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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashtube
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Flashtube
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A flashtube (flashlamp) is an electric arc lamp designed to produce extremely intense, incoherent, full-spectrum white light for a very short time. A flashtube is a glass tube with an electrode at each end and is filled with a gas that, when triggered, ionizes and conducts a high-voltage pulse to make light. Flashtubes are used most in photography; they also are used in science, medicine, industry, and entertainment.
Construction
The lamp comprises a hermetically sealed glass tube, which is filled with a noble gas, usually xenon, and electrodes to carry electric current to the gas. Additionally, a high voltage power source is necessary to energize the gas as a trigger event. A charged capacitor is usually used to supply energy for the flash, so as to allow very speedy delivery of very high electrical current when the lamp is triggered.
Glass envelopes
The glass envelope is most commonly a thin tube, often made of fused quartz, borosilicate or Pyrex, which may be straight, or bent into a number of different shapes, including helical, "U" shape, and circular (to surround a camera lens for shadowless photography—'ring flashes'). In some applications, the emission of ultraviolet light is undesired, whether due to production of ozone, damage to laser rods, degradation of plastics, or other detrimental effects. In these cases, a doped fused silica is used. Doping with titanium dioxide can provide different cutoff wavelengths on the ultraviolet side, but the material suffers from solarization; it is often used in medical and sun-ray lamps and some non-laser lamps. A better alternative is a cerium-doped quartz; it does not suffer from solarization and has higher efficiency, as part of the absorbed ultraviolet is reradiated as visible via fluorescence. Its cutoff is at about 380 nm. Conversely, when ultraviolet is called for, a synthetic quartz is used as the envelope; it is the most expensive of the materials, but it is not susceptible to solarization and its cutoff is at 160 nm.
The power level of the lamps is rated in watts/area, total electrical input power divided by the lamp's inner wall surface. Cooling of the electrodes and the lamp envelope is of high importance at high power levels. Air cooling is sufficient for lower average power levels. High power lamps are cooled with a liquid, typically by flowing demineralized water through a tube in which the lamp is encased. Water-cooled lamps will generally have the glass shrunk around the electrodes, to provide a direct thermal conductor between them and the cooling water. The cooling medium should flow also across the entire length of the lamp and electrodes. High average power or continuous-wave arc lamps must have the water flow across the ends of the lamp, and across the exposed ends of the electrodes as well, so the deionized water is used to prevent a short circuit. Above 15 W/cm2 forced air cooling is required; liquid cooling if in a confined space. Liquid cooling is generally necessary above 30 W/cm2.
Thinner walls can survive higher average-power loads due to lower mechanical strain across the thickness of the material, which is caused by a temperature gradient between the hot plasma and cooling water, (e.g. 1 mm thick doped quartz has a limit of 160 W/cm2, a 0.5 mm thick one has a limit of 320 W/cm2). For this reason, thinner glass is often used for continuous-wave arc-lamps. Thicker materials can generally handle more impact energy from the shock wave that a short-pulsed arc can generate, so quartz as much as 1 mm thick is often used in the construction of flashtubes. The material of the envelope provides another limit for the output power; 1 mm thick fused quartz has a limit of 200 W/cm2, synthetic quartz of same thickness can run up to 240 W/cm2. Other glasses such as borosilicate generally have less than half the power loading capacity of quartz. Aging lamps require some derating, due to increased energy absorption in the glass due to solarization and sputtered deposits.
Electrodes and seals
The electrodes protrude into each end of the tube, and are sealed to the glass using a few different methods. "Ribbon seals" use thin strips of molybdenum foil bonded directly to the glass, which are very durable, but are limited in the amount of current that can pass through. "Solder seals" bond the glass to the electrode with a solder for a very strong mechanical seal, but are limited to low temperature operation. Most common in laser pumping applications is the "rod seal", where the rod of the electrode is wetted with another type of glass and then bonded directly to a quartz tube. This seal is very durable and capable of withstanding very high temperature and currents. The seal and the glass must have the same coefficient of expansion.
For low electrode wear the electrodes are usually made of tungsten, which has the highest melting point of any metal, to handle the thermionic emission of electrons. Cathodes are often made from porous tungsten filled with a barium compound, which gives low work function; the structure of cathode has to be tailored for the application. Anodes are usually made from pure tungsten, or, when good machinability is required, lanthanum-alloyed tungsten, and are often machined to provide extra surface area to cope with power loading. DC arc lamps often have a cathode with a sharp tip, to help keep the arc away from the glass and to control temperature. Flashtubes usually have a cathode with a flattened radius, to reduce the incidence of hot spots and decrease sputter caused by peak currents, which may be in excess of 1000 amperes. Electrode design is also influenced by the average power. At high levels of average power, care has to be taken to achieve sufficient cooling of the electrodes. While anode temperature is of lower importance, overheating the cathode can greatly reduce the lamp's life expectancy.
Gases and fill pressure
Depending on the size, type, and application of the flashtube, gas fill pressures may range from a few kilopascals to hundreds of kilopascals (0.01–4.0 atmospheres or tens to thousands of torr). Generally, the higher the pressure, the greater the output efficiency. Xenon is used mostly because of its good efficiency, converting nearly 50% of electrical energy into light. Krypton, on the other hand, is only about 40% efficient, but at low currents is a better match to the absorption spectrum of Nd:YAG lasers. A major factor affecting efficiency is the amount of gas behind the electrodes, or the "dead volume". A higher dead volume leads to a lower pressure increase during operation.
Operation
The electrodes of the lamp are usually connected to a capacitor, which is charged to a relatively high voltage (generally between 250 and 5000 volts), using a step up transformer and a rectifier. The gas, however, exhibits extremely high resistance, and the lamp will not conduct electricity until the gas is ionized. Once ionized, or "triggered", a spark will form between the electrodes, allowing the capacitor to discharge. The sudden surge of electric current quickly heats the gas to a plasma state, where electrical resistance becomes very low. There are several methods of triggering.
External triggering
External triggering is the most common method of operation, especially for photographic use. The electrodes are charged to a voltage high enough to respond to triggering, but below the lamp's self-flash threshold. An extremely high voltage pulse, (usually between 2000 and 150,000 volts), the "trigger pulse", is applied either directly to or very near the glass envelope. (Water-cooled flashtubes sometimes apply this pulse directly to the cooling water, and often to the housing of the unit as well, so care must be taken with this type of system.) The short, high voltage pulse creates a rising electrostatic field, which ionizes the gas inside the tube. The capacitance of the glass couples the trigger pulse into the envelope, where it exceeds the breakdown voltage of the gas surrounding one or both of the electrodes, forming spark streamers. The streamers propagate via capacitance along the glass at a speed of 1 centimeter in 60 nanoseconds (170 km/s). (A trigger pulse must have a long enough duration to allow one streamer to reach the opposite electrode, or erratic triggering will result.) The triggering can be enhanced by applying the trigger pulse to a "reference plane", which may be in the form of a metal band or reflector affixed to the glass, a conductive paint, or a thin wire wrapped around the length of the lamp. If the capacitor voltage is greater than the voltage drop between the cathode and the anode, when the internal spark streamers bridge the electrodes the capacitor will discharge through the ionized gas, heating the xenon to a high enough temperature for the emission light.
Series triggering
Series triggering is more common in high powered, water-cooled flashtubes, such as those found in lasers. The high-voltage leads of the trigger-transformer are connected to the flashtube in series, (one lead to an electrode and the other to the capacitor), so that the flash travels through both the transformer and the lamp. The trigger pulse forms a spark inside the lamp, without exposing the trigger voltage to the outside of the lamp. The advantages are better insulation, more reliable triggering, and an arc that tends to develop well away from the glass, but at a much higher cost. The series-triggering transformer also acts as an inductor. This helps to control the flash duration, but prevents the circuit from being used in very fast discharge applications. The triggering can generally take place with a lower voltage at the capacitor than is required for external triggering. However, the trigger-transformer becomes part of the flash circuit, and couples the triggering-circuit to the flash energy. Therefore, because the trigger-transformer has very low impedance, the transformer, triggering-circuit, and silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) must be able to handle very high peak-currents, often in excess of 1500 amps.
Simmer-voltage triggering
Simmer-voltage triggering is the least common method. In this technique, the capacitor voltage is not initially applied to the electrodes, but instead, a high voltage spark streamer is maintained between the electrodes. The high current from the capacitor is delivered to the electrodes using a thyristor or a spark gap. This type of triggering is used mainly in very fast rise time systems, typically those that discharge in the microsecond regime, such as used in high-speed, stop-motion photography or dye lasers. The simmering spark-streamer causes the arc to develop in the exact center of the lamp, increasing the lifetime dramatically. If external triggering is used for extremely short pulses, the spark streamers may still be in contact with the glass when the full current-load passes through the tube, causing wall ablation, or in extreme cases, cracking or even explosion of the lamp. However, because very short pulses often call for very high voltage and low capacitance, to keep the current density from rising too high, some microsecond flashtubes are triggered by simply "over-volting", that is, by applying a voltage to the electrodes which is much higher than the lamp's self-flash threshold, using a spark gap. Often, a combination of simmer voltage and over-volting is used.
Prepulse techniques
Very rapid rise-times are often achieved using a prepulse technique. This method is performed by delivering a small flash through the lamp just before the main flash. This flash is of much lower energy than the main flash (typically less than 10%) and, depending on the pulse duration, is delivered just a few thousandths to a few millionths of a second before the main flash. The prepulse heats the gas, producing a dim, short-lived afterglow that results from free electrons and ionized particles that remain after the pulse shuts down. If the main flash is initiated before these particles can recombine, this provides a good quantity of ionized particles to be used by the main flash. This greatly decreases the rise time. It also reduces the shock wave and makes less noise during operation, vastly increasing the lifetime of the lamp. It is especially effective on very fast-discharge applications, allowing the arc to expand faster and better fill the tube. It is very often used with simmer voltage and sometimes with series triggering, but rarely used with external triggering. Prepulse techniques are most commonly used in the pumping of dye lasers, greatly increasing the conversion efficiency. However, it has also been shown to increase the efficiency of other lasers with longer fluorescence lifetimes (allowing longer pulses), such as Nd:YAG or titanium sapphire, by creating pulses with almost square waveforms.
Ablative flashtubes
Ablative flashtubes are triggered by under-pressurizing. Ablative flashtubes are typically constructed using quartz tubing and one or both electrodes hollowed out, allowing a vacuum pump to be attached to control the gas pressure. The electrodes of the lamp are connected to a charged capacitor, and then the gas is vacuumed from the lamp. When the gas reaches a low enough pressure (often just a few torr) randomly-ionized particles are able to accelerate to velocities sufficient to begin ejecting electrons from the cathode as they impact its surface, resulting in a Townsend avalanche that causes the lamp to self-flash. At such low pressures, the efficiency of the flash would normally be very low. However, because of the low pressure, the particles have room to accelerate to very high speeds, and the magnetic forces expand the arc so that the bulk of its plasma becomes concentrated at the surface, bombarding the glass. The bombardment ablates (vaporizes) large amounts of quartz from the inner wall. This ablation creates a sudden, violent, localized increase in the internal pressure of the lamp, increasing the efficiency of the flash to very high levels. The ablation, however, causes extensive wear to the lamp, weakening the glass, and they typically need replacement after a very short lifetime.
Ablative flashtubes need to be refilled and vacuumed to the proper pressure for each flash. Therefore, they cannot be used for very high-repetition applications. Also, this usually precludes the use of very expensive gases like krypton or xenon. The most common gas used in an ablative flashtube is air, although sometimes cheap argon is also used. The flash usually must be very short to prevent too much heat from transferring to the glass. However, because nearly all the plasma is concentrated at the surface, the lamps have very low inductance and flashes can often be shorter than a normal lamp of comparative size. The flash from a single ablative flashtube can also be more intense than multiple lamps. For these reasons, the most common use for the lamps is for the pumping of dye lasers.
Variable pulse width control
In addition, an insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) can be connected in series with both the trigger transformer and the lamp, making adjustable flash durations possible. An IGBT used for this purpose must be rated for a high pulsed-current, so as to avoid over-current damage to the semiconductor junction. This type of system is used frequently in high average-power laser systems, and can produce pulses ranging from 500 microseconds to over 20 milliseconds. It can be used with any of the triggering techniques, like external and series, and can produce square wave pulses. It can even be used with simmer voltage to produce a "modulated" continuous wave output, with repetition rates over 300 hertz. With the proper large bore, water-cooled flashtube, several kilowatts of average-power output can be obtained.
Electrical requirements
The electrical requirements for a flashtube can vary, depending on the desired results. The usual method is to first determine the pulse duration, the maximum amount of energy tolerable at that duration (explosion energy), and the safe amount of operating energy. Then pick a current density that will emit the desired spectrum, and let the lamp's resistance determine the necessary combination of voltage and capacitance to produce it. The resistance in flashtubes varies greatly, depending on pressure, shape, dead volume, current density, time, and flash duration, and therefore, is usually referred to as impedance. The most common symbol used for lamp impedance is Ko, which is expressed as ohms per the square root of amps (ohms(amps0.5).
Ko is used to calculate the amount of input voltage and capacitance needed to emit a desired spectrum, by controlling the current density. Ko is determined by the internal diameter, arc length, and gas type of the lamp and, to a lesser extent, by fill pressure. The resistance in flashtubes is not constant, but quickly drops as current density increases. In 1965, John H. Goncz showed that the plasma resistivity in flashtubes is inversely proportional to the square root of current density. As the arc develops, the lamp experiences a period of negative resistance, causing both the resistance and voltage to decrease as the current increases. This occurs until the plasma comes into contact with the inner wall. When this happens, the voltage becomes proportional to the square root of current, and the resistance in the plasma becomes stable for the remainder of the flash. It is this value which is defined as Ko. However, as the arc develops the gas expands, and calculations for Ko do not take into account the dead volume, which leads to a lower pressure increase. Therefore, any calculation of Ko is merely an approximation of lamp impedance.
Output spectrum
Xenon
As with all ionized gases, xenon flashtubes emit light in various spectral lines. This is the same phenomenon that gives neon signs their characteristic color. However, neon signs emit red light because of extremely low current-densities when compared to those seen in flashtubes, which favors spectral lines of longer wavelengths. Higher current-densities tend to favor shorter wavelengths. The light from xenon, in a neon sign, likewise is rather violet.
The spectrum emitted by flashtubes is far more dependent on current density than on the fill pressure or gas type. Low current-densities produce narrow spectral-line emission, against a faint background of continuous radiation. Xenon has many spectral lines in the UV, blue, green, red, and IR portions of the spectrum. Low current densities produce a greenish-blue flash, indicating the absence of significant yellow or orange lines. At low current-densities, most of xenon's output will be directed into the invisible IR spectral lines around 820, 900, and 1000 nm. Low current-densities for flashtubes are generally less than 1000 A/cm2.
Higher current-densities begin to produce continuum emission. Spectral lines broaden and become less dominant as light is produced across the spectrum, usually peaking, or "centered", on a certain wavelength. Optimum output-efficiency in the visual range is obtained at a density that favors "greybody radiation" (an arc that produces mostly continuum emission, but is still mostly translucent to its own light; an effect similar to sunlight when it passes through a cloud). For xenon, greybody radiation is centered near green, and produces the right combination for white light. Greybody radiation is produced at densities above 2400 A/cm2.
Current densities that are very high, approaching 4000 A/cm2, tend to favor black-body radiation. Spectral lines all but disappear as the continuum radiation dominates, and output center shifts toward the ultraviolet. As current densities become even higher, visually, xenon's output spectrum will begin to settle on that of a blackbody radiator with a color temperature of 9800 kelvins (a rather sky-blue shade of white). Except in cases where intense UV light is needed, such as water decontamination, blackbody radiation is usually not desired because the arc becomes opaque, and much of the radiation from within the arc can be absorbed before reaching the surface, impairing output efficiency.
Due to its high-efficiency, white output, xenon is used extensively for photographic applications, despite its great expense. In lasers, spectral-line emission is usually favored, as these lines tend to better match absorption lines of the lasing media. Krypton is also occasionally used. At low current-densities, krypton's spectral-line output in the near-IR range is better matched to the absorption profile of neodymium-based laser media than xenon emission, and very closely matches the narrow absorption-profile of Nd:YAG. None of xenon's spectral lines match Nd:YAG's absorption lines so, when pumping Nd:YAG with xenon, the continuum radiation must be used.
Krypton and other gases
All gases produce spectral lines which are specific to the gas, superimposed on a background of continuum radiation. With all gases, low current-densities produce mostly spectral lines, with the highest output being concentrated in the near-IR between 650 and 1000 nm. Krypton's strongest peaks are around 760 and 810 nm. Argon has many strong peaks at 670, 710, 760, 820, 860, and 920 nm. Neon has peaks around 650, 700, 850, and 880 nm. As current densities become higher, the output of continuum radiation will increase more than the spectral-line radiation at a rate 20% greater, and output center will shift toward the visual spectrum. At greybody current-densities there is only a slight difference in the spectrum emitted by various gases. At very high current-densities, all gases will begin to operate as blackbody radiators, with spectral outputs resembling a blue giant star, centered in the UV.
Heavier gases exhibit higher resistance, and therefore, have a higher value for Ko. Impedance, being defined as the resistance required to change energy into work, is higher for heavier gases, and as such, the heavier gases are much more efficient than the lighter ones. Helium and neon are far too light to produce an efficient flash. Krypton can be as good as 40% efficient, but requires up to a 70% increase in pressure over xenon to achieve this. Argon can be up to 30% efficient, but requires an even greater pressure-increase. At such high pressures, the voltage drop between the electrodes, formed by the spark streamer, may be greater than the capacitor voltage. These lamps often need a "boost voltage" during the trigger phase, to overcome the extremely high trigger-impedance.
Nitrogen, in the form of air, has been used in flashtubes in home made dye lasers, but the nitrogen and oxygen present form chemical reactions with the electrodes, and themselves, causing premature wear and the need to adjust the pressure for each flash.
Some research has been done on mixing gases to alter the spectral output. The effect on the output spectrum is negligible, but the effect on efficiency is great. Adding a lighter gas will only reduce the efficiency of the heavier one.
Light production
As the current pulse travels through the tube, it ionizes the atoms, causing them to jump to higher energy-levels. Three types of particles are found within the arc plasma, consisting of electrons, positively ionized atoms, and neutral atoms. At any given time during the flash, the ionized atoms make up less than 1% of the plasma and produce all of the emitted light. As they recombine with their lost electrons they immediately drop back to a lower energy-state, releasing photons in the process. The methods of transferring energy occur in three separate ways, called "bound-bound", "free-bound", and "free-free" transitions.
Within the plasma, positive ions accelerate toward the cathode while electrons accelerate toward the anode. Neutral atoms move toward the anode at a slower rate, filling some localized pressure differential created by the ions. At normal pressures this motion is in very short distances, because the particles interact and bump into each other, and, exchanging electrons, they reverse direction. Thus, during the pulse neutral atoms are constantly ionizing and recombining, emitting a photon each time, relaying electrons from the cathode to the anode. The greater the number of ion transitions for each electron; the better the conversion efficiency will be, so longer tubes or higher pressures both help increase the efficiency of the lamp. During the pulse, skin effect causes free electrons to gather near the inner wall, creating an electron sheath around the plasma. This makes the area electro-negative and helps to keep it cool. The skin effect also increases inductance by inducing eddy currents in the central plasma.
Bound-bound transitions occur when the ions and neutral atoms collide, transferring an electron from the atom to the ion. This method predominates at low current-densities, and is responsible for producing the spectral-line emission. Free-bound transitions happen when an ion captures a free electron. This method produces the continuum emission, and is more prominent at higher current-densities. Some of the continuum is also produced when an electron accelerates toward an ion, called free-free transitions, producing bremsstrahlung radiation. Bremsstrahlung radiation increases with increasing energy density, and causes a shift toward the blue and ultraviolet end of the spectrum.
Intensity and duration of flash
The only real electrical-limit to how short a pulse can be is the total-system inductance, including that of the capacitor, wires, and lamp itself. Short-pulse flashes require that all inductance be minimized. This is typically done using special capacitors, the shortest wires available, or electrical-leads with a lot of surface area but thin cross-sections. For extremely fast systems, low-inductance axial-leads, such as copper tubing, plastic-core wires, or even hollowed electrodes, may be used to decrease the total-system inductance. Dye lasers need very short pulses and sometimes use axial flashtubes, which have an annular cross section with a large outer diameter, ring-shaped electrodes, and a hollow inner core, allowing both lower inductance and a dye cell to be placed like an axle through the center of the lamp.
In contrast, changes in the input voltage or capacitance have no effect on discharge time, although they do have an effect on current density. As flash duration decreases, the electrical energy becomes concentrated into shorter pulses, so the current density will increase. Compensating for this usually requires lowering the capacitance as pulse duration decreases, and then raising the voltage proportionately in order to maintain a high enough energy-level. However, as pulse duration decreases, so does the "explosion energy" rating of the lamp, so the energy level must also be decreased to avoid destroying the lamp.
The amount of power loading the glass can handle is the major mechanical limit. Even if the amount of energy (joules) that is used remains constant, electrical power (wattage) will increase in inverse proportion to a decrease in discharge time. Therefore, energy must be decreased along with the pulse duration, to keep the pulsed power levels from rising too high. Quartz glass (1 millimeter thick per 1 second discharge) can usually withstand a maximum of 160 watts per square centimeter of internal surface-area. Other glasses have a much lower threshold. Extremely fast systems, with inductance below critical damping (0.8 microhenries), usually require a shunt diode across the capacitor, to prevent current reversal (ringing) from destroying the lamp. If the pulse is allowed to ring through the lamp it will lengthen the flash, so the diode traps the ringing, allowing the lamp to shut down at the correct time.
The limits to long pulse durations are the number of transferred electrons to the anode, sputter caused by ion bombardment at the cathode, and the temperature gradients of the glass. Pulses that are too long can vaporize large amounts of metal from the cathode, while overheating the glass will cause it to crack lengthwise. For continuous operation the cooling is the limit. Discharge durations for common flashtubes range from 0.1 microsecond to tens of milliseconds, and can have repetition rates of hundreds of hertz. Flash duration can be carefully controlled with the use of an inductor.
The flash that emanates from a xenon flashtube may be so intense that it can ignite flammable materials within a short distance of the tube. Carbon nanotubes are particularly susceptible to this spontaneous ignition when exposed to the light from a flashtube. Similar effects may be exploited for use in aesthetic or medical procedures known as intense pulsed light (IPL) treatments. IPL can be used for treatments such as hair removal and destroying lesions or moles.
Lifetime
The lifetime of a flashtube depends on both the energy level used for the lamp in proportion to its explosion energy, and on the pulse duration of the lamp. Failures can be catastrophic, causing the lamp to shatter, or they can be gradual, reducing the performance of the lamp below a usable rating.
Catastrophic failure
Catastrophic failure can occur from two separate mechanisms: energy and heat. When too much energy is used for the pulse duration, structural failure of the glass envelope can occur. Flashtubes produce an electrical arc flash contained in a glass tube. As the arc develops, a supersonic shock-wave forms, traveling radially from the center of the arc and impacting the inner wall of the tube. If the energy level is low enough, a tap against the glass is all that will be heard. However, if the energy level used equals the "explosion energy" rating of the lamp, the impacting shock wave will fracture the glass, rupturing the tube. The resulting explosion creates a loud, sonic shock-wave, and may throw shattered glass several feet. The explosion energy is calculated by multiplying the internal surface-area of the lamp, between the electrodes, with the power-loading capacity of the glass. Power loading is determined by the type and thickness of the glass, and the cooling method that is used. Power loading is measured in watts per centimeter squared. However, because the pulsed-power level increases as the flash duration decreases, the explosion energy must then be decreased in direct proportion to the square root of discharge time.
Failure from heat is usually caused by excessively long pulse-durations, high average-power levels, or inadequate electrode-size. The longer the pulse; the more of its intense heat will be transferred to the glass. When the inner wall of the tube gets too hot while the outer wall is still cold, this temperature gradient can cause the lamp to crack. Similarly, if the electrodes are not of a sufficient diameter to handle the peak currents they may produce too much resistance, rapidly heating up and thermally expanding. If the electrodes heat much faster than the glass, the lamp may crack or even shatter at the ends.
Gradual failure
The closer a flashtube operates to its explosion energy, the greater the risk becomes for catastrophic failure. At 50% of the explosion energy, the lamp may produce several thousand flashes before exploding. At 60% of the explosion energy, the lamp will usually fail in less than a hundred. If the lamp is operated below 30% of the explosion energy the risk of catastrophic failure becomes very low. The methods of failure then become those that reduce the output efficiency and affect the ability to trigger the lamp. The processes affecting these are sputter and ablation of the inner wall.
Sputter occurs when the energy level is very low, below 15% of the explosion energy, or when the pulse duration is very long. Sputter is the vaporization of metal from the cathode, which is redeposited on the walls of the lamp, blocking the light output. Because the cathode is more emissive than the anode, the flashtube is polarized, and connecting the lamp to the power source incorrectly will quickly ruin it. However, even if connected properly, the degree of sputter may vary considerably from lamp to lamp. Therefore, it is impossible to predict the lifetime accurately at low energy-levels.
At higher energy-levels, wall ablation becomes the main process of wear. The electrical arc slowly erodes the inner wall of the tube, forming microscopic cracks that give the glass a frosted appearance. The ablation releases oxygen from the glass, increasing the pressure beyond an operable level. This causes triggering problems, known as "jitter." Above 30%, the ablation may cause enough wear to rupture the lamp. However, at energy levels greater than 15%, the lifetime can be calculated with a fair degree of accuracy.
When operated below 30% of the explosion energy, flashtube lifetime is generally between a few million to tens of millions of flashes.
Applications
As the duration of the flash that is emitted by a xenon flashtube can be accurately controlled, and due to the high intensity of the light, xenon flashtubes are commonly used as photographic strobe lights. Xenon flashtubes are also used in very high-speed or "stop-motion" photography, which was pioneered by Harold Edgerton in the 1930s. Because they can generate bright, attention-getting flashes with a relatively small, continuous input of electrical power, they are also used in aircraft warning lights, emergency vehicle lighting, fire alarm notification appliances (horn strobes), aircraft anticollision beacons, and other similar applications.
In dentistry it is used in "light box" devices to light-activate the hardening of various restorative and auxiliary light-curing resins (for example: Megaflash mini, Uni XS and other devices).
Due to their high intensity and relative brightness at short wavelengths (extending into the ultraviolet) and short pulse widths, flashtubes are also ideally suited as light sources for pumping atoms in a laser to excited states where they can be stimulated to emit coherent, monochromatic light. Proper selection of both the filler gas and current density is crucial, so that the maximum radiated output-energy is concentrated in the bands that are the best absorbed by the lasing medium; e.g. krypton flashtubes are more suitable than xenon flashtubes for pumping Nd:YAG lasers, as krypton emission in near infrared is better matched to the absorption spectrum of Nd:YAG.
Xenon flashtubes have been used to produce an intense flash of white light, some of which is absorbed by Nd:glass that produces the laser power for inertial confinement fusion. In total about 1 to 1.5% of the electrical power fed into the flashtubes is turned into useful laser light for this application.
Pulsed light (PL) is a technique to decontaminate surfaces by killing microorganisms using pulses of an intense broad spectrum, rich in UV-C light. UV-C is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to the band between 200 and 280 nm. Pulsed light works with xenon lamps that can produce flashes several times per second. Disinfection robots use pulsed UV light.
A recent application of flashlamps is photonic curing.
History
The flashtube was invented by Harold Edgerton in the 1930s as a means to take sharp photographs of moving objects. Flashtubes were mainly used for strobe lights in scientific studies, but eventually began to take the place of chemical and powder flashbulbs and flash lamps in mainstream photography.
Because electrical arcs could be made that were much faster than mechanical-shutter speeds, early high-speed photographs were taken with an open-air, electrical-arc discharge, called spark photography, helping to remove blur from moving objects. This was typically done with the shutter locked open while in a dark or dimly lit room, to avoid overexposing the film, and a method of timing the flash to the event to be photographed. The earliest known use of spark photography began with Henry Fox Talbot around 1850. In 1886, Ernst Mach used an open-air spark to photograph a speeding bullet, revealing the shockwaves it produced at supersonic speeds. Open-air spark systems were fairly easy to build, but were bulky, very limited in light output, and produced loud noises comparable to that of a gunshot.
In 1927, Harold Edgerton built his first flash unit while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wanting to photograph the motion of a motor in vivid detail, without blur, Edgerton decided to improve the process of spark photography by using a mercury-arc rectifier, instead of an open-air discharge, to produce the light. He was able to achieve a flash duration of 10 microseconds, and was able to photograph the moving motor as if "frozen in time."
His colleague's interest in the new flash apparatus soon provoked Edgerton to improve upon the design. The mercury lamp's efficiency was limited by the coolest part of the lamp, causing them to perform better when very hot but poorly when cold. Edgerton decided to try a noble gas instead, feeling that it would not be as temperature dependent as mercury, and, in 1930, he employed the General Electric company to construct some lamps using argon instead. The argon tubes were much more efficient, were much smaller, and could be mounted near a reflector, concentrating their output. Slowly, camera designers began to take notice of the new technology and began to accept it. Edgerton received his first major order for the strobes from the Kodak company in 1940. Afterward, he discovered that xenon was the most efficient of the noble gases, producing a spectrum very close to that of daylight, and xenon flashtubes became standard in most large photography sets. It was not until the 1970s that strobe units became portable enough to use in common cameras.
In 1960, after Theodore Maiman invented the ruby laser, a new demand for flashtubes began for use in lasers, and new interest was taken in the study of the lamps.
Safety
Flashtubes operate at high voltages, with currents high enough to be deadly. Under certain conditions, shocks as low as 1 joule have been reported to be lethal. The energy stored in a capacitor can remain surprisingly long after power has been disconnected. A flashtube will usually shut down before the capacitor has fully drained, and it may regain part of its charge through a process called "dielectric absorption". In addition, some types of charging systems can be equally deadly themselves. The trigger voltage can deliver a painful shock, usually not enough to kill, but which can often startle a person into bumping or touching something more dangerous. When a person is charged to high voltages a spark can jump, delivering the high capacitor current without actually touching anything.
Flashtubes operate at high pressures and are known to explode, producing violent shockwaves. The "explosion energy" of a flashtube (the amount of energy that will destroy it in just a few flashes) is well defined, and to avoid catastrophic failure, it is recommended that no more than 30% of the explosion energy be used. Flashtubes should be shielded behind glass or in a reflector cavity. If not, eye and ear protection should be worn.
Flashtubes produce very intense flashes, often faster than the eye can register, and may not appear as bright as they are. Quartz glass will transmit nearly all of the long and short wave UV, including the germicidal wavelengths, and can be a serious hazard to eyes and skin. This ultraviolet radiation can also produce large amounts of ozone, which can be harmful to people, animals, and equipment.
Many compact cameras charge the flash capacitor immediately after power-up, and some even just by inserting the batteries. Merely inserting the battery into the camera can prime the capacitor to become dangerous or at least unpleasant for up to several days. The energy involved is also fairly significant; a 330 microfarad capacitor charged to 300 volts (common ballpark values found in cameras) stores almost 15 joules of energy.
Popular culture
In the 1969 book The Andromeda Strain and the 1971 motion picture, specialized exposure to a xenon flash apparatus was used to burn off the outer epithelial layers of human skin as an antiseptic measure to eliminate all possible bacterial access for persons working in an extreme, ultraclean environment. (The book used the term 'ultraflash'; the movie identified the apparatus as a 'xenon flash'.)
Animation
Frame 1: The tube is dark.
Frame 2: The trigger pulse ionizes the gas, glowing with a faint, blue light. Spark streamers form from each electrode, moving toward each other along the inner surface of the glass tube.
Frame 3: Spark streamers connect and move away from the glass, and a plasma tunnel forms allowing current to surge.
Frame 4: Capacitor current begins to run away, heating the surrounding xenon.
Frame 5: As resistance decreases voltage drops and current fills the tube, heating the xenon to a plasma state.
Frame 6: Fully heated, resistance and voltage stabilize into an arc and the full current load rushes through the tube, causing the xenon to emit a burst of light.
See also
Flash (photography)
List of light sources
Strobe beacon
Strobe light
Air-gap flash
References
External links
Emission spectra of different flash lamps
Gas discharge lamps
Flash photography
Xenon
Articles containing video clips
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387520
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ%20Hell
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DJ Hell
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Helmut Josef Geier (born 6 September 1962), known professionally as DJ Hell, is a German DJ.
Biography
1970s and 1980s
DJ Hell described his musical beginnings in an interview with The European, telling them “I was socialized with German electronic music of the 1960s and 1970s. There were no commercial aspirations; it was all about experimentation.”
Hell has worked as a DJ since 1978. Starting in 1983, he began working as a DJ at Club Libella in Kirchweidach, Germany, near his hometown of Altenmarkt an der Alz. This would be his first residency, where he cultivated his eclectic style of mixing New Wave, Ska, Punk, Rockabilly, Hip hop, and Disco in the same set. Further residencies followed, at Park Café and Tanzlokal Grössenwahn in Munich, where, as one of the first house DJs in Germany he regularly performed at house music parties. In 1987 he organized the first acid house party there, and in the same year at Grössenwahn deejayed at Run–D.M.C.’s aftershow party. At the end of the 1980s, he developed his style at various Munich clubs and dance halls from New Wave, EBM, Electro, and Hip hop to include House and Techno.
1990s
In 1991, Hell was instrumental in establishing Peter Wacha's label Disko B, and until 1996 was closely involved as A&R. The label's first release in 1991, Silicon Soul’s track Who Needs Sleep Tonight was licensed by Hell, who produced a remix for the b-side: The DJ G. Hell Remix. To sign the contract with the New York band, he flew to New York City. Disko B Records was launched for the release.
Hell's first self-produced single, My Definition of House Music (on R&S) became a club hit in 1992 with over 100,000 records sold, drawing recognition to DJ Hell among the first generation of Techno DJs who also released records.
During his time with Disko B and until 1997, DJ Hell was also a resident DJ at Ultraschall, Munich's first pure techno club, located on the site of the former Munich-Riem Airport and later at the former Pfanni factory compound Kunstpark Ost. During the 1990s DJ Hell had further residencies in Berlin, at E-Werk and WMF, from 1992 at Tresor, and in the 2000s at Watergate.
Parallel to his A&R work in Munich, in 1992 DJ Hell became A&R manager for the label Logic Records in Frankfurt, and in the same year compiled the world's first trance compilation, Logic Trance.
In 1993 he lived for a year in New York City, where was booked as a resident DJ at Limelight, together with Jeff Mills. In 1994 DJ Hell moved to Berlin and worked for the record store Hard Wax. Hell's debut album Geteert & Gefedert (Tarred & Feathered) was released on Disko B in 1994. In 1995, he moved back to Bavaria.
That same year, Hell was the only German DJ to be invited to be on a John Peel Session, including a radio interview, in London. The session was released that year on Disko B.
In addition to his work as a DJ and producer, in 1996 he founded the label International Deejay Gigolos in Munich, for which he served from the first day onward as the label mastermind, A&R, and art director. Parallel to managing the label, as a DJ and event organizer, Hell also curated over 40 Bavarian Gigolo Nights featuring international DJs and live bands in various clubs in Munich.
During this period in the late 1990s, numerous releases on International Deejay Gigolos notably fuelled the 1980s revival in the German and international club scene, establishing DJ Hell as one of the founders of the Electroclash subgenre. International Deejay Gigolos has released works by big names on the international Techno, House, and Electro scenes, including Jeff Mills, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Dave Clarke, Tiga, Fischerspooner, Dopplereffekt, Vitalic, Bobby Konders, The KLF, Tuxedomoon, and Laurent Garnier. Fischerspooner was discovered by DJ Hell and debuted on International Deejay Gigolos. Stylistically, International Deejay Gigolos focused, beyond the Electroclash genre, also on Electro, EBM, electronic avant-garde House, Tech-House, and Techno, with influences from 1980s Pop and Disco. In the 20 years spanning 1996 to 2016 that he has handled A&R for the label, Hell has released over 300 singles and albums on International Deejay Gigolos.
In 1998, Hell's second album Munich Machine was released on Disko B and V2 Records. According to The Guardian Munich Machine was an important record that helped to catalyse electroclash. According to the music magazine De:Bug: “Munich Machine feels like the result of a dynamic collaboration by Munich residents engaged in the club scene and who know how to work with it. Every aspect of it has been carefully crafted and sometimes it seems as if DJ Hell is using this kind of mega-mix to grow beyond himself. This is particularly evident when he mixes together very different sources.”
In 1999, Arnold Schwarzenegger sued International Deejay Gigolos for using his picture in the logo. Hell had to stop selling all records that bore the logo and pay a fine of 150,000 euros.
2000s
From 2000 to 2003, he ran the disco and nightclub Villa Traunstein, located in the Bavarian town of Traunstein, where he was responsible for the club's high-profile, international DJ bookings, including the likes of WestBam, Sven Väth, and Jeff Mills.
In 2003, DJ Hell lived for a second time in New York City, where he produced his third studio album NY Muscle, for which he collaborated with several artists, including Alan Vega, Erlend Øye, James Murphy, and singer Billie Ray Martin. The website allmusic.com wrote about NY Muscle: “This is the sound of nighttime New York City from the outsider perspective of an infamous German named Hell, and it’s dark, dark, debauched fun.”
Since 2005, DJ Hell has been based in both Munich and Berlin, and moved the label office to Berlin. Since the early 2010s Hell lives again mainly in Munich and in his hometown Altenmarkt at the Chiemsee.
From 2007 to 2010, he served as musical coordinator for Berlin fashion designer Michael Michalsky, for whose fashion shows he regularly produced the music. Hell has also performed at the after-show parties of Michael Michalsky's StyleNite, held during the Berlin Fashion Week. DJ Hell has been producing music for fashion shows since the mid-1990s, for the likes of Hugo Boss, Raf Simons, Patrick Mohr, Dirk Schönberger, and Donatella Versace – ever since he was first asked by fashion designer Kostas Murkudis to accompany one of his fashion shows in Berlin with music.
DJ Hell occasionally works with renowned fashion labels, either lending his name or collaborating as a designer. This work has given rise to an underwear collection for Wendy & Jim, women's underpants for Agent Provocateur, CD cases for Magma, and a pair of glasses for Freudenhaus. In 2004, Karl Lagerfeld photographed DJ Hell for V Magazine. These photographs were then exhibited at a gallery in Berlin. DJ Hell on his affinity for fashion (in SPEX #316/2008, p. 95f): “In England, fashion and music have gone together for decades. In Germany, however, one tends to deny a musician’s competence if he defines himself superficially, that is, according to things that are visible. Just think of David Bowie on the male side, and Grace Jones on the female side, and it becomes clear that a union between fashion and music can be incredibly prolific.”
As a DJ, Hell has toured worldwide, and repeatedly headlined international festivals such as the Loveparade and Mayday in Berlin, Fuji Rock and Wire in Tokyo, the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the Time Warp Festival in Mannheim. He was the first Techno DJ to perform at the University of Havana in 1997. The performance was filmed by a German film crew directed by Torsten Schulz, and screened in 2000. In 2002, Romuald Karmakar shot a segment of his film “196 BPM” during a performance by Hell at WMF.
In 2003, GQ magazine named DJ Hell “Man of the Year” in the category of music.
In 2009 Hell released the album Teufelswerk (Devil’s Work), which again features several international guest stars, such as Bryan Ferry, Peter Kruder, P. Diddy, Roberto di Gioia, Mijk van Dijk, Christian Prommer, and Billie Ray Martin. The double album is conceptually divided into “day” and “night” parts, and ranked in the Top 50 of the German Media Control charts.
According to Hell in an interview with Resident Advisor: “I did Kosmische Musik in a new way. This is where I come from, I grew up with the early German electronic pioneers of music, and this is why I went in this direction. Often it is called German electronic avant-garde, or psychedelic music. I went back to the '70s and tried to do it in my own way.”
The Guardian on Teufelswerk: “With Hell acting as conductor, and Kruder, Prommer, and Roberto di Gioia playing a mixture of synths, acoustic guitars, Wurlitzers and ‘rhythm machines,’ the four sweep back and forth across Europe, mapping the psychic highways that link Kraftwerk's Düsseldorf and Jean Michel Jarre's imaginary, futuristic Paris; Pink Floyd at the UFO Club in 1966, and Café del Mar in 1987; cavernous booming dubstep nights in modern Berlin and Goblin's progressive 1970's Italy.”
Since 2009, DJ Hell has supported the feminist Ukrainian activist group FEMEN with various DJ and television appearances.
The self-confessed fan of the FC Bayern Munich soccer club is a jersey sponsor for TSV Altenmarkt, the football club of his hometown. Contrary to rumors, he does not possess a professional coaching license. For the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Hell was booked as a DJ for the opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, but the event was canceled on short notice by FIFA.
DJ Hell on his football passion in Alert, 8/2002: “I watch the home games of FC Bayern Munich. I also represented Germany as a DJ at the recent European and World Championships, travelling with the German national team from city to city, and deejayed on the evening before the games. My contract stated that the organizer had to get me tickets for the games.” (See Alert 8/2002, p. 51)
2010s
In 2013, DJ Hell's remix of Tim Deluxe's track Transformation held the number 1 position on the Beatport techno charts for nine weeks.
In the same year, DJ Hell performed an hour live on Boiler Room TV on the occasion of the 1st birthday. This clip soon became a viral hit, with almost 880,000 views (Status: December 2020).
The countertenor and new wave singer Klaus Nomi interpreted Henry Purcell's original composition from the opera “King Arthur” spectacularly in 1982 as an early hybrid of electronic and classical music. DJ Hell, who has admired Klaus Nomi since his early days as a DJ and has always DJ'd him, bought the rights to the original composition and released his reworked version of the song as a single on International Deejay Gigolos in 2014.
In 2015, DJ Hell gave a lecture together with Sascha Arnold at the Munich Chamber of Architects with a picture presentation about club architecture and culture in Munich during the 1970s and 1980s. In the same year, Electronic Beats by Telekom filmed a Slices documentary about DJ Hell.
For the Design Hotel Flushing Meadows in Munich, DJ Hell designed one of eleven hotel rooms on the third floor in 2015. The room is designed entirely in black color and houses as a design element a life-size band of metal skeletons on keyboard, electric guitar and mic stand above the bed.
For the 2015/16 winter collection of fashion designer Boris Bidjan Saberi, who now lives and works in Barcelona, DJ Hell produced the music in 2015, which can also be heard in an official promotional video by Saberi.
In spring 2017, DJ Hell's fifth album Zukunftsmusik was released. Like his studio album Teufelswerk released eight years earlier, it was co-produced by Peter Kruder in Vienna. On Christmas Eve 2016 appeared with I Want U the first single release from the album. The accompanying video, produced by Hell, features animated gay comic artwork by Finnish artist Tom of Finland, who was known for homoerotic drawings of masculine men. The press photos for the album were taken by photographer Greg Gorman at his home in Los Angeles. Sven Marquardt, the photographer and bouncer of the techno club Berghain, was also involved with various photographs on DJ Hell covers of International Deejay Gigolos.
DJ Hell about future music: “This album is largely to be understood as a homage to gay culture, which with disco, house, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and techno can be seen as the nucleus of club culture. Club culture as we know it today is based at its core on the gay house culture invented by dj Ron hardy at Chicago's Warehouse and paralleled by Larry levan at New York's Paradise Garage.”
In Gerrit Starczewski's 2017 Ruhrpott road movie Pottorginale, DJ Hell embodied a hitman. The sequel to the film, in which DJ Hell plays the pop singer Helmut, is scheduled for March 2021.
At the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen of 2017, DJ Hell's video I Want U took second place of the "MuVi Award". The jury judged the 4-minute video: “A beautiful collaboration that elevates both DJ Hell's music and Tom of Finland's imagery to a common and higher level. Funny, sexy and intelligent in its use of graphic material, I Want U builds on a concept that is confidently sustained. The film is simple but not repetitive, using variations in the music to drive the imagery. Full of allusions to the history of the music video, this is an original look at a much-loved part of the subversive canon.”.
For Balenciaga Paris, DJ Hell produced a DJ mix for various 3D art videos: Balenciaga Loop 05 - Nightlife and Balenciaga Loop 06 - After Hours He also played at the 2017 & 2018 aftershow parties.
The own perfume – Helmut Josef Geier – was released in 2018, under the name DJ Hell “Techno”. It was presented at the Berlin Soho House store. "My first perfume is based mainly on incense components. It gets its freshness from citrus elements and earthy components. I can't reveal all the ingredients, but churches, like clubs, have always been meeting places for believers. I understand club music and club culture as faith, so a religion of its own.".
DJ Hell composed the soundtrack for the film Yung, which actor and director Henning Gronkowski shot in 2019. "The film," said DJ Hell in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, "portrays daily lives of girls in the Berlin party jungle, unvarnished, direct and sensitive." The soundtrack wa released on Hell's new output The DJ Hell Experience. The film had its world premiere at the Münchner Filmtage 2019.
In the late-night show Ringlstetter (BR), DJ Hell was a guest of Hannes Ringlstetter in September 2018.
Since 2020
In 2020 DJ Hell founded a new label called The DJ Hell Experience. The Hamburg-based distributor wordandsound is responsible for distribution. For the first album released under the new label, House Music Box, the artist Jonathan Meese contributed a picture for the cover. The electronic music magazine FAZEMAG chose House Music Box as the Album of the Year 2020. The album's first video features a Hell avatar, which will also be used at festivals and shows in the future. Another collaboration with Meese is the album Meese x Hell - Hab keine Angst, hab keine Angst, ich bin deine Angst, to be released in April 2021 by Daniel Richter’s Buback, records Hamburg.
In March 2021, Soft Cell - Tainted Love Remix 2021 was released on Cleopatra Records in the U.S.
To the book Mensch – Maschinen – Musik. Das Gesamtkunstwerk Kraftwerk, edited by Uwe Schütte (publication date February 2021), DJ Hell has written a detailed personal foreword.
In the exhibition “Nachts. Clubkultur in München“ („Nights. Club Culture in Munich”), which the Munich Stadtmuseum will be showing from April 2021 to January 2022, DJ Hell will play a significant role – he plans to make his record collection available to the museum for the show. The cultural-historical exhibition is dedicated to Munich's nightlife and club culture from the post-war period to the present in the form of a nocturnal foray.
DJ Hell is one of the DFB ambassadors for the 2024 European Football Championship to be held in Germany, the UEFA Euro 2024.
DJ Hell is the designated curator of the nascent Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEM) in Frankfurt am Main.
Awards
“Most successful national A&R,” Dance Music Award, 2001
“Man of the Year,” GQ Magazine, 2003, category: music
“Best DJ,” Music and Machine Award, Berlin, 2004
“Best Techno DJ” (nominee), DJ Awards, 2007
“Best Techno DJ” (nominee), DJ Awards 2008
“Best German Act,” Echo nominee, Berlin, 2009
“Best German Album”, Echo nominee, Berlin, 2009
Groove Magazine Reader Polls
1995: DJ National: 2nd place
1996: DJ National: 2nd place
1997: DJ National: 2nd place
1997: Label National: 1st place
1998: DJ National: 2nd place
1998: Label National: 2nd place
1999: National: 2nd place
1999: Label National: 3rd place
2000: DJ National: 3rd place
2000: Label National: 3rd place
2001: National: 2nd place
2001: Label National: 1st place
2002: National: 2nd place
2002: Label National: 2nd place
2003: National: 3rd place
2003: Label National: 4th place
2004: National: 3rd place
2004: Label National: 3rd place
Spex Magazine Reader and Editors’ polls
SPEX 1/99: Year in Review 1998 // Editors’ Picks for Best Album: 43rd place: DJ Hell: Munich Machine
SPEX 1-2/01: Year in Review 2000: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: DJ Hell
SPEX 1-2/02: Year in Review 2001: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: DJ Hell
SPEX 1-2/03: Year in Review 2002: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: DJ Hell
SPEX1-2/04: Year in Review 2003: Reader Polls for Best Song: 26th place: Hell Feat. Erlend Øye: Keep on Waiting
SPEX1-2/04: Year in Review 2003: Reader Polls for Best album: 36th place: Hell: NY Muscle
SPEX1-2/04: Year in Review 2003: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: Hell
SPEX 1-2/05: Year in Review 2004: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: DJ Hell
SPEX 1-2/06: Year in Review 2005: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: DJ Hell
SPEX 1-2/07: Year in Review 2006: Reader Polls for Best DJ: 2nd place: DJ Hell
SPEX 1-2/10: Year in Review 2009: Editors’ Picks for Best Album: 35th place: Hell: Teufelswerk
SPEX 1-2/10: Year in Review 2009: Reader Polls for Best Album: 37th place: Hell: Teufelswerk
SPEX 1-2/10: Reader Polls Best Song: 26th place: Hell: Electronic Germany
Discography
Geteert & Gefedert (Disko B)
Mixes Of Gary Numan Vol. 2 (Random Records)
Repassion (International Deejay Gigolo Records)
My Definition Of House Music (R&S)
Red Bull From Hell EP (Disko B)
Sprung Aus Den Wolken / Butter Säure (Kickin Records)
Three Degrees Kelvin / Like That! (Magnetic North)
Ultraworld EP Vol. 1 (Disko B)
Allerseelen (Disko B)
Albino EP (Disko B)
Original Street Techno (Disko B)
Totmacher (Disko B)
Totmacher Interpretationen (Disko B)
Munich Machine (V2 Records, Inc.)
Suicide Commando (V2 Records, Inc.)
Copa (Disko B)
Rock My Body To The Beat (International Deejay Gigolo Records)
Keep On Waiting (International Deejay Gigolo Records)
N.Y. Muscle (2003, Motor Music)
Listen To The Hiss feat. Alan Vega (International Deejay Gigolo Records)
Je regrette Everything feat. Billy Ray Martin International Deejay Gigolo Records)
Best of Hell (International Deejay Gigolo Records)
Fun Boy (International Deejay Gigolo Records)
Teufelswerk (2009, International Deejay Gigolo Records)
Teufelswerk House Remixes Part I (2011, Embassy of Music)
Teufelswerk House Remixes Part II (2012, Embassy of Music)
For a complete discography see the article about DJ Hell in the German Wikipedia.
Films
Durch die Nacht mit … mit Bai Ling and DJ Hell (Documentary, directed by Hasko Baumann, ARTE, 2005)
Fürst Nachtleben – DJ Hell (Documentary, written and Directed by Hilde Bechert, Bayerischer Rundfunk, 2006.)
Freak Show (Directed by Angelika Leppert, Producer: DJ Hell, International DJ Gigolo Records, 2005.)
196 bpm – Die Nacht der Raver (Documentary, directed by Romuald Karmakar, Pantera Film, 2002.)
Techno Salsa (Documentary, directed by Torsten Schulz, Absolut Medien, 1999.)
References
External links
Official Facebook page
DJ Hell on Twitter
DJ Hell on Soundcloud
Full discography at Discogs.com
1962 births
Living people
Musicians from Munich
German DJs
Electroclash
Electronic dance music DJs
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387562
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports%20video%20game
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Sports video game
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A sports video game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with a video games, including team sports, track and field, extreme sports, and combat sports. Some games emphasize actually playing the sport (such as FIFA , Pro Evolution Soccer and Madden NFL), whilst others emphasize strategy and sport management (such as Football Manager and Out of the Park Baseball). Some, such as Need for Speed, Arch Rivals and Punch-Out!!, satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been popular throughout the history of video games and is competitive, just like real-world sports. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, and are updated annually to reflect real-world changes. The sports genre is one of the oldest genres in gaming history.
Game design
Sports games involve physical and tactical challenges, and test the player's precision and accuracy. Most sports games attempt to model the athletic characteristics required by that sport, including speed, strength, acceleration, accuracy, and so on. As with their respective sports, these games take place in a stadium or arena with clear boundaries. Sports games often provide play-by-play and color commentary through the use of recorded audio.
Sports games sometimes make use of different modes for different parts of the game. This is especially true in games about American football such as the Madden NFL series, where executing a pass play requires six different gameplay modes in the span of approximately 45 seconds. Sometimes, other sports games offer a menu where players may select a strategy while play is temporarily suspended. Association football video games sometimes shift gameplay modes when it is time for the player to attempt a penalty kick, a free shot at goal from the penalty spot, taken by a single player. Some sports games also require players to shift roles between the athletes and the coach or manager. These mode switches are more intuitive than other game genres because they reflect actual sports.
Older 2D sports games sometimes used an unrealistic graphical scale, where athletes appeared to be quite large in order to be visible to the player. As sports games have evolved, players have come to expect a realistic graphical scale with a high degree of verisimilitude. Sports games often simplify the game physics for ease of play, and ignore factors such as a player's inertia. Games typically take place with a highly accurate time-scale, although they usually allow players to play quick sessions with shorter game quarters or periods.
Sports games sometimes treat button-pushes as continuous signals rather than discrete moves, in order to initiate and end a continuous action. For example, football games may distinguish between short and the long passes based on how long the player holds a button. Golf games often initiate the backswing with one button-push, and the swing itself is initiated by a subsequent push.
Types
Arcade
Arcade sports games have traditionally been very popular arcade games. The competitive nature of sports lends itself well to the arcades where the main objective is usually to obtain a high score. The arcade style of play is generally more unrealistic and focuses on a quicker gameplay experience. However the competitive nature of sports and being able to gain a high score while competing against friends for free online, has made online sports games very popular. Examples of this include the NFL Blitz and NBA Jam series.
Simulation
Simulation games are more realistic than arcade games, with the emphasis being more on realism than on how fun the game is to pick up and play based from the competitive seasons of each sport. The simulation-style tend to be slower and more accurate with normal rules while arcade games tend to be fast and can have all kinds of ad-hoc rules and ideas thrown in, especially pre-2000s. Examples of this include the EA Sports FC, NHL, EA Sports WRC, F1, MotoGP, PGA Tour, PGA Tour 2K, MLB The Show, Madden NFL and NBA 2K series.
Management
A sports management game puts the player in the role of team manager. Whereas some games are played online against other players, management games usually pit the player against AI controlled teams in the same league. Players are expected to handle strategy, tactics, transfers, and financial issues. Various examples of these games can be found in the sports management category.
Multi-sport
Since Track & Field (1983), various multi-sport video games have combined multiple sports into a single game. Wii Sports and Nintendo Switch Sports are recent examples. A popular sub-genre are Olympic video games, including Track & Field and other similar titles. Multi-sport tournaments are becoming the basis for computer games.
Sports-based fighting
Sports-based fighting games are titles that fall firmly within the definitions of both the fighting game and sports game genres, such as boxing and wrestling video games. As such, they are usually put in their own separate subgenres. Often the fighting is far more realistic than in traditional fighting games (though the amount of realism can greatly vary), and many feature real-world franchises or fighters. Examples of this include the Fight Night, UFC 2009 Undisputed, EA Sports UFC and WWE 2K series.
History
Origins (1958–1972)
Sports video games have origins in sports electro-mechanical games (EM games), which were arcade games manufactured using a mixture of electrical and mechanical components, for amusement arcades between the 1940s and 1970s. Examples include boxing games such as International Mutoscope Reel Company's K.O. Champ (1955), bowling games such as Bally Manufacturing's Bally Bowler and Chicago Coin's Corvette from 1966, baseball games such as Midway Manufacturing's Little League (1966) and Chicago Coin's All Stars Baseball (1968), other team sport games such as Taito's Crown Soccer Special (1967) and Crown Basketball (1968), and air hockey type games such as Sega's MotoPolo (1968) and Air Hockey (1972) by Brunswick Billiards.
The earliest sports video game dates backs to 1958, when William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two, a competitive two-player tennis game played on an oscilloscope. The players would select the angle at which to put their racket, and pressed a button to return it. Although this game was incredibly simple, it demonstrated how an action game (rather than previous puzzles) could be played on a computer. Video games prior to the late 1970s were primarily played on university mainframe computers under timesharing systems that supported multiple computer terminals on school campuses. The two dominant systems in this era were Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-10 and Control Data Corporation's PLATO. Both could only display text, and not graphics, originally printed on teleprinters and line printers, but later printed on single-color CRT screens.
Ralph Baer developed Table Tennis for the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972. While the console had other sports-themed game cards, they required the use of television overlays while playing similarly to board games or card games. Table Tennis was the only Odyssey game that was entirely electronic and did not require an overlay, introducing a ball-and-paddle game design that showcased the potential of the new video game medium. This provided the basis for the first commercially successful video game, Pong (1972), released as an arcade video game by Atari, Inc.
Ball-and-paddle era (1973–1975)
Numerous ball-and-paddle games that were either clones or variants of Pong were released for arcades in 1973. Atari themselves released a four-player cooperative multiplayer variant, Pong Doubles (1973), based on tennis doubles. In the United States, the best-selling arcade video game of 1973 was Pong, followed by several of its clones and variants, including Pro Tennis from Williams Electronics, Winner from Midway Manufacturing, Super Soccer and Tennis Tourney from Allied Leisure (later called Centuri), and TV Tennis from Chicago Coin.
In Japan, arcade manufacturers such as Taito initially avoided video games as they found Pong to be simplistic compared to more complex EM games, but after Sega successfully tested-marketed Pong in Japan, Sega and Taito released the clones Pong Tron and Elepong, respectively, in July 1973, before the official Japanese release of Pong by Atari Japan (later part of Namco) in November 1973. Tomohiro Nishikado's four-player Pong variant Soccer was released by Taito in November 1973, with a green background to simulate an association football playfield along with a goal on each side. Another Taito variant, Pro Hockey (1973), set boundaries around the screen and only a small gap for the goal.
Tomohiro Nishikado wanted to move beyond simple rectangles to character graphics, resulting in his development of a basketball game, Taito's TV Basketball, released in April 1974. It was the earliest use of character sprites to represent human characters in a video game. While the gameplay was similar to earlier ball-and-paddle games, it displayed images both for the players and the baskets, and attempted to simulate basketball. Each player controls two team members, a forward and a guard; the ball can be passed between team members before shooting, and the ball has to fall into the opposing team's basket to score a point. The game was released in North America by Midway as TV Basketball, selling 1,400 arcade cabinets in the United States, a production record for Midway up until they released Wheels the following year. Ramtek later released Baseball in October 1974, similarly featuring the use of character graphics.
In 1975, Nintendo released EVR-Race, a horse racing simulation game with support for up to six players. It was a mixture between a video game and an electro-mechanical game, and played back video footage from a video tape.
Decline (1976–1982)
After the market became flooded with Pong clones, the Pong market crashed around the mid-1970s. Sports video games would not regain the same level of success until the 1980s.
In 1976, Sega released an early combat sport game, Heavyweight Champ, based on boxing and now considered the first fighting game.
In March 1978, Sega released World Cup, an association football game with a trackball controller. In October 1978, Atari released Atari Football, which is considered to be the first video game to accurately emulate American football; it also popularized the use of a trackball, with the game's developers mentioning it was inspired by an earlier Japanese association football game that used a trackball. Atari Football was the second highest-earning arcade video game of 1979 in the United States, below only Taito's shoot 'em up blockbuster Space Invaders (1978), though Atari Football was the only sports game among the top ten highest-earners.
In 1980, Mattel's Basketball for the Intellivision was the first basketball video game to be licensed by the National Basketball Association (NBA). On home computers, Microsoft's Olympic Decathlon (1980) was one of the first sports-related programs to mix game and simulation elements, and was an early example of an Olympic track-and-field game. The first association football management simulation, Football Manager, was released for the ZX Spectrum computer in 1982.
Between 1981 and 1983, the Atari's VCS (2600) and Mattel's Intellivision waged a series of high-stakes TV advertising campaigns promoting their respective systems, marking the start of the first console wars. Atari prevailed in arcade games and had a larger customer base due to its lower price, while Intellivision touted its visually superior sports games. Sports writer George Plimpton was featured in the Intellivision ads, which showed the parallel games side by side. Both Atari and Intellivision fielded at least one game for baseball, American football, hockey, basketball and association football. Atari's sports games included Activision Tennis (1981).
Resurgence (1983–1985)
Sports video games experienced a resurgence from 1983. As the golden age of arcade video games came to an end, arcade manufacturers began looking for ways to reinvigorate the arcade video game industry, so they began turning to sports games. The arcade industry began producing sports games at levels not seen since the days of Pong and its clones, which played a role in the recovery of the arcade market by the mid-1980s. There were initially high expectations for laserdisc games to help revive the arcade industry in 1983, but it was instead non-laserdisc sports games that ended up being the most well-received hits at amusement arcade shows by late 1983.
Arcades
In March 1983, Sega released Alpha Denshi's arcade game Champion Baseball, which became a blockbuster success in Japanese arcades, with Sega comparing its impact on Japanese arcades to that of Space Invaders. Champion Baseball was a departure from the "space games" and "cartoon" action games that had previously dominated the arcades, and subsequently served as the prototype for later baseball video games. It had a split-screen format, displaying the playfield from two camera angles, one from the outfield and another close-up shot of the player and batter, while also giving players the option of selecting relief pitchers or pinch hitters, while an umpire looks on attentively to make the game calls. The game also had digitized voices for the umpire, and individual player statistics.
Sports games became more popular across arcades worldwide with the arrival of Konami's Track & Field, known as Hyper Olympic in Japan, introduced in September 1983. It was an Olympic-themed athletics game that had multiple Olympic track-and-field events (including the 100-meter dash, long jump, javelin throw, 110-meter hurdles, hammer throw, and high jump) and allowed up to four players to compete. It had a horizontal side-scrolling format, depicting one or two tracks at a time, a large scoreboard that displayed world records and current runs, and a packed audience in the background. Despite the industry's hype for laserdisc games at the time, Track & Field became the most well-received game at the Amusement Machine Show (AM Show) in Tokyo and the Amusement & Music Operators Association (AMOA) show in the United States. The game sold 38,000 arcade units in Japan, became one of the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1984 in the United States, and the top-grossing arcade game of 1984 in the United Kingdom. It was also the basis for an organized video game competition that drew more than a million players in 1984. The success of Track & Field spawned other similar Olympic video games.
Numerous sports video games were subsequently released in arcades after Track & Field, including American football games such as 10-Yard Fight (1983) by Irem and Goal to Go (1984) by Stern Electronics, boxing video games such as Nintendo's Punch-Out (1984), martial arts sports fighting games such as Karate Champ (1984), the Nintendo VS. System titles Vs. Tennis and Vs. Baseball, Taito's golf game Birdie King II, and Data East's Tag Team Wrestling. 10-Yard Fight in 1983 had a career mode, where the player progresses from high school, to college, professional, playoff, and Super Bowl, as the difficulty increases with each step. Irem's waterskiing game Tropical Angel had a female player character, and was one of the two most well-received games at the September 1983 AM Show (along with Hyper Olympic) for its graphics and gameplay. Another sports game with female player characters was Taito's Joshi Volleyball (Big Spikers), which topped the Japanese table arcade cabinet chart in December 1983. Kaneko's Roller Aces was a roller skating game played from a third-person perspective, while Technōs Japan released the wrestling game Tag Team Wrestling.
In the field of association football games, Alpha Denshi's Exciting Soccer (1983) featured digitized voices and a top-down overhead perspective, which was later popularized by Tehkan World Cup (1985) from Tehkan (later Tecmo). Tehkan World Cup was a multiplayer association football game with a trackball controller, where a button was used for kicking the ball and the trackball used for the direction and speed of the shot, with gameplay that was fairly realistic. It was a landmark title for association football games, considered revolutionary for its trackball control system, its top-down perspective that allows players to see more of the pitch, and its trackball-based game physics. It provided the basis for later association football games such as MicroProse Soccer (1988) and the Sensible Soccer series (1992 debut).
Several sports laserdisc games were released for arcades in 1984, including Universal's Top Gear which displayed 3D animated race car driving, while Sega's GP World and Taito's Laser Grand Prix displayed live-action footage. Sega also produced a bullfighting game, Bull Fight, and a multiple-watersports game Water Match (published by Bally Midway), which included swimming, kayaking and boat racing; while Taito released a female sports game based on high-school track & field, The Undoukai, and a dirt track racing game Buggy Challenge, with a buggy. Other dirt racing games from that year were dirt bike games: Nintendo's Excitebike and SNK's motocross game Jumping Cross. Nintendo also released a four-player racquet sport game, Vs. Tennis (the Nintendo Vs. System version of Tennis).
That same year, ice hockey games were also released: Alpha Denshi's Bull Fighter and Data East's Fighting Ice Hockey. Data East also released a lawn sports game Haro Gate Ball, based on croquet, while Nichibutsu released a game based on roller derby, Roller Jammer. Meanwhile, Technos Japan released a game based on sumo wrestling, Syusse Oozumou, and the first martial arts combat-sport game, Karate Champ, considered one of the most influential fighting games. In 1985, Nintendo released an arm wrestling game, Arm Wrestling, while Konami released a table tennis game that attempted to accurately reflect the sport, Konami's Ping Pong.
Homes
On home consoles, Mattel released Intellivision World Series Baseball (IWSB), designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, in late 1983. It is considered the earliest sports video game to use multiple camera angles to show the action in a manner resembling a sports television broadcast. Earlier sports games prior to this had displayed the entire field on screen, or scrolled across static top-down fields to show the action. IWSB mimicked television baseball coverage by showing the batter from a modified "center field" camera, the baserunners in corner insets and defensive plays from a camera behind the batter. It was also one of the first sports video games to feature audibly speaking digitized voices (as opposed to text), using the Mattel Intellivoice module. The game was sophisticated for its time, but was a commercial failure, released around the time of the video game crash of 1983 when the North American home video game market collapsed.
Nintendo released a series of highly successful sports games for the Nintendo Entertainment System console and the arcade Nintendo Vs. System, starting with Baseball (1983) and Tennis (1984). They played an important role in the history of the Nintendo Entertainment System, as they were the earliest NES games released in North America, initially in the arcades and then with the console's launch. Nintendo's arcade version VS. Baseball (1984) was competing with Sega's earlier hit Champion Baseball in the arcades.
On home computers, Track & Field spawned similar hit Olympic games for computer platforms, such as Ocean Software's Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984). Electronic Arts (EA) produced their first sports game for home computers, the basketball title Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One (1983), which was the first licensed sports game based on the names and likenesses of famous athletes; the inclusion of famous real world athletes would become one of the most important selling points for sports games. One on One became Electronic Arts' best-selling game, and the highest-selling computer sports game, having sold 400,000 copies by late 1988.
Further growth (1986–1994)
In the late 1980s, basketball video games gained popularity in arcades. Konami's Double Dribble (1986) featured colorful graphics, five-on-five gameplay, cutaway animations for slam dunks, and a digitized version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" theme. It was considered the most realistic basketball game upon release, with fast-paced action, detailed players, a large side-scrolling court, innovative cinematic dunks, and detailed sound effects, beginning a trend where presentation would play an increasingly important role in sports games. Magic Johnson's Fast Break (1988) by Arcadia Systems had detailed characters and audio clips of Magic Johnson's voice. Midway, who had not released a basketball game in sixteen years since Taito's TV Basketball in 1974, released Arch Rivals (1989), a two-on-two game featuring large players with distinct looks, a basketball court, a crowd, cheerleaders, four periods, the ability to rough up an opponent, and big dunks capable of backboard shattering. Konami's Punk Shot (1990) is an arcade basketball game with an element of violence, allowing players to physically attack each other, which CU Amiga magazine compared to the film Rollerball (1975).
The success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America led to the platform becoming a major platform for American sports video games. Basketball games included a port of Double Dribble, with a halo mechanic signifying the optimum release for shots, and Tecmo NBA Basketball (1992). American football video games included Tecmo Bowl (1987), which was ported to the NES with the NFL Players Association license, and Tecmo Super Bowl (1991), which introduced a season mode with nearly the entire NFL roster. Tecmo Super Bowl is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential games of all time, as it was the first mainstream sports video game with both the league and player association licenses, with ESPN ranking it the greatest sports video game of all time. Sega also developed American football games for their competing Master System console, Great Football in 1987 and American Pro Football (Walter Payton Football) in 1989, the latter very well received by critics at the time.
The late 1980s is considered the "Golden Age" of baseball video games. Namco's R.B.I. Baseball (1986) and the Atlus title Major League Baseball (1988) for the NES were the first fully licensed baseball video games. SNK's Baseball Stars (1989) was a popular arcade-style NES game, while Jaleco's NES title Bases Loaded (1987) was a simulation game with statistics. In 1988, EA released Earl Weaver Baseball, developed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, which for the first time combined a highly accurate simulation game with high quality graphics. This was also the first game in which an actual baseball manager provided the computer AI. In 1996 Computer Gaming World named EWB the 25th of its Best 150 Games of All Time, the second highest ranking for any sports game in that 1981–1996 period (after FPS Football).
The 1990s began in the 16-bit era, as a wave of fourth generation video game consoles were created to handle more complex games and graphics. The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in particular became renowned for its sports video games, as it was more powerful than the NES and with Sega targeting an older audience than Nintendo's typically younger target demographic at the time. Basketball video games included EA's Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs (1991), which launched the NBA Live series. World Series Baseball (1994) introduced the "catcher-cam" perspective, launching the World Series Baseball series and becoming the first game in the Sega Sports line.
In 1989, Electronic Arts producer Richard Hilleman hired GameStar's Scott Orr to re-design John Madden Football for the fast-growing Sega Genesis. In 1990, Orr and Hilleman released Madden Football. They focused on producing a head-to-head two-player game with an intuitive interface and responsive controls. Electronic Arts had only expected to sell around 75,000 units, but instead the title sold around 400,000 units.
In 1990, Taito released Football Champ, an association football game that allows up to four players in both competitive and cooperative gameplay. It also let players perform a number of actions, including a back heel, power kick, high kick, sliding tackle, super shot, and fouling other players (kicking, punching, and pulling shirts), which the player can get away with if the referee isn't looking, or get a yellow or red penalty card for if he is. In 1991, the American football game Tecmo Super Bowl was the first mainstream sports game to feature both the league and player association licenses of the sport it emulated; previous titles either had one license or the other, but Tecmo Super Bowl was the first to feature real NFL players on real teams.
Orr joined EA full-time in 1991 after the success of Madden on the Sega Genesis, and began a ten-year period of his career where he personally supervised the production of the Madden Football series. During this time EA formed EA Sports, a brand name used for sports games they produced. EA Sports created several ongoing series, with a new version released each year to reflect the changes in the sport and its teams since the previous release.
Sega launched its own competing NFL series on the Sega Genesis. The gameplay of Sega's earlier 1987 Master System title Great Football (1987) was the basis for Joe Montana Football (1991), developed by EA and published by Sega for the Genesis. Sega then released their own sequel without EA's involvement, Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football (1991), which became the first American football game with audio commentary. After Sega acquired the NFL license, they shortened the title to NFL Sports Talk Football Starring Joe Montana, which later became known as Sega's NFL series. Due to strong competition from Madden, the series was cancelled in 1997.
Licensed basketball games began becoming more common by the early 1990s, including Sega's Pat Riley Basketball (1990) and Acme Interactive's David Robinson's Supreme Court (1992) for the Sega Genesis, and Hudson Soft's Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball (1991) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). EA followed Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (1988) with Lakers versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs (1989), the latter ported to the Genesis in 1991, which added more simulation aspects to the subgenre. In the arcades, Midway followed Arch Rivals with NBA Jam (1993), which introduced digitized sprites similar to their fighting game Mortal Kombat (1992), combined with a gameplay formula similar to Arch Rivals. In its first twelve months of release, NBA Jam generated over to become the highest-grossing arcade sports game of all time.
FIFA International Soccer (1993), the first game in EA's FIFA series of association football video games, released on the Sega Mega Drive and became the best-selling home video game of 1993 in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the top-down perspective of earlier association football games, FIFA introduced an isometric perspective to the genre. International Superstar Soccer (1994), the first game in Konami's International Superstar Soccer (ISS) series, released for the SNES. A rivalry subsequently emerged between the FIFA and ISS franchises.
Transition to 3D polygons (1994–1997)
In the 1990s, 3D graphics were introduced in sports games. Early uses of flat-shaded polygons date back to 1991, with home computer games such as 4D Sports Boxing and Winter Challenge. However, it was not until the mid-1990s that 3D polygons were popularized in sports games.
Sega's arcade title Virtua Striker (1994) was the first association football game to use 3D graphics, and was also notable for its early use of texture mapping. Meanwhile, Sierra Online released American football title Front Page Sports Football in 1995 for the PC. The following year, Computer Gaming World named it twelfth of the Best 150 Games of All Time, the highest ranking sports game on the list.
International Superstar Soccer Pro (ISS Pro), released for the PlayStation in 1997, was considered a "game-changer" for association football games, which had been largely dominated by rival FIFA on home systems for the last several years. Developed by Konami Tokyo, ISS Pro introduced a new 3D engine capable of better graphics and more sophisticated gameplay than its rival. Whereas FIFA had a simpler "arcade-style" approach to its gameplay, ISS Pro introduced more complex simulation gameplay emphasizing tactics and improvisation, enabled by tactical variety such as nine in-match strategy options.
In 1997, Electronic Gaming Monthly reported that sports games accounted for roughly 50% of console software sales.
Extreme sports enter into the mainstream (1996–2001)
At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, extreme sport video games began to appear more frequently.
Namco's Alpine Racer (1994) was a skiing winter sports simulator that became a major success in arcades during the mid-1990s. This led to a wave of similar sports games capitalizing on its success during the late 1990s, from companies such as Sega, Namco, Konami and Innovative Concepts.
In 1996, two snowboarding video games were released: Namco's Alpine Surfer in the arcades, and the UEP Systems game Cool Boarders for the PlayStation console. The following year, Square's popular role-playing video game, Final Fantasy VII, included a snowboarding minigame that was later released as an independent snowboarding game, Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding, for mobile phones. In 2000, SSX was released. Based around boardercross, the game featured fast downhill races, avoiding various objects whilst using others to perform jumps and increase the player's speed.
In 1997, Sega released one of the first mainstream skateboarding games, Top Skater, in the arcades, where it introduced a skateboard controller interface. Top Skater served as a basic foundation for later skateboarding games. The following year saw the release of the console skateboarding game Street Sk8er, developed by Atelier Double and published by Electronic Arts. In 1999, the subgenre was further popularized by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, an arcade-like skateboarding game where players were challenged to execute elaborate tricks or collect a series of elements hidden throughout the level. Tony Hawk's went on to be one of the most popular sports game franchises.
Sports games become big business (2002–2005)
Association football games became more popular in the 2000s. Konami's ISS series spawned the Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series in the early 2000s. A rivalry subsequently emerged between FIFA and PES, considered the "greatest rivalry" in the history of sports video games. PES became known for having "faster-paced tactical play" and more varied emergent gameplay, while FIFA was known for having more licenses. The FIFA series had sold over units by 2000, while the PES series had sold more than units by 2002. The sales gap between the two franchises had narrowed by the mid-2000s.
On December 13, 2004, Electronic Arts began a string of deals that granted exclusive rights to several prominent sports organizations, starting with the NFL. This was quickly followed with two deals in January 2008 securing rights to the AFL and ESPN licenses. This was a particularly hard blow to Sega, the previous holder of the ESPN license, who had already been affected by EA's NFL deal. As the market for football brands was being quickly taken by EA, Take-Two Interactive responded by contacting the Major League Baseball Players Association and signing a deal that granted exclusive third-party major-league baseball rights; a deal not as restrictive, as first-party projects were still allowed. The NBA was then approached by several developers, but declined to enter into an exclusivity agreement, instead granting long-term licenses to Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Midway Games, Sony, and Atari. In April 2005, EA furthered its hold on American football licensing by securing rights to all NCAA brands.
Motion detection
Sega Activator: IR motion detection (1993–1994)
In 1993, Sega released the Sega Activator, a motion detection game controller designed to respond to a player's body movements, for their Genesis console. The Activator was based on the Light Harp, a MIDI controller invented by Assaf Gurner. He was an Israeli musician and Kung Fu martial artist who researched inter disciplinarian concepts to create the experience of playing an instrument using the whole body's motion. It was released for the Mega Drive (Genesis) in 1993. It could read the player's physical movements and was the first controller to allow full-body motion sensing, The original invention related to a 3 octaves musical instrument that could interpret the user's gestures into musical notes via MIDI protocol. The invention was registered as patent initially in Israel on May 11, 1988, after 4 years of R&D. In 1992, the first complete Light Harp was created by Assaf Gurner and Oded Zur, and was presented to Sega of America.
Like the Light Harp, the Activator is an octagonal frame that lies on the floor. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on the frame vertically project thin, invisible beams of infrared light. When something, such as a player's arm or leg, interrupts a beam, the device reads the distance at which the interruption occurred, and interprets the signal as a command. The device can also interpret signals from multiple beams simultaneously (i.e., chords) as a distinct command.
Sega designed special Activator motions for a few of their own game releases. By tailoring motion signals specifically for a game, Sega attempted to provide a more intuitive gaming experience. A player could, for example, compete in Greatest Heavyweights of the Ring or Eternal Champions by miming punches.
Despite these efforts, the Activator was a commercial failure. Like the Power Glove of 1989, it was widely rejected for its "unwieldiness and inaccuracy".
Wii Remote: IR motion detection with accelerometry (2006–2009)
In 2006, Nintendo released Wii Sports, a sports game for the Wii console in which the player had to physically move their Wii Remote to move their avatar known as a Mii. The game contained five different sports—boxing, bowling, golf, tennis, and baseball—which could all be played individually or with multiple players. Players could also track their skill progress through the game, as they became more proficient at the different sports, and use the training mode to practice particular situations. As of 2013, Wii Sports became the second-highest selling video game of all time.
Wii Sports opened the way for other physically reactive sports-based video games, such as Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the first official title to feature both Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, in which players used the Wii Remote to simulate running, jumping and other Olympic sports. In 2008, Nintendo released Wii Fit, which allowed players to do aerobic and fitness exercises using the Wii Balance Board. In a similar light, 2008 saw the release of Mario Kart Wii, a racing game which allowed the player to use their remote with a Wii Wheel to act as a steering wheel, akin to those on traditional arcade racing games.
Sports games today (2010–present)
The most popular subgenre in Europe is association football games, which up until 2010 was dominated by EA Sports with the FIFA series and Konami with the Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series. While FIFA was commercially ahead, the sales gap between the two franchises had narrowed. FIFA responded by borrowing gameplay elements from PES to improve FIFA, which eventually pulled ahead commercially by a significant margin in the 2010s and emerged as the world's most successful sports video game franchise.
In North America, the sports genre is currently dominated by EA Sports and 2K Sports, who hold licenses to produce games based on official leagues. EA's franchises include the Madden NFL series, the NHL series, the PGA Tour series, the UFC series, the F1 series, the EA Sports FC series, and the NBA Live series. 2K Sports' franchises include the NBA 2K, PGA Tour 2K and WWE 2K series. All of these games feature real leagues, competitions and players. These games continue to sell well today despite many of the product lines being over a decade old, and receive, for the most part, consistently good reviews.
With 2K & EA Sports' domination and many sports leagues carrying exclusive licences, the North American sports video game market has become very difficult to enter; competing games in any of the above genres, with the exception of racing games, tend to be unsuccessful. This has led to a sharp drop in sports-themed titles over recent years especially with arcade titles. One of the most notable exceptions is Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series, which is often hailed as an alternative to the FIFA series, but does not contain as many licensed teams, players, kits, or competitions. Another deviation from the norm is Sony's MLB The Show series, which now has a monopoly on the baseball genre after the withdrawal of 2K after MLB 2K13. Racing games, due to the variation that the sport can offer in terms of tracks, cars and styles, offer more room for competition and the selection of games on offer has been considerably greater (examples being F1 and the World Rally Championship, and many unlicensed games). Sports management games, while not as popular as they used to be, live on through small and independent software development houses. Management titles today have transitioned to the very popular fantasy sports leagues, which are available through many websites such as Yahoo. Independent developers are also creating sports titles like Super Mega Baseball, The Golf Club, and Freestyle2: Street Basketball.
Nintendo has been able to make an impact upon the sports market by producing several Mario-themed titles, such as Mario Sports Mix, Mario Golf: Super Rush, Mario Sports Superstars, Mario Tennis Aces, and Mario Strikers: Battle League. These titles sell respectfully, but are only available on Nintendo's video game consoles, for example GameCube, Nintendo 64, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, Wii U and Nintendo Switch.
See also
Lists of sports video games
References
External links
Video game genres
Video game terminology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwaito
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Kwaito
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Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1990s. It is a variant of house music that features the use of African sounds and samples. Kwaito songs occur at a slower tempo range than other styles of house music and often contains catchy melodic and percussive loop samples, deep bass lines, and vocals. Despite its similarities to hip hop music, kwaito has a distinctive manner in which the lyrics are sung, rapped and shouted.
Etymology
The word kwaito is an Isicamtho term from the Gauteng townships and encompasses styles that range from guz, d'gong, and isgubhu to swaito. The word originates from the Afrikaans kwaai, which when used as a slang term is the equivalent of the English term hot. Kwaito led a post-Apartheid township subculture into the mainstream. Despite the fact that the Afrikaans language is associated with the apartheid regime and racial oppression, Afrikaans words are often drawn into the Isicamtho vocabulary, reshaped and used in a related or new context. M'du Masilela, a pioneering kwaito artist, said, "When house music got popular, people from the ghetto called it Kwaito after the Afrikaans slang word kwai [sic], meaning those house tracks were hot, that they were kicking." Another Isicamtho word derived from the Afrikaans word kwaai is amakwaitosi, which means gangster. The popular kwaito artist and producer Arthur Mafokate describes the relationship between kwaito and gangsterism as music revolving around ghetto life.
History
In the backdrop of a transforming South Africa, kwaito took shape in the Soweto township at the same time Nelson Mandela took office as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. The removal of the political and economic sanctions greatly transformed the South African music industry.
One of the first kwaito singles to become a hit in South Africa was the song "Kaffir" by Arthur Mafokate, which illustrated the freedom of expression resulting from political liberation in South Africa. House music arrived in Cape Town in the early 1990s at raves such as the World Peace Party and in the original venue Club Eden, and later Euphoria and DV8. This spread northward, where, in the mid-1990s, the genre was becoming popular in Johannesburg clubs such as 4th World, and local artists fused its sound with that of South African music. Arthur Mafokate, Oskido, Boom Shaka, and Mdu Masilela were among the first artists to produce a huge kwaito hit and popularize it in and outside of the Black townships. However, it was only after 2001 that kwaito artists and music found their way to Europe and the United States.
Newfound freedom gave South African musicians easier access to international works and a greater ability to freely express themselves. As a result, kwaito has also been known as the expression of this new freedom, and many anti-apartheid chants have been used as lyrics for kwaito songs. Kwaito has been called the music that defines the generation who came of age after apartheid. Its pulsing dance beat evolved from styles such as mbaqanga and dancehall, as well as house and disco.
Schools in the townships were unable to fund programs such as music classes to enhance the learning experience of their students. As kwaito did not require a formal knowledge of music theory, large spaces to rehearse, and expensive instruments, it was easily accessible to individuals in these downtrodden communities.
As kwaito became increasingly mainstream in South Africa, collaborations, such as between South African R&B artists Danny K and Mandoza, have become more common. Kwaito hits often attract a bit of media attention, as Arthur's August 2005 release "Sika Lekhekhe" (a Zulu phrase literally meaning "Cut this cake" and figuratively "Have sex with me") did. The song was banned by a SABC radio station and Arthur had to reshoot its video after several complaints from viewers who were offended by its sexually suggestive content. Similarly, the kwaito band Boom Shaka was widely criticized by the political establishment for its rendition of the national anthem to a kwaito beat. As much as it was started and popularized by Johannesburg based artists. In Durban, KwaZulu Natal Sandy B came with his album AmaJovi Jovi in 1994 which had to be the big national hit and the first kwaito album from that province.
The kwaito industry is growing fast and is becoming increasingly competitive. Popular artists include Zola, Mandoza, Trompies, Mzekezeke, Brown Dash, Mahoota, Spikiri, Mzambiya, Chippa, Msawawa, Mshoza, Thembi Seite, Thandiswa Mazwai, Brikz, TKZee, Unathi, and the late Brenda Fassie. The kwaito stars in South Africa are seen as celebrities who influence the culture, language, and economy of the nation in ways that were impossible during the years of governmentally imposed segregation.
TS, Ghetto Ruff, Kalawa Jazmee, and Bulldogs are the main recording companies that have discovered kwaito musicians. Jam Alley is a South African talent show that has been a venue for many young kwaito artists like Mandoza, Mzambiya, and Zola, as well as other pop stars. Some kwaito artists have even transcended a musical career. Zola, for instance, hosted a talk show called Zola 7 on SABC1.
The globalized music industry influenced the cultural evolution that was to generate kwaito. A popular import from the US and the UK, hip hop trickled through the music scene in South Africa, particularly amongst colored people, who began to identify with an American construct of Blackness, as well as strong parallels between the hardship experienced in the many poor neighborhoods of South Africa and the ghettos of New York out of which American hip hop grew. Local flavors and additives gradually started dominating the local take on hip hop, and so kwaito started taking shape. The development of the genre and other local sounds was given an enormous boost with one of the ANC's first legislative acts to dramatically increase the number of private radio stations in South Africa and regulate local music quotas of 20–40 percent. As a result of this, exposure to local music, and in particular kwaito, expanded dramatically, which made it very popular.
Global media corporations own the distribution rights of much of the music in South Africa, yet market it specifically to the local youth.
Politics
While many assert kwaito's apolitical character, it is worthwhile to note that a refusal to deal with the contemporary realm of politics is an extremely political statement that denounces the political status quo. In the words of Rastafarian teacher Leachim Tufani Semaj, "Whether you deal with politics or not, politics will deal with you. The statement that one does not deal in politics is in effect a political statement." Kwaito is often thought of as a means of recreation and escapism as a genre that looks to the future instead of to the past. While apartheid is no longer in place, South Africa continues to be riddled with social problems that demand to be addressed in the realm of culture creation. HIV/AIDS and the increase in violent crimes since the end of apartheid are among the problems facing the youth of South Africa. In other words, the absence of apartheid-related subject material in kwaito songs should not be seen as an absence of a political awareness and activism but rather as a shift in socio-political focus. Kwaito artist OscarwaRona recalls, "We used to do tracks where we would ask why is the divorce rate so high? Why are little children being found in shabeens drinking?" The aftermath of a system of racial subjugation that was in place for centuries is equally demanding of attention as the atrocities that occurred during apartheid.
Many have noted that the lyrics of kwaito songs are apolitical because it mostly helps to create dance-oriented music. The listeners had pointed out that in many cases, kwaito songs use catchy phrases. Gavin Steingo gave an example in his article "South African music after Apartheid: kwaito, the 'party politic,' and the appropriation of gold as a sign of success" by saying that there was not a political view in the first song of Mandoza's album because Godoba kept repeating "Cyborg/Move Your Skeleton" throughout the whole song. On the other hand, according to Simone Swink's article "Kwaito: much more than music", it is impossible to talk about kwaito music without referencing the political history of South Africa. He notes that kwaito music started with the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. He continues saying that it was very hard for Black South African artists to get signed in the music business before. Gavin Steingo stated that most kwaito is overtly political, even if it seems like it is not. He said that it was more of anti-political situation for the artist than apolitical because the youth of South Africa desire to disengage from the long years of oppression and political protest of the apartheid era. Therefore, kwaito music represents the refusal of politics. It has also been noted that there are some kwaito songs that reflect an artist's political view because there are some artists (e.g Zola) that rhyme, chant, or sing about explicitly political and ideological issues. However, there are cases when people say kwaito that they refer only to the apolitical variety.
Characteristics
This genre of music started emerging in the 1990s. It is a mixture of a number of different rhythms from marabi of the 1920s, kwela of the 1950s, mbaqanga/maskhandi of the hostel dwellers, bubblegum music of the 1980s, and Imibongo (African praise poetry). Great South African musicians such as Miriam Makeba and Brenda Fassie have influenced kwaito. At times the use of styles drawn from the African diaspora's hip hop, dub, jazz and UK house is evident.
The kwaito sound originated from the use of European instruments that Black African laborers had at their disposal after gold was found in Johannesburg. Another common characteristic is the dialogue between a man and a woman with the woman largely repeating the man's lines. It is predominantly dance music with light subject matter. Kwaito is also usually not sung, but is usually rhythmic speech.
Kwaito performances require the audience to interact through verbal responses. This is done in a call-and-response manner. The artist engages the listener, who in turn listens attentively and responds when required. It is also sung in one of South Africa's languages, which include Afrikaans, Zulu, and English. This makes it even more popular with its audience.
Instrumentally, kwaito music is easily recognized for its use of slowed-down house-music beats, with the kick drum emphasizing each beat in the 4/4 time signature, which is commonly called four-on-the-floor. Although it draws its most noticeable characteristics from house music, kwaito also draws upon the musical landscape that was popular in South Africa during the early 1990s, which included disco, hip-hop, and contemporary R&B, among other genres.
One characteristic that still is up for debate is whether or not to consider kwaito a mainly South African phenomenon. While many believe that it is a distinctly home-grown style of popular dance music that is rooted in Johannesburg urban culture and features rhythmically recited vocals over an instrumental backing with strong bass lines, it is still argued whether or not this is actually true because of how recently the music has hit the scene and some of the inspirations from which it is gathered. The debate is that it is largely influenced by music types from the United States or the United Kingdom. Therefore, some people believe, even though the roots of it are based in the movements by Mandela and the upheaval at the time, that it is not fully of South African origin. We can see the influence that American hip hop music has had on kwaito most visibly in the use of gold as a symbol of power. Kwaito artists will wear gold and diamonds, completely ignoring its gruesome history and connection to South Africa, in order to portray a rags-to-riches story like many hip hop artists do. Consumption of gold and diamonds, while at the same time saying you represent your people, is very similar to the problematic rhymes of many American hip hop artists who glorify the drug trade but claim that they want to improve the living standards in their communities. Furthermore, many kwaito artists would sell their records out of the trunk of their cars, a long-honored underground form of selling records that was common among many fledgling hip hop artists.
It is also important to incorporate the attitude that kwaito musicians have. Many critics have a very biased and Western point of view on the genre. Kwaito rose from a ghetto culture, and most critics always look at kwaito in a cultural-studies context rather than looking at the ethnomusicology side. What makes kwaito stick out is the fact that the music is always associated with a cultural context that brings out some extra meanings and messages. Furthermore, kwaito is considered by some critics as the aggressive township music. In South Africa, some kwaito music producers say that the genre is comparable to hip hop; it is only comparable because it has become more than just a genre of music but rather a movement in which people can create their own identities with their own values.
As Thokozani Mhlambi states in his article Kwaitofabulous, "In kwaito music, the emphasis lies not in the poetic essence of the lyrics but rather in the instrumental arrangement and the 'danceability' of the composition. Therefore I disagree with writers such as Maria McCloy, the author of Kwaito: Its History and Where It's at Now, who criticize kwaito, claiming that very little time and effort is put into kwaito production.... This criticism overlooks the music's multiple social contexts such as parties, street bashes, and clubs. These are social venues where people are more in pursuit of leisure than engaging in intellectual discourse." Not only does kwaito resist a sense of Western based oppression by remaining apolitical, but it also resists trends and Western influence in and of itself via mode of production. Kwaito, as Mhlambi affirms, has remained the music of its people, which is the music of the South African youth after the struggle who wish to pursue rest and relaxation as opposed to dwelling on the past. The term kwaito is a clear sign that oppression is not something to be, or that will be forgotten. The danceability and poetry inherent to kwaito, however, shows a reversion to better times—to cultural integrity. Through kwaito music, artists and youths collaborate to create, through music and dance, a realm where the struggle does not exist.
Impact and cultural significance
Kwaito is a form of self-expression and a way of life—it is the way many South Africans dress, speak, and dance. It is a street style as lifestyle, where the music reflects life in the townships, much the same way hip hop reflects life in the American ghetto. As a result, the growth of kwaito in post-Apartheid South Africa has changed not only the music scene but many urban cultural aspects as well. The fashion industry has boomed all over the country, with urban apparel designers such as Stoned Cherrie, Loxion Kulca, and Sun Godd'ess setting trends based on those trends emphasized by kwaito artists. YFM, a youth radio station launched in Gauteng in 1997, has become the most widely listened to urban youth radio station in the country, adhering to the principle of giving the youth the license to create its own identity. After having been rejected by major record labels of the apartheid era, many independent kwaito labels emerged such as Kalawa, Triple 9, and Mdu Music. These labels produced myriad employment opportunities for young Black producers, engineers, and attorneys in the music industry and, more importantly, has provided young Black people with a source of financial gain and dignity. Furthermore, kwaito has strengthened social integration. While promoting South Africa internationally through successful overseas tours by artists such as Bongo Maffin, Tkzee, and Boomshaka, kwaito has gained a huge following with older Black people who grew up on protest songs, as demonstrated by President Thabo Mbeki when he performed the S'guqa dance with kwaito artist Mzekezeke during his song "S'guqa ngamadolo" at the 2003 Freedom day celebrations. This marked a huge change in the way people envisioned kwaito, engendering a more widespread commercial audience.
There has been ongoing debate as to whether kwaito is a form of South African hip hop, or if the music is in its own unique category. There are many ways to evaluate this according to researcher Sharlene Swartz who says that in addition to the musical attributes of kwaito, it is important to look at production, consumption and culture. While some say that kwaito is a form of hip hop, Schwartz (and many native South Africans) argue that instead, kwaito is to black South Africans as hip hop has been to African Americans. In her article Is Kwaito South African Hip Hop? Swartz clarifies that "kwaito, like hip hop has become more than music... it provides youth with the means for creating an identity, establishing new societal norms and economic opportunities." Additionally, the kwaito artist Zola alludes to the idea that kwaito is a native South African genre in the documentary Sharp Sharp! when she explains how Kwaito is a combination of music that comes from ancient Nigerian drumming patterns and poetry that comes from the streets of the township. She ultimately parallels the kwaito movement to the hip hop movement and others by saying "I'm fighting the same struggle my brothers in the states and all over the world are fighting."
Mhlambi's Kwaitofabulous highlights that hip hop and kwaito are both genres of the African Diaspora, yet he points out their similarities do not provide a causal relationship between the two. Yes, both cultures grew out of black oppression by whites, and in a world where consumer culture has reached a global level, kwaito cannot claim to be completely free of hip hop's influence. On the other hand, kwaito is unique due to its integration of African language and instruments, and most importantly because of the distinctly South African political, social and economic conditions in which kwaito was born. A Newsweek report claims kwaito is South Africa's answer to hip hop music, and is different for it incorporates a slowed down house beat with jazz, blues, R&B and reggae. The title of a report on CNN.com, "Kwaito: South Africa's hip-hop?", calls a relationship between the two genres into question, and only likens them because both music styles have their own subcultures.
The development of kwaito has had a significant impact on South African culture and economy. It has become mainstreamed and features in everything from television and radio to fashion. Half of the South African population is under 21 years of age; therefore, youth culture is very important to the nation's economic prosperity. Kwaito provides an opportunity for the nation's youth to produce and sell something they enjoy all the meanwhile making a profit. This can especially be seen in the fashion industry where several Kwaito clothing lines have emerged including Stoned Cherrie and Black Coffee Label. When Kwaito first emerged in the early 1990s, "the look" was based around street threads and floppy Kangol hats. Today it is a blend of black urban style and modern influences.
Though there is a fear of gimmicky marketing and loss of authenticity in the Kwaito music industry, this will not occur so long as the industry remains controlled by the South African youth. Kwaito did come from the first black owned record companies in South Africa. The music will continue to be profitable to the country as a whole as well as the people as long as it remains a voice for the emerging middle class.
Kwaito music, in its most popular form, has made a statement by expressing the shift in interest by South African Youth taking an apolitical stance in the post-apartheid era. In a sense by rejecting and negating politics, they were making a political statement. However, the overwhelming message that is being expressed in the music and culture surrounding Kwaito is one of just wanting to have fun. This new sentiment portrays the desire of South African youth to diverge from the years of oppression and disempowerment under apartheid laws. The fading of these apartheid laws permits them to "spend a night in a club rather than under a curfew". Therefore, the lyrics of many popular kwaito songs focus on dancing and reflect the attitude of having fun for the sake of having fun, rather than engaging in the political issues of the time.
The apolitical stance of kwaito, however, has been seen by older generation South Africans as a sign of South African youth losing touch with important political struggles that have occurred in the country. As a result, these critics of kwaito claim that kwaito is losing its purpose (which is to speak out against the injustices that are occurring South Africa.) Artists of kwaito, however, claim that the time has come to use kwaito as a vehicle to celebrate the freedom South Africans have attained, leaving artists free to sing about other matters that are important to South African youth. Apolitical kwaito in this sense, relates to hip-hop as it is now: a form of entertainment. Though hip-hop from America has enjoyed international success and has been embraced by Africans, kwaito has yet to gain recognition in the U.S., arguably, because of the language. The language of kwaito (a mix of Zulu, Afrikaan, and Xhosa) gives a Kwaito a sound that sounds "messy" or unlike "mainstream party music". As a result, Kwaito remains most likely to be heard in South Africa.
Record sales
In a country where nearly half the population are under 21, youth culture exerts a major influence on social life. South Africa has a population of over 40 million; 75% are black and many are living in the ghetto. It's these youth especially who lay claim to kwaito. Their stories sparked it, and the post-apartheid economy gave them the chance to produce and sell it. Kwaito cries out to impoverished youths in the ghetto and has given young black artists a chance to shine. Today, South Africans are buying kwaito albums in record numbers. Record numbers are insignificant compared to the United States record sales. Selling 25,000 CDs in South Africa means an album has gone "gold," as opposed to the 500,000 record sales it takes to go gold in the United States. Some of the heavy hitters of kwaito have sold over 100,000 records, making them major players in the South African music industry.
Record producers
The DJ aspect of Kwaito is extremely popular. Famous kwaito DJs—such as DJ Oskido, Spikiri, DJ Rudeboy Paul, DJ Mjava, and DJ Cleo—are well known for producing many of the big Hip-Hop South African Artists. Many of these DJ's in Kwaito release their own albums after producing other famous musicians in South Africa. The majority of them do not make much money but have very high hopes for the future. DJ Cleo said "All I need is that one chance produce just that one song for any rapper, Jay-Z, Jah Rule, 50 Cents, whatever. And I will kill it. It will become a hit worldwide. Try me. Whoever you're going to play this to, get a hold of me." Very similar to other genres of music, Kwaito wants to stay original and stick close to the roots. DJ cleo is considered one who tries to stay careful not to abandon his kwaito fan base in a flash because many Kwaito fans take abandoning the original tunes as offensive and turning your back on the Kwaito meaning.
According to Rudeboy Paul, "Kwaito is a platform that serves to drive thoughts, ideas, gives kids from the township a voice in which to speak on what their concerns are, social ills happening around them, the fact that they can't find jobs out there, HIV and AIDS awareness as well."
King of kwaito
There are two artists who claim to be the kwaito originators:
One is M'du Masilela, who claims he was the first to mix bubble gum with House from the UK and the US back in the 1980s. The other is Arthur Mafokate, who is also credited by some as the king of Kwaito, including himself as he wrote in a two-page piece called "Am I the king of Kwaito?"
The first official kwaito song played in South Africa, done by Mafokate, with the usage of one of the most degrading words that white colonialists would call black Africans, is the Arabic word for 'non-believer' or a 'heathen' which is the word that Afrikaans described the natives with. In his song, Mafokate demands the Boss, 'Nee baas'..;
The song, written in several forms, talked about how apartheid will not just go away overnight but change is coming. His groundwork has created an avenue for South African youth to channel their anger, talent and their voice, an outlet that they can call their own. Through this music the youth were able to express their feelings of oppression. One of the originators of Kwaito, DJ and producer Oskido of B.O.P, has said that it started out as house with small additions to that genre such as congas and other instruments.
Women in kwaito
Kwaito is a largely male-dominated music genre, in regards to the artists as well as the management. But there are a number of female artists that have managed to become quite successful. Brenda Fassie, long time South African pop superstar, quickly adopted a Kwaito style as it surged to popularity in the 1990s. According to Time, she was known both for her diva attitude and scandals involving sex and drugs, but also for lyrics that dealt with complex issues of African culture and life. Lebo Mathosa rose to fame as part of the group Boom Shaka, and later became a solo artist. Despite (or perhaps because of) being sometimes called South Africa's 'wild child' because of her sexually explicit lyrics and dance moves, she gained widespread popularity, and performed at Nelson Mandela's 85th birthday celebration. According to FHM magazine Lebo Mathosa has also performed alongside superstar performers Will Smith and Missy Elliott and has also recorded a duet with R&B star Keith Sweat. In 2004, she was killed in a car crash. Iyaya, formerly of group Abashante, is known for her powerful voice as well as "taking raw, street sexuality to the stage.". Goddess, Venus, Chocolate and Rasta Queen are the four members of the all-female kwaito group Ghetto Luv. They have also adopted an "in your face" sexual style; the cover of their first album You Ain't Gonna Get None displays all four members completely naked.
During the emergence of the kwaito, Boom Shaka emerged as a voice for young women and a symbol of empowerment. They also use sexuality as an expression and celebration of black female bodies and the natural female sexual desires. Therefore Boom Shaka is also politically involved by trying to get women voices heard through recording a new South African anthem that simply says women have the power to change the society. "Kwaito has offered women a new kind of agency in self-representation in post-apartheid South Africa." A CNN article considered Boom Shaka and TKZee the most influential kwaito groups in South African music. Boom Shaka's music is not only popular in South Africa but all around Africa. The group's music represented the voice of young people who are often neglected by governments in post colonial Africa.
Criticism
Despite what it has brought to the country, kwaito faces critics. The kwaito music industry is viewed as male-dominated, especially in management. There are few successful female artists. Lebo Mathosa, who was one of kwaito's most famous female artists and a member of Boom Shaka, noted that it is "difficult because every producer that you meet in our country is male there isn't even one female producer that you could say ok I like that record that is produced by so and so." Others accuse kwaito as being talentless, commercialized and mass-produced, consisting of sexually-driven lyrics and dances.
Being male-dominated, kwaito tends to misrepresent women in their lyrics by referencing the body and sexual images. On the other hand, some kwaito groups like Trompies are using the image of the woman to make a social and political statement. In one of their music videos, there is a beauty contest and the women that win and get all the male attention are all on the heavier side. The group is trying to say that today's perception and definition of beauty does not have to adhere to other cultures' societal standards. Furthermore, more women are entering the kwaito music scene like artist Lesego Bile. She has claimed she enjoys the challenge of entered a male dominated music genre and uses her struggles from her past to help her stay true. She refuses to never exploit her body and dance sexually to please the crowd, like other female artists. She plans on making a strong statement for female artists, while commenting on social issues.
Kwaito has also been criticized in that it has been labeled as the African version of hip hop or an imitator. In Thokozani Mhlambi's article "Kwaitofabulous", he points out various European scholars who have disclaimed the authenticity of hip hop as they believe it to undermine the cultural and historical struggles of the South African people because of Kwaito's similarity with American hip hop. Mhlambi, however, disclaims by pointing out that the Black youth of America and South Africa have faced similar oppressive histories by the white population, and thus makes sense to have its music similar as well. He also points out that the criticism from onlookers from other cultures do not realize how both kwaito and hip hop require performances and music making to be a group process and thus requires collaboration. He believes kwaito and hip hop to have many similarities due to both genre's origins, however he does not believe kwaito to be a direct descendant of hip hop. Furthermore, many scholars and researchers of the genre, including Gavin Steingo, agree with Mhlambi in that they disclaim the idea that kwaito is purely South African hip hop. Steingo writes in an article titled "South African music after Apartheid: kwaito, the 'party politic,' and the appropriation of gold as a sign of success" that the genre was influenced by both house music and American hip hop, while also drawing on inspiration from ancient African music. Therefore, kwaito cannot be simply the South African version of hip hop. Also, Steingo writes that a version of hip hop music does already exist in the country, and it is not kwaito: "Because of seemingly obvious parallels between African American youth culture and the new Black South African youth culture, people have been inclined to think of kwaito as South African hip hop, or a South African version of hip hop (In 2000, Sterns/Earthworks released a kwaito compilation CD in the UK called Kwaito—South African Hip Hop). It would seem that this perceived familiarity is based primarily on the shared characteristic of rhyming in verse. And, though this is not totally invalid, it should be stated that there is a South African version of hip hop in South Africa and it is not (and has even come into conflict with) kwaito." Additionally, it is difficult to define Kwaito as a type of South African hip hop, as there is an actual emergent hip-hop scene. As kwaito, for the most part, remains apolitical, the hip hop scene, although less popular, generates a more political and gangster-esque style. This difference is described by the South African hip hop group Godessa, "Hip-hop is universal. We were excluded from Kwaito because we cannot understand it. To us, music is not just about dancing, it is a vehicle for us to speak to the masses." Similarly, hip hop is gaining popularity in Johannesburg, kwaito's stomping ground, and its emergence is fostering a rivalry of sorts, further separating the two genres. As Kwaito is more of a mixture of hip hop, disco, and house, the hip hop scene mirrors a more American style of hip-hop.
Regardless of criticism, kwaito music now plays an important and prominent role in South African youth culture.
Cultural context and implications
Kwaito is viewed as a cultural product of the societal norms and historical context of the townships of South Africa. It is both affected by Black South African society and influences the popular culture of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and their surrounding suburbs. Kwaito serves a transmitter of popular fashion, language, and attitude. Kwaito has also been adopted by mainstream advertisers and production companies as a means of addressing the masses and selling products. A combination of the popularity of Kwaito music and the search by transnational marketers for a means of addressing Soweto youth (considered to be popular cultures' trendsetters) has led to the use of Kwaito music as a method for advertising mainstream North American products.
Kwaito acts as a reference point for understanding the social situation and cultural norms of Soweto society. Many songs such as Bantwan by Bob Mabena, "whose lyrics marry consumerism and female objectification" or Isigaga by Prophets of Da City which "expresses the same negative and misogynistic attitudes.". Kwaito also addresses the oppression of black people and the context of colonialism in which they still live. Songs such as Arthur Mafokate's song 'Kaffir' addresses the prevalence of direct racism and Zola's song Mblwembe (problem child) reflects the prevalence of crime in the townships serve as a means of social dialogue. A third way in which a specific aspect black South African Society is reflected by Kwaito is in the dancehall nature of its origins and rhythms. It shows the prevalence of the dancehall in the impoverished townships and flat lands and illustrates the importance of the dancehall as a cultural meeting place. South African Kwaito enthusiast Nhlanhla Sibongile Mafu best articulated the balance between social commentary and recreation when he said, "dancing itself becomes the site for a radical rejection of the traditional struggle lyrics in favour of the liberation of pleasure, while at the same time attempting to use the language of the street to grapple with and articulate the present reality for the man and woman in the streets of the ghetto".
It is said that " ...a repressive society would result in a creative art...it is an ingredient, it acts as a catalyst to a man who is committed." In 1994 apartheid ended in South Africa. Kwaito music in South Africa became a symbol of the new generation of youth; furthermore it was not just music, but it stood for a way of life and associated with it was a way of talk, dance, and dress. Kwaito reflects life for the South African youth in the townships, much in the same manner that American hip hop portrays life in the American ghetto. This type of music seems to be the newly unsilenced voice of the people speaking out freely in their society.
Critics have compared Kwaito to other international subgenres such as Jamaica's dancehall and the UK's grime. Dancehall was founded in the 1950s and '60s right when Jamaicans were trying to gain independence from the British. Similarly Kwaito was formed right after the apartheid was lifted in South Africa, both by young members of the lower class. Additionally both have "taken cues from the trends of new governments that supposedly gave rise to the advancement of personal wealth, and glamorized lifestyles." They also share a number of themes in common including commentary on violence and crime, AIDS awareness, and women's safety.
The commonalities between dancehall and Kwaito are in fact rooted in a deeper relationship between South Africa and Jamaican music. African reggae artists like Côte d'Ivoire's Alpha Blondy and South Africa's own Lucky Dube were popular throughout the continent during apartheid, and Alpha helped shed a negative light on the oppressive regime when he compared apartheid to Nazism. Many currently renowned Kwaito musicians grew up listening to Jamaican music, and Stoan, a member of Bongo Maffin, explained in an interview just how necessary an outlet this kind of music was: the representations of black people imported into the country during apartheid were singularly negative ones, and Jamaican music was one of the few imported forms that celebrated blackness and gave ghettoized black youth in South Africa something to embrace and identify with. As he describes it,
"If we had to look at any other example of black people off the continent who have found their essence, it's Jamaicans. For us, for South Africans after the curtain was lifted, after we could see other things besides what was presented to us on television which was blacksploitation [sic.] movies and stuff like that, buffoons, you know the picture of us. Any other picture of a successful black man was him behaving like a caricature of himself. Jamaicans brought another element to a picture we had of us as an out of body experience. Yeah, so I think you'll find that a lot of people, you know, have been touched by the culture, in South Africa, within 10 years."
Similarities have also been raised among kwaito and grime. These genres are based out of the local popularity of dance music, in both the UK and Jamaica. Furthermore they are both offshoots of popular electronic genres: kwaito being an offshoot of house music and dub being a derivative of drum and bass as well as garage. Both of these genres are also becoming increasingly popular in the U.S.
Dances
Kwaito is more than just a music genre. An article posted on CNN.com described kwaito as a whole subculture with a swirl of irresistible dance beats. According to Sonjah Stanley-Niaah in her article "Mapping Black Atlantic Performance Geographies: From Slave Ship to Ghetto," dancing has given kwaito increased appeal. In South Africa, beginning in the 1950s, people go to "shebeens" to listen to music, dance, socialize on the weekends. The dancing girls at these parties, often hosted in houses as opposed to licensed clubs, served as a motivation for men to attend. As kwaito emerged and became the norm of music in the shebeens, its popularity rapidly increased. Boom Shaka, the first kwaito group, was also the first to create and popularize dance moves to accompany kwaito. The steps are said to offer a window into the everyday life of South Africans by building on traditional dance styles from the region. This new dance style has also led to discussion over gender relations. Kwaito dancing has brought on a new type of female display in South Africa. The fact that women dance independently and draw men to them has been redefining the gender boundaries for propriety, work, ethics and morality for the South African population.
Mapantsula is a male-dominated dance that came about in the 1980s representing the lower class culture. This dance includes synchronized movements by large groups of male dancers. Mapantsula was also the title of a 1988 film describing the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It was the first anti-apartheid film relating to black South Africans.
And Bhujwa dancing is also influenced by kwaito/house music, Bhujwa dancing originated in Soweto Jabulani; pioneered by Sphiwe ntini and Skhebstar Makhubu and then the culture eventually spread in Soweto and South Africa.
Kwaito and globalization
The homogenization of kwaito with American rap music, due to globalization, is viewed by kwaito artists as a threat to the preservation of their local South African music credibility. Thus, kwaito artists focus on maintaining an emotional link between customer and brand. This explains why transnational corporations are much less interested in homogenizing or Americanizing kwaito music because true kwaito represents and dictates South African experience. Americanizing kwaito, as is many artists' opinion, can potentially dilute the substance kwaito was originally based on.
See also
Tofo Tofo Dance group
References
Further reading
Gabin Steingo: Kwaito's Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Esinako Ndabeni & Sihle Mthembu: Born to Kwaito: Reflections on the Kwaito Generation. BlackBird Books, 2018, .
External links
Makokate interviewed
The Kwaito Generation, home page of an in-depth audio documentary (51 minutes, US, 2005).
MWEB Music, South African Website with Kwaito CD reviews and song clips (Searchable).
South African music (including Kwaito lyrics)
Is Kwaito South African Hip Hop? Why the answer matters and who it matters to, Sharlene Swartz The Youth Institute 14 May 2003
South African music after Apartheid: kwaito, the "party politic," and the appropriation of gold as a sign of success, Popular Music and Society, July, 2005
Kwaito Music Videos
African electronic dance music
House music genres
Hip hop genres
South African styles of music
South African hip hop
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary
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Calvary
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Calvary ( or ) or Golgotha () was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, Jesus was crucified.
Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage. The exact location of Calvary has been traditionally associated with a place now enclosed within one of the southern chapels of the multidenominational Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site said to have been recognized by the Roman empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, during her visit to the Holy Land in 325.
Other locations have been suggested: in the 19th century, Protestant scholars proposed a different location near the Garden Tomb on Green Hill (now "Skull Hill") about north of the traditional site and historian Joan Taylor has more recently proposed a location about to its south-southeast.
Biblical references and names
The English names Calvary and Golgotha derive from the Vulgate Latin , and (all meaning "place of the Skull" or "a Skull"), and used by Jerome in his translations of Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, Luke 23:33, and John 19:17. Versions of these names have been used in English since at least the 10th century, a tradition shared with most European languages including French (), Spanish and Italian (), pre-Lutheran German (), Polish (), and Lithuanian (). The 1611 King James Version borrowed the Latin forms directly, while Wycliffe and other translators anglicized them in forms like Caluarie, Caluerie, and Calueri which were later standardized as Calvary. While the Gospels merely identify Golgotha as a "place", Christian tradition has described the location as a hill or mountain since at least the 6th century. It has thus often been referenced as in English hymns and literature.
In the 1769 King James Version, the relevant verses of the New Testament are:
And when they were come unto a place called Golgatha, that is to say, a place of a skull, They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink. And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots...
And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull. And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not. And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.
And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.
And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: Where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.
In the standard Koine Greek texts of the New Testament, the relevant terms appear as Golgothâ (), Golgathân (), kraníou tópos (), Kraníou tópos (), Kraníon (), and Kraníou tópon (). Golgotha's Hebrew equivalent would be Gulgōleṯ (, "skull"), ultimately from the verb galal () meaning "to roll". The form preserved in the Greek text, however, is actually closer to Aramaic Golgolta, which also appears in reference to a head count in the Samaritan version of Numbers 1:18, although the term is traditionally considered to derive from Syriac Gāgūlṯā () instead. Although Latin can mean either "a skull" or "the skull" depending on context and numerous English translations render the relevant passages or "Place of the Skull", the Greek forms of the name grammatically refer to the place of a skull and a place named Skull. (The Greek word does more specifically mean the cranium, the upper part of the skull, but it has been used metonymously since antiquity to refer to skulls and heads more generally.)
The Fathers of the Church offered various interpretations of the name and its origin. Jerome considered it a place of execution by beheading (), Pseudo-Tertullian describes it as a place resembling a head, and Origen associated it with legends concerning the skull of Adam. This buried skull of Adam appears in noncanonical medieval legends, including the Book of the Rolls, the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, the Cave of Treasures, and the works of Eutychius, the 9th-century patriarch of Alexandria. The usual form of the legend is that Shem and Melchizedek retrieved the body of Adam from the resting place of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat and were led by angels to Golgotha, a skull-shaped hill at the center of the earth where Adam had previously crushed the serpent's head following the Fall of Man.
In the 19th century, Wilhelm Ludwig Krafft proposed an alternative derivation of these names, suggesting that the place had actually been known as "Gol Goatha"which he interpreted to mean "heap of death" or "hill of execution"and had become associated with the similar sounding Semitic words for "skull" in folk etymologies. James Fergusson identified this "Goatha" with the Goʿah () mentioned in Jeremiah 31:39 as a place near Jerusalem, although Krafft himself identified that location with the separate Gennáth () of Josephus, the "Garden Gate" west of the Temple Mount.
Location
There is no consensus as to the location of the site. John describes the crucifixion site as being "near the city". According to Hebrews , it was "outside the city gate". and both note that the location would have been accessible to "passers-by". Thus, locating the crucifixion site involves identifying a site that, in the city of Jerusalem some four decades before its destruction in AD70, would have been outside a major gate near enough to the city that the passers-by could not only see him, but also read the inscription 'Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews'.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Christian tradition since the fourth century has favoured a location now within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This places it well within today's walls of Jerusalem, which surround the Old City and were rebuilt in the 16th century by the Ottoman Empire. Proponents of the traditional Holy Sepulchre location point out at the fact that first-century Jerusalem had a different shape and size from the 16th-century city, leaving the church's site outside the pre-AD 70 city walls. Those opposing it doubt this.
Defenders of the traditional site have argued that the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was only brought within the city limits by Herod Agrippa (41–44), who built the so-called Third Wall around a newly settled northern district, while at the time of Jesus' crucifixion around AD 30 it would still have been just outside the city.
Henry Chadwick (2003) argued that when Hadrian's builders replanned the old city, they "incidentally confirm[ed] the bringing of Golgotha inside a new town wall."
In 2007 Dan Bahat, the former City Archaeologist of Jerusalem and Professor of Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University, stated that "Six graves from the first century were found on the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That means, this place [was] outside of the city, without any doubt…".
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The traditional location of Golgotha derives from its identification by Queen Mother Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in 325. Less than away, Helena also identified the location of the tomb of Jesus and claimed to have discovered the True Cross; her son, Constantine, then built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around the whole site. In 333, the author of the Itinerarium Burdigalense, entering from the east, described the result:
In Nazénie Garibian de Vartavan's doctoral thesis, now published as La Jérusalem Nouvelle et les premiers sanctuaires chrétiens de l'Arménie. Méthode pour l'étude de l'église comme temple de Dieu, she concluded, through multiple arguments (mainly theological and archaeological), that the true site of Golgotha was precisely at the vertical of the now buried Constantinian basilica's altar and away from where the traditional rock of Golgotha is situated. The plans published in the book indicate the location of the Golgotha within a precision of less than two meters, below the circular passage situated a metre away from where the blood stained shirt of Christ was traditionally recovered and immediately before the stairs leading down to St. Helena's Chapel (the above-mentioned mother of Emperor Constantine), alternatively called St. Vartan's Chapel.
Temple to Aphrodite
Prior to Helena's identification, the site had been a temple to Aphrodite. Constantine's construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure, and the Rotunda and cloister (which was replaced after the 12th century by the present Catholicon and Calvary chapel) roughly overlap with the temple building itself; the basilica church Constantine built over the remainder of the enclosure was destroyed at the turn of the 11th century, and has not been replaced. Christian tradition claims that the location had originally been a Christian place of veneration, but that Hadrian had deliberately buried these Christian sites and built his own temple on top, on account of his alleged hatred for Christianity.
There is certainly evidence that circa 160, at least as early as 30 years after Hadrian's temple had been built, Christians associated it with the site of Golgotha; Melito of Sardis, an influential mid-2nd century bishop in the region, described the location as "in the middle of the street, in the middle of the city", which matches the position of Hadrian's temple within the mid-2nd century city.
The Romans typically built a city according to a Hippodamian grid plan – a north–south arterial road, the Cardo (which is now the Suq Khan-ez-Zeit), and an east–west arterial road, the Decumanus Maximus (which is now the Via Dolorosa). The forum would traditionally be located on the intersection of the two roads, with the main temples adjacent. However, due to the obstruction posed by the Temple Mount, as well as the Tenth Legion encampment on the Western Hill, Hadrian's city had two Cardo, two Decumanus Maximus, two forums, and several temples. The Western Forum (now the Muristan) is located on the crossroads of the West Cardo and what is now El-Bazar/David Street, with the Temple of Aphrodite adjacent, on the intersection of the Western Cardo and the Via Dolorosa. The Northern Forum is located north of the Temple Mount, on the junction of the Via Dolorosa and the Eastern Cardo (the Tyropoeon), adjacent to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, intentionally built atop the Temple Mount. Another popular holy site that Hadrian converted to a pagan temple was the Pool of Bethesda, possibly referenced to in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, on which was built the Temple of Asclepius and Serapis. While the positioning of the Temple of Aphrodite may be, in light of the common Colonia layout, entirely unintentional, Hadrian is known to have concurrently built pagan temples on top of other holy sites in Jerusalem as part of an overall "Romanization" policy.
Archaeological excavations under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have revealed Christian pilgrims' graffiti, dating from the period that the Temple of Aphrodite was still present, of a ship, a common early Christian symbol and the etching "DOMINVS IVIMVS", meaning "Lord, we went", lending possible support to the statement by Melito of Sardis' asserting that early Christians identified Golgotha as being in the middle of Hadrian's city, rather than outside.
Rockface
During 1973–1978 restoration works and excavations inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and under the nearby Muristan, it was found that the area was originally a quarry, from which white Meleke limestone was struck; surviving parts of the quarry to the north-east of the chapel of St. Helena are now accessible from within the chapel (by permission). Inside the church is a rock, about 7 m long by 3 m wide by 4.8 m high, that is traditionally believed to be all that now remains visible of Golgotha; the design of the church means that the Calvary Chapel contains the upper foot or so of the rock, while the remainder is in the chapel beneath it (known as the tomb of Adam). Virgilio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, present at the excavations, suggested that from the city the little hill (which still exists) could have looked like a skull.
During a 1986 repair to the floor of the Calvary Chapel by the art historian George Lavas and architect Theo Mitropoulos, a round slot of diameter was discovered in the rock, partly open on one side (Lavas attributes the open side to accidental damage during his repairs); although the dating of the slot is uncertain, and could date to Hadrian's temple of Aphrodite, Lavas suggested that it could have been the site of the crucifixion, as it would be strong enough to hold in place a wooden trunk of up to in height (among other things). The same restoration work also revealed a crack running across the surface of the rock, which continues down to the Chapel of Adam; the crack is thought by archaeologists to have been a result of the quarry workmen encountering a flaw in the rock.
Based on the late 20th century excavations of the site, there have been a number of attempted reconstructions of the profile of the cliff face. These often attempt to show the site as it would have appeared to Constantine. However, as the ground level in Roman times was about lower and the site housed Hadrian's temple to Aphrodite, much of the surrounding rocky slope must have been removed long before Constantine built the church on the site. The height of the Golgotha rock itself would have caused it to jut through the platform level of the Aphrodite temple, where it would be clearly visible. The reason for Hadrian not cutting the rock down is uncertain, but Virgilio Corbo suggested that a statue, probably of Aphrodite, was placed on it, a suggestion also made by Jerome. Some archaeologists have suggested that prior to Hadrian's use, the rock outcrop had been a nefesh – a Jewish funeral monument, equivalent to the stele.
Pilgrimages to Constantine's Church
The Itinerarium Burdigalense speaks of Golgotha in 333: "... On the left hand is the little hill of Golgotha where the Lord was crucified. About a stone's throw from thence is a vault (crypta) wherein His body was laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built a basilica, that is to say, a church of wondrous beauty," Cyril of Jerusalem, a distinguished theologian of the early Church, and eyewitness to the early days of Constantine's edifice, speaks of Golgotha in eight separate passages, sometimes as near to the church where he and his listeners assembled: "Golgotha, the holy hill standing above us here, bears witness to our sight: the Holy Sepulchre bears witness, and the stone which lies there to this day." And just in such a way the pilgrim Egeria often reported in 383: "… the church, built by Constantine, which is situated in Golgotha …" and also bishop Eucherius of Lyon wrote to the island presbyter Faustus in 440: "Golgotha is in the middle between the Anastasis and the Martyrium, the place of the Lord's passion, in which still appears that rock which once endured the very cross on which the Lord was." Breviarius de Hierosolyma reports in 530: "From there (the middle of the basilica), you enter into Golgotha, where there is a large court. Here the Lord was crucified. All around that hill, there are silver screens." (See also: Eusebius in 338.)
Gordon's Calvary
In 1842, Otto Thenius, a theologian and biblical scholar from Dresden, Germany, was the first to publish a proposal that the rocky knoll north of Damascus Gate was the biblical Golgotha. He relied heavily on the research of Edward Robinson. In 1882–83, Major-General Charles George Gordon endorsed this view; subsequently the site has sometimes been known as Gordon's Calvary. The location, usually referred to today as Skull Hill, is beneath a cliff that contains two large sunken holes, which Gordon regarded as resembling the eyes of a skull. He and a few others before him believed that the skull-like appearance would have caused the location to be known as Golgotha.
Nearby is an ancient rock-cut tomb known today as the Garden Tomb, which Gordon proposed as the tomb of Jesus. The Garden Tomb contains several ancient burial places, although the archaeologist Gabriel Barkay has proposed that the tomb dates to the 7th century BC and that the site may have been abandoned by the 1st century.
Eusebius comments that Golgotha was in his day (the 4th century) pointed out north of Mount Zion. While Mount Zion was used previously in reference to the Temple Mount itself, Josephus, the first-century AD historian who knew the city as it was before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, identified Mount Zion as being the Western Hill (the current Mount Zion), which is south of both the Garden Tomb and the Holy Sepulchre. Eusebius' comment therefore offers no additional argument for either location.
See also
Crucifixion of Jesus
References
External links
Golgotha Rediscovered – proposes that Golgotha was outside Lions' Gate
Polish Calvaries: Architecture as a Stage for the Passion of Christ
Crucifixion of Jesus
New Testament places
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%20Americans
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Polish Americans
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Polish Americans () are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 8.81 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.67% of the U.S. population, according to the 2021 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Polish Americans are the second-largest Central European ethnic group after German Americans, and the eighth largest ethnic group overall in the United States.
The first eight Polish immigrants to British America came to the Jamestown colony in 1608, twelve years before the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts. Two Polish volunteers, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, led armies in the Revolutionary War and are remembered as American heroes. Overall, around 2.2 million Poles and Polish subjects immigrated into the United States between 1820 and 1914, chiefly after national insurgencies and famine. They included former Polish citizens of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or other minority descent. Exact immigration figures are unknown. Many immigrants were classified as "Russian", "German" or "Austrian" by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as many former territories of Poland were under German, Austrian-Hungarian and Russian control between the late 18th and early 20th century. Complicating the U.S. Census figures further is the high proportion of Polish Americans who married people of other national descent. In 1940, about 50 percent married other American ethnics and a study in 1988 found that 54% of Polish Americans were of mixed ancestry from three generations or longer. The Polish American Cultural Center places a figure of Americans who have some Polish ancestry at 19–20 million.
In 2000, 667,414 Americans over five years old reported Polish as the language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of the census groups who speak a language other than English or 0.25% of the U.S. population.
History
The history of Polish immigration to the United States can be divided into three stages, beginning with the first stage in the colonial era down to 1870, small numbers of Poles and Polish subjects came to America as individuals or in small family groups, and they quickly assimilated and did not form separate communities, with the exception of Panna Maria, Texas founded in the 1850s. For instance, Polish settlers came to the Virginia Colony as skilled craftsmen as early as 1608. Some Jews from Poland even assimilated into cities which were Polish (and also other Slavic and sometimes additionally Jewish) bastions to conceal their Jewish identities.
In the second stage from 1870 to 1914, Poles and Polish subjects formed a significant part of the wave of immigration from Germany, Imperial Russia, and Austria Hungary. The Poles, particularly Polish Jews, came in family groups, settled in and/or blended into largely Polish neighborhoods and other Slavic bastions, and aspired to earn wages that were higher than what they could earn back in Europe and so many took the ample job opportunities for unskilled manual labor in industry and mining. The main Ethnically-Polish-American organizations were founded because of high Polish interest in the Catholic church, parochial schools, and local community affairs. Relatively few were politically active.
During the third stage from 1914 to present, the United States has seen mass emigration from Poland, and the coming of age of several generations of fully assimilated Polish Americans. Immigration from Poland has continued into the early 2000s and began to decline after Poland had joined the European Union in 2004. The income levels have gone up from well below average, to above average. Poles became active members of the liberal New Deal Coalition from the 1930s to the 1960s, but since then, many have moved to the suburbs, and have become more conservative and vote less often Democratic. Outside Republican and Democratic politics, politics such as those of Agudath Israel of America have heavily involved Polish-Jewish Americans.
Demographics
Helena Lopata (1976) argues that Poles differed from most other ethnic groups in America in several ways. They did not plan to remain permanently and become "Americanized." Instead, they came temporarily to earn money, invest, and wait for the right opportunity to return. Their intention was to ensure a desirable social status in the old world for themselves. However, many of the temporary migrants decided to become permanent Americans.
Many found manual labor jobs in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and the heavy industries (steel mills, iron foundries, slaughterhouses, oil and sugar refineries), of the Great Lakes cities of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Toledo.
The U.S. Census asked Polish immigrants to specify Polish as their native language beginning in Chicago in 1900, allowing the government to enumerate them as an individual nationality when there was no Polish nation-state. No distinction is made in the American census between ethnically Polish Americans and descendants of non-ethnic Poles, such as Jews or Ukrainians, who were born in the territory of Poland and considered themselves Polish nationals. Therefore, some say, of the 10 million Polish Americans, only a certain portion are of Polish ethnic descent. On the other hand, many ethnic Poles when entering the US from 1795 to 1917, when Poland did not exist, did not identify themselves as ethnic Poles and instead identified themselves as either German, Austrian or Russian (this pertained to the nations occupying Poland from 1795 to 1917). Therefore, the actual number of Americans of at least partial Polish ancestry, could be well over 10 million. In the 2011 United States Census Bureau's Population Estimates, there are between 9,365,239 and 9,530,571 Americans of Polish descent, with over 500,000 being foreign-born.
Historically, Polish-Americans have assimilated very quickly to American society. Between 1940 and 1960, only 20 percent of the children of Polish-American ethnic leaders spoke Polish regularly, compared to 50 percent for Ukrainians. In the early 1960s, 3,000 of Detroit's 300,000 Polish-Americans changed their names each year. Language proficiency in Polish is rare in Polish-Americans, as 91.3% speak "English only." In 1979, the 8 million respondents of Polish ancestry reported that only 41.5 percent had single ancestry, whereas 57.3% of Greeks, 52% of Italians and Sicilians, and 44% of Ukrainians had done so (clarification needed). Polish-Americans tended to marry exogamously in the postwar era in high numbers, and tended to marry within the Catholic population, often to persons of German (17%), Italian (10%), East European (8%), Irish (5%), French (4%), Spanish-speaking (2%), Lithuanian (2%), and English (1%) ancestry.
Polish-born population
Polish-born population in the U.S. since 2010:
Communities
The vast majority of Polish immigrants settled in metropolitan areas, attracted by jobs in industry. The minority, by some estimates, only ten percent, settled in rural areas.
Historian John Bukowczyk noted that Polish immigrants in America were highly mobile, and 40 to 60 percent were likely to move from any given urban neighborhood within 10 years. The reasons for this are very individualistic; Bukowczyk's theory is that many immigrants with agricultural backgrounds were eager to migrate because they were finally freed from the local plots of land they had owned in Poland. Others ventured into business and entrepreneurship, and the majority of them opened small retail shops such as bakeries, butcher shops, saloons, and print shops.
Polish American Heritage Month is an event in October by Polish American communities, first celebrated in 1981.
Chicago
One of the most notable in size of the urban Polish American communities is in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. Chicago is a city sprawling with Polish culture, billing itself as the largest Polish city outside of Poland, with approximately 185,000 Polish speakers, making Polish the third most spoken language in Chicago. The influence of Chicago's Polish community is demonstrated by the numerous Polish-American organizations: the Polish Museum of America, Polish Roman Catholic Union of America (the oldest Polish American fraternal organization in the United States), Polish American Association, Polish American Congress, Polish National Alliance, Polish Falcons, Polish Highlanders Alliance of North America, and the Polish Genealogical Society of America. In addition, Illinois has more than one million people that are of Polish descent, the third largest ethnic group after the German and Irish Americans. The Chicago area has many Polish delis, restaurants, and churches.
Chicago's Polish community was concentrated along the city's Northwest and Southwest Sides, along Milwaukee and Archer Avenues, respectively. Chicago's Taste of Polonia festival is celebrated at the Copernicus Foundation, in Jefferson Park, every Labor Day weekend. Nearly 3 million people of Polish descent live in the area between Chicago and Detroit, including Northern Indiana, a part of the Chicago metropolitan area. The community has played a role as a staunch supporter of the Democratic machine, and has been rewarded with several congressional seats. The leading representative has been Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most powerful members of Congress (1959 to 1995), especially on issues of taxation, before he went to prison.
New York City Metropolitan Area
The New York City Metropolitan Area, including the borough of Brooklyn in New York City as well as Northern New Jersey, is home to the second largest community of Polish Americans and is now closely behind the Chicago area's Polish population. Greenpoint, New York in Brooklyn is home to the Little Poland of New York City, while Williamsburg, Maspeth and Ridgewood also contain vibrant Polish communities. In 2014, the New York metropolitan area surpassed Chicago as the metropolitan area attracting the most new legal immigrants to the United States from Poland.
Linden, Elizabeth, and Newark, New Jersey
Linden, New Jersey in Union County, near Newark Liberty International Airport, has become heavily first-generation Polish in recent years. 15.6% of the residents five years old and above in the city of Linden primarily speak Polish at home and a variety of Polish-speaking establishments may be found by the Linden station, which is a direct line to Manhattan. St. Theresa's Roman Catholic Church offers masses in Polish.
In the early part of the 20th century, up to and immediately following the second World War, Newark, New Jersey and Elizabeth, New Jersey were the primary, historic centers of 'Polonia' as Polish-Americans of that era thought of themselves. Castle Garden and Ellis Island generation immigrants and those that followed them found employment in the industries of these two cities as well as Linden which housed oil refineries and auto manufacturing. Initial settlements were in Newark, primarily the "Ironbound" section, where St. Stanislaw Roman Catholic Church, followed by Casimir's Parish were the first parish churches founded and built by the communities there. In Elizabeth, the first parish serving the Polish community is St. Adalbert's Roman Catholic Church. All these parishes are over 100 years old, dating from the late 1800s, with churches constructed in the early 20th century. Post-war prosperity allowed many Polish Americans to disperse from the original core in New Jersey's industrial areas to the surrounding suburban communities. Documentation of their early history may be found on individual parkish websites. Other significant centers of Polish settlement in New Jersey included Garfield, New Jersey, Manville in Somerset County, Trenton, New Jersey, and Camden, New Jersey.
Other areas
In Hudson County, New Jersey, Bayonne houses New Jersey's largest Polish American community, while Wallington in Bergen County contains the state's highest percentage of Polish Americans and one of the highest percentages in the United States, at over 40%. However, within New Jersey, Polish populations are additionally increasing rapidly in Clifton, Passaic County as well as in Garfield, Bergen County.
Riverhead, New York, located on eastern Long Island, contains a neighborhood known as Polish Town, where many Polish immigrants have continued to settle since the World War II era; the town has Polish architecture, stores, and St. Isidore's R.C. Church, and Polish Town hosts an annual summer Polish Fair. LOT Polish Airlines provides non-stop flight service between JFK International Airport in the Queens borough of New York City, Newark and Warsaw.
The Kosciuszko Foundation is based in New York.
Wisconsin and Minnesota
Milwaukee's Polish population has always been overshadowed by the city's more numerous German American inhabitants. Nevertheless, the city's once numerous Polish community built a number of Polish Cathedrals, among them the magnificent Basilica of St. Josaphat and St. Stanislaus Catholic Church. Many Polish residents and businesses are still located in the Lincoln Village neighborhood. The city is also home to Polish Fest, the largest Polish festival in the United States, where Polish Americans from all over Wisconsin and nearby Chicago, come to celebrate Polish Culture, through music, food and entertainment. Polonia in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul is centered on Holy Cross Church in the Northeast Neighborhood of Minneapolis, where a vibrant Polish ministry continues to care for the Polish Roman Catholic Faithful.
Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Nebraska represent a different type of settlement with significant Polish communities having been established in rural areas. Historian John Radzilowski estimates that up to a third of Poles in Minnesota settled in rural areas, where they established 40 communities, that were often centered around a Catholic church. Most of these settlers came from the Polish lands that had been taken by Prussia during the Partitions, with a sub-group coming from Silesia. The Kaszub minority, from Poland's Baltic coast, was also strongly represented among Polish immigrants to Minnesota, most notably in Winona. Despite relative isolation from Poland and larger urban Polonian communities, due to strong community integration these communities continued speaking Polish into the 1970s in some cases and continue to have a strong Polish identity.
Michigan
Michigan's Polish population of more than 850,000 is the third-largest among U.S. states, behind that of New York and Illinois. Polish Americans make up 8.6% of Michigan's total population. The city of Detroit has a very large Polish community, which historically settled in Poletown and Hamtramck on the east side of Detroit, the neighborhoods along Michigan Avenue from 23rd street into east Dearborn, the west side of Delray, parts of Warrendale and several sections of Wyandotte downriver. The northern part of Poletown was cleared of residents, to make way for the General Motors Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant. Today it contains some of the most opulent Polish churches in America like St. Stanislaus, Sweetest Heart of Mary, St. Albertus, St. Josephat and St. Hyacinthe. Michigan as a state has Polish populations throughout. In addition to metropolitan Detroit, Grand Rapids, Bay City, Alpena and the surrounding area, the thumb of Michigan, Manistee, and numerous places in northern lower Michigan and south-central Michigan also have sizable Polish populations.
The Polish influence is still felt throughout the entire metropolitan Detroit area, especially the suburb of Wyandotte, which is slowly emerging as the major center of Polish American activities in the state. An increase in new immigration from Poland is helping to bolster the parish community of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and a host of Polish American civic organizations, located within the city of Wyandotte. Also, the Detroit suburb of Troy is home to the American Polish Cultural Center, where the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame has over 200 artifacts on display from over 100 inductees, including Stan Musial and Mike Krzyzewski. St. Mary's Preparatory, a high school in Orchard Lake with historically Polish roots, sponsors a popular annual Polish County Fair that bills itself as "America's Largest High School Fair."
