy for the next two years. His desire was to secure Milano for France, but through diplomatic means. All ambassadors wrote to him alongside the king. He recognised that to best achieve his goal, he needed to be in a position of strength with the Empire, and therefore sought to consolidate the French position in Piemonte and Savoia. Parlements and Chambre des comptes (chamber of accounts) were established in each of the occupied regions. Fortification was also undertaken of the key city of Piemonte, Turin, while the northern border was simultaneously fortified by Montmorency's brother La Rochepot.
As Constable of France, Montmorency was approached by foreign kingdoms that wished to do business with France. To this end in 1539 he received a request from the English court for the provision of 60,000 m2 of hemp fabric. This would have been sufficient to supply 100 great ships. In response it was 'diplomatically' protested that France lacked the capacity to fulfil such an order.
It was through the protection and patronship of Montmorency, that Saint-André received the charges of lieutenant-general and governor of Lyon in 1539.
Montmorency was again leant upon for diplomatic purposes when François sought further peace talks with the Emperor in 1539. Montmorency organised the receptions for the Emperor which involved ceremonial entries into many cities as the Imperial party progressed through the country. The Emperor was received at the Château de Fontainebleau for Christmas. The Constable enjoyed his own apartments on the first floor at Fontainebleau. Upon the parties entry into Paris on 1 January 1540, the Emperor entered the city under a canopy, Montmorency proceeded him, holding the sword of his office aloft.
After some time together, Montmorency accompanied the Emperor back to the border, taking leave of the king at Saint-Quentin. Montmorency and the king's sons escorted the Emperor as far as Valenciennes. They brought back gifts from the town to the French court. It was generally assumed that Montmorency and the Cardinal de Lorraine would shortly be called to Bruxelles for a more formal deal, however the Emperor became distracted by the revolt of Ghent. Rumours began to swirl that the understanding between France and the Empire had broken down, which Montmorency derided as 'jealous talk'. In March the Emperor revealed that he had changed his mind about the provision of Milano as a dowry for François' third son. Instead, he suggested a dowry of Nederland, Bourgogne and the Charolais for the young prince. François would not receive Milano, and would have to withdraw from Piemonte and Savoia as part of this deal. Further the lands would be administered under the Emperors' supervision and if his daughter María died without issue, the territory would revert to the Habsburg male line.
Path to disgrace
Upon receipt of this news François, Montmorency and Orléans locked themselves in a room for a long discussion. When it was concluded, Montmorency retired unwell to bed for several days. François delivered his reply to the Emperor in which he argued Nederland was a poor substitute for Milano which was his by right anyway. Moreover the instant gratification of Milano could not compare to a territory he would have to wait many years to receive. He later altered his reply to say that he would accept Nederland instead, but only if he received it immediately, the reversion clause could remain but only if Milano was given in compensation for the loss of Nederland. By June talks had collapsed entirely.
While still in a degree of favour, Montmorency engineered the disgrace of his long time enemy Admiral Chabot. Back in 1538 he enjoyed a position as the patron of the young duc d'Aumale who wrote to him that he might he was as much at Montmorency's command as were his own children. Aumale remained on positive terms with him in 1541 describing himself as Montmorency's 'very humble servant'. Aumale's father, the duc de Guise would remain cordial with Montmorency throughout the Constable's period of disgrace. In later years, Aumale would become the great rival of Montmorency as a favourite of the king in his capacity as the duc de Guise.
Around this time, Montmorency became aware his influence was beginning to slip with the king. In the hopes of buttressing his authority, he attempted to play upon François' hatred of subversion. To this end he shared with the king the sonnets of Vittoria Colonna (who was sympathetic to Protestantism), which he informed the king had been sent to his sister. However the queen of Navarre was able to gain the upper hand in this dispute. François continued to erode Montmorency's civic responsibilities, getting him to hand over the keys to the Louvre which he possessed in his capacity as Grand Maître.
In this first stage of his disgrace, he was removed from influence over diplomatic affairs, which were granted to Tournon. This removal occurred in April, but he remained in overall favour with François who remarked that the Constable's only fault was that he did not 'love those who I love'. French foreign policy was now back in the hands of the war party at court, and François privately boasted of his plans for a new war against the Emperor.
On 11 October 1540, the Holy Roman Emperor decided to award the ducato di Milano (duchy of Milan) to his son the future Felipe II of España. Thus, François was to give up all his conquests in Italia, and reconstitute the defunct duché de Bourgogne which had been integrated into the royal domain as a dowry to be gifted by the Emperor to his son. François was enraged at the betrayal, and took out his frustrations on Montmorency. It was Montmorency, François alleged, who had allowed the Emperor to present this diplomatic embarrassment to him. Montmorency was forced to withdraw from court when the news arrived.
Not a month had passed since this news arrived in France than the king forbade his secretaries to use the cyphers Montmorency had provided them. Montmorency, believing himself disgraced, asked François for permission to retire from court but François told him he still had use of his services. Indeed he staged something of a revival in his fortunes in early 1541, with the Imperial ambassador reporting that his credit had increased. It was ephemeral, by April he was reported to be at the mercy of the king's mistress, the duchess d'Étampes at court, his credit daily decreasing. Fully aware of this Montmorency advised the lieutenant-general of Piemonte Langey to send his correspondence to Marshal Annebault in future.
In June 1541 the king humiliated Montmorency through a request he made at the wedding of Jeanne d'Albret, the daughter of the queen of Navarre and the duc de Vendôme. Jeanne refused (or was unable) to walk to the alter for the ceremony, and therefore the king commanded Montmorency to carry her to the alter. The court was shocked that such a high ranking man as Montmorency had been ordered to undertake such a demeaning task, and Montmorency remarked to his nearby friends 'this is the end of my favour, I am saying goodbye to it'. The day after the wedding, he left court, and would not return during the lifetime of François.
Disgrace
Governate revoked
On 21 May 1542, François abolished all governorships in France, and ordered the people of France not to obey their ex-governors commands. He justified this on the grounds that their powers had become excessive. In the following weeks he proceeded to re-appoint every former governor of the provinces with the exception of Montmorency who was replaced in Languedoc. The initial abolition is therefore understood to be an attack on Montmorency disguised in a general dismissal due to his power making a specific dismissal unfeasible politically.
With his disgrace, Montmorency was no longer able to protect his political clients, this led to the disgrace of the chancellor of France Poyet in 1542. Conversely, Admiral Chabot was rehabilitated, and returned to a central place at the French court.
Dauphin's party
During his time of disgrace Montmorency was absent from the court. However, he remained close with the dauphin the duc de Bretagne (formerely the duc d'Orléans), while the duc d'Orléans (formerly the duc d'Angoulême) allied himself with the king's mistress the duchesse d'Étampes. Also in the faction of the dauphin were the queen and most of the French cardinals. Bretagne would ask the king to recall Montmorency so that he could serve with him in the campaigns against the Imperials, however this was refused. With Bretagne and Orléans in opposition to one another, each man represented a centre of their respective faction, this dynamic would however be radically altered by the sudden death of Orléans in 1545. Bretagne felt keenly the absence of his mentor from the centre of power.
These years would be ones of retirement for the Constable, and it was only with the death of the king that he returned to holding political influence himself. As early as 1546, Bretagne began to anticipate his coming reign, and to this end, planned the division of offices that would go to his various favourites upon his ascent. Montmorency would be recalled from disgrace, Saint-André made Premier Chambellan (first chamberlain) and Brissac established as Grand Maître de l'artillerie (grand-master of the artillery). Reports of these speculative appointments was delivered to François by the court jester, and he flew into a rage when he heard of his sons presumptuousness. He advanced on his sons chambers with the captain of his Scots guard and broke the door down, finding no one inside he had the furniture destrotyed. Shortly thereafter the remaining partisans of Bretagne were expelled from the court.
Not all those who allied with Bretagne in the final years of François' reign were to profit as completely as Montmorency and Saint-André. Another favourite, Dampierre ended in the dauphin's disgrace for daring to attack his mistress Diane de Poitiers, others died in battle or judicial duels.
As he lay dying, François summoned Bretagne to his bedside. Father implored son not to recall Montmorency from his disgrace, and to trust in the men the king had surrounded himself with since 1541, chief among them Tournon and Annebault.
Return to the centre
Palace revolution
François I of France died around 14:00 on 31 March 1547, while those in the room were still mourning the dauphin Bretagne, now styled King Henri II dashed off letters summoning Diane and Montmorency to come to court. Montmorency's recall was therefore rapid, and he was invited to join Henri at Saint-Germain. The two engaged in a 2 hour conference on 1 April during which Montmorency and the king engaged in a complete reorganisation of the government. After the meeting Montmorency received the apartments of François' former mistress the duchesse d'Étampes at Saint-Germain. Holding court here, he received the flocks of condolences that poured in for the recently departed king.
Montmorency assumed the position that had been jointly occupied by Admiral Annebault and Cardinal de Tournon in leading the administration of François in the kings final years. Both men were dispossessed of their charges that evening. Annebault was allowed to remain Admiral, however he would no longer be paid, in much the same way as Montmorency had maintained his charge of Constable without pay during his disgrace. He was further obliged to surrender his Marshal office to Saint-André. Montmorency became commander of the royal armies and the lynchpin of the royal council almost immediately. His proximity with the new king was such that he even shared the king's bed on occasion during 1547, a practice which shocked some contemporaries. The ambassador of Ferrara remarked on the matter with revulsion. His establishment as head of the administration was represented by his resumption of the offices of Constable and Grand Maître which he had enjoyed in former years. The duchesse d'Étampes, enemy of both Montmorency and Henri was banished from court. Montmorency also received the arrears of pay he would have been owed if not for his disgrace.
With great pride Montmorency remarked on a different incident of intimacy with the king where Henri had entered his chambers while he was receiving a footbath. The Constable bragged about the event to Saint-André, who in turn told the duc d'Aumale. According to the ambassador of Ferrara, Aumale was mortified, keenly aware the king would never make such shows of intimacy with him. One of the king's favourite horses, Compère was a gift from Montmorency.
Montmorency was restored to the governate of Languedoc, and his brother La Rochepot was restored to his office as governor of the Île de France and Paris. His eldest nephew Cardinal de Châtillon received rich new benefices among them Beauvais. Montmorency received the charge for the second time on 12 April 1547. Keen to reward his favourite, the return of his governate came with back-pay for the years in which he had been denied his possession of Languedoc, totalling 100,000 écus in addition to the annual income of 25,000 écus he would receive going forward. In sum Henri distributed 800,000 livres among his three great favourites (Montmorency, Aumale, and Saint-André) upon his ascent, which was raised by a tax of two tenths upon the clergy.
On 12 April the king received Montmorency's oath in his capacity as Constable of France, with the king declaring that all civil and military officials were to be subordinated to him. He also restored the exercise of his old lesser charges, that of captain of the forts of Bastille, Vincennes, Saint-Malo and Nantes.
Until at least 1552, all ambassadors to France presented their credentials to Montmorency before they were received by the king.
Back in favour, Montmorency advanced his nephews once more, with Coligny being elevated to the position of colonel-general of the French infantry within a month of Henri's accession. Over the following years of Henri's reign, Coligny would be made Admiral of France, governor of Picardie and governor of the Île de France. Through advancement of his nephews Montmorency secured his own power.
At the centre of power once more, Montmorency was again able to be a distributor of royal favour to a network of patronage. As such he was soon approached by the queen of Navarre who was seeking to re-enter royal favour. The two had a frosty relationship. This meant that when in 1548 the king became suspicious that the queen and her husband the king of Navarre were intriguing with the Emperor, Henri turned to Montmorency, who had his agents intercept all mail addressed to the couple for several months. In 1556 suspicions would again arise at court as to the potentially treasonous actions of the new king of Navarre and his wife with the Emperor over Spanish Navarre. The king of Navarre wrote to Henri and Montmorency, hoping to recharacterize his dealings in a less dangerous light. The queen of Navarre wrote to Montmorency separately, urging him to maintain the good relations he enjoyed with Navarre.
Push for war
Despite the centrality of his position in the new administration, Montmorency was unable to make the king forget the captivity he had experienced in Imperial hands in prior years. Henri was keen to exert himself against the Empire and therefore summoned the Holy Roman Emperor to appear at his coronation in his capacity as the comte de Flandre, formerly a vassal of the French crown. The Emperor replied that he would attend the coronation, at the head of an army of 50,000 men. Montmorency, who desired peace with the empire, was tasked with reinforcing the garrisons on the border.
Henri's coronation did not immediately follow his fathers death, it no longer being seen as the ceremony by which royal power was conferred. Therefore, it was not until 25 July that it was undertaken. The next day, representatives of the four most ancient baronies of France went to receive the ampulla of sacred oil that would be used to anoint the king.
The Montmorency who represented one of the four baronies were represented by the Constable's eldest son as the Constable was required elsewhere. During the coronation, Henri awarded two collars of the Ordre de Saint-Michel (Order of Saint-Michel), the highest order of French chivalry. One was granted to the Italian condotierri Piero Strozzi, while the other was awarded to Montmorency's nephew Coligny.
Montmorency also ensured that gentlemen were not left in a state of discontent with the crown where possible. To this end he assured such figures received a caress or embrace from the king, which he advised would appease their discontent. According to Brantôme, if such a system worked at this time, it broke down by the time of the Wars of Religion.
On 26 June 1547 Henri created a new law as applied to the frontier provinces of the east. The border was to be divided into three zones of control each subordinated to a Marshal of France. The Marshal would have all the authority over troops in their region, depriving the governors of the provinces. Montmorency, as the authority above the Marshals would therefore have military authority over all eastern border provinces. The motivation for this new policy, though it was a dead letter on arrival, was to invest authority in Montmorency and the three Marshals (Saint-André, Bouillon and Melfi) all of whom were favourites of the new king, at the expense of the Lorraine and Clèves family who were governors of those regions.
Coup de Jarnac
At the start of Henri's reign a celebrated duel exposed the factions that were to dominate the reign of the young king. La Châtaignerie and Jarnac were granted permission to conduct a judicial duel by the king. It was the first judicial duel that had been authorised in France since the times of Louis IX. Diane and the Lorraine family acted as patrons to La Châtaignerie, while Montmorency took Jarnac (formerly a member of the duchesse d'Étampes' party during the reign of François) under his wing. Jarnac's second would be Claude de Boisy, a friend of Montmorency's. Crowds gathered for the duel, which featured hundreds dressed in satin. In a shock to many of the watchers, Jarnac was able to deliver a quick victory in the duel getting around his opponent and slicing him in the back. The king was stunned, and for a while did not respond to Jarnac's request to have his honour restored and opponent spared. Marguerite and Montmorency urged Henri to speak so that La Châtaignerie's life could be spared. Henri eventually spoke, but did not say the customary plaudit to the victor that he was a man of honour. La Châtaignerie humiliated by his defeat tore off the bandages provided to him and bled out. Montmorency was the main winner of the duel, seen as wise for his backing of Jarnac. Henri meanwhile vowed to never allow another judicial duel during his reign.
Saint-André had suffered disgrace during the reign of François for his allegiance to Henri, however he was richly rewarded upon his patrons rise to power. He was made a Marshal and premier gentilhomme de la chambre du roi (first gentleman of the kings chamber) which gave him access to the king at times when even Montmorency was precluded from being in his presence.
Valentinois' party
The king's mistress Diane de Poitiers, duchesse de Valentinois, seeking a counterbalance to the great influence over the king that Montmorency enjoyed, found it in the patronage of the Lorraine family, and in particular the duc d'Aumale and archbishop of Reims. She and the Lorraine's had been in friendly conversation since at least 1546 when a marriage was arranged between the marquis de Maine and her daughter Louise de Brézé. The family achieved a major coup in 1548 when they secured a promise of marriage between the four year old dauphin and their six year old niece Mary Stuart. This marriage would come to pass on 24 April 1558. The alliance of the Lorraine family and Diane began to erode Montmorency's power, much to his consternation. In opposition to this, he frequently tried to contrive reasons for the Lorraine brothers to be absent from court. Ultimately, the Lorraine brothers would not attain the level of intimacy that Montmorency enjoyed with Henri.
In the rivalry between Montmorency and the Lorraine's during the reign of Henri, Saint-André maintained a flexible position between the two, ready to follow whichever advantaged him most in the particular circumstances. Saint-André would however have a rivalry with Montmorency's nephews for access to military command.
In 1548 the Venetian ambassador reported that it was a matter of dispute at the court which of Diane and Montmorency, Henri loved more.
Royal council
During the reign of François a conseil des affaires (council of affairs), sometimes called the secret council had been established. It would meet with the king every morning and was composed of the leading royal favourites, Montmorency, Saint-André, the Lorraine brothers, the elder Cardinal de Lorraine the king of Navarre, the duc de Vendôme, Marshal Bouillon and some administrative royal functionaries who did not participate in the discussions proper. Through this council, royal police was decided upon. In the most sensitive discussions, only Montmorency, Saint-André and the Lorraine brothers would be invited. In the afternoon the conseil privé (privy council) convened to consider matters of finance and administration. Legal matters that had been referred to the king could also be settled during the course of its sessions. It was a far larger council, and could meet without the presence of the king himself.
The two families, Lorraine and Montmorency dominated Henri's councils. Aside from the direct members of the families on the council, such as Montmorency's nephew Odet de Coligny their respective 'creatures' filled the body. Montmorency and the Chancellor François Olivier enjoyed a close relationship, unified by their antipathy for the Lorraine family. For example, Jean de Morvillier the bishop of Orléans, and Louis de Lausignan, the seigneur de Lansac were both men of Montmorency's faction on the court. However affiliation was not binary between the families, and men such as Jean de Monluc, the bishop of Valence maintained relationships with both families. While Montmorency enjoyed the most senior position on the royal council, the Cardinal de Lorraine held the second most senior position. The king for his part was not particularly interested in domestic politics and was content to balance the networks of his favourites in the administration while they ran things.
On 1 April 1547 letters patent established a new royal secretariat, that of the secrétaire d'État (secretary of state), which was grafted onto the former office of secrétaire des finances. The letters patent were likely drawn up by Montmorency himself. Montmorency also enjoyed the benefit of having one of Henri's four secretaires d'État , Jean du Thier, being an old client of his. Indeed Montmorency had gained for Thier the position of secrétaire du roi (secretary of the king) in 1536 and the secretary had served as his personal secretary since 1538. Du Thier was his own man however, and by his appointment in 1547 he was willing to work equally with the Cardinal de Lorraine and over the following decade would depart from Montmorency's service to be firmly associated with the duc de Guise. Three of the four initial secretaries established to the office in 1547 were the picks of Montmorency, and they generally leaned towards him, as they favoured a similarly peaceful international policy as opposed to the Lorraine war policy. The four secretaries did not however have the privilege of opening diplomatic dispatches addressed to the king, at least early in Henri's reign, before the grandees became occupied with war. Montmorency took responsibility for this personally from 1547, both due to his assiduous nature and his desire to maintain his centrality in the court. In 1552, the secrétaires d'État were joined by a new office, that of messieurs des finances. Both these roles were subordinate to the authority of Montmorency, who acted as something like a prime minister.
The grandees of the court, and in particular Montmorency, frequently took advantage of the secretaries to provide either the postscript or closure to the correspondence he was dispatching on his own account. On occasion the secretaries would write the entire letter for Montmorency.
In their later biographies, Marshal Tavannes and Marshal Vielleville would both characterise Henri as a passive presence during his own reign. For Tavannes, it was in fact the reign of Montmorency, Diane and the Lorraine brothers. Vielleville described the various grandees (adding Saint-André to Tavannes' list) as 'devouring the king like a lion'. Whether this distance from rule was a choice of the king is debatable, Montmorency was accused of keeping the king out of involvement in government to better allow for his total control. This included only showing him a portion of the correspondence the court received. It was also true that Henri's long running dispute with his father had meant that he had been kept out of the decision making processes of state for much of his adult life, and therefore he looked for guidance from a man with far more experience. It is possible even that Montmorency represented a surrogate father figure for a man so long estranged from his own. The Italian ambassador at one point remarked that the king trembled when Montmorency approached "as children do when they see their schoolmaster".
A reflection of this balance can be seen in the awards of office made by the royal council. When such awards were signed off on by the king, the supporting grandee would be indicated as 'present. Of the 109 awards made in spring 1553, 11% had the backing of the duc de Guise while 10% had the backing of Montmorency.
Italian expedition
As early as April 1547, Henri planned to visit Italia. Montmorency liased with the prince de Melfi the governor of French Piemonte to increase the number of troops under his command, such that the visit could be safely conducted. Melfi therefore raised an additional 500 soldiers, a challenging expense as his finances were already overstretched rebuilding the fortifications of the region. In Autumn 1547, Montmorency was informed that the Emperor planned to invade Piemonte. This warning came at a time of increasingly trouble border incidents, which only magnified the need of the king to come to Piemonte. The marchese di Saluzzo (marquis of Saluzzo) refused Melfi's order to accept French garrisons in his castles and was subsequently arrested. To free himself from his imprisonment, he agreed in March 1548 to cede all his property to Montmorency. This was an attractive prospect to Montmorency, who through his wife could stake a claim to Monferrato and the town of Tende. With all these combined he could build himself an Italian principality, however he ultimately refused the donation. The marchese died and was succeeded by his brother, who complied with Melfi's garrison order. Montmorency organised the escort to accompany Henri into Piemonte, the comte de Tende put the naval forces on alert in support of this.
Henri had at first wanted to seize this moment to resume war in Italia, Montmorency strenuously opposed the king in this matter. His case was made for him when Venezia announced that it would not enter an alliance with France, a crucial lynchpin of the militant factions policy. Henri nevertheless decided to go forward with his visit to Italia.
In August Henri crossed through the pass de Susa and entered Italia, arriving in Turin on 13 August. The duca di Ferrara (duke of Ferrara) came to pay his homage to the French king, and while there worked out the details of his daughters marriage to the duc d'Aumale. The duca di Savoia petitioned Henri to be restored to his lands but Henri refused to countenance abandoning French control of Piemonte.
Gabelle revolt
A revolt against the gabelle (salt tax) in 1548 disrupted the kings plans for advances in Italia. Tensions had been rising in the south-west of France since 1544, and exploded in this year with 50,000 rioting and taking up arms. At first, Henri was satisfied that the local authorities would be able to suppress it, but this confidence faded as more reports came in. Learning of what was transpiring in September 1548, he was convinced an exemplary punishment was required. From Piemonte he, Montmorency and the secretary Laubespine planned how to respond. Montmorency argued the population had already revolted 5 years previously, and that to pacify the area they should remove the entirety of the population. This extreme plan was however rejected by the king. It was agreed that a pincer movement would be conducted against the rebellious region, with Montmorency marching up towards Bordeaux from Languedoc, while the duc d'Aumale, (duc de Guise in 1550) would advance from Poitou. Montmorency who departed Piemonte with 1000 soldiers and 500 cavalry was to raise further troops of Languedoc, Béarn and the Basque country for his part of the pincer. Both men brought with them men of the others party. Aumale had with him the sieur de Burie, lieutenant-general of Guyenne who was a client of Montmorency's. Meanwhile Montmorency was accompanied by Aumale's brother the marquis de Maine.
The bourgeois of Bordeaux found themselves sympathetic to the cause of the peasant confederacy that dominated the surrounding countryside, known as the Pétault. The garrison and militia therefore were not charged with suppressing the Pétault and their allies. Moneins, the governor of Bordeaux was persuaded to negotiate with the rebels, however he was killed by a restless crowd on 21 August. This act of violence alienated the bourgeois of Bordeaux from the movement, and they repressed it in the cities confines. Montmorency meanwhile approached, he was well informed of how the situation had calmed in the period during which he had been assembling his army, indeed he received a stream of representatives from the city who assured him all was well. By this time Henri had lost interest in the progress of the two armies in suppressing the revolt.
Montmorency was little interested in the efforts of the bourgeois of Bordeaux to support him and he entered Bordeaux in force in October. The people of Bordeaux had decorated the streets with draperies for his arrival. Montmorency took all the arms in the possession of the city over the following days, including the cities artillery pieces. Montmorency suppressed the revolt with savagery, having 150 of the ring leaders executed, while the city itself was subject to the looting of his soldiers. He suspended the Parlement and installed magistrates from Provence, Normandie and Paris in the region. He instructed these parachuted magistrates to open an investigation into the city and its leaders. Meanwhile, on 26 October a funeral was commemorated for Tristan de Moneins. On 6 November the magistrates reached their conclusion, Bordeaux would lose its urban privileges, pay the cost of the campaign and an additional fine of 200,000 écus. The city hall was razed. With this sentence pronounced the execution begin, men of many ranks were sentenced to death, from the prévôt (provost) of Bordeaux who had 'failed to have his orders against the rebellion obeyed' to peasants and craftsmen. Various tortures were inflicted on the rebels.
He dispatched several companies of soldiers to reduce Limoges, which was held by peasant insurgents. On 22 November he left Bordeaux, leaving in the subjugated city the force he had initially brought out of Piemonte and several companies of gendarmes. He departed for Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
The harshness meted out by Montmorency towards Bordeaux would be short-lived, tensions with England creating concern Bordeaux would attempt to defect to the country. Therefore after 6 months the suppression of the civic institutions of Bordeaux was reversed, and the fines rescinded. In a further concession to the impetus towards rebellion, the majority of the unpopular changes to the gabelle would also be revoked in the coming years. The '
gabelle revolt would be the only major popular revolt during Henri's reign.
His behaviour during the gabelle crisis contrasted with that of Aumale who suppressed the rebellion in Saintonge with far more generosity. Durot posits that Aumale may have been making a conscience effort to distance himself from unpopular harshness, thereby allowing Montmorency to receive most of the backlash. Montmorency hoped by this exemplary savagery that the Holy Roman Emperor would find no lingering embers to fan in conjunction with an invasion of France. Aumale and Montmorency returned to court by November for Aumale's elaborate marriage with Anne d'Este. No sooner were the celebrations for Aumale's wedding concluded, than Montmorency had celebrations for his nephew Andelot to conduct, having secured his nephews marriage with the rich heiress Claude de Rieux. The former's wedding was on 4 December, and the latter's on 9 December, neither royal favourite willing to move the celebration to a different time to allow space for the other.
Boulogne campaign
Both Montmorency and the Lorraine family were in agreement as to the importance of recapturing Boulogne from the English, therefore offers of arbitration on the dispute were rejected by the court. Montmorency tasked Odet de Salve, the French ambassador to England with acquiring the plans of the defensive works the English had constructed around the city. Both Aumale and Montmorency proposed that French fortifications on the left bank of the river be reinforced. A new fort was thus built, with works completed in July 1548, it was named fort Châtillon and entrusted to Montmorency's nephew Coligny. It had the capacity to cannonade the English batteries.
In 1549 the campaign finally came, Montmorency encamped at Montreiul in August for the thrust to recapture Boulogne, half his forces were staged there while the other half resided at Ardres. An Imperial herald visited the camp where Henri had joined him and warned the French king that while the Emperor would tolerate an attack against the 'new English conquest' of Boulogne he would not abide by an attack against the 'old English conquest' of Calais. Henri almost flew into a rage at the representative but was calmed by Montmorency. The Empire and England were bound to protect one another if more than 2000 French soldiers approached Calais, therefore Henri sent an ambassador to the Imperial court to inform the Emperor that the English had violated the previous convention first by fortifying Boulogne among various other transgressions. This appeal impressed the Imperial court.
The Constable tasked the priore di Capua with using his naval squadrons to intercept any English relief efforts across the channel. He then struck out at Ambleteuse, a settlement to the north of Boulogne protected by four fortresses. With one of the forts put to siege on 23 August it would be quickly surprised and its garrison of several hundred massacred. The garrison of Ambleteuse were demoralised by this setback and sortied from the town to set fire to some barns, the royal army was thereby able to enter Ambleteuse. Support from the priore di Capua's naval squadron led to the reduction of the remaining parts of the town. The garrison proper was granted clemency, allowed to retreat to Calais. His forces then advanced to Hardinghen but were increasingly frustrated by the wet weather. The royal army led by Montmorency, Aumale and Henri made attempts on Boulogne itself but after three weeks of siege and bombardment of the city without progress a blockade was found to be the only practical course. To this end, it was ordered that several ships be scuttled at the entrance to the port of Boulogne.
The English were however willing to negotiate, as early as October 1549 talks began between the earl of Lincoln, English lieutenant-general of Boulogne and Montmorency's nephew Coligny, who was to be the French lieutenant-general of Boulogne. Henri departed the army at this time, feeling his presence no longer necessary. In February 1550 formal peace talks were opened. Montmorency's brother La Rochepot led the delegation to England, and was accompanied by his nephew Coligny. The delegation was authorised to pay up to 400,000 écus for the return of Boulogne to France. The negotiations bogged down as the English delegation proved reticent even with the large sum on offer to surrender the fort, however talks progressed on due to the advocacy of Montmorency. Montmorency was able to convince the duke of Northumberland, regent of the kingdom, to support the deal. In April a treaty was signed. The English agreed to evacuate Boulogne within 6 weeks on 6 March. The English finally evacuating the city on 25 April without removing their food supplies or artillery much to the delight of La Rochepot and Coligny who had received the keys from the English. The king was impressed with the fortifications the English had installed in the city during their occupation upon his visit to the city on 15 May. The peace with England ushered in a new period of warm relations between the two kingdoms, incubated by Montmorency's kinsmen and friends who served as ambassadors. Indeed it was at Montmorency's Château de Châteaubriant that an English delegation was received, for the awarding of the Order of the Garter to Henri.
Until such time as the money was fully paid to the English, Montmorency's eldest son François was to stay in England as a hostage, alongside five other great lords. In celebration of the victory at Boulogne, Henri organised a triumph in the city of Rouen. Montmorency and Guise (Aumale had succeeded his recently deceased father to the office) had pride of place in the procession, both of them proceeding the princes du sang (princes of the blood) in the parade through the city.
The death of the elder duc de Guise and ascent of his son to his titles was not without controversy. At the time of his death, Aumale was also seriously ill, and therefore accusations were cast towards Montmorency that he had poisoned the late duc and attempted to do likewise to Aumale.
Montmorency was one of the nobles whom it was necessary to negotiate with for the acceptance of the Ludovico di Gonzaga of the ruling family of Mantova into the French court. In a council meeting on 3 February 1565, Montmorency would be among the assembled grandees who assented to Ludovico's marriage to the heiress of the duché de Nevers, thereby making him a great French lord. Indeed the Nevers landed position was estimated to be worth around 2,000,000 livres, in comparison with Montmorency's landed interests which were worth around 3,000,000 and which had been built by his great proximity to the centre of power. His presence, alongside that of Cardinal de Guise and La Roche-sur-Yon was necessary to provide evidence that all the great families of the kingdom either assented or were not opposed to the arrangement. Montmorency would however present a force of opposition to the new duc when it came to him being made a pair (peer) of the realm by the Paris Parlement, attempting to block the transfer of the honour to either Henriette de Clèves or her new husband. Montmorency had a history of disputes with the former ducs de Nevers over their respective precedence in the peerage, however in the matter of Gonzague (as he was now naturalised), he argued peerage could not be inherited by or through a woman, and therefore the pairs de Nivernais had died out with Jacques de Clèves. The crown intervened in the dispute, deciding in favour of Gonzague for his elevation as pair de France, but making no ruling on whether Nivernais or Montmorency was a more senior title in the French peerage, Nevers was therefore received by the Parlement on 22 June 1566.
At court, Montmorency extolled the virtues of the lieutenant-general of Bourgogne, Tavannes, who in return wrote gratefully to Montmorency, asking to be considered even the most humble of the Constable's servants. Tavannes could not be counted among his reliable clients however, and when Tavannes sought intervention with the king in 1561, he sent identical letters to Montmorency, Guise, Tournon, Saint-André and others to be his representative at the court in the matter of his pension.
Royal entry
Due to the busyness of his first few years, it would not be until 15 May 1549 that Henri made his 'entry' into Paris. A grand procession of the great lords and ladies of the kingdom, Montmorency had an important role to play, carrying aloft the golden baton of his office of Grand Maître. In a further grand procession that took place in the city on 16 June, Montmorency rode out in front of the king holding above him the Constable's sword, he was wearing a golden cloth with gold reigns for the horse that he led, Henri proceeded behind him under a canopy head by the échevins (alderman) of Paris. Two days later, on 18 June the queen would make her ceremonial entrance into the capital in an open litter, Montmorency rode alongside the litter which was surrounded on all four corners by cardinals.
Scandal rocked the court in 1550, over the king's liaisons with Lady Fleming which Montmorency had been facilitating by bringing the king to her chambers each night. Montmorency was taking advantage of an broken leg Diane had sustained during riding to try and detach him from his powerful mistress with a woman of his own choosing, thereby furthering his total control of the administration. Diane de Poitiers was furious, as were the Lorraine brothers, who argued Montmorency was dishonouring their niece Diane by his actions. She brought Henri back to where she was recuperating at the Château d'Anet. Diane accused Henri of betraying the Lorraine family, his wife, his son and herself. She then turned on Montmorency showering him in insults for advising the king to conduct the affair and stating that going forward she would not speak to him. Her anger at Montmorency would not last long, and soon she would be writing to him to enquire of the king's health as she had previously. Henri meekly tried to explain that the two were just having conversations but Diane noted that his affair would sabotage the marriage between the dauphin and Marie de Lorraine as he would surely object to marry the "daughter of a whore". Henri conceded to the pressures of the anger and blamed Montmorency for the whole affair, refusing to speak with him for some time. Despite ceasing his liaisons with Fleming, during their time together the two would have a son, Henri de Valois, who would later by made the duc d'Angoulême
Duc de Montmorency
In July 1551, Montmorency was elevated from a simple baron, to the distinction of duché-pairie, (ducal peerage), catapulting him into the highest echelons of the French nobility. He was further assured that the title would not go extinct if there was only a daughter to succeed the duc, and would be inheritable through the female line. The justification for this extraordinary elevation was both on the grounds of his 'personal virtue' and the great lineage of his family which went back to the time of Mathieu II de Montmorency who had served under Philippe II Auguste in the 12th Century. The recent triumph at Boulogne and accord with England further recommended the move to the king. This 'unprecedented' elevation for a baron attracted some disapproval from those of more princely lineages.
War clouds
In Italia, war once again loomed as dispute arose between the Pope and the Farnese rulers of Parma. Henri's advisers were torn on how to proceed, the Lorraine's advocated intervention, hoping for the conquest of Parma, Montmorency meanwhile favoured caution. Henri decided to engage in a proxy conflict, swearing to protect the house of Farnesse on 27 May, to which end he undertook a subsidy of 12,000 écus and to provide 2000 infantry under the command of Piero Strozzi. The Pope was determined to prosecute the war, and declared Parma a rebel. the comte de Brissac was established as governor of French Piemonte in July, and given a force of 15,000 men with which to support Parma.
To finance the wars he undertook, Henri borrowed considerably from the bankers of Lyon and other places. He had inherited a royal debt of 6,800,000 livres, and had been able to reduce much of it with the royal reserves François had amassed. For future loans, the grandees Montmorency and Guise's property was used to guarantee repayment.
Metz campaign
During this time of peace with the Holy Roman Empire, Montmorency had not been idle. Instead he continued the profitable French policy of seeking out whatever enemies of the Emperor he could find to provide them with covert support. At Montmorency's urgings, Henri bided his time for the perfect moment, which came when a group of Protestant Imperial princes appealed to Henri for support. A treaty was established at Chambord in January 1552 by which France would support the Imperial princes in their resistance to 'Papal-Spanish tyranny', and in return for providing 240,000 couronnes (crowns) up front and a further 60,000 monthly to fund the Protestant armies they would allow Henri to occupy the Imperial cities of Cambrai, Metz, Toul and Verdun, which he was to govern in the capacity of a vicar of the Holy Roman Empire. This occupation was theoretically meant to be temporary, a defence of the cities from the tyranny of the Emperor.
Despite the lofty promises of Chambord, most of the Imperial princes would make their peace with the Emperor after only a few months of conflict. Montmorency was reticent about direct open warfare with the Empire, and urged Henri to seek compromise but more bellicose council prevailed against him. With war therefore resumed in 1552, Henri sought to make good on the deal he had struck. To this end a royal army was assembled in Champagne beginning in March. The king conducted a review of the troops alongside Montmorency, Guise and Saint-André in Vitry in April, in total there were 15,000 French foot soldiers, 15,000 Landsknechts, 1300 men-at-arms, 3000 light cavalry and various other assorted forces. Though the king was with the army, he granted Montmorency formal command. Montmorency was tasked with securing the city of Metz, while the king and duc de Guise would secure other parts of Lorraine.
The regent of the duché de Lorraine Christine allowed their army to pass, lacking the means to provide any serious opposition. Montmorency first captured Toul on 5 April 1552, the city being betrayed into his hands by a servant of the former Cardinal de Lorraine, he left the city with a royal garrison. This accomplished he took Pont-à-Mousson, again without a shot being fired, before he made his approach to Metz. Outside Metz he faced his first resistance, being compelled to storm the abbey of Gorze which was held by the Imperials. Though Metz had no Imperial garrison he sent ahead Tavannes and Bourdillon to the council to ask their permission to occupy the city, in aid of German liberties. The intimidated councillors assent on condition he only impose two bands of infantry on the city, to which Montmorency agreed. The bands were however far bigger than had been expected by the councillors, but it was too late to withdraw their consent. Arriving in the city centre, Montmorency had the centre and gates seized. Henri arrived at Metz on 17 April and was welcomed with a review of Montmorency's troops. Henri first desired to appoint Vielleville as governor of Metz, however Vielleville argued that if they wished to be treated as liberators in Alsace, they should employ a light hand in Metz as an example. Montmorency baulked at this, arguing that the grandees of Strasbourg were no smarter than those of Metz, and that these cities would fall as easily as a 'knife through butter'. Therefore the king established a client of Montmorency's, the seigneur de Gonnor as the governor of the city. Gonnor was replaced as governor of Metz by Vielleville (a client of Guise) after the siege of Metz later that year, caused significant friction between Montmorency and the duc.
With Metz conquered, Montmorency moved across the Vosges, facing resistance at the small stronghold of Haguenau which he successfully reduces after deploying his artillery and forces. Montmorency entered the square in triumph, shortly followed by the king. By mid-May the royal army arrived at Wissembourg. Upon reaching Wissembourg the royal army was approached by the pfalzgraf von Zweibrücken (count-palatine of Zweibrücken) who stated that if this was truly a conflict about German liberties, they should advance no further. By this time, word had reached the army that there was to be an invasion into France from Spanish Nederland, the French distraction with this invasion was a relief to the German princes. Therefore the king ordered the army be split into three divisions, one under Guise, one under Montmorency and the final under the duc de Vendôme. Montmorency oversaw the capture of Ivoy on 23 June, during the siege Henri had ventured into the trenches and messed with several cannons, arousing Montmorency's fury. Though he intended to divide the loot of the place between his own company and that of his son, he was unable to control the troops who engaged in unrestrained looting. The army then proceeded onto Sedan. These armies marched north west and put Damvillers to siege, shortly thereafter the king disbanded the army on 26 July.
Though the campaign was a considerable success for the French, it failed to yield any of the results that the 'allies' of the French, the German princes had hoped for. Montmorency's duplicity in the occupation of Metz was remembered bitterly. the elector of Sachsen who had been one of those who invited the French to participate would not forgive them, and soon reconciled himself with the Emperor. Going forward the German princes would reject the claims of outsiders to their territories. The king by contrast was delighted with Montmorency, and rewarded him with the elevation of the seigneurie of Damville to a baronnie, he further awarded the vacated office of Admiral to Montmorency's nephew Coligny upon Admiral Annebault's death. Coligny therefore resigned the charge of colonel-general in favour of another of Montmorency's nephews Andelot.
Despite the serious nature of the military campaign, the rivalry between Montmorency and the Lorraine family continued, and having arrived back at court Montmorency expended his energy to ensure that information about the diplomatic situation did not reach the duc de Guise who remained in the field. Guise's brother who had received his former title, the duc d'Aumale informed Guise that he had been compelled to approach the king at a time when Montmorency was absent to keep his brother informed of international developments. The Emperor was greatly aggrieved by the French coup and desired to recapture those settlements that were lost. To this end he crossed the Rhine in the middle of September. Montmorency sought to replicate his scorched earth strategies that he had employed in Provence, and therefore ordered the removal of all grain, the throwing of millstones into water and the removal of the irons from the mills. The Imperial army invested Metz on 10 November, bombarding the settlement from the east and south. In total 50,000 men would besiege Metz, led by the Emperor personally from 30 November. Montmorency prepared to lead a relief army, and assembled a force at Reims, penetrating into Lorraine with 38,000 men during October. To divert the French, the Imperials launched another force into Picardie that put Hesdin to siege, the king recognising the greatest strategic priority of Hesdin diverted 22,000 of the men in Champagne to march north to relieve the town. Montmorency advanced as far as Tilly before his progress failed, and he retreated back to Reims where he met the king. The two stay there until the end of November, with Montmorency dispatching several of his sons to support Guise in the defence of Metz. Montmorency continues to ensure his policy of starving out the Imperials is adhered to, and upon hearing reports of the poor state of the Imperial camp is satisfied as to the effect of his policy.
On 26 December, the Emperor decided to abandon the siege, having lost too many of his men for too little impact on the walls of Metz. The Emperors' failed siege of Metz made the reputation of the duc de Guise, who led the cities successful defence with only a small force at his command of around 6,000 men.
While Henri and Montmorency campaigned together, Catherine entrusted Montmorency with sending frequent correspondence back to her so she could be appraised of her husband Henri's health. She was not the only one who relied on Montmorency to impart information of the king's health, and Diane also corresponded with Montmorency to that effect. For her part, Catherine was entrusted with the regency government, Henri being out of the capital on campaign. After taking some initiative in early affairs during the regency, Montmorency urged her in future to refer the decisions she was to make to the king before proceeding with them. Catherine in turn requested of Montmorency that he always ensure her husbands safety.
At around the time of Henri's expedition into Lorraine, Leone Strozzi a condotierri of the famous Strozzi family who had been at the French court fled the country to Malta. Strozzi had entered dispute with Montmorency after the Constable secured the office of captain-general of the galleys for Coligny. This departure came after Strozzi had executed a confident of the Constable's Gian Battista Casella. Fearing reprisals Strozzi had taken two galleys from Provence, and fled to the sea, away from the comte de Tende, Montmorency's brother in law and governor of Provence, who wished to revenge himself for the killing. Montmorency denounced the Strozzi as treasonous to the king. Henri was furious at Leone and was determined to disgrace the entire Strozzi family. Catherine, who was close with the family interceded on the behalf of Piero Strozzi with Montmorency, telling him that she was certain he would remain loyal and die in French service. Montmorency in turn was able to convince Henri that Piero Strozzi at least was a trustworthy commander.
Piero Strozzi again found himself at risk in April 1555 due to his involvement in the capitulation of French held Siena which had been subject to an Imperial siege. In the months that followed, Strozzi's forces were almost encircled, and he had to flee by ship to France. Strozzi proposed to the king that they strike back against the Empire by a naval campaign. Henri frostily noted that Strozzi had already 'ruined a land campaign' and that he did not want the fleet to also be compromised. Catherine and Montmorency worked together to save the Marshal from disgrace, inviting him to court on 20 June where the king greeted him icily but did not disgrace him.
Guise was flush with victory after his triumph at Metz, and had gained great esteem in the eyes of the king for his performance. Upon his return the king kissed him, and addressed him as brother. Montmorency was infuriated by this favour shown to his rivals.
Northern campaign of 1553
After the embarrassing defeat at Thérouanne in 1553 a large royal army was raised for a counter offensive against the Imperials. Montmorency was in part blamed for the failures at Thérouanne, as his eldest son had been the commander in the town. His son was therefore now in captivity. For his part, Montmorency was critiqued for failing to follow up the victory at Metz with a decisive blow against the Imperials in Vlaanderen. Montmorency and the king jointly took charge of raising a force totalling 42,000 men. After the Emperor had razed Thérouanne to the ground he moved on Hesdin. Montmorency still raising his force dispatched 2,000 men under Marshal Bouillon to hold the town. Though Bouillon was able to establish himself in the Château he was bombarded from all sides and soon forced to submit on 18 July. Montmorency and the royal force now set out towards Doullens and were able to relieve the siege of the town. Opposite them stood an Imperial force of roughly equal number. Arriving near Corbie Henri inspected his forces, which alongside Montmorency boasted many of the realms princes. The force under Montmorency would devastate Bapaume and much of the surrounding countryside and inconclusive struggles in Luxembourg. The Papal Nuncio who joined Montmorency for the campaign pled with him to be merciful, but Montmorency informed him that it was necessary to execute their revenge. The Nuncio estimated around 2000 villages were burned down. Arriving at Cambrai, which had like Metz been promised as neutral Montmorency demands they open their doors and supply his army. The inhabitants, well remembering Metz refused and therefore Montmorency began a bombardment, which lasted only 6 days before the army decided to move on. Montmorency would become seriously ill during the campaign, and it would ultimately be cut short. Indeed it was suspected by many that he was going to die in September. Bad weather and the lateness of the season without any success contributed to the campaigns end.
Languedoc
Despite holding the office of governor of Languedoc, Montmorency rarely visited the province, as such there was something of a power vacuum in the region. He held little in the way of territory in Languedoc, with only the seigneuries of Florac, Bagnols and Pézenas to his name in the province. Montmorency's attentions were either devoted to political influence at the centre of power or occupied on campaign. This absence from Languedoc was true even in his period of exclusion from power between 1559-1562.
The lieutenant-general of Languedoc during his governorship, Joyeuse was as rigidly Catholic as Montmorency, as was the town governor of Narbonne Raimond de Beccarie whose charge was important in the province. Joyeuse had been named lieutenant-general of the province in 1561 at Montmorency's request and his father (a former governor of Narbonne) had been a client of Montmorency's since 1548.
Northern campaign of 1554
In 1554 the French army again campaigned in the north, with the army divided into three columns, one under Montmorency while the others were under the duc de Nevers and the prince de La Roche-sur-Yon. La Roche-sur-Yon entered Artois burning as he went while Montmorency took the left bank of the Meuse and Nevers the right. On June 28 after a siege Montmorency secures Mariembourg (renamed Henrimbourg by the victors), where he received the king a few days later. After briefly uniting with the force under Nevers, Montmorency's army stormed Bouvignes with the garrison of 800 massacred. The army continued its push towards Bruxelles and carved a path of burned suburbs and destroyed villages all the way to Crèvecœur-sur-l'Escaut where the force under La Roche-sur-Yon joined the royal army. Montmorency and the king decided to devote the entire royal army to the siege of Renty. However by now the entire Imperial army of 45,000 was in the area. Guise and Coligny, in charge of a small party of 300 were able to turn back the Imperial vanguard, however Montmorency did little to exploit this success and Renty would remain untaken. After Renty, the king decides to retreat the army back to France.
Montmorency's responsibilities for the direction of the army became a great burden for him, he was accused of limiting the pursuit of the Imperial army after the battle of Renty so as to deprive Guise of an opportunity for glory. The Venetian ambassador held him responsible for the failure of the campaign to take Bruxelles. His overall approach to the campaign had been cautious, which became the subject of criticism. It was alleged he was more interested in securing the ransom of his son than the prosecution of the campaign. At both court and in the town squares of France Latin verses were composed decrying him as a coward.
Man of peace
Contemporaries to the reign of Henri believed that the prime mover in appointments to bishoprics during this period was the Cardinal de Lorraine, who it was said was present whenever candidates to become bishop were read before the king for his approval or disapproval. His influence over the process was not however total, and Montmorency and Diane de Poitiers both exerted their own influence on ecclesiastical elections against Lorraine. For example, the archbishop of Arles, Jacques du Broullat was Montmorency's relative. Even if Montmorency did not enjoy anything like total influence over ecclesiastical appointments, there were bishops among those whom he exerted influence to protect. For example, when François de Dinteville, the bishop of Auxerre was accused of having attempted to poison the king's son, Montmorency secured the dropping of the charges against him.
As a testament to the great influence Montmorency enjoyed, he was made godfather of Henri's youngest son the duc d'Alençon after his birth in 1555.
The Île de France was increasingly a territory of the Montmorency family. As a reflection of this Montmorency was able to secure the governorship of the province for his son François upon such time as he was released from imperial captivity. The appointment of his eldest son to the office also reflected the upcoming marriage between him and the king's bastard Diane de France. At the same time, Coligny became governor of Picardie. With this region as his 'fief', Montmorency was greatly aggrieved when in 1555 the Lorraine's acquired the comté de Nanteuil (a days ride from Paris) for 260,000 livres. In response to this intrusion on his domain, Montmorency would devote the next several years to frenetic land purchases in the Île de France. The two families rivalry would come to a head over the comté de Dammartin. The last holder Françoise d'Anjou had died, and her succession was disputed between two heirs. Montmorency purchased the rights to the comté from one of the claimants for 192,000 livres in 1554, five years later the Guise bought out the other claimant for 200,000 livres. To achieve this, the Lorraine's had to convince Boulainvilliers to rescind the contract he had made with Montmorency. The dispute between the two grandees for possession of this (relatively poor - possessing revenues of only around 5000 livres per annum) fiefdom would continue until 1572. At times the hatred generated between the two families over Dammartin was anticipated to bring the two families into civil war.
Negotiation efforts
The Papal Nuncio Prospero Santacroce was keen to secure a peace between France and the Empire, so that both kingdoms might focus their attention on the 'true threats to Christendom', the Osmanlı İmparatorluğu (Ottoman Empire). He proposed that each side retain what they held, arguing that this was in France's interest, as they currently possessed Metz. Montmorency therefore alongside Lorraine and the secretary de Laubespine met with the Pope in early 1555 in a searching effort for an agreeable peace. During May 1555 peace talks were conducted at Marcq, however the French were unable to tolerate the demands of the Imperial side, to vacate Piemonte, Monferrato, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Corse in return for very few concessions from the Emperor and therefore talks broke down. The talks were further sabotaged by French gains in Italia, which lessened the interest of the crown in attaining peace. Montmorency had little to gain by the continuation of the war, with both a son and nephew in captivity (not to mention his son-in-law Turenne and brother-in-law Villars), and much to lose. However Guise and Lorraine's interests were much more closely tied to the prosecution of the war. With the death of Pope Julius, a new pope, Paul IV who was far more anti-Imperial, pushed for an alliance with France against the Neapolitans. Montmorency was frustrated by the efforts that were needed to stop the Pope inflaming the war.
Truce of Vaucelles
The failure of Piero Strozzi to defend Siena, which fell to Imperial forces on 12 April 1555 contributed to the push for peace. In negotiations with Cardinal de Granvelle in May Montmorency's strident desire for peace was apparent. More embarrassingly for the Constable, his admiration for the Emperor was also on display. In a notable incident he praised the Emperor as a man who 'knew what is what', Lorraine turned to Montmorency who reddened and added 'after my master [Henri]'. Despite his passion for peace, Montmorency was not willing to concede to all the Imperial demands and long discussions were held concerning Metz, Milano, Boulogne, Napoli, Vlaanderen and Bourgogne. Ultimately the election of the pro-French Pope put an end to the talks for the time.
At the French court, opinion was sharply divided between the Lorraine brothers, who saw advantage in continuing the fight in Italia, and Montmorency who saw it as an expensive liability (indeed the crown had already sunk 45,000,000 couronnes into the conflict by 1556). Montmorency disapproved of what he saw as 'adventurism' from the Lorraine brothers. France's ambassador to the Papal States, Avanson, was persuaded to negotiate France into a military alliance with the new Pope in October 1555, even before negotiators of proper rank arrived. This alliance was aimed at the Spanish control of Napoli. When Cardinal de Tournon and Lorraine arrived in December, they endorsed Avanson's agreement in a slightly modified version. Henri was to assist the Pope in liberating Napoli.
In October 1555, the Emperor began the process of his abdications, ceding control of first Nederland and then España to his son Felipe. This process was useful to the resumption of peace talks, as much of Henri's hatred of the Imperial camp was personally directed at the Emperor Charles, and he had less personal animosity towards Felipe. Negotiations opened, at first on the more specific issue of ransoms for the imprisoned nobility, before they expanded in December to a more extensive conference. As it remained nominally only a discussion of ransoms, Montmorency's nephew Coligny led the talks for the French. He considered withdrawing in late January, but Montmorency's desire for peace ensured the conference continued.
Montmorency ultimately arranged for the Truce of Vaucelles to be signed on 5 February 1556 between France, the Empire and España. This had the advantage of helping him with negotiating the release of his son François from his captivity. Meanwhile for the Emperor it allowed him to conduct the formalities of his abdication. The truce declared that there would be a five year truce between France and Felipe II, who was elevated to kingship in España. It was further declared that neither side would build any further fortifications. The truce was a considerable victory for the French, allowing the king to keep control of Metz, Toul, Verdun, all the places captured in Luxembourg, Hainaut and Vlaanderen between 1552-5; their control of Piemonte, Monferrato and Corse.
For his leadership in the movement towards peace, he was subject to increasing scorn from public opinion. He was accused of being fearful that if war was allowed to continue he would be supplanted in the royal favour by more aggressive captains such as Guise, Vielleville, Monluc and Brissac. De Crue, Montmorency's biographer, finds this attitude short-sighted and highlights Montmorency's skill at ensuring the army remained supplied and his determination to preserve the stability of the monarchy. More personal scorn was directed at Montmorency by the Lorraine brothers for the undermining of the work they were undertaking with the Papacy.
Alongside his nephew Coligny the governor of Picardie, Montmorency worked to ensure that vigilance was maintained on the north eastern border of the kingdom. Montmorency ordered engineers to overhaul the fortifications of the Haute Somme.
Raising ransom
The Constable was distraught to learn of the escape from French captivity of the hertog van Aarschot (duke of Aarschot). Not only a violation of his word of honour, Montmorency had hoped that Aarschot's ransom would constitute the majority of the sum that would see his son released from Imperial captivity. An event which had not yet happened due to continued negotiations over the size of the ransom. Montmorency and Henri threatened to void the truce if an agreeable ransom was not agreed. The Venetian ambassador recognised this as a bluff, as the captivity of his son had brought Montmorency to the peace table in the first place. Montmorency would opine that he was aware the Imperials were preparing for war, but that they would find the French ready to meet them on the field. With Montmorency for war, Lorraine advocated peace, arguing that they could not disrupt the peace of 'Christendom'. When a truce of 50,000 écus was finally set for his sons ransom on 25 July, Montmorency reverted to his pacific posture.
Henri's Italian campaign
In the end, the Truce of Vaucelles would not last its intended five years, being violated in September 1556, with the war therefore reopening at this time. When the Pope had learned of the truce of Vaucelles he was furious, and while it would have been improper for him to denounce it formally, his scorn was open. He put pressure on Henri to break it and despite the urgings of the French ambassador, succeeded in provoking the duque de Alba (duke of Alba) to invade Papal territory, thereby persuading Henri to void his adherence to the truce. Against the Lorraine's Montmorency condemned the drive back to war to the king. At council, Montmorency argued that Alba had not violated the truce and that he should content himself to support the Pope monetarily, Guise and Brissac meanwhile argued that the king's honour was at stake if he did not defend the Pope. Though the royal council was deadlocked on renouncing the truce for sometime, the king was able to convince Montmorency that by supporting the Pope he was not violating his agreement with España. Nevertheless Montmorency remarked that they would "ride across the Alps but come back on foot". On 28 September Henri committed to an Italian expedition.
The duque di Ferrara(duke of Ferrara) would not play ball with the campaign plan established by the French, which required his financial support. Montmorency jumped on the opposition to try and convince Henri to cancel the campaign, but to no avail. Despite the campaign into Italia, the truce of Vaucelles remained technically in force. On 6 January 1557 Montmorency's nephew Coligny launched a surprise attack on Douai. In the wake of this debacle, Montmorency tried to ensure the event would remain a local embarrassment as opposed to the beginning of a broader campaign. However when Henri learned (wrongly) that Venezia was about to ally with France, a formal declaration of war was exchanged with España on 31 January 1557.
Persecution of the Protestants
The growth of Protestantism, under the stewardship of the queen of Navarre (who had affiliated with Protestantism since 1557) in Béarn was a cause of great concern for Montmorency. In the hopes of combatting the 'heresy', he dispatched his militantly Catholic lieutenant Cardinal d'Armagnac from his position in Toulouse to 'restore ecclesiastical discipline'. These efforts would however come to little, and in July 1561, the queen of Navarre legalised Protestantism and outlawed Catholicism in her territories.
By the means of the Edict of Compiègne in July 1557 the inquisition was established in France. The edict called for three 'inquisitors' to run the proceedings. A man from each of the three leading families of the kingdom was selected for the role; Cardinal de Lorraine for the Lorraine family, Cardinal de Châtillon for the Montmorency and Cardinal de Bourbon for the Bourbons. By this time Châtillon's Protestant sympathies were already suspected, making his inclusion a subject of historical curiosity. Romier explains his inclusion as a political necessity, as Montmorency would never tolerate being excluded from such an important method by which to enhance his authority, which would be left in the hands of Lorraine.
Guise was charged with leading a campaign into Italia in support of the Pope in 1557. The campaign was a disaster, with the Spanish refusing to engage his force, allowing attrition and poor supplies to eat away at the strength of the French. At court, Lorraine complained in letters to his brother that he had to spend every hour of the day with the king if he was to have any hope of stopping Montmorency from getting the king to agree with his position that the invasion was a terrible idea.
Disaster at Saint-Quentin
The king was increasingly conscious that the next Imperial thrust might come from the north, and this was only furthered by the new state of war with England. To this end, he replaced Navarre (formerely the duc de Vendôme prior to the death of the old king in 1555) as commander of the northern frontier army with Montmorency in May 1557.
While the duc de Guise was fighting in Italia, a Spanish army led by the duca di Savoia (duke of Savoia), first cousin of Henri invaded France from the Spanish Netherlands. They first made a feint towards the east, suggesting they were to attack Marienburg before pivoting towards Saint-Quentin in Picardie. The town was initially poorly defended, but the small garrison happened to be reinforced by a passing company of the dauphins lances. This provided time for Montmorency to dispatch Coligny with 300 men-at-arms and two infantry companies to reinforce the town. They were able to slip in before the siege lines were sealed. Montmorency was charged with leading an army to relieve the town, the king having informed his favourite that he was angry better provisions had not been made for its defence. With several attempts failed at introducing troops into the besieged town, Montmorency prepared to withdraw, his army outnumbered considerably, however his order came late, and by then the besieging army was able to bring him to battle before he could reach the woods. Therefore on 10 August he was handed a crushing defeat by the duca in front of Saint-Quentin. His army attempted to extract itself to the east of the city, but upon entering a plateau with his cavalry routed, the infantry was bombarded relentlessly for four hours. Only some small portions of the army under Condé and Nevers were able to withdraw to La Fère. During the combat 6000 Frenchmen were killed, and around 600 French nobles were taken prisoner, including, the duc de Montpensier, Marshal Saint-André, Montmorency himself and his fourth son the sieur de Montbéron. It was the total defeat for the French army since Pavia. While there were fewer French casualties than at Pavia, the battle was at a far more dangerous location for France.
The destruction of Montmorency's army was a disaster for France. Henri lacked present troops, generals, and supplies. The remaining intact French forces were largely occupied far away in Italia. Therefore the capital was in theory open to attack from the Spanish. In the climate of panic some Parisians turned on their Protestant neighbours, besieging a secret Protestant service that was taking place at the rue Saint-Jacques. At court, bitter recriminations were levelled against Montmorency for his incompetence. In a couplet that spread throughout the kingdom it was noted that the people 'excused Henri, and cursed Montmorency'.
While France descended into fearful panic with the loss of Montmorency's army, the town of Saint-Quentin was able to hold out long enough for the king to hurriedly recall Guise from Italia, and invest him with the authority of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, granting him general command of the kingdom for the emergency. Guise's brother Lorraine took up a position approximating Montmorency's domestic responsibilities. With the fall of Saint-Quentin on 27 August, another of Montmorency's relatives, his nephew Coligny fell into Spanish hands. During his imprisonment he would convert to Protestantism. Having taken Saint-Quentin, the Spanish decided against a thrust towards the largely undefended Paris, and moved on to sacking other Picard towns, among them Ham, Le Catelet, Noyon and Chauny.
Captivity
Guise, now lieutenant-general of the kingdom, assembled a new army at Compiègne and was able to drive the Spanish from the kingdom.
Montmorency's imprisonment caused great anguish for the king, who began to send out peace feelers in the hope of quickly securing his return to the court. Alongside his desire to be reunited with his favourite, he was increasingly cautious about leaving the Lorraine family to have unchecked pre-eminence in his court without Montmorency as a counterweight. He was also concerned that he could no longer finance the war. Meanwhile, with Guise ascendant in Montmorency's absence, the duc secured the capture of Calais from England in January 1558, bringing the city that had been in English hands for 200 years back into the control of the French crown. By this means Guise made his name as 'the greatest captain in France'. According to later testimony by Coligny, the Lorraine government showed considerable hostility to the captive Constable.
With Montmorency's influence in the kingdom therefore weakened, some of his clients broke away from him and became clients of the Lorraine family. One such noble who was sensitive to the way the wind was blowing was the governor of Berry La Châtre who had long been in Montmorency's sphere.
At first, Montmorency was transported by the victorious army to Saint-Omer, and from there he was moved to Ghent. In the initial reports that reached the king, it was said that he had died. However when Henri learnt that Montmorency was in fact alive, but badly injured, he hurried to despatch the famed surgeon Ambroise Paré to him, though his captors refused to allow this. Several of the king's doctors were allowed to see him while he was staying in Enghein, and he began to heal. From his captivity in Ghent, Montmorency was not sitting idly. Hoping to facilitate a peace, Montmorency established marriage proposals aimed at sealing a deal in one match up, the daughter of the king Elisabeth de Valois would marry Felipe of España's son Don Carlos and in another the dauphin would marry Felipe's widowed sister the princess of Portugal. This second arrangement would have the advantage to Montmorency of avoiding a proximate relationship between the dauphin and his rivals the Lorraine brothers. For a while the king listened to Montmorency, and agreed to postpone his ascent to the marriage. However, with Guise's victory at Calais, the marriage of his niece to the dauphin was committed to by the king, and the ceremony celebrated on 24 April. At the top table during the wedding meal, the Montmorency family were thin on the ground. Only Montmorency's nephew Cardinal de Châtillon was there to represent the family at this key marriage. For the celebrations, Guise possessed the staff of the Grand Maître during Montmorency's absence.
In an assertion of their ascendency, the Lorraine family moved against Montmorency's nephew Andelot in May 1558, overseeing his arrest on charge of heresy. Andelot had been working as a negotiator for the peace accords with España and it was the Spanish who tipped off the Lorraine brothers to this opportunity. He would not be in captivity for long, and by July Montmorency had already secured his release, with Lorraine being forced to admit that the information he had been provided was intended to dupe him into falsely accusing Andelot. Henri was increasingly uneasy with their power, as was the Lorraine families former patron Diane. Diane took this moment to realign herself towards Montmorency, and arranged a marriage between her granddaughter and the duc de Montmorency's second son Damville. She had grown weary of the Lorraine brothers, who now had no need of her in their time of ascendency. The marriage would take place at Montmorency's château de Chantilly in January 1559, with Montmorency inviting the king and the queen to attend. Montmorency and Diane would dine together every evening in January as a reflection of their new political accord.
The king was frustrated by the obstinacy Guise showed towards continuing the war, and the need to be reunited with Montmorency which Guise was thereby denying him. In reflection of his increasing distaste for the duc de Guise, when Guise requested the office of Grand Maître be transferred to him from Montmorency in late 1558 as a further reward for his victory at Calais, the king refused. Guise seeing the way the wind was blowing, departed court in frustration on 1 December.
In light of the great wealth of Montmorency, and his importance to the king, Savoia set his ransom at a great amount, 600,000 livres. The first instalment of Montmorency's huge ransom was paid in late 1558, and therefore he was released from the duca di Savoia's captivity. Montmorency was released from captivity for two days on 10 October on Felipe's instruction in the hopes his presence would break the king's resolve to continue the war. Waiting impatiently for his favourite, Henri eventually resolved to ride out and meet him, he found the Constable alone on the road, and after a long embrace the two travelled back to Amiens. The two spent every minute of the following two days together, with Montmorency sleeping in the king's chamber. Montmorency complained to the king of the ambition of the Lorraines, with the king adding his own complaints about them onto his, upon receiving word of their discussions, Guise was dispirited that he departed court to go and hunt at one of his châteaux. After leaving back to captivity, Henri wrote to his favourite "Nothing in the world can turn me from the love I have for you". It would indeed be the renewal of the king's affections for him that were the prime result of his paroled release, with little immediate developments towards peace.
Return to power
With the 200,000 couronnes required for the first instalment of his ransom paid, Montmorency again returned to the centre of political power. A thousand riders came out to meet him as he travelled back to Paris in December. He arrived at court in Saint-Germain on 21 December, and set about re-establishing his dominance over the court in just the way it had been prior to his capture. That same day Lorraine returned his signet ring that he had received from the king back in 1557. Henri asked the Cardinal why he and Guise had stopped attending council, to which Lorraine replied that "he [Lorraine] did not wish to pass as Montmorency's valet". With his return, Guise's authority as lieutenant-general of the kingdom was cancelled. Henri also promised Montmorency, that his eldest son would inherit his office of Grand Maître upon his death. Guise was however able to delay this from coming to pass, and the appointment of Montmorency's second son Damville as a Marshal. Around Christmas in court the situation was explosive and matters almost came to blows in the halls of Saint-Germain. On 24 December Guise asked two courtiers to secretly watch him, and then challenged Montmorency's eldest son to a duel over a slight (likely the matter of his having blamed Guise for failing to get Papal dispensation to annul his secret marriage). Montmorency's son swore to the duc that he had done nothing to dishonour him and then departed to inform Montmorency and the king. Henri was unsettled by the episode, but Montmorency laughed it off. In the wake of this, those opposed to the influence of his relatives retreated. For example Blaise de Monluc who had usurped the position of colonel-general of the infantry in the Constables absence, resigned the charge in favour of Montmorency's nephew François de Coligny d'Andelot. In Picardie, Coligny returned to his charge as governor and was now joined by Andelot as his lieutenant-general. At liberty, Montmorency continued to work for peace. This did not mean he was blind to the considerations of the war however, should peace fail, and he oversaw the fortification of Péronne and incited Süleyman into attacking the Empire, so that the Emperor would not be in a position to seek the return of the three bishoprics.
Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis
As early as July 1558, Saint-André and Montmorency, both captives, had a conference at Oudernarde at which they agreed on the importance of securing a peace. With their discussions finalised, Saint-André went to the princ van Oranj (prince of Oranj) to inform him that the king wished to negotiate a settlement with España. Both Montmorency and Saint-André conducted negotiations with their captors through September, alongside the secretary L'Aubespine, hosting some of the talks in their chambers. A formal conference for the end of the war was begun at Cercamp on 8 October 1558 while Montmorency was still in captivity. The peace talks were impeded by the extent of the Habsburg demands, the French were to cede Piemonte, Calais, Corsica, Luxembourg and any other Italian possessions. Montmorency protested the ceding of Piemonte, arguing that this Italian territory should be left with France, however the Spanish countered that the mountains were the natural border that should be abided by. Lorraine was able to convince Montmorency of the necessity of jettisoning Piemonte. Initially these demands were viewed as too much, and the conference was at risk of breaking up. However Montmorency, keenly aware the collapse of the peace talks would mean his return to captivity persuaded the king to continue the negotiations. In this he was supported by a new ally, the king's mistress Diane. In a stormy council meeting on 15 November, Henri announced that he was determined to make peace, even if it involved ceding almost all of these French conquests in Italia. Henri informed the council that he had called them, not to debate the proposal but merely to inform them of his decision, only Archbishop of Vienne objected to the king in the meeting, but he was told to be quiet.
Catherine and other courtiers were horrified at this conciliatory approach, and implored Henri not to cede French Italian possessions. Henri had indeed promised Guise personally that French Piemonte would not be given away at the peace table. On 30 November Guise told the king that he would rather his head be cut off than admit the treaty proposals were honourable. He sought to publicly embarrass the king by publicly reminding him of his promise to transfer the office of Grand Maître to him. The captains such as Brissac and Monluc were also disgusted by the 'betrayal of their military sacrifices'. Monluc would later write that Montmorency and Saint-André were the prime reasons why the king established the peace, but that he did not blame them for the misfortunes of the peace and that which followed, as they too were victims of the troubles that were to follow. Montmorency was blamed by the war party for convincing the king of this approach, but Henri defended his favourite, arguing to Catherine that the wrongdoer was not Montmorency, who had always acted properly but rather those who had pushed for the resumption of the war after the truce of Vaucelles had been negotiated in the first place.
On 2 November Montmorency, Lorraine and Saint-André departed from the negotiations to meet with the king at Beauvais. Henri was overjoyed to see the Constable again. The Lorraine brothers later alleged that it was at this time that the two men entered into a secret agreement for the terms of the peace. Montmorency returned to the talks on 7 November, and therefore a second session began that day which would last until the end of the month. In the second session the matter of the parties allies was considered, for France the kingdom of Navarre, for España the ducato di Savoia. The claims of the king of Navarre to Spanish Navarre were abandoned. Matters then turned to England, with the Spanish and English delegation demanding the return of Calais to English control. Lorraine could not countenance this, and although it was the conquest of his political rival, Montmorency's loyalty to France would not allow him to support handing over Calais either. On 30 November negotiations were adjourned for 6 weeks, in part so Montmorency and Saint-André could sort out their ransoms.
Towards the establishment of the peace, Montmorency ordered Brissac to dismantle French fortifications that were present in Piemonte and Monferrato. Brissac greatly resented the order, but complied with what was asked, he further dismissed 12,000 soldiers under his command. The soldiers therefore likewise felt betrayed by the peace.
Upon the resumption of the talks, they were moved to Cateau-Cambrésis, viewed as a more convenient and comfortable location. Montmorency Saint-André and Lorraine arrived for their resumption on 6 February. By now there was a new queen in England, and Elizabeth proved far more conciliatory as concerned the fate of Calais. Nevertheless discussions became very heated, and Montmorency advised Henri to make the appearance of preparing for war to ensure that they got the peace they hoped for through the recruiting of new captains. The issue of Calais was finally cracked on 12 March. The French determined that it was necessary to treat England and España as separate peace treaties to progress. For Calais, France agreed to either return the city to England within 8 years, or failing that provide compensation to England of 500,000 couronnes d'or (golden crowns), England would forfeit its rights to Calais or compensation if they committed aggression against Scotland or France.
On 4 April the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was signed, it constituted two separate peace treaties, one between France and España, the other between France and England. France would maintain Calais, the Three Bishoprics (Metz, Toul and Verdun), Saluzzo and several towns in the Piemonte, but return all other conquests. Felipe for his part would return to France, Ham, Saint-Quentin, Thérouanne and Catelet. Felipe II agreed to marry Elisabeth de Valois, a similar arrangement to the one proposed by Montmorency in early November. The peace was bitterly resented by the majority of French military captains. The queen of Navarre had written to Montmorency in November urging him to represent her husbands claims to Spanish occupied southern Navarre, however this would not form part of the peace settlement. The finalisation of the specific terms of Montmorency's ransom payments also formed a component of the peace.
Concord with England
With peace now established, Montmorency worked to push friendship with England. At this time the great hostages France had agreed to provide England as part of the treaty arrived in London, while the English hostages were received with great pageantry by Henri. For the release of common prisoners of war, imprisoned in the galleys of their enemies, Montmorency signed a separate convention with the duque de Alba (duke of Alba) by which the French release the Spanish captives in their possession and the Spanish did likewise for the French. The only monetary compensation demanded for the common soldiers was for the cost of their food during captivity, therefore France paid España around 30,000 couronnes. Instead of providing the sum in cash, Henri released 9 Spanish captains of value without ransom.
War on heresy
On 10 June 1559, Henri decided to visit the Paris Parlement to observe the Parlementaires in session. He was inspecting the body at the urgings of radical Catholic deputies who had warned him that the court was filled with Protestants who wanted to strip him of the authority of his kingship. His visit would be one of the most important in the history of the Parlement, and he was accompanied for the occasion by Montmorency and the Lorraine brothers. In the session that followed, several deputies, including one Anne du Bourg voiced opinions that bordered on lèse majesté (defamation to the dignity of the king), and Henri was unable to tolerate what was said particularly in light of fact it was done in the presence of his favourites. As a result eight Parlementaires were arrested, Henri commanding Montmorency to arrest them despite the traditional protections of their office, with Anne du Bourg being burned at the stake in December.
At this time the king was determined to reinforce his measures against heresy. While with Montmorency at his Château d'Écouen a new edict was formulated to stiffen the persecution. This edict came at a time when Montmorency was ascendant at court.
Fall
Death of the king
On June 30 Henri was participating in a tournament to celebrate the recently signed peace. In a joust with the comte de Montgommery, captain of his Scots Guard his opponents lance pierced his visor, with a shard of wood embedding itself in his eye. Montmorency and Tavannes rushed forward, holding the king in their arms before they carried him to the Palais des Tournelles with the assistance of Guise, Condé and Martigues. In the following days Henri slowly and agonisingly died while attended to by the greatest doctors of the age. During his periods of unconsciousness Catherine ensured Montmorency was kept away from the king, but when he was conscious he was able to call for Montmorency to be with him. Guise began discussing a potential inditement of Montmorency on the grounds of failing to fasten Henri's visor properly. The Constable was agitated, and brought the body of a man murdered in Paris to the court so that the effects of Henri's wounds could be analysed on the skull. After experimenting on the corpse the physician concluded that Henri's wound would not be fatal but that he might lose an eye. Montmorency reported optimistically to the English ambassador that the king was on the mend. Henri's condition then took a turn for the worse as blood poisoning set in. Ultimately Montmorency began preparations for what was to come in the reign of Henri's son, and to this end entered contact with the king of Navarre to unite their political interests.
In his capacity as Grand Maître Montmorency had an important role to play in the events that followed the kings death, bringing 48 monks into the mortuary chamber to perform their chants.
Palace revolution of the Lorraine brothers
With Henri dead, the Lorraine family wasted little time in seizing the opportunity of their close proximity to the new king. Montmorency was unavoidably occupied with his responsibilities to guard the body of the late king, and remained with the body at the Hôtel des Tournelles alongside Saint-André while the court generally departed to the Louvre. Therefore Guise and Lorraine occupied the Louvre palace which had in the reign of Henri been reserved for the usage of Montmorency and the king's mistress, in so doing they took possession of the young king. Catherine served as the Lorraine families ally in these moves against Montmorency and Diane as she despised both figures. Her hatred of Montmorency derived from his détente with Diane and his alleged description of her as a mere 'merchants daughter'. She also despised the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, which had destroyed the French position in Italia, and held him to be the peace's architect. Montmorency's apartments were taken by the duc de Guise, while Jacques d'Humières took over Saint-André's, and Lorraine usurped Diane's.
At the funeral of the king at Saint-Denis the effigy which had adorned the coffin was removed and the corpse lowered into the pit. The great officers of state then all threw their batons into the hole on top of the coffin. Montmorency had the responsibility to cry the (traditional since 1515) declaration "The king is dead. Long live king François, second of his name, by the grace of God most Christian king of France". The duc de Guise then raised the royal standard, as he assumed the role of grand Chambellan for the purpose of the ceremony.
The Lorraines furthered this palace revolution with an assertion of control over the military, church and the kingdoms finances. Montmorency was informed of this on 11 July when the king told him, that it was his wish going forward for Guise to handle his kingdoms military affairs, and Lorraine to handle the kingdoms financial situation. Montmorency was told by the king that his presence at court was un-necessary. François had long held a distaste for Montmorency, who his father had compelled him to respect with the address of compère. Andelot was again dispossessed of the charge of colonel-general, this time in favour of the vicomte de Martigues. The specifics of the administration was however to be left to the secretaries to execute, a marked departure from the hands on administration Montmorency had preferred during his ascendency. Only several days into the young boys reigns, ambassadors were reporting home on the ascendency of the Lorraine family over the crown. The young king's mother initially endorsed this arrangement, and went along with the dismissal of Montmorency and the Bourbon princes from power.
Montmorency wrote urgent appeals to Navarre to come to court so they could present a united from against the Lorraine administration, however Navarre stalled. Navarre did not feel prepared to confront the power of the Lorraine brothers, and had sour memories of how little Montmorency had done to advance the territorial interests of his kingdom during the negotiations of Cateau-Cambrésis. Indeed, Montmorency had rarely acknowledged him during the reign of Henri and therefore in Navarre's eyes there was a probability that this was some form of trap. However, according to Navarre's wife Jeanne, Montmorency had shown friendship to Navarre during the 1550s.
Eventually however he agreed and began marching north alongside his brother the prince de Condé. Montmorency dispatched a secretary to meet with the princes, and his three nephews were also present to meet them in a conference that transpired in early August at Vendôme. Aside from their collective opposition to the Lorraine government, the assembled grandees could agree on little. The only product of the meeting was an agreement for an end to the feud between the Montmorency and the Bourbon-Montpensier family, which had been ongoing for a decade. Having accomplished little, Navarre proceeded on to court, arriving on 18 August where he did little to assert the opposition's position. Upon his return to his estates in southern France, Navarre affirmed his loyalty to the administration and Catholicism, and was richly rewarded with the addition of Poitou to his governate of Guyenne. Condé for his part was offered the governorship of Picardie to replace Coligny. The chief Bourbon princes were all offered places on the royal council.
As part of the palace revolution, Montmorency was dispossessed of the office of Grand Maître on 17 November, the charge being granted to the duc de Guise, he was further compelled to provide his royal seal to the brothers. By this means Guise gained control of the court. The negotiations to remove him from control of this office were predicated on the receipt of the office of Marshal by his eldest son François. His removal from the centre was not however total, he maintained the office of Constable and the charge of governor of Languedoc (neither of which he had remained in control of in his 1540s disgrace). His daughter Louise was granted the abbey of Maubuisson at this time. His partial maintenance in favour represented one aspect of what made the palace revolution of 1559 far less total than that which accompanied Henri's ascent to power in 1547.
Retirement
Left with little access to power at court, Montmorency withdrew from court to his estates. He told the king that he was 'old and tired'. Not a single award made of office at court in 1560 would be to someone with his backing, the Lorraine brothers meanwhile were responsible for 74% of grants.
The new Lorraine administration was cautious in its policy, and did little to rock the boat in terms of the foreign policy Henri and Montmorency had pursued in their final years. The peace with España was maintained and efforts continued towards gaining influence over Scotland.
In that year, a promotion to the Ordre de Saint-Michel of eighteen new chevaliers attracted Montmorency's disapproval. It was around this time that receipt of the award began to be considered a degraded and diluted honour.
The new administration of the kingdom was faced with a financial crisis, and responded with a radical program of austerity and repossessions. To this end various parts of the royal domain that had been alienated under the prior two kings were resumed in control by the crown. Therefore Montmorency was deprived of the comté de Beaumont (valued around 50,000 livres) which had been alienated to him in 1527, alongside the seigneuries of Compiègne and Baux.
Conspiracy of Amboise
In March 1560 a Protestant conspiracy attempted to seize the king while he was staying at the Château d'Amboise. Despite being frozen out of power, Montmorency would not involve himself in the plot, nor would his three Protestant inclined nephews who during this time stuck to rhetoric to express their opposition to the government. Only his nephew Andelot would express sympathy with the plotters, and protest against their repression. Montmorency and his son François took charge of the security measures to keep Paris from falling to any conspiracy. The gates of the city were shut, guards increased and searches conducted. Any strangers present in the city were to leave within 24 hours unless they could justify their presence. Aside from the capture of a few weapons, little suspicious activity was uncovered by these efforts.
The coup would be unsuccessful, but panic and fear of subsidiary uprisings spread across the kingdom. Condé was suspected of involvement, but denied the charge. The Lorraine family began to imagine the possibility that the Bourbon family had executed the plot in league with the Montmorency. Therefore they had Catherine summon Montmorency's nephews to court. Upon his arrival, Coligny argued that the Lorraine brothers had done a poor job recognising the services Montmorency had rendered to the crown, describing the Constable as victim of an injustice. Montmorency was forced to defend his innocence in front of the Parlement, making a speech in which he denounced the conspiracy, while taking shots at the Lorraine government. In the days that followed the conspiracy, the Lorraine government promulgated a pardon of those who had participated with solely religious motivation to present a petition, thereby differentiating 'heresy' from 'sedition'.
As early as June of that year, Montmorency began to consider the possibility of a reconciliation with the Lorraine government in return for the granting of the comté de Dammartin to him which had been stripped from him in the palace revolution, however for the moment little came of this. Baumgartner suggests that Montmorency's lack of interest in joining with his nephews, implies that his retirement was not a source of significant resentment.
On 21 August 1560, the Assembly of Notables that had been convoked by the crown met at Fontainebleau. Montmorency arrived in force for the event, accompanied by his three Châtillon nephews and sons, alongside a broader entourage of 1600 followers of whom 800 were noblemen. This large show of strength was intended as a display of his power in the hopes of defending his interests, an illustration to those who thought his days of power were behind him. On the third day of the Assembly, his nephew Coligny presented several petitions for the consideration of the Assembly, that argued that temples be granted for Protestant worship. The petitions were unsigned, but Coligny assured the notables that he could attain 10,000 signatures if necessary. The duc de Guise shot back that he could get a million signatures for a counter petition. In the end the Assembly agreed to convoke an Estates General, which was to meet on 10 December, and a religious council which would meet on 20 January 1561.
Condé, increasingly fearful of his position began to consider his options of how to proceed. He wrote to the vidame de Chartres and Montmorency urging both men to provide assistance to him against the Lorraine government. Montmorency rebuffed Condé's advance, while Chartres promised his support against all but the royal family. He was promptly arrested and thrown into the Bastille on 29 August.
As testimony implicating Condé in the various disorders that had racked the kingdom in 1560 continued to be received by the Lorraine government of the kingdom, the king ordered all governors to return to their governates, in preparation to mobilise if the Bourbon prince tried to more openly rebel. Montmorency and Guise were excluded from this order, both men allowed to remain at court through the crisis. Condé and his brother Navarre were meanwhile summoned to present themselves at court. On 30 October the Bourbon princes arrived at court, and Condé was promptly arrested and tried for treason.
Meanwhile at court, Catherine was growing increasingly uneasy with the domination of the government that the Lorraine brothers enjoyed. To this end she reached out to her former enemy Montmorency in September with a letter expressing considerable friendship, sounding him out to see whether he was someone she could turn to.
Return to power
Death of François II
With the sudden death of the young François II on 5 December 1560, Catherine negotiated an agreement with the king of Navarre by which she secured the regency for her second son (only 10 years old) Charles IX and Navarre became lieutenant-general of the kingdom. By this appointment, Navarre became the overall authority for the military of the kingdom, indeed the queen hoped that his authority would dilute that of the Constable. It indeed transpired that Navarre's authority cut into the prerogatives of the Constable. Montmorency was also an important element in the new order, and had already been marching on court with a large escort upon having heard word of the young kings illness. At the coronation ceremony, a dispute in precedence developed between the new king's brother the duc d'Orléans (future Henri III) and Montmorency. Montmorency resented that Catherine gave primary precedence to Orléans over the peers of the realm, and refused to abide it.
Navarre quickly tried to exert his newfound authority, and on 5 February threatened that if Guise was not removed from court that he, Coligny and Montmorency would depart. He further demanded that Guise be forced to surrender the office of Grand Maître through which he held such sway at court. Catherine saw the danger to her position in the move, and acted fast, she got the young king to beg Montmorency not to leave the court, and Montmorency acquiesced. In the new political arrangement, the court was composed of Catherine, Navarre, Montmorency, Coligny, Cardinal de Châtillon. According to the English ambassador state policy was to be decided by Catherine, Navarre and Montmorency. The Lorraine family and their clients were frozen out of the power they had enjoyed during the reign of François.
Returning to the centre of power, Montmorency also regained the capacity to live in the Louvre, and would do so on a regular basis during the 1560s, despite his possession of grand hôtels in the capital, of which he had around four.
Saint-André, who like the Lorraine brothers was alienated from the new administration, set to work turning Montmorency against the Protestant aligned grandees. He succeeded in bringing Montmorency into dispute with his nephew Coligny.
Formation of the 'Triumvirate'
During Easter 1561, there was fear among some French nobles, that the royal family itself was about to become Protestant, as it was rumoured that Catherine and her son the king had attended Protestant services. This development alongside the entry into the royal council of the Protestant Condé and his nephew Coligny inspired a great fear from Montmorency as to the direction of the kingdoms religious policy, these figures being greatly associated with the Protestant cause.
Resultingly, he reached a détente (known to history as the 'Triumvirate') with his great rival the duc de Guise, and Saint-André and the three agreed to work together for the preservation of Catholicism and the suppression of 'heresy' on 8 April, Easter. The reconciliation between Montmorency and his great enemy Guise was overseen by the aged Cardinal de Tournon. He was driven towards this new alignment by the failure of Catherine to 'properly reward' him for his services to the crown by re-establishing him as the prime courtier upon the death of François, a position which had instead been given to Navarre. Montmorency greatly resented the senior military command granted to the prince which placed Navarre above him.
The alliance was a muddled affair, composed of men with wildly different politics, as typified by the inclusion of Cardianl de Tournon, who was Ultramontane in disposition and Montmorency, an ardent Gallican. According to the Spanish ambassador Chantonnay, the duc de Montpensier and comte de Brissac also affiliated with this new axis in French politics. The main unifier of the 'Catholic party' was the failure to be given ascendence at court. The Protestants denounced the accord as a 'Triumvirate', comparing the men to Octavian, Antony and Lepidus whose arrangement brought about the destruction of the Roman republic and involved the executions of many of their enemies. This name, given by their enemies, has stuck with the accord.
The first manifestation of this new Catholic alliance was seen on Easter Sunday of that year, with Montmorency and Guise learning of who was to deliver the Easter sermon (Jean de Monluc) and mutually agreeing to not attend to attend. Montmorency had particular distaste for Monluc's sermons, which often critiqued the church and Catholic practices such as the cult of images that he cherished. Instead the Catholic grandees went down to the servants quarter to here a more conservative mass delivered by an obscure friar. Cardinal de Tournon provided both men their communion and oversaw the kiss of peace between Guise and Montmorency, burying their rivalry. To the ends of their alliance, support from the Spanish king Felipe II was sought.
Opposition to government
This new political alignment had the effect of pushing Catherine even closer to her Protestant advisers, in the hopes of offering a counterweight to this newly united opposition. Montmorency for his part broke from his nephews in favour of the Lorraine family. Montmorency gave a stern reprimand to Coligny for allowing Protestant preaching in his quarters at court on Palm Sunday. Montmorency's own eldest son Marshal Montmorency tried to dissuade him from his new alliance, arguing that he was discarding long term friends in favour of an alliance with his greatest enemy, however Montmorency was reinforced in his decision by his wife. Madeleine highlighted that Coligny had betrayed Montmorency's interests by pushing forward the interests of Navarre and Protestantism at the expense of the Constable. Shimizu argues that through this new alliance, Montmorency's religious and political convictions usurped his interests in the political advancement of his family.
The Spanish ambassador believed that Montmorency could use his influence with Navarre to preserve him for the Catholic fold.
The rise to power of Catherine caused Montmorency to lose some members of his fidelity network. For example the rich Louis de Lanssac (ambassador to Roma, España and the Council of Trent) who had territories in the Angoumois, Poitou and Guyenne defected from his service to hers.
Soon after reaching their accord, Montmorency and the Lorraine network departed from court, Montmorency on 7 April then the duc de Guise on 8 April. Saint-André meanwhile was disgraced by Catherine, but refused to depart court for his government of the Lyonnais.
The poor financial state of the kingdom in this period caused some issue for Montmorency, and in 1561 he drew up a list of the various debts owed to him by his clients and 'creatures'. He calculated himself to be owed 269,000 livres in total.
Toleration policy
After the failure of the Colloquy of Poissy to establish a unified creed between the Protestants and Catholics as Lorraine and Catherine had hoped, the 'Catholic party' furthered its divorce from court. With the royal council an increasingly Protestant affair, the duc d'Aumale departed court on 9 October, followed soon after by the Cardinal de Lorraine. On 19 October a grand procession of 700 notables departed court, among them the duc de Guise, cardinal de Guise, duc de Longueville and duc de Nemours departed court. Montmorency joined this mass exodus on 21 October, leaving the royal council little more than a rump composed of the Protestants, Catherine and Navarre. Catherine sent desperate appeals for the departed nobles to return to court.
Montmorency was present as a member of the assembly of Saint-Germain-en-Laye that was convened by Catherine from 3 to 15 of January 1562 in the hopes of solving the religious question. The assembly was largely dominated by moderate Parlementaires such as Paul de Foix and Christophe de Harlay, however it also featured great nobles like Montmorency and Saint-André (though not the Lorraine brothers, who remained absent from court). On the matter of whether to accord the Protestants temples, the assembly voted 27-22 against the proposal. A majority of the delegates present however supported allowing Protestant worship. Therefore on 17 January Catherine promulgated the Edict of Saint-Germain by which toleration was granted to Protestantism for the first time, with allowances for worship in the faubourgs (suburbs) of towns.
As a mark of Montmorency's religious temperament during this period, he was collaborating with the bishop of Paris to ascertain just how many Protestants there were in the capital, the conclusion of their collective research was that there were around 5000.
By early 1562, the king of Navarre had been won for the Catholic opposition. He had been promised the kingdom of Sardinia as compensation for his lost territories in Navarre. When Catherine tried to remove Montmorency from court for his opposition to her religious policy, Navarre insisted that if Montmorency were removed, that his Protestant nephews should also be retired from court. Coligny and Andelot therefore both departed from court on 22 February.
Blamed by Catherine for the defection of Navarre to the opposition, Montmorency departed court.
For Coligny, removed from power, there was little prospect of reconciling with Navarre or Saint-André. A reconciliation with his uncle would require such a radical shift in his policies as to be unrealistic. Moreover he was conscious Montmorency was no longer able to dominate the court alone in the way he had during the 1550s and therefore was of limited utility.
French Wars of Religion
Wassy
On 1 March, while travelling back from a meeting with the herzog von Württemberg (duke of Württemberg) the duc de Guise passed through Wassy, where a Protestant service was ongoing. He and his men proceeded to kill many of the Protestant worshippers, with both sides blaming the other for inciting his slaughter. He decided to march onto Paris, where he was met by Montmorency and Saint-André on route at Nanteuil, who then accompanied him for a grand entrance through the porte Saint-Denis on 16 March, traditional entrance of kings into the capital with a retinue of 3000 men. The grand party was warmly received by the prévôt des marchands (provost of the merchants) and a delegation of the cities notables. They were bolstered in their confidence by the presence of Navarre, who as (first prince of the blood) carried important legitimacy for their cause.
This entrance into the capital was despite a request from the regent Catherine, that Guise come instead to the court, to explain his actions. Having established themselves in the city, the three 'Triumvirs' wrote to Catherine explaining that they were going to stay in Paris despite her requests to stop the city falling into a state of chaos.
Paris quickly became a powder keg with both the Catholic grandees and Condé present in the city. To this end, the new governor of Paris Cardinal de Bourbon asked both the 'Triumvirs' and Condé to leave the city before they came to blows in the streets. The radical Catholics of the city begged Guise and his 'Triumvir' colleagues to stay. Condé departed on 23 March, heading to one of his properties. On 24 March Guise, Montmorency and Saint-André likewise left the city, heading to Fontainebleau to secure the king and Catherine.
Securing the royal family
At this moment, Catherine and therefore the king, were wavering between the two sides. For a time she was tempted to entreat with Condé through Jeanne d'Albret, with the end goal of going to Orléans with him and the king. She sent four letters to this end from Fontainebleau from 16 to 26 of March. Condé however ignored her pleas, and departed from Paris to Meaux. However this ambition became known to Montmorency and Guise, who pressured the king of Navarre into sending his wife away from Catherine on 27 March. That same day a large cavalry force composed of a 1000 horse led by the 'Triumvirs' arrived at Fontainebleau and brought the king and Catherine to Paris under 'their protection'. Protestants would denounce their move as making the royal family their prisoners.
Condé's failure to impede this effort put him in a position to either submit or enter former rebellion. He therefore proceeded to Orléans where he raised the standard of revolt on 2 April at the head of a force of 2000 cavalry. Over the following months many cities would rise up in favour of Condé's cause, among them Rouen, Lyon, Bourges and Grenoble.
On 4 April, Montmorency returned to the capital. He led an armed force to storm one of the Protestant temples of Paris, known as 'Jerusalem'. His soldiers broke in, located and confiscated a cache of weapons they found and then sacked the building, leaving it in ashes. With Jerusalem destroyed, they moved on to the other main Protestant church of the capital and repeated the spectacle. The pulpits and other wooden items in the temples piled into great bonfires. Their actions were imitated by elements of the population on the following day, with some Catholics tearing the remaining parts of the house down and crying 'god has not forgotten the people of Paris'. His soldiers patrolled the streets, conducting house to house searches in hopes of locating Protestant preachers.
As crisis consumed the French crown in the wake of the Massacre of Wassy both Protestant and Catholic grandees began to arm. Condé leading the Protestant efforts, while Guise, Montmorency and Saint-André mobilised armies in opposition to him. Now in rebellion, Condé engaged in an acidic 'war of words' with Montmorency, Saint-André and Guise. Both sides, argued that it was they who were the loyal protectors of the crown and the other who was a disobedient rebel.
Condé published a manifesto outlining the cause of his rebellion on 8 April. In the text he complained about violations of the Edict of January, the duc de Guise's culpability for the Massacre of Wassy and the existence of the 'Triumvirate' of Montmorency, Guise and Saint-André, which Condé charged engaged in illegal actions and formed a shadow government separate from the council of the king. According to Condé the association of Montmorency, Guise, Saint-André with support from Tournon and Lorraine intended nothing less than the extermination of the kings natural subjects with the aim of dividing and plundering France among themselves.
Montmorency's nephew Coligny ultimately decided to join Condé's cause. He wrote to Montmorency, rebuking him for allying with the Lorraine's, arguing that he had put himself in bed with a family who desired to rule France and ruin their own houses. On 4 May, Montmorency, Guise and Saint-André petitioned the king to restore a unity of religion in the kingdom.
First war of religion
Though there was now a state of war between the Protestant grandees and the crown, both sides remained keen to negotiate. Montmorency was therefore involved in considering the Protestant demands alongside Catherine, walking with her in the gardens of the Louvre while receiving the dispatches from the secretaries, who were actually travelling to Orléans to hear Condé's demands. Condé wished for Montmorency, Guise and Saint-André to disband their forces, and withdraw from court and for the Edict of January to be enforced. In response Catherine argued that it was not appropriate to send away such important grandees from court during the king's minority. Montmorency and Saint-André were more tempted by the various proposals towards peace than their Triumvir colleague once they learned how many cities were defecting to the Protestant cause. Though at times it would appear an acceptable settlement had been reached between the two sides, by late summer it had become clear that no deal could be reached.
On 19 April, with Catherine now on board with the 'Triumvirs', Montmorency proposed that they make an appeal via the Papal Nuncio to the Pope, so that he might provide money and troops in support of Catholic France. Catherine was however more interested in support from España and the leading figures of the court would all write to Felipe appealing for aid.
Now at war with the Protestants, the ascendant Catholic grandees could afford to be a little more open in their ambitions. There was conflict in their strategies however and in June 1562, Navarre was content to order the duc d'Étampes, governor of Bretagne to seize any caches of Protestant arms he located. Montmorency meanwhile ordered Étampes to remove any Protestants from his governate. This contradiction in severity caused Étampes to despair.
The Protestant rebels meanwhile, entered into accord with the English on 20 September 1562, by which in return for providing Le Havre to the English on a temporary basis (until such time as they could provide Calais), the rebels were to be granted 6,000 soldiers and 100,000 crowns.
Montmorency and Guise were both present at the bombardment of the Protestant held city of Rouen. At first the command of the siege was under the authority of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom Navarre. However he received a mortal wound during the conduct of the siege, and therefore command devolved to the Constable.
With the siege of Rouen successfully brought to its conclusion, if at the loss of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom (Navarre who was fatally wounded during its progress), the royal army prepared to decamp. Therefore on 6 November Guise and Montmorency led the force from the city in the hopes of bringing the Protestant commander Condé to battle. Condé had decided in the wake of the loss of Rouen that he needed to make a bold play, and therefore advanced on the capital. As he progressed he became bogged down taking surrounding villages and towns and therefore afforded enough time for Montmorency and Guise to hurry a force to bolster the cities defences. Condé therefore turned north and marched into Normandie in the hopes that the queen of England Elizabeth could provide troops to support them. It was on his march north into Normandie that Montmorency intercepted the Protestant army at Dreux. The royal army had departed Paris on 11 December under Montmorency's command had a strength of around 19,000 men total. However in terms of cavalry the army was inferior to Condé, with only around 2500 horse, to the Protestant 4500.
The two armies marched parallel, with the superior infantry (and lower amount of cavalry) of the royal army allowing them to cross worse ground than the Protestant army.
Dreux and captivity
When it became clear that the Protestants were heading into Normandie, the possibility of intercepting the army became a realistic course of action if the royal force struck west. However at this point Montmorency, and the other 'Triuvmirs' who were with the army hesitated, unsure of the wisdom of engaging fellow Frenchman across the battlefield. Therefore they dispatched a representative to Paris, to find out the opinion of Catherine on the course of action. The queen mother was amused that they would turn to her, and deferred to the military captains experience. On 19 December the royal army therefore crossed the river Eure and established themselves south of Dreux. The Protestants accepted the offer of battle and the two forces prepared to fight. The royal position was strong, anchored on both sides by villages, Montmorency commanded a force of Swiss pikeman and a portion of the gendarmes constituting the left of the royal army. Montmorency's force was subject to the attacks of the first phases of the battle, the Protestants acutely aware that they were at a disadvantage in terms of artillery and therefore prioritising rash cavalry charges. Coligny's cavalry charged into the royal lines, breaking them around Montmorency, and capturing him, the Constable receiving a wound to his mouth during the fighting. With a reiter escort, Montmorency was quickly hurried off the battlefield to captivity in Orléans, where the reiters reported a great Protestant victory.
In June 1563, Montmorency received a letter from Volpert von Ders, the German cavalrymen who had taken him prisoner at Dreux. He reminded Montmorency of the courtesy with which he had been treated by Ders while in his captivity, including his not having taken Montmorency's collier de l'ordre de Saint-Michel (collar of the Order of Saint-Michel) which could have dishonoured the Constable. In return for his good treatment, Ders demanded a chain worth 500 écus, which Ders promised he would always wear as a reminder of the Constable, and further that Montmorency would ensure he remained a pensioner of the king.
In the initial rumours that spread after the battle, Montmorency's capture was not yet known, and therefore it was reported that he had been killed and the battle lost for the royalists. This was not however true, and the battle represented a victory for the royalists. Montmorency's capture was offset for the royalists by the capture of Condé in the combat, leaving Montmorency's nephew Coligny in charge of the Protestant war effort. Despite being a royal victory, Montmorency's son Montbéron was killed in the course of the combat, as was Saint-André. Guise intended to continue prosecuting the war, and set about the siege of Orléans, hoping to reduce the final Protestant held city on the Loire. However before he could bring the siege to its conclusion he was assassinated. His assassin the sieur de Méré implicated Coligny under torture as being responsible for ordering the hit, before later retracting his testimony. As a result of his death, the hands of the royalist party were freed to begin negotiations.
Amboise
With Montmorency in Protestant captivity, and Condé in royal captivity, negotiations began between the two men to bring an end to the civil war at Catherine's instigation. They met for their negotiations at the Île aux Bœufs, which had a history of being used as a place for treaties to be signed. Alongside Montmorency for the royalist cause were Catherine, Montmorency's son Damville and the bishop of Limoges; meanwhile Condé was joined by Montmorency's nephew Andelot, Saint-Cyr the Protestant governor of Orléans and Jean d'Aubigné. The result of their work together was published on 19 March as the Edict of Amboise, which mandated that crimes of the past from the civil war and before be vanquished from memory, that Protestant worship only occur at certain designated sites and that associations that might be the nuclei of opposition to the peace be disbanded. In particular Protestant worship was permitted on the estates of nobility with rights of high justice, while outside of this it was allowed in towns the Protestants held prior to the outbreak of civil war and one town per baillage. This peace was greatly favourable to the Protestant nobility at the expense of the general Protestant population who could only worship inside their houses.
As a mark of the newfound peace, the royal court entered the city of Orléans which had resisted the efforts of Guise to besiege it. Montmorency, Catherine, Cardinal de Bourbon and Condé made a solemn entrance to the city on 1 April, with Condé hosting a banquet for the court as a proof of the Catholic and Protestant unity.
With peace established internally, the attentions of the crown turned to rooting out the Protestants former ally, to whom they had ceded the town of Le Havre in return for support. Condé and Montmorency jointly led a force that succeeded in securing its reduction on 28 July 1563. In the treaty of Troyes England agreed to France's permanent possession of Calais, in return for an indemnity of around 120,000 couronnes, far less than the 500,000 outlined at Cateau-Cambrésis.
Feud with the Guise
Montmorency's nephew Coligny was accused of involvement in the assassination of Guise by the Lorraine family. Montmorency rediscovered his familial interests and came to the defence of his nephew against the attacks of the Lorraines. Indeed the whole Montmorency family gave its backing to Coligny in the dispute, and given the death of the duc de Guise, the Lorraine family lacked the political influence to oppose them at court. In late 1563 he acted as a mediator between the two sides but was unable to achieve a reconciliation. In relation to the feud, Montmorency got into a dispute with the duc d'Aumale towards the end of 1563. In January 1564, the crown demanded an adjourning of the attempts to prosecute Coligny, a victory for Montmorency and the Châtillon in the feud.
With the war over, Montmorency took his place on the royal councils, and would be a fixture on them for the next four years until his death in 1567. During this period the council contained both radical Catholics and Protestants. By this time Montmorency's age was beginning to weight his political influence down, and his experience of captivity after Dreux had moderated his politics. He therefore did not advocate for the religious order he desired as vigorously as he had in previous years. Catherine was therefore able to express her own political program on the court more easily than she might have been able to in prior years.
Montmorency decided in 1563 to resign the charge of governor of Languedoc in favour of his second eldest son the baron de Damville. yielding the office on 12 May. The privilege of a governor to resign in favour of a chosen successor had been incredibly rare in prior generations, only occurring once between 1498-1547, however after that point it began to proliferate.
Grand tour
In 1564, Catherine decided that the court would conduct a grand tour of the kingdom. It was hoped that this would bring noble support back to the king after the destructions and disunity of the civil war, and pressure obedience to the Edict of Amboise from the regional Parlements. Before departing on this tour a great number of festivities were conducted at Fontainebleau, with mock battles, theatre, and tournaments. In these events Montmorency and the Cardinal de Bourbon presided over the festivities. As part of their responsibilities to preside over the events, they both hosted suppers for the various grandees in their lodgings.
As the royal tour began in March of that year, Montmorency was among those who accompanied the court in motion, alongside Bourbon, the young new king of Navarre and Condé. Montmorency indeed had the most important responsibility of the tour, as it was his duty to maintain discipline in the large moving court, gave orders to the local town governors that they passed by and rode ahead of the main force to ensure everything was ready to receive the king. Over the course of their travels the court would conduct three lit de justice (bed of justice) to bring the Parlements of Dijon, Bordeaux and Toulouse into line. Approaching Lyon, Montmorency ensured that a royal garrison was installed in the various fortifications before the king approached. At La Rochelle the port city had prepared a silk ribbon across the porte de Cougnes, and informed the royal party that it was tradition for the king to cut it before entering their city. Montmorency found little amusing in the tradition, and slashed through the ribbon with his sword, inquiring of the city grandees whether it was their plan to stop the king entering La Rochelle.
As the tour continued, Montmorency had a chance to place his clients in positions of authority. In Dauphiné, the lieutenant-general of the province who was loyal to the duc de Guise, Maugiron was replaced by the baron de Gordes who was a client of Montmorency, and the lieutenant of his personal company.
While the court was absent from the capital on the tour, the crisis between the Montmorency and Lorraine families almost exploded in a showdown in Paris. In January of that year, the Cardinal de Lorraine attempted to enter Paris under arms, and was resisted on his entry by Montmorency's eldest son, the governor of Paris. François de Montmorency was even more intense in his hatred of the Lorraine family than his father, but coupled his hatred with a genuine moderate attitude towards Protestantism. Lorraine was supported in this attempted show of force against the capital by the Protestant leader Condé who was nursing resentments against Montmorency at this time. The showdown was an embarrassment for the Lorraine's who came out the worse in a skirmish at the gates of the city and were forced to take shelter in one of the families houses. Though civil war between the two families was avoided, the confrontation left lingering resentments.
At Bayonne in June 1565, the court met up with the duque de Alba (duke of Alba) representing the Spanish king Felipe II. In a grand council on 30 June, Montmorency made an argument in favour of the toleration policy the crown was following, arguing it on the grounds that the alternative was civil war, which could present great dangers to the crown.
When the court arrived at Blois it was joined by Navarre's mother the queen of Navarre, Coligny and Lorraine. The court then proceeded to Moullins where Catherine engineered a reconciliation in the Montmorency-Lorraine feud. On 27 January 1566 Coligny was declared to be innocent of any involvement in the assassination of the duc. Montmorency was compelled to reconcile with Lorraine, while Coligny was to reconcile with the Guise. Oaths were exchanged that the participants would not attempt to harm each other. The young duc de Guise himself was not present at these exchanges, and when he did arrive at court in February, Montmorency departed in anger, which demonstrated the accords to be somewhat hollow. With this at least nominally accomplished, the court took two final steps on their tour before re-entering the capital on 1 May 1566.
Around this time, as a reward for his loyal service to the crown, Montmorency received the elevation of his second son, Damville to the Marshalate. Alba was unimpressed by the high favour Montmorency was in, and reported it back disapprovingly to Felipe II.
The rivalry between the Montmorency and Lorraine families, placed Catholic nobles in the south west in a difficult position as for example Cardinal d'Armagnac who had to balance his responsibilities as a subordinate to Montmorency in Languedoc, with his ties of clientage to the Cardinal of Lorraine. As a result many of these men withdrew from their affiliation with grandees entirely.
Despite his long record of anti-Protestantism, Montmorency was not excluded from the paranoid fears of some Catholics reported by Claude Haton, who observed that many felt the king, queen mother and Constable were all secret Protestants, as that could be the only explanation for the peace they had established and were enforcing across France.
Surprise of Meaux
Protestant suspicions of the peace were furthered in this period of peace by the various modifications made to the terms of the Peace of Amboise. Montmorency, Morvillier and the secretary of state L'Aubespine were suspected of pushing Catherine in a more pro-Catholic direction. Further discord between Protestant and Catholic nobles was created by the hiring of Swiss mercenaries by the crown to protect the realm against any potential moves by the passing army under the duque de Alba which was heading to Nederland. In exasperation, Montmorency said to the Protestant nobles at court "The Swiss have their pay; don't you expect them to be used?".
At this time Condé renewed his efforts to compete with Montmorency for supreme command of the French army, but was unsuccessful in his efforts, his campaign however damaged the relationship between the Bourbon and Montmorency families. Furious at being spurned for the office of lieutenant-general, Condé left court, and was soon joined by Montmorency's nephew Andelot who was similarly resentful in his dispute with Marshal Cossé (formerly known as the seigneur de Gonnor) over the office of colonel-general of the infantry. Coligny likewise departed court. They agreed to conduct a coup attempt in line with that of Amboise in 1560, assembling a large cavalry force at Meaux to kidnap the royal family and take charge of the religious direction of the kingdom from the Lorraine. The court was alerted to the plot while staying at Monceaux and were faced with two choices of how to proceed. Montmorency and the chancellor L'Hôpital favoured holding their ground against any attacks, meanwhile the Lorraine family and duc de Nemours favoured making a retreat to the safety of Paris. The Swiss guard that was with the group confidently asserted that they could provide the appropriate protection for a retreat to the capital. Therefore it was the latter course of action that was agreed on, and they conducted a fighting retreat towards the capital. Montmorency and the king's Swiss guard held back the Protestant cavalry while the king and Catherine made for Paris.
Second war of religion
With their coup at Meaux a failure, the Protestant leadership decided to besiege the king in Paris. Montmorency organised the royal defence in the capital, and called upon Strozzi to bring his infantry from Picardie, and comte de Brissac to bring forces up from Lyon, such that he could assemble an army able to break the Protestant hold on the capital. As he worked towards building his military force, negotiations flowed back and forth across the siege lines. The Protestants initially demanded Nemours and the Lorraine's be excluded from royal council, Catherine retire from politics and an Estates General be called. On 7 October the crown presented their counter-offer, Condé and Coligny were to present themselves before the king and admit their rebellion. This damaged the Protestant confidence, and Condé's next demands were for the Edict of Amboise to be applied without any worship restrictions. These negotiations were conducted face to face on 10 October, Montmorency and an armed escort, his eldest son Marshal Montmorency, Marshal Cossé meeting with Montmorency's three nephews and La Rochefoucauld. During the course of their discussions Montmorency got into a bitter argument with his nephew Cardinal de Châtillon. The religious concessions the princes wanted were intolerable to Montmorency who did not want a religiously divided realm, and therefore the talks collapsed. For Condé the edicts established by the king should be unalterable, while Montmorency believed the crown had the power to modify their edicts as they pleased.
Inside the city the situation was tense and religiously explosive. The city was low on food, even without the besieging army, the area had not yet recovered from a scarcity which had dominated the last few years. Therefore, when Charenton, a key point in the cities grain supply fell to the Protestants during the siege the populations blamed the leaders of the defence effort, Montmorency and his son François for the surrender of the garrison. It was even alleged that Montmorency's son had engineered the garrisons surrender intentionally. With the capital increasingly against him, Montmorency at first stepped up the efforts to conduct sorties, which reduced the stranglehold on the Parisian food supply. He then took the offensive. He was aided in this more forward posture by Condé's overconfidence. The Protestant commander had peeled off part of the besieging army, under the command of Montmorency's nephew Andelot to guard the north east approaches to the capital from any reinforcements that might arrive for Montmorency.
Saint-Denis
Montmorency engaged the besieging army outside Paris at the Battle of Saint-Denis on 10 November 1567. By this time he had assembled an army that totalled around 25,000 men, both the experienced Swiss various forces brought to the capital and a contingent of inexperienced Parisians brought to arms for the sole purpose of the emergency, the army boasted 14 artillery pieces. The Swiss under the command of Pfyffer constitued around 6,000 men, while the foot-soldiers were commanded by Brissac and Strozzi. The Protestant army was only around 5,000 strong, led by Coligny and Condé.
Death
Royal cavalry under Marshal Cossé and Marshal Biron attempted to charge the entrenched Protestant positions but were repulsed. Ultimately however they succeeded in smashing Condé's centre, composed of only a thin line of arquebusiers while Condé's cavalry ripped the royal wings apart. With Montmorency's forces pierced by Condé the Constable became surrounded and was wounded repeatedly on both his face and on his head, his surrender was therefore demanded. Montmorency, already thrice made prisoner during his career refused, and was shot in the kidney and neck by a man named Robert Stuart. His sons succeeded in breaking through to him, and were able to extract Montmorency from the field. He was taken to his Parisian hôtel on the rue Sainte-Avoye where he convalesced for two days before dying on 12 November 1567.
Montmorency's eldest son Marshal Montmorency therefore led the cavalry of the royal army against the Protestants, it having been galvanised by the wounding of the Constable. In the end the superior numbers of the royal army prevailed and allowed for a victory, with more Protestant casualties than royal. However, the Protestant force was able to disengage in good order and broke off from Paris to seek a rendezvous with their German mercenary allies.
The king's preacher Arnauld Sorbin spoke at Montmorency's funeral, as he would later do at the funeral of king himself, thereby making Montmorency's funeral royal. Sorbin held the important role of leading the prayers at the service. The royal parallels were accentuated by the route of the cortège which travelled to Saint-Denis and buried his coffin at the foot of Henri II's. An effigy of the Constable (which even included the face wounds he had received at Saint-Denis) was created as part of the ceremonies and displayed in Notre-Dame de Paris on 25 November. Similar effigies were to be created for the king's brother the duc d'Alençon in 1584 and Henri III's deceased favourite Joyeuse in 1587.
So close were Henri and Montmorency, that the king had expressed his desire for both of their hearts to be stored together in an urn in the king's Germain Pilon created funerary monument.
Legacy
The office of Constable would not be transferred, and the highest military office in the kingdom would become lieutenant-general, which was given to the king's eldest brother the duc d'Anjou on the day of Montmorency's death. The crown hoped that by this means important military control would remain in the hands of the royal family as opposed to grandees such as Condé. This was a disappointment to both Aumale and Montmorency's eldest son, both of whom had seen the possibility that they might become Constable. The dispute between Anjou and Condé over who would succeed Montmorency as head of the French military left much hatred between the two men.
A few years later, the murderer of the Constable, Stuart would be captured at the Battle of Jarnac by an army led by Anjou. Anjou handed Stuart over to the marquis de Villars, a brother in law of Montmorency. Villars took Stuart a little distance away from the camp, and killed him in cold blood.
Reputation
Montmorency's military reputation would ultimately be mixed. In his career he lost more battles than he won. A contemporary Venetian opined that Montmorency could not match the calibre of the duc de Guise's military skill. The Venetian ambassador nevertheless conceded that he was a 'courageous soldier' The duc de Nevers held Montmorency's political skill in high regard, and would later advice Henri III to imitate Montmorency's prudence and strategic behaviour. The ligueur'' (leaguer) archbishop of Lyon would advice the third duc de Guise to look to Montmorency as a model for dominating the court in 1588. Other contemporaries variously described Montmorency's domestic behaviour as 'arrogant', 'overbearing' 'of good understanding' and 'well experienced'. The historian Sutherland described Montmorency's approach to government as 'autocratic'.
Many contemporaries described him as the first true favourite in French history, by which it was meant a man whose fortune was based on his access to royal favour, as opposed to his control of a particularly powerful feudatory network. Brantôme contrasts his 'military valour' and 'excellence' with the favourites of Charles IX and Henri III, who were by contrast unworthy of the great benefits they received in Brantôme's estimation. Le Roux observes that many of the families who would provide favourites in the reign of Henri III, such as the Joyeuse, La Guiche and Saint-Sulpice, owed their accession to noteworthiness to the protection of the Montmorency family and the Constable.
Sources
References
External links
1493 births
1567 deaths
People from Chantilly, Oise
Military personnel from Paris
Dukes of Montmorency
Anne
Marshals of France
Military leaders of the Italian Wars
French people of the French Wars of Religion
Constables of France
Grand Masters of France
Knights of the Garter
16th-century peers of France
Court of Henry II of France
Court of Francis I of France
Court of Francis II of France
Court of Charles IX of France
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMP
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OpenMP
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OpenMP (Open Multi-Processing) is an application programming interface (API) that supports multi-platform shared-memory multiprocessing programming in C, C++, and Fortran, on many platforms, instruction-set architectures and operating systems, including Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, macOS, and Windows. It consists of a set of compiler directives, library routines, and environment variables that influence run-time behavior.
OpenMP is managed by the nonprofit technology consortium OpenMP Architecture Review Board (or OpenMP ARB), jointly defined by a broad swath of leading computer hardware and software vendors, including Arm, AMD, IBM, Intel, Cray, HP, Fujitsu, Nvidia, NEC, Red Hat, Texas Instruments, and Oracle Corporation.
OpenMP uses a portable, scalable model that gives programmers a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel applications for platforms ranging from the standard desktop computer to the supercomputer.
An application built with the hybrid model of parallel programming can run on a computer cluster using both OpenMP and Message Passing Interface (MPI), such that OpenMP is used for parallelism within a (multi-core) node while MPI is used for parallelism between nodes. There have also been efforts to run OpenMP on software distributed shared memory systems, to translate OpenMP into MPI
and to extend OpenMP for non-shared memory systems.
Design
OpenMP is an implementation of multithreading, a method of parallelizing whereby a primary thread (a series of instructions executed consecutively) forks a specified number of sub-threads and the system divides a task among them. The threads then run concurrently, with the runtime environment allocating threads to different processors.
The section of code that is meant to run in parallel is marked accordingly, with a compiler directive that will cause the threads to form before the section is executed. Each thread has an ID attached to it which can be obtained using a function (called omp_get_thread_num()). The thread ID is an integer, and the primary thread has an ID of 0. After the execution of the parallelized code, the threads join back into the primary thread, which continues onward to the end of the program.
By default, each thread executes the parallelized section of code independently. Work-sharing constructs can be used to divide a task among the threads so that each thread executes its allocated part of the code. Both task parallelism and data parallelism can be achieved using OpenMP in this way.
The runtime environment allocates threads to processors depending on usage, machine load and other factors. The runtime environment can assign the number of threads based on environment variables, or the code can do so using functions. The OpenMP functions are included in a header file labelled in C/C++.
History
The OpenMP Architecture Review Board (ARB) published its first API specifications, OpenMP for Fortran 1.0, in October 1997. In October the following year they released the C/C++ standard. 2000 saw version 2.0 of the Fortran specifications with version 2.0 of the C/C++ specifications being released in 2002. Version 2.5 is a combined C/C++/Fortran specification that was released in 2005.
Up to version 2.0, OpenMP primarily specified ways to parallelize highly regular loops, as they occur in matrix-oriented numerical programming, where the number of iterations of the loop is known at entry time. This was recognized as a limitation, and various task parallel extensions were added to implementations. In 2005, an effort to standardize task parallelism was formed, which published a proposal in 2007, taking inspiration from task parallelism features in Cilk, X10 and Chapel.
Version 3.0 was released in May 2008. Included in the new features in 3.0 is the concept of tasks and the task construct, significantly broadening the scope of OpenMP beyond the parallel loop constructs that made up most of OpenMP 2.0.
Version 4.0 of the specification was released in July 2013. It adds or improves the following features: support for accelerators; atomics; error handling; thread affinity; tasking extensions; user defined reduction; SIMD support; Fortran 2003 support.
The current version is 5.2, released in November 2021.
Note that not all compilers (and OSes) support the full set of features for the latest version/s.
Core elements
The core elements of OpenMP are the constructs for thread creation, workload distribution (work sharing), data-environment management, thread synchronization, user-level runtime routines and environment variables.
In C/C++, OpenMP uses #pragmas. The OpenMP specific pragmas are listed below.
Thread creation
The pragma omp parallel is used to fork additional threads to carry out the work enclosed in the construct in parallel. The original thread will be denoted as master thread with thread ID 0.
Example (C program): Display "Hello, world." using multiple threads.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <omp.h>
int main(void)
{
#pragma omp parallel
printf("Hello, world.\n");
return 0;
}
Use flag -fopenmp to compile using GCC:
$ gcc -fopenmp hello.c -o hello -ldl
Output on a computer with two cores, and thus two threads:
Hello, world.
Hello, world.
However, the output may also be garbled because of the race condition caused from the two threads sharing the standard output.
Hello, wHello, woorld.
rld.
Whether printf is atomic depends on the underlying implementation unlike C++'s std::cout.
Work-sharing constructs
Used to specify how to assign independent work to one or all of the threads.
omp for or omp do: used to split up loop iterations among the threads, also called loop constructs.
sections: assigning consecutive but independent code blocks to different threads
single: specifying a code block that is executed by only one thread, a barrier is implied in the end
master: similar to single, but the code block will be executed by the master thread only and no barrier implied in the end.
Example: initialize the value of a large array in parallel, using each thread to do part of the work
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int a[100000];
#pragma omp parallel for
for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {
a[i] = 2 * i;
}
return 0;
}
This example is embarrassingly parallel, and depends only on the value of . The OpenMP flag tells the OpenMP system to split this task among its working threads. The threads will each receive a unique and private version of the variable. For instance, with two worker threads, one thread might be handed a version of that runs from 0 to 49999 while the second gets a version running from 50000 to 99999.
Variant directives
Variant directives is one of the major features introduced in OpenMP 5.0 specification to facilitate programmers to improve performance portability. They enable adaptation of OpenMP pragmas and user code at compile time. The specification defines traits to describe active OpenMP constructs, execution devices, and functionality provided by an implementation, context selectors based on the traits and user-defined conditions, and metadirective and declare directive directives for users to program the same code region with variant directives.
The metadirective is an executable directive that conditionally resolves to another directive at compile time by selecting from multiple directive variants based on traits that define an OpenMP condition or context.
The declare variant directive has similar functionality as metadirective but selects a function variant at the call-site based on context or user-defined conditions.
The mechanism provided by the two variant directives for selecting variants is more convenient to use than the C/C++ preprocessing since it directly supports variant selection in OpenMP and allows an OpenMP compiler to analyze and determine the final directive from variants and context.
// code adaptation using preprocessing directives
int v1[N], v2[N], v3[N];
#if defined(nvptx)
#pragma omp target teams distribute parallel for map(to:v1,v2) map(from:v3)
for (int i= 0; i< N; i++)
v3[i] = v1[i] * v2[i];
#else
#pragma omp target parallel for map(to:v1,v2) map(from:v3)
for (int i= 0; i< N; i++)
v3[i] = v1[i] * v2[i];
#endif
// code adaptation using metadirective in OpenMP 5.0
int v1[N], v2[N], v3[N];
#pragma omp target map(to:v1,v2) map(from:v3)
#pragma omp metadirective \
when(device={arch(nvptx)}: target teams distribute parallel for)\
default(target parallel for)
for (int i= 0; i< N; i++)
v3[i] = v1[i] * v2[i];
Clauses
Since OpenMP is a shared memory programming model, most variables in OpenMP code are visible to all threads by default. But sometimes private variables are necessary to avoid race conditions and there is a need to pass values between the sequential part and the parallel region (the code block executed in parallel), so data environment management is introduced as data sharing attribute clauses by appending them to the OpenMP directive. The different types of clauses are:
Data sharing attribute clauses
shared: the data declared outside a parallel region is shared, which means visible and accessible by all threads simultaneously. By default, all variables in the work sharing region are shared except the loop iteration counter.
private: the data declared within a parallel region is private to each thread, which means each thread will have a local copy and use it as a temporary variable. A private variable is not initialized and the value is not maintained for use outside the parallel region. By default, the loop iteration counters in the OpenMP loop constructs are private.
default: allows the programmer to state that the default data scoping within a parallel region will be either shared, or none for C/C++, or shared, firstprivate, private, or none for Fortran. The none option forces the programmer to declare each variable in the parallel region using the data sharing attribute clauses.
firstprivate: like private except initialized to original value.
lastprivate: like private except original value is updated after construct.
reduction: a safe way of joining work from all threads after construct.
Synchronization clauses
critical: the enclosed code block will be executed by only one thread at a time, and not simultaneously executed by multiple threads. It is often used to protect shared data from race conditions.
atomic: the memory update (write, or read-modify-write) in the next instruction will be performed atomically. It does not make the entire statement atomic; only the memory update is atomic. A compiler might use special hardware instructions for better performance than when using critical.
ordered: the structured block is executed in the order in which iterations would be executed in a sequential loop
barrier: each thread waits until all of the other threads of a team have reached this point. A work-sharing construct has an implicit barrier synchronization at the end.
nowait: specifies that threads completing assigned work can proceed without waiting for all threads in the team to finish. In the absence of this clause, threads encounter a barrier synchronization at the end of the work sharing construct.
Scheduling clauses
schedule (type, chunk): This is useful if the work sharing construct is a do-loop or for-loop. The iterations in the work sharing construct are assigned to threads according to the scheduling method defined by this clause. The three types of scheduling are:
static: Here, all the threads are allocated iterations before they execute the loop iterations. The iterations are divided among threads equally by default. However, specifying an integer for the parameter chunk will allocate chunk number of contiguous iterations to a particular thread.
dynamic: Here, some of the iterations are allocated to a smaller number of threads. Once a particular thread finishes its allocated iteration, it returns to get another one from the iterations that are left. The parameter chunk defines the number of contiguous iterations that are allocated to a thread at a time.
guided: A large chunk of contiguous iterations are allocated to each thread dynamically (as above). The chunk size decreases exponentially with each successive allocation to a minimum size specified in the parameter chunk
IF control
if: This will cause the threads to parallelize the task only if a condition is met. Otherwise the code block executes serially.
Initialization
firstprivate: the data is private to each thread, but initialized using the value of the variable using the same name from the master thread.
lastprivate: the data is private to each thread. The value of this private data will be copied to a global variable using the same name outside the parallel region if current iteration is the last iteration in the parallelized loop. A variable can be both firstprivate and lastprivate.
threadprivate: The data is a global data, but it is private in each parallel region during the runtime. The difference between threadprivate and private is the global scope associated with threadprivate and the preserved value across parallel regions.
Data copying
copyin: similar to firstprivate for private variables, threadprivate variables are not initialized, unless using copyin to pass the value from the corresponding global variables. No copyout is needed because the value of a threadprivate variable is maintained throughout the execution of the whole program.
copyprivate: used with single to support the copying of data values from private objects on one thread (the single thread) to the corresponding objects on other threads in the team.
Reduction
reduction (operator | intrinsic : list): the variable has a local copy in each thread, but the values of the local copies will be summarized (reduced) into a global shared variable. This is very useful if a particular operation (specified in operator for this particular clause) on a variable runs iteratively, so that its value at a particular iteration depends on its value at a prior iteration. The steps that lead up to the operational increment are parallelized, but the threads updates the global variable in a thread safe manner. This would be required in parallelizing numerical integration of functions and differential equations, as a common example.
Others
flush: The value of this variable is restored from the register to the memory for using this value outside of a parallel part
master: Executed only by the master thread (the thread which forked off all the others during the execution of the OpenMP directive). No implicit barrier; other team members (threads) not required to reach.
User-level runtime routines
Used to modify/check the number of threads, detect if the execution context is in a parallel region, how many processors in current system, set/unset locks, timing functions, etc
Environment variables
A method to alter the execution features of OpenMP applications. Used to control loop iterations scheduling, default number of threads, etc. For example, OMP_NUM_THREADS is used to specify number of threads for an application.
Implementations
OpenMP has been implemented in many commercial compilers. For instance, Visual C++ 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013 support it (OpenMP 2.0, in Professional, Team System, Premium and Ultimate editions), as well as Intel Parallel Studio for various processors. Oracle Solaris Studio compilers and tools support the latest OpenMP specifications with productivity enhancements for Solaris OS (UltraSPARC and x86/x64) and Linux platforms. The Fortran, C and C++ compilers from The Portland Group also support OpenMP 2.5. GCC has also supported OpenMP since version 4.2.
Compilers with an implementation of OpenMP 3.0:
GCC 4.3.1
Mercurium compiler
Intel Fortran and C/C++ versions 11.0 and 11.1 compilers, Intel C/C++ and Fortran Composer XE 2011 and Intel Parallel Studio.
IBM XL compiler
Sun Studio 12 update 1 has a full implementation of OpenMP 3.0
Multi-Processor Computing
Several compilers support OpenMP 3.1:
GCC 4.7
Intel Fortran and C/C++ compilers 12.1
IBM XL C/C++ compilers for AIX and Linux, V13.1 & IBM XL Fortran compilers for AIX and Linux, V14.1
LLVM/Clang 3.7
Absoft Fortran Compilers v. 19 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
Compilers supporting OpenMP 4.0:
GCC 4.9.0 for C/C++, GCC 4.9.1 for Fortran
Intel Fortran and C/C++ compilers 15.0
IBM XL C/C++ for Linux, V13.1 (partial) & XL Fortran for Linux, V15.1 (partial)
LLVM/Clang 3.7 (partial)
Several Compilers supporting OpenMP 4.5:
GCC 6 for C/C++
Intel Fortran and C/C++ compilers 17.0, 18.0, 19.0
LLVM/Clang 12
Partial support for OpenMP 5.0:
GCC 9 for C/C++
Intel Fortran and C/C++ compilers 19.1
LLVM/Clang 12
Auto-parallelizing compilers that generates source code annotated with OpenMP directives:
iPat/OMP
Parallware
PLUTO
ROSE (compiler framework)
S2P by KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd.
ComPar
PragFormer
Several profilers and debuggers expressly support OpenMP:
Intel VTune Profiler - a profiler for the x86 CPU and Xe GPU architectures
Intel Advisor - a design assistance and analysis tool for OpenMP and MPI codes
Allinea Distributed Debugging Tool (DDT) – debugger for OpenMP and MPI codes
Allinea MAP – profiler for OpenMP and MPI codes
TotalView - debugger from Rogue Wave Software for OpenMP, MPI and serial codes
ompP – profiler for OpenMP
VAMPIR – profiler for OpenMP and MPI code
Pros and cons
Pros:
Portable multithreading code (in C/C++ and other languages, one typically has to call platform-specific primitives in order to get multithreading).
Simple: need not deal with message passing as MPI does.
Data layout and decomposition is handled automatically by directives.
Scalability comparable to MPI on shared-memory systems.
Incremental parallelism: can work on one part of the program at one time, no dramatic change to code is needed.
Unified code for both serial and parallel applications: OpenMP constructs are treated as comments when sequential compilers are used.
Original (serial) code statements need not, in general, be modified when parallelized with OpenMP. This reduces the chance of inadvertently introducing bugs.
Both coarse-grained and fine-grained parallelism are possible.
In irregular multi-physics applications which do not adhere solely to the SPMD mode of computation, as encountered in tightly coupled fluid-particulate systems, the flexibility of OpenMP can have a big performance advantage over MPI.
Can be used on various accelerators such as GPGPU and FPGAs.
Cons:
Risk of introducing difficult to debug synchronization bugs and race conditions.
only runs efficiently in shared-memory multiprocessor platforms (see however Intel's Cluster OpenMP and other distributed shared memory platforms).
Requires a compiler that supports OpenMP.
Scalability is limited by memory architecture.
No support for compare-and-swap.
Reliable error handling is missing.
Lacks fine-grained mechanisms to control thread-processor mapping.
High chance of accidentally writing false sharing code.
Performance expectations
One might expect to get an N times speedup when running a program parallelized using OpenMP on a N processor platform. However, this seldom occurs for these reasons:
When a dependency exists, a process must wait until the data it depends on is computed.
When multiple processes share a non-parallel proof resource (like a file to write in), their requests are executed sequentially. Therefore, each thread must wait until the other thread releases the resource.
A large part of the program may not be parallelized by OpenMP, which means that the theoretical upper limit of speedup is limited according to Amdahl's law.
N processors in a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) may have N times the computation power, but the memory bandwidth usually does not scale up N times. Quite often, the original memory path is shared by multiple processors and performance degradation may be observed when they compete for the shared memory bandwidth.
Many other common problems affecting the final speedup in parallel computing also apply to OpenMP, like load balancing and synchronization overhead.
Compiler optimisation may not be as effective when invoking OpenMP. This can commonly lead to a single-threaded OpenMP program running slower than the same code compiled without an OpenMP flag (which will be fully serial).
Thread affinity
Some vendors recommend setting the processor affinity on OpenMP threads to associate them with particular processor cores.
This minimizes thread migration and context-switching cost among cores. It also improves the data locality and reduces the cache-coherency traffic among the cores (or processors).
Benchmarks
A variety of benchmarks has been developed to demonstrate the use of OpenMP, test its performance and evaluate correctness.
Simple examples
OmpSCR: OpenMP Source Code Repository
Performance benchmarks include:
NAS Parallel Benchmark
Barcelona OpenMP Task Suite a collection of applications that allow to test OpenMP tasking implementations.
SPEC series
SPEC OMP 2012
The SPEC ACCEL benchmark suite testing OpenMP 4 target offloading API
The SPEChpc 2002 benchmark
CORAL benchmarks
Exascale Proxy Applications
Rodinia focusing on accelerators.
Problem Based Benchmark Suite
Correctness benchmarks include:
OpenMP Validation Suite
OpenMP Validation and Verification Testsuite
DataRaceBench is a benchmark suite designed to systematically and quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of OpenMP data race detection tools.
AutoParBench is a benchmark suite to evaluate compilers and tools which can automatically insert OpenMP directives.
See also
Concurrency (computer science)
Heterogeneous System Architecture
Parallel programming model
POSIX Threads
Unified Parallel C
Bulk synchronous parallel
Partitioned global address space
SequenceL
References
Further reading
Quinn Michael J, Parallel Programming in C with MPI and OpenMP McGraw-Hill Inc. 2004.
R. Chandra, R. Menon, L. Dagum, D. Kohr, D. Maydan, J. McDonald, Parallel Programming in OpenMP. Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.
R. Eigenmann (Editor), M. Voss (Editor), OpenMP Shared Memory Parallel Programming: International Workshop on OpenMP Applications and Tools, WOMPAT 2001, West Lafayette, IN, USA, July 30–31, 2001. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Springer 2001.
B. Chapman, G. Jost, R. van der Pas, D.J. Kuck (foreword), Using OpenMP: Portable Shared Memory Parallel Programming. The MIT Press (October 31, 2007).
Tom Deakin and Timothy G. Mattson: Programming Your GPU with OpenMP: Performance Portability for GPUs, The MIT Press,ISBN 978-0-262547536 (Nov, 7,2023).
Parallel Processing via MPI & OpenMP, M. Firuziaan, O. Nommensen. Linux Enterprise, 10/2002
MSDN Magazine article on OpenMP
SC08 OpenMP Tutorial (PDF) – Hands-On Introduction to OpenMP, Mattson and Meadows, from SC08 (Austin)
OpenMP Specifications
Miguel Hermanns:Parallel Programming in Fortran 95 using OpenMP (19th, April, 2002) (PDF) (OpenMP ver.1 and ver.2)
External links
Application programming interfaces
Articles with example Fortran code
C programming language family
Fortran
Parallel computing
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Suceava
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Suceava () is a municipality and the namesake county seat town of Suceava County, situated in the historical regions of Bukovina and Moldavia, northeastern Romania and at the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe respectively. It is the largest urban settlement of Suceava County, with a population of 84,308 inhabitants according to the 2021 Romanian census (postponed one year and conducted in 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania).
During the late Middle Ages, namely between 1388 and 1564 (or from the late 14th century to the late 16th century), this middle-sized town was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia. Later on, it became an important, strategically-located commercial town of the Habsburg monarchy, Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary (formerly belonging to Cisleithania or the Austrian part of the dual monarchy) on the border with the Romanian Old Kingdom.
Nowadays, the town is known for its reconstructed medieval seat fortress (further rebuilt through the EU-funded Regio programme) and its UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site Saint John the New Monastery (part of the Churches of Moldavia), both local and national tourist attractions. In addition, the Administrative Palace, a historic and civic building dating to imperial Austrian times and designed by Viennese architect Peter Paul Brang, is located in the historic town centre along with the Roman Catholic Saint John of Nepomuk church (one building faces the other).
Historical overview
During the late Middle Ages, the town of Suceava was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia, being strategically located at the crossroads of several trade routes linking Central Europe with Eastern Europe, and, more specifically for that period of time, the former Principality of Moldavia with the Kingdom of Poland and the Kingdom of Hungary respectively. The town of Suceava had also operated under the Magdeburg law back in the Middle Ages ().
From 1775 to 1918, Suceava was under the administration of the Habsburg Empire, initially part of its Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then gradually becoming the third most populous urban settlement of the Duchy of Bukovina, a constituent land of the Austrian Empire and subsequently a crown land within the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. During this time, Suceava was an important, strategically-located commercial border town with the then Romanian Old Kingdom to the south-east (, ).
Throughout the Austrian-ruled period of Bukovina, Suceava was also regarded as a 'miniature Austria' by native intellectual Rudolf Gassauer given its significant ethnic diversity (which, up until the early 20th century, included an overwhelming majority of ethnic Germans, more specifically Bukovina Germans, as well). An even older ethnic German presence in the town (as well as in the entire region of Bukovina) can be traced back to the end of the 14th century, more specifically during the Late Middle Ages (represented by a relatively small group of Transylvanian Saxons).
In the wake of World War I, after 1918, along with the rest of Bukovina, Suceava became part of the then newly enlarged Kingdom of Romania. After the end of World War II, the town slowly underwent a process of communist systematization which increased its population approximately tenfold throughout the decades prior to the 1989 Romanian Revolution. It became a municipality in 1968. Suceava is also crossed by the namesake river, a tributary of Siret, to the northwest, in the neighbourhood of Ițcani ().
An important market town at the crossroads of several Central and Eastern European commercial routes since the Middle Ages (toward the Kingdom of Hungary to the west and the Kingdom of Poland to the north), Suceava is still an important commercial town nowadays. Furthermore, The CFR 500 highway crosses it, which is a railway junction and thus from here the railway line then branches off to Transylvania to the west.
Names and etymology
Moldavian chronicler Grigore Ureche presumed the name of the town came from the Hungarian Szűcsvár, which is combined of the words szűcs (i.e. furrier, skinner) and vár (i.e. castle). This was taken over by Dimitrie Cantemir, who, in his work Descriptio Moldaviae, gave the very same explanation of the origin of the town's name; however, there is neither historical nor vernacular evidence for this. According to another theory, the town bears the name of the river with the same name and that, in turn, is supposed to be of Ukrainian origin.
In Old German, the town was known as Sedschopff, in both contemporary German (i.e. Standard German/Hochdeutsch) and Old German sources it can be found under such variations as Sotschen, Sutschawa, or Suczawa (most commonly), in Hungarian as Szucsáva () or Szőcsvásár (most likely according to his work Letopisețul Țării Moldovei până la Aron Vodă written in Romanian), in Polish as Suczawa, in Ukrainian as Сучава (Sučava), while in Yiddish as שאָץ ().
History
Antiquity
The present-day territory of the town of Suceava and the adjacent surroundings were already inhabited since the Paleolithic period. Stemming from the late Antiquity, there are also traces of Dacian oppidum of the 2nd century. In stark contrast to several other historical regions of Romania (most notably Transylvania and Oltenia), Suceava (along with the entire region of Bukovina for that matter) was not conquered by the legions of the Roman Empire and consequently was one of the lands of the Free Dacian tribes during ancient times. Nonetheless, according to ancient Roman scholar Ptolemy, at that time in the region also dwelled two likely Celtic-speaking tribes, more specifically the Anartes and the Taurisci, as well as the Germanic Bastarnae, who have also been attested there. The presence of Celtic-speaking tribes in Bukovina is further attested during the late La Tène culture period through archaeological studies.
Middle Ages
After the fall of Rome and during the Migration Period, the predominantly Carpiani population was successively invaded by East Germanic peoples (such as the Goths or the Gepids), Huns, Slavs, Magyars (i.e. Hungarians), Pechenegs, and ultimately Cumans.
When the town was established and very shortly afterwards, its trade was also facilitated with other Central European towns and markets by a local community of German potters and merchants (quite probably Transylvanian Saxons from Bistrița/Bistritz area) who migrated here during the Ostsiedlung. At the same time, the town had operated under the Magdeburg law (a type of medieval German town law applied mostly in Eastern Europe, but also in several parts of Central Europe), as was the case of Câmpulung Moldovenesc (), Siret (), Baia (), or Târgu Neamț (), all which were also situated on the territory of the Principality of Moldavia (more specifically on its northern area or the highlands).
As it was the case of other medieval towns in which the Magdeburg law held sway, this particular German town law came hand in hand with the medieval municipal law (discernible with the foundation of Freiburg im Breisgau in the early 12th century) and the Sachsenspiegel (an important law book during the time of the Holy Roman Empire). The town of Suceava is referred to as Sotschen (an Old High German name) in one of the works of Abraham Ortelius on European geography for the 15th and 16th centuries.
During the late Middle Ages, the town of Suceava was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia and the main residence of the Moldavian princes for nearly two centuries (namely between 1388 and 1564). The town was the capital of the lands of Stephen the Great, one of the pivotal royal figures in Romanian history, who died in Suceava in 1504. During the rule of Alexandru Lăpușneanu, the seat was moved to Iași in 1565 and Suceava failed to become the capital again. Michael the Brave captured the town in 1600 during the Moldavian Magnate Wars as he became the ruler of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, but he was defeated during the same year.
Habsburg rule and unification with the Kingdom of Romania
Together with the rest of Bukovina, Suceava was under the rule of the Habsburg monarchy (and, subsequently, the Austrian Empire as well as Austria-Hungary) from 1775 to 1918 (with the border of the Habsburg domains passing just south-east of the town).
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the town was the third largest in the Duchy of Bukovina, after Cernăuți () and Rădăuți (). Throughout this period of time, in the process of the Josephine colonization (), the Habsburgs and, later on, the Austrians, attracted many German-speaking settlers from abroad to settle down in Bukovina and, implicitly, in contemporary Suceava, then just a small market town. Over the passing of time, these newly arrived German settlers and their descendants became collectively known as Bukovina Germans. This community has since dwindled to a very small number.
Nonetheless, despite their current numbers, the Germans from Suceava are still culturally, socially, and politically active. Given its diverse ethnic background during the late Modern Age, Austrian architect Rudolf Gassauer stated that the town of Suceava could have well been perceived back then as a 'miniature Austria'. Additionally, at that time, on an administrative level, the town of Suceava was part of a namesake bezirk (i.e. district) with a total population of 66,826 inhabitants.
In 1918, the town of Suceava (as well as the entire region of Bukovina) became part of the enlarged and unified Kingdom of Romania (and what is known in Romanian historiography as Greater Romania), after an overwhelming vote of the German, Romanian, and Polish representatives of the General Congress of Bukovina. All 7 political representatives of the Bukovina Germans led by Alois Lebouton voted for the union of Bukovina with the Kingdom of Romania.
Kingdom of Romania, communist period, and 21st century history
Throughout the interwar period, Suceava underwent further infrastructural development within the then enlarged Kingdom of Romania (). Moreover, from an administrative point of view, it had also briefly belonged to Ținutul Suceava (between 1938 and 1940), one of the 10 lands established during King Carol II's reign.
In addition, the town had previously had sizeable German, Jewish, and Polish ethnic communities which gradually dramatically dwindled throughout both the late 20th century and early 21st century. However, they are still present in smaller numbers nowadays and are socially, culturally, and politically active and mostly well integrated through their representative institutions.
Subsequently, from the 1950s onwards (concomitantly with the rise of communism in Romania), Suceava was heavily industrialized and a significant series of historical buildings from its historical centre (including the entire Franz Josef Straße) were demolished in order for Plattenbau-like blocks of flats to be constructed at the orders of the former communist officials.
After the 1989 Romanian Revolution, the town had increasingly lost both a significant amount of its population and its former industry which was forged mainly during communism. Therefore, its local economy entered a period of decline for many years. However, during the early 21st century, Suceava's population raised, also in part due to the incorporation of several nearby communes in the main town as well as to sparse local economic development which occurred during the late 2010s and early 2020s which attracted new inhabitants from the neighbouring rural areas of Suceava County.
During spring 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania began, Suceava was placed under lockdown due to its high rate of infection. The following year, the roof of the Administrative Palace (local landmark) was severely damaged by fire. In March 2022, the government of Romania approved a restoration/rehabilitation plan for the entire building.
The 2022 Romanian census (which could have normally occurred in 2021 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic) remains to report the total current population living in Suceava as of early 2022. The data for this census will be later on reported by the Romanian authorities at the end of 2023.
Geography
Suceava is situated in the south-western part of the Suceava County, in a moderately hilly area, and is an important commercial town and regional transport hub with Ukraine to the north, on the one hand, and with Transylvania to the west on the other hand.
The town of Suceava covers two types of geographical areas, the hills (of which the highest is Zamca Hill) and the meadows of the Suceava river valley. The unique setting of the urban settlement includes two groves, Zamca and Șipote, which are both located within the town's limits.
Burdujeni, one of the town's neighbourhoods, is connected to the rest of the town by a prominent avenue, which makes the neighbourhood appear as a separate satellite town.
Suceava is also crossed by Mitocu and Dragomirna rivers in Ițcani.
Climate
The town of Suceava has a temperate continental climate which is typical to Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, the yearly weather can be described with short springs, usually moderately warm summers as well as prolonged autumns and winters.
Demographics
Historical data for the town proper
The Austrian census of 1869, which recorded only population in absolute numbers (bereft of ethnicity or religion), indicated that then small town of Suceava had a total population of 7,450 permanent inhabitants. The Austrian census of 1880 indicated that the town of Suceava had a total population of 10,104, of which 5,862 were Germans (i.e. Bukovina Germans), 2,652 Romanians, 441 Ruthenians, and 784 inhabitants belonging to other ethnic groups.
The Austrian census of 1890 indicated that the town of Suceava had a total population of 10,221, of which 5,965 were Germans (i.e. Bukovina Germans), 2,417 Romanians, 644 Ruthenians, and 905 inhabitants belonging to other ethnic groups.
In 1900, when the town was still under Imperial Austrian administration, its total population amounted to 10,955 inhabitants. Of those, 61.5% declared their native language to be German (i.e. Hochdeutsch), followed by Romanian with 25.38%, and Ruthenian (or Ukrainian) with 5.46%. 20 years later, when the town had already switched to the Kingdom of Romania, the 1930 Romanian census recorded a population that amounted to 17,000 inhabitants with the following ethno-linguistic composition:
Romanians: 61.5%
Jews: 18.7%
Germans (i.e. Bukovina Germans): 13.9%
Poles: 2.6%
Other ethnic groups (most notably Lipovans, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and Armenians): 3.3%
Shortly after the end of World War II, the ethnic minorities (mainly Germans and Jews but also Poles) considerably and gradually dwindled in the town of Suceava. However, as during communism, the overall population of the town raised (as it was the general case of other cities and towns in Romania as well as the country's total population given the pro-natalist policies of the Ceaușescu regime). After the 1989 Romanian Revolution (as it was the general case of the total population of the country), the population of Suceava dwindled once more given constant emigration both abroad or to other more developed towns and cities across Romania.
According to the 2002 Romanian census, the ethnic structure of the town of Suceava can be divided into distinct groups as follows:
Romanians: 98.17%
Roma (Gypsies): 0.48%
Germans (i.e. Bukovina Germans): 0.35%
Ukrainians: 0.27%
Poles: 0.23%
Lipovans: 0.20%
Other ethnic groups (most notably Hungarians, Jews, and Armenians): 0.3%
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According to the 2011 census data, Suceava had a population of 92,121, a decrease from the figure recorded at the 2002 census (106,138), making it the 23rd largest urban settlement in Romania at that time. Additionally, the ethnic composition was as follows:
Romanians: 98.3%
Roma (Gypsies): 0.7%
Ukrainians: 0.3%
Germans (i.e. Bukovina Germans): 0.2%
Poles: 0.1%
Lipovans: 0.1%
Other ethnic groups (most notably Hungarians, Jews, and Armenians): 0.3%
Historical data for the Ițcani neighborhood
According to the 1930 Romanian census, the population of present-day Ițcani neighborhood, which, at the time, was considered a separate commune comprising two villages, namely Ițcanii Noi () and Ițcani Gară (), amounted to 2,422 residents. By ethnic criterion, those residents were:
Germans (i.e. Bukovina Germans): 45%
Romanians: 21.40%
Jews: 17.84%
Ukrainians: 6.77%
Poles: 5.24%
Russians (i.e. Lipovans): 2.15%
Hungarians: 1.53%
Other minor ethnic groups (forming the remainder of 0.07%)
In religious terms, 28.4% of the then residents were Roman Catholic, 22.7% were Evangelical Lutheran, 22.04% were Orthodox, 18.04% belonged to Judaism, 8.17% were Greek Catholic, and the rest either belonged to other smaller cults or were irreligious.
Administration and local politics
List of mayors (1990–present)
The mayors elected since Romania's transition back to democracy and a free market economy in the wake of the 1989 Romanian Revolution have been the following ones:
Notes:
1 Initially elected on the lists of the Democratic Agrarian Party of Romania (PDAR) but subsequently switched to the National Liberal Party (PNL).
2 Initially elected on the lists of the National Liberal Party (PNL), subsequently switched to the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL), then re-elected on the lists of the PNL
Town council
1992–1996
Following the 1992 Romanian local elections, the first such type of elections in post-1989 Romania, the town had a new local council.
1996–2000
The town's former local council for the period 1996–2000 had the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 1996 Romanian local elections:
2000–2004
The town's former local council for the period 2000–2004 had the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 2000 Romanian local elections:
2004–2008
The town's former local council for the period 2004–2008 had the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 2004 Romanian local elections:
2008–2012
The town's former local council for the period 2008–2012 had the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 2008 Romanian local elections:
2012–2016
The town's former local council for the period 2012–2016 had the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 2012 Romanian local elections:
2016–2020
The town's former local council for the period 2016–2020 had the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 2016 Romanian local elections:
2020–2024
The town's current local council has the following multi-party political composition, based on the results of the votes cast at the 2020 Romanian local elections:
Culture
The Seat Fortress of Suceava
Suceava is the place of several medieval sites that are closely linked to the history of the former Principality of Moldavia. By far the most significant (and at the same time the most well preserved one) is the Seat Fortress of Suceava (; ) or Suceava Citadel, a medieval castle situated on the eastern edge of the contemporary town.
The fortress was built during the reign of Petru of Moldavia (1375–1391), also known as Petru Mușat. It was further expanded and strengthened during the reigns of Alexander I of Moldavia (1400–1432) and Stephen the Great (1457–1504). The medieval castle was part of the fortification system built in Moldavia during the late 14th century, given the emergence of the expansionist Ottoman danger. It even became strong enough to hold off an attack by Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (the conqueror of Constantinople) in 1476.
Suceava was the capital of the former Principality of Moldavia between 1388 and 1565. During this period, the castle served as princely residence. Alexandru Lăpușneanu had subsequently moved the Moldavian capital to Iași in 1565, so the castle lost its status. Afterwards, the citadel entered a period of steep decline. In 1675, during the reign of Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino, the fortress was destroyed. Then, for over two centuries, the castle was completely deserted.
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, under the patronage of Austrian architect Karl Adolf Romstorfer, a series of rehabilitation works and archaeological research had been conducted. Between 1961 and 1970 other restoration and consolidation processes were carried out. In 2013, a major reconstruction program was launched, aiming to return the castle to its original architecture and shape.
The Seat Fortress of Suceava consists of two concentric citadels. The inner citadel, known as fortul mușatin, has a rectangular shape and a patio (i.e. inner courtyard). It was built by Prince () Petru Mușat during the late 14th century. During the second half of the 15th century, Stephen the Great expanded the structure by adding another citadel that had a circular shape surrounding the old one.
After 1476, new fortifications were added to the outer citadel. Furthermore, the whole castle is encircled by a large defensive ditch. Today, the fortress is a landmark of Suceava and a noteworthy touristic attraction. Since 2011, it has also been used for hosting cultural events such as the rock music festival Bucovina Rock Castle. The festival attracted a series of renowned national and international bands and artists (e.g. guitarist Jan Akkerman, formerly of Dutch jazz fusion and progressive rock band Focus).
The Princely Court of Suceava
The Princely Court of Suceava () was built and developed along with the Seat Fortress. During the late 14th century, voivode Petru Mușat built the Princely House, a structure made in wood, which included a cellar. After 1400, Alexander I of Moldavia rebuilt the wooden house and added a surrounding stone wall and a complex of buildings also built in stone. During the second half of the 15th century, the Princely Court was severely affected by fire, the wooden house being completely burned out.
During his reign, Stephen the Great (1457–1504) restored the whole complex. A new Princely House was built, this time made of stone, and the other buildings were extended. Vasile Lupu (1634–1653) was the last ruler of Moldavia who took care of the Princely Court. During his time, the cellars were rehabilitated. The complex was abandoned at some point in the late 17th century, the buildings and the walls being gradually dismantled. Currently, on the site of the Princely Court there are only ruins and leftovers of the former buildings. The ruins of the former medieval court are located in the city center of Suceava. Between 14th and 17th centuries, in the proximity of the Princely Court there were built several churches that still exist today and attract tourists.
Șcheia Fortress
On the north-western edge of the contemporary city, on a hilltop, there is another medieval citadel known as Șcheia Fortress () or the Western Fortress of Suceava (). Unlike the Seat Fortress, Șcheia Fortress has left nothing but some ruined walls. The citadel proper was built during the reign of Petru Mușat during the late 14th century, but was short-lived, given that it was dismantled during the early 15th century, in the time of Alexander I of Moldavia. Șcheia Fortress, just like the main Seat Fortress, was part of the fortification system built in the medieval Principality of Moldavia during the late 14th century.
Museums
The first museum in Suceava was opened in 1900, by the initiative of some local intellectuals. In the beginning, the museum included only a few collections that were obtained as a result of the researches and excavation works at the Seat Fortress of Suceava. The museum was expanded and developed over time and became an important cultural institution, currently named Bukovina Museum (). It has several departments and administers the medieval sites of the Seat Fortress, Șcheia Fortress and the Princely Court, local museums (Bukovina Village Museum, the history, ethnographic, and natural sciences museums), the memorial houses of Simion Florea Marian in Suceava, Nicolae Labiș in Mălini, Eusebiu Camilar in Udești, Ciprian Porumbescu in Stupca, and two traditional houses located in Solca and Bilca.
The oldest department of Bukovina Museum is the history museum, which was the backbone for creating a county museum at Suceava. This museum presents the local history of Suceava and Moldavia in the context of Romanian national history. The exhibits of the history museum and the offices of Bukovina Museum are located in a historic building, in the city center. The building, which hosted the prefecture of Suceava County during the interwar period, was built between 1902 and 1903. Since 1968, it houses the history museum. In 2014, the building and the museum entered an extensive program of modernization, rehabilitation, and expansion.
At the history museum there is a reconstitution of a scene from the former throne hall located in the Seat Fortress. The scene presents some notable people from the history of Moldavia, made in glass fiber: Stephen the Great (ruler of Moldavia), Maria Voichița (his third wife), Bogdan III the One-Eyed (his son and successor to the throne), officials of that time. The scene chosen to be reconstructed is an allotment of land for peasants. The reconstitution is based on medieval documents, frescoes, and archaeological researches. Furthermore, the history museum periodically organizes a wide range of cultural events, several of which also involve the local branch of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania (FDGR/DFDR). Furthermore, the local branch of the FDGR/DFDR () is also in charge of the ACI Bukowina Stiftung, a Romanian-German cultural foundation whose president is Josef-Otto Exner.
Bukovina Village Museum () is an open-air museum that highlights the traditional cultural and architectural heritage of Bukovina region. It is located in the eastern part of Suceava, near the Seat Fortress. It was founded in the 1970s, but its major expansion and development took place after 1990. The museum is designed as a traditional village in Bukovina, containing houses and various objectives from the ethnographic areas of Rădăuți, Humor, Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Dorna, and Fălticeni.
The museum includes among others a water mill from Mănăstirea Humorului, a traditional blacksmith workshop, a pottery workshop from Marginea and one of the many old wooden churches in northern Moldavia: Church of the Ascension, a Romanian Orthodox wooden church built in 1783 in Vama, a village in Suceava County. The bell tower is also made in wood, and dates from 1787. The church and the bell tower were both relocated in 2001, and currently are part of the museum.
Besides Bukovina Village Museum, another museum that reflects the traditional life in this part of Romania is the ethnographic museum. It was opened in 1968 and includes old collections and exhibits that are housed in a medieval inn located in the center of Suceava, known as the Princely Inn of Suceava (). This landmark dates from the late 16th and early 17th century. It was built of stone and has two floors and a cellar. During the Austrian rule (1775–1918), the inn operated as a hunting lodge for the imperial family. Since 1968, it hosts the ethnographic museum. The Princely Inn is the oldest civic building in Suceava which had not been seriously affected by time and maintained its original architecture.
The natural sciences museum was founded in 1976–1977, being the newest museum in Suceava. It highlights the flora and fauna of the surrounding area. The museum's rare exhibits and collections are housed in an old building, located in the central park of the city and built between 1811 and 1814. In the past, before being an attraction for visitors, the building operated as a school for boys.
Along with all these museums, Bukovina Museum includes memorial houses of some writers and artists born in this area of the country. The memorial house of Simion Florea Marian () is the only one located in Suceava, the other ones being in the surrounding area. The memorial house operates as a museum. It was opened in 1974 in the home where Romanian priest and writer Simion Florea Marian lived, from 1884 until 1907, when he died. The museum hosts a collection that contains over 10,000 volumes, over 450 collections of magazines and newspapers, of which 150 are from Bukovina, manuscripts, letters, cultural and historical documents, old photos. In front of the memorial house it was opened a small park with a statue dedicated to Simion Florea Marian.
Historical buildings
Colegiul de Artă Ciprian Porumbescu () is a high school which is hosted in a historic building, built in 1859, in the city center of Suceava. The building had several destinations in the past: Suceava Town Hall (until 1904) and Școala primară română de fete (Primary Romanian school for girls). Romanian jazz singer Anca Parghel taught music for a living in Suceava at this local Arts high school before turning to a professional singing career in 1989.
Gara Suceava Nord-Ițcani (Suceava North railway station, also known as Ițcani) is a train station built in 1871 in the village of Ițcani (today district of Suceava). Between 1871 and 1918, it was a train station at the Austro-Hungarian border. The historic building of Ițcani railway station was built in the Gothic style of the Central European railway stations of that period.
Palatul de Justiție (The Palace of Justice) is a historic building which was built in 1885 to serve as the seat of Suceava Tribunal and Court. The building has four sides and a patio, and was designed by Viennese architect Ferdinand Fellner. Later, during the communist regime, the city hall was moved in this palace and operated here until 2000.
Spitalul Vechi (The Old Hospital) is a complex of buildings built between 1891 and 1903 which originally hosted the district hospital. The hospital ensemble consists of four pavilions of historic value and was built in the southwestern end of Suceava, in Areni neighborhood. In 1964 a new hospital building (known as Spitalul Nou) was inaugurated nearby.
Colegiul Național Ștefan cel Mare (Ștefan cel Mare National College) is the oldest and most prestigious high school in Suceava County, established in 1860. The baroque style building which houses the high school was built between 1893 and 1895, downtown Suceava, and today is considered a historical monument.
Gara Suceava-Burdujeni (Suceava railway station, also known as Burdujeni) is a train station built between 1892 and 1902 in the village of Burdujeni (today district of Suceava). Between 1902 and 1918, it was a train station at the Austro-Hungarian border. The historic building of Burdujeni railway station was built in the architectural style of Fribourg railway station, located in Switzerland.
Palatul Administrativ (The Administrative Palace) is a historic building which was built between 1903–1904 to serve as the seat of Suceava City Hall. The building originally had only two sides of the four current sides, and was designed by Viennese architect Peter Paul Brang. It was designed in the baroque style. Currently, the palace houses the prefecture and the county council of Suceava County.
Casa Polonă (The Polish House) is a building made between 1903 and 1907 by the Polish community in the city of Suceava. The building was designed by architect Alojz Friedel. During the communist regime, The Polish House was nationalized, and since 1954, it housed Ansamblul Artistic Ciprian Porumbescu (Ciprian Porumbescu Artistic Ensemble). In 1984 the building was restored, and then hosted a local theatre, until 1990. In 1996, the building was returned to the Polish community of the city.
Uzina de Apă (The Water Plant) is a set of industrial heritage buildings, designed in 1908 by engineer G. Thiem from Leipzig and built between 1910 and 1912. The water plant operated in these buildings between 1912 and 1960, and then it was moved into a modern building. In 2012, in celebration of 100 years since its establishment, in the former water plant buildings there was inaugurated the Centre for Architecture, Urban Culture and Landscape in Suceava.
Biblioteca Bucovinei I.G. Sbiera (I.G. Sbiera Bukovina Library) is the first public library in Suceava, inaugurated on 12 December 1923. It is also the largest library in Suceava County, with over 350,000 bibliographic units. Currently, the library is hosted by two historic buildings located in downtown Suceava and built between 1925 and 1926, respectively 1929–1930.
The County Forestry Department in Suceava is an institution which operates in a heritage building located in Areni neighborhood, in the city of Suceava. The building dates from the first half of the 20th century.
The Unions House in Suceava is a heritage building, located in downtown Suceava, which houses the unions offices, along with some shops. The building is also known as Samuil Isopescu House.
Casa Costin Tarangul (Costin Tarangul House) is a heritage house dating from the 19th century (1886). The building is located next to Simion Florea Marian Memorial House, in the center of Suceava.
Casa Ciprian Porumbescu (Ciprian Porumbescu House) is a heritage house dating from the 19th century, where Romanian composer Ciprian Porumbescu lived and created some of his works. The house is located in Prunului street, downtown Suceava.
School No. 5 Jean Bart in Burdujeni (Suceava) is a school built in 1902 in the village Burdujeni, today a town district of Suceava. The building that houses the school has historic value.
School No. 6 in Burdujeni-Sat (Suceava) is a school built in 1911 in the village Burdujeni, today a town district of Suceava. The building that houses the school has historic value.
Former Burdujeni Town Hall in Suceava is a building that was built in 1902 in the village Burdujeni and initially was the town hall of the locality. In 1926 Burdujeni became a district of Suceava, and so the town hall was abolished. The historic building currently houses the headquarters of Electrica company.
Ițcani neighbourhood
Ițcani is a neighbourhood located several miles northwest of the city centre. Initially established as a small village in the 15th century under the rulership of Alexăndrel of Moldavia, it expanded as a German-speaking colony starting in the late 19th century, seeing an influx of German settlers during the Josephine colonization which took place in the time of the Austrian Empire. The north railway station (which depicts architectural elements of both Gothic revival and Neo-romanticist styles, also the oldest in the city) is situated in this neighbourhood as well.
Monuments
Near the fortress, in Șipote-Cetate Park, there is an equestrian statue of Stephen the Great, designed and made by the local sculptor Iftimie Bârleanu in 1977. The monument has 23 meters in height, being the tallest equestrian statue in Romania. In the town centre there's also a statue dedicated to Petru Mușat, Prince of Moldavia between 1375 and 1391 and to Petru Rareș, twice Prince of Moldavia, firstly between 1527 and 1538 then secondly and for the last time between 1541 and 1546.
Religious buildings
Romanian Orthodox churches
One of the most important cultural sites in Suceava is Saint John the New Monastery which includes the monumental Church of Saint George, built between 1514 and 1522. The construction began during the reign of voivode Bogdan III the One-Eyed of Moldavia, after the nearby Mirăuți Church (the metropolitan cathedral of Moldavia at that moment) was devastated in 1513. The construction was completed by Stephen IV of Moldavia (also known as Ștefăniță). The monastery church served as metropolitan cathedral of Moldavia until 1677. It has frescoes painted on the outside, typical of the region, and is one of eight buildings that make up the churches of Moldavia UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since 1991 Saint John the New Monastery serves as the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Suceava and Rădăuți. Saint John the New was a Moldavian monk who preached during Turkish occupation and was subsequently martyred in Cetatea Albă, present-day Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in Ukraine. Alexander I of Moldavia brought his relics to Suceava in 1402.
Mirăuți Church, dedicated to Saint George, is the oldest religious building in Suceava, founded by Petru II of Moldavia in late 14th century, in the same period with the Seat Fortress, when he moved the capital from Siret to Suceava. The church established the city as a see of it. Mirăuți was the metropolitan cathedral of Moldavia between 1402 and 1522, when the church of Saint John the New Monastery was completed. In 1402, the relics of Saint John the New were transferred to this church from Cetatea Albă, and then, in 1589 transferred again to the nearby monastery church by voivode Peter the Lame. The name Mirăuți derives from the fact that it was the coronation church of Moldavia until 1522. Stephen the Great was crowned in here in 1457. After the church was devastated, it was rebuilt in early 17th century, and then, in the 18th century, abandoned.
Church of Saint Demetrius was founded by Peter IV Rareș, ruler of Moldavia (1527–1538, 1541–1546), and the son of Stephan the Great. The church was built in 1534–1535, with a bell tower added in 1560–1561 by Alexandru Lăpușneanu. The bell tower is 40 meters high, being the tallest bell tower in Suceava and a landmark of the city. The church had frescoes painted on the outside, that are still visible on one side wall. The frescoes inside were restored recently. Church of Saint Demetrius is located near the ruins of the former Princely Court of Suceava.
Furthermore, there is another old church near these ruins. Church of Saint John the Baptist, also known as Coconilor Church or Domnițelor Church, was founded in 1643 by Vasile Lupu, voivode of Moldavia between 1632 and 1653. It has no exterior frescoes and a short bell tower that has its roof linked with the roof above the church. In its early days, the church functioned as a chapel for the Princely Court.
Church of the Resurrection (located in the proximity of Saint John the New Monastery) dates from 1551, and was founded by Elena Rareș, the wife of voivode Peter IV Rareș. The church has no tower above the naos, its architecture reflecting the urban style of the medieval period. Instead of the bell tower, the church has a zvonnitsa, an architectural form especially used in the Russian architecture of the 14th–17th centuries. Church of the Resurrection was used by the local Roman Catholic community during the Habsburg occupation, and then by the Ruthenian Greek Catholic community, until 1936. It is also known as Văscresenia Church or Elena Doamna Church.
Church of Saint Nicholas (Prăjescu) is another religious building in Suceava that features the medieval Moldavian architectural style. The present church was rebuilt by treasurer Nicoară Prăjescu in 1611, during the reign of Constantin Movilă (1607–1611). Throughout its history, the church functioned as a necropolis for the local boyars.
Between the city center and Ițcani neighborhood, on the slopes that descend to the Suceava river valley, there is Church of the Assumption, another old Romanian Orthodox church, founded in the first half of the 17th century (1639). The church was built on the place where Ițcani Monastery existed before. It functioned as a nunnery until late 18th century. Today it is parish church, and has a zvonnitsa similar to that of Church of the Resurrection, located downtown.
In Burdujeni neighborhood, north-east of the city center, there is Teodoreni Monastery, founded in 1597 by local boyar Teodor Movilă, the elder brother of Ieremia Movilă, ruler of Moldavia (1595–1600, 1600–1606). Burdujeni village (now a district of Suceava) was established and developed around this monastery. The set of buildings includes Church of Ascension, the bell tower, living quarters for nuns and a surrounding wall. Just north of Teodoreni Monastery, in the old district of Burdujeni, there is Church of the Holy Trinity, founded by archimandrite Filaret Scriban in 1851.
Ițcani neighborhood has two Romanian Orthodox churches founded in the first half of the 20th century: Church of the Holy Archangels (built near Suceava North railway station, in 1933–1938) and Church of the Holy Apostles (located on European route E85 and built in 1905–1908 by the German community of Ițcani, initially as a Lutheran church).
Church of the Holy Cross, located in Pătrăuți village (a few miles north-west of Ițcani), was founded in 1487 by Stephen the Great, and is one of the monuments that make up the churches of Moldavia UNESCO World Heritage Site. Also not far away from Ițcani, there is Dragomirna Monastery, established by clergyman Anastasie Crimca in 1609. Voroneț Monastery is located west of Suceava, in the town of Gura Humorului.
German Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran churches
During the late Modern Age up until the early 1940s, a sizeable ethnic German community lived in the town of Suceava. They were of both Roman Catholic and Lutheran faith. These German-speaking colonists who were settled by the Austrian Empire in the town proper can trace their origins most notably to the territories of present-day southern Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic (more specifically Bohemia or the Bohemian Forest), being thus both Roman Catholics and Protestants (more specifically Lutherans).
Several religious buildings that served both aforementioned religious denominations can still be found today both in the town proper and in the Ițcani neighbourhood, where a bygone community of ethnic Germans (stemming from the contemporary Rhineland-Palatinate land in Germany) once lived in sizeable numbers.
Armenian Orthodox churches
In the past, Suceava used to have an important Armenian community as well. Their cultural and historical legacy is highlighted by a series of well preserved religious buildings that still exist to this today.
The most representative ecclesiastical landmark established by the local Armenian population is Zamca Monastery (the term Zamca can actually trace its linguistic origin to Polish, denoting as such a 'fortified place' and being named this way by King Jan Sobieski of Poland in 1691), a fortified complex of buildings located on a plateau at the western point of the contemporary city.
Zamca Monastery was constructed between 1551 and 1606 and its church is dedicated to Saint Auxentius. Along with the church, the monastery includes several buildings made of stone and a defensive wall that surrounds the whole medieval complex.
Between Zamca Monastery and the city center there are two more Armenian Orthodox churches. Church of Saint Simon (also known as The Red Tower Church because of its bell tower) was founded in 1513. The bell tower was constructed in 1551.
The church has an old Armenian cemetery in the proximity and a chapel that was built in 1902 (Pruncul Chapel). Church of the Holy Cross was established in 1521 and was renovated several times in its history. The Armenian parsonage is located near the church, along with several old tomb stones.
Hagigadar Monastery is another medieval complex built by the local Armenians. It was founded in 1512–1513, and is located on the south-western proximity of the town, on a valley near European route E85.
Tourism
In the past few years Suceava started to evolve more rapidly. The most important sights in the town date from its time as a princely capital (i.e. the Middle Ages). There are numerous museums in the city proper including, most notably, the Bucovina History Museum, the Bucovina Village Museum, Bucovina Ethnographic Museum (housed in an inn dating back to the 17th century), or the Natural History Museum.
Shopping centres
Suceava is renowned in Romania for having the most modern shopping centres (i.e. malls) and commercial spaces per capita. The most significant and also largest shopping centres of the town are Iulius Mall Suceava (situated closer to Ițcani), Galleria Shopping Center (outside the town proper), and Bucovina Shopping Center (located closer in the town centre). The latter was built during communist times whereas the former were both built after 1989.
The biggest and most representative shopping centre in Suceava is Iulius Mall and remains as such to this day, given the total volume of customers coming there for their needs as well as for the total amount of commercial spaces which the mall includes.
Sports
Football
ACS Foresta Suceava (), formerly known as Rapid CFR Suceava, currently plays in Liga III, the third tier of the Romanian football system.
The town has also had other significant football clubs competing in either Liga I or Liga II such as CSM Suceava, FC Cetatea Suceava, or Foresta Suceava, the last initially based in the city of Fălticeni from the same county. The town also used to have another Liga III side, Sporting Suceava, but it went bankrupt.
All the major sporting events are hosted on the Areni Stadium, a multi-purpose stadium with a capacity of 12,500 people. It is currently the home ground of ACS Foresta Suceava. The stadium was initially opened in 1963 as the "Municipal Stadium".
Handball
CS Universitatea Bucovina Suceava is the town's men's handball team which currently competes in the Romanian Handball League (). It was founded in 2002 and it started playing in the first tier of the Romanian handball system in 2006. In 2011, it achieved its greatest performance to date, namely finishing 3rd in the national handball division.
Education
The only university of the town is the Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava (, USV) which was established in 1990. However, this institution of higher education was initially founded as the Institute of Pedagogy as early as 1963.
The most prominent high schools with theoretical pathways of the town are the following ones:
National College "Mihai Eminescu" Suceava
Named after the most well-known Moldavian and Romanian poet, Mihai Eminescu
Main study offers are: Social Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Philology
National College "Petru Rareș" Suceava
Named after the voievod of Moldavia, Peter IV Rareș
Main study offers are: English, Philology, Mathematics and Computer Science.
National College "Ștefan cel Mare" Suceava
Named after the prince of Moldavia between the years 1457 and 1504, Stephen III of Moldavia (also known as Stephen the Great)
Main study offers are: Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science.
Economical College "Dimitre Cantemir" Suceava
Named after the twice Prince of Moldavia and the famous writer of the Descriptio Moldavie, Dimitrie Cantemir.
It is the only economics high-school in Suceava.
Main study offers are Tourism, Gastronomy, Alimentation, Economy, Countability, and Trade.
The main profile which the school promovates is the Technical profile.
Transportation
Public transport
In terms of public transportation, the Municipality of Suceava currently has a series of green electric buses within its public transportation fleet with the support of Switzerland. In the past, there were both buses and trolleybuses in circulation across the town and in the neighbouring localities. The trolleybus system of the town was officially opened on 15 August 1987 and was officially closed on 2 April 2006.
Nowadays, public transportation is mostly modern and meets efficient technical standards. The type of buses which were in service and operated across the town before the arrival of the green buses were of Irisbus type. As of 2023, the town's fleet of electric buses stops around various stations both across the town and outside of it in the nearby localities (e.g. in Șcheia). The main operator of public transportation in Suceava is SC Transport Public Local SA (TPL).
Air
Suceava is served by the Suceava International "Ștefan cel Mare" Airport (SCV), located east of the town centre, in the nearby small town of Salcea. The airport initially opened in 1962 when commercial services started with TAROM, the oldest operating Romanian airline. In 1963, the runway was paved, and an apron was built. Services by TAROM were discontinued in 2001, but resumed in 2004. During this period, the airport was served only by Angel Airlines. In March 2005, the airport was renamed Ștefan cel Mare Airport, and opened to international traffic.
In 2013, Suceava International Airport started a plan (worth €39 million) to rebuild and extend the old runway of , to construct a new control tower and to install a new ILS system. In August 2013, the construction works commenced, and on 12 January 2014, the airport closed in order to allow the runway works to resume. The old concrete runway was completely removed, and a new runway, made out of asphalt, was constructed.
On 25 October 2015, the airport was officially reopened. As of 2019, Suceava International Airport had an annual traffic of 430,064 passengers, a local record thus far, making it the 8th busiest airport in Romania.
Natives
See also
Foundation of Moldavia
List of rulers of Moldavia (between the 14th and 19th centuries)
Medieval churches of Moldavia
Duchy of Bukovina
Germans of Romania (including, most notably, Bukovina Germans)
International relations
Consulates and embassies
Consulate general of Ukraine
Twin towns and sister cities
Suceava is twinned with the following cities across the world (and one landlocked province which is Guizhou, in the region of Southwestern China):
Regional, cultural, and economic partnerships
In addition to the official town/city twinning, Suceava shares a series of regional, cultural, and economic partnerships with the following urban settlements or regions:
Gallery
Notes
References
External links
Suceava City Hall Official Site
Suceava Media
Suceava Photos
Suceava Travel
Suceava Website
Cities in Romania
Capitals of Romanian counties
Place names of Hungarian origin in Romania
Castles in Romania
Former capitals of Romania
Bukovina
Duchy of Bukovina
Localities in Southern Bukovina
Ținutul Suceava
Populated places in Suceava County
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf%20fiction
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Werewolf fiction
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Werewolf fiction denotes the portrayal of werewolves and other shapeshifting therianthropes, in the media of literature, drama, film, games and music. Werewolf literature includes folklore, legend, saga, fairy tales, Gothic and horror fiction, fantasy fiction and poetry. Such stories may be supernatural, symbolic or allegorical. A classic American cinematic example of the theme is The Wolf Man (1941) which in later films joins with the Frankenstein Monster and Count Dracula as one of the three famous icons of modern day horror. However, werewolf fiction is an exceptionally diverse genre, with ancient folkloric roots and manifold modern re-interpretations.
Literary origins
In Greek mythology, there is a story of an Arcadian King called Lycaon who tested Zeus by serving him a dish of his slaughtered and dismembered son to see if Zeus was really all-knowing. As punishment for his trickery, Zeus transformed Lycaon into a wolf and killed his 50 sons by lightning bolts, but supposedly revived Lycaon's son Nyctimus, who the king had slaughtered.
In medieval romances, such as Bisclavret, and Guillaume de Palerme the werewolf is relatively benign, appearing as the victim of evil magic and aiding knights errant.
However, in most legends influenced by medieval theology the werewolf was a Satanic beast with a craving for human flesh. This appears in such later fiction as "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains": an episode in the novel The Phantom Ship (1839) by Marryat, featuring a demonic femme fatale who transforms from woman to wolf.
Sexual themes are common in werewolf fiction; the protagonist kills his girlfriend as she walks with a former lover in Werewolf of London, suggesting sexual jealousy. The writers of The Wolf Man were careful in depicting killings as motivated out of hunger.
The wolf in the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" has been reinterpreted as a werewolf in many works of fiction, such as The Company of Wolves (1979) by Angela Carter (and its 1984 film adaptation) and the film Ginger Snaps (2000), which address female sexuality. 2011 also saw the release of Red Riding Hood with Amanda Seyfried in the main role, with the character name of Valerie.
Folklore
In folk and fairy tale traditions all over the world, humans who can shapeshift at will into both human and lupine forms appear in several fairy tales. According to the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, they can appear in this capacity in the following tale types:
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index tale type ATU 409, : a tale type more commonly found in the folklore of Estonia and Finland, a human hunter finds a woman in the woods and hides her animal (wolf) skin. Years later, after the wolf-maiden has given birth to children, one of them finds her wolf skin and returns it to her. She puts it back and disappears, never to return.
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index tale type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband" and ATU 425A, "The Animal Bridegroom": a maiden is betrothed to an animal bridegroom (a wolf, in several variants), who comes at night to the bridal bed in human form. The maiden breaks a taboo and her enchanted husband disappears. She is forced to search for him. Example: The White Wolf (fairy tale), Belgian fairy tale; Prince Wolf, Danish fairy tale.
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index tale type ATU 425C, "Beauty and the Beast": a father has three daughters, the youngest the most beautiful and the most loved by her parent. He needs to go on a journey and asks his daughter what presents should he bring them, the youngest suggest something simple, but very or nearly impossible to find. Near the end of his journey, he finds the wished-for object in the garden of a (seemingly) abandoned castle, when a booming voice interrupts him. The voice belongs to a fierce creature (sometimes explicitly described as a wolf by the narrative) who demands "his most precious gift" in return: the youngest daughter. She willingly offers herself to the beast and discovers he is an enchanted prince. She helps him break the curse and they both live happily ever after.
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index tale type ATU 552, "The Girls who married Animals": a bankrupt nobleman or a poor farmer is forced to wed his daughters to three animal suitors, who are actually enchanted princes under a curse. In some variants, one of the suitors is a wolf.
19th century
Nineteenth-century Gothic horror stories drew on previous folklore and legend to present the theme of the werewolf in a new fictional form. An early example is Hugues, the Wer-Wolf by Sutherland Menzies, published in 1838. The year after in 1839, Frederick Marryat's book The Phantom Ship was published, which included one of the first stories about a female werewolf, and is often reprinted as a stand-alone short story called The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains. In another, Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1847) by G. W. M. Reynolds, we find the classic subject of a man who, although a kind-hearted man himself, accepts a Deal with the Devil to become a werewolf for 18 months accompanying Dr. Faustus and killing humans, in exchange for youth and wealth. "The Man-Wolf" (1831) by Leitch Ritchie yields the werewolf in an 11th-century setting, while Catherine Crowe penned what is believed to be the first werewolf short story by a woman: "A Story of a Weir-Wolf" (1846). Other werewolf stories of this period include The Wolf Leader (1857) by Alexandre Dumas and Hugues-le-Loup (1869) by Erckmann-Chatrian.
A later Gothic story, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), has an implicit werewolf subtext, according to Colin Wilson. This has been made explicit in some recent adaptations of this story, such as the BBC TV series Jekyll (2007). Stevenson's Olalla (1887) offers more explicit werewolf content, but, like Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this aspect remains subordinate to the story's larger themes.
Charles De Coster's 1867 novel The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak includes an extensive episode where the Flemish town of Damme is terrorized by what seems a rampaging werewolf, the numerous victims' bodies bearing what seems the mark of a wolf's fangs - thought ultimately they turn out to have been killed by a completely mundane serial killer, clever and ruthless, who used metal blades to simulate these wolf's tooth marks.
A rapacious female werewolf who appears in the guise of a seductive femme fatale before transforming into lupine form to devour her hapless male victims is the protagonist of Clemence Housman's acclaimed The Were-wolf published in 1896.
20th century
In literature
The 20th century saw an explosion of werewolf short stories and novels published in both England and America. The famed English supernatural story writer Algernon Blackwood wrote a number of werewolf short stories. These often had an occult aspect to them. English author Gerald Biss published the 1919 werewolf novel The Door of the Unreal. American pulp magazines of the 1920 to 1950s, such as Weird Tales, include many werewolf tales, written by such authors as H. Warner Munn, Seabury Quinn and Manly Wade Wellman. Robert E. Howard made his own contribution to the genre in "Wolfshead".
The most renowned werewolf novel of the 20th century was The Werewolf of Paris (1933) by American author Guy Endore. This novel has been accorded classic status and is considered by some to be the Dracula of werewolf literature. It was adapted as The Curse of the Werewolf in 1961 for Hammer Film Productions. The novel The Wolf's Bride: A Tale from Estonia written by the Finnish author Aino Kallas was published in 1928 and it tells the story of the forester's wife living in Hiiumaa in the 17th century who became a werewolf under the influence of a malevolent forest spirit. A more recent example is Moon of the Wolf (1967) by Les Whitten, which the 1972 movie of the same name, Moon of the Wolf, was based on.
In films
In cinema during the silent era, werewolves were portrayed in canine form in such films as The Werewolf (1913) and Wolf Blood (1925). The first feature film to portray an anthropomorphic werewolf was Werewolf of London in 1935 (not to be confused with the 1981 film of a similar title), establishing the canon that the werewolf always kills what he loves the most. The main werewolf of this film was a dapper London scientist who retained some of his style and most of his human features after his transformation.
However, he lacked warmth, and it was left to the tragic character Laurence Stewart "Larry" Talbot played by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1941's The Wolf Man to capture the public imagination. This catapulted the werewolf into public consciousness. The theme of lycanthropy as a disease or curse reached its standard treatment in the film, which contained the now-famous rhyme:
This movie draws on elements of traditional folklore and fiction, such as the vulnerability of the werewolf to a silver bullet (as seen for instance in the legend of Beast of Gévaudan), though at the climax of the film, the Wolf Man is actually dispatched with a silver-handled cane.
While the process of transmogrification is sometimes portrayed in such films and works of literature to be painful, other works omit this aspect in favor of a loss of consciousness during the change and even an inability to recall the event. Regardless, the resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction, regardless of the moral character of the person when human.
Lon Chaney Jr. himself became somewhat typecast as the Wolf Man and reprised his role in several sequels for Universal Studios. In these films, the werewolf lore of the first film was clarified. In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) it is firmly established that the Wolf Man is revived from the dead at a night of the full moon after his grave was disturbed. In House of Frankenstein (1944), silver bullets are used for the first time to dispatch him. Further sequels were House of Dracula (1945) and the parodic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
The success of Universal's The Wolf Man prompted rival Hollywood film companies Columbia Pictures and Fox Studios to bring out their own, now somewhat obscure, werewolf films. The first of these was The Undying Monster produced by Fox in 1942, adapted from a werewolf novel of the same name by Jessie Douglas Kerruish, published in 1936.
In 1981, two prominent werewolf films, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, both drew on themes from the Universal series. While the werewolves in The Howling resembled bipedal wolves, the one in An American Werewolf in London had a more quadrupedal form with longer claws, a short tail, and finger-like structures on its front paws. The later had a follow-up called An American Werewolf in Paris.
In games
Werewolves have long been a race in the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons. In the game's 5th edition, its most recent version, werewolves are weak to silver, and can shift between human, wolf, and hybrid humanoid forms, being able to use weapons in both human and hybrid form.
Many video games portray the idea of werewolves, although, in most of their appearances, they are presented as mindless monsters or villains. In more rare cases, they feature as NPCs, such as the character Witherfang from Dragon Age: Origins (2009), who is not strictly evil and was created as an act of revenge, or even the game's protagonist, as in the case of Bigby Wolf from The Wolf Among Us (2013), a noir adventure game based on the eponymous comic book series that includes characters inspired by fairy tales. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006) causes the series' recurring main character, Link, to become a werewolf, a transformation induced by a magical "Twilight" that has spread across the realm. In wolf form, he is ridden and guided by the imp Midna. While the idea was praised as fun to control, it also proved divisive, seen as a "gimmick" in comparison to controlling Link as a sword-wielding human.
As a well-known and iconic creature type, lycanthropes, and particularly werewolves, are central to a variety of games, including board games, role-playing games, and video games.
These include a number of games where lycanthropes are either incidental villains, or the primary villain of the game, as well as games that allow players to play as a lycanthrope. It has been noted with respect to video games in particular that werewolves are "most often presented in videogames as mindless, slavering enemies", though some games do provide a more nuanced presentation.
Dungeons & Dragons
In Dungeons & Dragons, a lycanthrope ( or ) is a humanoid shapeshifter based on various legends of lycanthropes, werecats, and other such beings. In addition to the werewolf, in Dungeons & Dragons, weretigers, wereboars, werebears and other shapeshifting creatures similar to werewolves and related beings are considered lycanthropes, although traditionally, the term "lycanthrope" refers to a wolf-human combination exclusively. The presence of lyncanthropes in the gaming system is one of the elements that has led Christian fundamentalists to condemn Dungeons & Dragons and to associate it with the occult.
Description
In the standard Dungeons & Dragons rules, lycanthropy is both hereditary (the children of lycanthropes are lycanthropes of the same type) and infectious (victims of lycanthrope bites become lycanthropes themselves, of the same type as the attacker). The rules distinguish between natural and afflicted lycanthropes, according to the cause of lycanthropy, and handle them by different rules.
Hereditary lycanthropes can change shape at will, and retain their personality, being in control of their actions. Infected lycanthropes' shapechanges are affected by the full moon. They usually are not aware of their actions and act as aggressive predators. Lycanthropes can assume the form of an animal/humanoid hybrid, in addition to their animal form. Most lycanthropes in animal form can communicate with animals of their type. In humanoid form, they can use any weapon, and in animal form they use natural weapons like the corresponding animals, but each type has a different fighting style in hybrid form. An illustration in one edition of the Monster Manual implied that the beast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast was a lycanthrope, with a creature having a resemblance to the Beast attacking a human resembling that film's antagonist, Gaston.
Screen Rant has described the operation of lycanthropy in the game as an aspect that "makes no sense" because it is often a positive development for a character. "It is possible for a character to be infected with lycanthropy in Dungeons & Dragons and it comes highly recommended, as the benefits outweigh the negatives". It notes that "[i]n exchange for learning how to control your condition, you gain Damage Reduction, +2 to your Wisdom stat, the Scent ability, Low-Light Vision, a new Hit Dice, the Iron Will feat, and the ability to transform into a more powerful form". Like many examples of werewolves in modern fiction, D&D'''s werewolves and other lycanthropes are vulnerable to silver and highly resistant to other kinds of harm.
The archetypal lyncanthrope, the werewolf, was ranked sixth among the ten best low-level monsters by the authors of Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies. The authors described the werewolf as "a classic monster" and "the best illustration of a monster with damage reduction; unless characters have a silver weapon, they will have a hard time hurting this creature". The authors also note that "Werewolves are shapechangers, which means players can never be entirely sure whether that surly villager might indeed be the great black wolf who attacked their characters out in the forest." The werewolf is also fully detailed in Paizo Publishing's book Classic Horrors Revisited (2009), on pages 58–63.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Another role-playing game featuring the creature is Werewolf: The Apocalypse from the Classic World of Darkness line by White Wolf Publishing. Other related products include the Collectible card games named Rage and several novels (including one series). In the game, players take the role of werewolves known as "Garou" (from the French loup garou). These werewolves are locked in a two-front war against both the spiritual desolation of urban civilization and supernatural forces of corruption that seek to bring about the Apocalypse. Game supplements detail other shapeshifters.
Along with the other titles in the World of Darkness, Werewolf was discontinued in 2004. Its successor title within the Chronicles of Darkness line, Werewolf: The Forsaken, was released on March 14, 2005. A fifth edition is in development. The books have been reprinted since 2011 as part of the "Classic World of Darkness" line.
Video games
Numerous video games have featured lycanthropes, both as antagonists of the player, and as playable characters.Knight Lore (1984)Altered Beast (1988) allows the player to take various creature forms over the course of the game, including a wolf, dragon, bear, tiger, and golden wolf.Werewolf: The Last Warrior (1990)Shining Force (1992)Contra: Hard Corps (1994) features a "cyborg werewolf" wearing "rad sunglasses" and named Brad FangDarkstalkers (1994)Nightmare Creatures (1997)Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (1999)The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006)Wolf Team (2007)Sonic Unleashed (2008) is another of the few games to feature another form of lycanthrope, with the protagonist turning into a werehogDragon Age: Origins (2009)Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (2010)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf (2011), a promotional video game made for the band Fucking Werewolf AssoBlood of the Werewolf (2013)The Wolf Among Us (2013–2014)Bloodborne (2015)The Order: 1886 (2015)Werewolves Within (2016)Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood (2021)The Quarry (video game) (2022)
Some games have been noted to feature werewolf-like creatures, but without the element of lycanthrope. For example, in Pokémon, Zoroark has such an appearance as the final form of what previously appears as another creature.
Other kinds of gamesUltimate Werewolf, a card game designed by Ted Alspach and published by Bézier Games, is based on the social deduction game, Werewolf, which is Andrew Plotkin's reinvention of Dimitry Davidoff's 1987 game, Mafia. The Werewolf game appeared in many forms before Bézier Games published Ultimate Werewolf in 2008.
See also
List of werewolves
Werewoman
References
Further reading
Black, George Fraser. A List of Works Relating to Lycanthropy. New York: New York Public Library Publications, 1919. (earliest published list of werewolf fiction)
Du Coudray, Chantal Bourgault. The Curse of the Werewolf. London : I. B. Tauris, 2006. (book on literary symbolism of the werewolf)
Flores, Nona C. Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays. New York: Garland, 1996. (contains learned commentary on William of Palerne)
Frost, Brian J. The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 2003. (contains long lists of novels and short stories, especially pre-1970s ones, with excerpts)
Steiger, Brad. The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shapeshifting Beings''. Visible Ink Press, 1999. (contains long list of films, medium-sized list of novels)
Werewolf fiction
Lists of fantasy books
Film genres
Horror genres
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%20Gordon%20University
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Robert Gordon University
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Robert Gordon University, commonly called RGU (), is a public university in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. It became a university in 1992, and originated from an educational institution founded in the 18th century by Robert Gordon, a prosperous Aberdeen merchant, and various institutions which provided adult and technical education in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is one of two universities in the city, the other being the University of Aberdeen. RGU is a campus university and its single campus in Aberdeen is at Garthdee, in the south-west of the city.
The university awards degrees in a wide range of disciplines from BA/BSc to PhD, primarily in professional, technical, health and artistic disciplines and those most applicable to business and industry. A number of traditional academic degree programmes are also offered, such as in the social sciences. In addition, the university's academic and research staff produce research in a number of areas.
History
The university derives from Robert Gordon's Hospital, an institution set up in the mid-18th century to provide the poor with a basic education and reasonable start in life, and the various educational institutions which developed in Aberdeen to provide adults with technical, vocational and artistic training, mostly in the evenings and part-time. Following numerous mergers between these establishments, it became Robert Gordon's Technical College in 1910, then following further developments became Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology in 1965 and began to conduct increasing amounts of research and provide degree-level education. It became a university in 1992, and now mostly offering day classes to full-time students. Unlike some modern universities in the UK which were created following the government reforms of 1992, it has never been a polytechnic, which were never part of the Scottish education system.
Founding institutions
Robert Gordon was a Scottish merchant, who had grown up in Aberdeen and graduated from Marischal College. Following a successful career, mostly in Danzig where he amassed a fortune, he retired to Aberdeen around 1720. In the last decade of his life, he prepared plans for a Hospital similar to that founded in Edinburgh by George Heriot. The purpose of Robert Gordon's Hospital was "the Maintenance, Aliment, Entertainment and Education of young boys whose parents are poor and indigent... and to put them to Trades and Employment". Gordon died in 1731, and left his entire fortune to the project. However, it took nearly two decades for buildings to be completed, with the first boys admitted in 1750. The aim was not a sophisticated education, but to provide the poor with a reasonable start in life. Boys were taken in between 8 and 11 years old and received food, accommodation and a basic education including English, Latin, writing and arithmetic. They left the Hospital between 14 and 16 years old as an apprentice in a trade or to a merchant. The Hospital expanded through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Meanwhile, in the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution led to a greater need for scientific and technical education for working-class adults, with "Mechanic's Institutes" spreading through Scotland, patterned on that founded by George Birkbeck at Glasgow (he would later found Birkbeck College, the University of London's night school). The Aberdeen Mechanic's Institution opened in 1824 providing evening classes in subjects such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, book-keeping, maritime navigation and art. By 1855 it was receiving government funding as the School of Science and Art, with a Technical School founded two years later.
Child and adult education combined: Robert Gordon's College (1881)
Government education reforms in the 1870s saw the "Hospital" system fall out of favour and encouraged mergers with other educational establishments. As part of these reforms, the Aberdeen Mechanic's Institute and Technical School merged with Robert Gordon's Hospital in 1881. The resulting institution was known as Robert Gordon's College. It provided an education for boys but as a day school only, and evening (and later day) classes for adults (male and female) in science, technology, commerce and general subjects. Art classes offered by the Mechanic's Institution were transferred to a new, independent School of Art close by, paid for by local businessman John Gray and opened in 1885.
Splitting child from adult: Robert Gordon's Technical College (1910 on)
By the end of the 19th century, Robert Gordon's College was a major provider of technical education, receiving large government grants. Following further reforms, in 1903 the adult education part of the college was designated a Central Institution along with Gray's School of Art (which had become a Central Institution two years earlier), allowing the adult education activities to develop independently rather than under the control of the local School Board. However, even this was not sufficient to meet demand for technical education, and dedicated Technical Colleges were being set up in other Scottish cities. As a result, in 1910 adult education activities were split from the school and became Robert Gordon's Technical College. Also merged into the new Technical College was the city's School of Domestic Economy which provided classes in domestic science. The day school for boys continued as Robert Gordon's College, and the two institutions shared a campus, buildings and until 1981, a Board of Governors and administrative staff.
During the 1920s, the first Ordinary and Higher Certificates and Diplomas were awarded, and by the 1930s Robert Gordon's Technical College was made up of Schools of Engineering, Chemistry, Maths & Physics, Pharmacy, Art (including architecture), Domestic Science, and Navigation. Around this time the first students began to be prepared for external degree examinations – for the University of Aberdeen's BSc in engineering. A system of student governance also developed, with a Student Representative Council formed in 1931. In the closing years of World War II, candidates started to be prepared to sit exams for external degrees of the University of London, in subjects such as Chemistry and Engineering, but only via part-time and/or evening classes. After 1945, to aid with settling large numbers of returning soldiers into a career, the Government backed a Business Training Scheme which allowed the Technical College to introduce courses in Business Administration.
Technical College to Institute (1965) to University (1992)
In 1955, the Technical College received a large gift of land. Local Architect, property developer and entrepreneur Tom Scott Sutherland, purchased the Victorian manor and estate of Garthdee House in 1953 on the outskirts of the city. Finding himself and his wife living out of only four rooms in the enormous mansion, he donated it and the estate in 1955 for a new school of architecture. These classes had taken place at Gray's School of Art, but had been expanding in the 1940s and 1950s and much more space was needed. Following completion of a modern extension to the house, the new Scott Sutherland School of Architecture opened in 1957. In 1966, Gray's School of Art also moved to a large new building on this estate, freeing its Schoolhill building for administrative use. By 2013, all activities had transferred to Garthdee, with the addition of land immediately adjacent purchased from Aberdeen City Council in the 1990s.
The 1963 Robbins Report on the future of UK higher education recommended major expansion, which led to the renaming of the institution to Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology to suggest its increasing role in higher education rather than further education. As well as new "plate-glass" universities, reforms following the report created the polytechnics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also created the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) to allow non-university institutions (like the polytechnics and Scottish central institutions) to run programmes that graduated students with CNAA degrees. The institute's first CNAA degree programmes began in pharmacy in 1967, then in engineering, chemistry and physics in 1969, and expanded at undergraduate and postgraduate level to all disciplines. Around this time, the government also began to transfer non-degree teaching (e.g. certificate courses in navigation) to local-authority colleges.
During the 1960s, an academic committee structure was set up, headed from 1969 by an Academic Council. During the 1970s, these committees underwent expansion and reform to improve participation by academic staff in decision-making. For the first time, a faculty structure was introduced, with Faculties of Art & Architecture, Engineering, Arts, and Sciences, led by deans. A department dedicated to providing computer services to the institute was also established in 1974, and the first professorships were introduced in 1975. In 1981, the separation of the Board of Governors and administration staff from Robert Gordon's College was completed, although the school and Institute continued to share some buildings. Beginning in the 1970s, the institute also began to provide extensive consultancy and training for the North Sea oil industry, particularly in engineering and offshore safety and survival.
The Robert Gordon University (1992 to present)
Following the reforms of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, the institute was awarded university status as The Robert Gordon University on 12 June 1992. The new university inherited numerous small campuses, and during the late 1990s and 2000s embarked on large building projects to consolidate teaching at its City Centre and Garthdee campuses, assisted by a large purchase of land at Garthdee from Aberdeen City Council in the mid-1990s. As new Garthee facilities were completed, the majority of these previous campuses were sold as land for housing development (such as at Kepplestone and King Street), while City Centre facilities that were no longer required were often sold to Robert Gordon's College, with the sale proceeds paying for the expansion and new construction at Garthdee. In the 1990s and 2000s student numbers also increased considerably, requiring new and larger facilities. A merger with the University of Aberdeen was discussed in 2002, but was rejected in favour of remaining separate but working in closer collaboration.
By 2000, the university had consolidated to two campuses, at Garthdee and a city centre campus at Schoolhill and St. Andrew Street in central Aberdeen. However, it had been planned since the early 1990s to eventually move all facilities to a single campus at Garthdee and additional land was purchased to enable buildings to be constructed to house academic departments which had been at the city centre campus. The first phase was completed in summer 2013 with the opening of the Sir Ian Wood building (formally opened in July 2015). The only remaining building at the City-Centre campus is the Administration Building on Schoolhill.
Controversies
Donald Trump honorary degree
In 2010, RGU gained international attention for awarding an honorary degree to controversial American businessman Donald Trump. This was featured in the 2012 documentary film You've Been Trumped which documented the progress of the construction of Trump's golf course near Aberdeen from the point of view of local residents. In the film Dr David Kennedy, former Principal of the university, is shown handing back his own honorary degree in protest at the university's action in awarding the degree to Trump.
In December 2015 the university's then Principal, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, announced he was reviewing the honorary degree and expressed his alarm at statements made by Donald Trump. Then on 9 December 2015 the honorary degree was revoked. RGU publicly stated: "In the course of the current US election campaign (2016), Mr Trump has made a number of statements that are wholly incompatible with the ethos and values of the university. The university has therefore decided to revoke its award of the honorary degree". The revoking of Donald Trump's honorary doctorate came in excess of 4 years after the businessman accused the then-incumbent US President Barack Obama of illegitimacy on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not a US citizen.
Vice Principal appointment
In May 2018 an internal probe was launched after an anonymous whistleblower noted that RGU's newly appointed Vice-Principal for Commercial and Regional Innovation, Gordon McConnell, was co-director with Principal Ferdinand von Prondzynski in Knockdrin Estates Limited, a non-trading micro-company holding von Prondzynski's family castle and estate. Published on 4 July 2018, the investigation found that McConnell "did not declare in his declaration of interest form (completed in September 2017, following his appointment) that he was a director of Knockdrin Estates Limited" as well as revealing that this form was co-signed by von Prondzynski as his line manager. The inquiry found that whilst the Principal failed to declare this link at the time of Gordon McConnell's appointment, it also expressed the view of the board that he did not deliberately conceal any information.
The finding led to a letter of resignation from another of the three Vice-Principals, Paul Hagan, who condemned RGU for failing to punish the pair, stating that this damaged the institution. Hagan later withdrew his resignation in response to Prondzynski's departure.
On 9 August 2018, von Prondzynski announced that he would voluntarily step down from his post on 31 August. In the same press release, RGU announced that Deputy Principal John Harper had already been appointed to succeed Prondzynski.
Campus
RGU operates a single campus in Aberdeen, in the south-western suburbs at Garthdee. As of August 2017 all academic and administrative departments are located at Garthdee.
Garthdee campus
The Garthdee campus is the university's main campus, where all academic departments are located and teaching and research takes place.
The Garthdee campus is situated in the south-west of the city. For much of its history it was a greenfield site, with parts used as the gardens and estate of the Victorian manor of Garthdee House, farmland, and open meadows. The first university buildings were in use from the 1950s.
The Garthdee campus has seen major investment in recent years, with numerous new buildings constructed since the late 1990s which include a "University Street", part of Norman Foster's design concept for the modern campus.
The campus extends to , although some of this is currently landscaped parkland, undeveloped, or under construction. In addition, the university owns a further of land to the west (primarily woodland) and at Waterside Farm on the opposite bank of the River Dee.
The main buildings of the campus are:
Sir Ian Wood building (formerly Riverside East) - Houses the University Library and departments of pharmacy, life sciences, computing, architecture and engineering. The building was renamed at its official opening in July 2015 by the Princess Royal.
Aberdeen Business School building, which houses the departments of Accounting & Finance, Communication & Media, Information Management, Law, and Management, and a large Study Centre which occupies the former library space.
Faculty of Health and Social Care building houses the Schools of Applied Social Studies, Nursing & Midwifery, and Health Sciences. The building also acts as a hub for student services, with the university's student helpdesk, careers service, disability and dyslexia service, accommodation office and counselling service located in facilities off the main atrium
The RGU SPORT building is a campus sports and fitness centre, designed by architectural firm Thomson Craig & Donald and opened in 2005 at a cost of £10.7 million, including support from organisations such as sportscotland. It provides extensive facilities for sport, exercise and physical training, including several gyms with facilities for cardiovascular and resistance training, a 25-metre swimming pool, climbing wall, studios for group exercise classes, and a large sports hall for a wide range of indoor sports. The RGU SPORT Building also includes Union Way, the home of the RGU:Union offices, Deeview Student Store and social area.
The International College (ICRGU) building is a modular pre-fabricated two-storey building situated at the rear of RGU SPORT. It was constructed in 2011 to provide additional teaching space for the "International College at RGU" (ICRGU).
The Gray's School of Art building opened in 1966 to allow the art school to expand from its Victorian building next to the Aberdeen Art Gallery in the city centre used as the university's Administration Building before moving to Garthdee, and also considered as an extension to The Art Gallery until its eventual use as part of Robert Gordon's College.
Garthdee House is the location of the Principal's Office. It is a Victorian manor house which formed the core of the Garthdee estate, which with later purchases of adjacent land became today's campus. The Scott Sutherland School of Architecture was the sole user of Garthdee House until 2013, when the Principal's Office also moved into the building.
City centre facilities
Until recently the university continued to operate one non-academic facility in the city-centre. The building at Schoolhill is situated next to the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Robert Gordon's College, a private school which is no longer affiliated to the university but shares a common heritage and motto. The Administration Building is listed as an architecturally significant building, constructed in the Victorian period of carved and ornamented granite, typical of Aberdeen's famous Granite City architecture. In August 2017 all non-academic staff completed the move to the main campus at Garthdee.
Also located there was the old city centre campus. Many of these buildings were sold over the years to Robert Gordon's College for school use, while others have been sold for redevelopment. In July 2014, the St. Andrew Street building (which had been replaced by the Sir Ian Wood building at the Garthdee campus) was sold to the Canadian hotel Sandman Hotels group to be converted to a four-star hotel. The 12,000 square metre building was constructed around 1908 and had served as the Aberdeen College of Education until purchased in 1968; the university claimed it to be the third-largest granite building in Europe, after the Spanish Escorial palace near Madrid, and Marischal College. The university plans to retain the historic Administration Building for the foreseeable future.
Administration building
The former Administration Building has a frontage directly onto the public street of Schoolhill and was completed in 1885. It is a significantly larger building than the street frontage suggests. On completion, it housed Gray's School of Art and was designed by the prominent Aberdeen architect Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, who designed many of the city's grand granite buildings in the 19th century. The building is constructed of grey and pink Corrennie granite ashlar with Corinthian columns and was designed to match the Aberdeen Art Gallery adjacent to it, and like these buildings, it is Category A listed by Historic Scotland.
As the School of Art grew in size, the building was extended in 1896 and again between 1928 and 1931. However, it eventually became too small and when Gray's School of Art moved to a new modernist building at Garthdee in the 1960s (see above), the building was converted for administrative use. From then until 2013 it housed the Principal's office, which moved to Garthdee House at the Garthdee campus, followed by the administrative staff in 2017.
In 2019, the Administration building was redeveloped in partnership with Opportunity North East and Codebase, to become a "digital entrepreneurship hub" in the city centre. Robert Gordon University will retain an area of the building to host events and activities offering staff, students and alumni training and funding to develop business ideas. The facility includes co-working space, offices, and event areas for university start-up teams and businesses working with ONE Codebase.
Organisation and governance
Academic faculties
Academic activities at the university are divided into 11 schools. Each school is led by a head of school and is sub-divided into departments. There are also numerous administrative departments which support the university's activities. All academic Schools and Departments are based at the main Garthdee campus.
Aberdeen Business School
School of Applied Social Studies
School of Computing
School of Creative and Cultural Business
School of Engineering
Gray's School of Art
School of Health Sciences
The Law School
School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedic Practice
School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences
The Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment
Governance
Under the terms of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 1992 and The Robert Gordon University (Scotland) Order of Council 1993, the university's governing body comprises a Board of Governors, consisting of 23 governors appointed to exercise the functions of management and control. The official head of the university is the Chancellor, although in practice he or she acts mainly in a ceremonial or symbolic role. At an operational level, most of the day-to-day management and control of the institution is delegated to the Principal and Vice Chancellor (commonly known simply as the Principal). The Board of Governors also delegates functions relating to the overall planning, co-ordination, development and supervision of academic affairs to the university's Academic Council. Both the Board of Governors and the Academic Council are supported by a wide range of committees.
Chancellors
Sir Bob Reid (1992–2005)
Sir Ian Wood KT (2005–2021)
Dame Evelyn Glennie CH (2021–present)
At Scottish universities, the Principal of the university is its general chief executive and is the administrative head of the institution, second in precedence only to the Chancellor. This means that the day-to-day running and leadership of the university is the responsibility of the Principal.
Principal and Vice-Chancellors
David A. Kennedy (1992–1997)
William Stevely CBE (1997–2005)
R. Michael Pittilo MBE (2005–2010)
John Harper (acting) (2010–2011)
Ferdinand von Prondzynski (2011–2018)
John Harper (2018–2020)
Steve Olivier (2020–present)
Academic profile
Reputation and rankings
In the subject league tables from The Guardian, it was first in Scotland for four subjects in 2017 (Health Professions; Journalism; Architecture; and Pharmacy), while securing three subjects in the UK top 10.
The Sunday Times awarded RGU the title of Best Modern University in the UK for 2012 in its University Guide 2012. The title had previously been won by Oxford Brookes University for each of the preceding ten years. RGU received the 2012 award partly due to ratings of the quality of teaching and research, but also due to its employment record which was judged the best of any UK university. RGU was also named as Best Modern University in the UK in The Times Good University Guide 2013.
In 2017, RGU received the TEF Gold Framework of Excellence in teaching.
Graduate employment
At one time, the Robert Gordon University had the highest rate among the UK universities of graduates in employment or postgraduate study six months after graduation. In 2015, HESA announced that 97.2% of RGU graduates were in work or further education within six months of graduating. Specialised institutions such as Royal College of Music, Institute of Education and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance scored higher than Robert Gordon University.
Symbols and identity
The university's logo and corporate identity make frequent use of the colour purple and the "Gordon" font, all of which appear extensively on campus signage, printed material and online. The current logo was unveiled in February 2013. From 2009 to 2013, the logo consisted of a roundel derived from the university's coat of arms.
Most universities in the UK are designated by order of the Privy Council; unusually for a university named after an individual, according to Robert Gordon University (Scotland) Order of Council 1993 the official name of the university includes the prefix "The" (as with The George Washington University, The Ohio State University and The College of William & Mary). However, current university branding typically leaves it out although it is still used for graduation.
Coat of Arms
The coat of arms derives from the one issued by the Lord Lyon King of Arms (the state official responsible for heraldry in Scotland) to Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology in 1982, which in turn derives from that first used in 1881 by the governors of Robert Gordon's Hospital when it became Robert Gordon's College. The arms consist of a shield only and are used infrequently, usually at formal occasions such as graduation, and can also be seen over the main entrance to the university's Administration Building at Schoolhill and various academic buildings at the main campus at Garthdee. The shield also formed the previous logo which still features on some older signage.
On the left side of the arms, the three boars on a blue background edged in gold are taken from the arms of the Gordon family, while on the right the castle on a red background is taken from the arms of the City of Aberdeen. This symbol of the city is shared with the arms of the University of Aberdeen. A black wavy band divides the two sides, and features heraldic symbols in gold representing technology (a mechanical cog), learning (a flaming torch) and commerce (a gold coin).
Motto
The university's motto is Omni Nunc Arte Magistra, which translates literally from Latin as "Now by all your mastered arts...", as if to suggest making use in everyday life of knowledge and skills gained. It is sometimes translated as "Make the best of all your abilities", although this is a somewhat more liberal rendering of the Latin. It comes from Virgil's Aeneid, Book VIII, line 441, as the god Vulcan encourages his workers at the forge. It shares this motto with Robert Gordon's College, who use it more frequently. Unlike some universities, the motto is not seen frequently, although it has appeared in graduation materials and is engraved on the shaft of the university's ceremonial mace.
Ceremonial mace
A ceremonial mace is used at many universities as a symbol of authority and independence. The RGU mace appears mainly at graduation ceremonies, where it is placed prominently on the stage in front of the Chancellor and Principal and in full view of the audience. It may also be seen occasionally at other important university events. The mace is a modern design in silver and black, designed and crafted in 1993 by Gordon Burnett (a member of staff at the university's Gray's School of Art), and paid for by Aberdeen City Council as a gift to the new university. It was presented to the university at a ceremony on 26 June that year during which the first chancellor of the university, Bob Reid, was installed. The mace is primarily jet-black, with wavy fins edged in silver that run vertically down the full length of the mace's head (reflecting the wavy black band in the university's coat of arms). The coat of arms of the university is inset into the head of the mace, along with golden symbols taken from it - the castle representing the city of Aberdeen, flaming torch, coin, and mechanical cog. The shaft of the mace is inlaid in gold with the university's motto, Omni Nunc Arte Magistra.
Tartan
Like most Scottish universities, RGU has its own tartan; it mirrors the university's official colours of Royal Blue, Red and Gold which appear on the coat of arms (although the purple brand is now the recognised face of the university). The tartan was designed by Michael King in 1997. Some students on their graduation day choose to wear a tartan kilt.
Student life
In 2015/16 there were 16,878 students enrolled of whom 63% were undergraduates and 35% were postgraduates with 2% in postgraduate research.
As well as full-time and part-time on-campus study, the university provides a range of distance learning facilities over the internet via its virtual learning environment, CampusMoodle.
Student Association
The first Student Representative Council was organised at Robert Gordon's Technical College in 1931, with activities such as sports clubs and societies following in the 1940s. A Student Union building opening in 1952 at Rubislaw Terrace in the city's West End. In 1969, the shop and bakery next to Gray's School of Art (now the Administration Building) on Schoolhill came on the market and were purchased by Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology. The Student Union building opened there in 1974 and remained until its closure in July 2014 as the campus relocated to Garthdee. RGU:Union is now located on Union Way inside the RGU SPORT building.
The students' union represents the views of the student community, and works to improve the student experience at the university. RGU:Union is run by an executive board of students who are elected in March each year. The Union has a team of full-time sabbatical Presidents, and part-time Vice Presidents. RGU:Union also operates a system of student representatives, student school officers, equality champions and more who work in partnership with the university to ensure quality teaching and learning.
RGU:Union also provides a range of extra-curricular opportunities. As of 2018, the union has over 41 affiliated societies, ranging from course based academic societies to hobby and interest based groups. The Union also runs a number of volunteering projects and activities. RGU's Raising and Giving group host various fundraising events to donate money and time to charity.
RGU:Union seeks to provide support and advice to students. Along with running an advice service, the Union also launched a student Nightline in February 2014 to provide a confidential student helpline from 8pm to 8am. Students run a number of campaigns to support student welfare including liberation weeks, sexual health campaigns and in September 2015, a Safe Taxi Scheme as an emergency provision to help students get home safely.
Student media
RGU:Union operates a student media program with RGU:Radio, RGU:TV and Radar Magazine. The student radio station, called RGU:Radio broadcasts live from a studio on campus, running a number of shows from music to current affairs. Broadcasts are streamed and regular podcasts are posted online.
RGU:TV produces regular videos about campus events, topical issues and student life and distributed them online through a YouTube channel.
Radar Magazine is a full-colour printed publication which is published three or four times each year. It features articles written by students covering campus events, student life, music, news, reviews, entertainment, fashion, sport and more. The magazine also has an online website where articles are posted regularly by students.
Accommodation
The university's Accommodation Services department arranges for students to be placed in one of nine halls of residence across the city.
By far the largest of the halls of residence are the Woolmanhill Flats at St. Andrew Street. The Woolmanhill flats have over 700 one-person bedrooms, arranged in self-catering flats of up to eight. The Woolmanhill Flats development was constructed in stages in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the university working in collaboration with a private developer. The newest hall of residence is the Crathie Student Village on Holburn Street, and houses approximately 100 students.
Other halls of residence include two buildings on the Garthdee Campus; the Square Tower and the Round Tower. These distinctive pink buildings were constructed in the early 1990s and inspired by traditional Scottish tower houses. They have received architectural acclaim by critics and are included in Prospect magazine's list of the 100 best Scottish modern buildings. When the list was published in 2005, the Round and Square Towers were the only buildings in Aberdeen to be included. A number of other halls of residence across the city are used, some operated in-house by RGU and others by private companies. These include Rosemount Halls, St. Peter's Halls and Linksfield Halls which were constructed by the University of Aberdeen and then privatised in the early 2000s. Students also have access to the private halls of residence in Aberdeen which are operated on a commercial basis by specialist companies, such as those owned and operated by the Unite Group.
Sports
RGU SPORT at the Garthdee campus provides a wide range of sport and fitness facilities to the university community as well as to the general public. Facilities include a 25m pool, various gyms with extensive facilities for cardiovascular training and resistance training (including free weights), a large sports hall (also used for exams), climbing wall, numerous fitness classes, physiotherapy, podiatry and sports massage. Students, staff and graduates of the university receive a discount on use of these facilities.
There are over 32 campus sports clubs run by RGU:Union, and the university competes in Scottish Student Sport (SSS) and British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) competitions.
Swimmer Hannah Miley studied at RGU until 2013 and appeared in publicity for the university. A sport scholar program provides support for the athletic and academic careers of developing and elite athletes, including coaching, access to training facilities and financial assistance, as well as flexibility in fitting training around the academic timetable.
The Robert Gordon University Boat Club contests the annual Aberdeen Universities Boat Race each Spring against the University of Aberdeen. RGU were victorious in 2012 2013, 2014, 2015. and 2016.
The two universities also compete annually in the Granite City Challenge which sees teams across a range of sports compete to be the best in the city.
Notable alumni
Gordon Duthie (born 1987), musician, singer/songwriter
Ola Gorie, jewellery designer
Maxwell Hutchinson, architect and broadcaster, guitarist with Lene Lovich
Eilidh Middleton, equestrian competitor
Hannah Miley, swimmer and Olympian
Callum Innes, Turner Prize-nominated artist
Titi Horsfall, author
Alan J. Jamieson, marine biologist
International partners
The Robert Gordon University has 2 partner schools in Switzerland:
Business and Hotel Management School – Switzerland (BA Degree is a joint program between BHMS Switzerland and the Robert Gordon University)
BVS Business School (Bachelor of Business Administration Degree is a joint program between BVS Switzerland and the Robert Gordon University)
Notable honorary graduates
Leslie Benzies, Video Game Producer (Doctor of Design 2015)
Frank Chapman, Businessman (Doctor of Technology 2013)
Julie Fowlis, Scottish folk singer (Doctor of Music 2013)
Tony Hayward, Businessman in oil industry (Doctor of Technology 2013)
Sir Bill Gammell, Businessman (Doctor of Business Administration 2011)
Michael Clark, Dancer (Doctor of Art 2011)
Kevin Warwick, Scientist (Doctor of Technology 2011)
Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Adventurer (Doctor of Science 2010)
Barbara Dickson, Singer (Doctor of Music 2010)
Lord Alderdice, Politician (Doctor of Laws 2009)
Ben de Lisi, Fashion Designer (Doctor of Arts 2009)
Sir Andrew Motion, Poet (Doctor of Letters 2009)
Pamela Stephenson-Connolly, Clinical Psychologist (Doctor of Science 2009)
Nicky Campbell, Journalist and Broadcaster (Doctor of Letters 2008)
Lord Trimble, Politician (Doctor of Laws 2008)
Alan Johnston, Journalist (Doctor of Letters 2007)
Terry Waite, Humanitarian and Author (Doctor of Law 2007)
Gordon Brown, Politician (Doctor of Laws 2003)
Lord Norman Foster, Architect (Doctor of Design 2002)
Baroness Helena Kennedy, Barrister (Doctor of Laws 2002)
Baron Kinnock, Politician (Doctor of Laws 2002)
Stewart Milne, Businessman (Doctor of Business Administration 2000)
Paul Lawrie, Golfer (Doctor of Laws 1999)
Martin Bell, Journalist and Politician (Doctor of Letters 1998)
Sir Alex Ferguson, Football Manager (Doctor of Laws 1997)
Kate Adie, Journalist (Doctor of Letters 1996)
See also
Armorial of UK universities
List of universities in the United Kingdom
Universities in Scotland
References
External links
Robert Gordon University website
RGU Student Association
Educational institutions established in 1992
1992 establishments in Scotland
Universities UK
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381865
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satu%20Mare
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Satu Mare
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Satu Mare (; ; ; or ) is a city with a population of 102,400 (2011). It is the capital of Satu Mare County, Romania, as well as the centre of the Satu Mare metropolitan area. It lies in the region of Maramureș, broadly part of Transylvania. Mentioned in the Gesta Hungarorum as ("Zotmar's fort"), the city has a history going back to the Middle Ages. Today, it is an academic, cultural, industrial, and business centre in the Nord-Vest development region.
Geography
Satu Mare is situated in Satu Mare County, in northwest Romania, on the river Someș, from the border with Hungary and from the border with Ukraine. The city is located at an altitude of on the Lower Someș alluvial plain, spreading out from the Administrative Palace at 25 October Square. The boundaries of the municipality contain an area of .
From a geomorphologic point of view, the city is located on the Someș Meadow on both sides of the river, which narrows in the vicinity of the city and widens upstream and downstream from it; flooded during heavy rainfall, the field has various geographical configurations at the edge of the city (sand banks, valleys, micro-depressions).
The formation of the current terrain of the city, dating from the late Pliocene in the Tertiary period, is linked to the clogging of the Pannonian Sea. Layers of soil were created from deposits of sand, loess and gravel, and generally have a thickness of –. Over this base, decaying vegetation gave rise to podsolic soils, which led to favorable conditions for crops (cereals, vegetables, fruit trees).
The water network around Satu Mare is composed of the Someș River, Pârâul Sar in the north and the Homorod River in the south. The formation and evolution of the city was closely related to the Someș River, which, in addition to allowing for the settlement of a human community around it, has offered, since the early Middle Ages, the possibility of international trade with coastal regions, a practice that favored milling, fishing and other economic activities.
Because the land slopes gently around the city, the Someș River has created numerous branches and meanders (before 1777, in the perimeter of the city there were 25 meanders downstream and 14 upstream). After systematisation works in 1777, the number of meanders in the city dropped to 9 downstream and 5 upstream, the total length of the river now being at within the city. Systematisation performed up to the mid-19th century configured the existing Someș riverbed; embankments were built long on the right bank and on the left. In 1970, the embankments were raised by –, protecting 52,000 hectares within the city limits and restoring nearly 800 ha of agricultural land that had previously been flooded.
Flora and fauna
The flora associated with the town of Satu Mare is characteristic for the meadow area with trees of soft essence like wicker, indigenous poplar, maple and hazelnut. Grassland vegetation is represented by Agrostis stolonifera, Poa trivialis, Alopecurus pratensis and other types of vegetation.
The city's largest park, the Garden of Rome, features some rare trees that are uncommon to the area, including the pagoda tree, native to East Asia (especially China); Pterocarya, also native to Asia; and Paulownia tomentosa, native to central and western China.
Fauna is represented by species of rodents (hamster and european ground squirrel), reptiles, including Vipera berus in the Noroieni forest, and as avifauna species of ducks, geese, egrets, during passages and systematic occasional wanderings.
Climate
Satu Mare has a continental climate, characterised by hot dry summers and cold winters. As the city is in the far north of the country, winter is much colder than the national average, with minimum temperatures reaching , lower than values recorded in other cities in western Romania like Oradea () or Timișoara (). The average annual temperature is , or broken down by seasons: Spring , summer , autumn and winter . Atmospheric humidity is quite high. Prevailing wind currents blow in from the northwest, bringing spring and summer rainfall. Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).
Name
The Hungarian name of the town Szatmár is believed to come from the personal name Zotmar, as the 13th-century Gesta Hungarorum gives the name of the 10th-century fortified settlement at the site of today's Satu Mare as ("Zotmar's fort"). The name Satu Mare, which means "great village" in Romanian, was used for the first time by the priest Moise Sora Novac in the 19th century. An older Romanian name, Sătmar, was formally replaced by the current one in 1925.
History
Archaeological evidence from Țara Oașului, Ardud, Medieșu Aurit, Homoroade, etc. clearly shows settlements in the area dating to the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. There is also evidence that the local Dacian population remained there after the Roman conquest in 101/106 AD. Later, these lands may have formed part of Menumorut's holdings; one of the important defensive fortresses – , dating to the 10th century – was at Satu Mare, as mentioned in the Gesta Hungarorum. After Stephen I of Hungary created the Kingdom of Hungary in the year 1000, German colonists were settled at the periphery of the city (Villa Zotmar), brought in by Stephen's wife, the Bavarian princess Gisela of Hungary. Later, they were joined by more German colonists from beyond the Someș River, in Mintiu.
A royal free city since the 13th century, Satu Mare changed hands several times in the 15th century until the Báthory family took possession of the citadel in 1526, proceeding to divert the Someș's waters in order to defend the southern part of the citadel; thus, the fortress remained on an island linked to the main roads by three bridges over the Someș. In 1562 the citadel was besieged by Ottoman armies led by Pargalı İbrahim Pasha of Buda and Maleoci Pasha of Timișoara. Then the Habsburgs besieged it, leading the fleeing Transylvanian armies to set it on fire. The Austrian general Lazar Schwendi ordered the citadel to be rebuilt after the plans of Italian architect Ottavio Baldigara; using an Italian system of fortifications, the new structure would be pentagonal with five towers. After a period when it changed hands, the town came under Ottoman control in 1661. Called Sokmar by the new authorities, it was a kaza center within the Şenköy sanjak of Varat Eyalet. This status held until 1691, when the army of the Habsburgs expelled the Ottomans during the Great Turkish War. In the Middle Ages, Satu Mare and Mintiu were two distinct entities. The two settlements, then called "Szatmár" and "Németi", were united in 1715, and the resulting city was named "Szatmár-Németi". On 2 January 1721, Emperor Charles VI recognised the union, at the same time granting Satu Mare the status of royal free city. A decade earlier, the Treaty of Szatmár was signed in the city, ending Rákóczi's War for Independence.
The city's importance was linked to the transportation and commerce of salt from nearby Ocna Dejului (, ), possibly already at a very early date. Due to the economic and commercial benefits it began to receive in the 13th century, Satu Mare became an important centre for craft guilds. In the 18th century, intense urbanisation began; several buildings survive from that period, including the old city hall, the inn, a barracks, the Greek Catholic church and the Reformed church. A Roman Catholic diocese was established there in 1804. In 1823, the city's systematization commission was established in order to direct its local government. In 1844, paving operations begun in 1805 were stepped up. The first industrial concerns also opened, including the steam mill, the brick factory, the Neuschloss Factory for wood products, the lumber factory, the Princz Factory and the Unio Factory. Due to its location at the intersection of commercial roads, Szatmárnémeti became an important rail hub. The line to Nagykároly (Carei) was built in 1871, followed in 1872 by a line to Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmației) line, an 1894 link to Nagybánya (Baia Mare), 1900 to Erdőd (Ardud) and 1906 to Bikszád (Bixad).
Since the second half of the 19th century, it underwent important economic and socio-cultural changes. The city's large companies (the Unio wagon factory, the Princz Factory, the Ardeleana textile enterprise, the Freund petroleum refinery, the brick factory and the furniture factory) prospered in this period, and the city invested heavily in communication lines, schools, hospitals, public works and public parks. The banking and commerce system also developed: in 1929 the chamber of commerce and industry, as well as the commodities stock market were established, with 25 commercial enterprises and 75 industrial and production firms as members. In 1930 there were 33 banks.
After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Romanian troops captured the town during their offensive launched on April 15, 1919. By the Treaty of Trianon, Satu Mare officially ceased to be part of Hungary becoming part of Romania. In 1940, the Second Vienna Award gave back Northern Transylvania, including Satu Mare, to Hungary. In October 1944, the city was captured by the Soviet Red Army. After 1945, the city became again part of Romania. Soon afterwards, a Communist regime came to power, lasting until the 1989 revolution.
Jewish community
The presence of Jews in Transylvania is first mentioned in the late 16th century. In the 17th century, prince Gabriel Bethlen permitted Sephardi Jews from Turkey to settle in the Transylvanian capital Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), in 1623. In the early 18th century, Jews were allowed to settle in Sathmar. Some of them became involved in large-scale agriculture, becoming landlords or lessees, or were active in trade and industry, or distilled brandy and leased taverns on crown estates. In 1715, when Sathmar became a royal town, they were expelled, beginning to resettle in the 1820s. In 1841, several Jews obtained the permission to settle permanently in Sathmar; the first Jewish community was formally established in 1849, and in 1857, a synagogue was built. After a great number of traditional Ashkenazic Jews had settled in the town, the Jewish community split in 1898, when a supporter of the Hasidic movement was elected chief rabbi, into an Orthodox and a Status Quo community, led by a Zionist rabbi, which erected a synagogue in 1904.
In the 1920s, there were several Zionist organizations in Satu Mare, and the yeshiva, one of the largest in the region, was attended by 400 students. In 1930, the city had five large synagogues and about 20 shtiebels. In 1928, a conflict within the Orthodox community broke out over the election of a new chief rabbi, lasting six years and ending in 1934 with the appointment of the Hasidic rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, a traditionalist and anti-Zionist, who later re-founded the Satmar Hasidic dynasty in Williamsburg, New York. Another Hasidic rabbi, Aharon Roth, the founder of the Shomrei Emunim and Toldot Aharon communities in Jerusalem, was also active in Satu Mare.
After Satu Mare became part of Hungary again in 1940, the civil rights and economic activities of the Jews were restricted, and in summer 1941, "foreign" Jews were deported to Kamenets-Podolski, where they were murdered by Hungarian and German troops. In 1944, the Jewish population was forced into the Satu Mare ghetto; the majority of men were sent to forced labor battalions, and the others were deported to the extermination camps in Poland, where the majority of them were murdered by the Nazis. Six trains left Satu Mare for Auschwitz-Birkenau, starting on May 19, 1944, each carrying approximately 3300 persons. The trains passed through Kassa (Košice) on May 19, 22, 26, 29, 30, and June 1. In total, 18,863 Jews were deported from Satu Mare, Carei and the surrounding localities. Of these, 14,440 were killed. Only a small number of the survivors returned to Satu Mare after the war, but a number of Jews belonging to linguistically and culturally different groups from all parts of Romania settled in the city. The majority of them later emigrated to Israel. By 1970, the town's Jewish population numbered 500, and in 2011, only 34 Jews remained.
In 2004, a Holocaust memorial was dedicated in the Decebal Street Synagogue's courtyard. Aside from the synagogues, two Jewish cemeteries also remain.
Among the notable members of the local Jewish community have been historian Ignác Acsády, parliamentary deputies Ferenc Chorin and Kelemen Samu, politician Oszkár Jászi, writers Gyula Csehi, Rodion Markovits, Sándor Dénes, and Ernő Szép, painter Pál Erdös, Jacob Reinitz and director György Harag.
Demographics
According to the 2021 census, Satu Mare had a population of 91,520, making it the 20th largest city in Romania.
Politics
Administration
The city government is headed by a mayor. Since 2016, the office is held by Gábor Kereskényi. Decisions are approved and discussed by the local council made up of 23 elected councillors. The city is divided into 12 districts laid out radially. One of these, Sătmărel (Szatmárzsadány), is a separate village administered by the city.
Additionally, as Satu Mare is the capital of Satu Mare County, the city hosts the palace of the prefecture, the headquarters of the county council and the prefect, who is appointed by Romania's central government. Like all other local councils in Romania, the Satu Mare local council, the county council and the city's mayor are elected every four years by the population. The city is at the center of the Satu Mare metropolitan area, a metropolitan area established in 2013, with a population of 243,600, and which includes 26 cities, towns and communes.
The Satu Mare City Council, elected at the 2020 local elections, is composed of the following parties:
The city day is 14 May, which commemorates the devastating floods that affected the city in 1970, although it is also a day of rebirth.
Justice system
Satu Mare has a complex judicial organisation, as a consequence of its status of county capital. The Satu Mare Court of Justice is the local judicial institution and is under the purview of the Satu Mare County Tribunal, which also exerts its jurisdiction over the courts of Carei, Ardud, Negrești-Oaș, Tășnad and Livada. Appeals from these tribunals' verdicts, and more serious cases, are directed to the Oradea Court of Appeals. Satu Mare also hosts the county's commercial and military tribunals.
Satu Mare has its own municipal police force, Poliția Municipiului Satu Mare, which is responsible for policing of crime within the whole city, and operates a number of special divisions. The Satu Mare Police are headquartered on Mihai Viteazul Street in the city centre (with a number of precincts throughout the city) and is subordinated to the county's police inspectorate on Alexandru Iioan Cuza Street. City Hall has its own community police force, Poliția Comunitară located on Universului Alley, dealing with local community issues. Satu Mare also houses the county's gendarmerie inspectorate.
Transport
Road
Satu Mare has a complex system of transportation, providing road, air and rail connections to major cities in Romania and Europe. The city is an important road and rail hub located near the borders with Hungary and Ukraine. The city is connected to other major Romanian cities by road ( European route E81, European route E671 and European route E58) and by rail (CFR Main Line 400). The total number of automobiles registered in Satu Mare was 82,000 in 2008. The city has around 400 streets with a total length of and cover an area of .
Railway
Satu Mare Rail Station, located about north of the city centre, is situated on the Căile Ferate Române Line 400 (Brașov – Siculeni – Deda – Dej – Baia Mare), on Line 402 (Oradea – Săcueni – Carei – Satu Mare – Halmeu) and on Line 417 (Satu Mare – Bixad). CFR provides direct rail connections to all the major Romanian cities and to Budapest. The city is also served by another secondary rail station, the Saw Station (Gara Ferăstrău).
Public transport
The main public transportation system in Satu Mare consists of bus lines. There are twenty-three urban and suburban lines with a total length of , the main operator being Transurban S.A. In addition, there are various taxi companies serving the city. It is worth mentioning that Satu Mare had a trolleybus system in the past, created on the 15th of November 1994 but has been closed in 2005.
Airport
The city is served by the Satu Mare International Airport , located south of the city, with a concrete runway, one of the longest in Romania, with TAROM and Wizz Air operating regular flights to Bucharest, London and Antalya (seasonal only).
Sports
Football (soccer) is the most popular recreational sport in Satu Mare. There are two major football clubs in Satu Mare: Olimpia and Someșul Oar. There are two football stadiums in Satu Mare: Stadionul Olimpia with 18,000 seats and Someșul Stadium with 3,000 seats.
Other popular recreational activities include fencing, handball, bowling, women's basketball, karate and chess.
The local women's basketball team CSM Satu Mare is one of the best in the Romanian league; it finished third in the 2008/2009 season playoffs. The team plays its home matches in the largest indoor arena in the city, the LPS Arena, which has a capacity of 400 seats.
The Cypriot professional tennis player Marcos Baghdatis was brought to Satu Mare in 1998 for a month and a half by his former coach Jean Dobrescu to train and to participate in local tennis competitions alongside his fellow Davis Cup team member, Rareș Cuzdriorean, who is also a Satu Mare native with Cypriot citizenship.
Fencing
Satu Mare has a tradition in fencing dating to 1885, and is the city that has supplied the most world and Olympic champions in Europe. Names like Ecaterina Stahl, Marcela Moldovan, Suzana and Ștefan Ardeleanu, Petru Kuki, Rudolf Luczki, Samuilă Melczhner, Geza Tere and in particular Alexandru Csipler figure prominently in the annals of Romanian fencing. The last four also formed the core of the city's fencing school, winning major local and international tournaments. Top results for which there is evidence date to 1935, when the local foil team, Olimpia Satu Mare, lost against CFR Timișoara by a score of 15–10 in the national final, while Rudolf Luczki won the sabre finals held in Cluj-Napoca. In 1973, the first signaling device in Romania was used in Satu Mare; this has been characterised as "a veritable revolution" for Romanian fencing.
Economy
Satu Mare benefits from its proximity to the borders with Hungary and Ukraine, which makes it a prime location for logistical and industrial parks.
Companies that have established production facilities in Satu Mare are Voestalpine, Dräxlmaier Group, Gotec Group, Anvis Group, Schlemmer, Casco Schützhelme and Zollner Elektronik in the industrial sector; FrieslandCampina in the food sector; Radici Group in the textile sector; and Saint-Gobain and Boissigny in the wood industry.
Currently the largest private employer in Satu Mare is the German automotive company Dräxlmaier Group which owns since 1998 an electric engine components factory in the city and has around 3,600 employees. The factory supplies automotive wiring especially to the German car manufacturer Daimler AG but it also supplied wiring to another car manufacturer Porsche for its Porsche Panamera model. The Swedish company Electrolux owns a kitchen stove factory in the city acquired in 1997, that has a surface area of and 1,800 employees. The facility has an annual production capacity of around 1.2 million units and the majority of the Zanussi brand kitchen stoves in Europe are manufactured there. The Austrian company Voestalpine owns, since 2004, a steel tubes production facility with an annual capacity of 50 million units per year. The German company Arcandor has its main Romanian office established in Satu Mare. The subsidiary, accounting for the region formed by Romania and Hungary, is the most important among the 16 subsidiaries in Europe in terms of the percentage of sales through online orders having in 2008 total orders of €19.3 million. The company also owns a logistic facility and a call center in the city.
Satu Mare's retail sector is fairly well-developed; a number of international companies such as Carrefour, Auchan, Kaufland, Metro Point, Lidl and Penny Market have supermarkets or hypermarkets in the city. There is also a regional mall, Shopping City Satu Mare, with a gross leasable area (GLA) of , DIY stores (Dedeman, Brico Dépôt), and several other shopping centers: Grand Mall of , Plaza Europa of and Someșul Mall, of .
There is also an industrial park called Satu Mare Industrial Park located at the edge of the city on a 70 ha surface.
Education
Universities
Satu Mare is home to the Commercial Academy of Satu Mare and several other branches of important Romanian universities:
Babeș-Bolyai University
Spiru Haret University
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
University of Oradea
Vasile Goldiș West University of Arad
High schools
Satu Mare has 16 high schools, of which four are national colleges:
Doamna Stanca National College
Ioan Slavici National College
Kölcsey Ferenc National College
Mihai Eminescu National College
Gymnasiums
The city has 16 gymnasiums, with the most important being:
The Grigore Moisil Gymnasium (), founded in 1903 and named after the mathematician Grigore Moisil.
The Ion Creangă Gymnasium (), founded in 1990 and named after the writer Ion Creangă.
The Lucian Blaga Gymnasium (), founded in 1996 by Ioan Viman and named after the philosopher and writer Lucian Blaga.
Culture
Satu Mare has a county museum, an art museum, and a theatre, the North Theatre, built in 1889 which has both a Hungarian and a Romanian section. Concerts are given by the “Dinu Lipatti Philharmonic”, formerly the state symphonic orchestra of Satu Mare, in a concert hall in a wing of the Dacia Hotel. The county library had 320.000 books in 1997, including a special bibliophile collections of over 70.000 volumes.
Tourism
Major tourists attractions are:
Administrative Palace, at , one of the tallest buildings in Romania
Capitoline Wolf statue
Chain Church
Dacia Hotel
Decebal Street Synagogue
Firemen's Tower, a tall tower
Roman Catholic Cathedral
There are several hotels in the city: four 4-star hotels – Hotel Poesis, Villa Bodi, Satu-Mare City and Villa Class; eleven 3-star hotels – Astoria, Leon, Villa Lux, Dacia, Aurora, Dana I, Dana II, Select, Rania, Melody and Belvedere; and one 2-star hotel – Sport.
Media
Newspapers
Informația Zilei – daily local newspaper
Gazeta de Nord-Vest – daily local newspaper
Cronica Sătmăreană – daily local newspaper
Friss Újság – daily local newspaper in Hungarian language
Szatmári Magyar Hírlap – daily local newspaper in Hungarian language
TV stations
TV1 Satu Mare
Nord Vest TV
Pro TV Satu Mare
Informația TV
Radio stations
Radio City Satu Mare
Radio Unu
Radio Transilvania
Radio ZU
Kiss FM Satu Mare
Online portal
Satu Mare Online
Sătmăreanul
Consulates
Honorary Consulate of Ukraine
Natives
Romania
Ioana Boitor
Gavril Both
Ciprian Brata
Vlad Bujor
Corina Ciorbă
Cosmin Costinaș
Daniel David
Mircea Florian
Florin Gardoș
Gábor Gerstenmájer
Emanuel Gyenes
Alexandru Karikaș
Simona Miculescu
Dorel Moiș
Ioan Mircea Pașcu
Vasile Paulovics
Ciprian Prodan
Daniel Prodan
Zoltan Ritli
Ovidiu Ioan Silaghi
Sergiu Suciu
Josef Szepeschy
Dan Zaviceanu
Ervin Zsiga
Hungary
Dániel Antal
Árpád Árvay
Antal Bánhidi
László Bánhidi
László Botka
Gábor Darvas
Arányi Dezső
András Domahidy
Jenő Dsida
Mónika Esztán
Zoltán Horváth
József Kürthy
Gyula Lengyel
Noémi Matsutani
Vince Nagy
György Nyisztor
Richárd Osváth
Zoltán Pánczél
Moshe Dovid Winternitz
Germany
Zita-Eva Funkenhauser
Monika Weber-Koszto
Rita König
Susanne König
Canada
Corneliu Chisu
Ernest Klein
USA
Ernie Grunfeld
Yoel Levi
Cyprus
Rareș Cuzdriorean
Israel
Miriam Fried
International relations
Twin towns and sister cities
Satu Mare is twinned with:
Zutphen, Netherlands, since 1970
Wolfenbüttel, Germany, since 1974
Nyíregyháza, Hungary, since 2000
Berehove, Ukraine, since 2007
Rzeszów, Poland, since 2007
Gallery
See also
Satmar (Hasidic dynasty), a Jewish religious group named after this city
List of companies based in Satu Mare
List of natives and inhabitants of Satu Mare
References
External links
Official websites
Satu Mare administration official site
Satu Mare County Prefecture
Satu Mare Municipal Council
Transurban (Public Transport Company) official site
Satu Mare International Airport
Unofficial websites
Satu Mare Online
Satu-Mare.com
Szatmar.ro
Other
Cities in Romania
Capitals of Romanian counties
Satmar (Hasidic dynasty)
Populated places in Satu Mare County
Historic Jewish communities
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupadi
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Draupadi
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Draupadi (), also referred to as Krishnā, Panchali, and Yajñaseni is the main female protagonist of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, and the wife of the five Pandava brothers—Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva. She is noted for her beauty, courage, and polyandrous marriage.
In Mahabharata, Draupadi and her brother, Dhrishtadyumna, were born from a yajna (fire sacrifice) organized by King Drupad of Panchal. Arjuna won her hand in marriage, but she had to marry the five brothers because of her mother-in-law's misunderstanding. Later, she became an empress, as Yudhishthira performed the Rajasuya ritual and achieved the status of the emperor. She had five sons, one from each Pandava, who were collectively addressed as the Upapandavas.
The most notable incident in Draupadi's life is the game of dice at Hastinapura where Yudhishthira loses his possessions and wife, and she is humiliated by the Kaurava brothers and Karna. An attempt is made by Dushasana to disrobe her, but she is saved by the divine intervention of Krishna. Following the subsequent episodes, Draupadi and the Pandavas are exiled for 13 years. Significant events during this period include an attempted kidnapping by Jayadratha and the death of Kichaka. The exile is followed by the Kurukshetra War, where Draupadi loses her father, brothers, and her five children. After the war, she resumes her role as the empress for 36 years, after which she retires to the Himalayas along with her husbands.
Draupadi's story has been an inspiration for various arts, performances and secondary literature. In Hinduism, she is extolled as one of the panchakanya (five virgins), archetypes of female chastity whose names are believed to dispel sin when recited. In some parts of the sub-continent, a sect of Draupadi exists, where she is worshipped as a goddess.
Etymology and epithets
The word Draupadī (lit. 'daughter of Drupada') is a patronymic, derived from the word Drupada, which means 'pillar'. Like other epic characters, she is referred to by multiple names in the Mahabharata. Some of her other names and epithets are as follows:
Krishnā (Kṛṣṇā) – 'one who has a dark complexion'. It is the birth name of Draupadi.
Panchali (Pāñcālī) – 'one from Panchala'.
Yajnaseni (Yajñasenī) – another patronymic derived from Drupada's another name Yajnasena (lit. 'he whose army is sacrificial'); or the name can also mean 'one born from a Yajña (sacrificial fire)'.
Drupadakanya (Drupadakanyā) – 'the daughter of Drupada'.
Sairandhri (Sairandhrī) – 'an expert maid'. This pseudonym was assumed by Draupadi during her incognito life.
Parshati (Parṣatī) – 'granddaughter of Prishata', or 'daughter of Prishati'. Both the names—Parshati and Prishati—are derived from Prishata, Drupada's father.
Nityayuvani (Nityayuvanī) – 'one who remains young forever and never becomes old'.
Mahabharati – the virtuous wife of great descendants of Bharata (Pandavas)
Agnisutā – 'Daughter of fire'
Kalyani – 'One who brings fortune'. Yudhishthira addressed her by this name.
Malini (Mālinī) – fragrant, one who makes garlands.
Panchavallabha (Pancavallabhā) – 'Beloved of the five Pandavas'.
Pandusharmila (Pāṇḍuśarmilā) – 'Daughter-in-law of Pandu'.
Literary background
The story of Draupadi is told in the great indian script Mahabharata, one of the Sanskrit epics from the Indian subcontinent. The work is written in Classical Sanskrit and is a composite work of revisions, editing and interpolations over many centuries. The oldest parts in the surviving version of the text probably date to about 400 BCE.
The Mahabharata manuscripts exist in numerous versions, wherein the specifics and details of major characters and episodes vary, often significantly. Except for the sections containing the Bhagavad Gita which is remarkably consistent between the numerous manuscripts, the rest of the epic exists in many versions. The differences between the Northern and Southern recensions are particularly significant, with the Southern manuscripts more profuse and longer. Scholars have attempted to construct a critical edition, relying mostly on a study of the "Bombay" edition, the "Poona" edition, the "Calcutta" edition and the "south Indian" editions of the manuscripts. The most accepted version is one prepared by scholars led by Vishnu Sukthankar at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, preserved at Kyoto University, Cambridge University and various Indian universities.
Life and Legends
Birth
Most Hindu texts state that Draupadi was not born of a woman and thus, she is often described as an ayonija (lit. 'one not born from a woman's womb'). Her birth is narrated in the Adi Parva of the epic. Drona—the teacher of the Kuru princes—defeats Drupada with the help of his students, and takes half of Panchala. Drupada seeks vengeance but realises that none of his children and allies is capable enough to slay Drona. As a result, he decides to perform a yajna (fire-sacrifice) to obtain a powerful son. With the sages Yaja and Upyaja serving as the head priests, the yajna is conducted. After completion, the priests instruct Prishati—the wife of Drupada—to consume the sacrifice offering, but she refuses and asks them to wait till she washed herself. Unable to wait, Yaja pours the offering into the altar of the sacrifice, from which a youthful man and a woman emerge. The latter's birth is followed by a divine prophecy,
The youth and the maiden are named Dhrishtadyumna and Krishnaa, but the latter one is better known by the patronymic "Draupadi". They accept Drupada and Prishati as their parents and are raised in Drupada's palace.
Draupadi is described to be extremely beautiful. Vyasa—the author of the Mahabharata—describes her having a dark complexion, lotus-like eyes, beautiful copper nails, dark curly hair and an enchanting fragrance like that of a blue lotus.
Mahabharata includes an exceedingly flattering description of Draupadi as she arose from the fire,
Marriage and children
Drupada intended to wed Draupadi to Arjuna, who had previously defeated him in a battle. Upon hearing of the Pandavas' supposed death at Varnavata, he set up a Swayamvara contest for Draupadi to choose her husband from the competitive contest. The test was to lift and string a bow, and fire arrows to pierce the eye of a golden fish only by looking at its reflection in the water. The news of Draupadi's svayamvara spread far and wide, and numerous princes, as well as the general public including brahmanas, began proceeding towards Panchala. It so happened that the Pandavas also began their journey toward Panchala at this time along with their mother, Kunti. As they were on their way toward Panchala they were met by a large group of brahmanas on their way to Panchala, who invited Pandavas to join them. At the Swayamvara, almost all the assorted monarchs were unable to complete the challenge. There are some variations regarding Karna's participation. Some renditions show Draupadi refusing to marry Karna on account of being a Suta, while some other versions describe him failing to string the bow by the "breadth of a hair".
In the end, Arjuna succeeds in the task, dressed as a Brahmin. The other attendees, including the Kauravas and Karna protest at a Brahmin winning the competition and attack Draupadi and Arjuna. Arjuna and Bhima together protect Draupadi by defeating all attendees and are able to retreat. Arjuna, along with Draupadi and his brothers, runs home to tell Kunti of his success, shouting "look what we have found". Kunti thought he was referring to alms found in the forest or to some great prize unknown to her. She tells Arjuna that the find must be shared with his brothers, as they had always shared such things in the past. This misunderstanding, combined with a motherly command, leads to an agreement that all five brothers marry her. This is one of the rare examples of polyandry in Sanskrit literature. The brothers agreed that none should intrude if Draupadi was alone with one of the others, the penalty for doing so being 12 years to be spent in exile. Some versions say that a year was allotted to each Pandava and during that year only that Pandava could enter Draupadi's private chambers, while the others have no such mention.
Later Draupadi becomes a mother of five sons, one son each from the Pandava brothers. They were known as Upapandavas. Their names were Prativindhya (from Yudhishthira), Sutasoma (from Bheema), Shrutakarma (from Arjuna), Satanika (from Nakula) and Shrutasena (from Sahadeva). Ashwatthama killed the Upapandavas during his surprise raid on Pandava camp on the eighteenth day of the war to avenge the death of his father Drona.
Draupadi as the empress
With the Pandavas' survival revealed, a succession crisis was started. Upon the news of Pandavas' death at Varnavrat, the title of 'the crown prince' had fallen to Duryodhana. Dhritrashtra invites the Pandavas to Hastinapura and proposes that the kingdom be divided. The Pandavas are assigned the wasteland Khandavaprastha, referred to as unreclaimed desert. With the help of Krishna, Pandavas rebuilt Khandavprastha into the glorious Indraprastha. The crown jewel of the kingdom was built at the Khandava forest, where Draupadi resided in the "Palace of Illusions". Yudhishthira performed the rajasuya yajna with Draupadi by his side; the Pandavas gained lordship over many regions.
Draupadi was trained in economy and was responsible for the treasury of the Empire. Additionally, she also ran a citizen liaison. Her duties as a busy Empress are mentioned in her famous conversation with Satyabhama, Krishna's favourite wife, during their exile.
Duryodhana's insult
There is a popular myth that is believed to be the reason why Duryodhana hated Draupadi.
Duryodhana and his entourage were exploring the keep during their visit to Yudhishthira's Rajasuya yajna. While touring the grounds, an unsuspecting Duryodhana fell prey to one of the many illusions that could be seen all around the palace. When he stepped on the apparently solid part of the courtyard, there was a splash and Duryodhana found himself waist-deep in water, drenched from head to foot by the hidden pool. The myth is, Draupadi and her maids saw this from the balcony with amusement, and joked Andhasya Putra Andhaha meaning 'a blind man's son is blind'. This famous story does not feature in Veda Vyasa's Mahabharata but is the figment of the imagination of a much later playwright. It gained immense popularity gradually through repeated depictions in various screen and written adaptations of the epic across the length and breadth of the country. The most popular depictions were by B.R. Chopra's Mahabharata series that aired on Doordarshan in 1988 and famous Telugu film Daana Veera Soora Karna starring Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao as Duryodhana, where Draupadi's laughter was singled out for dramatic effect.
In Vyasa's Sanskrit epic, the scene is quite different. It was Bhima, Arjuna, and the twin brothers alongside their retinues who had witnessed Duryodhana's fall and laughed along with their servants. In the Sanskrit text, Draupadi is not mentioned in the scene at all, either laughing or insulting Duryodhana. Nonetheless, Duryodhana felt insulted by the behaviour of the four Pandavas, stoking his hatred of them. Later on, he went back to Hastinapura and expressed his immense agony on witnessing the riches of the Pandavas to his blind father, which was the root cause for inviting his cousins for the dice-game. His main wish was to usurp the wealth of his cousins which they had accumulated on account of the Rajasuya Yajna. Known to few, during this conversation, Duryodhan mentions how he had observed Draupadi serving food to everyone, including physically challenged citizens as the Empress. He says to his father, "And, O king, Yajnaseni, without having eaten herself, daily seeth whether everybody, including even the deformed and the dwarfs, hath eaten or not."
He then went on to express his wrath at having fallen into a pool of water and being laughed at mockingly, mainly by Bhima, followed by Arjun, Nakul, Sahadeva and other menials in the palace. It is here, where he fleetingly mentioned Draupadi's name, who accordingly to Duryodhan, had "joined in the laughter with other females." Whether Duryodhana was speaking an untruth or her name was a later addition into this part of the text is debatable.
Draupadi's laughter went on to be singled out and romanticized by writers for centuries as a cause for the dice-game, and the war. In Vyasa's Sanskrit epic, however, her role in the scene is trivial compared to the exaggerated treatment it has received in popular adaptations.
Game of dice and humiliation
This key incident is often considered to mark a definitive moment in the story of Mahabharata. It is one of the driving reasons that ultimately led to the Kurukshetra War.
Together with his maternal uncle Shakuni, Duryodhana conspired to call on the Pandavas to Hastinapura and win their kingdoms in a game of gambling. There is famous folklore that the plan's architect, Shakuni had magic dice that would never disobey his will, as they were made from the bones of Shakuni's father. This story, however, is non-existent in the Sanskrit epic. As the game proceeds, Yudhishthira loses everything at first. In the second round, Yudhishthira's brother Nakula is at stake, and Yudhishthira loses him. Yudhisthira subsequently gambles away Sahadeva, Arjuna and Bhima. Finally, Yudhishthira puts himself at stake, and loses again. For Duryodhana, the humiliation of the Pandavas was not complete. He prods Yudhishthira that he has not lost everything yet; Yudhishthira still has Draupadi with him and if he wishes he can win everything back by putting Draupadi at stake. Inebriated by the game, Yudhishthira, to the horror of everybody present, puts Draupadi up as a bet for the next round. Playing the next round, Shakuni wins. Draupadi was horrified after hearing that she was staked in the game and now is a slave for Duryodhana. Duryodhana initially sends his charioteer Pratikamin to bring Draupadi to the court. Pratikamin informs Draupadi about the incidents happened during the dice game. Draupadi questions Yudhishthira's right on her as he had lost himself first and she was still the queen. Duryodhana, angry with Draupadi's questions, commands his younger brother Dushasana to bring her into the court, forcefully if he must.
Dushasana drags Draupadi to the court by the hair. Seeing this, Bhima pledges to cut off Dushasana's hands, as they touched Draupadi's hair. Now in an emotional appeal to the elders present in the forum, Draupadi repeatedly questions the legality of the right of Yudhishthira to place her at stake.
In order to provoke the Pandavas further, Duryodhana bares and pats his thigh looking into Draupadi's eyes, implying that she should sit on his thigh. The enraged Bhima vows in front of the entire assembly that he would break Duryodhana's thighs, or else accept being Duryodhana's slave for seven lifetimes. At this time Vikarna, a brother of Duryodhana asks the kings assembled in the court to answer the question of Draupadi. He gives his opinion that Draupadi is not won rightfully as Yudhishthira lost himself first before staking her. Besides, no one has the right to put a woman on bet according to shastras; not a husband, father, or even the gods. Hearing these words, Karna gets angry and says that when Yudhishthira lost all his possession he also lost Draupadi, even specifically staking her. Karna calls Draupadi a "whore" for being the wedded wife of five men, adding that her being to the court is not a surprising act whether she is clothed or naked. He then instructs Dushasana to remove the garments of Draupadi. After her husbands fail to assist her, Draupadi prays to Krishna to protect her. Dushasana attempts to disrobe her, but she is miraculously protected by Krishna, and Dushasana finds that as he continues to unwrap the layers of her sari, the amount of fabric covering her never lessens. Dushasana is eventually reduced to exhaustion, as the awed court observes that Draupadi is still chastely dressed. At this point, a furious Bhima vows to drink blood from Dushasana's chest, at the pain of not seeing his ancestors/entering heaven. This vow unsettles the entire court.
The only Kauravas who object to the disrobing of Draupadi in the court are Vikarna and Yuyutsu. Vidura openly calls Duryodhana a snake and demon after finding no support even from his own brother, Vidura is helpless. Karna further orders Dushasana to take Draupadi to the servants' quarters and derisively asks her to choose another husband who unlike Yudhishthira would not gamble her away. Just then, jackals call out as a mark of evil omen. Queen Gandhari enters the scene and counsels Dhritarashtra to undo her sons' misdeeds. Fearing the ill-omens, Dhritarashtra intervenes and grants Draupadi a boon. Draupadi asks that her husband Yudishthira be freed from bondage so her son Prativindhya would not be called a slave. In order to pacify her further, Dhritarashtra offers a second boon. Calmly, she asks for the freedom of the Pandavas along with their weapons. When Dhritarashtra asks her for her third wish, she reminds him that a Kshatriya woman can seek only two wishes, three would be a sign of greed. Dhritarashtra gives them back their wealth and grants them permission to go home.
Amused by the sudden turn of events, Karna remarks that they "have never heard of such an act, performed by any of the women noted in this world for their beauty." He taunts the Pandavas by praising their wife, as she had rescued them "like a boat from their ocean of distress".
Having restored their pride and wealth, the Pandavas and Draupadi leave for Indraprastha, only to receive another invitation for a game of dice, in which the loser would be given an exile of 12 years followed by a year of Agyatavasa, meaning "living in incognito". Yudhishtira yet again accepts the invitation and loses, and goes on an exile with his brothers and wife Draupadi.
Living in Exile
Durvasa's visit
Once, Draupadi and the Pandavas had finished eating their meal cooked from the Akshay Patra. Suddenly, sage Durvasa and his pupils visited them. They were sent by Duryodhana as he wanted the sage to curse the Pandavas. The brothers welcomed the sage along with his pupils and offered them service. Durvasa demanded food to eat as he was hungry. However, Draupadi had nothing left to feed the guests. Frightened that the sage would curse them, Draupadi prayed to god. Krishna then came there and asked her to give him the vessel. Draupadi gave the vessel to Krishna and he ate a single grain of rice left in it. The sage and his pupils suddenly felt that they had eaten a grand feast and left the place with satisfaction. Though a very popular tale, the "Critical Edition" does not include this incident.
Abduction by Jayadratha
While the Pandavas was in the Kamyaka forest, they often went hunting, leaving Draupadi alone. At this time Jayadratha, the son of Vriddhakshatra and the husband of Duryodhana's sister Dussala, passed through Kamyaka forest on the way to Salva Desa. Jayadratha met Draupadi and then started beseeching her to go away with him and desert her husband. Draupadi pointed out the immorality of deserting one's spouses when they were in difficulty and attempted to stall and dissuade Jayadradtha by describing how the Pandavas would punish him. Failing with words, Jayadratha forced her onto his chariot. Meanwhile, the Pandavas finished their hunt and found Draupadi missing. Learning of their wife's abduction by Jayadratha they rushed to save her. On seeing the Pandavas coming after him, Jayadratha left Draupadi on the road, though ultimately the Pandavas managed to arrest him. Arjuna urged Bhima to spare Jayadratha's life for the sake of Dussala and Gandhari, much to the indignation of Draupadi. In some versions of the story, Yudhishthira asks Draupadi to pass the sentence since it was she who was attacked, and she begrudgingly counsels to spare him because of the relations they share. Before freeing him, the Pandavas shaved Jayadratha's head at five places in order to publicly humiliate him.
Agyatvās (Incognito)
On the thirteenth year of their exile, the Pandavas choose to stay in the Matsya Kingdom. Draupadi becomes the maid of Sudeshna, queen of Matsya, and serves her.
One day Kichaka, Sudeshna's brother and the commander of king Virata's forces, happens to see Draupadi. He is filled with lust by looking at her and requests her hand in marriage. Draupadi refuses him, saying that she is already married to Gandharvas. Seeing his persistence, she warns Kichaka that her husbands are very strong and that he will not be able to escape death at their hands. Later, he convinces his sister, the queen Sudeshna, to help him win Draupadi. Sudeshna orders Draupadi to fetch wine from Kichaka's house, overriding Draupadi's protests. When Draupadi goes to get wine, Kichaka tries to molest her.