Outside of Metro Detroit, Polish Americans retain a strong presence in Northern Michigan. The town of Cedar in Leelanau County retains a large Polish presence, and is home to a Polish Art Center, as well as an annual polka festival. The counties of Alpena, Presque Isle, and Huron also have a large percentage and population of families of Polish immigrants.
Ohio
Ohio is home to more than 440,000 people of Polish descent, their presence felt most strongly in the Greater Cleveland area, where half of Ohio's Polish population resides. The city of Cleveland, Ohio has a large Polish community, especially in historic Slavic Village, as part of its Warszawa Section. Poles from this part of Cleveland migrated to the suburbs, such as Garfield Heights, Parma and Seven Hills. Parma has even recently been designated a Polish Village commercial district. Farther out, other members of Cleveland's Polish community live in Brecksville, Independence and Broadview Heights. Many of these Poles return to their Polish roots by attending masses at St. Stanislaus Church, on East 65th Street and Baxter Avenue.
Cleveland's other Polish section is in Tremont, located on Cleveland's west side. The home parishes are St. John Cantius and St. John Kanty.
Other Polish language churches in Cleveland city include St. Casimir, St. Barbara, and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Outside of annual church festivals, other major city celebrations include Dyngus Day and the Slavic Village Harvest Festival, celebrating with Polish food, customer, and Polka music. Cleveland is home to the Polka Hall of Fame.
Poles in Cleveland were instrumental in forming the Third Federal Savings and Loan in 1938. After seeing fellow Poles discriminated against by Cleveland's banks, Ben Stefanski formed Third Federal. Today the Stefanski family still controls the bank. Unlike Cleveland's KeyBank and National City Corp., which have their headquarters in Downtown Cleveland, Third Federal is on Broadway Avenue in the Slavic Village neighborhood. Third Federal Savings and Loan is in the top 25 saving and loan institutions in the United States. In 2003, they acquired a Florida banking company and have branches in Florida and Ohio.
Texas
Panna Maria, Texas, was founded by Upper Silesian settlers on Christmas Eve in 1854. Some people still speak Texas Silesian. Silesian is regarded as either a dialect of Polish, or a distinct language. Cestohowa, Kosciusko, Falls City, Polonia, New Waverly, Brenham, Marlin, Bremond, Anderson, Bryan, and Chappell Hill were either founded or populated by the Poles.
Others
Other industrial cities, with major Polish communities, include: Buffalo, New York; Boston; Baltimore; New Britain, Connecticut; Dallas, Houston, Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; Philadelphia; Columbus, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; Syracuse, New York; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Seattle; Pittsburgh; South Bend, Indiana; central/western Massachusetts; and Duluth, Minnesota. There is a relatively large Polish population in Kansas City and Saint Louis, Missouri in addition to the area's many German-Americans.
Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is the only county in the United States, where a plurality of residents state their ancestry as Polish. (See: Maps of American ancestries) This includes the cities of Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Hazleton, and Nanticoke. Many of the immigrants were drawn to this area, because of the mining of Anthracite coal in the region. Polish influences are still common today, in the form of church bazaars, polka music, and Polish cuisine. It is widely believed that Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, has one of the fastest growing Polish communities in the United States.
In 2007, at the urging of Attorney Adrian Baron and the local Polonia Business Association, New Britain, Connecticut officially designated its Broad Street neighborhood as Little Poland, where an estimated 30,000 residents claim Polish heritage. Visitors can do an entire day's business completely in Polish including banking, shopping, dining, legal consultations, and even dance lessons. The area has retained its Polish character since 1890. There is also a Polish community in Las Vegas.
By state totals
As of the 2021 American Community Survey, the distribution of Polish Americans across the 50 states and DC is as presented in the following table:
Religion
As in Poland, the majority of Polish immigrants are Roman Catholic. Historically, less than 5% of Americans who identified as Polish would state any other religion but Roman Catholic. Jewish immigrants from Poland, largely without exception, self identified as "Jewish," "German Jewish," "Russian Jewish," or "Austrian Jewish" when inside the United States, and faced a historical trajectory far different from that of the Polish Catholics.
Polish Americans built dozens of Polish Cathedrals in the Great Lakes and New England regions and in the Mid-Atlantic States. Chicago's Poles founded the following churches: St. Stanislaus Kostka, Holy Trinity, St. John Cantius, Holy Innocents, St. Helen, St. Fidelis, St. Mary of the Angels, St. Hedwig, St. Josaphat, St. Francis of Assisi (Humboldt Park), St. Hyacinth Basilica, St. Wenceslaus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Stanislaus B&M, St. James (Cragin), St. Ladislaus, St. Constance, St. Mary of Perpetual Help, St. Barbara, SS. Peter & Paul, St. Joseph (Back of the Yards), Five Holy Martyrs, St. Pancratius, St. Bruno, St. Camillus, St. Michael (South Chicago), Immaculate Conception (South Chicago), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Bronislava, St. Thecla, St. Florian, St. Mary of Częstochowa (Cicero), St. Simeon (Bellwood), St. Blase (Summit), St. Glowienke (Downers Grove), St. John the Fisherman (Lisle), St. Isidore the Farmer (Blue Island), St. Andrew the Apostle (Calumet City) and St. John the Baptist (Harvey), as well as St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital, on the Near West Side.
Poles established approximately 50 Roman Catholic parishes in Minnesota. Among them: St. Wojciech (Adalbert) and St. Kazimierz (Casimir) in St. Paul; Holy Cross, St. Philip, St. Hedwig (Jadwiga Slaska) and All Saints, in Minneapolis; Our Lady Star of the Sea, St. Casimir's, and SS. Peter and Paul in Duluth; and St. Kazimierz (Casimir) and St. Stanislaw Kostka in Winona. A few of the parishes of particular note, founded by Poles elsewhere in Minnesota, include: St. John Cantius in Wilno; St. Jozef (Joseph) in Browerville; St. John the Baptist in Virginia; St. Mary in Częstochowa; St. Wojciech (Adalbert) in Silver Lake; Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Opole; Our Lady of Lourdes in Little Falls; St. Stanislaus B&M in Sobieski; St. Stanislaus Kostka in Bowlus; St. Hedwig in Holdingford; Sacred Heart in Flensburg; Holy Cross in North Prairie; Holy Cross in Harding; and St. Isadore in Moran Township.
Poles in Cleveland established St. Hyacinth's (now closed), Saint Stanislaus Church (1873), Sacred Heart (1888–2010) Immaculate Heart of Mary (1894), St. John Cantius (Westside Poles), St. Barbara (closed), Sts Peter and Paul Church (1927) in Garfield Heights, Saint Therese (1927) Garfield Heights, Marymount Hospital (1948) Garfield Heights, and Saint Monica Church (1952) Garfield Heights. Also, the Polish Community created the Our Lady of Częstochowa Shrine on the campus of Marymount Hospital.
Poles in South Bend, Indiana, founded four parishes: St. Hedwig Parish (1877), St. Casimir Parish (1898), St. Stanislaus Parish (1907), and St. Adalbert Parish, South Bend (1910).
Circa 1897, in Pittsburgh's Polish Hill, Immaculate Heart of Mary, modeled on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was founded.
Polish Americans preserved their longstanding tradition of venerating the Lady of Czestochowa in the United States. Replicas of the painting are common in Polish American churches and parishes, and many churches and parishes are named in her honor. The veneration of the Virgin Mary in Polish parishes is a significant difference between Polish Catholicism and American Catholicism; Polish nuns in the Felician Order for instance, took to Marianism as the cornerstone of their spiritual development, and Polish churches in the U.S. were seen as "cult-like" in their veneration of Mary. Religious catechism and writings from convents found that Polish nuns in the Felician Sisters and The Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth were taught to have "a sound appreciation of Mary's role in the mystery of the Redemption” and “a filial confidence in her patronage," more explicitly, “to be . . . a true daughter to the immaculate Virgin Mary." The Marianism that was taught in Polish parish schools in the United States was done independent of the Catholic Church, and demonstrated autonomy on the part of the nuns who taught Polish American youths. It is notable that there was a concurrent movement in Poland that eventually led to a separatist Catholic church, the Mariavite Church, which greatly expanded the veneration of the Virgin Mary in its doctrine. In Poland, the Virgin Mary was believed to serve as a mother of mercy and salvation for Catholics, and throughout the Middle Ages, Polish knights prayed to her before battle. Polish American churches featured replicas of the Lady of Częstochowa, which was on feature at the Jasna Góra Monastery and holds national and religious significance because of its connection to a victorious military defense in 1655. Several towns in America are named Częstochowa, in commemoration of the town in Poland.
Though the majority of Polish Americans remained loyal to the Catholic Church, a breakaway Catholic church was founded in 1897 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Polish parishioners founded the church to assert independence from the Catholic Church in America. The split was in rebellion from the church leadership, then dominated by Irish bishops and priests, and lacking Polish speakers and Polish church leaders. It exists today with 25,000 parishioners and remains independent from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
Poland is also home to followers of Protestantism and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Small groups of both of these groups also immigrated to the United States. One of the most celebrated painters of religious icons in North America today is a Polish American Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Theodore Jurewicz, who singlehandedly painted New Gračanica Monastery in Third Lake, Illinois, over the span of three years.
A small group of Lipka Tatars, originating from the Białystok region, helped co-found the first Muslim organization in Brooklyn, New York, in 1907, and later, a mosque, which is still in use.
Social status
In 1969, the median family income was $8,849 for Polish Americans. The median family income for all families in the United States in 1968 was $7,900. Leonard F. Chrobot summarizes the Census data for 1969:
In 2017, by educational attainment, the U.S. Census estimates that 42.5% have bachelor's degrees or higher, whereas the American population as a whole is 32.0%. The median household income for Americans of Polish descent is estimated by the U.S. Census as $73,452, with no statistically significant differences from other Slavic-American groups, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian. The median household income for those of Russian ancestry has been reported as higher on the U.S. Census, at $80,554.
Politics
Polish-Americans comprise a large voting bloc sought after by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Polish Americans comprise 3.2% of the United States population, but were estimated at nearly 10% of the overall electorate as of 2012. The Polish-American population is concentrated in several Midwestern swing states that make issues important to Polish-Americans more likely to be heard by presidential candidates. According to John Kromkowski, Polish-Americans make up an "almost archetypical swing vote". The Piast Institute found that Polish Americans are 36% Democrats, 33% Independents, and 26% are Republicans as of 2008. Ideologically, they were categorized as being in the more conservative wing of the Democratic Party, and demonstrated a much stronger inclination for third-party candidates in presidential elections than the American public.
Historically, Polish-American voters have swung from the Democratic and Republican parties depending on economic and social politics. In the 1918 election, Woodrow Wilson courted Poles through his promises of Polish autonomy. They gave strong support to the wet Catholic Al Smith in 1928. They gave even more enthusiastic support to the New Deal Coalition and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In World War II they were fiercely against Nazi Germany. FDR consistently won over 90% of the Polish vote during his four terms.
Polish-Americans founded the Polish American Congress (PAC) in 1944 to create strong leadership and represent Polish interests during World War II. FDR met with the PAC and assured Poles of a peaceful and independent Poland following the war. When this did not come to fruition, and with the publication of Arthur Bliss Lane's I Saw Poland Betrayed in 1947, Polish-Americans came to feel that they had been betrayed by the United States government. John F. Kennedy won a majority of the Polish vote in 1960, owing in part to his Catholicism and connection to ethnic communities and the labor movement. Since then, Polish voters have been tied to the more conservative wing of the Democratic Party, but shifted away from the Democrats over social issues such as abortion. Poland's liberation from Soviet occupation during the 1980s was championed to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but Bill Clinton seized Polish voters through his expansion of NATO. The relevance of the "Polish-American vote" has been in question in recent elections, as Americans of Polish descent have assimilated to U.S. society and increased their rate of exogamous marriages.
In modern politics, the Polish-American vote continues to have influence in the United States. The American Polish Advisory Council, a politically involved network of Polish organizations, has created a political platform and convention, and has shared its agenda with politicians, both at the state and federal level. In the 2012 elections, Polish-Americans have been courted by both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Anti-Polonism
The Polish community was long the subject of anti-Polish sentiment in America. The word Polack has become an ethnic slur. This prejudice was partially associated with anti-Catholicism, and early 20th century worries about being overrun by Central European immigrants.
Culture
The cultural contributions of Polish Americans span a broad spectrum, including in media, in the publishing industry, in religion, art, food, museums, and festivals.
Media
Among the most notable Polish American media groups are Hippocrene Books (founded by Polish American George Blagowidow); TVP Polonia; Polsat 2 International; TVN International; Polvision; TV4U New York; WEUR Radio Chicago; Polish Radio External Service (formerly Radio Polonia); Polonia Today and the Warsaw Voice. There are also Polish American newspapers and magazines, such as the Dziennik Związkowy, PL magazine, Polish Weekly Chicago, the Super Express USA and Nowy Dziennik in New York and Tygodnik Polski and The Polish Times in Detroit, not to mention the Ohio University Press Series in Polish American Studies, Przeglad Polski Online, Polish American Journal, the Polish News Online,Am-Pol Eagle Newspaper, and Progress for Poland, among others.
Cultural identity
Even in long-integrated communities, remnants of Polish culture and vocabulary remain. Roman Catholic churches built by Polish American communities often serve as a vehicle for cultural retention.
During the 1950s–1970s, the Polish wedding was often an all-day event. Traditional Polish weddings in Chicago metropolitan area, in areas such as the southeast side of Chicago, inner suburbs like Calumet City and Hegewisch, and Northwest Indiana suburbs, such as Whiting, Hammond and East Chicago, always occurred on Saturdays. The receptions were typically held in a large hall, such as a VFW Hall. A polka band of drums, a singer, accordion, and trumpet, entertained the people, as they danced traditional dances, such as the oberek, "Polish Hop" and the waltz. The musicians, as well as the guests, were expected to enjoy ample amounts of both food and drink. Foods, such as Polish sausage, sauerkraut, pierogi and kluski were common. Common drinks were beer, screwdrivers and highballs. Many popular Polish foods became a fixture in the American cuisine of today, including kiełbasa (Polish sausage), babka cake, kaszanka, pierogi, and, especially around the time of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, pączki doughnuts.
Polish American cultural groups include Polish American Arts Association and the Polish Falcons.
Among the many Polish American writers are a number of poets, such as Phil Boiarski, Hedwig Gorski, John Guzlowski, John Minczeski, Linda Nemec Foster, Leonard Kress (poet and translator), Cecilia Woloch, Kim Kikel and Mark Pawlak (poet and editor), along with novelists Leslie Pietrzyk, Thad Rutkowski, Suzanne Strempek Shea and others.
Museums
Among the best known Polish American museums are the Polish Museum of America in Chicago's old Polish Downtown; founded in 1935, the largest ethnic museum in the U.S. sponsored by the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America. The Museum Library ranks as one of the best outside of Poland. Equally ambitious is the Polish American Museum located in Port Washington, New York, founded in 1977. It features displays of folk art, costumes, historical artifacts and paintings, as well as bilingual research library with particular focus on achievements of the people of Polish heritage in America. There is also the Polish Cultural Institute and Museum of Winona, Minnesota, known informally as "The Polish Museum of Winona." Formally established in 1979 by Father Paul Breza, the Polish Museum of Winona features exhibits pertaining to Winona's Kashubian Polish culture and hosts a wide range of events celebrating America's Polish-American heritage in general.
Festivals
There are a number of unique festivals, street parties and parades held by the Polish American community. The Polish Fest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is a popular annual festival, takes place at the Henry Maier Festival Park. It is also the largest Polish festival in the United States. It attracts Polish Americans from all over Wisconsin and nearby Chicago, who come to celebrate Polish culture through music, food and entertainment. New York City is home to the New York Polish Film Festival, an annual film festival showcasing current and past films of Polish cinema. NYPFF is the only annual presentation of Polish films in New York City and the largest festival promoting and presenting Polish films on the East Coast.
The Polish Festival in Syracuse's Clinton Square has become the largest cultural event in the history of the Polish community in Central New York. There's also the Taste of Polonia festival held in Chicago every Labor Day weekend since 1979 at the Copernicus Cultural and Civic Center in the Jefferson Park area. The Polish Festival in Portland, Oregon is reported to be the largest in the Western United States. One of the newest and most ambitious festivals is the Seattle Polish Film Festival organized in conjunction with the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, Poland. Kansas City, Kansas is home to a large Polish population and for the last 31 years, All Saints Parish has hosted Polski Day . And last, but not least, there's the Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana with many more attractions other than Polish pierogi, and the Wisconsin Dells Polish Fest.
Holidays
Kosciuszko Day February 4
Casimir Pulaski Day March (Illinois regional)
Feast of the Annunciation March 25
Pączki Day (Fat Tuesday)
Constitution Day May 3
Dyngus Day (Easter Monday)
Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa August 26
Dozhinki September
General Pulaski Memorial Day October 11
Feast of the Immaculate Conception December 8
Wigilia December 24
Polish Americans carried on celebrations of Constitution Day throughout their time in the United States without political suppression. In Poland, from 1940 to 1989, the holiday was banned by Nazi and Soviet occupiers.
Contributions to American culture
Polish-Americans have influenced American culture in various ways. Most prominent among these is that Jefferson drafting the Constitution of the United States was inspired by religious tolerance of the Warsaw Confederation, which guaranteed freedom of conscience.
The Polish culture left also culinary marks in the United States – the inclusion of traditional Polish cuisine such as pierogi, kiełbasa, gołąbki. Some of these Polish foods were tweaked and reinvented in the new American environment, such as Chicago's Maxwell Street Polish Sausage.
Polish Americans have also contributed to altering the physical landscape of the cities they have inhabited, erecting monuments to Polish-American heroes such as Kościuszko and Pulaski. Distinctive cultural phenomena such as Polish flats or the Polish Cathedral style of architecture became part and parcel of the areas where Polish settlement occurred.
Poles' cultural ties to Roman Catholicism have also influenced the adoption of such distinctive rites like the blessing of the baskets before Easter in many areas of the United States by fellow Roman Catholics.
Architectural influence
Early Polish immigrants built houses with high-pitched roofs in the United States. The high-pitched roof is necessary in a country subject to snow, and is a common feature in Northern and Eastern European architecture. In Panna Maria, Texas, Poles built brick houses with thick walls and high-pitched roofs. Meteorological and soil data show that region in Texas is subject to less than 1 inch of snow and a meteorological study conducted 1960-1990 found the lowest one-day temperature ever recorded was 5 degrees Fahrenheit on January 21, 1986, highly unlikely to support much snow. The shaded veranda that was created by these roofs was a popular living space for the Polish Texans, who spent much of their time there to escape the hot temperatures of subtropical Texas. The Poles in Texas added porches to these verandas, often in the southward windy side, which is an alteration to traditional folk architecture. According to oral histories recorded from descendants, the verandas were used for "almost all daily activities from preparing meals to dressing animal hides." The Poles in Texas put straw thatching on their roofs until the early 1900s, another European influence. The first house built by a Pole in Panna Maria is the John Gawlik House, constructed in 1858. The building still stands and is visited as a historical attraction in the cultural history of Texas. In 2011, the San Antonio Conservation Society financed a replacement of the building's roof, identifying it as a "historically and architecturally significant building."
Military
Organizations like the Polish Legion of American Veterans were organized to memorialize the Polish contribution to the American military. Those who contributed to the Polish military created Polish Army Veterans' Association in America.
See also
European Americans
Kashubian Americans
Kashubian Diaspora
Polish American Football League
Polish Australians
Polish Brazilians
Polish British
Polish Canadians
Polish Cathedral style
Polish-American organized crime
Polish-American vote
Lists
List of Polish Americans
List of place names of Polish origin in the United States
List of U.S. cities with large Polish-American populations
Citations
Sources and further reading
Bukowczyk, John J. A history of the Polish Americans (2nd ed. Routledge, 2017) online
first edition published as
Erdmans, Mary Patrice. "Immigrants and ethnics: Conflict and identity in Chicago Polonia." Sociological Quarterly 36.1 (1995): 175-195. online
Esslinger, Dean R. . Immigrants and the city: Ethnicity and mobility in a nineteenth century Midwestern community (Kennikat Press, 1975); focus on demography and social mobility of Germans, Poles, and other Catholics in South Bend
PhD version University of Notre Dame ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1972. 7216267.
Greene, Victor. "Poles" in Thernstrom, Stephan; Orlov, Ann; Handlin, Oscar, eds. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. . (Harvard University Press, 1980) pp 787–803
Gurnack, Anne M., and James M. Cook. "Polish Americans, Political Partisanship and Presidential Elections Voting: 1972-2020." European Journal of Transformation Studies 9.2 (2021): 30-39. online
Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, Anna D. The exile mission: The Polish political diaspora and Polish Americans, 1939-1956 (Ohio University Press, 2004).
Jones, J. Sydney. "Polish Americans." Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Thomas Riggs, (3rd ed., vol. 3, Gale, 2014), pp. 477–492.
Mello, Caitlin. "Polish Immigration to Chicago and the Impact on Local Society and Culture." Language, Culture, Politics. International Journal 1.5 (2020): 183-193. online
Pacyga, Dominic A. "Poles," in Elliott Robert Barkan, ed., A Nation of Peoples: A Sourcebook on America's Multicultural Heritage (1999) pp 428–45
Pacyga, Dominic A. "To live amongst others: Poles and their neighbors in industrial Chicago, 1865-1930." Journal of American Ethnic History 16#1 (1996): 55-73.online
Pacyga, Dominic A. Polish immigrants and industrial Chicago: Workers on the south side, 1880-1922 (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Pacyga, Dominic A. American Warsaw: the rise, fall, and rebirth of Polish Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2019).
Pienkos, Donald E. PNA: A Centennial History of the Polish National Alliance of the United States (Columbia University Press, 1984) online
Pienkos, Donald E. For your freedom through ours : Polish-American efforts on Poland's behalf, 1863-1991 (1991) [https://archive.org/details/foryourfreedomth0000pien online\
Pienkos, Donald E. "Of Patriots and Presidents: America's Polish Diaspora and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1917," Polish American Studies 68 (Spring 2011), 5–17.
Pula, James S. "Polish-American Catholicism: A Case Study in Cultural Determinism", U.S. Catholic Historian Volume 27, #3 Summer 2009, pp. 1–19; in Project MUSE
Radzilowski, John. "A Social History of Polish-American Catholicism", U.S. Catholic Historian – Volume 27, #3 Summer 2009, pp. 21–43 online
Sugrue, Thomas. Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 2005). online
Swastek, Joseph. "The Poles in South Bend to 1914." Polish American Studies 2.3/4 (1945): 79–88.
Tentler, Leslie Woodcock. “Who Is the Church?: Conflict in a Polish Immigrant Parish in Late Nineteenth-Century Detroit.” Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 25 (April 1983): 241-276.
Wrobel, Paul. Our Way: Family, Parish, and Neighborhood in a Polish-American Community (University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).
Memory and historiography
Jaroszynska-Kirchmann, Anna D., "The Polish American Historical Association: Looking Back, Looking Forward," Polish American Studies, 65 (Spring 2008), 57–76.
Pietrusza, David Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World, Scotia (NY): Church and Reid Books, 2020.
Radzialowski, Thaddeus C. "The View From a Polish Ghetto. Some Observations on the First One Hundred Years in Detroit" Ethnicity 1#2 (July 1974): 125-150. online
Walaszek, Adam. "Has the" Salt-Water Curtain" Been Raised Up? Globalizing Historiography of Polish America." Polish American Studies 73.1 (2016): 47-67.
Zurawski, Joseph W. "Out of Focus: The Polish American Image in Film," Polish American Studies (2013) 70#1 pp. 5–35 in JSTOR
External links
PolishMigration.org, immigration records to United States between 1834 through 1897
Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey: English translations of 120,000 pages of newspaper articles from Chicago's foreign-language press from 1855 to 1938, many from Polish papers
European-American society
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The Oval
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The Oval, currently named for sponsorship reasons as the Kia Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, located in the borough of Lambeth, in south London. The Oval has been the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club since it was opened in 1845. It was the first ground in England to host international Test cricket in September 1880. The final Test match of the English season is traditionally played there.
In addition to cricket, The Oval has hosted a number of other historically significant sporting events. In 1870, it staged the first representative football match between England and Scotland, although this is not deemed to be an official international by FIFA. It hosted the first FA Cup final in 1872, as well as those between 1874 and 1892. In 1876, it held both the England v. Wales and England v. Scotland rugby international matches and, in 1877, rugby's first varsity match. It also hosted the finals of the 2004 & 2017 ICC Champions Trophy and the 2023 ICC World Test Championship Final.
History
The Oval is built on part of the former Kennington Common. Cricket matches were played on the common throughout the early 18th century. The earliest recorded match was the London v Dartford match in June 1724. However, as the common was also used regularly for public executions of those convicted at the Surrey Assizes (it was the south London equivalent of Tyburn), cricket matches had moved away to the Artillery Ground by the 1740s. Kennington Common was eventually enclosed in the mid-19th century under a scheme sponsored by the royal family.
In 1844, the site of the Kennington Oval was a cabbage patch and market garden owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy was willing to lease the land for the purpose of a cricket ground, and on 10 March 1845 the first lease, which the club later assumed, was issued to Mr. William Houghton (then president of the progenitor Montpelier Cricket Club) by the Otter Trustees who held the land from the Duchy "to convert it into a subscription cricket ground", for 31 years at a rent of £120 per annum plus taxes amounting to £20. The original contract for turfing The Oval cost £300; the 10,000 grass turfs came from Tooting Common and were laid in the spring of 1845 allowing for the first cricket match to be played in May 1845. Hence, Surrey County Cricket Club (SCCC) was established in 1845.
The popularity of the ground was immediate and the strength of the SCCC grew. On 3 May 1875 the club acquired the remainder of the leasehold for a further term of 31 years from the Otter Trustees for the sum of £2,800.
In 1868, 20,000 spectators gathered at The Oval for the first game of the 1868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England, the first tour of England by any foreign side. Thanks to C.W. Alcock, the Secretary of Surrey from 1872 to 1907, the first Test match in England was played at The Oval in 1880 between England and Australia. The Oval, thereby, became the second ground to stage a Test, after Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). In 1882, Australia won the Test by seven runs within two days. The Sporting Times printed a mocking obituary notice for English cricket, which led to the creation of the Ashes trophy, which is still contested whenever England plays Australia. The first Test double century was scored at The Oval in 1884 by Australia's Billy Murdoch.
Surrey's ground is noted as having the first artificial lighting at a sports arena, in the form of gas-lamps, dating to 1889. The current pavilion was completed in time for the 1898 season.
In 1907, South Africa became the second visiting Test team to play a Test match at the ground. In 1928, the West Indies played its first Test match at The Oval, followed by New Zealand in 1931. In 1936, India became the fifth foreign visiting Test side to play at The Oval, followed by Pakistan in 1954 and Sri Lanka in 1998. Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Ireland have yet to play a Test match at The Oval.
The Oval is referenced by the poet Philip Larkin in his poem about the First World War, "MCMXIV". During World War II, The Oval was requisitioned, initially housing anti-aircraft searchlights. It was then turned into a prisoner-of-war camp, intended to hold enemy parachutists. However, as they never came, The Oval was never actually used for this purpose.
The first One Day International match at this venue was played on 7 September 1973 between England and West Indies. It hosted matches of the 1975, 1979, 1983, and 1999 World Cups. It also hosted five of the fifteen matches in the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy, including the final. The Oval once held the record for the largest playing area of any Test venue in the world. That record has since been surpassed by Gaddafi Stadium in Pakistan, although The Oval remains the largest in Great Britain.
Billionaire Paul Getty, who had a great affinity for cricket and was at one time SCCC President, built a replica of The Oval on his Wormsley Park estate.
The famous gasholders just outside the ground were built around 1853. With the gasholders long disused, there was much speculation as to whether they should be demolished; however, many believe they are an integral part of The Oval's urban landscape and, therefore, their future looks secure. In 2016 the main gasholder was given official protected status as a historically important industrial structure.
On 20 August 2006, The Oval saw the first time a team forfeited a Test match. Pakistan were upset after umpires Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove awarded five penalty runs to the opposition and changed the ball after ruling that the team had tampered with it on the fourth day of the final Test against England. Pakistan debated the matter during the tea break and then refused to come out for the final session in protest. By the time they relented and decided to resume, the umpires had already called time on the match and awarded the game to England by default.
The Oval hosted its hundredth Test, against South Africa, on 27 July 2017, becoming the fourth Test venue in the world after Lord's, MCG and SCG to do so. Moeen Ali also became the first player to ever take a Test hat-trick at The Oval, bowling out South Africa in the second innings to win the match.
In Tests, the highest team score at The Oval is 903/7 declared by England against Australia on 20 August 1938. The leading run scorers are Len Hutton (1,521 runs), Alastair Cook (1,217 runs) and Graham Gooch (1,097 runs). The leading wicket takers are Ian Botham (52 wickets), Derek Underwood (45 wickets) and James Anderson (44 wickets).
In ODIs, the highest team score at The Oval is 398/5 by New Zealand against England on 12 June 2015. The leading ODI run scorers are Eoin Morgan (630 runs), Marcus Trescothick (528 runs) and Joe Root (480 runs). The leading ODI wicket takers are James Anderson (30 wickets) and Darren Gough (13 wickets).
In 2021, the Oval Invincibles were formed as a team in the newly-launched The Hundred competition. The initial games in both the men's and women's competition were played on the ground.
End names
The north-western end of The Oval is traditionally known as the Vauxhall End, as it is nearer to the district of Vauxhall and its railway station. The opposite end (south-east) is known as the Pavilion End as it is the location of the Members' Pavilion.
21st-century redevelopment
At the end of the 2002 cricket season, Surrey started redeveloping the Vauxhall End. The development included demolishing the outdated Surridge, Fender, Jardine, and Peter May north stands, and creating in their place a single four-tier grandstand. From completion until 2020 it was known as the OCS stand, as it was sponsored by Outsourced Client Solutions International Facilities Management Services. As of the start of the 2021 season it is now known as the JM Finn stand because of a sponsorship deal with JM Finn This work was completed in May 2005 and increased ground capacity to around 23,000.
In January 2007, Surrey CCC, announced plans to increase capacity by a further 2,000 seats, this time by redeveloping the Pavilion End. The Lock, Laker, and Peter May south stands were to be replaced by a new stand, which would have a hotel backing on to it. The Surrey Tavern at the entrance to the ground would be demolished, and a new pedestrian plaza would be created in its place, improving access to the ground and opening up views of the historic pavilion. These plans were delayed by objections raised by the Health & Safety Executive as the ground is close to a gasometer. Planning permission was eventually granted, but not before the credit crunch struck, as a result of which this development did not proceed.
In 2009, four masts of semi-permanent telescopic floodlights costing £3.7m were installed for use in late-day through evening matches. The floodlights were especially designed to comply with strict residential planning regulations to lessen their visual impact and any light overspill to residents, as well as to improve the game experience within the ground by reducing excess glare that can affect players, umpires, broadcasters and spectators. Precision reflector systems were fitted for tight beam control to decrease overspill and direct light only where needed. Each mast was made extendable to a maximum height of and, when not in use, retractable to . At the end of each season, all four masts can be removed and stored away.
After the 2013 season, a new project was started to add 'wings' to either side of the OCS Stand at the Vauxhall End of the ground. The development was finished in time for the start of the 2014 season. Each 'wing' added 500 seats, increasing the capacity from 23,500 to 24,500.
In September 2015, the Peter May and Tony Lock stands were demolished, to be replaced by a single new and much larger stand named after Peter May. May led Surrey to their sixth and seventh consecutive County Championships in 1957 and 1958 and also captained England from 1955 to 1961, winning the Ashes in 1956. Construction of the new stand, which cost around £10m, began in September 2015. It officially opened on 15 May 2016, increasing the capacity of the ground by 1,300 seats to 25,300.
Following the demolition of the Tony Lock stand, the club renamed the Laker Stand as the Lock/Laker Stand, continuing to honour the contribution made by the spin partnership of Tony Lock and Jim Laker, who collectively took 3,108 wickets for the club.
The Lock/Laker stand was itself demolished in September 2019, and work began on the construction of a new development in its place, initially named "One Oval Square". The new structure will include a three-tier stand that will increase the ground's total capacity to almost 28,000, as well as providing state-of-the-art facilities for the Club’s hospitality, conference and events businesses, and provide improved facilities for Members. The new stand is due to be completed in mid 2021. The project is part of a planned £50m long-term redevelopment of the ground by Surrey County Cricket Club which will see The Oval transformed into the largest cricket stadium in the western hemisphere, with a capacity of 40,000.
Floodlights were added in the shape of an O for oval on one side of the ground to emulate the e-shaped floodlights at Edgbaston.
Other sports
Football
The Oval was also an important site in the historical development of football in England. Football had been played in this part of London for many years prior to the inauguration of The Oval: "The Gymnastic Society", arguably the world's first organised football club, met regularly at nearby Kennington Common during the second half of the eighteenth century to play the game.
Between 1950 and 1963, amateur club Corinthian Casuals played their home matches at The Oval, with the pitch at the Vauxhall End.
First international football match
The Oval was the venue for the first representative football match in the world on 5 March 1870, England against Scotland, organised by The Football Association. The game resulted in a 1–1 draw, but is not recognised by FIFA as the first official international match because the Scotland team was selected only from London-based Scottish players. Similar representative international matches between England and Scotland took place at The Oval until February 1872.
On 8 March 1873, the England national team beat Scotland 4–2 in the first officially recognised international match to be played in England. England continued to play occasionally at The Oval until 1889.
First FA Cup final
The Oval was the site of the first FA Cup final, and also both semi-final matches. On 16 March 1872, The Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1–0 to win the first FA Cup. This final was notable for the Engineers' then innovative footballing style of teamwork rather than individual play. C. W. Alcock, Secretary of The Football Association, was the prime mover in the creation of the competition. He had also just become Secretary of Surrey CCC, so The Oval was the natural choice of venue for the final. Alcock was also captain of the successful Wanderers side. Apart from 1873, The Oval hosted all subsequent FA Cup finals until 1892.
Rugby
Between 1872 and 1879, The Oval held seven full cap international rugby union matches. The final of the United Hospitals Challenge Cup, the oldest rugby union cup competition in the world, was also first held at The Oval on Wednesday 3 March 1875.
Hockey
From 1935 to 1949 England women's international hockey matches were played at The Oval. One of these matches, in 1938, was the first match in any team sport to be televised by the BBC, as a trial for broadcasting the Oval Test later that year.
Baseball
On 12 March 1889, the Oval hosted an exhibition baseball game between the Chicago Whitestockings and an "All-American" team as part of Albert Spalding's 1888-1889 baseball world tour. The Oval was reported to have been full, and the match was attended by the Prince of Wales who greeted the players following the game.
Conferences and events
As well as being an international sporting venue, The Oval has a conference and events business. The Corinthian Roof Terrace built on the OCS Stand in 2013 features panoramic views of the London skyline.
Other events
The ground has also hosted other sporting events and also music concerts.
On September 18, 1971, a day-long rock concert was held at The Oval to raise funds for famine relief in war-torn Bangladesh. Featuring The Faces and headlined by The Who, a crowd of over 40,000 people attended, with the stage sited at the Vauxhall End. The following year, two more successful concerts were held; the first featuring Frank Zappa and Hawkwind, the second featuring Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Genesis.
The Oval has hosted exhibition matches for Australian rules football. The first such match was held between and a team of All-Stars in 1972. In 1987, the Oval hosted what became known as the Battle of Britain between Carlton and North Melbourne, which included numerous fights and future multiple AFL Premiership coach Alastair Clarkson, at the time only a teenager, breaking Ian Aitken's jaw. In 2005, a record crowd for Australian rules football in England (18,884) saw Fremantle defeat the West Coast Eagles in the Western Derby (thus far, the only edition of the fixture to not be played in Perth). In 2012, approximately 10,000 attended a post-season exhibition match between Port Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs, which Port Adelaide won by 1 point.
In 2011, ahead of an NFL International Series game at Wembley Stadium, the Chicago Bears used The Oval as a practice facility.
Oval gasometer and gasworks
A tall Victorian gasometer, sited less than 50 metres beyond the north-eastern stadium wall, has been a dominating feature of the view from the ground since the mid 1800s. A movement to preserve iconic gasometers across the UK as important and historic monuments of Britain's industrial heritage has emerged in recent years, with the one visible from The Oval often cited as a particularly notable example. The skeletal but decorative wrought iron structure is a landmark in the area and has become an intrinsic part of The Oval's history and urban allure. The cricket commentator Henry Blofeld once said in a broadcast, "As the bowler runs in, it's so quiet you can hear the creak of the gasometer."
Although long unused as a gas holder, the aging structure was only officially decommissioned in 2014, with plans to demolish it being announced in 2013. Blofeld stated: "In comparison, pulling down the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace would be child's play.". After local public protest at the proposed demolition, in March 2016 the structure was given Grade II listed status to protect its future.
Transport connections
See also
List of international cricket centuries at the Oval
Archbishop Tenison's School – a historic school located next to the ground, often used as a vantage point for TV cameras and crews
Gasworks Gallery, next to the ground
History of Test cricket from 1877 to 1883
History of Test cricket from 1884 to 1889
History of Test cricket from 1890 to 1900
List of cricket grounds in England and Wales
List of Test cricket grounds
References
External links
Cricinfo page on The Oval
Aerial view of The Oval at Google Maps
Annotated aerial photograph
Images of The Oval
Cricket grounds in London
Cricket in London
Defunct football venues in England
FA Cup final venues
Kennington
Sport in the London Borough of Lambeth
Sports venues completed in 1845
History of the London Borough of Lambeth
Surrey County Cricket Club grounds
Test cricket grounds in England
Corinthian-Casuals F.C.
Defunct rugby union venues in England
Australian rules football grounds
World War II prisoner-of-war camps in England
1845 establishments in England
1999 Cricket World Cup stadiums
1975 Cricket World Cup stadiums
1979 Cricket World Cup stadiums
1983 Cricket World Cup stadiums
2019 Cricket World Cup stadiums
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen%20angel
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Fallen angel
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Fallen angels are angels who were expelled from heaven. The literal term "fallen angel" does not appear in any Abrahamic religious texts, but is used to describe angels cast out of heaven or angels who sinned. Such angels often tempt humans to sin.
The idea of fallen angels is derived from the Book of Enoch, a Jewish pseudepigraphic apocalyptic religious text, or the assumption that the "sons of God" () mentioned in Genesis 6:1–4 are angels. In the period immediately preceding the composition of the New Testament, some sects of Judaism identified these same "sons of God" as fallen angels. During the late Second Temple period the biblical giants were sometimes considered the monstrous offspring of fallen angels and human women. In such accounts, God sends the Great Deluge to purge the world of these creatures; their bodies are destroyed, yet their peculiar souls survive, thereafter roaming the earth as demons. Rabbinic Judaism and Christian authorities after the third century rejected the Enochian writings and the notion of an illicit union between angels and women producing giants. Christian theology indicates the sins of fallen angels occur before the beginning of human history. Accordingly, fallen angels became identified with those led by Lucifer in rebellion against God, also equated with demons.
Evidence for the belief in fallen angels among Muslims can be traced back to reports attributed to some of the companions of Muhammad, such as Ibn Abbas (619–687) and Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud (594–653). On the other hand, some Islamic scholars opposed the belief in fallen angels by stressing the piety of angels supported by verses of Quran, such as 16:49 and 66:6, although none of these verses declare angels as immune from sin. One of the first opponents of the concept of fallen angels was the early and influential Islamic ascetic Hasan of Basra (642–728). To support the doctrine of infallible angels, he pointed at verses which stressed the piety of angels, while simultaneously reinterpreting verses which might imply acknowledgement of fallen angels. For that reason, he read the term mala'ikah (angels) in reference to Harut and Marut, two possible fallen angels mentioned in 2:102, as malikayn (kings) instead of malā'ikah (angels), depicting them as ordinary men and advocated the belief that Iblis was a jinn and had never been an angel before. The precise degree of angelic fallibility is not clear even among scholars who accepted fallen angels; according to a common assertion, impeccability applies only to the messengers among angels or as long as they remain angels.
Academic scholars have discussed whether or not the Quranic jinn are identical to the biblical fallen angels. Although the different types of spirits in the Quran are sometimes hard to distinguish, the jinn in Islamic traditions seem to differ in their major characteristics from fallen angels. In classical Islamic traditions, the jinn are often thought of as a race of Pre-Adamites, who dwelt on earth. However, their ethereal bodies, as in the Christian conception of fallen angels, would allow them to ascend to heaven to obtain knowledge, thus passing secret information to soothsayers (a notion also corresponding with the Greek Daimon). The Quran also refers to the idea of jinn trying to climb up to heaven. As Patricia Crone points out, one of the characteristics of fallen angels is that they fall from heaven, not that they try to get back to it.
Second Temple period
The concept of fallen angels derives mostly from works dated to the Second Temple period between 530 BC and 70 AD: in the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees and the Qumran Book of Giants; and perhaps in Genesis 6:1–4. A reference to heavenly beings called "Watchers" originates in Daniel 4, in which there are three mentions, twice in the singular (v. 13, 23), once in the plural (v. 17), of "watchers, holy ones". The Ancient Greek word for watchers is (, plural of ), literally translated as "wakeful". Some scholars consider it most likely that the Jewish tradition of fallen angels predates, even in written form, the composition of Gen 6:1–4. In the Book of Enoch, these Watchers "fell" after they became "enamored" with human women. The Second Book of Enoch (Slavonic Enoch) refers to the same beings of the (First) Book of Enoch, now called Grigori in the Greek transcription. Compared to the other Books of Enoch, fallen angels play a less significant role in 3 Enoch. 3 Enoch mentions only three fallen angels called Azazel, Azza and Uzza. Similar to The first Book of Enoch, they taught sorcery on earth, causing corruption. Unlike the first Book of Enoch, there is no mention of the reason for their fall and, according to 3 Enoch 4.6, they also later appear in heaven objecting to the presence of Enoch.
1 Enoch
According to 1 Enoch 7.2, the Watchers become "enamoured" with human women and have intercourse with them. The offspring of these unions, and the knowledge they were giving, corrupt human beings and the earth (1 Enoch 10.11–12). Eminent among these angels are Samyaza and Azazel. Like many other fallen angels mentioned in 1 Enoch 8.1–9, Azazel introduces men to "forbidden arts", and it is Azazel who is rebuked by Enoch himself for illicit instruction, as stated in 1 Enoch 13.1. According to 1 Enoch 10.6, God sends the archangel Raphael to chain Azazel in the desert Dudael as punishment. Further, Azazel is blamed for the corruption of earth:
An etiological interpretation of 1 Enoch deals with the origin of evil. By shifting the origin of mankind's sin and their misdeeds to illicit angel instruction, evil is attributed to something supernatural from without. This motif, in 1 Enoch, differs from that of later Jewish and Christian theology; in the latter evil is something from within. According to a paradigmatic interpretation, 1 Enoch might deal with illicit marriages between priests and women. As evident from Leviticus 21:1–15, priests were prohibited to marry impure women. Accordingly, the fallen angels in 1 Enoch are the priests counterpart, who defile themselves by marriage. Just like the angels are expelled from heaven, the priests are excluded from their service at the altar. Unlike most other apocalyptic writings, 1 Enoch reflects a growing dissatisfaction with the priestly establishments in Jerusalem in 3rd century BC. The paradigmatic interpretation parallels the Adamic myth in regard of the origin of evil: In both cases, transcending ones own limitations inherent in their own nature, causes their fall. This contrasts the etiological interpretation, which implies another power besides God, in heaven. The latter solution therefore poorly fits into monotheistic thought. Otherwise, the introduction to illicit knowledge might reflect a rejection of foreign Hellenistic culture. Accordingly, the fallen angels represent creatures of Greek mythology, which introduced forbidden arts, used by Hellenistic kings and generals, resulting in oppression of Jews.
2 Enoch
The concept of fallen angels is also in the Second Book of Enoch. It tells about Enoch's ascent through the layers of heaven. During his journey, he encounters fallen angels imprisoned in the 2nd heaven. At first, he decides to pray for them, but refuses to do so, since he himself as merely human, would not be worthy to pray for angels. In the 5th heaven however, he meets other rebellious angels, here called Grigori, remaining in grief, not joining the heavenly hosts in song. Enoch tries to cheer them up by telling about his prayers for their fellow angels and thereupon they join the heavenly liturgy.
Strikingly, the text refers to the leader of the Grigori as Satanail and not as Azael or Shemyaza, as in the other Books of Enoch. But the Grigori are identified with the Watchers of 1 Enoch.
The narration of the Grigori in 2 Enoch 18:1–7, who went down on to earth, married women and "befouled the earth with their deeds", resulting in their confinement under the earth, shows that the author of 2 Enoch knew about the stories in 1 Enoch. The longer recension of 2 Enoch, chapter 29 refers to angels who were "thrown out from the height" when their leader tried to become equal in rank with the Lord's power (2 Enoch 29:1–4), an idea probably taken from Ancient Canaanite religion about Attar, trying to rule the throne of Baal. The equation of an angel called Satanail with a deity trying to usurp the throne of a higher deity, was also adapted by later Christian in regard to the fall of Satan.
Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees, an ancient Jewish religious work, accepted as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Beta Israel, refers to the Watchers, who are among the angels created on the first day. However, unlike the (first) Book of Enoch, the Watchers are commanded by God to descend to earth and to instruct humanity. It is only after they copulate with human women that they transgress the laws of God. These illicit unions result in demonic offspring, who battle each other until they die, while the Watchers are bound in the depths of the earth as punishment. In Jubilees 10:1, another angel called Mastema appears as the leader of the evil spirits. He asks God to spare some of the demons, so he might use their aid to lead humankind into sin. Afterwards, he becomes their leader:
Both the (first) Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees include the motif of angels introducing evil to humans. However, unlike the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees does not hold that evil was caused by the fall of angels in the first place, although their introduction to sin is affirmed. Further, while the fallen angels in the Book of Enoch are acting against God's will, the fallen angels and demons in the Book of Jubilees seem to have no power independent from God but only act within his power.
Rabbinic Judaism
Early Rabbinic literature
Although the concept of fallen angels developed from Judaism during the Second Temple period, rabbis from the second century onward turned against the Enochian writings, probably in order to prevent fellow Jews from worship and veneration of angels. Thus, while many angels were individualized and sometimes venerated during the Second Temple period, the status of angels was degraded to a class of creatures on the same level of humans, thereby emphasizing the omnipresence of God. The 2nd-century rabbi Shimon bar Yochai cursed everyone who explained the term sons of God as angels. He stated sons of God were actually sons of judges or sons of nobles. Evil was no longer attributed to heavenly forces, now it was dealt as an "evil inclination" (yetzer hara) within humans. In some Midrashic works, the "evil inclination" is attributed to Samael, who is in charge of several satans in order to test humanity. Nevertheless, these angels are still subordinate to God; the reacceptance of rebel angels in Midrashic discourse was posterior and probably influenced by the role of fallen angels in Islamic and Christian lore.
Babylonian Talmud
However, there are several hints spread throughout the Babylonian Talmud witnessing to the sages' familiarity with the myth of the fallen angels. First, it transmits the word "Azazel", the name of one of the angelic leaders. In most cases (Yoma 37a, 62a-b, 67b, and Hullin 11b) it is used as a mere toponym, a name of a cliff from which the scapegoat was supposed to be thrown down. Once, in Yoma 67b the sages disclose that the place is called "Azazel" because it atones for the deeds of "Uzza and Azael", the malicious angels known from the 3 Book of Enoch (3 Enoch 5) for teaching sorcery to the generation of Enosh. Second, Niddah 61a explains that Og, the Rephaite warlord of gigantic height and strength (Deuteronomy 3:11) is the grandson of Shamhazai, the fallen angelic leader known from the 1 Book of Enoch (1 En 6:1-8; 8:1-3), Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 6:4, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q201 3:6; 4Q202 2:5, and 4Q530 2:3-23). Third, according to Eruvin 18b after witnessing Cain's murder Adam decides to abstain from cohabitation with Eve in order not to sire any more potentially wicked offspring. This decision proves to be only partially successful because he experiences ejaculations that led to the formation of demons. The text does not explain who the mother of these creatures is, but according to the version of this tradition transmitted in midrash Genesis Rabbah 20:11 the first couple was seduced by evil spirits and gave birth to even more demons. Fourth, according to Sanhedrin 109a the architects of the Tower of Babel are turned into demons and from the contextual works, both Rabbinic (e.g., Genesis Rabbah 31:12, Deuteronomy Rabbah 184) and Christian (e.g., Praeparatio Evangelica 9.17.2-3, 9.8.12), it is clear that these artisans could be interpreted as giants. From this perspective, the metamorphosis of the builders of Babel into demons parallels the motif of the giants' cadavers transformed into evil spirits (e.g., 1 Enoch 15:8-12 and Testament of Solomon 70-71). Hence, it could be concluded that the Talmudic rabbis knew at least some elements of the myth of the fallen angels but modified it so as to differentiate from among other religious and cultural traditions of the era.
Post-Talmudic works
The idea of rebel angels in Judaism reappears in the Aggadic-Midrashic work Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, which shows not one, but two falls of angels. The first one is attributed to Samael, who refuses to worship Adam and objects to God favoring Adam over the angels, ultimately descending onto Adam and Eve to tempt them into sin. This seems rooted in the motif of the fall of Iblis in the Quran and the fall of Satan in the Cave of Treasures. The second fall echoes the Enochian narratives. Again, the "sons of God" mentioned in Gen 6:1–4 are depicted as angels. During their fall, their "strength and stature became like the sons of man" and again, they give existence to the giants by intercourse with human women.
Kabbalah
Although not strictly speaking fallen, evil angels reappear in Kabbalah. Some of them are named after angels taken from the Enochian writings, such as Samael. According to the Zohar, just as angels can be created by virtue, evil angels are an incarnation of human vices, which derive from the Qliphoth, the representation of impure forces.
However, the Zohar also recalls a narration of two angels in a fallen state, called Aza and Azael. These angels are cast down from the heaven after mistrusting Adam for his inclination towards sin. Once on Earth, they complete the Enochian narrative by teaching magic to humans and producing offspring with them, as well as consorting with Lilith (hailed as "the sinner"). In the narrative, the Zohar affirms but simultaneously prohibits magical practices. As a punishment, God puts the angels in chains, but they still copulate with the demoness Naamah, who gives birth to demons, evil spirits and witches.
Christianity
Bible
Luke 10:18 refers to "Satan falling from heaven" and Matthew 25:41 mentions "the Devil and his angels", who will be thrown into hell. All Synoptic Gospels identify Satan as the leader of demons. Paul the Apostle ( or 67) states in 1 Corinthians 6:3 that there are angels who will be judged, implying the existence of wicked angels. 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6 refer paraenetically to angels who have sinned against God and await punishment on Judgement Day. The Book of Revelation, chapter 12, speaks of Satan as a great red dragon whose "tail swept a third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth". In verses 7–9, Satan is defeated in the War in Heaven against Michael and his angels: "the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him". Nowhere within the New Testament writings are fallen angels identified with demons, but by combining the references to Satan, demons and angels, early Christian exegetes equated fallen angels with demons, for which Satan was regarded as the leader.
The First Epistle to the Corinthians in 11:10, according to the early Church Father Tertullian, references fallen angels; Tertullian taught that protection from the lust of the fallen angels was the reason for Saint Paul's directive to Christian women to wear a headcovering (veil). Tertullian referenced a woman who was touched on the neck by a fallen angel "who found her to be a temptation".
Origen and other Christian writers linked the fallen morning star of Isaiah 14:12 of the Old Testament to Jesus' statement in Luke 10:18 that he "saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven", as well as a passage about the fall of Satan in Revelation 12:8–9. The Latin word lucifer, as introduced in the late 4th-century AD Vulgate, gave rise to the name for a fallen angel.
Christian tradition has associated Satan not only with the image of the morning star in Isaiah 14:12, but also with the denouncing in Ezekiel 28:11–19 of the king of Tyre, who is spoken of as having been a "cherub". The Church Fathers saw these two passages as in some ways parallel, an interpretation also testified in apocryphal and pseudepigraphic works. However, "no modern evangelical commentary on Isaiah or Ezekiel sees Isaiah 14 or Ezekiel 28 as providing information about the fall of Satan".
Early Christianity
During the period immediately before the rise of Christianity, the intercourse between the Watchers and human women was often seen as the first fall of the angels. Christianity stuck to the Enochian writings at least until the third century. Many Church Fathers such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Lactantius accepted the association of the angelic descent myth to the sons of God passage in Genesis 6:1–4. However, some ascetics, such as Origen (), rejected this interpretation. According to the Church Fathers who rejected the doctrine by Origen, these angels were guilty of having transgressed the limits of their nature and of desiring to leave their heavenly abode to experience sensual experiences. Irenaeus referred to fallen angels as apostates, who will be punished by an everlasting fire. Justin Martyr () identified pagan deities as fallen angels or their demonic offspring in disguise. Justin also held them responsible for Christian persecution during the first centuries. Tertullian and Origen also referred to fallen angels as teachers of astrology.
The Babylonian king, who is described as a fallen "morning star" in Isaiah 14:1–17, was probably the first time identified with a fallen angel by Origen. This description was interpreted typologically both as an angel and a human king. The image of the fallen morning star or angel was thereby applied to Satan by early Christian writers, following the equation of Lucifer to Satan in the pre-Christian century.
Catholicism
The subject of fallen angels is covered in a number of catechisms, including Rev. George Hay's in which he answers the question What was the sin by which they fell?: "It was pride, arising from the great beauty and sublime graces which God had bestowed upon them. For, seeing themselves such glorious beings, they fell in love with themselves, and, forgetting the God that made them, wished to be on an equality with their Creator." The consequence of this fall being that, "they were immediately deprived of all their supernatural graces and heavenly beauty: they were changed from glorious angels into hideous devils; they were banished out of heaven, and condemned to the torments of hell, which was prepared to receive them."
In terms of the history of fallen angel theology it is thought to be rooted in Enochian literature, which Christians began to reject by the third century. The sons of God came to be identified merely with righteous men, more precisely with descendants of Seth who had been seduced by women descended from Cain. The cause of evil was shifted from the superior powers of angels, to humans themselves, and to the very beginning of history; the expulsion of Satan and his angels on the one hand and the original sin of humans on the other hand. However, the Book of Watchers, which identified the sons of God with fallen angels, was not rejected by Syriac Christians or the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Augustine of Hippo's work Civitas Dei (5th century) became the major opinion of Western demonology and for the Catholic Church. He rejected the Enochian writings and stated that the sole origin of fallen angels was the rebellion of Satan. As a result, fallen angels came to be equated with demons and depicted as non-sexual spiritual entities. The exact nature of their spiritual bodies became another topic of dispute during the Middle Ages. Augustine based his descriptions of demons on his perception of the Greek Daimon. The Daimon was thought to be a spiritual being, composed of ethereal matter, a notion also used for fallen angels by Augustine. However, these angels received their ethereal body only after their fall. Later scholars tried to explain the details of their spiritual nature, asserting that the ethereal body is a mixture of fire and air, but that they are still composed of material elements. Others denied any physical relation to material elements, depicting the fallen angels as purely spiritual entities. But even those who believed the fallen angels had ethereal bodies did not believe that they could produce any offspring.
Augustine, in his Civitas Dei describes two cities (Civitates) distinct from each other and opposed to each other like light and darkness. The earthly city is caused by the act of rebellion of the fallen angels and is inhabited by wicked men and demons (fallen angels) led by Satan. On the other hand, the heavenly city is inhabited by righteous men and the angels led by God. Although, his ontological division into two different kingdoms shows resemblance of Manichean dualism, Augustine differs in regard of the origin and power of evil. In Augustine works, evil originates from free will. Augustine always emphasized the sovereignty of God over the fallen angels. Accordingly, the inhabitants of the earthly city can only operate within their God-given framework. The rebellion of angels is also a result of the God-given freedom of choice. The obedient angels are endowed with grace, giving them a deeper understanding of God's nature and the order of the cosmos. Illuminated by God-given grace, they became incapable of feeling any desire for sin. The other angels, however, are not blessed with grace, thus they remain capable of sin. After these angels decide to sin, they fall from heaven and become demons. In Augustine's view of angels, they cannot be guilty of carnal desires since they lack flesh, but they can be guilty of sins that are rooted in spirit and intellect such as pride and envy. However, after they have made their decision to rebel against God, they cannot turn back. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not take "the fall of the angels" literally, but as a radical and irrevocable rejection of God and his reign by some angels who, though created as good beings, freely chose evil, their sin being unforgivable because of the irrevocable character of their choice, not because of any defect in infinite divine mercy. Present-day Catholicism rejects Apocatastasis, the reconciliation with God suggested by the Church Father Origen.
Orthodox Christianity
Eastern Orthodox Christianity
Like Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity shares the basic belief in fallen angels as spiritual beings who rebel against God. Unlike Catholicism, however, there is no established doctrine about the exact nature of fallen angels, but Eastern Orthodox Christianity unanimously agrees that the power of fallen angels is always inferior to God. Therefore, belief in fallen angels can always be assimilated with local lore, as long it does not break basic principles and is in line with the Bible. Historically, some theologians even tend to suggest that fallen angels could be rehabilitated in the world to come. Fallen angels, just like angels, play a significant role in the spiritual life of believers. As in Catholicism, fallen angels tempt and incite people into sin, but mental illness is also linked to fallen angels. Those who have reached an advanced degree of spirituality are even thought to be able to envision them. Rituals and sacraments performed by Eastern Orthodoxy are thought to weaken such demonic influences.
Ethiopian Church
Unlike most other Churches, the Ethiopian Church accepts 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees as canonical. As a result, the Church believes that human sin does not originate in Adam's transgression alone, but also from Satan and other fallen angels. Together with demons, they continue to cause sin and corruption on earth.
Neutral angels
In Christian folklore tales about encounters between men and spirits, the spirits were often explained as fallen angels. They would have been cast out of heaven, damned to roam the world as demons, but were not so evil that they were sentenced to hell, like Lucifer and his devils. Yet they were still not as good to remain in heaven. Therefore, they would live between heaven and hell among humans in liminal spaces.
Caesarius of Heisterbach's () asserted that not all fallen angels are equally bad. Some fallen angels would be banished for not actively defending God against Lucifer, but since they did not side with the devils, would not be sentenced to hell. They remain loyal to God on earth, do good deeds, and bearing some resemblences to saints, as seen in the Dialogus Miraculorum, in which a knight is guided by a fallen angel to lead him back on the path of piety. In another tale, a neutral fallen angel became an assistant of a noble knight. However, when the knight learned that his best assistant was actually a demon, he dismissed him. When the knight wants to pay the demon for his service, the demon asserted that the knight should spend the money on a new bell for the church, instead.
According to The Brendan Voyage, during the Medieval Age, Brendan meets a group of angels referred to as "wandering spirits". On holy days, they were embodied as white birds, symbols usually used for purity and the holy spirit. In later versions, such as the 15th Century Dutch and German variant, the fallen angels are much more depicted as akin to grotesque demons. Although they would not have supported Lucifer in his evil schemes, they would have been passive and not fighting for good, thus turned into animal-like creatures cast out of heaven.
Such earthly fallen angels were used as a possible origin of fairies in Irish and Scandinavian folk-tales. Depending on the place they fell, they will remain as spirits of the specific element, but are usually benevolent and harmless. If such fairies were identified with the Biblical fallen angels, their salvation after Judgement Day was usually denied, since the fallen angels could not return to heaven. Later Protestant thinkers increasingly dismissed belief in fairies and neutral angels as part of either fairy-tales or a delusion cast by Satan.
Protestantism
Like Catholicism, Protestantism continues with the concept of fallen angels as spiritual entities unrelated to flesh, but it rejects the angelology established by Catholicism. Martin Luther's (1483–1546) sermons of the angels merely recount the exploits of the fallen angels, and does not deal with an angelic hierarchy. Satan and his fallen angels are responsible for some misfortune in the world, but Luther always believed that the power of the good angels exceeds those of the fallen ones. The Italian Protestant theologian Girolamo Zanchi (15161590) offered further explanations for the reason behind the fall of the angels. According to Zanchi, the angels rebelled when the incarnation of Christ was revealed to them in incomplete form. While Mainline Protestants are much less concerned with the cause of angelic fall, arguing that it is neither useful nor necessary to know, other Protestant churches do have fallen angels as more of a focus.
Theodicy
Theodicy, the question of how evil can exist simultaneously with the existence of an all-powerful and all-good God, may utilize the concept of fallen angels to explain natural evil. Accordingly, the angels would have great power, and by exercising havoc over the earth, they cause suffering and misery, manifesting in natural disasters. Accordingly, natural evil can be traced back to free-will (in that case of super-human agents). However, this implies that fallen angels have supernatural powers to influence the world, powers left unproven, thus falling into a devil of the gaps.
Islam
The concept of fallen angels is debated in Islam. Opposition to the possibility of erring angels can be attested as early as Hasan of Basra. On the other hand Abu Hanifa (d. 767), founder of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, distinguished between obedient angels, disobedient angels and unbelievers among the angels, who in turn differ from the jinn and devils. Al-Taftazani (1322 AD –1390 AD) argued that angels might slip into error and are rebuked, like Harut and Marut, but could not become unbelievers, like Iblis. Contemporary Muslim scholars have argued, even if fallen angels are considered, they are conceptually different from the fallen angels in Christianity, since they remain at the service of God and do not become God's enemies.
The Quran mentions the fall of Iblis in several Surahs. Surah Al-Anbiya states that angels claiming divine honors were to be punished with hell. Further, Surah 2:102 implies that a pair of fallen angels introduces magic to humanity. However, the latter angels did not accompany Iblis. Fallen angels work in entirely different ways in the Quran and Tafsir. According to the Isma'ilism work Umm al-Kitab, Azazil boasts about himself being superior to God until he is thrown into lower celestial spheres and ends up on earth. Iblis is often described as being chained in the lowest pit of hell (Sijjin) by various scholars, including Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1150–1210) and commands, according to Al-Tha'alibis (961–1038) Qisas Al-Anbiya, his host of rebel angels (shayāṭīn) and the fiercest jinn (ifrit) from there. In a Shia narrative from Ja'far al-Sadiq (700 or 702–765), Idris (Enoch) meets an angel, which the wrath of God falls upon, and his wings and hair are cut off; after Idris prays for him to God, his wings and hair are restored. In return they become friends and at his request the angel takes Idris to the heavens to meet the angel of death. In Shia traditions, a cherub called Futrus was cast out from heaven and fell to the earth in the form a snake.
Some recent non-Islamic scholars suggest Uzair, who is according to Surah 9:30 called a son of God by Jews, originally referred to a fallen angel. While exegetes almost unanimously identified Uzair as Ezra, there is no historical evidence that the Jews called him son of God. Thus, the Quran may refer not to the earthly Ezra, but to the heavenly Ezra, identifying him with the heavenly Enoch, who in turn became identified with the angel Metatron (also called lesser YHWH) in merkabah mysticism.
Iblis
The Quran repeatedly tells about the fall of Iblis. According to Quran 2:30, the angels object to God's intention to create a human, because they will cause corruption and shed blood, echoing the account of 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. This happens after the angels observe men causing unrighteousness. However, after God demonstrates the superiority of Adam's knowledge in comparison to the angels, He orders them to prostrate themselves. Only Iblis refuses to follow the instruction. When God asks for the reason behind Iblis' refusal, he boasts about himself being superior to Adam, because he is made of fire. Thereupon God expels him from heaven. In the early Meccan period, Iblis appears as a degraded angel. But since he is called a jinni in Surah 18:50, some scholars argue that Iblis is actually not an angel, but an entity apart, stating he is only allowed to join the company of angels as a reward for his previous righteousness. Therefore, they reject the concept of fallen angels and emphasize the nobility of angels by quoting certain Quranic verses like 66:6 and 16:49, distinguishing between infallible angels and jinn capable of sin. However, the notion of jinni cannot clearly exclude Iblis from being an angel. According to Ibn Abbas, angels who guard the jinan (here: heavens) are called Jinni, just as humans who were from Mecca are called Mecci, but they are not related to the jinn-race. Other scholars assert that a jinn is everything hidden from human eye, both angels and other invisible creatures, thus including Iblis to a group of angels. In Surah 15:36, God grants Iblis' request to prove the unworthiness of humans. Surah 38:82 also confirms that Iblis' intrigues to lead humans astray are permitted by God's power. However, as mentioned in Surah 17:65, Iblis' attempts to mislead God's servants are destined to fail. The Quranic episode of Iblis parallels another wicked angel in the earlier Books of Jubilees: Like Iblis, Mastema requests God's permission to tempt humanity, and both are limited in their power, that is, not able to deceive God's servants. However, the motif of Iblis' disobedience derives not from the Watcher mythology, but can be traced back to the Cave of Treasures, a work that probably holds the standard explanation in Proto-orthodox Christianity for the angelic fall of Satan. According to this explanation, Satan refuses to prostrate himself before Adam, because he is "fire and spirit" and thereupon Satan is banished from heaven. Unlike the majority opinion in later Christianity, the idea that Iblis tries to usurp the throne of God is alien to Islam and due to its strict monotheism unthinkable.
Harut and Marut
Harut and Marut are a pair of angels mentioned in Surah 2:102 teaching magic. Although the reason behind their stay on earth is not mentioned in the Quran, the following narration became canonized in Islamic tradition. The Quran exegete Tabari attributed this story to Ibn Masud and Ibn Abbas and is also attested by Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Briefly summarized, the angels complain about the mischievousness of mankind and make a request to destroy them. Consequently, God offers a test to determine whether or not the angels would do better than humans for long: the angels are endowed with human-like urges and Satan has power over them. The angels choose two (or in some accounts three) among themselves. However, on Earth, these angels entertain and act upon sexual desires and become guilty of idol worship, whereupon they even kill an innocent witness of their actions. For their deeds, they are not allowed to ascend to heaven again. Probably the names Harut and Marut are of Zoroastrian origin and derived from two Amesha Spentas called Haurvatat and Ameretat. Although the Quran gave these fallen angels Iranian names, recognized them as from the Book of Watchers. In accordance with 3 Enoch, al-Kalbi (737 AD – 819 AD) named three angels descending to earth, and he even gave them their Enochian names. He explained that one of them returned to heaven and the other two changed their names to Harut and Marut. However, like in the story of Iblis, the story of Harut and Marut does not contain any trace of angelic revolt. Rather, the stories about fallen angels are related to a rivalry between humans and angels. As the Quran affirms, Harut and Marut are sent by God and, unlike the Watchers, they only instruct humans to witchcraft by God's permission, just as Iblis can just tempt humans by God's permission.
Literature
In the Divine Comedy (1308–1320) by Dante Alighieri, fallen angels guard the City of Dis surrounding the lower circles of hell. They mark a transition: While in previous circles, the sinners are condemned for sins they just could not resist, later on, the circles of hell are filled with sinners who deliberately rebel against God, such as fallen angels or Christian heretics.
In John Milton's 17th-century epic poem Paradise Lost, both obedient and fallen angels play an important role. They appear as rational individuals: their personality is similar to that of humans. The fallen angels are named after entities from both Christian and Pagan mythology, such as Moloch, Chemosh, Dagon, Belial, Beelzebub and Satan himself. Following the canonical Christian narrative, Satan convinces other angels to live free from the laws of God, thereupon they are cast out of heaven. The epic poem starts with the fallen angels in hell. The first portrayal of God in the book is given by fallen angels, who describe him as a questionable tyrant and blame him for their fall. Outcast from heaven, the fallen angels establish their own kingdom in the depths of hell, with a capital called Pandæmonium. Unlike most earlier Christian representations of hell, it is not the primary place for God to torture the sinners, but the fallen angels' own kingdom. The fallen angels even build a palace, play music and freely debate. Nevertheless, without divine guidance, the fallen angels themselves turn hell into a place of suffering.
The idea of fallen angels plays a significant role in the various poems of Alfred de Vigny. In Le Déluge (1823), the son of an angel and a mortal woman learns from the stars about the great deluge. He seeks refuge with his beloved on Mount Ararat, hoping that his angelic father will save them. But since he does not appear, they are caught by the flood. Éloa (1824) is about a female angel created by the tears of Jesus. She hears about a male angel, expelled from heaven, whereupon she seeks to comfort him, but goes to perdition as a consequence.
See also
List of angels in theology
Meta-historical fall
Archon
İye
Nephilim
Notes
Citations
References
Further reading
External links
Catholic Encyclopedia: Angels, see section "The Evil Angels"
Jewish Encyclopedia: Fall of Angels
Book of Jubilees
Christian terminology
Second Temple period
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphanage
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Orphanage
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An orphanage is a residential institution, total institution or group home, devoted to the care of orphans and children who, for various reasons, cannot be cared for by their biological families. The parents may be deceased, absent, or abusive. There may be substance abuse or mental illness in the biological home, or the parent may simply be unwilling to care for the child. The legal responsibility for the support of abandoned children differs from country to country, and within countries. Government-run orphanages have been phased out in most developed countries during the latter half of the 20th century but continue to operate in many other regions internationally. It is now generally accepted that orphanages are detrimental to the emotional wellbeing of children, and government support goes instead towards supporting the family unit.
A few large international charities continue to fund orphanages, but most are still commonly founded by smaller charities and religious groups. Especially in developing countries, orphanages may prey on vulnerable families at risk of breakdown and actively recruit children to ensure continued funding. Orphanages in developing countries are rarely run by the state. However, not all orphanages that are state-run are less corrupted; the Romanian orphanages, like those in Bucharest, were founded due to the soaring population numbers catalyzed by dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who banned abortion and birth control and incentivized procreation in order to increase the Romanian workforce.
Today's residential institutions for children, also described as congregate care, include group homes, residential child care communities, children's homes, refuges, rehabilitation centers, night shelters, and youth treatment centers.
Research
Research from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is often cited as demonstrating that residential institutions negatively impact the wellbeing of children. The BEIP selected orphanages in Bucharest, Romania that raised abandoned children in socially and emotionally deprived environments in order to study the changes in development of infants and children after they had been placed with specially trained foster families in the local community. This powerful study demonstrated how the loving attention typically provided to children by their parents or caregivers is pivotal for optimal human development, specifically of the brain; adequate nutrition is not enough. Further research of children who were adopted from institutions in Eastern European countries to the US demonstrated that for every 3.5 months that an infant spent in the institution, they lagged behind their peers in growth by 1 month. Further, a meta-analysis of research on the IQs of children in orphanages found lower IQs among the children in many institutions, but this result was not found in the low-income country setting.
Worldwide, residential institutions like orphanages can often be detrimental to the psychological development of affected children. In countries where orphanages are no longer in use, the long-term care of unwarded children by the state has been transitioned to a domestic environment, with an emphasis on replicating a family home. Many of these countries, such as the United States, utilize a system of monetary stipends paid to foster parents to incentivize and subsidize the care of state wards in private homes. A distinction must be made between foster care and adoption, as adoption would remove the child from the care of the state and transfer the legal responsibility for that child's care to the adoptive parent completely and irrevocably, whereas, in the case of foster care, the child would remain a ward of the state with the foster parent acting only as a caregiver.
Most children who live in orphanages are not orphans; four out of five children in orphanages have at least one living parent and most having some extended family. Developing countries and their governments rely on kinship care to aid in the orphan crisis because it is cheaper to financially help extended families in taking in an orphaned child than it is to institutionalize them. Additionally, developing nations are lacking in child welfare and their well-being because of a lack of resources. Research that is being collected in the developing world shows that these countries focus purely on survival indicators instead of a combination of their survival and other positive indicators like a developed nation would do. This speaks to the way that many developed countries treat an orphan crisis, as the only focus is to obtain a way to ensure their survival. In the developed nations orphans can expect to find not only a home but also these countries will try and ensure a secure future as well. Furthermore, orphans in developing nations are seen as a problem that needs to be solved, this also makes them vulnerable to exploitation or neglect. In Pakistan, alternative care for orphans often falls on to extended families and Pakistan society as the government feels puts the burden of caring for orphans on them. Although it is very common for Pakistan citizens to take in orphans because of their culture and religion, only orphans whose parents have died are taken in. This neglects a population of children who need alternative care, either due to abuse, or parents who are unable to care for their child because of poverty, mental, or physical issues.
History
The Romans formed their first orphanages around 400 AD. Jewish law prescribed care for the widow and the orphan, and Athenian law supported all orphans of those killed in military service until the age of eighteen. Plato (Laws, 927) says: "Orphans should be placed under the care of public guardians. Men should have a fear of the loneliness of orphans and of the souls of their departed parents. A man should love the unfortunate orphan of whom he is guardian as if he were his own child. He should be as careful and as diligent in the management of the orphan's property as of his own or even more careful still." The care of orphans was referred to bishops and, during the Middle Ages, to monasteries. As soon as they were old enough, children were often given as apprentices to households to ensure their support and to learn an occupation.
In medieval Europe, care for orphans tended to reside with the Church. The Elizabethan Poor Laws were enacted at the time of the Reformation and placed public responsibility on individual parishes to care for the indigent poor.
Foundling Hospitals
The growth of sentimental philanthropy in the 18th century led to the establishment of the first charitable institutions that would cater to orphans.
The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1741 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram in London, England, as a children's home for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." The first children were admitted into a temporary house located in Hatton Garden. At first, no questions were asked about child or parent, but a distinguishing token was put on each child by the parent.
On reception, children were sent to wet nurses in the countryside, where they stayed until they were about four or five years old. At sixteen, girls were generally apprenticed as servants for four years; at fourteen, boys were apprenticed into a variety of occupations, typically for seven years. There was a small benevolent fund for adults.
In 1756, the House of Commons resolved that all children offered should be received, that local receiving places should be appointed all over the country, and that the funds should be publicly guaranteed. A basket was accordingly hung outside the hospital; the maximum age for admission was raised from two months to twelve, and a flood of children poured in from country workhouses. Parliament soon came to the conclusion that the indiscriminate admission should be discontinued. The hospital adopted a system of receiving children only with considerable sums. This practice was finally stopped in 1801, and it henceforth became a fundamental rule that no money was to be received.
19th century
By the early nineteenth century, the problem of abandoned children in urban areas, especially London, began to reach alarming proportions. The workhouse system, instituted in 1834, although often brutal, was an attempt at the time to house orphans as well as other vulnerable people in society who could not support themselves in exchange for work. Conditions, especially for the women and children, were so bad as to cause an outcry among the social reform–minded middle-class; some of Charles Dickens' most famous novels, including Oliver Twist, highlighted the plight of the vulnerable and the often abusive conditions that were prevalent in the London orphanages.
Clamour for change led to the birth of the orphanage movement. In England, the movement really took off in the mid-19th century although orphanages such as the Orphan Working Home in 1758 and the Bristol Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls in 1795, had been set up earlier. Private orphanages were founded by private benefactors; these often received royal patronage and government oversight.
Ragged schools, founded by John Pounds and the Lord Shaftesbury were also set up to provide pauper children with basic education.
Orphanages were also set up in the United States from the early 19th century; for example, in 1806, the first private orphanage in New York (the Orphan Asylum Society, now Graham Windham) was co-founded by Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, widow of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Under the influence of Charles Loring Brace, foster care became a popular alternative from the mid-19th century. Later, the Social Security Act of 1935 improved conditions by authorizing Aid to Families with Dependent Children as a form of social security.
A very influential philanthropist of the era was Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the charity Barnardos. Becoming aware of the great numbers of homeless and destitute children adrift in the cities of England and encouraged by the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury and the 1st Earl Cairns, he opened the first of the "Dr. Barnardo’s Homes" in 1870. By his death in 1905, he had established 112 district homes, which searched for and received waifs and strays, to feed, clothe and educate them. The system under which the institution was carried on is broad as follows: the infants and younger girls and boys were chiefly "boarded out" in rural districts; girls above fourteen years of age were sent to the industrial training homes, to be taught useful domestic occupations; boys above seventeen years of age were first tested in labor homes and then placed in employment at home, sent to sea, or emigrated; boys of between thirteen and seventeen years of age were trained for the various trades for which they might be mentally or physically fitted.
Deinstitutionalization
Evidence from a variety of studies supports the vital importance of attachment security and later development of children. Deinstitutionalization of orphanages and children's homes program in the United States began in the 1950s, after a series of scandals involving the coercion of birth parents and abuse of orphans (notably at Georgia Tann's Tennessee Children's Home Society). In Romania, a decree was established that aggressively promoted population growth, banning contraception and abortions for women with fewer than four children, despite the wretched poverty of most families. After Ceausescu was overthrown, he left a society unable and unwilling to take care of its children. Researchers conducted a study to see what the implications of this early childhood neglect were on development. Typically reared Romanian children showed high rates of secure attachment. Whereas the institutionally raised children showed huge rates of disorganized attachment. Many countries accepted the need to de-institutionalize the care of vulnerable children—that is, close down orphanages in favor of foster care and accelerated adoption.
Foster care operates by taking in children from their homes due to the lack of care or abuse of their parents, where orphanages take in children with no parents or children whose parents have dropped them off for a better life, typically due to income. Major charities are increasingly focusing their efforts on the re-integration of orphans in order to keep them with their parents or extended family and communities. Orphanages are no longer common in the European Community, and Romania, in particular, has struggled greatly to reduce the visibility of its children's institutions to meet conditions of its entry into the European Union.
Some have stated it is important to understand the reasons for child abandonment, then set up targeted alternative services to support vulnerable families at risk of separation such as mother and baby units and day care centres.
Comparison to alternatives
Orphanages, especially larger ones, have had some well publicised examples of poor care. In large institutions children, but particularly babies, may not receive enough eye contact, physical contact, and stimulation to promote proper physical, social or cognitive development. In the worst cases, orphanages can be dangerous and unregulated places where children are subject to abuse and neglect.
One significant study, which disputes this, was carried out by Duke University. Their researchers concluded that institutional care in America in the 20th century produced the same health, emotional, intellectual, mental, and physical outcomes as care by relatives, and better than care in the homes of strangers. One explanation for this is the prevalence of permanent temporary foster care. This is the name for a long string of short stays with different foster care families. Permanent temporary foster care is highly disruptive to the child and prevents the child from developing a sense of security or belonging. Placement in the home of a relative maintains and usually improves the child's connection to family members.
Another alternative is group homes which are used for short-term placements. They may be residential treatment centers, and they frequently specialize in a particular population with psychiatric or behavioral problems, e.g., a group home for children and teens with autism, eating disorders, or substance abuse problems or child soldiers undergoing decommissioning.
Criticism
Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty. It is speculated that flush with money, orphanages are increasing and push for children to join even though demographic data show that even the poorest extended families usually take in children whose parents have died. Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children's development by separating them from their families and that it would be more effective and cheaper to aid close relatives who want to take in the orphans.
Children living in orphanages for prolonged periods get behind in development goals, and have worse mental health. Orphanage children are not included in statistics making it easy to traffic them or abuse them in other ways. There are campaigns to include orphanage children and street children in progress statistics.
Scams
Visitors to developing countries can be taken in by orphanage scams, which can include orphanages set up as a front to get foreigners to pay school fees of orphanage directors' extended families. Alternatively the children whose upkeep is being funded by foreigners may be sent to work, not to school, the exact opposite of what the donor is expecting. The worst even sell children. In Cambodia, from 2005 to 2017, the number of orphanages increased by 75%, with many of these orphanages renting children from poor families for $25/month. Families are promised that their children can get free education and food here, but what really happens is that they are used as props to garner donations. Some are also bought from their parents for very little and passed on to westerners who pay a large fee to adopt them. This also happens in China. In Nepal, orphanages can be used as a way to remove a child from their parents before placing them for adoption overseas, which is equally lucrative to the owners who receive a number of official and unofficial payments and "donations". In other countries, such as Indonesia, orphanages are run as businesses, which will attract donations and make the owners rich; often the conditions orphans are kept in will deliberately be poor to attract more donations.
Worldwide
Europe
The orphanages and institutions remaining in Europe tend to be in Eastern Europe and are generally state-funded.
Albania
There are estimated to be about 31,000 orphans (0–14 years old) in Albanian orphanages. (2012 statistics) In most cases they were abandoned by their parents. At 14 they are required, by law, to leave their orphanage and live on their own.
There are approximately 10 small orphanages in Albania; each one having only 12-40 children residing there. The larger ones would be state-run.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
SOS Children's Villages giving support to 240 orphaned children.
Bulgaria
The Bulgarian government has shown interest in strengthening children's rights.
In 2010, Bulgaria adopted a national strategic plan for the period 2010–2025 to improve the living standards of the country's children. Bulgaria is working hard to get all institutions closed within the next few years and find alternative ways to take care of the children.
"Support is sporadically given to poor families and work during daytime; correspondingly, different kinds of day centers have started up, though the quality of care in these centers is poorly measured and difficult to monitor. A smaller number of children have also been able to be relocated into foster families".
There are 7000 children living in Bulgarian orphanages wrongly classified as orphaned. Only 10 percent of these are orphans, with the rest of the children placed in orphanages for temporary periods when the family is in crisis.
Estonia
As of 2009, there are 35 different orphanages.
Hungary
A comprehensive national strategy for strengthening the rights of children was adopted by Parliament in 2007 and will run until 2032.
Child flow to orphanages has been stopped and children are now protected by social services. Violation of children's rights leads to litigation.
Lithuania
In Lithuania there are 105 institutions. 41 percent of the institutions each have more than 60 children.
Lithuania has the highest number of orphaned children in Northern Europe.
Poland
Children's rights enjoy relatively strong protection in Poland. Orphaned children are now protected by social services.
Social Workers' opportunities have increased by establishing more foster homes and aggressive family members can now be forced away from home, instead of replacing the child/children.
Moldova
More than 8800 children are being raised in state institutions, but only three percent of them are orphans.
Romania
The Romanian child welfare system is in the process of being revised and has reduced the flow of infants into orphanages.
According to Baroness Emma Nicholson, in some counties Romania now has "a completely new, world class, state of the art, child health development policy." Dickensian orphanages remain in Romania, but Romania seeks to replace institutions by family care services, as children in need will be protected by social services. As of 2018, there were 17,718 children in old-style residential centers, a significant decrease from about 100,000 in 1990.
Serbia
There are many state orphanages "where several thousand children are kept and which are still part of an outdated child care system". The conditions for them are bad because the government does not pay enough attention in improving the living standards for disabled children in Serbia's orphanages and medical institutions.
Slovakia
The committee made recommendations, such as proposals for the adoption of a new "national 14" action plan for children for at least the next five years, and the creation of an independent institution for the protection of child rights.
Sweden
One of the first orphanages in Sweden was the Stora Barnhuset (1633-1922) in Stockholm, which remained the biggest orphanage in Sweden for centuries. In 1785, however, a reform by Gustav III of Sweden stipulated that orphans should first and foremost always be placed in foster homes when that was possible.
In Sweden, there are 5,000 children in the care of the state. None of them are currently living in an orphanage, because there is a social service law which requires that the children reside in a family home.
United Kingdom
During the Victorian era, child abandonment was rampant, and orphanages were set up to reduce infant mortality. Such places were often so full of children that nurses often administered Godfrey's Cordial, a special concoction of opium and treacle, to soothe baby colic.
Orphaned children were placed in either prisons or the poorhouse/workhouse, as there were so few places in orphanages, or else they were left to fend for themselves on the street. Such openings in orphanages as were available could only be obtained by collecting votes for admission, placing them out of reach of poor families.
Known orphanages are:
Sub-Saharan Africa
The majority of African orphanages (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa) appear to be funded by donors, often from Western nations, rather than by domestic governments.
Ethiopia
"For example, in the Jerusalem Association Children's Home (JACH), only 160 children remain of the 785 who were in JACH's three orphanages." / "Attitudes regarding the institutional care of children have shifted dramatically in recent years in Ethiopia. There appears to be a general recognition by MOLSA and the NGOs with which Pact is working that such care is, at best, a last resort and that serious problems arise with the social reintegration of children who grow up in institutions, and deinstitutionalization through family reunification and independent living are being emphasized."
Ghana
A 2007 survey sponsored by OAfrica (previously OrphanAid Africa) and carried out by the Department of Social Welfare came up with the figure of 4,800 children in institutional care in 148 orphanages. The government is currently attempting to phase out the use of orphanages in favor of foster care placements and adoption. At least eighty-eight homes have been closed since the passage of the National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children. The website www.ovcghana.org details these reforms.
Kenya
A 1999 survey of 36,000 orphans found the following number in institutional care: 64 in registered institutions and 164 in unregistered institutions.
Malawi
There are about 101 orphanages in Malawi. There is a UNICEF/Government driven program on de-institutionalization, but few orphanages are yet involved in the program.
Amitofo Care Centre ("ACC"), founded and directed by Venerable Hui Li from Taiwan since 2004 is a charitable, non-governmental and nonprofit making orphanage organization, which comprises an administration center, children's dormitories, youth dormitories, preparatory school, Yuan Tong Primary and Secondary schools, library, activity center, medical center, religious center, Community Bases Organization (CBO), etc. ACC is founded and directed by Venerable Hui Li with an aspiration and mission to directly rear and care for need and vulnerable children of Africa within the humanitarian and educational umbrella. The main principles of ACC are based on local African culture, Chinese culture, Western culture, and Buddhist philosophy which are delivered to the needy and vulnerable children. This is considered a unique and remarkable characteristic of ACC although it must be stressed that none of the orphans have taken refuge in Buddhism, as we respect their religious freedom and will allow them to choose their own as they enter adulthood.
Rwanda
Out of 400,000 orphans, 5,000 are living in orphanages. The Government of Rwanda are working with Hope and Homes for Children to close the first institution and develop a model for community-based childcare which can be used across the country and ultimately Africa
Tanzania
"Currently, there are 52 orphanages in Tanzania caring for about 3,000 orphans and vulnerable children." A world bank document on Tanzania showed it was six times more expensive to institutionalize a child there than to help the family become functional and support the child themselves.
Nigeria
In Nigeria, a rapid assessment of orphans and vulnerable children conducted in 2004 with UNICEF support revealed that there were about seven million orphans in 2003 and that 800,000 more orphans were added during that same year. Out of this total number, about 1.8 million are orphaned by HIV/AIDS. With the spread of HIV/AIDS, the number of orphans is expected to increase rapidly in the coming years to 8.2 million by 2010.
South Africa
Since 2000, South Africa does not license orphanages any more but they continue to be set up unregulated and potentially more harmful. Theoretically, the policy supports community-based family homes but this is not always the case. One example is the homes operated by Thokomala.
Zambia
A 1996 national survey of orphans revealed no evidence of orphanage care. The breakdown of care was as follows:
38% grandparents,
55% extended family,
1% older orphan,
6% non-relative.
Recently a group of students started a fundraising website for an orphanage in Zambia.
Zimbabwe
There are 39 privately run children's charity homes, or orphanages, in the country, and the government operates eight of its own.
Privately run Orphanages can accommodate an average of 2000 children, though some are very small and located in very remote areas, hence can take in less than 150 children.
Statistics on the total number of children in orphanages nationwide are unavailable, but caregivers say their facilities were becoming unmanageably overwhelmed almost on a daily basis.
Between 1994 and 1998, the number of orphans in Zimbabwe more than doubled from 200,000 to 543,000, and in five years, the number is expected to reach 900,000. (Unfortunately, there is no room for these children.)
Togo
In Togo, there were an estimated 280,000 orphans under 18 years of age in 2005, 88,000 of them orphaned by AIDS. Ninety-six thousand orphans in Togo attend school.
Sierra Leone
Children (0–17 years) orphaned by AIDS, 2005, estimate 31,000
Children (0–17 years) orphaned due to all causes, 2005, estimate 340,000
Orphan school attendance ratio, 1999–2005 71,000
Senegal
Children (0–17 years) orphaned by AIDS, 2005, estimate 25,000
Children (0–17 years) orphaned due to all causes, 2005, estimate 560,000
Orphan school attendance ratio, 1999–2005 74,000
South Asia
Nepal
There are at least 602 child care homes housing 15,095 children in Nepal "Orphanages have turned into a Nepalese industry there is rampant abuse and a great need for intervention." Many do not require adequate checks of their volunteers, leaving children open to abuse.
Afghanistan
"At Kabul's two main orphanages, Alauddin and Tahia Maskan, the number of children enrolled has increased almost 80 percent since last January, from 700 to over 1,200 children. Almost half of these come from families who have at least one parent, but who can't support their children." The non-governmental organisation Mahboba's promise assists orphans in contemporary Afghanistan. Nowadays the number of orphanages had changed. There are approximately 19 orphanages only in Kabul.
Bangladesh
"There are no statistics regarding the actual number of children in welfare institutions in Bangladesh. The Department of Social Services, under the Ministry of Social Welfare, has a major program named Child Welfare and Child Development in order to provide access to food, shelter, basic education, health services and other basic opportunities for hapless children." (The following numbers mention capacity only, not actual numbers of orphans at present.)
9,500 – State institutions
250 – babies in three available "baby homes"
400 – Destitute Children's Rehabilitation Centre
100 – Vocational Training Centre for Orphans and Destitute Children
1,400 -Sixty-five Welfare and Rehabilitation Programmes for Children with Disability
The private welfare institutions are mostly known as orphanages and madrassahs. The authorities of most of these orphanages put more emphasis on religion and religious studies. One example follows:
400 – Approximately – Nawab Sir Salimullah Muslim Orphanage.
Maldives
Orphans, Children (0–17 years) orphaned due to all causes, 2010, estimate 51.
India
India is in the top 10 and also has a very large number of orphans as well as a destitute child population. Orphanages operated by the state are generally known as juvenile homes. In addition, there is a vast number of privately run orphanages running into thousands spread across the country. These are run by various trusts, religious groups, individual citizens, citizens groups, NGO's, etc.
While some of these places endeavor to place the children for adoption a vast majority just care and educate them till they are of legal majority age and help place them back on their feet. Prominent organizations in this field include BOYS TOWN, SOS children's villages, etc.
There have been scandals especially with regard to adoption. Since government rules restrict funds unless there are a certain number of residents, some orphanages make sure the resident numbers remain high at the cost of adoption.
Pakistan
According to a UNICEF report in 2016, there are around 4.2 million orphaned children in Pakistan. Pakistan has had sizable economic growth from 1950 to 1999 yet they aren't performing well in multiple social indicators like education and health, and this is mainly due to the corrupt and unstable government. Pakistan heavily relies on the nonprofit sector and zakat to finance social issues such as aid for orphans. Zakat is a financial obligation on Muslims which requires one to donate 2.5% of the family's income to charity, and it is specifically mentioned in the Quran to take care of orphans. With the new use of zakat money from donations to investments it has a lot of potential in benefiting the development as well as the ultimate goal of poverty alleviation. The Pakistan government relies on this public sector on taking care of local issues so that they do not have the burden. Furthermore, only 6 percent of cash revenues are contributed to non-profits in Pakistan, and they are heavily favored by the government because it saves them money as non-profits are taking care of issues such as orphan care.
East and Southeast Asia
Taiwan
The number of orphanages and orphans drastically dropped from 15 institutions and 2,216 persons in 1971 to 9 institutions and 638 persons by the end of 2001.
Thailand
There are still a substantial number of NGOs and informal Orphanages in Thailand, particularly in Northern Thailand near the borders of Laos and Myanmar, e.g. around Chiang Rai. Very few of the children in these establishments are orphans, most have living parents. They attract funding from well-meaning tourists. Often protecting the children from trafficking/abuse is cited but the names and photographs of the children are published in marketing material to attract more funding. The reality is that the safest environment for these children is almost always with their parents or in their villages with familial connections where strangers are rarely seen and immediately recognized. A very few of these orphanages, go so far as to abduct or forcibly remove children from their homes, often across the border in Myanmar. The parents in local hill tribes may be encouraged to "buy a place" in the orphanage for vast sums, being told their child will have a better future. Some children's homes claim to always try to repatriate children with their families, but the local managers & director of the homes know of no such procedures or processes.
Vietnam
There are approximately 2 million highly vulnerable children in Vietnam with an estimated 500,000 orphaned or abandoned children. There are a number of orphanages present in the country including the Vinh Son Montagnard Orphanage, however these are generally privately funded. There are very few government run institutions.
South Korea
"There are now 17,000 children in public orphanages throughout the country and untold numbers at private institutions."
Japan
Approximately 39,000 children live in orphanages in Japan out of the 45,000 (2018 statistics) who are not able to live with their birth parents.
However, as of 2016, Japanese orphanages are severely underfunded, relying heavily on volunteer work. There are 602 foster homes across Japan, each with 30 to 100 children. A large portion of children in these orphanages are not actually orphans but victims of domestic abuse or neglect.
Cambodia
As of 2010, 11,945 children lived in 269 residential care facilities in Cambodia. About 44% were placed there by a parent.
However it is estimated that there are 553,000 orphans in the country. Most of these children are cared for by their extended family or community.
China
There are currently over 600,000 abandoned orphans living in China (some would put the figure as high as 1 million). Of these, 98% have special needs.
Laos
"It is stated that there are 20,000 orphaned children in Laos." However the figure generally remains unknown as about 30% of children are never registered with the government and remain invisible. In Laos nearly 50 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and many children are involved in child labor. There are six orphanages that are run by SOS Children's Village that help with this problem.
Middle East and North Africa
Egypt
"The [Mosques of Charity] orphanage houses about 120 children in Giza, Menoufiya and Qalyubiya."
"We [Dar Al-Iwaa] provide free education and accommodation for over 200 girls and boys."
"Dar Al-Mu'assassa Al-Iwaa'iya (Shelter Association), a government association affiliated with the Ministry of Social Affairs, was established in 1992. It houses about 44 children."
There are also 192 children at The Awlady, 30 at Sayeda Zeinab orphanage, and 300 at My Children Orphanage.
Note: There are about 185 orphanages in Egypt.
The above information was taken from the following articles:
"Other families" by Amany Abdel-Moneim. Al-Ahram Weekly (5/1999).
"Ramadan brings a charity to Egypt's orphans". Shanghai Star (13 December 2001).
"A Child by Any Other Name" by Réhab El-Bakry. Egypt Today (11/2001).
Orphanage Project in Egypt—www.littlestlamb.org
Sudan
There is still at least one orphanage in Sudan although the conditions there have been reported as very poor.
South Sudan
The number of orphans is expected to be 5,000 in 2023 in South Sudan. And in 2018, the UN Children Fund (UNICEF) reported that about 15,000 children in South Sudan had become separated from their families or were missing due to conflict.
Bahrain
The "Royal Charity Organization" is a Bahraini governmental charity organization founded in 2001 by King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifah to sponsor all helpless Bahraini orphans and widows. Since then almost 7,000 Bahraini families are granted monthly payments, annual school bags, and a number of university scholarships. Graduation ceremonies, various social and educational activities, and occasional contests are held each year by the organization for the benefit of orphans and widows sponsored by the organization.
Iraq
UNICEF maintains the same number at present. "While the number of state homes for orphans in the whole of Iraq was 25 in 1990 (serving 1,190 children); both the number of homes and the number of beneficiaries has declined. The quality of services has also declined."
A 1999 study by UNICEF "recommended the rebuilding of national capacity for the rehabilitation of orphans." The new project "will benefit all the 1,190 children placed in orphanages."
Palestinian Territory
"In 1999, the number of children living in orphanages witnessed a considerable drop as compared to 1998. The number dropped from 1,980 to 1,714 orphans. This is due to the policy of child re-integration in their household adopted by the Ministry of Social Affairs."
Former Soviet Union
In the post-Soviet countries, orphanages are better known as "children's homes" (). After reaching school age, all children enroll at internats () (boarding schools).
Russia
In 2021 it was recorded that there were 406,138 orphans living in orphan homes and families in Russia. UNICEF estimates that 95% of these children are "social orphans", meaning that they have at least one living parent who has given them up to the state. In 2011 Russian authorities registered 88,522 children who became orphans that year (down from 114,715 in 2009).
There are few webpages for Russian orphanages in English.
"Of a total of more than 600,000 children classified as being 'without parental care' (most of them live with other relatives and fosters), as many as one-third reside in institutions."
In 2011, there were 1344 institutions for orphans in Russia, including 1094 orphanages ("children's homes") and 207 special ("corrective") orphanages for children with serious health issues.
Azerbaijan
It is estimated that more than 10,000 children are living in 44 orphanages. In general, "many children are abandoned due to extreme poverty and harsh living conditions. Some may be raised by family members or neighbors but the majority live in crowded orphanages until the age of fifteen when they are sent into the community to make a living for themselves."
Belarus
Approximate total – 1,773 (1993 statistics for "all types of orphanages")
Kyrgyzstan
Partial information: 85 – Ivanovka Orphanage
Tajikistan
There are 4 orphanages in the major cities and 64 boarding schools in Tajikistan, where 8275 children are being educated. Those four orphanages raise 185 children up to 3 years old. In total there are 160 orphans. This small number is likely due to the popularity of adopting.
Ukraine
Before the Russian invasion of 2022, there were an estimated 100,000 orphans in Ukraine's state-run facilities. Of this number about 80 percent are described as "social orphans", because the parents are either financially destitute, abusive, or addicted to drugs or alcohol and thus are unable to raise them. Due to a lack of funding and overcrowding the conditions at these orphanages are often poor, especially for disabled children.
Since 2012 the number of children adopted by foreigners has gradually been reducing. From about two thousand in 2012 to about two hundred in 2016. A bit more than a thousand children were adopted by Ukrainians in 2016. During 2019 1,419 children were adopted. In 2020 2,047 children were adopted, in 1,890 cases the adoption was carried out by citizens of Ukraine.
Other information:
thousands – Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
150 – Kyiv State Baby Orphanage
30 – Beregena Orphanage
120 – Dom Invalid Orphanage
Uzbekistan
Partial Information: 80 – Takhtakupar Orphanage
Oceania
Australia
Orphanages in Australia mostly closed after World War II and up to the 1970s. Instead, children are mainly put in either Kinship, Residential or Foster care. Notable former orphanages include the Melbourne Orphanage and the St. John's Orphanage in Goulburn, New South Wales.
Indonesia
No verifiable information for the number of children actually in orphanages. The number of orphaned and abandoned children is approximately 500,000.
Fiji
Orphans, children (0–17 years) orphaned due to all causes, 2005, estimate 25,000
North America and Caribbean
Haiti
Haitians and expatriate childcare professionals are careful to make it clear that Haitian orphanages and children's homes are not orphanages in the North American sense, but instead shelters for vulnerable children, often housing children whose parent(s) are poor as well as those who are abandoned, neglected or abused by family guardians. Neither the number of children or the number of institutions is officially known, but Chambre de L'Enfance Necessiteusse Haitienne (CENH) indicated that it has received requests for assistance from nearly 200 orphanages from around the country for more than 200,000 children. Although not all are orphans, many are vulnerable or originate in vulnerable families that "hoped to increase their children's opportunities by sending them to orphanages. Catholic Relief Services provides assistance to 120 orphanages with 9,000 children in the Ouest, Sud, Sud-Est and Grand'Anse, but these include only orphanages that meet their criteria. They estimate receiving ten requests per week for assistance from additional orphanages and children's homes, but some of these are repeat requests."
In 2007, UNICEF estimated there were 380,000 orphans in Haiti, which has a population of just over 9 million, according to the CIA World Factbook. However, since the January 2010 earthquake, the number of orphans has skyrocketed, and the living conditions for orphans have seriously deteriorated. Official numbers are hard to find due to the general state of chaos in the country.
Jamaica
A large amount of children on the island of Jamaica grow up without a parental relationship as a result of their parents' death. An example of places for these lone children to go to are SOS children's villages, The Maxfield Park Children's Home and the Missionaries of the Poor facilities.
Mexico
There are over 700 public and privates orphanages in Mexico which house over 30,000 children. In 2018 it was estimated that 400,000 children lacked parents. Of these 100,000 are thought to be homeless.
Some notable orphanages include:
Casa Hogar Jeruel Orphanage in Chihuahua City, Mexico
Casa Hogar Alegría
United States
While the term "orphanage" is no longer typically used in the United States, nearly every US state continues to operate residential group homes for children in need of a safe place to live and in which to be supported in their educational and life-skills pursuits. Homes like the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania, Mooseheart in Illinois and the Crossnore School and Children's Home in North Carolina continue to provide care and support for children in need. While a place like the Milton Hershey School houses nearly 2,000 children, each child lives in a small group-home environment with "house parents" who often live many years in that home. Children who grow up in these residential homes have higher rates of high school and college graduation than those who spend equivalent numbers of years in the US Foster Care system, wherein only 44 to 66 percent of children graduate from high school.
Some private orphanages still exist in the United States apart from governmental child protective services processes. Following World War II, most orphanages in the U.S. began closing or converting to boarding schools or different kinds of group homes. Also, the term "children's home" became more common for those still existing. Over the past few decades, orphanages in the U.S. have been replaced with smaller institutions that try to provide a group home or boarding school environment. Most children who would have been in orphanages are in these residential treatment centers (RTC), residential child care communities, or with foster families. Adopting from RTCs, group homes, or foster families does not require working with an adoption agency, and in many areas, fostering to adopt is highly encouraged.
Central and South America
Guatemala
"...currently there are about 200,000 children in orphanages."
Peru
It is estimated that 550,000 children grow up without parents in Peru. Many of the children in orphanages are considered “social orphans”.
Significant charities that help orphans
Prior to the establishment of state care for orphans in First World countries, private charities existed to take care of destitute orphans, over time other charities have found other ways to care for children.
The Orphaned Starfish Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in New York City that focuses on developing vocational schools for orphans, victims of abuse and at-risk youth. It runs fifty computer centers in twenty-five countries, serving over 10,000 children worldwide
Lumos works to replace institutions with community-based services that provide children with access to health, education, and social care tailored to their individual needs.
Hope and Homes for Children are working with governments to deinstitutionalize their child care systems.
Stockwell Home and later Birchington, started by Charles H Spurgeon, is now Spurgeons after the last orphanage closed in 1979. Spurgeons Children's Charity provides support to vulnerable and disadvantaged children and families across England.
SOS Children's Villages is the world's largest non-governmental, non-denominational child welfare organization that provides loving family homes for orphaned and abandoned children.
Dr. Barnardo's Homes are now simply Barnardo's after closing their last orphanage in 1989.
OAfrica, previously OrphanAid Africa, has been working in Ghana since 2002, to get children out of orphanages and into families, in partnership with the government and as the only private implementing partner of the National Plan of Action.
Joint Council on International Children's Services is a nonprofit child advocacy organization based in Alexandria, Virginia. It is the largest association of international adoption agencies in America, and in addition to working in 51 countries, advocates for ethical practices in American adoption agencies
See also
Adoption
Boys Town (organization)
Child abandonment
Child abuse
Child and family services
Child and youth care
Community-based care
Congregate Care
Cottage Homes
Deinstitutionalisation
Family support
Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches
Foster Care
Foster Care in the United States
Group home
Hope and Homes for Children
Janusz Korczak
Kinship Care
Orphan Train
Residential Care
Residential Child Care Communities
Residential education
Residential treatment center
Settlement movement
Teaching-family model
The Steele home Orphanage
Wraparound (childcare)
Whole Child International
References
Works cited
External links
Keeping Children Out of Harmful Institutions: Why we should be investing in family-based care
Child welfare
Total institutions
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music%20of%20Portugal
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Music of Portugal
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Portuguese music includes many different styles and genres, as a result of its history. These can be broadly divided into classical music, traditional/folk music and popular music and all of them have produced internationally successful acts, with the country seeing a recent expansion in musical styles, especially in popular music.
In traditional/folk music, fado had a significant impact, with Amália Rodrigues still the most recognizable Portuguese name in music, and with more recent acts, like Dulce Pontes and Mariza. The genre is one of two Portuguese music traditions in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists, with the other being Cante Alentejano. Regional folk music remains popular too, having been updated and modernized in many cases, especially in the northeastern region of Trás-os-Montes. Some more recent successful fado/folk-inspired acts include Madredeus and Deolinda, the latter being part of a folk revival that has led to a newfound interest in this type of music.
In popular music, there is a significant number of popular genres. These include rock, with popular acts including Xutos & Pontapés, The Gift (alternative rock), Fingertips (pop rock), Blasted Mechanism (experimental electro-rock), Noctivagus (gothic rock) and Wraygunn (rock, blues). Also hip-hop, with acts such as Boss AC, Da Weasel, Ithaka, Mind Da Gap and Sam the Kid. Acts such as Moonspell and Heavenwood (metal) and Buraka Som Sistema (electro/kuduro/breakbeat) have had significant international success. Other popular modern genres in Portugal include dance, house, kizomba, pimba, pop, reggae, ska and zouk.
History
Portugal has had a history of receiving different musical influences from around the Mediterranean Sea, across Europe and former colonies.
In the two centuries before the Christian era, Ancient Rome brought with it Greek influences; early Christians, who had their differing versions of church music arrived during the height of the Roman Empire; the Visigoths, a Romanized Germanic people, who took control of the Iberian Peninsula following the fall of the Roman Empire; the Moors and Jews in the Middle Ages. Hence, there have been more than two thousand years of internal and external influences and developments. Its genres range from classical to popular music. Portugal's music history includes musical history from the medieval Gregorian chants through Carlos Seixas' symphonies era to the composers of the modern era. The musical history of Portugal can be divided in different ways. Portuguese music encompasses musical production of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern eras, especially from Angola with Kizomba. Portugal has very good dancing clothes making Portuguese dancing famous.
Classical music
Portuguese music gets its rich history and privileged geographical location. These are evidenced in the music history of Portugal, which despite its firm European roots, nevertheless reflects the intercontinental cultural interactions begun in the Portuguese discoveries.
A short list of past and present Portuguese musicians with important contributions must necessarily include the names of composers Manuel Cardoso, Duarte Lobo, Filipe de Magalhães, Carlos Seixas, Pedro de Escobar, Diogo Dias Melgás, João Domingos Bomtempo, Marcos Portugal, José Vianna da Motta, Luís de Freitas Branco, António Fragoso, Joly Braga Santos, Fernando Lopes-Graça, and Emmanuel Nunes; organists such as António Carreira and Manuel Rodrigues Coelho; singers Luísa Todi, Elisabete Matos and José Carlos Xavier; pianists Maria João Pires and Sequeira Costa; violinists Elmar Oliveira and Carlos Damas; and cellists such as Guilhermina Suggia.
Traditional Music
Fado
Fado is a musical style, which arose in Lisbon as the music of the urban poor. Fado songs are typically lyrically harsh, accompanied by a wire-strung acoustic guitar or the Portuguese Guitar. It is usually sung by solo performers, with the singer resigned to sadness, poverty, and loneliness, but remaining dignified and firmly controlled. It is claimed that fado's origins are older, going back to the 15th century, when women cried with longing for their husbands that sailed to the never-ending seas.
Late in the 19th century, the city of Coimbra developed a distinctive scene. Coimbra, a literary capital for the country, is now known for being more refined and majestic. The sound has been described as "the song of those who retain and cherish their illusions, not of those who have irretrievably lost them" by Rodney Gallop in 1936. A related form is the guitarradas of the 1920s and 30s, best known for Dr. Antonio Menano and a group of virtuoso musicians he formed, including Artur Paredes and José Joaquim Cavalheiro. Student fado, performed by students at Coimbra University, has maintained a tradition since it was pioneered in the 1890s by Augusto Hilário.
Starting in 1939 with the career of Amália Rodrigues, fado was an internationally popular genre. A singer and film actress, Rodrigues made numerous stylistic innovations that have made her probably the most influential fadista of all time.
A new generation of young musicians have contributed to the social and political revival of fado music, adapting and blending it with new trends. Contemporary fado musicians like Carminho, Mariza, Mísia and Camané have introduced the music to a new public. The sensuality of Misia and other female fadistas (fado singers) like Maria Ana Bobone, Cuca Roseta, Cristina Branco, Ana Moura, Katia Guerreiro, and Mariza has walked the fine line between carrying on the tradition of Amália Rodrigues and trying to bring in a new audience. Mísia and Carlos do Carmo are also well-known fado singers.Ricardo Ribeiro and Miguel Capucho are one of the best male fado singers of the new generation.
It was included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists in 2011.
Regional folk music
Recent events have helped keep Portuguese regional folk (rancho folclórico) traditions alive, most especially including the worldwide roots revival of the 1960s and 70s.
Cante Alentejano, from the Alentejo region, was included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists in 2014.
The people of the Azores islands maintain some distinct musical traditions, such as the traditionally fiddle-driven chamarrita dance.
Music in Madeira is widespread and mainly uses local musical instruments such as the Machete, rajao, Brinquinho and Cavaquinho, which are used in traditional Folklore dances like the Bailinho da Madeira. One of the island's most celebrated folklorists was Maria Ascensão (1926–2001). Famous performers of contemporary music include Max, Luís Jardim and Vânia Fernandes.
Trás-os-Montes' musical heritage is closely related to the music of Galicia, Cantabria, and Asturias. Traditional bagpipes (gaita-de-fole transmontana), a cappella vocals and a unique musical scale with equal semitones have kept alive a vital tradition. (Miranda de I Douro), some artists such as Galamdum Galundaina sing in Mirandese language. Also, the Pauliteiros folk dance is popular. Some residents sing in both Portuguese and Mirandese.
Folk/traditional music acts include: Dazkarieh, Cornalusa, Gaitúlia, Strella do Dia, Fausto, Notas e Voltas, Roberto Leal, Ronda dos Quatro Caminhos, Terra a Terra, Tonicha, Cândida Branca Flor, Óióai, Janita Salomé, Uxukalhus, Frei Fado D'el Rei, Gaiteiros de Lisboa, Roncos do Diabo, Dâna, Luís Peixoto, Dulce Pontes, Sangre Cavallum, Teresa Salgueiro, Vitorino and Xaile.
Pop music
Famous artists and bands included in the past are José Afonso, Fausto Bordalo Dias, José Mário Branco, Manuel Freire, Cândida Branca Flor, Tonicha, Paco Bandeira, Clã, Paulo de Carvalho, José Cid, Linda de Suza, Madalena Iglésias, António Variações, Duo Ouro Negro, Roberto Leal (singer), Peste & Sida and Ornatos Violeta. Nowadays some of the most popular acts are Virgem Suta, HMB, Aurea, Amor Electro, GNR, Xutos & Pontapés, The Gift, David Fonseca, Diogo Piçarra, Os Quatro e Meia and Capitão Fausto. Portugal has been participating in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1964; its best result before 2017 was the 6th place achieved by Lucia Moniz's folk inspired song "O meu coração não tem cor" in 1996, penned by Pedro Vaz Osorio. Portugal gained no further Top 10 place until Salvador Sobral's first place in the 2017 contest with the song Amar Pelos Dois, which gained a record 758 points.
Folk-Pop
In 2019, contemporary folk singer-songwriter Ana Mariano from Aveiro was featured on the compilation Novos Talentos FNAC 2019 (New Talents of Fnac 2019) with her Folk-pop debut single "Ordinary View", (written and performed in the English language.) In February 2020, she released her debut e.p. Everything I Touch which included the songs, "Insomnia" and "Plastic Wings" (featuring Ithaka), among others.
Electronic music
In electronica, Underground Sound of Lisbon with their 1994 progressive house remix of the 1992 Spoken word song So Get Up by Ithaka Darin Pappas (lyrics/vocals), was a musical project that brought international attention to Portuguese DJs, namely Rui da Silva (the only Portuguese musician to reach #1 on the UK charts), DJ Vibe and Pete tha Zouk.
Some other important names in the genre are Buraka Som Sistema, Branko, Conan Osiris, Micro Audio Waves and KURA, with this last one being the highest-ranked Portuguese of all time on the annual's Top 100 Dj's by Dj Mag. In Porto, the hometown of numerous talents such as Nuno Forte, Drum n' Bass styles are immensely popular, and the city has hosted various important international names in the genre such as Noisia, The Panacea and Black Sun Empire. Also, in the Psychedelic Trance genre there is a worldwide famous project: Paranormal Attack.
In February 2020, internationally recognized DJ-producer-musician, Armando Mendes, from northern Portugal released Parallel Universe on cd and a double-vinyl 12" set for Turquoise Records (one of the only full-length albums by any Portuguese electronic artist), collaborating with several worldwide vocalists/lyricists.
Experimental and Avantgarde
Portuguese music has a striving experimental underground music scene since the '80s, with some exponents attaining international attention. Notable groups and musicians in this genre are Osso Exótico, Ocaso Épico, Telectu, Carlos Zíngaro, Pedro INF, Favela Discos, If Lucy Fell and Life Theory.
Heavy metal
The biggest exponent of heavy metal music in Portugal are the bands Moonspell, Ava Inferi, Ramp, Heavenwood, Corpus Christii, Reaktor, W.C. Noise, Tarantula and Attick Demons, which have achieved international recognition, and have signed record deals with some of the most important international Heavy Metal Labels such as Century Media and Napalm Records for Moonspell, Massacre Records and Listenable Records for Heavenwood, Season of Mist for Ava Inferi, Pure Steel Records for Attick Demons, Candlelight Records for Corpus Christii, Nuclear Blast Records for Reaktor and AFM Records for Tarantula.
Heavy metal made by Portuguese bands is sold in all major records / music shops in all European countries such as Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Poland and Turkey. Moonspell, Heavenwood and Attick Demons achieved markets such as East Europe / Russia, Asia, North, and South America, furthermore Attick Demons achieved recognition in Japan by being the only Portuguese heavy metal band to have a Japanese release to date, through a Japanese label.
Others bands like Miss Lava, Holocausto Canibal, Thirdsphere, Sirius, Sacred Sin, Factory of Dreams, Ramp, Decayed, Filli Nigratium Infernallium, Morte Incandescente, Gwydion, Switchtense, Grog, Bizarra Locomotiva, Thee Orakle, More Than a Thousand and Oratory also achieved some international recognition.
Hip hop
Hip hop began in Portugal in the early 1990s. The first artist to sign a major record deal was General D with EMI Records. Other important artists from the Hip hop tuga genre include; Sam the Kid, Slow J, Papillon, Da Weasel, Dealema, Valete, Regula, Boss AC, Mind the Gap, Bob Da Rage Sense, Dillaz.
Jazz
People such as Mário Barreiros, Mário Laginha, Carlos Barretto, Carlos Bica, João Paulo Esteves da Silva, António Pinho Vargas and the singer Maria João have long and noteworthy careers in the field, despite experimenting, sometimes with notable success, other genres of music, and a more recent generation is following their footsteps, notable the pianist Bernardo Sassetti, Júlio Resende (músico), Carlos Bica, João Paulo, and the singers Salvador Sobral, João Barradas, Jacinta, Vânia Fernandes and Luísa Sobral.
Latin
Although it is an Iberian country, Portugal never had clear influences from Latin America, though Portuguese musical traditions have had an influence on Latin American music, particularly in Brazil and through instruments such as the cavaquinho and its descendent instruments like the cuatro. Nonetheless, the Latin music industry sometimes includes music sung in Portuguese from Portugal. This style came to the country in the 1990s, following a Spanish and world trend. Examples of Latin music singers in Portuguese are Ana Malhoa and Mil i Maria. The Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the organization responsible for the Latin Grammy Awards, encompasses music from Portugal and has voting members who live in the country. Carlos do Carmo became the first Portuguese artist to win a Latin Grammy award upon receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Pimba
Pimba music is the Portuguese version of the euro Schlager or the Balkan Turbo-Folk. It is named after the 1995 hit Pimba Pimba, by Emanuel. Some of its biggest names are Emanuel, Ágata, Suzana, Micaela, Ruth Marlene and Quim Barreiros. This genre mixes traditional sounds with accordion, Latin beats and funny or religious (mainly kitch) lyrics.
Folk and Political (Música de Intervenção)
During the Estado Novo authoritarian regime, music was widely used by the left-wing resistance as a way to say what could not be said, singing about freedom, equality, and democracy, mainly through metaphors and symbols. Many composers and singers became famous and persecuted by the political police, some of them being arrested or exiled, such as José Afonso, Paulo de Carvalho, José Mário Branco, Sérgio Godinho, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, Manuel Freire, Pedro Barroso, Fausto, Vitorino, Júlio Pereira and some others. Their music was (and remains) mostly based on Portuguese folk music and elements of European-style singer-songwriter genres.
José Afonso began performing in the 1950s; he was a popular roots-based musician that led the Portuguese roots revival. With artists like Sérgio Godinho and Luís Cília, Afonso helped form nova canção music, which, after the 1974 revolution, gained socially-aware lyrics and became canto livre. The biggest names in canto livre were Banda do Casaco and Brigada Víctor Jara, groups that seriously studied and were influenced by Portuguese regional music. The poet-singer-songwriter was also a significant contributor to the modern romance genre, can be compared to Leonard Cohen.
After the Carnation Revolution, that same music was used to support left-wing parties. Political ideas and causes, like the agrarian reform, socialism, equality, democratic elections, free education and many other were a constant presence in these songs lyrics, often written by well-known poets like José Barata-Moura, Manuel Alegre or Ary dos Santos.
Reggae and Ska
More underground but very prominent are Portuguese reggae and ska. Unregarding some 2 Tone and reggae-influenced singles in the late 70s by bands like Roquivários or early 80s mod outfit Táxi, it was only in the early 1990s when the first Portuguese roots reggae band, Kussondulola reached the mainstream public.
Best known Portuguese reggae singers include Richie Campbell, Mercado Negro, Prince Wadada and Freddy Locks, while some of the more famous bands of these types include Terrakota, Primitive Reason, Sativa, One Sun Tribe, One Love Family, Arsha, Three and a Quarter, Purocracy, Chapa Dux and Souls of Fire. This music is popular among young people, with its main roots based in Lisbon and the surrounding areas.
Earlier ska bands in Portugal included Despe&Siga and Contratempos, while The Ratazanas can be considered the best known Portuguese Early reggae and Rocksteady band. They recorded for German label Grover Records and toured throughout Europe on their own right as well as backing Jamaican singers like Susan Cadogan. Skarmiento, Skalibans, and Skamioneta do Lixo are other Portuguese ska bands.
Rock
Portuguese rock was born in the 1980s, with acts like Rui Veloso and Jorge Palma.
Examples of popular Portuguese rock bands, having a long history, are Xutos & Pontapés and UHF who have been playing for over 30 years and are known widely throughout Portugal, as well as Mão Morta, a unique and controversial Portuguese band with decades-long activity. Well known solo singers include Rui Veloso, Jorge Palma, and Pedro Abrunhosa. Clã (pop rock), Grupo Novo Rock (pop rock and rock), Fingertips, (pop rock), Blasted Mechanism (electro-rock and dub/reggae fusion), Suspiria Franklyn (punk-rock/new wave), Linda Martini (post/noise rock), peixe : aviao (post-rock), Ornatos Violeta (indie rock), A Book in the Shelf (grunge rock), Dream Circus (grunge rock), Decreto 77, (punk rock), or Mazgani (alternative), are other important acts.
The indie and alternative rock movements are also popular in Portugal. Some indie and alternative bands and artists from Portugal are Os Pontos Negros, Memória de Peixe, Linda Martini, The Glockenwise, Capitão Fausto, Frankie Chavez, Stereoboy, Quelle Dead Gazelle, B Fachada, Noiserv, Golden Slumbers (band) as well as the Luso-Brazilian group Banda do Mar.
Romantic
The highest exponents of this kind of music in Portugal are Tony Carreira and Marco Paulo (both, and even other performers, have a certain level of overlap with the Pimba genre, even partial or just in certain songs).
Singers of Portuguese-descent
There are several popular musicians of Portuguese descent. Luso-francofonic artists include Linda de Suza (Portuguese born and later an immigrant in France) and Marie Myriam, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1977. Nelly Furtado reflected some of her Portuguese origins, especially in lesser-known songs in her first albums (songs like "Scared" sung by Furtado in English and Portuguese, "Nas Horas do Dia" and "Força"). Portugal-born Nuno Bettencourt's heritage is also reflected in the title of Extreme's 2008 album Saudades de Rock. Steve Perry, former lead singer of rock group Journey is American of Portuguese ancestry, as is Aerosmith's Joe Perry (both their original paternal family names being Pereira). The lead singer from Jamiroquai, Jay Kay has Portuguese descent through his father. Ana da Silva, a founding member of the cult post-punk band The Raincoats is also of Portuguese origin. Also Mia Rose, which has collaborations with Portuguese artists and even songs in the Portuguese language, was a juror at The Voice Portugal. Others include Katy Perry, Shawn Mendes, Mishlawi and DEV and Carlos Melo.
See also
:Category:Portuguese musical instruments
References
Cronshaw, Andrew, and Paul Vernon. "Traditional Riches, Fate and Revolution". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, pp 225–236. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books.
External links
Audio clips: Traditional music of Portugal. Musée d'ethnographie de Genève. Accessed November 25, 2010.
Portuguese Music Information Centre
Fado Music in Alfama Neighborhood of Lisbon
Folk and Trad music and dance News, interviews, reviews, photos and music
Portuguese Music By Gina Modesto in Accessible Portugal Online Magazine
Portuguese Composers Database
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster%20care
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Foster care
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Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home (residential child care community, treatment center, etc.), or private home of a state-certified caregiver, referred to as a "foster parent", or with a family member approved by the state. The placement of a "foster child" is normally arranged through the government or a social service agency. The institution, group home, or foster parent is compensated for expenses unless with a family member. In some states, relative or "Kinship" caregivers of children who are wards of the state are provided with a financial stipend.
The state, via the family court and child protective services agency, stand in loco parentis to the minor, making all legal decisions while the foster parent is responsible for the day-to-day care of the minor.
Scholars and activists are concerned about the efficacy of the foster care services provided by NGOs. Specifically, this pertains to poor retention rates of social workers. Poor retention rates are attributed to being overworked in an emotionally draining field that offers minimal monetary compensation. The lack of professionals pursuing a degree in social work coupled with poor retention rates in the field has led to a shortage of social workers and created large caseloads for those who choose to work and stay in the field. The efficacy of caseworker retention also affects the overall ability to care for clients. Low staffing leads to data limitations that infringe on caseworkers' ability to adequately serve clients and their families.
Foster care is correlated with a range of negative outcomes compared to the general population. Children in foster care have a high rate of ill health, particularly psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. One third of foster children in a US study reported abuse from a foster parent or other adult in the foster home. Nearly half of foster children in the US become homeless when they reach the age of 18, and the poverty rate is three times higher among foster care alumni than in the general population.
By country
Australia
In Australia foster care was known as "boarding-out". Foster care had its early stages in South Australia in 1867 and stretched to the second half of the 19th century. It is said that the system was mostly run by women until the early 20th century. Then the control was centered in many state children's departments. "Although boarding-out was also implemented by non-government[al] child rescue organizations, many large institutions remained. These institutions assumed an increasing importance from the late 1920s when the system went into decline." The system was re-energized in the postwar era, and in the 1970s. The system is still the main structure for "out-of-home care". The system took care of both local and foreign children. "The first adoption legislation was passed in Western Australia in 1896, but the remaining states did not act until the 1920s, introducing the beginnings of the closed adoption that reached it peak in the period 1940–1975. New baby adoption dropped dramatically from the mid-1970s, with the greater tolerance of and support for single mothers".
Cambodia
Foster care in Cambodia is relatively new as an official practice within the government. However, despite a later start, the practice is currently making great strides within the country. Left with a large number of official and unofficial orphanages from the 1990s, the Cambodian government conducted several research projects in 2006 and 2008, pointing to the overuse of orphanages as a solution for caring for vulnerable children within the country. Most notably, the studies found that the percentage of children within orphanages that had parents approached 80%. At the same time, local NGOs like "Children In Families" began offering limited foster care services within the country. In the subsequent years, the Cambodian government began implementing policies that required the closure of some orphanages and the implementation of minimum standards for residential care institutions. These actions lead to an increase in the number of NGOs providing foster care placements and helped to set the course for care reform around the country. As of 2015, the Cambodian government is working with UNICEF, USAID, several governments, and many local NGOs in continuing to build the capacity for child protection and foster care within the Kingdom.
Canada
Foster children in Canada are known as permanent wards (crown wards in Ontario). A ward is someone, in this case a child, placed under protection of a legal guardian and are the legal responsibility of the government. Census data from 2011 counted children in foster care for the first time, counting 47,885 children in care. The majority of foster children – 29,590, or about 62 per cent – were aged 14 and under. The wards remain under the care of the government until they "age out of care". All ties are severed from the government and there is no longer any legal responsibility toward the youth. This age is different depending on the province.
Israel
In December 2013, the Israeli Knesset approved a bill co-drafted by the Israel National Council for the Child to regulate the rights and obligations of participants in the foster care system in Israel.
Japan
The idea of foster care or taking in abandoned children actually came about around 1392–1490s in Japan. The foster care system in Japan is similar to the Orphan Trains because Brace thought the children would be better off on farms. The people in Japan thought the children would do better on farms rather than living in the "dusty city". The families would often send their children to a farm family outside the village and only keep their oldest son. The farm families served as the foster parents and they were financially rewarded for taking in the younger siblings. "It was considered an honor to be chosen as foster parents, and selection greatly depended on the family's reputation and status within the village". Around 1895 the foster care program became more like the system used in the United States because the Tokyo Metropolitan Police sent children to a hospital where they would be "settled". Problems emerged in this system, such as child abuse, so the government started phasing it out and "began increasing institutional facilities". In 1948 the Child Welfare Law was passed, increasing official oversight, and creating better conditions for the children to grow up in.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, foster care and adoption has always been an option, "in the sense of taking other people's children into their homes and looking after them on a permanent or temporary basis." Although, nothing about it had a legal foundation, until the 20th century. The UK had "wardship", the family taking in the child had custody by the Chancery Court. Wardship was not used very often because it did not give the guardian "parental rights". In the 19th century came a "series of baby farming scandals". At the end of the 19th century they started calling it "boarding-out" like they did in Australia. They started placing the children in orphanages and workhouses as well. "The First World War saw an increase in organized adoption through adoption societies and child rescue organizations, and pressure grew for adoption to be given legal status." The first laws based on adoption and foster care were passed in 1926. "The peak number of adoptions was in 1968, since then there has been an enormous decline in adoption in the United Kingdom. The main reasons for children being adopted in the United Kingdom had been unmarried mothers giving up their children for adoption and stepparents adopting their new partner's children".
United States
In the United States, foster care started as a result of the efforts of Charles Loring Brace. "In the mid 19th Century, some 30,000 homeless or neglected children lived in the New York City streets and slums." Brace took these children off the streets and placed them with families in most states in the country. Brace believed the children would do best with a Christian farm family. He did this to save them from "a lifetime of suffering" He sent these children to families by train, which gave the name The Orphan Train Movement. "This lasted from 1853 to the early 1890s and transported more than 120,000 250,000? children to new lives." When Brace died in 1890, his sons took over his work of the Children's Aid Society until they retired. The Children's Aid Society created "a foster care approach that became the basis for the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997" called Concurrent Planning. This greatly impacted the foster care system.
From August 1999 to August 2019, 9,073,607 American children have been removed from their families and placed in foster homes according to the federal government Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.
As last reported in August 2019, 437,238 children nationally were removed from their families and placed in foster homes according to the federal government Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.
- 24% of foster children are between the ages of 0 and 2
- 18% of foster children are between the ages of 3 and 5
- 28% of foster children are between the ages of 6 and 12
- 40% of foster children are between the ages of 13 and 21
- Average # of birthdays a child spends in foster care: 2
- 22% of children had three or more placements during a length of 20 months in foster care.
- 91% of foster children under the age of 2 are adopted.
France
In France, foster families are called (literally "welcome families"). Foster homes must obtain an official approval from the government in order to welcome a minor or an elderly person. In order to receive this approval they must follow a training and their home is inspected to be sure it is safe and healthy. In 2017, 344 000 minors and 15000 elderly persons were welcomed in foster homes.
Placement
Family-based foster care is generally preferred to other forms of out of home care. Foster care is intended to be a short-term solution until a permanent placement can be made. In most states, the primary objective is to reconcile children with the biological parents. However, if the parents are unable or unwilling to care for the child, or if the child is an orphan, then the first choice of adoptive parents is a relative such as an aunt, uncle or grandparent, known as kinship care. Most kinship care is done informally, without the involvement of a court or public organization. However, in the United States, formal kinship care is increasingly common. In 2012, a quarter of all children in formal foster care were placed with relatives instead of being placed into the system.
If no related family member is willing or able to adopt, the next preference is for the child to be adopted by the foster parents or by someone else involved in the child's life (such as a teacher or coach). This is to maintain continuity in the child's life. If neither above option are available, the child may be adopted by someone who is a stranger to the child.
If none of these options are viable, the plan for the minor may be to enter OPPLA (Other Planned Permanent Living Arrangement). This option allows the child to stay in custody of the state and the child can stay placed in a foster home, with a relative or a long-term care facility, such as a residential child care community or, for children with development disabilities, physical disabilities or mental disabilities, a treatment center.
671,000 children were served by the foster care system in the United States in 2015. "After declining more than 20 percent between FY 2006 and FY 2012 to a low of 397,000, the number of children in foster care on the last day of the fiscal year increased to 428,000 in FY 2015, with a slightly higher percent change from 2014 to 2015 (3.3%) than observed from 2013 to 2014 (3.2%)." Since FY 2012, the number of children in foster care at the end of each FY has steadily increased.
The median amount of time a child spent in foster care in the U.S. in 2015 was 13.5 months. That year, 74% of children spent less than two years in foster care, while 13% were in care for three or more years. Of the estimated 427,910 children in foster care on September 30, 2015: 43 percent were White, 24 percent were African-American, 21 percent were Hispanic (of any race), 10 percent were other races or multiracial, and 2 percent were unknown or unable to be determined.
Children may enter foster care voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntary placement may occur when a biological parent or lawful guardian is unable to care for a child. Involuntary placement occurs when a child is removed from their biological parent or lawful guardian due to the risk or actual occurrence of physical or psychological harm, or if the child has been orphaned. In the US, most children enter foster care due to neglect. If a biological parent or legal guardian is unwilling to care for a child, the child is deemed to be dependent and is placed under the care of the child protection agency. The policies regarding foster care as well as the criteria to be met in order to become a foster parent vary according to legal jurisdiction.
Especially egregious failures of child protective services often serve as a catalyst for increased removal of children from the homes of biological parents. An example is the brutal torture and murder of 17-month-old Peter Connelly, a British toddler who died in London Borough of Haringey, North London after suffering more than 50 severe injuries over an eight-month period, including eight broken ribs and a broken back. Throughout the period of time in which he was being tortured, he was repeatedly seen by Haringey Children's services and NHS health professionals. Haringey Children's services already failed ten years earlier in the case of Victoria Climbié. In the time since his death, in 2007, cases have reached a record rate in England surpassing 10,000 in the reporting year ending in March 2012.
Abuse and negligence
From 1993 through 2002 there were 107 recorded deaths; there are approximately 400,000 children in out-of-home care, in the United States. Almost 10% of children in foster care have stayed in foster care for five or more years. Nearly half of all children in foster care have chronic medical problems. 8% of all children in foster care have serious emotional problems, 11% of children exiting foster care aged out of the system, in 2011. Children in foster care experience higher rates of child abuse, emotional deprivation, and physical neglect. In one study in the United Kingdom "foster children were 7–8 times, and children in residential care 6 times more likely to be assessed by a pediatrician for abuse than a child in the general population". A study of foster children in Oregon and Washington State found that nearly one third reported being abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. The "Parent Trauma Response Questionnaire" states that parental overprotection can be just as harmful psychologically as neglect.
Development
As of 2019, in the US, the majority of children in the foster care system were under eight years of age. These early years are quite important for the physical and mental development of children. More specifically, these early years are most important for brain development. Stressful and traumatic experiences have been found to have long-term negative consequences for the brain development in children whereas talking, singing, and playing can help encourage brain growth. Since the majority of children are removed from their homes due to neglect, this means that many of these children did not experience stable and stimulating environments to help promote this necessary growth. In a research study conducted at the University of Minnesota, researchers found that children placed in non-parental homes, such as foster homes, showed significant behavior problems and higher levels of internalizing problems in comparison to children in traditional families and even children who were mistreated by caregivers. According to an article written by Elizabeth Curry titled "The five things you should know about how orphanage life affects children", a child who has lived in an orphanage or a home for multiple children will have learned survival skills but lack family skills due to them never understanding permanency.
Medical and psychiatric disorders
A higher prevalence of physical, psychological, cognitive and epigenetic disorders for children in foster care has been established in studies in various countries. The Casey Family Programs Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study was a fairly extensive study of various aspects of children who had been in foster care.
Individuals who were in foster care experience higher rates of physical and psychiatric morbidity than the general population and suffer from not being able to trust and that can lead to placements breaking down.
In the Casey study of foster children in Oregon and Washington state, they were found to have double the incidence of depression, 20% as compared to 10% and were found to have a higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than combat veterans with 25% of those studied having PTSD. Children in foster care have a higher probability of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and deficits in executive functioning, anxiety as well as other developmental problems.
These children experience higher degrees of incarceration, poverty, homelessness, and suicide. Studies in the U.S. have suggested that some foster care placements may be more detrimental to children than remaining in a troubled home, but a more recent study suggested that these findings may have been affected by selection bias, and that foster care has little effect on behavioral problems.
Neurodevelopment
Foster children have elevated levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in comparison to children raised by their biological parents. Elevated cortisol levels can compromise the immune system. (Harden BJ, 2004). Most of the processes involved in typical neurodevelopment are predicated upon the establishment of close nurturing relationships and environmental stimulation. Negative environmental influences during this critical period of brain development can have lifelong consequences.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Children in foster care have a higher incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In one study, 60% of children in foster care who had experienced sexual abuse had PTSD, and 42% of those who had been physically abused met the PTSD criteria. PTSD was also found in 18% of the children who were not abused. These children may have developed PTSD due to witnessing violence in the home. (Marsenich, 2002).
In order to figure out if a child has developed PTSD, there is a PTSD module, the 'anxiety disorder interview'. This is considered a reliable resource for establishing if a child has developed post traumatic stress disorder due to physical, sexual, or mental abuse.
In a study conducted in Oregon and Washington state, the rate of PTSD in adults who were in foster care for one year between the ages of 14 and 18 was found to be higher than that of combat veterans, with 25% of those in the study meeting the diagnostic criteria as compared to 12–13% of Iraq war veterans and 15% of Vietnam war veterans, and a rate of 4% in the general population. The recovery rate for foster home alumni was 28.2% as opposed to 47% in the general population.
"More than half the study participants reported clinical levels of mental illness, compared to less than a quarter of the general population".
Eating disorders
Foster children are at increased risk for a variety of eating disorders in comparison to the general population. In a study done in the United Kingdom, 35% of foster children experienced an increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) once in care. Food Maintenance Syndrome is characterized by a set of aberrant eating behaviors of children in foster care. It is "a pattern of excessive eating and food acquisition and maintenance behaviors without concurrent obesity"; it resembles "the behavioral correlates of Hyperphagic Short Stature". It is hypothesized that this syndrome is triggered by the stress and maltreatment foster children are subjected to, it was prevalent amongst 25 percent of the study group in New Zealand. Bulimia nervosa is seven times more prevalent among former foster children than in the general population.
Poverty and homelessness
Nearly half of foster children in the U.S. become homeless when they turn 18. One of every 10 foster children stays in foster care longer than seven years, and each year about 15,000 reach the age of majority and leave foster care without a permanent family—many to join the ranks of the homeless or to commit crimes and be imprisoned.
Three out of 10 of the United States homeless are former foster children. According to the results of the Casey Family Study of Foster Care Alumni, up to 80 percent are doing poorly—with a quarter to a third of former foster children at or below the poverty line, three times the national poverty rate. Very frequently, people who are homeless had multiple placements as children: some were in foster care, but others experienced "unofficial" placements in the homes of family or friends.
Individuals with a history of foster care tend to become homeless at an earlier age than those who were not in foster care. The length of time a person remains homeless is longer in individuals who were in foster care.
Suicide-death rate
Children in foster care are at a greater risk of suicide. The increased risk of suicide is still prevalent after leaving foster care. In a small study of twenty-two Texan youths who aged out of the system, 23 percent had a history of suicide attempts.
A Swedish study utilizing the data of almost one million people including 22,305 former foster children who had been in care prior to their teens, concluded:
Death rate
Children in foster care have an overall higher mortality rate than children in the general population. A study conducted in Finland among current and former foster children up to age 24 found a higher mortality rate due to substance abuse, accidents, suicide and illness. The deaths due to illness were attributed to an increased incidence of acute and
chronic medical conditions and developmental delays among children in foster care.
Georgia Senator Nancy Schaefer published a report "The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services" stating:
Academic prospects
Educational outcomes of ex-foster children in the Northwest Alumni Study:
56% completed high school compared to 82% of the general population, although an additional 29% of former foster children received a G.E.D. compared to an additional 5% of the general population.
42.7% completed some education beyond high school.
20.6% completed any degree or certificate beyond high school
16.1% completed a vocational degree; 21.9% for those over 25.