Draupadi escapes and runs into the court of Virata. Kichaka kicks her in front of all the courtiers, including Yudhishthira. Fearful of losing his most powerful warrior, even Virat does not take any action. Bhima is present, and only a look from Yudhishthira prevents him from attacking Kichaka. Furious, Draupadi asks about the duties of a king and dharma. She then curses Kichaka with death by her husband's hand. Laughing it off, Kichaka only doubts their whereabouts and asks those present where the Gandharvas are. Yudhishthira addresses Draupadi as Sairandhri and orders her to go to the temple, as Kichaka would not do anything to her there (in some versions, he recommends she seeks refuge with the queen). With this, the king asks Kichaka to leave and praises Yudhishthira's reply as he himself could not think of anything.
Later that night, Bhima consoles Draupadi, and they hatch a plan to kill Kichaka. Draupadi meets with Kichaka, pretending to actually love him and agreeing to marry him on the condition that none of his friends or brothers will know about their relationship. Kichaka accepts her condition. Draupadi asks Kichaka to come to the dancing hall at night. Bhima (in the guise of Draupadi), fights with Kichaka and kills him.
Draupadi calls the members of Kichaka's family and shows them the mutilated body of Kichaka. The murder is attributed to her Gandharva husbands. This angers Kichaka's brothers and they decide to burn her along with Kichaka's body to take revenge. After getting permission from Virata, Draupadi is forcefully tied to Kichaka's pyre. Upon her pleading, Bhima runs for her help and kills the brothers of Kichaka, thus saving her from being burnt alive.
Kurukshetra War
During the war, Draupadi stays at Ekachakra with other women. On the 16th day, Bhima kills Dushasana, drinking his blood and fulfilling his oath.
A popular myth, often depicted in well-known adaptations of Mahabharata, depicts Draupadi washing her hair with her brother-in-law Dushasana's blood, as a mark of her vengeance against the molestation she had suffered at the dice-game. Though an extremely powerful and symbolic theme, this incident does not appear in Vyasa's Sanskrit Mahabharata.
Alf Hiltebeitel in his acclaimed research work, "The Cult of Draupadi" explores the source of this myth as he travels through the rural areas of India. He discovers that the first literary mention of the blood-washing theme appeared in "Venisamhara" or "Braiding The Hair (of Draupadi)", a Sanskrit play written in the Pallava period by eminent playwright Bhatta Narayana. Since then, this powerful theme of vengeance had been used in most retellings and adaptations on Mahabharat, thus mistakenly attributing the authorship to Veda Vyasa.
Ashwatthama's attack
Ashwathama, in order to avenge his father's as well as other Kuru warriors' deceitful killing by the Pandavas, attacks their camp at night with Kripacharya and Kritavarma. Ashwathama killed Dhrishtadyumna, Shikhandi, Upapandavas, and the remaining Pandava and Panchala army. In the morning, Yudhishthira hears the news and asks Nakula to bring Draupadi from Matsya Kingdom. Draupadi vows that if the Pandavas do not kill Ashwatthama, she would fast to death. The Pandavas find Ashwatthama at Vyasa's hut. Arjuna and Ashwatthama end up firing the Brahmashirsha astra at each other. Vyasa intervenes and asks the two warriors to withdraw the destructive weapon. Not endowed with the knowledge to do so, Ashwatthama instead redirects the weapon to Uttara's womb, but Krishna protects the Pandavas' only heir with his Sudarshana Chakra. Krishna curses him for this act. Ashwatthama is caught by the Pandavas and his jewel is taken away. Draupadi gives the jewel to Yudhishthira and forgives the killer of her children. Due to the power of meditation, her wrath is subdued and she speaks of Ashwathama, son of their preceptor Drona,
Later life and death
Draupadi and Yudhishthira performed the ashvamedha and ruled for 36 years. When her husbands retired from the world and went on their journey towards the Himalayas and heaven, she accompanied them and was the first to fall dead on the journey. When Bhima asked Yudhishthira why Draupadi had fallen, Yudhishthira replied,
Polyandry
Polyandry was not regarded without censure by the society spoken of in the epic. The Vedic texts have not discriminated between polyandry and polygamy but usually, the women of royal families were allowed to indulge in polyandry for expansion of progeny, although polygyny was more common among men of higher social ranks. Her marriage to five men was controversial for political reasons as that was an advantage for Prince Duryodhana to get the throne of Bharat Varsha. However, when questioned by Kunti to give an example of polyandry, Yudhishthira cites Gautam-clan Jatila (married to seven Saptarishi) and Hiranyaksha's sister Pracheti (married to ten brothers).
There are many women of high born classes or royal class like Princess Mādhavi who had four husbands, the only daughter of King Yayati. Polyandry was in the royal class but under the strict guidance of the Vedic sages exactly like polygamous marriages of ancient Indian kings were under strict supervision and guidance of the Vedic laws and Vedic sages.
Draupadi as a goddess
In Sanskrit Mahābhārata, Draupadi is described as the incarnation of different goddesses. In Sambhava section of Adi Parva, she is said to be partial incarnation of Goddess Shachi (or Sachi). However, in Vaivahika section of Adi Parva Vyasa describes her as the celestial Sri. In Svargarohanika Parva, Yudhisthira goes to heaven and sees Draupadi seated as Goddess Sri (Or Sree).
The Draupadi Amman sect (or Draupadi devotional sect) is a tradition that binds together a community of people in worshipping Draupadi Amman as a village goddess with unique rituals and mythology Fire walking or Thimithi is a popular ritual enacted at Draupadi Amman temples. At the ancient religious festival of Bengaluru Pete named Bangalore Karaga, Draupadi is worshipped as an incarnation of Adishakti and Parvati in the nine-day event.
There are over 400 temples dedicated to Draupadi in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and other countries like Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, Réunion, South Africa. In these regions, Draupadi is worshipped mainly by people of the Konar (Yadavas), Vanniyar (Kshatriyas) and Mutaliyar caste.
There are a few processions and festivals which are conducted for about three weeks a year. The most famous festival is in the village Durgasamudram, Tirupati of Chittoor district.
As a village deity
The Draupadi Amman cult (or Draupadi sect) is a regional Hindu sect in which the Pillais, Pallis, Konar, and the Mutaliyar communities worship Draupadi Amman was main god of vanniyar as a village goddess with unique rituals and mythologies.
Incarnation of Kali
The Pillais, Vanniyars, Mudaliyars, Konars and the Gounder community of Tamil Nadu, and the Tigala community of Karnataka believe Draupadi Amman as an incarnation of Adi Parashakti and as their household goddess (kuladevi) of their communities. There are many temples in South Indian villages dedicated to Draupadi Amman, observing annual festivals. One of the popular temples of Sri Dharmarayaswamy- Draupadi temple is at Thigarapete, the heart of Bengaluru, Karnataka. .
Fire Walking ritual
Fire walking or Thimithi is a popular ritual enacted at the Draupadi Amman temples.
Location
There are a number of temples dedicated to Draupadi Amman in Tamil Nadu, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
In other traditions
In Buddhism, Kṛṣṇā Draupadī is presented in the Mahāvastu and the Lalitavistara as one among eight goddesses who reside in the western cardinal direction.
In Digambara Jain scriptures like Harivamsa Purana, polyandry of Draupadi has been rejected and it is suggested that she was married only to Arjuna. Hemachandra, a Svetambara Jain monk, accepts the polyandry in his work Triṣaṣṭi and further suggests that Draupadi was Nagasri in one of her previous lives and had poisoned a Jain monk. Therefore, she had to suffer in hell and animal incarnations for several lives before being born a woman who later became a Jain nun. After her death, she was reborn as Draupadi and was married to five Pandavas.
In popular culture
In folk cultures
According to a folklore, Draupadi introduced the popular Indian snack Pani Puri.
Draupadi had only five sons in the Sanskrit epic. But, according to some folklores, the Pandavas and Draupadi had six daughters too. Based on several such tales, the names of their daughters are listed below:
Suthanu (from Yudhishthira)
Samyukthana (from Bheema)
Pragati and Pragya/Prathigya (twins) (from Arjuna)
Printha (from Nakula)
Sumithra (from Sahadeva).
Arts and dances
The story of Draupadi is one of the central topics of Yakshagana, a traditional dance-play practised in Karnataka and Terukkuttu, a Tamil street theatre form practised in Tamil Nadu state of India and Tamil-speaking regions of Sri Lanka.
List of popular performers
In films
In television
In literature
The fiery heroine of Mahabharata has been the topic of research and debate for centuries. There are various plays and novels based on her.
Yajnaseni by Pratibha Ray – This novel, originally written in Odia was the recipient of Jnanpith Award. It was also translated in various languages like English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, etc.
The Palace of Illusions: A Novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – Deviating much from the Sanskrit text, Divakaruni brings up the emotions of Draupadi, re-imagining the whole epic from her perspective.
Draupadi by Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad, is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Telugu novel that narrates Mahabharata from Draupadi's perspective.
The Cult of Draupadi by Alf Hiltebeitel – This trilogy is an exhaustive, scholarly account of the various folk traditions surrounding Draupadi in South India. Hiltebeitel travels through various parts of India, tracing and recording the lesser-known customs and tribes in Gingi Cult and much more, who extensively worship Draupadi as their deity – a status which has been attained by few Mahabharat characters. There are over 31 plays and ballads that are conducted in over 400 temples, that are dedicated to Draupadi Amman. The story of Draupadi creates great respect for women in society. Her sacrifice and her inner power defeats the evil activities performed on women
Nathabati Anathbat by Shaoli Mitra – This is a stage play depicting the agony of Draupadi as a woman who "has five husbands, and yet none to protect her."
Dopdi by Mahasweta Devi in Bengali – A contemporary tale of oppression with Draupadi as the lead character.
The Great Indian Novel by Dr. Shashi Tharoor – Written as a fictional work that is analogous to the events featured in the Mahabharata in order to describe contemporary Indian Politics, Dr.Tharoor has described the character of 'Draupadi' as 'Di Mokrasi', who is an illegitimate daughter of 'Dhritarashtra' and 'Lady Drewpad' in the novel. Tharoor likens Draupadi to the tenets of 'Democracy'. As mentioned in Veda Vyasa's epic, he ascribes her to be the wife to all five 'Pandyas', who are themselves an abbreviation of different facets of Indian politics.
See also
Agnivansha
Draupati Amman
Yajnaseni, a novel by Pratibha Ray
Yajnaseni, a play by Suman Pokhrel
Historicity of the Mahabharata
Notes
References
Eminent women in the Mahabharata by Vanamala Bhawalkar.
The Critical Edition of Mahabharat(1966) published by Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
Mahabharata (1999) by Krishna Dharma
Mahabharata of Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, English translation by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
External links
Sacred-texts.com
The Kaurava race of Sri Lanka and the worship of Draupadi
Karaga Worship is all about Goddess Draupadi
Pattanaik, Devadutt (2009). 7 Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art. Westland, Mumbai. .
Draupadi Amman Shrine/ Temple - KONDAL, Mayiladuthurai, TN.
Characters in the Mahabharata
Tamil deities
People related to Krishna
Indian female royalty
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Lord's
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Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the European Cricket Council (ECC) and, until August 2005, the International Cricket Council (ICC). Lord's is widely referred to as the Home of Cricket and is home to the world's oldest sporting museum.
Lord's today is not on its original site; it is the third of three grounds that Lord established between 1787 and 1814. His first ground, now referred to as Lord's Old Ground, was where Dorset Square now stands. His second ground, Lord's Middle Ground, was used from 1811 to 1813 before being abandoned to make way for the construction through its outfield of the Regent's Canal. The present Lord's ground is about north-west of the site of the Middle Ground. The ground can hold 31,100 spectators, the capacity having increased between 2017 and 2022 as part of MCC's ongoing redevelopment plans.
History
Background
Acting on behalf of members of the White Conduit Club and backed against any losses by George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea and Colonel Charles Lennox, Thomas Lord opened his first ground in May 1787 on the site where Dorset Square now stands, on land leased from the Portman Estate. The White Conduit moved there from Islington, unhappy at the standard of the ground at White Conduit Fields, soon afterwards and reconstituted themselves as Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). It was thought that the establishment of a new ground would offer more exclusivity to its members, with White Conduit Fields considered too far away from fashionable Oxford Street and the West End. The first match played at the new ground saw Middlesex play Essex. In 1811, feeling obliged to relocate because of a rise in rent, Lord removed his turf and relaid it at his second ground. This was short-lived because it lay on the route decided by Parliament for the Regent's Canal, in addition to the ground being unpopular with patrons.
The "Middle Ground" was on the estate of the Eyre family, who offered Lord another plot nearby; and he again relocated his turf. This new ground was originally a duck pond on a hill in St. John's Wood, which gives rise to Lord's famous slope, which at the time was recorded as sloping down from north-west to south-east, though in actuality the slope is . The new ground was opened in the 1814 season, with the MCC playing Hertfordshire in the first match on the ground on 22 June 1814.
Early history
A tavern was built for Lord in 1813–14, followed by a wooden pavilion in 1814. First-class cricket was first played on the present ground in July 1814, with the MCC playing St John's Wood Cricket Club. The first century to be scored at the ground in first-class cricket was made by Frederick Woodbridge (107) for Epsom against Middlesex, with Epsom's Felix Ladbroke (116) recording the second century in the same match. The annual Eton v Harrow match, which was first played on the Old Ground in 1805, returned to the present ground on 29 July 1818. From 1822, the fixture has been almost an annual event at Lord's.
Lord's witnessed the first double-century to be made in first-class cricket when William Ward scored 278 for the MCC against Norfolk in 1820. The original pavilion, which had recently been renovated at great expense, was destroyed by fire following the first Winchester v Harrow match on 23 July 1823, which destroyed nearly all of the original records of the MCC and the wider game. The pavilion was promptly rebuilt by Lord. In 1825, the future of the ground was placed in jeopardy when Lord proposed developing the ground with housing at a time when St John's Wood was seeing rapid development. This was prevented by William Ward, who purchased the ground from Lord for £5,000. His purchase was celebrated in the following anonymous poem:
And of all who frequent the ground named after Lord,
On the list first and foremost should stand Mr Ward.
No man will deny, I am sure, when I say
That he's without rival first bat of the day,
And although he has grown a little too stout,
Even Matthews is bothered at bowling him out.
He's our life blood and soul in this noblest of games,
And yet on our praises he's many more claims;
No pride, although rich, condescending and free,
And a well informed man and a city M.P.
The first University Match between Oxford and Cambridge was held at Lord's in 1827, at the instigation of Charles Wordsworth, establishing what would be the oldest first-class fixture in the world until 2020. The ground remained under the ownership of Ward until 1835, after which it was handed over to James Dark. The pavilion was refurbished in 1838, with the addition of gas lighting. Around this time Lord's could still be considered a country ground, with open countryside to the north and west. Lord's was described by Lord Cottesloe in 1845 as being a primitive venue, with low benches put in a circle around the ground at a good distance providing seating for spectators. Improvements to the ground were gradually made, with the introduction of a telegraph scoreboard in 1846. A small room was built on the north side of the pavilion in 1848 for professionals, providing them with a separate entrance to the field. In the same year scorecards were introduced for the first time, from a portable press, and drainage was installed in 1849–50.
The Australian Aboriginal cricket team toured England in 1868, with Lord's hosting one of their matches to a mixed response, with The Times describing the tourists as "a travestie upon cricketing at Lord's" and "the conquered natives of a convict colony". Dark proposed to part with his interest in the ground in 1863, for the fee of £15,000 for the remaining years of his lease. An agreement was reached in 1864, with Dark, who was seriously ill, selling his interests at Lord's for £11,000. The landlord of the ground, Isaac Moses, offered to sell it outright for £21,000 in 1865, which was reduced to £18,150. William Nicholson, who was a member of the MCC committee at the time advanced the money on a mortgage, with his proposal for the MCC to buy the ground being unanimously passed at a special general meeting on 2 May 1866. Following the purchase, a number of developments took place. These included the addition of cricket nets for players to practise and the construction of a grandstand designed by the architect Arthur Allom, which was built in the winter of 1867–68 and also provided accommodation for the press. This was funded by a private syndicate of MCC members, from whom the MCC purchased the stand in 1869. The wicket at Lord's was heavily criticised in the 1860s due to its poor condition, with Frederick Gale suggesting that nine cricket grounds out of ten within 20 miles of London would have a better wicket; the condition was deemed so poor as to be dangerous that Sussex refused to play there in 1864.
Continued developments
By the 1860s and 1870s, the great social occasions of the season were the public schools match between Eton and Harrow, the University Match between Oxford and Cambridge, and the Gentlemen v Players, with all three matches attracting great crowds. Crowds became so large that they encroached on the playing area, which necessitated the introduction of the boundary system in 1866. Further crowd control measures were initiated in 1871, with the introduction of turnstiles. The pavilion was expanded in the mid-1860s and shortly thereafter it was decided to replace the original tavern with a new construction commencing in December 1867. At this time a nascent county game was beginning to take shape. With Lord's hosting more county matches, the pitches subsequently improved with the umpires being responsible for their preparation.
Middlesex County Cricket Club, which had been founded in 1864, began playing their home games at Lord's in 1877 after vacating their ground in Chelsea, which had been considered a serious rival to Lord's given its noblemen backers. In 1873–74, an embankment was constructed which could accommodate 4,000 spectators in four rows of seats. Four years later a new lodge and was constructed to replace an older lodge, along with a new workshop, stables and a store room at a cost of £1,000. To meet the ever increasing demand to accommodate more spectators, a temporary stand was constructed on the eastern side of the ground. After many years of complaints regarding the poor condition of the Lord's pitch, the MCC took action by installing Percy Pearce as Ground Superintendent in 1874. Pearce had previously held the same position at the County Ground, Hove. His appointment vastly improved the condition of the wicket, with The Standard describing them as "faultless".
The Australian cricket team captained by Dave Gregory first visited Lord's on 27 May 1878, defeating their MCC hosts by 9 wickets. This was considered a shock result and established not only the fame of the Australian team, but also the rivalry between England and Australia. Lord's hosted its first Test match during the 1884 Ashes, becoming the third venue in England to host Test cricket after The Oval and Old Trafford. The match was won by England by an innings and 5 runs, with England's A. G. Steel and Edmund Peate recording the first Test century and five wicket haul at Lord's respectively.
As part of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations for Queen Victoria in 1887, the Kings of Belgium, Denmark, Saxony, and Portugal attended Lord's. It was noted that none of them had any grasp of cricket. In the same year Lord's hosted the MCC's hundredth anniversary celebrations, with the MCC playing a celebratory match against England. With only a two-tiered covered grandstand and both increasing membership and spectator numbers, it was decided to build a new pavilion at a cost of £21,000. Construction on this pavilion, which was designed by Thomas Verity, took place in 1889–90. The pavilion it replaced was relocated and painstakingly rebuilt on an estate in Sussex, where it lived out its days as a glorified garden shed. Soon after this, the MCC purchased the land to the east, known today as the Nursery Ground; this had previously been a market garden known as Henderson's Nursery which had grown pineapples and tulips. The ground was subsequently threatened by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway's attempts to purchase the area for their line into Marylebone station. After considering the company's offer, the MCC relinquished a strip of land bordering Wellington Road and was given in exchange the Clergy Orphan School to the south. In order to build the railway into Marylebone station, the Nursery Ground had to be dug up to allow tunnels to be constructed between 1894 and 1898 using the cut-and-cover method. Once completed the railway company laid a new pitch.
It was rumoured that subsequent tunnelling under Wellington Road provided the banking for the Mound Stand, which was constructed in 1898/99 on an area previously occupied by tennis and rackets courts. The rapid development of Lord's was not well met by some, with critics suggesting Thomas Lord would 'turn in his grave' at Lord's expansion. 1899 saw Albert Trott hit a six over the pavilion while playing for the MCC against the touring Australians, remaining as of the only batsman to do so. The Imperial Cricket Conference was founded by England, Australia and South Africa in 1909, with Lord's serving as its headquarters.
Lord's hosted three of the nine Test matches in the ill-fated 1912 Triangular Tournament which was organised by the South African millionaire Sir Abe Bailey. The ground's centenary was commemorated in June 1914 with a match between MCC, whose team was selected from the touring party from the recent tour of South Africa, and a Rest of England team. The Rest of England won the three-day match by an innings and 189 runs. Lord's was requisitioned by the army during the First World War, accommodating the Territorial Army, Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and Royal Army Service Corps. Both cooking and wireless instruction classes were held at the ground for military personnel. Once the RAMC departed, the War Office used the Nursery Ground and other buildings as a training centre for Royal Artillery cadets. The pavilion and its long room were used throughout the war for the manufacture of hay nets for horses on the Western Front. Though requisitioned, Lord's held several charity cricket matches during the war, featuring military teams from the various territories of the British Empire. These matches were well attended and one such match in 1918 between England and the Dominions was attended by George V and the Duke of Connaught.
Inter–war years and WWII
First-class cricket returned to Lord's in 1919, with a series of two-day matches in the County Championship. 1923 saw the installation of the Grace Gates, a tribute to W. G. Grace who had died in 1915. They were inaugurated by Sir Stanley Jackson, who had suggested the inclusion of the words THE GREAT CRICKETER in the dedication. These gates replaced an earlier, less decorative, entrance to the ground. With attendances growing in number, it was suggested that Lord's aim to accommodate crowds of up to 40,000 for Test matches; however, the stands at the ground were considered inadequate with the grandstand described as "hopelessly out of date". To accommodate these crowds, the old grandstand was demolished and a new one was built in its place in 1926, designed by the architect Sir Herbert Baker. Completion of the stand was delayed due to the 1926 General Strike. Upon its completion, Baker presented Lord's with a weather vane Father Time removing the bails from a wicket, which was placed on top of the grandstand. The full weathervane is tall, with the figure of Father Time standing at . Baker further contributed to the landscape of Lord's by designing the Q Stand next to the pavilion in 1934, while at the Nursery End stands were also erected. Careful consideration was taken to preserve the treeline dividing the main ground from the Nursery Ground. The West Indies under the captaincy of Karl Nunes played their first Test match at Lord's in 1928. The ground later hosted the first televised Test match during the Second Test of the 1938 Ashes series.
The 1935 season saw the Lord's pitches badly affected by crane fly larvae, known as leatherjackets. The larvae caused bald patches to appear on the playing surface and had to be removed by the ground staff, although spin bowlers did gain some benefit from the bare patches.
In contrast to the First World War, Lord's was not requisitioned by the military during the Second World War. Lord's hosted matches throughout the war for the London Counties cricket team, amongst others, which attracted large crowds. The ground was spared major damage from The Blitz. An oil bomb landed in the Nursery Ground in 1940, with a high-explosive bomb also narrowly missing the Nursery End stands in December of the same year. The grandstand and the pavilion were hit by incendiary bombs, damaging their roofs. The in-house Lord's firefighters reacted quickly and limited the damage. As the war progressed, the threat came not from the Luftwaffe but the newly developed V-1 flying bomb. Lord's had several near misses from these weapons in 1944, with one bomb landing short of the ground near to Regents Park. The Nursery Ground had been requisitioned by the Royal Air Force and converted into a barrage balloon site. The most high-profile damage during the war was that to Father Time, which was damaged by a one such balloon which had broken loose and drifted toward the grandstand, catching Father Time and depositing it into the seating at the front of the stand. International cricket resumed at the end of the war, with Lord's hosting one of the Victory Tests (though the matches did not actually have Test status) between the Australian Services cricket team and England.
Post–war years
Following the end of the war attendances at cricket matches grew. The gross attendance of 132,000 and the gate receipts of £43,000 for the Second Test of the 1948 Ashes series was a record for a Test match in England at that time. This demand necessitated further expansion of the ground, with the construction of the Warner Stand in 1958, which included snack bars and a press box. This stand was the work of the architect Kenneth Peacock and replaced an area of raised ground lined with trees from where it was traditionally possible to watch a match from the comfort of ones own carriage. Prior to the construction of the Warner Stand, all stands at the ground were identified by letters of the alphabet.
The record numbers of spectators who attended Test and County Championship matches began to decline by the end of the 1950s and cricket in England found itself from a position of 2.2 million paid County Championship spectators in 1947, dropping to 719,661 in 1963. To arrest this decline, List A one-day cricket was introduced in 1963, with Lord's hosting its first List A match in the 1963 Gillette Cup between Middlesex and Northamptonshire and later hosted the final of the competition between Sussex and Worcestershire in front of a sell-out 24,000 crowd. It was the first such final held anywhere in the world. The tavern and its adjoining buildings were demolished in 1968 to make way for the construction of the Tavern Stand, again designed by Peacock. The tavern was subsequently re-sited next to the Grace Gates and was complemented with a banqueting hall. Lord's hosted its first One Day International (ODI) in 1972, with Australia defeating England by 5 wickets. Three years later Lord's hosted the final of the inaugural men's World Cup, with the West Indies triumphing over Australia. Four years later, Lord's held the final of the 1979 World Cup, with the West Indies once against triumphing, this time against England.
The first women's cricket match at Lord's took place in August 1976 when England and Australia played a 60-over ODI which England won by eight wickets. The opportunity to play a women's match at Lord's resulted from a campaign by Rachael Heyhoe Flint, and was given extra impetus by England's victory in the 1973 Women's Cricket World Cup. England had to wait another 11 years to play their second match at Lord's. The ground hosted the final of the ICC Women's Cricket World Cup in 1993 with England beating New Zealand to win the World Cup. The ground was not fully opened for the game and only 5,000 spectators were able to attend.
A new indoor cricket school was completed in 1973 at the Nursery End, funded by £75,000 from Sir Jack Hayward and additional funds raised by the Lord's Taverners and The Sports Council. The West Indies appeared in their third successive World Cup final in 1983, but were defeated by 43 runs by India. The Mound Stand was demolished in 1985 to make way for a new stand designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners, which opened in time for the MCC's bicentenary in 1987. That bicentenary was celebrated with a five-day match between MCC and a Rest of the World team in August 1987, which ended in a draw after the final day was rained off.
Graham Gooch made the first Test match triple-century at Lord's, scoring 333 against India in 1990. The final decade of the 20th–century saw rapid redevelopment of Lord's. The Compton and Edrich stands were completed in 1991, having run over time and budget. The indoor school closed in 1994, owing to the construction of a new state-of-the-art indoor cricket centre which opened in 1995. The old grandstand was demolished in 1996, with a replacement designed by Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners being completed in 1998. Since 1997, Lord's has been home to the European Cricket Council (ECC), which administers cricket outside of the European full-member nations. With Lord's hosting three matches in the 1999 World Cup, including the final, the MCC set about improving press facilities by constructing the Media Centre at the Nursery End between the Compton and Edrich stands, offering commanding views towards the pavilion from over the bowlers arm. The Media Centre was opened in April 1999 by then MCC President Tony Lewis.
21st–century developments
Lord's hosted its one-hundredth Test match in June 2000, with England defeating the West Indies by two wickets; the match was also notable for the 21 wickets which fell on the second day, the most to fall in a day in a Test at Lord's since 1888. The ground also hosted The University Match over three days for the last time in 2000, after which the match alternated between Fenner's at Cambridge and University Parks at Oxford. The fixture has continued at Lord's since 2001 as a one-day limited overs match. At the start of the 21st–century, the Lord's slope which provides a benefit to both seam bowlers and swing bowlers from the Pavilion and Nursery Ends respectively, was under threat of being levelled due to the advent of drop-in pitches. However, the MCC resisted these calls as levelling the pitch would require the rebuilding of Lord's and would mean Test cricket would not be able to be played there for five years. The outfield was notorious for becoming waterlogged due to the clay soil, which resulted in considerable lost match time. The entire outfield was relaid in the winter of 2002 with the clay soil being replaced with sand, which has improved drainage. Lord's hosted its first Twenty20 match in the second edition of the Twenty20 Cup in 2004. In 2005 the International Cricket Council (formerly the Imperial Cricket Conference) headquarters, which had been located at Lord's since its foundation in 1909, were closed and moved to the Dubai Sports City in the United Arab Emirates.
Temporary floodlights were installed at the ground in 2007, but were removed in 2008 after complaints of light pollution from local residents. In January 2009, Westminster City Council approved the use of new 48 metre high retractable floodlights designed to minimise light spillage into nearby homes. Conditions of the approval included a five-year trial period during which up to 12 matches and 4 practice matches could be played under the lights from April to September. The lights must be dimmed to half-strength at 9.50 pm and be switched off by 11 pm. The floodlights were first used successfully on 27 May 2009 during the Twenty20 Cup match between Middlesex and Kent. Two weeks after the first use of the floodlights, Lord's hosted its first Twenty20 International in the World Twenty20 between England and the Netherlands, which resulted in a shock last-ball win for the associate nation. Lord's held the final of the competition between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which Pakistan won by 8 wickets.
In 2008 plans were drawn up by the MCC committee to fund the future £250 million development of the ground by constructing residential apartments and a luxury hotel along the Wellington Road and Grove End Road.
The Lord's Masterplan was unveiled in 2013, which is a twenty-year plan to redevelop the ground and improve its facilities. The first phase of the masterplan involved the demolition and replacement of the Warner Stand with a new stand, which was built between 2015 and 2017. The new stand has improved facilities for match officials and reduced the number of restricted view spectator seats from 600 to 100. Phase two of the masterplan involved the demolition of the Compton and Edrich Stands in 2019, with their replacements being completed in 2021; these provided an extra 2,000 seats and for the first time were linked by a walkway bridge.
Lord's celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of its current ground in 2014. To mark the occasion, an MCC XI captained by Sachin Tendulkar played a Rest of the World XI led by Shane Warne in a 50-over match.
Two matches of note were played at the ground in July 2019. The first of these was 2019 World Cup Final between England and New Zealand, which ended as a tie with both sides making 241 runs from their 50 overs. The final was then decided by a Super Over, which also ended in a tie. Therefore, the winner was decided on the number of boundaries scored in the game and Super Over; this was England's first World Cup triumph. A second match of note followed four days later when Ireland played their first Test match at Lord's, where they bowled England out for 85 on the first morning of the match with Tim Murtagh taking 5 for 13. Despite this, in their second innings Ireland were dismissed for 38, the lowest Test total at Lord's and lost the match by 143 runs.
In August 2022 the ground's East Gate was renamed the Heyhoe Flint Gate in honour of Rachael Heyhoe Flint.
Ground features and facilities
Stands
As of , the stands at Lord's are (clockwise from the Pavilion):
Many of the stands were rebuilt in the late 20th century. In 1987 the new Mound Stand, designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners, was opened, followed by the Grand Stand, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, in 1996. The Media Centre, opposite the Pavilion between the Compton and Edrich Stands, was added in 1999. Designed by Future Systems, it won the Royal Institute of British Architects' Stirling Prize for 1999. The redevelopment of the Compton Stand and Edrich Stands was completed in 2021, adding 2,600 seats and bringing the ground capacity to 31,100 spectators. The two ends of the pitch are the Pavilion End (south-west), where the main members' pavilion is located, and the Nursery End (north-east), dominated by the Media Centre.
The current Grand Stand replaced the one built in 1926 by Sir Herbert Baker. Although the stand was described as "truly a thing of beauty, loved by all who gazed upon it", it did have limitations for spectators. 43% of the seats had an obstructed views of the playing area and the structure itself was becoming rotten.
Pavilion
The current pavilion at Lord's is the third pavilion to stand at the ground and is the main survivor from the Victorian era, having been built in 1889–90. It has been a Grade II* listed building since September 1982. The pavilion was constructed using brick with ornate terracotta facing, which includes terracotta gargoyles, such as 'The Patriarch' which is thought to represent Lord Harris. The building consists of a long, two storey centre section with covered seating between two end towers which are capped with pyramidal roofs which have ornate wrought and cast iron lanterns. Running the full length of the rear of the second floor is the pavilion roof terrace, which provides views of the entire ground. It underwent an £8 million refurbishment programme in 2004–05. The pavilion is primarily for members of the MCC, who may use its amenities, which include seats for viewing the cricket, the Long Room and its Bar, the Bowlers Bar, and a members' shop. At Middlesex matches the pavilion is open to members of the Middlesex County Cricket Club. The Pavilion also contains the dressing rooms where players change, each of which has a small balcony for players to watch the play.
The Long Room is found on the ground floor of the pavilion and has been described by Lawrence Booth as "the most evocative four walls in world cricket". Players walk through the Long Room on their way from the dressing rooms to the cricket field; this walk is notoriously long and complex at Lord's. On his Test debut in 1975, David Steele got lost on his way out to bat "and ended up in the pavilion's basement toilets". Once a player reaches the Long Room is approximately 30 paces from the swing door at the rear of the room to the steps which lead onto the playing field. The Long Room is decorated with paintings of famous cricketers and administrators from the 18th to the 21st century, predominantly English players. For an overseas player to have their portrait placed in the Long Room is a considerable honour. Amongst overseas players to have a portrait in the Long Room are four Australians: Don Bradman, Keith Miller, Victor Trumper and Shane Warne.
Found in the players dressing rooms are the honours boards for commemorating centuries, five wicket hauls and ten wicket hauls in a match. Two honours boards for batting and bowling commemorate England players in the home dressing room, while the batting and bowling boards commemorating players from other nationalities are found in the away dressing room. Originally only these achievements in Test matches were commemorated, but since 2019 an honours board for ODIs has been introduced. As of 167 players have made 240 Test centuries at Lord's and 130 players have taken 186 five wicket hauls. In ODI's 29 players have made 32 centuries at Lord's and 14 players have taken a five wicket haul. A separate "neutral" honours board was created in 2010 to coincide with Lord's hosting a Test match between Australia and Pakistan. The Australians Warren Bardsley and Charlie Kelleway were the first two names added to this board, commemorating their centuries against South Africa in 1912. They were joined by the Australians Shane Watson and Marcus North, who both took five wicket hauls against Pakistan.
The dress code in the pavilion is notoriously strict. Men are required to wear "ties and tailored coats and acceptable trousers with appropriate shoes" and women are required to wear "dresses; or skirts or trousers worn with blouses, and appropriate shoes". Until 1999 women – except Queen Elizabeth II – were not permitted to enter the pavilion as members during play, due to the gender-based membership policy of the MCC. The 1998 decision to allow female MCC members represented a historic modernisation of the pavilion and its clubs.
Media Centre
The decision to build the Media Centre was made during a meeting of the MCC committee in 1995. These plans sought to remove the inadequate media facilities mostly concentrated in the Warner Stand which could accommodate 90 journalists, along with wooden shacks dotted around the ground for commentators, and replace them with a new purpose built facility. It was then approved by members of the MCC at a special general meeting in December 1996. A gap between the Compton and Edrich Stands was selected, with space limitations requiring the centre to stand above the ground on reinforced supports from the structure around its two lift shafts. This design allowed for uninterrupted access between the main ground and the Nursery Ground, while also allowing the movement of ground staff and their equipment.
It was designed by the Future Systems architectural practice led by Czech architect Jan Kaplický and was the first all-aluminium, semi-monocoque building in the world, costing about £5 million. Construction began in January 1997 and was completed in time for the 1999 World Cup. It was built in 32 sections and fitted out by Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth in combination with Centraalstaal from the Netherlands. These pieces were then delivered to Lord's where they were lowered into place during the 1998 season. The glazing on the front of the centre is inclined 25° so as to eliminate reflections and glare on the pitch to minimise the visual barrier between members of the media and the players. The lower tier of the centre provides accommodation for 118 journalists, with two hospitality boxes either side which accommodate 18 people each. The top tier has radio and television commentary boxes, consisting of two television studios, two large commentary and radio commentary boxes, each holding up to six people. The centre's only opening window is in the broadcasting box used by BBC Test Match Special. The building won eight architectural awards, including the RIBA Stirling Prize for architecture in 1999. The Media Centre was originally sponsored by NatWest, with sponsorship being taken over by Investec in 2007. Since 31 May 2011, the media centre has been sponsored by J. P. Morgan.
Nursery Ground
Purchased in two parts by the MCC in 1838 and 1887, the ground is primarily used as a practice ground and is considered to have some of the best grass nets in the world. In 1895 the Middlesex Volunteers requested the use of the Nursery Ground as a drill ground, but this was declined by the MCC. The Nursery Pavilion, which was constructed in 1999, overlooks the playing area of the Nursery Ground and is one of London's largest venues. The ground has hosted one first-class cricket match in 1903, when the MCC played Yorkshire; the match was originally to be played on the main Lord's ground, but heavy rain had fallen and in the week leading up to the match this had led to the abandonment of a match between the MCC and Nottinghamshire. The heavy rain persisted during the MCC v Yorkshire match, with the players spending the first two days of the three-day match sat in the pavilion. However, it was deemed that the playing surface on the Nursery Ground was suitable for the third day of the match to be played there, with both sides batting for an innings each and Yorkshire's Wilfred Rhodes making an unbeaten 98.
The Women's University Match has been played on the Nursery Ground since 2001, however following calls for gender equality, the 20-over fixture will be played on the main Lord's ground for the first time from 2022 alongside the men's fixtures. On big match days crowds are allowed onto the outfield. The Cross Arrows Cricket Club play their home matches at the Nursery Ground toward the end of the cricket season. The construction of the new Compton and Edrich stands, beginning in August 2019, encroached on the Nursery Ground's playing area. In order to reclaim the playing area lost to the redevelopment of the stands, the temporary Nursery Pavilion will be demolished in 2025–26 and the playing area will be extended up to the perimeter wall running along the Wellington Road.
MCC Museum and Library
Lord's is the home of the MCC Museum, which is the oldest sports museum in the world, and contains the world's most celebrated collection of cricket memorabilia, including The Ashes urn. MCC has been collecting memorabilia since 1864, the collection being originated by Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane, who subsequently became the club Treasurer. These items were originally displayed in the pavilion, limiting access to the collection to MCC members. Following the Second World War the collection had outgrown its home in the pavilion, with a decision made to relocate the collection and open it to the public. The MCC moved the collection to a disused rackets court, which had fallen into disrepair during the war, with this location also acting as a memorial to the fallen members of the MCC from the two world wars. They appointed Diana Rait Kerr, "to whom the game owes a great debt", to be the first full-time creator of the museum and library, a position she held from 1945 to 1968. The museum was officially opened to the public as the Imperial Memorial Collection by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1953. During her tenure as curator, Rait Kerr secured donations of pictures, equipment and other artefacts from around the world. Rait Kerr was succeeded as curator by Stephen Green in 1968. The museum today welcomes around 50,000 visitors per year.
Amongst the items on display include cricket kit used by Victor Trumper, Jack Hobbs, Don Bradman, Shane Warne, and others; many items related to the career of W. G. Grace; and curiosities such as the stuffed sparrow that was 'bowled out' by Jahangir Khan of Cambridge University in delivering a ball to T. N. Pearce batting for the MCC on 3 July 1936. It also contains the battered copy of Wisden that helped to sustain E. W. Swanton through his captivity in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War. It continues to collect historic artefacts and also commissions new paintings and photography. It contains the Brian Johnston Memorial Theatre, a cinema which screens historical cricket footage for visitors. The museum collaborates with a number of national museums and schools through active loans, in addition to community and tour programmes. It is a member of the Sporting Heritage network.
Lord's also has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of books and publications dedicated to cricket. The library includes over 20,000 volumes and grows by around 400 volumes a year. The library encourages donations from authors and publishers. The library operates as a private library for MCC members on match days, but is open by appointment on non-match days. It was expanded in the 1980s with the opening of a new library in the tennis court block to the rear of the pavilion, having previously been housed in a small office in the pavilion. In 2010, a selection of 100 duplicates from the library's collection was offered for auction by Christie's with proceeds going to support the library.
Gardens
Lord's has two gardens, the Harris Garden and the Coronation Garden. The Coronation Garden was created behind the A stand (Warner Stand) in 1952 to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II. It contains weeping Ash trees and other trees, providing a shaded area under which benches are found. Preserved in the Coronation Garden is one of the first models of mass-produced, cast iron, heavy rollers dating from the 1880s, which was in use at Lord's until 1945. A large bronze statue of W. G. Grace stands in the Coronation Garden. The garden is popular with picnickers during major matchdays. The Harris Garden, formerly tennis courts, was created as a rose garden in 1934 in memory of Lord Harris. The garden was restored and re-launched in 2018. The restoration included the exposing of the flint wall which runs along the back of the garden, which displays a dedication to Lord Harris. The flower beds in the Harris Garden were replanted in 2018 with a floral design featuring flowers from all the Test playing nations. The Harris Garden is available for private hire and can host up to 300 people.
Other sports
Pelham Warner was of the opinion that the only other sport which had any real standing at Lord's was real tennis. A real tennis court began construction in October 1838, with the foundation stone of the court being laid by Benjamin Aislabie. The court was built at a cost of £4,000, which at the time was exceptionally high. A real tennis competition was later established in 1867. The tennis court was demolished in 1898 to make way for the Mound Stand, with a replacement court being built behind the pavilion in 1900 in the back garden of number 3 Grove End Road. By 2005 the MCC had a real tennis playing membership of 200. The playing of rackets at Lord's dates from 1844 and is currently played in the same building as real tennis. Lord's hosted the Public Schools Championship in 1866, with Harrow School triumphing. Since then the Championship has been held at Prince's Club, before moving to Queen's Club.
With the advent of lawn tennis, a decision was made at the annual general meeting of the MCC in May 1875 to construct a tennis court, although there was strong opposition from some members. A suggestion to standardise the rules of tennis was made at Lord's by J. M. Heathcote, who was himself a prominent real tennis player. On 3 March 1875 the MCC, in its capacity as the governing body for rackets and real tennis, convened a meeting at Lord's to test the various versions of lawn tennis which existed with the aim to fully standardise the game's rules. Amongst the various versions of lawn tennis which were demonstrated were Major Clopton Wingfield's Sphairistikè, and John H. Hale's Germains Lawn Tennis. After the meeting, the MCC Tennis Committee was tasked with framing the rules. On 29 May 1875 the MCC issued the Laws of Lawn Tennis, the first unified rules for lawn tennis, which were adopted by the club on 24 June. These rules were amended by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club for the 1877 Wimbledon Championship, with the dimensions of the tennis courts being based on those at Lord's; the courts on which these were based are no longer used for tennis and are now part of the Harris Garden.
The original intention for the purchase of the northern part of the Nursery Ground in 1838 was for it to serve as an archery venue. Archery is recorded as having been played at Lord's as far back as August 1844, when visiting Ioway Indians camped at Lord's and demonstrated their archery skills. Lord's was one of the venues for the 2012 Summer Olympics, hosting the archery competition. The archery competition took place in front of the pavilion, which the archers were positioned in front of, with the targets placed 70 metres away just past the square and in front of the Media Centre. Either side of the square temporary stands holding up to 5,000 spectators were erected.
Lacrosse was first played at Lord's in 1833 by the Canadian pioneers of the sport. Lacrosse returned to Lord's in 1876, when a team of Canadian Gentlemen Amateurs led by William George Beers played an exhibition match at the ground against a team of Iroquois Indians. A Canadian lacrosse team toured the United Kingdom again in 1883, with one exhibition match being staged at Lord's in front of several thousand spectators. It was later played again at Lord's in October 1953 when the Kenton and Old Thorntonians lacrosse clubs met there in a lacrosse championship match, with further fixtures following in November of the same year.
Baseball was first played at Lord's in 1874 when the MCC hosted a touring party of 22 baseball players from the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics, who were the two leading American baseball teams of the time. The Red Stockings defeated The Athletics 24–7 in front of a crowd of 5,000 spectators. A baseball game was held at Lord's during the First World War to raise funds for the Canadian Widows and Orphans Fund. A Canadian team played a team of American London residents in a match watched by 10,000 people.
Lord's hosted the London pre-1968 Olympics field hockey tournament in 1967. One match saw India play Pakistan, which was broadcast live on the BBC, which at the time was unprecedented in field hockey. Pakistan won the match 1–0, while Pakistan also went on to defeat Belgium later in the tournament. The ground hosted further international hockey matches in the 1970s. The University Match between Oxford and Cambridge hockey clubs took place at Lord's for twenty-one years beginning in 1969. England beat world-champions India for the time ever in this venue, in 1978.
Other sports to have been played at Lord's include lawn bowls and billiards. In 1838, a bowling green was constructed at the western end of the ground, in addition to a billiards room with two billiard tables which was added to the original tavern, with professional billiards players playing matches at Lord's on a Monday during the cricket season; In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Lord's held Galloway pony races after the cricket season was over, with races starting at the tavern and finishing twenty yards south of the pavilion.
International records
Test
Highest team total: 729/6 declared by Australia v England, 1930
Lowest team total: 38 all out by Ireland v England, 2019
Highest individual innings: 333 by Graham Gooch for England v India, 1990
Best bowling in an innings: 8/34 by Ian Botham for England v Pakistan, 1978
Best bowling in a match: 16/137 by Bob Massie for Australia v England, 1972
One Day International
Highest team total: 334/4 (60 overs) by England v India, 1975
Lowest team total: 107 all out (32.1 overs) by South Africa v England, 2003
Highest individual innings: 138* by Viv Richards for West Indies v England, 1979
Best bowling in an innings: 6/24 by Reece Topley for England v India, 2022
Twenty20 International
Highest team total: 199/4 (20 overs) by West Indies v ICC World XI, 2018
Lowest team total: 93 all out (17.3 overs) by Netherlands v Pakistan, 2009
Highest individual innings: 78 by Mahela Jayawardene for Sri Lanka v Ireland, 2009
Best bowling in an innings: 4/11 by Shahid Afridi for Pakistan v Netherlands, 2009
All records correct as of .
Domestic records
First-class
Highest team total: 645/6 declared by Durham v Middlesex, 2002
Lowest team total: 15 by MCC v Surrey, 1839
Highest individual innings: 316* by Jack Hobbs for Surrey v Middlesex, 1926
Three bowlers have taken a ten-wicket haul in an innings where the exact bowling figures are not recorded, however it is known they conceded less than 20 runs, they are William Lillywhite, Edmund Hinkly and John Wisden. The best bowling figures in an innings where the records are complete is Samuel Butler's 10 for 38 for Oxford University v Cambridge University in 1871.
William Lillywhite has taken the most wickets in a match, with 18 for the Players v Gentlemen in the Gentlemen v Players fixture of 1837, though his exact bowling figures are not recorded.
List A
Highest team total: 368/2 (50 overs) by Nottinghamshire v Middlesex, 2014
Lowest team total: 57 (27.2 overs) by Essex v Lancashire, 1996
Highest individual innings: 187* by Alex Hales for Nottinghamshire v Surrey, 2017
Best bowling in an innings: 7/22 by Jeff Thomson for Middlesex v Hampshire, 1981
Twenty20
Highest team total: 223/7 (20 overs) by Surrey v Middlesex, 2021
Lowest team total: 90 (14.4 overs) by Kent v Middlesex, 2015
Highest individual innings: 102 not out by Stephen Eskinazi for Middlesex v Essex, 2021
Best bowling in an innings: 6/24 by Tim Murtagh for Surrey v Middlesex, 2005
All records correct as of .
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Rice, Jonathan (2001). One Hundred Lord's Tests. Methuen Publishing Ltd.
Wright, Graeme (2005). Wisden at Lord's. John Wisden & Co. Ltd.
External links
Profile – Lord's at the CricInfo
1814 establishments in England
Sports venues completed in 1814
St John's Wood
Buildings and structures in the City of Westminster
History of Middlesex
Marylebone Cricket Club
Middlesex County Cricket Club
Cricket grounds in London
Cricket grounds in Middlesex
Cricket in London
Sports venues in London
Sport in the City of Westminster
English cricket venues in the 18th century
English cricket in the 19th century
United Kingdom
Test cricket grounds in England
1975 Cricket World Cup stadiums
1979 Cricket World Cup stadiums
1983 Cricket World Cup stadiums
1999 Cricket World Cup stadiums
2019 Cricket World Cup stadiums
Venues of the 2012 Summer Olympics
Olympic archery venues
Real tennis venues
Archery venues
Tourist attractions in London
Tourist attractions in the City of Westminster
Cricket grounds in England
History museums in London
1814 in London
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu%20Yongfu
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Liu Yongfu
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Liu Yongfu () (1837–1917) was a Chinese warlord and commander of the celebrated Black Flag Army. Liu won fame as a Chinese patriot fighting against the French Empire in northern Vietnam (Tonkin) in the 1870s and early 1880s. During the Sino-French War (August 1884 – April 1885), he established a close friendship with the Chinese statesman and general Tang Jingsong, and in 1895, he helped Tang organise resistance to the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. He succeeded Tang as the second and last president of the short-lived Republic of Formosa (5 June–21 October 1895).
Early years
Liu Yongfu was born on 10 October 1837, in the town of Qinzhou (Ch'in-chou, ) in southern China, close to the Vietnamese border. Qinzhou, now in Guangxi province, was at that time in the extreme southwest of Guangdong province. The ancestral home of Liu's family was the village of Popai in Guangxi province, and when he was eight his parents moved to Shangsizhou (Shang-ssu-chou, , modern Shangsi, Guangxi) in Guangxi. Liu's family was poor, living by manual work for others, and was only just able to scrape a living. In 1857, Liu joined a local militia force commanded by Wu Yuanqing (Wu Yuan-ch'ing, ), who claimed to hold a commission from the Taipings.
The fall of Nanking (capital of Taiping Heavenly kingdom) and the collapse of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1864 altered Liu's prospects dramatically for the worse. Imperial forces gradually began to reassert their control over southwest China, and it was only a matter of time before they secured Guangxi province. To escape their vengeance, Liu needed to make himself sufficiently powerful to give the Imperial generals pause. His first step was to buy some time by retreating into the mountains of northern Tonkin. In 1868 he abandoned Wu Yuanqing's rebels and crossed into Vietnam with a force of 200 soldiers whose loyalty he could trust. He had dreamed as a youth that he would one day become a famous 'General of the Black Tiger', and christened his tiny band of adventurers the Black Flag Army, Hēiqí Jūn (hei-ch'i chun, ). The Black Flags marched slowly through northern Tonkin, recruiting men to their standard as they went, and eventually set up camp just outside Sơn Tây, on the northern bank of the Red River.
The mountain regions of western Tonkin were inhabited by minority tribesmen who did not acknowledge the writ of the Vietnamese government, and these montagnards resented the arrival of the Black Flag Army on Vietnamese soil. Fearing that Liu might eventually pose a threat to their own ascendancy in the area, they declared their intention of attacking the intruders. Liu struck first, however, and defeated a far stronger army of montagnards in a surprise attack. The short conflict enabled Liu to come to an early arrangement with the Vietnamese authorities, who had observed the performance of the Black Flag Army with great interest. The Vietnamese government, reasoning that it would be difficult to dislodge Liu from its territory and that he might also be a useful ally against the refractory montagnards, co-opted Liu into its service in 1869 and gave him military rank in the Vietnamese army. Provided that he continued to act in accordance with his technical status as a Vietnamese military governor, the Vietnamese authorities promised not to trouble the Black Flag leader.
Black Flags versus Yellow Flags
Having secured his base, Liu began to extend his ambitions. Ultimately, his intention was to carve out a small empire of his own controlling the upper course of the Red River. His first target was the border town of Lào Cai, which had recently been occupied by a force of Cantonese bandits under the command of He Junchang (Ho Chun-ch'ang, ). His band was allied with the Yellow Flag Army, a force established by Huang Chongying (Huang Ch'ung-ying, ) on the model of the Black Flag Army and about three times its size. Liu's attempt on Lào Cai brought him into conflict with the Yellow Flags. Troops of both armies moved warily into the town while their leaders negotiated insincerely. Finally the Yellow Flags launched a surprise attack on the Black Flags, first setting off a mine in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Black Flag leader. However, despite their superior numbers, they were defeated and driven from Lào Cai. The town remained in the hands of the Black Flags until 1885, and became Liu's main stronghold.
In 1869, having conciliated the Vietnamese, Liu also won favour with the Chinese authorities by committing the Black Flag Army to a Chinese punitive campaign against the Yellow Flags, which gave him the opportunity to cripple this rival bandit army. The Chinese expedition was commanded by the veteran general Feng Zicai, who would later win fame during the Sino-French War (August 1884 – April 1885) by defeating a French column at the Battle of Zhennan Pass (24 March 1885). In one particular military exploit, known as 'the storming of the thirteen passes', Liu's Black Flags fought their way through the mountains and attacked Huang Chongying's headquarters at Hayang, a town on the Clear River near the border with Yunnan, forcing the Yellow Flag leader to take refuge with his montagnard allies. Although the Chinese and Black Flags failed to annihilate the Yellow Flags, they taught them a severe lesson, and Feng rewarded Liu for his help by offering him an honorary commission in the Chinese army.
In the next few years, Liu Yongfu established a profitable protection racket on commerce on the Red River between Sơn Tây and Lào Cai. Traders were taxed at the rate of 10% of the value of their goods. The profits that accrued from this extortion were so great that Liu's army swelled in numbers during the 1870s, attracting to its ranks adventurers from all over the world. Although most of the soldiers were Chinese, many of the junior officers were Americans or European soldiers of fortune, some of whom had seen action in the Taiping Rebellion, and Liu used their expertise to transform the Black Flag Army into a formidable fighting force. Liu commanded 7,000 black flag soldiers from Guangdong and Guangxi around Tonkin.
Liu Yongfu and Francis Garnier
In 1873, the Vietnamese government enlisted the help of Liu's Black Flag Army to defeat the first French attempt to conquer Tonkin, led by the naval lieutenant Francis Garnier. On 21 December 1873 Liu Yongfu and around 600 Black Flags, marching beneath an enormous black banner, approached the west gate of Hanoi. A large Vietnamese army followed in their wake. Garnier began shelling the Black Flags with a field piece mounted above the gate, and when they began to fall back led a party of 18 French marine infantrymen out of the city to chase them away. The attack failed, and Garnier, leading three men uphill in a bayonet attack on a party of Black Flags, was speared to death by several Black Flag soldiers after stumbling in a watercourse. The youthful enseigne de vaisseau Adrien-Paul Balny d’Avricourt led an equally small column out of the citadel to support Garnier, but he also died leading his men. Three French soldiers also were killed in these sorties, and the others fled back to the citadel after their officers fell. Garnier's death ended the first French adventure in Tonkin.
Liu Yongfu and Henri Rivière
In April 1882, the French naval captain Henri Rivière captured the citadel of Hanoi, again disclosing French colonial ambitions in Tonkin and alarming the Vietnamese and Chinese governments. In April 1883, in the wake of Rivière's capture of Nam Định (27 March), the Chinese and Vietnamese were again able to enlist the support of Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army against the French in Tonkin.
On 10 May 1883 Liu Yongfu challenged the French to battle in a taunting message widely placarded on the walls of Hanoi:The valiant warrior Liu, general and military governor of the three provinces, has decided to wage war. He makes this proclamation to the French bandits: Everyone knows you are thieves. Other nations despise you. Whenever you come to a country, you claim that you have come to preach the faith, but you really wish to stir up the inhabitants with false rumours. You claim that you have come to trade, but in fact you are plotting to take over the country.
You act like wild animals. You are as fierce as tigers and wolves. Ever since you came to Vietnam, you have seized cities and killed governors. Your crimes are as numerous as the hairs on the head. You have taken over the customs and seized the revenues. This crime deserves death. The inhabitants have been reduced to misery, and the country is nearly ruined. God and man both loathe you. Heaven and earth both reject you. I have now been ordered to wage war. My three armies are massed like clouds. My rifles and cannon are as many as the trees of the forest. We are eager to attack you in your devil’s den and to suppress all disloyal subjects. But the country’s welfare weighs heavily with me. I cannot bear to turn Hanoi into a battlefield, in case I ruin its merchants and people. So I am first making this proclamation: You French bandits, if you think you are strong enough, send your rabble of soldiers to Phủ Hoài to fight in the open field with my tiger warriors, and then we will see who is the strongest.
If you are afraid to come, cut off the heads of your chief men and present them to me. Then give back the cities you have taken. I am a merciful commander, and I will let you miserable ants live. But if you delay, my army will take your city and kill you all, and not even a blade of grass will mark where you stood. You must choose between happiness and disaster. Life is but a step away from death. Mark my words well.
The French had no option but to respond to so stark a challenge. On 19 May, Rivière marched out of Hanoi to attack the Black Flags. His small force (around 450 men) advanced without proper precautions, and blundered into a well-prepared Black Flag ambush at Paper Bridge (Pont de Papier), a few miles to the west of Hanoi. In the Battle of Paper Bridge, the French were enveloped on both wings, and were only with difficulty able to regroup and fall back to Hanoi. Like Francis Garnier, ten years earlier, Rivière was killed in the battle. Liu had now taken the scalps of two French naval commanders in remarkably similar circumstances.
Sơn Tây, Bắc Ninh and Hưng Hóa
Liu began an unconventional campaign against the French, with success. Liu fought two further actions against the French in the autumn of 1883, the Battle of Phủ Hoài (15 August 1883) and the Battle of Palan (1 September 1883). The Black Flag Army was mauled in both these battles, but was not seriously damaged as a fighting force. In December 1883, however, Liu Yongfu suffered a major defeat at the hands of Admiral Amédée Courbet in the Sơn Tây Campaign. Despite fighting with fanatical courage in the engagements at Phù Sa on 14 December and Sơn Tây on 16 December, the Black Flags were unable to prevent the French from storming Sơn Tây. Although there were also Chinese and Vietnamese contingents at Sơn Tây, the Black Flag Army bore the brunt of the fighting, and took very heavy casualties.
Angered that his Chinese and Vietnamese allies had done little to support the Black Flag Army at Sơn Tây, Liu stood on the sidelines during the Bắc Ninh Campaign (March 1884). After the French capture of Bắc Ninh, Liu retreated with the Black Flag Army to Hưng Hóa. In April 1884 the French advanced on Hưng Hóa with both brigades of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps. The Black Flags had thrown up an impressive series of fortifications around the town, but General Charles-Théodore Millot, the French commander-in-chief, took it without a single French casualty. While General François de Négrier's 2nd Brigade pinned the Black Flags frontally and subjected Hưng Hóa to a ferocious artillery bombardment from the Trung Xa heights, General Louis Brière de l'Isle's 1st Brigade made a flank march to the west to cut Liu's line of retreat. On the evening of 11 April, seeing Brière de l'Isle's Turcos and marine infantry emerging behind their flank at Xuân Đông, the Black Flags evacuated Hưng Hóa before they were trapped inside it. They set alight the remaining buildings before they left, and on the following morning the French found the town completely abandoned.
Liu now fell back up the Red River to Thanh Quan, only a few days march from the frontier town of Lào Cai. He was now in a position to retreat into China if the French pursued him. Several hundred Black Flag soldiers, demoralised by the ease with which Courbet and Millot had defeated the Black Flag Army, surrendered to the French in the summer of 1884. One of Millot's final achievements was to advance up the Lô River and throw the Black Flag Army out of Tuyên Quang in the first week of June, again without a single French casualty. If the French had seriously pursued Liu Yongfu after the capture of Tuyên Quang, the Black Flags would probably have been driven from Tonkin there and then. But French attention was diverted by the sudden crisis with China provoked by the Bắc Lệ ambush (23 June 1884), and during the eventful summer of 1884 the Black Flags were left to lick their wounds.
Tuyên Quang and Hòa Mộc
Liu's fortunes were transformed by the outbreak of the Sino-French War in August 1884. The Empress Dowager Cixi responded to the news of the destruction of China's Fujian Fleet at the Battle of Fuzhou (23 August 1884) by ordering her generals to invade Tonkin to throw the French out of Hanoi. Tang Jingsong, the commander of the Yunnan Army, knew that Liu's services would be invaluable in the war with France. Although Liu had bitter memories of his previous service as an ally of China, he respected Tang (the only Chinese commander to have contributed troops to the defence of Sơn Tây), and agreed to take part with the Black Flag Army in the forthcoming campaign. Appointed a divisional general in the Yunnan Army, Liu helped the Chinese forces put pressure on Hưng Hóa and the isolated French posts of Phủ Doãn and Tuyên Quang during the autumn of 1884. In the winter and spring of 1885 he commanded 3,000 soldiers of the Black Flag Army during the Siege of Tuyên Quang. At the Battle of Hòa Mộc (2 March 1885), the Black Flag Army inflicted heavy casualties on a French column marching to the relief of Tuyên Quang.
One of the conditions of the peace treaty between France and China that ended the Sino-French War was that Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army should leave Tonkin. By the end of the war, Liu had only around 2,000 troops under his command and was in no position to resist pressure from Tang Jingsong and the other commanders of the Yunnan Army to remove the Black Flag Army. Liu crossed into China with some of his most loyal followers, but the bulk of the Black Flag Army was disbanded on Tonkinese soil in the summer of 1885. Unpaid for months and still in possession of their rifles, most of the unwanted Black Flag soldiers immediately took to banditry. It took months for the French to reduce them, and the route between Hưng Hóa and the border town of Lào Cai was only secured in February 1886. Meanwhile, the Qing government rewarded Liu Yongfu for his services in the Sino-French War with a minor military appointment in Guangdong province.
Liu's Black Flag forces continued to harass and fight the French in Tonkin after the end of the Sino-French War.
Defence of the Democratic Republic of Formosa
In 1895, under the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ended the First Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was ceded by China to Japan. The Taiwanese attempted to resist the Japanese occupation, and a short-lived Democratic Republic of Formosa was declared by the Chinese governor Tang Jingsong on 25 May 1895. Tang became president of the new republic, and Liu Yongfu was made a brigadier general and given command of resistance forces in southern Taiwan. Ten days after declaring independence Tang Jingsong fled to Mainland China, and Liu replaced him as head of government (though he did not, as is often claimed, succeed to the presidency). At the end of May 1895 Japanese forces landed near Keelung, on the northern coast of Taiwan, and proceeded to conquer the island. Between June and August the Japanese defeated the Formosan forces in northern and central Taiwan, and in October 1895 three Japanese columns advanced on Tainan, sweeping aside Liu's forces. On 20 October 1895 Liu fled to the mainland aboard the British-flagged merchant ship SS Thales with the Japanese cruiser in close pursuit. Yaeyama caught Thales in international waters outside of Amoy, but her boarding party was unable to apprehend Liu, who was disguised as a coolie. The incident provoked a diplomatic protest from the United Kingdom and resulted in an official apology by the Japanese government. On 21 October Tainan capitulated to the Japanese. The collapse of Formosan resistance inaugurated five decades of Japanese rule in Taiwan.
Final years
Liu Yongfu outlived the Qing dynasty and survived into the second decade of the twentieth century, his reputation growing with the passing years:He continued until the closing years of the dynasty in the employment of the Kwangtung provincial administration, and is said to have been a notable suppressor of bandits and a pacifier of clan feuds, those twin curses of the south China countryside. The advent of the Republic in 1912 found him in retirement, listening with interest to the news of public affairs as others related it to him from the papers, for he himself never learned to read. Most of the time, though, his mind dwelt in the past. He would take out Garnier’s watch and show the picture of the young wife inside the cover. He would tell of his challenge to Rivière and describe the battle at Paper Bridge. But he soon wearied of the incomprehensible foreign devils, and turned instead to what for him had been beyond comparison the most serious business of his life. The talk would then be all of the Black and Yellow Flags, and of the long years of feuds and hatreds in the steaming malarial jungle and on the silent reaches of the great river. His published memoirs, for his reminiscences were reverently taken down in writing, have as their main theme the story of this interminable vendetta between expatriate Chinese. But when he died, in January 1917, it was as the scourge of a formidable foreign enemy, the hero whose achievements were nullified by the cowardice of his own government, that he was mourned by his countrymen, and that is the way they still remember him.
Legacy
The Yongfu Road and Yongfu Elementary School in West Central District, Tainan City, Taiwan, are named after Liu Yongfu.
Notes
References
Davidson, J. W., The Island of Formosa, Past and Present (London, 1903)
Forbes, Andrew ; Henley, David (2011). Traders of the Golden Triangle. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B006GMID5
Lung Chang [], Yueh-nan yu Chung-fa chan-cheng [, Vietnam and the Sino-French War] (Taipei, 1993)
McAleavy, H., Black Flags in Vietnam: The Story of a Chinese Intervention (New York, 1968)
Yosaburo Takekoshi, Japanese Rule in Formosa (London, 1907)
Thomazi, A., La conquête de l'Indochine (Paris, 1934)
Thomazi, A., Histoire militaire de l'Indochine française (Hanoi, 1931)
Qing dynasty generals
1837 births
1917 deaths
Chinese military personnel of the First Sino-Japanese War
People of the Sino-French War
People of the Tonkin campaign
1895 in Taiwan
Taiwanese politicians
Heads of state of former countries
Generals from Guangxi
People from Qinzhou
Hakka generals
People from Bobai
Hakka writers
Writers from Guangxi
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International%20Cricket%20Council
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International Cricket Council
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The International Cricket Council (ICC) is the global governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from Australia, England and South Africa. It was renamed as the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and adopted its current name in 1987. The ICC has its headquarters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The ICC has 108 member nations currently: 12 Full Members that play Test matches, and 96 Associate Members. The ICC is responsible for the organisation and governance of cricket's major international tournaments, most notably the Cricket World Cup, T20 World Cup, and ICC World Test Championship. It also appoints the umpires and referees that officiate at all sanctioned Test matches, One Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals. It promulgates the ICC Code of Conduct, which sets professional standards of discipline for international cricket, and also co-ordinates action against corruption and match-fixing through its Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU).
The ICC does not control bilateral fixtures between member countries (which include all Test matches), and neither does it govern domestic cricket within member countries. It does not make or alter the laws of the game, which have remained under the governance of the Marylebone Cricket Club since 1788.
The Chairman heads the board of directors and on 26 June 2014, Narayanaswami Srinivasan, the former president of BCCI, was announced as the first chairman of the council. The role of ICC president has become a largely honorary position since the establishment of the chairman role and other changes were made to the ICC constitution in 2014. It has been claimed that the 2014 changes have handed control to the 'Big Three' nations of England, India and Australia. The last ICC president was Zaheer Abbas, who was appointed in June 2015 following the resignation of Mustafa Kamal in April 2015. When the post of ICC president was abolished in April 2016, Shashank Manohar, who replaced Srinivasan in October 2015, became the first independent elected chairman of the ICC.
History
1909–1963 – Imperial Cricket Conference
On 30 November 1907, Abe Bailey, the President of the South African Cricket Association, wrote a letter to the Marylebone Cricket Club's (MCC, England) secretary, Francis Lacey. Bailey suggested the formation of an 'Imperial Cricket Board'. In the letter, he suggested that the board would be responsible for the formulation of rules and regulations which will govern the international matches between the three members: Australia, England and South Africa. Bailey, wanted to host a Triangular Test series between the participant countries in South Africa. Australia rejected the offer. However, Bailey did not lose hope. He saw an opportunity of getting the three members together during Australia's tour of England in 1909. After continued lobbying and efforts, Bailey was successful.
On 15 June 1909, representatives from England, Australia and South Africa met at Lord's and founded the Imperial Cricket Conference. A month later, a second meeting between the three members was held. The rules were agreed upon amongst the nations, and the first-ever Tri-Test series was decided to be held in England in 1912.
In 1926, West Indies, New Zealand and India were elected as Full Members, doubling the number of Test-playing nations to six. After the formation of Pakistan in 1947, it was given Test status in 1952, becoming the seventh Test-playing nation. In May 1961 South Africa left the Commonwealth and therefore lost membership.
1964–1988 – International Cricket Conference
In 1964, the ICC agreed to include the non-Test playing countries. The following year, the ICC changed its name to the International Cricket Conference. The US, Ceylon and Fiji were admitted as Associates, a new class of members.
In 1968, Denmark, Bermuda, Netherlands, and East Africa were admitted as Associates, while South Africa had still not applied to rejoin the ICC.
In 1969, the basic rules of ICC were amended.
At the 1971 meeting, the idea of organizing a World Cup was introduced. At the 1973 meeting, it was decided that a World Cup would be played in 1975 in England. The six Test playing nations and East Africa and Sri Lanka were invited to take part.
New members were added frequently during this period:
In 1974, Israel and Singapore were admitted as Associates.
In 1976, West Africa was admitted as an Associate.
In 1977, Bangladesh was admitted as an Associate.
In 1978, Papua-New Guinea was admitted as an Associate. South Africa applied to rejoin, but their application was rejected.
In 1981, Sri Lanka was promoted to a Full Member, and they played their first Test in 1982.
In 1984, a third class of membership (Affiliate) was introduced. Italy was the first such member, followed by Switzerland in 1985. In 1987, Bahamas and France were admitted, followed by Nepal in 1988.
1989–present – International Cricket Council
At the July 1989 meeting, the ICC renamed itself as the International Cricket Council, and the tradition of the MCC President automatically becoming the Chairman of ICC was abolished.
In 1990, UAE joined as an Associate.
In 1991, for the first time in ICC history, the meeting was held away from England, in Melbourne. South Africa was re-elected as a Full Member of the ICC in July, following the end of apartheid.
In 1992, Zimbabwe was admitted as the ninth Full Member. Namibia joined as an Associate member. Austria, Belgium, Brunei and Spain joined as Affiliates.
In 1993, the position of Chief Executive of ICC was created; David Richards of the Australian Cricket Board was the first person appointed to the position. In July, Sir Clyde Walcott, from Barbados, was elected as the first non-British Chairman. The emergence of new technology saw the introduction of a third umpire who was equipped with video playback facilities.
By 1995, TV replays were made available for run-outs and stumpings in Test matches, with the third umpire required to signal out or not out with red and green lights respectively. The following year, the cameras were used to determine if the ball had crossed the boundary, and in 1997 decisions on the cleanness of catches could be referred to the third umpire. This year also saw the introduction of the Duckworth-Lewis method of adjusting targets in rain-affected ODI matches.
In 2000, Bangladesh were admitted as the tenth Full Member of the International Cricket Council.
In 2005, ICC moved to its new headquarters in Dubai.
In 2017, Afghanistan and Ireland were admitted as the eleventh and twelfth Full Members of the International Cricket Council after a unanimous vote at the ICC Full Council meeting at The Oval. Affiliate Membership was also abolished, with all existing Affiliate Members becoming Associate Members.
In 2018, all Women's T20 matches were elevated to Women's Twenty20 International status.
In July 2022, Cambodia, Cote D'Ivoire, and Uzbekistan were granted associate member status by ICC.
On 12 June 2023, After Australia's ICC World Test Championship title win against India, in the final by 209 runs at The Oval, Australia made history by becoming the first-ever team to clinch all major ICC trophies.
Members
Full Members – The twelve governing bodies of teams that have full voting rights within the International Cricket Council and play official Test matches.
Associate Members – The 96 governing bodies in countries where cricket is firmly established and organised, but have not been granted Full Membership yet.
Location
From its formation, the ICC had Lord's Cricket Ground as its home, and from 1993 had its offices in the "Clock Tower" building at the nursery end of the ground. The independent ICC was funded initially by commercial exploitation of the rights to the World Cup of One Day International cricket. As not all Member countries had double-tax agreements with the United Kingdom, it was necessary to protect cricket's revenues by creating a company, ICC Development (International) Pvt. Ltd – known as IDI, outside the UK. This was established in January 1994 and was based in Monaco.
For the remainder of the nineties, the administration of IDI was a modest affair. But with the negotiation of a bundle of rights to all ICC events from 2001 to 2008, revenues available to International cricket and the ICC member countries rose substantially. This led to a growth in the number of commercial staff employed by IDI in Monaco. It also had the disadvantage that the council's cricket administrators, who remained at Lord's, were separated from their commercial colleagues in Monaco. The Council decided to seek ways of bringing all of their staff together in one office while protecting their commercial income from tax.
The option of staying at Lord's was investigated and a request was made, through Sport England, to the British Government to allow the ICC to have all its personnel (including those working on commercial matters) in London – but be given special exemption from paying UK corporation tax on its commercial income. The British Government was unwilling to create a precedent and would not agree to this request. As a consequence, the ICC examined other locations and eventually settled on the emirate of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. ICC is registered in British Virgin Islands. In August 2005, the ICC moved its offices to Dubai, and subsequently closed its offices at Lord's and Monaco. The move to Dubai was made after an 11–1 vote by the ICC's executive board in favour.
While the principal driver of the ICC's move to Dubai was the wish to bring its main employees together in one tax-efficient location, a secondary reason was the wish to move offices closer to the increasingly important new centres of cricketing power in South Asia. Lord's had been a logical venue when the ICC had been administered by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) (a situation that lasted until 1993). But the growing power of India and Pakistan in world cricket had made the continued control of international cricket by a British private members club (the MCC) anachronistic and unsustainable. A direct consequence of the changes and reforms instituted in 1993 was eventually to be the move away from Lord's to a more neutral venue.
Income generation
The ICC generates income from the tournaments it organises, primarily the Cricket World Cup, and it distributes the majority of that income to its members. Sponsorship and television rights of the World Cup brought in over US$1.6 billion between 2007 and 2015, by far the ICC's main source of income. In the nine-month accounting period to 31 December 2007 the ICC had operating income of $12.66 million, mainly from member subscriptions and sponsorship. In contrast, event income was US$285.87 million, including $239 million from the 2007 World Cup. There was also investment income of $6.695 million in the period. In 2022 ICC generated US$ 208,375,000 as an net income.
The ICC has no income streams from the bilateral international cricket matches (Test matches, One Day International and Twenty20 Internationals), that account for the great majority of the international playing schedule, as they are owned and run by its members. It has sought to create other new events to augment its World Cup revenues. These include the ICC Champions Trophy and the ICC Super Series played in Australia in 2005. However, these events have not been as successful as the ICC hoped. The Super Series was widely seen as a failure and is not expected to be repeated, and India called for the Champions Trophy to be scrapped in 2006. The Champions Trophy 2004 event was referred to in Wisden 2005 by the editor as a "turkey of a tournament" and a "fiasco"; although the 2006 event was seen as a greater success due to a new format.
The ICC World Twenty20, first played in 2007, was a success. The ICC's current plan is to have an international tournament every year, with a Twenty20 World Cup played in even number years, the World Cup continuing to be held the year before the Olympic Games, and the ICC Champions Trophy in the remaining year of the cycle. This cycle began in 2010, one year after the 2009 tournament.
Rules and regulation
The International Cricket Council oversees playing conditions, bowling reviews, and other ICC regulations. The ICC does not have copyright to the Laws of Cricket: only the MCC may change the Laws, though this is usually done in consultation with the game's global governing body. The ICC maintains a set of playing conditions for international cricket which make slight amendments to the Laws. They also have a "Code of Conduct" to which teams and players in international matches are required to adhere. Where breaches of this code occur the ICC can apply sanctions, usually fines. In 2008, the ICC imposed 19 penalties on players. ICC announces changes to Playing Conditions.
Umpires and referees
The ICC appoints international umpires and match referees who officiate at all sanctioned Test matches, One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals. The ICC operates three panels of umpires: the Elite Panel, the International Panel, and the Associates and Affiliates Panel.
As of March 2012, the Elite Panel included twelve umpires. In theory, two umpires from the Elite Panel officiate at every Test match, while one Elite Panel umpire stands in ODI matches together with an umpire from the International Panel. In practice, members of the International Panel stand in occasional Test matches, as this is viewedn excellent good opportunity to see whether they can cope at the Test level and whether they should be elevated to the Elite Panel. Members of the Elite Panel are full-time employees of the ICC, although they do still, very occasionally, umpire first-class cricket in their country of residence. The average annual officiating schedule for Elite Umpires is 8–10 Test matches and 10–15 ODIs, a potential on-field workload of 75 days per year, plus travel and preparation time.
The International Panel is made up of officials nominated from each of the ten Test-playing cricket boards. The Panel Members officiate in ODI matches in their home country, and assist the Elite Panel at peak times in the cricket calendar when they can be appointed to overseas ODI and Test matches. International Panel members also undertake overseas umpiring assignments such as the ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup to improve their knowledge and understanding of overseas condition, and help them prepare for possible promotion to the Elite Panel. Some of these umpires also officiate in the Cricket World Cup. Each of the Test cricket boards nominates a "third umpire" who can be called upon to review certain on-field decisions through instant television replays. All third umpires are first-class umpires in their own country, and the role is seen as a step onto the International Panel, and then the Elite Panel.
The inaugural ICC Associate and Affiliate International Umpires Panel was formed in June 2006. It superseded the ICC Associate and Affiliate International Umpires Panel, created in 2005, and serves as the pinnacle for umpires from non-Test playing Members, with selection achieved through each of the five ICC Development Program Regional Umpires Panels.
Members of the Associate and Affiliate International Umpires Panel are eligible for appointments to ODIs involving ICC Associate Members, ICC Intercontinental Cup matches and other Associate and Affiliate tournaments. High-performing umpires may also be considered for other ICC events, including the ICC U/19 Cricket World Cup, and could also be invited to be involved in the ICC Champions Trophy and ICC Cricket World Cup.
There is also an Elite Panel of ICC Referees who act as the independent representative of the ICC at all Test and ODI matches. As of January 2009, it had 6 members, all highly experienced former international cricketers. The Referees do not have the power to report players or officials (which has to be done by the umpires), but they are responsible for conducting hearings under the ICC Code of Conduct and imposing penalties as required at matches, ranging from an official reprimand to a lifetime ban from cricket. Decisions can be appealed, but the original decision is upheld in most cases.
The Council failed to achieve consensus among the cricket-playing nations – as of June 2012 – on the universal application of an Umpire's Decision Review System, due to opposition by BCCI. It will continue to be applied subject to mutual agreement of the playing countries. In July 2012, ICC decided to send a delegation to show the ball tracking research done by Ed Rosten, an expert on computer vision and technology, to BCCI to remove the skepticism about the use of DRS technology.
Regional bodies
These regional bodies aim to organise, promote and develop the game of cricket:
Asian Cricket Council
European Cricket Council
African Cricket Association
ICC Americas
ICC East Asia-Pacific
Two further regional bodies were disestablished following the creation of the African Cricket Association:
East and Central Africa Cricket Council
West Africa Cricket Council
Rankings, Competitions and awards
Rankings
The ICC publishes team rankings for all three formats of the game and updates the same periodically.
ICC Men's Test Team Rankings
ICC Men's ODI Team Rankings
ICC Men's T20I Team Rankings
ICC Women's ODI Team Rankings
ICC Women's T20I Team Rankings
The ICC Player Rankings are a widely followed system of rankings for international cricketers based on their recent performances.
ICC Men's Player Rankings
ICC Women's Player Rankings
International tournaments
Tournaments
The ICC organizes various international Test, One-Day and Twenty20 cricket competitions.
The ICC in association with Commonwealth Games Federation and International Olympic Committee also conducts Twenty20 Cricket Tournament for Women in Commonwealth Games and Cricket at the Summer Olympics (for both) respectively.
Qualifiers
The ICC organizes qualifying tournaments for various international main events.
Starting with the 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, the Global Qualifiers will no longer take place and teams will qualify directly based on their performance in the previous T20 World Cup and from regional qualifiers.
Awards
The ICC has instituted the ICC Awards to recognize and honor the best international cricket players of the previous 12 months. The inaugural ICC Awards ceremony was held on 7 September 2004, in London. In 2020, ICC announced a special one-off event, the ICC Awards of the Decade to honour the best performers and performances in the previous 10 years.
Anti-corruption and security
The ICC has also had to deal with drugs and bribery scandals involving top cricketers. Following the corruption scandals by cricketers connected with the legal and illegal bookmaking markets, the ICC set up an Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) in 2000 under the retired Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, Lord Condon. Among the corruption on which they have reported was that of former South African captain Hansie Cronje who had accepted substantial sums of money from an Indian bookmaker for under-performing or ensuring that certain matches had a pre-determined result. Similarly, the former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja were investigated, found guilty of match-fixing, and banned from playing cricket (for life and for five years, respectively). The ACSU continues to monitor and investigate any reports of corruption in cricket and protocols have been introduced, which for example prohibit the use of mobile telephones in dressing rooms.
Prior to the 2007 Cricket World Cup ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed warned against any corruption and said that the ICC would be vigilant and intolerant against it.
Following a scandal that occurred during the 2010 Pakistan tour of England, 3 Pakistani players, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt were found to be guilty of spot-fixing, and were banned for 5 years, 7 years and 10 years respectively. On 3 November 2011, jail terms were handed down of 30 months for Butt, one year for Asif, six months for Amir and two years eight months for Majeed, the sports agent that facilitated the bribes.
In 2019, an investigation by Al Jazeera revealed match-fixing in Sri-Lanka, India, England, Australia and other cricket playing nations. The ICC launched an investigation corcerning the report.
Global Cricket Academy
The ICC Global Cricket Academy (GCA) is located at Dubai Sports City in the United Arab Emirates. The GCA's facilities include two ovals, each with 10 turf pitches, outdoor turf and synthetic practice facilities, indoor practice facilities including hawk eye technology and a cricket-specific gymnasium. Rod Marsh has been appointed as the academy's Director of Coaching. The opening, originally planned for 2008, took place in 2010.
ICC Cricket World Program
The International Cricket Council telecasts a weekly program on television called ICC Cricket World. It is produced by Sportsbrand.
It is a weekly 30-minute program providing the latest cricket news, recent cricket action including all Test and One-Day International matches, as well as off-field features and interviews.
Criticism
In 2015, Sam Collins and Jarrod Kimber made the documentary Death of a Gentleman on the internal organisation of the ICC, saying that the richer member countries were running the organisation to the detriment of the other members.
See also
Association of Cricket Officials
Federation of International Cricketers' Associations
International structure of cricket
List of International Cricket Council presidents (Position dissolved since 2014)
References
External links
ICC Crictos Launch with Fancraze
Organisations based in Dubai
Sports organizations established in 1909
Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New%20York%20University%20Tandon%20School%20of%20Engineering
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New York University Tandon School of Engineering
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The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United States.
The school dates back to 1854 when its predecessor institutions were separately founded: the University of the City of New York School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, which evolved into the NYU College of Engineering; and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, which evolved into Polytechnic Institute. In 1973, Polytechnic Institute acquired the College of Engineering from NYU, but in 2008, Polytechnic was absorbed by NYU to become its new engineering school. The school was renamed in 2015 in honor of NYU Trustees Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon following their donation of $100 million to the school.
The school's main campus is in Brooklyn's MetroTech Center, an urban academic-industrial research park. It is one of several engineering schools that were founded based on a European polytechnic university model in the 1800s, in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States. It has been a key center of research in the development of microwave, wireless, radar, electronics in general, polymers, industrial engineering, operations research and the US space program.
History
Predecessor institutions
Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute
On May 17, 1853, a group of Brooklyn businessmen wrote a charter to establish a school for young men. Founded as the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, the school moved into its first home at 99 Livingston Street in Brooklyn. The first class, admitted in 1855, consisted of 265 young men aged nine to 17. The school conferred its first bachelor's degrees in 1871. Graduate programs began in 1901, and the school awarded its first doctoral degree in 1921. From 1889 to 1973 the school became known as Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
In 1917, the preparatory program separated from the Institute and became the Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School. Polytechnic Institute moved to its present location in 1957, the former site of the American Safety Razor Company factory, where it became a co-educational institution.
School of Civil Engineering and Architecture
In 1854, the University of the City of New York, now New York University, founded the School of Civil Engineering and Architecture at a time when specialized schools of engineering were uncommon in America. Classes began in 1855 and the school awarded its first undergraduate degree in 1857. As the industrial revolution took shape, the school formalized its engineering curriculum and the school's first dean, Charles H. Snow, changed the name of the school to the School of Applied Science. During this time the engineering school officially separated from the university's arts and science school then called University College.
In 1894 the University of the City of New York moved its engineering school to a new campus in the Bronx. The new campus gave the university space to build larger science laboratories that could not be constructed at its Washington Square site. With the addition of the new campus, under the leadership of Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken, the University of the City of New York renamed itself New York University. The neighborhood surrounding the Bronx campus eventually became known as University Heights. By 1920 separate electrical and chemical engineering departments were created and the school changed its name to the College of Engineering.
Acquisition of NYU College of Engineering by Polytechnic Institute
Enrollment at New York University expanded considerably from the early 1900s into the postwar decades. However, by the early 1970s this growth ceased due to rising crime and financial troubles in New York City. New York University faced financial hardships leading it to sell its University Heights campus that housed its engineering school to City University of New York, which in turn renamed the campus Bronx Community College.
Also during that period from 1969 to 1975, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn was forced to rely on subsidies provided by New York state to keep the school afloat. The state supported Polytechnic on the basis that closing the school would create economic hardship locally. With both Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and New York University facing financial difficulties, the state brokered a merger with New York University's engineering school. Polytechnic Institute acquired the faculty, programs and students of New York University's engineering school to form Polytechnic Institute of New York. Polytechnic Institute of New York gained university status in 1985 and changed its name to Polytechnic University.
By 1986 Polytechnic University in Brooklyn was the largest technological university in the New York metropolitan area and the second-largest in graduate enrollment in the nation after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Of the 300 engineering schools in the United States, Polytechnic had the second-largest graduate enrollment and was among the most successful institutions in the country as a producer of science and engineering graduates who went on to doctoral studies. An average of 7.2 percent of Polytechnic graduates went on to achieve a Ph.D., compared with two other schools with large engineering programs: Carnegie Mellon, with an average of 6 percent, and Princeton, with 4.5 percent. Polytechnic University became well known for its research centers in electrophysics and polymer blends.
Merger between Polytechnic University and NYU
Discussions about a merger with Polytechnic University and New York University began in 2004. Four years later Polytechnic University and New York University agreed to take steps toward a merger beginning with a formal affiliation between the two schools. This affiliation resulted in the school changing its name to Polytechnic Institute of New York University. The schools officially merged in 2014 when the New York State Regents approved the change of charter making NYU the sole member of Polytechnic University.
Since the merger, applications to the school and incoming SAT scores have increased substantially. The school has also experienced an influx of students coming from outside of New York state. Fundraising and faculty research awards have increased since the merger. The school also opened a bioengineering facility in partnership with the medical and dental schools.
The school has had several fundraising campaigns over the years. From 2001 to 2005 the school raised more than $275 million. Alumnus Joseph J. Jacobs, who founded Jacobs Engineering Group, one of the largest engineering and construction companies in the world, gave the school more than $30 million over the course of his life.
A gift of $100 million from Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon in 2015 resulted in the school changing its name to the Tandon School of Engineering. New York University has committed to investing over $500 million to its engineering school in the coming years. In 2022, NYU announced it will invest $1 billion in the school to hire 40 tenure-track faculty members, improve lab and student spaces, and bolster the cybersecurity and artificial intelligence programs.
Name
The school started from two origins and has carried a number of different names:
1854: Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute; University of the City of New York School of Civil Engineering and Architecture (founding names, separate institutions)
1889: Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (also spun out Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School)
1896: New York University School of Applied Science (separate from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn)
1920: New York University College of Engineering (separate from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn)
1973: Polytechnic Institute of New York (acquired the faculty, programs and students of New York University College of Engineering)
1985: Polytechnic University (acquired university status)
2008: Polytechnic Institute of New York University (affiliated with New York University)
2014: New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering (merged with New York University)
2015: New York University Tandon School of Engineering
Campuses
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering main campus is in Downtown Brooklyn and is close to public transportation routes. It is located in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle and about a 20-minute subway ride from NYU's main campus in Lower Manhattan. It is also connected to the Washington Square campus by the NYU Shuttle Bus system. In addition to its main address at MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, the school offers programs in Manhattan. The school is an integral part of NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai and the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) in downtown Brooklyn.
Brooklyn campus
The school played a major role in bringing about MetroTech Center, one of the largest urban university-corporate parks in the United States, while closing down the larger campus at its former Long Island Graduate Center. Today, the 16-acre, $1 billion complex in Brooklyn includes the school's main campus, along with several technology-dependent companies such as Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), as well as New York City Police Department's 9-1-1 Center, New York City Fire Department Headquarters and the U.S. technology and operations functions of JPMorgan Chase.
The school has seven buildings in Brooklyn, as well as leased spaces in some other nearby buildings. The seven buildings are as follows:
Jacobs Academic Building
Jacobs Administration Building
Rogers Hall
Wunsch Building
Dibner Building
Othmer Residence Hall
Civil Engineering Building (currently closed)
An eighth 460,000-square-foot space at 370 Jay St, adjacent to Rogers Hall, which houses the Centre for Urban Science and Progress and other academic units within NYU, opened in Fall 2017.
Manhattan sites
The Bioengineering Institute research facility is located at 433 First Avenue in Manhattan. The School of Engineering and Colleges of Nursing and Dentistry are located in the building where chemical, biomolecular engineers, as well as mechanical engineers do research in biomaterials and biotherapeutics for regenerative medicine.
The engineering school also has a location in downtown Manhattan. The downtown site offers degree programs in Financial Engineering, Management of Technology, Information Management and Accelerated Management of Technology, and the Exec 21 Construction Management certificate.
Online
NYU Tandon Digital Learning (formerly known as NYU Tandon Online) is the digital learning department at NYU Tandon School of Engineering which offers 4 master's degrees, an advanced graduate certificate, and certificate of completion programs fully online. Focused on peer-to-peer engagement, the unit has been recognized as providing one of the top online learning programs by the Online Learning Consortium among others.
Academic profile
Departments
Applied Physics
Biomedical Engineering
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Civil and Urban Engineering
Computer Science and Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Finance and Risk Engineering
Mathematics (merged into the Courant Department of Mathematics)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Technology, Culture and Society
Technology Management and Innovation (affiliated with Leonard N. Stern School of Business)
Accreditation
All undergraduate and graduate programs at the engineering school are accredited by the Middle States Association. Undergraduate chemistry students have the option to pursue a degree approved by the American Chemical Society (ACS). The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the Computer Science Accreditation Board (CSAB), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE), Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Construction Management Association of America (CMAA), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), American Society for Metals, Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Physical Society (APS) and the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) have recognized the school's undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering, computer science and physics, chemistry and mathematics.
Admissions
Tandon's incoming classes typically consist of about 700 students, with a total academic population of over 5,000. For Fall 2019, the average SAT scores for incoming freshmen was 1448. The acceptance rate for the graduate programs in 2016 was 28%. The PhD student-faculty ratio in 2018 was 3.6:1.
For Fall 2018, the international students represented 91 countries and domestic students represented the 47 U.S States. The student body comprises 28.8% females and 71.2% males.
Rankings
Ranked #2 by U.S. News & World Report Best Online Graduate Computer Information Technology Program in 2019
Ranked #20 by U.S. News & World Report Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs in 2019
Ranked #1 by The Princeton Review Top Graduate Schools for Video Game Design in 2019
Ranked #5 by Risk.net's Top 25 quant finance master's programmes in the world
Ranked #25 in 2020 U.S. News Best Global Universities for Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Ranked #21 in Construction Week Online – The world's top 25 universities for civil engineering in 2019
Ranked #38 in U.S. News Best Engineering Schools Ranked in 2021.
Ranked #66 in U.S. News 2019 undergraduate engineering programs.
Ranked #65 in 2020 Times Higher Education World University Rankings by subject: engineering and technology
Ranked #81 in 2020 U.S. News Best Global Universities for Engineering
Research
In 2018, the school received about $52.5 million in externally sponsored research expenditures. Some of the school's first research institutes included the Polymer Research Institute, established in 1942, and the Microwave Research Institute, established in 1945. The American Chemical Society designated the Polymer Research Institute as a National Historic Chemical Landmark on September 3, 2003. The Microwave Research Institute developed electromagnetic and microwave defense and communication systems and later renamed itself the Weber Research Institute. Other notable research centers of the institute include NSF-sponsored Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology (WICAT), which ranked #1 among technology research centers in funding and #2 in the number of industry participants according to the United States National Science Foundation, Center for Advanced Technologies in Telecommunications (CATT), a New York State and NSF sponsored research center that is also affiliated with Columbia University, NSF-funded Internet Security and Information Systems Lab, a U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) designated Center of Excellence in Information Assurance, Information Assurance Education and a Center of Excellence in Research, and the New York State Resiliency Institute for Storms & Emergencies (NYS RISE), which is housed jointly at NYU's Brooklyn campus, and Stony Brook University.
Over the years the school has been a key center of research in the development of microwave physics, radar, polymers and the space program. During World War II the school's Microwave Research Institute worked on problems whose solution led to the development of radar, and later broke ground in electromagnetic theory and electronics in general. In later years the school participated in the space program, solving re-entry problems of crewed space capsules.
The school has been affiliated with some major inventions and innovations including: the Panama Canal locks; lockmaking; the Brooklyn Bridge cables; cable-lift elevators; cordless phones; ATMs; bar codes; laser; radar; penicillin; polymers; elevator brakes; lightweight, ultra durable automotive brake rotor; light beer; cardiac defibrillator; artificial cardiac pacemaker; RFID; contact lenses; zoom lens; first telephone handset; commercial television; non-stick coating as an application of Teflon; suspension system for the largest radio telescope; microwave technology; Apollo Lunar Module, the first, and to date only, crewed spacecraft to operate exclusively in the airless vacuum of space; X-ray crystallography; structure of the DNA molecule; submarine; modern refrigerator; A/C generator; electric motors; transformer; submarine communications facilities; development of the artificial sweetener aspartame; development of nontoxic processes to create food colorings and remove caffeine from coffee; the quasi-complementary (transistor) amplifier circuit; lateral transistor; the wireless microphone; as well as Eugene Kleiner's first semiconductor (and much of the Silicon Valley), and Spencer Trask's investing and supporting of Thomas Edison's invention of the electric light bulb.
Academic labs
Academic labs and research centers include:
Computational Mechanics Laboratory
Dynamical Systems Laboratory
Brooklyn Experimental Media Center (formerly Integrated Digital Media Institute)
Wireless Implementation Testbed Laboratory
Bio-interfacial Engineering and Diagnostics Lab
Control and Telecommunications Research Laboratory
High-Speed Networking Lab
Power and Power Electronics Engineering Laboratory
CITE Game Innovation Lab
Protein Engineering and Molecular Design Laboratory
Translational Neuroengineering (associated with the NYU Center for Neural Science and the NYU Langone Medical Center)
Urban Future Lab (founded in partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation)
Research centers
Research at the engineering school is conducted either through academic departments or through one of many interdisciplinary research centers including:
Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT)
Center for Finance and Technology (CFT)
Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing (IMAS)
Polymer Research Institute (PRI)
Urban Intelligent Transportation Systems Center (UITSC)
Wireless Internet Center for Advanced Technology (WICAT)
CRISSP (Cyber-Security. Includes Tandon School of Engineering, Wagner Graduate School, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Stern School of Business, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development)
Weber Research Institute
Research Center for Risk Engineering
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center
The Games for Learning Institute
Media and Games Network (MAGNET)
New York State Resiliency Institute for Storms & Emergencies (includes NYU, Stony Brook University, Columbia University, Cornell University, City University of New York and Brookhaven National Laboratory)
NYU WIRELESS
Biomatrix Research Center (located in Manhattan)
CUSP
The Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) is a degree-granting research facility of NYU located at 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, New York and is adjacent to NYU School of Engineering's Rogers Hall.
Notable faculty and alumni
New York University Tandon School of Engineering has just over 33,000 living alumni living in 68 countries as of 2015. The school's alumni include inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, country presidents, university presidents, academic leaders (including NYU Stern's founder Charles Waldo Haskins) and more than 2,000 CEOs and leaders at large corporations. Among its past and present graduates and faculty are at least four Nobel Prize winners, seven National Medals for Science, Technology and Innovation winners, two astronauts, Russ Prize, IEEE Edison Medal, Turing Award, Gordon Prize and Draper Prize winners and over 100 National Academy of Engineering members.
Nobel laureates
Gertrude B. Elion, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Rudolph Marcus, Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Francis Crick, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for being a co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule
Martin Perl, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for his discovery of the tau lepton
National Medals for Science, Technology and Innovation
John G. Trump
Joel S. Engel
Richard J. Gambino
Herman Francis Mark
Rudolph A. Marcus
Ernst Weber
Jerome Swartz, developed early optical strategies for barcode scanning technologies
Russ Prize, Gordon Prize, Draper Prize
Joel S. Engel
Clive Dym
Harold S. Goldberg
Elmer L. Gaden
IEEE Edison Medal
William B. Kouwenhoven, invented the closed-chest cardiac defibrillator
Bancroft Gherardi, Jr.
Turing Award
Judea Pearl
Astronauts
Paolo A. Nespoli
Charles Camarda
DARPA directors
Jack Ruina
Pulitzer Prize winners
James Truslow Adams, writer who coined the term "American Dream
Business leaders
Alumni leaders at large companies include:
Ursula Burns, Chairperson and CEO of Xerox
Arthur C. Martinez, Chairman and CEO of Sears
Robert J. Stevens, Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin
Alfred Amoroso, Chairman of Yahoo!
John Dionisio, Chairman and CEO of AECOM
Herbert L. Henkel, Chairman of Ingersoll Rand
Spencer Trask, Chairman of The New York Times
Jason Hsuan, Chairman and CEO of TPV Technology
John Trani, Chairman and CEO of Stanley Black & Decker
John Elmer McKeen, Chairman and CEO of Pfizer
Mark Ronald, Chairman and CEO of BAE Systems
Vincent A. Calarco, Chairman and CEO of Chemtura
Sunil Godhwani, Chairman and CEO of Religare
Robert Prieto, Chairman and CEO of Parsons Brinckerhoff
Richard Santulli, Chairman and CEO of NetJets
Stav Prodromou, Chairman and CEO of Peregrine Semiconductor
Michael H. Kappaz, Chairman and CEO of KM Group
Israel Borovich, Chairman and CEO of EL AL
Hugh John Casey, Chairman of New York City Transit Authority
Stewart G. Nagler, Vice Chairman, Director and CFO of MetLife
Craig G. Matthews, President, CFO and Chief Operating Officer of KeySpan
Charles D. Strang, Chairman, CEO and President of Outboard Marine Corporation
Charles Ranlett Flint, founder of IBM
Nils Lahr, Chairman, CEO and founder of IBEAM Broadcasting Corporation
Fadi Chehadé, CEO of ICANN
Joseph J. Jacobs, Chairman, CEO and founder of Jacobs Engineering Group
Glenford Myers, Chairman, CEO and founder of Radisys
Bern Dibner, Chairman, CEO and founder of Burndy
Eugene Kleiner, Chairman, CEO and founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Ta-lin Hsu, Chairman, CEO and founder of H&Q Asia Pacific
Paul Ferri, Chairman, CEO and founder of Matrix Partners
William C. W. Mow, Chairman, CEO and founder of Bugle Boy
Jerome Swartz, Chairman, CEO and founder of Symbol Technologies
Alfred P. Sloan (attended, but transferred), Chairman, CEO and founder of General Motors
Rachelle Friedman, Chairperson, CEO and founder of J&R
Bill Friend (engineer), President of Bechtel
Michael Horodniceanu, President of the MTA Capital Construction
Ami Miron, Vice President, General Instrument Corporation
Charles Hinkaty, Vice President, Citibank
Eugene Fasullo, Chief Engineer of Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Jay Greene, NASA chief engineer
George W. Melville, chief engineer of the United States Navy. Congressional Gold Medal winner.
Howard A. Chinn, Chief Engineer of CBS. Pioneered techniques of analog audio recording as well as radio and television broadcasting practices.
Virginia P. Ruesterholz, President, Verizon
Alan Schriesheim, Director and CEO of Argonne National Laboratory, Board member of Rohm and Haas
Inventors
Partial list of inventors affiliated with the school:
Barouh Berkovits, contributed to invention of the cardiac defibrillator and artificial cardiac pacemaker
Gordon Gould, invented the laser
Mario Cardullo, contributed to the invention of the Radio-frequency identification (RFID)
Erol Gelenbe invented the Random neural network and the G-network
Robert G. Brown, invented the first telephone handset
Jasper H. Kane, invented the practical, deep-tank fermentation method for production of large quantities of pharmaceutical-grade penicillin
Maurice Karnaugh, inventor of the Karnaugh map (K-map)
Norman Gaylord, played a prominent role in the development of permeable contact lenses
Ronald R. Yager, invented Ordered weighted averaging aggregation operator
Thomas J. Kelly, designed and built the Apollo Lunar Module
Fredric J. Harris, co-inventor of the Blackman–Harris filter
David J. Thomson, invented the multitaper
Erol Gelenbe, invented G-networks and random neural networks
Joseph Owades, inventor of Lite beer
John Colagioia, invented Thue (programming language)
Paul Peter Ewald, inventor of X-ray diffraction method for determination of molecular structure
Henry C. Goldmark, designed and installed the Panama Canal locks
Helias Doundoulakis, patented the suspension system for the largest radio telescope in the world
George Glauberman, discovered the ZJ theorem and the Z* theorem
Torunn Atteraas Garin, oversaw the development of the artificial sweetener aspartame; developed nontoxic processes to create food colorings and remove caffeine from coffee
James Wood, fabricated the steel cables for the Brooklyn Bridge, making cable-lift elevators possible. He also contributed to the inventions of lockmaking, submarine, A/C generator, electric motors, transformer and the design of the modern refrigerator. He held 240 patents.
Joe Landolina, invented Vetigel
Hung-Chang Lin, invented the quasi-complementary (transistor) amplifier circuit, the lateral transistor, and the wireless microphone. He held 61 patents
Hans Reissner, designed the first successful all-metal aircraft, the Reissner Canard (or Ente) with both skin and structure made of metal. Also, first solved Einstein's equation for the metric of a charged point mass. His closed-form solution, rediscovered by several other physicists within the next few years, is now called the Reissner–Nordström metric.
Harold Horton Sheldon, invented a precision photoelectric color-scope measurement instrument, more accurate than the human eye
Fred Waller, invented Cinerama, the Waller Gunnery Trainer, and patented the water ski
Joginder Lal, Goodyear Polymer Research Manager and expert in the synthesis and mechanism of the formation of high polymers
See also
List of university and college mergers in the United States
Gee Bee Model R
NYU Tandon School of Engineering Lynford Lecture Series
References
External links
Polytechnic School of Engineering
Engineering schools and colleges in the United States
Engineering universities and colleges in New York (state)
Universities and colleges in Brooklyn
Universities and colleges established in 1854
1854 establishments in New York (state)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation%20Sonnenblume
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Operation Sonnenblume
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Operation Sonnenblume (/Operation Sunflower) was the name given to the dispatch of German troops to North Africa in February 1941, during the Second World War. The Italian 10th Army () had been destroyed by the British, Commonwealth, Empire and Allied Western Desert Force attacks during Operation Compass The first units of the new (DAK, Erwin Rommel) departed Naples for Africa and arrived on 11 February 1941. (In the English-speaking world, the term became a generic term for German forces in North Africa.) On 14 February, advanced units of the 5th Light Afrika Division (later renamed the 21st Panzer Division), 3 (Reconnaissance Battalion 3) and 39 (Anti-tank Detachment 39) arrived in Tripoli, Libya and were sent immediately to the front line east of Sirte.
Rommel arrived in Libya on 12 February, with orders to defend Tripoli and Tripolitania, albeit using aggressive tactics. General Italo Gariboldi replaced (Marshal of Italy) Rodolfo Graziani as the Governor-General of Libya on 25 March and Mario Roatta, Commander in Chief of the (Royal Italian Army), ordered Graziani to place Italian motorised units in Libya under the new Italian–German command. The first German troops reached Sirte on 15 February and advanced to Nofilia on 18 February and on 24 February, a German raiding party ambushed a British patrol near El Agheila. On 24 March, the Axis captured El Agheila and on 31 March attacked Mersa Brega. The understrength 3rd Armoured Brigade failed to counter-attack and began to retreat towards Benghazi the next day.
When the 3rd Armoured Brigade moved, its worn-out tanks began to break down, as had been predicted. The brigade failed to prevent Axis flanking moves in the desert south of the Cyrenaican bulge, which left Australian infantry in Benghazi no option but to retreat up the . Rommel split his forces into small columns to harry the British retreat as far the Axis fuel and water shortage permitted. A considerable British force was captured at Mechili, which led to the British retreat continuing to Tobruk and then on to the Libyan–Egyptian frontier. Axis forces failed to capture Tobruk in the first rush and Rommel then had to divide the Axis forces between Tobruk and the frontier.
succeeded because the ability of the Germans to mount an offensive was underestimated by General Archibald Wavell, the Commander in Chief Middle East, the War Office and Winston Churchill. Rommel transformed the situation by his audacity, which was unexpected, despite copious intelligence reports from Ultra and MI 14 (British Military Intelligence). Many experienced British units had been transferred to Greece and others to Egypt to refit. Some commanders appointed by Wavell to Cyrenaica Command (CYRCOM) were unable to live up to expectations and Wavell relied on maps that were found to be inaccurate when he later arrived to see for himself. In 1949, Wavell wrote, "I had certainly not budgeted for Rommel after my experience of the Italians. I should have been more prudent...".
Background
Italian invasion of Egypt
was the Italian invasion of Egypt in 1940 to seize the Suez Canal and which began the Western Desert Campaign (1940–1943). The Italians were opposed by British, Commonwealth, and Free French forces. After numerous delays, the scope of the offensive was reduced to an advance by the 10th Army (Marshal Rodolfo Graziani) into Egypt, as far as Sidi Barrani and attacks on any British forces in the area. The 10th Army advanced about into Egypt but only made contact with the British screening force from the 7th Armoured Division and did not engage the main force around Mersa Matruh. On 16 September, the 10th Army halted and took up defensive positions around the port of Sidi Barrani, intending to build fortified camps, while waiting for engineers to extend the () with the . Graziani intended to use the road to accumulate supplies for an advance on Mersa Matruh, about further east, where the remainder of the 7th Armoured Division and the 4th Indian Division were based.
Operation Compass
The British Western Desert Force (WDF, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O'Connor) attacked the 10th Army in western Egypt and Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya from December 1940 to February 1941. The WDF, with about advanced from Mersa Matruh in Egypt for a five-day raid against the 10th Army. The Italian force had about in fortified posts around Sidi Barrani and further west, over the border in Cyrenaica. The 10th Army was swiftly defeated, Sidi Barrani and Sollum were re-captured, and the British continued the operation, attacking through Cyrenaica to capture Bardia, Tobruk, and Derna. The British then pursued the 10th Army along the around the Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain) towards the western province of Tripolitania. Combe Force, an flying column, moved through the desert south of the Jebel and intercepted the last organised units of the 10th Army at the Battle of Beda Fomm. The WDF then chased the remnants of the 10th Army to El Agheila on the Gulf of Sidra. The British captured and Libyan prisoners, hundreds of tanks, and over and aircraft, while suffering only killed or wounded.
The British were unable to continue beyond El Agheila, due to supply difficulty and worn-out vehicles. In February 1941, the British War Cabinet decided to hold Cyrenaica with the minimum of forces and send the remainder to Greece. The most experienced, best-trained, and best-equipped units of the WDF were diverted to the Greek Campaign in Operation Lustre in March and April 1941. In Cyrenaica, the 6th Australian Division was up to strength but the vehicles of the 7th Armoured Division were worn out. The 2nd New Zealand Division had two brigades available and the 6th Infantry Division in Egypt had no artillery and was training for operations in the Dodecanese Islands. The 7th Australian Division (Major-General John Lavarack) and the 9th Australian Division were poorly-equipped and still training, a Polish Brigade Group was short of equipment and two armoured regiments, detached from the 2nd Armoured Division to the 7th Armoured Division, had also been worn out in the later stages of Operation Compass. The rest of the division had two cruiser tank regiments whose tanks had worn-out tracks and two light tank regiments; the divisional commander had died suddenly and been replaced by Major-General Michael Gambier-Parry.
Siege of Giarabub
The Siege of Giarabub (now Jaghbub), took place in the aftermath of the defeat of the 10th Army. The fortified Italian position at the Al Jaghbub Oasis was besieged by parts of the 6th Australian Division. The 6th Australian Divisional Cavalry Regiment began the siege in December 1940, leaving the Italian garrison dependent for supplies on the . Air transport proved insufficient and hunger prompted many of the locally recruited troops to desert. After being reinforced by the 2/9th Australian Battalion and a battery of the 4th Royal Horse Artillery, the Australians attacked on 17 March 1941 and forced the Italian garrison to surrender on 21 March.
Terrain
The war was fought primarily in the Western Desert, which was about wide, from Mersa Matruh in Egypt to Gazala on the Libyan coast, along , the only paved road. The Sand Sea inland marked the southern limit of the desert at its widest at Giarabub and Siwa; in British parlance, Western Desert came to mean eastern Cyrenaica too. From the coast, extending south lies a raised, flat plain of stony desert about above sea level, about from north to south, as far as the Sand Sea. Scorpions, vipers and flies populated the region, which was inhabited by a small number of Bedouin nomads.
Bedouin tracks like the Trigh el Abd and Trigh Capuzzo, linked wells and the easier traversed ground; navigation was by sun, star, compass and "desert sense", good perception of the environment gained by experience. When Italian troops advanced into Egypt in September 1940, the Maletti Group left Sidi Omar and got lost, having to be found by reconnaissance aircraft. In spring and summer, the days are miserably hot and nights are very cold. The Sirocco ( or ), a hot desert wind, blows clouds of fine sand which reduces visibility to a few yards and coats eyes, lungs, machinery, food,and equipment. Motor vehicles and aircraft need special oil filters. In such barren country, supplies for military operations have to be transported from outside. German engines tended to overheat and tank engine life fell from to , made worse by the lack of common spare parts for German and Italian types of motor.
Supply
The normal sea route for Italian supplies to Libya went west round Sicily, then close to the coast to the port of Tripoli, to avoid interference from British aircraft, ships and submarines based at Malta; a third of the Italian merchant marine had been interned after Italy declared war and the diversion increased the voyage to about . On land, supplies had to be carried huge distances by road or in small consignments by coaster. After the Italian defeat in Operation Compass, Tripoli was the last remaining Axis port, with a maximum unloading capacity of four troopships or five cargo ships at once, enough for the delivery of about of freight per month. The distance from Tripoli to Benghazi was along the , which was only half-way to Alexandria.
The road could flood, was vulnerable to attacks by the Desert Air Force (DAF) and using desert tracks increased vehicle wear. A German motorised division needed per day and moving the supplies lorries. With seven Axis divisions, air and naval units, of supplies per month were needed. From February to May 1941, a surplus of was delivered from Italy. British attacks from Malta had some effect but in May, the worst month for shipping losses, 91 per cent of the supplies arrived. Lack of transport in Libya left German supplies stranded in Tripoli, while the Italians had only for deliveries to A record amount of supply arrived in June but at the front, shortages worsened.
Prelude
German intervention
German involvement in the western Mediterranean began with the arrival in Italy during June 1940, of , General Maximilian von Pohl), a liaison organisation to handle intelligence matters. air units arrived in Italy in October, to carry Italian troops to Albania and then on 15 November, 2 ( Albert Kesselring) transferred from Germany and ( Hans Geisler) moved from Norway to Sicily. By January 1941, X had bombers, bombers, forty twin-engined fighters, and twenty reconnaissance aircraft. X took over operations in southern Italy, Sicily, and part of Sardinia, and later took over in North Africa, with orders to secure the sea route from Italy to North Africa by neutralising Malta. Attacks were to be made on British supply routes to Egypt and Axis forces in North Africa were to be supported by the (General Stefan Fröhlich). The first sorties of the were flown on 7 January, against a British convoy and escorts off the Algerian coast.
On 24 October 1940, after an investigation of the possibility of military operations in North Africa, General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma reported to Adolf Hitler that supply difficulties determined what could be achieved, given the North African climate and terrain, and British control of the Mediterranean. The minimum necessary force to capture Egypt was four divisions, which was also the maximum force which could be supplied from Italy, but Hitler refused to consider sending more than one armoured division. On 12 November, Hitler issued Directive 18, ordering that a panzer division be prepared to move to North Africa. Even this was cancelled after the Italian advance into Egypt in . After the magnitude of the Italian defeat during Operation Compass was realised, Hitler issued Directive 22 on 11 January 1941, ordering the dispatch of a (blocking detachment), initiating (Operation Sunflower). On 3 February, Hitler agreed to send another panzer division to join the 5th Light Afrika Division ( Johann von Ravenstein). The first German troops reached Libya on 14 February and the first tanks on 20 February. A panzer corps of two divisions had been recommended by General Hans von Funck after a visit to Libya in January, and by General Enno von Rintelen, the senior military attaché in Rome; Hitler agreed only to send another panzer regiment. Other elements of the 15th Panzer Division ( Maximilian von Herff) began to arrive in late April.
On 19 February, the (DAK), was formed as a (barrier detachment) to defend Tripolitania. After the Battle of France 1940), the (German army) began bolting extra plates to its tanks and most of those in Panzer Regiment 5 and Panzer Regiment 8 were of the modified type. The tanks were also adapted for desert conditions, with better engine cooling achieved by increasing the speed of the radiator fan and by cutting holes in the hatch covers of the engine compartment. Panzer Regiment 5 of the 5th Light Division arrived in North Africa aboard two convoys from 1941.
The regiment had three (small command vehicles) and four (command vehicles). Another 25 Panzer I to reinforce the regiment arrived in Tripoli on 10 May. The tanks in Panzer Regiment 5 were still painted dark grey () and carried the 3rd Panzer Division emblem of an inverted Y with two strikes. On 18 January, Panzer Regiment 8 with part of the 10th Panzer Division was transferred to the new 15th Panzer Division, which had been created from the 33rd Infantry Division. Panzer Regiment 8 was shipped to Libya in three convoys from 1941 and by 28 May, had completed its assembly in North Africa.
Axis command
After General Giuseppe Tellera was killed on 7 February at the Battle of Beda Fomm, General Italo Gariboldi took over command of the remnants of the 10th Army and on 25 March, replaced Graziani as the Governor-General of Libya. Erwin Rommel was promoted to , appointed to command the DAK and arrived in Libya on 12 February. Rommel had been ordered in January by the Commander in Chief of the German army, Walther von Brauchitsch, to defend Tripoli and Tripolitania, albeit using aggressive tactics. The Commander in Chief of the , Mario Roatta, ordered Gariboldi to put all Italian motorised units under German command. Rommel sent XX Corps with the 27th Infantry Division "Brescia" (Brescia Division), 17th Infantry Division "Pavia" (Pavia Division) and the last 60 tanks of the 132nd Armoured Division "Ariete" (Ariete Division) forward. The German high command had no intention of obtaining complete victory in Africa and on a visit to Berlin, even after the limited advance from Tripoli, along the Gulf of Sirte to Sirte and then another on to Nofilia on 19 March, Rommel was told not to expect reinforcements.
CYRCOM
The 9th Australian Division and the 2nd Armoured Division (minus a brigade group sent to Greece), were left to garrison Cyrenaica under Cyrenaica Command (Lieutenant-General Henry Maitland Wilson), despite the inadequacy of the force if the Germans sent troops to Libya. Command in Egypt was taken over by Lieutenant-General Richard O'Connor and the XIII Corps HQ was replaced by the HQ of the 1st Australian Corps (Lieutenant-General Thomas Blamey). It was believed by General Archibald Wavell the Commander-in-Chief Middle East and GHQ in Egypt, that the Germans could not be ready until May, by when the 2nd Armoured Division tanks would have been overhauled and two more divisions and support troops, particularly artillery, would be ready, along with the 9th Australian Division. The 2nd Armoured Division had a reconnaissance regiment; the 3rd Armoured Brigade had an understrength light tank regiment and one equipped with captured Fiat M13/40 tanks. The cruiser regiment arrived in late March, after many break downs en route, which brought the division up to an understrength armoured brigade. Two brigades of the 9th Australian Division were swapped with two from the 7th Australian Division, which were less well trained and were short of equipment and transport.
Attempts by the British to re-open Benghazi were frustrated by lack of transport, poor weather and from early February, bombing and mining of the harbour. The attacks led the British to abandon attempts to use it to receive supplies and to evacuate the Italian stores and equipment captured during Operation Compass. Lack of transport made it impossible to supply a garrison west of El Agheila, which was the most favourable position for a defensive line and restricted the 2nd Armoured Division to movement between supply dumps, reducing its limited mobility further. In February, Lieutenant-General Philip Neame took over CYRCOM and predicted that many of the tanks would break down as soon as they moved. (Neame also discovered that he had to rely on the local telephone system staffed by Italian operators.) Neame wanted a proper armoured division, two infantry divisions and adequate air support to hold the area. Wavell replied that there was little to be sent and nothing before April. In early March, the 9th Australian Division began to relieve the 6th Australian Division at Mersa Brega for Operation Lustre, which demonstrated the difficulty of tactical moves with insufficient transport. On 20 March, the Australians were withdrawn north of Benghazi to Tocra, near Er Regima for ease of supply and the 2nd Armoured Division took over.
There were no easily defended positions between El Agheila and Benghazi, the terrain being open and good tank country. Neame was ordered to conserve the tank units as far as possible, yet inflict losses on the Axis forces if they attacked, fight a delaying action as far as Benghazi if pressed and abandon the port if necessary. There was no prospect of reinforcement before May so the high ground of the escarpment nearby and the defiles to the north near Er Regima and Barce in the Jebel Akhdar, were to be held for as long as possible. The 2nd Armoured Division would move inland south of the Jebel to Antelat and operate against the flank and rear of the Axis forces, when they moved up the or cut across the desert towards Mechili and Tobruk. The tanks would have to use depots at Msus, Tecnis, Martuba, Mechili, Timimi, El Magrun and Benghazi as a substitute for lorry-borne supply. The 3rd Indian Motor Brigade (Brigadier E. W. D. Vaughan) arrived at Martuba in late March, with all its transport but no tanks, artillery, anti-tank guns and only half its wireless sets, to be ready to move towards Derna, Barce or Mechili if the Axis attacked.
Battle
24 March – 2 April
On 24 March, Rommel advanced with the new towards the positions of the British 3rd Armoured Brigade, south-east of Mersa Brega, where the 2nd Support Group held an front; the Australians were to the north, minus a brigade left at Tobruk, deficient in much equipment and out of contact with the 2nd Armoured Division. British air reconnaissance had observed German troops west of El Agheila on 25 February and by 5 March, it was expected that the German commander would consolidate the defence of Tripolitania, try to recapture Cyrenaica and then invade Egypt. The Germans were expected to use Sirte and Nofilia as bases but not before April; Rommel was identified on 8 March but local intelligence was hard to find. The mileage restrictions necessary to maintain the few troops and vehicles near the front and the danger from fast German (eight-wheeler armoured cars) inhibited British reconnaissance units, whose armoured cars were slower and had inferior armament.
On 1 April, Rommel sent two columns to capture Mersa Brega, with Panzer Regiment 5, Machine-Gun Battalion 8, Reconnaissance Unit 3 and anti-tank guns and artillery moving along the as Machine-Gun Battalion 2 and some anti-tank guns made an outflanking move through the desert to the south. The British withdrew from Mersa Brega, followed up by the Germans as the Ariete Division and the Brescia Division advanced from Tripoli. The 5th Light Division was ordered on to Ajdabiya (Agedabia) and the harbour of Zuetina, despite Italian objections. Air reconnaissance on 3 April, revealed that the British were still retiring and Rommel ordered a probe around the southern flank by an Italian detachment and several German platoons were sent under Lieutenant-Colonel Gerhard von Schwerin towards Maaten el Grara, from where they were to observe the ground towards Msus, south-east of Benghazi and Ben Gania further south. Reconnaissance Unit 3 was ordered to reconnoitre towards Soluch and Ghemines; during the evening Rommel ordered them on to Benghazi.
3–5 April
On 3 April, Gambier-Parry had received a report that a large enemy armoured force was advancing on Msus (now Zawiyat Masus in the Fati Municipality), site of the main divisional supply dump. The 3rd Armoured Brigade (Brigadier Reginald Rimington) moved there and found that the petrol had been destroyed to prevent capture. The tank brigade had already been reduced by losses and breakdowns to and Neame received conflicting reports about the positions of the British and Axis forces and on 5 April, reports that a large Axis force was advancing on El Abiar, led him to order the 9th Australian Division back to Wadi Cuff north-east of Benghazi and the elements of the 2nd Armoured Division to guard the desert flank and retire on Mechili. Conflicting reports led Neame to countermand these orders, which caused the Australians much confusion. On 6 April, British air reconnaissance reported that there were Axis columns in the desert and the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade repulsed an attack at Mechili, which led to O'Connor at the CYRCOM headquarters (Neame had left to visit Gambier-Parry), to order a general withdrawal.
The headquarters of the 2nd Armoured Division and the 2nd Support Group were ordered back to Mechili followed by the 3rd Armoured Brigade. Rimington decided that the armoured brigade lacked the fuel to reach Mechili and ordered a move to Maraura, where a small amount of petrol was found. Rimington planned to move to Derna via Giovanni Berta to obtain more fuel; Rimington was captured with his deputy when he motored ahead. The brigade continued on and crowded the Australians, who were bypassing Derna, as they withdrew to Gazala. The Australians had collected every vehicle that could move and withdrawn at behind extensive demolitions, covered by the 1st Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps (1st KRRC), a motor battalion recently arrived from Egypt. (The 2/13th Australian Battalion was rushed to Martuba to block the track from Mechili and the first units of the division reached Tmimi by on 7 April, where the 26th Australian Brigade held the town, until the division and stragglers from other units passed through.)
The 5th Light Division, between Agedabia and Zuetina, reported that it needed four days to refuel but Rommel ordered that every supply vehicle be unloaded and along with spare fighting vehicles, sent back west of El Agheila, to collect fuel within 24 hours, while the rest of the division waited. Despite more objections from Gariboldi, Rommel decided that the advance must go faster if the British were to be trapped. On the night of Reconnaissance Unit 3 entered Benghazi and that morning Rommel ordered it to continue to Mechili, as soon as the Brescia Division arrived. As units reached Benghazi, Rommel formed them into columns, Group Schwerin was sent to Tmimi and Group Fabris, composed of motorcyclists and the Ariete divisional artillery, to Mechili followed by the rest of the Ariete Division. General Streich, the 5th Light Division commander, was ordered on to Tobruk with Machine-Gun Battalion 8, part of Panzer Regiment 5 and an anti-tank company. Lieutenant-Colonel Olbrich, the Panzer Regiment 5 commander, was sent with Machine-Gun Battalion 2, artillery and an armoured battalion of the Ariete Division, via Msus to Mechili or on to Tmimi and Major-General Heinrich Kirchheim, who was in the area by coincidence, was shanghaied and ordered to advance with two columns along the and through the Jebel Akhdar with the Brescia Division.
By late on 4 April, Group Schwerin was out of fuel and stranded near Ben Gania, with the Italian contingents trailing behind and Group Streich had got only as far as Maaten el Grara; next day a party from Group Streich reached Tengeder with the rest straggling behind for . Reconnaissance Unit 3 was stopped by the 2nd Support Group artillery west of Charruba and Group Olbrich reached Antelat, with a machine-gun unit having pressed on to the east of Sceleidima; Group Kirchheim had a column at Driana and the other at Er Regima. Air reconnaissance on 5 April, showed that the British were still retreating; Rommel ordered the Axis columns to meet at Mechili. Group Fabris and the Ariete Division were stalled between Ben Gania and Tengeder, south of Mechili and in the evening Rommel detached Machine-gun Battalion 8 (Lieutenant-Colonel Gustav Ponath) from Group Streich and led it to Mechili, where the advanced units of Group Schwerin arrived early on 6 April. Ponath was sent on towards Derna with a small party, by which time Group Kirchheim had one column near Maddalena and the other east of El Abiar. Reconnaissance Unit 3 had hardly moved and Group Olbrich had run out of fuel again. Ponath reached the coast road and advanced on the airfield south of Derna early on 7 April.
6–8 April
Kirchheim sent the non-mechanised parts of the Pavia Division (General Pietro Zaglio) and the Brescia Division along the and the mechanised and motorised units through the Jebel Akhdar. On 6 April, the Ariete Division reached Mechili and at noon, Ponath re-assembled his group near Derna airfield and cut one of the British withdrawal routes. The 5th Royal Tank Regiment (5th RTR, Lieutenant-Colonel H. D. Drew), repulsed two determined attacks and then counter-attacked with the last four British tanks. The rest of the British disengaged before the tanks were knocked out and the road was left open for stragglers in Derna. Neame had ordered CYRCOM headquarters to move back to Tmimi, west of Tobruk, where the Chief of Staff, Brigadier John Harding arrived early on 7 April, to find no sign of Neame or O'Connor. Harding ordered CYRCOM to move into Tobruk and reported his fears to Wavell in Egypt. During the withdrawal, Neame, O'Connor and Brigadier Combe had left Maraua at and taken a desert track at Giovanni Berta but then took a wrong turning north towards Derna, instead of east to Tmimi and ran into Group Ponath near Martuba.
Rommel had intended to attack Mechili on 7 April but the Axis forces were scattered, short of fuel and tired. Group Fabris moved forward during the morning but the Ariete Division and Group Streich took all day to arrive, having been attacked by the RAF; A Squadron of the Long Range Desert Group had appeared from the south, to harass Axis movements. By nightfall on 7 April, the 9th Australian Division (less the 24th Australian Infantry Brigade) with the 2nd Support Group had blocked the at Acroma, about west of Tobruk, where the 18th and 24th Australian Infantry brigades were preparing the defences. (The 18th Australian Infantry Brigade had arrived from Egypt by sea after the dispatch of the 7th Australian Division to Greece had been cancelled.) A small force held El Adem, south of Tobruk to observe the approaches from the south and south-west and at Mechili, Gambier-Parry had the 2nd Armoured Division headquarters soft-skinned vehicles and a cruiser tank, most of the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade, M Battery 1st Royal Horse Artillery, part of the 2/3rd Australian Anti-tank Regiment and elements of other units.
The Germans tried twice to bluff Gambier-Parry into surrender but he had received orders from CYRCOM to break out and retreat to El Adem, Gambier-Parry decided to attack at dawn, to gain a measure of surprise. On 8 April, A Squadron of the 18th Cavalry broke through and then turned to attack Italian artillery, as some Indian troops of the 11th Prince Albert Victor's Own Cavalry (Frontier Force) got away. Most of the garrison was pinned down but during a second attempt at small parties of the 2nd Royal Lancers escaped. The garrison had fired most of its small arms ammunition at the vision slits of the German tanks, which had hung back in fear of mines and when Italian infantry attacked, had little ammunition left. Gambier-Parry and Indian and Australian troops surrendered to Major-General Pietro Zaglio, commander of the Pavia Division.
Tobruk
By 8 April, the most advanced German units had arrived at Derna but some units which had cut across the chord of the Jebel, ran out of water and fuel at Tengeder. Prittwitz, the commander of the 15th Panzer Division was sent ahead with a column of reconnaissance, anti-tank, machine-gun and artillery units, to block the eastern exit from Tobruk, as the 5th Light Division moved from the south-west and the Brescia Division advanced from the west. Rommel hoped to pursue CYRCOM across Egypt and take Alexandria but overstretched supply lines, opposition from OKW and the British defence of Tobruk made this impossible.
On 10 April, Rommel made the Suez Canal the objective of the DAK and ordered that a breakout from Tobruk was to be prevented. Next day the port was invested but the rush ended with the 5th Light Division on the east side, Group Prittwitz to the south (Prittwitz having been killed) and the Brescia Division to the west. Reconnaissance Unit 3 went on to Bardia and a composite force was sent on to Sollum to try to reach Mersa Matruh but was prevented by the British Mobile Force (Brigadier William Gott) on the frontier, which conducted a delaying action around Sollum and Capuzzo. Tobruk was defended by a force of about and Australian troops, well stocked with supplies and linked to Egypt by the Navy. The garrison had armoured cars and captured Italian tanks, which could raid Axis supply convoys as they passed Tobruk for the frontier and made impossible an Axis invasion of Egypt.
Aftermath
Analysis
In 1956, I. S. O. Playfair, the British official historian, wrote that British assumptions about the time needed for an Axis counter-offensive were not unrealistic but were confounded by the boldness of Rommel and the fact that the 3rd Armoured Brigade was a brigade in name only, no tanks were available for the re-equipping of the brigade or the two in the 7th Armoured Division back in Egypt. When the DAK attacked there was no armoured force capable of counter-attacking or cutting Axis communications. By the time the British had retreated into the Jebel Akhdar, the infantry lacked mobility, the tanks of the 3rd Armoured Brigade had fallen to pieces and the only reserve was a motor brigade without tanks, artillery and anti-tank guns. For as long as the Axis forces had the fuel to manoeuvre, the British had no defence against outflanking attacks to the south. The retreat to Tobruk succeeded but the first Italo-German offensive had been an operational success and a "triumph for Rommel".
The and had little influence on operations, despite the disadvantages faced by the DAF during the retreat. The was not under army authority and chose the objectives of the air forces. Many strafing attacks were made on parties of British troops and vehicles but these were not concentrated on bottlenecks, despite the few routes of retreat round the Cyrenaican bulge and south of the Jebel Akhdar. The DAF had been depleted to provide squadrons for Greece and had only two fighter and one bomber squadron until 8 April when another bomber squadron arrived. The fighter squadrons had to resort to wasteful standing patrols over important areas and were able occasionally to give cover to traffic jams but were unable to prevent air attacks on two petrol convoys, which were destroyed. The British lacked the aircraft to keep air superiority and the Axis air forces made no consistent attempt to seize it, leading to the influence of both sides being sporadic.
Supply constraints had made it impossible for the Axis to advance much beyond the frontier wire on the Libyan–Egyptian border by mid-April. As long as the port of Tobruk was held by the British, the Axis position on the border was unstable, as the Italo-Germans were distracted by the siege, while the British could rebuild their strength in Egypt. The British Mobile Force columns based at Halfaya, Sofafi, Buq Buq and Sidi Barrani began to harass the Germans in the area around Capuzzo and Sollum and after an ambush near Sidi Azeiz, the local German commander sent an alarmist report to Rommel, leading to an attack by Group Herff from that pushed the British back to Buq Buq and Sofafi but the April attacks on Tobruk were costly failures.
Cooper wrote in 1978, that Tobruk had been invested on 11 April, after a twelve-day advance. German tanks had proved superior to their British counterparts but the Axis could not maintain a force further east than Sollum, without Tobruk. German forces probed the Tobruk defences from attacked from and again from On 2 May, Rommel accepted that the Axis force was not sufficient to capture Tobruk. Preparations would have to be made to repel a British counter-attack from Egypt, the chronic lack of fuel determining movement more than tactics. (Italian Armed Forces High Command) wanted a pause before advancing into Egypt, as did Hitler, who also considered the capture of Tobruk to be essential; Rommel demanded more aircraft to carry ammunition, fuel and water forward. General Friedrich Paulus, a deputy Chief of the General Staff, was sent to Africa to report on the situation. The British received through Ultra a decrypt of the Paulus report but the "considerable intelligence coup" was mishandled, encouraging the premature attack of Operation Brevity.
In 1993, Harold Raugh wrote that the diversion of so many British units to Greece was the main reason for the success of , along with the transfer of units to Egypt to refit, the appointment by Wavell of incompetent commanders and his failure properly to study the terrain. The potential of the Germans to mount an offensive was underestimated and the capability, audacity and potential Rommel had to transform the situation was overlooked by Wavell, the War Office and Winston Churchill, despite copious intelligence reports from Ultra and MI 14 (British Military Intelligence). In 1949, Wavell wrote that he had taken an unwarranted risk in Cyrenaica, having formed expectations of the Axis based on the experience of fighting the Italian army; "I had certainly not budgeted for Rommel after my experience of the Italians. I should have been more prudent...."
Casualties
The British lost when much of the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade was forced to surrender at Mechili on 8 April. Lieutenant-generals Philip Neame and Richard O'Connor, Richard Gambier-Parry, the 2nd Armoured Division commander, Brigadier Reginald Rimington and Lieutenant-Colonel John Combe were captured. From the 3rd Armoured Brigade lost most of its tanks to mechanical breakdown, fuel shortage and demolitions to prevent them being captured. About twenty tanks had been returned earlier to Tobruk for repairs and another three unserviceable tanks were salvaged during the retreat; tanks were knocked out but many were recovered later and repaired.
Subsequent operations
Siege of Tobruk
From 11 to 12 April, Panzer Regiment 5 probed the defences of the 20th Australian Brigade near the El Adem road and was repulsed by artillery-fire; German infantry who reached the anti-tank ditch were forced back by Australian infantry. The Germans were surprised, having assumed that the shipping at Tobruk was there to evacuate the garrison and planned an attack by the 5th Light Division for the night of Groups of Axis vehicles were attacked by 45 and 55 squadrons RAF, which rearmed at the airfields inside the perimeter. The attack began with an attempt to get over the anti-tank ditch west of the El Adem road, in the 2/17th Australian Battalion sector and was repulsed. Another attempt was made later and by dawn a small bridgehead had been established, where Panzer Regiment 5 drove through and turned northwards, ready to divide into one column for the harbour and one to move west and cut off the garrison but the advance was stopped. The Italians had been slow to provide blueprints for the port fortifications and after three weeks, Rommel suspended the attacks and resumed the siege. Italian infantry divisions took up positions about the fortress, while the bulk of the DAK maintained a mobile position south and east of the port, keeping the frontier in easy reach.
Operation Brevity
Operation Brevity was a limited British offensive, planned as a rapid blow against the weak Axis front-line forces around Sollum, Fort Capuzzo and Bardia on the Egyptian–Libyan frontier. The British had received an Ultra intercept of the report compiled by Paulus, which dwelt on the exhaustion and the dire supply situation facing the Axis at Tobruk and the frontier, which encouraged a premature attempt to inflict losses on the Axis frontier garrisons and to capture jumping-off places for a later attack towards Tobruk. The garrison of Tobruk, to the west, had resisted Axis attacks and its Australian and British troops could still endanger the Axis supply line from Tripoli, which led Rommel to give priority to the siege, leaving the front line thinly held. On 15 May, Gott attacked with a mixed infantry and armoured force in three columns.
Halfaya Pass was taken against determined Italian opposition and in Libya, the British captured Fort Capuzzo but German counter-attacks regained the fort during the afternoon, inflicting a costly defeat on the defenders. The operation had begun well and had thrown the Axis commanders into confusion but most of its early gains were lost to counter-attacks and with German reinforcements arriving from Tobruk, the operation was called off. Gott became concerned that his forces risked being caught in the open by German tanks and conducted a staged withdrawal to the Halfaya Pass on 16 May. From 26 to 27 May, German troops recaptured the pass in Operation Skorpion. The British resumed preparations for Operation Battleaxe which began on 15 June.
See also
List of World War II Battles
North African campaign timeline
List of German military equipment of World War II
List of Italian military equipment in World War II
List of British military equipment of World War II
List of Australian military equipment of World War II
Orders of battle
5th Light Division
Panzer Regiment 5
50 I
45 II
71 III
20 IV
3
4
Reconnaissance Battalion 3
15th Division (arrived in stages up to May 1941)
Panzer Regiment 8 (I & II Battalions)
45 II
71 III
20 IV
4
6
Motorized Rifle Regiment 104 (1 lorried battalion, 1 motor-cycle battalion, 1 battalion on foot)
Motorcycle Battalion 15
Reconnaissance Battalion 33
Motorized Artillery Regiment 33 (I, II & III Battalions)
Engineer Battalion 33
Battery, Anti-tank Battalion 33
Battery, anti-aircraft
33rd divisional services
Cyrenaica Command and British Troops Egypt
GHQ Middle East Forces
Libya
Cyrenaica Command
1st King's Royal Rifle Corps
1re (1 BIM)
2nd Armoured Division
143rd Field Park Troop, RE attached from 7th Armoured Division
4th Field Squadron RE attached from 7th Armoured Division
1st King's Dragoon Guards
2nd Armoured Division Signals
2nd Support Group
9th Rifle Brigade (renamed from 1 Bn, Tower Hamlets Rifles, 15 January 1941)
1re Compagnie, 1re Bataillon d'Infanterie de Marin (1 BIM)
'D/J' Battery, 3rd Royal Horse Artillery
104th (Essex Yeomanry) Royal Horse Artillery
1st Company, Free French Motor Battalion attached
3rd Armoured Brigade
3rd The King's Own Hussars
5th Royal Tank Regiment
6th Royal Tank Regiment
16th Australian Antitank Company attached
1st Royal Horse Artillery attached
9th Australian Division
2/3rd Antitank Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery (9th Battery only, 10th & 11th Batteries detached to 3rd Indian Motor Brigade, 12th Battery in Palestine until 5 April 1941)
51st Field Regiment, RA attached
2/13th Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers
2/3rd Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers
2/7th Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers
1st Royal Northumberland Fusiliers attached.
One company detached to 9th Rifle Brigade from 26 March 1941
2/1st Australian Pioneer Battalion
20 Australian Infantry Brigade
2/13th Australian Battalion
2/15th Australian Battalion
2/17th Australian Battalion
20th Australian Antitank Company
24th Australian Infantry Brigade
2/28th Australian Battalion
2/43rd Australian Battalion
24th Australian Antitank Company
26 Australian Infantry Brigade
2/23rd Australian Battalion
2/24th Australian Battalion
2/48th Australian Battalion
26th Australian Antitank Company
3rd Indian Motor Brigade
18th King Edward VII's Own Cavalry
2nd Royal Lancers (Gardner's Horse)
Prince Albert Victor's Own Cavalry (11th Frontier Force)
2/3rd Antitank Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery
10 & 11 Batteries attached from 9th Australian Division
Egypt
HQ British Troops Egypt
11th Hussars (Prince Albert's Own)
1st (Royal) Dragoons
107th (South Notts Hussars) Royal Horse Artillery
4th Royal Horse Artillery
11th Czechoslovak (Middle Eastern) Battalion
Spring 1941
4th Royal Tank Regiment
7th Royal Tank Regiment
7th Armoured Division
4th Armoured Brigade
2nd Royal Tank Regiment
7th Queen's Own Hussars
7th Armoured Brigade
1st Royal Tank Regiment
8th (King's Royal Irish) Hussars
7th Support Group
2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade
'C' Battery, 4th Royal Horse Artillery
3rd Royal Horse Artillery
'M/P' Battery only, 'D/J' Battery with 2 Support Group
Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade
I Rifle Battalion
II Rifle Battalion
III Rifle Battalion
1st Anti-tank Company
2nd Anti-tank Company
Carpathian Artillery Regiment
Engineers Group (HQ, 2 Companies)
The Legion of Polish Officers attached
Carpathian HMG Battalion
Medical Services (2 Companies, 2 Sections, Forward Hospital)
Transport Column (3 Platoons)
Carpathian Lancers Regiment
Signals Group (HQ, 1 Company, 3 Platoons)
Alexandria Sub-Area
18th Australian Infantry Brigade
Part of 7th Australian Division, en route for Greece
2/10th Australian Battalion
2/12th Australian Battalion
2/9th Australian Battalion
2/4th Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers
6th Australian Divisional Cavalry Regiment
Mersa Matruh Sub-Area
8th Field Regiment, RA
Suez Canal Sub-Area
GHQ Troops
6th Infantry Division
54th Field Company, RE
16th Infantry Brigade
1st Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders (Princess Louise's)
2nd Leicestershire Regiment
2nd Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey)
22nd (Guards) Infantry Brigade
1st Durham Light Infantry
2nd Scots Guards
3rd Coldstream Guards
Layforce (attached)
'A' Battalion Commando
'B' Battalion Commando
'C' Battalion Commando
'D' Battalion Commando
Notes
Footnotes
References
no isbn
Further reading
External links
Chadwick, Rommel's First Offensive
Kirkland Rommel's Desert Campaigns
Italian tables of organisation
British tables of organisation
Sonnenblume
1941 in Libya
Sonnenblume
Erwin Rommel
Sonnenblume
Sonnenblume
Sonnenblume
February 1941 events
March 1941 events
April 1941 events
May 1941 events
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwich
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Northwich
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Northwich is a town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It lies in the heart of the Cheshire Plain, at the confluence of the rivers Weaver and Dane. The town is about east of Chester, south of Warrington, and south of Manchester.
The population of the civil parish was 20,924 in 2021 and the wider built-up area (which also covers parts of several other civil parishes) was 50,531.
The area around Northwich has been exploited for its salt pans since Roman times, when the settlement was known as Condate. The town has been severely affected by salt mining, and subsidence has historically been a significant problem. Mine stabilisation work was completed in 2007.
History
Early history
During Roman times, Northwich was known as Condate, thought to be a Latinisation of a Brittonic name meaning "Confluence". There are several other sites of the same name, mostly in France; in Northwich's case, it lies at the junction of the rivers Dane and Weaver.
Northwich can be identified through two contemporary Roman documents. The first of these is the Antonine Itinerary, a 3rd-century road map split into 14 sections. Two of these sections, or Itinerary, mention Condate: Route II ("the route from the Wall to the port of Rutupiae") and Route X ("the route from Glannoventa to Mediolanum"). The second document is the 7th-century Ravenna Cosmography. This document refers to Condate between the entries for Salinae (now Middlewich, Cheshire) and Ratae (now Leicester, Leicestershire), at the time the capital of the Corieltauvi tribe.
The Romans' interest in the Northwich area is thought to be due to the strategic river crossing and the location of the salt brines. Salt was very important in Roman society; the Roman word salarium, linked employment, salt and soldiers, but the exact link is unclear. It is also theorised that this is the basis for the modern word salary. Another theory is that the word soldier itself comes from the Latin sal dare (to give salt). See History of salt for further details. There is archaeological evidence of a Roman auxiliary fort within the area of Northwich now known as "Castle" dated to AD 70. This and other northwestern forts were built as the Romans moved north from their stronghold in Chester.
The association with salt continues in the etymology of Northwich. The "wich" (or wych) suffix applies to other towns in the area: Middlewich, Nantwich and Leftwich. This is considered to have been derived from the Norse, wic, for bay, and is associated with the more traditional method of obtaining salt by evaporating sea water. Therefore, a place for making salt became a wych-house; Northwich was the most northern of the -wich towns in Cheshire.
Medieval to early modern
The existence of Northwich in the early medieval period is shown by its record in the Domesday Book of 1086:
The manor of Northwich belonged to the Earls of Chester until 1237 when the family line died out. Subsequently, Northwich became a royal manor and was given to a noble family to collect tolls in exchange for a set rent.
The Cheshire archers were a body of elite soldiers noted for their skills with the longbow that fought in many engagements in Britain and France in the Middle Ages. Battles at which there were sizeable numbers of Cheshire archers include Agincourt and Crecy; many of these archers hailed from the Northwich Hundred. Richard II employed a bodyguard of these yeoman archers who came from the Macclesfield Hundred and the forest districts of Cheshire.
That salt production continued throughout the centuries and can be seen through John Leland's description of the town in 1540:
Between 1642 and 1643, during the English Civil War, Northwich was fortified and garrisoned by Sir William Brereton for the Parliamentarians.
The salt beds beneath Northwich were re-discovered in the 1670s by employees of the local Smith-Barry family. The Smith-Barrys were looking for coal, but instead discovered rock salt, in the grounds of the family home, Marbury Hall, to the north of Northwich.
19th century
During the 19th century it became uneconomical to mine for the salt. Instead hot water was pumped through the mines, which dissolved the salt. The resultant brine was pumped out and the salt extracted from the brine. This technique weakened the mines and led to land subsidence as they collapsed. Subsidence affected the town and the surrounding landscape. For example, collapses in 1880 formed Witton Flash as the River Weaver flowed into a huge hole caused by subsidence. Subsidence also allegedly accounts for many old timber-framed houses in the town centre, which were better able to withstand the movement of the ground. Some houses were built on a base of steel girders that could be jacked up to level the house with each change in the underlying ground. The town's historical link with the salt industry is celebrated in its museum, which is today in the old workhouse.
In 1874, John Brunner and Ludwig Mond founded Brunner Mond in Winnington and started manufacturing soda ash using the Solvay ammonia-soda process. This process used salt as a main raw material. The chemical industry used the subsided land for the disposal of waste from the manufacture of soda-ash. The waste was transported through a network of cranes and rails to the produce limebeds. This was a dangerous alkaline substance and caused the landscape to be abandoned as unusable.
Modern development
In 1975 Marbury Country Park was the first area to be reclaimed from dereliction and has become a popular recreational area. In 1987 more land was reclaimed to form Furey Wood and over later years, Cheshire County Council's Land Regeneration Unit reclaimed what is now known as Anderton Nature Park, Witton Flash, Dairy House Meadows, Witton Mill Meadows, and Ashton's and Neumann's Flashes. The area now extends to approximately of public space known as Northwich Community Woodlands.
In February 2004 a £28 million programme to stabilise the abandoned salt mines underneath Northwich was begun. The work was funded by the English Partnerships through its Land Stabilisation Programme, introduced to resolve issues associated with unstable mines around England.
The four mines identified for work were Baron's Quay, Witton Bank, Neumann's and Penny's Lane. These mines were chosen because their subsidence was causing problems for the town centre. The stabilisation plan involved removing millions of litres of brine from the four mines and replacing it with a mixture of pulverised fuel ash (PFA), cement and salt. The project was completed in late 2007.
The old Magistrates Court and Memorial Hall have been demolished and been replaced by Memorial Court, a £12.5 million cultural and leisure centre, which offers a pool, dance studios and a gym.
The £80 million Barons Quay Development, a retail and leisure complex, opened in 2016 and has seen the creation of more than of shopping space, together with a large supermarket with a petrol filling station, cinema, restaurants, cafés, new public spaces, and car parking. As of January 2023 roughly half of the retail space remains empty.
A major fire occurred at the Northwich Outdoor Market on 3 January 2020. The Market's remains were quickly demolished and so far there are no plans to rebuild it.
Governance
At the time of the Domesday survey (1086) Northwich was in the hundred of Middlewich, but by the 14th century it had become part of the Northwich hundred. This probably happened during the reorganisation of the Hundreds in the 12th century. Northwich has been described as a borough from around 1288, though there is no surviving borough charter.
Northwich originally constituted an area of only at the confluence of the Rivers Weaver and Dane. The much larger township of Witton cum Twambrooks lay to the east, Leftwich to the south, Castle Northwich to the south-west, and Winnington to the north-west.
The manor of Northwich was granted to the Stanley family, later Earls of Derby in 1484, and stayed in the family's hands until the late 18th century. A local board was founded on 26 June 1863 after the Local Government Act 1858 and it purchased the manor from Arthur Heywood Esq. in 1871. In 1875, the local boards for Northwich and Witton cum Twambrooks were amalgamated, and the resultant district was further extended in 1880 to include the whole of Castle Northwich and parts of Hartford, Winnington and Leftwich. On 10 September 1894 these areas were united as the civil parish of Northwich, served by Northwich Urban District Council.
The town was further enlarged in 1936 by the addition of parts of Winnington, Lostock Gralam, Barnton, Leftwich and Rudheath, and again in 1955 when parts of Davenham, Hartford, Rudheath and Whatcroft were added.
The Local Government Act 1972 replaced the Urban District Council of Northwich with a new district (later borough) council: Vale Royal. Vale Royal covered areas previously covered by Northwich UDC (Urban District Council), Northwich RDC (Rural District Council), Winsford UDC and parts of Runcorn RDC. Northwich Town Council now has the powers of a parish council and is now made up of five main districts of Leftwich, Northwich, Castle, Winnington and Witton. In 2018 Northwich Town Council won 'Council of the Year' at the NALC Star Council Awards. The current Town Clerk of Northwich Town Council is Chris Shaw.
Vale Royal Borough Council was abolished on 1 April 2009, and Northwich now falls within the new unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester.
Between 1885 and 1983 Northwich gave its name to a parliamentary constituency. Northwich was also split between the Tatton and Eddisbury constituencies until the formation of Weaver Vale for the 1997 general election. The seat is currently held by Mike Amesbury (Labour).
The town coat of arms features the Latin motto "Sal est Vita" meaning "Salt is Life", which can be seen on the town's crest of arms. The town is twinned with Dole in France.
Geography
Northwich is situated in the Cheshire Plain at coordinates h (53.255, −2.522). The town is between above mean sea level. Northwich is surrounded by the following civil parishes, starting due north and proceeding in a clockwise direction: Anderton with Marbury, Marston, Wincham, Lostock Gralam, Rudheath, Davenham, Hartford, Weaverham, Barnton.
Two rivers meet in the town centre, the Weaver and the Dane. The town is surrounded by undulating pasture. Subsidence and the collapse of underground saltworks has created flashes and there are also local meres – for example, to the north is Budworth Mere and to the north-east is Pick Mere.
Demographics
The population of Northwich in 1664 has been estimated as 560. The population of Northwich over the last 200 years has been:
The 2011 Census shows the population of Northwich civil parish to be 19,924. This was composed of 9,878 (49.6%) males and 10,046 (50.4%) females. There were 8,808 households. This makes the average household size 2.62, an increase on 2001.
The adjacent civil parishes of Anderton with Marbury, Barnton, Davenham, Hartford, Kingsmead, Lostock Gralam, Rudheath, Weaverham and Wincham are in part built up, giving a total population of 53,391 in 2011 considered to use the facilities of Northwich town centre.
The population of Northwich is estimated at around 63,000 in 2021, The town forms part of the Cheshire West and Chester (Northwich and Winsford Locality) which has an estimated 2021 population of 107,000. Northwich and its urban area make up 63,000, Winsford makes up around 34,100 and the remaining 10,000 are the surrounding rural areas of the locality
Economics
Northwich has been described as having a market since at least 1535, when it was described as a market town by Leland, but there is no surviving charter. The town still has a market today, which is earmarked for refurbishment as part of the Northwich Vision plans.
The town's economy was dominated by the salt industry. However, a list of tolls for goods crossing over Northwich bridge in 1353 shows goods coming into the town, including a wide range of carcasses, fleeces, hides and skins, cloth, fish, alcoholic drinks, dairy products, building materials, household goods, metals and glass, and millstones. This indicates a much wider economic base to medieval Northwich than just the salt trade. Documentary evidence also exists for a mill from 1332 onwards and there is evidence for more than one mill from 1343.
Allied to the extraction of salt was a bulk chemical industry, which became concentrated at the three ICI sites at Winnington, Wallerscote and Lostock. The first industrially practical method for producing polythene was accidentally discovered at the Winnington Laboratory in 1933.
Bakers Frank Roberts & Sons have been associated with the town since 1887 and continues to be based near the town at Rudheath on the A556. Two of Frank Roberts & Sons's three main business divisions, Roberts Bakery and The Little Treats Co, are based in Northwich and Aldred's The Bakers, is in Ilkeston, Derbyshire.
There are many contemporary major employers in nearby Rudheath and Hartford.
Based on the 2001 Census, Northwich had 13,928 people aged between 16 and 74. Of these, 8,908 (64.0%) people were categorised as economically active; 4,268 (30.6%) were economically inactive; 455 (3.3%) were unemployed.
Culture and community
The town has three key annual events. Over the August Bank Holiday weekend, Northwich Festival is held at Moss Farm Sports Complex, featuring four days of music and sport. Since 2011, the town's Medieval Festival has been staged in Verdin Park. And since 2021, an annual Piña Colada Festival has taken place in recognition of Rupert Holmes who was born in the town and wrote Escape (The Piña Colada Song), released in 1979. The festival grew in 2022, with live music, fairground rides and old school street games among other attractions. Local bars, restaurants and cafés offered piña coladas alongside other tropical themed drinks and snacks.
Northwich Memorial Hall was opened in 1960 but closed for redevelopment in 2013, to be replaced by the Memorial Court Facility, opened in 2015. It hosted a range of activities, including the Purple Cactus Comedy Club.
The Harlequin Theatre produces six plays each year, and it is also the home of Northwich Folk Club (which has run continuously since 1977).
The Regal cinema closed in 2007 and was demolished. A cinema in the Barons Quay development opened in 2016.
Northwich has two local newspapers: the Northwich Guardian, published by Newsquest, and the Northwich Chronicle, published by Trinity Mirror. Radio station Shout Radio broadcasts online and covers the mid-Cheshire area including Northwich (territory previously covered by the now defunct Cheshire FM).
Northwich musicians include Steve Hewitt, drummer with Placebo, which provided a song for the soundtrack to the film Cruel Intentions, and Tim Burgess from the Charlatans, a band once managed by Steve Harrison from the town's Omega Music record store.
Local horror author Stuart Neild's first novel, A Haunted Man, was set in the salt mines that run underneath Northwich, combining fact with supernatural fiction. Neild's novels featuring Northwich and other North West locations. A Hollywood film and television series was in development.
Sport
Northwich is the home of three non-league football teams: Witton Albion, Northwich Victoria and 1874 Northwich. In May 2018 the Cheshire FA announced plans for a £70m development near Northwich, modelled on St George's Park National Football Centre. The facility would include two FIFA-standard pitches with a 1000-seat stadium, 3G pitches, six grass pitches, full medical facilities and a hotel/spa.
The town has two rugby union sides Northwich RUFC and Winnington Park.
The area also boasts several amateur cricket clubs, including Winnington Park CC, Davenham CC, Weaverham CC, Northwich CC and Hartford CC. Northwich also has a successful competitive swim team – Northwich Swimming Club, first formed in the late 19th century.
Northwich Rowing Club was formed in 1875 in Northwich and continues to row on the River Weaver, producing Olympic and international rowers such as Matt Langridge. The club has its own boat and clubhouse located by The Crescent and holds three events every year, the Autumn Head in November, the Spring Head in April and the Regatta in May. In 2015 the club was the first rowing club from the north of England to win the Junior Coxed Quad Sculls at the Head of the River Fours on the tideway in London. Club crews have also competed in the Henley Royal Regatta, with a crew seeded in 2015 for the first time in the club's history. The club also has a large junior section taking rowers on from age 12.
The Northwich Festival, held at Moss Farm Sports Complex each August includes the UK Strongman-North Competition.
The town also has a long-standing cycling club, Weaver Valley CC. Established in 1962, its members included ex-pro and ITV commentator Paul Sherwen and domestic rider Alan Kemp. The club competes in road racing, time trials, track racing and off-road. The club promotes three road races, a series of circuit races in June at Oulton Park, the Cat and Fiddle hill climb, and cyclo-cross in September. Since 1980, the club has promoted the Cheshire Classic women's cycling road race, held every April. Part of British Cycling's National Road Race Series, it is the longest running race on the women's national calendar. Previous winners include Dame Sarah Storey, Lucy Garner, Lizzie Armitstead, Nicole Cooke and Mandy Jones.
The first known swimming baths in Northwich was the Verdin Baths, situated on Verdin Park, presented by Robert Verdin in commemoration of the Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. It consisted of a cast-iron plunge bath and five slipper baths. Northwich Public Baths was built in 1913 following subsidence at Verdin Park pool. It its doors on 23 January 1991 to be replaced with Moss Farm leisure complex, which in turn was replaced by Memorial Court entertainment and leisure venue in 2015.
Landmarks and religious sites
The parish church is known as St. Helen's Witton. It is a Grade I Listed Building. The church initially developed as a chapel of ease associated with the parish of Great Budworth to serve the local community, known as the Chapel of Witton. There is no known date for the creation of this chapel, but it is thought to have existed in the 13th century. None of this building exists in the current church. There is no documentary evidence to indicate the dates of the older parts of the current building. However, stones in the fabric of the porch carry inscriptions attributed to "Ricardus Alkoke Capellanus". This name matches documents concerning land in Northwich and Lostock Gralam dated 1468, but this cannot be used to date the church accurately.
It was not until 7 August 1900 that the parish of Witton (otherwise Northwich) was formed from parts of Great Budworth, Davenham and other surrounding parishes.
The present St Wilfrid's (Roman Catholic) church was built in 1866. The current Northwich Methodist Chapel was opened in 1990, but there has been a Methodist presence in the town at least since 1774, when John Wesley laid the foundation stone of the first chapel in the London Road area.
The Northwich Union Workhouse opened in 1837 following the Poor Law Amendment of 1834 that standardised the system of poor relief throughout Britain. The building is now the Weaver Hall Museum.
The Dock Road Edwardian Pumping Station is a Grade II Listed Building originally built by Northwich Urban District Council in 1913. For over 60 years it was used for pumping sewage from parts of Northwich to the Wallerscote Treatment Works. Before it was built, untreated sewage was discharged directly into the River Weaver, causing widespread pollution.
Two swing bridges, Hayhurst Bridge built in 1898, and Town Bridge built in 1899, cross the Weaver at Northwich. The bridges were the first two electrically powered swing bridges in Great Britain and were built on floating pontoons to counteract the mine subsidence. They were designed by Colonel John Saner.
The Floatel Northwich was moored on the Weaver near the confluence of the two rivers, but was closed when the owners, The Real Hotel Company plc, went into administration in January 2009. It has since been removed. It was the UK's only floating hotel.
Transport
The key historical mode of transport is water. By 1732 the River Weaver was improved from Frodsham Bridge to Winsford Bridge and eventually allowed vessels up to to travel up to Northwich Bridge. The Trent and Mersey Canal, opened in 1775, passed to the north of Northwich because of objections from the trustees of the Weaver Navigation. However, the canal passed salt deposits near the village of Marston, and many of the later salt mines were based along its banks including the Lion Salt Works. The Anderton Boat Lift was opened in 1875 to connect the canal and river systems. It was fully restored in 2002 and now houses a visitor centre.
The road system around Northwich can be dated back to the Roman times. The A556 and A559 follow the route of the Roman road that runs from Chester to York. The A556 diverts away from the route of the Roman road following a new route to the south of the town acting as the town's bypass. The Chester to Manchester road became a Turnpike in 1769. The A530, known as King Street, also passes near to the town, and this follows the route of the Roman road that connected Warrington and Middlewich. The old route to Warrington and the north from Middlewich, however, was replaced by a new route through Knutsford, which became a turnpike in 1753. Northwich is connected to the motorway network to the north of the town via the A559 onto the M56 motorway; and to the east of the town via the A556 at Junction 19 of the M6 motorway.
The railway came to the town in 1863 when the Cheshire Midland Railway constructed its line from Knutsford. The West Cheshire Railway built its line to Helsby in 1869. Passenger trains from Northwich to Chester via Delamere commenced in 1875. The route through Northwich is now marketed as the Mid-Cheshire line. Northwich railway station, last rebuilt in 1897, is on the line from Chester to Manchester Piccadilly. There are also stations within close vicinity at Greenbank, also on the Mid-Cheshire line, and Hartford (on the West Coast Main Line).
There are bus routes between Northwich and a number of local towns, and villages including Weaverham, Hartford, Crewe, Warrington, Kelsall and Chester.
Family run coach company, Walker's Coaches, was based in Anderton, before being taken over by Holmeswood Coaches; who still run the Northwich depot.
Education
Northwich and its surroundings has a number of schools and colleges. Sir John Deane's College is now a sixth form college, but was originally formed as a grammar school in 1557. The school was originally known as Witton Grammar School and was erected close to Witton Chapel. The school moved to its current location, to the south of the town, in 1907–08. The Grange School, Northwich is an independent school.
Primary education include:
The Grange Junior School
Witton Church Walk CofE Primary School
Victoria Road Primary School
Charles Darwin Community Primary School
Winnington Park Community Primary and Nursery School
St Wilfrid's Catholic Primary School
Hartford Manor Primary School
Hartford County Primary School
Kingsmead Primary School was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Better Public Building award in 2005.
Rosebank School is a school for autistic children aged 3–11 years.
During the 19th century many new schools were founded and by 1850 twelve "academies" were recorded in the area. The town is now served by County High School Leftwich, a specialist media arts college, while Rudheath Senior Academy, a specialist performing arts college and Hartford High School both admit pupils from Northwich. There are also several primary schools in the area. St. Nicholas Catholic High School is also in the local vicinity, and performs well on national exam boards, coming second in the whole of Cheshire.
Mid Cheshire College had its main campus in nearby Hartford, offering further education courses. The campus closed in 2018 after it merged with Warrington Collegiate a year earlier to form Warrington and Vale Royal College
In November 2005, as part of the Northwich Vision, a refurbishment of the town's railway station included a Centre called Zone that promotes lifelong learning by offering people the opportunity to access a range of online and taught courses.
Notable people
Industry
Peter Drinkwater (1750 – 1801) an English cotton manufacturer and merchant. In 1782 he opened his first cotton mill on the River Weaver in Northwich
Sir Joseph Verdin, 1st Baronet (1838 in Witton – 1920) ran a family salt business known as Joseph Verdin & Sons with his brothers, Robert and William, lived at The Brockhurst in the town.
Ludwig Mond (1839–1909) German-born co-founder of Brunner Mond, a soda factory in Winnington
Sir John Brunner, 1st Baronet PC DL (1842–1919) founder of chemical firm Brunner Mond in 1873, MP for Northwich 1885–1886 and from 1887 to 1910, lived at Winnington Hall
William James Yarwood (1851–1926) shipbuilder and proprietor of W. J. Yarwood & Sons, a local shipbuilding business
Creative arts
Alethea Lewis (1749 at Acton - 1827) an English novelist, she centred on profound Christianity and virtue.
Bob Crossley (1912 in Northwich – 2010) an abstract artist who worked in oil and acrylic and lived in Cornwall from 1959
Percy M. Young (1912 in Northwich – 2004) a British musicologist, editor, organist, composer, conductor and teacher
Peter Gammond (born 1925 in Northwich) a British music critic, writer, journalist, musician, poet, and artist.
Robert Westall (1929–1993) the children's author lived in the town and taught at Sir John Deane's Grammar School.
Sue Birtwistle (born 1945 in Northwich) a producer and writer of television drama
Rupert Holmes (born 1947 in Northwich) composer, songwriter and author, now lives in New York
Malcolm Garrett (born 1956 in Northwich) a British graphic designer
Jennifer Saunders (born 1958) actress and comedian, attended Northwich Girls' Grammar School
Jim Tavaré (born 1963) an English stand-up comedian, actor, and musician. He attended art school in Northwich.
Moira Buffini (born 1965) an English dramatist, director, and actor.
Tim Burgess (born 1967) an English singer-songwriter and lead singer of the alternative rock band The Charlatans
Cathie Pilkington RA (born 1968) is a British sculptor, she attended the North Chester College of Art in Northwich
Stuart Neild (born 1970 in Northwich) horror author
Steve Hewitt (born 1971 in Northwich) an English musician, singer-songwriter, record producer and former drummer for the band Placebo, 1996–2007
Helsinki Seven (formed 2006) are an alternative rock band from Northwich,
Addictive (formed 2008) an English musical duo based in Northwich consists of Louise Bagan and Aisha Stuart
Politics
Robert Verdin (1836 in Witton – 1887) a salt manufacturer, philanthropist and MP for Northwich 1886–1887
Sir Philip Holland (1917 in Northwich – 2011) Conservative MP for Acton 1959-1964 and for Carlton 1966-1983
Paul Dean, Baron Dean of Harptree PC (1924 in Northwich – 2009) Conservative MP for North Somerset 1964 to 1983
John Greenway (born 1946) MP for Ryedale, was born and educated in the town
Arron Banks (born 1966 in Northwich) a British businessman and political donor.
Diana Johnson (born 1966) MP for Hull North was born and educated in the town
Sport
Charles James Hughes (1853 in Northwich –1916), footballer, referee, and co-founder of Northwich Victoria
George Elmore (1880 in Witton – 1916 Somme), English footballer
John Boden (1882 in Northwich – 1946), footballer
Billy Harrison (1886 in Wybunbury – 1948), footballer
Jack Eyres (1899 in Northwich – 1975), footballer
Sid Collins Jr. (1912 in Northwich – 1983) golfer
Tom Manley (1912 in Northwich – 1988), footballer and manager
Zandra Nowell (born 1936 in Northwich), alpine skier
Malcolm Arnold (born 1940 in Northwich), athletics coach
Len Bathurst (born 1959 in Northwich), footballer
Mike Whitlow (born 1968 in Northwich), footballer
Michael Oakes (born 1973 in Northwich), footballer
Andy Oakes (born 1977 in Northwich), footballer
Matt Langridge (born 1983), rower
Mark Roberts (born 1983 in Northwich), footballer
Craig Jones (1985–2008), motorcycle racer
Dennis Walker (1944 in Northwich - 2003), footballer
Joe Dale (1921 in Northwich - 2000), footballer
Other
Eaton Hodgkinson FRS (1789 in Anderton – 1861) an English engineer, a pioneer of the application of mathematics to problems of structural design.
William Allen Whitworth (1840–1905) was an English mathematician and a priest in the Church of England, schooled at the Sandicroft School in Northwich
Harold Drinkwater (1855-1925) physician and botanical artist, born and raised in Northwich
Geoffrey Cheshire FBA (1886 in Northwich – 1978) an English barrister, scholar and influential writer on law
Arthur Dodd (1919 in Northwich – 2011) served in the British Army during WWII and was a Prisoner of War at Auschwitz
Mary-Ann Ochota (born 1981 in Northwich) a British broadcaster and anthropologist specialising in archaeology, social history and adventure factual television
Twin town
Northwich is twinned with:
Dole, France
Carlow, Republic of Ireland
See also
Salt in Cheshire
Brunner Mond
Listed buildings in Northwich
Winnington Hall
Holy Trinity Church, Northwich
Market Fire
References
External links
Cheshire West and Chester Council
Visit Northwich
GoNorthwich
Brunner Mond
Northwich Town Council
Northwich and Rural North community website
Civil parishes in Cheshire
Towns in Cheshire
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothbury
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Rothbury
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Rothbury is a market town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, on the River Coquet. It is northwest of Morpeth and of Newcastle upon Tyne. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 2,107.
Rothbury emerged as an important town because of its location at a crossroads over a ford on the River Coquet. Turnpike roads leading to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Alnwick, Hexham and Morpeth allowed for an influx of families and the enlargement of the settlement during the Middle Ages. In 1291, Rothbury was chartered as a market town and became a centre for dealing in cattle and wool for the surrounding villages during the Early Modern Era. Later, Rothbury developed extensively in the Victorian era, due in large part to the railway and the industrialist Sir William Armstrong. Between 1862 and 1865, Armstrong built Cragside, a country house and "shooting box" (hunting lodge) just outside Rothbury, and extended it as a "fairy palace" between 1869 and 1900. The house and its estate are now owned by the National Trust and are open to the public, attracting many visitors to the area.
History
Prehistory and Ancient (Pre-500)
The area around Rothbury was populated during the prehistoric period, as evidenced by finds dating from the Mesolithic period and later, although all the known finds are from beyond the outer edges of the modern town. Sites include a cairnfield, standing stone and cup-marked rock on Debdon Moor to the north of the town, a well-preserved circular cairn some in diameter, a late Neolithic or Bronze Age standing stone, and an extensive hillfort, covering an area and associated cairnfield to the west of the town. No evidence of the Roman period has been found, probably because the town was a considerable distance north beyond Hadrian's Wall.
Saxons (500–1066)
Fragments from an Anglo-Saxon cross, possibly dating from the 9th century, are the only surviving relics pre-dating the Norman conquest. They were discovered in 1849, when part of the church was demolished, and in 1856. They are now in the town church and the University of Newcastle Museum.
Medieval (1066–1465)
The first documentary mention of Rothbury, according to a local history, was in around the year 1100, as Routhebiria, or "Routha's town" ("Hrotha", according to Beckensall). The village was retained as a Crown possession after the conquest, but in 1201 King John signed the Rothbury Town Charter and visited Rothbury four years later, when the rights and privileges of the manor of Rothbury were given to Robert Fitz Roger, the baron of Warkworth. Edward I visited the town in 1291, when Fitz Roger obtained a charter to authorise the holding of a market every Thursday, and a three-day annual fair near St Matthew's Day, celebrated on 21 September.
Rothbury was not particularly significant at the time, with records from 1310 showing that it consisted of a house, a garden, a bakehouse and a watermill, all of which were leased to tenants. When the line of Fitz Roger died out, the town reverted to being a crown possession, but in 1334 Edward III gave it to Henry de Percy, who had been given the castle and baronry of Warkworth six years earlier. Despite the Scottish border wars, Rothbury rose in prosperity during the 14th century, and had become the town with the highest parochial value in Northumberland by 1535. Feuds still dominated local affairs, resulting in some parishioners failing to attend church because of them in the 16th century, and at other times, gathering in armed groups in separate parts of the building.
Rothbury became a relatively important town in Coquetdale, being a crossroads situated on a ford of the River Coquet, with turnpike roads leading to Newcastle upon Tyne, Alnwick, Hexham and Morpeth. After it was chartered as a market town in 1291, it became a centre for dealing in cattle and wool for the surrounding villages. A market cross was erected in 1722, but demolished in 1827. In the 1760s, according to Bishop Pococke, Rothbury also had a small craft industry, including hatters. At that time, the parish church's vicarage and living was in the gift of the Bishop of Carlisle, and worth £500 per year.
Tudors and Stuarts (1465–1714)
Bernard Gilpin and the Border Reivers
Rothbury has had a turbulent and bloody history. In the 15th and 16th centuries the Coquet valley was a pillaging ground for bands of Reivers who attacked and burned the town with terrifying frequency. Hill farming has been a mainstay of the local economy for many generations. Names such as Armstrong, Charleton and Robson remain well represented in the farming community. Their forebears, members of the reiver 'clans', were in constant conflict with their Scots counterpart. The many fortified farms, known as bastle houses, are reminders of troubled times which lasted until the unification of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1603.
The theologian Bernard Gilpin, known as the 'Apostle of the North' for his work in northern England during this period, visited Rothbury. While he preached a sermon, two rival gangs were threatening each other; realising they might start fighting, Gilpin stood between them asking them to reconcile – they agreed as long as Gilpin stayed in their presence. On another occasion, Gilpin observed a glove hanging in the church and asked the sexton about it. He was told it was a challenge to anyone who removed it. Gilpin thus took the glove and put it in his pocket and carried on with his sermon, and no-one challenged him. A painting of this incident by artist William Bell Scott is housed at Wallington Hall.
Georgians (1714–1837)
Near the town's All Saints' Parish Church stands the doorway and site of the 17th-century Three Half Moons Inn, where the Jacobite rebel James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater stayed with his followers in 1715 prior to marching into a heavy defeat at the Battle of Preston in 1715.
On 16 June 1782, Methodist theologian John Wesley preached in Rothbury.
Victorians (1837–1901)
Cragside
Although Rothbury is of ancient origin, it mainly developed during the Victorian era. A factor in this development was industrialist Sir William Armstrong, later Lord Armstrong of Cragside, who built the country house, and "shooting box" (hunting lodge), of Cragside, between 1862 and 1865, then extended it as a "fairy palace" between 1869 and 1900. The house and its estate are now in the possession of the National Trust and are open to the public.
1884 royal visit
Another factor in Rothbury's Victorian development was the arrival of the railway. Rothbury Station opened in 1870, bringing tourists on walking holidays to the surrounding hill country. This railway was most notably used by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and Princess Alexandra and their children (Albert Victor, 10, George later George V, 9, Louise, 7, Victoria, 6, Maud, 4), They arrived in Rothbury on 19 August 1884 and left on 22 August to visit Cragside and Lord Armstrong. Firework displays were held by Pain's of London.
David Dippie Dixon
David Dippie Dixon was a historian from Rothbury. He previously worked in his father's draper's shop, William Dixon and Sons, set up in Coquetdale House (now the Co-op). After William Dixon died, David Dippie Dixon and his brother John Turnbull Dixon renamed the shop Dixon Bros.
21st century
2006 royal visit
On 9 November 2006, Rothbury was visited by another Prince of Wales and future King, Edward VIII's 2nd Great Grandson, Prince Charles, who is now the King of the United Kingdom. Charles visited his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, now Queen Consort. Charles visited to reopen the refurbished Rothbury village hall, Jubilee Hall, originally built in 1897 and named after the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, his 3rd Great Grandmother. The royal couple also visited Rothbury Family Butchers, whose owner, Morris Adamson, said:"I talked to them for about 20 minutes about the business. It was almost surreal, staggering. They were both very well informed about the trade, and the Duchess really impressed me with her knowledge and enthusiasm. I put together for them a gift of Northumbrian lamb and specialist sausages and two days later they sent me a thank you letter from Clarence House saying how much they had enjoyed the visit and the meat. The Duchess told me in the shop that her son (Tom) was a food critic and she said she would recommend he should come up to see us in Rothbury to sample our speciality sausages. And Prince Charles congratulated us on keeping alive the traditions of the trade and providing meat that was sourced locally. He urged us to keep up the good work. It was amazing, really."
Governance
Politics
Parish council
The Parish Council meets on the second Wednesday of each month (apart from August) with meetings commencing at 7 pm in the Dovecote Room, Jubilee Institute.
County Council
Rothbury is served by the Northumberland County Council and represented by Councillor Steven Bridgett, first elected in 2008 as a Liberal Democrat and re-elected in 2013, 2017 and 2021 as an Independent.
Parliament
Rothbury is in the parliamentary constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The current representative is Anne-Marie Trevelyan of the Conservatives, who has been the local MP since 2015.
From 1973 until 2015, Rothbury's MP was Alan Beith, a member of the Liberal Democrats since 1988 and the Liberal Party prior to its merger with the Social Democratic Party; he is currently a member of the House of Lords.
European Union
Prior to Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, Rothbury was in the European Parliament constituency of North East England, represented predominantly by the Labour party.
Public services
Police
Rothbury is served by Northumbria Police and has a single police station, housed, since May 2019, in a building owned by the Northumberland National Park.
Fire
Rothbury has a fire station. The fire station is staffed by on-call firefighters: they do not work at the fire station full-time but are paid to spend time on call to respond to emergencies. The station has a four by four fire engine. The building and its facilities are shared with Sure Start.
Healthcare
Rothbury is served by a doctor's surgery and a hospital, Rothbury Community Hospital. The original facility was built as a private home known as Coquet House in 1872. It was converted into the Coquetdale Cottage Hospital in 1905. A maternity ward was added, as a lasting memorial to soldiers who died in the Second World War in 1946. It joined the National Health Service in 1948 and the adjoining Hawthorn Cottage was acquired in 1956. After Hawthorn Cottage had been converted into a physiotherapy department, it was officially re-opened by Jimmy Savile in 1990. After the old hospital became dilapidated, modern facilities were built in Whitton Bank Road and opened in 2007, by local GP, Dr. Angus Armstrong, and his son, TV presenter, Alexander Armstrong. The new hospital closed to inpatients in September 2016 and in June 2019 the trust advised that a group was working on proposals for the future of remaining services at the hospital. The closure caused controversy and a local protest was established called Save Rothbury Cottage Hospital. Rothbury's (Conservative) MP, Anne-Marie Trevelyan condemned the closure to inpatients in Parliament on 9 March 2017.
Geography
Rothbury is located in Northumberland, England, on the River Coquet, it is northwest of Morpeth and of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is located on the edge of the Northumberland National Park. Rothbury has two Zone 6 B roads going through it: West to East is the B6341, Rothbury's main street, Front Street, is part of this B road; The second B road is the B6342, its starting point is in Rothbury, and is connected to the B6341, it is part of Rothbury's Bridge Street before going over the River Coquet on the Rothbury Bridge and going South for connecting to the A68 (Dere Street) at the hamlet of Colwell. Rothbury also has the B6344 on the eastern edge, it is connected to the B6341 and goes southeast for passing through the hamlet of Pauperhaugh and connecting to the A697 at the hamlet of Weldon Bridge.
Demography
Ethnicity
Note: An ethnic group that is not on the table means that no one from
that ethnic group was recorded being present in Rothbury at the
time of the census.
Religion
Note: A religion that is not on the table means
that no practitioner of that religion was recorded
being present in Rothbury at the time of the census.
Landmarks
Rothbury's Anglican parish church building – All Saints' Church – dates from circa 1850, largely replacing but in parts incorporating the fabric of a former Saxon edifice, including the chancel, the east wall of the south transept and the chancel arch. The church has a font with a stem or pedestal using a section of the Anglo-Saxon cross shaft, showing what is reputed to be the earliest carved representation in Great Britain of the Ascension of Christ.
The Anglo-Saxon cross is not to be confused with the market cross near the church, the current version of which was erected in 1902 and is known as "St Armstrong's Cross" as it was paid for by Lady Armstrong, widow of Lord Armstrong of Cragside. Until 1965, Rothbury was the location of a racecourse, which had operated intermittently since April 1759, but seldom staged more than one meeting per year. The course was affected by flooding in the 1960s, and the last meeting was on 10 April 1965. The site is now used by Rothbury Golf Club.
Half a mile to the south, Whitton Tower is an exceptionally well-preserved 14th-century pele tower.
Lordenshaw Hill has the largest concentration of rock carvings in Northumberland. Over 100 panels have been recorded on the hill, the adjacent Whitton Burn and Garleigh Moor, in an area which covers less than 620 acres. The carved panels range from single cup-marked boulders to complex panels. There are many other interesting archaeological sites in this area, including a ditched Iron Age enclosure and an Early Bronze Age cairn.
Transport
Former railway station
The town was the terminus of a branch line from Scotsgap railway station on the North British Railway line from Morpeth to Reedsmouth. The line opened on 1 November 1870, the last passenger trains ran on 15 September 1952 and the line closed completely on 9 November 1963. station was located to the south of the River Coquet, and the site has been reused as an industrial estate, where the only obvious remains are one wall of the engine shed, which has become part of an engineering workshop. The old Station Hotel still stands near the site, but is now known as The Coquetvale Hotel. It was built in the 1870s by William Armstrong, as a suitable place for visitors to his house at Cragside to be accommodated.
Bus services
The town is now served by an Arriva North East bus service X14 which runs via Longframlington, Longhorsley, Morpeth and continues to Newcastle upon Tyne, the nearest city. This runs every two hours during the day, hourly at peak morning and evening periods.
Education
Rothbury has two schools:
Rothbury First School – a community school for 3- to 9-year-olds of both genders (this type of school is state-funded, with the local education authority employing the staff, being responsible for the school's admissions and owning the school's estate). The school can accommodate 126 pupils and currently has 94.
Dr Thomlinson Church of England Middle School – founded in 1720, and for 9 to 13-year-olds of both genders, the school is run by the academy trust The Three Rivers Learning Trust. The school can accommodate 258 pupils and currently has 232. In February 2019 pupils took part in the School's Climate Strike which saw pupils not attending school and protesting over climate change.
Rothbury is in the catchment area for The King Edward VI School, Morpeth, also run by The Three Rivers Learning Trust.
Culture and community
Music
Rothbury Traditional Music Festival
Rothbury holds the annual Rothbury Traditional music festival. It consists music concerts as well as competitions within the genre of folk music, mainly being that of traditional Northumberland folk music,. In 2013, the festival was featured on Northumberland born TV Presenter and actor Robson Green's documentary series Tales from Northumberland with Robson Green (Season one, Episode five). In 2019, TV presenter and singerAlexander Armstrong, who was born in Rothbury, was made patron of the festival, in 2021 Armstrong announced the return of the Music Festival from an erupting Icelandic volcano in a video posted on the Facebook page of the Festival after it was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notable music acts that have performed at the festival include:
2015:
Dan Walsh, banjoist
Chris Parkinson, co-founder of the British folk band The House Band
2019:
Jez Lowe, County Durham folk singer-songwriter
Folkestra, The Sage Gateshead’s youth folk ensemble
2021:
Martin Carthy, influential folk singer and guitarist.
Rothbury Hills
Rothbury has a tune about it called "Rothbury Hills," written by Jack Armstrong in 1944. It has been performed by Kathryn Tickell on her 2009 album "Northumberland Collection", and Alexander Armstrong wrote and sang some lyrics to it on his 2015 album "A Year of Songs".
Rothbury Highland Pipe Band
Rothbury has its own pipe band, called the Rothbury Highland Pipe Band. The band was established on 1 June 1920, then being named the Rothbury Kilted Pipe Band. The tartan chosen for their kilts was taken from the army regiment the Seaforth Highlanders, as during World War One some of their soldiers were stationed in Coquetdale and developed friendships with the local people. They reformed in the 1950s, being renamed the Rothbury Highland Pipe Band. The band has appeared on the TV show The White Heather Club.
Football
Rothbury has its own football club: Rothbury FC; the club is in Division One of the Northern Football Alliance, which is on level 11 of the National League System.
Folklore
In Rothbury folklore Simonside Hills overlooking Rothbury has a mythical creature called a deaugar or duergar (Norse for 'dwarf'''). It is said that the creature lures people at night by its lantern light towards bogs or cliffs to kill them. The deaugar has entered into Rothbury's popular culture: in 2021 local musician and poet James Tait wrote a debut children's book called The World of Lightness: A Story of the Duergar of Simonside; an annual 10-mile winter nighttime trail run in the Simonside Hills is called the Duergar Nightcrawler; and a Rothbury art gallery is named Red Deaugar Art Gallery, run by local artist Margaret Bodley Edwards, a descendant of Gothic Revival architect George Frederick Bodley (1827–1907), and of diplomat and founder of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Sir Thomas Bodley (1545–1613).
Bedlington Terrier
The Bedlington Terrier was originally named after Rothbury and known as the Rothbury or Rodbury Terrier however the name changed due to popularity of the breed with miners in the Northumberland pit village of Bedlington.
Crime
The following are notable crimes committed in or connected to Rothbury.
1919 armed robbery of Rothbury Brewery
Dubbed by a newspaper as a "Wild West Drama", the Rothbury Brewery was had armed robbery on the night of 28 February 1919, an attempted armed robbery took place at the Rothbury Brewery. Two Russian sailors, Peter Klighe and Karl Strautin, broke into the Rothbury Brewery to rob it, however, at around 9:00 pm, patrol officer PC Francis Sinton was walking past the Brewery, and he approached it after hearing noises of breaking glass. As he did so he told a passer-by named James Curry to fetch the manager, Mr Farndale. As PC Sinton approached the brewery one of the two men appeared from it and shot at Sinton, missing him only slightly, and the two began to tussle as the second man appeared from the brewery and smashed Sinton's head with an iron bar. Curry and Farndale arrived finding PC Sinton laying on the ground, Farnsdale struggled with one of the assailant, however he managed to fight Farnsdale off leaving Farnsdale with the assailant's muffler scarf, with the assailant escaping with his accomplice. After an extensive police search around Northumberland, the two perpetrators Klighe and Strautin were found in Walbottle Dene. Despite being armed with a pistol they gave themselves up. Klighe and Strautin were found wearing clothes stolen from the Ashington Co-Op, where they also broke into the safe. They were suspected of breaking into a number of safes across the region. They were charged with four counts of burglary and attempted murder, being sentenced to penal servitude for 13 years before being deported. PC Sinton was awarded the Kings Police Medal for Gallantry.
1993 armed robbery of the Rothbury Post Office
Overnight on 23 and 24 August 1993, Rothbury experience another armed robbery. A gang of organized criminals robbed the Rothbury post office of £15,000 (≈ £30,000 in 2020) in cash, stamps and pension books. Armed with iron crowbars and dressed in camouflage and ski masks, they cut the telephone wires, blocked the main road with a stolen council van, and threatened local residents.
The then MP for Rothbury, Liberal Democrat Alan Beith said the event showed rural communities like Rothbury needed extra police cover to fight organised crime. Detective Inspector John Hope, who lead the investigation, stated that too much of focus on cities leads to organized crime moving to rural villages. He also said that improving roads to give better police access to rural villages would help decrease crime, and that the criminal justice system was failing to convict people, with criminals knowing they could escape punishment.
2010 Northumbria police manhunt
In July 2010, Rothbury was the site of a major police manhunt. Raoul Moat was released from HM Prison Durham on 1 July, after an 18-week sentence for assaulting a nine-year old relative. During his prison sentence, his girlfriend had a relationship with a police officer that she kept secret from Moat; his business also collapsed while he was in prison, which he blamed the police for. After his release, he discovered his girlfriend's relationship; he shot and killed her new boyfriend, 29-year-old karate instructor Chris Brown, and attempted to kill her. Then, while driving on the A1, he attacked police officer David Rathband, stationed in a patrol car on the roundabout of the A1 and A69 roads near East Denton, permanently blinding him (Rathband would hang himself at home in Blyth 18 months later). Moat then went on the run for six days (3–9 July), hiding in and around Rothbury. Police then cornered him by the river on the night of 9 July. After a six-hour stand-off, with Moat holding a gun to his head the entire time, Moat committed suicide by shooting himself early on the morning of 10 July.
2021 pub robberies
In May 2021 burglars broke into two pubs in the same night, the Newcastle House in Rothbury, stealing £4,000 and The Three Wheats in Thropton stealing £150. The landlord of The Three Wheats, Gail Hooper, called the burglars "scumbags".
2021 cannabis farm discovery
In June 2021 police discovered a cannabis farm at the closed-down pub The Railway Hotel in Rothbury, the police said that "At about 2.20pm on Monday we received a report from an electric company that a cannabis farm had been found inside the Railway Hotel pub in Rothbury. Officers attended the scene and about 100 plants were removed and destroyed. A 25-year-old man was arrested and has since been charged with producing a Class B drug".
Notable people
Deceased
Rowland Taylor (1510–1555) an English Protestant martyr during the Marian Persecutions.
James Robson (died ca.1757) a landowner, poet, songwriter and one time Jacobite rebel.
John Brown (1715–1766) an English Anglican priest, playwright and essayist.
Thomas Alcock (1784–1833) an English surgeon.
William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong (1810–1900) an English engineer and industrialist
Living
Imogen Stubbs (born 20 February 1961, age ), actress, was born in Rothbury
Alexander Armstrong (born 2 March 1970, age ), actor, comedian, and co-presenter of Pointless, was born in Rothbury, his father was a GP in the village.
Places named after Rothbury
Rothbury, New South Wales
North Rothbury, New South Wales (named after the larger town of Rothbury to the south that ultimately is named after Rothbury, Northumberland) Rothbury, Michigan
In popular culture
Film Moonlight Sonata (1937) is a film shot at Cragside. It was directed by Lothar Mendes, written by Edward Knoblock and E. M. Delafield, and starred the former Prime Minister of Poland, Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The Boy and the Bus (2014), a short film (23 minutes long) directed by Simon Pitts, written by Rod Arthur, and featuring actors Ali Cook and Tracey Wilkinson, and with music by John Elliott and Tiny Ruins, was filmed in Rothbury, the film involved a number of locals as extras including pupils from Dr Thomlinson's.
TV
Documentary
The Restoration Man (2010–present), is a home improvement show presented by architect George Clarke, the renovation of Thrum Mill by locals Dave and Margaret Heldey into a home was featured on the show in Series 3: Episode 4 (2014) and Clarke's revisiting of the mill a year later in Series 4: Episode Eight (2015).
Car SOS (2013–present), is show which restores classic cars in disrepair without the owner knowing, the owner being nominated for the show by a relative or friend, the owner is then surprised with their finished car in a staged event. The renovation of localman Tom Mason's 1934 Morgan F4 three-wheeler was featured in Series 3: Episode 4 (2015).
Drama
Vera (2011–present), a ITV crime drama set in North East England; Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, has scenes from two episodes filmed in Rothbury:Silent Voices (Season 2 Episode 2) at Thrum Mill, andDarkwater (Season 8 Episode 4) at Simonside Hills
Line producer Margaret Mitchell commented on filming at Rothbury for Darkwater'':
Rothbury was also mentioned by DS Joe Ashworth (David Leon) in the episode 'Poster Girl', Series 3: Episode 2.
Gallery
References and further reading
Further reading
References
External links
Rothbury: local site
Rothbury Photos
GENUKI (Accessed: 7 November 2008)
Northumberland Communities (Accessed: 7 November 2008)
Towns in Northumberland
Civil parishes in Northumberland
History of Northumberland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye%2C%20East%20Sussex
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Rye, East Sussex
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Rye is a small town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England, two miles from the sea at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. An important member of the mediaeval Cinque Ports confederation, it was at the head of an embayment of the English Channel, and almost entirely surrounded by the sea.
At the 2011 census, Rye had a population of 4,773. Its historical association with the sea has included providing ships for the service of the Crown in time of war, and being involved in smuggling. The notorious Hawkhurst Gang used its ancient inns The Mermaid Inn and The Olde Bell Inn, which are said to be connected to each other by a secret passageway.
Those historic roots and its charm make it a tourist destination, with hotels, guest houses, B&Bs, tea rooms, and restaurants. Rye has a small fishing fleet, and Rye Harbour has facilities for yachts and other vessels.
History
The name of Rye is believed to come from the West Saxon ieg meaning island. Medieval maps show that Rye was originally located on a huge embayment of the English Channel called the Rye Camber, which provided a safe anchorage and harbour. Probably as early as Roman times, Rye was important as a place of shipment and storage of iron from the Wealden iron industry.
Rye, as part of the Saxon Manor of Rameslie, was given to the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy by King Æthelred; it was to remain in Norman hands until 1247. The town of Rye is recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as possessing 189 households, marking it as a significant settlement at the time. The cellars of the Mermaid Inn date from 1156.
As one of the two "Antient Townes" (Winchelsea being the other), Rye was to become a limb of the Cinque Ports Confederation by 1189, and subsequently a full member. The protection of the town as one of the Cinque Ports was very important, due to the commerce that trading brought. One of the oldest buildings in Rye is Ypres Tower, which was built in 1249 as "Baddings Tower", to defend the town from the French, and was later named after its owner, John de Ypres. It is now part of the Rye Museum.
Rye received its charter from King Edward I in 1289, and acquired privileges and tax exemptions in return for ship-service for the crown. The "Landgate" (the only surviving one of four original fortified entrances to Rye) dates from 1329 in the early years of the reign of King Edward III. It is suitable only for light vehicles. In 2015, some 25 tonnes of pigeon excrement that had built up had to be removed from Landgate Arch for fear of damaging the ancient structure.
The River Rother originally took an easterly course to flow into the sea near what is now New Romney. However, the violent storms in the 13th century (particularly in 1250 and 1287) cut the town off from the sea, destroyed Old Winchelsea, and changed the course of the Rother. Then the sea and the river combined in about 1375 to destroy the eastern part of the town and ships began use the current area (the Strand) to unload their cargoes. Two years later, the town was sacked and burnt by the French, and it was ordered that the town walls be completed, as a defence against foreign raiders.
Rye was considered one of the finest of the Cinque Ports, though constant work had to be done to stop the gradual silting up of the river and the harbour. Also, a conflict arose between the maritime interests and the landowners, who gradually "inned" or reclaimed land from the sea on Romney and Walland Marsh, and thus reduced the tidal flows that were supposed to keep the harbour free of silt. Acts of Parliament had to be passed to enable the Rother to be kept navigable at all.
With the coming of bigger ships and larger deepwater ports, Rye's economy began to decline, and fishing and particularly smuggling (including owling, the smuggling of wool) became more important. Imposition of taxes on goods had encouraged smuggling since 1301, but by the end of the 17th century, it became widespread throughout Kent and Sussex, with wool being the largest commodity. When luxury goods were also added, smuggling became a criminal pursuit, and groups – such as the Hawkhurst Gang who met in The Mermaid Inn in Rye – turned to murder and were subsequently hanged.
Since 1803, lifeboats have been stationed at Rye although the lifeboat station is now at Rye Harbour about downriver from the town. The worst disaster in RNLI history concerning a single vessel, and in the 20th century, occurred in 1928, when the lifeboat Mary Stanford sank with all hands; 17 men were drowned. The incident is recorded by a tablet at Winchelsea church, by the imposing memorial at Rye Harbour Church and by the folk song "The Mary Stanford of Rye". A new Mary Stanford was commissioned by the RNLI two years later, and stationed at Ballycotton on the coast of Ireland. Since 2010, the RNLI has operated an Atlantic 85-class inshore lifeboat at Rye Harbour.
Between 1696 and 1948, six ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name .
During the 1803–1805 Napoleonic invasion threat, Rye, Dover, and Chatham were regarded as the three most likely invasion ports, and Rye became the western command centre for the Royal Military Canal. The canal was planned from Pett Level to Hythe, but was not completed until long after the threat had passed.
From 1838 to 1889, Rye had its own borough police force. It was a small force, often with just two officers. Rye police frequently had difficulties on Bonfire night (5 November) and special constables were recruited to help deal with the problems bonfire gangs caused. After amalgamation with the county force in 1889 a new police station was provided in Church Square. In 1892 the strength of the town police, now amalgamated, was one sergeant and three constables.
In May 1940, during the darkest days of World War II, the Rye fishing fleet was invited to participate in Operation Dynamo, the seaborne rescue of the stranded British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, but refused to do so.
Rye Royal
Rye, being part of the Cinque Ports Confederation and a bastion against invasion on the Channel Coast, has always had close links with the crown. King Edward III and the Black Prince defeated the Spanish in Rye Bay in 1350 in the battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer, but Queen Elizabeth I gave the town the right to use the title "Rye Royal" following a visit in 1573. King Charles I described Rye as "The cheapest sea-towne for the provision of fish for our house". George I whilst returning from visiting his continental possessions in 1726 was grounded on Camber Sands and spent the next four days in Rye, being accommodated at Lamb House.
Governance
Historically, Rye was an independent borough granted rights of governance under its charter of 1289, with its own appointed Mayor of Rye and chosen jurats (magistrates). These independent powers were terminated by the Local Government Act of 1972 and, although officially considered to be a rural parish, Rye's governing body – because of its history – is that of a Town Council. That Council has one electoral ward, electing 16 members, one of whom then is elected mayor of Rye. In Rye Town Hall, the list of the mayors of Rye is unbroken going back to the 13th century. Two gruesome relics of Rye's violent past include the gibbet cage which was famously used to display the hanged body of the murderer John Breads in 1742, and the pillory last used in 1813 in the case of a local publican who assisted the escape of the French General Armand Philippon.
Apart from the Town Council, the majority of local government functions are exercised by Rother District Council, with its headquarters in Bexhill-on-Sea, and East Sussex County Council, based in Lewes. The Rother District Council ward of Rye and Winchelsea returns two councillors. The East Sussex County Council division of Rye and Eastern Rother returns one councillor.
Since 1983, Rye has been part of the parliamentary constituency of Hastings and Rye, prior to which it had its own seat. The current Member of Parliament, since 2019, is Sally-Ann Hart of the Conservative Party.
Geography
Rye stands at the point where the sandstone high land of the Weald reaches the coast. The medieval coastline (see map above), with its large bay, enabled ships to come up to the port. The original course of the River Rother then reached the sea at Romney to the northeast. Storms in the English Channel in the 13th century, coupled with reclamation of the bay, brought huge quantities of gravel through longshore drift along the coast, blocking the port entrance. The course of the river has also changed over the centuries so that Rye now stands on the river at the point of its confluence with the River Tillingham and the River Brede, whereas the river flows southward into Rye Bay. River Rother and the environs of Rye Harbour are managed and maintained by the Environment Agency. The Rivers Brede and Rother also form part of the Royal Military Canal between Winchelsea and Iden Lock. The town is part of the remotest and least populated area of southeastern England, on the edge of Romney Marsh and within 3 km of the coast.
A part of the town, but only a minority of the housing stock, lies on the original rocky heights (the Citadel) and contains the historic buildings including St Mary's parish church, the Ypres Tower (part of the Town Wall), Lamb House and many of the houses on Mermaid Street, Watchbell Street, and Church Square. The main road skirts the town to the south after crossing the river; Winchelsea Road leads to New Winchelsea Road, formerly Royal Military Road, which runs parallel to the River Brede before leaving the town boundary. The houses along New Winchelsea Road date from the 1930s, built on the excavations from the Royal Military Canal. The gardens run down to the river, with fishing and boating rights. Most of Rye's inhabitants live outside the Citadel area.
Economy
Rye, over the centuries, has successively been an entrepôt port, a naval base, a fishing port, an agricultural centre, and a market town. The old part of the town within the former town walls has shops, art galleries and restaurants. Additionally, Rye is known for oast houses in the surrounding villages and hamlets Many have been converted into private residences, however a few, like the Playden Oasts Inn, remain open to the public.
The great attractiveness of the town has kept it on the tourist trail, especially its "perfect cobbled lanes, like Mermaid Street, which must be one of Britain's most photographed". A 2020 report praised the medieval streets "often wonky houses and it is easy to get lost in the town's history". Camber Sands beach, "with its moody sand dunes and long sandy beach", is nearby. The town and its surrounding areas were branded "1066 country" because of the historic aspects. Few statistics are published for Rye as a town, but an estimated one million visits were made in 2016.
Since the Second World War, the town has become a centre for ceramics. The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected many East Sussex businesses in 2020–2021. East Sussex Council estimated in September 2020 that "more than £45 million" was expected to be "injected into the county’s economy to aid recovery from the impact of Covid-19".
Apart from its tourist base, Rye continues to operate as a port. At Rye Harbour, the Rastrums Wharf (which was renovated in the 1980s) has the capacity to take large ships up to on a high tide.
Considerable investment has been made in facilities for both the fishing fleet berthed at Rye and the commercial wharves at Rye Harbour. Rye fishing boats are code-lettered RX (from "R"ye, Susse"x"; this registration is also used by the Hastings fishing fleet) and land fish daily. Some of the catch is sold at the quayside, though most is sold through the great regional market in Boulogne.
Rye also is an important yachting base, offering the only safe haven for many miles in either direction along this section of Channel coast. Yachts may currently moor either at Rye Harbour or at the Strand Quay at the edge of the town. Numerous plans have been proposed for a modern yacht marina to be built at Rye, but each has foundered on economic or planning grounds.
Transport
At the latter end of the 18th century, Rye was connected to the turnpike trust system of roads. One of these, the Flimwell Turnpike, took passengers towards London; the second ran from Hastings eastwards through the town. These two roads are now the A268 and the A259. The Monk Bretton Bridge over the Rother was built in 1893 and provided a link with Rye and New Romney via Brenzett. In the 1980s and 1990s, proposals to bypass the A259 route around Rye were met with local opposition and never received any priority in the building programme.
In addition to the half-hourly 100/101 Dover-Hastings Stagecoach long-distance bus service, buses connect Rye with other towns and villages, including Tenterden, Hastings, and Tunbridge Wells.
Rye railway station is on the Marshlink line between Hastings and Ashford. This now provides an hourly service from Eastbourne to Ashford International connecting with Eurostar services to Paris Gare du Nord and the high-speed Class 395 service to London St Pancras. Gatwick Airport may be reached by rail via Eastbourne or Lewes.
Before World War II, a summer steamship service ran from Rye to Boulogne. Rye was also the terminus for the prewar Rye & Camber Tramway, built to serve golf courses and Camber Sands; it was closed to the public at the outbreak of World War II, never reopened, and scrapped in 1947.
Several long-distance footpaths can be joined by walkers in the town. The Saxon Shore Way which starts at Gravesend, Kent, and traces the coast as it was in Roman times, passes through Rye en route to Hastings; the 1066 Country Walk leads from Rye to Pevensey; the High Weald Landscape Trail goes to Horsham; and the Royal Military Canal Path follows that waterway to Hythe.
Education
Rye College (formerly called Thomas Peacocke Community College, and before that Thomas Peacocke School) is a secondary school in Rye. The two primary schools, Tilling Green Infant School and Freda Gardham Community School, were replaced by a new school, Rye Primary, adjacent to the secondary institution, in September 2008. The original Rye Primary School was situated just off Ferry Road near the railway crossing.
Places of worship
Past and present places of worship in Rye include St Mary's, the Anglican parish church with Norman origins; St Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic church, rebuilt in 1929; a 1909 Baptist chapel in Cinque Ports Street, replacing the Rye Particular Baptist Chapel of 1754 (which itself stood on the site of an older Quaker meeting house); former Congregational and Independent churches; and a Methodist chapel.
Amenities
Rye is a local commercial centre for the Romney Marsh and Walland Marsh areas, as well as being a tourist spot. Rye Farmers' Market takes place on Strand Quay every Thursday morning. Rye has a well-established reputation as a centre for shops trading antiques, collectors' books, and records, and has many art galleries selling works by local artists and potters with changing exhibitions throughout the year.
Rye's general weekly market takes place on the marketplace car park by the station every Thursday. Until the foot-and-mouth disease crisis in 2001 (which closed all livestock markets in England), livestock sales were held frequently at Rye.
Rye Castle Museum is located on two sites, on East Street and at the Ypres Castle. One of the tourist websites includes a picture tour of the town Rye Art Gallery was established as a Trust in the early 1960s. Located at 107 High Street and incorporating the former Ypres Studio in Ockmans Lane, home of artists Mary Stormont (1871–1962) and her husband Howard Gull Stormont (1859–1935), it provides a focus for contemporary visual art, which it exhibits alongside heritage artworks from its permanent collection.
Rye also stands at the centre of a network of nature reserves, some of national importance. The Rye Harbour SSSI lies to the south and includes the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.
The neighbouring Pett Levels and Pools, and the Pannel Valley nature reserve are accessible via Winchelsea and Winchelsea Beach a few miles to the west, whilst Scotney Lake lies just off the Lydd road and the RSPB reserve at Dungeness lies a few miles further to the east with the Bird Observatory located in the old lighthouse.
The recent redevelopment of the Rye wharf for the RX fishing fleet has provided modern amenities for the landing and storage of fish. Most is sold wholesale through the regional market in Boulogne, though there is a trend for Rye to develop as a gastronomic centre in the style of Newquay or Padstow, featuring the use of fresh local produce from the sea. The annual "Rye Bay Scallops Festival" which takes place each year in February was first proposed by the then Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, Kate Roy, as a means of promoting the "Rye Bay Catch".
Every year in September, Rye hosts its annual two-week Arts Festival which attracts a world-class series of performers in music, comedy, and literature.
On the second Saturday after 5 November, the "Bonfire Boys" stage their annual torch-lit parade through the streets of the town, supported by visiting Bonfire Societies from all over the Sussex Bonfire Societies Confederation. This is followed by a "gurt 'normous bonfire" where the chosen "effigy" of the year is ceremoniously blown up, and a spectacular firework display. This event typically attracts over 10,000 visitors to the town, and results in the town's roads, and the main roads to London, Hastings, and Ashford, being clogged up and closed to traffic from the early evening onwards.
Local media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC South East and ITV Meridian. Television signals are received from the Dover and the local relay transmitters.
Rye’s local radio stations are BBC Radio Sussex on 104.5 FM, Heart South on 102 FM and a community radio station which launched on FM on 7 March 2022 and is called Cinque Ports Radio. This station broadcasts across Rye, Romney Marsh and Hythe on 100.2FM and replaced Shoreline FM 100.2 which broadcast since January 2020. Shoreline FM now being an online only service for Rye, Romney Marsh and Hythe called Shoreline Easy.
The town’s local newspaper is the Rye News.
Sport and leisure
Rye has a non-League football club, Rye Town FC, who play their home matches at The Salts. The club, which was formed in 2016, plays in the East Sussex Football League, and replaced the now defunct Rye United FC (formerly Rye & Iden United) of the Sussex County Football League, which folded in 2014.
Rye has a rugby union club, Rye RFC, who compete in the Sussex Intermediate League. The club was formed in 1991 and field both adult and youth teams. The rugby club and its playing fields are located on New Road.
Rye in literature
Several mentions of the town have been made by famous travel writers between the 16th and 18th centuries, although not all were good. Sir Robert Naunton (1563–1635) mentions it in his book Travels in England, published sometime between 1628 and 1632; he calls Rye a "small English seaport"; shortly after his arrival he takes post-horses for London, travelling via Flimwell.
Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) described the state of the harbour and its approaches, saying, "Rye would flourish again, if her harbour, which was once able to receive the royal navy, cou'd be restor'd", but thought it very doubtful that large ships would be able to use the port again.
William Cobbett (1763–1835) simply mentions it in passing, saying that this area (that including the Romney Marsh) would be most likely to be where the French invaders might land. According to Norman Wright's book The Famous Five: Everything you ever wanted to know, it was Rye and the Romney Marsh that inspired Enid Blyton to write Five go to Smuggler's Top (1945).
In 1969, Malcolm Saville published an entry in his Lone Pine series of children's adventure novels titled Rye Royal set largely in Rye, although he had previously based several others of the series wholly or partially in the town, starting with The Gay Dolphin Adventure published in 1945. The titular Gay Dolphin is a fictional hotel owned by the mother of one of the Lone Pine Club, but is located in the book seemingly in Watchbell Street, where the real Hope Anchor hotel stands, although its description in the books is more akin to the town's Mermaid hotel. Over the course of the books, several of the town's landmarks are mentioned and described accurately, as is some of its history.
Rye has produced and attracted many fiction writers, some of whom lived at Lamb House, one of the town's historic residences and now owned by the National Trust, including
Henry James (1843–1916), the American novelist, who was resident between 1898 and 1916, and E.F. Benson (1867–1940), the English novelist. Others who lived in the area include Joseph Conrad; Ford Madox Ford; Stephen Crane; H.G. Wells; Rumer Godden (1907–98), the Anglo-Indian novelist; and the naturalist W.H. Hudson. Both the house and the town feature prominently in Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels, as Mallards House and Tilling, respectively.
In the mid-1980s, Rye was used as a filming location by LWT for its adaptation of the Mapp and Lucia novels. A BBC adaptation of Mapp and Lucia was filmed in Rye in the summer of 2014.
The post-Monty Python film Yellowbeard also had several scenes filmed on the cobbled street. John Christopher (who wrote as Samuel Youd) wrote many of his novels, including the Death of Grass, whilst a resident of Rye, as did the popular children's author John Ryan, creator of the Captain Pugwash books. Sink Port is a thinly disguised fictional version of the town and a pun on 'cinque port'.
The feature film Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951), starring Gregory Peck, was filmed on Mermaid Street. Mermaid Street serves as Hornblower's wife and mother's house in Portsmouth.
Twin towns
Rye, United States
Notable people
Other residents of the town and environs have included:
Conrad Aiken (1889–1973), American writer: Aiken's former home, Jeake's House, is now a guest house.
Joan Aiken (1924–2004), children's author, daughter of Conrad Aiken
Geoffrey Bagley (1901–1992), Canadian war artist who settled in Rye post war and then worked to preserve the town's historic mementos and places.
John Banting (1902–1972), artist and writer, moved to Rye in the 1950s. He lived at 10 High Street.
Frederick Edward Bradshaw MacManus OBE (1903-1985) architect, moved to Rye in his retirement.
Viola Bayley (1911–1997), children's writer of adventure stories.
Reginald Blomfield (1856–1942), prolific architect and designer of the Cross of Sacrifice
Fred Boreham (1885–1951), professional footballer
Edward Burra (1905–1976), painter, draughtsman and printmaker, born near Rye and lived in the town from time to time in the 1920s and 1930s
John Christopher (1922–2012), science fiction author. The 1980s British television series based on his trilogy, The Tripods, was filmed near his house.
Tom Chaplin (born 1979), singer of the band Keane
Frederick Cuming (artist) (1930-2022) Royal Academician specialising in Landscapes and Seascapes of the Sussex Coast.
Monica Edwards (1912–1998), children's author who lived at Rye Harbour and set her Romney Marsh novels in the area, renaming Rye Dunsford.
Horace Field (1861–1948), influential "Wrenaissance" architect
John Fletcher (1579–1625), Jacobean playwright and solicitor
Babylon Graundfote (c. 1420 – 1480), English politician who sat in the House of Commons at several points between 1459 and 1465, and also served as Mayor of Rye between 1463 and 1475.
Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943), ground-breaking lesbian writer
John Howlett, writer (1942–2019) of novels, TV series, the script of the film If.... and other works.
Henry James, (1843–1916), American author
Wendy Law-Yone Burmese writer who current lives in London and Rye
Paul Nash (1889–1946), World War I artist, lived in East Street in the 1930s
Simon Nelson, 10th Earl Nelson (born 1971)
Paul McCartney, Beatle, had a home near Peasmarsh in the 1980s.
Spike Milligan (1918–2002), comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and vice-president of the Rye Rugby Club
John Ryan (1921–2009), although born in Edinburgh, this British author/cartoonist famed for his TV cartoon Captain Pugwash, was a resident of Rye.
Malcolm Saville (1901–1982), author of nearly 80 children's books, largely thrillers and adventure stories. Saville was the creator of the Lone Pine series of books, a number of which were set in Rye, including The Gay Dolphin Adventure and Rye Royal.
Baron Saville of Newdigate (born 1936) chair of the "Bloody Sunday" enquiry and nephew of Malcolm Saville, attended Rye Grammar School (1947–1953). The new Rye Studio School's dance theatre is named after him.
Admiral Sir Aubrey Smith (1872–1957) lived in Rye at Iden Cottage.
Russell Thorndike (1885–1972) set his Dr Syn novels about smuggling on the marshes.
Philippa Urquhart (born 1940), British actress
Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) did several drawings of the town.
J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) did many drawings and paintings of the town and its coastline, including surrounding areas such as Hastings.
Frederick Edward Bradshaw MacManus OBE (1903-85) architect and conservationist retired from Hamstead Garden Suburb to Rye c. 1969.
Notes
References
External links
Rye Harbour Nature Reserve
Walking Tour of Rye, the Most Beautiful Town in England by Jonathan Copeland
Towns in East Sussex
Market towns in East Sussex
Cinque ports
Civil parishes in East Sussex
Rother District
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavistock
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Tavistock
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Tavistock ( ) is an ancient stannary and market town within West Devon, England. It is situated on the River Tavy from which its name derives. At the 2011 census the three electoral wards (North, South and South West) had a population of 13,028. It traces its recorded history back to at least 961 when Tavistock Abbey, whose ruins lie in the centre of the town, was founded. Its most famous son is Sir Francis Drake.
History
Middle Ages
The area around Tavistock (formerly Tavistoke), where the River Tavy runs wide and shallow allowing it to be easily crossed, and near the secure high ground of Dartmoor, was inhabited long before historical records. The surrounding area is littered with archaeological remains from the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Rumon was founded in 961 by Ordgar, Earl of Devon. After destruction by Danish raiders in 997 it was restored, and at the time of the Conquest ranked as the wealthiest house in Devon, including the hundred and manor of Tavistock among its possessions. Among its famous abbots was Aldred, who crowned Harold II and William I, and died Archbishop of York.
In 1105 a royal charter was granted by Henry I to the monks of Tavistock to run a weekly "Pannier Market" (so called after the baskets used to carry goods) on a Friday, which still takes place today. In 1116 a three-day fair was also granted to mark the feast of Saint Rumon, another tradition that is still maintained in the shape of the annual "Goosey" fair on the second Wednesday in October.
By 1185 Tavistock had achieved borough status, and in 1295 it became a parliamentary borough, sending two members to parliament. The abbey church was rebuilt in 1285. In 1305, with the growing importance of the area as one of Europe's richest sources of tin, Tavistock was one of the four stannary towns appointed by charter of Edward I, where tin was stamped and weighed and monthly courts were held for the regulation of mining affairs.
Parish church
The St Eustachius' Church (named after the Roman centurion who became a Christian) was dedicated by Bishop Stapledon in 1318 though there are very few remains of that building today. It was rebuilt and enlarged into its current form between 1350 and 1450, at which time the Clothworkers' Aisle (an outer south aisle) was included, an indication of the growing importance of the textile industry to the local economy—the trade was protected by a 1467 statute. The whole is in the Perpendicular style and consists of a nave and chancel; both with two aisles, tower and outer south aisle.
It possesses a lofty tower supported on four open arches, one of which was reputedly added to accommodate the 19th-century "tinners" or tin miners. Within are monuments to the Glanville and Bourchier families, besides some fine stained glass, one window being the work of William Morris and another of Charles Eamer Kempe. It also has a roof boss featuring one of the so-called 'Tinners' Hares', a trio of rabbits/hares joined at and sharing three ears between them. The font is octagonal and dates from the 15th century.
Early modern period
The greater part of the abbey was rebuilt in 1457–1458. The town continued to prosper in the charge of the abbots, acquiring one of England's first printing presses in 1525. Tavistock remained an important centre of both trade and religion until the Dissolution of the Monasteries—the abbey was demolished in 1539, leaving the ruins still to be seen around the centre of the town. From that time on, the dominant force in the town became the Russell family, Earls and later Dukes of Bedford, who took over much of the land following the Dissolution. In 1552 two fairs on 23 April and 28 November were granted by Edward VI to the Earl of Bedford, then lord of the manor.
In the 17th century great quantities of cloth were sold at the Friday market, and four fairs were held at the feasts of Saint Michael, Epiphany, Saint Mark, and the Decollation of John the Baptist. The charter of Charles II instituted a Tuesday market, and fairs on the Thursday after Whitsunday and at the feast of Saint Swithin.
Tavistock is tied from late medieval times with the Russells, the family name of the Earls of Bedford and since 1694, the Dukes of Bedford. This is clearly seen from the history of the town. The second title of the Duke of Bedford is the Marquess of Tavistock, taken as the courtesy title of the eldest son and heir to the dukedom, and illustrates the importance of this Devon town, its hinterland and the minerals beneath it to the family's fortunes. It is believed that the Russell family retains considerable interests in the locality. Most recently, Robin, the short-lived 14th Duke, as Marquess of Tavistock, was a frequent visitor to the town along with his wife, Henrietta. Andrew Russell is the 15th Duke of Bedford and Marquess of Tavistock.
It is this Russell family connection through the Bedford Estates which gives the name by ownership to Russell Square and Tavistock Square in London, famously home to the Tavistock Clinic, and the bus-bombing of 7 July 2005.
Francis Drake
Around 1540 (some sources state 1542 as the exact year), Sir Francis Drake was born at Crowndale Farm, just to the west of what is now Tavistock College. A Blue Plaque is mounted on the current farmhouse, behind which Drake is believed to have been born, the original farmhouse having been dismantled and the stone transported for use in Lew Trenchard. He became a prominent figure of his age, a champion of Queen Elizabeth, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world from 1577 to 1580 and one of the English commanders in the victory against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
The famous statue of Drake on Plymouth Hoe is a copy of that on a roundabout on the A386 at the western end of the town, with panels not replicated on the Hoe copy. Drake later made his home at Buckland Abbey, about away towards Plymouth, jointly owned/run by Plymouth City Council and the National Trust, and now a museum to Drake.
Industry
Mines of copper, manganese, lead, silver and tin were previously in the neighbourhood and the town played host to a considerable trade of cattle and corn, and industries in brewing and iron-founding.
By the 17th century, tin mining was on the wane and the town relied more heavily on the cloth trade. Under the stewardship of the Russells the town remained prosperous, surviving the Black Death in 1625 (though 52 townspeople died). In the English Civil War starting 1642, the town was at first held by the Parliamentarians (Francis Russell, the 4th Earl of Bedford was a leading figure in the parliamentarian movement), before later hosting King Charles I and his Royalist troops in 1643 after the defeat of the Parliamentary forces at the Battle of Bradock Down.
In 1694, William Russell, 5th Earl of Bedford became the first Duke of Bedford.
Late modern period
By 1800, cloth was heading the same way as tin had done a century earlier, but copper was starting to be copiously mined in the area, to such an extent that by 1817 the Tavistock Canal had been dug (most of the labour being performed by French prisoners of war from the Napoleonic Wars) to carry copper to Morwellham Quay on the River Tamar, where it could be loaded into sailing ships. In 1822 the old fairs were abolished in favour of six fairs on the second Wednesday in May, July, September, October, November and December.
In the mid-19th century, with nearby Devon Great Consols mine at Blanchdown one of the biggest copper mining operations in the world, Tavistock was booming again, reputedly earning the 7th Duke of Bedford alone over £2,000,000. A statue in copper of the 7th Duke stands in Guildhall Square. The Duke built a 50,000 imperial gallon (230 m³) reservoir to supply the town in 1845, as well as a hundred miners' houses at the southern end of town, between 1845 and 1855. There is a strong, recognisable vernacular "Bedford style" of design, exemplified most strikingly in Tavistock Town Hall and "Bedford Cottages" ubiquitous across Tavistock and much of the local area to the north and west, where the Bedfords had their estate and summer "cottage" at Endsleigh House and Gardens, which since 2005 is the Hotel Endsleigh run by Alex Polizzi.
Tavistock was deprived of one member of Parliament in 1867 and finally disenfranchised in 1885. The railway came to the town in 1859, with connections to the Great Western Railway and the London and South Western Railway (LSWR). At around this time the centre of town was substantially and ruthlessly remodelled by the 7th Duke of Bedford, including the construction of the current town hall and Pannier Market buildings, and the widening of the Abbey Bridge, first built in 1764, and a new Drake Road ramped up northwards from Bedford Square to the LSWR station. Tavistock North railway station opened to much acclaim and fanfare in 1890. The population had peaked at around 9,000. By 1901 the population had halved, recorded as 4,728. In 1968, following the Beeching Report, Tavistock Station closed, and in 1999 English Heritage listed the building as Grade II.
Kelly College, a co-educational public school, to the north-east of the town, was founded by Admiral Benedictus Marwood Kelly, and opened in 1877 for the education of his descendants and the orphan sons of naval officers, and is a pastiche of the Bedford and High Victorian styles of building. It later amalgamated with Mount House to form Mount Kelly Foundation.
20th and 21st centuries
In 1911, the Bedford influence on the town came to an end after over 450 years, when the family sold most of their holdings in the area to meet death duties.
West Devon Borough Council is based in Tavistock, about 500 metres north of Bedford Square at Kilworthy Park. There was a small police station under part of the Bedford building complex on Bedford Square; this has closed and a new one is in Abbey Rise. The adjacent historic Magistrates Court has also closed and the nearest criminal court is now at Plymouth Law Courts.
In 1926 a meeting was held in Tavistock with representatives of the UK government and UK scientific instrument makers. A comparison was made on Dartmoor between UK theodolites and their European competition, especially the Swiss Wild T2 theodolite. One result of this conference was the 1930 "Tavistock" theodolite by Cooke, Troughton & Simms.
In 1933 the long-disused canal was put to use providing hydroelectric power for the area.
A war memorial in Bedford Square commemorates the townsfolk killed in the First and Second World Wars. Many families across Britain exercised their right not to have their family members named on these public memorials. In 2006 it was planned to move the monument to a site in the graveyard of the Parish Church, but due to local opposition this did not happen.
Tavistock had two railway stations, both now closed. Tavistock South was the Great Western Railway's station, on the route between Launceston and Plymouth. This was closed and mostly dismantled between 1962 and 1965. The station was sited to the south of Bedford Square, just over the bridge and to the right—now a council depot: no trace of the station remains. Tavistock North was the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway's station, operated by the London and South Western Railway, on the route between Lydford and Plymouth via Bere Alston. This opened on 2 June 1890 and closed on 6 May 1968. The main station building survives as railway-themed bed and breakfast accommodation while the extensive goods yard is now known as Kilworthy Park and houses the offices of West Devon Borough Council. The railway for around a mile south of Tavistock North station is open to the public as a footpath and nature reserve and one can walk across the viaducts that overlook the town.
The trackbed of the Tavistock North route is almost intact to Bere Alston, where it joins today's Tamar Valley Line. The possible re-opening of a rail link has been discussed for a number of years. Engineering assessment shows the rail-bed, bridges and tunnels to be in sound condition. In 2008 a housing developer offered to rebuild the railway to Bere Alston (from a new station slightly south of the town) if they were allowed to build 800 properties. This has also encouraged speculation about restoring the Tavistock-Okehampton rail link, which could provide an alternative to the Devon coastal main line to link the South West Region with the rest of the country. In December 2010 the developer published an update on the possibility of reinstating the line between Tavistock and Bere Alston and hence providing a train service between Tavistock and Plymouth. In April 2010 the Liberal Democrats had suggested that a Tavistock-Plymouth service could be included in the rail expansion plans should they win the 2010 General Election.
In 1986, the town's two newspapers, the Tavistock Gazette (founded in 1857) and the Tavistock Times (established in 1920) merged to form the current weekly publication, the Tavistock Times Gazette, with a circulation of around 8,000. The newspaper is owned by Tindle Newspaper Group. The newspaper celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2007, with a visit from the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.
In July 2006 Tavistock was named the eastern Gateway to the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site, which runs westward through the Tamar Valley and Great Consols Mine, down the spine of Cornwall to Lands End. This £75 million project is likely to bring more tourists to Tavistock. There has been no progress with proposals for a £1.1 million World Heritage Site Interpretation Centre, planned for 2007, to be built in the area of the Guildhall, and overlooking the River Tavy.
A local community group known as "Tavistock Forward" have been negotiating to take over the Guildhall complex with police and English Heritage endorsement, with leaseback of the existing police station to Devon & Cornwall Police, while developing the Guildhall itself.
Geography
Tavistock lies on the edge of Dartmoor, around north of Plymouth on the A386, with a population of 11,018. The town is centred on the paved amenity of Bedford Square, around which are found St. Eustachius' Church and the abbey ruins, to the west, the Grade 2-listed town hall, the disused former Guildhall/magistrates' court buildings, and Pannier Market buildings behind the town hall. Abbey Bridge crosses the River Tavy to the south, while West Street and Duke Street, on either side of the north end of the square, form the main shopping areas, with the indoor [Pannier] market running behind Duke Street.
Plymouth Road, the A386 heading west from the centre of the square, is home to much of the town's tourist trade, with many hotels and bed and breakfast establishments, as well as the town's bus station. Between Plymouth Road and the Tavy is the park, known locally as the Meadows, along with car parks, the Wharf theatre, cinema and culture centre, and a public recreation pool. West of the Meadows are found the substantial playing fields and buildings of Tavistock College, reached by an underpass below the A386. Further south along the Plymouth Road/A386 lie industrial estates, supermarkets and other large retail outlets. To the north and east of town lies Whitchurch Down, where Dartmoor begins immediately.
Climate
Tavistock has an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb).
Religious sites
See also Tavistock Abbey
For the parish church of St Eustachius, see above, Parish church
The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Mary Magdalene, Fitzford, was built at the expense of the Duke of Bedford in 1867. It is an ambitious building in the neo-transitional style and the tall spire is conspicuous from the high ground surrounding the town. This church was intended as a place of worship for miners. It fell into disuse and was bought in 1952 for use as a Roman Catholic church.
Education
State
Most secondary education is provided by Tavistock College, a state-funded specialist Language College with approximately 2,000 pupils, drawn from a catchment area of about radius. The college has links with Japan, Uganda, Spain and India where staff exchanges and student visits and projects take place.
Some children who pass the optional Eleven-Plus exam at a high level travel to one of the three remaining grammar schools in Plymouth. Others who leave school at 16 attend the City College C of F E there. Tavistock has a choice of primary schools: Church of England St Peter's and also St Rumon's, together with Devon County Council's Tavistock Community Primary and Whitchurch Primary.
Independent
Mount Kelly School is the independent school in Tavistock. It has two main sites, the College which is situated on Parkwood Road and the Preparatory School which is situated on Mount Tavy Road. The school has 570 pupils between the ages of 3 and 18. Mount Kelly was formed in 2014 after two independent schools, Kelly College and Mount House School merged.
Life and events
Market village and shopping centre
Tavistock remains a small market town, providing shopping and entertainment for its residents, many small outlying villages and the local farming community. The town is now a centre for the West Devon and Dartmoor tourist trade. It is a fast-growing dormitory area for commuters working in Plymouth and has a sizeable retired population, perhaps drawn by the rural tranquillity and scenery, giving Tavistock an average resident age of 43.
Markets were originally held in Bank Square. A specialist Corn Market was erected on the corner of West Street and King Steet in 1835. The main market continues to operate in the large covered market building, the Pannier Market, completed in 1860; the main market is on Fridays, on other days the market hosts specialised events, such as craft fairs and antiques fairs. A Farmers' Market takes place in the Square fortnightly and has been voted Best Farmer's Market in the South West.
In 2005 Tavistock was voted 'Best Market Town' in England and in 2006 'Best Food Town', largely on the strength of the many independent food shops and suppliers in the town and nearby, such as a long-established family grocer and delicatessen in Brook St and the cheese shop behind the Pannier market. The town also became Devon's second Fairtrade Town (in 2006). In 2006 the town was in the news for having successfully cold-shouldered to closure the local branch of McDonald's.
Events
The biggest event in the town's calendar is the annual Tavistock Goose Fair (known locally as the "Goosey Fair") which has existed since 1116. It occurs on the second Wednesday of October, and takes over much of the town for several days either side, drawing crowds which far outnumber the resident population. Traditionally, the Fair was an opportunity to buy a Christmas goose, with plenty of time to fatten the bird before Christmas; nowadays, along with a multitude of gypsy street vendors selling a vast range of wares, there are all the rides and games associated with funfairs, such as fortune tellers.
There is an annual two-day garden festival held on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend and a carnival with a two-day Balloon Fiesta each August bank holiday weekend. In May there is an annual Tavistock Music & Arts Festival.
In 2010, the town was chosen to be a stage depart town in the Tour of Britain cycle race.
On the first Sunday in October, the annual Abbots Way Walk finishes in Tavistock. Started in 1962, this challenge walk starts at Buckfast Abbey and participants walk across Southern Dartmoor to finish at Tavistock.
Transport
Bus Services
The main bus operator in Tavistock is Stagecoach South West. Stagecoach's service 1 runs frequently into Plymouth 7 days a week. Other Stagecoach services include the 87 to Bere Alston and service 89 Town Service. Plymouth Citybus run rural services onto Dartmoor from Tavistock. Dartline operate service 118 to Okehampton.
Coach excursions
Lomax Tours run coach day excursions from Tavistock and surrounding areas.
Rail Links
Currently Tavistock doesn't have a railway station although it used to. Okehampton and Plymouth are the nearest current stations.
Road
The A386 connects Tavistock to the A30 in the north and the A380 in the south.
Culture and sport
Tavistock's coat of arms is blazoned "Per pale, gules and azure, a fleece banded; a chief, dexter a lion passant gardant, sinister a fleur-de-lys, all or". The earliest record of these arms is in 1684. The fleece refers to the wool trade and the fleur-de-lys probably to Our Lady, joint patron of Tavistock Abbey. The town's motto is "Crescit sub pondere virtus", meaning "virtue flourishes under a burden".
Tavistock Penny Token
Bigbury Mint Ltd, medal makers based near Plymouth in Devon, produce a semi-reproduction of the Tavistock Penny Token which is distinguished from the original by the Bigbury Mint mark stamped on both sides of the coin. There is an example of the original coin held in the Science Museum Collection. The Bigbury Mint reproduction coin is struck in copper as a celebration of the proud mining history of the town, the obverse of the coin features the Tavistock fleur-de-lys and the reverse of the coin has a carving of the mine, along with the words "Devon Mines, 1811".
Literature
Tavistock was the birthplace of the poet William Browne. The town is mentioned in some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures, including The Hound of the Baskervilles and "The Adventure of Silver Blaze". It is also receives a mention in R. D. Blackmore's classic Lorna Doone and Neal Stephenson's novel, The System of the World. Anna Eliza Bray was the author of The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy (1836), an account of the traditions and superstitions of the neighbourhood of Tavistock in the form of letters to Robert Southey.
Sport
Tavistock has one senior football team, Tavistock A.F.C. and two junior football teams, Tavistock Town and Tavistock Thistles. Together the three clubs form Tavistock Community Football Club offering coaching and competition to players of all ages from 5 years old to veterans. There is also a rugby team with a large and active minis and junior section, Tavistock Rugby Football Club.
Media
Local TV coverage is provided by BBC South West and ITV West Country. Television signals are received from the Caradon Hill and the local relay TV transmitters.
Tavistock's local radio stations are BBC Radio Devon on 103.4 FM, Heart West on 96.6 FM, and Greatest Hits Radio South West (formerly The Breeze) on 105.5 FM.
The Tavistock Times Gazette is the town's local newspaper which publishes on Thursdays.
Twin towns
The town has had twinning links with Pontivy in France since 1958 and Celle in Germany.
Notable people
Mary Colling, poet and domestic servant of Tavistock.
Sir Francis Drake was born nearby, and was mayor of, Tavistock
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a model, grew up on a farm near Tavistock.
Pete Quaife, the Kinks bass player, was born in the town.
Olympians Kate Allenby and Heather Fell both have ties with Tavistock.
Graham Dawe (England, Sale and Bath rugby hooker) and Rob Baxter (the Exeter Chiefs and England rugby coach) were both born in Tavistock.
The hymn writer Elizabeth Parsons was also born in the town.
Michael Howat (born 1958), cricketer
William Thomas Goode (died 1932), journalist and academic
See also
Tavistock Canal
South Devon and Tavistock Railway
Tavistock (UK Parliament constituency)
Exeter to Plymouth railway of the LSWR
Notes
References
External links
Local government: Tavistock Town Council
Tavistock information from Devon County Council
Tavistock Community Information Website
Local Information
Market towns in Devon
Towns in Devon
Monasteries dissolved under the English Reformation
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitstable
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Whitstable
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Whitstable () is a town in the Canterbury district, on the north coast of Kent adjoining the convergence of the Swale Estuary and the Greater Thames Estuary in southeastern England, north of Canterbury and west of Herne Bay. The 2011 Census reported a population of 32,100.
The town, formerly known as Whitstable-on-Sea, was famous for its 'Native Oysters' which were collected from beds beyond the low water mark from Roman times until the mid-20th century. The annual Whitstable Oyster Festival takes place during the summer.
In 1830, one of the earliest passenger railway services was opened by the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway Company. In 1832 the company built a harbour and extended the line to handle coal and other bulk cargos for the City of Canterbury. The railway has closed but the harbour still plays an important role in the town's economy. The railway route, known as The Crab and Winkle Line, is now a cycle path which leads to the neighbouring city of Canterbury.
History
Archaeological finds indicate that the Whitstable area was inhabited during the Palaeolithic era, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Oysters were harvested in the area in Roman times. The remains of a Roman building have been found in the centre of the town. Charters indicate that there were Saxon settlements where salt production and coastal trade occurred. In the 19th century, extensive finds of Roman pottery were found in the sea around Whitstable during oyster dredging, and an offshore rock near the town has been associated with Caunos, an island mentioned by Ptolemy.
The town was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, under the name Witenestaple, meaning "the meeting place of the white post", a reference to a local landmark. At that time, Witenestaple was the administrative centre of the hundred of Witenestaple which stretched from the coast to the village of Blean, north of Canterbury. In addition to Witenestaple, the hundred contained three manors at Seasalter, Northwood and Swalecliffe. Whitstable hundred was located within the Lathe of St Augustine.
The Seasalter and Swalecliffe manors were owned by the church, and the manor at Northwood was run by a noble family on behalf of the king. Fisheries were located at the Seasalter manor, saltworks were at the Northwood manor, and pigs were farmed at the forest in Blean. By 1226, the name of the area had evolved into Whitstaple. Saltworks were opened at the Seasalter manor around the turn of the 14th century, and a sea wall was built there in 1325 to prevent coastal flooding. The history and development of the town has determined and been determined by the shape and location of the coast which has changed over recorded history due to natural events and human interventions.
By the late middle ages Whitstable had become a centre of Thames Esturary fishing, including for oysters, and was connected by road to Chestfield where archaeological finds evidence seafood consumption, as well as the Forest of Blean.
By 1413, the three manors had combined to form the Whitstaple manor, and had been sold to a religious foundation in Essex. The manor was seized by King Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, and was given to the Minter family, originally from Ickham. Branches of the Minter family survive today in the same area). A royal patent was granted in 1574 to the manor owner for the fishing of its oyster beds, and in the same year, the lands at Tankerton were incorporated into the manor. A copperas works was established at Tankerton in 1588, which operated until about 1830. By 1610, the name Whitstaple had become Whitstable.
Around the mid-18th century, goods and passengers began to be transported by ship between London and Whitstable, and a toll road was built to the cathedral city of Canterbury. These improvements in transport led to the town's development as a seaside resort; the first advertisements for bathing machines at Whitstable appeared in 1768. In 1790 the manor was sold to private landowners, and three years later the rights to harvest the oyster beds were bought by the newly established Company of Free Fishers and Dredgers of Whitstable, the successor to the Whitstable Company of Dredgers. Between roughly 1775 and 1875 the well smacks or early longliners out of Barking and other local fishing ports would collect lugworms and whelks from Whitstable's bait-diggers and dredgers before beginning their tour for prime fish north to Iceland. Whelks suspended in net bags in the well could live for a while due to circulating water. In the 1880s, Whitstable was described as having "an unrivalled, and indeed unchallenged, position in the oyster world".
On 3 May 1830, the world's first entirely steam-hauled passenger and freight railway service was opened by the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway Company. Designed by William James, the line ran six miles (10 km) from Westgate in Canterbury to Whitstable town centre. The railway line's initials—C&WR—and Whitstable's shellfish industry eventually led to its nickname, the Crab And Winkle Railway. The line carried coal arriving by sea in Whitstable to Canterbury, delivered by colliers sailing from the north east of England. At this time, the town also had a thriving shipbuilding industry. In the mid nineteenth century, hoys also sailed regularly from London to Whitstable.
Trains were driven by a locomotive for part of the journey, but on inclined planes were pulled on ropes by steam-driven stationary winding engines located at Tyler Hill and Clowes Wood. The locomotive used was the Invicta, an 0-4-0 inclined cylinder tender locomotive built by Robert Stephenson, the son of engineer George Stephenson. Whitstable harbour - also designed by Stephenson - was opened by the railway company in 1832, and the rail line was extended to enable goods, mainly coal, to be directly transferred from ships onto the trains. In 1834, the world's first season tickets were issued for the C&WR line. The harbour's size and positioning meant that it was the last place on England's east coast where barquentines, schooners and brigantines transporting coal could operate, with sailing colliers serving Whitstable Harbour until the 1920s.
The Invicta locomotive was retired in 1840 and replaced by horses until a third winding engine was built at South Street. The Invicta was kept for scrap, but in 1898 work began on its restoration, which continued intermittently until its completion in 1977 by the National Railway Museum in York. On 3 May 1980 the locomotive was returned to Canterbury to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the line. On Sunday 16 June 2019 Invicta was returned to the Whitstable Museum & Gallery.
Around the time of the construction of the Whitstable to Canterbury line, the local Gorrell stream was diverted into what was known as the Backwater reservoir, so as to prevent the railway needing to cross the estuary of the stream on damp and unstable land. The Gorrell Backwater was then filled through the stream itself as well as rain water drainage when the tide was in, and whilst out the water would be released into the newly built Whitstable Harbour. The reservoir unfortunately would contribute to the flooding of the town during years when the reservoir could not be drained, such as in 1897 and 1953 when weather conditions were exceptionally bad. This continued into the late 1960s, when fire engines were used to pump out large quantities of the water to prevent further flooding.
In the early 1970s, the present Gorrell Tank was built underground, with the Gorrell Car Park being in service above ground since.
In 1845, the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway Company was bought by the South Eastern Railway, who introduced steam locomotives capable of operating along the entire length of the railway. A direct rail route from Whitstable to London was established in 1860 when the London, Chatham and Dover Railway opened a station on what is now the Chatham Main Line. On 16 November 1869, 71 buildings in the town were destroyed by a fire which started at a shop near the harbour. In about 1856 the first branch of the Sea Cadet Corps, then known as the Naval Lads' Brigade, was established in the town by the Reverend Henry Barton.
A plant to manufacture tarmacadam was built beside Whitstable Harbour in 1936. The harbour gradually fell into decay after the Second World War, but in 1958 the Whitstable Urban District Council purchased and repaired the harbour with the intention of rejuvenating the town's economy.
The Crab and Winkle Line finally closed in 1953, but about a third of the line was reopened as a footpath and cycleway in 1999 under the stewardship of a local charity, the Crab and Winkle Line Trust. One of the main developments to the town in recent years was the Horsebridge project. Completed in 2005, it was designed to regenerate a dilapidated area of the town with the construction of new shops and houses, a town square, and a community centre with a performance space and art gallery.
Oysters
Whitstable became famous for its native oysters produced by the three companies in the area: The Faversham Oyster Fishery Company, the Seasalter and Ham Oyster Company and the Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company. Oysters have been farmed in Whitstable for centuries, but it was not until 1793 that the industry became highly regulated with the Act of Incorporation of the 'Company of Free Fishers and Dredgers of Whitstable' and are all unusual in that they own the freehold of the seabed. But Whitstable oysters go even further back, almost two thousand years, to when the Romans discovered them and, regarding them as a delicacy, shipped them back live to Rome. They are a registered Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) product. At these companies' peak in the 1850s, they were sending as many as 80 million oysters a year to Billingsgate fish market. By then the plentiful oyster had become the food of the poor. Unfortunately the native oyster population drastically declined in the first half of the 20th century and a combination of pollution, disease, overfishing and the introduction of diseases proved fatal to the industry by the middle of the 20th Century. Pacific Oysters are now farmed on the foreshore at Whitstable, owned by the Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company on a commercial scale producing up to 300 tons of sustainable shellfish per year. The farm was the subject of an investigation by the Marine Management Organisation in 2016 after allegations about the racks causing safety issues and blocking navigation for watercraft and swimmers. This ended in two independent navigational risk assessments commissioned by the MMO that concluded that the risk posed by the presence of the oyster farm remains ALARP or lower (broadly acceptable) and that the oyster farm’s activities met the requirements of the exemption relating to shellfish propagation and cultivation under the Marine Licensing (Exempted Activities) Order 2011 as amended (Article 13).
Governance
Since 1918, Whitstable has been in the constituency of Canterbury. The Member of Parliament for the constituency is Rosie Duffield of the Labour Party, who was first elected in the 2017 general election after unseating long-serving Conservative MP Julian Brazier.
Whitstable, along with Herne Bay and Canterbury, is in the City of Canterbury local government district. The town comprises the five electoral wards of Tankerton, Seasalter, Chestfield and Swalecliffe, Gorrell and Harbour. These wards have 12 of the 50 seats on the Canterbury City Council. Following the 2009 local elections, ten of those seats were held by the Conservatives and two by the Labour Party. Whitstable has no parish or town council. In their lieu, the Official Planning Consultee was the Whitstable Society, membership of which is open to all, until Cllr. Ben Fitter-Harding removed it in 2020.
Geography
Whitstable is on the north-east Kent coast. The town lies to the east of the outlet of The Swale into the Greater Thames Estuary. The town is west of the seaside town of Herne Bay, north-east of the town of Faversham and north of the city of Canterbury; several small villages lie in between. The suburbs/villages of Tankerton, Swalecliffe and Chestfield are at the eastern end of the town, Seasalter at the west, and South Street at the south. Chestfield has its own parish council. An area of protected woodland and grassland called Duncan Down lies to the south-east.
The geology of the town consists mainly of London Clay (which covers most of North Kent). Much of the centre of the town is built on low-lying marshland. Sea walls are in place to prevent coastal flooding. The land in the east is higher, with slopes down to the coast at Tankerton. The whole of the north-east Kent coast has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
A very unusual (some say unique) shingle spit locally named "The Street" extends into the sea to the east of the harbour, formed by the local currents. A survey in 2019 discovered it is an especially heavy London clay, and is all that remains of the saltmarsh that once extended the length of the Swale. It is exposed at low tide, and visitors, ignoring the warning signs, are sometimes trapped by the advancing tide, needing to be rescued by the local RNLI lifeboat.
Climate
In East Kent, the warmest time of the year is July and August, when maximum temperatures average around 22 °C (71.6 °F). The coolest time of the year is January and February, when minimum temperatures average around 2 °C (35.6 °F). East Kent's average maximum and minimum temperatures are around 1/2 °C higher than the national average. Whitstable is sometimes warmer than other parts of Kent due to it being backed by the North Downs to the south.
East Kent's average annual rainfall is about 613 mm (24.1 in); October to January being the wettest months. The national average annual rainfall is about 870 mm (34 in). A recent drought caused Mid Kent Water to impose a hosepipe ban between August 2005 and February 2007.
The nearest Met Office average data for each month as well as the current data reported on the BBC web site are from recording stations approximately away to east and west and do not well represent Whitstable weather.
Demography
At the 2001 UK census, Whitstable area electoral wards had a population of 30,195 and a population density of 10.3 persons per hectare.
The ethnicity of the town was 98.2% white, 0.8% mixed race, 0.2% Chinese, 0.4% other Asian, 0.2% black and 0.2% other. The place of birth of residents was 95.5% United Kingdom, 0.6% Republic of Ireland, 1.2% other Western European countries, and 2.7% elsewhere. Religion was recorded as 74.8% Christian, 0.3% Muslim, 0.3% Buddhist, 0.2% Jewish, 0.1% Hindu and 0.1% Sikh. 15.8% were recorded as having no religion, 0.4% had an alternative religion and 8.1% did not state their religion.
The age distribution was 5% aged 0–4 years, 14% aged 5–15 years, 4% aged 16–19 years, 28% aged 20–44 years, 26% aged 45–64 years and 23% aged 65 years and over. The town has a high percentage of residents over 65, compared with the national average of 16%. As a seaside town, Whitstable is a popular retirement destination.
Of the town's 13,155 households, 49.0% were married couples, 7.8% were cohabiting couples and 8.0% were lone parents. 30.7% of households were individuals, and 18.0% had someone living alone at pensionable age. 26.4% of households included children aged under 16, or a person aged 16 to 18 who was in full-time education.
Economy
According to the 2001 UK census, the economic activity of residents in the town aged 16–74 was 35.6% in full-time employment, 13.4% in part-time employment, 10.4% self-employed, 2.5% unemployed, 2.4% students with jobs, 3.4% students without jobs, 18.8% retired, 6.7% looking after home or family, 4.5% permanently sick or disabled and 2.3% economically inactive for other reasons. The percentage of retired people was significantly higher than the national figure of 13.5%. The unemployment rate of 2.5% was lower than the national rate of 3.3%. 12% of the town's residents aged 16–74 had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared to 20% nationwide.
The main activities at the harbour are fishing, fish processing, cargo handling and boat storage. The harbour area is the site for other industries such as tarmac manufacturing and a maintenance port for an offshore windfarm. Business parks located on the outskirts of the town provide premises for large retailers, offices and light industries.
The town's distinctive character and ambience has led to a strong tourist industry, which is promoted each year by the Oyster Festival. In early 2007, Canterbury City Council were planning to boost tourism by building retail developments in addition to the existing shopping centre.
The 2001 UK census reported the industry of employment of residents of Whitstable as 18% retail, 13% health and social work, 12% manufacturing, 11% education, 10% real estate, 9% construction, 7% transport and communications, 5% public administration, 5% hotels and restaurants, 4% finance, 1% agriculture and 5% other community, social or personal services. Compared to national figures, the town had a relatively high number of workers in the construction, education, and health/social care industries and a relatively low number in manufacturing, finance, and real estate. Many residents commute to work outside the town; at the 2001 census, there were 13,260 employed residents, but only 9,725 jobs within the town.
The high level of employees in teaching is possibly due to the town's proximity to Canterbury, which has three higher education establishments. The elderly population of the town has led to many health and social care jobs at local care homes and at the Whitstable and Tankerton Hospital. At the 2001 census, 1.3% of the town's population resided in a medical or care establishment, compared to the national average of only 0.8%.
Transport
Whitstable railway station is on the Chatham Main Line, which runs between Ramsgate in East Kent and London Victoria. Other stations on this line include Broadstairs, Margate Herne Bay, Faversham, Gillingham, Rochester and Bromley South. Whitstable is around 1 hour and 30 minutes from London Victoria, ten minutes more than in 2009 due to the introduction of HS1 services further up the line. On weekdays, during the morning and evening peaks, there is a direct service to London's Cannon Street station, provided primarily for business commuting; these trains run to Cannon Street in the morning and back in the evening. All services are operated by Southeastern.
A National Express coach service runs between London Victoria and Ramsgate.
There is a Stagecoach bus service, branded as the Triangle, running about every fifteen minutes to neighbouring Herne Bay and Canterbury, where many Whitstable residents go to work and shop. Route 5 runs from the town to Canterbury.
The A299 road, known as the Thanet Way, runs between Ramsgate and Faversham via Herne Bay and Whitstable; it merges with the M2 motorway at Faversham.
Education
Whitstable's secondary school is The Whitstable School, formerly The Community College Whitstable. It is a secondary modern school which changed its name from Sir William Nottidge School in 1998. In 2009, 25% of its pupils gained at least five GCSEs at grades A*–C – this increased to 37% in 2011.
The School was rated 'Requires Improvement' by Ofsted in March 2015.
Many pupils living in Whitstable commute to schools in other nearby towns, especially to the grammar schools in Faversham and Canterbury.
The town's public primary schools are Whitstable Junior School, Whitstable and Seasalter Church of England Junior School, Westmeads Infant School, Swalecliffe Community Primary School, St Mary's Catholic Primary School, St Alphege C of E Primary School, Joy Lane Primary School. The voluntary controlled church schools are owned by the church, but like the other schools, are administered by Kent County Council.
Whitstable Adult Education Centre runs adult learning courses.
Culture
Events and venues
The longest established event is the Regatta, dating from a sailing contest between 26 boats from Whitstable and Faversham which was split into three classes (divisions) in 1792. A reporter at the scene wrote: "Much nautical skill was displayed in the maneuvering of the various squadrons. Every hoy, smack, wherry etc. in the vicinity of Whitstable was crowded with company and formed quite a fair upon the ocean." In addition, at least two of the spectating boats had bands aboard and tents were erected along the shore which was lined with spectators.
The Regatta continued to become the biggest event on the North Kent Coast in the 19th century. It has moved from the original Whitstable to Tankerton for more land based events with fairground and fireworks on the elevated Slopes. For many years run by the council, the Whitstable and Herne Bay Lions Club have taken it on in the last 31 years. Future events will be more sea borne with yachting and rowing, and plans for swimming and even the traditional greasy pole.
May Day is celebrated with the annual Jack-in-the-Green parade, with traditional English dancing throughout the town, a fair at Whitstable Castle and a maypole dance by local schoolchildren overlooking the sea. It has been run by Whitstable and Herne Bay Lions Club for 34 years.
The importance of oysters to the tradition of Whitstable is celebrated with the Oyster Festival in July each year. The nine-day festival starts with an opening parade on the nearest Saturday to St James' Day. The parade starts with the official "Landing of the Catch", followed by the procession of the oysters in a horse-drawn dray through the town, stopping to deliver the catch to local restaurants, cafes and public houses. The rest of the festival consists of entertainment for both adults and children, with local art on display around the town, and many establishments offering local fish dishes.
The Whitstable Museum and Gallery displays artefacts and portraits relating to the town's seafaring traditions, with special features on oysters, diving and shipping. In 2001, the Museum was awarded the international Nautiek Award for services to diving history.
The Playhouse Theatre Whitstable is owned and administered by theatrical group, The Lindley Players Ltd. The theatre is regularly hired out to other local groups such as The Canterbury Players, Herne Bay Operatic Society, Theatrecraft & The Deborah Capon College. More recently Nick Wilty has adopted the venue to host the OyOyster Comedy nights, attracting stars including Harry Hill, Jo Brand and Paul Merton.
The Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre opened in March 2004 as part of the Horsebridge redevelopment. Built with an "upturned boat" design, and three floors totalling , the centre contains an art gallery, a performance space, art workshops, a learning area, and conference rooms. The building in 2004 won the Kent Design Award in the Town and Village Renaissance category.
There are monthly beach cleans carried out alone the Whitstable sea front. They are organised by the Canterbury Council Foreshore service in conjunction with the Marine Conservation Society. The location of the beach clean alternates each month between the beach by the Neptune pub and the Seasalter end. Times and dates can be obtained for the Fore shore services or the MCS South East Groups website, calendar page.
Attractions and landmarks
The town has shingle/sandy beaches flanking the harbour, where sunbathing, swimming and water sports are popular. The beaches east and west are unique amongst seaside towns in the south-east of England for having no promenade; making them generally peaceful. An exception is Long Beach to the immediate east of the harbour where there is a base for jet skis. A notable feature of Whitstable is The Street, a natural strip of shingle on clay bank which runs out to sea at right angles to the coast, for a distance of about . It is the last remnant of the Swale river valley to the north of the town lost to sea erosion over millennia. Located to the east of the harbour, The Street is revealed only at low tide, when it is possible to walk out along it as well as swim either side in safe, sandy bottomed shallows. A view of The Street can be seen on the hilltop lawns of Tankerton Slopes. The Slopes are home to the largest population in England of the rare Hog's Fennel.
Whitstable Castle is situated on the border of Whitstable and the suburb of Tankerton. It was originally built as an octagonal tower in 1789 by Charles Pearson, the owner of a copperas company in the town and a future investor in the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway. However, Pearson later added to the building, developing it into a manor house. In 1836 the house, then known as Tankerton Tower, was bought by London businessman and Whig MP Wynn Ellis, who by 1842 had added a west wing, a bell tower and a lodge. The building had become known as Tankerton Castle by 1897, although it is now commonly referred to as Whitstable Castle. Now managed by the Whitstable Castle Trust, the castle grounds are a centre for community activity.
Off the coast of Whitstable is Kentish Flats offshore windfarm, consisting of 30 wind turbines, each high, providing enough electricity to power 70,000 households. The now-redundant Shivering Sands and Red Sands offshore World War II sea forts are visible from the town's coast. Sailing trips are available from the harbour to the windfarm, the sea forts and a seal watching spot in the Thames Estuary.
Island Wall, the closest street to the seafront, has numerous buildings dating from the mid-19th century including the Neptune and Wall Tavern pubs, and the Dollar Row cottages, which were built from the proceeds of a salvage operation on a ship carrying silver dollars. The street is home to the Favourite, one of the few remaining Whitstable oyster yawls. Built in 1890, it is now managed by the Favourite Trust, a charitable trust who undertake fund raising to maintain the historical vessel. A traditional windmill on Borstal Hill, built in 1815, is used as a motel.
The town is criss-crossed by numerous small alleys, once used by fishermen to reach the beach. Many of these are now registered as public rights of way and are still in frequent use. Squeeze Gut Alley whose name suggests (erroneously) that most people have to walk sideways due to its narrowness, is one of the more notable.
The town claims to have the largest village green in England at Duncan Down ().
Sport
The town is a popular destination for watersport enthusiasts. Established in 1904, the Whitstable Yacht Club is one of the oldest yacht clubs in England and takes part in local and national competitions throughout the year. Each year, the town hosts the International Waterski Championships.
In May 2007, Whitstable Town Football Club, based at the Belmont ground, won promotion from the Kent League to the Isthmian League Division One South. Whitstable Rugby Football Club 1st XV also won promotion in 2007, to the London League. The club has a 2nd XV team which play in the East Kent League 2.
Whitstable has a council-owned swimming pool and sports centre with facilities for badminton, 5-a-side football, volleyball, cricket and tennis. A 10-pin bowling centre is located next door to the swimming pool. There is also an outdoor basketball court at the Rec near the swimming pool.
Windsurfing is common off the West Quay, usually at low tide in southwesterly winds. Kite surfing has become popular in recent years usually taking place east of the Harbour, due to its flat water conditions and exposure to the open sea.
Local media
The four local newspapers are the KM Group owned Whitstable Gazette and KM Extra, YourCanterbury part of KOS Ltd. and the Northcliffe Media-owned Whitstable Times.
During the 1960s, several pirate radio stations broadcast from the nearby Shivering Sands and Red Sands offshore sea forts. These included Radio Invicta, KING Radio, Radio Sutch (launched by Screaming Lord Sutch), Radio City, and Radio 390.
Local television news programmes are BBC South East Today and ITV News Meridian.
BBC local radio station is BBC Radio Kent on 96.7 FM.
Whitstable has a local radio station in KMFM Canterbury which also serves Canterbury and Herne Bay. It was previously known as CTFM, until it was taken over by the KM Group in September 2007. County-wide station Heart Kent (formerly Invicta FM) was based on the John Wilson business park in the town. In 2019, Heart Kent was rebranded under the Heart South banner.
Whitstable also has a community radio station which broadcasts online and is known as Whitstable Bay Radio (WBR)
Popular culture
The playwright and novelist W. Somerset Maugham was sent to live with his uncle in Whitstable, at age 10, after the death of his parents. His novels Of Human Bondage (1915) and Cakes and Ale (1930) are set in the fictional town of Blackstable. It is obvious that he based this town on Whitstable, as the names and description of places around Blackstable, including The Duke of Cumberland Inn and Joy Lane, are identical to places around Whitstable.
Whitstable is the hometown of the narrator, Nancy Astley, in Sarah Waters' 1998 novel Tipping the Velvet. Whitstable also featured in the 2002 BBC drama adaptation. The Old Neptune Pub on the seafront was used as a filming location for the 2006 movie Venus, for which the actor Peter O'Toole earned an Academy Award nomination.
Whitstable features prominently in the 2021 AcornTV series Whitstable Pearl, starring Kerry Godliman, in which a restaurateur fancies herself a private detective in the seaside town.
Notable people
Hervey Alan, operatic bass
Peter Cushing, actor, lived in the town
Alan Davies, comedian
Brian Haw, protester
Val Hennessy, journalist
Harry Hill, comedian, has his primary residence in the town
Matthew Holness, comedian and actor (Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Man to Man with Dean Learner)
Hugh Hopper (1945-2009), fusion jazz/rock bassist
Paul Jewell, Liverpool born Premier League English football manager
W. Somerset Maugham lived in Whitstable in his early years
Fiona Reid, English-born Canadian actress
Peter Shearing, former professional footballer
Dawn Steele, Scottish actress
Violet Wood (1899–2012), formerly the oldest documented living person in the United Kingdom, lived in the town.
Twin towns
Whitstable is twinned with the following towns:
Dainville, France
Borken, Germany
Říčany, Czech Republic
Albertslund, Denmark
Mölndal, Sweden
Whitstable has friendship links with:
Grabow, Germany
Sisimiut, Greenland
Bolków, Poland
Lviv, Ukraine
East Renfrewshire, Scotland
In popular culture
Author Russell Hoban repurposes Whitstable as "Widders Bel" in his 1980, post apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker.
References
External links
Towns in Kent
Seaside resorts in England
Populated coastal places in Kent
Beaches of Kent
Unparished areas in Kent
Former civil parishes in Kent
City of Canterbury
Ports and harbours of Kent
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy%20VIII%20Physcon
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Ptolemy VIII Physcon
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Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Tryphon (, Ptolemaĩos Euergétēs Tryphōn, "Ptolemy the Benefactor, the Opulent"; c. 184 BC – 28 June 116 BC), nicknamed Physcon (, Physkōn, "Fatty"), was a king of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. He was the younger son of King Ptolemy V and Queen Cleopatra I. His reign was characterised by fierce political and military conflict with his older siblings, Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II.
Ptolemy VIII was originally made co-ruler with his siblings in the run-up to the Sixth Syrian War, in 170 BC. In the course of that war, Ptolemy VI was captured and Ptolemy VIII arguably became sole king of Egypt. When the war ended and Ptolemy VI was restored to the throne in 168 BC, the two brothers continued to quarrel. In 164 BC Ptolemy VIII drove out his brother and became sole king of the Ptolemaic empire, but he was expelled in turn in 163 BC. As a result of Roman intervention, Ptolemy VIII was awarded control of Cyrene. From there he repeatedly tried to capture Cyprus, which had also been promised to him by the Romans, from his brother.
After Ptolemy VI's death in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII returned to Egypt as co-ruler and spouse of his sister Cleopatra II. His cruel treatment of the opposition and his decision to marry his niece Cleopatra III and promote her to the status of co-regent led to a civil war from 132/1 to 127/6 BC, in which Cleopatra II controlled Alexandria and enjoyed the support of the Greek population of the country, while Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III controlled most of the rest of Egypt and were supported by the native Egyptians. During this war, native Egyptians were promoted to the highest echelons of the Ptolemaic government for the first time. Ptolemy VIII was victorious and ruled alongside Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III until his death in 116 BC.
The ancient Greek sources on Ptolemy VIII are extremely hostile, characterising him as cruel and mocking him as fat and degenerate, as part of a contrast with Ptolemy VI, whom they present extremely positively. The historian Günther Hölbl calls him "one of the most brutal and at the same time one of the shrewdest politicians of the Hellenistic Age."
Background and early life
Ptolemy VIII was the younger son of Ptolemy V, who reigned from 204 to 180 BC. Ptolemy V's reign had been dominated by the Fifth Syrian War (204–198 BC), in which the Ptolemaic realm fought against the Seleucid king Antiochus III, who ruled the Near East and Asia Minor. In that war, Antiochus III had completely defeated the Ptolemaic forces, annexed Coele-Syria and Judaea to his empire, and reduced Egypt to a subordinate position. The new situation was solidified with a peace treaty, in which Ptolemy V married Antiochus III's daughter Cleopatra I in 194 BC. Ptolemy VI was the eldest son of the couple, born in 186 BC, and was the heir to the throne from birth. They also had a daughter, Cleopatra II. Their youngest child, Ptolemy VIII, was probably born around 184 BC.
The defeat in the Fifth Syrian War cast a shadow over the rest of Ptolemy V's reign. One prominent faction within the Ptolemaic court agitated for a return to war in order to restore Egyptian prestige, while another faction resisted the expense involved in rebuilding and remilitarising the realm. When Ptolemy V died unexpectedly in September 180 BC, at the age of only 30, he was succeeded by Ptolemy VI. Since the new king was only six years old, actual power rested with the regents - first Cleopatra I (180–178/7 BC) and then Eulaeus and Lenaeus (178/7–170 BC). These regents were more closely associated with the peaceful faction and, as a result, members of the warhawk faction seem to have begun to look to the young Ptolemy VIII as a potential figurehead for their movement.
First reign (170–163 BC)
Accession and the Sixth Syrian War (170–168 BC)
The Seleucid king Seleucus IV, who had followed a generally peaceful policy, was murdered in 175 BC, and after two months of conflict his brother Antiochus IV secured the throne. The unsettled situation empowered the warhawks in the Ptolemaic court and Eulaeus and Lenaeus made efforts to conciliate them. By 172 BC, they seem to have embraced the warhawks' position.
In October 170 BC, Ptolemy VIII, now about sixteen, was promoted to the status of co-regent and incorporated into the Ptolemaic dynastic cult as one of the Theoi Philomētores (Mother-loving gods) alongside his brother and sister, who had now been married to one another. The current year was declared the first year of a new era. John Grainger argues that these ceremonies were intended to paper over the factional differences that had developed in the court and to promote unity in the run-up to war. Ptolemy VI remained the senior king, as demonstrated later in 170 BC by the declaration of Ptolemy VI's adulthood and the celebration of his coming-of-age ceremony (the anakleteria), marking the formal end of the regency government. In practice, however, the regents Eulaeus and Lenaeus remained in charge of the government.
The Sixth Syrian War broke out shortly after this, probably in early 169 BC. Ptolemy VIII probably remained in Alexandria, while the Ptolemaic army set out from the border fort of Pelusium to invade Palestine. The Ptolemaic army was intercepted and decimated by Antiochus IV's army in the Sinai. The defeated army withdrew to the Nile Delta, while Antiochus seized Pelusium and then moved on the Delta.