1.8% complete a bachelor's degree, 2.7% for over 25, the completion rate for the general population in the same age group is 24%, a sizable difference.
The study reviewed case records for 659 foster care alumni in Northwest USA, and interviewed 479 of them
between September 2000 and January 2002.
Higher Education
Approximately 10% of foster youth make it to college and of those 10%, only about 3% actually graduate and obtain a 4-year degree. Although the number of foster youth who are starting at a 4-year university after high school has increased over the years, the number of youth who graduate from college continues to remain stable. A study of 712 youth in California, the results revealed that foster care youth are fives times less likely to attend college than youth who do not go through foster care. There are different resources that offer both financial and emotional support for foster youth to continue their education. Simultaneously, there are also many barriers that make getting to a college or university difficult.
Borton describes some of the barriers youth face in her article, Barriers to Post-Secondary Enrollment for Former Foster Youth. A few of those barriers include financial hurdles, navigating through the application process with little to no support, and lack of housing.
Many studies have shown that there are a few factors that have seemingly played a role in the success of foster youth making it to and graduating from a college or university. While having financial resources for foster youth is a huge help, there are other components to look at. Beginning with having support for these youth at the high school level. In order for foster youth to obtain a college degree, they must enroll at a university first.
Out of the different factors that play in increasing college enrollment such as youth participating in extended foster care, reading ability, etc., youth who received assistance or had supportive relationships from adults, were more likely than youth who did not have supportive relationships, to enroll at a university.
At colleges across the nation, there are programs that are specifically put in place to help youth who have aged out of the foster care system and continued into higher education. These programs often help youth financially by giving them supplemental funds and providing support through peer mentor programs or academic counseling services. While funding is an important key in helping get through college, it has not been found as the only crucial component in aiding a youth's success.
A study done by Jay and colleagues provides insight on what youth view as important in helping them thrive on a college campus. The study, which had a sample of 51 foster youth, used Conceptual Mapping to break down the different components of support that may be important for youth to receive on a college campus. It is important to take in the different factors that can be helpful for youth at a university and to look beyond providing financial support.
Psychotropic medication use
Studies have revealed that youth in foster care covered by Medicaid insurance receive psychotropic medication at a rate that was 3 times higher than that of Medicaid-insured youth who qualify by low family income. In a review (September 2003 to August 2004) of the medical records of 32,135 Texas foster care 0–19 years old, 12,189 were prescribed psychotropic medication, resulting in an annual prevalence of 37.9% of these children being prescribed medication. 41.3% received 3 different classes of these drugs during July 2004, and 15.9% received 4 different classes. The most frequently used medications were antidepressants (56.8%), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drugs (55.9%), and antipsychotic agents (53.2%). The study also showed that youth in foster care are frequently treated with concomitant psychotropic medication, for which sufficient evidence regarding safety and effectiveness is not available.
The use of expensive, brand name, patent protected medication was prevalent. In the case of SSRIs the use of the most expensive medications was noted to be 74%; in the general market only 28% are for brand name SSRI's vs generics. The average out-of-pocket expense per prescription was $34.75 for generics and $90.17 for branded products, a $55.42, difference.
Therapeutic intervention
Children in the child welfare system have often experienced significant and repeated traumas and having a background in foster homes—especially in instances of sexual abuse—can be the precipitating factor in a wide variety of psychological and cognitive deficits it may also serve to obfuscate the true cause of underlying issues. The foster care experience may have nothing to do with the symptoms, or on the other hand, a disorder may be exacerbated by having a history of foster care and attendant abuses. The human brain however has been shown to have a fair degree of neuroplasticity. and adult neurogenesis has been shown to be an ongoing process.
Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC), also referred to as Treatment Foster Care Oregon (TFCO) and Treatment Foster Care (TFC) is a community-based intervention that was created in 1983 by Dr. Patricia Chamberlain and her associated colleagues with the initial design intended to offer a replacement for group facilities. MTFC has differing approaches for different age groups. Preschoolers receive “a behavior-management approach and intensively trains, supervises, and supports foster caregivers to provide positive adult support and consistent limit setting” coupled with “coordinated interventions with the child’s biological parents.” MTFC for adolescence consists of individual placement with an intensely trained foster family providing “coordinated interventions in the home, with peers, [and] in educational settings.” MTFC has been shown to provide better results than group facilities and proves to be more cost effective. Reports show that Multidimensional treatment has effective results in reducing depression, arrest rates, deviant peer affiliations, placement disruption, and pregnancy rates while having positive replication trials. It is one method that attempts to incorporate trauma- and violence-informed care into its design.
Researchers have faced difficulty when it comes to accurately assessing what makes MTFC and other similar programs that involve multiple levels of intervention successful. It seems to remain in a "black box" scenario where it is unsure what aspect of the treatment plan is actually producing positive effects. Multiple peer-reviewed research articles on foster care programs point out a lack of research effectively evaluating the outcomes of specific foster care programs, calling for more complete assessments to be conducted in order to properly compare outcomes between treatment plans and evaluate what practices in MTFC are most effective. Ethical concerns have also been raised by Therese Åström and other associated researchers when conducting a systematic review on behalf of the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services in 2018, noting that on the one hand MTFC is evaluated as effective, however, it tends to be implemented in a way that diminishes the child's agency.
Cross-cultural adoption policies
George Shanti, Nico Van Oudenhoven, and Rekha Wazir, co-authors of Foster Care Beyond the Crossroads: Lessons from an International Comparative Analysis, say that there are four types of Government foster care systems. The first one is that of developing countries. These countries do not have policies implemented to take care of the basic needs of these children and these children mostly receive assistance from relatives. The second system is that of former socialist governments. The historical context of these states has not allowed for the evolution of their foster care system. NGO's have urged them to evolve; however the traditional system of institutionalizing these children is still in place. Thirdly, liberal democracies do not have the support from its political system in order to take care of these children, even though they have the resources. Finally, social democracies are the most advanced governments in regards to their foster care system. These governments have a massive infrastructure, funding, and support system in order to help foster care children.
Adoption
Foster care adoption is a type of domestic adoption where the child is initially placed into a foster care system and is subsequently placed for adoption.
Children may be placed into foster care for a variety of reasons; including, removal from the home by a governmental agency because of maltreatment. In some jurisdictions, adoptive parents are licensed as and technically considered foster parents while the adoption is being finalized. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Children's Bureau, there were approximately 408,425 children in foster care in 2010. Of those children, twenty-five percent had a goal of adoption. In 2015, 243,060 children exited foster care and twenty-two percent were adopted. Nationwide, there are more than one hundred thousand children in the U.S. foster care system waiting for permanent families.
Outcomes
Youth who are aging out of foster care often face difficulties in transitioning into adulthood, especially in terms of finding stable housing, employment, finances, and educational opportunities. The suspected reason for these difficulties involves a lack of stability experienced while in the foster care system, and the reported abuse and/or neglect in their childhood, which may affect their ability to cope with significant life changes. In the United States, there are independent living programs designed with the intent to serve the needs of transitioning foster youth. However, youth aging out of foster care have indicated that these programs are failing to fully address the needs of young adults without familial assistance.
In a study conducted by Gypen et al. (2017), involving a cross-database analysis of research articles relevant to the outcomes of former foster youth, they found that the educational, mental health, employment, income, stable housing, criminal involvement and substance abuse issues outcomes for youth who have aged out of the foster care system are substantially poorer than their peers. For example, Gypen et al. (2017), indicated that only 45% of former foster youth received a high school diploma, which is 23% lower than the general population. There are also significantly poorer outcomes for children who were formerly in foster care than children from low-income households. Children who are eventually adopted by their placement family show greater outcomes, in terms of finding stable housing, employment, finances and education opportunities, than those who aged out of the foster care system without a permanent placement.
It has also been reported that former foster youth have a higher chance of ending up in prostitution, and even fall prey to sex trafficking. This has also been called the "foster care to prostitution pipeline". a 2012 study in Los Angeles found that 59% of juveniles arrested for prostitution were or had been in foster care, but the generalizability of these findings has been disputed.
See also
Assisted living
Attachment theory
Child abandonment
Child and family services
Child and youth care
Community-based care
Community integration
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder
Congregate Care
Cottage Homes
Independent living
Orphan train
Orphanage
Reactive attachment disorder
Residential education
Substance dependence
Supported living
Supported housing
Teaching-family model
Family support
Wraparound (childcare)
References
Further reading
Bald, Anthony, Joseph J. Doyle Jr., Max Gross, and Brian A. Jacob. 2022. "Economics of Foster Care." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 36 (2): 223–46.
Hurley, Kendra (2002). "Almost Home" Retrieved June 27, 2006.
Knowlton, Paul E. (2001). "The Original Foster Care Survival Guide"; A first person account directed to successfully aging out of foster care.
McCutcheon, James, 2010. "Historical Analysis and Contemporary Assessment of Foster Care in Texas: Perceptions of Social Workers in a Private, Non-Profit Foster Care Agency". Applied Research Projects. Texas State University Paper 332.
External links
The Mental Health of Children in Out-of-Home Care: Scale and Complexity of Mental Health Problems
Effects of Enhanced Foster Care on the Long-term Physical and Mental Health of Foster Care Alumni
The impact of foster care on development
Enduring neurobehavioral effects of early life trauma mediated through learning and corticosterone suppression
Adoption forms and related practices
Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement
Family
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social%20simulation
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Social simulation
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Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in computational law, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, geography, engineering, archaeology and linguistics .
Social simulation aims to cross the gap between the descriptive approach used in the social sciences and the formal approach used in the natural sciences, by moving the focus on the processes/mechanisms/behaviors that build the social reality.
In social simulation, computers support human reasoning activities by executing these mechanisms. This field explores the simulation of societies as complex non-linear systems, which are difficult to study with classical mathematical equation-based models. Robert Axelrod regards social simulation as a third way of doing science, differing from both the deductive and inductive approach; generating data that can be analysed inductively, but coming from a rigorously specified set of rules rather than from direct measurement of the real world. Thus, simulating a phenomenon is akin to generating it—constructing artificial societies. These ambitious aims have encountered several criticisms.
The social simulation approach to the social sciences is promoted and coordinated by three regional associations, ESSA for Europe, North America (reorganizing under the new CSSS name), and PAAA Pacific Asia.
History and development
The history of the agent-based model can be traced back to the Von Neumann machine, a theoretical machine capable of reproducing itself. The device von Neumann proposed would follow precisely detailed instructions to fashion a copy of itself. The concept was then improved by von Neumann's friend Stanislaw Ulam, also a mathematician; Ulam suggested that the machine be built on paper, as a collection of cells on a grid. The idea intrigued von Neumann, who drew it up—creating the first of devices later termed cellular automata.
Another improvement was brought by mathematician, John Conway. He constructed the well-known Game of Life. Unlike the von Neumann's machine, Conway's Game of Life operated by simple rules in a virtual world in the form of a 2-dimensional checkerboard.
The birth of the agent-based model as a model for social systems was primarily brought about by a computer scientist, Craig Reynolds. He tried to model the reality of lively biological agents, known as the artificial life, a term coined by Christopher Langton.
Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell developed the first large scale agent model, the Sugarscape, to simulate and explore the role of social phenomena such as seasonal migrations, pollution, sexual reproduction, combat, transmission of disease, and even culture.
Kathleen M. Carley published "Computational Organizational Science and Organizational Engineering" defining the movement of simulation into
organizations, established a journal for social simulation applied to organizations and complex socio-technical systems: Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, and was the founding president of the North American Association of Computational Social and Organizational Systems that morphed into the current CSSSA.
Nigel Gilbert published with Klaus G. Troitzsch the first textbook on social simulation: "Simulation for the Social Scientist" (1999) and established its most relevant journal: the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation.
More recently, Ron Sun developed methods for basing agent-based simulation on models of human cognition, known as cognitive social simulation (see )
Topics
Here are some sample topics that have been explored with social simulation:
Social norms: Robert Axelrod has used simulations to investigate the foundation of morality; others have modeled the emergence of norms using memes, or how social norms and emotions can regulate each other.
Institutions: by investigating under what conditions agents manage to coordinate, or by modeling the works of Robert Putnam on civic traditions
Reputation, for example by making agents with a model of reputation from Pierre Bourdieu (image, social esteem, and prestige) and observing their behavior in a virtual marketplace.
Knowledge transmission and the social process of science: there is a special section on that topic in the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
Elections: Kim (2011) has modeled a psychological model of judgement from previous research (notably featuring motivated reasoning), and compared the statistical regularities of the simulation with empirical observations of voter behavior; others have compared delegation methods.
Economics: see computational economics and agent-based computational economics.
Types of simulation and modeling
Social simulation can refer to a general class of strategies for understanding social dynamics using computers to simulate social systems. Social simulation allows for a more systematic way of viewing the possibilities of outcomes.
There are four major types of social simulation:
System level simulation.
System level modeling.
Agent-based simulation.
Agent-based modeling.
A social simulation may fall within the rubric of computational sociology which is a recently developed branch of sociology that uses computation to analyze social phenomena. The basic premise of computational sociology is to take advantage of computer simulations in the construction of social theories. It involves the understanding of social agents, the interaction among these agents, and the effect of these interactions on the social aggregate. Although the subject matter and methodologies in social science differ from those in natural science or computer science, several of the approaches used in contemporary social simulation originated from fields such as physics and artificial intelligence.
System level simulation
System Level Simulation (SLS) is the oldest level of social simulation. System level simulation looks at the situation as a whole. This theoretical outlook on social situations uses a wide range of information to determine what should happen to society and its members if certain variables are present. Therefore, with specific variables presented, society and its members should have a certain response to the new situation. Navigating through this theoretical simulation will allow researchers to develop educated ideas of what will happen under some specific variables.
For example, if NASA were to conduct a system level simulation it would benefit the organization by providing a cost-effective research method to navigate through the simulation. This allows the researcher to steer through the virtual possibilities of the given simulation and develop safety procedures, and to produce proven facts about how a certain situation will play out.
System level modeling
System level modeling (SLM) aims to specifically predict (unlike system level simulation's generalization in prediction) and convey any number of actions, behaviors, or other theoretical possibilities of nearly any person, object, construct et cetera within a system using a large set of mathematical equations and computer programming in the form of models.
A model is a representation of a specific thing ranging from objects and people to structures and products created through mathematical equations and are designed, using computers, in such a way that they are able to stand-in as the aforementioned things in a study. Models can be either simplistic or complex, depending on the need for either; however, models are intended to be simpler than what they are representing while remaining realistically similar in order to be used accurately. They are built using a collection of data that is translated into computing languages that allow them to represent the system in question. These models, much like simulations, are used to help us better understand specific roles and actions of different things so as to predict behavior and the like.
Agent-based simulation
Agent-based social simulation (ABSS) consists of modeling different societies after artificial agents, (varying on scale) and placing them in a computer simulated society to observe the behaviors of the agents. From this data it is possible to learn about the reactions of the artificial agents and translate them into the results of non-artificial agents and simulations. Three main fields in ABSS are agent-based computing, social science, and computer simulation.
Agent-based computing is the design of the model and agents, while the computer simulation is the part of the simulation of the agents in the model and the outcomes. The social science is a mixture of sciences and social part of the model. It is where the social phenomena is developed and theorized. The main purpose of ABSS is to provide models and tools for agent-based simulation of social phenomena. With ABSS we can explore different outcomes for phenomena where we might not be able to view the outcome in real life. It can provide us valuable information on society and the outcomes of social events or phenomena.
Agent-based modeling
Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a system in which a collection of agents independently interact on networks. Each individual agent is responsible for different behaviors that result in collective behaviors. These behaviors as a whole help to define the workings of the network. ABM focuses on human social interactions and how people work together and communicate with one another without having one, single "group mind". This essentially means that it tends to focus on the consequences of interactions between people (the agents) in a population. Researchers are better able to understand this type of modeling by modeling these dynamics on a smaller, more localized level. Essentially, ABM helps to better understand interactions between people (agents) who, in turn, influence one another (in response to these influences). Simple individual rules or actions can result in coherent group behavior. Changes in these individual acts can affect the collective group in any given population.
Agent-based modeling is an experimental tool for theoretical research. It enables one to deal with more complex individual behaviors, such as adaptation. Overall, through this type of modeling, the creator, or researcher, aims to model behavior of agents and the communication between them in order to better understand how these individual interactions impact an entire population. In essence, ABM is a way of modeling and understanding different global patterns.
Current research
There are several current research projects that relate directly to modeling and agent-based simulation the following are listed below with a brief overview.
"Generative e-Social Science for Socio-Spatial Simulation" or (GENESIS) is a research node of the UK National Centre for e-Social Science funded by the UK research council ESRC.
"National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation" or (NeISS) is a UK-based project funded by JISC.
"Network Models Governance and R&D collaboration networks" or (N.E.M.O) is a research centre whose main focus is to identify ways to create and to assess desirable network structures for typical functions; (e.g. knowledge, creation, transfer, and distribution.) This research will ultimately aid policy-makers at all political levels in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of network-based policy instruments at promoting the knowledge economy in Europe.
"Agent-based Simulations of Market and Consumer Behavior" is another research group that is funded by the Unilever Corporate Research. The current research that is being conducted is investigating the usefulness of agent-based simulations for modeling consumer behavior and to show the potential value and insights it can add to long-established marketing methods.
"New and Emergent World Models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning" or (New Ties) is a three-year project that will ultimately create a virtual society developed by agent-based simulation. The project will develop a simulated society capable of exploring the environment and developing its own image of this environment and the society through interaction. The goal of the research project is for the simulated society to exhibit individual learning, evolutionary learning and social learning.
Bruch and Mare's project on neighborhood segregation: The purpose of the study is to figure out the reasoning for neighborhood segregation based on race, and to figure out the tipping point or when people become uncomfortable with the integration levels into their neighborhood, and decide to flee from the neighborhood. They set up a model using flash cards, and put the agent's house in the middle and put houses of different races surrounding the agent's house. They asked people how comfortable they would feel with different situations; if they were okay with one situation, they asked another until the neighborhood was fully integrated. Bruch and Mare's results showed that the tipping point was at 50%. When a neighborhood became 50% minority and 50% white, people of both races began to become uncomfortable and white flight began to rise. The use of agent-based modeling showed how useful it can be in the world of sociology, people did not have to answer why they would become uncomfortable, just which situation they were uncomfortable with.
The MAELIA Program (Multi-Agent Emergent Norms Assessment) is a project dealing with the relationships between the users and managers of a natural resource, in that case water, and the related norms and laws that are to be built within them (conventions) or are imposed to them by other actors (institutions). The purpose of the project is to build a generic multiscale platform which is planned to deal with water conflict-related issues.
The Mosi-Agil project is a four-year program funded by the Autonomous Region of Madrid through the program MOSI-AGIL-CM (grant S2013/ICE-3019, co-funded by EU Structural Funds FSE and FEDER). It aims at creating a body of knowledge and practical tools which are necessary to handle more effectively the behavior of occupants of large facilities. Therefore, the project studies the development of ambient intelligence and intelligent environments supported by the use of Agent-Based Social Simulation.
Agent-based modeling is most useful in providing a bridge between micro and macro levels, which is a large part of what sociology studies. Agent-based models are most appropriate for studying processes that lack central coordination, including the emergence of institutions that, once established, impose order from the top down. The models focus on how simple and predictable local interactions generate familiar but highly detailed global patterns, such as emergence of norms and participation of collective action. Michael W. Macy and Robert Willer researched a recent survey of applications and found that there were two main problems with agent-based modeling the self-organization of social structure and the emergence of social order . Below is a brief description of each problem Macy and Willer believe there to be;
"Emergent structure. In these models, agents change location or behavior in response to social influences or selection pressures. Agents may start out undifferentiated and then change location or behavior so as to avoid becoming different or isolated (or in some cases, overcrowded). Rather than producing homogeneity, however, these conformist decisions aggregate to produce global patterns of cultural differentiation, stratification, and homophilic clustering in local networks. Other studies reverse the process, starting with a heterogeneous population and ending in convergence: the coordination, diffusion, and sudden collapse of norms, conventions, innovations, and technological standards."
"Emergent social order. These studies show how egoistic adaptation can lead to successful collective action without either altruism or global (top down) imposition of control. A key finding across numerous studies is that the viability of trust, cooperation, and collective action depends decisively on the embeddedness of interaction."
These examples simply show the complexity of our environment and that agent-based models are designed to explore the minimal conditions, the simplest set of assumptions about human behavior, required for a given social phenomenon to emerge at a higher level of organization.
Criticisms
Since its creation, computerized social simulation has been the target of some criticism in regard to its practicality and accuracy. Social simulation's simplification of the complex to form models from which we can better understand the latter is sometimes seen as a draw back, as using fairly simple models to simulate real life with computers is not always the best way to predict behavior.
Most of the criticism seems to be aimed at agent-based models and simulation and how they work:
Simulations, being man-made from mathematical interfaces, predict human behavior in a far too simple manner in regard to the complexities of humanity and our actions.
Simulations cannot enlighten researchers as to how people interact or behave in ways not programmed into their models. For this reason, the scope of simulations are limited in that the researchers must already know what they are going to find (to a degree, for they cannot find anything they themselves did not place in the model) at least vaguely, possibly skewing the results.
Due to the complexities of what is being measured, simulations must be analyzed in unbiased ways; however, with the model running on a pre-made set of instructions coded into it by a modeler, biases exist almost universally.
It is highly difficult and often impractical to attempt to link the findings from the abstract world the simulation creates and our complex society and all of its variation.
Researchers working in social simulation might respond that the competing theories from the social sciences are far simpler than those achieved through simulation and therefore suffer the aforementioned drawbacks much more strongly. Theories in some social science tend to be linear models that are not dynamic, and are generally inferred from small laboratory experiments (laboratory tests are most common in psychology but rare in sociology, political science, economics and geography). The behavior of populations of agents under these models is rarely tested or verified against empirical observation.
See also
Agent-based computational economics
Agent-based social simulation
Artificial consciousness
Artificial reality
Artificial society
Computational sociology
Cliodynamics
Interactive online characters
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
Simulated reality
Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations
System dynamics
Virtual reality
References
External links
JASSS - The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
ESSA - The European Social Simulation Association
CSSSA - The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas
JoSC - The Journal of Social Complexity
Entry on Social Simulation in the NCeSS Wiki
Centre for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey
Laboratory for Agent Based Social Simulation, National Research Council (CNR), Italy
Dynamics Lab University College Dublin Ireland
CASOS - Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems
Social sciences
Simulation
Complex systems theory
Hyperreality
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingpin%20%28character%29
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Kingpin (character)
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The Kingpin (Wilson Grant Fisk) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr., and first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #50 (cover-dated July 1967). The "Kingpin" name is a reference to the crime lord title in Mafia slang nomenclature.
One of the most feared, dangerous and powerful crime lords in the Marvel Universe, usually depicted as New York City's crime overlord, the Kingpin was introduced as an adversary of Spider-Man, but later went on to be the archenemy of Daredevil, as well as a recurring foe of the Punisher and his adoptive daughter Echo. He was married to Vanessa Fisk, who frequently expressed her disapproval of his criminal activities, and later to Typhoid Mary Fisk, and is the father of Richard Fisk and Butch Pharris, the latter of whom succeeded him as the Kingpin following his retirement. His traditional attire consists of his signature white suit jacket and cane, though his appearance has been changed over the years. Across all iterations, the Kingpin is depicted with an extraordinarily heavyset appearance and a bald head. The character is not simply obese but also heavily-muscled (like a sumo wrestler) and a formidable hand-to-hand combatant. Despite this, his size has been regularly mocked, especially by Spider-Man.
The character has been adapted from the comics into various forms of media, including feature films, television series, and video games. The Kingpin was portrayed by John Rhys-Davies in the 1989 television film The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and by Michael Clarke Duncan in the 2003 feature film Daredevil, who also voiced the character in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series. Vincent D'Onofrio portrays Wilson Fisk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise, having appeared thus far in the television series Daredevil (2015–2018) and the miniseries Hawkeye (2021), and is scheduled to reprise the role in Echo (2024) and Daredevil: Born Again (2024). Liev Schreiber voiced the Kingpin in the 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In 2009, the Kingpin was ranked as IGN's 10th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.
Publication history
The Kingpin first appears in The Amazing Spider-Man #50 (July 1967), and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist John Romita Sr., who based his physical appearance on actors Sydney Greenstreet and Robert Middleton.
In his debut story arc in The Amazing Spider-Man #50–52, the Kingpin is portrayed purely as a crime lord, albeit one who tends to be unusually hands-on in his criminal dealings. In his subsequent appearances, also written by Lee, he becomes more of a typical supervillain, employing fantastic devices to further his criminal capers. In the early 1980s, the character evolved further. A series of appearances in Daredevil by writer/penciler Frank Miller depicted the Kingpin as a scheming, cold-blooded crime lord who consistently stayed beyond the reach of the law. This remained the character's dominant form for decades as the Kingpin became widely regarded as Daredevil's archenemy. He continues to be a recurring opponent of Spider-Man, Daredevil, Echo, and the Punisher.
Fictional character biography
Wilson Grant Fisk began his life as a poor child in New York City. Enduring bullying from his classmates because of his obesity, Fisk trained himself in physical combat and eventually used his new-found strength to form a gang of his former tormentors that terrorized the surrounding neighborhoods. He was soon discovered by mob boss Don Rigoletto, who hired him and his best friend as bodyguards, and Fisk worked his way up Rigoletto's ranks until he became the Don's right-hand man. He then turned on his mentor, eliminating him and taking control of his men and business interests, before expanding his new empire until he had become one of the most powerful figures in New York's criminal underworld, earning the name "Kingpin".
While the Kingpin enjoyed a long tenure in his new position, he also garnered enemies in the form of the Maggia and the terrorist group Hydra. The two groups joined forces to attack Fisk's empire, causing him to flee to Japan after losing most of his assets. There, he started a legitimate spice exporting business and used the profits to return to New York, organizing his old followers and starting a war to destroy the Maggia. The resulting chaos allowed Fisk to easily step back in and gain back everything he had lost.
Fisk attempted to form a coalition of New York's crime families after hearing that the vigilante Spider-Man had disappeared and ordered the abduction of J. Jonah Jameson to silence his reporting on the Kingpin's crimes, but Spider-Man returned and foiled his plans, in what became Fisk's first confrontation with the web-slinger.
To avoid public scrutiny of his criminal activities, Fisk cultivated an image of himself as a legitimate businessman and a kind-hearted philanthropist who made donations to charities. He eventually met and then married a woman named Vanessa, with whom he had a son named Richard. Vanessa did not know that her future husband was a criminal when they married. When she finally learned who he really was, she threatened to leave him if he did not give up his life of crime. The Kingpin gave up his criminal empire, moving his family to Japan to protect them from his enemies. As time passed, however, he found himself unable to adjust to civilian life and became the Kingpin once more, this time with his wife's knowledge.
Richard did not find out that his father was a criminal until he attended college. After graduating, he told his parents that he intended to travel through Europe. Only months later, they received news that their son had died in a skiing accident. However, it turned out that Richard was still alive; he returned to New York, used a costume and mask to disguise himself as a mysterious new crime lord calling himself the "Schemer", and formed his own gang to destroy his father's empire. Fisk came back into conflict with Spider-Man as he worked to stop the Schemer.
At one point, he became the manager and director of a Las Vegas-based fragment of HYDRA despite their past opposition to his rule.
At his wife's behest, Fisk later permanently divested himself of his criminal empire. He unsuccessfully attempted to kill Spider-Man once more before stepping down as the Kingpin, swearing to never again return to crime.
1980s
To complete his reformation, the Kingpin agreed to turn over all of his records to the authorities so they could prosecute his former lieutenants. His wife Vanessa was subsequently kidnapped by the men he betrayed, who then put out a contract on his life. After witnessing Vanessa's apparent death, Fisk returned to a life of crime. He quickly regained control by taking advantage of his knowledge of the weaknesses of all of New York's criminal organizations, and made a promise to keep the East Coast stable to stop crime bosses from the Midwest from expanding into his territory. The Kingpin also gained the loyalty of infamous assassin Bullseye by promising him steady work. When Daredevil stole his records, the Kingpin did nothing to stop him, plotting to get his old allies arrested so he could select more compliant replacements. Daredevil realized this in time to stop himself from turning over the records, frustrating the Kingpin's plans. Kingpin maneuvered Daredevil into battling the Hand, hoping to get him killed. He secretly promoted corrupt mayoral candidate Randolph Cherryh, and hired the services of Elektra Natchios. Daredevil found Vanessa alive but amnesiac, and used her as leverage to force Kingpin to end his support for Cherryh. As retribution, he sent Elektra to kill Foggy Nelson (Daredevil's friend), but Elektra failed and was killed by Bullseye.
The Kingpin learned Daredevil's secret identity through information passed on from Karen Page, Daredevil's ex-girlfriend who was now a pornographic film actress addicted to drugs. The Kingpin used his influence to destroy Matt Murdock's civilian and professional life. Enamored with the results of his own scheme, he became increasingly obsessed with ruining Daredevil's legacy. This led to a series of events that included brutalizing respected crime reporter Ben Urich, having his employees James Wesley and Felix Manning assault Daredevil's confidant, dirty cop Nick Manolis, and sending the homicidal Nuke into Hell's Kitchen. Nuke's rampage killed dozens of people, and the Kingpin was implicated. Though he avoided prison, his reputation was shattered and the image of respectability he had carefully built was ruined.
Kingpin was sought out by the Black Cat (who was dating Spider-Man at the time), and became concerned that her lack of powers would make the woman a liability to him. He therefore arranged to have scientists on his payroll provide her with defensive "bad luck" powers that cause mishap to befall anyone who attempts to harm her in combat but also hurt and eventually kill anyone who stays close to her for too long. The Kingpin hoped that this would lead to Spider-Man's death, but Spider-Man and the Black Cat ultimately broke up instead. Shortly after, Fisk was attacked by Spider-Man. Fisk later had his scientists create the supervillains the Answer, and the Spot, to battle Spider-Man and the Black Cat so they would not interfere further with his operations.
1990s
Fisk later rehires Bullseye to look into the parties responsible for a major drug war in New York and survives an assassination attempt by Crossbones. In retaliation, he sends Bullseye to assassinate the Red Skull (Crossbones's employer). The attempt fails, and the Kingpin instead defeats the Red Skull (in a clone of Captain America's body) in personal combat.
Fisk subsequently purchases his own cable television station, partnering with a wealthy millionaire from Texas that the Kingpin thinks can be easily manipulated. However, the "millionaire" is actually a spy planted by HYDRA. Learning of this from Nick Fury, Daredevil spreads rumors among New York's criminal outfits that the Kingpin had become a stooge of HYDRA, weakening his credibility and influence. HYDRA operatives steal most of the Kingpin's fortune, deprive him of income by dismantling his businesses, and send a helicopter gunship to destroy his skyscraper offices. With his empire crumbling, the Kingpin is indicted on federal charges, and Daredevil tricks him into committing assault and battery when he tries to escape via Manhattan's Port Authority Bus Terminal. Bailed out of jail by a rival, Fisk finally snaps when he learns that his benefactor intends to use him as an "errand boy". He kills him, and becomes a fugitive.
The Kingpin regains his sanity and has a small role in Marvel vs. DC when he purchases the Daily Planet, firing Perry White and replacing him with J. Jonah Jameson. He also bullies workers, especially Lois Lane, who threatens to expose him as the Kingpin. Eventually, he is confronted by his angry staff but is defeated when Spider-Man (Ben Reilly) and Superboy (Kon-El) arrive before he can do any significant damage. At the end of the crossover, the universes are restored and everyone is returned home.
Fisk returns to Japan and focuses on rebuilding his empire while fighting the X-Men and Shang-Chi, Kingpin became leader of Shang-Chi's father's organization, Si-Fan, introducing a clan of cyborg ninjas named Cyber-Ninjas. He returns to New York and resumes his criminal activities as Kingpin. Still under Kingpin's command, Si-Fan faces Shang-Chi and Elektra.
2000s
While in Japan, Fisk manipulates his adoptive daughter Maya Lopez (Echo) into thinking that Daredevil killed her biological father (although Fisk was actually responsible) to incite Daredevil's death. However, his plan backfires when Daredevil convinces Maya of the truth, and Lopez shoots the Kingpin in the eyes in retaliation, rendering him blind. Fisk eventually loses his criminal empire to Samuel Silke (one of his employees who works with Richard) in a bloody assassination bid, using the Kingpin's new status as a blind man to rally supporters. In the aftermath, Vanessa kills Richard and flees the country with Fisk's remaining wealth while the Kingpin recuperates in an unnamed East European country, broken and alone. He is given an eye transplant which restores his eyesight. He eventually confronts Silke and fatally crushes the man's head, almost manages to regain his empire through sheer will, but is defeated by Daredevil (who declares himself the new Kingpin). Fisk is imprisoned as a result.
He later hatches a scheme to be freed and regain his wealth by giving the FBI proof in the form of the nonexistent "Murdock Papers" that Murdock is Daredevil. Having made so many enemies in prison, Fisk is constantly under attack from the Hand, HYDRA, and any number of criminal organizations with which he had had dealings. The U.S. government is hard-pressed to get rid of this expensive, dangerous, legally clean master criminal, and Fisk succeeds in manipulating the FBI into gravely wounding Daredevil and providing them a sample of Daredevil's DNA. He tells Ben Urich to give the federal government the location of the Night Nurse, the only medic for injured superheroes, or go to jail.
Kingpin finally succeeds in getting Matt Murdock arrested, but the FBI betrays him at the last minute and arrests him as well, placing him in the same jail as Murdock in the hopes that the two will kill each other; instead, the two enemies team up to survive a prison riot directed at them. Finally, Murdock sacrifices the deal, refusing to let Bullseye (who was also incarcerated) leave the prison as the Kingpin had planned. The fight ends with the Kingpin shot point-blank in the knee by gunfire from Bullseye intended for Murdock, while Murdock escapes; a dying Vanessa is revealed to have manipulated events to attempt to have them both killed, while mourning her son's death.
Fisk appears in the 2006 Civil War: War Crimes one-shot issue, in which he offers information about Captain America's Resistance base to Iron Man, the leader of the pro-Registration forces in exchange for a reduced sentence. But as his status in prison is threatened for collaborating with Iron Man, he betrays Iron Man. He then puts out a hit on Spider-Man's loved ones after Iron Man convinced Peter Parker to publicly reveal himself as a means of demonstrating support for the Superhuman Registration Act. This results in May Parker being gravely wounded by a sniper's attempt to kill Spider-Man. After tracing the event back to Kingpin, Spider-Man confronts the Kingpin in prison and badly beats him in front of his fellow inmates. Spider-Man decides to let the Kingpin live with the humiliation of his defeat, news of which will quickly spread through the Underworld. Parker vows, however, to kill the Kingpin if May dies.
In the 2007 "One More Day" storyline, which ends with the undoing from history of Peter and Mary Jane Watson's marriage by Mephisto, all memories on the part of the public that Spider-Man is Peter is later removed, including the Kingpin's. In the new reality, Kingpin, informed of May's survival by a disguised Mephisto, decides to send a masked hitman after Anna Watson. The assassin is interrupted by Mary Jane Watson, who then becomes his target, and then by Spider-Man, who dispatches and unmask him. Spider-Man brings the wounded Mary Jane to Doctor Strange, who performs a healing spell on her. Peter insists that Doctor Strange should make people forget he is Spider-Man. Doctor Strange contacts Tony Stark and Reed Richards for advice on the matter, because they are partially responsible for Peter's identity becoming public. Both Reed and Tony agree with Doctor Strange, but it takes some convincing.
Murdock returns to the United States with a cleared name and completes Vanessa's last wish and takes on Fisk's case, getting all charges dropped in exchange for Fisk leaving the country, giving up his American citizenship and his agreement to end his vendetta with Daredevil. Although the charges were dropped due to the evidence being deemed inadmissible in court, Murdock delays the case enough so Fisk is unable to attend his wife's funeral. The mournful Fisk is later seen visiting his wife's grave, before temporarily returning to New York to resolve some loose ends.
In a 2007–2008 storyline in the series Runaways, Fisk meets with the Runaways, revealing he knew all about their parents since they ruled Los Angeles with efficiency and vision; he never tried to take their territory, nor did they invade his. He makes a deal with the Runaways to secure a mysterious object for him in exchange for protection from the government. He and his army of ninjas are defeated when the Runaways refuse to give it to him after stealing the object, discovering what Fisk wanted was a device invented by the Pride. It is later revealed that Fisk was hired by elderly woman Lillie McGurty who orchestrated the events so the Runaways can travel back to 1907 and ensure that the woman would come back to the present with them, which her past self declined.
During the 2008 "Dark Reign" storyline, the Kingpin forms an alliance with Lady Bullseye to destroy Daredevil. He orders Lady Bullseye to disguise herself as a member of the Hand and kill two corrupt cops and a judge, making it seems that Daredevil ordered this and prompting Norman Osborn as the leader of the law enforcement organization H.A.M.M.E.R. to send Bullseye in retaliation. Though Daredevil survives the fight with Bullseye, the Kingpin is undeterred and states that he has Daredevil "where he wants [his nemesis]". The Kingpin has also targeted Daredevil's friends to frame Osborn for their recent misfortunes to further his attempts on manipulating Daredevil's actions. He has Nelson disbarred as an attorney for standing up to a judge on his payroll for an unfair ruling of overturning a jury's verdict. He also causes the loss of Dakota North's private investigator license.
In the 2009 Daredevil arc "Return of the King", it is revealed that the Kingpin has spent the past year living a normal life in a small Spanish fishing village. There he meets and falls in love with Marta, a young mother of two. He finds himself trying to overcome his former life as a crime lord, only to later find Marta and the two kids murdered by Lady Bullseye and the Hand who then brutally attack him, stabbing him through the shoulders with two katanas. When he asks why, Lady Bullseye replies, "The reasons are far too numerous, but if you want a specific cause, ask Daredevil". In his revenge against the Hand, the Kingpin frees and recruits the Owl to help him. Fisk begins experiencing hallucinations of his dead wife who taunts him. It turns out that Fisk's actual plan is to take the leadership of the Hand, after killing Hiroshi, the ninja-lord who ordered the family's assassinations. However, he is thwarted by Daredevil who takes the lead for himself.
2010s
During the 2010 "Shadowland" storyline, the Kingpin approaches Iron Fist and Luke Cage, telling the two that they will need to take down Daredevil soon. The Kingpin and Lady Bullseye later perform a ritual that brings back Ghost Rider to attack the Hand. After Daredevil is dethroned from Shadowland, the Kingpin takes both Shadowland and the Hand under his rule, officially taking his place back as the crime lord of New York City.
During the 2010–2011 "Big Time" storyline, the Kingpin hires a new Hobgoblin to steal some experimental vibranium from Horizon Labs.
During the 2011 "Spider-Island" storyline, it is revealed that Fisk has gained spider-powers, as demonstrated by heightened reflexes and the ability to crawl on walls. Like all other New Yorkers, he lost those powers when the situation was resolved.
With Wakanda in a weakened economic position after the destruction of its vibranium stockpile, Kingpin attempts to purchase a controlling interest in the international Bank of Wakanda, with the goal of forcing the Bank to foreclose its current debts by selling its remaining land rights so that they can be exploited for more conventional mineral wealth. Fortunately, T'Challa becomes aware of this plan in his current role as defender of Hell's Kitchen (Matt Murdock needed time away after the events of Shadowland and T'Challa needed to re-learn his capabilities after the loss of his kingdom's vibranium), and begins a campaign of attacks against Fisk's new forces with the aid of Sam Wilson and Luke Cage. Fisk is so focused on these more public attacks that he misses when Shuri infiltrates and replaces Fisk's right-hand-woman, Miyu, giving her full access to Fisk's financial databases. Shuri plants a worm in the database that exposes most of Fisk's illegal financial transactions, with a final backdoor worm that could expose and ruin what little resources Fisk has left if he ever tries to come after Wakanda again (not wanting to completely take away his money as the heroes know from experience that Fisk will come back but this way he is more focused on protecting what he has left rather than plans for revenge).
Marvel NOW!
As part of the 2012 Marvel NOW! initiative, the Kingpin hears about how Otto Octavius as the Superior Spider-Man has been using brutal methods to take down the local crime families, which would leave a vacuum to fill. The Kingpin's Shadowland hideout is attacked by the Superior Spider-Man to which the Kingpin claims that the Superior Spider-Man is much different from the nemesis he had fought. While escaping, the Kingpin kills his doppelgänger Smedley Kornfeld (who was hired for events like this) to fool the Superior Spider-Man.
With his power over New York gone, Fisk set up shop in San Francisco, with the intention of rebuilding his empire there. But the vigilante Shroud acted first, taking control of the local gangs and kidnapped the Owl who also relocated to San Francisco. He transformed Owlsley into a super-computer capable of taking control of all wifi signals to locate his former girlfriend Julia Carpenter. During this time, Daredevil confirmed his secret identity, taking a positive approach to it this time and moved to San Francisco to practice law and continue his superhero career. Fisk began to make moves against both of his enemies, hiring the assassin Ikari to kidnap Foggy and Matt's new girlfriend, Kirsten McDuffie, and having his men look for Julia to have leverage against the Shroud. However, the Shroud and Daredevil came into conflict when he and Jubua Pride, the Owl's daughter, attempted to free Owlsley. The Shroud then released all private information about Daredevil's law practice's clients. Daredevil went to Fisk and offered him a deal, he would use his resources to fix his situation and assure Foggy and Kirsten are safe, and in exchange Matt Murdock would fake his death and get a new identity only Fisk would know, giving Kingpin back the power to destroy Daredevil, which he lost when he went public. However, Fisk went with his original plan instead and Ikari kidnapped Nelson and Kirsten. Meanwhile, the Shroud, Pride, and Daredevil crashed when they attempted to get Julia at an airport, allowing Kingpin's goons to take her. Fisk presented his hostages when Daredevil confronted him and had him fight Ikari to the death, with Fisk killing one of them if Daredevil wins. The fight took them to the streets, where the Shroud saved Daredevil and killed Ikari. Improvising, Daredevil took Ikari's costume and claimed to have killed the hero while the Shroud had the Owl bring to light all of Fisk's operations in exchange for his freedom. While Kingpin and Daredevil fought, the federals stormed his building. Daredevil beat down the Kingpin when he tried to flee and rescued the hostages, leaving him in bankruptcy.
During the 2015 "Secret Wars" storyline, the Kingpin hosts a viewing party for the incursion between Earth-616 and Earth-1610 where his guests include Absorbing Man, Bullseye, Norman Osborn, Sandman, and Scorpion. Festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Punisher who reveals that since he cannot take them with him, he has to put his large supply of bullets somewhere; the Punisher then kills them all, before they are resurrected in the reconstituted universe.
When the Purple Children acquired a machine designed by their father to enhance his powers, after Daredevil had saved them from a mob, they used the machine to erase the world's knowledge of Matt Murdock's identity as Daredevil, including the Kingpin's.
All-New, All-Different Marvel
As part of the 2015 "All-New, All-Different Marvel", Wilson Fisk represented Fisk Industries when he attended a meeting at the Universal Bank with Tiberius Stone of Alchemax, Sebastian Shaw of Shaw Industries, Darren Cross of Cross Technological Enterprises, Zeke Stane of Stane International, Shingen Harada of the Yashida Corporation, Frr'dox of Shi'ar Solutions Consolidated, and Wilhelmina Kensington of Kilgore Arms where they discussed with Dario Agger about his and Roxxon Energy Corporation's plans to exploit the Ten Realms of Asgard. Wilson Fisk also saw the arrival of Exterminatrix of the Midas Foundation, who knocked out Dario and declared herself a new member of their assembly.
During the 2016 "Civil War II" storyline, Kingpin returns from San Francisco, where he ends up in a fight with Bushwacker which ends in Bushwacker's apparent death. Afterward, he learns from a barista named Armand that his girlfriend Sonia had gone missing. Kingpin and Turk Barrett track her to a human smuggling business that Man Mountain Marko and Kingpin's former minion Janus Jardeesh are working for. Kingpin decides not to kill Janus when he learns that he is a recently emerged Inhuman whose abilities render him undetectable by Ulysses Cain's abilities. To test this ability, Kingpin has Janus kill a security guard that Janus knocked out upon discovering the smuggling business.
As part of the 2016 "Marvel NOW!" in a lead-up to the Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy storyline, Jackal sends Rhino to Kingpin to get him on his side. He even had Rhino bring a version of Vanessa to persuade Kingpin to go along with the deal. Kingpin snaps the neck of his wife's clone, stating, "That's not my wife. That's an abomination". Rhino then fights Kingpin, even when Spider-Man shows up. After the resulting fight in which Rhino gets away, Jackal is not pleased that Kingpin declined the offer. Kingpin knows this is a set-up and has a better plan on using Spider-Man to get rid of Jackal. After Spider-Man and Spider-Woman of Earth-65 learn from the New U Technologies staff what had happened to Kaine and Anna Maria Marconi, Kingpin shows up and reveals he has been following the Jackal's trail ever since the encounter with his wife. He gives Spider-Man a folder containing the location of a meeting that Jackal will be at so Spider-Man can take down for revenge. Spider-Man is seen beating up most of the Kingpin's henchmen at a restaurant in Chinatown. Kingpin tells Spider-Man that he is ready to repay his debt and gives Spider-Man a flash drive that has the location of Norman Osborn.
During the 2017 "Secret Empire" storyline, Kingpin is among the people trapped in a Darkforce-enclosed Manhattan. When some armed robbers raid a church for medical supplies, Kingpin saves the people inside from the armed robbers. Kingpin tells the people to present that they should let people know that he saved them once the crisis is over. He later saves Doctor Strange, Spider-Woman, and Ben Urich from the Elder God Pluorgg by ramming it with his limousine and offers his help to the heroes. After crossing through a monster-filled subway, Kingpin takes the heroes to a witch to acquire weapons to retake the Sanctum Sanctorum, though Doctor Strange argues over the side effects of black magic. Kingpin is then possessed by a demon inside a mask and attacks the heroes until Ben, transformed into a mystical knight, stops him and they come to a truce. They later help Doctor Strange in defeating Baron Mordo, who had been put in charge of New York by HYDRA Supreme Captain America, and retake the Sanctum.
Mayor of New York City
After HYDRA's defeat, Wilson Fisk is able to use a subsequent election to put himself forward as a last-minute candidate to become the Mayor of New York City, avoiding his criminal past being drawn into the issue by simply ignoring questions about it, aided by the fact that he has never been legitimately charged with anything. With his primary policy being a bill to declare all vigilantes as criminals, and despite Daredevil's own recent efforts to create a precedent for superheroes testifying under their secret identities in Washington, he is able to have Daredevil arrested in an FBI sting operation, mocking his old nemesis with the knowledge that the people he protects chose Fisk to 'protect' them, prompting Daredevil to break a window and leap out of Fisk's office to begin his own efforts to bring down Fisk's empire. Matt Murdock then applied for the position of deputy mayor. Although Daredevil eventually attempts to set up a 'sting operation' where he and his fellow street-level heroes will capture Mayor Fisk meeting with various gang bosses, Mayor Fisk uses this plan against them and uses the opportunity to arrest all of Daredevil's allies, subsequently attempting to provoke Daredevil into attacking him. Although Mayor Fisk is able to arrest Daredevil as well, he is subsequently attacked and left in critical condition by the Hand, with various amendments made to New York's constitution by prior administrations putting Matt Murdock in control of the city, once he has escaped from captivity, thanks to the Hand attacking the police van where he was being held, Fisk in critical condition and nobody willing to challenge the legal situation. While Matt Murdock used his skills as Daredevil and the acting mayor to keep the city safe with the street-level superheroes fighting off the Hand, Fisk recovered. Murdock gave Fisk the position of mayor back to him where Fisk had to promise not to do anymore crusades against the vigilantes.
Mayor Wilson Fisk later adopts another daughter, named Princess Fisk, who he briefly sends to go to P.S. 20 Anna Silver, the same elementary school as Lunella "Moon Girl" Lafayette.
Mayor Wilson Fisk later appears as a member of the Power Elite. When Captain America is named as a suspect in the murder of Thunderbolt Ross, he ends up in an argument with Sharon Carter over Captain America's innocence.
Mayor Wilson Fisk later had an encounter with Kindred. This demon kills Fisk's associates using supernatural abilities and forces him to back off of Peter Parker after revealing that he is in possession of Vanessa Fisk's soul.
Operatives of Mayor Wilson Fisk free Electro (Francine Frye) so that she can be part of a female version of the Sinister Syndicate. When the Sinister Syndicate is formed, Mayor Fisk gives them their first mission to capture Boomerang who has stolen something from him. When the Sinister Syndicate catches Boomerang, Beetle contacts Mayor Fisk as she is given information on where the exchange should happen. As the Sinister Syndicate plans to adjourn for the night, they hear Mayor Fisk outside stating that they are harboring a criminal and are to surrender Boomerang to him or suffer the full might of New York City. The Syndicate notices the police, the SWAT Team, the Anti-Super Squad, and low-level bureaucrats. Spider-Man arrives as well and tries to get Mayor Fisk to have the authorities stand down only for Mayor Fisk to claim that Spider-Man fell prey to Boomerang's hypnotic boomerang. Electro claims that Spider-Man is buying them some time. After reading the paper in Boomerang's hand that belonged to Mayor Fisk, Beetle tells the Syndicate that they should let Boomerang go. While Beetle claimed that she betrayed them, she did it because she is a supervillain and states that she plans to have Mayor Fisk deputize them. The rest of the Syndicate is not up with this plan. The Syndicate then assists Spider-Man against Mayor Fisk's forces. Beetle has Spider-Man evacuate Boomerang while the Syndicate fights Mayor Fisk's forces while not killing them. The Syndicate is defeated and arrested by the police.
Mayor Wilson Fisk was reunited with his Miles Morales who has become Ultimatum. He was elated to see Ultimatum again while apologizing that he did not find what he was looking for on Earth-1610. Mayor Fisk and Miles begin their next plan together, while opposing a Spider-Man version of Morales from an alternate reality.
2020s
During the "Last Remains" arc, Norman Osborn meets up with Mayor Wilson Fisk and his men as they work on a plan to dispose of Kindred for what he did to them. Mayor Wilson Fisk is informed by Norman Osborn that Mary Jane Watson got through to Kindred. After Norman as Green Goblin crashed the confrontation and threw a Pumpkin Bomb near Mary Jane, he gave Mayor Fisk the signal to activate the trap which causes the tomb to be engulfed in darkness. It was revealed that they pulled this off by enlisting the help of Spot who powered Project Blank that was inspired by the Darkforce Dome that once surrounded Manhattan. With Kindred locked up in a special cell in Ravencroft, Norman Osborn stated to Spider-Man that he saved him from Mayor Wilson Fisk. At Ravencroft, Mayor Wilson Fisk talks to Kindred about their encounter in the Parisian catacombs. One of Mister Negative's lieutenants appears and informs him that the Inner Demons will help him get more than the Tablet of Life and Destiny.
Mister Negative later meets with Mayor Wilson Fisk and informs him that they will need the sister counterpart of the Tablet of Life and Destiny called the Tablet of Death and Entropy. As Mister Negative has the item, he states to Mayor Fisk that their desired function can only be used when both items are together. Mayor Fisk allows Mister Negative to control Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Outside of enlisting Mister Negative to steal the Tablet of Life and Destiny from Spider-Man and Boomerang, Mayor Fisk has also enlisted the services of the crime lords Black Mariah, a Crime Master, Diamondback, Hammerhead, Madame Masque, Owl, Silvermane, and Tombstone to obtain the Tablet of Life and Destiny where the first crime lord to obtain it will win Mayor Fisk's favor. Upon getting his hands on both tablets, Mayor Fisk uses its abilities to revive Richard Fisk as Mayor Fisk realized that Vanessa would not be pleased with her resurrection. He did this as an act of redemption for Vanessa and even himself.
During the "King in Black" storyline, one of Iron Man's plans to fight Knull's invasion is to persuade Mayor Wilson Fisk to enlist villains to help defend New York City and fight Knull's Symbiote army. This leads to Mayor Fisk paying a visit to the Bar with No Name where he asks who would like to earn some money. Kingpin puts together his incarnation of the Thunderbolts with Taskmaster, Mister Fear, Batroc the Leaper, Star, Rhino, Ampere, and Snakehead. When the villain Incendiary turned him down, Mayor Fisk shot him to serve as a warning to anyone that does not take his offer. The assignment he gives them is to take Star to Ravencroft to meet up with the one person who can help defeat Knull.
Second marriage and retirement
After Mike Murdock (Matt Murdock's magically created criminal twin brother) uses the Norn stone to cement himself into reality by changing the history of the world, he inadvertently makes it so that Mayor Fisk has an illegitimate son (alongside his legitimate son Richard) with Stella Pharris named Byron "Butch" Pharris.
Sometime later, before the "Devil's Reign" storyline, Fisk discovers physical evidence proving that he once knew Daredevil's true identity, noticing gaps in his own memory after the fact. Outraged, Mayor Fisk confronts Daredevil, who taunts him. Consequentially, Mayor Fisk appoints Butch as New York's new Kingpin, outlaws vigilantism in the city, and announces his intent to run for President of the United States. While backed by Senator Arthur Krane of the Friends of Humanity and other people, Fisk also starts the Thunderbolt units to help the NYPD crack down on superhuman vigilantism. He even visits Purple Man in prison and strangles him to submission, and later imprisons him (as he would later do with his children as well) to use him to control people, just like Doctor Doom had done a long time ago, to secure an electoral victory for himself. The few superheroes who were still free, including Captain America, Spider-Man (Ben Reilly), She-Hulk, Luke Cage and Daredevil, began trying to implement ways of defeating Fisk legally, including letting Cage run for mayor.
Blaming Daredevil for his failures, Fisk makes the Purple Man force the population of New York City into attacking the superheroes, while Fisk seeks out Daredevil, having regained his memory of Daredevil's identity after the Purple Man was able to suggest how it might have been done as he recognized the influence of his children in the memory wipe. Fisk ends up confronting Mike Murdock, mistakes him for Matt and murders him. In return, he and his now wife Typhoid Mary are attacked by Daredevil and Elektra. Daredevil nearly kills Fisk until Elektra intervenes. Fisk is arrested, but freed by Butch Pharris and several criminal financers, who want to install him as President of the United States next. Instead, Fisk kills them, leaves Butch to succeed him as the new Kingpin, and retires from crime with Mary by his side.
Skills, abilities, and equipment
While the Kingpin has no superhuman powers, he is incredibly strong and significantly more durable than the average human, possessing remarkable strength concealed by his extremely corpulent appearance. Most of his body mass is actually muscle that has been built to extraordinary size, much like a Super Heavyweight sumo wrestler, or some Olympic weightlifters and powerlifters but at greater strength levels. He has been shown to be strong enough to hurl large men across a room, and leave imprints in concrete walls after punching them. Defying his size, the Kingpin is a master of many forms of armed and unarmed combat, especially sumo wrestling. His signature move is the bear hug. His skill is such that he has once fought Captain America to a standstill in hand-to-hand combat. His daily workout typically consists of simultaneously overcoming five or more trained martial artists with his bare hands, and he stores his valuables in a custom-built safe which has no lock, only a door which is so heavy that only the Kingpin himself is strong enough to open it.
He typically wears Kevlar armor under his clothing. Fisk sometimes carries an "obliterator cane", a walking stick that conceals a laser weapon that can vaporize a handgun or a person's head at close range. He typically wears an ornamental diamond stick-pin that conceals compressed sleeping gas that is effective if sprayed into a victim's face. Due to his wealth and intellectual acumen, Kingpin could use far more advanced defensive gadgets, but he prefers to use such things only as a last resort. As Fisk became less Spider-Man's enemy and more Daredevil's, he was portrayed more as a naturalistic mafioso than a comic book criminal mastermind, and depended less on science fiction–like weaponry.
Although state and federal authorities are aware of the Kingpin, they have never been able to prove his involvement in many crimes, and while Fisk has occasionally been incarcerated or put under investigation, his formidable legal resources and knowledge of the law have always protected him from any serious consequences. Members of the government have worked with him when necessary (even while describing him as "the devil"), such as when they needed his help to dispose of a Manhattan office building that the Beyonder turned into gold.
The Kingpin is intellectually formidable and is a master tactician and a highly skilled planner and organizer. He is self-educated to university graduate level in the field of political science, and is extremely skilled and knowledgeable in the organization and management of both illegal and legal business operations, allowing him to outsmart and outlast his enemies time and time again. The Kingpin's willpower is so great that he can resist even the Purple Man's mind control.
Reception
In 2014, WhatCulture ranked Kingpin 1st in their "7 Unused Spider-Man Villains Who'd Be Great In The Marvel Cinematic Universe" list.
In 2022, Screen Rant ranked Kingpin 4th in their "10 Most Powerful Silk Villains In Marvel Comics" list.
In 2022, Screen Rant included Kingpin in their "10 Best Marvel Characters Who Made Their Debut In Spider-Man Comics" list.
In 2022, CBR.com ranked Kingpin 8th in their "10 Most Violent Spider-Man Villains" list.
Other versions
Marvel 1602
In the Marvel 1602 universe, Wilson Fiske is a pirate and captain of HMS Vanessa, known as the King's Pin, who attacks the ship taking Peter Parquarh and Sir Norman Osborne back to England. However, although the attack leaves Osborne wounded, he and the crew are able to take the Vanessa when Peter deflects the ship's cannonballs by using his webbing to throw them back. Fiske is thrown into the sea to drown when Osborne confronts him directly, rejecting a desperate Fiske's "offer" to explain how he got his name.
"Age of Apocalypse"
In the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, Wilson Fisk is known as Dirigible, a wealthy businessman who bought his way into the Marauders, a human terrorist group serving Apocalypse that makes up for their lack of mutant powers using technology which allows them to fly and emit explosive blasts. Dirigible is clearly the leader of the group, as he is seen giving orders to his three teammates. Alongside Red (Norman Osborn), the Owl, and Arcade, he attacks the human refugee camps of Wakanda. However, Dirigible is killed by Gwen Stacy.
Old Man Logan
In the 2008–2009 "Old Man Logan" storyline, there were different versions of the Kingpin that appear in a possible future timeline in which the United States has been carved up between the various super-villains as seen on Earth-807128 and Earth-21923:
The first Kingpin is an unnamed African-American man who is described as a "man of the people" who fought his way to the top, gaining control of the western states and killing the domain's former master Magneto, who had become "too old" to fight back. He renamed Magneto's former territory Kingdom of the Kingpin. Hawkeye's daughter Ashley operated as "Spider-Bitch" and opposed Kingpin with her allies who operated as Daredevil and Punisher until Kingpin had the latter two captured and fed to carnivorous dinosaurs. Kingpin is eventually beheaded by Ashley after being freed by her father: striking her father over the head, Ashley reveals that she plans to take over Kingpin's territory herself, rather than free its people as he had assumed. Recognized as the new Kingpin by the surrounding guards, Ashley immediately attempts to have her father killed, only for him to be rescued by Logan; Ashley then sends her men after them.
Ashley returns as the new Kingpin in Spider-Verse (2014–2015), Edge of Venomverse (2017), Spider-Geddon (2018), Old Man Hawkeye (2018), and Old Man Quill (2019). Her predecessor on Earth-21923 has the same history as the version on Earth-807128.
House of M
An alternate version of Wilson Fisk appears in the House of M storyline as a mobster who controls all crime in the human neighborhoods of Uptown New York. Kingpin cooperates with the Mutant authorities, acting as an informant on Luke Cage and his Avengers gang, in exchange for official protection of his territories.
Marvel Zombies
The Kingpin appears in Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness #2 with his underlings, willing to work with the Punisher to try and save humanity from the zombie attack. The Punisher kills the group instead.
He appears in Marvel Zombies 3 as a leader of the zombie horde, planning to invade Earth-616. He keeps his wife in hiding, satisfying his hunger (and those of other infected characters) by cloning uninfected humans as a source of food, Vanessa noting that his strength of will in controlling the hunger is the reason that he has become the leader of the remaining zombies even when the others have superpowers. Eventually, he eats her when his plan is defeated.
An alternate version of Kingpin appears in Marvel Zombies Return, where he summons the Sinister Six to steal a sacred tablet from the college where Peter Parker attends. But when the zombified Spider-Man is transported to their world, he kills and devours five of the members. An infuriated Kingpin decides to confront Spider-Man, but is quickly dispatched and devoured by Spider-Man, leaving his men to run for their lives.
Punisher Max
Kingpin appears in a story arc in the MAX version of The Punisher, beginning with Punisher Max #1, with Bullseye as his main henchman. Like the mainstream version he is incredibly strong, able to squeeze someone's head until their eyes pop out. He is a highly formidable hand-to-hand combatant, cunning and utterly ruthless. This version of Fisk is also married to Vanessa and has a son, Richard, who is depicted as a young child. Following Richard's death, Fisk and Vanessa separate, with both taking Hand assassin Elektra Natchios as a lover and partner while plotting against the other.
Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe
In the one-shot issue Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, the Punisher goes after the Kingpin after Microchip uses his hacking skills to destroy the Kingpin's empire. Kingpin informs the Punisher that he supported the latter's campaign to kill all of the superpowered beings, and has acquired an armory of weapons for the Punisher's use. As the Punisher attempts to shoot the Kingpin with an M16, the Kingpin grabs the rifle and destroys it with his bare hands. The Punisher responds by shooting two Desert Eagle pistols at the Kingpin, which only infuriates him. The Punisher kills the Kingpin by shooting him in the throat, and his body collapses on top of Castle, where he is found and arrested by NYPD officers. The Punisher's benefactor breaks him out of prison, whereupon Castle reveals he killed the Kingpin to acquire his high-tech weaponry, specifically a holographic scrambler, which Castle uses to disguise a helicopter as the Fantastic Four's Fantasti-car, so he can infiltrate Latveria to kill Doctor Doom.
MC2
In the alternate future depicted in the MC2 comics, Fisk has finally succeeded in killing Daredevil, although he made the mistake of betraying Kaine in the process. Kaine attempted to revive Daredevil with sorcery, but ended up bonding him with the demon Zarathos and Reilly Tyne (son of Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider), creating the superhero Darkdevil. When a gang war begins, Fisk is slain by a bomb while incarcerated in prison. While dying, he has a vision of his wife and son who show the unrepentant criminal his dark past. The two spirits tell him that he can only come to the "light" if he renounces his criminal past. It is left ambiguous as to what he decided.
Spider-Man: Reign
Fisk appears in a vegetative state in the first part of Spider-Man: Reign.
What If
Fisk has appeared in different "What If" stories:
In What If the Punisher had Killed Daredevil?, the Punisher hunts down the Kingpin, who has bribed the newly elected Mayor of New York City into working for him. Since the Punisher had used up the last of his ammo to kill Spider-Man (as his alter ego Peter Parker), the wounded Punisher attacks the Kingpin with a knife, only for the Kingpin to knock the knife out of his hand, and kill him by crushing the Punisher's throat with his bare hands. However, Castle had a back-up plan: he left a bomb outside the Kingpin's office, which goes off, killing the Kingpin and the Mayor.
In What If Venom had Possessed the Punisher?, the Venom symbiote possessed Frank Castle, who used Venom's powers to murder criminals, which had the side effect of merging their personalities. The Kingpin hired Tombstone as an assassin, but the Punisher hunted him down and easily killed Tombstone with his bare hands. When the Punisher confronted the Kingpin, he found Daredevil and Typhoid Mary protecting him. Despite their best efforts to fight off the Punisher, the Venom symbiote used tendrils to envelop and strangle the Kingpin to death.
In What If Karen Page Had Lived? where Bullseye did not kill Karen Page as part of Mysterio's final scheme, the fear of losing Karen drove Daredevil to attack the Kingpin for his role in the scheme, beating him to death.
Ultimate Marvel
The Ultimate Marvel version of Kingpin is the head of corporate crime in New York, a ruthless murderer and notorious for bribing his way out of any prosecution. His henchmen include The Enforcers and later Electro and Elektra. He is rivaled by fellow crime lord Hammerhead, and briefly Mr. Big. In the first storyline in which he appears, Kingpin unmasks Spider-Man, and later taunts with the knowledge of his nemesis's secret identity many times. He also purchases the licensing rights of the Spider-Man movie franchise, essentially owning Spider-Man's likeness, during his battle with the Knights arc. He is ultimately killed by Earth-616's Mysterio, who blasts him out of a window of his building after the "Ultimatum" storyline.
In Ultimate Origins, Fisk's grandfather appears attempting to loot a house with Nick Fury and James Howlett (Wolverine) during World War II.
Marvel Noir
In the Marvel Noir universe, Wilson Fisk appears as a crime lord.
"Spider-Verse"
During the "Spider-Verse" storyline, Wilson Fisk assisted Mysterio and his assistant Ella in a plot to obtain the Spider-Man's blood.
Spider-Gwen
In the series Spider-Gwen, which is set on the alternate Earth-65, Kingpin is seemingly served by his lawyer Matt Murdock. Kingpin and Matt Murdock send the mercenary Aleksei Sytsevich to kill George Stacy. This was done as revenge, for Fisk is currently imprisoned in solitary confinement, due to the efforts of Captain Stacy.
Matt Murdock (nicknamed Murderdock) is later revealed to be the real Kingpin, with Wilson Fisk serving as his patsy.
Secret Wars
During the 2015 Secret Wars storyline, there are different versions of Kingpin that reside in the different Battleworld domains:
In the Battleworld domain of Technopolis, Kingpin is a powerful crime lord who is allied with Arno Stark. Like everyone else in Technopolis, he wears armor to protect him from an airborne virus that has been plaguing Technopolis. He dispatched his men to capture Spyder-Man. Kingpin is critically injured by Grand Marshal James Rhodes' attack.
In the Battleworld domain of the Valley of Doom, a Wild West version of Wilson Fisk is the corrupt Mayor of Timely.
In the Battleworld domain of the Warzone where the 2006 Civil War storyline never officially ended, Fisk kills Doctor Octopus and grafts his arms onto himself, but the arms retaliate by electrocuting him, rendering him essentially brain dead. Fisk is later killed by Clint Barton.
Spider-Geddon
During the Spider-Geddon storyline, the Earth-83043 version of Wilson Fisk is the head of Kingliner and secretly orchestrated the airplane crash in the Savage Land that killed Richard and Mary Parker. Years later, Fisk and his ally Ka-Zar the Hunter are poaching dinosaurs when they set off a trap left for them by the Savage Spider-Man. While Fisk did recognize Savage Spider-Man as Peter Parker while confirming the suspicion that someone on the airplane survived, he did reveal his soldiers that were in hiding nearby. Just then, the giant spiders that raised Savage Spider-Man appeared where they attacked Fisk's soldiers and the airplane that Fisk is on.
Crossovers with DC Comics
In the Batman & Spider-Man: New Age Dawning crossover, Kingpin is forced to partner with Ra's al Ghul in a plan that would destroy New York City, in exchange for a cure to Vanessa's cancer. As it turned out, Ra's gave Vanessa her cancer to force Kingpin to aid him, but the Kingpin actually formed an alliance with Batman and Spider-Man to save the city. Ra's attempted to get his revenge by denying Fisk the cure for Vanessa's cancer, but Talia al Ghul, Ra's' daughter, provided the cure herself, recognizing in Vanessa a kindred spirit, as both of them loved men that society regarded as monsters.
In the Batman/Daredevil: King of New York crossover, Kingpin almost loses his entire criminal empire to the Scarecrow, who tries to dismantle it merely as a distraction so that he could spread his fear toxin throughout New York. In this book, Kingpin is shown to be a formidable physical match for Batman.
The Amalgam Comics character the Big Question (Enigma Fisk) is a combination of the Riddler of DC Comics and the Kingpin. He appears in the Marvel/DC Comics crossover comic Assassins #1 (April 1996).
In other media
Television
The Kingpin appears in Spider-Man (1967), voiced by Tom Harvey.
The Kingpin appears in the Spider-Woman episode "The Kingpin Strikes Again".
The Kingpin appears in Spider-Man (1981), voiced by G. Stanley Jones.
The Kingpin appears in the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode "Pawns of the Kingpin", voiced by Walker Edmiston.
The Kingpin appears in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, voiced by Roscoe Lee Browne. This version operates as a wealthy entrepreneur at public events and was born Wilson Moriarty. At a young age, Wilson saw his father robbing a bank and joined his gang. However, when his father abandoned him after a failed job and Wilson refused to name him in court, he was sentenced to prison, where he developed his skills before building his own criminal empire, renamed himself "Fisk", erased his criminal record, established a hidden criminal headquarters in the Chrysler Building, and took revenge on his elderly father. After becoming an established crime boss, the Kingpin comes into regular conflict with Spider-Man and makes several attempts to eliminate him, such as forming the Insidious Six and recruiting others to maintain his order like the Hobgoblin, the Spot, Alistair Smythe, and Herbert Landon.
The Kingpin, based on the Daredevil film incarnation, appears in the Spider-Man: The New Animated Series episode "Royal Scam", voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan. This version is African-American and has a red diamond-studded cane capable of shooting lasers.
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Wilson Fisk appears in television series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), portrayed by Vincent D'Onofrio as an adult and Cole Jensen as a child. Kingpin along with Spider-Woman will be shared by both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
First appearing in the Netflix series Daredevil (2015), this version leads his crime family in taking over Hell's Kitchen while maintaining a presentable image to the public. Unlike traditional depictions, he initially lacks self-confidence, was emotionally unstable, and does not adopt the Kingpin moniker until much later in the series. A large focus of his story in the first season is his budding relationship with and eventual proposal to Vanessa Mariana while he and his right-hand man James Wesley have dealings with criminals, politicians, and corrupt police officers. Eventually, Fisk is legally detained after Matt Murdock helps the FBI arrest his associates and beaten in combat by Murdock as Daredevil before being arrested by Brett Mahoney and incarcerated at Ryker's Island. In the second season, Fisk uses Frank Castle as a pawn to eliminate rival gangsters trying to usurp his power while using mob lawyer Benjamin Donovan as his new consigliere. When Murdock threatens Marianna during a prison visit, Fisk attacks him and receives injuries similar to his fight with Daredevil, fueling his suspicions that Murdock and Daredevil may be one and the same. Fisk re-examines Murdock's files and plots to destroy Murdock's law firm as revenge. In the third season, Fisk is released from prison after becoming a criminal informant for the FBI, scheming to regain his position in the criminal underworld under the guise of securing Marianna's return to the country with immunity. With the help of fixer Felix Manning, he manipulates his FBI protection detail, including the mentally unstable Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter, and uses him to frame Daredevil as a criminal to the public and kill Poindexter's coworker Ray Nadeem. Additionally, Fisk confirms that Murdock is Daredevil during a murder attempt and arranges to have him killed by the FBI. However, Poindexter realizes Fisk manipulated him and his true intentions are revealed. Fisk battles Murdock and Poindexter, breaking the latter's back before Murdock defeats him. Fisk attempts to goad Murdock into finishing him off by threatening to reveal his identity, but Murdock counter-threatens to expose Marianna for her role in Nadeem's murder before leaving Fisk to be arrested.
As of the Disney+ series Hawkeye, Fisk became involved with Eleanor Bishop, whose late husband Derek owed him money prior to the Battle of New York, and rebuilt his criminal empire over the course of the Blip. When Eleanor tries to break off their partnership however, Fisk attempts to have her killed, only to be foiled by her daughter Kate. He manages to escape being arrested by the police, but his surrogate niece Maya Lopez confronts Fisk at gunpoint after learning he orchestrated the murder of her father.
D'Onofrio will reprise his role in the upcoming Disney+ series Echo (2023), and Daredevil: Born Again (2024).
Film
Wilson Fisk appears in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989), portrayed by John Rhys-Davies.
The Kingpin appears in Daredevil (2003), portrayed by Michael Clarke Duncan. When Duncan was cast, he weighed 290 pounds, and was asked to gain an additional 40 pounds for the role to fit the Kingpin's physique. This version is African American, originated from the Bronx, and is the head of New York City's criminal underworld disguised as a legitimate businessman.
The Kingpin appears in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), voiced by Liev Schreiber. This version is Alchemax's benefactor and has various supervillains under his employ. In the film, Fisk masterminds the creation of a trans-dimensional collider in order to reunite with alternate versions of his deceased wife Vanessa and son Richard, which risks the destruction of New York City and brings him into conflict with Miles Morales and a team of universe-displaced Spider-People.
Video games
The Kingpin appears as the final boss of The Punisher (1990).
The Kingpin appears in Spider-Man: The Video Game.
The Kingpin appears as the final boss of The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin.
The Kingpin appears as the final boss of The Punisher (1993).
The Kingpin appears as the final boss of the Daredevil film tie-in game.
The Ultimate Marvel incarnation of the Kingpin appears as a boss in Spider-Man: Battle for New York, voiced by Stephen Stanton.
The Kingpin appears in The Punisher (2005), voiced by David Sobolov.
The Kingpin appears as a boss in Spider-Man 3, voiced by Bob Joles.
The Kingpin appears in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, voiced by Gregg Berger. While Spider-Man initially works to dismantle his illegal operations and fights his technologically enhanced henchmen, after Manhattan is invaded by symbiotes, Kingpin reluctantly allies himself with Spider-Man and S.H.I.E.L.D. to combat them and to ensure the city remembers him as its savior.
The Kingpin appears in Chun-Li's ending for Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.
The Kingpin appears in Marvel Heroes, voiced by Jim Cummings.
The Kingpin appears in Lego Marvel Super Heroes, voiced by John DiMaggio.
The Kingpin appears in Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
The Kingpin appears in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, voiced by JB Blanc. This version is a wealthy businessman who finances Harry Osborn's Enhanced Crime Task Force to replace Spider-Man while secretly plotting to take control of Oscorp once Harry dies of the same hereditary illness that killed his father. Additionally, he arranges for serial killer Cletus Kasady to escape custody so he can terrorize New York's citizens into supporting his plans to redevelop the city and attempts to take control of all organized crime in New York. Spider-Man discovers the Kingpin's plans, overpowers him at his private bunker, and attempts to download his files to expose him, only to be called away when Electro attacks the city. The Kingpin uses the opportunity to erase the incriminating evidence and joins the Chameleon, posing as Oscorp executive Donald Menken, to continue their plans.
The Kingpin appears as a playable character in Marvel: Future Fight.
The Kingpin appears as a playable character in Marvel: Contest of Champions.
The Kingpin appears as a boss and a playable character in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2.
Two incarnations of the Kingpin ("Wilson Fisk" and "Spider-Verse") appear as separate playable characters in Marvel Puzzle Quest.
The Kingpin appears in Marvel Future Revolution, voiced again by Travis Willingham.
Marvel's Spider-Man
The Kingpin appears in Insomniac Games' Marvel's Spider-Man series, voiced by Travis Willingham. Similarly to his comics counterpart, this version is an exceptional combatant and criminal mastermind who posed as a respectable businessman, philanthropist, and owner of Fisk Industries to hide his true nature as the driving force behind most of New York's organized crime. Within the games' continuity, Spider-Man has existed for eight years, and it is implied that Fisk has been the Kingpin for even longer. During this time, he has been Spider-Man's most prominent adversary, and managed to avoid all serious charges related to his crimes due to a lack of evidence.
At the beginning of Marvel's Spider-Man (2018), in which he serves as the first boss, the police finally obtain enough evidence needed to arrest Fisk and raid Fisk Tower with Spider-Man's help. Spider-Man neutralizes Fisk's private army as well as several officers on his payroll and defeats the Kingpin in combat, leading to his incarceration at the maximum security prison, the Raft. However, Fisk accurately predicts that his arrest will cause crime rates to skyrocket as new criminal figures such as Mister Negative and Hammerhead attempt to fill the power vacuum, with Spider-Man admitting this later on. Despite being incarcerated, Fisk continues to maintain a number of fronts throughout the city, allowing him to continue financing his criminal empire, though Spider-Man helps the police find and dismantle them while also preventing Fisk's remaining men from breaking him out of custody. Fisk attempts to take revenge on Spider-Man by sending multiple hitmen after him, who can be randomly encountered in the open world.
In Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020), a side-mission revolves around Miles Morales confronting Fisk after discovering that he recruited a gang of his former associates to sow chaos in Harlem and drive out local businesses so he can purchase their land and rebuild his empire once he gets out of prison. After Morales thwarts an attack on a local block party, Fisk receives additional years to his sentence and is put under tighter surveillance by prison authorities, causing him to vow revenge.
Miscellaneous
Wilson Fisk makes a minor appearance in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
Kingpin received a figure in HeroClix's collectible miniatures game.
Kingpin was announced for the Marvel Crisis Protocol miniatures game.
Collected editions
See also
Tobias Whale, a similar fictional crime lord and archenemy of Black Lightning in DC Comics.
References
External links
Kingpin at Marvel.com
Kingpin's Profile at Spiderfan.org
Characters created by John Romita Sr.
Characters created by Stan Lee
Comics characters introduced in 1967
Daredevil (Marvel Comics) characters
Fictional crime bosses
Fictional characters from New York City
Fictional hapkido practitioners
Fictional judoka
Fictional jujutsuka
Marvel Comics martial artists
Fictional mayors
Fictional murderers
Fictional sumo wrestlers
Hydra (comics) agents
Marvel Comics film characters
Marvel Comics male supervillains
Marvel Comics television characters
Marvel's Spider-Man characters
Spider-Man characters
Supervillains with their own comic book titles
Video game bosses
Villains in animated television series
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical%20Party%20%28France%29
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Radical Party (France)
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The Radical Party (), officially the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party (), is a liberal and social-liberal political party in France. Since 1971, to prevent confusion with the Radical Party of the Left (PRG), it has also been referred to as Parti radical valoisien, after its headquarters on the rue de Valois. The party's name has been variously abbreviated to PRRRS, Rad, PR and PRV. Founded in 1901, the PR is the oldest active political party in France.
Coming from the Radical Republican tradition, the PR upheld the principles of private property, social justice and secularism. The Radicals were originally a left-wing group, but, starting with the emergence of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1905, they shifted gradually towards the political centre. In 1926, its right-wing split off to form the Unionist (or National) Radicals. In 1971 the party's left-wing split off to form the PRG. The PR then affiliated with the centre-right, becoming one of the founder parties of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) in 1978. In 2002, the party split from the UDF and became an associate party of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and were represented on the Liaison Committee for the Presidential Majority prior to launching The Alliance (ARES) in 2011 and the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) in 2012. After the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, negotiations to merge the PR and the PRG began. The refounding congress to reunite the parties into the Radical Movement was held in December 2017. However, the union proved short-lived and, by 2021, both the PR and PRG returned to be independent parties. The PR was then part of the Ensemble Citoyens coalition.
History
Radicals before the party (1830–1901)
After the collapse of Napoleon's empire in 1815, a reactionary Bourbon Restoration took place. The left-wing opposition was constituted by the broad family of Republicans, but these differed over whether and how far to cooperate with liberal-constitutional monarchists in pursuit of their common adversary. In contrast to the Republicans' right wing (then the centre-left of the political spectrum), who were more inclined to accept a socially conservative constitutional monarchy as the first stage to a republic, the Republicans' left wing took a hard line in advocating progressive reforms such as universal manhood suffrage, civil liberties (such as press freedom and right to assembly, among others), and the immediate installation of a republican constitution. They came to be termed Radical Republicans by opposition to the Moderate Republicans.
After the installation of the constitutional July Monarchy (1830–1848), the term Republican was outlawed and the regime's remaining Republican opponents adopted the term Radical for themselves. Following the monarchy's conservative turn, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc formulated a Radical doctrine. At this time, radicalism was distinct from and to the left of the July Monarchy's doctrinal liberalism. Radicals defended traditional peasant farmers and small craftsmen against the new rival economic projects of the 19th century, socialist collectivism and capitalist big business alike.
The Radicals took a major part in the 1848 Revolution and the foundation of the Second Republic, sitting in parliament as the Montagne legislative group. Fifty years later, the Radical-Socialist Party would consider this group its direct forefather. For a few months, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin was Interior Minister in the provisional government. However, the conservatives won the 1848 legislative election, the first election by universal suffrage. The repression of the June 1848 workers' demonstrations disappointed the left-wing supporters of the new regime. Ledru-Rollin obtained only 5% of votes at the December 1848 presidential election, which was won by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who launched a coup, ending parliamentary democracy in favour of a Second Empire.
From opposition, Radicals criticized Bonaparte's autocratic rule and attacks on civil liberties. At the end of the 1860s, they advocated with the Belleville Programme (supported by Léon Gambetta) the election of civil servants and mayors, the proclamation of the so-called "great liberties", free public teaching and the separation of church and state.
After the collapse of the Second French Empire following the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, the Third Republic was proclaimed in September 1870. The first elections in February 1871 returned a majority of monarchists belonging to two distinct factions, conservative-liberal Orléanists and Catholic-traditionalist Legitimists, but these were too divided to reach an agreement over the type of monarchy they wanted to restore. Their division allowed time for the Republicans to win the 1876 elections, leading to the firm establishment of a Republican republic. Like the monarchists, the Republicans were divided into two main factions, namely a centre-left formed of socially-conservative yet liberal and secular Moderate Republicans (pejoratively labeled "Opportunist Republicans") and a far-left of uncompromising anticlerical Radicals. Georges Clemenceau was the leader of the Radical parliamentary group, who criticized colonial policy as a form of diversion from "revenge" against Prussia and due to his ability was a protagonist of the collapse of many governments.
In the 1890s, competition from the growing labour movement and concern for the plight of industrial workers prompted Léon Bourgeois to update the fifty-year-old Radical doctrine to encompass social reforms such as the progressive income tax and social insurance schemes, hence the term Radical-Socialist, a social-democratic synthesis of reformist socialism with traditional radicalism. After the Dreyfus Affair, Radicals joined forces with conservative Republicans and some Socialists in Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet (1899–1902). In 1901, an Act on the right of association was voted and the various individual Radicals organised themselves into a political party in order to defend their governmental achievements from the Catholic Church's influence and the traditionalist opposition. However, not all Radicals accepted the change in doctrine and alliance. While retaining their doctrines, those show rejected the new turn towards social-democracy and partnership with the Socialist Party gradually peeled away, labelling themselves the Independent Radicals and sitting in their own loose-knit parliamentary party (Radical Left) to the right of the Radical-Socialists.
The Radical-Socialist and Radical Republican Party was the first large political party established at a national level in France, which contrasted with previous parliamentary groups that were formed spontaneously by likeminded independent lawmakers elected through purely local electoral committees. The first congress of the Radical Party was held in June 1901. Delegates represented 476 election committees, 215 editorial boards of Radical newspapers and 155 Masonic lodges as well as lawmakers, mayors and municipal councillors. However, it was not until 1914 that the Radical-Socialist Party imposed strict discipline on its parliamentary deputies, requiring them to sit exclusively in a single Radical-Socialist legislative caucus.
The existence of a national party immediately changed the political scene. Several Radical independents had already been presidents of the Council (Ferdinand Buisson, Emile Combes and Charles Floquet, among others) and the Radicals already benefited from a strong presence across the country. The party was composed of a heterogeneous alliance of personal fiefdoms, informal electoral clubs, masonic lodges and sections of the Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League) and the Ligue française de l'enseignement (French League of Education, an association dedicated to introducing, expanding and defending free, compulsory and non-religious primary education). The secularising cause was championed by Émile Combes' cabinet start of the 20th century. As the political enemy, they identified the Catholic Church, seen as a political campaign entity for ultra-conservatives and monarchists.
Early years: the Radical Republic (1901–1919)
At 1902 legislative election, the Radical-Socialists and the Independent Radicals allied themselves with the conservative-liberals of the Democratic Alliance (to their immediate right) and the Socialists (to their left) in the Bloc des gauches (Coalition of the Left), with the Radicals emerging the main political force. Émile Combes took the head of the Bloc des gauches cabinet and led a resolute anti-clerical policy culminating in the 1905 laic law which along with the earlier Jules Ferry laws removing confessional influence from public education formed the backbone of laïcité, France's policy of combatting clericalism by actively excluding it from state institutions. From then on, the Radical-Socialist Party's chief aim in domestic policy was to prevent its wide-ranging set of reforms from being overturned by a return to power of the religious right.
After the withdrawal of the Socialist ministers from the government following the International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam in 1904, the coalition dissolved and the Radicals went alone into the 1906 legislative elections. Nevertheless, the Radical-Socialist Party remained the axis of the parliamenary majorities and of the governments. The cabinet led by the Independent Radical Georges Clemenceau (1906–1909) introduced income tax and workers' pensions, but is also remembered for its violent repression of industrial strikes.
For the latter part of the Third Republic (1918–1940), the Radical-Socialists, generally representing the anti-clerical segment of peasant and petty-bourgeois voters, were usually the largest single party in parliament, but with their anti-clerical agenda accomplished the party lost their driving force. Its leader before World War I Joseph Caillaux was generally more noted for his advocacy of better relations with Germany than for his reformist agenda.
During World War I (1914–1918), the Radical-Socialist Party was the keystone of the Sacred Union while the most prominent Independent Radical Georges Clemenceau led the cabinet again from 1917 to 1919. He appeared as the "architect of victory", but his relationship with the Radical-Socialist Party deteriorated. The Radical-Socialists and the Independent Radicals entered the 1919 legislative election in opposing coalitions, thus Clemenceau's alliance of the right emerged victorious.
Between World Wars (1919–1946)
By the end of World War I, the Radical-Socialist Party, now led by Édouard Herriot, were generally a moderate centre-left party faced with the governmental dominance of the socially-conservative liberal parties to its right (see Independent Radicals and Democratic Alliance) and pressure from its left by the rise of support for the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and French Communist Party (PCF). With these political forces, Radical-Socialists shared anti-clericalism and the struggle for "social progress", but unlike the other left parties the Radical-Socialists defended the principle of strict parliamentary action and the defence of private property, at least that of smallholders and small business. Additionally, the Radical-Socialist Party had thought before 1914 that its old adversaries among the Catholic, monarchist and traditionalist right had been weakened once and for all, instead these emerged reinvigorated by World War I.
In 1924, Radical-Socialists formed electoral alliances with the SFIO. The Cartel des Gauches (Coalition of the Left) won the 1924 legislative election and Herriot formed a government. However, the Radical-Socialists gradually drifted to the right, moving from left-Republican governments supported by the non-participating Socialists to a coalition of "Republican concentration" with the centre-right Independent Radicals and the more socially-conservative liberal parties in 1926.
Two years later at the Angers Congress, the left-wing of the party obtained the withdrawal of the Radical-Socialists from the cabinet and the return to a policy of alliance with the Socialists. Édouard Daladier was elected party leader. However, a section of the party's right-wing defected to form a second centre-right Independent Radical party (the Social and Radical Left) which opposed alliance with the Socialist Party and preferred close cooperation with the centre-right liberals of the Democratic Alliance.
The party claimed 120,000 members in the 1930s, however, these figures were inflated by competitors purchasing party memberships in bulk to influence inner-party votes.
The second Cartel des gauches won the 1932 legislative election, but its two main components were not able to establish a common agenda and consequently the SFIO chose to support the second government led by Herriot without participation. The coalition fell on 7 February 1934 following riots organized by the far-right leagues the night before. The Radical-Socialist Camille Chautemps's government had been replaced by a government led by his popular rival Édouard Daladier in January after accusations of corruption against Chautemps' government in the wake of the Stavisky Affair and other similar scandals.
This pattern of initial alliance with a socialist party unwilling to join in active government followed by disillusionment and alliance with the centre-right seemed to be broken in 1936, when the Popular Front electoral alliance with the Socialists and the Communists led to the accession of Socialist leader Léon Blum as President of the Council in a coalition government in which the Radical-Socialist leaders Édouard Daladier and Camille Chautemps (representing left and right of the Radical-Socialist Party, respectively) took important roles. For the first time in its history, the Radical-Socialist Party obtained fewer votes than the SFIO.
Over the tempestuous life of the coalition, the Radical-Socialists began to become concerned at the perceived radicalism of their coalition partners. Hence, they opposed themselves to Blum's intention to help the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), forcing him to adopt a non-interventionist policy. Following the failure of Blum's second government in April 1938, Daladier formed a new government in coalition with the liberal and conservative parties.
After the 29 September 1938 Munich Agreement which handed over Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in exchange for what proved to be a temporary peace, Daladier was acclaimed upon his return to Paris as the man who had avoided war. However, two days after the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 the French government led by Daladier made good on its guarantees to Poland by declaring war alongside Britain. Following the 23 August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Daladier engaged in an anti-communist policy, prohibiting the Communists activities and the party's newspaper, L'Humanité.
Furthermore, Daladier moved increasingly to the right, notably repealing the 40-hour work week which had been the Popular Front's most visible accomplishment. Daladier would eventually resign in March 1940 and take part in the new government of Paul Reynaud (leader of the main centre-right liberal party, the Democratic Alliance) as minister of National Defense and of War. After the defeat of the Battle of France, the French army being overwhelmed by the Nazi Blitzkrieg, the French government declared Paris an "open city" on 10 June and flew to Bordeaux. The same month, Daladier escaped to Morocco in the Massilia. Thus, he was not there during the controversial 10 July 1940 vote of full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain which opened the door to the Vichy regime. Daladier was arrested and tried in 1942 by the new regime (see the Riom Trial) which accused him as well as other political leaders such as Socialist Léon Blum and conservative Paul Reynaud of being morally and strategically responsible for the loss of the Battle of France.
Fourth Republic (1946–1958)
After World War II, the Radicals, like many of the other political parties, were discredited by the fact that many of their members had voted to grant emergency powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, although senior Radical leaders as Édouard Herriot, then President of the Chamber of Deputies (the parliamentary Speaker), had been ambivalent.
The Radical-Socialist Party was reconstituted and formed one of the important parties of the Fourth Republic (1946–1958), but never recovered its dominant pre-war position. It failed to prevent the adoption of the projects of the three-parties coalition (nationalizations and the welfare state). Along with Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, it set up an electoral umbrella-group, the Rally of Republican Lefts (RGR). From 1947, after the split of the governmental coalition it participated to the Third Force coalition with the SFIO, the Christian-democratic Popular Republican Movement and the conservative-liberal National Centre of Independents and Peasants.
In the early years of the Fourth Republic, the party returned to the moderate left under the leadership of Pierre Mendès-France, a strong opponent of French colonialism, whose premiership from 1954 to 1955 saw France's withdrawal from Indochina and the agreement for French withdrawal from Tunisia. Mendès-France, a very popular figure who helped renew the Radical-Socialist Party after its discredit, was indeed elected on the pledge to stop Indochina War (1946–1954).
Mendès-France hoped to make the Radicals the party of the mainstream centre-left in France, taking advantage of the difficulties of the SFIO. The more conservative elements in the party led by Edgar Faure resisted these policies, leading to the fall of Mendès-France's government in 1955. They split and transformed the RGR in a centre-right party distinct from the Radical Party. Under Pierre Mendès-France's leadership, the Radical Party participated to a centre-left coalition, the Republican Front, which won the 1956 legislative election. Another split, this time over France's policy about the Algerian War (1954–1962), led to his resignation as party leader and the party's move in a distinctly conservative direction.
The Fourth Republic was characterized by constant parliamentary instability because of divisions between major parties over the Algerian War, which was officially called a "public order operation" until the 1990s. Mendès-France opposed the war and colonialism while the SFIO led by Prime Minister Guy Mollet supported it. Because of the start of the Cold War, all political parties, even the SFIO, opposed the French Communist Party (PCF), which was very popular due to its role during the Resistance (it was known as the parti des 75,000 fusillés, "party of the 75,000 executed people"). The PCF was also opposed to French rule in Algeria and supported its independence.
In the midst of this parliamentary instability and divisions of the political class, Charles de Gaulle took advantage of the May 1958 crisis to return to power. On 13 May, European colonists seized the Governor-General's building in Algiers while Opération Résurrection was launched by the right-wing insurrectionary Comité de Salut Public. De Gaulle, who had deserted the political arena for a decade by disgust over the parliamentary system and its chronic instability (the système des partis which he severely criticized), now appeared as the only man able to reconcile the far-right and the European settlers, which were threatening a coup d'état, with the French Republic. Thus, he was called to power and proclaimed the end of the Fourth Republic (according to him too weak because of its parliamentarism) and replaced it by the Fifth Republic, a hybrid presidential-parliamentary system tailored for himself.
The Radical Party supported de Gaulle at this crucial moment, leading Mendès-France to quit the party. Opposed to the proposed constitution, Mendès-France campaigned for the "no" on 28 September 1958 referendum. However, the new Constitution was finally adopted and proclaimed on 4 October 1958.
Fifth Republic (1958–present)
Popular figure Pierre Mendès-France quit the Radical Party, which had crossed the threshold to the centre-right, as early moderate Republicans did at the beginning of the Third Republic, when the Radical Party, appearing to their left, pushed them over the border between the left-wing and the right-wing, a process dubbed sinistrisme.
Mendès-France then founded the Centre d'Action Démocratique (CAD), which would later join the Autonomous Socialist Party (PSA, which had split from the SFIO), which in turn fused into the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) on 3 April 1960. This new socialist party gathered all the dissidents from the Radical Party and the SFIO who were opposed to both the Algerian War and the proclamation of the new presidential regime. Mendès-France would officially become a member of the PSU in 1961, a year before the 18 March 1962 Evian Accords which put an end to the Algerian War.
The Radical Party returned from support of the government to opposition in 1959 and declined throughout all the 1960s. Allied with the SFIO in the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left, it supported François Mitterrand for the 1965 presidential election. This federation later split in 1968.
Under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, President since 29 October 1969 issued from the left-wing, the party again made tentative moves to the left in the 1970s, but stopped short of an alliance with Socialist Party (PS) leader François Mitterrand and his Communist allies, leading to a final split in 1972 when the remaining centre-left Radicals left the party and eventually became the Movement of the Radical-Socialist Left. This group, which wanted to be a part of the left-wing Common Programme, broke away to create the Movement of the Left Radicals (MRG) and at the 1974 presidential election, supported Mitterrand, the candidate of the left-wing.
Radical Party valoisien
Henceforth, the Radical Party began to be known as valoisien, from the location of its national headquarters at the Place de Valois in Paris, in order to distinguish it from the MRG. Opposed to an electoral alliance with the PCF, which was the foundation of the 1972 Common Programme, the Radicals were still anti-Gaullists. They allied with the Christian Democrats in the Reforming Movement in order to propose another way between the Common Programme's parties and the Presidential Majority led by Gaullists. Finally, they joined it after the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to the presidency of France in 1974. They supported most reforms of Giscard d'Estaing's presidency (in particular the authorization of the contraceptive pill and recognition of women's rights). This evolution brought by Servan-Schreiber's influence would end with the latter's failure during the 1979 European elections.
Following the left-wing scission in 1971, the Radical Party valoisien maintained the judicial rights to the official name of Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party and is its legal continuation.
After the failure of the alliance with the Christians Democrats into the Reforming Movement, the Radical Party maintained its influence by participating in the foundation of Giscard d'Estaing's Union for French Democracy (UDF) in 1978. The Radical Party was one of its six components, along with the centrists of the Centre of Social Democrats, the liberals of the Republican Party and of the National Federation of Perspectives and Realities Clubs, the social democrats of the Socialist-Democratic Movement and of the new members of the UDF. Through the UDF, the Radical Party participated to all of the governments issued from parliamentary majorities of the Rally for the Republic (RPR).
Associate party of the UMP
An important split took place after the 1998 regional elections, during which some members of the party composed electoral alliances with the far-right National Front party. Those members created the Liberal Democratic Party while the Radical Party remained a member of the UDF. During the 2002 presidential election, François Bayrou presented himself as a candidate for the UDF while the Radical Party supported his rival Jacques Chirac (RPR).
After Chirac's re-election in 2002, most radicals participated to the creation of his new party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The Radical Party then quit the UDF to associate itself with the UMP, sharing its memberships and budget with the latter. However, some members such as Thierry Cornillet continue to be part of UDF. It was then headed by Jean-Louis Borloo and André Rossinot.
After the rise of Nicolas Sarkozy to the leadership of the UMP, Radicals launched a sort of re-foundation of their party in order to create a counterbalancing moderate and social wing within the UMP. The party soon started to attract other centrists (as Jean-Louis Borloo, Renaud Dutreil, Véronique Mathieu and Françoise Hostalier) and even some anti-Sarkozy neo-Gaullists (as Serge Lepeltier and Alain Ferry). As a result, the Radical Party had a comeback in French politics. It then had 21 deputies (four more from those elected in 2002), 6 senators (two more from 2002), 4 MEPs and 8,000 members. Jean-Louis Borloo was a high-ranking minister in François Fillon's second government as Minister of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Transport and Minister of State from 2007 to 2010, when he chose not take part to Fillon's third government. It was the first time since 1974 that Radicals were not represented in a centre-right government.
During the 7th term of the European Parliament, three Radical MEPs sat with the European People's Party Group (EPP) along with the UMP.
The Alliance
On 7 April 2011, Borloo announced the creation of a centrist coalition. During a party congress on 14–15 May, the Radicals decided to cut their ties with Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), of which they had been an associate party since 2002. During a convention on 26 June, the party officially joined The Alliance (ARES) alongside New Centre and other centrist parties as an alternative to the UMP. The Alliance was replaced with the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) in September 2012.
During the 8th European Parliament, the single Radical MEP Dominique Riquet sat with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group as part of the UDI.
Elected officials
Deputies: Alfred Almont (Martinique), Edwige Antier (Paris), Paul Aubry (Haut-Marne), Jean-Louis Bernard (Loiret), Jean-Louis Borloo (Nord), Claire Bouchet (Hautes-Alpes), Alain Ferry (Bas-Rhin), Jean Grenet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Laurent Hénart (Meurthe-et-Moselle), Françoise Hostalier (Nord), Yves Jégo (Seine-et-Marne), Robert Lecou (Hérault), Jean Leonetti (Alpes-Maritimes), François Loos (Bas-Rhin), Alain Marc (Aveyron), Franck Marlin (Essonne), Frédéric Reiss (Bas-Rhin), Franck Reynier (Drôme), Arnaud Richard (Yvelines), François Scellier (Val-d'Oise), André Wojciechowski (Moselle), Michel Zumkeller (Territoire de Belfort)
Senators: Jean-Paul Alduy (Pyrénées-Orientales), Alain Chatillon (Haute-Garonnne), Sylvie Goy-Chavent (Ain), Pierre Jarlier (Cantal), Sophie Joissains (Bouches-du-Rhône), Aymeri de Montesquiou (Gers)
MEPs: Dominique Riquet (Nord-Ouest)
Leadership
Party presidents:
Gustave Mesureur (1901–1902)
Jean Dubief (1902–1903)
Maurice Fauré (1903–1904)
Maurice Berteaux (1904–1905)
Émile Combes (1905–1906)
Camille Pelletan (1906–1907)
Auguste Delpech (1907–1908)
Louis Lafferre (1908–1909)
Ernest Vallé (1909–1910)
Émile Combes (1910–1913)
Joseph Caillaux (1913–1917)
Charles Debierre (1917–1918)
André Renard (1918–1919)
Édouard Herriot (1919–1920)
Maurice Sarraut (1920–1927)
Édouard Daladier (1927–1931)
Édouard Herriot (1931–1936)
Édouard Daladier (1936–1944)
Édouard Herriot (1944–1957)
Édouard Daladier (1957–1958)
Félix Gaillard (1958–1961)
Maurice Faure (1961–1965)
René Billères (1965–1969)
Maurice Faure (1969–1971)
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (1971–1975)
Gabriel Péronnet (1975–1977)
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (1977–1979)
Didier Bariani (1979–1983)
André Rossinot (1983–1988)
Yves Galland (1988–1993)
André Rossinot (1993–1997)
Thierry Cornillet (1997–1999)
François Loos (1999–2003)
André Rossinot (2003–2005)
Jean-Louis Borloo and André Rossinot (co-presidents, 2005–2007)
Jean-Louis Borloo (2007–2014)
Laurent Hénart (since 2014)
See also
French Left
Liberalism and radicalism in France
Further reading
Botsiou Konstantina E. "The European Centre-Right and European Integration: The Formative Years," in Reforming Europe (2009) online abstract
De Tarr, F. The French Radical Party: from Herriot to Mendès-France (1980)
Larmour, Peter. The French Radical Party in the 1930s (1964)
Mayeur, Jean-Marie, and Madeleine Rebérioux. The Third Republic from its origins to the Great War, 1871-1914 (1988)
O'Neill, Francis. The French Radical Party and European integration 1949-1957 (1979).
Schlesinger, Mildred. "The Development of the Radical Party in the Third Republic: The New Radical Movement, 1926-32." Journal of Modern History (1974): 476-501. in JSTOR
In French
Berstein, Serge. "La vie du Parti radical: la fédération de Saône-et-Loire de 1919 à 1939." Revue française de science politique (1970): 1136-1180. online
References
External links
Political parties of the French Fifth Republic
Republicanism in France
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party member parties
Liberal parties in France
Centrist parties in France
Political parties established in 1901
Political parties disestablished in 2017
Political parties established in 2021
Radical parties in France
Republican parties
Political parties of the French Third Republic
1901 establishments in France
2017 disestablishments in France
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt%20concrete
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Asphalt concrete
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Asphalt concrete (commonly called asphalt, blacktop, or pavement in North America, and tarmac or bitumen macadam in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) is a composite material commonly used to surface roads, parking lots, airports, and the core of embankment dams. Asphalt mixtures have been used in pavement construction since the beginning of the twentieth century. It consists of mineral aggregate bound together with bitumen (also known as asphalt), laid in layers, and compacted.
The process was refined and enhanced by Belgian-American inventor Edward De Smedt.
The terms asphalt (or asphaltic) concrete, bituminous asphalt concrete, and bituminous mixture are typically used only in engineering and construction documents, which define concrete as any composite material composed of mineral aggregate adhered with a binder. The abbreviation, AC, is sometimes used for asphalt concrete but can also denote asphalt content or asphalt cement, referring to the liquid asphalt portion of the composite material.
Mixture formulations
Mixing of asphalt and aggregate is accomplished in one of several ways:
Hot-mix asphalt concrete (commonly abbreviated as HMA) This is produced by heating the asphalt binder to decrease its viscosity and drying the aggregate to remove moisture from it prior to mixing. Mixing is generally performed with the aggregate at about for virgin asphalt and for polymer modified asphalt, and the asphalt cement at . Paving and compaction must be performed while the asphalt is sufficiently hot. In many locales paving is restricted to summer months because in winter the base will cool the asphalt too quickly before it can be packed to the required density. HMA is the form of asphalt concrete most commonly used on high traffic pavements such as those on major highways, racetracks and airfields. It is also used as an environmental liner for landfills, reservoirs, and fish hatchery ponds.
Warm-mix asphalt concrete (commonly abbreviated as WMA) This is produced by adding either zeolites, waxes, asphalt emulsions or sometimes water to the asphalt binder prior to mixing. This allows significantly lower mixing and laying temperatures and results in lower consumption of fossil fuels, thus releasing less carbon dioxide, aerosols and vapors. This improves working conditions, and lowers laying-temperature, which leads to more rapid availability of the surface for use, which is important for construction sites with critical time schedules. The usage of these additives in hot-mixed asphalt (above) may afford easier compaction and allow cold-weather paving or longer hauls. Use of warm mix is rapidly expanding. A survey of US asphalt producers found that nearly 25% of asphalt produced in 2012 was warm mix, a 416% increase since 2009. Cleaner road pavements can be potentially developed by combining WMA and material recycling. Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) technology has environmental, production, and economic benefits.
Cold-mix asphalt concrete This is produced by emulsifying the asphalt in water with an emulsifying agent before mixing with the aggregate. While in its emulsified state, the asphalt is less viscous and the mixture is easy to work and compact. The emulsion will break after enough water evaporates and the cold mix will, ideally, take on the properties of an HMA pavement. Cold mix is commonly used as a patching material and on lesser-trafficked service roads.
Cut-back asphalt concrete Is a form of cold mix asphalt produced by dissolving the binder in kerosene or another lighter fraction of petroleum before mixing with the aggregate. While in its dissolved state, the asphalt is less viscous and the mix is easy to work and compact. After the mix is laid down the lighter fraction evaporates. Because of concerns with pollution from the volatile organic compounds in the lighter fraction, cut-back asphalt has been largely replaced by asphalt emulsion.
Mastic asphalt concrete, or sheet asphalt This is produced by heating hard grade blown bitumen (i.e., partly oxidised) in a green cooker (mixer) until it has become a viscous liquid after which the aggregate mix is then added. The bitumen aggregate mixture is cooked (matured) for around 6–8 hours and once it is ready, the mastic asphalt mixer is transported to the work site where experienced layers empty the mixer and either machine or hand lay the mastic asphalt contents on to the road. Mastic asphalt concrete is generally laid to a thickness of around for footpath and road applications and around for flooring or roof applications.
High-modulus asphalt concrete, sometimes referred to by the French-language acronym EMÉ (enrobé à module élevé) This uses a very hard bituminous formulation (penetration 10/20), sometimes modified, in proportions close to 6% by weight of the aggregates, as well as a high proportion of mineral powder (between 8–10%) to create an asphalt concrete layer with a high modulus of elasticity (of the order of 13000MPa). This makes it possible to reduce the thickness of the base layer up to 25% (depending on the temperature) in relation to conventional bitumen, while offering as very high fatigue strengths. High-modulus asphalt layers are used both in reinforcement operations and in the construction of new reinforcements for medium and heavy traffic. In base layers, they tend to exhibit a greater capacity of absorbing tensions and, in general, better fatigue resistance.
In addition to the asphalt and aggregate, additives, such as polymers, and antistripping agents may be added to improve the properties of the final product.
Areas paved with asphalt concrete—especially airport aprons—have been called "the tarmac" at times, despite not being constructed using the tarmacadam process.
A variety of specialty asphalt concrete mixtures have been developed to meet specific needs, such as stone-matrix asphalt, which is designed to ensure a strong wearing surface, or porous asphalt pavements, which are permeable and allow water to drain through the pavement for controlling storm water.
Roadway performance characteristics
Different types of asphalt concrete have different performance characteristics in roads in terms of surface durability, tire wear, braking efficiency and roadway noise. In principle, the determination of appropriate asphalt performance characteristics must take into account the volume of traffic in each vehicle category, and the performance requirements of the friction course. In general, the viscosity of asphalt allows it to be applied directly to form a convex surface, which increases the drainage of streets and roads. This is an advantage over concrete. Concrete can be screeded to form many types of shapes and curves, yet it is impractical to use that method on an area as long as a street or road. As a disadvantage of asphalt, however, concrete is more durable, and the preference for surface is weighed against this depending on the situation.
Asphalt concrete generates less roadway noise than a Portland cement concrete surface, and is typically less noisy than chip seal surfaces. Because tire noise is generated through the conversion of kinetic energy to sound waves, more noise is produced as the speed of a vehicle increases. The notion that highway design might take into account acoustical engineering considerations, including the selection of the type of surface paving, arose in the early 1970s.
With regard to structural performance, the asphalt behaviour depends on a variety of factors including the material, loading and environmental condition. Furthermore, the performance of pavement varies over time. Therefore, the long-term behaviour of asphalt pavement is different from its short-term performance. The LTPP is a research program by the FHWA, which is specifically focusing on long-term pavement behaviour.
Degradation and restoration
Asphalt deterioration can include crocodile cracking, potholes, upheaval, raveling, bleeding, rutting, shoving, stripping, and grade depressions. In cold climates, frost heaves can crack asphalt even in one winter. Filling the cracks with bitumen is a temporary fix, but only proper compaction and drainage can slow this process.
Factors that cause asphalt concrete to deteriorate over time mostly fall into one of three categories: construction quality, environmental considerations, and traffic loads. Often, damage results from combinations of factors in all three categories.
Construction quality is critical to pavement performance. This includes the construction of utility trenches and appurtenances that are placed in the pavement after construction. Lack of compaction in the surface of the asphalt, especially on the longitudinal joint, can reduce the life of a pavement by 30 to 40%. Service trenches in pavements after construction have been said to reduce the life of the pavement by 50%, mainly due to the lack of compaction in the trench, and also because of water intrusion through improperly sealed joints.
Environmental factors include heat and cold, the presence of water in the subbase or subgrade soil underlying the pavement, and frost heaves.
High temperatures soften the asphalt binder, allowing heavy tire loads to deform the pavement into ruts. Paradoxically, high heat and strong sunlight also cause the asphalt to oxidize, becoming stiffer and less resilient, leading to crack formation. Cold temperatures can cause cracks as the asphalt contracts. Cold asphalt is also less resilient and more vulnerable to cracking.
Water trapped under the pavement softens the subbase and subgrade, making the road more vulnerable to traffic loads. Water under the road freezes and expands in cold weather, causing and enlarging cracks. In spring thaw, the ground thaws from the top down, so water is trapped between the pavement above and the still-frozen soil underneath. This layer of saturated soil provides little support for the road above, leading to the formation of potholes. This is more of a problem for silty or clay soils than sandy or gravelly soils. Some jurisdictions pass frost laws to reduce the allowable weight of trucks during the spring thaw season and protect their roads.
The damage a vehicle causes is roughly proportional to the axle load raised to the fourth power, so doubling the weight an axle carries actually causes 16 times as much damage. Wheels cause the road to flex slightly, resulting in fatigue cracking, which often leads to crocodile cracking. Vehicle speed also plays a role. Slowly moving vehicles stress the road over a longer period of time, increasing ruts, cracking, and corrugations in the asphalt pavement.
Other causes of damage include heat damage from vehicle fires, or solvent action from chemical spills.
Prevention and repair of degradation
The life of a road can be prolonged through good design, construction and maintenance practices. During design, engineers measure the traffic on a road, paying special attention to the number and types of trucks. They also evaluate the subsoil to see how much load it can withstand. The pavement and subbase thicknesses are designed to withstand the wheel loads. Sometimes, geogrids are used to reinforce the subbase and further strengthen the roads. Drainage, including ditches, storm drains and underdrains are used to remove water from the roadbed, preventing it from weakening the subbase and subsoil.
Sealcoating asphalt is a maintenance measure that helps keep water and petroleum products out of the pavement.
Maintaining and cleaning ditches and storm drains will extend the life of the road at low cost. Sealing small cracks with bituminous crack sealer prevents water from enlarging cracks through frost weathering, or percolating down to the subbase and softening it.
For somewhat more distressed roads, a chip seal or similar surface treatment may be applied. As the number, width and length of cracks increases, more intensive repairs are needed. In order of generally increasing expense, these include thin asphalt overlays, multicourse overlays, grinding off the top course and overlaying, in-place recycling, or full-depth reconstruction of the roadway.
It is far less expensive to keep a road in good condition than it is to repair it once it has deteriorated. This is why some agencies place the priority on preventive maintenance of roads in good condition, rather than reconstructing roads in poor condition. Poor roads are upgraded as resources and budget allow. In terms of lifetime cost and long term pavement conditions, this will result in better system performance. Agencies that concentrate on restoring their bad roads often find that by the time they have repaired them all, the roads that were in good condition have deteriorated.
Some agencies use a pavement management system to help prioritize maintenance and repairs.
Recycling
Asphalt concrete is a recyclable material that can be reclaimed and reused both on-site and in asphalt plants. The most common recycled component in asphalt concrete is reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). RAP is recycled at a greater rate than any other material in the United States. Many roofing shingles also contain asphalt, and asphalt concrete mixes may contain reclaimed asphalt shingles (RAS). Research has demonstrated that RAP and RAS can replace the need for up to 100% of the virgin aggregate and asphalt binder in a mix, but this percentage is typically lower due to regulatory requirements and performance concerns. In 2019, new asphalt pavement mixtures produced in the United States contained, on average, 21.1% RAP and 0.2% RAS.
Recycling methods
Recycled asphalt components may be reclaimed and transported to an asphalt plant for processing and use in new pavements, or the entire recycling process may be conducted in-place. While in-place recycling typically occurs on roadways and is specific to RAP, recycling in asphalt plants may utilize RAP, RAS, or both. In 2019, an estimated 97.0 million tons of RAP and 1.1 million tons of RAS were accepted by asphalt plants in the United States.
RAP is typically received by plants after being milled on-site, but pavements may also be ripped out in larger sections and crushed in the plant. RAP millings are typically stockpiled at plants before being incorporated into new asphalt mixes. Prior to mixing, stockpiled millings may be dried and any that have agglomerated in storage may have to be crushed.
RAS may be received by asphalt plants as post-manufacturer waste directly from shingle factories, or they may be received as post-consumer waste at the end of their service life. Processing of RAS includes grinding the shingles and sieving the grinds to remove oversized particles. The grinds may also be screened with a magnetic sieve to remove nails and other metal debris. The ground RAS is then dried, and the asphalt cement binder can be extracted. For further information on RAS processing, performance, and associated health and safety concerns, see Asphalt Shingles.
In-place recycling methods allow roadways to be rehabilitated by reclaiming the existing pavement, remixing, and repaving on-site. In-place recycling techniques include rubblizing, hot in-place recycling, cold in-place recycling, and full-depth reclamation. For further information on in-place methods, see Road Surface.
Performance
During its service life, the asphalt cement binder, which makes up about 5–6% of a typical asphalt concrete mix, naturally hardens and becomes stiffer. This aging process primarily occurs due to oxidation, evaporation, exudation, and physical hardening. For this reason, asphalt mixes containing RAP and RAS are prone to exhibiting lower workability and increased susceptibility to fatigue cracking. These issues are avoidable if the recycled components are apportioned correctly in the mix. Practicing proper storage and handling, such as by keeping RAP stockpiles out of damp areas or direct sunlight, is also important in avoiding quality issues. The binder aging process may also produce some beneficial attributes, such as by contributing to higher levels of rutting resistance in asphalts containing RAP and RAS.
One approach to balancing the performance aspects of RAP and RAS is to combine the recycled components with virgin aggregate and virgin asphalt binder. This approach can be effective when the recycled content in the mix is relatively low, and has a tendency to work more effectively with soft virgin binders. A 2020 study found that the addition of 5% RAS to a mix with a soft, low-grade virgin binder significantly increased the mix's rutting resistance while maintaining adequate fatigue cracking resistance.
In mixes with higher recycled content, the addition of virgin binder becomes less effective, and rejuvenators may be used. Rejuvenators are additives that restore the physical and chemical properties of the aged binder. When conventional mixing methods are used in asphalt plants, the upper limit for RAP content before rejuvenators become necessary has been estimated at 50%. Research has demonstrated that the use of rejuvenators at optimal doses can allow for mixes with 100% recycled components to meet the performance requirements of conventional asphalt concrete.
Other recycled materials in asphalt concrete
Beyond RAP and RAS, a range of waste materials can be re-used in place of virgin aggregate, or as rejuvenators. Crumb rubber, generated from recycled tires, has been demonstrated to improve the fatigue resistance and flexural strength of asphalt mixes that contain RAP. In California, legislative mandates require the Department of Transportation to incorporate crumb rubber into asphalt paving materials. Other recycled materials that are actively included in asphalt concrete mixes across the United States include steel slag, blast furnace slag, and cellulose fibers.
Further research has been conducted to discover new forms of waste that may be recycled into asphalt mixes. A 2020 study conducted in Melbourne, Australia presented a range of strategies for incorporating waste materials into asphalt concrete. The strategies presented in the study include the use of plastics, particularly high-density polyethylene, in asphalt binders, and the use of glass, brick, ceramic, and marble quarry waste in place of traditional aggregate.
Rejuvenators may also be produced from recycled materials, including waste engine oil, waste vegetable oil, and waste vegetable grease.
Recently, discarded face masks have been incorporated into stone mastic.
See also
Free floating screed
Macadam
Marshall Stability Method
Paver
Plastic armour
Road surface
Sealcoat
Stamped asphalt
References
Building materials
Concrete
Road construction
Pavements
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern%20Pacific%20Transportation%20Company
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Southern Pacific Transportation Company
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The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Company and Southern Pacific Transportation Company.
The original Southern Pacific began in 1865 as a land holding company. The last incarnation of the Southern Pacific, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, was founded in 1969 and assumed control of the Southern Pacific system. The Southern Pacific Transportation Company was acquired in 1996 by the Union Pacific Corporation and merged with their Union Pacific Railroad.
The Southern Pacific legacy founded hospitals in San Francisco, Tucson, and Houston. In the 1970s, it also founded a telecommunications network with a state-of-the-art microwave and fiber optic backbone. This telecommunications network became part of Sprint, a company whose name came from the acronym for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony.
History
The original Southern Pacific, Southern Pacific Railroad, was founded as a land holding company in 1865, later acquiring the Central Pacific Railroad in 1885 through leasing. By 1900, the Southern Pacific system was a major railroad system incorporating many smaller companies, such as the Texas and New Orleans Railroad and Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad. It extended from New Orleans through Texas to El Paso, across New Mexico and through Tucson, to Los Angeles, through most of California, including San Francisco and Sacramento. Central Pacific lines extended east across Nevada to Ogden, Utah, and reached north through Oregon to Portland. Other subsidiaries eventually included the St. Louis Southwestern Railway (Cotton Belt), El Paso and Southwestern Railroad,
the Northwestern Pacific Railroad at , the Southern Pacific Railroad of Mexico, and a variety of narrow-gauge routes. The SP was the defendant in the landmark 1886 United States Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which is often interpreted as having established certain corporate rights under the Constitution of the United States. The Southern Pacific Railroad was replaced by the Southern Pacific Company and assumed the railroad operations of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1929, Southern Pacific/Texas and New Orleans operated 13,848 route-miles not including Cotton Belt, whose purchase of the Golden State Route circa 1980 nearly doubled its size to , bringing total SP/SSW mileage to around .
In 1969, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company was established and took over the Southern Pacific Company; this Southern Pacific railroad is the last incarnation and was at times called "Southern Pacific Industries", though "Southern Pacific Industries" is not the official name of the company. By the 1980s, route mileage had dropped to , mainly due to the pruning of branch lines. On October 13, 1988, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company (including its subsidiary, St. Louis Southwestern Railway) was taken over by Rio Grande Industries, the parent company that controlled the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Rio Grande Industries did not merge the Southern Pacific Transportation Company and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad together, but transferred direct ownership of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad to the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, allowing the combined Rio Grande Industries railroad system to use the Southern Pacific name due to its brand recognition in the railroad industry and with customers of both the Southern Pacific Transportation Company and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. A long time Southern Pacific subsidiary, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway was also marketed under the Southern Pacific name. Along with the addition of the SPCSL Corporation route from Chicago to St. Louis, the total length of the D&RGW/SP/SSW system was . Rio Grande Industries was later renamed Southern Pacific Rail Corporation.
By 1996, years of financial problems had dropped Southern Pacific's mileage to . The financial problems caused the Southern Pacific Transportation Company to be taken over by the Union Pacific Corporation; the parent Southern Pacific Rail Corporation (formerly Rio Grande Industries), the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway and the SPCSL Corporation was also taken over by the Union Pacific Corporation. The Union Pacific Corporation merged the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway and the SPCSL Corporation into their Union Pacific Railroad but did not merge the Southern Pacific Transportation Company into the Union Pacific Railroad. Instead, the Union Pacific Corporation merged the Union Pacific Railroad into the Southern Pacific Transportation Company on February 1, 1998; the Southern Pacific Transportation Company became the surviving railroad and at the same time the Union Pacific Corporation renamed the Southern Pacific Transportation Company to Union Pacific Railroad. Thus, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company became, and is still operating as, the current incarnation of the Union Pacific Railroad.
Locomotives
Like most railroads, the SP painted most of its steam locomotives black during the 20th century, but after 1945 SP painted the front of the locomotive's smokebox silver (almost white in appearance), with graphite colored sides, for visibility.
Some passenger steam locomotives bore the Daylight scheme, named after the trains they hauled, most of which had the word Daylight in the train name. The most famous "Daylight" locomotives were the GS-4 steam locomotives. The most famous Daylight-hauled trains were the Coast Daylight and the Sunset Limited.
Well known were the Southern Pacific's unique "cab-forward" steam locomotives. These were 4-8-8-2, 2-8-8-2, and 4-6-6-2 (rebuilt from 2-6-6-2) locomotives set up to run in reverse, with the tender attached to the smokebox end of the locomotive. Southern Pacific had a number of snow sheds in mountain terrain, and locomotive crews nearly asphyxiated from smoke in the cab. After a number of engineers began running their engines in reverse (pushing the tender), Southern Pacific asked Baldwin Locomotive Works to produce cab-forward designs. No other North American railroad ordered cab-forward locomotives.
List of locomotives used
Steam locomotives
2-8-0 Consolidation
2-8-2 Mikado
4-4-2 Atlantic
4-6-2 Pacific – see SP 2472
4-8-2 Mountain – see SP Mt-5
4-8-4 Golden State/General Service – see SP 4449
2-8-8-4
4-8-8-2 Cab Forward Articulated
4-10-2 Southern Pacific - see SP 5021
Diesel locomotives
ALCO PA
EMC E2
EMD E7
EMD E8
EMD E9
EMD FP7
GE 70-ton switcher
EMD NW2
EMD NW5
EMD SW1
EMD SW8
EMD SW900
EMD SW1200
EMD SW1500
GE U25B
GE U28B
GE U30C
GE U33C
FM H-12-44
FM H-24-66 "Train Master"
EMD GP7
EMD GP9
EMD SD7
EMD SD9
GE P30CH
EMD SD40M-2
EMD SD39
EMD SD38-2
EMD SD35
EMD SDP45
EMD GP60
EMD GP40P-2
EMD GP40M-2
EMD GP40-2
EMD GP38-2
EMD GP20
EMD SD35
GE B30-7
GE B36-7
GE B39-8
GE B40-8
GE AC4400CW
GE C44-9W
EMD SD50
EMD SD45
EMD SD45T-2
EMD SD40T-2
EMD SD40R
EMD SD70M
Passenger train service
Until May 1, 1971 (when Amtrak took over long-distance passenger operations in the United States), the Southern Pacific at various times operated the following named passenger trains. Trains with names in italicized bold text still operate under Amtrak:
49er
Acadian
Apache
Argonaut
Arizona Limited
Beaver
Californian
Cascade
City of San Francisco
Coast Daylight
Coast Mail
Coaster
Del Monte
Fast Mail
Golden Rocket
Golden State
Grand Canyon
Hustler
Imperial
Klamath
Lark
Oregonian
Overland
Owl Limited
Pacific Limited
Peninsula Commute
Loop Service
Rogue River
Sacramento Daylight
San Francisco Challenger
San Joaquin Daylight
Senator
Shasta Daylight
Shasta Express
Shasta Limited
Shasta Limited De Luxe
Starlight
Sunbeam
Sunset Limited
Suntan Special
Tehachapi
West Coast
El Costeño
El Yaqui
Notable accidents
John Sontag, a young Southern Pacific employee, was injured c. 1888 while coupling cars in the railroad yard in Fresno. He accused the company of not providing him with medical care while he was recuperating from his on-the-job injury and then not rehiring him when he had healed. He soon turned to a life of crime (mostly train robberies) and died of gunshot wounds and tetanus in the Fresno jail in 1893 aged 32 years.
Sontag's partner in crime, Chris Evans also hated the Southern Pacific, which Evans accused of forcing farmers to sell their lands at reduced rates to the company.
On 28 March 1907, the Southern Pacific Sunset Express, descending the grade out of the San Timoteo Canyon, entered the Colton rail yard traveling about , hit an open switch and careened off the track, resulting in 24 fatalities. Accounts said 9 of the train's 14 cars disintegrated as they piled on top of one another, leaving the dead and injured in "a heap of kindling and crumpled metal". Of the dead, 18 were Italian immigrants traveling to jobs in San Francisco from Genoa, Italy.
The Coast Line Limited was heading for Los Angeles, on 22 May 1907, when it was derailed just west of Glendale, California. Passenger cars reportedly tumbled down the embankment. At least 2 people were killed and others injured. "The horrible deed was planned with devilish accurateness" the Pasadena Star News reported at the time. It said spikes were removed from the track and a hook placed under the end of the rail. The Star'''s coverage was extensive and its editorial blasted the criminal elements behind the wreck:The man or men who committed this horrible deed near Glendale may not be anarchists, technically speaking. But if they are sane men, moved by motive, they are such stuff as anarchists are made of. If the typical anarchist conceived that a railroad corporation should be terrorized, he would not scruple to wreck a passenger train and send scores and hundreds to instant death.
In the early hours of 1 June 1907, an attempt to derail a Southern Pacific train near Santa Clara, California, was foiled when a pile of railway ties was discovered on the tracks. A work train crew found that someone had driven a steel plate into a switch near Burbank, California, intending to derail the Santa Barbara local.
On 12 August 1939, the westbound City of San Francisco derailed from a bridge in Palisade Canyon, between Battle Mountain and Carlin in the Nevada desert. Among the passengers and crew members 24 people were killed and many more injured, and 5 cars were destroyed. An act of sabotage was determined to be the most likely cause; however, no suspect(s) was(were) ever identified.
On New Year's Eve 1944 a rear-end collision west of Ogden in thick fog killed 48 people.
On 17 January 1947, the Southern Pacific Nightflier wrecked outside of Bakersfield; 7 people were killed and over 50 injured. Four coaches and a tourist sleeper were overturned, landing far off the tracks; the other seven cars remained upright. The locomotive stayed on the tracks and its crew was uninjured. A 29-year-old passenger, Robert Crowley from Miami, Florida, had been conversing with a man across the aisle who was killed instantly. Crowley, who was a combat war veteran, said “I never saw such a mess” even on a battlefield.
On 8 May 1948, in Monterey, California, a Southern Pacific passenger train, the Del Monte Express struck a car driven by influential marine biologist Ed Ricketts at the now defunct railroad crossing at Drake Avenue. Ricketts subsequently succumbed to his injuries three days later in the hospital.
On 17 September 1963, a Southern Pacific freight train crashed into an illegally converted bus at a grade crossing in Chualar, California, killing 32 bracero workers. It would later be a factor in the decision by Congress in 1964 to terminate the bracero program, despite its strong support among farmers. It also helped spur the Chicano civil rights movement. As of 2014, it was the deadliest automobile accident in United States history, according to the National Safety Council
On 28 April 1973, a Southern Pacific freight train carrying munitions exploded in Roseville Yard injuring 52 people, the cause of this was due to a hot box on a railcar setting the floor ablaze, heating a bomb until it detonated.
On 12 May 1989, a Southern Pacific train carrying trona derailed in San Bernardino, California. The train failed to slow while descending a nearby slope, and sped up to about before derailing, causing the San Bernardino train disaster. The crash destroyed 7 homes along Duffy Street and killed 2 train workers and 2 residents. Thirteen days later on 25 May 1989, an underground pipeline running along the right-of-way ruptured and caught fire due to damage done to the pipeline during clean-up from the derailment or from the derailment itself, destroying 11 more homes and killing 2 more people.
On the night of 14 July 1991, a Southern Pacific train derailed into the upper Sacramento River at a sharp bend of track called “the Cantara Loop”, upstream from Dunsmuir, California, in Siskiyou County. Several cars made contact with the water, including a tank car. Early in the morning of 15 July, it became apparent that the tank car had ruptured and spilled its entire contents into the river – approximately of metam sodium, a soil fumigant. Ultimately, over a million fish, and tens of thousands of amphibians and crayfish were killed. Millions of aquatic invertebrates, including insects and mollusks, which form the basis of the river's ecosystem, were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of willows, alders, and cottonwoods eventually died; many more were severely injured.
The chemical plume left a wake of destruction from the spill site to the entry point of the river into Shasta Lake. The accident still ranks as the largest hazardous chemical spill in California history. At the time of the incident, metam sodium was not classified as a hazardous material.
Preserved locomotives
There are many Southern Pacific locomotives still in revenue service with railroads such as the Union Pacific Railroad, and many older and special locomotives have been donated to parks and museums, or continue operating on scenic or tourist railroads. Most of the engines now in use with Union Pacific have been "patched", where the SP logo on the front is replaced by a Union Pacific shield, and new numbers are applied over the old numbers with a Union Pacific sticker, however some engines remain in Southern Pacific "bloody nose" paint. Over the past couple years, most of the patched units were repainted into the full Union Pacific scheme and as of January 2019, less than ten units remain in their old paint. Among the more notable equipment is:
745 (Mk-5, 2-8-2), owned by the Louisiana Rail Heritage Trust, operated by the Louisiana Steam Train Association, and based in Jefferon (near New Orleans), Louisiana
786 (Mk-5, 2-8-2), owned by the City of Austin, leased to the Austin Steam Train Association. Currently under full mechanical restoration in Austin, Texas.
794 (Mk-5, 2-8-2), the last Mikado built for the Texas and New Orleans Railroad in 1916 out of spare parts in their Houston shops. It currently resides with cosmetic restoration at San Antonio Station, San Antonio, Texas, but plans are to restore it to operating condition.
982 (F-1, 2-10-2), tender located at the Heber Valley Railroad in Heber City, Utah, main locomotive located in Houston, Texas.
1518 (EMD SD7), former EMD demonstrator 990 and first SD7 built, located at the Illinois Railway Museum, Union, Illinois
1744 (M-6, 2-6-0), components slowly being gathered at Brightside, California for a restoration to operating condition on the Niles Canyon Railway.
2248 Puffy (T-1, 4-6-0), operated by the Grapevine Vintage Railroad, but is currently pending for a 1,472-day overhaul required by the FRA in Grapevine, Texas.
2353 (T-31, 4-6-0), on display at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, California.
2467 (P-8, 4-6-2), on loan by the Pacific Locomotive Association, Fremont, California to the California State Railroad Museum
2472 (P-8, 4-6-2), owned and operated by the Golden Gate Railroad Museum, Redwood City, California
2479 (P-10, 4-6-2), owned and being restored by the California Trolley and Railroad Corporation, San Jose, California
3100 (former SP6800 Bicentennial), U25B owned and operated by the Orange Empire Railway Museum, Perris, CA
3420 (C-19, 2-8-0), owned by El Paso Historic Board, stored at Phelps Dodge copper refinery, El Paso, Texas
3709 (EMD GP9), being restored to operation at Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, California
3769 (EMD GP9), On display and used as a switch engine for the Utah State Railroad Museum in Ogden, Utah.
4294 (AC-12, 4-8-8-2), located at the California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California
4449 (GS-4, 4-8-4), formerly located at the Brooklyn Roundhouse before being relocated to the Oregon Rail Heritage Center in June 2012, Portland, Oregon
4460 (GS-6, 4-8-4), located at the National Museum of Transportation, Kirkwood, Missouri
5119 (GE 70-ton switcher), Operational and awaiting paint restoration to SP colors at Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, California
7304 (ALCO RS-32), on display awaiting restoration at Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, California
7457 (EMD SD45) the first GM Electro-Motive Division SD45 diesel-electric road switcher locomotive to be built for that railroad in 1966. It last saw service on Donner Pass. It was donated to the Utah State Railroad Museum in 2002.
Honorary tribute
On August 19, 2006, UP unveiled a brand new EMD SD70ACe locomotive, Union Pacific 1996, as part of a new heritage program. It was the final unit in UP's Heritage Series of locomotives, and was painted in a color scheme inspired by the "Daylight" and "Black Widow" schemes.
Company officers
Presidents
Timothy Guy Phelps (1865–1868)
Charles Crocker (1868–1885)
Leland Stanford (1885–1890)
Collis P. Huntington (1890–1900)
Charles Melville Hays (1900–1901)
E. H. Harriman (1901–1909)
Robert S. Lovett (1909–1911)
William Sproule (1911–1918)
Julius Kruttschnitt (1918–1920)
William Sproule (1920–1928)
Paul Shoup (1929–1932)
Angus Daniel McDonald (1932–1941)
Armand Mercier (1941–1951)
Donald J. Russell (1952–1964)
Benjamin F. Biaggini (1964–1976)
Denman McNear (1976–1979)
Alan Furth (1979–1982)
Robert Krebs (1982–1988)
D. M. "Mike" Mohan (1988–1993)
Edward L. Moyers (1993–1995)
Jerry R. Davis (1995–1996)
Chairmen of Executive Committee
Leland Stanford (1890–1893)
(vacant 1893–1909)
Robert S. Lovett (1909–1913)
Julius Kruttschnitt (1913–1925)
Henry deForest (1925–1928)
Hale Holden (1928–1932)
Chairmen of Board of Directors
Henry deForest (1929–1932)
Hale Holden (1932–1939)
(position nonexistent 1939–1964)
Donald J. Russell (1964–1972)
Benjamin F. Biaggini (1976–1982)
Denman K. McNear (1982–1988)
Edward L. Moyers (1993–1995) Chairman/C.E.O.
Notable employees
Carl Ingold Jacobson, Los Angeles, California, City Council member, 1925–33
W. Burch Lee, employee in New Orleans office, along with his father, John Martin Lee Jr., before serving in the Louisiana House of Representatives
Blake R. Van Leer, President of Georgia Tech, United States Army officer and hydraulic process inventor
Charles Wright, land surveyor for the railway, before becoming a botanist
Jack Kerouac, novelist
Harry K. McClintock, singer-songwriter, The Big Rock Candy Mountains
Jimmie Rodgers, Father of Country Music, singer-songwriter
See also
History of rail transportation in California
El Paso and Southwestern Railroad
Long Wharf (Santa Monica)
Mussel Slough Tragedy
Pacific Fruit Express
Santa Fe–Southern Pacific merger
Southern Pacific 7399
Southern Pacific 4449
Southern Pacific Depot
St. Louis Southwestern Railway
Texas and New Orleans Railroad
TOPS (Total Operations Processing System), rolling stock management system jointly developed with IBM and Stanford University and used by SP until 1980, still used by British Rail and successor system
Notes
References
General
Daggett, Stuart. Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific (1922) online. detailed history
Darton, D.H. Guidebook of the Western United States; Part F. The Southern Pacific Lines, New Orleans to Los Angeles. Geological Survey Bulletin 845. Washington (D.C.): Government Printing Office, 1933.
Hofsommer, Donovan; The Southern Pacific, 1901–1985. Texas A&M University Press; (1986) .
Hofsommer, Don L. "Rivals for California: The Great Northern and the Southern Pacific, 1905-1931." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 38.2 (1988): 58–67.
External links
Sphts.org: Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society
Harvard Business School, Lehman Brothers Collection: "History of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company"
Union Pacific Railroad.com: Union Pacific History
"Across the Great Salt Lake, The Lucin Cutoff" — 1937 article''.
Abandoned Rails.com: History of the Santa Ana and Newport Railroad.
Predecessors of the Union Pacific Railroad
Rail lines receiving land grants
Railway companies established in 1865
Railway companies disestablished in 1996
Former Class I railroads in the United States
Defunct Arizona railroads
Defunct California railroads
Defunct Louisiana railroads
Defunct Nevada railroads
Defunct New Mexico railroads
Defunct Oregon railroads
Defunct Texas railroads
Defunct Utah railroads
Defunct Kansas railroads
Defunct Oklahoma railroads
Defunct Colorado railroads
Defunct Arkansas railroads
Defunct Missouri railroads
Defunct Tennessee railroads
Defunct Illinois railroads
Companies based in San Francisco
History of San Francisco
History of the Mojave Desert region
3 ft gauge railways in the United States
1865 establishments in California
1996 mergers and acquisitions
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians
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Armenians
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Armenians (, ) are an ethnic group and nation native to the Armenian highlands of West Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of the Republic of Armenia and constituted the main population of the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh until the Armenians of Nagorno-Narabakh were ethnically cleansed. There is a wide-ranging diaspora of around five million people of full or partial Armenian ancestry living outside modern Armenia. The largest Armenian populations today exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Germany, Ukraine, Lebanon, Brazil, Syria, and Turkey. The present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian genocide with the exceptions of Iran, former Soviet states, and parts of the Levant.
Armenian is an Indo-European language. It has two mutually intelligible spoken and written forms: Eastern Armenian, today spoken mainly in Armenia, Artsakh, Iran, and the former Soviet republics; and Western Armenian, used in the historical Western Armenia and, after the Armenian genocide, primarily in the Armenian diasporan communities. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots.
Most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian Christian church, which is also the world's oldest national church. Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus' death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew. In the early 4th century, the Kingdom of Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as a state religion, followed by the first pilgrimages to the Holy Land where a community established the Armenian Quarter of Old Jerusalem.
Etymology
The earliest attestations of the exonym Armenia date around the 6th century BC. In his trilingual Behistun Inscription dated to 517 BC, Darius I the Great of Persia refers to Urashtu (in Babylonian) as Armina (Old Persian: 𐎠𐎼𐎷𐎡𐎴) and Harminuya (in Elamite).
In Greek, Armenios () is attested from about the same time, perhaps the earliest reference being a fragment attributed to Hecataeus of Miletus (476 BC). Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BC.
Some have linked the name Armenia with the Early Bronze Age state of Armani (Armanum, Armi) or the Late Bronze Age state of Arme (Shupria). Armini, Urartian for "inhabitant of Arme" or "Armean country", referring to the region of Shupria, to the immediate west of Lake Van. The Arme tribe of Urartian texts may have been the Urumu, who in the 12th century BC attempted to invade Assyria from the north with their allies the Mushki and the Kaskians. The Urumu apparently settled in the vicinity of Sason, lending their name to the regions of Arme and the nearby lands of Urme and Inner Urumu. The location of the older site of Armani is a matter of debate. Some modern researchers have placed it in the same general area as Arme, near modern Samsat, and have suggested it was populated, at least partially, by an early Indo-European-speaking people. The relationship between Armani and the later Arme-Shupria, if any, is undetermined. Additionally, their connections to Armenians is inconclusive as it is not known what languages were spoken in these regions.