As a result of this defeat, Eulaeus and Lenaeus were toppled by a military coup and replaced with two prominent Ptolemaic generals, Comanus and Cineas. As Antiochus IV advanced on Alexandria, Ptolemy VI went out to meet him. They negotiated an agreement of friendship, which in effect reduced Egypt to a Seleucid client state. When news of the agreement reached Alexandria, the people of the city rioted. Comanus and Cineas rejected the agreement, rejected Ptolemy VI's authority and declared Ptolemy VIII the sole king (Cleopatra II's position remained unchanged). Antiochus IV responded by placing Alexandria under siege, but he was unable to take the city and withdrew from Egypt in September 169 BC, as winter approached, leaving Ptolemy VI as his puppet king in Memphis and retaining a garrison in Pelusium.
Within two months, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II reconciled with Ptolemy VI and he returned to Alexandria as their co-regent. The restored government repudiated the agreement that Ptolemy VI had made with Antiochus IV and began to recruit new troops from Greece. In response, in spring 168 BC, Antiochus IV invaded Egypt for a second time. Officially, this invasion was justified by the claim that Ptolemy VIII had unjustly appropriated his older brother's authority. Antiochus IV quickly occupied Memphis and was crowned king of Egypt and advanced on Alexandria. However, the Ptolemies had appealed to Rome for help over the winter and a Roman embassy led by Gaius Popillius Laenas confronted Antiochus at the town of Eleusis and forced him to agree to a settlement, bringing the war to an end.
From joint rule to sole rule (168–163 BC)
Initially, the joint rule of the two brothers and Cleopatra II, which had been established during the war, continued. However, the complete failure of the Egyptian forces in the Sixth Syrian War had left the Ptolemaic monarchy's prestige seriously diminished and it caused a permanent rift between Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII.
In 165 BC, Dionysius Petosarapis, a prominent courtier who appears to have been of native Egyptian origin, attempted to take advantage of the conflict between the brothers in order to take control of the government. He announced to the people of Alexandria that Ptolemy VI had tried to get him to assassinate Ptolemy VIII and tried to whip up a mob to support him. Ptolemy VI managed to convince Ptolemy VIII that the charges were untrue and the two brothers appeared publicly together in the stadium, defusing the crisis. Dionysius fled the city and convinced some military contingents to mutiny. Heavy fighting took place in the Fayyum over the next year. This and another revolt in the Thebaid – the latest in a series of rebellions that had attempted to overthrow the Ptolemies and re-establish native Egyptian rule. Ptolemy VI successfully suppressed the rebellion after a bitter siege at Panopolis.
Late in 164 BC, probably not long after Ptolemy VI had returned from the south, Ptolemy VIII, who was now about twenty years old, somehow ousted Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II from power. Ptolemy VI fled to Rome and then Cyprus. The exact course of events is not known, but Diodorus Siculus reports that the instigator of the expulsion was a man named Timotheus, who then became the dominant minister. Ptolemy VIII now assumed the epithet Euergetēs ('benefactor'), which recalled his ancestor Ptolemy III and distinguished him from Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II who both bore the epithet Philomētōr. Ptolemy VIII is said to have behaved tyrannically, and his minister Timotheus used torture and arbitrary executions to eliminate his enemies. In summer 163 BC, the people of Alexandria rioted against Ptolemy VIII, expelling him in turn and recalling Ptolemy VI.
Reign in Cyrenaica (163–145 BC)
On his return to power, a pair of Roman agents convinced Ptolemy VI to grant Ptolemy VIII control of Cyrenaica. Ptolemy VIII departed for Cyrene, but he was not satisfied. In late 163 or early 162 BC, he went to Rome to request help. The Senate was convinced that the division was unfair, declaring that Ptolemy VIII ought to receive Cyprus as well. The ancient historian Polybius believed that the Senate made this decision with the conscious goal of weakening Ptolemaic power. Titus Manlius Torquatus and Gnaeus Cornelius Merula were sent as envoys to force Ptolemy VI to concede this. From Rome, Ptolemy VIII went to Greece where he recruited soldiers in preparation for an expedition to seize Cyprus by force. He had sailed to Rhodes with this fleet when he encountered Torquatus and Merula, who convinced him to discharge his troops and return to Cyrene. He went to the border between Egypt and Cyrene, waiting with a force of 1,000 Cretan mercenaries at a small town just west of Paraetonium for the results of the Roman negotiations with Ptolemy VI. Ptolemy VIII had been waiting there for forty days when Ptolemy Sempetesis, the governor that Ptolemy VIII had left in charge of Cyrene in his absence, suddenly raised a revolt. Ptolemy VIII marched to suppress the revolt and was defeated in battle. He regained control over Cyrene by the end of 162 BC, but it is not known whether he achieved this by negotiation or military action.
However, when Torquatus and Merula arrived in Alexandria, Ptolemy VI successfully put them off until he heard about the revolt, at which point he refused their demands. They had to return to Rome without achieving their goal. In winter 162/61 BC, the Roman Senate responded to this by breaking off relations with Ptolemy VI and to grant Ptolemy VIII permission to use force to take control of Cyprus, but they offered him no tangible support. He launched a military expedition to Cyprus in 161 BC. This expedition lasted up to a year, before fierce Cypriot resistance forced him to abandon the enterprise.
In 156 or 155 BC, Ptolemy VIII faced a failed assassination attempt, which he attributed to his older brother. Ptolemy VIII went to Rome and displaying the scars he had received in the attempt to the Senate. As a result of the embassy, the Roman Senate agreed to send a second embassy in 154 BC, led by Gnaeus Cornelius Merula and Lucius Minucius Thermus, with an honour guard of troops, in order to enforce the transfer of Cyprus to Ptolemy VIII's control. Ptolemy VIII was besieged by his older brother at Lapethus and was captured. Ptolemy VIII was persuaded to withdraw from Cyprus, in exchange for continued possession of Cyrenaica, an annual payment of grain, and a promise of marriage to one of Ptolemy VI's infant daughters (probably Cleopatra Thea) once she came of age.
Relations with Rome
Throughout his time as king in Cyrene, Ptolemy VIII maintained extremely close relations with Rome. From 162 BC, he was an official amicus et socius (friend and ally) of the Roman Republic. During his time in Rome he is said to have met Cornelia. In 152 BC, after the death of her husband, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, Ptolemy VIII allegedly asked for her hand in marriage, which she refused. This encounter was popular in neoclassical art, but it is unlikely that it ever actually took place. Even if untrue, the story may reflect close ties between Ptolemy VIII and the gentes Cornelia and Sempronia. By contrast, Ptolemy VI seems to have maintained ties with Cato the Elder.
An inscription from 155 BC, set up in the aftermath of the assassination attempt records Ptolemy VIII's will, in which he bequeaths Cyrenaica to Rome if he died childless. This act is not mentioned by any literary source but it fits with the very close alignment between Ptolemy VIII and the Romans that is attested in the literary sources. Similar testaments are known from other contemporary monarchs, notably Attalus III of Pergamum. They were often used by monarchs as an attempt to protect themselves from assassination or coup. Ptolemy VIII's will would be the earliest example of this practice. However, L. Criscuolo has argued that the inscription of Ptolemy's will is actually a forgery produced by the Romans after they gained control of Cyrenaica in 96 BC.
Spectacle and construction
As king of Cyrene, Ptolemy VIII attempted to display the Hellenistic royal virtue of tryphe (luxury). The main priesthood in Cyrene was the position of the priest of Apollo. Ptolemy VIII assumed this position and discharged his duties, especially the hosting of feasts, extremely sumptuously. He also engaged in a wide-ranging construction project in the city. A large tomb west of Ptolemais seems to have been intended as his final resting place.
Second reign (145–132/1 BC)
Ptolemy VI died on campaign in Syria in 145 BC. Ptolemy VI may have intended for his seven-year-old son, also named Ptolemy, to succeed him, but the Alexandrians called on Ptolemy VIII to return from Cyrene, assume the kingship and marry his older sister, Cleopatra II. The royal couple were incorporated into the dynastic cult as the Theoi Euergetai ('benefactor gods') - Cleopatra II having previously been one of the Theoi Philomētores with Ptolemy VI. Ptolemy VIII was inaugurated as pharaoh at Memphis in 144 or 143 BC, during which time the couple's only child, Ptolemy Memphites, was born.
On his return to Alexandria in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII is reported to have launched a purge of those who had opposed him and supported Ptolemy VI. This purge is luridly described in the literary sources, though it is sometimes difficult to determine whether specific anecdotes belong to this event or his later reconquest of Alexandria in 126 BC. Justin reports that Ptolemy VIII let his soldiers rampage through the streets of Alexandria, murdering indiscriminately, until he was "left alone with his soldiers in so large a city, and found himself a king, not of men, but of empty houses." Valerius Maximus says that when the young men of Alexandria took refuge in the gymnasion, Ptolemy VIII set the building on fire. It is probably in this period that Ptolemy VIII gained a number of pejorative nicknames, including Physkōn ("fatty") and Kakergetēs ("Malefactor") - a pun on his official epithet Euergetēs ("Benefactor"). His accession also marked the end of Ptolemaic presence in the Aegean Sea. Within months of his accession, he had withdrawn all troops from Itanos, Thera, and Methana, the last remaining Ptolemaic bases in the Aegean. The Ptolemaic empire was now limited to Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene.
Ptolemy VIII probably had his young nephew Ptolemy murdered. According to Justin, Ptolemy VIII did the deed personally, on the night of his wedding to Cleopatra II in 145 BC, and the boy died in his mother's arms. Documentary evidence from papyri indicates that in reality, the boy was initially maintained as heir and only removed sometime after the birth of Ptolemy Memphites, since in c. 143 BC, Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy VI served as eponymous priest of Alexander the Great. By the late 140s BC, Ptolemy Memphites had been declared heir, and was depicted as king on reliefs of the Temple of Edfu, although there is no evidence for any co-regency between him and his father.
Between 142 and 139 BC, Ptolemy VIII married Cleopatra III, daughter of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II, and made her co-ruler, without divorcing Cleopatra II. According to Livy, Ptolemy VIII had initiated a relationship with his niece shortly after his accession which he now made official. Daniel Ogden has argued that the marriage to Cleopatra III may not have been planned from the outset, but a measure taken to prevent her from being married to someone else who might use that marriage in order to claim the throne. However, the new arrangement led to conflict with Cleopatra II.
Apparently in response to this new marriage and with the support of Cleopatra II, an Athamanian mercenary captain formerly in Ptolemaic service, Galaestes, initiated a revolt. Galaestes had been a trusted officer under Ptolemy VI but had been forced into exile in 145 BC. In Greece, he gathered an army of other Ptolemaic exiles, then announced that he had a young son of Ptolemy VI in his care and crowned this boy as king. Galaestes attacked Ptolemy VIII, intending to put this child on the throne. Ptolemy VIII's mercenaries, whose pay was in arrears, nearly defected to the challenger, but their commander, Hierax, prevented this by paying their wages from his own money. By February 139 BC, Galaestes had been defeated and Ptolemy VIII had issued a decree affirming the rights and privileges of the Egyptian priesthood, in which he represented himself, Cleopatra II, and Cleopatra III as harmoniously ruling together.
In the same year, Ptolemy VIII received a Roman embassy, led by Scipio Aemilianus, which was intended to effect a peaceful settlement of all affairs in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ancient sources emphasise the sumptuous greeting that the Romans received, mostly in order to contrast it with the austere behaviour of the Romans. By this point he was apparently enormously fat and was transported everywhere in a litter.
Civil war (132–126 BC)
In late 132 BC, the conflict between the royal siblings finally erupted into open warfare, with Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III on one side opposing Cleopatra II on the other. At first, Ptolemy retained control of Alexandria, but in late 131 BC the people of Alexandria rioted in favour of Cleopatra II and set fire to the royal palace. Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra III, and their children escaped to Cyprus. Cleopatra II meanwhile had herself crowned as sole queen - the first time that a Ptolemaic woman had done this - and assumed the title of Thea Philomētōr Sōteira ("Mother-loving, Saviour Goddess"), which served to link her to her deceased husband Ptolemy VI and to the dynastic founder, Ptolemy I.
Although Alexandria had sided with Cleopatra II and she tended to be supported by Greeks and Jews throughout the country, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III were more popular with the native Egyptian population. Most of Egypt continued to acknowledge Ptolemy VIII as king. In the south of the country, however, a man named Harsiesi took advantage of the chaos to rebel - following in the footsteps of the rebellion of Hugronaphor and Ankhmakis (206-185 BC). Harsiesi probably declared himself Pharaoh and managed to seize control of Thebes in August or September of 131 BC. He was expelled in November and pursued by Paos, the strategos of the Thebaid, who was also an Egyptian.
Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III had returned from Cyprus to Egypt by the beginning of 130 BC. By spring, they were in charge of Memphis. Impressed by Paos' success against Harsiesi, they promoted him to command over the whole of Upper Egypt and put him in charge of the whole military apparatus - the first time that a native Egyptian had held such a prominent position. Harsiesi was finally captured and executed in September 130 BC. Alexandria was placed under siege but Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III were unable to capture it. Cleopatra II also maintained strongholds throughout the country – Harmonthis in the Thebaid was still under her control in October 130 BC. In the context of the struggle between Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII, the latter eliminated his two eldest sons: one was summoned from Cyrene (this was possibly the son of Cleopatra II by Ptolemy VI) and killed on the suspicion that the Alexandrians would make him king; the other, Ptolemy Memphites, the son of Cleopatra II by Ptolemy VIII, was about twelve years old, when his father killed him and sent the dismembered pieces back to Cleopatra II on her birthday. Both parties appealed to Rome, but the Senate did not intervene in the conflict.
Growing desperate, in 129 BC Cleopatra II offered the throne of Egypt to her son-in-law, the Seleucid king Demetrius II, who had just returned to power after years in Parthian captivity. Demetrius II launched an invasion of Egypt in 128 BC, but his forces were still in the eastern desert, besieging the border fortress of Pelusium, when news arrived that his wife, Cleopatra II's daughter Cleopatra Thea, had installed their son Antiochus VIII as king of Syria. The Seleucid troops mutinied and Demetrius II had to return to Syria.
In order to prevent Demetrius II from returning once he had dealt with these revolts, Ptolemy VIII agreed to a request that he had received from a group of rebels in Syria, who had asked him to send them a royal pretender to lead them. Ptolemy VIII selected Alexander II, whom he presented as the son of an earlier Seleucid king, Alexander I ( BC). The resulting conflict in the Seleucid realm continued for years and meant that Seleucid intervention in opposition to Ptolemy VIII was no longer possible.
In 127 BC, Cleopatra II took her treasury and fled Alexandria for the court of Demetrius II. In her absence, Ptolemy VIII finally reconquered Alexandria by August 126 BC. This reconquest was accompanied by a bloody purge of the supporters of Cleopatra II. It is difficult to tell whether various anecdotes recording the bloody slaughter that Ptolemy VIII presided over belong to this event or to the earlier purge of 145 BC.
Third reign (127/6–116 BC)
After this, Ptolemy VIII began negotiations to reconcile with Cleopatra II and the Seleucid court. In 124 BC, Ptolemy VIII abandoned his support for Alexander II and agreed to support Demetrius II's son Antiochus VIII instead. He sealed the agreement by sending his second daughter by Cleopatra III, Tryphaena, to marry Antiochus VIII. Cleopatra II returned to Egypt from the Seleucid court and was once more acknowledged as co-regent with Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III. She appears along with them in papyrus documents from July 124 BC onwards.
The reconciliation of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III with Cleopatra II was nevertheless a long process. To solidify their reconciliation and restore peace and prosperity to Egypt, the royal trio issued the Amnesty Decree in April 118 BC, which survives in a number of papyrus copies. This decree pardoned all crimes other than murder and temple robbing committed before 118 BC, encouraged refugees to return home and reclaim their property, waived all back-taxes, confirmed land grants made to soldiers during the civil war, affirmed temple land holdings and tax privileges, and instructed tax officials to use standardised weights and measures on pain of death. In addition, the decree established the jurisdiction of courts in legal disputes between Egyptians and Greeks. Henceforth, this would be determined by the language that the documents at the heart of the legal dispute were written in: the chrematistai (money-judges) would decide disputes over Greek documents, while the laokritai (folk-judges) would resolve disputes over Egyptian documents. The chrematistai were no longer allowed to drag Egyptians into their courts, as had apparently been occurring previously.
Ptolemy VIII died on 28 June 116 BC. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Ptolemy IX, alongside Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III. Justin reports that he left the throne to Cleopatra III and whichever of her sons she preferred. Although she preferred her younger son, Ptolemy X, the people of Alexandria forced her to choose Ptolemy IX. This account is probably a false one, invented after Ptolemy IX was deposed by Ptolemy X.
Regime
Ptolemaic dynastic cult
Ptolemaic Egypt had a dynastic cult, which centred on the Ptolemaia festival and the annual priest of Alexander the Great, whose full title included the names of all the Ptolemaic ruling couples and appeared in official documents as part of the date formula. In October 170 BC when Ptolemy VIII first became co-regent with his brother and sister, who were already worshipped as the Theoi Philomētores ("Mother-loving Gods"), he was simply added to their cult as a third "Mother-loving God". When he seized sole power in 164 BC, he seems to have assumed the new epithet Euergetēs ("Benefactor God"), but it is not clear what the implications of this were for the dynastic cult. After his expulsion from Alexandria in 163 BC, the Theoi Philomētores are attested once more.
At the start of his second reign in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII was definitely incorporated into the dynastic cult, with him and Cleopatra II becoming the Theoi Euergetai ('Benefactor Gods'). Cleopatra III was added as a third Benefactor god in 142 or 141 BC, some time before she married Ptolemy VIII and was promoted to the status of co-regent. During the period of the civil war, Cleopatra II removed the Theoi Euergetai from the dynastic cult in Alexandria, but Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III maintained their own rival priest of Alexander from 130 BC until they recovered Alexandria in 127 BC. He is distinguished in documents as the 'Priest of Alexander... in the king's camp.' The situation before the civil war was restored in 124 BC after Ptolemy VIII reconciled with his sister, and it continued until Ptolemy VIII's death.
From May 118 BC, shortly after the final reconciliation of the royal trio, a new king was incorporated into the dynastic cult, Theos Neos Philopatōr ("New Father-loving God"). This was a posthumous cult for one of the princes killed by Ptolemy VIII, either Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II, or Ptolemy Memphites, the son of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II. In recent scholarship, Ptolemy Memphites is generally the preferred candidate, with his deification serving as an indication that the prince had posthumously reconciled with his father and murderer.
Since the death of Arsinoe II, deceased Ptolemaic queens had been honoured with a separate dynastic cult of their own, including a separate priestess who marched in religious processions in Alexandria behind the priest of Alexander the Great and whose names also appeared in dating formulae. In 131 or 130 BC, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III took advantage of this tradition, in their conflict against Cleopatra II, by establishing a new priesthood in honour of Cleopatra III. This new position was called the 'Hieros Polos (sacred foal) of Isis, Great Mother of the Gods' and was placed immediately after the priest of Alexander and ahead of all the priestesses of the previous queens in the order of precedence. The position was unlike the previous priesthoods in that it was established for a living queen rather than a deceased one and because the holder was a priest rather than a priestess. The position is not attested after 105 BC.
Pharaonic ideology and traditional Egyptian religion
From the beginning of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the Ptolemies had taken on the traditional role of the Egyptian pharaoh and pursued a symbiotic alliance with the Egyptian priestly elite. The degree of investment of the Ptolemies in this aspect of their rulership steadily increased over the third and second centuries BC. Ptolemy VIII nevertheless represents a new stage in this process, since in the conflict with Cleopatra II he proved more popular among his Egyptian subjects than among his Greek ones.
In the Amnesty decree that announced the reconciliation of Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra III, and Cleopatra II in 118 BC, the royal trio undertook to support reconstruction and repair work at temples throughout Egypt. They also promised to pay for the mummification and entombment of the Apis and Mnevis bulls.
Alexandrian Scholarship
Ptolemy VIII was an active participant in Greek scholarship, especially philology. He is reported to have written a study of Homer at some point before 145 BC and twenty-four books of Hypomnemata ('Notes'), a miscellaneous collection of paradoxography, including stories about historical and contemporary monarchs, as well as exotic wildlife, and other topics. The surviving fragments are collected in Felix Jacoby's Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
Despite this interest, Ptolemy VIII's reign saw a serious decline in the importance of Alexandria as an intellectual centre, in part due to the massacres that he carried out on taking control of the city in 145 BC and again in 126 BC. Among his victims on the first occasion were a number of prominent intellectuals, including Aristarchus of Samothrace and Apollodorus of Athens. The rest of the Alexandrian intellectuals appear to have been sent into exile, mostly relocating to Athens or Rhodes.
Indian Ocean trade
The Ptolemies had long retained a network of trading stations throughout the Red Sea, which enabled them to acquire gold, ivory, and elephants from the Horn of Africa. In the very last years of Ptolemy VIII's reign these sailors discovered that the annual reversal of the Indian Monsoon Current made it possible to cross the Indian Ocean by sea in summer and then return in winter. The first Greek to make this journey was Eudoxus of Cyzicus, who is reported to have travelled to India in 118 BC and again in 116 BC. The discovery opened up the possibility of direct seaborne trade with India. Previously, trade between the Mediterranean region and India had relied on intermediaries - sailors from the Arabian centres in the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf and then desert caravans led by the Nabataeans to carry goods across the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean coast. Henceforth sailors from Ptolemaic Egypt began to make the full journey themselves. This marks the beginning of the Indian Ocean trade, which would become a major part of the Eurasian economic world system that operated from the first century BC until the fourth century AD.
Marriages and issue
Ptolemy VIII married his older sister, Cleopatra II, on his accession in 145 BC. They had one son:
In 142 or 141 BC, Ptolemy VIII also married his niece Cleopatra III, daughter of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II. They had a number of children:
By a concubine, perhaps Eirene, Ptolemy VIII had further issue:
Numbering
The numbering of the Ptolemaic kings, like any Hellenistic monarchs, is a modern scholarly convention; at most, ancient sources informally distinguished between like-named kings by their epithets or nicknames, and sometimes numbered those if they repeated: thus, our Ptolemy VIII Euergetes is "[Ptolemy] Euergetes II" in the Canon of Ptolemy. Trying to synchronize the testimony of the narrative sources and epigraphic evidence, and misled by the appearance of additional royal names in the lists of deified Ptolemies, modern scholarship at one time numbered Ptolemy Eupator as a predecessor of Ptolemy VI Philometor (making the latter "Ptolemy VII Philometor") and Ptolemy Neos Philopator as a predecessor of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (making the latter "Ptolemy IX Euergetes"). Once it was determined that the listing in the dynastic cult reflected the order of death and deification, not reign, and that Ptolemy Eupator was a son and co-regent of Ptolemy VI Philometor who never became sole or senior monarch, he ceased to be numbered, leaving his father as "Ptolemy VI Philometor" (making his uncle "Ptolemy VIII Euergetes"). However, it was only recently established that Ptolemy Neos Philopator was never sole or senior monarch (and probably never even co-regent); even if identified with the surviving son of Ptolemy VI Philometor (current research favors Ptolemy Memphites, son of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes, instead), and even if he had reigned in 145 BC (which he did not), since Ptolemy VIII Euergetes became king as co-regent (in 170 BC) and as sole monarch (in 164 BC) long before any of his nephews and sons, he would be "Ptolemy VII Euergetes." However, to avoid causing confusion with a large body of accummulated literature already labeling him "Ptolemy VIII Euergetes," most scholars have continued to refer to him with that numbering. Nevertheless, Ptolemy VIII Euergetes sometimes appears, correctly but potentially confusingly, as "Ptolemy VII Euergetes." To avoid potential confusion, it is recommended to append the epithet and/or nickname of Ptolemaic kings to their names in addition to the numbering.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Beckerath, J. von, Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, Mainz, 1999.
Bickerman, E. J., Chronology of the Ancient World, 2nd rev. ed., London, 1980.
Bielman, A., "Stéréotypes et réalités du pouvoir politique féminin: la guerre civile en Égypte entre 132 et 124 av. J.-C.," EuGeStA 7 (2017) 84–114.
Cauville, S., and D. Devauchelle, "Le temple d'Edfou: étapes de la construction nouvelles données historiques," Revue d'Égyptologie 35 (1984) 31–55.
Chassinat, E., Le Temple d'Edfou 4, Cairo, 1929.
Chauveau, M., "Encore Ptolémée «VII» et le dieu Neos Philopatôr!," Revue d’Égyptologie 51 (2000) 257-261.
Errington, R. M., A History of the Hellenistic World 323-30 BC, Malden, MA, 2008.
Peter Green, Alexander to Actium (University of California Press, 1990)
Peter Nadig, Zwischen König und Karikatur: Das Bild Ptolemaios’ VIII. im Spannungsfeld der Überlieferung (C.H. Beck, 2007)
Toomer, G. J., Ptolemy's Almagest, Princeton, NJ, 1998.
External links
Ptolemy Euergetes II at LacusCurtius — (Chapter X of E. R Bevan's House of Ptolemy, 1923)
The Will of Ptolemy VIII
Ptolemy VIII entry in the online Ptolemaic Genealogy by Chris Bennett.
2nd-century BC Pharaohs
Pharaohs of the Ptolemaic dynasty
2nd-century BC Greek people
Kings of Cyrene
Ancient child monarchs
180s BC births
116 BC deaths
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Darkness%20%28band%29
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The Darkness (band)
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The Darkness are a British rock band that formed in Lowestoft, England in 2000. The band consists of Justin Hawkins (lead vocals, lead guitar), his brother Dan Hawkins (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Frankie Poullain (bass guitar, backing vocals) and Rufus Tiger Taylor (drums, backing vocals).
The Darkness came to prominence with the release of their debut album, Permission to Land, in 2003. Backed by the singles "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", "Growing on Me", "Get Your Hands off My Woman", and "Love Is Only a Feeling", the album was certified quadruple platinum in the United Kingdom, with sales of over 1.3 million. In 2004 the band won three Brit Awards: Best British Group, Best British Rock Act, and Best British Album.
After extensive touring in support of their debut album, Poullain left the band in 2005, and was replaced by former guitar technician Richie Edwards. The band's second studio album, One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back, was released in November 2005. The following year, Justin Hawkins departed from the band after successfully completing a course of rehabilitation from alcohol and cocaine abuse. This, combined with the poor sales of the album, resulted in Atlantic dropping the band in October 2006. After the split, the remaining members formed Stone Gods, and continued to perform and record without Hawkins, who subsequently fronted his own project, Hot Leg.
On 15 March 2011, the Darkness announced reunion shows, with original bassist Frankie Poullain, including Download Festival 2011, and the Isle of Wight Festival 2012. Their third album, Hot Cakes, was released on 20 August 2012. Original drummer Ed Graham then left the band, feeling the strain of touring was affecting his personal life, in which he had pressing issues. In 2015 a fourth studio album was announced, entitled Last of Our Kind, which was released on 2 June 2015. A fifth album, Pinewood Smile, was released on 6 October 2017 and one year later on 15 June 2018 a live album, Live at Hammersmith, was also released. Their sixth studio album, Easter Is Cancelled was released on 4 October 2019.
After the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to their world tour in 2020, the band wound up the year with a one-off streamed live show titled "Streaming of a White Christmas", which was also recorded as a new live album and slated to be released on CD and vinyl in June 2021.
On 4 June 2021, the band announced their seventh studio album Motorheart would be released on 15 October 2021 with an extensive UK tour through November and December 2021.
History
Early years
Justin and Dan Hawkins played together as teenagers in a band which, according to Dan Hawkins, "did a lot of Marillion covers, Bruce Springsteen, Genesis" and were "a bit prog-y". Justin Hawkins had been initially inspired to play guitar by Brian May of Queen, as he loved his tone and vibrato.
Originally known as Empire, the band generated some music industry buzz through their manager Sue Whitehouse, who was based at Savage & Best in Camden. Whitehouse had managed them since Justin Hawkins' time as a creator of music jingles.
Renamed the Darkness they became renowned for their live show, and such was the popularity of the band, they had a Carling Homecoming gig booked for the London Astoria before they had even signed a record deal.
Joe Taylor, Aled Jones and Paul Scaife at The Tip Sheet first heard about the band through a post on The Tip Sheet message board, and featured Love Is Only a Feeling in January 2002. They started Record of the Day, and featured the song again around the time of SXSW in March 2003. They wanted to feature Friday Night too but they were told the band was saving it for an album.
According to A&R Nick Raphael in an interview with HitQuarters, there was no initial clamour to sign the band, "There couldn't have been less of a buzz, and only two record labels showed any interest in them." He believes the reason for lack of interest was that "The business as a whole thought they were uncool. In fact, people were saying that they were a joke and that they weren't real." Raphael continued: "Now, 3.5 million records later, they're one of the greatest of all bands in the world, and that's because what they did was real; they weren't copying anyone. If they were copying, then they were copying someone from twenty years ago, and no-one else was doing that."
However, throughout their career critics around the world would label them as a "joke band". As part of Sony Music UK, Raphael had attempted to sign them, but the band instead opted to go with Atlantic Records. The band were hired to open for Disturbed on 1 December 2002 at Brixton Academy in which Justin Hawkins recalled numerous fans of Disturbed who threw bottles, shoes, and trash out of disgust at their stark contrast of Disturbed's music. Singer David Draiman later attacked the band for their handling of the ordeal, with Hawkins recounting the issue on his youtube channel in 2022. Draiman later apologized for the incident, and to Hawkins following the video.
Permission to Land and commercial success (2003–2005)
Their debut album, Permission to Land, went straight up to number two in the UK charts upon its release on 7 July 2003, before going to number one and staying there for four weeks, eventually going on to sell 1.5 million copies in the UK.
The Darkness took inspiration for some of their work from the local north Suffolk area, including "Black Shuck" which mentions the nearby village of Blythburgh.
The success of the album led to heavy touring for the band over the next two years, including European portions of Metallica's Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003. The band would later be added to the 2004 Big Day Out festival tour, performing alongside Metallica, Muse, The Strokes, Lostprophets, The Mars Volta, and The Black Eyed Peas. They then went on to headline the Carling Festival in 2004. The band won three BRIT Awards in 2004 in response to the album, Best Group, Best Rock Group and Best Album. They also won two Kerrang! awards in 2004 for Best Live Act and Best British Band. The third single from the album, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", was a smash hit in the UK and the United states, becoming the second highest charting single of 2003 released by a UK band in America. The band also managed a Christmas 2003 number 1, "Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)", which only just fell short, both singles reaching number 2 in 2003.
One Way Ticket to Hell... And Back and decline (2005–2006)
In October 2005, a month before the album was to be officially released, Justin Hawkins won an eBay auction for a copy of One Way Ticket to Hell ...and Back for £350 under the username 'turbogunhawk'. He claimed he did this so that he could track down whoever sold the digitally-marked advance copy of the album and try to prevent it from happening again.
"One Way Ticket", the first single from their second album, was released on 14 November 2005, debuting and peaking at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart. The album itself was released on 28 November 2005 to mixed reviews. The album was produced by rock producer Roy Thomas Baker, best known for his work with Queen. Early sales figures in the UK showed the album had not sold as well as its predecessor, Permission to Land. The album debuted at number 11, and fell to number 34 in the second week of its release. Although it has since reached platinum status, this contrasts with their debut's five-time platinum status.
The second single taken from their second album was "Is It Just Me?", released on 20 February 2006. The single gained a preliminary position of No. 6 all that week, but finally charted at number 8. The album's third single, "Girlfriend", was Released 22 May and charted at number 39.
Justin Hawkins' departure and breakup (2006)
In August 2006, lead singer Justin Hawkins was admitted to a rehabilitation clinic in concern of his health, which caused the band to cancel several concerts. Around this same time the band confirmed that they were to start working on their third album to be released early 2007. Tabloid rumours held that Justin Hawkins was leaving the band after completing his course of rehabilitation from alcohol and cocaine problems, and the band would continue without him, possibly with Richie Edwards as the front man. In response to the story being reported by the media, the Darkness confirmed on their official forum: "We're sorry that you had to find this out through the newspapers, but we were hoping until the last minute that this – Justin's exit – wasn't going to happen. We – Dan, Ed and Richie – are still in total shock and can't say at this stage what the future holds. We would like to thank all our fans, partners and family for their continuous support. You will hear from us, once we know what we want to do..."
Hawkins departure, and the lacklustre sales of One Way Ticket to Hell... (which had only gone gold compared to the previous album's four-times platinum status), led to Atlantic dropping the band from the label.
Using the pseudonym British Whale, Hawkins went on to release a cover version of the Sparks song "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us", reaching No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart. In 2007, he launched a failed attempt to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest.
In 2011, Hawkins gave a different explanation for his departure from the band, saying he had left because he felt the band had stopped being creative.
Other projects (2006–2011)
On 9 November 2007, it was announced on The University of East Anglia's student union website that a new band had been created comprising Dan Hawkins (lead guitar), Toby MacFarlaine (bass), Ed Graham (drums) and Ritchie Edwards (vocals/guitar). The name of the band was The Stone Gods.
In 2008, Justin Hawkins formed a new band, Hot Leg with Pete Rinaldi (of Anchorhead), Samuel SJ Stokes (formerly of The Thieves) and Darby Todd (from Protect the Beat). In 2009 Hot Leg released an album, Red Light Fever, which failed to make a dent on the charts (#81). Three singles were taken from it with two of them failing to chart.
By December 2010, both Hot Leg and The Stone Gods were in hiatus.
Reunion and Hot Cakes (2011–2013)
In March 2011, the four original band members reunited. They played three warm-up shows in Norwich, Leamington and at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire, before performing at the 2011 Download Festival. This was followed by an "intimate" show at London's 100 Club, which featured support from Dark Stares and notable appearances from Queen guitarist Brian May and comedian Rufus Hound. The band then toured Japan, the UK and Ireland.
A new song, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us", was released in February 2012 as a free download. They toured North America, playing with Crown Jewel Defense and Foxy Shazam, then performed at the Sweden Rock Festival in Sölvesborg, Sweden and the 18th Przystanek Woodstock. Singles "Every Inch of You" and "Everybody Have a Good Time" were released in May and June 2012, respectively, ahead of their third album, Hot Cakes, which came out in August. Throughout the summer the Darkness played a series of festival dates, including headlining the Big Top Tent at the 2012 Isle of Wight Festival, and were the opening act for the European, Latin American and African leg of Lady Gaga's The Born This Way Ball world tour.
A new non-album song, "The Horn", was released in late 2013 as a digital download.
Last of Our Kind and new line-up (2014–2017)
The band began work on their fourth studio album in September 2014, with Emily Dolan Davies replacing Ed Graham on drums. The new album, Last of Our Kind, was released on 2 June 2015, on the band's own label Canary Dwarf Records via Kobalt Label Services with a single, "Open Fire", released on 23 March. The first track from the album to be premiered was "Barbarian", which was released with an accompanying animated music video on 23 February.
On 21 April 2015, the band issued a statement saying that drummer Davies had left the band. On 25 April 2015, it was announced via the band's official Facebook page that Rufus Taylor, the son of Queen drummer Roger Taylor, was to join the band as Davies' replacement on drums.
They were announced as the first headline act for Planet Rockstock 2015, taking place at Trecco Bay in South Wales from 4 to 7 December 2015. The Darkness closed the event on 6 December.
On 20 November 2015, the band released a music video for a new Christmas single, entitled "I Am Santa" on their YouTube Channel, which it was announced would be included in the deluxe edition of the Last of Our Kind album.
Pinewood Smile (2017–2019)
The Darkness worked on a feature-length documentary, directed by Simon Emmett. In a 2016 interview, Frankie Poullain said, "We are currently over a year in to a feature-length documentary which will surprise a lot of people."
In March 2017, the Darkness announced that their fifth studio album would be released in 2017. This was confirmed in a July issue of Planet Rock, and later on the band's Facebook page. The album's title was later revealed as Pinewood Smile, and was due to be released on 6 October of the same year. The first single from the album 'All The Pretty Girls' was released on 22 July of that year.
The band embarked on a winter tour of the UK in November and December 2017.
In May 2017, the Darkness performed at the Australian touring music festival Groovin' the Moo, performing at six regional cities across Australia. They performed as a de facto opening act for the "headline act" of the festival, Violent Soho, and supported Guns N' Roses on the European leg of their tour.
In December 2017, Justin & Dan Hawkins were contestants on the Pointless Celebrities Christmas special.
In 2018, the band supported US supergroup Hollywood Vampires on their European tour, which included their first performances in UK arenas in several years. They also announced their first live album, Live at Hammersmith, a recording of their December 2017 concert at the Eventim Apollo in London. This was released on 15 June 2018.
The band contributed theme music to the British children's television programme Catie's Amazing Machines which premiered on CBeebies in October 2018.
Easter Is Cancelled (2019–2021)
In 2019, the Darkness released their sixth studio album Easter Is Cancelled on 4 October 2019 through Cooking Vinyl. Easter Is Cancelled became the band's fourth UK Top 10 album and topped the Official Charts Top 40 Rock And Metal Chart and the iTunes Rock Chart, while the record has achieved over 3 million streams on Spotify alone.
The album was released to a generally positive response from music critics while the previous singles "Heart Explodes" and "Rock and Roll Deserves to Die" proved a radio hit on the playlists of Radio 2, Absolute, Kerrang and more. The comedic video for "Rock and Roll Deserves to Die" has also individually surpassed 1 million views.
In January 2020, the Darkness released a new video for "In Another Life" which featured model Abbey Clancy. The track then made the BBC Radio 2 B-List.
The band commenced their UK tour of the Easter Is Cancelled album on 25 November 2019 in Ireland, culminating on 20 December at London's Roundhouse.
In 2020, the band attempted a worldwide tour across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. The tour abruptly ended in Adelaide, Australia on 15 March as the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders set in. The band returned to the UK for occasional shows and live streams where possible, with an aim to reschedule the remainder of the postponed New Zealand and North American dates in the future.
In December the band played a one-off show at The IndigO2 in London. Initial plans to open the show and sound check to a limited audience were shut down at the last minute due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The show still went ahead but only accessible by live stream. The whole show was recorded for a live album titled Streaming Of A White Christmas, scheduled to be released on CD and vinyl in early 2021.
Motorheart (2021–present)
For most of the first half of 2021 the band remained largely quiet on social media. On 4 June 2021, the band announced they were set to release their seventh studio album Motorheart in October. The album was eventually released on 19 November 2021. The album's cover was also unveiled in the announcement. The first single, "Motorheart", was released in August 2021. Along with the album release, the band announced an extensive list of UK tour dates to take place throughout November and December in support of the release of the album.
In January/February 2023 the band played UK arenas with Black Stone Cherry for the band's first arena tour since 2006 in the UK.
Band members
Current members
Justin Hawkins – lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards
Dan Hawkins – rhythm and lead guitar, backing vocals
Frankie Poullain – bass, backing vocals
Rufus Tiger Taylor – drums, backing vocals
Former members
Ed Graham – drums
Chris McDougall – lead and rhythm guitar
Richie Edwards – bass, backing vocals, keyboards
Emily Dolan Davies – drums
Touring members
Darby Todd – drums
Timeline
Discography
Studio albums
Permission to Land (2003)
One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back (2005)
Hot Cakes (2012)
Last of Our Kind (2015)
Pinewood Smile (2017)
Easter Is Cancelled (2019)
Motorheart (2021)
Awards and honours
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! scope="col" | Award
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Nominee(s)
! scope="col" | Category
! scope="col" | Result
! scope="col" class="unsortable"|
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! scope="row" rowspan=2|Classic Rock Roll of Honour Awards
| 2013
| Themselves
| Showman of the Year
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| rowspan=2|
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| 2015
| Last of Our Kind
| Album of the Year
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! scope="row" rowspan=4|Kerrang! Awards
| rowspan=2|2003
| Themselves
| Best Live Act
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| rowspan=2|
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| Permission to Land
| Best Album
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| rowspan=2|2004
| rowspan=2|Themselves
| Best British Band
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| rowspan=2|
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| Best Live Band
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!scope="row"|Mercury Prize
| 2003
| Permission to Land
| Album of the Year
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!scope="row" rowspan=2|Pop Factory Awards
| rowspan=2|2002
| rowspan=2|Themselves
| Best Pop Factory Performance
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| rowspan=2|
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| Best Pop Factory Debut
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2003
Metal Hammer 'Golden God' for Best Single (Get Your Hands off My Woman)
2004
Metal Hammer 'Golden God' for Best Video ("Love Is Only a Feeling")
Ivor Novello Award for Songwriters of the Year
BRIT Award for Best British Group
BRIT Award for Best Rock Act
BRIT Award for Best British Album (Permission to Land)
MTV Europe Music Award for Best UK & Ireland Act and Best Rock
IFPI Platinum Europe Award for sales in Europe in excess of 1,000,000 (triple Platinum) (Permission to Land)
Elle Style Award for Most Stylish Band
Meteor Ireland Award for Best Album (Permission to Land)
Smash Hits! Pollwinners' Party for Best Rock Award
RIAA Digital Sales Certifications Gold Award for 100,000 downloads ("I Believe in a Thing Called Love")
European Border Breakers Award for debut albums of European acts achieving the best sales outside of their country of origin in 2003 (Permission to Land)
Denmark GAFFA Award for Best Foreign New Act (nominated)
Denmark GAFFA Award for Best Foreign Hit ("I Believe in a Thing Called Love") (nominated)
2005
ASCAP Award for one of the Most Performed Works in the USA ("I Believe in a Thing Called Love")
2006
MTV Australia's Best Man Rock Video award ("One Way Ticket")
2008
VH1 The 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (94)
2011
VH1 The 100 Greatest Songs of '00s "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (87)
2020
Classic Rock magazine awarded "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" the number one spot on their Greatest Songs of the Century (so far) reader poll.
References
External links
Atlantic Records artists
Brit Award winners
Comedy rock musical groups
Cooking Vinyl artists
English glam metal musical groups
English glam rock groups
English hard rock musical groups
English heavy metal musical groups
Ivor Novello Award winners
Kerrang! Awards winners
Musical groups established in 1999
Musical groups disestablished in 2006
Musical groups reestablished in 2011
Musical groups from Suffolk
English musical quartets
Sibling musical groups
PIAS Recordings artists
MTV Europe Music Award winners
1999 establishments in England
Live Here Now artists
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical%20privacy
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Medical privacy
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Medical privacy, or health privacy, is the practice of maintaining the security and confidentiality of patient records. It involves both the conversational discretion of health care providers and the security of medical records. The terms can also refer to the physical privacy of patients from other patients and providers while in a medical facility, and to modesty in medical settings. Modern concerns include the degree of disclosure to insurance companies, employers, and other third parties. The advent of electronic medical records (EMR) and patient care management systems (PCMS) have raised new concerns about privacy, balanced with efforts to reduce duplication of services and medical errors.
Most developed countries including Australia, Canada, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and the Netherlands have enacted laws protecting people's medical health privacy. However, many of these health securing privacy laws have proven less effective in practice than in theory. In 1996, the United States passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which aimed to increase privacy precautions within medical institutions.
History of medical privacy
The history of medical privacy traces back to Hippocratic Oath that postulates the secrecy of information obtained when helping a patient.
Prior to the technological boom, medical institutions relied on the paper medium to file individual medical data. Nowadays, more and more information is stored within electronic databases. Research shows that it is safer to have information stored within a paper medium as it is harder to physically steal data, whilst digital records are vulnerable to access by hackers.
In order to reform the healthcare privacy issues in the early 1990s, researchers looked into the use of credit cards and smart cards to allow access to their medical information without fear of stolen information. The "smart" card allowed the storage and processing of information to be stored in a singular microchip, yet people were fearful of having so much information stored in a single spot that could easily be accessed. This "smart" card included an individual's social security number as an important piece of identification that can lead to identity theft if databases are breached. Additionally, there was the fear that people would target these medical cards because they have information that can be of value to many different third parties including employers, pharmaceutical companies, drug marketers, and insurance reviewers.
In response to the lack of medical privacy, there was a movement to create better medical privacy protection, but nothing has been officially passed. The Medical Information Bureau was thus created to prevent insurance fraud, yet it has since become a significant source of medical information for over 750 life insurance companies; thus, it is very dangerous as it is a target of privacy breaches. Although the electronic filing system of medical information has increased efficiency and administration costs have been reduced, there are negative aspects to consider. The electronic filing system allows for individual information to be more susceptible to outsiders; even though their information is stored on a singular card. Therefore, the medical card serves as a false sense of security as it does not protect their information completely.
Patient care management systems (PCMS)
With the technological boom, there has been an expansion of the record filing system and many hospitals have therefore adopted new PCMS. PCMS store large amounts of medical records, and hold the personal data of many individuals. These have become critical to the efficiency of storing medical information because of the high volumes of paperwork, the ability to quickly share information between medical institutions, and the increased mandatory reporting to the government. PCMS have ultimately increased the productivity of data record utilization and have created a large dependence on technology within the medical field.
It has also led to social and ethical issues because basic human rights are considered to be violated by the PCMS, since hospitals and health information services are now more likely to share information with third-party companies. Thus, there needs to be a reformation to specify which hospital personnel have the access to medical records. This has led to the discussion of privacy rights and created safeguards that will help data keepers understand situations where it is ethical to share an individual's medical information, provide ways for individuals to gain access to their own records, and determine who has ownership of those records. Additionally, it is used to ensure that a person's identity is kept confidential for research or statistical purposes and to understand the process to make individuals aware that their health information is being used. Thus, a balance between privacy and confidentiality must be kept in order to limit the amount of information disclosed and protect patients' rights by safeguarding sensitive information from third parties.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
Electronic medical records are a more efficient way of storing medical information, yet there are many negative aspects of this type of filing system as well. Hospitals are willing to adopt this type of filing system only if they are able to ensure that the private information of their patients is sufficiently protected.
Researchers have found that U.S. state legislation and regulation of medical privacy laws reduce the number of hospitals that adopt EMR by more than 24%. This is due to decreasing positive network externalities that are created by additional state protections. With increases in restrictions against the diffusion of medical information, hospitals have neglected to adopt the new EMRs because privacy laws restrict health information exchanges. With decreasing numbers of medical institutions adopting the EMR filing system, the U.S. government's plan of a national health network has not been fully recognized. The national network will ultimately cost US$156 billion in investments, yet in order for this to happen, the U.S. government needs to place a higher emphasis on protecting individual privacy. Many politicians and business leaders find that EMRs allow for more efficiency in both time and money, yet they neglect to address the decreasing privacy protections, demonstrating the significant trade-off between EMRs and individual privacy.
Privacy and Electronic Health Records (EHR)
The three goals of information security, including electronic information security, are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Organizations are attempting to meet these goals, referred to as the C.I.A. Triad, which is the "practice of defending information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, inspection, recording or destruction."
In a 2004 editorial in the Washington Post, U.S. Senators Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton supported this observation, stating "[patients] need...information, including access to their own health records... At the same time, we must ensure the privacy of the systems, or they will undermine the trust they are designed to create". A 2005 report by the California Health Care Foundation found that "67 percent of national respondents felt 'somewhat' or 'very concerned' about the privacy of their personal medical records".
The importance of privacy in electronic health records became prominent with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009. One of the provisions (known as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health [HITECH] Act) of the ARRA mandated incentives to clinicians for the implementation of electronic health records by 2015.Privacy advocates in the United States have raised concerns about unauthorized access to personal data as more medical practices switch from paper to electronic medical records. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) explained that some of the safety measures that EHR systems can utilize are passwords and pin numbers that control access to such systems, encryption of information, and an audit trail to keep track of the changes made to records.
Providing patient access to EHRs is strictly mandated by HIPAA's Privacy Rule. One study found that each year there are an estimated 25 million compelled authorizations for the release of personal health records. Researchers, however, have found new security threats open up as a result. Some of these security and privacy threats include hackers, viruses, worms, and the unintended consequences of the speed at which patients are expected to have their records disclosed while frequently containing sensitive terms that carry the risk of accidental disclosure.
These privacy threats are made more prominent by the emergence of "cloud computing", which is the use of shared computer processing power. Health care organizations are increasingly using cloud computing as a way to handle large amounts of data. This type of data storage, however, is susceptible to natural disasters, cybercrime and technological terrorism, and hardware failure. Health information breaches accounted for the 39 percent of all breaches in 2015. IT Security costs and implementations are needed to protect health institutions against security and data breaches.
Health screening cases
Although privacy issues with the health screening is a great concern among individuals and organizations, there has been little focus on the amount of work being done within the law to maintain the privacy expectation that people desire. Many of these issues lie within the abstractness of the term "privacy" as there are many different interpretations of the term, especially in the context of the law. Prior to 1994, there had been no cases regarding screening practices and the implications towards an individual's medical privacy, unless it was regarding HIV and drug testing. Within Glover v Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation, an employee sued her employer against violating her 4th amendment rights because of unnecessary HIV testing. The court ruled in favor of the employer and argued that it was unreasonable search to have it tested. However, this was only one of the few precedents that people have to use. With more precedents, the relationships between employees and employers will be better defined. Yet with more requirements, testing among patients will lead to additional standards for meeting health care standards. Screening has become a large indicator for diagnostic tools, yet there are concerns with the information that can be gained and subsequently shared with other people other than the patient and healthcare provider
Third party issues
One of the main dangers to an individual's privacy are private corporations because of the profits they can receive from selling seemingly private information. Privacy merchants are made up of two groups - one that tries to collect people's personal information while the other focuses on using client's information to market company products. Subsequently, privacy merchants purchase information from other companies, such as health insurance companies, if there is not sufficient information from their own research. Privacy merchants target health insurance companies because, nowadays, they collect huge amounts of personal information and keep them in large databases. They often require patients to provide more information that is needed for purposes other than that of doctors and other medical workers.
Additionally, people's information can be linked to other information outside of the medical field. For example, many employers use insurance information and medical records as an indicator of work ability and ethic. The selling of privacy information can also lead employers to make much money; however, this happens to many people without their consent or knowledge.
Within the United States, in order to define clear privacy laws regarding medical privacy, Title 17 thoroughly explains the ownership of one's data and adjusted the law so that people have more control over their own property. The Privacy Act of 1974 offers more restrictions regarding what corporations can access outside of an individual's consent.
States have created additional supplements to medical privacy laws. With HIPAA, many individuals were pleased to see the federal government take action in protecting the medical information of individuals. Yet when people looked into it, there was proof that the government was still protecting the rights of corporations. Many rules were seen as more of suggestions and the punishment for compromising the privacy of its patients were minimal. Even if release of medical information requires consent, blank authorizations can be allowed and will not ask for individuals for additional consent later on.
Although there is a large group of people who oppose the selling of individual's medical information, there are groups such as the Health Benefits Coalition, the Healthcare Leadership Council, and the Health Insurance Association of America that are against the new reforms for data protection as it can ruin their work and profits. Previous controversies, such as Google's "Project Nightingale" in 2019 have demonstrated potential holes in regulations of patient data and medical information. Project Nightingale, a joint effort between Google and the healthcare network Ascension, saw to the selling of millions of patients' identifiable medical information without their consent. Though Google claimed that their process was legal in obtaining the information, there was concern between researchers on this claim.
Efforts to protect health information
With the lack of help from the Department of Health and Human Services there is a conflict of interest that has been made clear. Some wish to place individual betterment as more important, while others focus more on external benefits from outside sources. The issues that occur when there are problems between the two groups are also not adequately solved which leads to controversial laws and effects. Individual interests take precedence over the benefits of society as a whole and are often viewed as selfish and for the gain of capital value. If the government does not make any more future changes to the current legislation, countless organizations and people will have access to individual medical information.
In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act (GLBA) addressed the insurance privacy debate regarding medical privacy. Yet, there were many issues with the implementation. One issue was that there were inconsistent regulation requirements within the different states due to preexisting laws. Secondly, it was difficult to combine the pre-existing laws with the new framework. And thirdly, in order for the federal government to implement these new rules, they needed state legislature to pass it.
GLBA aimed to regulate financial institutions so that corporations could not affect people's insurance. Because of the difficulty of the implementation of the GLBA, state legislatures are able to interpret the laws themselves and create initiatives to protect the medical privacy. When states are creating their own independent legislature, they create standards that understand the impact of the legislation. If they stray from the standard laws, they must be valid and fair. The new legislation must protect the rights of businesses and allow them to continue to function despite federally regulated competition. Patients gain benefits from these new services and standards through the flow of information that is considerate with medical privacy expectations.
These regulations should focus more on the consumer versus the benefits and political exploitation. Many times, regulations are for the personal gain of the corporation, therefore, state legislatures be wary of this and try to prevent it to the best of their abilities. Medical privacy is not a new issue within the insurance industry, yet the problems regarding exploitation continue to reoccur; there is more focus on taking advantage of the business environment for personal gain.
In 2001, President George W. Bush passed additional regulations to HIPAA in order to better protect the privacy of individual medical information. These new regulations were supposed to safeguard health information privacy by creating extensive solutions for the privacy of patients. The new regulation goals included being notified once an individual's information is inspected, amend any medical records, and request communication opportunities to discuss information disclosure.
However, there are exceptions to when the disclosure of PHI can be inspected. This includes specific conditions among law enforcement, judicial and administrative proceedings, parents, significant others, public health, health research, and commercial marketing. These aspects of lack of privacy have caused an alarming number of gaps within privacy measures.
Ultimately, there is still an issue on how to ensure privacy securities; in response, the government has created new regulations that makes trade offs between an individual's privacy and public benefit. These new regulations, however, still cover individually identifiable health information - any data that contains information unique to an individual. However, non-identifiable data is not covered as the government claims it will cause minimal damage to a person's privacy. It also covers all health care organizations and covers businesses as well.
Additionally, under new HIPAA additions, the state legislation is more protective than national laws because it created more obligations for organizations to follow. Ultimately, the new rules called for expansive requirements that created better safety measures for individuals. Yet, there are still ways that businesses and healthcare organizations can be exempt from disclosure rules for all individuals. Thus, the HHS needs to find more ways to balance personal and public trade offs within medical laws. This creates a need for extra government intervention to enforce legislation and new standards to decrease the number of threats against an individual's privacy of health data.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a global effort to use technologies, like contact tracing, to reduce the spread of the disease. Contact tracing involves notifying people that they have been in contact with an individual who has tested positive for the virus. This led to the general public being concerned about the privacy risks of this technology. In response, in April 2020 Apple and Google created a contact tracing API.
Effects of changing medical privacy laws
Physician-patient relationships
Patients want to be able to share medical information with their physicians, yet they worry about potential privacy breaches that can occur when they release financial and confidential medical information. In order to ensure better protection, the government has created frameworks for keeping information confidential - this includes being transparent about procedures, disclosure and protection of information, and monitoring of these new rules to ensure that people's information.
Effects of Technological Advances
Recently physicians and patients have started to use email as an additional communication tool for treatment and medical interactions. This way of communication is not "new", but its effects on doctor patient relationships has created new questions regarding legal, moral, and financial problems.
The American Medical Informatics Association has characterized medical emails as way to communicate "medical advice, treatment, and information exchanged professionally"; yet, the "spontaneity, permanence, and information power characterizing" role is significant because of its unknown affects. However, the use of emails allows for increased access, immediate aid, and increased interactions between patients and doctors. There are many benefits and negative aspects of using emails; doctors feel a new sense of negative responsibility to respond to emails outside of the office, but also find benefits with facilitating rapid responses to patient's questions.
Additionally, the use of email between physicians and their patients will continue to grow because of the increasing use of the Internet. With the Internet, patients are able to ask for medical advice and treatment, yet issues regarding confidentiality and legal issues come up. Ultimately, emails between a physician and patient are supposed to be used as a supplement for face to face interactions, not for casual messages. If used properly, physicians could use emails as a way to supplement interactions and provide more medical aid to those who need it immediately.
Traditional beliefs on doctor-patient relationship
Although many people believe that the technological changes are the reason for fear of sharing medical privacy, there is a theory that states that institutional ideals between doctors and their patients have created the fear of sharing medical privacy information. Although levels of confidentiality are changing, individuals often feel the need to share more information with their doctors in order to get diagnosed correctly. Because of this, people are concerned with how much information their physicians have. This information could be transferred to other third-party companies. However, there is a call for smaller emphasis on sharing and confidentiality in order to rid patients from their fears of information breaching. There is a common belief that the confidentiality of one's information also only protects the doctors and not the patients, therefore there is a negative stigma towards revealing too much information. Thus it causes patients to not share vital information relevant to their illnesses.
Medical privacy standards and laws by country
Australia – eHealth
On July 1, 2012, the Australian Government launched the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) (eHealth) system. The full implementation incorporates an electronic summary prepared by nominated healthcare providers along with consumer-provided notes. Further, the summary includes information on the individual's allergies, adverse reactions, medications, immunizations, diagnoses, and treatments. The consumer notes operate as a personal medical diary that only the individual can view and edit. The opt-in system gives people the option to choose whether to register for the eHealth record or not.
As of January 2016, the Commonwealth Department of Health changed the name PCEHR to My Health Record.
Privacy – Governance
The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Act 2012 and Privacy Act 1988 governs how eHealth record information is managed and protected. The PCEHR System Operator abides by the Information Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth) as well as any applicable State or Territory privacy laws. A Privacy Statement sets out the application of the collection of personal information by the System Operator. The statement includes an explanation of the types of personal information collected, what the information is used for, and how the information is stored. The statement covers measures in place to protect personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorized access, modification, and disclosure.
Privacy – Security measures
Security measures include audit trails so that patients can see who has accessed their medical records along with the time the records were accessed. Other measures include the use of encryption as well as secure logins and passwords. Patient records are identified using an Individual Health Identifier (IHI), assigned by Medicare, the IHI service provider.
Privacy – Issues
A 2012 nationwide survey in Australia assessed privacy concerns on patients' health care decisions, which could impact patient care. Results listed that 49.1% of Australian patients stated they have withheld or would withhold information from their health care provider based on privacy concerns.
How does consent impact privacy?
One concern is that personal control of the eHealth record via consent does not guarantee the protection of privacy. It is argued that a narrow definition, 'permission' or 'agreement', does not provide protection for privacy and is not well represented in Australian legislation. The PCEHR allows clinicians to assume consent by consumer participation in the system; however, the needs of the consumer may not be met. Critics argue that the broader definition of 'informed consent' is required, as it encompasses the provision of relevant information by the healthcare practitioner, and understanding of that information by the patient.
Is it legitimate to use personal information for public purposes?
Data from the PCEHR is to be predominantly used in patient healthcare, but other uses are possible, for policy, research, audit and public health purposes. The concern is that in the case of research, what is allowed goes beyond existing privacy legislation.
What are 'illegitimate' uses of health information?
The involvement of pharmaceutical companies is viewed as potentially problematic. If they are perceived by the public to be more concerned with profit than public health, public acceptance of their use of PCEHRs could be challenged. Also perceived as problematic, is the potential for parties other than health care practitioners, such as insurance companies, employers, police or the government, to use information in a way which could result in discrimination or disadvantage.
What are the potential implications of unwanted disclosure of patient information?
Information 'leakage' is seen as having the potential to discourage both patient and clinician from participating in the system. Critics argue the PCEHR initiative can only work, if a safe, effective continuum of care within a trusting patient/clinician relationship is established. If patients lose trust in the confidentiality of their eHealth information, they may withhold sensitive information from their health care providers. Clinicians may be reluctant to participate in a system where they are uncertain about the completeness of the information.
Are there sufficient safeguards for the protection of patient information?
Security experts have questioned the registration process, where those registering only have to provide a Medicare card number, and names and birth dates of family members to verify their identity. Concerns have also been raised by some stakeholders, about the inherent complexities of the limited access features. They warn that access to PCEHR record content, may involve transfer of information to a local system, where PCEHR access controls would no longer apply.
Canada
The privacy of patient information is protected at both the federal level and provincial level in Canada. The health information legislation established the rules that must be followed for the collection, use, disclosure and protection of health information by healthcare workers known as "custodians". These custodians have been defined to include almost all healthcare professionals (including all physicians, nurses, chiropractors, operators of ambulances and operators of nursing homes). In addition to the regulatory bodies of specific healthcare workers, the provincial privacy commissions are central to the protection of patient information.
Turkey
The privacy of patient information is guaranteed by articles 78 and 100 of legal code 5510.
On the other hand, the Social Security Institution (SGK), which regulates and administers state-sponsored social security / insurance benefits, sells patient information after allegedly anonymizing the data, confirmed on October 25, 2014.
United Kingdom
The National Health Service is increasingly using electronic health records, but until recently, the records held by individual NHS organisations, such as General Practitioners, NHS Trusts, dentists and pharmacies, were not linked. Each organization was responsible for the protection of patient data it collected. The care. data programme, which proposed to extract anonymised data from GP surgeries into a central database, aroused considerable opposition.
In 2003, the NHS made moves to create a centralized electronic registry of medical records. The system is protected by the UK's Government Gateway, which was built by Microsoft. This program is known as the Electronic Records Development and the Implementation Programme (ERDIP). The NHS National Program for IT was criticized for its lack of security and lack of patient privacy. It was one of the projects that caused the Information Commissioner to warn about the danger of the country "sleepwalking" into a surveillance society. Pressure groups opposed to ID cards also campaigned against the centralized registry.
Newspapers feature stories about lost computers and memory sticks but a more common and longstanding problem is about staff accessing records that they have no right to see. It has always been possible for staff to look at paper records, and in most cases, there is no track of record. Therefore, electronic records make it possible to keep track of who has accessed which records. NHS Wales has created the National Intelligent Integrated Audit System which provides "a range of automatically generated reports, designed to meet the needs of our local health boards and trusts, instantly identifying any potential issues when access has not been legitimate". Maxwell Stanley Consulting will use a system called Patient Data Protect (powered by VigilancePro) which can spot patterns – such as whether someone is accessing data about their relatives or colleagues.
United States
Since 1974, numerous federal laws have been passed in the United States to specify the privacy rights and protections of patients, physicians, and other covered entities to medical data. Many states have passed its own laws to try and better protect the medical privacy of their citizens.
An important national law regarding medical privacy is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), yet there are many controversies regarding the protection rights of the law.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
The most comprehensive law passed is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which was later revised after the Final Omnibus Rule in 2013. HIPAA provides a federal minimum standard for medical privacy, sets standards for uses and disclosures of protected health information (PHI), and provides civil and criminal penalties for violations.
Prior to HIPAA, only certain groups of people were protected under medical laws such as individuals with HIV or those who received Medicare aid. HIPAA provides protection of health information and supplements additional state and federal laws; yet it should be understood that the law's goal is to balance public health benefits, safety, and research while protecting the medical information of individuals. Yet many times, privacy is compromised for the benefits of the research and public health.
According to HIPAA, the covered entities that must follow the law's set mandates are health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers that electronically transmit PHI. Business associates of these covered entities are also subject to HIPAA's rules and regulations.
In 2008, Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA), which aimed to prohibit genetic discrimination for individuals seeking health insurance and employment. The law also included a provision which mandated that genetic information held by employers be maintained in a separate file and prohibited disclosure of genetic information except in limited circumstances.
In 2013, after GINA was passed, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule amended HIPAA regulations to include genetic information in the definition of Protected Health Information (PHI). This rule also expanded HIPAA by broadening the definition of business associates to include any entity that sends or accesses PHI such as health IT vendors.
Controversies
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is critiqued for not providing strong medical privacy protections as it only provides regulations that disclose certain information.
The government authorizes the access of an individual's health information for "treatment, payment, and health care options without patient consent". Additionally, HIPAA rules are very broad and do not protect an individual from unknown privacy threats. Additionally, a patient would not be able to identify the reason for breach due to inconsistent requirements. Because of limited confidentiality, HIPAA facilitates the sharing of medical information as there is little limitation from different organizations. Information can easily be exchanged between medical institutions and other non-medical institutions because of the little regulation of HIPAA - some effects include job loss due to credit score sharing or loss of insurance.
Additionally, doctors are not required to keep patients information confidential because in many cases patient consent is now optional. Patients are often unaware of the lack of privacy they have as medical processes and forms do not explicitly state the extent of how protected they are. Physicians believe that overall, HIPAA will cause unethical and non-professional mandates that can affect a person's privacy and therefore, they in response have to provide warnings about their privacy concerns. Because physicians are not able to ensure a person's privacy, there is a higher chance that patients will be less likely to get treatment and share what their medical concerns are. Individuals have asked for better consent requirements by asking if physicians can warn them prior to the sharing of any personal information. Patients want to be able to share medical information with their physicians, yet they worry about potential breaches that can release financial information and other confidential information and with that fear, they are wary of who may have access.
In order to ensure better protection, the government has created frameworks for keeping information confidential - some of which include being transparent about procedures, disclosure and protection of information, and monitoring of these new rules to ensure that people's information is not affected by breaches. Although there are many frameworks to ensure the protection of basic medical data, many organizations do not have these provisions in check. HIPAA gives a false hope to patients and physicians as they are unable to protect their own information. Patients have little rights regarding their medical privacy rights and physicians cannot guarantee those.
Hurricane Katrina
HIPAA does not protect the information of individuals as the government is able to publish certain information when they find it necessary. The government is exempted from privacy rules regarding national security. HIPAA additionally allows the authorization of protected health information (PHI) in order to aid in threats to public health and safety as long as it follows the good faith requirement - the idea that disclosing of information is necessary to the benefit of the public. The Model State Emergency Powers Act (MSEHPA) gives the government the power to "suspend regulations, seize property, quarantine individuals and enforce vaccinations" and requires that healthcare providers give information regarding potential health emergencies".
In regards to Hurricane Katrina, many people in Louisiana relied on Medicaid and their PHI was subsequently affected. People's medical privacy rights were soon waived in order for patient's to get the treatment they needed. Yet, many patients were unaware that their rights had been waived. In order to prevent the sharing of personal information in future natural disasters, a website was created in order to protect people's medical data. Ultimately, Katrina showed that the government was unprepared to face a national health scare.
Medical data outside of HIPAA
Many patients mistakenly believe that HIPAA protects all health information. HIPAA does not usually cover fitness trackers, social media sites and other health data created by the patient. Health information can be disclosed by patients in emails, blogs, chat groups, or social media sites including those dedicated to specific illnesses, "liking" web pages about diseases, completing online health and symptom checkers, and donating to health causes. In addition, credit card payments for physician visit co-pays, purchase of over the counter (OTC) medications, home testing products, tobacco products, and visits to alternative practitioners are also not covered by HIPAA.
A 2015 study reported over 165,000 health apps available to consumers. Disease treatment and management account for nearly a quarter of consumer apps. Two-thirds of the apps target fitness and wellness, and ten percent of these apps can collect data from a device or sensor. Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only regulates medical devices and most of these applications are not medical devices, they do not require FDA approval. The data from most apps are outside HIPAA regulations because they do not share data with healthcare providers. "Patients may mistakenly assume that mobile apps are under the scope of HIPAA since the same data, such as heart rate, may be collected by an application that is accessible to their physician and covered by HIPAA, or on a mobile app that is not accessible to the physician and not covered by HIPAA.
Changes
In 2000, there was a new surge to add new regulations to HIPAA. It included the following goals: to protect individual medical information by providing secure access and control of their own information, improving healthcare quality by creating a more trust between consumers and their healthcare providers and third party organizations, and improve the efficiency of the medical system through new rules and regulations put forth by the local governments, individuals, and organizations.
The implementation of these new goals was complicated by the change in administrations (Clinton to Bush), so it was difficult for the changes to be successfully implemented. HIPAA, in theory, should apply to all insurance companies, services, and organizations, yet there are exceptions to who actually qualifies under these categories.
Yet, within each category, there are specific restrictions that are different in every category. There are no universal laws that can be easily applied that are easy for organizations can follow. Thus, many states have neglected to implement these new policies. Additionally, there are new patient rights that call for better protection and disclosure of health information. However, like the new rules regarding insurance companies, the enforcement of the legislation is limited and not effective as they are too broad and complex. Therefore, it is difficult for many organizations to ensure the privacy of these people. Enforcing these new requirements also causes companies to spend many resources that they are not willing to use and enforce, which ultimately leads to further problems regarding the invasion of an individual's medical privacy.
Oregon-specific laws
The Oregon Genetic Privacy Act (GPA) states that "an individual's genetic information is the property of the individual". The idea of an individual's DNA being compared to property occurred when research caused an individual's privacy to be threatened. Many individuals believed that their genetic information was "more sensitive, personal, and potentially damaging than other types of medical information." Thus, people started calling for more protections. People started to question how their DNA would be able to stay anonymous within research studies and argued that the identity of an individual could be exposed if the research was later shared. As a result, there was a call for individuals to treat their DNA as property and protect it through property rights. Therefore, individuals can control the disclosure of their information without extra questioning and research. Many people believed that comparing one's DNA to property was inappropriate, yet individuals argued that property and privacy are interconnected because they both want to protect the right to control one's body.
Many research and pharmaceutical companies showed opposition because they were worried about conflicts that might arise regarding privacy issues within their work. Individuals, on the other hand, continued to support the act because they wanted protection over their own DNA. As a result, lawmakers created a compromise that included a property clause, that would give individuals protection rights, but also included provisions that would allow research to be done without much consent, limiting the benefits of the provisions. Afterwards, a committee was created to study the effects of the act and how it affected the way it was analyzed and stored. They found that the act benefited many individuals who did not want their privacy being shared with others and therefore the law was officially implemented in 2001.
Connecticut-specific laws
In order to solve HIPAA issues within Connecticut, state legislatures tried to create better provisions to protect the people living within the state. One of the issues that Connecticut tried to solve were issues with consent. Within the consent clause, health plans and health care clearinghouses do not need to receive consent from individuals because of a general provider consent form with gives healthcare providers permission to disclose all medical information. The patient thus does not get notification when their information is being shared afterwards.
Connecticut, like many other states, tried to protect individual's information from disclosure of information through additional clauses that would protect them from businesses initiatives. In order to do so, Connecticut legislature passed the Connecticut Insurance Information and Privacy Protect Act, which provides additional protections of individual medical information. If third parties neglect to follow this law, they will be fined, may face jail time, and may have their licenses suspended. Yet, even in these additional provisions, there were many holes within this legislation that allowed for businesses agreements to be denied and subsequently, information was compromised. Connecticut is still working to shift its divergent purposes to creating more stringent requirements that create better protections through clear provisions of certain policies.
California-specific laws
In California, the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA), provides more stringent protections than the federal statutes. HIPAA expressly provides that more stringent state laws like CMIA, will override HIPAA's requirements and penalties. More specifically, CMIA prohibits providers, contractors and health care service plans from disclosing PHI without prior authorization.
These medical privacy laws also set a higher standard for health IT vendors or vendors of an individual's personal health record (PHR) by applying such statutes to vendors, even if they are not business associates of a covered entity. CMIA also outlines penalties for violating the law. These penalties range from liability to the patient (compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys' fees, costs of litigation) to civil and even criminal liability.
Likewise, California's Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act (IIPPA) protects against unauthorized disclosure of PHI by prohibiting unapproved information sharing for information collected from insurance applications and claims resolution.
New Zealand
In New Zealand, the Health Information Privacy Code (1994) sets specific rules for agencies in the health sector to better ensure the protection of individual privacy. The code addresses the health information collected, used, held and disclosed by health agencies. For the health sector, the code takes the place of the information privacy principles.
Netherlands
The introduction of a nationwide system for the exchange of medical information and access to electronic patient records led to much discussion in the Netherlands.
Privacy for research participants
In the course of having or being part of a medical practice, doctors may obtain information that they wish to share with the medical or research community. If this information is shared or published, the privacy of the patients must be respected. Likewise, participants in medical research that are outside the realm of direct patient care have a right to privacy as well.
See also
STD notifications in dating services
Electronic health record (EHR)
Electronic medical record (EMR)
Exemptions on the GDPR: national security
Genetic privacy
Modesty in medical settings
National Electronic Health Transition Authority (NEHTA)
Personal health record
Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR)
Protected health information
Intentional contagion of infection
References
Further reading
External links
European Standards on Confidentiality and Privacy in Healthcare
Opt out of the NHS Spine, or the NHS Confidentiality campaign
Electronic Frontier Foundation on medical privacy
Medical privacy
Medical law
Data laws
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-backed%20salamander
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Red-backed salamander
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The red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus) is a small, hardy woodland salamander species in the family Plethodontidae. It is also known as the redback salamander, eastern red-backed salamander, or the northern red-backed salamander to distinguish it from the southern red-backed salamander (Plethodon serratus). The species inhabits wooded slopes in eastern North America, west to Missouri, south to North Carolina, and north from southern Quebec and the Maritime provinces in Canada to Minnesota. It is one of 56 species in the genus Plethodon. Red-backed salamanders are notable for their color polymorphism and primarily display two color morph varieties ("red-backed" and "lead-backed"), which differ in physiology and anti-predator behavior.
Description and ecology
The red-backed salamander is a small terrestrial salamander, in total length (including tail), which usually lives in forested areas under rocks, logs, bark, and other debris. It is one of the most numerous salamanders throughout its range.
As with all amphibians, the red-backed salamander has permeable skin. They also lack lungs, a condition which is an ancestral trait of the Plethodontidae. Red-backed salamanders are thus entirely reliant on cutaneous respiration for gas exchange. Permeable skin is susceptible to desiccation and must be kept moist in order to facilitate cutaneous respiration; as a result much of the ecology and behavior of the red-backed salamander is restricted by climatic and microclimatic variables, particularly dryness and temperature.
The skin of red-backed salamanders was found to contain Lysobacter gummosus, an epibiotic bacterium that produces the chemical 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol and inhibits the growth of certain pathogenic fungi.
Polymorphism
Plethodon cinereus has color diversity, the common ones are the red-striped morph and the lead-phase. The "red-backed" or "red-stripe" variety has a red dorsal stripe that tapers towards the tail, and the darker variety, known as the "lead-backed" (or simply "lead") phase, lacks most or all of the red pigmentation. The red-backed phase is not always red, but may actually be various other colors (e.g., yellow-backed, orange-backed, white-backed, or a rare erythristic morph in which the body is completely red). Both morphs have speckled black and white bellies. Additional color anomalies of this species also exist, including iridistic, albino, leucistic, amelanistic, and melanistic anomalies. These color morphs are rarer than the red-backed, lead-backed, and erythristic morphs, but still have been reported with consistency among varying populations of this species. polymorphism
How color polymorphism arose in this species
Color polymorphism is thought to be an adaptive strategy in a heterogeneous environment, so the maintenance of polymorphism is derived from behavioral and physiological choices. The color polymorphism of The red-striped morph Plethodon cinereus and the lead-phase Plethodon cinereus show different anti-predator responses in behavior, and predator attacks differently based on the color form. Compared to red-striped morph P. cinereus which prefers an "all trunk raised" posture and tends to stay still, the lead-phase P. cinereus is significantly more mobile. Moreover, lead-phase P. cinereus has the ability to automatically cut off the tail, indicating that the two forms also differ in the frequency of being attacked.
As an evidence that polymorphism is to adapt the environment, P. cinereus color morph frequencies are correlated with climatic variables, suggesting habitat temperature and more broadly climate to be potential sources of selective pressure on P. cinereus polymorphism. The red-backed form is found with greater frequency in colder regions at more northerly latitudes and easterly longitudes throughout its range, whereas the opposite is true of the lead-backed form. Additionally, lead-backed morphs withdraw from surface activity earlier in the autumn than red-backed morphs, presumably to avoid cooling temperatures. Standard metabolic rate has also been found to differ between the morphs at certain temperatures, with significantly lower metabolic rates being displayed by the lead-backed form at 15 °C; in the same study, lead-backed individuals were also more active on the ground surface at this temperature. These findings suggest that the lead-backed color variant is less tolerant of cool temperatures than the red-backed color variant, and that the two color forms differ physiologically and behaviorally at certain temperatures.
An alternate explanation for the uneven geographic distribution of the red-backed and lead-backed P. cinereus color morphs involves phenotypic plasticity responding to developmental temperature. Although the genetic origins of the P. cinereus polymorphic condition are not fully understood, initial studies indicate that color morph dominance is likely subject to epistasis, and that multiple loci may interact to determine an individual's morph condition. However, more recent research indicates that a plastic response to thermal conditions during development also contributes to color morph determination; in one study, P. cinereus eggs incubated at a higher temperature hatched a greater proportion of lead-backed morphs than eggs incubated at a lower temperature. Temperature-dependent color morph determination may therefore also potentially influence the spatial distribution of P. cinereus color morphs.
Diet
Red-backed salamanders are mostly insectivorous, but prey on a wide assortment of other small invertebrates including isopods, millipedes, centipedes, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, spiders, and gastropods.
The two primary P. cinereus color morphs also differ in diet. The prevalence of certain prey taxa and the overall diversity and quality of prey items have been observed to differ seasonally between the two morphs in the spring and autumn when surface activity is greatest. The diets of striped and unstriped P. cinereus differ the most in the spring and fall seasons. The striped salamanders have a red-colored dorsal band that runs from the head/neck to their tail, and the unstriped ones lack this red stripe and are instead totally black. These salamanders are at the surface the most during these seasons. Contrasting diets during the fall and spring are due to differences in two types of prey consumed during this time. In the fall, the striped salamanders eat more entomobryomorph Collembola, the largest species of elongated springtails, as opposed to in the spring when they eat more oribatid mites.
Some studies have suggested that the unstriped morph has adapted to be better suited for drier and warmer conditions explaining the differences in diets. Unstriped morphs are less aggressive and less likely to hold territories because they are more well suited to find a territory that these striped salamanders are less adapted to withstand. The unstriped salamanders can forage in drier leaf litter, so they do not need to protect their territory to the extent that striped morphs do. The less pressure the unstriped salamander feels to hold territory does change what type of access of prey it has access to compared to the striped salamander during the drier months. Striped salamanders defend territories underneath objects such as rocks and logs when the conditions are dry. During these dry conditions, arthropods are forced to hide in these same moist areas that the striped salamanders claim as their territory since some arthropods will desiccate in dry periods. These arthropods then become the (red-backed) striped salamander’s prey while the unstriped salamanders miss this opportunity. This allows striped salamanders to feed on springtails, mites, ants, and other small invertebrates.
There are some disputes on which morph has the more diverse diet. In one study, the autumn diet of red-backed morphs was more diverse and of higher quality, and found to be dominated by mites, springtails, and ants, whereas the most important prey for lead-backed morphs were ants, mites, and isopods. A later study notes that this was because the earlier study only compared diets during the fall season, while the later study compared their diets throughout all of the seasons. The later study concludes that the unstriped morph has a broader diet and encounters prey the striped morph does not. They link this back to unstriped salamanders being able to roam more freely between drier territories during this time.
Distribution
Distribution of P. cinereus are in close contact with the soil on the forest floor. As deciduous forests mature, acid deposition can accelerate the acidification of soils. Acidic conditions can limit the distribution of amphibians and the numbers of sibling species, while the pH value of soil has a strong effect on the density and distribution of P. cinereus. When choosing between acidic and neutral soils, P. cinereus prefers to occupy more neutral soils. P. cinereus is rarely found in soils with a pH value of 3.7, and relatively more to be found in soils with a pH value of about 3.8 or higher. Juvenile P. cinereus have never been found in soils with a pH value lower than 3.7. Similar conclusions have also been supported in the laboratory. P. cinereus prefers to occupy substrates near neutral pH. A pH value between 2.5 and 3 results in acute mortality, while a pH value between 3 and 4 results in chronic mortality. Low pH will reduce their growth and respiration. Slowed growth and delayed metamorphosis make juvenile P. cinereus more vulnerable to predators and has serious consequences for population survival.
Several other factors, such as moisture and temperature, can affect the population density or dispersion of Botrytis as well. During prolonged dry periods, individuals move down into the soil, while during short dry periods they retreat under logs or rocks. They will avoid very warm areas, and when the temperature drops to 4-5 Celsius degrees, they will retreat to the ground as well. The optimum temperature is 10 to 15 Celsius degrees. Moreover, intraspecific and interspecific competition also affected the distribution of P. cinerea. Individuals confine themselves to moist microhabitats (beneath rocks, woody debris, etc. as well as beneath the soil) for long periods of time in order to maintain hydration when surface conditions are inhospitably dry or hot, and are only active on the surface to travel, forage, or reproduce for short periods. The duration of surface activity is directly limited by the rate of cutaneous water loss to the environment, which is influenced by environmental variables such as altitude, forest canopy cover, and the amount of recent precipitation.
Spatial distributions of the salamander Plethodon cinereus is observed to be seasonal. In spring, Plethodon cinereus are more likely to exist in groups of around 2 to 7 individuals under some object covers such as rocks and wood, than in the other seasons, while the density on the forest floor stays constant. This is because that spatial dispute starts in spring. A study in Blackrock Mountain, Virginia indicates that the mean number of salamanders in each quadrant of 100*100 m varies from 1.6 to 3 in spring compared to 0.8 to 1.8 in summer. A significant increase in the spatial distribution of P. cinereus from spring to summer is thought to be due to intraspecific interference competition. The cover objects on the ground can be a good choice of moisture refuge for P. cinereus during the rainy season. The failure of P. cinereus to forage underground causes them to restrict down to areas under and around the cover objects. Aggression and territoriality under resource, food and shelter limitation are the reasons for the observed spacing.
Moreover, the two morphologies have different standard metabolic rates, while lead-phase P. cinereus favor warm habitats or microclimates. So the strong argument is that the geographic distribution of color form is caused by the selection of physiological traits.
Behavior
Antipredator behavior of P. cinereus was found to differ between the two color phases; the lead-backed phase has a tendency to run away from predators, whereas the red-backed phase often stays immobile and possibly exhibits aposematic coloration. Stress levels of each color phase were estimated by determining the ratio of neutrophil to lymphocyte cells in the blood, and the results suggest stress levels are higher in the lead-backed phase than in the red-backed phase. This may be a consequence of a higher predation risk experienced in the wild by the lead-backed phase, and may also mean lead-phase salamanders could be more vulnerable in captivity settings.
Home range and territoriality
Plethodon cinereus, like many plethodon species, exhibit homing behavior, with homing of females to their nests, as well as non-attending females and males to a home range. This allows for essential contact between a female and her eggs in order to ensure their survival, as well as for non-attending females and males to explore beyond the home range when under predation pressures, or searching for food or cover, and return to their home range if a more favorable microhabitat is not found.
Male Plethodon cinereus actively defends its territory from intrusion by other males and is less aggressive towards invading females and juveniles. Plethodon cinereus usually directs aggressive behavior towards conspecific as well as heterospecific, as long as it's thought to be a potential competitor. Plethodon cinereus positively interacts not only with conspecifics, but also with other potential competitors such as centipedes.
It is necessary to have a visual display in order to elicit the threat posture of P. cinereus, and there will be no obvious aggressive behavior toward conspecifics and heterospecifics if only chemical cues exist. However, P. cinereus will increase time spent in aggressive postures when paired with centipedes but did not show increased aggression when paired with conspecifics. The specific test method was to expose male P. cinereus to four substrate chemical cue treatments separately: control, self, conspecific, or centipede (Scolopocryptops sexspinosus) to determine its behavior in the presence or absence of conspecifics and heterospecific cues reaction.
Their residence status affects the attack level as well. Even if in different residency statuses, they do attack centipedes
Defense mechanism toward bacterial pathogen
Plethodon cinereus coexists with some bacteria. These bacteria help salamanders defend against fungal pathogens. For example, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a fungal pathogen that causes a disease called Chytridiomycosis, has led to a rapid decline in amphibian populations worldwide. Around one-third of amphibians are endangered because of the disease, but some species persist from the infection, and some even clear the pathogen. As evidence, Plethodon cinereus has bacterial symbionts called Microsymbiont Janthinobacterium lividum on the skin of Plethodon cinereus. These metabolites can inhibit the growth of pathogens. This finding suggests an idea for providing long-term protection to individuals who are infected with chytridiomycosis. It also provides a research pathway for future drug development which is to use novel antifungal compounds for the treatment of human pathogens.
Reproduction and biomass
Males and females of P. cinereus typically establish separate feeding and/or mating territories underneath rocks and logs. However, some red-backed salamanders are thought to engage in social monogamy, and may maintain co-defended territories throughout their active periods. Breeding occurs in June and July. Females produce from four to 17 eggs in a year. The eggs hatch in 6 to 8 weeks. Not much is known about the dispersal of neonates, although neonates and juveniles are thought to be philopatric.
As in many Plethodon species, female red-backed salamanders have the ability to store sperm as spermatophore, and have been evidenced in doing so up to eight months prior to the oviposition period in June and July. Sperm or spermatophores are not retained following the oviposition period.
Protective coloration and behavior
Mimicry
The lead-backed are absent in northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Instead, another phase called erythristic is observed and exclusive in these areas. This phase shows macro- and microgeographic variation in frequency. Regardless of the wide geographic variation, the highest frequency is always under 25%. This phase of P. cinereus mimic Notophthalmus viridescens to protect themselves. Birds selectively avoid to predate all-red or erythristic color P. cinereus because they think that red color is a signal of noxiousness and toxicity. Even if people trained the birds to enhance the avoidance by increasing exposure to red efts (juvenile Notophthalmus viridescens), the frequencies of erythrism is never above 25%.
Interactions with humans
Roads have various negative effects on animal populations. For example, a major source of direct mortality for many species is accidental collisions with moving vehicles. Due to the slow movement of amphibians, it is estimated that the mortality rate of these animals on roads is as high as 10% of the total population each year. From a genetic point of view, roads also reduce gene flow and thus divide animal populations, causing drift and loss of genetic diversity. Eventually, populations separated by roads may become more and more distinct from each other, thus losing the original population. Amongst different sizes of roads, it is known that the interstate highway leads to increased genetic differentiation of Plethodon cinereus by microsatellite examination. Genetic distances between regions on either side of an interstate highway were significantly larger than those between equally spaced quadrants on the same side of the highway. However, plots on smaller roads were not genetically different compared to that in the case of interstate highways. Narrow paved roads reduce the movement of redback salamanders by approximately 25–75% but do not eliminate the dynamic of the population. And the detection of genetic differences across the interstate means that the spread on this road is reduced by well over 25–75%. So there is little gene flow across very large roads, and the P. cinereus population diverges from each other. The indirect effect of smaller roads on genetic population structure is also not a big issue for terrestrial salamanders and is not a direct effect of mortality and habitat change.
The observed rate of dispersion in P. cinereus is far less than in most of the animals previously studied. Because P. cinereus have very high population densities, this should reduce the effects of genetic drift in isolated populations. From a conservation standpoint, red-backed salamanders are an important research organism because of their behavioral and physiological similarities to many threatened and endangered salamanders.
Moreover, salamanders are largely affected by forest management practices thus impacting the food web dynamics and nutrient cycling of the ecosystem they are residing in. In order to conserve the species, proper forest management practice is essential. For instance, even-aged timber harvesting practices are documented which show significantly low abundance and species richness of amphibian creatures in the area. SCE, so-called structural complexity enhancement, aims to promote the vertical development of differentiated canopies and make the horizontal density variable which then can help to rearrange the basal area, snag and log density. It turns out that SCE brings positive effects to the abundance of the Plethodon cincereus population.
References
Further reading
Behler JL, King FW (1979). The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 743 pp., 657 color plates. . (Plethodon cinereus, pp. 336–337 + Plates 71, 117).
Green R (1818). "Descriptions of several species of North American Amphibia, accompanied with observations". Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1 (2): 348–359. (Salamandra cinerea, new species, pp. 356–357). (in English and Latin).
Powell R, Conant R, Collins JT (2016). Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern North America, Fourth Edition. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 494 pp., 47 color plates, 207 Figures. . (Plethodon cinereus, pp. 78–80 + Plate 5 + Figures 33, 36, 37).
Zim HS, Smith HM (1956). Reptiles and Amphibians: A Guide to Familiar American Species: A Golden Nature Guide. Revised Edition. New York: Simon and Schuster. 160 pp. (Plethodon cinereus, pp. 147, 157).
External links
Plethodon cinereus at Animal Diversity Web
Parental Care in Plethodon cinereus
Plethodon cinereus, Caudata Culture
Plethodon
Salamander, Red Back
Salamander, Red Back
Salamander, Red Back
Salamander, Red Back
Salamander, Red Back
Ecology of the Appalachian Mountains
Amphibians described in 1818
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture%20of%20Quebec
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Culture of Quebec
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The culture of Quebec emerged over the last few hundred years, resulting predominantly from the shared history of the French-speaking North American majority in Quebec. Québécois culture, as a whole, constitutes all distinctive traits – spiritual, material, intellectual and affective – that characterize Québécois society. This term encompasses the arts, literature, institutions and traditions created by Québécois, as well as the collective beliefs, values and lifestyle of Québécois. It is a culture of the Western World.
Quebec is the only region in North America with a French-speaking majority, as well as one of only two provinces in Canada where French is a constitutionally recognized official language. As of 2006, 79% of all Quebecers list French as their mother tongue; since French is the official language in the province, up to 95% of all residents speak French. The 2001 census showed the population to be 90.3 percent Christian (in contrast to 77 percent for the whole country) with 83.4 percent Catholic (including 83.2 percent Roman Catholic).
History made Quebec a place where people can experience North America, but from the point of view of a linguistic minority surrounded by a larger English-speaking culture. This enclaved status has pushed many in Quebec to favour cultural protectionism, which can be seen in efforts such as the adoption of laws like of the Charter of the French Language and the creation of government institutions like the Office québécois de la langue française. The Encyclopædia Britannica describes contemporary Quebec political culture as a post-1960s phenomenon resulting from the Quiet Revolution, an essentially homogeneous socially liberal counter-culture phenomenon supported and financed by both of Quebec's major political parties, who differ essentially not in a right-vs-left continuum but a federalist-vs-sovereignty/separatist continuum. The Quiet Revolution also turned Quebec from the most religious province into the most secular.
Quebec has been strongly influenced by Early modern France as it was part of New France. Interactions with France today can also be impactful (ex. the Vive le Québec libre! declaration). The province has been strongly influenced by British culture as a result of the Conquest of New France and subsequent centuries spent as part of the British Empire and under the British monarchy. Quebec has received a Celtic influence because of past immigrants from Ireland and Scotland. English-speaking Canadians (called "Anglais" or "Anglo") of other provinces, especially of nearby provinces like Ontario, as well as those inside Quebec, continue to influence Québécois today. Quebec is strongly influenced by American culture because of geographical and affective proximity. For historical and linguistic reasons, Quebec has cultural links with other North American French-speaking communities, particularly with the Acadians and Franco-Ontarian communities in Eastern Ontario and Northern Ontario. Quebec has links -but to a lesser extent- to francophone communities in Western Canada, the Cajun French revival movements in Louisiana, Haiti and the French Antilles. Influences from First Nations are reflected in Québécois activities including snowshoeing and maple syrup production.
Heritage
The Cultural Heritage Fund is a program of the Quebec government for the conservation and development of Quebec's heritage, together with various laws. Several organizations ensure that same mission, both in the social and cultural traditions in the countryside and heritage buildings, including the Commission des biens culturels du Québec, the Quebec Heritage Foundation, the Conservation Centre of Quebec, the Centre for development of living heritage, the Quebec Council of living heritage, the Quebec Association of heritage interpretation, etc.
Several sites, houses and historical works reflect the cultural heritage of Quebec, such as the Village Québécois d'Antan, the historical village of Val-Jalbert, the Fort Chambly, the national home of the Patriots, the Chicoutimi pulp mill (Pulperie de Chicoutimi), the Lachine Canal and the Victoria Bridge. Strongly influenced by the presence of the Catholic Church, the development of the religious history of Quebec is provided by organizations like the Council of the religious heritage of Quebec. Since 2007, the government promotes, with the various players in the field, the conclusion of agreements on the use of property belonging to episcopal factories and corporations to establish "partnerships in financing the restoration and renovation of religious buildings."
As of December 2011, there are 190 National Historic Sites of Canada in Quebec. These sites were designated as being of national historic significance.
Various museums tell the cultural history of Quebec, like the Museum of Civilization, the Museum of French America, the McCord Museum or the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History in Pointe-à-Callière, displaying artifacts, paintings and other remains from the past of Quebec. Many literary works reproduce the daily lives of the past, following the social and cultural traditions of Quebec television series reproducing the old days such as the trilogy of Pierre Gauvreau (Le Temps d'une paix, Cormoran and Le Volcan tranquille), La Famille Plouffe, Les Belles Histoires des Pays-d'en-Haut, La Petite Patrie, Entre chien et loup, Les Filles de Caleb, Blanche, Au nom du père et du fils, Marguerite Volant, Nos Étés or Musée Éden, among others.
Folklore
In terms of folklore, Quebec's French-speaking populace has the second largest body of folktales in Canada (the first being Native people); most prominent within Quebec folklore are old parables and tales. Other forms of folklore include superstitions associated with objects, events, and dreams. The Association Quebecoise des Loisirs Folkloriques is an organization committed to preserving and disseminating Quebec's folklore heritage. It produces a number of publications and recordings, as well as sponsoring other activities.
When the early settlers arrived from France in the 17th century, they brought with them popular tales from their homeland. Adapted to fit the traditions of rural Quebec by transforming the European hero into Ti-Jean, a generic rural habitant, they eventually spawned many other tales. Many were passed on through generations by what French speaking Québécois refer to as Les Raconteurs, or storytellers. Almost all of the stories native to Quebec were influenced by Christian dogma and superstitions. The Devil, for instance, appears often as either a person, an animal or monster, or indirectly through Demonic acts.
Various tales and stories are told through oral tradition, such as, among many more, the legends of the Bogeyman, the Chasse-galerie, the Black Horse of Trois-Pistoles, the Complainte de Cadieux, the Corriveau, the dancing devil of Saint-Ambroise, the Giant Beaupré, the monsters of the lakes Pohénégamook and Memphremagog, of Quebec Bridge (called the Devil's Bridge), the Rocher Percé and of Rose Latulipe, for example.
Creative arts
Cinema
The Cinémathèque québécoise has a mandate to promote the film and television heritage of Quebec. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB), a federal Crown corporation, provides for the same mission in Canada. The Association of Film and Television in Quebec (APFTQ) promotes independent production in film and television. Several movie theatres across Quebec ensure the dissemination of Quebec cinema. With its cinematic installations, such as the Cité du cinéma and Mel's studios, the city of Montreal is home to the filming of various productions.
The first public movie projection in North America occurred in Montreal on June 27, 1896. Frenchman Louis Minier presented a film on a Cinematograph in a Café-Theatre on Saint Lawrence Boulevard. However, it was not until the 1960s when the National Film Board of Canada was established that a genuine Quebec cinema industry would emerge. The 1970s were a "watershed" moment for Quebec films, when sophisticated themes and techniques were used by filmmakers such as Claude Jutra. Jutra's Mon Oncle Antoine (1971) has been assessed by some film critics as "one of Canada's greatest films".
Denys Arcand found success in the 1980s with The Decline of the American Empire (1986) and Jesus of Montreal (1989). In 2004, an Arcand film, The Barbarian Invasions, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Jean-Claude Lauzon's films, such as Night Zoo (Un zoo la nuit) (1987) and Léolo (1992), gained traction with audiences and critics alike.
C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) by Jean-Marc Vallée was successful at home and abroad. Xavier Dolan attracted audience and critical attention with I Killed My Mother (2009) and subsequent films. Quebec films have gained recognition through multiple nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in recent years; Incendies (2010) by Denis Villeneuve, Monsieur Lazhar (2011) by Philippe Falardeau, and War Witch (2012) by Kim Nguyen.
Important contributions to world cinema include Cinéma vérité and artistic animation.
Circus arts
Quebec has carved a niche for itself in the field of circus arts, where it emphasizes the European tradition of circus.
Several circus troupes were created in recent decades, most notably the Cirque du Soleil. Its productions include Varekai, Dralion, Alegría, Corteo, KOOZA, Quidam, Kà, Zumanity, Love, Mystère and O (which is performed on a water platform).
It is one of the world's few circuses without animal performers. Other internationally successful troupes include Cirque Éloize and Cirque ÉOS. Presented outdoors under a tent or in venues similar to the Montreal Casino, the circuses attract large crowds both in Quebec and abroad. In the manner of touring companies of the Renaissance, the clowns, street performers, minstrels, or troubadours travel from city to city to play their comedies. Although they may appear randomly from time to time during the year, they are always visible in the cultural events such as the Winterlude in Gatineau, the Quebec Winter Carnival, the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival, the Quebec City Summer Festival, the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the Festival of New France in Quebec. The National Circus School and the École de cirque de Québec were created to train future Contemporary circus artists. For its part, Tohu, la Cité des Arts du Cirque was founded in 2004 to disseminate the circus arts.
Cavalia, a Shawinigan-based horse show, has, since 2003, gained massive popularity in Montreal and Los Angeles. It features both acrobatic and equestrian arts. All of the horses are male, most of which are stallions.
Comic strips
Comic books in Quebec traditionally follow the European tradition of comics, combining both graphic design and literature. Though most are aimed at children, they are generally considered more dignified entertainment and there are many notable exceptions of graphic novels and comic books aimed at an older reading audience, such as the ones published by the Montreal-based Drawn & Quarterly, Les 400 coups, and La Pastèque.
Dance
Traditional music is imbued with many dances, such as the jig, the quadrille, the reel and line dancing. Classical dance in Quebec took root after World War II. Les Ballets Quebec (1948–51) was a short-lived ballet corps founded by Gérald Crevier. Les Grands Ballets Canadiens was founded in 1959, and gained an international reputation.
Le Groupe de la Place Royale (1966) was the first modern dance company in Quebec, eventually moving to Ottawa in 1977. Le Groupe Nouvelle Aire (1968–1982) was the second modern dance company, also established in Montreal. During the 1980s, modern dance groups La La La Human Steps and O Vertigo became internally known. Choreographer Margie Gillis has established a successful career across Canada and internationally.
Comedy
Comedy is a vast cultural sector. Quebec has created and is home to several different comedy festivals, including the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, as well as the Grand Rire festivals of Quebec, Gatineau and Sherbrooke. The Association des professionnels de l'industrie de l'humour (APIH) is the main organization for the promotion and development of the cultural sector of humour in Quebec and the , created in 1988, trains future comedians in Quebec. The Ligue nationale d'improvisation (LNI), created in 1977, promotes a number of comedians by combining humour with improvisation theater. The , in honour of the former humorist Olivier Guimond, rewards the personalities of Quebec comedy. The National School of humour (École nationale de l'humour) was created in 1988 to form the next generations of Quebec comedians.
Many popular Québécois comedy shows exist, such as Cré Basile, Le zoo du Capitaine Bonhomme, Lundi des Ha! Ha !, Démons du midi, La petite vie, Les Bougon, Le sketch show, etc. There are also many comedy and cartoon shows for children, such as La boîte à surprise, Bobino, Le pirate Maboule, Fanfreluche, La Ribouldingue, Les 100 Tours de Centour, Patofville, Passe-Partout, Robin et Stella, Iniminimagimo, Vazimolo, Télé-Pirate, Bibi et Geneviève, Watatatow, Caillou, Cornemuse, Macaroni tout garni, Toc toc toc, Ramdam, Tactik, etc.
Several prominent Quebec artists and humorous groups are known nationally and internationally, such as Rose Ouellette (known as La Poune), Juliette Petrie, Stéphane Rousseau, François Pérusse, Gilles Latulippe, Yvon Deschamps, Marc Favreau (famous for his character of Sol, a hobo clown), Michael Noël (and the character of Capitaine Bonhomme), Jacques Desrosiers (performer of the famous clown Patof), Serge Thériault and Claude Meunier (as Ding et (and) Dong), Les Grandes Gueules, Lise Dion, Jean-Michel Anctil, Martin Matte and Louis-José Houde, to name only a few. Some humorous programs are or were also popular such as Cré Basile, Le Zoo du Capitaine Bonhomme, Lundi des Ha! Ha! (Monday, Ha! Ha!), Démons du midi (Midday Devils), La Petite Vie, Les Bougon, and The sketch show (Quebec version). A famous show called Bye-Bye, broadcast each year on December 31, was a funny way to review the year just completed and laugh about any news (political or not) that happened that year.
Le Poisson D'Avril (April Fools) is an old French tradition involving sticking fish (usually paper ones) on people's back without their knowledge. It dates back to 1564, and is still to this day a tradition in Quebec. Now, in most other parts of the world, people play pranks on each other instead of the fish custom.
Prior to the modern Quebec sovereignty movement, many citizens of Quebec decided to express their dissatisfaction with federal elections by forming the Rhinoceros Party of Canada. The party fielded humorous candidates in many ridings with a satirical platform. They added colour to many otherwise drab elections for more than two decades. Children also have their comedy and animated cartoons such as The Surprise Box, Bobino, Le Pirate Maboule, Fanfreluche, the Ribouldingue, Les 100 tours de Centour, Patofville, Passe-Partout, Robin et Stella, Iniminimagimo, Vazimolo, Tele-Pirate, Bibi et Geneviève, Watatatow, Caillou, Cornemuse, Macaroni tout garni, Toc toc toc, Ramdam, Tactik and many more.
Literature
Early literature
The first literary output from Quebec occurred under the regime of New France, with the many poems written by the early inhabitants, as well as histories. It was, however, during the 19th century that Quebec novels were first published. The first Quebecois novel was written by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé in 1837, titled Le chercheur de trésor or L'influence d'un livre.
The period 1895 to 1930 saw a rapid growth in French literature in Quebec, and writers were heavily influenced by poetry and novels from Paris. Prominent Quebec writers of this period include Émile Nelligan, Victor Barbeau, Paul Morin, Guy Delahaye, René Dugas, René Chopin, Charles Ignace Adélard Gill, Jean-Aubert Loranger, Arthur de Bussières, Albert Lozeau, Robert Choquette, Albert Dreux, Gonzalve Desaulniers, Lionel Léveillé, Robert de Roquebrune, and Léo d'Yril.
Roman du terroir (1900–1960)
After 1900, Quebecois writers explored regional and ethnic identity in what has become called the roman du terroir (English: novel of the homestead, or from the land) movement. Writers who can be placed within the terroir framework include Camille Roy, Adjutor Rivard, Frère Marie-Victorin, Louis Hémon, Lionel Groulx, Alfred Desrochers, Albert Laberge, Blanche Lamontagne-Beauregard, Henriette Dessaulles, Germaine Guèvremont, Damase Potvin, Albert Ferland, Adélard Dugré, Pamphile Lemay, Ulric Gingras, Alphonse Désilets, Nérée Beauchemin and Rodolphe Girard.
The roman du terroir style of novel continued its popularity during the era sometimes called "La grande noirceur" (the great darkness), during the premiership of Maurice Duplessis, a time of extreme social and political conservatism in the province. Other types of novels developed during the 1940s and 1950s, such as the roman de moeurs urbaines (novel of urban mores), as exemplified by the writing of Gabrielle Roy, Ringuet, and Roger Lemelin. Another development in the novel was the roman psychologique (psychological novel), showing the inner turmoil of a character who cannot live "within the colonized society that values religion, family, and a mythic past". In the meantime, English-language writers from Quebec became prominent in Canada. Writers of this period include Claude-Henri Grignon, Félix-Antoine Savard, Ringuet, Anne Hébert, Saint-Denys Garneau, Alain Grandbois, Rina Lasnier, Clément Marchand, Roger Lemelin, Gabrielle Roy, Yves Thériault, Félix Leclerc, Isabelle Legris, Claire Martin, Francis Reginald Scott, Jean-Charles Harvey, A.M. Klein, Irving Layton, Léo-Paul Desrosiers, André Langevin, Gérard Bessette, Gratien Gélinas, Marcel Dubé, Paul-Émile Borduas, Robert Élie, Robert Charbonneau, André Giroux, Claude Gauvreau, Rex Desmarchais, Gilles Hénault, and Jean Le Moyne. Among the well-known literary works produced in Quebec at this time were two cultural and political manifestos, Prisme d'yeux (1948) and Refus global (1948), early indications of the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec.
Quiet Revolution (1960–1970)
The Quiet Revolution began in earnest during the 1960s. The expression of Quebecois identity, or even nationalist sentiment, shaped much of Quebecois literature in the period 1960 to 1970. The Cold War, the feminist movement, the influence of the United States' "counterculture", the concerns of the baby boom generation, and other cultural developments sweeping the Western world during the era also permeated the works of Quebec writers. Writers of the Quiet Revolution era include Gaston Miron, Réjean Ducharme, Hubert Aquin, Marie-Claire Blais, Jacques Ferron, Jacques Poulin, Roch Carrier, Georges Dor, Jacques Godbout, Michel Tremblay, Jacques Renaud, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, André Major, Jacques Brault, Paul-Marie Lapointe, Gatien Lapointe, Paul Chamberland, Fernand Ouellette, Roland Giguère, Alphonse Piché, Jean-Guy Pilon, Françoise Loranger, Jean-Claude Germain, Jean Barbeau, Michel Garneau, Fernand Dumont, Pierre Vadeboncœur, Pierre Vallières, Jean Bouthillette. Also writing during this era were Mavis Gallant, Denis Vanier, Michèle Lalonde, Lucien Francoeur, Patrick Straram, Gérald Godin, Michel Beaulieu, Nicole Brossard, Pierre Morency, Marcel Bélanger, Hélène Brodeur, Claude Jasmin, Gilles Archambault, Gilbert La Rocque, Jean-Pierre Ronfard, Normand Chaurette, Leonard Cohen, Jean Éthier-Blais, Yves Beauchemin, and André Loiselet.
Post-modernism and today
After 1970, themes and techniques of post-modernism began to influence much of Quebec's literature. Writers prominent from 1970 onward include Mordecai Richler, Nicole Brossard, Louky Bersianik, France Théoret, Madeleine Gagnon, Denise Boucher, François Charron, Claude Beausoleil, Yolande Villemaire, Marie Uguay, Roger Desroches, Gaétan Brulotte, Jean-Yves Collette, Daniel Gagnon, Michel Khalo, François Ricard, Marie José Thériault, André Belleau, and Claudine Bertrand. Popular French-language contemporary writers of the late 20th and early 21st century include Louis Caron, Suzanne Jacob, Yves Beauchemin, and Gilles Archambault.
English-language writers of Quebec include David Homel, Neil Bissoondath and Yann Martel. An association, the Quebec Writers' Federation, promotes English-language literature of Quebec and gives out an annual prize to Quebec writers. English-language literature from Quebec is sometimes classified under English-Canadian literature.
Literature has been produced in other minority languages in Quebec, such as Hebrew, Yiddish (including an active Yiddish theatre scene in Montreal during the early to mid-20th century), and indigenous aboriginal languages.
Music
The traditional folk music of Quebec has two main influences: the traditional songs of France, and the influence of Celtic music, with reels and songs that show a definite affinity with the traditional music of Canada's Maritime Provinces, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany. Various instruments are more popular in Quebec's culture: harmonica (music-of-mouth or lip-destruction), fiddle, spoons, jaw harp and accordion. The podorythmie is a characteristic of traditional Quebec music and means giving the rhythm with the feet. This traditional music is becoming increasingly more popular, with the success of groups such as La Bottine Souriante.
From Quebec's musical repertoire, the song À la claire fontaine was the anthem of the New France, Patriots and French Canadian, then replaced by O Canada. Currently, the song Gens du pays is by far preferred by many Quebecers to be the national anthem of Quebec.
Quebec has also produced world-class classical music over the years, such as the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO), founded in 1934. Under the direction of Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit from 1977 to 2002, the MSO gained a truly international reputation. Montreal is also home to the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, the Orchestre de la Francophonie, the early music ensemble Arion, the all-female ensemble La Pietà, created by violinist Angèle Dubeau, to name but a few; Quebec City is home to the Violons du Roy under the direction of Bernard Labadie and the Orchestre symphonique de Québec under the direction of Yoav Talmi. Quebec has a number of classical music festivals, such as the Festival de Lanaudière, Festival Orford chamber music festival held at the Orford Art Centre, and where the ensemble the Orford String Quartet was first formed.
Classical music aficionados can attend performances in a number of concert halls. Salle Wilfrid Pelletier at the Place des Arts cultural centre in the heart of Montreal is home to the MSO. Montreal's McGill University also houses three concert halls: Pollack Hall, Tanna Schulich Hall and Redpath Hall. The Université de Montréal has its Salle Claude Champagne, named after Quebec composer Claude Champagne. The Grand Théâtre de Québec in Quebec City is home to the Orchestre symphonique du Québec. A regional centre, Rimouski, is home to the Orchestre symphonique de l'Estuaire and has a large concert hall, the Desjardins-Telus theatre.
Jazz also has a long tradition in Quebec. Montreal's annual Montreal International Jazz Festival draws a number of visitors each summer. Many Quebecers have made a name for themselves in the jazz world, such as Oscar Peterson, Oliver Jones, Karen Young, Lorraine Desmarais, Vic Vogel, Michel Donato, and Alain Caron.
A number of performers enjoy considerable success at home, both in terms of record sales and listenership, while remaining relatively unknown outside Quebec. In a number of cases, French-speaking Quebec singers are able to export their talent to France and Belgium. Belgian singer Lara Fabian followed the reverse path, moving to Quebec to seek a breakthrough in North America. Artists like Céline Dion and the pop-punk group Simple Plan have achieved considerable success in English-speaking countries by expanding their audience base. Celine Dion, for instance, has sold over 50 million albums in the United States alone.
Montreal also has a flourishing English-language music scene. Some of the well-known English-language musical acts from Quebec include Leonard Cohen, April Wine, The Box, Men Without Hats, Corey Hart, sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Arcade Fire.
Quebec is also well known for their French-language country music. Though English-language country is found in Quebec as well, French is the primary version. French-language singers include Renée Martel, Gildor Roy, Patrick Norman, Willie Lamothe, Steph Carse, and Georges Hamel.
The Quebec scene is renowned in metal circles for its production of some of the world's finest Technical and Progressive Death metal bands such as Voivod, Gorguts, Quo Vadis, Neuraxis and Martyr as well as Augury and Unexpect. The Quebec metal scene also produced other fine bands such as Kataklysm (northern hyperblast), Despised Icon (deathcore) and Cryptopsy (death metal).
Various musical events are held throughout Quebec, such as the Festival d'été de Québec, the Emerging Music Festival of Rouyn-Noranda, Festival en chanson de Petite-Vallée, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Granby International Song Festival, the International Festival of Rhythms of the World in Saguenay, the Festival Western de Saint-Tite, the Montreal FrancoFolies festival, the Mondial des Cultures of Drummondville, the White Nights of Anse de Roche, Woodstock en Beauce, etc. Other festivals join music to fireworks, such as Grand Feux Loto-Québec at the Montmorency Falls, Quebec City, the International Loto-Québec Firework at amusement park La Ronde, Montreal, or the Grands Feux du Casino in the park of Lac-Leamy in Gatineau.
Theatre
Quebec theatre was largely based on plays originating in France, Great Britain, or the United States before the mid-20th century, when plays written by Quebec dramatists gained popularity. Gratien Gélinas gained fame in Quebec and made an important contribution to Québécois identity with his character Fridolin, a Montreal boy who speaks in local slang (Joual) and has humorous views about everyday life.
Since the 1960s, many playwrights have embraced themes of modernism and post-modernism. This became known as the "new Quebec theatre", featuring works by playwrights such as Michel Tremblay, Jean-Claude Germain, and Jean Barbeau. Michel Tremblay, perhaps the most well known outside Quebec, brought themes such as Quebec identity, working class values, gay relationships, and urban life to the stage. Robert Lepage is prominent as a playwright, actor and director. Wajdi Mouawad is known for the critically praised play Scorched, which was filmed as Incendies.
Several landmark theatres are active in Montreal and Quebec City. The Théâtre du Nouveau Monde was established in Montreal in 1951 as a classical theatre company, staging works by Molière among others. During the Quiet Revolution, it began staging plays of a more contemporary and experimental nature as well. It lies within the precinct of the Quartier des Spectacles entertainment district, which encompasses more than 30 live performance halls. Other prominent theatres in the district include Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Théâtre Saint-Denis, Montreal Arts Interculturels, and Théâtre Telus. There are also the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui, Théâtre de Quat'Sous, Théâtre du Rideau Vert, Théâtre Espace Go, Monument-National, and Théâtre Maisonneuve among others. The Monument-National theatre is owned by the National Theatre School of Canada located in Montreal. The Maison Théâtre, founded in 1982, is an association of 27 theatre companies that has a mission to develop and promote theatre for children and youth. On its part, Quebec City is home to Capitole de Québec and Grand Théâtre de Québec.
Centaur Theatre is Montreal's largest English-language theatre.
The summer theatre is a true symbol of Quebec literature. Presented in the summer, it offers a variety of amusements, usually musicals or humorous dramas, sometimes outdoors, in rural and semi-rural regions of Quebec, in venues such as the theatre of la Dame de Cœur (the Lady of Heart) in Upton, Montérégie, the Grands Chênes (Great Oaks) Theatre in Kingsey Falls, Centre-du-Québec and the theatre of la Marjolaine in Eastmain, Estrie. The Quebec Theatre Academy and the Quebec Association of Playwrights (AQAD) are the main organizations for the promotion of literature and theatre in Quebec. The Quebec literary awards, including the Medal of the Académie des lettres du Québec, and the Soirée des Masques reward the important personalities of the year.
Visual arts
For many years a mostly rural society, Quebec has a tradition of craft art, including the making of stained glass windows, as exemplified in the art of Marcelle Ferron.
The group known as Les Automatistes, and its best known artist, Jean-Paul Riopelle, is perhaps Quebec's best known contribution to the world of fine art.
During the 19th and early 20th century, Quebec art was dominated by landscape painting, although some artists, including James Wilson Morrice, Ozias Leduc, and Alfred Laliberté, showed a receptiveness to European trends such as symbolism and the style of Matisse.
Modern Quebec art developed during and after World War II. Alfred Pellan and Paul-Émile Borduas were leaders of the modern art movement in Quebec. Non-figurative works became notable among the creations of Quebec artists. Two broad trends during the post-War years have been identified: abstract expressionism (Marcelle Ferron, Marcel Barbeau, Pierre Gauvreau, and Jean-Paul Riopelle) and geometric abstraction (Jean-Paul Jérôme, Fernand Toupin, Louis Belzile, and Rodolphe de Repetigny). Jean Dallaire and Jean-Paul Lemieux became prominent figurative painters during this period.
The most well-known painters of the 1960s include Guido Molinari, Claude Tousignant, and Yves Gaucher. During the 1960s, art "happenings" took place in Montreal, as in other artistic centres worldwide. Public art also became more visible in Montreal.
Montreal was the first city in Canada to participate in the Nuit Blanche (White Night) art festival, which is now an annual event. During this festival, art galleries and performance spaces open their doors to the public for evening exhibits.
In the 1990s, Charles Carson was "discovered" by Guy Robert, founder of the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal. Struck by "the freshness and vivacity of the palette, the dynamism and diversity of the compositions, the rhythm that animates each segment of his paintings" (ROBERT, Guy. "Carson", Mont-Royal: Iconia, 1993, 55 pp.), he sees Carson as one of the main painters known in Quebec, and he coined the word "carsonism" to name his art.
Architecture
Québécois architecture is characterized by its unique Canadien-style buildings as well as the juxtaposition of a variety of styles reflective of Quebec's history. When walking in any city or town, one can come across buildings with styles congruent to Classical, Neo-Gothic, Roman, Neo-Renaissance, Greek Revival, Neo-Classical, Québécois Neo-Classical, Victorian, Second Empire, Modern, Post-modern or Skyscrapers.
Canadien-style houses and barns were developed by the first settlers of New France who settled along the banks of the Saint Lawrence River. These buildings are rectangular one-storey structures with an extremely tall and steep roof, sometimes almost twice as tall as the house below. It is thought that this roof design may have been developed to prevent the accumulation of snow. They were usually built out of wood, but the surviving ones are almost all built out of stone.
Canadien-style churches also developed. Each new village would build its own church, often being inspired by the churches of Québec and Montreal in the process. These churches long served as landmarks while traversing rural Quebec and were built in the center of the town. Quebec is often said to possess the most beautiful churches in North America.
Lifestyle
Family life
During the 1950s and 1960s, Quebec maintained record fertility rates, with the Roman Catholic church using their priests (established in all parishes and small towns) to guide and direct people's attitudes and morals. In the post–Quiet Revolution era, this attitude completely changed. In 2001, the fertility rate in Quebec was 1.474 per thousand.
In Quebec, many, if not all, married women retain their maiden names when they marry, as was the case in the Middle Ages. This is mandated in the Civil Code of Quebec. This followed the 1970s strong feminist movement and the Quiet Revolution. Since June 24, 2002, Quebec has had a civil union system available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. On March 19, 2004, Quebec became the third province in Canada to legally perform a same-sex marriage, following a court challenge brought by Michael Hendricks and René Leboeuf. The province is known as one of the most tolerant and gay friendly places in North America.
Food
As in European countries like Italy or France, where cooking is considered one of the fine arts, fine dining is a passion among the well-to-do of Quebec society. Even small communities proudly boast of famous inns where the chef has an international reputation. This could be partly explained by a strong immigration in the 1960s and 1970s from Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and France. Many of those immigrants were waiters, cooks and chefs. Food from Quebec include most of the foods from Canada, The Americas, Northern Africa, Asia, Europe and then some scattered other food.
The traditional Quebecois cuisine descends from 16th century French cuisine, the fur trade and a history of hunting. French settlers populating North America were interested in a new cuisine to confront the climate and the needs arising from the work of colonization. It has many similarities with Acadian cuisine. Quebec's cuisine has also been influenced by learning from First Nation, by English cuisine and by American cuisine. Quebec is most famous for its Tourtière, Pâté Chinois, Poutine, St. Catherine's taffy among others. "Le temps des sucres" is a period during springtime when many Quebecers go to the sugar shack (cabane à sucre) for a traditional meal. Traditional dishes are also the star of Le temps des fêtes (holiday season, a period which covers the winter holidays.
Quebec is the biggest maple syrup producer on the planet. About 72% of the maple syrup sold on the international market (and 90% of the maple syrup sold in Canada) originates from Quebec. The province has a long history of developing and perfecting the craft of producing maple syrup, and creating new maple-derived products.
Quebec has produced beer since the beginning of colonization especially with the emergence of spruce beer. Quebec also produces a great number of high-quality wines including ice wine and ice cider. Because of the climate and available resources, it is only since the 1980s that these drinks can be produced in industrial quantities. Today there are nearly a hundred breweries and companies, including Unibroue, Molson Coors, Labatt and many others.
Quebec has produced cheese for centuries. Most of the first cheeses were soft cheeses, but after the Conquest of New France, hard cheese began to be created as well. The first cheese-making school in North America was established in Saint-Denis-de-Kamouraska in 1893. It was at this moment that the monks of La Trappe of Oka began to produce the famous Oka cheese. Today there are over 700 different cheeses in Quebec.
Work
The province at the beginning of the 20th century was known for its low-paid blue-collar workers employed in textiles, paper plants and shops. Quebec also has a long tradition in forestry. In the first part of the 20th century, many lumber camps in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire were staffed by French-Canadian workers.
Despite a nationwide decline in union membership in Canada since 1981, Quebec has sustained one of the highest rates of union membership in the country. Quebec is the only jurisdiction in North America where a Walmart has ever successfully unionized, although the store closed shortly thereafter.
Fashion
During the 17th century, the nobles and the bourgeois followed the fashions of France. They were always one year late to the fashion of Paris because it took one year for the King's ship to arrive. The habitants, including the lords and serfs of the seigneuries, adapted their clothes to the customs of Native Americans: women wore shorter skirts and shawls, and men wore mitasses (a type of leggings originating with First Nations), moccasins and woolen toques. Many poorer women often arranged their hair on Sunday in a more sophisticated fashion, despite administrators of the colony stating that this style was reserved for the bourgeois and nobles. Some women wore clothes deemed indecent, with breasts almost visible.
The Coureur des bois and Voyageurs wore similar clothing. During the colder months, they would wear a large coat made of deer, moose, or caribou skin with a large belt around the middle, called a Ceinture fléchée, made of leather or colorful wool. Voyageurs had the option of wearing clothes supplied by their employer, so a Voyageur who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company might have chosen to wear a capote coat with the traditional HBC stripes on them. Though, those who decided to make their own capot could style it to their whims. On their heads, they either wore a fur hat or a toque (a close-fitting knitted cap). Red toques appear frequently in artwork, but other colours like grey and blue were worn too.
Today, Québécois clothes follow the styles of mass-produced fashion. Québécois haute fashion is pioneered today with stylists, such as Marie Saint-Pierre, Marie-Claude Guay, Philippe Dubuc, Leo Chevalier, etc. Works are sold in boutiques and shops like La Maison Simons, Ogilvy's, Holt Renfrew, Les Ailes de la Mode, etc. The internationally renowned designers who do business in Quebec are mainly concentrated in Les Cours Mont-Royal. La Grande Braderie exhibits the works of Québécois fashion designers. The gala de la Griffe d'or rewards the best of those creators.
Leisure and hobbies
Vacation
Starting probably in the late 1940s and reaching its peak in the 1970s, some Quebec residents have vacationed or spent the whole winter months in southeast Florida, mainly in the Hallandale Beach and Fort Lauderdale regions. Initially a trend that only the wealthy could afford, this destination is now considered by many as outdated and unstylish. It did, however, spur the coining of the term "Floribécois", a Quebec snowbird. The increasing real estate taxes might explain why Quebecers increasingly tend to visit the North Miami area instead of residing there for part of the year. Many snowbirds owned a trailer or a house, but were renting the land where their property was located. New locations and resort areas such as Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Caribbean islands are now favoured by many Quebecers to spend their traditional sunny one or two-week vacations.
A lot of Quebec tourists go to The Wildwoods or Cape May along the Jersey Shore in the summer; in 2010 it was estimated 13 percent of the tourists to the area came from Quebec and brought in around $650 million. Several hotels in The Wildwoods and Cape May are named to attract Canadian tourists. Cape May County began targeting Quebec tourists around 1970 and once operated a tourism office in downtown Montreal.
Video games
Video games are popular in Quebec, as they are in the rest of Canada and the United States. The majority of video games come from either the United States, Canada, or Japan. Only some games have been translated into French, but the government of Quebec and the Entertainment Software Association of Canada made a deal in 2007 that will require all games sold in Quebec to be translated into French by 2009, as long as they are available in another part of the world in French as well. In some cases the game includes optional French text and/or subtitles, while in other cases the game is fully translated in French complete with dubbed voice acting (as is the case with games by Montreal-based Ubisoft), which may be recorded either locally or in Europe.
Sports
Sports in Quebec constitutes an essential dimension of Quebec culture. The practice of sports and outdoor activities in Quebec was influenced largely by its geography and climate.
Ice hockey is by far the sport of choice in Quebec. The rules of the game were set up by students at McGill University in 1875. There are many junior ice hockey teams, and one would be hard-pressed to find even the smallest community without a rink available for organized play. Institutions include the NHL's Montreal Canadiens, the NHL's former Quebec Nordiques, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and the governing body Hockey Québec.
Association football, known in North America as soccer, Canadian football, baseball, basketball, rugby union and volleyball are the most practised and watched sports during the summer season in Quebec.
Cross-country skiing is very easily accessible due to the abundance of snow and an unending supply of open fields. With the Laurentian Mountains close at hand, some of the best downhill skiing in Canada east of the Rockies is to be found in Quebec as well.
The snowmobile (or "skidoo"), invented in Quebec by Joseph-Armand Bombardier, is a popular hobby, though its reputation has been marred by several deaths each year. Through the 1990s, the Mont Tremblant and Mont Sainte-Anne ski resorts became popular destinations internationally.
Another popular pastime is ice fishing. Rivers freeze over quickly come wintertime and as soon as the ice is solid enough to walk upon, one can find dozens of tiny homemade shacks (ice houses) dotting the frozen surface.
Quebec is home to many professional sports teams and events, the majority of which call Montreal home.
Québec athletes have performed well at the Winter Olympics over recent years. They won 12 of Canada's 29 medals at the most recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang (2018); they won 12 of the 27 Canadian medals in Sochi (2014); and 9 of the 26 Canadian medals in Vancouver (2010).
Existing teams
Montreal Canadiens (National Hockey League)
Montreal Alouettes (Canadian Football League)
CF Montréal (Major League Soccer)
Québec Capitales (Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball)
Quebec Remparts (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League)
Sherbrooke Phoenix (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League)
Defunct teams
Montreal Expos (Major League Baseball)
Quebec Nordiques (National Hockey League)
Montreal Express (National Lacrosse League)
Équipe Cycliste Cascades (cycling)
Events
Canadian Grand Prix (Formula One racing)
NASCAR Canadian Tire Series
Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières (Atlantic Championship)
Athletes
Noted Quebec athletes include:
Baseball (Éric Gagné, Russell Martin, Dick Lines)
Basketball (Bill Wennington, Samuel Dalembert, Joel Anthony)
Cycling (Geneviève Jeanson, Lyne Bessette)
Diving (Alexandre Despatie, Sylvie Bernier, Annie Pelletier)
Figure skating: (Joannie Rochette, Isabelle Brasseur, David Pelletier, Josée Chouinard, Valérie Marcoux)
Hockey (Maurice Richard, Guy Lafleur, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy, Jean Béliveau, Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Vincent Lecavalier, Doug Harvey, Roberto Luongo, Joe Malone, Jean-Gabriel Pageau)
Judo (Nicolas Gill)
Lethwei (Dave Leduc)
Mixed martial arts (Georges St-Pierre, David Loiseau)
Short-track speed skating (Marc Gagnon, Nathalie Lambert, Éric Bédard)
Long-track speed skating (Gaétan Boucher)
Racing (Gilles Villeneuve, Jacques Villeneuve, Alex Tagliani, Patrick Carpentier)
Football (Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Paul Lambert, Éric Lapointe, Terry Evanshen, Ian Beckles),
Soccer (Samuel Piette, Sandro Grande, Adam Braz, Patrick Leduc), Nick DeSantis), Mauro Biello)
Moguls (Alexandre Bilodeau)
Media
Quebec is dominated by French-language media, although there are a small number of English-language media centred in Montreal. Quebecers also have access to Canadian English-language media, as well as media from the United States, France, and elsewhere. Québecor Média is a significant corporate presence in Quebec media; the company also controls the large Sun Media chain across Canada.
The major newspapers in Quebec include the broadsheets La Presse (Montreal), Le Devoir (Montreal) and Le Soleil (Quebec City), the tabloids Le Journal de Montréal (Montreal) and Le Journal de Québec (Quebec City), and the English-language broadsheet The Gazette (Montreal). Other smaller centres have their own newspapers, and there are also several free papers including "alternative weeklies" and daily micro-presses available in cafes and the Montreal Metro.
A number of television networks and stations broadcast in Quebec. Two public broadcasters broadcast over the air in French: Radio-Canada, operated by the federal government, and Télé-Québec, operated by the provincial government. Two private (commercial) broadcasters broadcast over the air in French: TVA (which generally has the highest ratings of all French-language broadcasters) and Noovo. These Quebec television networks produce a considerable amount of their content locally, including the popular téléromans.
The three main Canadian English networks also broadcast over the air in Quebec: public broadcaster CBC and private broadcasters CTV and Global. These networks provide some local content, primarily news and public affairs programming. Montreal's CJNT, owned by Rogers Sports & Media, is an affiliate of the English language Citytv network, while CFHD provides multicultural programming.
A number of networks are only available to cable and satellite subscribers. Subscribers can watch a wide range of specialized French-language TV channels. Amongst these offerings is TV5, the international French-language network. Most major Canadian English-language cable and satellite networks are also available.
Most American television networks are available in Quebec, although in some locations farther from the Canada–United States border they are not available over the air, but only on cable. The PBS affiliates from the neighbouring states, WETK in Burlington, Vermont, and WCFE in Plattsburgh, New York, sometimes run Quebec-specific material.
Cultural institutions
Many cultural institutions were set up in Quebec in the wake of the Quiet Revolution.
Among the key institutions are:
the Archives nationales du Québec (Quebec National Archives) created in 1920, and the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec (Quebec National Library) created in 1967, now combined into the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec, a network of nine Academies created in 1942
the provincial public broadcaster Télé-Québec created in 1968
the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (Quebec Council of Arts and Letters) created in 1992.
the interdisciplinary progressive music and fine arts institution Lambda School of Music and Fine Arts founded in 2008
Quebec's rich heritage of culture and history can be explored through a network of museums, which include the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée de la civilisation and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Many of Quebec's artists have been educated in universities' arts faculties and specialized art schools. Notable schools include the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec, the École nationale de théâtre du Canada and the École nationale de cirque.
Prizes and awards
Quebec rewards its singers, musicians, authors, actors, directors, dancers, etc. regularly. Among the awards are:
Athanase David Awards (Literature)
Félix Awards (Music)
Gémeaux Awards (Television and film)
Jutra Awards (Cinema)
Masques Awards (Theatre)
Olivier Guimond Awards (Humour)
Opus Awards (Concert music)
Prix du Québec (Several cultural fields)
Holidays and traditions
Quebec is home to a number of unique holidays and traditions not found anywhere else. St-Jean-Baptiste Day is one of Quebec's biggest holidays. In 1977, the Quebec Parliament declared June 24, the day of , to be Quebec's National Holiday. , or , honours French Canada's patron saint, John the Baptist. On this day, the song "Gens du pays", by Gilles Vigneault, is often heard. This song is commonly regarded as Quebec's unofficial anthem. Festivities occur on June 23 and 24 all over Quebec. In big cities like Quebec City or Montreal, shows are organized in main public spaces (such as on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, or in Maisonneuve Park in Montreal) where several of the most popular Québécois artists sing until late at night. Festivities include parades, bonfires, fireworks, drinking, feasts, musical concerts, flag waving, contests and patriotic speeches.
National Patriots' Day, a statutory holiday in Quebec, is also a unique public holiday, which honours the patriotes who fought the British in the Patriots' War with displays of the patriote flag, marches, music, public speeches, ceremonies and banquets. Le Vieux de '37 ("The Old Man of '37") is an illustration by Henri Julien that depicts a patriot of this rebellion. Le Vieux de '37 is one of the best known symbols of the rebellion and is sometimes added at the centre of Patriote flags.
Moving Day is a tradition where leases terminate on July 1. This creates a social phenomenon where everyone seems to be moving out at the same time. The Construction Holiday was born out of legislation which synchronized a two-week holiday in July for the entire construction industry. Other traditions include: the (a time in March when people go to sugar shacks), Québécois snowbirds (people who migrate to Florida every winter), and the (campgrounds celebrating Christmas in July).
Quebecois can also have different ways of celebrating certain holidays. A good example is the Réveillon, a giant feast and party which takes place during Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and goes on until midnight. Traditional dishes like tourtière or cipâte are offered, and rigaudon, spoon and/or violin may be played. April Fools' Day is called Poisson d'Avril ("April's Fish") because while pulling pranks is still important, there is another major tradition: sticking fish-shaped paper cutouts to people's backs without them noticing. During Halloween, the sentence used instead of "trick-or-treat!" varies depending on the region.
National symbols
In 1939, the government of Quebec unilaterally ratified its coat of arms to reflect Quebec's political history: French rule (gold lily on blue background), followed by British rule (lion on red background), followed by Canadian rule (maple leaves), and with Quebec's motto below "Je me souviens". Je me souviens ("I remember") was first carved under the coat of arms of Quebec's Parliament Building in 1883. Je me souviens is an official part of the coat of arms and has been the official licence plate motto since 1978, replacing the previous one: La belle province ("the beautiful province"). The expression La belle province is still used as a nickname for the province. The fleur-de-lis, one of Quebec's most common symbols, is an ancient symbol of the French monarchy and was first shown in Quebec on the shores of Gaspésie in 1534 when Jacques Cartier arrived in Quebec for the first time. Saint-Jean-Baptiste, the patron saint of Canadiens, is honoured every 24 June during Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Finally, the Great Seal of Quebec is used to authenticate documents issued by the government of Quebec.
When Samuel de Champlain founded Québec City in 1608, his ship hoisted the French merchant flag, which consisted of a white cross on a blue background. Later on, at the Battle of Carillon, in 1758, the Flag of Carillon was flown. This flag inspired the first members of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society to create the Carillon Sacré-Coeur flag, which consisted of a white cross on an azur background with white fleur-de-lis in each corner and a Sacred Heart surrounded by maple leaves in the centre. The Carillon Sacré-Coeur and French merchant flag went on to be the major inspirations for Québécois when creating Quebec's current flag in 1903, called the Fleurdelisé. The Fleurdelisé replaced the Union Jack on Quebec's Parliament Building on January 21, 1948, and it has flown there ever since.
Three new official symbols were adopted in the late 1900s:
Iris versicolor, the floral emblem of Quebec since 1999. It was chosen because it blooms around the time of Quebec's Fête nationale.
The snowy owl, the avian emblem of Quebec since 1987. It was selected by the Québécois government to symbolize Quebec's winters and northern climate.
The yellow birch, the tree emblem of Quebec since 1993. It was picked to emphasize the importance Québécois give to the forests. The tree is admired for its diverse uses, its commercial value and its autumn colours.
In 1998, the Montreal Insectarium sponsored a poll to choose an official insect for Quebec. The white admiral butterfly (Limenitis arthemis) won with 32% of the 230 660 votes. However, the white admiral was never accepted by the Government of Quebec as an official symbol.
Quebec's diaspora
The earliest immigrants to the Canadian prairies were French Canadians from Quebec. Most Franco-Albertans, Fransaskois and Franco-Manitobans are descended from these emigrants from Quebec.
From the mid-1800s to the Great Depression, Quebec experienced the Grande Hémorragie ("Great Hemorrhaging"), a massive emigration of 900,000 people from Quebec to New England. French Canadians often established themselves in Little Canadas in many industrial New England centers like Lowell, Lawrence and New Bedford (Massachusetts); Woonsocket (Rhode Island); Manchester and Nashua (New Hampshire); Biddeford, Brunswick and Lewiston (Maine), and parts of Connecticut, among others. Of the 900,000 Québécois who emigrated, about half returned. Most of the descendants of those who stayed are now assimilated to the general American population, though a few Franco-Americans remain, speaking New England French.
Some tried to slow the Grande Hémorragie by redirecting people north, which resulted in the founding of many regions in Quebec (ex. Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, Val-d'Or, etc.) but also in Northeastern Ontario. The northeastern Franco-Ontarians of today, which are primarily concentrated in Timmins, Hearst, Moosonee and Sault Sainte Marie, among others, are the descendants of emigrants from Quebec who worked in the mines of the area.
In recent times, Québécois snowbirds often migrate to southern Florida during the winter, resulting in the emergence of temporary "Québécois regions" there. Three Desjardins branches exist in Florida to assist Québécois snowbirds.
Regional cultures
Quebec's 17 administrative regions each have their own quirks. Inside of these administrative regions, there can often be other regions with their own character (ex. Magdalen Islands in Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Nunavik in Nord-du-Québec, etc.) as well as cities with their own personality (ex. Québec, Montréal, etc.).
Beauce
A region of small towns and farmland south of Quebec City, its people have a strong regional identity connected with the area's long history. Some of the earliest settlements of New France were in this region.
Côte-Nord
The large Côte-Nord region borders the northern stretch of the Saint Lawrence River. Its small-sized municipalities mainly concern themselves with the exploitation of natural resources via forestry, mining, hydroelectricity and fishing. The region is home to the famous "eye of Quebec", the massive submerged crater of Manicouagan Reservoir.
Eastern Townships (Estrie)
This southeast region is located along the Canada–United States border (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine). It was influenced during the 19th century by American loyalists who settled there. Its main city is Sherbrooke and the region is also well known for its skiing centres (Orford, Sutton, Owl's Head, all part of the Appalachian mountains).
Gaspé
The Gaspé Peninsula (Gaspésie in French) borders on the Maritimes and shares its maritime culture. Acadians are a majority in many towns close to New Brunswick such as Bonaventure, and some Québécois Gaspesians living in those towns have an accent very close to that of their Acadian neighbours.
The culture of the Gaspé is very much based on the sea. Tourist attractions include the shrimp industry and salmon pass of Matane, regional food, coastal scenery, the Percé Rock, and the Chic-Choc section of the Appalachian Mountains.
Montreal
Montréal, Quebec's largest city, is the second largest French-speaking city in the Western World after Paris. The city is known for its culture, festivals, cuisine, and shopping. Montreal also has a large English-speaking and allophone population. Most immigrants to Quebec settle in Montreal, and many come from French-speaking nations.
Outaouais
A local accent is characteristic of the people of Outaouais in western Quebec. The region includes some predominantly English-speaking villages such as Wakefield (which is part of the La Pêche municipality), but it is generally French-speaking. The city of Gatineau lies across the Ottawa River from the city of Ottawa, and many people in the area are employed with the federal government.
Quebec City
Quebec City, the provincial capital (albeit dubbed La capitale nationale, national capital, in French), is best known as the first permanent settlement and the only fortified city in North America north of Mexico. The old city, partially encircled within the centuries-old walls, is often said to have a European flair.
Saguenay–Lac-St-Jean
A region known for its blueberries, its tourtière which is a kind of a stew inside crust, its soupe aux gourganes and other specialties, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean is also the birthplace of many of Quebec's public figures such as former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, singer Mario Pelchat and Olympic athlete Marc Gagnon. The accent of this region is one of the most distinctive and peculiar ones found in Quebec. The region hosts many festivals during summertime and receives many tourists.
This area is sometimes considered the heartland of the Quebec sovereigntist movement.
See also
Culture of Canada
List of festivals in Quebec
List of provincial and territorial nicknames in Canada
References
Further reading
Pétrie, Juliette (1977). Quand on revoit tout ça!: le burlesque au Québec, 1914–1960. Propos de Juliette Pétrie, recueillis par Jean Leclerc. Montréal: Productions Vieux rêves.
External links
Culture: Quebec Portal
Cultural links from American Council for Quebec Studies
Public domain literature of Quebec
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Rinaldo (opera)
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Rinaldo (HWV 7) is an opera by George Frideric Handel, composed in 1711, and was the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill, and the work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket on 24 February 1711. The story of love, war and redemption, set at the time of the First Crusade, is loosely based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered"), and its staging involved many original and vivid effects. It was a great success with the public, despite negative reactions from literary critics hostile to the contemporary trend towards Italian entertainment in English theatres.
Handel composed Rinaldo quickly, borrowing and adapting music from operas and other works that he had composed during a long stay in Italy in the years 1706–10, during which he established a considerable reputation. In the years following the premiere, he made numerous amendments to the score. Rinaldo is regarded by critics as one of Handel's greatest operas. Of its individual numbers, the soprano aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" has become a particular favourite, and is a popular concert piece.
Handel went on to dominate opera in England for several decades. Rinaldo was revived in London regularly up to 1717, and in a revised version in 1731; of all Handel's operas, Rinaldo was the most frequently performed during his lifetime. After 1731, however, the opera was not staged for more than 200 years. Renewed interest in baroque opera during the 20th century led to the first modern professional production in Handel's birthplace, Halle, Germany, in 1954. The opera was mounted sporadically over the following thirty years; after a successful run at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1984, performances and recordings of the work have become more frequent worldwide. Rinaldo was the first Handel opera to have found its way to the Metropolitan. The opera's tercentenary in 2011 brought a modernized production at the Glyndebourne Festival.
Background
Handel began to compose operas in Hamburg, where he spent the years 1703–06; his principal influences were Johann Mattheson and Reinhard Keiser. At that time, German opera as a genre was still not clearly defined; in Hamburg the term Singspiel ("song-play") rather than opera described music dramas that combined elements of French and Italian opera, often with passages of spoken German dialogue. The music was, in the words of historian Donald Jay Grout, "tinged with the serious, heavy formality of Lutheran Germany". The first of Handel's early works in the German style was Almira, a considerable success when it was premiered on 8 January 1705. Over the next three years Handel composed three more operas in the German style, but all of these are now lost. However, fragments of the music from these works have been identified in later operas.
In autumn 1706 Handel went to Italy. He stayed for long periods in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice, making frequent visits to the opera houses and concert halls. He obtained introductions to leading musicians, among them Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, and Agostino Steffani, and met numerous singers and performers. From these acquaintances Handel learned the essential characteristics of Italian music, in particular (according to Dean and Knapp) "fluency in the treatment of Italian verse, accurate declamation and flexible harmonic rhythm in recitative, ... drawing the necessary distinction between vocal and instrumental material and, above all, the release of [his] wonderful melodic gift". Handel's first Italian opera, Rodrigo, showed an incomplete grasp of Italian style, with much of Keiser's Hamburg influence still evident; it was not a success when premiered in Florence, in late November or early December 1707. He followed this by a lengthy visit to Rome, where opera performances were then forbidden by papal decree, and honed his skills through the composition of cantatas and oratorios. In Rome, Handel met Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, a diplomat and spare-time librettist; the result of this meeting was a collaboration which produced Handel's second Italian opera, Agrippina. After this work's triumphant premiere at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice, on 26 December 1709, Handel became, says biographer P. H. Lang, "world famous and the idol of a spoiled and knowledgeable audience".
This sudden recognition led to eager competition for Handel's services. Among those most keen to employ him was Prince Georg Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover and future King George I of Great Britain. In June 1710 Handel accepted the appointment of Kapellmeister to Georg's Hanover court, under terms that gave him considerable scope to pursue his own interests. On the basis of this freedom, in late 1710 Handel left Hanover for London, possibly in response to an earlier invitation from members of the English nobility. By 1711, informed London audiences had become familiar with the nature of Italian opera through the numerous pastiches and adaptations that had been staged. The former Royal Academy of Music Principal, Curtis Price, writes that the popularity of these pieces was the result of a deliberate strategy aimed at the suppression of English opera. Handel's music was relatively unknown in England, though his reputation from Agrippina was considerable elsewhere. A short "Italian Dialogue" he had written in honour of Queen Anne's birthday was well received when performed at St James's Palace on 6 February 1711.
In London, by means which are not documented, Handel secured a commission to write an Italian opera for the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket (it became the "King's Theatre" after King George I's accession in 1714). This theatre, designed and built by Sir John Vanbrugh, had become London's main opera house; its manager, Aaron Hill, intended to mount the first Italian opera written specifically for London and had engaged an all-Italian company for the 1710–11 opera season. Hill employed an Italian poet and language teacher, Giacomo Rossi, to write a libretto based on a scenario that Hill prepared himself. As his subject Hill chose Gerusalemme liberata, an epic of the First Crusade by the 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso; the opera was called Rinaldo, after its main protagonist. Hill was determined to exploit to the full the opportunities for lavish spectacle afforded by the theatre's machinery; his aim, according to Dean and Knapp, was "to combine the virtuosity of Italian singing with the extravagance of the 17th century masque".
Roles
Synopsis
Place: in and around the city of Jerusalem during the First Crusade
Time: 1099
Act 1
The Crusader army under Goffredo is laying siege to Jerusalem, where the Saracen king Argante is confined with his troops. With Goffredo are his brother Eustazio, his daughter Almirena, and the knight Rinaldo. As Goffredo sings of the coming victory, Rinaldo declares his love for Almirena, and Goffredo confirms that she will be Rinaldo's bride when Jerusalem falls. Almirena urges Rinaldo to fight boldly and assure victory. As she departs, a herald announces the approach of Argante from the city. Eustazio surmises that the king fears defeat; this seems to be confirmed when Argante, after a grandiose entrance, requests a three-day truce to which Goffredo graciously assents. After Goffredo leaves, Argante ponders his love for Armida, the Queen of Damascus who is also a powerful sorceress, and considers the help her powers might bring him. As he muses, Armida arrives from the sky in a fiery chariot. She has divined that the Saracens' only chance of victory lies in vanquishing Rinaldo, and has the power, she claims, to achieve this.
The scene changes to a garden, with fountains and birds, where Rinaldo and Almirena are celebrating their love. They are interrupted as Armida appears, and wrests Almirena from Rinaldo's embrace. Rinaldo draws his sword to defend his lover, but a black cloud descends to envelop Armida and Almirena, and they are borne away. Rinaldo mourns the loss of his loved one. When Goffredo and Eustazio arrive they comfort Rinaldo, and propose they visit a Christian magician who may have the power to save Almirena. Rinaldo, left alone, prays for strength.
Act 2
A sea shore. As Goffredo, Eustazio and Rinaldo near the magician's lair, a beautiful woman calls from her boat, promising Rinaldo that she can take him to Almirena. Two mermaids sing of love's delights, and urge Rinaldo to go in the boat. He hesitates, unsure what to do, and his companions attempt to restrain him. Angry at the abduction of his loved one, Rinaldo enters the boat, which immediately sails off. Goffredo and Eustazio are shocked at Rinaldo's impulsiveness and believe that he has deserted their cause.
In Armida's palace garden, Almirena mourns her captivity. Argante joins her and, overcome by her beauty, confesses that he now loves her. He promises that as proof of his feelings he will defy Armida's wrath and secure Almirena's freedom. Meanwhile, Rinaldo is brought before the triumphant Armida. As he demands that Almirena be set free, Armida finds herself drawn to his noble spirit, and declares her love. When he angrily rejects her she uses her powers to assume Almirena's form, but Rinaldo suspects trickery, and departs. Armida, resuming her own appearance, is furious at her rejection yet retains feelings of tender love. She decides on another attempt to ensnare Rinaldo, and transforms herself back into Almirena's shape, but then encounters Argante. Believing her to be Almirena, Argante repeats his earlier promises of love and freedom. Swiftly resuming her own form, Armida denounces his infidelity and vows vengeance. Argante defiantly confirms his love for Almirena and declares that he no longer needs Armida's help. She departs in a fury.
Act 3
A mountainside, at the magician's cavern. Goffredo and Eustazio are told by the Magician that Almirena is being held captive in Armida's palace at the mountain-top. Ignoring the magician's warning that they will need special powers, the pair set off for the palace but are quickly driven back by Armida's monsters. The magician then gives them magic wands that transcend Armida's power, and they set off again. This time they overcome the monsters, but as they reach the gates of the palace it disappears, leaving them clinging to a rock in the midst of a stormy sea. They climb the rock and descend out of sight.
In the palace garden Armida prepares to kill Almirena. Rinaldo draws his sword, but Armida is protected from his wrath by spirits. Suddenly Goffredo and Eustazio arrive, but as they touch the garden with their wands it disappears, leaving them all on an empty plain with the city of Jerusalem visible in the distance. Armida, after a last attempt to kill Almirena, also disappears as Rinaldo strikes her with his sword. The remaining four celebrate their reunion, while Goffredo announces that the attack on Jerusalem will begin the next day.
In the city, Argante and Armida, in danger from a common enemy, become reconciled and prepare their troops for battle. Goffredo's army advances, and battle finally commences. After a struggle for supremacy, Jerusalem falls to Goffredo; Argante is overcome and captured by Rinaldo, while Armida is taken by Eustazio. Rinaldo and Almirena celebrate their love and forthcoming marriage. Armida, accepting her defeat, breaks the wand which is the source of her evil power and together with Argante embraces Christianity. Goffredo expresses his forgiveness to his beaten foes and sets them free, before victors and vanquished join in a chorus of reconciliation.
Revisions, 1717 and 1731
The opera was frequently revised, most particularly in 1717 and in 1731; modern performances are usually a conflation of the versions available. Up to and including 1717, these changes had no significant effect on the plot. In the 1731 version, however, in act 2 Armida imitates Almirena's voice rather than assuming her appearance, and Argante declares his love to Almirena's portrait rather than to her face. In act 3 the marches and the battle scene are cut; Armida and Argante remain unrepentant and vanish in a chariot drawn by dragons before the conclusion.
Compositional history
In a letter dedicating the new opera to Queen Anne, Hill wrote of his choice of story: "I could not chuse a finer Subject than the celebrated story of Rinaldo and Armida". He had, however, exercised "a Poet's Privilege", to render Tasso's work suitable for the stage. This "privilege" moved the opera's story a long way from Tasso's original. Hill invented a new heroine, Almirena, to provide the main love interest with the hero Rinaldo, and the relationship between Rinaldo and Armida scarcely figures in the opera. Likewise, the affair between Argante and Armida is Hill's creation, as are the conversions to Christianity, the latter possibly a sop to English susceptibilities. Rossi was required to turn the elaborate scenario into verses, a relatively light task which, he said, was "the delivery of a few evenings". Nevertheless, Rossi complained that Handel hardly gave him time to write: "To my great wonder I saw an entire Opera set to music by that surprising genius, with the greatest degree of perfection, in two weeks". Price argues that Rossi's role was beyond that of a mere versifier, quoting Hill's words of praise for Rossi in the preface to the libretto, which suggest that Rossi was the senior partner in the birth of the libretto. Price also points to the likely influences on the structure of Rinaldo from two British semi-operas—George Granville's The British Enchanters, and Purcell's King Arthur. The transformations of characters to others' shapes, Price contends, is likely derived from John Dryden's play Amphitryon.
Handel's speed of composition was assisted by his inclusion of arias and other numbers from his earlier Italian works, among them "Bel piacere" and "Basta che sol" from Agrippina, "Sibillar gli angui" from the dramatic cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, and the mermaids' song "Il vostro maggio" from the cantata Arresta il passo. Almirena's aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" had appeared in the oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. The suitability of some of these insertions has been questioned by later commentators; Dean and Knapp cite Argante's "Sibillar gli angui", with its references to the hissing snakes of Alecto and the howls of Scylla, as "ludicrously inappropriate" to accompany the king's grand act 1 entrance. Many other numbers—Dean and Knapp estimate two-thirds of the arias—were adapted and partly recomposed from earlier sources.
In the years between the 1711 premiere and the 1717 revival, Handel made various adjustments to the score and the vocal parts, often to accommodate the requirements of new singers. Details of these changes are difficult to establish since the performing librettos and scores for these years no longer exist. For 1717, more significant revisions were made; the role of Eustazio was merged with that of Goffredo, and Argante's part was rewritten to accommodate an alto voice. Thus in this revival all the principal parts were sung in high voice ranges. Handel's revisions for the 1731 revival were even more radical, since they not only affected individual musical numbers but involved alterations in the plot. The production was advertised "With New Scenes and Cloathes", but many of the changes involved reducing or eliminating the pyrotechnics and special effects that had characterised the original production. The only significant new music in the 1731 production is a long accompanied recitative for Rinaldo, though other numbers are changed or cut. Goffredo becomes a tenor, Armida a contralto, the Herald and the Magician become basses. Dean and Knapp summarise the 1731 revisions as "a striking illustration of the seeming vandalism with which Handel could treat his works in revival".
Performance history and reception
Early performances
The 19th-century music critic George Hogarth wrote of Rinaldo that "[t]he romantic interest of the subject, the charms of the music, and the splendour of the spectacle, made it an object of general attraction".
Its premiere at the Queen's Theatre on 24 February 1711, possibly under Handel's direction, was a triumphant success. A further 12 performances were immediately scheduled; at the end of the run, popular demand was such that two more were added. Notwithstanding this enthusiasm, the financial strains of such a grand production led to legal actions against Hill from unpaid craftsmen. Nine days after the premiere the Lord Chamberlain's Office revoked the impresario's licence. Under Hill's successors the opera was played at the theatre in most seasons until 1716–17, by which time it had totalled 47 performances, far more than any other opera at the Queen's.
The public's general enthusiasm for the opera was not shared by the writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who used the pages of their new journal, The Spectator, to pour scorn and ridicule on the work. Addison may have been motivated by his own failure, a few years previously, to establish a school of English opera with Rosamund, on which he had collaborated with the composer Thomas Clayton. It was absurd, he wrote, that theatre audiences should be exposed to entire evenings of entertainment in a foreign tongue: "We no longer understand the language of our own stage". Addison did, however, praise the singing of Nicolò Grimaldi, the celebrated alto castrato known as "Nicolini", in the title role. Steele compared the production unfavourably to a Punch and Judy show, particularly criticising certain bungled scene changes and the poor quality of effects such as thunder and lightning. Hogarth made light of such comments: "Notwithstanding the influence which the Spectator influenced over the taste and manners of the age, its attacks ... seem to have had little effect in turning people from the entertainment".
Some sources have suggested that the opera was performed in Dublin in March or April 1711, though according to Dean and Knapp there is no record of such an occasion. In November 1715 a version mainly in German was performed in Hamburg. This production, based on a translation by the playwright Barthold Feind, proved to be very popular and was revived in the city on numerous occasions during the 1720s. A pastiche of the opera, with additional numbers by Leonardo Leo, was presented by Leo at the Royal Court in Naples in 1718, with Nicolini singing his original role.
After 1716–17, Rinaldo was not seen on the London stage until 1731, when it was revived in its revised form at the King's Theatre. During these years Handel's industry was such that he was producing a new opera for this theatre every nine months. The 1731 production of Rinaldo received six performances, bringing the London total for the work to 53 in Handel's lifetime, the most for any of his operas. After 1731 Handel had fewer stage successes, and performances of his operas became rarer. Changes in taste and style combined, as Grout concludes, to "thrust [the operas] into ill-deserved oblivion", as a result of which Rinaldo was not staged anywhere for two hundred years.
Modern revivals
The first 20th-century production of Rinaldo which can be specifically verified was a performance in London, in February 1933, by pupils of the Hammersmith Day Continuation School, though Dean and Knapp mention a shortened version, in Czech, at the Prague Conservatory in 1923. The first modern professional performance was at the Halle Opera House in June 1954, under Horst-Tanu Margraf, as part of the Handel Festival. On 17 May 1961 the Handel Opera Society, directed by Charles Farncombe, staged the work at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre, a production that was revived four years later. The first American performance was a concert version at Carnegie Hall on 27 March 1972, given by the Handel Society of New York, with Stephen Simon conducting and Beverly Wolff as Rinaldo. The first staging of the opera in America was at the Houston Grand Opera under Lawrence Foster, in October 1975, with Marilyn Horne in the title role, a part with which she would become particularly associated on American stages.
In July 1982 Horne sang the part alongside John Alexander's Goffredo and Samuel Ramey's Argante, in a National Arts Centre (NAC) production in Ottawa directed by Frank Corsaro. The performance, with Mario Bernardi conducting the NAC Orchestra, was applauded by Montreal Gazette critic Eric McLean for its fine music making and its displays of "architectural and sartorial splendour". Eighteen months later, on 19 January 1984 Bernardi and Corsaro, with Horne, Ramey and Benita Valente from the Ottawa cast, brought the production to New York for the work's debut at the Metropolitan Opera. The production was loaned to the Met for its centennial season by the National Arts Centre of Canada "in deep appreciation of the many years during which Canadians have enjoyed opera from the Met – on tour, on radio and in New York". Donal Henahan in The New York Times praised all the singers in turn, with a special mention for Valente's "plaintive and affecting" rendering of the popular aria "Lascia ch'io pianga". But, says Henahan, "the loudest cheers of the night went at last to the choreographer, Eugene Collins, and an incredibly nimble corps of tumbling warriors". After ten performances at the Metropolitan Opera House the production was taken in May to Washington, D.C., and toured in the US before returning to New York in June for several outdoor performances.
From the mid-1980s onwards, performances of Rinaldo became more frequent worldwide. In June 1989 it was staged at La Fenice in Venice, under John Fisher, again with Marilyn Horne. This production was criticised by critic and music scholar Stanley Sadie, in his review of the live recording, for straying too far from the composer's original intentions, particularly in the rearrangement of material and the extent of cuts. Singers were, Sadie says, allowed too much freedom to ornament their vocal lines; some of the cadenzas were "preposterous".
The opera reached Australia in 1999, at the Sydney Opera House under Patrick Summers, and was performed there again in July–August 2005 under Trevor Pinnock, with Michael Chance as Rinaldo. The new century saw a number of performances across Europe, including an appearance at the Göttingen International Handel Festival in 2004, with Nicholas McGegan conducting Concerto Köln. This production was well received by the public, but was criticised by Jochen Breiholz of Opera News for poor staging, indifferent singing and a substandard performance from the orchestra.
Zurich Opera's 2008 production, directed by Jens-Daniel Herzog and conducted by William Christie, threw aside all convention by representing the action in a 21st-century airport lounge and conference centre, with Rinaldo dressed in a double-breasted navy blazer and needing a drink. "Characters go up and down on-stage escalators, and the set spins to show various areas of the lounge and terminal. There is a dissection of a small, white furry animal, a large snake, some allusions to Bond girls and character transformations. The Christians pull guns on the Muslims at a signing ceremony". It was, wrote Associated Press critic Ronald Blum, "outrageous – and entertaining". A concert version of Rinaldo was given at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival, by the Bach Collegium Japan conducted by Masaaki Suzuki, with the Japanese soprano Maki Mori as Almirena.
During the opera's tercentenary year in 2011, the Glyndebourne Festival mounted a new production directed by Robert Carsen, designed by Gideon Davey, and conducted by Ottavio Dantone with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the pit. The production is set in a school where Rinaldo is a student, initially the victim of bullying, who enters into the world of the Crusades. The Glyndebourne Festival Opera brought a semi-staged version of this production to the 2011 Proms.
Music
The amount of recycled music in Rinaldo is such that Dean and Knapp call it an "anthology" of the best works from Handel's Italian period. Sadie raises the question of whether the opera's dramaturgy is affected by the small amount of music written for its particular situations. He also comments on the problems raised for scholars by the extensive revisions to the music that took place during Handel's lifetime, but suggests that the available admixture creates interesting opportunities in the preparation of modern performing versions. The initial popular success of Rinaldo was assisted by the employment of virtuoso singers, in particular Nicolini in the title role. This part has remained in its original pitch, though in his various revisions Handel transposed the music of other leading roles to different voice types. Thus Goffredo had originally been an alto part, but in the 1717 revisions became a tenor; the Magician was transposed from alto castrato to bass, and Armida from soprano to contralto.
The music, Lang says, flows "beguilingly" from the spacious overture; the quieter, emotional passages are illustrated evocatively, while in the more spectacular moments Handel's innovative use of brass is exciting and inspiring. The sudden blast of trumpets which announces the march in act 3 provides, say Dean and Knapp, "an effect of splendour and exhilaration that time has not dimmed". The harpsichord solos which decorate "Vo' far guerra" in act 2 were originally improvised on the keyboard by Handel during performances, and were extremely popular. They were remembered and written down by William Babell, and published later as separate pieces. Lang believes that in spite of the borrowings, and the hasty manner in which the work was put together, Rinaldo is one of Handel's great operas. According to Dean and Knapp, no Italian opera heard in London to that point had been supported by such "majestic" orchestral forces. Critic Anthony Hicks describes the music, overall, as both "varied and excellent". Dean and Knapp's verdict is more equivocal. The music for the war and pageantry scenes, they say, is "brilliantly successful", but in depicting the scenes concerned with magic, Handel misses the mark; they suggest it was not until over 15 years later, with Admeto and Orlando, that he was able to represent the supernatural convincingly in music.
The opera begins in the key of F, and switches to G at the inception of the grove scene in act 1. Act 2 starts in E minor and ends in G. The final act begins and ends in B minor. According to Hicks the dominant character musically, except in act 3 in which she barely sings, is Armida. Her entry cavatina "Furie terribili" gives, says Hicks, "an immediate impression of fiery passion", an energy and intensity demonstrated in her act 2 "Ah crudel", and in her later vengeance aria which is the occasion of Handel's harpsichord cadenzas. Armida's act 3 duet with Argante was the last duet with bass part that Handel wrote for 30 years. Of the other set pieces, Dean and Knapp highlight Rinaldo's "Cara sposa" as an example of Handel's growing confidence with aria forms. "Or la tromba" is praised for the brilliance of its orchestration: 4 trumpets, drums, strings & oboes—the only aria Handel ever wrote for this combination. The melody for Almirena's "Lascia ch'io pianga" began its life as an Asian dance in Almira before appearing as an aria in the oratorio Il trionfo. From this simple tune and plain accompaniment Handel achieves an "intensely moving effect" in this, the best-known of all the arias.
Arias and other musical numbers
1717 libretto and subsequent amendments
The main musical numbers from the 1711 libretto are listed, together with changes and replacements from the two major revisions of 1717 and 1731. Minor changes, transpositions, and alterations to recitative sections are not shown. New numbers introduced in 1717 and 1731 are listed separately. Other arias not listed may have been sung in Rinaldo during the years 1711–17, but in the absence of contemporary evidence from scores or librettos the extent of such changes cannot be accurately ascertained.
Act 1
Sinfonia (overture)
"Sovra balze scoscesi e pungenti" (Goffredo)
"Combatti da forte" (Almirena) (1731: replaced with "Quel cor che mi donasti")
"Ogni indugio d'un amante" (Rinaldo)
"Sulla ruota di fortuna" (Eustazio) (1717: cut; 1731: revived, amended and allocated to Argante)
"Sibillar gli angui d'Aletto" (Argante) (1717: replaced with "Sorte amor vuol che quest'alma", which was cut in 1731)
"No, no, che quest'alma" (Goffredo) (1731: replaced with "D'instabile fortuna")
"Vieni o cara, a consolarmi" (Argante) (1731: replaced with amended "Sulla ruota di fortuna")
"Furie terribili!" (Armida)
"Molto voglio, molto spero" (Armida) (1731: replaced with a modified version of "Combatti da forte")
"Augelletti, che cantate" (Almirena)
"Scherzano sul tuo volto" (Duet: Almirena and Rinaldo)
Sinfonia
"Cara sposa, amante cara" (Rinaldo)
"Cor ingrato, ti rammembri" (Rinaldo)
"Col valor, colla virtù" (Eustazio) (1717: cut)
Venti, turbini, prestate (Rinaldo)
Act 2
"Siam prossimi al porto" (Eustazio) (1717: cut; 1731: partly restored, sung by Goffredo)
"Il vostro maggio" (Sirene)
"Il tricerbero umiliato" (Rinaldo)
"Mio cor, che mi sai dir?" (Goffredo)
"Lascia ch'io pianga" (Almirena)
"Basta che sol tu chieda" (Argante) (1717: replaced with "Ogni tua bella stilla" and in 1731 with "Per salvarti, idolo mio")
"Fermati!/No, crudel!" (Duet, Armida and Rinaldo)
"Abbrugio, avampo e fremo" (Rinaldo)
"Dunque i lacci d'un volto" (Accompanied recitative, Armida)
"Ah! crudel, Il pianto mio" (Armida)
"Vo' far guerra, e vincer voglio" (Armida)
Act 3
Sinfonia
"Andate, o forti" (Mago) (1717: cut; 1731: altered and restored)
"Sorge nel petto" (Goffredo) (1717: cut)
"È un incendio fra due venti" (Rinaldo)
Marcia (Pagan march) (1731: cut)
"Al trionfo del nostro furore" (Duet, Armida and Argante) (1731: repositioned, and sung by Goffredo and Almirena)
"Bel piacere e godere" (Almirena)
"Di Sion nell'alta sede" (Eustazio) (1717: sung by Goffredo; 1731: sung by Argante)
Marcia (Christian march) (1731: cut)
"Or la tromba in suon festante" (Rinaldo) (1731: cut)
Battaglia (battle) (1731: cut)
"Solo dal brando" (Goffredo) (1731; cut)
Vinto è sol della virtù (Coro)
Additions and replacements, 1717
Act 1: "Sorte amor vuol che quest'alma" (Argante)
Act 2: "Vieni, o caro, che senza il suo core" (Almirena)
Act 2: "Ogni tua bella stilla" (Argante)
Act 3: "Pregio è sol d'un alma forte" (Argante) (1731: cut)
Act 3: "Si t'amo" (Almirena)
Additions and replacements, 1731
Act 1: "Quel cor che mi donasti" (Almirena)
Act 1: "D'instabile fortuna" (Goffredo)
Act 2: "Arma lo sguardo" (Armida)
Act 2: "Per salvarti, idolo mio" (Argante)
Act 3: "Orrori menzogneri" (accompanied recitative, Rinaldo)
Editions
No complete autograph score exists; fragments representing about three-quarters of the 1711 score are held by the Royal Music Library (a subdivision of the British Library in London) and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The oldest complete score, dating from about 1716, is an error-strewn manuscript that may be a copy from one or more of the performing scores from that period. The manuscript bears numerous notes and corrections in Handel's hand, and was possibly the basis for the substantial revisions which he effected in 1731. It was also used by the copyist John Christopher Smith to produce two performing scores for the 1720s Hamburg performances. Further complete manuscript copies were produced by Smith and others in 1725–28 (the "Malmesbury" score), 1740 ("Lennard") and 1745 ("Granville"). These provide many variations of individual numbers.
During the initial run at the Queen's Theatre the publisher John Walsh printed Songs in the Opera of Rinaldo, in mainly short score form. Apart from the overture, instrumental numbers were omitted, as were the recitatives. In June 1711 Walsh published a fuller version, which included instrumental parts; he continued to publish versions of individual numbers, with a variety of orchestrations, until the 1730s. In 1717 William Babell issued an arrangement for harpsichord of the overture and seven of the arias. Friedrich Chrysander published editions of the whole opera in 1874 and in 1894, based on a study of the existing published and manuscript material. In 1993 David Kimbell, for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (HHA), produced a full score of the 1711 version, together with rejected draft material and the additional numbers introduced in revivals up to 1717. HHA has also produced a complete score of the 1731 version.
The libretto was published in London by the Queen's Theatre in February 1711, to coincide with the premiere, with Hill's English translation. Revised versions followed in 1717 and 1731 to reflect the changes introduced in those years; Rossi is believed to have prepared the Italian additions and revisions, with the 1731 English credited to "Mr. Humphreys". Feind's German versions of the libretto were published in Hamburg in 1715, 1723 and 1727.
Recordings
The first full recording of Rinaldo (an "excerpts" disc had preceded it by two years) was made in 1977 by CBS, with Carolyn Watkinson in the title role, Ileana Cotrubaș as Almirena, and Jean-Claude Malgoire conducting La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy. The work, recorded in a Paris church, was based on the 1711 score; Alan Blyth in Gramophone praised the standard of the singing, and despite reservations about the sound quality, called it one of the most enjoyable of available Handel opera recordings. There was no further recording of Rinaldo available until 1990, when John Fisher's heavily cut version from La Fenice was issued. Another decade passed before the appearance of Christopher Hogwood's 1999 Decca recording, again based on the original score, with the countertenor David Daniels as Rinaldo, Cecilia Bartoli as Almirena and Catherine Bott in the small part of First Mermaid. Gramophone's reviewer called this issue "a treat for Handel lovers – a rare recording of one of the composer's richest operas, with a strong and starry cast". Since then several more versions have been made available: Harry Bicket's 2001 recording for Arthaus, which was later issued as a DVD; René Jacobs with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra for Harmonia Mundi in 2001; and a performance by the Aradia Ensemble under Kevin Mallon, recorded in 2004 and issued under the Naxos label in 2005.
References
Notes
Sources
Originally published in 1987
External links
1711 libretto in Italian, prepared by Haendel.it
Operas by George Frideric Handel
Italian-language operas
Opera seria
1711 operas
Operas
Operas based on works by Torquato Tasso
Cultural depictions of Godfrey of Bouillon
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard%20of%20Oz%20%28character%29
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Wizard of Oz (character)
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Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs (also known as the "Wizard of Oz" and, during his reign, as "Oz the Great and Terrible" or the "Great and Powerful Oz") is a fictional character in the Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. The character was further popularized by a stage play and several films, including the classic 1939 film and the 2013 prequel adaptation.
Oz books
The Wizard is one of the characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Unseen for most of the novel, he is the ruler of the Land of Oz and highly venerated by his subjects. Believing he is the only man capable of solving their problems, Dorothy and her friends travel to the Emerald City, the capital of Oz, to meet him. Oz is very reluctant to meet them, but eventually each is granted an audience, one by one. In each of these occasions, the Wizard appears in a different form, once as a giant head, once as a beautiful fairy, once as a horrible monster, and once as a ball of fire. When, at last, he grants an audience to all of them at once, he seems to be a disembodied voice.
Eventually, it is revealed that Oz is actually none of these things, but rather an ordinary conman from Omaha, Nebraska, who has been using elaborate magic tricks and props to make himself seem "great and powerful". Working as a magician for a circus, he wrote OZ (the initials of his first two forenames, Oscar being his first, and Zoroaster being the first of his seven middle names) on the side of his hot air balloon for promotional purposes. One day his balloon sailed into the Land of Oz and he found himself worshipped as a great sorcerer. As Oz had no leadership at the time, he became Supreme Ruler of the kingdom and did his best to sustain the myth.
He leaves Oz at the end of the novel, again in a hot air balloon. After the Wizard's departure, the Scarecrow is briefly enthroned, until Princess Ozma (the rightful hereditary ruler of Oz) is freed from the witch Mombi at the end of The Marvelous Land of Oz.
In The Marvelous Land of Oz, the Wizard is described as having usurped the throne of King Pastoria and handed over the baby princess to Mombi. This did not please the readers, and in Ozma of Oz, although the character did not appear, Baum described Ozma's abduction without including the Wizard as part of it.
The Wizard returns in the novel Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. With Dorothy and the boy Zeb, he falls through a crack in the earth; in their underground journey, he acts as their guide and protector. Oz explains that his real name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. To shorten this name, he used only his initials (O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D.), but since they spell out the word pinhead, he shortened his name further and called himself "Oz". When Ozma rescues them from the underground kingdoms, he recounts his story of becoming the ruler of Oz, and Ozma explains that before the witches usurped her grandfather's throne (an occurrence happening long before the wizard arrived), the ruler of Oz had always been known as Oz or (if female) Ozma. Ozma then permits him to live in Oz permanently. He becomes an apprentice to Glinda (the most powerful magic-worker in Oz). Ozma decrees that, besides herself, only The Wizard and Glinda are allowed to use magic unless the other magic users have permits.
In later books, he proves himself quite an inventor, providing devices that aid in various characters’ journeys. Some of his most elaborate devices are the Ozpril and the Oztober, balloon-powered Ozoplanes in Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz and intelligent taxis called Scalawagons in The Scalawagons of Oz.
Possible inspiration
In The Annotated Wizard of Oz, Michael Patrick Hearn suggests that L. Frank Baum may have derived elements of the character and backstory of the Wizard from Washington Harrison Donaldson, a balloonist, ventriloquist and stage magician who worked for P. T. Barnum. On 15 July 1875, Donaldson made an ascent near Chicago and disappeared in a storm; neither he nor his balloon was ever seen again.
Film and TV adaptations
Silent films (1908–1925)
The Wizard has appeared in nearly every silent Oz film, portrayed by different actors each time.
The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908): Sam 'Smiling' Jones
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910): Hobart Bosworth
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914): Todd Wright
His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914): J. Charles Haydon
Wizard of Oz (1925): Charles Murray
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
In The Wizard of Oz, The Wizard's character is similar to that found in the earlier books; a bumbling "humbug". He was played by actor Frank Morgan who also played several other roles in the movie including Professor Marvel (the mysterious traveling fortune-teller who Dorothy meets in Kansas with a horse named Sylvester), the Doorman at the Emerald City, the Guard at the Gates to the Wizard's Castle, and the Coachman whose transport is drawn by "The Horse of a Different Color". His face was also presumably used as the projected image of the Wizard. Like Dorothy, the Wizard himself hails from Kansas, proudly stating that he is "an old Kansas man myself, born and bred in the heart of the Western Wilderness". However, the balloon says "Omaha State Fair" on it and Omaha is in Nebraska, not Kansas. In the film, the Wizard is seen only as a floating head and as a human, not in any of the other shapes that he appears in the book.
Screenwriters Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf created Professor Marvel for the Kansas sepia tone sequences. The Wizard's hot air balloon in the movie has the name Omaha on it, reflecting that the Wizard originated from Omaha, Nebraska, just as in the book.
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
Oz the Great and Powerful serves as an unofficial prequel to the Oz series. The film centers on Oscar Diggs (portrayed by James Franco) and follows his journey from small-time magician to the ruler of the Land of Oz. In it, he is portrayed as an overly flirtatious and overconfident con artist and stage magician who upon meeting Theodora (the future Wicked Witch of the West) and inadvertently sparking her obsession with him, is keen on fulfilling his role as the legendary Wizard destined to restore order to Oz (primarily due to the promise of the Oz Treasury). However, throughout his journey and seeing the impact of his actions both good and bad, he comes to realize how much the people of Oz need him and devises a way to use his skill in illusions to free them, using his balloon to create the idea that he has been physically killed while hiding in a caravan so that he can use smoke and a makeshift cinema to project the illusion of his face, subsequently claiming that his "death" has simply allowed him to shed his mortal form. He also forms a makeshift "family" in the form of himself, Glinda the Good Witch, Finley (a winged monkey he rescued from a lion) and the China Girl (a living glass china doll and the sole survivor of an attack on China Town whose legs he repaired with glue).
Once Upon a Time (2014)
The Wizard of Oz appears in the Once Upon a Time episodes "New York City Serenade", "A Curious Thing" and "Kansas" portrayed by Christopher Gorham.
Originally, Walsh is from Kansas, but finds himself in the Land of Oz. Giving himself the name "Oz the Great and Terrible", he masquerades as an all-knowing wizard. This hoax upsets Glinda the Witch of the South, as she knows he only gives false hope to those who seek out his help. From behind a curtain, Walsh projects a shadow image and speaks with a booming voice to anyone who approaches his palace to seek an audience with him. He also asks for genuine magical items in exchange for help which he uses to further his deception. A woman named Zelena wants his help in finding her birth family, so he gifts a pair of silver heels to take her anywhere she desires. Zelena leaves for the Enchanted Forest to seek out family, and she returns asking to go to the past so that she can change her own fate of being abandoned by her mother. The wizard states that, even with the most powerful magic, this is not possible. Angrily, she rips off the curtain and discovers his true persona is nothing but a simple man who likes orchestrating a false image to put on a good show. Deciding to make use of him, she turns Walsh into a flying monkey as her loyal pet. Sometime later, his transformation into a flying monkey alerts Glinda to Zelena's presence. Glinda thanks Zelena for exposing him and believes time as her pet is fitting punishment for his trickery. Zelena is welcomed into Glinda's sisterhood of witches as the Witch of the West, but is "defeated" by a young girl named Dorothy Gale. Rather than become the new Witch of the West, Dorothy only wishes to go home; a desire Glinda grants by taking her back to see the Wizard, who is presumed to have reverted to his old form, since Zelena's magic has been undone. From behind the green curtain, Zelena impersonates the Wizard's voice and gives Dorothy the silver slippers to send her home.
Walsh meets Emma Swan and they begin dating. Over the course of eight months, he gets to know her as well as her son, Henry. Walsh has dishonest motives in getting close to Emma, but the nature of it is not known. During one romantic evening dinner, Walsh surprises Emma by hiding a ring on the platter of an ice cream sundae and then proposes to her. She reacts in shock by walking out of the restaurant and stating that marriage is too soon for them. Walsh agrees to be patient, as she is the one he wants to spend his life with, and promises to give her all the time to think it over. The next day, he receives a text from Henry asking him to come over to the apartment to have dinner with Emma. Walsh promptly shows up, to which Emma leads him onto the rooftop where she rejects his marriage proposal. Emma reluctantly explains the necessity for herself to go home and leave him behind because "a ghost" from her past has showed up. Walsh does his best to convince her that the life she has now is worth staying for, but Emma cannot, though she wishes it could be so. Unable to sway her otherwise, Walsh's demeanor changes and he expresses knowledge of the potion Emma previously drank, which is what restored her memories. After throwing aside a table, he charges at her, but she dodges, sending him hurling down the roof. He soars up in the form of Flying Monkey to attack her, though Emma violently shoves him away with a metal pipe. Physically wounded, he falls from the building, nearly hitting the ground, before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
Emerald City (2017)
The Wizard of Oz appears in the Emerald City series, portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio. He is the ruler of Emerald City and, effectively, Oz, and as such has banished magic from the land. His real name is revealed to be Frank Morgan. Having travelled to Oz through an early experiment, he remained there as he felt that he could be a greater success in Oz than he was in Kansas. Despite establishing his authority over Oz and banishing magic, he attempts to use the witches to maintain his authority over areas such as a mystical prison. He seeks to prove his superiority over magic by vanquishing the Beast Forever through duplicating Dorothy's gun after she uses it to trick the Witch of the East into killing herself, but he is undermined by Dorothy's own refusal to go along with his orders. Although he is able to mass-produce more guns to use against the witches, proclaiming them to be the Beast Forever in an attempted propaganda coup, his plans fail as it is revealed that only witches can kill witches, the series ending with the assembled witches confronting the Wizard as the Beast Forever approaches Oz.
Adaptations
In the 1902 musical extravaganza, The Wizard was portrayed by a series of "ethnic" comedians.
The extended network television version of the animated feature Journey Back to Oz (1964/1972) contains live-action segments with Bill Cosby as The Wizard (a character otherwise not seen in the original theatrical version) trying to bring two children back to Kansas for Christmas.
The Wizard of Oz appears in Off to See the Wizard, voiced by Daws Butler. He serves as the host of the show where he presents the movie of the episode.
In the musical The Wiz, the titular "Wiz" was originally played on Broadway by Andre De Shields. This version is a balloonist from Omaha named Herman Smith who traveled to Oz by accident when his hot air balloon drifted off course.
In the 1978 film version, The Wiz, the Wiz was played by Richard Pryor. This adaption of Herman Smith is a failed politician from Atlantic City, New Jersey who was transported to Oz when a balloon he was flying to promote his campaign to become the city dogcatcher was lost in a storm.
The 2015 TV special The Wiz Live! features the first female Wiz, played by Queen Latifah.
In the 1980 Thanksgiving special Dorothy in the Land of Oz, the Wizard is voiced by Sid Caesar.
In author Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (a 1995 revisionist novel based on the inhabitants of Oz) and in the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked (based on Maguire's novel), the Wizard is a dictator who uses deceit and trickery to hide his own shortcomings. It also revealed, in both the book and musical, that the Wizard is in fact Elphaba's biological father. In the original stage production, the Wizard was played by Joel Grey, who performed that same role in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, a 1995 television concert stage production of the 1939 musical film which was a benefit for the Children's Defense Fund.
Jeff Goldblum has been confirmed to play the character in the two-part film adaptation of the musical.
Caliber Comics' Oz comic book series, followed by Arrow Comics' Dark Oz and The Land of Oz featured the Wizard, affectionately known as "Oscar," particularly to Ozma, as a tall, bald, mustachioed man, brooding, powerful, and not at all bumbling.
The Wizard is featured in the 1990 The Wizard of Oz animated series, voiced by Alan Oppenheimer.
In the animated series The Oz Kids (1996), he has a son named Frank. He is voiced by Steve Stoliar.
In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005), the Wizard of Oz is portrayed by Jeffrey Tambor. This version is a former tour bus driver named Francis Cornfine from Hollywood, CA who came to the Land of Oz where the residents assumed he was an all-powerful figure. Cornfine's talent at manipulating his fingers impressed the populace. Feeling a need to "give the public what they want," he developed a number of devices and tricks to maintain the illusion of "Oz, the great and powerful." Using special effects, he appeared as a dragon to the Lion (Fozzie Bear), a flaming entity to the Scarecrow (Kermit the Frog), a hot woman turning into a hen to Tin Thing (Gonzo the Great), and a big green monstrous head to Dorothy (Ashanti) and Toto (Pepe the King Prawn).
In the 2007 Sci Fi television miniseries Tin Man, a character called the "Mystic Man" (played by Richard Dreyfuss) is one of the former rulers of Central City, the capital of the Outer Zone (O.Z.), and like his counterpart from the book, uses technology to make himself seem more impressive. He is also referred to as "the wizard" and styles himself similarly to the Wizard of Oz, but has been relegated to the main performer of a Central City magic show rather than the "humbug" overlord of the Emerald City.
In the VeggieTales episode The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's, the Wizard is portrayed by Archibald Asparagus as the "Wonderful Land of Ha's" amusement park owner who later reveals himself as a promotional showman to Darby (Junior Asparagus).
In June 2008 the Japanese video game publisher D3 Publisher announced The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, a new video game adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, developed for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. The game was developed by Media.Vision and shows a Japanese anime style for the graphics. "Riz-Zoawd" (the game's name in Japan) is actually the anagram for "Wizard Oz". The game was published in Japan in late 2008 and North America in 2009 by Xseed Games.
The Wizard of Oz appears in Dorothy and the Witches of Oz, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd. When the Emerald City is attacked by the Wicked Witch of the West's forces who are after the Book of Mini Airu which contains the Changing Word, the Wizard of Oz holds a ceasefire where he will give the Book of Mini Airu to her in exchange that the Wicked Witch and her allies don't attack, bother, or annoy the Emerald City, the Munchkin Country, and the territories west of Winkie Country. This leads to a pinky swear where the Wizard of Oz is forbidden to try and fetch it back. When it was discovered that the Wizard of Oz entrusted the key to the Book of Mini Airu to Dorothy, this leads the Wicked Witch of the West to invade Earth years later to get her to give it up. When the Wicked Witch of the West gets the key, a holographic message is played by the Wizard of Oz who reveals some of his backstory and states that the key is a fake which thwarts the Wicked Witch of the West's plans to take over the worlds. By the end of the movie, Dorothy and Nick Chopper see someone that resembles the Wizard playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on the saxophone.
In the 2011 direct-to-DVD animated film Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard is voiced by Joe Alaskey.
In the Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Paige that details an alternate version of the stories, after Dorothy and her friends have been corrupted by the magic of Oz and the wizard's gifts, it is revealed that the Wizard has returned to Oz, acting as a 'neutral' party in the conflict between Dorothy's forces and the Order of the Wicked that acts against her, allowing him to live in the Emerald City while passing on some information to the Order of the Wicked. After he tells new protagonist Amy Gumm about how she might defeat Dorothy, she is able to take the Tin Woodman's heart and the Cowardly Lion's courage- 'manifested' as his tail- but when she next confronts the Wizard, he has taken the Scarecrow's brains. His true agenda is revealed to be a complex plan to bring Kansas and Oz together, having concluded that the two countries are essentially the same place across two different dimensions, requiring the gifts he gave Dorothy's companions as they represent a blend of the magics of Oz and Kansas (Kansas having been deprived of magic by Oz's existence). He attempts to use Dorothy as the final sacrifice for this spell, but she is able to disrupt the spell so that the Wizard is destroyed instead, creating a temporary portal that send the Order of the Wicked and Amy back to Kansas until they can find Dorothy's silver shoes.
The Wizard of Oz appears in the Supernatural season 10 episode There's No Place Like Home portrayed by Carter Kinsella. In this show, he was originally Man of Letters member Clive Dylan who got sent into the Land of Oz and split himself. L. Frank Baum was able to rescue Clive who then retired at the cost of Baum's daughter Dorothy being left behind. Sometime after the Wicked Witch's death, Charlie Bradbury reveals she made a deal with the Wizard to split herself into her good and dark sides using the Inner Key of Oz in order to win a rebellion to free Oz from evil. The Wizard of Oz turned out to be the personification of Clive Dylan's dark side who wanted to rule the Land of Oz. Years later, Sam Winchester and Good Charlie track down the good side of the elderly Clive Dylan (portrayed by Duncan Fraser) who is using the alias of Michael Carter. To draw out the Wizard of Oz, Charlie wounded Clive. The Wizard of Oz appeared to confront Clive as he used his magic to restrain Sam. Despite Dean Winchester beating up Dark Charlie, Good Charlie was goaded by Clive to kill him. Once Good Charlie shot Clive in the face, the Wizard of Oz fell dead as Sam uses his Inner Key of Oz to merge both Charlies back into one body.
The Wizard of Oz appears in Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, voiced by Tom Kenny. He appears in "The Wizard, The Witch, and The Crystal Ball" where another tornado brings his balloon back to the Land of Oz where he plans to become an actual wizard. When he finds out about the Wicked Witch of the West's spirit being trapped in her crystal ball, he decides to help resurrect her in exchange for powers (not knowing that it takes years to get powers), but it backfired and Dorothy accidentally resurrects the Wicked Witch without her powers.
The Wizard of Oz appears in the play The Wonderful Winter of Oz, portrayed by Kermit the Frog.
Cultural references
The season 3 episode of the serial drama Lost titled "The Man Behind the Curtain" is a reference to the Wizard of Oz. His name is also mentioned in the dialogue of the show, with John Locke comparing Ben Linus to the Wizard and saying that he is the one orchestrating events and is "The Man Behind the Curtain".
In the episode "It's Christmas in Canada" of the television series South Park, the main characters visit the new Prime Minister of Canada, who takes the shape of a floating head. This turns out to be a projection operated by Saddam Hussein, who was hiding in a hole in the wall.
An entire episode of Scrubs, "My Way Home", pays homage to The Wizard of Oz.
The television show Futurama aired "Anthology of Interest II" which parodied the 1939 movie version of the story where Professor Hubert Farnsworth played the wizard and appearing as a giant-headed version of himself standing behind a curtain.
The Wizard of Oz appears in the Robot Chicken episode "Two Weeks Without Food", voiced by Breckin Meyer.
The Wizard of Oz is the titular subject of the Spock's Beard song, "The Man Behind the Curtain" from their 2010 album, X.
The Fall Out Boy song "Alpha Dog" features the lyric "I can almost see the wizard through the curtains" - meaning he can see through the deception of something.
In the anime-inspired 3D web series RWBY, the character of "Headmaster Ozpin" alludes to the Wizard of Oz. This is further expanded on with the character "Oscar", Ozpin's next incarnation. In fact, Ozpin's name is even derived from the fact that the initials of the wizard's full name spells out "ozpinhead."
In the video game Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko, a boss level parodies The Wizard of Oz. The main character is dressed as the Tin Man and fights a holographic projected head known as the Brain of Oz.
The Wizard of Oz makes a brief appearance in the crossover video game Lego Dimensions as the "In Peril" character for the first level of the story mode "Follow the LEGO Brick Road". He also appears as a Gold Brick puzzle in The Wizard of Oz World if you collect all ten Minikits in Follow the LEGO Brick Road where he flies in his hot air balloon and you need to stop the Winged Monkeys from destroying the balloon so he can make it to Emerald City.
In the Indigo Girls song, "You and Me of the 10,000 Wars", Verse 4 includes the line "Watch the Wizard behind the curtain."
See also
List of Oz books
References
External links
More information on The Wizard
Characters in Wicked
Fictional advisors
Fictional con artists
Fictional dictators
Fictional inventors
Fictional stage magicians
Fictional wizards
Musical theatre characters
Fictional characters from Kansas
Fictional characters from Nebraska
Literary characters introduced in 1900
Male characters in film
Male characters in literature
Male characters in television
Oz (franchise) characters
Oz (franchise) characters who use magic
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral%20fraud
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Electoral fraud
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Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It differs from but often goes hand-in-hand with voter suppression. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country.
Electoral legislation outlaws many kinds of election fraud, but other practices violate general laws, such as those banning assault, harassment or libel. Although technically the term "electoral fraud" covers only those acts which are illegal, the term is sometimes used to describe acts which are legal, but considered morally unacceptable, outside the spirit of an election or in violation of the principles of democracy. Show elections, featuring only one candidate, are sometimes classified as electoral fraud, although they may comply with the law and are presented more as referendums/plebiscites.
In national elections, successful electoral fraud on a sufficient scale can have the effect of a coup d'état, protest or corruption of democracy. In a narrow election, a small amount of fraud may suffice to change the result. Even if the outcome is not affected, the revelation of fraud can reduce voters' confidence in democracy.
Law
In the US someone may be fined and/or imprisoned for not more than five years.
In France, someone guilty may be fined and/or imprisoned for not more than one year, or two years if the person is an official (like a mayor for example).
Electorate manipulation
Electoral fraud can occur in advance of voting if the composition of the electorate is altered. The legality of this type of manipulation varies across jurisdictions. Deliberate manipulation of election outcomes is widely considered a violation of the principles of democracy.
Artificial migration or party membership
In many cases, it is possible for authorities to artificially control the composition of an electorate in order to produce a foregone result. One way of doing this is to move a large number of voters into the electorate prior to an election, for example by temporarily assigning them land or lodging them in flophouses. Many countries prevent this with rules stipulating that a voter must have lived in an electoral district for a minimum period (for example, six months) in order to be eligible to vote there. However, such laws can also be used for demographic manipulation as they tend to disenfranchise those with no fixed address, such as the homeless, travelers, Roma, students (studying full-time away from home), and some casual workers.
Another strategy is to permanently move people into an electoral district, usually through public housing. If people eligible for public housing are likely to vote for a particular party, then they can either be concentrated into one area, thus making their votes count for less, or moved into marginal seats, where they may tip the balance towards their preferred party. One example of this was the 1986–1990 Homes for votes scandal in the City of Westminster in England under Shirley Porter.
Immigration law may also be used to manipulate electoral demography. For instance, Malaysia gave citizenship to immigrants from the neighboring Philippines and Indonesia, together with suffrage, in order for a political party to "dominate" the state of Sabah; this controversial process was known as Project IC.
A method of manipulating primary contests and other elections of party leaders are related to this. People who support one party may temporarily join another party (or vote in a crossover way, when permitted) in order to elect a weak candidate for that party's leadership. The goal ultimately is to defeat the weak candidate in the general election by the leader of the party that the voter truly supports. There were claims that this method was being utilised in the UK Labour Party leadership election in 2015, where Conservative-leaning Toby Young encouraged Conservatives to join Labour and vote for Jeremy Corbyn in order to "consign Labour to electoral oblivion". Shortly after, #ToriesForCorbyn trended on Twitter.
Disenfranchisement
The composition of an electorate may also be altered by disenfranchising some classes of people, rendering them unable to vote. In some cases, states have passed provisions that raised general barriers to voter registration, such as poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and record-keeping requirements, which in practice were applied against minority populations to discriminatory effect. From the turn of the century into the late 1960s, most African Americans in the southern states of the former Confederacy were disenfranchised by such measures. Corrupt election officials may misuse voting regulations such as a literacy test or requirement for proof of identity or address in such a way as to make it difficult or impossible for their targets to cast a vote. If such practices discriminate against a religious or ethnic group, they may so distort the political process that the political order becomes grossly unrepresentative, as in the post-Reconstruction or Jim Crow era until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Felons have been disenfranchised in many states as a strategy to prevent African Americans from voting.
Groups may also be disenfranchised by rules which make it impractical or impossible for them to cast a vote. For example, requiring people to vote within their electorate may disenfranchise serving military personnel, prison inmates, students, hospital patients or anyone else who cannot return to their homes. Polling can be set for inconvenient days, such as midweek or on holy days of religious groups: for example on the Sabbath or other holy days of a religious group whose teachings determine that voting is prohibited on such a day. Communities may also be effectively disenfranchised if polling places are situated in areas perceived by voters as unsafe, or are not provided within reasonable proximity (rural communities are especially vulnerable to this).
In some cases, voters may be invalidly disenfranchised, which is true electoral fraud. For example, a legitimate voter may be "accidentally" removed from the electoral roll, making it difficult or impossible for the person to vote.
In the Canadian federal election of 1917, during the Great War, the Canadian government, led by the Union Party, passed the Military Voters Act and the Wartime Elections Act. The Military Voters Act permitted any active military personnel to vote by party only and allowed that party to decide in which electoral district to place that vote. It also enfranchised those women who were directly related or married to an active soldier. These groups were believed to be disproportionately in favor of the Union government, as that party was campaigning in favor of conscription. The Wartime Elections Act, conversely, disenfranchised particular ethnic groups assumed to be disproportionately in favour of the opposition Liberal Party.
Division of opposition support
Stanford University professor Beatriz Magaloni described a model governing the behaviour of autocratic regimes. She proposed that ruling parties can maintain political control under a democratic system without actively manipulating votes or coercing the electorate. Under the right conditions, the democratic system is maneuvered into an equilibrium in which divided opposition parties act as unwitting accomplices to single-party rule. This permits the ruling regime to abstain from illegal electoral fraud.
Preferential voting systems such as score voting, instant-runoff voting, and single transferable vote are designed to prevent systemic electoral manipulation and political duopoly.
Intimidation
Voter intimidation involves putting undue pressure on a voter or group of voters so that they will vote a particular way, or not at all. Absentee and other remote voting can be more open to some forms of intimidation as the voter does not have the protection and privacy of the polling location. Intimidation can take a range of forms including verbal, physical, or coercion. This was so common that in 1887, a Kansas Supreme Court in New Perspectives on Election Fraud in The Gilded Age said "[...] physical retaliation constituted only a slight disturbance and would not vitiate an election."
Violence or the threat of violence: In its simplest form, voters from a particular demographic or known to support a particular party or candidate are directly threatened by supporters of another party or candidate or by those hired by them. In other cases, supporters of a particular party make it known that if a particular village or neighborhood is found to have voted the 'wrong' way, reprisals will be made against that community. Another method is to make a general threat of violence, for example, a bomb threat which has the effect of closing a particular polling place, thus making it difficult for people in that area to vote. One notable example of outright violence was the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, where followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh deliberately contaminated salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon, in an attempt to weaken political opposition during county elections. Historically, this tactic included Lynching in the United States to terrorize potential African American voters in some areas
Attacks on polling places: Polling places in an area known to support a particular party or candidate may be targeted for vandalism, destruction or threats, thus making it difficult or impossible for people in that area to vote
Legal threats: In this case, voters will be made to believe, accurately or otherwise, that they are not legally entitled to vote, or that they are legally obliged to vote a particular way. Voters who are not confident about their entitlement to vote may also be intimidated by real or implied authority figures who suggest that those who vote when they are not entitled to will be imprisoned, deported or otherwise punished.
For example, in 2004, in Wisconsin and elsewhere voters allegedly received flyers that said, "If you already voted in any election this year, you can't vote in the Presidential Election", implying that those who had voted in earlier primary elections were ineligible to vote. Also, "If anybody in your family has ever been found guilty of anything you can't vote in the Presidential Election." Finally, "If you violate any of these laws, you can get 10 years in prison and your children will be taken away from you."
Another method, allegedly used in Cook County, Illinois, in 2004, is to falsely tell particular people that they are not eligible to vote
In 1981 in New Jersey, the Republican National Committee created the Ballot Security Task Force to discourage voting among Latino and African-American citizens of New Jersey. The task force identified voters from an old registration list and challenged their credentials. It also paid off-duty police officers to patrol polling sites in Newark and Trenton, and posted signs saying that falsifying a ballot is a crime
Coercion: The demographic that controlled the voting ballot would try to persuade others to follow them. By singling out those who were against the majority, people would attempt to switch the voters' decision. Their argument could be that since the majority sides with a certain candidate, they should admit defeat and join the winning side. If this did not work, this led to the threatening of violence seen countless times during elections. Coercion, electoral intimidation was seen in the Navy. In 1885 William C. Whitney started an investigation that involved the men in the Navy. As said by Whitney "the vote of the yard was practically coerced and controlled by the foremen. This instance shows how even in the Navy there were still instances of people going to great lengths for the desired elective to win
Disinformation
People may distribute false or misleading information in order to affect the outcome of an election. For example, in the Chilean presidential election of 1970, the U.S. government's Central Intelligence Agency used "black propaganda"—materials purporting to be from various political parties—to sow discord between members of a coalition between socialists and communists.
Another use of disinformation is to give voters incorrect information about the time or place of polling, thus causing them to miss their chance to vote. As part of the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal, Elections Canada traced fraudulent phone calls, telling voters that their polling stations had been moved, to a telecommunications company that worked with the Conservative Party.
Similarly in the United States, right-wing political operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were indicted on several counts of bribery and election fraud in October 2020 regarding a voter disinformation scheme they undertook in the months prior to the November, 3 2020 general election. The pair hired a firm to make nearly 85,000 robocalls that targeted minority neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan, and Illinois. Like Democratic constituencies in general that year, minorities voted overwhelmingly by absentee ballot, many judging it a safer option during the COVID-19 pandemic than in-person voting. Baselessly, the call warned potential voters if they submitted their votes by mail that authorities could use their personal information against them, including threats of police arrest for outstanding warrants and forced debt collection by creditors.
On October 24, 2022 Wohl and Burkman pleaded guilty in Cuyahoga County, Ohio Common Pleas Court to one count each of felony telecommunications fraud. Commenting on the tactic of using disinformation to suppress voter turnout, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley said the two men had "infringed upon the right to vote", and that "by pleading guilty, they were held accountable for their un-American actions.”
Vote buying
Vote buying occurs when a political party or candidate seeks to buy the vote of a voter in an upcoming election. Vote buying can take various forms such as a monetary exchange, as well as an exchange for necessary goods or services. This practice is often used to incentivise or persuade voters to turn out to elections and vote in a particular way. Although this practice is illegal in many countries such as the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Kenya, Brazil and Nigeria, its prevalence remains worldwide.
Voting process and results
A list of threats to voting systems, or electoral fraud methods considered as sabotage are kept by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Misleading or confusing ballot papers
Ballot papers may be used to discourage votes for a particular party or candidate, using the design or other features which confuse voters into voting for a different candidate. For example, in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Florida's butterfly ballot paper was criticized as poorly designed, leading some voters to vote for the wrong candidate. While the ballot itself was designed by a Democrat, it was the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, who was most harmed by voter errors because of this design. Poor or misleading design is usually not illegal and therefore not technically election fraud, but it can nevertheless subvert the principles of democracy.
Sweden has a system with separate ballots used for each party, to reduce confusion among candidates. However, ballots from small parties such as Piratpartiet, Junilistan and Feministiskt initiativ have been omitted or placed on a separate table in the election to the EU parliament in 2009. Ballots from Sweden Democrats have been mixed with ballots from the larger Swedish Social Democratic Party, which used a very similar font for the party name written on the top of the ballot.
Another method of confusing people into voting for a different candidate than intended is to run candidates or create political parties with similar names or symbols as an existing candidate or party. The goal is to mislead voters into voting for the false candidate or party to influence the results. Such tactics may be particularly effective when a large proportion of voters have limited literacy in the language used on the ballot. Again, such tactics are usually not illegal but often work against the principles of democracy.
Another type of possible electoral confusion is multiple variations of voting by different electoral systems. This may cause ballots to be counted as invalid if the wrong system is used. For instance, if a voter puts a first-past-the-post cross in a numbered single transferable vote ballot paper, it is invalidated. For example, in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, up to three different voting systems and types of ballots may be used, based on the jurisdictional level of elections for candidates. Local elections are determined by single transferable votes; Scottish parliamentary elections by the additional member system; national elections and for the UK Parliament by first-past-the-post.
Ballot stuffing
Ballot stuffing, or "ballot-box stuffing", is the illegal practice of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted.
In the 1883 election for the district of Cook, in Queensland, Australia, arrests were made in connection with accusations of ballot stuffing, and the election committee subsequently changed the result of the election
A 2006 version of the Sequoia touchscreen voting machine had a yellow service "back" button on the back that could allow repeated voting under specific circumstances
During the 2014 Afghan presidential election, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) recorded Ziaul Haq Amarkhel, the secretary of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, telling local officials to "take sheep to the mountains, stuff them, and bring them back", in an apparent reference to ballot stuffing
During the 2018 Russian Presidential Election, there were multiple instances, some caught on camera, throughout Russia of voters and polling staff alike stuffing multiple votes in the ballot box
In Major League Baseball's All Star Game
Major League Baseball's All-Star Game has had problems with ballot stuffing on occasion.
In 1957, Cincinnati Reds fans aided by a local newspaper arranged for seven of the eight elected starting fielders to be Reds players
In 1999, the online ballot was stuffed by computer programmer Chris Nandor in favor of Boston Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra. Nandor created a program that enabled him to vote multiple times for Garciaparra and his teammates before his ballots—which were submitted through a dial-up connection—were traced back to him
In 2015, MLB annulled 65 million (out of a total of 620 million) online ballots after it was reported that eight out of the starting nine positions for the American League would have been Kansas City Royals players
Misrecording of votes
Votes may be misrecorded at source, on a ballot paper or voting machine, or later in misrecording totals. The 2019 Malawian general election was nullified by the Constitutional Court in 2020 because many results were changed by use of correction fluid, as well as duplicate, unverified and unsigned results forms. California allows correction fluid and tape, so changes can be made after the ballot leaves the voter.
Where votes are recorded through electronic or mechanical means, the voting machinery may be altered so that a vote intended for one candidate is recorded for another, or electronic results are duplicated or lost, and there is rarely evidence whether the cause was fraud or error.
Many elections feature multiple opportunities for unscrupulous officials or 'helpers' to record an elector's vote differently from their intentions. Voters who require assistance to cast their votes are particularly vulnerable to having their votes stolen in this way. For example, a blind or illiterate person may be told that they have voted for one party when in fact they have been led to vote for another.
Misuse of proxy votes
Proxy voting is particularly vulnerable to election fraud, due to the amount of trust placed in the person who casts the vote. In several countries, there have been allegations of retirement home residents being asked to fill out 'absentee voter' forms. When the forms are signed and gathered, they are secretly rewritten as applications for proxy votes, naming party activists or their friends and relatives as the proxies. These people, unknown to the voter, cast the vote for the party of their choice. In the United Kingdom, this is known as 'granny farming.'
Destruction or invalidation of ballots
One of the simplest methods of electoral fraud is to destroy ballots for an opposing candidate or party. During the Bourbon Restoration in late 19th century Spain, the organized “loss” of voting slips (:es:pucherazo) was used to maintain the agreed alternation between the Liberals and the Conservatives (similar to the English Whigs and Tories. who prior to the Reform Act 1832 maintained Rotten and pocket boroughs. This system of local political domination, especially rooted in rural areas and small cities, was known as caciquismo.
While mass destruction of ballots can be difficult to execute without drawing attention, in a very close election, it may be possible to destroy a very small number of ballot papers without detection, thereby changing the overall result. Blatant destruction of ballot papers can render an election invalid and force it to be re-run. If a party can improve its vote on the re-run election, it can benefit from such destruction as long as it is not linked to it.
Another method is to make it appear that the voter has spoiled his or her ballot, thus rendering it invalid. Typically this would be done by adding another mark to the paper, making it appear that the voter has voted for more candidates than entitled, for instance. It would be difficult to do this to a large number of paper ballots without detection in some locales, but altogether too simple in others, especially jurisdictions where legitimate ballot spoiling by voter would serve a clear and reasonable aim. Examples may include emulating protest votes in jurisdictions that have recently had and since abolished a "none of the above" or "against all" voting option, civil disobedience where voting is mandatory, and attempts at discrediting or invalidating an election. An unusually large share of invalidated ballots may be attributed to loyal supporters of candidates that lost in primaries or previous rounds, did not run or did not qualify to do so, or some manner of protest movement or organized boycott.
In 2016, during the EU membership referendum, Leave-supporting voters in the UK alleged without evidence that the pencils supplied by voting stations would allow the referendum to be rigged in favour of Remain by MI5 erasing their votes from the ballot. This has been described as the "use pens" conspiracy theory.
Tampering with electronic voting systems
General tampering
All voting systems face threats of some form of electoral fraud. The types of threats that affect voting machines vary. Research at Argonne National Laboratories revealed that a single individual with physical access to a machine, such as a Diebold Accuvote TS, can install inexpensive, readily available electronic components to manipulate its functions.
Other approaches include:
Tampering with the software of a voting machine to add malicious code that alters vote totals or favors a candidate in any way.
Multiple groups have demonstrated this possibility
Private companies manufacture these machines. Many companies will not allow public access or review of the machines' source code, claiming fear of exposing trade secrets
Tampering with the hardware of the voting machine to alter vote totals or favor any candidate.
Some of these machines require a smart card to activate the machine and vote. However, a fraudulent smart card could attempt to gain access to voting multiple times or be pre-loaded with negative votes to favor one candidate over another, as has been demonstrated
Abusing the administrative access to the machine by election officials might also allow individuals to vote multiple times
Election results that are sent directly over the internet from the polling place centre to the vote-counting authority can be vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, where they are diverted to an intermediate website where the man in the middle flips the votes in favour of a certain candidate and then immediately forwards them on to the vote-counting authority. All votes sent over the internet violate the chain of custody and hence should be avoided by driving or flying memory cards in locked metal containers to the vote-counters. For purposes of getting quick preliminary total results on election night, encrypted votes can be sent over the internet, but final official results should be tabulated the next day only after the actual memory cards arrive in secure metal containers and are counted
South Africa
In 1994, the election which brought majority rule and put Nelson Mandela in office, South Africa's election compilation system was hacked, so they re-tabulated by hand.
Ukraine
In 2014, Ukraine's central election system was hacked. Officials found and removed a virus and said the totals were correct.
United States
During the 2020 presidential election, incumbent President Donald Trump made numerous allegations of electoral fraud by Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The Trump campaign filed numerous legal challenges to the results, making unsubstantiated allegations accusing Democrats of manipulating the votes in favor of Biden. The campaign lost 64 of 65 lawsuits. Election security experts, officials, analysts, and Trump's own Attorney General William Barr have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Voter impersonation
United Kingdom
Concerns about voter impersonation have led the UK government to propose the Electoral Integrity Bill. Academic research shows very little evidence of impersonation, however.
United States
Some commentators, such as former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky, have claimed that voter impersonation fraud, in which one person votes by impersonating another, eligible voter, is widespread, but documentation has been scarce and prosecutions rare. Numerous others, such as Professor Larry Sabato, and a variety of studies have shown this to be "relatively rare" in the US. Since 2013, when the US Supreme Court ruled that a provision of the Voting Rights Act was no longer enforceable, several states have passed voter ID laws, ostensibly to counter the alleged fraud. But many experts counter that voter ID laws are not very effective against some forms of impersonation. These ID laws have been challenged by minority groups that claimed to be disadvantaged by the changes. By August 2016, four federal court rulings overturned laws or parts of such laws because they placed undue burdens on minority populations, including African Americans and Native Americans. In each case: Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, and may adversely affect minority voters. The states were required to accept alternatives for the November 2016 elections. These cases are expected to reach the US Supreme Court for hearings. In April 2020, a 20-year voter fraud study by MIT University found the level of fraud "exceedingly rare" since it occurs only in "0.00006 percent" of instances nationally, and, in one state, "0.000004 percent—about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States.
Allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 United States presidential election by busing out-of-state voters to New Hampshire were found to be false. Suspicions of hacking of electronic voting machines in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were determined to be unfounded.
The North Carolina Board of Elections reported in 2017 on questions of voter fraud and the state's proposed voter ID law. The report showed that out of 4,769,640 votes cast in the November 2016 election in North Carolina, only one illegal vote would potentially have been blocked by the voter ID law. The investigation found fewer than 500 incidences of invalid ballots cast, the vast majority of which were cast by individuals on probation for felony who were likely not aware that this status disqualified them from voting, and the total number of invalid votes was far too small to have affected the outcome of any race in North Carolina in the 2016 election.
Artificial results
In particularly corrupt regimes, the voting process may be nothing more than a sham, to the point that officials simply announce whatever results they want, sometimes without even bothering to count the votes. While such practices tend to draw international condemnation, voters typically have little if any recourse, as there would seldom be any ways to remove the fraudulent winner from power, short of a revolution.
In Turkmenistan, incumbent President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov received 97.69% of votes in the 2017 election, with his sole opponent, who was seen as pro-government, in fact being appointed by Berdymukhamedov. In Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili received 96.2% of votes in the election following the Rose Revolution while his ally Nino Burjanadze was an interim head of state.
Postal ballot fraud
Fraud with absentee or postal ballots has been found occasionally in the United Kingdom, and the United States
and has been alleged in Malaysia. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, experts estimate there is more fraud with postal ballots than in-person voting, and that even so it has affected only a few local elections.
Types of fraud have included pressure on voters from family or others, since the ballot is not cast in secret;
collection of ballots by dishonest collectors who mark votes or fail to deliver ballots; and insiders changing or destroying ballots after they arrive.
A significant measure to prevent some types of fraud has been to require the voter's signature on the outer envelope, which is compared to one or more signatures on file before taking the ballot out of the envelope and counting it. Not all places have standards for signature review,
and there have been calls to update signatures more often to improve this review. While any level of strictness involves rejecting some valid votes and accepting some invalid votes, there have been concerns that signatures are improperly rejected from young and minority voters at higher rates than others, with no or limited ability of voters to appeal the rejection.
Some problems have inherently limited scope, such as family pressure, while others can affect several percent of the vote, such as dishonest collectors and signature verification.
In legislature
Vote fraud can also take place in legislatures. Some of the forms used in national elections can also be used in parliaments, particularly intimidation and vote-buying. Because of the much smaller number of voters, however, election fraud in legislatures is qualitatively different in many ways. Fewer people are needed to 'swing' the election, and therefore specific people can be targeted in ways impractical on a larger scale. For example, Adolf Hitler achieved his dictatorial powers due to the Enabling Act of 1933. He attempted to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the Act by arresting members of the opposition, though this turned out to be unnecessary to attain the needed majority. Later, the Reichstag was packed with Nazi party members who voted for the Act's renewal.
In many legislatures, voting is public, in contrast to the secret ballot used in most modern public elections. This may make their elections more vulnerable to some forms of fraud since a politician can be pressured by others who will know how the legislator voted. However, it may also protect against bribery and blackmail, since the public and media will be aware if a politician votes in an unexpected way. Since voters and parties are entitled to pressure politicians to vote a particular way, the line between legitimate and fraudulent pressure is not always clear.
As in public elections, proxy votes are particularly prone to fraud. In some systems, parties may vote on behalf of any member who is not present in parliament. This protects those members from missing out on voting if prevented from attending parliament, but it also allows their party to prevent them from voting against its wishes. In some legislatures, proxy voting is not allowed, but politicians may rig voting buttons or otherwise illegally cast "ghost votes" while absent.
Detection and prevention
The three main strategies for the prevention of electoral fraud in society are:
Auditing the election process
Deterrence through consistent and effective prosecution
Cultivation of mores that discourage corruption
Some of the main fraud prevention tactics can be summarised as secrecy and openness. The secret ballot prevents many kinds of intimidation and vote selling, while transparency at all other levels of the electoral process prevents and allows detection of most interference.
Election audits
Election auditing refers to any review conducted after polls close for the purpose of determining whether the votes were counted accurately (a results audit) or whether proper procedures were followed (a process audit), or both.
Audits vary and can include checking that the number of voters signed in at the polls matches the number of ballots, seals on ballot boxes and storage rooms are intact, computer counts (if used) match hand counts, and counts are accurately totaled.
Election recounts are a specific type of audit, with elements of both results and process audits.
Prosecution
In the United States the goal of prosecutions is not to stop fraud or keep fraudulent winners out of office; it is to deter and punish years later. The Justice Department has published Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses in eight editions from 1976 to 2017, under Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Trump. It says, "Department does not have authority to directly intercede in the election process itself. ... overt criminal investigative measures should not ordinarily be taken ... until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded." Sentencing guidelines provide a range of 0–21 months in prison for a first offender; offense levels range from 8 to 14. Investigation, prosecution and appeals can take over 10 years.
In the Philippines, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was arrested in 2011 following the filing of criminal charges against her for electoral sabotage, in connection with the 2007 Philippine general election. She was accused of conspiring with election officials to ensure the victory of her party's senatorial slate in the province of Maguindanao, through the tampering of election returns.
Mores
The patterns of conventional behaviour in a society, or mores, are an effective means for preventing electoral fraud and corruption in general.
An advantage of cultivating positive mores as a prevention strategy is that it is effective across all electoral systems and devices. A disadvantage is that it makes other prevention and detection efforts more difficult to implement because members of society generally have more trust and less of a sense for fraudulent methods.
Secret ballot
The secret ballot, in which only the voter knows how they have voted, is believed by many to be a crucial part of ensuring free and fair elections through preventing voter intimidation or retribution. Others argue that the secret ballot enables election fraud (because it makes it harder to verify that votes have been counted correctly) and that it discourages voter participation. Although the secret ballot was sometimes practiced in ancient Greece and was a part of the Constitution of the Year III of 1795, it only became common in the nineteenth century. Secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in the former British colony—now an Australian state—of Tasmania on 7 February 1856. By the turn of the century, the practice had spread to most Western democracies.
In the United States, the popularity of the Australian ballot grew as reformers in the late 19th century sought to reduce the problems of election fraud. Groups such as the Greenbackers, Nationalist, and more fought for those who yearned to vote, but were exiled for their safety. George Walthew, Greenback, helped initiate one of the first secret ballots in America in Michigan in 1885. Even George Walthew had a predecessor in John Seitz, Greenback, who campaigned a bill to "preserve the purity of elections" in 1879 after the discovery of Ohio's electoral fraud in congressional elections.
The efforts of many helped accomplish this and led to the spread of other secret ballots all across the country. As mentioned on February 18, 1890, in the Galveston News "The Australian ballot has come to stay. It protects the independence of the voter and largely puts a stop to vote to buy." Before this, it was common for candidates to intimidate or bribe voters, as they would always know who had voted which way.
Transparency
Most methods of preventing electoral fraud involve making the election process completely transparent to all voters, from nomination of candidates through casting of the votes and tabulation. A key feature in ensuring the integrity of any part of the electoral process is a strict chain of custody.
To prevent fraud in central tabulation, there has to be a public list of the results from every single polling place. This is the only way for voters to prove that the results they witnessed in their election office are correctly incorporated into the totals.
End-to-end auditable voting systems provide voters with a receipt to allow them to verify their vote was cast correctly, and an audit mechanism to verify that the results were tabulated correctly and all votes were cast by valid voters. However, the ballot receipt does not permit voters to prove to others how they voted, since this would open the door towards forced voting and blackmail. End-to-end systems include Punchscan and Scantegrity, the latter being an add-on to optical scan systems instead of a replacement.
In many cases, election observers are used to help prevent fraud and assure voters that the election is fair. International observers (bilateral and multilateral) may be invited to observe the elections (examples include election observation by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), European Union election observation missions, observation missions of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as well as international observation organised by NGOs, such as CIS-EMO, European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), etc.). Some countries also invite foreign observers (i.e. bi-lateral observation, as opposed to multi-lateral observation by international observers).
In addition, national legislatures of countries often permit domestic observation. Domestic election observers can be either partisan (i.e. representing interests of one or a group of election contestants) or non-partisan (usually done by civil society groups). Legislations of different countries permit various forms and extents of international and domestic election observation.
Election observation is also prescribed by various international legal instruments. For example, paragraph 8 of the 1990 Copenhagen Document states that "The [OSCE] participating States consider that the presence of observers, both foreign and domestic, can enhance the electoral process for States in which elections are taking place. They, therefore, invite observers from any other CSCE participating States and any appropriate private institutions and organisations who may wish to do so to observe the course of their national election proceedings, to the extent permitted by law. They will also endeavour to facilitate similar access for election proceedings held below the national level. Such observers will undertake not to interfere in the electoral proceedings".
Critics note that observers cannot spot certain types of election fraud like targeted voter suppression or manipulated software of voting machines.
Statistical indicators and election forensics
Various forms of statistics can be indicators of election fraud—e.g., exit polls which diverge from the final results. Well-conducted exit polls serve as a deterrent to electoral fraud. However, exit polls are still notoriously imprecise. For instance, in the Czech Republic, some voters are afraid or ashamed to admit that they voted for the Communist Party (exit polls in 2002 gave the Communist party 2–3 percentage points less than the actual result). Variations in willingness to participate in an exit poll may result in an unrepresentative sample compared to the overall voting population.
When elections are marred by ballot-box stuffing (e.g., the Armenian presidential elections of 1996 and 1998), the affected polling stations will show abnormally high voter turnouts with results favouring a single candidate. By graphing the number of votes against turnout percentage (i.e., aggregating polling stations results within a given turnout range), the divergence from bell-curve distribution gives an indication of the extent of the fraud. Stuffing votes in favour of a single candidate affects votes vs. turnout distributions for that candidate and other candidates differently; this difference could be used to quantitatively assess the number of votes stuffed. Also, these distributions sometimes exhibit spikes at round-number turnout percentage values. High numbers of invalid ballots, overvoting or undervoting are other potential indicators. Risk-limiting audits are methods to assess the validity of an election result statistically without the effort of a full election recount.
Though election forensics can determine if election results are anomalous, the statistical results still need to be interpreted. Alan Hicken and Walter R. Mebane describe the results of election forensic analyses as not providing "definitive proof" of fraud. Election forensics can be combined with other fraud detection and prevention strategies, such as in-person monitoring.
Voting machine integrity
One method for verifying voting machine accuracy is Parallel Testing, the process of using an independent set of results compared to the original machine results. Parallel testing can be done prior to or during an election. During an election, one form of parallel testing is the VVPAT. Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. This method is only effective if statistically significant numbers of voters verify that their intended vote matches both the electronic and paper votes.
On election day, a statistically significant number of voting machines can be randomly selected from polling locations and used for testing. This can be used to detect potential fraud or malfunction unless manipulated software would only start to cheat after a certain event like a voter pressing a special key combination (Or a machine might cheat only if someone does not perform the combination, which requires more insider access but fewer voters).
Another form of testing is Logic & Accuracy Testing (L&A), pre-election testing of voting machines using test votes to determine if they are functioning correctly.
Another method to ensure the integrity of electronic voting machines is independent software verification and certification. Once a software is certified, code signing can ensure the software certified is identical to that which is used on election day. Some argue certification would be more effective if voting machine software was publicly available or open source.
Certification and testing processes conducted publicly and with oversight from interested parties can promote transparency in the election process. The integrity of those conducting testing can be questioned.
Testing and certification can prevent voting machines from being a black box where voters cannot be sure that counting inside is done as intended.
One method that people have argued would help prevent these machines from being tampered with would be for the companies that produce the machines to share the source code, which displays and captures the ballots, with computer scientists. This would allow external sources to make sure that the machines are working correctly.
Notable United States legislation
Help America Vote Act
The Help America Vote Act (), or HAVA, is a United States federal law enacted on October 29, 2002. It was drafted (at least in part) in reaction to the controversy surrounding the 2000 U.S. presidential election. The goals of HAVA are: to replace punchcard and lever-based voting systems; create the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections; and establish minimum election administration standards.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Federal legislation of the 20th century to protect voting rights, especially of ethnic and language minorities who had been disenfranchised for decades by states' constitutions and practices. Initially, it enforced the constitutional right of African Americans in the South to vote, where millions of people had been mostly disenfranchised since the turn of the 20th century and excluded from politics. The law has also protected other ethnicities, such as Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and language minorities in other states, who have been discriminated against at various times, especially in the process of voter registration and electoral practices.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () was a piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and other minorities.
See also
Further reading
General
Lehoucq, Fabrice. "Electoral fraud: Causes, types, and consequences". Annual review of political science (2003) 6#1 pp. 233–56.
Schaffer, Frederic Charles. The hidden costs of clean election reform (Cornell University Press, 2008)
Simpser, Alberto. Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections: Theory, Practice, and Implications (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Australia
McGrath, Amy. The Forging of Votes, Tower House Publications, Kensington, NSW (1994)
McGrath, Amy. Frauding of Elections, Tower House Publications and H.S. Chapman Society, Brighton-le Sands, NSW (2003)
McGrath, Amy. (The Frauding of Votes, Tower House Publications, Kensington, NSW 1996)
Perry, Peter John. Political Corruption in Australia: A Very Wicked Place? (Ashgate Pub Limited, 2001)
Canada
Atkinson, Michael M., and Gerald Bierling. "Politicians, the public and political ethics: Worlds apart". Canadian Journal of Political Science (2005) 38#4: 1003.
France
Ebhardt, Christian. "In Search of a Political Office: Railway Directors and Electoral Corruption in Britain and France, 1820–1870". Journal of Modern European History (2013) 11#1 pp. 72–87.
Germany
Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (2000)
Ziblatt, Daniel. "Shaping Democratic Practice and the Causes of Electoral Fraud: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Germany". American Political Science Review (2009) 103#1 pp. 1–21.
Latin America
Hartlyn, Jonathan, and Arturo Valenzuela, "Democracy in Latin America since 1930", in Leslie Bethell, ed. Latin America: Politics and Society since 1930 (1998), 3–66.
Molina, Iván and Fabrice Lehoucq. "Political Competition and Electoral Fraud: A Latin American Case Study", Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1999) 30#2 pp. 199–234
Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Electoral Juggling: A Comparative History of the Corruption of Suffrage in Latin America, 1830–1930". Journal of Latin American Studies (2000). pp. 611–44.
Ricci, Paolo. "'Beheading', Rule Manipulation and Fraud: The Approval of Election Results in Brazil, 1894–1930". Journal of Latin American Studies (2012) 44#3 pp. 495–521.
Silva, Marcos Fernandes da. "The political economy of corruption in Brazil". Revista de Administração de Empresas (1999) 39#3 pp. 26–41.
Russia
Reuter, O., & Szakonyi, D. (2021). "Electoral Manipulation and Regime Support: Survey Evidence from Russia". World Politics.
Turkey
Meyersson, Erik. "Is Something Rotten In Ankara's Mayoral Election? A Very Preliminary Statistical Analysis" (2014)
Meyersson, Erik. "Trouble in Turkey's Elections" (2014)
Meyersson, Erik. "Capital Fraud in Turkey? Evidence from Citizen Initiatives" (2014)
United Kingdom
Gash, Norman. Politics in the Age of Peel: A Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation 1830–1850 (1953)
O'Gorman, Frank. Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989).
Harling, Philip. "Rethinking "Old Corruption", Past & Present (1995) No. 147 pp. 127–58
Namier, Lewis Bernstein. The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London: Macmillan, 1957)
O'Leary, Cornelius. The elimination of corrupt practices in British elections, 1868–1911 (Clarendon Press, 1962)
United States
References
External links
Voter Fraud – an article from the ACE Project
Independent Verification: Essential Action to Assure Integrity in the Voting Process, Roy G. Saltman, August 22, 2006
Legal provisions to prevent Electoral Fraud – an article from the ACE Project
Was the 2004 Election Stolen? by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., June 1, 2006.
Organized crime activity
Fraud
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Princess Ozma
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Princess Ozma is a fictional character from the Land of Oz, created by American author L. Frank Baum. She appears in every book of the Oz series except the first, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).
She is the rightful ruler of Oz, and Baum indicated that she would reign in the fairyland forever, being immortal.
Baum described her physical appearance in detail, in The Marvelous Land of Oz: "Her eyes sparkled as two diamonds, and her lips were tinted like a tourmaline. All adown her back floated tresses of ruddy gold, with a slender jeweled circlet confining them at the brow." As originally illustrated by John R. Neill, she fit this description; however, in most subsequent Oz books, Ozma's hair became darker.
The classic books
Ozma is the daughter of the former King Pastoria of Oz. As an infant, she was given to the witch Mombi of the North by the Wizard of Oz. Mombi transformed Ozma into a boy and called him "Tip" (short for Tippetarius) in order to prevent the rightful ruler of Oz from ascending to the throne. Ozma spent her entire childhood with Mombi in the form of the boy Tip and had no memory of ever having been a girl. During this time, Tip had managed to create Jack Pumpkinhead who was brought to life by Mombi's Powder of Life. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, Glinda the Good Sorceress discovered what had happened and forced Mombi to turn Tip back into Ozma. Since then, the Princess has possessed the Throne of Oz (although many realms within Oz remained unaware of her authority).
In some of his last Oz books, namely The Tin Woodman of Oz and Glinda of Oz, L. Frank Baum indicated that Ozma has the appearance of a fourteen-year-old and is therefore older than Dorothy Gale. By that point in time, Baum had also established that the inhabitants of Oz cease to age, suggesting that Ozma would always appear to be an extremely beautiful young girl.
Baum was not inclined to worry about strict continuity in his series, however, and so there were discrepancies in the origins and very nature of Ozma. In her initial appearances, she was portrayed as no more than a human princess, born shortly before the Wizard's arrival in Oz. Later in the series, Baum revealed that Ozma is actually a fairy, descending from "a long line of fairy queens" as stated in The Scarecrow of Oz. In The Magic of Oz, Glinda tells Dorothy that no one knows how old Ozma really is. And in Baum's final book, Ozma herself explains that she was in fact a member of the Fairy Queen Lurline's band when Lurline enchanted Oz and turned it into a fairyland.
Jack Snow attempted to reconcile Baum's disparate accounts in The Shaggy Man of Oz, which explains that the Fairy Queen Lurline had left the infant Ozma in the care of King Pastoria, making the Princess the adopted daughter of the last King of Oz. This does not gel with the version of Ozma's story which says she is an ageless fairy who has ruled Oz for centuries.
Ozma frequently encounters difficulties while ruling her kingdom. In The Lost Princess of Oz, for instance, the Fairy Princess is kidnapped, although her dearest friend Dorothy comes to her rescue with a search party. Both Dorothy and Ozma are captured by the wicked Queen Coo-ee-oh in Glinda of Oz, while trying to stop a war between two races, but Glinda manages to save them with the help of the Three Adepts at Sorcery. In order to circumvent trouble, Ozma prohibits anyone other than the Wizard of Oz and Glinda from practicing magic in Oz unless they have a permit.
L. Frank Baum portrayed Ozma as an exceedingly benevolent and compassionate ruler, who never resorts to violence and who does not believe in destroying even her worst enemies. In Ozma of Oz, she even left Oz in order to rescue the Royal Family of Ev from the clutches of the Nome King, demonstrating that her kindness and concern extends far beyond her own kingdom. When the Nome King tried to conquer and destroy Oz in revenge, Ozma insisted on maintaining a pacifist disposition, which led to the Scarecrow's suggestion that Ozma's enemies be made to forget about their wicked intentions by drinking from the Fountain of Oblivion.
Furthermore, Ozma discontinued the use of money in Oz, and took systematic measures to ensure that all the citizens of Oz receive the land's resources in equal measure, without having to work harder than necessary.
Ozma invited several people from the outside world to come live in the Land of Oz, most notably Dorothy, The Wizard, Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, Betsy Bobbin, Trot, Button Bright and Cap'n Bill.
According to the timeline of The Road to Oz, Ozma's birthday falls on August 21.
Relationship with Dorothy
When Ozma first meets Dorothy, Oz's greatest heroine, in Ozma of Oz, they immediately like each other and become best friends; in the canonical Oz books by Baum, Dorothy and Ozma are each other's closest relationship.
In The Emerald City of Oz Ozma arranges, at Dorothy's request, for Dorothy and her family to move into the palace, and Ozma declares her an official princess of Oz and her "constant companion". In The Lost Princess of Oz the first page mentions that Ozma loves Dorothy very much and by page two says that Dorothy is the only one privileged to enter Ozma's rooms without an invitation. In turn, Dorothy often represents Ozma when some task takes the latter away from the Emerald City.
Ozma and Tip
Ozma was born a girl but was magically transformed into a boy named Tip while an infant to hide her from Glinda the Good. Tip was raised as a boy until his early teens, at which point, after the adventures detailed in The Marvelous Land of Oz, Tip is informed that he was born a girl. After some trepidation, Tip agreed to be transformed back into a girl and assumes rule of The Land of Oz as Princess Ozma.
In Windham Classics' adaptation of the Oz books, Tip is made monarch of Oz and no reference at all is made to Ozma.
Jack Snow, Melody Grandy, and Scott Andrew Hutchins have all made divergent attempts to bring Tip back alongside Ozma. Snow's device, which Hutchins followed as if canon, was that Tip seized his life from Ozma, but that Glinda and the Wizard were able to restore them both and make them siblings. Grandy made the characters totally unrelated through the use of a "Switcheroo Spell", with Ozma unrelated to Tippetarius and therefore suitable as a possible love interest. Snow's story, "A Murder in Oz" (1956) was rejected by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and published in The Baum Bugle. Grandy's The Disenchanted Princess of Oz has been published by Tails of the Cowardly Lion and Friends. Hutchins's Tip of Oz, heavily mulling over ideas such as Pastoria-as-tailor and the execution of Mombi in The Lost King of Oz and similar material in The Giant Horse of Oz, received a one-paragraph citation in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and remains unpublished under the Copyright Term Extension Act.
Other appearances
Ozma is portrayed by Blanche Deyo in the 1905 musical The Woggle-Bug.
In a 1914 film created by Baum's film company, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Ozma, played by Jessie May Walsh, appears briefly to preside over Ojo's trial. At the beginning of this film, as well as Baum's His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz, Ozma's smiling countenance (being the face of Vivian Reed) appears.
Annette Funicello played her in a 1957 pilot segment for the proposed Walt Disney production, Rainbow Road to Oz.
Shirley Temple, having reportedly been considered for the role of Dorothy Gale in the 1939 movie musical The Wizard of Oz but passed over in favor of Judy Garland, eventually portrayed Princess Ozma in a 1960 television production of The Marvelous Land of Oz, in which she also portrayed Tip.
Ozma appears briefly in Barry Mahon's 1969 The Wonderful Land of Oz, portrayed by Joy Webb.
Christopher Passi cameoed as Ozma after portraying Tip for the duration of a filmed stage version of The Marvelous Land of Oz by Thomas W. Olson, Gary Briggle, and Richard Dworsky in 1981 by The Children's Theatre Company and School of Minneapolis.
Joan Gerber voiced Ozma in 1980's Thanksgiving special Dorothy in the Land of Oz.
In the direct-to-video animated short Dorothy meets Ozma of Oz, an abridged but faithful adaptation of the book Ozma of Oz, Ozma's voice is provided by either Nancy Chance or Sandra J. Butcher (the credits do not specify).
Ozma was portrayed by Emma Ridley in 1985's Return to Oz (which was a blending of elements from the books Ozma of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz) while Walter Murch's daughter Beatrice dubbed her lines. Ridley's version fit Baum's original description of Ozma. Her Earth appearance is an unnamed girl in a Dr. J.B. Worley's hospital who tips off Dorothy about Dr. Worley's machines making the patients brain dead. Both of them escape from the hospital while evading Nurse Wilson only for the two of them to fall into the river where the girl wasn't seen emerging from the surface. In Oz, Princess Ozma is shown trapped in the mirror by Princess Mombi as her reflection leads Dorothy to the Powder of Life. Following the death of the Nome King and the imprisonment of Mombi, Dorothy frees Princess Ozma who forgives Mombi and uses the ruby slippers to send Dorothy back to Kansas. Dorothy sees Princess Ozma and Billina in the mirror as she advises Dorothy to keep the truth about the Land of Oz a secret from Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. A deleted scene following Dorothy's return to Kansas has Aunt Em telling the passing police officer that the girl that escaped with Dorothy hasn't been found.
In the Japanese animated series The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Ozma's transformation into Tip was so thorough that, despite bearing almost no physical resemblance whatever to Tip, she is a tomboy for a long while and only well into the last story arc of the series comes into her own as a princess.
In The Oz Kids, Andrea (Shay Astar), Glinda's ambivalent daughter, bases her fashion, but little else, on Ozma, who never appeared in the series.
Ozma also appears in the Russian animated Adventures in the Emerald City: Princess Ozma (2000) based on The Marvelous Land of Oz as well as in the 1987 Canadian Dorothy Meets Ozma of Oz based on Ozma of Oz and a 2005 direct to video CGI version of The Patchwork Girl of Oz where she is voiced by Lisa Rosenstock.
In Lost in Oz, an unaired 2002 pilot for a Warner Brothers drama show, Ozma appeared as a young, helpless girl kept eternally young by the Wicked Witch of the West. The main characters of that show rescued her and returned her to the good witch. However, throughout the show, she does not have any lines.
In Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, Ozma is voiced by Kari Wahlgren (who also voices Dorothy Gale). After she was formerly trapped by the Nome King, Dorothy rescued Ozma and she took her rightful place as queen.
In Emerald City, Tip/Ozma is played by Jordan Loughran.
In other works
In the Vertigo comic book series Fables, Ozma appears as one of the magicians and witches led by Frau Totenkinder. She first appears as an unnamed blonde girl, but in a one-page comic handed out at the 2009 Comic-Con she is seen to be wearing a belt resembling the Magic Belt from the Oz books and mentions she is "not so young." She is also wearing large flowers in her hair, similar to the depiction of Ozma in the books. Later, in issue #87 (October 2009) Frau Totenkinder actually addresses her as "sweet little Ozma." Later on, she is proven to be Ozma, and to be a powerful enough witch to lead the Fable community's magic-users, after Frau Totenkinder leaves unexpectedly.
Tip makes a cameo appearance In Son of a Witch, the second volume of "The Wicked Years", Gregory Maguire's revisionist take on Oz. Liir (son of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West) briefly encounters Tip and Mombi (the latter unnamed, but with a description matching Baum's and leading the four-horned cow mentioned on the first page of The Marvelous Land of Oz). Tip suggests to Mombi that she sell him to Liir, but Liir replies, "I don't buy children.... I can't save anyone. You have to save yourself."
Tip and Mombi (respelled "Mombey" by Maguire) play a larger role In Out of Oz, the fourth and final volume of "The Wicked Years". In Out of Oz, Tip first appears as a runaway in the city of Shiz and is befriended by Rain (daughter of Liir and granddaughter of Elphaba), and flees the city with her. Later, when Liir is abducted by thugs in Mombey's employ (and transformed into an Elephant), Tip returns to Mombey hoping to secure Liir's release. Near the novel's conclusion, Tip and Rain are reunited and have just finished making love while Mombey performs a spell called "To Call the Lost Forward", in order to return Liir to his proper form; the spell inadvertently also returns Tip to his true form (Ozma) and restores Rain's natural green skin. Although the circumstances of the spell are quite different from those in The Marvelous Land of Oz, details of it closely resemble Baum's description and the illustration of Mombi's spell by John R. Neill. In Maguire's version of Oz, Mombey has kept Ozma in the form of the boy Tip for almost a century.
In the superhero novel series Wearing the Cape by Marion G. Harmon, a character named Ozma appears in the third book, Young Sentinels. According to the book's narrator, Astra, she is a supernatural breakthrough (person who has developed superpowers) who genuinely believes herself to be the character Princess Ozma of Oz; it is unknown whether she was manifested into reality by an unknown person's breakthrough or if the breakthrough transformed the person into the Ozma character. She becomes a member of Astra's team of Young Sentinels and often explains the differences between Baum's description of events to what she believes really occurred in the Oz books.
In the Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Paige, Ozma plays a key role. Although officially the heir to the throne of Oz, after Dorothy is corrupted by magic and takes the throne for herself, Ozma is driven insane and reduced to babbling nonsense, with her past experience as 'Tip' resulting in her magic manifesting a completely separate soul in the form of 'Pete', a boy about the same age as Ozma is more mentally stable. In the second book in the series, The Wicked Will Rise, Pete betrays the Order of the Wicked to Glinda and Dorothy as he fears that the characters intend to 'kill' him to restore Ozma, resulting in the Order losing several members. In The Yellow Brick War, Ozma is able to regain some of her mental strength after new series protagonist Amy Gumm uses the magic of Dorothy's old silver shoes to separate Ozma and Pete into separate entities, rather than two souls in one body.
In Final Fantasy IX, there is a secret enemy boss called Ozma accessible through the Chocobo digging sidequest.
In Jonathan Green's gamebook The Wicked Wizard of Oz, Ozma's appearance is used by an impostor as a disguise; what happened to the real Ozma is left to speculation.
The American animated web series RWBY features an homage to Tip, in the form of main character Oscar Pine, who is the current incarnation of the warrior Ozma.
Ozma appears as an enemy in the 2020 video game Library of Ruina as one of a series of encounters based on characters from the Land of Oz. She is depicted here as an inhuman cursed princess with a withered body and a blood soaked veil covering her features. Her battle gimmick is centered around her pumpkin headed "Jack" minions.
Influence
Ozma was a direct influence on the design of the protagonist Padme Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In a 2022 interview with Star Wars Insider, concept artist Iain McCaig related the instructions that Lucasfilm provided its artists to visualize characters, saying, "Amidala was described as 'Kind of like Ozma' from The Wizard of Oz." According to McCaig, he chose actress Natalie Portman as a model for his designs because he felt evoked the Oz character, saying, "She had Ozma's aura of vulnerability and strength." After producer/director George Lucas spoke with McCaig about this inspiration, Lucas cast Portman to play her.
See also
Project Ozma
The Heart of Princess Osra (1896), a prequel to The Prisoner of Zenda
References
Oz (franchise) characters
English given names invented by fiction writers
Female characters in literature
Literary characters introduced in 1904
Oz (franchise) characters who use magic
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional fairies and sprites
Fictional princesses
Child characters in literature
Child characters in film
Child characters in animated films
Female characters in film
Female characters in musical theatre
Child characters in musical theatre
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham%20City%20University
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Birmingham City University
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Birmingham City University (abbrev. BCU) is a university in Birmingham, England. Initially established as the Birmingham College of Art with roots dating back to 1843, it was designated as a polytechnic in 1971 and gained university status in 1992.
The university has two main campuses serving four faculties, and offers courses in art and design, business, the built environment, computing, education, engineering, English, healthcare, law, the performing arts, social sciences, and technology. A £125 million extension to its campus in the city centre of Birmingham, part of the Eastside development of a new technology and learning quarter, is opening in two stages, with the first phase having opened in 2013.
It is the second largest of five universities in the city, the other four being the University of Birmingham (which is the largest), Aston University, University College Birmingham and Newman University. Roughly half of the university's full-time students are from the West Midlands, and a large percentage of these are from ethnic minorities. The university runs access and foundation programmes through an international network of associated universities and further education colleges, and has the highest intake of foreign students in the Birmingham area.
History
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
The Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) was the art and design faculty of Birmingham City University. It has now been merged into the university's Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, and is based at the Birmingham City University City Centre Campus and the Birmingham School of Art on Margaret Street. The main BIAD campus and library is located at The Parkside Building, just north of Birmingham city centre, and about three-quarters of a mile from both Birmingham New Street station and the Custard Factory. It is adjacent to Aston University.
Institute history
BIAD reached its full maturity in the 1890s, as the Birmingham Municipal School of Art at Margaret Street, under the leadership of Edward R. Taylor. BIAD's archives hold extensive records on the history of art & design in Birmingham, and 20 similar collections have also been deposited with the archives.
School of Art
The Birmingham School of Art was originally a municipal art school but was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and then became a part of the BIAD in 1988. Its Grade I listed building located on Margaret Street remains the home of the university's Department of Fine Art and is still commonly referred to by its original title. It currently houses the Centre for Fine Art Research (CFAR).
Birmingham School of Architecture
The Birmingham School of Architecture facility was opened in 1908.
Birmingham Polytechnic
In the 1960s, changes were made to the higher education system creating an expansion of polytechnics as a more vocationally orientated alternative to the typical university.
The City of Birmingham Education Committee was invited to submit a scheme for the establishment of a polytechnic bringing together a number of different colleges in the city in 1967. Late in 1969, the post of director of the polytechnic was advertised. Although the city lagged behind other parts of the country, Birmingham finally gained a polytechnic in 1971—then the 27th in the UK—designated by the Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher as the City of Birmingham Polytechnic. This was the second polytechnic in Birmingham, the first – Birmingham Polytechnic Institution – having existed in the mid-19th century for ten years.
It was formed initially out of five colleges. Some of the colleges' staff fought against the merger but later changed their minds. The colleges were:
Birmingham College of Art and Design (originally the Birmingham Government School of Design, founded in October 1843);
Birmingham School of Music (developed as a department of the Birmingham and Midland Institute around 1859);
Birmingham College of Commerce (established in the early 20th century as a branch school of the Birmingham Central Technical College, which went on to become Aston University);
South Birmingham Technical College (opened in 1961);
North Birmingham Technical College (formerly Aston Technical College, opened in 1966).
The latter's new Perry Barr campus (which began construction in 1971) became the centre of the new Polytechnic, although the institution continued to have a number of different campuses spread across the city. This has sometimes been seen as a weakness of the polytechnic, with the dispersal of sites considered confusing to visitors.
In the early 1970s, the Perry Barr campus was the site of building work for what later became the centrepiece of the polytechnic: the Attwood and Baker buildings. Later in the 1970s, the campus was increased in size with the building of what later became the Cox, Dawson, Edge, Feeney and Galton buildings. In the early 1980s, the William Kenrick Library was added to the site. Other, smaller buildings were subsequently constructed, and the estate became known as the City North Campus of Birmingham City University.
From its opening, the polytechnic was considered very strong in the field of art and design. As early as 1972, fashion and textile courses were heavily oversubscribed; there were 100 applications for every 30 places. Also in that year, the polytechnic held the Design in a Polytechnic exhibition, which was opened at a reception hosted by Sir Duncan Oppenheim, the chairman of the Council of Industrial Design. Arts courses remained strong at the polytechnic through the 1970s, with twice as many arts students compared to those doing engineering or technology courses.
In 1975, three more colleges were added to the polytechnic:
Anstey College of Physical Education (founded as a private college for women in 1897);
Bordesley College of Education (founded as a Local Education Authority (LEA) Day Training College for women teachers in 1963);
City of Birmingham College of Education (founded as an LEA Emergency Teacher training college in 1948).
In the mid-1970s, the polytechnic's then-chairman, William Kenrick, sparked criticism from politicians for saying his students were "second-class" students. In 1978, a lecturer in law, Francis Reynolds, was convicted and fined £150 for preparing instruments of property conveyance without being a solicitor. He did this to challenge the monopoly solicitors held over conveyancing, which he felt led to higher costs.
By 1979, the polytechnic was one of the biggest in the country, though that did not prevent it from being "starved" of resources and money. There was a concern that without sufficient investment, the quality of its degree courses in areas such as engineering could not be maintained to the desired standard.
In 1988, the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) was established from the merging of the polytechnic's Faculty of Art and Design with Bournville College of Art. The extensive archives from these earlier incarnations, including over 10,000 artworks, were housed at the polytechnic's Margaret Street campus.
Following the UK Government's Education Reform Act in 1989, the polytechnic ceased to be under Birmingham Local Education Authority control and became an independent corporation with charitable status. It was funded by the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council and no longer by the local education authority. The polytechnic continued to have close links to Birmingham City Council, and the Lord Mayor of Birmingham continued to serve as the university's chancellor for many years.
The change in status enabled a tighter union between the polytechnic and industry, and by 1989 it had 30 lecturer's posts sponsored by firms.
University status
The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 allowed all polytechnics to adopt the title of "university". The name University of Central England in Birmingham was approved by the Privy Council on 16 June 1992. The name change took place in time for the new academic year starting later that year. Students who graduated in mid-1992 were given certificates bearing the name University of Central England, even if the entirety of their study had taken place at the polytechnic. The original design was created by Amba Frog Design after a meeting with delegates from university student councils.
In 1995, two more colleges were absorbed—Birmingham and Solihull College of Nursing and Midwifery, and the West Midlands School of Radiography—and the Birmingham School of Jewellery opened on Vittoria Street in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. The Faculty of Engineering and Computer Technology provided the basis for the creation of the Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) in 2000. The following year, the Faculty of Health incorporated the Defence School of Health Care Studies.
In November 2003, the university pursued a merger between UCE and Aston University-another university in Birmingham, that, according to The Guardian, "would create an institution of 32,000 students with a £200m turnover". The plans were announced by the then Vice-Chancellor Peter Knight, and approved by lecturers. The new institution would use the established Aston University name, and all UCE staff members' jobs and employment conditions would be kept intact, although Vice-Chancellor Knight would not be part of its management team. He estimated a completion date for the merger of August 2006.
Michael Sterling, vice-chancellor of University of Birmingham, welcomed the initiative and said it was time for some creative thinking about higher education in the city. "Clearly, with three very distinct universities in one city, it's sensible to take a hard look at the big picture and how we can best work together, whether separately, in combination, or even as one institution," he said. His intervention provoked a furious reaction from Peter Knight, vice-chancellor of UCE, who made it clear his approach was only to Aston University.
The Aston University Council discussed the proposal during a meeting on 3 December 2003 and concluded that it should be rejected. Aston University said that "Whilst the Council respects UCE's distinctive mission, it does not share UCE's analysis of the potential opportunities that might arise from any merger", and cited influencing factors such as Aston's approach to research and teaching, the "significant differences between the missions and strategies" of Aston and UCE, and the negative impact that prolonged discussions would have on both institutions. Aston suggested that it, UCE and the University of Birmingham should instead begin discussions about the three universities' contribution to the future of local and regional higher education.
In August 2005, the University of Central England rebranded itself as UCE Birmingham for marketing and promotional purposes, though the original name remained for official use. This decision was reversed in March 2007, following the arrival of a new Vice-Chancellor, and the fuller title University of Central England in Birmingham was resurrected for all purposes.
Renaming
In June 2007, it was announced that the university would be renamed from 'UCE Birmingham', with three possible names being proposed: Birmingham City University, Birmingham Chamberlain University, and Birmingham Metropolitan University. Staff and students (both current and alumni) were asked to complete a survey on what they wished the name to be changed to. On 1 October 2007, Vice-Chancellor David Tidmarsh unveiled the name change from UCE Birmingham to Birmingham City University. 48.2% of those who voted on the survey voted for this name, although 62.1% of staff had voted for Birmingham Metropolitan University. The University of Birmingham Council had previously advised UCE that their preferred choice was Birmingham Metropolitan University, and that it considered Birmingham Chamberlain University "unacceptable" because of Joseph Chamberlain's historic involvement and association with the University of Birmingham.
The proposed name change was met with mixed reaction from students and student union officials. A common argument was that money should be spend on facilities and building repair work, and some students felt ignored by the establishment. The rationale for the name change was a perceived confusion of the location of the university and to give a "shorter, more powerful name". The rebranding of the university, which included changing signage and stationery, cost £285,084.
The university's current logo, designed by Birmingham-based BHMG Marketing, is based on the tiger in the crest originally used when it was awarded university status. The crest itself originated from the Birmingham College of Commerce, one of the institutions that formed the polytechnic in 1971. In 2009, the logo was revised to include the word "CITY" in upper-case on the first line instead of in lower-case on the second.
Moving to the city centre
Since 2011, the university has moved more of its operations to the centre of Birmingham, with teaching at the longstanding Perry Barr site gradually wound down. At the City Centre Campus, the Parkside Building for Design and Media students opened in 2013; the Curzon Building, which houses Business, Law and Social Science courses as well as library, IT and student support facilities opened in 2015; and a new music building for the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire opened in 2017. The university also announced plans to revive the former Belmont Works site nearby as STEAMhouse — a place for small and medium-sized businesses to collaborate with students and academics. This building opened in 2022.
Education courses moved to the City South Campus, where health programmes were already based, leaving the university with two main sites in the city, together with a small number of satellite buildings. Demolition of the Perry Barr campus began in 2018 and was completed by summer 2019.
Campuses
Throughout its history the university has been spread across a number of different sites in Birmingham. As of 2022, the university is at the following campuses:
City Centre Campus, located is the home of the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment inside Millennium Point. The Parkside Building, adjacent to Millennium Point and connected to it via a bridge, opened its doors in 2013, housing Birmingham School of Media and design courses from the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media. The Curzon Building houses the Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences and the School of English, as well as the library, Students' Union and other support services. Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, moved to the City Centre Campus in 2017. In 2023, doors opened to STEAMhouse, a £72 million development on the former Belmont Works building - the new home to Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment.
City South Campus is based in Edgbaston. The main hub is the Mary Seacole Building on Westbourne Road, home to the university's health, education and life sciences courses, and a moderate amount of student accommodation.
Vittoria Street in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, home to Birmingham School of Jewellery.
Margaret Street, home of the School of Fine Art, formerly home of the Birmingham School of Art.
Bournville, home to Birmingham School of Acting.
The university has completed a "flagship" extension to its campus in Birmingham City Centre, next to the existing facilities at Millennium Point. The City Centre Campus is a £150 million scheme, as part of Birmingham's Eastside development, with design and media students moving into Phase 1 of the development in 2013, from the former Gosta Green Campus and City North Campus, respectively. Business, English, law and social sciences followed when Phase 2 of the new building was completed in 2015.
As of September 2017, Birmingham City University invested approximately £220 million into campus infrastructure while moving its campus into the city centre. The university focused on building cutting-edge facilities for students and updating internal systems used for human resources and finance. The university purchased Oracle ERP Butt and HCM Butt to update its IT strategy and standardise employee-facing functions, which became crucial in the institution's efforts to modernise its IT infrastructure.
Facilities
University House (formerly known as the New Technology Institute or NTI) is located close to the City Centre Campus and is home to a number of the university's professional service departments. The International Project Space (IPS) is an art gallery located at the Bournville Centre for Visual Arts.
Moor Lane is a venue for sports, business training and conferences near to City North Campus. Previously, a dedicated sports centre was located behind The Coppice, a student accommodation block next to the former City North Campus, and included tennis courts, bowls, football and rugby pitches, running track and a social club. The university announced a £7 million sports complex would be built on the site, formerly the Ansells Sports Club, with construction to start in mid-2008 for completion in 2009. The Doug Ellis Sports Centre, named after Doug Ellis, opened on 4 January 2010 and includes a fitness suite, workout classes, and a sports hall.
Lawyers at Wragge & Co have advised Birmingham City University on the outsourcing of work for the sports centre to international service company Serco. Under a new 10-year agreement, the FTSE 100 company will run both the sports centre and the existing Pavilion sports facility in Perry Barr.
Accommodation
University Locks is a residential halls of residence located adjacent to the City Centre Campus. The university also offers accommodation in a number of privately owned halls of residence, these include Jennens Court, My Student Village: Birmingham (formerly clv Birmingham) and Curzon Gateway in the city centre and Queens Hospital Close near Five Ways.
Organisation and governance
Chancellors
After the former Birmingham Polytechnic was granted University status it installed the city's Lord Mayor as its Chancellor each year. It was one of only two national institutions to adopt this link with its local region. On 21 July 2016 the university announced that Lenny Henry would become its new Chancellor, for an initial term of five years.
Faculties and schools
Birmingham City University is a large university and has departments covering a wide range of subjects. The university's system was re-organised into four faculties in September 2014, composed of numerous schools and departments.
Faculty of Arts, Design and Media (ADM)
The faculty was created in 2014 by the merger of the Faculty of Performance, Media and English with the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. This faculty includes the art and design related courses taught by the School of Art, School of Architecture and Design, School of Fashion and Textiles, School of Jewellery and School of Visual Communication.
It is also home to the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, an international conservatoire and junior school and a major concert venue for many of Birmingham's principal concert promoters and organisations, hosting over 300 events annually. Their Junior Department provides tuition to over 200 young musicians aged 3 to 18 in classical music, chamber music, North Indian music and jazz. Birmingham School of Acting founded in 1936, merged with the university in 2005, and in September 2017 it merged to become part of the Conservatoire. The school is based in purpose-built facilities within the City Centre campus at Millennium Point which include 11 studios. Alongside its undergraduate programmes in Acting, Stage Management and Applied Theatre, the school offers specialist postgraduate programmes in Professional Voice Practice and an MFA in Acting: The British Tradition.
The School of English has undergraduate English programmes specialising across Literature, Language Studies, Drama and Creative Writing; and joint honours programmes in English and Media.
The Birmingham School of Media, was one of the first media schools in the country to teach media as part of the Skillset Academy Network. Its courses have received approval from the Broadcast Journalism Training Council and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
The Faculty is currently made up of the following Schools:
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts
Birmingham Institute of Jewellery, Fashion and Textiles
Birmingham Institute of Media and English
Birmingham School of Architecture and Design
Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences (BLSS)
This faculty includes Birmingham City Business School, a major centre for business and management education. It incorporates three academic departments and two specialist centres: the Department of Accountancy and Finance, the Department of Business and Marketing, the Department of Management and Human Resources, the Centre for Leadership and Management Practice, and the Centre for Internal Audit, Governance and Risk Management. The Faculty also includes the university's School of Law and School of Social Sciences.
Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences
The Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences (known as HELS) began in 1995 by a merger of Birmingham and Solihull College of Nursing and Midwifery, West Midlands School of Radiography and the University of Central England. In 2002, the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) joined the university to offer Ministry of Defence students and nurses better key skills in nurse training.
It also provides courses for intending teachers, serving teachers or those simply interested in education issues covering the entire range of school phases from infant to continuing education, at every study level from full-time undergraduate to postgraduate level and PhD.
It is formed of four schools:
School of Nursing and Midwifery
School of Health Sciences
School of Defence Healthcare Education
School of Education and Social Work
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment
The Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment, (known as CEBE) based entirely in Millennium Point until 2023 and later incorporating STEAMhouse as the new home going forward, is a national centre of excellence for learning, innovation and technology transfer. The faculty was temporarily known as the Faculty of Technology, Innovation and Development (TID) from 2008 until 2009, when the university relaunched the faculty through the merger of three of the more successful departments—the Technology Innovation Centre (TIC), School of Computing, and the School of Property Construction. It now has two schools:
School of Computing and Digital Technology
School of Engineering and the Built Environment:
Built Environment
Engineering
Libraries and collections
The university has four libraries across Birmingham on all campuses that contain around 950,000 books and 9,000 print and electronic journals:
Curzon Library (located at the City Centre Campus and houses the Conservatoire library collection);
Mary Seacole Library (located at the City South Campus);
Margaret Street Library (School of Art);
Vittoria Street Library (School of Jewellery).
Kenrick Library, named after William Kenrick in recognition of his role as the first Chairman of Governors when the Polytechnic was formed in 1971, was located at the City North Campus. The library closed in May 2018 when the remaining schools based at Perry Barr moved to the City South Campus.
Controversy over Mapplethorpe
In 1998, the university was involved in controversy when a book by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Mapplethorpe (1992), was confiscated. A final year undergraduate student was writing a paper on Mapplethorpe's work and intended to illustrate the paper with a few photographs. She took the photographs to the local photo-studio to be developed and the photo-studio informed West Midlands Police because of the unusual nature of the images. The police confiscated the library book from the student and informed the university that the book would have to be destroyed. If the university agreed to the destruction, no further action would be taken.
The university Vice-Chancellor, Peter Knight, took the view—supported by the Senate—that the book was a legitimate book for the university library to hold and that the action of the police was a serious infringement of academic freedom. The Vice-Chancellor was interviewed by the police, under caution, with a view to prosecution under the terms of the Obscene Publications Act, which defines obscenity as material that is likely to deprave and corrupt. The police focused on one particular image, 'Jim and Tom, Sausalito 1977', which depicts one man urinating into the mouth of another.
After the interview with the Vice-Chancellor, a file was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has to take the decision as to whether or not to proceed with a trial. After a delay of about six months, the affair came to an end when the DPP informed Knight that no action would be taken as "there was insufficient evidence to support a successful prosecution on this occasion". The original book was returned, in a slightly tattered state, and restored to the university library.
Partner institutions
The university runs access and foundation programmes through an international network of associated universities and further education colleges.
Academic profile
Research
The university has five Centres of Research Excellence, which are the main focus of its research activity. Following the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise conducted by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Birmingham Post reported that more than 70 per cent of research work submitted by Birmingham City University—including in business and management studies, education, English, social work and social policy, and town and country planning—was "officially recognised as of an international standard", and 15 per cent of that work was "rated as world leading". Its art and design submission was among the ten highest ranked in the country, and Birmingham Conservatoire was rated one of the top three conservatoires, and the best outside London. The university was ranked sixty-third based on average assessment scores.
Rankings and reputation
The university has a number of courses accredited by Creative Skillset, the government's skills sector council for audio, visual and creative industries. With regard to post-production, the university also has Avid Mentor status, and is the Midlands' accredited training centre for Apple's Final Cut editing software.
For health and social care, Birmingham City University was awarded national recognition as a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The university has an on-site virtual operating suite for health students, the first at a university in England. In the Smithers-Robinson League Table, for initial teacher training, Birmingham City University and three other institutions are consistently ranked top ten. Ofsted inspection scores for teacher education courses are frequently among the best.
Student life
Roughly half of the university's full-time students are from the West Midlands, and a large percentage of these are from ethnic minorities. The university runs access and foundation programmes through an international network of associated universities and further education colleges, and it has the highest intake of international students in the Birmingham area. For 2009 entry, applications rose by 37 per cent from 2008, one of the biggest increases at any university. There are almost six applications per place and a typical entry tariff of 112 UCAS points for honours degree programmes; other courses' requirements vary.
Students' Union
Birmingham City University Students' Union (abbreviated to BCUSU) has its main offices at the city centre campus. There are several reception offices located at other campuses. BCUSU is affiliated with the National Union of Students, and all students are automatically members of the union.
Student media at the Union comprises a student magazine; Polygon, which originally went into publication in the 1980s and, after a short period under other names, was brought back to life in 2019, and the award-winning student radio station; Scratch Radio, which is housed in the Curzon Building at the City Centre Campus and broadcasts on DAB in the city and online.
The student union of Birmingham Polytechnic was condemned in November 1974 when its council passed a resolution supporting IRA terrorism. The polytechnic's student radio station, then known as Radio G, was the runner-up in the 1989 Guardian/NUS Student Media Awards.
Now Birmingham City Students' Union, it holds elections every year to elect the five full-time Sabbatical Officers who run the union and act as its Company Directors.
Notable staff and alumni
Current and former staff of the university and its former entities include novelists Jim Crace and Stephen Booth, nurse-author Bethann Siviter, journalist Paul Bradshaw, Nigerian researcher and pollster Bell Ihua, scientist Kevin Warwick, environmentalist Chris Baines, politicians Khalid Mahmood (MP for Perry Barr) and Lynne Jones (former MP for Selly Oak), former Member of the European Parliament David Hallam, HSBC CEO Noel Quinn and former Chief Inspector of Probation for England and Wales Paul McDowell.
Notable graduates of the university and its predecessor institutions working in broadcasting include children's television presenter Kirsten O'Brien, sports TV presenter Mary Rhodes, radio and TV presenters Fiona Phillips and Margherita Taylor, investigative journalist Mark Williams-Thomas and Yemisi Akinbobola, founder of IQ4News and African Women in the Media. Several work in broadcast journalism, such as Sky News news presenter Marverine Cole, and BBC news presenter Charlie Stayt.
Art and design alumni include cartoonist Alex Hughes, artist Barbara Walker, fashion designer Betty Jackson, photographer Ravi Deepres, artists Jack Skinner and Rob Pepper, industrial product designer Hans Ramzan, British-born architect Laurie Baker (1917–2007), former Renault chief designer Patrick le Quément, and Saiman Miah, designer of the £5 Olympic coins for the 2012 Olympic Games.
Graduates in the performing arts include musicians Roy Priest (formerly of Sweet Jesus) and Nick Duffy, singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy, actors Jimi Mistry, Catherine Tyldesley and Tom Lister, comedian Frank Skinner, singer and The X Factor contestant Rhydian Roberts, and bass guitarist John Taylor, founder of Duran Duran.
See also
Armorial of UK universities
List of universities in the UK
Post-1992 universities
References
External links
Photos from Birmingham City University
Birmingham City University Students' Union
Birmingham City University : Future Media
BCU Open Access Research Repository
Universities and colleges established in 1971
1971 establishments in England
Buildings and structures in Birmingham, West Midlands
Culture in Birmingham, West Midlands
History of Birmingham, West Midlands
Education in Birmingham, West Midlands
Universities UK
University Alliance
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley%20Porter
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Shirley Porter
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Shirley, Lady Porter (née Cohen; born 29 November 1930), styled between 1991 and 2003 as Dame Shirley Porter, is a British politician who led Westminster City Council in London, representing the Conservative Party. She is the daughter and heiress of Sir Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco supermarkets. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991 by John Major after delivering victory in Westminster for the Conservatives in the 1990 elections, but was stripped of this title in 2003.
While leader of Westminster City Council, Porter oversaw the "Building Stable Communities" policy — later described as the "homes for votes scandal" — and was consequently accused of gerrymandering. The policy was judged illegal by the district auditor, and a surcharge of £27m levied on her in 1996. This was later raised to £42 million with interest and costs. She eventually settled in 2004, paying a final settlement of £12.3 million.
Porter moved to Herzliya Pituah, Israel in 1994 during the inquiry, and returned to London in 2006. She helped establish the Porter Centre for Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University, which opened in 2014.
Background and political career
Shirley Cohen was born in Upper Clapton, London, on 29 November 1930. Her father, Jacob Edward "Jack" Cohen, was the founder and owner of Tesco, and her mother was Sarah "Cissie" (née Fox), the daughter of a master tailor. Cohen opened the first two Tesco stores in 1931. By 1939, he owned over 100 Tesco stores across the country. The family lived at 7 Gunton Road, Hackney, a former council house in the East End of London that Jack had purchased from Hackney Council with the help of a £1,000 council loan.
Between 1939 and 1945 she boarded at Warren School For Girls in Worthing, Sussex. She then spent a year at La Ramée, a finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland, followed by a year at St. Godric's Secretarial and Language School in Hampstead, London. She married Leslie Porter (10 July 1920 – 20 March 2005) on 26 June 1949 at the New West End Synagogue, Paddington, London. They had a son, John, who died in 2021; as well as a daughter, Linda. In 1960, Porter was involved in the exposure of ten golf clubs in north London for discriminating against Jews.
Shirley Porter became a magistrate before entering local politics. Looking back at that time, she said "I remember my great lack of confidence, that I came in there and for the first time and I wasn't somebody's daughter, somebody's wife, somebody's mother. That's a very very mind-boggling feeling." In 1974, she was elected to Westminster City Council as a Conservative councillor for Hyde Park Ward. In the early 1980s, she chaired the Environment Committee, calling for strict enforcement of litter laws.
In 1983, she was elected as leader of the council. Her initiatives and policies included the Say No to Drugs Campaign and the Plain English Campaign and she was also involved in the abolition of the Greater London Council. She became the Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1990. after delivering victory in Westminster for the Conservatives, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991 by John Majorbut was stripped of this title in 2003.
Initiatives
Litter
Earlier in her career, Porter garnered national attention for her involvement and implementation of anti-litter campaigns in Westminster. In a 1985 interview with The Times''' Shirley Lowe, Porter explained that litter was the reason why she had first entered local politics in 1974. She said: "I was walking along the street with a friend one day and it was filthy and I said, 'My God, somebody ought to do something about this,' and my friend said 'Why don't you?'" Despite sitting on the Highways and Works Committee, which was responsible for street cleaning and refuse collection, Porter did not mention litter again until late 1976 following a visit to Leningrad and Moscow. On her return she told the Paddington Mercury of her distaste for the Soviet regime but continued "one thing they must be given credit for is the cleanliness you find everywhere... I should hate to think that we need such a repressive regime to get our cities cleaned to their standards."
She soon joined the "Clean Up London" campaign. She encouraged hoteliers to join forces to attack the squalor that was affecting their businesses. Her enthusiasm also aided her election as vice-chairman of Highways and Work on 28 June 1977. Her anti-litter activities within the CUL campaign continued. The Paddington Mercury described Porter as "fast winning a reputation as Paddington's Mrs Mops". She also mobilised schoolchildren in her campaign, raising brooms over their shoulders like rifles at the Lord Mayor's Show and singing "Pick up your litter and put it in the bin". By 1978, Porter had been elected as Chairman of the Highways and Works Committee, in the same year she launched the "Mr Clean Up" anti-litter campaign.
In January 1979, a series of strikes began to unfold as part of the "Winter of Discontent". Westminster was struck by the striking rubbish collectors and mounting waste in the streets. As a result, Porter opened 33 emergency rubbish dumps across the borough. Porter told press reporters that they would privatise rubbish collection if the strikers did not return to work. This practice was installed later on.
Porter's successive litter campaigns included the "Cleaner London Campaign", followed by the "Cleaner City Initiative" in 1980. Activities included the deployment of additional street sweepers in particularly squalor-ridden areas of Westminster for a 2–3 week period. Porter also increased the regularity of rubbish collections and convinced local businesses to sponsor litter bins.
She threatened to resign in September 1980 when her department of Highways and Works faced a £1 million budget cut; "I will resign in the event that they cut our basic services and that means keeping our frontline services and a clean and litter-free city." In 1981, Porter launched "Operation Spring Clean", a cleaning blitz of the West End.
In a 1991 appearance on Desert Island Discs, Porter said: "I really just feel so strongly that it isn't right for people to live in a dirty environment, and in an unpleasant environment. And it isn't just litter: I’m talking about the whole quality of life. When you live in pleasant surroundings, I think you are a better person."
Soho sex trade
In the late 1970s, Soho residents were troubled by the growing sex industry. Between 1965 and 1982, the number of sex shops had risen from 31 to 65. In 1982 Porter became Chairman of the General Purposes Committee and set to work in alleviating the issue. Porter and her aides soon proceeded with a fact-finding mission. The Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 stipulated that Westminster could shut down any pornographer that did not hold a licence. Porter soon decided that the number of sex shops in Soho would be limited to 20. The legislation also ensured that any successful applicants would require a minimum of six months residency in the UK as well as a clean police record. It was also legislated that sex shops would have to conceal their practice with blinds. Other measures included the requirement of business owners to keep a register of their staff. By February 1983, just 13 sex shops remained in Soho.
Homes for votes scandal
The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected in Westminster in the 1986 local council elections. Fearing that they would eventually lose control unless there was a permanent change in the social composition of the borough, Porter instituted a secret policy known as 'Building Stable Communities'.
Eight wards were selected as 'key wards' – in public it was claimed that these wards were subject to particular 'stress factors' leading to a decline in the population of Westminster. In reality, secret documents showed that the wards most subject to these stress factors were rather different, and that the eight wards chosen had been the most marginal in the City Council elections of 1986. Three – Bayswater, Maida Vale and Millbank, had been narrowly won by Labour, a further three, St James's, Victoria and Cavendish had been narrowly lost by them, in West End ward an Independent had split the two seats with the Conservatives, while in Hamilton Terrace the Conservatives were threatened by the Social Democratic Party.
An important part of this policy was the designation of much of Westminster's council housing for commercial sale, rather than re-letting when the properties became vacant. The designated housing was concentrated in those wards most likely to change hands to Labour in the elections. Much of this designated housing lay vacant for months or even years before it could be sold. To prevent its occupation by squatters or drug dealers, these flats were fitted with security doors provided by the company Sitex at a cost to local taxpayers of £50 per week per door.
Other council services were subverted to ensure the re-election of the majority party in the 1990 elections. In services such as street cleaning, pavement repair and environmental improvements, marginal wards were given priority while safely Labour and safely Conservative parts of the city were neglected.
Another vital part of 'Building Stable Communities' was the removal of homeless voters and others who lived in hostels and were perceived less likely to vote Conservative, such as students and nurses, from the City of Westminster. While this initially proved successful, other Councils in London and the Home Counties soon became aware of homeless individuals and families from Westminster, many with complex mental health and addiction problems, being relocated to their area.
As the City Council found it more and more difficult to move homeless people outside Westminster, increasingly the logic of the 'Building Stable Communities' programme required the concentration of homeless people within safe wards in the city. In 1989 over 100 homeless families were removed from hostels in marginal wards and placed in the Hermes and Chantry Point tower blocks in the safe Labour ward of Harrow Road. These blocks contained a dangerous form of asbestos, and should have either been cleaned up or demolished a decade before, but had remained in place due to funding disputes between the City Council and the by now abolished Greater London Council. Many of the flats had had their heating and sanitation systems destroyed by the council to prevent their use as drug dens, others had indeed been taken over by heroin users and still others had pigeons making nests out of asbestos, with the level in flats in Hermes and Chantry Points well above safe norms. One former homeless refuge was sold off at a discounted price to private developers and converted into private flats for young professional people at a cost to the ratepayer of £2.6 million.
Labour councillors and members of the public referred this policy to the District Auditor to check on its legality, and as a result it was ordered to be halted in 1989 whilst investigations continued. In 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected in Westminster in a landslide election victory in which they won all but one of the wards targeted by Building Stable Communities.
Porter stood down as Leader of the council in 1991, and served in the ceremonial position of Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991–92. She resigned from the council in 1993, and retired to live in Israel with her husband.
Court cases and surcharge
In May 1996, after legal investigation work, the District Auditor finally concluded that the 'Building Stable Communities' policy had been illegal, and ordered Porter and five others to pay the cost of the illegal policy, which were calculated as £31.6 million. This judgement was upheld by the High Court in 1997 with liability reduced solely to Porter and her Deputy Leader, David Weeks. After the judgement, the scandal and its effects were discussed in Parliament on 14 May 1996.
In 1998, BBC Two screened a documentary, Looking for Shirley, which profiled Westminster City Council's efforts to recover the surcharge and Porter's efforts to move her estimated £70m assets into offshore accounts and overseas investments.
The Court of Appeal overturned the judgement in 1999, but the House of Lords reinstated it in 2001 (see Porter v Magill [2001] UKHL 67, [2002] 2 AC 357). Including interest, the surcharge now stood at £43.3 million. In Israel, Porter transferred substantial parts of her great wealth to other members of her family and into secret trusts in an effort to avoid the charge, and subsequently claimed assets of only £300,000.
Final agreement
On 24 April 2004, the still Conservative controlled Westminster City Council and the Audit Commission announced that an agreement had been reached for a payment of £12.3 million in settlement of the debt. The council declared that the cost of legal action would be far greater than the amount to be recovered, while Porter still maintained her innocence. The decision was appealed by Labour members on the Council and the District Auditor began another investigation. The ensuing report, issued on 15 March 2007, accepted the position of the council that further action would not be cost effective. The Auditor further stated that Westminster had recovered substantially all of Porter's personal wealth and had acted at all times in the best interests of the taxpayers of the city.
In November 2009, ahead of a BBC radio play, Shirleymander, dramatising the principal events of Shirley Porter's time as leader at Westminster council, Council leader Colin Barrow apologised unreservedly to all those affected by the "gerrymandering" policy. He criticised Shirley Porter by name for the first time and added that her actions were "the opposite of the council's policies today".
The Labour Party in London has continued its pursuit of Porter and following the settlement, Porter has returned to Westminster to live, buying a £1.5m flat with family money. The former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, subsequently requested that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, commence an investigation as to whether or not Porter committed perjury or other offences, during the conduct of the 'homes for votes' case.
Westminster cemeteries scandal
The Westminster cemeteries scandal was a British political scandal which began in January 1987 when Westminster City Council sold three cemeteries, three lodges, one flat, a crematorium and over 12 acres of prime development land in London for a total of 85 pence, on Porter's orders; the cemeteries were re-sold by the purchaser for £1.25 million on the same day that he had acquired them.
Residence
It is in question whether Porter is now a full-time resident in the United Kingdom, considering her commitments to the Porter Foundation and the trust's various Israel-based projects. In November 2007, The Jerusalem Post cited her as a "permanent fixture" at the annual Balfour Dinner hosted by the Israel Britain and Commonwealth Association, as she does "reside in Israel".
Philanthropy
Porter was a governor of Tel Aviv University.
The Porter Foundation is a UK-registered charitable trust established in 1970 by the family of Sir Jack Cohen. In particular, Lady Porter and her late husband, Sir Leslie Porter, donated funds to causes such as Tel Aviv University, where the latter became chancellor. The foundation has given several naming donations to the University: the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, the Cohen-Porter Family Swimming Pool, the Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, the Cohen-Porter United Kingdom Building of Life Sciences, the Porter Super Centre for Environmental and Ecological Research. The foundation also provides scholarships and has paid for equipment and books.
In 2000, the Porter Foundation, then headed by (then Dame) Shirley Porter, founded the Porter School of Environmental Studies (PSES) at Tel Aviv University as a multi-disciplinary school of environmental studies. Porter was personally involved in the design and construction of the school's new building on the Tel Aviv University campus. The LEED Platinum-graded building was scheduled to open in May 2014. It has been built according to international standards of energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive design, making it the University's first "green building" and one of the first of its kind in Israel. The building's capsule design and energy-saving features was designed to make it a "living laboratory" for teaching and research on green architecture, both within the University and outside academia.
In addition to founding the PSES, Porter has been involved with the Council for a Beautiful Israel and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and on 23 April 2009 she was awarded the prestigious 'Green Globe' award for her contribution to Israel's environmental movement.
Another philanthropic project funded by the Porter Foundation is the Porter Senior Citizen Centre in Jaffa, a facility for elderly and poor Jews in the area (mostly Sephardic Bulgarians).
The Porter Foundation also built the Daniel Marcus Nautical Centre, in memory of Lady Shirley and Sir Leslie Porter's grandson Daniel Amichai Marcus who was killed in a car crash in Israel in 1993 at the age of 21 while on vacation with friends from their military service.
Other causes include endowing galleries in Britain's National Portrait Gallery, where The Porter Gallery exists on the ground floor, the Royal Academy and the V&A.
Public image and portrayals
In a review for The Guardian of Nothing Like a Dame, Porter's biography by journalist Andrew Hosken, Nicholas Lezard described her in the following terms: "She remains, by a considerable margin, the most corrupt British public figure in living memory, with the possible exception of Robert Maxwell". In the London Review of Books review of the same book Jenny Diski called the Homes for Votes scandal Porter's "biggest, stupidest and most cynical act of corruption". Diski, without justifying Porter's behaviour, accused many of Porter's critics of "snobbery and an undeclared racism". She cited the "echo of something more than simple class snobbery in the judgments made of her voice and decor".
In November 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the radio play Shirleymander, which dramatised the events of Porter's time as leader of Westminster City Council, with the role of Porter played by Tracy Ann Oberman. In 2018, a stage adaptation of the play starred Jessica Martin as Porter and had a brief run at the Playground Theatre in North Kensington, west London.
See also
Gerrymandering
List of philanthropistsShirleymanderWestminster cemeteries scandalWestminster City Council v Duke of Westminster''
References
Notes
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links
The Porter School of Environmental Studies
The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies
1930 births
English Ashkenazi Jews
English people of Polish-Jewish descent
Israeli Ashkenazi Jews
People from Upper Clapton
Councillors in the City of Westminster
Conservative Party (UK) councillors
Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Living people
English philanthropists
English environmentalists
British women environmentalists
Israeli environmentalists
Israeli women environmentalists
Tesco people
Tel Aviv University
20th-century Israeli women politicians
Jewish British politicians
English people of Russian-Jewish descent
Leaders of local authorities of England
Homes for votes scandal
Women councillors in England
Wives of knights
Deputy Lieutenants of Greater London
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing%20Anglican%20movement
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Continuing Anglican movement
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The Continuing Anglican movement, also known as the Anglican Continuum, encompasses a number of Christian churches, principally based in North America, that have an Anglican identity and tradition but are not part of the Anglican Communion.
These churches generally believe that traditional forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some churches of the Anglican Communion, but that they, the Continuing Anglicans, are preserving or "continuing" both Anglican lines of apostolic succession, and historic Anglican belief and practice.
The term was first used in 1948 to describe members of the Church of England in Nandyal who refused to enter the emerging Church of South India, which united the Anglican Church of India, Burma and Ceylon with the Reformed (Presbyterian and Congregationalist) and Methodist churches in India. Today, however, the term usually refers to the churches that descend from the Congress of St. Louis, at which the foundation was laid for a new Anglican church in North America. Some church bodies that predate the Congress of St. Louis or are of more recent origin have referred to themselves as "Continuing Anglican", although they have no connection to the Congress of St. Louis and may not adhere to all of its principles.
The churches defined as "Continuing Anglican" are separate from GAFCON and the Anglican Church of North America.
Relations with the Anglican Communion
Continuing Anglican churches were formed by clergy and lay people who left churches belonging to the Anglican Communion. The Continuing Anglican churches believe that those churches have been compromised by adopting secular cultural standards and liberal approaches to theology. Continuing Anglicans generally believe that the faith of some churches in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury have become either heretical or heterodox and therefore have not sought to be affiliated with the Anglican Communion. Although the term Anglican historically refers also to those churches in communion with the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury, many Continuing churches, particularly those in the United States, use the term Anglican to differentiate themselves from the Episcopal Church of the United States, which they consider to be heterodox.
At the 1998 Lambeth Conference, Resolution IV.11, Continuing Churches, was added, which asked the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates' Meeting to consider how best to initiate and maintain dialogue with such groups with a view to the reconciliation of all who partake of the Anglican tradition.
Theological unity and diversity
Anglicanism in general has historically viewed itself as a via media between the Reformed tradition and the Lutheran tradition, and after the Oxford Movement, certain clerics have sought a balance of the emphases of Catholicism and Protestantism, while tolerating a range of expressions of evangelicalism and ceremony. Clergy and laity from all Anglican churchmanship traditions have been active in the formation of the Continuing Anglican movement.
There are high church, broad church, and low church Continuing Anglican jurisdictions. Some are Anglo-Catholic with richly ceremonial liturgical practices. These include the Anglican Province of Christ the King, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of America, and the Anglican Church in America. Others that belong to the Reformed Anglican tradition, such as the United Episcopal Church of North America, support the Thirty-Nine Articles and, in some parishes, alternate Morning Prayer with Holy Communion.
The Continuing churches in the United States reject the 1979 revision of the Book of Common Prayer made by The Episcopal Church and instead use the American 1928 version or earlier official versions of the Book of Common Prayer for their services.
The liturgical use of the 1611 Authorized Version of the Bible (known in the United States as the King James Version) is also a common feature. This is done for many reasons, including aesthetics, and in opposition to what the churches regard as liberal or progressive theology which is said to characterize some translations of more recent origin.
The Affirmation of St. Louis, adopted at the Congress of St. Louis (September 14–16, 1977) by over 2000 concerned bishops, clergy, and laypeople, and, to a lesser extent, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, serve as a standard of faith and unity for most Continuing churches.
History
Origins
The Continuing Anglican movement originated in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Anglican Church of Canada. Related churches in other countries were founded later.
In 1976, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America voted to approve the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopate and also provisionally adopted a new and doctrinally controversial Book of Common Prayer, later called the 1979 version. During the following year, 1977, several thousand dissenting clergy and laypersons responded to those actions by meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, under the auspices of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, and adopting a theological statement, the Affirmation of St. Louis. The Affirmation expressed a determination "to continue in the Catholic Faith, Apostolic Order, Orthodox Worship, and Evangelical Witness of the traditional Anglican Church, doing all things necessary for the continuance of the same".
Out of this meeting came a new church with the provisional name "Anglican Church in North America (Episcopal)". The first bishops of the new church, later named the Anglican Catholic Church, were consecrated on January 28, 1978, in Denver, Colorado. The main Continuing Anglican churches claim Apostolic succession, originating from The Episcopal Church from before the date of ordination of women to the priesthood. It is also stated that there are Old Catholic and Polish National Catholic Church consecrations in the line of succession.
In Denver, the first bishop of the new church, Charles Dale David Doren, formerly the Archdeacon of the Diocese of Taejon in South Korea, was consecrated by the Rt Rev’d Albert Arthur Chambers, formerly the Episcopal Church's Bishop of Springfield (PECUSA #588) and Acting Metropolitan of the ACNA.
Joining Bishop Chambers in the consecration of Charles Doren was the Rt Rev’d Francisco de Jesus Pagtakhan of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church. Letters of Consent and Desire for the Doren consecration were in hand from the Rt Rev’d Mark Pae (Taejon, Korea) and Rt Rev'd Charles Boynton. The newly consecrated Charles Doren then joined with Chambers and Pagtakhan in consecrating as bishops James Orin Mote, Robert S. Morse, and Peter Francis Watterson. Watterson left the movement shortly afterward and became a Roman Catholic priest.
What had provisionally been called the Anglican Church in North America (Episcopal), was renamed Anglican Catholic Church at the constitutional assembly in Denver, 18–21 October 1978. "Anglican Catholic Church" had previously been considered as a possible alternative name of the Protestant Episcopal Church USA before the decision to adopt the name The Episcopal Church. The new church continued to appeal to disaffected Episcopalians to join. Some parishes of The Episcopal Church attempted to join the Anglican Catholic Church with their church building and property, leading to numerous court challenges. Only a few parishes were able to retain their property outright, such as St. James, Cleveland. By 1985, it was estimated that up to 20,000 people had left The Episcopal Church for the newly formed Anglican Catholic Church.
Early fractures and realignment
During the process of ratifying the new church's constitution, disputes developed that split its dioceses into two American churches and a separate Canadian church. These were the Anglican Catholic Church led by James Orin Mote, the Diocese of Christ the King (now the Anglican Province of Christ the King) led by Robert S. Morse, and the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. In 1981, Charles Doren and others left the Anglican Catholic Church to found the United Episcopal Church of North America in opposition to the alleged inhospitality of the other jurisdictions towards low churchmen.
In 1983, a statement of unity led to the coalescence of the Anglican Catholic Church. In 1984 a portion of the Anglican Episcopal Church of North America merged with the ACC to become the non-geographical Diocese of St. Paul.
In 1991 a number of parishes left the Anglican Catholic Church to merge with the American Episcopal Church and form the Anglican Church in America. Some of those later formed the Anglican Province of America after the resignation of Bishop Anthony F. M. Clavier as bishop ordinary of Diocese of the Eastern United States (ACA). In 1997 additional parishes left the Anglican Catholic Church and formed the Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite).
In 1999, Bishop Richard Boyce requested membership in the Anglican Province of America as the Diocese of the West, and in 2003 the Anglican Rite Synod in the Americas (ARSA) under Bishops Larry Shaver (formerly of the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Jurisdiction of the Americas) and Herbert M. Groce were received into the Anglican Province of America as the non-geographical Diocese of St. Augustine, later renamed the Diocese of Mid-America.
On March 5, 2003, Ash Wednesday, the Diocese of the Holy Cross seceded from the Anglican Province of Christ the King over questions surrounding the successor of Robert S. Morse, James Provence. On July 25, 2007, Bishop Rocco Florenza and most of the parishes in the Eastern Diocese of the Anglican Province of Christ the King withdrew, joining the Anglican Church in America.
The 2007/08 Directory of Traditional Anglican and Episcopal Parishes, published by The Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, contained information on over 900 parishes affiliated with either the Continuing Anglican churches or the Anglican realignment movement.
International growth
Some Continuing Anglican bodies have added dioceses outside North America. The two largest international jurisdictions are the Traditional Anglican Church and the Anglican Catholic Church. The Traditional Anglican Church comprises national provinces with dioceses, parishes and missions in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Great Britain, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Salvador, South Africa, the United States, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela.
The Anglican Catholic Church has a presence on six continents and nearly two dozen countries. In 1984 the five dioceses of the Church of India (CIPBC) were received by the Anglican Catholic Church and constituted as its second province, but they rescinded communion between 2013 and 2017 over matters relating to the status of the second province and became independent. In 2018, Archbishop Mark Haverland and the Most Rev. John Augustine, Metropolitan of the CIPBC, signed an agreement restoring communio in sacris. In September 2021, by a vote of the provincial synod of the Anglican Catholic Church, a third province, the Province of Southern Africa, was established, comprising five dioceses in South Africa and the one diocese in Zimbabwe.
The Anglican Province of America also includes global partnerships, with links to congregations in Ecuador, Haiti, Philippines, and India.
Reunification efforts
Grassroots partnerships have been formed between parishes in geographical regions. The Anglican Fellowship of the Delaware Valley, so named because it encompassed Anglican churches and missions within the Delaware Valley, was formed in 2003 and was led by Bishop Paul C. Hewett of the Diocese of the Holy Cross. It was an association of Anglican churches in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey that subscribed to the Affirmation of St. Louis and affiliated with Forward in Faith-UK. In 2005, the Anglican Fellowship of the Delaware Valley sponsored the conference The Affirmation of St. Louis: Seeking a Path to Reconciliation and Unity, which brought together traditionalists in the Episcopal Church and members of the continuing movement to discuss a path to jurisdictional unity. In 2006, representatives from seven Anglican churches announced the formation of Common Cause Appalachia, an alliance of Anglican churches in the Appalachian area of the Southeast United States, to which some continuing Anglican churches in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee belonged.
In September 2004, Bishops and clergy of the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), and the Anglican Church in America (ACA), together with some clergy of Forward in Faith, made a joint pilgramage to the tomb of Bishop Charles Grafton in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
ACC-APCK-UECNA
From 2003 to 2011, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of Christ the King, and the United Episcopal Church of North America (UECNA) explored opportunities for greater cooperation and the possibility of achieving organic unity. In 2003, Archbishop John-Charles Vockler of the ACC in a letter, called for prayers for healing of the damaged relations between the ACC and the APCK. On May 17, 2007, Archbishop Mark Haverland of the ACC signed an intercommunion agreement negotiated with the United Episcopal Church of North America. In July, Archbishop Haverland published a statement on church unity, calling on UECNA and the APCK to join him in building "full organic unity." Bishop Presley Hutchens of the ACC addressed delegates at the UECNA convention in October 2008 and discussed the possibility of uniting the ACC and UECNA. Although well received at the time, there was a feeling among many of the delegates that the proposal was being rushed, and that no proper consideration was being given to the theological, constitutional, and canonical issues thrown up by the move. In January 2009, one bishop from each jurisdiction consecrated three suffragan bishops in St. Louis, intending that they serve all three jurisdictions. Moves towards unity with the Anglican Catholic Church were referred for further discussion and subsequently stalled in 2011 by the decision of UECNA to remain an independent jurisdiction.
Approaches and responses to the Roman Catholic Church
One Continuing Anglican church body, the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), sought reunion with the Roman Catholic Church. In 2004, Archbishop John Hepworth of the TAC reported that based on eight years of dialogue Rome could recognize the TAC as an Anglican church in full communion with the Holy See. In 2007, the TAC made a formal proposal to the Roman Catholic Church for admission into "full corporate and sacramental union" with that church in a manner that would permit the retention of some of its Anglican heritage. The Vatican announced on July 5, 2008, that it was giving serious consideration to appeals received from various Anglican groups seeking union with itself, observing that "the situation within the Anglican Communion in general has become markedly more complex." On October 29, 2009, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced Pope Benedict XVI's intention to create a new type of ecclesiastical structure, called a "personal ordinariate", for groups of Anglicans entering into full communion with the see of Rome. The initial response to this announcement was not entirely positive.
On November 4, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI signed an apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus. The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America – the American province of the TAC – responded on March 3, 2010, voting unanimously to request acceptance under the personal ordinariate provision. Within months, however, a majority of the eight ACA bishops made known their opposition to the move, and the church declared its intention to remain a Continuing Anglican body.
The Most Rev. Mark Haverland (ACC) wrote a response to Anglicanorum coetibus, declining to participate. While the Most Rev. Walter H. Grundorf (APA) offered an initial cautious welcome of Rome's offer, there was no interest for the Anglican Province of America as an institution to join.
In 2012, the TAC College of Bishops met and formally accepted the resignation of Archbishop John Hepworth. Archbishop John Hepworth was officially expelled from the TAC College of Bishops on October 10, 2012.
Common Cause Partnership
Through the Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas, the Anglican Province of America was associated with the Common Cause Partnership, an organization seeking to unite various Anglican jurisdictions to form a new conservative province of the Anglican Communion in North America. But in January 2008 declined to become a full partner. When, in July 2008, the APA voted to delay a decision on its membership until a number of contentious issues were resolved in the Common Cause Partnership, including whether or not to accept the practice of ordaining women, the APA's Diocese of the West disaffiliated. It subsequently joined the Reformed Episcopal Church and, through her, the Common Cause Partnership. On March 4, 2009, the Anglican Province of America (APA) reorganized its Diocese of the West (DOW) with parishes that had chosen not to follow Richard Boyce out of the APA.
North American Anglican Conference and UECNA
The Anglican Episcopal Church and the Diocese of the Great Lakes formed the North American Anglican Conference for mutual assistance between "Biblical Anglican" churches. A suffragan bishop was consecrated for the Anglican Episcopal Church in late 2008 by its presiding bishop and three bishops of the Diocese of the Great Lakes. In July, 2014, the Diocese of the Great Lakes, under Bishop David Hustwick, joined the UECNA as its diocese for the Great Lakes states and eastern Canada. In January, 2015, a petition was received from Bishop George Conner of the Anglican Episcopal Church at the behest of that jurisdiction's standing committee asking for admission as a non-geographical diocese of the UECNA. This was granted on February 11, 2015.
Anglican Joint Synods – G-4 to G-3
In January 2016, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Province of America, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross reached a formal accord. Forming the Anglican Joint Synods, a "Group of 4" churches, called the G-4, pursuing eventual corporate unity. A joint synod was planned for all four jurisdictions to discuss common mission and unity.
On October 6, 2017, the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of America, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross signed a communio in sacris agreement at jointly held synods in Atlanta, Georgia, pledging to pursue full, institutional, and organic union.
On October 13, 2017, Archbishop Shane Janzen, then primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion and Metropolitan of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, together with Bishop Craig Botterill, released a statement expressing the hope that the "initiative will lead to further ecumenical dialogue, cooperation and reconciliation between and among the Continuing Anglican Churches around the world, as well as here in Canada".
In 2019, a joint mission and evangelism ministry called Continuing Forward was formed for these G-4 jurisdictions. All four were represented at a second joint synod held January 13–17, 2020 in Atlanta.
On September 23, 2021, the Diocese of the Holy Cross voted to join the Anglican Catholic Church as a non-geographical diocese, making the "Group of 4" a "Group of 3" (G-3) churches.
On February 16, 2022, the primates of the Anglican Province of America and the Traditional Anglican Church announced the establishment of a full communion agreement between the two traditional Anglican churches. On May 22, 2022, Rogation Sunday, the Anglican Province of America and the Traditional Anglican Church officially signed the agreement of full sacramental communion at Saint Barnabas Cathedral, Dunwoody, Georgia.
Dialogue with the Polish National Catholic Church
A dialogue between the G-3 (at the time, G-4) churches and the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) opened, resulting from the desire to restore the kind of intercommunion that the PNCC had shared with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States before 1978. The meetings began after representatives of the PNCC were invited and attended the Anglican Joint Synods of the G-4 in 2017. The dialogue has addressed various issues and ways the churches can continue to grow closer together and achieve unity.
The first official dialogue was held January 15, 2019, in Dunwoody, Georgia. The Jurisdictions of the G-4 were represented by their presiding bishops and archbishops from the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Province of America, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross. Also in attendance was a bishop of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC). The PNCC was represented by three bishops, including Prime Bishop Anthony Mikovsky and Bishop Paul Sobiechowski, and two senior priests.
On July 28, 2020, the G-4/PNCC Ecumenical Dialogue Group met via Zoom.
On October 5–6, 2021, the G-3/PNCC Ecumenical Dialogue Group met at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Manchester, New Hampshire.
On March 15–16, 2022, the G-3/PNCC Ecumenical Dialogue Group met at the Anglican Cathedral of the Epiphany in Columbia, South Carolina.
G-3 representatives were also in attendance with the bishops of the PNCC at the 125th anniversary and General Synod of the Polish National Catholic Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
As a part of the ACC's worldwide efforts with the Union of Scranton, meetings have been held between the Nordic Catholic Church and the ACC Diocese of the United Kingdom.
On January 23–25, 2023, delegates of the G-3 and the PNCC met for their 7th Dialogue at St. Paul's Anglican Church (APA), Melbourne, Florida, and produced this Statement:
We, the Bishops and members of the G-3 and the PNCC celebrate the anniversary of our Ecumenical Dialogue. We began our initial discussions on January 11th, 2019 for the purpose of discussing God's will for our mutual journey in Christ.
Over the past four years, we have gathered for worship and sacred fellowship. We have grown to know each other as brothers in Christ, and committed ourselves to find ways we may work together for mutual support and the ever challenging task of becoming one.
Though we gratefully share the fullness of the Catholic faith, we are aware that the goal of unity may take many years. Nevertheless, we believe that our work together is essential to the fulfillment of God's will.
We will keep our Churches in prayer that our efforts may bear the necessary spiritual fruit and be ever pleasing to God.
Churches
There have been occasional surveys of "orthodox" Anglican churches conducted by the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, with numbers reported from 2007 and 2011 and 2015.
The following is a list of denominations and dioceses worldwide that derive from the Congress of St. Louis and the January 28, 1978, consecrations.
North America
The approximate number of parishes and missions is shown in parentheses.
Anglican Catholic Church (including Diocese of the Holy Cross) (97)
Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (TAC) (12)
Anglican Church in America (TAC) (41)
Anglican Province of America (47)
Anglican Province of Christ the King (37)
Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite) (6)
Reformed Anglican Church (6)
Traditional Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) (9)
United Episcopal Church of North America (24)
South America and Caribbean
Diocese of the New Grenada (Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and Brazil) (ACC)
Indigenous Pastorale of the Anglican Province of America in Ecuador (APA)
Missionary Diocese of the Caribbean (ACC)
Traditional Anglican Church in Latin American (TAC)
Diocese of Peutro Rico and the Caribbean (TAC)
Europe
Church of England (Continuing)
Church of Ireland - Traditional Rite (TAC)
Deanery of Europe (ACC)
Diocese of the United Kingdom (ACC)
Traditional Anglican Church in Britain (TAC)
Africa
Anglican Church in Southern Africa (TAC)
Continuing Anglican Church in Zimbabwe (TAC)
Diocese of the Aweil (Sudan) (ACC)
Diocese of Cameroon (ACC)
Diocese of Christ the Redeemer (South Africa) (ACC)
Diocese of Congo (South Kivu (exclusive Fizi, Uvira and Mwenga), North Kivu, Central, West, North and South) (ACC)
Diocese of Kenya (ACC)
Missionary Diocese of Eastern Congo (Fizi, Uvira and Mwenga) (ACC)
Missionary Diocese of Rwanda (ACC)
Missionary Diocese of the West (South Africa) (ACC)
Province of Southern Africa (ACC)
Diocese of Kei
Missionary Diocese of Ekurhuleni
Missionary Diocese of Saint Paul
Missionary Diocese of Vaal
Missionary Diocese of Johannesburg
Diocese of Christ the King
Diocese of Zimbabwe
Traditional Anglican Church in Zambia (TAC)
Asia
Anglican Church of India - CIPBC (TAC)
Church of India-CIPBC (ACC)
Diocese of Lahore (Pakistan) (ACC)
Anglican Church in America (ACA) Deanery of Indonesia
Oceania
Church of the Torres Strait (TAC)
Missionary Diocese of Australia and New Zealand (ACC)
Missionary Diocese of the Philippines (ACC)
Traditional Anglican Church in Australia (TAC)
Other Continuing Anglican churches
Other church bodies commonly called "Continuing Anglican" were founded independently of the Continuing Anglican movement of the 1970s, some before and others later. Among these are the Free Church of England (the first congregations of which were founded in 1844), the Reformed Episcopal Church (founded in 1873), the Orthodox Anglican Church (founded in 1963 as the Anglican Orthodox Church), and the Southern Episcopal Church (founded in 1965). North American communities that fall into this category (with approximate number of congregations) are:
American Anglican Church (13)
Anglican Orthodox Church (5)
Christian Episcopal Church of North America (4)
Episcopal Missionary Church (19)
Independent Anglican Church, Canada Synod
Orthodox Anglican Church (15)
Reformed Anglican Church (5)
Southern Episcopal Church (3)
United Anglican Church
Defunct churches
Other American churches that emerged from the jurisdictions derived from the Congress of St. Louis, or merged with existing jurisdictions, or otherwise ceased.
American Episcopal Church (1970 - 1991)
Anglican Episcopal Church of North America (1972 - 1984)
Anglican Rite Jurisdiction of the Americas (1981 - ?)
Anglican Rite Synod in the Americas (? - 2003)
Anglican Rite Synod of America
Anglo-Catholic Church in the Americas (2000 - 2009)
Traditional Protestant Episcopal Church (1991 - 2011)
Affiliated Institutes of Higher Learning
Saint Joseph of Arimathea Theological College
Originally founded in 1952 by Robert S. Morse as the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Stanford University, it was renamed the St. Joseph of Arimathea Foundation in 1960. In 1964, the current location one block south of the University of California, Berkeley was purchased. Due to disagreements between Robert S. Morse and the current Episcopal bishop, James Pike, in 1963 Morse resigned as chairman but filled the Board with Orthodox and Catholic clergy, including Prince Vasili Romanov and the Very Rev. Alexander Schmemann. The St. Joseph's Student Center hosted Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican services throughout the week. The chapel, also named for Saint Joseph of Arimethea, was built in 1975 and features a sixteenth century crucifix. Saint Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Theological College was founded in 1979 as a seminary for the newly formed Diocese of Christ the King. It continues to offer classes, in person and online, mostly for prospective clergy of the Anglican Province of Christ the King.
Holyrood Seminary
Holyrood Seminary was established by the Anglican Catholic Church in 1981 to address the shortage of priests in the newly formed church. The building purchased was former hospital in Liberty, New York. The building had previously been purchased in 1979 by St. Alban's Anglican Catholic Holyrood Seminary of Richmond, Virginia. The seminary produced many graduates who were ordained in the Anglican Catholic Church and other continuing churches. The seminary closed in 1998.
Saint Bede’s Anglican Catholic Theological College
Saint Bede's Anglican Catholic Theological College was established in 2001 to serve the needs of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada and Traditional Anglican Church as well as other Continuing Anglican Churches. It offers courses leading to Bachelor in Theology (B.Th.), Master of Divinity (M.Div.), or Master of Theological Studies (M.T.S) degrees. In 2018, Saint Bede's Anglican Catholic Theological College was accredited by Accreditation Service for International Schools, Colleges and Universities (ASIC). Based in Victoria, BC, it also offers classes online.
See also
Anglican realignment
Bartonville Agreement
Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas
Continuing church
Convergence Movement
Independent sacramental movement
References
Further reading
de Catanzaro, Carmino J., Bp. Anglican Catholic: What's in a Name? Westmount, Qué.: Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, Parish of Saint Athanasius, [198-?], Without ISBN
de Catanzaro, Carmino J., Bp. Why on Earth [is there] the Church? Westmount, Qué.: Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, [198-?]. Without ISBN
Dees, James P., Bp. Reformation Anglicanism: an address ... on the Occasion of the Dedication of Cranmer Seminary ... Sept. 19, 1971 ... of the Anglican Orthodox Church. Statesville, N.C.: Anglican Orthodox Church, 1971. [21] p., col. ill.
The League of Independent Episcopal Parishes (LIEP), sponsored by the Traditional Episcopal Church. Spring Hill, Flor.: League of Independent Episcopal Churches, [199-]. N.B.: No personal author or specific committee is credited for the text of this pamphlet.
Palmer, Roland F. The Anglican Catholic Church of Canada: Questions & Answers. Westmount, Qué.: Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, [198-?]. Without ISBN
Holmes, C. Raymond. THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN AND THE ANGLICAN-EPISCOPAL EXPERIENCE: THE ROAD TO SCHISM. A Case Study prepared for The Biblical Research Institute of The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. September 1987.
The Traditional Episcopal Church. Spring Hill, Flor.: Traditional Episcopal Church, [199-]. N.B.: No personal author or specific committee is credited for the text of this pamphlet.
Doenecke, J. D. (1986). Schism in Perspective: A Comparative View. Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 55(4), 321–325. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42974144
Gallo, Michael F. "The Continuing Anglicans: Credible Movement or Ecclesiastical Dead End?" Touchstone Magazine, Winter, 1989.
Lantzer, Jason S. (1999). TRADITION, TRANSITION, TURMOIL, AND TRTIJMPH: INDIANAPOLIS EPISCOPALIANS CONFRONT THE 1960S - 1970S. https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7756690b-a931-46f0-96ff-9e3f8e910486/content
Divided We Stand: A History of the Continuing Anglican Movement by Douglas Bess, Tractarian Press, 2002, . Revised edition, Apocryphile Press, September 2006,
The Continuum and Its Problems, A Paper Delivered By Wallace Spaulding To The Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, September 2009.
Warner, C. V. (2010). Recognizing Anglican Catholic identity: an historical review of the Anglican Catholic Movement, the affirmation of St. Louis and the traditional Anglican Communion. https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:3832
Miller, D. A. (2011). A “Continuing” Anglican Congregation: St George's Church, Las Vegas, 22 August 2010, 12th Sunday after Trinity. Anglican and Episcopal History, 80(1), 74–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42612658
Andrews, Robert M. (2022). Continuing Anglicanism? The History, Theology, and Contexts of “The Affirmation of St Louis” (1977). Journal of Religious History, 46(1), 40–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.12821
External links
List of churches not in the Anglican Communion at anglicansonline.org, with weblinks for most of the Continuing Anglican churches and some other non-Anglican churches.
The Measure of A Bishop: The Episcopi Vagantes, Apostolic Succession, and the Legitimacy of the Anglican "Continuing Church" Movement. A master's degree thesis, written by a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, containing historical information on Continuing Anglican and related churches.
Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen Directories of Parishes & Jurisdictions
Anglican Taxonomy by William J. Tighe
Anglican Church of Canada
Episcopal Church (United States)
Anglicanism in Africa
Anglicanism in the United States
Anglicanism in the United Kingdom
Continuing Anglican denominations
Continuing Anglicans
Continuing Anglicans by nationality
Anglicanism in Canada
Anglican denominations in South America
Anglican denominations established in the 20th century
Anglican ecclesiastical provinces
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20R.%20Rice%20%28pastor%29
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John R. Rice (pastor)
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John R. Rice (December 11, 1895 – December 29, 1980) was a Baptist evangelist and pastor and the founding editor of The Sword of the Lord, an influential fundamentalist newspaper.
Childhood and education
John R. Rice was born in Cooke County, Texas, in 1895, the son of William H. and Sallie Elizabeth La Prade Rice, and the oldest of three brothers. Will Rice was a small businessman, a lay preacher, and a one-term state legislator "well respected in the community." (Will Rice was also a Mason, an Odd Fellow, and "an ardent Klansman"—all of which memberships his son later believed were "mistakes.") The death of John R. Rice's mother when he was six years old left a lasting mark on the man.
At twelve Rice made a profession of faith and joined his parents' Southern Baptist Church. After being educated in public schools, he earned a teaching certificate and taught at a local primary school. In 1916 Rice entered Decatur Baptist College in Decatur, Texas, riding his cow pony 120 miles to get there and borrowing $60 on the horse to make his first tuition payment. In 1918, he was drafted into the Army, but after his discharge the following year, he attended Baylor University, from which he graduated in 1920. Rice was attending graduate school at the University of Chicago and volunteering at the Pacific Garden Mission when he was called to the full-time ministry and returned to Texas. He married Lloys McClure Cooke, whom he had met at Decatur, and shortly thereafter he entered Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Early ministry
Rice did not complete his seminary course but in 1923, took a position as the assistant pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Plainview, Texas. The following year he became senior pastor in Shamrock, Texas, an oil boomtown; but in 1926 he left the pastorate for evangelism. Settling in Fort Worth, he became an unofficial associate of J. Frank Norris, pastor of First Baptist Church, who was preparing to leave the Southern Baptist Convention. Rice himself broke with the Southern Baptists in 1927.
During the next few years, Rice held a series of successful revivals in Texas that were promoted by Norris. Rice made converts during his campaigns and then organized the new Christians into at least a half-dozen churches with the name "Fundamentalist Baptist," a title that had come to be associated with Norris. In July 1932, Rice held an open-air evangelistic campaign in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas and hundreds made professions of faith. There Rice organized the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle of Dallas; but instead of moving on, he pastored the church for more than seven years. The congregation of more than a thousand members built two buildings, the first being destroyed by fire. When Rice refused to bend to Norris's will, the older man threatened him and then viciously attacked him in print. Nevertheless, Rice's sermons continued to include much of his mentor's sensationalism, with titles such as "Wild Oats in Dallas--How Dallas People Sow Them and How They Are Reaped," "The Dance--Child of the Brothel, Sister of Gambling and Drunkenness, Mother of Lust--Road to Hell!" and "Diseased, Decaying Bodies with Undying Maggots and Unquenched Fire in Hell"
Rice believed that the mission of churches was "not to take care of Christians" but to "win souls," a notion his mostly lower-middle-class church members did not wholeheartedly endorse. When Rice spent more time away from his pulpit to hold revivals elsewhere, a supply pastor and his supporters staged a coup. Rice decided to reenter evangelism. Yet before he did so, he encouraged the church to change its name from Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle to Galilean Baptist Church, thus distinguishing his ministry and that of the church from J. Frank Norris.
Sword of the Lord
In 1934, Rice founded The Sword of the Lord, a bi-weekly publication that grew into an influential fundamentalist Baptist newspaper. At first it was simply the publication of his Dallas church, handed out on the street and delivered door-to-door by Rice's daughters and other Sunday School children.
When Rice re-entered full-time evangelism in 1940, he moved The Sword of the Lord to Wheaton, Illinois, partially to educate his daughters at Wheaton College, and partially to put distance between himself and Norris. Rice had already begun to publish his sermons, and at his death, The Sword of the Lord had printed more than 200 of his books and pamphlets, with more than 60 million copies in print. His sermon booklet, "What Must I Do to Be Saved?" was distributed in over 32 million copies in English, 8.5 million in Japanese, and nearly 2 million in Spanish. Perhaps his most popular books were Prayer--Asking and Receiving (1942) and The Home: Courtship, Marriage and Children (1945). Rice also wrote commentaries on books of the Bible, and he attacked humanism, worldliness (especially movies and dancing), evolution, fraternal lodges, and the Southern Baptist Convention.
A special target was religious liberalism. Rice recalled that while at the University of Chicago, he had heard a message by William Jennings Bryan and then observed a missionary's son turn to infidelity during the subsequent campus discussion. "It was a time of crisis in my life," recalled Rice. "Standing there on the steps of Mandel Hall that spring afternoon with dusk coming on, I felt burning in me a holy fire. I lifted my hand solemnly to God and said, 'If God gives me grace and I have opportunity to smite this awful unbelief that wrecks the faith of all it can, then smite it I will, so help me God!'" Rice became a fierce opponent of the National Council of Churches, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, and prominent liberal ministers, such as Harry Emerson Fosdick, Nels Ferré, and G. Bromley Oxnam.
The Sword circulation grew dramatically. It was thirty thousand in 1940, fifty thousand in 1946, and ninety thousand in 1953, surpassing the circulation of the venerable Moody Monthly. Rice regularly published reports from evangelistic campaigns that became valuable publicity tools for approved revivalists. In 1946, he and other prominent evangelists adopted a code of ethics and a statement of faith to prevent "evangelists from being unduly criticized for commercialism and unethical practices." The same year Bob Jones College conferred on him an honorary Litt. D. degree.
Evangelism conferences
In 1945 Rice began organizing evangelism conferences, which in 1974 became Sword of the Lord Conferences. These meetings drew influential evangelists, such as Hyman Appelman, Joe Henry Hankins, Jack MacArthur, and especially Bob Jones Sr., whom Rice called "the dean of all the evangelists." The conferences attracted large crowds of clergymen from various denominations, not just Baptists. For instance, the Fort Smith conference of August 1952 had an average attendance of six to eight hundred at the morning sessions and a thousand to two thousand in the evenings. So many fundamentalist churches began to accept Rice's role as a clearing house for approved evangelists that to relieve some of the burden, he established a "Sword Extension Department," headed by his brother Bill. The Sword of the Lord even placed babies born to unwed mothers.
Separation from neo-evangelicals
For a brief period during the late 1940s, Rice and The Sword of the Lord held the allegiance of many orthodox Protestant Christians who would shortly be divided into Neo-Evangelical and Fundamentalist camps. While continuing to support older independent evangelists such as Bob Jones Sr. and Hyman Appelman, Rice now also endorsed the newer ministries of Youth for Christ, the Southern Baptist evangelist R. G. Lee, and especially, the young Billy Graham. By 1948, Rice believed Graham might become another Dwight L. Moody or Billy Sunday, and Graham's evangelistic successes were regularly trumpeted in the pages of The Sword of the Lord.
Meanwhile, Graham was distancing himself from fundamentalism. In 1954, Graham spoke to the faculty and student body of liberal Union Theological Seminary in New York, repeatedly referring to his ministry as "ecumenical". Presbyterian fundamentalist Carl McIntire picked up on this "compromising" speech in his Christian Beacon, but Rice continued to defend Graham in The Sword of the Lord. Graham used his considerable charm to remain in Rice's good graces for as long as possible, even inviting the older man to participate in his 1955 Glasgow campaign. At 59, Rice had never been out of the United States, and his response to Graham's red-carpet treatment in Scotland was more effusive praise.
Nevertheless, by 1956, the religious differences between Rice and Graham could no longer be papered over. Rice decided with some annoyance that Graham had been, at best, disingenuous about his relationship with religious liberals. Graham's 1957 New York City campaign was held in cooperation with the Protestant Council of New York, which was "predominantly nonevangelical and even included out-and-out modernists." Rice began to criticize Graham with increasing severity. When the seventy-five-year-old Bob Jones Sr. decided to draw the line of demarcation between fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism, Rice agreed to chair the resolutions committee at a meeting of fundamentalist leaders in Chicago held on December 26, 1958. Ninety attendees signed a pledge, written by Rice's committee, promising not to participate in evangelistic campaigns sponsored by clergymen who denied such cardinal doctrines of orthodox Christian belief as the inspiration of the Bible, the virgin birth, and the bodily resurrection of Christ. The names of Bob Jones Sr., Bob Jones Jr., and John R. Rice headed the list. Rice had clearly cast his lot with such separatist fundamentalists as Carl McIntire, Robert T. Ketcham, W. O. H. Garman, George Beauchamp Vick, Lee Roberson, Oliver B. Greene, and Archer Weniger, while the majority of Protestant evangelicals opted for a less militant position.
The break with Billy Graham left The Sword reeling. Circulation dropped from over 100,000 in 1956 to 67,000 in 1957. Rice was also refused the use of a conference center in Toccoa, Georgia, where he had held Sword rallies for thirteen years, because its founder, R. G. LeTourneau, had sided with neo-evangelicalism. Even more distressing to Rice was the break with radio preacher Charles E. Fuller, whose namesake seminary quickly moved to the vanguard of the neo-evangelical movement. Only a few years earlier, Fuller, Rice, and Jones had appeared together at a rally.
In 1963, Rice moved The Sword of the Lord from Wheaton to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where his brother Bill had established the Bill Rice Ranch, a ministry to the deaf. The cost of living in Murfreesboro was also cheaper than in the Chicago area. But Rice primarily wished to cut his ties with Wheaton, which had become a center of the neo-evangelical movement that he opposed.
Separation from separationists
In 1959, Rice and Bob Jones Sr. held a series of one-day rallies in different parts of the country in an attempt to explain the separationist position to the wavering, and Jones urged that the Sword be made "the official organ" of separatist fundamentalism. Meanwhile, Rice made new, younger, friends. One was Jack Hyles, who in 1959 had become the pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana; another was Curtis Hutson, who eventually became Rice's successor. A third was Jerry Falwell, pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.
In 1971, Rice planned a "great world conference on evangelism" that would bring together the various strands of fundamentalism. But Bob Jones Sr. had died three years earlier, and his son and successor, Bob Jones Jr., objected to the inclusion in the conference program of two Southern Baptists, W. A. Criswell and R. G. Lee, whom Jones considered "compromisers and traitors to the cause of Scriptural evangelism." (It did not help that shortly before Jones Sr.'s death, Criswell had referred to him as "a senile old fool.") Jones also opposed Rice's insistence that there be no criticism of Billy Graham (and presumably, neo-evangelicalism) at the conference. Rice argued that his position on separation was the same as that held by Bob Jones Sr. and that there was "nobody living in this world who was more intimately acquainted" with the late evangelist. Not surprisingly, Jones Jr. disagreed, and he and Rice engaged in an exchange of views about separation—Rice in The Sword of the Lord, Jones in a pamphlet, "Facts John R. Rice Will Not Face." To Rice the importance of soulwinning trumped what he considered minor disagreements among Christians about biblical separation.
The upshot was that Rice's planned conference was postponed and then canceled. In November 1971, Bob Jones Jr. and Bob Jones III were dropped from the cooperating board of The Sword to be replaced by Jerry Falwell and Curtis Hutson. In 1976, Jones, Ian Paisley, and Wayne Van Gelderen organized their own "World Congress of Fundamentalists" in Edinburgh. Unlike the split with Billy Graham, however, Rice's refusal to agree with separationist fundamentalists like Bob Jones Jr. and Ian Paisley only enhanced the growth of The Sword. By the mid-1960s, the paper had more than recovered its losses after Rice's criticism of Billy Graham; in 1974, circulation of The Sword of the Lord was over 300,000. Rice had been a major participant in shaping the two most important divisions of late twentieth-century fundamentalism, the split between fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals and then the creation of two fundamentalist factions: Rice's more sentimental and irenic; Jones's more academic, doctrinal, and confrontational.
Personality
Rice was an exceptionally hard worker who rarely took vacations. He once estimated that he had been away from home for thirty years of his forty-five year ministry. His book Home, Courtship, Marriage and Children was written almost entirely on the road, one chapter dictated on a train between Chicago and Albany, most of another while waiting for a plane at LaGuardia. A daughter who took a semester out of college to play the piano for Rice in two large revivals was there also pressed into service taking his dictation and typing the manuscript of the final chapters of the book. He claimed that woodworking was his hobby, but although he had all the necessary tools, he never had the time to use them. A brick room behind his house intended for woodworking was eventually used for storage.
Rice was gracious with praise and commanded the loyalty of his staff. He had a sometimes corny sense of humor—such as asking service station attendants, "Do you know where I could buy some gasoline?" or walking by a table filled with his own books and remarking to potential buyers, "I have read these books and find them to be sound." He liked dogs, horses, and children. Once he was discovered after a service playing hopscotch. He wrote texts and picked out melodic lines for dozens of simple gospel songs, mostly about revival and soulwinning. He was extremely frugal; there was never a hint of scandal about his personal life, and the testimonies of his six daughters were a credit to his ministry. Once on a car trip from Dallas to Chicago, Rice prayed, "Lord, help me to find someone I can win." He then missed a turn in Oklahoma and drove fifty miles out of the way. At a gas station where he stopped to ask directions, he led the attendant to Christ. Still upset about the unplanned detour, his daughters giggled at him, reminding him of his earlier prayer.
At 81, with a hearing aid, suffering from arthritis, and aware that his memory was "not quick as it was years ago," Rice still managed to be at the office most mornings at 6:30. In 1978, he had a heart attack, then a second, more serious one in April 1980. He died of a stroke on December 29. The staff counted 22,923 letters that had come to Rice between the beginning of his writing ministry and his death, each reporting that the writer had found Christ through Rice's books or booklets or through a sermon published in The Sword of the Lord.
References
Fred Barlow, "A Brief Biography of Dr. John R. Rice, Giant of Evangelism," Sword of the Lord (September 22, 2006).
Keith Bates, Mainstreaming Fundamentalism: John R. Rice and Fundamentalism's Public Reemergence (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2021).
John R. Himes, John R. Rice: The Last Revivalist of the Twentieth Century (Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: On To Victory Press, 2022).
Howard Edgar Moore, "The Emergence of Moderate Fundamentalism: John R. Rice and The Sword of the Lord," Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, 1990.
Robert L. Sumner, Man Sent from God: A Biography of Dr. John R. Rice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959).
Viola Walden, John R. Rice: The Captain of Our Team (Murfreesboro, TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1990)
F. Lionel Young III, "To the Right of Billy Graham: John R. Rice's 1957 Crusade Against New Evangelicalism and the End of the Fundamentalist-Evangelical Coalition." Th.M. Thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2005.
References
External links
The Sword of the Lord
Some works by John R. Rice
Coming Today?, one of Rice's hymns
1895 births
1980 deaths
American evangelicals
American evangelists
Baptists from Texas
Independent Baptist ministers from the United States
Southern Baptist ministers
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary alumni
Baylor University alumni
Bob Jones University alumni
American Christian creationists
Christian fundamentalists
Dallas Baptist University alumni
King James Only movement
People from Murfreesboro, Tennessee
People from Cooke County, Texas
People from Wheaton, Illinois
University of Chicago alumni
Baptists from Tennessee
Decatur Baptist College alumni
20th-century Baptist ministers from the United States
Anti-Masonry
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural%20philosophy
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Natural philosophy
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Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis) is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
From the ancient world (at least since Aristotle) until the 19th century, natural philosophy was the common term for the study of physics (nature), a broad term that included botany, zoology, anthropology, and chemistry as well as what we now call physics. It was in the 19th century that the concept of science received its modern shape, with different subjects within science emerging, such as astronomy, biology, and physics. Institutions and communities devoted to science were founded. Isaac Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) (English: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) reflects the use of the term natural philosophy in the 17th century. Even in the 19th century, the work that helped define much of modern physics bore the title Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).
In the German tradition, Naturphilosophie (philosophy of nature) persisted into the 18th and 19th centuries as an attempt to achieve a speculative unity of nature and spirit, after rejecting the scholastic tradition and replacing Aristotelian metaphysics, along with those of the dogmatic churchmen, with Kantian rationalism. Some of the greatest names in German philosophy are associated with this movement, including Goethe, Hegel, and Schelling. Naturphilosophie was associated with Romanticism and a view that regarded the natural world as a kind of giant organism, as opposed to the philosophical approach of figures such as John Locke and others espousing a more mechanical philosophy of the world, regarding it as being like a machine.
Origin and evolution of the term
The term natural philosophy preceded current usage of natural science (i.e. empirical science). Empirical science historically developed out of philosophy or, more specifically, natural philosophy. Natural philosophy was distinguished from the other precursor of modern science, natural history, in that natural philosophy involved reasoning and explanations about nature (and after Galileo, quantitative reasoning), whereas natural history was essentially qualitative and descriptive.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, natural philosophy was one of many branches of philosophy, but was not a specialized field of study. The first person appointed as a specialist in Natural Philosophy per se was Jacopo Zabarella, at the University of Padua in 1577.
Modern meanings of the terms science and scientists date only to the 19th century. Before that, science was a synonym for knowledge or study, in keeping with its Latin origin. The term gained its modern meaning when experimental science and the scientific method became a specialized branch of study apart from natural philosophy.
From the mid-19th century, when it became increasingly unusual for scientists to contribute to both physics and chemistry, "natural philosophy" came to mean just physics, and the word is still used in that sense in degree titles at the University of Oxford and University of Aberdeen. In general, chairs of Natural Philosophy established long ago at the oldest universities are nowadays occupied mainly by physics professors. Isaac Newton's book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), whose title translates to "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", reflects the then-current use of the words "natural philosophy", akin to "systematic study of nature". Even in the 19th century, a treatise by Lord Kelvin and Peter Guthrie Tait, which helped define much of modern physics, was titled Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).
Greek philosophers defined it as the combination of beings living in the universe, ignoring things made by humans. The other definition refers to human nature.
Scope
In Plato's earliest known dialogue, Charmides distinguishes between science or bodies of knowledge that produce a physical result, and those that do not. Natural philosophy has been categorized as a theoretical rather than a practical branch of philosophy (like ethics). Sciences that guide arts and draw on the philosophical knowledge of nature may produce practical results, but these subsidiary sciences (e.g., architecture or medicine) go beyond natural philosophy.
The study of natural philosophy seeks to explore the cosmos by any means necessary to understand the universe. Some ideas presuppose that change is a reality. Although this may seem obvious, there have been some philosophers who have denied the concept of metamorphosis, such as Plato's predecessor Parmenides and later Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and perhaps some Eastern philosophers. George Santayana, in his Scepticism and Animal Faith, attempted to show that the reality of change cannot be proven. If his reasoning is sound, it follows that to be a physicist, one must restrain one's skepticism enough to trust one's senses, or else rely on anti-realism.
René Descartes' metaphysical system of mind–body dualism describes two kinds of substance: matter and mind. According to this system, everything that is "matter" is deterministic and natural—and so belongs to natural philosophy—and everything that is "mind" is volitional and non-natural, and falls outside the domain of philosophy of nature.
Branches and subject matter
Major branches of natural philosophy include astronomy and cosmology, the study of nature on the grand scale; etiology, the study of (intrinsic and sometimes extrinsic) causes; the study of chance, probability and randomness; the study of elements; the study of the infinite and the unlimited (virtual or actual); the study of matter; mechanics, the study of translation of motion and change; the study of nature or the various sources of actions; the study of natural qualities; the study of physical quantities; the study of relations between physical entities; and the philosophy of space and time. (Adler, 1993)
History
Humankind's mental engagement with nature certainly predates civilization and the record of history. Philosophical, and specifically non-religious thought about the natural world, goes back to ancient Greece. These lines of thought began before Socrates, who turned from his philosophical studies from speculations about nature to a consideration of man, viz., political philosophy. The thought of early philosophers such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Democritus centered on the natural world. In addition, three Presocratic philosophers who lived in the Ionian town of Miletus (hence the Milesian School of philosophy), Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, attempted to explain natural phenomena without recourse to creation myths involving the Greek gods. They were called the physikoi ("natural philosophers") or, as Aristotle referred to them, the physiologoi. Plato followed Socrates in concentrating on man. It was Plato's student, Aristotle, who, in basing his thought on the natural world, returned empiricism to its primary place, while leaving room in the world for man. Martin Heidegger observes that Aristotle was the originator of conception of nature that prevailed in the Middle Ages into the modern era:
Aristotle surveyed the thought of his predecessors and conceived of nature in a way that charted a middle course between their excesses.
"The world we inhabit is an orderly one, in which things generally behave in predictable ways, Aristotle argued, because every natural object has a "nature"—an attribute (associated primarily with form) that makes the object behave in its customary fashion..." Aristotle recommended four causes as appropriate for the business of the natural philosopher, or physicist, "and if he refers his problems back to all of them, he will assign the 'why' in the way proper to his science—the matter, the form, the mover, [and] 'that for the sake of which. While the vagaries of the material cause are subject to circumstance, the formal, efficient and final cause often coincide because in natural kinds, the mature form and final cause are one and the same. The capacity to mature into a specimen of one's kind is directly acquired from "the primary source of motion", i.e., from one's father, whose seed (sperma) conveys the essential nature (common to the species), as a hypothetical ratio.
Material cause An object's motion will behave in different ways depending on the [substance/essence] from which it is made. (Compare clay, steel, etc.)
Formal cause An object's motion will behave in different ways depending on its material arrangement. (Compare a clay sphere, clay block, etc.)
Efficient cause That which caused the object to come into being; an "agent of change" or an "agent of movement".
Final cause The reason that caused the object to be brought into existence.
From the late Middle Ages into the modern era, the tendency has been to narrow "science" to the consideration of efficient or agency-based causes of a particular kind:
In ancient Greece
Early Greek philosophers studied motion and the cosmos. Figures like Hesiod regarded the natural world as offspring of the gods, whereas others like Leucippus and Democritus regarded the world as lifeless atoms in a vortex. Anaximander deduced that eclipses happen because of apertures in rings of celestial fire. Heraclitus believed that the heavenly bodies were made of fire that were contained within bowls. He thought that eclipses happen when the bowl turned away from the earth. Anaximenes is believed to have stated that an underlying element was air, and by manipulating air someone could change its thickness to create fire, water, dirt, and stones. Empedocles identified the elements that make up the world, which he termed the roots of all things, as fire, air, earth, and water. Parmenides argued that all change is a logical impossibility. He gives the example that nothing can go from nonexistence to existence. Plato argues that the world is an imperfect replica of an idea that a divine craftsman once held. He also believed that the only way to truly know something was through reason and logic not the study of the object itself, but that changeable matter is a viable course of study.
Aristotle's philosophy of nature
"An acorn is potentially, but not actually, an oak tree. In becoming an oak tree, it becomes actually what it originally was only potentially. This change thus involves passage from potentiality to actuality — not from non-being to being but from one kind or degree to being another"
Aristotle held many important beliefs that started a convergence of thought for natural philosophy. Aristotle believed that attributes of objects belong to the objects themselves, and share traits with other objects that fit them into a category. He uses the example of dogs to press this point. An individual dog may have very specific attributes (ex. one dog can be black and another brown) but also very general ones that classify it as a dog (ex. four-legged). This philosophy can be applied to many other objects as well. This idea is different from that of Plato, with whom Aristotle had a direct association. Aristotle argued that objects have properties "form" and something that is not part of its properties "matter" that defines the object. The form cannot be separated from the matter. Given the example that you can not separate properties and matter since this is impossible, you cannot collect properties in a pile and matter in another.
Aristotle believed that change was a natural occurrence. He used his philosophy of form and matter to argue that when something changes you change its properties without changing its matter. This change occurs by replacing certain properties with other properties. Since this change is always an intentional alteration whether by forced means or by natural ones, change is a controllable order of qualities. He argues that this happens through three categories of being: non-being, potential being, and actual being. Through these three states the process of changing an object never truly destroys an object's forms during this transition state but rather just blurs the reality between the two states. An example of this could be changing an object from red to blue with a transitional purple phase.
Medieval philosophy of motion
Medieval thoughts on motion involved much of Aristotle's works Physics and Metaphysics. The issue that medieval philosophers had with motion was the inconsistency found between book 3 of Physics and book 5 of Metaphysics. Aristotle claimed in book 3 of Physics that motion can be categorized by substance, quantity, quality, and place. where in book 5 of Metaphysics he stated that motion is a magnitude of quantity. This disputation led to some important questions to natural philosophers: Which category/categories does motion fit into? Is motion the same thing as a terminus? Is motion separate from real things? These questions asked by medieval philosophers tried to classify motion.
William of Ockham gives a good concept of motion for many people in the Middle Ages. There is an issue with the vocabulary behind motion that makes people think that there is a correlation between nouns and the qualities that make nouns. Ockham states that this distinction is what will allow people to understand motion, that motion is a property of mobiles, locations, and forms and that is all that is required to define what motion is. A famous example of this is Occam's razor, which simplifies vague statements by cutting them into more descriptive examples. "Every motion derives from an agent." becomes "each thing that is moved, is moved by an agent" this makes motion a more personal quality referring to individual objects that are moved.
Natural philosophy in the early modern period
The scientific method has ancient precedents, and Galileo exemplifies a mathematical understanding of nature, which is a hallmark of modern natural scientists. Galileo proposed that objects falling regardless of their mass would fall at the same rate, as long as the medium they fall in is identical. The 19th-century distinction of a scientific enterprise apart from traditional natural philosophy has its roots in prior centuries. Proposals for a more "inquisitive" and practical approach to the study of nature are notable in Francis Bacon, whose ardent convictions did much to popularize his insightful Baconian method. The Baconian method is employed throughout Thomas Browne's encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–1672), which debunks a wide range of common fallacies through empirical investigation of nature. The late-17th-century natural philosopher Robert Boyle wrote a seminal work on the distinction between physics and metaphysics called, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, as well as The Skeptical Chymist, after which the modern science of chemistry is named, (as distinct from proto-scientific studies of alchemy). These works of natural philosophy are representative of a departure from the medieval scholasticism taught in European universities, and anticipate in many ways, the developments that would lead to science as practiced in the modern sense. As Bacon would say, "vexing nature" to reveal "her" secrets (scientific experimentation), rather than a mere reliance on largely historical, even anecdotal, observations of empirical phenomena, would come to be regarded as a defining characteristic of modern science, if not the very key to its success. Boyle's biographers, in their emphasis that he laid the foundations of modern chemistry, neglect how steadily he clung to the scholastic sciences in theory, practice and doctrine. However, he meticulously recorded observational detail on practical research, and subsequently advocated not only this practice, but its publication, both for successful and unsuccessful experiments, so as to validate individual claims by replication.
Natural philosophers of the late 17th or early 18th century were sometimes insultingly described as 'projectors'. A projector was an entrepreneur who invited people to invest in his invention but – as the caricature went – could not be trusted, usually because his device was impractical. Jonathan Swift satirized natural philosophers of the Royal Society as 'the academy of projectors' in his novel Gulliver's Travels. Historians of science have argued that natural philosophers and the so-called projectors sometimes overlapped in their methods and aims.
Current work in the philosophy of science and nature
In the middle of the 20th century, Ernst Mayr's discussions on the teleology of nature brought up issues that were dealt with previously by Aristotle (regarding final cause) and Kant (regarding reflective judgment).
Especially since the mid-20th-century European crisis, some thinkers argued the importance of looking at nature from a broad philosophical perspective, rather than what they considered a narrowly positivist approach relying implicitly on a hidden, unexamined philosophy. One line of thought grows from the Aristotelian tradition, especially as developed by Thomas Aquinas. Another line springs from Edmund Husserl, especially as expressed in The Crisis of European Sciences. Students of his such as Jacob Klein and Hans Jonas more fully developed his themes. Last, but not least, there is the process philosophy inspired by Alfred North Whitehead's works.
Among living scholars, Brian David Ellis, Nancy Cartwright, David Oderberg, and John Dupré are some of the more prominent thinkers who can arguably be classed as generally adopting a more open approach to the natural world. Ellis (2002) observes the rise of a "New Essentialism." David Oderberg (2007) takes issue with other philosophers, including Ellis to a degree, who claim to be essentialists. He revives and defends the Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition from modern attempts to flatten nature to the limp subject of the experimental method.<ref>DavIn Praise of Natural Philosophy: A Revolution for Thought and Life (2017), Nicholas Maxwell argues that we need to reform philosophy and put science and philosophy back together again to create a modern version of natural philosophy.
See also
References
Further reading
E.A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954).
Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Science. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. LCCN:2001036144
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1945) Simon & Schuster, 1972.
David Snoke, Natural Philosophy: A Survey of Physics and Western Thought. Access Research Network, 2003. .Natural Philosophy: A Survey of Physics and Western Thought Welcome to The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine
Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Crossway Books, 1994, ).
Alfred N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, The Macmillan Company, 1929.
René Thom, Modèles mathématiques de la morphogenèse, Christian Bourgois, 1980.
Claude Paul Bruter, Topologie et perception, Maloine, 3 vols. 1974/1976/1986.
Jean Largeault, Principes classiques d'interprétation de la nature, Vrin, 1988.
Moritz Schlick, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949.
Andrew G. Van Melsen, The Philosophy of Nature, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh 1954.
Miguel Espinoza, La matière éternelle et ses harmonies éphémères, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2017.
External links
"Aristotle's Natural Philosophy", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Institute for the Study of Nature
"A Bigger Physics," a talk at MIT by Michael Augros
Other articles
History of philosophy
History of science
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor%20Inayat%20Khan
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Noor Inayat Khan
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Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC (1 January 1914 – 13 September 1944), also known as Nora Inayat-Khan and Nora Baker, was a British resistance agent in France in World War II who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany.
As an SOE agent under the codename Madeleine she became the first female wireless operator to be sent from the UK into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during World War II. Inayat Khan was betrayed and captured, and executed at Dachau concentration camp. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her service, the highest civilian decoration for gallantry in the United Kingdom.
Early life
Noor Inayat Khan was born on 1 January 1914, in Moscow. She was the eldest of four children. Her siblings were Vilayat Inayat Khan, an author and Sufi teacher; Hidayat Inayat Khan, a composer and Sufi teacher; and Khair-un-Nisa Inayat Khan.
Her father, Inayat Khan, was born in Baroda, Bombay Presidency, and came from a family of Indian Muslims with hereditary nobles and classical musicians among both sides of his ancestors. His great-great-grandfather was the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan. He lived in Europe as a musician and a teacher of Sufism. Her mother, Pirani Ameena Begum (born Ora Ray Baker), was an American from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who met Inayat Khan during his travels in the United States. Afterwards, Vilayat became head of the "Sufi Order of the West," later renamed the Sufi Order International, and now the Inayati Order.
In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the family left Russia for London, and lived in Bloomsbury. Noor attended nursery in Notting Hill. In 1920, the family moved to France, settling in Suresnes near Paris, in a house that was a gift from a benefactor of the Sufi movement. As a young girl, Noor was described as quiet, shy, sensitive, and dreamy. After the death of her father in 1927, 13-year-old Noor took on the responsibility for her grief-stricken mother of her younger siblings. She went on to study child psychology at the Sorbonne, as well as music at the Paris Conservatory under Nadia Boulanger, composing for both harp and piano.
As a young woman, Noor began a career as a writer, publishing her poetry and children's stories in English and French and becoming a regular contributor to children's magazines and French radio. In 1939, her book Twenty Jataka Tales, inspired by the Jataka tales of Buddhist tradition, was published in London by George G. Harrap and Co.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, when France was invaded by German troops, the family fled to Bordeaux and then by sea to England, landing at Falmouth in Cornwall, on 22 June 1940. Initially they stayed in Southampton, at the parental home of the philosopher Basil Mitchell.
Women's Auxiliary Air Force
Although Noor was deeply influenced by pacifist ideals, she and her brother Vilayat decided they wanted to help defeat Nazi tyranny: "I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians."
In November 1940, Noor joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and, as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class, was sent to be trained as a wireless operator. Upon assignment to a bomber training school in June 1941, she applied for a commission in an effort to relieve herself of the boring work there.
Special Operations Executive
Later, Noor Inayat Khan was recruited to join F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive; and in early February 1943 she was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She was sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey, after which she was ordered to Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, for special training as a wireless operator in occupied territory.
She was the first woman to be sent over in such a capacity, as all the woman agents before her had been sent as couriers. Having had previous wireless telegraphy (W/T) training, Noor had an edge on those who were just beginning their radio training, and was considered both fast and accurate.
From Aylesbury Noor went on to Beaulieu, where the security training was capped with a practice mission – in the case of wireless operators, to find a place in a strange city from which they could transmit back to their instructors without being detected by an agent unknown to them who would be shadowing them.
The ultimate training exercise was the mock Gestapo interrogation, intended to give agents a taste of what might be in store for them if they were captured, and some practice in maintaining their cover story. Noor's escaping officer found her interrogation "almost unbearable" and reported that "she seemed terrified … so overwhelmed she nearly lost her voice", and that afterwards, "she was trembling and quite blanched."
Her final report read: "Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keenness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course. She has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to work in the field." Next to this comment, Maurice Buckmaster, the head of F Section, had written in the margin "Nonsense" and that "We don't want them overburdened with brains."
Noor's superiors held mixed opinions on her suitability for secret warfare, and her training was incomplete due to the need to get trained W/T operators into the field. Khan's "childlike" qualities, particularly her gentle manner and "lack of ruse", had greatly worried her instructors at SOE's training schools. One instructor wrote that "she confesses that she would not like to have to do anything 'two faced'", while another said she was "very feminine in character, very eager to please, very ready to adapt herself to the mood of the company; the one of the conversation, capable of strong attachments, kind hearted, emotional, imaginative." A further observer said: "Tends to give far too much information. Came here without the foggiest idea what she was being trained for." Others later commented that she was physically unsuited, saying she would not easily disappear into a crowd.
Physically quite small in stature, Noor received poor athletic reports from her instructors: "Can run very well but otherwise clumsy. Unsuitable for jumping" "Pretty scared of weapons but tries hard to get over it." Noor was training as a W/T operator, and in that field she was getting quite adequate reports. Her "fist", or style of tapping the keys, was somewhat heavy, apparently owing to her fingers being swollen by chilblains, but her speed was improving every day. Khan, who played the harp, was a natural signaller like many talented musicians.
Further, Vera Atkins (the intelligence officer for F Section) insisted Noor's commitment was unquestioned, as another training report had readily confirmed: "She felt she had come to a dead end in the WAAF, and was longing to do something more active in the prosecution of the war, something that would demand more sacrifice." So when Suttill's request first came, Vera saw Noor as a natural choice, and although her final training in field security and encoding had to be cut short, she judged her ready to go.
Noor's mission would be an especially dangerous one. So successful had female couriers been that the decision was made to use them as wireless operators as well, which was even more dangerous work, probably the most dangerous work of all. The job of the operator was to maintain a link between the circuit in the field and London, sending and receiving messages about planned sabotage operations or about where arms were needed for resistance fighters. Without such communication it was almost impossible for any resistance strategy to be co-ordinated, but the operators were highly vulnerable to detection which was improving as the war progressed.
Hiding themselves as best they could, with aerials strung up in attics or disguised as washing lines, they tapped out Morse on the key of transmitters, and would often wait alone for hours for a reply saying the messages had been received. If they stayed on the air transmitting for more than 20 minutes, their signals were likely to be picked up by the enemy, and detection vans would trace the source of these suspect signals. When the operator moved location, the bulky transmitter had to be carried, sometimes concealed in a suitcase or in a bundle of firewood. If stopped and searched, the operator would have no cover story to explain the transmitter. In 1943, an operator's life expectancy was six weeks.
Noor had been staying at a country house in Buckinghamshire, a place where agents had a final chance to adjust to their new identities and consider their missions before departure. Noor's conducting officer, a female companion who watched over agents in training, told Atkins that Noor had descended into a gloom and was clearly troubled by the thought of what she was about to undertake. Then two fellow agents staying with Noor at the country house had written directly to Vera to say they felt she should not go. Such an intervention at this stage was most unusual.
Atkins decided to call Noor back to London, to meet and talk. Vilayat remembered trying to stop his sister going on her mission exactly at the time of this meeting. "You see, Nora and I had been brought up with the policy of Gandhi's nonviolence, and at the outbreak of war we discussed what we would do", said Vilayat, who had followed his father and become a Sufi mystic. "She said, 'Well, I must do something, but I don't want to kill anyone.' So I said, 'Well, if we are going to join the war, we have to involve ourselves in the most dangerous positions, which would mean no killing.' Then, when we eventually go to England, I volunteered for minesweeping and she volunteered for SOE, and so I have always had a feeling of guilt because of what I said that day."
Noor and Atkins met at Manetta's, a restaurant in Mayfair. Atkins wanted to confirm that Noor believed in her own ability to succeed. Confidence was the most important thing for any agent. However poor Noor's jumping or even her encoding, Atkins believed those agents who did well were those who knew before they set off that they could do the job. Her intention was to let Noor feel she had an opportunity to back out gracefully should she so wish. Atkins began by asking if she was happy in what she was doing. Noor looked startled and said: "Yes, of course."
Atkins then told her about the letter and its contents. Noor was reportedly upset that anybody would think she was unfit. "You know that if you have any doubts, it is not too late to turn back… If you don't feel you're the typeif for any reason whatever you don't want to go you only have to tell me now. I'll arrange everything so that you have no embarrassment. You will be transferred to another branch of the service with no adverse mark on your file. We have every respect for the man or woman who admits frankly to not feeling up to it", Atkins told her, adding: "For us there is only one crime: to go out there and let your comrades down."
Noor insisted adamantly that she wanted to go and was competent for the work. Her only concern, she said, was her family, and Vera sensed immediately that this was, as she had suspected, where the problem lay. Noor had found saying goodbye to her widowed mother the most painful thing she had ever had to do, she said. As Vera had advised her, she had told her mother only half the truth: she had said she was going abroad, but to Africa, and she had found maintaining the deception cruel.
Atkins asked if there was anything she could do to help with family matters. Noor said that, should she go missing, she would like Atkins to avoid worrying her mother as far as possible. The normal procedure, as Noor knew, was that when an agent went to the field, Vera would send out a periodic "good news" letters to the family, letting them know the person concerned was well. If the agent went missing, the family would be told so. What Noor was suggesting was that bad news should be broken to her mother only if it was beyond any doubt that she was dead. Atkins said she would agree to this arrangement if it was what she wanted. With this assurance Noor seemed content and confident once more. Any doubts in Atkins's mind were also now apparently settled.
Atkins always accompanied the woman agents to the departure airfields, if she possibly could. Those who were not dropped into France by parachute (as were agents like Andrée Borrel and Lise de Baissac) were flown in on Lysanders, a light monowing transport aircraft designed to land on short and rough fields. These planes were met by a "reception committee" consisting of SOE agents and local French helpers. The reception committees were alerted to imminent arrival of a plane by a BBC action message inserted as a message personnel; these were broadcast across France every evening, mostly for ordinary listeners wishing to contact friends or family separated by war. The messages broadcast for SOE, agreed in advance between HQ and the circuit organizer, usually by wireless signal, sounded like odd greetings or aphorisms"Le hibou n'est pas un éléphant" (The owl is not an elephant)but the reception committee on the ground would know that the message meant a particular (pre-planned) operation would take place.
Promoted to Assistant Section Officer (the WAAF equivalent of RAF pilot officer), Noor was to fly by Lysander with the June moon to a field near Angers, from where she would make her way to Paris to link up with the leader of a Prosper sub-circuit named Emile Garry, or Cinema, an alias chosen because of his uncanny resemblance to the film star Gary Cooper. Once on the ground Noor would make contact with the Prosper circuit organizer, Francis Suttill, and take on her new persona as a children's nurse, "Jeanne-Marie Renier", using fake papers in that name. To her SOE colleagues, however, she would be known simply as "Madeleine".
Regardless of her perceived shortcomings, Noor's fluent French and her competency in wireless operationcoupled with a shortage of experienced agentsmade her a desirable candidate for service in Nazi-occupied France. On 16/17 June 1943, cryptonymed 'Madeleine'/W/T operator 'Nurse' and under the cover identity of Jeanne-Marie Regnier, Assistant Section Officer Noor was flown to landing ground B/20A 'Indigestion' in Northern France on a night landing double Lysander operation, code named Teacher/Nurse/Chaplain/Monk, along with agents Diana Rowden (code named Paulette/Chaplain), and Cecily Lefort (code named Alice/Teacher). They were met by Henri Déricourt.
Capture and imprisonment
From 24 June 1943 the 'Prosper' network that Noor had been sent to be a radio operator for began to be rounded up by the Germans. Noor remained in radio contact with London. When Buckmaster told her she would be flown home, she told him she would prefer to remain, as she believed she was the only radio operator remaining in Paris. Buckmaster agreed to this, though she was told only to receive signals, not to transmit.
Noor Inayat Khan was betrayed to the Germans, possibly by Renée Garry. Garry was the sister of Émile Henri Garry, the head agent of the 'Cinema' and 'Phono' circuits, and Inayat Khan's organiser in the Cinema network (later renamed Phono). Émile Henri Garry was later arrested and executed at Buchenwald in September 1944.
Renée Garry was allegedly paid 100,000 francs (some sources state 500 pounds). Her actions have been attributed at least partially to Garry's suspicion that she had lost the affections of SOE agent France Antelme to Noor. After the war, she was tried but escaped conviction by one vote.
On or around 13 October 1943, Noor was arrested and interrogated at the SD Headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris. During that time, she attempted escape twice. Hans Kieffer, the former head of the SD in Paris, testified after the war that she did not give the Gestapo a single piece of information, but lied consistently.
However, other sources indicate that Noor chatted amiably with an out-of-uniform Alsatian interrogator, and provided personal details that enabled the SD to answer random checks in the form of questions about her childhood and family.
Noor did not talk about her activities under interrogation but the SD found her notebooks. Contrary to security regulations, Noor had copied out all the messages she had sent as an SOE operative (this may have been due to her misunderstanding what a reference to filing meant in her orders, and also the truncated nature of her security course due to the need to insert her into France as soon as possible). Although Noor refused to reveal any secret codes, the Germans gained enough information from them to continue sending false messages imitating her.
Some claim London failed to properly investigate anomalies which would have indicated the transmissions were sent under enemy control, in particular the change in the 'fist' (the style of the operator's Morse transmission). As a WAAF signaller, Noor had been nicknamed "Bang Away Lulu" because of her distinctively heavy-handed style, which was said to be a result of chilblains. However, according to M.R.D. Foot, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) were quite adept at faking operators' fists. The well-organised and skillful counter-espionage work of the SD under Hans Josef Kieffer is, in fact, the true reason for the intelligence failures.
Additionally, Déricourt, F Section's air-landing officer in France, literally gave SOE's secrets to the SD in Paris. He would later claim to have been working for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly known as MI6), without the knowledge of SOE, as part of a complex deception plan in the run-up to D-Day.
As a result, however, three more agents sent to France were captured by the Germans at their parachute landing, including Madeleine Damerment, who was later executed. Sonya Olschanezky ('Tania'), a locally recruited SOE agent, had learnt of Noor's arrest and sent a message to London through her fiancé, Jacques Weil, telling Baker Street of her capture and warning HQ to suspect any transmissions from "Madeleine".
Colonel Maurice Buckmaster ignored the message as unreliable because he did not know who Olschanezky was. As a result, German transmissions from Noor's radio continued to be treated as genuine, leading to the unnecessary deaths of SOE agents, including Olschanezky herself, who was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on 6 July 1944. When Vera Atkins investigated the deaths of missing SOE agents, she initially confused Noor with Olschanezky (they were similar in appearance), who was unknown to her, believing Noor had been killed at Natzweiler, correcting the record only when she learned of Noor's fate at Dachau.
On 25 November 1943, Noor escaped from the SD Headquarters, along with fellow SOE agent John Renshaw Starr and resistance leader Léon Faye, but was recaptured in the vicinity. There was an air raid alert as they escaped across the roof. Regulations required a count of prisoners at such times and their escape was discovered before they could get away. After refusing to sign a declaration renouncing future escape attempts, Noor was taken to Germany on 27 November 1943 "for safe custody" and imprisoned at Pforzheim in solitary confinement as a "Nacht und Nebel" ("Night and Fog": condemned to "Disappearance without Trace") prisoner, in complete secrecy. For ten months, she was kept there, shackled at her hands and feet.
Noor was classified as "highly dangerous" and shackled in chains most of the time. As the prison director testified after the war, Noor remained uncooperative and continued to refuse to give any information on her work or her fellow operatives, although in her despair at the appalling nature of her confinement, other prisoners could hear her crying at night. However, by scratching messages on the base of her mess cup, Noor was able to inform another inmate of her identity, giving the name of Nora Baker and the London address of her mother's house.
Execution
On 12 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan was abruptly transferred to the Dachau concentration camp along with her fellow agents Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Eliane Plewman. At dawn on the following morning the four women were executed.
A Gestapo man named Max Wassmer was in charge of prisoner transports at Karlsruhe and accompanied the women to Dachau. Another Gestapo man named Christian Ott gave a statement to US investigators after the war as to the fate of Noor and her three companions. Ott was stationed at Karlsruhe and volunteered to accompany the four women to Dachau because he wanted to visit his family in Stuttgart on the return journey. Although he was not present at the execution, Ott told investigators what Wassmer had told him.
The four prisoners had come from the barrack in the camp, where they had spent the night, into the yard where the shooting was to take place. Here he [Wassmer] announced the death sentence to them. Only the Lagerkommandant and the two SS men were present. The German-speaking Englishwoman (the major) notified her companion about the death sentence. All four of the prisoners had grown very pale and wept; the major asked if they could protest against the sentence. The Kommandant declared that nobody could protest against the sentence. The major then requested to see a priest. The camp Kommandant denied the major's request on the ground that there was no priest in the camp. Now the four prisoners were ordered to kneel with their heads facing a small mound of earth before they were killed by the two SS men, one after another by a shot through the back of the neck. During the shooting, the two Englishwomen held hands and the two Frenchwomen did the same. For three of the prisoners, the first shot caused their deaths, but for the German-speaking Englishwoman, a second shot needed to be fired because she still showed signs of life after the first shot was fired. After the shooting of these prisoners the Lagerkommandant said to the two SS men that he took a personal interest in the jewellery of the women and that this should be taken into his office.
This is an unreliable account because Ott told the investigator that he had asked Wassmer the following question after he was told what had happened to the women: "But tell me, what really happened", to which Wassmer replied: "So you want to know how it really happened?"
In 1958, an anonymous Dutch prisoner asserted that Noor was cruelly beaten by an SS officer named Wilhelm Ruppert before she was shot from behind. Her last word was reported as "Liberté". Noor was survived by her mother and three siblings.
Honours and awards
Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949, and she was awarded a French Croix de Guerre with a silver star (avec étoile de vermeil). Because she was still considered "missing" in 1946, she could not be awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire, but her commission as Assistant Section Officer was gazetted in June (with effect from 5 July 1944), and she was Mentioned in Despatches in October 1946. Noor was the third of three Second World War FANY members to be awarded the George Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy.
At the beginning of 2011, a campaign to raise £100,000 in order to pay for the construction of a bronze bust of her in central London close to her former home was launched. The unveiling of the bronze bust by the Princess Royal took place on 8 November 2012 in Gordon Square Gardens, Bloomsbury, London.
Noor was commemorated on a stamp which was issued by the Royal Mail on 25 March 2014 in a set of stamps about "Remarkable Lives". In 2018, a campaign was launched to have Noor represented on the next version of the £50 note.
George Cross citation
The announcement of the award of the George Cross was made in the London Gazette of 5 April 1949. The full citation reads:The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the GEORGE CROSS to:—
Assistant Section Officer Nora INAYAT-KHAN (9901), Women's Auxiliary Air Force.Assistant Section Officer Nora INAYAT-KHAN was the first woman operator to be infiltrated into enemy occupied France, and she was landed by Lysander aircraft on 16th June, 1943. During the weeks immediately following her arrival, the Gestapo made mass arrests in the Paris Resistance groups to which she had been detailed. However, she refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France, even though she had been given the opportunity to return to England, because she did not want to leave her French comrades without communications and she also hoped to rebuild her group. Therefore, she remained at her post and did the excellent work which earned her a posthumous Mention in Despatches.The Gestapo had a full description of her, but it only knew her code name "Madeleine". It deployed considerable forces in its effort to catch her and break the last remaining link with London. After 3 months, she was betrayed to the Gestapo and taken to its H.Q. in the Avenue Foch. The Gestapo had found her codes and messages and as a result, it was now in a position to work back to London. It asked her to co-operate, but she refused and gave it no information of any kind. She was imprisoned in one of the cells on the 5th floor of the Gestapo H.Q. and she remained there for several weeks during which time she made two unsuccessful attempts to escape. She was asked to sign a declaration which stated that she would make no further escape attempts, but she refused to sign it and the Chief of the Gestapo obtained permission to send her to Germany for "safe custody" from Berlin. She was the first enemy agent to be sent to Germany.Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN was sent to Karlsruhe in November 1943, and then she was sent to Pforzheim where her cell was apart from the main prison. She was considered a particularly dangerous and uncooperative prisoner. The Director of the prison was also interrogated and confirmed that Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN refused to give any information whatsoever, either about her work or her colleagues when she was interrogated by the Karlsruhe Gestapo.She was taken to the Dachau Concentration Camp with three other female prisoners on 12 September 1944. On her arrival, she was taken to the crematorium and shot.Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN displayed the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical over a period of more than 12 months.
Blue plaque
On 25 February 2019, it was announced that Noor Inayat Khan would be honoured with a blue plaque at her wartime London home at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury – the house that she left on her final and fatal mission and the address that she etched onto her bowl while in prison so she could be identified. Noor is the first woman of South Asian descent to have a blue plaque honouring her in London. The plaque was unveiled at a virtual ceremony broadcast on English Heritage's Facebook page at 7 pm on Friday 28 August 2020.
In popular culture
Theatre
In 2018 a play about the life and death of Noor, entitled Agent Madeleine, premiered at the Ottawa Fringe Festival. The role of Noor was played by Puja Uppal. The following deviations from facts have been noted:
Noor is in a relationship with Leo Marks, instead of an unknown SOE officer.
John Starr, Leon Faye, and a variety of prisoners of 84 Avenue Foch were represented by a single character, "Marcel de Faye".
Noor is imprisoned at 84 Avenue Foch until she is moved to Dachau, where she is executed alone.
Noor's escape attempts are altered – her escape out of the bathroom window is foiled by an air raid siren, and her escape attempt with the screwdriver is foiled when a guard discovers her with it.
Khan is the basis for Anna Sidiqui in Catalyst Theatre's all-female musical The Invisible: Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Christenson.
Film
In September 2012, producers Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani obtained the film rights to the biography Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu.
Noor's story is featured in the 2019 film A Call to Spy, written by Sarah Megan Thomas and directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher. Noor is played by Indian actress Radhika Apte.
Noor is the central character in the 2021 live action short film Liberté, written, produced and starring Sam Naz. The film was shot on location at Beaulieu Palace House where Noor had trained for SOE and features music from the track La Monotonia which was composed in Noor's memory by her brother Hidayat Inayat Khan.
Literature
On 6 September 2010, American poet Stacy Ericson posted a poem on the Internet entitled "Resistance", dedicated to Noor Inayat Khan and providing a link back to Inayat Khan's biography. This may have been the first poem dedicated to Noor Inayat Khan and refers to the isolation and fear shared by those in resistance to oppressive regimes.
On 3 March 2013, Irfanulla Shariff, an American poet, posted a poem on the Internet, "A Tribute To The Illuminated Woman of World War II", dedicated to Khan, which illustrates her life story.
Television
The second episode of the Indian anthology series Adrishya, which aired on Epic TV in 2014, was based on Noor Inayat Khan's adult life in wartime organization till her death in Nazi Germany.
A Man Called Intrepid (first airdate February 1979), a six-hour, fact-based TV miniseries broadcast in Canada on CTV and in the US on NBC, starred David Niven as its protagonist Sir William Stephenson, and Barbara Hershey as Noor. It contains a number of deviations from the facts.
In 2014, PBS aired a 60-minute biographical docudrama entitled Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story, executive produced by Alex Kronemer and Michael Wolfe of Unity Productions Foundation and directed by Robert H. Gardner. Grace Srinivasan played the title role.
In 2018, Netflix released an original show entitled "Churchill's Secret Agents the new recruits", with Season 1, episode 4 featuring a summary of Noor's final mission with the SOE.
On 5 January 2020, Aurora Marion played Noor in "Spyfall, Part 2", the second episode of Doctor Who, series 12
Radio
In November 1980, as an afternoon theatre production, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a play about Noor written by Patrice Chaplin.
In November 1980, The Knightsbridge Memorial a play about Noor was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a Saturday-Night Theatre production.
See also
British military history of World War II
Military history of France during World War II
Resistance during World War II
Notes
References
Sources
Comprehensive look at the SOE in France during WW2.
Comprehensive look at Dericourt.
Jean Overton Fuller, Born For Sacrifice (Pan Books, 1957)
Documents Atkins' post-war search for missing SOE agents including Borrel.
Focus on the four female SOE agents (Borrel, Leigh, Olschanezky and Rowden) executed in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Further reading
Substantive history of the French Resistance.
A once classified report compiled in 1946 by a former member of SOE's F Section, Major Robert Bourne-Patterson, who was a planning officer.
Buckmaster was the head of SOE's F Section, who infamously ignored security checks by captured SOE wireless operators that indicated their capture, resulting in agents being captured and executed.
Comprehensive coverage of the French Resistance.
Information about female SOE agents in France including Borrel.
Overview of SOE (Foot won the Croix de Guerre as a SAS operative in Brittany, later becoming Professor of Modern History at Manchester University and an official historian of the SOE).
A thorough overview of SOE.
Overview of the scores of female SOE agents sent into occupied Europe during WW2 including Borrel.
A source of information about the dozens of female agents sent into France during WW2 including Borrel.
Comprehensive coverage of the German occupation of France.
Overview of Atkins' activity at SOE (served as Buckmaster's intelligence officer in the F Section).
Documents the activities of female SOE agents in France including Borrel.
Written by the son of Major Francis Suttill, the Prosper network chief executed by the Nazis in 1945.
Documents the activities of female OSS and SOE agents in France including Borrel.
Overview of SOE activities.
External links
Aquila Style – Muslim 'Spy Princess' Honoured in London
BBC History – Noor Inayat Khan (1914–1944)
BBC World Service – The Documentary, Codename: Madeleine
Independent – Noor Anayat Khan: The princess who became a spy
Nigel Perrin – 10 Amazing Female Spies Who Brought Down The Nazis
1914 births
1944 deaths
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom
British people of Indian descent
British people of American descent
British Sufis
Ināyati Sufis
British Universalists
British children's writers
British women poets
British women short story writers
Sufi poets
20th-century British poets
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École Normale de Musique de Paris alumni
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Night and Fog program
Spies who died in Nazi concentration camps
People executed by Nazi Germany by firearm
Special Operations Executive personnel killed in World War II
British people executed in Nazi concentration camps
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Executed British women
Executed spies
Executed Indian women
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael%20DeBakey
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Michael DeBakey
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Michael Ellis DeBakey (September 7, 1908 – July 11, 2008) was an American general and cardiovascular surgeon, scientist and medical educator who became Chairman of the Department of Surgery, President, and Chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. His career spanned nearly eight decades.
Born to Lebanese immigrants, DeBakey was inspired to pursue a career in medicine by the physicians that he had met at his father's drug store, and he simultaneously learned sewing skills from his mother. He subsequently attended Tulane University for his premedical course and Tulane University School of Medicine to study medicine. At Tulane, he developed a version of the roller pump, which he initially used to transfuse blood directly from person to person and which later became a component of the heart–lung machine. Following early surgical training at Charity Hospital, DeBakey was encouraged to complete his surgical fellowships in Europe, before returning to Tulane University in 1937. During World War II, he worked in the Surgical Consultants Division of the Office of the Army Surgeon General, and later was involved in the establishment of the Veterans Administration.
DeBakey's surgical innovations included novel procedures to repair aortic aneurysms and dissections, the development of ventricular assist devices, and the introduction of prosthetic vascular substitutes. DeBakey received a number of awards, including the Albert Lasker Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and the Congressional Gold Medal. In addition, a number of institutions bear his name.
Early life and education
Michael DeBakey was born Michel Dabaghi () on September 7, 1908 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His parents, Shiker and Raheeja Dabaghi (which was anglicized to DeBakey) were immigrants from Marjeyoun, Lebanon (then Ottoman Syria) although they did not meet until both were living in the United States. Shiker, who had been a traveling salesman, settled in Lake Charles in the early 1900s and began to establish retail businesses, particularly general and drug stores. Both of them spoke French. Young Michael helped out with manual chores and keeping the books. DeBakey was the eldest of five children. His brother Ernest also became a physician, specializing in general and thoracic surgery. His sisters Lois and Selma were also scholarly, and eventually joined their eldest brother at Baylor College of Medicine as faculty members in medical communications. Another sister, Selena, died in 1952.
As a child, DeBakey learned to play the saxophone and was taught by his mother to sew, crochet, knit and tat. He could sew his own shirt by the age of 10. He also became intrigued with the Encyclopædia Britannica and is said by colleagues to have read it from beginning to end. He learned French and German and participated in a Boy Scout troop. He won awards for vegetables he had grown in his garden.
Medical school
DeBakey attended Tulane University, where he enrolled in a six-year program that combined undergraduate and medical school. He was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1930 and a M.D. in 1932.
During his final year in medical school at Tulane University, and prior to the establishment of blood banks, DeBakey adapted old pumps and rubber tubing and developed a version of the roller pump. He used the pump to transfuse blood directly and continuously from person to person, and this later became a component of the heart–lung machine.
Postgraduate surgical training
Between 1933 and 1935, DeBakey remained in New Orleans to complete his internship and residency in surgery at Charity Hospital, and in 1935, he received a MS for his research on stomach ulcers. As was the trend for ambitious training surgeons at the time, and as his mentors Rudolph Matas and Alton Ochsner had done before him, DeBakey was encouraged to complete his surgical fellowships at the University of Strasbourg, France, under Professor René Leriche, and at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, under Professor Martin Kirschner.
Returning to Tulane Medical School, DeBakey served on the surgical faculty from 1937 to 1948.
With his mentor, Alton Ochsner, in 1939 DeBakey postulated a strong link between smoking and carcinoma of the lung, a hypothesis that other researchers supported as well.
Second World War
During the Second World War, DeBakey served in the US Army in the Surgical Consultants' Division in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army. In 1945, he was given the Legion of Merit award. Although sometimes credited in recent years for establishing the system of Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, research has shown that DeBakey actually led the effort to prevent the establishment of these units.
Remaining in the U.S. Army for a year after the end of the war, he was instrumental in the ongoing care of wounded servicemen and helped establish the Veterans Administration and the Medical Follow-Up Agency.
After the war, he returned to Tulane.
Postwar surgical career
DeBakey joined the faculty of Baylor University College of Medicine (now known as the Baylor College of Medicine) in 1948, serving as chairman of the surgical department until 1993. DeBakey was president of the college from 1969 to 1979, and served as its chancellor from 1979 to January 1996, when he was named chancellor emeritus. He was Olga Keith Wiess and Distinguished Service Professor in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the DeBakey Heart Center for research and public education at Baylor College of Medicine and Houston Methodist Hospital.
DeBakey was a member of the medical advisory committee of the Hoover Commission and was chairman of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke during the Johnson Administration. He worked in numerous capacities to improve national and international standards of health care. Among his numerous consultative appointments, he served 3 terms on the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health.
DeBakey hired surgeon Denton Cooley at Baylor College of Medicine in 1951. They collaborated until Cooley's resignation from his faculty position at the college in 1969.
Death of the Shah of Iran
In 1980 DeBakey was a consultant in the care of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, who was in the terminal stages of lymphoma. Due to hypersplenism, the Shah underwent splenectomy in Cairo on March 28, 1980, with DeBakey supervising a team of surgeons. At operation, the Shah was found to be harboring widely metastatic disease. Several complications developed in the postoperative period, including a subphrenic abscess and pneumonia. Although these were successfully treated, the Shah succumbed from his malignancy on July 27.
Vascular surgery
In the 1950s, DeBakey's observations and classification of atherosclerotic blood vessels permitted innovations in the treatments of vascular disease. His pursuit of the ideal material to make grafts led him to a department store that had run out of nylon, so he settled on polyethylene terephthalate (Dacron) and bought a yard of the material. Using his wife's sewing machine, DeBakey produced the first arterial Dacron grafts to replace or repair blood vessels. He subsequently collaborated with a research associate from the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science to create a knitting machine for making grafts.
DeBakey performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy in 1953. A year later, he pioneered techniques in grafts for the various parts of the aorta.
DeBakey was among the earliest surgeons to perform coronary artery bypass surgery. A pioneer in the development of an artificial heart, he was among the first to use an external heart pump successfully in a patient – a left ventricular bypass pump.
In 1958, to counteract narrowing of an artery caused by an endarterectomy, DeBakey performed the first successful patch-graft angioplasty. This procedure involved patching the slit in the artery from an endarterectomy with a Dacron or vein graft. The patch widened the artery so that when it closed, the channel of the artery returned to normal size.
Film
In the 1960s, DeBakey and his team of surgeons performed some of the early instances of surgeries on film.
Views on animal research
DeBakey founded and chaired the Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR), whose goal is to promote public understanding and support for animal research. DeBakey made wide use of animals in his research. He antagonized animal rights and animal welfare advocates who oppose the use of animals in the development of medical treatment for humans when he claimed that the "future of biomedical research; and ultimately human health" would be compromised if shelters stopped turning over surplus animals for medical research. Responding to the need for animal research, DeBakey stated that "These scientists, veterinarians, physicians, surgeons and others who do research in animal labs are as much concerned about the care of the animals as anyone can be. Their respect for the dignity of life and compassion for the sick and disabled, in fact, is what motivated them to search for ways of relieving the pain and suffering caused by diseases."
Later surgical career
DeBakey continued to practice medicine until his death in 2008 at the age of 99. His contributions to the field of medicine spanned the better part of 75 years. DeBakey operated on more than 60,000 patients, including several heads of state. DeBakey and a team of American cardiothoracic surgeons, including George Noon, supervised quintuple-bypass surgery performed by Russian surgeons on Russian president Boris Yeltsin in 1996. On 29 April 1999, DeBakey oversaw an aorta-coronary bypass surgery of Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev in Cleveland, Ohio during Aliyev's visit to the United States.
Health issues
In late 2005, DeBakey suffered an aortic dissection. Years prior, DeBakey had pioneered the surgical treatment that now bears his name to treat this condition. A sharp chest pain sent him to Houston Methodist Hospital, where the diagnosis was confirmed by a CT scan.
DeBakey initially resisted the surgical option, but as his health deteriorated and DeBakey became unresponsive, the surgical team opted to proceed with surgical intervention. In a controversial decision, Houston Methodist's ethics committee approved the operation; on February 9–10, DeBakey at age 98 became the oldest patient ever to undergo the surgery for which he was responsible. The operation by George Noon to repair his aorta with a Dacron graft, similar to one he had pioneered decades earlier, lasted seven hours. After a complicated post-operative course that required eight months in the hospital at a cost of over one million dollars, DeBakey was released in September 2006 and returned to good health.
Selected honors and awards
DeBakey became a member of numerous learned societies, gained 36 honorary degrees and was the recipient of hundreds of awards.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Science. He was a Health Care Hall of Famer, a Lasker Luminary and a recipient of the United Nations Lifetime Achievement Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Foundation for Biomedical Research and in 2000 was cited as a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress. On April 23, 2008, he received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
DeBakey's major awards include:
US Army Legion of Merit (1945)
American Medical Association Hektoen Gold Medal (1954 and 1970)
Rudolph Matas Award in Vascular Surgery (1954)
International Society of Surgery Distinguished Service Award (1958)
René Leriche Prize from the International Surgical Society (1959)
American Medical Association Distinguished Service Award (1959)
Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research (1963)
American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award (1967)
Prix International Dag Hammarskjold Great Collar with Golden Medal (1967)
American Heart Association Gold Heart Award (1968)
Medal of Freedom with Distinction (1969)
Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award (1969)
Yugoslavian Presidential Banner and Sash (1971)
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences 50th Anniversary Jubilee Medal (1973)
Independence of Jordan Medal (1980)
American Surgical Association Distinguished Service Award (1981)
National Medal of Science (1987)
Merit Order of the Republic of Egypt (1980)
International Society of Surgery Distinguished Service Award (1981)
National Medal of Science (1987)
Theodore E. Cummings Memorial Prize for Outstanding Contributions in Cardiovascular Disease (1987)
International Platform Association George Crile Award as the Trailblazer in Open Heart Surgery (1988)
Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award (1988)
Others awards include:
Honorary Doctorate of Science from Universidad Francisco Marroquín (1989)
Special Award for Space Technology Utilization (1997)
MUSC Lindbergh-Carrel Prize (2002)
Lomonosov Large Gold Medal, Russian Academy of Sciences (2003)
The Denton A. Cooley Leadership Award (January 21, 2009)
Personal and family
DeBakey married Diana Cooper after returning from Europe in 1937, and they had four sons: Michael, Dennis, Ernest and Barry. After Diana died in 1972, he married German actress Katrin Fehlhaber, with whom he had a daughter, Olga-Katarina.
DeBakey has been described as a "tough taskmaster" by colleagues and trainees. Former trainee Jeremy R. Morton described how “he could be sweet as dripping honey when it came to patients and medical students, but could be brutal with surgical residents."
Death and legacy
DeBakey died from natural causes at Houston Methodist Hospital on July 11, 2008, at the age of 99. After lying in repose in Houston's City Hall, the first ever to do so, DeBakey received a memorial service at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart on July 16, 2008. He was granted ground burial at Arlington National Cemetery by the Secretary of the Army. On January 21, 2009, DeBakey became the first posthumous recipient of the Denton A. Cooley Leadership Award.
Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society
In 1976, DeBakey's trainees students founded the Michael E. DeBakey International Cardiovascular Surgical Society, which later changed its name to the Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society. Every two years, the Michael E. DeBakey Surgical Award is given.
Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award
The Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, given by the Lasker Foundation since 1946, was renamed the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in DeBakey's honor in 2008.
Michael E. DeBakey Library and Museum
In early 2008, DeBakey attended the groundbreaking for the new Michael E. DeBakey Library and Museum at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which honors his life, work and dedication to care and teaching. The museum officially opened on Friday, May 14, 2010.
DeBakey Medical Foundation
In honor of DeBakey, the DeBakey Medical Foundation, in conjunction with Baylor College of Medicine, annually selects recipients of the Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Awards. The awards recognize faculty who have published outstanding scientific research contributions to clinical or basic biomedical research. The awards are funded by the DeBakey Medical Foundation and have funded researchers from the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Texas Children's Cancer Center.
The foundation helped to establish the Michael E. DeBakey, Selma DeBakey and Lois DeBakey Endowed Scholarship Fund in Medical Humanities at Baylor University. The scholarship designates award recipients as "DeBakey Scholars" in recognition of the legacy of the DeBakey family.
Other DeBakey institutes
The DeBakey High School for Health Professions, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston at the Texas Medical Center in Houston are named after DeBakey. He had a role in establishing the Michael E. DeBakey Heart Institute at the Hays Medical Center in Kansas. Several atraumatic vascular surgical clamps and forceps that DeBakey introduced also bear his name. The Michael E. DeBakey Institute at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, founded as a collaboration between Texas A&M, the Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center at Houston for cardiovascular research, was named after DeBakey.
Selected publications
DeBakey's writings are reflected in his authorship or co-authorship in more than 1,300 published medical articles, chapters, and books on various aspects of surgery, medicine, health, medical research, and medical education, as well as ethical, socio-economic and philosophic discussion in those fields. In addition to his scholarly writings, DeBakey co-authored popular works including The Living Heart, The Living Heart Shopper's Guide and The Living Heart Guide to Eating Out. His publications include:
" A Simple Continuous Flow Blood Transfusion Instrument", New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal (1934)
The living heart. Co-authored with Antonio M Gotto and Mediziner Italien, Charter Books (1977),
The Living heart diet, New York: Raven Press (1984),
New living heart. Co-authored with Antonio M Gotto, Holbrook (1997),
The Living Heart in the 21st Century. Co-authored with Antonio Gotto and George P. Noon, Prometheus (2012),
DeBakey worked on his first book with Gilbert Wheeler Beebe after World War II:.
Battle Casualties Incidence, Mortality, and Logistic Considerations, co-authored with G. W. Beebe, Springfield, Ill. : Charles C. Thomas (1952)
References
External links
Video: A Dying King: The Shah of Iran
DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine
Methodist DeBakey Heart Center at The Methodist Hospital
Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society
DeBakey Institute for Comparative Cardiovascular Science and Biomedical Devices at Texas A&M University
DeBakey Cell Lab at The Health Museum
Lasker Luminary Dr. Michael DeBakey
In Moscow in 1996, a Doctor's Visit Changed History – The New York Times
Arlington National Cemetery
The Michael E. DeBakey Papers – Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine
1908 births
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20th-century American physicians
20th-century surgeons
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American Maronites
American Surgical Association members
American cardiac surgeons
American medical researchers
American people of Lebanese descent
Baylor College of Medicine physicians and researchers
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
Congressional Gold Medal recipients
Diseases of the aorta
Heidelberg University alumni
History of surgery
Members of the National Academy of Medicine
Middle Eastern Christians
National Medal of Science laureates
Military personnel from Houston
People from Lake Charles, Louisiana
Physicians from Louisiana
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Recipients of the Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Lomonosov Gold Medal
Tulane University School of Medicine alumni
Tulane University alumni
United States Army Medical Corps officers
United States Army personnel of World War II
University of Strasbourg alumni
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work%20song
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Work song
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A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either sung while conducting a task (usually to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task that might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. An example is "I've Been Working on the Railroad".
Definitions and categories
Records of work songs are as old as historical records, and anthropological evidence suggests that most agrarian societies tend to have them. Most modern commentators on work songs have included both songs sung while working as well as songs about work since the two categories are seen as interconnected. Norm Cohen divided collected work songs into domestic, agricultural or pastoral, sea shanties, African-American work songs, songs and chants of direction, and street cries. Ted Gioia further divided agricultural and pastoral songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of cloth workers (see Waulking song), factory workers, seamen, longshoremen, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He also added prisoner songs and modern work songs.
Hunting and pastoral songs
In societies without mechanical time keeping, songs of mobilisation, calling members of a community together for a collective task, were extremely important. Both hunting and the keeping of livestock tended to involve small groups or individuals, usually boys and young men, away from the centers of settlement and with long hours to pass. As a result, these activities have tended to produce long narrative songs, often sung individually, which might dwell on the themes of pastoral activity or animals, designed to pass the time in the tedium of work. Hunting songs, such as those of the Mbuti of the Congo, often incorporated distinctive whistles and yodels so that hunters could identify each other's locations and those of their prey.
Agricultural work songs
Most agricultural work songs were rhythmic a cappella songs intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom. Rhythms of work songs, similar to an African drum beat, served to synchronize physical movement in groups, coordinating sowing, hoeing, and harvesting. The usage of verses in work songs were sometimes improvised and sung differently each time. Improvisation provided singers with a subversive form of expression. Slaves sang improvised verses to mock their overseers, express frustrations, and share dreams of escaping. Many work songs served to create connection and familiarity between workers.
Yankee Doodle is thought to have started out as a harvest song, its words possibly originating from farmers in 15th century Holland. It contained mostly nonsensical and out-of-place words that were presumably sang to a similar—if not the same—tune: "Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther." Farm laborers in Holland at the time received as their wages "as much buttermilk (Botermilk) as they could drink, and a tenth (tanther) of the grain".
African-American work songs
African-American work songs originally developed in the era of slavery, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Because they were part of an almost entirely oral culture, they had no fixed form and only began to be recorded as the era of slavery came to an end after 1865. Slave Songs of the United States was the first collection of African-American "slave songs." It was published in 1867 by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. Though this text included many songs by slaves, other texts have also been published that include work songs. Many songs sung by slaves have their origins in African song traditions, and may have been sung to remind the Africans of home, while others were instituted by the captors to raise morale and keep Africans working in rhythm. They have also been seen as a means of withstanding hardship and expressing anger and frustration through creativity or covert verbal opposition. Similarly, work songs have been used as a form of rebellion and resistance. Specifically, African-American women work songs have a particular history and center on resistance and self-care. Work songs helped to pass down information about the lived experience of enslaved people to their communities and families.
A common feature of African-American songs was the call-and-response format, where a leader would sing a verse or verses and the others would respond with a chorus. This came from African traditions of agricultural work song and found its way into the spirituals that developed once Africans in bondage began to convert to Christianity and from there to both gospel music and the blues. The call and response format showcases the ways in which work songs foster dialogue. The importance of dialogue is illuminated in many African-American traditions and continues on to the present day. Particular to the African call and response tradition is the overlapping of the call and response. The leader's part might overlap with the response, thus creating a unique collaborative sound. Similarly, African-American folk and traditional music focuses on polyphony rather than a melody with a harmony. Often, there will be multiple rhythmic patterns used in the same song "resulting in a counterpoint of rhythms." The focus on polyphony also allows for improvisation, a component that is crucial to African-American work songs. As scholar Tilford Brooks writes, "improvisation is utilized extensively in Black folk songs, and it is an essential element especially in songs that employ the call-and-response pattern." Brooks also notes that often in a work song, "the leader has license to improvise on the melody in [their] call, while the response usually repeats its basic melody line without change." Also evident were field hollers, shouts, and moans, which may have been originally designed for different bands or individuals to locate each other and narrative songs that used folk tales and folk motifs, often making use of homemade instruments. In early African captivity drums were used to provide rhythm, but they were banned in later years because of the fear that Africans would use them to communicate in a rebellion; nevertheless, Africans managed to generate percussion and percussive sounds, using other instruments or their own bodies. In the 1950s, there are very few examples of work songs linked to cotton picking.
Corn, however, was a very common subject of work songs on a typical plantation. Because the crop was the main component of most Africans' diet, they would often sing about it regardless of whether it was being harvested. Often, communities in the south would hold "corn-shucking jubilees," during which an entire community of planters would gather on one plantation. The planters would bring their harvests, as well as their enslaved workers, and work such as shucking corn, rolling logs, or threshing rice would be done, accompanied by the singing of Africans doing work. The following is an example of a song Africans would sing as they approached one of these festivals. It is from ex bonded African William Wells Brown's memoir " My Southern Home."
Work songs were used by African-American railroad work crews in the southern United States before modern machinery became available in the 1960s. Anne Kimzey of the Alabama Center For Traditional Culture writes: "All-black gandy dancer crews used songs and chants as tools to help accomplish specific tasks and to send coded messages to each other so as not to be understood by the foreman and others. The lead singer, or caller, would chant to his crew, for example, to realign a rail to a certain position. His purpose was to uplift his crew, both physically and emotionally, while seeing to the coordination of the work at hand. It took a skilled, sensitive caller to raise the right chant to fit the task at hand and the mood of the men. Using tonal boundaries and melodic style typical of the blues, each caller had his own signature. The effectiveness of a caller to move his men has been likened to how a preacher can move a congregation."
Another common type of African-American work song was the "boat song." Sung by slaves who had the job of rowing, this type of work song is characterized by "plaintive, melancholy singing." These songs were not somber because the work was more troublesome than the work of harvesting crops. Rather, they were low-spirited so that they could maintain the slow, steady tempo needed for rowing. In this way, work songs followed the African tradition, emphasizing the importance of activities being accompanied by the appropriate song.
The historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik identify Islamic music as an influence on field holler music. Diouf notes a striking resemblance between the Islamic call to prayer (originating from Bilal ibn Rabah, a famous Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century) and 19th-century field holler music, noting that both have similar lyrics praising God, melody, note changes, "words that seem to quiver and shake" in the vocal cords, dramatic changes in musical scales, and nasal intonation. She attributes the origins of field holler music to African Muslim slaves who accounted for an estimated 30% of African slaves in America. According to Kubik, "the vocal style of many blues singers using melisma, wavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large region of West Africa that had been in contact with the Arabic-Islamic world of the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries." There was particularly a significant trans-Saharan cross-fertilization between the musical traditions of the Maghreb and the Sahel.
Sea shanties
Work songs sung by sailors between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries are known as sea shanties. These songs were typically performed while adjusting the rigging, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the nineteenth century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together. Because many cultures used slaves to row, some of these songs might also be considered slave songs. Improvised verses sung by sailors spoke of ills with work conditions and captains. These songs were performed with and without the aid of a drum.
Cowboy songs
Western music was directly influenced by the folk music traditions of immigrants in the nineteenth century as they moved west. They reflected the realities of the range and ranch houses where the music originated, played a major part in combating the loneliness and boredom that characterised cowboy life and western life in general. Such songs were often accompanied on portable instruments of guitars, fiddles, concertina and harmonica. In the nineteenth century cowboy bands developed and cowboy songs began to be collected and published from the early twentieth century with books like John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910). As cowboys were romanticised in the mid-twentieth century they became extremely popular and played a part in the development of country and western music.
Industrial folk song
Industrial folk song emerged in Britain in the eighteenth century, as workers took the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapted them to their new experiences and circumstances. Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry.
As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in textile production, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries. As other nations industrialised their folk song underwent a similar process of change, as can be seen for example in France, where Saint-Simon noted the rise of 'Chansons Industriale' among cloth workers in the early nineteenth century, and in the USA where industrialisation expanded rapidly after the Civil War.
A.L. Lloyd defined the industrial work song as 'the kind of vernacular songs made by workers themselves directly out of their own experiences, expressing their own interest and aspirations...'. Lloyd also pointed to various types of song, including chants of labour, love and erotic occupational songs and industrial protest songs, which included narratives of disasters (particularly among miners), laments for conditions, as well as overtly political strike ballads. He also noted the existence of songs about heroic and mythical figures of industrial work, like the coal miners the 'Big Hewer' or 'Big Isaac' Lewis.
This tendency was even more marked in early American industrial songs, where representative heroes like Casey Jones and John Henry were eulogised in blues ballads from the nineteenth century.
Folk revival
In the 1930s, Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) was recorded in prison by the folklorist Alan Lomax. Leadbelly knew hundreds of work hollers and traditional songs from the cotton fields, railroads and prison gangs. In the 1940s he toured widely on college campuses and folk music venues, popularising songs including "Take This Hammer", "John Henry" "Boll Weevil" and "Midnight Special". His repertoire was a major influence on the Folk Revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Mining songs written in the late 1940s by country artists Merle Travis ("Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon") and Billy Edd Wheeler ("Coal Tattoo") also became fireside standards.
The working class was glorified in Marxist theory and practice, and a strong link between work songs and activism developed in the USA and elsewhere. The "dustbowl balladeer" Woody Guthrie wrote and performed work-related songs such as "Deportee" and "Talking Hard Work" in the 1940s and 1950s. Guthrie and other politically active performers, especially the Weavers with Pete Seeger, continued the Union Songs movement that had begun with Joe Hill in the early 1900s. From that time, most topical and activist singers including Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs performed work-related songs. Rock performers with working-class leanings such as Bruce Springsteen have also been influenced by the genre.
In Britain, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger produced hundreds of albums of political and traditional songs, writing many songs referring to industrial and working conditions. Folk or folk-rock performers including Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, The Watersons, Dick Gaughan, Capercaillie, Billy Bragg, James Fagan and Nancy Kerr have featured work songs in their performances.
In Australia, shearing songs and droving songs featured strongly in the first traditional songs to be collected in the field in the 1950s. Merv Lilley and Dorothy Hewett wrote work poems that were set to music during the early 1960s folk revival and became standards, such as the call-and-reply canecutting song "Cane Killed Abel" and one of the first songs about the social and environmental damage caused by industrialisation, "Weevils in the Flour". Alternative rock bands like Midnight Oil and Goanna passed the tradition to a broader audience.
With the end of the folk boom in the 1970s and the rise of the introspective singer-songwriter, the genre lost its wide public appeal, but work songs have continued to be very popular throughout the folk scene, at protest gatherings and with union choirs.
Women's work songs
Waulking songs from Scotland are a traditional genre performed while women communally beat and felted cloth.
Some women's work songs have been created within modern genres. Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" is pop country, Cher's "Working Girl" is also an office work anthem. Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money" is disco/techno and refers to "the oldest profession" (prostitution).
See also
Military cadence
Waulking song
The Volga Boatmen's Song
Gandydancer
References
Work music
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Speakers' Corner
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A Speakers' Corner is an area where free speech open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed. The original and best known is in the north-east corner of Hyde Park in London, England. Historically there were a number of other areas designated as Speakers' Corners in other parks in London, such as Lincoln's Inn Fields, Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Kennington Park, and Victoria Park. Areas for Speakers' Corners have been established in other countries and elsewhere in the UK.
Hyde Park
Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers' Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police intervene only when they receive a complaint. On some occasions in the past, they have intervened on grounds of profanity.
Though Hyde Park Speakers' Corner is considered the paved area closest to Marble Arch, legally the public speaking area extends beyond the Reform Tree and covers a large area from Marble Arch to Victoria Gate, then along the Serpentine to Hyde Park Corner and the Broad Walk running from Hyde Park Corner to Marble Arch.
Public riots broke out in the park in 1855, in protest over the Sunday Trading Bill, which forbade buying and selling on a Sunday, the only day working people had off. The riots were described by Karl Marx as "the beginning of the English revolution".
The Chartist movement used Hyde Park as a point of assembly for popular protests, but no permanent speaking location was established. The Reform League organised a massive demonstration in 1866 and then again in 1867, which compelled the government to extend the franchise to include most working-class men.
Speakers' Corner is often held up to demonstrate freedom of speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, although always at the risk of being heckled by regulars. The corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, and William Morris.
In June 1972, three Irish republican activists, Joseph Callinan, Louis Marcantonio and Thomas Quinn, were arrested after giving inflammatory speeches at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park protesting the events of Bloody Sunday, in which British troops opened fire on a crowd of civil rights demonstrators in Derry, killing 13. The three men were subsequently charged under the Treason Felony Act 1848 with criminal conspiracy and incitement. Most of the charges were eventually dropped, and the three were ultimately convicted of sedition and given sentences of between nine and eighteen months in prison.
Lord Justice Sedley, in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999), described Speakers' Corner as demonstrating "the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear." The ruling famously established in English case law that freedom of speech could not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to "the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such speech did not tend to provoke violence", and that the right to free speech accorded by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights also accorded the right to be offensive. Prior to the ruling, prohibited speech at Speakers' Corner included obscenity, blasphemy, insulting the Queen, or inciting a breach of the peace.
In the late 19th century, for instance, a combination of park by-laws, use of the Highways Acts and use of venue licensing powers of the London County Council made it one of the few places where socialist speakers could meet and debate.
Robert Vincent Rogers (1947 - 2021) was an unofficial custodian and historian of Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park. Although not an orator himself, Bob usually drew a small crowd of fellow-enthusiasts to his pitch. He had heard the orators and hecklers for the first time as a boy of 16, loved the experience and, subsequently, enjoyed the company of such speakers as Norman Schlund and Michael ‘Lord’ Barker.
Noted speakers
The following organisations and individuals, listed here in chronological order, have (had) a well-established history of speaking regularly in Hyde Park.
Socialist Party of Great Britain (since 1904)
Catholic Evidence Guild (since 1918)
Vincent McNabb (ca. 1920–43)
Bonar Thompson (1920–1960)
Frank Sheed (1921–ca.1970)
Philip Sansom (1947–ca.1978)
John Webster (1947–ca. 1985)
Donald Soper, Baron Soper (1950–ca. 1995)
Norman "The Walker" Schlund (1960s–1980s)
Robert Ogilvie (1960s–1980s)
The Hyde Park Tories (1966 - 1975) (Bryan Morgan-Edwards, John Goss, Lou Brotherton MP, Christopher Horne, Sir Ian MacTaggart, Jacques Arnold MP, William List and others)
Derek Prince (1970s)
Jim Huggon (1970s, 1980s)
Michael 'Lord' Barker (1970s, 1980s)
Tony Allen (since 1978)
Martin Besserman (since ca. 1978)
Peter Lumsden (ca. 1980–2007)
Diane Hamilton (since 1980s)
Outside London
Official
Nottingham
The first official Speakers' Corner outside London opened in Nottingham in 2009. It was officially inaugurated by Jack Straw, the UK Justice Secretary, on 22 February 2009. The designated space occupied a new landscaped extension to the city's Old Market Square, at the junction of King Street and Queen Street. The large paved space includes the new statue of Brian Clough, the former manager of Derby County and Nottingham Forest, who forged ties between the two cities which were famous for local rivalry.
Lichfield, Staffordshire
Speakers Corner Lichfield was launched in May 2009, with the help of the Speakers' Corner Trust, to much applause. Hundreds of people joined in the celebrations which featured more than 30 speeches, musical and dance performances, as well as star appearances from BBC's Jo Malin and former Coronation Street star Chris Walker.
Today Speakers' Corner is a site for events and activities, as well as a destination for all the community to visit and have their say on topics close to their hearts.
Since the launch, a plaque has been unveiled at the site, along with a code of conduct. Plans for the site include a stone plaque marking the spot, as well as a series of annual events.
Worthing, West Sussex
The Sussex coastal town of Worthing has had its own Speakers' Corner at Splash Point on the town's seafront since the Victorian era. A sign today marks the "stand for delivering sermons and public speeches", while another sign close by marks the site by the old Fish Market where the Salvation Army has preached the Gospel since 1886. The Speakers' Corner fell into disuse in the late 20th century. As part of the Government's Sea Change programme, run by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the area benefited from a £500,000 grant to re-landscape the area around Splash Point including a revival of the Speakers' Corner. Work was completed early in 2011
Unofficial
Leeds
Leeds is known to have its own Speakers' Corner, at Victoria Gardens on the Headrow, in front of the Leeds City Art Gallery, Central Library and Henry Moore Sculpture Centre building. It is a pivotal point in Leeds for justice and anti-war marches, most of which gather and terminate here, as well as for war memorial services due to the location of Leeds's Municipal Cenotaph.
Newcastle
The stepped base of Grey's Monument is used as a stage by assorted musicians, preachers and activists.
Portsmouth
The steps of Guildhall, Portsmouth are often used for protest activity, speeches and activists.
Other countries
Australia
There is a Speakers' Corner in The Domain, Sydney, established in 1878. The speakers talk every Sunday afternoon from 2 pm until 5 pm, and have a website. Official outdoor "free" speech first appeared in the hustings and hanging grounds of Hyde Park Sydney in 1874. Free speech in this form was banned following a serious riot between Catholics and Orangemen. However, following the formalisation of free speech in Speakers' Corner in London it was decided in 1878 that The Domain would be the place for free speech in Sydney.
In Diary of a Voyage to Australia, New Zealand and other lands (published 1896), the Christadelphian preacher Robert Roberts wrote: "On the west side [of a particular location] is a feature peculiar to Sydney in all the world - a preaching park. There are of course, parks in other cities where open-air spouting is practiced on Sundays, such as Hyde Park, in London : but there is no city in the world where a park on such a scale is used by all classes of religious people. It is a wooded enclosure, like a nobleman's park in England, kept in capital order, both as regards the turf under foot, and the tall and noble trees that give shelter overhead from the sun." "All the sects and denominations use it. There is none of the sense of infra dig that associates itself with out-door preaching in England.""Every denomination has its own tree." "The various religious bodies hold their meetings sufficiently apart to make no interference one with the other. It is a sort of weekly babel of religious tongues - recognised and patronised by the whole community"
Other Speakers' Corners are found in Brisbane outside Parliament House, and in King George Square. In Melbourne, Speakers' Corner was originally held in Birrarung Marr where the original site is still visible. This site has lost some popularity over the years and Speakers' Corner (Now called "Speakers' Forum") is currently held outside the State Library of Victoria on Sunday afternoon from 3 pm.
Canada
Dedicated by the Earl Mountbatten on 12 April 1966, Speakers' Corner in Regina, Saskatchewan is located on the north shore of Wascana Lake. It serves as a constant reminder of the notion of free speech and assembly and a tribute to Saskatchewan people who have upheld that heritage. The two lanterns framing the south entrance to the main plaza formed part of the Cumberland Screen at the entrance to Speakers' Corner in London. The podia on the main plaza are from the exterior columns of the Old City Hall (1908–1965) and symbolise free speech in democracy at the municipal level of government. Six paper birch trees were taken from Runnymede Meadow in Windsor Great Park, near Windsor Castle. It was there that King John signed Magna Carta on 15 June 1215. The ten gas lamps surrounding the corner come from King Charles Street which runs from Whitehall to St. James Park, London, near the Houses of Parliament. They were erected in 1908 during the reign of Edward VII, whose royal cypher E.R. VII appears on the base of each lamp.
Kitchener, Ontario has a small area designated as Speakers' Corner on the northwest corner of King and Benton Street. It has existed since the mid-1980s.
Hong Kong
The City Forum, a public forum was held weekly on Sunday in Victoria Park's Bandstand. The forum brought together politicians, academics and prominent public figures to discuss current issues, and also allowed the public to participate in a Q&A session. Each week, a number of secondary schools were invited to bring pupils to the forum to ask questions. The forum was broadcast live on RTHK TV 31 and was also sometimes held in other locations across Hong Kong such as Centenary Garden and Morse Park as well as across different university campuses. The forum ended on 18 July 2021.
Indonesia
Mass demonstration and speeches are traditionally held on the Hotel Indonesia roundabout Selamat Datang Monument. This venue however, is located the middle of Jakarta's main boulevard and commercial district, thus causing a severe traffic jam when a rally is held. To accommodate this, Jakarta's provincial government built a small park on the northwestern corner of the Merdeka Square, across the Istana Merdeka, Indonesia's presidential palace. Officially named 'Taman Pandang Istana' (Palace-View Park), this park is known commonly as 'Taman Unjuk Rasa' (Demonstration Park).
Italy
As a tribute to democracy and freedom of speech, in Lajatico, Pisa there a small area designated as Speakers' Corner ("L'angolo del parlatore") on a corner of the Vittorio Veneto main square. It is opened for the public to speak on Sundays (9 to 11 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m.). The first speaker was the mayor Alessio Barbarfieri, who highlighted the importance of the acts of speaking and listening for a good and effective local governance.
Malaysia
The first Speakers' Square in Malaysia was established at the Esplanade, George Town, Penang on 4 May 2010. It is opened for the public to speak on Wednesday and Sunday (6.00 pm to 10.00 pm). The first speaker was Tan Seng Hai who shared his views on preventing Ascot Sports Sdn. Bhd. from conducting betting activities in the Penang state.
Conditions for use of Speakers' Square
All speakers are prohibited from using loudspeakers, megaphones, or any other public address system
Anyone who uses the Speakers' Square to make speeches does so at his or her own risk
The Penang State Government and the City Council of Penang Island will not be responsible for any prosecution or legal action by the Police or civil proceedings
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, there is a permanently designated speakers' corner called the Spreeksteen in Amsterdam. Lawfully, every person has the freedom of speech as a matter of right. The 'Spreeksteen' is open for free speech 24-hours a day, and was established to allow complete free speech. The 'Spreeksteen' has been located in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam since 5 May 2005, and has been erected by a citizens action after the brutal murder of film-maker and columnist Theo van Gogh. Plans for bringing the Amsterdam Speakers' Corner online with a permanent camera and microphone are in a phase of installation. In the meantime the speakers are filmed with a hand-held camera.
On 1 October 2006, Michiel Smit, a far-right activist, spoke at the Spreeksteen. Antifascist demonstrators counter-protested, using noise to disrupt the speech.
New Zealand
There is a Speakers' Corner in Albert Park in Auckland at Princes Street, opposite to the University of Auckland.
Singapore
The Speakers' Corner in Singapore was opened on 1 September 2000, to allow Singapore citizens to speak freely. They are exempted from the need to obtain a police permit as long as they meet the terms and conditions of use.
The Speakers' Corner is located in Hong Lim Park, a popular venue for many election rallies and political speeches in the 1950s and '60s. Hong Lim Park is centrally located, well-served by public transport and is sited in a high public density area.
In 2004, public exhibitions and performances were added to the list of exempted activities at the Speakers' Corner.
From 1 September 2008, Singapore citizens can also organise or participate in demonstrations at Speakers' Corner without having to obtain a police permit. With this latest change in policy to allow the venue to be used freely as an outdoor demonstration site, coupled with the liberalisation on the use of sound amplification and the extension of operating hours of the venue, the Speakers' Corner aims to address the genuine desire by some Singaporeans for lawful outdoor demonstrations and processions as a means of political expression.
Singapore citizens who wish to hold a speech, exhibition/performance or demonstration at the Speakers' Corner can register with the National Parks Board, which manages Hong Lim Park. Online registration is available on the website.
Trinidad and Tobago
Woodford Square in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is also known as "The University of Woodford Square", so named by the first prime minister of Trinidad Eric Williams, who gave many speeches here. Another nickname, "People's Parliament", comes from the Black Power movement of the 1970s. Flanked by Trinidad's Parliament and Halls of Justice the Square still plays host to speeches of a highly topical and political nature.
In the southeast corner of the square, a blackboard lists the day's discussion as well as other important information. The speakers' topics are divided by interest and known as "classes".
Thailand
An area was set up in Bangkok in the 1930s, and quickly became known as Hyde Park, to enable freedom of speech and the airing of political views in Thailand. The area was shut down after student rioting and the lethal intervention of the army and it is not discussed openly today.
In 1955, Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram had visited London as part of an international tour. He became impressed with the "Speakers' Corner" in Hyde Park. Upon his return to Thailand a "Hyde Park" space for free speech and assembly was instituted at the Phramane Grounds in Bangkok. The experiment was well received and effectively stimulated political debate. The experiment was not appreciated by the government though, and in February 1956 restrictions were imposed on the Phramane "Hyde Park". However, during this period the Hyde Park Movement Party had evolved, upholding the legacy of the Hyde Park experiment.
United States
Tom L. Johnson, the radical reforming Mayor of Cleveland (1901–1909), dedicated the north-west quadrant of Public Square to free speech, as in Hyde Park. Speeches and meetings there were common in the early part of the century; Anarchist Emma Goldman addressed a large crowd there in 1908. Today the site remains the traditional place for rallies and demonstrations in Cleveland, around Mayor Johnson's statue.
The University of California at Berkeley had a free speech area in front of Sproul Plaza until 1964. The University of Missouri hosts a Speaker's Corner, referred to as "Speaker's Circle". There are only two such locations in the entire state of Missouri.
As a result of winter semesters visits to England and Hyde Park, Elon University created a Speakers' Corner on campus. No persons from outside the university may speak without a permit. Students are free to speak at any time as long as they don't use amplification, do not disrupt others, do not damage property and do not cause dangerous conditions.
Bughouse Square in Washington Square Park, Chicago, was known as a free speech site from the 1910s to the 1960s.
The pedestrian-only area of Pennsylvania Avenue on the north side of the White House in Washington, D.C. has become a de facto speaker's corner. Consistent with the principles of the First Amendment, ad hoc public speaking is generally legal in all public places in Washington DC, although organized demonstrations require police permits.
Inspired by Speakers' Corner, Karl Dean, the Mayor of Nashville, designated a space for live music in the southwest corner of Centennial Park (Nashville), calling it Musicians Corner. A free concert series of the same name takes place in this space each year.
Books and articles
A Summer in the Park – A Journal of Speakers' Corner (2004) by Tony Allen, foreword by Ken Campbell
The Speakers (1964) by Heathcote Williams. The book features William MacGuinness, Axel Ney Hoch, John Webster, Jacobus van Dyn, Norman Schlund, Alfred Reynolds and other Speakers' Corner regulars from the 1960s
Hyde Park Orator. Autobiographical reminiscences (1933) by Bonar Thompson. With a portrait. Foreword by Seán O'Casey
Speakers' Corner – an anthology (1977) Edited by Jim Huggon. With a foreword by Philip Sansom.
But Mr Speaker, It would create Anarchy! (ca. 1975) by Jim Huggon
Bonar Thompson, the Old Days of Carnearney: An Examination of the Life and Times of Bonar Thompson, the Hyde Park Orator (1991) by R. H. Foy
Around the Marble Arch. Wit and Humour of the Hyde Park Orators (1939) by F. W. Batchelor
The History of Soapbox Oratory. Part one: prominent speakers of the Sydney Domain (1994) by Stephen Maxwell
Speakers' Corner: The Conceptualisation and Regulation of a Public Sphere (2000) by J. M. Roberts. Dissertation, University of Cardiff.
Roberts, John Michael. 2008. "Expressive free speech, the state and the public sphere: a Bakhtinian-Deleuzian analysis of 'public address' at Hyde Park". Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest. 7:2 (September 2008), pp. 101–119.
From Where I Stand (Hansib, 1987) by Roy Sawh
A Saint in Hyde Park: Memories of Father Vincent McNabb, O. P. (1950) by Edward A Siderman
Wer andern eine Rede hält – Speakers Corner London (1981) by K. H. Wocker, photographs by J. D. Schmidt
Answering Back. Donald Soper answers your questions (1953) by Donald Soper
The Domain Speaker. Humour, Politics, Satire, Revolution, Human Rights, Historical, Pictorial, Vicious Wit (1981) by Victor Zammit
Stilled Tongues: From Soapbox to Soundbite (1997) by Stephen Coleman
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (2001) by Lawrence Lessig
'Only in London': Speakers' Corner, Marble Arch. Past, Present, and Future (if any). An illustrated sourcebook (2010) by Reinhard Wentz
Speaker's Corner Teacher Guide. KS3 History and Citizenship (2011) [Produced by The Royal Parks(Agency)] 22 pp
"Speakers' Corner: Where all speech reigns free" (2017)
Media references
Bill Maher appeared at the Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London, impersonating a Scientologist while filming his 2008 comedy/documentary film Religulous.
BBC 3 produced a program with Tony Allen on heckling as a lost art for the election in 2005. It was based around teaching two people how to heckle at Speakers' Corner.
Episode 24 of Season 6 of the comedy TV series Married... with Children had the Bundy family paying a visit to Speakers' Corner.
In Omen III: The Final Conflict, the adult Damien passes through Speakers' Corner, hears a priest there speaking of the Antichrist, and looks uneasy as the priest seems to recognise him.
Karl Pilkington interviews a man who regularly attends Speakers' Corner, claiming to have discovered "the secret to eternal youth". The interview is an extra, featured on Ricky Gervais's DVD entitled FAME.
Speakers' Corner appears in one of the early issues of the Grant Morrison comic book The Invisibles (later reprinted in the first Invisibles graphic novel, Say You Want A Revolution).
The BBC produced a program on the Park Police.
The lyrics of British rock group Dire Straits' song "Industrial Disease" (from the Love Over Gold album) refer to Speakers' Corner: "I go down to Speakers' Corner, I'm thunderstruck; they got free speech, tourists, police in trucks. Two men say they're Jesus; one of them must be wrong. There's a protest singer, he's singing a protest song".
Episode 3 season 1 BBC The Speaker contestants have to speak at Speakers' Corner to prove their public speaking skills.
In Half a Life: A Novel by V. S. Naipaul, the main character, visiting London for the first time, expects to see large, radical, excited crowds at Speakers' Corner. Instead he encounters "an idle scatter of people around half a dozen talkers, with the big buses and the cars rolling indifferently by all the time" and speakers with odd, "very personal religious ideas," such that their families "might have been glad to get them out of the house in the afternoons."
Graham Bond song "Strange Time, Sad Time" from his album "Love Is the Law" (Pulsar 1969) contains the lyric "In London England, people take a walk... Great Times, Love Times... to Speakers Corner to tell their talk... Great Times, Love Times
See also
Free speech zone
References
External links
London, United Kingdom
Light Creatures Over three hundred fine art b&w pictures from Speakers' Corner since 1991
Speakers'Corner: You have the right to remain vocal Documentary (60 minutes) by Gavin White and Duncan Walsh. 2009
The Speakers' Corner web site from Hyde Park. The web site contains radio and video archives of speeches, discussions and soundscapes from Speakers' Corner Hyde Park since 2003 broadcast on Resonance104.4fm Listen Live Weekly at 3 pm on Tuesday, 6pm on Thursday, 3:30 pm on Saturday, (London Time) Producer Heiko Khoo .
Sounds from the Park an oral and visual history of Speakers' Corner
Other countries
Speakers' Corner, Sydney The site contains brief videos of all the current speakers and hecklers.
Parks and open spaces in the City of Westminster
Public speaking
Tourist attractions in London
Freedom of expression
Hyde Park, London
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi%20Su-24
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Sukhoi Su-24
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The Sukhoi Su-24 (NATO reporting name: Fencer) is a supersonic, all-weather tactical bomber developed in the Soviet Union. The aircraft has a variable-sweep wing, twin-engines and a side-by-side seating arrangement for its crew of two. It was the first of the USSR's aircraft to carry an integrated digital navigation/attack system.
The Su-24 started development in the early 1960s and entered full production in 1967. Production ceased in 1993. It remains in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces, Syrian Air Force, Ukrainian Air Force, Algerian Air Force and various other air forces to which it was exported.
Development
Background
One of the conditions for accepting the Sukhoi Su-7B into service in 1961 was the requirement for Sukhoi to develop an all-weather variant capable of precision air strikes. Preliminary investigations with S-28 and S-32 aircraft revealed that the basic Su-7 design was too small to contain all the avionics required for the mission. OKB-794 (later known as Leninets) was tasked with developing an advanced nav/attack system, codenamed Puma, which would be at the core of the new aircraft. That same year, the United States proposal for their new all-weather strike fighter would be the TFX. The resulting F-111 would introduce a variable-geometry wing for greatly increased payload, range, and low-level penetration capabilities.
In 1962–1963, Sukhoi initially set out to build an aircraft without the complexity of moving wings like the F-111. It designed and built a mockup of S-6, a delta wing aircraft powered by two Tumansky R-21 turbojet engines and with a crew of two in a tandem arrangement. The mockup was inspected but no further work was ordered due to lack of progress on the Puma hardware.
In 1964, Sukhoi started work on S-58M. The aircraft was supposed to represent a modification of the Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor (factory designation S-58). In the meantime, revised Soviet Air Force requirements called for a low-altitude strike aircraft with STOL capability. A key feature was the ability to cruise at supersonic speeds at low altitude for extended periods of time in order to traverse enemy air defenses. To achieve this, the design included two Tumansky R-27 afterburning turbojets for cruise and four Rybinsk RD-36-35 turbojets for STOL performance. Side-by-side seating for the crew was implemented since the large Orion radar antennas required a large frontal cross-section. To test the six-engine scheme, the first Su-15 prototype was converted into S-58VD flying laboratory which operated in 1966–1969.
Design phase
The aircraft was officially sanctioned on 24 August 1965 under the internal codename T-6. The first prototype, T-6-1, was completed in May 1967 and flew on 2 July with Vladimir Ilyushin at the controls. The initial flights were performed without the four lift jets, which were installed in October 1967. At the same time, R-27s were replaced with Lyulka AL-21Fs. STOL tests confirmed the data from S-58VD that short-field performance was achieved at the cost of significant loss of flight distance as the lift engines occupied space normally reserved for fuel, loss of under-fuselage hardpoints, and instability during transition from STOL to conventional flight. So the six-engine approach was abandoned.
By 1967, the F-111 had entered service and demonstrated the practical advantages and solutions to the technical problems of a swing-wing design. On 7 August 1968, the OKB was officially tasked with investigating a variable geometry wing for the T-6. The resulting T-6-2I first flew on 17 January 1970 with Ilyushin at the controls. The subsequent government trials lasted until 1974, dictated by the complexity of the on-board systems. The day or night and all-weather capability was achieved – for the first time in Soviet tactical attack aircraft – thanks to the Puma nav/attack system consisting of two Orion-A superimposed radar scanners for nav/attack, a dedicated Relyef terrain clearance radar to provide automatic control of flights at low and extremely low altitudes, and an Orbita-10-58 onboard computer. The crew was equipped with Zvezda K-36D ejection seats, allowing them to bail out at any altitude and flight speed, including during takeoff and landing. The resulting design with a range of and payload of was slightly smaller and shorter ranged than the F-111.
Ten fatal accidents occurred during Su-24 development, killing thirteen Sukhoi and Soviet Air Force test pilots, and more than 5 crashes per year were occurring at average after that
The first production aircraft flew on 31 December 1971 with V.T. Vylomov at the controls, and on 4 February 1975, T-6 was formally accepted into service as the Su-24. About 1,400 Su-24s were produced.
Upgrades
Surviving Su-24M models have gone through a life-extension and updating program, with GLONASS, upgraded cockpit with multi-function displays (MFDs), HUD, digital moving-map generator, Shchel helmet-mounted sights, and provision for the latest guided weapons, including R-73 (AA-11 'Archer') air-to-air missiles. The upgraded aircraft are designated Su-24M2.
Design
The Su-24 has a shoulder-mounted variable geometry wing outboard of a relatively small fixed wing glove, swept at 69°. The wing has four sweep settings: 16° for take-off and landing, 35° and 45° for cruise at different altitudes, and 69° for minimum aspect ratio and wing area in low-level dashes. The variable geometry wing provides excellent STOL performance, allowing a landing speed of , even lower than the Sukhoi Su-17 despite substantially greater take-off weight. Its high wing loading provides a stable low-level ride and minimal gust response.
The Su-24 has two Saturn/Lyulka AL-21F-3A after-burning turbojet engines with 109.8 kN (24,700 lbf) thrust each, fed with air from two rectangular side-mounted intakes with splitter plates/boundary-layer diverters.
In early Su-24 ("Fencer A" according to NATO) aircraft these intakes had variable ramps, allowing a maximum speed of , Mach 2.18, at altitude and a ceiling of . Because the Su-24 is used almost exclusively for low-level missions, the actuators for the variable intakes were removed to reduce weight and maintenance. This has no effect on low-level performance, but absolute maximum speed and altitude are cut to Mach 1.35 and . The earliest Su-24 had a box-like rear fuselage, which was soon changed in production to a rear exhaust shroud more closely shaped around the engines to reduce drag. The revised aircraft also gained three side-by-side antenna fairings in the nose, a repositioned braking chute, and a new ram-air inlet at the base of the tail fin. The revised aircraft were dubbed "Fencer-B" by NATO, but did not merit a new Soviet designation.
Armament
The Su-24's fixed armament is a single fast-firing GSh-6-23 cannon with 500 rounds of ammunition, mounted in the fuselage underside. The gun is covered with an eyelid shutter when not in use. Two or four R-60 (NATO AA-8 'Aphid') infrared missiles are usually carried for self-defence by the Su-24M/24MK.
Initial Su-24s had basic electronic countermeasures (ECM) equipment, with many Su-24s limited to the old Sirena radar-warning receiver with no integral jamming system. Later-production Su-24s had more comprehensive radar warning, missile-launch warning, and active ECM equipment, with triangular antennas on the sides of the intakes and the tip of the vertical fin. This earned the NATO designation "Fencer-C", although again it did not have a separate Soviet designation. Some "Fencer-C" and later Su-24M (NATO "Fencer-D") have large wing fence/pylons on the wing glove portion with integral chaff/flare dispensers; others have such launchers scabbed onto either side of the tail fin.
Operational history
Substantial numbers of ex-Soviet Su-24s remain in service with Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. In 2008, roughly 415 were in service with Russian forces, with 321 in the Russian Air Force and 94 in the Russian Navy.
The Russian Aerospace Forces will eventually replace the Su-24 with the Sukhoi Su-34.
Soviet–Afghan War
The Soviet Union used some Su-24s in the Soviet–Afghan War, with an initial round of strikes in 1984 and a second intervention at the end of the war in 1988. No Su-24 was lost.
Lebanese Civil War
On October 13, 1990, Syrian Air Force jets entered Lebanese airspace in order to strike General Michel Aoun's military forces. Seven Su-24s were used in this operation.
Operation Desert Storm
During Operation Desert Storm, the Iraqi Air Force evacuated 24 of its 30 Su-24MKs to Iran. Another five were destroyed on the ground, while the sole survivor remained in service after the war.
Tajik and Afghan civil wars
Fencers were used by the Uzbek Air Force (UzAF) against United Tajik Opposition operating from Afghanistan (which also had a civil war of its own going on), as part of a wider air campaign in support of the embattled government of Tajikistan during the 1992–97 civil war. An Su-24M was shot down on 3 May 1993 with an FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS fired by fundamentalists. Both Russian crew members were rescued.
In August 1999 Tajikistan protested over an alleged strike involving four UzAF Su-24s against Islamist militants in areas close to two mountain villages in the Jirgatol District that, despite not producing human casualties, killed some 100 head of livestock and set ablaze several crop fields. Tashkent denied the accusations.
In the final stages of the 1996-2001 phase of the Afghan civil war, Uzbekistan launched airstrikes against Taliban positions in support of the Northern Alliance. During a mission to attack a Taliban armoured infantry unit near Heiratan, an UzAF Su-24 was shot down on 6 June 2001, killing both crew members.
First Chechen War
On 3 February 1995, during operations over Chechnya, a Russian Su-24M hit the ground in bad weather killing both crew members.
Second Chechen War
Su-24s were used in combat during the Second Chechen War performing bombing and reconnaissance missions. Up to four were lost, one due to hostile fire: on 4 October 1999, a Su-24 was shot down by a SAM while searching for the crash site of a downed Su-25. The pilot was killed while the navigator was taken prisoner.
2008 Russo-Georgian War
In August 2008, a low intensity conflict in the breakaway Georgian regions of Samachablo and Abkhazia, escalated into the 2008 South Ossetia war. Russian Su-24s flew bombing and reconnaissance sorties over Georgia. Russia admitted that three of its Su-25 strike aircraft and one Tu-22M3 long-range bomber were lost. Moscow Defence Brief provided a higher estimate, saying that Russian Air Force total losses during the war were one Tu-22M3 long-range bomber, one Su-24M Fencer fighter-bomber, one Su-24MR Fencer E reconnaissance plane and four Su-25 attack planes. Anton Lavrov listed one Su-25SM, two Su-25BM, two Su-24M and one Tu-22M3 lost.
Libyan Air Force
Libya received five Su-24MK and one Su-24MR from the Soviet Union in 1989. This was one of the last deliveries by the USSR to Libya before the end of the Cold War. One Su-24MK and one Su-24MR may have been transferred to the Syrian Arab Air Force. At the beginning of 2011, the Libyan Air Force was ordered to attack rebel positions and opposition rallies. The Libyan Air Force was limited to a composite force of some MiG-23 (due to be retired, according to plans) and Su-22 and few units of flyable MiG-21, Su-24 and Mirage F1ED fighter-bombers, supported by Soko G-2 Galeb and Aero L-39 Albatros armed trainers. The largest part of the former fleet was in disrepair or stored in not flyable condition. On 5 March 2011, at the beginning of the 2011 Libyan civil war, rebels shot down a Libyan Air Force Su-24MK during fighting around Ra's Lanuf with a ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun. Both crew members died. A BBC reporter was on the scene soon after the event and filmed an aircraft part at the crash site showing the emblem of the 1124 Squadron, flying the Su-24MK.
Syrian Civil War
Starting in November 2012, 18 months after the beginning of the Syrian Civil War and four months after the beginning of air raids by fixed-wing SyAAF aircraft, Su-24 bombers were filmed attacking rebel positions. The SAF suffered its first Su-24 loss, an upgraded MK2 version, to an Igla surface-to-air missile on 28 November 2012 near the town of Darat Izza in the Aleppo Governorate. One of the crew members, Col. Ziad Daud Ali, was injured and filmed being taken to a rebel field hospital.
Syrian Su-24s have reportedly also been involved in near-encounters with NATO warplanes. The first of such incidents occurred in early September 2013, when Syrian Su-24s of the 819th Squadron (launched from Tiyas Military Airbase) flew low over the Mediterranean and approached the 14-mile air exclusion zone surrounding the British airbase in Akrotiri, Cyprus. The jets turned back before reaching the area due to two RAF Eurofighter Typhoons being scrambled to intercept them. Turkey also sent two F-16s. The Fencers were possibly testing the air defenses of the base (and their reaction time) in preparation for a possible military strike by the U.S., the United Kingdom and France in the aftermath of the chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Damascus allegedly committed by the Syrian government.
On 23 September 2014, a Syrian Su-24 was shot down by an Israeli Air Defense Command MIM-104D Patriot missile near Quneitra, after it had flown into Israeli controlled airspace over the occupied Golan Heights. The missile hit the aircraft when it already re-entered into the Syrian air space. Both crew members ejected safely and landed in Syrian territory.
On 18 March 2018, a SyAAF Su-24 was shot down by rebels in East Qalamoun, East of Damascus province; it fell into territory controlled by Syrian government forces.
On 1 March 2020, two SyAAF Su-24MK2s were shot down by Turkish Air Force F-16s using air-to-air missiles over the Idlib province. All four pilots ejected safely.
2015 Russian military operation in Syria
The long-range striking power of the Russian aerospace forces in the region comes from the twelve Su-24M2 bombers that Russia sent to its base in Latakia, Syria. On 24 November 2015, a Russian Su-24M was shot down by a flight of two Turkish F-16s near the Turkey–Syrian border. The two crew ejected before the plane crashed in Syrian territory. Russia claimed that the jet had not left Syrian airspace while Turkey claimed that the jet entered their airspace and was warned 10–12 times before being shot down.
A deputy commander in a Syrian Turkmen brigade claimed that his personnel shot and killed the crew while they were descending in their parachutes, while some Turkish officials subsequently stated that the crew was still alive. The weapon systems officer was rescued by Russian forces but the pilot was killed by rebels, along with a Russian marine involved in a helicopter rescue attempt. Russian president Vladimir Putin warned Turkey of serious consequences. To increase safety during aerial operations in the region, Russian fighter jets would escort bombers, S-400 SAM systems were deployed in Syria and a Russian cruiser was stationed off the coast to protect Russian aircraft. Following the incident, Russia announced that Su-24s in Syria had been armed with air-to-air missiles on operational sorties.
Russian encounters with NATO forces
In late May 2015, a pair of Russian Su-24s made a low pass over the in the Black Sea. In April 2016, several Russian Su-24s flew within 30 metres of another American ship, the destroyer in the Baltic Sea. The incidents occurred over two days, with the planes making passes by the Donald Cook while it was in international waters. In November 2018, two armed Russian Su-24s flew low over the Belgian frigate Godetia. At the time of the incident, the Godetia was in use as the command ship of NATO’s northern mine-sweeping fleet.
Saudi-led intervention in Yemen
In March 2015, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir committed Sudan to join the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Houthis. The Sudanese military effort included the commitment of up to four recently acquired Sudanese Air Force Su-24s to the Saudi King Khalid Air Base where they were photographed. Sudanese Armed Forces did not specify the type of mission the Su-24s conducted. Integrating several Soviet-made combat jets with air forces using modern Western models (F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, Tornadoes, Typhoons) during an active military campaign would represent a historical first, requiring extensive communication integration or leaving the Soviet-made jets operating on a different mission plan. Air defense units, like Saudi MIM-104 Patriot batteries, would either need to stand down, taking the risk of not monitoring for incoming threats or some very specific orders to avoid shooting down friendlies.
On 28 March 2015, during Operation Decisive Storm, Houthi forces claimed they shot down a Sudanese Air Force Su-24. Houthis published photos of an allegedly captured Sudanese pilot and metal parts claiming it as the aircraft wreckage.
Russo-Ukrainian War
The Ukrainian Air Force inherited all of its Su-24s from the Soviet Union when the latter dissolved in 1991. In 2009, amid declining relations with Russia, Ukraine began to have difficulty obtaining spare parts from Sukhoi. On 5 August 2019, the announced a modernization and MRO program for Ukraine's Su-24M bombers and Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft.
During the war in Donbas, a Ukrainian Air Force Su-24 was damaged by a MANPADS fired by pro-Russian forces on 2 July 2014. One of the engines was damaged but the crew managed to return to base and land. During landing a new fire started but it was extinguished by the ground crew. Initially identified as a Su-25, on 20 August 2014 a Ukrainian Su-24M was shot down by Russian proxy forces in the Luhansk Oblast and confirmed by Ukrainian authorities who reported that the crew members ejected safely and were recovered. On 21 August 2014, the downed plane was identified as a Su-24M.
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine reportedly had 10–20 operational Su-24s prior to the invasion. Lack of standoff missiles meant that Ukrainian crews had to fly into range of Russian air defences in order to strike their targets. As a result, the 7th Tactical Aviation Brigade suffered heavy losses in the first few months of the invasion.
In the first hours of the invasion, the Ukrainian Air Force used at least two Su-24Ms during the Battle of Antonov Airport against Russian Airborne Forces which had been inserted in the airport by helicopters. On 27 February, one Ukrainian Su-24 was lost near Bucha, Kyiv Oblast. The pilots, Commander Ruslan Aleksandrovich Belous and Commander Roman Aleksandrovich Dovhalyuk, were killed and were awarded with the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Another bomber was reported lost on 3 April, when a video emerged showing the crash site with the remains of a blue-coloured AL-21 engine employed by the Su-24. On 10 April, another Ukrainian Su-24 was destroyed by Russian forces in Izyum. On 19 May, a Su-24 was lost near Pylove. The pilot, Lt. Colonel Igor Khamar and the navigator, Major Ilya Negar, were killed.
On 9 August, explosions at Saky Airport in Novofedorivka, Crimea destroyed and damaged several aircraft on the ground, among them at least five Russian Naval Aviation Su-24s. Russia denied the loss of any aircraft, though this was rebutted by satellite imagery.
On 9 October 2022, an Su-24 crashed during landing in the Rostov region in Russia due to technical malfunction. As of 30 March 2023, the Oryx open-source intelligence website has visually confirmed ten Russian Su-24 losses.
In May 2023, the United Kingdom supplied Ukraine with Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles. On 24 May, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted a composite image of an Su-24MR carrying a Storm Shadow missile on its right wing glove pylon. As a Storm Shadow weighs almost 2,900 pounds, only the Su-24 or Su-27 can carry it. Given this is the reconnaissance version of the Su-24, which only carries R-60 (missile) for defence.
On 2 July, it was reported that Ukrainian Su-24s were modified with pylons taken from decommissioned RAF Panavia Tornado GR4s in order to carry and fire the Storm Shadow missile. The aircraft can carry at least two Storm Shadows at a time. It appears that the coordinates have to be entered while the aircraft is on the ground.
On 11 July 2023, Russian Lieutenant general Oleg Tsokov was killed in an airstrike on the command post of the 58th Combined Arms Army in occupied Berdiansk, during the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive; Russian state media alleged he was killed by a Storm Shadow missile launched from an Su-24.
On 9 September 2023, Russian sources claimed that six boats of an attempted Ukrainian amphibious operation, near Cape Tarkhankut, were intercepted by a Russian Su-24M. Which sunk three out of the six boats using RBK-500 according to Russian milbloggers.
On 13 September 2023, an attack on Sevastopol Shipyard resulted in damage to port facilities, the submarine Rostov na Donu and the landing ship Minsk, both of which were in drydock. In a Telegram post, Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk strongly implied the use of either UK Storm Shadow or French SCALP missiles launched by Su-24s.
On 22 September, Su-24s firing Storm Shadow missiles struck the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. The Ukrainian military alleged that the strike was timed to coincide with a meeting of naval officials and there were casualties.
Variants
Source: Sukhoi
S6
An early project in the gestation of the Su-24, like a meld of the Su-7 and Su-15.
T6-1
The initial prototype with cropped delta wings and 4 RD-36-35 lift engines in the fuselage.
T6-2I / T6-3I / T6-4I
Prototypes for the variable geometry Su-24 production aircraft.
Su-24
The first production version, the armaments include Kh-23 and Kh-28 type air-to-ground guided missiles, together with R-55 type air-to-air guided missiles. Manufactured 1971–1983.
Su-24M ('Fencer-D')
Work on upgrading the Su-24 started in 1971, and included the addition of inflight refueling and expansion of attack capabilities with even more payload options. T-6M-8 prototype first flew on 29 June 1977, and the first production Su-24M flew on 20 June 1979. The aircraft was accepted into service in 1983. Su-24M has a 0.76 m (30 in) longer fuselage section forward of the cockpit, adding a retractable refueling probe, and a reshaped, shorter radome for the attack radar. It can be identified by the single nose probe in place of the three-part probe of earlier aircraft. A new PNS-24M inertial navigation system and digital computer were also added. A Kaira-24 laser designator/TV-optical quantum system (similar to the American Pave Tack) was fitted in a bulge in the port side of the lower fuselage, as well as Tekon track and search system (in pod), for compatibility with guided weapons, including 500 and 1,500kg laser-guided bombs and TV-guided bombs, and laser/TV-guided missiles Kh-25 and Kh-29L/T, anti-radar missiles Kh-58 and Kh-14 (AS-12 'Kegler') and Kh-59 (AS-13 'Kingbolt')/Kh-59M TV-target seeker guided missiles. The new systems led to a reduction in internal fuel amounting to 85 L (22.4 US gal). Su-24M was manufactured in 1981–1993.
Su-24M2 ('Fencer-D')
Next modernization of Su-24M introduced in 2000 with the "Sukhoi" program and in 1999 with the "Gefest" program. The modernized planes are equipped with new equipment and systems. As a result, they get new capabilities and improved combat efficiency, including new navigation system (SVP-24), new weapons control system, new HUD (ILS-31, like in Su-27SM or KAI-24) and expanding list of usable munitions (Kh-31A/P, Kh-59MK, KAB-500S). The last batch of the Sukhoi was delivered to the Russian VVS in 2009. Modernization continues with the program "Gefest". All frontline bombers Su-24 in the Central Military District received new sighting and navigation systems SVP-24 in 2013.
Su-24MK ('Fencer-D')
Export version of the Su-24M with downgraded avionics and weapons capabilities. First flight 30 May 1987 as T-6MK, 17 May 1988 as Su-24MK. Manufactured 1988–1992, sold to Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Many Iraqi examples were evacuated to Iran.
Su-24MR ('Fencer-E')
Dedicated tactical reconnaissance variant. First flight 25 July 1980 as T-6MR-26, 13 April 1983 as Su-24MR. Entered service in 1983. Su-24MR retains much of the Su-24M's navigation suite, including the terrain-following radar, but deletes the Orion-A attack radar, the laser/TV system, and the cannon in favor of two panoramic camera installations, 'Aist-M' ('Stork') TV camera, RDS-BO 'Shtik' ('Bayonet') side-looking airborne radar (SLAR), and 'Zima' ('Winter') infrared reconnaissance system. Other sensors are carried in pod form. Manufactured 1983–1993. It is also being modernized.
Su-24MP ('Fencer-F')
Dedicated electronic signals intelligence (ELINT) variant, intended to replace the Yak-28PP 'Brewer-E'. First flight 14 March 1980 as T-6MP-25, 7 April 1983 as Su-24MP. The Su-24MP has additional antennas for intelligence-gathering sensors and radar jamming, omitting the laser/TV fairing, but retaining the cannon and provision for up to four R-60 (AA-8) missiles for self-defense. Only 10 were built.
Operators
Current operators
Algerian Air Force – 33 Su-24M/MKs, some upgraded to the M2 standard. 4 Su-24MRs.
Belarus Air Force
Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force – 30 Su-24MKs were in service as of January 2013. 24 Iraqi examples were evacuated to Iran during the 1991 Gulf War and were put in service with the IRIAF. Iran possibly purchased other Su-24s from Russia or other former Soviet States. Iran tested domestically produced anti-radar missiles carried by Su-24 aircraft in September 2011, the IRIAF's Deputy Commander, General Mohammad Alavi said, according to IRIB TV1.
Libyan Air Force - Six Su-24MKs were received in 1989. The few remaining airframes were withdrawn after the Libyan Civil War, but forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar claim to have refurbished a number of the Su-24s.
Russian Aerospace Forces – 80 Su-24M2s and 79 Su-24MRs were in service in 2017.
Russian Naval Aviation – 18 were in service in 2012.
Syrian Arab Air Force – 22 received. 20 Su-24MKs from the Soviet Union starting in 1987, one Su-24MK and one Su-24MR from Libya. 20 were in service in January 2013. All the Su-24MKs have been upgraded to Su-24MK2 standard, between 2009 and 2013. The contract for that was signed in 2009 and the upgrade started in 2010.
Eight ex-Belarusian Air Force Su-24s were transferred to the Sudanese Air Force starting in 2013.
Ukrainian Air Force inherited around 120 Su-24s airframes from the Soviet Union. In March 2019, 23 Su-24 were reported in operational status.
Former operators
Azerbaijani Air and Air Defence Force - 11 in service as of 2008. Not in service anymore as of December 2021.
Iraq Air Force
Kazakhstan Air Defense Force
Uzbekistan Air and Air Defence Forces
Notable recent accidents and incidents
On 10 April 2011 an Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force Su-24MK crashed close to Khavaran village near the city of Sarvestan, about 80 km east of Shiraz in the southern province of Fars.
On 30 October 2012, a Russian Air Force Su-24M crashed in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. During the flight the nose cone fractured. After attempting an emergency landing, the crew of two flew to open territory and safely ejected. A regional government website stated that emergency was the result of aircraft control system failure. Flights of Su-24 were suspended at the Shagol base.
On 21 March 2014, a Ukrainian Air Force Su-24M belonging to the 7th Brigade crashed during approach for landing near Starokonstantinov in the Khmelnitsky region, Ukraine. Both crew members ejected safely.
On 13 October 2014, an Algerian Air Force Su-24 crashed during a training flight killing both crew members
On 6 July 2015, a Russian Air Force Su-24 crashed outside of Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East killing one out of two crew members.
On 24 November 2015, a Russian Aerospace Forces Su-24 was shot down by a Turkish F-16 near the Turkey-Syria border. Both crew ejected, but the pilot was killed by Turkmen rebels as he parachuted to the ground, while the navigator was rescued.
On 10 October 2017, a Russian Aerospace Forces Su-24 crashed during takeoff at Khmeimim Air Base, Latakia province, Syria. Both crew members died in the crash.
On 9 August 2022, a series of explosions occurred at the Saki Air Base in Crimea. At least 1 Su-24 was destroyed, with satellite imagery taken hours before indicating there were at least two others in the vicinity. The Russian Ministry of Defense stated "there had been no attack and no aviation equipment had been damaged."
Specifications (Su-24MK)
Notable appearances in media
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
Antonov, Vladimir, et al. Okb Sukhoi: A History of the Design Bureau and Its Aircraft. Leicester, UK: Midland, 1996. .
Wilson, Stewart. Combat Aircraft since 1945. Fyshwick, Australia: Aerospace Publications, 2000. .
Further reading
Air Forces Monthly, September 2015 (Iranian Su-24 force)
External links
Su-24 page on Sukhoi's site
Su-24 page on AerospaceWeb.org
1970s Soviet bomber aircraft
Su-24
Variable-sweep-wing aircraft
Articles containing video clips
Twinjets
High-wing aircraft
Aircraft first flown in 1970
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agkistrodon%20piscivorus
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Agkistrodon piscivorus
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Agkistrodon piscivorus is a species of venomous snake, a pit viper in the subfamily Crotalinae of the family Viperidae. It is one of the world's few semiaquatic vipers (along with the Florida cottonmouth), and is native to the Southeastern United States. As an adult, it is large and capable of delivering a painful and potentially fatal bite. When threatened, it may respond by coiling its body and displaying its fangs. Individuals may bite when feeling threatened or being handled in any way. It tends to be found in or near water, particularly in slow-moving and shallow lakes, streams, and marshes. It is a capable swimmer, and like several species of snakes, is known to occasionally enter bays and estuaries and swim between barrier islands and the mainland.
The generic name is derived from the Greek words "fish-hook, hook" and "tooth", and the specific name comes from the Latin 'fish' and '(I) eat greedily, devour'; thus, the scientific name translates to "hook-toothed fish-eater". Common names include cottonmouth, northern cottonmouth, water moccasin, swamp moccasin, black moccasin, and simply viper. Many of the common names refer to the threat display, in which this species often stands its ground and gapes at an intruder, exposing the white lining of its mouth. Many scientists dislike the use of the term water moccasin since it can lead to confusion between the venomous cottonmouth and nonvenomous water snakes.
Description
Agkistrodon piscivorus is the largest species of the genus Agkistrodon. Adults commonly exceed in total length (including tail); females are typically smaller than males. Total length, per one study of adults, was . Average body mass has been found to be in males and in females. Occasionally, individuals may exceed in total length, especially in the eastern part of the range.
Although larger ones have purportedly been seen in the wild, according to Gloyd and Conant (1990), the largest recorded specimen of A. p. piscivorus was in total length, based on a specimen caught in the Dismal Swamp region and given to the Philadelphia Zoological Garden. This snake had apparently been injured during capture, died several days later, and was measured when straight and relaxed. Large specimens can be extremely bulky, with the mass of a specimen of about in total length known to weigh .
The broad head is distinct from the neck, and the snout is blunt in profile with the rim of the top of the head extending forwards slightly further than the mouth. Substantial cranial plates are present, although the parietal plates are often fragmented, especially towards the rear. A loreal scale is absent. Six to 9 supralabials and eight to 12 infralabials are seen. At midbody, it has 23–27 rows of dorsal scales. All dorsal scale rows have keels, although those on the lowermost scale rows are weak. In males/females, the ventral scales number 130-145/128-144 and the subcaudals 38-54/36-50. Many of the latter may be divided.
Though most specimens are almost or even totally black, (with the exception of the head and facial markings), the color pattern may consist of a brown, gray, tan, yellowish-olive, or blackish ground color, which is overlaid with a series of 10–17 dark brown to almost black crossbands. These crossbands, which usually have black edges, are sometimes broken along the dorsal midline to form a series of staggered halfbands on either side of the body. These crossbands are visibly lighter in the center, almost matching the ground color, often contain irregular dark markings, and extend well down onto the ventral scales. The dorsal banding pattern fades with age, so older individuals are an almost uniform olive-brown, grayish-brown, or black. The belly is white, yellowish-white, or tan, marked with dark spots, and becomes darker posteriorly. The amount of dark pigment on the belly varies from virtually none to almost completely black. The head is a more or less uniform brown color, especially in A. p. piscivorus. Subadult specimens may exhibit the same kind of dark, parietal spots characteristic of A. contortrix, but sometimes these are still visible in adults. Eastern populations have a broad, dark, postocular stripe, bordered with pale pigment above and below, that is faint or absent in western populations. The underside of the head is generally whitish, cream, or tan.
Juvenile and subadult specimens generally have a more contrasting color pattern, with dark crossbands on a lighter ground color. The ground color is then tan, brown, or reddish-brown. The tip of the tail is usually yellowish, becoming greenish-yellow or greenish in subadults, and then black in adults. On some juveniles, the banding pattern can also be seen on the tail. Young snakes wiggle the tips of their tails to lure prey animals.
This species is often confused with the copperhead, A. contortrix. This is especially true for juveniles, but differences exist. A. piscivorus has broad, dark stripes on the sides of its head that extend back from the eyes, whereas A. contortrix has only a thin, dark line that divides the pale supralabials from the somewhat darker color of the head. The watersnakes of the genus Nerodia are also similar in appearance, being thick-bodied with large heads, but they have round pupils, no loreal pit, a single anal plate, subcaudal scales that are divided throughout, and a distinctive overall color pattern.
Common names
This is a list of common names for A. piscivorus, some of which also refer to other species:
aquatic moccasin
black moccasin
black snake
black water viper
blunt-tail moccasin
Congo
copperhead
cottonmouth
cotton-mouthed snake
cottonmouth rattler
cottonmouth water moccasin
gaper:USGS
gapper
highland moccasin
lake moccasin
lowland moccasin
mangrove rattler
moccasin
moccasin snake
North American cottonmouth snake
North American water moccasin
North American water viper
pond moccasin
pond rattler
river moccasin
river rattler
rusty moccasin
saltwater rattler
short-tailed moccasin
short-tail rattler
small-tailed cottonmouth
snap-jaw
stub-tail
stub-tail snake
stump moccasin
stump-tail moccasin
stump-tail viper
swamp lion
swamp moccasin
swamp rattler
Texas moccasin
trap jaw
Troost's moccasin
true horn snake
true water moccasin
viper
water copperhead
water mamba
water moccasin
water mokeson
water pilot
water pit rattler
water pit viper
water rattlesnake
water viper
white-mouth moccasin
white-mouth rattler
worm-tailed viper
Geographic range
A. piscivorus is found in the eastern US from the Great Dismal Swamp in southeast Virginia, south through the Florida peninsula and west to Arkansas, eastern and southern Oklahoma, and western and southern Georgia (excluding Lake Lanier and Lake Allatoona). A few records exist of the species being found along the Rio Grande in Texas, but these are thought to represent disjunct populations, now possibly eradicated. The type locality given is "Carolina", although Schmidt (1953) proposed this be restricted to the area around Charleston, South Carolina. Snakes observed in the northern areas of this range are typically larger older individuals.
Campbell and Lamar (2004) mentioned this species as being found in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Maps provided by Campbell and Lamar (2004) and Wright and Wright (1957) also indicate its presence in Western and Middle Tennessee and extreme southeastern Kansas, and limit it to the western part of Kentucky.
In Georgia, it is found in the southern half of the state up to a few kilometers north of the Fall Line with few exceptions. Its range also includes the Ohio River Valley as far north as southern Indiana, and it inhabits many barrier islands off the coasts of the states where it is found.
Conservation status
The species A. piscivorus is classified as least concern on the IUCN Red List (v3.1, 2007). Species are listed as such due to their wide distribution, presumed large population, or because they are unlikely to be declining fast enough to qualify for listing in a more threatened category. When last assessed in 2007, the population trend was stable.
Constant persecution of the species and drainage of wetland habitat prior to development has taken a heavy toll on local populations. Despite this, it remains a common species in many areas.
In Indiana, the cottonmouth is listed as an endangered species.
Habitat
Agkistrodon piscivorus is the most aquatic species of the genus Agkistrodon, and is usually associated with bodies of water, such as creeks, streams, marshes, swamps, and the shores of ponds and lakes. The U.S. Navy (1991) describes it as inhabiting swamps, shallow lakes, and sluggish streams, but it is usually not found in swift, deep, cool water. Behler and King (1979) list its habitats as including lowland swamps, lakes, rivers, bayheads, sloughs, irrigation ditches, canals, rice fields, and small, clear, rocky, mountain streams.
It is also found in brackish-water habitats and is sometimes seen swimming in salt water. It has been much more successful at colonizing Atlantic and Gulf Coast barrier islands than the copperhead. Even on these islands, though, it tends to favor freshwater marshes. A study by Dunson and Freda (1985) describes it as not being particularly salt-tolerant.
The snake is not limited to aquatic habitats, however, as Gloyd and Conant (1990) mentioned large specimens have been found more than a mile (1.6 km) from water. In various locations, the species is well-adapted to less moist environments, such as palmetto thickets, pine-palmetto forest, pine woods in East Texas, pine flatwoods in Florida, eastern deciduous dune forest, dune and beach areas, riparian forest, and prairies.
Behavior
In tests designed to measure the various behavioral responses by wild specimens to encounters with people, 23 of 45 (51%) tried to escape, while 28 of 36 (78%) resorted to threat displays and other defensive tactics. Only when they were picked up with a mechanical hand were they likely to bite.
When sufficiently stressed or threatened, this species engages in a characteristic threat display that includes vibrating its tail and throwing its head back with its mouth open to display the startlingly white interior, often making a loud hiss while the neck and front part of the body are pulled into an S-shaped position.<ref name="C&G-G&C90">Carpenter, Charles C.; Gillingham, James C. (1990). "Ritualized Behavior in Agkistrodon and Allied Genera". pp. 523–531. In: Gloyd HK, Conant R (1990). Snakes of the Agkistrodon Complex: A Monographic Review. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. 614 pp. 52 plates. LCCN 89-50342. .</ref> Many of its common names, including "cottonmouth" and "gaper", refer to this behavior, while its habit of snapping its jaws shut when anything touches its mouth has earned it the name "trap jaw" in some areas. Other defensive responses can include flattening the body and emitting a strong, pungent secretion from the anal glands located at the base of the tail. This musk may be ejected in thin jets if the snake is sufficiently agitated or restrained. The smell has been likened to that of a billy goat, as well as to a genus of common flood-plain weeds, Pluchea, that also have a penetrating odor.
Harmless watersnakes of the genus Nerodia are often mistaken for it. These are also semiaquatic, thick-bodied snakes with large heads that can be aggressive when provoked, but they behave differently. For example, watersnakes usually flee quickly into the water, while A. piscivorus often stands its ground with its threat display. In addition, watersnakes do not vibrate their tails when excited. A. piscivorus usually holds its head at an angle around 45° when swimming or crawling.
Brown (1973) considered their heavy muscular bodies to be a striking characteristic, stating this made it difficult to hold them for venom extraction owing to their strength.
This species may be active during the day and at night, but on bright, sunny days, they are usually found coiled or stretched out in the shade. In the morning and on cool days, they can often be seen basking in the sunlight. They often emerge at sunset to warm themselves on warm ground (i.e., sidewalks, roads) and then become very active throughout the night, when they are usually found swimming or crawling. Contrary to popular belief, they are capable of biting while under water.
In the north, they hibernate during the winter. Niell (1947, 1948) made observations in Georgia, and noted they were one of the last species to seek shelter, often being found active until the first heavy frosts. At this point, they moved to higher ground and could be found in rotting pine stumps by tearing away the bark. These snakes could be quite active upon discovery and would then attempt to burrow more deeply into the soft wood or escape to the nearest water. In southeastern Virginia, Wood (1954) reported seeing migratory behavior in late October and early November. During a period of three or four days, as many as 50 individuals could be seen swimming across Back Bay from the bayside swamps of the barrier islands to the mainland. He suggested this might have something to do with hibernating habits. In the southern parts of its range, hibernation may be short or omitted altogether.
Feeding
Raymond Ditmars (1912) described A. piscivorus as carnivorous. Its diet includes mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, eggs, insects, other snakes, small turtles, and small alligators. Cannibalism has also been reported. Normally, though, the bulk of its diet consists of fish and frogs. On occasion, juvenile specimens feed on invertebrates. Catfish (especially of the genus Ictalurus) are often eaten, although the sharp spines sometimes cause injuries. Toads of the genus Bufo are apparently avoided. Common prey species include southern leopard frogs, bass, juvenile black rat snakes, young common snapping turtles, and North American least shrews.
Many authors have described the prey items taken under natural circumstances. Although fish and frogs are their most common prey, they eat almost any small vertebrate. Fish are captured by cornering them in shallow water, usually against the bank or under logs. They take advantage when bodies of water begin to dry up in the summer or early fall and gorge themselves on the resulting high concentrations of fish and tadpoles. They are surprisingly unsuccessful at seizing either live or dead fish under water.
They are opportunistic feeders and sometimes eat carrion, making them one of the few snakes to do so. Campbell and Lamar (2004) described having seen them feeding on fish heads and viscera that had been thrown into the water from a dock. Heinrich and Studenroth (1996) reported an occasion in which an individual was seen feeding on the butchered remains of a feral hog (Sus scrofa) that had been thrown into Cypress Creek. Northern cottonmouths have an unusual feeding adaptation that allows them to adhere to prey through rotation of their head during swallowing because it aids the jaws in clearing the prey and contributes to the advance of the jaws along the prey.
Conant (1929) gave a detailed account of the feeding behavior of a captive specimen from South Carolina. When prey was introduced, the snake quickly became attentive and made an attack. Frogs and small birds were seized and held until movement stopped. Larger prey was approached in a more cautious manner; a rapid strike was executed after which the snake would withdraw. In 2.5 years, the snake had accepted three species of frogs, including a large bullfrog, a spotted salamander, water snakes, garter snakes, sparrows, young rats, and three species of mice. Brimley (1944) described a captive specimen that ate copperheads (A. contortrix), as well as members of its own species, keeping its fangs embedded in its victims until they had been immobilized. A 2018 study found that northern cottonmouths on a diet of only fish when compared to a diet of mice had to eat 20% more to achieve the same growth.
Young individuals have yellowish or greenish tail tips and engage in caudal luring. The tail tip is wriggled to lure prey, such as frogs and lizards, within striking distance. Wharton (1960) observed captive specimens exhibiting this behavior between 07:20 and 19:40 hours, which suggests it is a daytime activity.
In August 2020 and May 2021, individuals found in Florida were observed to have consumed introduced Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus). Burmese pythons are an invasive species in Florida with the capacity to inflict great damage to the local ecosystem, so it is hoped that A. piscivorus may be in the process of modifying its diet to enable it to hunt the pythons.
Predators
Agkistrodon piscivorus is preyed upon by snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina), falcons, American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis), horned owls (Bubo virginianus), eagles, red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus), loggerhead shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus), and large wading birds, such as herons, cranes, and egrets.
It is also preyed upon by ophiophagous snakes, including their own species. Humphreys (1881) described how a specimen was killed and eaten by a captive kingsnake. On the other hand, Neill (1947) reported captive kingsnakes (Lampropeltis getula) were loath to attack them, being successfully repelled with "body blows". Also called body-bridging, this is a specific defensive behavior against ophiophagous snakes, first observed in certain rattlesnake (Crotalus) species by Klauber (1927), that involves raising a section of the middle of the body above the ground to varying heights. This raised loop may then be held in this position for varying amounts of time, shifted in position, or moved towards the attacker. In the latter case, it is often flipped or thrown vigorously in the direction of the assailant. In A. piscivorus, the loop is raised laterally, with the belly facing towards the attacker.
Reproduction
Agkistrodon piscivorus is ovoviviparous, with females usually giving birth to one to 16 live young and possibly as many as 20. Litters of six to eight are the most common. Neonates are 22–35 cm in length (excluding runts), with the largest belonging to A. p. conanti and A. p. leucostoma the smallest. If weather conditions are favorable and food is readily available, growth is rapid and females may reproduce at less than three years of age and a total length of as little as 60 cm. They will also only reproduce every other year, unless optimal conditions are met for them to go through the reproduction process. The young are born in August or September, while mating may occur during any of the warmer months of the year, at least in certain parts of its range.
Regarding A. p. piscivorus, an early account by Stejneger (1895) described a pair in the Berlin Zoological Garden that mated on January 21, 1873, after which eight neonates were discovered in the cage on July 16 of that year. The young were each 26 cm in length and 1.5 cm thick. They shed for the first time within two weeks, after which they accepted small frogs, but not fish.
Combat behavior between males has been reported on a number of occasions, and is very similar in form to that seen in many other viperid species. An important factor in sexual selection, it allows for the establishment and recognition of dominance as males compete for access to sexually active females.
A few accounts exist that describe females defending their newborn litters. Wharten (1960, 1966) reported several cases where females found near their young stood their ground and considered these to be examples of guarding behavior. Another case was described by Walters and Card (1996) in which a female was found at the entrance of a chamber with seven neonates crawling on or around her. When one of the young was moved a short distance from the chamber, she seemed to be agitated and faced the intruder. Eventually, all of her offspring retreated into the chamber, but the female remained at the entrance, ready to strike.
Facultative parthenogenesis
Parthenogenesis is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. A. piscivorus can reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis, that is, they are capable of switching from a sexual mode of reproduction to an asexual mode. This likely involves recombination at the tips of the chromosomes, which leads to genome wide homozygosity. The result is the expression of deleterious recessive alleles and often to developmental failure (inbreeding depression). Both captive-born and wild-born A. piscivorus specimens appear to be capable of this form of parthenogenesis.
Venom
Agkistrodon piscivorus venom is more toxic than that of A. contortrix, and is rich with powerful cytotoxic venom that destroys tissue. Although deaths are rare, the bite can leave scars, and on occasion, require amputation. Absent an anaphylactic reaction in a bitten individual, however, the venom does not cause systemic reactions in victims and does not contain neurotoxic components present in numerous rattlesnake species. Bites can be effectively treated with CroFab antivenom; this serum is derived using venom components from four species of American pit vipers (the eastern and western diamondback rattlesnakes, the Mojave rattlesnake, and the cottonmouth).
Bites from the cottonmouth are relatively frequent in the lower Mississippi River Valley and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, although fatalities are rare. Allen and Swindell (1948) compiled a record of A. piscivorus bites in Florida from newspaper accounts and data from the Bureau of Vital Statistics: 1934, eight bites and three fatalities (no further fatalities were recorded after this year); 1935, 10; 1936, 16; 1937, 7; 1938, 6; 1939, 5; 1940, 3; 1941, 6; 1942, 3; 1943, 1; 1944, 3; 1998, 1. Wright and Wright (1957) report having encountered these snakes on countless occasions, often almost stepping on them, but never being bitten. In addition, they heard of no reports of any bites among 400 cypress cutters in the Okefenokee Swamp during the entire summer of 1921. These accounts suggest that the species is not particularly aggressive. Studies show that stressed snakes are more likely to strike. This action comes as a predator defense mechanism. Snakes with elevated hormone levels are more likely to strike. Additionally, larger snakes are more likely to strike than smaller snakes.
Brown (1973) gave an average venom yield (dried) of 125 mg, with a range of 80–237 mg, along with values of 4.0, 2.2, 2.7, 3.5, 2.0 mg/kg IV, 4.8, 5.1, 4.0, 5.5, 3.8, 6.8 mg/kg IP and 25.8 mg/kg SC for toxicity. Wolff and Githens (1939) described a specimen that yielded 3.5 ml of venom during the first extraction and 4.0 ml five weeks later (1.094 grams of dried venom). The human lethal dose is unknown, but has been estimated at 100–150 mg.
Symptoms commonly include ecchymosis and swelling. The pain is generally more severe than bites from the copperhead, but less so than those from rattlesnakes (Crotalus spp.). The formation of vesicles and bullae is less common than with rattlesnake bites, although necrosis can occur. Myokymia is sometimes reported.<ref name="Nor-C&L04">Norris R (2004). "Venom Poisoning in North American Reptiles". In: Campbell JA, Lamar WW (2004). The Venomous Reptiles of the Western Hemisphere. Ithaca and London: Comstock Publishing Associates. 870 pp. 1,500 plates. .</ref> However, the venom has strong proteolytic activity that can lead to severe tissue destruction.
Subspecies and taxonomic changes
For many decades, one species with three subspecies were formally recognized: eastern cottonmouth, A. p. piscivorus (Lacépède, 1789); western cottonmouth, A. p. leucostoma (Troost, 1836); and Florida cottonmouth, A. p. conanti Gloyd, 1969. However, a molecular (DNA) based study was published in 2014, applying phylogenetic theories (one implication being no subspecies are recognized), changing the long-standing taxonomy. The resulting and current taxonomic arrangement recognizes two species and no subspecies. The western cottonmouth (A. p. leucostoma) was synonymized with the eastern cottonmouth (A. p. piscivorus) into one species (with the oldest published name, A. p. piscivorus, having priority). The Florida cottonmouth (A. p. conanti) is now recognized as a separate species.
Agkistrodon piscivorus (Lacépéde, 1789), northern cottonmouth
Agkistrodon conanti Gloyd, 1969, Florida cottonmouth (south Georgia and Florida peninsular)
References
Further reading
Allen ER, Swindell D (1948). "The cottonmouth moccasin of Florida". Herpetologica 4 (supplement 1): 1–16.
Baird SF, Girard C (1853). Catalogue of North American Reptiles in the Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Part I.—Serpentes. Washington, District of Columbia: Smithsonian Institution. xvi + 172 pp. (for a discussion of the publication date, see Adler K. 1963. J. Ohio Herpetol. Soc. 4: 55–57).
Bonnaterre P-J (1790). Ophiologie. pp. 1–76. In Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature [Encyclopédie Methodique]. Paris, France: Chez Panckoucke, Libraire. i–xliv + 1–76. (in French).
Boulenger GA (1896). Catalogue of the Snakes in the British Museum (Natural History). Volume III., Containing the Colubridæ (Opisthoglyphæ and Proteroglyphæ), Amblycephalidæ, and Viperidæ. London: Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History). (Taylor and Francis, printers). xiv + 727 pp. (Ancistrodon piscivorus, pp. 520–521).
Brimley CS (1944). Amphibians and Reptiles of North Carolina. Elon College, North Carolina, Carolina Biol. Supply Co., reprinted from Carolina Tips, 1939–43: 1–63.
Catesby M (1743). The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: Containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants: Particularly the forest-trees, shrubs, and other plants, not hitherto described, or very incorrectly figured by authors. Together with their descriptions in English and French. To which are added, observation on the air, soil, and waters; With remarks upon agriculture, grain, pulse, roots, &c, To the whole is prefixed a new and correct map of the countries treated of. London, Printed at the expense of the author, 1731–1743: 2 vols. Vol.II: 100 + 200 (appendix).
Conant R (1929). "Notes on a water moccasin in captivity (Agkistrodon piscivorus) (female)". Bull. Antivenin Inst. Amer. 3: 61–64.
Cope ED (1860) (dated 1859). "Catalogue of the venomous serpents in the museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, with notes on the families, genera and species". Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia 11: 332–347.
Cope ED (1875). Check-list of North American Batrachia and Reptiles with a systematic list of higher groups, and an essay on geographical distribution based on specimens contained in the United States National Museum. Washington, District of Columbia: Government Printing Office. 104 pp.
Cuvier G (1829). Le règne animal distribué d'après son organisation, pour servir de base à l'histoire naturelle des animaux det d'introduction à l'anatomie comparée. Tome II, contenant les reptiles, les poissons, les mollusques et les annélidés. Nouvelle édition. Paris: Déterville. xv + 406 pp. (in French).
Daudin FM (1801–1803). Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des reptiles: ouvrage faisant suit à l'histoire naturelle générale et particulière, composée par Leclerc de Buffon; et rédigée par C.S. Sonnini, miembre de plusieurs sociétés savantes. 8 vols. Paris: F. Dufart. (in French). (for a discussion of the publication date, see F. Harper. 1940. Amer. Midl. Nat. 23: 693).
Ditmars RL (1912). "The feeding habits of serpents". Zoologica 1: 197–238.
Duméril A-M-C, Bibron G, Duméril A-H-A (1854). Erpetologie générale ou histoire naturelle complète des reptiles. Vol. 7. (Parts 1 and 2). Paris: Librarie Encyclopédique de Roret. 1,536 pp. (in French).
Dunson, William A.; Freda, Joseph (1985). "Water permeability of the skin of the amphibious snake, Agkistrodon piscivorus ". J. Herpetol. 19 (1): 93–98.
Garman S (1884) (dated 1883). "The reptiles and batrachians of North America". Memoires of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 8 (3): 1–185.
Garman S (1890). "Notes on Illinois reptiles and amphibians, including several specimens not before recorded from the northern states". Bulletin of the Illinois Natural History Survey 3: 185–190.
Gloyd HK, Conant R (1943). "A synopsis of the American forms of Agkistrodon (copperheads and moccasins)". Bull. Chicago Acad. Sci. 7: 147–170.
Goin CJ, Goin OB, Zug GR (1978). Introduction to Herpetology, Third Edition. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company. xi + 378 pp. . (Agkistrodon piscivorus, pp. 113, 124, 336).
Gray JE (1842). "Synopsis of the species of rattle-snakes, or family of Crotalidae". Zoological Miscellany, London 2: 47–51 (reprinted in 1971 by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles).
Harlan R (1835). Medical and physical research of original memories in medicine, surgery, physiology, geology, zoology and comparative anatomy. Philadelphia. xxxix + 635 pp.
Heinrich, George; Studenroth, Karl R. Jr. (1996). "Natural history notes: Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti (Florida cottonmouth). Diet". Herpetol. Rev. 27 (1): 22.
Higgins, Silvestre B. (1873). Ophidians, zoological arrangement of the different genera, including varieties known in North and South America, the East Indies, South Africa, and Australia. The poisons, and all that is known of their nature. The galls as antidotes to the snake venom. Pathological, toxicological, and microscopical facts; together with much interesting matter hitherto not published. New York: Boericke & Tafel. 239 pp.
Holbrook JE (1838). North American Herpetology; Or, a Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Volume 2. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. Dobson: i–iv + 5–125.
Hubbs B, O'Connor B (2012). A Guide to the Rattlesnakes and other Venomous Serpents of the United States. Tempe, Arizona: Tricolor Books. 129 pp. . (Agkistrodon piscivorus, pp. 104–109, 125–126).
Humphreys, John T. (1881). "The king snake (Ophibolus sayi) sups on a full grown water moccasin (Ancistrodon piscivorus)". Amer. Nat. 15: 561–562.
Jan G (1863). Elenco sistematico degli ofidi descritti e disegnati per l'iconografia generale. Milan, Italy: A. Lombardi. vii + 143 pp. (in Italian).
Klauber LM (1927). "Some observations on the rattlesnakes of the extreme southwest". Bull. Antivenin Inst. Amer. 1 (1): 7–21.
Lacépède BGE (1789). Histoire naturelle des quadrupèdes ovipares et des serpentes, vol. 2 Table Méthodique. Paris, France: Hotel de Thou. 527 pp. (in French).
Merrem B (1820). Versuch eines Systems der Amphibien. Tentamen systematis amphibiorum. Marburg: J.C. Krieger. xv + 191 pp. + 1 plate. (in German and Latin).
Morris PA (1948). Boy's Book of Snakes: How to Recognize and Understand Them. (A volume of the Humanizing Science Series, edited by Jaques Cattell). New York: Ronald Press. viii + 185 pp. (Agkistrodon piscivorus, pp. 114–117, 180).
Niell WT Jr (1947). "Size and habits of the cottonmouth moccasin". Herpetologica 3: 203–205.
Niell WT Jr (1948). "Hibernation of amphibians and reptiles in Richmond County, Georgia". Herpetologica 4: 107–114.
Powell R, Conant R, Collins JT (2016). Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America, Fourth Edition. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. xiv + 494 pp. 47 Plates, 207 Figures. . (Agkistrodon piscivorus, pp. 437–438, Figure 198 + Plate 45).
Schmidt KP (1953). A check list of North American amphibians and reptiles. Sixth edition. Chicago, Illinois: American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. i–viii + 280 pp.
Schmidt KP, Davis DD (1941). Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 365 pp. 103 Figures. 34 plates. (Agkistrodon piscivorus, pp. 285–287, Figure 94 + Plate 30, Below).
Shaw G (1802). General Zoology or Systematic Natural History. Vol. 3. Part 2. Amphibia. London: Thomas Davidson. vi + 313–615.
Smith HM, Brodie ED Jr (1982). Reptiles of North America: A Guide to Field Identification. New York: Golden Press. 240 pp. (paperback), (hardcover). (Agkistrodon piscivorus, pp. 200–201).
Sonnini CS, Latreille PA (1801). Histoire naturelle des reptiles, avec figures dissinées dápres nature. 4 Vols. Paris. (in French). (for a discussion of the publication date, see Harper, F. 1940. Amer. Midl. Nat. 23: 692–723).
Stejneger L (1895). "The poisonous snakes of North America". Ann. Rept. U.S. Natl. Mus. 1893: 337–487.
Stejneger L, Barbour T (1917). A Check List of North American Amphibians and Reptiles. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 125 pp. (Agkistrodon piscivorus, p. 107).
Stewart GD (1974). "Diagnosis of two new American snakes". Baltimore Univ. Comm. (529 N. Howard St. / "an unincorp. free lance organization") 2: 1 [1].
Walters, Adam C.; Card, Winston (1996). "Natural history notes: Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti (Florida cottonmouth). Prey". Herpetol. Rev. 27 (4): 203.
Wharton, Charles H. (1960). "Birth and behavior of a brood of cottonmouths, Agkistrodon piscivorus piscivorus, with notes on tail-luring". Herpetologica 16 (2): 125–129.
Wharton CH (1966). "Reproduction and growth in the cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus Lacépède, of Cedar Keys, Florida". Copeia 1966 (2): 149–161.
Wolff, Nigel O'Connor; Githens, Thomas S. (1939). "Record venom extraction from water moccasin". Copeia 1939 (1): 52.
Wood, John Thornton (1954). "The distribution of poisonous snakes in Virginia". Virginia Journal of Science 5: 152–167.
Yarrow HC (1882). "Check list of North American Reptilia and Batrachia, with catalogue of specimens in the United States Museum". Bulletin of the U.S. National Museum 24: 1–249.
Zim HS, Smith HM (1956). Reptiles and Amphibians: A Guide to Familiar American Species: A Golden Nature Guide. Revised Edition. New York: Simon and Schuster. 160 pp. (Agkistrodon piscivorus'', pp. 109, 156).
External links
Cottonmouth Fact Sheet at Smithsonian National Zoological Park. Accessed 7 December 2007.
Cottonmouth snake – bites, identification, diet and habitat.
Water Moccasin Snake * information on identification, range and natural history.
. Accessed 3 July 2008.
piscivorus
Endemic reptiles of the United States
Fauna of the Southeastern United States
Venomous snakes
Taxa named by Bernard Germain de Lacépède
Reptiles described in 1789
Semiaquatic animals
Extant Pleistocene first appearances
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20the%20Peloponnesian%20War
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History of the Peloponnesian War
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The History of the Peloponnesian War is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian historian who also served as an Athenian general during the war. His account of the conflict is widely considered to be a classic and regarded as one of the earliest scholarly works of history. The History is divided into eight books.
Analyses of the History generally occur in one of two camps. On the one hand, some scholars such as J. B. Bury view the work as an objective and scientific piece of history. The judgment of Bury reflects this traditional interpretation of the History as "severe in its detachment, written from a purely intellectual point of view, unencumbered with platitudes and moral judgments, cold and critical."
On the other hand, in keeping with more recent interpretations that are associated with reader-response criticism, the History can be read as a piece of literature rather than an objective record of the historical events. This view is embodied in the words of W. R. Connor, who describes Thucydides as "an artist who responds to, selects and skillfully arranges his material, and develops its symbolic and emotional potential."
Historical method
Thucydides is considered to be one of the key figures in the development of Western history, thus making his methodology the subject of much analysis in the area of historiography.
Chronology
Thucydides is one of the first western historians to employ a strict standard of chronology, recording events by year, with each year consisting of the summer campaign season and a less active winter season. This method contrasts sharply with Herodotus.
Speeches
Thucydides also makes extensive use of speeches in order to elaborate on the event in question. While the inclusion of long first-person speeches is somewhat alien to modern historical method, in the context of ancient Greek oral culture, speeches are expected. These include addresses given to troops by their generals before battles and numerous political speeches, both by Athenian and Spartan leaders, as well as debates between various parties. Of the speeches, the most famous is the funeral oration of Pericles, which is found in Book Two. Being an Athenian general in the war, Thucydides heard some of these speeches himself. For the other speeches, he relied on eyewitness accounts.
These speeches are suspect in the eyes of Classicists, however, inasmuch as it is not clear to what degree Thucydides altered these speeches in order to elucidate better the crux of the argument presented. Some of the speeches are probably fabricated according to his expectations of, as he puts it, "what was called for in each situation" (1.22.1).
Neutrality
Despite being an Athenian and a participant in the conflict, Thucydides is often regarded as having written a generally unbiased account of the conflict with respect to the sides involved in it. In the introduction to the piece he states, "my work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever" (1.22.4).
There are scholars, however, who doubt this. Ernst Badian, for example, has argued that Thucydides has a strong pro-Athenian bias. In keeping with this sort of doubt, other scholars claim that Thucydides had an ulterior motive in his Histories, specifically to create an epic comparable to those of the past such as the works of Homer, and that this led him to create a nonobjective dualism favoring the Athenians. The work does display a clear bias against certain people involved in the conflict, such as Cleon.
Role of religion
The gods play no active role in Thucydides' work. This is very different from Herodotus, who frequently mentions the role of the gods, as well as a nearly ubiquitous divine presence in the centuries-earlier poems of Homer. Instead, Thucydides regards history as being caused by the choices and actions of human beings.
Despite the absence of actions of the gods, religion and piety play critical roles in the actions of the Spartans, and to a lesser degree, the Athenians. Thus natural occurrences such as earthquake and eclipses were viewed as religiously significant (1.23.3; 7.50.4)
Rationalization of myth
Despite the absence of the gods from Thucydides' work, he still draws heavily from the Greek mythos, especially from Homer, whose works are prominent in Greek mythology. Thucydides references Homer frequently as a source of information, but always adds a distancing clause, such as "Homer shows this, if that is sufficient evidence," and "assuming we should trust Homer's poetry in this case too."
However, despite Thucydides' skepticism in secondhand information such as Homer's, he does use the poet's epics to infer facts about the Trojan War. For instance, while Thucydides considered the number of over 1,000 Greek ships sent to Troy to be a poetic exaggeration, he uses Homer's Catalogue of Ships to determine the approximate number of Greek soldiers who were present. Later, Thucydides claims that since Homer never makes reference to a united Greek state, the pre-Hellenic nations must have been so disjointed that they could not organize properly to launch an effective campaign. In fact, Thucydides claims that Troy could have been conquered in half the time had the Greek leaders allocated resources properly and not sent a large portion of the army on raids for supplies.
Thucydides makes sure to inform his reader that he, unlike Homer, is not a poet prone to exaggeration, but instead a historian, whose stories may not give "momentary pleasure," but "whose intended meaning will be challenged by the truth of the facts." By distancing himself from the storytelling practices of Homer, Thucydides makes it clear that while he does consider mythology and epics to be evidence, these works cannot be given much credibility, and that it takes an impartial and empirically minded historian, such as himself, to accurately portray the events of the past.
Subject matter of the History
The first book of the History, after a brief review of early Greek history and some programmatic historiographical commentary, seeks to explain why the Peloponnesian War broke out when it did and what its causes were. Except for a few short excursuses (notably 6.54–58 on the Tyrant Slayers), the remainder of the History (books 2 through 8) rigidly maintains its focus on the Peloponnesian War to the exclusion of other topics.
While the History concentrates on the military aspects of the Peloponnesian War, it uses these events as a medium to suggest several other themes closely related to the war. It specifically discusses in several passages the socially and culturally degenerative effects of war on humanity itself. The History is especially concerned with the lawlessness and atrocities committed by Greek citizens to each other in the name of one side or another in the war. Some events depicted in the History, such as the Melian dialogue, describe early instances of realpolitik or power politics. Noteworthy, there is a possibility that translation mistakes influenced the deductions of realists with regards to the work of Thucydides.
The History is preoccupied with the interplay of justice and power in political and military decision-making. Thucydides' presentation is decidedly ambivalent on this theme. While the History seems to suggest that considerations of justice are artificial and necessarily capitulate to power, it sometimes also shows a significant degree of empathy with those who suffer from the exigencies of the war.
For the most part, the History does not discuss topics such as the art and architecture of Greece.
Military technology
The History emphasizes the development of military technologies. In several passages (1.14.3, 2.75–76, 7.36.2–3), Thucydides describes in detail various innovations in the conduct of siegeworks or naval warfare. The History places great importance upon naval supremacy, arguing that a modern empire is impossible without a strong navy. He states that this is the result of the development of piracy and coastal settlements in earlier Greece.
Important in this regard was the development, at the beginning of the classical period (c. 500 BC), of the trireme, the supreme naval ship for the next several hundred years. In his emphasis on sea power, Thucydides is echoed by the modern naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose influential work The Influence of Sea Power upon History helped set in motion the naval arms race prior to World War I.
Empire
The History explains that the primary cause of the Peloponnesian War was the "growth in power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta" (1.23.6). Thucydides traces the development of Athenian power through the growth of the Athenian empire in the years 479 BC to 432 BC in book one of the History (1.89–118). The legitimacy of the empire is explored in several passages, notably in the speech at 1.73–78, where an anonymous Athenian legation defends the empire on the grounds that it was freely given to the Athenians and not taken by force. The subsequent expansion of the empire is defended by these Athenians, "...the nature of the case first compelled us to advance our empire to its present height; fear being our principal motive, though honor and interest came afterward." (1.75.3)
The Athenians also argue that, "We have done nothing extraordinary, nothing contrary to human nature in accepting an empire when it was offered to us and then in refusing to give it up." (1.76) They claim that anyone in their position would act in the same fashion. The Spartans represent a more traditional, circumspect, and less expansive power. Indeed, the Athenians are nearly destroyed by their greatest act of imperial overreach, the Sicilian expedition, described in books six and seven of the History.
Earth science
Thucydides correlates, in his description of the 426 BC Malian Gulf tsunami, for the first time in the recorded history of natural science, quakes and waves in terms of cause and effect.
Some difficulties of interpretation
Thucydides' History is extraordinarily dense and complex. His particular ancient Greek prose is also very challenging, grammatically, syntactically, and semantically. This has resulted in much scholarly disagreement on a cluster of issues of interpretation.
Strata of composition
It is commonly thought that Thucydides died while still working on the History, since it ends in mid-sentence and only goes up to 410 BC, leaving six years of war uncovered. Furthermore, there is a great deal of uncertainty whether he intended to revise the sections he had already written. Since there appear to be some contradictions between certain passages in the History, it has been proposed that the conflicting passages were written at different times and that Thucydides' opinion on the conflicting matter had changed. Those who argue that the History can be divided into various levels of composition are usually called "analysts" and those who argue that the passages must be made to reconcile with one another are called "unitarians". This conflict is called the "strata of composition" debate. The lack of progress in this debate over the course of the twentieth century has caused many Thucydidean scholars to declare the debate insoluble and to side-step the issue in their work.
Sources
The History is notoriously reticent about its sources. Thucydides almost never names his informants and alludes to competing versions of events only a handful of times. This is in marked contrast to Herodotus, who frequently mentions multiple versions of his stories and allows the reader to decide which is true. Instead, Thucydides strives to create the impression of a seamless and irrefutable narrative. Nevertheless, scholars have sought to detect the sources behind the various sections of the History. For example, the narrative after Thucydides' exile (4.108ff.) seems to focus on Peloponnesian events more than the first four books, leading to the conclusion that he had greater access to Peloponnesian sources at that time.
Frequently, Thucydides appears to assert knowledge of the thoughts of individuals at key moments in the narrative. Scholars have asserted that these moments are evidence that he interviewed these individuals after the fact. However, the evidence of the Sicilian Expedition argues against this, since Thucydides discusses the thoughts of the generals who died there and whom he would have had no chance to interview. Instead it seems likely that, as with the speeches, Thucydides is looser than previously thought in inferring the thoughts, feelings, and motives of principal characters in his History from their actions, as well as his own sense of what would be appropriate or likely in such a situation.
Critical evaluations
The historian J. B. Bury writes that the work of Thucydides "marks the longest and most decisive step that has ever been taken by a single man towards making history what it is today.”
Historian H. D. Kitto feels that Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War not because it was the most significant war in antiquity but because it caused the most suffering. Indeed, several passages of Thucydides' book are written "with an intensity of feeling hardly exceeded by Sappho herself."
In his Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R. Popper writes that Thucydides was the "greatest historian, perhaps, who ever lived." Thucydides' work, however, Popper goes on to say, represents "an interpretation, a point of view; and in this we need not agree with him." In the war between Athenian democracy and the "arrested oligarchic tribalism of Sparta," we must never forget Thucydides' "involuntary bias," and that "his heart was not with Athens, his native city:""Although he apparently did not belong to the extreme wing of the Athenian oligarchic clubs who conspired throughout the war with the enemy, he was certainly a member of the oligarchic party, and a friend neither of the Athenian people, the demos, who had exiled him, nor of its imperialist policy."
Influence
Thucydides' History has been enormously influential in both ancient and modern historiography. It was embraced by many of the author's contemporaries and immediate successors with enthusiasm; indeed, many authors sought to complete the unfinished history. For example, Xenophon wrote his Hellenica as a continuation of Thucydides' work, beginning at the exact moment that Thucydides' History leaves off. Xenophon's work, however, is sometimes considered inferior in style and accuracy compared with Thucydides'. In later antiquity, Thucydides' reputation suffered somewhat, with critics such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus rejecting the History as turgid and excessively austere. Lucian also parodies it (among others) in his satire The True Histories. Woodrow Wilson read the History on his voyage across the Atlantic to the Versailles Peace Conference.
In the 17th century, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote about Thucydides as follows:
It hath been noted by divers, that Homer in poesy, Aristotle in philosophy, Demosthenes in eloquence, and others of the ancients in other knowledge, do still maintain their primacy: none of them exceeded, some not approached, by any in these later ages. And in the number of these is justly ranked also our Thucydides; a workman no less perfect in his work, than any of the former; and in whom (I believe with many others) the faculty of writing history is at the highest.
Manuscripts
The most important manuscripts include: Codex Parisinus suppl. Gr. 255, Codex Vaticanus 126, Codex Laurentianus LXIX.2, Codex Palatinus 252, Codex Monacensis 430, Codex Monacensis 228, and Codex Britannicus II, 727.
Grenfell and Hunt discovered about 20 papyrus fragments copied some time between the 1st and 6th centuries AD in Oxyrhynchus, including Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 16 and 17.
Outline of the work
Book 1
The state of Greece from the earliest times to the commencement of the Peloponnesian War, also known as the Archaeology. 1.1–1.19.
Methodological excursus. 1.20–1.23
Causes of the war (433–432 BC) 1.24–1.66
The Affair of Epidamnus. 1.24–1.55
The Affair of Potidaea. 1.56–1.66
Congress of the Peloponnesian League at Lacedaemon. 1.67–1.88
The Speech of the Corinthians. 1.68–1.71
The Speech of the Athenian envoys. 1.73–1.78
The Speech of Archidamus. 1.80–1.85
The Speech of Sthenelaidas. 1.86
From the end of the Persian War to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, also known as the Pentecontaetia. 1.89–1.117
The progress from supremacy to empire.
Second congress at Lacedaemon and the Corinthian Speech. 1.119–1.125
Diplomatic maneuvering. 1.126–1.139
Excursus on Cylon. 1.126–1.127
Excursus on Pausanias and Themistocles. 1.128–1.138
Pericles' first speech. 1.140–1.145
Book 2 (431–428 BC)
War begins with Thebes' attempt to subvert Plataea. 2.1–2.6
Account of the mobilization of and list of the allies of the two combatants. 2.7–2.9
First invasion of Attica. 2.10–2.23
Archidamus leads the Peloponnesian army into Attica. 2.10–2.12
Athenian preparations and abandonment of the countryside. 2.13–2.14
Excursus on Athenian synoikism. 2.15–2.16
Difficult conditions in Athens for refugees from countryside. 2.17
Archidamus ravages Oenoe and Acharnai. 2.18–2.20
Athenian fury and anger at Pericles. 2.21–2.22
Athenian naval counterattacks along coast of Peloponnese and islands. 2.23–2.32
Pericles' Funeral Oration. 2.34–2.46
The plague of Athens. 2.47–2.54
Second invasion of Attica and Athenian naval counterattacks. 2.55–2.58
Pericles' third speech, defending his position and policy. 2.59–2.64
Thucydides' estimate of Pericles' qualities and the causes for Athens' eventual defeat. 2.65
Diplomacy and skirmishes in Thrace, the islands, and the Northeast. 2.66–2.69
Fall of Potidaea. 2.70
Investment of Plataea. 2.71–2.78
Naval victories of Phormio in the Northeast. 2.80–2.92
Threat of raid on the Piraeus. 2.93–2.94
Thracian campaign in Macedonia under Sitalces. 2.95–2.101
Book 3 (428–425 BC)
Annual invasion of Attica. 3.1
Revolt of Mytilene. 3.2–3.50
Speech of Mytilenian envoys to Sparta at Olympia, asking for help. 3.9–3.14
Sparta accepts Lesbos as an ally and prepares to counter the Athenians. 3.15
Mytilene surrenders to Athens despite Spartan support. 3.28
Mytilenian Debate. 3.37–3.50
Fall of Plataea. 3.20–3.24, 3.52–68
Some Plataeans escape. 3.20–3.24.
Plataea surrenders. 3.52.
Trial and execution of the Plataeans. 3.53–3.68.
Speech of Plataeans, 3.53–3.59
Speech of the Thebans. 3.61–3.67
Revolution at Corcyra. 3.70–3.85
Thucydides' account of the evils of civil strife. 3.82–3.84
Athenian campaigns in Sicily. 3.86, 3.90, 3.99, 3.103, 3.115–3.116
Tsunami and inquiry into its causes 3.89.2–5
Campaigns of Demosthenes in western Greece. 3.94–3.98, 3.100–3.102, 3.105–3.114
Spartans establish Heraclea in Trachis. 3.92–3.93
Athenians purify Delos. 3.104
Book 4 (425–423 BC)
Annual invasion of Attica. 4.2
Athenians en route to Sicily occupy Pylos in the Peloponnese. 4.2–4.6
King Agis of Sparta cuts short the invasion of Attica to return to the Peloponnese. 4.6
Concerted Spartan attack on the Athenian fort at Pylos. 4.8–4.15
The Athenian general Demosthenes coordinates the defense of Pylos and rouses the troops with a speech. 4.9–4.10
The Spartan commander Brasidas distinguishes himself for bravery. 4.11–4.12
The Athenians defeat the Spartan assault on Pylos and cut off a garrison of Spartiates on the adjacent island of Sphacteria. 4.13–4.14
The Spartans, concerned for the men on the island, conclude an immediate armistice and send an embassy to Athens to negotiate peace. 4.13–4.22
The speech of the Spartan ambassadors offers to peace and alliance to Athens in exchange for the return of the men on Sphacteria. 4.17–4.20
The Athenian Cleon, speaking in the Assembly, encourages the Athenians to demand the return of the territories surrendered by Athens at the conclusion of the First Peloponnesian War. 4.21–4.22
Events in Sicily. 4.24–4.25
Siege of the Spartiates on Sphacteria continues without result. 4.26–4.27
Cleon takes command at Pylos. 4.27–4.29
Battle of Sphacteria results in the capture of all the Spartiates trapped there. 4.29–4.41
Nicias leads an Athenian attack on Corinth. 4.42–4.45
End of Corcyraean revolution. 4.46–4.48
Athenians capture Cythera, an island off the Peloponnese, and Thyrea, a town in the Peloponnese. Sparta is hemmed in on all sides and desperate. 4.53–4.57
Sicilian cities make peace in conference at Gela, frustrating Athenian designs on the island. 4.58–65
Speech of Hermocrates at Gela. 4.59–4.64
Athenian attack on Megara. 4.66–4.74
Capture of Nisaea. 4.69
Inconclusive engagements at Megara. 4.73
Megara eludes Athenian capture. 4.74
Invasion of Boeotia. 4.76, 4.89–4.101.2
Battle of Delium results in Athenian retreat into a temple, which the Boeotians attack and burn down. 4.90–4.100
Brasidas marches through Thessaly to Thrace and begins to cause Athenian subject cities to revolt. 4.78–4.88
Speech of Brasidas to the Acanthians. 4.85–4.87
Fall of Amphipolis to Brasidas. 4.102–4.108
Continued successes of Brasidas in Thrace. 4.111–4.135
Brasidas secures the revolt of the garrison of Torone. 4.110–4.116
One–year armistice between Athenians and Spartans. 4.117–4.118
Scione revolts from Athens to Brasidas. 4.120–4.123
Truce breaks down. 4.122–4.123.
Athenians retake Mende and besiege Scione. 4.129–4.131.
Book 5 (422–415 BC)
Death of Cleon and Brasidas. 5.10
Peace of Nicias. 5.13–5.24
Feeling against Sparta in the Peloponnese
League of the Mantineans, Eleans, Argives, and Athenians. 5.27–5.48
Battle of Mantinea and breaking up of the League. 5.63–5.81
The Melian Dialogue. 5.84–5.113
Fate of Melos. 5.116
Book 6 (415–414 BC)
The Sicilian Expedition. 6.8–6.52
Early history of Sicily. 6.1–6.6
Speeches of Nicias and Alcibiades. 6.8–6.26
Affair of the Hermae. 6.27–6.29, 6.53
Departure of the expedition to Sicily. 6.30–6.32
Speeches of Hermocrates and Athenagoras at Syracuse. 6.33–41
Arrival of Athenians in Sicily. 6.42–52
Digression on Harmodius and Aristogiton. 6.53–6.58
Recall and flight of Alcibiades. 6.60–6.61
Athenian victory at Syracuse. 6.62–6.71
Debate between Hermocrates and Euphemus at Camarina. 6.72–6.88
Alcibiades at Sparta. 6.88–6.93
Athenian victories at Syracuse. 6.94–103
Spartans dispatch Gylippus to Sicily and clash with Athens at Argos. 6.104–105
Book 7 (414–413 BC)
Arrival of Gylippus at Syracuse. 7.1–7.3
Fortification of Decelea. 7.19–7.30
Successes of the Syracusans.
Arrival of Demosthenes
Defeat of the Athenians at Epipolae. 7.42–7.59
Folly and obstinacy of Nicias
Battles in the Great Harbour
Retreat and annihilation of the Athenian army. 7.72–7.87
Book 8 (413–411 BC)
Disbelief and despair in Athens. 8.1
Allies revolt. 8.2–4
Persians offer support to Sparta. 8.5
Isthmian Festival. 8.9
Alcamenes. 8.10
Alcibiades encourages Endius to revolt. 8.12
Alcibiades encourages Chios to revolt. 8.14
Athens reverses law on reserve funds. 8.15
Sparta and Persian alliance. 8.18
Chians encourage revolt. 8.19
Samos commons overthrow upper classes. 8.21
Chians and Spartans v Athens and Argos; Ionians defeat Dorians. 8.25
Hermocrates prepares “finishing blow” to Athens, Alcibiades in Teichiussa. 8.26
Phrynichus = a “man of sense” retreats. 8.27
Tissaphernes distributes pay to Spartans. 8.29
The Spartan treaty with Persia. 8.37
Conflict between Pedaitus and Astyochus. 8.39
Slaves desert Chios. 8.40
Lichas tries to renegotiate treaty with Persia. The Spartans give not liberty but a “Median master” to the Greeks. 8.43
Rhodes revolts. 8.44
Astyochus is ordered to kill Alcibiades, who flees from Sparta to Tissaphernes. 8.45
Alcibiades advises Tissaphernes to let Athens and Sparta wear each other out. 8.46
Alcibiades plots his return to Athens. 8.47–8.48
Pissander to pave way for Alcibiades’ return. 8.49
Alcibiades betrays Phrynichus. 8.50
Phrynichus fortifies Samos. 8.51
Alcibiades encourages Tissaphernes to befriend Athens. 8.52
Pisander in Athens proposes deal: alliance with Persia, end of democracy, return of Alcibiades. 8.53–8.54
Athens defeats Chians, Pedaritus. 8.55
Alcibiades’ plans w/ Tissaphernes unravel. 8.56
Tissaphernes resolves to keep both sides equal, pays Sparta. 8.57
another treaty bet Persia and Sparta. 8.58–8.59
Pisander est. oligarchy in Athens, confusion in Samos. 8.63
Oligarchy in Athens, popular leaders are killed. “government of the 5,000.” 8.65
Oligarchy triumphant. 8.65
Popular party suspicious of each other. 8.66
Commissioners to frame a new constitution = tyranny of the four hundred. 8.67
Pisander, Phrynichus, Theramenes = leaders of the oligarchy. 8.68
The 400 with daggers dismiss the council (Boule) . 8.69
Oligarchs offer to make peace with Sparta. 8.70
Spartan forces move to Athens’ walls. Oligarchs again offer peace w/ Sparta. 8.71
Seamen at Samos reject oligarchy. 8.72
Turmoil at Samos, the Athenian crews est democracy, kill 30 oligarchs. 8.73
Exaggerated report at Samos of horrors at Athens. 8.74
Thrasybullus and Thrasyllus leaders of the democratic faction in Samos. 8.75
The army replaces oligarchy in Samos, Alcibiades promises alliance with Persia. 8.76
Debate in Samos. 8.77
Pelop soldiers anxious to fight, Astyochus unwilling to fight at sea. Tissaphernes fleet never arrives. 8.78
Athenians reinforced, Pelop unwilling to fight. 8.79
Revolt of Byzantium. 8.80
Alcibiades recalled, promises Persian aid. 8.81
Alcibiades elected general, “put all their affairs in his hands. 8.82
Tissaphernes fails to pay Spartan soldiers. 8.83
Pelop sailors threaten Astyochus, who is recalled and replaced by Mindarus. 8.84
Hermocrates is banished from Syracuse, he opposes Sparta’s alliance with Persia. 8.85
Alcibiades prevents Samian soldiers’ attack on Athens, calls for end to the 400. 8.86
Tissaphernes/Persia continues policy of letting Athens and Sparta wear each other out. 8.87
Alcibiades knew Tissaphernes would never send ships to support Sparta. 8.88
Oligarchs in Athens break ranks, Thermenes and Aristocrates fear Alcibiades power in Samos. 8.89
Phrynichus, Aristarchus, Pisander, and Antiphon most opposed to Democracy, again appeal to Sparta. Fortify the Piraeus. 8.90
The oligarchs’ plans. 8.91
The oligarchy collapses. 8.92
Oligarchs and soldiers meet on Acropolis and agree to reforms. 8.93
Pelop ships appear. 8.94
Pelop ships defeat Athenians, Euboea revolts. 8.95
Athens despairs. “Lacedaemonians proved the most convenient people in the world for the Athenians to be at war with.” 8.96
The 400 are deposed, the 5000 the “best government” in Thuc's lifetime. A “hoplite democracy,” no pay for public service (i.e. no thetes). 8.97
Pisander and Alexicles withdraw to Decelea, Aristarchus takes barbarian archers to Oenoe. The oligarchy is over. 8.98
Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus victory at sea renews Athens’ hope. 8.103–8.106
Alcibiades returns. 8.108
Abrupt ending of the history. 8.109
Selected translations
Laurentius Valla, Treviso: J. Rubeus Vercellensis, 1483
Full text – Thomas Hobbes, 1628
William Smith, 1753
Johann David Heilmann, 1760
Full text – Richard Crawley, 1874
Full text – Benjamin Jowett, 1881
Full text – Benjamin Jowett, 1881 (archival copy)
Edgar C. Marchant, 1900
Charles Forster Smith, 1919–23 (Loeb)
Rex Warner, 1954
John H. Finley, Jr., 1963
Walter Blanco, 1998
Steven Lattimore, 1998
Bryn Mawr review of Lattimore's translation, which discusses the other major translations as well.
Martin Hammond
Jeremy Mynott, 2013
See also
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 17
References
Citations
Bibliography
Connor, W. Robert, Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1984). .
Crane, Gregory, Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: the Limits of Political Realism. Berkeley: University of California Press (1998).
Hornblower, Simon, A Commentary on Thucydides. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon (1991–1996). (vol. 1), (vol. 2).
Hornblower, Simon, Thucydides. London: Duckworth (1987). .
Orwin, Clifford, The Humanity of Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1994). .
Pade, Marianne, "Thucydides", Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, 8, pp. 104–81. Last accessed 1 March 2016
Romilly, Jacqueline de, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (1963). .
Rood, Tim, Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1998). .
Strassler, Robert B, ed. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. New York: Free Press (1996). .
Thucydides, Thucydidis, olori fil, De bello peloponnesiacoa libri VIII, Versione Latina, (London 1819)
External links
Books about military history
5th-century BC history books
Unfinished books
Peloponnesian War
Ancient Greek military books
Unfinished literature completed by others
History books about wars
Political philosophy in ancient Greece
Ancient Greek history books
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell%20Douglas%20MD-11
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McDonnell Douglas MD-11
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The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 is an American tri-jet wide-body airliner manufactured by American manufacturer McDonnell Douglas (MDC) and later by Boeing.
Following DC-10 development studies, the MD-11 program was launched on December 30, 1986. Assembly of the first prototype began on March 9, 1988. Its maiden flight occurred on January 10, and it achieved FAA certification on November 8, 1990. The first delivery was to Finnair on December 7 and it entered service on December 20, 1990.
It retains the basic trijet configuration of the DC-10 with updated GE CF6-80C2 or PW4000 turbofan engines. Its wingspan is slightly larger than the DC-10 and it has winglets. Its MTOW is increased by % to . Its fuselage is stretched by % to to accommodate 298 passengers in three classes over a range of up to . It features a glass cockpit that eliminates the need for a flight engineer.
The MD-11 failed to meet its range and fuel burn targets. The last of 200 aircraft was built in October 2000 after Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Some MD-11 freighters were built, but many more are converted MD-11 passenger aircraft, many of which are still in service with cargo airlines.
Development
Origins
Although the MD-11 program was launched in 1986, McDonnell Douglas had started to search for a DC-10 derivative as early as 1976. Two versions were considered then: a DC-10-10 with a fuselage stretch of and a DC-10-30 stretched by . The latter version would have been capable of transporting up to 340 passengers in a multi-class configuration, or 277 passengers and their luggage over . At the same time, the manufacturer was seeking to reduce wing and engine drag on the trijet. Another version of the aircraft was also envisaged, the "DC-10 global", aimed to counter the risks of loss of orders for the DC-10-30 that the Boeing 747SP and its range were causing. The DC-10 global would have incorporated more fuel tanks.
While continuing their research for a new aircraft, McDonnell Douglas designated the program DC-10 Super 60, previously known for a short time as DC-10 Super 50. The Super 60 was to be an intercontinental aircraft incorporating many aerodynamic improvements in the wings, and a fuselage lengthened by to allow for up to 350 passengers to be seated in a mixed-class layout, compared to 275 in the same configuration of the DC-10.
Following more refinements, in 1979 the DC-10 Super 60 was proposed in three distinct versions like the DC-8. The DC-10-61 was designed to be a high-capacity medium-range aircraft. It would have a fuselage stretch of over the earlier DC-10 models, enabling it to carry 390 passengers in a mixed class or 550 passengers in an all-economy layout, similar to Boeing's later 777-300 and Airbus A340-600. Like the DC-8, the series 62 was proposed for long-range routes. It would feature a more modest fuselage stretch of , along with an increased wingspan and fuel capacity. It would be capable of carrying up to 350 passengers (mixed class) or 440 passengers (all-economy), similar to the later Boeing 777-200 or the Airbus A330-300/A340-300/500. Finally, the series 63 would have incorporated the same fuselage as the DC-10-61 as well as the larger wing of the -62. After high-profile accidents in the 1970s, such as Turkish Airlines Flight 981 and American Airlines Flight 191, the trijet's reputation was seriously damaged by doubts regarding its structural integrity. For these reasons, and due to a downturn in the airline industry, all work on the Super 60 was stopped.
In 1981, a Continental Airlines DC-10-10 (registration number N68048) was leased to conduct more research, particularly the effects the newly designed winglets would have on aircraft performance. Different types of winglets were tested during that time in conjunction with NASA. McDonnell Douglas was again planning new DC-10 versions that could incorporate winglets and more efficient engines developed at the time by Pratt & Whitney (PW2037) and Rolls-Royce (RB.211-535F4). The manufacturer finally rationalized all these studies under the MD-EEE (Ecology-Economy-Efficiency) designation, which was later modified to the MD-100 following some more changes. The MD-100 was proposed in two versions: the Series 10, having an airframe shorter by compared to the DC-10 and seating up to 270 passengers in a mixed-class configuration; and the Series 20, incorporating a fuselage stretch of over the DC-10 and able to seat up to 333 passengers in the same kind of configuration as the Series 10. Both versions could be powered by the same engine families as the actual MD-11 plus the RB.211-600. However, the situation for the manufacturer, and the airline industry in general, did not look bright. No new DC-10 orders were received, and many observers and customers doubted that the manufacturer would stay in business much longer. Thus, the board of directors decided in November 1983 to once again cease all work on the projected new trijet.
The following year no new orders for the DC-10 were received. The production line was kept active thanks to earlier orders from the U.S. Air Force for 60 KC-10A tankers. McDonnell Douglas was still convinced that a new derivative for the DC-10 was needed, as shown by the second-hand market for their Series 30 and the heavier DC-10-30ER version. Thus, in 1984 a new derivative aircraft version of the DC-10 was designated MD-11. From the very beginning, the MD-11X was conceived in two different versions. The MD-11X-10, based on a DC-10-30 airframe, offered a range of with passengers. That first version would have had a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of and would have used CF6-80C2 or PW4000 engines. The MD-11X-20 was to have a longer fuselage, accommodating up to 331 passengers in a mixed-class layout, and a range of .
As more orders for the DC-10 were received, McDonnell Douglas used the time gained before the end of DC-10 production to consult with potential customers and to refine the proposed new trijet. In July 1985, the board of directors authorized the Long Beach plant to offer the MD-11 to potential customers. At the time, the aircraft was still proposed in two versions, both with the same fuselage length, a stretch of over the DC-10 airframe, as well as the same engine choice as the MD-11X. One version would have a range of with a gross weight of and transport up to 337 passengers, while the second would carry 331 passengers over . A year later, as several airlines had committed to the MD-11, the situation was looking optimistic. The aircraft was now a 320-seater baseline and defined as an stretch over the DC-10-30 powered by the new advanced turbofans offered by the major engine manufacturers giving it a range of . Other versions, such as a shortened ER with a range of , an all-cargo offering a maximum payload of and a Combi with a provision for ten freight pallets on the main deck, were proposed. Further growth of the aircraft was also foreseen, such as the MD-11 Advanced.
The lack of innovation from McDonnell Douglas during the MD-11's design had been attributed to the company's declining cash flow, as it struggled with problems with its military contracts and declining orders for its commercial jets. Limited company resources resulting in the MD-11 being developed as a refinement of the existing DC-10, in contrast to rivals Airbus and Boeing who during this period developed all-new aircraft designs that would become the Airbus A330/A340 and Boeing 777. As a trijet the MD-11 was less fuel-efficient but had a greater range than its mid-size widebody contemporaries which were twinjets (the existing Boeing 767 and upcoming Airbus A330). Aerospace consultant Scott Hamilton, in a 2014 article, said that the MD-11 was "classically ill-timed" as "it came at the end of the three- or four-engine era, just ahead of the real move to ETOPS with the 777". McDonnell Douglas's initiative to "outsource everything but design, final assembly, and flight testing and sales of the MD-11" was also seen as contributing to the end of their commercial airline business.
Launch and costs
On December 30, 1986, McDonnell Douglas launched the MD-11 with commitments for 52 firm orders and 40 options in three different versions (passenger, combi and freighter) from ten airlines (Alitalia, British Caledonian, Dragonair, Federal Express, Finnair, Korean Air, Scandinavian Airlines, Swissair, Thai Airways International, and VARIG) and two leasing companies (Guinness Peat Aviation and Mitsui). Orders from Dragonair, Scandinavian and UTA, an undisclosed customer, were canceled by 1988.
In 1987, the program was to cost $1.5 billion (equivalent to $ in ) with $500 million for development and almost $1 billion for tooling and inventory. The first 52 firm orders totaled $5 billion, or $95 million each, while the A340 sold for $67 million. At certification in 1990, $2.5 billion were invested in initial production inventory, and $700 million for engineering, tools and flight testing. While it was selling for $100 million, the initial MD-11 jets cost $120 to $150 million to produce but this was to reduce to $90 million with manufacturing experience over the program life for an 11% gross profit margin, less than the 15% to 20% Boeing obtains.
In 1992, the $1.7 billion development cost was to be spread over the first 301 aircraft produced for $100 million each. In 1995, because costs and revenues could not be reasonably estimated over the program life, MDC took a pre-tax charge of $1.838 billion (~$ in ) for deferred production costs and for reduced support and tooling value. In 1999, the unit cost was $132-$147.5 million (equivalent to $-$ million in dollars).
Production and performance issues
Assembly of the first MD-11 began on March 9, 1988, and the mating of the fuselage with wings occurred in October of that year. The first flight was originally planned to occur in March 1989, but numerous problems with the manufacturing, delays with suppliers producing essential components, and labor industrial actions delayed the ceremonial rollout of the prototype until September of that year. The following months were used to prepare the prototype for its maiden flight, which finally happened on January 10, 1990. The first two aircraft manufactured were intended for FedEx and thus, were already fitted with the forward side cargo door. They remained with the manufacturer as test aircraft until 1991 before being completely converted to freighters and delivered to their customer. FAA certification was achieved on November 8, 1990, while the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) certified the MD-11 on October 17, 1991, after approximately 200 separate issues were resolved. Fuselage sections for the DC-10, KC-10, and MD-11 were built by General Dynamics' Convair Division. Yugoslav Airlines, already flying several DC-10s, became the first customer of the MD-11. Three aircraft were manufactured but were never delivered due to the Yugoslav Wars. The first MD-11 was delivered to Finnair on December 7, 1990, and it accomplished the first revenue service by an MD-11 on December 20, 1990, carrying passengers from Helsinki to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. MD-11 service in the U.S. was inaugurated by Delta Air Lines the following year.
It was during this period that flaws in the MD-11's performance became apparent. It failed to meet its targets for range and fuel burn. American Airlines in particular was unimpressed with the 19 MD-11s that it received, as was Singapore Airlines who canceled their order for 20 MD-11s and instead ordered 20 Airbus A340-300s. American Airlines cited problems with the performance of the engines and airframe, while Singapore Airlines stated that the MD-11 could not operate on the airline's long-haul routes. Pre-flight estimates indicated that the P&W-powered MD-11 was to have a range with of payload. With the Phase 1 drag reduction in place then, the aircraft could only achieve its full range with of payload, or a reduced range of with a full payload.
In 1990, McDonnell Douglas, along with Pratt & Whitney and General Electric began a modification program known as the Performance Improvement Program (PIP) to improve the aircraft's weight, fuel capacity, engine performance, and aerodynamics. McDonnell Douglas worked with NASA's Langley Research Center to study aerodynamic improvements. The PIP lasted until 1995 and recovered the range for the aircraft. However, by this point, sales of the MD-11 had already been significantly impacted. In 1995, American Airlines sold their 19 MD-11s to FedEx, as the PIP program was not sufficient for the aircraft to fly the DFW-Hong Kong route.
After McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997, the unified company decided that MD-11 production would continue exclusively with the freighter variant. In 1998, Boeing announced it would end MD-11 production after filling orders on hand. The last passenger MD-11 built was delivered to Sabena in April 1998. Assembly of the last two MD-11s were completed in August and October 2000; they were delivered to Lufthansa Cargo on February 22 and January 25, 2001 respectively. Production ended because of a lack of sales, resulting from internal competition from the Boeing 767 and 777, as well as external competition from the Airbus A330/A340.
The MD-11 was assembled at McDonnell Douglas's Douglas Products Division in Long Beach, California (later Boeing's facility). McDonnell Douglas originally projected that it would sell more than 300 MD-11 aircraft, but only 200 were built.
Design
The MD-11 is a medium- to long-range widebody airliner, with two engines mounted on underwing pylons and a third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer. It is based on the DC-10 but features a stretched fuselage, increased wingspan with winglets, refined airfoils on the wing and tailplane, new engines, and increased use of composites. The winglets are credited with improving fuel efficiency by about 2.5%. The MD-11 has a smaller empennage than the DC-10 it is based upon.
The MD-11 features a two-crew cockpit that incorporates six interchangeable CRT-units and advanced Honeywell VIA 2000 computers. The cockpit design is called Advanced Common Flightdeck (ACF) and is shared with the Boeing 717. Flight deck features include an Electronic Instrument System, a dual Flight Management System, a Central Fault Display System, and Global Positioning System. Category IIIb automatic landing capability for bad-weather operations and Future Air Navigation Systems are available.
The MD-11 was one of the first commercial designs to employ a computer-assisted pitch stability augmentation system that featured a fuel ballast tank in the tailplane, and a partly computer-driven horizontal stabilizer. Updates to the software package made the airplane's handling characteristics in manual flight similar to those of the DC-10, despite a smaller tailplane to reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency.
The MD-11 incorporates hydraulic fuses not included in the initial DC-10 design, to prevent catastrophic loss of control in the event of hydraulic failure.
Variants
The MD-11 was manufactured in five variants.
MD-11 (131 built): the passenger variant, was produced from 1988 to 1998. It was the first version on offer at the aircraft's launch in 1986 and was delivered to American Airlines (19), Delta Air Lines (17), Swissair (16), Japan Airlines (10), KLM (10), and other airlines with fewer aircraft.
MD-11C (five built): this combi aircraft was the third variant on offer at launch in 1986 and was designed to accommodate both passengers and freight on the main deck, which featured a rear cargo compartment for up to ten pallets, each measuring or . The main deck cargo compartment was accessible by a large rear port-side cargo door, which measured . The main-deck cargo volume was . Additional freight was also carried in below-deck compartments. The MD-11C could also be configured as an all-passenger aircraft. All five aircraft were manufactured between 1991 and 1992 and delivered to Alitalia, the only customer for that variant. In 2005 and 2006 the airline converted them to full-freighter configurations to be operated by Alitalia's cargo division. Following that division's closure, the five aircraft were returned to their lessor in January 2009.
MD-11CF (six built): the Convertible Freighter variant was launched in 1991 by an order from Martinair for three aircraft plus two options. The MD-11CF features a large forward port-side cargo door () located between the first doors, and can be used in an all-passenger or in an all-cargo configuration. As a freighter, it can transport 26 pallets of the same dimensions () or ) as for the MD-11C and MD-11F for a main-deck cargo volume of and offers a maximum payload of . All six MD-11CFs were delivered to Martinair (four) and World Airways (two) in 1995. The two World Airways aircraft were converted to freight-only in 2002.
MD-11ER (five built): the Extended Range version was launched by the manufacturer at the Singapore Air Show in February 1994. The MD-11ER incorporates all the Performance Improvement Program (PIP) options, including a maximum takeoff weight of and an extra fuel tank of ) in the forward cargo hold to offer a range of , an increase of over the standard passenger variant. MD-11ERs were delivered between 1995 and 1997 to Garuda Indonesia (three) and World Airways (two). As of February 2007, only one Finnair MD-11ER has been converted to MD-11 with the removal of the extra fuel tank.
MD-11F (53 built): The freight transport aircraft was the second variant on offer at launch in 1986 and was the last and longest (1988–2000) manufactured version. The all-cargo aircraft features the same forward port-side cargo door () as the MD-11CF, a main-deck volume of , a maximum payload of and can transport 26 pallets of the same dimensions ( or ) as for the MD-11C and MD-11CF. The MD-11F was delivered between 1991 and 2001 to FedEx Express (22), Lufthansa Cargo (14), and other airlines with fewer aircraft.
MD-11 Boeing Converted Freighter (BCF) – Boeing and its group of international affiliates offer a conversion of used passenger airliners into freighters. The MD-11BCF is one of the models offered.
Note: Some or all the features of the MD-11ER, including the higher MTOW of , part or all of the PIPs aerodynamic improvements packages and composite panels were fitted to later-built MD-11s (except the extra fuel tank), and could be retrofitted to any of the variants, except for the PIP Phase IIIB larger aft-engine intake. Some airlines, such as Finnair, Martinair, and FedEx have made the structural changes required to allow their aircraft to have the higher MTOW. Swissair's 16 newly delivered aircraft were retrofitted with all the features except for the extra fuel tank and were so-designated MD-11AH for Advanced Heavy.
Proposed tanker version
After McDonnell Douglas did the KDC-10 conversion for the Royal Netherlands Air Force in 1992, they proposed a tanker/transport version of the MD-11CF which had the in-house designation KMD-11. McDD offered either conversion of second-hand aircraft (KMD-11) or newly built aircraft (KC-10B), the proposed KMD-11 offered 35,000 lbs more cargo capacity and 8,400 lbs more transferable fuel than the KC-10A. It was offered to the RNAF and RSAF in the 1990s and the RAAF in the early 2000s.
Undeveloped variants
In 1993, 1995, and again in 1996, McDonnell Douglas performed studies on the feasibility of a twin-engine jet using MD-11 components, but nothing came of any of them. In August 1997, just after the merger with Boeing, a presentation was made pitching an MD-11 twin with a new Boeing wing to fill the gap between the 767 and the 777, but again the proposal came to nothing.
After ending the MD-12 program, McDonnell Douglas focused on 300–400-seat MD-11 derivatives. At the 1996 Farnborough International Air Show, the company presented plans for a new tri-jet with high seating and long range named "MD-XX". It was offered in the MD-XX Stretch and MD-XX LR versions. The MD-XX Stretch version was to have a longer fuselage than the MD-11 and seat 375 in a typical three-class arrangement. The MD-XX LR was to have a longer range and be the same length as the MD-11; it was to have typical three-class seating for 309. However, the MDC board of directors decided to end the MD-XX program in October 1996, because the financial investment was too large for the company.
Operators
As of August 2022, there are 116 MD-11s in commercial service with cargo operators FedEx Express (57), UPS Airlines (42) and Western Global Airlines (17).
Most of the airlines that ordered the MD-11 for their long-haul passenger flights had replaced it with Airbus A330, A340, and Boeing 777 aircraft by the end of 2004. Some carriers converted their MD-11s to freighters such as China Eastern Airlines and Korean Air. Korean Air announced as early as December 1994 its intention to convert its MD-11s to freighters for medium-range cargo routes. In 1995, American Airlines agreed to sell its 19 aircraft to FedEx, with the first MD-11 being transferred in 1996. Japan Airlines (JAL) announced the replacement of its 10 MD-11s in 2000; these aircraft were being converted into freighters and sold to UPS in 2004.
In February 2007, TAM Linhas Aéreas began operating the first of three leased passenger MD-11s, in a deal arranged by Boeing as an interim solution for TAM to quickly be able to operate newly granted intercontinental routes while waiting for four Boeing 777-300ERs to be delivered from late 2008. The last MD-11 was retired from TAM's fleet in July 2009, which ended its use by Brazilian airlines (Varig, VASP, and TAM).
In May 2007, Finnair announced the sale of their last two MD-11s to Aeroflot-Cargo to become part of the Russian airline cargo fleet in 2008 and 2009. KLM was the last major airline to operate scheduled passenger flights with the passenger version of the MD-11. The final scheduled flight took place on October 26, 2014 from Montréal to Amsterdam, followed by three special roundtrip flights on November 11, 2014.
Two MD-11s were also operated in a VIP configuration, one by Saudia Royal Flight for members of the Royal family, and one by Mid East Jet for ASACO Aviation; both are now stored.
Lufthansa Cargo retired their last MD-11 on October 17, 2021.
Accidents and incidents
As of June 2017, the MD-11 has been involved in 30 aviation incidents, including nine hull-loss accidents with fatalities.
Notable accidents and incidents
On April 6, 1993, China Eastern Airlines Flight 583, an MD-11 went into severe oscillations when a crew member accidentally deployed the slats during cruise flight over the Pacific Ocean near the Aleutian Islands. Two passengers were seriously injured and later died.
On July 31, 1997, FedEx Express Flight 14, MD-11 N611FE, crashed during a landing at Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey. The aircraft flipped onto its back and subsequently burned, following a landing attempt from an unstabilized flare. The five occupants survived with injuries.
On September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111, MD-11 HB-IWF, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Halifax, Nova Scotia while en route from New York City to Geneva, Switzerland. All 229 people on board perished. The cause of the crash was determined to have been a fire caused by improper wiring of passenger entertainment system units added by Swissair. The fire started at the front of the aircraft and quickly grew uncontrollable, attributed partly to the poor flame retardant properties of its metalized mylar insulation.
On April 15, 1999, Korean Air Cargo Flight 6316, MD-11 registration number HL7373, crashed shortly after takeoff while operating cargo flight KE6316 from Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport to Seoul. After takeoff, the flight was cleared to climb to . The aircraft climbed to . Due to confusion on the flight deck, the captain thought the aircraft was too high and needed to descend. The captain pushed the control column abruptly forward, causing the MD-11 to enter a rapid descent from which it could not be recovered. All three occupants on board and five people on the ground were killed.
On August 22, 1999, China Airlines Flight 642, an MD-11 operated by subsidiary Mandarin Airlines, crashed while landing at Hong Kong International Airport during typhoon Sam that exceeded its crosswind specifications, also flipping onto its back and burning. Three passengers were killed.
On October 17, 1999, FedEx Express Flight 87, MD-11 N581FE, was written off after landing at Subic Bay International Airport, Philippines. The aircraft was operating from Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. Upon landing, the aircraft rolled down the whole length of the runway before plunging into the bay where it was completely submerged except for the cockpit. An excessive approach and landing speed were pointed out as probable cause of the accident.
On March 23, 2009, FedEx Express Flight 80, MD-11F N526FE, crashed at Narita International Airport, Japan while landing in windy conditions. Airport surveillance video showed the aircraft becoming airborne again after the first touchdown, then impacting nose-first the second time and turning onto its left side, erupting into flames; the impact flipped the aircraft upside-down. The aircraft finally came to rest some distance left of the runway. The two flight crew members were killed.
On November 28, 2009, Avient Aviation Flight 324, MD-11F Z-BAV (c/n 48408), crashed on takeoff from Shanghai Pudong International Airport on a flight to Bishkek-Manas International Airport, Kyrgyzstan with the loss of three lives. The aircraft was written off.
On July 27, 2010, Lufthansa Cargo Flight 8460, a MD-11F, crash-landed at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The captain and first officer evacuated the aircraft with injuries. This incident is very similar to FedEx Flight 80 and FedEx Flight 14.
On February 13, 2016, Western Global Airlines Flight 4425 was involved in a stowaway incident that was discovered when the plane had stopped in Harare Airport, Zimbabwe for a fuel stop en-route to King Shaka International Airport, South Africa from Munich, Germany. The deceased stowaway was located in the plane’s cargo hold after ground staff at Harare noticed blood dripping from one of the MD-11’s cargo doors. The crew initially stated that they believed the blood to have come from a bird strike which had been noticed by ground staff at Munich Airport earlier in the plane's journey, but the body of a man who had stowed away on the flight was discovered shortly after the plane and its crew were seized by Zimbabwean authorities.
On June 6, 2016, UPS Airlines Flight 61, MD-11F N277UP suffered a runway excursion and nose gear collapse in a takeoff accident at Seoul-Incheon International Airport (ICN). Takeoff from runway 33L was aborted and the aircraft continued past the end of the runway. The nose gear collapsed and the nos. 1 and 3 engines contacted the grass. The flight was bound for Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. All 4 crew members survived without injury. The aircraft was written off.
Safety problems
The MD-11 had problems with its flight control systems that have resulted in multiple accidents and incidents since the aircraft's introduction. The initial design of the slat/flap lever in the cockpit left it prone to being accidentally dislodged by a crew in flight. The defect has been corrected since 1992. In the early 2000s, Boeing improved the flight control software at the urging of the FAA to reduce the possibility of violent unintentional pitch movements.
To improve fuel efficiency, McDonnell Douglas designed the MD-11's center of gravity to be much farther aft than that of other commercial aircraft. There was also a fuel-ballast tank in the MD-11's horizontal stabilizer since its tailplane was smaller than the DC-10's to improve fuel efficiency, but this was found to inhibit the MD-11's crosswind performance. These design features, coupled with standard landing speeds faster than those of comparable aircraft, significantly reduce the MD-11's margin for error during the takeoff and landing phases, making it more difficult to handle than the smaller DC-10. Several operators have introduced special training to assist crews in safely handling the MD-11's critical phases of flight.
Specifications
Deliveries
See also
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Steffen, Arthur. McDonnell Douglas MD-11: A Long Beach Swansong. Hinckley, UK: Midland, 2002. .
External links
MD-11 Historical Snapshot
MD-11
MD-011
1990s United States airliners
Trijets
Aircraft first flown in 1990
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gremlins
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Gremlins
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Gremlins is a 1984 American comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo, the main mogwai character. It draws on legends of folkloric mischievous creatures that cause malfunctions—"gremlins"—in the British Royal Air Force going back to World War II. The story follows a young man who receives a strange creature as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, mischievous monsters that all wreak havoc on a whole town on Christmas Eve.
The film was the center of large merchandising campaigns and opts for black comedy, balanced against a Christmastime setting. Steven Spielberg was the film's executive producer, with the film being produced by Michael Finnell.
Gremlins was theatrically released on June 8, 1984 by Warner Bros. to critical and commercial success. However, it was heavily criticized for some of its more violent sequences. In response to this and to similar complaints about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg suggested that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) alter its rating system, which it did within two months of the film's release, creating a new PG-13 rating. It was followed by a sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).
Plot
Struggling inventor Randall Peltzer visits a Chinatown antique store, hoping to find a Christmas present for his son Billy. Inside, Randall encounters a small, furry creature called a (Cantonese: , 'devil'). The owner, Mr. Wing, refuses to sell Randall the creature, but his grandson secretly does, warning Randall to remember three important rules: do not expose the mogwai to light, especially sunlight, which will kill it; do not let it come in contact with water; and above all, never feed it after midnight.
Randall returns home to Kingston Falls, where he gives the mogwai to Billy as a pet. Billy works in the local bank, but fears that his dog Barney will be put down by widowed miser Mrs. Deagle. Randall names the mogwai "Gizmo" and explains the three rules. Gizmo is friendly and docile, but when Billy's young friend Pete accidentally spills water over Gizmo, five more mogwai spawn from his back, a more troublemaking sort led by the aggressive Stripe, named for the tuft of fur on his head. Billy shows one of the mogwai to his former elementary school science teacher, Mr. Hanson, spawning another mogwai, on whom Hanson experiments. Back at home, Stripe and his fellow mogwai trick Billy into feeding them after midnight by severing the power cord on his alarm clock. They form cocoons, as does Hanson's mogwai, which soon hatch, emerging as mischievous, dark green, reptilian monsters called "Gremlins", who then torture Gizmo and attack Billy's mother, Lynn. Hanson is killed by his gremlin.
Lynn and Billy are able to kill off the gremlins, except for Stripe, who escapes to a local YMCA. There, Stripe jumps into the swimming pool, spawning an army of gremlins who wreak havoc in Kingston Falls. Many people are injured or outright killed by the gremlins' rampage, including Mrs. Deagle. Billy reports this to the police, but they prove to be no help as they don't believe his story, even after he shows them Gizmo.
As Billy rescues his girlfriend, Kate Beringer, they hide in the now-abandoned bank where Kate reveals to Billy and Gizmo why she hates Christmas: when she was nine years old, her father went missing on Christmas Eve and did not come home on Christmas Day either; several days later, he was found dead in their chimney while dressed as Santa Claus. Planning to surprise her and her mother, he had accidentally slipped and broken his neck while climbing down the chimney. Still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Kate confesses this is how she discovered the truth about Santa Claus.
Billy and Kate discover that the town has fallen silent, and the gremlins are watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the local theater. They set off a natural gas explosion, incinerating all the gremlins except for Stripe, who left to commandeer more candy at a Montgomery Ward store across the street. As morning approaches, they follow Stripe into the department store, where Stripe attempts to use a fountain to spawn more gremlins. Gizmo opens a skylight, exposing Stripe to sunlight, killing him.
As the local news reports on the day's mysterious tragedies, Mr. Wing reclaims Gizmo at the Peltzer home. He scolds the Peltzers for their negligence and criticizes Western society for its carelessness with nature. However, as he turns to leave, Gizmo, having bonded with Billy, bids the young man goodbye. A touched Mr. Wing then concedes that Billy may be ready one day, and until then, Gizmo will be waiting.
Cast
Voices
Howie Mandel as Gizmo
Frank Welker as Stripe
Don Steele as Rockin' Ricky Rialto
Marvin Miller as Robby The Robot (uncredited)
Ilene Keys : Gizmo (song, uncredited)
Mogwai and Gremlin vocal effects provided by Brad Kesten (uncredited), Michael Winslow, Bob Bergen, Fred Newman, Peter Cullen, Jim Cummings (uncredited), Sonny Melendrez (uncredited), Mark Dodson, Bob Holt, and Michael Sheehan.
Cameos
Steven Spielberg as Man Riding recumbent bicycle
Jim McKrell as Lew Landers
Jerry Goldsmith as man in phone booth
William Schallert as Father Bartlett
Chuck Jones as Mr. Jones, Billy's Drawing Mentor
Kenneth Tobey as Smoking Gas Station Attendant
Production
Background
Gremlins was produced at a time when combining horror and comedy was becoming increasingly popular. According to Professor Noël Carroll, Ghostbusters, released the same weekend as Gremlins, and the comic strip The Far Side also followed this trend. Carroll argued that there was now a new genre emphasizing sudden shifts between humorous and horrific scenes, drawing laughs with plot elements that have been traditionally used to scare.
The notion of gremlins was first conceived during the 1920s when mechanical failures in RAF aircraft were jokingly blamed on the small monsters. The term "gremlins" also entered popular culture as children's author and RAF pilot Roald Dahl published a book called The Gremlins in 1943, based on the mischievous creatures. Walt Disney considered making a film of it. A Bugs Bunny cartoon of the era, Falling Hare, has him battling a gremlin on an airplane. Joe Dante had read The Gremlins and said that the book was of some influence on his film. In 1983, Dante publicly distanced his work from earlier films, explaining, "Our gremlins are somewhat different—they're sort of green, and they have big mouths, and they smile a lot and they do incredibly, really nasty things to people and enjoy it all the while".
Development
The story of Gremlins was conceived by Chris Columbus. As Columbus explained, his inspiration came from his loft, when at night "what sounded like a platoon of mice would come out and to hear them skittering around in the blackness was really creepy". He then wrote the original screenplay as a spec script to show potential employers that he had writing abilities. The story was not actually intended to be filmed until Steven Spielberg took an interest in turning it into a film. As Spielberg explained, "It's one of the most original things I've come across in many years, which is why I bought it." Spielberg considered Tim Burton to direct the film after seeing his short film Frankenweenie.
After deciding to executive produce the film, Spielberg chose Dante as his director because of his experience with horror-comedy; Dante had previously directed The Howling (1981); however, in the time between The Howling and the offer to film Gremlins, he had experienced a lull in his career. Dante began doing storyboard work on the film while also working as a director on Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), a film which Spielberg also served as a director on. The film's producer was Michael Finnell, who had also worked on The Howling with Dante. Spielberg took the project to Warner Bros. and co-produced it through his own company, Amblin Entertainment.
The film's script went through a few drafts before a shooting script was finalized. The first version was much darker than the final film. Various scenes were cut, including one which portrayed Billy's mother dying in her struggle with the gremlins, with her head thrown down the stairs when Billy arrives. Dante later explained the scene made the film darker than the filmmakers wanted. There was also a scene where the gremlins ate Billy's dog and a scene where the gremlins attacked a McDonald's, eating customers instead of burgers. Also, instead of Stripe being a mogwai who becomes a gremlin, there was originally no mogwai named Stripe; rather, Gizmo was supposed to transform into Stripe the gremlin. Spielberg overruled this plot element as he felt Gizmo was cute and that audiences would want him to be present throughout the film.
The film mentions an urban legend in which Kate reveals in a speech that her father died at Christmas when he dressed as Santa Claus and broke his neck while climbing down the family's chimney. After the film was completed, studio executives insisted upon its removal, because they felt it was too ambiguous as to whether it was supposed to be funny or sad. Dante refused to take the scene out, saying it represented the film as a whole, which had a combination of horrific and comedic elements. Spielberg did not like the scene but, despite his creative control, he viewed Gremlins as Dante's project and allowed him to leave it in. A parody of this scene is featured in Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
Casting
Phoebe Cates was cast as Kate, Billy's girlfriend, despite concerns that she was known for playing more risqué parts, such as Linda Barrett in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Spielberg urged the casting of the relatively unknown Zach Galligan as Billy because he saw chemistry between Galligan and Cates during auditions. Galligan later compared himself to Billy, saying he was a "geeky kid", and that being in the film "was really kind of a dream" given "what I get to do, what my character gets to do, blow up movie theatres", adding that he "got to work with great people". Spielberg commented when Galligan was testing with Cates that "he's in love with her already" and that was how Galligan won the part. Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson also auditioned.
In contrast to Galligan, many of the supporting actors and actresses were better known. Veteran actor Glynn Turman portrayed the high school science teacher whose study of a newborn mogwai leads to his death after it forms a cocoon and emerges as a vicious gremlin. Dick Miller, who was a regular in Dante's films, was another experienced actor on the set, playing a World War II veteran who first refers to the creatures as gremlins. Rand was played by Hoyt Axton, who was always the filmmakers' preferred choice for the role even though it was widely contested by other actors. Axton's experience included acting as the father in The Black Stallion (1979), and he was also a country music singer-songwriter. After an introductory scene to Gremlins was cut, Axton's voice earned him the added role of the narrator to establish some context. Mr. Wing was played by Keye Luke, a renowned film actor, whose film career spanned half a century. Although in reality he was around 80 at the time of filming, and his character was very elderly, Luke's youthful appearance had to be covered by make-up.