It has also been speculated that the land of Ermenen (located in or near Minni), mentioned by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III in 1446 BCE, could be a reference to Armenia.
Armenians call themselves Hay (, pronounced [ˈhaj]; plural: հայեր, [haˈjɛɾ]). The name has traditionally been derived from Hayk (), the legendary patriarch of the Armenians and a great-great-grandson of Noah, who, according to Movses Khorenatsi (Moses of Khorene), defeated the Babylonian king Bel in 2492 BC and established his nation in the Ararat region. It is also further postulated that the name Hay comes from, or is related to, one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—Hayasa-Azzi (1600–1200 BC). Ultimately, Hay may derive from the Proto Indo-European words póti (meaning "lord" or "master") or *h₂éyos/*áyos (meaning "metal").
Khorenatsi wrote that the word Armenian originated from the name Armenak or Aram (the descendant of Hayk). Khorenatsi refers to both Armenia and Armenians as Hayk‘ (Armenian: Հայք) (not to be confused with the aforementioned patriarch, Hayk).
History
Origin
While the Armenian language is classified as an Indo-European language, its placement within the broader Indo-European language family is a matter of debate. Until fairly recently, scholars believed Armenian to be most closely related to Greek and Ancient Macedonian. Eric P. Hamp placed Armenian in the "Pontic Indo-European" (also called Graeco-Armenian or Helleno-Armenian) subgroup of Indo-European languages in his 2012 Indo-European family tree. There are two possible explanations, not mutually exclusive, for a common origin of the Armenian and Greek languages.
In Hamp's view, the homeland of the proposed Graeco-Armenian subgroup is the northeast coast of the Black Sea and its hinterlands. He assumes that they migrated from there southeast through the Caucasus with the Armenians remaining after Batumi while the pre-Greeks proceeded westward along the southern coast of the Black Sea.
Ancient Greek historian Herodotus (writing ), suggested that Armenians migrated from Phrygia, a region that encompassed much of western and central Anatolia during the Iron Age: "the Armenians were equipped like Phrygians, being Phrygian colonists" (7.73) (). This statement was interpreted by later scholars as meaning that Armenians spoke a language derived from Phrygian, a poorly attested Indo-European language. However, this theory has been discredited. Ancient Greek writers believed that the Phrygians had originated in the Balkans, in an area adjoining Macedonia, from where they had emigrated to Anatolia during the Bronze Age collapse. This led later scholars to theorize that Armenians also originated in the Balkans. However, an Armenian origin in the Balkans, although once widely accepted, has been facing increased scrutiny in recent years due to discrepancies in the timeline and lack of genetic and archeological evidence. The view that Armenians are native to the South Caucasus is supported by ancient Armenian historical accounts and legends, which place the Ararat Plain as the cradle of Armenian culture, as well as modern genetic research. In fact, some scholars have suggested that the Phrygians or the apparently related Mushki people were originally from Armenia and moved westward.
Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (and Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (satem subgroup). This has led some scholars to propose a hypothetical Graeco-Armenian-Aryan clade within the Indo-European language family from which the Armenian, Greek, Indo-Iranian, and possibly Phrygian languages all descend. According to Kim (2018), however, there is insufficient evidence for a cladistic connection between Armenian and Greek, and common features between these two languages can be explained as a result of contact. Contact is also the most likely explanation for morphological features shared by Armenian with Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages.
It has been suggested that the Bronze Age Trialeti-Vanadzor culture and sites such as the burial complexes at Verin and Nerkin Naver are indicative of an Indo-European presence in Armenia by the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. The controversial Armenian hypothesis, put forward by some scholars, such as Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, proposes that the Indo-European homeland was around the Armenian Highland. This theory was partially confirmed by the research of geneticist David Reich (et al. 2018), among others. Similarly Grolle (et al. 2018) supports not only a homeland for Armenians on the Armenian highlands, but also that the Armenian highlands are the homeland for the "pre-proto-Indo-Europeans". A large genetic study in 2022 showed that many Armenians are "direct patrilineal descendants of the Yamnaya".
Genetic studies explain Armenian diversity by several mixtures of Eurasian populations that occurred between 3000 and 2000 BCE. But genetic signals of population mixture cease after 1200 BCE when Bronze Age civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean world suddenly and violently collapsed. Armenians have since remained isolated and genetic structure within the population developed ~500 years ago when Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the Safavid Empire in Iran. A genetic study (Wang et al. 2018) supports the indigenous origin for Armenians in a region south of the Caucasus which he calls "Greater Caucasus".
In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire (at the height of its power in the 14th century BCE), (Mitanni (South-Western historical Armenia, 1500–1300 BCE), and Hayasa-Azzi (1500–1200 BCE). Soon after Hayasa-Azzi came Arme-Shupria (1300s–1190 BCE), the Nairi Confederation (1200–900 BCE), and the Kingdom of Urartu (860–590 BCE), who successively established their sovereignty over the Armenian Highland. Each of the aforementioned nations and tribes participated in the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people. Under Ashurbanipal (669–627 BCE), the Assyrian empire reached the Caucasus Mountains (modern Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan).
Luwianologist John D. Hawkins proposed that "Hai" people were possibly mentioned in the 10th century BCE Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions from Carchemish. A.E. Redgate later clarified that these "Hai" people may have been Armenians.
Antiquity
The first geographical entity that was called Armenia by neighboring peoples (such as by Hecataeus of Miletus and on the Achaemenid Behistun Inscription) was the Satrapy of Armenia, established in the late 6th century BCE under the Orontid (Yervanduni) dynasty within the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The Orontids later ruled the independent Kingdom of Armenia. At its zenith (95–65 BCE), under the imperial reign of Tigran the Great, a member of the Artaxiad (Artashesian) dynasty, the Kingdom of Armenia extended from the Caucasus all the way to what is now central Turkey, Lebanon, and northern Iran.
The Arsacid Kingdom of Armenia, itself a branch of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia, was the first state to adopt Christianity as its religion (it had formerly been adherent to Armenian paganism, which was influenced by Zoroastrianism, while later on adopting a few elements regarding identification of its pantheon with Greco-Roman deities). In the early years of the 4th century, likely 301 CE, partly in defiance of the Sassanids it seems. In the late Parthian period, Armenia was a predominantly Zoroastrian-adhering land, but by the Christianisation, previously predominant Zoroastrianism and paganism in Armenia gradually declined. This is the period that an Armenian community was established in Judea (modern-day Palestine-Israel), leading to the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem. Later on, to further strengthen Armenian national identity, Mesrop Mashtots invented the Armenian alphabet, in 405 CE. This event ushered the Golden Age of Armenia, during which many foreign books and manuscripts were translated to Armenian by Mesrop's pupils. Armenia lost its sovereignty again in 428 CE to the rivaling Byzantine and Sassanid Persian empires, until the Muslim conquest of Persia overran also the regions in which Armenians lived.
Middle Ages
In 885 CE the Armenians reestablished themselves as a sovereign kingdom under the leadership of Ashot I of the Bagratid Dynasty. A considerable portion of the Armenian nobility and peasantry fled the Byzantine occupation of Bagratid Armenia in 1045, and the subsequent invasion of the region by Seljuk Turks in 1064. They settled in large numbers in Cilicia, an Anatolian region where Armenians were already established as a minority since Roman times. In 1080, they founded an independent Armenian Principality then Kingdom of Cilicia, which became the focus of Armenian nationalism. The Armenians developed close social, cultural, military, and religious ties with nearby Crusader States, but eventually succumbed to Mamluk invasions. In the next few centuries, Djenghis Khan, Timurids, and the tribal Turkic federations of the Ak Koyunlu and the Kara Koyunlu ruled over the Armenians.
Early modern history
From the early 16th century, both Western Armenia and Eastern Armenia fell under Iranian Safavid rule. Owing to the century long Turco-Iranian geo-political rivalry that would last in Western Asia, significant parts of the region were frequently fought over between the two rivalling empires. From the mid 16th century with the Peace of Amasya, and decisively from the first half of the 17th century with the Treaty of Zuhab until the first half of the 19th century, Eastern Armenia was ruled by the successive Iranian Safavid, Afsharid and Qajar empires, while Western Armenia remained under Ottoman rule. In the late 1820s, the parts of historic Armenia under Iranian control centering on Yerevan and Lake Sevan (all of Eastern Armenia) were incorporated into the Russian Empire following Iran's forced ceding of the territories after its loss in the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) and the outcoming Treaty of Turkmenchay. Western Armenia however, remained in Ottoman hands.
Modern history
The ethnic cleansing of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire is widely considered a genocide, resulting in an estimated 1.2 million victims. The first wave of persecution was in the years 1894 to 1896, the second one culminating in the events of the Armenian genocide in 1915 and 1916. With World War I in progress, the Ottoman Empire accused the (Christian) Armenians as liable to ally with Imperial Russia, and used it as a pretext to deal with the entire Armenian population as an enemy within their empire.
Governments of the Republic of Turkey since that time have consistently rejected charges of genocide, typically arguing either that those Armenians who died were simply in the way of a war, or that killings of Armenians were justified by their individual or collective support for the enemies of the Ottoman Empire. Passage of legislation in various foreign countries, condemning the persecution of the Armenians as genocide, has often provoked diplomatic conflict. (See recognition of the Armenian genocide)
Following the breakup of the Russian Empire in the aftermath of World War I for a brief period, from 1918 to 1920, Armenia was an independent republic plagued by socio-economic crises such as large-scale Muslim uprisings. In late 1920, the communists came to power following an invasion of Armenia by the Red Army; in 1922, Armenia became part of the Transcaucasian SFSR of the Soviet Union, later on forming the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1936 to 21 September 1991). In 1991, Armenia declared independence from the USSR and established the second Republic of Armenia. Also in 1991, the ethnic Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (later the Republic of Artsakh), declared independence from Azerbaijan which lasted until 2023.
Geographic distribution
Armenia
Armenians are believed to have had a presence in the Armenian Highland for over 4,000 years. According to legend, Hayk, the patriarch and founder of the Armenian nation, led Armenians to victory over Bel of Babylon and settled in the Armenian Highland. Today, with a population of 3.5 million (although more recent estimates place the population closer to 2.9 million), they constitute an overwhelming majority in Armenia, Armenians in the diaspora informally refer to them as Hayastantsis (), meaning those that are from Armenia (that is, those born and raised in Armenia). They, as well as the Armenians of Iran and Russia, speak the Eastern dialect of the Armenian language. The country itself is secular as a result of Soviet domination, but most of its citizens identify themselves as Apostolic Armenian Christian.
Diaspora
While the largest Armenian diaspora populations reside in Russia, the United States, France, and other countries, small Armenian trading and religious communities have existed outside Armenia for centuries. A prominent community has continued since the 4th century in the Holy Land, and one of the quarters of the walled Old City of Jerusalem is called the Armenian Quarter. An Armenian Catholic monastic community of 35 founded in 1717 exists on an island near Venice, Italy.
The region of Western Armenia was an influential part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. The Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire is estimated to have been between 1.5 and 2.5 million in the early 20th century. Most of the modern Armenian diaspora consists of Armenians scattered throughout the world as a direct consequence of massacres and genocide in the Ottoman Empire. However, Armenian communities in Iran, Georgia (Tbilisi), and Syria existed since antiquity. During the Middle Ages and the centuries prior to the genocide, additional communities were formed in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kievan Rus' and the territories of Russia, Poland, Austria, and Lebanon. There are also remnants of historic communities in Turkey (Istanbul), India, Myanmar, Thailand, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Israel-Palestine, Iraq, Romania, Serbia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan had an absolute Armenian majority until 2023. From 1991 to 2023, the region was governed by the Armenia-backed Republic of Artsakh, a largely unrecognized breakway state. After Azerbaijan defeated Artsakh in 2023 after decades of conflict, nearly the entire population fled into Armenia.
Within the diasporan Armenian community, there is an unofficial classification of the different kinds of Armenians. For example, Armenians who originate from Iran are referred to as Parskahay (), while Armenians from Lebanon are usually referred to as Lipananahay (). Armenians of the Diaspora are the primary speakers of the Western dialect of the Armenian language. This dialect has considerable differences with Eastern Armenian, but speakers of either of the two variations can usually understand each other. Eastern Armenian in the diaspora is primarily spoken in Iran and European countries such as Ukraine, Russia, and Georgia (where they form a majority in the Samtskhe-Javakheti province). In diverse communities (such as in the United States and Canada) where many different kinds of Armenians live together, there is a tendency for the different groups to cluster together.
Culture
Religion
Before Christianity, Armenians adhered to Armenian Indo-European native religion: a type of indigenous polytheism that pre-dated the Urartu period but which subsequently adopted several Greco-Roman and Iranian religious characteristics.
In 301 AD, Armenia adopted Christianity as a state religion, becoming the first state to do so. The claim is primarily based on the fifth-century work of Agathangelos titled "The History of the Armenians." Agathangelos witnessed at first hand the baptism of the Armenian King Trdat III (c. 301/314 A.D.) by St. Gregory the Illuminator. Trdat III decreed Christianity was the state religion.
Armenia established a Church that still exists independently of both the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches, having become so in 451 AD as a result of its stance regarding the Council of Chalcedon. Today this church is known as the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is a part of the Oriental Orthodox communion, not to be confused with the Eastern Orthodox communion. During its later political eclipses, Armenia depended on the church to preserve and protect its unique identity. The original location of the Armenian Catholicosate is Echmiadzin. However, the continuous upheavals, which characterized the political scenes of Armenia, made the political power move to safer places. The Church center moved as well to different locations together with the political authority. Therefore, it eventually moved to Cilicia as the Holy See of Cilicia.
Armenia has, at times, constituted a Christian "island" in a mostly Muslim region. There are, however, a minority of ethnic Armenian Muslims, known as Hamshenis and Crypto-Armenians, although the former are often regarded as a distinct group or subgroup. In the late tsarist Caucasus, individual conversions of Muslims, Yazidis, Jews, and Assyrians into Armenian Christianity have been documented. The history of the Jews in Armenia dates back over 2,000 years. The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia had close ties to European Crusader States. Later on, the deteriorating situation in the region led the bishops of Armenia to elect a Catholicos in Etchmiadzin, the original seat of the Catholicosate. In 1441, a new Catholicos was elected in Etchmiadzin in the person of Kirakos Virapetsi, while Krikor Moussapegiants preserved his title as Catholicos of Cilicia. Therefore, since 1441, there have been two Catholicosates in the Armenian Church with equal rights and privileges, and with their respective jurisdictions. The primacy of honor of the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin has always been recognized by the Catholicosate of Cilicia.
While the Armenian Apostolic Church remains the most prominent church in the Armenian community throughout the world, Armenians (especially in the diaspora) subscribe to any number of other Christian denominations. These include the Armenian Catholic Church (which follows its own liturgy but recognizes the Roman Catholic Pope), the Armenian Evangelical Church, which started as a reformation in the Mother church but later broke away, and the Armenian Brotherhood Church, which was born in the Armenian Evangelical Church, but later broke apart from it. There are other numerous Armenian churches belonging to Protestant denominations of all kinds.
Through the ages many Armenians have collectively belonged to other faiths or Christian movements, including the Paulicians which is a form of Gnostic and Manichaean Christianity. Paulicians sought to restore the pure Christianity of Paul and in c.660 founded the first congregation in Kibossa, Armenia.
Another example is the Tondrakians, who flourished in medieval Armenia between the early 9th century and 11th century. Tondrakians advocated the abolishment of the church, denied the immortality of the soul, did not believe in an afterlife, supported property rights for peasants, and equality between men and women.
The Orthodox Armenians or the Chalcedonian Armenians in the Byzantine Empire were called Iberians ("Georgians") or "Greeks". A notable Orthodox "Iberian" Armenian was the Byzantine General Gregory Pakourianos. The descendants of these Orthodox and Chalcedonic Armenians are the Hayhurum of Greece and Catholic Armenians of Georgia.
Language and literature
Armenian is a sub-branch of the Indo-European family, and with some 8 million speakers one of the smallest surviving branches, comparable to Albanian or the somewhat more widely spoken Greek, with which it may be connected (see Graeco-Armenian). Today, that branch has just one language – Armenian.
Five million Eastern Armenian speakers live in the Caucasus, Russia, and Iran, and approximately two to three million people in the rest of the Armenian diaspora speak Western Armenian. According to US Census figures, there are 300,000 Americans who speak Armenian at home. It is in fact the twentieth most commonly spoken language in the United States, having slightly fewer speakers than Haitian Creole, and slightly more than Navajo.
Armenian literature dates back to 400 AD, when Mesrop Mashtots first invented the Armenian alphabet. This period of time is often viewed as the Golden Age of Armenian literature. Early Armenian literature was written by the "father of Armenian history", Moses of Chorene, who authored The History of Armenia. The book covers the time-frame from the formation of the Armenian people to the fifth century AD. The nineteenth century beheld a great literary movement that was to give rise to modern Armenian literature. This period of time, during which Armenian culture flourished, is known as the Revival period (Zartonki sherchan). The Revivalist authors of Constantinople and Tiflis, almost identical to the Romanticists of Europe, were interested in encouraging Armenian nationalism. Most of them adopted the newly created Eastern or Western variants of the Armenian language depending on the targeted audience, and preferred them over classical Armenian (grabar). This period ended after the Hamidian massacres, when Armenians experienced turbulent times. As Armenian history of the 1920s and of the Genocide came to be more openly discussed, writers like Paruyr Sevak, Gevork Emin, Silva Kaputikyan and Hovhannes Shiraz began a new era of literature.
Architecture
The first Armenian churches were built on the orders of St. Gregory the Illuminator, and were often built on top of pagan temples, and imitated some aspects of Armenian pre-Christian architecture.
Classical and Medieval Armenian Architecture is divided into four separate periods.
The first Armenian churches were built between the 4th and 7th century, beginning when Armenia converted to Christianity, and ending with the Arab invasion of Armenia. The early churches were mostly simple basilicas, but some with side apses. By the fifth century the typical cupola cone in the center had become widely used. By the seventh century, centrally planned churches had been built and a more complicated niched buttress and radiating Hrip'simé style had formed. By the time of the Arab invasion, most of what we now know as classical Armenian architecture had formed.
From the 9th to 11th century, Armenian architecture underwent a revival under the patronage of the Bagratid Dynasty with a great deal of building done in the area of Lake Van, this included both traditional styles and new innovations. Ornately carved Armenian Khachkars were developed during this time. Many new cities and churches were built during this time, including a new capital at Lake Van and a new Cathedral on Akdamar Island to match. The Cathedral of Ani was also completed during this dynasty. It was during this time that the first major monasteries, such as Haghpat and Haritchavank were built. This period was ended by the Seljuk invasion.
Sports
Many types of sports are played in Armenia, among the most popular being football, chess, boxing, basketball, ice hockey, sambo, wrestling, weightlifting, and volleyball. Since independence, the Armenian government has been actively rebuilding its sports program in the country.
During Soviet rule, Armenian athletes rose to prominence winning plenty of medals and helping the USSR win the medal standings at the Olympics on numerous occasions. The first medal won by an Armenian in modern Olympic history was by Hrant Shahinyan, who won two golds and two silvers in gymnastics at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. In football, their most successful team was Yerevan's FC Ararat, which had claimed most of the Soviet championships in the 70s and had also gone to post victories against professional clubs like FC Bayern Munich in the Euro cup.
Armenians have also been successful in chess, which is the most popular mind sport in Armenia. Some of the most prominent chess players in the world are Armenian such as Tigran Petrosian, Levon Aronian and Garry Kasparov. Armenians have also been successful in weightlifting and wrestling (Armen Nazaryan), winning medals in each sport at the Olympics. There are also successful Armenians in football – Henrikh Mkhitaryan, boxing – Arthur Abraham and Vic Darchinyan.
Music and dance
Armenian music is a mix of indigenous folk music, perhaps best-represented by Djivan Gasparyan's well-known duduk music, as well as light pop, and extensive Christian music.
Instruments like the duduk, the dhol, the zurna and the kanun are commonly found in Armenian folk music. Artists such as Sayat Nova are famous due to their influence in the development of Armenian folk music. One of the oldest types of Armenian music is the Armenian chant which is the most common kind of religious music in Armenia. Many of these chants are ancient in origin, extending to pre-Christian times, while others are relatively modern, including several composed by Saint Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet. While under Soviet rule, Armenian classical music composer Aram Khatchaturian became internationally well known for his music, for various ballets and the Sabre Dance from his composition for the ballet Gayane.
The Armenian genocide caused widespread emigration that led to the settlement of Armenians in various countries in the world. Armenians kept to their traditions and certain diasporans rose to fame with their music. In the post-Genocide Armenian community of the United States, the so-called "kef" style Armenian dance music, using Armenian and Middle Eastern folk instruments (often electrified/amplified) and some western instruments, was popular. This style preserved the folk songs and dances of Western Armenia, and many artists also played the contemporary popular songs of Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries from which the Armenians emigrated. Richard Hagopian is perhaps the most famous artist of the traditional "kef" style and the Vosbikian Band was notable in the 40s and 50s for developing their own style of "kef music" heavily influenced by the popular American Big Band Jazz of the time. Later, stemming from the Middle Eastern Armenian diaspora and influenced by Continental European (especially French) pop music, the Armenian pop music genre grew to fame in the 60s and 70s with artists such as Adiss Harmandian and Harout Pamboukjian performing to the Armenian diaspora and Armenia. Also with artists such as Sirusho, performing pop music combined with Armenian folk music in today's entertainment industry. Other Armenian diasporans that rose to fame in classical or international music circles are world-renowned French-Armenian singer and composer Charles Aznavour, pianist Sahan Arzruni, prominent opera sopranos such as Hasmik Papian and more recently Isabel Bayrakdarian and Anna Kasyan. Certain Armenians settled to sing non-Armenian tunes such as the heavy metal band System of a Down (which nonetheless often incorporates traditional Armenian instrumentals and styling into their songs) or pop star Cher (whose father was Armenian). Ruben Hakobyan (Ruben Sasuntsi) is a well recognized Armenian ethnographic and patriotic folk singer who has achieved widespread national recognition due to his devotion to Armenian folk music and exceptional talent. In the Armenian diaspora, Armenian Revolutionary Songs are popular with the youth. These songs encourage Armenian patriotism and are generally about Armenian history and national heroes.
Carpet weaving
Carpet-weaving is historically a major traditional profession for the majority of Armenian women, including many Armenian families. Prominent Karabakh carpet weavers there were men too. The oldest extant Armenian carpet from the region, referred to as Artsakh (see also Karabakh carpet) during the medieval era, is from the village of Banants (near Gandzak) and dates to the early 13th century. The first time that the Armenian word for carpet, kork, was used in historical sources was in a 1242–1243 Armenian inscription on the wall of the Kaptavan Church in Artsakh.
Common themes and patterns found on Armenian carpets were the depiction of dragons and eagles. They were diverse in style, rich in color and ornamental motifs, and were even separated in categories depending on what sort of animals were depicted on them, such as artsvagorgs (eagle-carpets), vishapagorgs (dragon-carpets) and otsagorgs (serpent-carpets). The rug mentioned in the Kaptavan inscriptions is composed of three arches, "covered with vegatative ornaments", and bears an artistic resemblance to the illuminated manuscripts produced in Artsakh.
The art of carpet weaving was in addition intimately connected to the making of curtains as evidenced in a passage by Kirakos Gandzaketsi, a 13th-century Armenian historian from Artsakh, who praised Arzu-Khatun, the wife of regional prince Vakhtang Khachenatsi, and her daughters for their expertise and skill in weaving.
Armenian carpets were also renowned by foreigners who traveled to Artsakh; the Arab geographer and historian Al-Masudi noted that, among other works of art, he had never seen such carpets elsewhere in his life.
Cuisine
Khorovats, an Armenian-styled barbecue, is arguably the favorite Armenian dish. Lavash is a very popular Armenian flat bread, and Armenian paklava is a popular dessert made from filo dough. Other famous Armenian foods include the kabob (a skewer of marinated roasted meat and vegetables), various dolmas (minced lamb, or beef meat and rice wrapped in grape leaves, cabbage leaves, or stuffed into hollowed vegetables), and pilaf, a rice dish. Also, ghapama, a rice-stuffed pumpkin dish, and many different salads are popular in Armenian culture. Fruits play a large part in the Armenian diet. Apricots (Prunus armeniaca, also known as Armenian Plum) have been grown in Armenia for centuries and have a reputation for having an especially good flavor. Peaches are popular as well, as are grapes, figs, pomegranates, and melons. Preserves are made from many fruits, including cornelian cherries, young walnuts, sea buckthorn, mulberries, sour cherries, and many others.
Institutions
The Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest National Church
The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) founded in 1906 and the largest Armenian non-profit organization in the world, with educational, cultural and humanitarian projects on all continents
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, founded in 1890. It is generally referred to as the Dashnaktsutyun, which means Federation in Armenian. The ARF is the strongest worldwide Armenian political organization and the only diasporan Armenian organization with a significant political presence in Armenia.
Hamazkayin, an Armenian cultural and educational society founded in Cairo in 1928, and responsible for the founding of Armenian secondary schools and institutions of higher education in several countries
The Armenian Catholic Church, representing small communities of Armeno-Catholics in different countries around the world, as well as important monastic and cultural institutions in Venice and Vienna
Homenetmen, an Armenian Scouting and athletic organization founded in 1910 with a worldwide membership of about 25,000
The Armenian Relief Society, founded in 1910
Genetics
Y-DNA
A 2012 study found that haplogroups R1b, J2, and T were the most notable haplogroups among Armenians.
MtDNA
Most notable mtDNA haplogroups among the Armenian samples are H, U, T, J, K and X while the rest of remaining Mtdna of the Armenians are HV, I, X, W, R0 and N.
Notable people
See also
Armenian diaspora
Ethnic groups in Europe
Ethnic groups in West Asia
Hayk
Hemshin peoples
Hidden Armenians
List of Armenian ethnic enclaves
Peoples of the Caucasus
Prehistory of the Armenians
References
Notes
Citations
General
The categorization of Armenian churches in Los Angeles used information from Sacred Transformation: Armenian Churches in Los Angeles a project of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development.
Some of the information about the history of the Armenians comes from the multi-volume History of the Armenian People, Yerevan, Armenia, 1971.
Further reading
I. M. Diakonoff, The Pre-History of the Armenian People (revised, trans. Lori Jennings), Caravan Books, New York (1984), .
George A. Bournoutian, A History of the Armenian People, 2 vol. (1994)
Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm, The Polish Experience through World War II: A Better Day Has Not Come, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013,
Russell D. Gray and Quentin D. Atkinson, "Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin", Nature, 426, 435–439 (2003)
George A. Bournoutian, A Concise History of the Armenian People (Mazda, 2003, 2004).
- on Brazil's Armenian diaspora.
UCLA conference series proceedings
The UCLA conference series titled "Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces" is organized by the Holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History. The conference proceedings are edited by Richard G. Hovannisian. Published in Costa Mesa, CA, by Mazda Publishers, they are:
Armenian Van/Vaspurakan (2000)
Armenian Baghesh/Bitlis and Taron/Mush (2001)
Armenian Tsopk/Kharpert (2002)
Armenian Karin/Erzerum (2003)
Armenian Sebastia/Sivas and Lesser Armenia (2004)
Armenian Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa (2006)
Armenian Cilicia (2008)
Armenian Pontus: the Trebizond-Black Sea communities (2009)
Ethnic groups in Armenia
Peoples of the Caucasus
Ancient peoples of the Near East
Indo-European peoples
Indigenous peoples of West Asia
Articles containing video clips
Ethnic groups in the Middle East
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervical%20cap
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Cervical cap
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The cervical cap is a form of barrier contraception. A cervical cap fits over the cervix and blocks sperm from entering the uterus through the external orifice of the uterus, called the os.
Terminology
The term cervical cap has been used to refer to a number of barrier contraceptives, including the Prentif, Dumas, Vimule, and Oves devices. In the United States, Prentif was the only brand available for several decades (Prentif was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 2005). During this time, it was common to use the term cervical cap to refer exclusively to the Prentif brand.
The Lea's Shield was a cervical barrier device which was discontinued as of 2008. Some sources use cervical cap to refer to the FemCap and Lea's Shield. Other sources include FemCap in the term cervical cap, but classified the Lea's Shield as a distinct device.
In the 1920s, cervical caps (and also diaphragms) were often just called pessaries.
Cervical caps or conception caps have also been designed as a form of assisted reproductive technology, used to help people experiencing infertility.
Medical use
The effectiveness of cervical caps, as with most other forms of contraception, can be assessed two ways: method effectiveness and actual effectiveness. The method effectiveness is the proportion of couples correctly and consistently using the method who do not become pregnant. Actual effectiveness is the proportion of couples who intended that method as their sole form of birth control and do not become pregnant; it includes couples who sometimes use the method incorrectly, or sometimes not at all. Rates are generally presented for the first year of use. Most commonly the Pearl Index is used to calculate effectiveness rates, but some studies use decrement tables.
Contraceptive Technology reports that the method failure rate of the Prentif cervical cap with spermicide is 9% per year for nulliparous women (women who have never given birth), and 26% per year for parous women (who have given birth). The actual pregnancy rates among Prentif users vary depending on the population being studied, with yearly rates of 11% to 32% being reported. An FDA-mandated study reported failure rates: Method rate 6.4% (vs. 4.6% for the diaphragm); Overall rate 17.4% (vs. 16.7% for the diaphragm).
Little data is available on the effectiveness of the Oves cap and FemCap. The Oves manufacturer cites one small study of 17 users. The FemCap website does not cite any data on the current version of the FemCap, but lists data for an older version which is no longer approved by the FDA.
The effectiveness trial of Lea's Shield was too small to determine method effectiveness. The actual pregnancy rate was 15% per year. Of the women in the trial, 85% were parous (had given birth). The study authors estimate that for nulliparous women (those who have never given birth) the pregnancy rate in typical use may be lower, around 5% per year.
Compared to other barrier methods
In the 1920s, Marie Stopes considered the cervical cap to be the best method of contraception available. Among barrier methods it provides the least intervention of a barrier surface between the penis and vagina resulting in natural contact between them. Except for the Fem-Cap, it also leaves exposed all the vaginal wall so that the hormones, etc. in the seminal fluid of the man can be better absorbed by the woman. The condom does not allow any absorption and the diaphragm exposes less area. However the condom does significantly reduce the likelihood of transmission of STDs. The diaphragm is inserted painlessly. It does not stretch the vagina, nor does it interfere with internal muscle movements during sex, as it is too high up in the vagina. The tip of the penis might touch the cap depending on the position and the size of the penis. Note that what Stopes calls the "Dutch cap" is today known as the "diaphragm". A partial objection to this claim is that most women do not know how to voluntarily control these muscles, and that some size diaphragms do not stretch the vagina that much, especially if they are smaller in size The cervical cap can be worn for a significantly longer period of time than the diaphragm. It can be inserted several hours before intercourse and used successfully even if a woman's partner is drunk, etc. Stopes concludes in favor of the cervical cap and "condemns" the diaphragm "for general use"
Side effects
Insertion and removal
There are more complaints about difficulties in removal than difficulties with insertion. Since suction holds the cap on, it may sometimes be difficult to remove unless one knows the tricks of removal. Marie Stopes wrote that for rim caps, one should work the tip of one's finger under the rim and pull with a jerk. The idea is to release suction before pulling hard. If one's fingers are too short (and/or the vagina too long), one can use an inserter (intended for diaphragms) or have one's partner do it.
Odor
Since the cervical cap can be worn for longer periods of time than the diaphragm, it is more prone to develop odors which might begin to appear after three continuous days of wear.
Types
Several brands of caps were manufactured during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They can be divided into two types: cavity rim caps, and other caps. Cavity rim caps adhere to the cervix, while other caps adhere to the vaginal walls around the cervix. However, the FemCap (the only cervical cap sold in the United States after 2008) adheres to both.
The cavity rim caps are Prentif, made of latex, and the disposable cap Oves, made of silicone. There are four sizes of Prentif: 22, 25, 28, and 31 mm. There are three sizes of Oves: 26, 28, and 30 mm. Unique among cervical caps, it adheres to the cervix by surface tension, rather than by suction.
The other devices are the latex Dumas and Vimule, and the silicone FemCap, Lea's Shield, and Shanghai Lily. There are five sizes of Dumas: 50, 55, 60, 65, and 75 mm. There are three sizes of Vimule: 42, 48, and 52 mm. There are three sizes of FemCap: 22, 26, and 30 mm. There are four sizes of Shanghai Lily: 54, 58, 62, and 66 mm. Lea's Shield is manufactured in a single size. Unlike the other caps, Lea's Shield has a one-way air valve that helps it seal to the vaginal walls. The valve also allows the passage of cervical mucus. FemCap does not have such a valve and as such can be used to collect cervical mucus to support the Billings method. Both Lea's Shield and FemCap have loops to assist in removal.
Shanghai Lily is only available in China. As of 2008, many of the other devices are no longer being manufactured: Prentif, Vimule, and Dumas have been discontinued. Oves is only being sold as a conception cap, not as a birth control device. As of February 2009, FemCap was the only brand of cervical cap available in the United States. FemCap is also available in the UK via the NHS on prescription and is often distributed free from Family Planning Clinics depending on the health authority.
Lea's Shield is only available as the German brand LEA contraceptivum.
FemCap
As of 2009, FemCap is the only brand available in the United States. A new FemCap performed poorly in a user acceptability study, suggesting that the modifications increased coital pain or discomfort among female users and their male sex partners, and that the modifications did not improve ease of use overall. However, FemCap users are still less likely to report such pain or discomfort than diaphragm users.
Sponge covered cap
A cap of the 1920'a had a sponge permanently attached to the outer surface of the cap to hold a liquid spermaticide such as vinegar. It was not as easy to clean the cap when removed, due to the sponge part.
2-part cap
This cap of the 1920s (the "Mizpah") had a separate ring (rim) which went around the base of the cervix and was worn constantly. The cap portion (which has its own ring/rim) is snapped into the base ring for use. A criticism of it was that due to the groove in the base ring (so it could attach itself to the cap part) it could not be kept perfectly clean without removing it.
Design
Height of dome
The dome of a cervical cap may be low with little air space between the dome and the cervix, or high with plenty of air space above the cervix enclosed under the dome. Stopes recommends the high dome type for the following reasons: 1. The high dome cap has room to store secretions from the uterus such as menstrual flow or flow possibly resulting from an orgasm. 2. The high dome cap is allegedly less likely to become dislodged should the penis push hard against the cervix.
Rim
Per Stopes (in the 1920s) they should be made of very pliable soft rubber which should not be wrinkled or withered.
Caps of the 1920s had three types of rims: solid rubber (like an o-ring), air-inflated rubber, or a spring encased in rubber. Stopes recommended the all-rubber cap with the solid rubber rim There is also the question as to what is the best shape of the rim cross-section so that the penis is less likely to dislodge the cap by contact with the rim. Some caps such as the Prorace, advocated by Stopes, had a wide but flat thin rim so that a penis contact would tend to push the rim against the fornix which it is already resting against.
Stopes recommendations
The type of rim cap recommended by Stopes in the 1920s with a high dome of thin rubber was experimentally revived by Lamberts in England in 1981 and called the "test cap". It came in six sizes and its light weight meant that it was not as apt to be felt during sexual activity. It was not received well. Some thought it was too flimsy and more likely to dislodge, but Stopes had (in the 1920s) claimed just the opposite for this design, as did the director of a woman's health center who tried it out.
Process
Fitting
Individuals who wish to use a cervical cap are screened by a health care provider to determine if a cervical cap, or one brand of cap, is appropriate for them. If a cap is determined to be appropriate, the provider will determine the proper size. The user must be refitted after any duration of pregnancy, whether the pregnancy is aborted, miscarried, or carried to term through vaginal childbirth or caesarean section.
Several factors may make a cap inappropriate for a particular woman. Women who have given birth may have scar tissue or irregularly shaped cervixes that interfere with the cap forming a good seal. For some women, available sizes of cervical caps do not provide a correct fit. Also, cavity rim caps are not recommended for women with an anteflexed uterus. In infrequent cases a woman may have a long vagina but short fingers and thus may not be able to place the cap correctly. Overall, 80% to 85% of women who want caps can be fitted without issues.
The rim cap should be such that the rim tucks into the fornix snugly and evenly so as to maintain good suction to hold it in place.
In some countries, some devices (such as the Lea's Shield) are available without a prescription.
Method of use
The first step in inserting or removing a cervical cap is handwashing, to avoid introducing harmful bacteria into the vaginal canal. The cap is inserted prior to sexual intercourse; some sources state that insertion prior to sexual arousal decreases the risk of incorrect placement. Most sources recommend the use of spermicide with the cap, but some sources say spermicide use is optional.
The cap remains in the vagina for a minimum of 6 - 8 hours after the last intravaginal ejaculation. It is recommended the cap be removed within 72 hours (within 48 hours is recommended in the U.S.). Other than the disposable Oves cap, cervical caps can be washed and stored for reuse. Silicone devices may be boiled to sterilize them. Reusable caps may last for one or two years.
Some caps have a pull tab for removal but it is claimed that pulling on it should not be done since it the cap tends to adhere very tightly to the cervix. Instead, putting a finger under the rim and pulling with a jerk should easily detach it.
Acceptability
It was reported in the 1980s (during the cervical cap renaissance in the U.S.) that "women overwhelmingly preferred the cap to the diaphragm". On average, women also reported an increase in libido and frequency of sex.
The Oves cap and the new version of the FemCap performed poorly in user acceptability studies. The study on the FemCap concluded that the modifications to the FemCap significantly increased pain and discomfort among female users and their male sex partners, and that the modifications decreased acceptability of the device compared with the earlier version. The study of the Oves cap reported that few women indicated that they would use the cap in the future.
A pilot study conducted in Britain prior to the Lea's Shield's approval concluded that the Lea's Shield "may be acceptable to a highly select minority of women".
As of 2002, the cervical cap was one of the least common methods of contraception in the United States. A 2002 study indicated that of sexually active American women, 0.6% are currently using either the cervical cap, contraceptive sponge, or female condom as their primary method of contraception, and fewer than 1% have ever used a cervical cap.
History
Ancient
The idea of blocking the cervix to prevent pregnancy is thousands of years old. Various cultures have used cervix-shaped devices such as oiled paper cones or lemon halves. Others made sticky mixtures that included honey or cedar rosin, to be applied to the os. The modern idea of a cervical cap as a fitted device that seals itself against the vaginal walls is of more recent origin; it emerged within the past century.
19th century
In 1838, German gynecologist Friedrich Wilde created the first modern cervical cap by making custom-made rubber molds of the cervix for some of his patients. These caps were probably short-lived, as uncured rubber degrades fairly quickly. An important precursor to the invention of more lasting caps was the rubber vulcanization process, patented by Charles Goodyear in 1844. In the 1840s or 1860s E.B. Foote, a U.S. physician claims to have invented the cervical cap but it's reported that his patent was denied since the device could be used for obscene purposes. Foote claimed that his invention was "widely counterfeited". An occlusive pessary marketed in the United States as the "womb veil" seems to have been an early form of diaphragm or cervical cap.
Over the next several decades, the cervical cap became the most widely used barrier contraceptive method in Western Europe and Britain. Although the diaphragm was always more popular in the United States than the cervical cap, the cap was also common.
20th century
Many designs were developed in the later 19th and early 20th century in various countries. The Vimule cap became available as early as 1927. A book by Vimule and Co., published in 1898, advertises the Vimule Cap. The Prentif brand cap was introduced in the early 1930s. The Dumas cap was initially made of plastic, and was available by the 1940s. Lamberts (Dalston) Ltd. of the UK manufactured these three cap types. Other types of caps had stems to hold them in place in the cervix; some of the stems actually extended into the uterus. These stem pessaries became precursors to the modern intrauterine device (IUD).
Margaret Sanger in the 1910s brought cervical caps to the U.S. but later on seemingly preferred the diaphragm but never repudiated the cap. This may have been influenced by her visit to the Netherlands where the diaphragm (also known as the "Dutch Cap") reigned supreme.
Use of all barrier methods, but especially cervical barriers, dropped dramatically after the 1960s introduction of the combined oral contraceptive pill and the IUD. In 1976, the U.S. government enacted the Medical Device Regulation Act. This law required all manufacturers of medical devices to provide the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with data on the safety and efficacy of those devices. Lamberts (Dalston) Ltd., the only manufacturer at that time, failed to provide this information, and the FDA banned the use of cervical caps in the United States.
In the late 1970s, the FDA reclassified the cervical cap as an investigational device, and it regained limited availability. Within a few years, the FDA withdrew investigational status from the Vimule cap, following a study that associated its use with vaginal lacerations. In 1988, the then 60-year-old Prentif cap gained FDA approval. The feminist movement played a large role in re-introducing the cervical cap to the United States. One paper called its involvement at all steps of the FDA approval process "unprecedented". This renewed interest in the cervical cap has been called "The cervical cap renaissance".
Quality
In the 1920s it was reported from England that "careless and hasty construction" could sometimes be found in many brands. Some caps had a seam in the dome (two parts of it were welded together making a seam) and the seam might be defective and even contain minute perforations. Also the junction between the rim and the dome might be rough and difficult to clean. Caps that were seamless avoided the "seam" problem. It was suggested that caps should be inspected for possible defects by the user under a magnifying glass.
In popular culture
Cervical cap is very likely to be the contraceptive that maid Anna Bates buys for her mistress Lady Mary Crawley in the second episode of the fifth serie of the historical drama Downton Abbey. Mary Crawley is inspired by the book Married Love, from Marie Stopes.
Bibliography
References
External links
Cervical Barrier Advancement Society
Diaphragms and Caps (Yahoo Group)
FemCap website
Oves website
Barrier contraception
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender%20%28rail%29
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Tender (rail)
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A tender or coal-car (US only) is a special rail vehicle hauled by a steam locomotive containing its fuel (wood, coal, oil or torrefied biomass) and water. Steam locomotives consume large quantities of water compared to the quantity of fuel, so their tenders are necessary to keep them running over long distances. A locomotive that pulls a tender is called a tender locomotive. Locomotives that do not have tenders and carry all their fuel and water on board the locomotive itself are called tank locomotives or tank engines.
A corridor tender is a locomotive tender with a passageway to one side, allowing crew changes on the fly.
A brake tender is a tender that is heavy and used (primarily) to provide greater braking efficiency.
General functions
The largest steam locomotives are semi-permanently coupled by a drawbar to a tender that carries the water and fuel. The fuel source used depends on what is economically available locally. In the UK and parts of Europe, a plentiful supply of coal made this the obvious choice from the earliest days of the steam engine. Until around 1850 in the United States, the vast majority of locomotives burned wood until most of the eastern forests were cleared. Subsequently, coal burning became more widespread, and wood burners were restricted to rural and logging districts.
Water supply
By the mid-1800s, most steam locomotive tenders consisted of a fuel bunker (that held coal or wood) surrounded by a "U" shaped (when viewed from the top) water jacket. The overall shape of the tender was usually rectangular. The bunker which held the coal was sloped downwards toward the locomotive providing easier access to the coal. The ratio of water to fuel capacities of tenders was normally based on two water-stops to each fuel stop because water was more readily available than fuel. One pound [] of coal could turn six pounds of water (0.7 gallons) [] to steam. Therefore, tender capacity ratios were normally close to 7 tons (14,000 lb) [] of coal per 10,000 gallons [] of water.
The water supply in a tender was replenished at water stops and locomotive depots from a dedicated water tower connected to water cranes or gantries. Refilling the tender is the job of the fireman, who is responsible for maintaining the locomotive's fire, steam pressure, and supply of fuel and water.
Water carried in the tender must be forced into the boiler, to replace that which is consumed during operation. Early engines used pumps driven by the motion of the pistons. Later, steam injectors replaced the pump while some engines used turbopumps.
With track pans or water troughs
In the UK, the US and France, water troughs (in the US, track pans) were provided on some main lines to allow locomotives to replenish their water supply while moving. A "water scoop" was fitted under the tender or the rear water tank in the case of a large tank engine; the fireman remotely lowered the scoop into the trough, the speed of the engine forced the water up into the tank, and the scoop was raised once it was full.
The fuel and water capacities of a tender are usually proportional to the rate at which they are consumed, though there were exceptions. The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad used track pans on many of their routes, allowing locomotives to pick up water at speed. The result was that the water tanks on these tenders were proportionally much smaller.
In the UK water troughs were used by three of the Big Four railways. The exception was the Southern Railway – mainly because the majority of the Southern's operations were based around short-distance commuter, suburban and rural services with frequent station stops where water could be taken on from water columns. The Southern's decision to electrify its routes into London with a third rail system also made the installation of water troughs impractical. Only on the former London and South Western Railway routes west of Salisbury, where long-distance express trains operated, was the lack of troughs a problem. Rather than install troughs the L&SWR (and the Southern) equipped its express locomotives with special high-capacity tenders with a water capacity of 4,000 gallons (18,200 L) running on a pair of twin-axle bogies. These were known to railwaymen as "water cart" tenders.
Condensing tenders
Condensing steam locomotives were designed to recycle exhaust steam by condensing it into feed water. The principal benefit is conservation of water, but the thermal efficiency of the engine is also increased, since much of the heat otherwise lost in the exhaust is used to preheat water injected into the boiler. In some cases condensing was employed simply to improve visibility by eliminating clouds of exhaust.
A primitive approach to condensation simply injected the spent steam into the tender tank, relying on the mass of water for cooling. More sophisticated tenders, such as those used in the South African Railways Class 25 locomotives designed for service in the Karoo, replaced most of the water tank with a huge radiator, in which the steam was cooled and condensed. Exhaust steam, after passing through an oil-water separator, was conveyed to the tender, where it powered a low-pressure turbine used to drive the radiator fans. The steam then passed into the radiator. The condensate was injected into the boiler with another turbine-driven pump. This was a quite complex bit of machinery, also requiring another turbine in the smokebox to provide the exhaust draft normally obtained by blowing the exhaust steam up the stack. Eventually the SAR examples were converted to conventional locomotives by replacing the radiator with a long water tank.
Fuel supply
A factor that limits locomotive performance is the rate at which fuel is fed into the fire. Much of the fireman's time is spent throwing wood or shoveling coal into the firebox of the locomotive to maintain constant steam pressure. In the early 20th century some locomotives became so large that the fireman could not shovel coal fast enough. Consequently, in the United States, various steam-powered mechanical stokers (typically using an auger feed between the fuel bunker and the firebox) became standard equipment and were adopted elsewhere, including Australia and South Africa.
Tender design variants
In the early days of railroading, tenders were rectangular boxes, with a bunker for coal or wood surrounded by a U-shaped water jacket. This form was retained up to the end of steam on many coal-burning engines. Oil-burning engines substituted a fuel tank for the bunker. Variations on this plan were made for operational reasons, in attempts to economize on structure.
Vanderbilt
In early 1901, Cornelius Vanderbilt III filed a patent application covering a new type of tender.
Vanderbilt was the great-grandson of the founder of the New York Central Railroad; his tender featured a cylindrical body like a tank car with a fuel bunker set into the front end. This design was soon adopted by a number of American railroads with oil-burning and coal-burning locomotives.
Compared to rectangular tenders, cylindrical Vanderbilt tenders were stronger, lighter, and held more fuel in relation to surface area. Railroads who were noted for using Vanderbilt tenders include:
Baltimore & Ohio
Canadian National
Grand Trunk Western
Great Northern Railway
Southern Pacific
Union Pacific
New Zealand Railways Department (NZR AB class, NZR J class, NZR G class (1928)).
Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway
Seaboard Air Line Railroad
South African Railways
Whaleback
A form peculiar to oil-burning engines was the "whaleback" tender (also sometimes called a "turtle-back" or "loaf" tender). This was a roughly half-cylindrical form with the rounded side up; the forward portion of the tank held the oil, while the remainder held the water. This form was particularly associated with the Southern Pacific.
Slopeback
In the United States, tenders with sloped backs were often used for locomotives in yard switching service, because they greatly improved the engineer's ability to see behind the locomotive when switching cars. The reduced water capacity was not a problem, as the tender's water tank could be frequently refilled in the rail yard. In the 1880s, numerous locomotive manufacturers were offering tenders with this design on small switcher locomotives.
Corridor
For the introduction of the London and North Eastern Railway's non-stop Flying Scotsman service on 1 May 1928, ten special tenders were built with means to reach the locomotive from the train through a narrow passageway inside the tender tank plus a flexible bellows connection linking it with the leading coach. The passageway, which ran along the right-hand side of the tender, was high and wide. Further corridor tenders were built at intervals until 1938, and eventually there were 22; at various times, they were coupled to engines of classes A1, A3, A4 and W1, but by the end of 1948, all were running with class A4 locomotives. Use of the corridor tender for changing crews on the move in an A4 loco is shown in the 1953 British Transport film Elizabethan Express, the name of another London-Edinburgh non-stop train.
Water cart
The water cart was a type of high-capacity tender used by the London and South Western Railway in England. Unlike the usual British six-wheel tender, it was a double-bogie design with inside bearings. This gave it a distinctive appearance because the wheels were very obvious.
Canteen
An additional tender which holds only water is called a "canteen" or "auxiliary tender". During the steam era, these were not frequently used. Water tanks were placed at regular intervals along the track, making a canteen unnecessary in most cases. However, there were times that canteens proved economical. The Norfolk and Western Railway used canteens with its giant 2-8-8-2 Y Class and 2-6-6-4 A Class locomotives on coal trains, timed freights, fast freights, and merchandise freights. Use of the canteen allowed one of the water stops to be skipped, allowing the train to avoid climbing a hill from a dead stop. Currently, the Union Pacific Railroad uses two canteens with its steam locomotives 844 and 4014 on excursion trains. Virtually all the trackside tanks were removed when steam locomotives were retired. Nowadays, fire hydrant hookups are used, which fills the tanks much more slowly. The canteens allow for greater range between stops.
Canteens were also used on the Trans-Australian Railway which crosses the waterless Nullarbor Plain. In New South Wales these vehicles were called "gins", and were used in the predominantly dry western region and on some branch lines. Now prominently use on heritage excursions due to the lack of places with accessible water points. During the catastrophic 2019-2020 bushfire season, as fires devastated towns near the Rail Transport Museum at Thirlmere, south of Sydney, a diesel locomotive from the museum hauled two gins to help replenish firefighting tanker trucks.
In the United Kingdom, a canteen was used on the preserved Flying Scotsman during enthusiast excursions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The water troughs that had previously supplied long-distance expresses had been removed during dieselisation of the railway network. On 25 July 2009, Bittern made a 188-mile run from King's Cross to York non-stop using a second tender. As railways in Britain tend to be much shorter than those in the US, the canteen was not an economical proposition.
Fuel tender
Sometimes a tender will be used for a diesel locomotive. This is typically a tank car with a fuel line that connects to the locomotive and MU connections to allow locomotives behind the tender to be controlled remotely. The Burlington Northern Railroad used fuel tenders in remote territory where fuel was expensive. Diesel fuel could be bought cheaply and loaded into the tender. A common consist was two EMD SD40-2s with a tender between them. Some of the tenders survived the Burlington Northern Santa Fe merger but retain the black and green BN colors. The Southern Pacific Railroad also briefly experimented with fuel tenders for diesels. Some slugs have fuel tanks and serve as fuel tenders for the attached locomotives, especially those that are converted from locomotives that are retired due to worn-out diesels.
The Union Pacific Railroad used fuel tenders on its turbines. These tenders were originally used with steam locomotives, then reworked to hold heavy "Bunker C" fuel oil. Fuel capacity was about 23,000 gallons (87,000 liters). When the turbines were retired, some of the tenders were reworked to hold water, and employed as canteens for steam locomotives.
Fuel tenders have also been the cause of controversy for railroads, in particular the Soo Line. In the late 1970s, the management of the railroad discovered that it was cheaper for them to fill their fuel tenders at Chicago, and then transport the fuel to Shoreham Wisconsin. Doing this avoided the railroad needing to pay extra taxes on the fuel, and the system was continued until the mid 1980s. When the states of Illinois and Wisconsin caught onto the railroad's actions, legislation was passed which charged the same over the road tax on the fuel movement over rail which was charged for truck drivers. Doing this completely negated the benefit of moving the fuel by way of the tenders, and Soo quietly withdrew the practice.
Tenders have also been developed to carry liquefied natural gas for diesel locomotives converted to run on that fuel.
Brake tender
On British railways, brake tenders were low, heavy wagons used with early main line diesel locomotives. One or two were coupled in front or behind the locomotive to provide extra braking power when hauling unfitted or partially fitted freight trains (trains formed from wagons not fitted with automatic brakes). They were required as the lighter weight of the new diesel locomotives, compared to steam, meant that they had comparable tractive effort (and thus train hauling capacity) but less braking ability. Originally intended to be used in North East England, where they were usually propelled (pushed) by the locomotive, and later used in other regions. On the Southern Region they were normally hauled behind the locomotive.
The tender took the form of a hollow box, low enough to avoid obscuring the driver's view when pushed. The body was carried on a pair of former carriage bogies, which provided the automatic brakes. The body was filled with scrap steel to raise the weight of the vehicle to 35½–37½ tons; consequently increasing the available brake force. Four lamp brackets were provided at each end to display locomotive headcode discs describing the class of train – when propelled, the tender obscured the front of the locomotive, and hence the headcode.
Introduced around 1964–65, they were taken out of use in the 1980s when the practice of using unfitted trains was discontinued. None survived in preservation but an operational replica has been constructed on the Great Central Railway from the remnants of a Mk1 corridor coach and has been given the next number in the brake tender sequence; B964122.
Powered tender
Certain early British steam locomotives were fitted with powered tenders. As well as holding coal and water, these had wheels powered from the locomotive to provide greater tractive effort. These were abandoned for economic reasons; railwaymen working on locomotives so equipped demanded extra pay as they were effectively running two locomotives. However, the concept was tried again on the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway's River Mite, and the Garratt locomotive may be seen as an extension of this principle. Powered tenders were also seen on the triplex locomotives in the United States, but these experiments were not considered successful due to the varying mass of the tender. Powered tenders were used extensively on geared logging steam locomotives like the Shay, Climax, and Heisler types where the steep grades and heavy trains necessitated the extra tractive effort.
Nowadays, slugs are used with diesel-electric locomotives. The slug has traction motors that draw electricity from the locomotive's prime mover to provide extra traction.
German practice
In Germany, attention was given to ensuring that tender locomotives were capable of moderately high speeds in reverse, pushing their tenders. The numerous DRB Class 50 (2-10-0) locomotives, for example, were capable of in either direction, and were commonly used on branch lines without turning facilities.
A source of possible confusion with regards to German locomotives is that in German, means a tank locomotive. A locomotive with a separate, hauled tender is a .
Tender-first operations
In some instances, particularly on branch lines having no turnaround such as a turntable or wye at the terminus point, locomotives ran in reverse with the tender leading the train. In such instances, a headlamp (US) or headcode lamps/discs were placed on the leading end of the tender. Locomotive crews often rigged a tarpaulin (or the locomotive's storm sheet, if available) from the rear of the cab roof to the front of the tender to provide protection from the wind and to prevent coal dust being blown into the cab. Tenders designed for more frequent tender-first workings were often fitted with a fixed cab panel and windows, providing an almost fully enclosed cab.
See also
Coal bunker
References
Further reading
External links
United States locomotive tenders
Steam locomotive types
Steam locomotive technologies
Locomotive parts
Rail transport
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida%20International%20University
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Florida International University
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Florida International University (FIU) is a public research university with its main campus in the neighborhood of University Park in the Westchester CDP of unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1965 by the Florida Legislature, the school opened its doors to students in 1972. FIU has grown to become the third-largest university in Florida and the eighth-largest public university in the United States by enrollment. FIU is a constituent part of the State University System of Florida.
The university is classified among the Carnegie "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" institutions. FIU has 11 colleges and more than 40 centers, facilities, labs, and institutes that offer more than 200 programs of study. It has an annual budget of over $1.7 billion and an annual economic impact of over $5 billion. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
FIU's intercollegiate sports teams, the FIU Panthers, compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Conference USA (C-USA). FIU's varsity sports teams have won five athletic championships and Panther athletes have won various individual NCAA national championships. Kenneth A. Jessell has served as President of FIU since 2022.
History
In 1943, state senator Ernest 'Cap' Graham (father of future Florida governor and U.S. senator Bob Graham) presented the state legislature with the initial proposal for the establishment of a public university in Miami-Dade County. While his bill did not pass, Graham persisted in presenting his proposal to colleagues, advising them of the county's need for a state university. He felt the establishment of a public university was necessary to serve the city's growing population.
In 1964, Senate Bill 711 was introduced by Florida senator Robert M. Haverfield. It instructed the state Board of Education and the Board of Regents to begin planning for the development of the state university. The bill was signed into law by then-governor W. Haydon Burns in June 1965.
FIU's founding president Charles "Chuck" Perry was appointed by the board of regents in July 1969, at which time the institution was named Florida International University. At 32 years old, the new president was the youngest in the history of the State University System and, at the time, the youngest university president in the country. Perry recruited three co-founders, Butler Waugh, Donald McDowell and Nick Sileo. Alvah Chapman, Jr., former Miami Herald publisher and Knight Ridder chairman, used his civic standing and media power to assist the effort. In the 1980s, Chapman became chair of the FIU Foundation Board of Trustees.
The founders located the campus on the site of the original Tamiami Airport (not related to the later Kendall-Tamiami Airport) on the Tamiami Trail (U.S. Route 41) between Southwest 107th and 117th Avenues, just east of where the West Dade Expressway (now the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike) was being planned. The abandoned airport's air traffic control tower became FIU's first building, with Perry's office on the first floor. It originally had no telephones, no drinking water, and no furniture. Perry decided that the tower should never be destroyed, and it remains on campus, where it is now known variously as the "Veterans Office," "Ivory Tower," the "Tower Building," or the "Public Safety Tower," and is the former location of the FIU Police Department.
Groundbreaking for the Tamiami campus was held in January 1971. U Thant received FIU's first honorary degree.
Miami-Dade County's public university
In September 1972, 5,667 students entered the new state university, the largest opening day enrollment at the time. Eighty percent of the student body had just graduated from Dade County Junior College (now Miami-Dade College). A typical student entering FIU was 25 years old and attending school full-time while holding down a full-time job. Forty-three percent were married. Negotiations with the University of Miami and Dade County Junior College led FIU to open as an upper-division only school; Perry's vision foresaw a "no gimmicks" institution with no student housing. It would be nine years before lower-division classes were added.
The first commencement, held in June 1973, took place in the reading room of the ground floor of Primera Casa – the only place large enough on campus for the ceremony. More than 1,500 family members and friends watched FIU's first class of 191 graduates receive their diplomas.
By late 1975, after seven years at the helm, Charles Perry felt he had accomplished his goal and left the university to become president and publisher of the Sunday newspaper magazine Family Weekly (later USA Weekend), one of the country's largest magazines. When he left, there were more than 10,000 students attending classes and a campus with five major buildings and a sixth being planned.
Crosby and Wolfe: 1976–1986
Harold Crosby, the university's second president and the founding president of the University of West Florida in Pensacola, agreed in 1976 to serve a three-year "interim" term. Under his leadership, FIU's North Miami Campus (which was officially renamed the Bay Vista Campus in 1980, the North Miami Campus in 1987, the North Campus in 1994, and the Biscayne Bay Campus in 2000)—located on the former Interama site on Biscayne Bay—was opened in 1977. State senator Jack Gordon was instrumental in securing funding for the development of the campus. President Crosby emphasized the university's international character, prompting the launching of new programs with an international focus and the recruitment of faculty from the Caribbean and Latin America. President Crosby's resignation in January 1979 triggered the search for a "permanent" president.
Gregory Baker Wolfe, a former United States diplomat and then-president of Portland State University, became FIU's third president, serving from 1979 to 1986. During his tenure, the institution continued to grow; it became a four-year institution, though Wolfe was criticized for not hiring enough minorities and for leading a weak private fundraising effort. After stepping down as president, Wolfe taught in the university's international relations department. The student union on the Biscayne Bay Campus is named in his honor.
Maidique presidency and expansion
Modesto A. Maidique assumed the presidency at FIU in 1986, becoming the fourth in the university's history and the first Hispanic leader of any of Florida's state universities. Maidique graduated with a Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), before joining the private sector. He held academic appointments from MIT, Harvard and Stanford Universities, and has been named to several US presidential boards and committees.
Under his leadership, FIU heralded in an era of unprecedented growth and prestige, with all facets of the university undergoing major transformations. Physically, the university tripled in size and its enrollment grew to nearly 40,000. During his 23 years as president, the school established the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, the FIU College of Law, the FIU School of Architecture, and the Robert Stempel School of Public Health. Also during his tenure, the endowment grew from less than $2 million to over $100 million.
During Maidique's tenure, the university added 22 new doctoral programs. Research expenditures grew from about $6 million to nearly $110 million as defined by the National Science Foundation. In 2000, FIU attained the highest ranking in the Carnegie Foundation classification system, that of "Doctoral/Research University-Extensive." FIU's faculty has engaged in research and holds far-reaching expertise in reducing morbidity and mortality from cancer, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, diabetes and other diseases, and change the approaches to the delivery of health care by medical, public health, nursing and other healthcare professionals, hurricane mitigation, climate change, nano-technologies, forensic sciences, and the development of biomedical devices.
The arts also flourished while Maidique was at the helm, with the university acquiring The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum on Miami Beach and building the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum on its main campus. In athletics, FIU made inroads in becoming a powerhouse athletic university during Maidique's time as president; he unilaterally changed the mascot from the Sunblazers to the Golden Panthers early in his tenure, and he championed the eventual establishment of an NCAA football program. Finally, the school earned membership into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest honor society.
Maidique was the second longest-serving research university president in the nation. Now President Emeritus, he currently serves as the Alvah H. Chapman, Jr., Eminent Scholar Chair in Leadership, and Professor of Management at FIU.
Rosenberg presidency
On November 14, 2008, Maidique announced that he would be stepping down and asked FIU's board of trustees to begin the search of a new president. He said he would remain president until a new one was found. On April 25, 2009, Mark B. Rosenberg was selected to become FIU's fifth president. He signed a five-year contract with the board of trustees. On August 29, 2009, Rosenberg became FIU's fifth president.
Having started as a two-year upper division university, FIU has grown into a much larger traditional university and serves international students. More than $600 million has been invested in campus construction, with the addition of new residence halls, the FIU Stadium, recreation center, student center, and Greek life mansions, as well as the fielding of the Division I-A Golden Panthers football team in 2002.
Since 1986, the university established its School of Architecture, College of Law and College of Medicine (named the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in 1999 after Herbert Wertheim donated $20 million to the college, which was matched by state funds and is the largest donation in the university's history), and acquired the historic Wolfsonian-FIU Museum in Miami Beach.
FIU now emphasizes research as a major component of its mission and is now classed as a "very high research activity" university under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Sponsored research funding (grants and contracts) from external sources for the year 2007–2008 totaled some $110 million. FIU has a budget of over $649 million. The Florida International University School of Hospitality & Tourism Management collaborated with the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China to work on preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics. FIU was the only university in the United States invited to do so.
In December 2013, it was announced Royal Caribbean was building a $20 million 130,000 sq. ft. training facility for its performers at the school. The facility opened in March 2015. The complex serves architecture, art, and hospitality students and includes lighting, set design, marketing, and other internship and training opportunities.
On March 15, 2018, a newly constructed pedestrian bridge collapsed outside the university, resulting in six fatalities. On May 6, 2020, Florida Department of Transportation announced plans to design and rebuild the bridge.
Rosenberg suddenly resigned from the university effective January 21, 2022, citing deteriorating health conditions of his wife. Just a week later it was revealed that he stepped down because he had made advances to a younger female employee, "causing discomfort," and creating a hostile work environment. Rosenberg is currently a professor of political science and international relations at the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at FIU.
Jessell presidency
Rosenberg was succeeded by Kenneth A. Jessell as president, previously FIU's chief financial officer and senior vice president for finance and administration. Jessell was selected as FIU's sixth president on October 17, 2022 by FIU's board of trustees and was and was confirmed by the Florida Board of Governors on November 9, 2022.
Campus
Florida International's 344-acre (139 ha) campus is in the neighborhood of University Park in the census-designated place of Westchester in an unincorporated area of western Miami-Dade County, Florida. The Modesto A. Maidique Campus ("MMC")—formerly called University Park but renamed in 2009—encompasses . The MMC houses almost all of the university's colleges and schools as well as all the administrative offices and main university facilities. MMC is also home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential House, the home of FIU's president; the Wertheim Performing Arts Center; the Frost Art Museum; the International Hurricane Research Center; and the university's athletic facilities such as FIU Stadium, FIU Arena, and the FIU Baseball Stadium.
The postal address of the Modesto Maidique campus is designated as being of "Miami, Florida" and the ZIP code is 33199, while the campus is physically in the Westchester census-designated place as of the 2020 U.S. Census. In the 1990 U.S. Census it was in the Olympia Heights CDP. In the 2000 U.S. Census and the 2010 U.S. Census this campus was in the University Park CDP.
The site of the campus was originally used for a general aviation airport called Tamiami Airport (not to be confused with Kendall-Tamiami Airport), which was in operation from the 1940s until 1967, when it relocated to a new site. The airport had three runways and was used for pilot training, among other purposes. The original campus was named the Tamiami Campus, after the nearby Tamiami Trail highway and the former airport, until being designated the University Park Campus in 1987.
Until the early 1990s, the runways, parking ramp, and other features of Tamiami Airport were still visible on campus and clearly discernible in aerial photos. Construction has removed all of these features, and only the University Tower remains as a memory of the university's past. University Park is a heavily vegetated campus, with many lakes, a 15-acre nature preserve, and a palm arboretum, with over 90 buildings. As of late 2009, current construction at University Park includes the Nursing and Health Sciences Building, the School of International and Public Affairs Building, and a fifth parking garage.
On June 12, 2009, FIU's board of trustees voted unanimously to rename the University Park campus to the Modesto Maidique Campus; the university had considered naming the law school in his honor but decided not to because that would preclude a future charitable donation to name the school. The change created a large backlash from the FIU community, as many felt it unfitting to name the campus after him. A campaign by FIU students and alumni was created to revert the name change, and to keep the name University Park. A Facebook group, "No to Maidique's Campus" with over 2,000 supporters has made national news, in many newspapers, TV news stations, and collegiate magazines, supporting to keep the name "University Park".
Engineering Center
Located five blocks north of Modesto A. Maidique, is the 38-acre (15.3 ha) Engineering Center which houses a part of the College of Engineering and Computing and is the home of FIU's Motorola Nanofabrication Research Facility. The Engineering Center is serviced by the CATS Shuttle, FIU's student buses, which run throughout the day on weekdays connecting the two parts of campus.
Main Modesto A. Maidique buildingshttps://facilities.fiu.edu/Planning/Documents/ProjectsInPlanning/Facilities_Project_Master_List_AP_2_2_2023.pdf
Carlos Finlay Elementary School, of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, is on the FIU Maidique Campus. The National Weather Service Miami Office is also on FIU property. Both Finlay ES and the Hurricane Center are subleased.
Biscayne Bay Campus
The Biscayne Bay Campus (BBC) in North Miami is Florida International's 200-acre (91 ha) waterfront branch campus. It was opened in 1977 by Harold Crosby and occupies land, directly on the bay and adjacent to the Oleta River State Park, with which FIU has a research partnership. Access to these resources inspired the creation of a marine biology program on the Biscayne Bay Campus, which has become one of the university's most recognized programs. The Biscayne Bay Campus also houses the School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Aquatic Center, and the Kovens Conference Center. The Golden Panther Express, FIU's student buses, connect the main campus and the Biscayne Bay Campus throughout the day on weekdays.
On the Biscayne Bay Campus, FIU offers housing through Bayview Student Living apartments. BBC's first on-campus new housing in 30+ years houses 408 students in a high rise overlooking Biscayne Bay. Through FIU's Panther Express Shuttle, current students travel free between campuses.
Regional centers
FIU also has other smaller regional centers located throughout South Florida in both Miami-Dade County and Broward County, serving the local communities in research, continuing studies, and in culture. In Miami-Dade County, there are four regional FIU facilities, the Downtown Miami Center, the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum in Miami Beach (Washington Avenue and 10th St), the FIU-Florida Memorial research center in Miami Gardens, and a research site in Homestead.
FIU at I-75
The FIU at I-75 academic center is a satellite campus located in Miramar, which borders Pembroke Pines and the southernmost portion of Interstate 75 in Broward County. It finished construction in 2014 and is used to satisfy overwhelming demand from Broward County students. The campus houses an 89,000-sqft. complex that offers programs offers courses and program from within the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Business, College of Education, and the College of Engineering & Computing. This campus is also equipped with offices, a computer lab, student lounges, and study spaces for students.
Downtown Miami Center
FIU has a center on Brickell Avenue in Downtown Miami at 1101 Brickell Avenue dubbed "FIU Downtown on Brickell". FIU's College of Business Administration has had classes at the Burdines Building on Flagler Street and the Metropolitan Center had offices at 150 SE 2nd Ave since 2004. In August 2011, FIU expanded its Downtown center to 1101 Brickell with the expansion of course offerings for the College of Business Administration and the School of International and Public Affairs, as well as with FIU's research center, the Metropolitan Center. Most programs in Downtown are graduate-level evening courses geared for Downtown professionals and residents. As of Spring 2011, there were approximately 500 students enrolled at the Downtown center, with plans to grow the center to over 2,000 students by 2021.
Global Forensic and Justice Center, Largo
Founded in 2018, it combines two decades of experience to engage the forensic science and criminal justice industries from the crime scene to the courtroom.
Located at: Bryan Dairy Road, Largo, Florida .
Organization and administration
FIU belongs to the 12-campus State University System of Florida and is one of Florida's primary graduate research universities, awarding over 3,400 graduate and professional degrees annually. The university offers 191 programs of study with more than 280 majors in 23 colleges and schools. FIU offers many graduate programs, including architecture, business administration, engineering, law, and medicine, offering 81 master's degrees, 34 doctoral degrees, and 3 professional degrees.
Student government
The Student Government Association presides over and funds the over 300 student clubs, organizations, and honor societies at the university and has an operating budget of about $20 million each year. The Student Government Association is split into three branches. The Executive branch consists of the Student Body President and Vice President, who are chosen in a university-wide election, and well as the Governor of the Biscayne Bay Campus, who is chosen in an election of students pertaining to that campus. The Executive branch also contains the Cabinet of the Student Body President. The Legislative branch consists of the Student Body Senate. The Judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court. The Student Body President serves as a member of the FIU Board of Trustees, while the Student Body Vice President serves as a member of the FIU Foundation's Board of Directors.
The Student Government oversees several Agencies which provide programming to the student body: the Homecoming Council, the Student Programming Council, Panther Power, and the Registered Student Organizations Council, which is responsible for registering the over 300 student organizations and distributing funding allocated by the Student Government. Panther Power is the student spirit group, and it can be seen in all FIU athletic events alongside the Band, the Dazzlers dance team, and the cheerleaders. In addition, the Student Government oversees several Bureaus which provide community for identity groups on campus, including the Black Student Union and the Pride Student Union.
Presidents
Colleges and Schools
Academics
FIU offers 191 academic programs, 60 baccalaureate programs, 81 master's programs, 3 specialist programs, 34 doctoral programs, and 4 professional programs in 23 colleges and schools. In addition, 97% of the faculty have terminal degrees, and 50% currently have tenure at the university with a student/teacher ratio of 27:1.
In the early 2000s (decade), emphasis at FIU was placed on growth in degree programs and student enrollment. Since 2005 however, student enrollment has been capped and emphasis became placed on improving the quality of the existing academic programs. With the addition of the College of Medicine, the demand for facilities and classroom space has greatly increased.
Tuition
For the 2019–2020 academic year, tuition costs are:
Undergraduate $205.57 per credit hour for in-state students, and $618.87 per credit hour for out-of-state students. Total tuition/fees :$7,916 for in-state and $20,314 for out of state
Graduate $455.64 per credit hour for in-state students, and $1,001.69 per credit hour for out-of-state students. Total tuition/fees :$9,600 for in-state and $19,428 for out of state
Law School (day) $675.67 per credit hour for in-state students, and $1,101.87 per credit hour for out-of-state students. Total tuition/fees:$20,660 for in-state and $33,446 for out of state
Law School (night) $506.77 per credit hour for in-state students, and $851.40 per credit hour for out-of-state students. Total tuition/fees:$15,593 for in-state and $25,932 for out of state
Admissions
Florida International University students, numbering 56,592 in Fall 2021, come from more than 130 countries, and all 50 U.S. states. The ratio of women to men is 57:43, and 28.9 percent are graduate and professional students. Professional degree programs include Law, Medicine, Engineering, Business Administration, and Nursing.
The Fall 2021 incoming freshman class had an average 4.34 GPA, 1338 SAT score, and a 28.66 ACT score. The freshman retention rate for 2021 was 100%. The most popular College by enrollment is the College of Arts and Sciences.
For Fall 2021, 24,351 students applied for graduate admissions throughout the university. Of those, 8,043 (33.02%) were accepted. The Wertheim College of Medicine admitted 5.1% of its applicants, and the College of Law admitted 22%. Admission to the Wertheim College of Medicine is competitive, and the college has one of the highest number of applicants in the state, greater than the University of Florida. For Fall 2010, 3,606 students applied for 43 spots.
The FIU School of Architecture is the most competitive in Florida, with the lowest admission rate in the state at 14% (2011). For Fall 2009, the School of Architecture received over 1,000 applications for the first-year Master of Architecture program, with 60 being accepted, giving the School of Architecture a 6% admissions rate. The average high school GPA for the freshman class in the School of Architecture was 3.98, also making it one of the most selective schools at FIU.
Enrollment
Total enrollment in Fall 2022 was 55,687 students, with 45,442 being undergraduate students and 10,245 being graduate students.
In 2018, 4.68% of FIU students were recognized as international students. Of those, the most popular countries of origin were: Venezuela (17.1%), China (11.7%), Kuwait (7.4%), India (5.1%), Brazil (4.4%), and Colombia (3.3%). In total, 2,738 international students enrolled at Florida International University.
Students from New York, New Jersey, and California make up the largest states for out-of-state students. Floridians make up 90% of the student population. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, and Orange County make up the largest Florida counties for in-state students.
University Park accounted for 87% of the student population and 94% of housing students. The Biscayne Bay Campus accounted for about 13% of the student population, mostly of lower-division undergraduates and students of the School of Hospitality & Tourism Management. According to U.S. News college rankings and reviews, 92% of FIU students live off-campus, while 8% of students live in "college-owned, college-operated or college-affiliated" housing.
Rankings
For 2023, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida International University as the 72nd best public university in the United States, and 151st overall among all national universities, public and private.
For 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida International University as the 34th most innovative university in the United States. This ranking is determined by the top-ranked schools that are making the most innovative improvements in terms of curriculum, campus life, technology, and facilities.
For 2023, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida International University as the 4th best university in the United States for Social Mobility. This ranking was determined by which colleges are more successful than others at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants.
For 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida International University as the 99th best university in the United States for Veterans. This ranking is determined by the top-ranked schools that participate in federal initiatives helping veterans and active-duty service members pay for their degrees.
For 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida International University as the 121st best value university in the United States. The calculation used here takes into account a school's academic quality level versus the net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid.
In 2018, Diverse: Issues In Higher Education ranked FIU first in granting bachelor's degrees, seventh in granting master's degrees, and 27th in granting doctoral degrees to minorities in the United States.
In 2013, U.S. News & World Report reported that FIU students are among the least indebted college students in the nation, and recognized the university as a "best buy" in higher education. The organization also reported FIU for having one of the safest campus in the United States.
In 2010, FIU was listed as one of 16 universities with the toughest grading system nationally.
In 2000, FIU became the youngest university to be awarded a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, the country's oldest and most distinguished academic honor society. FIU is one of only 78 universities nationwide to hold both designations.
The Journal of Criminal Justice ranks the Criminal Justice program tenth in the U.S. (November 2007).
Faculty of the PhD program in social welfare rank fourth in the United States in their scholarly accomplishment, according to Academic Analytics in 2007.
College of Business
The College of Business is accredited by the AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
U.S. News & World Reports "America's Best Colleges" (2015) ranks the undergraduate international business program sixth in the nation. It 2015, it ranked the Chapman Graduate School of Business 15th in the nation for an International MBA. FIU is also the only university in Florida to be ranked in the top 15 for undergraduate international business. Bloomberg Businessweek ranked the Landon Undergraduate School of Business in 2012, 11th in Operations Management, and 99th for Accounting. América Economía ranks the Chapman Graduate School of Business 48th for an International MBA.
The Financial Times (2008) ranks the Executive MBA in the top 35 among U.S. Executive MBAs.
Hispanic Business (since 1998) and Hispanic Trends (since 2003) have placed the College of Business among the top 25 business schools for Hispanics. In 2008, it was ranked #8. Fortune Small Business recognized the college as among the best in the United States for entrepreneurship in its listing of "America's Best Colleges for Entrepreneurs," (August 2007), in the "Cross-Disciplinary/Cross Pollination" category. Hispanic Trends ranks the Executive MBA program eighth in its list of the best Executive MBA programs for Hispanics. QS in 2015 ranked FIU's MBA program 58th in North America.
College of Law
The College of Law is currently 88th in the U.S. News & World Report's law school rankings, having risen steadily from 132nd when first ranked. In 2010, the FIU College of Law was ranked among the Top 10 Best Value schools by The National Jurist. The Best Value rating was based on three criteria: bar passage rate, average indebtedness after graduation, and employment nine months after graduation. The FIU College of Law was also ranked third amongst Florida schools for the scholarly impact of its faculty, behind University of Florida and Florida State University. According to the Leiter Rankings, the College of Law has already made a scholarly impact that dramatically outpaces its academic reputation.
FIU graduates achieved the highest passage rate among all Florida law schools on the July 2015, February 2016, and July 2016 exams. In 2007, the College of Law was ranked first in Florida in the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam at 96%. In July 2008, the College of Law achieved a 90.6% passing rate, which placed it second among Florida's ten law schools. In February 2009, the College of Law achieved an 81.5% passing rate, which placed it first among Florida's ten law schools.
On July 1, 2009, Alex Acosta, after leaving the post of United States Attorney (USAG) for South Florida, became FIU's second dean of its law school. He departed FIU to become the United States Secretary of Labor in 2017. In 2019, he stepped down as Labor Secretary after scrutiny of his role as USAG in the minimal sentencing of convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Honors College
Florida International University has a nationally recognized honors program. The FIU Honors College supports the university's long tradition of academic excellence by offering research support, honors housing, library privileges, special scholarships, internships, and study abroad opportunities. The Honors College also has pipeline programs with multiple professional and graduate schools. These programs provide students an
opportunity to know by the end of the sophomore year whether they will be accepted into the program of their choice. The Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, FIU College of Law, FIU College of Engineering and Computing Biomedical Engineering Ph.D., and the Lake Erie College of Medicine's Dentistry, Pharmacy, or Osteopathic Medicine departments have early assurance programs with the FIU Honors College.
Admission into the University Honors Program is selective and in the fall term only. The average academic profile of students that were accepted into honors in 2019 was as follows: 4.4 weighted GPA; 29 ACT composite; 1329 SAT total. The Honors program offers students housing in Parkview Hall which is a living-learning community. Parkview Hall is the traditional home of Honors students since it was completed in 2013, which is situated at the geographic heart of FIU's main campus.
International programs
Florida International University's Education Abroad program (FIU EA) has an international presence in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Every year FIU consistently sends over 1,000 students across the world to study in multiple locations. As a student of EA, students are able to take classes that meet their major and/or minor requirements, study with experts in their field, and earn FIU credit. In addition, the university has exchange agreements with over 70 partner institutions.
In Italy, FIU's presence is centered in the Genoa area. The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum has a regional facility in the Nervi area, and the School of Architecture has facilities in Genoa for FIU's upper-division and graduate architecture students.
In 2006, FIU opened the Florida International University Tianjin Center in China, from which a branch of the School of Hospitality & Tourism Management operates. The Tianjin Center was constructed as a cooperative venture with the local municipal government. It temporarily closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While FIU does not have a campus in Colombia, its extensive involvement in efforts in that country—including river conservation, public health, and justice reform—led the university to designate it one of its "World Centers".
Model United Nations Program
The FIU Model United Nations Program is a program of the School of International and Public Affairs. Each year anywhere between 40 and 80 delegates participate in FIU MUN. FIU MUN is ranked as the first best Model UN Team in North America for the 2018–2019 season.
FIU MUN also hosts an annual high school conference: Florida International Model United Nations (FIMUN). The conference traditionally hosts over 500 high school students.
FIU Libraries
FIU has six libraries, Green Library, FIU's main library; the Glenn Hubert Library (Biscayne Bay Campus), the Wolfsonian Library, the Engineering Library, the Law Library, and the Medical Library. The Green Library, Hubert Library, and Engineering Library Service Center are under the direction of the Dean of University Libraries. Other libraries are overseen by their appropriate schools or organizations.
Together, the entire FIU university-wide Library holdings include over 2,097,207 volumes, 52,511 current serials, 3,587,663 microform units, and 163,715 audio visual units.
Libraries
The Green Library is FIU's main library, is the largest building on campus. Originally designed by Architect David M. Harper in 1973, the Green Library was expanded by the architecture firm M. C. Harry & Associates, Inc. in the early 1990s to its current eight floors, with a capacity to expand to a total of 15 floors, if necessary. The eight-floor structure was built over, through, and around the original three-story library while it was still in use.
The first floor has classrooms, auditorium spaces, and support services for students, such as tutoring, the writing center, and technology assistance. Also on the first floor is an Auntie Anne's and a Starbucks. The second floor has the reference section, cartography (GIS Center), circulation, and numerous computer and printing labs. The third floor is the home of the Medical Library, and includes study lounges as well as a resource center for students of the Honors College. The fourth floor houses the special collections department and university archives. The fifth floor is the home of the School of Architecture Library, as well as the music and audiovisual collections. The sixth and seventh floors are strictly quiet floors, and contain the general book collection along with numerous student study lounges. The eighth floor contains the library's administration offices and technical services departments.
The FIU Engineering Library is located on the second floor of the main building of the Engineering Center.
The FIU Law Library opened in 2002, and has three floors, with all three holding the library's general collection. The third floor has a two-story, quiet reading room, as well as numerous study lounges. Although the Law Library is restricted to Law students, other students may use the library for research purposes.
The FIU Medical Library opened in August 2009 at the same time as the opening of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. The Medical Library offers a rich array of resources, services, and instructional support to advance the teaching and learning, discovery, and healthcare programs of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and is currently located on the third floor of Green Library building. Future construction of buildings for the College of Medicine will include a new space for the Medical Library outside of Green Library, based upon funding and space availability.
The Glenn Hubert Library, previously named the Biscayne Bay Library, is a smaller three-story structure serving the Biscayne Bay Campus. All services at the Green Library are available in the Hubert Library.
The Wolfsonian Library is located at the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum in South Beach, on the corner of Washington Avenue and 10th Street. The collection focuses exclusively on architecture, art, design, and history of the Western World from 1885 to 1945. The library serves mostly as a research library with an extensive collection of primary sources.
Research
Florida International University spent $246 million in annual research expenditures and was awarded $310 million in research awards for fiscal year 2021. Florida International University ranked 107th in total research and development (R&D) expenditures by the National Science Foundation. FIU is classified as a top-tier Doctoral University – Very high research activity by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
International Hurricane Research Center
The International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC) is the nation's only university-based research facility dedicated tropical storm research. It comprises the Laboratory for Coastal Research; the Laboratory for Social Science Research; the Laboratory for Insurance, Financial & Economic Research; and the Laboratory for Wind Engineering Research, as well as the FIU Wall of Wind. The 12-fan Wall of Wind (WoW) at FIU is the largest and most powerful university research facility of its kind and is capable of simulating a Category 5 hurricane. In 2015 the National Science Foundation selected the 12-fan WOW as one of the nation's major "Experimental Facilities" under the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) competition. Not to be confused with the National Hurricane Center (also located at University Park), the IHRC is located on the western side of the campus.
Student life
Traditions
FIU has many traditions from student spirit groups, alumni association events, and student spirit events. Incoming students can attend Panther Camp, originally a weekend retreat in the summer and now a two-day on-campus event, which began in 2006. Week of Welcome, usually held the first or second week of the fall semester, holds many spirit events, such as Trail of the Torch, when the torch of knowledge in front of the Primera Casa building is lit on campus.
Residential life
Florida International University's student housing facilities are managed by the Office of Housing and Residential Life located on the Modesto Maidique Campus (MMC). There are 3,300 students living on campus throughout 10 apartment buildings and 6 residence halls. Students reside in the following buildings: University Apartments, Panther Hall, University Towers, Everglades Hall, Lakeview Hall North, Lakeview Hall South, Honors College @ Parkview Hall, and Tamiami Hall. All rooms are suite style or apartment style and none of the buildings have community bathrooms.
On the Biscayne Bay Campus (BBC), FIU offers housing through Bayview Student Living apartments. BBC's first on-campus new housing in 30+ years houses 408 students in a high rise overlooking Biscayne Bay. Through FIU's Panther Express Shuttle, current students travel free between campuses.
The Office of Housing and Residential Life also offers optional communities in the residence halls known as Living Learning Communities (LLCs). These communities offer residents the opportunity to live with individuals of the same major or interest; including, Business, Changemakers, Engineering, Global Engagement, and Honors Place for Honors College students.
Arts and culture
FIU has three museums, the Frost Art Museum, the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum and the Jewish Museum of Florida. The Frost Art Museum is located on Modesto A. Maidique campus and was opened in 1977 as The Art Museum at Florida International University. The Frost Art Museum's Permanent Collection consists of a broad array of art objects from ancient cultural artifacts to contemporary works of art. The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum is located in Miami Beach and promotes the collection, preservation and understanding of decorative art and design from the period from 1885 to 1945. FIU also has a large sculpture collection, named the Sculpture Park at FIU, with sculptures from such prominent artists as Anthony Caro, Jacques Lipchitz, Daniel Joseph Martinez, and Tony Rosenthal. Many different art structures, statues, paintings and mosaics can be seen throughout campus in gardens, buildings, walkways, and on walls.
The School of Music presents an annual series of concerts in a variety of genres, as well as learning facilities and opportunities for musicians. The concert season incorporates music of all styles including jazz, early music, chamber music, choral/vocal, contemporary music, wind, and opera theater performed by world class musicians and ensembles. Many masterclasses and lectures are also open to the public and offered at no charge. The season runs from August through April each year.
The Department Theatre presents a season of four professionally designed, produced and directed productions each year that serve as a laboratory for students. its Main Stage season is presented at the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center. In addition to Main Stage productions students write, direct and perform productions in the Student Theatre Lab Studio, the annual New Plays Festival, and the summer Alternative Theatre Festival. The summer Alternative Theatre Festival includes a development project of a new work by an established playwright, a faculty directed piece, one student directed piece, and may include Alumni showcase and reunion productions.
The Florida International University School of Hospitality & Tourism Managementhosts the Annual Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival in South Beach, a major national culinary event.
Order of the Torch
The Order of the Torch is a semi-secret honorary leadership society akin to other secret societies in the state such as Florida Blue Key at the University of Florida and the Iron Arrow Honor Society at the University of Miami. The organization is rumored to have been founded in 2003 as a way of organizing student leadership to restructure student life to mirror that of a traditional university. Members now include students, faculty, staff and community members, including FIU alumni Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez (class of 1974). Top leadership in Student Government, Homecoming, and the most elite campus fraternal organizations rank among its members.
Greek life
Approximately 1,100 undergraduate students ( or approximately 2%) are members of either a fraternity or sorority. The Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Florida International University is separated into four divisions: Interfraternity Council (IFC), National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), Multicultural Greek Council (MGC), and the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC). The Order of Omega, a Greek honor society, has had a chapter at the university since 1991 and represents the academic top three percent of FIU Greeks.
The Interfraternity Council (IFC) comprises 12 fraternities, and the Panhellenic Council is made up of 7 sororities.
The Multicultural Greek Council consists of 7 cultural organizations (Latino, Asian, South Asian, etc.), three fraternities and four sororities. The National Pan-Hellenic Council comprises nine historically black organizations, five fraternities and four sororities.
There are 29 Academic Honor Societies as well Greek service organizations for students such as Phi Delta Epsilon.
In December 2017, Greek life activities were temporarily paused by the university in the wake of a series of hazing events nationally and the discovery of a group chat of Tau Kappa Epsilon members that contained photos of nude women. TKE and two other institutions, Phi Gamma Delta ("Fiji") and Pi Kappa Phi, were suspended when the university allowed fraternities and sororities to resume. FIU obtained the property of the Greek houses occupied by the latter two fraternities, the only such houses on campus.
Campus and area transportation
The main campus is located on the south side of the Tamiami Trail (U.S. Route 41/SW 8th Street) between SW 107th and SW 117th Avenue next to Florida's Turnpike and near the western terminus of the Dolphin Expressway.
Miami-Dade Transit serves University Park with Metrobus lines 8, 11, 24, and 71. Metrobus lines 75 and 135 serve the Biscayne Bay Campus. Bus lines 8, 11 and the 24 directly connect FIU with Downtown Miami.
Two distinct FIU-operated bus lines are available. The CATS Shuttle runs between University Park and the Engineering Center, and the Golden Panther Express, from University Park to the Biscayne Bay Campus. The CATS Shuttle connects University Park from the Graham Center bus stop and the Engineering and Computer Sciences Building, to the Engineering Center on Flagler Street and 107th Avenue.
There has long been plans for Metrorail, the local heavy rail rapid transit system to be extended west, with two proposed lines terminating at Florida International University's main campus. This would ease traffic and parking problems at and around the main campus.
Student media
FIU Student Media includes PantherNOW, the student newspaper and its accompanying website, and FIU's radio station, WRGP.
PantherNOW is the FIU student newspaper, founded in 1972 and having printed under various titles. PantherNOW is published in print form monthly and also maintains a website, PantherNOW.com. WRGP "The Roar", with antecedents dating to 1988 and broadcasting on FM since 1999, is FIU's student-run radio station, with transmitters in Homestead and on the Maidique and Biscayne Bay campuses.
In television and entertainment
FIU's campus has been the set for many films, television shows, and music videos. One of the earliest television shows to have filmed at FIU was Miami Vice; an episode partially filmed in the then-brand-new Sunblazer Arena was recorded in 1986, just after its opening. The TV show Burn Notice has also filmed various episodes at FIU, with scenes at the College of Business Buildings and the Diaz-Balart College of Law Building. In 2007, Chris Brown filmed the music video for his song "Kiss Kiss" at FIU, with scenes near the Frost Art Museum and around the Graham Center. Various telenovelas for Telemundo and Univision have filmed television episodes at FIU as well. In 2007, Telemundo's Pecados Ajenos was filmed in the Graham Center.
In 2004, MTV's Campus Invasion Tour was held at FIU, bringing numerous bands such as Hoobastank to FIU.
In 2009, TLC's What Not to Wear filmed an episode on campus at the Management and Advanced Research Center. In October 2009, former CNN news anchor Rick Sanchez broadcast his CNN show from the Graham Center at FIU. Three years later, in 2012, G4TV held the Northeast and Southeast regional qualifying rounds of the television show American Ninja Warrior at FIU. The competition took place in the traffic loop between the School of Architecture and the College of Business. Three years after that, in 2015, Florida International University hosted the Miss Universe 2014 pageant in the FIU Arena.
Athletics
Florida International University has seventeen varsity sports teams, named the Panthers. The athletic colors for the Panthers are blue and gold, and they compete in the NCAA Division I as part of Conference USA in all sports. Three main sports facilities serve as home venues for Panther athletics. The Panthers football team plays at Riccardo Silva Stadium ("The Cage"), the men and women's basketball and volleyball teams play at the Ocean Bank Convocation Center, and the men's baseball team plays at Infinity Insurance Park. Other athletics venues include the Aquatic Center, Tennis Complex, softball fields, and various other recreational fields. On July 1, 2013, FIU became a member of Conference USA.
Traditional rivals of the FIU Panthers include Florida Atlantic University and the University of Miami. The Panthers football team competes in the Shula Bowl, an annual football game played for the Don Shula Award against in-state rival Florida Atlantic University. Due to this competition, the rivalry between the two schools has grown, with the rivalry extending into the men's baseball and basketball teams as well.
The Panthers football team plays home games at Riccardo Silva Stadium, nicknamed "The Cage", and are currently coached by Mike MacIntyre. In 2005, the Panthers moved to the Sun Belt Conference, making their transition from Division I-FCS to Division I-FBS complete. In their first season in the conference, the Panthers began by finishing 5–6. The football program has one conference title to date—in 2010, when it won the Sun Belt Conference title and played in the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl against Toledo, winning late in the fourth quarter.
The FIU men's basketball team has one NCAA tournament appearance to its record. Currently coached by Jeremy Ballard, past coaches include Isiah Thomas and Richard Pitino.
FIU's athletics department has produced many professional and Olympic athletes, including current players in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, National Basketball Association, National Football League and the Women's National Basketball Association. Notable alumni include Mike Lowell, Raja Bell, Carlos Arroyo, and Tayna Lawrence.
Notable alumni
FIU currently has over 275,000 alumni around the world in more than 138 countries. FIU graduates more than 10,000 students a year. Alumni services is run by the Florida International University Alumni Association, which sponsors numerous alumni events, galas, and ceremonies annually.
See also
Notes
References
External links
Florida International University Athletics website
1965 establishments in Florida
Universities and colleges established in 1965
Public universities and colleges in Florida
Universities and colleges accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
Universities and colleges in Broward County, Florida
Universities and colleges in Miami-Dade County, Florida
Westchester, Florida
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George%20Armitage%20Miller
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George Armitage Miller
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George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, an online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental findings considered together reveal the presence of an average limit of seven for human short-term memory capacity. This paper is frequently cited by psychologists and in the wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science.
Miller began his career when the reigning theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Rejecting this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematical methods to analyze mental processes, focusing particularly on speech and language. Working mostly at Harvard University, MIT and Princeton University, he went on to become one of the founders of psycholinguistics and was one of the key figures in founding the broader new field of cognitive science, . He collaborated and co-authored work with other figures in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, such as Noam Chomsky. For moving psychology into the realm of mental processes and for aligning that move with information theory, computation theory, and linguistics, Miller is considered one of the great twentieth-century psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Miller as the 20th most cited psychologist of that era.
Biography
Miller was born on February 3, 1920, in Charleston, West Virginia, the son of George E. Miller, a steel company executive and Florence (née Armitage) Miller. Soon after his birth, his parents divorced, and he lived with his mother during the Great Depression, attending public school and graduating from Charleston High School in 1937. He moved with his mother and stepfather to Washington, D.C., and attended George Washington University for a year. His family practiced Christian Science, which required turning to prayer, rather than medical science, for healing. After his stepfather was transferred to Birmingham, Alabama, Miller transferred to the University of Alabama.
At the University of Alabama he took courses in phonetics, voice science, and speech pathology, earning his bachelor's degree in history and speech in 1940, and a master's in a speech in 1941. Membership in the Drama club had fostered his interest in courses in the Speech Department. He was also influenced by Professor Donald Ramsdell, who introduced him both to psychology, and, indirectly through a seminar, to his future wife Katherine James. They married on November 29, 1939. Katherine died in January 1996. He married Margaret Ferguson Skutch Page in 2008.
Miller taught the course "Introduction to Psychology" at Alabama for two years. He enrolled in the Ph.D. program in psychology at Harvard University in 1943, after coming to the university in 1942. At Harvard he worked in Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, under the supervision of Stanley Smith Stevens, researching military voice communications for the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He received his doctorate in 1946; his doctoral thesis, "The Optimal Design of Jamming Signals," was classified top secret by the US Army.
Career
After receiving his doctorate, Miller stayed at Harvard as a research fellow, continuing his research on speech and hearing. He was appointed an assistant professor of psychology in 1948. The course he developed on language and communication eventually led to his first major book, Language and communication (1951). He took a sabbatical in 1950, and spent a year as a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, to pursue his interest in mathematics. Miller befriended J. Robert Oppenheimer, with whom he played squash. In 1951, Miller joined MIT as an associate professor of psychology. He led the psychology group at the MIT Lincoln Lab and worked on voice communication and human engineering. A notable outcome of this research was his identification of the minimal voice features of speech required for it to be intelligible. Based on this work, in 1955, he was invited to talk at the Eastern Psychological Association. That presentation, "The magical number seven, plus or minus two", was later published as a paper which went on to be a legendary one in cognitive psychology.
Miller moved back to Harvard as a tenured associate professor in 1955 and became a full professor in 1958, expanding his research into how language affects human cognition. At the university, he met a young Noam Chomsky, another of the founders of cognitive science. They spent a summer together at Stanford, where their two families shared a house. In 1958–59, Miller took leave to join the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, California, (now at Stanford University). There he collaborated with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram on the book Plans and the Structure of Behavior. In 1960, along with Jerome S. Bruner, he co-founded the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard. The cognitive term was a break from the then-dominant school of behaviorism, which insisted cognition was not fit for scientific study. The center attracted such notable visitors as Jean Piaget, Alexander Luria and Chomsky. Miller then became the chair of the psychology department. Miller was instrumental at the time for recruiting Timothy Leary to teach at Harvard. Miller knew Leary from the University of Alabama, where Miller was teaching psychology and Leary graduated with an undergraduate degree from the department.
In 1967, Miller taught at Rockefeller University for a year, as a visiting professor, From 1968 to 1979, he was Professor at the Rockefeller and continued as adjunct professor there from 1979 to 1982. Following the election of a new president at Rockefeller Miller moved to Princeton University as the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology. At Princeton he helped to found (in 1986) the Cognitive Science Laboratory, and also directed the McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Science.. Eventually, he became a professor emeritus and senior research psychologist at Princeton.
Miller had honorary doctorates from the University of Sussex (1984), Columbia University (1980), Yale University (1979), Catholic University of Louvain (1978), Carnegie Mellon University (in humane letters, 2003), and an honorary DSC from Williams College (2000). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1957, the National Academy of Sciences in 1962, the presidency of the Eastern Psychological Association in 1962, the presidency of the American Psychological Association in 1969, the American Philosophical Society in 1971, and to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. Miller was the keynote speaker at the first convention of the Association for Psychological Science in 1989. He was a Fulbright research fellow at Oxford University in 1964–65, and in 1991, received the National Medal of Science.
Death
In his later years, Miller enjoyed playing golf. He died in 2012 at his home in Plainsboro, New Jersey of complications of pneumonia and dementia. At the time of his death, he was survived by his wife Margaret; the children from his first marriage: son Donnally James and daughter Nancy Saunders; two stepsons, David Skutch and Christopher Skutch; and three grandchildren: Gavin Murray-Miller, Morgan Murray-Miller and Nathaniel James Miller.
Major contributions
Miller began his career in a period during which behaviorism dominated research psychology. It was argued that observable processes are the proper subject matter of science, that behavior is observable and mental processes are not. Thus, mental processes were not a fit topic for study. Miller disagreed. He and others such Jerome Bruner and Noam Chomsky founded the field of Cognitive Psychology, which accepted the study of mental processes as fundamental to an understanding of complex behavior. In succeeding years, this cognitive approach largely replaced behaviorism as the framework governing research in psychology.
Working memory
From the days of William James, psychologists had distinguished short-term from long-term memory. While short-term memory seemed to be limited, its limits were not known. In 1956, Miller put a number on that limit in the paper "The magical number seven, plus or minus two". He derived this number from tasks such as asking a person to repeat a set of digits, presenting a stimulus and a label and requiring recall of the label, or asking the person to quickly count things in a group. In all three cases, Miller found the average limit to be seven items. He later had mixed feelings about this work, feeling that it had been often been misquoted, and he jokingly suggested that he was being persecuted by an integer. Miller invented the term chunk to characterize the way that individuals could cope with this limitation on memory, effectively reducing the number of elements by grouping them. A chunk might be a single letter or a familiar word or even a larger familiar unit. These and related ideas strongly influenced the budding field of cognitive psychology.
WordNet
For many years starting from 1986, Miller directed the development of WordNet, a large computer-readable electronic reference usable in applications such as search engines, which was created by a team that included Christiane Fellbaum, among others. Wordnet is a large lexical database representing human semantic memory in English. Its fundamental building block is a synset, which is a collection of synonyms representing a concept or idea. Words can be in multiple synsets. The entire class of synsets is grouped into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs separately, with links existing only within these four major groups but not between them. Going beyond a thesaurus, WordNet also includes inter-word relationships such as part/whole relationships and hierarchies of inclusion.Although not intended to be a dictionary, Wordnet did have many short definitions added to it as time went on. Miller and colleagues had planned the tool to test psycholinguistic theories on how humans use and understand words. Miller also later worked closely with entrepreneur Jeff Stibel and scientists at Simpli.com Inc., on a meaning-based keyword search engine based on WordNet. Wordnet has proved to be extremely influential on an international scale. It has now been emulated by wordnets in many different languages.
Psychology of language
Miller is one of the founders of psycholinguistics, which links language and cognition in the analysis of language creation and usage. His 1951 book Language and Communication is considered seminal in the field. His later book, The Science of Words (1991) also focused on the psychology of language. Together with Noam Chomsky he published papers on the mathematical and computational aspects of language and its syntax, two new areas of study. Miller also studied the human understanding of words and sentences, a problem also faced by artificial speech-recognition technology. The book Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), written with Eugene Galanter and Karl H. Pribram, explored how humans plan and act, trying to extrapolate this to how a robot could be programmed to plan and act. Miller is also known for coining Miller's Law: "In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of".
Books
Miller authored several books, many considered the first major works in their respective fields.
Language and Communication, 1951
Miller's Language and Communication was one of the first significant texts in the study of language behavior. The book was a scientific study of language, emphasizing quantitative data, and was based on the mathematical model of Claude Shannon's information theory. It used a probabilistic model imposed on a learning-by-association scheme borrowed from behaviorism, with Miller not yet attached to a pure cognitive perspective. The first part of the book reviewed information theory, the physiology and acoustics of phonetics, speech recognition and comprehension, and statistical techniques to analyze language. The focus was more on speech generation than recognition. The second part had the psychology: idiosyncratic differences across people in language use; developmental linguistics; the structure of word associations in people; use of symbolism in language; and social aspects of language use.
Reviewing the book, Charles E. Osgood classified the book as a graduate-level text based more on objective facts than on theoretical constructs. He thought the book was verbose on some topics and too brief on others not directly related to the author's expertise area. He was also critical of Miller's use of simple, Skinnerian single-stage stimulus-response learning to explain human language acquisition and use. This approach, per Osgood, made it impossible to analyze the concept of meaning, and the idea of language consisting of representational signs. He did find the book objective in its emphasis on facts over theory, and depicting clearly application of information theory to psychology.
Plans and the Structure of Behavior, 1960
In Plans and the Structure of Behavior, Miller and his co-authors tried to explain through an artificial-intelligence computational perspective how animals plan and act. This was a radical break from behaviorism which explained behavior as a set or sequence of stimulus-response actions. The authors introduced a planning element controlling such actions. They saw all plans as being executed based on input using a stored or inherited information of the environment (called the image), and using a strategy called test-operate-test-exit (TOTE). The image was essentially a stored memory of all past context, akin to Tolman's cognitive map. The TOTE strategy, in its initial test phase, compared the input against the image; if there was incongruity the operate function attempted to reduce it. This cycle would be repeated till the incongruity vanished, and then the exit function would be invoked, passing control to another TOTE unit in a hierarchically arranged scheme.
Peter Milner, in a review in the Canadian Journal of Psychology, noted the book was short on concrete details on implementing the TOTE strategy. He also critically viewed the book as not being able to tie its model to details from neurophysiology at a molecular level. Per him, the book covered only the brain at the gross level of lesion studies, showing that some of its regions could possibly implement some TOTE strategies, without giving a reader an indication as to how the region could implement the strategy.
The Psychology of Communication, 1967
Miller's 1967 work, The Psychology of Communication, was a collection of seven previously published articles. The first "Information and Memory" dealt with chunking, presenting the idea of separating physical length (the number of items presented to be learned) and psychological length (the number of ideas the recipient manages to categorize and summarize the items with). Capacity of short-term memory was measured in units of psychological length, arguing against a pure behaviorist interpretation since meaning of items, beyond reinforcement and punishment, was central to psychological length.
The second essay was the paper on magical number seven. The third, 'The human link in communication systems,' used information theory and its idea of channel capacity to analyze human perception bandwidth. The essay concluded how much of what impinges on us we can absorb as knowledge was limited, for each property of the stimulus, to a handful of items. The paper on "Psycholinguists" described how effort in both speaking or understanding a sentence was related to how much of self-reference to similar-structures-present-inside was there when the sentence was broken down into clauses and phrases. The book, in general, used the Chomskian view of seeing language rules of grammar as having a biological basis—disproving the simple behaviorist idea that language performance improved with reinforcement—and using the tools of information and computation to place hypotheses on a sound theoretical framework and to analyze data practically and efficiently. Miller specifically addressed experimental data refuting the behaviorist framework at concept level in the field of language and cognition. He noted this only qualified behaviorism at the level of cognition, and did not overthrow it in other spheres of psychology.
Legacy
The Cognitive Neuroscience Society established a George A. Miller Prize in 1995 for contributions to the field. The American Psychological Association established a George A. Miller Award in 1995 for an outstanding article on general psychology. From 1987 the department of psychology at Princeton University has presented the George A. Miller prize annually to the best interdisciplinary senior thesis in cognitive science. The paper on the magical number seven continues to be cited by both the popular press to explain the liking for seven-digit phone numbers and to argue against nine-digit zip codes, and by academia, especially modern psychology, to highlight its break with the behaviorist paradigm.
Miller was considered the 20th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century in a list republished by, among others, the American Psychological Association.
Awards
Distinguished Scientific Contribution award from the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1963.
Distinguished Service award from the American Speech and Hearing Association, 1976.
Award in Behavioral Sciences from the New York Academy of Sciences, 1982.
Guggenheim fellow in 1986.
William James fellow of the American Psychological Society, 1989.
Hermann von Helmholtz award from the Cognitive Neurosciences Institute, 1989.
Gold Medal from the American Psychological Foundation in 1990.
National Medal of Science from The White House, 1991.
Louis E. Levy medal from the Franklin Institute, 1991.
International Prize from the Fyssen Foundation, 1992.
William James Book award from the APA Division of General Psychology, 1993.
John P. McGovern award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000.
Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology award from the APA in 2003.
Antonio Zampolli Prize from the European Languages Research Association, 2006.
Works
Chapters in books
References
External links
2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part I
2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part II
2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part III
2007 discussion on the cognitive revolution, with Chomsky, Bruner, Pinker and others: Part IV
Classics in the history of psychology: The seven plus/minus two paper
Bio on Kurtzweil.net
Old faculty page
Communication, Language, and Meaning (edited by Miller)
A blog with links to discussions on the seven-plus-minus-two paper
Neurotree: Miller's academic genealogy
20th-century American psychologists
American cognitive psychologists
Memory researchers
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Harvard University Department of Psychology faculty
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows
National Medal of Science laureates
Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
American consciousness researchers and theorists
Princeton University faculty
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
University of Alabama faculty
University of Alabama alumni
Charleston High School (West Virginia) alumni
Scientists from West Virginia
People from Charleston, West Virginia
1920 births
2012 deaths
Presidents of the American Psychological Association
Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society
MIT Lincoln Laboratory people
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Fulbright alumni
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian%20Compromise%20of%201867
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Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867
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The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (, ) established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which was a military and diplomatic alliance of two sovereign states. The Compromise only partially re-established the former pre-1848 sovereignty and status of the Kingdom of Hungary, being separate from, and no longer subject to, the Austrian Empire. The compromise put an end to the 18-year-long military dictatorship and absolutist rule over Hungary which Emperor Franz Joseph had instituted after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Hungary was restored. The agreement also restored the old historic constitution of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Hungarian political leaders had two main goals during the negotiations. One was to regain the traditional status (both legal and political) of the Hungarian state, which had been lost after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The other was to restore the series of reform laws (the so-called April Laws) of the revolutionary parliament of 1848, which were based on the 12 points that established modern civil and political rights, economic and societal reforms in Hungary. The April Laws of the Hungarian revolutionary parliament (with the exception of the laws based on the 9th and 10th points) were restored by Franz Joseph.
Under the Compromise, the lands of the House of Habsburg were reorganized as a real union between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, headed by a single monarch who reigned as Emperor of Austria in the Austrian half of the empire, and as King of Hungary in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Cisleithanian (Austrian) and Transleithanian (Hungarian) states were governed by separate parliaments and prime ministers. The two countries conducted unified diplomatic and defence policies. For these purposes, "common" ministries of foreign affairs and defence were maintained under the monarch's direct authority, as was a third finance ministry responsible only for financing the two "common" portfolios.
The relationship of Hungary to Austria before the 1848 revolution had been personal union, whereas after the compromise of 1867 her status was reduced to partnership in a real union. Thus Hungarian society widely considered the compromise as a betrayal of the vital Hungarian interests and the achievements of the reforms of 1848. The compromise remained bitterly unpopular among ethnic Hungarian voters: ethnic Hungarians did not generally support the ruling Liberal party in Hungarian parliamentary elections. Therefore, the political maintenance of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, and thus Austria-Hungary itself, was mostly a result of the popularity of the pro-compromise ruling Liberal Party among ethnic minority voters in the Kingdom of Hungary.
According to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, "There were three of us who made the agreement: Deák, Andrássy and myself."
Historical background
1526–1848
In the Middle Ages, the Duchy of Austria was an autonomous state within the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the House of Habsburg, and the Kingdom of Hungary was a sovereign state outside the empire. In 1526, Hungary was defeated and partially conquered by the Ottoman Empire. King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia had no legitimate heir and died young in the Battle of Mohács. Louis II's brother-in-law, Ferdinand I of Habsburg, was elected King of Hungary by a rump Parliament in Pozsony (now Bratislava) in December 1526. The Ottomans were subsequently driven out of Hungary by the cooperation of international Western Christian forces led by Prince Eugene of Savoy between 1686 and 1699. From 1526 to 1804, Hungary was ruled by the Habsburg dynasty as kings of Hungary, but remained nominally and legally separate from the other lands of the Habsburg monarchy.
Unlike other Habsburg-ruled areas, the Kingdom of Hungary had an old historic constitution, which limited the power of the Crown and had greatly increased the authority of the parliament since the 13th century. The Golden Bull of 1222 was one of the earliest examples of constitutional limits being placed on the powers of a European monarch,which was forced on the Hungarian king in much the same way King John of England was made to sign Magna Carta.
The involvement and integration of Kingdom of Hungary into a different state was legally impossible, due to the provisions of the old Hungarian constitution and Hungarian public law.
The Hugarian parliament was the most important political assembly since the 12th century, which emerged to the position of the supreme legislative institution in the Kingdom of Hungary from the 1290s,
"At any time in the past, Hungary might have made peace with a power with which Austria was at war, if the kings had not falsified their oath by not assembling the Hungarian Parliament: for the Diet always had the lawful right of [declaring] War and Peace."
The other serious problem for the Habsburgs was the traditionally highly autonomous counties of Hungary, which proved to be a solid and major obstacle in the construction of absolutism in Hungary. The counties were the centers of local public administration and local politics in Hungary, and they possessed a recognized right to refuse to carry out any "unlawful" (unconstitutional) royal orders. Thus, it was possible to question the legality of a surprisingly high proportion of the royal orders which emanated from Vienna.
In 1804, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was also ruler of the lands of the Habsburg monarchy, founded the Empire of Austria in which most his so-called Erblande lands were included. However the new Erblande term was not applied to Kingdom of Hungary. In doing so he created a formal overarching structure for the Habsburg Monarchy, which had functioned as a composite monarchy for about 300 years. (Composite states/monarchies were the most common / dominant form of states in early modern era Europe.) The Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806. The Kingdom of Hungary had always been considered a separate realm, the country's status was affirmed by Article X, which was added to Hungary's constitution in 1790 during the phase of the composite monarchy; it described the state as a Regnum Independens. From the perspective of the Court since 1723, regnum Hungariae had been a hereditary province of the dynasty's three main branches on both lines. From the perspective of the ország (the country), Hungary was regnum independens, a separate Land as the above mentioned Article X of 1790 stipulated. The Court reassured the diet, however, that the assumption of the monarch's newly adopted title (Emperor of Austria) did not in any sense affect the laws and the constitution on the territory of Kingdom of Hungary. Hungary's affairs continued to be administered by its own institutions (King and Diet and the local governments of its counties) as they had been previously. Thus, under the new arrangements, no Austrian imperial institutions were involved in its internal government The Hungarian legal system and judicial system remained separated and independent from the unified legal and judicial systems of the other Habsburg ruled areas.
Accordingly, the administration and the structures of central government of Kingdom of Hungary also remained separate from the Austrian administration and Austrian government until the 1848 revolution. Hungary was governed to a greater degree by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary (the Gubernium) in Pressburg (Pozsony) and, to a lesser extent, by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna, independent of the Imperial Chancellery of Austria.
From 1526 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs borders, which separated Hungary from the united customs system of other Habsburg-ruled territories.
While in most Western European countries (like France and the United Kingdom) the king's reign began immediately upon the death of his predecessor, in Hungary the coronation was absolutely indispensable as if it were not properly executed, the Kingdom stayed "orphaned". Even during the long personal union between the Kingdom of Hungary and other Habsburg-ruled areas, no Habsburg monarch could promulgate laws or exercise his royal prerogatives in the territory of Hungary until he had been crowned as King of Hungary. Since the Golden Bull of 1222, all Hungarian monarchs had to take a coronation oath during the coronation procedure, where the new monarchs had to agree to uphold the constitutional arrangement of the country, to preserve the liberties of his subjects and the territorial integrity of the realm.
1849–1867 (military dictatorship)
On 7 March 1849 an imperial proclamation was issued in the name of the emperor Franz Joseph establishing a united constitution for the whole empire, according to the new proclamation, the traditional territorial integrity of Kingdom of Hungary would be terminated and carved up, and it would be administered by five separated military districts, while the Principality of Transylvania would be reestablished. Austrian Prime Minister Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg and his government, operating from November 1848, pursued a radically new imperial policy. It wanted to develop a uniform empire in the spirit of the imperial constitution issued by Franz Joseph I in Olmütz on 4 March 1849, and as a result, Hungary's constitution and territorial integrity would be abolished. The centralist March Constitution of Austria introduced neo-absolutism in Habsburg ruled territories, and it provided absolute power for the monarch. The Austrian constitution was accepted by the Imperial Diet of Austria, in which Hungary had no representation and traditionally had no legislative power in the territory of Kingdom of Hungary; still, it also tried to abolish the Diet of Hungary, which existed as the supreme legislative power in Hungary since the late 12th century. The new Austrian constitution also went against the historical constitution of Hungary and tried to nullify it.
In the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Magyars came close to ending ties with the Habsburg Dynasty, but were defeated by the Austrian Empire only by the military intervention of the Russian Empire. After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under martial law. A military dictatorship was created in Hungary.
Every aspect of Hungarian life would be put under close scrutiny and governmental control.
German became the official language of public administration. An edict issued on 9 October 1849 placed education under state control, the curriculum was prescribed and controlled by the state, the teaching of national history was restricted and history was taught from a Habsburg viewpoint. Even the bastion of Hungarian culture, The academy, was kept under control: the institution was staffed with foreigners, mostly Germans, and the institution was practically defunct until the end of 1858. Hungarians responded with passive resistance. Anti-Habsburg and anti-German sentiments were strong. In the following years, the empire instituted several reforms but failed to resolve problems.
After the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–49, the independent customs system of Hungary was abolished. Hungary became part of the unified imperial customs system on 1 October 1851.
Austrian military and economic crisis and adoption
The suppression of the 1848 Revolutions and the Russian intervention had a very high price.
In 1858 already 40 percent of the Austrian Imperial government's expenditures went to service the state debt. An expensive mobilization during the Crimean War (1853–1856) and a disastrous campaign against Piedmont-Sardinia in 1859 brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy. The threat of fiscal insolvency and the demands of his creditors for an open and credible budgetary process forced the unwilling Franz Joseph to authorize political reform.
In 1866, Austria was completely defeated in the Austro-Prussian War. Its position as the leading state of Germany ended, and the remaining German minor states were soon absorbed into the German Empire, created by Prussia's Bismarck. Austria also lost much of its remaining claims and influence in Italy, which had been its chief foreign policy interest.
After a period of Greater German ambitions, when Austria tried to establish itself as the leading German power, Austria again needed to redefine itself to maintain unity in the face of nationalism.
As a consequence of the Second Italian War of Independence and the Austro-Prussian War, the Habsburg Empire was on the verge of collapse in 1866, as these wars caused monumental state debt and a financial crisis. The Habsburgs were forced to reconcile with Hungary, to save their empire and dynasty. The Habsburgs and part of the Hungarian political elite arranged the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The Compromise was arranged and legitimated by a very small part of the Hungarian society (suffrage was very limited: less than 8% of the population had voting rights), and was seen by a very large part of the population as betrayal of the Hungarian cause and the heritage of the 1848–49 War of Independence. This caused deep and lasting cracks in Hungarian society.
Hungarian statesman Ferenc Deák is considered the intellectual force behind the Compromise. Deák initially wanted independence for Hungary and supported the 1848 Revolution, but he broke with hardline nationalists and advocated a modified union under the Habsburgs. Deák believed that while Hungary had the right to full internal independence, the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723 made questions of defence and foreign affairs "common" to both Austria and Hungary. The Pragmatic Sanction of 1723 had great impact on the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. As the Hungarian statesman Ferenc Deák argued, according to the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723, constitutional governing of Hungary was a fundamental prerequisite of the Habsburg rule over Hungary. The foreign policy and defense, as well as financing them, were the most important joint affairs of Austria-Hungary, the resulting dual monarchy, to be based on the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723. He also felt that Hungary benefited from continued union with wealthier, more industrialized Austria and that the Compromise would end the continual pressures on Austria to choose between the Magyars and the Slavs of the Kingdom of Hungary. Imperial Chancellor Beust quickly negotiated the Compromise with the Hungarian leaders. Beust was particularly eager to renew the conflict with Prussia and thought a quick settlement with Hungary would make that possible. Franz Joseph and Deák signed the Compromise, and it was ratified by the restored Diet of Hungary on 29 May 1867.
Beust's revenge against Prussia did not materialize. When, in 1870, Beust wanted Austria–Hungary to support France against Prussia, Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy was "vigorously opposed" and effectively vetoed Austrian intervention.
The settlement with Hungary consisted then of three parts: the political settlement, which was to be permanent and would remain part of the fundamental constitution of the monarchy; the periodical financial settlement, determining the partition of the common expenses as arranged by the Quota-Deputations and ratified by the parliaments; and the Customs Union and the agreement on currency, a voluntary, reversible arrangement between the two governments and parliaments.
Terms
Under the Compromise:
The old historic constitution of Hungary was restored.
The Hungarian parliament was re-established (which had been the supreme legislative power in Hungary since the 12th century), as it was before 1849. Each part of the Monarchy had its own government, headed by its own prime minister. The "dual monarchy" consisted of the Emperor-King, and the common ministers of foreign affairs, defence, and a finance ministry only for expenditures of the Common Army, navy and diplomatic service.
The Hungarian legal system and Hungarian laws were restored in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary. During the negotiations of the compromise, even the April Laws of the Hungarian revolutionary parliament (with the exception of the laws based on the 9th and 10th points) were also accepted by the monarch.
The traditionally independent and separate judicial system of Hungary was restored.
Austria–Hungary, as a common entity, had no jurisdiction and legislative power, which was shaped by the fact that there was no common parliament. The common diplomatic and military affairs were managed by delegations from the Imperial Council and the Hungarian parliament. The delegations had 60 members from the Imperial Council, and 60 members from the Hungarian parliament, and the ratios of various political fractions exactly and proportionally mirrored their own political parties of their parliaments. The members of the delegations from the two parliaments had no right to give speeches, to debate, or introduce new ideas during the meetings; thus they were nothing more than the extended arms of their own parliaments. The only function of the delegates was to cast their votes according to the previously made decisions of their political factions in the Austrian and the Hungarian parliaments. All common decisions had to be ratified by the Austrian parliament to be valid on Austrian territory, and by the Hungarian parliament to be valid on the territory of Kingdom of Hungary. The Austrian and Hungarian delegations hold their joint meeting in Vienna in every odd year, and in Pest in every even year.
With the exception of the territory of Bosnian Condominium, Austria and Hungary did not form a common sovereign territory in international law. (Ie. Kingdom of Hungary and Empire of Austria were different countries) Thus regarding to territorial changes during peace treaties, the Empire of Austria and Kingdom of Hungary had to act independently as independent countries: A delegate from the Austrian parliament had right to sign peace treaties related to territorial changes of the Austrian Empire, and respectively, a delegate from the Hungarian parliament had right to sign peace treaties regarding to territorial changes of the Kingdom of Hungary. See: Treaty of Saint-Germain and Treaty of Trianon
A common Ministry of Foreign Affairs was created, responsible for diplomacy and foreign policy. Further information: Foreign Ministry of Austria-Hungary
There was no common citizenship in Austria–Hungary: one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. Austria–Hungary used two separate passports: the Austrian passport and the Hungarian one. There was no common passport.
A common finance ministry was founded, only for the expenditures of the Common Army, the navy and the diplomatic service and for the issue of banknotes. It was headed by the Common Finance Minister. All other expenditures belonged to the Austrian Finance Ministry in the Austrian Empire and the Hungarian Finance Ministry in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Austrian finance minister was subordinated only to the Minister-President of Austria in the Austrian Empire, and the Hungarian Finance Minister was subordinated only to the Prime Minister of Hungary.
The monetary and economic terms of the Compromise and the customs union had to be renegotiated every ten years.
Despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities.
The international commercial treaties and trade agreements were conducted independently by Austria and Hungary, as independent nations. The Common Finance Ministry had no competence in the international commercial treaties and trade agreements of the Austrian state or the Hungarian state.
The Royal Hungarian Honvéd was restored, and the Imperial-Royal Landwehr was created, but both states had to continue to finance the Austro-Hungarian Common Army, much larger than both. A common Austro-Hungarian War Ministry was formed immediately for the large Common Army, but it had no right to command directly the smaller Austrian Landwehr and the Hungarian Honvéd armies, which were respectively placed under the direct control of the separate Austrian and Hungarian Ministries of Defence. The Austrian and Hungarian Ministers of Defence were not placed under the command and jurisdiction of the Common War Ministry; they were subordinated only to their own prime ministers and the respective parliaments in Vienna and Budapest. The Hungarian Honvéd army could join the imperial army only with the explicit authorization of the Hungarian government. Further information: Imperial and Royal Ministry of War
Hungary took on a large part of the towering Austrian state debt.
The Emperor-King held all authority over the structure, organization, and administration of the three armies. He appointed the senior officials, had the right to declare war, and was the commander-in-chief of the army.
The Emperor-King had the right to declare a state of emergency.
The Emperor-King had the right of preliminary royal assent to every bill the Cabinet Council wanted to report to the National Assembly. He had the right to veto any law passed by the National Assemblies.
The Emperor-King had the right to dissolve the National Assemblies and of the declaration of new parliamentary elections.
The Emperor-King had the right to appoint and dismiss the members of the Cabinet Councils.
The power of the monarch significantly increased in a comparison with the pre-1848 status of Hungary. This meant a great reduction in Hungarian sovereignty and autonomy, even in comparison with the pre-1848 status quo.
Continuing pressures
The dominance of ethnic minority elected Liberal Party in the Hungarian Parliament
The Austro-Hungarian compromise and its supporting liberal parliamentary parties remained bitterly unpopular among the ethnic Hungarian voters, and the continuous successes of these pro-compromise Liberal Party in the Hungarian parliamentary elections caused long lasting frustration for Hungarians. The ethnic minorities had the key role in the political maintenance of the compromise in Hungary, because they were able to vote the pro-compromise liberal parties into the position of the majority/ruling parties of the Hungarian parliament. The pro-compromise liberal parties were the most popular among ethnic minority voters, however i.e. the Slovak, Serb and Romanian minority parties remained unpopular among their own ethnic minority voters. The coalitions of Hungarian nationalist parties – which were supported by the overwhelming majority of ethnic Hungarian voters – always remained in the opposition, with the exception of the 1906–1910 period, where the Hungarian-supported nationalist parties were able to form a government.
Ethnic minorities
Before the World War I, only three European countries declared ethnic minority rights, and enacted minority-protecting laws: the first was Hungary (1849 and 1868), the second was Austria (1867), and the third was Belgium (1898). In contrast, the legal systems of other pre-WW1 era European countries did not allow the use of European minority languages in primary schools, in cultural institutions, in offices of public administration and at the legal courts.
The resulting system was maintained until the dissolution of the dual monarchy after World War I. The favoritism shown to the Magyars, the second largest ethnic group in the dual monarchy after the Germans, caused discontent on the part of other ethnic groups like the Slovaks and Romanians. Although a "Nationalities Law" was enacted to preserve the rights of ethnic minorities, the two parliaments took very different approaches to this issue.
The basic problem in the later years was that the Compromise with Hungary only encouraged the appetites of non-Hungarian minorities in Hungary that were historically within the boundaries of the Hungarian Kingdom. The majority of Hungarians felt they had accepted the Compromise only under coercion. The Hungarian monarchs were always crowned as King of Hungary, due to the Hungarian coronation oath they had to agree to uphold the old constitutional arrangements of the country and preserve the territorial integrity of the Hungarian realm. This coronation oath was obligatory for the Hungarian monarchs during the coronation process since the Golden Bull of 1222. The Hungarians, who were regarded as equal after the Compromise, only partially acquiesced to granting "their" minorities recognition and local autonomy.
In the Kingdom of Hungary, several ethnic minorities faced increased pressures of Magyarization. Further, the renegotiation that occurred every ten years often led to constitutional crises. Ultimately, although the Compromise hoped to fix the problems faced by a multi-national state while maintaining the benefits of a large state, the new system still faced the same internal pressures as the old. To what extent the dual monarchy stabilized the country in the face of national awakenings and to what extent it alleviated or aggravated the situation is still debated today.
In a letter on 1 February 1913, to Foreign Minister Berchtold, Archduke Franz Ferdinand said that "irredentism in our country ... will cease immediately if our Slavs are given a comfortable, fair and good life" instead of being trampled on (as they were being trampled on by the Hungarians).
Influence in Ireland
As early as the mid-1880s, Lord Salisbury, leader of the British Conservative Party, had contemplated using the 1867 Austro-Hungarian example as a model for a reformed relationship between Britain and Ireland. In 1904 Arthur Griffith published the highly influential book The Resurrection of Hungary: A Parallel for Ireland, setting out a detailed proposal for an Anglo-Irish dual monarchy similar to the Austro-Hungarian one. This dual monarchy model was advocated by Griffith's Sinn Féin party in its early years of existence and had a considerable influence on the development of Irish Nationalism - though after the Easter Rising and subsequent October 1917 Ardfheis, it was dropped in favor of Irish Republicanism.
See also
Fundamental Articles of 1871
References
Sources
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External links
Chronology of the Compromise
The Dual Monarchy in Hungary
Nationalism in Hungary
1867 in Austria-Hungary
1867 in international relations
1867 in the Austrian Empire
1867 in Hungary
Constitutional history of Austria
Hungary under Habsburg rule
Territorial evolution of Hungary
1867 establishments in the Austrian Empire
1867 establishments in Austria-Hungary
1867 establishments in Hungary
June 1867 events
Real unions
Political compromises in Europe
Franz Joseph I of Austria
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20Seattle
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History of Seattle
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This is the main article of a series that covers the history of Seattle, Washington, a city in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America.
Seattle is a major port city that has a history of boom and bust. Seattle has on several occasions been sent into severe decline, but has typically used those periods to successfully rebuild infrastructure. There have been at least five such cycles:
The lumber-industry boom, followed by the construction of an Olmsted-designed park system.
The Klondike gold rush started in 1896, but reached Seattle in July 1897. This constituted the largest boom for Seattle proportional to the city's size at the time, and ended the economic woes Seattle (and the nation) had been suffering since the Panic of 1893.
The shipbuilding boom, which peaked during World War I and crashed immediately thereafter, followed by the unused city development plan of Virgil Bogue.
The Boeing boom, followed by general infrastructure building.
Most recently, the boom based on Microsoft and other software, web, and telecommunications companies, such as Amazon.com, AT&T Wireless, and RealNetworks.
Early history of Seattle
What is now Seattle has been inhabited since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8,000 B.C.—10,000 years ago), for at least 4,000 years. In the mid-1850s the Coast Salish people of what is now called the Duwamish Tribe and Suquamish, as well as other associated groups and tribes, were living in some 13 villages within the present-day city limits of Seattle. Evidence of continuous human habitation of a village site within the current city limits of the city of Seattle dating back to the 6th century C.E. exists on the Port of Seattle Terminal 107 site, located on the Western bank of the Duwamish River. The site was abandoned in approximately 1800, for unknown reasons. Other notable village sites include the birthplace of Chief Seattle, which was located near the current footprint of the King Street Station.
George Vancouver was the first European to visit the Seattle area in May 1792 during his 1791-95 expedition to chart the Pacific Northwest.
The founding of Seattle is usually dated from the arrival of the Denny Party scouts on September 25, 1851. However, Luther Collins, Henry Van Asselt, and the Maple family founded a farming settlement on what is currently the Seattle neighborhood of Georgetown on September 27, 1851. The Denny party's original site was an unfinished cabin, without roof, and a camp site, located at Alki Point, in West Seattle. The Collins party settlement was improved with permanent structures, and was soon producing produce and meat for sale and barter. In April, 1852, Arthur A. Denny abandoned the original site at Alki in favor of a better protected site on Elliott Bay that is now part of downtown Seattle. Arthur A. Denny and Luther Collins were the first commissioners of King County after its creation in 1852. Around the same time, David Swinson "Doc" Maynard began settling the land immediately south of Denny's.
Seattle in its early decades relied on the timber industry, shipping logs (and later, milled timber) to San Francisco. A climax forest of trees up to 1,000–2,000 years old and towering as high as nearly 400 ft (122 m) covered much of what is now Seattle. Today, none of that size remain anywhere in the world.
When Henry Yesler brought the first steam sawmill to the region, he chose a location on the waterfront where Maynard and Denny's plats met. Thereafter Seattle would dominate the lumber industry.
Charlie Terry sold out Alki (which, after his departure barely held on as a settlement), moved to Seattle and began acquiring land. He either owned or partially owned Seattle's first timber ships. He eventually gave a land grant to the University of the Territory of Washington (later University of Washington), and was instrumental in the politics to establish an urban infrastructure.
The logging town developed rapidly over decades into a small city. Despite being officially founded by the Methodists of the Denny Party, Seattle quickly developed a reputation as a wide-open town, a haven for prostitution, liquor, and gambling. Some attribute this, at least in part, to Maynard who realized that something was needed to bring the loggers and sailors, who formed the majority of the surrounding population, to town.
Real estate records show that nearly all of the city's first 60 businesses were on, or immediately adjacent to, Maynard's plat.
All of this occurred against a background of sometimes rocky relations with the local Native American population, including a nominally pitched battle, the Battle of Seattle, January 25, 1856.
Seattle was incorporated as a town January 14, 1865. That charter was voided January 18, 1867, in response to questionable activities of the town's elected leaders. Seattle was re-incorporated December 2, 1869. At the times of incorporations, the population was approximately 350 and 1,000, respectively.
In 1867, a young French Canadian Catholic priest named Francis X. Prefontaine arrived in Seattle and decided to establish a parish there. At that time, Seattle had no Catholic church and few parishioners. Fr. Prefontaine counted only ten Catholics in the town and only three attended the first mass that he conducted. His bishop, Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, whose cathedra was in Vancouver, Washington, gave Fr. Prefontaine permission to build a church there, as long as the priest could raise the funds himself and it would cost the diocese nothing. Prefontaine raised the money by holding fairs around the Puget Sound area. During 1868–69 he built the church, doing much of the work himself, and in 1869 he opened Seattle's first Catholic church at Third Avenue and Washington Street, on the site where the present-day Prefontaine Building stands.
Railroad rivalry and encroaching civilization
On July 14, 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway announced that they had chosen the then-village of Tacoma over Seattle as the Western terminus of their transcontinental railroad. The railroad barons appear to have been gambling on the advantage they could gain from being able to buy up the land around their terminus cheaply instead of bringing the railroad into a more established Pacific port town.
Seattle made several attempts to build a railroad of its own or to leverage one to come. The Great Northern Railway finally came to Seattle in 1884, winning Seattle a place in competition for freight, though it would be 1906 before Seattle finally acquired a major rail passenger terminal.
Seattle in this era was a freebooting and often relatively lawless town. Although it boasted newspapers and telephones, lynch law often prevailed (there were at least four deaths by lynching in 1882), schools barely operated, and indoor plumbing was a rare novelty. In the low mudflats where much of the city was built, sewage was almost as likely to come in on the tide as to flow away. The streets were potholed, to the point where there was at least one fatal drowning.
Union organizing first arrived in the form of a skilled craft union. In 1882, Seattle printers formed the Seattle Typographical Union Local 202. Dockworkers followed in 1886, cigarmakers in 1887, tailors in 1889, and both brewers and musicians in 1890. Even the newsboys unionized in 1892, followed by more organizing, mostly of craft unions.
The history of labor in the American West in this period is inseparable from the issue of anti-Chinese vigilantism. In 1883 Chinese laborers played a key role in the first effort at digging the Montlake Cut to connect Lake Union's Portage Bay to Lake Washington's Union Bay. In 1885–1886, whites—sometimes in combination with Indians—complaining of overly cheap labor competition, drove the Chinese settlers from Seattle, Tacoma, and other Northwest cities.
In an era during which the Washington Territory was one of the first parts of the U.S. to (briefly) allow women's suffrage, women played a significant part in "civilizing" Seattle.
The first bathtub with plumbing was in 1870. In the 1880s, Seattle got its first streetcar and cable car, ferry service, a YMCA gymnasium, and the exclusive Rainier Club, and passed an ordinance requiring attached sewer lines for all new residences. It also began to develop a road system.
The relative fortunes of Seattle and Tacoma clearly show the nature of Seattle's growth. Though both Seattle and Tacoma grew at a rapid rate from 1880 to 1890, based on the strength of their timber industries, Seattle's growth as an exporter of services and manufactured goods continued for another two decades, while Tacoma's growth dropped almost to zero. The reason for this lies in Tacoma's nature as a company town and Seattle's successful avoidance of that condition.
The Great Fire
The early Seattle era came to a stunning halt with the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. Started by a glue pot, the fire burned 29 city blocks (almost entirely wooden buildings; about 10 brick buildings also burned). It destroyed nearly the entire business district, all of the railroad terminals, and all but four of the wharves. Major fires like this were common in Washington that summer: the center of Ellensburg was destroyed by fire on July 4 and downtown Spokane burned on August 4.
Thanks in part to credit arranged by Jacob Furth, Seattle rebuilt from the ashes with astounding rapidity. A new zoning code resulted in a downtown of brick and stone buildings, rather than wood. In the single year after the fire, the city grew from 25,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, largely because of the enormous number of construction jobs suddenly created.
Still, south of Yesler Way, the open city atmosphere remained.
The Klondike Gold Rush
The greatest boom period for Seattle occurred during the Klondike gold rush. Seattle, as well as the rest of the nation, was suffering from the economic panic of 1893, and to a lesser extent, the panic of 1896. Gold was discovered in August 1896 in the Klondike region of Canada. Almost one year later, on July 17, 1897, the steamer Portland arrived at Schwabacher's Wharf in Seattle. A publicity campaign engineered largely by Erastus Brainerd told the world of the Portland's "ton of gold," started the Klondike gold rush, and established Seattle as its supply center and the jumping-off point for transportation to and from Alaska and the gold fields of the Yukon. The rush ended the depression overnight for Seattle.
Beginning of the 20th century
Leader of the Northwest: 1900–1915
The gold rush led to massive immigration. Many of Seattle's neighborhoods got their start around this time. Downtown Seattle was bustling with activity; as quickly as previous inhabitants moved out to newly created neighborhoods, new immigrants came in to take their place in the city core.
Once the obvious extensions of downtown had been made along the flatlands to the north and south, streetcars began providing transportation to new outlying neighborhoods.
Following the vision of city engineer R.H. Thomson, who had already played a key role in the development of municipal utilities, a massive effort was made to level the steep hills that rose south and north of the bustling city. A seawall containing spoils (dirt) sluiced from the Denny Regrade created the current waterfront. More spoils from the Denny Regrade went to build the industrial Harbor Island at the mouth of the Duwamish River, south of Downtown.