Corey Feldman, who up to that time had primarily been in commercials, played Pete Fountaine, establishing his early credentials as a child actor. Polly Holliday, an actress best known for her role in Alice, played Mrs. Deagle. Dante considered the casting fortunate, as she was well-known, and he considered her to be talented. Two other well-known actors, Fast Times Judge Reinhold and character actor Edward Andrews, received roles that were significantly reduced after the film was edited; they played Billy's superiors at the bank.
Special effects
Some of the performances were shot on the Courthouse Square and Colonial Street sets of the Universal Studios Lot in Universal City, California (Mrs. Deagle's house was one such set as well as the opening street scenes in Chinatown, which were filmed on the Warner Bros. Studios backlot). This required fake snow; Dante also felt it was an atmosphere that would make the special effects more convincing.
An earlier attempt to use monkeys to interpret the gremlins was abandoned because the test monkey panicked when made to wear a gremlin head. Puppets and marionettes were used instead, so the actors worked alongside them in most scenes. Nevertheless, after the actors finished their work for good, a great deal of effort was spent finishing the effects.
Numerous small rubber puppets, some of which were mechanical, were used to portray Gizmo and the gremlins. They were designed by Chris Walas. There was more than one Gizmo puppet, and occasionally Galligan, when carrying one, would set him down off camera, and when Gizmo appeared again sitting on a surface it was actually a different puppet wired to the surface. These puppets had many limitations. The Gizmo puppets were particularly frustrating because they were smaller and thus broke down more. While Walas recommended making the mogwais larger to make their creation and functioning easier for the special effects team, Dante insisted on keeping their size small to enhance the cuteness of the creatures. Consequently, to satisfy the crew, a scene was included in which the gremlins hang Gizmo on a wall and throw darts at him. This was included on a list that the crew created known to them as the "Horrible Things to do to Gizmo" list.
Other effects required large mogwai faces and ears to be produced for close-ups, as the puppets were less capable of conveying emotion. Consequently, large props simulating food were needed for the close-ups in the scene in which the mogwai feast after midnight. An enlarged Gizmo puppet was also needed for the scene in which he multiplies. The new mogwai, who popped out of Gizmo's body as small, furry balls which then started to grow, were balloons and expanded as such. Walas had also created the exploding gremlin in the microwave by means of a balloon that was allowed to burst.
Howie Mandel provided the voice for Gizmo, and prolific voice actor Frank Welker provided the voice for Stripe. It was Welker who suggested Mandel perform in Gremlins. The puppets' lines were mostly invented by the voice actors, based on cues from the physical actions of the puppets, which were filmed before the voice work. When developing the voice for Gizmo, Mandel explained, "[Gizmo was] cute and naive, so, you know, I got in touch with that... I couldn't envision going any other way or do something different with it". The majority of the other gremlins' voices were performed by Michael Winslow and Peter Cullen, while the remaining voices were done by Bob Bergen, Fred Newman, Mark Dodson, Bob Holt, and Michael Sheehan.
Music
The film's score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who won a Saturn Award for Best Music for his efforts. The main score was composed with the objective of conveying "the mischievous humor and mounting suspense of Gremlins". Goldsmith also wrote Gizmo's song, which was hummed by Ilene Keys, a child actress and acquaintance of Goldsmith, rather than Mandel himself. Goldsmith also appears in the film, alongside Steven Spielberg, in the scene where Rand calls home from the salesman's convention.
The soundtrack album was released by Geffen Records as a specially priced mini-album on LP and cassette (Goldsmith's music comprised all of side two) and reissued on compact disc in 1993 only in Germany.
Gremlins...Mega Madness – Michael Sembello (3:50)
Make It Shine – Quarterflash (4:10)
Out/Out – Peter Gabriel (7:00)
The Gift (4:51)
Gizmo (4:09)
Mrs. Deagle (2:50)
The Gremlin Rag (4:03)
"Gremlins...Mega Madness" was also released as a single, with "The Gremlin Rag" as its B-side.
In 2011, Film Score Monthly issued a two-disc release of the soundtrack, with the complete score on disc one and the original soundtrack album on disc two (representing the latter's first North American CD issue); this was the label's final Jerry Goldsmith album.
DISC ONE: The Film Score
Fanfare in C (Max Steiner) / The Shop / The Little One 4:30
Late for Work 1:46
Mrs. Deagle / That Dog 2:22
The Gift 1:45
First Aid 2:17
Spilt Water 3:02
A New One 1:10
The Lab / Old Times 2:35
The Injection 2:56
Snack Time / The Wrong Time 1:49
The Box 1:24
First Aid 1:39
Disconnected / Hurry Home 1:03
Kitchen Fight 4:06
Dirty Linen 0:43
The Pool 1:07
The Plow / Special Delivery 1:16
High Flyer 2:22
Too Many Gremlins 2:06
No Santa Claus 3:27
After Theatre 1:39
Theatre Escape / Stripe Is Loose / Toy Dept. / No Gizmo 4:36
The Fountain / Stripe's Death 5:42
Goodbye, Billy 2:56
End Title / The Gremlin Rag 4:10
Blues 2:17
Mrs. Deagle [film version] 1:27
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen [traditional, arr. Alexander Courage] 1:12
After Theatre [with "Silent Night"] 1:36
After Theatre [without "Silent Night"] 1:36
Rabbit Rampage [Milt Franklyn] 0:47
The Gremlin Rag [full version] 3:35
Gizmo's New Song 0:35
Gizmo's Trumpet 0:30
Tracks 26–34 are listed as bonus tracks.
DISC TWO: 1984 Soundtrack Album
Gremlins...Mega Madness – Michael Sembello 3:52
Make It Shine – Quarterflash 4:11
Out/Out – Peter Gabriel 7:02
The Gift 4:58
Gizmo 4:14
Mrs. Deagle 2:54
The Gremlin Rag 4:13
Reception
Box office
Financially, Gremlins was a success. Produced on an $11 million budget, it was more expensive than Spielberg had originally intended but still relatively cheap for its time. The trailer introduced the film to audiences by briefly explaining that Billy receives a strange creature as a Christmas present, by going over the three rules, and then coming out with the fact that the creatures transform into terrible monsters. This trailer showed little of either the mogwai or the gremlins. In contrast to this, other advertisements concentrated on Gizmo, overlooked the gremlins, and made the film look similar to Spielberg's earlier family film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
Gremlins was released into North American theaters on June 8, 1984, the same day as Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters. Gremlins ranked second, with $12.5 million in its first weekend, $1.1 million less than Ghostbusters. By the end of its American screenings on November 29, it had grossed $148,168,459 domestically. This made it the fourth highest-grossing film of the year, behind Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In August 1984, it opened in Argentina and Spain, and in October it premiered in West Germany. Screenings began in Mexico, Australia, and much of the rest of Europe in December. Since Gremlins had an international audience, different versions of the film were made to overcome cultural barriers. Mandel learned to speak his few intelligible lines, such as "Bright light!", in various languages, including German. Regional music and humor were also incorporated into foreign-language versions. Dante credited this work as being one of the factors which helped to make Gremlins a worldwide success. However, many critics questioned the summer release date of the film in America, as the film takes place during the Christmas holiday season, causing them to comment that it should have had a Christmas release date instead.
In addition to this, there were also complaints from audiences about the violence depicted in the film. These complaints were particularly present in people who had brought their children to see the film, many of whom walked out of the theater before the film had ended. Dante admitted to reporters later that "the idea of taking a 4-year-old to see Gremlins, thinking it's going to be a cuddly, funny animal movie and then seeing that it turns into a horror picture, I think people were upset... They felt like they had been sold something family friendly and it wasn't entirely family friendly".
The film became available to audiences again when it was brought back to theaters on August 30, 1985. This additional release brought its gross up to $153,083,102.
By February 1985, the film had grossed $59.6 million internationally, including $17 million in Japan. It grossed a further $0.2 million in 2019, taking its worldwide gross to over $212.9 million.
Critical response
Roger Ebert approved of the film, awarding three out of four stars and declaring it to not only be "fun", but also a "sly series of send-ups", effectively parodying many elemental film storylines. In his opinion, Gremlins did this partly through depictions of mysterious worlds (the shop in Chinatown) and tyrannical elderly women (Mrs. Deagle). Ebert also believed the rule in which a mogwai cannot eat after midnight was inspired by fairy tales, and that the final scenes parody classic horror films. He connected Kate's speech about her father with "the great tradition of 1950s sick jokes". Gene Siskel gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, describing it as "a wickedly funny and slightly sick ride", and "a most original work. We're aware at every moment that someone is trying to entertain us. Playfulness abounds." Vincent Canby of The New York Times was mixed, writing that the film "is far more interested in showing off its knowledge of movie lore and making random jokes than in providing consistent entertainment. Unfortunately, it's funniest when being most nasty." Variety declared, "Make room for adorable 'Gremlins' dolls on the shelves and start counting the take for another calculated audience pleaser from the Steven Spielberg-Frank Marshall-Kathleen Kennedy team. But that's all that's here in this showy display of technical talent, otherwise nearly heedless of dramatic concerns." Leonard Maltin disapproved of the film, and his view was made clear in remarks he made on the television show Entertainment Tonight. He called the film "icky" and "gross". He later wrote that despite being set in a "picture-postcard town" and blending the feel of It's a Wonderful Life (a clip of which appears in Gremlins) with that of The Blob, the film is "negated by too-vivid violence and mayhem"; giving the film two out of four stars. Maltin later made a cameo appearance in Gremlins 2, repeating his criticisms of the original on film, as an in-joke, before being throttled by the creatures; he later gave the second film a more positive rating, three out of four stars.
While some critics criticized the film's depictions of violence and greed—such as death scenes, Kate's speech, and the gremlins' gluttony—for lacking comic value, scholar Charlotte Miller instead interpreted these as a satire of "some characteristics of Western civilization", suggesting that Westerners may take too much satisfaction from violence. Gremlins can also be interpreted as a statement against technology, in that some characters, such as Billy's father, are overly dependent on it. In contrast, Mr. Wing is shown to have a strong distaste for television. Kirkpatrick Sale also interpreted Gremlins as an anti-technology film in his book Rebels Against the Future. Another scholar suggested that the film is meant to express a number of observations of society by having the gremlin characters shift in what they are meant to represent. At different times, they are depicted as teenagers, the wealthy establishment, or fans of Disney films.
Another scholar drew a connection between the microwave scene and urban legends about pets dying in microwave ovens. He described the portrayal of this urban legend in the film as successful, but that meant it seemed terrible. This is indeed a scene that is thought of as being one of the film's most violent depictions; with even Roger Ebert expressing some fear in his review that the film might encourage children to try similar things with their pets.
Colin Greenland reviewed Gremlins for Imagine magazine, and stated that "Two or three good jokes, three or four neat scenes, lots of detail, but overall, a manic melee of pyrotechnics that made random grabs for my sympathy and failed to hold my attention, A bit more coherent thought, and who knows, it might have been something good."
Gremlins has been criticized for more than its depictions of violence. One BBC critic wrote in 2000 that "The plot is thin and the pacing is askew". However, that critic also complimented the dark humour contrasted against the ideal Christmas setting. In 2002, another critic wrote that in hindsight, Gremlins has "corny special effects" and that the film will tend to appeal to children more so than to adults; he also said the acting was dull.
Despite the initial mixed criticism, Gremlins has continued to receive critical praise over the years and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a "Certified Fresh" approval rating of 86% based on 76 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Whether you choose to see it as a statement on consumer culture or simply a special effects-heavy popcorn flick, Gremlins is a minor classic." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 70 based on 13 reviews, indicatng "generally favorable reviews".
Accolades
Home media
Warner Home Video released Gremlins on VHS, CED Videodisc, and Beta in 1985. Gremlins made $79,500,000 in video rental stores. The film was released on DVD in 1997 in a bare bones presentation. It included both full screen and widescreen versions and the film's trailer. It was repackaged in 1999 with the same disc, but a different cover. On August 20, 2002, a "special edition" DVD was released, which featured cast and filmmakers' commentary and deleted scenes. A 25th anniversary Blu-ray edition was released on December 1, 2009. The film was again released on home video in 4K Ultra HD on October 1, 2019.
Merchandising
Toys and collectibles
With its commercial themes, particularly the cuteness of the character Gizmo, Gremlins became the center of considerable merchandising. Due to this, it became part of a rising trend in film, which had received a boost from Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Manufacturers including LJN produced versions of Gizmo as dolls or stuffed animals, the latter of which became a popular high demand toy during the holiday season of 1984. Both Gizmo and the gremlins were mass-produced as action figures, and Topps printed trading cards based upon the film.
A Gizmo toy was produced which was a spinoff of furby.
A product placement deal with fast food chain Hardee's also led to a series of five book-and-cassette/45 records adaptations of the film's story. Starting in the early 2000s, companies such as Jun Planning and the National Entertainment Collectibles Association produced all-new Gremlins toys and collectibles. In 2017 Trick or Treat Studios began producing official Gremlins life-size puppets of Stripe and Gizmo. In May 2019, NECA unveiled their Christmas 2019 collectible, which features two Gremlins singing carols.
Novel
The screenplay was adapted into a novelization by George Gipe, published by Avon Books in June 1984. The novel offered an origin for mogwai and gremlins as a prologue. Supposedly, mogwai were created as gentle, contemplative creatures by a scientist on an alien world. However, it was discovered their physiology was unstable. The end result was only 1 in 10,000 mogwai would retain their sweet, loving demeanor. The rest would change into creatures the novel referred to as "mischievous". The minority mogwai (the 1 in 10,000) are immortal by human standards, though Gizmo explains to Stripe if he were to undergo the transformation himself, he would become like the others, "short lived and violent". This origin is unique to the novel but is referred to in the novelization of Gremlins 2 by David Bischoff. No definitive origin for mogwai or gremlins is given in either Gremlins film. The novelization contains a subplot that was cut from the original film, where the National Guard plans to neutralize the gremlins with fire hoses.
Video games
Action-oriented video games
Several officially licensed video games based on the film have been produced. One of the first was Gremlins, released by Atari, Inc. for their 2600 console.
Atari, Inc. released a completely different (and more technically advanced) game—also called Gremlins—for the Atari 5200 console and the Apple II, Commodore 64, and IBM PC computers. Although the Atari 5200 version went to manufacturing in 1984, the turmoil surrounding Jack Tramiel's takeover of Atari's consumer business resulted in it not being released until 1986.
In the 2000s, more games were released; Gremlins: Unleashed! was released on Game Boy Color in 2001. The game was about Gizmo trying to catch Stripe and thirty other gremlins, while the gremlins also try to turn Gizmo into a gremlin. Both Gizmo and Stripe are playable characters in the game.
A Gremlins Team Pack was released for Lego Dimensions on November 18, 2016. The pack includes minifigures of Gizmo and Stripe, a constructible polaroid camera and RC car, and grants access to an Adventure World and Battle Arena based on the film. Howie Mandel and Frank Welker reprise their respective roles as Gizmo and Stripe, while Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton and Frances Lee McCain reprise as non-playable characters Kate Beringer, Randall Peltzer and Lynn Peltzer respectively.
Gremlins: The Adventure
At the time of the film's release, an interactive fiction game based on scenes from the film, entitled Gremlins: The Adventure (1985), was released for various home computers, including the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum. The game was written by Brian Howarth for Adventure Soft and was text-based, with full-color illustrations on some formats.
Miscellaneous
In addition to this, Gremlins brand breakfast cereal was produced by Ralston concurrent to and for a few years after the first film was released in 1984. The front of the cereal box featured Gizmo, and inside were decals of the malevolent gremlins, including Stripe.
Legacy
The film not only spawned the sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and an advertisement for British Telecom, but is believed to have been the inspiration for several unrelated films about small monsters. These include Ghoulies, Troll, Hobgoblins, and Munchies.
In music, the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai are named after the film's creatures: as for the reason why the band chose this as their name, their guitarist, Stuart Braithwaite, has stated that "it has no significant meaning and we always intended on getting a better one, but like a lot of other things we never got round to it". Welsh singer and songwriter Rod Thomas performs under the name Bright Light Bright Light, which is a direct quote from the film.
In January 2013, Vulture reported that Warner Bros. was negotiating with Amblin Entertainment to reboot the Gremlins franchise. Seth Grahame-Smith was tapped to produce, alongside David Katzenberg. In January 2015, Grahame-Smith stated that the project has been put on hold. In November 2015, Zach Galligan confirmed that the third film will be a sequel and not a reboot.
In a December 2016 interview with Bleeding Cool, Galligan again spoke about a third film saying that "Warner Bros. definitely wants it, Chris Columbus wants to do it because he'd like to undo the Gremlins 2 thing as he wasn't thrilled with it, and Spielberg wants to." He claimed Gremlins 3 is being written by Carl Ellsworth. In an interview with /Film in 2017, a script was written by Chris Columbus. His script explored the idea that has been on the fan's mind for a long time: "if all the gremlins come from getting Gizmo wet and feeding his mogwai offspring after midnight, should Gizmo be eliminated?" He described his script as "twisted and dark".
In November 18, 2016, both Gizmo and Stripe made their appearance in Lego Dimensions as playable characters in their own Team Pack. Many of the other in-game playable characters, such as Supergirl, hint not to give gremlins water or light. Gizmo and Stripe also each have their own unique abilities and vehicles; Gizmo has the RC Car and Stripe gets the Flash 'n' Finish.
In 2017, gremlins were featured in the animated film The Lego Batman Movie, with director Chris McKay explaining he loved the characters. The gremlins were among numerous villains from outside of the Batman franchise playing a role in the film, with many of the added antagonists owned by Warner Bros.
In 2019, Warner Bros. successfully gained registered trademark of the name and the franchise. That same year, the studio's parent company WarnerMedia greenlit an animated series, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai based on the property for its streaming service, Max. The series premiered on May 23, 2023.
In February 2021, a Mountain Dew Zero Sugar ad featuring Zach Galligan and Gizmo was released.
Also in 2021, a trio of Gremlins including Stripe appear in Space Jam: A New Legacy. They were shown running towards the site of the basketball game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad and can be seen cheering from on top of the blue Bronto-Crane from The Flintstones.
Both Gizmo and Stripe appear as playable characters in the 2022 fighting game MultiVersus.
See also
Warner Bros. Classics & Great Gremlins Adventure (a.k.a. Gremlins Invasion), two defunct amusement rides themed after the film
Holiday horror
List of films set around Christmas
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
1980s American films
1980s Christmas horror films
1980s Christmas comedy films
1984 black comedy films
1984 comedy horror films
1980s English-language films
1980s monster movies
1980s dark fantasy films
Amblin Entertainment films
American Christmas films
American Christmas comedy films
American Christmas horror films
American comedy horror films
American dark fantasy films
American monster movies
Fictional humanoids
Films about gremlins
Films directed by Joe Dante
Films scored by Jerry Goldsmith
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films set in a movie theatre
Films set in New York (state)
Films using stop-motion animation
Films with screenplays by Chris Columbus
Gremlins (franchise)
Puppet films
Race-related controversies in film
Rating controversies in film
Warner Bros. films
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford%20Law%20School
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Stanford Law School
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Stanford Law School (SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28% in 2021, the second-lowest of any law school in the country. Since October 2023, Robert Weisberg has served as its dean.
Stanford Law School employs more than 90 full-time and part-time faculty members and enrolls over 550 students who are working toward their Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. Stanford Law also confers four advanced legal degrees: a Master of Laws (LL.M.), a Master of Studies in Law (M.S.L.), a Master of the Science of Law (J.S.M.), and a Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.). Each fall, Stanford Law enrolls a J.D. class of approximately 180 students, giving Stanford the smallest student body of any law school ranked in the top fourteen (T14). Stanford also maintains eleven full-time legal clinics, including the nation's first and most active Supreme Court litigation clinic, and offers 27 formal joint degree programs.
The law school's alumni include several of the first women to occupy Chief Justice or Associate Justice posts on supreme courts: former Chief Justice of New Zealand Sian Elias, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and the late Chief Justice of Washington Barbara Durham. Other justices of supreme courts who graduated from Stanford Law include the late Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist, retired Chief Justice of California Ronald M. George, retired California Supreme Court Justice Carlos R. Moreno, and the late California Supreme Court Justice Frank K. Richardson.
History
Stanford first offered a curriculum in legal studies in 1893, when the university hired its first two law professors: former U.S. president Benjamin Harrison and Nathan Abbott - who attended Boston University School of Law. Abbott headed the new program and assembled a small faculty over the next few years. The law department primarily enrolled undergraduate majors at this time and included a large number of students who might not have been welcome at more traditional law schools at the time, including women and students of color, especially Hispanic, Chinese and Japanese students.
In 1900, the department moved from its original location in Encina Hall to the northeast side of the Inner Quadrangle. These larger facilities included Stanford's first law library. Beginning to focus more on professional training, the school implemented its first three-year curriculum and became one of 27 charter members of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). In 1901, the school awarded its first professional degree, the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.).
Starting in 1908, the law department began its transition into an exclusively professional school when Stanford's Board of Trustees passed a resolution to officially change its name from Law Department to Law School. Eight years later, Frederic Campbell Woodward became the first dean of the law school, and in 1923, the law school received accreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA). In 1924, Stanford's law program officially transitioned into a modern professional school when it began requiring a bachelor's degree for admission.
The 1940s and 1950s brought considerable change to the law school. After World War II caused the law school's enrollment to drop to fewer than 30 students, the school quickly expanded once the war ended in 1945. A move to a new location in the Outer Quadrangle, as well as the 1948 opening of the law school dormitory Crothers Hall (the result of a donation by Stanford Law graduate George E. Crothers), allowed the school to grow, while the 1948 inaugural publication of the Stanford Law Review (helmed by future U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher '49) helped to augment the law school's national reputation. The decision that Stanford should remain a small law school with a very limited enrollment emerged during this period. For the third time in its history, the law school relocated in the 1970s, this time to its current location in the Crown Quadrangle.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the law school aimed to diversify its student body. During this period, students established a large number of new and progressive student organizations, including the Women of Stanford Law, the Stanford Chicano Law Student Association, the Environmental Law Society, and the Stanford Public Interest Foundation. Additionally, in 1966, the school sought to academically diversify its student body by collaborating with the Stanford Business School to create its first joint-degree program. A year earlier, in 1965, the law school enrolled its first black student, Sallyanne Payton '68, and in 1972, the school hired its first female law professor, Barbara Babcock, and its first professor of color, William B. Gould IV. In 1968, Stanford appointed Thelton Henderson, future judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, as the first assistant dean for minority admissions. Henderson expanded minority enrollment from a single student to approximately a fifth of the student body. Stanford Law's commitment to diversity continues today, and The Princeton Review currently ranks Stanford Law as one of the ten best law schools for minority students.
Earning national recognition in the 1980s and 1990s, the law school embarked on innovating its curriculum. Stanford offered new courses focusing on law and technology, environmental law, intellectual property law, and international law, allowing students to specialize in emerging legal fields. In 1984, it launched its first clinical program, the East Palo Alto Community Law Project. By the 21st century, a new focus on interdisciplinary education emerged. In 2009, it transitioned from a semester system to a quarter system to align itself with Stanford's other graduate schools. Stanford also expanded its upper-level offerings in international law, by adding new clinics, academic centers, and simulation courses, and expanded its joint degree programs.
Academics and admissions
Stanford Law School is known for its student-to-faculty ratio (7.3 to 1), one of the lowest in the country. The first-year class of approximately 180 students is divided into six smaller sections of 30 students each.
The academic program is flexible. First-year students (or 1Ls) are required to take Civil Procedure, Contracts, Torts, and Legal Research & Writing during the autumn quarter, and Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Litigation, and one elective during the winter quarter. In the spring quarter, they take Federal Litigation, Property, and enroll in electives. Stanford Law offers 280 course titles beyond the first-year curriculum, and advanced courses range from White-Collar Crime to a Supreme Court Simulation Seminar. Additionally, because of the law school's proximity to other academic programs on campus, there is a strong focus on joint-degree programs and interdisciplinary learning, and upper-level students may take classes at Stanford's other professional and graduate schools.
Stanford Law enables second- and third-year students to gain hands-on experience by working full-time in one of eleven legal clinics, including an Environmental Law Clinic, Criminal Defense Clinic, a Religious Liberty Clinic, and an Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic. The Supreme Court Litigation Clinic has successfully brought over thirty cases before the Court, making it one of the most active Supreme Court practices of any kind. The clinic has served as lead counsel or co-lead counsel on the merits in numerous cases, including Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009), United States v. Windsor (2013), Riley v. California (2014), and Bourke v. Beshear (2015).
Launched in 2013, Stanford's Law and Policy Lab provides further opportunities for experiential learning. The Policy Lab allows second- and third-year students to enroll in faculty-supervised policy practicums, where students work in small teams to conduct policy research and analysis for real-world clients. Topics have ranged from wildlife trafficking to prison realignment to copyright reform, and prior clients include California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Governor of California Jerry Brown, the California Law Revision Commission, the U.S. Copyright Office, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Students and alumni routinely report high satisfaction with their academic experience. In surveys conducted by Above the Law, Stanford Law received an "A+" from both students and alumni for their satisfaction with Stanford's academic program, and the law school also received an "A+" rating from students for practical/clinical training, career counseling, and financial aid advising. Based on surveys with students at the nation's 169 best law schools, The Princeton Review currently ranks Stanford Law as having the best "Classroom Experience", and students provided Stanford with the highest score (99) for its "Academic Experience Rating" and "Professors Interesting Rating". Additionally, the 2014 "Midlevel Associates Survey" conducted by The American Lawyer magazine found that based on mid-level associates' assessments of their legal education, Stanford Law placed in the top five law schools for effectively preparing its graduates for law firm life.
Outside of the classroom, Stanford Law students run over fifty student organizations and publish seven legal journals. The most influential journal is the Stanford Law Review, which has been ranked as the top law review by the Washington & Lee Law Review Rankings in both 2013 and 2014. Advocacy skills are tested in the Marion Rice Kirkwood Moot Court competition.
The Robert Crown Law Library at Stanford holds 500,000 books, 360,000 microform and audiovisual items, and more than 8,000 current serial subscriptions.
In August 2008, Stanford Law School changed its grading system, which no longer relies on traditional letter grades, joining Yale Law School, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Harvard Law School. Students now receive one of four grades: honors, pass, restricted credit, or no credit. Unlike Harvard Law School and Yale Law School, Stanford Law School enforces strict curves which cap the number of honors grades to around 30%. As part of Stanford's grade reform, the law school no longer awards the honors of the Order of the Coif or Graduation with Distinction.
Between 4,000 and 5,000 students apply for admission each year. Selection is competitive: the median undergraduate grade point average of admitted students is 3.92 and the median LSAT score is 173 (out of 180). Beyond numbers, Stanford places considerable emphasis on factors such as extracurricular activities, work experience, and prior graduate study. About three quarters of the members of each entering class have one or more years of prior work experience and over a quarter have another graduate degree. The school also accepts a small number of transfers each year.
Bar passage rates
According to ABA Required Disclosures, Stanford Law School had an average bar passage rate of 94.41% in 2022.
In 2022, 75.86% of Stanford Law graduates taking the California bar exam for the first time passed, and 100% of Stanford Law graduates who took the bar exam in other jurisdictions for the first time passed.
Post-graduation employment
Upon graduation, about a third of the class clerks for a judge; about half join law firms.
According to Stanford Law School's official 2014 ABA-required disclosures, 90.4% of the Class of 2014 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo-practitioners. Stanford's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 3.2%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2014 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.
According to the American Bar Association, of 2014 Stanford Law graduates, 90.9% are employed in a position that required the graduate to pass the bar exam; 2.7% are employed in a position in which the employer sought an individual with a J.D. or in which the J.D. provided a demonstrable advantage in obtaining or performing the job, but which did not itself require an active law license; 2.7% are employed in other professional positions; 1.1% are pursuing graduate work full-time; 1.1% have a deferred employment starting date; and 1.6% are unemployed and seeking employment.
Despite its small size, Stanford Law has the third highest (per capita) placement rate for law professors at the nation's 43 leading law schools, according to a 2011 study, and has achieved the second-highest (per capita) placement rate for U.S. Supreme Court clerkships, according to a 2013 finding. Stanford Law alumni have clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court every year for the past 40 years. Based on a 2012 to 2014 average, Stanford Law has also achieved the second-highest (per capita) placement rate for federal judicial clerkships, and for the class of 2014, reported the highest placement rate for federal judicial clerkships at 30.5%. Stanford Law currently has the highest percentage of its graduates clerking for federal judges of any law school in the United States.
Costs
The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at Stanford Law School for the 2020–21 academic year is $105,849. Law School Transparency estimated that Stanford Law's debt-financed cost of attendance for three years (at full cost) is $315,604.
A 2015 study by M7 Financial, which assessed law schools' "credit ratings" using data on average starting salaries, employment trends, and student loan obligations, found that Stanford Law had the lowest student debt burden of any law school in the study.
Programs and centers
Stanford Constitutional Law Center
Stanford Criminal Justice Center (SCJC)
Stanford Three Strikes Project
Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy Program (ENRLP)
Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance
China Guiding Cases Project (CGCP)
Rule of Law Program
Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN)
Stanford Human Rights Center
Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law
Stanford Program in Law and Society
Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance
John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics
Securities Class Action Clearinghouse (SCAC)
Center for E-Commerce
Center for Internet and Society
Center for Law and the Biosciences
Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX)
Fair Use Project
Stanford Center in Law, Science, & Technology
Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society (SPINS)
Transatlantic Technology Law Forum
Stanford Center on the Legal Profession
Martin Daniel Gould Center for Conflict Resolution Programs
Gould Negotiation and Mediation Teaching Program
Center for Internet and Society (CIS)
John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law
Stanford Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Law and Policy Project (SIDDLAPP)
The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics
Often known simply as CodeX, this research center at Stanford University is focused on the application of technology to law, and is jointly operated by Stanford Law School and Stanford University School of Engineering.
Law Review and journals
Stanford Law Review
Stanford Journal of International Law
Stanford Law & Policy Review
Stanford Journal of Law, Business & Finance
Stanford Technology Law Review
Stanford Environmental Law Journal
Stanford Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties
Notable faculty
The Stanford Law School faculty ranks among the top three law faculties in the United States in terms of scholarly impact, and faculty members include the most widely cited legal scholars in intellectual property law (Mark Lemley), legal history (Lawrence Friedman), and legal ethics (Deborah L. Rhode). A 2012 study found that five Stanford Law professors are among the 50 most relevant law professors in the nation, and a 2013 study found that 25 percent of Stanford Law School's tenured faculty have been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
In 2013, The National Law Journal recognized Professors Jeffrey L. Fisher and Mark Lemley as two of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, and in 2014, a study by Reuters identified former Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan and Professors Jeffrey L. Fisher, Pamela S. Karlan, and Brian Wolfman as among the 66 most successful appellate litigators before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Notable current faculty
Joseph Bankman – tax law
Ralph Richard Banks – family law, employment discrimination law, race and the law
Paul Brest (emeritus) – former Dean of the law school; constitutional law, judgment and decision-making
Gerhard Casper (emeritus) – former President of Stanford University; constitutional law scholar
Joshua Cohen – political theorist and philosopher
John J. Donohue III – law and economics, empirical analysis
Jeffrey L. Fisher – co-director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and appellate litigator who has argued 27 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court
Richard Thompson Ford - civil rights, local & state government, critical theory; named one of Esquire's Best-Dressed Real Men in 2009
Barbara Fried - legal theory
Lawrence M. Friedman – legal historian
Paul Goldstein – international intellectual property, copyright, trademark; author of best-selling legal fiction novels
Thomas C. Grey (emeritus) – legal theory, modern American legal thought, constitutional law
Joseph Grundfest – corporate governance and securities litigation
Thomas Heller – international trade and tax specialist
Pamela S. Karlan – co-director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic; election law and constitutional law scholar who is currently serving as the U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice
Mark Kelman - Vice Dean of the law school; application of social sciences to law
Michael Klausner – corporate law, business transactions, corporate governance, financial regulation
Larry Kramer – constitutional law, conflict of laws
Mark Lemley – intellectual property law, patent law, law and technology
Jennifer Martínez – Provost of Stanford University since 2023; former Dean of the law school (2019-2023); human rights and international law scholar; represented José Padilla before the U.S. Supreme Court
Michael W. McConnell – constitutional law scholar and former Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Nathaniel Persily – election law and constitutional law scholar
A. Mitchell Polinsky – law and economics
Deborah Sivas – environmental law
Jane S. Schacter – sexual orientation law, statutory interpretation, constitutional law
Barton Thompson – natural resources law
Allen S. Weiner – international law scholar
Robert Weisberg – criminal law and law and literature
Notable visiting faculty and lecturers
Viola Canales – former litigator, short story author, and published novelist
Lanhee Chen – lecturer in law and former chief policy advisor to Mitt Romney
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar – visiting professor, current Justice of the Supreme Court of California, former White House official, and former Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford
Russ Feingold – lecturer in law and former U.S. Senator
Bertram Fields – lecturer in law and entertainment attorney
Benjamin Ginsberg – lecturer in law and former national counsel to the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns
Jennifer Granick – intellectual property and First Amendment scholar and practitioner
Thomas B. Griffith – lecturer in law and current judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Goodwin Liu – lecturer in law and current Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California
Notable former faculty
Michelle Alexander – associate professor of law and author of The New Jim Crow
Anthony G. Amsterdam – professor of clinical education (1969-1981)
Barbara Allen Babcock (emerita) – criminal law, civil procedure, women's legal history
Tom Campbell – professor of law (1987-2002), associate professor of law (1983-1987)
Barbara A. Caulfield – lecturer in law (1988-2010)
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar – professor of law (2001-2015), visiting professor (2015-2021); administrative law, legislation, international law, executive power, artificial intelligence
John Hart Ely – professor of law (1982-1996); former Dean (1982-1987)
Tom Goldstein – clinical lecturer (2004-2012); co-founder of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
Gerald Gunther – professor of law (1962-1995), professor emeritus (1995-2002)
Lawrence Lessig – professor of law (2000-2009); founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society
M. Elizabeth Magill – former Dean of the law school; constitutional law and administrative law scholar
Lia Matera – teaching fellow
Richard Posner – associate professor of law (1968-9)
Margaret Jane Radin – professor of law (1989-2006)
Deborah L. Rhode – legal ethics, gender and the law; former president of the Association of American Law Schools
Joseph Tyree Sneed, III – professor of law (1962-1971)
Kathleen M. Sullivan – professor of law (1992-2012); former Dean (1999-2004)
Notable alumni
Stanford Law School alumni practice in 61 countries, 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and Washington D.C. Stanford Law alumni are partners at 87 of the 100 largest law firms in the United States; 94 of the largest law firms employ Stanford Law alumni as attorneys. Consistent with Stanford's expertise in law and technology, Stanford Law graduates currently work or have previously worked as general counsels for many of the leading high-tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, Cisco, eBay, Yahoo!, Qualcomm, Oracle, and Genentech.
Popular culture
The film Legally Blonde was originally set at Stanford Law School, which is also the setting of the book it is based on; however, Stanford did not approve of the script, so the setting was changed to Harvard.
See also
Dean of Stanford Law School
Stanford Center for Computers and the Law
2023 Student protest of Judge Kyle Duncan
References
External links
ABA-accredited law schools in California
Educational institutions established in 1893
Law in the San Francisco Bay Area
1893 establishments in California
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics
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Graphics
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Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, in typesetting and the graphic arts, and in educational and recreational software. Images that are generated by a computer are called computer graphics.
Examples are photographs, drawings, line art, mathematical graphs, line graphs, charts, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images. Graphics often combine text, illustration, and color. Graphic design may consist of the deliberate selection, creation, or arrangement of typography alone, as in a brochure, flyer, poster, web site, or book without any other element. The objective can be clarity or effective communication, association with other cultural elements, or merely the creation of a distinctive style.
Graphics can be functional or artistic. The latter can be a recorded version, such as a photograph, or interpretation by a scientist to highlight essential features, or an artist, in which case the distinction with imaginary graphics may become blurred. It can also be used for architecture.
History
The earliest graphics known to anthropologists studying prehistoric periods are cave paintings and markings on boulders, bone, ivory, and antlers, which were created during the Upper Palaeolithic period from 40,000 to 10,000 B.C. or earlier. Many of these were found to record astronomical, seasonal, and chronological details. Some of the earliest graphics and drawings are known to the modern world, from almost 6,000 years ago, are that of engraved stone tablets and ceramic cylinder seals, marking the beginning of the historical periods and the keeping of records for accounting and inventory purposes. Records from Egypt predate these and papyrus was used by the Egyptians as a material on which to plan the building of pyramids; they also used slabs of limestone and wood. From 600 to 250 BC, the Greeks played a major role in geometry. They used graphics to represent their mathematical theories such as the Circle Theorem and the Pythagorean theorem.
In art, "graphics" is often used to distinguish work in a monotone and made up of lines, as opposed to painting.
Drawing
Drawing generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool or moving a tool across a surface. In which a tool is always used as if there were no tools it would be art. Graphical drawing is an instrumental guided drawing.
Printmaking
Woodblock printing, including images is first seen in China after paper was invented (about A.D. 105). In the West, the main techniques have been woodcut, engraving and etching, but there are many others.
Etching
Etching is an intaglio method of printmaking in which the image is incised into the surface of a metal plate using an acid. The acid eats the metal, leaving behind roughened areas, or, if the surface exposed to the acid is very thin, burning a line into the plate. The use of the process in printmaking is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer (–1536) of Augsburg, Germany, who decorated armour in this way.
Etching is also used in the manufacturing of printed circuit boards and semiconductor devices.
Line art
Line art is a rather non-specific term sometimes used for any image that consists of distinct straight and curved lines placed against a (usually plain) background, without gradations in shade (darkness) or hue (color) to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects. Line art is usually monochromatic, although lines may be of different colors.
Illustration
An illustration is a visual representation such as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that stresses subject more than form. The aim of an illustration is to elucidate or decorate a story, poem or piece of textual information (such as a newspaper article), traditionally by providing a visual representation of something described in the text. The editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration containing a political or social message.
Illustrations can be used to display a wide range of subject matter and serve a variety of functions, such as:
giving faces to characters in a story
displaying a number of examples of an item described in an academic textbook (e.g. A Typology)
visualizing step-wise sets of instructions in a technical manual
communicating subtle thematic tone in a narrative
linking brands to the ideas of human expression, individuality, and creativity
making a reader laugh or smile
for fun (to make laugh) funny
Graphs
A graph or chart is an graphic that represents tabular or numeric data. Charts are often used to make it easier to understand large quantities of data and the relationships between different parts of the data.
Diagrams
A diagram is a simplified and structured visual representation of concepts, ideas, constructions, relations, statistical data, etc., used to visualize and clarify the topic.
Symbols
A symbol, in its basic sense, is a representation of a concept or quantity; i.e., an idea, object, concept, quality, etc. In more psychological and philosophical terms, all concepts are symbolic in nature, and representations for these concepts are simply token artifacts that are allegorical to (but do not directly codify) a symbolic meaning, or symbolism.
Maps
A map is a simplified depiction of a space, a navigational aid which highlights relations between objects within that space. Usually, a map is a two-dimensional, geometrically accurate representation of a three-dimensional space.
One of the first 'modern' maps was made by Waldseemüller.
Photography
One difference between photography and other forms of graphics is that a photographer, in principle, just records a single moment in reality, with seemingly no interpretation. However, a photographer can choose the field of view and angle, and may also use other techniques, such as various lenses to choose the view or filters to change the colors. In recent times, digital photography has opened the way to an infinite number of fast, but strong, manipulations. Even in the early days of photography, there was controversy over photographs of enacted scenes that were presented as 'real life' (especially in war photography, where it can be very difficult to record the original events). Shifting the viewer's eyes ever so slightly with simple pinpricks in the negative could have a dramatic effect.
The choice of the field of view can have a strong effect, effectively 'censoring out' other parts of the scene, accomplished by cropping them out or simply not including them in the photograph. This even touches on the philosophical question of what reality is. The human brain processes information based on previous experience, making us see what we want to see or what we were taught to see. Photography does the same, although the photographer interprets the scene for their viewer.
Engineering drawings
An engineering drawing is a type of drawing and is technical in nature, used to fully and clearly define requirements for engineered items. It is usually created in accordance with standardized conventions for layout, nomenclature, interpretation, appearance (such as typefaces and line styles), size, etc.
Computer graphics
There are two types of computer graphics: raster graphics, where each pixel is separately defined (as in a digital photograph), and vector graphics, where mathematical formulas are used to draw lines and shapes, which are then interpreted at the viewer's end to produce the graphic. Using vectors results in infinitely sharp graphics and often smaller files, but, when complex, like vectors take time to render and may have larger file sizes than a raster equivalent.
In 1950, the first computer-driven display was attached to MIT's Whirlwind I computer to generate simple pictures. This was followed by MIT's TX-0 and TX-2, interactive computing which increased interest in computer graphics during the late 1950s. In 1962, Ivan Sutherland invented Sketchpad, an innovative program that influenced alternative forms of interaction with computers.
In the mid-1960s, large computer graphics research projects were begun at MIT, General Motors, Bell Labs, and Lockheed Corporation. Douglas T. Ross of MIT developed an advanced compiler language for graphics programming. S.A.Coons, also at MIT, and J. C. Ferguson at Boeing, began work in sculptured surfaces. GM developed their DAC-1 system, and other companies, such as Douglas, Lockheed, and McDonnell, also made significant developments. In 1968, ray tracing was first described by Arthur Appel of the IBM Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
During the late 1970s, home computers became more powerful, capable of drawing both basic and complex shapes and designs. In the 1980s, artists and graphic designers began to see the personal computer as a serious design tool, one that could save time and draw more accurately than other methods.
3D computer graphics began being used in video games in the 1970s with Spasim for the PLATO system in 1974 and FS1 Flight Simulator in 1979. Atari, Inc.'s Battlezone (1980) exposed 3D graphics to a wide audience. Other wireframe and flat-shaded 3D games appeared throughout the 1980s. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992) was one of the first major video games with texture-mapped polygons.
Computer systems dating from the 1980s and onwards often use a graphical user interface (GUI) to present data and information with symbols, icons, and pictures, rather than text. 3D computer graphics and creation tools became more accessible to video game and film developers in the late 1980s with SGI computers, which were later used to create some of the first fully computer-generated short films at Pixar.
3D graphics became more popular in the 1990s in video games, multimedia, and animation. In 1995, Toy Story, the first full-length computer-generated animation film, was released in cinemas. Since then, computer graphics have become more accurate and detailed, due to more advanced computers and better 3D modeling software applications, such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Cinema 4D. Consumer-level 3D graphics acceleration hardware became common in IBM PC compatibles near the end of the decade.
Another use of computer graphics is screensavers, originally intended to prevent the layout of much-used GUIs from 'burning into' the computer screen. They have since evolved into true pieces of art, their practical purpose obsolete; modern screens are not susceptible to such artifacts.
Web graphics
In the 1990s, Internet speeds increased, and Internet browsers capable of viewing images were released, the first being Mosaic. Websites began to use the GIF format to display small graphics, such as banners, advertisements, and navigation buttons, on web pages. Modern web browsers can now display JPEG, PNG and increasingly, SVG images in addition to GIFs on web pages. SVG, and to some extent VML, support in some modern web browsers have made it possible to display vector graphics that are clear at any size. Plugins expand the web browser functions to display animated, interactive and 3-D graphics contained within file formats such as SWF and X3D.
Modern web graphics can be made with software such as Adobe Photoshop, the GIMP, or Corel Paint Shop Pro. Users of Microsoft Windows have MS Paint, which many find to be lacking in features. This is because MS Paint is a drawing package and not a graphics package.
Numerous platforms and websites have been created to cater to web graphics artists and to host their communities. A growing number of people use create internet forum signatures—generally, appearing after a user's post—and other digital artwork, such as photo manipulations and large graphics. With computer games' developers creating their own communities around their products, many more websites are being developed to offer graphics for the fans and to enable them to show their appreciation of such games in their own gaming profiles.
Uses
Graphics are visual elements often used to point readers and viewers to particular information. They are also used to supplement text in an effort to aid readers in their understanding of a particular concept or make the concept more clear or interesting. Popular magazines, such as Time, Wired and Newsweek, usually contain graphic material in abundance to attract readers, unlike the majority of scholarly journals. In computing, they are used to create a graphical interface for the user; and graphics are one of the five key elements of multimedia technology. Graphics are among the primary ways of advertising the sale of goods or services.
Business
Graphics are commonly used in business and economics to create financial charts and tables. The term business graphics came into use in the late 1970s, when personal computers became capable of drawing graphs and charts instead of using a tabular format. Business graphics can be used to highlight changes over time.
Advertising
Advertising is one of the most profitable uses of graphics; artists often do advertising work or take advertising potential into account when creating art, to increase the chances of selling the artwork.
Most importantly, graphics give a good look to artwork whenever it is applied. Graphics contribute to the general outlook of a designed artwork, this, in turn, lure interested members of the public to look at the work of art or purchasing it.
Any graphical work (especially advertisement) or any work of art that is poorly designed will not persuade the audience. therefore, for an advertisement to persuade and convince readers or viewers, it must be well designed with needed graphical tools so as to bring profit to the designer or advertiser.
Political
The use of graphics for overtly political purposes—cartoons, graffiti, poster art, flag design, etc.—is a centuries-old practice which thrives today in every part of the world. The Northern Irish murals are one such example. A more recent example is Shepard Fairey's 2008 U.S. presidential election Barack Obama "Hope" poster. It was first published on the web, but soon found its way onto streets throughout the United States.
Education
Graphics are heavily used in textbooks, especially those concerning subjects such as geography, science, and mathematics, in order to illustrate theories and concepts, such as the human anatomy. Diagrams are also used to label photographs and pictures.
Educational animation is an important emerging field of graphics. Animated graphics have obvious advantages over static graphics when explaining subject matter that changes over time.
The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary uses graphics and technical illustrations to make reading material more interesting and easier to understand. In an encyclopedia, graphics are used to illustrate concepts and show examples of the particular topic being discussed.
In order for a graphic to function effectively as an educational aid, the learner must be able to interpret it successfully. This interpretative capacity is one aspect of graphicacy.
Film and animation
Computer graphics are often used in the majority of new feature films, especially those with a large budget. Films that heavily use computer graphics include The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the Harry Potter films, Spider-Man and War of the Worlds.
Graphics education
The majority of schools, college
s, and universities around the world educate students on the subject of graphic design and art.
The subject is taught in a broad variety of ways, each course teaching its own distinctive balance of craft skills and intellectual response to the client's needs.
Some graphics courses prioritize traditional craft skills—drawing, printmaking, and typography—over modern craft skills. Other courses may place an emphasis on teaching digital craft skills. Still, other courses may downplay the crafts entirely, concentrating on training students to generate novel intellectual responses that engage with the brief. Despite these apparent differences in training and curriculum, the staff and students on any of these courses will generally consider themselves to be graphic designers.
The typical pedagogy of a graphic design (or graphic communication, visual communication, graphic arts or any number of synonymous course titles) will be broadly based on the teaching models developed in the Bauhaus school in Germany or Vkhutemas in Russia. The teaching model will tend to expose students to a variety of craft skills (currently everything from drawing to motion capture), combined with an effort to engage the student with the world of visual culture.
Noted graphic designers
Aldus Manutius designed the first italic type style which is often used in desktop publishing and graphic design. April Greiman is known for her influential poster design. Paul Rand is well known as a design pioneer for designing many popular corporate logos, including the logo for IBM, NeXT and UPS. William Caslon, during the mid-18th century, designed many typefaces, including ITC Founder's Caslon, ITC Founder's Caslon Ornaments, Caslon Graphique, ITC Caslon No. 224, Caslon Old Face and Big Caslon.
See also
Editorial cartoon
Visualization (graphics)
Semiotics
References
External links
A Historical Timeline of Computer Graphics and Animation
Computer graphics
Graphic design
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian%20Zionism
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Christian Zionism
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Christian Zionism is an ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with Bible prophecy: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant — the eschatological "Gathering of Israel" — is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The term began to be used in the mid-20th century, in place of Christian restorationism, as proponents of the ideology rallied behind Zionists in support of a Jewish national homeland.
Advocacy on the part of Christians for a Jewish restoration grew after the Reformation, and is rooted in 17th-century England. Contemporary Israeli historian Anita Shapira suggests that England's Zionist evangelical Christians "passed this notion on to Jewish circles" around the 1840s, while Jewish nationalism in the early 19th century was largely met with hostility from British Jews.
Christian pro-Zionist ideals have generally been common among Protestants since the Reformation. While supporting a mass Jewish return to the Land of Israel, Christian Zionism asserts a parallel idea that the returnees ought to be encouraged to reject Judaism and adopt Christianity as a means of fulfilling biblical prophecies. Polling has suggested a trend of widespread distrust among Jews towards the motives of evangelical Christians.
History before the 20th century
Origins in Calvinistic millennialism
Advocacy of the restoration of Palestine as a national homeland for the Jews was first heard among self-identified Christian groups in the 1580s following the Protestant Reformation. The first wave of Protestant leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, did not mention any special eschatological views which included a return of the Jews to Palestine (converted to Christianity or otherwise). More generally, Luther had hoped that the Jews would convert to his brand of Christianity once he had broken with the Catholic Church, but later he harshly denounced Jews. Like the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, Luther and Calvin saw the Christian Church as being the "spiritual Israel" and since Jesus Christ, the covenant with God as being with faithful Christians exclusively as the "people of God", with no special privileges or role based on ancestral descent (in later times this has been called supersessionism). The Protestant focus on sola scriptura and the wider distribution of the Bible across Europe in the vernacular languages, however, allowed various radical protestants to interpret the scriptures in their own ways, in a manner which was not entirely reflective of either medieval Catholic tradition, or, the views of the early Protestant leaders themselves. Coupled with this was a general cultural Hebraising among more radical Protestants, as they saw the veneration of saints as idolatry and placed more focus on the Biblical prophets of the Old Testament, often naming their children Jeremiah, Zachary, Daniel, Sampson and the like.
While Edward VI of England was the Tudor child-monarch of England, a Calvinist-leaning Regency de facto ruled. This allowed Continental Protestants such as Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli to teach at the prestigious universities of Cambridge and Oxford. These two men forwarded a biblical exegesis which included an important role for the Jews, converted to Christianity, in the end times. Early versions of the Bible endorsed by the English monarchy and the Anglican Church included the Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible. However, a number of English Puritans and Lowland Scots Presbyterians viewed these (along with Episcopalianism and the establishment "Protestantism of the princes"), in general, as too "Romanist." In response, a number of these Puritans and Presbyterians spent some time in Geneva in the 1560s under Calvin's successor Theodore Beza and developed a translation of the Bible called the Geneva Bible, which contained footnotes in reference to the Book of Romans, specifically claiming that the Jews would be converted to Christianity in the end times and reorientating attention to Palestine as a central theatre. This view came to be taken up strongly by English Puritans (such as Francis Kett, Edmund Bunny, Thomas Draxe, Thomas Brightman, Joseph Mede, William Perkins, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Goodwin, William Strong, William Bridge, Henry Finch, John Owen and Giles Fletcher), Lowland Scots Presbyterians (such as George Gillespie, Robert Baillie and Samuel Rutherford), and even some Continental Protestants (such as Oliger Paulli, Isaac Vossius, Hugo Grotius, Gerhard Vossius and David Blondel).
During the late Tudor and early Stuart period, these Puritans remained outsiders in England and bitterly opposed the Laudian-dominated Anglican Church (though the Presbyterians, who held very similar views, had established the Church of Scotland as the largest "Kirk" in Scotland). With the English Civil War, the Puritans filled the ranks of the Parliamentarians and the New Model Army. Under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell they were victorious, executed Charles I of England and gained complete state power, establishing the Commonwealth of England between 1649 and 1660. The Philo-Semitic millennialist undercurrent came to have a direct influence on politics. A number of Cromwell's close advisors, such as John Dury, John Sadler and Hugh Peter, came into contact with Dutch-based Jews such as Menasseh ben Israel and advocated Jewish resettlement in England (they had been banned from the country since the 13th century). Sadler, Cromwell's secretary, even argued that the British were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel in his pamphlet The Rights of the Kingdom (1649) and thus kindred to the Jews, initiating British Israelism. Other Puritans such as Jeremiah Burroughs, Peter Bulkley, John Fenwicke and John Cotton, some of whom lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, saw Jewish re-entry to England as a step on the path to their eventual return to Palestine (all tied up within a millennialist eschatology, which would hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and thus the final judgement). Johanna and Ebenezer Cartwright, two Baptists who had spent time in Amsterdam, held the same view and issued the original petition to Thomas Fairfax's Council of War in January 1649 for Jewish readmission: the petition hoped, "That this Nation of England, with the inhabitants of the Netherlands, shall be the first and the readiest to transport Israel's sons and daughters on their ships to the land promised to their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for an everlasting inheritance." Their de facto toleration in England was informally achieved by 1655 to 1656 and was not rolled back after the Restoration.
A prominent French-born figure Isaac La Peyrère, who was nominally a Huguenot Calvinist, but came from a Portuguese New Christian (converted Sephardic Jewish) family was also a significant 17th century progenitor, with influence on both sides of the English Channel. La Peyrère in his millennialist work Du rappel des juifs (1643) wrote about a Jewish return to Palestine, predicted the building of the Third Temple and Jerusalem playing the most powerful role in world governance: all working towards the Second Coming. La Peyrère closely followed the developments of Oliver Cromwell's Dissenter regime and dreamed of overthrowing Louis XIV of France and replacing him with the Prince of Condé (who he worked for as a secretary) as part of a millennialist proto-Zionist messianic project. After the publication of La Peyrère's book the Amsterdam-based Menasseh Ben Israel informed his friend, Petrus Serrarius (a close associate of John Dury), about the importance of the theories, showing an early interplay between 17th century Jewish and Protestant proto-Zionism. Other Continental Protestant millennialists enthused by La Peyrère's theories were the Germans Abraham von Franckenberg (a student of the Kabbalah) and Paul Felgenhauer. Menasseh Ben Israel himself would author The Hope of Israel in 1652. Serrarius ended up being the main supporter among Protestants in Amsterdam of the message that Sabbatai Zevi was the Messiah, as proclaimed by Nathan of Gaza (his followers, the Sabbateans, were based in the Ottoman Empire but he had significant support throughout the Jewish diaspora).
Although removed from power in England itself, the millennialist Puritans who had moved to North America continued to have a deeper cultural legacy in society. As well as John Cotton, Increase Mather, one of the early Presidents of Harvard University was a strong proponent of the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. An author of numerous works, his most notable in this regard was The Mystery of Israel's Salvation (1669). Roger Williams, the Puritan proponent of religious liberty (including for Jews) in the Colony of Rhode Island that he founded has been citied as a proto-Zionist in speeches by later Jewish Zionist leaders such as Stephen S. Wise, due to his comment that "I have longed after some trading with the Jews themselves, for whose hard measure I fear the nations and England have yet a score to pay." Some important 17th-century philosophers who acted a bridge between the millennialist sectarians of their day and the approaching Age of the Enlightenment with its scientific revolution either held views associated with premillennial restorationists, or moved closely in their circles: this applies particularly to Sir Isaac Newton and Baruch Spinoza. Newton especially, who held Radical Reformation views in terms of religion and also dabbled in the occult (including the Kabbalah) predicted a Jewish return to Palestine, with the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the late 19th century and the erection of the Third Temple in the 20th or 21st century, leading to the end of the world no later than 2060. Much of these private writings were embarrassing to his supporters who sought to uphold him as a man of reason and science against Leibniz and while the University of Cambridge inherited his scientific papers, they refused to take these private ones. Many of these, collected by Abraham Yahuda, now rest in the National Library of Israel since 1967. Spinoza for his part, although Jewish himself, moved in circles in the Netherlands which included Petrus Serrarius, Henry Oldenburg and was even directly influenced by La Peyrère.
Pietism, Evangelicalism, and British foreign policy
With the rise of the Hanoverians to power in Britain and the ascent of the Enlightenment, much of the 18th century mainstream elite adopted Philhellenism, looking back to the culture and philosophies of classical world for inspiration for the Georgian age, rather than entertaining millennialist fantasies based on the Hebrew Old Testament (though Jews themselves enjoyed significant toleration in the British Empire). Although marginal at first, a religious underground was slowly growing from the 1730s which would eventually spout a second wave of Protestant Zionism and with it the birth of Evangelical Protestantism. This was precipitated in Germany by Philipp Spener's Pietism, a mystical and often millennialist take on Lutheranism, which prophesied the "conversion of the Jews and the fall of the Papacy as the prelude of the triumph of the Church." One of Spener's followers, Nicolaus Zinzendorf, spread this into the Moravian Church, linking the theory to Palestine, changing the Moravian liturgy to include a prayer "to restore the tribe of Judah in its time and bless its first fruits among us." John and Charles Wesley, early leaders in Methodism; inspired by the Pietists and Zinzendorf's Moravians; also promoted a Jewish return to Palestine with Charles Wesley even authoring a hymn dedicated to it. The Baptist, John Gill, who moved in similar circles to the Wesleys, authored works expressing similar views. By 1771, the Evangelical minister, John Eyre, founder of the Evangelical Magazine and among the original members of the London Missionary Society was promoting a more developed version of these views with his Observations upon Prophecies Relating to the Restoration of the Jews.
By the end of the 18th century, in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the National Assembly decreeing in December 1789 that non-Catholics were eligible for all civil and military positions, the Revolutionary government in France made a play for the allegiance of Jews, in competition with Britain. During the Egypt–Syria campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars, Bonaparte invited "all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem." Although Bonaparte himself was secular and the idea an early example of pragmatic Political Zionism, the Jacobin idea itself may have originated from Thomas Corbet (1773-1804), an Anglo-Irish Protestant émigrée who, as a member of the liberal-republican Society of United Irishmen, was an ally of the Jacobin-government, engaged in revolutionary activities against the British and served in the French Army. In February 1790, he authored a letter to the French Directory, then under the leadership of Napoleon's patron Paul Barras. In the letter he stated "I recommend you, Napoleon, to call on the Jewish people to join your conquest in the East, to your mission to conquer the land of Israel" saying, "Their riches do not console them for their hardships. They await with impatience the epoch of their re-establishment as a nation." Dr. Milka Levy-Rubin, a curator at the National Library of Israel, has attributed Corbet's motivation to a Protestant Zionism based on premillennialist themes.
In British America and then the United States during the 18th century, Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University was a supporter of Jewish restoration and befriended Rabbi Raphael Chaim Yitzchak Karigal of Hebron in 1773 during his visit to the United States. Jonathan Edwards also anticipated a future return of Jews to their homeland. In 1808, Asa McFarland, a Presbyterian, voiced the opinion of many that the fall of the Ottoman Empire was imminent and would bring about Jewish restoration. One David Austin of New Haven spent his fortune building docks and inns from which the Jews could embark to the Holy Land. In 1825, Mordecai Manuel Noah, a Jew who wanted to found a national home for the Jews on Grand Island in New York as a way station on the way to the Holy Land, won widespread Christian backing for his project. Likewise, restorationist theology was among the inspirations for the first American missionary activity in the Middle East and for mapping the Holy Land.
Most early-19th-century British Restorationists, like Charles Simeon, were postmillennial in eschatology. With the rise of James Frere, James Haldane Stewart and Edward Irving a major shift in the 1820s towards premillennialism occurred, with a similar focus on advocacy for the restoration of the Jews to Israel. As the demise of the Ottoman Empire appeared to be approaching, the advocacy of restorationism increased. At the same time, the visit of John Nelson Darby, the founder of a variant of premillennialism called dispensationalism, to the United States catalyzed a new movement. This was expressed at the Niagara Bible Conference in 1878, which issued a 14-point proclamation (relying on Luke 12:35–40, 17:26–30, 18:8 Acts 15:14–17, 2 Thessalonians 2:3–8, 2 Timothy 3:1–5, and Titus 1:11–15), including:
The dispensationalist theology of John Nelson Darby is often claimed to be a significant awakener of American Christian Zionism. He first distinguished the hopes of the Jews and that of the church and gentiles in a series of 11 evening lectures in Geneva in 1840. His lectures were immediately published in French (L'Attente Actuelle de l'Eglise), English (1841), German and Dutch (1847) and so his teachings began their global journey. Some dispensationalists, like Arno Gabelein, whilst philo-semitic, opposed Zionism as a movement born in self-confidence and unbelief. While dispensationalism had considerable influence through the Scofield Reference Bible, Christian lobbying for the restoration of the Jews preceded the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible (first published by OUP, 1909) by over a century, and many Christian Zionists and Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem do not subscribe to dispensationalism. Many non-dispensationalist Protestants were also strong advocates of a Jewish return to their homeland, Charles Spurgeon, both Horatius and Andrew Bonar, Robert Murray M'Chyene, and J. C. Ryle were among a number of proponents of both the importance and significance of a Jewish return to Israel. However Spurgeon averred of dispensationalism: "It is a mercy that these absurdities are revealed one at a time, in order that we may be able to endure their stupidity without dying of amazement". In 1864, Spurgeon wrote:
The crumbling of the Ottoman Empire threatened the British route to India via the Suez Canal as well as sundry French, German and American economic interests. In 1831 the Ottomans were driven from Greater Syria (including Palestine) by an expansionist Egypt, in the First Turko-Egyptian War. Although Britain forced Muhammad Ali to withdraw to Egypt, the Levant was left for a brief time without a government. The ongoing weakness of the Ottoman Empire made some in the west consider the potential of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. A number of important figures within the British government advocated such a plan, including Charles Henry Churchill. Again during the lead-up to the Crimean War (1854), there was an opportunity for political rearrangements in the Near East. In July 1853, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who was President of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, wrote to Prime Minister Aberdeen urging Jewish restoration as a means of stabilizing the region.
Late-19th-century non-messianic restorationism was largely driven by concern over the fate of the Jews of the Russian Empire, beset by poverty and by deadly, government-inspired pogroms. It was widely accepted that western nations did not wish to receive Jewish immigrants. Restorationism was a way for charitable individuals to assist oppressed Jews without actually accepting them as neighbors and fellow-citizens. In this, Restorationism was not unlike the efforts of the American Colonization Society to send blacks to Liberia and the efforts of British abolitionists to create Sierra Leone. Winston Churchill endorsed Restoration because he recognized that Jews fleeing Russian pogroms required a refuge, and preferred Palestine for sentimental reasons.
In the United States
In 1818, President John Adams wrote, "I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation", and believed that they would gradually become Unitarian Christians.
In 1844, George Bush, a professor of Hebrew at New York University and the cousin of an ancestor of the Presidents Bush, published a book titled The Valley of Vision; or, The Dry Bones of Israel Revived. In it he denounced "the thralldom and oppression which has so long ground them (the Jews) to the dust," and called for "elevating" the Jews "to a rank of honorable repute among the nations of the earth" by allowing restoring the Jews to the land of Israel where the bulk would be converted to Christianity. This, according to Bush, would benefit not only the Jews, but all of mankind, forming a "link of communication" between humanity and God. "It will blaze in notoriety ...". "It will flash a splendid demonstration upon all kindreds and tongues of the truth."
Herman Melville expressed the idea in a poem, "Clarel; A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land":
The tycoon William Eugene Blackstone was inspired by the conference to publish the book Jesus is Coming, which took up the restorationist cause. His book was translated and published in Yiddish. On November 24–25, 1890, Blackstone organized the Conference on the Past, Present and Future of Israel at the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago where participants included leaders of many Christian communities. Resolutions of sympathy for the oppressed Jews living in Russia were passed, but Blackstone was convinced that such resolutions—even though passed by prominent men—were insufficient. He advocated strongly for the resettlement of Jewish people in Palestine. In 1891 he lobbied President Benjamin Harrison for the restoration of the Jews, in a petition signed by 413 prominent Americans, that became known as the Blackstone Memorial. The names included the US Chief Justice, Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and several other congressmen, Rockefeller, Morgan and famous industrialists. It read, in part: "Why shall not the powers which under the treaty of Berlin, in 1878, gave Bulgaria to the Bulgarians and Servia to the Servians now give Palestine back to the Jews? ... These provinces, as well as Romania, Montenegro, and Greece, were wrested from the Turks and given to their natural owners. Does not Palestine as rightfully belong to the Jews?"
In the British Empire
Ideas favoring the restoration of the Jews in Palestine or the Land of Israel entered the British public discourse in the 1830s, though British Reformationists had written about the restoration of the Jews as early as the 16th century, and the idea had strong support among Puritans. Not all such attitudes were favorable towards the Jews; they were shaped in part by a variety of Protestant beliefs,
or by a streak of philo-Semitism among the classically educated British elite,
or by hopes to extend the Empire. (See The Great Game)
At the urging of Lord Shaftesbury, Britain established a consulate in Jerusalem in 1838, the first diplomatic appointment to Palestine.
In 1839, the Church of Scotland sent Andrew Bonar, Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Alexander Black and Alexander Keith on a mission to report on the condition of the Jews in Palestine. Their report was widely published. They traveled through France, Greece, and Egypt, and from Egypt, overland to Gaza. On the way home they visited Syria, the Austrian Empire and some of the German principalities. They sought out Jewish communities and inquired about their readiness to accept Christ, and separately, their preparedness to return to Israel as prophesied in the Bible. Alexander Keith recounted the journey in his 1844 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. It was also in that book that Keith used the slogan that became popular with other Christian Restorationists, a land without a people for a people without a land. In 1844 he revisited Palestine with his son, George Skene Keith (1819–1910), who was the first person to photograph the land.
An important, though often neglected, figure in British support of the restoration of the Jews was William Hechler (1845–1931), an English clergyman of German descent who was Chaplain of the British Embassy in Vienna and became a close friend of Theodor Herzl. Hechler was instrumental in aiding Herzl through his diplomatic activities, and may, in that sense, be called the founder of modern Christian Zionism. When it came to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Herzl's death, it was noted by the editors of the English-language memorial volume that William Hechler would prove "not only the first, but the most constant and the most indefatigable of Herzl’s followers".
On 2 November 1917, UK Home Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild. This letter, which would come to be known as the Balfour Declaration, famously stated that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." As noted by Philip Alexander, "A crucial ingredient in Balfour's Zionism [may have been] his Christian belief or, to put it a little more subtly, his Christian formation. The most persuasive advocate of this thesis is the Canadian historian Donald Lewis in his 2010 monograph, The Origins of Christian Zionism, but it has been espoused by a number of other scholars as well."
Between World War I and the 1948 Palestine War
In the United States
In the decades leading up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, the most prominent and politically active American Christian supporters of Zionism were liberal and mainline Protestants whose support for the movement was often unrelated to their interpretation of the Bible. These Christian supporters of Zionism viewed Palestine as a needed safe haven for Jews who were fleeing from intensifying persecution in Europe and they frequently believed that their support of the movement was part of a broader effort at interfaith rapprochement. The Pro-Palestine Federation, a Christian pro-Zionist organization which was founded in 1930, called for the promotion of “goodwill and esteem between Jews and non-Jews” and it also called for the British government to adhere to the terms of its Mandate for Palestine, which pledged support for the establishment of a Jewish national home.
Amidst World War II and their growing awareness of the Holocaust, American Jewish Zionists helped coordinate the establishment of two non-Jewish Zionist organizations, the American Palestine Committee and the Christian Council on Palestine, which were later merged into the American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC). The ACPC, which was composed largely of liberal and mainline Protestants, became the leading American Christian lobby in support of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the ACPC continued its lobbying efforts. For instance, it coordinated opposition to the United Nations’ efforts to internationalize the city of Jerusalem, which was divided between Israel and Transjordan in the 1948 War.
During these years, premillennialism (including its dispensationalist variety) grew in popularity among conservative American Protestants. Many premillennialists viewed the Zionist movement as at least a partial fulfillment of biblical prophecy or they viewed it as a modern fulfillment of God's covenantal promises to the Jewish people. In the 1930s, Southern Baptist missionary Jacob Gartenhaus, himself a convert from Judaism, argued that “Zionism is going to win whether anybody likes it or not...To oppose it is to oppose God’s plan.” But for the most part, such beliefs did not translate into political action on behalf of the movement in this era. One slight exception was J. Frank Norris, a fundamentalist Baptist who split time between pulpits in Fort Worth, Texas, and Detroit, Michigan. While Norris did not organize lobbying efforts in the way that the ACPC did, he did preach to his followers that it was their Christian duty to support the Zionist cause and wrote President Truman in support of Zionist claims to Palestine in 1947 and 1948. Norris also loosely coordinated with the ACPC, at times publishing their materials in his periodical, The Fundamentalist.
After the founding of the State of Israel
In the United States
In the decades since the establishment of Israel, and especially since the 1967 Six-Day War, the most prominent American Christian supporters of Israel have come from the evangelical wing of American Protestantism. American evangelicalism itself underwent significant changes in the years surrounding Israel's birth, as a "new" evangelicalism led by figures like Billy Graham emerged from Protestantism and came to cultural prominence. It was among these new evangelicals that the contemporary movement that most commonly associated with the term "Christian Zionism" originated.
Many new evangelicals adhered to dispensationalism or at least, they adhered to beliefs which were inspired by it—most especially, they adhered to the dispensationalist understanding that Jews remained in a special covenantal relationship with God. Most important to the development of Christian Zionism as a movement, though, was the fact that American evangelical leaders began to build relationships with American and Israeli Jews and they also began to build institutional connections with Jewish organizations and the Israeli government itself. Crucial to the building of these relationships was a motivated coterie of American evangelicals who resided in Israel, most notably, the founder of the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, G. Douglas Young. Through his institute, Young worked to convince American Christians that it was their biblical duty to support the Jewish people and the Jewish state. He also worked as a go-between for Jewish organizations and Israeli government agencies which were seeking to build relationships with American evangelicals. Such activism provided the basis for the development of Christian Zionism as a movement.
Such activism, it should be noted, was in many ways distinct from the prophetic speculation about the State of Israel that exploded after the 1967 Six-Day War (even as it had somewhat common theological and hermeneutical antecedents). This activism includes the wildly popular writings of the American dispensationalist evangelical writer Hal Lindsey, which sought to fit Israel into a dispensationalist end-time narrative. In The Late Great Planet Earth, for example, Lindsey anticipated that, per , Jews would fight off a "Russian" invasion before realizing their miraculous deliverance and converting to Christianity. Their lives would be spared the great fire that God will put upon Russia and people of the "coastlands." And, per , one third of Jews alive who have converted will be spared. Lindsay has been critiqued for highly specific, failed predictions even by those who share his eschatology, like John MacArthur.
Examples of Protestant leaders who combined political conservatism with Christian Zionism are Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, leading figures on the Christian Right in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1981, Falwell said: "To stand against Israel is to stand against God. We believe that history and scripture prove that God deals with nations in relation to how they deal with Israel." They cite part of the blessing of Isaac at , "Those who curse you will be cursed, and those who bless you will be blessed." Martin Luther King Jr. has also been cited as a Christian supporter of Israel and Zionism.
In Israel
The government of Israel has given official encouragement to Christian Zionism, allowing the establishment of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem in 1980. The embassy has raised funds to help finance Jewish immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union, and has assisted Zionist groups in establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The Third International Christian Zionist Congress, held in Jerusalem in February 1996, issued a proclamation which said:
Popular interest in Christian Zionism was given a boost around the year 2000 in the form of the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The novels are built around the prophetic role of Israel in the apocalyptic end times.
Critical views within Christianity
General
For most Christians the City of God () has nothing to do with Jewish immigration to Israel and the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, instead, it predicts the sack of Rome (410) and it is cited in the teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo, whose rejection of millennialism was adopted by the Council of Ephesus (431). That is why neither Eastern Orthodox Christians nor traditional Catholic Christians did consider Zionism in any political form: "[T]he Eastern Orthodox Church [...] upheld a historic lack of emphasis on pilgrimage, insisting that the land of promise was not Palestine but the Kingdom of God. Thus, Patriarch Ignatius IV, head of the church in the Middle East, reiterated that the people were his concern in Jerusalem, not the stones." Not a worldly kingdom, not an earthly Jerusalem is sought after, but the focus is on the heavenly Jerusalem, the kingdom of the triune God:
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church—the largest branch of Christians in the world—does not endorse the theological premises underlying millennialist Protestant Restorationism and has generally inveighed against the prospect of Jewish governance over Holy Places in Palestine which it deems of importance to Christianity. Theodor Herzl, the secular Jewish founder of modern political Zionism, had an audience in the Vatican with Pope Pius X in 1904, arranged by the Austrian Count Berthold Dominik Lippay, seeking out the position of the Catholic Church on Herzl's prospective project for a Jewish state in Palestine. Pope Pius X stated "We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it. The soil of Jerusalem, if it was not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church I cannot tell you anything different. The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people." After Herzl explained that his reasoning behind the project for the creation of a Jewish state was not a religious statement, but interest in secular land for national independence, Pope Pius X replied "Does it have to be Gerusalemme?"
While rejecting a theological basis for Zionism outright, a major concern for the Holy See was the Holy Places associated with Jesus Christ falling under the governance of such a state. By the mid-19th century, relations between the Vatican and Istanbul were fairly collegial; the Muslim Ottomans by that time permitted the Vatican to work among the Arab Catholics in Palestine and access the Holy Places quite freely and so the status quo was already workable for them. Following the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the Vatican advocated Jerusalem being a separate "international city", as laid out in the encyclical Redemptoris nostri cruciatus. Until the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church was forthright in lobbying against Zionism internationally (including the Catholic Church in the United States, as the United States had become Zionism's most powerful endorser). The State of Israel and the Holy See only established full diplomatic relations in 1993 and this was a recognition of political and civic reality, not a theological statement.
Protestantism
Political Zionism, which "came down like the wolf on the fold", has also been anathematized by eminent Protestants:
In the United States, the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches in November 2007 approved a resolution for further study which stated that the "theological stance of Christian Zionism adversely affects:
justice and peace in the Middle East, delaying the day when Israelis and Palestinians can live within secure borders
relationships with Middle Eastern Christians (see the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism)
relationships with Jews, since Jews are seen as mere pawns in an eschatological scheme
relationships with Muslims, since it treats the rights of Muslims as subordinate to the rights of Jews
interfaith dialogue, since it views the world in starkly dichotomous terms"
The Reformed Church in America at its 2004 General Synod found "the ideology of Christian Zionism and the extreme form of dispensationalism that undergirds it to be a distortion of the biblical message noting the impediment it represents to achieving a just peace in Israel/Palestine." The Mennonite Church published an article that described the ongoing seizure of additional Palestinian lands by Israeli militants as illegal, noting that in some churches under the influence of Christian Zionism the "congregations 'adopt' illegal Israeli settlements, sending funds to bolster the defense of these armed colonies." As of September 2007, churches in the USA that have criticized Christian Zionism include the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Church of Christ.
The film With God On Our Side, by Porter Speakman Jr. and Kevin Miller (the latter of whom also co-created the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed), criticizes both the underlying theology behind Christian Zionism as well as its negative influence on the church.
In the United Kingdom, the Church of Scotland, despite its Restorationist history, has recently been critical of Zionism in general, and in turn has received strong criticism over the perceived injustice of its report, "The Inheritance of Abraham: A Report on the Promised Land", which resulted in its republication in a briefer form. On 9 July 2012, the Anglican General Synod passed a motion affirming support for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). This was criticised by the Board of Deputies claiming the Synod 'has chosen to promote an inflammatory and partisan programme'. The advocated group was simultaneously criticised for its publication of a call for sit-ins at Israeli Embassies, the hacking of government websites to promote its message, and support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
Biblical interpretations
Some Christian Zionists interpret the prophetic texts as describing inevitable future events, and these events primarily involve Israel (taken to mean the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Jacob) or Judah (taken to mean the remaining faithful adherents of Judaism). These prophecies are seen as requiring the presence of a Jewish state in the Holy Land, the central part of the lands promised to the Biblical patriarch Abraham in the Covenant of the pieces. This requirement is sometimes interpreted as being fulfilled by the contemporary state of Israel.
Other doctrines
Christian schools of doctrine which consider other teachings to counterbalance these doctrines, or which interpret them in terms of distinct eschatological theories, are less conducive to Christian Zionism. Among the many texts which address this subject in counterbalance are the words of Jesus, as for example in Matthew , "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it".
In Defending Christian Zionism, David Pawson, a Christian Zionist in the United Kingdom, puts forward the case that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land is a fulfilment of scriptural prophecy, and that Christians should support the existence of the Jewish State (although not unconditionally its actions) on theological grounds. He also argues that prophecies spoken about Israel relate specifically to Israel (not to the church, as in "replacement theology"). However, he criticises Dispensationalism, which he says is a largely American movement holding similar views. Pawson was spurred to write this book by the work of Stephen Sizer, an evangelical Christian who rejects Christian Zionism.
Public opinion
A 2017 LifeWay poll conducted in United States found that 80% of evangelical Christians believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ's return and more than 50% of Evangelical Christians believed that they support Israel because it is important for fulfilling the prophecy.
According to the Pew Research survey in 2003, more than 60% of the Evangelical Christians and about 50% of Blacks agreed that the existence of Israel fulfilled biblical prophecy. About 55% of poll respondents said that the Bible was the biggest influence for supporting Israel which is 11 times the people who said church was the biggest influence.
See also
Center for Jewish–Christian Understanding and Cooperation
Christians United for Israel
Christianity and Judaism
Christianity in Israel
Day to Praise
The Friends of Zion Museum
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
Arab Christians
Palestinian Christians
Supersessionism
Zionist antisemitism
Notes
References
Further reading
Andrew Crome. Christian Zionism and English National Identity, 1600–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Robert O. Smith. More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Barbara Tuchman. Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour. W&N, 2001.
Nahum Sokolow. History of Zionism, 1600-1918. Longmans, Green and Company, 1919.
Paul Richard Wilkinson. For Zion's Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby. Paternoster, 2007.
Douglas J. Culver. Albion and Ariel: British Puritanism and the Birth of Political Zionism. P. Lang, 1995.
Mikael Knighton, Christians Standing with Israel, Copyright 2007 – The Theological Background of Christian Zionism
Mark Dunman. Has God Really Finished with Israel? New Wine Press 2013.
Paul Richard Wilkinson. For Zion's Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby , Paternoster Press, Authentic, Carlisle 2008.
Zev Chafets. A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance. HarperCollins, 2007.
Victoria Clark. Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism. Yale University Press, 2007.
Grace Halsell. Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War. Lawrence Hill & Co., 1986. .
Donald M. Lewis. "The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland" Cambridge University Press. 2009.
Donald M. Lewis, "A Short History of Christian Zionism from the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century". InterVarsity Press, 2021.
Rammy Haija. "The Armageddon Lobby: Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Shaping of US Policy Towards Israel-Palestine." Holy Land Studies 5(1): 75–95. 2006. The Armageddon Lobby
Irvine Anderson. Biblical interpretation and Middle East policy: the promised land, America, and Israel, 1917–2002. University Press of Florida. 2005. .
Tony Campolo. "The Ideological Roots of Christian Zionism." Tikkun. January–February 2005.
Stephen Sizer. Christian Zionism: Road map to Armageddon? InterVarsity Press. 2004. . Review
Gershom Gorenberg. The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. Oxford University Press. 2002.
Paul Charles Merkley. The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891–1948. Frank Cass. 1998.
Paul Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, Mcgill Queens Univ Press, Montreal, Sep 2001.
Lawrence Jeffrey Epstein. Zion’s Call: Christian Contributions to the Origins and Development of Israel. University Press of America. 1984.
Michael Oren. Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776–Present. New York, 2007.
Barbara W. Tuchman. Bible and Sword. New York, 1956.
David Pawson. Defending Christian Zionism Terra Nova Publications, 2008.
Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope. Banner of Truth, June 1971.
Shalom Goldman, "Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, & the Idea of the Promised Land." University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Stephen Spector, "Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism." Oxford University Press, 2009.
Yaakov Ariel, "An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews." New York University Press, 2013.
Samuel Goldman, "God's Country: Christian Zionism in America." University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
Daniel G. Hummel, "Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations." University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Walker Robins, "Between Dixie and Zion: Southern Baptists and Palestine Before Israel." University of Alabama Press, 2020.
External links
Christian Zionists – Bridges for Peace
Jewish and Christian Zionists – SAZ – Support Association for Zionism
Christian Zionism and Its Religious Arguments to Create Conflict, Strategic Outlook
Christians Standing with Israel: Support Israel, What is a Christian Zionist? Stand Against Anti-Semitism
Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, Christians Who Love Israel on Arutz Sheva.
Dispensationalism
Christian eschatology
Christian and Jewish interfaith dialogue
Christian terminology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office
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Office
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An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it (see officer, office-holder, official); the latter is an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. In the adjective form, the term "office" may refer to business-related tasks. In law, a company or organization has offices in any place where it has an official presence, even if that presence consists of a storage silo, for example, instead of a more traditional establishment with a desk and chair. An office is also an architectural and design phenomenon, including small offices, such as a bench in the corner of a small business or a room in someone's home (see small office/home office), entire floors of buildings, and massive buildings dedicated entirely to one company. In modern terms, an office is usually the location where white-collar workers carry out their functions.
Offices were, in classical antiquity, often part of a palace complex or a large temple. In the High Middle Ages (1000–1300), the medieval chancery served as a sort of office, being the space where records and laws were stored and copied. With the growth of large, complex organizations in the 18th century, the first purpose-built office spaces were constructed. As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking, rail, insurance, retail, petroleum, and telegraphy grew dramatically, requiring many clerks, and as a result, more office space was assigned to house their activities. The time-and-motion study, pioneered in manufacturing by F. W. Taylor (1856-1915), led to the "Modern Efficiency Desk" of 1915 with a flat top and drawers below, designed to allow managers an easy view of the workers. By the middle of the 20th century, it became apparent that an efficient office required discretion in the control of privacy, and gradually the cubicle system evolved.
The main purpose of an office building is to provide a working environment for primarily administrative and managerial workers. Work spaces within offices are typically used for conventional office activities such as reading, writing, and computer work. Workers usually occupy set areas within the office building and are usually provided with desks, PCs, and other equipment they may need within their areas. The interior of the office may or may not have internal walls, barriers, or cubicles separating individual workers from one another. In addition to individual workspaces, many offices contain meeting rooms, lounges, and spaces for support activities such as photocopying and filing. Some offices also have a kitchen area where workers can make their lunches. There are many different ways of arranging the space in an office based on function, managerial styles, and the culture of specific companies. While offices can be built in almost any location and almost any building, some modern requirements for offices make this more difficult, such as requirements for light, networking, and security.
History
The word "office" stems from the Latin "officium", and its equivalents in various, mainly romance, languages. An officium was not necessarily a place but rather an often mobile 'bureau' in the sense of a human staff or even the abstract notion of a formal position, such as a magistrate. The elaborate Roman bureaucracy would not be equaled for centuries in the West after the fall of Rome, with areas partially reverting to illiteracy , while the East preserved a more sophisticated administrative culture, both under Byzantium and under Islam.
Offices in classical antiquity were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. There was often a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. Ancient texts mentioning the work of scribes allude to the existence of such "offices". These rooms are sometimes called "libraries" by some archaeologists because scrolls are often associated with literature. They were, however, closer to modern offices because the scrolls were meant for record-keeping and other management functions such as treaties and edicts, and not for poetry or works of fiction .
Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages (1000–1300) saw the rise of the medieval chancery, which was the place where most government letters were written and laws were copied within a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled-up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference—a precursor to the bookshelf. The introduction of printing during the Renaissance did not impact the setup and function of these government offices significantly.
Medieval paintings and tapestries often show people in their private offices handling record-keeping books or writing on scrolls of parchment. Before the invention of the printing press and its wider distribution, there was often a very thin line between a private office and a private library because books were both read and written at the same desk or table, as were personal and professional accounting and letter-writing.
It was during the 13th century that the English word "office" first appeared when referring to a position involving specific professional duties (ex. the office of the ...). Geoffrey Chaucer appears to have first used the word in 1395 to mean a place where business is transacted in The Canterbury Tales.
As mercantilism became the dominant economic theory of the Renaissance, merchants tended to conduct their business in buildings that might also house people doing retail sales, warehousing, and clerical work. During the 15th century, population density in many cities reached the point where stand-alone buildings were used by merchants to conduct their business, and there was a developing distinction between church, government/military, and commerce uses for buildings.
The emergence of the modern office
With the growth of large organizations such as the Royal Navy and the East India Company in the 18th century, the first purpose-built office spaces were constructed. The Old Admiralty (Ripley Building) was built in 1726 and was the first purpose-built office building in Great Britain. As well as offices, the building housed a board room and apartments for the Lords of the Admiralty. In the 1770s, many scattered offices for the Royal Navy were gathered into Somerset House, the first block purpose-built for office work.
The East India House was built in 1729 on Leadenhall Street as the headquarters from which the East India Company administered its Indian colonial possessions. The Company developed a very complex bureaucracy for the task, which required thousands of office employees to process the necessary paperwork. The Company recognized the benefits of centralized administration and required that all workers sign in and out at the central office each day.
As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking, rail, insurance, retail, petroleum, and telegraphy dramatically grew in size and complexity. To transact business, an increasingly large number of clerks were needed to handle order processing, accounting, and document filing, with increasingly specialized office space required to house these activities. Most of the desks of the era were top-heavy, with paper storage bins extending above the desk-work area, giving the appearance of a cubicle and offering the workers some degree of privacy.
The relatively high price of land in the central core of cities led to the first multi-story buildings, which were limited to about 10 stories until the use of iron and steel allowed for higher structures. The first purpose-built office block was the Brunswick Building, built in Liverpool in 1841. The invention of the safety elevator in 1852 by Elisha Otis saw the rapid escalation of buildings upward. By the end of the 19th century, larger office buildings frequently contained large glass atriums to allow light into the complex and improve air circulation.
20th century
By 1906, Sears, Roebuck, and Co. had opened their mail order and headquarters operation in a building in Chicago, at the time the largest building in the world. The time and motion study, pioneered in manufacturing by F. W. Taylor and later applied to the office environment by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, led to the idea that managers needed to play an active role in directing the work of subordinates to increase the efficiency of the workplace. F.W. Taylor advocated the use of large, open floor plans and desks that faced supervisors. As a result, in 1915, the Equitable Life Insurance Company in New York City introduced the "Modern Efficiency Desk" with a flat top and drawers below, designed to allow managers an easy view of the workers. This led to a demand for large square footage per floor in buildings, and a return to the open spaces that were seen in pre-industrial revolution buildings.
However, by the midpoint of the 20th century, it became apparent that an efficient office required discretion in the control of privacy, which is needed to combat tedium linked to poor productivity and encourage creativity. In 1964, the Herman Miller (office equipment) company engaged Robert Propst, a prolific industrial designer, who came up with the concept of the Action Office, which later evolved into the cubicle office furniture system.
Japan 20th century office
Japanese businesses have set themselves apart from their American counterparts by implementing different techniques in the way they handle business. The Japanese office layout improves work productivity, creates harmony in the office, and holds every employee accountable for the work they produce. The type of office layout used in Japan is called an open plan and relies on ergonomics to help make employees as productive as possible. The Japanese open office layout allows them to use an organizational structure known as the horizontal structure. In the typical Japanese office, there are no walls dividing desks, no cubicles, and no individual offices. Also, they are able to implement policies using the ringi-sho consensus.
In order to get group members to work effectively in the open office floor plan, island-style desks are used. The most dominant feature of the Japanese island-style office layout is that each group forms an island. Kageyu Noro, Goroh Fujimaki, and Shinsuke Kishi, researchers of ergonomics in the workplace, stated,” Japanese offices have traditionally adhered to island layouts because these reflect the Japanese style of teamwork and top-down management.” The group leader will then sit in the prominent position and ensure productivity.
The group leader will assign a task to the group, and each member of the group then receives their individual task to complete. Island-style seating also gives the group the benefit of being able to speak to one another at any time and ask for help if needed. Being in such close proximity to one another in the office gives another advantage to the supervisor in that he can call an uchi-awase. Uchi-awase is an informal meeting in order to get an important message across, and also allows all members of the team to be creative in the office. “The open office layout allows for this because there are hardly any independent rooms or enclosures. If the supervisor stands at his desk he can glance at his associates and easily call them over.”, according to Durlabhji, Subhash, Norton E. Marks, and Scott Roach, authors of Japanese Business: Cultural Perspective. Once all individual tasks are complete the group then combines each person's work and the project is put together as a whole and returned to the supervisor. The work is viewed as a team effort and each member of the group receives equal credit for being part of a team completing the goal assigned. The group itself holds each member accountable for ensuring that the work is getting done and that no one individual is doing more work than another. Another motivating factor is that the group's boss is also seated at the same desk, and the effect that this has on the individuals is that they must work hard just like the boss. The role of having an open layout with island-type seating allows the office to be structured so the employees are put together as teams.
The type of organizational structure found within the Japanese office is known as a horizontal structure. According to Andrew, Ghillyer, author of Management Now, "Horizontal structure is an organization structure consisting of two groups: the first composed of senior management responsible for strategic decisions and policies and the second composed of empowered employees working together in different process teams; also known as a team structure.” The benefit of using this type of structure is that hierarchy is flattened to reduce supervision, teams are able to self-manage, team performance, not just the individual is rewarded, and training is highly emphasized amongst all employees. With a heightened sense of empowerment and responsibility workers are motivated to complete objectives in a timely manner. Having the office structured horizontally allows for easy communication of introducing new policies and ideas among the groups.
“Ringisho” is the concept of submitting proposals and making decisions off those ideas. By unifying everyone together in the Japanese office it helps to make better-informed decisions on the policies of the company that all managers and employees have input on. The idea behind this is to get a hold of various thinking individuals to see if there is a good way in writing their policies that come to benefit the company better. Richard Lewis, the author of When Cultures Collide, states “Suggestions, ideas and inventions make their way up the company hierarchy by a process of collecting signatures among workers and middle managers. Many people are involved. Top executives take the final step in ratifying items that have won sufficient approval.” With this system in place changes to policies are only passed if there is an overall consensus to pass it. Allowing each group to have a say on which policies should be implemented improves overall job satisfaction and harmony throughout the office.
The way Japanese offices are structured allow them to be more efficient when conducting business. The efficiency at which they operate has been noticed by such companies as General Motors, Ford, Motorola, and Chrysler Company. They continue to look for other ways to be more efficient and productive with the office layout and employee productivity.
Office spaces
The main purpose of an office environment is to support its occupants in performing their jobs—preferably at minimum cost and to maximum satisfaction. With different people performing different tasks and activities, however, it is not always easy to select the right office spaces. To aid decision-making in workplace and office design, one can distinguish three different types of office spaces: workspaces, meeting spaces, and support spaces. For new or developing businesses, remote satellite offices and project rooms, or serviced offices, can provide a simple solution and provide all of the former types of space.
Workspaces
Workspaces in an office are typically used for conventional office activities such as reading, writing, and computer work. There are nine generic types of workspaces, each supporting different activities.
Open office: An open workspace for more than ten people; suitable for activities that demand frequent communication or routine activities that need relatively little concentration.
Team space: A semi-enclosed workspace for two to eight people; suitable for teamwork which demands frequent internal communication and a medium level of concentration.
Cubicle: A semi-enclosed workspace for one person; suitable for activities that demand medium concentration and medium interaction.
Private office: An enclosed workspace for one person; suitable for activities that are confidential, demand a lot of concentration, or include many small meetings.
Shared office: An enclosed workspace for two or three people; suitable for semi-concentrated work and collaborative work in small groups.
Team room: An enclosed workspace for four to ten people; suitable for teamwork that may be confidential and demands frequent internal communication.
Study booth: An enclosed workspace for one person; suitable for short-term activities that demand concentration or confidentiality.
Work lounge: A lounge-like workspace for two to six people; suitable for short-term activities that demand collaboration and/or allow impromptu interaction.
Touch down: An open workspace for one person; suitable for short-term activities that require little concentration and low interaction.
Meeting spaces
Meeting spaces in an office typically use interactive processes, be they quick conversations or intensive brainstorming. There are six generic types of meeting spaces, each supporting different activities.
Small meeting room: An enclosed meeting space for two to four people; suitable for both formal and informal interaction.
Large meeting room: An enclosed meeting space for five to twelve people; suitable for formal interaction.
Small meeting space: An open or semi-open meeting space for two to four persons; suitable for short, informal interaction.
Large meeting space: An open or semi-open meeting space for five to twelve people; suitable for short, informal interaction.
Brainstorm room: An enclosed meeting space for five to twelve people; suitable for brainstorming sessions and workshops.
Meeting point: An open meeting point for two to four people; suitable for ad hoc, informal meetings.
Support spaces
Support spaces in an office are typically used for secondary activities such as filing documents or taking a break. There are twelve generic types of support spaces, each supporting different activities.
Filing space: An open or enclosed support space for the storage of frequently used files and documents
Storage space: An open or enclosed support space for the storage of commonly used office supplies
Print and copy area: An open or enclosed support space with facilities for printing, scanning and copying
Mail area: An open or semi-open support space where employees can pick up or deliver their mail
Pantry area: An open or enclosed support space where employees can get refreshments and supplies for visitor hospitality are kept.
Break area: A semi-open or enclosed support space where employees can take a break from their work
Locker area: An open or semi-open support space where employees can store their personal belongings
Smoking room: An enclosed support space where employees can smoke a cigarette
Library: A semi-open or enclosed support space for reading books, journals and magazines
Games room: An enclosed support space where employees can play games (e.g., computer games, pool, darts)
Lactation room: as of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a requirement for companies in the United States.
Waiting area: An open or semi-open support space where visitors can be received and wait for their appointment
Circulation space: Support space which is required for circulation on office floors, linking all major functions
Office structure
There are many different ways of arranging the space in an office and whilst these vary according to function, managerial fashions, and the culture of specific companies can be even more important. Choices include, how many people will work within the same room. At one extreme, each individual worker will have their own room; at the other extreme a large open plan office can be made up of one main room with tens or hundreds of people working in the same space. Open-plan offices put multiple workers together in the same space, and some studies have shown that they can improve short-term productivity, i.e. within a single software project. At the same time, the loss of privacy and security can increase the incidence of theft and loss of company secrets. A type of compromise between open plan and individual rooms is provided by the cubicle desk, possibly made most famous by the Dilbert cartoon series, which solves visual privacy to some extent, but often fails on acoustic separation and security. Most cubicles also require the occupant to sit with their back towards anyone who might be approaching; workers in walled offices almost always try to position their normal work seats and desks so that they can see someone entering, and in some instances, install tiny mirrors on things such as computer monitors.
According to research, open-plan offices, associated with a 70% decrease in face-to-face interactions and a rise in electronic communication, result in increased stress, a 25% uptick in negative moods, and up to a 20% drop in productivity due to distractions. In contrast, post-pandemic trends are favoring private "cell-office plans," which address health precautions and have been reported to enhance productivity by up to 22%.
Office buildings
While offices can be built in almost any location and in almost any building, some modern requirements for offices make this more difficult. These requirements can be both legal (e.g., light levels must be sufficient) or technical (e.g., requirements for computer networking). Alongside, other requirements such as security and flexibility of layout, has led to the creation of special buildings which are dedicated only or primarily for use as offices. An office building, also known as an office block or business center is a form of commercial building which contains spaces mainly designed to be used for offices.
The primary purpose of an office building is to provide a workplace and working environment primarily for administrative and managerial workers. These workers usually occupy set areas within the office building, and usually are provided with desks, PCs and other equipment they may need within these areas.
An office building will be divided into sections for different companies or may be dedicated to one company. In either case, each company will typically have a reception area, one or several meeting rooms, singular or open-plan offices, as well as toilets.
Many office buildings also have kitchen facilities and a staff room, where workers can have lunch or take a short break. Many office spaces are now also serviced office spaces, which means that those occupying a space or building can share facilities.
Office and retail rental rates
Rental rates for office and retail space are typically quoted in terms of money per floor-area–time, usually money per floor-area per year or month. For example, the rate for a particular property may be $29 per square-foot per year ($29/s.f/yr) - $290 per square-meter–year ($290/m2/a), and rates in the area could range $20–$50/s.f./yr ($200–$500/m2·a).
In many countries, rent is typically paid monthly even if usually discussed in terms of years.
Examples:
A particular 2,000 s.f. space is priced at $15/s.f./yr = (2,000 s.f.) × ($15/s.f./a) / (12 mo/yr) = $2500/month
A 200 m2 space priced at $150/m2·a = (200 m2) × ($150/m2·a) / (12 mo/a) = $2500/month
In a gross lease, the rate quoted is an all-inclusive rate. One pays a set amount of rent per time and the landlord is responsible for all other expenses such as costs of utilities, taxes, insurance, maintenance, and repairs.
The triple net lease is one in which the tenant is liable for a share of various expenses such as property taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, climate control, repairs, janitorial services and landscaping.
Office rents in the United States are still recovering from the high vacancy rates that occurred in the wake of the 2008 depression.
Grading
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) classifies office space into three categories: Class A, Class B, and Class C. According to BOMA, Class A office buildings have the "most prestigious buildings competing for premier office users with rents above average for the area". BOMA states that Class A facilities have "high-quality standard finishes, state of the art systems, exceptional accessibility and a definite market presence". BOMA describes Class B office buildings as those that compete "for a wide range of users with rents in the average range for the area". BOMA states that Class B buildings have "adequate systems" and finishes that "are fair to good for the area", but that the buildings do not compete with Class A buildings for the same prices. According to BOMA Class C buildings are aimed towards "tenants requiring functional space at rents below the average for the area". The lack of specifics allows considerable room for "fudging" the boundaries of the categories. Oftentimes, the above categories are further modified by adding the plus or minus sign to create subclasses, such as Class A+ or Class B-.
See also
Physical
Business park
Corner office
Executive suite
Factory
Office space planning
Office supplies
Over-illumination
Steel buildings
Warehouse
Soft issues
Business attire
Office management
Office politics
Sick building syndrome
References
Further reading
External links
Early Office Museum
Rooms
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Happy%20Prince%20and%20Other%20Tales
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The Happy Prince and Other Tales
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The Happy Prince and Other Tales (or Stories) is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: "The Happy Prince," "The Nightingale and the Rose," "The Selfish Giant," "The Devoted Friend," and "The Remarkable Rocket." In 2003, the second through fourth stories were adapted by Lupus Films and Terraglyph Interactive Studios into the three-part series Wilde Stories for Channel 4.
Contents
The Happy Prince
In a town full of suffering poor people, a swallow who was left behind after his flock flew off to Egypt for the winter meets the statue of the late "Happy Prince," who has never experienced true sorrow, for he lived in a palace where sorrow was not allowed to enter. Viewing various scenes of people suffering in poverty from his tall monument, the Happy Prince asks the swallow to take the ruby from his hilt, the sapphires from his eyes, and the gold leaf covering his body to give to the poor. As winter comes and the Happy Prince is stripped of all of his beauty, his lead heart breaks when the swallow dies as a result of his selfless deeds and severe cold. The people, unaware of their good deeds, take the statue down from the pillar due to its shabbiness (intending to replace it with one of the Mayor) and melt the metal in a furnace, leaving behind the broken heart and the dead swallow, which are thrown in a dust heap. These are taken up to heaven by an Angel that has deemed them the two most precious things in the city. This is affirmed by God, and they live forever in His "city of gold" and garden of Paradise.
Adaptations
A radio drama adaption by Columbia Workshop was broadcast on 26 December 1936.
In 1941 Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre broadcast a version on their "Christmas Show," with music by Bernard Herrmann.
Another radio version was broadcast in the Philco Radio Hall of Fame on 24 December 1944. This featured Orson Welles (narrator), Bing Crosby (as The Prince) and Lurene Tuttle as The Swallow.
A record album called The Happy Prince was recorded on 21 August 1945 and issued in 1946 by American Decca Records, with Orson Welles narrating and Bing Crosby as the Prince.
In 1968 the British group Bee Gees published the song "When the Swallows fly" with clear references to The Happy Prince tale.
In 1969 New Zealand group The La De Das recorded and performed a rock opera based on the story. Band members Bruce Howard and Trevor Wilson conceived the idea in 1967, composing the music with Australian poet Adrian Rawlins narrating the story.
An animated film adaptation of the story was produced in 1974, starring Glynis Johns as the swallow and Christopher Plummer as the Prince.
A major story arc in Journey to the West II presented the tale as the backstory of two antagonists. The Python Demon Queen (Angie Cheung) who is in love with the Long Armed Ape Monkey (Derek Kok), explained that she was once a swallow besotted with his statue of gold, and later helped the suffering commoners by stripping the statue of its treasures and distributing it.
Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child presented a version of the title story set in New York City featuring Ed Koch as the Happy Prince (who was the statue of the city's previous mayor) and Cyndi Lauper as a streetwise pigeon named "Pidge" (in place of the Swallow).
Leo the Lion Records released a reading of the story performed by Richard Kiley on a recording (#GD01603) including a dramatization of "The Magic Fishbone" by Charles Dickens featuring Julie Harris and Ian Martin and a reading of Rudyard Kipling's story "The Potted Princess" performed by Ms. Harris.
McDull, Prince de la Bun was partially based on this story.
In 2012 the Irish composer Vincent Kennedy and playwright John Nee adapted the story for narrator, chorus and orchestra. "The Happy Prince" was premiered in County Donegal, Ireland, in April 2012 with Nee narrating and acting and Kennedy conducting and performing. It was broadcast on RTÉ Jr Radio.
A chamber musical, by Sue Casson, based on the story first toured Britain in 1992, touring again for its 20th anniversary 2012 - 2014. Original cast recording featuring John Barr as the Happy Prince and Mina Anwar as the Swallow released in 1993 on Dress Circle Records.
Music for Oscar Wilde's "Happy Prince" from his book "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," composed by Edvard Schiffauer, c.2000
In 2014, composer Stephen DeCesare released and published his adaption of the "Happy Prince" as a children's musical.
In 2015, Irish singer/songwriter Oliver Cole released a song called "The Happy Prince" with vocals from Gemma Hayes on his album "Year of the Bird."
In 2014, Brisbane composer Simon Chan recorded his production as a children's musical featuring members of Opera Queensland Meg Kiddle (the Narrator), D'Arne Sleeman (Chorus), Bernard Wheaton (the Swallow), Patrick Oxley (the Happy Prince), and accompanied by Mark Leung.
In 2016, British-Canadian composer Tony Matthews composed an operetta version for children which premiered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on 4 December 2016.
In 2017, Tall Stories Theatre Company premiered "Wilde Creatures" at London's Vaudeville Theatre. The show is an adaptation of three of Oscar Wilde's tales for children ("The Devoted Friend," "The Nightingale and the Rose" and "The Birthday of the Infanta"), using "The Happy Prince" as a framing device.
In 2019, Viki produced an adaption of the manga "Zettai Kareshi" by Yuu Watase. The title of the show being the same as the English title of the manga "Absolute Boyfriend." The show features numerous references to "The Happy Prince" even featuring a children's story book of the tale.
In the fall of 2020, a "Rock Reading" dramatic presentation of the story was performed for the Theatre 1010 in Tokyo Japan. It starred Motodaka Katsuki as the titular prince and Konno Taiki as the swallow, both of the J-pop boyband 7 Men Samurai.
The visual novel "Sakura no Uta" makes various references to The Happy Prince.
In 2023, "The Happy Prince", a musical by well-known musical director and writer David W. Young, was performed at Metro Arts New Benner Theatre, in West End, Brisbane on the 19th and 20th May 2023.
The Nightingale and the Rose
This story is an allegory of the moral decay and materialism of the age.
A nightingale overhears a student complaining that the professor's daughter will not dance with him, as he is unable to give her a red rose; a lizard, a butterfly and a daisy laugh at the student for doing so. The nightingale visits all the rose-trees in the garden, and one of the roses tells her there is a way to produce a red rose, but only if the nightingale is prepared to sing the sweetest song for the rose all night with her heart pressing into a thorn, sacrificing her life. Seeing the student in tears, and valuing his human life above her bird life, the nightingale carries out the ritual and dies painfully. The student takes the rose to the professor's daughter, but she again rejects him because the Chamberlain's nephew has sent her some real jewels, and "everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers." The student angrily throws the rose into the gutter, returns to his study of metaphysics, and decides not to believe in true love anymore.
Adaptations
There are many adaptations of this story in the form of operas and ballets. These include:
A cantata by Henry Hadley, an American composer and conductor, The Nightingale and the Rose, libretto E. W. Grant, Op. 54, S, SSAA, orchestra (New York, 1911)
An opera by Hooper Brewster-Jones, an Australian composer, The Nightingale and the Rose, 1927, of which only an orchestral suite survives.
A ballet by English composer Harold Fraser-Simson, The Nightingale and the Rose, (based on Wilde) (1927)
One-act opera Rosa rossa, Op. 18, by Italian composer (1883–1965), libretto by Bossi, after Wilde: The Nightingale and the Rose, Radio Turin, 9 August 1938; staged Teatro Regio (Parma), 9 January 1940.
A ballet by Latvian-Canadian composer Jānis Kalniņš, Lakstigala un roze [The Nightingale and the Rose], Riga, 1938
A ballet by German composer Friedrich Voss, Die Nachtigall und die Rose, 1961; Oberhausen, 5 January 1962
An opera by British composer Jonathan Rutherford, The Nightingale and the Rose, 1966
One-act opera by American composer Margaret Garwood, The Nightingale and the Rose, libretto by Garwood, Chester, Widener College Alumni Auditorium, 21 October 1973
One-act chamber opera by Russian composer Elena Firsova, The Nightingale and the Rose, Op. 46 (1991), libretto by Firsova, premiered 8 July 1994 at Almeida Theatre, Almeida Opera
One-act ballet by South African composer David Earl, The Nightingale and the Rose, 1983
In 2003–2004, the cartoonist P. Craig Russell adapted the story for volume 4 of the series Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, which also includes "The Devoted Friend."
A short film adaptation by Del Kathryn Barton with filmmaker Brenda Fletcher in 2015 that was screened at the Melbourne Writer's Festival
A one-act opera by Philip Hagemann written in 2003.
The Selfish Giant
The Selfish Giant owns a beautiful garden which has 12 peach trees and lovely fragrant flowers, in which children love to play after returning from school. On the giant's return after visiting his friend the Cornish Ogre for seven years, he takes offence at the children and builds a wall to keep them out. He put up a notice board "TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED." The garden falls into perpetual winter. One day, the giant is awakened by a linnet, and discovers that spring has returned to the garden, as the children have found a way in through a gap in the wall. He sees the error of his ways, and resolves to destroy the wall. However, when he emerges from his castle, all the children run away except for one boy who was trying to climb a tree. The giant helps this boy into the tree and announces: "It is your garden now, little children," and knocks down the wall. The children once more play in the garden, and Spring returns. But the boy that the Giant helped does not return, and the Giant is heartbroken. Many years later, after happily playing with the children all the time, the Giant is old and feeble. One winter morning, he awakes to see the trees in one part of his garden in full blossom. He descends from the castle to discover the boy that he once helped standing beneath a beautiful white tree. The Giant sees that the boy bears the stigmata. He does not realise that the boy is actually the Christ Child and is furious that somebody has wounded him.
Shortly afterwards, the happy giant dies. That same afternoon, his body is found lying under the tree, covered in blossoms.
Adaptations
English singer and composer Liza Lehmann wrote the recitation The Selfish Giant in 1911.
English light music composer Eric Coates wrote the orchestral Phantasy The Selfish Giant in 1925. In 1933–1934, violinist-composer Jenő Hubay adapted the story into a Hungarian language opera, Az önző óriás (Der selbstsüchtige Riese), Op. 124. The libretto was written by László Márkus and Jenő Mohácsi.
A record album was produced in the 1940s by American Decca, narrated by Fredric March, with a full unnamed supporting cast.
In 1971, Peter Sander wrote and produced an animated version of The Selfish Giant for CTV in Canada. The music was by Ron Goodwin. It was nominated at the 44th Academy Awards (1972) in the Animated Short Subject category, one of only three films to receive a nomination. It was first broadcast in November that year.
In the 1990s, the Australian team of composer Graeme Koehne and choreographer Graeme Murphy created a children's ballet based on The Selfish Giant.
In 1992, the cartoonist P. Craig Russell adapted the story for Volume 1 of "Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde," which also includes "The Star Child."
In the 1997 film Wilde, based on the life of the author, portions of The Selfish Giant are woven in, with Wilde and his wife telling the story to their children, the portions reflecting on his relationship with them and others: the sadness of the children who can no longer play in the giant's garden is reflected in that of Wilde's sons as their beloved father spends more time with his lovers than with them.
In 2009, composer Stephen DeCesare adapted the "Selfish Giant" as a musical.
In 2010, composer Dan Goeller wrote an orchestral interpretation of the story. That same year Chris Beatrice created new illustrations for the story. In 2011 they released a combination of a CD containing the orchestration and new narration by Martin Jarvis, plus the newly illustrated book.
In 2010, UK composer Howard Goodall wrote a version, to a commission from the Brighton Festival, for narrator, children's choir and orchestra.
An illustrated and abridged version was published in 2013 by Alexis Deacon.
The Selfish Giant is a 2013 British drama film directed by Clio Barnard, inspired by and loosely based on the Oscar Wilde story.
In 2014, the story was adapted as a South Korean musical stage by June Young Soh, the musical was a global project involving talents from different countries starring T-ara's Boram, Kim Tae Woo and French actor Jerome Collet. The musical was also very successful and sold out every showing.
In 2018, English songwriter Guy Chambers adapted the story into a folk opera
In 2020/21, the Nepal government included the story in the literature section of the English book for grade 11 in its new refined curriculum.
The Devoted Friend
Once upon a time, there was a kind and honest man named Hans. He lived alone in a tiny cottage.
Hans was a little man who owned a beautiful garden, where he grew flowers of all kinds and colours which were sold in the market to make some money. He enjoyed the company of another man called Hugh, a miller who used to visit Hans very often during the summer time and with whom he shared thoughts about friendship and loyalty. Hans was so devoted to Hugh that he even gifted him whole bunches of flowers from his own garden.
However, when winter came, Hans found himself in a very difficult situation, as his flowers wouldn't flourish anymore until the following spring, meaning that he was impoverished, living on a simple diet of a few pears and hard nuts. That winter was so stark that he had to sell some of his useful gardening tools, including his wheelbarrow, a silver chain, his pipe and some silver buttons. Meanwhile, the miller lived comfortably in his own house and avoided visiting his friend or helping him in any way, not to make him jealous and spoil, if not break, their friendship.
Finally, Spring came, and it was time for Hans to sell some of his primroses in order to buy back his silver buttons. Hugh finally visits him, and, hearing about his problem, he decides to kindly gift him his old, broken wheelbarrow in exchange for a few favours. Hans naively accepts the deal, but the unceasing requests of the miller keeps him busy to the point that he cannot tend his garden.
One day, Hans was asked to go and seek a doctor for Hugh's son, who had hurt himself, but as it was a stormy and rainy night, he could barely see where he was going. After finding the doctor, on the way back home, he gets lost and drowns in a hole full of water.
Hugh, exaggerating his sadness, attends Hans's funeral, and the linnet's story is concluded with the following sentence: "'A great loss to me at any rate,' answered the Miller; 'why, I had as good as given him my wheelbarrow, and now I really don't know what to do with it. It is very much in my way at home, and it is in such bad repair that I could not get anything for it if I sold it. I will certainly take care not to give away anything again. One always suffers for being generous.'"
The water-rat, however, is unmoved by the story, saying that he would rather have not had listened to it, and disappears into his home.
This story has been adapted for comics by the cartoonist P. Craig Russell, in Volume 4 of "Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde," which also includes "The Nightingale and the Rose."
The Remarkable Rocket
This story concerns a firework, who is one of many to be let off at the wedding of a prince and princess. The rocket is extremely pompous and self-important, and denigrates all the other fireworks, eventually bursting into tears to demonstrate his "sensitivity." As this makes him wet, he fails to ignite and, the next day, is thrown away into a ditch. He still believes he is destined for great public importance, and treats a frog, dragonfly, and duck that meet him with appropriate disdain. Two boys find him and use him as fuel for their camp-fire. The rocket is finally lit and explodes, but nobody observes him – the only effect he has is to frighten a goose with his falling stick.
"The Remarkable Rocket," unlike the other stories in the collection, contains a large number of Wildean epigrams:
See also
Music based on the works of Oscar Wilde
A House of Pomegranates
References
Sources
External links
The Happy Prince and Other Tales at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
The Happy Prince and Other Tales at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
The Happy Prince and Other Tales. (PDF - illustrated)
The Happy Prince and Other Tales, with original illustrations by Charles Robinson (HTML)
Irish fairy tales
Irish folklore
1888 short story collections
Fantasy short story collections
Fictional princes
Collections of fairy tales
Works by Oscar Wilde
Books adapted into comics
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third%20jersey
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Third jersey
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A third jersey, alternative jersey, third kit, third sweater or alternative uniform is a jersey or uniform that a sports team can wear instead of its home outfit or its away outfit during games, often when the colors of two competing teams' other uniforms are too similar to contrast easily.
Alternative jerseys are a lucrative means for professional sports organizations to generate revenue, by sales to fans. Of North American sports leagues, the National Football League generates $1.2 billion annually in jersey sales, with the National Basketball Association second, selling $900 million annually. Another use of the alternative uniform is for identifying with causes, like the Central Coast Mariners wear an alternative pink kit on pink ribbon day.
Extra alternative uniforms or fourth and fifth kits are not commonly used, but are sometimes required when teams' other uniforms cause color clashes, or the uniforms are unavailable to use. In cases where teams have worn more than three kits in the same season, the extra kits were usually recycled from previous seasons.
Third-choice jerseys or uniforms are used in all four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.
Third kits are commonplace in professional European association football and in some professional European rugby union clubs. Alternative uniforms are common in Australia's two biggest domestic leagues, the Australian Football League (Aussie rules) and National Rugby League (rugby league).
Background
For home and away jerseys in North America, historical convention has often dictated the colors used by teams in a given league. Teams generally have one jersey which is primarily in a team color, and another jersey which is primarily white (or another light color) and accented with a team color. "White at home" is the convention in baseball (MLB), basketball (NBA, NCAA basketball, and WNBA), minor league professional hockey (AHL and ECHL), and college hockey. "White while away" is the convention in football (NFL, CFL, NCAA football), major league professional hockey (NHL), and professional lacrosse (NLL and MLL). Association football (MLS) does not have a "white at home" or a "white while away" convention.
The NHL (and formerly the NBA) enforces the color/white rule strictly; any NHL team seeking to wear white at home must get express permission from the league office to do so. In minor league hockey, the rules are set in both the AHL and ECHL where the team wears white jerseys at home during one half of the season, then wears the color jerseys during the other half at home, and vice versa on the road. In the NFL, the rules state that the home team has the first choice of color, with the visiting team forced to choose a contrasting color; an exception was Color Rush, in which uniform choices were coordinated by the league itself.
Starting with their uniform contract with Nike that begins with the 2017-2018 season, the NBA has abolished the color/white rule. Instead, each team will designate whether their white uniform, now dubbed the "Association Edition," or their colored uniform, called the "Icon Edition," will be the home uniform, with the other becoming their designated away uniform.
In American sports, throwback jerseys are generally only used for special team games and not for the "third" purpose. In American football a third jersey may be a throwback uniform based on designs the team used in the past. In association football, meanwhile, it is more commonly a radically different design.
American football
National Football League
The NFL was the last of the major professional sports leagues to adopt the third jersey rule in 2002, with the only exceptions being the 1994 season, when teams issued a throwback uniform in honour of the league's 75th Anniversary. Initially, the NFL rule stated that a team may wear their third jersey only once a year, however, after one year this restriction was increased to two times a year, and then three soon after. Some teams have exceeded the limit; the 2017 Baltimore Ravens were an example, wearing their all-black uniforms twice that season, and the less-frequent black jerseys on white pants once. There are currently no rules on wearing alternative pants. Teams are only permitted to wear alternative jerseys once in playoff games (except the Super Bowl, where teams must wear their standard uniforms); the only team to do so (other than in 1994) was the 2008 San Diego Chargers. In 2021, the Los Angeles Rams were permitted to wear their white alternate uniforms for Super Bowl. In the past, rules allowed for teams to wear their third jersey two times in the regular season and once in the preseason until 2010. In 2011 teams were no longer allowed to wear their third jersey in the preseason. However, there have been some exceptions since 2011. Beginning in 2018, the NFL began allowing teams to wear their alternates three times, and allowed two different alternates to be worn during the season.
Some teams will generally use one of their third jersey allotments against a particular division opponent each year. For instance, the Los Angeles (formerly San Diego) Chargers would frequently wear their popular alternate powder blue jerseys (that was introduced in 2007) at home against the Oakland Raiders, while the Houston Texans were known to wear their alternate "Battle Red" uniforms at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Pittsburgh Steelers usually wore their throwbacks from 2007 to 2011 at home against the archrival Baltimore Ravens. The New York Giants were known to wear their alternate red jerseys at home against the Dallas Cowboys until the red jerseys were retired in 2009. The Los Angeles Rams have frequently worn their throwback uniform against the San Francisco 49ers in recent years. The Washington Commanders wear their alternative uniform on home games to commemorate their annual homecoming game once a year since 2012.
When wearing their third jerseys, especially if the team is wearing a throwback uniform, the team may theme the field around the uniforms. When the New York Jets, for instance, wore their 1960–1962 "Titans of New York" throwbacks at home, they painted the field in the Titans blue-and-gold color scheme (The Jets' current color scheme is green and white). In addition, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers dressed the field up in orange when they wore their "Creamsicle" throwbacks in 2009.
Teams will generally wear their third jerseys at home, although clubs may wear them as the visiting team as well. The Carolina Panthers are known to wear their electric blue jerseys on the road (most notably in Tampa) if the home team opts to wear their white jerseys against the Panthers and depending on the circumstance (primarily in warmer weather situations, where home teams will wear white to force the visiting team to have their uniforms absorb heat rather than reflect it). Since introducing a wolf grey alternate in 2012, the Seattle Seahawks have worn their alternates only when on the road. The Denver Broncos wore their alternate navy blue jersey with blue pants in a game against the Dallas Cowboys in 2013, and in 2017 the Los Angeles Chargers also wore their alternate powder blue jersey against the Dallas Cowboys for a Thanksgiving Day matchup despite Dallas wearing navy blue. The New York Jets have worn their Titans throwback uniform once in 2007 against the Miami Dolphins at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, and in 2017 the Buffalo Bills also wore their white throwback uniform against the Miami Dolphins in a week 17 meeting when Miami was also wearing their throwbacks. The Tennessee Titans, who switched back to navy as the primary color in 2015, wore their alternate Columbia blue jersey with white pants on the road in 2016, 2017, and 2018 when their home opponent forced them to wear their dark colors. The Las Vegas Raiders, who previously wore their white jersey with silver numbers for the color rush promotion from 2016 to 2017, wore the alternates for road games at San Francisco in 2018 and at the Los Angeles Chargers in 2020.
Because the football helmet is such a significant and visible part of the football uniform, some teams also wore alternate helmets when wearing their third jersey. This was particularly true for throwback uniforms, such as those worn by the Cowboys (white), Patriots (white), Steelers (yellow), Jets/Titans (blue), and Buccaneers (white). The NFL outlawed the use of alternate helmets beginning in the 2013 season. This has had impact on some teams wanting to wear their throwback jerseys while other teams are not affected by the limitation. Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has tried to persuade the league to reverse its one-helmet policy, to allow the Eagles to wear matching kelly green helmets and jerseys. However, beginning in 2022, teams will be allowed to wear an alternate helmet if they so choose.
Outside of league-wide promotions, the only team to not have had an official third uniform as of now are the Kansas City Chiefs.
Color Rush
For the 2015 season, the NFL debuted a "Color Rush" jersey concept for select Thursday games (Thursday Night Football and one Thanksgiving Day game) in celebration of 50 years of games being broadcast in color. The games featured, mostly, both teams wearing one color matching jerseys, pants, socks and shoes, specially designed to clash with the color of the other team.
The games were as follows:
November 12: Buffalo Bills (Red) at New York Jets (Kelly Green)
November 19: Tennessee Titans (Titans Blue) at Jacksonville Jaguars (Bold Gold),
November 26: Carolina Panthers (Panthers Blue) at Dallas Cowboys (White, due to superstitions about wearing colored jerseys),
December 17: Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Red) at St. Louis Rams (Yellow Gold).
For 2016, all NFL teams had Color Rush uniforms, although nine teams did not wear them on the field during the 2016 season. The 2017 season also featured Color Rush games, but the Redskins (wore all burgundy combo) and Browns did not wear their color rush uniforms. The program as a whole is no longer required prior to the 2018 season; teams have the option of whether or not they want to wear their color rush uniforms for the Thursday night games and can wear them beyond that point.
College football
Although uniforms are much less regulated at the collegiate level compared to the NFL, alternate uniforms – and even regular uniform redesigns – are generally less common due to many teams' respective histories and traditions surrounding a particular jersey color or uniform combination.
Ole Miss was one of the earliest programs to use two different jerseys, wearing the school colors of navy blue and red depending upon the game.
Recently, however, many teams have begun to experiment with alternate uniforms and helmets, especially teams whose uniforms are provided by Nike. Since the late 2000s, Nike has provided the University of Oregon Ducks with modular uniform systems consisting of as many as four color choices for jerseys, pants, helmets, socks and other components, allowing the Ducks to select a new combination for nearly every game.
One of the more famous third jerseys is that of the University of Notre Dame. The team wears either white or navy blue for most games, but occasionally special kelly green jerseys with gold numbers, evocative of the "Fighting Irish", are chosen for a major contest.
Association football
Third kits traditionally started in European competition as a way of marking the occasion and existed in association football at least as early as the 1930s. Until 1989–90, the FA Cup competition rules stated: "Where the colours of the two competing clubs are similar, both clubs must change unless alternative arrangements are mutually agreed by the competing clubs". Away kits were often similar as well, therefore third kits were worn in the 1948 FA Cup Final by Manchester United and the 1950 final by Arsenal. Similar rules were employed by European governing body UEFA, with Manchester United winning the 1968 European Cup Final in a blue third kit.
Teams sometimes needed to find makeshift third kits for their players. One notable example being France having to wear the green-and-white stripes of local club C.A. Kimberley for their 1978 World Cup match against Hungary, as both teams were only equipped with their white change shirts for the game.
Third kits in international football are less common; both teams are typically advised to change colours in the event of a home kit clashing. England prepared light blue third kits for the 1970 and 1986 World Cups, which were only worn for the former, and Spain introduced a white third kit for the 2014 World Cup at the insistence of FIFA.
Since the 2000s, most clubs in major European leagues have used a third kit, or had one in reserve. Replicas of the kits are usually sold at club merchandise shops. Sometimes, a previous season's away kit is retained if a clash arises. Clubs sometimes also assign a third kit as their secondary or even primary kit for certain competitions and vice versa.
One notable incident occurred in 1996, when Manchester United changed into their blue and white third kit – mainly used as their cup away kit – at half-time, with manager Alex Ferguson blaming the grey away shirt for several sub-par performances. Ferguson commented, "The players couldn't pick each other out.[...] They said it was difficult to see their team-mates at distance when they lifted their heads". Newcastle United had to wear its sky blue training kit during a 2022 match against Brighton & Hove Albion, because its home kit (black and white), away kit (navy blue) and third kit (white) were all deemed too similar to the blue and white home kit of Brighton & Hove Albion.
Baseball
Major League Baseball
After decades of wearing the same uniforms, Major League Baseball teams began to experiment with numerous designs in the early 1970s, ranging from popular designs (such as the Oakland Athletics' pullover jerseys that most MLB teams later adopted) and not so popular (such as the Chicago White Sox wearing shorts, or the Cleveland Indians wearing all red).
Among such designs that were also tested were third jerseys, to break the traditional mold that baseball teams wear white uniforms at home, and gray on the road. This began in 1972 when the A's flamboyant owner, Charles O. Finley, introduced new uniforms to the team. Taking after the lead of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the jerseys were pullover spandex that would later catch on in MLB (though this would be phased out by the early 1990s in favor of the more traditional button-down jerseys), but by going one step further than the Pirates, the A's introduced alternate gold and green jerseys. The gold jerseys, lighter in color, were considered "home" alternates while the darker green jerseys were considered "away" alternates.
Soon, many teams caught on with different colored jerseys. The Pirates even went as far as to having a rotation of which jerseys to wear, matching white pinstriped, gold, and black pants to wear with jerseys of the same color. The white pinstripes were later phased out in favor of solid white.
The New York Yankees have generally shunned the practice of third jerseys. The Yankees wore three different jerseys in 1911, 1916, and most recently in 1943 according to the Dressed to the Nines database maintained by the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In recent years, the Yankees have worn throwback uniforms for single games in 1996 and 2012. Third jerseys otherwise remain popular in baseball today, either as an alternate design or as a throwback known as "Turn Back the Clock Night." The Milwaukee Brewers, for example, have worn a variation of their 1978–1993 home uniforms for every Friday home game. In 1999, the Seattle Mariners hosted the Kansas City Royals for a game where both teams wore "futuristic" uniforms meant to represent the year 2027 (what will be the Mariners 50th season). The "Turn Ahead The Clock" promotion was so successful that it was copied the next year by 20 MLB teams, this time representing the year 2021 (due to sponsorship by the real estate company Century 21); however, the jerseys were roundly ridiculed and have not been seen since.
The Toronto Blue Jays change from their traditional blue and grey jersey to a red alternate jersey every Canada Day (July 1) to help celebrate the national holiday (and with it, a cap with a red maple leaf on it, which is Canada's national symbol). In 2007, the Jays announced that as part of the team's popular "Flashback Friday" promotion, the team would use replica uniforms based on the powder-blue road uniforms used in the 1980s at all Friday night home games, starting with the 2008 season. To complete the look, the Jays also wore the original blue and white caps, with their traditional logo on the front of the uniform as well as on the caps. In 2017, to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary, the Blue Jays wore alternate red jerseys and caps for every Sunday home game. The Tampa Bay Rays wore a black alternate from 1998 to 2000 when they were the Devil Rays, and from 2005 to 2007 they wore green alternate jersey worn both at home and away on selected games. When they changed their name to the Rays, they introduced an alternate navy blue for home and away games to go along with their white and gray uniforms. In 2010 they added light blue jerseys to be worn only on Sunday home games. The Cincinnati Reds wear a red alternate at many afternoon home games, and the Atlanta Braves wear a red jersey for every home game played on Sunday, while the Washington Nationals wear red for all weekend home games, and in 2011 have done so for most weekend road games as well. The Pittsburgh Pirates wore a red alternate for every home game played on Friday during the 2007 season, even though red is not an official team color. Since , the Boston Red Sox wore a red alternate jersey for Friday night home games and a blue alternate jersey for Friday night away games. Also since 2008, for every afternoon home game, the Kansas City Royals wear powder-blue jerseys almost reminiscent of the old jerseys they wore in the 1980s (and in 2010 introduced new powder-blue caps to be worn with these jerseys, though they have since gone back to wearing their normal blue caps). The San Francisco Giants wear orange jerseys during all Friday home games. The Philadelphia Phillies introduced an alternate cream-colored uniform (with a blue cap to complete the look) in 2008 and currently wear it for all afternoon home games. Most recently the Mariners revived their teal jerseys from the mid-1990s, to be used on Friday home games. The Seattle Mariners also have a navy blue alternate away jersey. In 2015 they also introduced an alternate version of their home uniforms, using the team's classic blue-and-yellow scheme on cream uniforms, to be worn on Sunday home games. The Baltimore Orioles wear alternate black jerseys (with a cap showing the "O's" script logo) every Friday, regardless of whether they are home or away (home games against the Red Sox would force the latter to wear their regular grey uniforms rather than their navy Friday uniforms), and in 2012 they introduced an alternate orange jersey to be worn during Saturday games. In 2013, the New York Mets introduced two different blue alternate jerseys; one has their team name on it (in orange lettering) and is used at home, while the other has their city name on it (in gray lettering) and is used on the road. Prior to that, the Mets wore two black alternate jerseys in a similar fashion as their current blue alternates.
To honor the U.S. military, during Sunday home games, the San Diego Padres originally sported special camouflage-colored jerseys (with green caps to match); in 2011 the camouflage jerseys were changed to a brown/tan "desert camo" with a tan cap. Then in 2016, the Padres replaced them with a new "navy camo" jersey (honoring the U.S. Navy) with a blue cap. Also, they released a modernized version of the franchise's classic brown jerseys with brown-and-yellow caps (which was originally worn from 1969 to 1984) to be worn for Friday home games.
In contrast, the Chicago Cubs frequently wear a blue alternate jersey on the road, and not according to the day of the week. This jersey is worn based on the decision of the starting pitcher (particularly when Carlos Zambrano was scheduled to start), thus explaining why it is worn more often than other third jerseys.
After the death of Harmon Killebrew in 2011, the Minnesota Twins decided to wear their cream-colored "throwback" third jersey – a direct replica of the uniforms used for most of Killebrew's career – for every home game for the rest of the year.
The Milwaukee Brewers have two alternate uniforms with the same color, with one featuring the team nickname and used on home games, the other featuring the city name and used on away games; in addition to their regular alternates, since 2011 the Brewers have, during various "Heritage" games, worn uniforms with "Cerveceros" ("Brewers" in Spanish), "Bierbrauer" (German), "Birrai" (Italian) and "Piwowarzy" (Polish); their opponents during those games would usually also have the foreign translation of their own team name on their road uniforms, such as "Piraten" ("Pirates" in German) or "Cardenales" ("Cardinals" in Spanish).
More recently, there is also a trend towards alternate grey uniforms. The San Francisco Giants wear a different version of their road grey uniforms, featuring the interlocking "SF" instead of the city name in full. This design is similar to the road uniforms the team utilized in the late 80's. The Dodgers and the Cubs have followed suit in wearing alternate grey uniforms, sporting the team name in front (rather than the city name) for their grey alternates.
All 30 MLB teams wore special colored jerseys with contrasting sleeves on the weekend of August 25–27, 2017, for Players Weekend. The Cardinals and Pirates also used these jerseys on August 20, when they met in the MLB Little League Game in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; both this game and Players Weekend coincided with the 2017 Little League World Series in South Williamsport. Notably, the 2017 Players Weekend marked the first time the Yankees ever placed names on the back of their jerseys. Players Weekend has since become an annual affair, with similar jersey changes for each subsequent event.
The trend toward multiple uniforms of the same color can also lead to on-field mix-ups: in 2011, Brewers pitcher Zach Greinke, making a pinch-hitting appearance, accidentally wore the "Bierbrauer" jersey the night before German Heritage Day, while in 2014, just three games into the first season where the alternate was introduced, outfielder Junior Lake played the first inning in a "Chicago" jersey while the rest of the team wore "Cubs".
In 2021, Nike and Major League Baseball introduced the City Connect series, in which teams unveil alternate uniforms that were a reflection of their community. In a break from recent trends of wearing only colored alternate tops whilst pairing them with either gray or white pants, some designs began incorporating similarly colored pants for the occasion, giving a full-color treatment from shoulders to feet.
In 2023, Major League Baseball limited teams to two alternate uniforms in addition to a home and road uniform and a City Connect uniform; this is known as the "4+1 rule". While some teams complied with the rule, including teams such as the Seattle Mariners and Tampa Bay Rays replacing their gray road uniforms with colored tops, MLB allowed the San Diego Padres to keep their two Sunday camouflage home uniforms in order to maintain their tradition of honoring the United States Armed Forces. In addition to the two aforementioned uniforms, the Padres also wear brown tops with sand pants as an alternate road uniform.
Basketball
National Basketball Association
The concept of the third jersey in the NBA was first introduced when the Atlanta Hawks wore neon green alternate jerseys in addition to their standard blue road and white home jerseys during the and seasons. However, it was not until the mid-1990s that third jerseys became a common trend throughout the league.
The season brought the first wave of third jerseys in the NBA, as the Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons, Orlando Magic, Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings released new alternate uniforms. The trend continued in the season with the Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks introducing their own third jerseys.
Since then, third jerseys became a regular part of every NBA team's uniform rotation, but at first, not all teams were receptive with the concept. For instance, the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers initially refused to join the trend out of respect to tradition, but they eventually unveiled new alternates in the and seasons respectively.
The third jersey trend only got stronger when the NBA signed exclusive uniform contracts with Reebok and later Adidas. The Adidas deal, in particular, saw the introduction of additional alternate uniforms in an effort to boost jersey sales; examples include the Golden State Warriors' sleeved alternates and the Heat's monochrome uniforms.
In addition to third jerseys, there are also holiday-themed jerseys that are worn only on special occasions. These include the jerseys worn on Christmas Day, Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras (for the New Orleans Pelicans), and Saint Patrick's Day.
Other alternate uniforms in the NBA include the "Noche Latina" uniforms, military-inspired uniforms, and "Pride" uniforms, all of which were also concepts introduced by Adidas.
NBA teams were only allowed to introduce a new third jersey at least two years after unveiling a new logo and uniform set. This rule has since been relaxed somewhat, following more recent third jersey releases by the Utah Jazz, the Brooklyn Nets, the New Orleans Pelicans, the New York Knicks, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Phoenix Suns the Charlotte Hornets and the Atlanta Hawks, in which some of the teams release their alternates on the same day as their regular home and away set.
Teams are also allowed to wear their third jerseys as often as desired during the first three rounds of the NBA Playoffs and the NBA Finals. Per the NBA Rule Book, there is no official rule that states that teams are restricted on wearing alternate uniforms or white at home during the NBA Finals. They only requirement stated is from Section VI, c. which states, "The home team shall wear light color jerseys, and the visitors dark jerseys unless otherwise approved. For neutral court games and doubleheaders, the second team named in the official schedule shall be regarded as the home team and shall wear the light colored jerseys." An example of this was when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 NBA Finals in a black sleeved alternate jersey.
This rule concerning uniform designations was eliminated once Nike became the uniform provider for the NBA in 2017. In doing so, teams now have the freedom to choose whichever uniform they want to wear, whether it's the "Association" white jersey (formerly the de facto home jersey), the "Icon" dark jersey (formerly the de facto away jersey), the "Statement" alternate color jersey (formerly the de facto third jersey) and the annual "City" and "Earned" jerseys.
Canadian football
The Canadian Football League first introduced the use of a permanent third jersey on September 6, 1994, when the Calgary Stampeders wore black uniforms for the Labour Day Classic against the Edmonton Eskimos. The CFL did not have a rule for use of alternate uniforms and teams were able to wear them as often or as little as they liked, a rule that is still in effect. Teams are also able to wear multiple alternate jerseys within the same season, as seen with the Montreal Alouettes during their 2009 campaign when they wore alternate black, blue, and throwback jerseys, in addition to their regular home and away uniforms. Teams are also permitted to wear their third jerseys as the away team, provided that they do not clash with the home team's uniforms. Despite teams having no restrictions with third jerseys, only the Stampeders chose to wear them during the 1990s, presumably due to the league's financial struggles during this decade. As such, no CFL USA team ever wore an alternate uniform. The Alouettes were the next team to introduce third uniforms in 2001 when they also wore black uniforms; a colour that was not part of the team's colour scheme. The Saskatchewan Roughriders first wore their black alternates in 2002 as it became more normal for teams to wear these jerseys. The BC Lions wore orange retro uniforms twice during the 2003 season as part of the celebrations for their 50th season, but those were only worn for that season.
In the 2005 CFL season, Reebok redesigned the primary home and away uniforms for all nine teams and also introduced new alternate uniforms for six teams, with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts abstaining and the Saskatchewan Roughriders keeping their alternates that they had been using since 2002. Calgary introduced the third iteration of their black uniforms while the Alouettes wore a blue jersey with red numerals. The BC Lions, having now converted to orange as the primary jersey colour, wore black alternates, the Edmonton Eskimos and Winnipeg Blue Bombers wore their own versions of gold alternates, and the Ottawa Renegades wore red alternate jerseys.
For 2006, the Tiger-Cats introduced gold alternate jerseys on August 12, 2006 in a game against the Argonauts. This season also saw the first case of both teams wearing alternate uniforms as the Alouettes brought back their black uniforms in a home game against the Eskimos who wore their gold jerseys. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers also wore their alternate gold jerseys as the away team for their playoff game against the host Toronto Argonauts. The Toronto Argonauts were the last CFL team to wear a third jersey as they wore alternate Cambridge blue uniforms on July 26, 2007.
The league recognized the history of its teams by having member clubs wear throwback uniforms beginning with the 2008 CFL season with the Toronto Argonauts and Winnipeg Blue Bombers wearing 1950s-style uniforms for two games featuring both teams. The CFL then had all eight current teams wear 1960s-based uniforms for the 2009 CFL season and 1970s-based uniforms for the 2010 CFL season. These differed from the designated third jerseys in that most were for one season only, except for the Saskatchewan Roughriders white retro jersey and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers royal blue retro jersey that were worn in subsequent seasons. These throwback uniforms were worn to lead up to the 100th Grey Cup celebration.
Following the league-based retro initiative, the league then turned its attention to a modernized take on all nine teams (including the expansion Ottawa Redblacks) by introducing Signature uniforms mostly in the 2014 season. The Lions first wore their Signature uniforms in 2013 as part of their 60th season celebrations with the other eight teams following suit the following season. The uniforms were worn twice by each team except for Ottawa who wore theirs three times and Winnipeg who wore theirs once. In 2015, Winnipeg abandoned the uniforms altogether, as did the BC Lions, despite their popularity in BC. Every other team wore theirs twice during 2015 except for Hamilton, who wore theirs once on Labour Day.
With the league-wide redesign of uniforms by Adidas in 2016, Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal each retained their signature series uniforms and each wore them twice during the regular season (Calgary also wore theirs in the West Final game). Saskatchewan also wore a modified version of their retro-themed uniforms in two games that year. When New Era became the league outfitter in 2019, only Calgary, Edmonton, and Saskatchewan wore third jerseys and all three were holdovers from the previous three seasons. Ottawa introduced new alternates in 2021 and four teams wore new alternates in 2022.
As of 2018, teams are permitted to wear third jerseys during the playoffs, but not for the Grey Cup game. The 2010 Saskatchewan Roughriders were the last team to wear alternate uniforms for the championship game.
The following list is a recount of all known alternate uniforms worn by member clubs as of the 2022 CFL season and does not include one-time throwback uniforms:
BC Lions – Introduced a black alternate uniform in 2005 loosely based on the 1960s jersey, initially worn with white helmets. Switched to orange helmets with black uniform from 2006 to 2008, including the 2006 West final and 94th Grey Cup win. Worn with black retro helmets in 2009 and 2010 seasons. Retired the jerseys in 2011 wearing white helmets, in the final game at Empire Field. Introduced gunmetal uniforms, first worn on August 17, 2013, and worn twice during the 2013 and 2014 seasons, including an away game in Toronto on August 17, 2014. The Lions did not wear a third jersey again until October 15, 2022, when the team wore a modified version of the gunmetal uniforms. The team also wore these uniforms for their playoff game in 2022.
Calgary Stampeders – First to wear third uniforms when they introduced black alternates with red numerals in 1994 on September 6 against Edmonton. They were the first team to wear alternates during a playoff game and the first to wear alternates during a Grey Cup game, which they did in the 86th Grey Cup in 1998. Those black jerseys were retired following the Grey Cup win and new black alternates with white numerals were unveiled in 1999 that were worn until 2004. They first wore black pants with the black jerseys on October 18, 2002 at home vs. the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The third version of black uniforms were worn on Labour Day in 2005 and were last worn on September 2, 2013. 2011 was the first time the Stampeders wore black helmets with the black uniforms. The Signature series uniforms were first worn, also on Labour Day, for the 2014 season and again from 2015 to 2021. They were also worn for home playoff games from 2015 to 2018. The team introduced new black uniforms in 2022 which were first worn for the Labour Day game that year and once more in the final home game in 2022. Since 1994, the Stampeders have worn black on Labour Day 19 times.
Edmonton Elks – First wore their gold alternate jersey on September 9, 2005 against the Calgary Stampeders. Wore the gold alternates against the Alouettes in 2006 as the away team as the Alouettes also wore their alternate uniforms. The club last wore these jerseys on September 7, 2007, again against the Stampeders. The club had no third jersey after the retirement of the gold jersey until the 2014 season when they wore their Signature series green uniforms with the gold "EE" logo. This uniform had been worn at least once each season until the uniforms were rebranded in 2022 where no alternate uniforms were worn that year.
Hamilton Tiger-Cats – Introduced a gold alternate jersey on August 12, 2006 against the Toronto Argonauts. The jerseys were always paired with black helmets and black pants. They were worn three times during the 2007 and 2008 seasons and worn for the last time on October 31, 2009 and just once for the 2009 season as the team wore retro jerseys that same year. The team had no alternate jersey until the Signature series grey uniform was unveiled in 2014. The grey uniform was worn three times between 2014 and 2015 and no alternate uniform was worn from 2016 to 2021. The team introduced new steel grey uniforms in 2022 which were worn twice that year.
Montreal Alouettes – Began wearing an all-black uniform in 2001 and continued wearing them until 2004 and two more times in 2006. Introduced a blue alternate with red numerals in 2005 and wore these jerseys in the 93rd Grey Cup. The blue alternates were worn again in 2006, 2009 and 2010. The team introduced a new black jersey, this time with grey numerals as opposed to blue, for the 2007 and wore this jersey five times during the regular season while wearing the primary home jersey four times. This jersey was worn until the 2010 season and was brought back one more time for the 2013 season. The team wore dark grey and blue Signature series uniforms for the 2014 season and wore them two times in each subsequent season until 2016. The uniforms were worn just once in 2017 and 2018 and when the Alouettes re-branded in 2019, the team did not wear a third jersey. The Alouettes had planned to introduce a fan-designed third jersey for the 2021 season as part of their 75th anniversary celebrations, but this did not occur following a cancelled 2020 CFL season.
Ottawa Rough Riders – Never wore a third jersey.
Ottawa Renegades – Introduced a red alternate jersey worn with white pants on July 1, 2005 against the Montreal Alouettes. Worn four times for the 2005 season including a game where they wore the jerseys with black pants on September 16, 2005 against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Ottawa Redblacks – As part of the Signature series, the Redblacks wore red and plaid uniforms three times during the 2014 season, including an away game on November 7 against the Toronto Argonauts. They wore them twice again in 2015. The team did not wear alternate uniforms again until 2021 when they introduced new red alternate uniforms which were worn three times during the season. The red uniforms were worn twice during the 2022 season.
Saskatchewan Roughriders – First wore a black uniform with green numerals during the 2002 season. The jersey was always worn with black pants and was last worn in 2006. The team introduced retro-themed green alternate jerseys worn with silver pants in 2007, based on the uniforms first worn in 1967. From 2010 to 2012, these jerseys were worn with white pants. Also in 2010, white retro versions of these jerseys were introduced, but contrary to most CFL teams, the Roughriders continued to wear these until the 2012 season for select away games. In 2013, the green retro jersey was worn with green pants. In 2014, the team remodeled the retro green jersey, this time more resembling the uniforms from the early 1980s. Also in 2014, the team wore their Signature series uniforms twice, while also wearing "blitz green" for the first time. Both the retro uniform and the Signature series uniforms were worn twice during 2015. The team introduced a modified version of their retro uniform in 2016 that did not have shoulder numbers and it has been worn at least twice each season since then, except for 2021 and 2022 when it was only worn for the Labour Day Classic.
Toronto Argonauts – Were the last franchise to introduce a recurring alternate jersey, which they did in 2007 on July 26 against the Montreal Alouettes. The jersey was Cambridge blue and partnered with their Oxford blue pants and was worn once in 2007, 2008 and 2009. With the retro uniforms that were introduced in 2009, the team also paired the retro Cambridge blue pants with the alternate jerseys for a monochrome Cambridge blue look that the team wore twice that year. The team wore an Oxford blue retro jersey in 2010 that made a return appearance in 2011. The team became the first in the CFL to wear a white alternate uniform that wasn't based on a retro uniform when they wore their Signature series jerseys in 2014. This uniform was worn once at home and once away in both 2014 and 2015. No alternate jersey has been worn since 2016.
Winnipeg Blue Bombers – Wore gold alternate jerseys as part of their 75th anniversary season in 2005. The jerseys were worn with either white pants or blue pants and were worn every season through to 2010. Additionally, for the three seasons that the Blue Bombers qualified for the playoffs, the gold jerseys were worn for each game, both home and away, and in the 95th Grey Cup. Also in 2010, the club wore retro 1970s era royal blue jerseys, which were then adopted as the alternates for 2011 and 2012. A modified 1980s era royal blue jersey was introduced in 2013 and was also worn in 2014. The Blue Bombers only wore their 2014 Signature series uniforms once, whereas all other teams wore theirs at least twice, possibly due to negative fan reception. The team did not wear an alternate uniform until 2022 when they introduced all-blue uniforms with a white "W" on the front. These uniforms were worn twice, including in the Banjo Bowl that year.
Ice hockey
National Hockey League
In the National Hockey League, each team has its own distinctive sweater design (hockey tradition usually refers to jerseys as "sweaters," because hockey players actually wore sweaters on the ice until the 1960s). Prior to 1995 (save a few isolated instances), each team only had two sweaters – one for home use, and one for the road. One sweater was dominantly white (or in a few instances, a light colour), and the other dominantly a dark colour. The home team has first choice of uniforms from the 1917–18 to the 1969–70 seasons (the white or yellow sweater was predominantly the road sweater with the dark sweater predominantly being the home sweater). In the 1970–1971 season, the NHL required teams to wear white (or yellow) sweaters at home and dark sweaters on the road; this rule remained in place until the end of the 2002–03 season. When the Third Sweater Program was introduced in the 1995–96 season, some teams wore the third sweater at home, which would have required an opponent to carry two sets of equipment and uniforms with them while on the road under most circumstances. This was alleviated starting in the 2003–04 season, when new rules mandated dark sweaters at home and white sweaters on the road, with yellow now being treated as a dark colour.
The first NHL team to feature a three-sweater rotation was the Boston Bruins. From 1955 through 1967, the Bruins had a gold home sweater and a white road sweater, and for several of those seasons featured a black third sweater. The Pittsburgh Penguins would later introduce a gold third sweater in 1981, worn occasionally at home for two seasons for Sunday games and exclusively at home only in the 1983–84 season before retiring it. As part of the NHL's 75th anniversary in the 1991–92 season, for select games the Original Six teams wore throwback sweaters based on designs the teams wore at some point during the first 50 years of the league. The Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings wore their throwbacks again for a game at Chicago Stadium in the 1993–94 season.
The 1995-96 third sweater program provided an opportunity for CCM to further experiment with dye-sublimation printing on their sweaters. CCM had introduced the process to the NHL with the 1994 All-Star Game sweaters and the Calgary Flames' new uniforms introduced in the 1994–95 season. The sublimated dye process allows for more complex stripe and graphic designs than were possible or practical with traditional manufacturing methods. The initial participating teams in the 1995–96 season embraced the concept, although the results were mixed. The Bruins' gold jersey, featuring a brown bear's head on the front and jagged striping, lasted through the 2005–06 season, while the Penguins' third jersey, featuring gradient striping that complemented their logo at the time, replaced their road jerseys in 1997. The Vancouver Canucks' red and black jersey with gradient striping, a subtle nod to their garish "Flying V" jerseys from 1978 to 1985, were retired in 1997 when the team changed colours and logos altogether. The jerseys worn by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and Los Angeles Kings only lasted one season. Due to the backlash against the less popular designs, the sublimation process was used by fewer teams in subsequent seasons, as newer thirds either rearranged the colours of an existing jersey, or experimented with different construction methods to create new designs.
With the advent of the 2003 Heritage Classic outdoor game, the NHL introduced the Vintage jersey program, allowing a select number of teams to wear throwback designs for a limited number of games, in addition to their existing uniforms. These uniforms were designated with a special V-logo patch. Seven teams participated in the program, and included both home and road versions of throwback designs. As a result, the Bruins, Kings, Canucks, and New York Rangers each had an unprecedented five jerseys in their rotation for that season. The program was suspended due to the 2004–05 NHL lockout, although the Vancouver Canucks and Montreal Canadiens would wear their vintage jerseys for a few games each in the 2005–06 season, and the Canucks and Bruins would wear their dark throwbacks as third jerseys (replacing sublimated-print third jerseys) in the 2006–07 season. The Canucks' and Bruins' throwbacks would later serve as the inspiration for their RBK Edge uniform redesigns in 2007.
Following a one-year hiatus on all third jerseys (save for the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, where the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres wore throwbacks for that game) as part of the NHL's transition to the Edge uniform system, the third jersey program returned in full earnest for the 2008–09 season. The Winter and Heritage Classics became showcases for throwback uniforms and new sweaters with a throwback aesthetic, while the NHL Stadium Series became a showcase for more radical uniform designs. Third jerseys as a whole began to skew more to traditional stylings and throwback designs, especially for teams who more modernized looks in the Edge redesign. Another trend has been for teams to include an off-white cream colour, sometimes referred to as "vintage white" or "antique white", in place of pure white on their third or Classic jersey, attempting to replicate the discoloured appearance of a genuine aged sweater. This trend picked up after the Minnesota Wild began extensively using "Minnesota wheat", an official team colour similar to the vintage cream colour, in place of white trim on their dark jerseys.
The only teams that have not had a full-season third jersey since the beginning of the current program are the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens. However, both teams have participated in at least one outdoor game and had special jerseys for each event. In addition, the Canadiens wore five different vintage jerseys over the course of their centennial celebration in the 2008–09 and 2009-10 seasons, in addition to their earlier participation in the Vintage jersey program.
Prior to 2021, the New Jersey Devils have eschewed the concept of third jerseys under general manager Lou Lamoriello. Instead, they wore special one-off alternates that were throwbacks of the classic red and green jerseys for one home game on or around St. Patrick's Day every season since 2009–10, with the exception of the lockout-shortened 2013 season, and have also worn them in their 2014 NHL Stadium Series outdoor game. However, in 2021, the Devils finally unveiled their first full-time third jersey, using black as the base color.
With Reebok being replaced by parent company Adidas as the NHL's uniform supplier for the 2017–18 NHL season, the third jersey program once again went on hiatus for one year. Like what happened during the Reebok transition, alternate jerseys returned for the 2018–19 season.
Usage
Once a team has been granted permission by the league to use their new design, they will request and be allowed ten to fifteen games during the season in which they may use their third sweater. They may continue to use the third sweater in subsequent years as well. This alternate design allowed the team's appearance to flirt with radical designs which have occasionally gone on to become the new looks for some of the participating teams, though they can also be quite garish. An infamous example is the aforementioned St.Louis Blues' planned third sweater from 1996. The Mighty Ducks' third from that season, featuring mascot Wildwing bursting through a sheet of ice, was also considered particularly garish. Sales of third sweaters to fans have also provided significant additional income for cash-strapped NHL teams. For example, in 2013, the Calgary Flames introduced a third sweater in exactly the same colours as their primary home sweater, but with the addition of "western styling" mixed with traditional hockey sweater features such as laces and the team name in script on the front. This doesn't always work; in the case of the Flames, they reverted to their throwback third jersey in the 2016–17 season.
Teams are also allowed to wear their third jerseys as often as desired in the Stanley Cup Playoffs; however, they may only wear two different uniforms during the playoffs (one at home and one on the road). Examples of teams who wore third jerseys in the playoffs include the Dallas Stars (in 1999), the San Jose Sharks (from 2011 to 2014), the Anaheim Ducks (in 2014), the Minnesota Wild (from 2013 to 2017), the Washington Capitals (in 2015), the Toronto Maple Leafs (in 1999), the Philadelphia Flyers (in 2001 and 2009), the Pittsburgh Penguins (in 1997, 2016, and 2021), the Edmonton Oilers (in 2017 and 2021), the Calgary Flames (in 2019), the Arizona Coyotes (in 2020) and the Carolina Hurricanes (in 2019, 2020, and 2021). The Ducks, Stars, Flyers, Penguins, Oilers, Wild, Flames, and Coyotes are also examples of teams wearing third jerseys in the playoffs that are then promoted to full-time jerseys the following season.
Chronology
Several teams have had multiple designs of their third jersey.
1955–56: Boston Bruins (remained until end of 1956–57 season; brought back for 1959–60 season and stayed until end of 1964–65 season)
1966–67: Toronto Maple Leafs (inspired by Canada's Centennial celebrations in 1967, the Leafs had a completely different uniform set for that year's Stanley Cup playoffs, which culminated with a Stanley Cup victory. The modified Leafs uniform featured a new Maple Leaf emblem, replacing the traditional maple leaf with a design imitating the leaf found on Canada's new Maple Leaf Flag introduced in 1965. This uniform was adopted by the team the following season (1967–68) and remained until a completely new uniform design was unveiled for the 1970–71 season.)
1981–82: Pittsburgh Penguins (remained until 1984–1985 season)
1991–92: Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs (all as throwback/vintage jerseys)
1993–94: Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings (one game, wearing the 1992 throwback/vintage jerseys)
1995–96: Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Boston Bruins (through 2005–06), Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins (through 1996–97; would eventually become their regular road jersey), Vancouver Canucks (through 1996–97)
1996–97: Chicago Blackhawks (used through 2006–07), New York Islanders (third and fourth jerseys with classic logo, became full-time home and road shirts the following season), New York Rangers (through 2006–07), Tampa Bay Lightning (through 1998–99), Toronto Maple Leafs (one game – throwback/vintage jerseys)
1997–98: Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (through 1999–2000), Dallas Stars (through 1998–99; became road jersey afterward), Ottawa Senators (through 1998–99; became road jersey afterward), Philadelphia Flyers (through 2000–01; became road jersey afterward), St. Louis Blues (became home jersey the following season), San Jose Sharks (became road jersey the following season), Washington Capitals (through 1999–2000; became road jersey afterward)
1998–99: Calgary Flames (through 1999–2000; became road jersey through 2003; third jersey again 2003–06), Florida Panthers (through 2002–03; became the new home jersey, replaced by former road jersey), New York Rangers (white shirt replaced blue third for one season), Phoenix Coyotes (through 2002–03), Toronto Maple Leafs (through 2006–07)
1999–2000: Los Angeles Kings (retired prior to 2007–08 season; logos switched in 2002–03)
2000–01: Buffalo Sabres (through 2005–06), Ottawa Senators (through 2006–07), Pittsburgh Penguins (through 2001–02; became home uniform after one season)
2001–02: Colorado Avalanche (through 2006–07), Edmonton Oilers (designed by Todd McFarlane; through 2006–07), Nashville Predators (through 2006–07), San Jose Sharks (through 2006–07), Vancouver Canucks (through 2005–06)
2002–03: New York Islanders (through 2006–07), Philadelphia Flyers (orange with 3D version of logo, through 2006–07)
2003–04: Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (through 2005–06), Atlanta Thrashers (would become home jersey), Boston Bruins (c.1970 – vintage program) Columbus Blue Jackets (became home jersey for 2007–08), Dallas Stars (used through 2005–06), Edmonton Oilers (c.1988 – vintage program), Florida Panthers (former road jersey, through 2006–07), Los Angeles Kings (c.1987 – vintage program), Minnesota Wild (became home jersey for 2007–08); Montreal Canadiens (c.1946 and c.1960 versions – vintage program – 1946 version used through 2006–07), New York Rangers (c.1978 – vintage program), St. Louis Blues (c.1979 – vintage program) Vancouver Canucks (c.1976 – vintage program; worn as fourth in 2005–06, in use as third in 2006–07).
2006–07: Boston Bruins (1960s throwback), Buffalo Sabres
2007–08: No teams were allowed to have alternate jerseys due to the introduction of the Reebok Edge jersey style. During the NHL playoffs, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced they would wear jerseys similar in design to the ones worn during their 1967 Stanley Cup run, but this did not occur because the Maple Leafs failed to reach a playoff spot during the regular season. The Pittsburgh Penguins (1968–76 blue throwback) and the Buffalo Sabres (1970–96 white throwback) were therefore the only two teams to wear their third jerseys, which happened in the Winter Classic.
2008–09: On September 10, 2008, the Carolina Hurricanes unveiled a new predominantly black third jersey featuring a flag design reminiscent of the maritime advisory flag system. The following teams announced the use of third jerseys for the 2008–09 NHL season: Atlanta Thrashers, Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Chicago Blackhawks (a vintage jersey for the 2009 NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field), Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings (for the 2009 Winter Classic), Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, New York Islanders, Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers, Phoenix Coyotes, Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, St. Louis Blues, Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks. To commemorate its 100th season, Montreal Canadiens wear vintage jerseys from seasons 1912–13, 1915–16 and 1945–46 during selected home games against Original Six teams.
2009–10: Montreal Canadiens announce in Fall 2008 they will wear vintage jerseys from seasons 1909–10 and 1910–11 during selected home games against Original Six teams to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the team. In addition, the Bruins and Flyers donned vintage jerseys for their game as part of the 2010 NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park on January 1, and the Flyers then changed to the Winter Classic white sweater as their away jersey for the 2010–11 season; new third jerseys in the 2009–10 NHL season were worn by the Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, Florida Panthers, Minnesota Wild and the Nashville Predators. The Blackhawks also debuted a new third jersey which is a variation of the Winter Classic jersey used in 2009.
2010–11: The Buffalo Sabres and the New York Islanders are officially changing to the third as their home (and a new white road uniform based on same) for the 2010–11 season. Buffalo introduced a new third jersey loosely based on their AHL predecessor, the Buffalo Bisons, to celebrate the team's 40th anniversary. The Columbus Blue Jackets have introduced a new third jersey, wearing it on selective home and away games only. The Anaheim Ducks also introduced a new third jersey as well along with their home and away jerseys. The Los Angeles Kings unveiled a new fourth throwback jersey, which is based on their purple and gold jerseys worn from 1967 to 1979. The Pittsburgh Penguins retired their powder blue alternates and unveiled their new third jersey at the 2011 NHL Winter Classic at Heinz Field. On November 12, 2010, the New York Rangers introduced a new heritage jersey in a celebration of their 85th anniversary, which is worn during home games against Original Six teams and on all Sunday (later Saturday) home games. The Rangers' heritage jersey debuted on November 17 in a game against the Bruins. The Anaheim Ducks introduced a third sweater on November 26. The jersey features the "D" duck foot logo on the front and the colours are primarily black and orange. On the shoulder of the jersey, there is a patch of the Mighty Duck logo which was no longer used in the 2006–07 NHL season with the logo the Ducks are currently using.
2011–12: The Los Angeles Kings relegated their purple and black road jerseys as alternates, while assigning the black and silver jerseys to regular use at home. They made a white and black away jersey based on this design. The Ottawa Senators replaced their black "SENS" alternates with a retro barberpole design based on the original Senators jerseys. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals promoted their 2011 Winter Classic jerseys to third jersey status, while the Toronto Maple Leafs unveiled a new blue retro alternate based on the jersey worn when they won the 1967 Stanley Cup Finals. Even though the Tampa Bay Lightning unveiled new logos and uniforms, their alternate "BOLTS" uniform was retained. The New York Islanders added a black jersey as their alternate, which was retired towards the end of the 2013–14 season.
2012–13: No third jerseys were unveiled in the lockout-shortened season, but the Buffalo Sabres, Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers dropped their third jerseys.
2013–14: The Buffalo Sabres unveiled their two-tone third jersey, with the front of the jersey in gold and the back of the jersey in navy. The Calgary Flames replaced their classic 1980s third jerseys (which are now worn once per season) with a red and black jersey featuring a throwback 'Calgary' script and modern design features (it would be replaced with the former jerseys after the 2015–16 season). The Carolina Hurricanes retained their black third jerseys despite unveiling a new uniform set, while the third jerseys of the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins were dropped.
2014–15: The Anaheim Ducks promoted their third jerseys to regular use at home, adding a new white uniform based on the same design. The Pittsburgh Penguins unveiled their new black and gold third jersey, which is based on their road uniforms worn from 1980 to 1992. In addition, the Philadelphia Flyers promoted the jersey they wore at the 2012 Winter Classic to alternate status. After retiring their black third jersey towards the end of the 2013–14 season, the New York Islanders added a blue alternate jersey, which was previously worn at the Stadium Series game at Yankee Stadium in the previous season. The Tampa Bay Lightning changed their third jersey to a black alternate, while the Los Angeles Kings and Arizona Coyotes unveiled new throwback jerseys, the latter replacing their black third jersey.
2015–16: The Anaheim Ducks introduced a new orange third jersey. The Edmonton Oilers introduced a new throwback alternate orange jersey, while the Vancouver Canucks added a black throwback jersey that was the team's road uniform from 1989 to 1997. The Washington Capitals added a red alternate jersey based on the white alternate jersey they used from the 2011–12 to the 2014–15 seasons. In addition, the Colorado Avalanche and the New York Islanders changed their alternate jerseys. The two-tone third jersey worn by the Buffalo Sabres was permanently discontinued; in its place, a "third jersey" identical to the white away jersey was used for six home games (technically it was the same jersey, but as previously noted it required special dispensation from the league to allow it).
2016–17: The Pittsburgh Penguins' third jersey that was worn during the 2014–15 and 2015–16 seasons was promoted to regular use at home; while the Boston Bruins replaced their third jersey with the jersey that was first worn at the 2016 NHL Winter Classic. The Los Angeles Kings and Philadelphia Flyers introduced special third jerseys, while the St. Louis Blues removed their third jerseys.
2017–18: No teams were allowed to have regular alternate jerseys due to the introduction of the Adidas jersey style. However, teams participating in outdoor games (the NHL 100 Classic, Winter Classic, and Stadium Series games) had special uniforms for those games. In addition, the Toronto Maple Leafs wore a Toronto Arenas throwback for the Next Century Game, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first game in NHL history.
2018–19: The following teams announced the use of third jerseys for the 2018–19: the Anaheim Ducks, the Arizona Coyotes, the Calgary Flames, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Colorado Avalanche, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Edmonton Oilers, the New Jersey Devils, the New York Islanders, the Ottawa Senators, the Philadelphia Flyers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the San Jose Sharks, the St. Louis Blues, the Washington Capitals and the Winnipeg Jets. The Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks wore throwback jerseys during the 2019 NHL Winter Classic. The Carolina Hurricanes announced that they would wear green Hartford Whalers jerseys for select games against the Boston Bruins during the 2018–19 season.
2019–20: The Boston Bruins, the Edmonton Oilers, and the Vancouver Canucks added new third jerseys. Special throwback uniform designs were worn by the Buffalo Sabres, the Calgary Flames, the Dallas Stars, the Los Angeles Kings, the Nashville Predators, and the Winnipeg Jets for a few games during the season.
2020–21: NHL began partnering with Adidas to introduce the Reverse Retro program, where all 31 teams are issued special uniforms which are based on throwback jerseys that were worn during previous seasons. Several teams, including the Arizona Coyotes, the Boston Bruins, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Los Angeles Kings, the Minnesota Wild, the Montreal Canadiens, the New Jersey Devils, the San Jose Sharks, and the St. Louis Blues, received uniforms that swapped the colour palettes. The introduction of the Reverse Retro jerseys (which have to be worn in specific rivalry matchups) marks the first time in history that all 31 teams have at least three jerseys. In addition to the introduction of the Reverse Retro series, the Dallas Stars, the Vegas Golden Knights, and the Washington Capitals introduced new fourth jerseys, while the throwback uniform of the Calgary Flames was promoted to a home uniform and the old home uniform was relegated to a fourth jersey; the third jerseys of the Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators were redesigned into Reverse Retro jerseys as part of those teams introducing new wholesale uniform sets.
2021–22: New third jerseys were unveiled for the Los Angeles Kings, New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Winnipeg Jets. In addition, the Arizona Coyotes' previous "coyote head" home jersey was relegated to a third jersey.
2022–23: A second set of Reverse Retro jerseys were introduced. The Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, and Vancouver Canucks unveiled modernized versions of 1990s-era throwback jerseys, while the Arizona Coyotes unveiled a new red alternate jersey.
Rugby league
National Rugby League
In recent years the third jersey has appeared in the Australian NRL, with every team having a 'home' jersey, an 'away' jersey and a 'heritage' jersey. The NRL does not currently require third or alternate jerseys, because most clashes can be resolved with away jerseys or using modified under-20s jerseys.
South Sydney Rabbitohs used a white jersey (the under-20s away jersey) against Canberra in 2008, even though the NRL stated that the Souths and Canberra jerseys don't clash. They have a similar jersey for 2009 which contains tribal Aboriginal and Maori designs.
Parramatta Eels have adopted a home (yellow with blue designs), away (blue with yellow designs, however in 2007 this was the alternate) and alternate (white with yellow designs, however in 2007 was away) jersey scheme. They (along with Manly-Warringah and Illawarra) were one of the pioneers of away jerseys in rugby league in Australia.
Canterbury Bulldogs use a jersey reminiscent of their training jersey as a clash strip (also their under-20s away jersey). They also wear their Berries strip from the 1960s as a heritage strip and a similar (yet quite different) jersey (white with blue and black butcher stripes) for trials.
Brisbane Broncos have been known to wear a blue and aqua alternate jersey, however, it is rare to see as blue has become a colour hated by Queensland rugby league fans.
Wests Tigers have worn a white version of their 2008 home jersey, switching the white/orange areas, and introduced a "10 Year Anniversary" jersey, which is white with black and orange V's. They also wear modernised versions of the old Balmain Tigers and Western Suburbs Magpies strips from the 1980s.
Though not technically third jumpers, the Centenary of Rugby League celebrations left all teams with special jerseys for the Centenary round, and in 2009 several teams wore the same jerseys (the Newcastle Knights, however, wore their foundation strip, in 2008 they wore a Newcastle Rebels jersey, which was the first Newcastle team in the NSWRL and played in the NSWRL's foundation season. The New Zealand Warriors wore a jersey symbolising the history of rugby league in Auckland, with a dark blue jersey with 2 white V's, while the Melbourne Storm wore their 2000's light purple with white lightning bolts away strip in the 2009 Heritage Round, while in 2008 they wore their foundation jersey with V's).
As a result of the above point, the Sydney Roosters have used five jerseys in 2008.
See also
Away colours
Throwback uniform
References
External links
A history of the third kit, by John Devlin, 2009
NHLuniforms.com
Sports terminology
Sports uniforms
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel%20Inouye
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Daniel Inouye
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Daniel Ken Inouye ( ; September 7, 1924 – December 17, 2012) was an American attorney, soldier, and politician who served as a United States senator from Hawaii from 1963 until his death in 2012. Beginning in 1959, he was the first U.S. Representative for the State of Hawaii, and a Medal of Honor recipient. A member of the Democratic Party, he also served as the president pro tempore of the United States Senate from 2010 until his death. Inouye was the highest-ranking Asian-American politician in U.S. history until Kamala Harris became vice president in 2021. Inouye also chaired various senate committees, including those on Intelligence, Indian Affairs, Commerce, and Appropriations.
Inouye fought in World War II as part of the 442nd Infantry Regiment. He lost his right arm to a grenade wound and received several military decorations, including the Medal of Honor (the nation's highest military award). He later earned a J.D. degree from George Washington University Law School. Returning to Hawaii, Inouye was elected to Hawaii's territorial House of Representatives in 1953, and was elected to the territorial Senate in 1957. When Hawaii achieved statehood in 1959, Inouye was elected as its first member of the House of Representatives. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962. He never lost an election in 58 years as an elected official, and he exercised an exceptionally large influence on Hawaii politics.
Inouye was the second Asian American senator, following Hawaii Republican Hiram Fong. Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the first to serve in the U.S. Senate. Because of his seniority, Inouye became president pro tempore of the Senate following the death of Robert Byrd on June 28, 2010, making him third in the presidential line of succession after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Inouye was a posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the Paulownia Flowers. Among other public structures, Honolulu International Airport has since been renamed Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in his memory.
Early life (1924–1942)
Daniel Ken Inouye was born in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii on September 7, 1924. His father, Hyotaro Inouye, was a jeweler who had immigrated to Hawaii from Japan as a child. His mother, Kame (née Imanaga) Inouye, was a homemaker born on Maui to Japanese immigrants. Her parents died young and she was adopted and raised by a family in Honolulu. Both of Daniel's parents were Christian, and met at the River Street Methodist Church in Honolulu. They married in 1923. This heritage makes Daniel a Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) through his father and a Sansei (third-generation) through his mother. Daniel was named after Kame's adoptive father.
Inouye grew up in Bingham Tract, a Chinese-American enclave in Honolulu. He was raised Christian, and was the oldest of four children. As a child, he collected homing pigeons which he hatched from eggs given to him at an army base in Schofield Barracks in return for him cleaning the coops. As a teenager, he worked on the local beaches teaching tourists how to surf. Inouye's parents raised him and his siblings with a mix of American and Japanese customs. His parents spoke English at home, but had their children attend a private Japanese language school in addition to public school. Inouye dropped out of the Japanese school in 1939 because he disagreed with his instructor's anti-American rhetoric, and focused on his studies at President William McKinley High School. He intended to go to college and medical school after his planned 1942 graduation.
Inouye witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, while still a senior in high school. The Japanese surprise attack brought the United States into World War II. Being a volunteer first aid instructor with the Red Cross, his supervisor called on him to report to Lunalilo Elementary School which had become a Red Cross station. There, he tended to civilians injured by antiaircraft shells that had fallen into the city. After the United States declared war on Japan the next day, Inouye took up a paid job from his Red Cross supervisor to work there as a medical aide. For the remainder of his senior year, Inouye attended school during the day, and worked at the Red Cross station at night. He graduated from McKinley High School in 1942. Although Inouye wanted to join the armed forces after graduating, he did not possess that right as a Japanese-American. The United States Department of War had declared all Japanese-Americans as "enemy aliens", which stipulated they could not volunteer or be drafted for military service. Inouye enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in September 1942 as a premedical student with the goal of becoming a surgeon.
Army service (1943–1947)
In March 1943, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all-Nisei combat unit. Inouye applied and was initially turned down because his work at the Red Cross was deemed critical, but was inducted later that month. The unit was composed of over 2,500 Nisei from Hawaii, and 800 from the mainland. Inouye went with his unit in April to Camp Shelby in Mississippi for a 10-month training period, postponing his medical studies. While in Mississippi, the unit visited the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas, where Inouye witnessed the internment of Japanese Americans first hand.
The 442nd shipped off to Italy in May 1944 after the conclusion of their training, shortly before the liberation of Rome. Inouye was promoted to sergeant within the first three months of fighting in the Italian countryside north of Rome. The 442nd was then sent to eastern France, where they seized the towns of Bruyères, Belmont, and Biffontaine from the Germans. In late October, the regiment was transferred to the Vosges Mountains region of France, where they rescued 211 members of the 1st Battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment, otherwise known as the "Lost Battalion". Inouye received a battlefield commission to second lieutenant for his actions there, becoming the youngest officer in his regiment. During the battle, a shot struck him in the chest directly above his heart, but the bullet was stopped by the two silver dollars he happened to have stacked in his shirt pocket. He continued to carry the coins throughout the war in his shirt pocket as good luck charms, but lost them later, shortly before the battle in which he lost his arm. The 442nd spent the next several months near Nice, guarding the French-Italian border until early 1945, when they were called to Northern Italy to assist with an assault on German strongholds in the Apennine Mountains.
Arm injury
On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on the heavily defended Colle Musatello ridge near San Terenzo, Italy. The ridge served as a strongpoint of the German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, the last and most unyielding line of German defensive works in Italy. During a flanking maneuver against German machine gun nests, Inouye was shot in the stomach from 40 yards away. Ignoring his wound, he proceeded with the attack and together with the unit, destroyed the first two machine gun nests. As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, the injured Inouye crawled toward the final bunker and came within 10 yards. As he prepared to toss a grenade within, a German soldier fired out a 30 mm Schiessbecher antipersonnel rifle grenade at Inouye, striking him in the right elbow. Although it failed to detonate, the blunt force of the grenade amputated most of his right arm at the elbow. The nature of the injury caused his arm muscles to involuntarily squeeze the grenade tightly via a reflex arc, preventing his arm from going limp and dropping a live grenade at his feet. This injury left him disabled, in terrible pain, under fire with minimal cover and staring at a live grenade "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore."
Inouye's platoon moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. As the German inside the bunker began reloading his rifle with regular full metal jacket ammunition to finish off Inouye, Inouye pried the live hand grenade from his useless right hand with his left, and tossed it into the bunker, killing the German. Stumbling to his feet, Inouye continued forward, killing at least one more German before sustaining his fifth and final wound of the day in his left leg. Inouye fell unconscious, and awoke to see the worried men of his platoon hovering over him. His only comment before being carried away was to gruffly order them back to their positions, saying "Nobody called off the war!" By the end of the day, the ridge had fallen to American control, without the loss of any soldiers in Inouye's platoon. The remainder of Inouye's mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia, as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him. The war in Europe ended on May 8, less than three weeks later.
Rehabilitation and discharge
Shortly before the Japanese surrender and end of World War II in August 1945, Inouye was shipped back to the United States to recover for eleven months at a rehabilitation center for wounded soldiers in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In mid-1946, Inouye was transferred to the Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, to continue his rehabilitation for nine more months. While recovering there, Inouye met future Republican senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole, then a fellow patient. The two became friends and would often play bridge together. Dole shared with Inouye his long-term plans to attend law school and become an attorney, and later run for state legislature and eventually the United States Congress. With Inouye's plans to become a surgeon dashed due to his injury, Dole's plans for a career in public service inspired Inouye to consider entering politics. Inouye ultimately beat Dole to congress. The two remained lifelong friends. In 2003, the hospital was renamed the Hart–Dole–Inouye Federal Center in honor of the two World War II veterans, as well as Democratic senator Philip Hart, who had been a patient at the hospital after sustaining injuries on D-Day.
Inouye was honorably discharged with the rank of captain in May 1947 after 20 months of rehabilitation. At the time, he was a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal, Distinguished Service Cross, and three Purple Hearts. Many in his regiment believed that, were he not Japanese-American, he would have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. Inouye eventually received the Medal of Honor on June 21, 2000, from President Bill Clinton, along with 19 other Japanese American servicemen in the 442nd.
Entry into politics
Inouye decided to study law hoping it would lead him into a political career. He enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in late 1947 as a prelaw student, majoring in government and economics. He relied on the financial benefits of the G.I. Bill to fund his education. When not in class, Inouye would volunteer for the Democratic Party at the Honolulu County Democratic Committee. He had been talked into joining the party by John A. Burns, a former police captain and future governor, who had ties to the Japanese American community. Though the territory of Hawaii had been politically dominated by the Republican Party, Burns convinced Inouye that the Democratic Party could help Japanese Hawaiians achieve social and economic reform. During these years, Inouye met speech instructor Margaret Awamura at the university, whom he married in 1948.
After graduating in 1950, Inouye moved with his wife to Washington D.C. so he could continue his studies at George Washington University Law School. While there, he volunteered at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters to gain more experience to bring back with him to Hawaii. Inouye earned his J.D. degree in two years, and moved back with his wife to Hawaii in late 1952. Inouye spent the next year studying for the Hawaii bar exam and volunteering with the Democratic Party. After passing the bar exam in August 1953, Inouye was appointed assistant public prosecutor for the city and county of Honolulu by the city mayor and fellow Democrat John Wilson.
At the urging of Burns, Inouye successfully ran for the Hawaii Territorial House of Representatives in the November 1954 election, representing the Fourth District. The election came to be known as the Hawaii Democratic Revolution of 1954, as the long entrenched Republican control of the Hawaii Territorial Legislature abruptly ended with a wave of Democratic candidates taking their seats. The election also filled the legislature with Japanese American politicians, who previously held few seats. Inouye was immediately elected majority leader. He served two terms there, and was elected to the Hawaii territorial senate in 1957. Midway through Inouye's first term in the territorial senate, Hawaii achieved statehood. He won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as Hawaii's first full member, and took office on August 21, 1959, the same date Hawaii became a state; he was re-elected in 1960.
United States Senate (1963–2012)
In 1962, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, succeeding retiring fellow Democrat Oren E. Long.
He was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee between 1976 and 1979, and the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee between 1987 and 1995. He introduced the National Museum of the American Indian Act in 1984 which led to the inauguration of the National Museum of the American Indian in 2004. He was chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee between 2001 and 2003, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee between 2007 and 2009 and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee between 2009 and 2012.
He was reelected eight times, usually without serious difficulty. His closest race was in 1992, when state senator Rick Reed held him to 57 percent of the vote; this was the only time he received less than 69 percent of the vote. He delivered the keynote address at the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and gained national attention for his service on the Senate Watergate Committee.
Inouye was also involved in the Iran-Contra investigations of the 1980s, chairing a special committee (Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition) from 1987 until 1989. During the hearings, Inouye referred to the operations that had been revealed as a "secret government", saying:
Criticizing the logic of Marine Lt. Colonel Oliver North's justifications for his actions in the affair, Inouye made reference to the Nuremberg trials, provoking a heated interruption from North's attorney Brendan Sullivan, an exchange that was widely repeated in the media at the time. He was also seen as a pro-Taiwan senator and helped in forming the Taiwan Relations Act.
On May 1, 1977, Inouye stated that President Carter had telephoned him to express his objections to a sentence in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the Central Intelligence Agency.
On November 20, 1993, Inouye voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement. The trade agreement linked the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a single free trade zone and was signed into law on December 8 by President Bill Clinton.
In 2009, Inouye assumed leadership of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations after longtime chairman Robert Byrd stepped down. Following the latter's death on June 28, 2010, Inouye was elected President pro tempore, the officer third in the presidential line of succession.
In 2010, Inouye announced his decision to run for a ninth term. He easily won the Democratic primary—the real contest in heavily Democratic Hawaii — and then won against Republican state representative Campbell Cavasso with 74 percent of the vote.
Inouye ran for Senate Majority Leader several times without success.
Prior to his death, Inouye announced that he planned to run for a record tenth term in 2016 when he would have been 92 years old. He also said,
1980s
In 1986, West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd opted to run for Senate Majority Leader, believing that his two opponents to claiming the position would be Inouye and Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston. Cutting a deal with Inouye, Byrd pledged that he would step aside from the position in 1989 if Inouye supported him for Senate Majority Leader of the 100th United States Congress. Inouye accepted the offer and was given the chance to select the new Senate sergeant-at-arms.
Foreign policy
In early 1981, Inouye called for tighter restrictions on what Americans can ship overseas, citing his belief that American international stature would be harmed along with the country's foreign policy interests in the event of the shipments causing environmental damage.
In March 1981, Inouye was one of 24 elected officials to issue a joint statement calling on the Reagan administration to compose a method of finding a peaceful solution that would end The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
In July 1981, a Federal commission began hearings to decide on rewarding compensations to Japanese-Americans placed in internment camps during World War II, Inouye and fellow Hawaii Senator Spark M. Matsunaga delivering opening statements. In November, during an appearance at the opening of a 10-day public forum at Tufts University on Japanese internment, Inouye stated his opposition to distributing reparation fees for Japanese-Americans previously incarcerated during World War II, adding that it "would be insulting even to try to do so." In August 1988, Inouye attended President Reagan's signing of legislation apologizing for the internment camps and establishing a $1.25 billion trust fund to pay reparations to both those who were placed in camps and to their families. In September 1989, during the Senate's debate over bestowing reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, Inouye delivered his first public speech on the issue and noted $22,000 were bestowed to each captive American in the Iran hostage crisis.
In October 2002, Inouye was one of 23 senators who voted against authorization of the use of military force in Iraq.
Domestic policy
In March 1982, amid controversy surrounding Democratic Senator Harrison A. Williams for taking bribes in the Abscam sting operation, Inouye delivered a closing defense argument stating the possibility of the Senate looking foolish in the event the conviction was reversed on appeal. Inouye confirmed that he had received telephone calls regarding Williams critiquing his remarks during his defense of himself the previous week and questioned if the Senate was going to punish him "because his presentation was rambling, not in the tradition of Daniel Webster" and for his wife believing in him.
In October 1982, after President Reagan appointed two new members to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, Inouye was one of 32 Senators to sign a letter expressing grave concerns over the appointments.
On December 23, Inouye voted against a 5 cent a gallon increase in gasoline taxes across the US imposed to aid the financing of highway repairs and mass transit. The bill passed on the last day of the 97th United States Congress.
In March 1984, Inouye voted against a constitutional amendment authorizing periods in public school for silent prayer and against President Reagan's unsuccessful proposal for a constitutional amendment permitting organized school prayer in public schools. In August, Inouye secured the acceptance of the Senate's defense appropriations subcommittee for an amendment meant to cure mainland milk arriving at Hawaiian and Alaskan military bases sour, arguing thousands of gallons of milk coming from the mainland must be dumped due to their souring and said shipments were arriving eight days after pasteurization.
In February 1989, after Oliver North went on trial in Federal District Court amid accusations of a dozen crimes in accordance with his role in diverting profits from the secret sale of arms to Iran to the Nicaraguan rebels and Jack Brooks questioned North's role in composing a "contingency plan in the event of an emergency that would suspend the American Constitution," Inouye replied that the inquiry touched on both a classified and sensitive matter that would only be discussed in a closed session.
Alleged sexual misconduct
In 1992, Inouye's hairdresser made allegations of sexual misconduct initiating with a 1975 incident wherein she was placed on an errand to his apartment, which he denied. Although reaching press nationally, consensus was that Hawaii's culture of silence towards indiscretions of those in power, prevailed. A Senate ethics committee review was dropped in 1993 over lack of participation or refusal to be publicly identified by accusers.
In 2014, two years after Inouye's death, senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York wrote in her autobiography about a male colleague who squeezed her waist and commented on her weight. Although not named in the autobiography, The New York Times identified Inouye as the perpetrator, setting off national discussion of Inouye's past. In 2017, discussion resurfaced in local Hawaii media about the power of Inouye, and hence deference given to him politically and publicly, with the #MeToo movement providing impetus for just one more of the nine accusers coming forward publicly. The former staffer told about how Inouye would routinely rub her shoulders and legs in the office. During a trip to the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, he gave her a ride to a hotel one night and then, upon arriving in the room, requested she sit next to him on the bed. She complied but immediately stood away, and called a fellow female staffer to join her there. The corroborator of her story requested to remain unidentified.
A state lawmaker, who learned about the 1992 accusations through a PBS television program, questioned the 2016 renaming of the Honolulu International Airport after Inouye. They declined seeking to undo the naming while receiving criticism from within and outside the Hawaii Democratic party for labelling Inouye as "an accused serial rapist."
Gang of 14
On May 23, 2005, Inouye was a member of a bipartisan group of 14 moderate senators, known as the Gang of 14, to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the "nuclear option", a means of forcibly ending a filibuster. Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, and William H. Pryor Jr.) would receive a vote by the full U.S. Senate.
Electoral history
Inouye never lost an election.
In August 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson placed a phone call to vice president and Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey, urging him to select Inouye as his running mate. Johnson went as far as to request a background check on Inouye from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Johnson told Humphrey that Inouye's World War II injuries would silence Humphrey's critics on the Vietnam War: "He answers Vietnam with that empty sleeve. He answers your problems with (Republican presumptive presidential nominee and former vice president Richard) Nixon with that empty sleeve", Johnson said. Humphrey eventually chose Edmund Muskie as his running mate, and lost the election. According to his chief of staff, Jennifer Sabas, Inouye knew that he was being considered as a vice presidential pick, but was uninterested in the possibility, apparently content with his current position.
Family
Inouye's first wife was Margaret "Maggie" Shinobu Awamura, who was working as a speech instructor at the University of Hawaiʻi when Inouye was attending as a prelaw student after the war. The two married on June 12, 1948, at the Harris Memorial Methodist Church in Honolulu. She died of cancer on March 13, 2006. On May 24, 2008, he married Irene Hirano in a private ceremony in Beverly Hills, California. Hirano was president and founding chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California. She resigned the position at the time of her marriage, in order to be closer to her husband. According to the Honolulu Advertiser, Inouye was 24 years older than Hirano. On May 27, 2010, Hirano was elected chair of the nation's second largest non-profit organization, The Ford Foundation. Hirano outlived him by more than seven years; she died on April 7, 2020.
Inouye's son Kenny was the guitarist for the hardcore punk band Marginal Man.
Honors
Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1968.
Grand Cross of the Philippine Legion of Honor in 1993.
On June 21, 2000, Inouye was presented the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton for his service during World War II.
In 2000, Inouye was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan in recognition of his long and distinguished career in public service.
In 2006, the U.S. Navy Memorial awarded Inouye its Naval Heritage award for his support of the U.S. Navy and the military during his terms in the Senate.
Grand Cross (Bayani) of the Order of Lakandula on August 14, 2006.
In 2007, Inouye was personally inducted as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by President of France Nicolas Sarkozy.
In February 2009, a bill was introduced in the Philippine House of Representatives by Rep. Antonio Diaz seeking to confer honorary Filipino citizenship on Inouye, Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Akaka, and Representative Bob Filner for their role in securing the passage of benefits for Filipino World War II veterans.
In June 2011, Inouye was appointed a Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers, the highest Japanese honor which may be conferred upon a foreigner who is not a head of state. Only the seventh American to be so honored, he is also the first American of Japanese descent to receive it. The conferment of the order was "to recognize his continued significant and unprecedented contributions to the enhancement of goodwill and understanding between Japan and the United States."
In 2011, Philippine president Benigno Aquino III conferred Order of Sikatuna upon Inouye. He had previously been awarded Order of Lakandula and a Philippine Republic Presidential Unit Citation.
Inouye was inducted as an honorary member of the Navajo Nation and titled "The Leader Who Has Returned With a Plan".
On August 8, 2013, Inouye was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. The citation in the press release reads as follows:
Daniel Inouye was a lifelong public servant. As a young man, he fought in World War II with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, for which he received the Medal of Honor. He was later elected to the Hawaii Territorial House of Representatives, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate. Senator Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in Congress, representing the people of Hawaii from the moment they joined the Union.
Awards and decorations
On May 27, 1947, Inouye was honorably discharged and returned home as a Captain with a Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star Medal, two Purple Hearts, and 12 other medals and citations. In 2000, his Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
Death
In 2012, Inouye began using a wheelchair in the Senate to preserve his knees, and received an oxygen concentrator to aid his breathing. In November 2012, he sustained a minor cut after falling in his apartment and was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. On December 6, he was again hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital so doctors could further regulate his oxygen intake, and was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center on December 10. He died there of respiratory complications seven days later on December 17, 2012. According to the senator's Congressional website, his last word was "Aloha." Prior to his death, Inouye left a letter encouraging Governor Neil Abercrombie to appoint Colleen Hanabusa to succeed Inouye should he become incapacitated; instead Abercrombie appointed Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz until a November 2014 special election, which Schatz won.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Inouye's death on the floor of the Senate, referring to Inouye as "certainly one of the giants of the Senate." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referred to Inouye as one of the finest Senators in United States history. President Barack Obama referred to him as a "true American hero".
Inouye's body lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda on December 20, 2012. President Obama, former president Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, House speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke at a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on December 21. Inouye's body was then flown to Hawaii where it lay in state at the Hawaii State Capitol on December 22. A second funeral service was held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu the following day.
Legacy
The Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing, founded in 1993, is part of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
He made a cameo appearance as himself in the 1994 film The Next Karate Kid, giving the opening speech at Arlington National Cemetery for a commendation for Japanese-Americans who fought in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II.
In 2001, the Forest Glen Annex at Fort Detrick in Silver Spring, Maryland dedicated building 503 as the Daniel K. Inouye Building, built to house the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) and the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC).
In 2007, The Citadel dedicated Inouye Hall at the Citadel/South Carolina Army National Guard Marksmanship Center to Senator Inouye, who helped make the Center possible.
In May 2013, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that the next would be named . The destroyer was officially christened at Bath Iron Works on June 22, 2019.
In November 2013, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association renamed its Trailblazer Award in honor of Inouye, posthumously honoring him with the Senator Daniel K. Inouye NAPABA Trailblazer Award.
In December 2013, the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope at Haleakala Observatory on Maui was renamed the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope.
Numerous federal properties at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam and around Hawai'i have been dedicated to Senator Inouye, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Daniel K. Inouye Regional Center (2013), the Hawaii Air National Guard Daniel K. Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations & Aircraft Maintenance Facility (2014), the Senator Daniel K. Inouye Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency building (2015), the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies at Fort Derussy (2015), and the Pacific Missile Range Facility Daniel K. Inouye Range and Operations Center on Kauai (2016).
In 2014, Israel named the simulator room of the Arrow anti-missile defense system in his honor, the first time that a military facility has been named after a foreign national.
A Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, tail number 5147, of the 535th Airlift Squadron, was dedicated Spirit of Daniel Inouye on August 20, 2014.
The Parade Field at Fort Benning was rededicated to honor Senator Inouye on September 12, 2014.
On April 27, 2017, Honolulu's airport was renamed Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in his honor.
In 2018, Honolulu-based Matson, Inc. named its newest container ship, the largest built in the United States, the Daniel K. Inouye.
The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo dedicated its pharmacy college the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy (DKICP) on December 4, 2019.
In August 2021, while visiting Japan for the Tokyo Olympics, First Lady Jill Biden dedicated a room in the U.S. ambassador's residence to Inouye and his wife, Irene.
See also
List of Asian American Medal of Honor recipients for World War II
List of Asian Americans in the United States Congress
List of United States Congress members who died in office (2000–)#2010s
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Winston, Mitch. Senator Daniel Inouye: WW II Hero and America Finest Senator (2022), Democrat of Hawaii
External links
Daniel K. Inouye Institute
1924 births
2012 deaths
20th-century American politicians
21st-century American politicians
American amputees
American military personnel of Japanese descent
American politicians of Japanese descent
American politicians with disabilities
American United Methodists
American writers of Japanese descent
Asian-American members of the United States House of Representatives
Asian-American United States senators
Burials in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
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Deaths from respiratory failure
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20B.%20Mayer
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Louis B. Mayer
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Louis Burt Mayer (; born Lazar Meir; July 12, 1884 – October 29, 1957) was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industry's most prestigious movie studio, accumulating the largest concentration of leading writers, directors, and stars in Hollywood.
Mayer was born in the Russian Empire and grew up poor in Saint John, New Brunswick. He quit school at 12 to support his family and later moved to Boston and purchased a small vaudeville theatre in Haverhill, Massachusetts, called the "Garlic Box" because it catered to poorer Italian immigrants. He renovated and expanded several other theatres in the Boston area catering to audiences of higher social classes. After expanding and moving to Los Angeles, he teamed with film producer Irving Thalberg and they developed hundreds of films. Mayer handled the business of running the studio, such as setting budgets and approving new productions, while Thalberg, still in his twenties, supervised all MGM productions.
Mayer claimed to believe in "wholesome entertainment" and went to great lengths to discover new actors and develop them into major stars. During his long reign at MGM, Mayer acquired many critics and supporters. Some stars did not appreciate his attempts to control their private lives, while others saw him as a concerned father figure. He was controversial for his treatment of the actors under his management, demanding compliance from female stars by threatening their livelihoods, such as in the case of Judy Garland, whom he forced to go on diets, take drugs, and work punishing schedules.
Mayer was forced to resign as MGM's vice president in 1951, when the studio's parent company, Loew's, Inc., wanted to improve declining profits. A staunch conservative, Mayer at one time was the chairman of the California Republican Party. In 1927 he was one of the founders of AMPAS, famous for its annual Academy Awards.
Early life
The exact date and location of Mayer's birth remain highly disputed. According to Bosley Crowther, Mayer was born "in a little town near Minsk" according to Samuel Marx in "Demre", according to Gary Carey in "Dmra, a village between Minsk and Vilnius" while Charles Higham and Scott Eyman believed that Mayer was born in Dymer near Kyiv in Ukraine. In addition, Andrzej Krakowski suggested that the birthplace has been misinterpreted and Mayer was in fact from the town of Mińsk Mazowiecki in eastern Poland, which at the time was subjugated by the Russian Empire.
According to his personal details in the U.S. immigration documents, the date was July 4, 1885. In addition he gave his birth year as 1882 in his marriage certificate while the April 1910 census states his age as 26 (b.1883). His parents were Jacob Meir and Sarah Meltzer (both Jewish) and he had two sisters — Yetta, born in c. 1878 and Ida, born in c. 1883. Mayer first moved with his family to Long Island, where they lived from 1887 to 1892 and where his two brothers were born—Rubin, in April 1888 and Jeremiah, in April 1891. Then, they moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where Mayer attended school.
His father started a scrap metal business, J. Mayer & Son. An immigrant unskilled in any trade, he struggled to earn a living. Young Louis quit school at age twelve to work with his father and help support his family. He roamed the streets with a cart that said "Junk Dealer" and collected any scrap metal he came across. When the owner of a tin business, John Wilson, saw him with his cart, he began giving him copper trimmings which were of no use and Mayer considered Wilson to be his first partner and his best friend. Wilson remembered that he was impressed with the boy's good manners and bright personality. Whenever Mayer visited Saint John in later years, he placed flowers on Wilson's grave, just as he did on his mother's.
"It was a crappy childhood", said Mayer's nephew Gerald. His family was poor and Mayer's father spoke little English and had no valuable skills. It thus became young Mayer's ambition and drive which supported the family. With his family speaking mostly Yiddish at home, his goal of self-education when he quit school was made more difficult.
In his spare time, he hung around the York Theatre, sometimes paying to watch the live vaudeville shows. He became enamored of the entertainment business. Then in 1904 the 20-year-old Mayer left Saint John for Boston, where he continued for a time in the scrap metal business, got married and took a variety of odd jobs to support his new family when his junk business lagged.
Early career
Mayer renovated the Gem Theater, a rundown, 600 seat burlesque house
in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which he reopened on November 28, 1907, as the Orpheum, his first movie theater. To overcome an unfavorable reputation that the building had, Mayer opened with a religious film at his new Orpheum, From the Manger to the Cross, in 1912. Within a few years, he owned all five of Haverhill's theaters, and, with Nathan H. Gordon, created the Gordon-Mayer partnership that controlled the largest theater chain in New England. During his years in Haverhill, Mayer lived at 16 Middlesex St. in the city's Bradford section, closer to city center at Temple Street and at 2 1/2 Merrimac St. Mayer also lived in a house he built at 27 Hamilton Ave.
In 1914, the partners organized their own film distribution agency in Boston. Mayer paid D.W. Griffith $25,000 for the exclusive rights to show The Birth of a Nation (1915) in New England. Mayer made the bid on a film that one of his scouts had seen, but he had not, although he was well aware of the plot surrounding the Ku Klux Klan; his decision netted him over $100,000. Using earnings from the popularity of The Birth of a Nation, Mayer partnered with Richard A. Rowland in 1916 to create Metro Pictures Corporation, a talent booking agency, in New York City.
Two years later, Mayer moved to Los Angeles and formed his own production company, Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. The first production was 1918's Virtuous Wives. A partnership was set up with B. P. Schulberg to make the Mayer-Schulberg Studio
In late 1922, Mayer was introduced to Irving Thalberg, then working for Universal Pictures. Mayer was searching for someone to help him manage his small, but dynamic and fast-growing studio. At that first meeting, Thalberg made an immediate positive impression on Mayer, writes biographer Roland Flamini. Later that evening, after Thalberg had left, Mayer told the studio's attorney, Edwin Loeb, to let Thalberg know that if he wanted to work for Mayer, he would be treated like a son.
Although their personalities were in many ways opposite, Mayer being more outspoken and nearly twice the younger man's age, Thalberg was hired as vice president in charge of production at Louis B. Mayer Productions. Years later, Mayer's daughter, Irene Mayer Selznick, found it hard to believe that anyone "so boyish could be so important". According to Flamini, Thalberg was hired because, although Mayer was an astute businessman, he lacked Thalberg's strong ability to combine making films of quality with gaining commercial success.
Heading new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios
Mayer's big breakthrough was in April 1924 when his company subsequently merged with two others to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The 24-year-old Thalberg was made part-owner and accorded the same position as vice president in charge of production.
Marcus Loew, owner of the Loew's chain, merged Metro Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn's Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, and Mayer Pictures into Metro-Goldwyn. Loew had bought Metro and Goldwyn some months before, but could not find anyone to oversee his new holdings on the West Coast. Mayer, with his proven success as a producer, was an obvious choice. He was named head of studio operations and a Loew's vice president, based in Los Angeles, reporting to Loew's longtime right-hand man Nicholas Schenck. He would hold this post for the next 27 years. Before the year was out, Mayer added his name to the studio with Loew's blessing, renaming it Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Three years after the merger, MGM became the most successful studio in Hollywood.
Loew died in 1927, and Schenck became president of Loew's. Mayer and Schenck hated each other intensely; Mayer reportedly referred to his boss, whose name was pronounced "Skenk", as "Mr. Skunk" in private. Two years later, Schenck agreed to sell Loew's – and MGM – to William Fox, which angered Mayer. But despite his important role in MGM, Mayer was not a shareholder, and had no standing to challenge the sale. So he instead used his Washington connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay the merger on antitrust grounds. During the summer of 1929, Fox was severely injured in an auto accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash had wiped out his fortune, destroying any chance of the deal going through even if the Justice Department had lifted its objections. Nonetheless, Schenck believed Mayer had cost him a fortune and never forgave him, causing an already frigid relationship to become even worse.
Working with Irving Thalberg
Mayer and Thalberg were a brilliant team that worked well together. They relied on each other, and neither operated unilaterally. Mayer took charge of the business part of running the studio, such as setting budgets and approving new productions. Thalberg, eventually called the "boy wonder", took charge of all MGM productions. Director Joseph M. Newman said that their skills complemented each other well, with Thalberg having a great story mind, and Mayer having superior business acumen.
They shared a guiding philosophy, to make the best motion pictures they could at any cost, even if it meant reshooting the entire picture. More important than showing a consistent profit with their films was, for them, to see MGM become a high-quality studio. That goal began with their early silent films, when stars such as Greta Garbo, Mayer's discovery, acted in lush settings with spectacular camera work.
Although they initially got along well, their relationship frayed over philosophical differences. Thalberg preferred literary works over the crowd-pleasers Mayer wanted. He ousted Thalberg as production chief in 1932, while Thalberg was recovering from a heart attack, and replaced him with producer David O. Selznick.
But MGM received a serious blow when Thalberg died suddenly on September 14, 1936, at age 37. His death came as a shock to Mayer and everyone at MGM and the other studios. Mayer issued statements to the press, calling Thalberg "the finest friend a man could ever have ... the guiding inspiration behind the artistic progress on the screen." His funeral was a major news event in Los Angeles. All the studios observed five minutes of silence, while MGM closed its studio for the entire day.
Mayer dedicated MGM's front office building and christened it the Thalberg Building. He had the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences establish the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, given to producers to recognize their exceptional careers, now considered one of the most prestigious awards in the Hollywood film industry.
Continued success after Thalberg's death
After Thalberg died, many in Hollywood expected Mayer to "stumble and fall". Director Joseph M. Newman saw the studio start to change for the worse. Some actors were affected, such as Luise Rainer, winner of Hollywood's first back-to-back Oscars, who felt that the death of Thalberg marked the death of her career: "Had it not been that he died, I think I may have stayed much longer in films." Joan Crawford was also concerned, feeling that with Thalberg gone, the concept of the quality "big" picture "pretty much went out the window".
However, MGM under Mayer's leadership continued to produce successful movies. Mayer made himself head of production as well as studio chief. For the next ten years, MGM grew and thrived. 1939 was an especially "golden" year: besides distributing Gone with the Wind, MGM released The Wizard of Oz, Babes in Arms, At the Circus, and The Women. Garbo laughed in Ninotchka; Goodbye, Mr. Chips won an Oscar (it was nominated for seven); and Hedy Lamarr, another of Mayer's personal discoveries, made her film debut.
Mayer became the first person in American history to earn a million-dollar salary. For nine years from 1937, when he earned $1,300,000—equivalent to $ today,Mayer was the highest-paid man in the United States.
Managing MGM
Management style
In his overall management skills, Mayer was considered a great executive, someone who could have run General Motors equally as well as a large studio like MGM, said producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz. He worked at the studio all the time, and decisively, without any fixed schedule, but disliked paperwork. Some said Mayer had a lot in common with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst had financed multiple MGM pictures, while MGM benefited by having film reviews included nationwide in the Hearst newspapers.
Hearst, 20 years Mayer's senior, affectionately referred to Mayer as "son" and they became good friends. Mayer took Hearst's suggestion to build himself an office bungalow on the MGM lot, something Hearst said was appropriate for a studio head: "Everybody of distinction from all over the world comes to Los Angeles and everybody who comes wants to see your studio and they all want to meet you and do meet you, so put on a few airs son, and provide the atmosphere." Director Clarence Brown pointed out that overall, Mayer's skill was similar to Hearst's in that they both learned by doing. What Mayer couldn't do on his own, he hired the best talent he could find to do for him. "Like Hearst and Henry Ford," said Brown, "he was an executive genius".
Mayer's temper was widely known, but most people knew that his sudden bursts of anger faded quickly. With those working underneath him, he was usually patient and preferred to leave department heads alone, and would fire executives if they failed to produce successful films over a long period.
Growth of the studio
At its peak in the 1940s, MGM employed six thousand people, had three entrances, and covered 185 acres in Culver City, California, outside of Los Angeles. It had forty cameras and sixty sound machines, used on its six separate lots, and connected with its own rail line. About 2,700 people ate in the commissary every day. Power was supplied by an in-house electrical plant which could light a town of 25,000. In addition, MGM maintained a police force of fifty officers—larger than that of Culver City itself. "Anywhere from sixteen to eighteen pictures were being shot at one time", remembers actress Ann Rutherford. "They were either shooting or preparing to shoot on every sound stage."
Creating a "star system"
Mayer helped create what is termed the "star system". At one point he explained the process he went through in creating a star:
Hiring actors and staff
During MGM's growth period, Mayer traveled often, and among his personal discoveries were Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, Norma Shearer and Greer Garson. He also signed up dancing team Marge and Gower Champion and discovered Mario Lanza, then a young tenor from Philadelphia, who Mayer hoped to turn into a "singing Clark Gable".
When hiring new actors, he typically wanted them to agree to stay with the studio for either three or seven years, during which time they would become one of the MGM "family". The studio usually succeeded in hiring those it wanted since they offered the highest salaries. With executives, Mayer took more time before taking them, wanting to know them first on a personal level. He respected intelligence and talent overall, said manager Joe Cohn: "One time he said to me, 'Never be afraid of hiring a fellow smarter than you are. You'll only learn from them.'"
Mayer took pride in his ability to hire good people, and once hired, he left them alone to do their job without interference. That policy held true whether the person was a producer, a department head or simply a janitor. As a result, while other studios went through continuous upheavals or reorganizations, Mayer's hands-off policy kept MGM stable and sound, where employees felt their jobs were secure."
When meeting a new employee, he always told them to come to him personally for help with any problems. Some, like Barbara Stanwyck, considered this attitude to be "pompous" however, since he used his position to meddle in people's lives. Others, such as actor Edward G. Robinson, after his first meeting Mayer, said "I found him to be a man of truth ... Behind his gutta-percha face and roly-poly figure, it was evident there was a man of steel—but well-mannered steel." British director Victor Saville remembered him as being "the best listener. He wanted to know. He was the devil's advocate. He would prod you and question you and suck you dry of any knowledge."
Working with studio people
His attitude and conversational style were both professional and animated, sometimes "theatrical", observed June Caldwell, secretary to Eddie Mannix, Mayer's assistant. "Bombastic and colorful, but I never heard him use nasty language ... he had a great loyalty to everybody, and everybody respected him. And he would listen ... You could work with him." His manners were considered "impeccable".
With MGM's film output as high as one film each week, he never panicked over a bad picture. If somebody suggested canceling a movie and cutting the studio's losses, when a film had consistent production problems, Mayer would typically refuse. He relied on his instinct and intuition, said actress Esther Williams. Although he did not read full scripts, if he was given the framework of a story, he could assemble the pieces needed to see if it could be a successful film.
Occasionally, when producers, directors, writers or actors were deadlocked over how to handle a problem in a film, he would mediate. On Rosalie, for instance, when Nelson Eddy refused to sing a song he thought was too melodramatic, its songwriter, Cole Porter, went to Mayer and played it for him. Mayer was moved to tears by the song, and told Eddy to sing it. "Imagine making Louis B. Mayer cry," Porter later told friends.
Response to technical innovations
With regard to any technical issues with productions, Mayer left the details and solutions to MGM's engineers. He, though, like other top film executives and Hollywood stars in the 1920s and early 1930s, was often too quick to dismiss news of inventions and major innovations on the horizon that might profoundly change the movie industry or possibly challenge in the future the growing dominance of films in the realm of American entertainment. Beyond the well-entrenched aspect of sound by 1932, other technologies being discussed at that time in newspapers and on studio lots included color features, widescreen formatting, and even early television. In August 1932, after an "exclusive" interview with Mayer in New York, The Film Daily reported the movie mogul's assertions that such potential developments would never impact motion pictures in substantial, meaningful ways:
Being a father figure
With many of his actors, Mayer was like an overprotective father. In some cases, especially with child actors, he could become closely involved in managing their everyday life, telling them where to shop, where to dine, or what doctor to visit. He liked giving suggestions about how they could take better care of themselves. He sometimes arranged marriages, and coping with occupational hazards such as alcoholism, suicide, and eccentric sexual habits were as much a part of his job as negotiating contracts with stars and directors. When he learned that June Allyson was dating David Rose, for instance, he told her to stop seeing him: "If you care about your reputation, you cannot be seen with a married man."
Stories about his sobbing or rages have often been repeated in books, but few employees ever saw that part of him. "Mr. Mayer was to me like a father", said Ricardo Montalbán. "He really thought of the people under contract as his boys and girls." Mayer's paternalism could extend to productions; for example, he revised the Dr. Kildare stories in order to keep an ailing Lionel Barrymore, who required the use of a wheelchair due to arthritis, on the job.
Some, such as young starlet Elizabeth Taylor, disliked Mayer overseeing their lives; Taylor called him a "monster", while Mickey Rooney, another young actor who co-starred with Taylor when she was 12, formed the opposite impression: "He was the daddy of everybody and vitally interested in everybody. They always talk badly about Mayer, but he was really a wonderful guy ... he listened and you listened." Rooney spoke from experience, as he himself had some confrontations with Mayer, observed film historian Jane Ellen Wayne:
One of Rooney's repeat costars in Andy Hardy and other films was Judy Garland, with whom he made nine films. Garland stated in her unfinished autobiography that Mayer molested her. In the late 1940s, she began having personal problems which affected her acting, and Mayer tried his best to protect her star reputation while continuing to have her overworked and making money for MGM. She suffered from addictions to prescription drugs, severely disordered eating and domestic strains, as well as a multitude of issues with her mental health. This was largely the result of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, her mother, and the era's ignorance of diet and drugs. When her absences caused the production of Summer Stock to go far over budget, producer Joe Pasternak suggested that Mayer cut his losses and cancel the picture. Mayer refused, telling him, "Judy Garland has made this studio a fortune in the good days, and the least we can do is to give her one more chance. If you stop production now, it'll finish her", in what some consider to be his last attempt at holding on to her fame for the benefit of the studio. She completed the film, but during her next picture, Annie Get Your Gun, the studio finally ran out of patience. Costar Howard Keel recalls that "she began to fall apart". After the studio fired her, she attempted suicide.
Developing child stars
Mayer wanted the studio to nurture child stars for MGM's family-oriented productions. The studio provided all the essential services, such as formal education and medical care. They were given acting or dancing tutors. Mayer loved children, wrote biographer Kitty Kelley: "They provided the magic that brought millions of people stampeding into theaters every week ... They were the good, clean, wholesome elements of the folksy entertainment that was MGM's specialty."
Jackie Coogan, then 11, marked the studio's debut using child stars with his role in The Rag Man in 1925. During Hollywood's golden age, MGM had more child actors than any other studio, including Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Freddie Bartholomew, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, and Roddy McDowall.
Themes, musicals and formula
While MGM's films during the 1920s and 1930s were often known for containing adult themes and strong female stars, such as Greta Garbo, after Thalberg's early death in 1936, Mayer promoted a change in emphasis to more male leads, family themes, and child stars. And unusual for a movie mogul, he took moral positions in his movies, especially when it came to portraying family values—as in the Andy Hardy series. One of Mayer's proudest moments came when Mickey Rooney, who starred as Andy Hardy, was given a special award by the Academy in 1942 for "furthering the American way of life."
Mayer tried to express an idealized vision of men, women, and families in the real world they lived in. He also believed in beauty, glamour, and the "star system". In MGM films, "marriage was sacrosanct and mothers were objects of veneration". Author Peter Hay states that Mayer "cherished the Puritan values of family and hard work." When he hired writers, he made those objectives clear at the outset, once telling screenwriter Frances Marion that he never wanted his own daughters or his wife to be embarrassed when watching an MGM movie. "I worship good women, honorable men, and saintly mothers", he told her. Mayer was serious about that, once coming from behind his desk and knocking director Erich von Stroheim to the floor when he said that all women were whores.
Mayer knew that formula in his themes and stories usually works. He felt that the general public, especially Americans, like to see stars, spectacle, and optimism on screen, and if possible, with a little sentiment attached. They don't like to be challenged or instructed, but comforted and entertained.
Therefore, having messages was less important to Mayer than giving his audience pure entertainment and escapism. In his screen dramas, he wanted them to be melodramatic, whereas in comedies, he often laced them with strong doses of sentimentality. "He loved swaggering, charismatic hams like Lionel Barrymore and Marie Dressler", wrote Eyman.
Musicals were high on his list of preferred genres. Anxious to make more of them, on a hunch, he asked songwriter Arthur Freed to be associate producer for The Wizard of Oz. As Mayer hoped, Freed's unit at MGM produced many films considered among the best musicals ever made: For Me and My Gal, Girl Crazy, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls, The Pirate, Easter Parade, The Barkleys of Broadway, On the Town, An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and Gigi. Mayer's greatest contributions to posterity are said to be his musicals. Both An American in Paris and Gigi won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
World War II issues
Unlike Charlie Chaplin, who produced The Great Dictator, the other, much larger Hollywood studios lacked the freedom to make such independent films. Mayer understood that the Germans could ban or boycott Hollywood films throughout much of Europe, with serious economic implications, since 30 to 40 percent of Hollywood's income came from European audiences. Nevertheless, MGM produced Three Comrades in 1938, despite movie censor Joseph Breen warning Mayer that the film was "a serious indictment of the German nation and people and is certain to be violently resented by the present government in that country."
After the Second World War began in Europe in September 1939, Mayer authorized the production of two anti-Nazi films, The Mortal Storm and Escape. At the same time, Warner Brothers produced Confessions of a Nazi Spy. The German government informed the studios that "those films would be remembered by Germany when — not if — they won the war", writes Eyman. Warners had to post guards to protect the family of actor Edward G. Robinson, and the Germans threatened Mayer with a boycott of all MGM films.
From September 1939 until January 1940, all films that could be considered anti-Nazi were banned by the Hays Office. The U.S. ambassador to England, Joseph Kennedy, told the studios to stop making pro-British and anti-German films. Kennedy felt that "British defeat was imminent and there was no point in America holding out alone: 'With England licked, the party's over,' said Kennedy."
Defying those pleadings, MGM produced Mrs. Miniver, a simple story about a family in rural England trying to get by during the early years of the war. Eddie Mannix agreed that "someone should salute England. And even if we lose $100,000, that'll be okay."
Mayer wanted British actress Greer Garson, his personal discovery, to star, but she refused to play a matronly role. Mayer implored her "to have the same faith in me" that he had in her. He read from the script, having her visualize the image she would present to the world, "a woman who survives and endures. She was London. No, more than that, she was ... England!" Garson accepted the role, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. Mrs. Miniver won six Academy Awards and became the top box office hit of 1942.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill both loved the film, said historian Emily Yellin, and Roosevelt wanted prints rushed to theaters nationwide. The Voice of America radio network broadcast the minister's speech from the film, magazines reprinted it, and it was copied onto leaflets and dropped over German-occupied countries. Churchill sent Mayer a telegram claiming that "Mrs. Miniver is propaganda worth 100 battleships." Bosley Crowther (1960 biographer of Mayer, below), wrote in his New York Times review that Mrs. Miniver was the finest film yet made about the war, "and a most exalting tribute to the British."
The following year, 1943, saw the release of another Oscar-winning film, this one aimed at supporting the home front, titled The Human Comedy. It was Mayer's personal favorite and the favorite of its director, Clarence Brown. Mayer assisted the U.S. government by producing a number of short films related to the war, and helped produce pro-American films such as Joe Smith, American, in 1942.
Declining years at MGM
The post-war years saw a gradual decline in profits for MGM and the other studios. The number of high-grossing films in 1947 dwindled to six, compared to twenty-two a year earlier. MGM had to let go many of its top producers and other executives. Mayer was pressured to tighten expenses by the studio's parent company, although Mayer's reputation as a "big-picture man" would make that difficult. They began looking for someone, another Thalberg, to redo the studio system.
In the interim, Mayer kept making "big pictures". When RKO turned down financing of Frank Capra's State of the Union in 1948 because of its expensive budget, Mayer took on the project. He filled the cast with MGM stars including Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Adolphe Menjou and Angela Lansbury, but the film only broke even. Nicholas Schenck called Mayer and insisted that he "cut, cut", recalls director George Sidney. Mayer replied, "A studio isn't salami, Nick." "L.B. would ask only one question: 'Can you make it better?' It was all he cared about", said Sidney.
As pressure built to find a new Thalberg-style manager to handle production, Dore Schary was brought in from RKO, and began work on July 14, 1948, as vice president in charge of production, working under Mayer's direction.
Some long-time studio executives saw this change as a sign of the eventual downfall of MGM. When she heard the news, Lillian Burns Sidney, George Sidney's wife, marched into Mayer's office and announced, "Now you've done it. You've ruined everything." She told Mayer that she was afraid Schary would eliminate all future musicals, comedies and adventure movies, and replace them with the "message" movies that he preferred. She expressed her fear: "They won't have need for anybody around here. Even you! You'll see."
By mutual consent with Loew's, Mayer resigned from MGM in August 1951. On his final day, as he walked down a red carpet laid out in front of the Thalberg Building, executives, actors and staff lined the path and applauded him for his contributions. "He was so respected," said June Caldwell, Eddie Mannix's secretary. Many assumed that his leaving meant the end of an era. Actor Turhan Bey said, "In every meaningful way, it was the end of Hollywood."
Mayer, for a period after he left MGM, tried to finance and assemble a new group of film stars and directors to produce his own films as an independent. He told the press that his films would carry on in the tradition of MGM's previous style of film subjects.
In 1952, he became chairman of the board and the single largest shareholder in Cinerama, and had hoped to produce a property he owned, Paint Your Wagon, in the widescreen process, but without success. He left Cinerama in 1954 when the company was sold.
Personal life
Accusations of sexual abuse
Louis B. Mayer has been accused of sexual abuse, including having groped a then-teenage Judy Garland. According to Gerald Clarke's book Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, Mayer "held meetings with the young woman seated on his lap, his hands on her chest". In an interview with Larry King, Shirley Temple claimed that Mayer disrobed before her when she was 12, and she proceeded to laugh until he threw her out.
Mayer reportedly pursued Jean Howard in hopes of establishing a sexual relationship, but without success. Cari Beauchamp, author of Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood, observed: "Mayer chased actress Jean Howard around the room. When she said, 'No way', and went off and married Charles K. Feldman, the agent, Mayer banned Charlie from the lot. For a long time after, he wouldn't allow any of Feldman's clients to work at MGM." In her autobiography, Esther Ralston recorded that her career was sabotaged by Mayer when she refused to sleep with him.
Family
Mayer had two daughters from his first marriage to Margaret Shenberg (1883–1955), which ended in divorce in 1947. The elder of these, Edith (Edie) Mayer (1905–1988), whom he would later become estranged from and disinherit, married producer William Goetz (who served as vice president for Twentieth-Century Fox and later became president of Universal-International). The younger, Irene (1907–1990), was the first wife of producer David O. Selznick and became a successful theatrical producer. In 1948, Mayer married former actress Lorena Layson Danker (1907–1985).
At home, Mayer was boss. "In our family, all the basic decisions were made by him", remembers his nephew, Gerald Mayer. "He was a giant. ... Were we afraid of him? Jesus Christ, yes!" And although he never spoke Yiddish at the office, he sometimes spoke Yiddish with "some of the relatives", said his daughter Irene.
Mayer's activities for the Jewish Home for the Aged led to a strong friendship with Edgar Magnin, the rabbi at the Wilshire Temple in Los Angeles. "Edgar and Louis B. virtually built that temple", said Herbert Brin.
Entertainment and leisure
At his home on Saint Cloud Road in the East Gate Bel Air neighborhood, Sundays were reserved for brunches in what was an open house, which often included visiting statesmen or former U.S. presidents, along with various producers, directors or stars. There would be a buffet supper, drinks, and later a movie. Mayer drank almost no alcohol, cared nothing for fine cuisine, and did not gamble, but might play penny-ante card games for fun.
For leisure activities, he liked going to the Hollywood Bowl, especially the annual John Philip Sousa concert. Sousa's patriotic-style music built up his pride in America, and he "would be stoked with extra exuberance for days afterward", states Eyman. Mayer also enjoyed ballet and opera, and concerts where violinist Jascha Heifetz or pianist Arthur Rubinstein performed.
While Mayer seldom discussed his early life, his partiality towards Canada would sometimes be revealed, especially after Canada entered World War II in September 1939 and the United States followed more than two years later in December 1941. On one occasion in 1943, Mary Pickford called to tell him she met a movie-struck Royal Canadian Air Force pilot from New Brunswick, where Mayer grew up. Mayer asked her to have him drop by the studio. The pilot, Charles Foster, recalled his visit: "Mary's driver took me through the gates, and I saw this little man come running down the steps of the Thalberg Building. I thought, 'Oh, he's sent a man to greet me.' And I got out of the car, and this man threw his arms around me and said, 'Welcome to my studio.' "
Mayer took him on a personal tour of the studio, and Foster remembers that "everybody waved to him and he waved back. He spoke to people and knew them by name. I was shocked." Mayer invited him back for lunch the next day. But before Foster arrived, Mayer had invited every Canadian in Hollywood to meet the flier, including Fay Wray, Walter Pidgeon, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson, Rod Cameron, Deanna Durbin, Walter Huston, Ann Rutherford, and even his main competitor, Jack Warner. Mayer told him, "When this war is over, if you want to come back here, I'll find a job for you." Foster said "It was like he was the father I never knew."
Politics
Active in Republican Party politics, Mayer served as the vice chairman of the California Republican Party in 1931 and 1932, and as its state chairman in 1932 and 1933. As a delegate to the 1928 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Mayer supported Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover of California. Mayer became friends with California Governor James Rolph Jr., Oakland Tribune publisher Joseph R. Knowland, and Marshall Hale. Joseph M. Schenck was an alternate delegate at the convention. Mayer was a delegate to the 1932 Republican National Convention with fellow Californians Knowland, Rolph, and Earl Warren. Mayer endorsed President Herbert Hoover's failed reelection bid.
Mayer was a Freemason.
Horse racing hobby
Mayer owned or bred a number of successful thoroughbred racehorses at his ranch in Perris, California, near Los Angeles. It was considered one of the finest racing stables in the United States and raised the standards of the California racing business. Among his horses were Your Host, sire of Kelso; the 1945 U.S. Horse of the Year, Busher; and the 1959 Preakness Stakes winner, Royal Orbit. Eventually Mayer sold off the stable, partly to finance his divorce in 1947. His 248 horses brought more than $4.4 million. In 1976, Thoroughbred of California magazine named him "California Breeder of the Century".
Death
Mayer died of leukemia on October 29, 1957. He was buried in the Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California. His sister, Ida Mayer Cummings, and brothers Jerry and Rubin also are buried there.
Legacy
Mayer and his lieutenants built a company that was regarded by the public and his peers alike as the pinnacle of the movie industry. "Louis B. Mayer defined MGM, just as MGM defined Hollywood, and Hollywood defined America", writes biographer Scott Eyman.
In 1951, he was given an honorary Oscar for heading MGM for over 25 years. At the event, screenwriter Charles Brackett presented the award and thanked him for guiding MGM's "production policy with foresight, aggressiveness and with a real desire for taste and quality". Mayer was also thanked for founding and developing new personalities and for bringing the Hollywood "star system into full flower".
Although Mayer was often disliked and even feared by many in the studio, editor Sam Marx explains that "his reputation is far worse than it should be. He had to be strong to do his job, and he couldn't do that without making enemies." Director Clarence Brown compared him to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst:
Mayer never wrote or directed movies, and never pretended to tell writers what to write or art directors what to design. But he understood movies and their audience. According to Eyman, "Mayer's view of America became America's view of itself." Because of the stars, the stories, the glamour, the music, and the way they were presented, audiences the world over would often applaud the moment they saw the MGM lion. Mayer was the constant at MGM who set the tone. At Mayer's funeral in 1957, Spencer Tracy expressed Mayer's ambitions:
Honors and recognition
Revered in his home country, Mayer has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.
A street in the Canadian city of Laval, Quebec a suburb of Montreal, is named Rue Louis-B-Mayer.
The primary screening facility for Loyola Marymount University's School of Film and Television—the Mayer Theatre—is named after him. Mayer permitted the university's sports teams to use the MGM lion as their mascot.
The main theatre at Santa Clara University bears his name.
Mayer was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1990.
The Louis B. Mayer Research Laboratories building at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston opened in 1988.
Mayer is enshrined in the Citizens Hall of Fame in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
Filmography
Producer
Portrayals in popular culture
Mayer has been portrayed numerous times in film and television including:
Harlow (1965) (by Jack Kruschen)
Gable and Lombard (1976) (by Allen Garfield)
Rainbow (1978) (by Martin Balsam)
The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980) (by Harold Gould)
Mommie Dearest (1981) (by Howard Da Silva)
Malice in Wonderland (1985) (by Richard Dysart)
RKO 281 (1999) (by David Suchet)
The Three Stooges (2000) (by David Baldwin)
Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001) (by Al Waxman)
De-Lovely (2004) (by Peter Polycarpou)
The Aviator (2004) (by Stanley DeSantis)
Trumbo (2015) (by Richard Portnow)
The Last Tycoon (2016) (by Saul Rubinek)
Feud (2017) (by Kerry Stein)
Judy (2019) (by Richard Cordery)
Mank (2020) (by Arliss Howard)
William Saroyan wrote a short story about L. B. Mayer in his 1971 book, Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody.
Characters based on Mayer
Pat Brady in the 1941 F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Last Tycoon. He was played by Robert Mitchum in the 1976 film adaptation, and Kelsey Grammer in the 2016 TV series.
Stanley Shriner Hoff in The Big Knife (1955) (by Rod Steiger) was based in part on Mayer.
Cyril H. Bean, referred to by his employees as "The Head", in the 1966 Jacqueline Susann novel Valley of the Dolls
Jack Lipnick in Barton Fink (1991) (by Michael Lerner, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor)
L.B. Mammoth in the animated film Cats Don't Dance (1997) (voice-acted by George Kennedy)
See also
Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood
Selig Polyscope Company
List of Freemasons
List of people from Belarus
Notes
References
Further reading
Hay, Peter. (1991). MGM: When the Lion Roars Turner Publishing.
Selznick, Irene Mayer (May 1983). A Private View. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-40192-1.
Gary Carey, (September 1981), All the Stars in Heaven: Louis B Mayer's MGM. Dutton ISBN 0525052453
Samuel Marx, (June 1975), Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-believe Saints, Random House, ISBN 0394488423
Bosley Crowther (March 1960). Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (Reviewed by John K. Hutchens, New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1960, p. 15.)
External links
1880s births
1957 deaths
People from Kiev Governorate
Russian Jews
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Canada
Canadian people of Russian-Jewish descent
Canadian emigrants to the United States
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American film producers
American film studio executives
American film production company founders
American Freemasons
Film producers from California
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executives
American racehorse owners and breeders
Businesspeople from Los Angeles
California Republicans
California Republican Party chairs
Canadian Freemasons
People from Perris, California
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences founders
Academy Honorary Award recipients
Deaths from leukemia
Deaths from cancer in California
Burials at Home of Peace Cemetery
20th-century American businesspeople
Conservatism in the United States
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings%20River%20%28California%29
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Kings River (California)
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The Kings River (), historically called Wimmel-che by the Yokuts, is a river draining the Sierra Nevada mountain range in central California in the United States. Its headwaters originate along the Sierra Crest in and around Kings Canyon National Park and form the eponymous Kings Canyon, one of the deepest river gorges in North America. The river is impounded in Pine Flat Lake before flowing into the San Joaquin Valley (the southern half of the Central Valley) southeast of Fresno. With its upper and middle course in Fresno County, the Kings River diverges into multiple branches in Kings County, with some water flowing south to the old Tulare Lake bed and the rest flowing north to the San Joaquin River. However, most of the water is consumed for irrigation well upstream of either point.
Inhabited for thousands of years by the Yokuts and other native groups, the Kings River basin once fed a vast network of seasonal wetlands around Tulare Lake that supported millions of waterfowl, fish, and game animals, in turn providing sustenance for indigenous peoples. Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake in the western U.S., at the middle of an endorheic basin also fed by the Kaweah, Tule and Kern Rivers. The river was named by Gabriel Moraga, the commander of a Spanish military expedition in 1806, but it was not until California became a U.S. state in 1850 that many Europeans arrived and settled along the Kings River, driving out the area's original inhabitants. Logging and livestock grazing inflicted significant environmental damage on the upper parts of the river system, before the federal government moved to establish national parks and preserves there.
The Kings has a long history of water development, going back to the mid-19th century when farmers made their first attempts to irrigate with Kings River water. In the early 1900s Tulare Lake and its surrounding wetlands were diked, drained and reclaimed for agriculture; the construction of Pine Flat Dam in the 1950s tamed the river's seasonal floods. The battle for control over Kings River water produced extended conflicts, including a set of dams proposed in what would become Kings Canyon National Park. Today, the river irrigates about 1.1 million acres (4,500 km2) of some of the most productive farmland in the country, and is also used extensively for hydropower generation, and water-based and backcountry recreation.
Course
All three forks of the Kings River originate as snowmelt in the high Sierra Nevada mountains. The Middle and South Forks begin in Kings Canyon National Park, and join in the Monarch Wilderness (Sierra and Sequoia National Forests) to form the Kings River. The North Fork, which begins in the John Muir Wilderness of the Sierra National Forest, joins the Kings River further downstream near Pine Flat Lake, the only major reservoir on the river. Much of the upper Kings River consists of remote backcountry and wilderness areas, accessible only by non-motorized trails. The entire upper course of the Kings River is in Fresno County; in the Central Valley, the Kings River also flows through parts of Tulare County and Kings County.
Headwaters
The South Fork is the longest tributary of the Kings River, originating on the Sierra Crest at the far eastern edge of Kings Canyon National Park. It flows south, then flows west through the Cedar Grove section of Kings Canyon, a glacial valley with high granite cliffs and a meadow floor which has been compared in appearance to Yosemite Valley. The Middle Fork flows for through some of the park's most difficult-to-access backcountry, including Simpson Meadow and Tehipite Valley. The South and Middle Forks converge in the Monarch Wilderness at an elevation of just outside the national park to form the Kings River in the deepest part of Kings Canyon. With Spanish Peak towering above the north side of the river, and summits as high as on the south side, Kings Canyon is both deeper and narrower than the Grand Canyon.
Below the confluence of the Middle and South Forks, the Kings River flows swiftly westward for about , carving a canyon more than deep in places. Major tributaries of the Kings River in this section include Tenmile and Mill Flat Creeks, both from the south; a dam on Tenmile Creek creates Hume Lake. Another notable feature along this area of the Kings Canyon is Garlic Falls, a tiered waterfall on a tributary of the Kings more than in height. The canyon is roadless as far as the Upper Kings Campground near Verplank Creek; below the campground the river is followed by Trimmer Springs Road.
The Kings River passes Rodgers Crossing and receives the North Fork from the right near Balch Camp. The North Fork is about long and flows mainly through the Sierra National Forest. It is dammed at Wishon Reservoir, which serves as the lower reservoir for the Helms Pumped Storage Plant, one of the biggest pumped-storage hydroelectric plants in California. The North Fork passes through several other hydro plants before it joins with the Kings River. The main Kings then flows into Pine Flat Lake, the large reservoir created by Pine Flat Dam, which can store up to of water. Constructed in 1954, Pine Flat Dam provides flood control, irrigation and hydroelectricity for the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Lower river
The Kings River emerges from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada near Piedra, about downstream of Pine Flat Dam. From there it flows across the gently sloping alluvial plain of the San Joaquin Valley, which today is one of the most productive agricultural regions of the United States. Here the Kings River encounters a large number of diversions that serve both irrigation and flood control purposes. Two key irrigation structures along the lower river are the Fresno Weir and People's Weir; both divert a substantial part of the river's flow into canals. The Kings River flows south-southwest past Sanger and Reedley, crossing briefly into northwest Tulare County before entering Kings County. At Kingsburg Cole Slough splits off to the northwest, rejoining the main stem about downstream at Laton.
About north of Lemoore the Kings River splits into a pair of distributaries, the North Fork and the South Fork (not to be confused with the North and South Forks upstream in the Sierra Nevada). The Army Weir controls the amount of water flowing into either branch. Fresno Slough diverges from the North Fork and flows northwest, seasonally carrying floodwaters from the Kings River to the San Joaquin River at Mendota. This is the only branch of the Kings River to reach the San Joaquin, and consequently the Pacific Ocean. The remainder of the North Fork turns south below Fresno Slough, rejoining the South Fork west of Lemoore. There is also a smaller distributary called Clark's Fork which splits from the South Fork and enters the North Fork just above where all the forks re-join.
From there the Kings River flows due south through Kings County, past Stratford, and approaches the old Tulare Lake bed. The river terminates about northeast of Kettleman City at a junction with a canal carrying water from the Tule River. Today, the old lake bed is used for agriculture and diked to prevent flooding; floodwaters are pumped into about of evaporation basins. In most years, the dams on the Kings and other rivers flowing into Tulare Lake, and the extensive canal diversion system surrounding the lake, are sufficient to prevent flooding. However, the lake occasionally reforms in very wet years.
Watershed and natural characteristics
The Kings River is the largest river draining the southern Sierra Nevada. Its average annual flow of makes it larger than the Kern, Kaweah and Tule Rivers combined. Before the construction of Pine Flat Dam in 1954, the Kings River reached monthly averages as high as in May and June where it flows into the San Joaquin Valley, and averaged as low as in the driest months of September and October. After the dam was built, late spring-early summer high flows have been reduced, and late summer-autumn flows have greatly increased.
In the winter season of mid-November through April, rainstorms at lower elevations commonly flood the Kings River, although with less volume than the summer melt. Annual precipitation can be as high as in the Sierra; however, in the San Joaquin Valley the climate is semi-arid to arid with annual precipitation of , decreasing as one moves further west.
The majority of the runoff, about 71 percent, originates as snowmelt between April and July in the drainage basin above Pine Flat Dam. Three-quarters of this rugged watershed is a mile (1,600 m) or more above sea level; the watershed tops out at North Palisade, the highest point in Kings Canyon National Park. The canyons of the Kings River are relatively young in geological terms; mostly carved during the Pliocene and Pleistocene (5 million–12,000 years ago) during periods of rapid uplift in the Sierra Nevada.
During and before the Pleistocene, the upper portion of the watershed was heavily glaciated during successive ice ages, with valley glaciers flowing as much as down the river's three forks, carving the "V"-shaped river canyons into the "U"-shaped gorges of Kings Canyon, Tehipite Valley and others. The Sierra is composed mainly of granitic igneous rock; however, in the foothill area the Kings River flows through roof pendant formations of older sedimentary and metamorphic rock which were accreted to the Sierra Nevada crustal block as it rose above the surrounding landscape.
The lower Kings River forms a large and gently sloping inland delta, or alluvial fan, extending laterally across the Central Valley – the resulting material from millions of years of erosion that carved Kings Canyon. The alluvial fan raised the elevation of the valley floor and blocked water flowing northward into the San Joaquin River, essentially creating a large bowl in the southern part of the valley, forming the Tulare Lake basin. Soils on the alluvial slope are generally sandy, permeable and fertile, creating ideal conditions for farming; in lower elevations and old lake beds the soil is more alkaline and less fertile.
Before people began building levees and dikes in the 19th century to contain flooding, the Kings River experienced frequent channel avulsion during high flow events, sometimes flowing north into the San Joaquin River via various sloughs, at other times south into Tulare Lake, and often into both. Historically, the river had a wide floodplain characterized by a system of vernal pools, oxbow lakes, and seasonal channels and marshes that supported a dense riparian habitat. The overflow area began near present-day Kingsburg and continued from there south to Tulare Lake.
In extremely wet years, Tulare Lake could fill to such an extent that it backed up the lower Kings River and overflowed through Fresno Slough into the San Joaquin River. All this intermittent flooding over thousands of years built up the valley's huge groundwater reserves, which today are a vital water source for agriculture. The Kings Subbasin aquifer, as defined by the California Department of Water Resources, contained in 1961 a total of 93 million acre feet (115 km3), a level that has since been gradually declining due to intensive pumping for irrigation.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Kings River basin has experienced an increased number of dry years and particularly high temperatures in Kings Canyon National Park. The 2014–2015 water year was the driest for the Kings basin since official records began in 1895. Climate change is projected to significantly decrease the flow of the river by 2100. According to a 2014 study by UC Merced and UC Irvine researchers, average river flow could drop as much as 26 percent, due to warming temperatures causing increased plant growth in high elevations of the Sierra with a corresponding increase in evapotranspiration. The amount of available water in summer could also decrease due to more precipitation falling as rain in winter, rather than being stored in snowpack.
Ecology
Although most of the original wetlands and riparian zones in the valley have been lost to development, narrow riparian corridors still exist along of the Kings River between Pine Flat Dam and People's Weir (below Highway 99), and in other places such as lower Fresno Slough. The largest riparian habitats are concentrated in the Centerville Bottoms, east of Sanger, where the river divides into multiple channels over a roughly wide area. Below Highway 99 the river channels, with few exceptions, are almost completely channelized and modified from their native state. A minimum Kings River flow of is maintained at all times via releases from Pine Flat Dam, in order to support fish populations and riparian habitats.
In the foothills, California oak woodlands consisting mainly of blue and black oak occur along the Kings River, Mill Creek and other perennial tributaries. Other foothill areas are dominated by thick chaparral and brush. At lower to middle elevations in the Sierra Nevada portion of the watershed, mixed conifer forests are the primary habitat, with ponderosa pine and yellow pine being dominant. Some areas, such as the steeper and more exposed north wall of Kings Canyon, remain primarily chaparral and brush. Giant sequoias are found in this area of the watershed. The General Grant Grove is located about southwest of the Middle and South Fork confluence; the Kings River groves, a set of four smaller groves, are situated lower in elevation and close to the South Fork.
Higher up in the Sierra, subalpine forests below the treeless alpine zone are characterized by red fir, lodgepole pine, whitebark pine, mountain hemlock and foxtail pine. Above in elevation, glacial features such as cirques and tarns characterize the landscape, with various wildflower and shrub species occurring in between areas of bare rock. Although the high country is usually covered in snow from November to May, as many as 600 plant species occur in the alpine zone of Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks, and twice that many are present in other parts of the parks. Starting in 2002, the U.S. Forest Service managed certain areas of the Kings basin under the Kings River Experimental Watersheds program, whose various activities include vegetation thinning and prescribed burns to address overgrowth, erosion and wildfire risk with the overall goal of improving water quality. These sites are concentrated mostly around the North Fork and Pine Flat Lake.
Above Pine Flat Dam, the Kings River holds native rainbow trout as well as introduced brown trout and smallmouth bass; the Upper Kings is designated a "Wild Trout Water" by the California Department of Fish and Game. Rainbow trout are also present in the river below the dam; however, the installation of a hydroelectric plant at Pine Flat Dam in 1984 diminished the cold water supply in the reservoir and deteriorated rainbow trout habitat as a result. In 1999, the state of California implemented the Kings River Fisheries Management Program, which has helped recover the fishery by mandating a minimum cold water pool of in Pine Flat Reservoir, and enforcing angling restrictions. Other fish species in the lower Kings include native Sacramento pikeminnow and Sacramento sucker (also present in smaller numbers upstream), and introduced species such as common carp, channel catfish and striped bass.
Another notable animal species is Kings River pyrg, a spring snail half the size of a pea that can only be found in 13 isolated desert springs around Thacker pass. However, the disruption of groundwater flows, road construction, and livestock grazing drove this interesting snail to near extinction.
Early history
At the time of first European contact, at least 5,000, but possibly as many as 15,000–20,000 Native Americans lived along the lower Kings River and its many branches in the Central Valley. The Kings River watershed is traditional Yokuts territory; the Kings River dialects of the Yokutsan language were divided among the Choynimni, who lived along about of the Kings River between present-day Piedra and Sanger; the Chukaymina along the Mill Creek tributary, and the Michahay further south. At least two other dialects, the Aiticha and the Toyhicha, were spoken further downstream on the Kings, but these groups have not been well documented.
The Yokuts mainly lived along the Kings River below the foothills and along the marshy fringes of Tulare Lake. The extensive oak forests in the Kings River riparian zone provided acorns, their main source of food. Wetlands provided them with abundant fish, waterfowl, fur-bearing animals including beaver and river otter, and edible roots. Tule rushes provided material for roofing their pit houses and building rafts and canoes, the main form of transport in the often flooded low country. The Yokuts traded with Paiute peoples (the Mono) in the Great Basin to the east, via various trails across the Sierra Nevada, one of which may have been via Kearsarge Pass at the eastern end of Kings Canyon. About 500 years ago, some of the Mono migrated west, settling in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada above Yokuts territory, where they eventually formed a distinct subgroup known as the Western Mono.
The first recorded Spanish explorers to see the Kings River were the members of Gabriel Moraga's expedition, which camped along the river on January 6, 1806, the day of the Epiphany. Thus, they named the river El Rio de los Santos Reyes ("River of the Holy Kings"), later shortened to Rio Reyes, Rio de los Reyes or other variations thereof. Father Pedro Muñoz, a member of the 1806 expedition, wrote: "All the meadows are well covered with oak, alder, cottonwood and willow. The river abounds with beaver and fish. It is a location suitable for a mission, although there would also have to be a presidio." Extending the California mission system inland was a major goal of the Spanish Empire in the 1800s. However, no missions were ever established along the Kings River or elsewhere in the Central Valley.
Jedediah Smith was the first American explorer to see the Kings River, encountering it during a fur trapping expedition in 1827. John C. Fremont's expedition in 1844 attempted to find a route over the Sierra Nevada via the Kings River, but were forced to turn back by deep snows and difficult terrain. Fourteen years later a party led by J.H. Johnson successfully crossed Kearsarge Pass – the route Fremont had failed to find – becoming the first known non-Native Americans to do so. Early maps from this era label the Kings River under a variety of names. Smith recorded the river as the Kimmel-che or Wimmel-che after "Indians of that name who reside on it", likely a Yokuts clan or village along the lower part of the river. Fremont called it River of the Lake or Lake Fork, as it was the largest stream flowing into Tulare Lake. Some older maps label it King's River, translated from the original Spanish name. By 1852, the name Kings River was in common use.
After California became a U.S. state in 1850, the upper Kings River watershed was used intermittently by stockmen, prospectors and loggers, and the lower watershed was used mainly for cattle and sheep ranching. Scottsburg, one of the first American towns on the Kings River, was founded in 1854. Destroyed twice by flooding, it was reestablished as today's Centerville in 1867. Smith's Ferry, established by James Smith in 1855, was one of several ferries established on the Kings River for travelers on the Stockton-Los Angeles Road and since it was the only one accessible during high water, remained the most important crossing of the Kings River for almost twenty years. After the Kern River gold rush of 1853, settlers arrived in large numbers to Tulare County and conflict broke out with Native Americans; a proposal to remove the natives to the Tejon Reservation was not acted upon. Skirmishes continued over the next few years, culminating in the Tule River War in spring 1856. Most of the natives not killed in the fighting or by foreign diseases were forcibly relocated from their lands along the Kings River to the Tule River Indian Reservation, where their descendants live today.
From the 1860s to the early 1900s, logging was one of the biggest industries in the upper Kings River. In 1890 two San Francisco businessmen purchased in the upper Kings watershed and founded the Kings River Lumber Company, intending to log the area's abundant giant sequoias. Between 1890 and 1926 a huge logging operation was extended across the mountains, an area including Converse Basin Grove – then the world's largest grove of sequoias – which was almost completely clear-cut. A dam was built to form Hume Lake, feeding a flume running more than 40 miles (64 km) down Kings Canyon to carry logs to the mill in Sanger. Despite the scale of the venture it was ultimately unprofitable. Sequoia wood is soft and unsuitable for most construction; in addition, the trees were so tall that they often shattered into unusable pieces when they hit the ground.
When John Muir visited and wrote about the Kings River and its canyon in the late 19th century, he brought attention to the area's potential as a tourist attraction and its merit as a nature preserve. Muir lobbied for the preservation of the sequoia groves above the Kings River, which include General Grant Grove, home to the world's second largest tree. Due to his efforts and those of local politicians and civic activists, President Benjamin Harrison signed a bill establishing General Grant National Park in October 1890. However, it would not be until 1940 when the park was extended to the middle and south forks of the Kings River and renamed Kings Canyon National Park.
Settlement of the Kings delta
The Kings River country was not an attractive site for early settlers, because for most of its lower course the river flows in an incised channel between low bluffs (an area known as the Centerville Bottoms), leaving the surrounding plains high and dry, suitable only for livestock grazing. Further downstream, approaching Tulare Lake, the land was too swampy for farming in addition to being seasonally flooded. For this reason, farmers initially favored the more well-watered Kaweah Delta, the present-day location of Visalia, to the south. Agriculture along the Kings River was limited to the Centerville Bottoms until ditches were extended from further upstream to supply the surrounding lands, the first being the short Byrd Ditch in 1858. The Great Flood of 1862 and another in 1868 destroyed most of the early settlements along the Kings River, and also wiped out the cattle ranching economy of the San Joaquin Valley, precipitating an economic shift to farming.
Starting in 1870 the settlement of the region began in earnest, and larger and more permanent water supply systems were built. Long canals brought water to the large, semi-arid prairie between the Kings and San Joaquin rivers, enabling the growth of Fresno and attracting many more settlers to the area. Farming cooperatives or "colonies", where large landowners subdivided many small plots for individual farmers, were a popular early pattern of settlement and attracted immigrants from the eastern United States, Europe, and Asia. A few individuals were able to amass huge land holdings by exploiting loopholes in the Homestead Act and Swamp Land Act, the most successful being J.G. Boswell and his nephew James G. Boswell II, who acquired as much as in the lower Kings and the Tulare Lake bed. Despite portions being sold off since the 1980s, the Boswell family farm remains the largest privately owned farm in the world, at .
The Wright Act of 1887 allowed farmers to organize into irrigation districts, enabling them to pool their resources and greatly extend the reach of canal systems. The Alta Irrigation District, established in 1888, was the first of the newly formed irrigation districts to deliver water; it would be followed by at least eighteen others (some of which have since been consolidated). However, drought spawned conflict between earlier landowners with riparian rights and their newly arrived counterparts. In the days before Pine Flat Dam, the river often dropped too low by August or September to satisfy all the demands on it, and often disputes escalated to armed conflict over the control of canal gates. In 1897 the first Kings River water agreement was made, establishing irrigation districts' legal priority to water, resolving many lawsuits. However, by 1913 practically all the Kings River's water was being used and farmers demanded a solution. In 1919 state engineer Charles L. Kaupke was assigned as the first Kings River "watermaster" – a role he served until 1956 – to settle issues of rationing and establish a "diversion schedule" to reduce water waste.
All these actions were still not enough to solve the basic issue of seasonal drought, and in 1925 a local board was convened to discuss the possibility of building a dam at Pine Flat. The Kings River Water Association (KRWA), representing most of the local water districts, was established two years later with Kaupke as its head. However, when the Great Depression hit, the districts could not sell the bonds necessary to build a dam, and the federal government was asked to step in. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wanted to build the dam as part of its Central Valley Project and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to build it as a separate flood control project. The KRWA favored the Corps' proposal because the reclamation project would be subject to a limitation per farm – a product of the Newlands Reclamation Act – and many farms in the area were larger than that (though none owned nearly as much land as the Boswells, who lobbied heavily for the Corps' project).
Political conflict raged on for more than ten years, with the Corps ultimately being authorized to build the dam, and the Bureau authorized to manage water storage. The dam was constructed between 1949 and 1954; only 19 months after its dedication, it stopped the monstrous flood of December 1955, the largest recorded flood on the Kings since at least 1862, sparing downstream towns from heavy damage. In 1963 all Kings River water users signed an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation establishing their shares of storage in Pine Flat Lake, granting them "perpetual rights to use of storage subordinate only to flood control purposes," and in 1969 the California Department of Water Resources declared the Kings River fully appropriated, meaning that no new water rights can be claimed, unless bought from existing rights-holders.
Modern uses
Irrigation
Almost all of the Kings River's water is consumed for agriculture. The river irrigates about 1.1 million acres (4,500 km2) of some of the most productive farmland in the United States; in 2009 the Kings delta produced crops valued at more than $3 billion. Fresno County, which is mostly supplied by Kings River water, ranked first among U.S. counties for agriculture sales in 2012. Tulare and Kings Counties ranked second and tenth, respectively.
The main crops grown in the Kings River service area are grapes, citrus, grain, and various fruits and nuts. Other crops include alfalfa, berries, rice, and miscellaneous nursery and field crops. More than of man-made canals deliver water to fourteen irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley. The Fresno, Kings River, Consolidated, Raisin City, Liberty and Laguna districts are located to the west of the river; the Tri-Valley, Hills Valley, Orange Cove, Alta and Kings County districts are located to the south. Kings River water also supplies the Riverdale, Stilson, James, Tranquility and Mid-Valley districts via Fresno Slough.
Surface water deliveries have been managed by the Kings River Water Association (KRWA), headed by the Kings River watermaster, since 1927. The KRWA oversees the water supply to 28 member agencies and about 20,000 farms in the Kings River service area, and is responsible for adjudicating water rights as well as regulating water quality. A monthly "water entitlement schedule" determines how much water each agency receives, contingent on the flow of the Kings River.
The Friant-Kern Canal, a part of the Central Valley Project (CVP), is the only source of surface water from outside the Kings River basin. Only the Fresno Irrigation District is contracted for CVP water, but other Kings River users can also purchase CVP water in times of need, such as droughts. Summer water demand for irrigation is typically in the range of .
Groundwater is the other major source of water supply for the basin, providing a large part of the agricultural supply and all of the water used by area cities. The Kings River Conservation District (KRCD), among its other functions, is the primary agency managing groundwater use. The Kings Basin Water Authority also monitors groundwater use, as well as certain water conservation, water quality and environmental functions. The Kings River provides more than of groundwater recharge to the local aquifer each year. However, depths to groundwater have been increasing for many years, indicating concern for the safe yield of the aquifer. The annual overdraft is estimated at .
Hydropower
The Kings River system has several major hydroelectric plants; the only one on the main stem is the Jeff L. Taylor Pine Flat Power Plant, located at the base of Pine Flat Dam. KRCD has operated the power plant since its completion in 1984. Power generation at Pine Flat Dam is incidental, meaning it is governed by demand for irrigation water or flood control requirements rather than demand for power. There was a proposal to add one more dam on the Kings River near Piedra, which would create a small regulating reservoir below Pine Flat Dam, allowing the power station to be used for peaking purposes while releasing a stable flow for irrigation. Due to environmental concerns and a poor cost-benefit ratio this project was never built.
Further upstream, the three forks of the Kings have considerable hydropower potential due to their large drop in elevation from the Sierra crest. However, because the Middle and South Forks are located in Kings Canyon National Park, only the North Fork is utilized for hydroelectric generation. The Haas, Balch No.1 and No.2, and Kings River powerhouses on the North Fork were built between 1927 and 1959 by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and can collectively produce . In 2010, the four North Fork powerhouses plus Pine Flat generated more than 2 billion kilowatt hours (7200 TJ) of energy. Between 1977 and 1984, PG&E constructed the Helms Pumped Storage Plant located between the Wishon and Courtright Reservoirs. The Helms plant, which pumps water up into Courtright during periods of low demand and releases it during high demand periods, is crucial to stabilizing the California electric grid by providing peaking power.
During the first half of the 20th century, the Kings River was the focus of a political fight over Los Angeles' proposal to dam the Middle and South Forks for power generation. Local farmers feared the city's real intention was to divert Kings water south, as it had gained notoriety for doing in the Owens Valley water wars. The KRCD, however, also wanted to dam these rivers for irrigation, and thus the proposed dam sites were excluded from Kings Canyon National Park as designated in 1940. It was not until 1965 when these areas were finally added to the park, ending a debate which had lasted more than sixty years. Today, the fall from the head of the South Fork to Pine Flat Reservoir remains the longest undammed drop of any U.S. river.
Flood control
Pine Flat Dam, holding up to of water, is the primary flood control facility in the Kings River Basin. The winter and spring flood control reservation is , although the reservoir can be drawn down further depending on the size of the Sierra snowpack.
During the winter and spring, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for determining the water release from Pine Flat Dam. The dam provides flood protection for of farmland along the Kings River and another in the old Tulare Lake bed. Pine Flat Dam is operated so that the flow at Crescent Weir (about downstream of Pine Flat, near Riverdale) does not exceed , although this amount is frequently exceeded due to the large size and heavy runoff from the Kings watershed.
The floodwater capacity of the Kings River falls dramatically in downstream areas, from between Pine Flat Dam and Highway 180 to at Kingsburg. The key flood control facility on the lower river is the Island Weir and Army Weir complex, which control the water flow into the north and south forks of the Kings River, respectively. Flood flows up to are sent north; flows of up to above that level are diverted south into the Tulare Lake bed, and flows above that combined level are sent north.
On the north fork floodwaters are again divided at the Crescent Weir with the first sent north via Fresno Slough and James Bypass into the San Joaquin River, and the next south into the Tulare Lake bed. Any flows exceeding the total channel capacity of the north and south Forks are divided in whichever direction is currently safer.
The Kings River Conservation District (KRCD) is in charge of maintaining the system of flood control channels and levees. On the lower river west of Highway 99, the KRCD has worked since the 1950s to maintain the floodwater capacity of the Kings River and its various distributaries in the San Joaquin Valley. The KRCD service area consists of of levees starting from below Kingsburg, to SR 145 on the North Fork of the river, and to near Stratford on the South Fork. During flood conditions, KRCD patrols the levees 24 hours a day to monitor and repair any damages.
Since its construction in 1954, Pine Flat Dam has not provided the high degree of flood protection originally intended by the project. An average of of water are spilled each year because the reservoir is not big enough to hold it. In 1969 a total of , more than the entire capacity of the lake, flowed over the spillway, causing heavy damage downstream. The Bureau of Reclamation has studied the possibility of raising Pine Flat Dam to store more water.
In addition, local irrigation districts are engaged in efforts to use floodwater for groundwater recharge rather than allowing it to drain away, including the use of certain farm fields as temporary flood basins in winter. This will both reduce flood damage and provide more water for farmers' use.
Recreation
The upper reaches of the Kings River, including the entirety of the Middle Fork and most of the South Fork, flow through rugged backcountry that can be reached only by foot or on horseback. The Middle and South Forks are part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, as is about of the main Kings below their confluence. About are classified as Wild and as Recreational. The North Fork is more accessible, with boating, camping and visitor facilities at Wishon Reservoir and a boat launch at Courtright Reservoir.
Whitewater rafting and kayaking on the Middle and South Forks is "extremely dangerous" and is usually only done by experts. However, the main Kings between the Garnet Dike put-in and Pine Flat Lake is a popular run for both commercial rafting companies and private boaters. According to the Forest Service, "the Kings River has the highest volume of water which can safely be rafted in the Sierra Nevada", and due to the large size and high elevation of its drainage basin it has a longer boating season than most other Sierra rivers.
The Kings River and its forks above Pine Flat Lake has naturally reproducing populations of rainbow trout, brown trout and brook trout. Fishing access above Pine Flat Lake extends as far upstream as Garlic Falls; beyond there, the canyon is too narrow to enter safely by foot except during periods of extremely low water. In lower elevation reaches and in the reservoir, smallmouth bass and spotted bass are common.
Below Pine Flat Dam the Kings River is wide and slow-flowing, with tailwater fishing for trout roughly between the dam and Highway 180; further downstream, carp, bass and catfish are more common. The lower river is suitable for swimming, floating and canoeing with many public access points between the dam and Avocado Lake. Below there, most of the banks are private property, with exceptions such as Pierce's Park at Highway 180. Although there are few natural obstructions along the lower Kings, there are a number of diversion weirs that pose a hazard to boaters and must be portaged.
List of tributaries
Tributaries of the Kings River are listed going upstream from the North Fork/South Fork split near Lemoore. Major lakes/reservoirs and dams are also listed. Distributaries of the Kings River below Lemoore are detailed in the Course section.
Fish Creek
Hughes Creek
Mill Creek
Pine Flat Dam, Pine Flat Lake
Deer Creek
Zebe Creek
Russian Charlie Creek
Lefever Creek
Billy Creek
Sycamore Creek
Big Creek
Sacata Creek
Redoak Creek
Lower Rancheria Creek
Sycamore Springs Creek
North Fork Kings River
Dinkey Creek
Basin Creek
Patterson Creek
Weir Creek
Black Rock Creek
Williams Creek
Mule Creek
Rancheria Creek
Teakettle Creek
Long Meadow Creek
Wishon Dam, Wishon Reservoir
Woodchuck Creek
Short Hair Creek
Sharp Creek
Helms Creek
Courtright Dam, Courtright Reservoir
Dusy Creek
Post Corral Creek
Burnt Corral Creek
Flemming Creek
Nichols Canyon
Meadow Brook
Fall Creek
Division Lake
Regiment Lake
Davis Creek
Mill Flat Creek
Verplank Creek
Fox Canyon Creek
Converse Creek
Spring Creek
Cabin Creek
Garlic Meadow Creek
Rough Creek
Ten Mile Creek
Hume Lake
Middle Fork Kings River
Deer Canyon Creek
Brush Canyon Creek
Tombstone Creek
Wren Creek
Silver Creek
Crown Creek
Rogers Creek
Gorge of Despair
Crystal Creek
Blue Canyon Creek
Lost Canyon Creek
Rattlesnake Creek
Alpine Creek
Dog Creek
Kennedy Creek
Dougherty Creek
[Horseshoe Creek
Goddard Creek
Disappearing Creek
Windy Canyon Creek
Cartridge Creek
Rimbaud Creek
Palisade Creek
Cataract Creek
Glacier Creek
Dusy Branch
Helen Lake
South Fork Kings River
Lockwood Creek
Redwood Creek
Windy Gulch
Boulder Creek
Grizzly Creek
Lightning Creek
Deer Cove Creek
Lewis Creek
Comb Creek
Sheep Creek
Hotel Creek
Roaring River
Sugarloaf Creek
Ferguson Creek
Granite Creek
Copper Creek
Avalanche Creek
Bubbs Creek
Sphinx Creek
Charlotte Creek
Cross Creek
North Guard Creek
East Creek
Glacier Creek
Gardiner Creek
Woods Creek
Woods Creek
Arrow Creek
Kid Creek
See also
List of rivers of California
References
External links
Kings River Handbook
Rivers of the Sierra Nevada (United States)
Rivers of Fresno County, California
Rivers of Kings County, California
Tributaries of the San Joaquin River
Tulare Basin watershed
Wild and Scenic Rivers of the United States
Geography of the San Joaquin Valley
Kings Canyon National Park
Sierra National Forest
Rivers of Northern California
Rivers of the Sierra Nevada in California
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-American%20Development%20Bank
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Inter-American Development Bank
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The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB or IADB) is an international financial institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States of America, and serving as the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Established in 1959, the IDB supports Latin American and Caribbean economic development, social development and regional integration by lending to governments and government agencies, including State corporations.
The IDB has four official languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. Its official names in the other three languages are as follows:
History
At the First Pan-American Conference in 1890, the idea of a development institution for Latin America was first suggested during the earliest efforts to create an inter-American system. The IDB became a reality under an initiative proposed by President Juscelino Kubitschek of Brazil. The Bank was formally created on April 8, 1959, when the Organization of American States drafted the Articles of Agreement establishing the Inter-American Development Bank.
Member states
The Bank is owned by 48 sovereign states, which are its shareholders and members. Only the 26 borrowing countries are able to receive loans.
Presidents
Mauricio Claver-Carone was removed by the governors of IDB after an ethics investigation found that he had an affair with a subordinate and gave her a pay raise. The affair allegedly occurred during Claver-Carone's tenure on the National Security Council during the Trump administration. Executive Vice President Reina Irene Mejía of Honduras took over as acting president.
Ilan Goldfajn of Brazil was elected on November 20, 2022, and assumed his responsibilities as president on December 19, 2022.
Operations
The IDB is the largest multilateral source of financing for the Latin America and the Caribbean region. The IDB makes loans to the governments of its borrowing member countries at standard commercial rates of interest, and has preferred creditor status, meaning that borrowers will repay loans to the IDB before repaying other obligations to other lenders such as commercial banks.
Governance
The IDB is governed by its Board of Governors, a 48-member body who regularly meets once a year. In March 2010, reunited in Cancun, Mexico, the Board of Governors of the Bank agreed on a $70 billion capital increase, along with full debt forgiveness for Haiti, its poorest member country, devastated by an earthquake that had destroyed its capital, Port-au-Prince, two months before.
The developing countries that borrow from the IDB are the majority shareholders, and therefore control the majority of the decision-making bodies of the Bank. Each member's voting power is determined by its shareholding: its subscription to the Bank's ordinary capital. The United States holds 30 percent of the Bank's shares, while the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean combined hold 50.02 percent but with another 20% from Europe the US can veto decisions. This arrangement is unique in that the developing member countries, as a group, are the majority shareholders. Though this arrangement was first viewed as risky, it is believed by some that strict peer pressure prevents the borrowers from defaulting, even when under severe economic pressure.
Priority areas
In March 2015, the Bank updated its Institutional Strategy for 2010–2020. The document says that to ultimately transform Latin American and the Caribbean 'into a more inclusive and prosperous society, three main development challenges must be addressed: social exclusion and inequality, low productivity and innovation, and limited economic integration." Moreover, the document also says that "these three challenges are inter-related and certain overarching issues
cut across them that public policies need to address: gender equality and diversity; climate change and environmental sustainability; and institutions and the rule of law."
Education Initiative
Vision
The IDB's Education Division works in partnership with 26 borrowing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to ensure that children and adolescents exercise their right to a quality education, achieve their potential, and reverse the cycle of poverty.
Mission
Given that education is a key to development and a prerequisite for a genuine equality of opportunity, and given its strategic importance to the region, the IDB has an Education Initiative that focuses its research and projects in three main areas: Early Childhood Development, School to Work Transition and Teacher Quality.
Early childhood development
The IDB supports readiness to learn interventions so that children can have access to quality programs within the region. Among the projects in this area are the Regional Project on Child Development Indicators (PRIDI), which provides high quality, policy-relevant, and regionally comparative data on the situation of young children and their families. These data will allow countries to benchmark progress on childhood development both within their borders and in the region, thus facilitating policy dialogue between governments on how to best address the needs of young children and their families. Participating countries include Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Paraguay. The IDB also participates in the Support for a Seamless Education System Program in Trinidad and Tobago, which aims to improve the quality of early childhood care and primary education, and the Alliance for Children Initiative (Alianza por la Iniciativa Infantil), an initiative that seeks to foster collaboration between governments, families, civil society and the private sector to support innovative interventions in the field.
Teacher quality
The IDB supports interventions to improve teacher quality in Latin America and the Caribbean and conducts research in the field. It supports the Aligning of Learning Incentives (ALI) in Mexico, a pilot program that provides monetary incentives to students, faculty and staff to improve student achievement in mathematics. Brazil also supports the tutoring program, Multiplying Knowledge, where academically successful students help children in the last years of primary school with mathematics. and the implementation and evaluation of Enseña Chile, a program that attracts outstanding college graduates to teach for two years in vulnerable schools. The Inter-American Development bank focuses on three main areas: incentives (with particular emphasis on teachers), supplies (with emphasis on teacher training and capacity building), and administration (targeting school management).
School to work transition
The IDB supports the development of knowledge, interventions, programs, and policies to improve the competencies and skills acquired by adolescents in the education system so they will contribute to a student's successful transition between school and work. The projects for this field include supporting the government of Costa Rica to improve the English as a foreign language project in order to close the skills gap between the demand in the labor market and the supply of the education systems in the field. As part of its research agenda, the IDB conducted a survey of young students from Chile analyzing their educational labor trajectory while measuring certain cognitive and non-cognitive skills, relating them to the education and labor performance of adolescents. The IDB also implemented The Employers’ Survey of Mandatory Skills (ENEHD, Spanish Acronym), that investigated the twenty-first century skills demanded by entrepreneurs for people under 25.
Other projects
The Bank also has interventions in other areas that affect children and adolescents in the region, such as education inputs, equity, and compensatory programs. The initiatives in these fields are support projects for the reconstruction of educational infrastructure in Haiti; a support project for the consolidation and expansion of the Plan Ceibal in Uruguay; a community education program in Mexico, which aims to raise quality of educational services for marginalized communities; a project to support the education plan in the Dominican Republic; the National Infrastructure Program for the universalization of education quality and equality in Ecuador; a program to support policies for the improvement of education equity in Argentina (PROMEDU); a project to improve education activities and learning quality in Mexico; and a comprehensive care program for children in Nicaragua, which contributes to the development of children living in extreme poverty within rural areas under 6 years old.
Poverty reduction
Government of developing countries is not equipped to reduce poverty due to heavy responsibility to build and maintain infrastructure, as well as meet payroll and debt obligations. Tax revenue is often weak or non-existent. Poverty reduction depends largely on business investment in global markets to create sustainable jobs for economic empowerment of individuals. International companies need funding, and difficulty lies on the inability of the investment banks to overcome regulatory obstacles.
Small business entities are largely responsible for improving lives, as they play an inherent role in raising the socio-economic status of families, making it possible to combat poverty in the long range, as employed heads of household are in better positions to finance the education of children for a better future. Hence, empowering institutions, such as, The World Bank, IFC, the IADB, and others can exercise their due diligence to fit those promising entities in their projects with eased regulatory restraints, as certain regulations that work in developed nations are obstacles to progress in developing nations.
Climate Change and Sustainability Division
Climate change threatens both to undermine the long-term efforts of the region to achieve sustainable development and to affect the most vulnerable members of society disproportionately.
To respond to increasing demand for clients for assistance in addressing climate change, the General Capital Increase (GCI-9) commits the Bank to support mitigation and adaptation efforts of borrowing members while meeting their developmental and energy requirements. GCI-9 sets a target of 25 percent of total lending going to a growing portfolio on climate change, environmental sustainability, and renewable energy.
Climate Change Strategy
The objective of the Climate Change Strategy (CCS) is to serve as a guiding instrument for scaling up IDB support for actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change within Latin America and the Caribbean Leveraging the IDB's institutional strengths and its unique advantages, the CCS will promote the development and use of a range of public and private sector financial and nonfinancial instruments for strengthening the institutional, technical, and financial capacity to address climate change challenges.
Water and sanitation
There are four programs in the Water and Sanitation Division: 100 Cities Program, Water for 3,000 Rural Communities, Water Defenders and Efficient and Transparent Utilities.
The Bank has also a number of focused special programs: AquaFund, Energy Efficient, Hydro-BID, and AquaRating.
Hydro-BID
In order to support the Latin American and Caribbean region to address water resources challenges, the IDB has created Hydro-BID, a tool that allows the efficient management and planning of water resources by predicting water availability taking into consideration the impacts of climate change.
Hydro-BID was developed to respond to the challenges related to lack of information, reliable data and the lack of tools to support governments, water utilities, the private sector and other institutions to plan and make better decisions for a sustainable management on behalf of the consumers of water, the people.
AquaRating
AquaRating is the first rating agency for the water sector. It is an Inter-American Development Bank venture, hosted by the International Water Association. The rating system has already been piloted in thirteen utilities in nine countries in Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. A worldwide market introduction is planned during 2015.
Infrastructure
The satisfactory provision and administration of infrastructure stimulates economic growth and competitiveness. It is also essential for
improving the quality of life and inclusion in modern society.
The infrastructure strategy identifies priority areas of action: a)Promote access to infrastructure services b)Support infrastructure for regional and global integration c)Foster financing mechanisms and leverage private sector participation in infrastructure d) Adopt and promote a multisector agenda e) Support the construction and maintenance of an environmentally and socially sustainable infrastructure f) Promote ongoing improvements in infrastructure
governance
Of the 44 new projects, 32% are in the infrastructure and environment sector.
Capital increase
On July 21, 2010, the Board of Governors agreed to increase the Bank's ordinary capital by $70 billion, the largest expansion of resources in the Bank's history, and to provide an unprecedented package of financial support to Haiti. The agreement also includes a replenishment of the Fund for Special Operations, which finances operations in the region's poorest nations.
The Bank's capital increase will be implemented through 2015 as parliaments in each of its member countries appropriate the necessary funds.
Haiti
After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the IDB pledged to provide Haiti more than $2.2 billion in grants over the next decade to fund its recovery efforts and long-term development plans, working closely with the Haitian government and the international community. The Bank's Board of Governors also agreed to cancel all of Haiti's outstanding debt.
President Préval also gave the Inter-American Development Bank the mandate to work with the Education Ministry and the National Commission preparing a major reform of the Education System in a 5-year plan.
Financial resources
The callable capital pledged by the 22 non-borrowing members, which include the world's wealthiest developed countries, therefore functions as a guarantee for the bonds that the IDB sells. This arrangement ensures that the IDB maintains a triple-A credit rating, and as a result can make loans to its borrowing member countries at rates of interest similar to those that commercial banks charge their largest corporate borrowers. At the same time, the 22 non-borrowing countries are only putting up guarantees – not actual funds – so their support of the IDB's lending operations has a minimal impact on their national budgets.
The funds that the IDB lends are raised by selling bonds to institutional investors at standard commercial rates of interest. The bonds are backed by (a) the sum of the capital subscriptions actually paid in by the Bank's 47 member countries, plus (b) the sum of the callable capital subscriptions pledged by the Bank's 22 non-borrowing member countries. Together these constitute the Bank's ordinary capital, some US$101 billion. Of this amount, 4.3 percent is paid in, while the remaining 95.7 percent is callable.
Aside from its lending activities for its member countries, the IDB also has lending operations with private sector companies, both directly through its Structured Corporate Finance Department and Opportunities for the Majority Initiative, and by means of the IDB Invest, a multilateral lender created by the IDB member countries, and part of the IDB Group, to help develop small and medium-sized companies in Latin America and the Caribbean. An affiliate of the IDB, IDB Lab (formerly the Multilateral Investment Fund - FOMIN), uses loans, grants and equity investments to support private projects seeking to bring innovation, boost entrepreneurship, or expand access to financing throughout the region. The Bank, IDB Invest and IDB Lab constitute the IDB Group.
Criticism
There are claims that operations funded by the IDB may have adverse impacts on local environments and indigenous peoples. According to the Bank Information Center (BIC), "civil society groups have long been concerned about the negative impacts the IDB's operations have on the environment and on indigenous and traditional peoples, as well as on the prospects for genuine economic and democratic reform in the region". The BIC cites environmental and social damage funded by the IDB as adversely impacting local economies, contrary to IDB's stated goal of fostering social and economic prosperity.
Member state comparison table
The following table are amounts for 20 largest countries by subscribed capital stock, voting power, and FSO contribution quotas at the Inter-American Development Bank as of December 2020.
See also
Bank of the South
CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean
Caribbean Development Bank
Development in the Americas
Generation and Transfer of Agricultural Technology and Seed Production
References
External links
Inter-American Investment Corporation (official site)
Multilateral Investment Fund (official site)
YoGobierno.org (project from IADB's Institutional Capacities Division)
Inter-American Development Bank within Google Arts & Culture
Banks established in 1959
Supranational banks
Multilateral development banks
United Nations General Assembly observers
Banks based in Washington, D.C.
Organizations established in 1959
Development in North America
International development organizations
Non-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C.
Development in South America
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki%20method
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Suzuki method
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The Suzuki method is a music curriculum and teaching philosophy dating from the mid-20th century, created by Japanese violinist and pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki (1898–1998). The method aims to create an environment for learning music which parallels the linguistic environment of acquiring a native language. Suzuki believed that this environment would also help to foster good moral character.
Background
The Suzuki Method was conceived in the mid-20th century by Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese violin salesman. As a poor violinist and a beginner at the German language who struggled to learn it, Suzuki noticed that children pick up their native language quickly, whereas adults consider even dialects "difficult" to learn but are spoken with ease by children at age five or six. He reasoned that if children have the skill to acquire their native language, they have the necessary ability to become proficient on a musical instrument. Suzuki decided to develop his teaching method (rather than become a professional violinist) after a conversation with Leonor Michaelis, who was Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Nagoya.
Suzuki pioneered the idea that preschool age children could learn to play the violin if the learning steps were small enough and the instrument was scaled down to fit their body. He modeled his method, which he called , after his theories of natural language acquisition. Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of a high level of musical achievement. He also made it clear that the goal of such musical education was to raise generations of children with "noble hearts" (as opposed to creating famous musical prodigies).
Philosophy
The central belief of Suzuki, based on his language acquisition theories, is that all people can (and will) learn from their environment. The essential components of his method spring from the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music (he believed that this positive environment would also help to foster excellent character in every student). These components include:
Saturation in the musical community.
This includes attending local classical music concerts, developing friendships with other music students, and listening to recordings of professional musicians in the home every day, starting before birth if possible.
Deliberate avoidance of musical aptitude tests or auditions to begin music study.
Suzuki believed that teachers who test for musical aptitude before taking students, or who look only for "talented" students, are limiting themselves to people who have already started their music education. Just as every child is expected to learn their native language, Suzuki expected every child to be able to learn to play music.
Emphasis on playing from a very young age.
Suzuki believed that children should typically start formal instruction between the ages of three and five years old. (See Technique).
Using well-trained teachers.
Suzuki believed in training musicians not only to be better musicians, but also to be better teachers. Suzuki Associations worldwide offer ongoing teacher-training programs to prospective and continuing Suzuki teachers.
In the beginning, learning music by ear is emphasized over reading written musical notation.
Suzuki observed that children speak before learning to read, and thought that children should also be able to play music before learning to read. To support learning by ear, students are expected to listen to recordings of the music they are learning daily.
Memorization of all solo repertoire is expected.
The focus on memorization continues even after a student begins to use sheet music to learn new pieces.
Music theory and note reading are left to the teacher.
The Suzuki method does not include a formal plan or prescribe specific materials for introducing music theory and reading, in part because Suzuki created the method in a culture where music literacy was routinely taught in schools.
Regular playing in groups (including playing pieces in unison) is strongly encouraged.
Retaining and reviewing every piece of music ever learned is also strongly encouraged.
This is intended to raise technical and musical ability. Review pieces, along with "preview" parts of music a student is yet to learn, are often used in place of the more traditional etude books. Traditional etudes and technical studies are not used in the beginning stages, which focus almost exclusively on a set of performance pieces.
Frequent public performance makes performing feel like a natural and enjoyable part of being a musician.
The method discourages competitive attitudes between players, and advocates collaboration and mutual encouragement for those of every ability and level. However, this does not mean the elimination of auditions or evaluations of student performances. (This statement does not contradict the second bullet in this section: “Deliberate avoidance of musical aptitude tests or auditions to begin music study. ”, because that second bullet is saying all can start learning. Some will progress faster than others and this could be measured later with auditions.)
The parent of the young student is expected to supervise instrument practice every day, instead of leaving the child to practice alone between lessons, and to attend and take notes at every lesson so they can coach the student effectively. This element of the method is so prominent that a newspaper article once dubbed it "The Mom-Centric Method."
Technique
Although Suzuki was a violinist, the method he founded is not a "school of violin playing" (like the French or the Russian schools of playing) whose students can be identified by the set of techniques they use to play the violin. However, some of the technical concepts Suzuki taught his own students, such as the development of "tonalization", were so essential to his way of teaching that they have been carried over into the entire method. Other non-instrument specific techniques are used to implement the basic elements of the philosophy in each discipline.
Tonalization is a term coined by Suzuki, and is deliberately similar to the word "vocalization" (as it is used by singers when they talk about warming up their voices). Tonalization is defined as the student's ability to produce and recognize a beautiful, ringing tone quality on their instrument. While initially developed for violin education, the tonalization technique has been applied to other instruments such as the piano. Suzuki believed that a student must learn tonalization in order to properly reproduce and perform music (Lavie, Karen, New Zealand Suzuki Journal, 2005). Outside the Suzuki method, the term used is "tone production," and is part of Western music education stretching back to its beginning.
Using sound recordings is another technique common to all the musical instruments taught in the Suzuki method. Thibeault's (2018) history of Suzuki's mediated pedagogy presents Suzuki as a technological innovator who created new ways of learning from sound recordings. Pre-recorded music is used to help students learn notes, phrasing, dynamics, rhythm, and beautiful tone quality by ear. Suzuki pointed out that great artists (such as Mozart) were surrounded with excellent performances from birth, and that the advent of recording technology made this aspect of their environment possible to achieve for large numbers of "ordinary" people whose parents were not themselves great musicians & music teachers like Mozart's father was. So-called "traditional" (that is, not Suzuki trained) music educators have used this technique since the earliest days of recording technology; the difference in the Suzuki method is the scale on which Suzuki systematically insisted on daily listening in the home, from before birth if possible, and his focus on using recordings of beginner's repertoire alongside recordings of advanced repertoire.
Instruments are adapted to meet the demands of a small child's body in various ways. This lowers the age at which people are anatomically ready to begin studying an instrument. Scaled-down instrument sizes are used for children studying stringed instruments. Curved-headjoint flutes with displaced keys (which are closer together than normal flute keys) and holes are also available, making it possible for children as young as three to study the flute through the Suzuki method. Height-adjustable chairs, benches, and footrests are used for piano, guitar, cello, and string bass. Although fractional-sized student violins were available when Suzuki began to teach, the success and popularity of his idea that pre-school aged children could also learn to play prompted violinmakers to scale violins down to even smaller sizes than before.
Suzuki Institutes were established to encourage a musical community, train teachers, and provide a place where master teachers' ideas can be spread to the whole community of Suzuki students, teachers and parents. These short term music festivals began in Matsumoto, Japan, where teachers & students came to learn from Suzuki. In the US, they often last for a week or two and include daily masterclasses; repertoire (group) classes; teacher training courses; concerts; discussion sessions; seminars; and various 'enrichment' classes in different musical styles, instruments, or non-musical (usually arts, crafts, or dancing) activities. As at any music festival, participants must pay registration and tuition fees to the institute they are attending. Each national Suzuki association handles registration for teacher training, and policies differ from country to country.
A common repertoire for all students of an instrument was established. This body of music allows each student to participate in group classes, helps foster local and international musical community and camaraderie, and provides motivation for students to learn new music while keeping the 'old' pieces they have learned in top form. This is in direct contrast to music education outside of the method, in which teachers tailor the repertoire to the current need and level of the individual student.
Repertoire
The core Suzuki literature is published on audio recordings and in sheet music books for each instrument, and Suzuki teachers supplement the repertoire common to each instrument as needed, particularly in the area of teaching reading. One of the innovations of the Suzuki method was to make quality recordings of the beginners' pieces widely available, performed by professional musicians. Many traditional (non-Suzuki trained) music teachers also use the Suzuki repertoire, often to supplement their curriculum, and they adapt the music to their own philosophies of teaching.
Another innovation of Suzuki was to deliberately leave out the large amount of technical instructions and exercises found in many beginners' music books of his day. He favored a focus on melodic song-playing over technical exercises, and asked teachers to allow students to make music from the beginning, helping to motivate young children with short, attractive songs which can themselves be used as technique building exercises. Each song in the common repertoire is carefully chosen to introduce some new or higher level of technique than the previous selection.
Suzuki teaching uses a common core repertoire for students of the same instrument worldwide, and although it focuses on Western European "classical" music, it emphasizes that this music can be a bridge across cultural and language barriers: one does not have to share the ethnic or national origin of the composers in order to learn or share the music. Suzuki created a series of rhythmic variations on the theme "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", using rhythms from more advanced literature in units small enough for a beginner to grasp quickly. Although these variations were created for violin, most of the instruments use them as a starting point for their repertoire.
Violin
The violin method was compiled and edited by Suzuki in ten volumes, beginning with Suzuki's Variations on "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and ending with two Mozart concertos. The first 3 books are mostly graded arrangements of music not originally written for solo violin, although book 1 contains several original compositions by Suzuki for violin & piano. These arrangements are drawn from folk tunes and from composers such as Bach, Telemann, Dvořák, Beethoven, Schubert, Handel, Paganini, Boccherini and Brahms. Books 4–10 continue the graded selection by incorporating 'standard' or 'traditional' student violin solos by Seitz, Vivaldi, Bach, Veracini, Corelli, Dittersdorf, Rameau, Handel, Mozart, Fiocco, and others. The Suzuki violin repertoire is currently in the process of being revised by the International Suzuki Association, and as part of the revision process, each regional Suzuki Association provides a recommended list of supplemental repertoire appropriate for students in books 6-8. The SAA supplemental repertoire list includes pieces by Bach, Kreisler, Elgar, Bartok, Shostakovich, Copland, and others (Suggested Supplementary Repertoire, 2013, and Preucil, 1985).
The most recent audio recordings are Books 1-3 recorded by Hilary Hahn and released in 2020. Audio recordings for books 1-4 are also available in separate albums by artists such as David Nadien, David Cerone, Yukari Tate and Shin'ichi Suzuki. Recordings of volumes 1-4 by William Preucil, Jr. were released in 2007, along with revised versions of the first 4 books. Recordings for books 5-8 have been made by Koji Toyoda, although many of the pieces can be found separately on other artists' albums. In 2008 Takako Nishizaki made a complete set of recordings of Books 1-8 for Naxos Records. There are no official recordings of books 9 and 10 but these books, simply being Mozart's A major and D major violin concertos, have readily available recordings by various violinists. Completing the 10 volumes is not the end of the Suzuki journey, as many Suzuki violin teachers traditionally continue with the Bruch and Mendelssohn concertos, along with pieces from other composers such as Paradis,
Mozart, and Kreisler.
Viola
The viola repertoire is in nine volumes, compiled and edited by Doris Preucil. Like the violin repertoire, much of the viola repertoire is drawn from the Baroque period. The first 3 volumes have been arranged (or transposed) almost directly from the first 3 violin volumes, and the rest differ significantly as they delve into standard viola literature. The viola books introduce shifting and work in higher positions earlier than the violin volumes, in anticipation of viola students being asked to play in ensembles sooner in their studies than violinists, and needing these skills to better handle orchestral or chamber music parts (Preucil, 1985). Viola volumes 4-8 include works by Telemann, Casadesus, Bach, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Leclair, Hummel, and Bruch. Books 1-4 have been recorded on two albums by William Preucil, and the rest are available in separate albums.
Cello
The cello repertoire is in ten volumes, with some early pieces arranged from the early violin volumes, and the first distinct piece (the second) being "French Folk Song". Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi performs volumes 1 through 4. Volumes 4-10 contain works by: Vivaldi, Saint-Saëns, Popper, Breval, Goltermann, Squire, Bach, Paradis, Eccles, Fauré, van Goens, Sammartini, Haydn, and Boccherini.
Piano
The piano repertoire is composed of seven volumes. The first book begins with Variations on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (as with the violin books) and continues with many folk songs and contemporary songs. As one progresses to the second book, there are pieces written by romantic, classical and baroque composers, such as Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach. The third book is early intermediate level with several sonatinas and beginning with Sonatina in C Major, Op. 36, No. 1 by Muzio Clementi. The fourth book includes Sonata in G Major, Op. 49, No. 2 by Ludwig van Beethoven and ends with Minuet 1, Minuet 2 and the Gigue from Partita in B by J.S. Bach. The fifth book begins with the famous "Für Elise" by Beethoven and includes Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI/35 by Franz Joseph Haydn. The sixth book begins with the Sonata in C Major, K.545 by W.A. Mozart, and the seventh book begins with the Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major by Mozart. This book also includes "The Harmonious Blacksmith" by Handel and Romanian Folk Dances by Béla Bartók. There are also many minuets in the second book. The New International Edition adds some more recent compositions to the books, such as the music of Béla Bartók. Revised versions of the piano books have now been published. The new volumes are collections of piano repertoire from all eras representing works by composers such as Mozart, Burgmüller, Beethoven, Bach, Tcherepnin, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Daquin, Grieg, Granados, Villa-Lobos, Scarlatti, Handel, Bartók, and Debussy. Many pieces from the original books remain; some have been shifted to another volume. The book/CD combo for Revised Books 4-7 is now available, and was performed by Japanese concert artist Seizo Azuma.
Bass
Currently there are five printed volumes in the double bass series, with the first three volumes also available on recordings. Nine volumes are planned and being compiled and edited by Dr. S Daniel Swaim (SAA, Chair), Virginia Dixon (SAA), Michael Fanelli (SAA), Domenick Fiore (SAA), and Eugene Rebeck (SAA). Volume 1 and 2 contain arrangements of the traditional Suzuki violin pieces mixed in with some new arrangements of other pieces. Volume 3 contains some new transcriptions of jazz, Gaelic, and folk songs; plus works by Handel, Gossec, Beethoven, Bach, Webster, Saint-Saëns, and Dvořák. Famous pieces include: "The Elephant" from Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns, Ode to Joy by Beethoven, and "Largo" from the New World Symphony by Dvořák.
Flute
The flute repertoire is compiled and edited by Toshio Takahashi. In fourteen volumes, beginning with Mary Had a Little Lamb and ending in the Flute Concerto by Otaka. Also included are concerti by Mozart, Cimarosa, Ibert and Quantz. Students also study music by Bach, Handel, Blavet, Fauré and other major composers.
Recorder
There are eight volumes of recorder repertoire for both soprano and alto recorder. The recorder repertoire shares some early repertoire with other instruments, such as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", several Bach Minuets, etc. Later books delve into more complex Renaissance and Baroque music, including instruction in intense Baroque ornamentation along with 17th-century Dutch and Italian articulation techniques.
Guitar
The classical guitar repertoire was compiled through a collaborative process involving teachers from the United States, Europe and Australia, and edited by Frank Longay. The nine volumes begin with Twinkle Variations and many folk songs, and adds pieces originally written for the lute in the Renaissance, and spanning all musical time periods, including pieces by Sanz, Vivaldi, Bach, Carcassi, Giuliani, Sor, Tarrega, Albéniz, Mudarra, and Yocoh's Sakura Variations. Music in book one is performed by Frank Longay and Bill Kossler, with books two through four recorded by Seth Himmelhoch, Andrew LaFrenier, and Louis Brown. George Sakellariou has recorded books five, six and seven and William Kanengiser recorded books 8 and 9, with the exception of Recuerdos de la Alhambra in book 9, which was recorded by Scott Tennant.
Harp
The harp repertoire is in five volumes. These books are suitable for learning to read and play music on the pedal harp or the lever harp (folk harp, Irish/Celtic harp, etc. that preferably has 30 or more strings). Most of the music is arrangements of either folk music or classical music. Students of the lever harp will find some of the pieces in the later books to have challenging lever changes. This series ultimately leads to more in-depth study of the pedal harp and its repertoire and teaches more of a classical style technique. Those pursuing traditional Celtic music can use this as a foundation, however, the traditional style of teaching focuses on relying on the ear rather than on the written note. Repertoire for volume six is selected, though the music is not published in a single book.
Voice
The voice repertoire is in five Levels. Developed in Finland since 1986, the vocal repertoire of the Suzuki method has spread to over 20 countries including The United States, Australia, Europe, Asia and New Zealand. Teacher training courses are scheduled yearly in Europe, US and Australia.
Organ
The pipe organ repertoire was compiled and edited by Gunilla Rönnberg and Lars Hagström beginning in 1998. Currently Volumes 1-8 have been published (Alfred Publishing, 2019). As of 2011, an active Suzuki-training organ scheme is under way in the Australian city of Newcastle.
Mandolin
The application of Suzuki's teaching philosophy to the mandolin is currently being researched in Italy by Amelia Saracco.
Early childhood education (SECE) and Suzuki in the schools
Rather than focusing on a specific instrument, at the stage of early childhood education (ECE), a Suzuki Early Childhood Education (SECE) curriculum for (pre-instrumental) ECE was developed within the Suzuki philosophy by Dorothy & Sharon Jones (SAA), Jeong Cheol Wong (ASA), Emma O'Keefe (PPSA), Anke van der Bijl (ESA), and Yasuyo Matsui (TERI). The SECE curriculum is designed for ages 0–3 and uses singing, nursery rhymes, percussion, audio recordings, and whole body movements in a group setting where children and their adult caregivers participate side by side. The Japanese based SECE curriculum is different from the English-based SECE curriculum. The English-based curriculum is currently being adapted for use in other languages.
A "modified" Suzuki philosophy curriculum has been developed to apply Suzuki teaching to heterogeneous instrumental music classes & string orchestras in schools.
Trumpet
Trumpet was added to the International Suzuki Association's list of Suzuki Method instruments in 2011. The application of Suzuki's teaching philosophy to the trumpet is currently being researched in Sweden; the first Trumpet teacher training course to be offered by the European Suzuki Association in 2013. (Suzuki Teacher Training for Trumpet, 2013).
Supplemental materials
Supplementary materials are also published under the Suzuki name, including some etudes, note-reading books, piano accompaniment parts, guitar accompaniment parts, duets, trios, string orchestra, and string quartet arrangements of Suzuki repertoire.
Historical notes
In the late 19th century, Japan's borders were opened to trade with the outside world, and in particular to the importation of Western Culture. As a result of this, Suzuki's father, who owned a company which had manufactured the Shamisen, began to manufacture violins instead. (Nurtured by Love Documentary) In his youth, Shin'ichi Suzuki chanced to hear a phonograph recording of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, as played on violin by Mischa Elman. Gripped by the beauty of the music, he immediately picked up a violin from his father's factory and began to teach himself to play the instrument "by ear". His father felt that instrumental performance was beneath his son's social status, and refused to allow him to study the instrument. At age 17, he began to teach himself by ear, since no formal training was allowed to him. Eventually he convinced his father to allow him to study with a violin teacher in Tokyo. (Suzuki, Nurtured by Love)
At age 22, Suzuki travelled to Germany to find a violin teacher to continue his studies. While there, he studied privately with Karl Klingler, but did not receive any formal degree past his high school diploma. He met and became friends with Albert Einstein, who encouraged him in learning classical music. He also met, courted, and married his wife, Waltraud.(Suzuki, Nurtured by Love)
In 1945, Suzuki began his Talent Education movement in Matsumoto, Japan shortly after the end of World War II. Raising children with "noble hearts" (inspired by great music and diligent study) was one of his primary goals; he believed that people raised and "nurtured by love" in his method would grow up to achieve better things than war. One of his students during this post-1945 period was violinist Hidetaro Suzuki, no relation, who later became a veteran of international violin competitions (Tchaikovsky, Queen Elizabeth, Montreal International) and then the longtime concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. (Hermann, 1981)
Eventually, the center of the Suzuki movement in education was established as the Talent Education Research Institute (TERI) in Matsumoto. TERI hosts thousands of people each year—students, parents, teachers, (and teacher trainees). Other organizations have sprung up all over the world to help oversee the movement and train teachers. These include the Asia Suzuki Association, the Suzuki Association of the Americas, the European Suzuki Association (which is currently assisting in the beginnings of the Suzuki movement in Africa), and the Pan-Pacific Suzuki Association.(International Suzuki Association, 2016).
John D. Kendall of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville brought the Suzuki method, along with adaptations to better fit the requirements of the American classroom, to the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Nurtured by Love Documentary). Vilem Sokol of the Seattle Youth Symphony hosted Suzuki in Seattle. The majority of American Suzuki pedagogues and teaching methods are grounded in the Suzuki-Kendall system. Other pioneers of the Suzuki Method in the US include Clifford Cook, Roland and Almita Vamos, Elizabeth and Harlow Mills, Betty Haag, Louise Behrend, Dorothy Roffman, William Starr, Anastasia Jempelis, and Margery Aber.
See also
Blanche Ray Alden
Shinichi Suzuki (violinist)
References
Sources
Barber, Barbara (Autumn, 1991). "Traditional & Suzuki Teaching: A Comparison". American String Teacher.
Bradley, Jane (Spring 2005). "When to Twinkle – Are Children Ever Too Young?". American Suzuki Journal Vol. 33, #3, p53.
Campell, Don. The Mozart Effect for Children. Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY, 2000,
Hermann, Evelyn. Shinichi Suzuki: The Man and his Philosophy. Warner Brothers Publications, 1981, .
International Suzuki Association Website Retrieved January 14, 2016.
Kelly, Birte (2002). International Suzuki Association: Regional Suzuki Associations. Retrieved February 21, 2007.
Kreitman, Edward. Teaching from the Balance Point: A Guide for Suzuki Teachers, Parents, and Students. Western Springs School of Talent Education Publications, Western Springs, IL, 1998.
Lavie, Karen (Summer, 2005). "On Gastronomy and Tonalization." New Zealand Suzuki Journal Vol. 16, #4, pp. 5–6.
Meyer, Constance (2003, 7 September). The Mom-Centric Method. Los Angeles Times, Classical Music.
Nurtured by Love: The life and work of Shinichi Suzuki [Video Documentary]. Produced by The Cleveland Institute of Music. Telos Productions, Inc.
Preucil, William & Doris (November, 1985). "The Evolution of the Suzuki Viola School". Journal of the American Viola Society Vol. 1, #2, pp18-20.
Suggested Supplementary Repertoire for Suzuki Violin School Volumes 6, 7 & 8. Suzuki Association of the Americas Website, May 2013. Retrieved January 14, 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
Suzuki Organ Website , Retrieved June 20, 2010
Suzuki, Shinichi. Nurtured By Love: A New Approach to Talent Education. Warner bros. Publication, Miami, Florida, 1968
Suzuki, Shinichi. Ability Development from Age Zero. Warner bros. Publication, Miami, Florida, 1981
Suzuki Talent Education Association of Australia (Vic) Inc., (Copyright 2005). History of the Suzuki Method. Retrieved November 29, 2008.
Suzuki Teacher Training for Trumpet. Suzuki Association of the Americas Website , Retrieved July 15, 2013.
Thibeault, M. D. (2018). Learning with Sound Recordings: A History of Suzuki’s Mediated Pedagogy. Journal of Research in Music Education, 66(1), 6–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429418756879
External links
International Suzuki Association
European Suzuki Association
Suzuki Association of the Americas
Asia Region Suzuki Association
Talent Education Research Institute
Pan-Pacific Suzuki Association
The American Suzuki Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point: The Suzuki Method in Action: An online collection documenting Suzuki and his teaching methodology.
Kristian Bush talks about music, the Suzuki Method, and Southern Gravity on Ben Sorensen's REAL Country
Music education
Pedagogy
Philosophy of education
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballymun
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Ballymun
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Ballymun () is an outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland, at the northern edge of the Northside, the green-field development of which began in the 1960s to accommodate a housing crisis in inner city areas of Dublin. While the newly built housing was state-of-the-art at the time, comprising high-rise tower blocks and flat complexes, residents were moved in years before shops, schools and other infrastructure were fully ready, and the area became well known for both a strong community spirit and considerable social challenges. Ballymun has several sub-districts such as Sillogue, Coultry, Shangan and Poppintree, and is close to both the Republic of Ireland's only IKEA store and to Dublin Airport. The area is the source of one Dublin river, and parts lie in the floodplain of another, and there are a number of parks.
In 1997, a regeneration plan was announced, which led to demolition of the flats over time and their replacement by new low-rise housing, along with some civic amenities, a number of arts projects, including the participative tree-planting project amaptocare, and an unfinished civic plaza, but also saw the loss of many of the area's shops, including the demolition of the only shopping centre. The regeneration, originally budgeted at €442 million, had cost at least €1 billion as of 2016, for the public elements. A metro stop on a city-to-airport line was planned but the plans were later shelved.
The population of all electoral divisions labelled as Ballymun was 22,321 as of the 2022 census.
Geography
Ballymun lies on the plains of southern Fingal (the historic area, rather than the modern county), sloping from northwest to southeast, from the catchment of the Santry River through that of the Wad River. The Santry rises in Harristown and Dubber, northwest of Ballymun, and crosses and drains the northern parts of the district. The Wad is the area's main watershed, with branches most notably around Poppintree; it flows southeast, eventually reaching the estuary of the River Tolka at Clontarf
Ballymun neighbours Finglas, Glasnevin and Santry.
History
The name Ballymun most likely derives from , meaning the 'town of the shrubland', in reference to the once dense forest which covered the area. In the 1300s the land was controlled by the Baron Skryne, County Meath. Richard Stanyhurst was granted 180 acres at Ballymun in 1473 upon his marriage to Agneta of the Barons of Scyrne family. The Burnell family held the lands of Ballymun and Balgriffin until 1534, when John Burnell was executed for supporting the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The lands then passed to the Bathe family of Drumcondra. By 1615, Robert Barnwell of Dunbro held the lands of Ballymun, and by 1641 there were just 2 or 3 cottages and a single thatched house in the area. The population in 1659 was 10 people, 4 born in England, and 6 Irish. In 1662, just 3 residents paid a hearth tax in the area.
In the early 1700s, the tower house at Ballymun was constructed as a mill, which was subsequently taken over by an English educational society in 1744 to found a girls Charter School. It was later converted to a boys school, before closing in 1825. The building still stands and is today called Santry Lodge. Due to the dense woodland and sparse population, the area was generally regarded as dangerous in the early 1700s, with numerous highwaymen operating on the Drogheda Road. In 1829, the Freeman's Journal noted that Ballymun was a popular place for duels. The area known as Stormanstown is named after Lord Stormingston who was granted land in Ballymun by Henry VIII, with the original Stormanstown House which was built in the early 18th century. This tiled mansion was demolished in 1823, and another house of the same name replaced it. This house was used by the Albert Agricultural College as offices in the 20th century until it was demolished in 1970. Another house called Stormanstown on the corner of Glasnevin Avenue and Ballymun Road was the former residence of Brian O'Higgins. It too was demolished in the 1970s.
Public housing for Dublin
By the 1960s, Dublin's housing stock was not only under pressure from a rising population but was also poorly maintained. House collapses in Bolton Street and Fenian Street in 1963 led to the death of four people, forcing Dublin Corporation to adopt 'emergency measures' to deal with the crisis. In 1964, in a response to this housing crisis in inner city areas of the capital, plans were made to build high-rise flat complexes; construction started in 1966 and were completed by the following year. The seven 15-storey towers were named after Irish Republican revolutionaries, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The flat complexes consisted of five 8-storey "districts" (Balbutcher, Balcurris, Coultry, Shangan and Sillogue) and three 4-storey "districts," two of which were part of Shangan and Sillogue, the third being located in Sandyhill. The Poppintree area of Ballymun was constructed in the late 1970s.
Original development
At the time of its construction, Ballymun was a sought-after location and prospective tenants had to pass an interview to get housing there. There were three types of apartment building: seven "fifteen-storey" towers (which actually had 16 storeys plus plant rooms above), nineteen eight-storey blocks and ten four-storey blocks. The flats were built in the 1960s on contracts from the National Building Agency under the authority of Neil Blaney, the Minister for Local Government.
Later commentators described the development of the flats and the district as problematic, with the environmental journalist Frank McDonald, in his book The Construction of Dublin, calling it the Irish state's "worst planning disaster", but the issues were not with the apartment buildings as such but the failure to integrate construction of accommodation with provision of services, problematic maintenance, notably of the lifts, the lack of social mix, and the abrupt move of tightly knit inner-city community families to an isolated area on the very edge of the city. Dublin's City Architect, Ali Grehan, after working as a lead architect and designer with the Ballymun regeneration project, commented that the concept of the area, developed from green fields, and its new (for Ireland) types of accommodation were a "really great idea" but that the project was "doomed to fall into decline" due to poor planning and central government policies. She especially highlighted the scale of the development, its purely public housing nature, and its location — a "constructed around a roundabout ... a dead end". She also noted that the concept envisaged the shopping centre being available from the start, but delayed for years, and the issues with lift and centralised heating system (also a new idea for Ireland) maintenance.
The corporation had more gradual plans for development in multiple locations, and according to geographer Joe Brady of University College Dublin, Dublin Corporation were sceptical about the Ballymun scheme but given the weakness of Irish local government and especially its funding, had little choice but to work with the proposal from national government:
The first tenants moved in between August 1966 and December 1966. By February 1969, when the National Building Agency's contract for Ballymun ceased and control of Ballymun was handed to Dublin Corporation, there was a total of 3,021 dwellings, fully comprising publicly-owned social housing.
Social challenges, community activity
Some social problems occurred in the early years, as families which had grown up in dense city terraces close to Dublin's retail core, found themselves at the edge of the city, with few amenities beyond a small and expensive travelling "van shop". Over time, Ballymun became notorious for a number of social problems, such as drug abuse and unemployment, and was impacted by negative media coverage of the area. At the same time, a wide range of local community organisations emerged, for particular areas and towers, and for purposes such as small enterprise support, anti-drugs campaigning and community project support.
The current Ballymun district is not substantially in the townland historically called "Ballymun" — instead, it occupies several nearby townlands, the most significant of which is Stormanstown. Due to what were seen to be undesirable associations, some say that the area has shrunk since the completion of the tower blocks. For instance, in the early days of Dublin City University (DCU), then called NIHE, Dublin, this institution was sometimes referred to as being in Ballymun (part of the "Ballymun Project"), or sometimes in Whitehall, while today it is referred to and has a postal address in Glasnevin, even though it has not changed location. Indeed, much of the present day central Ballymun lies on lands once in the northern reaches of the Albert Agricultural College estate, the forerunner of the present-day DCU. Streets have also been renamed — for example, Ballymun Avenue (which was previously Collins Avenue Extension) was renamed Glasnevin Avenue after a local plebiscite in the 1970s.
The city architect commented in 2015 that the "killer blow" for Ballymun was the offering of a tenant-purchase scheme in 1985, which gave good terms for local authority tenants to buy out their accommodation, but only if they had a house, not a flat, which led to many committed community members moving from Ballymun to be able to avail of the offer. This led to a "cycle of decline" and ultimately the need for a regeneration.
Regeneration of Ballymun
The government and Dublin City Council agreed an ambitious regeneration plan for Ballymun, with a budget exceeding €440 million. The creation of Ballymun Regeneration Limited as a limited company controlled by Dublin City Council initiated the main part of the project, beginning of the demolition of the Ballymun flats, and planned to conclude with the emergence of a "new town" of Ballymun. , six of the seven towers (Pearse, Ceannt, McDermott, McDonagh, Connolly, and Clarke) as well as three eight-storey blocks and seven four-storey blocks had been demolished by DSM, with the residents generally rehoused in new "state-of-the-art" housing in Ballymun. The new housing is a mixture of public, private, voluntary and co-operative housing. The residential aspects of the "new Ballymun" were largely completed by 2013. Several films and documentary TV programmes were produced during the regeneration period.
Positive aspects
The regeneration delivered the promised new housing, and many other amenities, including reworked park areas, a major City Council office facility, Health Service facilities, a public leisure centre, the Axis arts centre, student accommodation, a new hotel, and some renewed retail facilities.
Criticisms
During the planning and delivery process, the regeneration project attracted well-publicised questions about accountability and democratic participation. During it, most of the large number of community organisations closed. The regeneration saw the loss of many shops, including the emptying of the only shopping centre, Ballymun Town Centre. This meant the 18,000 residents had to travel to other districts for major grocery, and virtually all non-grocery, shopping. The plan for a replacement centre failed, and as of 2021, there is no central shopping facility. The shopping centre was eventually demolished in 2020.
Arts during the regeneration
During the regeneration and organisation, Breaking Ground, was set up as a "percent for art" scheme, and commissioned a wide range of projects, including prominent sculptures, and two headline projects, Hotel Ballymun and amaptocare.
In 2007, a floor of the by-then vacant Thomas Clarke Tower was temporarily transformed into a hotel as part of an art project; the project ran for a month and was heavily booked, with a waiting list.
As part of the New Ballymun, a major tree-planting project called amaptocare has been run, with more than 600 people sponsoring the planting of around 635 trees, and providing inscription texts which are engraved on plaques near the trees. Sponsors were informed that the all trees would be identified on a glass panel at Ballymun's central plaza; the plaza was completed by 2013, but the panel has, as of 2019, not yet been made.
The most-publicised sculpture was , which portrayed a young local woman on a horse, at 1.5 times life size. The model, Toni Marie Shields, was selected by public auditions, and 3D-imaged in London. Designed to be placed centrally in the district, it was temporarily erected in front of the area's only secondary school, where, as of 2021, it remains.
After regeneration
Local area plan
In 2017, with the formal end of the regeneration, and the dissolution of Ballymun Regeneration Limited, 2,820 apartments had been replaced by just under 2,000 units of social housing, and 1,350 units of privately owned housing, mostly rented out. The area had moved from 80% of residents living in social housing to just under 60%, with one in eight in private rental, and 28% owner-occupied. In July 2017, the City Council approved a Local Area Plan for the area, to govern future development. This plan provided for around 2,000 housing units, of which a significant percentage would be for sale, but with developers to be required to sell 10% to the council or an Approved Housing Body for social housing. The plan included guidance for 31 distinct sites, totalling 34 hectares, and including as a priority redevelopment of the almost-derelict central shopping centre.
2018 Metro Hotel Dublin
A multistorey hotel fire occurred in the building containing the Metro Hotel Dublin and two floors of apartments, on 21 March 2018. The fire broke out at approximately 8.00 pm and affected the top seven floors of the building. At least 12 units of Dublin Fire Brigade attended the building, and confirmed that the hotel was successfully evacuated. Dublin Fire Brigade reported soon after the fire was extinguished that there were no reports of any casualties or people unaccounted for. This included approximately 150 guests who were staying in the hotel. The fire broke out in a private residence on the 13th floor, above rooms for hotel guests.
The 15-storey hotel and apartment building was built as part of the Ballymun renewal, developed in 2006 by Pierce Contracting and a group of investors who included businessman Paddy Kelly. The hotel was designed by Shay Cleary Architects for Pierse Contracting and was originally scheduled to open on 9 June 2006, and was operated by the Days Inn Hotel group.
In 2007 a charter plane with 118 passengers and crew narrowly avoided crashing into the hotel after its pilot mistook the red lighting on the hotel's roof combined with its white internal light for the approach lights of a Dublin Airport runway. The incident occurred at 11.34 pm on the night of 16 August 2007, when the McDonnell Douglas jet was carrying 112 passengers and six crew on a charter flight from Lisbon to Dublin.
In April 2014, the 88-bedroom Metro Hotel was put on the market in the region of €2.5 million. Along with the hotel, the sellers sought €3 million for the 30 two-bed apartments on the upper floors of the property. In July 2016, planning permission was refused for the retention of masts and antennae on the hotel.
Transport
Ballymun is served by a number of Dublin Bus routes to the city centre including the numbers 4, 13 and the 155 while the Go-Ahead Ireland route 220 runs between Mulhuddart and DCU Helix and the 220T runs from Finglas Garda station to Whitehall.
The area was also envisaged to have an underground stop on the planned Metro North (Dublin city centre to Swords) line of the Dublin Metro. Plans for that have been revived with the Irish Government's 'Project Ireland 2040' scheme and the revised MetroLink concept. Journey time from Ballymun to the airport is estimated be around ten minutes by car, and to Dublin city centre 25–40 minutes.
Amenities
Education
There are a number of schools in each sub-district, including a (Irish-speaking) primary school in the Coultry district and another on Main Street, opposite to Trinity Comprehensive which is the only secondary school in Ballymun; this was formerly known as Ballymun Comprehensive and split between boys on the North side and girls on the South side before a major reconfiguration in 2005.
Retail
In the earliest years of the area's development, it was served by "van shops", often criticised for limited selection and high prices. The area's only shopping centre, Ballymun Town Centre, was built as a central point for the whole community, and was the main source for shopping for over 40 years. It was owned by the City Council, and rented units on commercial terms, with, as of 1991, a rent roll of half a million euro, and service charge income of 300,000 euro. By that time, there were urgent calls from traders and locals for serious refurbishment, but it proved hard to progress these issues due to questions about who should fund any work.
Redevelopment of the centre was a major element of the Ballymun Masterplan from 1997, and was to be private sector-led. 53% of the centre and surrounding site was sold to major developer Treasury Holdings for 6 million pounds in 2000, with the local authority retaining the rest. As of 2000, the centre was to be redeveloped by 2005, but there were delays, and it was 2009, after financial crisis had struck Ireland, before the developer secured permission for a complex to be called Springcross, involving a planned investment of 800 million euro to provide more than 70 shopping and office units, cinema and other entertainments, dining facilities, a new public library branch, and a creche. Construction was planned for 2010, but by then the site had been taken over by NAMA, and the project was unable to proceed.
Various units had closed during and after the disruption of the regeneration, and the anchor tenant, Tesco Ireland, handed back its unit early in 2014. In May 2014 NAMA and Treasury's receivers agreed to sell the 53% share back to the council, and in 2016 the Council used compulsory purchase powers to secure clear title to the whole complex, with the final lessees leaving mid-2018, and the centre being boarded up. In 2019 a 1.9 million euro contract to clear the site was awarded, and main demolition started mid-2019. The Council plans to sell the site to a new developer, who will be permitted to construct a combined retail and residential building. With the closure of the Tesco supermarket, the area is served by two standalone supermarkets, and otherwise by shopping centres in Finglas and Santry.
A small AIB branch, which used to be a Bank of Ireland branch before closure in 1984, was demolished in 2017 and replaced by a new AIB branch near the Civic Centre. The Republic of Ireland's only IKEA store is located nearby on St. Margaret's Road.
Civic centre
On the site of a former large underpass and roundabout, a brand new civic complex was built, including The Axis arts centre (opened in 2001), with the local health centre (completed and opened in 2003) and Garda station also moved here, although their defunct buildings remained across the road. City Council offices are also here, although the offices handling some services, such as driver licensing and motor taxation, closed as part of broader changes in such service delivery.
Other amenities
A number of green spaces, parks and playgrounds have been built around the district, and some were remodelled during the regeneration, notably Poppintree Park.
Two hotels, Travelodge and Metro are located in this area, as well as a city-owned gym and leisure centre (the old Ballymun swimming pool was demolished in 2016 after being defunct for a number of years).
Religion
There is a church in the old village centre, which was built in 1847 and replaced a penal chapel. Ballymun is a parish in the Fingal South West deanery of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.
Sport
There are a number of local sports groups, including:
In soccer: Belclare Celtic, St Pats Phoenix Football Club and Ballymun United Football Club.
For the GAA, Ballymun Kickhams Gaelic Football Club and Setanta Hurling Club
Governance and politics
Ballymun is in the jurisdiction of Dublin City Council, and for local elections it is part of the Finglas-Ballymun local electoral area. It is in the council's Dublin North West area, and hosts one of two area offices for that division of the city, the other being in Finglas.
Ballymun in the media
For decades, Ballymun's reputation was damaged by a high level of negative publicity in the media, usually focusing on crime and drugs, whilst ignoring positive news.
Television and film
About Ballymun
The 1992 film Into the West was set, and filmed, in Ballymun.
Other fictional works that were set in the area were the 1994 drama mini-series Family and the 1982 short film One Day Time .
Documentary
Several documentaries of the area have been made throughout the years, notably during the regeneration. A film of the leisure centre by filmmakers Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy, LEISURE CENTRE, was made in 2007 and starred hundreds of Ballymun residents. A documentary film entitled Ballymun Lullaby was released in February 2011 and includes scenes detailing the regeneration of Ballymun as well as its impact on the culture of its populace. In 2018 The 4th Act looked back at the whole regeneration, with contextual material about the area's history; it had significant appearances from several community activists, and City Council and BRL officials, and the artists, Seamus Nolan and Jochen Gerz, who led the biggest Ballymun arts projects, Hotel Ballymun and amaptocare respectively. It also highlighted the compilation and even printing of the area's oral history project, which sponsor Ballymun Regeneration then refused to publish and distribute.
Using Ballymun as urban setting
Bloody Sunday, a 2002 British-Irish film written and directed by Paul Greengrass and based around the 1972 "Bloody Sunday" incident in Northern Ireland. The film was mostly shot in Ballymun, with some location scenes shot in Northern Ireland.
Books
In September 2006, Gill & Macmillan published The Mun, by Lynn Connolly. This is a memoir covering the history of Ballymun from its inception to the final regeneration of the town. The Mun was Connolly's account of another side of Ballymun, of which she had fond memories, not press stories about drug dealing and gangsters but accounts of a community that thrived in spite of the squalor.
In April 2009, Irish publisher Gill & Macmillan published Ballymun resident Rachael Keogh's account of her life as a heroin addict, Dying to Survive. Rachael started taking drugs aged 12 and for the next 15 years was hooked on a variety of substances. In 2006, after repeated attempts to get help, Rachael went to the media to publicise her plight.
In 2010 New Island Books published The Ballymun Trilogy by the Dublin playwright, Dermot Bolger: three plays that chart forty years of life in Ballymun and which were all premiered in Axis in Ballymun before being staged in Britain, America, Poland and elsewhere.
Notable residents
Patrick Clarke, filmmaker, Sillogue Road from 1967 to 1972
Aoife Dooley, writer, illustrator, comedienne lives there
Glen Hansard, musician
M. J. Hyland, author, lived there for two years and uses the experience in "Carry Me Down"
James McCarthy, Gaelic footballer
Philly McMahon, Gaelic footballer
Barney Rock, Gaelic footballer
Dean Rock, Gaelic footballer
Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy, was born in Stormanstown House, a Georgian house that stood where Ballymun library currently is.
See also
List of towns and villages in Ireland
References
External links
Ballymun Regeneration Ltd, with much about all aspects of the regeneration
Photos of the demolition of one of the flats
Towns and villages in Dublin (city)
Populated places established in 1966
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greystones
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Greystones
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Greystones () is a coastal town and seaside resort in County Wicklow, Ireland. It lies on Ireland's east coast, south of Bray and south of Dublin city centre and has a population of 22,009, according to the 2022 census. The town is bordered by the Irish Sea to the east, Bray Head to the north and the Wicklow Mountains to the west. It is the second largest town in County Wicklow (after Bray).
The town was named after a half-mile or one-kilometre stretch of grey stones between two beaches on the seafront. The harbour area and Greystones railway station are at the northern and southern ends respectively. The North Beach, which begins at the harbour, is a stony beach, and some of its length is overlooked by the southern cliffs of Bray Head, which are subject to erosion. The South Beach is a broad sandy beach about one kilometre long. It is a Blue Flag beach and receives many visitors and tourists, mainly in the summer.
In 2008, Greystones was named as the world's "most liveable community" at the LivCom Awards in China. The community received the same award again in 2021.
History
Greystones is located south of the site of an ancient castle of the Barony of Rathdown. There was a hamlet which, like Rathdown Castle, was known as Rathdown, and which appeared on a 1712 map. This site occupied an area now known as the Grove, north of Greystones harbour, but only the ruins of a chapel, St. Crispin's Cell, survive. Greystones is a much more recent settlement and is first mentioned in , a 1795 publication. Here it is described as a "noted fishing place four miles beyond Bray."
In the early 19th century, there were some families scattered around the harbour, Blacklion, Windgates, Killincarrig and Rathdown. Delgany was a more substantial and longer-established village. However, Greystones was put on the map with the coming of the railway in 1855, a difficult undertaking which was performed in consultation with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the famous engineer. The railway station was built on the line dividing the properties of two landowners: the La Touche family of Bellevue House (now in ruins, near Delgany), and the Hawkins-Whitshed family of Killincarrig House (which is now Greystones Golf Club). It provided links with Bray and Dublin and left room for development on the adjoining estates.
Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed (better known as Lizzie Le Blond) owned the Hawkins-Whitshed estate from 1871 and she developed Ireland's first planned housing estate, an area currently known as the Burnaby. Lizzie was a trailblazing mountaineer and explorer, a photographer, an author of mountaineering books, fiction, travel writing and a filmmaker. She donated for a nominal rent the site upon which the library in Greystones is built. Her first marriage to Frederick Gustavus Burnaby was short-lived and he is only known to have visited Wicklow once/ However the area is still given his surname. An adjoining estate to that of Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed was owned by the La Touche Family. It was during the time William Robert La Touche owned the estate that Greystones' developed rapidly. To the north of the station, Church Road, Victoria Road and Trafalgar Road were laid out, and many houses were built. In the early 20th century, the Burnabys began to expand the town on their side of the station, and the roads and houses of the Burnaby were developed and the population grew considerably. The names of these two families remain well known today, with many roads and housing estates bearing their names.
Between 1885 and 1897, the people of Greystones campaigned for a harbour to aid the fishing industry and imports such as coal. The original pier, dock, sea wall and boat slip remained pre-2009 but had endured substantial damage. In the early 20th century, the town felt the effects of coastal erosion (which is still a major problem); the loss of fields and most of the houses on the North Beach Road, and the costly inland relocation of the railway have all resulted. In 1968, the old Kish lighthouse foundation was added to the end of the pier.
At the end of World War II, cars and petrol became widely available, allowing Greystones to gradually expand, filling in space between itself and outlying areas such as Blacklion, Killincarrig and Delgany. However, the popularity of the railway declined; its very existence being in jeopardy during the 1980s, as government cutbacks reduced the service to just a few trains per day. The 1990s brought a revival with the arrival of the electrified DART from Bray, and a much more frequent schedule.
Population and development
Greystones has experienced a huge increase in its population since the 1970s with the construction of mainly large housing estates. The first of these periods lasted for around a decade seeing the development of estates like Hillside, Applewood Heights, Redford Park and many other smaller ones like Burnaby Park. The second boom in construction came during the Celtic Tiger period of the early 2000s which saw developments such as Charlesland (the biggest) just south of the town, which includes over 1,000 dwelling units. Following the 2008 financial crisis little development took place, evident in the difference between the 2011 census and the 2016 census; an increase of only 1000. This is compared to previous increases like 2006 showing 3000–4000 in growth. Other projects such as the harbour redevelopment stalled or completely halted during this time period.
As of 2018, Greystones was experiencing a housing boom. A number of large-scale developments were taking place, mainly on the western fringes of the town, in the harbour area and around Charlesland. The main schemes included Seagreen and Waverly in Blacklion, Glenheron beside Charlesland and Marina village at the harbour. These equate collectively to over 1000 dwellings under construction. There are also multiple other similar schemes approved or pending approval. Greystones is the only town in County Wicklow with this scale of growth. These new developments resulted in a population increase of almost 4000 between 2016 and 2022.
As of the 2022 census the population of Greystones town stood at 22,009, making it the second largest town in the county after Bray. In 2016, the Greystones Municipal District Population stood at 26,323.
Wicklow County Council and Greystones Municipal District Council plan for at least 24,000 by 2028 in the town itself.
Along with the housing developments, road networks and facilities have been "improved" to cater for the growth. The road between Greystones and Bray has been slightly widened and realigned. A dual carriageway link road (R774) connecting Greystones to the N11 has been completed to the south of the town. Construction of a full interchange with the N11 has also been completed. Chapel Road has been connected with Blacklion Manor Road forming a new section of wide higher capacity road from the junction at Lidl to the junction with the top of Applewood Heights, creating a complete bottleneck at Delgany village. Estates like Seagreen access from this road.
According to the 2016 census, Greystones has the largest Church of Ireland presence as a proportion of the population (8.2%) anywhere in the country, has the largest proportion of Protestants overall (10.5%), and is the least religious town in the country (18.3% 'no religion').
Transport
Road
Greystones is accessible from the N11 Dublin-Wexford road; an interchange (Junction 11 on the N11) near Charlesland connects with the town via a dual carriageway. This quickly changes into the M11. This then joins onto the M50 (Dublin's orbital motorway) about 10 km north.
Rail
Greystones railway station, which opened on 30 October 1855, is the southern terminus of the DART railway line, a service which connects thirty stations along Dublin's east coast. Iarnród Éireann diesel Commuter and InterCity trains also serve Greystones, linking the town with Wicklow, Arklow, Gorey, Wexford, and Rosslare Europort to the south, and Dublin's Connolly Station to the north.
Bus
Greystones is served by the 84, 84N, 84X and 184 bus routes whilst route 702 Aircoach service starting at Charlesland links the area with Dublin Airport.
Walking
Bray and Greystones are linked by a Cliff Walk, which follows the route of the railway line around Bray Head. The walk is 6 km long and takes approximately two hours.
Politics
Greystones is part of the Wicklow Dáil constituency and the South European Parliament constituency. Two of Wicklow's five TDs are based in Greystones; Simon Harris (FG) and Jennifer Whitmore (SD).
In local government, the Greystones local electoral area (LEA) elects six councillors to Wicklow County Council who sit as Greystones Municipal District. This LEA also includes the neighbouring villages of Delgany, Kilcoole and Newcastle Lower
The following councillors represent the Greystones local electoral area:
In 1984, Greystones was granted town commissioners. This became a town council in 2002. All town councils in Ireland were abolished in 2014.
Development
Marina
A €300 million redevelopment scheme for the harbour was proposed by the Sispar consortium (Sispar is a joint venture consortium of Sisk and Michael Cotter's Park Developments) in a public-private partnership with Wicklow County Council. This development was a topical issue in the town, with objections revolving around the privatisation of public beachfront land without a broad public agreement. The development includes a new harbour, 341 apartments, a 230 berth marina, a new public plaza and facilities for local sporting clubs.
On the granting of planning permission, 6,210 submissions were received by An Bord Pleanála on initial plans, of which more than 6,200 were objections. Many of the objections came from outside County Wicklow, according to a spokesman for Wicklow County Council. Many objected to specifics of the plan while approving the general idea. An oral hearing was held and the board requested the developers to make certain changes which resulted in the plans being scaled down by approximately 10%. Some 3,700 objections were made on these updated plans. On 9 August 2007, the board approved the final plans, while imposing 13 conditions on construction works, including the retention of public access to the Cliff Walk during the development period, strict guidelines in relation to dust suppression, the re-use of demolition materials, and limitations on the hours of operation and noise levels. The board also overruled an earlier inspector's report, instead permitting an old unlicensed landfill to remain beside the new apartments.
In February 2010, it was announced that development of the marina would be paused indefinitely due to conditions in the Irish property market.
After the development plans stalled, the loans attached to the development were transferred to NAMA. Sispar insisted that it needed funding from NAMA to finish the project. In September 2012 it was reported that NAMA had written off €50m owed for the troubled development of Greystones Harbour. It appeared that it was not the Sispar consortium but Sisk alone that controlled the loans.
Almost all of the new harbour facilities are now in use and available to the public, while the construction of apartments is ongoing.
Sports
Association football
The town is home the association football club Greystones United, which is based at Woodlands near the south beach. GUFC is the largest schoolboy/girl football club in the country and has in excess of 700 members. Perhaps the club's most famous alumnus is retired Irish international Paul McShane. Another club, Greystones AFC, is located at 'The Arch Field' just beside the railway bridge at the harbour. Five of their players have represented Ireland at various levels. Ian Horan, Chris Mason and Stephen McCann have represented the Irish Intermediate team and Stephen Roche and Richie O'Hanlon have represented the Irish Colleges team. The Saturday and Sunday sides both play in the top division of the Leinster Senior League.
Gaelic games
Éire Óg Greystones GAA club is located on Mill Road, at the south end of the town. The club has recently undergone a major reconstruction which saw improvements made to the clubhouse, pitches, lighting and parking facilities.
Golf
There are two 18-hole golf courses and a driving range within the town. Greystones Golf Club was founded in 1895 and overlooks the town, the countryside, and the Irish Sea. Charlesland Golf Club is newer, flatter, and located by the sea. There are other courses at Delgany, Glen of the Downs, Kilcoole, Druids Glen, and Bray.
Marine
Greystones has many marine-based clubs including sailing and wind-surfing, angling, diving, rowing and Sea Scouts. Greystones rowing club, for example, was established in 1920.
Shore angling for cod and plaice at the beaches and the harbour attracts many people, especially during the summer. Swimming is popular in warmer weather, especially on the south beach.
Rugby
Greystones RFC is a rugby union team which participates in the All-Ireland League.
Tennis
Greystones Lawn Tennis Club has 12 outdoor floodlit courts and a clubhouse located on Mill Road at the south end of the town. It regularly hosts regional and national competitions.
Other sports
There is a lawn bowling club located at Burnaby Park. Greystones is also home to the Greystones Mariners Baseball Club, which competes nationally and which has seen several members represent the Irish national baseball team.
Greystones Cricket (formed in 2012), practices (nets) at Greystones RFC and play their home matches at the Greystones United F.C. grounds. They have three senior men's teams and one ladies' team playing in the Leinster Cricket Union competitions, a taverners and two junior teams.
St. Kilian's Badminton Club plays in Shoreline Leisure Center on Mill Road.
Religion
Greystones has a variety of Christian denominations in the locality, with most divisions of mainstream Christianity represented. There is a Roman Catholic, a Presbyterian, a Church of Ireland, an Evangelical, and an Evangelical Arminian church in Greystones.
Carraig Eden Theological College is the premier Pentecostal centre for theological study and ministerial training in Ireland, offering BTh and MTh degrees in Applied Theology
The majority of residents are Catholic; however, Greystones has the largest Church of Ireland presence as a proportion of the population (8.2%) anywhere in the country, has the largest proportion of Protestants overall (10.5%), and is the least religious town in the country (18.3% 'no religion'). (according to the 2016 census).
Education and research
Greystones has eight primary schools, including several national schools, an Educate Together primary school, and an Irish-language Gaelscoil.
The town also has four secondary schools:
St. David's Holy Faith Secondary School which is a public, co-educational school.
Temple Carrig School; A Church of Ireland, co-educational secondary school which opened in 2014.
Greystones Community College, a (non-denominational) secondary school which opened in 2020
SEK-Dublin, a private international school which offers Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) courses. It is located in Belvedere Hall and first opened its doors in 1981.
Wicklow County Council manages a Carnegie library opposite Burnaby Park on the main street (Church Road).
Entertainment
Greystones has a number of entertainment facilities; Charlesland Sports and Recreation Park which include a skate park, several all-weather football and basketball courts, a running track and a playground. The Whale Theatre, used for drama, dance, and concerts, is located in the town centre and is supplemented by Greystones Studios, which provide classes, performance space, practice rooms and AV studios.
Film and television
The Ormonde cinema in Greystones, which closed in July 2007, featured in the Father Ted episode "The Passion of St. Tibulus" and also in an episode of Custer's Last Standup.
Greystones featured as the backdrop for some scenes in the popular BBC series Ballykissangel.
In the 1980s, many scenes from a series called "Rose of Dublin" were filmed around the harbour area of Greystones.
The town was commonly used in the Irish programme Glenroe.
Parts of the movie Taffin, starring Pierce Brosnan, were filmed in Greystones.
Greystones featured in an episode of Dream Team, a Sky One soccer soap series.
Parts of George Gently, a 2007 British detective one-off by BBC, were filmed around the Harbour. Martin Shaw starred in the production, which is set in 1960s Britain (Northumberland). The Beach House pub was renamed 'The Mariner's Rest' for the occasion.
The movie Yesterday's Children, starring Jane Seymour, was filmed in Greystones.
Economy
The Greystones area is the home to several businesses, including The Happy Pear food company, Goldfish Telecom, and Smart Storage (RTÉ Dragons' Den-winning company based in nearby Newtownmountkennedy).
Greystones remains the most expensive Eircode (A63) outside of Dublin as of Q2 2021 at €495,000.
Notable people
Greystones and its environs (including Delgany) are home to several notable people including:
Amy Bowtell, professional tennis player
Éamon de Buitléar, wildlife film-maker and naturalist
Reggie Corrigan, former Ireland national rugby union team team member and Leinster player
Paul Dunne, golfer
Simon Harris, politician
Andrew Hozier-Byrne, musician
Seán Drea, former Irish Olympic rower
Ronnie Drew of The Dubliners lived in Greystones
Sean FitzPatrick, former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank
George Hamilton, commentator for RTÉ television
Ciara Kelly, broadcaster
Paul McNaughton, former Irish international rugby player, ex Leinster manager
Samuel Middleton, cricketer
John L. Murray, Chief Justice of Ireland 2004–2011
A. J. Potter, composer
Damien Rice, musician
Saoirse Ronan, actress
Marten Toonder, artist, creator of Oliver B. Bumble
Town twinning
Greystones has town twinning agreements with:
Holyhead, Wales, United Kingdom.
Gallery
See also
List of towns and villages in Ireland
References
External links
Greystones Chamber of Commerce
Greystones Tourism
Greystones Town Council, archived website of former authority
Beaches of County Wicklow
Towns and villages in County Wicklow
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective%20linear%20group
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Projective linear group
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In mathematics, especially in the group theoretic area of algebra, the projective linear group (also known as the projective general linear group or PGL) is the induced action of the general linear group of a vector space V on the associated projective space P(V). Explicitly, the projective linear group is the quotient group
PGL(V) = GL(V)/Z(V)
where GL(V) is the general linear group of V and Z(V) is the subgroup of all nonzero scalar transformations of V; these are quotiented out because they act trivially on the projective space and they form the kernel of the action, and the notation "Z" reflects that the scalar transformations form the center of the general linear group.
The projective special linear group, PSL, is defined analogously, as the induced action of the special linear group on the associated projective space. Explicitly:
PSL(V) = SL(V)/SZ(V)
where SL(V) is the special linear group over V and SZ(V) is the subgroup of scalar transformations with unit determinant. Here SZ is the center of SL, and is naturally identified with the group of nth roots of unity in F (where n is the dimension of V and F is the base field).
PGL and PSL are some of the fundamental groups of study, part of the so-called classical groups, and an element of PGL is called projective linear transformation, projective transformation or homography. If V is the n-dimensional vector space over a field F, namely the alternate notations and are also used.
Note that and are isomorphic if and only if every element of F has an nth root in F. As an example, note that , but that ; this corresponds to the real projective line being orientable, and the projective special linear group only being the orientation-preserving transformations.
PGL and PSL can also be defined over a ring, with an important example being the modular group, .
Name
The name comes from projective geometry, where the projective group acting on homogeneous coordinates (x0:x1: ... :xn) is the underlying group of the geometry. Stated differently, the natural action of GL(V) on V descends to an action of PGL(V) on the projective space P(V).
The projective linear groups therefore generalise the case PGL(2, C) of Möbius transformations (sometimes called the Möbius group), which acts on the projective line.
Note that unlike the general linear group, which is generally defined axiomatically as "invertible functions preserving the linear (vector space) structure", the projective linear group is defined constructively, as a quotient of the general linear group of the associated vector space, rather than axiomatically as "invertible functions preserving the projective linear structure". This is reflected in the notation: PGL(n, F) is the group associated to GL(n, F), and is the projective linear group of (n−1)-dimensional projective space, not n-dimensional projective space.
Collineations
A related group is the collineation group, which is defined axiomatically. A collineation is an invertible (or more generally one-to-one) map which sends collinear points to collinear points. One can define a projective space axiomatically in terms of an incidence structure (a set of points P, lines L, and an incidence relation I specifying which points lie on which lines) satisfying certain axioms – an automorphism of a projective space thus defined then being an automorphism f of the set of points and an automorphism g of the set of lines, preserving the incidence relation, which is exactly a collineation of a space to itself. Projective linear transforms are collineations (planes in a vector space correspond to lines in the associated projective space, and linear transforms map planes to planes, so projective linear transforms map lines to lines), but in general not all collineations are projective linear transforms – PGL is in general a proper subgroup of the collineation group.
Specifically, for n = 2 (a projective line), all points are collinear, so the collineation group is exactly the symmetric group of the points of the projective line, and except for F2 and F3 (where PGL is the full symmetric group), PGL is a proper subgroup of the full symmetric group on these points.
For n ≥ 3, the collineation group is the projective semilinear group, PΓL – this is PGL, twisted by field automorphisms; formally, PΓL ≅ PGL ⋊ Gal(K/k), where k is the prime field for K; this is the fundamental theorem of projective geometry. Thus for K a prime field (Fp or Q), we have PGL = PΓL, but for K a field with non-trivial Galois automorphisms (such as for n ≥ 2 or C), the projective linear group is a proper subgroup of the collineation group, which can be thought of as "transforms preserving a projective semi-linear structure". Correspondingly, the quotient group PΓL/PGL = Gal(K/k) corresponds to "choices of linear structure", with the identity (base point) being the existing linear structure.
One may also define collineation groups for axiomatically defined projective spaces, where there is no natural notion of a projective linear transform. However, with the exception of the non-Desarguesian planes, all projective spaces are the projectivization of a linear space over a division ring though, as noted above, there are multiple choices of linear structure, namely a torsor over Gal(K/k) (for n ≥ 3).
Elements
The elements of the projective linear group can be understood as "tilting the plane" along one of the axes, and then projecting to the original plane, and also have dimension n.
A more familiar geometric way to understand the projective transforms is via projective rotations (the elements of PSO(n+1)), which corresponds to the stereographic projection of rotations of the unit hypersphere, and has dimension Visually, this corresponds to standing at the origin (or placing a camera at the origin), and turning one's angle of view, then projecting onto a flat plane. Rotations in axes perpendicular to the hyperplane preserve the hyperplane and yield a rotation of the hyperplane (an element of SO(n), which has dimension ), while rotations in axes parallel to the hyperplane are proper projective maps, and accounts for the remaining n dimensions.
Properties
PGL sends collinear points to collinear points (it preserves projective lines), but it is not the full collineation group, which is instead either PΓL (for n > 2) or the full symmetric group for n = 2 (the projective line).
Every (biregular) algebraic automorphism of a projective space is projective linear. The birational automorphisms form a larger group, the Cremona group.
PGL acts faithfully on projective space: non-identity elements act non-trivially.
Concretely, the kernel of the action of GL on projective space is exactly the scalar maps, which are quotiented out in PGL.
PGL acts 2-transitively on projective space.
This is because 2 distinct points in projective space correspond to 2 vectors that do not lie on a single linear space, and hence are linearly independent, and GL acts transitively on k-element sets of linearly independent vectors.
PGL(2, K) acts sharply 3-transitively on the projective line.
3 arbitrary points are conventionally mapped to [0, 1], [1, 1], [1, 0]; in alternative notation, 0, 1, ∞. In fractional linear transformation notation, the function maps a ↦ 0, b ↦ 1, c ↦ ∞, and is the unique such map that does so. This is the cross-ratio – see for details.
For n ≥ 3, PGL(n, K) does not act 3-transitively, because it must send 3 collinear points to 3 other collinear points, not an arbitrary set. For n = 2 the space is the projective line, so all points are collinear and this is no restriction.
PGL(2, K) does not act 4-transitively on the projective line (except for PGL(2, 3), as P1(3) has 3+1=4 points, so 3-transitive implies 4-transitive); the invariant that is preserved is the cross ratio, and this determines where every other point is sent: specifying where 3 points are mapped determines the map. Thus in particular it is not the full collineation group of the projective line (except for F2 and F3).
PSL(2, q) and PGL(2, q) (for q > 2, and q odd for PSL) are two of the four families of Zassenhaus groups.
PGL(n, K) is an algebraic group of dimension n2−1 and an open subgroup of the projective space Pn2−1. As defined, the functor PSL(n,K) does not define an algebraic group, or even an fppf sheaf, and its sheafification in the fppf topology is in fact PGL(n,K).
PSL and PGL are centerless – this is because the diagonal matrices are not only the center, but also the hypercenter (the quotient of a group by its center is not necessarily centerless).
Fractional linear transformations
As for Möbius transformations, the group PGL(2, K) can be interpreted as fractional linear transformations with coefficients in K. Points in the projective line over K correspond to pairs from K2, with two pairs being equivalent when they are proportional. When the second coordinate is non-zero, a point can be represented by [z, 1]. Then when ad– bc ≠ 0, the action of PGL(2, K) is by linear transformation:
In this way successive transformations can be written as right multiplication by such matrices, and matrix multiplication can be used for the group product in PGL(2, K).
Finite fields
The projective special linear groups PSL(n, Fq) for a finite field Fq are often written as PSL(n, q) or Ln(q). They are finite simple groups whenever n is at least 2, with two exceptions: L2(2), which is isomorphic to S3, the symmetric group on 3 letters, and is solvable; and L2(3), which is isomorphic to A4, the alternating group on 4 letters, and is also solvable. These exceptional isomorphisms can be understood as arising from the action on the projective line.
The special linear groups SL(n, q) are thus quasisimple: perfect central extensions of a simple group (unless n = 2 and q = 2 or 3).
History
The groups PSL(2, p) for any prime number p were constructed by Évariste Galois in the 1830s, and were the second family of finite simple groups, after the alternating groups. Galois constructed them as fractional linear transforms, and observed that they were simple except if p was 2 or 3; this is contained in his last letter to Chevalier. In the same letter and attached manuscripts, Galois also constructed the general linear group over a prime field, GL(ν, p), in studying the Galois group of the general equation of degree pν.
The groups PSL(n, q) (general n, general finite field) for any prime power q were then constructed in the classic 1870 text by Camille Jordan, Traité des substitutions et des équations algébriques.
Order
The order of PGL(n, q) is
(qn − 1)(qn − q)(qn − q2) ⋅⋅⋅ (qn − qn−1)/(q − 1) = qn2−1 − O(qn2−3),
which corresponds to the order of , divided by for projectivization; see q-analog for discussion of such formulas. Note that the degree is , which agrees with the dimension as an algebraic group. The "O" is for big O notation, meaning "terms involving lower order". This also equals the order of ; there dividing by is due to the determinant.
The order of is the order of PGL(n, q) as above, divided by . This is equal to , the number of scalar matrices with determinant 1; , the number of classes of element that have no nth root; and it is also the number of nth roots of unity in Fq.
Exceptional isomorphisms
In addition to the isomorphisms
L2(2) ≅ S3, L2(3) ≅ A4, and PGL(2, 3) ≅ S4,
there are other exceptional isomorphisms between projective special linear groups and alternating groups (these groups are all simple, as the alternating group over 5 or more letters is simple):
(see here for a proof)
The isomorphism L2(9) ≅ A6 allows one to see the exotic outer automorphism of A6 in terms of field automorphism and matrix operations. The isomorphism L4(2) ≅ A8 is of interest in the structure of the Mathieu group M24.
The associated extensions SL(n, q) → PSL(n, q) are covering groups of the alternating groups (universal perfect central extensions) for A4, A5, by uniqueness of the universal perfect central extension; for L2(9) ≅ A6, the associated extension is a perfect central extension, but not universal: there is a 3-fold covering group.
The groups over F5 have a number of exceptional isomorphisms:
PSL(2, 5) ≅ A5 ≅ I, the alternating group on five elements, or equivalently the icosahedral group;
PGL(2, 5) ≅ S5, the symmetric group on five elements;
SL(2, 5) ≅ 2 ⋅ A5 ≅ 2I the double cover of the alternating group A5, or equivalently the binary icosahedral group.
They can also be used to give a construction of an exotic map S5 → S6, as described below. Note however that GL(2, 5) is not a double cover of S5, but is rather a 4-fold cover.
A further isomorphism is:
L2(7) ≅ L3(2) is the simple group of order 168, the second-smallest non-abelian simple group, and is not an alternating group; see PSL(2,7).
The above exceptional isomorphisms involving the projective special linear groups are almost all of the exceptional isomorphisms between families of finite simple groups; the only other exceptional isomorphism is PSU(4, 2) ≃ PSp(4, 3), between a projective special unitary group and a projective symplectic group.
Action on projective line
Some of the above maps can be seen directly in terms of the action of PSL and PGL on the associated projective line: PGL(n, q) acts on the projective space Pn−1(q), which has (qn−1)/(q−1) points, and this yields a map from the projective linear group to the symmetric group on (qn−1)/(q−1) points. For n = 2, this is the projective line P1(q) which has (q2−1)/(q−1) = q+1 points, so there is a map PGL(2, q) → Sq+1.
To understand these maps, it is useful to recall these facts:
The order of PGL(2, q) is
the order of PSL(2, q) either equals this (if the characteristic is 2), or is half this (if the characteristic is not 2).
The action of the projective linear group on the projective line is sharply 3-transitive (faithful and 3-transitive), so the map is one-to-one and has image a 3-transitive subgroup.
Thus the image is a 3-transitive subgroup of known order, which allows it to be identified. This yields the following maps:
PSL(2, 2) = PGL(2, 2) → S3, of order 6, which is an isomorphism.
The inverse map (a projective representation of S3) can be realized by the anharmonic group, and more generally yields an embedding S3 → PGL(2, q) for all fields.
PSL(2, 3) < PGL(2, 3) → S4, of orders 12 and 24, the latter of which is an isomorphism, with PSL(2, 3) being the alternating group.
The anharmonic group gives a partial map in the opposite direction, mapping S3 → PGL(2, 3) as the stabilizer of the point −1.
PSL(2, 4) = PGL(2, 4) → S5, of order 60, yielding the alternating group A5.
PSL(2, 5) < PGL(2, 5) → S6, of orders 60 and 120, which yields an embedding of S5 (respectively, A5) as a transitive subgroup of S6 (respectively, A6). This is an example of an exotic map S5 → S6, and can be used to construct the exceptional outer automorphism of S6. Note that the isomorphism PGL(2, 5) ≅ S5 is not transparent from this presentation: there is no particularly natural set of 5 elements on which PGL(2, 5) acts.
Action on p points
While PSL(n, q) naturally acts on (qn−1)/(q−1) = 1+q+...+qn−1 points, non-trivial actions on fewer points are rarer. Indeed, for PSL(2, p) acts non-trivially on p points if and only if p = 2, 3, 5, 7, or 11; for 2 and 3 the group is not simple, while for 5, 7, and 11, the group is simple – further, it does not act non-trivially on fewer than p points. This was first observed by Évariste Galois in his last letter to Chevalier, 1832.
This can be analyzed as follows; note that for 2 and 3 the action is not faithful (it is a non-trivial quotient, and the PSL group is not simple), while for 5, 7, and 11 the action is faithful (as the group is simple and the action is non-trivial), and yields an embedding into Sp. In all but the last case, PSL(2, 11), it corresponds to an exceptional isomorphism, where the right-most group has an obvious action on p points:
via the sign map;
via the quotient by the Klein 4-group;
To construct such an isomorphism, one needs to consider the group L2(5) as a Galois group of a Galois cover a5: X(5) → X(1) = P1, where X(N) is a modular curve of level N. This cover is ramified at 12 points. The modular curve X(5) has genus 0 and is isomorphic to a sphere over the field of complex numbers, and then the action of L2(5) on these 12 points becomes the symmetry group of an icosahedron. One then needs to consider the action of the symmetry group of icosahedron on the five associated tetrahedra.
L2(7) ≅ L3(2) which acts on the 1+2+4 = 7 points of the Fano plane (projective plane over F2); this can also be seen as the action on order 2 biplane, which is the complementary Fano plane.
L2(11) is subtler, and elaborated below; it acts on the order 3 biplane.
Further, L2(7) and L2(11) have two inequivalent actions on p points; geometrically this is realized by the action on a biplane, which has p points and p blocks – the action on the points and the action on the blocks are both actions on p points, but not conjugate (they have different point stabilizers); they are instead related by an outer automorphism of the group.
More recently, these last three exceptional actions have been interpreted as an example of the ADE classification: these actions correspond to products (as sets, not as groups) of the groups as A4 × Z/5Z, S4 × Z/7Z, and A5 × Z/11Z, where the groups A4, S4 and A5 are the isometry groups of the Platonic solids, and correspond to E6, E7, and E8 under the McKay correspondence. These three exceptional cases are also realized as the geometries of polyhedra (equivalently, tilings of Riemann surfaces), respectively: the compound of five tetrahedra inside the icosahedron (sphere, genus 0), the order 2 biplane (complementary Fano plane) inside the Klein quartic (genus 3), and the order 3 biplane (Paley biplane) inside the buckyball surface (genus 70).
The action of L2(11) can be seen algebraically as due to an exceptional inclusion – there are two conjugacy classes of subgroups of L2(11) that are isomorphic to L2(5), each with 11 elements: the action of L2(11) by conjugation on these is an action on 11 points, and, further, the two conjugacy classes are related by an outer automorphism of L2(11). (The same is true for subgroups of L2(7) isomorphic to S4, and this also has a biplane geometry.)
Geometrically, this action can be understood via a biplane geometry, which is defined as follows. A biplane geometry is a symmetric design (a set of points and an equal number of "lines", or rather blocks) such that any set of two points is contained in two lines, while any two lines intersect in two points; this is similar to a finite projective plane, except that rather than two points determining one line (and two lines determining one point), they determine two lines (respectively, points). In this case (the Paley biplane, obtained from the Paley digraph of order 11), the points are the affine line (the finite field) F11, where the first line is defined to be the five non-zero quadratic residues (points which are squares: 1, 3, 4, 5, 9), and the other lines are the affine translates of this (add a constant to all the points). L2(11) is then isomorphic to the subgroup of S11 that preserve this geometry (sends lines to lines), giving a set of 11 points on which it acts – in fact two: the points or the lines, which corresponds to the outer automorphism – while L2(5) is the stabilizer of a given line, or dually of a given point.
More surprisingly, the coset space L2(11)/Z/11Z, which has order 660/11 = 60 (and on which the icosahedral group acts) naturally has the structure of a buckeyball, which is used in the construction of the buckyball surface.
Mathieu groups
The group PSL(3, 4) can be used to construct the Mathieu group M24, one of the sporadic simple groups; in this context, one refers to PSL(3, 4) as M21, though it is not properly a Mathieu group itself. One begins with the projective plane over the field with four elements, which is a Steiner system of type S(2, 5, 21) – meaning that it has 21 points, each line ("block", in Steiner terminology) has 5 points, and any 2 points determine a line – and on which PSL(3, 4) acts. One calls this Steiner system W21 ("W" for Witt), and then expands it to a larger Steiner system W24, expanding the symmetry group along the way: to the projective general linear group PGL(3, 4), then to the projective semilinear group PΓL(3, 4), and finally to the Mathieu group M24.
M24 also contains copies of PSL(2, 11), which is maximal in M22, and PSL(2, 23), which is maximal in M24, and can be used to construct M24.
Hurwitz surfaces
PSL groups arise as Hurwitz groups (automorphism groups of Hurwitz surfaces – algebraic curves of maximal possibly symmetry group). The Hurwitz surface of lowest genus, the Klein quartic (genus 3), has automorphism group isomorphic to PSL(2, 7) (equivalently GL(3, 2)), while the Hurwitz surface of second-lowest genus, the Macbeath surface (genus 7), has automorphism group isomorphic to PSL(2, 8).
In fact, many but not all simple groups arise as Hurwitz groups (including the monster group, though not all alternating groups or sporadic groups), though PSL is notable for including the smallest such groups.
Modular group
The groups PSL(2, Z/nZ) arise in studying the modular group, PSL(2, Z), as quotients by reducing all elements mod n; the kernels are called the principal congruence subgroups.
A noteworthy subgroup of the projective general linear group PGL(2, Z) (and of the projective special linear group PSL(2, Z[i])) is the symmetries of the set {0, 1, ∞} ⊂ P1(C) which is known as the anharmonic group, and arises as the symmetries of the six cross-ratios. The subgroup can be expressed as fractional linear transformations, or represented (non-uniquely) by matrices, as:
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Note that the top row is the identity and the two 3-cycles, and are orientation-preserving, forming a subgroup in PSL(2, Z), while the bottom row is the three 2-cycles, and are in PGL(2, Z) and PSL(2, Z[i]), but not in PSL(2, Z), hence realized either as matrices with determinant −1 and integer coefficients, or as matrices with determinant 1 and Gaussian integer coefficients.
This maps to the symmetries of {0, 1, ∞} ⊂ P1(n) under reduction mod n. Notably, for n = 2, this subgroup maps isomorphically to PGL(2, Z/2Z) = PSL(2, Z/2Z) ≅ S3, and thus provides a splitting for the quotient map
The fixed points of both 3-cycles are the "most symmetric" cross-ratios, , the solutions to (the primitive sixth roots of unity). The 2-cycles interchange these, as they do any points other than their fixed points, which realizes the quotient map S3 → S2 by the group action on these two points. That is, the subgroup C3 < S3 consisting of the identity and the 3-cycles, {(), (0 1 ∞), (0 ∞ 1)}, fixes these two points, while the other elements interchange them.
The fixed points of the individual 2-cycles are, respectively, −1, 1/2, 2, and this set is also preserved and permuted by the 3-cycles. This corresponds to the action of S3 on the 2-cycles (its Sylow 2-subgroups) by conjugation and realizes the isomorphism with the group of inner automorphisms,
Geometrically, this can be visualized as the rotation group of the triangular bipyramid, which is isomorphic to the dihedral group of the triangle ; see anharmonic group.
Topology
Over the real and complex numbers, the topology of PGL and PSL can be determined from the fiber bundles that define them:
via the long exact sequence of a fibration.
For both the reals and complexes, SL is a covering space of PSL, with number of sheets equal to the number of nth roots in K; thus in particular all their higher homotopy groups agree. For the reals, SL is a 2-fold cover of PSL for n even, and is a 1-fold cover for n odd, i.e., an isomorphism:
{±1} → SL(2n, R) → PSL(2n, R)
For the complexes, SL is an n-fold cover of PSL.
For PGL, for the reals, the fiber is R* ≅ {±1}, so up to homotopy, GL → PGL is a 2-fold covering space, and all higher homotopy groups agree.
For PGL over the complexes, the fiber is C* ≅ S1, so up to homotopy, GL → PGL is a circle bundle. The higher homotopy groups of the circle vanish, so the homotopy groups of GL(n, C) and PGL(n, C) agree for n ≥ 3. In fact, π2 always vanishes for Lie groups, so the homotopy groups agree for n ≥ 2. For n = 1, we have that π1(GL(n, C)) = π1(S1) = Z. The fundamental group of PGL(2, C) is a finite cyclic group of order 2.
Covering groups
Over the real and complex numbers, the projective special linear groups are the minimal (centerless) Lie group realizations for the special linear Lie algebra every connected Lie group whose Lie algebra is is a cover of PSL(n, F). Conversely, its universal covering group is the maximal (simply connected) element, and the intermediary realizations form a lattice of covering groups.
For example, SL(2, R) has center {±1} and fundamental group Z, and thus has universal cover and covers the centerless PSL(2, R).
Representation theory
A group homomorphism G → PGL(V) from a group G to a projective linear group is called a projective representation of the group G, by analogy with a linear representation (a homomorphism G → GL(V)). These were studied by Issai Schur, who showed that projective representations of G can be classified in terms of linear representations of central extensions of G. This led to the Schur multiplier, which is used to address this question.
Low dimensions
The projective linear group is mostly studied for n ≥ 2, though it can be defined for low dimensions.
For n = 0 (or in fact n < 0) the projective space of K0 is empty, as there are no 1-dimensional subspaces of a 0-dimensional space. Thus, PGL(0, K) is the trivial group, consisting of the unique empty map from the empty set to itself. Further, the action of scalars on a 0-dimensional space is trivial, so the map K* → GL(0, K) is trivial, rather than an inclusion as it is in higher dimensions.
For n = 1, the projective space of K1 is a single point, as there is a single 1-dimensional subspace. Thus, PGL(1, K) is the trivial group, consisting of the unique map from a singleton set to itself. Further, the general linear group of a 1-dimensional space is exactly the scalars, so the map is an isomorphism, corresponding to PGL(1, K) := GL(1, K)/K* ≅ {1} being trivial.
For n = 2, PGL(2, K) is non-trivial, but is unusual in that it is 3-transitive, unlike higher dimensions when it is only 2-transitive.
Examples
PSL(2,7)
Modular group, PSL(2, Z)
PSL(2,R)
Möbius group, PGL(2, C) = PSL(2, C)
Subgroups
Projective orthogonal group, PO – maximal compact subgroup of PGL
Projective unitary group, PU
Projective special orthogonal group, PSO – maximal compact subgroup of PSL
Projective special unitary group, PSU
Larger groups
The projective linear group is contained within larger groups, notably:
Projective semilinear group, PΓL, which allows field automorphisms.
Cremona group, Cr(Pn(k)) of birational automorphisms; any biregular automorphism is linear, so PGL coincides with the group of biregular automorphisms.
See also
Projective transformation
Unit
Notes
References
Lie groups
Projective geometry
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Landing gear
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Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called alighting gear by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin Company. For aircraft, Stinton makes the terminology distinction undercarriage (British) = landing gear (US).
For aircraft, the landing gear supports the craft when it is not flying, allowing it to take off, land, and taxi without damage. Wheeled landing gear is the most common, with skis or floats needed to operate from snow/ice/water and skids for vertical operation on land. Faster aircraft have retractable undercarriages, which fold away during flight to reduce drag.
Some unusual landing gear have been evaluated experimentally. These include: no landing gear (to save weight), made possible by operating from a catapult cradle and flexible landing deck: air cushion (to enable operation over a wide range of ground obstacles and water/snow/ice); tracked (to reduce runway loading).
For launch vehicles and spacecraft landers, the landing gear usually only supports the vehicle on landing, and is not used for takeoff or surface movement.
Given their varied designs and applications, there exist dozens of specialized landing gear manufacturers. The three largest are Safran Landing Systems, Collins Aerospace (part of Raytheon Technologies) and Héroux-Devtek.
Aircraft
The landing gear represents 2.5 to 5% of the maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) and 1.5 to 1.75% of the aircraft cost, but 20% of the airframe direct maintenance cost. A suitably-designed wheel can support , tolerate a ground speed of 300 km/h and roll a distance of ; it has a 20,000 hours time between overhaul and a 60,000 hours or 20 year life time.
Gear arrangements
Wheeled undercarriages normally come in two types:
Conventional landing gear or "taildragger", where there are two main wheels towards the front of the aircraft and a single, much smaller, wheel or skid at the rear. The same helicopter arrangement is called tricycle tailwheel.
Tricycle undercarriage where there are two main wheels (or wheel assemblies) under the wings and a third smaller wheel in the nose. The same helicopter arrangement is called tricycle nosewheel.
The taildragger arrangement was common during the early propeller era, as it allows more room for propeller clearance. Most modern aircraft have tricycle undercarriages. Taildraggers are considered harder to land and take off (because the arrangement is usually unstable, that is, a small deviation from straight-line travel will tend to increase rather than correct itself), and usually require special pilot training. A small tail wheel or skid/bumper may be added to a tricycle undercarriage to prevent damage to the underside of the fuselage if over-rotation occurs on take-off leading to a tail strike. Aircraft with tail-strike protection include the B-29 Superfortress, Boeing 727 trijet and Concorde. Some aircraft with retractable conventional landing gear have a fixed tailwheel. Hoerner estimated the drag of the Bf 109 fixed tailwheel and compared it with that of other protrusions such as the pilot's canopy.
A third arrangement (known as tandem or bicycle) has the main and nose gear located fore and aft of the center of gravity (CG) under the fuselage with outriggers on the wings. This is used when there is no convenient location on either side of the fuselage to attach the main undercarriage or to store it when retracted. Examples include the Lockheed U-2 spy plane and the Harrier jump jet. The Boeing B-52 uses a similar arrangement, except that the fore and aft gears each have two twin-wheel units side by side.
Quadricycle gear is similar to bicycle but with two sets of wheels displaced laterally in the fore and aft positions. Raymer classifies the B-52 gear as quadricycle. The experimental Fairchild XC-120 Packplane had quadricycle gear located in the engine nacelles to allow unrestricted access beneath the fuselage for attaching a large freight container.
Helicopters use skids, pontoons or wheels depending on their size and role.
Retractable gear
To decrease drag in flight undercarriages retract into the wings and/or fuselage with wheels flush with the surrounding surface or concealed behind flush-mounted doors; this is called retractable gear. If the wheels do not retract completely but protrude partially exposed to the airstream, it is called a semi-retractable gear.
Most retractable gear is hydraulically operated, though some is electrically operated or even manually operated on very light aircraft. The landing gear is stowed in a compartment called a wheel well.
Pilots confirming that their landing gear is down and locked refer to "three greens" or "three in the green.", a reference to the electrical indicator lights (or painted panels of mechanical indicator units) from the nosewheel/tailwheel and the two main gears. Blinking green lights or red lights indicate the gear is in transit and neither up and locked or down and locked. When the gear is fully stowed up with the up-locks secure, the lights often extinguish to follow the dark cockpit philosophy; some airplanes have gear up indicator lights.
Redundant systems are used to operate the landing gear and redundant main gear legs may also be provided so the aircraft can be landed in a satisfactory manner in a range of failure scenarios. The Boeing 747 was given four separate and independent hydraulic systems (when previous airliners had two) and four main landing gear posts (when previous airliners had two). Safe landing would be possible if two main gear legs were torn off provided they were on opposite sides of the fuselage. In the case of power failure in a light aircraft, an emergency extension system is always available. This may be a manually operated crank or pump, or a mechanical free-fall mechanism which disengages the uplocks and allows the landing gear to fall under gravity.
Shock absorbers
Aircraft landing gear includes wheels equipped with solid shock absorbers on light planes, and air/oil oleo struts on larger aircraft.
Large aircraft
As aircraft weights have increased more wheels have been added and runway thickness has increased to keep within the runway loading limit. The Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI, a large German World War I long-range bomber of 1916, used eighteen wheels for its undercarriage, split between two wheels on its nose gear struts, and sixteen wheels on its main gear units—split into four side-by-side quartets each, two quartets of wheels per side—under each tandem engine nacelle, to support its loaded weight of almost .
Multiple "tandem wheels" on an aircraft—particularly for cargo aircraft, mounted to the fuselage lower sides as retractable main gear units on modern designs—were first seen during World War II, on the experimental German Arado Ar 232 cargo aircraft, which used a row of eleven "twinned" fixed wheel sets directly under the fuselage centerline to handle heavier loads while on the ground. Many of today's large cargo aircraft use this arrangement for their retractable main gear setups, usually mounted on the lower corners of the central fuselage structure.
The prototype Convair XB-36 had most of its weight on two main wheels, which needed runways at least thick. Production aircraft used two four-wheel bogies, allowing the aircraft to use any airfield suitable for a B-29.
A relatively light Lockheed JetStar business jet, with four wheels supporting , needed a thick flexible asphalt pavement. The Boeing 727-200 with four tires on two legs main landing gears required a thick pavement. The thickness rose to for a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 with supported on eight wheels on two legs. The heavier, , DC-10-30/40 were able to operate from the same thickness pavements with a third main leg for ten wheels, like the first Boeing 747-100, weighing on four legs and 16 wheels. The similar-weight Lockheed C-5, with 24 wheels, needs an pavement.
The twin-wheel unit on the fuselage centerline of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30/40 was retained on the MD-11 airliner and the same configuration was used on the initial Airbus A340-200/300, which evolved in a complete four-wheel undercarriage bogie for the heavier Airbus A340-500/-600. The up to Boeing 777 has twelve main wheels on two three-axles bogies, like the later Airbus A350.
The Airbus A380 has a four-wheel bogie under each wing with two sets of six-wheel bogies under the fuselage. The Antonov An-225, the largest cargo aircraft, had 4 wheels on the twin-strut nose gear units like the smaller Antonov An-124, and 28 main gear wheels.
The A321neo has a twin-wheel main gear inflated to 15.7 bar (228 psi), while the A350-900 has a four-wheel main gear inflated to 17.1 bar (248 psi).
STOL aircraft
STOL aircraft have a higher sink-rate requirement if a carrier-type, no-flare landing technique has to be adopted to reduce touchdown scatter. For example, the Saab 37 Viggen, with landing gear designed for a 5m/sec impact, could use a carrier-type landing and HUD to reduce its scatter from 300 m to 100m.
The de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou used long-stroke legs to land from a steep approach with no float.
Operation from water
A flying boat has a lower fuselage with the shape of a boat hull giving it buoyancy. Wing-mounted floats or stubby wing-like sponsons are added for stability. Sponsons are attached to the lower sides of the fuselage.
A floatplane has two or three streamlined floats. Amphibious floats have retractable wheels for land operation.
An amphibious aircraft or amphibian usually has two distinct landing gears, namely a "boat" hull/floats and retractable wheels, which allow it to operate from land or water.
Beaching gear is detachable wheeled landing gear that allows a non-amphibious floatplane or flying boat to be maneuvered on land. It is used for aircraft maintenance and storage and is either carried in the aircraft or kept at a slipway. Beaching gear may consist of individual detachable wheels or a cradle that supports the entire aircraft. In the former case, the beaching gear is manually attached or detached with the aircraft in the water; in the latter case, the aircraft is maneuvered onto the cradle.
Helicopters are able to land on water using floats or a hull and floats.
For take-off a step and planing bottom are required to lift from the floating position to planing on the surface. For landing a cleaving action is required to reduce the impact with the surface of the water. A vee bottom parts the water and chines deflect the spray to prevent it damaging vulnerable parts of the aircraft. Additional spray control may be needed using spray strips or inverted gutters. A step is added to the hull, just behind the center of gravity, to stop water clinging to the afterbody so the aircraft can accelerate to flying speed. The step allows air, known as ventilation air, to break the water suction on the afterbody. Two steps were used on the Kawanishi H8K. A step increases the drag in flight. The drag contribution from the step can be reduced with a fairing. A faired step was introduced on the Short Sunderland III.
One goal of seaplane designers was the development of an open ocean seaplane capable of routine operation from very rough water. This led to changes in seaplane hull configuration. High length/beam ratio hulls and extended afterbodies improved rough water capabilities. A hull much longer than its width also reduced drag in flight. An experimental development of the Martin Marlin, the Martin M-270, was tested with a new hull with a greater length/beam ratio of 15 obtained by adding 6 feet to both the nose and tail. Rough-sea capability can be improved with lower take-off and landing speeds because impacts with waves are reduced. The Shin Meiwa US-1A is a STOL amphibian with blown flaps and all control surfaces. The ability to land and take-off at relatively low speeds of about 45 knots and the hydrodynamic features of the hull, long length/beam ratio and inverted spray gutter for example, allow operation in wave heights of 15 feet. The inverted gutters channel spray to the rear of the propeller discs.
Low speed maneuvring is necessary between slipways and buoys and take-off and landing areas. Water rudders are used on seaplanes ranging in size from the Republic RC-3 Seabee to the Beriev A-40 Hydro flaps were used on the Martin Marlin and Martin SeaMaster. Hydroflaps, submerged at the rear of the afterbody, act as a speed brake or differentially as a rudder. A fixed fin, known as a skeg, has been used for directional stability. A skeg, was added to the second step on the Kawanishi H8K flying boat hull.
High speed impacts in rough water between the hull and wave flanks may be reduced using hydro-skis which hold the hull out of the water at higher speeds. Hydro skis replace the need for a boat hull and only require a plain fuselage which planes at the rear. Alternatively skis with wheels can be used for land-based aircraft which start and end their flight from a beach or floating barge. Hydro-skis with wheels were demonstrated as an all-purpose landing gear conversion of the Fairchild C-123, known as the Panto-base Stroukoff YC-134. A seaplane designed from the outset with hydro-skis was the Convair F2Y Sea Dart prototype fighter. The skis incorporated small wheels, with a third wheel on the fuselage, for ground handling.
In the 1950s hydro-skis were envisaged as a ditching aid for large piston-engined aircraft. Water-tank tests done using models of the Lockheed Constellation, Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Neptune concluded that chances of survival and rescue would be greatly enhanced by preventing critical damage associated with ditching.
Shipboard operation
The landing gear on fixed-wing aircraft that land on aircraft carriers have a higher sink-rate requirement because the aircraft are flown onto the deck with no landing flare. Other features are related to catapult take-off requirements for specific aircraft. For example, the Blackburn Buccaneer was pulled down onto its tail-skid to set the required nose-up attitude. The naval McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in UK service needed an extending nosewheel leg to set the wing attitude at launch.
The landing gear for an aircraft using a ski-jump on take-off is subjected to loads of 0.5g which also last for much longer than a landing impact.
Helicopters may have a deck-lock harpoon to anchor them to the deck.
In-flight use
Some aircraft have a requirement to use the landing-gear as a speed brake.
Flexible mounting of the stowed main landing-gear bogies on the Tupolev Tu-22R raised the aircraft flutter speed to . The bogies oscillated within the nacelle under the control of dampers and springs as an anti-flutter device.
Gear common to different aircraft
Some experimental aircraft have used gear from existing aircraft to reduce program costs. The Martin-Marietta X-24 lifting body used the nose/main gear from the North American T-39 / Northrop T-38 and the Grumman X-29 from the Northrop F-5 / General Dynamics F-16.
Other types
When an airplane needs to land on surfaces covered by snow, the landing gear usually consists of skis or a combination of wheels and skis.
Detachable
Some aircraft use wheels for takeoff and jettison them when airborne for improved streamlining without the complexity, weight and space requirements of a retraction mechanism. The wheels are sometimes mounted onto axles that are part of a separate "dolly" (for main wheels only) or "trolley" (for a three-wheel set with a nosewheel) chassis. Landing is done on skids or similar simple devices (fixed or retractable). The SNCASE Baroudeur used this arrangement.
Historical examples include the "dolly"-using Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 321 Gigant troop glider, and the first eight "trolley"-using prototypes of the Arado Ar 234 jet reconnaissance bomber. The main disadvantage to using the takeoff dolly/trolley and landing skid(s) system on German World War II aircraft—intended for a sizable number of late-war German jet and rocket-powered military aircraft designs—was that aircraft would likely be scattered all over a military airfield after they had landed from a mission, and would be unable to taxi on their own to an appropriately hidden "dispersal" location, which could easily leave them vulnerable to being shot up by attacking Allied fighters. A related contemporary example are the wingtip support wheels ("pogos") on the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, which fall away after take-off and drop to earth; the aircraft then relies on titanium skids on the wingtips for landing.
Rearwards and sideways retraction
Some main landing gear struts on World War II aircraft, in order to allow a single-leg main gear to more efficiently store the wheel within either the wing or an engine nacelle, rotated the single gear strut through a 90° angle during the rearwards-retraction sequence to allow the main wheel to rest "flat" above the lower end of the main gear strut, or flush within the wing or engine nacelles, when fully retracted. Examples are the Curtiss P-40, Vought F4U Corsair, Grumman F6F Hellcat, Messerschmitt Me 210 and Junkers Ju 88. The Aero Commander family of twin-engined business aircraft also shares this feature on the main gears, which retract aft into the ends of the engine nacelles. The rearward-retracting nosewheel strut on the Heinkel He 219 and the forward-retracting nose gear strut on the later Cessna Skymaster similarly rotated 90 degrees as they retracted.
On most World War II single-engined fighter aircraft (and even one German heavy bomber design) with sideways retracting main gear, the main gear that retracted into the wings was raked forward in the "down" position for better ground handling, with a retracted position that placed the main wheels at some distance aft of their position when downairframe—this led to a complex angular geometry for setting up the "pintle" angles at the top ends of the struts for the retraction mechanism's axis of rotation. with some aircraft, like the P-47 Thunderbolt and Grumman Bearcat, even mandating that the main gear struts lengthened as they were extended to give sufficient ground clearance for their large four-bladed propellers. One exception to the need for this complexity in many WW II fighter aircraft was Japan's famous Zero fighter, whose main gear stayed at a perpendicular angle to the centerline of the aircraft when extended, as seen from the side.
Variable axial position of main wheels
The main wheels on the Vought F7U Cutlass could move 20 inches between a forward and aft position. The forward position was used for take-off to give a longer lever-arm for pitch control and greater nose-up attitude. The aft position was used to reduce landing bounce and reduce risk of tip-back during ground handling.
Tandem layout
The tandem or bicycle layout is used on the Hawker Siddeley Harrier, which has two main-wheels behind a single nose-wheel under the fuselage and a smaller wheel near the tip of each wing. On second generation Harriers, the wing is extended past the outrigger wheels to allow greater wing-mounted munition loads to be carried, or to permit wing-tip extensions to be bolted on for ferry flights.
A tandem layout was evaluated by Martin using a specially-modified Martin B-26 Marauder (the XB-26H) to evaluate its use on Martin's first jet bomber, the Martin XB-48. This configuration proved so manoeuvrable that it was also selected for the B-47 Stratojet. It was also used on the U-2, Myasishchev M-4, Yakovlev Yak-25, Yak-28 and Sud Aviation Vautour. A variation of the multi tandem layout is also used on the B-52 Stratofortress which has four main wheel bogies (two forward and two aft) underneath the fuselage and a small outrigger wheel supporting each wing-tip. The B-52's landing gear is also unique in that all four pairs of main wheels can be steered. This allows the landing gear to line up with the runway and thus makes crosswind landings easier (using a technique called crab landing). Since tandem aircraft cannot rotate for takeoff, the forward gear must be long enough to give the wings the correct angle of attack during takeoff. During landing, the forward gear must not touch the runway first, otherwise the rear gear will slam down and may cause the aircraft to bounce and become airborne again.
Crosswind landing accommodation
One very early undercarriage incorporating castoring for crosswind landings was pioneered on the Bleriot VIII design of 1908. It was later used in the much more famous Blériot XI Channel-crossing aircraft of 1909 and also copied in the earliest examples of the Etrich Taube. In this arrangement the main landing gear's shock absorption was taken up by a vertically sliding bungee cord-sprung upper member. The vertical post along which the upper member slid to take landing shocks also had its lower end as the rotation point for the forward end of the main wheel's suspension fork, allowing the main gear to pivot on moderate crosswind landings.
Manually-adjusted main-gear units on the B-52 can be set for crosswind take-offs. It rarely has to be used from SAC-designated airfields which have major runways in the predominant strongest wind direction. The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy has swivelling 6-wheel main units for crosswind landings and castoring rear units to prevent tire scrubbing on tight turns.
"Kneeling" gear
Both the nosegear and the wing-mounted main landing gear of the World War II German Arado Ar 232 cargo/transport aircraft were designed to kneel. This made it easier to load and unload cargo, and improved taxiing over ditches and on soft ground.
Some early U.S. Navy jet fighters were equipped with "kneeling" nose gear consisting of small steerable auxiliary wheels on short struts located forward of the primary nose gear, allowing the aircraft to be taxied tail-high with the primary nose gear retracted. This feature was intended to enhance safety aboard aircraft carriers by redirecting the hot exhaust blast upwards, and to reduce hangar space requirements by enabling the aircraft to park with its nose underneath the tail of a similarly equipped jet. Kneeling gear was used on the North American FJ-1 Fury and on early versions of the McDonnell F2H Banshee, but was found to be of little use operationally, and was omitted from later Navy fighters.
The nosewheel on the Lockheed C-5, partially retracts against a bumper to assist in loading and unloading of cargo using ramps through the forward, "tilt-up" hinged fuselage nose while stationary on the ground. The aircraft also tilts backwards. The Messier twin-wheel main units fitted to the Transall and other cargo aircraft can tilt forward or backward as necessary.
The Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter is able to kneel to fit inside the cargo hold of a transport aircraft and for storage.
Tail support
Aircraft landing gear includes devices to prevent fuselage contact with the ground by tipping back when the aircraft is being loaded. Some commercial aircraft have used tail props when parked at the gate. The Douglas C-54 had a critical CG location which required a ground handling strut. The Lockheed C-130 and Boeing C-17 Globemaster III use ramp supports.
The unladen CG of the rear-engined Ilyushin IL-62 is aft of the main gear due to design decisions stemming from efforts to reduce overall weight, systems complexity and drag; to prevent the fuselage from tilting back when unloaded, the aircraft has a unique fully retractable vertical tail strut with castering wheels to allow towing or pushback. The strut is not intended for taxiing or flight, when the weight of the crew, passengers, cargo and fuel provide the necessary fore-aft balance.
Monowheel
To minimize drag, modern gliders usually have a single wheel, retractable or fixed, centered under the fuselage, which is referred to as monowheel gear or monowheel landing gear. Monowheel gear is also used on some powered aircraft, where drag reduction is a priority, such as the Europa Classic. Much like the Me 163 rocket fighter, some gliders from prior to the Second World War used a take-off dolly that was jettisoned on take-off; these gliders then landed on a fixed skid. This configuration is necessarily accompanied with a taildragger.
Helicopters
Light helicopters use simple landing skids to save weight and cost. The skids may have attachment points for wheels so that they can be moved for short distances on the ground. Skids are impractical for helicopters weighing more than four tons. Some high-speed machines have retractable wheels, but most use fixed wheels for their robustness, and to avoid the need for a retraction mechanism.
Tailsitter
Experimental tailsitter aircraft use landing gear located in their tails for VTOL operation.
Light aircraft
For light aircraft a type of landing gear which is economical to produce is a simple wooden arch laminated from ash, as used on some homebuilt aircraft. A similar arched gear is often formed from spring steel. The Cessna Airmaster was among the first aircraft to use spring steel landing gear. The main advantage of such gear is that no other shock-absorbing device is needed; the deflecting leaf provides the shock absorption.
Folding gear
The limited space available to stow landing gear has led to many complex retraction mechanisms, each unique to a particular aircraft. An early example, the German Bomber B combat aircraft design competition winner, the Junkers Ju 288, had a complex "folding" main landing gear unlike any other aircraft designed by either Axis or Allied sides in the war: its single oleo strut was only attached to the lower end of its Y-form main retraction struts, handling the twinned main gear wheels, and folding by swiveling downwards and aftwards during retraction to "fold" the maingear's length to shorten it for stowage in the engine nacelle it was mounted in. However, the single pivot-point design also led to numerous incidents of collapsed maingear units for its prototype airframes.
Tracked
Increased contact area can be obtained with very large wheels, many smaller wheels or track-type gear. Tracked gear made by Dowty was fitted to a Westland Lysander in 1938 for taxi tests, then a Fairchild Cornell and a Douglas Boston. Bonmartini, in Italy, fitted tracked gear to a Piper Cub in 1951. Track-type gear was also tested using a C-47, C-82 and B-50. A much heavier aircraft, an XB-36, was made available for further tests, although there was no intention of using it on production aircraft. The stress on the runway was reduced to one third that of the B-36 four-wheel bogie.
Ground carriage
Ground carriage is a long-term (after 2030) concept of flying without landing gear. It is one of many aviation technologies being proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Leaving the landing gear on the ground reduces weight and drag. Leaving it behind after take-off was done for a different reason, ie with military objectives, during World War II using the "dolly" and "trolley" arrangements of the German Me 163B rocket fighter and Arado Ar 234A prototype jet recon-bomber.
Steering
There are several types of steering. Taildragger aircraft may be steered by rudder alone (depending upon the prop wash produced by the aircraft to turn it) with a freely pivoting tail wheel, or by a steering linkage with the tail wheel, or by differential braking (the use of independent brakes on opposite sides of the aircraft to turn the aircraft by slowing one side more sharply than the other). Aircraft with tricycle landing gear usually have a steering linkage with the nosewheel (especially in large aircraft), but some allow the nosewheel to pivot freely and use differential braking and/or the rudder to steer the aircraft, like the Cirrus SR22.
Some aircraft require that the pilot steer by using rudder pedals; others allow steering with the yoke or control stick. Some allow both. Still others have a separate control, called a tiller, used for steering on the ground exclusively.
Rudder
When an aircraft is steered on the ground exclusively using the rudder, it needs a substantial airflow past the rudder, which can be generated either by the forward motion of the aircraft or by propeller slipstream. Rudder steering requires considerable practice to use effectively. Although it needs airflow past the rudder, it has the advantage of not needing any friction with the ground, which makes it useful for aircraft on water, snow or ice.
Direct
Some aircraft link the yoke, control stick, or rudder directly to the wheel used for steering. Manipulating these controls turns the steering wheel (the nose wheel for tricycle landing gear, and the tail wheel for taildraggers). The connection may be a firm one in which any movement of the controls turns the steering wheel (and vice versa), or it may be a soft one in which a spring-like mechanism twists the steering wheel but does not force it to turn. The former provides positive steering but makes it easier to skid the steering wheel; the latter provides softer steering (making it easy to overcontrol) but reduces the probability of skidding. Aircraft with retractable gear may disable the steering mechanism wholly or partially when the gear is retracted.
Differential braking
Differential braking depends on asymmetric application of the brakes on the main gear wheels to turn the aircraft. For this, the aircraft must be equipped with separate controls for the right and left brakes (usually on the rudder pedals). The nose or tail wheel usually is not equipped with brakes. Differential braking requires considerable skill. In aircraft with several methods of steering that include differential braking, differential braking may be avoided because of the wear it puts on the braking mechanisms. Differential braking has the advantage of being largely independent of any movement or skidding of the nose or tailwheel.
Tiller
A tiller in an aircraft is a small wheel or lever, sometimes accessible to one pilot and sometimes duplicated for both pilots, that controls the steering of the aircraft while it is on the ground. The tiller may be designed to work in combination with other controls such as the rudder or yoke. In large airliners, for example, the tiller is often used as the sole means of steering during taxi, and then the rudder is used to steer during takeoff and landing, so that both aerodynamic control surfaces and the landing gear can be controlled simultaneously when the aircraft is moving at aerodynamic speeds.
Tires and wheels
The specified selection criterion, e.g., minimum size, weight, or pressure, are used to select suitable tires and wheels from manufacturer's catalog and industry standards found in the Aircraft Yearbook published by the Tire and Rim Association, Inc.
Gear loading
The choice of the main wheel tires is made on the basis of the static loading case. The total main gear load is calculated assuming that the aircraft is taxiing at low speed without braking:
where is the weight of the aircraft and and are the distance measured from the aircraft's center of gravity(cg) to the main and nose gear, respectively.
The choice of the nose wheel tires is based on the nose wheel load during braking at maximum effort:
where is the lift, is the drag, is the thrust, and is the height of aircraft cg from the static groundline. Typical values for on dry concrete vary from 0.35 for a simple brake system to 0.45 for an automatic brake pressure control system. As both and are positive, the maximum nose gear load occurs at low speed. Reverse thrust decreases the nose gear load, and hence the condition results in the maximum value:
To ensure that the rated loads will not be exceeded in the static and braking conditions, a seven percent safety factor is used in the calculation of the applied loads.
Inflation pressure
Provided that the wheel load and configuration of the landing gear remain unchanged, the weight and volume of the tire will decrease with an increase in inflation pressure. From the flotation standpoint, a decrease in the tire contact area will induce a higher bearing stress on the pavement which may reduce the number of airfields available to the aircraft. Braking will also become less effective due to a reduction in the frictional force between the tires and the ground. In addition, the decrease in the size of the tire, and hence the size of the wheel, could pose a problem if internal brakes are to be fitted inside the wheel rims. The arguments against higher pressure are of such a nature that commercial operators generally prefer the lower pressures in order to maximize tire life and minimize runway stress. To prevent punctures from stones Philippine Airlines had to operate their Hawker Siddeley 748 aircraft with pressures as low as the tire manufacturer would permit. However, too low a pressure can lead to an accident as in the Nigeria Airways Flight 2120.
A rough general rule for required tire pressure is given by the manufacturer in their catalog. Goodyear for example advises the pressure to be 4% higher than required for a given weight or as fraction of the rated static load and inflation.
Tires of many commercial aircraft are required to be filled with nitrogen, and not subsequently diluted with more than 5% oxygen, to prevent auto-ignition of the gas which may result from overheating brakes producing volatile vapors from the tire lining.
Naval aircraft use different pressures when operating from a carrier and ashore. For example, the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye tire pressures are on ship and ashore. En-route deflation is used in the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy to suit airfield conditions at the destination but adds excessive complication to the landing gear and wheels
Future developments
Airport community noise is an environmental issue which has brought into focus the contribution of aerodynamic noise from the landing gear. A NASA long-term goal is to confine aircraft objectional noise to within the airport boundary. During the approach to land the landing gear is lowered several miles from touchdown and the landing gear is the dominant airframe noise source, followed by deployed highlift devices. With engines at a reduced power setting on the approach it is necessary to reduce airframe noise to make a significant reduction to total aircraft noise. The addition of add-on fairings is one approach for reducing the noise from the landing gear with a longer term approach to address noise generation during initial design.
Airline specifications require an airliner to reach up to 90,000 take-offs and landings and roll 500,000 km on the ground in its lifetime. Conventional landing gear is designed to absorb the energy of a landing and does not perform well at reducing ground-induced vibrations in the airframe during landing ground roll, taxi and take-off. Airframe vibrations and fatigue damage can be reduced using semi-active oleos which vary damping over a wide range of ground speeds and runway quality.
Accidents
Malfunctions or human errors (or a combination of these) related to retractable landing gear have been the cause of numerous accidents and incidents throughout aviation history. Distraction and preoccupation during the landing sequence played a prominent role in the approximately 100 gear-up landing incidents that occurred each year in the United States between 1998 and 2003. A gear-up landing, also known as a belly landing, is an accident that results from the pilot forgetting to lower the landing gear, or being unable to do so because of a malfunction. Although rarely fatal, a gear-up landing can be very expensive if it causes extensive airframe/engine damage. For propeller-driven aircraft a prop strike may require an engine overhaul.
Some aircraft have a stiffened fuselage underside or added features to minimize structural damage in a wheels-up landing. When the Cessna Skymaster was converted for a military spotting role (the O-2 Skymaster), fiberglass railings were added to the length of the fuselage; they were adequate to support the aircraft without damage if it was landed on a grassy surface.
The Bombardier Dash 8 is notorious for its landing gear problems. There were three incidents involved, all of them involving Scandinavian Airlines, flights SK1209, SK2478, and SK2867. This led to Scandinavian retiring all of its Dash 8s. The cause of these incidents was a locking mechanism that failed to work properly. This also caused concern for the aircraft for many other airlines that found similar problems, Bombardier Aerospace ordered all Dash 8s with 10,000 or more hours to be grounded, it was soon found that 19 Horizon Airlines Dash 8s had locking mechanism problems, so did 8 Austrian Airlines planes, this did cause several hundred flights to be canceled.
On September 21, 2005, JetBlue Airways Flight 292 successfully landed with its nose gear turned 90 degrees sideways, resulting in a shower of sparks and flame after touchdown.
On November 1, 2011, LOT Polish Airlines Flight LO16 successfully belly landed at Warsaw Chopin Airport due to technical failures; all 231 people on board escaped without injury.
Emergency extension systems
In the event of a failure of the aircraft's landing gear extension mechanism a backup is provided. This may be an alternate hydraulic system, a hand-crank, compressed air (nitrogen), pyrotechnic or free-fall system.
A free-fall or gravity drop system uses gravity to deploy the landing gear into the down and locked position. To accomplish this the pilot activates a switch or mechanical handle in the cockpit, which releases the up-lock. Gravity then pulls the landing gear down and deploys it. Once in position the landing gear is mechanically locked and safe to use for landing.
Ground resonance in rotorcraft
Rotorcraft with fully articulated rotors may experience a dangerous and self-perpetuating phenomenon known as ground resonance, in which the unbalanced rotor system vibrates at a frequency coinciding with the natural frequency of the airframe, causing the entire aircraft to violently shake or wobble in contact with the ground. Ground resonance occurs when shock is continuously transmitted to the turning rotors through the landing gear, causing the angles between the rotor blades to become uneven; this is typically triggered if the aircraft touches the ground with forward or lateral motion, or touches down on one corner of the landing gear due to sloping ground or the craft's flight attitude. The resulting violent oscillations may cause the rotors or other parts to catastrophically fail, detach, and/or strike other parts of the airframe; this can destroy the aircraft in seconds and critically endanger persons unless the pilot immediately initiates a takeoff or closes the throttle and reduces rotor pitch. Ground resonance was cited in 34 National Transportation Safety Board incident and accident reports in the United States between 1990 and 2008.
Rotorcraft with fully articulated rotors typically have shock-absorbing landing gear designed to prevent ground resonance; however, poor landing gear maintenance and improperly inflated tires may contribute to the phenomenon. Helicopters with skid-type landing gear are less prone to ground resonance than those with wheels.
Stowaways
Unauthorized passengers have been known to stowaway on larger aircraft by climbing a landing gear strut and riding in the compartment meant for the wheels. There are extreme dangers to this practice, with numerous deaths reported. Dangers include a lack of oxygen at high altitude, temperatures well below freezing, crush injury or death from the gear retracting into its confined space, and falling out of the compartment during takeoff or landing.
Spacecraft
Launch vehicles
Landing gear has traditionally not been used on the vast majority of launch vehicles, which take off vertically and are destroyed on falling back to earth. With some exceptions for suborbital vertical-landing vehicles (e.g., the Masten Xoie or Armadillo Aerospace's Lunar Lander Challenge vehicle), or for spaceplanes that use the vertical takeoff, horizontal landing (VTHL) approach (e.g., the Space Shuttle orbiter, or the USAF X-37), landing gear have been largely absent from orbital vehicles during the early decades since the advent of spaceflight technology, when orbital space transport has been the exclusive preserve of national-monopoly governmental space programs. Each spaceflight system through 2015 had relied on expendable boosters to begin each ascent to orbital velocity.
Advances during the 2010s in private space transport, where new competition to governmental space initiatives has emerged, have included the explicit design of landing gear into orbital booster rockets. SpaceX has initiated and funded a multimillion-dollar reusable launch system development program to pursue this objective. As part of this program, SpaceX built, and flew eight times in 2012–2013, a first-generation test vehicle called Grasshopper with a large fixed landing gear in order to test low-altitude vehicle dynamics and control for vertical landings of a near-empty orbital first stage. A second-generation test vehicle called F9R Dev1 was built with extensible landing gear. The prototype was flown four times—with all landing attempts successful—in 2014 for low-altitude tests before being self-destructed for safety reasons on a fifth test flight due to a blocked engine sensor port.
The orbital-flight version of the test vehicles–Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy—includes a lightweight, deployable landing gear for the booster stage: a nested, telescoping piston on an A-frame. The total span of the four carbon fiber/aluminum extensible landing legs is approximately , and weigh less than ; the deployment system uses high-pressure helium as the working fluid.
The first test of the extensible landing gear was successfully accomplished in April 2014 on a Falcon 9 returning from an orbital launch and was the first successful controlled ocean soft touchdown of a liquid-rocket-engine orbital booster. After a single successful booster recovery in 2015, and several in 2016, the recovery of SpaceX booster stages became routine by 2017. Landing legs had become an ordinary operational part of orbital spaceflight launch vehicles.
The newest launch vehicle under development at SpaceX—the Starship—is expected to have landing legs on its first stage called Super Heavy like Falcon 9 but also has landing legs on its reusable second stage, a first for launch vehicle second stages. The first prototype of Starship—Starhopper, built in early 2019—had three fixed landing legs with replaceable shock absorbers. In order to reduce mass of the flight vehicle and the payload penalty for a reusable design, the long-term plan is for Super Heavy to land directly back at the launch site on special ground equipment that is part of the launch mount, but initial testing of the large booster is expected to occur with landing legs.
Landers
Spacecraft designed to land safely on extraterrestrial bodies such as the Moon or Mars are known as either legged landers (for example the Apollo Lunar Module) or pod landers (for example Mars Pathfinder) depending on their landing gear. Pod landers are designed to land in any orientation after which they may bounce and roll before coming to rest at which time they have to be given the correct orientation to function. The whole vehicle is enclosed in crushable material or airbags for the impacts and may have opening petals to right it.
Features for landing and movement on the surface were combined in the landing gear for the Mars Science Laboratory.
For landing on low-gravity bodies landing gear may include hold-down thrusters, harpoon anchors and foot-pad screws, all of which were incorporated in the design of comet-lander Philae for redundancy.
In the case of Philae, however, both harpoons and the hold-down thruster failed, resulting in the craft bouncing before landing for good at a non-optimal orientation.
See also
Dayton-Wright RB-1 Racer, an early example of an airplane with retractable landing gear.
Landing gear extender
Tundra tire, a low-pressure landing gear tire allowing landings on rough surfaces
Undercarriage arrangements of jetliners and other aircraft.
Verville Racer Aircraft, an early example of an airplane with retractable landing gear.
References
External links
Aircraft undercarriage
Articles containing video clips
Aircraft systems
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olusegun%20Obasanjo
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Olusegun Obasanjo
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Chief Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Ogunboye Aremu Obasanjo (; ; born 5 March 1937) is a Nigerian retired military officer and statesman who served as Nigeria's head of state from 1976 to 1979 and later as its president from 1999 to 2007. Ideologically a Nigerian nationalist, he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from 1998 to 2015, and since 2018.
Born in the village of Ibogun-Olaogun to a farming family of the Owu branch of the Yoruba, Obasanjo was educated largely in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Joining the Nigerian Army, where he specialised in engineering, he spent time assigned in the Congo, Britain, and India, rising to the rank of major. In the latter part of the 1960s, he played a senior role in combating Biafran separatists during the Nigerian Civil War, accepting their surrender in 1970. In 1975, a military coup established a junta with Obasanjo as part of its ruling triumvirate. After the triumvirate's leader, Murtala Muhammed, was assassinated the following year, the Supreme Military Council appointed Obasanjo as head of state. Continuing Murtala's policies, Obasanjo oversaw budgetary cut-backs and an expansion in access to free school education. Increasingly aligning Nigeria with the United States, he also emphasised support for groups opposing white minority rule in southern Africa. Committed to restoring democracy, Obasanjo oversaw the 1979 election, after which he handed over control of Nigeria to the newly elected civilian president, Shehu Shagari. He then retired to Ota, Ogun, where he became a farmer, published four books, and took part in international initiatives to end various African conflicts.
In 1993, Sani Abacha seized power in a military coup. Openly critical of Abacha's administration, in 1995 Obasanjo was arrested and convicted of being part of a planned coup, despite protesting his innocence. While imprisoned, he became a born again Christian, with providentialism strongly influencing his subsequent worldview. He was released following Abacha's death in 1998. Entering electoral politics, Obasanjo became the PDP candidate for the 1999 presidential election, which he won comfortably. As president, he de-politicised the military and both expanded the police and mobilised the army to combat widespread ethnic, religious, and secessionist violence. He withdrew Nigeria's military from Sierra Leone and privatised various public enterprises to limit his country's spiralling debt. He was re-elected in the 2003 election. Influenced by Pan-Africanist ideas, he was a keen supporter of the formation of the African Union and served as its chair from 2004 to 2006. Obasanjo's attempts to change the constitution to abolish presidential term limits were unsuccessful and brought criticism. In retirement, he earned a PhD in theology from the National Open University of Nigeria.
Obasanjo has been described as one of the great figures of the second generation of post-colonial African leaders. He received praise both for overseeing Nigeria's transition to representative democracy in the 1970s and for his Pan-African efforts to encourage cooperation across the continent. Critics maintain that he was guilty of corruption, that his administrations oversaw human rights abuses, and that as president he became too interested in consolidating and maintaining his personal power.
Early life (1937–1958)
Matthew Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo was born in Ibogun-Olaogun, a village in southwest Nigeria. His later passport gave his date of birth as 5 March 1937, although this was a later estimate, with no contemporary records surviving. His father was Amos Adigun Obaluayesanjo "Obasanjo" Bankole and his mother was Bernice Ashabi Bankole. The first of nine children, only he and a sister (Adunni Oluwole Obasanjo) survived childhood. He was born to the Owu branch of the Yoruba people. The village church was part of a mission set up by the U.S. Southern Baptist Church and Obasanjo was raised Baptist. His village also contained Muslims and his sister later converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man.
Obasanjo's father was a farmer and until he was eleven years old, the boy was involved in agricultural labour. Aged eleven, he joined the village primary school, and after three years, in 1951, he moved on to the Baptist Day School in Abeokuta's Owu quarter. In 1952 he transferred to the Baptist Boys' High School, also in the town. His school fees were partly financed by state grants. Obasanjo did well academically, and at school became a keen Boy Scout. Although there is no evidence that he was then involved in any political groups, it was at secondary school that Obasanjo rejected his forename of "Matthew" as an anti-colonial act. Meanwhile, Obasanjo's father had abandoned his wife and two children. Falling into poverty, Obasanjo's mother had to operate in trading to survive. To pay his school fees, Obasanjo worked on cocoa and kola farms, fished, collected firewood, and sold sand to builders. During the school holidays he also worked at the school, cutting the grass and other manual jobs.
In 1956, Obasanjo took his secondary school exams, having borrowed money to pay for the entry fees. That same year, he began courting Oluremi Akinlawon, the Owu daughter of a station master. They were engaged to be married by 1958. Leaving school, he moved to Ibadan, where he took a teaching job. There, he sat the entrance exam for University College Ibadan, but although he passed it he found that he could not afford the tuition fees. Obasanjo then decided to pursue a career as a civil engineer, and to access this profession, in 1958 answered an advert for officer cadet training in the Nigerian Army.
Early military career
Military training: 1958–1959
In March 1958, Obasanjo enlisted in the Nigerian Army. He saw it as an opportunity to continue his education while earning a salary; he did not immediately inform his family, fearing that his parents would object. It was at this time that the Nigerian Army was being transferred to the control of the Nigerian colonial government, in preparation for an anticipated full Nigerian independence, and there were attempts afoot to get more native Nigerians into the higher ranks of its military.
He was then sent to a Regular Officers' Training School at Teshie in Ghana. When stationed abroad, he sent letters and presents to his fiancé in Nigeria. In September 1958, he was selected for six months of additional training at Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot, southern England. Obasanjo disliked it there, believing that it was a classist and racist institution, and found it difficult adjusting to the colder, wetter English weather. It reinforced his negative opinions of the British Empire and its right to rule over its colonised subjects. At Mons, he received a commission and a certificate in engineering. While Obasanjo was in England, his mother died. His father then died a year later.
In 1959, Obasanjo returned to Nigeria. There, he was posted to Kaduna as an infantry subaltern with the Fifth Battalion. His time in Kaduna was the first time that Obasanjo lived in a Muslim-majority area. It was while he was there, in October 1960, that Nigeria became an independent country.
Congo crisis: 1960–1961
Shortly after, the Fifth Battalion were sent to the Congo as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force. There, the battalion were stationed in Kivu Province, with their headquarters at Bukavu. In the Congo, Obasanjo and others were responsible for protecting civilians, including the ethnic Belgian minority, against soldiers who had mutinied against Patrice Lumumba's government. In February 1961, Obasanjo was captured by the mutineers while he was evacuating Roman Catholic missionaries from a station near Bukavu. The mutineers considered executing him but were ordered to release him. In May 1961, the Fifth Battalion left the Congo and returned to Nigeria. During the conflict, he had been appointed a temporary captain. He later noted that the time spent in the Congo strengthened the "Pan-African fervour" of his battalion.
Return from the Congo: 1961–1966
On his return, Obasanjo bought his first car, and was hospitalised for a time with a stomach ulcer. On his recovery, he was transferred to the Army Engineering Corps. In 1962 he was stationed at the Royal College of Military Engineering in England. There, he excelled and was described as "the best Commonwealth student ever". That year, he paid for Akinlawon to travel to London where she could join a training course. The couple married in June 1963 at the Camberwell Green Registry Office, only informing their families after the event. That year, Obasanjo was ordered back to Nigeria, although his wife remained in London for three more years to finish her course. Once in Nigeria, Obasanjo took command of the Field Engineering Squadron based at Kaduna. Within the military, Obasanjo steadily progressed through the ranks, becoming a major in 1965. He used his earning to purchase land, in the early 1960s obtaining property in Ibadan, Kaduna, and Lagos. In 1965, Obasanjo was sent to India. En route, he visited his wife in London. In India, he studied at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington and then the School of Engineering in Poona. Obasanjo was appalled at the starvation that he witnessed in India although took an interest in the country's culture, something that encouraged him to read books on comparative religion.
Nigerian Civil War
Pre-Civil War career: 1966–1967
Obasanjo flew back to Nigeria in January 1966 to find the country in the midst of a military coup led by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna. Almost all of those involved in organising the coup were from the Igbo people of southern Nigeria. Obasanjo was among those warning that the situation could descend into civil war. He offered to serve as an intermediary between the coup plotters and the civilian government, which had transferred power to the military Commander-in-Chief Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. As the coup failed, Olusegun met Ironsi in Lagos. Ironsi soon ended federalism in Nigeria through his unification decree in May 1966, something which inflamed ethnic tensions. In late July, a second coup took place. In Ibadan, troops of northern Nigerian origin rebelled and killed Ironsi, also massacring around two hundred Igbo soldiers. General Yakubu Gowon took power.
While this coup was taking place, Obasanjo was in Maiduguri. Hearing of it, he quickly returned to Kaduna. There, he found that northern troops from the Third Battalion were rounding up, torturing, and killing Igbo soldiers. The Governor of Northern Nigeria, Hassan Katsina, recognised that although Olusegun was not Igbo, as a southerner he was still in danger from the mutinous troops. To protect them, Katsina sent Olusegun and his wife back to Maiduguri for ten days, while the violence abated. After this, Obasanjo sent his wife to Lagos while returning to Kaduna himself, where he remained until January 1967. At this point he was the most senior Yoruba officer present in the north.
In January 1967, Obasanjo was posted to Lagos as the Chief Army Engineer. Tensions between the Igbo and northern ethnic groups continued to grow, and in May the Igbo military officer C. Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the independence of Igbo-majority areas in the southeast, forming the Republic of Biafra. On 3 July, Nigeria's government posted Obasanjo to Ibadan to serve as commander of the Western State. The fighting between the Nigerian Army and the Biafran separatists broke out on 6 July. On 9 July, Ojukwu sent a column of Biafran troops over the Niger Bridge in an attempt to seize the Mid-West, a position from which it could attack Lagos. Obasanjo sought to block the roads leading to the city. The Yoruba commander Victor Banjo, who was leading the Biafran attack force, tried to convince Obasanjo to let them through, but he declined.
Civil War command: 1967–1970
Obasanjo was then appointed the rear commander of Murtala Muhammed's Second Division, which was operating in the Mid-West. Based at Ibadan, Obasanjo was responsible for ensuring that the Second Division was kept supplied. In the city, Obasanjo taught a course in military science at the University of Ibadan and built his contacts in the Yoruba elite. During the war, there was popular unrest in the Western State, and to avoid responsibility for these issues, Obasanjo resigned from the Western State Executive Council. While Obasanjo was away from Ibadan in November 1968, armed villagers mobilised by the farmers' Agbekoya Association attacked the Ibadan City Hall. Troops retaliated, killing ten of the rioters. When Obasanjo returned he ordered a court of inquiry into the events.
Gowon decide to replace Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, who was leading the attack on Biafra, but needed another senior Yoruba. He chose Obasanjo, despite the latter's lack of combat experience. Obasanjo arrived at Port Harcourt to take up the new position on 16 May 1969; he was now in charge of between 35,000 and 40,000 troops. He spent his first six weeks repelling a Biafran attack on Aba. He toured every part of the front, and was wounded while doing so. These actions earned him a reputation for courage among his men. In December, Obasanjo launched Operation Finishing Touch, ordering his troops to advance towards Umuahia, which they took on Christmas Day. This cut Biafra in half. On 7 January 1970 he then launched Operation Tail-Wind, capturing the Uli airstrip on 12 January. At this, the Biafran leaders agreed to surrender.
On 13 January, Obasanjo met with Biafran military commander Philip Effiong. Obasanjo insisted that Biafran troops surrender their arms and that a selection of the breakaway state's leaders go to Lagos and formally surrender to Gowon. The next day, Obasanjo spoke on regional radio, urging citizens to stay in their homes and guaranteeing their safety. Many Biafrans and foreign media sources feared that the Nigerian Army would commit widespread atrocities against the defeated population, although Obasanjo was keen to prevent this. He ordered his troops in the region to remain within their barracks, maintain that the local police should take responsibility for law and order. The Third Division, which was more isolated, did carry out reprisal attacks on the local population. Obasanjo was tough on the perpetrators, having those guilty of looting flogged and those guilty of rape shot. Gowon's government made Obasanjo responsible for reintegrating Biafra into Nigeria, in which position he earned respect for emphasising magnanimity. As an engineer, he emphasised restoration of the water supply; by May 1970 all major towns in the region were reconnected to the water supply. Obasanjo's role in ending the war made him a war hero and a nationally known figure in Nigeria.
Post-Civil War career: 1970–1975
In June 1970, Obasanjo returned to Abeokuta, where crowds welcomed him as a returning hero. He was then posted to Lagos as the Brigadier commanding the Corps of Engineers. In October, Gowon announced that the military government would transfer authority to a civilian administration in 1976. In the meantime, a ban on political parties remained in forces; Gowon made little progress towards establishing a civilian government. Under the military government, Obasanjo sat on the decommissioning committee which recommended dramatic reductions of troop numbers in the Nigerian Army over the course of the 1970s. In 1974 Obasanjo went to the UK for a course at the Royal College of Defence Studies. On returning, in January 1975 Gowon appointed him as the Commissioner for Works and Housing, a position he held for seven months, during which he was largely responsible for building military barracks.
In 1970, Obasanjo bought a former Lebanese company in Ibadan, employing an agent to manage it. In 1973 he registered a business, Temperance Enterprises Limited, through which he could embark on commercial ventures after retiring from the military. He also continued to invest in property; by 1974 he owned two houses in Lagos and one each in Ibadan and Abeokuta. Rumours arose that Obasanjo engaged in the corruption that was becoming increasingly widespread in Nigeria, although no hard evidence of this ever emerged. His marriage with Oluremi became strained as she opposed his relationships with other women. In the mid-1970s their marriage was dissolved. In 1976 he married Stella Abebe in a traditional Yoruba ceremony.
In Murtala's government
Coup d'état of 1975 and aftermath
In July 1975, a coup led by Shehu Musa Yar'Adua and Joseph Garba ousted Gowon, who fled to Britain. They had not informed Obasanjo of their plans as he was known to be critical of coups as an instrument of regime change. The coup plotters wanted to replace Gowon's autocratic rule with a triumvirate of three brigadiers whose decisions could be vetoed by a Supreme Military Council. For this triumvirate, they convinced General Murtala Muhammed to become head of state, with Obasanjo as his second-in-command, and Danjuma as the third. Historian John Iliffe noted that of the triumvirate, Obasanjo was "the work-horse and the brains" and was the most eager for a return to civilian rule. Together, the triumvirate introduced austerity measures to stem inflation, established a Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, replaced all military governors with new officers who reported directly to Obasanjo as Chief of Staff, and launched "Operation Deadwood" through which they fired 11,000 officials from the civil service.
Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters: 1975–76
In October 1975, the government announced plans for an election which would result in civilian rule in October 1979. It also declared plans to create a committee to draft a new constitution, with Obasanjo largely responsible for selecting the 49 committee members. On the recommendation of the Irifeke Commission, the government also announced the creation of seven new states; at Obasanjo's insistence, Abeokuta was to become the capital of one of these new states, Ogun. Also on the commission's recommendation, it announced gradual plans to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to the more central Abuja. In January 1976, both Obasanjo and Danjuma were promoted to the ranks of Lieutenant General.
Both Murtala and Obasanjo were committed to ending ongoing European colonialism and white minority rule in southern Africa, a cause reflected in their foreign policy choices. This cause increasingly became a preoccupation for Obasanjo. After Angola secured independence from Portugal, a civil war broke out in the country. Nigeria recognised the legitimacy of the government declared by the MPLA, a Marxist group backed by the Soviet Union, because the rival FNLA and UNITA were being assisted by the white minority government in South Africa. As well as providing material aid to the MPLA, Nigeria began lobbying other African countries to also recognise the MPLA administration, and by early 1976 most states in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) had done so. In February 1976, Obasanjo led a Nigerian delegation to an MPLA anniversary celebration in Luanda, where he declared: "This is a symbolic date, marking the beginning of the final struggle against colonialism, imperialism and racism in Africa."
Murtala's assassination: 13 February 1976
In February 1976, Colonel Buka Suka Dimka launched a coup against Nigeria's government, during which General Murtala Muhammed was assassinated. An attempt was also made on Obasanjo's life, but the wrong individual was killed. Dimka lacked widespread support among the military and his coup failed, forcing him to flee. Obasanjo did not attend Murtala's funeral in Kano, but declared that the government would finance construction of a mosque on the burial site.
After the assassination, Obasanjo attended a meeting of the Supreme Military Council. He expressed his desire to resign from government, but the Council successfully urged him to replace Murtala as head of state. He therefore became the council's chair. Concerned about further attempts on his life, Obasanjo moved into the Dodan Barracks, while 39 people accused of being part of Dimka's coup were executed, generating accusations that Obasanjo's response was excessive. As head of state, Obasanjo vowed to continue Murtala's policies.
Military Head of State (1976–1979)
Military triumvirate
Aware of the danger of alienating northern Nigerians, Obasanjo brought General Shehu Yar'Adua as his replacement and second-in-command as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters completing the military triumvirate, with Obasanjo as head of state and General Theophilus Danjuma as Chief of Army Staff, the three went on to re-establish control over the military regime. Obasanjo encouraged debate and consensus among the Supreme Military Council. Many wondered why Obasanjo – as a Yoruba and a Christian – had appointed Yar'Adua, a member of the northern u, as his second-in-command, rather than a fellow Yoruba Christian.
Obasanjo emphasised national concerns over those of the regions; he encouraged both children and adults to recite the new national pledge and the national anthem. Interested in getting a broader range of perspectives, each Saturday he held an informal seminar on a topical issue to which people other than politicians and civil servants were invited. Among those whose advice he sought were Islamic scholars and traditional chiefs.
Economic policy
By the mid-1970s, Nigeria had an overheated economy with a 34% inflation rate. To deal with Nigeria's economic problems, Obasanjo pursued austerity measures to reduce public expenditure. In his 1976 budget, Obasanjo proposed to reduce government expenditure by a sixth, curtailing prestige projects while spending more on education, health, housing, and agriculture. He also set up an anti-inflation task force, and within a year of Obasanjo taking office, inflation had fallen to 30%. Obasanjo was generally adverse to borrowing money, but with the support of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Nigeria took out a $1 billion loan from a syndicate of banks. Leftist critics argued that doing so left the country subservient to Western capitalism. In the subsequent two years of Obasanjo's government, Nigeria borrowed a further $4,983 million.
Nigeria was undergoing nearly 3% annual population growth during the 1970s, something which would double the country's population in just over 25 years. Obasanjo later noted that he was unaware of this at the time, with his government having no policy on population control. Nigeria's population growth contributed to rapid urbanisation and an urban housing shortage. To deal with this, Obasanjo's 1976 budget outlined plans for the construction of 200,000 new housing units by 1980, although ultimately only 28,500 were built. In 1976, Obasanjo's government also announced rent and price controls. To counteract the disruption of labour strikes, in 1976 Obasanjo's government introduced legislation that defined most major industries as essential services, banned strikes within them, and authorised the detention of disruptive union leaders. In 1978 it merged 42 unions into the single Nigerian Labour Congress.
Obasanjo continued with three major irrigation schemes in northern Nigeria that were first announced under Murtala: the Kano River Project, the Bakalori Scheme, and the South Chad Irrigation Project. His government also continued the Agricultural Development Projects launched in Funtua, Gusau, and Gombe. Some reforestation projects were also initiated to stall the encroachment of the Sahara Desert in the north. To meet the country's growing demand for electricity, Obasanjo oversaw the launch of two new hydroelectric projects and a thermal plant. The oil industry remained an important part of Nigeria's economy and under Obasanjo the Ministry of Petroleum Resources was merged with the Nigerian National Oil Corporation to form the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Obasanjo also supported the creation of a liquefaction plant at Bonny, which was 62% financed by the NNPC; the project was abandoned by his successor amid spiralling cost increases. Obasanjo also continued the planning of the Ajaokuta integrated steel mill, an inherited project that many critics in the civil service argued was unviable.
In the mid-1970s, Nigeria also faced declining agricultural production, a process caused by successive governments finding it cheaper to import food than grow it domestically. In May 1976, Obasanjo launched Operation Feed the Nation, a project to revitalise small-scale farming and which involved students being paid to farm during the holidays. The project also involved abolishing duties on livestock feed and farm implements, subsidizing the use of fertilisers, and easing agricultural credit. In March 1978, Obasanjo issued the Land Use Decree which gave the state propriety rights over all land. This was designed to stop land hoarding and land speculation, and brought praise from the Nigerian left although was disliked by many land-owning families. Obasanjo saw it as one of his government's main achievements.
Domestic policies
Obasanjo continued the push for universal primary education in Nigeria, a policy inherited from Gowon. He introduced the Primary Education Act in 1976; between 1975–76 and 1979–80, enrolment in free but voluntary primary schooling grew from 6 million to 12.5 million, although there was a shortage of teachers and materials to cope with the demand. In the 1977–78 school year, Obasanjo introduced free secondary educational in technical subjects, something extended to all secondary schooling in 1979–80.
Concomitantly, Nigeria cut back on university funding; in 1978 it ceased issuing student loans and trebled university food and accommodation charges. Student protests erupted in several cities, resulting in fatal shootings in Lagos and Zaria. In response to the unrest, Obasanjo closed several universities, banned political activity on campus, and proscribed the National Union of Nigerian Students. The severity of these measures was perhaps due to suspicions that the student unrest was linked to a planned military coup that was uncovered in February 1978. Obasanjo was frustrated at the protesting student's behaviour, arguing that it reflected a turn away from traditional values such as respect for elders.
As a consequence of Nigeria's state-directed development, the country saw a rapid growth in the public sector. Evidence emerged of extensive corruption in the country's government, and while accusations were often made against Obasanjo himself, no hard evidence was produced. To hinder the image of corruption in the government, Obasanjo's administration banned the use of Mercedes cars as government transport and instead introduced more modest Peugeot 504s. The import of champagne was also banned. Pushing for cut-backs in the military, Obasanjo's government saw 12,000 soldiers demobilised over the course of 1976 and 1977. These troops went through new rehabilitation centres to assist them in adjusting to civilian life.
Obasanjo was also accused of being responsible for political repression. In one famous instance, the compound of the Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti, Kalakuta Republic, was raided and burned to the ground after a member of his entourage was involved in an altercation with military personnel. Fela and his family were beaten and raped and his aged mother, the political activist and founding mother Chief Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, was thrown from a window. This resulted in serious injuries, and eventually led to her death. Fela subsequently carried a coffin to the then presidential residence at Dodan Barracks in Lagos as a protest against the government's political repression.
Foreign policy
Obasanjo was eager to establish Nigeria as a prominent leader in Africa and under his tenure its influence in the continent increased. He revived Gowon's plan to hold the second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Nigeria; it took place in Lagos in February 1977, although domestic critics argued that it was too expensive. Obasanjo gave low priority to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and angered many of its Francophone members after insisting that, as the largest financial contributor to the organisation, Nigeria should host the organisation's headquarters in Lagos. Relations with nearby Ghana also declined; in 1979, Nigeria cut off oil supplies to the country to protest the execution of political opponents by Jerry Rawlings' new military junta.
Under Obasanjo, Nigeria loosened its longstanding ties with the United Kingdom and aligned more closely with the United States. Obasanjo was favourable to the U.S. government of Jimmy Carter, who was elected in 1976, because of Carter's commitment to ensuring majority rule across southern Africa. Carter's ambassador to Nigeria, Andrew Young, formed a close personal friendship with Obasanjo, while Carter visited Nigeria in 1978. However, the decision to shift allegiances was made for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons; the discovery of oil in the North Sea meant that the UK had become a competitor rather than a customer of Nigerian oil. Obasanjo's government was also angry that the UK refused to extradite Gowon and suspected that the British government might have been involved in the coup against Murtala. For these reasons, in 1976 it considered suspending diplomatic relations with the UK, but ultimately did not. Obasanjo nevertheless refused to visit the UK and discouraged his officials from doing so. Relations were further damaged when Margaret Thatcher became British Prime Minister in 1979, initiating a warmer British approach to the white minority administrations of Rhodesia and South Africa. In response, Nigeria seized a British tanker that was believed to be transporting Nigerian oil to South Africa, banned British firms from competing for Nigerian contracts, and nationalised British Petroleum's Nigerian operations.
Obasanjo was also eager to hasten the end of white minority rule in southern Africa; according to Iliffe, this became "the centrepiece of his foreign policy". Nigeria gave grants to those fighting white minority rule in the region, allowed these groups to open offices in Lagos, and offered sanctuary to various refugees fleeing the governments of southern Africa. Taking a hard line against the apartheid regime in South Africa, Obasanjo announced that Nigeria would not take part in the 1976 Summer Olympics because New Zealand, which was competing, had sporting ties with South Africa, a country that was banned from competing due to apartheid. In 1977, Obasanjo barred any contractors with South African links from operating in Nigeria; the main companies that were hit were British Petroleum and Barclays Bank. That same year, Nigeria hosted the United Nations Conference for Action Against Apartheid in Lagos, while Obasanjo visited the U.S. in October where he urged the country to stop selling arms to South Africa. While in the country he addressed the United Nations General Assembly and two weeks later Nigeria received a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Opposition to white minority rule in Rhodesia had sparked the Rhodesian Bush War and Obasanjo's government maintained that armed struggle was the only option for overthrowing Rhodesia's government. He encouraged unity among the various anti-government factions there, urging Robert Mugabe, the head of ZANU, to accept the leadership of his rival, Joshua Nkomo of ZAPU. In 1977, the UK and US drew up proposals for a transition to majority rule in Rhodesia, amid a period in which the country would be under the management of United Nations forces. Obasanjo backed the plan, and visited Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to urge their governments to do the same. However, after Thatcher became UK Prime Minister, Nigeria distanced itself from British efforts to end the Rhodesian Bush War and was excluded from any significant role in the UK-brokered process that led to multi-racial democratic elections in Rhodesia.
As head of state, Obasanjo attended OAU summits. At that held in July 1977, he proposed the formation of a standing committee to mediate disputes between OAU member states. At the 1978 conference, he warned of interference from both sides in the Cold War. At the next conference, he urged the formation of a Pan-African military which could engage in peace-keeping efforts on the continent. To promote Nigeria's role internationally, Obasanjo involved himself in various mediation efforts across Africa. In 1977, he persuaded Benin and Togo to end their border dispute and reopen their frontier. He also attempted to mediate a quarrel among several East African states and thus prevent the collapse of the East African Community, but failed in this attempt. As the chair of the OAU mediation committee, he tried to mediate the Ogaden dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia but was again unsuccessful. He also failed to mend the breach that had emerged between Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On behalf of the OAU, Obasanjo held a conference at Kano to mediate the Chadian Civil War. Several factions agreed to a ceasefire, to form a government of national unity, and to allow Nigerian troops to act as peacekeepers. The war nevertheless continued and Nigeria responded by cutting off its oil supply to Chad. A second conference on the conflict took place in Lagos in August 1979, resulting in the formation of another short-lived transitional government. In the final year of his military government, he headed an OAU mission to resolve the conflict in Western Sahara.
Transfer of power
The military government has assembled a constituent drafting committee to devise a new constitution which could be used amid a transfer to civilian rule. The committee argued that Nigeria should change its governance system, which was based on the British parliamentary system, to one based on the U.S. presidential system whereby a single elected president would be both head of state and head of government. To avoid this president becoming a dictator, as had happened elsewhere in Africa, it argued for various checks on their power, including a federal structure whereby independent elected institutions would exist at the federal, state, and local level. The draft constitution was published in October 1976 and debated in public for the following year. A constituent assembly met to discuss the draft in October 1977. The assembly deadlocked over what role to give sharia law in the constitution. Obasanjo called the assembly together and warned them of the social impact of their decision, urging them to take a more conciliatory attitude. In September 1978, the Supreme Military Council announced the new constitution; it had made several amendments to the version put forward by the constituent assembly.
Along with the new constitution, Obasanjo lifted the ban on political parties. A variety of groups then formed to compete in the ensuing election, most notably the Unity Party of Yoruba, the Nigerian People's Party, and the National Party of Nigeria. Obasanjo was angered that many of the politicians were making promises that they could not keep. The elections took place over the course of July and August 1979. Turnout was low, at between 30 and 40 percent of legally registered voters, and there was rigging on various sides, although it was peaceful. There was debate as to who won the presidential vote, and Obasanjo refused to adjudicate, insisting that the Electoral Commission take on that role. They declared that Shehu Shagari was the winner, something that the runner up, Obafemi Awolowo, unsuccessfully challenged at the Supreme Court. Shagari took office in October 1979; at his inauguration ceremony, Obasanjo presented Shagari with a copy of the new constitution. This marked the start of Nigeria's Second Republic.
Obasanjo's role in returning Nigeria to civilian rule would form the basis of the good reputation he retained for the next two decades. However, various domestic and foreign individuals, including the Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and Togo President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, urged him to remain in power. His refusal to back Awolowo, a fellow Yoruba, earned him the enmity of much of the Yoruba elite. Awolowo accused Obasanjo of orchestrating Shagari's victory, something Obasanjo strenuously denied.
Pre-presidency (1979–1999)
Before he left office, in April 1979, Obasanjo promoted himself to the role of general; as a four-star general he continued to receive a salary from the state. Having left office in October, he returned to Abeokuta. Following a six-week course at an agricultural training college, Obasanjo then set himself up as a farmer, hoping to set an example in encouraging agricultural self-reliance. He obtained at least 230 hectares of land in Ota on which to establish his farm, there moving in to a brick farmhouse. There was local hostility to his obtaining so much land, and much litigation was brought against him because of it. His agricultural activities were organised through his Temperance Enterprises Limited, later renamed Obasanjo's Farms Limited. He devoted particular attention to poultry farming; by the mid-1980s, his farm was hatching 140,000 chicks a week. He developed farms elsewhere in Yorubaland, and by 1987 he employed over 400 workers at eight locations. As did other senior Yoruba figures, Obasanjo sponsored poor students who attended his former school in Abeokuta.
Obasanjo grew critical of Shagari's civilian government, deeming the president weak and ill-prepared. Nigeria entered economic recession due to fluctuations in global oil prices. In May 1983, senior military figures asked Obasanjo to take over control in the country again, but he declined. In December, they overthrew Shagari without Obasanjo's involvement, in a coup that saw little violence. Muhammadu Buhari became the new military head of state. Obasanjo was initially supportive of Buhari's government, stating that representative democracy had failed in Nigeria. He praised Buhari's War Against Indiscipline, his halving of imports, and his restoration of a balanced budget. In August 1985, Buhari was also overthrown, with the Army Chief of Staff Ibrahim Babangida taking power. Obasanjo was critical of some of the economic reforms that Babangida introduced, including the devaluation of the naira. By 1992, his opposition to Babangida's rule had led him to call for a re-democratisation of Nigeria. He also began to reject the economic indigenisation policies of the 1970s, arguing that the constitution should prohibit the confiscation of foreign investments. Instead, he thought the government should emphasise private-led development. He became increasingly concerned by rapid population growth, a topic he had ignored while in power, urging Nigerians to have smaller families "in their own economic and national socio-economic interest".
During the eleven years after Obasanjo left office, he published four books. In 1980, Obasanjo was a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Ibadan, where he wrote My Command, an account of his experiences during the civil war; it was published in November that year. Some readers criticised what they saw as Obasanjo's disloyalty to Murtala Muhammed, while Robert Adeyinka Adebayo, a senior Yoruba political figure, urged for the book to be withdrawn to prevent it sowing division. A more positive assessment was made by his friend, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who called it masterly but believed that it had involved much editorial assistance. In 1987, he published Nzeogwu, a memoir of his friend Chukwuma Nzeogwu, with whom he had served in the Congo. 1989 saw the publication of Obasanjo's next book, Constitution for National Integration and Development, in which he warned against Babangida's argument for instituting a two-party system in Nigeria. In 1990, his third book, Not My Will, was published. It provided an account of his time governing the country.
International activities: 1979–1993
Seeking to retain influence on the global stage, Obasanjo launched the Africa Leadership Forum from his Ota farm. From 1981 to 1982, he also sat on the Palme Commission, a group chaired by the former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme which discussed disarmament and international security. Obasanjo followed this with membership on similar panels for the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Inter-Action Council of Former Heads of Government. When Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the UN Secretary-General, fell ill, Obasanjo was considered as a potential successor. After Pérez de Cuéllar announced his resignation, Obasanjo began campaigning to replace him. At a vote of the UN Security Council, he came third, with Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali taking on the role. He left his home on several visits; in 1986 he visited Japan, and in 1987 the U.S.
Amid a dispute in the Commonwealth of Nations over the UK's more lenient view of South Africa, it was agreed that an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) would be formed to initiate dialogue with the South African government in the hope of encouraging it toward dismantling apartheid. At the recommendation of Nigeria's Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku, Obasanjo was nominated to co-chair the group alongside former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Obasanjo reluctantly agreed. In February 1986, he and Fraser travelled to Cape Town where they asked to meet with the imprisoned anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, a prominent member of the banned African National Congress (ANC). Obasanjo alone was permitted to meet with Mandela; he later commented that he was greatly impressed by him. Obasanjo then met with senior ANC figures in exile in Lusaka.
In March 1986, the entirety of the EPG visited South Africa, during a period of growing domestic unrest and violence. There they met with senior government figures, including Prime Minister P. W. Botha, whom Obasanjo later described as the most intolerant man he had ever met. The EPG's report stated that while a majority of South Africans desired a non-violent negotiated settlement between the government and anti-apartheid groups, the former was unwilling to contemplate this and had made no significant progress towards ending apartheid. The EPG thus proposed that further international pressure was necessary. A Commonwealth committee accepted the report's findings, with the UK dissenting; this left Obasanjo further frustrated with Thatcher. The Commonwealth then commissioned him to head a committee to determine what the Frontline States needed to defend themselves from South African incursions.
After Botha was replaced by F. W. de Klerk, the latter freed Mandela from prison. One of Mandela's first foreign trips was to Nigeria, where he visited Obasanjo at his home. Two months later, Obasanjo led a Nigerian delegation to South Africa for talks with prominent political figures. In September 1991, he visited again, where he urged the Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi to engage in negotiations with other factions to help end apartheid and hold a fully representative election.
Obasanjo also worked on developments elsewhere in Africa. He visited Angola twice during 1988, contributing to efforts to end the civil war there. He also visited Sudan three times between 1987 and 1989, unsuccessfully encouraging negotiations to end the Second Sudanese Civil War. He then served as an observer at the 1994 Mozambican general election. In 1994 and 1995, he visited Burundi, where he worked to calm tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. He had begun calling for closer integration across Africa, proposing this could be achieved through the formation of six regional confederations. In June 1987, he had sketched out plans for an Africa Leadership Forum, which would help to provide skills and training for politicians from across the continent. It began holding meetings, known as the Farm House Dialogues, from Obasanjo's home about six times a year. It also held quarterly international meetings and issued a quarterly magazine, Africa Forum, between 1991 and 1993.
Opposing Abacha: 1992–1995
Obasanjo voiced concern that, despite his professed claims to support a return to democracy, Babangida had no intention of stepping down as military head of state. After the presidential primaries were cancelled in 1992, Obasanjo and Anthony Enahoro launched the Association for Democracy and Good Governance in Nigeria. The group's inaugural meeting brought together 31 domestic political figures at Ota in May 1993. An election followed in June 1993, which saw low turnout. Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) claimed victory, but this was challenged in court. Babangida then annulled the election result, promising a second election soon after. The SDP opposed any second election as they argued that their candidate had already won the first. Babangida then agreed to step down in favour of an interim civilian government, led by Ernest Shonekan, which took power in August 1993 and set out plans for new elections in February 1994.
Meanwhile, Sani Abacha consolidated his control of the military and in November 1993 pressured Shonekan into resigning, allowing himself to take power. Obasanjo had telephoned Abacha prior to the coup, urging him not to take this course of action. After Abacha had seized power, he asked Obasanjo to meet with him. The latter did, but refused to support Abacha's government until it announced a date for its own departure. Abacha then abolished the existing political parties and democratic institutions and called for politicians from various backgrounds to join his Federal Executive Council; Obasanjo refused to nominate anyone for this council.
Obasanjo began warning that Nigeria was headed towards another civil war along ethnic divisions, and in May 1994 he and Yar'Adua launched the National Unity Promoters, a group dedicated to preventing this outcome. In June, Abiola unilaterally declared himself Nigeria's president and was arrested for treason. Although Obasanjo refused to endorse Abiola's claim, he did advise Abacha not to arrest him. He then led a group of traditional leaders at a meeting in which they attempted to initiate a dialogue between Abacha and Abiola. His refusal to support Abiola angered many Yoruba and Obasanjo's property in Yorubaland was attacked. Obasanjo was upset by what he saw as punishment for not backing Yoruba sectarian interests.
In March 1995, Obasanjo was in Denmark for a UN Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen. While there, he heard that Yar'Adua had been detained and that he would probably face the same fate if he returned to Nigeria. He nevertheless argued that he had done nothing wrong and thus agreed to return. Once at Lagos Airport, his passport was confiscated and the next day, police picked him up from his Ota home. The police accused Obasanjo of links to a coup against Abacha being plotted by Brigadier General Lawan Guadabe. Obasanjo was moved between various detention centres, while former US President Carter personally contacted Abacha requesting Obasanjo's release. Obasanjo was then returned to Ota, where he was placed under house arrest for two months, during which time he was denied access to media, the telephone, or visitors.
Another of those accused of being involved in the plot, Colonel Bello-Fadile, a military lawyer, had been tortured, during which he signed a statement that he had gone to Ota to inform Obasanjo about the coup as it was in preparation. This was used as evidence to charge Obasanjo with concealment of treason, a capital offense under Nigerian law. He was then taken to the State Security Interrogation Centre at Ikoyi. Abacha insisted that Obasanjo be tried before a military court, which took place on 19 June 1995. At the trial, Obasanjo denied that Bello-Fadile had ever met with him. Bello-Fadile also maintained that he had signed the statement implicating Obasanjo under duress, but the court rejected this retraction.
On 14 July, the court sentenced Obasanjo to 25 years in prison; Yar'Adua and fourteen others also accused of being part of the conspiracy were sentenced to death. Obasanjo later called it his "saddest day". After the US President Bill Clinton stated that his country would embargo Nigerian oil if these executions took place, Abacha commuted their sentences to imprisonment and reduced Obasanjo's sentence to 15 years.
Imprisonment: 1995–1998
Obasanjo spent the next four months at the Ikoyi Centre, where he was initially chained up in solitary confinement. He was then transferred to Lagos' main prison, Kirikiri, where he spent time in the prison hospital for his hypertension and diabetes. Conditions in Kirikiri were overcrowded and unsanitary, with Obasanjo stating that he "would not wish it on my worst enemy". There, Bello-Fadile apologised to Obasanjo for having implicated him, at which Obasanjo forgave him. A note written by Bello-Fadile explaining the situation was then smuggled out of the prison and published, helping to demonstrate Obasanjo's innocence.
After several weeks, Obasanjo and the other alleged conspirators were moved to Jos prison in the central plateau, Plateau State where they spent several months. Obasanjo was initially given only the Bible and Quran to read, but gradually allowed a wider range of literature. Writing material was also granted to him, allowing him to correspond with various people and institutions, and eventually Stella was permitted to visit him once a month. Both Mandela and Pope John Paul II called for his release, with Indian and German foundations both awarding him international prizes. The Africa Leadership Forum produced two volumes of letters and essays written in his honour; the Forum itself had been forced to relocate to Accra in Ghana to avoid persecution from Abacha's government.
In early 1996, Obasanjo was moved from Jos to the more remote prison at Yola, Adamawa State. There, he was allowed to cultivate a garden. Obasanjo related that in prison he deepened his Christian faith and grew closer to God, becoming a born-again Christian. From that point, Christianity played a much larger role in his personal world-view. At Yola, he preached 28 weekly sermons after visiting ministers were temporarily banned. He wrote these sermons down, allowing them to be published when he was released. Obasanjo also tried to reform some of the younger prisoners, following up on their progress once he became a free man. Obasanjo feared that he would be poisoned, particularly amid public speculation that Yar'adua's death had been caused by deliberate poisoning.
Abacha died suddenly in June 1998, after which the military commanders appointed Lieutenant General Abdulsalami Abubakar as his successor. A week later, Abubakar ordered Obasanjo's release, sending a plane to return him to Ota. Eager to return Nigeria to civilian rule, Abubakar dissolved the country's existing parties and institutions and announced a plan that would lead to a civilian president being installed in May 1999.
Campaigning for the presidency: 1998–1999
Now a free man, Obasanjo travelled to South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where he underwent medical treatment. New political parties were forming across Nigeria, one of the largest of which was the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), an umbrella group that sought to be sufficiently broad that if in power it would deter future coups. Prominent PDP members proposed Obasanjo as an ideal presidential candidate. They felt that he could command international respect and that as a military figure he could hold the country together against future coups and secessionist movements. They also argued that Nigeria needed a southern president to balance out its previous northern leadership and that Obasanjo had proved himself as a southerner who had no partisan prejudice against the north.
Friends and family urged him not to run, saying that he would damage his good reputation or be killed. Obasanjo appeared reluctant, but on 28 October he joined the PDP and a week later announced that he was putting himself forward to be the party's presidential nominee. In his campaign, he emphasized his desire to restore what he deemed the legacy of good governance when he left office in 1979. At a fundraising dinner, he gained N356 million, of which N120 million had been donated by industrialist Aliko Dangote. Most of these donations came from military men and the new business class. He toured the country, giving speeches and seeking audiences with influential persons; courting state governors was a significant element of his approach. His campaign overshadowed that of his main rival, Alex Ekwueme, who was widely mistrusted by northerners and the military.
The PDP was gaining ground in Nigeria, proving the most successful party in the local government elections of December 1998, the state elections in January 1999, and the Senate and House of Representatives elections in February 1999. On 14 February 1999, a PDP convention was called to select its presidential candidate. Obasanjo received 1,658 votes, to 521 for Ekwueme, and 260 for the other five candidates. Seeking a northerner as the PDP's vice presidential candidate, Obasanjo selected Atiku Abubakar. The presidential election took place on 27 February; Obasanjo's sole opponent was the APP's Olu Falae. About a quarter of those eligible to vote did so, and there was some rigging although no violence. The official tally gave Obasanjo 63 percent of the vote; he was the loser in all six states of his native Yorubaland.
Presidency (1999–2007)
First term
After having it exorcised, Obasanjo moved into the presidential complex at Aso Rock in May. On 29 May he took the presidential oath in Abuja's Eagle Square. While appointing his new government, he selected an even number of ministers from the north and south of Nigeria, although the fact that a majority were Christian upset some Muslim northerners. Critics generally characterised Obasanjo's cabinet as being too old and conservative, as well as lacking in experience, especially when dealing with economic matters. During his first administration the levels of freedom experienced by Nigerians increased; freedom of the press allowed for considerable criticism of the president.
In the initial months of his presidency, Obasanjo retired around 200 military officers, including all 93 who held political positions, thus making a coup by experienced officers less likely. He also moved the Defence Ministry from Lagos to Abuja, ensuring it was brought under more direct government control.
Second term
Obasanjo was re-elected in a tumultuous 2003 election that had violent ethnic and religious overtones. His main opponent, fellow former military ruler General Muhammadu Buhari, was Muslim and drew his support mainly from the north. Capturing 61.8% of the vote, Obasanjo defeated Buhari by more than 11 million votes.
In November 2003, Obasanjo was criticized for his decision to grant asylum to the deposed Liberian president, Charles Taylor. On 12 June 2006, he signed the Greentree Agreement with Cameroonian President Paul Biya which formally put an end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute. Even though the Nigerian Senate passed a resolution declaring that the withdrawal of Nigerian troops from the Bakassi Peninsula was illegal, Obasanjo gave the order for it to continue as planned.
In his second term, Obasanjo continued to ensure the expansion of the country's police force, which rose to 325,000 in 2007.
Ongoing rural violence between Muslims and Christians in Plateau State led Obasanjo to declare a state of emergency there in May 2004, suspending the state government and installing six months of military rule. On 22 August 2005, the then governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, submitted a petition alleging corrupt practices against Obasanjo to the EFCC.
Third term agenda
Obasanjo was embroiled in controversy regarding his "Third Term Agenda", a plan to modify the constitution so he could serve a third, four-year term as president. This led to a political media uproar in Nigeria and the bill was not ratified by the National Assembly. Consequently, Obasanjo stepped down after the April 2007 general election. In an exclusive interview granted to Channels Television, Obasanjo denied involvement in what has been defined as "Third Term Agenda". He said that it was the National Assembly (Nigeria) that included tenure elongation amongst the other clauses of the Constitution of Nigeria that were to be amended. "I never toyed with the idea of a third term," Obasanjo said.
Obasanjo was condemned by major political players during the Third Term Agenda saga. Senator Ken Nnamani, former President of the Nigerian Senate claimed Obasanjo informed him about the agenda shortly after he became President of the Nigerian Senate. "Immediately, I became Senate President, he told me of his intentions and told me how he wanted to achieve it. I initially did not take him seriously until the events began to unfold." He also insinuated that Eight Billion Naira was spent to corrupt legislators to support the agenda. "How can someone talk like this that he didn't know about it, yet money, both in local and foreign currencies, exchanged hands," he asked. Femi Gbajabiamila corroborated Nnamani's account but put the figure differently, "The money totaled over N10 billion. How could N10bn be taken out of the national treasury for a project when you were the sitting President, yet that project was not your idea? Where did the money come from?" In the following quotes, Nnamani said President George W. Bush warned Obasanjo to desist from his plan to contest presidential election for the third term: "If you want to be convinced that the man is only telling a lie, pick up a copy of the book written by Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary to the Government of the United States of America. It is actually an autobiography by Rice. On page 628 or page 638, she discussed Obasanjo's meeting with Bush, how he told the former American President that he wanted to see how he could amend the Constitution so that he could go for a third term. To his surprise, Bush told him not to try it. Bush told him to be patriotic and leave by May 29, 2007."
Economic, social and foreign policies
Economic policyWith the oil revenue, Obasanjo created the Niger Delta Development Commission and implemented the Universal Basic Education Program to enhance the literacy level of Nigerians. He constituted both the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Resuscitated the National Fertilizer Company in Kaduna and (Onne) Port Harcourt. Obasanjo increased the share of oil royalties and rents to the state of origin from 3 to 13 percent.
Before Obasanjo's administration, Nigeria's GDP growth had been painfully slow since 1987, and only managed 3 percent between 1999 and 2000. However, under Obasanjo, the growth rate doubled to 6 percent until he left office, helped in part by higher oil prices. Nigeria's foreign reserves rose from $2 billion in 1999 to $43 billion on leaving office in 2007.
He was able to secure debt pardons from the Paris and London club amounting to some $18 billion and paid another $18 billion to be debt free. Most of these loans were accumulated from short-term trade arrears during the exchange control period. (Point of correction). Most of these loans were accumulated not out of corruption but during a period 1982–1985 when Nigeria operated exchange control regime that vested all foreign exchange transactions on the central bank of Nigeria.
When Obasanjo took office, Nigeria's economy was in a poor state. Inflation had averaged about 30% a year throughout the 1990s, and by 2001 around 20% of Nigerian adults were unemployed. Poverty was widespread, with Obasanjo's government seeking to alleviate this by paying N3,500 a month to around 200,000 people to conduct routine tasks such as sweeping and mending roads. This project was then replaced with a National Poverty Eradication Programme which focused on generating youth employment, rural infrastructure, and conservation. In 2000, Obasanjo's government doubled the legal minimum wage.
He invited the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to review Nigeria's economy and offer advice on how to improve it; they warned that the government was overspending. In 2001, Obasanjo declared himself "a believer in market efficiency" and related that he had seen the damage caused by "public sector mismanagement" first hand. However, while expressing his commitment to the Washington Consensus of free markets, privatisation, and limited state expenditure, government expenditure as a share of GDP rose from 29% in 1997 to 50% in 2001. In January 2000, Nigeria received a US$1 billion stand-by loan, which allowed the government to enter debt rescheduling negotiations with its creditors. Obasanjo's government benefited from high international oil prices during his first presidential term. It planned both to increase Nigeria's oil output and to produce increasing quantities of liquefied natural gas, which was first exported from the country in 1999.
Obasanjo was determined to abolish the petrol subsidy, increasing prices to commercial rates. The Nigerian Labour Congress called a general strike in protest for June 2000 and Obasanjo ultimately compromised, reducing the subsidy rather than abolishing it. This situation allowed Obasanjo to be portrayed as an "enemy of the poor" on the public imagination. To further reduce expenditure, Obasanjo turned to privatisation, forming a National Council on Privatisation in July 1999. When he took office, Nigeria's federal government owned 588 public enterprises, accounting for over 55% of external debt, and Obasanjo hoped that many of these, although not those involved in oil production, could be sold off. Privatisation was not popular with Nigeria's population, having only 35% support according to a 2000 opinion survey. Obasanjo was also keen to negotiate debt reduction. He insisted that Nigeria's debts were so large as to be unpayable and that they threatened its economy and democracy. Although Canada, Italy, and the U.S. cancelled Nigeria's debts, these were small, and the country's major creditors, the largest of which was the UK, refused.
Obasanjo blamed many of Nigeria's economic problems on endemic corruption; in 2000, Transparency International ranked it the world's most corrupt country. Several days after taking office he presented an Anti-Corruption Bill to the National Assembly, although this aroused much opposition from critics who thought it gave the government excessive powers. Compromises were reached that watered-down Obasanjo's proposals, allowing him to sign the new law in June 2000. There is no evidence that corruption declined in Nigeria in Obasanjo's first term, and his government did nothing to check Nigeria's endemic low-level corruption, which was widespread at the state and local government levels.
Public health was also a key issue in Nigeria. During the 1990s, Nigeria had spent about 0.2% of its GDP on public health services, the joint lowest percentage in the world. Obasanjo's government increased this to over 0.4%. The most urgent health crisis impacting Nigeria was the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with Obasanjo immediately ordering a situation report on the topic after taking office. He then established a Presidential Committee on AIDS, which he headed as chair, and created a National Action Plan Committee to prepare a campaign for 2000–03 which would focus on publicity, training, counselling, and testing to combat the virus. To advance public health more broadly, he launched a new primary care campaign that used local government funds to try and build a clinic in every one of Nigeria's 774 local government areas.
Foreign policy
One of Obasanjo's major tasks, in which he succeeded, was to improve Nigeria's international reputation, which had been tarnished under Abacha. He spent over a quarter of his first term abroad, having visited 92 countries by October 2002. In October 1999, Obasanjo launched a South African-Nigerian Bi-National Commission to discuss cooperation between the two countries, the largest powers on Sub-Saharan Africa. Obasanjo retained Nigeria's close ties with the U.S., bringing in U.S. advisers to help train the Nigerian military. He had close ties with U.S. President Bill Clinton and also got on with Clinton's successor George W. Bush; Bush visited Abuja in 2000, and Obasanjo visited Washington DC in 2006. Pursuing warmer relations with the U.K. than he had in the 1970s, he attended his first Commonwealth Conference in November 1999 and hosted that in December 2003, where he received an honorary knighthood from British Queen Elizabeth II.
On taking office, Obasanjo had vowed to withdraw Nigerian troops from Sierra Leone. In August 1999, he announced a schedule for their withdrawal, although this was suspended while a UN peacekeeping force was assembled, to which Nigeria provided 4000 troops. This force withdrew in 2005. Amid turmoil in Liberia, Obasanjo ordered Nigerian troops into the country in August 2003; they passed into a UN command two months later. Obasanjo granted Liberia's ousted leader Charles Taylor refuge in Nigeria, although subsequently returned him to Liberia to face trial for war crimes at the request of new Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Eager to keep Nigeria out of domestically unpopular conflicts, he refused requests for the Nigerian military to participate in an ECOMOG intervention in the Guinea-Bissau civil war and the 2002 peacekeeping mission to the Côte d'Ivoire. At the UK's request, he assisted in a mediation with Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe government over the latter's encouragement of the violent seizure of white-owned farms. Along with South African President Thabo Mbeki and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, he was part of a team tasked with dealing with Zimbabwe by the Commonwealth. Obasanjo and Mbeki visited Zimbabwe three times to work on quiet diplomacy, unsuccessfully urging Mugabe to either retire or form a power sharing government with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Confronting ethnic and religious tensions
Shortly after Obasanjo's election, the place of Islamic sharia law became a major debate in Nigerian politics. Since the country's independence, sharia had been restricted to civil cases between Muslims in the northern states; criminal cases were not governed by sharia law, something that offended some Muslims. In September 1999, the Governor of Zamfara State, Ahmed Sani, announced the full introduction of sharia as the basis of that state's penal code, although specified that it would only apply to Muslim residents and not the non-Islamic minority. This sparked alarm among Christian minorities across northern Nigeria, with protests and counter-protests generating violence, especially in Kaduna. Across Nigeria, Christian opinion was very hostile to the introduction of sharia as the basis of state penal systems. Both houses of the National Assembly urged Obasanjo to take the issue to the Supreme Court. He was eager to avoid this, not wanting the role of sharia to become a constitutional issue. Publicly he sought to distinguish what he called "genuine sharia" from "political sharia", praising the former while insisting that the latter was a fad that would fizzle out. By refusing to intervene, Obasanjo drew criticism for a lack of courage from many southerners, while Muslim hardliners in the north mocked him. Amid popular demand from Muslim communities, four more northern states adopted sharia penal law in 2000 and seven more in 2001. Obasanjo later stated that the issue was the biggest challenge he ever faced as president.
When Obasanjo came to power, he was appalled that Nigeria was experiencing widespread unrest and violence, resulting in thousands of deaths. This violence was being exacerbated by a rapidly growing population which brought with it spiralling urbanisation and competition for scarce land in rural areas. To deal with this, Obasanjo doubled the country's police force from 120,000 to 240,000 between 1999 and 2003. Little was done to deal with police brutality, with the torture of suspects remaining widespread under Obasanjo's administration. Also fuelling the violence were ethnic tensions, with different ethnic and regional groups calling for greater autonomy, leading various commentators to predict the breakup of Nigeria. For Obasanjo, keeping the country united became a major priority. Only on select occasions would he turn to the military to quell unrest, preferring not to have to mobilise the army unless state governors requested it. In his words, "we must utilise military force only when all else has failed. That is my own principle and philosophy." He saw greater value in forgiveness, amnesty, and reconciliation to achieve harmony than in retributive criminal justice of perpetrators. Under Obasanjo's presidency, the levels of violence and disorder in Nigeria declined.A major hub of secessionist sentiment was in the Niger Delta region, where indigenous groups wanted to retain a far greater proportion of the proceeds from the area's lucrative oil reserves. In July 1999, Obasanjo sent the National Assembly a bill to create a Niger Delta Development Commission to formulate and implement a plan for dealing with the region, something he hoped would quell violence there. Amid much debate, the commission was finally launched in December 2000. In November 1999, he also sent two army battalions into the Niger Delta region to apprehend the Asawana Boys, an Ijaw group who had captured and killed police officers in Odi, Bayelsa State. The military destroyed most of the town; the government claimed that 43 had been killed, but a local NGO put the number of civilian deaths at 2,483. Obasanjo described the destruction as "avoidable" and "regrettable" and visited Odi in March 2001; he refused to condemn the army, apologise for the destruction, pay compensation or rebuild the town, although the Niger Delta Development Commission did the latter.
In 2000, Obasanjo banned the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), a Yoruba nationalist group involved in violence against other ethnicities, and ordered the arrest of its leaders. In September 2001, violence between indigenous Christians and northern Muslim traders in Plateau State resulted in around 500 deaths before the army moved in and regained control. Obasanjo then visited and urged reconciliation. In October 2001, Muslim demonstrators in Kano killed around 200 Igbo in response to Nigeria's support for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Obasanjo then visited to urge reconciliation but was booed by residents. Also in October, soldiers had been sent to calm tensions between the Jukun and Tiv communities along the borders between Benue and Taraba states; a Tiv militia then captured and killed them in Zaki-Biam. Obasanjo ordered the army in, where they rounded up and killed as many as 250 to 300 local men. Obasanjo visited the area in 2002 and apologised for the excessive use of force.
In January 2002, Obasanjo ordered the mobile police to break-up the Bakossi Boys, a vigilante group active primarily in Abia and Anambra states which was responsible for an estimated two thousand killings. He had hesitated doing so before due to the popular support that the group had accrued through fighting criminal gangs, but felt able to move against them after their popularity waned. That same month, an ammunition dump at the Ijeka barracks near Lagos exploded, potentially resulting in as many as a thousand deaths. Obasanjo visited immediately. Violent unrest had also continued in Lagos, and in February 2002, troops were sent into the city to restore stability. In April 2002, Obasanjo proposed legislation that would allow for the proscription of ethnic-based groups if they were deemed to promote violence, but the National Executive rejected this as an overreach of presidential power.
Some public officials like the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President of the Senate were involved in conflicts with the President, who battled many impeachment attempts from both houses. Obasanjo managed to survive impeachment and was renominated.
Post-presidency (2007–present)
Politics
He became chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, with control over nominations for governmental positions and even policy and strategy. As one Western diplomat said, "He intends to sit in the passenger seat giving advice and ready to grab the wheel if Nigeria goes off course." He voluntarily resigned as the chairman board of trustees of the PDP in April 2012. Afterwards, he withdrew from political activities with PDP.
In March 2008, Obasanjo was "supposedly" indicted by a committee of the Nigerian parliament for awarding $2.2bn-worth of energy contracts during his eight-year rule, without due process. The report of this probe was never accepted by the whole Nigerian parliament due to manipulation of the entire process by the leadership of the power probe committee. It is not on any official record that Chief Obasanjo was indicted.
In May 2014, Obasanjo wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan requesting that he should mediate on behalf of the Nigerian government for the release of the Chibok girls held by the Boko Haram militants.
On 16 February 2015, he quit the ruling party and directed a PDP ward leader to tear his membership card during a press conference. He was later to be known as the navigator of the newly formed opposition party, the APC.
On 24 January 2018, he wrote serving President Muhammadu Buhari highlighting his areas of weakness and advising him not to run for office in 2019. To date all his letters to incumbent presidents have preceded their downfall.
On 31 January 2018, his political movement called "Coalition for Nigeria Movement" (CNM) was launched in Abuja. On 10 May 2018, the movement adopts a political party, African Democratic Congress (ADC), to realise its dream of a new Nigeria.
On 20 November 2018, Obasanjo officially announced his return to the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during a book launch for My Transition Hours, written by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
On 22 January 2022, Obasanjo declared that he had retired from partisan politics; he stated this after receiving national delegates of the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] in his residence in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria
Diplomacy
Obasanjo was appointed Special Envoy by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. He held separate meetings with DRC President Joseph Kabila and rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.
During the Zimbabwean election of July 2013, Obasanjo headed a delegation of African Union election observers.
In 2022, Obasanjo mediated peace talks between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front under the auspices of the African Union, culminating in a ceasefire of the Tigray War on November 2, 2022.
Further education
In December 2017, Obasanjo defended his Ph.D. thesis at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He now holds a Ph.D. in theology. That was about two years after he completed his master's degree in the same course.
Political ideology
Ideologically, Obasanjo was a Nigerian nationalist. He was committed to a form of Nigerian patriotism and the belief that Nigeria should be retained as a single nation-state, rather than being broken up along ethnic lines. In 2001, he stated that his long-term goal was "the nullification of all forms of identification except Nigerian citizenship". He argued that dismantling Nigeria along ethnic lines would result in the ethnic cleansing and violence that had been seen during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Ilife argued that Obasanjo's Nigerian nationalism was impacted both by his detachment from the Yoruba elite and by his time in the army, where he worked alongside soldiers from a broad range of ethnic backgrounds.
Iliffe noted that an emphasis on consensus politics was "a guiding principle" throughout Obasanjo's career. While in power during the 1970s, Obasanjo expressed criticism of "institutionalized opposition" to the government. In his view this was "profoundly incongruent with most African political culture and practice." Instead of constantly opposing the government, he believed that opposition parties should instead offer constructive criticism, and that politicians should pursue a search for consensus rather than engaging in constant competition. He thought that political competition had a destabilising effect that was particularly dangerous for a developing country such as Nigeria, and that stability should be preserved.
Frustrated with what he regarded as the failures of representative democratic rule during the early 1980s, Obasanjo began expressing support for a one-party state in Nigeria. He nevertheless insisted that this one-party state must facilitate general public participation in governance, respect human rights, and protect freedom of expression. Later in the 1980s, he warned against the proposed two-party state which Babangida was putting forward, believing that while Babangida envisioned a centre-left and centre-right party competing against each other, it would inevitably develop into one party representing the Christian south and the other representing the Muslim north. He instead argued that there should be no limit on the number of political parties that could be formed, although suggested that if this could not occur then Nigeria should become a one-party state. Amid the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the subsequent move towards multi-party politics across Africa, Obasanjo again became supportive of multi-party systems.
Iliffe noted that as a politician, Obasanjo displayed an "open-minded pragmatism". A tactic employed by Obasanjo at various points was to deliberately polarise an issue so as to rally support for his perspective.
Iliffe thought that although Obasanjo had been too young to play a major role in the anti-colonialist struggle for Nigerian independence from British rule, he was "marked for ever" by the "optimism and dedication" of the independence movement.
In office, Obasanjo's task was to ensure that Nigeria functioned both politically and economically. Over the course of his political career, Obasanjo moved from the belief in the advantages of state involvement in heavy industry, which was common in the 1970s, to a commitment to market liberalism that had become dominant in the 1990s. Iliffe thought that throughout his career, Obasanjo had always displayed an "ambivalence" about the level of state involvement in the economy. His general attitude was that poverty was caused by idleness. While campaigning for the 1999 presidential election, Obasanjo called himself a "market-oriented social democrat" although was vague on his proposed economic strategy. During his presidency, his government brought together figures who were committed to free markets, who favoured more protectionist economic strategies, and those sympathetic to socialism. Obasanjo was contemptuous of ideological arguments about capitalism and socialism. The decisions he took were usually based on political considerations rather than on legal or constitutional principles, something which was a source of concern for some of his critics. Derfler thought that during his first term in office, Obasanjo was a "cautious reformer".
Personal life
Obasanjo lived a polygamous lifestyle. Obasanjo married his first wife, Oluremi Akinlawon, in London in 1963; she gave birth to his first child, Iyabo, in 1967. Iyabo had a close relationship with her father. Oluremi was unhappy that Obasanjo maintained relationships with other women and alleged that he beat her. They divorced in the mid-1970s. That decade, Obasanjo began a common-law relationship with NTA reporter Gold Oruh who bore him two children. He married his second wife, Stella Abebe, in 1976, having met her on a visit to London. He married Stella in 1976 and they had three children. Obasanjo's other partners include businesswoman Lynda Soares who was murdered by car thieves in 1986. On 23 October 2005, the President lost his wife, Stella Obasanjo, First Lady of Nigeria the day after she had an abdominoplasty in Spain. In 2009, the doctor, known only as 'AM', was sentenced to one year in jail for negligence in Spain and ordered to pay restitution to her son of about $176,000. He was largely private about his relationships with these women. Some of his children were resentful that he gave them no special privileges and treated their mothers poorly. One of his sons, Adeboye Obasanjo is a brigadier general in the Nigerian army.
Ethnically, Obasanjo is Yoruba, a cultural identification he reflected in his speech and choice of clothing. However, he always foregrounded his Nigerian identity above his Yoruba one, repeatedly stating that "I am a Nigerian who happens to be a Yoruba man. I am not a Yoruba man who happens to be a Nigerian."
Throughout his life he expressed a preference for rural over urban life. He has been a lifelong teetotaller. He has been characterised as having a sense of discipline and duty, and emphasised what he saw as the importance of leadership. He was meticulous at planning, and Iliffe called him an "instinctively cautious man". Obasanjo always emphasised the importance of deferring to seniority, a value he had learned in childhood.
Iliffe described Obasanjo as a man with "great physical and intellectual energy" who "exercised power with skill and ruthlessness, sometimes unscrupulously but seldom cruelly". Derfler similarly stated that, although Obasanjo could appear "boorish and dull", he had a "sharply perceptive mind" and the capacity to be "tough and ruthless". He had, according to Iliffe, a "remarkable capacity for work". He was cautious with money, living modestly and seeking financial security by investing in property. He is softly-spoken.
In his sixties, Obasanjo would regularly work 18 to 20 hour days, getting very little sleep. He would start each day with prayers. Obasanjo suffers from diabetes and high blood-pressure. He enjoyed playing squash.
Obasanjo's writings after his imprisonment reflected his commitment to Biblical literalism. He called the Darwinian theory of evolution a "debasing, devaluing and dehumanising" idea. After his release from prison his writings placed far less emphasis on traditional culture as a guide to morality, calling on fellow Nigerians to reject much of their pre-Christian "way of life". Iliffe noted that Obasanjo's born-again Christianity was "strikingly orthodox" and was aligned with Orthodox Pentecostal teaching. He rejected the prosperity gospel that was taught by some Pentecostalists in Nigeria. Providentialism also became a key part of his worldview after his imprisonment.
In addition to a variety of other chieftaincy titles, Chief Obasanjo is the holder of the title of the Olori Omo Ilu of Ibogun-Olaogun. A number of other members of his family hold or have held chieftaincies as well.
Reception and legacy
John Iliffe described Obasanjo as "the outstanding member of the second generation of independent African leaders who dedicated themselves to the consolidation of their postcolonial states". He thought that there were four major achievements of Obasanjo's presidency: that he partially contained the domestic turmoil permeating Nigeria, that he kept control of the military, that he helped to form the African Union, and that he liquidated the country's external debt.
In December 1999, his approval rating was at 84%; by 2001 it was at 72%; and by September 2003 it had fallen to 39%.
Obasanjo was repeatedly accused of corruption throughout his career, although maintained that his dealings were honest.
Obasanjo's critics believed that after his imprisonment in the 1990s, he increasingly perceived himself as a messianic figure, having lost his humility and become increasingly committed to the belief that it was his God-commanded destiny to rule Nigeria. Obasanjo's critics believed that he had been corrupted by power and that, particularly during his second term in office, he became driven by the idea of indefinitely retaining power for himself.
During his first term as head of state, he earned some enmity from fellow Yoruba who believed that he should have done more to advance the interests of his own ethnic group in government.
After his imprisonment, Obasanjo claimed that criticism only served to confirm "the rightness of my cause" and demonstrated his critics' "depravity in a fallen and perverted world".
Books by Obasanjo
My Watch Volume 1: Early Life and Military
My Watch Volume 2: Political and Public Affairs
My Watch Volume 3: Now and Then
My Command
Nzeogwu
The Animal Called Man
A New Dawn
The Thabo Mbeki I know
Africa Through the Eyes of A Patriot
Making Africa Work: A handbook
Forging a Compact in U.S. African Relations: The Fifth David M. Abshire Endowed Lecture, 15 December 1987.
Africa in Perspective
Letters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell.
Not my Will
Democracy Works: Re-Wiring Politics to Africa's Advantage
My Watch
Challenges of Leadership in Africa
War Wounds: Development Costs of Conflict in Southern Sudan
Guides to Effective Prayer
The Challenges of Agricultural Production and Food Security in Africa
Addressing Africa's Youth Employment and food security Crisis: The Role of African Agriculture in Job Creation.
Dust Suspended: A memoir of Colonial, Overseas and Diplomatic Service Life 1953 to 1986
L'Afrique en Marche: un manuel pour la reussite économique
Africa's Critical Choices: A Call for a Pan-African Roadmap
See also
Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library
References
Footnotes
Sources
External links
Faces of Africa
General Olusegun Obasanjo Hands Power To Alhaji Shehu Shagari, October 1979
Lt-General Olusegun Obasanjo Opening the First Lagos International Trade Fair, November 1977
1937 births
Chairpersons of the African Union
Commonwealth Chairpersons-in-Office
Graduates of the Mons Officer Cadet School
Grand Commanders of the Order of the Federal Republic
Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Living people
Nigerian engineers
Nigerian Baptists
Olusegun
Politicians from Abeokuta
Peoples Democratic Party presidents of Nigeria
Presidents of Nigeria
Vice presidents of Nigeria
Yoruba politicians
20th-century Nigerian politicians
Military personnel of the Nigerian Civil War
Yoruba military personnel
Nigerian generals
Candidates in the 1999 Nigerian presidential election
Candidates in the Nigerian general election, 2003
Baptist Boys' High School alumni
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
Defence ministers of Nigeria
Honorary Fellows of the African Academy of Sciences
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain%20Home
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Chain Home
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Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal early warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the official name Air Ministry Experimental Station Type 1 (AMES Type 1) in 1940, the radar units were also known as Chain Home for most of their life. Chain Home was the first early warning radar network in the world and the first military radar system to reach operational status. Its effect on the war made it one of the most powerful weapons of what became known as the "Wizard War".
Overview
In late 1934, the Tizard Committee asked radio expert Robert Watson-Watt to comment on the repeated claims of radio death rays and reports suggesting Germany had built some sort of radio weapon. His assistant, Arnold Wilkins, demonstrated that a death ray was impossible but suggested radio could be used for long-range detection. In February 1935, a demonstration was arranged by placing a receiver near a BBC short wave transmitter and flying an aircraft around the area. An oscilloscope connected to the receiver showed a pattern from the aircraft's reflection. Funding quickly followed. Using commercial short wave radio hardware, Watt's team built a prototype pulsed transmitter. On 17 June 1935, it measured the angle and range of an aircraft that happened to be flying past. Basic development was completed by the end of the year, with detection ranges on the order of . In 1936 attention was focused on a production version, and early 1937 saw the addition of height finding.
The first five stations, covering the approaches to London, were installed by 1937 and began full-time operation in 1938. Operational tests that year, using early units, demonstrated the difficulties in relaying useful information to the pilots in fighter aircraft. This led to the formation of the first integrated ground-controlled interception network, the Dowding system, which collected and filtered this information into a single view of the airspace. Dozens of CH stations covering the majority of the eastern and southern coasts of the UK, along with a complete ground network with thousands of miles of private telephone lines, were ready by the time the war began in 1939. Chain Home proved important during the Battle of Britain in 1940. CH systems could detect enemy aircraft while they were forming over France, giving RAF commanders ample time to marshal their aircraft in the path of the raid. This had the effect of multiplying the effectiveness of the RAF to the point that it was as if they had three times as many fighters, allowing them to defeat frequently larger German forces.
The Chain Home network was continually expanded, with over 40 stations operational by the war's end. CH was not able to detect aircraft at low altitudes, and from 1939 was normally partnered with the Chain Home Low system, or AMES Type 2, which could detect aircraft flying at any altitude over . Ports were covered by Chain Home Extra Low, which gave cover down to but at shorter ranges of approximately . In 1942 the AMES Type 7 radar began to assume the job of tracking of targets once detected, and CH changed to early warning. Late in the war, when the threat of Luftwaffe bombing had ended, the CH systems were used to detect V2 missile launches. UK radar systems were wound down after the war but the start of the Cold War led to efforts to establish a new network as rapidly as possible. In spite of being outdated, the Chain Home radars were pressed into service in the new ROTOR system until replaced by newer systems in the 1950s. Only a few of the original sites remain.
Development
Prior experiments
From the earliest days of radio technology, signals had been used for navigation using the radio direction finding (RDF) technique. RDF can determine the bearing to a radio transmitter, and several such measurements can be combined to produce a radio fix, allowing the receiver's position to be calculated. Given some basic changes to the broadcast signal, it was possible for the receiver to determine its location using a single station. The UK pioneered one such service in the form of the Orfordness Beacon.
Through the early period of radio development it was widely known that certain materials, especially metal, reflected radio signals. This led to the possibility of determining the location of objects by broadcasting a signal and then using RDF to measure the bearing of any reflections. Such a system saw patents issued to Germany's Christian Hülsmeyer in 1904, and widespread experimentation with the basic concept was carried out from then on. These systems revealed only the bearing to the target, not the range, and due to the low power of radio equipment of that era, they were useful only for short-range detection. This led to their use for iceberg and collision warning in fog or bad weather, where all that was required was the rough bearing of nearby objects.
The use of radio detection specifically against aircraft was first considered in the early 1930s. Teams in the UK, US, Japan, Germany and others had all considered this concept and put at least some amount of effort into developing it. Lacking ranging information, such systems remained of limited use in practical terms; two angle measurements could be used, but these took time to complete using existing RDF equipment and the rapid movement of the aircraft during the measurement would make coordination difficult.
Radio research in the UK
Since 1915, Robert Watson-Watt had been working for the Met Office in a lab that was colocated at the National Physical Laboratory's (NPL) Radio Research Section (RRS) at Ditton Park in Slough. Watt became interested in using the fleeting radio signals given off by lightning as a way to track thunderstorms, but existing RDF techniques were too slow to allow the direction to be determined before the signal disappeared. In 1922, he solved this by connecting a cathode ray tube (CRT) to a directional Adcock antenna array, originally built by the RRS but now unused. The combined system, later known as huff-duff (from HF/DF, high frequency direction finding), allowed the almost instantaneous determination of the bearing of a signal. The Met Office began using it to produce storm warnings for aviators.
During this period, Edward Appleton of King's College, Cambridge was carrying out experiments that would lead to him winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. Using a BBC transmitter set up in 1923 in Bournemouth and listening for its signal with a receiver at Oxford University, he was able to use changes in wavelength to measure the distance to a reflective layer in the atmosphere then known as the Heaviside layer. After the initial experiments at Oxford, an NPL transmitter at Teddington was used as a source, received by Appleton in an out-station of King's College in the East End of London. Watt learned of these experiments and began conducting the same measurements using his team's receivers in Slough. From then on, the two teams interacted regularly and Watt coined the term ionosphere to describe the multiple atmospheric layers they discovered.
In 1927 the two radio labs, at the Met Office and NPL, were combined to form the Radio Research Station (with the same acronym, RRS), run by the NPL with Watt as the Superintendent. This provided Watt with direct contact to the research community, as well as the chief signals officers of the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. Watt became a well-known expert in the field of radio technology. This began a long period where Watt agitated for the NPL to take a more active role in technology development, as opposed to its pure research role. Watt was particularly interested in the use of radio for long-range aircraft navigation, but the NPL management at Teddington was not receptive and these proposals went nowhere.
Detection of aircraft
In 1931, Arnold Frederic Wilkins joined Watt's staff in Slough. As the "new boy", he was given a variety of menial tasks to complete. One of these was to select a new shortwave receiver for ionospheric studies, a task he undertook with great seriousness. After reading everything available on several units, he selected a model from the General Post Office (GPO) that worked at (for that time) very high frequencies. As part of their tests of this system, in June 1932 the GPO published a report, No. 232 Interference by Aeroplanes. The report recounted the GPO testing team's observation that aircraft flying near the receiver caused the signal to change in intensity, an annoying effect known as fading.
The stage was now set for the development of radar in the UK. Using Wilkins' knowledge that shortwave signals bounced off aircraft, a BBC transmitter to light up the sky as in Appleton's experiment, and Watt's RDF technique to measure angles, a complete radar could be built. While such a system could determine the angle to a target, it could not determine its range and provide a location in space. Watt's huff-duff technique solved the problem of making rapid measurements, but the issue of coordinating the measurement at two stations remained, as did any inaccuracies in measurement or differences in calibration between the two stations.
The missing technique that made radar practical was the use of pulses to determine range by measuring the time between the transmission of the signal and reception of the reflected signal. This would allow a single station to measure angle and range simultaneously. In 1924, two researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory in the United States, Merle Tuve and Gregory Briet, decided to recreate Appleton's experiment using timed pulsed signals instead of the changing wavelengths. The application of this technique to a detection system was not lost on those working in the field, and such a system was prototyped by W. A. S. Butement and P. E. Pollard of the British Signals Experimental Establishment (SEE) in 1931. The War Office proved uninterested in the concept and the development remained little known outside SEE.
"The bomber will always get through"
At the same time, the need for such a system was becoming increasingly pressing. In 1932, Winston Churchill and his friend, confidant and scientific advisor Frederick Lindemann travelled by car in Europe, where they saw the rapid rebuilding of the German aircraft industry. It was in November of that year that Stanley Baldwin gave his famous speech, stating that "The bomber will always get through".
In the early summer of 1934, the RAF carried out large-scale exercises with up to 350 aircraft. The forces were split, with bombers attempting to attack London, while fighters, guided by the Observer Corps, attempted to stop them. The results were dismal. In most cases, the vast majority of the bombers reached their target without ever seeing a fighter. To address the one-sided results, the RAF gave increasingly accurate information to the defenders, eventually telling the observers where and when the attacks would be taking place. Even then, 70 per cent of the bombers reached their targets unhindered. The numbers suggested any targets in the city would be destroyed. Squadron Leader P. R. Burchall summed up the results by noting that "a feeling of defencelessness and dismay, or at all events of uneasiness, has seized the public." In November, Churchill gave a speech on "The threat of Nazi Germany" in which he pointed out that the Royal Navy could not protect Britain from an enemy who attacked by air.
Through the early 1930s, a debate raged within British military and political circles about strategic airpower. Baldwin's famous speech led many to believe the only way to prevent the bombing of British cities was to make a strategic bomber force so large it could, as Baldwin put it, "kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy." Even the highest levels of the RAF came to agree with this policy, publicly stating that their tests suggested that "'The best form of defence is attack' may be all-too-familiar platitudes, but they illustrate the only sound method of defending this country from air invasion. It is attack that counts." As it became clear the Germans were rapidly rearming the Luftwaffe, the fear grew RAF could not meet the objective of winning such a tit-for-tat exchange and many suggested they invest in a massive bomber building exercise.
Others felt advances in fighters meant the bomber was increasingly vulnerable and suggested at least exploring a defensive approach. Among the latter group was Lindemann, test pilot and scientist, who noted in The Times in August 1934 that "To adopt a defeatist attitude in the face of such a threat is inexcusable until it has definitely been shown that all the resources of science and invention have been exhausted."
Tales of destructive "rays"
In 1923–24 inventor Harry Grindell Matthews repeatedly claimed to have built a device that projected energy over long ranges and attempted to sell it to the War Office, but it was deemed to be fraudulent. His attempts spurred on many other inventors to contact the British military with claims of having perfected some form of the fabled electric or radio "death ray". Some turned out to be frauds and none turned out to be feasible.
Around the same time, a series of stories suggested another radio weapon was being developed in Germany. The stories varied, with one common thread being a death ray, and another that used the signals to interfere with an engine's ignition system to cause the engine to stall. One commonly repeated story involved an English couple who were driving in the Black Forest on holiday and had their car fail in the countryside. They claimed they were approached by soldiers who told them to wait while they conducted a test, and were then able to start their engine without trouble when the test was complete. This was followed shortly thereafter by a story in a German newspaper with an image of a large radio antenna that had been installed on Feldberg in the same area.
Although highly skeptical about claims of engine-stopping rays and death rays, the Air Ministry could not ignore them as they were theoretically possible. If such systems could be built, it might render bombers useless. If this were to happen, the night bomber deterrent might evaporate overnight, leaving the UK open to attack by Germany's ever-growing air fleet. Conversely, if the UK had such a device, the population could be protected.
In 1934, along with a movement to establish a scientific committee to examine these new types of weapons, the RAF offered a £1,000 prize to anyone who could demonstrate a working model of a death ray that could kill a sheep at 100 yards; it went unclaimed.
Tizard committee
The need to research better forms of air defense prompted Harry Wimperis to press for the formation of a study group to consider new concepts. Lord Londonderry, then Secretary of State for Air, approved the formation of the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence in November 1934, asking Henry Tizard to chair the group, which thus became better known to history as the Tizard Committee.
When Wimperis sought an expert in radio to help judge the death-ray concept, he was naturally directed to Watt. He wrote to Watt "on the practicability of proposals of the type colloquially called 'death ray'". The two met on 18 January 1935, and Watt promised to look into the matter. Watt turned to Wilkins for help but wanted to keep the underlying question a secret. He asked Wilkins to calculate what sort of radio energy would be needed to raise the temperature of of water at a distance of from . To Watt's bemusement, Wilkins immediately surmised this was a question about a death ray. He made a number of back-of-the-envelope calculations demonstrating the amount of energy needed would be impossible given the state of the art in electronics.
According to R. V. Jones, when Wilkins reported the negative results, Watt asked, "Well then, if the death ray is not possible, how can we help them?" Wilkins recalled the earlier report from the GPO, and noted that the wingspan of a contemporary bomber aircraft, about , would be just right to form a half-wavelength dipole antenna for signals in the range of 50 m wavelength, or about 6 MHz. In theory, this would efficiently reflect the signal and could be picked up by a receiver to give an early indication of approaching aircraft.
"Less unpromising"
Watt wrote back to the committee saying the death ray was extremely unlikely, but added:
The letter was discussed at the first official meeting of the Tizard Committee on 28 January 1935. The utility of the concept was evident to all attending, but the question remained whether it was actually possible. Albert Rowe and Wimperis both checked the maths and it appeared to be correct. They immediately wrote back asking for a more detailed consideration. Watt and Wilkins followed up with a 14 February secret memo entitled Detection and Location of Aircraft by Radio Means. In the new memo, Watson-Watt and Wilkins first considered various natural emanations from the aircraft – light, heat and radio waves from the engine ignition system – and demonstrated that these were too easy for the enemy to mask to a level that would be undetectable at reasonable ranges. They concluded that radio waves from their own transmitter would be needed.
Wilkins gave specific calculations for the expected reflectivity of an aircraft. The received signal would be only 10−19 times as strong as the transmitted one, but such sensitivity was considered to be within the state of the art. To reach this goal, a further improvement in receiver sensitivity of two times was assumed. Their ionospheric systems broadcast only about 1 kW, but commercial shortwave systems were available with 15 amp transmitters (about 10 kW) that they calculated would produce a signal detectable at about . They went on to suggest that the output power could be increased as much as ten times if the system operated in pulses instead of continuously, and that such a system would have the advantage of allowing range to the targets to be determined by measuring the time delay between transmission and reception on an oscilloscope. The rest of the required performance would be made up by increasing the gain of the antennas by making them very tall, focusing the signal vertically. The memo concluded with an outline for a complete station using these techniques. The design was almost identical to the CH stations that went into service.
Daventry experiment
The letter was seized on by the Committee, who immediately released £4,000 to begin development. They petitioned Hugh Dowding, the Air Member for Supply and Research, to ask the Treasury for another £10,000. Dowding was extremely impressed with the concept, but demanded a practical demonstration before further funding was released.
Wilkins suggested using the new 10 kW, 49.8 m BBC Borough Hill shortwave station in Daventry, Northamptonshire as a suitable ad hoc transmitter. The receiver and an oscilloscope were placed in a delivery van the RRS used for measuring radio reception around the countryside. On 26 February 1935, they parked the van in a field near Upper Stowe and connected it to wire antennas stretched across the field on top of wooden poles. A Handley Page Heyford made four passes over the area, producing clearly notable effects on the CRT display on three of the passes. A memorial stone stands on the site of the test.
Observing the test were Watt, Wilkins, and several other members of the RRS team, along with Rowe representing the Tizard Committee. Watt was so impressed he later claimed to have exclaimed: "Britain has become an island again!"
Rowe and Dowding were equally impressed. It was at this point that Watt's previous agitation over development became important; NPL management remained uninterested in practical development of the concept, and was happy to allow the Air Ministry to take over the team. Days later, the Treasury released £12,300 for further development, and a small team of the RRS researchers were sworn to secrecy and began developing the concept. A system was to be built at the RRS station, and then moved to Orfordness for over-water testing. Wilkins would develop the receiver based on the GPO units, along with suitable antenna systems. This left the problem of developing a suitable pulsed transmitter. An engineer familiar with these concepts was needed.
Experimental system
Edward George Bowen joined the team after responding to a newspaper advertisement looking for a radio expert. Bowen had previously worked on ionosphere studies under Appleton, and was well acquainted with the basic concepts. He had also used the RRS' RDF systems at Appleton's request and was known to the RRS staff. After a breezy interview, Watson-Watt and Jock Herd stated the job was his if he could sing the Welsh national anthem. He agreed, but only if they would sing the Scottish one in return. They declined, and gave him the job.
Starting with the BBC transmitter electronics, but using a new transmitter valve from the Navy, Bowen produced a system that transmitted a 25 kW signal at 6 MHz (50 metre wavelength), sending out 25 μs long pulses 25 times a second. Meanwhile, Wilkins and L.H. Bainbridge-Bell built a receiver based on electronics from Ferranti and one of the RRS CRTs. They decided not to assemble the system at the RRS for secrecy reasons. The team, now consisting of three scientific officers and six assistants, began moving the equipment to Orfordness on 13 May 1935. The receiver and transmitter were set up in old huts left over from World War I artillery experiments, the transmitter antenna was a single dipole strung horizontally between two poles, and the receiver a similar arrangement of two crossed wires.
The system showed little success against aircraft, although echoes from the ionosphere as far as 1,000 miles away were noted. The group released several reports on these effects as a cover story, claiming that their ionospheric studies had been interfering with the other experiments at the RRS at Slough, and expressing their gratitude that the Air Ministry had granted them access to unused land at Orfordness to continue their efforts. Bowen continued increasing the voltage in the transmitter, starting with the 5000 volt maximum suggested by the Navy, but increasing in steps over several months to 12,000 V, which produced pulses of 200 kW. Arcing between the valves required the transmitter to be rebuilt with more room between them, while arcing on the antenna was solved by hanging copper balls from the dipole to reduce corona discharge.
By June the system was working well, although Bainbridge-Bell proved to be so skeptical of success that Watt eventually returned him to the RRS and replaced him with Nick Carter. The Tizard Committee visited the site on 15 June to examine the team's progress. Watt secretly arranged for a Vickers Valentia to fly nearby, and years later insisted that he saw the echoes on the display, but no one else recalls seeing these.
Watt decided not to return to the RRS with the rest of the Tizard group and stayed with the team for another day. With no changes made to the equipment, on 17 June the system was turned on and immediately provided returns from an object at . After tracking it for some time, they watched it fly off to the south and disappear. Watt phoned the nearby Seaplane Experimental Station at Felixstowe and the superintendent stated that a Supermarine Scapa flying boat had just landed. Watt requested the aircraft return to make more passes. This event is considered the official birth date of radar in the UK.
Aircraft from RAF Martlesham Heath took over the job of providing targets for the system, and the range was continually pushed out. During a 24 July test, the receiver detected a target at and the signal was strong enough that they could determine the target was actually three aircraft in close formation. By September the range was consistently 40 miles, increasing to by the end of the year, and with the power improvements Bowen worked into the transmitter, was over by early 1936.
Planning the chain
In August 1935, Albert Rowe, secretary of the Tizard Committee, coined the term "Radio Direction and Finding" (RDF), deliberately choosing a name that could be confused with "Radio Direction Finding", a term already in widespread use.
In a 9 September 1935 memo, Watson-Watt outlined the progress to date. At that time the range was about , so Watson-Watt suggested building a complete network of stations apart along the entire east coast. Since the transmitters and receivers were separate, to save development costs he suggested placing a transmitter at every other station. The transmitter signal could be used by a receiver at that site as well as the ones on each side of it. This was quickly rendered moot by the rapid increases in range. When the Committee next visited the site in October, the range was up to , and Wilkins was working on a method for height finding using multiple antennas.
In spite of its ad hoc nature and short development time of less than six months, the Orfordness system had already become a useful and practical system. In comparison, the acoustic mirror systems that had been in development for a decade were still limited to only range under most conditions, and were very difficult to use in practice. Work on mirror systems ended, and on 19 December 1935, a £60,000 contract for five RDF stations along the south-east coast was sent out, to be operational by August 1936.
The only person not convinced of the utility of RDF was Lindemann. He had been placed on the Committee at the insistence of his friend, Churchill, and proved unimpressed with the team's work. When he visited the site, he was upset by the crude conditions, and apparently, by the box lunch he had to eat. Lindemann strongly advocated the use of infrared systems for detection and tracking and numerous observers have noted Lindemann's continual interference with radar. As Bowen put it,
Churchill's backing meant the other members' complaints about his behaviour were ignored. The matter was eventually referred back to Lord Swinton, the new Secretary of State for Air. Swinton solved the problem by dissolving the original Committee and reforming it with Appleton in Lindemann's place.
As the development effort grew, Watt requested a central research station be established "of large size and with ground space for a considerable number of mast and aerial systems". Several members of the team went on scouting trips with Watt to the north of Orfordness but found nothing suitable. Then Wilkins recalled having come across an interesting site about south of Orfordness, some time earlier while on a Sunday drive. He recalled it because it was some above sea level, which was unusual in that area. The large manor house on the property would have ample room for experimental labs and offices. In February and March 1936, the team moved to Bawdsey Manor and established the Air Ministry Experimental Station (AMES). When the scientific team left in 1939, the site became the operational CH site RAF Bawdsey.
While the "ness team" began moving to Bawdsey, the Orfordness site remained in use. This proved useful during one demonstration when the new system recently completed at Bawdsey failed. The next day, Robert Hanbury-Brown and the new recruit Gerald Touch started up the Orfordness system and were able to run the demonstrations from there. The Orfordness site was not closed until 1937.
Into production
The system was deliberately developed using existing commercially available technology to speed introduction. The development team could not afford the time to develop and debug new technology. Watt, a pragmatic engineer, believed "third-best" would do if "second-best" would not be available in time and "best" never available at all. This led to the use of the 50 m wavelength (around 6 MHz), which Wilkins suggested would resonate in a bomber's wings and improve the signal. Unfortunately, this also meant that the system was increasingly blanketed by noise as new commercial broadcasts began taking up this formerly high-frequency spectrum. The team responded by reducing their own wavelength to 26 m (around 11 MHz) to get clear spectrum. To everyone's delight, and contrary to Wilkins' 1935 calculations, the shorter wavelength produced no loss of performance. This led to a further reduction to 13 m, and finally the ability to tune between 10 and 13 m, (roughly 30-20 MHz) to provide some frequency agility to help avoid jamming.
Wilkins' method of height-finding was added in 1937. He had originally developed this system as a way to measure the vertical angle of transatlantic broadcasts while working at the RRS. The system consisted of several parallel dipoles separated vertically on the receiver masts. Normally the RDF goniometer was connected to two crossed dipoles at the same height and used to determine the bearing to a target return. For height finding, the operator instead connected two antennas at different heights and carried out the same basic operation to determine the vertical angle. Because the transmitter antenna was deliberately focused vertically to improve gain, a single pair of such antennas would only cover a thin vertical angle. A series of such antennas was used, each pair with a different center angle, providing continuous coverage from about 2.5 degrees over the horizon to as much as 40 degrees above it. With this addition, the final remaining piece of Watt's original memo was accomplished and the system was ready to go into production.
Industry partners were canvassed in early 1937, and a production network was organized covering many companies. Metropolitan-Vickers took over design and production of the transmitters, AC Cossor did the same for the receivers, the Radio Transmission Equipment Company worked on the goniometers, and the antennas were designed by a joint AMES-GPO group. The Treasury gave approval for full-scale deployment in August, and the first production contracts were sent out for 20 sets in November, at a total cost of £380,000. Installation of 15 of these sets was carried out in 1937 and 1938. In June 1938 a London headquarters was established to organize the rapidly growing force. This became the Directorate of Communications Development (DCD), with Watt named as the director. Wilkins followed him to the DCD, and A. P. Rowe took over AMES at Bawdsey. In August 1938, the first five stations were declared operational and entered service during the Munich crisis, starting full-time operation in September.
Deployment
During the summer of 1936, experiments were carried out at RAF Biggin Hill to examine what effect the presence of radar would have on an air battle. Assuming RDF would provide them 15 minutes' warning, they developed interception techniques putting fighters in front of the bombers with increasing efficiency. They found the main problems were finding their own aircraft's location, and ensuring the fighters were at the right altitude.
In a similar test against the operational radar at Bawdsey in 1937, the results were comical. As Dowding watched the ground controllers scramble to direct their fighters, he could hear the bombers passing overhead. He identified the problem not as a technological one, but in the reporting. The pilots were being sent too many, often contradictory, reports. This realization led to the development of the Dowding system, an extensive network of telephone lines reporting to a central "filter room" in London where the reports from the radar stations were collected and collated, and fed back to the pilots in a clear format. The system as a whole was enormously manpower intensive.
By the outbreak of war in September 1939, there were 21 operational Chain Home stations. After the Battle of France in 1940 the network was expanded to cover the west coast and Northern Ireland. The Chain continued to be expanded throughout the war, and by 1940 it stretched from Orkney in the north to Weymouth in the south. This provided radar coverage for the entire Europe-facing side of the British Isles, able to detect high-flying targets well over France. Calibration of the system was carried out initially using a flight of mostly civilian-flown, impressed Avro Rota autogyros flying over a known landmark, the radar then being calibrated so that the position of a target relative to the ground could be read off the CRT. The Rota was used because of its ability to maintain a relatively stationary position over the ground, the pilots learning to fly in small circles while remaining at a constant ground position, despite a headwind.
The rapid expansion of the CH network necessitated more technical and operational personnel than the UK could provide, and in 1940, a formal request was made by the British High Commission, Ottawa to the Canadian Government, appealing for men skilled in radio technology for the service of the defence of Great Britain. By the end of 1941, 1,292 trained personnel had enlisted and most were rushed to England to serve as radar mechanics.
Battle of Britain
During the battle, Chain Home stations – most notably the one at Ventnor, Isle of Wight – were attacked several times between 12 and 18 August 1940. On one occasion a section of the radar chain in Kent, including the Dover CH, was put out of action by a lucky hit on the power grid. Though the wooden huts housing the radar equipment were damaged, the towers survived owing to their open steel girder construction. Because the towers survived intact and the signals were soon restored, the Luftwaffe concluded the stations were too difficult to damage by bombing and left them alone for the remainder of the war.
Upgrades
Chain Home was the primary radar system of the UK for only a short time. By 1942, many of its duties had been taken over by the far more advanced AMES Type 7 ground-controlled interception (GCI) radar systems. Whereas CH scanned an area perhaps 100 degrees wide and required considerable effort to take measurements, the Type 7 scanned the entire 360-degree area around the station, and presented it on a plan position indicator, essentially a real-time two-dimensional map of the airspace around the station. Both fighters and bombers appeared on the display, and could be distinguished using Identification friend or foe (IFF) signals. The data from this display could be read directly to the intercepting pilots, without the need for additional operators or control centres.
With the deployment of GCI, CH became the early warning portion of the radar network. To further simplify operations and reduce manpower requirements, the job of plotting the targets became semi-automated. An analogue computer of some complexity, known as "The Fruit Machine", was fed information directly from the operator console, reading the goniometer setting for bearing, and the range from the setting of a dial that moved a mechanical pointer along the screen until it lay over a selected target. When a button was pushed, the Fruit Machine read the inputs and calculated the X and Y location of the target, which a single operator could then plot on a map, or relay directly over the telephone.
The original transmitters were constantly upgraded, first from 100 kW of the Orfordness system to 350 kW for the deployed system, and then again to 750 kW during the war in order to offer greatly increased range. To aid in detection at long range, a slower 12.5 pulse per second rate was added. The four-tower transmitter was later reduced to three towers.
Big Ben
The British had no answer to the V-2 rocket bombardment that began in September 1944. The missiles flew too high and too fast to be detected during their approach, leaving no time even for an air raid warning to be sounded. Their supersonic speed meant that the explosions occurred without warning before the sound of their approach reached the target. The government initially tried to pass them off as explosions in the underground gas mains. It was clear this was not the case, and eventually, examples of the V-2 falling in its final plunge were captured on film.
In response, several CH stations were re-organized into the "Big Ben" system to report the V-2s during launch. No attempt was made to try to find the location of the launch; the radio-goniometer was simply too slow to use. Instead, each of the stations in the network, Bawdsey, Gt. Bromley, High St, Dunkirk and Swingate (Dover) were left set to their maximum range settings and in the altitude measuring mode. In this mode, the radar had several stacked lobes where they were sensitive to signals. As the missile ascended it would pass through these lobes in turn, causing a series of blips to fade in and out over time. The stations attempted to measure the ranges to the target as they flew through each of these lobes and forwarded that by telephone to a central plotting station.
At the station, these range measurements were plotted as arcs on a chart, known as range cuts. The intersections of the arcs defined the approximate area of the launcher. Since the missile approached the target as it climbed, each of these intersections would be closer to the target. Taking several of these, in turn, the trajectory of the missile could be determined to some degree of accuracy, and air raid warnings sent to likely areas.
Success in this task was aided by the missile fuselage profile, which acted as an excellent quarter-wave reflector for 12 m band HF radar. RAF Fighter Command was also informed of the launch in an effort to attack the sites. However, the German launch convoys were motorized, well camouflaged and highly mobile, making them extremely difficult to find and attack. The only known claim was made when Supermarine Spitfire pilots of No. 602 Squadron RAF squadron came across a V-2 rising from a wooded area, allowing a quick shot of unknown result.
ROTOR
The British radar defences were rapidly run down during the last years of the war, with many sites closed and others placed on "care and maintenance". However, immediate postwar tensions with the Soviet Union resulted in recommissioning of some wartime radars as a stopgap measure. Specific radars were remanufactured to peacetime standards of quality and reliability, which gave significant increases in range and accuracy. These rebuilt systems were the first phase of Chain Home's replacement system, ROTOR, which progressed through three phases from 1949 to 1958.
It had been pointed out from the start that due to the inherent timing of the interception task, about 23 minutes was required to carry out a single interception from initial detection. If the target was a high-speed jet bomber, this required about initial detection range. CH, even in its upgraded form, was barely capable of this under the best conditions. The GCI radars were not even close to this, and the entire ROTOR system relied on a new radar system becoming available by 1957 at the latest. In one of the few instances of this occurring, this requirement was actually beaten, with the first AMES Type 80 systems entering service in 1954.
The very last Chain Home Type 1 systems were retired in 1955 along with the wholesale demolition of most of the steel and timber towers.
CH today
Some of the steel transmitter towers remain, although the wooden receiver towers have all been demolished. The remaining towers have various new uses and in some cases are now protected as listed buildings by order of English Heritage. One such transmitter tower can now be found at the BAE Systems facility at Great Baddow in Essex, on the former Marconi Research Centre site. It originally stood at RAF Canewdon in Essex and was moved to Great Baddow in 1956. This is the only surviving Chain Home tower still in its original, unmodified form with cantilever platforms at 50 ft, 200 ft and 360 ft, and in 2019 was given Grade II listed status. Swingate transmitting station in Kent (originally AMES 04 Dover) has two original towers (three until 2010) which are used for microwave relay; the towers lost their platforms in the 1970s. RAF Stenigot in Lincolnshire has another, almost complete tower, without its top platforms; it is used for training aerial erectors.
The only original Chain Home site which is still used as a military radar station is RRH Staxton Wold in North Yorkshire, although there are no remnants of the 1937 equipment as it was completely cleared and remodelled for the ROTOR replacement, the Linesman/Mediator system, in 1964.
The 240-foot timber receiver towers were some of the tallest wooden structures ever built in Britain. Two of these wooden towers were still standing in 1955, at Hayscastle Cross. Unlike the transmitter tower pictured here, those at Hayscastle Cross were guyed. The wooden reception towers at Stoke Holy Cross were demolished in 1960. It is possible that a wooden tower standing at RAF Blakehill Farm, Wiltshire, in the 1970s or 1980s was a Chain Home survivor.
Wilkins would later repeat the Daventry Experiment for the 1977 BBC Television series The Secret War episode "To See For a Hundred Miles".
Description
Mechanical layout
Chain Home radar installations were normally composed of two sites. One compound contained the transmitter towers with associated structures, and a second compound, normally within a few hundred metres distance, contained the receiver masts and receiver equipment block where the operators (principally WAAF, Women's Auxiliary Air Force) worked. The CH system was, by modern terminology, a "bistatic radar", although modern examples normally have their transmitters and receivers far more widely separated.
The transmitter antenna consisted of four steel towers tall, set out in a line about apart. Three large platforms were stationed on the tower, at 50, 200 and 350 feet off the ground. A 600 ohm transmission cable was suspended from the top platform to the ground on either side of the platform (only on the inside of the end towers). Between these vertical feed cables were the antennas proper, eight half-wave dipoles strung between the vertical cables and spaced ½ of a wavelength apart. They were fed from alternating sides so the entire array of cables was in-phase, given their ½ wavelength spacing. Located behind each dipole was a passive reflector wire, spaced 0.18 wavelength back.
The resulting curtain array antenna produced a horizontally polarised signal that was directed strongly forward along the perpendicular to the line of the towers. This direction was known as the line of shoot, and was generally aimed out over the water. The broadcast pattern covered an area of about 100 degrees in a roughly fan-shaped area, with a smaller side lobe to the rear, courtesy of the reflectors, and much smaller ones to the sides. When the signal reflected off the ground it underwent a ½ wavelength phase-change, which caused it to interfere with the direct signal. The result was a series of vertically-stacked lobes about 5 degrees wide from 1 degree off the ground to the vertical. The system was later expanded by adding another set of four additional antennas closer to the ground, wired in a similar fashion.
The receiver consisted of an Adcock array consisting of four tall wooden towers arranged at the corners of a square. Each tower had three sets (originally two) of receiver antennas, one at 45, 95 and 215 feet off the ground. The mean height of the transmitter stack was 215 feet, which is why the topmost antenna was positioned at the same altitude in order to produce a reception pattern that was identical to the transmission. A set of motor-driven mechanical switches allowed the operator to select which antenna was active. The output of the selected antenna on each of the four towers was sent to a single radiogoniometer system (not Watt's own huff-duff solution). By connecting the antennas together in X-Y pairs the horizontal bearing could be measured, while connecting together the upper and lower antennas allowed the same goniometer to be used to measure the vertical angle.
Two physical layout plans were used, either 'East Coast' or 'West Coast'. West Coast sites replaced the steel lattice towers with simpler guy-stayed masts, although they retained the same wooden towers for reception. East Coast sites had transmitter and receiver blocks protected with earth mounds and blast walls, along with separate reserve transmitter and receivers in small bunkers with attached 120 ft aerial masts. These reserves were in close proximity to the respective transmitter/receiver sites, often in a neighbouring field. West Coast sites relied on site dispersal for protection, duplicating the entire transmitter and receiver buildings.
Transmitter details
Operation began with the Type T.3026 transmitter sending a pulse of radio energy into the transmission antennas from a hut beside the towers. Each station had two T.3026's, one active and one standby. The signal filled space in front of the antenna, flooding the entire area. Due to the transmission effects of the multiple stacked antennas, the signal was most strong directly along the line of shoot, and dwindled on either side. An area about 50 degrees to either side of the line was filled with enough energy to make detection practical.
The Type T.3026 transmitter was provided by Metropolitan-Vickers, based on a design used for a BBC transmitter at Rugby. A unique feature of the design was the "demountable" valves, which could be opened for service, and had to be connected to an oil diffusion vacuum pump for continual evacuation while in use. The valves were able to operate at one of four selected frequencies between 20 and 55 MHz, and switched from one to another in 15 seconds. To produce the short pulses of signal, the transmitter consisted of Hartley oscillators feeding a pair of tetrode amplifier valves. The tetrodes were switched on and off by a pair of mercury vapour thyratrons connected to a timing circuit, the output of which biased the control and screen grids of the tetrode positively while a bias signal kept it normally turned off.
Stations were arranged so their fan-shaped broadcast patterns slightly overlapped to cover gaps between the stations. However, it was found that the timers controlling the broadcasts could drift and the broadcasts from one station would begin to be seen at others, a phenomenon known as "running rabbits". To avoid this, power from the National Grid was used to provide a convenient phase-locked 50 Hz signal that was available across the entire nation. Each CH station was equipped with a phase-shifting transformer that triggered it at a different point on the grid waveform. The output of the transformer was fed to a Dippy oscillator that produced sharp pulses at 25 Hz, phase-locked to the output from the transformer. The locking was "soft", so short-term variations in the phase or frequency of the grid were filtered out.
During times of strong ionospheric reflection, especially at night, it was possible that the receiver would see reflections from the ground after one reflection. To address this problem, the system was later provided with a second pulse repetition frequency at 12.5 pps, which meant that a reflection would have to be from further than away before it would be seen during the next reception period.
Receiver details
In addition to triggering the broadcast signal, the output of the transmitter trigger signal was also sent to the receiver hut. Here it fed the input to a time base generator that drove the X-axis deflection plates of the CRT display. This caused the electron beam in the tube to start moving left-to-right at the instant that the transmission was completed. Due to the slow decay of the pulse, some of the transmitted signal was received on the display. This signal was so powerful it overwhelmed any reflected signal from targets, which meant that objects closer than about could not be seen on the display. To reduce this period even to this point required the receiver to be hand-tuned, selecting the decoupling capacitors and impedance of the power supplies.
The receiver system, built by A.C. Cossor to a TRE design, was a multiple-stage superheterodyne. The signal from the selected antennas on the receiver towers was fed through the radiogoniometer and then into a three-stage amplifier, with each stage housed in a metal screen box to avoid interference between the stages. Each stage used a Class B amplifier arrangement of EF8s, special low noise, "aligned-grid" pentodes. The output of the initial amplifier was then sent to the intermediate frequency mixer, which extracted a user-selectable amount of the signal, 500, 200 or 50 kHz as selected by a switch on the console. The first setting allowed most of the signal through, and was used under most circumstances. The other settings were available to block out interference, but did so by also blocking some of the signal which reduced the overall sensitivity of the system.
The output of the mixer was sent to the Y-axis deflection plates in a specially designed high-quality CRT. For reasons not well explained in the literature, this was arranged to deflect the beam downward with increasing signal. When combined with the X-axis signal from the time base generator, echoes received from distant objects caused the display to produce blips along the display. By measuring the centre point of the blip against a mechanical scale along the top of the display, the range to the target could be determined. This measurement was later aided by the addition of the calibrator unit or strobe, which caused additional sharp blips to be drawn every along the display. The markers were fed from the same electronic signals as the time base, so it was always properly calibrated.
Distance and bearing measurement
Determining the location in space of a given blip was a complex multi-step process. First the operator would select a set of receiver antennas using the motorized switch, feeding signals to the receiver system. The antennas were connected together in pairs, forming two directional antennas, sensitive primarily along the X and Y axes respectively, Y being the line of shoot. The operator would then "swing the gonio", or "hunt", back and forth until the selected blip reached its minimum deflection on this display (or maximum, at 90 degrees off). The operator would measure the distance against the scale, and then tell the plotter the range and bearing of the selected target. The operator would then select a different blip on the display and repeat the process. For targets at different altitudes, the operator might have to try different antennas to maximize the signal.
On the receipt of a set of polar coordinates from the radar operator, the plotter's task was to convert these to X and Y locations on a map. They were provided with large maps of their operational area printed on light paper so they could be stored for future reference. A rotating straightedge with the centrepoint at the radar's location on the map was fixed on top, so when the operator called an angle the plotter would rotate the straightedge to that angle, look along it to pick off the range, and plot a point. The range called from the operator is the line-of-sight range, or slant range, not the over-ground distance from the station. To calculate the actual location over the ground, the altitude also had to be measured (see below) and then calculated using simple trigonometry. A variety of calculators and aids were used to help in this calculation step.
As the plotter worked, the targets would be updated over time, causing a series of marks, or plots, to appear that indicated the targets' direction of motion, or track. Track-tellers standing around the map would then relay this information via telephone to the filter room at RAF Bentley Priory, where a dedicated telephone operator relayed that information to plotters on a much larger map. In this way the reports from multiple stations were re-created into a single overall view.
Due to differences in reception patterns between stations, as well as differences in received signals from different directions even at a single station, the reported locations varied from the target's real location by a varying amount. The same target as reported from two different stations could appear in very different locations on the filter room's plot. It was the job of the filter room to recognize these were actually the same plot, and re-combine them into a single track. From then on each track was identified by a number, which would be used for all future communications. When first reported the tracks were given an "X" prefix, and then "H" for Hostile or "F" for friendly once identified. This data was then sent down the telephone network to the Group and Section headquarters where the plots were again re-created for local control over the fighters.
The data also went sideways to other defence units such as Royal Navy, Army anti-aircraft gun sites, and RAF barrage balloon operations. There was also comprehensive liaison with the civil authorities, principally Air Raid Precautions.
Altitude measurement
Due to the arrangement of the receiver antennas, the sensitive area had a number of side lobes that allowed reception at multiple vertical angles. Typically the operator would use the upper set of antennas at , which had the clearest view of the horizon. Due to the half-wave interference from the ground, the main lobe from this antenna was directed at about 2.5 degrees above the horizontal, with its sensitive region extending from about 1 to 3 degrees. At the ground the gain was zero, which allowed aircraft to escape detection by flying at low altitudes. The second lobe extended from about 6 to 12 degrees, and so on. This left a distinct gap in the reception pattern centred at about 5.2 degrees.
This reception pattern provided CH with a relatively accurate way to estimate the altitude of the target. To do this, the motorized switch in the receiver hut was used to disconnect the four receiver masts and instead select the two vertically displaced antennas on one mast. When connected to the radiogoniometer, the output on the display was now effected by the relative signal strength of the two lobes, rather than the relative strengths in X and Y in the horizontal plane. The operator swung the radiogoniometer looking for the peak or minimum reception, as before, and noted the angle.
The number reported by the operator was the line-of-sight range to the target, or slant range, which included components of both the horizontal distance and altitude. To convert this to the real range on the ground, the plotter used basic trigonometry on a right angle triangle; the slant range was the hypotenuse and the open angle was the measurement from the radiogoniometer. The base and opposite sides could then be calculated, revealing the distance and altitude. An important correction was the curvature of the Earth, which became significant at the ranges CH worked at. Once calculated, this allowed the range to be properly plotted, revealing the grid square for the target, which was then reported up the chain.
When the target was first detected at long range, the signal typically did not have enough of a return in the second lobe to perform height finding. This only became possible as the aircraft approached the station. Eventually this problem would recur as the target centred itself in the second lobe, and so forth. Additionally, it was not possible to determine the difference between a signal being compared between the first and second or second and third lobe, which caused some ambiguity at short ranges. However, as the altitude was likely determined long before this, this tended not to be a problem in practice.
This pattern left a set of distinct angles where reception in both lobes was very low. To address this, a second set of receiver antennas was installed at . When the lower antennas were used, the pattern was shifted upward, providing strong reception in the "gaps", at the cost of diminished long-range reception due to the higher angles.
Raid assessment
Another critical function of the CH operators was to estimate the number and type of aircraft in a raid. A gross level of the overall size could be determined by the strength of the return. But a much more accurate determination could be made by observing the "beat" rate of the composite echoes, the way they grew and diminished over time as they entered into different sections of the antenna reception pattern. To aid this, the operator could reduce the pulse length to 6 microseconds (from 20) with a push-button. This improved the range resolution, spreading the blip out on the display at the cost of lower returned energy.
Raid assessment was largely an acquired skill and continued to improve with operator experience. In measured tests, experimenters found that acquired skill was so great that experienced operators could often pick out targets with returns less than the current signal-to-noise ratio. How this was accomplished was a great mystery at the time–the operators were spotting blips in static that were larger than the signal. It is currently believed this is a form of stochastic resonance.
Fruit machine
Operating a CH station was a manpower-intensive situation, with an operator in the transmitter hut, an operator and assistant in the receiver hut, and as many as six assistants in the receiver hut operating the plotters, calculators and telephone systems. In order to provide 24-hour service, multiple crews were needed, along with a number of service and support personnel. This was then multiplied by the reporting hierarchy, which required similar numbers of WAAFs at each level of the Dowding system hierarchy.
Plotting the angle of the target was a simple process of taking the gonio reading and setting a rotating straightedge to that value. The problem was determining where along that straightedge the target lay; the radar measured the slant range straight-line distance to the target, not the distance over the ground. That distance was affected by the target's altitude, which had to be determined by taking the somewhat time-consuming altitude measurements. Additionally, that altitude was affected by the range, due to the curvature of the Earth, as well as any imperfections in the local environment, which caused the lobes to have different measurements depending on the target angle.
As no small part of the manpower required was dedicated to calculation and plotting, a great reduction could be made by using as much automation as possible. This started with the use of various mechanical aids; these were eventually replaced by the fruit machine, an electromechanical analogue computer of some complexity. It replicated all of these devices and tables in electrical form. An electrical repeater, or synchro, was added to the gonio dial. To measure the range, a new dial was added that moved a mechanical marker to a selected blip on the display. When a particular target was properly selected, the operator pushed a button to activate the fruit machine, which then read these inputs. In addition to the inputs, the fruit machine also had a series of local corrections for both angle and altitude, as measured by calibration flights and stored in the machine in telephone uniselectors. These corrections were automatically added to the calculation, eliminating the time-consuming lookup of these numbers from tables. The output was the altitude, which then allowed the plotters to determine the proper over-ground distance to the target.
Later versions of the fruit machine were upgraded to directly output the position of the aircraft with no manual operation. Using the same buttons to send settings to the machine, the operator simply triggered the system and the outputs were used to drive a T-square-like indicator on the chart, allowing the operator to read the calculated location directly. This reduced the number of people needed at the station and allowed the station to be reorganized into a much more compact form. No longer did the operator call readings out to the plotters; now they sat directly beside the plotting table so they could see if the results looked right, while the tellers could see the plot and call it into the area plotting room. A further upgrade allowed the data to be sent to the local plotting room automatically over the phone lines, further reducing the required manpower.
Detection, jamming and counter-jamming
Early detection
From May to August 1939 the LZ130 Graf Zeppelin II made flights along Britain's North Sea coast to investigate the 100-metre-high radio towers that were being erected from Portsmouth to Scapa Flow. LZ130 performed a series of radiometric tests and took photographs. German sources report the 12 m Chain Home signals were detected and suspected to be radar; however, the chief investigator was not able to prove his suspicions. Other sources are said to report different results.
During the Battle of France, the Germans observed 12 m pulse signals on the western front without being able to recognize their origin and purpose. In mid-June 1940, the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL, German Aeronautic Research Institute) set up a special group under the direction of Professor von Handel and found out that the signals originated from the installations on the coast of the English Channel.
Their suspicions were finally proven in the aftermath of the Battle of Dunkirk, when the British were forced to abandon a mobile gun-laying radar (GL Mk. I) station in Normandy. Wolfgang Martini's team of specialists was able to determine the operation of the system. GL was a rather crude system of limited effectiveness, and this led the Germans to have a dim view of British radar systems. However, an effective system requires more than just the radar; plotting and reporting are equally important, and this part of the system was fully developed in Chain Home. The Germans' failure to realize the value of the system as a whole has been pointed to as one of their great failings during the war.
Anti-jamming technologies
The British had been aware that the Germans would determine the purpose of the system and attempt to interfere with it, and had designed in a variety of features and methods in order to address some of these issues even as the first stations were being built. The most obvious of these was CH's ability to operate on different frequencies, which was added to allow the stations to avoid any sort of continuous-broadcast interference on their operating frequency. Additionally, the Interference Rejection Unit, or IFRU, allowed the output of the intermediate stages of the amplifiers to be clipped in an attempt to finely tune the receiver to the station's own signals and help reject broadband signals.
More complex was a system built into the CH displays, implemented in order to remove spurious signals from unsynchronized jamming pulses. It consisted of two layers of phosphor in the CRT screen, a quick-reacting layer of zinc sulphide below, and a slower "afterglow" layer of zinc cadmium sulphide on top. During normal operation the bright blue signal from the zinc sulphide was visible, and its signal would activate the yellow zinc cadmium sulphide layer, causing an "averaged" signal to be displayed in yellow. To filter out jamming pulses, a yellow plastic sheet was placed in front of the display, rendering the blue display invisible and revealing the dimmer yellow averaged signal. This is the reason many radars from the War through to the 1960s have yellow displays.
Another method was to use range-only measurements from multiple CH stations to produce fixes on individual targets, the "Chapman method". To aid this task, a second display would be installed that would be fed the Y-axis signal from a distant CH station over telephone lines. This way the operator could directly compare the two signals, eliminating the delays if this information was transmitted by voice. This system was never required.
First attempts, halting follow-up
When jamming was first attempted by the Germans it was in a much more clever fashion than had been anticipated. The observation that the transmissions of the individual stations were spread out in time, in order to avoid mutual interference, was exploited. A system was designed to send back spurious broadband pulses on a chosen CH station's time slot. The CH operator could avoid this signal simply by changing their time slot slightly, so the jamming was not received. This caused the station's signals to start overlapping another's time slot, so that station would attempt the same cure, affecting another station in the network, and so forth.
A series of such jammers were set up in France starting in July 1940, and soon concentrated into a single station in Calais that affected CH for some time. However, the timing of these attempts was extremely ill-considered. The British quickly developed operational methods to counteract this jamming, and these had effectively eliminated the effect of the jamming by the opening of the Battle of Britain on 10 July. The Germans were well on their way to develop more sophisticated jamming systems, but these were not ready for operation until September. This meant that the CH system was able to operate unmolested throughout the Battle, and led to its well-publicized successes.
By the opening of the Battle in July the German Luftwaffe operational units were well aware of CH, and had been informed by the DVL that they could not expect to remain undetected, even in clouds. In spite of these warnings, the Luftwaffe did little to address this and treated the entire topic with some level of disdain. Their own radars were superior to CH in many ways, but had proven to be only marginally useful. During the Air Battle of the Heligoland Bight in 1939, a German Freya radar detected the raid while it was still an hour away from its target, yet had no way to report this to any of the fighter units that could intercept it. Getting the information from the radar to the pilots in a useful form appeared to be a difficult problem, and the Germans believed the British would have the same difficulty and thus radar would have little real effect.
Some desultory effort was put into attacking the CH stations, especially during the opening stages of the Battle. British engineers were able to quickly return these units to service, or in some cases simply pretend to do so in order to fool the Germans into thinking the attacks failed. As the pattern of these attacks became clear, the RAF began to counter them with increasing effectiveness. The Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers were subjected to catastrophic losses and had to be withdrawn from battle. The Germans gave up trying to attack CH directly on any reasonable scale.
Thus, CH was allowed to operate throughout the Battle largely unhindered. Although communications were indeed a serious problem, it was precisely this problem that the Dowding system had been set up to address, at great expense. The result was that every British fighter was roughly twice or perhaps more as effective than its German counterpart. Some raids were met with 100% of the fighters dispatched successfully engaging their targets, while German aircraft returned home over half the time never having seen the enemy. It is for this reason that Churchill credits Chain Home with winning the Battle.
Spoofing jammers, jitter
A second jamming system was eventually activated at Cap Gris Nez in September, using a system that triggered its signal in response to the reception of a pulse from CH. This meant that the system responded to the CH station even if it moved its time slot. These systems, known as Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were used during Operation Donnerkeil in 1941. Further improvements to the basic concept allowed multiple returns to be generated, appearing like multiple aircraft on the CH display.
Although these new jammers were relatively sophisticated, CH operators quickly adapted to them by periodically changing the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of their station's transmitter. This caused the synchronized jamming signals to briefly go out of synch with the station, and the blips from the jammers would "jitter" on the screen, allowing them to be visually distinguished. The "Intentional Jitter Anti-Jamming Unit", IJAJ, performed this automatically and randomly, making it impossible for the German jammers to match the changes.
Another upgrade helped reject unsynchronized pulses, supplanting the two-layer display. This device, the "Anti-Jamming Black-Out" unit, AJBO, fed the Y-axis signal into a delay and then into the brightness control of the CRT. Short pulses that appeared and disappeared were muted, disappearing from the display. Similar techniques using acoustic delay lines, both for jamming reduction and filtering out noise, became common on many radar units during the war.
Klein Heidelberg
The Germans also made use of CH for their own passive radar system, known as Klein Heidelberg. This used CH's transmissions as their source, and a series of antennas along the Channel coast as the receiver. By comparing the time of arrival of the signals from a selected aircraft, its range and direction could be determined with some accuracy. Since the system sent out no signals of its own, the allies were not aware of it until they overran the stations in 1944. Most of the stations had only just been built when they were overrun.
Comparison with other systems
Modern texts are often dismissive of Chain Home, viewing it as "dead end technology with serious shortcomings".
In many respects, CH was a crude system, both in theory and in comparison with other systems of the era. This is especially true when CH is compared with its German counterpart, the Freya. Freya operated on shorter wavelengths, in the 2.5 to 2.3 m (120 to 130 MHz) band, allowing it to be broadcast from a much smaller antenna. This meant that Freya did not have to use the two-part structure of CH with a floodlight transmission, and could instead send its signal in a more tightly focused beam like a searchlight. This greatly reduced the amount of energy needed to be broadcast, as a much smaller volume was being filled with the transmission. Direction finding was accomplished simply by turning the antenna, which was small enough to make this relatively easy to arrange. Additionally, the higher frequency of the signal allowed higher resolution, which aided operational effectiveness. However, Freya had a shorter maximum range of , and could not accurately determine altitude.
It should be remembered that CH was deliberately designed specifically to use off-the-shelf components wherever possible. Only the receiver was truly new, the transmitter was adapted from commercial systems and this is the primary reason the system used such a long wavelength. CH stations were designed to operate at 20–50 MHz, the "boundary area" between high frequency and VHF bands at 30 MHz, although typical operations were at 20–30 MHz (the upper end of the HF band), or about a 12 m wavelength (25 MHz). The detection range was typically , but could be better.
The main limitation in use was that Chain Home was a fixed system, non-rotational, which meant it could not see beyond its sixty-degree transmission arc or behind it once the targets had flown overhead, and so raid plotting over land was down to ground observers, principally the Observer Corps (from April 1941 known as the Royal Observer Corps). Ground-based observation was acceptable during the day but useless at night and in conditions of reduced visibility. This problem was lessened on introduction of more advanced surveillance radars with 360-degree tracking and height-finding capability and, more importantly, aircraft fitted with Airborne Intercept radar (AI), which had been developed in parallel with Chain Home from 1936 onwards. This new equipment began to appear in late 1940 fitted to Bristol Blenheim, Bristol Beaufighter and Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft.
Even as the CH system was being deployed, a wide variety of experiments with newer designs was being carried out. By 1941 the Type 7 Ground Control Intercept Radar (GCI) on a wavelength of 1.5 m was entering production, and reached widespread service in 1942.
Chain Home sites
Radar site locations in this period are complicated due to the rapid growth in technology 1936–45 and the changing operational requirements. By 1945 there were 100+ radar sites in the UK. One of the primary objectives of post war ROTOR was to streamline and manage an unwieldy network that grew rapidly 'as required' in the war years.
Individual sites are listed below:
See also
History of radar
Acoustic mirror
Battle of the Beams
British military history of World War II
Chain Home Low
Civilian Technical Corps
Ground-controlled interception
ROTOR
RAF Air Defence Radar Museum
Castles in the Sky (film)
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Batt, Reg., The Radar Army: Winning the War of the Airwaves (1991, Robert Hale, London)
Bragg, Michael., RDF1 The Location of Aircraft by Radio Methods 1935–1945, Hawkhead Publishing, Paisley 1988 The history of ground radar in the UK during World War II
Brown, Louis., A Radar History of World War II, Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol, 1999.,
Latham, Colin & Stobbs, Anne., Radar A Wartime Miracle, Sutton Publishing Ltd, Stroud 1996 A history of radar in the UK during World War II told by the men and women who worked on it.
Latham, Colin & Stobbs, Anne., Pioneers of Radar (1999, Sutton, England)
Scanlan, M.J.B., Chain Home Radar - A Personal Reminiscence, The General Electric Company, p.l.c., GEC Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1993, p171-183,
Zimmerman, David., Britain's Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe, Sutton Publishing Ltd, Stroud, 2001,
External links
Early Radar Memories Memories of Sgt. Jean Semple, one of Britain's pioneer radar operators
RAF Bawdsey Chain Home Radar Station at Subterranean Britain
RAF Radar Museum
RAF High Street picture
Life at Darsham – BBC
Great Baddow Chain Home Mast & Radar Anniversary
Chain Home Radar – A Personal Reminiscence, M Scanlan, GEC Review, 1993
Early radar development in the UK at purbeckradar.co.uk
60 (Signals) Group, Fighter Command (pdf)
World War II sites in the United Kingdom
Battle of Britain
Ground radars
World War II British electronics
World War II radars
Military radars of the United Kingdom
Air defence radar networks
Military equipment introduced in the 1930s
1938 establishments in the United Kingdom
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin%20Chadwick
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Edwin Chadwick
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Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB (24 January 18006 July 1890) was an English social reformer who is noted for his leadership in reforming the Poor Laws in England and instituting major reforms in urban sanitation and public health. A disciple of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he was most active between 1832 and 1854; after that he held minor positions, and his views were largely ignored. Chadwick pioneered the use of scientific surveys to identify all phases of a complex social problem, and pioneered the use of systematic long-term inspection programmes to make sure the reforms operated as planned.
Early life
Edwin Chadwick was born on 24 January 1800 at Longsight, Manchester, Lancashire His mother died when he was still a young child, yet to be named. His father, James Chadwick, tutored the scientist John Dalton in music and botany and was considered to be an advanced liberal politician, thus exposing young Edwin to political and social ideas. His grandfather, Andrew Chadwick, had been a close friend of the Methodist theologian John Wesley.
He began his education at a small local school and then at a boarding school in Stockport, where he studied until he was 10. When his family moved to London in 1810, Chadwick continued his education with the help of private tutors, his father and a great deal of self-teaching.
His father remarried in the early 1820s; Edwin's younger half-brother was baseball icon Henry Chadwick, born in 1824.
At 18, Chadwick decided to pursue a career in law and undertook an apprenticeship with a solicitor. In 1823, he enrolled in law school at The Temple in London. On 26 November 1830 he was called to the bar, becoming a barrister.
Called to the bar without independent means, he sought to support himself by literary work such as his work on 'Applied Science and its Place in Democracy', and his essays in the Westminster Review, mainly on different methods of applying scientific knowledge to the practice of government. He became friends with two of the leading philosophers of the day, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Bentham engaged him as a literary assistant and left him a large legacy. He also became acquaintanced with Thomas Southwood Smith, Neil Arnott and James Kay-Shuttleworth, all doctors.
From his exposure to social reform and under the influence of his friends, he began to devote his efforts to sanitary reform. In 1832, Chadwick began on his path to make improvements with sanitary and health conditions.
Reformer
In 1832, he was employed by the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the operation of the Poor Law, and in 1833, he was made a full member of that commission. Chadwick and Nassau William Senior drafted the famous report of 1834, recommending the reform of the old law. Under the 1834 system, individual parishes were formed into Poor Law Unions, and each Poor Law Union was to have a union workhouse. Chadwick favoured a more centralised system of administration than the one adopted, and he felt the Poor Law reform of 1834 should have provided for the management of poor law relief by salaried officers controlled from a central board, with the boards of guardians acting merely as inspectors.
In 1834, he was appointed secretary to the Poor Law commissioners. Unwilling to administer an act of which he was largely the author in any way other than as he thought best, he found it hard to get along with his superiors. The disagreement, among others, contributed to the dissolution of the Poor Law Commission in 1847. His chief contribution to political controversy was his belief in entrusting certain departments of local affairs to trained and selected experts instead of to representatives, elected on the principle of local self-government.
Sanitation
Following a serious outbreak of typhus in 1838, Chadwick convinced the Poor Law Board that an enquiry was required, and this was initially carried out by his doctor friends Arnot and Southwood Smith, assisted by another doctor from Manchester, James Kay Shuttleworth. This was the first time in British history that doctors were employed to look at the conditions which might contribute to ill health in the population. Chadwick sent questionnaires to every Poor Law Union, and talked to surveyors, builders, prison governors, police officers and factory inspectors to obtain additional data about the lives of the poor. He edited the information himself, and prepared it for publication. His Report on The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, begun in 1839 and published in 1842, was researched and published at his own expense, and became the best-selling publication produced by the Stationery Office to date. A supplementary report was also published in 1843.
He employed John Roe, the surveyor for the district of Holborn and Finsbury who had invented the egg-shaped sewer, to conduct experiments on the most efficient ways to construct drains, the results of which were incorporated into the report, and the summary included eight points, including the absolute necessity of better water supplies and of a drainage system to remove waste, as ways to diminish premature mortality. Evidence given by Dr Dyce Guthrie convinced Chadwick that every house should have a permanent water supply, rather than the intermittent supplies from standpipes that were often provided. The report caught the public imagination, and the government had to set up a Royal Commission on the Health of Towns to consider the issues and recommend legislation. Its chairman was the Duke of Baccleuch, and there were thirteen members, including the engineers Robert Stephenson and William Cubitt. Chadwick acted as secretary in an unofficial capacity, and seems to have dominated the proceedings.
The Commission took evidence from Robert Thom, who had designed a water supply system for Greenock, Thomas Wicksteed, who was the engineer for the East London Waterworks Company, and Thomas Hawksley from the Trent Waterworks, Nottingham. These confirmed his ideas about constant water supplies, and he developed a model which he called the "venous and arterial system." Each house would have a constant water supply, and water-closets would ensure that soil was discharged into egg-shaped sewers, to be carried away and spread on the land as manure, preventing rivers from becoming polluted. Followed the publication of the commission's report, the Health of Towns Association was formed and various city-based branches were created. Chadwick later helped to ensure that the Waterworks Clauses Act 1847 became law, to limit the profits that water supply companies could make to 10 per cent, and requiring them to comply with reasonable demands for water. This included a constant supply of wholesome water for houses, and a supply for cleansing sewers and watering streets.
Chadwick wanted to see his ideas implemented over a wide area, and set about forming a company to supply water to towns, to ensure their drainage and cleansing, and to use the refuse for agricultural production. It was to have the grandiose title "The British, Colonial and Foreign Drainage, Water Supply and Towns Improvement Company", with an initial capital of £1 million, but it was the time of the Railway Mania, and he struggled to raise the finance against such competition. The company when it was eventually registered became the more modest Towns Improvement Company. Railways continued to dominate the money market, and the company was wound up after just three years. Chadwick understood that both water supply and drainage were important, since replacing earth-closets with water closets resulted in cesspools overflowing and making sanitary conditions worse, unless there were sewers to carry the waste away. This led to a rift forming between him and Hawksley, who had initially worked closely with him but who later took on water supply projects which did not include any requirement for drainage.
Public Health Act
Chadwick's report led to the Public Health Act 1848, which was the first instance of the British government taking responsibility for the health of its citizens. It had been introduced by Lord Morpeth in 1847, with the aim or requiring every town to supply water to every house, which they could do by building their own waterworks or by liaising with water companies, and to undertake drainage, sewerage and street paving projects. Most of its grand aims were considerably watered down by the time it became law, but it established a Central Board of Health, whose members were Lord Morpeth, Lord Shaftesbury, and Chadwick. They were later joined by Southwood Smith, who acted as a medical advisor. Districts could pay for a survey from an inspector employed by the Board, and could then proceed without the need to obtain a costly local Act to authorise the work. Chadwick chose all of the inspectors himself, ensuring that they shared his views on glazed sewer pipes, constant water supply and arterial drainage. They worked enthusiastically, ensuring that districts considered comprehensive schemes for water supply, drainage and sewerage.