The Denny Regrade wasn't the only radical reshaping of Seattle's topography in this period. The slightly earlier Jackson Regrade had already reshaped Pioneer Square and the International District. The 1911–1917 construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal included two major "cuts" (the Montlake Cut and the Fremont Cut), four bascule bridges, and the Government Locks (now Hiram M. Chittenden Locks). The level of Lake Washington dropped; the Black River, which formerly ran out of the south end of the lake, dried up completely, and Seward Island became the Seward Peninsula, now the site of Seward Park.
All of the expansion was happening without zoning, leading to "different land uses and economic classes everywhere [being] mixed."
At the same time as the city was expanding dramatically, the city planners began to put in parks and boulevards under a plan designed by the Olmsted Firm, providing numerous parks and about twenty miles of boulevard which link most of the parks and greenbelts within the city limits. Much of the ambiance of Seattle today derives from this project.
Where there had so recently been wilderness, increasingly there was the reality of a major city. The Seattle Symphony was founded in 1903, and while few, if any, other comparably important arts institutions were established, the story was different in more popular entertainments. Vaudeville impresarios Alexander Pantages, John Considine, and John Cort (the last also involved in legitimate theater) were all based in Seattle in this era.
The progressive school board hired a new superintendent in 1901, Frank B. Cooper, who oversaw a program of building many new schools in Seattle's neighborhoods. The schools expanded their curriculum from the basic core to include music and art, physical education, vocational training, and programs for immigrants and special needs students.
As a major port Seattle depended heavily on its waterfront. Before 1911 it was a confused jumble of private rail lines and docks. The progressive reformers rationalized the system by building a port owned and operated by local government. The efficient new system allowed Seattle to expand after 1945 with the Sea-Tac airport, and enabled Seattle to become one of the first Pacific Coast ports to move to containerized shipping and thus expand business with Asia.
Seattle trumpeted and celebrated its rise with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, but the city's rapid growth had led to much questioning of the social order. Not only the labor left, but also progressives calling for "good government" challenged the hegemony of the captains of industry. Rail baron James J. Hill, addressing Seattle business leaders in 1909, noted and regretted the change. "Where," he asked, "are the man who used to match your mountains...?"
Religion was less of a force in Seattle than in eastern cities, but the Protestant Social Gospel movement had a national leader in the Rev. Mark A. Matthews (1867-1940) of Seattle's First Presbyterian Church. He was a tireless reformer who investigated red light districts and crime scenes, denouncing corrupt politicians, businessmen and saloon keepers. With 10,000 members, his was the largest Presbyterian Church in the country, and he was selected the denomination's national moderator in 1912. He built a model church, with night schools, unemployment bureaus, a kindergarten, Anti-tuberculosis clinics, and America's first church-owned radio station. Matthews was the most influential clergymen in the Pacific Northwest.
World War I and after
In 1910, Seattle voters approved a referendum to create a development plan for the whole city. However, the result, known as the Bogue plan, was never to be implemented. The unused plan had at its heart a grand civic center in Belltown and the Denny Regrade connected to the rest of the city by a rapid transit rail system, with a huge expansion of the park system, crowned by a total conversion of Mercer Island into parkland. However, the plan was defeated by an alliance of fiscal conservatives who opposed such a purportedly grandiose plan on general principles and populists who argued that the plan would mainly benefit the rich.
Growth during this 1910s was almost all in lumber and maritime industries. With the Atlantic a scene of belligerency, World War I increased Pacific maritime trade and caused a boom in shipbuilding, there was very little growth in new industries. When the war ended, economic output crashed as the government stopped buying boats, and there were no new industries to pick up the slack. Seattle stopped being the place of explosive growth and opportunity it had been for two consecutive decades.
After the war, Western Washington was a center of radical labor agitation. Most dramatically, in 1919, a dispute over post-war lowering of waterfront wages spread to become the Seattle General Strike. The Industrial Workers of the World played a prominent role in the strike. Seattle mayor Ole Hanson became a prominent figure in the First Red Scare, and made an unsuccessful attempt to ride that backlash to the White House in an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the presidential election of 1920.
Although no longer the economic powerhouse it had been at the turn of the century, Seattle first began seriously to be an arts center in the 1920s. The Frye and Henry families put on public display the collections that would become the core of the Frye Art Museum and Henry Art Gallery, respectively. Australian painter Ambrose Patterson arrived in 1919; over the next few decades Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Irving Anderson, and Paul Horiuchi would establish themselves as nationally and internationally known artists. Bandleader Vic Meyers and others kept the speakeasies jumping through the Prohibition era, and by mid-century the thriving jazz scene in the city's Skid Road district would launch the careers of musicians including Ray Charles and Quincy Jones.
In 1924, Seattle's Sand Point Airfield was the endpoint of the first aerial circumnavigation of the world. The historic flight helped convince Congress to develop Sand Point as a Naval Air Station.
The Great Depression hit Seattle hard. For example, Seattle issued 2,538 permits for housing construction in 1930, but only 361 in 1932. During the Maritime Strike of 1934, Smith Cove was nearly a battle zone; shippers were scared, to the point where Seattle lost most of its Asian trade to Los Angeles.
World War II
Following Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. entered World War II and the whole Puget Sound region was full on rolling in the nation's war effort. Among the chief priority was the federal government's sudden desire for tens of thousands of planes a year, and Boeing was positioned to provide them. Working under fixed-fee contracts, Boeing churned out aircraft and became by far the largest employer in Seattle. During the war, Seattle ranked as one of the top three cities in the nation in contracts per capita, and Washington state ranked as one of the top two in the nation for war contracts per capita. Seattle and Renton produced 8,200 planes, including 6,981 B-17s and more than 1,000 B-29 bombers. Civilian use of Boeing Field was greatly curtailed to accommodate the production of thousands of Boeing bombers. To accommodate the war effort, the U.S. military also annexed McChord Field in Tacoma, prompting that city to plead with the Port of Seattle to develop Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at Bow Lake -- midway between the Sound's two major cities.
Puget Sound-area shipyards constructed a large number of war vessels. At the combined Todd Shipyards/Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding operation, 33,000 men and women worked in Tacoma to build five freighters, two transports, 37 escort carriers, five gasoline tankers, and three destroyer tenders. At the Seattle yards, 22,000 employees built 46 destroyers and three tenders for the United States Navy, plus other vessels. The Lake Washington Shipyard at Houghton, now annexed to Kirkland, employed 6,000 workers to repair dozens of merchant vessels and ferries during the war and to turn out ships for the Navy. The shipyard site is now the location of Carillon Point, a residential-commercial development. 15 smaller shipyards in Seattle and other cities in the Puget Sound area also produced vessels for the war effort.
The war also attracted tens of thousands of workers from across the country, as the greatly expanded wartime production quickly exhausted local labor pools. Of the five million rural southern African-Americans migrating to the industrial North and West during the second wave of the Great Migration, an estimated 45,000 went to the Pacific Northwest, of which 10,000 moved to Seattle. Most African American workers came to Seattle as shipyard employees, and by summer 1942, the National Youth Administration brought to the city the first group of blacks to work for Boeing. By war's end, 4,078 (7 percent) of the 60,328 shipyard workers in Seattle were African Americans. AA's also found work as non-military government employees. Of 18,862 federal employees in Seattle in 1945, 1,019 (5 percent) were black. Moreover, the 4,000 black soldiers and sailors stationed at Fort Lawton in Seattle and other military installations nearby contributed to the new employment diversity of the African American population. As a result, between 1940 and 1950, Seattle's black population grew 413 percent, from 3,789 to 15,666. The newcomers became permanent residents, building up black political influence, strengthening civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, and calling for antidiscrimination legislation. On the negative side, racial tensions increased, both black and white residential areas deteriorated from overcrowding, and inside the black community there were angry words between "old settlers" and recent arrivals for leadership in the black communities.
Japanese American community
Japanese-Americans living in the Pacific Northwest were heavily affected by the war; President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the removal of 110,000 Japanese immigrants and ethnic Japanese citizens from the West Coast to internment camps inland, relocating 7,000 people from the Seattle area alone. Seattle's Japantown, once the 2nd largest in the nation, was emptied. Local grocers and the Pike Place Market lost the bounty of hundreds of Japanese American truck farms, including the 55 families who had produced famed strawberries in Bellevue. Although most of their neighbors acquiesced to the internment of Japanese Americans, a few community leaders questioned its validity or necessity. Tacoma Mayor Harry P. Cain said, "America has always been interested in selection, and I feel it would be preferable to make careful selection of those who are evacuated then just to say, 'Let's get rid of our problem by the easiest, most obvious way, by moving everybody out'".
Post-war boom 1945–1970
After the war ended, the military canceled its bomber orders; Boeing factories shut down and 70,000 people lost their jobs, and initially it appeared that Seattle had little to show for the wartime Boeing boom. However, this period of stagnation soon ended with the rise of the jet aircraft and Boeing's reincarnation as the world's leading producer of commercial passenger planes.
With all the post-war growth came growing pollution of the lakes and rivers that provided much of beauty that had been Seattle's appeal to its recent immigrants. Also, the sprawl constantly demanded more roads, since the ones already built had terrible traffic. Jim Ellis and other Seattle natives, anxious to preserve the city in which they grew up, came together to institute the Metropolitan Problems Committee, or METRO, intended to manage and plan the metropolitan area. The original, comprehensive METRO regional plan was defeated in a vote by the suburbanites;
METRO came back, scaled down to a sewage treatment and transport organization; METRO was eventually merged into the King County government.
During this period, Seattle attempted to counter the decline of its downtown and the area immediately to the north by hosting the Century 21 Exposition, the 1962 World's Fair. The fair, given a futuristic science theme, was designed to leave behind a civic center, now known as Seattle Center, including arts buildings, the Pacific Science Center and the Space Needle, and serving also as a fairground. In addition, freeways were built to compensate for all this new growth for people to commute. Most of the Eastside (east of Lake Washington) and northern suburbs came into being during the Boeing boom, as did Interstate Highways (I-5 and I-90). I-5 neatly cut off Downtown Seattle from Capitol Hill and First Hill.
In conjunction with the fair, a demonstration monorail line was constructed at no cost to the city and was paid for out of ticket sales, and then turned over to the city for $600,000. (See Seattle Center Monorail.) It is now mostly a tourist attraction. The World's Fair arguably reenergized the downtown of Seattle, and was generally a smashing success, even finishing with a profit.
After the war, the University of Washington also took a step forward, finally fulfilling the promise of its name under university president Charles Odegaard. Starting in the late 1950s, Seattle was one of the centers of the emergence of the American counter-culture and culture of protest. Before grunge there were beats, fringies (a local Seattle term), hippies, and batcavers.
The Boeing Bust
Due to the simultaneous decline in Vietnam War military spending, the slowing of the space program as Project Apollo neared completion, the recession of 1969-1970, and Boeing's $2 billion in debt as it built the 747 airliner, the company and the Seattle area greatly suffered. Commercial Airplane Group, by far the largest unit of Boeing, went from 83,700 employees in 1968 to 20,750 in 1971. Each unemployed Boeing employee cost at least one other job, and unemployment rose to 14%, the highest in the United States. Housing vacancy rates rose to 16% from 1% in 1967. U-Haul dealerships ran out of trailers because so many people moved out. A billboard appeared near the airport:
After 1973, Seattle was in good company for its recession, since the rest of the country was also experiencing the energy crisis.
Pike Place Market, arguably Seattle's most important tourist attraction, gained its modern form in the aftermath of the Boeing crash. The internment of Seattle's Japanese-Americans during World War II had hit the market particularly hard, since 80% of its "wet stall" vendors had been ethnically Japanese. A "Keep the Market" initiative led by architect Victor Steinbrueck, passed in 1971, pushing for adaptive reuse. The project was wildly successful in spite of intense opposition by the Seattle Establishment, and today the Pike Place Market pulls in nine million visitors each year.
A similar story occurred with Pioneer Square. An old neighborhood, largely built after the Fire of 1889, it had fallen into derelict status after the war. However, with a reenergized downtown, businesses started to look for buildings that could be acquired cheaply. When offices moved into renovated buildings, suddenly there was a market for facilities to service them, leading to a "flood of other restaurants, galleries, boutiques." Seattle was definitely recovering from the blow dealt by the Boeing recession, refilling areas that had threatened to become slums.
High tech: 1970 onwards
In 1979, Bill Gates (1955–) and Paul Allen (1954–2018), founders of Microsoft, moved their small company from New Mexico to the suburbs of their native Seattle. By 1985, sales were over $140 million, by 1990, $1.18 billion, and by 1995, Microsoft was the world's most profitable corporation, Allen and Gates were billionaires, and thousands of their past and present employees were millionaires. Microsoft spawned a host of other companies in the Seattle area: millionaire employees often left to found their own companies, and Allen, after his own departure from Microsoft, became a major investor in new companies. Seattle-area companies that owe their origins at least indirectly to Microsoft include RealNetworks, AttachmateWRQ, InfoSpace, and a host of others. Quite unlike Boeing, Microsoft has served as a catalyst for the creation of a whole realm of industry. Microsoft has also taken a much more active hand than Boeing in public works in the area, donating software to many schools (including the University of Washington).
Seattle has also been experiencing quite good growth in the biotechnology and coffee sectors, with international coffeeshop chain Starbucks originating from Seattle, and Seattle-based Nordstrom now a national brand.
Paul Allen, whose fortune was made through Microsoft though he had long since ceased to be an active participant in the company, was a major force in Seattle politics. He attempted a voter initiative to build the Seattle Commons, a huge park in South Lake Union and the Cascade District, and even offered to put up his own money to endow a security force for the park, but it was defeated at the polls. (Allen then became the leader of the movement to redevelop this same area as a biotech center.) He did get a football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks through a successful statewide ballot initiative, and founded the Experience Music Project (originally intended as a Jimi Hendrix museum) on the grounds of Seattle Center.
Seattle's bid for the world stage by hosting the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 did not play out as planned. Instead, the city became the site of the first great street confrontation between the anti-globalization movement and the World Trade Organization on November 30, 1999. While many of those in the streets, and most of those in the suites, were from out of town or even out of country, much of the groundwork of Seattle hosting both the event and the protests against it can be attributed to local forces. In 2001 the central city was the site of rioting, mixed with partying and racially motivated violence against European Americans in the Seattle Mardi Gras riot. Seattle along with other west coast cities experienced politically inspired confrontations and violence during the May Day marches in 2015.
Seattle today is physically similar to the Seattle of the 1960s, while the demographics have begun to shift over time. It is still filled with single-family households, with whites making up 64.9% of the population (down from a high of 91.6% in 1960), Asian 16.3%, Two or more races 8.8%, Black 6.8%, and Hispanic 7.2%. The city is politically still largely progressive, with about three quarters of a million people. The city, or its setting, is still physically beautiful.
In 2023, Seattle became the first city in the United States to ban discrimination based on caste.
See also
Timeline of Seattle
Seattle Police Department
Notes and references
Much of the content of this page is from "Seattle: Booms and Busts", by Emmett Shear, who has granted blanket permission for material from that paper to be reused in Wikipedia.
Bibliography
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Brown, Frederick L. "Cows in the Commons, Dogs on the Lawn: A History of Animals in Seattle" (PhD dissertation, University of Washington ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2010. 3431517).
Cockburn, Alexander, and Jeffrey St Clair. Five days that shook the world: Seattle and beyond (Verso, 2000). in 1999
Friedheim, Robert L. The Seattle general strike (University of Washington Press, 2018.) on 1919
Kim, Jae Yeon. "Racism is not enough: Minority coalition building in San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver." Studies in American Political Development 34.2 (2020): 195-215. online
Klingle, Matthew W. Emerald City: an Environmental History of Seattle (Yale University Press, 2008).
Levi, Margaret, and David Olson. "The battles in Seattle." Politics & Society 28.3 (2000): 309-329. In 1999.
MacDonald, Norbert. "Population Growth and Change in Seattle and Vancouver, 1880-1960." Pacific Historical Review 39.3 (1970): 297-321. online
Mullins, William H. The Depression and the Urban West Coast, 1929-1933: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland (2000)
Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl, ed. Shaping Seattle architecture: a historical guide to the architects (University of Washington Press, 2017).
Ott, Jennifer. Olmsted in Seattle: Creating a Park System for a Modern City ( Seattle: History Link and Documentary Media, 2019) online review
Rony, Dorothy B. Fujita. American workers, colonial power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919-1941 (Univ of California Press, 2003).
; a standard scholarly history
Sell, Terry M . Wings of Power: Boeing and the Politics of Growth in the Northwest (U of Washington Press, 2015)
Smith, Jackie. "Globalizing resistance: The battle of Seattle and the future of social movements." Mobilization: An International Quarterly 6.1 (2001): 1-19. On 1999 online
Speidel provides a substantial bibliography with extensive primary sources.
Speidel provides a substantial bibliography with extensive primary sources.
Taylor, Quintard. "Blacks and Asians in a white city: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, 1890-1940." Western Historical Quarterly (1991): 401–429. in JSTOR
Taylor, Quintard. "Black Urban Development: Another View: Seattle's Central District, 1910-1940." Pacific Historical Review (1989): 429-448 in JSTOR
Taylor, Quintard. "The Civil Rights Movement in the American West: Black Protest in Seattle, 1960-1970." Journal of Negro History (1995): 1-14. in JSTOR
External links
HistoryLink.org Encyclopedia of Washington State History provides a collection of articles on Seattle and Washington State history, unparalleled in its niche.
History of the Smith Tower
Seattle Museum of History and Industry. With the Seattle Room at the Seattle Public Library, hosts the most extensive archives about Seattle. Both have references to other archives.
Washington State History Museum, Washington State Historical Society
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History. An extensive project directed by University of Washington professor James Gregory
University of Washington Libraries: Digital Collections:
Photographic collections grouped by subject
Vintage Seattle: Blog featuring collections of high resolution images from Seattle's past.
The Seattle Times: Seattle History, a collection of articles and resources commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Denny Party's arrival
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Hemmings
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David Hemmings
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David Edward Leslie Hemmings (18 November 1941 – 3 December 2003) was an English actor and director. He is best remembered for his roles in British films and television programmes of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, particularly his lead role as a trendy fashion photographer in the hugely successful avant-garde mystery film Blowup (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Early in his career, Hemmings was a boy soprano appearing in operatic roles. In 1967, he co-founded the Hemdale Film Corporation. From the mid-1970s on, he worked mainly as a character actor and occasionally as director.
Early life
David Hemmings was born in Guildford, Surrey, to a biscuit salesman father.
Benjamin Britten
His education at Alleyn's School, Glyn Grammar School in Ewell and the Arts Educational Schools led him to start his career performing as a boy soprano in several works by the composer Benjamin Britten, who formed a close friendship with him at this time. Most notably Hemmings created the role of Miles in Britten's chamber opera Turn of the Screw (1954). His intimate yet innocent relationship with Britten is described in John Bridcut's book Britten's Children (2006).
Although many commentators identified Britten's relationship with Hemmings as based on an infatuation, throughout his life Hemmings maintained categorically that Britten's conduct with him was beyond reproach at all times. Hemmings had earlier played the title role in Britten's The Little Sweep (1952), which was part of Britten's Let's Make an Opera! children's production.
Britten's interest in Hemmings ceased very abruptly from the moment his voice broke, which occurred unexpectedly while singing the aria 'Malo' during a performance of The Turn of the Screw in 1956 in Paris. Britten was furious, waved Hemmings away and never had any further contact with him.
Acting
Child actor
Hemmings then moved on to acting in films. He made his first film appearance in the drama film The Rainbow Jacket (1954). He could also be seen in Saint Joan (1957).
Hemmings had bigger roles in Five Clues to Fortune (1957), The Heart Within (1957) and No Trees in the Street (1959), directed by J. Lee Thompson. He could also be seen in Men of Tomorrow (1959), In the Wake of a Stranger (1959), Sink the Bismarck! (1960) and The Wind of Change (1961).
Teen idol
Hemmings began to be known for playing young men, for example in The Painted Smile (1962) and Some People (1962). His first lead role was in the low budget teen musical Live It Up! (1963), then he had support roles for Michael Winner's The System (1964). After this, he starred in a sequel to Live It Up!, Be My Guest (1965) and in the same year in Two Left Feet with Michael Crawford.
Blowup and stardom
Hemmings’ luck changed when he was cast in the lead of Blowup (1966). It was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, who detested the "Method" way of acting. He sought a fresh young face for the lead in the film. He found Hemmings, at the time acting in small-stage theatre in London, although at their first meeting Antonioni told Hemmings, "You look wrong. You're too young." Hemmings was offered the part of the protagonist, a London fashion photographer who accidentally photographs evidence of a murder, after Sean Connery turned the role down because Antonioni would not show him the full script but only a seven-page treatment stored in a cigarette packet.
The resulting film was a critical and commercial sensation for MGM, which financed it, and helped turn Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave into stars. "I've been discovered half a dozen times," said Hemmings. "This time I think I've made it."
After Blowup Hemmings accepted an offer from Warner Bros to play Mordred in the big-budget film of the Broadway musical Camelot (1967). He had a supporting part in the thriller Eye of the Devil (1966), playing the brother of Sharon Tate. Hemmings was then cast as Louis Nolan in the big-budget epic The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), which, like Camelot, was widely seen but failed to recoup its cost.
Around 1967 Hemmings was briefly considered for the role of Alex in a film version of Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), which was to be based on a screen treatment by satirist Terry Southern and British photographer Michael Cooper. Cooper and the Rolling Stones were reportedly upset by the move and it was decided to return to the original plan in which Mick Jagger, the lead vocalist of the Rolling Stones, would play Alex, with the rest of the Stones as his droog gang; the production was shelved after Britain's chief censor, the Lord Chamberlain, indicated that he would not permit it to be made.
Hemmings costarred with Richard Attenborough in a comedy, Only When I Larf (1968), then was the sole star of an anti-war film, The Long Day's Dying (1968). Both films flopped. More financially successful was Barbarella (1968), in which Hemmings had a key role. He played the lead in two period films for MGM: a comedy, The Best House in London (1969), and the historical epic Alfred the Great (1969), in which Hemmings had the title role. Neither film did well at the box office, with Alfred the Great being a notable flop.
Hemmings was cast in further lead roles at the start of the 1970s : The Walking Stick (1970) with Samantha Eggar for MGM; Fragment of Fear (1970), a thriller; and Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971). He went to Hollywood to play a supporting role in The Love Machine (1971). Back in Britain he starred in a horror film, Voices (1973). He went to Spain to appear in Lola (1974) and in Britain supported Richard Harris in Juggernaut (1974).
Hemmings appeared in the Italian giallo film Profondo Rosso (also known as Deep Red or The Hatchet Murders) (1975) directed by Dario Argento. Back in England he supported Anthony Newley in Mister Quilp (1975).
Director
Hemmings first turned to directing with Running Scared (1972), an adaptation of an American novel by Gregory Macdonald for which Hemmings also co-wrote the script, resetting the story from Harvard to Cambridge University. He directed the drama film The 14 (1973), which won the Silver Bear at the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival.
Hemmings directed David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich in the drama film Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo (also known as Just a Gigolo) (1978). The film was poorly received, with Bowie describing it as "my 32 Elvis Presley films rolled into one".
Later, after relocating to Hollywood, he directed a number of television films and series episodes.
Character actor
From the mid-1970s on, Hemmings's acting work was mainly in supporting roles. In 1977 he appeared as Eddy in the film Islands in the Stream, an adaptation of Hemingway's novel of the same name, starring George C Scott. He also had support roles in The Squeeze (1977), The Prince and the Pauper (1977), The Heroin Busters (1977), The Disappearance (1977), Squadra antitruffa (1977), Blood Relatives (1978), Power Play (1978) and Murder by Decree (1979). He also returned to television in 1978 with a film for Granada TV directed by Ken Russell and written by Melvin Bragg: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, about Samuel Taylor Coleridge (played by Hemmings), was the second of two films in the Clouds of Glory series about poets.
Australia and New Zealand
Hemmings received an offer to play a supporting role in an Australian vampire film, Thirst. He starred in a TV film, Charlie Muffin then returned to Australia to feature in Harlequin.
Hemmings then received an offer from Ginnane to direct the Australian horror film The Survivor, based on James Herbert's 1976 novel of the same name, starring Robert Powell and Jenny Agutter. Hemmings directed Race for the Yankee Zephyr shot in New Zealand.
While in New Zealand Hemmings played roles in Prisoners and Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
Hollywood
Hemmings then moved to Hollywood. He played supporting roles in Man, Woman and Child (1983) and Airwolf (1984).
He also worked extensively as a director of television programmes, including the action-adventure drama series Quantum Leap (e.g. the series’ premiere); the crime series Magnum, P.I. (in which he also played characters in several episodes); and two action-adventure series, The A-Team and Airwolf (in which he also played the role of Doctor Charles Henry Moffet, twisted creator of Airwolf, in the pilot and the second-season episode "Moffett's Ghost"a typographical error by the studio's titles unit). He once joked "People thought I was dead. But I wasn't. I was just directing The A-Team."
Hemmings also directed the puzzle-contest video Money Hunt: The Mystery of the Missing Link (1984). He directed (and acted in) the television film The Key to Rebecca (1985), an adaptation of Ken Follett's 1980 novel of the same name. He also briefly served as a producer on the NBC crime-drama television series Stingray.
He directed the drama film Dark Horse (1992) and as an actor returned to the voyeuristic preoccupations of his Blowup character with a plum part as the Big Brother-esque villain in the series-three opener for the television horror anthology series Tales From the Crypt.
Later years
In later years he had roles that included Cassius in the historical epic film Gladiator (2000), with Russell Crowe, and in the drama film Last Orders (2001) and the spy film Spy Game (2001). He appeared as Mr Schermerhorn in the historical film Gangs of New York (2002), directed by Martin Scorsese.
His last screen appearances included the science-fiction action film Equilibrium (2002), , the superhero film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), with Sean Connery, and as Frank Sinatra's attorney in the 2003 Australian film The Night We Called It a Day, a comedy based on true events. He also appeared in the horror film Blessed (2004) with Heather Graham, which was dedicated to his memory after a fatal heart attack while on set.
Recording career
In 1967, Hemmings recorded a pop single, "Back Street Mirror" (written by Gene Clark), and a studio album, David Hemmings Happens, in Los Angeles. The album featured instrumental backing by several members of the Byrds, and was produced by Byrds' mentor Jim Dickson.
In the 1970s, he was jointly credited with former Easybeats members Harry Vanda and George Young as a co-composer of the song "Pasadena". The original 1973 recording of this song – the first Australian hit for singer John Paul Young – was produced by Simon Napier-Bell, in whose SNB Records label Hemmings was a partner at the time.
Hemmings also later provided the narration for Rick Wakeman's progressive-rock album Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974) – an adaptation of Jules Verne's science-fiction novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) – which was recorded live.
He starred as Bertie Wooster in the short-lived Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Jeeves (1975), for which an original cast album was released.
Autobiography
After his death his autobiography, Blow Up... and Other ExaggerationsThe Autobiography of David Hemmings, was published in 2004.
Personal life
Hemmings was married four times: to Genista Ouvry (1960–1967), actress Gayle Hunnicutt (1968–1975), Prudence de Casembroot (1976–1997), and Lucy Williams (2002 to his death). Hemmings met Hunnicutt while he was in America promoting Blowup, by which time his marriage to Ouvry was over. At their outdoor wedding, Henry Mancini conducted an orchestra and the Mamas and the Papas performed next to a swimming pool filled with doves dyed puce. Of his relationship with Hunnicutt, Hemmings remarked, "We were the poor man's Taylor and Burton". Their marriage ended when Hunnicutt discovered Hemmings's affairs with actress Samantha Eggar (his co-star in The Walking Stick (1970)), and his secretary Prudence de Casembroot.
During his subsequent marriage to de Casembroot, Hemmings continued to have extra-marital relationships with, among others, Tessa Dahl.
Hemmings had six children altogether; he and Ouvry had a daughter, he and Hunnicutt had a son (actor Nolan Hemmings), while he and de Casembroot had three sons and a daughter.
Hemmings was an active supporter of liberal causes, and spoke at a number of meetings on behalf of the UK's Liberal Party.
Death
Hemmings died in 2003 at age 62 of a heart attack, in Bucharest, Romania, on the film set of Blessed (working title: Samantha's Child) after he had performed his scenes for the day.
His funeral was held at St Peter's Church, in the hamlet of Blackland near Calne, Wiltshire, where he had lived in his final years. He was buried in the graveyard of the church.
Filmography
The Rainbow Jacket (1954)
Saint Joan (1957) as Minor Role
Five Clues to Fortune (1957) as Ken
The Heart Within (1957) as Danny Willard
No Trees in the Street (1959) as Kenny
Men of Tomorrow (1959) as Ted
In the Wake of a Stranger (1959) as Schoolboy
Sink the Bismarck! (1960) as Seaman on Ark Royal
The Wind of Change (1961) as Ginger
Play It Cool (1962)
The Painted Smile (1962) as Roy
Some People (1962) as Bert
West 11 (1963) as Bit Role
Two Left Feet (1963) as Brian
Live It Up! (1963) as Dave Martin
The System (1964) as David
Be My Guest (1965) as Dave Martin
Out of the Unknown – The Counterfeit Man (1965) as Westcott
Blowup (1966) as Thomas
Eye of the Devil (1966) as Christian de Caray
Camelot (1967) as Mordred
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) as Captain Nolan
Only When I Larf (1968) as Bob
The Long Day's Dying (1968) as John
Barbarella (1968) as Dildano
The Best House in London (1969) as Benjamin Oakes / Walter Leybourne
Alfred The Great (1969) as Alfred
The Walking Stick (1970) as Leigh Hartley
Fragment of Fear (1970) as Tim Brett
Simon, Simon (1970) as Man in car with posters
Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971) as John Ebony
The Love Machine (1971) as Jerry Nelson
Voices (1973) as Robert
Lola (1974) as Juan
Juggernaut (1974) as Charlie Braddock
Deep Red (1975) as Marcus Daly
Mister Quilp (aka The Old Curiosity Shop; 1975) as Richard Swiveller
Islands in the Stream (1977) as Eddy
The Squeeze (1977) as Keith
The Prince and the Pauper (US title Crossed Swords) (1977) as Hugh Hendon
The Heroin Busters (1977) as Hamilton
The Disappearance (1977) as Edward
Squadra antitruffa (1977) as Robert Clayton
Blood Relatives (1978) as Armstrong
Power Play (1978) as Colonel Narriman
Just a Gigolo (1978) as Captain Hermann Kraft
Murder by Decree (1979) as Inspector Foxborough
Thirst (1979) as Dr. Fraser
Charlie Muffin (US title: A Deadly Game) (1979) as Charlie Muffin
Harlequin (1980) as Nick Rast
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1980) as Dr. Henry Jekyll / Mr. Edward Hyde
Swan Lake (1981) as Rothbart (voice)
Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1981) as Insp. Bruce Hutton
Prisoners (1981) as Wilkens
Man, Woman and Child (1983) as Gavin Wilson
Airwolf (1984) (television film and two subsequent episodes) as Dr. Charles Henry Moffett
Magnum, P.I. (1985/87) (two episodes) as Lord Smythe-White / Danny
The A-Team (1983/1987) (one episode) as captain of the boat (episode 2 season 4)
The Rainbow (1989) as Uncle Henry
Tales from the Crypt, "Loved to Death" (1991) as Mr. Stronham
Northern Exposure (1992) as Viktor Bobrov
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1995) as Durham
Gladiator (2000) as Cassius
Last Orders (2001) as Lenny
Spy Game (2001) as CIA Agent Harry Duncan
Mean Machine (2001) as Governor
Waking the Dead: "Deathwatch" (2002) (television episode in 2 parts) as Ex-DCI Malcolm Finlay
Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice (2002) as Martin Fox
Equilibrium (2002) as Proctor
Gangs of New York (2002) as Mr. Schermerhorn
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) as Nigel
The Night We Called It a Day (2003) (a.k.a. All the Way) as Mickey Rudin
Blessed (2004) as Earl Sydney
Romantik (2007) as Dr. Sadun
Director
Running Scared (1972)
The 14 (1973)
Just a Gigolo (1978)
Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981)
The Survivor (1981)
A-Team (9 episodes) (1983/1987)
The Key to Rebecca (1985)
Down Delaware Road (1988)
In the Heat of the Night (1988)
Dark Horse (1992)
Passport to Murder (1993)
Christmas Reunion (1994)
Lone Justice: Showdown at Plum Creek (1996)
Bibliography
Hemmings, David (2004). Blow Up... and Other ExaggerationsThe Autobiography of David Hemmings. Robson Books (London). .
See also
List of British actors
List of British film directors
List of film producers
List of singer-songwriters
References
External links
Pulleine, Tim (5 December 2005). "David Hemmings – Gifted Actor, Director and Producer Who Successfully Outgrew His Iconic '60s Image in Antonioni's Blow Up". The Guardian''
1941 births
2003 deaths
20th-century English male actors
20th-century English male singers
20th-century English singers
21st-century English male actors
21st-century English male singers
21st-century English singers
21st-century English male writers
Boy sopranos
Benjamin Britten
English autobiographers
English male child actors
English child singers
English male film actors
English film directors
English film producers
English male musical theatre actors
English pop singers
English male screenwriters
English male singer-songwriters
English singer-songwriters
English male television actors
English television directors
English television producers
German-language film directors
Male actors from Guildford
People educated at Glyn School
People educated at Alleyn's School
British expatriate male actors in the United States
20th-century English screenwriters
20th-century English businesspeople
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%20Ellroy
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James Ellroy
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Lee Earle "James" Ellroy (born March 4, 1948) is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).
Life
Early life
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy was born in Los Angeles. His mother, Geneva Odelia (née Hilliker), was a nurse. His father, Armand, was an accountant and a onetime business manager of Rita Hayworth. His parents divorced in 1954, after which Ellroy and his mother moved to El Monte, California.
At the age of 7, Ellroy saw his mother naked and began to sexually fantasize about her. He struggled in youth with this obsession, as he held a psycho-sexual relationship with her, and tried to catch glimpses of her nude. Ellroy stated that "I lived for naked glimpses. I hated her and lusted for her..."
On June 22, 1958, when Ellroy was ten years old, his mother was raped and murdered. Ellroy later described his mother as "sharp-tongued [and] bad-tempered", unable to keep a steady job, alcoholic, and sexually promiscuous. His first reaction upon hearing of her death was relief: he could now live with his father, whom he preferred. His father was more permissive and allowed Ellroy to do as he pleased, namely be "left alone to read, to go out and peep through windows, prowl around and sniff the air." The police never found his mother's killer, and the case still remains unsolved. The murder, along with reading The Badge by Jack Webb (a book comprising sensational cases from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department, a birthday gift from his father), were important events of Ellroy's youth.
Ellroy's inability to come to terms with the emotions surrounding his mother's murder led him to transfer them onto another murder victim, Elizabeth Short. Nicknamed the "Black Dahlia," Short was a young woman murdered in 1947, her body cut in half and discarded in Los Angeles, in a notorious and unsolved crime. Throughout his youth, Ellroy used Short as a surrogate for his conflicting emotions and desires. His confusion and trauma led to a period of intense clinical depression, from which he recovered only gradually.
Education
In 1962, Ellroy began to attend Fairfax High School, a predominantly Jewish high school. While in high school, he began to engage in a variety of outrageous acts, many anti-Semitic in nature. He joined the American Nazi Party, purchased Nazi paraphernalia, sang the Horst-Wessel-Lied at school, mailed Nazi pamphlets to girls he liked, openly criticized John F. Kennedy, and ironically advocated for the reinstatement of slavery. His "Crazy Man Act", as Ellroy describes it, was a plea for attention and got him beat up and eventually expelled from Fairfax High School in 11th grade, after ranting about Nazism in his English class.
Ellroy's father died soon after this, with his father's last words to him being, "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you."
Early career
After being expelled from high school, Ellroy then joined the U.S. Army for a short period of time. On enlisting, Ellroy soon decided he did not belong there and convinced an army psychiatrist he was unfit for combat. He was discharged after three months.
Ellroy credits the public libraries of Los Angeles County as the basis of his writing. He shelved books at the public library. In a speech at the Library of Congress in 2019 he declared: "I am a product of the L.A. County Public Library System." During his teens and 20s, he drank heavily and abused Benzedrex inhalers. He was engaged in minor crimes (especially shoplifting, house-breaking, and burglary) and was often homeless. After serving some time in jail and suffering from pneumonia, during which he developed an abscess on his lung "the size of a large man's fist," Ellroy stopped drinking and began working as a golf caddie while pursuing writing. He later said, "Caddying was good tax-free cash and allowed me to get home by 2 p.m. and write books.... I caddied right up to the sale of my fifth book."
Personal life
On October 4, 1991, Ellroy married writer and critic Helen Knode. The couple moved from California to Kansas City in 1995. In 2006, after their divorce, Ellroy returned to Los Angeles. The two later reconciled and moved to Denver, although Ellroy has stated that they live in separate apartments in the same building.
Literary career
In 1981, Ellroy published his first novel, Brown's Requiem, a detective story drawing on his experiences as a caddie. He then published Clandestine and Silent Terror (which was later published under the title Killer on the Road). Ellroy followed these three novels with the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy. The novels are centered on Hopkins, a brilliant but disturbed LAPD robbery-homicide detective, and are set mainly in the 1980s.
He is a self-described recluse who possesses very few technological amenities, including television, and claims never to read contemporary books by other authors, aside from Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field, out of concern that they might influence his own. However, this does not mean that Ellroy does not read at all, as he claims in My Dark Places to have read at least two books a week growing up, eventually shoplifting more to satisfy his love of reading. He then goes on to say that he read works by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
Writing style
Hallmarks of his work include dense plotting and a relentlessly pessimistic—albeit moral—worldview. His work has earned Ellroy the nickname "Demon dog of American crime fiction."
Ellroy writes longhand on legal pads rather than on a computer. He prepares elaborate outlines for his books, most of which are several hundred pages long.
Dialogue and narration in Ellroy novels often consists of a "heightened pastiche of jazz slang, cop patois, creative profanity and drug vernacular" with a particular use of period-appropriate slang. He often employs a sort of telegraphese (stripped-down, staccato-like sentence structures), a style that reaches its apex in The Cold Six Thousand. Ellroy describes it as a "direct, shorter-rather-than-longer sentence style that's declarative and ugly and right there, punching you in the nards." This signature style is not the result of a conscious experimentation but of chance and came about when he was asked by his editor to shorten his novel L.A. Confidential by more than one hundred pages. Rather than removing any subplots, Ellroy abbreviated the novel by cutting every unnecessary word from every sentence, creating a unique style of prose. While each sentence on its own is simple, the cumulative effect is a dense, baroque style.
The L.A. Quartet
While his early novels earned him a cult following and notice among crime fiction buffs, Ellroy earned much greater success and critical acclaim with the L.A. Quartet—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. The four novels represent Ellroy's change of style from the tradition of classic modernist noir fiction of his earlier novels to what has been classified as postmodern historiographic metafiction. The Black Dahlia, for example, fused the real-life murder of Elizabeth Short with a fictional story of two police officers investigating the crime.
Underworld USA Trilogy
In 1995, Ellroy published American Tabloid, the first novel in a series informally dubbed the "Underworld USA Trilogy" that Ellroy describes as a "secret history" of the mid-to-late 20th century. Tabloid was named TIMEs fiction book of the year for 1995. Its follow-up, The Cold Six Thousand, became a bestseller. The final novel, Blood's a Rover, was released on September 22, 2009.
My Dark Places
After publishing American Tabloid, Ellroy began a memoir, My Dark Places, based on his memories of his mother's murder, the unconventional relationship he had with her, and his investigation of the crime. In the memoir, Ellroy mentions that his mother's murder received little news coverage because the media were still fixated on the stabbing death of mobster Johnny Stompanato, who was dating actress Lana Turner. Frank C. Girardot, a reporter for The San Gabriel Valley Tribune, accessed files on Geneva Hilliker Ellroy's murder from detectives with Los Angeles Police Department. Based on the cold case file, Ellroy and investigator Bill Stoner worked the case but gave up after 15 months, believing any suspects to be dead. After the final pages of My Dark Places, a contact page is provided, stating: "The investigation continues. Information on the case can be forwarded to Detective Stoner either through the toll-free number, 1-800-717-6517, or his e-mail address, [email protected]." In 2008, The Library of America selected the essay "My Mother's Killer" from My Dark Places for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Other
Ellroy is currently writing a "Second L.A. Quartet" taking place during the Second World War, with some characters from the first L.A. Quartet and the Underworld USA Trilogy reappearing in younger depictions. The first book, Perfidia, was released on September 9, 2014. The second book is titled This Storm which had a release date of May 14, 2019. It was released May 30, 2019, in the United Kingdom, and June 4, 2019, in the United States.
A Waterstones exclusive limited edition of Perfidia was published two days after its initial release and included an essay by Ellroy titled "Ellroy's History—Then and Now.". Ellroy dedicated Perfidia "To Lisa Stafford." The epigraph is "Envy thou not the oppressor, And choose none of his ways" from Proverbs 3:31.
In collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Museum and Glynn Martin, the museum's executive director, Ellroy released LAPD '53 on May 19, 2015. Photography from the museum's archives are presented alongside Ellroy's writings about crime and law enforcement during that era.
In the fall of 2017, Ellroy investigated the murder of Sal Mineo. Reminiscent of how he investigated his mother's unsolved murder, Ellroy worked with Glynn Martin, an ex-LAPD officer, the LAPD Museum's current executive director, and co-author of LAPD '53. Ellroy wrote about this investigation for The Hollywood Reporter in digital form on December 21, 2018, and it also appeared in published form in the December 18, 2018, issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Early in January 2019, Ellroy posted news on jamesellroy.net, writing, "I’m digitally illiterate, so you’ve got to gas on the fact that I’m breaking baaaaaaaaad from tradition, in order to post this announcement." Ellroy posted that he had been inducted into the Everyman's Library series. Three Everyman's Library editions have been reprinted: The L.A. Quartet, The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I and The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume II. The release dates for these editions, as well as This Storm: A Novel, was June 4, 2019. Ellroy added, "Stay stirringly tuned to this website for further updates" and simply signed the finished post Ellroy, inserting a dog's pawprint below it.
In 2022 Ellroy a long-time fan of Chester Himes wrote the introduction to Himes's classic, 'A Rage in Harlem'. In his hard-bitten style, Ellroy raves that "'A Rage in Harlem' features a mind-mauling array of chump-change hustles, lurid larcenies, and malicious mischief."The novel was originally published in France in 1958 where it won France's 'Grand Prix de Littérature Policière', and was most recently re-published by Vintage Books.
In 2023, at the LA Times Festival of Books, Ellroy revealed, in light of his latest book The Enchanters and his editors' response to it, that he had abandoned his previous plans to write a 'Second L.A. Quartet' and would instead turn it into a quintet, with The Enchanters being the third of five books in the series. The later books in the series will be set in the 1960s and will tie back in to the World War II setting, Japanese internment and the immediate post-war setting initially established in Perfidia and This Storm
Public life and views
In media appearances, Ellroy has adopted an outsized, stylized public persona of hard-boiled nihilism and self-reflexive subversiveness. He frequently begins public appearances with a monologue such as:
Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the demon dog with the hog-log, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. These books will leave you reamed, steamed and drycleaned, tie-dyed, swept to the side, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed. These are books for the whole fuckin' family, if the name of your family is Manson.
Another aspect of his public persona involves an almost comically grand assessment of his work and his place in literature. For example, he told the New York Times, "I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music."
Structurally, several of Ellroy's books, such as The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, American Tabloid, and The Cold Six Thousand, have three disparate points of view through different characters, with chapters alternating between them. Starting with The Black Dahlia, Ellroy's novels have mostly been historical dramas about the relationship between corruption and law enforcement.
A predominant theme of Ellroy's work is the myth of "closure". "Closure is bullshit", Ellroy often remarks, "and I would love to find the man who invented closure and shove a giant closure plaque up his ass." In his works characters often die or vanish quickly before otherwise traditional closure points in order to capitalize this idea.
Ellroy has claimed that he is done writing noir crime novels. "I write big political books now," he says. "I want to write about LA exclusively for the rest of my career. I don't know where and when."
On April 29, 2015, Ellroy and Lois Duncan were the Grandmasters at the 2015 Edgar Awards.
Politics
Ellroy has frequently espoused conservative political views. In 2019, Ellroy described himself as anti-totalitarian, conservative, and a Tory, adding "Underneath my profane exterior, I’m very concerned with decorum, with probity, with morality, and I have a painfully developed conscience. I despise unconscionable acts, whoever is perpetrating them."
In a 2009 interview, Ellroy said that in the 1960s and 1970s "I was never a peacemaker; I was a fuck-you right-winger." He has also been an outspoken and unquestioning admirer of the Los Angeles Police Department (despite his explicit depictions of brutality and corruption of the department in his novels), dismissing its flaws as aberrations. He has referred to the coverage of the Rodney King beating and Rampart police scandals were overblown by a biased media. Nevertheless, like other aspects of his persona, he often deliberately obscures where his public persona ends and his actual views begin. When asked about his "right-wing tendencies," he told an interviewer, "Right-wing tendencies? I do that to fuck with people." Similarly, in the film Feast of Death, his (now ex-) wife describes his politics as "bullshit," an assessment to which Ellroy responds only with a knowing smile. Privately, Ellroy opposes the death penalty.
In 2001, Ellroy stated that he is opposed to gun control (owning 30 guns), but believes assault weapons should be banned. In the 2000 presidential election, Ellroy voted for George W. Bush "because I wanted to repudiate Gore and Clintonism and nobody hates Bill Clinton more than me..."
In 2008, when asked what he thought of the candidates for the 2008 presidential election, he stated:
Hillary looks like a bull dyke in a pantsuit, but at least she seems serious. McCain looks like Mr. Magoo. Obama looks like a f---ing lemur, a little rodent-like creature, a marsupial or something, I don't know. Jesus, I have no idea of what's going on in the world anymore. Where's Ronald Reagan, now that I really need him?
In 2009, he referred to Bush as a "slimeball and the most disastrous American president in recent times", and added that he voted for Obama. Ellroy subsequently denied voting for Obama and admitted that most of his statements on modern politics are willful misrepresentations. On Donald Trump, Ellroy stated that he "doesn’t have the charm of a true, world-class dictator", but also understands his appeal, as "He’s the big ‘fuck you’ to all pieties."
Religion
Following his parents' divorce, Ellroy was sent to a Dutch Lutheran Church by his mother every Sunday. In 2004, Ellroy had stated "I had a Christian upbringing of sorts, Lutheran. I don't go to church. I can't say I'm a Christian."
However, in 2013, Ellroy stated "I'm a Christian. I’m not an Evangelical Christian, but God and religious spiritual feelings always guided me during the worst moments of my life, and I don't for a moment doubt it." In 2014, Ellroy stated that "I'm a Christian. I believe we are all one soul united in God", adding that he is "conservative and theocratic".
Film adaptations and screenplays
Several of Ellroy's works have been adapted to film, including Blood on the Moon (adapted as Cop), L.A. Confidential, Brown's Requiem, Killer on the Road/Silent Terror (adapted as Stay Clean), and The Black Dahlia. In each instance, screenplays based on Ellroy's work have been penned by other screenwriters.
While he has frequently been disappointed by these adaptations (such as Cop), he was very complimentary of Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland's screenplay for L.A. Confidential at the time of its release. In succeeding years, however, his comments have been more reserved:
Shortly after viewing three hours of unedited footage for Brian De Palma's adaptation of The Black Dahlia, Ellroy wrote an essay, "Hillikers," praising De Palma and his film. Ultimately, nearly an hour was removed from the final cut. Of the released film, Ellroy told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Look, you're not going to get me to say anything negative about the movie, so you might as well give up." He had, however, mocked the film's director, cast, and production design before it was filmed.
Ellroy co-wrote the original screenplay for the 2008 film Street Kings but refused to do any publicity for the finished film.
In a September 2008, Daily Variety reported that HBO, along with Tom Hanks's production company, Playtone, was developing American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand for either a miniseries or ongoing series.
In a September 2009 interview, Ellroy himself stated, "All movie adaptations of my books are dead." In a November 2012 interview, when asked about how movie adaptations distort his books, he remarked, "[Film studios] can do whatever the [fuck] they want as long as they pay me."
In an October 2017 interview with The New York Times, Tom Hanks stated he would be interested in playing the part of Lloyd Hopkins if a film or stage adaptation was put into production.
Bibliography
Stand-alone novels
Brown's Requiem (1981)
Clandestine (1982)
Killer on the Road (originally published as Silent Terror) (1986)
Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy
Blood on the Moon (1984)
Because the Night (1984)
Suicide Hill (1986)
(also published in an omnibus edition as 'L.A. Noir' (1997))
L.A. Quartet
The Black Dahlia (1987)
The Big Nowhere (1988)
L.A. Confidential (1990)
White Jazz (1992)
The L.A. Quartet (2019)
Underworld USA Trilogy
American Tabloid (1995)
The Cold Six Thousand (2001)
Blood's a Rover (2009)
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I (2019)
The Underworld U.S.A Trilogy, Volume II (2019)
L.A. Quintet (The Second L.A. Quartet)
Perfidia (2014)
This Storm (2019)
Fred Otash series
Widespread Panic (2021)
The Enchanters (2023)
Short stories and essays
Dick Contino's Blues (issue number 46 of Granta magazine, Winter 1994)
Hollywood Nocturnes (1994; UK title: Dick Contino's Blues and Other Stories)
Crime Wave (1999)
Destination: Morgue! (2004)
Shakedown (2012) (e-book)
LAPD '53 (2015)
Autobiography
My Dark Places (1996)
The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women (2010)
Editor
The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 (2002)
The Best American Crime Writing 2005 (2005)
(Note: Part of The Best American Series)
Other works, influences, and adaptations
((Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy by Steven Powell - Published 2023.))
Filmography
Documentaries
1993 James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction
1995 White Jazz
2001 James Ellroy's Feast of Death
2005 James Ellroy: American Dog
2006 Murder by the Book: "James Ellroy"
2011 James Ellroy's L.A.: City of Demons
Films
1988 Cop
1997 L.A. Confidential
1998 Brown's Requiem
2002 Stay Clean
2002 Vakvagany
2002 Dark Blue
2003 Das Bus
2005 James Ellroy presents Bazaar Bizarre
2006 The Black Dahlia
2008 Street Kings
2008 Land of the Living
2011 Rampart
Television
1992 "Since I Don't Have You" adapted by Steven A. Katz for Showtime's Fallen Angels.
2011 James Ellroy's L.A.: City of Demons for Investigation Discovery.
References
Further reading
Powell, Steven (2023) Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy Bloomsbury
James Ellroy: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction
Powell, Steven, ed. (2012) Conversations with James Ellroy
External links
James Ellroy official website
James Ellroy archive at the University of South Carolina Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Tom Hanks wants to play Lloyd Hopkins from The New York Times
1948 births
Living people
American crime fiction writers
American mystery novelists
American non-fiction crime writers
Maltese Falcon Award winners
20th-century American novelists
Organized crime novelists
Writers of historical fiction set in the modern age
Edgar Award winners
Writers from Los Angeles
People from El Monte, California
American autobiographers
American short story writers
20th-century American short story writers
21st-century American novelists
21st-century American short story writers
American male novelists
American male essayists
American male short story writers
20th-century American essayists
21st-century American essayists
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American male writers
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong
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Kaesong
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Kaesong (, ; ) is a special city in the southern part of North Korea (formerly in North Hwanghae Province), and the capital of Korea during the Taebong kingdom and subsequent Goryeo dynasty. The city is near the Kaesong Industrial Region close to the border with South Korea and contains the remains of the Manwoldae palace. Called Songdo while it was the ancient capital of Goryeo, the city prospered as a trade centre that produced Korean ginseng. Kaesong now functions as North Korea's light industry centre.
During the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945, the city was known by the Japanese pronunciation of its name, "Kaijō". Between 1945 and 1950, Kaesong was part of South Korea and under its control. During the Korean War, North Korea captured the city, and the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement left the city under North Korean control. Due to the city's proximity to the border with South Korea, Kaesong has hosted cross-border economic exchanges between the two countries as well as the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Region.
As of 2009, the city had a population of 192,578.
History
The earliest archaeological signs of habitation in the Kaesong area date from the Neolithic. Artifacts such as Jeulmun pottery, stone ware, and stone axes have been excavated from Osongsan and Kaesong Nasong, the double-walled fortress of Kaesong. As Kaesong has been occupied by various states throughout centuries, its name has changed. It was in the realm of Mahan confederacy, and was referred to as Busogap during the rule of Goguryeo. Before the strength of Baekje was retreated to the southwest of Jungnyeong, Mungyeong Saejae, and Asan Bay in 475, the area had been a part of Baekje for about 100 years.
However, it became a territory of Silla in 555, the 16th year of Jinheung of Silla's reign, and its name was changed to Song'ak-gun during the period. According to the Samguk Sagi, when a castle was built in the site in 694, the third year of Hyoso of Silla's reign, Kaesong was referred to as "Song'ak (송악; 松嶽)". Therefore, it is assumed that the name Song'ak had been used at least before the time.
Goryeo
Silla began to decline in late 9th century, and a period of rival warlords ensued. In 898, Kaesong fell under the hand of Gung Ye, the founder of his short-lived state, Taebong, and then became a part of Goryeo in 919 by its founder, Wang Geon, who was enthroned as Taejo of Goryeo. Taejo established the capital in the south of Song'ak, and incorporated Kaesong into Song'ak under the name of "Gaeju". In 919, Kaesong became the national capital. In 960, the 11th year of Gwangjong of Goryeo's reign, the city was renamed Gaegyeong, and in 995, the 14th year of Seonjong of Goryeo's reign, it was elevated to "Gaesong-bu". The Gaeseong-bu is a combined term of Song'ak-gun, and Gaesong-gun, which is different from the region of the pre-1945 Gaesong-ri, Seo-myeon, Kaepung-gun. In 1010, the first year of Hyeonjong of Goryeo's reign, the palace and houses were almost burnt down during the second conflict in the Goryeo–Khitan War, so in 1018, Gaesong-bu was relegated for the "bu" system, and became to govern the three hyeon unites of Jeongju, Deoksu, and Gangeum.
In the late 12th century, there was instability in both the government and the countryside. A slave named Manjǒk (or Manjeok) (만적; 萬積) led a group of slaves who gathered outside Kaesong in 1198. The revolt plot was suppressed by Choe Chung-heon. When Yi Songgye overthrew Goryeo in 1392 and established Joseon as Taejo of Joseon, he moved the Korean capital from Kaesong to Hanyang (modern-day Seoul) in 1394.
20th century
Kaesong remained a part of Gyeonggi Province until the Korean War. When Korea was partitioned at the 38th parallel after World War II, Kaesong was on the southern side of the line (within South Korea).
However, the battle of Kaesong-Munsan was won by the Korean People's Army (KPA) in the first days of the Korean War. The city was recaptured by UN Forces on 9 October 1950 during the pursuit of the KPA that followed the successful Inchon landings. UN Forces abandoned the city 16 December 1950 during the withdrawal to the Imjin River following the Chinese People's Volunteer Army intervention in the war. Kaesong would remain under Chinese/North Korean control until the end of the war.
Ceasefire negotiations began in Kaesong on 10 July 1951, but were moved to Panmunjom, southeast of the city, on 25 October 1951. The Korean Armistice Agreement signed on 27 July 1953 recognised North Korean control over Kaesong making it the only city to change control from South Korea to North Korea as a result of the war. Postwar Kaesong and the part of Kyonggi Province that came to be occupied was organized into "Kaesong Region" (Kaesŏng Chigu; 개성 지구; 開城 地區). In 1957, Kaesong became a "Directly Governed City" (Kaesŏng Chikhalsi; 개성 직할시; 開城 直轄市).
21st century
In 2002, Kaesŏng Industrial Region was formed from part of Kaesong. In 2003, the remaining part of Kaesong (excluding the Industrial Region) became part of North Hwanghae Province. The city is close to the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea.
In October 2019, Kaesong became a "Special City".
Geography
Located in the center of Korea, Kaesong is the southernmost city of North Korea. It is bordered by Kaepung, Changpung, Panmun, and Kumchon counties. Kanghwa Island of Incheon Municipality lies just south, beyond a narrow channel. It covers an area of 1,309 km2, the urban district is surrounded by Songak (Songak-san; 송악산; 松嶽山) (489 m) and Pongmyong mountains. The city center surrounds the much smaller Mt. Janam (103 m), on which is located the city's Kim Il Sung statue.
In the northern part of Kaesong, the end of the Ahobiryŏng range creates the northernmost border of Kaesong City. This range consists of Mts. Chŏnma (757 m), Sŏnggŏ, Myoji (764 m), Suryong (716 m), Chesŏk (749 m), Hwajang (558 m), and Ogwan. With the exception of the mountainous northeastern region, however, most areas of Kaesong consist of low hills with heights less than 100 meters A.S.L.
The Imjin River flows along the northeastern border line of the city and the Ryesong River (禮成江) (Ryeseong-gang; 례성강) (transliterated in South Korea as Yeseong-gang; 예성강) runs along the western border to the mouth of the Han River. In addition to the two rivers, small and large rivers and streams such as the Samich'ŏn, Wŏlamch'ŏn, Chukbaech'ŏn, Kŭmsŏngch'ŏn, and Sach'ŏn rivers drain into the Han. The river basin located in the southwest of Kaesong has spacious alluvial plains such as P'ungdŏkbŏl, Singwangbŏl, and Samsŏngbŏl.
The geology consists of the Proterozoic, Cenozoic, and Paleozoic strata and Mesozoic intrusive granite. The underground resources include gold, zinc, copper, fluorspar, limestone, granite, and kaolin. The soil comprises generally brown forest soil while the areas drained by Yesŏng, Imjin, and Han rivers consist of mostly alluvial and saline soil. The climate is generally warm and moderate, with an average annual temperature of around 10 °C. The coldest month is January, with an average temperature of −5.9 °C, while the hottest month is August, with an average temperature of 24.7 °C. The average annual rainfall ranges from 1,300 to 1,400 millimeters. The duration of frost-free period is 180 days—the longest in North Korea. About 55% of Kaesong is forested (80% of the trees are pines), and 40 species of mammals and 250 birds inhabit the area.
Climate
Kaesong has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dwa), with cold, dry winters and hot, humid summers with abundant rainfall.
Administrative divisions
Before 2002, what is now Kaesong Directly Governed City was divided into one city (Kaesŏng itself) and two counties, Changpung County and Panmunjom. In 2003, P'anmun-gun and part of Kaesong-si were separated from Kaesŏng Directly Governed City and merged to form Kaesong Industrial Region. The remaining part of Kaesŏng joined North Hwanghae Province in 2002. Kaesong is currently divided into 24 administrative districts known as Dong, as well as three villages ("ri").
Koryŏ-dong (고려동/):Anhwasa temple is located here.
Haeun-dong (해운동/):Named after pavillion called Haeunru
Chanam-dong (자남동/):Named after Mount chanam.
Kwanhun-dong (관훈동/):The place was named as such because of the fact the place had a Hunryonwon (Institution that hired military officials and soldiers for the Joseon dynasty) and Gwaegwanhyon (also called Gatgoljae, a place where Goryeo scholars protested by refusing to take the Gwageo and take off their gat hats).
Manwŏl-dong (만월동/):named after Manwoldae.
Naesŏng-dong (내성동/):Named after Naeseong of Kaesong city walls
Nam'an-dong (남안동/):Named as such because it was comfortably in the southern plains of Namdaemun (Kaesong)
Nammun-dong (남문동/):Named after Namdaemun (Kaesong).Bell of Yonbok Temple is located here.
Namsan-dong (남산동/)
Pangjik-tong (방직동/)
Posŏn-dong (보선동/)
Pug'an-dong (북안동/):Named as such because it was comfortably in the northern plains of Namdaemun (Kaesong).Kaesong Students and Children's Palace is located here.
Pusan-dong (부산동/)
Ryonghŭng-dong (룡흥동/)
Ryongsan-dong (룡산동/)
Song'ak-tong (송악동/)
Sŏngnam-dong (성남동/)
Sŏnjuk-tong (선죽동/)
Sŭngjŏn-dong (승전동/)
Tonghŭng-dong (동흥동/)
Tonghyŏn-dong (동현동/)
Ŭndŏk-tong (은덕동/)
Ŭnhak-tong (운학동/)
Yŏkchŏn-dong (역전동/)
Pak'yŏl-li (박연리/)
Samgŏ-ri (삼거리/)
Tog'am-ri (덕암리/)
Culture
Landmarks
Kaesong is home to the World Heritage Site Historic Monuments and Sites in Kaesong. Koryo Songgyungwan University (Light Industry), Communist University and Art College are located in Kaesong. The Koryo Museum, housed in the city's old Confucian academy, contains many priceless Goryeo arts and cultural relics (although many are copies, with the originals held in the vaults of the Korean Central History Museum in Pyongyang).
As the former capital of Goryeo, the tombs of almost all of the Goryeo kings are located in the area, though most are not accessible; the heavily reconstructed Tomb of King Wanggon, belonging to the dynasty's founder, Taejo of Goryeo, is located to the west of the city in Kaepung-gun. Other notable tombs include those of kings Hyejong of Goryeo (the Sollung Royal Tomb), Gyeongjong of Goryeo (Yongrung Royal Tomb), Seongjong of Goryeo (Kangrung Royal Tomb), Hyeonjong of Goryeo (Sollung Royal Tomb), Munjong of Goryeo (Kyongrung Royal Tomb), and Gongmin of Goryeo (Tomb of King Kongmin). Kaesong also contains North Korea's only two royal tombs dating to the Joseon: the Hurung Royal Tomb, belonging to the dynasty's second king, Jeongjong of Joseon, and the Cherung Royal Tomb, containing the remains of Queen Sinui, wife of the dynasty's founder, Yi Songgye (Taejo of Joseon). The two final tombs, despite belonging to members of the Joseon royal family, were excluded from the World Heritage Site Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty because of their location in North Korea.
Cuisine
Since Kaesong was the capital of Goryeo for 487 years, its culinary culture was highly developed. The luxurious style of Kaesong cuisine is frequently compared with Seoul cuisine and Jeolla cuisine. Kaesong cuisine was traditionally treated as part of Gyeonggi cuisine, since Kaesong belonged to Gyeonggi Province until 1950. However, it has been incorporated into the administration of North Korea after the Korean War while Gyeonggi Province is in South Korea. Bossam kimchi (wrapped kimchi), pyeonsu (square-shaped summer mandu), sinseollo (royal casserole), seolleongtang (ox bone soup), chueotang (mudfish soup), joraengi tteokguk (rice cake soup), umegi (tteok covered with syrup), and gyeongdan (ball-shaped tteok) are representative Kaesong dishes. Umegi, also called Kaesong juak, is a holiday food of Kaesong, and known for the delicate style with the sweet and nutty taste. The dish is made by kneading a mixture of rice flour and glutinous rice flour with warm water, by shaping the dough into balls with either one pine nut or jujube, by frying and coating them with syrup.
Economy
With its topography, climate and soil, Kaesong has advantageous natural conditions for agricultural productions. The water supply system is established with 18 reservoirs, including Songdo Reservoir, built for agricultural advances and about 150 pumping stations as well as hundreds of dammed pools. The cultivated land accounts for 27% of Kaesong's area. Rice, maize, soybeans, wheat, and barley are the main crops. Among them, rice production accounts for 60% of the whole grain production, and Kaepung and Panmun are the two primary regions, producing more than 70% of the rice production. In addition, vegetable and fruit cultivation including peach, apple and persimmon, livestock farming, and sericulture are active. Peach is a local specialty of Kaesong, especially white peach, which accounts for more than 25% of the total fruit production. The counties of Kaepung-gun and Panmun-gun are also known for cultivating the quality Korean ginseng called Goryeo Insam.
Kaesong is North Korea's light industry centre. The urban district is equipped with a jewel processing factory, ginseng processing factory and an embroidery factory. Since the Goryeo period, Kaesong had been a center of handcrafts such as Goryeo ware and commerce while the textile industry has been the primary business along with the production of grocery goods, daily general goods, and ginseng products after the division into the two states. The food processing industry ranks next to the textile business, mainly producing jang (soybean-based condiments), oil, canned foods, alcoholic beverages, soft drinks and others. In addition, resin, timber, handicrafts, pottery, shoes, school supplies, musical instruments, and glass are produced. Kaesong has factories for producing agricultural machines and tractor repair.
As of 2002, the city contained the headquarters of the Central Bank of North Korea, with branches also in Kapung and Panmun counties.
North Korea and South Korea jointly operate an industrial complex in the Kaesong Industrial Region. The industrial park, built around 2005, employs over 53,400 North Koreans at over 120 South Korean textile and other labor-intensive factories. In early 2013, approximately 887 South Koreans worked in the complex, which produced an estimated $470 million of goods in 2012, and the complex employed a sixth of Kaesong's working people.
Amid tensions in 2013, the industrial park was temporarily closed. It was closed again in 2016.
Tourism
Kaesong is a major destination for foreign visitors to North Korea. Many Goryeo-era sites are located in Kaesong, including the Kaesong Namdaemun gate, the Songgyungwan Confucian Academy, now the Koryo Museum, and the Sonjuk Bridge and Pyochung Pavilion. Less-known sites include Kwandok Pavilion, the ruined Goryeo-era Manwoldae Palace, Anhwa Temple, Sungyang Hall, Mokchong Hall, and the Kaesong Chomsongdae (개성 첨성대; 開城 瞻星臺) observatory. Located to the west of the city are the tombs of Kings Kongmin and Wanggon; twenty-four km north of Kaesong is Taehungsan Fortress, a Koguryo satellite fortress built to protect Pyongyang. This castle contains the Kwanum and Taehung Temples. The famous Pakyon Falls are located in the area, as well as a large, recently discovered Goryeo-era Buddha carved into the stone on Mt. Chonma. Most tourists to Kaesong are put in the traditional Kaesong Folk Hotel, housed in 19 traditional hanok courtyard houses.
Education
Sungkyunkwan, one kilometer north of Seonjukgyo bridge is a representative traditional educational institution in Kaesong. It was founded in the neighborhood of Gukja-dong with the name Gukjagam (국자감; 國子監) in 992 during the reign of King Seongjong of Goryeo, which ignited Korean Confucianism. Its name was changed to Gukhak (국학; 國學) in the reign of Chungnyeol of Goryeo and was referred to as Seonggyungwan. In 1367, the 16th year of Gongmin of Goryeo's reign, the structure was revamped and Yi Saek, and Jeong Mong-ju, Confucian scholars of the time taught there as professors. In 1592, the 25th year of Seonjo of Joseon's reign, Kim Yuk reconstructed the institution which was burned down by the Japanese during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598).
The first modern school that appeared in Kaesong was Hanyeong Seowon (한영서원; 韓英書院), or Anglo-Korean School established by Yun Chi-ho in 1906, with the help of American missionaries Mr. Wasson, and Mr. Candler. It obtained authorization as Songdo High School from Governor-General of Korea in 1917, and expanded to the Songdo School Foundation in 1950 with the accreditation for the establishment of Songdo Middle School and Songdo College of Pharmacy, the latter of which produced 40 graduates. However, when the Korean War occurred, the foundation was moved to Incheon, and reconstructed Songdo Middle and High Schools in 1953 which still exist to the present.
By 1950, there were two public high schools: Kaeseong High School (개성중학교; 開城中學校) and Kaeseong Girls' High School (개성고등여학교; 開城高等女學校) and three private high schools: Songdo High School (송도중학교; 松都中學校), Jeonghwa Girls' School (정화여학교;貞和女學校) and Hosudon Girls' School (호수돈여학교; 好壽敦女學校). Like Songdo High School, Jeonghwa and Hosudon Girls' Schools, with the teachers and most students, evacuated south during the Korean War and their campuses now are located in Seoul and Daejeon respectively.
There were also eight public elementary schools (국민학교) in Kaeseong by 1950, they were the Manwol (만월; 滿月), Donghyun (동현; 銅峴), Seonjuk (선죽; 善竹), Koryo (고려; 高麗), Songdo (송도; 松都), Junggyeong (중경; 中京), Namsan (남산; 南山) and Deokam (덕암; 德岩) elementary schools.
As of 2002, Kaesong had 80 each public elementary schools which scattered in each unit of ri (village), 60 middle-high schools, 3 colleges and 3 universities such as Songdo University of Politics, Kaesong University of Education, and Kaesong Communist University.
Transportation
Kaesong is connected to Pyongyang and other cities by rail and highways. The city's main railway station is Kaesong Station, which is on the Pyongbu Line.
There was a plan to build a trolleybus line in this city, but it never came to fruition.
Sister cities
Cusco (1990)
People born in Kaesong
Uicheon (1055–1191), founder of the Cheontae Buddhist sect
Choe Chung-hon (1149–1219), a military ruler of Korea during the Goryeo
Choe U (died 1249), general of the Goryeo, son of Choe Chung-Hon
Hwang Hui (1363–1452), prime minister of Joseon
Hwang Jin-i (1515–1550), famous Kisaeng and poet
Lee Jong soo (Chong Lee) (1938–2017), Father of Taekwondo in Canada
K. W. Lee (1928–), Korean-American print journalist
Won Pyong Oh (1926–2020), South Korean zoologist
Chin Byung Ho (1909–1972), Dean of Seoul National University Medical School
Youn Yuh-jung (1947–), South Korean actress and Academy Award winner
Woo In-hee (died 1981), North Korean actress and a mistress of Kim Jong Il.
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
.
Further reading
Dormels, Rainer. North Korea's Cities: Industrial facilities, internal structures and typification. Jimoondang, 2014.
External links
Gaeseong Industrial District Foundation Foreign Investment Support Center
German website about the City of Kaesong
" North Korea opens hidden city to tourists." BBC News. Friday 7 December 2007.
City profile of Kaesong
Historical Remains in Kaesong picture album at Naenara
Another picture album at Naenara
Directly Governed Cities and Special Administrative Regions of North Korea
Former capitals of Korea
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Jacobus Arminius
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Jacobus Arminius (; 10 October 1560 – 19 October 1609), the Latinized name of Jakob Hermanszoon, was a Dutch Reformed minister and theologian during the Protestant Reformation period whose views became the basis of Arminianism and the Dutch Remonstrant movement. He served from 1603 as professor in theology at the University of Leiden and wrote many books and treatises on theology.
Following his death, his challenge to the Reformed standard, the Belgic Confession, provoked ample discussion at the Synod of Dort, which crafted the five points of Calvinism in response to Arminius's teaching.
Early life
Arminius, was born in 1559 or 1560 in Oudewater, Utrecht. He became an orphan while still young. His father Herman, a manufacturer of weapons, died, leaving his wife a widow with small children. He never knew his father, and his mother was killed during the Spanish massacre at Oudewater in 1575.
The child was adopted by Theodorus Aemilius, a priest inclined towards Protestantism. Around 1572 (the year Oudewater was conquered by the rebels), Arminius and Aemilius settled in Utrecht. The young Jacobus studied there, probably at the Hieronymusschool. After the death of Aemilius (1574 or 1575), Arminius became acquainted with the mathematician Rudolph Snellius, also from Oudewater. The latter brought Arminius to Marburg and enabled him to study at the Leiden University, where he taught. In 1576, Arminius was registered as a liberal arts student at the newly opened Leiden University.
Theological studies and ministry
Arminius remained a student at Leiden from 1576 to 1582. Although he enrolled as a student in Liberal Arts, this allowed him to pursue an education in theology, as well. His teachers in theology included Calvinist Lambertus Danaeus, Hebrew scholar Johannes Drusius, Guillaume Feuguereius (or Feugueires, d. 1613), and Johann Kolmann. Kolmann is now known for teaching that the overemphasis of God's sovereignty in high Calvinism made God "a tyrant and an executioner". Although the university in Leiden was solidly Reformed, it had influences from Lutheran, Zwinglian, and Anabaptist views in addition to Calvinism. One Leiden pastor (Caspar Coolhaes) held, contra Calvin, that civil authorities did have jurisdiction in some church affairs, that it was wrong to punish and execute heretics, and that Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists could unite around core tenets. The astronomer and mathematician Willebrord Snellius used Ramist philosophy in an effort to encourage his students to pursue truth without over reliance on Aristotle. Under the influence of these men, Arminius studied with success and may have had seeds planted that would begin to develop into a theology that would later question the dominant Reformed theology of John Calvin. The success he showed in his studies motivated the merchants guild of Amsterdam to fund the next three years of his studies.
In 1582, Arminius began studying under Theodore Beza at Geneva. He found himself under pressure for using Ramist philosophical methods, familiar to him from his time at Leiden. Arminius was publicly forbidden to teach Ramean philosophy. After this difficult state of affairs, he moved to Basel to continue his studies.
He continued to distinguish himself there as an excellent student. In 1583 Arminius was contemplating a return to Geneva when the theological faculty at Basel spontaneously offered him a doctorate. He declined the honor on account of his youth (he was about 24) and returned to the school in Geneva to finish his schooling in Geneva under Beza.
Commendations from Beza and Grynaeus
Upon the conclusion of Arminius' studies and a request for him to pastor in Amsterdam, Beza replied to leaders in Amsterdam with this letter:
"...Let it be known to you that from the time Arminius returned to us from Basel, his life and learning both have so approved themselves to us, that we hope for the best from him in every respect, if he steadily persists in the same course, which, by the blessing of God, we doubt not he will; for, among other endowments, God has given him an intellect well-suited both to the apprehension and to the discrimination of things. If this henceforward be regulated by piety, which he appears assiduously to cultivate, it cannot but happen that this power of intellect, when consolidated by mature age and experience, will be productive of the richest fruits. Such is our opinion of Arminius — a young man, unquestionably, so far as we are able to judge, most worthy of your kindness and liberality" (Letter of 3 June 1585 from Beza to Amsterdam).
From this letter it would seem that the earlier tension from Arminius' attraction to Ramist philosophy had dissipated and Arminius was known even to Beza as an excellent though budding theologian. Three months later, John Grynaeus at the University of Basel sent this letter of commendation:
"To pious readers, greeting: 'Inasmuch as a faithful testimonial of learning and piety ought not to be refused to any learned and pious man, so neither to James Arminius, a native of Amsterdam [sic], for his deportment while he attended the University of Basel was marked by piety, moderation, and assiduity in study ; and very often, in the course of our theological discussions, he made his gift of a discerning spirit so manifest to all of us, as to elicit from us well-merited congratulations. More recently, too, in certain extraordinary prelections delivered with the consent, and by the order, of the Theological Faculty, in which he publicly expounded a few chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, he gave us the best ground to hope that he was destined erelong — if, indeed, he goes on to stir up the gift of God that is in him — to undertake and sustain the function of teaching, to which he may be lawfully set apart, with much fruit to the Church. I commend him, accordingly, to all good men, and, in particular, to the Church of God in the famous city of Amsterdam ; and I respectfully entreat that regard may be had to that learned and pious youth, so that he may never be under the necessity of intermitting theological studies which have been thus far so happily prosecuted. Farewell ! 'John James Grynaeus, Professor of Sacred Literature, and Dean of the Theological Faculty. — Written with mine own hand. Basle, 3rd September, 1583."
Beginning of public ministry
Arminius answered the call to pastor at Amsterdam in 1587, delivering Sunday and midweek sermons. After being tested by the church leaders, he was ordained in 1588. He gained a reputation as a good preacher and faithful pastor.
One of Arminius' first tasks was given to him by Ecclesiastical Court of Amsterdam; namely, to refute the teachings of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, who rejected Beza's supralapsarian doctrine of God's absolute and unconditional decree to create men so as to save some and damn others, based on nothing in themselves. The discussion had already begun with two ministers at Delft who had written "An Answer to certain Arguments of Beza and Calvin, from a Treatise on Predestination as taught in the Ninth Chapter of Romans" a document which contradicted both Beza and Coornhert. They proposed that although God's decree to save only some was indeed absolute and unconditional, it had occurred after the fall (proposing infralapsarianism rather than Beza's supralapsarianism). Arminius was tasked with refuting both Coornhert and infralapsarianism theology. He readily agreed to the task, but after greater study found himself in conflict over the matter. He determined to spend greater time in study before continuing his refutation.
In 1590 he married Lijsbet Reael, the daughter of Laurens Jacobsz Reael, a prominent merchant and poet in Amsterdam who also helped lead the Protestant Reformation and later helped establish the first Reformed Church in the area. Arminius's marriage to Reael allowed him access to her prestigious connections, and he made many friends in the merchant industry and high society. He was commissioned to organize the educational system of Amsterdam, and is said to have done it well. He greatly distinguished himself by faithfulness to his duties in 1602 during a plague that swept through Amsterdam, going into infected houses that others did not dare to enter in order to give them water, and supplying their neighbors with funds to care for them.
Controversy
At Amsterdam, Arminius taught through "a number of sermons on the Epistle of the Romans". In discussing Romans 7 in 1591, he taught that man, through grace and rebirth, did not have to live in bondage to sin, and that Romans 7:14 was speaking of a man living under the law and convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, yet not presently regenerated. This was met with some resistance, and some detractors labeled him Pelagian for teaching that an unregenerate man could feel such conviction and desire for salvation, even with the influence of the Law and the Holy Spirit. In the same year, responding to Arminius' theological positions, his colleague Petrus Plancius began to dispute him openly. During a gathering of ministers, Arminius insisted he was not teaching anything in contradiction to the Heidelberg Confession and other standards of orthodoxy, that early church theologians held similar views, and that he utterly repudiated the heresy of Pelagianism. Further, Arminius expressed some astonishment that he was not to be allowed to interpret this passage according to the dictates of his own conscience and within the pattern of historic orthodoxy. The Amsterdam burgomasters intervened, in an effort to keep the peace and tamp down divisions in the populace, urging them to peacefully coexist and for Arminius to teach nothing out of accord with the Reformed thought agreed upon at the time unless he had consulted with the church council or other bodies.
During the following years, controversy emerged as he preached through Romans 9. Although he did not directly contradict Calvinist interpretations, he focused on Paul's theme of "justification by faith" in contradiction to works, rather than focusing on God's eternal decrees. During this time he "gradually developed opinions on grace, predestination and free will that were inconsistent with the doctrine of the Reformed teachers Calvin and Beza".
Professor at Leiden
In 1603 he was called back to Leiden University to teach theology. This came about after almost simultaneous deaths in 1602 of two faculty members, Franciscus Junius and Lucas Trelcatius the elder, in an outbreak of plague. Lucas Trelcatius the younger and Arminius (despite Plancius' protest) were appointed, the decision resting largely with Franciscus Gomarus, the surviving faculty member. While Gomarus cautiously approved Arminius, whose views were already suspected of unorthodoxy, his arrival opened a period of debate rather than closed it. The appointment had also a political dimension, being backed by both Johannes Uytenbogaert at The Hague and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.
Escalating controversy with Gomarus
Gomarus, a Fleming who had been in Leiden since 1594, has been described as "a rather mediocre scholar" but "a forceful defender of the Calvinistic doctrine... a man of deep-rooted faith" In contrast Arminius has been described as "a seeker, a doubter". On the question of predestination Gomarus was a supralapsarian and it was in debate over this point that the conflict between the two began. Arminius advocated revising the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, but was not explicit, until much later when the debate became an open conflict.
The dispute took a public turn on 7 February 1604, when Willem Bastingius in his disputation De divina praedestinatione defended a number of Arminius's theses, Arminius himself presiding. This event led Gomarus to have Samuel Gruterus argue an opposite position to these theses on 14 October 1604, but not on the official schedule. Gomarus ascribed the positions he disliked to Calvin's adversary Sebastian Castellio and his follower, Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert. While Arminius pointed to the Bible to defend his positions, the Calvinist views set forth by "the Genevan patriarchs gradually acquired the force of Res judicata, so that resistance against it was no longer tolerated."
Opponents of Arminius outside the university gradually expanded the controversy. The classis in Dordrecht drew up a gravamen in which "some differences" that "were said to have arisen in the Church and University of Leiden on the doctrine of the Reformed Churches" was laid out. In response the three Leiden professors of theology (Lucas Trelcatius Jr. joining Arminius and Gomarus) and the Regent of the State College, Johannes Cuchlinus, wrote an indignant letter, stating "that as far as was known to them there was no conflict between the professors on any fundamental doctrine whatsoever."
Gomarus was incited to increase his opposition to Arminius by Leiden minister Festus Hommius and Petrus Plancius, Arminius's old opponent. An anonymous series of thirty-one articles was circulated, "in which all kinds of unorthodox opinions held by Arminius were exposed". Sibrandus Lubbertus, Professor of Theology at the University of Franeker, began sending letters to foreign theologians attacking Arminius with charges of heresy; and one of these letters fell into Arminius's hands. Because his opponents remained anonymous or bypassed official procedures, Arminius in April 1608 requested from the States of Holland permission to expound his views. On 30 May 1608 Arminius and Gomarus were allowed by the States to deliver speeches before the Supreme Court in The Hague. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Reinout van Brederode (Oldenbarnevelt's son-in-law) concluded that "the points of difference between the two professors, mostly relating to the subtle details of doctrine of predestination, were of minor importance and could co-exist... [and] enjoined both gentlemen to tolerate one another lovingly".
In direct defiance of the Court, Gomarus then published the speech he had made before it, and Arminius followed suit by publishing his own speech. In response to the Court's opinion Gomarus declared that "he would not dare die holding Arminius' opinion, nor to appear with it before God's judgement seat." Arminius then asked to defend his positions in public or for a national or provincial synod to be called to examine the matter. Seeking to avoid a synod, the States of Holland allowed Arminius to expound on his views to their assembly on 30 October 1608.
Before the assembly, Arminius finally explained his call to rewrite the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, saying that he did not feel obligated to explain his position before, for "as a professor, he considered himself subject only to the authority of the Leiden Curators and the States, not to the Church". Arminius then gave an overview of all the various opinions existing on predestination. He claimed that supralapsarianism was contrary to the Confession and Catechism and that "supra- and infralapsarianism, basically amount to the same thing." Arminius put forward his own view on predestination which he held was in concordance with the Confession and the Catechism.
Learning that Arminius had appeared before the States assembly, Gomarus requested permission to address it as well, which was granted. On 12 December 1608 Gomarus blasted Arminius, accusing "his colleague of being a supporter of Pelagianism and the Jesuits; he also attacked Johannes Wtenbogaert, whom he branded a 'courtly trumpeter.'" The assembly took offence against this polemical tone, which contrasted with Arminius's eirenicism, and ordered the speeches made before them by both men to be banned from publication. Despite the ban the speeches soon appeared in print.
On 25 July 1609 Jacobus Bontebal defended the theses De vocatione hominis ad salutem under Arminius's presidency. A Roman Catholic priest (rumored to be a Jesuit) was in the audience and dared to oppose Arminius' positions. While an already seriously ill Arminius refuted the arguments, Gomarus "who was among the audience, became alternately flushing and deathly pale, and afterwards, while the Papist was within earshot, he insultingly remarked to his colleague that now the door to Papism had been widely opened."
Final debate and last days
Arminius remained as a teacher at Leiden until his death, and was valued by his students. Still, the conflict with Gomarus widened out into a large-scale split within Calvinism. Of the local clergy, Adrianus Borrius supported Arminius, while Festus Hommius opposed him. Close friends, students and supporters of Arminius included Johannes Drusius, Conrad Vorstius, Anthony Thysius, Johannes Halsbergius, Petrus Bertius, Johannes Arnoldi Corvinus, the brothers Rembert and Simon Episcopius. His successor at Leiden (again selected with the support of Uytenbogaert and Oldenbarnevelt) was Vorstius, a past influence on Arminius by his writings.
Once again the States attempted to tamp down the growing controversy without calling a synod. Arminius was ordered to attend another conference with Gomarus in The Hague in on 13–14 August 1609. When the conference was to reconvene on 18 August, Arminius' health began to fail and so he returned to Leiden. The States suspended the conference and asked both men for a written reaction to their adversary's viewpoint.
Arminius died on 19 October 1609 at his house at the Pieterskerkhof. He was buried in the Pieterskerk at Leiden, where a memorial stone on his behalf was placed in 1934.
Theology and legacy
In attempting to defend Calvinistic predestination against the teachings of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, Arminius began to doubt aspects of Calvinism and modified some parts of his own view. He attempted to reform Calvinism, and lent his name to a movement—Arminianism—which resisted some of the Calvinist tenets (unconditional election, the nature of the limitation of the atonement, and irresistible grace). The early Dutch followers of his teaching became known as Remonstrants after they issued a document containing five points of disagreement with mainstream Calvinism, entitled Remonstrantiæ (1610).
Arminius wrote that he sought to teach only those things which could be proved from the Scriptures and that tended toward edification among Christians (with the exception of Roman Catholics, with whom he said there could be no spiritual accord). His motto was reputed to be "Bona conscientia paradisus", meaning, "A good conscience is a paradise."
Arminius taught of a "preventing" (or prevenient) grace that has been conferred upon all by the Holy Spirit and this grace is "sufficient for belief, in spite of our sinful corruption, and thus for salvation." Arminius stated that "the grace sufficient for salvation is conferred on the Elect, and on the Non-elect; that, if they will, they may believe or not believe, may be saved or not be saved." William Witt states that "Arminius has a very high theology of grace. He insists emphatically that grace is gratuitous because it is obtained through God's redemption in Christ, not through human effort."
The theology of Arminianism did not become fully developed during Arminius' lifetime, but after his death (1609) the Five articles of the Remonstrants (1610) systematized and formalized the ideas. But the Calvinist Synod of Dort (1618–19), convening for the purpose of condemning Arminius' theology, declared it and its adherents anathemas, defined the five points of Calvinism, and persecuted Arminian pastors who remained in the Netherlands. But in spite of persecution, "the Remonstrants continued in Holland as a distinct church and again and again where Calvinism was taught Arminianism raised its head."
Publishers in Leiden (1629) and at Frankfurt (1631 and 1635) issued the works of Arminius in Latin.
John Wesley (1703–91), the founder of the Methodist Movement, came to his own religious beliefs while in college and through his Aldersgate Experience or epiphany and expressed himself strongly against the doctrines of Calvinistic election and reprobation. His system of thought has become known as Wesleyan Arminianism, the foundations of which were laid by Wesley and his fellow preacher John William Fletcher. Although Wesley knew very little about the beliefs of Jacobus Arminius and arrived at his religious views independently of Arminius, Wesley acknowledged late in life, with the 1778 publication of The Arminian Magazine, that he and Arminius were in general agreement. Theology Professor W. Stephen Gunther concludes he was "a faithful representative" of Arminius' beliefs. Wesley was perhaps the clearest English proponent of Arminianism. He embraced Arminian theology and became its most prominent champion. , the majority of Methodists remain committed (knowingly or unknowingly) to Arminian theology, and Arminianism itself has become one of the dominant theological systems in the United States, thanks in large part to the influence of John and Charles Wesley.
Personal life
Arminius and his wife Lijsbet Laurensdochtor Reael, who married in 1590, had a total of 12 children, three of whom died young during infancy. They had ten sons; Harmen (b. 1594), Pieter (b. 1596), Jan (b. 1598), Laurens (b. 1600, died in infancy), Laurens (b. 1601), Jacob (b. 1603), Willem (b. 1605), and Daniel (b. 1606). They had two other sons who also died in infancy, whose names are not part of the public record. Their daughters were Engelte (b. 1593) and Geertruyd (b. 1608). He was survived by his wife and children when he died.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Sources
Further reading
External links
Works by Jacobus Arminius in Short Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN)
1560 births
1609 deaths
16th-century Dutch people
17th-century Dutch Calvinist and Reformed ministers
17th-century Dutch philosophers
17th-century Dutch theologians
Arminian ministers
Arminian theologians
Burials at Pieterskerk, Leiden
Dutch Calvinist and Reformed theologians
History of Utrecht (city)
Leiden University alumni
Academic staff of Leiden University
People from Oudewater
Philosophy and thought in the Dutch Republic
Protestant philosophers
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Salvation in Christianity
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In Christianity, salvation (also called deliverance or redemption) is the saving of human beings from sin and its consequences—which include death and separation from God—by Christ's death and resurrection, and the justification entailed by this salvation.
The idea of Jesus' death as an atonement for human sin was recorded in the Christian Bible, and was elaborated in Paul's epistles and in the Gospels. Paul saw the faithful redeemed by participation in Jesus' death and rising. Early Christians regarded themselves as partaking in a new covenant with God, open to both Jews and Gentiles, through the sacrificial death and subsequent exaltation of Jesus Christ.
Early Christian beliefs of the person and sacrificial role of Jesus in human salvation were further elaborated by the Church Fathers, medieval writers and modern scholars in various atonement theories, such as the ransom theory, Christus Victor theory, recapitulation theory, satisfaction theory, penal substitution theory and moral influence theory.
Variant views on salvation (soteriology) are among the main fault lines dividing the various Christian denominations, including conflicting definitions of sin and depravity (the sinful nature of mankind), justification (God's means of removing the consequences of sin), and atonement (the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus).
Definition and scope
Salvation in Christianity, or deliverance or redemption, is the "saving [of] human beings from death and separation from God" by Christ's death and resurrection.
Christian salvation not only concerns the atonement itself, but also the question of how one partakes of this salvation, by faith, baptism, or obedience; and the question of whether this salvation is individual or universal. It further involves questions regarding the afterlife, e.g. "heaven, hell, purgatory, soul sleep, and annihilation." The fault lines between the various denominations include conflicting definitions of sin, justification, and atonement.
Sin
In the West (differentiating from Eastern Orthodoxy) Christian hamartiology describes sin as an act of offence against God by despising his persons and Christian biblical law, and by injuring others. It is an evil human act, which violates the rational nature of man, as well as God's nature and his eternal law. According to the classical definition of Augustine of Hippo, sin is "a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God".
Christian tradition has explained sin as a fundamental aspect of human existence, brought about by original sin—also called ancestral sin, the fall of man stemming from Adam's rebellion in Eden by eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Paul espouses it in Romans 5:12–19, and Augustine of Hippo popularized his interpretation of it in the West, developing it into a notion of "hereditary sin," arguing that God holds all the descendants of Adam and Eve accountable for Adam's sin of rebellion, and as such all people deserve God's wrath and condemnation—apart from any actual sins they personally commit.
Total depravity (also called "radical corruption" or "pervasive depravity") is a Protestant theological doctrine derived from the concept of original sin. It is the teaching that, as a consequence of the fall of man, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin as a result of their inherent fallen nature and, apart from the irresistible or prevenient grace of God, is utterly unable to choose to follow God, refrain from evil, or accept the gift of salvation as it is offered. It is advocated to various degrees by many Protestant confessions of faith and catechisms, including those of some Lutheran synods, and Calvinism, teaching irresistible grace. Arminians, such as Methodists, also believe and teach total depravity, but with the distinct difference of teaching prevenient grace.
Justification
In Christian theology, justification is God's act of removing the guilt and penalty of sin while at the same time making a sinner righteous through Christ's atoning sacrifice. The means of justification is an area of significant difference among Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Justification is often seen as being the theological fault line that divided Catholic from the Lutheran and Reformed traditions of Protestantism during the Reformation.
Broadly speaking, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christians distinguish between initial justification, which in their view ordinarily occurs at baptism; and final salvation, accomplished after a lifetime of striving to do God's will (theosis or divinization).
Theosis is a transformative process whose aim is likeness to or union with God, as taught by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches. As a process of transformation, theosis is brought about by the effects of catharsis (purification of mind and body) and theoria ('illumination' with the 'vision' of God). According to Eastern Christian teaching, theosis is very much the purpose of human life. It is considered achievable only through a synergy (or cooperation) between human activity and God's uncreated energies (or operations). The synonymous term divinization is the transforming effect of divine grace, the Spirit of God, or the atonement of Christ. Theosis and divinization are distinguished from sanctification, "being made holy," which can also apply to objects; and from apotheosis, also "divinization," ).
Catholics believe faith which is active in charity and good works () can justify, or remove the burden of guilt in sin, from man. Forgiveness of sin exists and is natural, but justification can be lost by mortal sin.
In the Protestant doctrine, sin is merely "covered" and righteousness imputed. In Lutheranism and Calvinism, righteousness from God is viewed as being credited to the sinner's account through faith alone, without works. Protestants believe faith without works can justify man because Christ died for sinners, but anyone who truly has faith will produce good works as a product of faith, as a good tree produces good fruit. For Lutherans, justification can be lost with the loss of faith.
Atonement
The word "atonement" often is used in the Old Testament to translate the Hebrew words (, m.sg.) and (, m.pl.), which mean "propitiation" or "expiation"; The English word atonement is derived from the original meaning of "at-one-ment" (i.e., being "at one" or in harmony, with someone). According to Collins English Dictionary, atonement is used to describe the saving work that God granted (through Christ) to reconcile the world to Himself, and also of the state of a person having been reconciled to God. According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, atonement in Christian theology is "man's reconciliation with God through the sacrificial death of Christ."
Many Christians believe in unlimited atonement; however, some Christians teach limited atonement to those who are predestined unto salvation, as its primary benefits are not given to all of mankind but rather to believers only.
Theories of atonement
A number of metaphors (and Old Testament terms) and references have been used in New Testament writings to understand the person and death of Jesus. Starting in the 2nd century CE, various understandings of atonement have been put forth to explain the death and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the metaphors applied by the New Testament to understand his death. Over the centuries, Christians have held different ideas regarding how Jesus saves people, with different views still existing within various Christian denominations. According to the biblical scholar C. Marvin Pate, "...there are three aspects to Christ's atonement according to the early Church: vicarious atonement [substitutionary atonement], the eschatological defeat of Satan [Christ the Victor], and the imitation of Christ [participation in Jesus' death and resurrection]." Pate further notes that these three aspects were intertwined in the earliest Christian writings but that this intertwining was lost since the Patristic times. Because of the influence of Gustaf Aulén's 1931 study, the various theories or paradigms of atonement which developed after the New Testament writings are often grouped under the "classic paradigm," the "objective paradigm," and the "subjective paradigm".
Old Testament
In the Hebrew writings, God is absolutely righteous, and only pure and sinless persons can approach him. Reconciliation is achieved by an act of God, namely by his appointment of the sacrificial system, or, in the prophetic view, "by the future Divine gift of a new covenant to replace the old covenant which sinful Israel has broken." The Old Testament describes three types of vicarious atonement which result in purity or sinlessness: the Paschal Lamb; "the sacrificial system as a whole," with the Day of Atonement as the most essential element; and the idea of the suffering servant (Isaiah 42:1–9, 49:1–6, 50:4–11, 52:13–53:12), "the action of a Divinely sent Servant of the Lord who was 'wounded for our transgressions' and 'bear the sin of many'." The Old Testament Apocrypha adds a fourth idea, namely the righteous martyr (2 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, Wisdom 2–5).
These traditions of atonement offer only temporary forgiveness, and (offerings) could only be used as a means of atoning for the lightest type of sin, that is sins committed in ignorance that the thing was a sin. In addition, have no expiating effect unless the person making the offering sincerely repents of their actions before making the offering, and makes restitution to any person who was harmed by the violation. Marcus Borg notes that animal sacrifice in Second Temple Judaism was not a "payment for sin," but had a basic meaning as "making something sacred by giving it as a gift to God," and included a shared meal with God. Sacrifices had numerous purposes, namely thanksgiving, petition, purification, and reconciliation. None of them was a "payment or substitution or satisfaction," and even "sacrifices of reconciliation were about restoring the relationship." James F. McGrath refers to 4 Maccabees 6, "which presents a martyr praying 'Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs' (4 Maccabees 6:28–29). Clearly there were ideas that existed in the Judaism of the time that helped make sense of the death of the righteous in terms of atonement."
New Testament
Jerusalem
1 Corinthians 15:3–8 contains the of the early Christians:
In the Jerusalem , from which Paul received this creed, the phrase "died for our sins" probably was an apologetic rationale for the death of Jesus as being part of God's plan and purpose, as evidenced in the scriptures. The phrase "died for our sins" was derived from Isaiah, especially Isaiah 53:1–11, and 4 Maccabees, especially 4 Maccabees 6:28–29. "Raised on the third day" is derived from Hosea 6:1–2:
Soon after his death, Jesus' followers believed he was raised from death by God and exalted to divine status as Lord () "at God's 'right hand'," which "associates him in astonishing ways with God." According to Hurtado, powerful religious experiences were an indispensable factor in the emergence of this Christ-devotion. Those experiences "seem to have included visions of (and/or ascents to) God's heaven, in which the glorified Christ was seen in an exalted position." Those experiences were interpreted in the framework of God's redemptive purposes, as reflected in the scriptures, in a "dynamic interaction between devout, prayerful searching for, and pondering over, scriptural texts and continuing powerful religious experiences." This initiated a "new devotional pattern unprecedented in Jewish monotheism," that is, the worship of Jesus next to God, giving a central place to Jesus because his ministry, and its consequences, had a strong impact on his early followers. Revelations, including those visions, but also inspired and spontaneous utterances, and "charismatic exegesis" of the Jewish scriptures, convinced them that this devotion was commanded by God.
Paul
The meaning of the of 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 for Paul is a matter of debate, and open to multiple interpretations. For Paul, "dying for our sins" gained a deeper significance, providing "a basis for the salvation of sinful Gentiles apart from the Torah."
Traditionally, this is interpreted as meaning that Jesus' death was an "atonement" for sin, or a ransom, or a means of propitiating God or expiating God's wrath against humanity because of their sins. With Jesus' death, humanity was freed from this wrath. In the classical Protestant understanding humans partake in this salvation by faith in Jesus Christ; this faith is a grace given by God, and people are justified by God through Jesus Christ and faith in him.
More recent scholarship has raised several concerns regarding these interpretations. The traditional interpretation sees Paul's understanding of salvation as involving "an exposition of the individual's relation to God." According to Krister Stendahl, the main concern of Paul's writings on Jesus' role, and salvation by faith, is not the individual conscience of human sinners, and their doubts about being chosen by God or not, but the problem of the inclusion of Gentile (Greek) Torah observers into God's covenant. Paul draws on several interpretative frames to solve this problem, but most importantly, his own experience and understanding. The from 1 Cor.15:3-5 refers to two mythologies: the Greek myth of the noble dead, to which the Maccabean notion of martyrdom and dying for ones people is related; and the Jewish myth of the persecuted sage or righteous man, in particular the "story of the child of wisdom." For Paul, the notion of 'dying for' refers to this martyrdom and persecution. According to Burton Mack, 'Dying for our sins' refers to the problem of Gentile Torah-observers, who, despite their faithfulness, cannot fully observe commandments, including circumcision, and are therefore 'sinners', excluded from God's covenant. Jesus' death and resurrection solved this problem of the exclusion of the Gentiles from God's covenant, as indicated by Romans 3:21–26.
According to E.P. Sanders, who initiated the New Perspective on Paul, Paul saw the faithful redeemed by participation in Jesus' death and rising. But "Jesus' death substituted for that of others and thereby freed believers from sin and guilt," a metaphor derived from "ancient sacrificial theology," the essence of Paul's writing is not in the "legal terms" regarding the expiation of sin, but the act of "participation in Christ through dying and rising with him." According to Sanders, "those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and thus they escape the power of sin [...] he died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him." James F. McGrath notes that Paul "prefers to use the language of participation. One died for all, so that all died (2 Corinthians 5:14). This is not only different from substitution, it is the opposite of it." By this participation in Christ's death and rising, "one receives forgiveness for past offences, is liberated from the powers of sin, and receives the Spirit." Paul insists that salvation is received by the grace of God; according to Sanders, this insistence is in line with Judaism of until 200 CE, which saw God's covenant with Israel as an act of grace of God. Observance of the Law is needed to maintain the covenant, but the covenant is not earned by observing the Law, but by the grace of God.
Several passages from Paul, such as Romans 3:25, are traditionally interpreted as meaning that humanity is saved by faith Christ. According to Richard B. Hays, who initiated the "Pistis Christou debate," a different reading of these passages is also possible. The phrase can be translated as 'faith in Christ', that is, salvation by believing in Christ, the traditional interpretation; or as 'faithfulness of Christ', that is, belief "through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ." In this view, according to Cobb, Jesus' life and death was not seen by Paul as an atonement, but as a means to participate in faithfulness. In this interpretation, Romans 3:21–26 states that Jesus was faithful, even to the cost of death, and justified by God for this faithfulness. Those who participate in this faithfulness are equally justified by God, both Jews and Gentiles. While this view has found support by a range of scholars, it has also been questioned and criticized.
Gospels
In the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as calling for repentance from sin, and saying that God wants mercy rather than sacrifices (Matthew 9:13). Yet, he is also portrayed as "giving His life [as] a ransom for many" and applying the "suffering servant" passage of Isaiah 53 to himself (Luke 22:37). The Gospel of John portrays him as the sacrificial Lamb of God, and compares his death to the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb at Pesach.
Christians assert that Jesus was predicted by Isaiah, as attested in Luke 4:16–22, where Jesus is portrayed as saying that the prophecies in Isaiah were about him. The New Testament explicitly quotes from Isaiah 53 in Matthew 8:16–18 to indicate that Jesus is the fulfillment of these prophecies.
Classic paradigm
The classic paradigm entails the traditional understandings of the early Church Fathers, who developed the themes found in the New Testament.
Ransom from Satan
The ransom theory of atonement says that Christ liberated humanity from slavery to sin and Satan, and thus death, by giving his own life as a ransom sacrifice to Satan, swapping the life of the perfect (Jesus), for the lives of the imperfect (other humans). It entails the idea that God deceived the devil, and that Satan, or death, had "legitimate rights" over sinful souls in the afterlife, due to the fall of man and inherited sin. During the first millennium CE, the ransom theory of atonement was the dominant metaphor for atonement, both in eastern and western Christianity, until it was replaced in the west by Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement.
In one version of the idea of deception, Satan attempted to take Jesus' soul after he had died, but in doing so over-extended his authority, as Jesus had never sinned. As a consequence, Satan lost his authority completely, and all humanity gained freedom. In another version, God entered into a deal with Satan, offering to trade Jesus' soul in exchange for the souls of all people, but after the trade, God raised Jesus from the dead and left Satan with nothing. Other versions held that Jesus' divinity was masked by his human form, so Satan tried to take Jesus' soul without realizing that his divinity would destroy Satan's power. Another idea is that Jesus came to teach how not to sin and Satan, in anger with this, tried to take his soul.
The ransom theory was first clearly enunciated by Irenaeus (), who was an outspoken critic of Gnosticism, but borrowed ideas from their dualistic worldview. In this worldview, mankind is under the power of the Demiurge, a lesser god who created the world. Yet, humans have a spark of the true divine nature within them, which can be liberated by gnosis (knowledge) of this divine spark. This knowledge is revealed by the Logos, "the very mind of the supreme God," who entered the world in the person of Jesus. Nevertheless, the Logos could not simply undo the power of the Demiurge, and had to hide his real identity, appearing in a physical form, thereby misleading the Demiurge, and liberating mankind. In Irenaeus' writings, the Demiurge is replaced by the devil.
Origen (184–253) introduced the idea that the devil held legitimate rights over humans, who were bought free by the blood of Christ. He also introduced the notion that the Devil was deceived in thinking that he could master the human soul.
Gustaf Aulén reinterpreted the ransom theory in his study (1931), calling it the Christus Victor doctrine, arguing that Christ's death was not a payment to the Devil, but defeated the powers of evil, particularly Satan, which had held mankind in their dominion. According to Pugh, "Ever since [Aulén's] time, we call these patristic ideas the way of seeing the cross."
Recapitulation theory
The recapitulation view, first comprehensively expressed by Irenaeus, went "hand-in-hand" with the ransom theory. It says that Christ succeeds where Adam failed, undoing the wrong that Adam did and, because of his union with humanity, leads humanity on to eternal life, including moral perfection. Theosis ("divinisation") is a "corollary" of the recapitulation.
Objective paradigm
Satisfaction
In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury rejected the ransom view and proposed the satisfaction theory of atonement. He allegedly depicted God as a feudal lord whose honor had been offended by the sins of mankind. In this view, people needed salvation from the divine punishment that these offences would bring, since nothing they could do could repay the honor debt. Anselm held that Christ had infinitely honored God through his life and death and that Christ could repay what humanity owed God, thus satisfying the offence to God's honor and doing away with the need for punishment. When Anselm proposed the satisfaction view, it was immediately criticized by Peter Abelard.
Penal substitution
In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformers reinterpreted Anselm's satisfaction theory of salvation within a legal paradigm. In the legal system, offences required punishment, and no satisfaction could be given to avert this need. They proposed a theory known as penal substitution, in which Christ takes the penalty of people's sin as their substitute, thus saving people from God's wrath against sin. Penal substitution thus presents Jesus saving people from the divine punishment of their past wrongdoings. However, this salvation is not presented as automatic. Rather, a person must have faith in order to receive this free gift of salvation. In the penal substitution view, salvation is not dependent upon human effort or deeds.
The penal substitution paradigm of salvation is widely held among Protestants, who often consider it central to Christianity. However, it has also been widely critiqued, and is rejected by liberal Christians as un-Biblical, and an offense to the love of God. According to Richard Rohr, "[t]hese theories are based on retributive justice rather than the restorative justice that the prophets and Jesus taught." Advocates of the New Perspective on Paul also argue that many New Testament epistles of Paul the Apostle, which used to support the theory of penal substitution, should be interpreted differently.
Governmental theory
The "governmental theory of atonement" teaches that Christ suffered for humanity so that God could forgive humans without punishing them while still maintaining divine justice. It is traditionally taught in Arminian circles that draw primarily from the works of Hugo Grotius.
Subjective paradigm
Moral transformation
The "moral influence theory of atonement" was developed, or most notably propagated, by Abelard (1079–1142), as an alternative to Anselm's satisfaction theory. Abelard not only "rejected the idea of Jesus' death as a ransom paid to the devil", which turned the Devil into a rival god, but also objected to the idea that Jesus' death was a "debt paid to God's honor". He also objected to the emphasis on God's judgment, and the idea that God changed his mind after the sinner accepted Jesus' sacrificial death, which was not easily reconcilable with the idea of "the perfect, impassible God [who] does not change". Abelard focused on changing man's perception of God – not to be seen as offended, harsh, and judgemental, but as loving. According to Abelard, "Jesus died as the demonstration of God's love", a demonstration which can change the hearts and minds of the sinners, turning back to God.
During the Protestant Reformation in Western Christianity, the majority of the Reformers strongly rejected the moral influence view of the atonement in favor of penal substitution, a highly forensic modification of the honor-oriented Anselmian satisfaction model. Fausto Sozzini's Socinian arm of the Reformation maintained a belief in the moral influence view of the atonement. Socinianism was an early form of Unitarianism, and the Unitarian Church today maintains a moral influence view of the atonement, as do many liberal Protestant theologians of the modern age.
During the 18th century, versions of the moral influence view found overwhelming support among German theologians, most notably the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. In the 19th and 20th century, it has been popular among liberal Protestant thinkers in the Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches, including the Anglican theologian Hastings Rashdall. A number of English theological works in the last hundred years have advocated and popularized the moral influence theory of atonement.
A strong division has remained since the Reformation between liberal Protestants (who typically adopt a moral influence view) and conservative Protestants (who typically adopt a penal substitutionary view). Both sides believe that their position is taught by the Bible.
Moral example theory
A related theory, the "moral example theory", was developed by Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) in his work (1578). He rejected the idea of "vicarious satisfaction". According to Socinus, Jesus' death offers us a perfect example of self-sacrificial dedication to God."
A number of theologians see "example" (or "exemplar") theories of the atonement as variations of the moral influence theory. Wayne Grudem, however, argues that "Whereas the moral influence theory says that Christ's death teaches us how much God loves us, the example theory says that Christ's death teaches us how we should live." Grudem identifies the Socinians as supporters of the example theory.
Other theories
Embracement theory
Hong Kong Baptist University Department of Religion and Philosophy lecturer Domenic Marbaniang, drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche, sees the Divine voluntary self-giving as the ultimate embracement of humanity in its ultimate act of sin, viz, deicide, or the murder of God, thus canceling sin on the cross.
Shared atonement theory
Southern Baptist theologian David Jeremiah writes that in the "shared atonement" theory the atonement is spoken of as shared by all. To wit, God sustains the Universe. Therefore, if Jesus was God in human form, when he died, the entirety of humanity died with him, and when he rose from the dead, the entirety of humanity rose with him.
Compatibility of differing theories
Some theologians maintain that "various biblical understandings of the atonement need not conflict". Reformed theologian J. I. Packer, for example, although he maintains that "penal substitution is the mainstream, historic view of the church and the essential meaning of the Atonement... Yet with penal substitution at the center", he also maintains that " and other Scriptural views of atonement can work together to present a fully orbed picture of Christ's work". J. Kenneth Grider, speaking from a governmental theory perspective, says that the governmental theory can incorporate within itself "numerous understandings promoted in the other major Atonement theories", including ransom theory, elements of the "Abelardian 'moral influence' theory", vicarious aspects of the atonement, etc.
Anglican theologian Oliver Chase Quick described differing theories as being of value, but also denied that any particular theory was fully true, saying, "if we start from the fundamental and cardinal thought of God's act of love in Jesus Christ [...] I think we can reach a reconciling point of view, from which each type of theory is seen to make its essential contribution to the truth, although no one theory, no any number of theories, can be sufficient to express its fullness."
Others say that some models of the atonement naturally exclude each other. James F. McGrath, for example, talking about the atonement, says that "Paul [...] prefers to use the language of participation. One died for all, so that all died (2 Corinthians 5:14). This is not only different from substitution, it is the opposite of it." Similarly, Mark M. Mattison, in his article The Meaning of the Atonement says, "Substitution implies an "either/or"; participation implies a "both/and."" J. Kenneth Grider, quoted above showing the compatibility of various atonement models with the governmental theory, nevertheless also says that both penal substitution and satisfaction atonement theories are incompatible with the governmental theory.
Confusion of terms
Some confusion can occur when discussing the atonement because the terms used sometimes have differing meanings depending on the contexts in which they are used. For example:
Sometimes substitutionary atonement is used to refer to penal substitution alone, when the term also has a broader sense including other atonement models that are not penal.
Penal substitution is also sometimes described as a type of satisfaction atonement, but the term 'satisfaction atonement' functions primarily as a technical term to refer particularly to Anselm's theory.
Substitutionary and penal themes are found within the Patristic (and later) literature, but they are not used in a penal substitutionary sense until the Reformed period.
'Substitution', as well as potentially referring to specific theories of the atonement (e.g. penal substitution), is also sometimes used in a less technical way—for example, when used in 'the sense that [Jesus, through his death,] did for us that which we can never do for ourselves'.
The phrase 'vicarious atonement' is sometimes used as a synonym for penal substitution, and is also sometimes used to describe other, non-penal substitutionary, theories of atonement. Care needs to be taken to understand what is being referred to by the various terms used in different contexts.
Eastern Christianity
According to Eastern Christian theology, based upon their understanding of the atonement as put forward by Irenaeus recapitulation theory, Jesus' death is a ransom. This restores the relation with God, who is loving and reaches out to humanity, and offers the possibility of theosis or divinization, becoming the kind of humans God wants us to be.
In Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholicism salvation is seen as participation in the renewal of human nature itself by way of the eternal Word of God assuming the human nature in its fullness. In contrast to Western branches of theology, Eastern Orthodox Christians tend to use the word "expiation" with regard to what is accomplished in the sacrificial act. In Orthodox theology, expiation is an act of offering that seeks to change the one making the offering. The Biblical Greek word which is translated both as "propitiation" and as "expiation" is hilasmos (I John 2:2, 4:10), which means "to make acceptable and enable one to draw close to God". Thus the Orthodox emphasis would be that Christ died, not to appease an angry and vindictive Father or to avert the wrath of God upon sinners, but to defeat and secure the destruction of sin and death, so that those who are fallen and in spiritual bondage may become divinely transfigured, and therefore fully human, as their Creator intended; that is to say, human creatures become God in his energies or operations but not in his essence or identity, conforming to the image of Christ and reacquiring the divine likeness (see theosis).
The Orthodox Church further teaches that a person abides in Christ and makes his salvation sure not only by works of love, but also by his patient suffering of various griefs, illnesses, misfortunes and failures.
Catholicism
The Catholic Church teaches that the death of Jesus on the Cross is a sacrifice that redeems man and reconciles man to God. The sacrifice of Jesus is both a "gift from God the Father himself, for the Father handed his Son over to sinners in order to reconcile us with himself" and "the offering of the Son of God made man, who in freedom and love offered his life to his Father through the Holy Spirit in reparation for our disobedience."
Catholic theologians often explain salvation by dividing it into justification—which relates to infused faith and how justice is satisfied—and sanctification—which relates to infused charity and our capacity for happiness at the beatific vision, some emphasizing their intertwinedness more than others.
A separate usage is "salvation from Purgatory" (i.e., related to sanctification) rather than salvation from sin and punishment (i.e., related to justification): this usage is rarer but examples are found by Catholics, Protestants, and academics.
Trent definition
The Catholic view of Christ's redemptive work was set forth formally at the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent.
The council stated that Jesus merited the grace of justification, which is not only the remission of sin but the infusion of the virtues of faith, hope, and charity into the Christian. A justified Christian is then said to be in the state of grace, which can be lost by committing a mortal sin.
The view that prevailed at the Council of Trent has been described as a "combination of the opinions of Anselm and Abelard". Catholic scholars have noted that Abelard did not teach that Jesus was merely a good moral example, but that Christians are truly saved by His sacrifice on the Cross.
The moral transformation of the Christian is not the result of merely following Christ's example and teachings, but a supernatural gift merited by the sacrifice of Jesus, for "by one man's obedience many will be made righteous".
Co-operation with grace
While the initial grace of justification is merited solely by the sacrifice of Jesus, the Catholic Church teaches that a justified Christian can merit an "increase" in justification and the attainment of eternal life by cooperating with God's grace. The grace of final perseverance preserves a justified Christian in the state of grace until his or her death.
The practical manner of salvation is expounded on by St. Alphonsus Liguori, a Doctor of the Church:
Divinization
The Catholic Church shares the Eastern Christian belief in divinization, teaching that "the Son of God became man so that we might become God." However, in contrast with the Eastern Orthodox notion of theosis in which the divinized Christian becomes God in his energies or operations, the Catholic Church teaches that the ultimate end of divinization is the beatific vision, in which the divinized Christian will see God's essence.
Protestantism
In Protestantism, grace is the result of God's initiative without any regard whatsoever to the one initiating the works, and no one can merit the grace of God by performing rituals, good works, asceticism, or meditation. Broadly speaking, Protestants hold to the five solae of the Reformation, which declare that salvation is attained by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone for the Glory of God alone as told in Scripture alone. Most Protestants believe that salvation is achieved through God's grace alone, and once salvation is secured in the person, good works will be a result of this, allowing good works to often operate as a signifier for salvation. Some Protestants, such as Lutherans and the Reformed, understand this to mean that God saves solely by grace, and that works follow as a necessary consequence of saving grace. Others, such as Methodists (and other Arminians), believe that salvation is by faith alone, but that salvation can be forfeited if it is not accompanied by continued faith, and the works that naturally follow from it. Others firmly believe that salvation is accomplished by faith alone without any reference to works whatsoever, including the works that may follow salvation (see below under Other and also Free Grace theology).
Lutheranism
Lutherans believe that Christ, through His death and resurrection, has obtained justification and atonement for all sinners. Lutheran churches believe that this is the central message in the Bible upon which the very existence of the churches depends. In Lutheranism, it is a message relevant to people of all races and social levels, of all times and places, for "the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men" (Romans 5:18). All need forgiveness of sins before God, and Scripture proclaims that all have been justified, for "the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men" (Romans 5:18).
Lutheranism teaches that individuals receive this free gift of forgiveness and salvation not on the basis of their own works, but only through faith (Sola fide):
Saving faith is the knowledge of, acceptance of, and trust in the promise of the Gospel. Even faith itself is seen as a gift of God, created in the hearts of Christians by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word and Baptism. Faith is seen as an instrument that receives the gift of salvation, not something that causes salvation. Thus, Lutherans reject the "decision theology" which is common among modern evangelicals.
Calvinism
Calvinists believe in the predestination of the elect before the foundation of the world. All of the elect necessarily persevere in faith because God keeps them from falling away. Calvinists understand the doctrines of salvation to include the five points of Calvinism, typically arranged in English to form the acrostic "TULIP".
"Total depravity", also called "total inability", asserts that as a consequence of the fall of man into sin, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin. People are not by nature inclined to love God with their whole heart, mind, or strength, but rather all are inclined to serve their own interests over those of their neighbor and to reject the rule of God. Thus, all people by their own faculties are morally unable to choose to follow God and be saved because they are unwilling to do so out of the necessity of their own natures. (The term "total" in this context refers to sin affecting every part of a person, not that every person is as evil as possible.) This doctrine is derived from Augustine's explanation of Original Sin.
"Unconditional election" asserts that God has chosen from eternity those whom he will bring to himself not based on foreseen virtue, merit, or faith in those people; rather, it is unconditionally grounded in God's mercy alone. God has chosen from eternity to extend mercy to those he has chosen and to withhold mercy from those not chosen. Those chosen receive salvation through Christ alone. Those not chosen receive the just wrath that is warranted for their sins against God
"Limited atonement", also called "particular redemption" or "definite atonement", asserts that Jesus's substitutionary atonement was definite and certain in its purpose and in what it accomplished. This implies that only the sins of the elect were atoned for by Jesus's death. Calvinists do not believe, however, that the atonement is limited in its value or power, but rather that the atonement is limited in the sense that it is designed for some and not all. Hence, Calvinists hold that the atonement is sufficient for all and efficient for the elect. The doctrine is driven by the Calvinistic concept of the sovereignty of God in salvation and their understanding of the nature of the atonement.
"Irresistible grace", also called "efficacious grace", asserts that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save (that is, the elect) and, in God's timing, overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to a saving faith. This means that when God sovereignly purposes to save someone, that individual certainly will be saved. The doctrine holds that this purposeful influence of God's Holy Spirit cannot be resisted, but that the Holy Spirit, "graciously causes the elect sinner to cooperate, to believe, to repent, to come freely and willingly to Christ."
"Perseverance of the saints", or "preservation of the saints", asserts that since God is sovereign and his will cannot be frustrated by humans or anything else, those whom God has called into communion with himself will continue in faith until the end. Those who apparently fall away either never had true faith to begin with or will return. The word "saints" is used to refer to all who are set apart by God, and not only those who are exceptionally holy, canonized, or in heaven).
Arminianism
Arminian soteriology—held by Christian denominations such as the Methodist Church—is based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609). Like Calvinists, Arminians agree that all people are born sinful and are in need of salvation. Classical Arminians emphasize that God's free grace (or prevenient grace) enables humans to freely respond to or to reject the salvation offered through Christ. Classical Arminians believe that a person's saving relationship with Christ is conditional upon faith, and thus, a person can sever his or her saving relationship with Christ through persistent unbelief. The relationship of "the believer to Christ is never a static relationship existing as the irrevocable consequence of a past decision, act, or experience."
The Five Articles of Remonstrance that Arminius's followers formulated in 1610 state the beliefs regarding (I) conditional election, (II) unlimited atonement, (III) total depravity, (IV) total depravity and resistible grace, and (V) possibility of apostasy. However, the fifth article did not completely deny the perseverance of the saints; Arminius said that "I never taught that a true believer can… fall away from the faith… yet I will not conceal, that there are passages of Scripture which seem to me to wear this aspect; and those answers to them which I have been permitted to see, are not of such a kind as to approve themselves on all points to my understanding." Further, the text of the Articles of Remonstrance says that no believer can be plucked from Christ's hand, and the matter of falling away, "loss of salvation", required further study before it could be taught with any certainty.
Methodism
Methodism falls squarely in the tradition of substitutionary atonement, though it is linked with Christus Victor and moral influence theories. Methodism also emphasizes a participatory nature in atonement, in which the Methodist believer spiritually dies with Christ as He dies for humanity.
Methodism affirms the doctrine of justification by faith, but in Wesleyan theology, justification refers to "pardon, the forgiveness of sins", rather than "being made actually just and righteous", which Methodists believe is accomplished through sanctification. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Churches, taught that the keeping of the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, as well as engaging in the works of piety and the works of mercy, were "indispensable for our sanctification".
Methodist soteriology emphasizes the importance of the pursuit of holiness in salvation, a concept best summarized in a quote by Methodist evangelist Phoebe Palmer who stated that "justification would have ended with me had I refused to be holy." Thus, for Methodists, "true faith...cannot subsist without works".
While "faith is essential for a meaningful relationship with God, our relationship with God also takes shape through our care for people, the community, and creation itself." Methodism, inclusive of the holiness movement, thus teaches that "justification [is made] conditional on obedience and progress in sanctification", emphasizing "a deep reliance upon Christ not only in coming to faith, but in remaining in the faith."
Free Grace Theology
There are some who believe in the Free Grace Theology. They believe people use their free will to receive imputed righteousness and eternal life in Heaven, simply by Grace through faith alone on The Lord Jesus Christ. Once saved, the individual will always be saved as they believe God promised them eternal life the moment they believe on Him. It's important to note they don't believe a person is saved by good works, neither do they teach good works would automatically follow salvation as any kind of evidence. After salvation, a Christian is instructed to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost and live a good life as a good testimony for Jesus Christ and to please God the Father. The belief here is that doing good works will earn a believer Heavenly treasures and Earthly blessings, whereas committing sins and bad works will cause earthly punishments from God, chastisement from a loving Father, towards his children in the faith. It's worth a note they believe a person cannot lose their salvation at any time.
Anabaptism
Anabaptist denominations such as the Mennonites teach:
Obedience to Jesus and a careful keeping of the Ten Commandments, in addition to loving one another and being at peace with others, are seen as "earmarks of the saved".
Universalism
Christian universalism is the doctrine or belief that all people will ultimately be reconciled to God. The appeal of the idea of universal salvation may be related to the perception of a problem of Hell, standing opposed to ideas such as endless conscious torment in Hell, but may also include a period of finite punishment similar to a state of purgatory. Believers in universal reconciliation may support the view that while there may be a real "Hell" of some kind, it is neither a place of endless suffering nor a place where the spirits of human beings are ultimately 'annihilated' after enduring the just amount of divine retribution.
Restorationism
Churches of Christ
Churches of Christ are strongly anti-Calvinist in their understanding of salvation, and generally present conversion as "obedience to the proclaimed facts of the gospel rather than as the result of an emotional, Spirit-initiated conversion." Some churches of Christ hold the view that humans of accountable age are lost because of their sins. These lost souls can be redeemed because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, offered himself as the atoning sacrifice. Children too young to understand right from wrong, and make a conscious choice between the two, are believed to be innocent of sin. The age when this occurs is generally believed to be around 13.
Beginning in the 1960s, many preachers began placing more emphasis on the role of grace in salvation, instead of focusing exclusively implementing all of the New Testament commands and examples.
The Churches of Christ argue that since faith and repentance are necessary, and that the cleansing of sins is by the blood of Christ through the grace of God, baptism is not an inherently redeeming ritual. One author describes the relationship between faith and baptism this way, "Faith is the reason why a person is a child of God; baptism is the time at which one is incorporated into Christ and so becomes a child of God" (italics are in the source). Baptism is understood as a confessional expression of faith and repentance, rather than a "work" that earns salvation.
Other
The New Church (Swedenborgian)
According to the doctrine of The New Church, as explained by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), there is no such thing as substitutionary atonement as is generally understood. Swedenborg's account of atonement has much in common with the Christus Victor doctrine, which refers to a Christian understanding of the Atonement which views Christ's death as the means by which the powers of evil, which held humanity under their dominion, were defeated. It is a model of the atonement that is dated to the Church Fathers, and it, along with the related ransom theory, was the dominant theory of the atonement for a thousand years.
Jehovah's Witnesses
According to Jehovah's Witnesses, atonement for sins comes only through the life, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. They believe Jesus was the "second Adam", being the pre-existent and sinless Son of God who became the human Messiah of Israel, and that he came to undo Adamic sin.
Witnesses believe that the sentence of death given to Adam and subsequently his offspring by God required an equal substitute or ransom sacrifice of a perfect man. They believe that salvation is possible only through Jesus' ransom sacrifice, and that individuals cannot be reconciled to God until they repent of their sins, and then call on the name of God through Jesus. Salvation is described as a free gift from God, but is said to be unattainable without obedience to Christ as King and good works, such as baptism, confession of sins, evangelizing, and promoting God's Kingdom, that are prompted by faith. According to their teaching, the works prove faith is genuine. "Preaching the good news" is said to be one of the works necessary for salvation, both of those who preach and those to whom they preach. They believe that people in the "last days" can be "saved" by identifying Jehovah's Witnesses as God's theocratic organization, and by serving God as a part of it.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the atonement of Jesus Christ is infinite and the central principle that enables the "plan of redemption" which is often also called the "plan of salvation". In the Book of Mormon the prophet Amulek teaches that the "great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal. And thus he shall bring salvation to all those who shall believe on his name" There are two parts of salvation, conditional and unconditional. Unconditional salvation means that the atonement of Jesus Christ redeems all humanity from the chains of death and they are resurrected to their perfect frames. Conditional salvation of the righteous comes by grace coupled with strict obedience to Gospel principles, in which those who have upheld the highest standards and are committed to the covenants and ordinances of God, will inherit the highest heaven. There is no need for infant baptism. Christ's atonement completely resolved the consequence from the fall of Adam of spiritual death for infants, young children and those of innocent mental capacity who die before an age of self-accountability, hence all these are resurrected to eternal life in the resurrection. However, baptism is required of those who are deemed by God to be accountable for their actions (Moroni 8:10–22)
The United Pentecostal Church
Oneness Pentecostals teach that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the only means by which atonement can be obtained for dying humanity, and which makes the free gift of God's salvation possible. They believe that all must put faith in the propitiatory work of Christ to gain everlasting life. According to United Pentecostal theology, this saving faith is more than just mental assent or intellectual acceptance, or even verbal profession, but must include trust, appropriation, application, action, and obedience. They contend that water baptism is one of the works of faith and obedience necessary for Christ's sacrificial atonement to be efficacious.
See also
Absolution
Christology
Ecclesiology
Eternal life (Christianity)
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Printed sources
(
Web-sources
Further reading
Janowski, Bernd. "Atonement." In The Encyclopedia of Christianity, edited by Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley, 152–154. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999.
Thomas, G. Michael. The Extent of the Atonement: a Dilemma for Reformed Theology, from Calvin to the Consensus, in series, Paternoster Biblical and Theological Monographs (Carlisle, Scotland: Paternoster Publishing, 1997)
External links
Philosophy and Christian Theology > Atonement from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"Atonement" in the Jewish Encyclopedia
Salvation
Christian hamartiology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian%20Army
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Norwegian Army
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The Norwegian Army () is the land warfare service branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces. The Army is the oldest of the Norwegian service branches, established as a modern military organization under the command of the King of Norway in 1628. The Army participated in various continental wars during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries as well, both in Norway and abroad, especially in World War II (1939–1945). It constitutes part of the Norwegian military contribution as a charter member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1949.
History
Creation of the Norwegian Army
After the Kalmar War broke out in 1611, the Danish-Norwegian king, Christian IV tried to revive the leidang, with dire results. As the Norwegian peasantry had not been armed or trained in the use of arms for nearly three centuries, they were not able to fight. Soldiers deserted or were captured. The soldiers had to participate in military drills, while providing supplementary labor to the local community when not in active service. Although the army still did not represent the whole nation, as city residents were exempt from military duty, 1628 is generally regarded by historians as the year when the modern Norwegian army was born.
As a result of the Torstenson war (, , ) lasting from 1643 to 1645, Danish–Norwegian territories were to be ceded to Sweden. This led Christian IV to invite German mercenaries to coach and command the Danish–Norwegian armed forces: a decision echoing down the centuries in traces of German vocabulary used by the Norwegian military to this day.
In the early 18th century the Swedes invaded Norway again, and this time the Norwegian army held its own, setting the stage for nearly a century of peace – the longest yet in early modern and modern Norwegian history – during which time a distinct Norwegian identity began to evolve. German ceased to be the official language of command in the army in 1772, in favour of "Dano-Norwegian".
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
During the French Revolutionary Wars, Denmark–Norway tried to remain neutral. But the British attack on Copenhagen 1801 forced the kingdom to leave the Second League of Armed Neutrality. The British bombardment of the Danish capital in 1807 pushed King Frederik IV to align with French Emperor Napoleon I. Hostilities reached north into Scandinavia and by 1807, Denmark-Norway was at war with Great Britain. Denmark–Norway's alliance with France and Sweden's alliance with the Great Britain led to war with Sweden 1808. Sweden made a bid to acquire Norway by way of invasion while Denmark-Norway made ill-fated attempts to reconquer territories lost to Sweden in the 17th century. As the Napoleonic era drew to a close, the anti-French victorious allies decided to sever Norway from Denmark and unite and award Norway to neighboring Sweden in 1814 at the Congress of Vienna.
The Royal Decree of 3 July 1817 decided that the Army should, among other things, consist of five infantry brigades. There were 1st Akershus, 2nd Akershus, 3rd Trondhjem, 4th Bergen and 5th Kristiansand infantry brigades. The brigades had a section called the brigade command (5th Brig.kdo.), Which was responsible for the war organization and plans.
Union with Sweden
The union with Sweden lasted until 1905, during which time the Norwegian Army retained a separate entity within the joint kingdoms. Financial budgeting, recruitment, regimental organization, and uniforms were all independent of their Swedish counterparts. The basis for recruitment for the Norwegian Army was initially one of conscription for up to five years by lot drawn amongst rural recruits only. A framework was provided by regular soldiers or hvervede, enlisted as long-service volunteers. As with other armies of the period, the payment of a substitute to serve in one's place was permitted. This system was replaced by one of universal conscription introduced in 1854. Enlistment in the active army was however still based on the drawing of ballots, with those escaping full-time service going immediately to the reserve landvern, where they received brief and basic training.
In 1884, the basis of service was further modified with the training period being reduced to 90 days. The regulars of the hvervede were reduced to a cadre of career officers, NCOs, and other specialists. The individual Norwegian recruit now passed through three stages of service with the line regiments, the militia, and the territorial reserve during the 13-year period that his liability for military service lasted. The left-wing parties of the Storting favored the substitution of part-time volunteer rifle clubs for the regular army but this was opposed by the Storting (Parliament of Norway) parliamentary majority on the basis of the doubtful effectiveness of such a force.
Independence
In June 1905, the Storting unilaterally dissolved the 91-year-old union with Sweden. After a short but tense period during which both armies were mobilized, Sweden agreed to the peaceful dissolution of the union. In 1911, six brigades were established, which by the Army Order of 1916 were called divisions. The divisions were consecutively numbered without geographical place names. The divisions corresponded to what later became district commands.
By 1920, the army of Norway was a national militia. Service was universal and compulsory, liability commencing at the age of 18 and continuing till the age of 56. The men were called out at 21, and for the first 12 years belonged to the line; then for 12 years to the landvarn. Afterwards they passed into the landatorm, in which they remained until they attained the age of 55 years. The initial training was carried out in recruits' schools; it lasted for 48 days in the infantry and garrison artillery, 62 in the mountain batteries, 72 in the engineers, 92 in the field artillery, and 102 in the cavalry. As soon as their courses were finished the men were transferred to the units to which they would permanently belong, and with them went through a further training of 30 days. Subsequent training consisted of 80 days in the second, third and seventh years of service.
The line was organized into 6 divisions of all arms, besides which there was the garrison artillery. There were 56 battalions of infantry, 5 companies of cyclists (skiers), 3 regiments of cavalry (16 squadrons), 27 four-gun field batteries, 3 batteries of mountain artillery, 9 batteries of heavy artillery, and 1 regiment and 2 battalions of engineers. The new Flying Corps was organized in 3 divisions. The divisions were of unequal strength, according to the importance of the district in which they were recruited. In event of war, each division would mobilize 2 or 3 regiments of infantry (of 3 battalions), 3 or 4 squadrons of cavalry, a battalion of field artillery (of 3 batteries), a battalion of heavy artillery, a sapper company, a telegraph company, a medical company and a company of train. Each regimental district also forms one battalion of landvarn (of 6 companies), and the other arms would form landvarn units in the same proportion. The total peace strength was 118,500 men and comprised 71,836 rifles, 228 field and 36 heavy guns. The additional numbers available on mobilization amount to 282,000 men.
The Norwegian infantry was armed with various models of the Norwegian-designed Krag–Jørgensen 6.5x55 rifles and carbines. The field artillery had Ehrhardt 7.5 cm Model 1901. The budget of the army for 1919–1920 was 1,940,000.
The divisions received in 1933 the task of establishing their own field manoeuvre brigade with the same number as the division.
World War I Neutrality
With full Norwegian independence, legislation was passed strengthening the system introduced in 1885. Liability for military service was extended to 55 years of age and the period of training was lengthened to about five months. Additional localized regiments were created within a framework of six military districts, permitting more rapid mobilization of reservists. These precautions proved effective in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. Norway's armed forces remained mobilized throughout the war, ensuring Norwegian neutrality in conjunction with that of Denmark and Sweden.
Though nominally a neutral nation during the "Great War" of World War I (1914–1918), Norway was in the unenviable position of being dependent on the warring sides for its trade. Coal from Britain was needed to keep the country going, and Norway had thus to agree that each shipload of coal leaving Britain be matched with incoming Norwegian cargoes such as copper ore and fish. This attracted the attention of the opposing German Empire and its Imperial German Navy's numerous submarines.
In 1911 the 5th Brigade was established as the Norwegian Army's district organization in Møre og Romsdal and Trøndelag. It was upgraded to the status of the 5th Division in 1916.
World War II Occupation
Despite the escalating hostilities throughout Europe in 1939 and 1940, the Norwegian government at the time failed to mobilize; leaving the Army wholly unprepared for the German invasion of April 1940. The Norwegians were organised into six divisions/districts in April 1940. This amounted to approximately 19,000 men on paper. This was actually a numerically superior force to that of the Germans. However, these divisions were ill-prepared by the time the landings commenced and four were destroyed by the Germans during the initial phases of the campaign. With the German occupational forces in 1940, as with the other parts of the Armed Forces, the Army had to surrender to a superior force, but army units were the ones resisting for the longest period of time: The 6th Division led by the legendary Major General Carl Gustav Fleischer participated in the allied recapture of Narvik.
In most divisions, A force of 3 regiments (With 3,750 men in each regiment, 11,250 men in total) was the basic organization of the army. But with the 3rd and 4th Division, There was only 2 regiments (7,500 total men). Total Norwegian Division Force numbered 60,000 Men, in 16 Regiments. There was also a Few Extra Groups, like 3 Dragoon Regiments, 3 Artillery Regiments, a few Mountain artillery battalions and infantry battalions in the far north, with 2 Royal Guards companies in the south.
The greatest Norwegian accomplishment of the Second World War was the victory in the Battle of Narvik, especially the mountain war forcing the German forces all the way from the ocean to the Swedish border. In addition to the Norwegian Campaign, Norwegian soldiers joined the Norwegian resistance movement after German forces occupied Norway. The Home Front (Hjemmefronten) was the Norwegian resistance movement during Nazi Germany's occupation of Norway (1940–1945).
Norwegian soldiers also joined free Norwegian units in the United Kingdom to continue the fight against the Nazis from abroad. These units included the Norwegian Independent Company 1 and 5 Troop, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando. The bulk of the Norwegian Army during the years in exile in Britain consisted of a brigade in Dumfries as well as smaller units stationed in Iceland, Jan Mayen, Svalbard and South Georgia. The 2nd Mountain Company operated in Finnmark from late 1944 under nominal Russian command. Norwegian police troops and units from this brigade took control over Finnmark in 1944 after the German retreat from the Red Army. Many former Norwegian Army members also served with the German forces.
Cold War
The Army was reconstructed after the War, based among others on the forces Norwegian Brigade in Scotland and the Norwegian police troops in Sweden as well as on Milorg. The participation in the allied occupation of Germany with the Independent Norwegian Brigade Group in Germany was a very demanding task for the Army in the period of 1946–52, but it was also a part of the reconstruction. After the war the Army was structured to meet an invasion from the East. The Army was established in all parts of the country, from 1972 in five regional "divisions" to commemorate the divisions/districts of the Second World War: East (including the inactive 6th Brigade), West, South, Trondelag, and 6th Division: North Norway. The first four divisions were divided into 12 regional districts, which could, after full mobilization, embody 11 combat brigades (10 mobilization-dependent). 6th Division controlled Brigade North in Tromso, two brigade mobilization districts, and two garrisons in the northernmost Finnmark region. At the end of the Cold War the army could mobilise 13 brigades, although 10 of them were less well equipped.
Post Cold War
This picture definitely changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
It has been downsized after the end of the Cold War, with the biggest changes taking place in the middle of the 1990s, when a number of garrisons and units were discontinued. This restructuring focused on moving from a fairly static invasion army to a flexible rapid reaction army. The Parliament in 1994 and 1995 approved a series of major organizational changes, for the Army in particular. To ensure a cost-efficient implementation, it is necessary to focus the activities in the Army on the process of transforming the army from a large mobilization army to a smaller, professional army.