Ratepayers in a district could request an inspector to attend if ten per cent of them signed a petition. The Board could also hold an enquiry if the death rate of a district exceeded 23 per 1000, but gauged the level of local feeling, and formed a local Board if there was support, and withdrew tactfully if there was opposition. By 1853, they had received requests for inspections from 284 towns, and 13 combined water supply, sewerage and drainage schemes had been completed under the legislation. Relationships with engineers were not always easy, with J. M. Rendel calling Chadwick's ideas "sanitary humbug" and Robert Stephenson stating that he hated the ideas of pipes, rather than brick-built sewers. Even Joseph Bazalgette, who went on to design London's trunk sewer network, spoke out against glazed sewer pipes. As time went by, there was growing opposition to what was seen as central control by the Board. The rift between Chadwick and Hawksley had become open hostility, and Hawksley made serious complaints against Chadwick and one of the Board's inspectors to a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1853. Opposition from engineers increased, and a "Private Enterprise Society" was formed by Hawksley and James Simpson, with the intent of bringing down the Board. Shaftsbury, Chadwick and Southwood Smith all had to resign in 1854, and the Board did not last for long afterwards. Chadwick lived to see his position vindicated when the Local Government Board was established in 1871, which led to the formation of the Ministry of Health. Since then, it has been widely acknowledged that public health is a matter of government responsibility, working through local authorities.
In 1851, Chadwick made a recommendation that a single authority should take over the nine separate water supply companies that operated in London. Although this idea was rejected by the Government, the Metropolitan Water Supply Act 1852 forced the companies to move the intakes for their water to locations above Teddington weir, to filter water before it was used for domestic supply, to cover filtered water reservoirs, and to ensure that there was a constant water supply to all users by 1857. This was not achieved until 1899, and Chadwick's recommendation for a single authority was eventually implemented in 1902, with the formation of the Metropolitan Water Board.
In 1852, Chadwick conversed with Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn in relation to the construction of a sewerage system in Swansea.
Chadwick's efforts were acknowledged by at least one health reformer of the day: Erasmus Wilson dedicated his 1854 book Healthy Skin to Chadwick "In admiration of his strenuous and indefatigable labours in the cause of Sanitary Reform".
He corresponded with Florence Nightingale on methodology. He encouraged her to write up her research into the book Notes on Nursing. He promoted it among well placed intellectuals, making her more visible.
Later life
Chadwick was a commissioner of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers in London from 1848 to 1849. He was also a commissioner of the General Board of Health from its establishment in 1848 to its abolition in 1854, when he retired on a pension. He occupied the remainder of his life in voluntary contributions to sanitary, health and economic questions.
In January 1884, he was appointed as the first president of the Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors, now the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Its head office, in Waterloo, London, is named Chadwick Court, in his honour.
While he is well known for his work with the Poor Law and with sanitation, he also contributed to other areas of public policy. These included tropical hygiene, criminal justice institutions, policy regarding funerals and burials in urban areas, school architecture, utilisation of sewage, military sanitation and the education of paupers. He was involved in investigations into child labour in factories, the organisation of the police force, drunkenness, the treatment of labourers on the railways, the building and maintenance of roads, organisation of the civil service, and various aspects of education. Most of these benefitted from his use of statistical methods to collect and organise data, and of the use of anecdotal evidence to support his conclusions. He was involved in a number of organisations, including the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Civil Engineers, the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Statistical Society, the London Debating Society and the Political Economy Club.
In recognition of his public service, he was knighted in 1889. He served in his post until his death, at 90, in 1890, at East Sheen, Richmond on Thames. He was buried at Mortlake Cemetery.
Chadwick is remembered at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine where his name appears among the names of 23 pioneers of public health and tropical medicine chosen to be honoured when the School was built in 1929.
He is also commemorated at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland for the engineering building.
According to Priti Joshi in 2004 the evaluation of his career has drastically changed since the 1950s:
The Chadwick that emerges in recent accounts could not be more different from the mid-century Chadwick. The post-war critics saw him as a visionary, an often-embattled crusader for public health whose enemies were formidable but whose vision, extending the liberal and radical tradition, ultimately prevailed. Cultural critics, on the other hand, present a Chadwick who misrepresented (if not outright oppressed) the poor and who was instrumental in developing a massive bureaucracy to police their lives. Thus, while earlier accounts highlighted Chadwick’s accomplishments, the progress of public health reforms, and the details of legislative politics, more recent ones draw attention to his representations of the poor, the erasures in his text, and the growing nineteenth-century institutionalization of the poor that the Sanitary Report promotes. Chadwick, in other words, is portrayed as either a pioneer of reform or an avatar of bureaucratic oppression.
Such views are not universally held. Thus Ekelund and Price in their assessment of Chadwick's economic policies in 2012 wrote:
It is no exaggeration to note that Chadwick is an almost singular progenitor of public health in the UK and elsewhere. The one hundredth anniversary of his death (1990) and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first Public Health Act (1848) was an occasion of serious and deserved plaudits for him in the United States and abroad. His prowess in sanitation engineering has also been duly noted. These excellent works appropriately feature Chadwick's role as one of the two or three most important policy makers of nineteenth century England.
Works
References
Attribution:
Bibliography
Further reading
Finer, S.E. The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952) excerpt
Hamlin, Christopher. Public Health & Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800-1854 (1998) excerpt
Hanley, James. "Edwin Chadwick and the poverty of statistics." Medical history 46.1 (2002): 21+. online
Joshi, Priti. "Edwin Chadwick's Self-Fashioning: Professionalism, Masculinity, and the Victorian Poor." Victorian Literature and Culture 32.2 (2004): 353–370.
Lewis, R. A. Edwin Chadwick and the public health movement, 1832–1854 (1952)
Mandler, Peter. "Chadwick, Sir Edwin (1800–1890)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 25 Oct 2017 doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5013
External links
Marjie Bloy, "Edwin Chadwick (1800–1890)", The Victorian Web
1842 Sanitary Report on the UK Parliament website
Sir Edwin Chadwick at UCL
1800 births
1890 deaths
Environmental health practitioners
Water supply and sanitation in London
People from Longsight
People in public health
British reformers
British social reformers
Environmental health
Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath
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382801
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate%20dehydrogenase%20deficiency
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Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency
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Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PDD), which is the most common enzyme deficiency worldwide, is an inborn error of metabolism that predisposes to red blood cell breakdown. Most of the time, those who are affected have no symptoms. Following a specific trigger, symptoms such as yellowish skin, dark urine, shortness of breath, and feeling tired may develop. Complications can include anemia and newborn jaundice. Some people never have symptoms.
It is an X-linked recessive disorder that results in defective glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase enzyme. Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase is an enzyme which protects red blood cells, which carry oxygen from the lungs to tissues throughout the body. A defect of the enzyme results in the premature breakdown of red blood cells. This destruction of red blood cells is called hemolysis. Red blood cell breakdown may be triggered by infections, certain medication, stress, or foods such as fava beans. Depending on the specific mutation the severity of the condition may vary. Diagnosis is based on symptoms and supported by blood tests and genetic testing.
Affected persons must avoid dietary triggers, notably fava beans. This can be difficult, as fava beans may be called "broad beans" and are used in many foods, whole or as flour. Falafel is probably the best known, but fava beans are also often used as filler in meatballs and other foods. Since G6PD deficiency is not an allergy, food regulations in most countries do not require that fava beans be highlighted as an allergen on the label.
Treatment of acute episodes may include medications for infection, stopping the offending medication, or blood transfusions. Jaundice in newborns may be treated with bili lights. It is recommended that people be tested for G6PDD before certain medications, such as primaquine, are taken.
About 400 million people have the condition globally. It is particularly common in certain parts of Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. Males are affected more often than females. In 2015 it is believed to have resulted in 33,000 deaths.
Signs and symptoms
Most individuals with G6PD deficiency are asymptomatic.
Most people who develop symptoms are male, due to the X-linked pattern of inheritance, but female carriers can be affected due to unfavorable lyonization or skewed X-inactivation, where random inactivation of an X-chromosome in certain cells creates a population of G6PD-deficient red blood cells coexisting with unaffected red blood cells. A female with one affected X chromosome will show the deficiency in approximately half of her red blood cells. However, in some cases, including double X-deficiency, the ratio can be much more than half, making the individual almost as sensitive as males.
Red blood cell breakdown (also known as hemolysis) in G6PD deficiency can manifest in a number of ways, including the following:
Prolonged neonatal jaundice, possibly leading to kernicterus (arguably the most serious complication of G6PD deficiency)
Hemolytic crises in response to:
Illness (especially infections)
Certain drugs (see below)
Certain foods, most notably broad beans, from which the word favism derives
Certain chemicals
Diabetic ketoacidosis
Hemoglobinuria (red or brown urine)
Very severe crisis can cause acute kidney injury
Favism is a hemolytic response to the consumption of fava beans, also known as broad beans. Though all individuals with favism show G6PD deficiency, not all individuals with G6PD deficiency show favism. The condition is known to be more prevalent in infants and children, and G6PD genetic variant can influence chemical sensitivity. Other than this, the specifics of the chemical relationship between favism and G6PD are not well understood.
Cause
G6PD deficiency results from mutations in the G6PD gene. G6PD gene contributes to the production of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase. Chemical reactions involving glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase produce compounds that prevent reactive oxygen species from building up to toxic levels within red blood cells. If reduction in the amount of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase or alteration of structure occurs due to the mutations of G6PD gene, the enzyme loses its protective role and leads to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and thus damage of red blood cells.
Triggers
Carriers of the underlying mutation do not show any symptoms unless their red blood cells are exposed to certain triggers, which can be of four main types:
Foods (fava beans is the hallmark trigger for G6PD mutation carriers),
Certain medicines including aspirin, quinine and other antimalarials derived from quinine.
Moth balls (naphthalene)
Stress from a bacterial or viral infection.
Drugs
Many substances are potentially harmful to people with G6PD deficiency. Variation in response to these substances makes individual predictions difficult. Antimalarial drugs that can cause acute hemolysis in people with G6PD deficiency include primaquine, pamaquine, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine. There is evidence that other antimalarials may also exacerbate G6PD deficiency, but only at higher doses. Sulfonamides (such as sulfanilamide, sulfamethoxazole, and mafenide), thiazolesulfone, methylene blue, and naphthalene should also be avoided by people with G6PD deficiency as they antagonize folate synthesis, as should certain analgesics (such as phenazopyridine and acetanilide) and a few non-sulfa antibiotics (nalidixic acid, nitrofurantoin, isoniazid, dapsone, and furazolidone). Henna has been known to cause hemolytic crisis in G6PD-deficient infants. Rasburicase is also contraindicated in G6PD deficiency. High dose intravenous vitamin C has also been known to cause haemolysis in G6PD deficiency carriers; therefore, G6PD deficiency testing is routine before infusion of doses of 25 g or more.
Genetics
Two variants (G6PD A− and G6PD Mediterranean) are the most common in human populations. G6PD A− has an occurrence of 10% of Africans and African-Americans while G6PD Mediterranean is prevalent in the Middle East. The known distribution of the mutated allele is largely limited to people of Mediterranean origins (Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Sephardi Jews and other Semitic peoples). Both variants are believed to stem from a strongly protective effect against Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria. It is particularly frequent in the Kurdish Jewish population, wherein approximately 1 in 2 males have the condition and the same rate of females are carriers. It is also common in African American, Saudi Arabian, Sardinian males, some African populations, and Asian groups.
All mutations that cause G6PD deficiency are found on the long arm of the X chromosome, on band Xq28. The G6PD gene spans some 18.5 kilobases. The following variants and mutations are well-known and described:
Pathophysiology
Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) is an enzyme in the pentose phosphate pathway (see image, also known as the HMP shunt pathway). G6PD converts glucose-6-phosphate into 6-phosphoglucono-δ-lactone and is the rate-limiting enzyme of this metabolic pathway that supplies reducing energy to cells by maintaining the level of the reduced form of the co-enzyme nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). The NADPH maintains the supply of reduced glutathione in the cells that is used to mop up free radicals that cause oxidative damage. The pathway also stimulates catalase, an antioxidant enzyme.
The G6PD / NADPH pathway is the only source of reduced glutathione in red blood cells (erythrocytes). The role of red cells as oxygen carriers puts them at substantial risk of damage from oxidizing free radicals except for the protective effect of G6PD/NADPH/glutathione.
People with G6PD deficiency are therefore at risk of hemolytic anemia in states of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress can result from infection and from chemical exposure to medication and certain foods. Broad beans, e.g., fava beans, contain high levels of vicine, divicine, convicine and isouramil, all of which create oxidants.
When all remaining reduced glutathione is consumed, enzymes and other proteins (including hemoglobin) are subsequently damaged by the oxidants, leading to cross-bonding and protein deposition in the red cell membranes. Damaged red cells are phagocytosed and sequestered (taken out of circulation) in the spleen. The hemoglobin is metabolized to bilirubin (causing jaundice at high concentrations). The red cells rarely disintegrate in the circulation, so hemoglobin is rarely excreted directly by the kidney, but this can occur in severe cases, causing acute kidney injury.
Deficiency of G6PD in the alternative pathway causes the buildup of glucose and thus there is an increase of advanced glycation endproducts (AGE). The deficiency also reduces the amount of NADPH, which is required for the formation of nitric oxide (NO). The high prevalence of diabetes mellitus type 2 and hypertension in Afro-Caribbeans in the West could be directly related to the incidence of G6PD deficiency in those populations.
Although female carriers can have a mild form of G6PD deficiency (dependent on the degree of inactivation of the unaffected X chromosome – see lyonization), homozygous females have been described; in these females there is co-incidence of a rare immune disorder termed chronic granulomatous disease (CGD).
Diagnosis
The diagnosis is generally suspected when patients from certain ethnic groups (see epidemiology) develop anemia, jaundice and symptoms of hemolysis after challenges from any of the above causes, especially when there is a positive family history.
Generally, tests will include:
Complete blood count and reticulocyte count; in active G6PD deficiency, Heinz bodies can be seen in red blood cells on a blood film;
Liver enzymes (to exclude other causes of jaundice);
Lactate dehydrogenase (elevated in hemolysis and a marker of hemolytic severity)
Haptoglobin (decreased in hemolysis);
A "direct antiglobulin test" (Coombs' test) – this should be negative, as hemolysis in G6PD is not immune-mediated;
When there are sufficient grounds to suspect G6PD, a direct test for G6PD is the "Beutler fluorescent spot test", which has largely replaced an older test (the Motulsky dye-decolouration test). Other possibilities are direct DNA testing and/or sequencing of the G6PD gene.
The Beutler fluorescent spot test is a rapid and inexpensive test that visually identifies NADPH produced by G6PD under ultraviolet light. When the blood spot does not fluoresce, the test is positive; it can be falsely negative in patients who are actively hemolysing. It can therefore only be done 2–3 weeks after a hemolytic episode.
When a macrophage in the spleen identifies a RBC with a Heinz body, it removes the precipitate and a small piece of the membrane, leading to characteristic "bite cells". However, if a large number of Heinz bodies are produced, as in the case of G6PD deficiency, some Heinz bodies will nonetheless be visible when viewing RBCs that have been stained with crystal violet. This easy and inexpensive test can lead to an initial presumption of G6PD deficiency, which can be confirmed with the other tests.
Testing during and for many weeks after a haemolytic episode will lead to false negative results as the G6PD deficient RBC will have been excreted and the young RBC (reticulocytes) will not yet be G6PD deficient. False negative results will also be likely following any blood transfusions. For this reason, many hospitals wait for 3 months after a haemolytic episode before testing for G6PD deficiency. Females should have their G6PD activity measured by quantitative assay to avoid being misclassified by screening tests.
Classification
The World Health Organization classifies G6PD genetic variants into five classes, the first three of which are deficiency states.
Class I: Severe deficiency (<10% activity) with chronic (nonspherocytic) hemolytic anemia
Class II: Severe deficiency (<10% activity), with intermittent hemolysis
Class III: Moderate deficiency (10–60% activity), hemolysis with stressors only
Class IV: Non-deficient variant, no clinical sequelae
Class V: Increased enzyme activity, no clinical sequelae
Differential diagnosis
6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGD) deficiency has similar symptoms and is often mistaken for G6PD deficiency, as the affected enzyme is within the same pathway, however these diseases are not linked and can be found within the same person.
Treatment
The most important measure is prevention – avoidance of the drugs and foods that cause hemolysis. Vaccination against some common pathogens (e.g. hepatitis A and hepatitis B) may prevent infection-induced attacks.
In the acute phase of hemolysis, blood transfusions might be necessary, or even dialysis in acute kidney failure. Blood transfusion is an important symptomatic measure, as the transfused red cells are generally not G6PD deficient and will live a normal lifespan in the recipient's circulation. Those affected should avoid drugs such as aspirin.
Some patients may benefit from removal of the spleen (splenectomy), as this is an important site of red cell destruction. Folic acid should be used in any disorder featuring a high red cell turnover. Although vitamin E and selenium have antioxidant properties, their use does not decrease the severity of G6PD deficiency.
Prognosis
G6PD-deficient individuals do not appear to acquire any illnesses more frequently than other people, and may have less risk than other people for acquiring ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease.
However, a recent study revealed that G6PD deficiency increases the cardiovascular risk up to 70%. The risk conferred by G6PD deficiency is moderate compared with the impact of primary cardiovascular risk factors.
Besides, a published review hypothesized that G6PD deficiency could reduce the antiplatelet efficacy of clopidogrel (clopidogrel resistance).
Epidemiology
G6PD deficiency is the second most common human enzyme defect after ALDH2 deficiency, being present in more than 400 million people worldwide. G6PD deficiency resulted in 4,100 deaths in 2013 and 3,400 deaths in 1990. The Mediterranean Basin is where favism is most common, especially among Mizrahi Jews, Sardinians, Cypriots, Greeks, Egyptians, and some African populations, including those who have these ancestries. Favism has also been documented outside of the Mediterranean basin, in other Middle Eastern and East Asian nations like Iraq, Iran, Bulgaria and China. Sardinia has the highest reported frequency of favism, with five instances per every 1,000 people.
A side effect of this disease is that it confers protection against malaria, in particular the form of malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly form of malaria. A similar relationship exists between malaria and sickle-cell disease. One theory to explain this is that cells infected with the Plasmodium parasite are cleared more rapidly by the spleen. This phenomenon might give G6PD deficiency carriers an evolutionary advantage by increasing their fitness in malarial endemic environments.
In vitro studies have shown that the Plasmodium falciparum is very sensitive to oxidative damage. This is the basis for another theory, that is that the genetic defect confers resistance due to the fact that the G6PD-deficient host has a higher level of oxidative agents that, while generally tolerable by the host, are deadly to the parasite.
History
The modern understanding of the condition began with the analysis of patients who exhibited sensitivity to primaquine. The discovery of G6PD deficiency relied heavily upon the testing of prisoner volunteers at Illinois State Penitentiary, a type of study which today is considered unethical and cannot be performed. When some prisoners were given the drug primaquine, some developed hemolytic anemia but others did not. In spite of these results, the US military administered the drug widely during the Korean War to prevent the relapsing infection caused by Plasmodium vivax hypnozoites. Numerous cases of hemolytic anemia were observed in US soldiers of North African and Mediterranean descent.
After studying the mechanism through Cr51 testing, it was conclusively shown that the hemolytic effect of primaquine was due to an intrinsic defect of erythrocytes.
Society and culture
In both legend and mythology, favism has been known since antiquity. The priests of various Greco-Roman era cults were forbidden to eat or even mention beans, and Pythagoras had a strict rule that to join the society of the Pythagoreans one had to swear off beans. This ban was supposedly because beans resembled male genitalia, but it is possible that this was because of a belief that beans and humans were created from the same material.
References
External links
Family Practice Notebook/G6PD Deficiency (Favism)
Hereditary hemolytic anemias
Inborn errors of carbohydrate metabolism
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Freewheelin%27%20Bob%20Dylan
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The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
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The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on May 27, 1963 by Columbia Records. Whereas his self-titled debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, this album represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary words to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. It opens with "Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary soon after the release of the album. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as among Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".
Dylan's lyrics embraced news stories drawn from headlines about the Civil Rights Movement and he articulated anxieties about the fear of nuclear warfare. Balancing this political material were love songs, sometimes bitter and accusatory, and material that features surreal humor. Freewheelin showcased Dylan's songwriting talent for the first time, propelling him to national and international fame. The success of the album and Dylan's subsequent recognition led to his being named as "Spokesman of a Generation", a label Dylan repudiated.
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan reached number 22 in the US (eventually going platinum), and became a number-one album in the UK in 1965. In 2003, the album was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2002, Freewheelin was one of the first 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
Recording sessions
Neither critics nor the public took much notice of Dylan's self-titled debut album, Bob Dylan, which sold only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. In a pointed rebuke to John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to Columbia Records, some within the company referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously and was determined that Dylan's second album should be a success. The recording of Freewheelin took place from April 1962 to April 1963, and the album was assembled from eight recording sessions at Columbia Records Studio A, located at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York City.
Political and personal background
Many critics have noted the extraordinary development of Dylan's songwriting immediately after completing his first album. One of Dylan's biographers, Clinton Heylin, connects the sudden increase in lyrics written along topical and political lines to the fact that Dylan had moved into an apartment on West 4th Street with his girlfriend Suze Rotolo (1943–2011) in January 1962. Rotolo's family had strong left-wing political commitments; both of her parents were members of the American Communist Party. Dylan acknowledged her influence when he told an interviewer: "Suze was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was. I checked out the songs with her".
Dylan's relationship with Rotolo also provided an important emotional dynamic in the composition of the Freewheelin album. After six months of living with Dylan, Rotolo agreed to her mother's proposal that she travel to Italy to study art. Dylan missed her and wrote long letters to her conveying his hope that she would return soon to New York. She postponed her return several times, finally coming back in January 1963. Critics have connected the intense love songs expressing longing and loss on Freewheelin to Dylan's fraught relationship with Rotolo. In her autobiography, Rotolo explains that musicians' girlfriends were routinely described as "chicks", and she resented being regarded as "a possession of Bob, who was the center of attention".
The speed and facility with which Dylan wrote topical songs attracted the attention of other musicians in the New York folk scene. In a radio interview on WBAI in June 1962, Pete Seeger described Dylan as "the most prolific songwriter on the scene" and then asked Dylan how many songs he had written recently. Dylan replied, "I might go for two weeks without writing these songs. I write a lot of stuff. In fact, I wrote five songs last night but I gave all the papers away in some place called the Bitter End." Dylan also expressed the impersonal idea that the songs were not his own creation. In an interview with Sing Out! magazine, Dylan said, "The songs are there. They exist all by themselves just waiting for someone to write them down. I just put them down on paper. If I didn't do it, somebody else would".
Recording in New York
Dylan began work on his second album at Columbia's Studio A in New York on April 24, 1962. The album was provisionally entitled Bob Dylan's Blues, and as late as July 1962, this would remain the working title. At this session, Dylan recorded four of his own compositions: "Sally Gal", "The Death of Emmett Till", "Rambling, Gambling Willie", and "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues". He also recorded two traditional folk songs, "Going To New Orleans" and "Corrina, Corrina", and Hank Williams' "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle".
Returning to Studio A the following day, Dylan recorded his new song about fallout shelters, "Let Me Die in My Footsteps". Other original compositions followed: "Rocks and Gravel", "Talking Hava Negiliah Blues", "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues", and two more takes of "Sally Gal". Dylan recorded cover versions of "Wichita", Big Joe Williams' "Baby, Please Don't Go", and Robert Johnson's "Milk Cow's Calf's Blues". Because Dylan's songwriting talent was developing so rapidly, nothing from the April sessions appeared on Freewheelin.
The recording sessions at Studio A resumed on July 9, when Dylan recorded "Blowin' in the Wind", a song that he had first performed live at Gerde's Folk City on April 16. Dylan also recorded "Bob Dylan's Blues", "Down the Highway", and "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance", all of which ended up on Freewheelin, plus one other original composition, "Baby, I'm in the Mood for You", which did not.
At this point, music manager Albert Grossman began to take an interest in Dylan's business affairs. Grossman persuaded Dylan to transfer the publishing rights of his songs from Duchess Music, whom he had signed a contract with in January 1962, to Witmark Music, a division of Warner's music publishing operation. Dylan signed a contract with Witmark on July 13, 1962. Unknown to Dylan, Grossman had also negotiated a deal with Witmark. This gave Grossman fifty percent of Witmark's share of the publishing income generated by any songwriter Grossman had brought to the company. This "secret deal" resulted in a bitter legal battle between Dylan and Grossman in the 1980s.
Albert Grossman became Dylan's manager on August 20, 1962. Since Dylan was under twenty-one when he had signed his contract with CBS, Grossman argued that the contract was invalid and had to be re-negotiated. Instead, Hammond responded by inviting Dylan to his office and persuading him to sign a "reaffirment"—agreeing to abide by the original contract. This effectively neutralized Grossman's strategy, and led to some animosity between Grossman and Hammond. Grossman enjoyed a reputation in the folk scene of being commercially aggressive, generating more income and defending his clients' interests more fiercely than "the nicer, more amateurish managers in the Village". Dylan critic Andy Gill has suggested that Grossman encouraged Dylan to become more reclusive and aloof, even paranoid.
On September 22, Dylan appeared for the first time at Carnegie Hall, part of an all-star hootenanny. On this occasion, he premiered his new composition "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", a complex and powerful song built upon the question and answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad "Lord Randall". "Hard Rain" would gain added resonance one month later, when President Kennedy appeared on national television on October 22, and announced the discovery of Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba, initiating the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the sleeve notes on the Freewheelin album, Nat Hentoff quotes Dylan as saying that he wrote "Hard Rain" in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis: "Every line in it is actually the start of a whole new song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one". In fact, Dylan had written the song more than a month before the crisis broke.
Dylan resumed work on Freewheelin at Columbia's Studio A on October 26, when a major innovation took place—Dylan made his first studio recordings with a backing band. Accompanied by Dick Wellstood on piano, Howie Collins and Bruce Langhorne on guitar, Leonard Gaskin on bass, and Herb Lovelle on drums, Dylan recorded three songs. Several takes of Dylan's "Mixed-Up Confusion" and Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right Mama" were deemed unusable, but a master take of "Corrina, Corrina" was selected for the final album. An 'alternate take' of "Corrina, Corrina" from the same session would also be selected for the b-side of "Mixed Up Confusion", Dylan's first electric single issued later in the year. At the next recording session on November 1, the band included Art Davis on bass, while jazz guitarist George Barnes replaced Howie Collins. "Mixed-Up Confusion" and "That's All Right Mama" were re-recorded, and again the results were deemed unsatisfactory. A take of the third song, "Rocks and Gravel", was selected for the album, but the track was subsequently dropped.
On November 14, Dylan resumed work with his backup band, this time with Gene Ramey on bass, devoting most of the session to recording "Mixed-Up Confusion". Although this track did not appear on Freewheelin, it was released as a single on December 14, 1962, and then swiftly withdrawn. Unlike the other material which Dylan recorded between 1961 and 1964, "Mixed-Up Confusion" attempted a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records".
Also recorded on November 14 was the new composition "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (Clinton Heylin writes that, although the sleeve notes of Freewheelin describe this song as being accompanied by a backing band, no band is audible on the released version). Langhorne then accompanied Dylan on three more original compositions: "Ballad of Hollis Brown", "Kingsport Town", and "Whatcha Gonna Do", but these performances were not included on Freewheelin.
Dylan held another session at Studio A on December 6. Five songs, all original compositions, were recorded, three of which were eventually included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", "Oxford Town", and "I Shall Be Free". Dylan also made another attempt at "Whatcha Gonna Do" and recorded a new song, "Hero Blues", but both songs were ultimately rejected and left unreleased.
Traveling to England
Twelve days later, Dylan made his first trip abroad. British TV director Philip Saville had heard Dylan perform in Greenwich Village, and invited him to take part in a BBC television drama: Madhouse on Castle Street. Dylan arrived in London on December 17. In the play, Dylan performed "Blowin' in the Wind" and two other songs. Dylan also immersed himself in the London folk scene, making contact with the Troubadour folk club organizer Anthea Joseph and folk singers Martin Carthy and Bob Davenport. "I ran into some people in England who really knew those [traditional English] songs", Dylan recalled in 1984. "Martin Carthy, another guy named [Bob] Davenport. Martin Carthy's incredible. I learned a lot of stuff from Martin."
Carthy taught Dylan two English songs that would prove important for the Freewheelin album. Carthy's arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" would be used by Dylan as the basis of his own composition, "Girl from the North Country". A 19th-century ballad commemorating the death of Sir John Franklin in 1847, "Lady Franklin's Lament", gave Dylan the melody for his composition "Bob Dylan's Dream". Both songs displayed Dylan's fast-growing ability to take traditional melodies and use them as a basis for highly personal songwriting.
From England, Dylan traveled to Italy, and joined Albert Grossman, who was touring with his client Odetta. Dylan was also hoping to make contact with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, unaware that she had already left Italy and was on her way back to New York. Dylan worked on his new material, and when he returned to London, Martin Carthy received a surprise: "When he came back from Italy, he'd written 'Girl From the North Country'; he came down to the Troubadour and said, 'Hey, here's "Scarborough Fair"' and he started playing this thing".
Returning to New York
Dylan flew back to New York on January 16, 1963. In January and February, he recorded some of his new compositions in sessions for the folk magazine Broadside, including a new anti-war song, "Masters of War", which he had composed in London. Dylan was happy to be reunited with Suze Rotolo, and he persuaded her to move back into the apartment they had shared on West 4th Street.
Dylan's keenness to record his new material for Freewheelin paralleled a dramatic power struggle in the studio: Albert Grossman's determination to have John Hammond replaced as Dylan's producer at CBS. According to Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "The two men could not have been more different. Hammond was a WASP, so relaxed during recording sessions that he sat with feet up, reading The New Yorker. Grossman was a Jewish businessman with a shady past, hustling to become a millionaire".
Because of Grossman's hostility to Hammond, Columbia paired Dylan with a young, African-American jazz producer, Tom Wilson. Wilson recalled: "I didn't even particularly like folk music. I'd been recording Sun Ra and Coltrane ... I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. [Dylan] played like the dumb guys, but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted." At a recording session on April 24, produced by Wilson, Dylan recorded five new compositions: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", "Bob Dylan's Dream", and "Walls of Red Wing". "Walls of Red Wing" was ultimately rejected, but the other four were included in a revised album sequence.
The final drama of recording Freewheelin occurred when Dylan was scheduled to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 12, 1963. Dylan had told Sullivan he would perform "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", but the "head of program practices" at CBS Television informed Dylan that this song was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society, and asked him to perform another number. Rather than comply with TV censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the show. There is disagreement between Dylan's biographers about the consequences of this censorship row. Anthony Scaduto writes that after The Ed Sullivan Show debacle, CBS lawyers were alarmed to discover that the controversial song was to be included on Dylan's new album, only a few weeks from its release date. They insisted that the song be dropped, and four songs ("John Birch", "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie", "Rocks and Gravel") on the album were replaced with Dylan's newer compositions recorded in April ("Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", "Bob Dylan's Dream"). Scaduto writes that Dylan felt "crushed" by being compelled to submit to censorship, but he was in no position to argue.
According to Heylin, "There remains a common belief that [Dylan] was forced by Columbia to pull 'Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues' from the album after he walked out on The Ed Sullivan Show." However, the "revised" version of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was released on May 27, 1963; this would have given Columbia Records only two weeks to recut the album, reprint the record sleeves, and press and package enough copies of the new version to fill orders. Heylin suggests that CBS had probably forced Dylan to withdraw "John Birch" from the album some weeks earlier and that Dylan had responded by recording his new material on April 24. Whether the songs were substituted before or after The Ed Sullivan Show, critics agree that the new material gave the album a more personal feel, distanced from the traditional folk-blues material which had dominated his first album, Bob Dylan.
A few copies of the original pressing of the LP with the four deleted tracks have turned up over the years, despite Columbia's supposed destruction of all copies during the pre-release phase (all copies found were in the standard album sleeve with the revised track selection). Other permutations of the Freewheelin album include versions with a different running order of the tracks on the album, and a Canadian version of the album that listed the tracks in the wrong order. The original pressing of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is considered the most valuable and rarest record in America, with one copy having sold for $35,000.
Songs and themes
Side one
"Blowin' in the Wind"
"Blowin' in the Wind" is among Dylan's most celebrated compositions. In his sleeve notes for The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991, John Bauldie writes that it was Pete Seeger who first identified the melody of "Blowin' in the Wind" as Dylan's adaptation of the old Negro spiritual "No More Auction Block". According to Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America, the song originated in Canada and was sung by former slaves who fled there after Britain abolished slavery in 1833. In 1978, Dylan acknowledged the source when he told journalist Marc Rowland: "'Blowin' in the Wind' has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called 'No More Auction Block'—that's a spiritual and 'Blowin' in the Wind' follows the same feeling." Dylan's performance of "No More Auction Block" was recorded at the Gaslight Cafe in October 1962, and appeared on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.
Critic Andy Gill wrote: Blowin' in the Wind' marked a huge jump in Dylan's songwriting: for the first time, Dylan discovered the effectiveness of moving from the particular to the general. Whereas 'The Ballad of Donald White' would become completely redundant as soon as the eponymous criminal was executed, a song as vague as 'Blowin' in the Wind' could be applied to just about any freedom issue. It remains the song with which Dylan's name is most inextricably linked, and safeguarded his reputation as a civil libertarian through any number of changes in style and attitude."
"Blowin' in the Wind" became world-famous when Peter, Paul and Mary issued the song as a single three weeks after the release of Freewheelin. They and Dylan both shared the same manager: Albert Grossman. The single sold a phenomenal three hundred thousand copies in the first week of release. On July 13, 1963, it reached number two on the Billboard chart with sales exceeding one million copies. Dylan later recalled that he was astonished when Peter Yarrow told him he was going to make $5,000 from the publishing rights.
"Girl from the North Country"
There has been much speculation in print about the identity of the girl in "Girl from the North Country". Clinton Heylin states that the most frequently mooted candidates are Echo Helstrom, an early girlfriend of Dylan from his hometown of Hibbing, and Suze Rotolo, for whom Dylan was pining as he finished the song in Italy. Howard Sounes suggests the girl Dylan probably had in mind was Bonnie Beecher, a girlfriend of Dylan's when he was at the University of Minnesota. Musicologist Todd Harvey notes that Dylan not only took the tune of "Scarborough Fair", which he learned from Martin Carthy in London but also adapted the theme of that song. "Scarborough Fair" derives from "The Elfin Knight" (Child Ballad Number 2), which was first transcribed in 1670. In the song, a supernatural character poses a series of questions to an innocent, requesting her to perform impossible tasks. Harvey points out that Dylan "retains the idea of the listener being sent upon a task, a northern place setting, and an antique lyric quality". Dylan returned to this song on Nashville Skyline (1969), recording it as a duet with Johnny Cash, and he returned to it again in the studio with an unreleased organ and sax version in 1978.
"Masters of War"
A scathing song directed against the war industry, "Masters of War" is based on Jean Ritchie's arrangement of "Nottamun Town", an English riddle song. It was written in late 1962 while Dylan was in London; eyewitnesses (including Martin Carthy and Anthea Joseph) recall Dylan performing the song in folk clubs at the time. Ritchie would later assert her claim on the song's arrangement; according to one Dylan biography, the suit was settled when Ritchie received $5,000 from Dylan's lawyers.
"Down the Highway"
Dylan composed "Down the Highway" in the form of a 12-bar blues. In the sleeve notes of Freewheelin, Dylan explained to Nat Hentoff: "What made the real blues singers so great is that they were able to state all the problems they had; but at the same time, they were standing outside of them and could look at them. And in that way, they had them beat." Into this song, Dylan injected one explicit mention of an absence that was troubling him: the sojourn of Suze Rotolo in Perugia: "My baby took my heart from me/ She packed it all up in a suitcase/ Lord, she took it away to Italy, Italy."
"Bob Dylan's Blues"
"Bob Dylan's Blues" begins with a spoken intro where Dylan describes the origins of folk songs in a satirical vein: "most of the songs that are written uptown in Tin Pan Alley, that's where most of the folk songs come from nowadays". What follows has been characterized as an absurd, improvised blues which Dylan, in the sleeve notes, describes as "a really off-the-cuff-song. I start with an idea and then I feel what follows. Best way I can describe this one is that it's sort of like walking by a side street. You gaze in and walk on." Harvey points out that Dylan subsequently elaborated this style of self-deprecatory, absurdist humor into more complex songs, such as "I Shall Be Free No.10" (1964).
"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
Dylan was only 21 years old when he wrote one of his most complex songs, "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", often referred to as "Hard Rain". Dylan is said to have premiered "Hard Rain" at the Gaslight Cafe, where Village performer Peter Blankfield recalled: "He put out these pieces of loose-leaf paper ripped out of a spiral notebook. And he starts singing ['Hard Rain'] ... He finished singing it, and no one could say anything. The length of it, the episodic sense of it. Every line kept building and bursting". Dylan performed "Hard Rain" days later at Carnegie Hall on September 22, 1962, as part of a concert organized by Pete Seeger. The song gained added resonance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, just one month after Dylan's first performance of "Hard Rain", when U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his warning to the Soviet Union over their deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Critics have interpreted the lyric 'hard rain' as a reference to nuclear fallout, but Dylan resisted the specificity of this interpretation. In a radio interview with Studs Terkel in 1963, Dylan said,
No, it's not atomic rain, it's just a hard rain. It isn't the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen ... In the last verse, when I say, "the pellets of poison are flooding the waters", that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers.
Many people were astonished by the power and complexity of this work. For Robert Shelton, who had given Dylan an important boost in his 1961 review in The New York Times, this song was "a landmark in topical, folk-based songwriting. Here blooms the promised fruit of the 1950s poetry-jazz fusion of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and Rexroth." Folk singer Dave Van Ronk later commented: "I was acutely aware that it represented the beginning of an artistic revolution." Seeger expressed the opinion that this song would last longer than any other written by Dylan.
Side two
"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
Dylan wrote "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" on hearing from Suze Rotolo that she was considering staying in Italy indefinitely, and he used a melody he adapted from Paul Clayton's song "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone)". In the Freewheelin sleeve notes, Dylan comments: "It isn't a love song. It's a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better. It's as if you were talking to yourself".
Dylan's contemporaries hailed the song as a masterpiece: Bob Spitz quotes Paul Stookey saying "I thought it was a masterful statement", while Dave Van Ronk called it "self-pitying but brilliant". Dylan biographer Howard Sounes commented: "The greatness of the song was in the cleverness of the language. The phrase "don't think twice, it's all right" could be snarled, sung with resignation, or delivered with an ambiguous mixture of bitterness and regret. Seldom have the contradictory emotions of a thwarted lover been so well expressed, and the song transcended the autobiographical origins of Dylan's pain".
"Bob Dylan's Dream"
"Bob Dylan's Dream" was based on the melody of the traditional "Lady Franklin's Lament", in which the title character dreams of finding her husband, Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, alive and well. (Sir John Franklin had vanished on an expedition searching for the North West Passage in 1845; a stone cairn on King William Island detailing his demise was found by a later expedition in 1859.) Todd Harvey points out that Dylan transforms the song into a personal journey, yet he retains both the theme and the mood of the original ballad. The world outside is depicted as stormy and harsh, and Dylan's most fervent wish, like Lady Franklin's, is to be reunited with departed companions and to relive the fond memories they represent.
"Oxford Town"
"Oxford Town" is Dylan's sardonic account of events at the University of Mississippi in September 1962. U.S. Air Force veteran James Meredith was the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, Mississippi. When Meredith first tried to attend classes at the school, some Mississippians pledged to keep the university segregated, including the state governor Ross Barnett. Ultimately, the University of Mississippi had to be integrated with the help of U.S. federal troops. Dylan responded rapidly: his song was published in the November 1962 issue of Broadside.
"Talkin' World War III Blues"
The "talkin' blues" was a style of improvised songwriting that Woody Guthrie had developed to a high plane. (A Minneapolis domestic recording that Dylan made in September 1960 includes his performances of Guthrie's "Talking Columbia" and "Talking Merchant Marine".) "Talkin' World War III Blues" was a spontaneous composition Dylan created in the studio during the final session for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. He recorded five takes of the song and the fifth was selected for the album. The format of the "talkin' blues" permitted Dylan to address the serious subject of nuclear annihilation with humor, and "without resorting to his finger-pointing or apocalyptical-prophetic persona".
"Corrina, Corrina"
"Corrina, Corrina" was recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks, and by their leader Bo Carter in 1928. The song was covered by artists as diverse as Bob Wills, Big Joe Turner, and Doc Watson. Dylan's version borrows phrases from a few Robert Johnson songs: "Stones In My Passway", "32-20 Blues", and "Hellhound On My Trail". An alternate take of the song was used as a B-side for his "Mixed-Up Confusion" single.
"Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance"
"Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" is based on "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance?", a song dating back to the 1890s that was popularized by Henry Thomas in his 1928 recording. "However, Thomas's original provided no more than a song title and a notion", writes Heylin, "which Dylan turned into a personal plea to an absent lover to allow him 'one more chance to get along with you.' It is a vocal tour de force and ... showed a Dylan prepared to make light of his own blues by using the form itself."
"I Shall Be Free"
"I Shall Be Free" is a rewrite of Lead Belly's "We Shall Be Free", which was performed by Lead Belly, Sonny Terry, Cisco Houston, and Woody Guthrie. According to Todd Harvey, Dylan's version draws its melody from the Guthrie recording but omits its signature chorus ("We'll soon be free/When the Lord will call us home"). Critics have been divided about the worth of this final song. Robert Shelton dismissed the song as "a decided anticlimax. Although the album has at least a half dozen blockbusters, two of the weakest songs are tucked in at the end, like shirttails." Todd Harvey has argued that by placing the song at the close of the Freewheelin LP, Dylan ends on a note of levity which is a relief after the weighty sentiments expressed in several songs on the album.
Outtakes
The known outtakes from the Freewheelin album are as follows. All songs released in 1991 on The Bootleg Series 1–3 are discussed in that album's liner notes, while songs that have never been released have been documented by biographer Clinton Heylin, except where noted. All songs written by Bob Dylan, except where noted.
Release
Dylan promoted his upcoming album with radio appearances and concert performances. In May 1963, Dylan performed with Joan Baez at the Monterey Folk Festival, where she joined him on stage for a duet of a new Dylan song, "With God on Our Side". Baez was at the pinnacle of her fame, having appeared on the cover of Time magazine the previous November. The performance not only gave Dylan and his songs a new prominence, it also marked the beginning of a romantic relationship between Baez and Dylan, the start of what Dylan biographer Sounes termed "one of the most celebrated love affairs of the decade".
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was released at the end of May. According to Scaduto, it was an immediate success, selling 10,000 copies a month and bringing Dylan an income of about $2,500 a month (). An article by Nat Hentoff on folk music appeared in the June issue of Playboy magazine and devoted considerable space to Dylan's achievements, calling him "the most vital of the younger citybillies".
In July, Dylan appeared at the second Newport Folk Festival. That weekend, Peter, Paul and Mary's rendition of "Blowin' in the Wind" reached number two on Billboards pop chart. Baez was also at Newport, appearing twice on stage with Dylan. The combination of the chart success of "Blowin' in the Wind", and the glamor of Baez and Dylan singing together generated excitement about Dylan and his new album. Tom Paxton recalled: "That was a big breakout festival for Bob. The buzz kept growing exponentially and it was like a coronation of Bob and Joan. They were King and Queen of the festival". His friend Bob Fass recalled that after Newport, Dylan told him that "suddenly I just can't walk around without a disguise. I used to walk around and go wherever I wanted. But now it's gotten very weird. People follow me into the men's room just so they can say that they saw me pee".
In September, the album entered Billboards album charts; the highest position Freewheelin reached was number 22, but it eventually came to sell one million copies in the U.S. Dylan himself came to acknowledge Freewheelin as the album that marked the start of his success. During his dispute with Albert Grossman, Dylan stated in a deposition: "Although I didn't know it at the time, the second album was destined to become a great success because it was to include 'Blowin' in the Wind'." Besides "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War", "Girl from the North Country", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" have all been acclaimed as masterpieces, and they have been mainstays of Dylan's performing repertory to the present day. The album's balance between serious subject matter and levity, earnest finger-pointing songs and surreal jokes captured a wide audience, including The Beatles, who were on the cusp of global success. John Lennon recalled: "In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn't stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan".
The album was re-issued in 2010 as part of The Original Mono Recordings, a Columbia Legacy box set that included the monaural versions of Dylan's first eight albums.
Artwork
The album cover features a photograph of Dylan with Suze Rotolo. It was taken in February 1963—a few weeks after Rotolo had returned from Italy—by CBS staff photographer Don Hunstein as Dylan and Rotolo walked in the middle of Jones Street, approximately 50 feet from West 4th Street in the West Village, New York City, close to the apartment where the couple lived at the time. In 2008, Rotolo described the circumstances surrounding the famous photo to The New York Times: "He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put on a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat." In her memoir, A Freewheelin' Time, Rotolo analyzed the significance of the cover art:
Critic Janet Maslin summed up the iconic impact of the cover as "a photograph that inspired countless young men to hunch their shoulders, look distant, and let the girl do the clinging".
In popular culture
The album's cover photo was carefully recreated by Cameron Crowe for his 2001 Tom Cruise–starring film Vanilla Sky and by Todd Haynes for his 2007 Dylan biopic I'm Not There. It also served as a visual reference for the Coen brothers' 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis.
A copy of the vinyl album itself is an important prop in Jacques Rivette's 1969 film L'Amour fou. In one key scene, the male lead, Sebastien (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), is in the apartment of his girlfriend, Marta (Josée Destoop), helping her sort through LPs she could potentially re-sell in order to raise some quick cash. He holds up her copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which she declines to sell on the grounds that she still listens to it.
Legacy
The success of Freewheelin transformed the public perception of Dylan. Before the album's release, he was one among many folk-singers. Afterwards, at the age of 22, Dylan was regarded as a major artist, perhaps even a spokesman for disaffected youth. As one critic described the transformation, "In barely over a year, a young plagiarist had been reborn as a songwriter of substance, and his first album of fully realized original material got the 1960s off their musical starting block." Janet Maslin wrote of the album: "These were the songs that established him as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament and the growing Civil Rights Movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes".
This title of "Spokesman of a Generation" was viewed by Dylan with disgust in later years. He came to feel it was a label that the media had pinned on him, and in his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan wrote: "The press never let up. Once in a while I would have to rise up and offer myself for an interview so they wouldn't beat the door down. Later an article would hit the streets with the headline "Spokesman Denies That He's A Spokesman". I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs".
The album secured for Dylan an "unstoppable cult following" of fans who preferred the harshness of his performances to the softer cover versions released by other singers. Richard Williams has suggested that the richness of the imagery in Freewheelin transformed Dylan into a key performer for a burgeoning college audience hungry for a new cultural complexity: "For students whose exam courses included Eliot and Yeats, here was something that flattered their expanding intellect while appealing to the teenage rebel in their early-sixties souls. James Dean had walked around reading James Joyce; here were both in a single package, the words and the attitude set to music." Andy Gill adds that in the few months between the release of Freewheelin in May 1963, and Dylan's next album The Times They Are A-Changin' in January 1964, Dylan became the hottest property in American music, stretching the boundaries of what had been previously viewed as a collegiate folk music audience.
Critical opinion about Freewheelin has been consistently favorable in the years since its release. Dylan biographer Howard Sounes called it "Bob Dylan's first great album". In a survey of Dylan's work published by Q magazine in 2000, the Freewheelin album was described as "easily the best of [Dylan's] acoustic albums and a quantum leap from his debut—which shows the frantic pace at which Dylan's mind was moving." The magazine went on to comment, "You can see why this album got The Beatles listening. The songs at its core must have sounded like communiques from another plane".
For Patrick Humphries, "rarely has one album so effectively reflected the times which produced it. Freewheelin spoke directly to the concerns of its audience. and addressed them in a mature and reflective manner: it mirrored the state of the nation." Stephen Thomas Erlewine's verdict on the album in the AllMusic guide was: "It's hard to overestimate the importance of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the record that firmly established Dylan as an unparalleled songwriter ... This is rich, imaginative music, capturing the sound and spirit of America as much as that of Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, or Elvis Presley. Dylan, in many ways, recorded music that equaled this, but he never topped it".
In March 2000, Van Morrison told the Irish rock magazine Hot Press about the impact that Freewheelin made on him: "I think I heard it in a record shop in Smith Street. And I just thought it was incredible that this guy's not singing about 'moon in June' and he's getting away with it. That's what I thought at the time. The subject matter wasn't pop songs, ya know, and I thought this kind of opens the whole thing up ... Dylan put it into the mainstream that this could be done".
Freewheelin was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry in 2002. The citation read: "This album is considered by some to be the most important collection of original songs issued in the 1960s. It includes "Blowin' in the Wind," the era's popular and powerful protest anthem." The following year (2003), Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it number 97 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, before dropping to number 255 in a 2020 revised list.
The album was included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). It was also included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was voted number 127 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).
Taylor Swift cited the album as the inspiration for her song "Betty" on Folklore. As "Betty"'s co-writer, The National's Aaron Dessner explained to Vulture, "She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a Freewheelin' Bob Dylan feel".
Track listing
Note:
Some very early first pressing copies contained four songs that were ultimately replaced by Columbia on all subsequent pressings. These songs were "Rocks and Gravel", "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie" and "Talkin' John Birch Blues". Copies of the "original" version of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (in either mono or stereo) are extremely rare.
The original track listing was as follows:
Personnel
Bob Dylan – acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocals
Additional musicians
Howie Collins – guitar on "Corrina, Corrina"
Leonard Gaskin – double bass on "Corrina, Corrina"
Bruce Langhorne – guitar on "Corrina, Corrina"
Herb Lovelle – drums on "Corrina, Corrina"
Dick Wellstood – piano on "Corrina, Corrina"
Technical
John H. Hammond – production
Nat Hentoff – liner notes
Don Hunstein – album cover photographer
Tom Wilson – production
Charts
Certifications
Notes
Footnotes
References
1963 albums
Albums produced by John Hammond (producer)
Albums produced by Tom Wilson (record producer)
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
United States National Recording Registry recordings
United States National Recording Registry albums
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbus%20aucuparia
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Sorbus aucuparia
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Sorbus aucuparia, commonly called rowan (, also ) and mountain-ash, is a species of deciduous tree or shrub in the rose family. It is a highly variable species, and botanists have used different definitions of the species to include or exclude trees native to certain areas. A recent definition includes trees native to most of Europe and parts of Asia, as well as northern Africa. The range extends from Madeira, the British Isles and Iceland to Russia and northern China. Unlike many plants with similar distributions, it is not native to Japan.
The tree has a slender trunk with smooth bark, a loose and roundish crown, and its leaves are pinnate in pairs of leaflets on a central vein with a terminal leaflet. It blossoms from May to June in dense corymbs of small yellowish white flowers and develops small red pomes as fruit that ripen from August to October and are eaten by many bird species. The plant is undemanding and frost hardy and colonizes disrupted and inaccessible places as a short-lived pioneer species.
The fruit and foliage have been used in the creation of dishes and beverages, as a folk medicine, and as fodder for livestock. Its tough and flexible wood has traditionally been used for woodworking. It is planted to fortify soil in mountain regions or as an ornamental tree and has several cultivars.
Description
Sorbus aucuparia is a small tree or shrub that grows up to between about in height. The crown is loose and roundish or irregularly shaped but wide and the plant often grows multiple trunks. A trunk is slender and cylindrical and reaches up to in diameter, and the branches stick out and are slanted upwards. The bark of a young plant is yellowish gray and gleaming and becomes gray-black with lengthwise cracks in advanced age; it descales in small flakes. Lenticels in the bark are elongated and colored a bright ocher. The plant does not often grow older than 80 years and is one of the shortest-lived trees in temperate climate. The wood has a wide reddish white sapwood and a light brown to reddish brown heartwood. It is diffuse-porous, flexible, elastic, and tough, but not durable, with a density of in a dried state. The roots grow wide and deep, and the plant is capable of root sprouting and can regenerate after coppicing.
The compound leaves are pinnate with 4 to 9 pairs of leaflets on either side of a terete central vein and with a terminal leaflet. The leaves are up to long, wide. They have paired leaf-like stipules at the base of the petiole, and are arranged alternately along a branch, distinguishing them from those of ash, Fraxinus excelsior, which are opposite and without stipules. The leaflets are elongated-lanceolate in shape, long, and wide with a sharply serrated edge, and have short stems or sit close to the central vein except for the outermost leaflet. Leaflets are covered in gray-silvery hairs after sprouting but become mostly bare after they unfold. Their upper side is dark green and their underside is a grayish green and felted. Young leaflets smell like marzipan when brayed. The leaflets are asymmetrical at the bottom. The foliage grows in May and turns yellow in autumn or a dark red in dry locations.
The buds are often longer than and have flossy to felted hairs. These hairs, which disappear over time, cover dark brown to black bud scales. The terminal buds are oval and pointed and larger than axillary buds, which are narrow, oval and pointed, close to the twig, and often curved towards it.
The species is monoecious. It reaches maturity at age 10 and carries ample fruit almost every year. The plant flowers from May to June (on occasion again in September) in many yellowish white corymbs that contain about 250 flowers. The corymbs are large, upright, and bulging. The flowers are between in diameter and have five small, yellowish green, and triangular sepals that are covered in hairs or bare. The five round or oval petals are yellowish white and the flower has up to 25 stamens fused with the corolla to form a hypanthium and an ovary with two to five styles; the style is fused with the receptacle. The flowers have an unpleasant trimethylamine smell. Their nectar is high in fructose and glucose.
Its berries are round pomes between in diameter that ripen from August to October. The fruit are green before they ripen and then typically turn to orange or scarlet in color. The sepals persist as a black, five-pointed star on the ripe fruit. A corymb carries 80 to 100 pomes. A pome contains a star-shaped ovary with two to five locules each containing one or two flat, narrow, and pointed reddish seeds. The flesh of the fruit contains carotenoids, citric acid, malic acid, parasorbic acid, pectin, provitamin A, sorbitol, tannin, and vitamin C. The seeds contain glycoside.
The species has a chromosome number of 2n=34.
Taxonomy
Fossil record
Fossils of Sorbus aucuparia have been described from the fossil flora of Kızılcahamam district in Turkey, which is of early Pliocene age.
Names
The binomial name Sorbus aucuparia is composed of the Latin words sorbus for service tree and aucuparia, which derives from the words avis for "bird" and capere for "catching" and describes the use of the fruit of S. aucuparia as bait for fowling. The plant is commonly known as rowan and mountain-ash, and has also been called Amur mountain-ash, European mountain-ash, quick beam, quickbeam, or rowan-berry. The names rowan and mountain ash may be applied to other species in Sorbus subgenus Sorbus, and mountain ash may be used for several other distantly related trees. The species is not closely related to either the true ash trees (genus Fraxinus), which also carry pinnate leaves, or the species Eucalyptus regnans, also called mountain ash, native to Tasmania and Victoria in southeastern Australia.
The common name mountain ash dates from the 16th century. It was first used by John Gerard in 1597, translating it directly from the then botanists' Latin Montana fraxinus
S. aucuparia was previously categorized as Pyrus aucuparia.
Sorbus aucuparia L. belongs to Carl Linnaeus.
Distribution and habitat
Sorbus aucuparia is found in five subspecies:
Sorbus aucuparia subsp. aucuparia: found in most of the species' range, less in the South
Sorbus aucuparia subsp. fenenkiana (Georgiev & Stoj.): has thin, sparsely hairy leaflets and depressed-globose fruit, restricted to Bulgaria
Sorbus aucuparia subsp. glabrata (Wimm. & Grab.): less hairy, found in Northern Europe and Central European mountains
Sorbus aucuparia subsp. praemorsa (Guss.): has hairy leaflets and ovoid fruit, found in Southern Italy, Sicily, and Corsica
Sorbus aucuparia subsp. sibirica (Hedl.): nearly hairless, found in North Eastern Russia
It can be found in almost all of Europe and the Caucasus up to Northern Russia and Siberia, but it is not native to Southern Spain, Southern Greece, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, the Azores, and the Faroe Islands. The species was introduced as an ornamental species in North America. It is widespread from plains to mountains up to the tree line where it grows as the only deciduous tree species among krummholz. In the Alps it grows at elevations of up to . S. aucuparia appears north of the boreal forest at the arctic tree line; in Norway, it is found up to the 71st parallel north.
It has naturalized in America from Washington to Alaska and eastward in Canada and the northeast of the US very successfully.
S. aucuparia is an undemanding species and can withstand shade. It is frost hardy and can tolerate winter dryness and a brief growing season. The plant is also resistant to air pollution, wind, and snow pressure. It mostly grows on soil that is moderately dry to moderately damp, acidic, low on nutrients, sandy, and loose. It often grows in stony soil or clay soil, but also sandy soil or wet peat. The plant grows best on fresh, loose, and fertile soil, prefers average humidity, and does not tolerate saline soil or waterlogging. It can be found in light woodland of all kinds and as a pioneer species over fallen dead trees or in clearcuttings, and at the edge of forests or at the sides of roads. The seeds germinate easily, so the plant may appear on inaccessible rock, ruins, branch forks, or on hollow trees.
The tallest S. aucuparia in the United Kingdom stands in the Chiltern Hills in South East England. This exceptional specimen is tall and has a trunk diameter of . In Germany, an unusually large specimen is located near Wendisch Waren, a village in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This tree stands at more than tall, is around 100 years old, and has a diameter of . The tallest known specimen in Ireland is an tall specimen at Glenstal Abbey, County Limerick.
Ecology
The species is pollinated by bees and flies. Its seeds are not digested by birds and are thus propagated by being passed intact in their droppings. The fruit are eaten by about 60 bird species and several mammals. They are liked particularly by thrushes and other songbirds, and are also eaten by cloven-hoofed game, red fox, European badger, dormouse, and squirrel. The fruit are eaten by migratory birds in winter, including Bohemian waxwing, spotted nutcracker, and redwing. Cloven-hoofed game also excessively browse foliage and bark. The plant roots can be found in symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal and less commonly with ectomycorrhizal fungi.
It is usually later superseded by larger forest trees. In Central Europe it often grows in association with red elderberry, goat willow, Eurasian aspen, and silver birch. The plant is highly flammable and tends not to accumulate plant litter.
Other species of the genus Sorbus easily hybridize with S. aucuparia and hybrid speciation can result; hybrids include Sorbus × hybrida, a small tree with oval serrated leaves and 2 to 3 pairs of leaflets, which is a hybrid with Sorbus × intermedia, and S. thuringiaca, a medium-size tree with elongated leaves and 1 to 3 pairs of leaflets that are sometimes fused at the central vein, which is a hybrid with S. aria.
The main pests for S. aucuparia are the apple fruit moth Argyresthia conjugella and the mountain-ash sawfly Hoplocampa alpina. The rust fungus Gymnosporangium cornutum produces leaf galls. The leaves are not palatable to insects, but are used by insect larvae, including by the moth Venusia cambrica, the case-bearer moth Coleophora anatipennella, and leaf miners of the genus Stigmella. The snail Cornu aspersum feeds on the leaves. The plant can suffer from fire blight.
Usage
Culinary
The fruit of S. aucuparia were used in the past to lure and catch birds. To humans, the fruit are bitter, astringent, laxative, diuretic and a cholagogue. They have vitamin C, so they prevent scurvy, but the parasorbic acid irritates the gastric mucosa. Pharmacist Mannfried Pahlow wrote that he doubted the toxicity of the fruit but advised against consuming large amounts. The fruit contain sorbitol, which can be used as a sugar substitute by diabetics, but its production is no longer relevant. Sorbus aucuparia fruits have been used in the traditional Austrian medicine internally (as tea, syrup, jelly or liqueur) for treatment of disorders of the respiratory tract, fever, infections, colds, flu, rheumatism and gout.
Fresh fruit are usually not tasty, but they can be debittered and made into compote, jelly, jam, a tangy syrup, a tart chutney, or juice, as well as wine and liqueur, or used for tea or to make flour. Fruit are served as a side dish to lamb or game. Debittering can be accomplished by freezing, cooking, or drying, which degrades the parasorbic acid. The fruit are red colored in August but usually only harvested in October after the first frost by cutting the corymbs. The robust qualities of S. aucuparia make it a source for fruit in harsh mountain climate and Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg monarchy, recommended the planting of the species in 1779.
A more palatable variety, named Sorbus aucuparia var. dulcis Kraetzl, or var. edulis Dieck, or var. moravica Dippel, was first discovered in 1810 near Ostružná in the Hrubý Jeseník mountain range of Northern Moravia and became widespread in Germany and Austria the early 20th century. Its leaves are larger and pointed, only the front part of the leaflets is serrated, and they have darker bark, larger buds and larger fruit. Similar non-bitter varieties found in Southern Russia were first introduced in Central Europe in 1900 as 'Rossica' and 'Rossica Major', which has large fruit up to in diameter.
Two widespread cultivars of the Moravian variety are 'Konzentra' and 'Rosina', which were selected beginning in 1946 by the Institut für Gartenbau Dresden-Pillnitz, an agricultural research institute in Saxony, from 75 specimens found mostly in the Ore Mountains, and made available in 1954. Fruit of the more widely used 'Konzentra' are small to medium-sized, mildly aromatic and tart, easier to transport because of their thicker peel, and used for juicing, while fruit of 'Rosina' are larger, sweet and tart, and aromatic, and candied or used in compote. The two cultivars are self-pollinating, yield fruit early, and the sugar content increases while the acid content decreases as the fruit ripen. 'Beissneri' is a cultivar with reddish foliage and bark and serrated leaves. Other edible varieties originate in and are named after Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria.
Russian botanist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin began in 1905 to crossbreed common S. aucuparia with other species to create fruit trees. His experiments resulted in the cultivars 'Burka', 'Likjornaja', 'Dessertnaja', 'Granatnaja', 'Rubinovaja', and 'Titan'. Other S. aucuparia hybrids planted in Western Europe beginning in the 1980s include 'Apricot Queen', 'Brilliant Yellow', 'Chamois Glow', 'Pink Queen', and 'Salmon Queen'.
The leaves were fermented with leaves of sweet gale and oak bark to create herb beer. Fruits are eaten as a mash in small amounts against lack of appetite or an upset stomach and stimulate production of gastric acid. In folk medicine they are used as a laxative, against rheumatism and kidney disease, and as a gargled juice against hoarseness.
Timber
The wood is used for cartwright's work, turner's work, and woodcarving. Wood can be used from trees as young as 20 years. The sapwood is golden and white, while the heart-wood is brown. In almost treeless regions it is used as firewood. The leaves are sometimes used as fodder for livestock while the fruit are used against erysipeloid infections in domestic pigs and goats. Bark of the plant was used to dye wool brown or red. Honey from the flowers is strongly aromatic and has a reddish color.
The species is planted in mountain ranges to fortify landslide and avalanche zones.
Ornamental
It is also used as an ornamental plant in parks, gardens, or as an avenue tree. Ornamental cultivars include 'Asplenifolia', which has divided and sharply serrated leaflets, 'Blackhawk', which has large fruit and dark green foliage, 'Fastigiata', which has an upright columnar form, 'Fructu Luteo', which has orange yellow fruit, 'Michred', which has brilliant red fruit, 'Pendula', which is a weeping tree, and 'Xanthocarpa', which has orange yellow fruit.
‘Sheerwater Seedling', an upright and slender cultivar, and 'Wisley Gold' with yellow fruits, have received the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Cultivars are vegetatively propagated via cuttings, grafting, or shield budding.
Culture
In the Prose Edda, the Norse god Thor saves himself from a rapid river created by the giantess Gjálp by grabbing hold of a rowan, which became known as "Thor's protection".
In English folklore, twigs of S. aucuparia were believed to ward off evil spirits and witches. The plant was called "the witch" in England and dowsing rods to find ores were made out of its wood. Twigs were used to drive cattle to the pasture for the first time in spring to ensure their health and fertility. The wooden shafts of forks and other farm implements were constructed from the species to protect farm animals and production from witches' spells. In weather lore, a year with plentiful rowan fruit would have a good grain harvest but be followed by a severe winter.
In Scottish folklore, boughs of rowan were traditionally taken into cattle byres in May to protect livestock from evil, and rowan trees were planted in pastures for similar purposes.
S. aucuparia is used in the coats of arms of the German municipalities Ebernhahn, Eschenrode, and Hermsdorf, and of the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. Rowan is part of the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and the logo of both Wigan Athletic and Wigan Warriors.
Footnotes
References
External links
Sorbus aucuparia - information, genetic conservation units and related resources. European Forest Genetic Resources Programme (EUFORGEN)
Flora of Asia
Flora of Europe
Flora of Ukraine
Flora of Iceland
Flora of the Alps
Flora of the Pyrenees
aucuparia
Plants described in 1753
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%20Southern%20Airlines
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China Southern Airlines
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China Southern Airlines Company Limited, also known as China Southern, is an airline headquartered in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province and is the largest airline in China. Established on 1 July 1988 following the restructuring of the CAAC Airlines that acquired and merged a number of domestic airlines, the airline became one of China's "Big Three" airlines (alongside Air China and China Eastern Airlines), the world's sixth-largest airline measured by passengers carried and Asia's largest airline in fleet size, revenue, and passengers carried. With its main hubs at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport and Beijing Daxing International Airport, the airline operates more than 2,000 flights to more than 200 destinations daily and was a member of SkyTeam until 1 January 2019. The airline started a frequent flyer program partnership with American Airlines in March 2019. The logo of the airline consists of a kapok flower (which is also the city flower of Guangzhou) on a blue tail fin. The company slogan is Fly towards your dreams ().
The parent company of China Southern Airlines Company Limited is China Southern Air Holding Company, a state-owned enterprise that is supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
History and development
Founding
In 1984, the Chinese government disclosed the decision to decentralize the CAAC. Formed in 1949, CAAC was an all-encompassing organisation responsible for civil aviation in China as it was tasked with passenger transport, resource development and survey work, air traffic control, aircraft maintenance and personnel training. The decentralisation decision would result in numerous regional airlines, with four main carriers to be responsible for the majority of international and domestic air traffic: Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and China Southwest Airlines; CAAC itself would be rationalised into a regulatory and administrative organisation.
In 1988, CAAC granted its seven regional divisions, among which was the Guangzhou Regional Administration, limited operating autonomy with the status of "associate" airlines. China Southern Airlines began flying under its own name and livery in February 1991. At this time, the aircraft operated some 160 flights a day on 100 routes using the Antonov An-24, Boeing 737 and Boeing 757, along with helicopters and agricultural aircraft. In December 1992, the airline placed a US$800-million order for six Boeing 777s and the associated spare parts and training.
The airline completed its decentralisation from CAAC when it gained independence on 10 October 1993. As such, the airline could from then on restructure itself into shareholding enterprises, independently arrange external financing and establish subsidiaries to complement its core enterprise. During the airline's early years, the carrier was the dominant domestic carrier. Together with the two major airlines of China – Air China and China Eastern – the airline handled half of passenger traffic carried by all Chinese carriers. Owing to Air China's status as the country's flag carrier, the airline is entitled to extensive international service rights, with China Eastern and China Southern's international networks confined to mainly East Asia and within Asia, respectively. Like other Chinese carriers, China Southern was subjected to CAAC's exclusive right to grant operating rights for every prospective route as well as to regulate domestic prices.
Expansion
To raise its operating standards and distance itself from mostly unprofitable second and third tiers domestic airlines, the carrier signed agreements with a number of foreign carriers regarding staff training and aircraft maintenance, with the ultimate aim of being listed on the , possibly as soon as early 1995.
Starting in the mid-1990s, China Southern sought to expand its international reach beyond Asia. In December 1995, the Chinese and US governments signed an aviation agreement that would allow the commencement of non-stop air services between the two countries. After having been granted the right to establish services to Amsterdam in early 1996, the airline started Guangzhou–Beijing–Amsterdam, its first long-haul route, in November 1996. The following year, the carrier commenced non-stop trans-Pacific services to Los Angeles, as well as services to Brisbane.
The start of European and American services coincided with the arrival of the long-range Boeing 777s, the first of which was delivered in late December 1995, as well as a general expansion and upgrade of the carrier's fleet and the associated facilities. Due to engine certification and labor relations issues, the delivery of the first Boeing 777 was more than a month behind schedule. As a result, the carrier considered, but ultimately decided against, leasing the Boeing 747-400, which would have been used to cover anticipated delays as well as to launch trans-Pacific services to the US. Nevertheless, the airline planned to double its fleet of 67 aircraft. In April 1996, the Chinese government would place an order, on China Southern's behalf, for 10 Airbus A320s; the delivery of the first aircraft, and China Southern's first Airbus, was made the following year. Guangzhou Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Company, which was jointly established with Lockheed Aircraft Services International and Hutchinson Whampoa, was carrying out expansion of its aircraft maintenance facilities in anticipation of the increase.
To keep pace with fast developments, China Southern raised capital, becoming listed on the Hong Kong and New York Stock Exchanges in July 1997, and raising $600–$700 million. Much of the funds raised were used to facilitate the airline's fleet expansion, repayment of debt, and investments in other capital; it followed up with domestic listing in 2003 at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. By 1997, the airline, along with its joint-venture airlines Xiamen Airlines, Shantou Airlinesm and Guangxi Airlines, was carrying some 15 million passengers per year using about 90 aircraft, operating about 270 routes among 68 destinations and almost 2,450 flights per week. The airline group's revenue totalled some US$1.4 billion with a net income of $90 million.
Mergers and acquisitions
The end of the 1990s was a period of consolidation for the Chinese airline industry. Initially, China Southern looked to acquire several smaller non-profitable domestic carriers as it sought to highlight its expansion plans in an effort to raise funds; among the deals was the purchase of 60% shares of Guizhou Airlines. Due to the weakening economy amidst the 1997 Asian financial crisis and intense competition among the some 30 Chinese carriers, in 1998, CAAC considered a comprehensive restructuring of the industry that would see the consolidation of the airlines into three or five carrier groups. At one stage, it was reported that CAAC was contemplating a forced merger of Air China and China Southern. Given the latter's dual listing in Hong Kong and New York, it was thought that such a merger would have eased Air China's path towards its own share offering. China Southern confirmed that such talks between them were occurring, although they ultimately proved fruitless. Had the merger proceeded, their combined fleets would have numbered some 250 aircraft, which would have made the resultant airline the largest in Asia.
Although there was considerable resistance to CAAC's call to rationalise the industry, in July 2000, the administrative body announced that the ten airlines under its direct management will be merged into three airline groups, revolving around Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern itself. Within a month, China Southern had started absorbing Zhengzhou-based Zhongyuan Airlines, which at the time operated five Boeing 737s and two Xian Y-7 turboprops. The carrier would later merge with Shenyang-based China Northern Airlines and Urumqi-based Xinjiang Airlines to form China Southern Air Holding Co., a process that took more than two years and would culminate in China Southern's acquisition of their US$2 billion's worth of assets (as well as $1.8 billion of debt) in November 2004. Consequently, China Southern's fleet expanded from some 140 aircraft to over 210. The takeovers meant that the carrier became the main airline at Shenyang and Ürümqi, with passenger numbers' jumping from 28.2 million in 2004 to 44.1 million in 2005. As a result, China Southern Airlines became one of the "Big Three" carriers in the country. Since then, it has successively taken over shareholding stocks and joined the equity in numerous Chinese carriers. The airline is the major shareholder of Xiamen Airlines (55%) and Chongqing Airlines (60%); it also invests in Sichuan Airlines (39%).
Amidst the major consolidation of the airline industry, China Southern in April 2000 started dedicated cargo services from Shenzhen using a Boeing 747-200F (which was quickly upgraded to the Boeing 747-400F) wet-leased from Atlas Air. To capitalise on the economic growth of the Pearl River Delta region (which includes Hong Kong), the carrier constructed a dedicated cargo centre in Shenzhen. Successful operations prompted an order for two Boeing 747-400Fs the following year. The airline by now had commenced operations to Sydney and Melbourne.
In September 2003, China Southern signed a purchase agreement for four Airbus A330-200s, to be delivered from 2005. This was part of the order placed in April by the China Aviation Supplies Imp. & Exp. Group covering 30 aircraft. China Southern became the first mainland Chinese A330 operator with the delivery of the first example February 2005. China Southern followed up in September 2005 with a further order for eight A330-300s and two A330-200s.
The month of January 2005 proved to be significant for civil aviation in China in general and China Southern in particular. In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China Southern and the Chinese government placed several landmark widebody-aircraft orders from Airbus and Boeing. More specifically, on 28 January 2005, the carrier became the first (and so far the only) Chinese carrier to commit to the Airbus A380 double-deck aircraft, when it signed a general-terms agreement for five examples worth US$1.4 billion at catalogue prices. On the same day, China Southern, along with five other domestic carriers, placed a bulk order for 60 Boeing 7E7s (later renamed the Boeing 787 Dreamliner). The aircraft were worth $7.2 billion at list prices, and the first example was expected to be delivered in time for the Olympics; however, the first aircraft did not arrive until June 2013.
Earlier during the month, the CAAC had approved the temporary operations of charter flights between mainland China and Taiwan. On the same day as the widebody orders, a China Southern Airlines Boeing 777-200 took off from Guangzhou and landed in Taipei the following day, becoming the first mainland Chinese aircraft to land in the Republic of China since 1949, when the Kuomintang were involved in Chinese Civil War with the Chinese Communist Party. The flight carried 242 passengers home after the Lunar New Year. Previously, passengers travelling between the mainland and Taiwan had to transit through a third port such as Hong Kong or Macau. Within three years, in July 2008, a China Southern Airlines Airbus A330 carrying 230 tourists again landed in Taipei. The governments of China and Taiwan had both agreed to allow direct flights across the Taiwan Strait in June, ending six decades of limited air travel between the two sides. Following the flight, China Southern Airlines Chairman and pilot of the flight, Liu Shaoyong, said, "From today onward, regular commercial flights will replace the rumbling warplanes over the skies of the Taiwan Strait, and relations between the two sides will become better and better."
Following two years of negotiations which had started in August 2004, China Southern in late June 2006 signed an agreement with SkyTeam, one of the three global airline alliances, formally pledging itself to the improvement of standards with the aim of its eventual joining. According to the agreement, the airline committed to the upgrade of handling services, facilities and training of at least 75% of its staff to SkyTeam's standards. On 15 November 2007, China Southern officially joined SkyTeam, becoming the eleventh carrier to join the grouping and the first mainland Chinese carrier to join an airline alliance. The welcoming ceremony was attended by high-ranking Chinese government and SkyTeam corporate officials and was held at the Great Hall of the People. The carrier's integration with the alliance continued with its entry into SkyTeam Cargo in November 2010, and its joint-venture carrier Xiamen Airlines' formal joining in November 2012. With China Eastern's ascension in June 2011, SkyTeam furthered its leading presence on the mainland Chinese market; the remaining Big Three carrier, Air China, is a member of Star Alliance.
It followed up with another Airbus order on 7 July 2006, when it confirmed a deal covering the purchase of 50 more A320 narrow bodies for delivery from 2009. The order included 13 A319-100s, 20 A320-200s and 17 A321-200s, reportedly worth $3.3 billion at list price. In December 2005, China Southern Airlines along with CASGC, announced an order with Boeing for 9 Boeing 737-700s and 11 Boeing 737-800s.
In June 2006, China Southern Airlines confirmed another order of 3 Boeing 737-700s and 7 Boeing 737-800s. The deliveries would continue through 2010. On 18 October 2006, China Southern Airlines placed an order for 6 Boeing 777 freighters, striding forward a brand new step in its cargo development. The aircraft would be delivered from November 2008 to July 2010.
On 20 August 2007, China Southern Airlines announced its intention for an order of 25 Boeing 737-700s and 30 Boeing 737-800s, which will be delivered from May 2011 to October 2013. It was a mere two months before, on 23 October 2007, China Southern Airlines announced that it had placed an order for 10 additional Airbus A330-200s. The order has a listed price of US$1.677 billion and the aircraft will be delivered from March 2010 to August 2012.
Recent developments
During 2009, China Southern Airlines remodeled its strategy from a point to point hub to a full hub and spoke carrier, which has been proven successful. Along with that, the airline has rapidly expanded its international market share, particularly in Australia, where passenger numbers in 2011 have been 97% greater than in 2010.
On 21 January 2010, China Southern Airlines announced an order for an additional 20 A320-200s, scheduled for delivery from 2011, due to the falling fuel costs and surging passenger demand. In March 2010, the Chinese carrier issued new shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai 2010 to raise 10.75 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) in a bid to pay off outstanding loans. In December, CNY810 million ($121.5 million) was injected by China Southern Airlines into its subsidiary Xiamen Airlines to fund its fleet expansion. In November 2010, China Southern Airlines signed an agreement with Airbus for the purchase of six A330s and 30 A320s–200.
On 11 January 2011, China Southern Airlines announced a lease for 10 Embraer E-190, set to be delivered from the second half of 2011. On 27 January 2011, China Southern Airlines was awarded a four-star ranking by Skytrax. It is the largest airline to hold this title. On 17 October 2011, China Southern Airlines made its first flight with the Airbus A380. Initially, the airline deployed the A380s on domestic routes, flying between Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. At the same time, the carrier conducted negotiations to commence A380 international services. Due to the government-imposed limitation which confined an international route to a single airline, China Southern in August 2012 announced its intention to initiate Beijing-Paris services in cooperation with Air China, pending government approval. Two months later, the A380 was deployed on Guangzhou-Los Angeles services. Early A380 operations were unprofitable and the aircraft, underutilised; services to Sydney were thus launched in October 2013. By now talks with Air China on Beijing-Paris services had ceased.
While China Southern, like the other Big Three Chinese carriers, had been expanding rapidly since 2000, much of their activities had been focused on the domestic market. With the increase in outflow of Chinese tourists, who in 2012 for example spent $102 billion internationally, as well as the rapid construction and introduction of high-speed rail in China, the carrier shifted its outlook overseas in order to sustain growth. Owing to the location of its hub at Guangzhou, which hinders the airline effectively serving the North American market, the airline concentrated its international expansion on Australasia. In June 2012, with the inauguration of services from Guangzhou to London-Heathrow, the airline started marketing its services connecting Europe and Australia as the "Canton Route", an alternative to the Kangaroo Route flown by carriers such as Qantas. It hoped to attract the predominantly business traffic that travel between Europe and Australia, and channel such sixth-freedom traffic as well as traffic from mainland China through its Guangzhou hub (thereby transforming the carrier's network from one that emphasises point-to-point to a hub-and-spoke system). The carrier by now had added cities such as Auckland, Istanbul, Perth, and Vancouver to its route map.
During May–June 2012, China Southern Airlines has recruited Dutch flight attendants to serve the First and Business class sections for flights from Guangzhou to Amsterdam.
On 7 June 2013, China Southern Airlines began operating its first Boeing 787.
In early 2015 it was announced that the airline would lease 24 Airbus A320neo aircraft from AerCap for delivery between 2016 and 2019.
On 15 November 2018, the airline announced that it would leave SkyTeam by 1 January 2019 and will strengthen its partnership with American Airlines and others. The announcement lead to speculation that it will join Oneworld alongside Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific. Various media outlets reported that while analysts predict that its Oneworld move could threaten Cathay Pacific's position in the alliance, other analysts states that China Southern joining Oneworld would benefit Cathay more due to different target markets.
In March 2019, the airline announced a frequent flyer partnership with American Airlines. Currently, the airline plans for more flexible tie-ups with other carriers, mostly with Oneworld members such as Qatar Airways while not joining the alliance 'for a few years' in order to fulfill its dream as 'world's largest airline'. On September 26, 2019, China Southern operates at Beijing Daxing International Airport alongside its former and current partners, and all of its flights to and from Beijing are transferred to Daxing on 25 October 2020.
In November 2022, China Southern scheduled their last Airbus A380 flights prior to their planned retirement.
Corporate affairs
China Southern is headquartered in the China Southern Air Building at 68 Qixin Road () in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.
It was previously at 278 Jichang (Airport) Road () in Baiyun District.
China Southern had plans to open a new headquarters facility on a site on the outskirts of Guangzhou, about from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. Woods Bagot won a competition for the architect firm which would design the facility. The proposed site consists of two parcels of land on opposite sides of a highway leading to Baiyun Airport; both sites are shaped like wings. The site will have a bridge and light rail system that operates above the highway to connect the two parcels, which will each have distinct functions. For instance, the east parcel will house internal functions such as the data center facilities, staff dormitories, and the training center. The airline wants it to be aesthetically pleasing from the air since it sits below a runway approach. The site will have a lot of outdoor space, which Woods Bagot designed along with Hargreaves Associates and Sherwood Design Engineers. Jean Weng, a Woods Bagot Beijing-based principal, said "Most Chinese cities are very dense and very urban, but China Southern wants to create a human-scale campus, that's close to nature." The new headquarters was opened in August 2016.
Destinations
Overview
China Southern Airlines serves 193 destinations in 35 countries worldwide. It maintains a strong presence in the domestic market with its main hubs at Beijing Daxing International Airport and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport with secondary hubs at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, and Ürümqi Diwopu International Airport, along with other focus cities in Changchun, Changsha, Dalian, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Zhengzhou. The airline plans to continue to develop Chongqing and Ürümqi as hubs as well to exploit the domestic market potential.
China Southern offers 485 flights a day from its Guangzhou hub and 221 from its Beijing hub. The airline provides services to 65 international destinations. Most of the international flights link Guangzhou with world cities. There are also plenty of international flights operated through Beijing, Shanghai, Ürümqi (notably to Central Asia and Middle-east) and Dalian (to Japan, South Korea, and Russia). China Southern Airlines has developed an extensive network to Southeast Asia and also has become the Chinese airline with the largest presence in Australia. China Southern is also considering expanding into the South American markets, as well as further expansion into the African market.
Alliance
On 28 August 2004, China Southern Airlines signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the airline alliance SkyTeam. On 15 November 2007, the airline was officially welcomed as the 11th member of SkyTeam, becoming the first mainland Chinese airline to join any global airline alliance, expanding the alliance's presence on mainland China.
On 24 December 2018, China Southern Airlines released an official statement saying that it would discontinue its SkyTeam membership on 1 January 2019 and will also terminate its partnership with China Eastern and Delta.
Codeshare agreements
China Southern Airlines codeshares with the following airlines:
Aeroflot
Aerolíneas Argentinas
Air Canada (selected routes only)
Air France (Joint Venture Partner)
American Airlines
Asiana Airlines
British Airways
China Airlines
China Express Airlines
Czech Airlines
Emirates
Etihad Airways
Finnair
Iberia
Garuda Indonesia
Japan Airlines
Kenya Airways
KLM (Joint Venture Partner)
Korean Air
LATAM Airlines Group
Lufthansa
Mandarin Airlines
Pakistan International Airlines
Qantas
Qatar Airways
Saudia
Sichuan Airlines
Vietnam Airlines
WestJet
XiamenAir
Fleet
Current fleet
, China Southern Airlines operates the following aircraft:
Cargo
China Southern Cargo is the cargo subsidiary of China Southern Airlines. The cargo airline provides services between mainland China and North America, Europe, and Australia, where destinations such as Amsterdam, Anchorage, Chicago, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Vienna, and London Stansted are served from its main hub at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, with cargo flights to Amsterdam and Milan from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. The cargo subsidiary joined the SkyTeam Cargo alliance in November 2010 and withdrew on 1 January 2019 following the airline's withdrawal from SkyTeam.
Former fleet
China Southern Airlines previously operated the following aircraft
Airbus A380
China Southern was the only Chinese airline to operate the Airbus A380. The airline initially operated these aircraft on Beijing–Hong Kong and Beijing–Guangzhou routes. However, these services struggled to be profitable. Due to the demand limitation of the airline's international hub at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, few routes from Guangzhou have the demand to support an A380. In efforts to make its A380s viable, China Southern started operating A380 on its Guangzhou–Los Angeles route and on the Guangzhou–Sydney route. Additionally, China Southern flew A380s to Sydney and Melbourne every summer during its peak travel period. As of 20 June 2015, China Southern began operating the Airbus A380 from Beijing to Amsterdam. The A380 also operated four domestic flights each day between Beijing and Guangzhou. The airline's A380s were retired by November 2022.
Special liveries gallery
Services
China Southern Airlines offers First Class, Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy Class.
First Class
China Southern Airlines offers an "Experience Luxurious Skybed" on Boeing 787-8s. It is equipped with personal privacy, in-built massage, a 17-inch personal TV and fully reclining seat. It also has First Class on Airbus A330s and Boeing 777-300ERs, which features a seat pitch of and converts into a fully flat bed with a personal TV.
China Southern Airlines offers Premium First Class on select flights, such as on the Beijing-Guangzhou route. This cabin offers more amenities and is more spacious than Regular First Class, such as a variety of lighting options and a private storage cabinet with a password lock.
Business Class
Business Class also offers a fully flat bed, and an adjustable privacy divider. It includes a USB port and a reading light. It also has a 15-inch TV.
Economy Class
Economy Class features a seat and a 9-inch personal TV. It also has a multi-adjustable headrest.
China Southern also offers Premium Economy class, which is more spacious than Economy class. In most aircraft, the seats are , compared to in Economy. The Boeing 777-300ERs however, are equipped with fixed-shell premium economy seats similar to those seen on Air France's Boeing 777s.
Sky Pearl Club
China Southern Airlines's frequent-flyer program is called Sky Pearl Club (). The Sky Pearl Club allows its members earn FFP mileage not only flying China Southern domestic segments but also on flights of other codeshare member airlines. Additionally, Sky Pearl Club members can earn and use mileage on partnered Sichuan Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and China Airlines flights. Membership of Sky Pearl Club is divided into four tiers: Sky Pearl Gold Card, Sky Pearl Silver Card, Sky Pearl Member Card and Little Pearl On The Palm Card, the first three tier are available for all adult members, but Little Pearl On The Palm Card is only available for members at age 2-11.
Incidents and accidents
China Southern Airlines Flight 301: On 31 August 1988, a Hawker Siddeley Trident 2E (B-2218), struck approach lights at Kai Tak Airport and struck a lip, collapsing the right main landing gear; the aircraft then slid off the runway into Kowloon Bay, killing 7 of the 89 on board. The cause was undetermined, but windshear may have been a factor.
Guangzhou Baiyun aircraft collision: On 2 October 1990, a hijacked Xiamen Airlines Boeing 737 crashed into a China Southern Airlines Boeing 757, killing 128 people from both aircraft.
China Southern Airlines Flight 3943: On 24 November 1992, China Southern Airlines Flight 3943, a Boeing 737-300, crashed into a hill near Guilin, Guangxi, due to an engine thrust malfunction. All 141 people on board were killed.
China Southern Airlines Flight 3456: On 8 May 1997, China Southern Flight 3456, a Boeing 737-300, crashed on approach to Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport killing 35 people and injuring 9.
Controversy
Shipping of primates to laboratories
In 2013, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found the airline had transported more than 1,000 monkeys into the United States through the arrangements of Air Transport International, without federal permission to do so, and had transported the animals in insecure crates. The USDA ordered China Southern Airlines to pay $11,600 in fines for violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) during the airline's transport of monkeys to laboratories in the United States. Although the USDA cited Air Transport International for failure to provide food and water to the imported animals, China Southern Airlines was previously also ordered to pay $14,438 for AWA violations during one transport that left more than a dozen monkeys dead after they went without food and water for an extended period of time. Following these most recent violations, where the delivered animals were left neglected after arrival in the US, China Southern announced that it would no longer transport laboratory animals to the US. PETA had protested against the airline for these shipments.
See also
Civil aviation in China
List of airlines of China
Transport in China
References
External links
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Airlines of China
Cargo airlines of China
Government-owned companies of China
South China
Former SkyTeam members
Companies based in Guangzhou
Airlines established in 1988
Chinese companies established in 1988
Chinese brands
Transport in Guangdong
Transport in Guangxi
Transport in Guangzhou
Transport in Hainan
Companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
H shares
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan%20Carlos%20Ferrero
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Juan Carlos Ferrero
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Juan Carlos Ferrero Donat (; born 12 February 1980) is a Spanish former world No. 1 tennis player and current tennis coach. He won the men's singles title at the 2003 French Open, and in September of that year became the 21st player to hold the top ranking, which he held for eight weeks. He was runner-up at the 2002 French Open and 2003 US Open and won 16 ATP Tour titles, including four Masters events. He was nicknamed "Mosquito" for his speed and slender physical build.
Ferrero retired from professional tennis following the 2012 Valencia Open. He has since been a tennis coach to two-time ATP Finals champion and Olympic gold medalist Alexander Zverev, and to US Open and Wimbledon champion and world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz.
Personal life
Nicknamed Juanki, JC, and "El Mosquito", Ferrero began playing tennis at age seven with his father, Eduardo Ferrero Micó (1943–2022), who often traveled with him. He has two sisters, Ana and Laura and admires the play of former No. 1 Jim Courier. Ferrero's inspiration has been his mother, Rosario, who died of cancer in 1996, when he was 16. In July 2007, he bought an old cottage in Bocairent, south of Valencia, and refurbished it into "Hotel Ferrero", which features 12 luxury suites. He used to be a joint owner of the Valencia Open tournament together with fellow tennis player David Ferrer. His fitness trainer was Miguel Maeso, and he was coached by Antonio Martínez Cascales (from 1989) and Salvador Navarro (from May 2008). He and his wife had their first child, a daughter, in September 2014. The couple married in July 2015. They have had two more children since.
Playing style and equipment
Although Ferrero was known as one of the best clay-court players during his prime, he distinguished himself as an all-court and all-round player through his solid performance on hard- and grass-court tournaments. He said during an interview that he preferred playing on hard courts. Tennis experts agreed that Ferrero's clay-court game translated well to the hard court due to his aggressive style of playing. He also had one of the greatest forehands in the game and immense speed on the court. He was sponsored by Nike, Sergio Tacchini, and Lotto Sport Italia for his apparel on court. In 2010, he signed an endorsement deal with Joma He uses Lacoste (since 2012) for his clothes, Asics for shoes and Prince Sports for his racquets. He played with a Prince EXO3 Tour 100 Mid+ (16x18) racquet.
Career
Early years
Born in Ontinyent, Ferrero came to prominence in 1998, making the final of the French Open Juniors, losing to Fernando González. He finished the year ranked as the No. 17 junior. He then made his professional debut in 1998 by reaching the finals of his first Futures tournament in Italy. He won two Futures events in Spain, and ended the year ranked No. 345.
1999
He made his first ATP main draw debut at the Grand Prix Hassan II as a qualifier, where he reached the semi-finals. He followed it up by winning a Challenger events in Naples. He then received a wildcard at the Open Seat Godó and reached the third round losing to Carlos Moyá. He reached back–to–back finals, marking his top 100 debut at no. 95. He then reached his fourth challenger final of the year at Graz losing Tomáš Zíb. He then played at the Generali Open, where he earned his first top 20 win in the second round against No. 15 Tommy Haas, before losing in the quarterfinals. He made his Grand Slam debut at the US Open in August, losing to ninth seeded Greg Rusedski in the first round. The following month, in just his fifth professional event, he won his first career title at the Majorca Open, which propelled him from No. 68 to 47. He ended the year at No. 43 and won the ATP Newcomer of the Year award.
2000
He began the year at the Heineken Open and made the quarterfinals. He made his Australian Open debut, making it to the third round, where he was defeated by Younes El Aynaoui in a tight five–setter, 6–7(3–7), 6–4, 6–4, 6–7(5–7), 4–6. Shortly after, he reached the finals at the Dubai Tennis Championships, losing to Nicolas Kiefer, en route earning his first top 10 win over then No. 9 Nicolás Lapentti in the second round. He backed it up with a semifinal showing at the Franklin Templeton Tennis Classic, falling to Australian Lleyton Hewitt. At the first Masters of the year, he lost his first matches at the Indian Wells Masters to Michael Chang 5–7, 4–6 and at the Ericsson Open to George Bastl. He then represented Davis Cup for the first time, winning both his matches.
At the European clay season, Ferrero made it to back–to–back quarterfinals at the Estoril Open and his first masters quarterfinals at the Monte Carlo Open, losing to Nicolás Lapentti and Gastón Gaudio respectively. He made it to his second final of the year at the Torneo Godó losing to Marat Safin. By doing so, Ferrero entered the top 20 for the first time at No. 18. At the final Masters series of the clay court swing, Ferrero didn't fare well, losing to lower ranked opponent. He made the third round of the Italian Open losing to Mariano Puerta and second round of the German Open losing to Andrei Pavel. However, he bounced back by reaching the semifinals of his first French Open after defeating No. 10 Àlex Corretja before losing to the eventual champion Gustavo Kuerten in five sets. He then chose not to compete at Wimbledon.
At the US Open, he reached the fourth round but lost convincingly to eventual champion Marat Safin. He then represented Spain at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, he reached the quarterfinals losing to France's Arnaud di Pasquale. He then suffered loses in his first match in his next four events, at the CA–TennisTrophy to Richard Krajicek 4–6, 4–6, the adidas Open de Toulouse to Magnus Gustafsson 2–6, 6–7(9–11), the Davidoff Swiss Indoors to Richard Krajicek 4–6, 3–6, and the Stuttgart Masters to Younes El Aynaoui 6–7(4–7), 4–6. The drought ended when he reached the semifinals of Paris Masters, losing to eventual champion Marat Safin, 2–6, 2–6. However, he lost at the first round of the Scania Stockholm Open to Adrian Voinea 7–6(7–5), 2–6, 3–6. He then led Spain win the Davis Cup against Australia with a 3–1 win, when Ferrero won both his matches against Patrick Rafter 6–7(4), 7–6(2), 6–2, 3–1 RET and Lleyton Hewitt 6–2, 7–6(7–5), 4–6, 6–4, handing Spain their first Davis Cup title. Although he did not win any titles in 2000, his significant performances in major tournaments helped him end the year ranked No. 12.
2001
Ferrero started the year poorly, suffering three consecutive loses, beginning with a second round loss at the Australian Open to Australian Andrew Ilie 6–3, 2–6, 1–6, 6–1, 2–6, followed by loses at Davis Cup to Dutch Raemon Sluiter 7–6(7–5), 6–7(7–9), 6–3, 6–7(3–7), 4–6 and the first round at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament to Ivan Ljubičić 6–7(2–7), 4–6. He bounced back at the Dubai Tennis Championships defeating Marat Safin, 6–2, 3–1 RET in the final, after upsetting No. 5 Magnus Norman 6–2, 4–6, 6–4 in the quarterfinals. He suffered a first round loss at the Indian Wells Masters in three tie–break sets to Nicolás Massú and a fourth round loss to Gastón Gaudio 0–6, 6–3, 3–6 at the Ericsson Open.
He began the European clay season by winning the Estoril Open in an all–Spanish final, defeating Félix Mantilla, 7–6, 4–6, 6–3. This placed him at No. 9 in the world, his top 10 debut. Despite suffering an early exit at the second round of the Monte Carlo Masters to Galo Blanco 2–6, 6–7(3–7), he recovered by making it to three consecutive finals. Winning his first two at the Open SEAT Godó defeating Carlos Moyá, 4–6, 7–5, 6–3, 3–6, 7–5 and his first Masters title at the Rome Masters defeating Gustavo Kuerten, 3–6, 6–1, 2–6, 6–4, 6–2, his first win over a No. 1-ranked opponent. He lost the third final at the Hamburg Masters losing to Albert Portas, 6–4, 2–6, 6–0, 6–7, 5–7(5–7). He then followed his success by reaching the semifinals after defeating Lleyton Hewitt 6–4, 6–2, 6–1 at the French Open for the second consecutive year, losing again to the No. 1 seed, defending champion, and eventual champion Gustavo Kuerten 4–6, 4–6, 3–6. In his first Wimbledon, he was able to reach the third round losing to Britain's Greg Rusedski 1–6, 4–6, 4–6.
Ferrero also reached the finals at the UBS Open, losing to Jiří Novák, 1–6, 7–6(7–5), 5–7. He followed it up with a quarterfinal showing at the Generali Open falling to Nicolás Lapentti 6–7(6–8), 2–6 and at the Canada Masters falling to Patrick Rafter 5–7, 6–4, 2–6. He then had a disappointing results in America, losing in the second round of the Cincinnati Masters to Hicham Arazi 7–6(7–1), 4–6, 4–6 and the third round of the US Open with his compatriot Tommy Robredo upsetting him in a tight five setter 6–7(5–7), 6–4, 4–6, 6–4, 6–7(1–7). He then helped his Davis Cup team get back to the world group by defeating Uzbekistan's Oleg Ogorodov 7–5, 6–2, 6–4. He then made the quarterfinals of the Salem Open losing to Rainer Schüttler 3–6, 6–7(6–8) and the Grand Prix de Tennis de Lyon to Younes El Aynaoui 4–6, 4–6. However, he fell in his first matches at the Stuttgart Masters to Thomas Enqvist 6–4, 3–6, 6–7(4–7) and at the St. Petersburg Open to Rainer Schüttler 6–7(8–10), 4–6. At the final Masters event of the year the Paris Masters, he fell in the third round to Hicham Arazi 2–6, 6–4, 3–6. Ferrero qualified for the Tennis Masters Cup and advance to the semifinals defeating Gustavo Kuerten 7–6(7–3), 6–2 and Goran Ivanišević 7–6(7–4), 7–6(7–5), but losing to Yevgeny Kafelnikov 6–4, 1–6, 6–7(5–7) in the round robin stage. In the semifinals, he lost to eventual champion Lleyton Hewitt, 4–6, 3–6. He finished the year ranked No. 5.
2002
In 2002, Ferrero missed the Australian Open due to bursitis in his right knee. He started his year at the Milan Indoor, but was upset by eventual champion Davide Sanguinetti 6–3, 6–7(0–7), 4–6 in the second round. He then represented Spain in the first round Davis Cup tie against Morocco, he went to win one against Hicham Arazi 6–3, 6–1, 6–2 and lost one to Younes El Aynaoui 6–7(2–7), 0–6, 6–3, 6–0, 3–6. He made his first quarterfinal of the year at the Open 13, but was upset by No. 99 Cédric Pioline 7–6(3–7), 4–6, 5–7. At the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, he lost in his opening match against eventual champion Nicolas Escudé 7–5, 1–6, 0–6. As the defending champion at the Dubai Tennis Championships, he retired in his second-round match 1–2 down against Younes El Aynaoui with a pulled abductor. His form continued to dip with a couple of early exits: In the first round of the Pacific Life Open to Greg Rusedski, 4–6, 3–6, in the third round of the NASDAQ–100 Open to Adrian Voinea 6–7(6–8), 6–1, 2–6, and in the second round of the Estoril Open to David Nalbandian, 6–4, 4–6, 6–7(7–4).
He bounced back at the Monte Carlo Masters to reach the finals, where he earned his first top-10 wins of the year against Tommy Haas and Sébastien Grosjean, and he defeated Carlos Moyá in straight sets, 7–5, 6–3, 6–4, in the final to win the title. However, he was unable to keep his form, losing to Alberto Martín at the third round at Torneo Godó, losing to Ivan Ljubičić in the second round of Rome Masters, and the first round of the Hamburg Masters to Alberto Costa. These results made him fall out of the top 10 for the first time in a year. At the 2002 French Open, Ferrero reached his first Grand Slam final after upsetting No. 4 Andre Agassi 6–3, 5–7, 7–5, 6–3 and No. 2 Marat Safin 6–3, 6–2, 6–4. Despite being the strong favourite, he lost to compatriot Albert Costa, 1–6, 0–6, 6–4, 3–6. His foot was injured during the tournament, and he played through, taking some cortisone shots.
He fell early at the Wimbledon Championships to 98th-ranked American Jeff Morrison 3–6, 5–7, 6–7(5–7). He reached the finals at the Generali Open, losing to Àlex Corretja, 4–6, 1–6, 3–6. He made it to the semifinals in the Cincinnati Masters, losing to eventual champion Carlos Moyá, 3–6, 4–6. At the US Open he fell in the third round to Fernando González 4–6, 4–6, 4–6. He won his second title of the year in Hong Kong, avenging his loss to Carlos Moyá by beating him in the final, 6–3, 1–6, 7–6(7–4). He lost in the quarterfinal of the Madrid Masters to Andre Agassi 3–6, 2–6 and the semifinal of the Davidoff Swiss Indoors to Fernando González 4–6, 6–4, 1–6. He qualified to the Tennis Masters Cup; he advanced to the semifinals with wins over Andre Agassi 2–6, 7–6(8–6) and Jiří Novák 7–5, 6–3, but lost to Roger Federer 3–6, 4–6 in the round robin stage. He then advanced to the final by defeating compatriot Carlos Moyá, 6–7(6–8), 6–4, 6–4, but lost to No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt, 5–7, 5–7, 6–2, 6–2, 4–6. This result saw the Spaniard finish the year ranked No. 4.
2003
In 2003, Ferrero started the year by reaching the finals in the Adidas International, losing to Hyung-Taik Lee, 6–4, 6–7(6–8), 6–7(4–7). He went on to reach the quarter–finals of the Australian Open, losing to Wayne Ferreira, 6–7(4–7), 6–7(5–7), 1–6. He then competed for Spain at Davis Cup against Belgium and won both his matches against Christophe Rochus 6–3, 6–2, 7–5 and Kristof Vliegen 6–1, 6–4. He then competed at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament but retired with a sprained ankle in the quarterfinals against Raemon Sluiter while leading 2–1 in the first set. At the next two Masters events of Pacific Life Open and NASDAQ–100 Open, he lost in the round of 32 to Brian Vahaly 4–6, 6–3, 3–6 and to Marcelo Ríos 3–6, 6–7(2–7). In the quarterfinals of Davis Cup against Croatia, he won his only match against Mario Ančić 6–4, 6–2, 7–6(7–1).
He won his first title of the year at the Monte Carlo Masters, which he defended by defeating Guillermo Coria, 6–2, 6–2. In his next four tournaments, he reached the semi–finals in Torneo Godó, losing to Marat Safin, 4–6, 3–6, and the semifinals at the 2003 Rome Masters retiring against Roger Federer, 4–6, 2–4 with a shoulder injury. He also won the Valencia Open, defeating Christophe Rochus, 6–2, 6–4, without losing a set. He then won his first and only Grand Slam at the 2003 French Open, defeating surprise finalist Martin Verkerk, 6–1, 6–3, 6–2, in the final. He reached the 4th round of Wimbledon losing to Sébastien Grosjean 2–6, 6–4, 6–7(2–7), 6–7(3–7). He reached back–to–back quarterfinals at the Generali Open losing to Mariano Zabaleta 1–6, 4–6 and at the Idea Prokom Open losing to Luis Horna 1–6, 6–7(1–7).
He fell early at the third round of the Canada Masters to Karol Kučera 3–6, 5–7 and at the second round of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters to Gastón Gaudio 7–6(7–3), 6–7(5–7), 4–6. At the 2003 US Open his good form at the Grand Slams continued, eliminating former world No. 1s and former US Open champions Lleyton Hewitt 4–6, 6–3, 7–6(7–5), 6–1 and Andre Agassi 6–4, 6–3, 3–6, 6–4, before losing to Andy Roddick, 3–6, 6–7(2–7), 3–6, in the final. This result saw Ferrero take the No. 1 ranking from Agassi. He once again represented Davis Cup this time against Argentina, defeating Gastón Gaudio 6–4, 6–0, 6–0 but losing to Agustín Calleri 4–6, 5–7, 1–6. The year continued in Bangkok where he played for the first time as No. 1, losing to Taylor Dent in the final, 3–6, 6–7. He took his next title at the Madrid Masters, his first hard–court Masters title, by defeating Nicolás Massú, 6–3, 6–4, 6–3, in the final. He was presented with the Spanish "National Sportsman of the Year" award from King Juan Carlos. However, he went into a 6 match losing streak, In the third round of the BNP Paribas Masters to Jiří Novák 5–7, 5–7. At the Tennis Masters Cup, he lost all his three matches against David Nalbandian, Andre Agassi, and Roger Federer. Representing Spain in the Davis Cup final against Australia, he lost both his matches in 5 sets against Lleyton Hewitt 6–3, 3–6, 6–3, 6–7(0–7), 2–6 and Mark Philippoussis 5–7, 3–6, 6–1, 6–2, 0–6. Ferrero ended the year ranked No. 3, behind Andy Roddick and Roger Federer.
2004
Injuries began to plague Ferrero throughout 2004, and his ranking and form dipped. Despite making the Australian Open semifinals early in the year, losing to Roger Federer 4–6, 1–6, 4–6, and the finals of ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, losing to Lleyton Hewitt, 7–6, 5–7, 4–6, chicken pox kept him out for the entire month of March. He came back at Davis Cup against Netherlands and won both his matches defeating Raemon Sluiter 6–2, 6–2, 6–4 and Martin Verkerk 6–4, 6–7(5–7), 4–6, 7–5, 6–1 and the semifinals of the Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana losing to Fernando Verdasco 2–6, 1–6. After a first–round loss in Monte Carlo Masters to Alex Corretja 2–6, 3–6 in April, he required another month out for rest and recuperation. On 8 May, Ferrero fell during a practice session, injuring his ribs and his right wrist and went into the defence of his French Open crown under–prepared. He lost in the second round to Igor Andreev 4–6, 2–6, 3–6. At the Wimbledon Championships he reached the third round losing to Robby Ginepri 3–6, 4–6, 1–6. After Wimbledon, he failed to win back–to–back matches. He lost in the first rounds of Allianz Suisse Open Gstaad to Stefan Koubek 6–7(4–7), 4–6 and of Canada Masters retiring 2–3 down against Fabrice Santoro. He lost in the second round of Cincinnati Masters losing to Tommy Robredo 6–7(5–7), 6–4, 4–6, Summer Olympics losing to Mardy Fish 6–4, 6–7(5–7), 4–6, US Open to Stefan Koubek 6–7(2–7), 6–4, 7–6(8–6), 2–6, 3–6, China Open to Kevin Kim 4–6, 4–6, Grand Prix de Tennis de Lyon to David Ferrer 6–3, 5–7, 3–6, and Madrid Masters to Luis Horna 3–6, 1–6. He ended the year at 31, finishing outside the world's top 30 for the first time in five years. :(
2005
In 2005, Ferrero looked to return to the top of the game. However, he began his year with a loss to Jan Hernych 7–6(7–1), 1–6, 3–6 at the Heineken Open. At the Australian Open due to being seeded 31st, he met 6th ranked Guillermo Coria and lost 3–6, 2–6, 1–6. With this loss his ranking went down to 64 for the first time since September 1999. His ranking continued to drop to as low as 98, with first round loss at the Open 13 to eventual champion Joachim Johansson 6–7(4–7), 3–6, and second round loses at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament to Radek Štěpánek 4–6, 7–6(8–6), 3–6, the Dubai Tennis Championships to Roger Federer 6–4, 3–6, 6–7(6–8), and at the Pacific Life Open to Carlos Moya 3–6, 4–6. He made a decent run at the NASDAQ–100 Open reaching the fourth round, losing to David Ferrer 7–6(9–7), 3–6, 5–7. At the Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana, he fell to Rafael Nadal 2–6, 1–6. He bounced back by reaching the semifinals of the Monte Carlo Masters losing to Guillermo Coria, 2–6, 5–7, and then the final of Torneo Godó upsetting Gastón Gaudio 6–4, 4–6, 6–3 and Nikolay Davydenko 7–6(7–1), 6–1, before losing to Rafael Nadal, 4–6, 4–6. This results pushed him back inside the top 50. He then reached the second round of the Estoril Open losing to Carlos Moyá 5–7, 7–6(7–4), 4–6. He ended the European clay season by reaching the third rounds of the Hamburg Masters losing to Nikolay Davydenko 6–3, 2–6, 1–6 and French Open to Marat Safin 6–7(5–7), 5–7, 6–1, 6–7(2–7).
At the grass season, he reached the quarterfinals of the Gerry Weber Open but lost to Tommy Haas 2–6, 5–7 and the fourth round of the Wimbledon Championships to Roger Federer 3–6, 4–6, 6–7(6–8). He then went back to clay and made it to back–to–back quarterfinals at the Swedish Open and ATP Vegeta Croatia Open losing to eventual champions Rafael Nadal 3–6, 3–6 and Guillermo Coria 3–6, 0–6. He did not fare well at the North American leg, losing in the third round of Rogers Cup to Dominik Hrbatý 4–6, 2–6, second round of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters to Andy Roddick 7–6(7–3), 6–7(5–7), 2–6, and the first round of the US Open losing to Arnaud Clément 5–7, 5–7, 1–6. He bounced back by reaching the semifinals of the China Open losing to Nadal 4–6, 4–6. At the Davis Cup Play–off against Italy, Ferrero lost his first match against Andreas Seppi 7–5, 6–3, 0–6, 3–6, 2–6, but won the decisive rubber against Daniele Bracciali 6–3, 6–0, 6–3 to put Spain back into the World Group. He then competed at the Campionati Internazionali di Sicilia but lost in the quarterfinal to Tomas Behrend 7–6(7–2), 6–7(4–7), 5–7. He reached his second final of the year at the BA–CA Tennis Trophy defeating David Nalbandian 7–6(7–5), 6–3 and Radek Štěpánek 7–6(7–3), 6–3, before losing to Ivan Ljubičić 6–2, 6–4, 7–6(9–7). However, he fell early in his last three events, at the Mutua Madrileña Masters Madrid in the first round to Max Mirnyi 5–7, 6–7(2–7), at the Davidoff Swiss Indoors in the second round to José Acasuso 3–6, 7–6(9–7), 3–6, and at the BNP Paribas Masters in the third round to Tomáš Berdych 5–7, 7–6(9–7), 4–6. He ended 2005 ranked No. 17.
2006
In 2006, he once again lost his first match at the Medibank International losing to Chris Guccione 6–4, 3–6, 5–7. At the first slam of the year, the Australian Open, he reached the third round again this time to Nicolas Kiefer 3–6, 2–6, 7–5, 2–6. He reached his first semifinal of the year at the ATP Buenos Aires losing to compatriot Carlos Moyá 6–3, 6–7(3–7), 4–6. However. he fell in the first round of the Brasil Open to Flávio Saretta 4–6, 3–6. At the first two Masters event of the year, the Pacific Life Open and NASDAQ–100 Open, losing to Paradorn Srichaphan 2–6, 2–6 in the third round and Dmitry Tursunov 3–6, 6–7(0–7) in the second round, respectively.
He started his French Open preparation at the Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana but fell to eventual champion Nicolás Almagro 7–6(7–3), 4–6, 4–6. At the Monte Carlo Masters, he reached the third round, but lost to friend David Ferrer 1–6, 7–6(7–5), 3–6. He reached his second quarterfinal of the year at the Torneo Godó losing once again to Nicolás Almagro 3–6, 3–6. At the next three events, he lost in the first round of Internazionali BNL d'Italia to Paul-Henri Mathieu 1–6, 3–6 and the third round of the Hamburg Masters to David Ferrer 2–6, 4–6 and of the French Open to Gastón Gaudio 5–7, 5–7, 6–7(7–9). In his Wimbledon preparation, he reached the quarterfinals of the Ordina Open losing to Florent Serra 3–6, 7–6(7–4), 3–6. At Wimbledon, despite leading 2 sets to love against Radek Štěpánek in the third round, he lost in a tight fifth set 7–5, 7–6(7–3), 4–6, 2–6, 9–11.
At the Swedish Open reached the quarterfinals, losing to Jarkko Nieminen 6–7(5–7), 2–6. He then fell early at the first round of Croatia Open Umag to Albert Portas and second round of Rogers Cup to Fernando González 2–6, 1–6. He reached his lone final of the year at the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters, Ferrero notched his first top 10 win of 2006 with a 6–2, 6–4 win over US No. 1 and No. 5 player James Blake. A few days later, Ferrero defeated No. 2 Rafael Nadal, 7–6(7–2), 7–6(7–3), and subsequently No. 7 Tommy Robredo, 6–3, 6–4, to move into the final of an ATP Masters Series event for the first time since 2003. In the final, Ferrero lost to Andy Roddick, 3–6, 4–6. Ferrero ended the year with a five match losing streak, beginning with the second round of the US Open to Marc Gicquel 5–7, 3–6, 4–6. This was followed by loses in his first matches at the PTT Thailand Open to Mischa Zverev 6–4, 2–6, 4–6, at the Open de Moselle to Julien Benneteau 4–6, 6–1, 6–7(7–9), at the BA–CA–TennisTrophy to Jürgen Melzer 7–5, 6–7(5–7), 3–6, and at the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Masters to Robin Söderling 3–6, 2–6. He ended the year ranked No. 23.
2007
In 2007, Ferrero had a bad start of the year with a first round loss at the Heineken Open to Nicolás Massú 4–6, 2–6 and a second round loss at the Australian Open to Danai Udomchoke in four sets 6–7(0–7), 5–7, 6–4, 1–6. Ferrero bounced back by reaching the final of the Brasil Open, where he lost to Guillermo Cañas, 6–7(4–7), 2–6. He was eliminated in the round robin stage of Copa Telmex and the semifinals of the Abierto Mexicano Telcel, where he lost to Carlos Moyá, 6–2, 2–6, 3–6. At the Pacific Life Open he reached the fourth round losing to Rafael Nadal 1–6, 1–6 but fell early in the Sony Ericsson Open to Guillermo Cañas in the second round 7–6(7–5), 3–6, 5–7. He also fell early Alberto Martín 4–6, 2–6 at the second round of the Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana. But he bounced back reaching the semifinals of the Monte Carlo Masters, losing to Roger Federer, 3–6, 4–6. However, he fell in the second rounds of Torneo Godó to Pablo Andújar 1–2 ret and Internazionali BNL d'Italia to Potito Starace 2–6, 6–3, 2–6, and the third rounds of the Hamburg Masters to Roger Federer 2–6, 3–6 and of the French Open to Mikhail Youzhny 7–6(7–3), 6–7(3–7), 2–6, 2–6.
Despite losing in the first round of the Ordina Open to Carlos Berlocq 6–2, 3–6, 2–6, he was able to reach the quarterfinals of Wimbledon for the first time, defeating No. 9 James Blake 3–6, 6–3, 6–3, 7–6(7–4) in the third round, earning his first top 10 win of the year. He lost to No. 1 Federer 6–7(2–7), 6–3, 1–6, 3–6, this marks Ferrero reaching the quarterfinals or better of each slam. He back it up with another quarterfinal at the Mercedes Cup losing to Feliciano López 4–6, 6–3, 4–6, but was upset in the first round by Andreas Seppi at the Austrian Open 6–7(3–7), 6–4, 2–6 The Spaniard's US Open campaign was a disappointment, despite making it to the third round of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters losing to American James Blake 1–6, 4–6 after defeating No. 6 Fernando González 6–2, 7–6(9–7), he lost in the first rounds of Rogers Cup to Lleyton Hewitt 6–7(5–7), 4–6 and US Open to Feliciano López 3–6, 4–6, 4–6. He bounced back by reaching the semifinals of the BA-CA-TennisTrophy losing to Stanislas Wawrinka 5–7, 1–6 and the third round of the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open losing to Novak Djokovic 3–6, 6–2, 4–6. His final match of the year was a first round loss to Marcos Baghdatis 4–6, 2–6 at the BNP Paribas Masters. He ended the year ranked No. 24.
2008
Ferrero started 2008 by reaching the final of the Heineken Open losing to Philipp Kohlschreiber 6–7(4–7), 5–7 and defeating David Nalbandian, 6–1, 6–2, 6–3 to advance to the fourth round of the Australian Open, where he lost to David Ferrer 5–7, 6–3, 4–6, 1–6. After the Australian Open, Ferrero suffered three consecutive losses to Nicolas Mahut 7–5, 4–6, 6–7(1–7) at the second round of the Open 13, at the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament to Teymuraz Gabashvili 5–7, 1–6 and to Andy Roddick at the Dubai Tennis Championships, 2–6, 4–6. He made a fourth–round appearance at the Pacific Life Open, where Nalbandian defeated him, 2–6, 2–6. At the Sony Ericsson Open, Ferrero lost to Tomáš Berdych 1–6, 3–6 in the third round. He lost to Marat Safin 3–6, 7–5, 4–6 at the Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana in the first round. At the Monte Carlo Masters and Internazionali BNL d'Italia, he reached the third round in both events, to Rafael Nadal 4–6, 1–6 and to Stanislas Wawrinka 4–6, 3–6. At the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, he stunned No. 2 Rafael Nadal 7–5, 6–1 in the second round ending Nadal's 17 successive match wins in Rome. He then competed in the French Openn, retiring in the first round due to a leg injury against Marcos Daniel after winning the first set, 7–6, 2–2 RET. In June he competed at Wimbledon, retiring in the second round against Mischa Zverev, 4–6, 4–6, 1–2 RET, due to a hamstring injury. He missed the next three months with a shoulder injury and returned with a quarterfinal appearance at the China Open, losing to eventual champion Andy Roddick 6–2, 3–6, 4–6. His next tournaments were at the Bank Austria–Tennis Trophy, a second–round loss to Jürgen Melzer 6–7(4–7), 3–6, and a quarterfinals appearance at the Grand Prix de Tennis de Lyon6–7(5–7), 1–6, losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. He ended the year ranked No. 55, his lowest year–end ranking since 1998.
2009
Ferrero started the year with early losses in the second round of the Heineken Open to Philipp Kohlschreiber 4–6, 6–4, 6–7(5–7), and the first rounds of the Brisbane International Florent Serra 3–6, 6–7(3–7), and the Australian Open to Fabrice Santoro 3–6, 2–6, 7–6(7–5), 2–6 which made him drop out of the top 100 at No. 101 for the first time in almost 10 years. He, however, reached the quarterfinals of the Brasil Open, losing to Thomaz Bellucci, 6–7(5–7), 6–1, 3–6, and of the Copa Telmex, retiring against David Nalbandian, 3–6, 0–3 with a right leg injury. In March, Ferrero captured his first singles title since 2003 by defeating fifth–seeded Florent Serra, 6–4, 7–5, in the final of the Grand Prix Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco. He, however, followed up with early losses in rest of the clay–court season. He lost in first round of the Barcelona Open to Igor Kunitsyn 5–7, 6–7(3–7), failed to qualify for the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, and suffered second–round losses in the Estoril Open to Nikolay Davydenko 5–7, 2–6, Madrid Open to Fernando Verdasco 3–6, 2–6, and the 2009 French Open to Philipp Kohlschreiber 4–6, 6–2, 4–6, 7–6(7–3), 3–6.
Surprisingly, Ferrero's resurgence came on the grass courts, as he reached the semifinals of the Queen's Club Championships, losing to Andy Murray, 2–6, 4–6, and the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, defeating tenth seed Fernando González in the third round, 4–6, 7–5, 6–4, 4–6, 6–4, in a match lasting about 3 hours, and seventh seed Gilles Simon in the fourth round, 7–6(7–4), 6–3, 6–2, before losing to Andy Murray, 5–7, 3–6, 2–6. These performances saw him climb from No. 90 to No. 37 in a month. He then reached the finals of the Umag Open, losing to Nikolay Davydenko, 3–6, 0–6. At the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, Ferrero advanced to the third round, before losing to Tommy Haas, 5–7, 6–2, 1–6, after beating Tommy Robredo, 6–3, 6–2.
In August he competed at the Rogers Cup, where he needed to qualify for the main draw despite his high ranking. He defeated Lleyton Hewitt in the first round, 6––1, 6–4, ending Hewitt's three–match winning streak against him. He then defeated 13th seed Gaël Monfils, 6–3, 7–6(9–7). in the pair's first meeting, before losing to Andy Murray once again, 1–6, 3–6. He lost in the first round of the Cincinnati Masters to Marin Čilić, 3–6, 4–6. At the US Open, he defeated Fabrice Santoro in the first round in Santoro's last US Open match. In the second round against Philipp Petzschner, Ferrero mounted a remarkable comeback from two sets down for the third time in his career to win 1–6, 3–6, 6–4, 6–2, 6–4. He went on to defeat No. 9 seed, when Gilles Simon retired with a right knee injury while Ferrer was leading 1–6, 6–4, 7–6(7–5), 1–0 ret, but lost in the fourth round to eventual champion Juan Martín del Potro 3–6, 3–6, 3–6. Ferrero climbed impressively into the top 20, having been ranked No. 115 just 5 months before. In his first tournament after the US Open at the China Open, he lost to Fernando Verdasco, 5–7, 4–6, in the second round, after defeating Nicolás Almagro, 7–5, 7–6(7–3). He competed in the Shanghai Masters, where he missed being seeded by one ranking position. He was crushed in the first round by 13th seed Radek Štěpánek, 6–3, 6–0, winning only 7 points in the second set. He also lost in the first round of the Stockholm Open to Marcos Baghdatis, 4–6, 2–6. He then competed in the Valencia Open but made an early exit to Pablo Cuevas in the first round in a three–set battle, 6–2, 6–7, 3–6, after serving for the set at 5–3 in the second set. He ended the year at No. 23, which was 32 spots higher than the previous year and won his first title in 6 years.
2010
Ferrero had a bad start to the 2010 season. Ferrero began the year at the Heineken Open, where he retired against Michael Lammer with an injury trailing 1–3 in the second round, after receiving a first round bye. At the Australian Open, he lost to Ivan Dodig, after being two sets to love up and seemingly cruising to victory. His mind slipped mid-match and he got crushed during the last three sets of the match, 6–2, 6–1, 4–6, 1–6, 1–6. Ferrero then competed in the Brasil Open as the No. 1 seed. He earned his first win of the season against Eduardo Schwank, 7–6, 6–3. In the following round he defeated Nicolás Massú, 6–2, 5–7, 6–2 (despite failing to serve out the match 5–4 in the second set), Carlos Berlocq, 6–3, 6–2, in the quarterfinals, and Ricardo Mello, 6–4, 6–2, in the semifinals. In the final, he crushed Łukasz Kubot, 6–1, 6–0, in 61 minutes, conceding one of his services games but in turn, breaking all of his opponent's service games. At the Copa Telmex, seeded No. 2, he won against top seed David Ferrer in the final, 5–7, 6–4, 6–3, after defeating Juan Mónaco in the semifinals, 6–2, 7–6. This was his second title in a row and extended his winning streak to 10. The tournament victory also raised his ranking to No. 16. At the Abierto Mexicano in Acapulco, he had comfortable victories over qualifier Diego Junqueira, 6–2, 6–3, and Igor Andreev, 6–4, 6–3. Carrying on his fiery form, he defeated defending champion Nicolás Almagro, 6–1, 5–7, 6–2, in the quarterfinals, not facing any break points in the first and third sets and being broken only once. He defeated Juan Mónaco in the semifinals, when the Argentinian retired with an abdominal strain after losing the first set 7–5. Ferrero faced David Ferrer in his third straight final and lost, 3–6, 6–3, 1–6. Both players admitted that Ferrero's fatigue played a major role in the final set. This ended his 14-match winning streak. Despite the loss, he rose to No. 14 in the world, the first time he was ranked that high since 11 October 2004, when he was ranked 13th.
He defeated Daniel Köllerer, 6–3, 6–0, in the second round of BNP Paribas Open, earning his first hard-court victory of the season, losing only eight points on serve. He then faced Juan Mónaco in the third round, their third meeting in a row, with Ferrero prevailing in the other two. He was upset, 6–7(2–7), 6–3, 3–6, in a match that lasted over three hours. At the Sony Ericsson Open, he made the round of 16, losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 2–6, 2–6, after defeating John Isner, 6–2, 3–6, 6–3, and Daniel Köllerer, 4–0 RET. At the Monte Carlo Masters, he defeated Marcel Granollers, 6–0, 6–3, and Benjamin Becker, 6–3, 6–4. After defeating the German, Ferrero upset Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6–1, 3–6, 7–5, earning his first victory over the Frenchman. He, however, lost to Rafael Nadal, 4–6, 2–6, in the quarterfinals. At the Barcelona Open, Ferrero was upset by Dutchman Thiemo de Bakker in the third round, due to not playing well in the tie-breaks, 6–7(2–7), 6–3, 6–7(4–7),. At the Rome Masters, his form worsened as he surprisingly slumped to a 0–6, 3–6 loss to qualifier Santiago Giraldo in the first round. Ferrero went into the French Open seeded 16th and tipped by some to make a good run in the tournament. He defeated Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay in the first round, 6–4, 6–3, 6–1. He then met fellow Spaniard Pere Riba in the second round, winning in four sets, 7–6(7–5), 6–7(13–15), 6–2, 6–2. However, he was upset in the third round by unseeded American Robby Ginepri. After coming back from a two-set deficit and being a break of serve up in the decider, Ferrero lost in the fifth set with a final score of 7–5, 6–3, 3–6, 2–6, 6–4. He may have been seen to have underachieved in the tournament but did improve on his previous year's performance and did therefore increase his ranking points.
At the Gerry Weber Open grass tournament his form continued to go down as he lost to lucky loser Dominik Meffert in the first round, 3–6, 5–7. His bad form continued, as he lost to Xavier Malisse in five sets in the first round of Wimbledon. He was now 9 wins–8 losses since his good run at the South American clay season. Next stop on his tour was the MercedesCup, losing to Albert Montañés for the first time in six meetings in the semifinals, 3–6, 6–7(6–8), despite having two set points in the second set tiebreak. At the German Open, Ferrero defeated Jan Hájek and Jarkko Nieminen, before being upset by Florian Mayer, 7–6(7–3), 2–6, 3–6, for the first time in five meetings. At the Umag Open, Ferrero won his third title of the year, at first struggling against Pablo Cuevas, 4–6, 6–4, 6–4, but cruising through against Alexandr Dolgopolov, Andreas Seppi, and Potito Starace in the final. He then missed the Rogers Cup and Cincinnati Masters due to a knee injury. He returned at the US Open, where he defeated Martin Kližan and Ricardo Mello in straight sets, but lost to Jürgen Melzer 5–7, 3–6, 1–6 in the third round. He missed the rest of the season due to knee and wrist injuries for which he was operated in October.
2011–2012
In 2011, Ferrero withdrew from the Heineken Open and Australian Open. As the defending champion, he withdrew from the Brasil Open and Copa Claro. He also withdrew from the Abierto Mexicano, Indian Wells, Miami Masters, and Monte Carlo Masters as the recovery from his wrist and knee surgery took longer than expected. He made his return at the Barcelona Open, where he defeated Xavier Malisse, 6–4, 6–1, Mischa Zverev, 6–4, 7–5, and Simone Vagnozzi, 7–6(7–3), 4–6, 6–4, but lost in the quarterfinals to Nicolás Almagro, 3–6, 3–6. His next tournament was the Madrid Open, where he lost in the first round to Dutchman Thiemo de Bakker, 6–2, 5–7, 4–6, after which he indicated that the end of tennis career might be near. He missed the Rome Masters, French Open, and Wimbledon due to same injury. His ranking dropped to No. 85. He returned to competition at the MercedesCup in Stuttgart. There, he defeated Bastian Knittel, Mikhail Youzhny, Marcel Granollers, Federico Delbonis and in the final countryman Pablo Andújar, 6–4, 6–0, to capture the Stuttgart title. Right after this win he went to the German Open Hamburg, where he lost in the first round to Cedrik-Marcel Stebe, 3–6, 2–6. As the defending champion, he reached the semifinals of the Croatia Open losing to eventual champion Alexandr Dolgopolov 4–6, 4–6. At the Rogers Cup, he lost to Ernests Gulbis, 6–3, 1–6, 5–7 and at the Cincinnati Masters to Feliciano López 6–4, 3–6, 4–6 both in the first round.
Ferrero's next tournament was the US Open, where he defeated Pablo Andújar in the first round, 1–6, 7–5, 5–7, 6–1, 6–3. In the second round, he defeated Frenchman Gaël Monfils in an electrifying five-set match, 7–6(7–5), 5–7, 6–7(5–7), 6–4, 6–4. His next opponent was Spain's Marcel Granollers, who retired in the second set; at the time of Granollers' retirement, Ferrero led the match 6–1, 4–3. In the fourth round, Ferrero lost to Janko Tipsarević, 5–7, 7–6(7–3), 5–7, 2–6. His next tournament was the 2011 China Open, where he lost in the quarterfinals to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. He then played at the Shanghai Masters reaching the third round, falling to good friend David Ferrer 6–1, 5–7, 2–6 after having wasted three match points in the second set. His next tour stop was the Valencia Open, where he lost in the quarterfinals to Argentine player Juan Mónaco 3–6, 3–6. The final tournament of the year was the Paris Masters, where he lost in the first round to Frenchman Nicolas Mahut 2–6, 3–6.
Ferrero began his 2012 season with a 3–6, 2–6 loss to Frenchmen Benoît Paire in Sydney. His next tournament was the 2012 Australian Open, where he made an early exit in the first round to Serbian Viktor Troicki after a hard-fought five-set match, 6–4, 7–6(7–3), 2–6, 6–7(3–7), 2–6 in which he failed to convert a match point in the fourth set. After the match, Ferrero was fined $1,500 by the organization of the Australian Open for "audible obscenities" during the match. Ferrero represented Spain in the Davis Cup vs. Kazakhstan defeating Mikhail Kukushkin in five sets in the first tie. He then played a disappointing Golden Swing in Latin America losing three times in his opening matches. At the Brasil Open he lost to Leonardo Mayer 6–7(6–8), 2–6 at the Copa Claro he lost to Kei Nishikori 5–7, 6–3, 2–6. For last, at the Abierto Mexicano Telcel to Stanislas Wawrinka 6–2, 3–6, 4–6. He then missed 3 months due to a wrist injury. Ferrero returned at the Mutua Madrid Open losing in the first round to qualifier Igor Andreev 4–6, 6–7(4–7),. His next tournament was the Internazionali BNL d'Italia. In the first round, Ferrero beat Kevin Anderson 6–4, 7–5; recording his 2nd win in the year. In the second round, he beat Frenchman and 13th seed Gaël Monfils 7–5, 6–3. However, in the third round, he fell to Roger Federer in 3 sets: 2–6, 7–5, 1–6. After Rome, Ferrero played at Open de Nice Côte d'Azur. In the first round, he beat Dutch Robin Haase after saving a match point 4–6, 7–6(8–6), 7–6(8–6). In the second round, he fell to Brazilian qualifying Thomaz Bellucci in straight sets 4–6, 3–6. In Roland Garros, his next tournament, Juan won the first match against the French Wildcard player Jonathan Dasnières de Veigy 6–1, 6–4, 6–3. In the second round, he lost to Marin Čilić 6–7(4–7), 2–6, 3–6. After this, Ferrero did not play at any tournament, preferring to go straight to Wimbledon, where he lost in the 1st round 3–6, 3–6, 1–6 to defending champion and No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic. He then lost in the first round of the ATP Vegeta Croatia Open Umag. Ferrero announced on 12 September 2012, that he would officially retire from professional tennis after the Valencia Open 500 in October. He stated that "The Valencia Open 500 will be my last tournament, it's the best possible stage for me to retire. Because of injuries, I was not able to play a full season and it's been a complicated year as I could see I didn't have the same ambition after 14 years on the tour." His final match was in the first round of Valencia, losing to Nicolás Almagro 5–7, 3–6.
2017
In 2017 it was announced that Ferrero would make a return to the ATP World Tour, playing in the Barcelona doubles draw alongside Pablo Carreño Busta. However, this would be his only tournament, and they would lose in the first round.
Davis Cup
Ferrero made his Davis Cup debut for Spain in the quarterfinals match-up against Russia in 2000 and won both his matches against Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Marat Safin in straight sets. He played in the semifinals, this time against the American Vince Spadea, and won in three sets, 4–6, 6–1, 6–4. His impressive Davis Cup form continued when he defeated Australians Patrick Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt in Barcelona, enabling Spain to capture the Davis Cup for the first time. In 2001, Spain fell to the Netherlands, and Ferrero lost his first match against Raemon Sluiter, losing two tie-breakers and winning one. He made up for this loss, however, when Spain competed in the qualifying rounds for the Davis Cup World Group, by defeating Oleg Ogorodov of Uzbekistan in straight sets.
Ferrero continued to be a key Davis Cup player in subsequent years. In both 2003 and 2004, Ferrero contributed to Spain's successive progress to the Davis Cup final. In 2004, Spain won the Davis Cup for the second time. In 2009, Ferrero won the fifth and decisive rubber against Andreas Beck of Germany, 6–4, 6–4, 6–4, in the quarterfinals, putting Spain through to the semifinal. In the semifinal Ferrero won the second rubber against Israel, 6–4, 6–2, 6–0, putting Spain on track to win the Davis Cup for the second consecutive year, the first nation to do so since Sweden in 1998. As Nadal returned from injury to play the final for Spain, Ferrero was not selected to Spain's final team. He attended all the live rubbers to support his teammates during the first two days of the Davis Cup final as a reserve player. He was not included in the 2009 Davis Cup presentation ceremony and celebrations on the final day.
Coaching career
In 2019, Ferrero began coaching 16-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, a fellow Spaniard. As of 16 July 2023, their partnership has produced twelve tournament wins on the ATP Tour, including two major titles - the 2022 US Open and Gentleman's singles title at 2023 Wimbledon Championships and four Masters 1000 titles - Miami & Madrid in 2022 and Indian Wells & Madrid in 2023. Their latest success together was on 16 July 2023 when Alcaraz won the Men’s Championship title at Wimbledon, having won the Queens Club Championship, London, an ATP 500 event three weeks earlier. As well as the aforementioned titles, Juan Carlos Ferrero also coached Carlos Alcaraz to become World Number 1 - the youngest player in the history of tennis to reach the summit of the official tennis rankings.
Their main training base is at Juan Carlos (JC) Ferrero Tennis Academy in Alicante, southern Spain.
In July 2017, Ferrero started working as a tennis coach of then-world No. 11 Alexander Zverev. Their work ended in February 2018 due to rumoured differences between them.
Career statistics
Grand Slam tournament performance timeline
Grand Slam tournament finals: 3 (1 title, 2 runners-up)
See also
List of ATP number 1 ranked singles players
List of Grand Slam men's singles champions
Notes
References
Ferrero loses the last game of his career
External links
Official site
1980 births
Living people
People from Vall d'Albaida
Sportspeople from the Province of Valencia
Spanish male tennis players
Tennis players from the Valencian Community
French Open champions
Olympic tennis players for Spain
Tennis players at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Tennis players at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Grand Slam (tennis) champions in men's singles
Masters tennis players
ATP number 1 ranked singles tennis players
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st%20Airborne%20Division%20%28United%20Kingdom%29
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1st Airborne Division (United Kingdom)
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The 1st Airborne Division was an airborne infantry division of the British Army during the Second World War. The division was formed in late 1941 during the Second World War, after the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, demanded an airborne force, and was initially under command of Major-General Frederick A. M. "Boy" Browning. The division was one of two airborne divisions raised by the British Army during the war, with the other being the 6th Airborne Division, created in May 1943, using former units of the 1st Airborne Division.
The division's first two missions—Operation Biting, a parachute landing in France, and Operation Freshman, a glider mission in Norway—were both raids. Part of the division was sent to North Africa at the end of 1942, where it fought in an infantry role during the Tunisian campaign over the next few weeks, and when the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, the division undertook two brigade sized landings. The first, Operation Ladbroke, carried out by glider infantry of the 1st Airlanding Brigade and the second, Operation Fustian, by the 1st Parachute Brigade, were far from completely successful. The 1st Airborne Division then took part in a mostly diversionary amphibious landing, codenamed Operation Slapstick, as part of the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943.
In December, most of the 1st Airborne Division (minus the 2nd Parachute Brigade, left behind in Italy) returned to England, and began training and preparing for the Allied invasion of Normandy. It was not involved in the Normandy landings in June 1944, being held in reserve. In September 1944 the 1st Airborne took part in Operation Market Garden. The division, with the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade temporarily attached, landed behind German lines, to capture crossings on the River Rhine, and fought in the Battle of Arnhem. After failing to achieve its objectives, the division was surrounded and took very heavy casualties, but held out for nine days before the survivors were evacuated.
The remnants of the 1st Airborne Division returned to England soon after. The division never fully recovered from their losses at Arnhem and the 4th Parachute Brigade was disbanded. Just after the end of the war in Europe, the depleted formation took part in Operation Doomsday in Norway in May 1945. They were tasked with the disarmament and repatriation of the German occupation army. The 1st Airborne Division then returned to England and was disbanded in November 1945.
Background
Inspired by the success of German airborne operations during the Battle of France, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed the War Office to investigate the possibility of creating a force of 5,000 parachute troops. As a result, on 22 June 1940, No. 2 Commando assumed parachute duties, and on 21 November was re-designated the 11th Special Air Service Battalion, with a parachute and glider wing.
On 21 June 1940 the Central Landing Establishment was formed at Ringway airfield near Manchester. Although tasked primarily with training parachute troops, it was also directed to investigate the use of gliders to transport troops into battle. At the same time, the Ministry of Aircraft Production contracted General Aircraft Ltd to design and produce a glider for this purpose. The result was the General Aircraft Hotspur, which was capable of transporting eight soldiers and was used for both assault and training purposes.
The success of the first British airborne raid, Operation Colossus, prompted the War Office to expand the airborne force through the creation of the Parachute Regiment, and to develop plans to convert several infantry battalions into parachute and glider battalions. On 31 May 1941, a joint army and air force memorandum was approved by the Chiefs-of-Staff and Winston Churchill; it recommended that the British airborne forces should consist of two parachute brigades, one based in England and the other in the Middle East, and that a glider force of 10,000 men should be created.
Formation history
The existing 11th Special Air Service Battalion was renamed the 1st Parachute Battalion and, together with the newly raised 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions, formed the first of the new airborne formations, the 1st Parachute Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Richard Nelson Gale, who would later command the 6th Airborne Division from 1943 to 1944. The 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions were formed from volunteers, between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-two, who were already serving in infantry units. Only ten men from any one unit were allowed to volunteer.
In October 1941, Brigadier Frederick Arthur Montague "Boy" Browning was promoted to major general, named the Commander Parachute and Airborne Troops, and ordered to form a headquarters to develop and train airborne forces. The next unit formed was the 1st Airlanding Brigade on 10 October 1941, by the conversion of the mountain warfare trained 31st Independent Infantry Brigade Group, commanded by Brigadier George Frederick "Hoppy" Hopkinson, later to command the division. The brigade comprised four battalions: the 1st Border Regiment, 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment, 2nd Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, and the 1st Royal Ulster Rifles. The men who were unsuitable for airborne forces were replaced by volunteers from other units. By the end of the year Browning's command had become the headquarters of 1st Airborne Division.
Browning expressed his opinion that the force must not be sacrificed in "penny packets", and urged the formation of a third brigade. Permission was finally granted in July 1942, and the 2nd Parachute Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Ernest Down, who would later succeed Hopkinson in command of the division, was formed. The 2nd Parachute Brigade was assigned the existing 4th Parachute Battalion, and two new battalions converted from line infantry units, the 5th (Scottish) Parachute Battalion, converted from the 7th Battalion, Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, and the 6th (Royal Welch) Parachute Battalion, from the 10th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers.
The 3rd Parachute Brigade was formed in November 1942 and assigned to the 1st Airborne Division. The brigade, under Brigadier Alexander Stanier, comprised the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion, previously the 10th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, the 8th (Midlands) Parachute Battalion, converted from the 13th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and the 9th (Eastern and Home Counties) Parachute Battalion, formerly the 10th Battalion, Essex Regiment. Soon afterwards, the 1st Parachute Brigade left the division, to take part in Operation Torch, codename for the Allied landings in French North Africa, and ended up participating in numerous operations in North Africa, although fighting in an infantry role.
In April 1943, the commander of the 1st Airlanding Brigade, Hopkinson, was promoted to major general and given command of the division in succession to Browning. Later that year, the division was deployed to Tunisia for operations in the Mediterranean theatre. The 3rd Parachute Brigade and two battalions from the 1st Airlanding Brigade—the 1st Ulster Rifles and 2nd Ox and Bucks—remained behind in England, forming the nucleus of the newly raised 6th Airborne Division. On arrival, the 1st Airborne Division was reinforced by the 4th Parachute Brigade. The 4th Parachute Brigade had been formed in the Middle East during 1942. In addition to the 156th Parachute Battalion, which had been raised from British troops stationed in India, it comprised the 10th and 11th Parachute Battalions, which had been raised from troops based in Egypt and Palestine.
The division took part in two brigade sized operations in Sicily, and an amphibious assault at Taranto in Italy. During the fighting in Italy, Major General Ernest Down became the divisional commander, after his predecessor, Major General Hopkinson, died of wounds received in the fighting. After brief service in Italy, the division returned to England in December 1943, leaving the 2nd Parachute Brigade behind as an independent formation.
1944–1945
After the division arrived in England, Down was posted to India to oversee the formation of the 44th Indian Airborne Division, and was replaced by Major General Roy Urquhart. In September 1944, for Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade was attached to the division. Following Market Garden, fewer than 2,200 men from the 10,000 that were sent to the Netherlands returned to the British lines.
Having suffered such severe casualties, the 4th Parachute Brigade was disbanded, with its surviving men being posted to the 1st Parachute Brigade. The division then went through a period of reorganisation, but had still not fully recovered by the end of the war, due to the acute shortage of manpower throughout the British Army in 1944–1945. Still under strength in May 1945 when the war in Europe ended, it was sent to Norway to disarm the German army of occupation; returning to Britain in November 1945 where the 1st Airborne Division was disbanded.
Operational history
France
Operation Biting, also known as the Bruneval Raid, was the codename for a raid by Combined Operations in 1942. Their objective was a German Würzburg radar installation at Bruneval in France. Due to the extensive coastal defences erected by the Germans to protect the array, it was thought a commando raid from the sea would incur heavy losses, and give the garrison sufficient time for the radar equipment to be destroyed. It was therefore decided that an airborne assault followed by sea-borne evacuation would be the ideal way to surprise the garrison and seize the technology intact.
On the night of 27 February, 'C' Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion, under the command of Major John Frost, parachuted into France a few miles from the installation. The force then proceeded to assault the villa in which the radar equipment was kept, killing several members of the German garrison and capturing the installation after a brief fire-fight. A technician that had come with the force partially dismantled the Würzburg radar array and removed several key pieces to take back to Britain; the raiding force then retreated to the evacuation beach. The detachment assigned to clear the beach had failed to do so, however, and another brief fire-fight was required to eliminate the Germans guarding the beach. The raiding force was then picked up by a small number of landing craft and transferred to several Motor Gun Boats which brought them back to Britain. The raid was entirely successful. The airborne troops suffered only a few casualties, and the pieces of the radar they brought back, along with a German radar technician, allowed British scientists to understand German advances in radar and to create counter-measures to neutralise those advances.
Norway
Operation Freshman was the first British airborne operation conducted using gliders, its target was the Vemork Norsk Hydro chemical plant in Norway, which produced heavy water for Nazi Germany. By 1942 the German atomic weapons programme had come close to being able to develop a nuclear reactor, but in order for the reactor to function it would require a great deal of heavy water. The source of this water was the Norsk Hydro plant, which had been occupied in 1940; when the British government learned of the German nuclear developments, it was decided that a raid would be launched to destroy the plant and deny the Germans the heavy water. Several tactics were discussed and discarded as impractical, and it was finally decided that a small force from the 1st Airborne Division, comprising 30 sappers from the Royal Engineers, would land by glider a short distance from the plant, and demolish it with explosives.
Two aircraft, each towing one glider, left Scotland on the night of 19 November 1942. All managed to reach the Norwegian coast, but none were able to reach their objective. The first pair suffered from navigational difficulties and severe weather, which resulted in the tow rope snapping and the first glider crash-landing, with its towing aircraft returning to base; eight airborne troops were killed outright, four were severely injured and five unhurt. The survivors were captured shortly after the crash. The second pair fared even worse, with both aircraft and glider crashing into a mountain for unknown reasons; the aircrew and several men were killed outright, and those who survived were taken prisoner. None of the prisoners survived for very long, being either poisoned or executed as a result of Adolf Hitler's Commando Order, which stated that all British Commandos personnel were to be killed immediately when captured.
Sicily
Operation Turkey Buzzard, also known as Operation Beggar, was a supply mission to North Africa that took place between March and August 1943. The mission was undertaken by the division's glider pilots and No. 295 Squadron Royal Air Force, as part of the preparations for the Allied invasion of Sicily.
The mission involved Halifax bombers towing Horsa gliders from England to Tunisia. The Horsas were needed to complement the smaller American Waco gliders, which did not have the capacity required for the planned operations. During the mission two German Condor patrol aircraft located and shot down a Halifax-and-Horsa combination. Altogether five Horsas and three Halifaxes were lost, but 27 Horsas arrived in Tunisia in time to participate in the invasion of Sicily.
Operation Ladbroke was a glider assault by the 1st Airlanding Brigade near Syracuse, that began on 9 July 1943 as part of the invasion of Sicily. The brigade were equipped with 144 Waco and six Horsa gliders. Their objective was to land near the town of Syracuse, secure the Ponte Grande Bridge, and ultimately take control of the city itself with its strategically important docks.
On the way to Sicily, 65 gliders were released too early by the towing aircraft and crashed into the sea, drowning around 252 men. Of the remainder, only 87 men arrived at the Pont Grande Bridge, which they successfully captured and held beyond the time they were to be relieved. Finally, with their ammunition expended and only 15 soldiers remaining unwounded, they surrendered to the Italian forces. The Italians sought to demolish the bridge after regaining control of it, but were unable to do so because the airborne forces had removed the explosive charges. Other troops from the airlanding brigade, who had landed elsewhere in Sicily, destroyed communications links and captured artillery batteries.
Operation Fustian, the division's second mission in Sicily, was carried out by the 1st Parachute Brigade. Their objective was the Primosole Bridge across the Simeto River. The intention was for the parachute brigade, with glider-borne forces in support, to land on both sides of the river. While one battalion seized the bridge, the other two battalions would establish defensive positions to the north and south. They would then hold the bridge until relieved by the advance of XIII Corps, part of the Eighth Army which had landed on the southeastern coast three days previously.
The start of the operation was a disaster. Many of the aircraft carrying the paratroopers from North Africa were shot down, or were damaged and turned back, due to both friendly fire and enemy action. The evasive action taken by the pilots scattered the brigade over a large area, and only the equivalent of two companies of troops were landed in the correct locations. Despite this and the defence by German and Italian forces, the British paratroops captured the bridge. Resisting attacks from the north and south, they held out against increasing odds until nightfall.
The relieving force led by the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, which was short of transport, found it hard going to reach the parachute brigade and were still away when they halted for the night. By this time, with casualties mounting and supplies running short, the brigade commander, Brigadier Gerald Lathbury, had relinquished control of the bridge to the Germans. The following day the British units joined forces, and the 9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry with armour support attempted to recapture the bridge. It was not finally secured until three days after the start of the operation, when another battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, led by the paratroopers, established a bridgehead on the northern bank of the river.
Italy
Operation Slapstick was an amphibious landing at the Italian port of Taranto, part of the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943.
The mission had been planned at short notice, following an offer by the Italian government to open the ports of Taranto and Brindisi on the heel of Italy to the Allies. The 1st Airborne Division was selected to undertake the mission, but at the time they were located in North Africa. A shortage of transport aircraft meant the division could not land by parachute and glider, and all the landing craft in the area were already allocated to the other landings: Operation Avalanche at Salerno on the western coast, and Operation Baytown at Calabria. Instead, the division had to be transported across the Mediterranean by ships of the Royal Navy. The landing was unopposed, and the airborne division successfully captured the ports of Taranto, and later Brindisi on the Adriatic coast, in working order.
The only German forces in the area were elements of the German 1st Parachute Division, which engaged the advancing British in ambushes and at roadblocks during a fighting withdrawal north. By the end of September, the 1st Airborne Division had advanced to Foggia. Reinforcements from two infantry divisions, the 8th Indian and British 78th, had by then been landed behind them, which allowed the airborne troops to be withdrawn back to Taranto. Despite casualties for the 1st Airborne Division in Italy being relatively light, the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Major-General George Hopkinson, was killed while watching an assault by the 10th Parachute Battalion where he was mortally wounded by a burst of machine gun fire. He was replaced by Brigadier Ernest E. Down, previously the commander of 2nd Parachute Brigade.
England
By December 1943 the division had returned to England and begun training for operations in North-West Europe under the supervision of I Airborne Corps. Although the 1st Airborne Division was not scheduled to take part in the Normandy landings, a contingency plan, Operation Wasteage, was drawn up whereby the division would be parachuted in to support any of the five invasion beaches if serious delays were experienced. This plan turned out not to be required.
While the 6th Airborne Division were still fighting in Normandy, numerous plans to parachute the 1st Airborne Division into France were formulated, all to no avail. In June and July 1944, the plans included Operation Reinforcement, which was a landing to the west of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte to support the US 82nd Airborne Division, and Operation Wild Oats that would have seen the division land south of Caen to meet the advancing 7th Armoured Division moving from Villers-Bocage and the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division and 4th Armoured Brigade advancing south out of the Orne bridgehead in a move to encircle and capture Caen. Such an airborne operation was vetoed by Trafford Leigh-Mallory, as being too risky for the aircraft involved. At any rate, the land portion of the attack (generally considered to be part of Operation Perch) bogged down due to German resistance and the delayed deployment of troops to Normandy. There was also Operation Beneficiary, intended to support the American XX Corps in capturing St Malo, and Operation Lucky Strike which had the objective of seizing bridges across the River Seine at Rouen. In Operation Sword Hilt, the division was to isolate the port of Brest and destroy the Morlaix viaduct. Operation Hands Up was intended to support the US Third Army by seizing the Vannes airfield.
By August the division was still waiting to be deployed, but now plans envisioned using them as part of a larger force. Operation Transfigure involved the division, the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division, the US 101st Airborne Division, and the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade landing at Rambouillet St Arnoult, to close the gap between Orléans and Paris. Operation Axehead, using the same force, was to seize the bridges over the River Seine in support of 21st Army Group. Operation Boxer, with the same force, was to seize Boulogne and assault V1 flying bomb sites. Near the end of the month, Operation Linnet, with the same units as before, was formulated to seize crossings over the Escaut. Operation Infatuate, drawn up in early September, involved the entire I Airborne Corps landing in Belgium to trap the retreating German armies in the Scheldt estuary, as well as aiming to threaten Antwerp.
Finally, in September, there was Operation Comet, in which the division's three brigades were to land in the Netherlands and each capture a river crossing. The first of these was the bridge over the River Waal at Nijmegen, the second the bridge over the River Maas at Grave, and the last was the bridge over the River Rhine at Arnhem. Planning for Comet was well advanced when on 10 September the mission was cancelled. Instead, a new operation was proposed with the same objectives as Comet but to be carried out by three divisions of the First Allied Airborne Army.
Arnhem
Operation Market Garden was an airborne assault by three divisions in the Netherlands in September 1944, including the British 1st and the American 82nd and 101st, to secure key bridges and towns along the expected Allied axis of advance. Farthest north, 1st Airborne, supported by the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade, landed at Arnhem to secure bridges across the Nederrijn. Initially expecting an easy advance, XXX Corps, under Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks, to reach the airborne force at Arnhem within two to three days.
1st Airborne landed some distance from its objectives and was quickly hampered by unexpected resistance, especially from elements of the 9th SS and 10th SS panzer divisions. Only a small force was able to reach the Arnhem road bridge, while the main body of the division was halted on the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, XXX Corps was unable to advance north as quickly as anticipated and failed to relieve the airborne troops. After four days, the small British force at the bridge was overwhelmed and the rest of the division became trapped in a pocket north of the river, where they could not be sufficiently reinforced by the Poles, or by XXX Corps when it arrived on the southern bank. After nine days of fighting, the shattered remains of the airborne forces were eventually withdrawn south of the Rhine. 1st Airborne lost 8,000 men during the battle and never saw combat again.
Norway post-war
In May 1945, immediately after the Allied Victory in Europe Day, the 1st Airborne Division was sent to disarm and repatriate the 350,000-strong German occupation army in Norway. The division maintained law and order until the arrival of the occupation force, Force 134. During its time in Norway, the division was tasked with supervising the surrender of the German forces in Norway, as well as preventing the sabotage of important military and civilian facilities.
The German Instrument of Surrender was delivered on 8 May to General Franz Böhme, the commander of all German forces stationed in Norway; the 1st Airborne Division landed near Oslo and Stavanger between 9 and 11 May. Most of the transport aircraft carrying the division landed safely, but one crash caused several fatalities. The division encountered little of the expected German resistance. Operational duties included welcoming back King Haakon, looking after Allied ex-prisoners of war, arresting war criminals and supervising the clearing of minefields. While in Norway, the division was also able to investigate what happened to the airborne troops that had taken part in Operation Freshman. The division returned to Britain, and was disbanded on 26 August 1945.
Order of battle
The division had the following composition:
Commanders
Commanders of the division included;
1943—1944 Major General Sir Frederick Arthur Montague Browning GCVO KBE CB DSO
1944—1945 Major General Robert Elliott Urquhart CB DSO
Units
1st Parachute Brigade
1st Airlanding Brigade
2nd Parachute Brigade
3rd Parachute Brigade
4th Parachute Brigade
Divisional troops
Divisional headquarters and signal squadron
1st Airlanding Light Regiment, Royal Artillery
1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery
204th (Oban) Independent Anti-Tank Battery (later 2nd Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery)
1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery
5th Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery
283rd Light Anti-Aircraft (LAA) Battery (later 1st (City of London Yeomanry) Airlanding LAA Battery) (left 21 February 1944)
1st Forward (Airborne) Observation Unit, Royal Artillery
21st Independent Parachute Company, Army Air Corps
1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron
9th (Airborne) Field Company, Royal Engineers
261st (Airborne) Field Park Company, Royal Engineers
591st (Antrim) Airborne Squadron, Royal Engineers (from 1 June 1945)
250th (Airborne) Light Company, Royal Army Service Corps
93rd Company, Royal Army Service Corps
Detachment Ordnance Field Park
Detachment, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Workshop
89th Field Security Section, Intelligence Corps
1st Airborne Division, Provost Company, Royal Military Police
See also
Theirs is the Glory
List of British divisions in World War II
Notes
Footnotes
Citations
References
British World War II divisions
Airborne divisions of the United Kingdom
Airborne Division (United Kingdom)
Military units and formations of the British Empire in World War II
Airborne Division UK
Airborne Division UK
Airborne Division (United Kingdom)
Operation Market Garden
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick%20Browning
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Frederick Browning
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Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Arthur Montague "Boy" Browning, (20 December 1896 – 14 March 1965) was a senior officer of the British Army who has been called the "father of the British airborne forces". He was also an Olympic bobsleigh competitor, and the husband of author Daphne du Maurier.
Educated at Eton College and then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Browning was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Grenadier Guards in 1915. During the First World War, he fought on the Western Front, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for conspicuous gallantry during the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917. In September 1918, he became aide de camp to General Sir Henry Rawlinson.
During the Second World War, Browning commanded the 1st Airborne Division and I Airborne Corps and was also the deputy commander of First Allied Airborne Army during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. During the planning for this operation, he was alleged to have said: "I think we might be going a bridge too far." In December 1944 he became Chief of Staff of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command. From September 1946 to January 1948, he was Military Secretary of the War Office.
In January 1948, Browning became Comptroller and Treasurer to Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh. After she ascended to the throne to become Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, he became treasurer in the Office of the Duke of Edinburgh. He suffered a severe nervous breakdown in 1957 and retired in 1959. He died at Menabilly, the mansion that inspired his wife's novel Rebecca, on 14 March 1965.
Early life
Frederick Arthur Montague Browning was born on 20 December 1896 at his family home in Kensington, London. The house was later demolished to make way for an expansion of Harrods, allowing him to claim in later life that he had been born in its piano department. He was the first son of Frederick Henry Browning, a wine merchant, and his wife Anne "Nancy" née Alt. He had one sibling, an older sister, Helen Grace. From an early age, he was known to his family as "Tommy". He was educated at West Downs School and Eton College, which his grandfather had attended. While at Eton, he joined the Officer Training Corps.
First World War
Browning sat the entrance examinations for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, on 24 November 1914. Although he did not achieve the necessary scores in all the required subjects, the headmasters of some schools, including Eton, were in a position to recommend students for nomination by the Army Council. The headmaster of Eton, Edward Lyttelton, put Browning's name forward and in this way he entered Sandhurst on 27 December 1914. He graduated on 16 June 1915, and was commissioned a second lieutenant into the Grenadier Guards. Joining such an exclusive regiment, even in wartime, required a personal introduction and an interview by the regimental commander, Colonel Sir Henry Streatfeild.
Initially, Browning joined the 4th Battalion, Grenadier Guards, which was training at Bovington Camp. When it departed for the Western Front in August 1915, he was transferred to the 5th (Reserve) Battalion. In October 1915 he left it to join the 2nd Battalion at the front. The battalion formed part of the 1st Guards Brigade of the Guards Division. Around this time he acquired the nickname "Boy". For a time he served in the same company of 2nd Battalion as Major Winston Churchill. Upon Churchill's arrival, Browning was given the job of showing him the company's trenches. When Browning discovered that Churchill had no greatcoat, Browning gave Churchill his own.
Browning was invalided back to England with trench fever in January 1916, and, although only hospitalised for four weeks, did not rejoin the 2nd Battalion at the front until 6 October 1916. After being released from hospital, he went on leave for two months. In April he was posted to the 5th (Reserve) Battalion, and then to the Guards Depot at Caterham Barracks. He was assessed each month by a medical board at Caxton Hall, and was not passed as fit for service at the front until 20 September.
Browning fought in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October and the Battle of Cambrai in November. He distinguished himself in this battle, for which he received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The order was generally given to officers in command, above the rank of captain. When a junior officer like Browning, who was still only a lieutenant, was awarded the DSO, this was often regarded as an acknowledgement that the officer had only just missed out on being awarded the Victoria Cross. His citation read:
He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre on 14 December 1917, and was mentioned in despatches on 23 May 1918. In September 1918, during the Hundred Days Offensive which saw the tide of the war turn in favour of the Allies, Browning temporarily became aide de camp to General Sir Henry Rawlinson, commander of the British Fourth Army. The appointment only lasted a few weeks, however, before Browning returned to his regiment in early November. He was promoted to the temporary rank of captain, and appointed adjutant of the 1st Grenadier Guards, then part of the 3rd Guards Brigade of the Guards Division, in November 1918.
Inter-war period
Browning was granted the substantive rank of captain on 24 November 1920. He retained his post as adjutant until November 1921, when he was posted to the Guards' Depot at Caterham Barracks. In 1924 he was posted to Sandhurst as adjutant. He was the first adjutant, during the Sovereign's Parade of 1926, to ride his horse (named "The Vicar") up the steps of Old College and to dismount in the Grand Entrance. There is no satisfactory explanation as to why he did it. After the Second World War this became an enduring tradition, but since horses have great difficulty going down steps, a ramp is now provided for the horse to return.
Other members of staff at Sandhurst at the time included Richard O'Connor, Miles Dempsey, Douglas Gracey, Ronald Brittain and Eric Dorman-Smith. Dorman-Smith and Browning became close friends. Browning relinquished the appointment of adjutant at Sandhurst on 28 April 1928, and was promoted to major on 22 May 1928. Following a pattern whereby tours of duty away from the regiment alternated with those in it, he was sent for a refresher course at the Small Arms School before being posted to the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards, at Pirbright.
His workload was very light, allowing plenty of time for sport. Browning competed in the Amateur Athletic Association of England championships in hurdling but failed to make Olympic selection. He did however make the Olympic five-man bobsleigh team as brake-man. An injury incurred during a training accident prevented his participation in the bobsleigh at the 1924 Winter Olympics, but he competed in the bobsleigh at the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in which his team finished tenth. Browning was also a keen sailor, competing in the Household Cavalry Sailing Regatta at Chichester Harbour in 1930. He purchased his own motor boat, a cabin cruiser that he named Ygdrasil.
In 1931, Browning read Daphne du Maurier's novel The Loving Spirit and, impressed by its graphic depictions of the Cornish coastline, set out to see it for himself on Ygdrasil. Afterwards, he left the boat moored in the River Fowey for the winter, and returned in April 1932 to collect it. He heard that the author of the book that had impressed him so much was convalescing from an appendix operation, and invited her out on his boat. After a short romance, he proposed to her but she rejected this, as she did not believe in marriage. Dorman-Smith visited her and explained that it would be disastrous for Browning's career for him to live with Du Maurier without marriage. Du Maurier then proposed to Browning, who accepted. They were married in a simple ceremony at the Church of St Willow, Lanteglos-by-Fowey on 19 July 1932, and honeymooned on Ygdrasil. Their marriage produced three children: two daughters, Tessa (later second wife of David Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, son and heir of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery) and Flavia (later wife of General Sir Peter Leng), and a son, Christian, known as Kits.
Browning was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 1 February 1936, and was appointed commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards. The battalion was deployed to Egypt in 1936 and returned in December 1937. His term as commander ended on 1 August 1939; he was removed from the Grenadier Guards' regimental list but remained on full pay. On 1 September, he was promoted to colonel, with his seniority backdated to 1 February 1939, and became Commandant of the Small Arms School.
Second World War
Airborne troops
Establishment
In mid-May 1940, eight months after the outbreak of the Second World War, Browning, promoted to brigadier, was given command of the 128th (Hampshire) Infantry Brigade (consisting of the 1/4th, 2/4th and 5th Battalions of the Hampshire Regiment). Part of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, which was then commanded by Major-General Robert Pollok, the brigade was a Territorial Army unit that was preparing to join the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France. This was pre-empted by the Dunkirk evacuation and the subsequent fall of France in June, and the division instead assumed a defensive posture. The next few months were spent in numerous activities, the most important of which was training to repel a German invasion of Britain. The severe shortage of equipment that plagued the army during this time made Browning's already formidable task even more difficult. Despite this, he managed to impress his superiors, including his immediate superior, Pollok, who was inspired by the way in which Browning's brigade responded to his command. He recommended Browning for the command of a division, as did Lieutenant-General Francis Nosworthy, commanding IV Corps (the 43rd Division's parent formation), and Lieutenant-General Guy Williams, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Eastern Command, although all three believed that Browning needed more time and experience.
In late February 1941, after handing over the brigade to Brigadier Manley James, Browning succeeded Brigadier The Hon. William Fraser, a fellow Grenadier Guardsman and an old friend, in command of the 24th Guards Brigade Group. Such was his popularity by now within the 128th Brigade, that when Browning left his old command many members of the brigade turned out to cheer him on and wish him well. While the 24th Brigade was not a division, it was perhaps the next best thing to one. The brigade group's objective was to defend London from an attack from the south.
On 3 November 1941, Browning was promoted to the acting rank of major-general, and appointed as the first General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the newly created 1st Airborne Division. The division initially comprised the 1st Parachute Brigade, under Brigadier Richard Gale, and the 1st Airlanding Brigade, under Brigadier George Hopkinson. In this new role he was instrumental in parachutists adopting the maroon beret, and assigned an artist, Major Edward Seago, to design the Parachute Regiment's emblem of the warrior Bellerophon riding Pegasus, the winged horse. Because of this he has been called the "father of the British airborne forces". Browning designed his own uniform. He qualified as a pilot in 1942, and henceforth wore the Army Air Corps wings, which he also designed.
Training
Browning supervised the newly formed division as it underwent a prolonged period of expansion and intensive training, with new brigades raised and assigned to the division, and new equipment tested. Though not considered an airborne warfare visionary, he proved adept at dealing with the War Office and Air Ministry, and demonstrated a knack for overcoming bureaucratic obstacles. As the airborne forces expanded in size, the major difficulty in getting the 1st Airborne Division ready for operations was a shortage of aircraft. The Royal Air Force (RAF) had neglected air transport before the war, and the only available aircraft for airborne troops were conversions of obsolete bombers like the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, in particular, felt that the 1st Airborne Division was not worth the drain on RAF Bomber Command's resources.
When Churchill, who was now the Prime Minister, and General George C. Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, visited the 1st Airborne Division on 16 April 1942, they were treated to a demonstration involving every available aircraft of No. 38 Wing RAF—12 Whitleys and nine Hawker Hector biplanes towing General Aircraft Hotspur gliders. At a meeting on 6 May chaired by Churchill, Browning was asked what he required. He stated that he needed 96 aircraft to get the 1st Airborne Division battle-ready. Churchill directed Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal to find the required aircraft, and Portal agreed to supply 83 Whitleys, along with 10 Halifax bombers to tow the new, larger General Aircraft Hamilcar gliders.
In July 1942, Browning travelled to the United States, where he toured airborne training facilities with his American counterpart, Major-General William C. Lee, who soon took command of the US 101st Airborne Division. Browning's tendency to lecture the Americans on airborne warfare made him few friends among the Americans, who felt that the British were still novices themselves. Browning was envious of the Americans' equipment, particularly the Dakota transports. On returning to the United Kingdom in early August, he arranged for a joint exercise to be conducted with the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment (2/503) and the 1st Airlanding Brigade, with the 1st Parachute Brigade and the 2nd (Armoured) Battalion of the Irish Guards.
Operation Torch
In mid–September, as the 1st Airborne Division was coming close to reaching full strength, Browning was informed that Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, would take place in November. When he found that the 2/503 was to take part, Browning argued that a larger airborne force should be utilised, as the vast distances and comparatively light opposition would provide opportunities for airborne operations. The War Office and the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, General Sir Bernard Paget, were won over by Browning's arguments, and agreed to detach the 1st Parachute Brigade, now under Brigadier Edwin Flavell, from 1st Airborne Division and place it under the command of US Lieutenant-General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would command all Allied troops participating in the invasion. After it had been brought to full operational strength, partly by cross-posting personnel from the newly formed 2nd Parachute Brigade, under Brigadier Ernest Down, and had been provided with sufficient equipment and resources, the brigade departed for North Africa at the beginning of November.
The results of British airborne operations in North Africa were mixed, and the subject of a detailed report by Browning. The airborne troops had operated under several handicaps, including shortages of aerial photographs and maps of the target area. All the troop carrier aircrew were American, who lacked familiarity with airborne operations and in dealing with British troops and equipment. Browning felt that the inexperience with handling airborne operations extended to Eisenhower's Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) and that of the British First Army, resulting in the paratroops being misused. He felt that had they been employed more aggressively and in greater strength they might have shortened the Tunisian campaign by some months. The 1st Parachute Brigade was called the "Rote Teufel" ("Red Devils") by the German troops they had fought. Browning pointed out to the brigade that this was an honour, as "distinctions given by the enemy are seldom won in battle except by the finest fighting troops." The title was officially confirmed by General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the Allied 18th Army Group, and henceforth it applied to all British airborne troops.
Allied Force Headquarters posting
On 1 January 1943, Browning was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath. He relinquished command of the 1st Airborne Division to Hopkinson in March 1943 to take up a new post as Major-General, Airborne Forces at Eisenhower's AFHQ. He soon clashed with the commander of the American 82nd Airborne Division, Major-General Matthew Ridgway. When Browning asked to see the plans for Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, Ridgway replied that they would not be available for scrutiny until after they had been approved by the US Seventh Army commander, Lieutenant-General George S. Patton. When Browning protested, Patton backed Ridgway, but Eisenhower and his chief of staff, Major-General Walter Bedell Smith, supported Browning and forced them to back down.
Browning's dealings with the British Army were no smoother. Hopkinson sold the British Eighth Army commander, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, on Operation Ladbroke, a glider landing to seize the Ponte Grande road bridge south of Syracuse. Browning's objections to the operation were ignored, and attempts to discuss airborne operations with the corps commanders elicited a directive from Montgomery that all such discussion had to go through him. The operation was a disaster, as Browning had predicted. Inexperienced aircrew released the gliders too early, and many crashed into the sea; 252 soldiers were drowned. Those that made it to land were scattered over a wide area. The troops captured their objective, but were driven off by an Italian counterattack. Browning concluded that to be effective, the airborne advisor had to have equal rank with the army commanders.
In September 1943, Browning travelled to India, where he inspected the 50th Parachute Brigade, and met with Major-General Orde Wingate, the commander of the Chindits. Browning held a series of meetings with General Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief, India; Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, the Air Officer Commander-in-Chief; and Lieutenant-General Sir George Giffard, the GOC Eastern Army. They discussed plans for improving the airborne establishment in India and expanding the airborne force there to a division. As a result of these discussions, and Browning's subsequent report to the War Office, the 44th Indian Airborne Division was formed in October 1944. Browning sent his most experienced airborne commander, Major-General Ernest Down, to India as GOC of the 44th Division. Formerly the commander of the 2nd Parachute Brigade, Down had succeeded Hopkinson as GOC 1st Airborne Division after Hopkinson had been killed in Italy. Down's replacement as GOC 1st Airborne Division was Montgomery's selection, Major-General Roy Urquhart, an officer with no airborne experience, rather than Browning's choice, Brigadier Gerald Lathbury of the 1st Parachute Brigade. The decision was to become controversial.
US Brigadier-General James M. Gavin, recalled that when he travelled to England in November 1943 to assume command of the 82nd Airborne Division, Ridgway "cautioned me against the machinations and scheming of General F. M. Browning, who was the senior British airborne officer, and well he should have." Gavin was taken aback by Browning's criticism of Ridgway on the grounds that he had not parachuted into Sicily with his troops. US Major-General Ray Barker, who worked in Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), warned him that Browning was "an empire builder", an assessment with which Gavin came to agree.
Operation Market Garden
Browning assumed a new command on 4 December 1943. His Directive No. 1 announced that "the title of the force is Headquarters, Airborne Troops (21st Army Group). All correspondence will bear the official title, but verbally it will be known as the Airborne Corps and I will be referred to as the Corps Commander." He was promoted to lieutenant-general on 7 January 1944, with his seniority backdated to 9 December 1943. He officially became commander of I Airborne Corps on 16 April 1944.
I Airborne Corps became part of the First Allied Airborne Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Lewis H. Brereton, in August 1944. While retaining command of the corps, Browning also became Deputy Commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, despite a poor relationship with Brereton and being disliked by many American officers. During preparations for one of many cancelled operations, Linnete II, his disagreement with Brereton over a risky operation caused him to threaten resignation, which, due to differences in military culture, Brereton regarded as tantamount to disobeying an order. Browning was forced to back down.
When I Airborne Corps was committed to action in Operation Market Garden in September 1944, Browning's rift with Brereton had severe repercussions. Browning was concerned about the timetable put forward by Major-General Paul L. Williams of the IX Troop Carrier Command, under which the drop was staggered over several days, with only one drop on the first day. This restricted the number of combat troops that would be available on the first day. He also disagreed with the British drop zones proposed by Air Vice Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst of No. 38 Group, which he felt were too distant from the bridge at Arnhem, but Browning felt unable to challenge the airmen.
Browning downplayed Ultra evidence brought to him by his intelligence officer, Major Brian Urquhart, that the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen and the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg were in the Arnhem area, but was not as confident as he led his subordinates to believe. According to Major-General Roy Urquhart, when informed that his airborne troops would have to hold the bridge for two days, Browning responded that they could hold it for four, but later claimed that he had added: "But I think we might be going a bridge too far."
Browning landed by gliders with a tactical headquarters near Nijmegen with Gavin's 82nd Airborne Division. His use of 38 aircraft to move his corps headquarters on the first lift has been criticised. Half of these gliders carried signal equipment but for much of the operation he had no contact with either the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem or Major-General Maxwell D. Taylor's US 101st Airborne Division at Eindhoven. His headquarters had not been envisaged as a frontline unit, and the signals section that had been hastily assembled just weeks before lacked training and experience. In his pack, Browning carried three teddy bears and a framed print of Albrecht Dürer's The Praying Hands. After the war, Gavin was criticised for the decision to secure the high ground around Groesbeek before attempting the capture of the road and the railway bridges at Nijmegen. Browning took responsibility for this, noting that he "personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it". Gavin's opinion of Browning was uncomplimentary: "There is no doubt that in our system he would have been summarily relieved and sent home in disgrace."
Browning was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta (II class) by the Polish government-in-exile, but his critical evaluation of the contribution of Polish forces led to the removal of Major-General Stanisław Sosabowski as commanding officer of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. Some writers later claimed that Sosabowski had been made a scapegoat for the failure of Market Garden. Montgomery attached no blame to Browning or any of his subordinates, or indeed acknowledged failure at all. He told Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, that he would like Browning to take over VIII Corps in the event that Sir Richard O'Connor, the GOC, was transferred to another theatre.
South East Asia Command
Events took a different course. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command (SEAC), had need of a new chief of staff owing to the poor health of Lieutenant-General Henry Pownall. Brooke turned down Mountbatten's initial request for either Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Nye or Lieutenant-General Sir John Swayne. He then offered Browning for the post, and Mountbatten accepted. Pownall considered that Browning was "excellently qualified" for the post, although Browning had no staff college training and had never held a staff job before. Pownall noted that his "only reservation is that I believe [Browning] is rather nervy and highly strung". For his services as a corps commander, Browning was mentioned in despatches a second time, and was awarded the Legion of Merit in the degree of Commander by the United States government.
Browning served in South East Asia from December 1944 until July 1946; Mountbatten soon came to regard him as indispensable. Browning had an American deputy, Major-General Horace H. Fuller, and brought staff with him from Europe to SEAC headquarters in Kandy, Ceylon. For his services at SEAC, Browning was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1946. His last major military post was as Military Secretary of the War Office from 16 September 1946 to January 1948, although he did not formally retire from the Army until 5 April 1948.
Later life
In January 1948, Browning became Comptroller and Treasurer to Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth. This appointment was made on the recommendation of Lord Mountbatten, whose nephew Philip Mountbatten was the Duke of Edinburgh. As such, Browning became the head of the Princess' personal staff. Browning also juggled other duties. In 1948 he was involved with the 1948 Summer Olympics as Deputy Chairman of the British Olympic Association, and commandant of the British team. From 1944 to 1962 he was Commodore of the Royal Fowey Yacht Club; on stepping down in 1962, he was elected its first admiral.
Upon the death of King George VI in 1952, the Princess Elizabeth came to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II, and Browning and his staff became redundant, as the Queen was served by the large staff of the monarch. The domestic staff remained at Clarence House, where they continued to serve the Queen Mother; the remainder were reorganised as the Office of the Duke of Edinburgh, with Browning as treasurer, the head of the office, and moved into a new and larger office at Buckingham Palace. Like the Duke they served, the office had no constitutional role, but supported his sporting, cultural and scientific interests. Browning became involved with the Cutty Sark Trust, set up to preserve the famous ship, and the administration of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award. In June 1953, Browning and du Maurier attended the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Browning had been drinking since the war, but it now became chronic. This led to a severe nervous breakdown in July 1957, forcing his resignation from his position at the Palace in 1959. Du Maurier had known he had a mistress in Fowey, but his breakdown brought to light two other girlfriends in London. For her part, du Maurier confessed to her own wartime affair. For his services to the Royal Household, Browning was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1953, and was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the order in 1959. He retreated to Menabilly, the mansion that had inspired du Maurier's novel Rebecca, which she had leased and restored in 1943. He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall in March 1960. Browning caused a scandal in 1963 when, under the influence of prescription drugs and alcohol, he was involved in an automobile accident in which two people were injured. He was fined £50 and forced to pay court and medical costs. He died from a heart attack at Menabilly on 14 March 1965.
Legacy
Browning was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde in the film A Bridge Too Far, which was based on the events of Operation Market Garden. A copy of Browning's uniform was made to Bogarde's measurements from the original in the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces Museum. Du Maurier responded angrily to early reports of how Browning was portrayed, and wrote to Mountbatten, urging him to boycott the premiere. He did not do so, explaining that proceeds were going to a charity that he supported. After seeing the film he wrote back that he could find nothing detrimental to Browning in it, and did not think that Browning's reputation had been tarnished. He pointed out that Operation Market Garden was a disaster, and blame had to be shared by those in charge, which included Browning. The Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces Museum, which opened in 1969, was for many years located in Browning Barracks at Aldershot, which had been built in 1964 and named after him. It remained the depot of the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces until 1993. The museum moved to the Imperial War Museum Duxford in 2008, and Browning Barracks was sold for housing development.
Notes
References
External links
British Army Officers 1939−1945
Generals of World War II
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1896 births
1965 deaths
Airborne warfare
Bobsledders at the 1928 Winter Olympics
British Army generals of World War II
British Army personnel of World War I
British male bobsledders
Frederick
Commanders of the Legion of Merit
Companions of the Distinguished Service Order
Companions of the Order of the Bath
Deputy Lieutenants of Cornwall
Du Maurier family
Foreign recipients of the Legion of Merit
Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
Grenadier Guards officers
Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Knights Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
Olympic bobsledders for Great Britain
People educated at Eton College
People educated at West Downs School
Military personnel from Kensington
Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)
Recipients of the Order of Polonia Restituta
Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Academics of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
British Army lieutenant generals
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cebu%20Pacific
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Cebu Pacific
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Cebu Air, Inc., operating as Cebu Pacific (), is a Philippine low-cost airline based at Pasay in Metro Manila. Founded in 1988, it is Asia's oldest low-cost airline. It offers scheduled flights to both domestic and international destinations. The airline operates flights from two primary hubs in Cebu and Manila, five secondary hubs in Cagayan de Oro, Clark, Davao, Iloilo, and Kalibo, and a focus city in Zamboanga.
With its low-cost business model and its extensive destination network, Cebu Pacific became the Philippines' largest airline based on number of passengers flown on domestic and international routes in 2010, overtaking rival Philippine Airlines (PAL). According to Civil Aeronautics Board data, Cebu Pacific flew 2.45 million total passengers in the first quarter of 2010, nearly 110,000 more than PAL, which carried 2.34 million systemwide during the same period.
The airline has been criticized for its frequent flight delays and cancellations and unsatisfactory service to the passengers, prompting investigations by the Philippine government.
History
Foundation and growth (1988–2006)
The airline was established on August 26, 1988. Republic Act No. 7151, which grants a legislative franchise to Cebu Air, Inc. to operate was approved on August 30, 1991. It started operations on March 8, 1996, with its first flight from Manila to Cebu. Domestic services commenced following market deregulation by the Philippine government. The airline was subsequently acquired by JG Summit Holdings, which was at the time, owned by John Gokongwei. It temporarily ceased operations in February 1998 after being grounded by the government due to an accident that killed 104 people but resumed services later the next month following re-certification of its aircraft. It initially started with 24 domestic flights daily among Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, and Metro Davao. By the end of 2001, its operations had grown to about 80 daily flights to 18 domestic destinations.
In the 2000s, Cebu Pacific was granted rights to operate international flights to the region, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Guam. International flights were launched on November 22, 2001, with a twice-daily service to Hong Kong. On March 1, 2002, it commenced thrice-weekly flights to Seoul. Other regional flights were introduced and suspended later; however, including flights to Singapore (from November 6, 2002, to January 2003) and from Manila via Subic to Seoul (from December 2002) due in part to the effects of the SARS epidemic.
In November 2005, Cebu Pacific launched its "Go Fares" promo, reducing its air fares by half to increase the airline's revenue by twenty percent. Following this, the airline gained a significant increase in passengers. Cebu Pacific President Lance Gokongwei said that the low fares aim to attract more people to travel by air.
The airline resumed its Manila–Singapore flights on August 31, 2006 and launched its direct flight from Cebu to Singapore on October 23, 2006, the first low-cost airline to serve the Cebu-Singapore-Cebu sector, and in direct competition with Singapore Airlines' subsidiary SilkAir, CEB was the only Philippine carrier serving the Cebu-Singapore-Cebu route for years until Philippine Airlines resumed its direct service in 2017. The airline operates direct flights from Cebu to Hong Kong which commenced October 2, 2006, which also made CEB the only Philippine carrier to serve a Cebu-Hong Kong-Cebu route after PAL terminated its direct service and is now code-sharing with Cathay Pacific for this route.
Cebu Pacific's plans to begin international flights from Clark in 2007 were initially unsuccessful when its request was denied. The nations involved came to an agreement that Cebu Pacific would be only allowed to operate charter flights from Clark to the respective countries' airport(s). Only Singapore initially agreed to allow Cebu Pacific to fly scheduled flights from Clark to Singapore. It later expanded its routes from Clark to Cebu, Davao, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tokyo.
Expansion and re-branding (2007–2020)
In November 2007, Cebu Pacific opened a hub at Francisco Bangoy International Airport in Davao City, its fourth hub after Manila, Cebu, and Clark. It later launched direct services from Davao to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Iloilo in May 2008. In late 2007, Cebu Pacific announced plans to launch non-stop flights to the United States West Coast, Houston, Texas and Chicago, Illinois by mid-2009.
On May 28, 2008, Cebu Pacific was named as the world's number one airline in terms of growth. The airline was also ranked fifth in Asia for Budget Airline passengers transported and 23rd in the world. The airline carried a total of almost 5.5 million passengers in 2007, an increase of 57.4 percent from 2006. On November 20, 2008, it launched direct flights from Manila to Osaka, making it the airline's first destination in Japan.
In August 2009, Cebu Pacific became the first airline in the Philippines to use social media. The airline created a fan page on Facebook and Twitter.
In October 2010, the airline completed an initial public offering of 30.4% of outstanding shares. It raised prior to an exercise of an overallotment option and was the largest IPO made by a low-cost carrier.
In January 2011, Cebu Pacific flew its 50 millionth passenger.
On July 16, 2012, Cebu Pacific announced Iloilo International Airport as its fifth hub, which opened on November 8. Direct flights were launched from Iloilo to Hong Kong, General Santos, Singapore, and Puerto Princesa. On August 2, 2012, it opened a hub in Kalibo and launched direct flights to Davao and Puerto Princesa. That same year, Cebu Pacific planned to commence international long-haul flights to the Middle East, the United States, Australia, and some parts of Europe using the Airbus A330-300. The first long-haul flight commenced to Dubai, United Arab Emirates on October 7, 2013. Cebu Pacific is also applying for rights for a daily service to Auckland, New Zealand. Three Japanese destinations were later added to its network: on March 30, 2014, it launched direct flights to Tokyo and Nagoya, followed by Fukuoka on December 17, 2015.
The airline flew its 100 millionth passenger in January 2015. On June 1, 2015, Cebu Pacific revealed its new logo that represents the colors of the Philippines and also symbolizes as an evolution of a low-cost pioneer. The airline received its first Airbus A320 painted in the new livery on January 22, 2016.
Cebu Pacific opened its seventh hub in Cagayan de Oro (Laguindingan Airport) on October 20, 2017, and launched direct flights to Dumaguete and Caticlan. That same month, it flew its 150 millionth passenger. In 2018, Cebu Pacific launched flights to Basco (Batanes) and Melbourne.
COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recovery (2020–present)
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the operations of the airline and its regional subsidiary. All operations were suspended during the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon in 2020. Due to low passenger demand, the airline laid off 1,300 employees that year, and sent many aircraft to indefinite storage. In 2021, Cebu Pacific raised a total of (US$) to help the airline recover from the pandemic.
As travel demand recovers, it started rehiring retrenched employees in November 2021. By December 2022, the airline operated at 92% of pre-pandemic levels. The airline resumed flights to China in early 2023 as the country, being an important market for tourism in the Philippines, lifted travel restrictions.
In March 2022, Cebu Pacific flew its 200 millionth passenger.
In the first quarter of 2023, Cebu Pacific reported its first profitable quarter, after three consecutive financial years of losses. On April 21, 2023, Cebu Pacific reopened its Pampanga hub at Clark International Airport.
Environmental initiatives
As part of the airline's modernization and environmental initiatives, Cebu Pacific is replacing its existing aircraft with new fuel-efficient aircraft by 2028. In addition, the airline used sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) initially on its delivery flights, before using SAF on a commercial passenger flight from Singapore to Manila on September 28, 2022, using an Airbus A321neo. The airline also signed a five-year agreement with Shell Aviation that would supply 25,000 metric tons of SAF to Cebu Pacific.
On October 19, 2023, Cebu Pacific signed another five-year agreement with Neste, one of the largest producers of sustainable aviation fuel. The airline then completed its second SAF-powered flight on October 25, from Narita International Airport to Manila, also performed by an A321neo.
Corporate affairs
Cebu Pacific is headquarted at the Cebu Pacific Building along Domestic Road in Pasay City. The airline is a subsidiary of JG Summit Holdings.
Partnerships
Cebu Pacific was the only Philippines-based member airline of Northwest Airlines' WorldPerks award travel program. WorldPerks offered regular travellers the ability to obtain free tickets, first-class upgrades on flights and other types of rewards. On August 1, 2006, Northwest and Cebu Pacific ended their mileage-accrual agreement.
On May 16, 2016, Cebu Pacific became a founding member of the world's largest low-cost carrier alliance, Value Alliance. It joined other pioneer members Singapore's Scoot, South Korea's Jeju Air, Thailand's Nok Air and NokScoot, Tigerair, Tigerair Australia, and Japan's Vanilla Air in the low-cost carrier network. Cebu Pacific is also currently the only Philippine carrier which is a member of an airline alliance.
Subsidiaries
Cebgo is the airline's regional subsidiary. It operates an all-turboprop fleet of ATR 72-600 aircraft and is used in regional domestic routes. It was founded in May 2015 following the acquisition of Tigerair Philippines by Cebu Pacific.
Cebu Pacific Cargo operates two dedicated cargo turboprop aircraft. The airline announced in 2018 that it would enter the dedicated cargo market to support the increase in demand for logistics.
Business highlights
Destinations
Fleet
Current fleet
, Cebu Pacific operates an all-Airbus fleet composed of the following aircraft:
Gallery
Fleet development
The airline previously operated a combined fleet of jet and turboprop aircraft. In 2007, Cebu Pacific ordered six ATR 72-500 turboprop aircraft for its regional domestic flights. The ATR aircraft were transferred to its regional subsidiary Cebgo in 2015. In the same year, Cebu Pacific ceased turboprop operations, while Cebgo ceased jet operations with the return of its last Airbus A320 to its parent company.
On June 18, 2019, Cebu Pacific announced an order for 31 Airbus aircraft at that year's Paris Air Show, consisting of five A320neos, sixteen A330neos, and ten A321XLRs, in a deal worth US$6.8 billion at list prices. These were ordered as part of its fleet modernization, seeking to replace its older aging fleet with newer, fuel-efficient planes.
To prepare for the anticipated doubling of travel demand in Southeast Asia, the airline is set to order 100 to 150 aircraft—the largest order of any Philippine-based airline—in a deal worth US$12 billion at list prices. The order is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2024.
Airbus A320
In 2004, Cebu Pacific signed a purchase agreement with Airbus for the lease of two A320s and the acquisition of twelve A319s to replace its existing fleet of Boeing 757 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft. It later ordered seven additional A320s. Cebu Pacific received its first A320 in 2005, while the airline received its first A320neo in 2019. The A320s supported the airline's expanding international and domestic operations.
On June 30, 2023, the airline took delivery of its first plane assembled in China — an Airbus A320neo built at Airbus' final assembly line at Tianjin Binhai International Airport.
Airbus A321
In June 2011, Cebu Pacific signed a memorandum of understanding for 30 Airbus A321neos including nine leased that will help the airline's growth and development. The deal was finalized in August 2011, with deliveries commencing in 2017. However, due to problems with the Pratt & Whitney engines, the deliveries were delayed. Instead, in June of that year, the airline ordered seven A321ceos to meet ongoing strong growth on its domestic and regional network.
The first 230-seater A321ceo was delivered on March 22, 2018. On January 20, 2019, the airline received its first 236-seater A321neo, registered as RP-C4118 and powered with Pratt & Whitney engines. It later ordered ten A321XLRs in June of the same year, making Cebu Pacific as one of the few launch customers of the then-newly-launched long-range narrow-body plane.
Airbus A330
In 2007, the airline ordered six A330-300s to operate Middle East destinations such as Dubai, East Asia routes such as Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo, and Southeast Asia cities such as Bangkok and Singapore. It will also be used in the domestic sector, namely flights to Cebu, Davao, and General Santos. Cebu Pacific received its first A330-300 on June 15, 2013. In 2016, the carrier then added two more A330s on its orders to complement earlier fleet in operating new long-haul routes, such as Sydney and Melbourne. Currently in October 2023, Cebu Pacific is only operating one A330-300 namely RP-C3348 that had its last commercial flight being 5J018 and 5J019 from Manila to Dubai and vice versa.
On November 4, 2019, Cebu Pacific finalized an order of 16 Airbus A330neos to replace the Airbus A330ceos. On November 28, 2021, the airline received its first 459-seater A330-900, with registration RP-C3900.
Former fleet
Gallery
Criticism and controversies
Customer service and punctuality
Cebu Pacific has been criticized for its poor passenger service, alleged overbooking, flight delays and cancellations. For instance, the airline was also criticized for lack of coordination in the aftermath of the runway excursion incident at Francisco Bangoy International Airport in 2013 and the numerous flight cancellations and delays during the December 2014 Christmas peak season.
In January 2018, Cebu Pacific was named as one of the world's least punctual airlines, with an on-time performance of 57.6 percent in 2017 based on data from OAG. Also included in the list from the Philippines is another low-cost airline, Philippines AirAsia, with an on-time performance of 58.0 percent.
The airline was again criticized in 2023 because of its "unsatisfactory" service to passengers, prompting the Senate of the Philippines to begin an investigation on June 21, 2023.
Other controversies
In October 2010, a video uploaded to YouTube showing female flight attendants dancing to Lady Gaga's Just Dance and Katy Perry's California Gurls drew international attention. Despite its popularity, it was criticized by the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (FASAP), referring it as "sexist and gender-insensitive". That same month, the airline was criticized again for its dancing male crew.
Accidents and incidents
On February 2, 1998, Cebu Pacific Flight 387, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 flying from Manila to Cagayan de Oro, crashed on the slopes of Mount Sumagaya in Misamis Oriental, killing all 104 people on board during its approach to Lumbia Airport.
On July 28, 2010, Cebu Pacific Flight 509, an ATR 72-500, bounced while landing at Manila after a flight from Tuguegarao Airport. The pilots performed a go-around and discovered that they could not retract the landing gear. The plane made a priority landing on runway 13. The aircraft (RP-C7254) was declared a hull loss.
On June 2, 2013, Cebu Pacific Flight 971, an Airbus A320-200 registered as RP-C3266 and carrying 165 passengers inbound from Manila, ran off the runway at Francisco Bangoy International Airport and investigators have found the cause was likely human error. There were no fatalities, however, the plane was heavily damaged. In 2014, the plane returned to service after six months of repairs and maintenance checks.
On August 4, 2017, Cebu Pacific Flight 570, an Airbus A330-300 registered as RP-C3341, due to a nosegear fault, went off the runway stopping on soft ground while taxiing for departure at Mactan–Cebu International Airport. There were no injuries, however, the aircraft incurred minor damage. The runway was closed until the aircraft was moved back on to a paved surface. It was rated as an Incident by CAAP and is under investigation.
On October 13, 2017, Cebu Pacific Flight 461, an Airbus A320-200 registered as RP-C3237, veered to the side of the runway at Iloilo International Airport. No injuries were reported.
On April 23, 2018, Cebu Pacific Flight 849, an Airbus A320-200 registered as RP-C4105, flew from Manila to Zamboanga with 172 people on board, safely landed on Zamboanga International Airport's runway and was about to turn around at the turning pad at the end of the runway when the flight crew stopped the maneuver due to a nose gear steering fault. The entire airport was closed for about three hours until the aircraft could be moved to the apron.
See also
List of airlines of the Philippines
List of airports in the Philippines
List of companies of the Philippines
List of low-cost airlines
Transportation in the Philippines
References
External links
Official website
Official holidays website
Airlines of the Philippines
Airlines established in 1988
Airlines formerly banned in the European Union
Philippine brands
Low-cost carriers
Companies based in Pasay
Companies listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange
Value Alliance
Philippine companies established in 1988
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS%20Inflexible%20%281907%29
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HMS Inflexible (1907)
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HMS Inflexible was one of three s built for the Royal Navy before World War I and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German battlecruiser and the light cruiser in the Mediterranean Sea when war broke out and she and her sister ship sank the German armoured cruisers and during the Battle of the Falkland Islands. Inflexible bombarded Turkish forts in the Dardanelles in 1915, but was damaged by return fire and struck a mine while maneuvering. She had to be beached to prevent her from sinking, but she was patched up and sent to Malta, and then Gibraltar for more permanent repairs. Transferred to the Grand Fleet afterwards, she damaged the German battlecruiser during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and watched Invincible explode. She was deemed obsolete after the war and was sold for scrap in 1921.
Design
The Invincible-class ships were formally known as armoured cruisers until 1911 when they were redesignated as battlecruisers by an Admiralty order of 24 November 1911. Unofficially a number of designations were used until then, including cruiser-battleship, dreadnought cruiser and battle-cruiser.
General characteristics
Inflexible was significantly larger than her armoured cruiser predecessors of the . She had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of at deep load. She displaced at load and at deep load, nearly more than the earlier ships.
Propulsion
Inflexible had two paired sets of Parsons direct-drive turbines, each of which was housed in a separate engine-room and drove an outboard and inboard shaft. The high-pressure ahead and astern turbines were coupled to the outboard shafts and the low-pressure turbines to the inner shafts. A cruising turbine was also coupled to each inner shaft; these were not used often and were eventually disconnected. The turbines were powered by thirty-one Yarrow water-tube boilers in four boiler rooms. The turbines were designed to produce a total of , but reached nearly during her trials in 1908. She was designed for , but reached during trials. She carried of coal, and an additional of fuel oil that was to be sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate. At full fuel capacity, she could steam for at a speed of .
Armament
Inflexible mounted eight BL Mk X guns in four twin hydraulically powered turrets. Her secondary armament consisted of sixteen QF Mk III guns. In 1915, the turret roof guns were transferred to the superstructure, and the total number of guns was reduced to twelve. All of the remaining guns were enclosed in casemates and given blast shields at that time to better protect the gun crews from weather and enemy action. These guns were replaced by twelve 4-inch BL MK IX guns on CPI mountings during 1917.
Her anti-aircraft armament consisted of a single QF 20 cwt AA gun on a high-angle MKII mount at the aft end of the superstructure that was carried from July 1915. A 3-pounder Hotchkiss gun on a high-angle MkIc mounting with a maximum elevation of 60° was fitted in November 1914 and used until August 1917. A 4-inch BL MK VII on a HA MkII mount was added in April 1917. Five submerged torpedo tubes were fitted on the Invincibles, two on each side and one in the stern. Fourteen torpedoes were carried for them.
Armour
The armour protection given to the Invincibles was heavier than that of the Minotaurs; their waterline belt measured amidships in contrast to the belt of their predecessors. The belt was 6 inches thick roughly between the fore and aft 12-inch gun turrets, but was reduced to four inches from the fore turret to the bow, but did not extend aft of the rear turret. The gun turrets and barbettes were protected by of armour, except for the turret roofs which used of Krupp non-cemented armour (KNC). The thickness of the main deck was and the lower deck armour was . Mild steel torpedo bulkheads of 2.5-inch thickness were fitted abreast the magazines and shell rooms.
After the Battle of Jutland revealed her vulnerability to plunging shellfire, additional armour was added in the area of the magazines and to the turret roofs. The exact thickness is not known, but it was unlikely to be thick as the total amount was less than .
Construction and career
She was authorized in the naval expansion program of 1905, and built at the John Brown & Company shipyard on the Clyde. She was laid down on 5 February 1906, launched on 26 June 1907, and commissioned on 20 October 1908. Inflexible was initially assigned to the Nore Division of the British Home Fleet. She was the temporary flagship of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward Hobart Seymour while in New York for the Hudson–Fulton Celebration in September 1909. On 26 May 1911, she was in a collision with the battleship that damaged her bow. She was refitted in October–November 1911, where her fore funnel was also raised by to reduce smoke interference with the bridge.
First World War
Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau
On the outbreak of the First World War, Inflexible was flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. Accompanied by , under the command of Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne she encountered the German battlecruiser and the light cruiser on the morning of 4 August 1914 headed east after a cursory bombardment of the French Algerian port of Philippeville, but Britain and Germany were not yet at war so Milne turned to shadow the Germans as they headed back to Messina to recoal. All three battlecruisers had problems with their boilers, but Goeben and Breslau were able to break contact and reached Messina by the morning of the 5th. By this time, war had been declared, after the German invasion of Belgium, but an Admiralty order to respect Italian neutrality and stay outside a limit from the Italian coast precluded entrance into the passage of the Strait of Messina where they could observe the port directly. Therefore, Milne stationed Inflexible and Indefatigable at the northern exit of the Strait of Messina, still expecting the Germans to break out to the west where they could attack French troop transports, the light cruiser at the southern exit and sent Indomitable to recoal at Bizerte where she was better positioned to react to a German sortie into the Western Mediterranean.
The Germans sortied from Messina on 6 August and headed east, towards Constantinople, trailed by Gloucester. Milne, still expecting Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon to turn west, kept the battlecruisers at Malta until shortly after midnight on 8 August when he set sail for Cape Matapan at a leisurely , where Goeben had been spotted eight hours earlier. At 14:30, he received an incorrect signal from the Admiralty stating that Britain was at war with Austria; war would not be declared until 12 August and the order was countermanded four hours later, but Milne followed his standing orders to guard the Adriatic against an Austrian breakout attempt, rather than seek Goeben. Finally on 9 August, Milne was given clear orders to "chase Goeben which had passed Cape Matapan on the 7th steering north-east". Milne still did not believe that Souchon was heading for the Dardanelles, and so he resolved to guard the exit from the Aegean, unaware that the Goeben did not intend to come out. Indomitable remained in the Mediterranean to blockade the Dardanelles, but Inflexible was ordered home on 18 August.
Battle of the Falklands
The West Indies Squadron of Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock was destroyed by the German East Asia Squadron commanded by Admiral Graf von Spee during the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914. In response, the Admiralty ordered that a squadron be sent to destroy the Germans. The squadron, under the command of Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee, consisted of Invincible (flag) and Inflexible. They departed on 11 November and rendezvoused with several other cruisers under Rear Admiral Stoddard at Abrolhos Rocks, off the coast of Brazil on the 26th. They departed the following day and reached Port Stanley on the morning of 7 December.
Spee – making a leisurely voyage back to the Atlantic – wished to destroy the radio station at Port Stanley, so he sent the armoured cruiser and the light cruiser to see if the harbor was clear of British warships on the morning of 8 December. They were spotted at 07:30, although the pre-dreadnought , grounded in Stanley Harbor to defend the town and its wireless station, did not receive the signal until 07:45. It mattered little because Sturdee was not expecting an engagement and most of his ships were coaling. Furthermore, the armoured cruiser and the light cruiser had one or both of their engines under repair. The armed merchant cruiser Macedonian was patrolling the outer harbor entrance while the armoured cruiser was anchored in the outer harbor, scheduled to relieve the Macedonian at 08:00. The Germans were not expecting any resistance and the first salvo from Canopuss guns at 09:20 caused them to sheer off from their planned bombardment of the wireless station and fall back on Spee's main body.
Sturdee's ships did not sortie from the harbor until 09:50, but they could see the retreating German ships on the southwest horizon. The Invincibles, fresh out of dry dock, had a advantage over Spee's ships which all had fouled bottoms that limited their speeds to at best. The light cruiser was lagging behind the other ships and Inflexible opened fire on her when the range dropped to at 12:55. Invincible opened fire shortly afterwards and both ships began straddling Leipzig as the range closed to . At 13:20, Spee ordered his squadron to separate and ordered his light cruisers to turn to the southwest while his armoured cruisers turned to the north east to cover their retreat. The German ships opened fire first at 13:30 and scored their first hit at 13:44 when hit Invincible, although the shell burst harmlessly on the belt armour. Both sides fired rapidly during the first half-hour of the engagement before Sturdee opened up the range a little to put his ships outside the effective range of the German guns. British gunnery was very poor during this period, scoring only four hits out of 210 rounds fired. The primary cause was the smoke from the guns and funnels as the British were downwind of the Germans.
Spee turned to the south in the hope of disengaging while the British had their vision obscured, but only opened the range to before the British saw his course change. This was futile as the British battlecruisers gave chase at . Forty minutes later, the British opened fire again at . Eight minutes later, Spee turned again to the east to give battle; this time, his strategy was to close the range on the British ships so he could bring his secondary armament to bear. He was successful, and they were able to open fire at 15:00 at maximum elevation. On this course, the smoke bothered both sides, but multiple hits were made regardless. Those made by the Germans either failed to detonate or hit in some insignificant area. On the contrary, Gneisenau had her starboard engine room put out of action. Sturdee ordered his ships at 15:15 back across their own wakes to gain the windward advantage. Spee turned to the northwest, as if to attempt to cross the British T, but actually to bring Scharnhorsts undamaged starboard guns to bear as most of those on his port side were out of action. The British continued to hit Scharnhorst and Gneisenau regularly during this time and Scharnhorst ceased fire at 16:00 before capsizing at 16:17 with no survivors. Gneisenau had been slowed by earlier damage and was battered for another hour and a half by Inflexible and Invincible at ranges down to . Despite the damage her crew continued to fire back until she ceased firing at 16:47. Sturdee was ready to order 'Cease fire' at 17:15 when an ammunition hoist was freed up and she made her last shot. The British continued to pound her until 17:50, after her captain had given the order to scuttle her at 17:40. She slowly capsized at 18:00 and the British were able to rescue 176 men. She had fired 661 twelve-inch shells during the battle and had only been hit three times because she was often obscured by Invincibles smoke. Only one man was killed and five wounded aboard the battlecruisers during the battle.
Dardanelles Campaign
After the Battle of the Falklands Inflexible was repaired and refitted at Gibraltar. She arrived at the Dardanelles on 24 January 1915 where she replaced Indefatigable as the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. She bombarded Turkish fortifications on 19 February, the start of the Battle of Gallipoli, to little effect, and again on 15 March, with the same results. She was part of the first line of British ships on 18 March as they attempted to suppress the Turkish guns so the minefields could be swept. Turkish return fire was heavy and she was hit a number of times. A howitzer shell knocked out the left gun of 'P' turret, a shell hit the yard above the foretop and killed or wounded everybody within. A heavy shell of unknown size hit her on the port side below the waterline, but only dished in the side plating. A shell hit the foremast at the same level as the flying bridge and set fire to the navigator's sea cabin. The hit destroyed all the cables and voice pipes running through the foremast to the fire control director. The smoke from the fire was choking the wounded so she withdrew to turn her head into the wind and the fire was then quickly put out. She returned to reengage the Turkish forts and was hit once more with little effect. Later, as she was turning in Eren Keui Bay, she was seriously damaged by a mine – probably about in size – that blew a large hole in her starboard bow and flooded the forward torpedo flat, drowning 39 men. She had to be beached at the island of Bozcaada (Tenedos) to prevent her sinking, as she had taken in some of water, but she was temporarily repaired with a cofferdam over the hole. She sailed to Malta, escorted by and on 6 April. She nearly foundered when her cofferdam worked loose in heavy weather en route and had to be towed stern-first by Canopus for six hours while the cofferdam was repaired. She was under repair at Malta until early June before she sailed for home. She reached the U.K. on 19 June, where she joined the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) of the Grand Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral H.L.A. Hood.
Battle of Jutland
At the end of May 1916, the 3rd BCS was temporarily assigned to the Grand Fleet for gunnery practice. On 30 May, the entire Grand Fleet, along with Admiral Beatty's battlecruisers, was ordered to sea to prepare for an excursion by the German High Seas Fleet. In order to support Beatty, Admiral Hood took his three battlecruisers ahead of the Grand Fleet. At about 14:30, Invincible intercepted a radio message from the light cruiser , attached to Beatty's Battlecruiser Force, reporting the sighting of two enemy cruisers. This was amplified by other reports of seven enemy ships steering north. Hood interpreted this as an attempt to escape through the Skagerrak and ordered an increase in speed to at 15:11 and steered East-Southeast to cut off the fleeing ships. Twenty minutes later, Invincible intercepted a message from Beatty reporting five enemy battlecruisers in sight and later signals reporting that he was engaging the enemy on a south-easterly course. At 16:06, Hood ordered full speed and a course of south-southeast in an attempt to converge on Beatty. At 16:56, with no British ships in sight, Hood requested Beatty's course, position and speed, but he never received a reply.
Hood continued on course until 17:40, when gunfire was spotted in the direction to which his light cruiser had been dispatched to investigate other gunfire flashes. Chester encountered four light cruisers of Hipper's 2nd Scouting Group and was badly damaged before Hood turned to investigate and was able to drive the German cruisers away. At 17:53, Invincible opened fire on ; the other two Invincibles followed two minutes later. The German ships turned for the south after fruitlessly firing torpedoes at 18:00 and attempted to find shelter in the mist. As they turned, Invincible hit Wiesbaden in the engine room and knocked out her engines while Inflexible hit once. The 2nd Scouting Group was escorted by the light cruiser and 31 destroyers of the 2nd and 9th Flotillas and the 12th Half-Flotilla which attacked the 3rd BCS in succession. They were driven off by Hood's remaining light cruiser and the five destroyers of his escort. In a confused action, the Germans only launched 12 torpedoes and disabled the destroyer with gunfire. Having turned due west to close on Beatty's ships, the Invincibles were broadside to the oncoming torpedoes, but Invincible turned north, while Inflexible and Indomitable turned south to present their narrowest profile to the torpedoes. All the torpedoes missed, although one passed underneath Inflexible without detonating. As Invincible turned north, her helm jammed and she had to come to a stop to fix the problem, but this was quickly done and the squadron reformed heading west.
At 18:21, with both Beatty and the Grand Fleet converging on him, Hood turned south to lead Beatty's battlecruisers. Hipper's battlecruisers were away and the Invincibles almost immediately opened fire on Hipper's flagship, , and . Lützow quickly took ten hits from , Inflexible and Invincible, including two hits below the waterline forward by Invincible that would ultimately doom her. But at 18:30, Invincible abruptly appeared as a clear target before Lützow and Derfflinger. The two German ships then fired three salvoes each at Invincible, and sank her in 90 seconds. A 305 mm (12-inch) shell from the third salvo struck the roof of Invincibles midships 'Q' turret, flash detonated the magazines below, and the ship blew up and broke in two, killing all but six of her crew of 1,032 officers and men, including Rear-Admiral Hood.
Inflexible and Indomitable remained in company with Beatty for the rest of the battle. They encountered Hipper's battlecruisers only away as the sun was setting about 8:19 and opened fire. Seydlitz was hit five times before the German battlecruisers were rescued by the appearance of the pre-dreadnought battleships of Rear Admiral Mauve and the British shifted fire to the new threat. Three of the predreadnoughts were hit before they too were able to turn into the gloom.
Post-Jutland career
The loss of three battlecruisers at Jutland (the others were and ) led to the force being reorganised into two squadrons, with Inflexible and Indomitable in the 2nd BCS. However, after Jutland there was little significant naval activity for the Invincibles, other than routine patrolling, thanks to the Kaiser's order that his ships should not be allowed to go to sea unless assured of victory. Two torpedoes fired by the German U-boat during one of these patrols on 19 August 1916 missed astern. On 1 February 1918, she collided with the British submarine off the Isle of May with minor damage. This was during a night exercise in the Firth of Forth involving the Flotilla, eight capital ships, and numerous cruisers and destroyers. It was a series of collisions which led to the loss of two K boats, serious damage to three others, including K22, and a cruiser, and the deaths of 104 submariners, with no enemy involved. She was fitted with two flying off ramps fitted above her midships turrets in early 1918. On 21 November she was present at Scapa Flow for the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet.
The end of the war saw the end for many of the older vessels, not least the two remaining Invincible-class ships. Inflexible was paid off to the Reserve Fleet in January 1919 before being decommissioned on 31 March 1920. Chile briefly considered purchasing the ship in 1920, however the sale did not materialise. She was sold for scrap on 1 December 1921, and scrapped in Germany the following year. Mount Inflexible in the Canadian Rockies was named after the battlecruiser in 1917.
Notes
References
Bibliography
The Inflexibles ship log and captain's after action report have been transcribed and are available at this link.
The Inflexibles ship log have been transcribed and are available at this link.
External links
OldWeather.org transcription of ship's logbooks October 1914 to March 1915
Battle of Jutland Crew Lists Project – HMS Inflexible Crew List
Ships built on the River Clyde
Invincible-class battlecruisers
Maritime incidents in 1915
World War I battlecruisers of the United Kingdom
1907 ships
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank%20Hague
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Frank Hague
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Frank Hague (January 17, 1876 – January 1, 1956) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as the Mayor of Jersey City from 1917 to 1947, Democratic National Committeeman from New Jersey from 1922 until 1949, and Vice-Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1924 until 1949. During his 30 years as mayor, Hague established reforms and innovations that upgraded the city's infrastructure and services, including the construction of parks, schools, and public housing. He also worked to secure funding for public works projects and attracted new businesses to the city, which helped to boost its economy. Simultaneously Mayor Hague had a dark reputation for corruption, extortion and bossism and has been called "the grandaddy of Jersey bosses". By the time he left office in 1947, he enjoyed palatial homes, European vacations, and a private suite at the Plaza Hotel. His wealth has been estimated to have been over $10 million at the time of his death, although his City salary never exceeded $8,500 per year and he had no other legitimate source of income.
During the height of his power Hague's political machine, known as "the organization", was one of the most powerful in the United States controlling politics on local, county, and state levels. Hague's personal influence extended to the national level, influencing federal patronage, and presidential campaigns.
Early life
Francis "Frank" Hague, born in Jersey City, was the fourth of eight children to John D. and Margaret Hague (née Fagen), immigrants from County Cavan, Ireland. He was raised in Jersey City's Second ward, an area known as The Horseshoe due to its shape which wrapped around a railroad loop. The ward was created when the Republican-controlled legislature gerrymandered a district within Jersey City in 1871 to concentrate and isolate Democratic, and mostly Catholic, votes.
By age 14, Hague was expelled from school before completing the sixth grade for poor attendance and unacceptable behavior. He worked briefly as a blacksmith's apprentice for the Erie Railroad. While training at a local gym for his own potential debut as a prizefighter, he arranged to become manager for Joe Craig, a professional lightweight boxer. Craig was successful enough to allow Hague to buy a few suits that made him appear successful. In 1896, Hague's apparent prosperity gained him the attention of local tavern owner "Nat" Kenny who was seeking a candidate for constable in the upcoming primary to run against the candidate of a rival tavern owner. Kenny provided Hague with $75 to "spread around", and Frank Hague quickly won his first election by a ratio of three-to-one.
Political career
Early success
Hague's victory in the Constable election brought him to the attention of Hudson County Democratic political boss "Little Bob" Davis, and Davis asked Hague to help get out Democratic votes for the upcoming 1897 Mayoral election. Hague's efforts were credited with generating large voter turnout in the Second Ward for the 1897 and 1899 elections. As a reward for his work, Hague was appointed as a deputy sheriff at a salary of $25 per week. Over this time, Hague took a leadership role in the Second Ward Democratic club.
In the 1901 Mayoral election, Republican Mark M. Fagan was elected. Hague's second ward was one of only two that voted Democratic. Hague survived a Republican challenge for a third term as Constable the following year.
The "Red Dugan" affair
As a ward leader, Hague was approached by a woman to provide assistance for her son, who had been arrested for passing a forged check. The son, Red Dugan, had been a classmate of Hague's in school. According to the Boston Evening Transcript of October 4, 1904, Dugan had deposited a forged check for $955 in the Peoples Bank of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and convinced the bank manager to let him withdraw $500. Hague ignored a subpoena to testify in Hudson County Court and traveled to Massachusetts to provide an alibi for Dugan. Hague and another deputy sheriff, Thomas "Skidder" Madigan, claimed that they had seen Dugan in Jersey City on the day of the alleged offense. Both were threatened with perjury charges.
Upon returning to Jersey City, Hague was found guilty of contempt of court for ignoring the subpoena. He was fined $100 and stripped of his duties as Deputy Sheriff.
In spite of the resulting press coverage of the event, Hague was more deeply embraced by his constituency. Thomas Smith wrote: "But to the residents of the Horseshoe, Frank Hague had gone out of his way to help a friend – had practically given his livelihood to aid a brother." In the succeeding municipal election of 1905, which saw the return of incumbent Fagan to the office of mayor, Hague was elected to a fourth term as constable.
Ward leader
Hague rose through the Democratic machinery of Hudson County, which drew much of its strength by providing newly arrived immigrants with rudimentary social services. Hague took a job as a bill collector for a local brewery, leaving him with time to spend in the streets and the local taverns which were hubs of political activity. He also spent his time cleaning up the loose ends of the Second Ward's south-end Democratic Club to consolidate his power.
As a reward for his efforts in turning out votes in the 1905 election, Bob Davis named Hague as the party leader for the Second Ward and arranged for Hague to be appointed as Sergeant at Arms for the New Jersey State Assembly.
Political reformer
Hague broke ties with "Boss" Davis in 1906 over a difference of opinion on a candidate for appointment to the city Street and Water Board. As a result, Hague supported H. Otto Wittpenn for mayor in the 1907 election. Wittpenn was a reformer who opposed the control Davis held over Hudson County politics. Over the objections of Davis, newly elected Mayor Wittpenn appointed Hague as chief custodian of City Hall – a "cushy" job with plenty of patronage opportunities. During the Wittpenn administration, Hague also became friendly with Wittpenn's secretary – a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher named A. Harry Moore.
The resulting battle for control of the Hudson County Democratic machine would ironically result in one of the greatest boosts to Hague's rise to power – the Walsh Act of 1911. In 1909 Davis, seeing support for Hague increasing, supported Wittpenn's re-election against former mayor Fagan. Hague's second ward produced the largest plurality of Wittpenn votes of any of Jersey City's 12 wards. Davis then arranged the appointment of Fagan to the Hudson County Tax Board. When Wittpenn's administration began facing troubles, including Fagan's discovery of a Pennsylvania Railroad property that had paid no taxes for four years, Wittpenn blamed Davis.
Seeking to curb the influence of Davis, Wittpenn announced his candidacy for Governor, stating "I have endured the machine as long as possible, but patience is no longer a virtue." Davis, in turn, prevailed upon Woodrow Wilson, then President of Princeton University, to oppose Wittpenn's candidacy. Wilson's victory was overwhelming even in Hague's ward, despite heavy-handed tactics used there. The Jersey Journal wrote: "Cops on duty were using clubs and blackjacks to assist Mayor Wittpenn and Frank Hague defeat the Davis men."
Wilson's reform-minded term as Governor saw the establishment of Presidential primary elections, introduced workers' compensation, and brought about passage of the Walsh Act which provided for a non-partisan commission form of municipal government that was greatly reflective of his academic writings in Congressional Government.
"Little Bob" Davis died of cancer shortly after the 1910 gubernatorial election leaving a vacuum in the power structure of the Hudson County Democrats. Wittpenn quickly endorsed the idea of converting Jersey City to a commission form of government, but was opposed by forces, including Hague, attempting to take control of the party. Hague campaigned heavily against the idea in the Horseshoe, claiming that such a system of citywide elected commissioners would erode the influence of the working-class and consolidate power among the city's elite. Wittpenn's opponents successfully petitioned for a change in the date of the vote on the charter change, moving it from September to mid-July, and the proposal was defeated. As a result of this campaign, Hague came under the scrutiny of The Jersey Journal, which had supported the proposed charter change. It was reported that Hague's older brother, a battalion chief on the city fire department, had been on "sick leave" for three years at full pay.
Hague reconciled with Wittpenn to support his re-election in 1911. Wittpenn then supported Hague's nomination for Commissioner of Streets and Water. Both were elected. The new position greatly expanded Hague's patronage authority. While City Hall employed a few dozen custodians, there were hundreds of workers in the Street and Water Department. Hague's work as head of the Department of Street Cleaners even convinced The Jersey Journal to endorse him as a "reform candidate" in the next election.
In the spring of 1913, having gained confidence in his own ability to assure himself a place on the commission, Hague supported the renewed effort to change the Jersey City government from the Mayor-Council model to a commission model under the recently adopted Walsh Act. This act would place all executive and legislative powers in a five-man commission, each of whom would head a city department. The five commissioners would choose one of their colleagues to be mayor. The vote for charter change passed, and the stage was set for Frank Hague's rise to power.
Commissioner
In 1913, the first election for the city commission saw 91 men on the ballot competing for five available seats on the commission. Hague finished fourth with 17,390 votes and was elected to the five-man commission. The only Wittpenn-supported candidate, A. Harry Moore, was also elected. As a result of having garnered the most votes (21,419) former mayor Fagan became the first mayor under this new form of government, and the only Republican to hold that title in Jersey City for the following 75 years. Hague was named public safety commissioner, with control over the police and fire departments. In the same year, Hague cemented his control of the Hudson County political machine by securing for himself the leadership of the Hudson County Democratic Organization Executive Committee.
Hague immediately set about reshaping the corrupt Jersey City police force with tough Horseshoe recruits. Hague spearheaded crackdowns on prostitution and narcotics trafficking, earning him favor with religious leaders. These enforcement acts went as far as Hague himself marching across local Vaudeville stages personally directing the shut down of "girlie shows." At the heart of this change was an inner cadre of officers known as the Zeppelin Squad or "zepps" who were personally loyal to Hague alone. The "zepps" would spy on, and report back to Hague about other members of the department. Eventually, Jersey City had one patrolman for every 3,000 residents, causing a marked decline in the city's once-astronomical crime rate.
Hague took steps to curb the police department's lackadaisical work ethic, punishing offenses that had gone unpunished for years. He also made much-needed improvements to the fire department; at the time he took office Jersey City's fire insurance rates were among the highest in the nation.
Upon discovering in early 1916 that millions of pounds of munitions were being stockpiled on the Jersey City waterfront, Hague travelled to Washington, D.C. to register concerns for the safety of his constituents. His meetings with Congressmen resulted in no action, Congress having decided that Jersey City was an "appropriate port." Hague's concerns were shown to be valid in July 1916 when the Black Tom explosion sent shrapnel flying across the city.
In 1917, Hague, with his reputation as the man who cleaned up the police force, ran for reelection. He put together a commission ticket called "The Unbossed." The ticket consisted of him, Parks Commissioner Moore, Revenue Commissioner George Brensinger, ex-judge Charles F.X. O'Brien and City Clerk Michael I. Fagan. It swept all five spots on the commission. Moore topped the poll, and traditional practice called for him to be appointed mayor. However, when the commission met for the first time on May 11, Hague was chosen as the new mayor.
Boss of Jersey City
Technically, Hague's only responsibility as mayor was to appoint the school board. Otherwise, he was merely first among equals, with no powers over and above the other four commissioners. However, soon after taking office, he wrested control of the Hudson County Democratic Party from Wittpenn. This allowed him to significantly influence the makeup of the commission in this overwhelmingly Democratic city. He soon built the organization into one of the most powerful political machines in the country. Hague himself became very wealthy, owning a $125,000 summer home in Deal, living in a large apartment in the best building in the city, and able to give a $50,000 altar to a local Catholic church. In 1941, Dartmouth professor Dayton David McKean wrote The Boss, a book about Hague's political machine, in which he estimated his amassed wealth at four million dollars on an annual mayoral salary of $8,000 a year.
He also had the support of a significant faction of Republicans which dated to his initial election as mayor, when he cut a deal with Governor Walter Edge in which Edge effectively ceded North Jersey to Hague in return for keeping South Jersey for himself. Also, as public safety commissioner (a post he held throughout his entire tenure), he controlled the two departments with the most patronage appointments in the city. This post also placed responsibility for maintaining public order in his hands.
Hague soon extended his influence statewide by helping to elect his "puppets" as governor. In the 1919 gubernatorial election, Hague endorsed State Senator Edward I. Edwards and aggressively campaigned for him. Edwards carried Hudson County by 50,000 votes, which was enough for him to win statewide by just under 15,000 votes. Hague proclaimed himself leader of the New Jersey Democratic Party, and Edwards allowed him to recommend dozens of appointments to high state offices. Democrats won five out of eight gubernatorial races between 1919 and 1940, more often than not due to massive landslides in Hudson County. However, he was never able to extend his dominance to the state legislature.
Hague was able to stay in power despite a nearly constant effort to turn him out of office from 1921 onward. He was also able to avoid prosecution despite numerous federal and state investigations in part because he took most of his kickbacks in cash. However, from the early 1940s onward, many of the city's longer-tenured ethnic groups started moving to the suburbs. They were replaced by Poles, Italians, Eastern Europeans and African-Americans. Hague never adapted his methods to the new groups.
Hague had little tolerance for those who dared oppose him publicly. He relied on two ordinances of dubious constitutionality to muzzle critics. A 1920 ordinance effectively required people making political speeches to obtain clearance from the chief of police. A 1930 ordinance gave the public safety commissioner—Hague himself—the power to turn down permits for meetings if he felt it necessary to prevent "riots, disturbances or disorderly assemblage." The latter ordinance was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, but continued to be enforced for several years after that decision. The police were also allowed to stop and search anyone without probable cause or a warrant after 9 pm.
In 1932, Hague, a friend of Al Smith, backed Smith against Franklin D. Roosevelt during the race for the Democratic nomination. When Roosevelt won the nomination, Hague offered to organize the biggest political rally anyone had ever seen if Roosevelt would launch his presidential campaign in New Jersey. When Roosevelt formally began his campaign with an event at the Jersey Shore town of Sea Girt, Hague's machine made sure there were several thousand Hudson County voters looking on and cheering. Hague's support was rewarded with funding for a massive medical center complex complete with a maternity hospital named after his mother, Margaret Hague. During the 1936 campaign Hague provided 150,000 adults and children to cheer Roosevelt during a visit.
Hague's use of voter fraud is the stuff of legend. In 1937, for instance, Jersey City had 160,050 registered voters, but only 147,000 people who were at least 21 years old—the legal voting age.
In 1932, Governor Moore appointed a lawyer named Thomas J. Brogan, who had served as Hague's personal attorney in corruption hearings, to an associate Justice seat on the state's Supreme Court. Less than a year later Brogan was named as Chief Justice. In at least two instances of alleged voting fraud in the 1930s (Ferguson v. Brogan, 112 N.J.L. 471; Clee v. Moore, 119 N.J.L. 215; In re Clee, 119 N.J.L. 310), Brogan's court issued extraordinary rulings in favor of the Democratic machine, in one case asserting that the district superintendent of elections had no authority to open ballot boxes, and in another case ruling that the boxes could be opened, but no one had the right to look inside. Brogan also assigned himself to the Hudson County jurisdiction, thereby controlling the local grand jury process and squelching other election fraud cases.
Retirement from politics
The beginning of the end for Hague came in 1943, when former governor Walter Edge was returned to office. Edge's attorney general, Walter Van Riper, initiated several prosecutions of Hague cronies. Hague retaliated by having his handpicked U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey bring federal indictments against Van Riper, but Van Riper was acquitted. Edge also initiated reforms in the civil service, freeing it from Hague's control.
Edge's successor, fellow Republican Alfred Driscoll, succeeded in further curbing Hague's power over state government. He led the effort to implement a new constitution, which streamlined state government and made it less vulnerable to control by locally based bosses like Hague. For example, county prosecutors were now directly accountable to the state attorney general. It also set up a new state Supreme Court, which was given supervision over the state's judges. As the first Chief Justice, Driscoll appointed an old Hague foe, Arthur T. Vanderbilt. Driscoll also installed voting machines throughout the state, which made it harder for corrupt politicians to steal elections.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Hague abruptly announced his retirement in 1947. However, he was able to have his nephew, Frank Hague Eggers, chosen as his successor. It was generally understood that Hague still held the real power. This ended in 1949 when John V. Kenny, a former Hague ward leader alienated by the appointment of Eggers, put together his own commission ticket. Due to the presence of a "third ticket," Kenny's ticket was able to oust the Hague/Eggers ticket from power, ending Hague's 32-year rule. Kenny soon set up a machine which proved every bit as corrupt as Hague's, but far less efficient at providing services.
Death
Hague died on New Year's Day in 1956 at his 480 Park Avenue duplex apartment in Manhattan, New York City. While hundreds gathered to see the casket depart the funeral home, only four men were seen to remove their hats for the passing of the coffin. One woman present held an American Flag and a sign that read, "God have mercy on his sinful, greedy soul."
Hague was interred in a large mausoleum at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.
Legacy
Hague's pride and joy was the Jersey City Medical Center, which he began creating almost as soon as he became mayor. By the 1940s it had grown into a 10-building complex that provided virtually free medical care to Jersey City residents. At the time of its completion, the Medical Center was one of the biggest medical facilities in the country and included the Medical Center Hospital, Pollak Chest Diseases Hospital, Murdoch Hall, and Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital, named in honor of Hague's mother. The buildings, funded in part through federal funds obtained by Hague, are known for their Art Deco details, including marble walls, terrazzo floors, etched glass, and decorative moldings. Even at the time the Medical Center was too large to operate cost-effectively. In 2005 the 14 acre complex (much of which had fallen into disuse) was sold to a private developer who began converting two towers into a luxury condominium complex called the Beacon.
A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Hague as the second-worst American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.
Quotes
"We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.' You never heard a real American talk in that manner." – speech to the Jersey City Chamber of Commerce, January 12, 1938.
"Listen, here is the law! I am the law! These boys go to work!" – speech on city government to the Emory Methodist Episcopal Church in Jersey City, November 10, 1937.
See also
List of mayors of Jersey City, New Jersey
Notes
References
(originally published—Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940).
External links
Full text of the decision from FindLaw.com
Frank Hague Page at Jersey City History
The Life and Times of Frank Hague (2001) A five-part radio program
The Pragmatic Populism of a Non-Partisan Politician: An Analysis of the Political Philosophy of Charles Edison
1876 births
1956 deaths
American people of Irish descent
People from Deal, New Jersey
Mayors of Jersey City, New Jersey
Political corruption in the United States
Culture of Jersey City, New Jersey
American political bosses
American political bosses from New Jersey
New Jersey Democrats
Burials at Holy Name Cemetery (Jersey City, New Jersey)
Catholics from New Jersey
American anti-communists
Nucky Johnson's Organization
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good%20Times
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Good Times
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Good Times is an American television sitcom that aired for six seasons on CBS, from February 8, 1974, to August 1, 1979. Created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans and developed by executive producer Norman Lear, it was television's first African American two-parent family sitcom. Good Times is a spin-off of Maude, which itself is a spin-off of All in the Family, arguably making Good Times the first television spin-off from another spin-off.
In September 2020, it was announced that the series would receive an animated sitcom revival produced with Norman Lear executive producing alongside Seth MacFarlane and Steph Curry for Netflix.
Synopsis
Florida and James (renamed from Henry) Evans and their three children live at 721 North Gilbert Avenue, apartment 17C, in a public housing project in a poor, black neighborhood in inner-city Chicago. The project is unnamed on the show but is implicitly the infamous Cabrini–Green Homes, shown in the opening and closing credits. Florida and James have three children: James Jr., also known as "J.J.", a budding artist and illustrator who thinks of himself as a "Casanova" type and achieves both success and rejection on his path to monetize his talent into a career; Thelma, a very bright girl who takes education very seriously as she sees it as a way to help her family and is shown attending high school and community college over the course of the series; and Michael, whose passionate activism and support for the Black community and Black issues causes his father to call him "the militant midget."
When the series begins, J.J. is 17 (portrayed by 26-year-old Jimmie Walker, who was just eight years younger than co-star John Amos), Thelma 16 and Michael 11. Their exuberant neighbor and Florida's best friend is Willona Woods, a recent divorcée who works at a boutique. Their building superintendent is Nathan Bookman (seasons 2–6), who James, Willona and later J.J. refer to as "Buffalo Butt" or, even more derisively, "Booger."
The characters originated on the sitcom Maude as Florida and Henry Evans, with Florida employed as Maude Findlay's housekeeper in Tuckahoe, New York, and Henry employed as a New York City firefighter. When producers decided to feature the Florida character in her own show, they changed the characters' history to fit a new series that was well into development rather than start from scratch to create a consistent starring vehicle. Henry's name became James, he worked various odd jobs, there was no mention of Maude but it was mentioned that Florida was a maid once before in the episode 'The Checkup' and the couple lived in Chicago.
Episodes of Good Times deal with the characters' attempts to overcome poverty, living in high-rise public housing in Chicago. James Evans often works at least two jobs, mostly manual labor such as dishwasher, construction laborer, etc. Though he is often unemployed, he is a proud man who will not accept charity. He sometimes hustles money playing pool, although Florida disapproves of this.
Episodes
Cast and characters
Main
Supporting
Ned the Wino (Raymond Allen) is the local drunk who frequents the neighborhood and the apartment building where the Evans family reside. In the season one episode "Black Jesus," J.J. uses Ned the Wino as the model for a portrait of Jesus. Another episode is centered on Michael's plan to "clean up" Ned and get him off the booze by letting him stay at the Evanses' house.
Carl Dixon (Moses Gunn) is a shop owner for whom Michael briefly works. Despite their religious differences, Carl and Florida begin dating and become engaged in the final episode of season four. Carl breaks off the engagement after he is diagnosed with lung cancer. After a talk from Bookman, Carl again asks Florida for her hand in marriage. The two marry off-screen and move to Arizona. Florida returns at the beginning of season six, this time without Carl for Thelma's wedding. Carl is referenced briefly in that season's second episode "Florida's Homecoming Part 2," but he is never mentioned again (Florida continues to use the surname Evans instead of Dixon). (Rolle decided to come back to the show on the condition the character of Carl Dixon was written out.) Florida then revealed to Willona he died from his battle of lung cancer.
Marion "Sweet Daddy" Williams (Theodore Wilson) is a menacing neighborhood numbers runner and pimp, who has a reputation for wearing flashy clothing and jewelry. He is usually accompanied by bodyguards (one portrayed by Bubba Smith, the other by series painter Ernie Barnes) and comes across as cool and threatening, but has shown a soft heart on occasion, particularly when he decided not to take an antique locket (to settle a debt) that Florida had given to Thelma because it had reminded him of his late mother. (Wilson also plays a club owner named Stanley in the season four episode, "The Comedian and the Loan Sharks").
Alderman Fred C. Davis (Albert Reed Jr.) is a local politician with a slightly shady disposition whom the Evans generally despise. Spoofing President Richard M. Nixon, he would state in a speech, "I am not a crook." He frequently relies on the support of the Evans family (his "favorite project family") for reelection or support and resorts to threats of eviction to secure their support. In a running joke, Alderman Davis frequently forgets Willona's name and calls her another similar-sounding name that began with a "W" (such as Wilhemina, Winnifrieda, Winsomnium, Wyomia and even Waldorf-Astoria), thus earning him her everlasting ire as well as the nickname "Baldy." (In the 2019 ABC special, Live in Front of a Studio Audience, Amos portrayed the role of Davis, the only cast member from the original series to appear.)
Lenny (Dap 'Sugar' Willie) (also known as "Lootin" Lenny), is a neighborhood hustler and peddler who tries to sell presumably stolen items that are usually attached to the lining of his fur coat. He usually approaches people with a laid-back rap and a rhyme ("my name is Len-nay, if I ain't got it, there ain't an-nay"). He is typically rebuffed by the people he approaches and responds by saying "that's cold" or uses a small brush to "brush off" the negativity.
"Grandpa" Henry Evans (Richard Ward) is James's long-lost father. He abandoned the family years before because he was ashamed that he could not do more to provide for them. This deeply hurt James, who disregarded his father's existence, telling everyone that he was dead. Thelma learns about her grandfather while doing some family research. She meets him and invites him to the Evanses' home to surprise James for his birthday, not knowing that James was well aware of his whereabouts but chose to stay out of his life. After Henry arrives at the Evans home and meets the rest of the family, he realizes that James would not welcome him in the home and decides to leave. Florida convinces him to stay and talk to James and explains that there may never be another chance to do so. Henry and James have a heart-to-heart talk, with Henry being remorseful and apologetic. James ultimately forgives his father. After James's death, the Evans family embraces Henry into the family, alongside his common law (and eventually legal) wife Lena (Paulene Myers) in later episodes.
Wanda Williams (Helen Martin) is another resident in the apartment building where the Evans reside. Earlier episodes show her at a women's support group, and the tenants rallying around her by giving her a rent party. Later episodes show her appearing and crying at several funerals, whether she knew the person or not, thus earning her the nickname "Weeping Wanda" from J.J. and Willona.
Lynnetta Gordon (Chip Fields) is Penny's abusive biological mother whose first appearance is in the four-part fifth season opening episode, "The Evans Get Involved." Penny's father abandoned her mom when Lynnetta became pregnant at 16. As a result, she takes her anger and frustrations out on Penny, including burning her with a hot iron. After the abuse is finally brought to light, she tells the Evans family that she herself was abused as a child. She gets into a fighting match with Willona and Thelma and they plead for her to seek therapy. Just before she disappears, she expresses regret for hurting her child, telling Willona that Penny deserves better than her. This clears the way for Willona to adopt Penny. She reappears more than a year later, in the sixth-season episode, "A Matter of Mothers," having gotten married and reveals that her new husband is from a very wealthy family. She uses her husband's wealth to send Penny anonymous gifts and, in an effort to regain custody of Penny, also attempts to frame Willona as an unfit adoptive mother who throws wild parties with less than wholesome attendees. However, her scheme is exposed by being recorded on tape admitting that the scheme was a set up to get Penny back. After Lynnetta tries to get the tape from Penny and threatens to hurt her again, which is stopped by Willona, Penny tells Lynnetta that no matter what anyone says, she will always consider Willona her real mother. Devastated, Lynnetta decides to drop the charges against Willona and leaves Penny with her, never to be seen again.
Cleatus (John Bailey) is a cousin of J.J. Evans, Thelma Evans Anderson and Michael Evans and nephew of Florida Evans and James Evans. He made one appearance in the episode "Cousin Cleatus."
Violet Bookman (Marilyn Coleman) is the wife of Bookman (episodes: "Bye, Bye Bookman" and "Willona, the Other Woman" in season 5).
Notable guest stars
Mary Alice as Loretta Simpson in the episode The Baby (season 3, episode 7).
Debbie Allen as J.J.'s drug-addicted fiancée, Diana Buchanan in "J.J.'s Fiancee (Parts 1 & 2)" (season 3)
Matthew Beard (former Our Gang child actor) in five episodes, including four appearances as James' friend Monty
Taurean Blacque as Chopper in the episode “Breaker, Breaker (season 5, episode 8) and as John Dunbar Jr. in the episode “The Boarder” (season 5, episode 18)
Sorrell Booke as Mr. Galbraith, J.J.'s boss at the ad agency (season 5, episode 17)
Kathleen Bradley as the nurse in the episode “Blood Will Tell”. (season 6, episode 16)
Roscoe Lee Browne as a shady televangelist Reverend Sam "the Happiness Man", who befriended James in the military (season 1, episode 4)
Tony Burton as Aide in the Episode: "Evans Versus Davis" (Season 4, Episode 6)
T. K. Carter as J.J.'s friend "Head" (part of the "Awesome Foursome", later the "Gleesome Threesome", the "Gruesome Twosome" and the "Lonesome Onesome," as stated in the episode "The New Car")
Rosalind Cash as Thelma's teacher, Jessica Bishop, who becomes romantically involved with a much younger J.J. (season 4, episode 3)
Alvin Childress as Reverend Gordon in the episode “The Windfall. (season 2, episode 12)
William Christopher as The Army Doctor in the episode "The Enlistment" (season 2, episode 22)
Bill Cobbs as George Gillard in the episode "Evans Versus Davis" (Season 4, episode 6)
Judith Cohen as herself in the episode "The Judy Cohen Story" (season 4, episode 12)
Gary Coleman as Gary, a sharp-tongued classmate of Penny's in two season five episodes
Conchata Ferrell as Miss Johnson, Willona's supervisor at her short-lived second job as security in a department store (season 5, episode 6)
Kim Fields (real-life daughter of Chip Fields) as Penny's friend, Kim, who has a tendency to add the suffix "-ness" to emphasize her anxiety such as "hopelessnessness" (2 season 6 episodes)
Carl Franklin as Larry, Thelma's fiancé', ultimately breaking up when Larry is offered a job on the West Coast and Thelma is not ready to accompany him (2 episodes)
Alice Ghostley as Ms. Dobbs, a social worker who is working on Penny being adopted by Willona (3 episodes)
Ron Glass as Michael's elementary school principal (2.4); also made an appearance as a blind encyclopedia salesman who tries to swindle the Evans family (2.8)
Louis Gossett Jr., in season two as Thelma's older boyfriend (Florida and James object to their relationship because of the age difference) (2.6); also appears as Uncle Wilbert (Florida's brother), who comes from Detroit to look in on the family while James is away (3.8)
Robert Guillaume as Fishbone the wino in the episode "Requiem for a Wino" (season 5, episode 11)
Phillip Baker Hall as Motel Owner in the episode "J.J.'s Fiancee (Part 2)" (season 3, episode 18)
Lynn Hamilton as Mrs. Edwards, mother of Mad Dog , who shot J.J. (season 2, episode 10)
Shirley Hemphill as "Roz", the dimwitted sister of Edna, who was being tutored by Thelma (season 4, episode 10)
Gordon Jump as Mr. Rogers, the head of security at Willona's short-lived second job as security in a department store (season 5, episode 6)
Paula Kelly as Dr. Kelly in the episode "Where Have All The Doctors Gone" (season 6, episode 17)
Richard Lawson as Raymond, J.J.’s friend and co-worker (season 5, episode 17)
Jay Leno as "Young Man" in the season three's "J.J. in Trouble", which was one of the first times that the subject of "VD" (STD) was addressed on a primetime series
Richard Libertini as Painter #1 in the episode "Love Has A Spot On His Lung: Part 2" (season 4, episode 24).
Calvin Lockhart as Florida's cousin Raymond, who earned his riches by betting on horses (season 6, episode 23)
Don Marshall as FBI Agent Lloyd in the episode "The Investigation" (season 3, episode 20).
Paul Mooney as "The Second Guy" in the episode "J.J. and T.C." (season 6).
Debbi Morgan as Samantha, a date of J.J.'s (3.23); and as Ellen (4.18)
Nancy Morgan as Cindy Crebbins in the episode "Michael’s Decision" (season 6, episode8)
Judy Pace as Gloria Jackson in the episode “The Weekend” (season 3, episode 6)
J. A. Preston as Walter Ingles in the episode "Wilona's Dilemma" (season 3, episode 10)
Charlotte Rae as a hiring manager for a sales job that Florida stole from James (season 2, episode 14)
Sheryl Lee Ralph as Vanessa in the episode "J.J. and The Plumber's Helper" (season 6, episode 9)
Thalmus Rasulala as Ernie Harris, in the episode "The Houseguest" (season 2, episode 20)
Albert Reed Jr. as Alderman Fred C. Davis also played cousin Oscar in Season 2 episode Sometimes There's No Bottom in the Bottle
Percy Rodriguez as Florida’s cousin Edgar.(season 3, episode 5)
Timmie Rogers as Donald the Wino in the episode “The Snow Storm”. (season 6, episode 11)
Bubba Smith as Claude, a bodyguard/thug working for Marion "Sweet Daddy" Williams (4 season 6 episodes)
Richard Stahl as Judge Daniels in the episode “The Gang:Part 2” (season 2, episode 10)
Philip Michael Thomas as Eddie, Thelma's college-age boyfriend (season 1, episode 6)
Adam Wade as successful businessman Frank Mason, Willona's boyfriend (Season 5, 2 episodes)
Vernee Watson-Johnson as Thelma's friend and college mate Valerie, in the episode "Thelma's African Romance (Part 1)" (season 4)
Carl Weathers as Calvin Brooks, husband of the 'nude' model for J.J.'s painting (season 2, episode 16)
Lee Weaver as the second man in season 4 episode "The Big Move: Part 2".
Hal Williams as one of the movers in a season one episode; James' friend, Willie Washington (season 2); and Mr. Mitchell, the father of Earl Mitchell, who is an art student of J.J.'s (season 6)
John Witherspoon as Officer Lawson in the episode "A Matter of Mothers" (season 6, episode 20)
Production
Good Times was created by Eric Monte and actor Mike Evans. The series also features a character named "Michael Evans" after Evans, who portrayed Lionel Jefferson on the Lear-produced series All in the Family and The Jeffersons.
Theme song and opening sequence
The gospel-styled theme song was composed by Dave Grusin with lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. It was sung by Jim Gilstrap and Motown singer Blinky Williams with a gospel choir providing background vocals. The lyrics to the theme song are notorious for being hard to discern, notably the line "Hangin' in a chow line"/"Hangin' in and jivin'" (depending on the source used). Dave Chappelle used this part of the lyrics as a quiz in his "I Know Black People" skit on Chappelle's Show in which the former was claimed as the answer. The insert for the Season One DVD box set has the lyric as "Hangin' in a chow line." However, the Bergmans, along with Bern Nadette Stanis, confirmed that the lyric is actually "Hangin' in and jivin'." Slightly different lyrics were used for the closing credits, with the song beginning on a verse instead of the chorus.
Casting
When Ralph Carter was cast as the youngest Evans child, Michael, he was a cast member in the Broadway musical Raisin and the producers of Raisin were initially reluctant to accept Tandem Productions' buyout offer. While Carter's contract was being negotiated, another young actor, Larry Fishburne (later Laurence) filled the role of Michael during initial rehearsals for Good Times. Early episodes of Good Times contain a notice in the credits: "Ralph Carter appears courtesy of the Broadway musical Raisin."
Cast conflicts
Good Times was intended to be a timely show in the All in the Family vein focused on Rolle and Amos. Both expected the show to deal with serious topics in a comedic way while providing positive characters for viewers to identify with. However, it was Walker's character of J.J. that was an immediate hit with audiences and became the breakout character of the series. J.J.'s frequent use of the expression "Dy-no-mite!" (often in the phrase "Kid Dy-no-mite!"), credited to director John Rich, became a popular catchphrase (later included in TV Land's The 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catch Phrases special).
Rich insisted Walker say it in every episode. Walker and executive producer Norman Lear were skeptical of the idea, but the phrase and the J.J. Evans character caught on with the audience. As a result of the character's popularity, the writers focused more on J.J.'s comedic antics instead of serious issues. Throughout seasons two and three, Rolle and Amos grew increasingly disillusioned with the direction of the show and especially with J.J.'s tomfoolery and stereotypically buffoonish behavior. Rolle was vocal about her hate of his character. In a 1975 interview with Ebony magazine she stated: Despite doing so less publicly than Rolle, Amos also was outspoken about his dissatisfaction with the J.J. character, stating: While Amos was less public with his dissatisfaction than Rolle, he was fired after season three due to disagreements with Lear. Amos' departure was initially attributed to his desire to focus on a film career, but he admitted in a 1976 interview that Lear called him and told him that his contract option with the show was not being renewed. Amos stated, "That's the same thing as being fired." The producers decided not to recast the character of James Evans, instead opting to kill off the character in the two-part season four premiere, "The Big Move," with Florida finding out that James died in an automobile accident while in Mississippi.
Final seasons
By the end of season four, Rolle had also become dissatisfied with the show's direction and decided to leave the series. In the two-part season finale, "Love Has a Spot On His Lung," Florida gets engaged to Carl Dixon (Moses Gunn), a man she began dating toward the end of season four. In the season five premiere episode, "The Evans Get Involved Part 1," it is revealed that Florida and Carl married off screen and moved to Arizona for the sake of Carl's health. With Amos and Rolle gone, DuBois took over as lead actor, as Willona checked in on the Evans children since they were now living alone.
In season five, Janet Jackson joined the cast, playing Penny Gordon, an abused girl, abandoned by her mother, and eventually adopted by Willona. During that season, Johnny Brown's character of Nathan Bookman, the Evans' superintendent, became more prominent. At the beginning of the fifth season, Brown became a series regular and was included in the opening credits. Ratings began to decline. It was clear to the producers as well as viewers that Rolle's absence had left the series without a much-needed unifying center of attention.
Before the taping of season six began, CBS and the show's producers decided that they had to do "something drastic" to increase viewership. According to then-vice president of CBS programming Steve Mills, "We had lost the essence of the show. Without parental guidance, the show slipped. Everything told us that: our mail, our phone calls, our research. We felt we had to go back to basics."
Producers approached Rolle with an offer to appear in a guest role on the series. Rolle was initially hesitant, but when producers agreed to a number of her demands (including an increased salary and higher quality scripts), she agreed to return to the series on a full-time basis. Rolle also wanted producers to make the character of J.J. more responsible, as she felt the character was a poor role model for African-American youths. She also requested that producers write out the character of Carl Dixon; Rolle reportedly disliked the storyline surrounding the Carl Dixon character, as she believed Florida would not have moved on so quickly after James's death or left her children. Rolle also thought the writers had disregarded Florida's devout Christian beliefs by having her fall for and marry Carl, who was an atheist.
In the season six premiere episode "Florida's Homecoming: Part 1," Florida returns from Arizona without Carl to attend Thelma's upcoming wedding to professional football player Keith Anderson (Ben Powers, who joined the cast for the final season). In a rare uncut version of "Florida's Homecoming: Part 2," after Florida arrives home from Arizona, Willona briefly pulls her aside and mentions Carl, to which Florida sadly smiles and shakes her head, implying that Carl had died from cancer. Florida later mentions Carl one last time when she tells Michael about a book they'd both bought him.
Despite changes in the series at Rolle's request and her return, plus the addition of Powers to the cast, ratings continued to fall and CBS canceled the series during the 1978–79 season. In the series finale episode "The End of the Rainbow," each character finally gets a "happy ending." J.J. gets his big break as a nationally syndicated artist for a comic book company with his newly created character, DynoWoman, which is based on Thelma (much to her surprise and delight) and is moving into an apartment with some lady friends.
Michael attends college and moves into an on-campus dorm. Keith's bad knee heals due to his exercise and own physical therapy, leading to the Chicago Bears offering him a contract to play football. Keith announces that he and Thelma are moving into a luxury apartment in the city's upscale Gold Coast district. Thelma also announces that she is pregnant with the couple's first child.
Keith offers Florida the chance to move in with them so she can help Thelma with the new baby; Florida accepts the offer. Willona becomes the head buyer of the boutique, she walks in and announces that she and Penny are also moving out of the projects. Willona then reveals that her new apartment is in the same apartment building to which Keith, Thelma and Florida are also moving; she and Penny become the Evanses' downstairs neighbors.
Broadcast and syndication
Cable network TV One aired reruns of the show since its launch on January 19, 2004. Good Times had also aired at various times on TV Land and on the Canadian specialty cable channel DejaView. Minisodes of the show are available for free on Crackle. Additionally, digital multicast network Antenna TV also aired episodes of the show until January 1, 2018, when GetTV, operated by Sony (which distributes the show), began airing the program. Good Times airs on GetTV with a TV-PG rating.
Most episodes run on TV One with a TV-G rating, with the lone exception being the season three episode "J.J. in Trouble," in which J.J. fears he may have contracted an STD. That episode airs with a TV-14 rating, as well as the "parental guidance is suggested" slide that preceded the episode when it was originally broadcast on CBS. In the past, it aired on TV Land with a TV-PG rating.
As of March 27, 2023, episodes have been airing nightly on the Catchy Comedy (formerly Decades) digital retro TV network.
Home media
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 between February 2003 and August 2006, with a complete box set following the separate seasons on October 28, 2008. Season 1 was released on DVD in Region 4 on December 27, 2006. On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library, including Good Times. They have subsequently re-released the first four seasons on DVD. On September 1, 2015, Mill Creek Entertainment re-released Good Times: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.
All episodes are available to stream on Peacock Premium.
Reception
Ratings
The program premiered in February 1974; high ratings led CBS to renew the program for the 1974–75 season, as it was the seventeenth-highest-rated program that year. During its first full season on the air, the show was the seventh-highest-rated program in the Nielsen ratings, with more than 25% of all American households tuning into an episode each week. Three of the top ten highest-rated programs on American TV that season centered on the lives of African-Americans: Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons and Good Times. The Nielsen ratings for the series declined over time, partly because of its many time slot changes and the departure of John Amos. The ratings went down considerably when the show entered its final two seasons:
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Good Times at TVLand.com
1974 American television series debuts
1979 American television series endings
1970s American sitcoms
1970s American black sitcoms
All in the Family
American television spin-offs
CBS original programming
TV One (American TV channel) original programming
English-language television shows
Mass media portrayals of the working class
Television series about families
Television series about widowhood
Television series by Sony Pictures Television
Television shows set in Chicago
Television shows filmed in California
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian%20communism
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Christian communism
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Christian communism is a theological view that the teachings of Jesus compel Christians to support religious communism. Although there is no universal agreement on the exact dates when communistic ideas and practices in Christianity began, many Christian communists argue that evidence from the Bible suggests that the first Christians, including the Apostles in the New Testament, established their own small communist society in the years following Jesus' death and resurrection. Many advocates of Christian communism and other communists, including Karl Kautsky, argue that it was taught by Jesus and practised by the apostles themselves. This is generally confirmed by historians.
There are those who view that the early Christian Church, such as that one described in the Acts of the Apostles, was an early form of communism and religious socialism. The view is that communism was just Christianity in practice and Jesus was the first communist.
History
Christian communism was based on the concept of koinonia, which means common or shared life, it was not an economic doctrine but an expression of agape love. It was the voluntary sharing of goods amongst the community. Acts 4:35 records that in the early Christian Church in Jerusalem "[n]o one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but shared everything in common." The pattern helped the early Christians to survive after the siege of Jerusalem and was taken seriously for several centuries. While it later disappeared from church history, it remained within monasticism and was an important supporting factor in the rise of feudalism. This ideal returned in the 19th century with monasticism revival and the rise of religious movements wanting to revive the early Christian egalitarianism. Because they were accused of atheism due its association with Marxism, they preferred communalism to describe their Christian communism.
Church Fathers
The early Church Fathers, like their non-Abrahamic religious predecessors, maintained that human society had declined to its current state from a now lost egalitarian social order. Several historians view the early Christian Church, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (specifically the omnia sunt communia reference in Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32-35), as an early form of communism. Among Christian communists, the view is that communism was just Christianity in practice and Jesus was a communist. Later historians across several centuries supported the reading of early church communities as communistic in structure.
European High Middle Ages
From the High Middle Ages in Europe, various groups supporting Christian communist and rural communalist ideas were occasionally adopted by reformist Christian sects. An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with the Book of Acts but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to Piedmont.
Around 1300, the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino, who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians, which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common. The Peasants' Revolt in England has been an inspiration for "the medieval ideal of primitive communism", with the priest John Ball of the revolt being an inspirational figure to later revolutionaries, and having allegedly declared that "things cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common."
Renaissance
In the 16th century, English writer Thomas More, who is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint, portrayed a society based on common ownership of property in his treatise Utopia, whose leaders administered it through the application of reason.
Reformation and early modernity
Several groupings in the English Civil War supported this idea, especially Gerrard Winstanley's Diggers, who espoused clear communistic and agrarianist ideals. Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees' attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile. Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the 16th-century German Peasants' War, which Friedrich Engels analysed in The Peasant War in Germany.
The Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles and church discipline, and practised a form of communism. In the words of historians Max Stanton and Rod Janzen, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, Christian communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe", such as the German Peasants' War, and Engels came to view Anabaptists as proto-communists.
Beginning of the Age of Enlightenment
Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Enlightenment era of the 18th century through such thinkers as the deeply religious Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Raised a Calvinist, Rousseau was influenced by the Jansenist movement within the Catholic Church. The Jansenist movement originated from the most orthodox Roman Catholic bishops who tried to reform the Catholic Church in the 17th century to stop secularization and Protestantism. One of the main Jansenist aims was democratizing to stop the aristocratic corruption at the top of the Church hierarchy.
Late modern period
In Christian Europe, communists were believed to have adopted atheism. In Protestant England, communism was too close to the Catholic communion rite, hence socialist was the preferred term. Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, when The Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable in Europe while communism was not. The teachings of Jesus are frequently described as socialist, especially by Christian socialists, such as Terry Eagleton. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists. This branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. Weitling was the leader of the Christian communist League of the Just whose stated goal was "the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one's neighbor, equality and justice". This was also referred to by the League as the "new Jerusalem".
In the earliest years of the Mormon movement, Joseph Smith promoted the law of consecration and the concept of the United Order. Today, some Mormon fundamentalist groups still apply this principle. Christian socialism was one of the founding threads of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and is said to begin with the uprising of John Ball and Wat Tyler in the 14th century.
Pehr Götrek translated The Communist Manifesto into Swedish the same year it was published in German. He made changes in it from his Christian influence, such as changing the now famous quote, Workers of the world, unite! to (, or "People's voice is God's voice"). He also wrote several works criticising the developing capitalist society from a Christian perspective. Igal Halfin of Tel Aviv University argues the Marxist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people.
Early 20th century science fiction author and socialist Olaf Stapledon stated that "Marxism and Christianity spring from the same emotional experience". Fidel Castro believed, "Christ chose the fishermen because he was a communist", In his book "Fidel and Religion", Castro states that there is a "great coincidence between Christianity's objectives and the ones we Communists seek, between the Christian teachings of humility, austerity, selflessness, and loving thy neighbour and what we might call the content of a revolutionary's life and behaviour". Castro saw a similarity to his goals with the goals of Christ: "Christ multiplied the fish and the loaves to feed the people. That is precisely what we want to do with the Revolution and socialism", adding that, "I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount".
Nicaraguan Sandinista activist, priest and former Minister for Culture Ernesto Cardenal was a proponent of the idea of Christian communism, saying "Christ led me to Marx...for me, the four Gospels are all equally Communist. I’m a Marxist who believes in God, follows Christ and is a revolutionary for his Kingdom". He later said "The Bible is full of revolutions. The prophets are people with a message of revolution. Jesus of Nazareth takes the revolutionary message of the prophets. And we also will continue trying to change the world and make revolution. Those revolutions failed, but others will come".
China
The participants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rebellion, a syncretic Christian-Shenic theocratic kingdom, are viewed by the Chinese Communist Party as proto-communists. Soong Ching-ling, a Methodist, was recognized in China with the title of Honorary President of the People's Republic of China.
Basis
Christian communists typically regard biblical texts in Acts 2 and Acts 4 as evidence that the first Christians lived in a communist society. Scholars generally agree that the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of Luke were written by the same person. In Luke 12:33, Jesus commands his disciples to sell what they have and give alms, and in Luke 14:33 says that no one can be his disciple who has not forsaken all his possessions. Historians generally confirm the view that a form of communism was taught by Jesus and practised by the apostles.
Among those historians who support the Christian communist view, Montero offers anthropological evidence that the practices recounted in Acts 4:32–35 were historical and were practised widely and taken seriously during at least the first two centuries of Christianity. Other biblical evidence of anti-capitalistic belief systems include Matthew 6:24, which said: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." The slogan "Each according to his abilities" has biblical origins. Acts 11:29 states: "Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea." Additionally, the phrase "To each according to his needs" has a biblical basis in Acts 4:35, which says "to the emissaries to distribute to each according to his need".
Various authors, including Thomas Wharton Collens, , and José Míguez Bonino, describe biblical sources supporting a common-property society. Bonino wrote: "Is it altogether absurd to re-read the resurrection today as a death of the monopolies, the liberation from hunger, or a solidary form of ownership?" Bonino and Miranda argue against the belief that "Scripture has various meanings", which in their view allow Western conservative theologians "to prevent the Bible from revealing its own subversive message", and that "use the Biblical text ... to defend the status-quo of a pre-revolutionary situation", as summarized by Andrew Kirk. Miranda said: "I am not introducing the Bible to Marx. ... I only wish to understand what the Bible says. ... We want to take the Bible seriously."
Christian communism does not depend merely on the principles of the early apostles, and Christian communists argue that anti-capitalist ideals are deeply rooted in the Christian faith. While modern capitalism had not yet formed in the time of Jesus, his message was overwhelmingly against the love of money and greed, and in support of the poor. Christian communists see the principles of Christ as staunchly anti-capitalist in nature. Since "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10), it seems natural for Christians to oppose a social system founded—as Christian communists argue—entirely on the love of money. Capitalism is heavily based in the collection of usury, which was condemned for centuries by the Church based in numerous scriptures. Christian opposition to the emergence of such an interest-based system largely delayed capitalist development and capitalism did not gather popular support until John Calvin endorsed capitalist practice from a religious perspective.
Groups
Several Christian groups formerly practised common ownership and others continue to do so. They may or may not have explicitly used the English term communist for self-identification. Extant groups include:
Aaronic Order
Bruderhof Communities
Church of Bible Understanding
Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite)
Evangelical Association of the Israelite Mission of the New Universal Covenant
Gloriavale Christian Community
Hutterites
Jesus Christians
Jesus People USA
Koinonia Partners
Padanaram Settlement
Reba Place Fellowship
Shakers
Sojourners Community
Twelve Tribes communities
Historically, many groups have practised Christian communism, and may or may not be extant, depending on the case, including:
Adonai-Shomo
Amana Colonies (Community of True Inspiration is extant but no longer communal)
Anabaptist followers of Thomas Müntzer
Aurora Colony
Batenburgers
Diggers
Dulcinians
Jesus Army
Labadists
Levellers
Harmony Society
Oneida Community
Peoples Temple
Society of Separatists of Zoar
United Order Family of Christ
Waldensians
Zwijndrechtse Nieuwlichters
Reception
Both Christian communism and liberation theology stress orthopraxy in Christianity over orthodoxy. A narrative of the nature of contemporary social struggles is developed via materialist analysis utilizing historiographic concepts developed by Marx. A concrete example are the Paraguayan landless movement Sin Tierra, who engage in direct land seizures and the establishment of socialized agricultural cooperative production in . The contemporary Paraguayan Sin Tierra operate in a very similar manner as that of the reformation era Diggers. For Camilo Torres Restrepo, the founder of a Colombian guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, developing this orthopraxis meant celebrating the Catholic Eucharist only among those engaged in armed struggle against the army of the Colombian state while fighting alongside them. In Australia, the academic Roland Boer has attempted to synthesize Calvinism and Marxism.
In a September 1962 sermon, Martin Luther King Jr., a democratic socialist and social gospel advocate, said that "no Christian can be a communist". He stated that "basic philosophy of Christianity is unalterably opposed to the basic philosophy of communism", citing what he saw as rampant secularism and materialism in communism as evidence that communism "leaves out God". He further said that "for the communist there is no divine government or no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles." Nevertheless, King acknowledged that "although communism can never be accepted by a Christian, it emphasizes many essential truths that must forever challenge us as Christians." He added:
The theology of Pope Francis has been described as critical of capitalism, and Pope Francis has been viewed as having some sympathy to socialist causes, with his frequent criticism of capitalism and of neoliberalism. In 2016, Francis said that the world economy is "[f]undamental terrorism, against all of Humanity". When questioned on whether or not he is a communist, Francis responded: "As for whether or not I'm a communist: I am sure that I have not said anything more than what the Church's social doctrine teaches ... maybe the impression of being a little more 'of the left' has been given, but that would be a misinterpretation." In 2013, he said: "The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don't feel offended." When asked about being labeled a Leninist by a blog post in The Economist in 2014, Francis said: "The communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the center of the Gospel." He added that communism came "twenty centuries later".