The 2005–08 plan envisaged reduction of the then army from three to two brigades, but the essential and key formation was to be Brigade North. The 6 Division Command was to be organised as a mobile tactical headquarters with the capability to serve as a framework for a headquarters for multinational operations above brigade level in Norway. But to keep Brigade North operational Jane's Defence Weekly was told in May 2004 would require two brigade sets of equipment. The Army had by the end of the decade been significantly downsized from its late Cold War heights, and has for example faced criticism from within claiming that it would now only be able to defend one district of Oslo in the event of a national invasion.
Norwegian contributions to international crisis management have been generated from a system that is first and foremost geared towards the rapid activation of mobilization units armed and trained for territorial defence. As a consequence, Norwegian contributions to international military operations have a high degree of sustainability, as they have a substantial number of reserve units on which to draw. However, without adaptation this force posture is to a lesser extent able to generate forces rapidly and flexibly in response to international crises. Moreover, the contributions that Norway has been able to make to international operations have tended to consist of lightly armoured mechanized infantry, well-suited for more traditional peacekeeping tasks (UNIFIL in southern Lebanon to which Norway contributed a sizable unit for over twenty years) but not sufficiently robust for missions which might entail enforcement tasks.
War in Afghanistan
Norway along with other Scandinavian countries, supported the US War on Terror. The Norwegian government was one of the strongest supporters of the war.
Norwegian Defence Minister at the time, Bjørn Tore Godal, said "the United States is Norway's most important ally. Norway is already providing intelligence assistance to the United States. If we receive a request for further support, including military support, we will, of course, respond positively, and in accordance with the obligations of article 5 of the NATO treaty."
The Norwegian Army sent troops to support the NATO ISAF mission in Afghanistan, to help free Afghanistan of the Taliban. Norwegian special forces were involved in combat operations during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2002, and Norwegian Army troops during Operation Harekate Yolo in 2007. About 590 Norwegians were serving in the ISAF force in 2009.
According to , the Norwegian Army base at Meymaneh was amongst the least secure bases in Afghanistan at one point. Meymaneh is located in northwestern Afghanistan, which has become increasingly restless in recent years. Both the military and political heads of the armed forces agreed about the weakened state of the base. When the Norwegian Army was asked what they needed to defend their position, they asked for 120 troops and long-range weapons. They also requested a mobile reaction force, so that allies in the region could assist each other if they came under heavy attack.
Organization
In 2009 the Army introduced the new command and control lines. The Chief of the Army (former General Inspector) now commands three subordinate operational units and five support units:
Army Staff, in Bardufoss
Brigade Nord, in Bardufoss
Hans Majestet Kongens Garde, in Oslo
Finnmark Land Command
Military intelligence Battalion, in Setermoen
Land Warfare Centre, in Rena and Terningmoen
Military police unit
Operations Support Group, in Bardufoss (Maintenance, Catering, etc.)
Hans Majestets Kongens Garde (Garden)
Hans Majestet Kongens Garde is a light infantry battalion based in Oslo at Huseby camp. The main task of Garden is to protect the King and the royal family in peace, crisis and war.
After the terrorist attack in 2011, the unit also functions as a defence force in Norway’s capital Oslo and will assist the police when needed.
Brigade Nord
Brigade Nord is the Norwegian Army's only major combat formation. Brigade Nord is the northernmost combat brigade in NATO and has the capabilities to plan, lead and implement operations with support from other branches of the Norwegian Defence Forces. The brigade is formed primarily around three all-arms battlegroups.
2012 White Paper
According to the Norwegian MoD 2012 White Paper the Brigade Nord maneuver elements will be reorganised. Telemark Bataljonen and The Armoured Battalion will be organized as two near identical mechanized battalions composed mainly of contract personnel, but with some conscripts. The 2nd Battalion will be developed in the light infantry role, composed mainly of conscript personnel. The brigade will be equipped with organic air defence assets. The reorganization is intended to provide the brigade with 2 continuously combat ready battlegroups.
Uniforms
Norwegian army field uniforms are mainly two different uniforms: M17, a lightweight field uniform for general use, both in garrison and in field. And M02: A field uniform with breathable membrane, which provides protection against moisture and wind. Service uniform M10 is used as ceremonial dress and service dress; blue full dress uniform as ceremonial dress and mess dress. Blue full dress uniforms are used by professional soldiers.
The goal of the Nordic Combat Uniform Project is to procure a common, flexible combat uniform system for the countries Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Although the uniform will be the same in the four Nordic countries, the uniforms will look different because the countries will use their own camouflage patterns.
Equipment
Ranks and rank insignia
Garrisons
References
External links
Official page – in English
1628 establishments in Norway
Army
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie%20Lloyd
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Marie Lloyd
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Matilda Alice Victoria Wood (12 February 1870 – 7 October 1922), professionally known as Marie Lloyd (), was an English music hall singer, comedian and musical theatre actress. She was best known for her performances of songs such as "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)" and "Oh Mr Porter What Shall I Do". She received both criticism and praise for her use of innuendo and double entendre during her performances, but enjoyed a long and prosperous career, during which she was affectionately called the "Queen of the Music Hall".
Born in London, she was showcased by her father at the Eagle Tavern in Hoxton. In 1884, she made her professional début as Bella Delmere; she changed her stage name to Marie Lloyd the following year. In 1885, she had success with her song "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", and she frequently topped the bill at prestigious theatres in London's West End. In 1891, she was recruited by the impresario Augustus Harris to appear in that year's spectacular Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Christmas pantomime Humpty Dumpty. She starred in a further two productions at the theatre, Little Bo Peep (1892) and Robinson Crusoe (1893). By the mid-1890s, Lloyd was in frequent dispute with Britain's theatre censors due to the risqué content of her songs.
Between 1894 and 1900, she became an international success when she toured France, America, Australia and Belgium with her solo music hall act. In 1907, she assisted other performers during the music hall war and took part in demonstrations outside theatres, protesting for better pay and conditions for performers. During the First World War, in common with most other music hall artists, she supported recruitment into the armed services to help the war effort, touring hospitals and industrial institutions to help boost morale. In 1915, she performed her only wartime song "Now You've Got Your Khaki On", which became a favourite among front-line troops.
Lloyd had a turbulent private life that was often the subject of press attention: she was married three times, divorced twice, and frequently found herself giving court testimony against two of her husbands who had physically abused her. In later life, she was still in demand at music halls and had a late success in 1919 with her performance of "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)", which became one of her most popular songs. Privately, she suffered from bouts of ill-health and became alcohol-dependent, both of which imposed restrictions on her performing career by the 1920s. In 1922, she gave her final performance at the Alhambra Theatre, London, during which she became ill on stage. She died a few days later at the age of 52.
Biography
Family background and early life
Lloyd was born on 12 February 1870 in Hoxton, London. Her father, John Wood (1847–1940), was an artificial flower arranger and waiter; her mother, Matilda Mary Caroline née Archer (1849–1931), was a dressmaker and costume designer. Lloyd was the eldest of nine children and became known within the family circle as Tilley. The Wood family were respectable, hard-working, and financially comfortable. Lloyd often took career advice from her mother, whose influence was strong in the family. Lloyd attended a school in Bath Street, London, but disliked formal education and often played truant; with both her parents working, she adopted a maternal role over her siblings, helping to keep them entertained, clean and well cared-for. Along with her sister Alice, she arranged events in which the Wood children performed at the family home. Lloyd enjoyed entertaining her family and decided to form a minstrel act in 1879 called the Fairy Bell troupe, comprising her siblings.
Lloyd and the troupe made their début at a mission in Nile Street, Hoxton, in 1880 and followed this with an appearance at the Blue Ribbon Gospel Temperance Mission later the same year. Costumed by Matilda, they toured local doss-houses in East London, where they performed temperance songs, teaching people the dangers of alcohol abuse. Eager to show off his daughter's talent, John secured her unpaid employment as a table singer at the Eagle Tavern in Hoxton, where he worked as a waiter. Among the songs she performed there was "My Soldier Laddie". Together with her performances at the Eagle, Lloyd briefly contributed to the family income by making babies' boots, and, later, curled feathers for hat making. She was unsuccessful at both and was sacked from the latter after being caught dancing on the tables by the foreman. She returned home that evening and declared that she wanted a permanent career on the stage. Although happy to have her performing in her spare time, her parents initially opposed the idea of her appearing on the stage full-time. She recalled that when her parents "saw that they couldn't kick their objections as high as [she] could kick [her] legs, they very sensibly came to the conclusion to let things take their course and said 'Bless you my child, do what you like'."
Early career and first marriage
On 9 May 1885, at the age of 15, Lloyd made her professional solo stage début at the Grecian music hall (in the same premises as the Eagle Tavern), under the name "Matilda Wood". She performed "In the Good Old Days" and "My Soldier Laddie", which proved successful, and earned her a booking at the Sir John Falstaff music hall in Old Street where she sang a series of romantic ballads. Soon after this, she chose the stage name Bella Delmere and appeared on stage in costumes designed by her mother. Her performances were a success, despite her singing other artists' songs without their permission, a practice which brought her a threat of an injunction from one of the original performers. News of her act travelled; that October, she appeared at Collins's Music Hall in Islington in a special performance to celebrate the theatre's refurbishment, the first time she had appeared outside Hoxton, and two months later, she was engaged at the Hammersmith Temple of Varieties and the Middlesex Music Hall in Drury Lane. On 3 February 1886, she appeared at the prestigious Sebright Music Hall in Bethnal Green, where she met George Ware, a prolific composer of music hall songs. Ware became her agent and, after a few weeks, she began performing songs purchased from little-known composers. As her popularity grew, Ware suggested that she change her name. "Marie" was chosen for its "posh" and "slightly French" sound, and "Lloyd" was taken from an edition of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.
Lloyd established her new name on 22 June 1886, with an appearance at the Falstaff Music Hall, where she attracted wide notice for the song "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery" (which was initially written for Nelly Power by Lloyd's agent George Ware). By 1887, her performance of the song had become so popular that she was in demand in London's West End, including the Oxford Music Hall, where she excelled at skirt dancing. George Belmont, the Falstaff's proprietor, secured her an engagement at the Star Palace of Varieties in Bermondsey. She soon began making her own costumes, a skill she learned from her mother, and one she used for the rest of her career. She undertook a month-long tour of Ireland at the start of 1886, earning £10 per week after which she returned to East London to perform at, amongst others, the Sebright Music Hall, Bethnal Green. On 23 October, The Era called her "a pretty little soubrette who dances with great dash and energy."
By the end of 1886, Lloyd was playing several halls a night and earned £100 per week. She was now able to afford new songs from established music hall composers and writers, including "Harry's a Soldier", "She Has a Sailor for a Lover", and "Oh Jeremiah, Don't You Go to Sea". By 1887, Lloyd began to display a skill for ad lib, and to gain a reputation for her impromptu performances. It was during this period that she first sang "Whacky-Wack" and "When you Wink the Other Eye", a song which introduced her famous wink at the audience. Unlike her West End audiences who enjoyed her coarse humour, her "blue" performances did not impress audiences in the East End.
While appearing at the Foresters music hall in Mile End, she met and began dating Percy Charles Courtenay, a ticket tout from Streatham, London. The courtship was brief, and the couple married on 12 November 1887 at St John the Baptist, Hoxton. In May 1888, Lloyd gave birth to a daughter, Marie Courtenay (1888–1967). The marriage was mostly unhappy, and Courtenay was disliked by Lloyd's family and friends. Before long, Courtenay became addicted to alcohol and gambling, and grew jealous of his wife's close friendship with the 13-year-old actress Bella Burge, to whom Lloyd had rented a room in the marital house. He also became angry at the numerous parties Lloyd hosted for fellow members of the music hall profession including Gus Elen, Dan Leno and Eugene Stratton.
In October 1888, Lloyd returned from maternity leave and joined rehearsals for the 1888–89 pantomime The Magic Dragon of the Demon Dell; or, The Search for the Mystic Thyme, in which she was cast as Princess Kristina. The production, which was staged between Boxing Day and February at the Britannia theatre in Hoxton, gave her the security of working close to home for a two-month period. The engagement also gave her much-needed experience of playing to a big audience. The following year, she appeared at more Bohemian venues including the Empire and the Alhambra theatres, the Trocadero Palace of Varieties, and the Royal Standard playhouse. In 1889, she gave birth to a stillborn child, which further damaged her marriage.
By the start of the 1890s, Lloyd had built up a successful catalogue of songs, which included "What's That For, Eh?", about a little girl who asks her parents the meaning of various everyday household objects. Her biographer and theatre historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope described the song as being "blue" and thought that it spoke volumes about her reputation thanks to her "wonderful wink, and that sudden, dazzling smile, and the nod of the head." Similar-styled songs followed; "She'd Never had her Ticket Punched Before", told the story of a young, naive woman travelling to London on her own by train. This was followed by "The Wrong Man Never Let a Chance Go By"; "We Don't Want to Fight, But, by Jingo, If We Do"; "Oh You Wink the Other Eye" and "Twiggy Vous"—a song which won her much success and increased her popularity abroad. After an evening's performance at the Oxford music hall, a French well-wisher requested a conversation and to meet Lloyd backstage. Flanked by Courtenay, she appeared at the stage door, where Courtenay threatened the man with violence as both had become suspicious of his interest in her. She took a chance and invited the man into her dressing room, where he identified himself as a member of the French government. He confirmed to her that "Twiggy Vous" was "most popular in Paris"; she was delighted at the news. At the end of the year, Lloyd returned to London where she appeared in the Christmas pantomime Cinderella in Peckham alongside her sister Alice.
1890s
Drury Lane and success
Between 1891 and 1893, Lloyd was recruited by the impresario Augustus Harris to appear alongside Dan Leno in the spectacular and popular Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Christmas pantomimes. While lunching with Harris in 1891 to discuss his offer, Lloyd played coy, deliberately confusing the theatre with the lesser known venue the Old Mo so as not to appear conscious of Drury Lane's successful reputation; she compared its structure to that of a prison. Secretly, she was thrilled with the offer, for which she would receive £100 per week. The pantomime seasons lasted from Boxing Day to March and were highly lucrative, but Lloyd found working from a script restrictive. Her first role was Princess Allfair in Humpty Dumpty; or, The Yellow Dwarf and the Fair One, which she dismissed as being "Bloody awful, eh?" She received mixed reviews for her opening performance. The Times described her as being "playful in gesture, graceful in appearance, but not strong in voice." Despite the weak start (which Lloyd blamed on nerves), the pantomime received glowing reviews from the theatrical press. The London Entr'acte thought that she "delivere[d] her text quite pungently, and sings and dances with spirit too." She was noted for her acrobatic dancing on stage, and was able to display handstands, tumbles and high kicks. As a boy, the writer Compton Mackenzie was taken to the show's opening night and admitted that he was "greatly surprised that any girl should have the courage to let the world see her drawers as definitely as Marie Lloyd."
Lloyd's biographer Midge Gillies defines 1891 as being the year that she officially "made it" thanks to a catalogue of hit songs and major success in the halls and pantomime. When she appeared at the Oxford music hall in June, the audience cheered so loudly for her return that the following act could not be heard; The Era called her "the favourite of the hour". During the summer months, she toured North England, including Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. At the last she stayed an extra six nights due to popular demand, which caused her to cancel a trip to Paris. The 1892 pantomime was Little Bo Peep; or, Little Red Riding Hood and Hop O' My Thumb, in which she played Little Red Riding Hood. The production was five hours long and culminated with the show's harlequinade. During one scene, her improvisational skills caused some scandal when she got out of bed to pray, but instead reached for a chamber pot. The stunt angered Harris, who ordered her not to do it again or risk immediate dismissal. Max Beerbohm, who was in a later audience, said "Isn't Marie Lloyd charming and sweet in the pantomime? I think of little besides her." On 12 January 1892, Lloyd and Courtenay brawled drunkenly in her Drury Lane dressing room after an evening's performance of Little Bo-Peep. Courtenay pulled a decorative sword off the wall and threatened to cut her throat; she escaped from the room with minor bruises and reported the incident to the Bow Street police station. In early 1893, she travelled to Wolverhampton where she starred as Flossie in another unsuccessful piece called The A.B.C Girl; or, Flossie the Frivolous, which, according to MacQueen-Pope, "ended the Queen of Comedy's career as an actress".
Lloyd made her American stage début in 1893, appearing at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York. She sang "Oh You Wink the Other Eye", much to the delight of her American audiences. Other numbers were "After the Pantomime" and "You Should Go to France and See the Ladies Dance", which both required her to wear provocative costumes. Her performances pleased the theatre proprietors, who presented her with an antique tea and coffee service. News of her success reached home, and the London Entr'acte reported that "Miss Marie Lloyd made the biggest hit ever known at Koster and Bial's variety hall, New York."
Upon her return to London, Lloyd introduced "Listen with the Right Ear", which was an intended follow-up to "Oh You Wink the Other Eye". Shortly after her return, she sailed to France, to take up an engagement in Paris. Her biographer Daniel Farson thought that she received "greater acclaim than any other English comedienne who had preceded her". She changed the lyrics to some of her best-known songs for her French audience and retitled them, "The Naughty Continong"; "Twiggy Vous"; "I'm Just Back from Paris" and "The Coster Honeymoon in Paris". At Christmas in 1893, she returned to London to honour her final Drury Lane commitment, starring as Polly Perkins in Robinson Crusoe. The part allowed her to perform "The Barmaid" and "The Naughty Continong" and saw her perform a mazurka with Leno. Talking to a friend years later about her Drury Lane engagements, she admitted that she was "the proudest little woman in the world".
In May 1894, Courtenay followed Lloyd to the Empire, Leicester Square, where she was performing, and attempted to batter her with a stick, shouting: "I will gouge your eyes out and ruin you!" His assault missed Lloyd, but struck Burge in the face instead. As a result of the incident, Lloyd was sacked from the Empire for fear of a reprisal. Lloyd left the marital home, moving to 73 Carleton Road, Tufnell Park and successfully applied for a restraining warrant, which prevented Courtenay from contacting her. A few weeks later, Lloyd began an affair with the music hall singer Alec Hurley, which resulted in Courtenay initiating divorce proceedings in 1894 on the grounds of her adultery. That year, together with a short tour of the English provinces, Lloyd travelled to New York with Hurley, where she appeared at the Imperial Theatre, staying for two months. On her return to England, she appeared in the Liverpool Christmas pantomime as the principal boy in Pretty Bo-Peep, Little Boy Blue, and the Merry Old Woman who lived in a Shoe. Her performance was praised by the press, who called her "delightfully easy, graceful and self-possessed."
Risqué reputation and transatlantic tours
By 1895, Lloyd's risqué songs were receiving frequent criticism from theatre reviewers and influential feminists. As a result, she often experienced resistance from strict theatre censorship which dogged the rest of her career. The writer and feminist Laura Ormiston Chant, who was a member of the Social Purity Alliance, disliked the bawdiness of music hall performances, and thought that the venues were attractive to prostitutes. Her campaign persuaded the London County Council to erect large screens around the promenade at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, as part of the licensing conditions. The screens were unpopular and protesters, among them the young Winston Churchill, later pulled them down. That November at the Tivoli theatre, Lloyd performed "Johnny Jones", a ditty about a girl who is taught the facts of life by her best male friend. The song, although not lyrically obscene, was considered to be offensive largely because of the manner in which Lloyd sang it, adding winks and gestures, and creating a conspiratorial relationship with her audience. Social reformers cited "Johnny Jones" as being offensive, but less so compared to other songs of the day. Upon the expiry of a music hall's entertainments licence, the Licensing Committee tried to use the lyrical content of music hall songs as evidence against a renewal. As a result, Lloyd was summoned to perform some of her songs in front of a council committee. She sang "Oh! Mr Porter" (composed for her by George Le Brunn); "A Little of What You Fancy"; and, according to some writers, "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas", which she retitled "I Sits Amongst the Cabbages and Leeks" after some protest. The numbers were sung in such a way that the committee had no reason to find anything amiss. Feeling disgruntled at the council's interference, she then rendered Alfred Tennyson's drawing-room ballad "Come into the Garden, Maud" with leers and nudges to illustrate each innuendo. The committee were left stunned at the performance, but Lloyd argued afterwards that the rudeness was "all in the mind".
Despite their opposing views on music hall entertainment, Lloyd and Chant shared similar political views, and were wrongly assumed by the press to be enemies. An inspector who reported on one of Lloyd's performances at the Oxford music hall thought that her lyrical content was fine but her knowing nods, looks, smiles and the suggestiveness in her winks to the audience suggested otherwise. The restrictions imposed on the music halls were, by now beginning to affect trade, and many were threatened with closure. To avoid social unrest, Hackney council scrapped the licensing restrictions on 7 October 1896. In 1896, Lloyd sailed to South Africa with her daughter, who appeared as Little Maudie Courtenay on the same bill as her mother. Lloyd came to the attention of Barney Barnato, a British entrepreneur who was responsible for mining diamond and gold. Barnato lavished gifts on her in an attempt to woo her, but his attempts were unsuccessful; nevertheless, the two remained friends until his death in 1897. The tour was a triumph for Lloyd, and her songs became popular among her South African audience. She performed "Wink the Other Eye", "Twiggy-Vous", "Hello, Hello, Hello", "Whacky, Whacky, Whack!", "Keep Off the Grass", and "Oh! Mr Porter". Feeling satisfied at the success she had achieved, Lloyd returned to London once the two-month tour had ended.
The following year, Lloyd travelled to New York where she re-appeared at Koster and Bial's Music Hall. Her first song was about a young woman who lacked confidence in finding a suitor. The chorus, "Not for the very best man that ever got into a pair of trousers", proved hilarious; The Era observed that the line "tickled the audience immensely". Following this, she performed a song about a French maid who appeared innocent and petite at first sight, but turned out not to be so. The Era described the character as being "not so demure as she looked, for she confided to her auditors that she 'knew a lot about those tricky little things they don't teach a girl at school'." Many other songs followed and were all warmly received. At the conclusion of each performance, she received gifts from the audience including bouquets and floral structures. The Era commented that "Miss Lloyd's clever character work, her versatility and unflagging endeavours to please were rewarded with deserved success". After the tour, Lloyd returned to London, and moved to Hampstead with Hurley. That Christmas, she appeared in pantomime, this time at the Crown Theatre in Peckham in a production of Dick Whittington in which she played the title role. In it, she sang "A Little Bit Off the Top", which MacQueen-Pope describes as being "one of the pantomime songs of the year". The Music Hall and Theatre Review was equally complimentary, saying: "Brilliant Repertory, Charming Dresses, A Unique Personality!" During the Christmas period of 1898–9, Lloyd returned to the Crown where she took her benefit, during which she appeared in Dick Whittington. The entertainment culminated with a song from Vesta Victoria, and a short piece called The Squeaker, starring Joe Elvin.
1900s
In February 1900, Lloyd was the subject of another benefit performance at the Crown Theatre in Peckham. Kate Carney, Vesta Tilley and Joe Elvin were among the star turns who performed before the main piece, Cinderella, which starred Lloyd, her sister Alice, Kittee Rayburn and Jennie Rubie. The same year, although her divorce was not yet finalised, Lloyd went to live with Hurley in Southampton Row, London. Hurley, an established singer of coster songs, regularly appeared on the same bill as Lloyd; his calm nature was a contrast to the abusive personality of Courtenay. Lloyd and Hurley set sail for a tour of Australia in 1901, opening at Harry Rickards Opera House in Melbourne on 18 May with their own version of "The Lambeth Walk". After the successful two-month tour, Lloyd and Hurley returned to London where she appeared in the only revue of her career. Entitled The Revue, it was written by Charles Raymond and Phillip Yorke with lyrics by Roland Carse and music by Maurice Jacobi. It was staged at the Tivoli theatre, in celebration of the Coronation of King Edward VII. Lloyd and Courtenay's divorce became absolute on 22 May 1905, and she married Hurley on 27 October 1906. Hurley, although ecstatic with his earlier success in Australia, began feeling sidelined by his wife's popularity. MacQueen-Pope suggested that "[Hurley] was a star who had married a planet. Already the seeds of disaster were being sown."
Music hall strikes of 1907
Shortly after her marriage to Hurley, Lloyd went to Bournemouth to recuperate from exhaustion. Within days she was back performing in London music halls. From the start of the new century, music hall artistes and theatre managers had been in dispute over working conditions, a reduction in pay and perks, and an increased number of matinée performances. The first significant rift was a 1906 strike, initiated by the Variety Artistes' Federation. The following year, the Music Hall War commenced, which saw the Federation fight for more freedom and better working conditions on behalf of music-hall performers. Although popular enough to command her own fees, Lloyd supported the strike, acted as a picket for the strikers and gave generously to the strike fund. To raise spirits, she often performed on picket lines and took part in a fundraising performance at the Scala Theatre. The dispute ended later the same year with a resolution broadly favourable to the performers. In 1909, Lloyd appeared at the Gaiety Theatre in Dundee where a critic for The Courier noted "Her bright smile and fascinating presence has much to do with her popularity, while her songs are of the catchy style, perhaps not what a Dundee audience is familiar with, but still amusing and of an attractive style."
Relationship with Bernard Dillon
Despite their marital problems, Lloyd went on an American tour with Hurley in 1908. She was eager to equal the success of her sister Alice, who had become popular in the country a few years previously. By 1910, Marie's relationship with Hurley had ended, due in part to her endless parties and her developing friendship with the jockey Bernard Dillon, winner of the 1910 Derby. Lloyd and the young sportsman began an open and passionate affair. For the first time, her private life eclipsed her professional career. She was seldom mentioned in the theatrical press in 1910, and when she did perform, it was not to the best of her abilities. The writer Arnold Bennett, who witnessed her on stage at the Tivoli Theatre in 1909, admitted that he "couldn't see the legendary cleverness of the vulgarity of Marie Lloyd" and accused her songs of being "variations of the same theme of sexual naughtiness." As with Courtenay years previously, the shy and retiring Dillon was finding it hard to adapt to Lloyd's elaborate and sociable lifestyle. Dillon's success on the racecourse was short lived. In 1911, he was expelled from the Jockey Club for borrowing £660 to bet on his own horses to win. Dillon's horses lost, and he ended up in debt to trainers. He became jealous of Lloyd's successful life in the spotlight. Depression led to drink and obesity, and he started to abuse her. Hurley, meanwhile, had initiated divorce proceedings, the strain of which caused him to drink heavily, which in turn finished his theatrical career. Lloyd left the marital home in Hampstead and moved to Golders Green with Dillon, a move which MacQueen-Pope describes as being "the worst thing she ever did."
Later years
A new show in London in 1912 showcased the best of music hall's talent. The Royal Command Performance took place at the Palace Theatre in London, which was managed by Alfred Butt. The show was organised by Oswald Stoll, an Australian impresario who managed a string of West End and provincial theatres. Stoll, although a fan of Lloyd's, disliked the vulgarity of her act and championed a return to a more family-friendly atmosphere within the music hall. Because of this, and her participation in the earlier music hall war, Stoll left her out of the line-up. He placed an advert in The Era on the day of the performance warning that "Coarseness and vulgarity etc are not allowed ... this intimation is rendered necessary only by a few artists". In retaliation, Lloyd staged her own show at the London Pavilion, advertising that "every one of her performances was a command performance by order of the British public". She performed "One Thing Leads to Another", "Oh Mr Porter", and "The Boy I Love Is up in the Gallery" and was hailed as "the Queen of Comedy" by critics. The same year, she travelled to Devon where she appeared at the Exeter Hippodrome to much success. The Devon and Exeter Gazette, reported that Lloyd's performance of "Every Movement Tells a Tale", was "thoroughly enjoyed" by the audience and "[received] round after round of applause". The paper also praised her recital of a "Cockney girl's honeymoon in Paris", which was met by "roars of laughter".
Scandal in America
In 1913, Lloyd was booked by the Orpheum Syndicate to appear at the New York Palace Theatre. She and Dillon set sail on the RMS Olympic under the name Mr and Mrs Dillon and were met at the American port by her sister Alice, who had resided in the country for many years. Upon arrival, Lloyd and Dillon were refused entry when the authorities found out that they were not married, as they had claimed when applying for entry visas. They were detained and threatened with deportation on the grounds of moral turpitude and were sent to Ellis Island while an enquiry took place. Dillon was charged under the White Slave Act with attempting to take into the country a woman who was not his wife, and Lloyd was charged with being a passive agent. After a lengthy enquiry, a surety of $300 each, and an imposed condition that they were to live apart while in America, the couple were allowed to stay until March 1914. Alice later stated that "the indignity of the subsequent experience [while in custody] went to Marie's heart in a way she never survived. She could not bear to talk of that awful twenty-four hours."
Despite the problems, the tour was a success, and Lloyd performed to packed theatres throughout America. Her act featured the songs "The Tiddly Wink", "I'd Like to Live in Paris All the Time (The Coster Girl in Paris)", and "The Aviator". The numbers were popular, partly due to the Americanisation of each song's lyrics. On a personal level, Lloyd's time in America was miserable and was made worse by the increasing domestic abuse she received from Dillon. The assaults caused her to miss several key performances, which angered the theatre manager, Edward Albee, who threatened her with a breach of contract action. She claimed that illness made it difficult for her to perform and protested at her billing position. The theatrical press were not convinced. The New York Telegraph speculated "In vaudeville circles her domestic relations are thought to be at the bottom of her attacks of disposition." Back in England, Hurley had died of pleurisy and pneumonia on 6 December 1913. Lloyd heard the news while appearing in Chicago and sent a wreath with a note saying "until we meet again". She was reported in The Morning Telegraph as saying: "With all due respect to the dead, I can cheerfully say that's the best piece of news I've heard in many years, for it means that Bernard Dillon and I will marry as soon as this unlucky year ends." Lloyd married Dillon on 21 February 1914, the ceremony taking place at the British Consulate in Portland, Oregon. When the tour finished, Lloyd commented, "[I will] never forget the humiliation to which I have been subjected and I shall never sing in America again, no matter how high the salary offered."
First World War and final years
Lloyd and Dillon returned to England in June 1914. Lloyd started a provincial tour of Liverpool, Aldershot, Southend, Birmingham and Margate, and finished the summer season at the London Hippodrome. She sang "The Coster Honeymoon in Paris" and "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs Rip Van Winkle?", the latter of which had been received particularly well with her American audiences. Within a fortnight, Britain was at war, which threw the music-hall world into disarray. The atmosphere in London's music halls had turned patriotic, and theatre proprietors often held charity events and benefits to help the war effort. Lloyd played her part and frequently visited hospitals, including the Ulster Volunteer Force Hospital in Belfast, where she interacted with wounded servicemen. She also toured munitions factories to help boost public morale, but received no official recognition for her work. During 1914, she scored a hit with "A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good", which critics thought captured her life perfectly up until that point. The song is about a middle-aged woman who encourages the younger generation to enjoy themselves, rather than indulging in life's excitement herself. During the rendition, Lloyd depicts a young couple who cuddle and kiss on a railway carriage, while she sits back and recalls memories of her doing the same in years gone by.
In January 1915, Lloyd appeared at the Crystal Palace where she entertained over ten thousand troops. At the end of that year, she performed her only war song, "Now You've Got your Khaki On", composed for her by Charles Collins and Fred W. Leigh, about a woman who found the army uniform sexy and thought that wearing it made the average pot-bellied gentleman look like a muscle-toned soldier. Lloyd's brother John appeared with her on stage dressed as a soldier and helped characterise the ditty. Following this, she sang the already well-established songs "If You Want to Get On in Revue", which depicted a young girl who offered sexual favours to promote her theatrical career, and "The Three Ages of Woman", which took a cynical look at men from a woman's perspective. She seldom toured during the war, but briefly performed in Northampton, Watford and Nottingham in 1916. By the end of that year, she had suffered a nervous breakdown which she blamed on her hectic workload and a delayed reaction to Hurley's death. During the war years, Lloyd's public image had deteriorated. Her biographer Midge Gillies thought that Lloyd's violent relationship with Dillon and professional snubs in public had left the singer feeling like "someone's mother, rather than their sweetheart."
In July 1916, Dillon was conscripted into the army, but disliked the discipline of regimental life. He applied for exemption on the grounds he had to look after his parents and four brothers, but his claim was rejected. In a later failed attempt, he tried to convince army officials that he was too obese to carry out military duties. On the rare occasions when Dillon was allowed home on leave, he would often indulge in drinking sessions. One night, Lloyd's friend Bella Burge answered a knock at the front door to find a hysterical Lloyd covered in blood and bruises. When asked to explain what had caused her injuries, she stated that she had caught Dillon in bed with another woman and had had a showdown with her husband. By 1917, Dillon's drinking had become worse. That June, two constables were called to Lloyd and Dillon's house in Golders Green after Dillon committed a drunken assault on his wife. Police entered the house and found Lloyd and her maid cowering beneath a table. Dillon confronted the constables and assaulted one of them, which resulted in him being taken to court, fined and sentenced to a month's hard labour. Lloyd began drinking to escape the trauma of her domestic abuse. That year, she was earning £470 per week performing in music halls and making special appearances. By 1918, she had become popular with the British-based American soldiers, but had failed to capture the spirits of their English counterparts, and began feeling sidelined by her peers; Vesta Tilley had led a very successful recruitment drive into the services, and other music hall performers had been honoured by royalty. The following year, she performed perhaps her best known song, "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)", which was written for her by Fred W. Leigh and Charles Collins. The song depicts a mother fleeing her home to avoid the rent man. The lyrics reflected the hardships of working class life in London at the beginning of the 20th century, and gave her the chance to costume the character in a worn out dress and black straw boater, while carrying a birdcage.
In July 1919, Lloyd was again left off the cast list for the Royal Variety Performance, which paid tribute to the acts who helped raise money and boost morale during the war years. She was devastated at the snub and grew bitter towards her rivals who had been acknowledged. Her biographer Midge Gillies compared Lloyd to a "talented old aunt who must be allowed to have her turn at the piano even though all everyone really wants is jazz or go to the Picture Palace". She toured Cardiff in 1919, and in 1920 she was earning £11,000 a year. Despite the high earnings, she was living beyond her means, with a reckless tendency to spend money. She was famous for her generosity, but was unable to differentiate between those in need and those who simply exploited her kindness. Her extravagant tastes, an accumulation of writs from disgruntled theatre managers, an inability to save money, and generous hand-outs to friends and family, resulted in severe money troubles during the final years of her life.
Decline and death
In 1920, Lloyd appeared twice at Hendon Magistrates Court and gave evidence of the abuse she had suffered from Dillon. Soon afterwards, she separated from him and, as a result, became depressed. When asked by prosecutors how many times Dillon had assaulted her since Christmas 1919, Lloyd replied "I cannot tell you, there were so many [occasions]. It has happened for years, time after time, always when he is drunk." By now, she was becoming increasingly unreliable on stage; she appeared at a theatre in Cardiff for a mere six minutes before being carried off by stage hands. During the performance, she seemed dazed and confused, and she stumbled across the stage. She was conscious of her weak performances and frequently cried between shows. Virginia Woolf was among the audience at the Bedford Music Hall on 8 April 1921 and described Lloyd as "A mass of corruption – long front teeth – a crapulous way of saying 'desire', and yet a born artist – scarcely able to walk, waddling, aged, unblushing."
In April 1922, Lloyd collapsed in her dressing room after singing "The Cosmopolitan Girl" at the Gateshead Empire in Cardiff. Her doctor diagnosed exhaustion, and she returned to the stage in August. Her voice became weak, and she reduced her act to a much shorter running time. Her biographer Naomi Jacob thought that Lloyd was "growing old, and [she] was determined to show herself to her public as she really was ... an old, grey-faced, tired woman". On 12 August 1921, Lloyd failed to show for an appearance at the London Palladium, choosing instead to stay at home and write her will.
In early 1922, Lloyd moved in with her sister Daisy to save money. On 4 October, against her doctor's advice, she appeared at the Empire Music Hall in Edmonton, North London, where she sang "I'm One of the Ruins That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit". Her performance was weak, and she was unsteady on her feet, eventually falling over on stage. Her erratic and brief performance proved hilarious for the audience, who thought that it was all part of the act. Three days later, while appearing at the Alhambra Theatre, she was taken ill on stage and was found later in her dressing room crippled with pain, complaining of stomach cramps. She returned home later that evening, where she died of heart and kidney failure, aged 52. More than 50,000 people attended her funeral at Hampstead Cemetery on 12 October 1922. Lloyd was penniless at the time of her death and her estate, which was worth £7,334, helped to pay off debts that she and Dillon had incurred over the years. In their announceent of Lloyd's death, The Times wrote:
In her the public loses not only a vivid personality whose range and extremely broad humour as a character actress were extraordinary, but also one of the few remaining links with the old music-hall stage of the last century.
Writing in The Dial magazine the following month, T. S. Eliot claimed: "Among [the] small number of music-hall performers, whose names are familiar to what is called the lower class, Marie Lloyd had far the strongest hold on popular affection." Her biographer and friend MacQueen-Pope thought that Lloyd was "going downhill of her own volition. The complaint was incurable, some might call it heartbreak, perhaps a less sentimental diagnosis is disillusionment." The impersonator Charles Austin paid tribute by saying "I have lost an old pal, and the public has lost its principal stage favourite, one who can never be replaced."
Notes and references
Notes
References
Sources
External links
Songs from Marie Lloyd, at the Internet Archive.
"From the archive: The death of Marie Lloyd", The Guardian (online).
Images of Marie Lloyd at the National Portrait Gallery.
Marie Lloyd biography at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Queen of the Music Halls by W. J. MacQueen-Pope at the Internet Archive.
1870 births
1922 deaths
British women in World War I
English women comedians
English women singers
Music hall performers
People from Hoxton
Vaudeville performers
Women of the Victorian era
Burials at Hampstead Cemetery
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVA%20Air
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EVA Air
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EVA Airways Corporation ( ; ) (), of which "EVA" stands for Evergreen Airways, is one of the two largest airlines in Taiwan – the other being China Airlines. It operates passenger and dedicated cargo services to over 40 international destinations in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. In contrast to the state-owned flag carrier China Airlines, EVA Air is privately owned and flies a fully international route network with no domestic destinations. It is rated as a 5-star airline by Skytrax, and is the second largest airline based in Taiwan after China Airlines. EVA Air is headquartered at Taoyuan International Airport in Luzhu, Taoyuan City. The company slogan is "Sharing the World, Flying Together" ( ).
Since its founding in 1989 as an affiliate of shipping conglomerate Evergreen Group, EVA Air has expanded to include air cargo, airline catering, ground handling, and aviation engineering services. Its cargo arm, EVA Air Cargo, links with the Evergreen worldwide shipping network on sea and land. Its domestic and regional subsidiary, UNI Air, operates a medium and short-haul network to destinations within the island of Taiwan, Macau as well as mainland China with its main hub in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
EVA Air operates a mixed fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft, with Airbus A330, Airbus A321, Boeing 777, Boeing 787, and ATR 72 (operated by UNI Air) airliners primarily used on passenger routes, along with Boeing 777 freighter aircraft used on cargo routes. The airline was one of the first carriers to introduce the Premium Economy class (previously called Elite Class by EVA Air), which it debuted in 1991.
History
Launch
In September 1988, during the 20th anniversary celebration of Evergreen Marine Corporation's founding, company chairman Chang Yung-fa announced his company's intentions to establish Taiwan's first private international airline. The opportunity to create a major Taiwanese airline had just arisen following a decision by the Taiwanese government to liberalise the country's air transportation system. At this time, the government still required global experience and financial capital requirements for any company seeking permission to initiate international airline service from Taiwan.
Upon receipt of regulatory approval, EVA Airways Corporation was formally established in March 1989. The airline was originally to be called Evergreen Airways, however this was deemed too similar to the unrelated Evergreen International cargo airline. In October 1989, the newly formed EVA Airways Corporation placed a US$3.6 billion order for 26 aircraft from Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, including Boeing 747-400 and MD-11 airliners.
Operations began on 1 July 1991 with a small fleet of Boeing 767-300ER aircraft featuring business and economy class seating. Initial destinations from Taipei were Bangkok, Seoul, Jakarta, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. These 767s were initially painted slightly different to the standard livery adopted in 1992. By the end of the year, the EVA Air network had expanded to include additional cities in East Asia and its first European destination, Vienna. First year revenues reached US$40 million.
Expansion in the 1990s
In 1992, EVA Air received the first of its Boeing 747-400 aircraft on order, and launched its premium economy class, "Economy Deluxe", on its 747 transpacific flights to Los Angeles, beginning in December of that year. EVA Air's premium economy cabin was the first in the world featured a wider 2-4-2 abreast configuration, legrests, individual seatback video, and enhanced meal services. EVA Air's Economy Deluxe cabin (later renamed "Evergreen Deluxe" and "Elite Class") proved popular with the traveling public. For international services, EVA Air's 747s were configured with 104 premium economy seats as part of a 370-seat, four-class cabin, in addition to first, business and economy classes. In 1993, EVA Air added flights to Seattle, New York, Bangkok and Vienna with the Boeing 747-400.
By 1994, EVA Air was providing regular service to 22 destinations worldwide, and carrying over 3 million passengers annually. In 1995, the airline posted its first profit on revenues of US$1.05 billion, one year ahead of schedule. Internationally, EVA Air's rapid expansion and increased passenger volume was boosted by its safety record, in contrast to its primary competitor, China Airlines. In addition to receiving IOSA (IATA Operational Safety Audit) certification, EVA Air in 1997 achieved simultaneous official ISO 9002 certification in the areas of Passenger, Cargo, and Maintenance Services.
Dedicated EVA Air Cargo operations began in April 1995, with the first weekly McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighter flights to Taipei, Singapore, Penang, San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. EVA Air Cargo's fleet was expanded to five freighters by the end of the year. Previously, EVA Air Cargo operations mainly relied on passenger aircraft cargo space.
In the mid-1990s, EVA Air expanded into the domestic Taiwan market by acquiring shares in Makung International Airlines, followed by Great China Airlines and Taiwan Airways. On 1 July 1998, all three carriers, as well as EVA's existing domestic operations, merged under the UNI Air title. UNI Air became EVA Air's domestic intra-Taiwanese subsidiary, operating short haul flights out of its base in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's southern port and second-largest city.
Maturation in the early 2000s
In 2000, EVA Air embarked on its first major long-haul fleet renewal. The airline became one of the launch customers for the Boeing 777-300ER, ordering four aircraft plus eight options. At the same time, the airline placed three orders for the Boeing 777-200LR. In January 2001, EVA Air ordered its first Airbus aircraft, the A330-200. The Boeing 777 aircraft were intended for United States and European services, while the Airbus A330 aircraft were intended for regional Asian routes.
In 2001, EVA Air began listing public stock offerings on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Initially, one percent of the company's shares was offered over-the-counter, with one-quarter held by parent company Evergreen Marine Corporation and EVA Air employees, respectively. In 2002, EVA Air underwent internal corporate reforms, with staff reductions and streamlined management. This culminated a process which had begun in 1997, when the Asian financial crisis began affecting profitability. The 2002–2003 SARS contagion also affected passenger traffic for medium-haul flights in Southeast Asia, while long-haul flights to North America, Japan, and Europe were less affected.
In 2004, EVA Air converted its remaining eight options for Boeing 777-300ERs into firm orders. The first Boeing 777-300ER entered service as EVA Air's new flagship aircraft in July 2005. With the arrival of its new Boeing 777s, EVA Air launched a comprehensive revamp of its cabins, introducing lie-flat seats in its new Premium Laurel business class cabin, and upgrading its premium economy product to the new Elite Class cabin. The airline's A330s were introduced with two-class Premium Laurel and Economy cabins. In December 2005, EVA Air and its associated divisions had 5,098 employees, and the airline's network spanned 40 passenger destinations worldwide, with additional cargo destinations.
Repositioning in the late 2000s
In 2007, EVA Air announced a nonstop Taipei to New York (Newark Liberty International Airport) service, to be operated with its new long-range Boeing 777-300ERs. At the same time, the airline withdrew passenger service from Taipei to Paris. On 31 October 2008, EVA Air announced a resumption of Taipei to Paris service with twice-weekly passenger flights beginning 21 January 2009. In 2008, the airline also announced the suspension of services to Auckland. The carrier also prepared to increase direct flights to China, after initiating weekly charter flights in July 2008 following changes to the Three Links travel agreements.
For the 2007–2008 period, EVA Air coped with a 34% surge in fuel prices, which contributed to a US$61.2 million 2007 loss. In August 2008, EVA Air reported a second quarterly loss due to increased fuel costs. In response, the airline implemented cost-saving measures, including flight schedule reductions and fee increases. In early 2008, EVA Air's business office in El Segundo, California, announced a major staff reduction, with over half the staff advised that they would no longer be employed by May 2008. Functions performed by those local staff were shifted to Taiwan by half, such as the reservation center.
EVA Air carried 6.2 million passengers in 2007, and employed 4,800 staff members as of April 2008. The carrier returned to profitability in the first quarter of 2009, with a US$5.9 million net gain. In August 2010, EVA Air was named one of the top 10 international airlines in Travel+Leisures World's Best Awards.
Further expansion in the early 2010s
In March 2010, EVA Air began services to Toronto. In November 2010, EVA Air began nonstop flights connecting the inner-city Taipei Songshan and Tokyo Haneda airports. In 2010, Chang Kuo-wei, son of Chang Yung-fa, returned to serve as EVA Air's president, and the carrier recorded increased sales and yearly profits. In early 2011, the carrier announced that it had applied for airline alliance membership with Star Alliance, and later that year clarified that it was in talks to join either Oneworld or Star Alliance by 2013. In June 2011, the carrier began nonstop flights from Taipei to Guam, and, in October 2011, the carrier announced nonstop service from New York (JFK) to Taipei.
On 27 March 2012, EVA Air announced that it would join Star Alliance in 2013. On 24 September 2012, EVA Air signed a partnership with Amadeus IT Group Altéa suite for its Altéa Revenue Management system. On 18 June 2013, EVA Air became a full member of Star Alliance.
In October 2014, EVA Air announced its intention to expand its North American network by adding new routes to Houston in 2015 and Chicago in 2016, along with expanding 55 flights per week to 63 flights per week to North America.
In October 2015, EVA Air announced its intent to purchase up to 24 Boeing 787 Dreamliners and two additional 777-300ER (Extended Range) jetliners from Boeing. EVA Airways joined the 787-10 launch customer team.
Recent developments
In November 2015, EVA Air unveiled a new livery on its Boeing 777-300ER.
In January 2016, Evergreen Group chairman Chang Yung-fa died, leaving control of the company to his son by his second marriage, Chang Kuo-Wei. In March 2016, a coup by the three children of Chang Yung-fa's first marriage removed Chang Kuo-Wei as chairman and replaced him with Lin Pang-Shui (Steven Lin). Chang Kuo-Wei later established a new airline separate from EVA Air, called StarLux Airlines.
In June 2016, EVA Air was one of eleven airlines to be given a Skytrax 5-star rating.
On 24 August 2017, EVA Air unveiled its third-generation uniform, designed by fashion house Shiatzy Chen. Those new uniforms were rolled out in November 2017, replacing the second generation uniform that was introduced in 2003.
On 2 October 2018, EVA Air took delivery of its first of four Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners. The airline has orders for 20 787-10s and options for six more. In June 2019, EVA Air took delivery of its first of twenty Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners.
Corporate affairs and identity
Management
As of 2011, EVA Air's corporate leadership is headed by Chairman Lin Bou-shiu and President Cheng Chuan-yi. EVA Air's president plays a primary role in managing EVA's business operations. Other members of EVA Air's board manage support and service services of the company, including its catering and maintenance divisions. Related areas outside EVA Air's direct management include UNI Holidays, Evergreen's Evasión travel service and Evergreen Laurel Hotels. EVA Air has its headquarters, known as the EVA Air Building, in Luzhu, Taoyuan City.
EVA Air is largely privately owned. Primary shareholders are Evergreen Marine Corporation (20%), Evergreen founder Chang Yung-fa (15%), and Evergreen International Corporation (11%). Foreign investors and individual stockholders combined hold 28% of EVA Air shares.
Cultural details
EVA Air has differentiated its onboard service by using Taiwanese (Hokkien), Mandarin, Hakka, English, and other languages for its in-flight cabin announcements. The order of Hokkien and Mandarin has varied since the carrier's launch. EVA Air has also used Taiwanese folk songs in its boarding music, including an orchestral form of "Longing for Spring Wind" performed by the Evergreen Group's Evergreen Symphony Orchestra. The carrier's aircraft and employee color scheme has at times been interpreted by observers as support for the Pan-Green Coalition of Taiwanese politics, mainly due to Evergreen founder Chang Yung-fa's political views in the 2000 presidential election, but this association changed following Chang's support of the Pan-Blue Coalition in the 2004 presidential election. The carrier has further abstained from displaying official markings of Taiwan on its aircraft, and received expedited approval of international landing rights as a result.
Branding
Name and logo
The name "EVA" was taken from two letters of "Evergreen" and the first letter of "Airways." The name "EVA" is always spelled in capital letters and is pronounced "E-V-A". However, the ICAO callsign is pronounced “Eva”. The airline uses the logo of its parent company, using green with an orange trim. The orange trim was removed on the current logo.
Livery and uniforms
The standard EVA Air livery utilizes dark green, signifying durability, and orange, representing technological innovation. Originally, both the globe and background behind the globe were painted a respective shade of green on their initial 767-300ERs in 1991. This was later changed to the first standard scheme on all other aircraft. The tail globe logo is intended to represent stability and reliability, and its positioning on the tail, with one corner off the edge, represents service innovation. The first standard EVA Air livery was updated in 2002, adding a larger typeface and the use of green covering the aircraft below the window line. The tail design and logo remained unchanged. In late 2015, EVA Air redesigned the livery and tail logo, using the dark green color on the belly, and cancelled the orange line on the edge of the tail to highlight the corporate identity.
Since 2003, EVA Air has adopted its current uniform, featuring dark green dresses with cropped jackets. Chief pursers are distinguished by orange highlights, gold bands, and orange stripes; flight attendants feature green trim and white stripes. The current uniform replaced the former green-and-orange necktie ensembles used in EVA Air's first twelve years.
Marketing slogans
EVA Air has used different slogans throughout its operational history. The first slogan appeared on English language advertising in the United States, while the 1996 and 2003 versions were introduced internationally in both English and Mandarin. In 2005, a second "Sharing the world" slogan was introduced to complement the arrival of the airline's Boeing 777s. EVA Air slogans have been as follows:
Flying into the Future (2016–present)
Divisions
EVA Air Cargo
Founded concurrently with the passenger operations of EVA Air, EVA Air Cargo operates facilities in Europe, Asia, and North America. Its cargo operations have diversified to include transportation of high-tech equipment and special care items such as museum artwork and live zoological specimens. EVA Air has stated its goal of achieving a 50/50 split in revenues between its passenger and cargo operations. The airline's cargo operations are mainly operated via a fleet of Boeing 747-400, MD-11 dedicated freighters, Boeing 747-400 Combi aircraft, and additional belly cargo space on passenger aircraft.
Following the establishment of its A330 fleet and the introduction of Boeing 777 long-haul aircraft, the airline converted some of its older Boeing 747-400 passenger aircraft to freighters to meet cargo market demands. EVA Air Cargo established its European Cargo Center in Brussels in 2003 and opened its Southern China Cargo Center in Hong Kong in 2006.
As of 2007, EVA Air Cargo had 43 weekly cargo flights to London, Vienna, Brussels and US destinations including Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, Atlanta and New York. The carrier also has code-shares with international airlines including Air Nippon (a subsidiary of All Nippon Airways), British Airways World Cargo, Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa Cargo.
In recent years, the airline has focused its North American cargo operations solely on point-to-point routes. By 2004, EVA Air Cargo ranked among the world's top 10 largest air freight companies. Industry publication Air Cargo World ranked EVA Air Cargo sixth out of 50 in its 2008 Air Cargo Excellence Survey, a measure of cargo service customer service and performance. In 2008, EVA Air handled the transport of two Chinese pandas, donated as a gift to the Taipei Zoo.
Maintenance and support
EVA Air service divisions further include pilot and cabin attendant training facilities, along with its Evergreen Sky Catering and Evergreen Airline Services ground support divisions. EVA Air has partnered with General Electric since 1998 to operate the Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corporation (EGAT), a heavy maintenance and aircraft overhaul service. Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corporation provides safety, repair, and refit services for EVA Air, other airlines' aircraft, and has handled the modification of four Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter aircraft for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner production program.
Financial report
EVA Air's financial results are shown below:
Destinations
Most EVA Air flights originate out of Taoyuan International Airport, its main hub near Taipei, Taiwan. At Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, EVA Air's flight operations are concentrated in Terminal 2. Additionally, EVA Air and its domestic subsidiary UNI Air operate numerous flights out of Kaohsiung International Airport. A focus city for EVA Air outside of Taiwan is Bangkok, (its main hub being Suvarnabhumi Airport), with westerly connections to all its European destinations except for Paris, Munich, and Milan which are flown non-stop.
Through the mid-2000s, EVA Air's route network was affected by the political status of Taiwan, which has historically limited access for Taiwanese airlines to Europe and certain Asian countries. Because Taiwanese carriers did not have direct access to China, EVA Air has used Hong Kong, Bangkok and Macau as interline destinations. EVA Air operated regular charter flights to China in 2008. The airline began regularly scheduled, direct cross-strait operations in December 2008, following the restoration of direct travel links.
A Houston (George Bush Intercontinental Airport) route was opened in June 2015, and service to Chicago (O'Hare International Airport) began on 2 November 2016, using a 777-300ER, as part of a planned increase in North American flights from 58 flights to 77 flights a week.
EVA Air launched a new year-round service to Istanbul on 5 March 2016, operating 777-300ER aircraft. This route was first downgraded to a seasonal frequency and then cancelled altogether by September 2016. EVA Air also launched daily service to Cebu, Philippines on 27 March 2016 using A321-200 aircraft. Furthermore, EVA Air expanded its Southeast Asian services by offering daily flights to Chiang Mai on 1 July 2018.
Codeshare agreements
EVA Air has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
Air Canada
Air China
Air India
Air New Zealand
All Nippon Airways
Asiana Airlines
Avianca
Bangkok Airways
Copa Airlines
Hainan Airlines
Hong Kong Airlines
Juneyao Airlines
Shandong Airlines
Shenzhen Airlines
Singapore Airlines
Thai Airways International
Turkish Airlines
Uni Air
United Airlines
Fleet
Current fleet
, EVA Air operates the following aircraft:
Former fleet
Special liveries
In October 2005, EVA Air launched a campaign with Japanese company Sanrio to create the "Hello Kitty Jet," featuring the popular Japanese character. Using the airline's A330-200, the exterior adopted a livery of Hello Kitty characters. A year later, the airline launched a second Hello Kitty Jet. The aircraft featured a Hello Kitty motif on exterior and interior furnishings and features. Both aircraft were used to serve Japanese destinations, and from mid–July 2007, also Taipei-Hong Kong routes. The original Hello Kitty livery was retired in 2009, but in 2011 EVA Air announced its return in redesigned form to mark the carrier's 20th anniversary and renew interest in Japanese tourism. For this occasion, EVA Air had ordered brand-new Airbus A330-300s to be painted in an all-new Hello Kitty livery, which the first three were the Hello Kitty with Magic Stars, Hello Kitty Loves Apples, and Hello Kitty Around the World.
After the introduction of the "refreshed" Hello Kitty Livery on three EVA Air A330s, EVA Air decided to introduce two additional Hello Kitty A330 jets, launched in May and June 2012. The fourth and fifth Hello Kitty jets are known as Hello Kitty Speed Puff and Hello Kitty Happy Music respectively. In 2013, the carrier rolled out its sixth Hello Kitty jet Hand in Hand, this time on a Boeing 777-300ER, until it was repainted into the new EVA Air livery in May 2021. The aircraft featured all the main characters from the Sanrio family. In 2015, the seventh and final Hello Kitty jet, Kikilala-themed Shining Star Boeing 777-300ER, rolled out. In 2017, the first 3 of the Hello Kitty jets, Hello Kitty with Magic Stars, Hello Kitty Loves Apples, and Hello Kitty Around the World were re-themed into Bad Badtz-Maru Travel Fun, Joyful Dream, and Celebration Flight respectively. At the same time, the Gudetama Comfort Flight were added onto the A321, and the Hello Kitty Speed Puff and Hello Kitty Happy Music were phased out.
In July 2006, EVA Air's third new Boeing 777-300ER was Boeing's center stage at the 2006 Farnborough Airshow in a static display. The aircraft, with its special 777-300ER "Rainbow" livery, was leased by Boeing for a week to be presented at the show. The first three EVA Air Boeing 777 aircraft featured this livery, which were repainted in 2013 (B-16701 in Star Alliance livery, B-16702 in regular livery, B-16703 in Hello Kitty "Hand in Hand" livery, which has been repainted to the standard livery in 2021).
For the 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition, EVA Air debuted a floral-inspired design for its A330-200 aircraft, highlighting the carrier's official sponsorship of the event; the "Flora Expo cabin concept" introduced interior products such as in-flight meals with a flower motif.
Fleet plans
The majority of EVA Air's long-haul fleet is based on the Boeing 777-300ER, with the carrier's initial order for 15 all delivered by 2011. In 2006, the airline decided against proceeding with an order for two Boeing 777-200LR (stating that with the 777-300ERs would give it sufficient passenger capacity), and they were converted into orders for two 777-200F cargo aircraft. In late 2010, EVA Air indicated it planned to lease three A330-300 aircraft for Asian routes in 2011. In mid-2011, EVA Air announced plans to acquire further 777-300ERs to complete the replacement of its 747-400 aircraft on Europe and US routes, along with A321 series narrow-body jets to replace its MD-90 fleet. On 8 May 2012, EVA Air signed orders with Boeing for three additional 777-300ERs, and also announced a lease of four more 777-300ERs. Due to falling freight demand, the airline restructured its cargo fleet by retiring its McDonnell Douglas MD-11s. The last 747-400M flight was conducted on 5 January 2015, ending its 22-year service.
At the Paris Airshow in 2015, EVA Air announced its intention to purchase five Boeing 777F cargo aircraft and four Airbus A330-300s. EVA Air confirmed the order of up to 24 Boeing 787-10s and two additional Boeing 777-300ERs. It also announced the additional lease of 787 aircraft.
EVA announced in late 2015 that it would be retiring all of its leased A330-200 aircraft by the end of 2016, replacing them with the newly ordered A330-300s.
Following the changes of air traffic demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline switched 7 787-10s with 4 787-9s and 3 777Fs. In March 2022, the airline plans to convert 3 of their older 777-300ER passenger jets into freighters; considering the replacement of the older 777-300ER fleet by the 787-10 and/or the 777-9. The airline is also evaluating the 737-10s and the A321neos to replace the older A321's in the fleet.
747 retirements
As the 777s continued to phase in, the 747s were progressively retired. On 5 January 2015, EVA Air retired its first 747 variant, the 747-400M Combi. In 2016, EVA announced that the last 747-400 passenger service would be mid-May 2017. The airline also plans to retire the 747 freighters when the 777 freighters are delivered. EVA retired the Boeing 747-400 passenger aircraft from its fleet on 21 August 2017. The following year, the production 747 freighters were retired, leaving the converted 747 freighters in service until 2019.
ServicesHello Kitty FlightsEVA Air ran Hello Kitty flights from 2005 through 2008, and brought them back in 2011. They have been running Hello Kitty flights ever since, and current Hello Kitty routes have some of the highest load factors in their system (around 85%).
Check-in
At Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, EVA Air has introduced the EVA Air Check-in Kiosks at T2, counters 6A, allowing passengers to check in and print their boarding passes electronically, since December 2009. The kiosks are currently available at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei Songshan Airport. Over time, EVA will install these counters in airports in China and other international EVA Air destinations. Outside of Taiwan, it is only currently available in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Osaka. Previously, if passengers were to check in for an EVA Air flight, they would have to go to an airline representative at the counters. There is a self service baggage drop available at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at T2 at counters 16–17.
Onboard
EVA Air offers three classes of service on its long-haul flights: "Royal Laurel"/"Premium Laurel" (business), Premium Economy Class, and Economy Class. All cabins feature satellite phones, audio video on demand (AVOD) entertainment, SMS service, and in a number of Boeing 777 cabins, mood lighting (B-16718-B-16738). Domestic and short-haul international services flown also feature a short-haul business class.
In the latter half of 2007, EVA Air's Boeing 747-400 fleet was upgraded to feature the airline's latest seating classes; the addition of Premium Laurel class on the Boeing 747-400 succeeded the previous "Super First" and "Super Business" cabins. In early 2012, EVA Air officials unveiled a redesigned "Royal Laurel" business class, including 180-degree, fully flat seats in reverse herringbone layout, which was first introduced on Boeing 777-300ER services in June 2012 between Taipei and New York.
Cabin classes
EVA Air currently has five classes. In May 2012, EVA Air announced the introduction of a new business class on select, redesigned Boeing 777-300ER aircraft: Royal Laurel Class. The cabin features 38 lie-flat bed/seats in a reverse herringbone configuration pitched at wide. Laptop power and multi-port connectors (USB/iPod) are available at each seat. The Royal Laurel class seating arrangement is in a 1–2–1 abreast arrangement. The airline is offering this cabin on all flights operated by the Boeing 777. On 20 September 2018, EVA Air debuted the Boeing 787 Royal Laurel Class. The seat was designed by Designworks, a BMW Group company. The new Royal Laurel Class seats are 584 mm (23 in) wide and recline into flat-bed positions that have a pitch of 1,930 mm (76 in) long. There are 26 Royal Laurel Class seats on the Boeing 787-9. The Royal Laurel Class cabin on the Boeing 787-10 features 40 seats.
Premium Laurel Class, EVA Air's existing business class cabin, was introduced in 2003 with the A330-200, and expanded to more destinations with the Boeing 777-300ER in 2005 and refitted Boeing 747-400 (replacing "Super First") in 2007. Seats are pitched at in Premium Laurel in a pod-style layout, and can convert to an angled lie-flat bed. Laptop power is available.
Premium Laurel class seating is in a 2–2–2 abreast arrangement on the A330. In 2016, Premium Laurel was upgraded to the new B/E Aerospace seats in a 2-2-2 configuration.
Business Class, EVA Air's short haul business class cabin on the A321, consists of eight seats. These seats feature a 10.6-inch in-flight entertainment system and 110 V power outlets. Seat pitch is 45 inches.
is offered in a dedicated cabin on the Boeing 777. Premium Economy Class has wider seating and legroom (in a 2-4-2 layout), and a seat similar to short-haul business class with a footrest, pitch, adjustable winged headrests, and laptop power. Service levels in Premium Economy Class are similar to Economy Class, but food and amenities are improved, along with the seating. Premium Economy passengers further receive an amenity kit on most flights. There are two or four lavatories (dependent on aircraft configuration) that are dedicated to Premium Economy Class passengers.
Economy Class is available on all EVA Air aircraft, featuring pitch, touchscreen personal entertainment screens, sliding seat cushions, and adjustable winged headrests. Each seat is also equipped with a personal handset satellite telephone which can be used with a credit card. Economy seating is in 3–3–3 arrangement on the Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner, 3–4–3 on certain Boeing 777 aircraft, 3–3 on the A321, and 2–4–2 on all A330s. In Economy Class of the A321 there is no personal entertainment, with only overhead screens.
A new Economy and Premium Economy cabin is available on 777-300ER aircraft. Those new seats have improved entertainment systems and USB and 110 V AC ports in each seat. It includes a seat-back screen that is 11.1 inches, compared to the previous 9 inches.
In 2018, EVA Air renamed Elite Class to Premium Economy Class.
In-flight entertainment
EVA Air's audio video on demand (AVOD) entertainment system, Star Gallery, is available in all classes, except Airbus A321 Economy class. This system has 40 movies and short features, interactive games, and over 100 music albums. Programs are mainly in Mandarin and English, with some selections in Japanese, German, and French.
Star Gallery entertainment categories include such areas as Sky Hollywood (films), Sky Concert Hall (music and playlist creator), Kids' World (entertainment geared toward younger travelers), among others. The Panasonic Avionics 3000i system can display Mandarin, English, or Japanese text. On certain aircraft, a Panasonic EX3 system is installed. Since 2005, customers can also send SMS text messages and emails to the ground using their personal handsets and seatback screens.
Seatback video is not available in Economy Class on A321-200s.
enVoyage is EVA's inflight magazine and features articles in English, Mandarin and Japanese. EVA Air's duty-free shopping brochure, named EVA Air Sky Shop, is included at each seat in either paper or video form, with sales occurring in-flight, typically after meal services. EVA Air also stocks a supply of newspapers and magazine publications on international flights, selection depending on route.
Catering
EVA Air offers a variety of meals on intercontinental routes, depending on seat class, destination, and flight length. Western and Eastern menu selections are typically offered, including seasonal menu selections varied by destination. Special meal offerings can be requested in each class during booking, including children's, religious, vegetarian, and other meals.
In Royal Laurel Class and Premium Laurel Class, passengers can pre-order gourmet entreés, depending on destination, including specialties produced by Din Tai Fung, an award-winning Taiwanese restaurant. Royal Laurel cabins on the Boeing 777 also feature an in-flight refreshment bar, and European wine selections are served.
EVA AIR lounges
EVA AIR operates airline lounges under the brand name EVA AIR lounge (formerly branded Evergreen Lounge) in major destination airports. Passengers eligible to enter these facilities include Royal Laurel, Premium Laurel and business class passengers, Infinity MileageLands Diamond, Gold, and Silver Card holders, Star Alliance Gold members, and eligible passengers travelling with airlines that have contracted with EVA Air on the lounge facilities.
EVA Air's four flagship lounges, located at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, are:The Garden (Exclusively to Infinity MileageLands Diamond and American Express Centurion/EVA Air Co-brand Platinum/Citibank EVA Air Co-brand World Cardholders travelling in Royal Laurel/Premium Laurel/Business Class)The Infinity (Accessible by all eligible passengers above and: Royal Laurel/Premium Laurel/Business Class passengers, Star Alliance First/Business Class Passengers and American Express Centurion/EVA Air Co-brand Platinum/Citibank EVA Air Co-brand World Cardholders travelling in Premium Economy/Economy Class)The Star (Accessible by all eligible passengers above and: Infinity MileageLands Gold, Star Alliance Gold members, Business customers, Business class/elite passengers travelling with airlines contracted with EGAT on lounge facilities)The club by EVA Air (Accessible by all eligible passengers above and: Infinity MileageLands Silver, Citibank Diamond Cardholders, Diners Club cardholders and Citibank EVA Air Cobrand Titanium/Platinum Cardholders).
EVA Air also operates its EVA AIR lounges' at Bangkok and Kaohsiung. It previously operated an outstation lounge at San Francisco.
EVA Air lounge services typically include refreshments, business facilities, and television and reading entertainment.
Infinity MileageLands
EVA Air's frequent flyer program, Infinity MileageLands, awards members points based on miles traveled and class of service. Infinity MileageLands points are redeemable for upgrades and free tickets, and can also be accumulated through credit card use, rental car agencies, Evergreen Laurel Hotels, and other participating services. Membership benefits include a dedicated reservation line, dedicated customer service hotlines, dedicated check-in services, holiday gifts (Diamond Card Holders), Evergreen Lounge access, additional baggage allowance with priority handling, and discounts on car rentals and hotels.
Membership into the program is free. The program is divided into four tiers: Green, Silver, Gold, and Diamond. Infinity MileageLands privileges are additive by membership tier, with higher tiers including all benefits listed for prior tiers. The program accepts miles flown on partner airlines and Star Alliance partners such as All Nippon Airways, Air Canada, and United Airlines, provided that the flights are booked and logged according to EVA Air frequent flier rules. Co-branded Cathay United Bank, American Express, Citibank, and Diners Club cards can also earn miles. Qualification levels and general benefits are listed on the EVA Air website.
Shuttle services
EVA Air operates the following shuttle services in the United States and Europe, free for customers:
To/from John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York City): In New Jersey: Jersey City, Piscataway, Fort Lee, East Hanover, Cherry Hill – In Pennsylvania: South Philadelphia and Cheltenham
To/from George Bush Intercontinental Airport (Houston): Stops in the Dallas-Fort Worth area: Richardson
To/from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol: Saint-Gilles (Sint-Gillis), Brussels (near the Brussels-South (Midi) railway station) and Berchem, Antwerp (near Antwerp-Berchem bus station) – Co-operated with Reizen Lauwers NV
Accidents and incidents
To date, EVA Air has not had any aircraft losses or passenger fatalities in its operational history. As of 21 January 2021, EVA Air is ranked number 6 in safety after Qantas and five other airlines by cntraveler.com.
According to the JACDEC Airline Safety Ranking 2018, EVA Air was ranked 15th out of 100 major airlines. On 2 April 2019, EVA Air was voted third best airline in the world according to Trip Advisor's Travelers Choice rankings, preceded only by Singapore Airlines and Qatar Airways.
On 17 July 2014, EVA Air Flight 088 (BR088), en route from Paris to Taipei, was in the same area when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
On 16 December 2016, EVA Air Flight 015 (operated by a Boeing 777-300ER registered as B-16726) from Los Angeles International Airport to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport narrowly missed colliding with Air Canada Flight 788 on takeoff, and subsequently nearly impacted Mount Wilson above Pasadena, California. With takeoffs that evening rerouted to the rarely-used eastbound departure due to weather, the Los Angeles air traffic controller mistakenly told the pilot to turn left instead of right (as they would if the aircraft were taking off westbound, over the ocean). The aircraft complied, and instead headed north, climbing to as it headed towards Mt. Wilson. The EVA aircraft was forced to take evasive action, and climb to , missing Mt. Wilson by less than . Air Canada Flight 788, also departing Los Angeles, was taking the same route as the EVA aircraft and was forced to climb to in evasive action.
On 2 December 2017, EVA Air Flight 035 from Toronto Pearson International Airport to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport struck a pole while taxiing in darkness. The aircraft (a Boeing 777-300ER registered as B-16718) suffered significant damage on its right leading edge and wing surface. The aircraft had not been taxiing on the centerline after deicing and therefore lacked wing clearance with the light pole.
On 10 June 2023, EVA Air Flight 189 from Taipei Songshan Airport, an Airbus A330-300 heading to Haneda Airport in Japan struck the wing of Thai Airways International Flight 683, an Airbus A330-300, which was to depart for Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport. The Thai Airways aircraft reportedly sustained minor damage, with reportedly losing its wing as a result of the collision. The collision forced one of the runways of Haneda to close.
Controversies and labor disputes
On 19 January 2019, on EVA Air's flight from Los Angeles to Taoyuan, Taipei, a disorderly overweight American passenger asked female flight attendants for assistance in the lavatory. Claiming that he recently had surgery and was physically unable to wipe his buttocks, he demanded that the flight attendants clean his backside. After berating them when they refused, the flight attendants reluctantly complied. It was later revealed that the passenger was a frequent EVA Air customer with a history of making similar questionable requests to the airline's flight attendants. The airline moved to cancel the passenger's return flight but learned that he died in Thailand.
On 29 January 2019, a female EVA Air flight attendant issued a public complaint after EVA Air falsely accused her of taking part in pornography.
On 20 June 2019, Taiwan Flight Attendants Union (TFAU) started an air strike. EVA Air and Taiwan Flight Attendants reached an agreement on 7 July 2019, stating that the strike would end on 10 July 2019. About 1440 flights were cancelled and more than 280,000 passengers were affected from the air strike. The strike became the longest strike in Taiwan's history. The airline estimated a prospective loss of about US$97 million as a result of the strike.
See also
List of airlines of Taiwan
Air transport in Taiwan
List of airports in Taiwan
List of companies of Taiwan
Transportation in Taiwan
References
External links
Airlines established in 1989
1989 establishments in Taiwan
Airlines of Taiwan
Association of Asia Pacific Airlines
Companies based in Taoyuan City
Companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange
Star Alliance
Taiwanese brands
Evergreen Group
EVA Air
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular%20Masonic%20jurisdiction
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Regular Masonic jurisdiction
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In Freemasonry, regularity is one of the factors by which individual Grand Lodges judge whether to recognise one another for the purposes of allowing formal interaction at the Grand Lodge level and visitation by members of other jurisdictions. Each individual Grand Lodge determines which other Grand Lodges it considers Regular (and the standards for determining this are not uniform between Grand Lodges).
Regularity and its origins
History
There are a number of groupings of Masonic jurisdictions which consider themselves regular, and recognise others as regular, yet consider others to be irregular. There is no globally centralised Masonic organisational system, and therefore the criteria for regularity are not consistent across all Grand Lodges.
Ancients and Moderns
The concept of Regularity first appears in Payne's regulations, and was printed in Anderson's Constitutions. In regulation VIII we find –
If any Set or Number of Masons shall take upon themselves to form a Lodge without the Grand-Master's Warrant, the regular Lodges are not to countenance them, or own them as fair Brethren and duly form’d, nor approve of their Acts and Deeds; but must treat them as Rebels, until they humble themselves, as the Grand-Master shall in his Prudence direct, and until he approve of them by his Warrant, which must be signify’d to the other Lodges, as the Custom is when a new Lodge is to be register’d in the List of Lodges.
The revisions published in the 1738 constitutions introduced the term Regular Lodge.
Arguments regarding what ought to constitute proper Freemasonry appear in the 1720s, when some lodges of the Premier Grand Lodge of England began to replace the old method of drawing the lodge symbols on the floor in chalk and charcoal with tape, tacked to the floor, and portable metal letters. This earned the new Grand Lodge the nickname of the Moderns. In 1735, the same Grand Lodge refused admission to the master and wardens of an Irish lodge, who claimed to be a deputation from the Grand Master of Ireland, unless they accepted the English constitution, which they refused. In 1751 the nucleus of a second Grand Lodge, which did not accept the innovations of the original, was formed. Their book of constitutions, the Ahiman Rezon of their Grand Secretary Laurence Dermott, suggests that the Moderns had now changed their passwords in alarm over masonic exposures printed in the 1730s, which would not allow their members admission into any lodges outside their own jurisdiction. The process of uniting of these two Grand Lodges began in 1809, when the Moderns set up a travelling Lodge of Promulgation to return their ritual to its "Ancient" form. This made possible the creation, in 1813, of the United Grand Lodge of England.
Landmarks of Freemasonry
Payne's 1720 regulations mention the necessity of maintaining the "old Land-Marks" of the order, but it was much later that anybody attempted to define them. It was not until 1858 that Albert Mackey published a list of 25 landmarks, which while not universally accepted, formed the basis of some American jurisdictions.
Attempts to formulate the basis of regularity came even later in England, and appear to have arisen from recognition of a new Grand Lodge in France, which had just split from the Grand Orient de France, already branded as irregular (see below). A letter of 1913 from the new Grand Master of the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge of France and of the French Colonies stated the obligations of his lodges as his claim to regularity.
While the Lodge is at work the Bible will always be open on the altar.
The ceremonies will be conducted in strict conformity with the Ritual of the "Regime Rectifié" which is followed by these Lodges, a Ritual which was drawn up in 1778 and sanctioned in 1782, and with which the Duke of Kent was initiated in 1792[47].
The Lodge will always be opened and closed with invocation and in the name of the Great Architect of the Universe. All the summonses of the Order and of the Lodges will be printed with the symbols of the Great Architect of the Universe.
No religious or political discussion will be permitted in the Lodge.
The Lodge as such will never take part officially in any political affair but every individual Brother will preserve complete liberty of opinion and action.
Only those Brethren who are recognised as true Brethren by the Grand Lodge of England will be received in Lodge.
These appear to have formed the basis for the 1929 Basic Principles for Grand Lodge Recognition, still used by the United Grand Lodge of England.
Great Architect of the Universe
In 1813, upon the union of Antients and Moderns, the UGLE had created a new Constitution, based on the Constitutions of Anderson of the Moderns and the Ahiman Rezon of the Antients, which required
acceptance of the Great Architect of the Universe.
The Grand Orient de France (GOdF) initially adapted its Constitution in order to comply. In 1877, however, on a proposal of the Protestant priest Frédéric Desmons at the convention of the GOdF, the members of the convention removed references to the Great Architect of the Universe (GAOTU) from their Constitution. They saw their decision as a way to return to the original Constitution of James Anderson of 1723. The first two sentences of the constitution of the GOdF (in English translation) had been:
"Its principles of Freemasonry are the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and human solidarity. It considers liberty of conscience as an inherent right of each man and excludes no one because of his beliefs."
These became:
"Its principles are liberty of conscience and human solidarity. It excludes no one because of his beliefs."
This decision led to a schism between the Grand Orient de France and the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE).
Since the great schism of 1877 freemasonry is divided in two branches, Continental style Freemasonry and Anglo Freemasonry. These two branches are not in mutual regular amity, since most English style lodges consider Continental style lodges to be irregular. The Grand Orient de France (Grand Orients) and the United Grand Lodge of England (Grand Lodges) are the basic models for each variety of freemasonry.
Present
Home Grand Lodges – related jurisdictions
The largest collection of mutually recognised Grand Lodges derives its regularity from one or more of the Home Grand Lodges (United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE), Grand Lodge of Scotland (GLoS) and Grand Lodge of Ireland (GLoI)) based on criteria known as "Basic Principles for Grand Lodge Recognition" which together they codified and published on 4 September 1929 (although not new – they had been developed and refined over at least the preceding 150 years):
Regularity of origin; i.e.each Grand Lodge shall have been established lawfully by a duly recognised Grand Lodge or by three or more regularly constituted Lodges.
That a belief in the G.A.O.T.U. and His revealed will shall be an essential qualification for membership.
That all Initiates shall take their Obligation on or in full view of an open Volume of Sacred Law, by which is meant the revelation from above which is binding on the conscience of the particular individual who is being initiated.
That the membership of the Grand Lodge and individual Lodges shall be composed exclusively of men; and that each Grand Lodge shall have no Masonic intercourse of any kind with mixed Lodges or bodies which admit women to membership.
That the Grand Lodge shall have sovereign jurisdiction over Lodges under its control; i.e. that it shall be a responsible, independent, self-governing organisation, with sole and undisputed authority over the Craft or Symbolic Degrees (Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason) within its Jurisdiction; and shall not in any way be subject to, or divide such authority with, a Supreme Council or other Power claiming any control or supervision over those degrees.
That the three Great Lights of Freemasonry (namely, a Volume of Sacred Law, the Square, and the Compasses) shall always be exhibited when the Grand Lodge or its subordinate Lodges are at work, the chief of these being the Volume of Sacred Law.
That the discussion of religion and politics within the Lodge shall be strictly prohibited.
That the principles of the Antient Landmarks, customs, and usages of the Craft be strictly observed.
The first attempt to codify the governance of Freemasonry was The Constitution of the Freemasons of Strasbourg in 1459, which the Masonic Bodies of Continental Freemasonry hold as the essence of Freemasonry. However, the more popular codification in English - speaking nations was created by James Anderson in his Constitutions, published in 1723, which contain his idea of the basic principles. Dr. Albert Mackey built on this in 1856, when he identified 25 Landmarks or characteristics of Masonry which have been widely adopted in America.
UGLE considers itself to be the most ancient Grand Lodge in continuous existence. Although it was founded in 1813 with its first Grand Master, it considers itself a continuation of the much older Grand Lodge of London, founded in 1717 by four pre-existent lodges. No record exists of any earlier Lodge organisation styling itself as a Grand Lodge. Three of the four original lodges still exist. Today they are UGLE lodges No 2, No 4, and No 12. Naturally, since they were founded even before the creation of the Grand Lodge of London, they function without the normal warrant, and also have some internal offices and regulations which differ from the standard UGLE constitutions. As they pre-date the foundation of the oldest grand lodge, and as their actual date of foundation is unknown, these three lodges are referred to as being "time immemorial" lodges. Since 1717 other grand lodges have been founded, and many have sought recognition by UGLE, hence it has claimed the 'benchmark' of masonic regularity.
"Continental" style jurisdictions
The Continental style Grand Lodges and Grand Orients have created several organizations in order to organize their international relations, such as CLIPSAS, the International Masonic Union Catena, CIMAS, COMAM, TRACIA and, formerly, the International Secretariat of the Masonic Adogmatic Powers before it was re-absorbed into CLIPSAS.
Other bodies predicate their assessment of regularity on the 8th decree of Anderson's Constitution; a Lodge is regular if it works in conformity to the rules of its granted constitutional patent. Grand Lodges certify regularity to their recognized Member Lodges and Grand Lodges with patents.
Europe
Austria
The first Grand Lodge in Austria, the Große Landesloge von Österreich was founded in Vienna in 1784 but only ten years later in 1794 Freemasonry was forbidden by the then Holy Roman Emperor Franz II. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 Freemasonry was re-established, but only in the Hungarian part of the Empire. After the end of World War I, only four weeks after the proclamation of the Republic of German-Austria the Grand Lodge of Vienna was founded on 8 December 1918. She was recognised by UGLE in 1930. Immediately after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938 Freemasonry was again forbidden. After the end of World War II the Grand Lodge of Vienna was formally re-established on 4 August 1945. In 1952 UGLE restored relations with her. 1955 after the end of the Allied occupation of Austria the Grandlodge changed its name into Grand Lodge of Austria.
The Grand Lodge of Austria has currently 77 lodges with approx. 3500 brethren.
Belgium
Several Grand Lodges are active in Belgium.
The Regular Grand Lodge of Belgium (R.G.L.B.) is currently the only Belgian Grand Lodge which is recognised as regular by UGLE and its concordant jurisdictions.
The oldest Grand Lodge of Belgium, the Grand Orient of Belgium (G.O.B.) lost its recognition by the UGLE in the 19th century when it decided to remove the requirement for Masons to have a belief in a Supreme Being. In an attempt to regain recognition by the UGLE, five lodges from the GOB founded the Grand Lodge of Belgium (G.L.B.) in 1959. When in 1979 the G.L.B. also lost its recognition by UGLE, nine lodges founded the Regular Grand Loge of Belgium on 15 June 1979.
Bulgaria
The oldest obedience in Bulgaria is the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Bulgaria, established in 1917. Until it was banned in 1940 by a Nazi Law called "Law of the Homeland protection" this Grand Lodge was recognized by 47 regular and mainstream Grand Lodges worldwide. Most of the recognitions were never withdrawn and after Grand Lodge of Bulgaria (GLB) was reactivated it gained additional recognitions. Today GLB is recognized by 54 Grand Lodges from Europe, North and South America and Africa. It works in the Antient & Accepted Scottish Rite, has 16 Constituent lodges including one English speaking Lodge "HIRAM".
Ireland
Regular Freemasonry in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is controlled by the Grand Lodge of Ireland, which is based in Dublin. It has jurisdiction over 13 Provincial Grand Lodges covering all the Freemasons of the island of Ireland, and another 12 provinces worldwide.
France
In 2021 they were 38 Grand Lodges operating in France including overseas territories.
They range from 200 to 60,000 members.
The Grande Loge Nationale Française (GLNF) is the only French Grand Lodge to be recognised as regular by UGLE and its concordant jurisdictions.
The Grand Orient de France (GOdF) was recognised by most Grand Lodges in the world until the middle of the 19th century, when the GOdF recognized the Supreme Council of Louisiana. This caused several US Grand Lodges to withdraw recognition from the GOdF. The final breaking point, however, came about due to a decision by the GOdF in 1877 to remove the requirement for Masons to have a belief in a Supreme Being. UGLE and most other Anglo-Saxon Grand Lodges suspended all relations with, and recognition of, the Grand Orient de France as a result.
Germany
The Vereinigte Großlogen von Deutschland or United Grand Lodges of Germany (VGLvD) is the regular Grand Lodge in Germany, it comprises five united Grand Lodges of varying traditions: two traditional German Grand Lodges, one Prussian Swedish Rite Grand Lodge, one English tradition Grand Lodge and one North American tradition Grand Lodge, the latter two Grand Lodges having been formed by occupying forces.
There are also irregular masonic Grand Lodges in Germany including Women Freemasons (FGLD) as well as Co-Freemasons.
Italy
There are no fewer than three national Grand Lodges operating in Italy.
The Gran Loggia Regolare d'Italia (Grand Regular Italian Lodge) (GLRI) is the only Italian Grand Lodge to be recognised as regular by UGLE, but other regular Grand Lodges favour the Grand Orient of Italy.
Portugal
In Portugal the Grand Lodge is called Grande Loja Legal de Portugal (GLLP/GLRP).
The Grand Lodge of Portugal (GLLP / GLRP) is a regular Portuguese Masonic obedience. GLLP and the Regular Grand Lodge of Portugal vied for the leadership of regular Portuguese Masonry until their reconciliation in 2011, the second was officially recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE).
Slovakia
In Slovakia is a Grand Lodge that called Veľká lóža Slovenska (Great Lodge of Slovakia) .
Serbia
LIST AND HISTORY OF GRAND LODGES IN SERBIA 1990 - 2023
Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia - ( VLJ ). Started working in 1990. as the First Successor of the Awakened Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia, which was formed in 1919. The first Grand Master was Zoran Nenezić. (later it changed its name to the Grand Lodge of Serbia VLS)
Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia - ( RVLS ). It was created in 1993. with the original name Regular Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia. It was created by a schism in the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia, when part of the membership, after an extraordinary assembly in Rimini (Italy), appointed a new Grand Master, and changed its name to the Regular Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia. Legitimacy was given to that meeting by representatives of the United Grand Lodges of Germany. The first Grand Master was D. T. https://rgls.org/
Grand National Lodge of Serbia - ( VNLS ). It was created in 1997 by the resignation of a large number of members from the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia VLJ (1990). The first Grand Master was M. L. https://vnls.rs/
B.B. Lodge Serbia 676 - 2004. the work of the Jewish Freemasonry of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith was renewed.
Great Orient of France Serbia - ( VOF Serbia ) Established in 2005. from the Lodges "Zora" (1992), "Vernost" (2002), "Unification" (2005), and the "Pannonia" Lodge. In 2009, it was joined by 5 more Lodges that separated from the Grand National Lodge of Serbia VNLS. First Grand Master V. Ž.
Grand United Lodge of Serbia - ( VULS ). It was created in 2006. from several Lodges and members of the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia VLJ (1990), the Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia (1993) and the Grand National Lodge of Serbia (1997)
United Grand Lodge of Serbia - ( UVLS ). It was created in 2007 by a schism in the Grand United Lodge of Serbia. Lodge "Sloboda" leaves under Vedro Nebo, and the largest number of VULS members separate and found the United Grand Lodge of Serbia (UVLS). http://mason33.org/content/europa/serbia/uvls/
Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia, Belgrade - ( RVLS Belgrade ). It was created in 2007. from part of the membership of the Grand United Lodge of Serbia - (2006) and several members of the Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia (1993). First Grand Master Čedomir Vukić
Grand Masonic Lodge of Serbia - ( VMLS ) Established in 2008. It was created from the remaining part of the Grand United Lodge of Serbia (2006) as well as more brothers from already existing Grand Lodges. First Grand Master: Milan Leichner. https://vmls.org.rs/o-nama/
Great Spiritual Lodge of Freemasons of Serbia "Sub Rosa" - ( VDLSZS Sub Rosa ). It was created in 2015 by the separation of membership from the Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia, Belgrade. First Grand Master: A. N. https://search.bisnode.rs/rs/1011048/velika-duhovna-loza-slobodnih-zidara-srbije-sub-rosa/
Grand Lodge of Serbia - ( VLS ). It was created in 2015. First Grand Master: Z. K. http://www.vls.rs/
Grand Orient of Serbia - ( VOS ). It was created in 2015. by exercising membership from the Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia, Belgrade. First Grand Master: D. V. www.velikiorijentsrbije.rs
Grand Lodge is a secret order of Nikola Tesla
It was created in 1919 by the split from the Great Orient of Serbia. VLNT also practices the Scottish Rite and has its own Supreme Council 33° that directs the work on those degrees.//wsssnt.org/
Sovereign Grand Masonic Lodge of Serbia
It was created in 2021 from 6 lodges from Novi Sad. It was created by the separation from the Grand Lodge Nikola Tesla .
_
In accordance with the history and origin of the creation of all these Grand Lodges, it can be stated with certainty that all of them have their origin from the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia, which was awakened in 1990. In this sense, all these Grand Lodges have a proper Masonic identity of origin.
In terms of international recognition of the regularity of work, the Regular Grand Lodge of Serbia has recognition from UGLA, the Serbian Lodge founded by the Grand Orient of France from the VOF, and other Grand Lodges have international mutual recognition with other Grand Lodges and Masonic organizations of their orientation through independent Masonic international bodies such as are CLIPSAS, SIMPA, TRACIA, CIMAS, COMAM, CATENA, GLUA, or any of various other international organizations of Liberal, i.e., Continental Freemasonry.
United Kingdom
Masonic activity in the United Kingdom is governed by three bodies which are independent from each other. The United Grand Lodge of England has jurisdiction over Freemasonry in England, Wales, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man ("English Constitution" – "EC"), the Grand Lodge of Scotland over Freemasonry in Scotland ("Scottish Constitution" – "SC"), and the Grand Lodge of Ireland over Freemasonry in Ireland ("Irish Constitution" – "IC").
Because of the historical role of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) in the development of Freemasonry, the term "Regular Freemasonry", when it is not further defined, usually refers to the United Grand Lodge of England and its recognized jurisdictions. Since UGLE is considered to be not only the oldest, but also the largest grouping of lodges, UGLE recognition (or the lack thereof) is generally the barometer by which a Masonic jurisdiction is deemed regular. UGLE provides a list of recognised Grand Lodges on its website.
North America
Canada
The majority of Canadian Grand Lodges are in amity with UGLE. There is also a healthy presence of GOdF-affiliated Grand Lodges and Orients that follow Continental Freemasonry, particularly in the French-speaking province of Quebec.
United States
In the United States, each state has a Grand Lodge that supervises the lodges within that state and is sovereign and independent within that jurisdiction. These are commonly referred to as the "regular" or "mainstream" Grand Lodges. There is no national Grand Lodge. All regular Grand Lodges in the US are in mutual amity with each other and with UGLE.
Because of historical segregation, many states also have a sovereign and independent Prince Hall Grand Lodge that is predominantly African-American. For many years the mainstream Grand Lodges did not recognize Prince Hall Freemasonry and considered their Prince Hall Freemasonry irregular, despite the UGLE's approval of their regularity. In the 1980s, many mainstream Grand Lodges began to recognize Prince Hall Grand Lodges as Freemasons.
Due to a 19th-century argument and a resulting schism, not all Prince Hall Grand Lodges recognize each other (see Prince Hall National Grand Lodge), and generally the mainstream Grand Lodges have followed the lead of their Prince Hall counterparts when it comes to recognizing Prince Hall Grand Lodges in other states.
Throughout the US there are also numerous independent Masonic Lodges and Grand Lodges, which are not recognized as such by UGLE, the mainstream Grand Lodges, or their Prince Hall counterparts. Many of these are affiliated with international organizations of Continental Freemasonry. These are deemed to be irregular by UGLE - affiliated Masonic Obediences.
South America
Chile
The Only regular regular Masonic body in Chile is the Grand Lodge of Chile, founded on May 24, 1862 in Valparaíso. The earthquake of 1906 destroyed the original headquarters and the archives of the Grand Lodge, which determined its definitive transfer to Santiago, settling in the Club de la República, located in 659 Marcoleta street.
In 1862, the Grand Lodge of Chile was recognized by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, that is, the same year it was founded, and the following year it would obtain recognition from the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia.
In 1864, when the problems caused by Napoleon III in French Freemasonry had already been overcome, official recognition was obtained by the Central Grand Orient de France. By 1862, the first Constitution was promulgated under the name of Statutes of the Masonic Order in Chile.
The Grand Lodge of Chile has jurisdiction over the symbolic lodges (they work in the degrees of apprentice, fellow craft and Master Mason), these can work three different rites: Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, York Rite and Schröder Rite. His currently Grand Master is W. Bro. Sebastián Jans, since 2018.
Chile has a Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, with jurisdiction over 4 to 33 degree too, was foundes on 1870 and reactivated on 1899, with Eduardo de la Barra as his first Sovereign Grand Commander
Notwithstanding the foregoing, there are several regular Lodges that depend on other regular Masonic bodies, such as Harmony Lodge 1411 (based in Valparaiso, dependent on the District Grand Lodge of South America, southern division of the United Grand Lodge of England), Britannia Lodge 1033 (located in Santiago, Grand Lodge of Scotland) Bethesda and Huelen Lodges (dependent on American Freemasonry)
See also
York Rite
Scottish Rite
References
External links
Foreign Grand Lodges Recognised by the United Grand Lodge of England
Regularity and Recognition by Tony Pope, editor of the Australian & New Zealand Masonic Research Council's publications.
Freemasonry
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nampo
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Nampo
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Nampo (North Korean official spelling: Nampho; ), also spelled Namp'o, is the second largest city by population and an important seaport in North Korea, which lies on the northern shore of the Taedong River, 15 km east of the river's mouth. Formerly known as Chinnamp'o, it was a provincial-level "Directly Governed City" ("Chikhalsi") from 1980 to 2004, and was designated a "Special City" ("T'ŭkpyŏlsi", 특별시; 特別市) in 2010. Nampo is approximately 50 km southwest of Pyongyang, at the mouth of the Taedong River. Since North Korean independence, the city has developed a wide range of industry and has seen significant recent redevelopment.
History
Before formation of North Korea
The city belonged to Gojoseon until the Three Kingdoms era, when it was taken by Goguryeo. During this time, the city was part of Sogyong (now Pyongyang) until the Goryeo dynasty, when in the aftermath of the Myocheong rebellion, Sogyong was split into six counties, of which currently constitute Nampo are Kangso-hyon, Ryonggang-hyon and Samhwa-hyon. In the late Goryeo period, the area was named Chungnampo for the village of Pogu, located to the south of Chungsan County. After the establishment of Joseon dynsasty, the area belonged to Pyongan Province.
In 1871, the General Sherman incident occurred when an American ship attempted to sail on the Taedong to Pyongyang to engage the Joseon dynasty with trade, but was declined. According to North Korean history, Kim Il Sung's grandfather raised the alarm on the foreign ship and led the attack on it.
The name of the city comes from the fishing village that was originally located in the Samhwa-hyon area of South Pyongan Province. The city was renamed to Chinnampo during the Japanese occupation of Korea, by adding the character '鎭' as during the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese landed in Nampo and defeated the Qing dynasty forces. The name was immediately reverted to Nampo after liberation to be rid of colonial legacies.
After formation of North Korea
The city was founded in 1950 and contained 27 ri. Various rearrangements occurred in 1952 and by 1960, there were 15 dong and 8 ri.
In December 1979, Nampo became a directly-governed city. Taean-si, Ryonggang-gun were absorbed into Nampo and the former Nampo-si was reorganised into Nampo-guyok with jurisdiction over 26 dongs.
In 1983, a major reorganisation occurred and Nampo-guyok was split up into Waudo-guyok and Hanggu-guyok while Taean-si was split into Chollima-guyok, Taean-guyok and Kangso-guyok.
On 9 January 2004, the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly downgraded Nampo from a directly governed city (chikhalsi) to a normal city belonging to South Pyongan Province. For some time after this, Chollima-guyok, Kangso-guyok and Taean-guyok districts became counties (gun) of South Pyongan Province. By 2012, these counties were re-promoted to districts.
In 2010, the city was detached from South Pyongan Province, and the counties which were originally part of the city reassigned to it along with transferring administration of Onchon-gun to Nampo. Due to these changes, Nampo became the second largest city in North Korea.
In September 2020, a major uplifting of the city was completed, in accordance to the state policy of 'building local cities into distinctive towns'. This resulted in a seaside theme, with buildings mainly remodelled in blue, but also orange and browns. The strong local glass industry produced windows to glaze the apartment buildings. The supply of electricity, water and public transport was improved. As previously, the water supply was quoted to be 'insufficient' due to 'topographical conditions'.
Economy
Nampo was originally a small fishing village that became a port for foreign trade in 1897, developing into a modern port in 1945 after World War II. With the rapid increase in state investment, the city's industrial capacity grew. Some of the city's industrial facilities include the city's Smelter Complex, Glass Corporation, Shipbuilding complex, Fishery Complex, and other central and local factories. Nampo is a center for the DPRK shipbuilding industry. North of the city are facilities for freight transportation, aquatic products, and fishery, and a sea salt factory. Apples grown in the city's Ryonggang county (룡강군) are a famous local product.
In a May 1981, Kim Il Sung drew up a plan for the city which included three goals:
to be developed into an international port city
to increase export volume and be developed into the largest trading port in the DPRK
to develop into the largest industrial area in the west of North Korea and to have a focus on heavy industry
Farming
As the city is located on the Taedong River, the surrounding area is well suited to agriculture. Land reclamation occurs along the river and is used for rice growing. Before liberation, the economy was mainly agricultural at 97%, but was in a very backwards condition. This was made worse by the Japanese plundering the rice grown locally. After the foundation of North Korea, the conditions rapidly improved and it was transformed into a modern rural economy and fishery industry.
47.8% of the agricultural land are paddy fields, 40% are fields, 8.7% are orchards and 2.7% are Mulberry fields. The majority of fields sown are for grains, while around 20% is for vegetables. Various livestock are grown on cooperative farms, but also in private farms. The fishery industry in Nampo is one of the most important on the west coast.
Health
The main hospital in Nampo is the Nampho City People's Hospital, which underwent major reconstruction in 2020. The new hospital is reported to greatly enhance the quality of medical services provided by the hospital. It has a telemedicine link to hospitals in Pyongyang to further improve the medical care provided.
Other treatment facilities in the city include the Nampho City Koryo Medicine Hospital, Nampho City Maternity Hospital and the Waudo District People's Hospital.
Industry
Prior to liberation, the industry was fully committed to military needs to supply the Japanese imperialist ambition and was an important port for munitions transport. For convenience, the Japanese-built industries were clustered around what are now the districts of Waudo-guyok and Hunggu-guyok. Since then, Nampo has developed a strong economy with some industries in these areas being demolished and rebuilt in the corridor from Nampo to Pyongyang, such as in Chollima-guyok, Kangso-guyok or Taean-guyok.
The Nampo Smelting Complex is a key production complex and produces various copper products. It also smelts zinc and lead, although the zinc smelter was allegedly dismantled in 2001 due to pollution concerns. Four other important industries of the city are the Chollima Steel Complex, Taean Friendship Glass Factory, Kumsong Tractor Factory and Taean Heavy Machine Complex. Although the city also has a range of light industry, the major companies are all invested in various forms of heavy industry.
The position of the city has attracted foreign investment, an example being Pyeonghwa Motors, which was a joint venture between the Unification Church and the North Korean government, where about 340 workers built cars from knock-down kits, mainly various Chinese cars and Fiats.
Defence
Nampo has an extensive shipbuilding capability, which along with cargo ships, also builds various warships. A submersible submarine-launched ballistic missile launch platform is based out of Nampo. The platform was first observed in 2017 and was likely operational in 2019, although in 2020 the platform was captured out of the water, possibly for repairs, as at the same time, the first platform in the Sinpho South Shipyard also underwent repairs.
A number of Hainan (Taechong) class patrol vessels, Osa (Soju)-class missile boats, Nongo class fast attack crafts, Komar-class missile boats, Nampo-class corvettes and a Najin-class frigate are based in Nampo.
Alleged uranium enrichment facility
In 2018, a report in The Diplomat claimed to have uncovered a Uranium enrichment facility in Chollima-guyok. A large building is said to contain the centrifuges for isotope separation and is surrounded by a wall, which according to the report, is a sign of a high security facility. The lack of snow on the roof of the building suggest that heat is being produced the entire year, and thus suggested that it is likely to be a uranium enrichment site.
However, these features are common in North Korea, and buildings with security fencing, on-site housing and monuments to the Kim family and are not proof of a uranium enrichment facility. The Korean People's Army brigades that were assigned to the nuclear program are fixed, unlike the shock troops deployed for hydroelectric power station or apartment construction and if they were moved to Nampo, there should be evident signs in satellite imagery, of which there were none. Similarly, the security at the facility is comparably low, being accessed on an open road off the Youth Hero Motorway and with few facilities for security personal onsite. In comparison, the nearby Chamjin Missile Factory (Tae-sung Machine Plant) has noticeably higher security; an actual enrichment facility at the Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center has multiple gates and inspection posts and is in a significantly less exposed position.
Administrative divisions
Nampo is divided into 5 guyŏk and 2 gun, which are in turn subdivided into dong and ri:
Demographics
According to the 2008 North Korea Census, a population of 366,815 lived in the city, of which 310,864 lived in urban areas and 55,951 lived in rural areas.
Environment
Climate
Geography
Nampo is located on the west coast of Korea, and is mostly low-lying with 82% of the city below 50 metres elevation. There are mountains mostly in the south and east, which are generally below 100 metres above sea level, forming a wavy plain. The highest points in the city are on the Osok mountain range, with Osok-san at 566 m and Guksabong at 506 m. The many rivers and streams flowing through the city provide good conditions for agriculture. Underneath the city, there are iron, manganese, titanium along with other precious metals, including gold and silver.
Natural environment
Around 5,000 birds visit the Kumsong tideland and 76,000 waterbirds visit the lake created by the West Sea Barrage, which includes a number of endangered and vulnerable birds.
Transportation
Road
The Youth Hero Motorway, completed in October 2000 connects Nampo to Pyongyang. The motorway was built mainly by younger people, and hence the road was renamed in commemoration of their efforts from Pyongyang-Nampo Motorway to the Youth Hero Motorway.
Public transport
Nampo has a trolleybus system which opened around 1982. The system has a main line, running from Nampo Stadium to the northeast of the city and a branch from the main line to the west of the city, near the salt pans. The branch could be only served from the direction of the stadium, and was in poor condition with the overhead line no longer stretched with it not being used at least since 2011. In 2015, the service was reported intermittently operated if at all, and only on weekdays. Operation was returned to normal from 24 August 2021, when the city authorities declared a push to improve transport, which included normalising the trolleybus service. As part of this push, around 20 derelict buses were repaired and brought back into service.
In November 2015, a solar panel electric bus developed by the science and technological committee of Nampo was tested in the city. It is powered by 32 100-watt solar panels charging 50 Taedonggang Batteries and powering a 95 kW DC motor to carry up to 140 passengers at 40 km/h and is part of the effort to alleviate the energy shortages in North Korea.
Tarkhov, Sergei and Dmitriy Merzlov. "North Korean Surprises - Part 3". (Trolleybus Magazine No. 246, November–December 2002).
Air
The only airport in Nampo is the military Onch'ŏn Air Base in Onch'ŏn-gun.
Rail
The first rail line in Korea was built connecting Pyongyang and Chinnampo in 1895 by the Japanese military. It was an 88 km line with cars that were man-powered and running on 21-inch tracks but was dismantled not long after it began operation.
The greater Nampo area is densely served by the Korean State Railway, with a number of stations on the P'yŏngnam Line, the entirety of the Ryonggang, Sŏhaekammun, Posan, Nampohang and Taean lines, and one station on the Ŭllyul Line being located inside the boundaries of Namp'o-t'ŭkpyŏlsi. Branches off the Pyongnam line at Nampo station specifically serve the Nampo Smelting Complex and Nampo Electrode Factory.
Water
River
With the city sitting on the Taedong River, river transport is a significant form of transport. Passenger ships run from Nampo Port to Sohae-ri, Songrim, Unchon County and Pyongyang. Cruise ships run between Waudo and the West Sea Barrage, and between Waudo and Mangyongdae.
Sea
The West Sea Barrage of the port of Nampo, built by erecting an 8-km long sea wall, has three lock chambers which allow the passage of ships up to 50,000 tons, and 36 sluices. Nampo Harbour is often used as the primary port of call for receiving foreign food aid assistance into North Korea. The port of Nampo has modern harbour facilities that can accommodate ships of 20,000 tonnes but is frozen during the winter. Nampo serves as Pyongyang's port on the Yellow Sea. Contrary to most ports, containers that are offloaded at the port are not transported; instead, the contents are removed and transported by cargo trucks, while the containers remain at the port, waiting for goods to be shipped out.
In 2008, the harbour received several batches of grain delivery; the first batch delivered in June was sent by the United States and weighed 38,000 tons. A South Korean-based relief organisation, Join Together Society, donated one batch of flour in October of the same year weighing approximately 500 tons.
Vehicle transport ships carry trucks between Nampo port and South Hwanghae Province through the West Sea Barrage, which saves time and fuel from driving a longer distance to the province.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a noticeable decrease in traffic at the Nampo Coal Port, with just a few or no ships visible. Two tanks for petroleum or oil were finally built in 2020 after the bases were completed in 2016, while the other bases for the tanks remains unused. A separate oil terminal also started construction in 2020, including a new offshore wharf. Walls were built with shipping containers which marked a path to the warehouses and divided the port into cargo storage areas, although the purpose is not known but possibly related to COVID-19. The port mainly handles trade of concrete and coal.
Culture
Education
Institutes of higher learning in Nampo include
Nampo University
Sŏhae University
Samgwang College
Sunhwa College
Nampho College of Medical Sciences
Nampho University of Agriculture
Nampo College of Shipping Industry
Nampo Building Materials College
Nampo University of Fisheries
Kangson College of Engineering
Nampho University of Education
Historical relics
Parts of the World Cultural Heritage listed Koguryo tombs are located in Ryonggang County, dating to the 5th century which provides much information on the study of the social, architectural, painting and castles of the Koguryo dynasty. Although most of the murals have faded away, a portrait and a map are still present on the south walls.
An early Koryo Dynasty era granite Buddhist image was unearthed by the Kim Il Sung University and and registered to the list of national treasures in 2019. Various other artefacts were also unearthed along with it, such as iron arrowheads, metallic currency and pottery. It appears to depict Bhaisajyaguru as it is holding a gallipot with both hands.
The Hwangnyong Fortress was built during Koguryo and repaired in year 919 under the Koryo Dynasty. The original purpose was to defend Pyongyang from invaders in the southwest. The peaks in the north, east, south and west of the fort are used as observation posts during peacetime and can be used as command posts during wartime.
There are three historical tombs in Nampo, all dating to the Goguryeo dynasty.
Notable people from Nampo
No Kwang-chol, North Korean general and politician (Workers' Party of Korea)
Kim Kil-hak, composer, with title of People's Artist.
Sister cities
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Chiautempan, Mexico
Loja, Ecuador
Lisbon, Portugal
List of cities in North Korea
Geography of North Korea
References
Note
Further reading
Dormels, Rainer. North Korea's Cities: Industrial facilities, internal structures and typification. Jimoondang, 2014.
External links
Korea Tourist Map (English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese)
North Korea Uncovered , North Korea Google Earth: labels most of Nampo's infrastructure locations including hotels, nearby UNESCO sites, railroads, West Sea Barge, electricity grid, and shipping facilities.
Cities in South Pyongan
Port cities and towns in North Korea
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir%20Guerrero
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Vladimir Guerrero
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Vladimir Guerrero Alvino Sr. (born February 9, 1975), nicknamed "Vlad the Impaler", is a Dominican former professional baseball player who spent 16 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a right fielder and designated hitter. He played for the Montreal Expos (–), Anaheim Angels / Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (–), Texas Rangers (), and Baltimore Orioles ().
A nine-time All-Star, Guerrero was widely recognized for his impressive offensive production — regularly hitting for power and average — as well as his defensive range and strong throwing arm. In 2004, he was voted the American League (AL) Most Valuable Player (MVP). Guerrero helped lead the Angels to five AL West championships between 2004 and 2009 and was voted one of the most feared hitters in baseball in a 2008 poll of all 30 major league managers.
Regarded as the game's premier "bad-ball hitter", Guerrero consistently hit balls thrown well outside the strike zone, a skill evident on August 14, 2009, when he hit a pitch after it bounced in front of home plate. With his aggressive batting style, he hit more than 30 home runs (HR) in each of 8 seasons and surpassed 100 runs batted in (RBI) 10 times, though he had just 2 seasons with at least 65 walks. In the first pitch of an at-bat, Guerrero hit 126 home runs and put 1,780 balls in play.
On September 26, 2011, Guerrero surpassed Julio Franco as the all-time MLB leader for hits by a Dominican player, a record since broken by Adrián Beltré in 2014. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2021, Guerrero and his son became the second father-son duo in MLB history to each have a 40-home run season in their careers, joining Cecil and Prince Fielder.
Early life and career
Guerrero was raised in Don Gregorio, Dominican Republic, in a house made of mud and brick and a palm-leaf roof. Guerrero's mother, Altagracia, made money selling food on the street until Hurricane David ravaged the country in 1979. After the hurricane, his mother traveled between the Dominican Republic and Venezuela in order to find work, while Guerrero and his siblings were in the care of a great aunt.
One of nine children, Guerrero is the younger brother of ex-major leaguer Wilton Guerrero of the Montreal Expos, where the two were teammates for several seasons. Guerrero and his brothers played baseball using makeshift gloves assembled from milk cartons and socks filled with plastic bags as baseballs. Guerrero did not own a real baseball glove until he was 15 years old, when he received one from his older brother, a minor leaguer. Guerrero's brothers, Eleazar and Julio Cesar, played in the farm systems of the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers, respectively. Guerrero is also the cousin of minor leaguers Armando Guerrero and Cristian Guerrero, and the uncle of major leaguer Gabriel Guerrero.
As a teenager, Guerrero worked out for the Dodgers at their baseball complex in the Dominican Republic but he was ultimately sent home after eight months without a contract. In 1993, scout Arturo DeFreites convinced the Montreal Expos to sign Guerrero for $2,100 (). During the process he lied about his age, claiming to be born February 9, 1976. It was not until March 2009 that he inadvertently revealed to Major League Baseball that he was born in 1975.
Career
Montreal Expos
Guerrero was signed by the Montreal Expos as an unsigned amateur free agent, on March 1, 1993. He advanced quickly through the Expos' Minor League Baseball (MiLB) farm system, making his MLB debut on September 19, 1996. That night, Guerrero went 1 for 5 at the plate; his first big league hit, a single to center field, came against Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Steve Avery, in the top of the fourth inning, at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium. Two nights later, on September 21, 1996, Braves closer Mark Wohlers yielded Guerrero's first career home run (HR) — a ninth-inning blast that capped Montreal's scoring, in a 5-4 loss. That contest is also significant, in that it marks Guerrero's first multi-hit game.
Guerrero was criticized during his first full season, in 1997 (he had played only 9 games, in 1996), for being too aggressive at the plate. Nonetheless, he put up solid numbers for a rookie, batting .302, with 11 home runs and 40 runs batted in (RBI), in just 325 at bats (AB).
Guerrero led all big league outfielders in errors, in 1997 (12; tied), 1998 (17), 1999 (19), 2000 (10; tied), and 2001 (12; tied). He also led all NL outfielders in errors in 2002 (10), and led all AL outfielders in 2006 (11), and 2007 (9).
Scorn for Guerrero's free-swinging ways changed into admiration, in 1998. While he continued to swing at pitches that were clearly balls, he also continued to hit them with authority. In one instance, Guerrero got a base hit off a pitch that bounced before arriving at home plate. His superior hand-eye coordination and prodigious strength allowed him to be unusually aggressive at the plate, but still put up high batting averages year after year. Despite Guerrero's freeswinging style, he never struck out 100 times in a season.
Guerrero batted .324, with 38 home runs, and 109 RBI, in 1998. Before the end of the 1998 season, he agreed to a $28 million deal. Guerrero represented the Expos at the 1999 All-Star Game. During the 1999 season, he maintained a 31-game hitting streak‚ the longest in the majors in 12 years. Guerrero finished 1999 with 131 RBI, and in 2000, he hit 44 home runs; both figures are career highs.
On July 7, 2001, Guerrero threw out Alberto Castillo in one of the best throws in MLB history. After a base hit by Toronto, Castillo, then a baserunner on second base, saw an opportunity to score a run, as the batter had hit the ball well into deep right field. Guerrero caught the ball off a bounce and threw it to his catcher, who caught it squarely. Castillo was tagged out short of home plate. The throw's distance has been estimated to have been roughly three hundred feet, with its vertical arch peaking at merely twenty-one feet.
Guerrero posted similar or slightly improved numbers through the 2002 season. He had also developed a running game, stealing 37 bases in 2001. Guerrero also hit 34 home runs, joining the 30–30 club for the first time in his career and leading the major leagues in power-speed number (35.4).
In 2002, Guerrero led the National League with 206 base hits and 364 total bases. He also stole a career-high 40 bases and fell one home run short of becoming the fourth member of the 40–40 club. He became the first player in major league history to hit 30 home runs, steal 40 bases, and hit above .330 in one season. However, Guerrero led the majors in times caught stealing (20).
Guerrero's 2003 season was shortened due to a back injury. In 394 at-bats, he hit .330, with 25 home runs, and 79 RBIs. Because of the injury, some in the media thought signing him would be a risk. While Guerrero was playing injured, though, he still managed to hit for the cycle, on September 14, 2003. He would be the final Expo to hit for the cycle before their relocation to Washington after the 2004 season.
Throughout his career, Guerrero set single season Expos records in batting average, slugging, on-base plus slugging (OPS), home runs, RBI, total bases (TB), hits, extra base hits (XBH), TOB, IBB, as well as several other records. He is the all time Expos career leader in batting (.323), homers (234), slugging (.588), and OPS (.978). Guerrero won the Montreal Expos Player of the Year award in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2002.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Guerrero was a free agent for the first time after the 2003 season, and signed a five-year, $70 million deal with the Anaheim Angels on January 14, 2004 after being courted by several teams. The owner of the Angels, Arte Moreno, was the first Hispanic controlling owner of a Major League ballclub, and Guerrero cited Moreno's heritage as a motivating factor for choosing the Angels over other teams.
2004 MVP season
During his first season with Angels, Guerrero led his club, and in some cases the American League (AL), in several offensive categories, including 124 runs (set new club record and led the AL), 13 outfield assists (Tied for 1st in AL), 366 total bases (tied club record and led AL), and a season ending batting average of .337 (3rd in AL). He was the second player in club history with .300/30/100 numbers. Among AL leaders, he finished in the top 10 of 20 major offensive categories,
which led to Guerrero being voted the Gene Autry Trophy (Team MVP) by his teammates. Making his fifth MLB All-Star game appearance in July, he led AL outfielders with 3,024,870 votes and was the first Angel outfielder to be a starter since Reggie Jackson in 1984.
Guerrero continued his offensive dominance in September, earning American League Player of the Month after batting .371 with 24 runs scored, six doubles, a triple, 10 home runs and 23 RBI. Guerrero was clutch down the stretch. Over the final seven games of the season, his 10 runs, six home runs and 11 RBI helped the Angels overcome a 3-game deficit, which ultimately led to an American League West Division Crown.
Down the stretch of the 2004 MLB season, Guerrero was impressive. Mike Scioscia, the Angels manager, said that Guerrero "really carried us on his back" in the last month of the season, as the Angels overtook first place from the faltering Oakland Athletics who finished the season one game behind in the standings. Guerrero leading the Angels to their first Western Division title since 1986 (The Angels won the 2002 World Series as the American League Wild Card). These late-season heroics led to Guerrero being chosen as the second Angel to win the AL MVP in franchise history. He finished with 354 points, 100 more than second-place finisher Gary Sheffield.
In the opening best-of-5 round of the playoffs, the Angels were swept by the Boston Red Sox, and Guerrero had an odd batting line: just a .167 average, but six RBIs in three games. He would also have a grand slam in Game 3.
2005 season
The Angels won the Western Division again in 2005, with Guerrero batting .317 with 32 home runs and 108 RBIs in 520 at bats. Late in the season, Guerrero became the 12th player to hit his 300th home run before the age of 30 (along with Hank Aaron, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, Harmon Killebrew, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Juan González, and Andruw Jones, who achieved the mark about the same time as Guerrero).
Guerrero had an up-and-down 2005 postseason, batting .389 in ALDS victory over the New York Yankees, but just .050 in the ALCS against the eventual world champion Chicago White Sox. He fared better in a national TV ad for Pepsi with the Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez; the two engaged in a personal home run competition that ended up with the moon being broken. Guerrero also appeared at Game Four of the 2005 World Series, where he was introduced as a member of Major League Baseball's Latino Legends Team.
Guerrero recorded his 1,000th career RBI on July 15, 2006 at home against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Making his 8th Major League Baseball All-Star Game appearance, Guerrero subsequently won his first career Home Run Derby in the 2007 season, highlighted by a home run. He is the third Angel to win the Derby (after Wally Joyner in 1986, and Garret Anderson in 2003). Guerrero was chosen for the All-Star Game in each of his first four seasons with the Angels (2004–2007). Guerrero's stellar fielding talent dwindled in the later 2000s due to age and injuries, prompting the long-time outfielder to be reassigned as a designated hitter at the start of the 2009 season.
2009 season
In 2009, Guerrero was named number 37 on the Sporting News''' list of the 50 greatest current players in baseball. A panel of 100 baseball people, many of them members of the Baseball Hall of Fame and winners of major baseball awards, was polled to arrive at the list.
On August 10, Guerrero hit his 400th career home run off Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Russ Springer. On August 26, he recorded his 1,000th career hit as an Angel, a single off Detroit Tigers pitcher Edwin Jackson. This hit made Guerrero only the fourth player (following Frank Robinson, Dave Winfield, and Fred McGriff) to record 1,000 hits as both a National League player and'' as an American League player.
On October 11, in the ninth inning, Guerrero delivered a two-run single, off Jonathan Papelbon of the Boston Red Sox, scoring Bobby Abreu and Chone Figgins. The clutch base knock gave the Angels a 7–6 lead and eventually the win to finally advance to the ALCS, beating the Red Sox for the first time ever in the postseason. It was called "the biggest hit in Vlad's career."
2009 was the first time that Guerrero had a batting average below .300 (.295), an OPS below .800 (.794), or a doubles total less than 20 (16).
Texas Rangers
On January 11, 2010, Guerrero signed a one-year, $5.5 million deal with incentives and a 2011 option with the Texas Rangers.
He broke up a no-hitter by Shaun Marcum in the seventh inning of the Opening Day game against the Toronto Blue Jays on April 5, 2010.
On May 6, 2010 Guerrero hit two home runs versus the Kansas City Royals to secure a 13–12 win. On May 13, 2010, Guerrero's walk off line drive to left field won the final game of a three-game series against the Oakland Athletics in the bottom of the 12th. On May 25, 2010 he hit two more home runs to secure another win over the Kansas City Royals. On June 30, 2010, against his former team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Guerrero hit two home runs and went 4-for-4 with 5 RBIs.
Guerrero wound up appearing in 152 games with a batting average of .300, 29 home runs and 115 RBIs. He earned a Silver Slugger Award in the regular season for a Texas Rangers club that wound up winning its division and ultimately, the first pennant in Rangers history. He also won the Edgar Martínez Award and earned his ninth invitation to the All-Star Game. On October 22, 2010, Guerrero drove in 3 runs during game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees, capturing the first American League pennant for the Texas Rangers. The Rangers would go on to lose the World Series to the San Francisco Giants in five games. On November 3 the Rangers declined to pick up Guerrero's 2011 option making him a free agent.
Baltimore Orioles
Guerrero signed a one-year, $8 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles on February 18, 2011. He became the all-time MLB hits leader among Dominican-born players when he singled off Josh Beckett in the sixth inning of a 6–3 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Camden Yards on September 26, 2011. In 2011, Guerrero hit .290, his lowest batting average since his rookie year with the Montreal Expos in 1996. He also had 13 home runs, 63 RBIs, and 163 base hits for Orioles.
Toronto Blue Jays
Guerrero remained unsigned by any team going into the 2012 Major League Baseball season, leading to much speculation about his potential retirement, though Guerrero insisted that he would not retire. On May 10, 2012, Guerrero signed a minor league contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. During his first game for the Class-A Dunedin Blue Jays on Sunday May 27, 2012, Guerrero hit a home run. Guerrero played in 4 games for Dunedin, with 9 hits in 20 at bats, including 4 home runs and was then promoted to the Triple-A Las Vegas 51s. With the 51s he played in 8 games, with 10 hits in 33 at-bats (.303 avg). He asked for, and was granted, his release on June 12, 2012.
Dominican Professional Baseball League
He started playing in the Dominican Professional Baseball League with the San Pedro de Macorís team Estrellas Orientales. On November 4, 2012 Guerrero came back to the Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana with Tigres del Licey. He played only eight games with Tigres logging a batting average of .188 without a home run. On November 20, 2012, Guerrero quit the team after he was informed by team management that he would be used only as a pinch hitter.
Long Island Ducks
On April 4, 2013, Guerrero signed with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League. He informed the team that he had family issues to attend to and would not be joining them to start the season. He never appeared with the team in the 2013 season.
Retirement and Hall of Fame induction
On March 31, 2014, Guerrero signed a one-day contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and officially retired from professional baseball. Having played his last game in 2011, he became eligible for induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017 and was inducted in 2018 along with Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, and Trevor Hoffman, earning 92.9% of the vote. Guerrero is the first member of the Hall to be depicted with an Angels cap, even though he appeared in more games (1004-846) and played in more seasons (8-6) as a Montreal Expo.
Career statistics
In 2,147 games over 16 seasons, Guerrero posted a .318 batting average (2,590-for-8,155) with 1,328 runs, 477 doubles, 46 triples, 449 home runs, 1,496 RBI, 181 stolen bases, 737 bases on balls, .379 on-base percentage and .553 slugging percentage. Defensively, he finished his career with a .963 fielding percentage. In 44 postseason games, he hit .263 (45-for-171) with 17 runs, 7 doubles, 2 home runs, 20 RBI, 2 stolen bases and 14 walks.
Batting style
Guerrero batted without wearing batting gloves, a custom rarely seen in modern baseball. In an interview with Yahoo! Sports, he attributed this to helping his grandfather pull cows home barehanded as a young boy in the Dominican Republic. To improve his grip on the bat, Guerrero coated his helmet with pine tar and rubbed his helmet before going to the on-deck circle. As the season progressed, his batting helmet would become covered in the substance.
Guerrero batted over .300 from 1997 to 2008. He drove in over 100 runs every season between 1998 and 2007, except for 2003. Along with his 2004 MVP season, he finished 6th (2000), 4th (2002), 3rd (2005), 9th (2006), and 3rd (2007) in MVP voting.
In 2008, Guerrero swung at a higher percentage of pitches outside the strike zone, 45.5%, than any other hitter in major league baseball up to that time.
Guerrero had a 44-game hitting streak exclusively against the Texas Rangers, from 2004 to 2006, the longest such player-vs.-team streak in MLB history, since 1969. The streak occurred over his first 44 appearances against the Rangers. The streak finally came to an end in August 2006 in a game in which Guerrero was intentionally walked three times, walked four times overall, and finished 0-for-1. He decimated Ranger pitching over the course of his major league career, putting up a career batting line of .395/.461/.661/1.122, with 25 home runs, 34 doubles, and 70 RBI, in 108 games played. During the 2009 postseason, Cal Ripken Jr. commented during a TBS postgame report that Guerrero was "the best bad-ball hitter I've ever seen." On one occasion in a game against the Baltimore Orioles, Guerrero hit a pitch that bounced in the dirt before home plate. Even more unusual, his bat struck the ground as well before hitting the ball.
World Baseball Classic
Guerrero was named to the Dominican Republic's roster for the 2006 World Baseball Classic, although he eventually withdrew due to the death of three cousins in a car accident immediately before the tournament.
Personal life
His son, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., was born in Montreal in 1999 during the elder Guerrero's time with the Expos. Vladimir Jr. signed with the Toronto Blue Jays on July 2, 2015, made his major league debut on April 26, 2019, and won the All-Star Game MVP on July 13, 2021. Another son, Pablo, signed with the Texas Rangers as an international free agent in January 2023. Guerrero has provided job opportunities in his hometown in the Dominican Republic through his business ventures: a concrete-block factory, a propane distribution company, a supermarket, a livestock and vegetable farm, and a women's clothing store.
Awards and honors
Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame (2018)
American League Most Valuable Player (2004)
Edgar Martínez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award (2010)
9× MLB All-Star (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010)
8× Silver Slugger Award winner (1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010)
2× Montreal Expos Minor League Player of the Year (1995, 1996)
4× Montreal Expos Player of the Year (1998, 1999, 2000, 2002)
4× Los Angeles Angels Player of the Year (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007)
2× Baseball America First-Team Major League All-Star OF (2000, 2004)
3× Baseball America Second-Team Major League All-Star OF (1998, 1999, 2005)
South Atlantic League All-Star OF (1995)
Eastern League MVP (1996)
Double-A Player of the Year (1996)
Baseball America 1st team Minor League All-Star OF (1996)
Double-A All-Star OF (1996)
Eastern League All-Star OF (1996)
Eastern League Rookie of the Year (1996)
Career statistical highlights
League top ten
Top 10 in MVP voting (2000, 2002, 2004(won), 2005, 2006, 2007)
Top 10 in AVG (1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007)
Top 10 in home runs (1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010)
Top 10 in RBI (1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010)
Top 10 in slugging percentage (1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
Top 10 in OBA (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007)
Top 10 in OPS (1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
Top 10 in hits (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006)
Top 10 in runs (2002, 2004)
Top 10 in stolen bases (2001, 2002)
See also
List of Major League Baseball annual runs scored leaders
List of Major League Baseball career batting average leaders
List of Major League Baseball career doubles leaders
List of Major League Baseball career extra base hits leaders
List of Major League Baseball career home run leaders
List of Major League Baseball career runs batted in leaders
List of Major League Baseball career slugging percentage leaders
List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball career total bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic
List of Major League Baseball players to hit for the cycle
List of Washington Nationals team records
Los Angeles Angels award winners and league leaders
References
External links
1975 births
People from Nizao
Albany Polecats players
American League All-Stars
American League Most Valuable Player Award winners
Anaheim Angels players
Baltimore Orioles players
Brevard County Manatees players
Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in Canada
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in the United States
Dunedin Blue Jays players
Gulf Coast Expos players
Harrisburg Senators players
Las Vegas 51s players
Living people
Los Angeles Angels players
Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic
Major League Baseball right fielders
Montreal Expos players
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
National League All-Stars
Rancho Cucamonga Quakes players
Silver Slugger Award winners
Texas Rangers players
West Palm Beach Expos players
Age controversies in sports
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%20of%20Hearts%20%28Alice%27s%20Adventures%20in%20Wonderland%29
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Queen of Hearts (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
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The Queen of Hearts is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1865 book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. She is a childish, foul-tempered monarch whom Carroll himself describes as "a blind fury", and who is quick to give death sentences at even the slightest of offenses. One of her most famous lines is the oft-repeated "Off with his/her head!" / "Off with their heads!"
The Queen is referred to as a card from a pack of playing cards by Alice, yet somehow she is able to talk and is the ruler of the lands in the story, alongside her husband, the King of Hearts. She is often confused with the Red Queen from the 1871 sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, although the two are very different.
Overview
Alice observes three playing cards painting white roses red. They drop to the ground face down at the approach of the Queen of Hearts, whom Alice has never met. When the Queen arrives, along with the King and their ten children, and asks Alice who is lying on the ground (since the backs of all playing cards look alike), Alice tells her that she does not know. The Queen then becomes frustrated and commands that her head be severed. She is deterred by her comparatively moderate husband by being reminded that Alice is only a child.
Generally, however, as we are told by Carroll:
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking around.
One of the Queen's hobbies – besides ordering executions – is croquet; however, it is Wonderland croquet, where the balls are live hedgehogs and the mallets are flamingoes. This is presumably with the aim that the birds' blunt beaks should strike, but, as Alice observes, it is complicated by the fact that they keep looking back up at the players- as well as the hedgehogs' tendency to scuttle away without waiting to be hit. The Queen's soldiers act as the arches (or hoops) on the croquet grounds, but have to leave off being arches every time the Queen has an executioner drag away the victim, so that, by the end of the game in the story, the only players that remain are the Queen herself, the King, and Alice.
Despite the frequency of death sentences, it would appear few people are actually beheaded. The King of Hearts quietly pardons many of his subjects when the Queen is not looking (although this did not seem to be the case with The Duchess), and her soldiers humor her but do not carry out her orders. The Gryphon tells Alice, "It's all her fancy: she executes nobody, you know." Nevertheless, all creatures in Wonderland fear the Queen. In the final chapters, the Queen sentences Alice again (for defending the Knave of Hearts), and she offers a bizarre approach towards justice: sentence before the verdict.
Modern portrayals in popular culture usually let her play the role of a villain because of the menace the character exemplifies, but in the book she does not fill that purpose. She is just one of the many obstacles that Alice has to encounter on the journey, but unlike other obstacles, she makes a higher potential threat.
Origins
The Queen is believed by some to be a caricature of Queen Victoria, with elements of reality that Dodgson felt correctly would make her at once instantly recognizable to parents reading the story to children, and also fantastical enough to make her unrecognizable to children. Some elements of reality in line that would make the Queen of Hearts recognizable as Queen Victoria were the way in which their subjects viewed them as rulers as one Queen was loved while the other was feared. Queen Victoria was loved more by her people in contrast with her consort, Prince Albert, in part because some did not trust him as he wasn't English. The Queen of Hearts was feared by the people of Wonderland and would give the order for execution for even the slightest offense, although her husband would often quietly pardon them. The reference to Queen Victoria is explicit in Jonathan Miller's 1966 television version where she and the King of Hearts are portrayed without any attempt at fantasy, or disguise as to their true natures or personality.
The Queen may also be a reference to Queen Margaret of the House of Lancaster. During the War of the Roses, a red rose was the symbol of the House Lancaster. Their rivals, the House of York, had a white rose for their symbol. The gardeners' painting the white roses red may be a reference to these two houses. It is also possible that she is based on Queen Elizabeth I, as her yelling off with their head demonstrates the Victorian stereotype of a Tudor king/queen.
Illustrations
After unsuccessfully attempting to illustrate Alice's Adventures in Wonderland himself, Lewis Carroll was persuaded to engage a professional artist to provide the illustrations. He turned to cartoonist John Tenniel, who was known for his regular contributions to the satirical magazine Punch (published 1841–1992, 1996–2002).
Tenniel's inspiration for the Queen of Hearts was an image of Elizabeth de Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk in one of the medieval stained glass windows at Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford, Suffolk.
The illustrations for the Alice books were engraved onto blocks of wood, to be printed in the wood engraving process. The original wood blocks are now in the collection of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. They are not usually on public display, but were exhibited in 2003.
Confusion with the Red Queen
She is commonly mistaken for the Red Queen in the story's sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, but in reality shares none of her characteristics other than being a queen. Indeed, Carroll, in his lifetime, made the distinction of the two Queens by saying:
The 1951 animated film Alice in Wonderland perpetuates the long-standing confusion between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. In the film, the Queen of Hearts delivers several of the Red Queen's statements, the most notable being based on her "all the ways about here belong to me". Both characters say this to suggest their importance and possible arrogance, but in the Red Queen's case, it has a double meaning since her status as a Chess-queen means that she can move in any direction she desires.
In the American McGee's Alice adaptation of the books, the characters are also conflated, leading to further popular misconception.
Adaptations
Disney
In the Disney animated feature Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts appears as the movie's main villain. She makes her appearance at the climax of the movie.
The character was voiced by Verna Felton. She is portrayed as a haughty sadist, who enjoys decapitating anyone who merely annoys her. Her presence is all the more striking because of how tiny her husband the King is (he barely comes up to her knee). Similar to the book, Alice meets three cards painting the roses red, since they planted white roses by mistake. When the Queen arrives, she finds those three cards guilty and shouts "Off with their heads!" Once the unfortunate cards are dragged away, she turns her attention to Alice. Refusing to answer her questions with a presumption that only she can ask them, she quickly ropes her into a game of croquet. The game ends with the Queen tripping herself over, and Alice is punished unfairly by the Queen as a result of to the Cheshire Cat's mischievous antics. Before the Queen can give the order, the King suggests holding a trial for Alice. The Queen, grudgingly, but reasonably, agrees. At Alice’s trial, the Queen calls the March Hare, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter to witness, who hold an unbirthday party for her and cheer her up considerably. During the party, the Cheshire Cat reappears and upsets the Dormouse. The frightened Dormouse runs all over, and in an attempt to crush the Dormouse, the King of Hearts accidentally hits the Queen on the head with the gavel, which is hastily passed into the March Hare's hands, then the Hatter's, and finally Alice's. The Queen, of course, punishes Alice unfairly for it and is going to have her arrested. But Alice eats mushrooms she had procured earlier, which make her grow bigger. Although Rule No. 42 says that anyone more than a mile high must leave the court immediately, Alice feels free to call the queen a "fat, pompous, bad tempered old tyrant". Unfortunately, she subsequently shrinks down to her normal size, but flees and is able to escape.
Of interest is the fact that Disney's Queen of Hearts seems to be an amalgamation of the Queen from the book, the Duchess, and the Red Queen of Through The Looking-Glass. When pleased, she can be quite pleasant, but is still bossy and often impatient, and can almost at once change to enraged.
She is one of the primary members of the Disney Villains franchise. She is also a greetable character at the Disney Parks.
Other films and television appearances
In the 1991 Disney Channel series Adventures in Wonderland, the Queen was played by Armelia McQueen. She appears as a short-tempered and childish but basically benevolent ruler. She was alternately called "The Queen of Hearts" and "The Red Queen" during the course of the series.
She has recurring cameos in the television series House of Mouse, voiced by Tress MacNeille, as well as its direct-to-video films Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse and Mickey's House of Villains, in the last one being one of the main villains who take over the House of Mouse.
Another Queen of Hearts (real name Valentina Corazón) appeared in the computer-animated series Alice's Wonderland Bakery (possibly a descendant of her like the rest of the characters in the series with respect to the characters in the 1951 film), voiced by Eden Espinosa, who was nominated for the Children's and Family Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice Performance in a Preschool Animated Program for her performance. She also has a daughter named Rosa, who is one of the best friends of Alice (great-granddaughter of the Alice from the film).
The Queen of Hearts is set to appear in the live-action film Descendants: The Rise of Red, played by Rita Ora and Ruby Rose Turner (as Bridget, a young Queen of Hearts), where her daughter Red is a main character.
Disney video games
The Queen of Hearts exacted her revenge upon Alice in the game Disney's Villains' Revenge where she stole the ending page of the story and changed the ending, so Alice lost her head. Jiminy Cricket, the player and Alice's headless body retrieve the head and escape the labyrinth of the Queen. They meet one last time in the final battle and she surrenders. The Queen of Hearts is the final boss on the Japanese version of Mickey Mousecapade, a 1987 video game where Alice is her hostage.
The Queen appears in the Square-Enix/Disney video game Kingdom Hearts, in her homeworld. As in the film, she holds Alice on trial, only this time for attempting to steal her heart. The main heroes in the game, Sora, Donald, and Goofy, intervene, telling the Queen that Alice is innocent. The Queen challenges them to provide proof of their theory, and with help from the Cheshire Cat, the three are able to do so. The Queen, however, enraged at being proven wrong, orders them executed and Alice imprisoned in a cage on the roof. The three are able to fight off the Queen's guards and destroy the cage controls, but Alice is kidnapped before they can save her. The Queen orders a search for Alice, and temporarily pardons Sora, Donald, and Goofy, requesting that they look for Alice as well. She returns in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, only this time as a figment of Sora's memories. Again, she holds Alice on trial, this time for attempting to steal her memories. In both games, Sora, Donald, and Goofy prove Alice's innocence by defeating the Trickmaster Heartless, the real culprit. The Queen congratulates Sora for solving the mystery, and once again demonstrates her bi-polar personality by pardoning Alice. She is absent in Kingdom Hearts II, but appears in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days along with her homeworld. A digital version of her later appears in Kingdom Hearts coded.
The Queen of Hearts appears as a playable character to unlock for a limited time in the video game Disney Magic Kingdoms.
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Alice's Warped Wonderland
In the Sunsoft's 2006 mobile game , the Queen of Hearts's personality and appearance is vastly different from other versions of the character. She is depicted as a beautiful young girl with long blond hair in a pink dress and wields a large scythe. While emotional at times and a has morbid fondness for beheading people, the Queen loves Ariko (the "Alice" of the game), claiming to love her most out of all the other Wonderland denizens, and wants to protect her from remembering her suppressed memories of her traumatic childhood. However, due to Ariko's depressed state of mind, the Queen's love for Alice is warped and seeks to behead her as way to protect her (which she succeed in one of the bad endings). Like the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit, the Queen possess the power to enter the real world and interact with people besides Ariko.
American McGee's Alice
In the video game American McGee's Alice, the Queen of Hearts is the final boss and the reason for Wonderland's decay. When Alice fights her, she discovers that the Queen is her dark side – an embodiment of her insanity; the Queen must be destroyed for Alice to become sane once more. The Queen's appearance is different in American McGee's Alice from how she is in the book: she appears first as a faceless entity having tentacles for arms, legs, and hair. It is later revealed that this is a mere puppet and that the true Queen of Hearts is a horrible monster in the image of a real anatomical heart. She is called both the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen interchangeably throughout the game. No mention is made of the Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass. However, the White Queen is seen for only a moment, as her head is chopped off by the enemy in The Pale Realm. It's implied that after Alice was placed in the asylum the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts fused together which explains why the Queen of Hearts is able to control the red piece and the cards at the same time.
In the sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, the Queen of Hearts is sought by Alice for assistance in stopping an Infernal Train from tearing apart Wonderland and driving her back into insanity. The Queen claims, when found in the ruins of the Red Kingdom, that Alice is being manipulated by someone other than herself, that this person is trying to erase her memories, particularly about the fire in her childhood, which is tearing her sanity apart. It later turns out that this person is none other than her psychiatrist Dr. Angus Bumby, who has been revealed to have raped Alice's older sister Lizzy and burned down the house with Lizzy and Alice's parents to cover up the crime, and that he is attempting to erase Alice's memories and subject her to prostitution after it. In this sequel, the Red Queen has changed considerably, taking the appearance of a younger Alice, only in a royal dress befitting the Queen of Hearts, with large fleshy claws rather than hands, and her lower body composed of fleshy tentacles that spread throughout the entire castle, which is actually the Queen's body itself. Some argue she is actually based not on Alice herself, but her sister, as she also referred to her as "Lizzy" in the following dialogue, and considering she felt guilty of the death of her family, its possible her subconscious projected her dead sister in the queen she herself killed in the previous game.
The Looking Glass Wars
In The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, the ruling dynasty of the Wonderland is the Heart family. The title of Queen of Hearts is a hereditary title for the Queen of Wonderland. The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland is reimagined as Queen Redd, the enemy and aunt of the heroine, Alyss. She kills Alyss's parents and usurps the throne of Wonderland.
The true Queen of Hearts in this story is Genevieve Heart, Alyss's mother as an apparent re-imagining of the White Queen. Alyss is, therefore, the Princess of Hearts.
Alice in the Country of Hearts
In the manga Alice in the Country of Hearts, the Queen of Hearts is known as Vivaldi. She isn't as much a main character, though, and she has very few parts in the current books. Vivaldi rules Heart Castle and is feuding with the other territories over Wonderland. She is beautiful with black hair, unlike other adaptations. She speaks in the majestic plural, I.E, "We are happy you are here to see us." As discovered through Heart no Kuni no Alice the game by Quinrose (the predecessor to the manga). Blood Dupree (The Hatter) is Vivaldi's little brother though it is alluded to be a romantic interest for Vivaldi until Alice discovers the secret.
SyFy TV miniseries
In the two-part series Alice, hosted by the SyFy Channel, the Queen of Hearts is portrayed by Kathy Bates as a refined but ruthless drug lord. The miniseries is set one hundred and fifty years after the original Alice's first visit to Wonderland (the heroine is an unrelated character) and the Queen is (as usual) the primary villain of the series. As is customary, the Queen is depicted as narcissistic, declaring herself as "the most powerful woman in the history of literature" and obese. Her calm, cold demeanour suggests that she too is a mixture of the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen. Her name is given as "Mary Elizabeth Heart", and it is suggested that the Hearts are the "Red" royal family who seized control of Wonderland from the "White" royal family.
Once Upon a Time
The Queen of Hearts appears in the Once Upon a Time episode "Hat Trick", played by Jennifer Koenig. In the show's second season, it is revealed that the Queen of Hearts is, in fact, Cora (Barbara Hershey), the mother of the Evil Queen and the Wicked Witch of the West. In her earlier life, Cora (portrayed by Rose McGowan) was also the miller's daughter (the heroine of the Rumpelstiltskin story).
Cora abandons her first born, Zelena, after realising that the father is not royalty as she believed. When she has a baby girl with King Henry, she names her Regina and raises Regina to be queen. Cora stages the death of Snow White's mother, and manipulates Regina into becoming Snow's stepmother by marrying the girl's father, King Leopold. After killing Regina's true love, Daniel the stable boy, Regina banishes Cora to Wonderland through a looking-glass, where she eventually becomes the Queen of Hearts. The show's spin-off, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, shows that Cora was the Red Queen's tutor in magic whilst in Wonderland; Cora apparently ruled part of the land and was a political rival of the Red King.
Years later, after Regina has become the Evil Queen, she sets out to cast a Dark Curse and send all the fairytale characters to the Land Without Magic. Regina hires Captain Hook to kill Cora so she won't follow Regina to this new land. However, Cora convinces Hook to team up with her, and once the curse is eventually broken, Cora and Hook travel to the town of Storybrooke where Regina believes her mother is dead. Cora thwarts Regina's plans for redemption by framing her for murder in order to manipulate her back into villainy so that they can take over the town and kill Rumplestiltskin, obtaining his great power. However, Snow White tricks Regina into killing Cora before they succeed.
Years later, Cora's soul resides in the Underworld, believing Regina to be her unfinished business. When a redeemed Regina visits the Underworld with her new allies, Cora reunites with her daughter and, forcibly working for Hades, tries to convince Regina to go home. When Zelena, who has grown up to be the Wicked Witch of the West, visits the Underworld, Cora realises that her unfinished business was to make amends with the daughter she abandoned and unite her estranged daughters. Cora is successful with both, and is finally able to move on to Mount Olympus.
Come Away
The Queen is portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the 2020 movie Come Away, and is depicted as an imaginary counterpart to Alice's alcoholic mother Rose (also played by Jolie). This version of the Queen of Hearts is kept as separate character from the Red Queen, who is the imaginary counterpart to Rose's stuffy and disapproving older sister Eleanor.
Ever After High
In the animated web series Ever After High, the Queen of Hearts has a daughter named Lizzie Hearts who is a recurring character. The Queen of Hearts appears in one of the specials where she is voiced by Karen Strassman. She also appears in some of the tie-in novels.
Other versions and adaptations
In various film and television versions of the novel, The Queen has been played by May Robson, Ronald Long, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eve Arden, Jayne Meadows, and, In the 1999 Alice in Wonderland television movie, Miranda Richardson, whose portrayal is strongly reminiscent of her role as the spoiled Queenie in Blackadder.
In Sandra the Fairytale Detective, her name is Theressa.
Pandora Hearts has Miranda Barma who would later become the chain Demios the Executor also nicknamed Queen of Hearts and they have a similar obsession of cutting heads.
The Queen is one of the characters adopted by Gwen Stefani in her Wonderland-themed music video What You Waiting For?. She wears a red gown and a crown reminiscent of the Imperial State Crown from the British Crown Jewels. The Queen wanders through a garden populated with flamingos and pushes Alice (also Stefani) into a pool of her own tears.
The Queen of Hearts features in Unsuk Chin's 2007 opera Alice in Wonderland; the role was created for Dame Gwyneth Jones.
The Queen is a major character in Christopher Wheeldon's 2011 full-length ballet Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, created for The Royal Ballet. The role was created for principal dancer Zenaida Yanowsky and includes a hilarious spoof of the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty.
The Queen appeared briefly during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London in a segment dedicated to the villains of British children's literature.
In Marissa Meyer's 2016 novel Heartless, the backstory of the Queen of Hearts is told, in which she is a young girl who aspires to be a baker, but is instead taken off course by the anticipated proposal of the King of Hearts.
The Queen of Hearts appears in the twelfth episode ("And the Broken Staff") of The Librarians. She is brought to life by the wizard Prospero as a distraction for the Librarians but is subsequently tricked into attacking her own reflection, turning her into a pack of cards (mirroring the ending of the original story).
The manga One Piece has Charlotte Linlin, also known as "Big Mom", whose appearance and character is mostly based on the Queen of Hearts.
In Andrzej Sapkowski's short story Złote popołudnie (The Golden Afternoon) which is postmodern retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the Queen of Hearts is identified with Queen Mab.
In the 1998 television film A Soldier's Sweetheart directed by Thomas Michael Donnelly Marianne's character is foreshadowed at the end of the card game when the last card laid down is the Queen of Hearts.
During the 4.5 anniversary for Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation, the character Monica plays the role of the Queen of Hearts. Her role was significantly softened compared to usual, simply dealing a game of chance regarding finding a heart, as well as willingly letting the Owner leave Wonderland after he won.
In the manga Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, she is the protagonist; a girl who reincarnated as her from an Alice in Wonderland video game. On the day she takes the throne, a curse twists everything she says into something cruel; meaning someone is trying to kill her. Hope comes from her allies Mad Hatter (who understands her intent) and Aleth Liddell, whom can hear her true words.
References
Citations
Female characters in television
Female characters in film
Female literary villains
Fictional dictators
Fictional queens
Playing cards
Lewis Carroll characters
Literary characters introduced in 1865
Video game bosses
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejection%20seat
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Ejection seat
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In aircraft, an ejection seat or ejector seat is a system designed to rescue the pilot or other crew of an aircraft (usually military) in an emergency. In most designs, the seat is propelled out of the aircraft by an explosive charge or rocket motor, carrying the pilot with it. The concept of an ejectable escape crew capsule has also been tried. Once clear of the aircraft, the ejection seat deploys a parachute. Ejection seats are common on certain types of military aircraft.
History
A bungee-assisted escape from an aircraft took place in 1910. In 1916, Everard Calthrop, an early inventor of parachutes, patented an ejector seat using compressed air.
The modern layout for an ejection seat was first introduced by Romanian inventor Anastase Dragomir in the late 1920s. The design featured a parachuted cell (a dischargeable chair from an aircraft or other vehicle). It was successfully tested on 25 August 1929 at the Paris-Orly Airport near Paris and in October 1929 at Băneasa, near Bucharest. Dragomir patented his "catapult-able cockpit" at the French Patent Office.
The design was perfected during World War II. Prior to this, the only means of escape from an incapacitated aircraft was to jump clear ("bail out"), and in many cases this was difficult due to injury, the difficulty of egress from a confined space, g forces, the airflow past the aircraft, and other factors.
The first ejection seats were developed independently during World War II by Heinkel and SAAB. Early models were powered by compressed air and the first aircraft to be fitted with such a system was the Heinkel He 280 prototype jet-engined fighter in 1940. One of the He 280 test pilots, Helmut Schenk, became the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejection seat on 13 January 1942 after his control surfaces iced up and became inoperative. The fighter was being used in tests of the Argus As 014 impulse jets for Fieseler Fi 103 missile development. It had its usual Heinkel HeS 8A turbojets removed, and was towed aloft from the Erprobungsstelle Rechlin central test facility of the Luftwaffe in Germany by a pair of Messerschmitt Bf 110C tugs in a heavy snow-shower. At , Schenk found he had no control, jettisoned his towline, and ejected. The He 280 was never put into production status. The first operational type built anywhere to provide ejection seats for the crew was the Heinkel He 219 Uhu night fighter in 1942.
In Sweden, a version using compressed air was tested in 1941. A gunpowder ejection seat was developed by Bofors and tested in 1943 for the Saab 21. The first test in the air was on a Saab 17 on 27 February 1944, and the first real use occurred by Lt. Bengt Johansson on 29 July 1946 after a mid-air collision between a J 21 and a J 22.
As the first operational military jet in late 1944 to ever feature one, the winner of the German Volksjäger "people's fighter" home defense jet fighter design competition; the lightweight Heinkel He 162A Spatz, featured a new type of ejection seat, this time fired by an explosive cartridge. In this system, the seat rode on wheels set between two pipes running up the back of the cockpit. When lowered into position, caps at the top of the seat fitted over the pipes to close them. Cartridges, basically identical to shotgun shells, were placed in the bottom of the pipes, facing upward. When fired, the gases would fill the pipes, "popping" the caps off the end, and thereby forcing the seat to ride up the pipes on its wheels and out of the aircraft. By the end of the war, the Dornier Do 335 Pfeil — primarily from it having a rear-mounted engine (of the twin engines powering the design) powering a pusher propeller located at the aft end of the fuselage presenting a hazard to a normal "bailout" escape — and a few late-war prototype aircraft were also fitted with ejection seats.
After World War II, the need for such systems became pressing, as aircraft speeds were getting ever higher, and it was not long before the sound barrier was broken. Manual escape at such speeds would be impossible. The United States Army Air Forces experimented with downward-ejecting systems operated by a spring, but it was the work of James Martin and his company Martin-Baker that proved crucial.
The first live flight test of the Martin-Baker system took place on 24 July 1946, when fitter Bernard Lynch ejected from a Gloster Meteor Mk III jet. Shortly afterward, on 17 August 1946, 1st Sgt. Larry Lambert was the first live U.S. ejectee. Lynch demonstrated the ejection seat at the Daily Express Air Pageant in 1948, ejecting from a Meteor. Martin-Baker ejector seats were fitted to prototype and production aircraft from the late 1940s, and the first emergency use of such a seat occurred in 1949 during testing of the jet-powered Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 experimental flying wing.
Early seats used a solid propellant charge to eject the pilot and seat by igniting the charge inside a telescoping tube attached to the seat. As aircraft speeds increased still further, this method proved inadequate to get the pilot sufficiently clear of the airframe. Increasing the amount of propellant risked damaging the occupant's spine, so experiments with rocket propulsion began. In 1958, the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger was the first aircraft to be fitted with a rocket-propelled seat. Martin-Baker developed a similar design, using multiple rocket units feeding a single nozzle. The greater thrust from this configuration had the advantage of being able to eject the pilot to a safe height even if the aircraft was on or very near the ground.
In the early 1960s, deployment of rocket-powered ejection seats designed for use at supersonic speeds began in such planes as the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. Six pilots have ejected at speeds exceeding . The highest altitude at which a Martin-Baker seat was deployed was 57,000 ft (17,400 m) (from a Canberra bomber in 1958). Following an accident on 30 July 1966 in the attempted launch of a D-21 drone, two Lockheed M-21 crew members ejected at Mach 3.25 at an altitude of . The pilot was recovered successfully, but the launch control officer drowned after a water landing. Despite these records, most ejections occur at fairly low speeds and altitudes, when the pilot can see that there is no hope of regaining aircraft control before impact with the ground.
Late in the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy became concerned about its pilots ejecting over hostile territory and those pilots either being captured or killed and the losses in men and aircraft in attempts to rescue them. Both services began a program titled Air Crew Escape/Rescue Capability or Aerial Escape and Rescue Capability (AERCAB) ejection seats (both terms have been used by the US military and defence industry), where after the pilot ejected, the ejection seat would fly them to a location far enough away from where they ejected to where they could safely be picked up. A Request for Proposals for concepts for AERCAB ejection seats were issued in the late 1960s. Three companies submitted papers for further development: A Rogallo wing design by Bell Systems; a gyrocopter design by Kaman Aircraft; and a mini-conventional fixed wing aircraft employing a Princeton Wing (i.e. a wing made of flexible material that rolls out and then becomes rigid by means of internal struts or supports etc. deploying) by Fairchild Hiller. All three, after ejection, would be propelled by small turbojet engine developed for target drones. With the exception of the Kaman design, the pilot would still be required to parachute to the ground after reaching a safety-point for rescue. The AERCAB project was terminated in the 1970s with the end of the Vietnam War. The Kaman design, in early 1972, was the only one which was to reach the hardware stage. It came close to being tested with a special landing-gear platform attached to the AERCAB ejection seat for first-stage ground take offs and landings with a test pilot.
Pilot safety
The purpose of an ejection seat is pilot survival. The pilot typically experiences an acceleration of about 12–14g. Western seats usually impose lighter loads on the pilots; 1960s–70s era Soviet technology often goes up to 20–22 g (with SM-1 and KM-1 gunbarrel-type ejection seats). Compression fractures of vertebrae are a recurrent side effect of ejection.
It was theorised early on that ejection at supersonic speeds would be unsurvivable; extensive tests, including Project Whoosh with chimpanzee test subjects, were undertaken to determine that it was feasible.
The capabilities of the NPP Zvezda K-36 were unintentionally demonstrated at the Fairford Air Show on 24 July 1993 when the pilots of two MiG-29 fighters ejected after a mid-air collision.
The minimal ejection altitude for ACES II seat in inverted flight is about above ground level at 150 KIAS, while the Russian counterpart – K-36DM has the minimal ejection altitude from inverted flight of AGL.
When an aircraft is equipped with the NPP Zvezda K-36DM ejection seat and the pilot is wearing the КО-15 protective gear, they are able to eject at airspeeds from 0 to and altitudes of 0 to 25 km (16 mi or about 82,000 ft). The K-36DM ejection seat features drag chutes and a small shield that rises between the pilot's legs to deflect air around the pilot.
Pilots have successfully ejected from underwater in a handful of instances, after being forced to ditch in water. The first recorded case was Lt. B. D. Macfarlane of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm when he successfully ejected under water using his Martin-Baker Mk.1 ejection seat after his Westland Wyvern had ditched on launch and been cut in two by the carrier on 13 October 1954. Documented evidence also exists that pilots of the US and Indian navies have also performed this feat.
– when two Spanish Air Force pilots ejected over San Javier airport – the number of lives saved by Martin-Baker products was 7,402 from 93 air forces. The company runs a club called the "Ejection Tie Club" and gives survivors a unique tie and lapel pin. The total figure for all types of ejection seats is unknown, but may be considerably higher.
Early models of the ejection seat were equipped with only an overhead ejection handle which doubled in function by forcing the pilot to assume the right posture and by having them pull a screen down to protect both their face and oxygen mask from the subsequent air blast. Martin Baker added a secondary handle in the front of the seat to allow ejection even when pilots weren't able to reach upwards because of high g-force. Later (e.g. in Martin Baker's MK9) the top handle was discarded because the lower handle had proven easier to operate and the technology of helmets had advanced to also protect from the air blast.
Egress systems
The "standard" ejection system operates in two stages. First, the entire canopy or hatch above the aviator is opened, shattered, or jettisoned, and the seat and occupant are launched through the opening. In most earlier aircraft this required two separate actions by the aviator, while later egress system designs, such as the Advanced Concept Ejection Seat model 2 (ACES II), perform both functions as a single action.
The ACES II ejection seat is used in most American-built fighters. The A-10 uses connected firing handles that activate both the canopy jettison systems, followed by the seat ejection. The F-15 has the same connected system as the A-10 seat. Both handles accomplish the same task, so pulling either one suffices. The F-16 has only one handle located between the pilot's knees, since the cockpit is too narrow for side-mounted handles.
Non-standard egress systems include Downward Track (used for some crew positions in bomber aircraft, including the B-52 Stratofortress), Canopy Destruct (CD) and Through-Canopy Penetration (TCP), Drag Extraction, Encapsulated Seat, and even Crew Capsule.
Early models of the F-104 Starfighter were equipped with a Downward Track ejection seat due to the hazard of the T-tail. In order to make this work, the pilot was equipped with "spurs" which were attached to cables that would pull the legs inward so the pilot could be ejected. Following this development, some other egress systems began using leg retractors as a way to prevent injuries to flailing legs, and to provide a more stable center of gravity. Some models of the F-104 were equipped with upward-ejecting seats.
Similarly, two of the six ejection seats on the B-52 Stratofortress fire downward, through hatch openings on the bottom of the aircraft; the downward hatches are released from the aircraft by a thruster that unlocks the hatch, while gravity and wind remove the hatch and arm the seat. The four seats on the forward upper deck (two of them, EWO and Gunner, facing the rear of the airplane) fire upwards as usual. Any such downward-firing system is of no use on or near the ground if aircraft is in level flight at the time of the ejection.
Aircraft designed for low-level use sometimes have ejection seats which fire through the canopy, as waiting for the canopy to be ejected is too slow. Many aircraft types (e.g., the BAE Hawk and the Harrier line of aircraft) use Canopy Destruct systems, which have an explosive cord (MDC – Miniature Detonation Cord or FLSC – Flexible Linear Shaped Charge) embedded within the acrylic plastic of the canopy. The MDC is initiated when the eject handle is pulled, and shatters the canopy over the seat a few milliseconds before the seat is launched. This system was developed for the Hawker Siddeley Harrier family of VTOL aircraft as ejection may be necessary while the aircraft was in the hover, and jettisoning the canopy might result in the pilot and seat striking it. This system is also used in the T-6 Texan II and F-35 Lightning II.
Through-Canopy Penetration is similar to Canopy Destruct, but a sharp spike on the top of the seat, known as the "shell tooth", strikes the underside of the canopy and shatters it. The A-10 Thunderbolt II is equipped with canopy breakers on either side of its headrest in the event that the canopy fails to jettison. The T-6 is also equipped with such breakers if the MDC fails to detonate. In ground emergencies, a ground crewman or pilot can use a breaker knife attached to the inside of the canopy to shatter the transparency. The A-6 Intruder and EA-6B Prowler seats were capable of ejecting through the canopy, with canopy jettison a separate option if there is enough time.
CD and TCP systems cannot be used with canopies made of flexible materials, such as the Lexan polycarbonate canopy used on the F-16.
Soviet VTOL naval fighter planes such as the Yakovlev Yak-38 were equipped with ejection seats which were automatically activated during at least some part of the flight envelope.
Drag Extraction is the lightest and simplest egress system available, and has been used on many experimental aircraft. Halfway between simply "bailing out" and using explosive-eject systems, Drag Extraction uses the airflow past the aircraft (or spacecraft) to move the aviator out of the cockpit and away from the stricken craft on a guide rail. Some operate like a standard ejector seat, by jettisoning the canopy, then deploying a drag chute into the airflow. That chute pulls the occupant out of the aircraft, either with the seat or following release of the seat straps, who then rides off the end of a rail extending far enough out to help clear the structure. In the case of the Space Shuttle, the astronauts would have ridden a long, curved rail, blown by the wind against their bodies, then deployed their chutes after free-falling to a safe altitude.
Encapsulated Seat egress systems were developed for use in the B-58 Hustler and B-70 Valkyrie supersonic bombers. These seats were enclosed in an air-operated clamshell, which permitted the aircrew to escape at airspeeds and altitudes high enough to otherwise cause bodily harm. These seats were designed to allow the pilot to control the plane even with the clamshell closed, and the capsule would float in case of water landings.
Some aircraft designs, such as the General Dynamics F-111, do not have individual ejection seats, but instead, the entire section of the airframe containing the crew can be ejected as a single capsule. In this system, very powerful rockets are used, and multiple large parachutes are used to bring the capsule down, in a manner similar to the Launch Escape System of the Apollo spacecraft. On landing, an airbag system is used to cushion the landing, and this also acts as a flotation device if the Crew Capsule lands in water.
Zero-zero ejection seat
A zero-zero ejection seat is designed to safely extract upward and land its occupant from a grounded stationary position (i.e., zero altitude and zero airspeed), specifically from aircraft cockpits. The zero-zero capability was developed to help aircrews escape upward from unrecoverable emergencies during low-altitude and/or low-speed flight, as well as ground mishaps. Parachutes require a minimum altitude for opening, to give time for deceleration to a safe landing speed. Thus, prior to the introduction of zero-zero capability, ejections could only be performed above minimum altitudes and airspeeds. If the seat was to work from zero (aircraft) altitude, the seat would have to lift itself to a sufficient altitude.
These early seats were fired from the aircraft with a cannon, providing the high impulse needed over the very short length on the cannon barrel within the seat. This limited the total energy, and thus the additional height possible, as otherwise the high forces needed would crush the pilot.
Modern zero-zero technology use small rockets to propel the seat upward to an adequate altitude and a small explosive charge to open the parachute canopy quickly for a successful parachute descent, so that proper deployment of the parachute no longer relies on airspeed and altitude. The seat cannon clears the seat from the aircraft, then the under-seat rocket pack fires to lift the seat to altitude. As the rockets fire for longer than the cannon, they do not require the same high forces. Zero-zero rocket seats also reduced forces on the pilot during any ejection, reducing injuries and spinal compression.
Other vehicles
The Kamov Ka-50, which entered limited service with Russian forces in 1995, was the first production helicopter with an ejection seat. The system is similar to that of a conventional fixed-wing aircraft; however the main rotors are equipped with explosive bolts to jettison the blades moments before the seat is fired.
The only commercial jetliner ever fitted with ejection seats was the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144. However, the seats were present in the prototype only, and were only available for the crew and not the passengers. The Tu-144 that crashed at the Paris Air Show in 1973 was a production model, and did not have ejection seats.
The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, (LLRV) and its successor Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV), used ejection seats. Neil Armstrong ejected on 6 May 1968, following Joe Algranti and Stuart M. Present.
The only spacecraft ever flown with installed ejection seats were Vostok, Gemini, and the Space Shuttle.
Early flights of the Space Shuttle, which used Columbia, were with a crew of two, both provided with ejector seats (STS-1 to STS-4), but the seats were disabled and then removed as the crew size was increased. Columbia and Enterprise were the only two Space Shuttle orbiters fitted with ejection seats. The Buran-class orbiters were planned to be fitted with K-36RB (K-36M-11F35) seats, but as the program was canceled, the seats were never used.
No real life land vehicle has ever been fitted with an ejection seat, though it is a common trope in fiction. A notable example is the Aston Martin DB5 from the James Bond films, which had an ejecting passenger seat.
See also
Attacks on parachutists - discusses the 1949 Geneva Conventions on War, declaring it illegal to attack ejecting aircrew until they land
Caterpillar Club
Dynamic response index
Escape pod
Airborne lifeboat
Lifeboat
Pressure suit
Ejection Tie Club
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Aircraft emergency systems
Rocketry
Romanian inventions
Seats
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389363
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic%20Movement%20of%20Uzbekistan
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Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
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The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU; ) was a militant Islamist group formed in 1998 by Islamic ideologue Tahir Yuldashev and former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani; both ethnic Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley. Its original objective was to overthrow President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and create an Islamic state under Sharia; however, in subsequent years, it reinvented itself as an ally of Al-Qaeda. The group also maintained relations with Afghan Taliban in 1990s. However, later on, relations between the Afghan Taliban and the IMU started declining.
Operating out of bases in Tajikistan and Taliban-controlled areas of northern Afghanistan, the IMU launched a series of raids into southern Kyrgyzstan in the years 1999 and 2000. The IMU suffered heavy casualties in 2001–2002 during the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Namangani was killed, while Yuldeshev and many of the IMU's remaining fighters escaped with remnants of the Taliban to Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The IMU then focused on fighting the Pakistan Forces in the Tribal Areas, and NATO and Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan.
In mid-2015, its leadership publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and announced that the IMU was part of the group's regional branch. In 2016, it was reported that a new faction of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan emerged after the group became part of ISIL. The new faction retained the group's name and was independent of ISIL. It has also indicated that it is loyal to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and shared their views against ISIL.
Background
During the Soviet era, Islam in Central Asia was officially suppressed – mosques were closed, and all contact with the wider Muslim world was severed. This isolation ended with the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), when thousands of conscripts from Soviet Central Asia were sent to fight the Afghan mujahedin. Many of these conscripts returned home impressed by the Islamic zeal of their opponents, and newly aware of the religious, cultural and linguistic characteristics they shared with their neighbours in the South; and which distinguished them from their rulers in Moscow.
Adolat (1991–1992)
One such soldier sent to fight in Afghanistan was the Uzbek paratrooper Jumaboi Khojayev (b. 1969). Following the war, Khojayev returned to his hometown of Namangan in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley radicalized by his experiences, and became associated with a local Islamic ideologue, Tohir Yuldashev (b. 1967). In the period of initial instability that followed Uzbekistan's sudden independence in 1991, Yuldeshev and Khojayev (now adopting the nom de guerre Juma Namangani) established a radical Salafi Islamist group in Namangan which they called Adolat (Justice).
Adolat assumed civil authority in Namangan and quickly established a degree of order and security through the imposition of Sharia Law, which was ruthlessly enforced by Adolat's vigilante cadres. Initially tolerated by the newly installed President Karimov, Adolat became increasingly assertive, culminating in a demand that Karimov impose Sharia throughout Uzbekistan. However, by 1992 Karimov had successfully cemented his authority in Tashkent, and was strong enough to outlaw Adolat and re-establish central control over the Fergana Valley region – traditionally one of the most Islamic regions in Central Asia.
Tajik civil war (1992–1997)
Evading arrest, Yuldashev and Namagani fled to Tajikistan, where civil war was raging following a bloody but successful coup led by Emomali Rahmonov earlier in 1992. The civil war pitted Rahmonov's neo-communist forces against a loose coalition of democrats and Islamists known as the United Tajik Opposition (UTO). The UTO was led by the widely popular and highly respected Islamist Said Abdullah Nuri, whose Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) advocated a moderate and democratic brand of Islamism.
Namangani's combat experience in Afghanistan saw him entrusted by the IRPT with the command of active units in the field, based out of the remote, mountainous Tavildara Valley region. He enjoyed considerable success in this role. Meanwhile, Yuldashev left Tajikistan on a tour of Afghanistan, Turkey and the Middle East, during which time he developed contacts with numerous Islamist groups. From 1995 to 1998 Yuldashev was based in Peshawar in Pakistan, where he established relations with Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Arabs based there at the time.
IMU formation (1998)
In 1997 Rahmonov and Nuri signed a peace agreement which saw Rahmonov agree to sharing power with the IRPT. Disillusioned with the political concessions made by the Tajik Islamists, Yuldeshev and Namangani formed the IMU in 1998 with the aim of creating a militant Islamic opposition to Karimov in Uzbekistan. The IMU began moving towards the Afghan Taliban and away from their former and more moderate IRPT allies, who were in turn partially backing the ethnic-Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
Nevertheless, Namangani maintained his base in Tajikistan's Tavildara Valley, and was able to recruit large numbers of disaffected youth from the Fergana Valley, where economic hardship and religious persecution were continuing under Karimov's authoritarian rule.
History
Initial operations in Central Asia
In 1999 a series of explosions in the capital Tashkent were orchestrated in an unsuccessful attempt on Karimov's life. Karimov placed the blame on the Islamists and the IMU in particular; however this attribution remains disputed, and it is possible the assassination attempt was the work of rival political and regional elites. Irrespective of who was responsible, the result was an escalation in Karimov's suppression of Islam, particularly in the traditionally observant Fergana Valley – a move which only increased the number of those fleeing Uzbekistan to join up with Namangani and the IMU in the Tavildara Valley.
Later that year the IMU conducted its first verifiable operations, with an incursion into the Batken region of southern Kyrgyzstan, a region populated mainly by ethnic Uzbeks that is between Tavildara in Tajikistan and the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan. Insurgents seized the Mayor of Osh (the regional capital) and successfully extorted a ransom from the ill-prepared Kyrgyz government in Bishkek, as well as a helicopter to transport them to Afghanistan. Further incursions into Batken followed, with one raid resulted in a number of Japanese geologists kidnapped. Although denied by Japan, their subsequent release was reported to have followed the payment of a significant ransom.
These raids had a major impact in Central Asia, and resulted in considerable international pressure on Tajikistan, not least from Karimov, to expel the IMU from its base in the Tavildara Valley. The IRPT persuaded their former ally Namangani to abandon Tavildara in late 1999. Controversially, Namangani and his fighters were then flown from Tajikistan to northern Afghanistan in Russian military helicopters, a move which enraged Karimov who claimed the Russians were aiding the IMU in an attempt to undermine Uzbekistan.
Expansion into Taliban-ruled Afghanistan
In Afghanistan Yuldeshev was able to exploit the contacts he had made on his earlier travels to negotiate freedom of operation from the Taliban, in return for providing them with assistance in their battle with Massoud's Northern Alliance. The IMU established offices and training camps, and began expanding their recruitment of disaffected Uzbeks.
It is estimated in 2000 that the IMU was approximately 2000 strong, and in the spring they contributed around 600 fighters to the Taliban's offensive against Massoud, participating in the successful siege of Taloqan, where they fought alongside Bin Laden's 055 Brigade. The IMU also provided the Taliban with a useful degree of deniability, under pressure from China to expel Uighur militants the Taliban simply sent them north to the IMU's camps.
By the summer of 2000 Western and CIS intelligence sources claim the IMU were equipped with more advanced weaponry such as sniper rifles and night-vision goggles, and had been supplied with a pair of heavy transport helicopters by Bin Laden. Namangani led IMU fighters back to the Tavildara Valley in Tajikistan, and from there launched multipronged attacks into Batken in Kyrgyzstan, and also into northern Uzbekistan, close to Tashkent.
In August 2000 the IMU also kidnapped four U.S. mountain-climbers (Tommy Caldwell, Beth Rodden, Jason "Singer" Smith, and John Dickey) in the Kara-Su Valley of Kyrgyzstan, holding them hostage until they escaped on 12 August. In response, the United States classified the IMU as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Once again the raids were followed by a strategic retreat to Tavildara, and once again international pressure on the Tajik government saw Namangani agree to him and his men being flown by the Russians back to Afghanistan, where they arrived in January 2001.
By 2001 the connections between the IMU and the Taliban had become more overt, with media reports of Namangani had been appointed Deputy Defence Minister in the Taliban government, which the Taliban did not deny. In the spring the IMU again supplied the Taliban with 600 fighters for a renewed campaign against Massoud, while in Batken in Kyrgyzstan a number of sleepers armed the previous year executed a series of attacks.
Uzbek government maintained contacts with Afghan Talibans during the final months of Taliban rule over Afghanistan. The contacts were aimed at convincing Talibans to hand over militants belonging to Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Overthrow of Taliban rule
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, the IMU was largely destroyed while fighting alongside the Taliban, with Namangani being killed in November 2001 by a U.S. airstrike in northern Afghanistan. In March 2002, Yuldashev and many IMU members are believed to have fought against Coalition forces during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan's Shahi Kot Valley, suffering heavy casualties before retreating to the Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Members of the IMU began settling down in the region, with some starting families and becoming involved in local business. The group developed close ties with members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda who had also taken refuge in the region, often serving as bodyguards for senior commanders. Tensions grew with some locals however, with the Uzbeks accused by local Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir of disrespecting local customs, killing tribesmen, and involving themselves in local feuds. In early 2007, fighting broke out between Nazir's fighters and the Uzbeks, which resulted in hundreds of casualties on both sides and the expulsion of the IMU from much of South Waziristan.
Many of the retreating IMU members were sheltered by the local militant commander Baitullah Mehsud, and when Mehsud turned against the Pakistani state and formed the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2007, the IMU cooperated closely with him. The alliance between the two groups continued after Hakimullah Mehsud succeeded Baitullah as TTP leader in 2009, the IMU and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan carried out joint attacks on the Pakistani State and eventually formed a combined unit called Ansar al-Aseer, with the goal of freeing militant Islamist prisoners held in Pakistani prisons. Close ties were also formed with the militant Haqqani Network following the August 2009 killing of Yuldashev in a US drone strike, as the IMU's new leadership relocated the group to the Haqqani strongholds of Mir Ali and Miranshah in North Waziristan.
Return to Afghanistan and later events
The IMU became increasingly active in Afghanistan and was regularly cited as a terrorist threat by governments within and outside of the region. IMU fighters first started to become active in Afghanistan in 2007, fighting in the Taliban insurgency against Afghan and ISAF troops. From 2010 the IMU began to expand its presence into northern Afghanistan, particularly in ethnic Uzbek areas in and around Takhar Province. IMU commanders in northern Afghanistan integrated into the Taliban's shadow government, exercising governance in areas where the Afghan government's presence was weak.
Haji Seyit Dawud, director of the Afghan media-resources center in Kabul, claimed that the move to Afghanistan was natural as Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was much more likely to find support in Afghanistan than in Pakistan. In Pakistan they were declared as foreign terrorist and Pakistan Army was killing them.
In June 2014, the Pakistan Armed Forces began a major military campaign against militant groups in North Waziristan, in the wake of the IMU and TTP's attack on Jinnah International Airport. There were media reports in the following months that many IMU fighters and their families fled these military operations and moved to Afghanistan.
After a period of declining relations between Afghan Talibans and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the group pledged its allegiance Islamic State (IS).
IMU leader Usman Ghazi declared the group's support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in September 2014, however it continued to cooperate closely with the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to Afghan government sources. In March 2015, a group of IMU militants in northern Afghanistan, led by Sadulla Urgenji, released a video in which they stated they no longer view the Taliban's Mullah Omar as leader and pledged allegiance to ISIL's Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This was followed by another video in July 2015, in which Sheikh Muhammad Ali, identified as the IMU's spiritual leader, swears allegiance to ISIL. In August 2015, a video was released by the group in which its leader, Usman Ghazi, leads IMU fighters in taking an oath of allegiance to ISIL and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Ghazi also stated that the group should now be considered as fighters for ISIL's Afghanistan branch, Wilayat Khorasan. Following the pledge of allegiance, the Taliban launched an offensive against the IMU and forces loyal to dissident Taliban commander Mansoor Dadullah in Zabul Province, inflicting heavy casualties and effectively wiping out the group's presence in the province.
In June 2016, a new faction of the IMU announced itself, denouncing ISIL and expressing its loyalty to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Organization and leadership
Membership
While IMU was originally an ethnic Uzbek movement, its recruitment base expanded to include Central Asians (Afghans, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Turkmens) and as well as Arabs, Chechens and Westerners.
Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan received Uyghur recruits from the diaspora in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The movement's goal is the takeover of Xinjiang and Central Asia. Uyghurs, Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and other ethnic groups flocked to serve under IMU leader Juma Namangani, who died in November 2001.
A number of the IMU's senior leaders and ideologues have been non-Uzbeks, including its Kyrgyz former military commander, Abbas Mansur, and its Mufti (religious authority), Abu Zar al-Burmi, a Pakistani national of Burmese Rohingya descent. In 2011, of the 87 "martyrs" that the IMU listed on its website, only four were Uzbeks from Uzbekistan, while 64 were from Afghanistan, 10 from Tajikistan, six from Kyrgyzstan, and one each from Tatarstan, Germany and Pakistan.
One of the mouthpieces of IMU was Abu Dher al Barmi. He was IMU's mufti, joining and then leaving ISIL in a video called (Muftiy Abu Zar Azzom Davla jamoatidan bezor buldi) (المفتي ابو ذر عزام يتبرأ من تأييد تنظيم الدولة).
Afghan troops liquidated Ammar Sahib. Usman Ghazi, Abu Usman Adil, Tahir Yuldashev, and Juma Namangani were among the commanders of the IMU.
Leadership
On 30 September 2009, a man claiming to be a bodyguard of Tahir Yuldashev reported that Yuldashev had been killed in a US missile airstrike that occurred shortly after the death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.
The next day, Pakistan and US officials confirmed this report. Almost a year later, the IMU website confirmed that Yuldashev had been killed on 27 August 2009 by a US Predator drone strike in South Waziristan, and described him as a Shaheed, or martyr.
On 17 August 2010, the IMU announced that Yuldashev's long-serving deputy, Abu Usman Adil, had been appointed the group's new leader. In his first statement, Adil called on his followers to wage jihad in the southern portion of Kyrgyzstan, in the wake of ethnic violence against the Uzbek minority. Adil was killed in an April 2012 US drone strike in Pakistan. In August 2012 the group announced that Adil's deputy, Usman Ghazi, was their new leader.
Funding
The IMU is alleged by the magazine Eurasia Critic to be involved in organized criminal activities such as controlling and facilitating drug smuggling. The IMU is alleged by the United States of America to receive funding from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Media
The IMU's media arm is known as Jundallah Studio. It produces high-quality videos, publishes audio and written statements, and has released newsletters in Uzbek, Russian, Persian, Arabic, German, Burmese, Urdu and Pashto. The group also ran an Uzbek-language website called Furqon, which is no longer accessible.
Claimed and alleged attacks
The Government of Uzbekistan accused the IMU of being involved in the 2004 Tashkent bombings, which left 33 militants, 10 policemen, and four civilian dead; however, an IMU splinter group called the Islamic Jihad Union later claimed responsibility.
The Tajik government announced that it was seeking 23 suspected IMU members who Tajik authorities say attacked supporters of Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov on 28 September 2006, wounding two people.
In 2008, a number of men were arrested in eastern France, the Netherlands and Germany, for allegedly raising funds for the IMU between 2003 and 2008. Nine out of the ten men were convicted on 8 January 2013 in a Paris court.
The IMU and Taliban were blamed for the 28 May 2011 bombing in Taloqan, Afghanistan, that killed a top Afghan National Police commander, General Mohammed Daud Daud, and wounded the governor of Takhar Province and a German general.
An IMU suicide bomber was responsible for the December 2011 attack on the funeral of an Afghan government official in Takhar, killing 19 people, including Alhaj Mutalib Baig, an ethnic Uzbek Member of Parliament and former Tahkar Chief of Police.
IMU attacks on Pakistan
In April 2012, an estimated 150 IMU and TTP fighters launched a successful attack on Bannu Prison in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, freeing nearly 400 prisoners, including Adnan Rashid, who was convicted of involvement in a 2003 assassination attempt against then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
The BBC reported that members of the IMU took part in the 15 December 2012 Peshawar airport attack, resulting in the deaths of 4 civilians and all 5 attackers.
In June 2014, the IMU claimed responsibility for an attack on Pakistan's Jinnah International Airport. At least 39 people were killed in the attack, including all 10 attackers.
A video released by the IMU in April 2015 showed members of the group beheading a Hazara man, one of 31 people kidnapped from a bus in Afghanistan in February 2015. The men threatened to kill more hostages unless their comrades are released from Afghan jails.
Analysis
In September 2002, an aide to Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the Foreign Minister of the Taliban, claimed he had been sent prior to 9/11 to warn the U.S. government of an impending attack and to persuade them to take military action against Al Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan. The aide claimed advance knowledge of the attack came from Yuldashev, which if true would indicate a high degree of cooperation between Al-Qaeda and the IMU.
In his book Terror and Consent, Philip Bobbitt noted that Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, had met Osama bin Laden in Kabul in August 2001. Mahmood is said to have disclosed that bin Laden "insisted that he already had sufficient fissile material to build a [nuclear] bomb, having obtained it from former Soviet stockpiles through the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan."
In 2003, A. Elizabeth Jones, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, testified on the threat of terrorism in Central Asia before the U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, arguing that the greatest threats were the IMU, and Hizb ut-Tahrir. Jones said that despite the death of Namangani, the "IMU is still active in the region -- particularly in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan -- and it represents a serious threat to the region and therefore to our interests."
Mahmadsaid Juraqulov, head of the anti-organized crime department in the Interior Ministry of Tajikistan, told reporters in Dushanbe on 16 October 2006 that the "Islamic Movement of Turkestan is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan," and that Uzbek secret services manufactured the change in name. Juraqulov also said that the IMT was not a major security threat to Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan. "Everyone knows that it is in Uzbekistan that [the IMU] wants to create problems. For them, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are just regrouping bases they're trying to reach."
Some analysts have asserted that rather than the image of a unified IMU under Namangani and Yuldeshev, it has always been an organization consisting of two poles: the radical, spiritual (Yuldeshev) and militant, criminal (Namangani).
Designation as a terrorist organization
Countries and organizations below have officially listed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as a terrorist organization.
References
Anti-Pakistan sentiment
Anti-Zionist organizations
Islamist groups
Organizations designated as terrorist by Canada
Salafi Jihadist groups
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389401
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific%20management
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Scientific management
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Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes to management. Scientific management is sometimes known as Taylorism after its pioneer, Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Taylor began the theory's development in the United States during the 1880s and 1890s within manufacturing industries, especially steel. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s. Although Taylor died in 1915, by the 1920s scientific management was still influential but had entered into competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas.
Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today. These include: analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality; empiricism; work ethic; efficiency through elimination of wasteful activities (as in muda, muri and mura); standardization of best practices; disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or to protect the social status of particular workers with particular skill sets; the transformation of craft production into mass production; and knowledge transfer between workers and from workers into tools, processes, and documentation.
Name
Taylor's own names for his approach initially included "shop management" and "process management". However, "scientific management" came to national attention in 1910 when crusading attorney Louis Brandeis (then not yet Supreme Court justice) popularized the term. Brandeis had sought a consensus term for the approach with the help of practitioners like Henry L. Gantt and Frank B. Gilbreth. Brandeis then used the consensus of "SCIENTIFIC management" when he argued before the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) that a proposed increase in railroad rates was unnecessary despite an increase in labor costs; he alleged scientific management would overcome railroad inefficiencies (The ICC ruled against the rate increase, but also dismissed as insufficiently substantiated that concept the railroads were necessarily inefficient.) Taylor recognized the nationally known term "scientific management" as another good name for the concept, and adopted it in the title of his influential 1911 monograph.
History
The Midvale Steel Company, "one of America's great armor plate making plants," was the birthplace of scientific management. In 1877, Frederick W. Taylor started as a clerk in Midvale, but advanced to foreman in 1880. As foreman, Taylor was "constantly impressed by the failure of his [team members] to produce more than about one-third of [what he deemed] a good day's work". Taylor determined to discover, by scientific methods, how long it should take men to perform each given piece of work; and it was in the fall of 1882 that he started to put the first features of scientific management into operation.
Horace Bookwalter Drury, in his 1918 work, Scientific management: A History and Criticism, identified seven other leaders in the movement, most of whom learned of and extended scientific management from Taylor's efforts:
Henry L. Gantt (1861–1919)
Carl G. Barth (1860–1939)
Horace K. Hathaway (1878–1944)
Morris L. Cooke (1872–1960)
Sanford E. Thompson (1867–1949)
Frank B. Gilbreth (1868–1924). Gilbreth's independent work on "motion study" is on record as early as 1885; after meeting Taylor in 1906 and being introduced to scientific management, Gilbreth devoted his efforts to introducing scientific management into factories. Gilbreth and his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878–1972) performed micro-motion studies using stop-motion cameras as well as developing the profession of industrial/organizational psychology.
Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) began determining what industrial plants' products and costs were compared to what they ought to be in 1895. Emerson did not meet Taylor until December 1900, and the two never worked together.
Emerson's testimony in late 1910 to the Interstate Commerce Commission brought the movement to national attention and instigated serious opposition. Emerson contended the railroads might save $1,000,000 a day by paying greater attention to efficiency of operation. By January 1911, a leading railroad journal began a series of articles denying they were inefficiently managed.
When steps were taken to introduce scientific management at the government-owned Rock Island Arsenal in early 1911, it was opposed by Samuel Gompers, founder and President of the American Federation of Labor (an alliance of craft unions). When a subsequent attempt was made to introduce the bonus system into the government's Watertown Arsenal foundry during the summer of 1911, the entire force walked out for a few days. Congressional investigations followed, resulting in a ban on the use of time studies and pay premiums in Government service.
Taylor's death in 1915 at age 59 left the movement without its original leader. In management literature today, the term "scientific management" mostly refers to the work of Taylor and his disciples ("classical", implying "no longer current, but still respected for its seminal value") in contrast to newer, improved iterations of efficiency-seeking methods. Today, task-oriented optimization of work tasks is nearly ubiquitous in industry.
Scientific Management Principles
Frederick Taylor tackled the challenge of making a business productive and profitable in his years of service and research in a steel company. He believed in a scientific solution. In his "Shop Management" article, Taylor explained that there were two facts that appeared "most noteworthy" in the field of management: (a) "Great unevenness": the lack of uniformity in what is called "the management", (b) The lack of relation between good (shop) management and the pay. He added, "The art of management has been defined, "as knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way"."
In this regard, he highlighted that although there is "no concise definition" for this art, "the relations between employers and men form without question the most important part of this art". He then continued that a good management must in long run give satisfaction to both managers and workers. Taylor emphasized that he was advocating "high wages" and "low labor cost" as "the foundation of the best management". Discussing the pays for different classes of workers and what he called a "first-class" workman, he compared different scenarios of workmanship and their pros and cons. For best management, he asserted with ample reasons that managers in an organization should follow the following guideline: (a) Each worker should be given the highest grade of work they are capable of.
(b) Each worker should be demanded the work that a first-grade worker can do and thrive.
(c) When each worker works at the pace of a first-grade worker, they should be paid 30% to 100% beyond the average of their class. While Taylor stated that sharing "the equitable division of the profits" is required in an organization, he believed that management could unite high wages with a low labor cost by application of the following principles:(a) A large daily task: Each worker in the organization, should have a clearly defined task.
(b) Standard Conditions: Each worker should be given standard conditions and appliances that will enable him to perform his tasks.
(c) High pay for success: Each worker should be rewarded when he accomplishes their task.
(d) Loss in case of failure: When a worker fails, he should know that he would share the loss.In Scientific Management, the responsibility of the success or failure of an organization is not solely on the shoulder of the workers, as it is in the old management systems. According to Scientific Management, the managers are taking half of the burden by being responsible for securing the proper work conditions for workers' prosperity.
In his book "Principles of Scientific Management", Taylor formally introduced his methodically investigated theory of Scientific Management. Although he explained the details of Scientific Management in his works, he did not provide its concise definition. Shortly before his death, Taylor approved the following summary and definition of Scientific Management that Hoxie prepared: "Scientific management is a system devised by industrial engineers for the purpose of serving the common interests of employers, workmen and society at large through the elimination of avoidable wastes, the general improvement of the processes and methods of production, and the just and scientific distribution of the product." Taylor indicated that Scientific Management consisted of four underlying principles:1) the development of a true science: We must scientifically analyze all parts of a job. This consists of examining the elements and steps that required to carry out the work, as well as measuring the optimum time for each task. We also need to know the working time per day for a qualified worker.
2) the scientific selection of the workers: The most suitable person for the job is selected.
3) the scientific education and training of the workers: There is a clear division of work and responsibility between managers and workers. While workers are carrying out the job with quality and workmanship, managers are responsible for planning, supervision, and proper training of the workers.
4) cooperation between managers and workers: Managers and workers scientific cooperation is required to ensure the proper and high-quality execution of the jobs.There are various tools that would enable us to serve these principles, such as time and motion study, functional foremanship, standardization of tools and movements of workers for each type of work, clear instructions for workers, and cost accounting.
There are many other features, tools, and methods that Taylor developed and recommended during his job at the steel plant and research, which have footprints in other fields, such as accounting and Engineering. Some of his concepts, studies, and findings has led to intellectual revolution in organization management. Taylor made contributions to various fields such as work measurement, production planning and control, process design, quality control, ergonomics, and human engineering.
Pursuit of economic efficiency
Flourishing in the late 19th and early 20th century, scientific management built on earlier pursuits of economic efficiency. While it was prefigured in the folk wisdom of thrift, it favored empirical methods to determine efficient procedures rather than perpetuating established traditions. Thus it was followed by a profusion of successors in applied science, including time and motion study, the Efficiency Movement (which was a broader cultural echo of scientific management's impact on business managers specifically), Fordism, operations management, operations research, industrial engineering, management science, manufacturing engineering, logistics, business process management, business process reengineering, lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma. There is a fluid continuum linking scientific management with the later fields, and the different approaches often display a high degree of compatibility.
Taylor rejected the notion, which was universal in his day and still held today, that the trades, including manufacturing, were resistant to analysis and could only be performed by craft production methods. In the course of his empirical studies, Taylor examined various kinds of manual labor. For example, most bulk materials handling was manual at the time; material handling equipment as we know it today was mostly not developed yet. He looked at shoveling in the unloading of railroad cars full of ore; lifting and carrying in the moving of iron pigs at steel mills; the manual inspection of bearing balls; and others. He discovered many concepts that were not widely accepted at the time. For example, by observing workers, he decided that labor should include rest breaks so that the worker has time to recover from fatigue, either physical (as in shoveling or lifting) or mental (as in the ball inspection case). Workers were allowed to take more rests during work, and productivity increased as a result.
Subsequent forms of scientific management were articulated by Taylor's disciples, such as Henry Gantt; other engineers and managers, such as Benjamin S. Graham; and other theorists, such as Max Weber. Taylor's work also contrasts with other efforts, including those of Henri Fayol and those of Frank Gilbreth, Sr. and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (whose views originally shared much with Taylor's but later diverged in response to Taylorism's inadequate handling of human relations).
Soldiering
Scientific management requires a high level of managerial control over employee work practices and entails a higher ratio of managerial workers to laborers than previous management methods. Such detail-oriented management may cause friction between workers and managers.
Taylor observed that some workers were more talented than others, and that even smart ones were often unmotivated. He observed that most workers who are forced to perform repetitive tasks tend to work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work has been observed in many industries and many countries and has been called by various terms. Taylor used the term "soldiering", a term that reflects the way conscripts may approach following orders, and observed that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work that the slowest among them does. Taylor describes soldiering as "the greatest evil with which the working-people ... are now afflicted".
This reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their remuneration. He, therefore, proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. He posited that time and motion studies combined with rational analysis and synthesis could uncover one best method for performing any particular task, and that prevailing methods were seldom equal to these best methods. Crucially, Taylor himself prominently acknowledged that if each employee's compensation was linked to their output, their productivity would go up. Thus his compensation plans usually included piece rates. In contrast, some later adopters of time and motion studies ignored this aspect and tried to get large productivity gains while passing little or no compensation gains to the workforce, which contributed to resentment against the system.
Productivity, automation, and unemployment
Taylorism led to productivity increases, meaning fewer workers or working hours were needed to produce the same amount of goods. In the short term, productivity increases like those achieved by Taylor's efficiency techniques can cause considerable disruption. Labor relations often become contentious over whether the financial benefits will accrue to owners in the form of increased profits, or workers in the form of increased wages. As a result of decomposition and documentation of manufacturing processes, companies employing Taylor's methods might be able to hire lower-skill workers, enlarging the pool of workers and thus lowering wages and job security.
In the long term, most economists consider productivity increases as a benefit to the economy overall, and necessary to improve the standard of living for consumers in general. By the time Taylor was doing his work, improvements in agricultural productivity had freed up a large portion of the workforce for the manufacturing sector, allowing those workers in turn to buy new types of consumer goods instead of working as subsistence farmers. In later years, increased manufacturing efficiency would free up large sections of the workforce for the service sector. If captured as profits or wages, the money generated by more-productive companies would be spent on new goods and services; if free market competition forces prices down close to the cost of production, consumers effectively capture the benefits and have more money to spend on new goods and services. Either way, new companies and industries spring up to profit from increased demand, and due to freed-up labor are able to hire workers. But the long-term benefits are no guarantee that individual displaced workers will be able to get new jobs that paid them as well or better as their old jobs, as this may require access to education or job training, or moving to different part of the country where new industries are growing. Inability to obtain new employment due to mismatches like these is known as structural unemployment, and economists debate to what extent this is happening in the long term, if at all, as well as the impact on income inequality for those who do find jobs.
Though not foreseen by early proponents of scientific management, detailed decomposition and documentation of an optimal production method also makes automation of the process easier, especially physical processes that would later use industrial control systems and numerical control. Widespread economic globalization also creates opportunity for work to be outsourced to lower-wage areas, with knowledge transfer made easier if an optimal method is already clearly documented. Especially when wages or wage differentials are high, automation and offshoring can result in significant productivity gains and similar questions of who benefits and whether or not technological unemployment is persistent. Because automation is often best suited to tasks that are repetitive and boring, and can also be used for tasks that are dirty, dangerous, and demeaning, proponents believe that in the long run it will free up human workers for more creative, safer, and more enjoyable work.
Taylorism and unions
The early history of labor relations with scientific management in the U.S. was described by Horace Bookwalter Drury:
In 1911, organized labor erupted with strong opposition to scientific management, including from Samuel Gompers, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Once the time-and-motion men had completed their studies of a particular task, the workers had very little opportunity for further thinking, experimenting, or suggestion-making. Taylorism was criticized for turning the worker into an "automaton" or "machine", making work monotonous and unfulfilling by doing one small and rigidly defined piece of work instead of using complex skills with the whole production process done by one person. "The further 'progress' of industrial development... increased the anomic or forced division of labor," the opposite of what Taylor thought would be the effect. Some workers also complained about being made to work at a faster pace and producing goods of lower quality.
The Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts provides an example of the application and repeal of the Taylor system in the workplace, due to worker opposition. In the early 20th century, neglect in the Watertown shops included overcrowding, dim lighting, lack of tools and equipment, and questionable management strategies in the eyes of the workers. Frederick W. Taylor and Carl G. Barth visited Watertown in April 1909 and reported on their observations at the shops. Their conclusion was to apply the Taylor system of management to the shops to produce better results. Efforts to install the Taylor system began in June 1909. Over the years of time study and trying to improve the efficiency of workers, criticisms began to evolve. Workers complained of having to compete with one another, feeling strained and resentful, and feeling excessively tired after work. In June 1913, employees of the Watertown Arsenal petitioned to abolish the practice of scientific management there. A number of magazine writers inquiring into the effects of scientific management found that the "conditions in shops investigated contrasted favorably with those in other plants".
A committee of the U.S. House of Representatives investigated and reported in 1912, concluding that scientific management did provide some useful techniques and offered valuable organizational suggestions, but that it also gave production managers a dangerously high level of uncontrolled power. After an attitude survey of the workers revealed a high level of resentment and hostility towards scientific management, the Senate banned Taylor's methods at the arsenal.
Taylor had a largely negative view of unions, and believed they only led to decreased productivity. Efforts to resolve conflicts with workers included methods of scientific collectivism, making agreements with unions, and the personnel management movement.
Relationship to Fordism
It is often assumed that Fordism derives from Taylor's work. Taylor apparently made this assumption himself when visiting the Ford Motor Company's Michigan plants not too long before he died, but it is likely that the methods at Ford were evolved independently, and that any influence from Taylor's work was indirect at best. Charles E. Sorensen, a principal of the company during its first four decades, disclaimed any connection at all. There was a belief at Ford, which remained dominant until Henry Ford II took over the company in 1945, that the world's experts were worthless, because if Ford had listened to them, it would have failed to attain its great successes. Henry Ford felt that he had succeeded in spite of, not because of, experts, who had tried to stop him in various ways (disagreeing about price points, production methods, car features, business financing, and other issues). Sorensen thus was dismissive of Taylor and lumped him into the category of useless experts. Sorensen held the New England machine tool vendor Walter Flanders in high esteem and credits him for the efficient floorplan layout at Ford, claiming that Flanders knew nothing about Taylor. Flanders may have been exposed to the spirit of Taylorism elsewhere, and may have been influenced by it, but he did not cite it when developing his production technique. Regardless, the Ford team apparently did independently invent modern mass production techniques in the period of 1905–1915, and they themselves were not aware of any borrowing from Taylorism. Perhaps it is only possible with hindsight to see the zeitgeist that (indirectly) connected the budding Fordism to the rest of the efficiency movement during the decade of 1905–1915.
Adoption in planned economies
Scientific management appealed to managers of planned economies because central economic planning relies on the idea that the expenses that go into economic production can be precisely predicted and can be optimized by design.
Soviet Union
By 1913 Vladimir Lenin wrote that the "most widely discussed topic today in Europe, and to some extent in Russia, is the 'system' of the American engineer, Frederick Taylor"; Lenin decried it as merely a "'scientific' system of sweating" more work from laborers. Again in 1914, Lenin derided Taylorism as "man's enslavement by the machine". However, after the Russian Revolutions brought him to power, Lenin wrote in 1918 that the "Russian is a bad worker [who must] learn to work. The Taylor system... is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field."
In the Soviet Union, Taylorism was advocated by Aleksei Gastev and nauchnaia organizatsia truda (the movement for the scientific organization of labor). It found support in both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Gastev continued to promote this system of labor management until his arrest and execution in 1939. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet Union enthusiastically embraced Fordism and Taylorism, importing American experts in both fields as well as American engineering firms to build parts of its new industrial infrastructure. The concepts of the Five Year Plan and the centrally planned economy can be traced directly to the influence of Taylorism on Soviet thinking. As scientific management was believed to epitomize American efficiency, Joseph Stalin even claimed that "the combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism."
Sorensen was one of the consultants who brought American know-how to the USSR during this era, before the Cold War made such exchanges unthinkable. As the Soviet Union developed and grew in power, both sides, the Soviets and the Americans, chose to ignore or deny the contribution that American ideas and expertise had made: the Soviets because they wished to portray themselves as creators of their own destiny and not indebted to a rival, and the Americans because they did not wish to acknowledge their part in creating a powerful communist rival. Anti-communism had always enjoyed widespread popularity in America, and anti-capitalism in Russia, but after World War II, they precluded any admission by either side that technologies or ideas might be either freely shared or clandestinely stolen.
East Germany
By the 1950s, scientific management had grown dated, but its goals and practices remained attractive and were also being adopted by the German Democratic Republic as it sought to increase efficiency in its industrial sectors. Workers engaged in a state-planned instance of process improvement, pursuing the same goals that were contemporaneously pursued in capitalist societies, as in the Toyota Production System.
Criticism of rigor
Taylor believed that the scientific method of management included the calculations of exactly how much time it takes a man to do a particular task, or his rate of work. Critics of Taylor complained that such a calculation relies on certain arbitrary, non-scientific decisions such as what constituted the job, which men were timed, and under which conditions. Any of these factors are subject to change, and therefore can produce inconsistencies. Some dismiss so-called "scientific management" or Taylorism as pseudoscience.
Others are critical of the representativeness of the workers Taylor selected to take his measurements.
Variations of scientific management after Taylorism
In the 1900s
Taylorism was one of the first attempts to systematically treat management and process improvement as a scientific problem, and Taylor is considered a founder of modern industrial engineering. Taylorism may have been the first "bottom-up" method and found a lineage of successors that have many elements in common. Later methods took a broader approach, measuring not only productivity but quality. With the advancement of statistical methods, quality assurance and quality control began in the 1920s and 1930s. During the 1940s and 1950s, the body of knowledge for doing scientific management evolved into operations management, operations research, and management cybernetics. In the 1980s total quality management became widely popular, growing from quality control techniques. In the 1990s "re-engineering" went from a simple word to a mystique. Today's Six Sigma and lean manufacturing could be seen as new kinds of scientific management, although their evolutionary distance from the original is so great that the comparison might be misleading. In particular, Shigeo Shingo, one of the originators of the Toyota Production System, believed that this system and Japanese management culture in general should be seen as a kind of scientific management. These newer methods are all based on systematic analysis rather than relying on tradition and rule of thumb.
Other thinkers, even in Taylor's own time, also proposed considering the individual worker's needs, not just the needs of the process. Critics said that in Taylorism, "the worker was taken for granted as a cog in the machinery." James Hartness published The Human Factor in Works Management in 1912, while Frank Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth offered their own alternatives to Taylorism. The human relations school of management (founded by the work of Elton Mayo) evolved in the 1930s as a counterpoint or complement of scientific management. Taylorism focused on the organization of the work process, and human relations helped workers adapt to the new procedures. Modern definitions of "quality control" like ISO-9000 include not only clearly documented and optimized manufacturing tasks, but also consideration of human factors like expertise, motivation, and organizational culture. The Toyota Production System, from which lean manufacturing in general is derived, includes "respect for people" and teamwork as core principles.
Peter Drucker saw Frederick Taylor as the creator of knowledge management, because the aim of scientific management was to produce knowledge about how to improve work processes. Although the typical application of scientific management was manufacturing, Taylor himself advocated scientific management for all sorts of work, including the management of schools, universities and government. For example, Taylor believed scientific management could be extended to "the work of our salesmen". Shortly after his death, his acolyte Harlow S. Person began to lecture corporate audiences on the possibility of using Taylorism for "sales engineering" (Person was talking about what is now called sales process engineering—engineering the processes that salespeople use—not about what we call sales engineering today.) This was a watershed insight in the history of corporate marketing.
In the 2000s
Google's methods of increasing productivity and output can be seen to be influenced by Taylorism as well. The Silicon Valley company is a forerunner in applying behavioral science (such as the motivations of purpose, mastery, and autonomy set out by Daniel Pink in his 2009 book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) to increase knowledge worker productivity. In classic scientific management as well as approaches like lean management where leaders facilitate and empower teams to continuously improve their standards and values. Leading high-tech companies use the concept of nudge management to increase productivity of employees. More and more business leaders start to make use of this new scientific management.
Today's militaries employ all of the major goals and tactics of scientific management, if not under that name. Of the key points, all but wage incentives for increased output are used by modern military organizations. Wage incentives rather appear in the form of skill bonuses for enlistments.
Scientific management has had an important influence in sports, where stop watches and motion studies rule the day. (Taylor himself enjoyed sports, especially tennis and golf. He and a partner won a national championship in doubles tennis. He invented improved tennis racquets and improved golf clubs, although other players liked to tease him for his unorthodox designs, and they did not catch on as replacements for the mainstream implements).
Modern human resources can be seen to have begun in the scientific management era, most notably in the writings of Katherine M. H. Blackford.
Practices descended from scientific management are currently used in offices and in medicine (e.g. managed care) as well.
In countries with a post-industrial economy, manufacturing jobs are a relatively few, with most workers in the service sector. One approach to efficiency in information work is called digital Taylorism, which uses software to monitor the performance of employees who use computers all day.
See also
American system of manufacturing
Cheaper by the Dozen
Hawthorne effect
Henry Louis Le Châtelier (1850–1936), industrial chemist and author of French language texts on Taylorism
Modern Times (film)
The Pajama Game
Pandora's Box
Hans Renold (1852–1943), credited with introducing Taylorism to Britain
Stakhanovism
Theory X and Theory Y
Henry R. Towne (1844–1924), ASME President and author of the seminal The Engineer as An Economist (1886)
Words per minute
Exploitation
Notes
References
. ;
Bonazzi, G. (2014). Geschichte des organisatorischen Denkens. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.
Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J. & Reijers, H. (2013). Fundamentals of Business Process Management. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Freriks, R. (1996). Theoretische Modelle der Betriebsgröße im Maschinenbau. Koordination und Kontrollmechanismen bei organisatorischem Wachstum. Opladen: Leske+ Budrich.
.
Hebeisen, W. (1999). F.W. Taylor und der Taylorismus. Über das Wirken und die Lehre Taylors und die Kritik am Taylorismus. Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag AG.
Henke, J. (2004). Infoblatt Taylorismus. Frederick Winslow Taylor stellte Theorien zur Optimierung der Arbeit bzw. Unternehmen auf. Leipzig: Klett Verlag.
Koch, S. (2011). Einführung in das Management von Geschäftsprozessen. Berling Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Laube, H. (2014). Arbeiten im Silicon Valley. Wann ist endlich wieder Montag? In: Der Spiegel.
McGaughey, Ewan, 'Behavioral Economics and Labor Law' (2014) LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 20/2014
. Also available from Project Gutenberg.
Further reading
Morf, Martin (1983) Eight Scenarios for Work in the Future. in Futurist, v17 n3 pp. 24–29 Jun 1983, reprinted in Cornish, Edward and World Future Society (1985) Habitats tomorrow: homes and communities in an exciting new era : selections from The futurist, pp. 14–19
. "Shop Management" began as an address by Taylor to a meeting of the ASME, which published it in pamphlet form. The link here takes the reader to a 1912 republication by Harper & Brothers. Also available from Project Gutenberg.
External links
Special Collections: F.W. Taylor Collection. Stevens Institute of Technology has an extensive collection at its library.
History of business
Production and manufacturing
Management theory
Industrial and organizational psychology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%27l%20Abner%20%28musical%29
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Li'l Abner (musical)
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Li'l Abner is a 1956 musical with a book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, music by Gene De Paul, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Based on the comic strip Li'l Abner by Al Capp, the show is, on the surface, a broad spoof of hillbillies, but it is also a pointed satire on other topics, ranging from American politics and incompetence in the United States federal government to propriety and gender roles.
After several other writers and composers considered musicalizing the comic strip, Al Capp finally made a deal in 1955 with the eventual creators for a musical to be financed by Paramount Pictures, which wanted to follow the stage version with a film musical. The Broadway production opened on November 15, 1956, and ran for a moderately successful 693 performances. The score and Michael Kidd's choreography received critical praise, but some critics felt that the book's adaptation lost the spirit of the comic strip. Kidd and Edie Adams, as Daisy Mae, won Tony Awards, while newcomer Peter Palmer, in the title role, won a Theatre World Award. Paramount released a film version with the same title in 1959, with most of the Broadway cast reprising their roles.
History
A musical version of the popular comic strip Li'l Abner was first planned in 1946, with the book to be written by the comic strip's author, Al Capp. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were named as potential producers, though reports did not state whether they intended to write the score. However, this version never materialized, and over the next several years, various authors and composers sought to musicalize Li'l Abner, including writers Arnold Horwitt and Josh Logan.
In 1953, Arthur Schwartz and Alan Jay Lerner obtained the rights to the show from Al Capp; the three were to co-produce the show, with Schwartz writing the music and Lerner writing the book and lyrics for an opening during the 1954–55 season. The familiar comic strip characters were to be retained but Li'l Abner and his longtime sweetheart Daisy Mae would not yet be married in the musical. Hollywood star Van Johnson expressed interest in the title role, saying he would dye his hair black to match the comic strip character; he had not appeared on Broadway since the 1940 production of Pal Joey.
The Schwartz–Lerner version also fell through, but by the next year Lerner and composer Burton Lane planned to write the musical. Herman Levin would serve as producer, and rehearsals were scheduled to begin in November 1954. However, later that year, Levin announced a musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, by Lerner and Loewe. Although work was supposed to continue on the Lane–Lerner Li'l Abner, this version never appeared, and My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe's adaptation of Pygmalion, opened in 1956, becoming the hit musical of the decade.
In 1955, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank announced a Li'l Abner musical to open on Broadway in 1956, followed by a film of the musical. The music was to be written by Gene de Paul with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. De Paul and Mercer had previously written the score for the popular movie musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Michael Kidd, who had choreographed Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, was to direct and choreograph Li'l Abner. Al Capp approved the production and was to receive a share of any profits. Paramount Pictures was the sole backer of the musical and also paid $300,000 for its film rights, with Panama and Frank slated to adapt, direct, and produce the film version.
The producers conducted a long search for the actor to play the title role: over 400 actors auditioned for the part, and at one time, Dick Shawn was reported to be their preferred choice. However, the producers eventually chose unknown singer Peter Palmer, who had been serving in an army entertainment unit; Panama and Frank saw him perform on a segment of The Ed Sullivan Show featuring talented American soldiers. Palmer was a trained singer with a music degree from the University of Illinois, where he had also played football; at 6'4" and 228 pounds, Palmer had the right "look" to play Li'l Abner. He was 15 years younger than Van Johnson, who had expressed an interest in the role.
The leading female role, Daisy Mae, was relatively easier to cast. The producers knew that they wanted soprano Edie Adams, who had given a star-making performance as Eileen in the 1953 musical Wonderful Town. Adams, however, had also been offered the lead role in the original production of Candide. Adams asked director George Abbott, who had directed her in Wonderful Town, which show she should choose, and he advised her to take Daisy Mae, which she subsequently did. Coincidentally, Al Capp had been one of the three judges for the "Miss U.S. Television" contest broadcast on the DuMont Television Network in 1950 that first brought Adams national attention.
Synopsis
Act One
"It's a Typical Day" as the citizens of Dogpatch, U.S.A. go about their daily activities. As usual, sweet, curvaceous Daisy Mae Scragg is pursuing Li'l Abner Yokum who, despite being a strapping, handsome young man, isn't interested in girls or employment. Abner's domineering, diminutive Mammy sends Daisy Mae to tell Abner to come to the Cornpone Meetin' in the town square. At the fishing hole with his friends, Abner lazily reflects that if he could be anyone in the world, he'd rather be himself ("If I had my Druthers"). Daisy Mae tells the young men about the meeting, and they rush into town. Daisy is frustrated because Abner has failed to take any romantic interest in her ("If I Had My Druthers" (reprise)).
The townspeople assemble for the Cornpone Meetin', where parson Marryin' Sam leads a celebration of Dogpatch's founder, "Jubilation T. Cornpone", a bumbling Confederate general whose leadership was more beneficial to the North than to the South. Senator Fogbound, Dogpatch's U.S. congressman, tells the citizens that Congress has declared Dogpatch the most unnecessary town in the U.S., and so it must be evacuated to be used as a nuclear bomb test site to be overseen by Dr. Finsdale, a government scientist. Everyone is thrilled that Dogpatch has been picked out of the entire U.S. ("Rag Offen the Bush").
But Earthquake McGoon reminds them that if they leave Dogpatch, the annual Sadie Hawkins Day race won't take place: in Dogpatch, the only way anyone can be married is if a young woman catches a boy on Sadie Hawkins Day. Daisy Mae's sleazy unscrupulous relative, Romeo Scragg, gives Earthquake permission to marry Daisy Mae (in exchange for a $1 bribe). The townspeople decide to save Dogpatch and Sadie Hawkins Day by proving there is something necessary in the town. Daisy Mae asks Abner if he will let her catch him on Sadie Hawkins Day and tries to persuade him that he deserves to marry a girl like her, and Abner agrees that she should marry a boy like him ("Namely You"). The townspeople lament that their beloved home has been declared an "Unnecessary Town" as Dr. Finsdale declares all of their attempts to prove their worth were in vain.
It turns out that Mammy Yokum's Yokumberry Tonic, which she makes from the one-of-a-kind Yokumberry tree growing outside her home, is what has made Abner so strong and handsome.
When a short, pudgy government scientist is given a spoonful, he turns into a tall, muscular man. Abner also agrees to go to Washington, accompanied by Marryin' Sam, to allow Dr. Finadale and the government to test the tonic on the scrawny men of Dogpatch. There, greedy, tyrannical General Bullmoose wants to buy the formula for Yokumberry Tonic, and he is angry that Li'l Abner intends to turn the formula over to the government for free ("What's Good for General Bullmoose"). He hatches a dastardly scheme in which his girlfriend, femme fatale Appassionata Von Climax, will catch Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day. Once they're married, Bullmoose will kill Abner, and the formula will belong to his widow, Appassionata.
Abner and Marryin' Sam return to Dogpatch with the happy news that "The Country's In the Very Best of Hands". On Sadie Hawkins Day, General Bullmoose and Appassionata arrive in Dogpatch. They hire Evil Eye Fleagle to help Appassionata catch Abner. The race begins, and the young women of Dogpatch pursue the young men ("Sadie Hawkins Day" ballet). Though Daisy Mae, with the help of Stupefyin' Jones (any man who looks at her freezes), almost succeeds in catching Abner, Evil Eye Fleagle uses his evil eye to freeze everyone in the race, and Appassionata calmly walks up to Abner and claims him as hers.
Act Two
In Washington, Dr. Finsdale and the scientists testing Yokumberry Tonic dream of a time when life will be totally controlled by science ("Oh Happy Day"). In Dogpatch, Daisy Mae concludes that the reason she couldn't win Abner is that she, at age seventeen, is too old and no longer beautiful, and Marryin' Sam joins her lament ("I'm Past My Prime"). Mammy Yokum has a vision in which she sees Bullmoose and Apassionata's plot to kill Li'l Abner. Daisy Mae asks Earthquake McGoon to go to Washington, D.C. to save Li'l Abner, promising to marry him if he does.
In Washington, an engagement party is being held for Li'l Abner and Appassionata. General Bullmoose has Evil Eye Fleagle on hand; since Fleagle's evil eye can require him to do anything requested, Apassionata won't even have to marry Abner to get the formula. The General is planning to simply have Fleagle use his eye on Abner, get the formula for Yokumberry Tonic, and then order Abner to commit suicide. Mammy and Pappy Yokum, Earthquake, Daisy Mae, and the ladies of Dogpatch all show up to sabotage the party. When Fleagle tries to use his evil eye on Abner, Earthquake holds up a mirrored serving tray to protect himself, and the beam from Fleagle's eye bounces off the tray and rebounds onto General Bullmoose. Mammy Yokum questions the General, and he reveals the entire plot. The police arrest him and Apassionata.
The women of Dogpatch go to the laboratory to see the results of Yokumberry Tonic. Their scrawny husbands have been transformed into handsome men, but they have no interest in their wives. Dr. Finsdale explains that this is an unfortunate side effect of the tonic: it kills men's romantic interests. The women beg for him to "Put 'Em Back" the way they were before they took the tonic. Daisy tells Abner that she's promised to marry Earthquake since he came to Washington and saved Abner, but she'd rather marry Abner ("Namely You" (reprise)). Softspoken Pappy Yokum tells Abner that he has a secret potion which will make Abner want to marry Daisy Mae. Abner agrees to take it once they get back to Dogpatch.
Back in Dogpatch, Marryin' Sam is officiating at Daisy Mae and Earthquake's wedding. Before the wedding, Daisy introduces her filthy relatives to Earthquake, saying that they'll be coming to live with them once they are married. Marryin' Sam begins the ceremony by warning Earthquake of the potential consequences of marriage ("The Matrimonial Stomp"). Abner and Pappy interrupt the ceremony, and Abner takes the potion (Pappy whispers to Mammy that it's really just water) and declares that he wants to marry Daisy Mae. Earthquake now happily relinquishes Daisy Mae to marry Abner instead. Dr. Finsdale arrives, warning that the atomic bombs will arrive soon. As the townspeople try to move the town's statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone, a plaque bearing a declaration by Abraham Lincoln is revealed: because Cornpone's military blunders almost single-handedly allowed the North to win the Civil War, Dogpatch is designated a national shrine. Dr. Finsdale cancels the bombings, the scrawny men of Dogpatch return home to their happy wives, and the citizens of Dogpatch honor Jubilation T. Cornpone as Abner kisses Daisy Mae (Finale).
Musical Numbers
Act I
A Typical Day – Dogpatchers
If I Had My Druthers – Li'l Abner and Cronies
If I Had My Druthers (Reprise) – Daisy Mae
Jubilation T. Cornpone – Marryin' Sam and Dogpatchers
Rag Offen the Bush – Dogpatchers
Namely You – Daisy Mae and Li'l Abner
Unnecessary Town – Li'l Abner, Daisy Mae and Dogpatchers
What's Good for General Bullmoose – Secretaries
There's Room Enough For Us†
The Country's in the Very Best of Hands – Li'l Abner and Marryin' Sam
Sadie Hawkins Day (Ballet) – Dogpatchers
Act II
Oh Happy Day – Drs. Finsdale, Smithborn, Krogmeyer and Schleifitz
I'm Past My Prime – Daisy Mae and Marryin' Sam
Love in a Home – Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae
Progress Is the Root of All Evil – Bullmoose
Progress Is the Root of All Evil (Reprise) – Bullmoose
Put 'Em Back – Wives
Namely You (Reprise) – Daisy Mae
The Matrimonial Stomp – Marryin' Sam and Dogpatchers
Finale – Company
†Added after the show opened
Productions
The Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd and orchestrated by Philip J. Lang, opened on November 15, 1956, at the St. James Theatre where it ran for 693 performances. The original Broadway cast starred Peter Palmer in the title role and Edie Adams (billed as Edith Adams) as Daisy Mae. The cast included Howard St. John as General Bullmoose, Stubby Kaye as Marryin' Sam, Tina Louise as Appassionata von Climax, Julie Newmar as Stupefyin' Jones, Al Nesor as Evil Eye Fleagle, Charlotte Rae as Mammy Yokum, Joe E. Marks as Pappy Yokum, Carmen Alvarez as Moonbeam McSwine, Ted Thurston as Senator Jack S. Phogbound, Bern Hoffman as Earthquake McGoon, and Tony Mordente as Lonesome Polecat. Alvin Colt designed the costumes, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Costume Design. The wardrobe is on display at the Costume World Broadway Collection in Pompano Beach, Florida.
In 1998, Li'l Abner was presented in concert as part of the New York City Center's Encores! series.
Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, presented the musical from April 21 to July 2, 2006. The production was updated to contemporary times and included references to Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, and Al Sharpton, among others, and the actor who played General Bullmoose was a Dick Cheney (at the time the U.S. vice president) look-alike.
"Reprise! Broadway's Best" produced the musical in Los Angeles in February 2008.
Film and television
A film based on the stage musical was made by Paramount and released in 1959, with most of the Broadway cast reprising their roles. The film was shot to resemble a stage set, with the buildings and surroundings in two-dimensions, giving the sense of a "proscenium dividing audience and performer".
A TV adaption was produced in 1971 starring Ray Young as Li'l Abner, Nancee Parkinson as Daisy Mae, Billy Bletcher as Pappy Yokum, Donald O’Connor as General Bullmoose and Billie Hayes, reprising her role as Mammy Yokum, which she had played in the 1959 film version.
Response
Critical reception
1956 Original Broadway Production
The 1956 original Broadway production opened to great praise for Michael Kidd's choreography, and the score was generally well received. However, some critics thought that the creators of the musical had not effectively translated the original comic strip to the stage, and there was some critical disagreement about whether the satirical elements were effective. In the New York Herald Tribune, for example, Walter Kerr praised Kidd's direction and choreography, saying that Kidd "knows how to set fists and feet pounding against the floor. ... Every time he does it the air sizzles and crackles". He also praised the score, stating, "Every time ... the orchestra strikes up for one of Johnny Mercer's and Gene de Paul's salutes to comic-strip fury, the beat is driving, the voices are clamoring. ... It's all done with zip and zingo". John Chapman of the Daily News found Li'l Abner very enjoyable, stating, "I decided I was going to like it all very much soon after the curtain rose and this fetching little Edith Adams sidled up to this big hunk, Peter Palmer, and said, shyly, 'Abner, I brought you some worms.' There is a cast which is as remarkable for its ability to entertain as for its picturesqueness". He praised the satirical lyrics, stating, "Johnny Mercer's lyrics bring to mind the salty and saucy days of Lorenz Hart and Ira Gershwin [as they] jab at our personal and national foibles".
Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times lauded Michael Kidd's choreography, stating, "If everyone in Li'l Abner were as talented as Michael Kidd, everything would be as brilliant as the ballets, and probably the world would be gayer, too. But it is difficult to make a fluent musical romance out of some characters who may have hearts of gold but are not very bright in the upper story". Atkinson thought the book of the musical was inferior to the choreography, stating that the book did "not have the lightness, simplicity, and speed of the Dogpatch folks. ... Mr. Kidd has caught the spirit of Dogpatch civilization brilliantly enough to suggest that ballet is a more suitable medium than words for animating Al Capp's cartoon drawings".
Tom Donnelly of the New York World-Telegram & Sun thought that the production had not retained the spirit of the comic strip, stating, "Those aren't real Dogpatch people stompin' and whompin' and cavortin' across that stage. Those are (sob!) Broadway actors done up in funny looking costumes". He also thought that too much of the libretto was spent explaining the Dogpatch milieu, which Donnelly assumed would be familiar to most audience members since Li'l Abner was at that time a very popular comic strip. Conversely, John McClain of the New York Journal American thought the show would have been incomprehensible to anyone not already familiar with the comic strip. McClain also thought the show's political satire was of "questionable taste", asserting, "it's poor timing to feature a song about 'The Country's in the Very Best of Hands', which attempts to show it isn't, and to haul out and shove all over the stage that dreary caricature of a relentless millionaire". However, McClain still concluded, "it is sure to be a great big hit. Li'l Abner is bountiful, lively, and tuneful".
1998 Encores! Production
In his review of the 1998 Encores! production, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times praised the production, calling it a "stylish revisiting", saying, "everything we have come to expect of [the Encores! series] is in evidence here: a fresh faced, multitalented cast; imaginative staging from the director, Christopher Ashley; careful attention ... to recreating the original orchestrations; stylish playing from the band, and wonderfully kinetic choreography". However, Tommasini thought the show itself was flawed, pronouncing the book "dated-on-arrival" and saying, "Even in 1956 it must have been hard to find much satirical humor in [the plot]. Today it's downright creepy". He conceded that "the Mercer–De Paul has some tuneful gems" but opined that "Mercer's witty lyrics create a paradox for the actors: characters who sing clever lyrics inevitably sound clever. ... So the score undermines the dimwitted characterizations". Irv Lichtman of Billboard favorably reviewed both the production and the show itself, saying the performance exemplified Encores' "utterly delightful, right-on-the-mark performances". He wrote, "The successful but largely forgotten 1956 musical Li'l Abner is certainly not a dud, for it has good-natured energy and a bright and tuneful score by Gene DePaul and Johnny Mercer ... the show serves well as one of those solid "knockabout" shows Broadway turned out with regularity through the '50s". He praised the "playful zest" of the characterizations and "fine re-creations of the original choreography".
2006 Goodspeed Revival
In The New York Times review of the 2006 Goodspeed production, Anita Gates generally approved of the new topical references added to the show, noting that "Scott Schwartz's colorful new production at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam has updated some of the political references, but the show's message – typified by the gullible Dogpatchers' song "The Country's in the Very Best of Hands" – remains the same". Gates stated that "the musical is cartoonish by definition and hardly one of Broadway's great treasures, but the show grows on you", opining that "most of the Johnny Mercer–Gene de Paul songs are forgettable, but "Namely Me" ... stands out". Frank Rizzo of Variety was more critical of the production, declaring, "even cartoon characters with a diminishing fan base should be shown some respect. This production, helmed with ever-increasing doses of exaggeration by Scott Schwartz, pushes the idiot quotient to new levels and overwhelms the piece's playful political commentary". He praised the show itself, asserting that it contained "many Mercer–de Paul gems in a tuneful, bright score". Rizzo stated that updating Li'l Abner was "not a bad idea, given that there are perennial themes ... that fit into today's social zeitgeist", but he thought that the updates had not been applied consistently, as the show had retained many 1950s references.
Awards and nominations
1957 Tony Awards
Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical - Edith Adams (winner)
Tony Award for Best Costume Design - Costume Design by Alvin Colt (nominee)
Tony Award for Best Choreography - Michael Kidd (winner)
Theatre World Awards
1957 Theatre World Award - Peter Palmer (winner)
1958 Theatre World Award - Wynne Miller (winner)
Notes
References
Bloom, Ken and Vlastnik, Frank (2004). Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
Hischak, Thomas (2008). The Oxford Companion to the American Musical. New York: Oxford University Press.
Suskin, Stephen (1990). Opening Night on Broadway: A Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre. New York: Schrimmer Books.
External links
Li'l Abner synopsis, song list, scenes at guidetomusicaltheatre.com
1956 musicals
1971 in American television
Broadway musicals
Li'l Abner
Musicals based on comic strips
Musicals by Johnny Mercer
American musical television films
Musical theatre television specials
Tony Award-winning musicals
Musicals set in the United States
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%20Sulawesi
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South Sulawesi
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South Sulawesi () is a province in the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital and largest city is Makassar. The province is bordered by Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi to the north, the Gulf of Bone and Southeast Sulawesi to the east, Makassar Strait to the west, and Flores Sea to the south.
The 2010 census estimated the population as 8,032,551, which makes South Sulawesi the most populous province on the island (46% of the population of Sulawesi is in South Sulawesi), and the sixth most populous province in Indonesia. At the 2020 Census this had risen to 9,073,509, and the official estimate as at mid 2022 was 9,225,747. The main ethnic groups in South Sulawesi are the Buginese, Makassarese, Toraja, and Mandar. The economy of the province is based on agriculture, fishing, and mining of gold, magnesium, iron and other metals. The pinisi, a traditional Indonesian two-masted sailing ship, is still used widely by the Buginese and Makassarese, mostly for inter-insular transportation, cargo, and fishing purposes within the Indonesian archipelago.
During the golden era of the spice trade, from the 15th to 19th centuries, South Sulawesi served as the gateway to the Maluku Islands. There were a number of small kingdoms, including two prominent ones, the Kingdom of Gowa near Makassar and the Bugis kingdom located in Bone. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) began operating in the region in the 17th century. VOC later allied with the Bugis prince, Arung Palakka, and they defeated the kingdom of Gowa. The king of Gowa, Sultan Hasanuddin was forced to sign a treaty which greatly reduced the power of Bungaya Gowa.
History
Sulawesi was first inhabited by humans around 30,000 years ago. The archaeological remains of the earliest inhabitants were discovered in caves near limestone hills around Maros, about 30 km northeast of Makassar. Pebble and flake stone tools have been collected from the river terraces in the valley of Walanae, among Soppeng and Sengkang, including the bones from giant pig and elephant species that are now extinct. Hand print paintings, estimated to be around 35,000 to 40,000 years old, have been found in the Pettakere cave, located from the town of Maros and from Makassar.
Increase in commerce due to the rise of external demand for South Sulawesi rice encouraged major agricultural expansion and political centralization in the early 14th century. Swidden agriculture was increasingly replaced with intensive wet rice cultivation, leading to a rise in population density. New settlements were founded in the interior part of the peninsula as pristine forests were cleared. These changes accompanied the rise of new interior agricultural polities, such as the Bugis chiefdoms of Boné and Wajoq, as well as the Makassar polity of Gowa.
By the early 16th century, Boné had assumed a paramount position in the eastern part of the peninsula, while the Makassar twin kingdoms of Gowa and Talloq started to expand their influence throughout the western part. Their competition for hegemony over South Sulawesi caused Gowa-Talloq and Boné to clash in the 1560s.
In 1582, Boné, Soppéng, and Wajoq signed a mutual defense pact known as the Treaty of Timurung. The alliance, also referred to as the Tellumpocco ("Three Powers", lit. "Three Peaks"), sought to stop Gowa's expansionism and to reclaim the autonomy of the Bugis polities under Gowa's vassalage. Gowa's campaigns against the alliance in 1582, 1585, and 1588 were all successfully repulsed, with another one in 1590 abandoned following the death of Gowa's ruler. By the early 17th century, however, Gowa and Talloq had become the dominant powers in South Sulawesi as they supported international commerce and embracing Islam. Gowa waged successful campaigns against the Bugis kingdoms, defeating Soppéng in 1609, Wajoq in 1610, and Boné in 1611.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) began operating in the region in the 17th century and saw the Kingdom of Gowa as an obstacle for its desire to control of the spice trade in this area. VOC later allied with the Bugis prince, Arung Palakka, who was living in exile after the fall of the Bugis. After a year-long battle, they defeated the kingdom of Gowa. And the king of Gowa, Sultan Hasanuddin was forced to sign a treaty greatly reducing the power of Bungaya Gowa. Furthermore, Palakka became ruler in South Sulawesi.
A Bugis queen later emerged to lead the resistance against the Dutch, who were busy dealing with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, but after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch returned to South Sulawesi and eradicated the queen's rebellion. But resistance of the Bugis people against colonial rule continued until 1905. In 1905, the Dutch also managed to conquer Tana Toraja.
Before the proclamation of the Republic of Indonesia, South Sulawesi consisted of a number of independent kingdoms' territory and was inhabited by four ethnic groups namely the Bugis, Makassar, Mandar, and Toraja.
On June 16, 2022, a tornado struck in the province, damaging 63 homes. One man died of a stress-induced medical issue during the tornado, but was not a direct tornado-related fatality.
Geography
South Sulawesi is located at 4°20'S 120°15'E and covers an area of 46,717.48 square kilometres. The province is bordered by Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi to the north, the Gulf of Bone and Southeast Sulawesi to the east, Makassar Strait to the west, and Flores Sea to the south.
Administrative divisions
Five years after independence, the government issued Law No. 21 of 1950, which became the basis of the legal establishment of what was then the Sulawesi province. Ten years later, the government passed Law No. 47 of 1960 which endorsed the formation of the South/Southeast Sulawesi province. Four years after that, with Act No. 13 of 1964, the provinces of South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi were separated. Forty years later, the South Sulawesi government was split into two, with the regencies of Majene, Mamasa, Mamuju, Pasangkayu, and Polewali Mandar being separated off into a new West Sulawesi province on 5 October 2004 under Act No. 26 of 2004.
The remaining South Sulawesi Province is divided into 21 regencies and three independent cities.
Demographics
Ethnic groups
The main religion in South Sulawesi is Islam at 89.62% (7,200,938). Other major religions include Protestantism 7.62% (612,751), Roman Catholicism 1.54% (124,255), Buddhism 0.24% (19,867), Hinduism 0.72% (58,393), and Confucianism 0.004% (367).
South Sulawesi has a diverse range of ethnic groups. The main three are:
The Buginese (Suku Bugis) are the largest ethnic group in South Sulawesi, comprising almost 4 million people. These people inhabit the middle of the southern peninsula of South Sulawesi. Many of these people have migrated to the outer islands around Sulawesi, even as far as Malaysia.
The Makassarese (Suku Makassar) are the second largest ethnic group in South Sulawesi. Their language is Makassar. Makassar people inhabit the southern part of the southern peninsula of South Sulawesi including the Jeneponto, Takalar, Bulukumba, Bantaeng, Gowa and Maros Regencies, Pangkajene and Islands, and Makassar city. The total population is over 2 million people.
The Torajan (Suku Toraja) are the indigenous ethnic group which inhabits the mountainous region of South Sulawesi. Their population is approximately 800,000, 70% of which still live in the regencies of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja") and North Toraja.
Language
There are various languages and dialects spoken in South Sulawesi. The majority of them belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian languages. Below is the list of major languages spoken in the province.
Makassarese is spoken in the southwestern part of the province, including the city of Makassar. It has a total of 2.1 million speakers.
Buginese is spoken in an area stretching from Pinrang in the northwest to Bulukumba in the southeast. This language is the predominant language used by many communities in South Sulawesi. It is natively spoken by around 5 million people as a first language, plus 500,000 as a second language speakers, making it one of the most widely spoken language in both South Sulawesi and the island of Sulawesi.
The Tae' language is mostly spoken in Tana Luwu, the region in the north-east of the province comprising the Luwu, North Luwu and East Luwu Regencies, together with Palopo city. It had approximately 400,000 native speakers in 2020.
The Toraja language is the native language of Tana Toraja, comprising Tana Toraja Regency and Toraja Utara Regency. It has a total of over 800,000 speakers.
Mandar, Mamuju and Pattae' are the languages spoken by the Mandar people in the province of West Sulawesi, especially in Mamuju, Polewali Mandar, Majene and Pasangkayu Regencies. In addition to the core in the tribal areas, they are also scattered in coastal parts of South Sulawesi. It is spoken by around 400,000 people.
The Duri language is a language spoken in the north of Mount Bambapuang, Enrekang and into the border of Tana Toraja. There are an estimated around 130,000 native speakers. It is the prestige variety of the Massenrempulu languages.
The Konjo language is divided into two groups: the Coastal Konjo language and the Highland Konjo language. The Coastal Konjo live in coastal areas, notably the Bulukumba area, in the southeastern corner of the southern part of the island of Sulawesi. The Mountain Konjo live in the mountains of southeastern Sulawesi, around Bawakaraeng. It has a total of almost 300,000 native speakers.
In 2010 there were 3,921,543 males and 4,111,008 females with 1,848,132 housing units, with an average of 4.34 people per unit versus national average of 3.86. Some 13.3 percent of the population was under the national poverty line.
The Human Development Index (HDI) for South Sulawesi in 2008 reached 70.22.
Life expectancy was 69.60 in 2008.
Poor population was at 12.31 percent in 2009, amounting to 963.6 thousand persons.
There was an unemployment rate of 8.90 percent in 2009, amounting to 296,559 people.
Religion
Economy
The Sulawesi economy grew 7.78 percent in 2008 and grew by 6.20 percent in 2009. Economic Growth in the First Quarter of 2010 reached 7.77 percent. The GDP in 2009 (ADHK) amounted to Rp 47.31 trillion and 99.90 Trillion (ADHB).
Natural resources
As one of the national rice granaries, South Sulawesi annually produces 2,305,469 tons of rice. Of that amount, rice designated for local consumption is around 884,375 tons and 1,421,094 tons of reserves remain for distribution to other eastern areas. Rice is even exported to Malaysia, to the Philippines, and to Papua New Guinea. The locations of the largest rice production are in the Bone regency, in Soppeng, in Wajo, in Sidrap, in Pinrang, and in Luwu (Bodowasipilu Area).
Food
In addition to corn, the South Sulawesi region also produces cassavas, sweet potatoes, green beans, peanuts, and soybeans. Some luxuries such as hybrid coconuts, cocoa, coffee, pepper, vanilla, tea, cashews, and cotton are also produced. The Tata Guna Horan Agreement (TGHK) of 2004 protects a lot of the forest in South Sulawesi creating a limited output of timber related products.
Tuna and snapper-grouper are caught in large proportions and seaweed is grown to eat. Farms also have all of the typical animals such as chickens, cows, pigs, goats, etc.
Mining
One of the factors that contributes to the high GRDP of South Sulawesi is the mining sector. Nickel, gold, magnesium, iron, granite, lead, and stone products are mined.
Transportation
Trans-Sulawesi Railway is being constructed. It will connect Makassar and Parepare. 44 km of the railway, connecting Barru to Palanro is targeted to operate in the end of 2018. The entire Makassar-Parepare railway, with a length of 150 km, will be completed in 2019.
Airports in South Sulawesi include Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport (Makassar), Palopo Lagaligo Airport (Palopo), Pongtiku Airport (Tana Toraja), and Haji Aroepala Airport (Selayar), Andi Jemma Airport (Masamba), Soroako Airport (Soroako).
Ports include Soekarno-Hatta (Makassar), Tanjung Ringgit (Palopo), Nusantara, (Pare-Pare) and Pattumbukang (Selayar).
Culture
Philosophy
Siri Na Pacce (ᨔᨗᨑᨗ ᨊ ᨄᨌᨙ) is one cultural philosophy of the Bugis-Makassar Society which must be upheld. If one is a siri' na pacce (not a person), then that person does not exceed the behavior of animals, because it has no sense of shame, self-esteem, and social concerns. The people of Bugis-Makassar teach morality in the form of advice about decency, prohibition, and the rights and obligations that dominate human action to preserve and defend himself and his honor. They have a very strong relationship with the view of Islam in terms of spirituality, where the strength of the soul can conquer the body. The core concept of siri' na pacce covers all aspects of community life and is the identity of the Bugis-Makassar.
Siri Nipakasiri (ᨔᨗᨑᨗ ᨊᨗᨄᨀᨔᨗᨑᨗ) occurs when someone insulted or treated someone outside the boundaries of reasonableness. Then he or his family had to enforce siri' (ᨔᨗᨑᨗ) to restore the honour that has been deprived of, if not it would be called "mate siri' (ᨆᨈᨙ ᨔᨗᨑᨗ)" or dead status and dignity as a human being. The Bugis-Makassar would rather die than live without siri'.
Siri Masiri (ᨔᨗᨑᨗ ᨆᨔᨗᨑᨗ) is a way of life that intends to maintain, improve, or achieve a feat performed by earnest and hard.
Traditional costume
Baju Bodo (ᨅᨍᨘ ᨅᨚᨉᨚ)[Mks] or Waju Tokko (ᨓᨍᨘ ᨈᨚᨀᨚ)[Bug] is the traditional costume of the women. Baju Bodo is rectangular and is usually short sleeved. According to customs, every color of the clothes worn by women shows the age or the dignity of the wearer. Clothing is often used for ceremonies such as weddings. But now, Baju Bodo is worn in other events such as dance competitions or to welcome guests.
Traditional dance
The traditional dance in South Sulawesi is a combination of dance elements in the form of movement, music, lighting and fashion used by dancers. The combination tells the message about the story of the habits of the community in the past. Like there is a dance that tells about the war, an expression of community excitement and welcoming guests.
In this case, the Bugis-Makassar tribe, whose numbers dominate in representing dance styles in South Sulawesi. However, the Toraja also have many traditional dances that are ritualistic. Some Mandar tribes also inhabit this province and have their own uniqueness in the arts. The rest are tribes of Duri, Pattinjo, Maiwa, Endekan, Pattae, and Ammatoa Kajang, who also paint the distinctive art of South Sulawesi.
Traditional ship
The pinisi or phinisi (ᨄᨗᨊᨗᨔᨗ) is a traditional Indonesian two-masted sailing ship. It was mainly built by the Konjo tribe, a sub-ethnic group but was, and still is used widely by the Buginese and Makassarese, mostly for inter-insular transportation, cargo, and fishing purposes within the Indonesian archipelago.
The hull of the ships looks similar to that of a dhow while the fore-and-aft rigging is similar to that of western schooners, although it might be more correctly termed to resemble a ketch, as the front mast is the larger.
The large mainsails differ from western style gaff rigs though, as they often do not have a boom and the sail is not lowered with the gaff. Instead it is reefed towards the mast, much like a curtain, thus allowing the gaff to be used as deck crane in the harbor. The lower part of the mast itself may resemble a tripod or is made of two poles. Pinisi may be 20 to 35 meters long and can weigh up to 350 tons. The masts may be as high as 30 meters above the deck.
Traditional houses
South Sulawesi has three types of traditional houses. The most known are the Rumah Panggung (Balla/Bola) from Bugis Makassar and the Tongkonan from Toraja.
Rumah Panggung ( Balla ᨅᨒ[Mks] / Bola ᨅᨚᨒ[Bug] ) Some of the considerations for the building of the house are should it face the sunrise, overlook a plateau, or overlook a cardinal direction.
Usually a good day or a month to build the house is determined by those who have the skill in that regard. Building the house is preceded by a ritual ceremony.
Tongkonan is the traditional ancestral house, or rumah adat of the Torajan people. Tongkonan have a distinguishing boat-shaped and oversized saddleback roof. Like most of Indonesia's Austronesian-based traditional architecture, tongkonan are built on piles. The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and it is usually built with the help of all of one's family members. In the original Toraja society, only nobles had the right to build tongkonan while commoners lived in smaller and less decorated homes called banua.
Traditional food
Rice and other crops such as bananas are abundant so almost all dishes are, like the Bugis Makassar cake, made from rice and bananas. Coastal areas of South Sulawesi eat Bolu (milkfish), Shrimp, Sunu (grouper), and Crab.
In South Sulawesi, the traditional food is diverse, ranging from soup to traditional cakes.
Traditional weapons
Badik (ᨅᨉᨗ)[Mks] or Kawali (ᨀᨓᨒᨗ)[Bug] A badik is a knife with a specific form developed by the Bugis and Makassar. The Badik is sharp, single or double sided, and has a length of about half a meter. Like with a kris, the blade shape is asymmetric and often decorated with prestige. However, different from the kris, the badik never had a ganja (buffer strip). Some versions from Sulawesi are decorated with inlaid gold figure on the blade called jeko. The handle is made of wood, horn or ivory in a shape of a pistol grip at a 45° to 90° angle and is often decorated with carvings. From Sulawesi, the badik soon spread to neighbouring islands like Java, Borneo, Sumatra, and as far as the Malay Peninsula, creating a wide variety of badik according to each region and ethic group.
As with other blades in the Malay Archipelago, traditionally-made badik are believed to be imbued with a supernatural force during the time of their forging. The pamor in particular is said to affect its owner, bringing either well-being and prosperity or misfortune and poverty. Aside from being used as a weapon and hunting tool, the badik is a symbol of cultural identity in Sulawesi. The Bugis and Makassar people still carry badik as part of their daily attire. The badik is worn on the right side, with the butt end of the handle pointing to the rear.
See also
Ma'jonga
Polewali-Mamasa
References
Notes
Bibliography
Provinces of Indonesia
States and territories established in 1960
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar
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Makassar
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Makassar (, , ), formerly Ujung Pandang, is the capital of the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth-largest urban center after Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, and Bandung. The city is located on the southwest coast of the island of Sulawesi, facing the Makassar Strait.
Throughout its history, Makassar has been an important trading port, hosting the center of the Gowa Sultanate and a Portuguese naval base before its conquest by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century. It remained an important port in the Dutch East Indies, serving Eastern Indonesian regions with Makassarese fishers going as far south as the Australian coast. For a brief period after Indonesian independence, Makassar became the capital of the State of East Indonesia, during which an uprising occurred.
The city's area is , and it had a population of around 1.432 million in mid 2022 within Makassar City's fifteen administrative districts. Its official metropolitan area, known as Mamminasata, with the addition of thirty-three further districts of neighboring regencies, covers an area of and had a population of around 2,740,532 according to the mid 2022 official estimates.
According to the National Development Planning Agency, Makassar is one of the four main central cities of Indonesia, alongside Medan, Jakarta, and Surabaya.
According to Bank Indonesia, Makassar has the second-highest commercial property values in Indonesia, after Greater Jakarta.
Names and etymology
The name Makassar was long spelled Macassar in English and many other European languages, although the Portuguese spelled it Macáçar during their presence there in the 17th century.
The Dutch spelled the name both Makasser and Makassar during their rule over the city as part of the Dutch East Indies. With the independence following World War II, the Indonesians kept the Dutch spelling of Makassar with a double 's', despite the fact that the Indonesian language does not have geminate consonants.
On 1 September 1971 (until 1999), the city was renamed after a variant of the pre-colonial name of the city's Fort Rotterdam, Ujung Pandang (Makassarese: Jumpandang).
The action was taken at the time Makassar was expanding from its original 21 km2 to encompass neighboring regions to de-emphasise the ethnic connotations of the name, enlarged to its present area. Ujung Pandang remained locally unpopular and, on 13 October 1999, the name reverted to Makassar under President B. J. Habibie, himself a native of South Sulawesi.
In the local language, the city is known as Mangkasara, written in the Lontara script traditionally used to write Makassarese as well as Buginese, which is also widely spoken in the city.
The adjective form of the city's name and the eponymous ethnic group has varied over time. In English, Macassarese, Makassarese, and Macassan have all been used, although the latter is usually used in the historical context of trepangers in northern Australia (the Macassan contact with Australia) and may include people not from Makassar. More recently, forms such as Makasarese and simply Makasar (both with a single 's') have appeared.
History
The trade in spices figured prominently in the history of Sulawesi, which involved frequent struggles between rival native and foreign powers for control of the lucrative trade during the pre-colonial and colonial period when spices from the region were in high demand in the West. Much of South Sulawesi's early history was written in old texts that can be traced back to the 13th and 14th centuries.
Makassar is mentioned in the Nagarakretagama, a Javanese eulogy composed in 14th century during the reign of Majapahit king Hayam Wuruk. In the text, Makassar is mentioned as an island under Majapahit dominance, alongside Butun, Salaya and Banggawi.
Makassarese Kingdom
The 9th King of Gowa Tumaparisi Kallonna (1512–1546) is described in the royal chronicle as the first Gowa ruler to ally with the nearby trade-oriented polity of Tallo, a partnership which endured throughout Makassar's apogee as an independent kingdom. The center of the dual kingdom was at Sombaopu, near the then mouth of the Jeneberang River about 10 km south of the present city center, where, where an international port and a fortress were gradually developed. First Malay traders (expelled from their Melaka metropolis by the Portuguese in 1511), then Portuguese from at least the 1540s, began to make this port their base for trading to the Spice Islands (Maluku), further east.
The growth of Dutch maritime power over the spice trade after 1600 made Makassar more vital as an alternative port open to all traders, as well as a source of rice to trade with rice-deficient Maluku.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) sought a monopoly of Malukan nutmeg and cloves and came close to succeeding at the expense of English, Portuguese and Muslims from the 1620s. The Makassar kings maintained a policy of free trade, insisting on the right of any visitor to do business in the city, and rejecting the attempts of the Dutch to establish a monopoly.
Makassar depended mainly on the Muslim Malay and Catholic Portuguese sailors communities as its two crucial economic assets. However the English East India Company also established a post there in 1613, the Danish Company arrived in 1618, and Chinese, Spanish and Indian traders were all important. When the Dutch conquered Portuguese Melaka in 1641, Makassar became the most extensive Portuguese base in Southeast Asia.
The Portuguese population had been in the hundreds but rose to several thousand, served by churches of the Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits as well as the regular clergy. By the 16th century, Makassar had become Sulawesi's principal port and center of the powerful Gowa and Tallo sultanates which between them had a series of 11 fortresses and strongholds and a fortified sea wall that extended along the coast.
Portuguese rulers called the city Macáçar. Makassar was very ably led in the first half of the 17th century when it effectively resisted Dutch pressure to close down its trade to Maluku and made allies rather than enemies of the neighboring Bugis states. Karaeng Matoaya (c.1573–1636) was the ruler of Tallo from 1593, as well as Chancellor or Chief Minister (Tuma'bicara-butta) of the partner kingdom of Gowa. He managed the succession to the Gowa throne in 1593 of the 7-year-old boy later known as Sultan Alaud-din, and guided him through the acceptance of Islam in 1603, numerous modernizations in military and civil governance, and cordial relations with the foreign traders. The conversion of the citizens to Islam was followed by the first official Friday Prayer in the city, traditionally dated to 9 November 1607, which is celebrated today as the city's official anniversary. John Jourdain called Makassar in his day "the kindest people in all the Indias to strangers".
Matoaya's eldest son succeeded him on the throne of Tallo, but as Chancellor, he had evidently groomed his brilliant second son, Karaeng Pattingalloang (1600–54), who exercised that position from 1639 until his death. Pattingalloang must have been partly educated by Portuguese, since as an adult he spoke Portuguese "as fluently as people from Lisbon itself", and avidly read all the books that came his way in Portuguese, Spanish or Latin. A French Jesuit, Father Alexandre de Rhodes, described Pattingalloang's passion for mathematics and astronomy, on which he pestered the priest endlessly, while even one of his Dutch adversaries conceded he was "a man of great knowledge, science and understanding".
Dutch colonial period
After Pattingalloang's death in 1654, a new king of Gowa, Sultan Hasanuddin, rejected the alliance with Tallo by declaring he would be his own Chancellor. Conflicts within the kingdom quickly escalated, the Bugis rebelled under the leadership of Bone, and the Dutch VOC seized its long-awaited chance to conquer Makassar with the help of the Bugis (1667–69).
Their first conquest in 1667 was the northern Makassar fort of Ujung Pandang, while in 1669 they conquered and destroyed Sombaopu in one of the greatest battles of 17th century Indonesia. The VOC moved the city center northward, around the Ujung Pandang fort they rebuilt and renamed Fort Rotterdam. From this base, they managed to destroy the strongholds of the Sultan of Gowa, who was then forced to live on the outskirts of Makassar. Following the Java War (1825–30), Prince Diponegoro was exiled to Fort Rotterdam until his death in 1855.
After the arrival of the Dutch, there was an important Portuguese community, also called a bandel, that received the name of Borrobos.
Around 1660 the leader of this community, which today would be equivalent to a neighbourhood, was the Portuguese Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo.
The character of this old trading center changed as a walled city known as Vlaardingen grew. Gradually, in defiance of the Dutch, the Arabs, Malays and Buddhist returned to trade outside the fortress walls and were joined later by the Chinese.
The town again became a collecting point for the produce of eastern Indonesia – the copra, rattan, Pearls, trepang and sandalwood and the famous oil made from bado nuts used in Europe as men's hairdressing – hence the anti-macassars (embroidered cloths protecting the head-rests of upholstered chairs).
Although the Dutch controlled the coast, it was not until the early 20th century that they gained power over the southern interior through a series of treaties with local rulers. Meanwhile, Dutch missionaries converted many of the Toraja people to Christianity. By 1938, the population of Makassar had reached around 84,000 – a town described by writer Joseph Conrad as "the prettiest and perhaps, cleanest looking of all the towns in the islands".
During World War II, the Makassar area was defended by approximately 1000 men of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army commanded by Colonel M. Vooren. He decided that he could not defend the coast, and was planning to fight a guerrilla war inland. The Japanese landed near Makassar on 9 February 1942. The defenders retreated but were soon overtaken and captured.
After independence
In 1945, Indonesia proclaimed its Independence, and in 1946, Makassar became the capital of the State of East Indonesia, part of the United States of Indonesia. In 1950, it was the site of fighting between pro-Federalist forces under Captain Kahar Muzakkar and Republican forces under Colonel Sunkono during the Makassar uprising.
Connection with Australia
Makassar is also a significant fishing center in Sulawesi. One of its major industries is the trepang (sea cucumber) industry. Trepang fishing brought the Makassan people into contact with Indigenous Australian peoples of northern Australia, long before European settlement (from 1788).
C. C. MacKnight in his 1976 work entitled Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia has shown that they began frequenting the north of Australia around 1700 in search of trepang (sea-slug, sea cucumber, Beche-de-mer), an edible Holothurian. They left their waters during the Northwest Monsoon in December or January for what is now Arnhem Land, Marriage or Marega and the Kimberley region or Kayu Djawa. They returned home with the south-east trade winds in April.
A fleet of between 24 and 26 Macassan perahus was seen in 1803 by French explorers under Nicolas Baudin on the Holothuria Banks in the Timor Sea. In February 1803, Matthew Flinders in the Investigator met six perahus with 20–25 men each on board and was told by the fleet's chief Pobasso, that there were 60 perahus then on the north Australian coast. They were fishing for trepang and appeared to have only a small compass as a navigation aid. In June 1818 Macassan trepang fishing was noted by Phillip Parker King in the vicinity of Port Essington in the Arafura Sea.
In 1865, R.J. Sholl, then Government Resident for the British settlement at Camden Sound (near Augustus Island in the Kimberley region) observed seven 'Macassan' perahus with a total of around 300 men on board. He believed that they made kidnapping raids and ranged as far south as Roebuck Bay (later Broome) where 'quite a fleet' was seen around 1866. Sholl believed that they did not venture south into other areas such as Nickol Bay (where the European pearling industry commenced around 1865) due to the absence of trepang in those waters.
The Macassan voyages appear to have ceased sometime in the late nineteenth century, and their place was taken by other sailors operating from elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago.
Economy
The city is one of Indonesia's primary ports, with regular international and domestic shipping connections. It is nationally famous as an essential port of call for the pinisi ships, wooden sailing ships which are among the last in use for regular long-distance trade.
During the colonial era, the city was widely known as the namesake of Makassar oil, which it exported in substantial quantity. Makassar ebony is a warm black hue, streaked with tan or brown tones, and highly prized for use in making fine cabinetry and veneers.
Nowadays, as the largest city in Sulawesi and Eastern Indonesia, the city's economy depends highly on the service sector, which makes up approximately 70% of activity. Restaurant and hotel services are the most significant contributor (29.14%), followed by transportation and communication (14.86%), trading (14.86), and finance (10.58%). Industrial activity is the next most important after the service sector, with 21.34% of overall activity. The Makassar Industrial Estate (Kawasan Industri Makassar), located within the city's boundaries, measures at 270.84 hectares.
Transportation
Makassar has a public transportation system called pete-pete. A pete-pete (known elsewhere in Indonesia as an angkot) is a minibus that has been modified to carry passengers. The route of Makassar's pete-petes is denoted by the letter on the windshield. Makassar is also known for its becak (pedicabs), which are smaller than the "becak" on the island of Java. In addition to becak and pete-pete, the city has a government-run bus system, taxis and ride-hailing services such as Gojek.
A bus rapid transit (BRT), which is known as "Trans Mamminasata" was started in 2014. It has some routes through Makassar to cities around Makassar region such as Maros, Takallar, and Gowa. Run by the Indonesian Transportation Department, each bus has 20 seats and space for 20 standing passengers.
A 35-kilometer monorail in the areas of Makassar, Maros Regency, Sungguminasa (Gowa Regency), and Takalar Regency (the Mamminasata region) was proposed in 2011, with operations commencing in 2014, at a predicted cost of Rp.4 trillion ($468 million). The memorandum of understanding was signed on 25 July 2011 by Makassar city, Maros Regency and Gowa Regency. In 2014, the project was officially abandoned, citing insufficient ridership and a lack of financial feasibility.
The city of Makassar, its outlying districts, and the South Sulawesi Province are served by Hasanuddin International Airport. The airport is located outside the Makassar city administration area, being situated in the nearby Maros Regency.
The city is served by Soekarno-Hatta Sea Port. In January 2012 it was announced that due to limited capacity of the current dock at Soekarno-Hatta sea port, it would be expanded to 150x30 square meters to avoid the need for at least two ships to queue every day.
Administration and governance
The executive head of the city is the mayor, who is elected by direct vote for a period of five years. The mayor is assisted by a deputy mayor, who is also an elected official. There is a legislative assembly for the city, members of which are also elected for a period of five years.
Administrative districts
Makassar City is divided into 15 administrative districts (kecamatan) and subdivided into 153 urban villages (kelurahan). The districts are listed below with their areas and their populations at the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census, together with the official estimates as at mid 2022. The table also includes the number of administrative villages (kelurahan) in each district.
Note (a) The 2010 population of the Sangkarrang Islands District (Kecamatan Kepulauan Sangkarrang) is included in the figure for the Ujung Tanah district, from which it was cut out.
Metropolitan area (Mamminasata)
The metropolitan area including Makassar is known as , an acronym of Makassar and the neighboring areas of Maros, Sungguminasa (Gowa) and Takalar.
This official metropolitan area covers 2,666.63 km2 and had a population of 2,698,915 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as at mid 2022 was 2,740,532. The metropolitan area of Makassar (Mamminasata) extends over forty-eight administrative districts (kecamatan), consisting of all fifteen districts within the city, all ten districts of Takalar Regency, eleven (out of eighteen) districts of Gowa Regency and twelve (out of fourteen) districts of Maros Regency.
The districts of Takalar Regency which are included in the metro area are: Mangarabombang, Mappakasunggu, Sanrobone, Kepulauan Tanakeke, Polombangkeng Selatan, Pattallassang, Polombangkeng Utara, Galesong Selatan, Galesong and Galesong Utara. The districts of Gowa Regency which are included in the metro area are: Somba Opu, Bontomarannu, Pallangga, Bajeng, Bajeng Barat, Barombong, Manuju, Pattallassang, Parangloe, Bontonompo and Bontonompo Selatan. The districts of Maros Regency which are included in the metro area are: Maros Baru, Turikale, Marusu, Mandai, Moncongloe, Bontoa, Lau, Tanralili, Tompo Bulu, Bantimurung, Simbang and Cenrana.
Media
The oldest newspaper in the Makassar region is Fajar, part of Jawa Pos Group. Several other newspapers such as Tribun Timur and Ujungpandang Ekspres are also available.
The privately owned Fajar TV and V Channel are the local TV stations based in Makassar. The public TVRI South Sulawesi is also covered the city.
Climate
Makassar has a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen Am). The average temperature for the year in Makassar is , with little variation due to its near-equatorial latitude: the average high is around and the average low around all year long.
In contrast to the virtually consistent temperature, rainfall shows wide variation between months due to the movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Makassar averages around of rain on 163 days during the year, but during the month with least rainfall – August – only on one day of rain can be expected. In contrast, during its wet season, Makassar can expect more than per month between December and February. During the wettest month of January, can be expected to fall on twenty-seven rainy days.
Demographics
Makassar is a multi-ethnic city, populated mostly by Makassarese and Buginese. The remainder are Torajans, Mandarese, Butonese, Chinese and Javanese. The current population in mid 2022 is approximately 1,432,189, with a Metropolitan total of 2.74 million.
Education
State University of Makassar
Hasanuddin University
Alauddin Islamic State University
Muhammadiyah University of Makassar
Muslim University of Indonesia
Merchant Marine Polytechnic of Makassar
Aviation Polytechnic of Makassar
By 2007, the city government began requiring all skirts of schoolgirls to be below the knee.
Traditional cuisine
Makassar has several famous traditional foods, the most famous of which is coto makassar. It is a soto (stew) made from a mixture of nuts, spices, and selected offal which may include beef brain, tongue and intestine. Konro, a rib dish, is also a popular traditional food in Makassar. Both coto makassar and konro are usually consumed with burasa or ketupat, a glutinous rice cake. Another famous dish from Makassar is ayam goreng sulawesi (Celebes fried chicken); the chicken is marinated with a traditional soy sauce recipe for up to 24 hours before being fried to a golden color. The dish is usually served with chicken broth, rice and special sambal (chilli sauce).
In addition, Makassar is the home of pisang epe (pressed banana), as well as pisang ijo (green banana). Pisang epe is a banana which is pressed, grilled, and covered with palm sugar sauce and sometimes consumed with durian. Many street vendors sell pisang epe, especially around the area of Losari Beach. Pisang ijo is a banana covered with green colored flour, coconut milk, and syrup. Pisang ijo is sometimes served iced and often consumed at iftar during Ramadan.
Notable people
Syahrul Yasin Limpo (born 1955) Minister of Agriculture
Asnawi Mangkualam (born 1999), footballer for the Indonesian National Team and the Jeonnam Dragons
Andi Ramang (born 1924) footballer
Denny Sumargo (born 1981) professional basketball player
Febriyanto Wijaya (born 1990), footballer
See also
List of twin towns and sister cities in Indonesia
Sacred Heart Cathedral, Makassar
Okkots
Notes
References
MacKnight, C.C., Voyage to Marege. Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1976.
Reid, Anthony. 1999. Charting the shape of early modern Southeast Asia. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. . pp. 100–154.
Further reading
McCarthy, M., 2000, Indonesian divers in Australian waters. The Great Circle, vol. 20, No.2:120–137.
Turner, S. 2003: Indonesia’s Small Entrepreneurs: Trading on the Margins. London, RoutledgeCurzon 288pp. Hardback.
Turner, S. 2007: Small-Scale Enterprise Livelihoods and Social Capital in Eastern Indonesia: Ethnic Embeddedness and Exclusion. Professional Geographer. 59 (4), 407–20.
External links
Indonesia Official Tourism Website
Pinisi at Poatere Harbour, 2012. Photographs by Peter Loud
Cities in South Sulawesi
Port cities and towns in Indonesia
Provincial capitals in Indonesia
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan%20Behan
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Brendan Behan
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Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) ( ; ; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican, an activist who wrote in both English and Irish. He was named by US website Irish Central as one of the greatest Irish writers of all time.
An Irish Republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, Behan was born in Dublin into a staunchly republican family, becoming a member of the IRA's youth organization Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. There was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in his home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from an early age. At age 16, Behan joined the IRA, which led to his serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and imprisonment in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study, and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara and also resided in Paris for a time.
In 1954, Behan's first play, The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin. It was well received; however, it was the 1956 production at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford, London, that gained Behan a wider reputation. This was helped by a famous drunken interview on BBC television with Malcolm Muggeridge. In 1958, Behan's play in the Irish language, An Giall had its debut at Dublin's Damer Theatre. Later, The Hostage, Behan's English-language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally. Behan's autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, was published the same year and became a worldwide best-seller.
By the early 1960s, Behan reached the peak of his fame. He spent increasing amounts of time in New York City, famously declaring, "To America, my new found land: The man that hates you hates the human race." By this point, Behan began spending time with various prominent people such as Harpo Marx and Arthur Miller and was followed by a young Bob Dylan. However, this newfound fame did nothing to aid his health or his work, with his alcoholism and diabetes medical conditions continuing to deteriorate. Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel received little praise. He briefly attempted to combat this by a dry stretch while staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, and in 1961 was admitted to Sunnyside Private Hospital, an institution for the treatment of alcoholism in Toronto, but he once again turned back to alcohol and relapsed back into active alcoholism.
Early life
Behan was born in the inner city of Dublin at Holles Street Hospital on 9 February 1923 into an educated working-class family.
His mother, Kathleen Behan, née Kearney, had two sons, Sean Furlong and Rory (Roger Casement Furlong), from her first marriage to compositor Jack Furlong; after Brendan was born she had three more sons and a daughter: Seamus, Brian, Dominic and Carmel.
They first lived in a house on Russell Street near Mountjoy Square owned by his grandmother, Christine English, who owned a number of properties in the area. Brendan's father Stephen Behan, a house painter who had fought in the War of Independence, read classic literature to the children at bedtime including the works of Zola, Galsworthy, and Maupassant; their mother Kathleen took them on literary tours of the city. She remained politically active all her life and was a personal friend of the Irish leader Michael Collins. Kathleen published her autobiography, Mother of All The Behans, a collaboration with her son Brian, in 1984.
Brendan Behan wrote a lament to Collins, The Laughing Boy, at the age of thirteen. The title was from the affectionate nickname Mrs Behan gave to Collins.
Behan's uncle Peadar Kearney wrote The Soldier's Song, which became the Irish national anthem Amhrán na bhFiann when translated into Irish. His brother Dominic was also a songwriter, best known for the song The Patriot Game; His brother Brian was a prominent radical political activist and public speaker, actor, author, and playwright.
Biographer Ulick O'Connor wrote that one day, aged eight, Brendan was returning home with his granny and a friend from a pub. A passer-by remarked, "Oh, my! Isn't it terrible, ma'am, to see such a beautiful child deformed?" "How dare you," joked his granny. "He's not deformed; he's just drunk!"
In 1937, the Behan family moved to a newly-built local council housing scheme in Kildare Road, Crumlin, then seen by Dubliners as the countryside – Stephen muttered that the working classes were being sent "To Hell or to Kimmage" a parody of Oliver Cromwell's demand that the Irish be sent "To Hell or to Connacht". At this stage, Behan left school at 13 to enter apprenticeship to follow in his father's and both grandfathers' footsteps as a house painter.
IRA activities
Behan became a member of Fianna Éireann, the boy scout group of the Anti-Treaty IRA. He published his first poems and prose in the organisation's magazine, Fianna: the Voice of Young Ireland. In 1931 he also became the youngest contributor to be published in The Irish Press with his poem Reply of Young Boy to Pro-English verses.
At 16, Behan joined the IRA and embarked on an unauthorised solo mission to England to set off a bomb at the Liverpool docks. He was arrested while in possession of explosives. British prosecutors tried to persuade him to testify against his IRA superiors and offered in return to relocate him under a new name to Canada or another distant part of the British Commonwealth.
Refusing to be turned, the 16-year-old Behan was sentenced to three years in a borstal (Hollesley Bay, once under the care of Cyril Joyce) and did not return to Ireland until 1941. He wrote about the experience in the memoir Borstal Boy.
In 1942, during the wartime state of emergency declared by Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, Behan was arrested by the Garda Síochána and put on trial for conspiracy to murder and the attempted murder of two Garda detectives, which the IRA had planned to take place during a Dublin commemoration ceremony for Theobald Wolfe Tone. Behan was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.
He was first incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin and then interned both with other IRA men and with Allied and German airmen at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare. He later related his experiences there in his memoir Confessions of an Irish Rebel. Released under a general amnesty for IRA prisoners and internees in 1946, Behan's active IRA career was largely over by the age of 23. Aside from a short prison sentence in 1947 for trying to break an imprisoned IRA man out of prison in Manchester, Behan effectively left the organisation, but remained friends with Cathal Goulding.
Writer
Behan's prison experiences were central to his writing career. In Mountjoy he wrote his first play, The Landlady and also began to write short stories and other prose. It was a literary magazine called Envoy (A Review of Literature and Art), founded by John Ryan, that first published Behan's short stories and his first poem. Some of his early work was also published in The Bell, the leading Irish literary magazine of the time. He learned Irish in prison and, after his release in 1946, he spent some time in the Gaeltacht areas of counties Galway and Kerry, where he started writing poetry in Irish.
During this period he was employed by the Commissioners of Irish Lights, where the lighthouse keeper of Saint John's Point, County Down, recommending his dismissal, described him as “the worst specimen” he had met in 30 years of service, adding that he showed "careless indifference" and "no respect for property".
He left Ireland and all its perceived social pressures to live in Paris in the early 1950s. There, he felt he could lose himself and release the artist within. Although he still drank heavily, he managed to earn a living, supposedly by writing pornography. He returned to Dublin and began to write seriously, and to be published in serious papers such as The Irish Times, for which he wrote In 1953, drawing on his extensive knowledge of criminal activity in Dublin and Paris, he wrote a serial that was later published as The Scarperer.
Throughout the rest of his writing career, he would rise at seven in the morning and work until noon, when the pubs opened. He began to write for radio, and his play The Leaving Party was broadcast. Literary Ireland in the 1950s was a place where people drank. Behan cultivated a reputation as carouser-in-chief and swayed shoulder-to-shoulder with other literati of the day who used the pub McDaid's as their base: Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, Patrick Swift, Anthony Cronin, John Jordan, J. P. Donleavy and artist Desmond MacNamara whose bust of Behan is on display at the National Writers Museum. Behan fell out with the spiky Kavanagh, who reportedly would visibly shudder at the mention of Behan's name and who referred to him as "evil incarnate".
Behan's fortunes changed in 1954, with the appearance of his play The Quare Fellow. Originally called The Twisting of Another Rope and influenced by his time spent in jail, it chronicles the vicissitudes of prison life leading up to the execution of "The quare fellow", a character who is never seen. The prison dialogue is vivid and laced with satire but reveals to the reader the human detritus that surrounds capital punishment. Produced in the Pike Theatre, in Dublin, the play ran for six months. In May 1956, The Quare Fellow opened in the Theatre Royal Stratford East, in a production by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. Subsequently, it transferred to the West End. Behan generated immense publicity for The Quare Fellow as a result of a drunken appearance on the Malcolm Muggeridge TV show. The English, relatively unaccustomed to public drunkenness in authors, took him to their hearts. A fellow guest on the show, Irish-American actor Jackie Gleason, reportedly said about the incident: "It wasn't an act of God, but an act of Guinness!" Behan and Gleason went on to forge a friendship. Behan loved the story of how, walking along the street in London shortly after this episode, a Cockney approached him and exclaimed that he understood every word he had said—drunk or not—but had not a clue what "that bugger Muggeridge was on about!" While addled, Brendan would clamber on stage and recite the play's signature song, The Auld Triangle. The transfer of the play to Broadway provided Behan with international recognition. Rumours still abound that Littlewood contributed much of the text of The Quare Fellow and led to the saying, "Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood, Brendan Behan wrote under Littlewood". Littlewood remained a supporter, visiting him in Dublin in 1960.
In 1958, his Irish-language play An Giall (The Hostage) opened in the Damer Theatre, Dublin. Reminiscent of Frank O'Connor's Guests of the Nation, it portrays the detention in a teeming Dublin house in the late 1950s of a British conscript soldier, seized by the IRA as a hostage pending the scheduled execution in Northern Ireland of an imprisoned IRA volunteer. The hostage falls in love with an Irish convent girl, Teresa, working as a maid in the house. Their innocent world of love is incongruous among their surroundings since the house also serves as a brothel. In the end, the hostage dies accidentally during a bungled police raid, revealing the human cost of war, a universal suffering. The subsequent English-language version The Hostage (1958), reflecting Behan's own translation from the Irish but also much influenced by Joan Littlewood during a troubled collaboration with Behan, is a bawdy, slapstick play that adds a number of flamboyantly gay characters and bears only a limited resemblance to the original version.
His autobiographical novel Borstal Boy followed in 1958. In the vivid memoir of his time in St Andrews House, Hollesley Bay Colony Borstal, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England. (The site of St Andrews House is now a Category D men's prison and Young Offenders Institution). An original voice in Irish literature boomed out from its pages. The language is both acerbic and delicate, the portrayal of inmates and "screws" cerebral. For a Republican, though, it is not a vitriolic attack on Britain; it delineates Behan's move away from violence. In one account, an inmate strives to entice Behan into chanting political slogans with him. Behan curses and damns him in his mind, hoping that he would cease his rantings-hardly the sign of a troublesome prisoner. By the end, the idealistic boy rebel emerges as a realistic young man, who recognises the truth: violence, especially political violence, is futile. The 1950s literary critic Kenneth Tynan said: "If the English hoard words like misers... Behan sends them out on a spree, ribald, flushed, and spoiling for a fight." He was now established as one of the leading Irish writers of his generation.
Behan revered the memory of Father William Doyle, a Dublin priest of the Society of Jesus, who served as military chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers as they fought in the trenches of the Western Front. Father Doyle was killed in action while running to the aid of wounded soldiers from his regiment during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Behan expressed his affection for Father Doyle's memory in the memoir Borstal Boy. Alfred O'Rahilly's 1920 biography of the fallen chaplain was one of Behan's favorite books.
Personal life
In February 1955, Behan married horticultural illustrator for The Irish Times, Beatrice Ffrench Salkeld, daughter of the painter Cecil Ffrench Salkeld. A daughter, Blanaid, was born in 1963, shortly before Behan's death. Various biographies have established that Behan was bisexual to some degree.
Decline and death
Behan found fame difficult. He was a long-term heavy drinker (describing himself, on one occasion, as "a drinker with a writing problem" and claiming "I only drink on two occasions—when I'm thirsty and when I'm not") and developed diabetes in the early 1950s but this was not diagnosed until 1956. As his fame grew, so too did his alcohol addiction. This combination resulted in a series of famously drunken public appearances, on both stage and television. Behan's favourite drink was champagne and sherry.
The public wanted the witty, iconoclastic, genial "broth of a boy", and he gave that to them in abundance, once exclaiming: "There's no bad publicity except an obituary." His health suffered, with diabetic comas and seizures occurring regularly. The public who once extended their arms now closed ranks against him; publicans flung him from their premises. His books, Brendan Behan's Island, Brendan Behan's New York and Confessions of an Irish Rebel, published in 1962 and 1964, were dictated into a tape recorder because he was no longer able to write or type for long enough to be able to finish them.
Behan died on 20 March 1964 after collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar (now Harkin's Harbour Bar) in Echlin Street, Dublin. He was transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died, aged 41. At his funeral he was given a full IRA guard of honour, which escorted his coffin. It was described by several newspapers as the biggest Irish funeral of all time after those of Michael Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.
Acclaimed Irish sculptor James Power sculpted Brendan Behan's death mask.
Following his death, his widow had a son, Paudge Behan, with Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the Official IRA.
Behan had a one-night stand in 1961 with Valerie Danby-Smith, who was Ernest Hemingway's personal assistant and later married his son, Dr Gregory Hemingway. Nine months later, Valerie gave birth to a son she named Brendan. Brendan Behan died two years later, having never met his son.
In popular culture
Behan is frequently mentioned in works of popular culture. His work has been a significant influence in the writings of Shane MacGowan, and he is the subject of Streams of Whiskey, a song by The Pogues. The Pogues' Thousands Are Sailing written by lead guitarist Philip Chevron, features the lyric and in Brendan Behan's footsteps / I danced up and down the street. Behan is also referenced in Damien Dempsey's 'Jar Song'. Behan's version of the third verse of The Internationale, from Borstal Boy was reproduced on the LP sleeve of Dexys Midnight Runners's debut album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels.
Australian singer songwriter Paul Kelly wrote Laughing Boy as tribute to Behan, and it was covered by Weddings, Parties, Anything on their Roaring Days album.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones 2000 album Pay Attention features the song All Things Considered, which contains the lyrics Most of what he tells us no one's verified / He swears he was there the day that Brendan Behan died.
Behan is referenced in Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things, a song from the 1990 Bob Geldof album, Vegetarians of Love, with the lyrics So rise up Brendan Behan and like a drunken Lazarus / Let's traipse the high bronze of the evening sky like crack crazed kings.
Chicago-based band The Tossers wrote the song Breandan Ó Beacháin, released on their 2008 album On A Fine Spring Evening. Shortly after Behan's death a student, Fred Geis, wrote the song Lament for Brendan Behan and passed it on to the Clancy Brothers, who sang it on their album Recorded Live in Ireland the same year. This song, which calls "bold Brendan" Ireland's "sweet angry singer", was later covered by the Australian trio The Doug Anthony All Stars, better known as a comedy band, on their album Blue. Brendan is Seamus Robinson's song-tribute to Behan. Behan's prison song The Auld Triangle (which featured in his play The Quare Fellow —this term being prison slang for a prisoner condemned to be hanged), has become a standard and has been recorded on numerous occasions by folk musicians as well as popular bands such as The Pogues, The Dubliners, the Dropkick Murphys and The Doug Anthony All Stars. Behan is also referenced in the opening line of the Mountain Goats song Commandante, where the narrator proclaims that he will "drink more whiskey than Brendan Behan".
Behan's two poems from his work The Hostage, On the eighteenth day of November and The Laughing Boy were translated into Swedish and recorded by Ann Sofi Nilsson on the album När kommer dagen. The same poems were translated in 1966 to Greek and recorded by Maria Farantouri on the album Ένας όμηρος (The hostage) by Mikis Theodorakis.
A pub named after Behan is located in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, Massachusetts. A bronze sculpture of the writer sits on the banks of the Royal canal, while a bronze of Behan's head sits inside Searson's bar, one of his watering holes, on Pembroke Road, Dublin..
According to J.P. Donleavy's History of The Ginger Man, Behan was instrumental in bringing Donleavy in contact with M. Girodios of Olympia Press (Paris) to help Donleavy's first novel, The Ginger Man, be published despite its having been ostracised by the world literature community for its "filth" and "obscenity".
In the season 4 Mad Men episode Blowing Smoke, which premiered on 10 October 2010, Midge Daniels introduces Don to her playwright husband, Perry, and says, "When we met, I said he looked like Brendan Behan."
In May 2011, Brendan at the Chelsea, written by Behan's niece Janet Behan, was the first play performed in the Naughton Studio at the new Lyric Theatre in Belfast. The production tells the story of Behan's residence at New York's Hotel Chelsea in 1963. It was a critical success and is being revived for a tour to Theatre Row in New York in September 2013 before returning to the Lyric in October 2013.
Morrissey's 2014 song Mountjoy references the writer: Brendan Behan's laughter rings / For what he had or hadn’t done / For he knew then as I know now / That for each and every one of us / We all lose / Rich or poor, / We all lose / Rich or poor, they all lose.
Works
Plays
The Quare Fellow (1954)
An Giall (The Hostage) (1958)
Behan wrote the play in Irish, and translated it to English.
Richard's Cork Leg (1972)
Moving Out (one-act play, commissioned for radio)
A Garden Party (one-act play, commissioned for radio)
The Big House (1957, one-act play, commissioned for radio)
Books
Borstal Boy (1958)
Brendan Behan's Island (1962)
Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963)
Brendan Behan's New York (1964)
Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965)
The Scarperer (1963)
After The Wake: Twenty-One Prose Works Including Previously Unpublished Material (posthumous – 1981)
Music
Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folksongs and Ballads Spoken Arts Records SAC760 (1985)
The Captains and the Kings
Biographies
Brendan Behan – A Life by Michael O'Sullivan
My Brother Brendan by Dominic Behan
Brendan Behan by Ulick O'Connor
The Brothers Behan by Brian Behan
With Brendan Behan by Peter Arthurs
The Crazy Life of Brendan Behan: The Rise and Fall of Dublin's Laughing Boy by Frank Gray
My Life with Brendan by Beatrice Behan
Brendan Behan, Man and Showman by Rae Jeffs
References
External links
Two portraits from life by Irish artist Reginald Gray
Improving the Day... Tribute site, last updated in 2010.