Relation with Marxism
Christian communists may or may not agree with various parts of Marxism, such as on the way a socialist or communist society should be organized. Christian communists also share some of the political goals of Marxists, for example replacing capitalism with socialism, which should in turn be followed by communism at a later point in the future. The young Louis Althusser and Denys Turner are among Christian or Christianity-influenced philosophers who asserted the coherence of Christianity and Marxism. Althusser said: "I became communist because I was Catholic. I did not change religion, but I remained profoundly Catholic. I don't go to church but this doesn't matter; you don't ask people to go to church. I remained a Catholic, that is, an internationalist universalist. I thought that inside the Communist Party there were more adequate means to realize universal fraternity."
Roland Boer, the son of a Presbyterian minister, said: "There is a tradition within Marxism of engagement with religion that is usually characterised as atheistic and disinterested, but I argue there is a continuous stream of major Marxist figures who have written on questions of religion and engaged specifically with the Bible or with theological debate. Some people contend that Marxism borrowed its main ideas from Christianity and Judaism and reconstructed them as secular ideology, but I think that is extremely simplistic – the relationship is much more complex." About Karl Marx's famous quote about religion being the "opium of the people", he argues it has been largely misinterpreted, and that at that time opium was both valued and denounced for its medicinal qualities and its addictive potential. He said: "That ambivalence over religion is really what is embodied in Marx's metaphor, rather than the notion that it is just a drug that dulls the senses and makes you forget your suffering." About Christian communism, he said: "The Christian communist tradition is what really interests me and keeps me involved with religion. I am fascinated by the radical, revolutionary dimension of Christianity."
See also
General
Catholicity
Che Jesus
Christian left
Christian views on poverty and wealth
Doctor Communis
Ebionites
"He who does not work, neither shall he eat"
Jesus in Christianity
Jesuism
Jesuit reduction
League of the Just
Marxism and religion
Materialism and Christianity
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
People
Alain Badiou
John Goodwyn Barmby
Étienne Cabet
Terry Eagleton
Denys Turner
Katayama Sen
Y. T. Wu
Slavoj Zizek
Other Christian left perspectives
Christian anarchism
Christian egalitarianism
Christian socialism
References
Bibliography
Further reading
David Chilton. 1982, 1986. Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. Tyler, Texas: The Institute for Christian Economics. . Available online for free.
John Cort. Christian Socialism: An informal history.
Metacosmesis: The Christian Marxism of Frederic Hastings Smyth and the Society of the Catholic Commonwealth. By Terry Brown (1987).
Montero, Roman A. 2017. All Things in Common: The Economic Practices of the Early Christians. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock. .
Myles, Robert J. 2019. Class Struggle in the New Testament. Lanham: Fortress Academic/Lexington Books.
External links
Crises In European History Socialist Labor Party says that the early Christian Church practised "pure communism". pp. 23–25 (PDF).
Modern History Sourcebook: William Bradford From Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation.
"Preaching". March 1868. Judge Thomas Wharton Collens.
The Sources of Early Christian Communism July 30, 2019. Church Life Journal. University of Notre Dame. Roman Montero.
Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists? November 4, 2017. Archived from the Wayback Machine. The New York Times. Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart.
Anti-capitalism
Communism
Communism
Types of socialism
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown%20Prosecution%20Service
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Crown Prosecution Service
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The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal public agency for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. It is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The main responsibilities of the CPS are to provide legal advice to the police and other investigative agencies during the course of criminal investigations, to decide whether a suspect should face criminal charges following an investigation, and to conduct prosecutions both in the magistrates' courts and the Crown Court.
The Attorney General for England and Wales superintends the CPS's work and answers for it in Parliament, although the Attorney General has no influence over the conduct of prosecutions, except when national security is an issue or for a small number of offences that require the Attorney General's permission to prosecute.
History
Historically prosecutions were conducted through a patchwork of different systems. For serious crimes tried at the county level, justices of the peace or the sheriff would issue a presentment to a grand jury, who would either return a "true bill" resulting in an indictment, or not. If a true bill followed presentment, the individual would be tried by a petit jury by justices of the King's Bench, Common Pleas or Exchequer as they toured the circuits conducting the assizes. Individuals could be prosecuted upon indictment by prosecutors ranging from the Attorney-general or Solicitor-general, king's serjeants or attorneys, prosecutors instructed by the sheriff or justice of the peace. It was more likely that the Attorney-General or Solicitor-General would be involved in prosecutions of serious crimes such as high treason at the Court of King's Bench at Westminster Hall.
The second means of prosecution was by "appeal", which was when the prosecution was initiated not by presentment to a grand jury but by direct private prosecution of an interested party. An "appeal of murder" prosecuted by the widow of a murdered man was typical of this form of prosecution.
Sir John Maule was appointed to be the first Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales in 1880, operating under the Home Office; his jurisdiction was only for decisions as to whether to prosecute in a very small number of difficult or important cases; once prosecution had been authorised, the matter was turned over to the Treasury Solicitor. Police forces continued to be responsible for the bulk of cases, sometimes referring difficult ones to the Director.
In 1962 a Royal commission recommended that police forces set up independent prosecution teams so as to avoid having the same officers investigate and prosecute a case. Technical barriers were already in place that those prosecuting did so as private citizens, rendering them open to the range of evidential offences imposable by the court. This Royal Commission's recommendation was not implemented by all police forces, however, and so in 1978, another was set up, this time headed by Sir Cyril Philips. It reported in 1981, recommending that a single unified team, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), be made responsible for all public prosecutions in England and Wales. A White paper was released in 1983, becoming the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, which established the CPS under the direction of the Director of Public Prosecutions, consisting of a merger of his old department with the police prosecution departments. It started operating in 1986.
In 1997, the Home Office tasked Sir Iain Glidewell to inquire into performance of and make recommendations for the CPS. The Glidewell Report of June 1998 found that 12% of charges by police were discontinued by the CPS and that there were failures to communicate between the two. It recommended the CPS:
focus resources more on serious crimes at the Crown Court level
co-operate more with the police in each case
concurring with an existing government plan, restructure the organisation into 42 regional branches, each with own Chief Crown Prosecutor.
Organisation
The CPS undertook more than 800,000 prosecutions in 2012–13, approximately 700,000 of which were in the magistrates' courts and 100,000 in the Crown Court. The conviction rate was 86% in the magistrates' courts and 80% in the Crown Court.
The Spending Review undertaken by HM Treasury in 2010 (and revised in 2013) has led to a budget decrease of almost 30% between 2010 and 2014, resulting in a restructure of the organisation and a large number of voluntary redundancies. The CPS has implemented measures such as the Core Quality Standards with the intention of maintaining and raising standards.
People
The CPS employs about 9,000 staff. They primarily prepare cases for internal and external advocates and liaise with police and third parties. Its approved external advocates number 2,900 solicitors and barristers, among which are specialists. Both sets of advocates include King's Counsel—concentrated externally.
Grades of staff
Crown Advocates present cases in the Crown Court
Crown Prosecutors (also known as reviewing lawyers) provide advice to investigators, make charging decisions and present prosecution cases in the Magistrates Court.
Associate Prosecutors represent the CPS in cases with guilty pleas in the magistrates' courts
Paralegals/casework assistants provide clerical support and help with progressing cases.
Structure
Headquartered in London and York, the senior management team sets policies and handles corporate matters such as finance and communications. The Director of Public Prosecutions is assisted by the CPS Chief Executive in running the organisation.
CPS Areas
Most of its casework is dealt with by the fourteen CPS Areas, which are responsible for conducting prosecutions in specific parts of England and Wales; each area is led by a Chief Crown Prosecutor.
The areas are composed of police force areas, except in London where the Metropolitan Police are split across two areas. They are:
Cymru/Wales (Dyfed Powys, Gwent, North Wales, South Wales)
East Midlands (Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire)
Eastern (Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk)
London North (Metropolitan)
London South (City of London, Metropolitan)
Mersey Cheshire (Cheshire, Merseyside)
North East (Cleveland, Durham, Northumbria)
North West (Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire)
South East (Kent, Surrey, Sussex)
South West (Avon and Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, Gloucestershire)
Thames and Chiltern (Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Thames Valley)
Wessex (Dorset, Hampshire & Isle of Wight, Wiltshire)
West Midlands (Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Midlands and British Transport Police)
Yorkshire and Humberside (West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Humberside)
Before a review, these numbered 42 to mirror the police forces (save that CPS London dealt with both of London's territorial police forces).
CPS Direct
CPS Direct provides charging advice/authorisation by phone and electronically to police forces at all hours. Prosecutors assigned to CPS Direct are remote workers in order to provide support outside of normal business hours. Most charging decisions by the CPS are now made by CPS Direct, which then passes the prosecution to the appropriate CPS Area.
Casework Divisions
The Casework Divisions deal with prosecutions requiring specialist knowledge and experience:
Special Crime and Counter-Terrorism Division – Appeals, counter-terrorism, and special crime, which includes deaths in custody, public corruption, and medical manslaughter.
Serious Economic, Organised Crime and International Directorate - This consists of the former Proceeds of Crime Unit, Specialist Fraud, and International Justice and Organised Crime Divisions
Oversight
The Attorney General oversees the work of the CPS, meeting regularly with the DPP and requesting briefings on matters of public or Parliamentary concern. The Attorney General (or their deputy, the Solicitor General) answer for the CPS's performance and conduct in Parliament.
However, the Attorney General has no role in the day-to-day running of the organisation or in deciding whether a suspect should be prosecuted. The CPS is an independent prosecuting authority and government ministers have no influence over its decision making.
The only exceptions to this rule are when a case involves matters of national security or the Attorney General must personally consent to a prosecution (e.g. all Official Secrets Act prosecutions require the Attorney General's permission to proceed).
Due to the Attorney General's limited role in the CPS's casework, the use of nolle prosequi (halting of proceedings on indictment; a prerogative of the Attorney General) is now rare. Questionable incidents, such as the dropping of the case against John Bodkin Adams for what was believed to be purely political reasons, have not been repeated in modern times.
Inspection
His Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) is responsible for inspecting the work of the CPS. The current Chief Inspector of the CPS is Kevin McGinty.
Roles and responsibilities
Pre-charge advice
The CPS will often provide confidential advice to investigators on the viability of a prosecution in complex or unusual cases. This includes clarifying the intent needed to commit an offence or addressing shortcomings in the available evidence.
Unlike in many other jurisdictions, the CPS has no power to order investigations or direct investigators to take action. Whether the CPS is asked for advice or a charging decision is entirely at the discretion of investigators (see History for background on this division of responsibilities in England & Wales).
Charging decisions
The Crown Prosecution Service is responsible for charging suspects with indictable offences (e.g. murder, rape) and all other criminal offences that lay beyond the prosecutorial authority of the police. Police forces can charge suspects with less serious summary offences (e.g. common assault, criminal damage with a low value) but cannot charge suspects with indictable offences without authorisation from a crown prosecutor (except in certain emergency situations).
The Code for Crown Prosecutors requires prosecutors to answer two questions in the 'Full Code Test': Is there sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction? (in other words, is there sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction against each suspect on each charge). The code outlines this means that an objective, impartial and reasonable jury or bench of magistrates or judge hearing a case alone, properly directed and acting in accordance with the law, is more likely than not to convict the defendant of the charge alleged. The second question asked is: Is a prosecution required in the public interest? These questions must be answered in this order; if there is insufficient evidence, the public interest in prosecuting is irrelevant.
According to the code, if there is insufficient evidence to prosecute, no further action will be taken against the suspect or the prosecutor will ask the police to carry out further inquiries to gather more evidence. When there is sufficient evidence but a prosecution is not required in the public interest, prosecutors can decide that no further action should be taken or that a caution or reprimand is a suitable alternative to prosecution.
In limited circumstances, where the Full Code Test is not met, the Threshold Test may be applied to charge a suspect. The seriousness or circumstances of the case must justify the making of an immediate charging decision, and there must be substantial grounds to object to bail. There must be a rigorous examination of the five conditions of the Threshold Test to ensure that it is only applied when necessary and that cases are not charged prematurely. All five conditions must be met before the Threshold Test can be applied. Where any of the conditions are not met, there is no need to consider any of the other conditions, as the Threshold Test cannot be applied and the suspect cannot be charged. The five conditions that must be met before a Threshold Test can be applied are as follows:
There are reasonable grounds to suspect that the person to be charged has committed the offence
Further evidence can be obtained to provide a realistic prospect of conviction
The seriousness of the circumstances of the case justifies the making of an immediate charging decision
There are continuing substantial grounds to object to bail in accordance with the Bail Act 1976 and in all the circumstances of the case it is proper to do so
It is in the public interest to charge the suspect
A decision to charge under the Threshold Test must be kept under review. The prosecutor should be proactive to secure from the police the identified outstanding evidence or other material in accordance with an agreed timetable. The evidence must be regularly assessed to ensure that the charge is still appropriate and that continued objection to bail is justified. The Full Code Test must be applied as soon as the anticipated further evidence or material is received and, in any event, in Crown Court cases, usually before the formal service of the prosecution case.
Conducting prosecutions
Whether a decision to charge is taken by police or prosecutors, the CPS will conduct the case, which includes preparing the case for court hearings, disclosing material to the defence and presenting the case in court. The CPS will be represented in court from the first hearing through to conviction/sentencing and in some cases appeal.
All prosecutions must be kept under continuous review and stopped if the Full Code Test (see above) is no longer satisfied or was never satisfied (i.e. the decision to charge was wrong). Mishandling of a case, such as failing to disclose evidence, can result in the courts either acquitting a defendant or quashing the conviction on appeal.
Appeals
When an appeal against conviction or sentence is lodged by a defendant, the CPS will decide whether or not to oppose the appeal after considering the grounds of appeal. If it decides to oppose, it will present relevant evidence and material to assist the appellate court.
Exceptionally, the CPS has invited defendants to appeal when it has concluded that the safety of a conviction was questionable, for example in the case of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.
Extradition
The Extradition Act 2003 tasks the CPS with representing foreign states in extradition proceedings, heard at Westminster Magistrates' Court. While it acts on the foreign prosecutor's instructions, the CPS retains discretion on how the case should be prosecuted.
The Extradition Unit at CPS Headquarters deals with all cases in which the extradition of a person within England and Wales is sought by another state and all cases in which the CPS is seeking the extradition of an individual outside the European Union. The CPS Areas prepare and manage their own extradition requests under the European Arrest Warrant framework.
Attorney General's Treasury Counsel
Treasury Counsel are specialist advocates who prosecute many of the most serious and complex cases in the country; they are led by a "First Senior Treasury Counsel (Criminal)" and is composed of ten senior and seven junior Treasury Counsel. Treasury Counsel (Criminal) are so-named because historically they were also instructed by the Treasury Solicitor (who in earlier times was also Director of Public Prosecutions), although criminal prosecution is now overseen by the independent Crown Prosecution Service.
Current First Senior Treasury Counsel
Oliver Glasgow QC (2021– )
Former First Senior Treasury Counsel
John Nutting QC (1993–1995)
David Calvert-Smith QC (1995–1998)
Orlando Pownell QC (1999–2002)
Richard Horwell QC (2002–2006)
Mark Ellison QC (2006–2008)
Jonathan Laidlaw QC (2008–2010)
Brian Altman QC (2011–2013)
Richard Whittam QC (2013–2015)
Mark Heywood QC (2015–2018)
Duncan Penny QC (2018–2020)
Controversy
Julian Assange
The CPS faced embarrassment after it destroyed key emails relating to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Email exchanges between the CPS and the Swedish Prosecution Authority were deleted after CPS lawyer Paul Close retired from the CPS in 2014. According to The Guardian, the CPS "unaccountably advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running embassy standoff." The CPS data destruction was disclosed in a freedom of information case pursued by Italian investigative journalist Stephania Maurizi, who took her case against the CPS to an information tribunal in London on 13 and 14 November 2017.
Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan
On 30 October 2020, the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, a member of the UAE royal family, who was accused by the curator of the inaugural Hay festival in Abu Dhabi, Caitlin McNamara, of sexually assaulting her during a meeting to discuss human rights concerns. McNamara had been seeking a prosecution in the UK, but the CPS concluded that it could not prosecute Nahyan, as the alleged offence happened outside its jurisdiction.
Heads
These individuals have served as the Director of Public Prosecutions since the CPS was established in 1986:
Sir Thomas Hetherington, KCB, CBE, TD, QC (1986–87) (DPP since 1977; became head of CPS)
Sir Allan Green, KCB, QC (1987 – 1991)
Dame Barbara Mills, DBE, QC (1992 – 1998)
Sir David Calvert-Smith, QC (1998–2003)
Ken Macdonald, Baron Macdonald of River Glaven, Kt, QC (2003–2008)
Sir Keir Starmer, KCB, QC (2008 – October 2013)
Dame Alison Saunders, DCB (November 2013–November 2018)
Max Hill, KC (November 2018 – present)
In popular culture
Rough Justice – about the circumstances leading to the formation of the CPS
Crown Prosecutor – first television series to feature the CPS
Law & Order: UK – the British remake of Law & Order, features Metropolitan Police detectives working with CPS prosecutors
Anatomy of a Scandal – a Netflix limited series in which Michelle Dockery portrays a Crown prosecutor pursuing rape charges against a member of parliament, based on the novel of the same name by Sarah Vaughan.
See also
Elsewhere in the United Kingdom:
Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (Scotland)
Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland
Prosecution in England & Wales
Attorney General's Office (United Kingdom)
Crown prosecutor, the title given in a number of jurisdictions to the state prosecutor
Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (Incorporated into the CPS in 2010)
District attorney (US)
References
External links
His Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate website
Criminal investigation
Government agencies established in 1985
1985 establishments in the United Kingdom
Legal organisations based in London
Non-ministerial departments of the Government of the United Kingdom
Organisations based in the City of Westminster
Prosecution services of the United Kingdom
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward%20Herrmann
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Edward Herrmann
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Edward Kirk Herrmann (July 21, 1943 – December 31, 2014) was an American actor, director, and writer. He was known for his portrayals of Franklin D. Roosevelt in both the miniseries Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and 1982 film musical Annie, Richard Gilmore in Amy Sherman-Palladino's comedy-drama series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), and a ubiquitous narrator for historical programs on The History Channel and in such PBS productions as Nova. He was also known as a spokesman for Dodge automobiles in the 1990s.
Herrmann started working in theatre on Broadway in 1972 with his debut in Moonchildren alongside James Woods. He received two Tony Award nominations, winning for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Mrs. Warren's Profession in 1976. Herrmann received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning for his performance in The Practice in 1999. He also received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination with the ensemble for Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995). Herrmann became known as a character actor having appeared in various films such as Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Garry Marshall's Overboard (1987), Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004) and Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife (2007).
Early life
Edward Kirk Herrmann was born on July 21, 1943, in Washington, D.C., the son of Jean Eleanor (née O'Connor) and John Anthony Herrmann. Of German and Irish descent, Herrmann grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and graduated from Bucknell University in 1965, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi. He studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Career
Theater
Herrmann began his career in theatre. One of the first professional productions he appeared in was the U.S. premiere of Michael Weller's Moonchildren at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in November 1971. He moved with the show to New York City to make his Broadway debut the following year. Herrmann returned to Broadway in 1976 to portray Frank Gardner in the revival of Mrs. Warren's Profession. For his performance he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Herrmann and Dianne Wiest collaborated as directors on the Williamstown Theater Festival in its 1985 offering Not About Heroes, playing Sassoon. Frank Rich praised the performance: "If Mr. Baker's Wilfred is a bit of an uncomplicated, foursquare boy scout and if Mr. Herrmann's stiff-upper-lipped Siegfried at first arouses deja vu, they form a passionate symbiosis as the darker clouds gather in Act II. Both actors also have a natural way with the rhetoric of their characters' respective canons." During 1988, Herrmann appeared in the New York production Julius Caesar as Gaius Cassius Longinus. Herrmann stated he had joined after becoming tired with constantly having to wear a suit in his prior roles and finding Cassius the most complex of the available roles. Frank Rich opined that Herrmann was the "liveliest of the leads by far" and that he would be better suited in the role of Brutus. In 1988–89, Herrmann starred with Alec Guinness in the London West End production of A Walk in the Woods. The play debuted at the Comedy Theater in November 1988, and was directed by Ronald Eyre. As the New York Times reported, "Mr. Guinness and Mr. Herrmann share the stage uninterrupted for some two hours. The fictional play is rooted in the real-life relationship between a Soviet diplomat and an American negotiator who broke protocol in 1982 and made a private limited arms control deal while taking a stroll in a forest outside Geneva."
Television
1970s
Herrmann was known for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the television films Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977) (both of which earned him Best Actor Emmy Award nominations), as well as in the first feature film adaptation of the Broadway musical Annie (1982). Reflecting on becoming involved with Eleanor and Franklin, Herrmann reflected, "It was a gift. You never get a script that good. Or a cast that good, or a director that good, or a designer that good, or a sponsor that good. And all on the same project? It was just blessed." Joseph McAuley said of Herrmann's casting, "To a generation growing up watching television and the movies, Edward Herrmann was the personification of FDR. As an actor, he stood head and shoulders above everybody else (literally—he was 6'5") and he was an inspired choice to play the Depression era/World War II president for a generation who never knew the real man who had long since become an historical figure." Emily VanDerWerff wrote that while she found Annie to be a mediocre film, "Herrmann's warm charm as FDR shines through. He's a kind, compassionate fellow, in a film that's all about the power of positive feeling and kindness."
1980s
In 1980 Herrmann starred in an episode of M*A*S*H as an army surgeon suffering from PTSD, and in 1987 he portrayed Max in The Lost Boys.
He was nominated for a Tony Award for Plenty in 1983 and Emmy Awards in 1986 and 1987 for two guest-starring appearances as Father Joseph McCabe on St. Elsewhere. In 1984, Herrmann played Alger Hiss in the PBS docudrama Concealed Enemies. During a break from filming, Herrmann praised the production: "This is perhaps the most ambitious thing public television has ever done. They were a little nervous about it, because of the cost. But they shouldn't have worried. It smacks of the real thing."
1990s
Herrmann appeared in the 1994 television film Don't Drink the Water. Ken Tucker wrote, "In smaller roles, veteran character actors Austin Pendleton, Josef Sommer, and Edward Herrmann nail their lines like the seasoned pros they are." Herrmann portrayed Herman Munster in the Fox made-for-television film Here Come the Munsters, which aired on Halloween in 1995. Herrmann found the script "silly and funny" and wanted to play a clown again, though also admitting a lack of prior involvement with the original The Munsters: "I was way too old. I was out of college. I was going to be an actor. I have always admired Fred, but no, I wasn't swept up in Munstermania at all. I didn't have a lunch box." In observing the plot of Here Come the Munsters, Herrmann was reminded of American family values, seeing the production as parodying such beliefs: "In our screenplay, the Munsters arrive here as refugees. We resist attempts to kick us out of the country by a vicious politician who keeps saying, 'America for Americans!'"
David Flint and Nick Smithson positively commented on the accuracy of his likeness. He played Tobias Beecher's father on Oz. Herrmann earned an Emmy in 1999 for his guest appearances on The Practice. Also in 1999, Herrmann appeared as President Fellwick in the television miniseries Atomic Train. Ray Richmond commented that Herrmann "makes a swell U.S. President, reassuring and authoritative".
2000s
Herrmann portrayed Norman, a strikingly old intern, on ABC's Grey's Anatomy. From 2000 to 2007, he portrayed Richard Gilmore on The WB's Gilmore Girls. Series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino said Herrmann had been the first choice to play the character and came in to read the script despite his agent saying he would not: "We sat there in stunned silence as Ed opened the script and proceeded to read. And just like that, Richard Gilmore was sitting in front of us." The audition had taken place in New York City; casting director Jill Anthony said his audition and that of Kelly Bishop were vastly superior to others trying to procure the same roles. Bishop said she gained a friendship with Herrmann based on their similarities: "We, obviously, were older [than the rest of the cast]. But we were also New York actors, and we connected very well. We always did our crossword puzzles together in the hair-and-makeup room." Alexis Bledel, who portrayed his character's granddaughter, recalled Herrmann's extensive knowledge and habits during breaks from filming: "Ed was so knowledgeable about theater, TV, and film, and what I remember most is how he would share so much of this knowledge. He loved talking about it so we had those long Friday-night dinner scenes where we'd be sitting at a table all day, and he would share so much." Herrmann enjoyed the relationship between his character and that of Bledel, and was disappointed by the series finale. Caryn James assessed that Herrmann and Bishop succeeded in making their characters likeable while Sarah Schweppe wrote that Herrmann "was such a comforting presence on this show."
2010s
In October 2013, Herrmann made an appearance on How I Met Your Mother in the episode "Knight Vision", playing a minister.
Herrmann's death was written in via his character Richard in the 2016 revival of Gilmore Girls, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Lauren Graham, Herrmann's costar on Gilmore Girls, said, "He would have loved this [new series]. His death was just a loss for us personally. It's given the show a new complexity and depth. It's a nice tribute to him." Sherman-Palladino told Entertainment Weekly, "It's safe to say that the death of Richard Gilmore, the death of Ed Herrmann, looms large over everything." Scott Patterson, another costar, agreed with Sherman-Palladino: "[Herrmann's death] left a big void, but Amy honored it beautifully. He's throughout ... these stories. It's a wonderful homage to him as a person and to his character as well. It's nice to have him around." After concluding filming, Bishop said of Herrmann, "There was a space where he was supposed to be, so he certainly was with us, and he's very prevalent in the show so that will make everybody happy I think, who'll miss him, but I'm sorry he couldn't be with us."
Film
Herrmann's film career began in the mid-1970s, playing supporting roles including Robert Redford's partner in The Great Waldo Pepper, a law student in The Paper Chase, the idle, piano-playing Klipspringer in The Great Gatsby and opposite Laurence Olivier in The Betsy (1978). He again portrayed President Roosevelt in Annie.
Herrmann played the lead in the 1979 Kieth Merrill film, Take Down, in the role as the high-school English teacher turned wrestling coach. Among Herrmann's better known roles are as the title character in another Kieth Merrill film, Harry's War (1981), the philandering husband of Goldie Hawn's character in Overboard, Reverend Michael Hill in Disney's The North Avenue Irregulars, one of the characters in the film-within-a-film in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, and as Max, the mild-mannered head vampire in The Lost Boys. In 1993, Herrmann appeared in Born Yesterday. He was offered praise for the role, Vincent Canby citing him as one of the four actors heading "the excellent supporting cast", and Malcolm Johnson writing Herrmann and Fred Dalton Thompson had the "most convincing performances". Herrmann appeared in the following year's Foreign Student, released on July 29, 1994. Kevin Thomas commented, "Edward Herrmann, so often a fine actor, emerges as a caricature of the tweedy, pipe-smoking professor". Herrmann portrayed Nelson Rockefeller in the 1995 film Nixon. Herrmann appeared in the 1998 film Better Living, a priest who becomes a family counselor. Oliver Jones wrote that Herrmann was in "a rare comic form" in the role.
Herrmann also had a supporting role as William Randolph Hearst in the 2001 film The Cat's Meow, starring Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies. A. O. Scott praised Herrmann as performing "with remarkable emotional agility" while Kevin Thomas noted the resemblance Herrmann had to Hearst as being better than some of his costars. Herrmann had a small role as Joseph Breen in the 2004 film The Aviator, being assessed by Rich Drees as joining several actors in making "memorable moments" and cited by Roger Friedman of joining other featured actors in creating "lovely cameos". In March 2007, Herrmann had a supporting role in I Think I Love My Wife. Kirk Honeycutt lamented Herrmann, along with costars Chris Rock and Steve Buscemi, as character actors "wasted on such lightweight roles."
In 2011, Herrmann appeared in Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, playing a father whose son discovers his previous career. Robert Abele assessed Herrmann and costar Miriam Flynn as giving "aw-shucks performances". In 2012, Herrmann appeared in Treasure Buddies, portraying the film's antagonist. Herrmann took on the role due to the character being an English villain, allowing him to portray an antagonist with an accent, as well as being able to work with animals and make a film for children. The following year, Herrmann had a small role as a doctor in Are You Here. Herrmann's final appearance in a film was The Town That Dreaded Sundown, released in October 2014. Gary Collinson wrote that Herrmann and Veronica Cartwright both offered "solid support, although they are a little underused".
Voice work
Herrmann was known for his voluminous voice work for The History Channel and various PBS specials, including hosting a revival of Frank Capra's Why We Fight, and made appearances and did voiceovers in Dodge commercials from 1992 to 2001, and Rayovac batteries in the same timeframe. His voice work includes dozens of audiobooks, for which he won several Audie awards. He played Gutman in Blackstone Audio's Grammy-nominated dramatization of The Maltese Falcon and played Cauchon in Blackstone's audio version of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. Herrmann provided the narration for the 2010 non-fiction book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, Josh Schwartz praising Herrmann as doing "a great job", and Susan Rife assessing his narration as "urgent".
After his well-received portrayal of J. Alden Weir in the play My Dearest Anna at the Wilton Playshop in Wilton, Connecticut, he was a special guest of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square in their Ring Christmas Bells holiday concert in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 11–14, 2008. He reprised his role of Franklin Roosevelt in 2014, providing the voice of F.D.R. in Ken Burns' PBS series, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Herrmann received praise, Neil Genzlinger noting him as among the "top-drawer talent" of the voiceover cast.
His final work was as narrator for another Burns documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, which aired three months after Herrmann's death. Director Barak Goodman recalled Herrmann collapsing during the first day of his work on the project and explaining his illness of terminal brain cancer to the production crew of the documentary, Goodman furthering that by this point it was clear to Herrmann that he was not going to live despite receiving new forms of treatment: "He was confident he could do this, and felt it [was appropriate to] be his final project." Mary McNamara wrote that Herrmann delivered "a final performance, equal in breathtaking courage and beauty, that embodies precisely what allows Goodman to explore the staggering numbers and many defeats without ever falling to its knees as defeatist."
Personal life
Herrmann came from a prominent Unitarian family, based in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. He became a Roman Catholic as an adult.
Marriages
Herrmann was married twice and had two daughters, Ryen and Emma. In 1978, he married his longtime girlfriend, screenwriter Leigh Curran. The marriage ended in 1992. Prior to his second marriage, Herrmann's future second wife, Star (Hayner) Roman, filed a paternity suit against him after he fathered a child with her while filming Harry's War (1981). Roman and Herrmann eventually married, and the union lasted from 1994 until his death in 2014. Herrmann had one stepson, Rory Herrmann (né Rory Roman), Star Roman's son from a previous relationship who, as an adult, changed his last name from Roman to Herrmann in honor of his stepfather.
Automobiles
Herrmann was a well-known automotive enthusiast and restored classic automobiles. He was a regular master of ceremonies for the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and hosted the television show Automobiles on The History Channel. He owned and restored several classics of his own, including a 1929 Auburn 8-90 Boattail Speedster and a 1934 Alvis Speed 20.
Legal issues
In December 2014, it was reported that Edward and Star Herrmann had filed a lawsuit against their accountants seeking $14.5 million that they alleged had been misappropriated. The suit was later dismissed.
Death
On December 31, 2014, Herrmann died from brain cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, at the age of 71. The estate of Edward Herrmann has licensed his synthesized voice for audiobook narration through DeepZen.io from which the estate is granted royalties.
Acting credits
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Golden Voices Herrmann
1943 births
2014 deaths
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
Alumni of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
American male film actors
American male stage actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American people of German descent
American people of Irish descent
Audiobook narrators
Bucknell University alumni
Converts to Roman Catholicism
Deaths from brain cancer in the United States
Male actors from Michigan
Male actors from Washington, D.C.
People from Grosse Pointe, Michigan
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Tony Award winners
Fulbright alumni
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%20of%20God%20in%20Christ%2C%20Mennonite
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Church of God in Christ, Mennonite
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The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, also called Holdeman Mennonite, is a Christian Church of Anabaptist heritage. Its formation started in 1859 under its first leader, a self-described prophet named John Holdeman (1832-1900), who was a baptized Mennonite. The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite is Conservative Mennonite that has distanced itself from other Conservative Mennonites because of its one true church doctrine. In 2013 the church had 24,400 baptized members.
History
Origins
The congregations of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite are descendants of the Anabaptists of the 16th century. Under the influential work of Menno Simons, many of the Anabaptists became known as Mennonites. Holdeman Mennonites recognize the faith of the Waldenses and other nonconformist groups of the Middle Ages as part of their spiritual heritage and see a direct lineage through them to the Early Church. They believe that "Christ established one true, visible Church, and through her He has preserved His faith and doctrine through the ages."
John Holdeman
In the mid-19th century, some American Mennonites believed they saw in their church a spiritual decline and drift away from sound doctrine, and sought to "earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints". Among these was John Holdeman (1832–1900), who was born in Wayne County, Ohio, to Mennonite parents. John's father, Amos Holdeman, was interested in the revivalist movement of John Winebrenner. John Holdeman became both an evangelist and a reformer. Issues he believed needed reform included the baptism of persons not giving sufficient evidence of conversion, less than diligent child training, and laxity of church discipline. Holdeman and other concerned individuals began holding separate meetings in April 1859, resulting in a permanent separation from the Mennonite church and the eventual organization of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. Holdeman wrote extensively and traveled widely, and new congregations were formed in the United States and Canada.
The coming of the Mennonites from Russia
The spread of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite among other Mennonites and among the Amish was minimal until the arrival of Mennonite immigrants from the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), so called "Russian" Mennonites who are of Dutch and Prussian heritage and who settled in Canada, mainly Manitoba and in the USA, among other places in McPherson County, Kansas, starting in 1874. In 1878, Holdeman baptized 78 members of the McPherson County group. In 1881, he baptized 118 Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites in Manitoba who had migrated from southern Russia (now Ukraine) to North America some years before. With this group came Peter Toews, who led many Mennonite immigrants from Russia then living in Canada and Kansas into the Holdeman church.
Theology
Holdeman's teachings on salvation and the Bible probably reflect more evangelical Protestant and Pietist influence. The church began during a time of widespread revival and spiritual awakening. They hold the Arminian position and therefore believe that a person can lose his or her salvation if they stop following Jesus. Leaving or excommunication from the Holdeman Mennonite church is usually considered as following a loss of salvation. They do believe there are Christians saved outside of the Holdeman Mennonite church, but they also believe that the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite is the true visible church. Baptism, by pouring, is the method by which born-again believers are admitted into this visible church.
Soteriologically, the new birth is considered the "cornerstone" of the doctrine of salvation. It is described as true repentance from sin and acceptance of the atoning work of Christ by faith, resulting in the redemption from sin and being spiritually born again. Those so affected will find their heart filled by God with peace, have assurance of salvation, and grace. This new birth results in one's conversion from a sinful life unto a life that "brings forth the fruit of the Holy Spirit."
In Christology, the Holdeman Church denies that Jesus was made from the flesh or seed of Mary, trying to be closer to the teachings of Menno Simons and Melchior Hoffman than other modern Anabaptists. Eschatologically, they hold to an historic Anabaptist amillennial view of Christ's kingdom and reign, teaching that the present dispensation is the only time in which salvation is offered.
The church and the world are viewed as distinctly separate institutions and thus Christians are not to be conformed to the world (Romans 12:1-2). To maintain nonconformity to the world, Christians must not be "compromised by worldly dress, amusements, or other worldly attractions." Worldly entertainment provided by such things as motion pictures, musical instruments, radio, television, and the improper use of the internet are to be avoided. Modesty in apparel is particularly stressed. Jewelry, "costly or fashionable attire", and bodily ornamentation detract from Christian simplicity. Their beliefs also include an unwritten dress code. This dress code is most noticeable with the women, who wear mid-length dresses and head coverings.
Marriage is seen as divinely instituted between one man and one woman for life, for the propagation, purity, and happiness of the human race. It is only permitted between church members. Divorce and remarriage are not recognized, as among other plain Anabaptist churches.
Practice
The church holds to a strong Mennonite culture, and obligates its members to lead a life according to Mennonite principles. The members should pattern their lives after their beliefs in integrity in personal and business dealings, non-involvement in government, loving their neighbors, keeping the avoidance of sin with love, inviting the sinner to repent, and emphasis on voluntary service. Non-resistance is standard practice, whether peacemaking among individuals, regarding lawsuits, or concerning warfare among nations. Holdeman Mennonites do not vote, serve in the military, or in law enforcement professions. They consider themselves to be citizens of a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one.
Courtship
The Church of God in Christ Mennonite, via General Conference decision, has forbidden its members from pursuing "carnal courtship", a term that encompasses any form of dating or courtship. Instead of allowing young people to choose a partner and engage in dating rituals, every congregation has a formal youth group, which organizes group functions such as bible studies, singing evenings, or volleyball games at which young people get to know each other. If a man wants to get married, he must get approval from a church minister who "carries the proposal" for him. In this tradition, the minister pays a visit to the young lady to whom the young man wants to propose. She can then accept or reject this proposal. In the event that she says yes, the marriage engagement will be announced in church the following Sunday morning after the worship service. Engaging in courtship is grounds for excommunication from the Church of God in Christ Mennonite. Weddings are simple religious services followed by a reception for guests.
Membership
As with other Anabaptist churches, membership is through young child and adult believer’s baptism, by pouring water on the believer's head. Communion is only for members and held with bread and unfermented grape juice rather than wine. Excommunication from the Holdeman Mennonite church is the only accepted way to leave it. There are cases of membership annulment but they are rare. The Holdeman Mennonites practice shunning or avoidance toward former members by not eating at the same table with them, shaking hands with them, or having any business partnerships with them. This act of shunning causes much trauma among 'the shunned'.
Worship and service
Congregations meet weekly on Sunday mornings for Sunday school and worship. Each congregation has its own schedule for other types of meetings, such as communion, teaching, fellowship, Bible study, and singing. Foot washing is practiced by ministers washing the men's feet, and the wives of ministers and/or deacons washing the women's feet. The kiss of peace is also practiced.
Worship takes place in modest buildings that may contain air condition, carpet, and padded pews, but without any musical instruments. Singing is a cappella and in four-part harmony. Preaching tends to be topical, rather than exegetical. Most congregations also hold summer vacation Bible school classes during the summer school holidays. These are open to any children, member or non-member in their communities.
Clothing and appearance
Simplicity and modesty in clothing, personal possessions, and homes is held as an ideal. Plain dress is mandatory, which for women means a mid-length dress always with sleeves, and a head covering. The headcovering for daily use is black and sits on the back of the head. A second black headscarf is required to be over the head when attending church.
Girls must wear their hair in braids until they are baptised into church. Men do not wear a necktie in formal dress and otherwise their appearance resembles the look of a typical American businessman or other conservative Mennonites, in that they are dressed in a modest way that does not reveal much skin.
The men, "by order of creation" wear a beard out of "respect for God’s order". Believing a devotional head covering is Scripturally commanded (1 Corinthians 11:1-16) as "an outward sign of submission to God’s order," the women wear a devotional head covering "for prayer and as a sign of submission."
Technology
Modern technologies like automobiles, telephone, and other modern conveniences are allowed. Television, radio, movies, musical instruments, and "the improper use of the internet" is not allowed. The Church of God in Christ Mennonite encourages members to install special software, purported to be a pornography filter, developed by the technology committee on any internet connected devices. This software blocks access to social media as well as many websites that church leadership finds objectionable. If the app is disabled, a notification will be sent to a third party stating that the application is not active.
Ministers and church organization
Ministers are chosen from within the own ranks and formal training is not required. There are only two positions of office in the church and only men are eligible. Ministers and deacons from each congregation are chosen by the local membership by first asking a series of questions regarding a need for more staff, whether there is a gift for the position, and whether the members feel that it is the right time to elect a staff member. These questions are by show of hands and only if they all pass with a significant majority does a secret ballot vote take place. The vote is one ballot per member and there is no nomination process. The ballots are counted by the ministers already in office and, if a high enough percentage of the congregation votes for the same individual, he is elected. The percentages needed for a successful election or total number of votes cast for each candidate are not public knowledge. There are no salaried ministers and they seldom use prepared notes, but rather preach extemporaneously.
A General Conference made up of ministers, deacons, and other delegates meets every seven years (more often if necessary) for decision-making. An annual meeting is held yearly to provide a formal meeting for all business and corporate activities. The General Conference and Annual meeting is open to any members to attend. Matters at the General Conference are voted on by all members present. At each annual meeting a minister's and deacon's meeting is also held to discuss matters pertaining to spiritual life and practical issues and is sometimes, but not always a closed meeting to lay members.
Education
Formal education beyond eighth or ninth grade is rare outside of California and Quebec (to the tenth grade to comply with compulsory school attendance laws in these cases where religious exemption has not been made) and in the case of job training such as carpentry, nursing, etc. Congregations in Canada teach grades K-9. One thing that causes the Quebec government to give problems to these schools is that they teach Young Earth creationism in their science curriculum, and they use curriculum viewed as Bible-based.
Nearly all congregations have their own private schools. Those that cannot do this because of legal issues, run under a similar system: group homeschooling. 50-70% of their teachers are unmarried women aged eighteen and up. These teachers have some basic formal training in education, and their secondary education varies from completion of a high school curriculum through correspondence to no further education than what they received within their private schools. The main requirement to teach is a solid standing as a member in the Church and a reasonable skill set to be able to handle the grade that they will be teaching. This is determined in consultation with the applicant's minister and local elected school board.
Adherents and congregations
From a small beginning, membership grew to around 750 at the time of Holdeman's death in the year 1900. In 1953 the baptized membership was 5,308, in 41 congregations in Canada and the United States. There were missions in Mexico and New Mexico with three ordained ministers of Spanish language, and also a mission station in Canada among indigenous peoples. The church experienced slow but steady growth until the mid-1970s. During the later 1970s the growth slowed, then continued. Numerous new churches have been started because of the growth as members have sought opportunity in new locations, and churches have been planted in new states and provinces.
In 2009, there were 14,672 members and 138 congregations in the United States. In 2013 the church had 24,400 members, of whom 14,804 lived in the United States and 5,081 in Canada.
Kansas continues to contain the largest population of the denomination, with over 4,000 members. Current membership still greatly reflects the growth of the church through the Swiss-German ancestry of those such as Holdeman, the Kansas-"Russian Mennonite" ancestry, and the Manitoba-"Russian Mennonite" ancestry. Yet, in some regions, like Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Eastern Ontario, there is a high percentage of believers who have recently joined the Church and do not have the same roots as the majority of the Holdemans in North America, who are still ethnic Mennonites.
In addition to the United States and Canada, the Church of God has established congregations and mission work in various countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe.
Controversies
2016 Lawsuit and Allegations
In February 2016, a lawsuit was filed against the Mennonite church with the plaintiff alleging that he was sexually assaulted by his father from age 11. The lawsuit alleged that clergy failed to contact authorities as required by mandatory reporter statutes. His lawsuit pointed allegations of sexual abuse by people who attended congregations affiliated with the Church of God In Christ Mennonite, some resulting arrests and convictions. The case was settled out of court, and the terms of the settlement were not published by the parties.
2022 Allegations by Mennonite Abuse Prevention List
On August 2, 2022, a nonprofit called Mennonite Abuse Prevention published a report alleging how sexual abuse allegations are handled in the church. This report alleges, in a series of cases, that there was clergy misconduct including failures to report abuse and cases where victims were discouraged from reporting abuse to police. The allegations claim that, as part of the settlement of the 2016 lawsuit, every congregation explored local mandatory reporting laws and declared that their congregations would now comply. The allegations further claim that, that same year, court records show that ministers at the Gospel Mennonite Church congregation in Almena, Wisconsin were notified that Leslie Toews, a member at the congregation, had sexually abused a 13-year-old girl for about a year, and claim that this abuse was not reported. The allegations claim that the alleged perpetrator arranged to speak with detectives four years later, in 2021. MAP claims that church policy documents shared with them show that church members, including school teachers, are required by law to report directly to authorities, are required to report abuse to clergy, who then investigate and make a judgement call with regard to whether the abuse should be reported to authorities.
The Purge of the 1970s (The New Way)
Economic trends in the 1970s led to an increasing rate of non compliant members, in addition to some members who began to question the doctrine of the "one true church." Church discipline concerns led to a "new way" of dealing with non-conforming members. Church leadership began the process of interviewing every member of every congregation around the conference. This new method was referred to as "paneling", which led to number of members who were disciplined and excommunicated. The practice of excommunicating former members, known as The Avoidance, is still practiced and is an official Conference Decision (policy).
Publications
The Messenger of Truth, which was begun in the early 20th century, is issued bi-weekly from the church headquarters in Moundridge, Kansas, US. Canadian offices are located in Greenland, Manitoba. The church's publishing arm is Gospel Publishers.
See also
Schowalter Foundation
References
Literature
John M. Penner: A Concise History of the Church of God, 1967.
Cornelius J. Dyck, Dennis D. Martin, et al. (editors): Mennonite Encyclopedia, 1990.
P. G. Hiebert: Principles of Faith, 3rd edition 1967.
External links
forum for members and exe’s’’
Church of God in Christ, Mennonite in Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
Basic information
Anabaptism
Conservative Mennonites
Mennonitism in the United States
Mennonite denominations
Evangelical denominations in North America
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drink%20can
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Drink can
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A drink can (or beverage can) is a metal container designed to hold a fixed portion of liquid such as carbonated soft drinks, alcoholic drinks, fruit juices, teas, herbal teas, energy drinks, etc. Drink cans are made of aluminum (75% of worldwide production) or tin-plated steel (25% worldwide production). Worldwide production for all drink cans is approximately 370 billion cans per year.
==History==
The first commercial beer available in cans began in 1935 in Richmond, Virginia. Not long after that, sodas, with their higher acidity and somewhat higher pressures, were available in cans. The key development for storing drinks in cans was the interior liner, typically plastic or sometimes a waxy substance, that helped to keep the product's flavor from being ruined by a chemical reaction with the metal. Another major factor for the timing was the repeal of Prohibition in the United States at the end of 1933.
In 1935, the Felinfoel Brewery at Felinfoel in Wales was the first brewery outside the US to commercially can beer. Prior to this time, beer had been available only in barrels or in glass bottles. From this time, lightweight tin cans could be used. Felinfoel was a major supplier to British armed forces abroad in the Second World War. Cans saved a great deal of space and weight for wartime exports compared to glass bottles and did not have to be returned for refilling. These early cans did not have a pull tab, being equipped instead with a crown cork (beer bottle top). From the 18th century until the early 20th century Wales dominated world tinplate production, peaking in the early 1890s when 80% of the world's tinplate was produced in south Wales.
Canned drinks were factory-sealed and required a special opener tool in order to consume the contents. Cans were typically formed as cylinders, having a flat top and bottom. They required a can piercer, colloquially known as a "church key", that latched onto the top rim for leverage; lifting the handle would force the sharp tip through the top of the can, cutting a triangular hole. A smaller second hole was usually punched at the opposite side of the top to admit air while pouring, allowing the liquid to flow freely.
In the mid-1930s, some cans were developed with caps so that they could be opened and poured more like a bottle. These were called "cone tops", as their tops had a conical taper up to the smaller diameter of the cap. Cone top cans were sealed by the same crimped caps that were put on bottles, and could be opened with the same bottle-opener tool. There were three types of conetops: high profile, low profile, and j-spout. The low profile and j-spout were the earliest, dating from about 1935. The "crowntainer" was a different type of can that was drawn steel with a bottom cap. These were developed by Crown Cork & Seal (now known as Crown Holdings, Inc.), a leading drink packaging and drink can producer. The popularity of canned drinks was slow to catch on, as the metallic taste was difficult to overcome with the interior liner not perfected, especially with more acidic sodas. Cans had two advantages over glass bottles. First for the distributors, flat-top cans were more compact for transportation and storage and weighed less than bottles. Second for consumers, they did not require the deposit typically paid for bottles, as they were discarded after use. Glass-bottle deposits were reimbursed when consumers took the empties back to the store.
In 1959, the recyclable aluminum can was introduced to the market in a 7 oz. size by the Adolph Coors Company.
In 2008, an aluminum version of the crowntainer design was adopted for packaging Coca-Cola's Caribou Coffee drink.
Standard sizes
Capacity in countries
Various standard capacities are used throughout the world.
Australia
In Australia the standard can size for alcoholic and soft drinks is 375 ml. Energy drinks are commonly served in 250 ml and 500 ml sizes.
Brazil
In Brazil the standard can size is 350 ml.
China
In China the most common size is 330 ml.
Can dimensions may be cited in metric or imperial units; imperial dimensions for can making are written as inches+sixteenths of an inch (e.g. "202" = 2 inches + 2 sixteenths).
Europe
In Europe the standard can is 330 ml, but since the 1990s 250 ml has slowly become common for energy drinks (e.g. redbull), along with 500 ml, often used for beers and sometimes for soft drinks too (particularly in wholesale supply).
In the UK, 440 ml is commonly used for lager and cider.
In Ireland, 330ml and 440ml fat cans are used for soft drinks.
In Austria, energy drinks are usually sold in sizes of 200 to 330 ml.
Hong Kong
In Hong Kong most cans are 330 ml – in the past they were usually 355 or 350 ml. 200 ml has also become available. Some beers and coffees are, respectively, sold with 500-ml and 250-ml cans.
India
In India standard cans are 250 ml.
Indonesia
Indonesia introduced 320 ml cans for domestically produced beer in 2018. Carbonated soft drink cans are typically 330 ml.
Japan
In Japan the most common sizes are 350 ml and 500 ml, while larger and smaller cans are also sold.
South Korea
250 ml cans are the most common for soft drinks, but when accompanying take-out food (such as pizza or chicken), a short 245-ml can is standard. Recently, some 355-ml cans which are similar to North American cans are increasingly available, but are limited mostly to Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper, and beer cans are available in 500 ml.
Malaysia and Singapore
In Malaysia, beer cans are 320 ml. For soft drinks in both Malaysia and Singapore, the most commonly found cans are 300 ml for non-carbonated drinks and 325 ml for carbonated drinks. Larger 330 ml/350 ml cans are limited to imported drinks which usually cost a lot more than local ones.
The Middle East
In the Middle East standard cans are 330 ml.
New Zealand
In New Zealand the standard can size is 355 ml, although Coca-Cola Amatil changed some of its canned drinks to 330 ml in 2017.
North America
In North America, the standard can size is . The US standard can is high, in diameter at the lid, and in diameter at the widest point of the body. Also available are cans (known as tallboys or, referring to the weight, "pounders"), and .
In Mexico, the standard size is 355 ml, although smaller 235 ml cans have gained popularity in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
In Canada, the standard size was previously 12 Imperial fluid ounces (341 ml), later redefined and labelled as 341 ml in 1980. This size was commonly used with steel drink cans in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, the US standard 355 ml can size was standardized in the 1980s and 1990s upon the conversion from steel to aluminum. Some drinks, such as Nestea, are sold in 341 ml cans.
In Quebec, a new standard for carbonated drinks has been added, as some grocery stores now only sell cans of all major carbonated drinks in six-packs of 222 ml cans. Many convenience stores also began selling "slim cans" with a 310ml capacity in 2015.
Pakistan
In Pakistan the most common sizes are 250 ml and 330 ml, and 200 ml cans are also sold.
South Africa
South African standard cans are 330 ml (reduced in the early 2000s from the up-until-then ubiquitous 340 ml) and the promotional size is 440 ml. There is also the 500 ml can. A smaller 200 ml can is used for "mixers" such as tonic or soda water. It has a smaller diameter than the other cans. In September 2018, a 300 ml can was introduced as an alternative to the 330 ml can in a continued effort to reduce the amount of sugar consumed in soft drinks.
Thailand
Singha beer uses 320 ml cans for domestic sales and 330 ml cans for exports.
Composition
Most metal drink cans manufactured in the United States are made of aluminum, whereas in some parts of Europe and Asia approximately 55 percent are made of steel and 45 percent are aluminum alloy. Steel cans often have a top made of aluminum. Beverage containers are made of two different aluminum alloys. The body is made of the 3004 alloy that can be drawn easily and the top is made of the harder 5182 alloy.
An empty aluminum can weighs approximately . There are 34 empty aluminum cans to a pound or 70 to a kilogram.
In many parts of the world a deposit can be recovered by turning in empty plastic, glass, and aluminum containers. Scrap metal dealers often purchase aluminum cans in bulk, even when deposits are not offered. Aluminum is one of the most cost-effective materials to recycle. When recycled without other metals being mixed in, the can–lid combination is perfect for producing new stock for the main part of the can—the loss of magnesium during melting is made up for by the high magnesium content of the lid. Also, reducing ores such as bauxite into aluminum requires large amounts of electricity, making recycling cheaper than producing new metal.
Aluminum cans are coated internally to protect the aluminum from oxidizing. Despite this coating, trace amounts of aluminum can be degraded into the liquid, the amount depending on factors such as storage temperature and liquid composition. Chemical compounds used in the internal coating of the can include types of epoxy resin.
Fabrication process
Modern cans are generally produced through a mechanical cold forming process that starts with punching a flat blank from very stiff cold-rolled sheet. This sheet is typically alloy 3104-H19 or 3004-H19, which is aluminum with about 1% manganese and 1% magnesium to give it strength and formability. The flat blank is first formed into a cup about three inches in diameter. This cup is then pushed through a different forming process called "ironing" which forms the can. The bottom of the can is also shaped at this time. The malleable metal deforms into the shape of an open-top can. With the sophisticated technology of the dies and the forming machines, the side of the can is thinner than either the top and bottom areas, where stiffness is required.
Plain lids (known as shells) are stamped from a coil of aluminum, typically alloy 5182-H48, and transferred to another press that converts them to easy-open ends. This press is known as a conversion press which forms an integral rivet button in the lid and scores the opening, while concurrently forming the tabs in another die from a separate strip of aluminum.
Filling cans
Cans are filled before the top is crimped on by seamers. To speed up the production process filling and sealing operations need to be extremely precise. The filling head centers the can using gas pressure, purges the air, and lets the drink flow down the sides of the can. The lid is placed on the can, and then crimped in two operations. A seaming head engages the lid from above while a seaming roller to the side curls the edge of the lid around the edge of the can body. The head and roller spin the can in a complete circle to seal all the way around. Then a pressure roller with a different profile drives the two edges together under pressure to make a gas-tight seal. Filled cans usually have pressurized gas inside, which makes them stiff enough for easy handling. Without the riveted tab the scored section of the can's end would be impossible to lift from the can.
Can filling lines come in different line speeds from 15,000 cans per hour (cph) up to 120,000 cph or more, all with different levels of automation. For example, lid feeding alone starts with manual debagging onto a simple v-chute connected to the seamer up to fully automated processes with automatic debagging and lid feeding of lids combined with automatic roll depalletizers for filling debaggers by robots.
Opening mechanisms
Early metal drink cans had no tabs; they were opened by a can-piercer or churchkey, a device resembling a bottle opener with a sharp point. The can was opened by punching two triangular holes in the lid—a large one for drinking, and a second smaller one to admit air.
As early as 1922, inventors were applying for patents on cans with tab tops, but the technology of the time made these inventions impractical. Later advancements saw the ends of the can made out of aluminum instead of steel.
In 1959, Ermal Fraze devised a can-opening method that would come to dominate the canned drink market. His invention was the "pull-tab". This eliminated the need for a separate opener tool by attaching an aluminum pull-ring lever with a rivet to a pre-scored wedge-shaped tab section of the can top. The ring was riveted to the center of the top, which created an elongated opening large enough that one hole simultaneously served to let the drink flow out while air flowed in.
Previously, while on a family picnic, Mr. Fraze had forgotten to bring a can opener and was forced to use a car bumper to open a can of beer. Thinking there must be an easier way, he stayed up all night until he came up with the pull tab. Pull-tab cans, or the discarded tabs from them, were colloquially called "pop-tops".
Into the 1970s the pull-tab was widely popular, but its popularity came with the problem of people frequently simply discarding the pull-tabs on the ground, creating a potential injury risk especially to the feet or fingers. In the 1960s, at least one inventor attempted to solve the litter problem, by having the tab be retained by a stationary key that would wrap the tab around itself, which was unsuccessful commercially.
The problem of the discarded tops was initially solved by the invention of the push-tab. Used primarily on Coors Beer cans in the mid-1970s, the push-tab was a raised circular scored area used in place of the pull-tab. It needed no ring to pull up; instead, the raised aluminum blister was pushed down into the can using one finger. A small unscored section of the tab prevented it from detaching and falling into the can after being pushed in. Push-tabs never gained wide popularity because while they had solved the litter problem of the pull-tab, they created a safety hazard where the person's finger upon pushing the tab into the can was immediately exposed to the sharp edges of the opening. A feature of the push-tab Coors Beer cans was that they had a second, smaller, push-tab at the top as an airflow vent. "Push-tabs" were introduced into Australia from around 1977 and were locally known as "pop-tops", before being replaced later by the Stay-on-tab. The safety and litter problems were eventually solved later in the 1970s with Daniel F. Cudzik's invention of the non-removing "Stay-Tab".
Cans are usually in sealed paperboard cartons, corrugated fiberboard boxes, or trays covered with plastic film. The entire distribution system and packaging need to be controlled to ensure freshness.
Pop-tab
Mikolaj Kondakow and James Wong of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada invented the pull tab version for bottles in or before 1951 (Canadian patent 476789). In 1962, Ermal Cleon Fraze of Dayton, Ohio, United States, invented the similar integral rivet and pull-tab version (also known as ring pull in British English), which had a ring attached at the rivet for pulling, and which would come off completely to be discarded. He received US Patent No. 3,349,949 for his pull-top can design in 1963 and licensed his invention to Alcoa and Pittsburgh Brewing Company, the latter of which first introduced the design on Iron City Beer cans. The first soft drinks to be sold in all-aluminum cans were R.C. Cola and Diet-Rite Cola, both made by the Royal Crown Cola company, in 1964.
The early pull-tabs detached easily. In 1976, the Journal of the American Medical Association noted cases of children ingesting pull-tabs that had broken off and dropped into the can.
Full-top pull-tabs were also used in some oil cans and are currently used in some soup, pet food, tennis ball, nuts, and other cans.
Stay-on-tab
In 1958, American inventor Anthony Bajada was awarded the patent for a "Lid closure for can containers". Bajada's invention was the first design to keep the opening tab connected to the lid of the can, preventing it from falling into the contents of the can. His patent expired in 1975 and has been directly cited in the mechanisms used by companies such as Crown Cork & Seal Co., Broken Hill Proprietary Co., and United States Steel Corporation. Approximately one month after Bajada's patent expired, Daniel F. Cudzik, an engineer with Reynolds Metals, filed a design patent application for an "End closure for a container". This later became known as a "Sta-Tab". When the Sta-Tab launched in 1975, on Falls City beer and, quickly, other drinks, there was an initial period of consumer testing and education. Cudzik later received patents for this "Easy Open Wall" ( ). The validity of these patents was upheld in subsequent litigation.
The similarly designed "Easy-open ecology end" was invented by Ermal Fraze and Omar Brown. Its patent application was also filed in 1975, less than two months after the expiration of Bajada's patent. This design, like Cudzik's, uses a separate tab attached to the upper surface as a lever to depress a scored part of the lid, which folds underneath the top of the can and out of the way of the resulting opening, thus reducing injuries and roadside litter caused by removable tabs.
Such "retained ring-pull" cans supplanted pull-off tabs in the United Kingdom in 1989 for soft drinks and 1990 for alcoholic drinks.
Wide mouth
One of the more recent modifications to can design was the introduction of the "wide mouth" can in the late 1990s. The American Can Company, now a part of Rexam, and Coors Brewing Company have owned wide mouth design patent (number D385,192) since 1997. Other companies have similar designs for the wide mouth. Ball Corporation's from 2008 has a vent tube to allow direct airflow into the can reducing the number of gulps during the pour.
Press button can
One variation was the press button can, which featured two pre-cut buttons—one small and one large—in the top of the can sealed with a plastic membrane. These buttons were held closed by the outward pressure of the carbonated drink. The consumer would open the can by depressing both buttons, which would result in two holes. The small hole would act as a vent to relieve internal pressure so the larger button could then be pressed down to create the hole used for consuming the drink. Consumers could also easily cut themselves on the edges of the holes or get their fingers stuck.
Press button cans were used by Pepsi in Canada from the 1970s to 1980s and Coors in the 1970s. They have since been replaced with pull tabs. Used in Australia, locally known as "pop-tops", for soft drinks from 1977 to the early 1980s. However, Heineken Brewery did bring back press- or push button cans on the market in Europe as a short-lived marketing strategy in the 1990s.
Full aperture end
Another variation on the drink can is the "full aperture end", where the entire lid can be removed – turning an aluminum can into a cup. Crown Holdings first designed the "360 End" for use by SABMiller at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. It has been used by Anheuser-Busch InBev in China and Brazil and by the Sly Fox Brewing Company in the United States.
Resealable lid
Another variation on the drink can is to have a resealable lid. A version patented by Cogito Can in France has been used by Groupe Casino, the French grocery chain for its private label energy drink.
Recycling
The beverage can be recycled, and clean aluminum has residual market value, but recycled cans still need to be diluted by up to 50% virgin aluminum because the sides and tops of the can are of different alloys. The acronym UBC, for used beverage container, is employed by such companies as Apple, Inc for reference to the material of its portable laptop cases.
Design
Most large companies serve their beverages in printed cans, where designs are printed on the aluminum and then crafted into a can. Alternatively, cans can be wrapped with a plastic design, mimicking the printed can but allowing for more flexibility than printed cans. A modern-day trend in craft alcohol is to design stickers to put on cans, allowing for smaller batches and quick changes for new flavors.
Collecting
Beer can collecting was a minor fad in the late 1970s and 1990s. However, the hobby waned rapidly in popularity. The Beer Can Collectors of America (BCCA), founded in 1970, was an organization supporting the hobby, but has now renamed itself Brewery Collectibles Club of America to be more modern.
As of late 2009, membership in the Brewery Collectibles Club of America was 3,570, down from a peak of 11,954 in 1978. Just 19 of the members were under the age of 30, and the members' average age had increased to 59.
See also
Beer Can Museum
Beer Can Printing
Beer koozie
Beverage-can stove
Glass bottle
Plastic bottle
Self-heating can
Six pack rings
Widget (beer)
Notes
References
Yam, K. L., "Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology", John Wiley & Sons, 2009,
Soroka, W., Fundamentals of Packaging Technology, IoPP, 2002,
External links
Beer can history
Pull tab fundraiser myth
The Ingenious Design of the Aluminum Beverage Can – Prof. WS Hammack
Beer vessels and serving
Liquid containers
Packaging
Food packaging
Single-serve containers
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial%20spheres
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Celestial spheres
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The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and others. In these celestial models, the apparent motions of the fixed stars and planets are accounted for by treating them as embedded in rotating spheres made of an aetherial, transparent fifth element (quintessence), like gems set in orbs. Since it was believed that the fixed stars did not change their positions relative to one another, it was argued that they must be on the surface of a single starry sphere.
In modern thought, the orbits of the planets are viewed as the paths of those planets through mostly empty space. Ancient and medieval thinkers, however, considered the celestial orbs to be thick spheres of rarefied matter nested one within the other, each one in complete contact with the sphere above it and the sphere below. When scholars applied Ptolemy's epicycles, they presumed that each planetary sphere was exactly thick enough to accommodate them. By combining this nested sphere model with astronomical observations, scholars calculated what became generally accepted values at the time for the distances to the Sun: about , to the other planets, and to the edge of the universe: about . The nested sphere model's distances to the Sun and planets differ significantly from modern measurements of the distances, and the size of the universe is now known to be inconceivably large and continuously expanding.
Albert Van Helden has suggested that from about 1250 until the 17th century, virtually all educated Europeans were familiar with the Ptolemaic model of "nesting spheres and the cosmic dimensions derived from it". Even following the adoption of Copernicus's heliocentric model of the universe, new versions of the celestial sphere model were introduced, with the planetary spheres following this sequence from the central Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth-Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Mainstream belief in the theory of celestial spheres did not survive the Scientific Revolution. In the early 1600s, Kepler continued to discuss celestial spheres, although he did not consider that the planets were carried by the spheres but held that they moved in elliptical paths described by Kepler's laws of planetary motion. In the late 1600s, Greek and medieval theories concerning the motion of terrestrial and celestial objects were replaced by Newton's law of universal gravitation and Newtonian mechanics, which explain how Kepler's laws arise from the gravitational attraction between bodies.
History
Early ideas of spheres and circles
In Greek antiquity the ideas of celestial spheres and rings first appeared in the cosmology of Anaximander in the early 6th century BC. In his cosmology both the Sun and Moon are circular open vents in tubular rings of fire enclosed in tubes of condensed air; these rings constitute the rims of rotating chariot-like wheels pivoting on the Earth at their centre. The fixed stars are also open vents in such wheel rims, but there are so many such wheels for the stars that their contiguous rims all together form a continuous spherical shell encompassing the Earth. All these wheel rims had originally been formed out of an original sphere of fire wholly encompassing the Earth, which had disintegrated into many individual rings. Hence, in Anaximanders's cosmogony, in the beginning was the sphere, out of which celestial rings were formed, from some of which the stellar sphere was in turn composed. As viewed from the Earth, the ring of the Sun was highest, that of the Moon was lower, and the sphere of the stars was lowest.
Following Anaximander, his pupil Anaximenes () held that the stars, Sun, Moon, and planets are all made of fire. But whilst the stars are fastened on a revolving crystal sphere like nails or studs, the Sun, Moon, and planets, and also the Earth, all just ride on air like leaves because of their breadth. And whilst the fixed stars are carried around in a complete circle by the stellar sphere, the Sun, Moon and planets do not revolve under the Earth between setting and rising again like the stars do, but rather on setting they go laterally around the Earth like a cap turning halfway around the head until they rise again. And unlike Anaximander, he relegated the fixed stars to the region most distant from the Earth. The most enduring feature of Anaximenes' cosmos was its conception of the stars being fixed on a crystal sphere as in a rigid frame, which became a fundamental principle of cosmology down to Copernicus and Kepler.
After Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Parmenides all held that the universe was spherical. And much later in the fourth century BC Plato's Timaeus proposed that the body of the cosmos was made in the most perfect and uniform shape, that of a sphere containing the fixed stars. But it posited that the planets were spherical bodies set in rotating bands or rings rather than wheel rims as in Anaximander's cosmology.
Emergence of the planetary spheres
Instead of bands, Plato's student Eudoxus developed a planetary model using concentric spheres for all the planets, with three spheres each for his models of the Moon and the Sun and four each for the models of the other five planets, thus making 26 spheres in all. Callippus modified this system, using five spheres for his models of the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars and retaining four spheres for the models of Jupiter and Saturn, thus making 33 spheres in all. Each planet is attached to the innermost of its own particular set of spheres. Although the models of Eudoxus and Callippus qualitatively describe the major features of the motion of the planets, they fail to account exactly for these motions and therefore cannot provide quantitative predictions. Although historians of Greek science have traditionally considered these models to be merely geometrical representations, recent studies have proposed that they were also intended to be physically real or have withheld judgment, noting the limited evidence to resolve the question.
In his Metaphysics, Aristotle developed a physical cosmology of spheres, based on the mathematical models of Eudoxus. In Aristotle's fully developed celestial model, the spherical Earth is at the centre of the universe and the planets are moved by either 47 or 55 interconnected spheres that form a unified planetary system, whereas in the models of Eudoxus and Callippus each planet's individual set of spheres were not connected to those of the next planet. Aristotle says the exact number of spheres, and hence the number of movers, is to be determined by astronomical investigation, but he added additional spheres to those proposed by Eudoxus and Callippus, to counteract the motion of the outer spheres. Aristotle considers that these spheres are made of an unchanging fifth element, the aether. Each of these concentric spheres is moved by its own god—an unchanging divine unmoved mover, and who moves its sphere simply by virtue of being loved by it.
In his Almagest, the astronomer Ptolemy (fl. ca. 150 AD) developed geometrical predictive models of the motions of the stars and planets and extended them to a unified physical model of the cosmos in his Planetary hypotheses. By using eccentrics and epicycles, his geometrical model achieved greater mathematical detail and predictive accuracy than had been exhibited by earlier concentric spherical models of the cosmos. In Ptolemy's physical model, each planet is contained in two or more spheres, but in Book 2 of his Planetary Hypotheses Ptolemy depicted thick circular slices rather than spheres as in its Book 1. One sphere/slice is the deferent, with a centre offset somewhat from the Earth; the other sphere/slice is an epicycle embedded in the deferent, with the planet embedded in the epicyclical sphere/slice. Ptolemy's model of nesting spheres provided the general dimensions of the cosmos, the greatest distance of Saturn being 19,865 times the radius of the Earth and the distance of the fixed stars being at least 20,000 Earth radii.
The planetary spheres were arranged outwards from the spherical, stationary Earth at the centre of the universe in this order: the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In more detailed models the seven planetary spheres contained other secondary spheres within them. The planetary spheres were followed by the stellar sphere containing the fixed stars; other scholars added a ninth sphere to account for the precession of the equinoxes, a tenth to account for the supposed trepidation of the equinoxes, and even an eleventh to account for the changing obliquity of the ecliptic. In antiquity the order of the lower planets was not universally agreed. Plato and his followers ordered them Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, and then followed the standard model for the upper spheres. Others disagreed about the relative place of the spheres of Mercury and Venus: Ptolemy placed both of them beneath the Sun with Venus above Mercury, but noted others placed them both above the Sun; some medieval thinkers, such as al-Bitruji, placed the sphere of Venus above the Sun and that of Mercury below it.
Middle Ages
Astronomical discussions
A series of astronomers, beginning with the Muslim astronomer al-Farghānī, used the Ptolemaic model of nesting spheres to compute distances to the stars and planetary spheres. Al-Farghānī's distance to the stars was 20,110 Earth radii which, on the assumption that the radius of the Earth was , came to . An introduction to Ptolemy's Almagest, the Tashil al-Majisti, believed to be written by Thābit ibn Qurra, presented minor variations of Ptolemy's distances to the celestial spheres. In his Zij, Al-Battānī presented independent calculations of the distances to the planets on the model of nesting spheres, which he thought was due to scholars writing after Ptolemy. His calculations yielded a distance of 19,000 Earth radii to the stars.
Around the turn of the millennium, the Arabic astronomer and polymath Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen) presented a development of Ptolemy's geocentric models in terms of nested spheres. Despite the similarity of this concept to that of Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses, al-Haytham's presentation differs in sufficient detail that it has been argued that it reflects an independent development of the concept. In chapters 15–16 of his Book of Optics, Ibn al-Haytham also said that the celestial spheres do not consist of solid matter.
Near the end of the twelfth century, the Spanish Muslim astronomer al-Bitrūjī (Alpetragius) sought to explain the complex motions of the planets without Ptolemy's epicycles and eccentrics, using an Aristotelian framework of purely concentric spheres that moved with differing speeds from east to west. This model was much less accurate as a predictive astronomical model, but it was discussed by later European astronomers and philosophers.
In the thirteenth century the astronomer al-'Urḍi proposed a radical change to Ptolemy's system of nesting spheres. In his Kitāb al-Hayáh, he recalculated the distance of the planets using parameters which he redetermined. Taking the distance of the Sun as 1,266 Earth radii, he was forced to place the sphere of Venus above the sphere of the Sun; as a further refinement, he added the planet's diameters to the thickness of their spheres. As a consequence, his version of the nesting spheres model had the sphere of the stars at a distance of 140,177 Earth radii.
About the same time, scholars in European universities began to address the implications of the rediscovered philosophy of Aristotle and astronomy of Ptolemy. Both astronomical scholars and popular writers considered the implications of the nested sphere model for the dimensions of the universe. Campanus of Novara's introductory astronomical text, the Theorica planetarum, used the model of nesting spheres to compute the distances of the various planets from the Earth, which he gave as 22,612 Earth radii or 73,387,747 miles. In his Opus Majus, Roger Bacon cited Al-Farghānī's distance to the stars of 20,110 Earth radii, or 65,357,700 miles, from which he computed the circumference of the universe to be 410,818,517 miles. Clear evidence that this model was thought to represent physical reality is the accounts found in Bacon's Opus Majus of the time needed to walk to the Moon and in the popular Middle English South English Legendary, that it would take 8,000 years to reach the highest starry heaven. General understanding of the dimensions of the universe derived from the nested sphere model reached wider audiences through the presentations in Hebrew by Moses Maimonides, in French by Gossuin of Metz, and in Italian by Dante Alighieri.
Philosophical and theological discussions
Philosophers were less concerned with such mathematical calculations than with the nature of the celestial spheres, their relation to revealed accounts of created nature, and the causes of their motion.
Adi Setia describes the debate among Islamic scholars in the twelfth century, based on the commentary of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi about whether the celestial spheres are real, concrete physical bodies or "merely the abstract circles in the heavens traced out… by the various stars and planets." Setia points out that most of the learned, and the astronomers, said they were solid spheres "on which the stars turn… and this view is closer to the apparent sense of the Qur'anic verses regarding the celestial orbits." However, al-Razi mentions that some, such as the Islamic scholar Dahhak, considered them to be abstract. Al-Razi himself, was undecided, he said: "In truth, there is no way to ascertain the characteristics of the heavens except by authority [of divine revelation or prophetic traditions]." Setia concludes: "Thus it seems that for al-Razi (and for others before and after him), astronomical models, whatever their utility or lack thereof for ordering the heavens, are not founded on sound rational proofs, and so no intellectual commitment can be made to them insofar as description and explanation of celestial realities are concerned."
Christian and Muslim philosophers modified Ptolemy's system to include an unmoved outermost region, the empyrean heaven, which came to be identified as the dwelling place of God and all the elect. Medieval Christians identified the sphere of stars with the Biblical firmament and sometimes posited an invisible layer of water above the firmament, to accord with Genesis. An outer sphere, inhabited by angels, appeared in some accounts.
Edward Grant, a historian of science, has provided evidence that medieval scholastic philosophers generally considered the celestial spheres to be solid in the sense of three-dimensional or continuous, but most did not consider them solid in the sense of hard. The consensus was that the celestial spheres were made of some kind of continuous fluid.
Later in the century, the mutakallim Adud al-Din al-Iji (1281–1355) rejected the principle of uniform and circular motion, following the Ash'ari doctrine of atomism, which maintained that all physical effects were caused directly by God's will rather than by natural causes. He maintained that the celestial spheres were "imaginary things" and "more tenuous than a spider's web". His views were challenged by al-Jurjani (1339–1413), who maintained that even if the celestial spheres "do not have an external reality, yet they are things that are correctly imagined and correspond to what [exists] in actuality".
Medieval astronomers and philosophers developed diverse theories about the causes of the celestial spheres' motions. They attempted to explain the spheres' motions in terms of the materials of which they were thought to be made, external movers such as celestial intelligences, and internal movers such as motive souls or impressed forces. Most of these models were qualitative, although a few incorporated quantitative analyses that related speed, motive force and resistance. By the end of the Middle Ages, the common opinion in Europe was that celestial bodies were moved by external intelligences, identified with the angels of revelation. The outermost moving sphere, which moved with the daily motion affecting all subordinate spheres, was moved by an unmoved mover, the Prime Mover, who was identified with God. Each of the lower spheres was moved by a subordinate spiritual mover (a replacement for Aristotle's multiple divine movers), called an intelligence.
Renaissance
Early in the sixteenth century Nicolaus Copernicus drastically reformed the model of astronomy by displacing the Earth from its central place in favour of the Sun, yet he called his great work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres). Although Copernicus does not treat the physical nature of the spheres in detail, his few allusions make it clear that, like many of his predecessors, he accepted non-solid celestial spheres. Copernicus rejected the ninth and tenth spheres, placed the orb of the Moon around the Earth, and moved the Sun from its orb to the center of the universe. The planetary orbs circled the center of the universe in the following order: Mercury, Venus, the great orb containing the Earth and the orb of the Moon, then the orbs of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Finally he retained the eighth sphere of the stars, which he held to be stationary.
The English almanac maker, Thomas Digges, delineated the spheres of the new cosmological system in his Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes … (1576). Here he arranged the "orbes" in the new Copernican order, expanding one sphere to carry "the globe of mortalitye", the Earth, the four classical elements, and the Moon, and expanding the sphere of stars infinitely to encompass all the stars and also to serve as "the court of the Great God, the habitacle of the elect, and of the coelestiall angelles."
In the sixteenth century, a number of philosophers, theologians, and astronomers—among them Francesco Patrizi, Andrea Cisalpino, Peter Ramus, Robert Bellarmine, Giordano Bruno, Jerónimo Muñoz, Michael Neander, Jean Pena, and Christoph Rothmann—abandoned the concept of celestial spheres. Rothmann argued from observations of the comet of 1585 that the lack of observed parallax indicated that the comet was beyond Saturn, while the absence of observed refraction indicated the celestial region was of the same material as air, hence there were no planetary spheres.
Tycho Brahe's investigations of a series of comets from 1577 to 1585, aided by Rothmann's discussion of the comet of 1585 and Michael Maestlin's tabulated distances of the comet of 1577, which passed through the planetary orbs, led Tycho to conclude that "the structure of the heavens was very fluid and simple." Tycho opposed his view to that of "very many modern philosophers" who divided the heavens into "various orbs made of hard and impervious matter." Edward Grant found relatively few believers in hard celestial spheres before Copernicus and concluded that the idea first became common sometime between the publication of Copernicus's De revolutionibus in 1542 and Tycho Brahe's publication of his cometary research in 1588.
In his early Mysterium Cosmographicum, Johannes Kepler considered the distances of the planets and the consequent gaps required between the planetary spheres implied by the Copernican system, which had been noted by his former teacher, Michael Maestlin. Kepler's Platonic cosmology filled the large gaps with the five Platonic polyhedra, which accounted for the spheres' measured astronomical distance. In Kepler's mature celestial physics, the spheres were regarded as the purely geometric spatial regions containing each planetary orbit rather than as the rotating physical orbs of the earlier Aristotelian celestial physics. The eccentricity of each planet's orbit thereby defined the radii of the inner and outer limits of its celestial sphere and thus its thickness. In Kepler's celestial mechanics, the cause of planetary motion became the rotating Sun, itself rotated by its own motive soul. However, an immobile stellar sphere was a lasting remnant of physical celestial spheres in Kepler's cosmology.
Literary and visual expressions
In Cicero's Dream of Scipio, the elder Scipio Africanus describes an ascent through the celestial spheres, compared to which the Earth and the Roman Empire dwindle into insignificance. A commentary on the Dream of Scipio by the Roman writer Macrobius, which included a discussion of the various schools of thought on the order of the spheres, did much to spread the idea of the celestial spheres through the Early Middle Ages.
Some late medieval figures noted that the celestial spheres' physical order was inverse to their order on the spiritual plane, where God was at the center and the Earth at the periphery. Near the beginning of the fourteenth century Dante, in the Paradiso of his Divine Comedy, described God as a light at the center of the cosmos. Here the poet ascends beyond physical existence to the Empyrean Heaven, where he comes face to face with God himself and is granted understanding of both divine and human nature. Later in the century, the illuminator of Nicole Oresme's Le livre du Ciel et du Monde, a translation of and commentary on Aristotle's De caelo produced for Oresme's patron, King Charles V, employed the same motif. He drew the spheres in the conventional order, with the Moon closest to the Earth and the stars highest, but the spheres were concave upwards, centered on God, rather than concave downwards, centered on the Earth. Below this figure Oresme quotes the Psalms that "The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork."
The late-16th-century Portuguese epic The Lusiads vividly portrays the celestial spheres as a "great machine of the universe" constructed by God. The explorer Vasco da Gama is shown the celestial spheres in the form of a mechanical model. Contrary to Cicero's representation, da Gama's tour of the spheres begins with the Empyrean, then descends inward toward Earth, culminating in a survey of the domains and divisions of earthly kingdoms, thus magnifying the importance of human deeds in the divine plan.
See also
Notes
Bibliography
Aristotle Metaphysics, in 'The Basic Works of Aristotle' Richard McKeon (Ed) The Modern Library, 2001
Clagett, Marshall Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages University of Wisconsin Press 1959
Cohen, I.B. & Whitman, A. Principia University of California Press 1999
Cohen & Smith (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Newton CUP 2002
Copernicus, Nicolaus On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, in Great Books of the Western World : 16 Ptolemy Copernicus Kepler Encyclopædia Britannica Inc 1952
Duhem, Pierre. "History of Physics." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 18 Jun. 2008 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12047a.htm>.
Duhem, Pierre. Le Système du Monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, 10 vols., Paris: Hermann, 1959.
Duhem, Pierre. Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds, excerpts from Le Système du Monde, translated and edited by Roger Ariew, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
Eastwood, Bruce, "Astronomy in Christian Latin Europe c. 500 – c. 1150," Journal for the History of Astronomy, 28(1997): 235–258.
Eastwood, Bruce, Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance, Leiden: Brill, 2007. .
Eastwood, Bruce and Gerd Graßhoff, Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, ca. 800–1500, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 94, pt. 3, Philadelphia, 2004.
Field, J. V., Kepler's geometrical cosmology. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988
Golino, Carlo (ed.), Galileo Reappraised, University of California Press 1966
Grant, Edward, "Celestial Orbs in the Latin Middle Ages," Isis, 78(1987): 153–73; reprinted in Michael H. Shank, ed., The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000.
Grant, Edward, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1994.
Grant, Edward, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1996.
Gingerich, Owen The Eye of Heaven, American Institute of Physics 1993
Heath, Thomas, Aristarchus of Samos Oxford University Press/Sandpiper Books Ltd. 1913/97
Jarrell, R.A., The contemporaries of Tycho Brahe in Taton & Wilson (eds)1989
Koyré, Alexandre, Galileo Studies (translator Mepham) Harvester Press 1977
Kepler, Johannes, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Bks 4 & 5), published in Great Books of the Western World : 16 Ptolemy Copernicus Kepler, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 1952
Lewis, C. S., The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1964
Lindberg, David C. (ed.), Science in the Middle Ages Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1978.
Lloyd, G. E. R., Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought, pp. 133–153, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1968. .
Lloyd, G. E. R., "Heavenly aberrations: Aristotle the amateur astronomer," pp. 160–183 in his Aristotelian Explorations, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1996. .
Mach, Ernst, The Science of Mechanics Open Court 1960.
Maier, Annaliese, At the Threshold of Exact Science: Selected Writings of Annaliese Maier on Late Medieval Natural Philosophy, edited by Steven Sargent, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
McCluskey, Stephen C., Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1998.
Neugebauer, Otto, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, 3 vols., New York: Springer, 1975.
Popper, Karl, The World of Parmenides Routledge 1996
Rosen, Edward, Three Copernican Treatises Dover 1939/59.
Sambursky, S., The Physical World of Late Antiquity Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962
Schofield, C., The Tychonic and Semi-Tychonic World Systems in Taton & Wilson (eds) 1989
Sorabji, Richard, Matter, Space and Motion London: Duckworth, 1988
Sorabji, Richard, (ed.) Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science London & Ithaca NY 1987
Sorabji, Richard, The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD: Volume 2 Physics Duckworth 2004
R. Taton & C. Wilson (eds.), The General History of Astronomy: Volume 2 Planetary astronomy from the Renaissance to the rise of astrophysics Part A Tycho Brahe to Newton Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1989
Thoren, Victor E., "The Comet of 1577 and Tycho Brahe's System of the World," Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 29 (1979): 53–67.
Thoren, Victor E., Tycho Brahe in Taton & Wilson 1989
External links
Working model and complete explanation of the Eudoxus's Spheres
Dennis Duke, Animated Ptolemaic model of the nested spheres
Henry Mendell, Vignettes of Ancient Mathematics: Eudoxus of Cnidus Ptolemy, Almagest
M. Blundevile his exercises, p 282 – Depiction of celestial spheres in a 1613 book
Ancient Greek astronomy
Early scientific cosmologies
Physical cosmology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%20State%20University%2C%20Long%20Beach
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California State University, Long Beach
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California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) is a public research university in Long Beach, California. The 322-acre campus is the second largest in the California State University system (CSU). The university is one of the largest in the state of California by enrollment with a student body numbering 38,273 for the fall 2022 semester. With 5,562 graduate students as of fall 2022, the university enrolls one of the largest graduate student populations across the CSU system and in the state of California. CSULB is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High Research Activity," reflecting the university's evolution from a master's-level comprehensive university to one that awards doctorate degrees.
The university is home to one of the largest publicly funded art schools in the United States. The university currently operates with one of the lowest student tuition and mandatory fee rates in the country, at $5,742 per semester for full-time students with California residence as of 2022-23. CSULB is an Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) and is eligible to be designated as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander serving institution (AANAPISI).
History
The college was established in 1949 by California Governor Earl Warren, to serve the rapidly expanding post-World War II population of Orange and Southern Los Angeles counties. Since then, CSULB has grown to become one of the state's largest universities.
The institution was first named as Los Angeles-Orange County State College. Peter Victor Peterson was its first president. It offered 25 courses, taught by 13 faculty members, in two apartment buildings at 5381 Anaheim Road in Long Beach. In June 1950, the citizens of Long Beach voted overwhelmingly to purchase as a permanent campus for the college, then known as Long Beach State College. The purchase price was nearly $1 million. Student enrollment grew rapidly in this new, permanent location.
Carl W. McIntosh was named the college's second president in 1959. While McIntosh was president, the school grew tremendously. Enrollment surged from about 10,000 to more than 30,000, and he rapidly expanded and revamped the curriculum. McIntosh tripled the number of faculty and constructed 30 new buildings. Although the 1960s were a period of deep unrest on American college campuses, McIntosh's collegial governing style, gentle and quiet demeanor, and willingness to permit protest on campus (so long as it remained quiet and peaceful) helped keep Long Beach State College relatively quiet throughout the period. In 1964, LBSC changed its name to California State College at Long Beach. In 1967, the California state legislature revamped the state college system. It changed its name in 1968 to California State College, Long Beach, as part of these changes and began to be much more closely integrated into the California State College system. However, then as now, it is still called "Long Beach State" for short, especially in athletics.
In 1965, CSULB hosted the first International Sculpture Symposium to be held in the United States and the first such symposium to be held at a college or university. Six sculptors from abroad and two from the United States created many of the monumental sculptures present on the campus. The event received national media attention from newspapers around the country, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Art in America and a six-page color spread in Fortune.
McIntosh departed for Montana State University in 1969, and was succeeded by President Steve Horn. The California State University Board of Trustees elevated the school to university status in 1972, along with 12 other state college campuses. The decision was made based on total enrollment, size of graduate programs, complexity and diversity of majors and number of doctorates held by faculty at each college. CSCLB thus became California State University, Long Beach, or CSULB.
Also in 1972, the campus became the home of the largest library facility in the then 19-campus CSU system: a modern six-story building with a seating capacity of nearly 4,000 students.
In 1995, President Robert Maxson initiated the privately funded President's Scholars Program, providing selected qualified California high school valedictorians and National Merit finalists and semi-finalists with a full four-year scholarship package, including tuition, a book stipend, and housing. , over 1000 students have accepted the scholarship. For applicants for fall 2010, National Achievement Program Semifinalists/Finalists and National Hispanic Recognition scholars were also considered.
In 2010, the University launched the Sunstone Innovation Challenge, an annual business plan competition seeking diverse teams to develop sustainable, entrepreneurial, and innovative ideas. The winning team receives funding and services worth $35,000.
In August 2020, CSULB unveiled its new shark mascot, Elbee, following a 2019 student-led process that selected the shark as Beach's new mascot. While Elbee is a shark, the university's Division I intercollegiate athletics program remains "Beach Athletics".
As of 2022, the university was classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" in recognition of the university's evolution from a master's-level comprehensive institution to one that awards doctorates and conducts a significant amount of research.
Campus
The campus spans across 84 buildings, and is located from the Pacific Ocean. It has its own U.S. Postal ZIP Code, 90840. CSULB is located at 1250 Bellflower Boulevard. It is bounded by East 7th Street to the south, East Atherton Street to the north, Bellflower Boulevard to the west, and Palo Verde Avenue to the east.
Architecture
The architecture of the campus is mostly of the International style (designed primarily by architect Edward Killingsworth) and is very minimalist, placing emphasis instead on the landscaping that surrounds it. This naturalistic, park-like layout has earned the campus numerous design awards, as well as other awards from gardening societies. Recent construction maintains the characteristic glass-and-brick style. The integration of landscaping and architecture is apparent at the school's theater complex, where a dense grove of ficus trees is planted in such a way that it forms a continuation of the pillar-supported canopy at the theater's entrance. The university's registration offices are located in the open courtyard of Brotman Hall, which is "roofed" by a similar jungle-like canopy. The Psychology building is also notable for its soaring, airy courtyard planted with tall Eucalyptus trees.
Campus landmarks
The University Student Union (USU) building is located at the center of campus. The three-story glass building occupies roughly , housing numerous offices, and offering more casual attractions, including a study lounge, a ballroom, a food court, a bowling alley, an arcade, and a movie theater.
The Rec and Wellness Center is an extensive all-purpose athletic center covering about on North Campus. It was completed in 2010. It includes facilities for fitness programs and aerobics classes, courts for volleyball, basketball, badminton, rock climbing walls, an indoor track, a student lounge, and much more. The center is funded and managed by CSULB's Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI).
49er basketball and volleyball games are currently played in the iconic, eighteen-story Walter Pyramid (formerly known as the Long Beach Pyramid) located on north campus. The Pyramid is a sporting complex that can accommodate over 5,000 fans, including temporary seating and standing room. Two sections of interior stands are fitted with large hydraulic lifts that can lift the seating elements 45 degrees into the air, creating room for five volleyball courts or three basketball courts. The Pyramid is home to the Southern California Summer Pro League, a noted showcase for current and prospective NBA basketball players.
The University Art Museum's permanent collection contains primarily abstract expressionist paintings, works on paper, and an outdoor sculpture garden that began in 1966. The UAM was the first accredited museum in the CSU system. In addition, the museum's Gordon F. Hampton collection is housed at the Downtown Los Angeles law offices of Sheppard Mullin.
The campus is also home to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, a 1,074-seat theater named after CSULB alumni Richard and Karen Carpenter.
The Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden is an artistic retreat of solitude and beauty. Among its many picturesque attractions, the Garden features a large pond populated with koi.
Puvungna
The campus is built on the ancient Tongva village and burial site known as Puvungna ("the place of the gathering" or "in the ball"), which is a sacred site for the Tongva and Acjachemen. In 1974, the now twenty-two acre site was added to the National Register of Historic Places after the site was uncovered in the development of the nearby Japanese Garden.
From 1992 to 1995, CSULB attempted to challenge this designation in order to commercially develop the site into a strip mall and student housing. The Tongva people filed a lawsuit and initiated a protest, which involved physically occupying the land day and night to stave off bulldozers even while threatened with arrest by campus officials.
In 2019, the university dumped dirt and debris onto the site and drove heavy equipment over the ground in the construction of a new student housing development. This was received negatively by the Tongva and Acjachemen, who organized in an attempt to preserve the site from future damage. The site remains a natural area with a few trees.
Campus sustainability
The university, in its push to support climate sustainability, installed solar panels on the Brotman Hall building and the Facilities Management canopy parking in 2007. The university has been taking steps in addressing the challenge of sustainability, with the support of its student government, student body, and organizations, such as the Environmental Science & Policy Club.
The Environmental Science & Policy Club (ES&P Club) has brought support to environmental awareness and sustainability through club activities, such as coastal clean-ups, hikes, plant-restoration project, tabling, conferences, guest speakers, & Kaleidoscope. In 2006, the ES&P Club supported the installation of waterless urinals in the university's men's restrooms. The ES&P Club hosts an annual Earth Week celebration each April, including documentary screenings, discussions, and speaker series.
In addition, there has been a push in recent years to revive the organic gardens on campus, culminating in 2015 with the launch of the Grow Beach University Gardens, a student-led ASI sub-group that promotes organic gardening and sustainable agriculture on campus. The new garden boxes are part of a campus-wide effort to provide a natural, organic, and convenient garden right on campus for student and faculty use.
The university "has a comprehensive energy management program incorporating real-time metering and energy-saving technologies such as the EnergySaver, which provides a more sophisticated alternative to turning off the lights by automatically varying the voltage to the ballasted fixtures and reducing the power consumed, while maintaining appropriate lighting levels."
Desert Studies Center
The Desert Studies Center is a field station of the California State University located in Zzyzx, California in the Mojave Desert. The purpose of the center is to provide opportunities to conduct research, receive instruction and experience the Mojave Desert environment. It is operated by the California Desert Studies Consortium, a consortium of 7 CSU campuses: Fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, Long Beach, San Bernardino, Northridge, Dominguez Hills and Los Angeles.
Academics
CSULB comprises three Liberal Arts colleges:
College of the Arts
College of Liberal Arts
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
and five vocational colleges:
College of Business
College of Education
College of Engineering
College of Health & Human Services
College of Continuing & Professional Education
Together, the colleges offer a total of 81 baccalaureate degrees, 67 master's degrees, 16 education-related credential programs, and three doctoral degrees (two joint and one independent).
Admissions
Fall freshman statistics
Cal State Long Beach has become the most applied to campus in the California State University system, receiving over 102,000 applicants with a low acceptance rate of 28%, edging out San Diego State in number of applicants and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO) in percentage accepted. The Beach is no. 8 in the nation in enrolling the most transfer students.
Rankings
The 2021 edition of Washington Monthlys College Guide and Rankings list CSULB as the No. 2 Master's-level university in the nation.
In 2021, The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranked CSULB 8th in the nation for Campus Diversity. The category ranking, called "environment" by the publication, assessed the percentage of Pell Grant recipients, the racial and ethnic diversity of students and faculty, and the proportion of students who come from outside the United States.
Student life
Campus publications
The university has three student publications: the Daily 49er, 22 West Magazine (formerly The Long Beach Union Newspaper) and DIG Magazine.
The first issue of the Daily 49er, the campus newspaper, was published on November 11, 1949. It publishes Monday through Thursday during the fall and spring semesters, and once weekly during the summer sessions. It was one of the first college newspapers in the country to have an Internet edition, starting in August 1994.
22 West Magazine, which is partially student-funded, and affiliated with ASI, publishes every month during fall and spring semesters. It began on April 22, 1977, when it was formed in response to the Daily 49er. The Union Weekly focuses on being an alternative voice on campus and features a satirical section called "The Grunion" (not to be confused with the Long Beach paper the Grunion Gazette). During the late 1970s through 1980s, the Union was a daily newspaper, giving heavy competition to the Daily 49er. Journalism majors who worked on the "Union" did so under a pseudonym as it was a practice forbidden by the dean of the Journalism department.
DIG Magazine, the campus magazine, has gone through many changes throughout the years. It started off as The Lantern, a magazine for night-time students, before transforming to UniverCity in 1973. Then, it turned into University Magazine. In the early 2000s, the magazine transformed to DIG Magazine as a music magazine before transitioning to a general art & culture magazine. Today, the magazine features interesting people and groups within the community, and discusses topics that concern students' interests.
KKJZ 88.1 FM
The California State University Long Beach Foundation owns the KKJZ non-commercial broadcast license of 88.1 FM, a jazz and blues radio station. Global Jazz, Inc., an affiliate of Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters, Inc., programs and manages the radio station. In 2015, Global Jazz moved the station thirty miles from Long Beach to West Los Angeles. While KKJZ began as a radio station exclusively playing Jazz and Blues music it has recently expanded its playlist to include Rhythm and Blues artists.
22 West Radio22 West Radio is a free format, student run internet radio station at CSU, Long Beach. It is also an HD Radio station via 88.1 HD3 . The radio station is operated year-round. The station has been around in various forms since the mid-1970s, then known as KSUL (which went defunct after 1981). 22 West Radio is a department of Associated Students, Incorporated at CSULB and is both funded and regulated by them.
Pow Wow
Each March since 1970, the university has hosted the largest pow-wow in Southern California. This free two-day event, which attracts more than 6,000 persons each year, features Native American dancing, arts, craft and native foods.
Student Recreation and Wellness Center
The $70 million Student Recreation and Wellness Center is located on the northeast side of campus. It opened in fall 2010.
Greek life – sororities and fraternities
Eight national sororities on campus are governed by the Panhellenic Association and are members of the National Panhellenic Conference. Eleven general fraternities are members of and governed by the Interfraternity Council. There is also a Cultural Greek Council which governs over six sororities, six fraternities and one co-ed fraternity. Within the last 5 years, two fraternities have been removed for various instances of sexual assault and misconduct, specifically Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Chi. The latter's expulsion was not made known to the university community, causing controversy within the student body.
Student housing
CSULB provides housing to accommodate 3,000 students:Beachside Village – Off-site student housing with 2 buildings (Pacific, Atlantic), a dining hall and a pool.Hillside Village – 9 buildings (A, B, C, D, E, F, International House, Los Cerritos, Los Alamitos) with dining hall.Parkside Village''' – 10 buildings (G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, Parkside North) with dining hall.
Athletics
Long Beach State competes in NCAA Division I in 18 sports teams and plays competitively in baseball, cross country, softball, track and field, women's tennis, and women's soccer, as well as both men's and women's basketball, volleyball, water polo and golf teams. The university is a founding member of the Big West Conference, and also competes in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation for sports not sponsored by the Big West.
In the realm of sports the school is branded as "Long Beach State". "Beach", which had long been unofficially used to refer to Long Beach State and its sports teams as it is the only university on the West Coast with the word "Beach" in its name, became the official athletic program brand name in the 2020–21 school year. One can see the cheer "Go Beach!" written on many CSULB products around campus and on the large water tower near the entrance to the campus.
The school colors have been black and gold since 2000, when they were changed by a student referendum (after George Allen changed the football uniform colors) from the original brown and gold.
Long Beach State is home to one of the top women's volleyball teams in the nation. Long Beach State has won three national titles in women's volleyball, in 1989, 1993 and 1998. The 1998 women's team was the first team in NCAA Division I history to have an undefeated season. The team's most famous alumna is Misty May-Treanor, who won three Olympic gold medals in Beach Volleyball in 2004, 2008, and 2012. Long Beach is also the only California State University to participate in the Golden Coast Conference for Men's Water polo not sponsored by the Big West Conference the Division Long Beach participates for in NCAA Division I.
Because of the proximity to California State University, Fullerton, the schools are considered rivals. The rivalry is especially heated in baseball with the Long Beach State baseball team also having a competitive college baseball program.
Noted people
CSULB has more than 320,000 alumni .
Alumni have written, acted and directed screenplays that have attracted Oscar-caliber talent. David Twohy (BA) co-wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award winning film The Fugitive. Linda Woolverton (BA 1974) wrote the screenplays for the Academy Award-winning,Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture and five other Academy Awards, and won for Best Original Score and Best Original Song Disney animated films Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, and the live-action 2010 film Alice in Wonderland. J. F. Lawton (BA) wrote the screenplay to Pretty Woman. Mark Steven Johnson (BA 1989) has co-written and directed the films Daredevil and Ghost Rider. Actor Crispin Alapag notably on Big Time In Hollywood FL, Ray Donovan, General Hospital and VR Troopers Power Rangers.
Current and former mayors of Long Beach Robert Garcia and Beverly O'Neill are alumni.
Former students have won at least five Academy Awards. Steven Spielberg (Class of 1969, BA 2002) won two Oscars for Best Directing for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan and has directed a number of other successful movies such as Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park. Former industrial design major John Dykstra, who has been nominated five times for Academy Awards, won two Oscars for his special effects work on the George Lucas film Star Wars and the Sam Raimi film Spider-Man 2. Deborah L. Scott (BA) won an Oscar for costume design for the James Cameron film Titanic.
Emmy Award-nominated director Chris Carter (BA 1979) created the series The X-Files, which garnered several awards during its nine seasons on television. Former student Steve Martin, whose philosophy classes at the university inspired him to become a professional comedian, is an Emmy Award winner and a Disney Legend.
Alumni and former students have also participated in the world of sports. Jason Giambi, Evan Longoria, Troy Tulowitzki, Harold Reynolds, Jered Weaver, Steve Trachsel, and Jason Vargas have all been selected to play in the Major League Baseball All Stars games. Matt Duffy won the World Series with the 2014 San Francisco Giants and continues to play with the Los Angeles Angels. Jeff McNeil of the New York Mets won the 2022 NL batting title with an average of .326. Golfer Mark O'Meara (BA 1980) won the Masters Tournament and The Open Championship. Craig Hodges is a two-time NBA Champion, Terrell Davis is a two-time Super Bowl champion and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, and Billy Parks played five seasons in the NFL. Diver Pat McCormick won four gold medals in two consecutive Olympics (Helsinki and Melbourne), and Misty May-Treanor (BS 2002) won three gold medals in women's beach volleyball in three other consecutive Olympics (Athens, Beijing, and London). High Jumper Dwight Stones set the World Record while a student at Cal State Long Beach, in addition to winning the bronze medal at both the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and 1976 in Montreal. Track and Field athlete Bill Green (BA 1984) set the United States and NCAA record three times in the hammer throw, and placed 5th at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Former students Karen Carpenter and Richard Carpenter (Class of 1972, Honorary Doctorate 2000) of the Carpenters are the namesakes of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, a 1,065-seat performance hall on the campus of the university that also houses an exhibit on the Carpenters. Richard Carpenter's college instructor and choir director Frank Pooler inspired him in choral arrangement, and both Karen and Richard participated in Pooler's choir. Pooler also introduced Richard to fellow undergraduate and future song-writing collaborator John Bettis. Another undergraduate, Wesley Jacobs, would join the Carpenters as a musical instrumentalist. The Carpenters sold over 100 million records, won three Grammy Awards out of eighteen nominations, and created numerous gold and platinum albums.
Notes
References
BibliographyTeacher Education Programs in the United States: A Guide.'' Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004.
External links
Long Beach State Athletics website
Long Beach
California State University, Long Beach
Universities and colleges established in 1949
1949 establishments in California
Education in Long Beach, California
School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in California
Universities and colleges in Los Angeles County, California
Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges
Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles County, California
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddi%20Jagan
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Cheddi Jagan
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Cheddi Berret Jagan (22 March 1918 – 6 March 1997) was a Guyanese politician and dentist who was first elected Chief Minister in 1953 and later Premier of British Guiana from 1961 to 1964. He later served as President of Guyana from 1992 to his death in 1997. In 1953, he became the first person of Indian descent to be a head of government outside of the Indian subcontinent.
Jagan founded the People's Progressive Party along with his wife Janet and Forbes Burnham, and served as the first leader of the party. Jagan was a leading figure in the campaign for the independence of Guyana from the United Kingdom, and advocated for increased powers for trade unions at a time when British Guiana's economy was dominated by powerful foreign enterprises. Jagan lost his position as Prime Minister to Forbes Burnham following the 1964 British Guiana general election, and Burnham would become Guyana's first Head of Government following independence. 28 years later, Jagan was elected president in the 1992 Guyanese general election, which was regarded as the first "free and fair" election since 1964.
Early life
Cheddi Berret (Bharat) Jagan was born on 22 March 1918 in Ankerville, Port Mourant, a rural village in the county of Berbice (present-day East Berbice-Corentyne). He was the eldest of 11 children. His parents were Indian Hindus who were Kurmis. They emigrated from British India to British Guiana as indentured labourers. They were both from the Basti district in the then North-Western Provinces in the Awadh and Bhojpuri regions of the Hindi Belt in North India (in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India). His mother Bachaoni came to British Guiana as a child with her mother, while his father Jagan also came as a child with his mother and brother. Both his mother's and father's family immigrated to British Guiana aboard the Elbe in 1901; his father being two years old and his mother 18 months when they arrived. His father's family were indentured to Albion Estate and his mother's family was indentured to Port Mourant Estate.
The Jagan family lived in rural poverty, working in the cane fields to support themselves. His mother had worked on the estate till Jagan was nine years old. His father had worked his way up to become head driver on the estate, but it did not amount to much change in pay, and he had to retire at 50 due to ill health. Jagan received his primary education at Port Mourant Primary and the Rose Hall Scots School. He went on to pursue secondary education at R. N. Persaud's private Secondary School. When Jagan was 15 years old, his father sent him to Queen's College in the capital city of Georgetown (about away) for the next three years. Upon graduation, Jagan found his employment options in Guyana limited to agricultural work or converting to Christianity and becoming a teacher, so his father sent him to the United States to study dentistry with $500, the family's life savings, so that he would not end up in the cane fields and he would not have to compromise his Hindu faith.
Education and early career (1935–1946)
Jagan left for the United States in September 1935 or 1936 with two friends, and did not return to British Guiana until October 1943. He lived in Washington, D.C., for two years, enrolled in a pre-dental course at Howard University. To cover his expenses, Jagan took a job as an elevator operator. During the summers, he worked in New York City as a door-to-door salesman. Jagan's performance helped him to win a scholarship for his second year at Howard. In 1938, he was admitted to the four-year dental program at Northwestern University in Chicago.
After returning to British Guiana, Jagan established a practice in Georgetown on 68 Main Street. During this time, he began to become politically engaged, and became involved with trade unions in the sugar industry. In 1945 he was made the treasurer of the ManPower Citizen's Association, though he was removed after a year after objecting to union policy.
Political career
Early political career (1946–1953)
Jagan co-founded the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) in 1946 along with his wife, Janet, as well as H.J.M. Hubbard, and Ashton Chase. He was subsequently elected to the Legislative Council in November 1947 as an independent candidate from Central Demerara constituency. In 1949 Jagan became the president of the Sawmill Workers Union.
On 1 January 1950, the People's Progressive Party (PPP) was founded by a merger of the PAC and the British Guiana Labour Party (BGLP), with Jagan as its leader, former BGLP leader Forbes Burnham as its chairman and Jagan's wife Janet as secretary.
The PPP quickly gained a mass following when they organised protests against the colonial administration, following an incident where colonial police shot dead five workers at Enmore sugar plantation in 1948 when they were participating in strike action.
Chief Minister of British Guiana for 133 days (1953)
On 27 April 1953, Jagan won the 1953 British Guiana general election, with his PPP party winning 18 of 24 seats.
Jagan's government immediately dissented against British rule. Jagan encouraged strike action against important sugar company Booker, refused to send a delegation to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, repealed a law on "undesirable publications" passed by the colonial government, and repealed another law banning immigration of politically left-leaning individuals from the West Indies.
Taking place in the middle of Second Red Scare and McCarthyism, Jagan's actions and policies led to British worries about a possible communist revolution in Guyana. Winston Churchill expressed fears that Jagan was a Marxist-Leninist, and claimed Jagan could allow the Soviet Union a foothold in South America, saying “[W]e ought surely to get American support in doing all we can to break the Communist teeth in British Guiana … [P]erhaps they would even send Senator McCarthy down there.” Declassified documents from MI5 show that the intelligence service concluded that the party were "not receiving any financial support from any communist organisation outside the country". However, Jagan's wife Janet may have been a member of the Young Communist League USA before she moved to Guyana.
On 8 October 1953, the PPP government passed the Labour Relations Act (modelled on the Wagner Act). The next day, on 9 October, the British administration suspended the constitution of British Guiana and troops were deployed. The queen had signed the order to dispatch troops on 4 October. On 9 October, a contingent of Royal Welsh Fusiliers arrived in Georgetown on HMS Superb, and Jagan was dismissed from his position and arrested. According to MI5, Jagan was unaware of the possibility of British intervention or of his arrest. Jagan appealed to British Labour leader Clement Attlee, who responded "Regret impossible to intervene." Jagan was forced to resign as Chief Minister after 133 days. Britain installed an interim government.
Interim Government (1953–1957)
After the suspension of the constitution, Jagan departed for London with Forbes Burnham on 19 October 1953 to protest the suspension and attended the debate in the House of Commons on 21 October. During his time in the United Kingdom, both Jagan and Burnham were subject to covert surveillance by American and British intelligence services. He would subsequently arrive in India with Burnham on November 20, 1953, and meet Jawaharlal Nehru in an attempt to garner support.
Jagan's movements were restricted to Georgetown from 1954 to 1957, and both him and his wife were closely monitored and kept under house arrest. During this period of time, colonial police would routinely raid the residences of senior members of the party to seize subversive literature. In 1954, Jagan was sentenced to 6 months in prison with hard labour for violating a restriction on his movement, travelling to the countryside and as a result leaving Georgetown. In court, Jagan likened British Guiana to a "vast prison".
Senior member of the party Forbes Burnham split with Jagan politically in 1955, dividing the PPP into two separate factions named "Burnhamite" and "Jaganite". These two factions in the PPP would both go on to contest the 1957 Guyanese election as PPP candidates. Burnham as a candidate was generally further to the right of the political spectrum. Support for the two factions followed mostly racial lines, as Burnham was the leading Afro-Guyanese figure in the PPP. However, the split was not entirely racial; prominent Afro-Guyanese politician Sydney King remained in the Jaganite faction, and Indo-Guyanese J.B. Lachmansingh supported Burnham. However, Sydney King and Afro-Guyanese Martin Carter and Rory Westmaas would both leave the party one year later due to being "ultra-leftist". Clem Seecharan made the claim that they left because they believed that Jagan was compromising Marxist ideals for racial pragmatism (i.e., supporting Indo-Guyanese policies to appeal to his support base). This further reduced the number of active Afro-Guyanese politicians within the PPP.
Minister of Trade and Industry (1957–1961)
Jaganites won a majority of seats in the 1957 British Guiana general election winning 9 seats to the Burnhamite 3, and 2 seats for other parties. Following this outcome, the Burnhamite faction split entirely from the PPP, and Burnham founded the People's National Congress (PNC). Jagan became minister of trade and industry, remained as PPP leader and was a member of the cabinet. He did not become Prime Minister during this time – there was no such position. The PPP government did not have possession of the Ministries of Finance, Foreign Affairs or Administration, and power resided mostly with the Governor, Ralph Grey.
During the lead-up and aftermath of the 1957 elections, Guyanese politics began to strongly follow racial lines. Jagan's faction was majority Indo-Guayanese, and advocated for policies that would benefit mainly Indo-Guyanese, such as an increase in land for rice production and sugar industry reform through increased union powers. Jagan's veto of West Indies Federation membership further alienated Afro-Guyanese voters- the Federation was majority Afro-Caribbean. Similarly, Burnham merged the PNC with the United Democratic Party to consolidate his grip on middle class Afro-Guyanese support. This style of politics along racial lines in Guyana became known as apan jhaat, which is Guyanese Hindustani for "vote for your own kind".
Premier of British Guiana (1961–1964)
After a PPP victory in the August 1961 elections, Jagan became Premier, serving for three years. The elections were held as first-past-the-post, with 35 members of the Legislative assembly; the PPP won 20 seats, almost twice the number won by Burnham's PNC, and 10 seats in the 13-seat senate, which led to mass demonstrations led by the PNC, a general strike and racially motivated violence. This violence would peak in early 1962, after Jagan's government proposed what became known as the "Kaldor Budget". Advised by economist Nicholas Kaldor, on 31 January 1962 the PPP government proposed an increase in tax and import duty which was opposed by opposition parties. The budget imposed austerity, the tax increases would have significantly impacted the Afro-Guyanese community, and the opposition was not consulted. However, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. expressed the opinion that the tax scheme was entirely orthodox and suitable for Britain, and the budget was praised by both the New York Times and the London Times. Following the budget, action was taken against the government, which culminated on 16 February 1962 in the destruction of 56 businesses, 87 businesses damaged by fire and 66 looted. One Police Superintendent was killed and 39 injured, Four looters shot and 41 injured. The rioters also attacked the Electricity Plant, the Water Works, Parliament, and Jagan's residence. The British response was to send two warships, HMS Troubridge and HMS Wizard, to stop the violence. Jagan's official residence suffered fire damage during the riots.
Following the 1961 elections, Jagan met John F. Kennedy in person in Washington, D.C., on October 25, and on December 18 he addressed the United Nations calling for a date for Independence from the United Kingdom.
The lead-up to the 1964 elections included a concerted effort by officials from the United States to ensure that Jagan did not win the election, due to fears about Jagan supposed communist views. A March 1961 CIA estimate opined that Jagan's wife, Janet, was a communist, and that Jagan was under communist influence. Jagan had also expressed support and encouragement for the Cuban Revolution. The United Kingdom and United States differed on their opinions of how to solve the situation, with the British suggestion being that Jagan should be educated rather than removed from power. Jagan's meeting with Kennedy in 1961 did not significantly change the American opinion of his political leanings. The Americans decided that Burnham's policies were preferable to those of Jagan, and began to take actions against Jagan, including delaying independence from Britain, advocating a proportional representation electoral system which would be to the detriment of Jagan's electoral chances, and providing support for strike action. These actions continued despite Jagan contacting Kennedy to protest his case. The CIA helped fund and organise the protests that led to the February 1962 demonstrations, and in April 1963 the CIA used $1 million of allocated funds to support the 80-day general strike. This strike action would later be cited as evidence that Jagan was not capable of governing British Guiana.
In October 1963, a constitutional conference was called. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan summoned the three main Guyanese political leaders (Jagan, Forbes Burnham and Peter D'Aguiar) to London where Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys announced the holding of fresh elections (previously the agreement was that independence would be granted before any further elections were called), a delay in the date of independence from 1963 to 1964, and a change in the electoral system from first-past-the-post to proportional representation. In a letter to President Kennedy, MacMillan explained that if Jagan refused to cooperate, Britain would suspend the constitution. Jagan agreed to elections in 1964 under proportional representation, but John Prados posits that this was only because he received assurances from Forbes Burnham that a coalition between the two parties would be acceptable. The Guiana United Muslim Party and Justice Party were both set up with the assistance of the CIA to split the Indo-Guyanese voting bloc, and the United States funded Burnham's campaign activities against Jagan's party.
The months preceding the December 1964 elections were marked with extensive civil disorder. Arson was a daily occurrence, nearly 200 people were murdered and 1000 were injured, and more than 15,000 people were forced from their homes. Violence came from both PPP and PNC supporters. On one occasion in August, a conference between the three political party leaders was interrupted when the PPP party headquarters was bombed on the same street. An article in Time Magazine accused Jagan of quietly encouraging the violence. There were multiple examples of racial violence across the country, including the fatal shooting of an elderly Afro-Guyanese couple on their farm, the death of a pregnant Indo-Guyanese woman at Bachelor's Adventure near Enterprise and the deaths of four Indo-Guyanese at Afro-Guyanese hands in Wismar. Further violence included the sinking of the Sun Chapman on 6 July and the following murders of 5 Indo-Guyanese individuals at Mackenzie.
In the December 1964 elections, the PPP won a plurality of votes and actually increased their vote share to 46%, but Burnham's party, the People's National Congress, and the conservative United Force held a majority of seats and were invited to form the government by Governor Richard Luyt. However, Jagan refused to resign, and had to be removed by Luyt. Jagan would begin his role as leader of the opposition.
Clem Seecharan would later point to Jagan's ideological inflexibility and his poor diplomatic handling of the electoral situation in Guyana as reasons for the strong American preference for Burnham over Jagan, and as a result Burnham becoming Guyana's first leader after independence.
Leader of the Opposition (1964–1992)
Following Burnham's election in 1964, a constitutional conference was held in London. Jagan refused to attend in protest at the imprisonment of PPP members at Mazaruni Prison. As agreed at the conference, Guyana gained independence from the United Kingdom on 26 May 1966. Jagan opposed this date for independence, as it was the anniversary of the Wismar Massacre of 1964. The same year, Jagan published "The West On Trial: My Fight for Guyana's Freedom", concerning his experience working towards Guyanese independence, which remains his most popular written work.
In 1965 Jagan attempted to enter the United States to join a protest against the Vietnam War but he was denied entry. He was again denied entry in 1967 to attend a planned speaking tour which had to be cancelled as a result.
He was elected as Leader of the Opposition and Minority Leader in 1966, and would remain in the role until 1973 when Marcellus Fielden Singh took over the role. He subsequently took the role again from 1976 until his election as president in 1992. During this time, Jagan would repeatedly protest at the authoritarian policies of Burnham's administration, with electoral fraud being reported in 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985.
In 1969, the People's Progressive Party attended the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, with Jagan attending personally. Jagan was subsequently elected General Secretary of the PPP.
In 1973, the PPP boycotted the National Assembly in protest at the fraudulent 1973 elections, and at the deaths of two Indo-Guyanese on election day. In 1974, a raid on Jagan's home found parts of a revolver and he was charged with illegal possession.
Starting in 1975, the PPP began a period of closer collaboration with Burnham's PNC, offering "critical support" when the PNC pushed for pro-socialist policies and was under the pressure of Venezuelan border claims, as well as proposing a national government with the PPP forming part of the ruling party in 1977. In 1978, Jagan was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples by the Soviet Union at the Kremlin.
The 1978 Guyanese constitutional referendum was strongly opposed by Jagan. The referendum would prolong the parliamentary term and would expand presidential powers. Jagan's party led a boycott of the vote. The referendum passed with 97% of the vote, and the vote is considered to be fraudulent.
Following the death of Burnham in 1985, Desmond Hoyte came to power. Influenced by Jimmy Carter, Hoyte would put forward electoral reforms which would lead to the 1992 elections being internationally recognised as free and fair.
President of Guyana (1992–1997)
After 28 years in opposition, the PPP won the 5 October 1992 elections with about 54% of the vote, and Jagan became president. Contrary to earlier foreign fears, he governed as a democratic socialist and not a Marxist–Leninist. Jagan would pursue policies to attract foreign investors and move towards free market policies. Jagan also had a cordial relationship with the Clinton Administration in the United States, unlike his difficult relationship with Kennedy in the 1960s.
Following the previous administration, the Guyanese economy was still recovering from flawed economic policies and high national debt, and low prices for major Guyanese exports such as bauxite, oil and bananas. Jagan would pursue a policy of investment in national infrastructure, including sea defences, irrigation and drainage systems, road and bridge projects and investment in health, education and electricity generation. Jagan would also try to improve free trade in the Americas.
During his time in power, Jagan would advocate for a New Global Human Order. This proposal was aimed at the need for developing countries to acquire the means to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. This involved debt relief, pollution tax, a Tobin tax on currency exchange and cuts in arms spending. These proposals did not gain significant support. Jagan announced this proposal in a speech at the United Nations in late 1995.
Political opinions
Jagan has been labelled as communist or Marxist by many different sources. Clem Seecharan said that the Jagan couple were both communists, although Cheddi was more ideological. In a discussion with V.S. Naipaul, Jagan elaborated on his appreciation of Marxist literature. Jagan also had regular communication with communist Billy Strachan. Political rival Forbes Burnham in 1957 classified Jagan and his allies as "dogmatists whose aim is communism and who abuse everyone with whom they do not agree". In 1984, Jagan stated that "I am not only fighting for the people of Guyana. I am fighting for the people of the world. I am contributing to that struggle. That struggle is winning. That is why the United States is so hysterical at the moment, because of that very fact, that what I stand for is winning". Jagan also went on to claim in 1990 that it was socialism in Eastern Europe which was failing, rather than communism, and stated that "Communism, as a system, has not been tried in any country as yet, and remains a highly moralistic and humanistic ideal and destination." If Jagan was a Marxist, he would have been the first democratically elected Marxist in the Western Hemisphere, ahead of Chilean leader Salvador Allende.
Percy Hintzen stated that "characterization of Jagan as a communist misses the complexity of his political philosophy… if Jagan was indeed a communist, it was certainly not reflected in the policies and programs that his party attempted to implement while in office." Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. said Jagan was not a communist, but rater a “London School of Economics Marxist filled with charm.”
Personal life
After graduating from dental school in 1942, Jagan met Janet Rosenberg, a student nurse, in spring 1943. They married in 1943, and had two children: Nadira and Cheddi Jr. (who in turn produced five grandchildren).
Jagan and his wife shared a lifelong friendship with Billy Strachan, a leading British communist and a pioneer of black civil rights in Britain.
Janet Jagan followed her husband's footsteps and held the positions of prime minister and president in 1997 (succeeded as president by Bharrat Jagdeo in 1999).
Personality
Clem Seecharan characterised Jagan as a man of integrity, "who did not steal and never construed the political vocation as a means of amassing wealth". He would also label him as an "attractive and incorruptible man" known for his frugality. However, Seecharan would also accuse Jagan of ideological inflexibility and an "apparent inability to comprehend or empathise with African insecurities". An article by Indo-Guyanese author Frank Birbalsingh also praised his integrity, pointing out that "Never, in his half-century of involvement in politics, has anyone been able to point a finger at him, while charges of financial corruption, sexual misconduct or electoral fraudulence have been levelled at most of his contemporaries."
Death
Jagan suffered a heart attack on 15 February 1997 and was taken to Georgetown Hospital before being flown by U.S. military aircraft then by U.S. Air Force helicopter from Andrews Air Force Base to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., later that day. He underwent heart surgery there and died in Washington on 6 March 1997, 16 days before his 79th birthday. Prime Minister Sam Hinds succeeded him as president and declared six days of mourning, describing Jagan as the "greatest son and patriot that has ever walked this land". His funeral was postponed by a day to allow mourners time to visit who were caught in massive traffic jams, caused by the immense number of people traveling to Port Mourant for his funeral. More than 200,000 mourners attended. He had a state funeral in Georgetown and his cremation was at the Babu John (Jan) Crematorium in his hometown of Port Mourant. His final rites were done per Hindu customs and he was cremated on 12 March 1997. The site of his cremation became a samadhi (memorial) to him and later his wife, known as the Jagans' Memorial Monument.
Legacy
The People's Progressive Party, which Jagan founded with Janet Jagan and Forbes Burnham, remains one of the two dominant political parties in Guyana, along with the PNC. Support for both groups continue to follow the racial divide between Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese. There are claims that Jagan may bear partial responsibility for the racial divide present in Guyanese politics. Walter Rodney said that "...more than one political party has been responsible for the crisis of race relations on this country. I think our leadership has failed us on that score." Rodney also pointed to external intervention as a catalyst for poor race relations.
The Cheddi Jagan Research Centre in Georgetown commemorates his life and work, complete with a replication of his office. The centre is located in the Red House which served as Jagan's official residence from 1961 to 1964. The Cheddi Jagan International Airport, the largest and primary international airport of the country, has been renamed after Jagan.
In 2007, Jagan was posthumously awarded the Order of Liberation of Guyana (OR). This award surpasses the Order of Excellence of Guyana, but was granted without an amendment to the constitution of orders and it does not appear in the list of national awards. Jagan also received the Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo from South Africa in 2005.
Jagan's wide regard as "Father of the Nation" in Guyana is stated by several different sources, the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, the Guyana Chronicle, the Times of India and important political figures in the PPP such as Irfaan Ali. In contrast, PNC member and at the time Minister of Social Cohesion Amna Ally in a 2015 speech named Forbes Burnham the "Father of the Nation".
Awards
Order of Friendship of Peoples: Soviet Union (1978)
Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo: South Africa (2005)
Order of Liberation: Guyana (2007)
Selected publications
Jagan was also an important political author and speechwriter, and his publications include:
Forbidden Freedom: The Story of British Guiana (Hansib, 1954)
The West On Trial: My Fight for Guyana's Freedom (Harpy, 1966)
The Caribbean Revolution (1979)
The Caribbean: Whose Backyard? (1984)
Selected Speeches 1992–1994 (Hansib, 1995)
The USA in South America (Hansib, 1998)
A New Global Human Order (Harpy, 1999)
Selected Correspondences 1953–1965 (Dido Press, 2004)
See also
Cheddi Jagan Bio Diversity Park
Cheddi Jagan International Airport
Notes
This award surpasses the Order of Excellence of Guyana, but was granted without an amendment to the constitution of orders and it does not appear in the list of national awards.
References
External links
Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, an informational site maintained by Jagan's daughter, Nadira Jagan-Brancier.
Cheddi Jagan Archive at marxists.org
Cheddi Jagan Timeline Posted at Center for Cooperative Research
"An Appreciation of Dr. Cheddi Jagan". Indo Caribbean World, 12 March 1997.
1918 births
1997 deaths
Alumni of Queen's College, Guyana
Foreign ministers of Guyana
Guyanese democracy activists
Guyanese Hindus
Guyanese politicians of Indian descent
Howard University alumni
Indo-Guyanese people
Leaders of political parties
Northwestern University Dental School alumni
People from East Berbice-Corentyne
People's Progressive Party (Guyana) politicians
Presidents of Guyana
Recipients of the Order of Friendship of Peoples
Recipients of the Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile
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Tile
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Tiles are usually thin, square or rectangular coverings manufactured from hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass. They are generally fixed in place in an array to cover roofs, floors, walls, edges, or other objects such as tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to similar units made from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood, and mineral wool, typically used for wall and ceiling applications. In another sense, a tile is a construction tile or similar object, such as rectangular counters used in playing games (see tile-based game). The word is derived from the French word tuile, which is, in turn, from the Latin word tegula, meaning a roof tile composed of fired clay.
Tiles are often used to form wall and floor coverings, and can range from simple square tiles to complex or mosaics. Tiles are most often made of ceramic, typically glazed for internal uses and unglazed for roofing, but other materials are also commonly used, such as glass, cork, concrete and other composite materials, and stone. Tiling stone is typically marble, onyx, granite or slate. Thinner tiles can be used on walls than on floors, which require more durable surfaces that will resist impacts.
Global production of ceramic tiles, excluding roof tiles, was estimated to be 12.7 billion m2 in 2019.
Decorative tile work and colored brick
Decorative tilework or tile art should be distinguished from mosaic, where forms are made of great numbers of tiny irregularly positioned tesserae, each of a single color, usually of glass or sometimes ceramic or stone. There are various tile patterns, such as herringbone, staggered, offset, grid, stacked, pinwheel, parquet de Versailles, basket weave, tiles Art, diagonal, chevron, and encaustic which can range in size, shape, thickness, and color.
History
Ancient Middle East
The earliest evidence of glazed brick is the discovery of glazed bricks in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil, dated to the 13th century BC. Glazed and colored bricks were used to make low reliefs in Ancient Mesopotamia, most famously the Ishtar Gate of Babylon (), now partly reconstructed in Berlin, with sections elsewhere. Mesopotamian craftsmen were imported for the palaces of the Persian Empire such as Persepolis.
The use of sun-dried bricks or adobe was the main method of building in Mesopotamia where river mud was found in abundance along the Tigris and Euphrates. Here the scarcity of stone may have been an incentive to develop the technology of making kiln-fired bricks to use as an alternative. To strengthen walls made from sun-dried bricks, fired bricks began to be used as an outer protective skin for more important buildings like temples, palaces, city walls, and gates. Making fired bricks is an advanced pottery technique. Fired bricks are solid masses of clay heated in kilns to temperatures of between 950° and 1,150°C, and a well-made fired brick is an extremely durable object. Like sun-dried bricks, they were made in wooden molds but for bricks with relief decorations, special molds had to be made.
Ancient Indian subcontinent
Rooms with tiled floors made of clay decorated with geometric circular patterns have been discovered from the ancient remains of Kalibangan, Balakot and Ahladino
Tiling was used in the second century by the Sinhalese kings of ancient Sri Lanka, using smoothed and polished stone laid on floors and in swimming pools. The techniques and tools for tiling is advanced, evidenced by the fine workmanship and close fit of the tiles. Such tiling can be seen in Ruwanwelisaya and Kuttam Pokuna in the city of Anuradhapura. The nine-storied Lovamahapaya (3rd century BCE) had copper roof tiles. The roofs were tiled, with red, white, yellow, turquoise and brown tiles. There were also tiles made of bronze. Sigiriya also had an elaborate gatehouse made of timber and brick masonry with multiple tiled roofs. The massive timber doorposts remaining today indicate this.
Ancient Iran
The Achaemenid Empire decorated buildings with glazed brick tiles, including Darius the Great's palace at Susa, and buildings at Persepolis.
The succeeding Sassanid Empire used tiles patterned with geometric designs, flowers, plants, birds and human beings, glazed up to a centimeter thick.
Islamic
Early Islamic mosaics in Iran consist mainly of geometric decorations in mosques and mausoleums, made of glazed brick. Typical, turquoise, tiling becomes popular in 10th-11th century and is used mostly for Kufic inscriptions on mosque walls. Seyyed Mosque in Isfahan (AD 1122), Dome of Maraqeh (AD 1147) and the Jame Mosque of Gonabad (1212 AD) are among the finest examples. The dome of Jame' Atiq Mosque of Qazvin is also dated to this period.
The golden age of Persian tilework began during the Timurid Empire. In the moraq technique, single-color tiles were cut into small geometric pieces and assembled by pouring liquid plaster between them. After hardening, these panels were assembled on the walls of buildings. But the mosaic was not limited to flat areas. Tiles were used to cover both the interior and exterior surfaces of domes. Prominent Timurid examples of this technique include the Jame Mosque of Yazd (AD 1324–1365), Goharshad Mosque (AD 1418), the Madrassa of Khan in Shiraz (AD 1615), and the Molana Mosque (AD 1444).
Other important tile techniques of this time include girih tiles, with their characteristic white girih, or straps.
Mihrabs, being the focal points of mosques, were usually the places where most sophisticated tilework was placed. The 14th-century mihrab at Madrasa Imami in Isfahan is an outstanding example of aesthetic union between the Islamic calligrapher's art and abstract ornament. The pointed arch, framing the mihrab's niche, bears an inscription in Kufic script used in 9th-century Qur'an.
One of the best known architectural masterpieces of Iran is the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, from the 17th century. Its dome is a prime example of tile mosaic and its winter praying hall houses one of the finest ensembles of cuerda seca tiles in the world. A wide variety of tiles had to be manufactured in order to cover complex forms of the hall with consistent mosaic patterns. The result was a technological triumph as well as a dazzling display of abstract ornament.
During the Safavid period, mosaic ornaments were often replaced by a haft rang (seven colors) technique. Pictures were painted on plain rectangle tiles, glazed and fired afterwards. Besides economic reasons, the seven colors method gave more freedom to artists and was less time-consuming. It was popular until the Qajar period, when the palette of colors was extended by yellow and orange. The seven colors of Haft Rang tiles were usually black, white, ultramarine, turquoise, red, yellow and fawn.
The Persianate tradition continued and spread to much of the Islamic world, notably the İznik pottery of Turkey under the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. Palaces, public buildings, mosques and türbe mausoleums were heavily decorated with large brightly colored patterns, typically with floral motifs, and friezes of astonishing complexity, including floral motifs and calligraphy as well as geometric patterns.
Islamic buildings in Bukhara in central Asia (16th-17th century) also exhibit very sophisticated floral ornaments. In South Asia monuments and shrines adorned with Kashi tile work from Persia became a distinct feature of the shrines of Multan and Sindh. The Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore stands out as one of the masterpieces of Kashi time work from the Mughal period.
The zellige tradition of Arabic North Africa uses small colored tiles of various shapes to make very complex geometric patterns. It is halfway to mosaic, but as the different shapes must be fitted precisely together, it falls under tiling. The use of small coloured glass fields also make it rather like enamelling, but with ceramic rather than metal as the support.
Azulejos are derived from zellige, and the name is likewise derived. The term is both a simple Portuguese and Spanish term for zellige, and a term for later tilework following the tradition. Some azujelos are small-scale geometric patterns or vegetative motifs, some are blue monochrome and highly pictorial, and some are neither. The Baroque period produced extremely large painted scenes on tiles, usually in blue and white, for walls. Azulejos were also used in Latin American architecture.
Medieval influences between Middle Eastern tilework and tilework in Europe were mainly through Islamic Iberia and the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. The Alhambra zellige are said to have inspired the tessellations of M. C. Escher.
Medieval encaustic tiles were made of multiple colours of clay, shaped and baked together to form a patternt that, rather than sitting on the surface, ran right through the thickness of the tile, and thus would not wear away.
Medieval Europe
Medieval Europe made considerable use of painted tiles, sometimes producing very elaborate schemes, of which few have survived. Religious and secular stories were depicted. The imaginary tiles with Old Testament scenes shown on the floor in Jan van Eyck's 1434 Annunciation in Washington are an example. The 14th century "Tring tiles" in the British Museum show childhood scenes from the Life of Christ, possibly for a wall rather than a floor, while their 13th century "Chertsey Tiles", though from an abbey, show scenes of Richard the Lionheart battling with Saladin in very high-quality work. Medieval letter tiles were used to create Christian inscriptions on church floors.
Delftware wall tiles, typically with a painted design covering only one (rather small) blue and white tile, were ubiquitous in Holland and widely exported over Northern Europe from the 16th century on, replacing many local industries. Several 18th century royal palaces had porcelain rooms with the walls entirely covered in porcelain in tiles or panels. Surviving examples include ones at Capodimonte, Naples, the Royal Palace of Madrid and the nearby Royal Palace of Aranjuez.
Far East
There are several other types of traditional tiles that remain in manufacture, for example the small, almost mosaic, brightly colored zellige tiles of Morocco and the surrounding countries. With exceptions, notably the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, decorated tiles or glazed bricks do not feature largely in East Asian ceramics.
Modern Europe
The Victorian period saw a great revival in tilework, largely as part of the Gothic Revival, but also the Arts and Crafts Movement. Patterned tiles, or tiles making up patterns, were now mass-produced by machine and reliably level for floors and cheap to produce, especially for churches, schools and public buildings, but also for domestic hallways and bathrooms. For many uses the tougher encaustic tile was used. Wall tiles in various styles also revived; the rise of the bathroom contributing greatly to this, as well as greater appreciation of the benefit of hygiene in kitchens. William De Morgan was the leading English designer working in tiles, strongly influenced by Islamic designs.
Since the Victorian period tiles have remained standard for kitchens and bathrooms, and many types of public area.
Panot is a type of outdoor tile and the associated paving style, both found in Barcelona. In 2010, around of Barcelona streets were panot-tiled.
Portugal and São Luís continue their tradition of azulejo tilework today, with azulejos used to decorate buildings, ships, and even rocks.
Roof tiles
Roof tiles are overlapping tiles designed mainly to keep out rain or snow, and are traditionally made from locally available materials such as clay or slate. Later tiles have been made from materials such as concrete, and plastic.
Roof tiles can be affixed by screws or nails, but in some cases historic designs such as Marseilles tiles utilize interlocking systems that can be self-supporting. Tiles typically cover an underlayment system, which seals the roof against water intrusion.
Clay roof tiles historically gained their color purely from the clay that they were composed of, resulting in largely red, orange, and tan colored roofs. Over time some cultures, notably in Asia, began to apply glazes to clay tiles, achieving a wide variety of colors and combinations. Modern clay roof tiles typically source their color from kiln firing conditions, the application of glaze, or the use of a ceramic engobe. Contrary to popular belief a glaze does not weatherproof a tile, the porosity of the clay body is what determines how well a tile will survive harsh weather conditions.
Floor tiles
These are commonly made of ceramic or stone, although recent technological advances have resulted in rubber or glass tiles for floors as well. Ceramic tiles may be painted and glazed. Small mosaic tiles may be laid in various patterns. Floor tiles are typically set into mortar consisting of sand, cement and often a latex additive. The spaces between the tiles are commonly filled with sanded or unsanded floor grout, but traditionally mortar was used.
Natural stone tiles can be beautiful but as a natural product they are less uniform in color and pattern, and require more planning for use and installation. Mass-produced stone tiles are uniform in width and length. Granite or marble tiles are sawn on both sides and then polished or finished on the top surface so that they have a uniform thickness. Other natural stone tiles such as slate are typically "riven" (split) on the top surface so that the thickness of the tile varies slightly from one spot on the tile to another and from one tile to another. Variations in tile thickness can be handled by adjusting the amount of mortar under each part of the tile, by using wide grout lines that "ramp" between different thicknesses, or by using a cold chisel to knock off high spots.
Some stone tiles such as polished granite, marble, and travertine are very slippery when wet. Stone tiles with a riven (split) surface such as slate or with a sawn and then sandblasted or honed surface will be more slip-resistant. Ceramic tiles for use in wet areas can be made more slip-resistant by using very small tiles so that the grout lines acts as grooves, by imprinting a contour pattern onto the face of the tile, or by adding a non-slip material, such as sand, to the glazed surface.
The hardness of natural stone tiles varies such that some of the softer stone (e.g. limestone) tiles are not suitable for very heavy-traffic floor areas. On the other hand, ceramic tiles typically have a glazed upper surface and when that becomes scratched or pitted the floor looks worn, whereas the same amount of wear on natural stone tiles will not show, or will be less noticeable.
Natural stone tiles can be stained by spilled liquids; they must be sealed and periodically resealed with a sealant in contrast to ceramic tiles which only need their grout lines sealed. However, because of the complex, nonrepeating patterns in natural stone, small amounts of dirt on many natural stone floor tiles do not show.
The tendency of floor tiles to stain depends not only on a sealant being applied, and periodically reapplied, but also on their porosity or how porous the stone is. Slate is an example of a less porous stone while limestone is an example of a more porous stone. Different granites and marbles have different porosities with the less porous ones being more valued and more expensive.
Most vendors of stone tiles emphasize that there will be variation in color and pattern from one batch of tiles to another of the same description and variation within the same batch. Stone floor tiles tend to be heavier than ceramic tiles and somewhat more prone to breakage during shipment.
Rubber floor tiles have a variety of uses, both in residential and commercial settings. They are especially useful in situations where it is desired to have high-traction floors or protection for an easily breakable floor. Some common uses include flooring of garage, workshops, patios, swimming pool decks, sport courts, gyms, and dance floors.
Plastic floor tiles including interlocking floor tiles that can be installed without adhesive or glue are a recent innovation and are suitable for areas subject to heavy traffic, wet areas and floors that are subject to movement, damp or contamination from oil, grease or other substances that may prevent adhesion to the substrate. Common uses include old factory floors, garages, gyms and sports complexes, schools and shops.
Ceiling tiles
Ceiling tiles are lightweight tiles used inside buildings. They are placed in an aluminium grid; they provide little thermal insulation but are generally designed either to improve the acoustics of a room or to reduce the volume of air being heated or cooled.
Mineral fiber tiles are fabricated from a range of products; wet felt tiles can be manufactured from perlite, mineral wool, and fibers from recycled paper; stone wool tiles are created by combining molten stone and binders which is then spun to create the tile; gypsum tiles are based on the soft mineral and then finished with vinyl, paper or a decorative face.
Ceiling tiles very often have patterns on the front face; these are there in most circumstances to aid with the tiles ability to improve acoustics.
Ceiling tiles also provide a barrier to the spread of smoke and fire. Breaking, displacing, or removing ceiling tiles enables hot gases and smoke from a fire to rise and accumulate above detectors and sprinklers. Doing so delays their activation, enabling fires to grow more rapidly.
Ceiling tiles, especially in old Mediterranean houses, were made of terracotta and were placed on top of the wooden ceiling beams and upon those were placed the roof tiles. They were then plastered or painted, but nowadays are usually left bare for decorative purposes.
Modern-day tile ceilings may be flush mounted (nail up or glue up) or installed as dropped ceilings.
Materials and processes
Ceramic
Ceramic materials for tiles include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. Terracotta is a traditional material used for roof tiles.
Porcelain tiles
This is a US term, and defined in ASTM standard C242 as a ceramic mosaic tile or paver that is generally made by dust-pressing and of a composition yielding a tile that is dense, fine-grained, and smooth, with sharply-formed face, usually impervious. The colours of such tiles are generally clear and bright.
Pebble
Similar to mosaics or other patterned tiles, pebble tiles are tiles made up of small pebbles attached to a backing. The tile is generally designed in an interlocking pattern so that final installations fit of multiple tiles fit together to have a seamless appearance. A relatively new tile design, pebble tiles were originally developed in Indonesia using pebbles found in various locations in the country. Today, pebble tiles feature all types of stones and pebbles from around the world.
Digital printed
Printing techniques and digital manipulation of art and photography are used in what is known as "custom tile printing". Dye sublimation printers, inkjet printers and ceramic inks and toners permit printing on a variety of tile types yielding photographic-quality reproduction. Using digital image capture via scanning or digital cameras, bitmap/raster images can be prepared in photo editing software programs. Specialized custom-tile printing techniques permit transfer under heat and pressure or the use of high temperature kilns to fuse the picture to the tile substrate. This has become a method of producing custom tile murals for kitchens, showers, and commercial decoration in restaurants, hotels, and corporate lobbies.
Recent technology applied to Digital ceramic and porcelain printers allow images to be printed with a wider color gamut and greater color stability even when fired in a kiln up to 2200 °F
Diamond etched
A method for custom tile printing involving a diamond-tipped drill controlled by a computer. Compared with the laser engravings, diamond etching is in almost every circumstance more permanent.
Mathematics of tiling
Certain shapes of tiles, most obviously rectangles, can be replicated to cover a surface with no gaps. These shapes are said to tessellate (from the Latin tessella, 'tile') and such a tiling is called a tessellation. Geometric patterns of some Islamic polychrome decorative tilings are rather complicated (see Islamic geometric patterns and, in particular, Girih tiles), even up to supposedly quaziperiodic ones, similar to Penrose tilings.
Further reading
Marilyn Y. Goldberg, "Greek Temples and Chinese Roofs," American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 87, No. 3. (Jul. 1983), pp. 305–310
Örjan Wikander, "Archaic Roof Tiles the First Generations," Hesperia, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Jan.–Mar. 1990), pp. 285–290
William Rostoker; Elizabeth Gebhard, "The Reproduction of Rooftiles for the Archaic Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia, Greece," Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Summer, 1981), pp. 211–227
Michel Kornmann and CTTB, "Clay bricks and roof tiles, manufacturing and properties", Soc. Industrie Minerale, Paris (2007)
E-book on the manufacture of roofing tiles in the United States from 1910.
See also
Building integrated photovoltaics
Dimension stone
Dropped ceiling
Glass tile
Marble
Mathematical tile
Porcelain tile
Quarry tile
Roof shingle
Tile mural
Vitrified tile
References
Building materials
Ceilings
Floors
Pavements
Roofs
Ceramic art
Decorative arts
Mosaic
Articles containing video clips
Terracotta
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garda%20S%C3%ADoch%C3%A1na
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Garda Síochána
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The (; meaning "the Guardian(s) of the Peace") is the national police and security service of Ireland. It is more commonly referred to as the Gardaí (; "Guardians") or "the Guards". The service is headed by the Garda Commissioner, who is appointed by the Irish Government. Its headquarters are in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
Since the formation of the in 1923, it has been a predominantly unarmed force, and more than three quarters of the force do not routinely carry firearms. As of 31 December 2019, the police service had 14,708 sworn members (including 458 sworn Reserve members) and 2,944 civilian staff. Operationally, the is organised into four geographical regions: the East, North/West, South and Dublin Metropolitan regions, in turn broken into divisions, districts and sub-districts.
The force is the main law enforcement and security agency in the state, acting at local and national levels. Its roles include crime detection and prevention, drug enforcement, road traffic enforcement and accident investigation, diplomatic and witness protection responsibilities; it also provides a community policing service. Special units exist for specific areas of work such as organised crime prevention, migration management and cyber crime, and there is a central Garda technical bureau, a mounted unit and a canine unit. The force has its own college.
Members of the Garda Síochána are not free to join general trade unions but are represented by four rank-based organisations; there is also an association for retired members of the force.
Terminology
The service was originally named the Civic Guard in English, but in 1923 it became the Garda Síochána in both English and Irish. This title has been maintained in recent legislation. This is usually translated as "the Guardians of the Peace". ("of Ireland", ) appears on its logo but is seldom used elsewhere. At that time, there was a vogue for naming the new institutions of the Irish Free State after counterparts in the French Third Republic; the term "guardians of the peace" (, literally 'peacekeepers') had been used since 1870 in French-speaking countries to designate civilian police forces as distinguished from the armed gendarmery, notably municipal police in France, communal guards in Belgium and cantonal police in Switzerland.
The full official title of the police service is rarely used in speech. How it is referred to depends on the register being used. It is variously known as ; the ; the ; the (plural); and it is popularly called "the guards". Although is singular, in these terms it is used as a collective noun, like police.
An individual officer is called a (plural ), or less formally, a "guard", and is typically addressed as such by members of the public when on duty. A police station is called a station. is also the name of the lowest rank within the force (e.g. " John Murphy", analogous to the British term "constable" or the American "officer", "deputy", "trooper", etc.). A female officer was once officially referred to as a (; "female guard"; plural ). This term was abolished in 1990, but is still used colloquially in place of the gender-neutral .
Colloquially, as a slang or derogatory term, they are sometimes referred to as "the shades".
Organisation
The service, which is operationally independent of the Government, Department of Justice and the Policing Authority, is headed by the Garda Commissioner, whose immediate subordinates are two deputy commissioners – in charge of "Policing and Security" and "Governance & Strategy", respectively – and a Chief Administrative Officer with responsibility for resource management (personnel, finance, Information and Communications Technology, and accommodation). There is an assistant commissioner for each of the four geographical regions, along with a number dealing with other national support functions. The four geographical regions, each overseen by an assistant commissioner, are:
Dublin Metropolitan Region
North-Western
Eastern
Southern
At an equivalent or near-equivalent level to the assistant commissioners are such figures as the Chief Medical Officer, executive director of Information and Communications Technology, and executive director of Finance.
Directly subordinate to the assistant commissioners are approximately 40 chief superintendents, about half of whom supervise what are called divisions. Each division contains a number of districts, each commanded by a superintendent assisted by a team of inspectors. Each district contains a number of sub-districts, which are usually commanded by sergeants.
Typically each subdistrict contains only one Garda station. A different number of are based at each station depending on its importance. Most of these stations employ the basic rank of , which was referred to as the rank of Guard until 1972. The most junior members of the service are students, whose duties can vary depending on their training progress. They are often assigned clerical duties as part of their extracurricular studies.
The Garda organisation also has more than 3,000 civilian support staff (not sworn police officers). working across a range of areas such as human resources, occupational health services, finance and procurement, internal audit, IT and telecommunications, accommodation and fleet management, as well as aspects of scene-of-crime support, research and analysis, training and general administration. The figure also includes industrial staff such as traffic wardens, drivers and cleaners.
Structure and numbers
As of September 2023, the organisation is structured as follows:
Deputy Commissioner - Policing and Security
Assistant Commissioner - National Crime and Security & Intelligence Service
National Surveillance Unit
Special Detective Unit
Special Tactics & Operations Command
Emergency Response Unit
Armed Support Units
Liaison & Protection
Assistant Commissioner - Organised and Serious Crime
Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation
Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau
Garda National Economic Crime Bureau
Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau
Garda National Immigration Bureau
Garda National Protective Services Bureau
Technical Bureau
Operational Support Services that consists of:
Air Support Unit
Water Unit
Dog Unit
Mounted Unit
Assistant Commissioner - Roads Policing & Community Engagement
Garda National Roads Policing Bureau
Garda Community Engagement Bureau
Garda National Youth Diversion Bureau
Assistant Commissioners for 4 regions (in turn with divisions, and a Dublin roads unit)
Public Order Units are embedded in the regions
Garda Síochána Reserve members are embedded in the regions
Executive Director for Information and Technology
Central Vetting Unit
Garda Information Services Centre
National Data Protection Office
Deputy Commissioner for Strategy, Governance and Performance
Chief Administrative Officer
Legal, Occupational Health & Wellbeing, HR & Professional Development and Finance & Services units
Garda Síochána College
Garda Reserve
The Garda Síochána Act 2005 provided for the establishment of a Garda Reserve to assist the force in performing its functions, and supplement the work of members of the Garda Síochána. The intent of the Garda Reserve is "to be a source of local strength and knowledge". Reserve members are to carry out duties defined by the Garda Commissioner and sanctioned by the Minister for Justice. With limited training of 128 hours, these duties and powers must be executed under the supervision of regular members of the Service; they are also limited with respect to those of regular members.
The first batch of 36 Reserve Gardaí graduated on 15 December 2006 at the Garda College, in Templemore. Having reached a strength of over 1,100 in 2014, as of October 2016, there were 789 Garda Reserve members, with further training scheduled for 2017, however numbers have fallen since then, to under 460 as of 2021, and under 400 by 2023.
Rank structure
A garda allocated to detective duties, up to and including the rank of chief superintendent, is a detective and the word detective () is prefixed to their rank (e.g. detective sergeant, bleachtaire sáirsint). The detective moniker is not a rank but rather a role identification, a detective Garda and a Garda are the same rank. As of 31 December 2022, 2,401 Gardaí were on Detective duty, about one-sixth of the total.
Uniform and equipment
Uniform
In 2022, the fourth iteration of the Garda uniform was launched. It dispensed with formal shirts and ties, substituting a "sky blue" polo shirt, worn with loose-fitting "operational trousers", and a yellow-and-dark-navy waterproof jacket. A tie is available for formal occasions, and the Garda hat from previous versions of the uniform is retained. Alternative head and other coverings, such as the turban, kippah and hijab, are provided for. The uniform was for force members of the ranks of Garda, sergeant and inspector, with no change for those of superintendent rank or above. The original Garda uniform featured a high "night helmet" and cape, as was then used in the UK. There were changes to colouration of both fabric and buttons in 1987.
Equipment
Most uniformed members of the do not routinely carry firearms. Individual gardaí have been issued ASP extendable batons and pepper spray as their standard issue weapons while handcuffs are provided as restraints.
The service, when originally created, was armed, but the Provisional Government reversed the decision and reconstituted the service as an unarmed police service. This was in contrast to the attitude of the British Dublin Castle administration, which refused appeals from the Royal Irish Constabulary that the service be disarmed. In the words of first Commissioner, Michael Staines, TD, "the will succeed not by force of arms or numbers, but on their moral authority as servants of the people." This reflected the approach in the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which had also been unarmed, but did not extend to the CID detective branch, who were armed from the outset.
According to Tom Garvin such a decision gave the new force a cultural ace: "the taboo on killing unarmed men and women who could not reasonably be seen as spies and informers."
Armed Gardaí
The Gardaí is primarily an unarmed force; however, detectives and certain units such as the regional Armed Support Units (ASU) and the national Emergency Response Unit (ERU) are commissioned to carry firearms and do so. A website managed by the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa notes that there are "no specific legal provisions on use of firearms by the Gardai, which is predominantly an unarmed police service. Instead, the law provides an exemption from licensing requirements under the various Firearms Acts for a member of the Garda Síochána when on duty".
The armed officers serve as a support to regular Gardaí. Armed units were established in response to a rise in the number of armed incidents dealt with by regular members. To be issued with a firearm, or to carry a firearm whilst on duty, a member must be in possession of a valid gun card, and cannot wear a regular uniform.
Armed Gardaí carry Sig Sauer P226 and Walther P99C semi-automatic pistols. In addition to issued pistols, less-lethal weapons such as tasers and large pepper spray canisters are carried also by the ERU.
In December 2018, Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan provided updated specifics."Training is provided by Firearms Instructors attached to the Garda College and the Emergency Response Unit under the control of the Director of Training, Garda College. ... there are approximately 2700 personnel that are currently authorised to carry firearms. This can increase to approx. 3500 depending on operational requirements. ... Members attached to regular units and Detective units are trained in handguns only, namely Smith & Wesson revolver, Sig Sauer & Walther semi-automatic pistol. Specialist Units such as Emergency Response Unit and the Armed Support Unit are trained in Sig Pistol, H&K MP7 Sub-machine gun, Taser and 40mm direct impact munitions (Less Lethal options)".
In early April 2019, the Garda Representative Association called for 24-hour armed support units in every division across Ireland. In response, Minister Flanagan noted that "gardaí have had armed support for a long number of years. One of the great attributes of the [Garda Síochána], is the fact that it is in the main an unarmed police service. I think that's good and I would be concerned at attempts to ensure that the arming of the gardaí becomes commonplace." He did not support the GRA demands on a country-wide basis: "I think there is merit in ensuring that at a regional level, there can be an armed response should the circumstances warrant. And I'm thinking particularly in Drogheda where currently we have an armed support unit on the street in order to meet head-on what is a particularly nasty challenge."
Vehicles
patrol cars are white in colour, with a fluorescent yellow and blue-bordered horizontal strip, accompanied by the Garda crest as livery. Full or partial battenburg markings are used on traffic or roads policing vehicles. RSU/ASU vehicles also have Battenburg markings - as well as a red stripe denoting the fact that it is an armed unit. Unmarked patrol cars are also used in the course of regular, traffic and other duties. Specialist units, such as the ERU, use armoured vehicles for special operations.
The Garda Fleet management Section manages the vehicles, totalling approximately 2,750 in 2019, which are located in the various Garda Divisions and specialist units.
Governance and oversight
Policing Authority
In the first week of November 2014, Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald obtained the approval of the Irish Cabinet for the General Scheme of the Garda Síochána (Amendment) Bill 2014, intended to create a new independent policing authority, in what she described as the 'most far-reaching reform’ of the Garda Síochána since the State was founded in 1922. The draft bill proposed that state security would remain the responsibility of the Minister for Justice and outside the remit of the new authority. The first chairperson-designate of the new authority was the outgoing Revenue Commissioners chairperson Josephine Feehily.
Inspectorate
In accordance with Section 115 of the Act, the Inspectorate consists of three members who are appointed by the Irish Government. The functions of the Inspectorate, , are as follows:
Carry out, at the request or with the consent of the Minister, inspections or inquiries in relation to any particular aspects of the operation and administration of the ,
Submit to the Minister (1) a report on those inspections or inquiries, and (2) if required by the Minister, a report on the operation and administration of the Garda Síochána during a specified period and on any significant developments in that regard during that period, and any such reports must contain recommendations for any action the Inspectorate considers necessary.
provide advice to the Minister with regard to best-policing practice.
The first Chief Inspector (since July 2006), was former Commissioner of Boston Police, Kathleen M. O'Toole. She reported directly to the Minister for Justice.
From 2006 to 2009, O'Toole was supported by two other inspectors, Robert Olsen and Gwen M. Boniface. Olsen was Chief of Police for 8 years of the Minneapolis Police Department. Boniface is a former Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police and was one of 3 female police commissioners in Canada when appointed in May 1998. She suggested that rank and file Gardaí were not equipped to perform their duties or protect themselves properly. She also suggested that routine arming may become a reality but dismissed the suggestion that this was currently being considered.
In 2012, O'Toole was succeeded by Robert K. Olson.
Ombudsman Commission
Over 2000 complaints were made against the organisation in 2009, with a similar number of complaints by 2017. The Garda Commissioner referred over 100 incidents where the conduct of a garda resulted in death or serious injury to the Ombudsman for investigation. Also newly instrumented, the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (referred to colloquially as the Garda Ombudsman or simply abbreviated to GSOC) replaces the earlier system of complaints (the Complaints Board). Becoming fully operational on 9 May 2007, the commission is empowered to:
Directly and independently investigate complaints against members of the Garda Síochána
Investigate any matter, even where no complaint has been made, where it appears that a Garda may have committed an offence or behaved in a way that justified disciplinary proceedings
Investigate any practice, policy or procedure of the with a view to reducing the incidence of related complaints
The commission's first chairman was Kevin Haugh (a High Court Judge) who died in early 2009, shortly before his term of office was to conclude.
Diplomatic protection
The Garda Special Detective Unit (SDU) are primarily responsible for providing armed close protection to senior officials in Ireland. They provide full-time armed protection and transport for the President, Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Minister for Justice, Attorney General, Chief Justice, Director of Public Prosecutions, Ambassadors and Diplomats deemed 'at risk', as well as foreign dignitaries visiting Ireland and citizens deemed to require armed protection as designated so by the Garda Commissioner. The Commissioner is also protected by the unit. All cabinet ministers are afforded armed protection at heightened levels of risk when deemed necessary by Garda Intelligence, and their places of work and residences are monitored. Former Presidents and Taoisigh are protected if their security is under threat, otherwise they only receive protection on formal state occasions. The Emergency Response Unit (ERU), a section of the SDU, are deployed on more than 100 VIP protection duties per year.
History
Prior to the creation of the Irish Free State, policing in Ireland had been undertaken by the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), with a separate and unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). These were joined in 1919 by a parallel security force loyal to the provisional government, the Irish Republican Police. The early years of the new state saw a gradual process of incorporating these various pre-existing forces into a single centralised, nationwide and civilian organisation.
The Civic Guard was formed by the Provisional Government in February 1922 to take over the responsibility of policing the fledgeling Irish Free State. It replaced the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Irish Republican Police of 1919–22. In August 1922 the force accompanied Michael Collins when he met the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin Castle.
The Garda Síochána (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 enacted after the creation of the Irish Free State on 8 August 1923, provided for the creation of "a force of police to be called and known as 'The . Under section 22, The Civic Guard were deemed to have been established under and to be governed by the Act. The law therefore effectively renamed the existing force.
The seven-week Civic Guard Mutiny began in May 1922, when Garda recruits took over the Kildare Depot. It resulted in Michael Staines' resignation in September.
During the Civil War of 1922–23, the new Free State set up the Criminal Investigation Department as an armed, plain-clothed counter-insurgency unit. It was disbanded after the end of the war in October 1923 and elements of it were absorbed into the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
In Dublin, policing remained the responsibility of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP, founded 1836) until it merged with the in 1925. Since then, the has been the only civil police service in the state now known as Ireland. Other police forces with limited powers are the Military Police within the Irish Defence Forces, the Airport Police Service, and Dublin Harbour Police and Dún Laoghaire Harbour Police forces.
The headquarters, the Phoenix Park Depot in Dublin, consists of a series of buildings; the first of these were occupied in 1839 by the new Constabulary. Over subsequent years, additional buildings were added, including a riding school, chapel, infirmary and cavalry barracks; all are now used for other purposes. The new Garda Síochána started to occupy the Depot in early 1923. The facility also included a training centre but that was moved to McCan Barracks, Templemore, County Tipperary in the 1960s; it is now the Garda Síochána College.
Scott Medal
First awarded in 1923, the Scott Medal for Bravery is the highest honour for bravery and valour awarded to a member of the Garda Síochána. The first medals were funded by Colonel Walter Scott, an honorary Commissioner of the New York Police Department. The first recipient of the Scott Medal was Garda James Mulroy. Other notable recipients include Garda Patrick Malone of St. Luke's in Cork City who – as an unarmed – disarmed Tomás Óg Mac Curtain (the son of Tomás Mac Curtain).
To mark the United States link, the American English spelling of valor is used on the medal. The Commissioner chooses the recipients of the medal, which is presented by the Minister for Justice.
In 2000, Anne McCabe – the widow of Jerry McCabe, a garda who was killed by armed Provisional IRA bank robbers – accepted the Scott Medal for Bravery that had been awarded posthumously to her husband.
The Irish Republican Police had at least one member killed by the RIC on 21 July 1920. The Civic Guard had one killed by accident 22 September 1922 and another was killed in March 1923 by Frank Teeling. Likewise 4 members of the Oriel House Criminal Investigation Department were killed or died of wounds during the Irish Civil War. The Roll of Honor lists 89 Garda members killed between 1922 and 2020.
Commissioners
The first Commissioner, Michael Staines, who was a Pro-Treaty member of , held office for only eight months. It was his successors, Eoin O'Duffy and Éamon Broy, who played a central role in the development of the service. O'Duffy was Commissioner in the early years of the service when to many people's surprise the viability of an unarmed police service was established. O'Duffy later became a short-lived political leader of the quasi-fascist Blueshirts before heading to Spain to fight alongside Francisco Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. Broy had greatly assisted the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Anglo-Irish War, while serving with the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). Broy was depicted in the film Michael Collins as having been murdered by the British during the War of Independence, when in reality he lived till 1972 and headed the from 1933 to 1938. Broy was followed by Commissioners Michael Kinnane (1938–52) and Daniel Costigan (1952–65). The first Commissioner to rise from the rank of ordinary Garda was William P. Quinn, who was appointed in February 1965.
One later Commissioner, Edmund Garvey, was sacked by the government of Jack Lynch in 1978 after it had lost confidence in him. Garvey won "unfair dismissal" legal proceedings against the government, which was upheld in the Irish Supreme Court. This outcome required the passing of the Act 1979 to retrospectively validate the actions of Garvey's successor since he had become Commissioner. Garvey's successor, Patrick McLaughlin, was forced to resign along with his deputy in 1983 over his peripheral involvement in a political scandal.
On 25 November 2014 Nóirín O'Sullivan was appointed as Garda Commissioner, after acting as interim Commissioner since March 2014, following the unexpected retirement of Martin Callinan. It was noted that as a result most top justice posts in Ireland at the time were held by women. The first female to hold the top rank, Commissioner O'Sullivan joined the force in 1981 and was among the first members of a plainclothes unit set up to tackle drug dealing in Dublin.
On 10 September 2017 Nóirín O'Sullivan announced her retirement from the force and, by extension, Garda Commissioner. Upon her retirement, Deputy Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin was appointed Acting Commissioner pending a permanent replacement. In June 2018, Drew Harris was named as this replacement, and officially appointed in September 2018 following Ó Cualáin's retirement.
Past reserve forces
During the Second World War (often referred to in Ireland as "the Emergency") there were two reserve forces to the , and the Local Security Force.
had the power of arrest and wore a uniform, and were allowed to leave the reserve or sign-up as full members of the at the end of the war before the reserve was disbanded. The reserve was established by the Emergency Powers (Temporary Special Police Force) Order 1939.
The Local Security Force (LSF) did not have the power of arrest, and part of the reserve was soon incorporated into the Irish Army Reserve under the command of the Irish Army.
Inter-jurisdiction co-operation
Northern Ireland
The Patten Report recommended that a programme of long-term personnel exchanges should be established between the Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). This recommendation was enacted in 2002 by an Inter-Governmental Agreement on Policing Cooperation, which set the basis for the exchange of officers between the two services. There are three levels of exchanges:
Personnel exchanges, for all ranks, without policing powers and for a term up to one year
Secondments: for ranks Sergeant to Chief Superintendent, with policing powers, for up to three years
Lateral entry by the permanent transfer of officers for ranks above Inspector and under Assistant Commissioner
The protocols for these movements of personnel were signed by both the Chief Constable of the PSNI and the Garda Commissioner on 21 February 2005.
officers also co-operate with members of the PSNI to combat cross-border crime and can conduct joint raids on both jurisdictions. They have also accompanied politicians and officials from the Republic, such as the President, on visits to Northern Ireland.
Other jurisdictions
Since 1989, the has undertaken United Nations peace-keeping duties. Its first such mission was a 50 strong contingent sent to Namibia. Since then the force has acted in Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, South Africa, and the former Yugoslavia. More recently, Garda members have served in Cyprus with UNFICYP, and in Kosovo with EULEX Kosovo. The force's first fatality whilst working abroad was Sergeant Paul M. Reid, who was fatally injured while on duty with the United Nations UNPROFOR at "Sniper's Alley" in Sarajevo on 18 May 1995.
Members of the also serve in the Embassies of Ireland in London, The Hague, Madrid and Paris. Members are also seconded to Europol in The Hague, in the Netherlands and Interpol in Lyon, France. There are also many members working directly for UN and European agencies such as the War Crimes Tribunal.
Under an agreement with the British Government and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the and the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland are allowed to inspect the Sellafield nuclear facility in Cumbria, England.
Controversy and allegations involving the police service
The Gardaí have faced complaints or allegations of discourtesy, harassment and perjury. A total of 1,173 complaints were made against the in 2005, with over 2000 complaints made in 2017.
Some such incidents have attracted broad attention and resulted in a number of reform initiatives—such as those relating to Garda whistleblowers or which led to the Morris and Barr Tribunals.
Mishandling of cases and complaints
The Kerry Babies case was one of the first public inquiries into the mishandling of a investigation. Later, in the 1980s, the Ferns Report (an inquiry into allegations of clerical sexual abuse) described as "wholly inadequate" the handling of one of eight formal complaints made to Wexford gardaí, but noted that the remaining formal complaints were handled in an "effective, professional and sensitive" manner.
The Gardaí were also criticised in the Murphy Report in relation to the handing over of the case of Fr. Paul McGennis to Archbishop McQuaid by Commissioner Costigan. Some very senior Gardaí were criticised for regarding priests as being outside their remit in 1960. On 26 November 2009, then Commissioner Fachtna Murphy apologised for the failure of the Garda Síochána to protect victims of child abuse, saying that inappropriate contact between gardaí and the Dublin Archdiocese had taken place at the time, and later announced an examination into the report's findings.
The Gardaí were criticised by the commission of investigation into the Dean Lyons case for their handling of the investigation into the Grangegorman killings. In his report, George Birmingham said that the Gardaí had used leading questions in their interviews with Lyons, and had failed to act on a suspicion that Lyons' confession was unreliable. For a period, the gardaí involved in the case failed to act on the knowledge that another man, Mark Nash, had confessed to the crime.
Allegations resulting in Tribunals of Inquiry
In the 1990s and early 2000s the faced allegations of corrupt and dishonest policing in County Donegal. This became the subject of a Garda inquiry (the Carty inquiry) and subsequent judicial inquiry (the Morris Tribunal). The Morris Tribunal found that some gardaí based in County Donegal had invented a Provisional IRA informer, made bombs and claimed credit for locating them, and attempted to frame Raphoe publican Frank McBrearty Junior for murderthe latter case involving a €1.5m settlement with the State. A similar case saw a €4.5m judgement, after another Donegal publican was wrongly convicted based on "perjured Garda evidence" and "a conspiracy to concoct false evidence" by the same Donegal-based gardaí.
On 20 April 2000, members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit (ERU) shot dead 27-year-old John Carthy at the end of a 25-hour siege as he left his home in Abbeylara, County Longford with a loaded shotgun in his hands. There were allegations made of inappropriate handling of the situation and of the reliance on lethal force by the . This led to a inquiry, and subsequently, the Barr Tribunal. The official findings of the tribunal of inquiry, under Justice Robert Barr, were that the responsible sergeant had made 14 mistakes in his role as the negotiator during the siege, and failed to make real efforts to achieve resolution during the armed stand-off. It further stated however that the sergeant was limited by lack of experience and resources, and recommended a review of command structures, and that the ERU be equipped with stun guns and other non-lethal options. The Barr tribunal further recommended a formal working arrangement between Gardaí and state psychologists, and improvements in Garda training.
During the mid-2010s, the Garda whistleblower scandal led to a tribunal of enquiry, and the resignations of two ministers for justice and two Garda commissioners.
Allegations involving abuse of powers
One of the first charges of serious impropriety against the force rose out of the handling of the Sallins Train Robbery in 1976. This case eventually led to accusations that a "Heavy Gang" within the force intimidated and tortured the accused. This eventually led to a Presidential pardon for one of the accused.
In 2004, an RTÉ Prime Time documentary accused elements within the of abusing their powers by physically assaulting people arrested. A retired Circuit Court judge (W. A. Murphy) suggested that some members of the force had committed perjury in criminal trials before him but later stated that he was misquoted, while Minister of State Dick Roche, accused Gardaí in one instance of "torture". The Commissioner accused the television programme of lacking balance. The documentary followed the publication of footage by the Independent Media Centre showing scuffles between and Reclaim the Streets demonstrators. One in the footage was later convicted of common assault, while several other were acquitted.
In 2014, a debate arose relating to alleged abuse of process in cancelling penalty points (for traffic offences), and a subsequent controversy resulted in a number of resignations.
In 2017, Dara Quigley, who lived with mental illness, was arrested for public nudity, an incident captured on CCTV. A Garda member went to the police station CCTV control room and recorded the incident on a phone, then shared it to a WhatsApp group including other Gardaí. The video was quickly shared to Facebook and went viral. Quigley took her own life several days later. The Garda, who recorded and shared the video, was not charged with a crime.
Allegations involving cross-border policing and collusion with the IRA
The former head of intelligence of the Provisional IRA, Kieran Conway claimed that in 1974 the IRA were tipped off by "high-placed figures" within the Gardaí about a planned RUC Special Branch raid, which was intended to capture members of the IRA command. Asked if this was just a one-off example of individual Gardaí colluding with the IRA, Conway claimed: "It wasn't just in 1974 and it wasn't just concentrated in border areas like Dundalk, it was some individuals but it was more widespread."
Following a recommendation from the Cory Collusion Inquiry, the Smithwick Tribunal investigated allegations of collusion following the 1989 killing of two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers by the Provisional IRA as they returned from a meeting with the . The tribunal's report was published in December 2013, and noted that, although there was no "smoking gun", Judge Smithwick was "satisfied there was collusion in the murders" and that "evidence points to the fact that there was someone within the Garda station assisting the IRA". The report was also critical of two earlier Garda investigations into the murders, which it described as "inadequate". Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter apologised "without reservation" for the failings identified in the report.
The family of Eddie Fullerton, a Buncrana councillor killed in 1991 by members of the Ulster Defence Association, criticised the subsequent investigation, and in 2006, the Minister for Justice considered a public inquiry into the case.
Operational management and finances
Protests at the proposed Royal Dutch Shell Corrib gas refinery near Erris, County Mayo saw large Garda operations with up to 200 Gardaí involved. By September 2008, the cost of the operation was €10 million, and by January 2009 estimated to have cost €13.5 million. Some outlets compared this to the €20 million budgeted for operations targeting organised crime. A section of road used by the protesters was allegedly dubbed "the Golden Mile" by Gardaí because of overtime opportunities. Complaints were also made about Garda management and handling of the protests.
In 2017, a number of reported operational issues (including handling of the Garda whistleblower scandal, falsified alcohol breath tests, and the finances of the Garda Training College) were referenced as contributors to the early retirement of then commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan.
Reform initiatives
Arising from some of the above incidents, the underwent a number of reform initiatives in the early 21st century. The Morris Tribunal, in particular, recommended major changes to the organisation's management, discipline, promotion and accountability arrangements. Many of these recommendations were subsequently implemented under the Garda Síochána Act 2005.
It was also stated by the tribunal chairman, Justice Morris, that the code of discipline was extremely complex and, at times, "cynically manipulated" to promote indiscipline across the force. Judicial reviews, for example, were cited as a means for delaying disciplinary action.
The fall-out from the Morris Tribunal was considerable. While fifteen members of the force were sacked between 2001 and 2006, and a further 42 resigned in lieu of dismissal in the same period, Commissioner Conroy stated that he was constrained in the responses available to deal with members whose misbehaviour is cited in public inquiries.
Updated procedures and code of discipline
With support from opposition parties, and reflecting broad political consensus, the Minister for Justice responded to many of these issues by announcing a new draft code of discipline on 17 August 2006. The new streamlined code introduced new procedures to enable the Commissioner to summarily dismiss a alleged to have brought the force into disrepute, abandoned duties, compromised the security of the State or unjustifiably infringed the rights of other persons.
In addition, a four-member "non-officer management advisory team" was appointed in August 2006 to advise on implementing change options and addressing management and leadership challenges facing the . The advisers were also mandated to promote a culture of performance management, succession planning, recruitment of non-officers with specialist expertise, and improved training.
Enhanced non-officer support
Clerical and administrative support was updated such that, in the two-year period from December 2006 to December 2008 whole-time equivalent, non-officer staffing levels were increased by over 60%, from under 1,300 to approximately 2,100. This was in support of a policy to release more desk-bound for operational duties and to bring the level of general support in line with international norms. A tier of middle and senior non-officer management was also introduced in administrative and technical/professional support areas. A Chief Administrative Officer at Deputy Commissioner level was appointed in October 2007 to oversee several of these support functions.
Enhanced oversight
The Garda Inspectorate, Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission and Policing Authority were introduced, as part of the reform process, under the Garda Síochána Act 2005 and the Garda Síochána (Policing Authority and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2015.
Public attitudes to the Garda Síochána
The Garda Public Attitudes Survey 2017 found that 74% of respondents were satisfied with the , down from 81% in the 2008 survey.
The 2017 survey (taken before revelations of false breath tests, wrongful convictions and the departure of the then commissioner) also found that less than half of respondents believed that the was a well managed or world-class police service.
Labour disputes
Industrial action (including work-to-rule and withdrawal of labour) was threatened by Gardaí during 2016, arising out of a dispute on pay and conditions.
Linguistic capabilities and diversity
In 2015, it was reported that the Garda had no active officers who are proficient in Arabic, forcing them to rely on assistance on Interpol. There are calls to recruit Arabic-speaking recruits, especially those from the Irish Muslim community.
In 2019, the European Network Against Racism Ireland submitted a paper calling for the Garda's Garda Racial, Intercultural, and Diversity Office to be disbanded and replaced with a specialist unit due to its limited manpower and resources to tackle hate crime cases.
Band
The Garda Band is a public relations branch of the , and was formed shortly after the foundation of the force. It gave its first public performance on Dún Laoghaire Pier on Easter Monday 1923, and its first Bandmaster was Superintendent D.J. Delaney. In 1938, the Dublin Metropolitan Band (based at Kevin Street) and the Band amalgamated and were based at Headquarters in Phoenix Park.
Besides providing music for official functions (such as graduation ceremonies at the Garda College) the band also performs at schools, festivals and sporting events.
Members of the band, none of whom are involved in policing duties, were paid an average of €58,985 in 2017.
Representation
There are four legally-recognised bodies defined by regulation, each working with specific ranks of Garda:
the Garda Representative Association (GRA), for all officers of the rank of Garda
the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI), for the ranks of Sergeant, Station Sergeant and Inspector
the Association of Garda Superintendents (AGS)
the Association of Garda Chief Superintendents (AGCS)
There is also the Garda Retired Members Association (GRMA), previously the Garda Pensioners Association.
Other associated bodies
Members of the Garda Síochána have their own credit unions and a medical insurance society, as well as a benevolent society for members and former members in need. The organisation has a wide range of clubs and societies, with a coordinating structure, the Coiste Siamsa, for sporting groups.
See also
Garda Museum
List of Garda districts
Notes
References
External links
Garda Review The force's magazine since 1923
Roll of Honour
Ombudsman Commission
Act 2005
GRA.ie - Website of Garda Representative Association
Association of Sergeants and Inspectors
Headquarters, Phoenix Park, Dublin
1922 establishments in Ireland
Emergency services in the Republic of Ireland
National Central Bureaus of Interpol
Department of Justice (Ireland)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.%20W.%20Botha
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P. W. Botha
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Pieter Willem Botha, (; 12 January 1916 – 31 October 2006) was a South African politician. He served as the last prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and the first executive state president of South Africa from 1984 to 1989.
First elected to Parliament in 1948, Botha was an opponent of black majority rule and international communism. However, his administration did make concessions towards political reform, whereas internal unrest saw widespread human rights abuses at the hands of the government. Botha resigned as leader of the ruling National Party (NP) in February 1989 after suffering a stroke and six months later was also coerced to leave the presidency.
In F. W. de Klerk's 1992 apartheid referendum, Botha campaigned for a No vote and denounced De Klerk's administration as irresponsible for opening the door to black majority rule. In early 1998, when Botha refused to testify at the Mandela government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), he was supported by the Conservative Party, which had earlier contested his rule as the official opposition. For his refusal, he was fined and given a suspended jail sentence. The sentence was overturned on appeal.
Early life and education
Pieter Willem Botha was born on a farm in the Paul Roux district of the Orange Free State Province (now Free State Province), the son of Afrikaner parents. His father, Pieter Willem Botha Sr., fought as a commando against the British in the Second Boer War. His mother, Hendrina Christina Botha (née de Wet), was interned in a British concentration camp during the war.
Botha initially attended the Paul Roux School and matriculated from Bethlehem Voortrekker High School. In 1934, he entered the Grey University College (now the University of the Free State) in Bloemfontein to study law, but left early at the age of twenty in order to pursue a career in politics. He began working for the National Party as a political organiser in the neighbouring Cape Province. In the run-up to World War II, Botha joined the Ossewabrandwag, an Afrikaner nationalist group which was sympathetic to the German Nazi Party; but months after the German attack on the USSR, Botha condemned the Ossewabrandwag and changed his ideological allegiance to Christian nationalism.
In 1943, Botha married Anna Elizabeth Rossouw (Elize). The couple had two sons and three daughters.
Parliamentary career
At age 30, Botha was elected head of the National Party Youth in 1946, and two years later was elected to the House of Assembly as representative of George in the southern Cape Province in the general election which saw the beginning of the National Party's 46-year tenure in power. His opponent in the 1948 election was JP Marais from the United Party. In 1958 Botha was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs by Hendrik Verwoerd, and in 1961 was appointed to the new Department of Coloured Affairs and became Minister of Community Development. In 1966, Botha was appointed Minister of Defence by Verwoerd and served under the government of John Vorster, upon Verwoerd's murder later that year. Under his 14 years in charge of the ministry, the South African Defence Force (SADF) reached a zenith, at times consuming 20% of the national budget, compared to 1.3% in 1968, and was involved in the South African Border War. When Vorster resigned following allegations of his involvement in the Muldergate Scandal in 1978, Botha was elected as his successor by the National Party caucus, besting the electorate's favourite, 45-year-old Foreign Minister Pik Botha. In the final internal ballot, he beat Connie Mulder, the scandal's namesake, in a 78–72 vote.
Botha was keen to promote constitutional reform, and hoped to implement a form of federal system in South Africa that would allow for greater "self-rule" for black homelands (or Bantustans), while still retaining the supremacy of a white central government, and foremost expand the rights of Coloureds (South Africans of mixed ancestry) and Asians in order to widen support for the government. Upon enacting the reforms, he remarked in the House of Assembly; "We must adapt or die."
Upon becoming Prime Minister, Botha retained the defence portfolio until October 1980, when he appointed SADF Chief General Magnus Malan, his successor. From his ascension to the cabinet, Botha pursued an ambitious military policy designed to increase South Africa's military capability. He sought to improve relations with the West – especially the United States – but with mixed results. He argued that the preservation of the apartheid government, though unpopular, was crucial to stemming the tide of African Communism, which had made in-roads into neighbouring Angola and Mozambique after these two former Portuguese colonies obtained independence.
As Prime Minister and later State President, Botha's greatest parliamentary opponents were Harry Schwarz and Helen Suzman of the Progressive Federal Party until 1987, when his former cabinet colleague Andries Treurnicht's new Conservative Party became the official opposition on a strictly anti-concessionist agenda.
In 1977, as Minister of Defence, Botha began a secret nuclear weapons program, which culminated in the manufacture of six nuclear bombs, destroyed only in the early 1990s. He remained steadfast in South Africa's administration of neighbouring territory South-West Africa, particularly while there was a presence of Cuban troops in Angola to the north. Botha was responsible for introducing the notorious Koevoet police counter-insurgency unit. He was also instrumental in building the SADF's strength, adding momentum to establishing units such as 32 Battalion. South African intervention, with support of the rebel UNITA movement (led by Dr. Jonas Savimbi, a personal friend), in the Angolan Civil War continued until the late 1980s, terminating with the Tripartite Accord. To maintain the nation's military strength, a very strict draft was implemented to enforce compulsory military service for white South African men.
State President
In 1983, Botha proposed a new constitution, which was then put to a vote of the white population. Though it did not implement a federal system as established in 1961, it implemented what was ostensibly a power-sharing agreement with Coloureds and Indians. The new constitution created two new houses of parliament alongside the existing, white-only House of Assembly—the House of Representatives for Coloureds and the House of Delegates for Indians. The three chambers of the new Tricameral Parliament had sole jurisdiction over matters relating to their respective communities. Legislation affecting "general affairs," such as foreign policy and race relations, had to pass all three chambers after consideration by joint standing committees.
The plan included no chamber or system of representation for the black majority. Each Black ethno-linguistic group was allocated a 'homeland' which would initially be a semi-autonomous area. However, blacks were legally considered citizens of the Bantustans, not of South Africa, and were expected to exercise their political rights there. Bantustans were expected to gradually move towards a greater state of independence with sovereign nation status being the final goal. During Botha's tenure, Ciskei, Bophutatswana and Venda all achieved nominal nationhood. These new countries, set up within the borders of South Africa, never gained international recognition, and economically all remained heavily dependent on South Africa. Over half of the Bantustans, most notably KwaZulu led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, rejected independence due to their leaders' commitment to opposing Apartheid from within.
The new constitution also changed the executive branch from the parliamentary system that had been in place in one form or another since 1910, to a presidential system. The prime minister's post was abolished, and its functions were merged with those of the state president, which became an executive post with sweeping powers. He was elected by an electoral college whose members were elected by the three chambers of the Parliament. The state president and cabinet had sole jurisdiction over "general affairs." Disputes between the three chambers regarding "general affairs" were resolved by the President's Council, composed of members from the three chambers and members directly appointed by the state president. In practice, the composition of the President's Council and the electoral college made it impossible for the Coloured and Indian chambers to outvote the white chamber on any substantive matter, even if they voted as a bloc. Thus, the real power remained in white hands—and in practice, in the hands of Botha's National Party, which commanded a large majority in the white chamber.
Though the new constitution was criticised by the black majority for failing to grant them any formal role in government, many international commentators praised it as a "first step" in what was assumed to be a series of reforms. On 14 September 1984, Botha was elected as the first state president under the newly approved constitution.
Implementing the presidential system was seen as a key step in consolidating Botha's personal power. In previous years, he had succeeded in getting a number of strict laws that limited freedom of speech through parliament, and thus suppressed criticism of government decisions.
In many western countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom (where the Anti-Apartheid Movement was based) and the Commonwealth, there was much debate over the imposition of economic sanctions in order to weaken Botha and undermine the white regime. By the late 1980s – as foreign investment in South Africa declined – disinvestment began to have a serious effect on the nation's economy.
Apartheid government
Botha undertook some changes to apartheid practices, but these were rejected by many as superficial and inadequate. He legalised interracial marriage and miscegenation, both completely banned since the late 1940s. The constitutional prohibition on multiracial political parties was lifted. He also relaxed the Group Areas Act, which barred non-whites from living in certain areas. In 1988, a new law created "Open Group Areas" or racially mixed neighbourhoods but these neighbourhoods had to receive a Government permit, had to have the support of the local whites immediately concerned, and had to be an upper-class neighbourhood in a major city in order to be awarded a permit. In 1983, the aforementioned constitutional reforms granted limited political rights to "Coloureds" and "Indians". Botha also became the first South African government leader to authorise contacts with Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress (ANC).
Even these reforms, rejected as meagre by opponents of apartheid, went too far for a group of NP hardliners, led by former Education Minister Andries Treurnicht. In 1982, the group broke away to form the Conservative Party. However, they did not even begin to meet the demands of the opposition. In the face of rising discontent and violence, Botha refused to cede political power to blacks and imposed greater security measures against anti-apartheid activists. Botha also refused to negotiate with the ANC.
In 1985, Botha delivered the Rubicon speech, a policy address in which he refused to give in to demands by the black population, including the release of Mandela. Botha's defiance of international opinion further isolated South Africa, leading to economic sanctions and a rapid decline in the value of the rand. The following year, when the United States introduced the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, Botha declared a nationwide state of emergency. He is famously quoted during this time as saying, "This uprising will bring out the beast in us".
As economic and diplomatic actions against South Africa increased, civil unrest spread amongst the black population, supported by the ANC and neighbouring black-majority governments. On 16 May 1986, Botha publicly warned neighbouring states against engaging in "unsolicited interference" in South Africa's affairs. Four days later, Botha ordered air strikes against selected targets in Lusaka, Harare, and Gaborone, including the offices of exiled ANC activists. Botha charged that these raids were just a "first installment" and showed that "South Africa has the capacity and the will to break the [ANC]."
In spite of the concessions made by Botha, the apartheid years under his leadership were by far the most brutal. Thousands were detained without trial during Botha's presidency, while others were tortured and killed. The TRC found Botha responsible for gross violations of human rights. He was also found to have directly authorised "unlawful activity which included killing." Botha declined to apologise for apartheid. In a 2006 interview to mark his 90th birthday, he suggested that he had no regrets about the way he had run the country. Botha denied that he had ever considered black South Africans to be in any way inferior to whites, but conceded that "some" whites did hold that view. He also claimed that the racial segregation laws of apartheid "started in Lord Milner’s time" and the National Party merely inherited them; however, Botha conceded that the Afrikaner population had been "happy to perpetuate [apartheid]", as many of them "were, and some of them still are... 'racists at heart'".
Fall from power
State President Botha's loss of influence can be directly attributed to decisions taken at the Ronald Reagan/Mikhail Gorbachev summit of the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union in Moscow (29 May – 1 June 1988) that paved the way to resolving the problem of Namibia which, according to foreign minister Pik Botha, was destabilising the region and "seriously complicating" the major issue which South Africa itself would shortly have to face. Soviet military aid would cease and Cuban troops be withdrawn from Angola as soon as South Africa complied with UN Security Council Resolution 435 by relinquishing control of Namibia and allowing UN-supervised elections there. The Tripartite Agreement, which gave effect to the Reagan/Gorbachev summit decisions, was signed at UN headquarters in New York on 22 December 1988 by representatives of Angola, Cuba and South Africa.
On 18 January 1989, Botha (then aged 73) suffered a mild stroke which prevented him from attending a meeting with Namibian political leaders on 20 January 1989. Botha's place was taken by acting president J. Christiaan Heunis. On 2 February 1989, Botha resigned as leader of the National Party (NP), anticipating his nominee – finance minister Barend du Plessis – would succeed him. Instead, the NP's parliamentary caucus selected as leader education minister F. W. de Klerk, who moved quickly to consolidate his position within the party as a reformist, while hardliners supported Botha. In March 1989, the NP elected De Klerk as state president but Botha refused to resign, saying in a television address that the constitution entitled him to remain in office until March 1990 and that he was even considering running for another five-year term. Following a series of acrimonious meetings in Cape Town, and five days after UNSCR 435 was implemented in Namibia on 1 April 1989, Botha and De Klerk reached a compromise: Botha would retire after the parliamentary elections in September, allowing de Klerk to take over as state president.
However, Botha abruptly resigned from the state presidency on 14 August 1989, complaining that he had not been consulted by De Klerk over his scheduled visit to see President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia:
"The ANC is enjoying the protection of president Kaunda and is planning insurgency activities against South Africa from Lusaka", Botha declared on nationwide television. He said he had asked the cabinet what reason he should give the public for abruptly leaving office. "They replied I could use my health as an excuse. To this, I replied that I am not prepared to leave on a lie. It is evident to me that after all these years of my best efforts for the National Party and for the government of this country, as well as the security of our country, I am being ignored by ministers serving in my cabinet."
De Klerk was sworn in as acting state president on 14 August 1989 and the following month was nominated by the electoral college to succeed Botha in a five-year term as state president. De Klerk soon announced the removal of legislation against anti-apartheid groups – including the African National Congress – and the release of Nelson Mandela. De Klerk's term saw the dismantling of the apartheid system and negotiations that eventually led to South Africa's first racially inclusive democratic elections on 27 April 1994.
In a statement on the death of Botha in 2006, De Klerk said:
"Personally, my relationship with P. W. Botha was often strained. I did not like his overbearing leadership style and was opposed to the intrusion of the State Security Council system into virtually every facet of government. After I became leader of the National Party in February 1989, I did my best to ensure that P. W. Botha would be able to end his term as president with full dignity and decorum. Unfortunately, this was not to be."
Retirement
Botha and his wife Elize retired to their home, Die Anker, in the town of Wilderness, from the city of George and located on the Indian Ocean coast of the Western Cape. Elize died in 1997, and he later married Barbara Robertson, a legal secretary 25 years his junior, on 22 June 1998.
Botha remained largely out of sight of the media and it was widely believed that he remained opposed to many of F. W. de Klerk's reforms. He resigned from the Afrikaner Broederbond.
Botha refused to testify at the new government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up to expose apartheid-era crimes and chaired by his cultural and political nemesis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The TRC found that he had ordered the 1988 bombing of the South African Council of Churches headquarters in Johannesburg. In August 1998, he was fined and given a suspended jail sentence for his refusal to testify on human rights violations and violence sanctioned by the State Security Council (SSC) which he, as president until 1989, had directed.
In June 1999, Botha successfully appealed to the High Court against his conviction and sentence. The Court's ruling by Judge Selikowitz (with Judge Foxcroft concurring) found that the notice served on Botha to appear before the TRC was technically invalid.
Death
Botha died of a heart attack at his home in Wilderness on Tuesday 31 October 2006, aged 90. His death was met with magnanimity by many of his former opponents. Former President Nelson Mandela was reported as saying "while to many Mr. Botha will remain a symbol of apartheid, we also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the eventual peacefully negotiated settlement in our country".
President Thabo Mbeki announced that flags would be flown at half mast to mark the death of a former head of state. The offer of a state funeral was declined by Botha's family, and a private funeral was held on 8 November in the town of George, where Botha's body was buried. Mbeki attended the funeral.
Awards
: Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon (1980)
References
Further reading
Botha's last interview before he died
The Mandela Document, dated prior to Mandela's release
"Fighter and Reformer: Extracts from the Speeches of P. W. Botha", Compiled by J.J.J. Scholtz, Published: Bureau for Information, Pretoria, 1989
The life and times of PW Botha – IOL
PW, Tambo 'partners in peace' – News24
'He was my bread and botha' (By artists) – Mail&Guardian
Zuma on PW: 'He saw the need for change' – Mail&Guardian
Thabo Mbeki on PW – Moneyweb
1916 births
2006 deaths
People from Dihlabeng Local Municipality
South African people of Dutch descent
Members of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK)
National Party (South Africa) politicians
State Presidents of South Africa
Prime Ministers of South Africa
Defence ministers of South Africa
Members of the House of Assembly (South Africa)
Apartheid government
University of the Free State alumni
Burials in South Africa
Ossewabrandwag members
Christian nationalists
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French%20Navy
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French Navy
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The French Navy (), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in the world, ranking seventh in combined fleet tonnage and fifth in number of naval vessels. The French Navy is one of eight naval forces currently operating fixed-wing aircraft carriers, with its flagship being the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier outside the United States Navy, and one of two non-American vessels to use catapults to launch aircraft.
Founded in the 17th century, the French Navy is one of the oldest navies still in continuous service, with precursors dating back to the Middle Ages. It has taken part in key events in French history, including the Napoleonic Wars and both world wars, and played a critical role in establishing and securing the French colonial empire for over 400 years. The French Navy pioneered several innovations in naval technology, including the first steam-powered ship of the line, first seagoing ironclad warship, first mechanically propelled submarine, first steel-hulled warship, and first armoured cruiser.
The French Navy consists of six main components: the Naval Action Force, the Submarine Forces (FOST and ESNA), French Naval Aviation, the Navy Riflemen (including Naval Commandos), the Marseille Naval Fire Battalion, and the Maritime Gendarmerie. As of 2021, the French Navy employed 44,000 personnel (37,000 military and 7,000 civilian), more than 180 ships, 200 aircraft, and six commandos units; as of 2014, its reserve element numbered roughly 48,000.
As a blue-water navy, the French Navy is capable of operating globally and conducting expeditionary missions, maintaining a significant overseas presence. It operates a wide range of fighting vessels, including various aeronaval forces, attack and ballistic missile submarines, frigates, patrol boats and support ships, with aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle serving as the centerpiece of most expeditionary forces.
Origins
The history of French naval power dates back to the Middle Ages, and had three loci of evolution:
The Mediterranean Sea, where the Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem had its own navy, the Levant Fleet, whose principal ports were Fréjus, Marseille, and Toulon. The Ordre, which was both a religious and military order, recruited knights from the families of French nobility. Members who had fulfilled their service at sea were granted the rank of Knights Hospitaller, elites who served as the officer corps. The Ordre was one of the ancestors of modern French naval schools including the French Naval Academy.
The Manche along Normandy which, since William the Conqueror, always tendered capable marines and sailors from its numerous active seaports.
The Atlantic Ocean, where the navy of the Duchy of Brittany eventually constituted the nucleus of the royal Flotte du Ponant, which projected French naval power across the Atlantic and the Americas.
Names and symbols
The first true French Royal Navy () was established in 1624 by Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to King Louis XIII. During the French Revolution, was formally renamed . Under the First French Empire and the Second French Empire, the navy was designated as the Imperial French Navy (). Institutionally, however, the navy has never lost its short familiar nickname, .
The original symbol of the French Navy was a golden anchor, which, beginning in 1830, was interlaced by a sailing rope; this symbol was featured on all naval vessels, arms, and uniforms. Although anchor symbols are still used on uniforms, a new naval logo was introduced in 1990 under Naval Chief of Staff Bernard Louzeau, featuring a modern design that incorporates the tricolour—by flanking the bow section of a white warship with two ascending red and blue spray foams—and the inscription "".
History
17th century
Cardinal Richelieu personally supervised the Navy until his death in 1643. He was succeeded by his protégé, Jean Baptiste Colbert, who introduced the first code of regulations of the French Navy and established the original naval dockyards in Brest and Toulon. Colbert and his son, the Marquis de Seignelay, between them administered the Navy for twenty-nine years.
During this century, the Navy cut its teeth in the Anglo-French War (1627–1629), the Franco-Spanish War (1635–59), the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Franco-Dutch War, and the Nine Years' War. Major battles in these years include the Battle of Augusta, Battle of Beachy Head, the Battles of Barfleur and La Hougue, the Battle of Lagos, and the Battle of Texel.
18th century
The 1700s opened with the War of the Spanish Succession, over a decade long, followed by the War of the Austrian Succession in the 1740s. Principal engagements of these wars include the Battle of Vigo Bay and two separate Battles of Cape Finisterre in 1747. The most grueling conflict for the Navy, however, was the Seven Years' War, in which it was virtually destroyed. Significant actions include the Battle of Cap-Français, the Battle of Quiberon Bay, and another Battle of Cape Finisterre.
The Navy regrouped and rebuilt, and within 15 years it was eager to join the fray when France intervened in the American Revolutionary War. Though outnumbered everywhere, the French fleets held the British at bay for years until victory. After this conflict and the concomitant Anglo-French War (1778–1783), the Navy emerged at a new height in its history. Major battles in these years include the Battle of the Chesapeake, the Battle of Cape Henry, the Battle of Grenada, the invasion of Dominica, and three separate Battles of Ushant.
Within less than a decade, however, the Navy was decimated by the French Revolution when large numbers of veteran officers were dismissed or executed for their noble lineage. Nonetheless, the Navy fought vigorously through the French Revolutionary Wars as well as the Quasi-War. Significant actions include a fourth Battle of Ushant (known in English as the Glorious First of June), the Battle of Groix, the Atlantic campaign of May 1794, the French expedition to Ireland, the Battle of Tory Island, and the Battle of the Nile.
19th century
Other engagements of the Revolutionary Wars ensued in the early 1800s, including the Battle of the Malta Convoy and the Algeciras Campaign. The Quasi-War wound down with single-ship actions including USS Constellation vs La Vengeance and USS Enterprise vs Flambeau.
When Napoleon was crowned Emperor in 1804, he attempted to restore the Navy to a position that would enable his plan for an invasion of England. His dreams were dashed by the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the British all but annihilated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet, a disaster that guaranteed British naval superiority throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Still, the Navy did not shrink from action: among the engagements of this time were the Battle of the Basque Roads, the Battle of Grand Port, the Mauritius campaign of 1809–11, and the Battle of Lissa.
After Napoleon's fall in 1815, the long era of Anglo-French rivalry on the seas began to close, and the Navy became more of an instrument for expanding the French colonial empire. Under King Charles X, the two nations' fleets fought side by side in the Battle of Navarino, and throughout the rest of the century they generally behaved in a manner that paved the way for the Entente Cordiale.
Charles X sent a large fleet to execute the invasion of Algiers in 1830. The next year, his successor, Louis Philippe I, made a show of force against Portugal at the Battle of the Tagus, and in 1838 conducted another display of gunboat diplomacy, this time in Mexico at the Battle of Veracruz. Beginning in 1845, a five-year Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata was imposed on Argentina over trade rights.
The Emperor Napoleon III was determined to follow an even stronger foreign policy than his predecessors, and the Navy was involved in a multitude of actions around the world. He joined in the Crimean War in 1854; major actions for the Navy include the siege of Petropavlovsk and the Battle of Kinburn. The Navy was heavily involved in the Cochinchina Campaign in 1858, the Second Opium War in China, and the French intervention in Mexico. It took part in the French campaign against Korea, and fought Japan in the bombardment of Shimonoseki. In the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Navy imposed an effective blockade of Germany, but events on land proceeded at such a rapid pace that it was superfluous. Isolated engagements between French and German ships took place in other theaters, but the war was over in a matter of weeks.
The Navy continued to protect colonial safety and expansion under the French Third Republic. The Sino-French War saw considerable naval action including the Battle of Fuzhou, the Battle of Shipu, and the Pescadores Campaign. In Vietnam, the Navy helped wage the Tonkin Campaign which included the Battle of Thuận An, and it later participated in the Franco-Siamese War of 1893.
The 19th century French Navy brought forth numerous new technologies. It led the development of naval artillery with its invention of the highly effective Paixhans gun. In 1850, became the first steam-powered ship of the line in history, and became the first seagoing ironclad warship nine years later. In 1863, the Navy launched , the first submarine in the world to be propelled by mechanical power. In 1876, became the first steel-hulled warship ever. In 1887, became the world's first armoured cruiser.
During the latter part of the century, French officers developed the so-called Jeune École (Young School) theory that emphasized the use of small, cheap torpedo boats to destroy expensive battleships, coupled with long-range commerce raiders to attack an opponent's merchant fleet.
20th century
The first seaplane, the French Fabre Hydravion, was flown in 1910, and the first seaplane carrier, , was christened in the following year. Despite that innovation, the general development of the French Navy slowed down in the beginning of the 20th century as the naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain grew in intensity.
It entered World War I with relatively few modern vessels, and during the war few warships were built because the main French effort was on land. While the British held control of the North Sea, the French held the Mediterranean, where they mostly kept watch on the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The largest operations of the Navy were conducted during the Dardanelles Campaign. In December 1916, during the Noemvriana events, French warships also bombarded Athens, trying to force the pro-German government of Greece to change its policies. The French Navy also played an important role in countering Germany's U-boat campaign by regularly patrolling the seas and escorting convoys.
Between the World Wars, the Navy modernized and expanded significantly, even in the face of limitations set by the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. New additions included the heavy and fast "super-destroyers", the battleships, and the submarine which was the largest and most powerful of its day.
From the start of World War II, the Navy was involved in a number of operations, participating in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Norwegian Campaign, the Dunkirk evacuation and, briefly, the Battle of the Mediterranean. However, after the fall of France in June 1940, the Navy was obligated to remain neutral under the terms of the armistice that created the truncated state of Vichy France. Worldwide, some 100 naval vessels and their crews heeded General Charles de Gaulle's call to join forces with the British, but the bulk of the fleet, including all its capital ships, transferred loyalty to Vichy French Navy (Marine nationale de Vichy). Concerned that the German Navy might somehow gain control of the ships, the British mounted an attack on Mers-el-Kébir, the Algerian city where many of them were harbored. The incident poisoned Anglo-French relations, leading to Vichy reprisals and a full-scale naval battle at Casablanca in 1942 when the Allies invaded French North Africa. But the confrontations were set aside once the Germans occupied Vichy France. The capital ships were a primary goal of the occupation, but before they could be seized they were scuttled by their own crews. A few small ships and submarines managed to escape in time, and these joined de Gaulle's Free French Naval Forces, an arm of Free France that fought as an adjunct of the Royal Navy until the end of the war. In the Pacific theatre as well, Free French vessels operated until the Japanese capitulation; was present at the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.
The Navy later provided fire support and troop transport in the Indochina War, the Algerian War, the Gulf War, and the Kosovo War.
Since 2000, the Navy has given logistical support to the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) as well as the global War on Terror. In 2011, it assisted Opération Harmattan in Libya.
Organisation
The chief of the naval staff is Vice-admiral d’escadre Arnaud de Tarlé, and as of 2014 the Navy has an active strength of 36,776 military personnel and 2,909 civilian staff. The Navy is organised into four main operational branches:
The Force d'Action Navale (Naval Action Force) – Surface fleet.
The Forces Sous-marines (Submarine forces) – Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and fleet submarines.
The Aviation Navale (Naval air force) – Ground and sea-based aircraft.
The Fusiliers Marins (Naval riflemen) – Protection force and infantry including the Navy special forces (Commandos Marine).
In addition, the National Gendarmerie of France maintain a maritime force of patrol boats that falls under the operational command of the French Navy:
The Gendarmerie maritime – The coast guard of France.
During most of the Cold War, the Navy was organised in two squadrons based in Brest and Toulon, commanded by ALESCLANT (Amiral commandant l'escadre de l'Atlantique) and ALESCMED (Amiral commandant l'escadre de la Méditerranée) respectively. Since the post-Cold War restructuring process named Optimar '95, the two components have been divided into the Naval Action Force (commanded by ALFAN) and the Antisubmarine Group (commanded by ALGASM).
Main naval bases
As of 2014, the largest French naval base is the military port of Toulon. Other major bases in metropolitan France are the Brest Arsenal and Île Longue on the Atlantic, and Cherbourg Naval Base on the English Channel. Overseas French bases include Fort de France and Degrad des Cannes in the Americas; Port des Galets and Dzaoudzi in the Indian Ocean; and Nouméa and Papeete in the Pacific. In addition, the navy shares or leases bases in foreign locales such as Abu Dhabi, Dakar and Djibouti.
Equipment
Ships and submarines
Although French naval doctrine calls for two aircraft carriers, the French only have one, . Originally a planned order for French aircraft carrier PA2 was based on the design of the British recently constructed and launched for the British Royal Navy. However, the French programme had been delayed several times for budgetary reasons and the result was priority being given to the more exportable FREMM project. In April 2013 it was confirmed that the second aircraft carrier project would be abandoned due to defence cuts announced in the 2013 French White Paper on Defence and National Security.
The French Navy operates three amphibious assault ships, ten air defence and/or anti-submarine frigates, five general purpose frigates and has a commitment to six fleet submarines (SSNs). These vessels, with the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, constitute the French Navy's main ocean-going war-fighting force, while the four ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) of the navy's Strategic Oceanic Force provide the backbone of the French nuclear deterrent.
In addition the French Navy operates six light surveillance frigates and, as of 2020, six avisos (originally light corvettes now reclassified as patrol vessels). They undertake the navy's offshore patrol duties, the protection of French naval bases and territorial waters, and can also provide low-end escort capabilities to any oceangoing task force. The Navy also operates a fleet of offshore and coastal patrol vessels, mine countermeasures vessels as well as auxiliaries and support ships.
Aircraft
The French Naval Aviation is officially known as the Aéronautique navale and was created on the 19 June 1998 with the merging of Naval patrol aircraft and aircraft carrier squadrons. It has a strength of around 6,800 civilian and military personnel operating from four airbases in Metropolitan France. The Aéronavale has been modernized with 40 Rafale fighters which operate from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.
Personnel
{|align=right class="wikitable"
|colspan=3 style="text-align:center;" |Personnel strength of the French Navy 2015
|-
! align="left" width="100" | Category
! align="left" width="50" | Strength
|-
| Commissioned officers || 4,500
|-
| Petty officers || 23,600
|-
|Seamen|| 6,600
|-
|Volunteers|| 767
|-
| Civilian employees || 2,800
|-
|colspan=2|Source:
|}
Application requirement
Seamen
Seamen must be at least 17 but no more than 30 years old, with no minimum level of schooling.
Petty Officers
Petty officers must be at least 17 but no more than 30 years old, with at least a high school diploma giving access to university studies.
Petty Officer Candidate begin training with five months at the Petty Officer School of Maistrance at Brest.
Contract officers
Contract officers serve on an initial eight-year contract, renewable up to 20 years.
Operational officers must be 21 to 26 years old, with at least a Bachelor of Science degree, or having passed a classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles in engineering or business.
Staff officers have to be 21 to 29 years old, with an honors degree or master's degree in a field corresponding to the military occupational specialty.
Career officers
Less than 22 years old, having passed a classe préparatoire in science. After four years at the École Navale (naval academy) a cadet will graduate as a commissioned Enseigne de Vaisseau with an engineering degree.
Less than 25 years old, having an honors degree in science. After three years at the naval academy a cadet will graduate as Enseigne de Vaisseau with an engineering degree.
Less than 27 years old, having a master's degree. After two years at the naval academy a cadet will graduate as an Enseigne de Vaisseau.
Customs and traditions
Ranks
The rank insignia of the French Navy are worn on shoulder straps of shirts and white jackets, and on sleeves for navy jackets and mantels. Until 2005, only commissioned officers had an anchor on their insignia, but enlisted personnel are now receiving them as well. Commanding officers have titles of capitaine, but are called commandant (in the army, both capitaine and commandant are ranks, which tends to stir some confusion among the public). The two highest ranks, vice-amiral d'escadre and amiral (admiral), are functions, rather than ranks. They are assumed by officers ranking vice-amiral (vice admiral). The only amiral de la flotte (Admiral of the Fleet) was François Darlan after he was refused the dignity of amiral de France (Admiral of France). Equivalent to the dignity of Marshal of France, the rank of amiral de France remains theoretical in the Fifth Republic; it was last granted in 1869, during the Second Empire, but retained during the Third Republic until the death of its bearer in 1873. The title of amiral de la flotte was created so that Darlan would not have an inferior rank than his counterpart in the British Royal Navy, who had the rank of Admiral of the Fleet.
Commissioned officer ranks
The rank insignia of commissioned officers.
Other ranks
The rank insignia of non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel.
Addressing officers
Unlike in the French Army and air and space force, one does not prepend mon to the name of the rank when addressing an officer (that is, not mon capitaine, but simply capitaine).
Uniforms
Military music
The main military musical unit of the French Navy is the Military Band of the Toulon Fleet (), founded on 13 July 1827. The Bagad Lann Bihoue, based on the bagad bands in Bretagne, is currently the sole pipe band in the service of the French Navy, which uses bagpipes and bombards, and thus is affiliated to the band.
In Canada, French naval music has affected the traditions of Canadian navy bands. French navy bands in the country date back to the era of New France. Musical units were primarily attached to the Compagnies Franches de la Marine and the Troupes de la marine, the former of which maintained two drums (tambour) and a fife.
Future
France's financial problems have affected all branches of her military. The 2013 French White Paper on Defence and National Security cancelled the long-planned new aircraft carrier and a possible fourth . The backbone of the fleet will be the Aquitaine-class FREMM anti-submarine frigates, replacing the , but plans to buy a possible seventeen FREMMs were cut back to eleven and then to eight. The cancellation of the third and fourth Horizon destroyers meant that the last two FREMM hulls, entering service in 2021/22, are fitted out as FREDA air-defence ships to replace the . DCNS has shown a FREMM-ER concept to meet this requirement, emphasising ballistic missile defence with the Thales Sea Fire 500 AESA radar. Industrial considerations mean that the funds for FREMMs 9-11 will now be spent on five more exportable frégates de taille intermédiaire (FTI, "intermediate size frigates") from 2024 to supplement, and ultimately replace, the La Fayette class, three of which are being upgraded with new sonars to operate into the early 2030s. With respect to support ships, the will be replaced under the FLOTLOG project by up to four derivatives of Italy's , with three to be delivered in 2023–2027. A fourth potential ship is delayed until after 2030.
Construction has started on the first of six Barracuda-class nuclear attack submarines; commissioning of Suffren took place in 2020. These nuclear attack submarines are to be followed in the 2030s by the incremental introduction of a new class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) whose construction is to begin in around 2023.
The first MM40 Exocet Block 3 missile was test-fired in 2010 to be produced. Naval versions of the SCALP EG land-attack cruise missile are under development, along with a planned Aster Block 1NT with greater capabilities against ballistic missiles.
In October 2018, the French Ministry of Defence launched an 18-month study for €40 million for the eventual future replacement of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle beyond 2030. A decision to build the new carrier was taken by President Emmanuel Macron in 2020 and once it enters service it is anticipated to remain in service until beyond 2080. Construction of the new carrier is to begin in around 2025 with service entry anticipated in the latter 2030s.
French naval officers
Privateers
Lieutenant général des Armées navales du Casse
Lieutenant général des Armées navales Duguay-Trouin
Chef d'escadre Jean Bart
Chef d'escadre Pierre Bouvet
Cassard
Surcouf
Thurot
Heroes of the First Republic
Vice-admiral de Latouche-Tréville
Vice-admiral de Villaret-Joyeuse
Vice-admiral Bruix
Rear Admiral du Chayla
Capitaine de vaisseau du Petit Thouars
Capitaine de vaisseau Casabianca
Explorers
Lieutenant général des Armées navales Bougainville
Chef d'escadre d'Entrecasteaux
Chef d'escadre Dumont d'Urville
Chef de Division Lapérouse
Captain Samuel de Champlain
Captain d'Iberville
Captain Nicolas Baudin
Captain Louis de Freycinet
Commander Doudart de Lagrée
Lieutenant de St Aloüarn
Lieutenant Francis Garnier
Lieutenant Savorgnan de Brazza
Other important French naval officers
Admiral Florent de Varennes—first admiral of France
Admiral Jean de Vienne—admiral of the French fleet during the Hundred Years' War
Admiral Hervé de Portzmoguer— Breton naval commander, renowned for his raids on the English and his death in the Battle of St. Mathieu
Admiral d'Estaing—admiral of the French fleet which helped the United States secure independence
Admiral de Grasse—commander of the French fleet at Chesapeake Bay during the American Revolutionary War.
Admiral Courbet-commander of the Far East Squadron.
Vice-Admiral Tourville—commander of the French fleet at the Battle of Beachy Head
Vice-Admiral Villeneuve—commander of the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar
Vice-Admiral Duquesne—commander of the French fleet at the Battle of Agosta
Lieutenant commander Paul Teste, pioneer of the modern aeronaval operations.
Vice-Admiral Jean-Paul de Saumeur, often called Chevalier Paul, served in several Mediterranean campaigns.
Notable people who served in the French Navy
Marcel Cerdan, world boxing champion during the 1940s
Jean Cocteau, poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker
Jean Cras, composer
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Philippe de Gaulle, the son of the general Charles de Gaulle
Alain Delon, actor, served as a fusilier marin in the First Indochina War
Bob Denard, a mercenary notorious for coup attempts and wars in Africa
Jean Gabin, another major French actor, he joined the free French naval force during the Second World War
Paul Gauguin, painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer
Bernard Giraudeau, actor, film director, scriptwriter, producer and writer
André Marty, a leading figure in the French Communist Party from 1923 to 1955
Albert II, Prince of Monaco, reserve Lieutenant Commander
Pierre Loti, mostly known for his literary works
Albert Roussel, composer
Michel Serres, philosopher and author
Eric Tabarly, yachtsman
Victor Segalen, ethnographer, archaeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic
Eugène Sue, a famous 19th-century novelist
Paul Emile Victor, an ethnologist and polar explorer
See also
Future of the French Navy
List of active French Navy ships
List of French Navy ship names
Marine Nationale
Chief of Staff of the French Navy
Airborne Units of the French Navy
Escorteur
Far East Squadron
French 100 mm naval gun
List of aircraft carriers of France
List of Escorteurs of the French Navy
List of French naval battles
List of Naval Ministers of France
Standing French Navy Deployments
:Category:French Navy admirals
:Category:French Navy officers
:Category:Naval ships of France
Notes
References
Further reading
Auphan, Paul, & Jacques Mordal. The French Navy in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 2016).
Dull, Jonathan R. The French Navy and American Independence (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Winfield, Rif and Roberts, Stephen S., French Warships in the Age of Sail, 1626-1786: Design, Constructions, Careers and Fates (Seaforth Publishing, 2017) ; French Warships in the Age of Sail, 1786-1861: Design, Constructions, Careers and Fates'' (Seaforth Publishing, 2015) .
External links
Marine nationale—Official site
French Navy 2011—Guide Book
French Navy 2011—Information File
Net-Marine—A well documented database on French navy.
Mer & Marine—Main website on French maritime affairs (only in French)
French Fleet Air Arm, about French naval aviation.
French Navy in World War 1, including warship losses
Military of France
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%20Navy
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Russian Navy
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The Russian navy () is the naval arm of the Russian Armed Forces. It has existed in various forms since 1696; its present iteration was formed in January 1992 when it succeeded the Navy of the Commonwealth of Independent States (which had itself succeeded the Soviet Navy following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late December 1991).
The Imperial Russian Navy was established by Peter the Great (Peter I) in October 1696. The symbols of the Russian Navy, the St. Andrew's ensign (seen to the right), and most of its traditions were established personally by Peter I.
The Russian navy possesses the vast majority of the former Soviet naval forces, and currently comprises the Northern Fleet, the Pacific Fleet, the Black Sea Fleet, the Baltic Fleet, the Caspian Flotilla, the permanent task force in the Mediterranean, Naval Aviation, and the Coastal Troops (consisting of the Naval Infantry and the Coastal Missile and Artillery Troops).
The Russian navy suffered severely with the collapse of the Soviet Union due to insufficient maintenance, lack of funding, and subsequent effects on the training of personnel and timely replacement of equipment. Another setback was attributed to Russia's domestic shipbuilding industry, which was in decline due to the absence of modern hardware and technology.
In 2013, a rise in gas and oil prices enabled a sort of renaissance of the Russian Navy due to increased available funds, which may have allowed Russia to begin "developing the capacity to modernize". In August 2014, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russian naval capabilities would be bolstered with new weapons and equipment within the next six years in response to the enlargement of NATO and the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
History
The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a severe decline in the Russian Navy. Defence expenditures were severely reduced. Many ships were scrapped or laid up as accommodation ships at naval bases, and the building program was essentially stopped. Sergey Gorshkov's buildup during the Soviet period had emphasised ships over support facilities, but Gorshkov had also retained ships in service beyond their effective lifetimes, so a reduction had been inevitable in any event. The situation was exacerbated by the impractical range of vessel types which the Soviet military-industrial complex, with the support of the leadership, had forced on the navy—taking modifications into account, the Soviet Navy in the mid-1980s had nearly 250 different classes of ship.
The Kiev-class aircraft carrying cruisers and many other ships were prematurely retired, and the incomplete second Admiral Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier Varyag was eventually sold to the People's Republic of China by Ukraine. Funds were only allocated for the completion of ships ordered prior to the collapse of the USSR, as well as for refits and repairs on fleet ships taken out of service since. However, the construction times for these ships tended to stretch out extensively: in 2003 it was reported that the Akula-class submarine Nerpa had been under construction for fifteen years.
Storage of decommissioned nuclear submarines in ports near Murmansk became a significant issue, with the Bellona Foundation reporting details of lowered readiness. Naval support bases outside Russia, such as Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, were gradually closed, with the exception of the modest technical support base in Tartus, Syria to support ships deployed to the Mediterranean. Naval Aviation declined as well from its height as Soviet Naval Aviation, dropping from an estimated 60,000 personnel with some 1,100 combat aircraft in 1992 to 35,000 personnel with around 270 combat aircraft in 2006. In 2002, out of 584 naval aviation crews only 156 were combat ready, and 77 ready for night flying. Average annual flying time was 21.7 hours, compared to 24 hours in 1999.
Training and readiness also suffered severely. In 1995, only two missile submarines at a time were being maintained on station, from the Northern and Pacific Fleets. The decline culminated in the loss of the Oscar II-class submarine Kursk during the Northern Fleet summer exercise that was intended to back up the publication of a new naval doctrine. The exercise was to have culminated with the deployment of the Admiral Kuznetsov task group to the Mediterranean.
As of February 2008, the Russian Navy had 44 nuclear submarines with 24 operational; 19 diesel-electric submarines, 16 operational; and 56 first and second rank surface combatants, 37 operational. Despite this improvement, the November 2008 accident on board the attack boat Nerpa during sea trials before lease to India represented a concern for the future.
The strength and quality of the Russian Navy started to improve during the 2010s. In 2012, as part of an ambitious rebuilding effort, President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to build 51 modern ships and 24 submarines by 2020. Of the 24 submarines, 16 were to be nuclear-powered. On 10 January 2013, the Russian Navy finally accepted its first new Borei-class SSBN () for service. A second Borei (Aleksandr Nevskiy) was undergoing sea trials and entered service on 21 December 2013.
A third Borei-class boat () was launched and began trials in early 2013, and was commissioned in late 2014. As of early 2022, five Borei-class boats are in service, along with three nuclear attack submarines. More vessels of these classes are building along with additional and Improved-Kilo-class conventional attack submarines. The surface fleet is also being modernized, principally by introducing at least six new classes of corvette/offshore patrol vessels, a new class of frigate (the Admiral Gorshkov class), as well as new classes of amphibious ships and support vessels. As of 2019, total tonnage of Russian Navy stand at 1,216,547 tonnes.
Russo-Ukrainian War
On 23 June 2021, Russian forces were involved in an incident with a British Royal Navy ship in the waters of Crimea.
Invasion of Ukraine
In 2022 the Russian Navy took part in the invasion of Ukraine, starting with the attack on Snake Island at the beginning of the war. The siege became infamous when the Ukrainian defenders told the , flagship of the Black Sea; "Russian warship, go fuck yourself", before subsequently being captured by Russian forces. Moskva sunk on 14 April 2022 after a fire broke out and forced the crew to evacuate. The Ukrainian military reported that they hit the ship with Neptune anti-ship missiles, however the Russian military did not confirm this. The ship subsequently capsized and sank while the Russian Navy was attempting to tow her into port. The sinking of Moskva is the most significant Russian naval loss in action since World War II.
Structure
Since 2012 the headquarters of the Russian Navy (Russian Navy Main Staff) is once again located in The Admiralty in Saint Petersburg. Russian naval manpower is a mixture of conscripts serving one-year terms and volunteers (Officers and Ratings). In 2006 the IISS assessed there were 142,000 personnel in the Russian Navy. This personnel number includes the Naval Infantry (Marines) and the Coastal Missile and Artillery Troops. As of 2008 the conscription term was reduced to one year and a major downsizing and reorganization were underway. In 2008, plans were announced to move the headquarters to the Admiralty building in St. Petersburg, the historic location of the headquarters of the Imperial Russian Navy. The Navy Staff finally relocated there in November 2012.
The Russian Navy is organised into four combat services - the Surface Forces, the Submarine Forces, the Naval Aviation and the Coastal Troops. Additionally the navy also includes support units afloat and ashore. It does not include special forces. The Naval Spetsnaz brigades are part of the Main Intelligence Directorate attached to the respective fleets and the Counter-Diversionary Forces and Assets (ПДСС) (which are units, protecting the Navy from incursions of enemy special forces) fall within the Coastal Forces.
During the Cold War the Soviet Armed Forces made the distinction between the various naval commands. The main fleets were the Northern and the Pacific Fleet. They were tasked with independent operations on the high seas and for that reason included strategic surface, submarine and air forces, including the country's naval nuclear deterrent. Due to the limited geography of the Baltic and the Black Seas the respective Baltic and Black Sea Fleets were given a more circumscribed role in support of adjacent ground formation (the Main Command of the Troops of the Western Direction in Legnica (Poland) and the Main Command of the Troops of the South-Western Direction in Chișinău).
These two fleets were armed with shorter-range weapon systems than the main fleets (diesel-electric submarines, Sukhoi Su-24 fighter-bombers and a larger quantity of frigates and corvettes). Due to the closed nature of the Caspian Sea (still connected to the Baltic and Black Seas through the Volga River and the system of rivers and canals and navigable for ships of corvette size) its Caspian Flotilla had an even more limited role than the Fleets and played a defensive role supporting the Main Command of the Troops of the Southern Direction in Baku.
With the end of the Cold War a significant reduction in forces followed. Before the 2008 Russian military reform, the four fleets were ranked as equal in status to the six Military Districts. With the reform measures going into force the number of Military Districts was reduced and became new Joint Strategic Commands and the four fleets and one flotilla were subordinated to them with status equal to the Ground Forces and the Air Forces armies. Due to Russia's increased interests in the Arctic region and the importance of Russia's western/northwestern maritime defence the Northern Fleet, originally part of the Joint Strategic Command West (Western Military District), on 12 December 2014 became the basis for the newly formed fifth Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command.
Submarine and surface forces
The submarine and surface forces form the backbone of the Navy. The submarines form part of dedicated submarine squadrons and flotillas or part of squadrons and flotillas of mixed composition together with major surface combatants. The Russian Navy retains a rigid structure, whose levels of command could, according to military regulations, be directly equalled to the corresponding ground and air forces counterparts:
Coastal troops
Coastal Troops include the Naval Infantry and the Coastal Missile and Artillery Troops.
The Russian Naval Infantry are the amphibious force of the Russian Navy and can trace their origins back to 1705, when Peter the Great issued a decree for an infantry regiment "of naval equipage". Since its formation it has seen action in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First and Second World Wars, and the Chechen and Georgian conflicts. Under the leadership of Admiral Gorshkov during the Cold War, the Soviet Navy expanded the reach of the Naval Infantry and deployed it worldwide on numerous occasions, but since the dissolution of the Soviet Union its role has been greatly reduced.
The Soviet Naval Infantry and their Russian successors have a reputation as elite shock troops. For their black uniforms and ferocious performance in combat in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea regions during World War II they received the nickname "The Black Death" (German: der schwarze Tod). The Russian Naval Infantry is a mechanised force, organised in brigades, independent regiments and independent battalions. The 55th Naval Infantry Division of the Pacific Fleet has been disbanded in 2009 and replaced by two separate brigades. Each brigade has a tank battalion, a self-propelled artillery battalion, a self-propelled air defence battalion, mechanised marine infantry battalions, other support units and one Airborne Assault Naval Infantry Battalion (десантно-штурмовой батальон морской пехоты), parachute and air assault qualified, with the mission to spearhead amphibious landings.
The coastal defence troops of the Russian Navy are conventional mechanised brigades with the main task to prevent enemy amphibious landings. An example of coastal defence troops are those of the Baltic Fleet. With Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania declaring independence at the end of the Soviet Union the Baltic Military District practically disintegrated. The massive ground forces formations left landlocked in the Kaliningrad Oblast were transferred from the ground forces to naval command and control. The integration of naval infantry and coastal defence troops is a relatively new tendency from the 2010s in order to simplify the naval command structure and the new Arctic infantry brigades in formation under the Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command fall within that process.
The coastal artillery troops also play a very important role for the Navy. The geography of the Barents Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk as well as the Caspian Sea makes the deployment of shore-based, anti-ship systems in an area-denying role very effective. They deploy K-300P Bastion-P supersonic ASCM, 3M-54 Kalibr cruise subsonic ASCM and A-222E Bereg-E 130mm coastal mobile artillery system as well as self-propelled surface-to-air missile systems.
The Naval Infantry and Coastal Troops are led by the Deputy Commander for Naval Infantry/Commandant of the Naval Infantry of the Russian Navy, Lieutenant General (NI) Aleksandr Kolpatsenko. Their motto is: "Where We Are, There is Victory!"
Naval aviation
[[File:Su27K (Su33) DD-SD-99-06153.jpg|thumb|A Sukhoi Su-33 from the 279th Shipborne Fighter Aviation Regiment on Admiral Kuznetsovs flight deck]]
The first naval aviation units in Russia were formed from 1912 through 1914 as a part of the Baltic Fleet and the Black Sea Fleet. Since its formation, it has participated in the Russian Civil War, World War II and in many other conflicts throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia (statement requires source citation). During the Cold War the naval aviation pursued a policy of deploying large numbers of bombers in maritime strike roles to counter the U.S. Navy's extensive fleet of aircraft carriers, by 1989 it operated over 1,000 fixed-wing aircraft with the majority being bombers such as the Tu-22M "Backfire" and the Tu-16 "Badger".
Since the fall of the Soviet Union however, it has been significantly reduced in size. The Tu-22Ms have been transferred to the Aerospace Forces and since then the combat arm of the Naval Aviation is built around Sukhoi Su-33s, Mikoyan MiG-29Ks, with Sukhoi Su-30s and Sukhoi Su-34s replacing the obsolete Sukhoi Su-24s.
As of 2007, the Russian Naval Aviation consists of the following components:
Naval missile-carrying aviation
Shore-based ASW aviation
Attack (Shturmovik) aviation
Shore-based fighter aviation
Reconnaissance aviation
Shipborne aviation (fighters and ASW aircraft)
Auxiliary air units
Ranks, rates and insignia
Officers
The following table of navy ranks illustrates those of the Russian Federation. The rank in Russian is given first, followed by the English transliteration.
Warrant officers and ratings
Warrant officers and rates of the Russian Navy'''
Equipment
Ships and submarines See List of active Russian Navy shipsAircraft
Radars
The Russian Navy uses Podsolnukh over-the-horizon surface wave radar for detection of ships. As of 2019, four radars have been delivered to the coasts of Caspian Sea, Okhotsk Sea, Sea of Japan and Baltic Sea.
Military districts and fleets
The Russian Navy consists of four fleets and one flotilla with all of them subordinated to the newly formed Military Districts-Joint Operational Strategic Commands.
Northern Military District – Northern Joint Strategic Command
Northern Fleet
The Russian Northern Fleet, dating to 1733 but established as a modern formation in 1933, is headquartered at Severomorsk and spread around various bases in the greater Murmansk area. It is the main fleet of the Russian Navy and currently comprises
Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov aircraft carrier (1 in refit)
Kirov-class battlecruiser (2, including one in long-term refit/upgrade)
Slava-class cruiser (1)
Udaloy II-class destroyer (1)
Udaloy-class destroyer (3)
Sovremennyy-class destroyer (1)
Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate (2, plus one on sea trials in the Baltic)
Grisha-class corvette (6)
Nanuchka-class corvette (1)
Dolgorukiy-class submarine (2)
Delta IV-class submarine (5)
Oscar-class submarine (2)
Yasen-class submarine (2)
Akula-class submarine (6)
Sierra-class submarine (2, plus 2 inactive/reserve)
Victor III-class submarine (2)
Lada-class submarine (1 on sea trials in the Baltic as of April 2023)
Kilo-class submarine (4)
Delta IV-class special operations submarine BS-64 Podmoskovye (1)
K-239 Belgorod special operations submarine (1, in an "experimental role" with the Northern Fleet as of July 2022; projected to transfer to the Pacific Fleet in due course)
B-90 Sarov special operations submarine (1)
Losharik (AS-12/or 28/or 31) special operations submarine (1 in refit/repair)
Delta III-class special operations submarine Orenburg (BS-136) (1)
Paltus-class special operations mini-submarine (2)
Kashalot-class special operations submarine (2)
The Northern Fleet also includes patrol ships, mine countermeasures vessels, light amphibious ships and support and logistic ships.
Western Military District – Western Joint Strategic Command
Baltic Fleet
The Baltic Fleet, established on 18 May 1703, is based in Baltiysk and Kronshtadt, with its headquarters in the city of Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast. The Fleet consists of the following units:
Sovremenny-class destroyer (1 in prolonged refit)
Neustrashimy-class frigate (2)
Steregushchiy-class multi-role corvette (4)
Buyan-M-class corvette (3)
Karakurt-class corvette (3)
Tarantul-class corvette (6)
Nanuchka-class corvette (4)
Parchim-class corvette (6)
Kilo-class submarine (1 assigned unit as of 2020)
The Baltic Fleet also includes patrol vessels, minehunters, amphibious ships and support vessels.
Southern Military District – Southern Joint Strategic Command
Black Sea Fleet
The Black Sea Fleet, established on 2 May 1783, is based at the Sevastopol, Karantinnaya, and Streletskaya Bays in Sevastopol which is also the location of its headquarters, and at Novorossiysk in Krasnodar Kray. The fleet also has various other facilities on the Crimean Peninsula and facilities in Krasnodar Kray. The Black Sea Fleet's flagship, the cruiser Moskva, was sunk on 14 April 2022 during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Tapir-class landing ship Saratov was also scuttled on 24 March 2022 after it was damaged in an attack. The Fleet consists of the following units:
Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate (3)
Burevestnik (Krivak)-class frigate (2)
Steregushchiy-class multi-role corvette (1 deployed in the Baltic as of 2023)
Buyan-M-class corvette (4)
Karakurt-class corvette (1, plus one on sea trials)
Bykov-class corvette/offshore patrol ship (4)
Tarantul-class corvette (4)
Bora-class corvette (2)
Grisha-class corvette (6)
Kilo-class submarine (1)
Improved Kilo-class submarine (6 - one vessel reported heavily damaged by Ukrainian attack while in drydock)
The Black Sea Fleet also includes patrol and coastal protection vessels, amphibious ships, and support vessels.
Operational Command South - Tartus
The Russian Navy maintains a base under the command of the Southern Military District in Syria at Tartus. The Mediterranean squadron was disestablished soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but a small naval logistics support facility remained there. In January 2017 Russia and Syria signed an agreement, to be valid for 49 years, to expand the Tartus facility with a view to improving the support at Tartus.
On 4 February 2022, naval detachments from the Northern Fleet and Baltic Fleet arrived at Tartus. Large amphibious assault ships Pyotr Morgunov, Georgy Pobedonosets, Olenegorsky Gornyak, Korolyov, Minsk and Kaliningrad were under the direction of Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Nikolay Yevmenov. In April 2022 there were around 20 Russian naval ships in the Mediterranean Sea. On 11 May it was reported that the flotilla had remained without change since early February. There were 13 ships and 5 support vessels of the four Russian fleets, including 9 attack missile ships. The formation of a "Mediterranean Squadron" of the Russian Navy in February 2022, using the Northern, Baltic, and Pacific Fleets' ships allowed the Russian Black Sea Fleet to return a large number of ships to the Black Sea some time prior to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. On 27 February three days after the commencement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine Turkey (who acts as guarantor of the Montreux Convention) decided to ban the passage through the straits of any warships whose homeport is not in the Black Sea.
Caspian Flotilla
The Caspian Flotilla, established on 4 November 1722, is based in Astrakhan and Makhachkala with its headquarters in Astrakhan. The Fleet consists of:
Tatarstan/Gepard-class frigate (2)
Buyan-class corvette (3)
Buyan-M-class corvette (3)
Tarantul-class corvette (1)
The Caspian Flotilla also includes 4 small artillery ships, patrol and mine warfare ships as well as landing craft.
Eastern Military District – Eastern Joint Strategic Command
Pacific Fleet
The Pacific Fleet, established on 10 May 1731, is headquartered in Vladivostok and based around Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy. The Fleet consists of the following units:
Slava-class cruiser (1)
Sovremennyy-class destroyer (1 inactive since 2005; still reported in refit as of 2020)
Udaloy-class destroyer (4)
Steregushchiy-class multi-role corvette (3, plus 1 in sea trials)
Gremyashchiy-class multi-role corvette (1)
Tarantul-class corvette (10)
Grisha-class corvette (8)
Nanuchka-class corvette (1-3)
Dolgorukiy-class submarine (4)
Delta III-class submarine (1)
Yasen-class submarine (1, plus 1 destined for the Pacific on sea trials in Northern Fleet operational area as of June 2022)
Oscar-class submarine (5)
Akula-class submarine (4)
Kilo-class submarine (6-7)
Improved Kilo-class submarine (4 plus one on sea trials; the fourth boat was deployed in the Baltic as of November 2022; fifth boat on sea trials - also in the Baltic - as of September 2023)
The Pacific Fleet also includes patrol ships, mine warfare ships, amphibious ships, and support vessels. There are also naval aviation and coastal troops and naval infantry components.
Future and modernization
Russia's military budget expanded from 1998 until 2015, but economic problems including a sharp decline in oil prices led to budget cuts in 2016. Higher expenditure led to an increase in numbers of ships under construction, initially focusing on submarines, such as the conventional Petersburg (Lada)-class and nuclear Severodvinsk (Yasen)-class. Some older vessels have been refitted as well. Jane's Fighting Ships commented in 2004 that the construction programme was too focused on Cold War scenarios, given the submarine emphasis.
According to the Russian Defence Ministry, share of modern armament in the Navy has reached more than 50% in 2014. A report from December 2019 estimated the figure at 68%. However, in September 2020 it was reported that the defence budget was to be cut by 5% as part of a shift to social spending and in response the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting impact of such a cut on Russian Navy modernization plans was not immediately apparent. Likely more significant is the impact of sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation after 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2021, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev reportedly acknowledged that the Russian defence industry “is still dependent on foreign technologies.” The impact of western sanctions on naval procurement projects, given both reduced access to foreign technologies and significant pressure on the defence budget, had yet to be determined.
The Steregushchiy-class corvettes, the lead ship of which was laid down on 21 December 2001, is the first new surface construction since the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the new Admiral Sergei Gorshkov class frigates marks the first attempt of the Navy to return to the construction of large blue water capable vessels. The Russian Navy had been planning to procure a new class of destroyer, the general-purpose Project 21956. The Lider-class has been envisaged as a "green water" vessel and was anticipated to be nuclear-powered.
The project was reportedly suspended in 2020, apparently in favour of the less expensive Project 22350 Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates. The Gorshkov-class vessels have themselves experienced technical challenges and in 2020 it was initially suggested that the larger 22350M variant of that class would not be proceeding. However, it was later reported that design work on both the Lider and the 22350M variant of the Gorshkov-class was in fact moving forward.
In keeping with the emphasis on strategic forces, the Navy's submarine fleet is being modernized by the acquisition of several classes of strategic and tactical submarines. Up to 12 Borei/Dolgorukiy-class SSBNs are planned to replace older classes in both the Northern and Pacific fleets. These are being complemented by new Yasen and Khabarovsk-class SSGNs, as well as conventional submarines of the Improved Kilo and Lada classes. However, in terms of the tactical nuclear submarine fleet, it is unclear whether the new Yasen-class, Khabarovsk-class, and potential follow-on models, can be produced in sufficient numbers, and on a timely basis, to replace aging older model nuclear submarines on a one-for-one basis. It has been reported that Russian third-generation nuclear submarines have not been modernized to a level to avoid block obsolescence before 2030.
On 28 April 2010, the Ukrainian parliament ratified an agreement to extend Russia's lease of Crimean base facilities to 2042 with an option for five more years, through 2047. Following the invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, this agreement has been officially invalidated by the Russian State Duma. The Russian Navy has also revealed that the Russia's Black Sea Fleet will receive 30 new ships by 2020 and will become self-sufficient with its own infrastructure in the Crimean peninsula. The fleet will be updated with new warships, submarines, and auxiliary vessels within the next six years. The new ships built for the Black Sea Fleet include three Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates (originally six, but two of the remaining three were sold to India and in 2021 it was reported that a third ship would also be sold abroad) and six Varshavyanka-class (Improved Kilo-class) diesel-electric submarines.
On 27 December 2015, state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation declared that by 2019 the company would have the technical ability to build aircraft and helicopter carriers, which came as some surprise to analysts as previously the company had stated carrier-building would not take place until 2025 at the earliest. Russia's only existing carrier, the Soviet era Admiral Kuznetsov will remain in service at least until 2030.
In a May 2017, ten year defence review the development of a new aircraft carrier and nuclear powered destroyers was cancelled in favour of concentrating modernisation efforts on the nuclear triad. Development of a sixth generation SSBN was announced even though the fifth generation Borei class are still under construction as was a fleet of sub-frigate sized surface combatants.
On 14 July 2021, shipyard Sevmash announced that for the first time in decades several nuclear submarines of different projects are undergoing sea trials. In the summer 2021, three nuclear submarines were undergoing sea trials simultaneously: Borei II class Knyaz Oleg, Yasen-M class Novosibirsk and modernized Antey class Belgorod. The last time in Russia or Soviet Union nuclear submarines of three different classes were undergoing sea trials was 1993, when Improved Akula class Tigr, Antey class Omsk and Sierra II class Pskov were undergoing sea trials. The increased intensity of sea trials taking place indicates enhanced shipbuilding in Russian Navy.
On January 12, 2023, The Russian Northern Fleet announced in a press release that the 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missile-equipped Admiral Gorshkov Frigate successfully sailed through the English Channel to carry out its assigned duties in the Atlantic Ocean.
Main Naval Parade in St. Petersburg
Since 2017, by the decree of the President of Russia dated 27 July 2017, the tradition of holding the "Main Naval Parade" in St. Petersburg on the Navy Day has been restored. Prior to 2017, in Soviet and Russian Federation times the previously held annual St. Petersburg Navy Day parade was not so specifically named. The parade is composed of ships and sailors representing the several fleets and the Caspian Flotilla with small ships and submarines in the Neva River and the larger ones arrayed off Kronshtadt in the Gulf of St. Petersburg. It is celebrated annually on the last Sunday of July during the Navy Day holiday.
Deployments from 2018
Ocean Shield
In the years 2018–2021, the Russian Navy has been organizing central annual naval exercise called Ocean Shield.
Between 1–8 September 2018, Ocean Shield exercise was held for the first time. Unlike 2019 and 2020 exercises, conducted in the Baltic Sea, the first exercise took place in the Mediterranean Sea. 26 ships, 2 submarines and 34 aircraft were included. Among participants were cruiser Marshal Ustinov, destroyers Smetlivy and Severomorsk, frigates Admiral Grigorovich, Admiral Essen, Admiral Makarov, Pytlivy and Yaroslav Mudry, corvettes Vishny Volochyok, Grad Sviyazhsk and Veliky Ustyug and conventional submarines Kolpino and Velikiy Novgorod.
The aircraft present included Tu-160 bombers, Tu-142 and Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft and Su-33 and MiG-29K maritime fighters. This was the largest Russian naval exercise in the Mediterranean Sea of the post-Cold War era and the largest Russian post-Cold War naval exercise in the far sea zone. In terms of distant location and number of capital ships participating it's comparable only to June 2021 exercises of the Pacific Fleet off the Hawaii islands.
Organized between 1–9 August 2019, the second Ocean Shield exercise was the exercise with the largest number of participating ships (69 ships, including 49 warships and 20 support ships) in the independent Russia and took place in the Baltic Sea. The 22 known ships of the exercise "Ocean Shield 2019" include cruiser Marshal Ustinov, destroyer Severomorsk and frigate Admiral Gorshkov of the Northern Fleet, as well as Baltic Fleet's frigate Yaroslav Mudry, corvettes Steregushchy, Soobrazitelny, Stoykiy, Boikiy, Passat, Geyzer, Serpukhov, Mitishchi, Chuvashiya, Morshansk, Liven, Urengoy, R-257 and LSTs Aleksandr Shabalin, Kaliningrad, Minsk and Korolyov, as well as nuclear submarine Smolensk. Other possible participants include ships, participating in the July Naval Parade in St. Petersburg, i.e. frigate Admiral Kasatonov, corvettes Gremyashchy and Sovetsk, submarine Kronshtadt and minesweepers Ivan Antonov, Aleksandr Obukhov and Pavel Khenov.
On 3 August 2020, third Ocean Shield exercise started in the Baltic Sea and included Northern Fleet's destroyer Vice-Admiral Kulakov and LST Pyotr Morgunov and Baltic Fleet's corvettes Steregushchy, Boikiy and Stoikiy.
Combined-fleet exercises
June 2021
In 2021, no usual Ocean Shield exercise was conducted in August or September in the Baltic Sea. However, in June, the Pacific, Northern and Black Sea fleets conducted large-scale exercises. In mid June, four Russian cruisers and four destroyers were simultaneously at sea, or all operational large surface combatants except destroyer Severomorsk, which was probably the first time in the post-Cold war era. A complex large-scale exercise took place in the central Pacific Ocean, where the Russian Navy conducted possibly the strongest exercise of the post-Soviet era.
It took place prior to the 2021 Putin-Biden summit, similarly to Aport and Atrina exercises that were held in 1985 and 1987 prior to the Geneva and Washington summits of Gorbachev and Reagan to improve Soviet negotiation position. Officially, however, it was stated that the exercise is an answer to the exercise Agile Dagger 2021 of the US Pacific Fleet, employing one third of the operational submarines of the US Pacific Fleet.
In the Barents Sea, cruisers Marshal Ustinov and Pyotr Veliky, destroyer Vice-admiral Kulakov and submarines Kaluga, Gepard and Dmitry Donskoy were active.
Between 7 and 24 June, a large-scale exercise was conducted by the Pacific Fleet in the central Pacific Ocean, being the first post-Cold war Russian naval exercise in that area (minor exceptions being destroyer Admiral Panteleev taking part in RIMPAC-2012 exercise and frigate Admiral Gorshkov sailing near Hawaii in 2019). It included cruiser Varyag, destroyers Marshal Shaposhnikov and Admiral Panteleyev, corvettes Sovershenny, Gromky and Aldar Tsydenzhapov, (a) nuclear submarine(s) (likely Omsk and Kuzbass) and intelligence ship Kareliya.
The exercise started in the central Pacific Ocean on 10 June, and on 21 June the ships 2500 nautical miles southeast of the Kuril islands simulated an attack on the enemy carrier strike group. Prior to that, the ships operated in two groups, sailing at 300 nautical miles from each other, one of them playing the role of enemy. The largest auxiliary ship of the Russian Navy Marshal Krylov also took part in the exercise and acted as a command ship for the commander of the exercise, rear admiral Konstantin Kabantsev, commander of Primorskaya Flotilla, as well as hospital ship Irtysh and MiG-31 interceptors and Il-38 and Tu-142 anti-submarine aircraft.
On 24 June, the final day of the exercise, three Tu-95 bombers, several Tu-22M bombers, escorted by interceptors MiG-31BM and two Il-78 tankers flied to the central Pacific Ocean as well. The Tu-95s delivered conditional strikes against enemy's critical infrastructure and Tu-22M delivered strikes against enemy's conditional carrier strike group together with Varyag and Marshal Shaposhnikov.
An additional destroyer Admiral Tributs was deployed to the South China Sea, accompanying nuclear submarine Nerpa.
On 18 June 2021, the Black Sea Fleet deployed cruiser Moskva to the Mediterranean Sea, which, amid deployment of Queen Elizabeth to the Eastern Mediterranean, took part in an unprecedented anti-ship exercise with bombers Tu-22M and interceptors MiG-31K both deployed to Syria for the first time in May and June. A MiG-31K reportedly fired a Kinzhal missile against a ground target in Syria, while a newest air defence system S-500 was reportedly tested at Khmeymim airbase and obtained a lock on F-35 fighter from Queen Elizabeth. The exercise included rocket fire 30 km away from Queen Elizabeth.
January–February 2022
In January–February 2022 large-scale exercise of all Russian fleets took place with some 140 warships and support ships.
In the Northern Fleet it included two task groups. First, cruiser Marshal Ustinov, destroyer Vice-Admiral Kulakov and frigate Admiral Kasatonov, as well as tanker Vyazma and tug SB-406 were deployed to the southwest of Ireland, conducting first Russian post-Cold war naval exercise west of British isles. Second, destroyer Severomorsk, frigate Admiral Gorshkov, LST Ivan Gren, nuclear submarine Severodvinsk, diesel-electric submarine Kaluga, corvettes Snezhnogorsk and Brest, as well as support ships operated in the Barents Sea. Additionally, three LSTs were deploying to the Black Sea (Olenogorsky Gornyak, Georgiy Pobedonosets and Pyotr Morgunov).
In the Pacific Fleet, cruiser Varyag, destroyer Admiral Tributs and tanker Boris Butoma were deployed to the Indian Ocean, participating in the third Russo-Sino-Iranian naval exercise, first Russo-Chinese naval exercise away from Russian/Chinese coast that took place in the western Indian Ocean and will finally strengthen Mediterranean squadron. Additionally, submarine Volkhov fired a Kalibr missile in the Sea of Japan and two Tu-142 performed flight above the Okhotsk Sea.
In the Baltic Fleet, corvettes Soobrazitelny and Stoykiy were deployed to the Northern Sea, while Zeleny Dol, Mytishchi, Odintsovo, Aleksin, Kabardino-Balkariya were active in the Baltic Sea. Additionally, three LSTs were deploying to the Black Sea: Korolyov, Minsk and Kaliningrad and intelligence ship Vasily Tatishchev to the Mediterranean Sea, where it will monitor three-carrier exercise with CVN Harry Truman, Cavour and Charles de Gaulle in February 2022.
In the Black Sea Fleet, an exercise was conducted by frigates Admiral Essen, Ladnyy, corvettes Ingushetiya, Grayvoron, Naberezhnye Chelny, R-60, Yeysk, Suzdalets and other ships, totally around 20 ships.
Annual exercise
Russia organises a central military exercise for September each year.
During Zapad 2021, in Northern Fleet two surface groups were active: Admiral Ushakov and Admiral Kasatonov in the Barents Sea (along with coastal systems Bal and Bastion-P) and Severomorsk in the Arctic (along with LST Georgiy Pobedonosets, tug Pamir and tanker Sergey Osipov), as well as submarines Orel and Verkhoturye (along with minesweepers Yelnya, Soloyevetskiy, Yunga, Yadrin and Kotelnich in two groups). In the Baltic Fleet, frigate Yaroslav Mudry, corvettes Steregushchy and Stoykiy and submarine Dmitrov were active (along with coastal system Bal).
Barents Sea
On 22 February 2021, the Northern Fleet conducted an exercise in which cruiser Marshal Ustinov sailed in Varanger Fjord in the area of the Russia–Norway maritime border, becoming the first Russian warship to do so in the post-Cold War era. Sailing was speculated to be response to the US bombers (B-1B) landing in Norway on the same day for the first time.
Other ships active in the area in January–February 2021 included destroyer Severomorsk, frigate with the tug Altay, nuclear submarine Severodvinsk (that launched a Kalibr missile), corvettes Aysberg, Snezhnogorsk, Yunga and Brest, and salvage vessel Georgiy Titov with deep-submergence rescue vehicle AS-34.
Atlantic
South of Gibraltar, in September–October 2021 Russian Navy deployed destroyer Vice-Admiral Kulakov (along tanker Akademik Pashin and tug Altai) that visited Praia, Capo Verde and performed anti-piracy exercise in the Gulf of Guinea. It was the first deployment of a Russian warship south of Gibraltar since Admiral Gorshkov's 2019 world circumnavigation.
Western Atlantic and US eastern seaboard
In August 2012, the news media published an unconfirmed report that a Akula-class submarine operated in the Gulf of Mexico purportedly undetected for over a month, sparking controversy within US military and political circles, with US Senator John Cornyn of the Senate Armed Services Committee demanding details of this deployment from Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations. Adm Greenert stated that no Russian submarine had operated in the Gulf of Mexico.
North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea
In February 2008 a Russian Northern Fleet naval task force completed a two-month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic which started on 4 December 2007. The operation was the first large-scale Russian Navy deployment to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in 15 years. The task force included the Admiral Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, the Udaloy-class destroyers and , and the Slava-class guided missile cruiser Moskva, as well as auxiliary vessels. During the operation the navy practiced rescue and counter-terror operations, reconnaissance, and missile and bomb strikes on the (theoretical) enemy's naval task force. Over 40 Russian Air Force aircraft took part in joint exercises with the navy as well.
In October 2008, a naval task group from the Northern Fleet, comprising the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, the large ASW ship Admiral Chabanenko, and support ships, left their homeport of Severomorsk in northern Russia on 22 September and sailed into the northern Atlantic, having covered a distance of in a week. Russian warships were scheduled to participate in joint naval exercises with the Venezuelan Navy in the Caribbean on 10–14 November, in line with the 2008 training program, and in order to expand military cooperation with foreign navies. These exercises actually took place on 1 December.
11 October 2008, Russian warships bound for Venezuela, including the nuclear-powered cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, put in at the Libyan port of Tripoli for resupply.
From Venezuela Petr Velikiy proceeded alone to a port call in Cape Town, South Africa, then participated in the INDRA-2009 exercise off western India, briefly engaged in counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, and returned to its homeport of Severomorsk in March 2009. The other ships in company returned to their home base in the Northern Fleet.
A group of Pacific Fleet ships arrived in the Mediterranean Sea on 15 May 2013 having sailed from Vladivostok on 19 March 2013. , the Ropucha-class landing ships Peresvet and Admiral Nevelskoy, the tanker Pechenga and the rescue tug Fotiy Krylov augmented the Russian Navy's grouping there, and carried out tasks in the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. The Pacific Fleet ships practiced activities jointly with forces from other Russian navy fleets and made a number of business calls at ports in the region, including a call at Limassol, Cyprus on 17 May 2013.
The Baltic Fleet Ropucha-class landing ships Kaliningrad, Aleksandr Shabalin and Azov arrived at Novorossiysk naval base on 14 May 2013 having completed their duties in the Mediterranean. The Baltic Fleet ships spent several weeks at Novorossiysk undergoing checks and maintenance and replenishing supplies before resuming their duties in the Mediterranean.
The Northern Fleet's Udaloy-class destroyer was reported to be heading for the Atlantic on 20 May 2013 after completing a visit to Norway. The ship had been taking part in the Russian-Norwegian Pomor-2013 exercise and is expected to take on supplies from the tanker Vyazma while at anchor in the North Sea before undertaking a lengthy voyage in the north eastern regions of the Atlantic Ocean.
On 1 June 2013, Navy Commander Adm Viktor Chirkov said that the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is "expected to put out and perform a number of missions in an offshore oceanic zone as part of a group. Northern Fleet naval pilots will perform a number of missions on board this cruiser during the long-range mission." He also stated that the ship's deployment might be as part of a permanent operational group in the Mediterranean. In preparing for the deployment the ships' airwing would not be using the NITKA pilot training facility located in Crimea, Ukraine.
On 20 October 2016, a Northern Fleet task group headed by Admiral Kuznetsov was monitored by a fleet of least eight ships in the English Channel en route to Syria reportedly to participate in the attack on Aleppo. The British Royal Navy sent multiple ships including HMS Dragon to shadow each warship as the fleet met up with an additional two Russian warships. NATO also tasked its standing naval group SNMG1 to shadow the group and escort it through the Dover Straits towards the Mediterranean.
On 17 February 2017, the Russian Navy surveillance vessel SSV-175 Viktor Leonov was cruising international waters off the East Coast of the United States. Viktor Leonov is outfitted with a variety of high-tech spying equipment designed to intercept signals intelligence. It first appeared off Delaware and, then moved south of the US submarine base at Groton, Connecticut collecting electronic signals.
Syria
Sequentially having lost naval support facility access in Albania, Yugoslavia, and Egypt, in 1971 the Soviet Navy began operating from a leased facility in Tartus, Syria.
In September 2008, it was reported that Russia and Syria conducted talks about permitting Russia to develop and enlarge its naval base in Syria in order to establish a stronger naval presence in the Mediterranean, and amidst the deteriorating Russia relations with the west in conjunction with the 2008 South Ossetia war and the plans to deploy US missile defence shield in Poland, it has even been asserted that President Assad has agreed to Tartus port's conversion into a permanent Middle East base for Russia's nuclear-armed warships. Moscow and Damascus additionally announced that it would be renovating the port, although there was no mention in the Syrian press.
On 22 September 2008, Russian Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said the nuclear-powered Pyotr Velikiy cruiser, accompanied by three other ships, sailed from the Northern Fleet's base of Severomorsk. The ships will cover about to conduct joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy. Dygalo refused to comment on Monday's report in the daily Izvestia claiming that the ships were to make a stopover in the Syrian port of Tartus on their way to Venezuela. Russian officials said the Soviet-era base there was being renovated to serve as a foothold for a permanent Russian navy presence in the Mediterranean.
In late November 2011, Pravda and Reuters wrote that a naval flotilla led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov would sail to its naval base in Tartus as a show of support for the al-Assad regime. Such a visit is not possible because the lengths of all of Russia's current modern warships exceed the size of the two 100 meter piers located at the Russian leasehold in Tartus. (see next paragraph)
On 29 November 2011, Army General Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, said that sending ships of the Russian Navy to the Mediterranean Sea is linked to exercises and not to the situation in Syria. "In the event of necessity, namely to carry out repairs, to take water and food on board and to allow rest for the crews, Russian ships may visit Tartus but in this case this has not been included in the plan of the trip," the Interfax source said. He also noted that the size of Admiral Kuznetsov does not allow it to moor in Tartus because the port does not have suitable infrastructure, i.e., large enough mooring.
Sudan
On 23 July 2019, Russia and Sudan signed an agreement on establishment of a Russian naval base in Port Sudan in Khartoum and, on 1 December 2020, in Moscow. On 25 June 2021, Russian prime minister Mishustin submitted the agreement for ratification. On 12 July, Sudan was preparing for ratification too.
Between 28 February and 2 May 2021, a number of Russian ships called at Port Sudan, beginning with frigate Admiral Grigorovich in what was the first visit of a Russian warship to Sudan in the modern history. This was followed by corvette Stoikiy and tug Kola on 19 March, signals intelligence ship Ivan Khurs on 10 April, signals intelligence ship Vasily Tatishchev and its accompanying repair ship PM-138 on 2 May.
Algeria
Russia and Algeria hold annual naval exercise at the end of the year.
Between 16 and 17 November 2021, Russo-Algerian naval exercise was conducted. Russian Black Sea Fleet's frigate Admiral Grigorovich, patrol ship Vasily Bykov and seagoing tug SB-742 took part, as well as Algerian frigate Harrad, training vessel La Sammam and rescue vessel El Munjid.
Egypt
Russia and Egypt have held an annual naval exercise at the end of the year since 2015. Usually, the exercise is conducted in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, an exception being 2020, when the exercise took place in the Black Sea. From 3–10 December 2021, another Russo-Egyptian naval exercise, Bridge of Friendship, took place in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The Russian task force comprised frigate Admiral Grigorovich, patrol ship Dmitry Rogachev and sea-going tug SB-742.
Caribbean Sea
On 8 September 2008, it was announced that the Pyotr Velikiy would sail to the Caribbean Sea in order to participate in naval exercises with the Venezuelan Navy. This represented the first major Russian show of force in that sea since the end of the Cold War. On 22 September the Kirov-class nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy and the Udaloy class large anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko, accompanied by support vessels, left their home port of Severomorsk for naval exercises with Venezuela scheduled for early November 2008. On 25 November 2008, a group of warships from Russia's Northern Fleet arrived at the Venezuelan port of La Guaira.
East Africa: Somali Coast
On 24 September 2008, the Russian frigate Neustrashimy left its home base at Baltiysk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, for counter-piracy operations near the Somali coast.
From 11 January to 17 March 2009, the Admiral Vinogradov took up the counter-piracy mission from the Neustrashimy and upon completion took a course home to Vladivostok by way of a port visit to Jakarta, Indonesia 24–28 March 2009.Морская коллегия. – Новости. Отряд кораблей Тихоокеанского флота в составе большого противолодочного корабля «Адмирал Виноградов» и танкера «Борис Бутома» закончил патрулирование в районе Африканского рога . Morskayakollegiya.ru (30 August 2010). Retrieved on 9 September 2010.
From 26 April to 7 June 2009, the Pacific Fleet destroyer Admiral Panteleyev took up counter-piracy duties in the Gulf of Aden, having left Vladivostok at the end of March 2009 to relieve the Admiral Vinogradov. It returned to Vladivostok on 1 July."Адмирал Пантелеев" вернулся во Владивосток после успешно выполненной миссии -Русское зарубежье, российские соотечественники, русские за границей, русские за рубежом, соотечественники, русскоязычное население, русские общины, диаспора, эмиграция . Russkie.org. Retrieved on 9 September 2010.
Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea
Main article: Cam Ranh Air Base
On 11 January 2009, Army General Nikolai Makarov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, announced that the Kirov-class nuclear-powered cruiser Pyotr Velikiy and five other ships would take part in exercises with the Indian Navy in late January 2009.
In 2021, Black Sea Fleet's intelligence ship Kildin entered port Oman on 1 November. Besides, in summer, the newly built frigate Gremyashchy and Kilo (Varshavanka) class diesel-electric submarines Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Volkhov transited Indian Ocean on their way from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
East Asia
Since 2012, Russia and China have conducted an annual naval exercise. In even years, they take place off Chinese coast (usually in the Yellow Sea), and in odd years off Russian coast (usually in the Sea of Japan). In 2015 and 2017, in addition to the exercises in the Sea of Japan, additional exercises in the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea, respectively, were held. In 2021, for the first time the exercise surpassed the defensive character as Russian and Chinese warships passed through the Tsugaru Strait between Japanese islands Hokkaido and Honshu.
On 23 October 2021, Russian and Chinese Navies conducted first ever joint patrol. Five warships of each navy participated, including two destroyers, two corvettes and a command ship. Russian Navy was represented by destroyers Admiral Panteleyev and Admiral Tributs, corvettes Gromky and Geroy Rossiyskoy federatsii Aldar Tsydenzhapov and tracking ship Marshal Krylov. The patrol group passed through the Tsugaru Strait. Joint Russo-Chinese operations imply readiness of both superpowers to cooperate to limit the power of the American-led order in the Asia-Pacific region.
From 1–3 December 2021, the first naval exercise between Russia and ASEAN occurred in the Indonesian territorial waters. Russia was represented by destroyer Admiral Panteleyev, Vietnam by frigate Ly Thai To, Indonesia by frigate Raden Eddy Martadinata, Malaysia by frigate Lekiu, Singapore by corvette Vigour, Brunei by off-shore patrol vessel Daruttaqwa, Thailand by frigate Kraburi and Myanmar by frigate Kyansittha, while Philippines joined as an observer.
See also
History of the Russian Navy
Future of the Russian Navy
Russian Naval Academy
List of ships of the line of Russia
List of aircraft carriers of Russia and the Soviet Union
List of Russian Navy cruisers
List of Russian Navy equipment
List of ships of Russia by project number
List of Soviet and Russian submarine classes
List of active Russian Navy ships for current Order of Battle of the Russian Navy
Russian Hydrographic Service
Russian torpedoes
Notes
References
Further reading
Lebedev A.A. To March and Battle Ready? The Combat Capabilities of Naval Squadrons Russian Sailing Fleet XVIII – mid XIX centuries. from the Point of View of the Status of Their Personnel. SPb, 2015. .
Reuben Johnson, "Russian Navy 'faces irreversible collapse,'" Jane's Defence Weekly'', 15 July 2009, and link to original Russian article at ВМФ умрет в ближайшие годы. Nvo.ng.ru (2009-07-03). Retrieved on 2010-09-09.
"Russia Will Not Build Aircraft Carriers Till 2010." RIA Novosti. 16 May 2005. (Via Lexis-Nexis, 27 July 2005).
"The Russian Navy – A Historic Transition." U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. December 2015
External links
Military of Russia
Military units and formations established in 1992
1992 establishments in Russia
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