Brendan Behan in Paris | RTÉ Radio 1, Sep 2019 Documentary on One
Irish Times centenary article, Feb 9th 2023.
1923 births
1964 deaths
20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights
20th-century Irish male writers
20th-century Irish novelists
20th-century Irish poets
20th-century Irish short story writers
Alcohol-related deaths in the Republic of Ireland
Alumni of Dublin Institute of Technology
Burials at Glasnevin Cemetery
House painters
20th-century Irish-language poets
Irish-language writers
Irish male dramatists and playwrights
Irish male novelists
Irish male poets
Irish male short story writers
Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) members
People from Crumlin, Dublin
Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict
The Irish Press people
Behan family
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%20Costello
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Peter Costello
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Peter Howard Costello (born 14 August 1957) is an Australian businessman, lawyer and former politician who served as the treasurer of Australia in government of John Howard from 1996 to 2007. He is the longest-serving treasurer in Australia's history. Costello was a member of parliament (MP) of the Australian House of Representatives from 1990 to 2009, representing the Division of Higgins. He also served as the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party from 1994 to 2007.
On 18 September 2008, Costello was appointed as chairman of the World Bank's new Independent Advisory Board (IAB) to provide advice on anti-corruption measures. Costello has served as Chairman of Nine Entertainment Co. since February 2016. Costello is Chairman of the Board of Guardians of Australian Future Fund.
Early life
Costello was born on 14 August 1957 in Melbourne into a middle-class family of practising Christians. He was the second of three children; his elder brother, Tim, is a prominent Baptist minister and former CEO of World Vision Australia. Costello was educated at Carey Baptist Grammar School (graduating in 1974) and Monash University, where he studied arts and law, graduating with honours in 1982. Costello is a descendant of Irish immigrant Patrick Costello, who was expelled from the Parliament of Victoria in the 1860s for electoral fraud.
During the 1980s, Costello was a solicitor at the law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques, then became a barrister and represented employers in some of Australia's best-known industrial relations disputes.
In 1982 Costello married Tanya (née Coleman), daughter of writer and former Liberal politician Peter Coleman.
In 1983 and 1984, Costello represented the National Farmers' Federation in legal action against the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU). The AMIEU was seeking a unit tally system to be set up in abattoirs in the Northern Territory. The dispute focussed on one abattoir, Mudginberri, which chose to fight the AMIEU claim. Ultimately the AMIEU claim was unsuccessful.
Costello became counsel to organisations representing small business and rose to prominence in the 1985 Dollar Sweets case, as junior counsel assisting Alan Goldberg QC, successfully representing a confectionery company involved in a bitter industrial dispute.
Political background
In his student years, Costello was active in student politics. For a time, he was an office-bearer of the Social Democratic Students Association of Victoria, an affiliate of the Balaclava Branch of Australian Young Labor. In 1977, Costello was assaulted by a left-wing student politician, receiving mainstream media attention for the first time in his career as a result.
After graduating, Costello became more conservative but retained progressive views on some social issues. In 1984 he was a founding member of the H. R. Nicholls Society, a think tank on industrial relations. In the late 1980s, he was identified as part of the New Right movement, which was organised to some extent in the H. R. Nicholls Society.
Political career
Early political career
In 1990, Costello defeated sitting member Roger Shipton in a preselection ballot for the comfortably safe Liberal electorate of Higgins, the seat once held by Harold Holt and John Gorton. He entered the House of Representatives at the age of 32. Costello made his maiden speech in May 1990 and mentioned "government should be subservient to the citizen; the Executive accountable to the representative parliament; and the monopoly give way in the face of the individual."
Following the resignation of Andrew Peacock, Costello voted for John Hewson to replace Peacock as Liberal Leader and Costello was made shadow minister for Consumer affairs and later Shadow Attorney General. However Hewson despite launching Peter's local campaign in Higgins, despised Costello making it clear to him that he would not be appointed a Minister in a Hewson government and always maintained suspicion about Costello due to his admiration for John Howard.
On one occasion Hewson accused Costello of bad mouthing him to journalist Laurie Oakes which Costello denied.
Hewson's shock defeat at the 1993 election, Costello believes, can be attributed to Hewson lacking the experience to know which things to try to change and which things to avoid trying to change. Costello believed Hewson fought everyone from Churches and Welfare groups over the GST to the Superannuation and Medicare organisations and recipients. Costello claimed he found it hard to promote the Liberal party's zero Tariff policy to the car industry.
Costello's profile became higher following the 1993 election becoming Shadow Finance Minister after his failure to become deputy leader. After the "sports rorts affair" with Sport Minister Ros Kelly: after revealing Kelly did not handle funding properly for the policy, Hewson and Costello demanded she resign, and she did, this and other factors made Costello be seen as alternative leader to Hewson. Hewson was deposed as Liberal leader in May 1994, Costello supported Alexander Downer for the leadership, becoming his Deputy Leader and shadow Treasurer. What may have prevented Costello from challenging Hewson for the leadership himself was that it would have proven correct an accusation by Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett that Costello and his friend, former Victorian Liberal party president Michael Kroger, had undermined Hewson's leadership prior to Hewson calling the leadership spill that partly occurred because of Costello in the first place.
However, Downer resigned in January 1995. Costello did not seek the leadership, instead supporting John Howard. It was revealed in July 2006 that this was due to a December 1994 meeting between Howard, Costello and Ian McLachlan during which Howard allegedly agreed to stand aside after one and a half terms as Prime Minister in return for Costello's agreement not to challenge for the leadership. Howard denied that this was a formal arrangement.
Hewson noted with irony in 2009 that Costello's best chances of becoming leader were at the 1994 leadership spill or when Downer stood down, several months later.
As Deputy Leader until 2007, he was the longest serving in that role, achieving that status in 2006 after breaking the record of the party's first Deputy Leader Sir Eric Harrison. He also spent all but the last two years of his career on the front bench.
Federal Treasurer (1996–2007)
The Liberal/National coalition headed by Howard won the 1996 election, defeating the Keating government on a 29-seat swing, and Costello became Federal Treasurer at age 38, the same age at which Howard himself had become treasurer in 1977. He oversaw the return to and maintenance of federal budget surpluses, which enabled significant reduction in government debt. Costello brought down twelve consecutive Federal Budgets, including ten surpluses. During this period he eliminated the Commonwealth Government net debt of $96 billion. He also sold 2/3rds of the Reserve Bank's substantial gold holdings at a record low price. Inflation, interest rates and unemployment all fell and remained generally low during Costello's term as Treasurer.
Tax reform became a major policy focus for Costello. Although John Howard had promised during the 1996 election campaign that he would "never, ever" introduce a GST, it returned as Liberal Party policy for the 1998 election. It was passed through the Senate with the help of the Australian Democrats. Until July 2005, Costello's own agenda of labour market deregulation remained blocked by the government's lack of a Senate majority.
In 1998, Costello and his wife Tanya, along with Tony Abbott and his wife Margaret, successfully sued author Bob Ellis for false statements he made about them in his book Goodbye Jerusalem.
Costello advocated for change to a republic at the Australian Constitutional Convention 1998. He rejected any suggestion that Australia was not already an independent nation and said that the Australian Constitution works "remarkably well". It was the institution of monarchy that was the crux of his argument for change:
Costello supported the 1999 referendum on whether Australia should become a republic.
After the 2001 election, he attracted criticism for not securing funding for a key election promise to extend the Medicare safety net.
In 2002, The Baby bonus scheme was reintroduced by the Federal Government of Australia in the 2002 budget was aimed at offsetting the expenses associated with bearing a child. The scheme was also introduced as a means of increasing Australia's fertility rate and to mitigate the effects of Australia's ageing population. Costello famously had a slogan to encourage Australians to "have one for mum, one for dad and one for the country".
In February 2006, Costello caused controversy during a lecture at the Sydney Institute when questioned about the government's refusal to legally recognise same-sex marriage. He stated, "I think we do recognise the rights of gay and lesbian people in Australia. We do not criminalise [their] conduct or behaviour." He also pointed out that the law was changed in 2004 to recognise same-sex couples with regards to superannuation. He stated that marriage should only be recognised between heterosexual couples. Also during the same speech, Costello criticised "mushy misguided multiculturalism," warning immigrants that the acceptance of Australian values was "not optional."
Leadership aspirations
Under Howard
Costello expected to gain the Liberal leadership some time during Howard's second term as Prime Minister, as per Howard's alleged December 1994 offer. When this did not eventuate, it is alleged that Costello became frustrated, particularly when Howard announced, in July 2003, his intention to lead the government into the 2004 election.
During the 2004 election campaign, Howard avoided saying whether he would serve a full term if re-elected, saying only he would remain as long as his party supported him. The government's subsequent success in winning control of the Senate raised further speculation that Howard would delay his retirement, and the prospect of a Costello leadership succession appeared to recede.
In July 2006, the alleged Costello/Howard succession deal was made public by Ian McLachlan. Costello confirmed the incident had occurred and that he shared McLachlan's interpretation of events. Howard denied the claims repeatedly, stating the continued public drama displayed "hubris and arrogance" and that the leadership was the party room's to decide, not a prize to be handed over by leaders to successors.
Press Gallery columnist Michelle Grattan described Costello's actions :
Despite tensions between the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, nothing further came of those events. Neither Howard nor Costello took any action to remove the other from office, or resign. However, on 12 September 2007, amid renewed leadership tensions and a series of unfavourable public polls, Howard confirmed he would step aside well into the next term, if re-elected, and that Costello would be his "logical successor".
A federal election was held on 24 November 2007. An exit poll of 2,787 voters by Auspoll, commissioned by Sky News, included a question on the statement "I don’t want Peter Costello to become Prime Minister". Fifty-nine per cent agreed, while 41 per cent disagreed. The Coalition lost the election.
Given the well publicised working relationship between Howard and Costello , the two did not stay in touch after the Howard Government left office.
In opposition (2007–2009)
Costello was widely expected to assume the Liberal leadership after the 2007 election, but the day after the election, in a surprise announcement, he said that he would not seek or accept the leadership or deputy leadership of the Liberal Party. This was after John Howard, in his concession speech on the night of the election, specifically endorsed Costello as the next leader for the Coalition. A week later, he indicated that he would be unlikely to serve out in full his parliamentary term of three years.
However, as opposition leader Brendan Nelson struggled, speculation mounted that Costello would change his mind and seek the leadership. In August 2008, he ruled out challenging Nelson, but did not comment on the prospect of Nelson stepping aside in his favour.
Finally in September 2008, just before the release of his memoirs, The Costello Memoirs, Costello specifically re-confirmed that he would not be seeking leadership of the party and would leave politics at a time that suited him. Media attention immediately shifted to whether Costello's decision cleared the way for a leadership challenge by Malcolm Turnbull (who was the shadow treasurer at the time). Tony Abbott described the decision as a great loss to Australia and to Costello himself, who might continue to have regrets for the rest of his life at what might have been. Media outlets capitalised on Costello's failure to categorically rule out any future leadership challenge. An incumbent-announced leadership spill on the morning of Costello's book release saw Turnbull defeat Nelson. Costello remained as an opposition backbencher. On 18 September 2008, Costello was appointed to the World Bank's new Independent Advisory Board, (IAB), which will provide advice on anti-corruption measures.
On 15 June 2009, Costello announced that he would retire from Parliament at the next Federal election. However on 7 October 2009, Costello announced he would be resigning from Parliament when it resumed later in the month. He resigned on 19 October 2009, triggering the 2009 Higgins by-election. Costello's departure came just prior to the ETS crisis that lead to Malcolm Turnbull losing
the Liberal party leadership to Tony Abbott.
Post-political career
Costello is a member of the Board of Guardians of the Australian Government Future Fund since December 2009. Amidst some controversy it was announced that David Gonski would succeed the inaugural Chairman, David Murray when Murray's term expired on 3 April 2012. Gonski's appointment was in spite of an independent review (that was conducted by Gonski). Gonski reported to the Australian Government that the existing Guardians favoured Costello to succeed Murray as Chairman.
Costello is a managing partner of BKK Partners, a boutique corporate advisory run by former Goldman Sachs JBWere managers. He also chairs the advisory board of specialist corporate advisory firm ECG Advisory Solutions.
In 2008, his best-selling memoir was published by Melbourne University Press.
Costello wrote a regular column for Fairfax newspapers until 2013.
In October 2010, Howard published a memoir, Lazarus Rising, that drew the ire of Costello and others. Howard used the memoir to settle some personal scores, calling Costello "an elitist, who's unable to connect to ordinary Australians" and accuses Costello of bungling the leadership handover issue. Costello responded by claiming that Howard "appears to be incapable of taking responsibility for the defeat of the government and for losing his seat of Bennelong."
In May 2012, Michael Kroger accused Costello of being interested in returning to Federal Parliament, most likely by getting a Liberal MP to step aside, with the hope of becoming leader of the Liberal Party. Costello denied this, saying that Kroger had approached him asking to help preserve his ex-wife Helen Kroger's Senate position. At around the same time, Helen Kroger was demoted on the Senate Liberal ticket for Victoria. Kroger believes Costello was targeting her along with others; Kroger also claimed Costello very often criticises past and present Liberal party MPs and officials.
In February 2016, Costello was appointed chairman of the Nine Entertainment Co.
Honours
On 26 January 2011, Peter Costello was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for "eminent service to the Parliament of Australia, particularly through the development of landmark economic policy reforms in the areas of taxation, foreign investment, superannuation and corporate regulation, and through representative roles with global financial organisations".
References
External links
Peter Costello – Official Website (www.petercostello.com.au)
Biography – Monash University prominent alumni profile
Treasurers of Australia
Members of the Cabinet of Australia
Australian Anglicans
Australian barristers
Australian economists
Australian investment bankers
Australian people of Irish descent
Australian republicans
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Australia
Members of the Australian House of Representatives
Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Higgins
People educated at Carey Baptist Grammar School
Lawyers from Melbourne
Politicians from Melbourne
1957 births
Living people
Monash Law School alumni
Converts to Anglicanism from Baptist denominations
Companions of the Order of Australia
Delegates to the Australian Constitutional Convention 1998
20th-century Australian politicians
World Bank people
Nine Entertainment
21st-century Australian politicians
Australian officials of the United Nations
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%20Hand%20Commando
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Red Hand Commando
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The Red Hand Commando (RHC) is a small Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland that is closely linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Its aim was to combat Irish republicanism – particularly the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – and to maintain Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom. The Red Hand Commando carried out shootings and bombings, primarily targeting Catholic civilians. As well as allowing other loyalist groupings to claim attacks in their name, the organisation has also allegedly used the cover names "Red Branch Knights" and "Loyalist Retaliation and Defence Group". It is named after the Red Hand of Ulster, and is unique among loyalist paramilitaries for its use of an Irish language motto, Lamh Dearg Abu, meaning 'red hand to victory'.
Writing in early 1973, Martin Dillon characterized the Red Hand Commando thus: "the composition of this group was highly selective, and it was very secret in its operations. Its membership was composed in the main of Protestant youths – the Tartans who roamed the streets at night looking for trouble. These youths longed for action, and (the group founder John) McKeague let them have it."
The Red Hand Commando was the only major loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland not to have its ranks heavily penetrated by a so-called supergrass or informant during the early 1980s; this was attributed to the group's secrecy (described as an "enigma") and opaque structure. However an alleged senior member of the organisation from East Belfast was charged with membership in 1983 after boasting to UVF man (and later supergrass) John Gibson that he was second-in-command in the area.
The RHC is a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000. The Red Hand Commando made a failed application in September 2017 to be removed from the list of proscribed organisations in the UK.
History
Formation
Much of the group's past is unknown. The RHC was formed in June 1970 among loyalists in the Shankill area of west Belfast, by John McKeague (who was also involved with Tara), William "Plum" Smith and colleagues from the Shankill Defence Association. Membership was high in the Shankill, east Belfast, Sandy Row and Newtownabbey areas as well as in parts of County Down. A cell was also allegedly based in County Tyrone, near Castlederg. The RHC also reportedly had a presence in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone region in the 1970s, involved in bombings and issuing threats to nationalists. The RHC agreed in 1972 to become an integral part of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). It kept its own structures but in operational matters agreed to share weapons and personnel and often carried out attacks in the name of the UVF. It was proscribed by William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on 12 November 1973. According to Jim Wilson, chairman of the Reach Programme with association of the Red Hand Commando, the RHC numbered well over one thousand members during its campaign, and as of 2017 membership numbers were in the small hundreds who are engaged in community work.
Progressive Unionist Party formation
A number of senior Red Hand Commando members played an integral part in the formation of the Progressive Unionist Party in 1979. The beginnings of the party were in the compounds of Long Kesh, where members such as William Smith and Winston Churchill Rea joined members of the UVF in taking a new political direction.
Paramilitary campaign
Following the group's formation in 1970, RHC attacks usually took the form of random drive-by shootings targeting assumed Catholic civilians and no-warning bombs left at social spots (e.g. pubs) the group believed to be frequented by Catholics. The RHC also claimed responsibility for a number of killings in the Republic of Ireland in 1975 and 1976. During the 1980s Loyalist paramilitary violence had dropped significantly from its height in the mid-1970s, and the RHC wasn't implicated in any killings for several years. The organisation was reportedly considered "extinct" by 1988, although it was also described as "largely intact" and capable of violence in 1984. However Loyalist paramilitary activity generally began to increase following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and in 1988 the RHC was tied to at least two attempted murders. The group routinely used cover names during the first years of this resurgence in activity but later opted to claim attacks under the RHC title. RHC violence intensified in the years leading up to the 1994 Loyalist ceasefire, although never claiming as many victims as it did in the 1970s.
According to the Sutton database of deaths at the University of Ulster's CAIN project, the RHC has allegedly killed 13 people, including 12 civilians, and one of its own members. However, as a satellite grouping of the UVF, attacks carried out by the RHC have been in some cases attributed to the UVF; per other sources the RHC has killed at least 40 people.
The following is a timeline of RHC attacks, and attacks in which RHC members were killed:
1970s
12 November 1971: The RHC carried out a bomb attack on the Frederick Inn pub on Frederick Street, Belfast. The thrown device missed the building and exploded on waste ground nearby, slightly injuring a girl.
8 February 1972: The RHC claimed responsibility for killing Bernard Rice, a member of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association, in a drive-by shooting on Crumlin Road, Belfast.
13 March 1972: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Patrick McCrory) at his home on Ravenhill Avenue, Belfast.
15 April 1972: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Sean McConville, 17) from a passing car while he was walking along the Crumlin Road, Belfast.
20 July 1972: The RHC attempted to kill a Catholic businessman in the Smithfield area of Belfast.
28 July 1972: The RHC attempted to kill a Catholic civilian from a passing car on Upper Library Street, Belfast. William "Plum" Smith, later a senior figure in the Progressive Unionist Party, was arrested for his involvement in the attack, along with two other men.
26 September 1972: The RHC left a bomb at a home on Oakwood Avenue, Bangor, County Down, but the device failed to detonate.
31 October 1972: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (James Kerr) at his workplace on Lisburn Road, Belfast. The gunman responsible was shot by a plainclothes policeman as he fled the scene and was arrested.
11 November 1972: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Gerard Kelly) at his shop on Crumlin Road, Belfast.
18 February 1973: The RHC shot dead two Catholic civilians, both postmen, (Anthony Coleman and Joseph McAleese) from a passing car while they were walking along Divis Street, Belfast. A gunman armed with a submachine gun had gotten out of the vehicle and opened fire.
26 March 1973: The RHC bombed the Catholic-owned Hillfoot Bar in east Belfast.
11 May 1973: The RHC shot and seriously injured a Catholic civilian (John McCormac) while he was walking along Raglan Street, Lower Falls, Belfast. He died three days later.
31 May 1973: The RHC shot dead an English sailor (Thomas Curry) during a gun and bomb attack on Muldoon's Bar, Corporation Square, Belfast.
June 1973: The RHC attempted to kill four Catholic youths in a drive-by shooting on the Antrim Road, Belfast.
1 October 1973: The RHC shot a Catholic civilian (Eileen Doherty, 19) after hijacking the taxi she was travelling in at Annandale Embankment, Ballynafeigh, Belfast.
20 February 1974: RHC members beat and stabbed a "fellow Loyalist" (John Thompson) to death, he was founded dead on the Ormeau Road, Belfast. Apparent internal dispute.
July 1974: In what was described as a "no warning bomb spree", the RHC bombed 14 Catholic-owned pubs in 14 days. One man was killed (Thomas Braniff) and 100 people were wounded.
25 September 1974: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Kieran McIlroy) after he left work in Parkend Street off Limestone Road, Belfast.
9 March 1973: The RHC claimed responsibility for a firebomb attack on the fishing fleet moored at Greencastle, County Donegal, with 30 incendiary devices planted on 17 vessels. Fishermen described allegations their boats were being used for gun running as "laughable", noting that the Royal Navy frequently searched them at sea.
16 March 1975: The RHC was suspected by police to be responsible for a bomb that killed an RUC constable (Mildred Harrison) after exploding outside a Catholic-owned pub in Bangor, County Down.
12 April 1975: The RHC claimed responsibility for a gun and bomb attack on Strand Bar, Anderson Street, Belfast. Six Catholic civilians were killed. (See: Strand Bar bombing)
19 December 1975: A car bomb exploded without warning at Kay's Tavern in Dundalk, County Louth, Republic of Ireland. Two civilians were killed and twenty wounded. A short time later, there was a gun and bomb attack on the Silverbridge Inn near Crossmaglen, County Armagh. Two Catholic civilians and an English civilian were killed in that attack, while six others were wounded. Members of the "Glenanne gang" were believed to have been involved in these attacks. The RHC claimed responsibility for both.(See: Donnelly's Bar and Kay's Tavern attacks)
2 May 1976: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Seamus Ludlow) near his home in Thistlecross, County Louth.
2 June 1976: The RHC shot dead a Protestant civilian (David Spratt) at a house in Comber, County Down. A Catholic man was the intended target.
28 October 1976: The RHC and "Ulster Freedom Fighters" claimed responsibility for killing former Sinn Féin vice-president Máire Drumm. She was shot dead by gunmen dressed as doctors in Mater Hospital, Belfast. She had retired a short time before her killing and had been in the hospital for an operation. A UVF member (formerly a soldier), who worked as a security officer at the hospital, was among a number of men jailed.
8 March 1978: The RHC shot dead an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) volunteer (Thomas Trainor) in Portadown, County Armagh.
1980s
27 May 1980: Two RHC members carried out a gun attack on the home of a prison officer in Belfast.
August 1981: According to Michael Stone, the RHC planned a bomb attack aimed at Charles Haughey's yacht, the Taurima II, while it was berthed at Dingle Harbour, County Kerry. Stone claimed the RHC operative planned to "wire Haughey's boat with five pounds of commercial explosives. … [he] would attach the bomb to the on-board radio using an electrical detonator. Once the radio was switched on, the bomb would explode". The operation was aborted after two RHC operatives were arrested a week earlier for a robbery and the explosives became volatile in transit from a quarry in Scotland. Allegedly elements of British intelligence provided a dossier on Haughey to the RHC.
29 January 1982: RHC founder John McKeague was shot dead at his shop on Albertbridge Road, Belfast. by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
14 July 1986: The RHC claimed responsibility for a no-warning car bomb in Castlewellan, County Down that injured two people; the attack was revenge for a ban on an Orange Order parade through the predominantly-Catholic town. The UFF also claimed responsibility.
6 January 1988: The RHC (thought to have been "extinct" for some years at this time) claimed responsibility for a blast-bomb thrown into the home of a Catholic man in the Short Strand area of east Belfast.
2 October 1988: The RHC fired twenty shots at the home of a former INLA member in the Ormeau Road area of Belfast.
23 July 1989: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (John Devine) at his home in the Divis area of Belfast. The attack wasn't attributed to a specific Loyalist group at the time, but in 2016 former RHC leader Winkie Rea was charged with the murder.
1990s and 2000s
1990s
11 March 1990: RHC members assaulted a full-time UDR soldier (Samuel McChesney) with a hatchet at his home in Dundonald on the outskirts of Belfast. He died of his injuries the following day.
17 April 1991: The RHC shot dead a Catholic taxi driver (John O'Hara) on Dunluce Avenue, off the Lisburn Road, Belfast. The attack was claimed by the Ulster Freedom Fighters, but in 2016 former RHC leader Winkie Rea was charged with the murder.
10 August 1991: The "Loyalist Retaliation and Defence Group" (believed to be linked to the RHC) shot dead a Catholic civilian (James Carson) at his shop on Donegall Road, Belfast. It was targeted for selling republican newsletter An Phoblacht.
28 September 1991: The Loyalist Retaliation and Defence Group shot dead a Catholic civilian (Larry Murchan) at his shop on St James Road, Belfast. It was targeted for selling An Phoblacht.
28 September 1992: The "Red Branch Knights" (believed to be linked to the RHC) claimed responsibility for six incendiary devices left in a shopping centre in Newtownabbey. Three bombs were defused. Earlier, a blast bomb left outside a Dublin-based bank nearby was also defused. Statements were sent to the media threatening action against anyone with political or economic links with the Republic of Ireland, and several companies and individuals received death threats accompanied by bullets through the post.
9 October 1992: The RHC shot dead a Protestant civilian (Michael Anderson) at his workplace on Mersey Street, Belfast. It claimed he was an informer.
6 November 1992: The RHC claimed responsibility for shooting and wounding a security guard at the Mater Hospital in North Belfast. The UFF also claimed responsibility.
1 January 1993: The RHC claimed responsibility for shooting two Catholic civilians on Manor Street, Belfast. The two men were cleaning a car when they were shot at from a passing vehicle. The RHC claimed it was retaliation for the killing of a British soldier in the area two days before.
11 January 1993: The RHC claimed responsibility for an arson attack on a fast food store in Belfast.
17 February 1993: The RHC claimed responsibility for shooting into the home of a Catholic man in Newtownabbey. There were no injuries.
5 April 1993: The RHC was alleged to be responsible for shooting dead a former UDA member (William Killen) at his flat in Portavogie, County Down. Security sources suggested it was a punishment shooting gone wrong.
7 May 1993: The RHC carried out an arson attack on a GAA club at Ballycran, County Down.
30 May 1993: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Edward McHugh) at his home in Dundonald, County Down.
29 July 1993: The RHC shot and seriously injured a Catholic man and a teenage boy after their car broke down on the M2 Motorway outside Belfast.
8 August 1993: The RHC carried out an arson attack on a GAA club at Portaferry, County Down. On 23 August the RHC threatened to attack workmen repairing the premises.
25 August 1993: The RHC announced that it would attack bars or hotels where Irish folk music is played, following a claim of responsibility for an attempted bombing on a pub in Newtownards, County Down. Following widespread criticism the RHC withdrew the threat a day later.
1 September 1993: The RHC claimed responsibility for shooting two Catholic civilians in Shore Crescent, Belfast.
13 September 1993: The RHC shot dead a former RHC leader (Vernon Bailie) outside his girlfriend's home in Carrowdore, County Down. Internal dispute.
17 February 1994: The RHC shot dead a Catholic civilian (Sean McParland) in his relatives' home on Skegoneill Avenue, Belfast.
7 April 1994: A Protestant woman (Margaret Wright) was found dead at the back of an abandoned house on Donegall Avenue, Belfast. She had been beaten and then shot by a group of UVF/RHC members, who assumed she was a Catholic.
23 August 1994: The RHC shot and seriously injured a Protestant workman, mistaken for a Catholic, in Rathcoole in Newtownabbey, County Antrim.
28 September 1995: The RHC shot dead one of its own members Billy Elliot in Bangor, County Down for the killing of a Protestant Woman in April 1994.
30 March 1997: The RHC was linked to a bomb left in a hijacked taxi outside a Sinn Féin office in the New Lodge area of Belfast. After security forces evacuated nearby families from the area, British Army engineers successfully neutralised the bomb via a controlled detonation.
17 March 1999: The UVF shot dead an expelled member of the RHC (Frankie Curry) as he walked over waste ground off Malvern Way, Belfast, in an internal dispute.
2000s
13 September 2002: The RHC shot dead a member of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) as he sat in a car in Newtownards, County Down. The killing was part of a loyalist feud.
8 May 2003: A member of the RHC was shot dead in at his home in Crawfordsburn, County Down. The killing was believed to be part of a loyalist feud.
Ceasefire and decommissioning
In October 1994, the Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) declared a ceasefire on behalf of all loyalist paramilitary groups. The RHC, along with all major Loyalist groups, supported the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and maintained a ceasefire from 1994 until (arguably) 2005. On 3 May 2007, the RHC declared it was officially ending its armed campaign, following recent negotiations between the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and with Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde. The RHC made a statement that it would transform to a "non-military, civilianised" organisation. This was to take effect from midnight. It also stated that it would retain its weaponry but put them beyond reach of normal volunteers. Its weapon stockpiles were to be retained under the watch of the RHC leadership.
2007 official statement
Following a direct engagement with all the units and departments of our organisation, the leadership of the Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando today make public the outcome of our three year consultation process.
We do so against a backdrop of increasing community acceptance that the mainstream republican offensive has ended; that the six principles upon which our ceasefire was predicated are maintained; that the principle of consent has been firmly established and thus, that the union remains safe.
We welcome recent developments in securing stable, durable democratic structures in Northern Ireland and accept as significant, support by the mainstream republican movement of the constitutional status quo.
Commensurate with these developments, as of 12 midnight, Thursday 3 May 2007, the Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando will assume a non-military, civilianised, role.
To consolidate this fundamental change in outlook we have addressed the methodology of transformation from military to civilian organisation by implementing the following measures in every operational and command area.
Recruitment
All recruitment has ceased; military training has ceased; targeting has ceased and all intelligence rendered obsolete; all active service units have been de-activated; all ordinance has been put beyond reach and the IICD instructed accordingly.
We encourage our volunteers to embrace the challenges which continue to face their communities and support their continued participation in non-military capacities.
We reaffirm our opposition to all criminality and instruct our volunteers to cooperate fully with the lawful authorities in all possible instances.
Moreover, we state unequivocally, that any volunteer engaged in criminality does so in direct contravention of brigade command and thus we welcome any recourse through due process of law.
All volunteers are further encouraged to show support for credible restorative justice projects so that they, with their respective communities, may help to eradicate criminality and anti-social behaviour in our society.
We call on all violent dissidents to desist immediately.
We ask the government to facilitate this process and remove the obstacles which currently prevent our volunteers and their families from assuming full and meaningful citizenship.
We call on all violent dissidents to desist immediately and urge all relevant governments and their security apparatus to deal swiftly and efficiently with this threat.
Failure to do so will inevitably provoke another generation of loyalists toward armed resistance.
We have taken the above measures in an earnest attempt to augment the return of accountable democracy to the people of Northern Ireland and as such, to engender confidence that the constitutional question has now been firmly settled.
In doing so we reaffirm the legitimacy of our tactical response to violent nationalism yet reiterate the sincere expression of abject and true remorse to all innocent victims of the conflict.
Brigade command salutes the dedication and fortitude of officers, NCOs, and volunteers throughout the difficult, brutal years of armed resistance.
We reflect with honour on those from our organisation who made the ultimate sacrifice; those who endured long years of incarceration and the loyal families who shared their suffering and supported them throughout.
Finally, we convey our appreciation for their honest forthright exchange with officers, NCOs and volunteers throughout the organisation over the past three years which has allowed us to assume with confidence the position we adopt today.
For God and Ulster. Captain William Johnston, Adjutant.
The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) stated that this statement was "unacceptable." In June 2009, after talks with the IICD, it was announced that the RHC and UVF had decommissioned their weapons before independent witnesses.
The group is noted for using an Irish language motto, Lámh Dearg Abú (Victory to the Red Hand) as opposed to a Latin motto like most other Loyalist groups.
References
Works cited
Gusty Spence (Roy Garland, 2001), .
Proscribed paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland
Non-military counterinsurgency organizations
Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom
Ulster loyalist militant groups
1970 establishments in Northern Ireland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%20Hand%20Defenders
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Red Hand Defenders
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The Red Hand Defenders (RHD) is an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in 1998 by loyalists who opposed the Belfast Agreement and the loyalist ceasefires. Its members were drawn mostly from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). The name had first been used by Red Hand Commandos dissident Frankie Curry in 1996 and he was the leading figure in what was a somewhat unstructured organization until he was killed in 1999. It is named after the Red Hand of Ulster.
The RHD emerged when it claimed responsibility for a blast bomb attack on 7 September 1998 during a loyalist protest in Portadown. Loyalists had been protesting against the decision to ban the Orange Order from marching through the town's mainly Catholic and Irish nationalist quarter (see Drumcree conflict). The attack killed a Catholic Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer. Since then, the RHD has claimed responsibility for killing a further ten people. It has also claimed responsibility for many pipe bomb attacks, mostly on the homes of Catholics. One of the RHD's most notable attacks was the assassination of human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson on 15 March 1999. She had represented alleged Irish republican paramilitaries, the family of Robert Hamill, and the Garvaghy Road Residents Association. Of the eleven people the RHD claimed to have killed, nine were civilians, one was a former UDA member and one was an RUC officer.
The RHD are a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Links with the wider loyalist movement
It has been alleged that the name "Red Hand Defenders" is merely a covername for members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) so the organizations can claim on the surface to have honoured their ceasefire agreements. Similar accusations have been made regarding the name "Orange Volunteers", another loyalist paramilitary group that emerged in 1998. Claims of responsibility by the RHD for certain attacks have overlapped with those of the Orange Volunteers. The Council on Foreign Relations indicates the membership of the RHD, LVF and Orange Volunteers likely overlap. These organizations are generally composed of young Ulster Protestant males from Northern Ireland.
McDonald (2001) characterizes the LVF and UDA ceasefire agreements as "official fiction". The LVF denies these claims, stating that its armed campaign has ended. LVF members were aware that any breach of the ceasefire could result in the return to jail for those paramilitary prisoners freed as part of the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998. This essentially served as an incentive for the groups to create a cover name. As a result, the actual existence of the RHD has consistently been called into question. Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald have argued that the RHD and the Orange Volunteers are both overseen by a Christian fundamentalist preacher they identify only as the Pastor. The Pastor, a former associate of William McGrath, John McKeague and George Seawright and a long-established British intelligence agent, is said by the authors to provide his own form of fundamentalist, anti-Catholic Protestantism to the two groups' fluid membership of young men, most of whom are also UDA or LVF members.
Ideology and modus operandi
The Red Hand Defenders use violence toward the goal of maintaining British control in Northern Ireland. Like other loyalist groups, the RHD is an adversary of Irish nationalists who seek to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a united Ireland. In essence, (mostly) Irish Catholic nationalists aspire to be part of the Republic of Ireland, while (mostly) Protestant unionists wish to remain united with Great Britain. The resulting long-term conflict in Northern Ireland was often referred to as "the Troubles". However, unlike the two biggest loyalist paramilitary groups—the Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Volunteer Force—the group fully opposes the peace process and peace agreements, including the Good Friday Agreement.
Their tactics include shootings, bombings and arson, with victims usually being Catholic civilians. Although the victimization of Catholics is based on their perceived politics rather than religion, the religious emphasis nonetheless exacerbates the underlying political problems. The group’s civilian targets have included Catholic schools and Catholic postal workers. The weapons used by RHD members include pipe bombs, handguns and grenades. The group does not appear to receive aid from outside the UK.
Notable attacks
The RHD emerged when it claimed responsibility for a blast bomb attack on 7 September 1998 during a loyalist protest in Portadown. The loyalists had been protesting against the decision to ban the Orange Order from marching through the town's mainly Irish Catholic and Irish nationalist quarter (see Drumcree conflict). The attack killed a Catholic Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer. Since then, the RHD has claimed responsibility for killing a further ten people. Of the eleven people the RHD claimed to have killed, nine were civilians, one was a former UDA member and one was an RUC officer. The group admitted shooting to death a Catholic man, Brian Service, while he was walking home in North Belfast on 31 October 1998, and to an attack on a pub in West Belfast earlier that day.
One of the RHD's most notable attacks was the assassination of human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson on 15 March 1999. She had represented alleged Irish republican paramilitaries, the family of Robert Hamill, and the Garvaghy Road Residents Association. Nelson had been working with Prime Minister Tony Blair toward resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland. She had also testified in Washington, D.C. about the plight of attorneys who were subjected to harassment and threats for representing Irish nationalists. Nelson further informed that she and her family had received death threats. The killing of Nelson was a significant setback to the peace process due to a fear of the need for retaliation. Moreover, this killing was the first high-profile assassination since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
In August 2001, the RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe-bomb attack on a Sinn Féin Member of Parliament and an attempted car bomb attack at a fair shortly thereafter where streets were filled with civilians, though both plots were thwarted by police. The RHD also claimed responsibility for the murder of a journalist named Martin O’Hagan in September 2001, who was shot dead while walking home from a pub with his wife. O’Hagan had previously been threatened by Ulster Volunteer Force brigadier Billy Wright, who became the leader of the LVF and was subsequently killed in the Maze Prison. The attack may have stemmed from the journalist’s report on alleged collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and security forces in Northern Ireland.
According to the U.S. Department of State, the RHD claimed responsibility for killing a total of five individuals in 2001. In 2002, the RHD claimed responsibility for the murders of a Catholic teenager and a Catholic postman (with the UDA and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) also subsequently claiming responsibility for the attacks), and also bombed the home of a prison officer. On 16 January 2002, the RHD allegedly made a statement agreeing to "stand down" at the request of the UDA/UFF after threatening Catholic postal workers and teachers. The sincerity of the statement was immediately called into question. The RHD resumed its campaign a few months later with a nail-bomb attack on a well-known republican. The RHD successfully separated itself from the UDA in February 2003 with the murder of UDA member John Gregg, who had attempted to kill Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams almost 20 years before. The attack on Gregg may have stemmed from disapproval with the RHD that had been expressed by the UFF. The RHD is believed to have engaged in periodic bombings and shootings in 2003, and further claimed responsibility for an attack in September 2004.
Timeline
1998
5 Sep: The RHD claimed responsibility for a blast bomb attack during a riot on Charles Street, Portadown. A Catholic Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer was wounded and died on 6 October 1998.
31 Oct: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Catholic civilian as he walked along Alliance Avenue, Belfast.
17 Dec: The RHD claimed responsibility for a blast bomb attack on a pub on Ballyganniff Road near Crumlin, County Antrim.
1999
26 Jan: The RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe bomb attack on the home of a Catholic family near Carrickfergus. The family lived in a mainly Protestant estate. It failed to explode.
28 Jan: The RHD claimed responsibility for a pipe bomb attack on the home of a Catholic family in Dungannon.
2 Feb: There was a grenade attack on St Joseph's Catholic Church in Antrim. It is believed the RHD were responsible.
24 Feb: The RHD claimed responsibility for a pipe bomb attack on a house in Rosapenna Street, Belfast. The pipe bomb was found in the back garden of the house, which was beside a peace line.
15 Mar: The RHD claimed responsibility for killing Catholic human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson. A booby-trap bomb exploded under her car in Lurgan.
31 Mar: The RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe bomb attack on the car of a Catholic civilian in Dungannon. It failed to explode.
31 Mar: The RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe bomb attack on a house on Gray's Lane, Belfast. It was made safe by the British Army.
19 Apr: The RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe bomb attack on the home of a Catholic family on Serpentine Park, Belfast. It failed to explode.
21 May: Shots were fired at a Catholic youth worker as he escorted a Protestant girl to her home on Shankill Road, Belfast. He claimed that he had been threatened by RUC officers six months earlier. He claimed the officers wanted information on IRA members otherwise he would be killed by the RHD. The RUC denied the claims.
5 June: A Protestant civilian was killed in a pipe bomb attack on her home at Corcrain Drive, Portadown. It was thrown through the window and exploded as she tried to take it outside. She was married to a Catholic man and lived in a mainly Protestant area. A blast bomb also exploded at another Catholic-owned home nearby. The RHD and the LVF were blamed but the LVF denied responsibility.
7 June: A pipe bomb was found and defused outside St Mary's (Catholic) primary school in Ballymena. It is believed that the RHD were responsible.
4 Oct: The RHD claimed responsibility for throwing a pipe bomb at a Catholic taxi driver as he drove through the Peter's Hill area of Belfast. It failed to explode.
15 Oct: The RHD claimed responsibility for planting a hoax bomb at a Catholic-owned house in north Belfast. A family member said, "It's just to try and intimidate Catholics out of the area".
27 Oct: The RHD claimed responsibility for planting a pipe bomb at the home of a republican in west Belfast. It failed to explode.
2001
24 Jan: The RHD claimed responsibility for firing shots at the home of prominent republican Martin Óg Meehan (son of Sinn Féin MLA Martin Meehan) in Ardoyne, Belfast. On 29 Jan it claimed responsibility for firing shots at the home of Martin Óg Meehan's brother on the same street.
5 Feb: The RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe bomb attack on the home of a Catholic family in Ardoyne, Belfast. The man who lived there was a former republican prisoner. It failed to explode.
19 Jun: The RHD issued a death threat to husband and wife Sinn Féin councillors Breige and Martin Meehan.
4 Jul: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Catholic civilian as he waited for a lift to work in Antrim. The attack was a drive-by shooting by gunmen on a motorbike. In a call to a newspaper, a RHD spokesman said the teenager had been shot in "direct response to the Catholic people of Antrim voting in two Sinn Féin [councillors]. They are going to have to pay the price for it. God Save Ulster".
20 Jul: The RHD claimed responsibility for firing shots into Ashton Community Centre in the nationalist Ardoyne area of Belfast. There were staff and children inside at the time. In a statement, the RHD said: "all nationalist people [are] hostile and legitimate targets".
29 Jul: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Protestant civilian as he stood outside St Edna's Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club in Newtownabbey. The attack was a drive-by shooting on a group of people. Brett was hit by automatic fire as he stood with his Catholic friends.
30 Jul: The RHD claimed responsibility for two pipe bombs that exploded outside the Golden Thread theatre at a community centre in north Belfast. Over 250 people were watching a youth theatre production inside. One woman was hospitalized for shock.
22 Aug: The RHD claimed responsibility for a string of bomb alerts across Northern Ireland. A suspect device was found under a van in Armagh; a pipe bomb was found at a Sinn Féin office in Cookstown; a pipe bomb was found at a GAA club in Garvagh; and a pipe bomb exploded at a GAA club in Gulladuff.
23 Aug: The RHD claimed responsibility for two pipe bomb attacks on the home of a Catholic family at Deerpark Parade, Belfast. It also claimed responsibility for an attempted pipe bomb attack on a GAA club in Desertmartin.
28 Aug: The RHD claimed responsibility for an attempted car bomb attack in the middle of Ballycastle. Thousands of people were in the town to celebrate the yearly Auld Lammas Fair. The bomb was found by the RUC and defused by the British Army.
29 Aug: The RHD claimed responsibility for two pipe bomb attacks on the home of a Catholic family in Ballynahinch. It also claimed to have left bombs at five pubs in Belfast and a pub and hotel in Ballycastle.
30 Aug: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting a man in Coalisland.
5 Sep: The RHD claimed responsibility for throwing a blast bomb at a group of Catholic schoolchildren as they walked to Holy Cross Primary School on Ardoyne Road, Belfast. Local loyalists had been protesting outside the school for the past three days. Four RUC officers and a civilian were injured. The next day, it was announced that the RHD had threatened to kill the parents if they tried to bring their children to the school. See Holy Cross dispute for more information.
15 Sep: The RHD claimed responsibility for firing shots at a Catholic taxi driver as he drove through Parkmount Terrace, Belfast. The shots hit the car but missed the driver.
28 Sep: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead Catholic journalist Martin O'Hagan as he walked near his home in Lurgan. He worked for the Sunday World newspaper. The RUC Chief Constable said he believed that it was carried-out by members of the LVF, which was then on ceasefire. O'Hagan had written stories about LVF activities and had been threatened by loyalists a number of times. The RHD statement said that he had been killed "for crimes against the loyalist people".
1 Oct: The RHD claimed responsibility for planting a bomb outside the home of republican Eddie Copeland in Ardoyne, Belfast.
3 Dec: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Catholic civilian as he sat in a car on Upper Crumlin Road, Belfast.
12 Dec: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead former UDA member William Stobie outside his home on Forthriver Road, Belfast. It was claimed he was an informer.
18 Dec: The RHD claimed responsibility for attempting to shoot a Catholic man at Brompton Park, Belfast. He ran off before the gun could be fired. He had recently been warned that his name was on a loyalist death list.
2002
6 Jan: The RHD claimed responsibility for a pipe bomb attack on the home of a prison officer at Westway Park, Belfast. The man's wife and daughter were wounded. The RHD said it was in response to the alleged harassment of loyalist prisoners in Maghaberry Prison.
11 Jan: The RHD issued a death threat against all teachers and staff working at Catholic schools in north Belfast.
12 Jan: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Catholic civilian as he arrived for work at a postal sorting office in Newtownabbey. It also issued a statement saying that all Catholic postal workers were now "legitimate targets". However, the UDA later admitted that its members had been involved in the killing.
15 Jan: The UDA/UFF called for the RHD to stand down within fourteen days.
17 Apr: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Catholic civilian as he sat in his taxi in Donaghmore, County Tyrone.
26 Apr: The RHD claimed responsibility for a nail bomb attack on the home of a Sinn Féin councillor.
22 Jul: The RHD claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Catholic civilian as he walked home on Floral Road, Belfast. Earlier in the evening, a Protestant had been shot and wounded on Alliance Avenue. The RHD said the killing of Lawlor was a "measured response" to that attack. However, the UDA/UFF later admitted that its members had been involved in the killing.
4 Aug: The RHD issued a death threat against Catholic workers at the Mater Hospital in Belfast and Ulster Hospital in Dundonald.
20 Aug: In a statement to a newspaper, the RHD threatened that "if there is one more brick thrown by Catholics at houses in Glenbryn, every resident on the upper half of Alliance Avenue will be forcibly removed from their homes".
24 Oct: The RHD claimed responsibility for throwing a pipe bomb into the back yard of a Catholic-owned home on Alliance Avenue, Belfast. It claimed the man who lived there was a "senior republican".
19 Dec: The RHD claimed responsibility for throwing a pipe bomb at the home of a Catholic family in north Belfast.
2003
6 Jan: The RHD claimed responsibility for planting a pipe bomb at the gates of Holy Cross Catholic Primary School in Belfast. It warned the school to shut permanently within one week.
19 May: The RHD claimed responsibility for planting an explosive device outside a Republican Sinn Féin office in west Belfast. It was defused by the British Army.
11 Nov: The RHD claimed responsibility for planting an explosive device outside a Catholic-owned house in north Belfast. It said it was targeting a spokesperson for the Parents of Holy Cross Primary School.
2005
13 Feb: The RHD claimed responsibility for killing a Catholic civilian. He was found unconscious with head wounds on Jamaica Road, Belfast. However, it is not certain if the RHD were responsible as no code-word was given when the claim was made.
2006
4 Mar: The RHD claimed responsibility for the attempted killing of a taxi driver in north Belfast. A man who got into the taxi pressed a handgun to the driver's head and pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed and he managed to flee.
2013
21 May: Four men linked with the Red Hand Defenders were jailed for two years and eight months for sending death threats to a couple in County Armagh back in February and March 2011. The loyalist gang demanded £15,000 from the couple and threatened paramilitary attacks if the couple did not pay them, but were arrested shortly after receiving £5,000 from the couple in Portadown.
6 September: RHD reportedly threatened attacks on Catholic schools in North Belfast.
See also
Orange Volunteers
Real Ulster Freedom Fighters
References
External links
LVF link to Red Hand terrorists, BBC News, 16 March 1999
Vengeance of dead King Rat, The Observer
Red Hand Defenders, BBC News
Proscribed paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland
Christian terrorism in Europe
Organizations based in Europe designated as terrorist
Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom
The Troubles (Northern Ireland)
Ulster loyalist militant groups
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann%20Friedrich%20Fasch
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Johann Friedrich Fasch
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Johann Friedrich Fasch (15 April 1688 – 5 December 1758) was a German violinist and composer. Much of his music is in the Baroque-Classical transitional style known as galant.
Life
Fasch was born in the town of Buttelstedt, 11 km north of Weimar, the eldest child of schoolmaster Friedrich Georg Fasch and his wife Sophie Wegerig, from Leißling near Weißenfels. After his father's death in 1700, Fasch lived with his maternal uncle, the clergyman Gottfried Wegerig in Göthewitz, and it was presumably in this way that he made the acquaintance of the Opera composer Reinhard Keiser.
Fasch was a choirboy in Weissenfels and studied under Johann Kuhnau at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig. It was in Leipzig in 1708 that he founded a Collegium Musicum. In 1711 he wrote an opera to be performed at the Peter-Paul Festival in Naumburg, and a second one for the festival in 1712.
In 1714, unable to procure aristocratic patronage for a journey to Italy, Fasch instead travelled to Darmstadt to study composition for three months under his former Leipzig prefect Christoph Graupner and Gottfried Grünewald. He then traveled extensively in Germany, becoming a violinist in the orchestra in Bayreuth in 1714, was an amanuensis in Gera till 1719 and from 1719 until 1721 held a court post as organist in Greiz.
His next major post was Prague, where he served for two years as Kapellmeister and court composer to Count Morzin. In 1722, he "reluctantly accepted the position" of court Kapellmeister at Zerbst, a post he held until his death. (The organist Johann Ulich was his assistant.) Also in 1722, he was invited to apply for the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig at his alma mater, the St. Thomas School, but he chose to withdraw his name from the competition. The Leipzig opening was eventually filled by Johann Sebastian Bach, who had considerable esteem for Fasch.
Works
His works include cantatas, concertos, symphonies, and chamber music. None of his music was published in his lifetime, and according to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 2014, "it appears that most of his vocal works (including 9 complete cantata cycles, at least 14 masses and four operas) are lost, while the instrumental works are mostly extant." However, his music was "widely performed" in his day and was held in high regard by contemporaries. Georg Philipp Telemann performed a cycle of his church cantatas in 1733 in Hamburg; an organ work once attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach as BWV 585 is now known to be an arrangement of movements from a Fasch trio sonata; and Bach's Collegium Musicum in Leipzig (a different group than the one founded by Fasch) performed some of Fasch's Orchestral Suites (ten of them, according to Hugo Riemann in 1900, based on his examination of copies in the library of the St. Thomas School, which Riemann said were partly in Bach's hand. Only one of these suites survived World War II; it is in the hand of Bach's student Carl Gotthelf Gerlach).
In 1900, Riemann asserted that Fasch's style was an important link between the Baroque and Classical periods, and that he was one of those who "set instrumental music entirely on its feet and displaced fugal writing with modern 'thematic' style’"; New Groves entry on Fasch states, "Later research has largely confirmed [Riemann's] assessment."
Legacy
Fasch died in Zerbst at the age of 70 on 5 December 1758. He was the father of Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, born on 18 November 1736, like his father a musician of note. The city of Zerbst/Anhalt has been hosting International Festivals since 1983, biennially since 1993. The Sixteenth International Fasch Festival (2021) was cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions. The 17th International Fasch Festival is scheduled to take place from 15 to 18 June 2023 in Zerbst/Anhalt.
Works list
This listing is based on Rüdiger Pfeiffer's now out-dated Fasch Werke Verzeichnis. The Internationale Fasch Gesellschaft e.V. has been working on a new online Fasch-Verzeichnis, which is now called Fasch-Repertorium. Its main contributor, Dr. Gottfried Gille, gave a paper on the project's progress at the 2013 international Fasch conference, held on the occasion of the twelfth International Fasch Festival (18-21 April 2013). All papers presented at the conference were published in vol. 12 of Fasch-Studien.OperasFwv A \ Operas (lost)SerenatasFwv B: 1 \ Serenata (lost)
Fwv B: 2 \ Serenata (lost)
Fwv B: 3 \ Freudenbezeugung der vier Tageszeiten, autograph score at D-DS
Fwv B: 4 \ Beglückter Tag (for the birthday of Catherine the Great, 1757), autograph score and performing materials in the Sing-Akademie Berlin archive, D-B; performed at 10th Fasch-Festtage on 10 April 2008Sacred cantatas for occasionsFwv C:B 1 \ Beständigkeit bleibt mein VergnügenSacred cantatasFwv D:B 1 \ Bewahre deinen Fuss
Fwv D:D 1 \ Dein allerhöchster Adel
Fwv D:D 2 \ Der Gottlose ist wie ein Wetter
Fwv D:D 3 \ Die den Herrn vertrauen
Fwv D:D 4 \ Die Gerechten müssen sich freuen
Fwv D:D 5 \ Die so das Land des Lichts bewohnen
Fwv D:D 6 \ Die Starken bedürfen des Arztes nicht
Fwv D:D 7 \ Die Starken bedürfen des Arztes nicht
Fwv D:D 8 \ Du bist Christus, des lebendigen Gottes Sohn
Fwv D:D 9 \ Du bist mein Gott, ich bitte dich
Fwv D:D10 \ Du sollst Gott, deinen Herrn, lieben
Fwv D:E 1 \ Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe
Fwv D:E 2 \ Er hat grosse Dinge an mir getan
Fwv D:E 3 \ Es erhub sich ein Streit
Fwv D:E 4 \ Es haben dir, Herr, die Hoffärtigen
Fwv D:E 5 \ Es wird des Herrn Tag kommen
Fwv D:E 6 \ Es wird ein unbarmherzig Gericht
Fwv D:G 1 \ Gehet zu seinen Toren ein
Fwv D:G 2 \ Gelobet sei der Herr täglich
Fwv D:G 3 \ Gottes und Marien Kind
Fwv D:G 4 \ Gott hat die Zeit der Unwissenheit übersehen
Fwv D:G 5 \ Gott ist die Liebe
Fwv D:G 6 \ Gott ist die Liebe
Fwv D:G 7 \ Gott ist ein rechter Richter
Fwv D:G 8 \ Gott will, dass allen Menschen
Fwv D:G 9 \ Gott wir warten deiner Güte
Fwv D:G10 \ Gott wir warten deiner Güte
Fwv D:H 1 \ Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht
Fwv D:H 2 \ Herr, lehre uns bedenken
Fwv D:H 3 \ Herr, wenn Trübsal da ist
Fwv D:I 1 \ Ich bin der Weg
Fwv D:I 2 \ Ich danke dem Herrn von ganzem Herzen
Fwv D:I 3 \ Ich freue mich im Herrn
Fwv D:I 4 \ Ich halte mich, Herr, zu deinen Altar
Fwv D:I 5 \ Ich hebe meine Augen auf
Fwv D:I 6 \ Ich hoffe darauf, dass du so gnädig bist
Fwv D:I 7 \ Ich war tot, und siehe, ich bin lebendig
Fwv D:I 8 \ In der Welt habt ihr Angst
Fwv D:J 1 \ Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt; Edition 2008 Gottfried Gille for Prima la musica!
Fwv D:K 1 \ Kommet her zu mir alle
Fwv D:K 2 \ Kündlich gross ist das gottselige Geheimnis
Fwv D:L 1 \ Leben wir, so leben wir dem Herrn
Fwv D:L 2 \ Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele
Fwv D:L 3 \ Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele
Fwv D:M 1 \ Mein Seel erhebt den Herren mein
Fwv D:N 1 \ Niemand kennet den Sohn
Fwv D:N 2 \ Niemand kennet den Sohn
Fwv D:R 1 \ Rast und tobt, ihr stolzen Feinde
Fwv D:S 1 \ Sage mir an, du, den meine Seele liebet
Fwv D:S 2 \ Sanftes Brausen, süsses Sausen; Edition 2008 Gottfried Gille for Prima la musica!
Fwv D:S 3 \ Seid untereinander freundlich, herzlich
Fwv D:S 4 \ Sei getreu bis in den Tod
Fwv D:S 5 \ Selig sind, die nicht sehen und doch gläuben
Fwv D:S 6 \ Siehe um Trost war mir sehr bange
Fwv D:S 7 \ Siehe zu, dass deine Gottesfurcht nicht
Fwv D:T 1 \ Trachtet am ersten nach dem Reiche Gottes
Fwv D:U 1 \ Unser Wandel ist im Himmel
Fwv D:W 1 \ Wachet und betet, das ihr nicht in Anfechtung
Fwv D:W 2 \ Welt und Teufel, tobt ihr noch
Fwv D:W 3 \ Welt, du magst mich immer hassen (fragment)
Fwv D:W 4 \ Wer sich selbst erhöhet
Fwv D:W 5 \ Wie Gott liebt und vergibt
Fwv D:W 6 \ Will mir jemand nachfolgen
Fwv D:W 7 \ Wirf dein Anliegen auf den Herrn
Fwv D:W 8 \ Wir müssen alle offenbar werden
Fwv D:W 9 \ Wir wissen, dass der Sohn Gottes
Fwv D:Z 1 \ Zion mach in deinen Toren
Fwv D:Z 2 \ Zur Mitternacht war ein Geschrei (fragment)MotetsFwv E:B 1 \ Beschliesset einen RatPassion oratoriosFwv F: 1 Passio Jesu Christi ("Brockes Passion")MassesFwv G:B 1 \ Missa brevis in B flat major
Fwv G:D 1 \ Mass in D major
Fwv G:D 2 \ Mass in D major
Fwv G:D 3 \ Missa brevis in D major
Fwv G:D 4 \ Missa brevis in D major
Fwv G:D 5 \ Missa brevis in D major
Fwv G:D 6 \ Credo in D major
Fwv G:D 7 \ Credo in D major - NOT FASCH, but Johann David Heinichen
Fwv G:e 1 \ German Mass in E minor
Fwv G:F 1 \ Mass in F major
Fwv G:F 2 \ Missa brevis in F major
Fwv G:F 3 \ Quoniam in F major
Fwv G:g 1 \ Missa brevis in G minorCanticlesFwv H:G 1 \ Magnificat in G majorPsalm settingsFwv I:B 1 \ Beatus vir in G major
Fwv I:C 1 \ Confiteor in D major
Fwv I:D 1 \ Dixit Dominus in G major
Fwv I:L 1 \ Laetatus sum in F sharp minor
Fwv I:L 2 \ Lauda Jerusalem in D major
Fwv I:L 3 \ Laudate Pueri Dominum in A major
Fwv I:N 1 \ Nisi Dominus in D majorOrchestral suites(Unless otherwise stated, these are scored for 2 oboes, bassoon, strings and Basso continuo
Fwv K:A 1 \ Suite for violin, 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in A major
Fwv K:A 2 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in A major
Fwv K:A 3 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in A major
Fwv K:a 1 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in A minor
Fwv K:a 2 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in A minor
Fwv K:a 3 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in A minor
Fwv K:a 4 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in A minor
Fwv K:B 1 \ Suite for 2 orchestras (3 flutes, 3 oboes, 2 bassoons, strings and basso continuo in each orchestra)
Fwv K:B 2 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B 3 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B 4 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B 5 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B 6 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon, strings and b.c.in B flat major* Modern edition by W.Jaksch http://www.imslp.org
Fwv K:B 7 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B 8 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B 9 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:B10 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in B flat major
Fwv K:C 1 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in C major * Modern edition: Hans-Heinrich Kriegel; Bochum: 1998
Fwv K:C 2 \ Suite in C major (lost)
Fwv K:C 3 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in C major (lost)
Fwv K:D 1 \ Suite for 3 trumpets & winds in D major
Fwv K:D 2 \ Suite for 3 trumpets & winds in D major
Fwv K:D 3 \ Suite for 2 trumpets, 3 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D 4 \ Suite for 2 trumpets, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D 5 \ Suite for 3 horns, 3 oboes & 2 bassoons in D major
Fwv K:D 6 \ Suite for wind septet in D major
Fwv K:D 7 \ Suite for 2 flutes,2 oboes & bassoon, 2 horns, strings and b.c. in D major * Modern edition by W.Jaksch http://www.imslp.org
Fwv K:D 8 \ Suite for wind septet in D major
Fwv K:D 9 \ Suite for wind septet in D major
Fwv K:D10 \ Suite for wind septet in D major
Fwv K:D11 \ Suite in D major (lost)
Fwv K:D12 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D13 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D14 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major * Modern edition in preparation by Kim Patrick Clow for Prima la musica!
Fwv K:D15 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D16 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D17 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D18 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D19 \ Suite in D major (lost)
Fwv K:D20 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in D major
Fwv K:D21 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D22 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D23 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D24 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D25 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:D26 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D major
Fwv K:d 1 \ Suite in D minor (lost)
Fwv K:d 2 \ Suite for 3 flutes, 3 oboes & bassoon in D minor
Fwv K:d 3 \ Suite for chalumeau, 2 oboes & bassoon in D minor
Fwv K:d 4 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D minor
Fwv K:d 5 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D minor
Fwv K:d 6 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in D minor
Fwv K:e 1 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in E minor
Fwv K:e 2 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in E minor
Fwv K:e 3 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in E minor
Fwv K:Es1 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in E flat major
Fwv K:F 1 \ Suite for wind septet in F major
Fwv K:F 2 \ Suite in F major (lost)
Fwv K:F 3 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in F major
Fwv K:F 4 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in F major
Fwv K:F 5 \ Suite for 2 horns, 2 oboes & bassoon in F major
Fwv K:F 6 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in F major
Fwv K:F 7 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in F major * Modern edition in preparation by Kim Patrick Clow for Prima la musica!
Fwv K:F 8 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in F major
Fwv K:F 9 \ Suite in F major (lost)
Fwv K:G 1 \ Suite for violin & wind septet in G major
Fwv K:G 2 \ Suite for violin & oboe concertante in G major * Modern edition in preparation by Kim Patrick Clow for Prima la musica!
Fwv K:G 3 \ Suite for wind septet in G major
Fwv K:G 4 \ Suite for wind septet in G major
Fwv K:G 5 \ Suite for 4 horns, 3 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G 6 \ Suite in G major (lost)
Fwv K:G 7 \ Suite in G major (lost)
Fwv K:G 8 \ Suite for 3 flutes & 2 bassoons in G major * Modern edition in preparation by Hans-Heinrich Kriegel for Prima la musica!
Fwv K:G 9 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in G major
Fwv K:G10 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G11 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G12 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G13 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G14 \ Suite for 2 flutes, 2 oboes & bassoon in G major (lost)
Fwv K:G15 \ Suite for 3 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G16 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major * Modern edition in preparation by Kim Patrick Clow for Prima la musica!
Fwv K:G17 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G18 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G19 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G20 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G21 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major
Fwv K:G22 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G major (lost)
Fwv K:g 1 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G minor
Fwv K:g 2 \ Suite for 3 oboes & bassoon in G minor
Fwv K:g 3 \ Suite for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in G minor
Fwv K:g 4 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G minor
Fwv K:g 5 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G minor
Fwv K:g 6 \ Suite in G minor (lost)
Fwv K:g 7 \ Suite for 2 oboes & bassoon in G minorConcertosFwv L:A 1 \ Violin Concerto in A major
Fwv L:A 2 \ Violin Concerto in A major
Fwv L:A 3 \ Violin Concerto in A major
Fwv L:a 1 \ Oboe Concerto in A minor
Fwv L:a 2 \ Violin Concerto in A minor
Fwv L:B 1 \ Concerto for chalumeau in B flat major
Fwv L:B 2 \ Violin Concerto in B flat major
Fwv L:B 3 \ Concerto grosso in B flat major
Fwv L:B 4 \ Concerto grosso in B flat major
Fwv L:C 1 \ Oboe Concerto in C major
Fwv L:C 2 \ Bassoon Concerto in C major
Fwv L:C 3 \ Concerto for flute, violin, bassoon & b.c. in C major
Fwv L:c 1 \ Concerto for bassoon, strings & b.c. in C minor
Fwv L:c 2 \ Concerto for 2 oboes, bassoon, strings & b.c. in C minor
Fwv L:D 1 \ Concerto for trumpet & 2 oboes in D major
Fwv L:D 2 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 3 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 4 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 4a \ Violin Concerto in D major (Fwv L:D 4a)
Fwv L:D 5 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 6 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 7 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 8 \ Violin Concerto in D major
Fwv L:D 9 \ Concerto for 2 flutes in D major
Fwv L:D10 \ Concerto for flute and oboe in D major
Fwv L:D11 \ Concerto for flute and oboe in D major
Fwv L:D12 \ Concerto in D major (lost)
Fwv L:D13 \ Concerto for triple wind choirs in D major
Fwv L:D14 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D15 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D16 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D17 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D18 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D19 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D20 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D21 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:D22 \ Concerto grosso in D major
Fwv L:d 1 \ Lute Concerto in D minor
Fwv L:d 2 \ Oboe Concerto in D minor
Fwv L:d 3 \ Oboe Concerto in D minor
Fwv L:d 4 \ Concerto for oboe and violin in D minor
Fwv L:d 5 \ Concerto in D minor (lost)
Fwv L:d 6 \ Concerto for flute, violin, bassoon & b.c. in D minor
Fwv L:d 7 \ Concerto grosso in D minor
Fwv L:e 1 \ Concerto for flute and oboe in E minor
Fwv L:Es1 \ Concerto grosso in E flat major
Fwv L:F 1 \ Concerto in F major (lost)
Fwv L:F 2 \ Violin Concerto in F major
Fwv L:F 3 \ Concerto grosso in F major
Fwv L:F 4 \ Concerto grosso in F major
Fwv L:F 5 \ Concerto grosso in F major
Fwv L:F 6 \ Concerto for Alto recorder in F major * Modern edition by Johannes Pausch for Edition Musiklandschaften Hamburg
Fwv L:G 1 \ Concerto in G major (lost)
Fwv L:G 2 \ Oboe Concerto in G major
Fwv L:G 3 \ Oboe Concerto in G major
Fwv L:G 4 \ Concerto for violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, bassoon, strings, continuo in G major
Fwv L:G 5 \ Violin Concerto in G major
Fwv L:G 6 \ Violin Concerto in G major
Fwv L:G 7 \ Violin Concerto in G major
Fwv L:G 8 \ Concerto for flute and oboe in G major
Fwv L:G 9 \ Concerto for 2 oboes in G major
Fwv L:G10 \ Concerto for 2 oboes in G major
Fwv L:G11 \ Concerto grosso in G major
Fwv L:G12 \ Concerto grosso in G major
Fwv L:G13 \ Concerto grosso in G major
Fwv L:g 1 \ Oboe Concerto in G minor
Fwv L:g 2 \ Concerto in G minor (lost)
Fwv L:g 3 \ Concerto in G minor (lost)
Fwv L:g 4 \ Concerto for 2 oboes in G minor
Fwv L:h 1 \ Concerto for flute and oboe in B minor
Fwv L:h 2 \ Concerto for flute and oboe in B minorSymphoniesFwv M:A 1 \ Symphony in A major
Fwv M:A 2 \ Symphony in A major [Possibly Carl Friedrich Fasch]
Fwv M:A 3 \ Symphony in A major
Fwv M:a 1 \ Symphony in A minor
Fwv M:B 1 \ Symphony in B flat major
Fwv M:B 2 \ Symphony in B flat major
Fwv M:B 3 \ Symphony in B flat major
Fwv M:C 1 \ Symphony in C major
Fwv M:D 1 \ Symphony in D major
Fwv M:D 2 \ Symphony in D major
Fwv M:F 1 \ Symphony in F major
Fwv M:Fis \ Symphony in F sharp major
Fwv M:G 1 \ Symphony in G major
Fwv M:G 2 \ Symphony in G major
Fwv M:G 3 \ Symphony in G major
Fwv M:G 4 \ Symphony in G major
Fwv M:G 5 \ Symphony in G major
Fwv M:G 6 \ Symphony in G major
Fwv M:g 1 \ Symphony in G minorChamber piecesFwv N:a 1 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in A minor
Fwv N:B 1 \ Quartet for recorder, oboe, violin & continuo in B flat major
Fwv N:B 2 \ Quartet for 2 oboes, bassoon & continuo in B flat major
Fwv N:B 3 \ Trio for 2 oboes & continuo in B flat major
Fwv N:C 1 \ Bassoon Sonata in C major
Fwv N:c 1 \ Quartet for 2 violins, & continuo in C minor
Fwv N:c 2 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in C minor
Fwv N:D 1 \ Quartet for flute, violin, bassoon & continuo in D major
Fwv N:D 2 \ Trio for flute, violin & continuo in D major
Fwv N:D 3 \ Trio for flute, violin & continuo in D major
Fwv N:D 4 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in D major
Fwv N:d 1 \ Quartet for 2 oboes, bassoon & continuo in D minor
Fwv N:d 2 \ Quartet for 2 oboes, bassoon & continuo in D minor
Fwv N:d 3 \ Quartet for 2 violins, viola & b.c. in D minor
Fwv N:d 4 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in D minor
Fwv N:E 1 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in E major
Fwv N:e 1 \ Trio for 2 oboes & continuo in E minor
Fwv N:F 1 \ Quartet for 2 oboes & 2 bassoons in F major
Fwv N:F 2 \ Quartet for 2 oboes, bassoon & continuo in F major
Fwv N:F 3 \ Quartet oboe, violin, horn & continuo in F major
Fwv N:F 4 \ Quartet for oboe, violin, bassoon & continuo in F major
Fwv N:F 5 \ Trio for recorder, bassoon & continuo in F major
Fwv N:F 6 \ Trio for 2 oboes & bassoon in F major
Fwv N:F 7 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in F major
Fwv N:G 1 \ Quartet for flute, 2 recorders & continuo in G major
Fwv N:G 2 \ Trio for flute, violin & continuo in G major
Fwv N:G 3 \ Trio for flute, violin & continuo in G major
Fwv N:G 4 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in G major
Fwv N:G 5 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in G major
Fwv N:G 6 \ Trio for 2 violins & continuo in G major
Fwv N:g 1 \ Quartet for 2 oboes, bassoon & continuo in G minor
Fwv N:g 2 \ Trio for 2 oboes & continuo in G minorDoubtful authenticityFwv O:F 1 \ Fantasie in F majorCopies of works by other composers'
Fwv Q:D 1 \ Symphony in D major by Maximilian III
Fwv Q:deest \ Symphony in C major by Carl Hoeckh
Fwv Q:deest \ Symphony in C major by Placidus von Camerloher
References
Further reading
Reul, Barbara (2011). "'Forgive us our debts' – Viewing the life and career of Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758) through the lens of finance.” Eighteenth-Century Music 8, no. 2 (2011), pp. 261–286.
Selected discography
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Orchesterwerke Vol.1. Tempesta di Mare. (Chandos Records CHAN0751, 2007) + vols. 2 [CHAN0783] & 3 [CHAN0791]
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Concertos for various instruments Vol 1. Il Gardelino. (Accent Records ACC24182, 2007) + vol 2 [Accent Records ACC24252, 2011]
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Ouverturen. Il Fondamento, Paul Dombrecht. (Fuga Libera, FUG502, 2004)
Violin concertos from Dresden. Pisendel, Heinichen, Fasch, Handel, Telemann. Johannes Pramsohler. International Baroque Players. (Raumklang RK 3105)
Violin concertos from Darmstadt. Kress, Telemann, Fasch, Endler. Johannes Pramsohler. Darmstädter Barocksolisten (Audax Records ADX 13716)
The Dresden Album. Ensemble Diderot. Johannes Pramsohler (Audax Records ADX 13701)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Ouvertüren-Sinfonian. Les Amis de Philippe, Ludger Rémy. (Classic Produktion Osnabrück, 7779522, 2015)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Dresdner Ouvertüren, Sinfonias & Konzerte. Les Amis de Philippe, Ludger Rémy. (Classic Produktion Osnabrück, 7774242, 2008)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Concertos. La Stravaganza, Koln. (Classic Production Osnabruck 7770152, 2004)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Cantatas, Psalm, Ouverture & Concerto. Accademia Daniel, Shalev Ad-El. (Classic Production Osnabruck, 9996742, 2000)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Concerti & Ouverturen. Kammerorchester Basel, Julia Schroder. (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 88697446412, 2009)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Trios and Sonatas. Epoca Barocca. (Classic Produktion Osnabrück 7772042, 2007)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Quartette & Konzerte. Ensemble Marsyas. (Linn Records CKD467, 2013)
Johann Friedrich Fasch: Quartets & Trio Sonatas. Camerata Koln. (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 77015-2RG, 1988)
External links
International Fasch Society
Modern urtext editions of Fasch's music via Brian Clark's Prima la Musica!
1688 births
1758 deaths
18th-century classical composers
18th-century German composers
18th-century German male musicians
German Classical-period composers
German Baroque composers
German male classical composers
People from Buttelstedt
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82a%20Podlaska
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Biała Podlaska
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Biała Podlaska () is a city in eastern Poland with 56,498 inhabitants It is situated in the Lublin Voivodeship (since 1999), having previously been the capital of Biała Podlaska Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the capital of Biała Podlaska County, although the city is not part of the county (it constitutes a separate city county). The city lies on the Krzna river.
History
The first historical document mentioning Biała Podlaska dates to 1481. In the beginning, Biała Podlaska belonged to the Illnicz family. The founder of the city may have been Piotr Janowicz, nicknamed "Biały" (Polish for "white"), who was the hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Biała Podlaska was administratively part of the Podlaskie Voivodeship, and then the Brest Litovsk Voivodeship in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (then in union with Poland).
In 1569, Biała Podlaska changed ownership; the new owners were the Radziwiłł family. Under their rule, Biała Podlaska had been growing for two and a half centuries. In 1622, Aleksander Ludwik Radziwiłł built the fortress and the castle. In 1628, Krzysztof Ciborowicz Wilski established Bialska Academy as a regional center of education (since 1633 it was a branch of the Jagiellonian University, then called Kraków Academy). During this time, many churches were erected, as was a hospital.
The prosperity period ended with the Swedish invasion in 1655. Then Biała Podlaska was attacked by Cossacks and Rákóczi armies. The town was significantly destroyed; however, thanks to Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł and his wife Katarzyna Sobieska, it was rebuilt. In 1670, Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł gives Biała Podlaska town rights and the coat of arms, which depicts archangel Michael standing on a dragon.
In 1720, Anna Katarzyna Radziwiłłowa began building the tower and the gate - both buildings exist to this day and are the most interesting remains of the castle and palace. In the 18th century, the city and the fortress were times destroyed many times in warfare and rebuilt. The last heir, Dominik Hieronim Radziwiłł, died on 11 November 1813 in France, as a colonel of the Polish army. The palace fell into ruin and was pulled down in 1883.
After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Biała Podlaska temporarily came under the rule of Austrian Habsburgs (Austrian partition of Poland).
During the Napoleonic Wars, temporarily recovered by Poles in 1809–1815, Biała Podlaska was part of the Polish Duchy of Warsaw after the wars with Austria.
In 1815, the town became part of Congress Poland within the Russian Partition of Poland. At the end of the 19th century, Biała Podlaska was a large garrison town of the Imperial Russian Army. Near the intersection of Brzeska Street and Aleje Tysiclecia Avenue is a cemetery for soldiers killed during World War I.
In 1918, following World War I, Poland regained independence and the town was reunited with Poland. During the Second Polish Republic in the interwar period, Biała Podlaska was growing fast. The town was the seat of the Podlaska Wytwórnia Samolotów (PWS), an important airplane factory. There was also a garrison of the 34th infantry regiment of the Polish Armed Forces. The regiment, formed in 1919, fought successfully in the Polish–Soviet War, and also fought against Germans and Soviets during the invasion of Poland, which started World War II in 1939. During the Polish–Soviet War, on 1 August 1920, Russians invaded the city, but were quickly repelled by the Poles, and later on they invaded again, before the town was eventually liberated by the Polish 1st Legions Infantry Division on 17 August 1920. The last commander of the regiment, lieutenant colonel Wacław Budrewicz, was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets and murdered by them in the 1940 Katyn massacre, in which also multiple Polish teachers and policemen from the city, and alumni of local schools were murdered.
World War II halted the town's development because of Nazi and Soviet repression. The Germans captured Biała Podlaska on 13 September 1939, but withdrew on 26 September to allow the Soviets to a station in the town. But, on 10 October 1939, in accordance with the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviets departed and the town was reoccupied by the Germans. By that time, the Soviets had already completely plundered the PWS airplane factory, so that nothing but empty buildings remained. Poles expelled by the Germans in 1939–1940 from various places in German-annexed western Poland were deported to the area, while their previous homes were handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. In March and July 1940, the Germans imprisoned dozens of Poles in the local prison, and then massacred them in the nearby Grabarka forest. Over 40 Polish teachers were arrested in the town on 24 June 1940, imprisoned in Lublin and then deported to concentration camps, as part of the AB-Aktion. On 5 July 1940 the Germans carried out another massacre of Poles in Grabarka, whom they previously imprisoned in the town. Further massacres of Poles were carried out by the Germans throughout the war. Despite such circumstances, the Polish resistance movement was active in the city. After Germany attacked their Soviet ally in Operation Barbarossa, a German prisoner camp was set up near Biała Podlaska, where many Soviet POWs were killed. In 1944 the town was recaptured by Polish and Soviet troops and restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which remained in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.
In the postwar period and after the fall of communism, Biała Podlaska has developed as a more modern city. It retains many of the historic features in the central Polish old town of the city. From 1975 to 1999 Biała Podlaska was a capital of the voivodeship, later it again became a city county, as before 1975.
History of the Jewish community
The first mention of Jewish settlement in Biała Podlaska dates from 1621, when 30 Jewish families were granted rights of residence there. By 1841, there were 2,200 Jews of a total population of 3,588 in the town. In 1897, the number was 6,549 out of 13,090 inhabitants. In the 19th century, the chasidic movement established strong roots in Biała Podlaska.
A descendant of the Yid Hakodosh of Przysucha formed the Biala chasidic court, which survives to this day with communities in London, and cities in the United States and Israel. The chasidim of Kotsk also had a large presence in Biała Podlaska, some of whom later became Gerrer chasidim. In sovereign Poland by 1931, the Jews constituted 64.7% of the total population, or 6,923 out of 10,697 citizens. Four Yiddish newspapers were published locally between the two world wars.
The Germans captured Biała Podlaska on 13 September 1939 during the invasion of Poland but withdrew on 26 September. On 10 October 1939, the Soviets handed the town back to the Germans when the line of demarkation was finally set up. Around 600 Jews escaped the town during the Soviet departure. The Germans formed a Judenrat in November 1939, which set up a public kitchen and a Jewish infirmary. By the end of the year, the Nazis began to impose discriminatory restrictions against the Jews. On 1 December 1939, they decreed that all Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David. Jews were ordered to move into an open-type ghetto along the Grabanów, Janowa, Prosta and Przechodnia streets, and a Jewish Ghetto Police was established. At the end of 1939, some 2,000 to 3,000 more Jews were brought there as a result of deportations from Suwałki and Serock. The overcrowding and poor sanitations resulted in a typhus epidemic in Biała Podlaska in early 1940, causing many deaths. The Germans imprisoned some Poles in the local prison and then deported them to concentration camps for helping and rescuing Jews.
Several hundred more Jews were brought in from as far as Kraków and Mława during German "resettlement" actions conducted in 1940 and 1941. The men were sent to new labour camps in the Wola district at an airfield, the train station, and elsewhere. Hundreds were forced to pave roads, drain ditches, constructsewage lines and build barracks. Many Jewish women worked in the Nazi farms. In March 1942 the ghetto had 8,400 inmates.
The Holocaust
After the launch of Operation Reinhard on 6 June 1942– the code name for the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland – the Jews were told to prepare for "resettlement". Only workers from the forced labour camps possessing labour permits were to be exempt from the deportation. On 10 June 1942, some 3,000 Jews, including women with children, were assembled in the synagogue courtyard. Many Jews fled to the forests. The assembled Jews were led by the German police to the train station. The next day the prisoners were packed into deportation trains and sent to Sobibór extermination camp. All were gassed.
In September 1942, some 3,000 Jews from the neighbouring towns of Janów and Konstantynów were brought into Biała Podlaska Ghetto. The overcrowding became desperate. The Jews sensed that the ghetto was slated for liquidation. Many escaped to the forests; others prepared hiding places in the basements. On 6 October 1942, the Germans deported about 1,200 Jews from the local labour camps to Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto. The subsequent "deportation actions" conducted by the Nazi German Reserve Police Battalion 101, augmented by the Ukrainian Trawnikis, lasted throughout October and November 1942. In total, some 10,800 Jews from around Biała Podlaska and its county were murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp, away, or massacred on the spot during roundups.
Chil Rajchman, a Sonderkommando who survived the Treblinka revolt and the war, later testified that he witnessed a transport of 6,000 Jews from Biała Podlaska arrive at Treblinka. When the sealed doors were opened, 90 percent of prisonersmen, women, and childrenwere already dead inside. Their bodies were thrown into smouldering mass grave at the "Lazaret".
The remaining Jews of Biała Podlaska were sent to a transit point at the Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto for deportations to death camps. In July 1943 the transit ghetto in Międzyrzec was liquidated. All its inmates were deported to Majdanek and Treblinka, where they were murdered in the gas chambers. The Nazis left a small group of 300 Jewish slave labourers in Biała Podlaska to clean up the decaying ghetto area. In May 1944, the surviving workers were murdered at Majdanek. Biała Podlaska was captured by the Red Army on 26 July 1944. Only 300 of the Jews who had lived in Biała Podlaska are known to have survived the Holocaust. Most of them left Poland after the war.
Remembrance
The parts of the city which were originally the Jewish "quarter" still exist.
The Jewish community is commemorated by a memorial erected at the site of the Jewish cemetery, which was destroyed by the Nazis. Another memorial was recently erected by Jewish survivors from the town who now live in the USA. Two former private prayer houses of the Jewish community are still in existence. The cemetery otherwise stands as a reminder of the hole that was ripped out of Biała Podlaska life by the Holocaust and loss of so many Jews. Apart from Israel, Melbourne in Australia has the largest number of Jewish survivors from Biała Podlaska - all now very aged.
Culture and tourism
Popular points of interest include the Old Town, as well as St. Anne's Church built in 1572, St. Anthony's Church from 1672 to 1684, Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary built in 1759, and the historic building Academy of Biała from 1628.
Popular museums include the most important Muzeum Południowego Podlasia (Museum of Southern Podlasie, founded in 1924), as well as the Oddział Martyrologiczno-Historyczny (Martyrology and Historic Division, since 1973, in the World War II Gestapo jail at Łomaska 21 Street).
Among the local art galleries are the Galeria Podlaska, Galeria Ulica Krzywa (Crooked Street Gallery), Bialskie Centrum Kultury (the Biała Podlaska Cultural Center), and Galeria Autorska Jakusza Maksymiuka (Janusz Maksymiuk's Gallery).
There are two popular cinemas in Biała Podlaska including Novekino Merkury - 1 hall, 282 seats, digital cinema 3D, as well as Cinema 3D - multiplex situated in Rywal Shopping Center; 4 halls; digital cinema 3D, 4K (Ultra HD). Plays are staged in the auditorium of the Pope John II State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska and in amphitheater in Radziwiłł park.
There are also several cultural centers in the city including Bialskie Centrum Kultury, Scena, Piast, and Eureka.
Festivals
Days of Biała Podlaska
Podlasie Jazz Festival
Biała Blues Festival
Art Of Fun Festival
Podlaska Jesień Teatralna (en. Podlasie Theatrical Autumn)
Transport
The city is a major transport hub: national road 2, which is also the european route E30, two voivodeship roads (DW811, DW812) and national railway line 2, pass through the town.
Biała Podlaska has its own bus lines. The organizer of the communication is the Management of Urban Transport (Polish: ZKM - Zarząd Komunikacji Miejskiej). Buses operate 8 lines marked with letters from "A" to "H" (frequency approx. 30 min). On the basis of an agreement between the neighboring villages, buses carry courses outside the administrative boundaries of the city.
The Biała Podlaska Airport has one of the longest runways in Poland. The airport was used for military purposes, however since 2020 the airport is closed.
Roads
National road 2 / European route E30: Terespol - Biała Podlaska - Warszawa - Poznań - Świecko
811 - voivodeship road: Biała Podlaska - Konstantynów - Sarnaki
812 - voivodeship road: Biała Podlaska - Wisznice - Chełm - Krasnystaw
Government
the city mayor of Biała Podlaska is Michał Litwiniuk.
Education
There are about a dozen primary schools in the city. The secondary schools include six public schools and one Catholic Secondary School named after Cyprian Norwid. Among the local secondary schools are the High School No. 1 named after Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, the High School No. 2 named after Emilia Plater, the Adam Mickiewicz High School No. 3, High School No. 4 named after Stanisław Staszic, and the Catholic High School named after Cyprian Norwid.
State universities
Branch of the Kazimierz Pułaski Technical University of Radom
Faculty of the Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw
Media
News websites hailing from the city include biala24.pl, bialanonstop.pl, bialasiedzieje.pl, slowopodlasia.pl, tygodnikpodlaski.pl, Bialczanin.eu, Radiobiper.info, and Interwizja.edu.pl.
Local TV stations include:
Biała Podlaska TV – channel available on cable TV Vectra (in both digital and analog technology)
TVP Lublin – channel available in MUX-3 DVB-T
Interwizja – internet TV
biala.tv
pulsmiasta.pl
Among the local radio stations are:
Polskie Radio Lublin 93.1 FM (Broadcast from Biała Podlaska)
Katolickie Radio Podlasie 101.7 FM (Broadcast from Łosice transmitter)
Radio Biper (Internet radio)
National radio transmissions are broadcast through the Łosice transmitter. They include:
Polskie Radio Jedynka (88.3 FM)
Polskie Radio Trójka (90.5 FM)
RMF FM (91.9 FM)
Radio ZET (105.4 FM)
Polskie Radio RDC (103.4 FM)
Broadcast directly from Biała Podlaska include:
Radio Maryja (87.8 FM / 107.7 FM also from Łosice transmitter)
Polskie Radio Dwójka (98.3 FM)
Belarusian Radio Racja (99.2 FM) - radio for the Belarusian minority in Poland
Among the newspapers published locally are:
Słowo Podlasia
Tygodnik Podlaski
Biała Się Dzieje na papierze
Kurier Bialski
Dziennik Wschodni
Życie Bialskie
Films and programs made in Biała Podlaska
Smoleńsk - film, which tells the story of the Smolensk plane crash on 10 April 2010. Scenes were recorded at airport in Biała Podlaska.
To nie koniec świata! (Eng. It's not the end of the world!) - TV series broadcast on Polsat
K2 - Kierowców dwóch - automotive program by TVN Turbo. Some episodes are recorded on Biala Podlaska Airport
Sports and recreation
Sport facilities in Biała Podlaska include 4 stadiums, 3 swimming pools, and a popular tennis court. Recreation facilities include also public spaces such as Radziwiłł Park and promenade at Plac Wolności (the Freedom Square).
Sections and clubs
AZS-AWF Biała Podlaska – handball, basketball, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball, weightlifting
Podlasie Biała Podlaska – men's soccer
KU AZS PSW Biała Podlaska – women's soccer, men's handball
Bialskopodlaski Klub Jeździecki – horsemanship
UKS TOP-54 – men's soccer, handball, korfball, cheerleaders, billiards
UKS Piątka plus – handball, billiard
UKS Jagiellończyk – soccer, athletics, gymnastics, women's volleyball
UKS Orlik-2 – women's basketball, men's soccer
UKS Serbinów (men's volleyball)
SKS Szóstka (women's volleyball)
UKS Olimpia – basketball, taekwon-do, soccer
UKS Kraszak – men's handball, basketball
UKS TATAMI – judo
Międzyszkolny Klub Sportowy ŻAK
Klub Żeglarski Biała Podlaska
Bialski Klub Sportowy GEM – tennis
Klub Sportowy Zakład Karny – volleyball
Bialski Klub Karate Kyokushin
Klub Sportowy Wushu
WOPR Biała Podlaska
Automobilklub bialskopodlaski
Bialski Klub Rowerowy – cycling
Bialskie Stowarzyszenie Koszykówki "KADET" - basketball
International relations
Twin towns - sister cities
Biała Podlaska is twinned with:
Niort in France
Former twin towns:
Brest in Belarus
In March 2022, Biała Podlaska suspended its partnership with the Belarusian city of Brest as a reaction to the Belarusian involvement in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Notable people
George Bridgetower (1778 - 1860), Polish/English violinist of African descent, famous for giving the premiere of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887), Polish writer, author of about 200 novels, received his primary education at the local academy, the Biała's college in 1822–1826
Karol Stanisław "Panie Kochanku" Radziwiłł (1734–1790), Polish noble and aristocrat, died in Biała
Apolinary Hartglas (1883–1953), lawyer, publicist, Jewish politician, a parliament deputy from 1919 to 1930
Xenia Denikina (1892–1973), wife of Anton Denikin, kept a journal of émigré life in France during WWII
Sebastian Szymański (1999-), Polish footballer
References
External links
Official website
A website about Biała Podlaska powiat - on this page there are several maps of the powiat and a link table to individual gmina pages, where information about every city, town, village and hamlet in the powiat is located
A website about Biała Podlaska gmina - maps and further information available
Photos and history of Biała Podlaska
A photo album of Biała Podlaska - 662 photos and 225 digital paintings discovering the beauty of Biała Podlaska region.
Holocaust in the Biała Podlaska powiat
1481 establishments in Europe
15th-century establishments in Poland
Historic Jewish communities in Poland
Brest Litovsk Voivodeship
Siedlce Governorate
Kholm Governorate
Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939)
Cities and towns in Lublin Voivodeship
City counties of Poland
Cities with powiat rights
Holocaust locations in Poland
Reserve Police Battalion 101
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo%20Cars
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Volvo Cars
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Volvo Cars (, styled VOLVO in the company's logo) is a Swedish multinational manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Torslanda, Gothenburg. The company manufactures SUVs, station wagons, and sedans. The company's main marketing arguments are safety and its Swedish heritage and design. 82% of Volvo Cars is currently owned by the Chinese firm Geely, the parent of motor manufacturer Geely Auto.
Volvo Cars has been separate from its former parent conglomerate and producer of heavy trucks, buses, and construction equipment (among others) AB Volvo since 1999 when AB Volvo sold its automobile division Volvo Cars to Ford Motor Company. On 28 March 2010, Ford sold loss-making Volvo Cars to Geely for $1.8 billion; the deal closed in August 2010. Volvo Cars was publicly listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange in 2021, though Geely still retains majority ownership. Volvo Cars and AB Volvo share the Volvo logo, and cooperate in running the Volvo Museum.
In March 2021, Volvo Cars announced that it would be a fully electric brand by 2030. In June 2021, Volvo Cars and Swedish battery developer and manufacturer Northvolt announced the intention to establish a 50/50 joint venture consisting of a battery gigafactory and R&D (research and development) center. In December 2021, it was revealed the battery R&D center would be located in Gothenburg. In February 2022, Gothenburg was also chosen as the location for the battery gigafactory.
During 2021 and 2022, Volvo Cars transferred its hybrid engine research and production capabilities in Skövde and Zhangjiakou to Aurobay, in a joint venture with Geely.
Volvo Cars owns 48.3% of Polestar and 30% of Lynk & Co, in addition to 50% of NOVO Energy (electric vehicle batteries), 100% of Zenseact (AD and ADAS software), and 60% of HaleyTek (Android-based infotainment systems).
History
1927–1999
Volvo was founded upon the concept of safety in 1927, in Gothenburg, Sweden:
The company was created as a subsidiary to SKF. Assar Gabrielsson was appointed managing director and Gustav Larson technical manager.
The trademark Volvo (which is Latin for 'I roll') was first registered by SKF on 11 May 1915 with the intention to use it for a special series of ball bearing for the American market but it was never used for this purpose (however in the application for the trademark, it was also designated for the purpose of automobiles). The SKF trademark as it looks today was used instead for all the SKF-products. Some pre-series of Volvo-bearings stamped with the brand name 'Volvo' were manufactured but never released to the market, and it was not until 1927 that the trademark was used again, now as a trademark and company name for an automobile.
The first Volvo car left the assembly line on 14 April 1927, and was called Volvo ÖV 4. After this the young company produced closed top and cabriolet vehicles, which were designed to hold strong in the Swedish climate and terrain. In the registration application for Volvo logotype in 1927, they simply made a copy of the entire radiator for ÖV4, viewed from the front. The round logo with the arrow pointing to the right ( ♂ ) is the Greek alchemical symbol for iron.
Presented in 1944 the Volvo PV444 passenger car only entered production in 1947. It was the smallest Volvo yet and was to take the lion's share of Volvo production, as well as spearheading their move into the profitable American market. The first Volvos arrived in the United States in 1955, after hardware wholesaler Leo Hirsh began distributing cars in California. Later, Texas was added, and in 1956, Volvo themselves began importing cars to the US. North America has consistently provided Volvo with their main outlet since.
In 1963, Volvo opened the Volvo Halifax Assembly plant, the first assembly plant in the company's history outside of Sweden, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1964, Volvo opened its Torslanda plant in Sweden, which currently is one of its largest production sites (chiefly large cars and SUVs). Then in 1965, the Ghent, Belgium plant was opened, which is the company's second largest production site. This was also Volvo's first location producing cars within the European Economic Community. In 1989, the Uddevalla plant in Sweden was opened, which was jointly operated by Volvo Car Corporation and Pininfarina Sverige AB from 2005 to 2013.
In the early 1970s, Volvo acquired the passenger car division of the Dutch company DAF, and marketed their small cars as Volvos before releasing the Dutch-built Volvo 340, which went on to be a big seller in the UK market in the 1980s. In 1986 Volvo sold 113,267 cars in the US marking a record year for the company. The appearance of Japanese brands like Acura and Lexus and the growing popularity of Subaru station wagons in subsequent years meant the loss of a significant market share for Volvo, one which they have never regained.
Volvo's long-time CEO Pehr G. Gyllenhammar saw early on that Volvo was too small to survive in the future, and attempted several times to merge with other manufacturers. Volvo nearly merged with Saab in the late seventies, while in 1978 an aborted affair would have seen the Norwegian state take over 40 percent of the company. In return, Volvo would receive 200 million SEK and a ten percent concession in the Oseberg oil field. Major institutional actors in Sweden opposed the deal and blocked it. A deal to merge with Renault was blocked in 1993, mainly opposed by a Swedish stockholders' association.
A collection of Volvo's most important historical vehicles are now housed in the Volvo Museum, which opened in a permanent location in Arendal at Hisingen on 30 May 1995. For several years, the collection had been housed at the Blue Hangar, at the then closed Torslanda Airport.
In 1999, Volvo Group decided to sell its automobile manufacturing business in order to concentrate on commercial vehicles, and to buy a 5% stake in Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors (with which Volvo Group along with the Dutch government had participated in a joint venture at the former DAF plant in Born, Netherlands since 1991). Ford saw advantages in acquiring a profitable prestige mid-size European automobile manufacturer, well renowned for its safety aspects, as an addition to its Premier Automotive Group. The buyout of Volvo Cars was announced on 28 January 1999, and in the following year the acquisition was completed at a price of US$6.45 billion. As a result of the divestiture, the Volvo trademark was used by two separate companies:
Volvo Group – a manufacturer of trucks, buses and construction equipment (among others) owned by Swedish interests
Volvo Car Corporation or Volvo Cars – a manufacturer of automobiles owned by Ford Motor Company
Volvo Group completed its 5% deal with Mitsubishi in November 1999, but sold its stake back to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in March 2001.
Ford era, 1999–2010
Volvo Car Corporation was part of Ford Motor Company's Premier Automotive Group (PAG), along with Jaguar, Aston Martin and Land Rover. While part of the PAG, the company significantly expanded its range of vehicles.
After Ford sold Jaguar Land Rover to Tata Motors of India in 2008, the company initially decided to keep Volvo Cars despite mounting losses and major economic downturns. Ford decided to restructure plans for Volvo Cars, pushing it further upmarket, alongside the lower end of Mercedes and BMW sedans, wagons, and SUV crossovers. The outcome was the luxurious second generation Volvo S80 and the new small premium crossover Volvo XC60.
When the global economic crisis of 2008 threatened the US automakers, Swedish authorities became concerned about the fate of Volvo, should Ford file for bankruptcy. These concerns mounted after repeated mass-layoffs at Volvo. In December 2008, Ford announced that it was considering selling Volvo Cars. Initially, a sale price of US$6 billion was reported. Ford said it was also looking into the possibility of spinning off Volvo as an independent company. The Swedish government was asked to look into a possible state ownership of Volvo, or a financial bailout for Volvo Cars and SAAB of GM. Former parent AB Volvo agreed to help Volvo cut costs through partnerships, and suggested taking part in a shared ownership of Volvo Cars, as part of a larger consortium. Other rumored candidates to purchase Volvo Cars included BMW AG of Germany, Investor AB of Sweden, Chinese investors, and Russian investors.
Although it was rumoured that Volkswagen would buy Volvo Cars, and despite initial denials, the company Geely Holding Group was ultimately selected to take over the Swedish automaker. Geely Group Holdings Co. allegedly bid about US$1.5 billion to take over Volvo, with Goldman Sachs investing HK$2.59 billion (US$334 million) in the holding company.
Geely era, 2010–present
Ford Motor Company offered Volvo Cars for sale in December 2008, after suffering losses that year. On 28 October 2009, Ford confirmed that, after considering several offers, the preferred buyer of Volvo Cars was Geely Holding Group, the parent of motor manufacturer Geely Automobile. On 23 December 2009, Ford confirmed the terms of the sale to Geely had been settled. A definitive agreement was signed on 28 March 2010, for $1.8 billion. The European Commission and China's Ministry of Commerce approved the deal on 6 and 29 July 2010, respectively. The deal closed on 2 August 2010 with Geely paying $1.3 billion cash and a $200 million note. Further payments are expected with a later price "true-up". It is the largest overseas acquisition by a Chinese automaker.
Stefan Jacoby, formerly chief executive of Volkswagen of America, became Volvo Car Corporation's president and chief executive on 16 August 2010, replacing Stephen Odell, who became chief executive of Ford Europe. Li Shufu became Volvo Cars' chairman of the board. His board members include vice-chairman Hans-Olov Olsson, a former president and chief executive of Volvo Cars, and Håkan Samuelsson, formerly chief executive of MAN.
Under Geely ownership, Volvo has refocused its product lineup. The manufacturer has developed a new line of 3- and 4-cylinder diesel and petrol engines while eliminating larger engines. It has also developed a new vehicle platform, the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), and re-introduced an expanded -90 series of models, including the S90 sedan and Volvo V90 wagon in addition to a redesigned XC90 SUV.
In 2015, Volvo sold more than half a million cars for the first time in its 89-year history.
Volvo reported strong sales from all three core global regions. Sales in Europe rose 10% in 2015 to 269k, representing over 50% of total global volume. Volvo's revival in the US gained momentum, with sales up 24% in 2015, while China was flat amid a challenging sales environment, but sales were up 11% in the fourth quarter.
In July 2017, the automaker announced that beginning in 2019, all of its new models will include an electric motor in their powertrain. Implementation of the announcement could mean Volvo becoming the first manufacturer to end production of internal combustion-only vehicles, with all vehicles hybrid or electric powered. Between 2019 and 2021, Volvo plans to launch three electric cars under the Volvo brand and two more under the Polestar performance brand.
Volvo is one of the proponents of autonomous vehicles. On 20 November 2017, Uber announced that it planned to buy up to 24,000 Volvo cars designed to accept autonomous technology between 2019 and 2021. This non-binding intent includes a plan for Uber Advanced Technologies Group to design and build the self-driving system in the XC90 SUV. In 2016, the companies announced that they planned to collaborate on the design and financing of cars with self-driving systems. Such vehicles require a different type of steering and braking mechanism, as well as sensors. The CEO of Volvo Cars, Håkan Samuelsson, made this comment in an interview: "We get support developing this car ... It’s also a big commercial deal."
Also in 2017, Volvo announced a vehicle subscription offering called Care by Volvo, which offers the Volvo XC40 for a monthly payment that includes insurance and maintenance. Care by Volvo is offered in several European markets, such as Germany, the UK and Italy, as well as in the U.S.
In February 2020, Volvo and Geely announced that they had started formal discussions about a merger of business. Geely had owned 100% of Volvo, but Volvo Cars had largely been allowed autonomy with its resources. These merger talks were later halted, and 18% of Volvo Cars shares were listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange in October 2021.
In early 2021 the company announced plans to completely stop selling fossil fuel-based cars by 2030, switching to electric-powered cars. The plan includes phasing out fossil-fuel-only cars by 2025, manufacturing only electric cars or hybrids.
In 2021, Volvo Cars set up a joint venture with Geely for its hybrid engine operations. The new business, Aurobay will develop and market powertrain solutions, and as of 2022, includes Volvo Cars' engine plants in Skövde and Zhangjiakou, together with its powertrain research and development operations in Gothenburg.
In June 2023, Ukraine blacklisted Geely due to its refusal to leave the Russian market. In this regard, the Swedish authorities began to discuss the possibility of a boycott of Volvo Cars. The discussion was initiated by the Ministry of Defense of Sweden.
Safety
Volvo cars have long been marketed as safe and the company has stressed their historic reputation for solidity and reliability in marketing campaigns. Volvo uses high-tech safety systems as standard equipment in new vehicles. Prior to strong government safety regulation Volvo had been at the forefront of safety engineering.
In 1944, laminated glass was introduced in the PV model. After Vattenfall engineers presented their pioneering work to Volvo in the 1950s, Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin invented and patented the modern three-point safety belt, which became standard on all Volvo cars in 1959, and then made this design patent open in the interest of safety and made it available to other car manufacturers for free. Additionally, Volvo developed the first rear-facing child seat in 1964 and introduced its own booster seat in 1978.
In 1991, the 960 introduced the first three-point seat belt for the middle of the rear seat and a child safety cushion integrated in the middle armrest. Also in 1991, it introduced the Side Impact Protection System (SIPS) on the 700, 940/960 and 850 models, which channels the force of a side impact away from the doors and into the safety cage.
In 1994, to add to its SIPS, Volvo was the first to introduce side airbags and installed them as standard equipment in all models from 1995. At the start of the 1995 model year, side impact protection airbags were standard on high trim-level Volvo 850s, and optional on other 850s. By the middle of the production year, they were standard on all 850s. In model year 1995, SIPS airbags became standard on all Volvo models.
In 1995, the Volvo 745 was recalled as the front seatbelt mounts could break in a collision.
In 1998, Volvo installed a head-protecting airbag, which was made standard in all new models as well as some existing models. The IC head-protecting airbag was not available on the 1997 C70 since the initial design deployed the airbag from the roof, and the C70, being a convertible, could not accommodate such an airbag. A later version of the C70 featured a head-protecting airbag deploying upwards from the door, avoiding this problem. It has been stated by many testing authorities that side head protecting curtain airbags can reduce the risk of death in a side impact by up to 40% and brain injury by up to 55%, as well as protect occupants during a rollover. In 1998, Volvo introduced its Whiplash Protection System (WHIPS), a safety device to prevent injury to front seat users during collisions.
In 2004, Volvo introduced the Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), which detects vehicles entering the vehicle's blind spot with a side-view-mirror-mounted camera, and alerts the driver with a light. That year also saw Volvos sold in all markets equipped with side-marker lights and daytime running lights. Also, since 2004 all Volvo models except for the coupes (C70 and C30) are available with an all-wheel drive system developed by Haldex Traction of Sweden.
In 2005, Volvo presented the second generation of Volvo C70, which came with extra stiff door-mounted inflatable side curtains (the first of its kind in a convertible) dubbed 'DMIC'.
Even though Volvo Car Corporation was owned by Ford Motor Company, Volvo's safety systems were still standard on all Volvo vehicles. Volvo has patented all its safety innovations, including SIPS, WHIPS, ROPS, DSTC, and body structures. Some of these systems were fitted to other Ford vehicles in forms similar to those of Volvo systems, but only because Volvo licensed the FOMOCO and other PAG members to use these features.
A 2005 Folksam report, put the 740/940 (from 1982 on) in the 15% better than average category, the second from the top category.
In 2005, when the American non-profit, non-governmental Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released its first annual "Top Safety Picks" vehicles list, none of Volvo's offered vehicles in the US were included on the list.
According to Russ Rader, a spokesman for IIHS, Volvo lagged behind its competitors. Dan Johnston, a Volvo spokesman, denied that the company's vehicles were any less safe than the institute's top-rated vehicles, adding that
In 2006, Volvo's Personal Car Communicator (PCC) remote control was launched as an optional feature with the all-new Volvo S80. Before a driver enters their car, they can review the security level and know whether they had set the alarm and if the car is locked. Additionally, a heartbeat sensor warns if someone is hiding inside the car. The S80 was also the first Volvo model to feature adaptive cruise control (ACC) with Collision Warning and Brake Support (CWBS).
In 2008, a French court found Volvo partially responsible for causing the death of two children and serious injuries of another in Wasselonne on 17 June 1999, when the brakes of a 1996 Volvo 850 failed. The court subjected Volvo to a €200,000 fine.
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Volvo's S80 became one of the 2009 Top Safety Picks Award winners. The previous versions of the S40 and S60 models (2005–09 models with standard side airbags) failed to attain the highest rating in their side impact test. However, according to the IIHS, in recent years Volvo cars have still managed to maintain their high class safety ratings as seen in test results. The Volvo XC90, S80, C70, XC60, S60 and C30 are all rated Top Safety Picks in these crash tests. The 2014 models of the XC60, XC90, S60 and S80 have even received the Top Safety Pick+ rating. All Volvos tested in the small overlap test have received a 'good' rating.
Volvo has also scored high in Euro NCAP tests. Since 2009, all the Volvo models that Euro NCAP have tested have received five-star safety ratings: Volvo C30, V40, V60, V60 plug-in hybrid, XC60 and V70. The second generation Volvo V40 got the best test result of any car model ever tested by Euro NCAP at the time. As well the redesigned XC60 received the highest adult occupant score (98%) in 2017.
In the United States, Volvo paid $19.6 million in fines for missing its Corporate Average Fuel Economy targets for the 2010–2014 model years. In July 2017, Volvo announced that new models launched from 2019 onward would be fully electric or hybrid-electric, heralding the end of production of nearly a century of Volvo vehicles powered solely by the internal combustion engine. Volvo, however, will continue to produce non-electric, non-hybrid cars from models introduced before that year but will discontinue them once the non-hybrid, non-electric cars receive a facelift or complete redesign. In 2019, Volvo announced that it plans to produce only electrified cars from the year 2040 onwards.
Safety milestones
(This list is not necessarily Volvo innovations, but dates when Volvo incorporated the technology into its cars)
1944 – safety cage
1944 – laminated windscreen
1957 – anchor points for two-point safety belts, front
1958 – anchor points for two-point safety belts, rear
1959 – three-point safety belt, standard in front seats
1964 – rearward-facing child safety seat, first prototype tested
1966 – crumple zones front and rear
1966 – safety door-locks
1969 – inertia-reel safety belts
1971 – reminder safety belt
1972 – three-point safety belt, outer rear seats
1972 – rearward-facing child safety seat
1974 – multistage impact absorbing steering column
1974 – bulb integrity sensor
1975 – braking system with stepped bore master cylinder
1978 – child safety booster cushion
1982 – "anti-submarining" protection
1986 – three-point safety belt in centre rear seat (740/760)
1990 – integrated child safety cushion in centre rear seat (940/960)
1991 – Side Impact Protection System (850 and 940/960)
1991 – automatic height adjusting safety belt
1992 – reinforced rear seats, estate models
1995 – front side airbags (seat-mounted) for torso (850), integrated child safety cushion, outer rear seats
1997 – Roll Over Protection System (C70)
1998 – Whiplash Protection System (S80)
1998 – roof-mounted inflatable curtain side airbags (S80)
2001 – SCC : Volvo Safety Concept Car
2002 – Roll Stability Control (XC90)
2003 – Volvo Intelligent Vehicle Architecture, new front structure (S40, V50)
2003 – rear seat belt reminders (S40, V50)
2003 – Intelligent Driver Information System, a system that selectively blocks information to the driver in complex traffic situations and lets the information through once the situation has calmed down (S40, V50)
2003 – Volvo's Traffic Accident Research Team, inaugurated in Bangkok
2004 – Blind Spot Information System, informs the driver of vehicles in the blind spots, using a yellow LED in the A-pillars (S40, V50)
2005 – door-mounted inflatable curtain airbags (C70)
2006 – Personal Car Communicator (S80)
2006 – Collision Warning Brake Support, a system that warns the driver and gives brake support when a collision with another vehicle in front of the car is imminent (S80)
2006 – Electrical Parking Brake (S80)
2007 – Driver Alert Control, a driver drowsiness detection system that alerts the driver when the system detects that they are becoming tired (S80, V70, XC70)
2007 – Lane Departure Warning, a system that warns the driver for unintended lane departures (S80, V70, XC70)
2007 – Collision Warning with Auto Brake, a system that automatically brakes the car when a collision with another vehicle in front of the car is imminent (S80, V70, XC70)
2007 – Distance Alert, a system that helps the driver keeping a safe distance to the vehicle ahead, by continuously measuring the distance and lighting up the vehicle's head up display if the time gap becomes shorter than what the driver has specified (S80, V70, XC70)
2007 – Alcoguard, a hand-held device that the driver blows into before they can start the car, mainly aimed for the company-car sector, taxi operators, state authorities and municipalities (S80, V70, XC70)
2008 – City Safety, a system that automatically brakes the car at speeds below if an obstruction is detected in front of the car (new XC60)
2010 – Pedestrian Detection with Auto Brake, a system that warns the driver and automatically brakes the car when a collision with a pedestrian in front of the car is imminent (S60)
2012 – pedestrian airbag, covering the A-pillars and the lower part of the windscreen in case of collision with a pedestrian (Volvo V40)
2012 – knee airbag, for the driver (V40)
2012 – Upgraded City Safety, now working up to (S80, V70, XC70, XC60, S60, V60, new V40)
2012 – Lane Keeping Aid, a system that steers the car back into the lane again if it is about to unintentionally drift out of the lane (V40)
2012 – Road Sign Information, a system that reads road signs and displays them in the information display, thereby helping the driver to remember speed limits, no-overtaking stretches, low-speed areas, etc. (S80, V70, XC70, XC60, S60, V60, V40)
2012 – Enhanced Blind Spot Information System, now able to detect approaching vehicles up to 70 meters behind the car (V40)
2012 – Cross Traffic Alert, alerting the driver of crossing traffic approaching from the sides (up to 30 meters away) when reversing out of a parking space (V40)
2013 – Cyclist Detection with Auto Brake, a system that warns the driver and automatically brakes the car when a collision with a cyclist travelling in the same direction as the car in front of the car is imminent (S80, V70, XC70, XC60, XC90, S60, V60, V40)
2018 – Head-on crash detection with Auto Brake.
Car models
Early years
Volvo ÖV 4, a.k.a. Jakob
Volvo PV650 Series
Volvo TR670 Series
Volvo PV 36 Carioca
Volvo PV51
Volvo PV800 Series (civilian (PV801, PV802, PV810, PV821, PV822 and PV831) and military (TP21/P2104, P2104))
Volvo PV 60
Volvo PV444/544
Volvo Duett (Volvo PV445, P210)
Volvo P1900
Volvo Amazon/Volvo 122
Volvo P1800
Volvo 66
Volvo C202
Volvo C3-series (C303, C304 and C306)
Tri-digit nomenclature
Starting with the 140 series in 1966, Volvo used a tri-digit system for their cars. The first number was the series, the second number the number of cylinders and the third number the number of doors; so a 164 was a 1-series with a six-cylinder engine and four doors. However, there were exceptions to this rule – the 780 for example, came with turbocharged I4 and naturally aspirated V6 petrol engines and I6 diesel engines, but never an eight-cylinder, as the "eight" would suggest. Similarly, the 760 often was equipped with a turbocharged I4 engine, and the Volvo 360 only had four cylinders. Some 240GLT had a V6 engine. The company dropped the meaning of the final digit for later cars like the 740, but the digit continued to identify cars underhood on the identification plate.
Volvo 140 (Volvo 142, Volvo 144, Volvo 145)
Volvo 164
Volvo 240 (Volvo 242, 244, 245)
Volvo 260 (Volvo 262C, 264, 265)
Volvo 340 (Volvo 343, 345)
Volvo 360
Volvo 440/460
Volvo 480
Volvo 740
Volvo 760
Volvo 780
Volvo 850
Volvo 940
Volvo 960
Post tri-digit models
Released in 1995
Volvo S40
Volvo V40
Released in 1996
Volvo S70 replaced the 850 saloon
Volvo V70 replaced the 850 estate
Volvo S90 replaced the 960 saloon
Volvo V90 replaced the 960 estate
Released in 1997
Volvo C70 coupé
Volvo V70 XC
Released in 1998
Volvo C70 convertible
Volvo S80 replaced the Volvo S90
Released in 2000
Volvo S60 replaced the Volvo S70
Volvo V70 II
Volvo V70 XC II/XC70
Released in 2002
Volvo XC90
Released in 2004
Volvo S40 II replaced the Volvo S40
Volvo V50 replaced the Volvo V40
Released in 2006
Volvo C30
Volvo C70 II
Volvo S80 II
Released in 2007
Volvo V70 III
Volvo XC70 II
Released in 2008
Volvo XC60
Released in 2010
Volvo S60 II replaced the Volvo S60
Volvo V60 replaced the Volvo V50
Released in 2012
Volvo V40 II replaced both the Volvo S40 II and Volvo V50
Released in 2014
Volvo XC Classic
Volvo XC90 II replaced the Volvo XC90
Released in 2016
Volvo S90 replaced the Volvo S80 II
Volvo V90 replaced both the Volvo V70 III and Volvo XC70 II
Released in 2017
Volvo XC60 II replaced the Volvo XC60
Volvo XC40
Released in 2018
Volvo V60 II replaced the Volvo V60
Released in 2021
Volvo C40 coupé version of the Volvo XC40 Recharge
Released in 2022
Volvo EX90 fully electric replacement for the Volvo XC90 II
Current models
Today, the company uses a system of letters denoting body style followed by the series number. "S" stands for "sedan", "C" stands for "coupé" or "convertible" (including three-door hatchback AKA "shooting brake") and "V" stands for "versatile" (5-door hatchback and station wagon). A V50 is an estate (also under "V") that is smaller than the V70. "XC" stands for "cross country" originally added to a more rugged V70 model as the V70XC and indicates all wheel drive paired with a raised suspension to give it an SUV look. Volvo would later change the name to the "XC70" in keeping with its car naming consistent with the XC90.
Originally, Volvo was planning a different naming scheme. S and C were to be the same, but "F", standing for "flexibility", was to be used on station wagons. When Volvo introduced the first generation S40 and V40 in 1995, they were announced as the S4 and F4. However, Audi complained that it had inherent rights to the S4 name, since it names its sporty vehicles "S", and the yet to be introduced sport version of the Audi A4 would have the S4 name. Volvo agreed to add a second digit, so the vehicles became the S40 and F40. However, that led to another complaint from Ferrari, who used the Ferrari F40 name on their legendary sports car. This led to Volvo switching the "F" to "V", for versatile.
Medium cars (CMA platform)
Volvo XC40 2017–present (M/Y 2019–present)
Volvo C40 2021–present (M/Y 2022–present)
Large cars (SPA platform)
Volvo XC90 II 2014–present (M/Y 2015–present)
Volvo S90 II 2016–present (M/Y 2017–present)
Volvo V90 II 2016–present (M/Y 2017–present)
Volvo V90 Cross Country 2016–present (M/Y 2017–present)
Volvo XC60 II 2017–present (M/Y 2018–present)
Volvo S60 III 2018–present (M/Y 2018–present)
Volvo V60 II 2018–present (M/Y 2019–present)
Large electric cars (SPA2 platform)
Volvo EX90 2022–present (to commence for M/Y 2024)
Future models
Volvo EM90 (2024) premium EV MPV
Medium cars (SEA platform)
Volvo EX30
Concept cars
Volvo Venus Bilo (1933)
Volvo Philip (1952)
Volvo Margarete Rose (1953)
Volvo Elisabeth I (1953)
Volvo GTZ (1969)
Volvo GTZ 3000 (1970)
Volvo VESC (1972)
Volvo 1800 ESC (1972)
Volvo EC (1977)
Volvo City Taxi (1977)
Volvo Tundra (1979)
Volvo VCC – Volvo Concept Car (1980)
Volvo LCP2000 (1983)
Volvo ECC – Environment Concept Car (1992)
Volvo ACC – Adventure Concept Car (1997)
Volvo SCC – Safety Concept Car (2001)
Volvo PCC – Performance Concept Car (2001)
Volvo PCC2 (2002)
Volvo ACC2 (2002)
Volvo VCC – Versatility Concept Car (2003)
Volvo YCC – Your Concept Car (2004)
Volvo T6 (2005)
Volvo 3CC (2005)
Volvo C30 Design Concept (2006)
Volvo XC60 Concept (2006)
Volvo ReCharge Concept (2007)
Volvo S60 Concept (2008)
C30 DRIVe Electric (2010)
Volvo Universe Concept (2011)
Volvo Concept You (2011)
Volvo Concept Coupe (2013)
Volvo Concept Estate (2014)
Volvo Concept XC Coupe (2014)
Volvo 40.1 (2016)
Volvo 40.2 (2016)
Volvo 360c (2018)
Volvo Concept Recharge (2021)
Alternative propulsion
In 2019, Volvo announced that it plans to produce only fully electrified cars from the year 2040 onwards. From 2040, it plans to no longer produce internal combustion engine powered vehicles. In March 2021, Volvo doubled down on these plans and committed to being an electric-only car maker by 2030.
Flexible-fuel vehicles
In 2005, Volvo introduced to the Swedish market the company's first E85 flexifuel models. Volvo introduced its S40 and V50 with flexible-fuel engines, joined in late 2006 by the then new C30. All Volvo models were initially restricted to the Swedish market, until 2007, when these three models were launched in eight new European markets. In 2008, Volvo launched the V70 with a 2.5-litre turbocharged flexifuel engine.
Plug-in hybrids
The Volvo ReCharge is a plug-in hybrid concept car with an all-electric range (AER) of . It was officially unveiled at the 2007 Frankfurt Auto Show.
On 1 June 2009, Volvo announced the launching of series production diesel-electric plug-in hybrids by 2012. The company plans to sell a series hybrid with the goal of achieving emissions of less than 50 grams of CO2 per kilometer. As part of a joint venture with Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company, Volvo converted two Volvo V70 to plug-in hybrid demonstrators that have been in field testing in Göteborg, Sweden since December 2009. Vattenfall offered customers participating in this trial the supply of renewable electricity generated from wind power or hydropower. Among other challenges, this test has allowed to experience the all-electric range at low temperatures, which has been a disadvantage of plug-in vehicles.
Electric car
The Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric concept car was exhibited at the 2010 Paris Motor Show and Volvo announced that field testing will begin in 2011, in the US, Europe, and China. The C30 DRIVe electric car has a lithium-ion battery, a top speed of , and an all-electric range of up to . Field testing began in 2010 with 10 units in Göteborg, Sweden.
Gas-turbine Hybrid
The Volvo ECC (Environmental Concept Car) was exhibited at the 1992 Paris Motor Show. The vehicles range on batteries alone was 90 miles (140 km), and when combined with a full tank of fuel for the turbine, about 415 miles (668 km).
Drive-E engines
Starting in the 2015 model year (Volvo S60, V60, and XC60), Volvo introduced a line of forced-induction four-cylinder engines, dubbed "Drive-E", to increase the efficiency of their models without sacrificing performance. These engines also debuted throughout the lineup that year, and also appeared in the second-generation Volvo XC90. Hybridized versions of these engines would, in theory, have enough power to match eight-cylinder engines.
Production locations
Sweden
Torslanda (Volvo Cars Torslanda – Torslandaverken) 1964–present
Volvo V60, Volvo XC60, Volvo V90, Volvo XC90
Olofström (body components)
Skövde (engines)
Floby (engine components, brake discs)
Belgium
Ghent (Volvo Car Gent) 1965–present
Volvo XC40, Volvo C40, Volvo S60, Volvo V60
China
Chengdu (Zhongjia Automobile Manufacturing) 2013–present
Volvo S60L, Volvo XC60
Daqing (Daqing Volvo Car Manufacturing) 2014–present
Volvo S90, Volvo S90L
Luqiao (Zhejiang Geely Manufacturing) 2016–present
Volvo XC40
Zhangjiakou (engines)
Malaysia
Shah Alam (Volvo Car Manufacturing Malaysia) 1967–present
Volvo S60, Volvo S90, Volvo V60, Volvo XC40, Volvo XC60, Volvo XC90
India
Bangalore (Volvo Auto India) 2017–present
Volvo S90, Volvo XC60, Volvo XC90
United States
Ridgeville, South Carolina (Volvo Car North America) 2018–present
Volvo S60
Other facilities
Sweden
Gothenburg (Volvo Cars Headquarters, R&D and Safety Center)
Hedared (Hällered Proving Ground)
Engine types
Volvo uses in-line, or straight engines in their production vehicles. Volvo is also known for the application of the in-line 5-cylinder engine to its vehicle line up since its introduction in 1991 in the Volvo 850.
Side valve six – fitted into the PV651/2, TR671/4, PV653/4, TR676/9, PV658/9, PV36, PV51/2, PV53/6, PV801/2, PV821/2, PV831/2 and PV60 from 1929 to 1958
B4B and B14A – fitted into the Volvo PV and Volvo Duett from 1947 to 1956
B16 (A and B) – fitted into the PV, Duett and Volvo Amazon from 1957 to 1960
B18 and B20 – 1.8 L/2.0 L OHV 8v fitted into all Volvo models from 1961 to 1974 except 164 (and 1975 US spec 240 models).
B19, B21, and B23 – fitted from 1975
B200 and B230 – 2.0 L and 2.3 L, respectively, SOHC 8v fitted to 240, 360, 700, 940 series cars from 1985
B204 and B234 – 2.0 L and 2.3 L DOHC 16 valve engines
B27/B28 and B280 – 2.7 and 2.8 L SOHC 12v developed together with Renault and Peugeot
B30 – fitted to all 164 models
Transmissions
Volvo automatic transmissions in the past were made by the ZF Friedrichshafen company, but now the transmissions are co-developed with Aisin of Japan. Geartronic is Volvo Cars' name for its manumatic transmission.
Automatic transmissions
Borg-Warner 35 transmission
Borg-Warner 55 transmission
Volvo AW70 series transmissions
Volvo AW70 transmission
Volvo AW71 transmission
Volvo AW72 transmission
AW50-42 (4-speed automatic, FWD/AWD)
AW55-50/51 (5-speed automatic, FWD/AWD)
GM4T65EV/GT (4-speed GM automatic, FWD/AWD)
AWTF-80 SC (6-speed automatic, FWD/AWD)
ZF 4HP22 transmission (4-speed automatic transmission, 4x4)
Manual transmissions
Volvo M30 transmission
Volvo M40 transmission
Volvo M400 & M410 transmission
Volvo M41 transmission
Volvo M45 transmission
Volvo M46 transmission
Volvo M47 transmission
Volvo M50 transmission
Volvo M51 transmission
Volvo M56 transmission
Volvo M58 transmission
Volvo M59 transmission
Volvo M65 transmission
Volvo M66 transmission
Volvo M90 transmission
IB5
MTX-75
MMT6
MPS6 (6-speed dual clutch Powershift, FWD)
Motorsport
In 1959, Volvo had set up its own motorsport department. This led to Volvo enjoying worldwide success in the motorsport arena throughout the early 1960s. In 1961, Gran Premio de Argentina Gunnar Andersson was appointed Volvo's competition department manager, signing a number of drivers, including Carl-Magnus Skogh, Tom Trana and Ewy Rosqvist, though he himself still continued to compete in rallies. In 1964, Volvo made heavy investments in the Safari Rally, entering four Volvo PV544s in the 1964 competition. A PV544, borrowed from Volvo and then modified and driven by Joginder and Jaswant Singh won the Safari Rally in 1965.
Volvo entered the European Touring Car Championship with the Volvo 240 Turbo in the 1980s. In the 1984 European Touring Car Championship, the Swedish team Sportpromotion won the EG Trophy at Zolder circuit, followed by placing second in the Mugello. In 1985, Volvo signed Swiss engine guru Ruedi Eggenberger to run its works team through Eggenberger Motorsport. Team drivers Gianfranco Brancatelli and Thomas Lindström led the 240T to victory in the 1985 ETCC.
Also in 1985, New Zealander Mark Petch had purchased a 240T from the Magnum team in Sweden (and claimed to run the only privateer Volvo 240T outside of Europe), and drivers Robbie Francevic and Michel Delcourt had also won the Wellington 500 street race in New Zealand in January. Francevic went on to finish 5th in the 1985 Australian Touring Car Championship, taking wins at Symmons Plains and Oran Park. The factory-supported Petch team also participated in the 1985 Bathurst 1000. Thomas Lindström later joined Francevic to win the 1986 Wellington 500. The Petch team become the Volvo Dealer Team in 1986, and expanded to two cars, with the other being for John Bowe, who had driven the Volvo with Francevic at the 1985 Bathurst 1000.
Volvo contracted Belgian based team RAS Sport to be its works team in the ETCC in 1986, following Eggenberger moving to race Ford Sierra's. This team included defending champion Lindström, joined by ex-Formula One and Grand Prix motorcycle racer Johnny Cecotto, as well as Ulf Granberg and Anders Olofsson. The team took wins at wins at Hockenheim, Anderstorp, Brno, Österreichring and Zolder, though the wins at Anderstorp and the Österreichring were disqualified due to the use of illegal fuel.
The 240T also entered the Guia Race, part of the Macau Grand Prix in 1985, 1986 and 1987, winning in both 1985 and 1986.
Volvo also saw success in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (German Touring Car Championship), with a 240 Turbo driven by Per Stureson winning the 1985 DTM.
Volvo also entered the British Touring Car Championship in the 1990s with Tom Walkinshaw Racing. This partnership was responsible for the controversial 850 Estate racing cars, driven by Rickard Rydell and Jan Lammers and with a best qualifying placing of third and a best race finish of fifth, which was only rendered uncompetitive when the FIA allowed the use of aerodynamic aids in 1995. TWR then built and ran the works 850 Saloon, with six wins in 1995, and five wins in 1996, and a S40, with one win in 1997 in the BTCC, as well as Volvo placing third in the Manufacturers Championship, both in 1995 and 1996. In 1998, TWR Volvo won the British Touring Car Championship with Rickard Rydell driving the S40R.
Volvo also competed in the Super Touring category with the 850 across Europe and in Australia. Australian race car driver Peter Brock drove an 850 T5 with Tony Scott in the 1994 James Hardie 12 Hour production car race at Bathurst, finishing 25th. He also drove an 850 saloon in the 1996 Australian Super Touring Championship, placing sixth in the Drivers’ Championship.
Volvo regularly entered the S60 in the Swedish Touring Car Championship, where it finished 2nd in the drivers' championship twice and won the manufacturers' title once. The S60 continued to be raced after the formation of the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship, a merger of the Swedish and Danish touring car championships. Thed Björk won three consecutive titles from 2013 to 2015, driving an S60 prepared by Polestar Racing.
From 2002 to 2007, there was an S60 one-make racing series as a support series to the Swedish Touring Car Championship known as the S60 Challenge Cup, using 26 factory-modified S60s.
An S60 was driven by Robert Dahlgren in the Swedish round of the 2007 World Touring Car Championship.
The first generation S60 made its competitive debut in 2006, racing in the Speed World Challenge GT class. The second-generation model was introduced for the 2009 season. In 2010, its programme was expanded to include the SCAA Pro Racing World Challenge, where it won both the drivers' and manufacturers' championships in the GT class. The programme was expanded again in 2011, to include the Pirelli World Challenge.
In 2008, Volvo entered the Swedish Touring Car Championship with a C30 powered by bioethanol E85 fuel. Robert Dahlgren and Tommy Rustad were the drivers, finishing 5th and 10th respectively in the championship. Volvo had also signalled their intentions to enter the 2009 British Touring Car Championship with the same car.
Volvo entered the V8 Supercars Championship with two S60s in 2014 with Garry Rogers Motorsport, and were immediately competitive. Following ten pole positions and four race wins, Scott McLaughlin finished fifth in the championship and was awarded the Barry Sheene Medal.
Marketing
The name Volvo is Latin for "I roll".
Logo
The Volvo symbol is an ancient chemistry sign for iron. The iron sign is used to symbolize the strength of iron used in the car as Sweden is known for its quality iron. The diagonal line (a strip of metal) across the grille came about to hold the actual symbol, a circle with an arrow, in front of the radiator.
Sponsorship
Volvo has, since the 1950s, had special international sales programs for customers assigned abroad, for example Diplomat Sales, Military Sales and Expat Sales.
The Volvo trademark is now jointly owned (50/50) by Volvo Group and Volvo Car Corporation. One of the main promotional activities for the brand is the sailing Race Volvo Ocean Race, formerly known as the Whitbread Around the World Race. There is also a Volvo Baltic Race and Volvo Pacific Race, and Volvo likes to encourage its image by sponsoring golf tournaments all over the world including major championship events called the Volvo Masters and Volvo China Open.
Volvo sponsored the Volvo Ocean Race, the world's leading round-the-world yacht race for the first time in 2001–02. The next edition was to take place between 2011 and 2012. Volvo has also had a long-standing commitment to the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) and is involved in the Volvo/ISAF World Youth Sailing Championships since 1997.
In 2011, Volvo Cars is the main sponsor of the winter sports and music festival Snowbombing in Austria.
In 2012, Volvo signed NBA star Jeremy Lin to an endorsement agreement for two years to participate in Volvo's corporate and marketing activities as a "brand ambassador" for Volvo Car Corp.
In 2015, Volvo signed a deal with Chennaiyin FC, a football franchise team of the Indian Super League as a side shirt sponsor.
Video games
In May 2009, Volvo – The Game was released. It was developed by Simbin Studios (now Sector3 Studios).
Volvo trademark lawsuit
In 1990, Volvo Cars filed a lawsuit against Hong Kong-based Club Volvo night club for infringement in Hong Kong High Court. The lawsuit ended with settlement where the night club paid 1 dollar to Volvo Cars. Since then, Club Volvo had been renamed to Club Borubo (the Japanese pronunciation of "Volvo"), and then Club Bboss (reference to Big Boss).
See also
British Touring Car Championship (BTCC)
Polestar (in-house performance division)
Polestar Racing (STCC)
Garry Rogers Motorsport (V8 Supercars)
Saab Automobile
The Saint (TV series)
Tom Trana
Volvo – The Game
Volvo Penta
Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR)
Jan Wilsgaard
References
External links
Wikibooks:Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN codes)/Volvo/VIN codes
Electric vehicle manufacturers of Sweden
Car manufacturers of Sweden
Corporate spin-offs
Luxury motor vehicle manufacturers
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1927
Swedish companies established in 1927
1999 mergers and acquisitions
Premier Automotive Group
Swedish brands
2010 mergers and acquisitions
2021 initial public offerings
Companies listed on Nasdaq Stockholm
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child%20care
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Child care
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Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(ren), child care typically refers to the care provided by caregivers that are not the child's parents. Child care is a broad topic that covers a wide spectrum of professionals, institutions, contexts, activities, and social and cultural conventions. Early child care is an equally important and often overlooked component of child's developments.
Care can be provided to children by a variety of individuals and groups. Care facilitated by similar-aged children covers a variety of developmental and psychological effects in both caregivers and charge. This is due to their mental development being in a particular case of not being able to progress as it should be at their age. This care giving role may also be taken on by the child's extended family's. Another form of childcare that is on the rise in contrast to familial care giving is that of center-based child care. In lieu of familial care giving, these responsibilities may be given to paid caretakers, orphanages or foster homes to provide care, housing, and schooling.
Professional caregivers work within the context of a center-based care (including crèches, daycare, preschools and schools) or a home-based care (nannies or family daycare). The majority of child care institutions available require child care providers to have extensive training in first aid and be CPR certified. In addition, background checks, drug testing at all centers, and reference verifications are normally a requirement. Child care can consist of advanced learning environments that include early childhood education or elementary education. "The objective of the program of daily activities should be to foster incremental developmental progress in a healthy and safe environment and should be flexible to capture the interests of the children and the individual abilities of the children." In many cases the appropriate child care provider is a teacher or person with educational background in child development, which requires a more focused training aside from the common core skills typical of a child caregiver.
As well as these licensed options, parents may also choose to find their own caregiver or arrange childcare exchanges/swaps with another family.
Access to and quality of childcare have a variety of implications for children, parents and guardians, and families. As aforementioned, child care at an early age can have long-term impacts on educational attainment for children. Parents, particularly women and mothers, see increased labor force attachment when child care is more accessible and affordable. In particular, child care has disproportionate benefits for communities lacking in child care programs, such as certain immigrant communities and communities of color.
This article will cover a wide range of issues pertaining to childcare, including the various cultural considerations of childcare, the policies of various countries, the different types of childcare offered, the effects of childcare on development and health of children, payment of childcare workers, the inequities seen within childcare, as well as the history, business, access, and standards of requirement for childcare.
Overview
Child care varies dramatically across cultures. While many global communities prefer children aged 7–10 for designated caregiving responsibilities, children no younger than 12 are preferred in the Western world where paid childcare is common. For example, very young children in Zaire regularly use machetes safely and skillfully while American middle-class adults do not trust their young children with knives. Child development is not just biological or psychological—it is also a cultural process and it is not universal. In countries where children are given more responsibility the adults serve as "occasional supervisors" and children take pride in their responsibilities.
There are also cultural implications when it comes to child care outside of the home. An important aspect that many center-based child cares have been trying to implement into their mission statement and everyday routine is being aware of the multiple cultures they will be dealing with. This was seen as being important because of the growing numbers of families considering and seeking childcare. Programs must understand similarities and differences between cultures/ ethnic groups. This must be done to understand the overall diversity of the community. Children should be able to have their cultural practices represented as well as be able to learn about other cultures they have not been exposed to.
Child care by country
Australia
Australia has a large child care industry, but in many locations (especially in inner-city suburbs of large cities and in rural areas) the availability is limited and the waiting periods can be up to several years. The Australian Government's Child Care Subsidy scheme provides assistance with child care costs, but this still leaves many families with a large out of pocket expense. The median weekly cost of centre-based long day care in 2013 was approximately A$364 which puts it out of the reach of lower income earners.
Regulation is governed by the Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), a federal government body, which acts as a central body for the state bodies. As of 2021, ratios were 1:4 for infants, 1:5 for 2–3 years old (except for VIC – 1:4), 1:10 for preschoolers in NSW, TAS and WA, and 1:11 for preschoolers in ACT, NT, QLD, SA and VIC.
All childcare workers must have, or be undertaking, the minimum Certificate III in Children's Services in order to work in a centre (Recognition of Prior Learning is available to help qualify staff with many years experience, but no qualifications). (Common more advanced qualifications are 'Diploma of Children's Services' and an Early Childhood Education degree).
Rules differ between states regarding family day care in Australia. To start a Family Day Care business in Victoria, an educator should be either have a Certificate III in Children's Services or be actively working towards the same. Additionally, a current police check, current first aid training and insurance (specifically for family day care) are necessary for starting a family day care. The house should be safe for children. A group of 15 educators works under one Supervisor who must have a Diploma in Children's Services.
In Australia, Nannies are also a viable childcare option for many families, although they do not currently reap the benefits of the Government Child Care Subsidy. Nannies often offer many styles of services, including casual and permanent nannies, as well as au pairs and overnight nannies.
Canada
Canada offers both private and subsidized daycare centers. Some shortages of subsidized openings can lengthen the time needed to find a suitable childcare provider. To counter this, government or private enterprise sometimes enable parents to look for available spaces online.
A 2008 article in The Star said that not-for-profits are much more likely to produce the high quality environments in which children thrive."
Local governments, often municipalities, may operate non-profit day care centers.
For all providers, the largest expense is labor. Local legislation may regulate the operation of daycare centers, affecting staffing requirements. In Canada, the workforce is predominantly female (95%) and low paid, averaging only 60% of average workforce wage. Some jurisdictions require licensing or certification. Legislation may specify details of the physical facilities (washroom, eating, sleeping, lighting levels, etc.).
In 2021, in reflection on the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian government reflected upon the benefits and values of child care on child development and economic growth. As such, the government made it a goal to decrease the cost of child care. This policy change is reflected in the 2021 Canadian budget, which invests up to $8.3 billion for child care services for early learning and for indigenous communities.
Denmark
In Denmark most day-cares accept children ranging from 6 months old to 3 years old. 91.2% of 1-2-year-old children are enrolled in different types of day-care institutions. Most of these are managed by a municipality and mostly government funded. The different types of institutions ranges from separate day-care institutions (Vuggestue), kindergartens with a day-care department (Integrerede institutioner) and in-home day-care (Dagpleje).
The day-cares are play-based focusing on the children's perspective and involvement in day-to-day life. The day-cares are staffed by trained social educators or pedagogues (pædagog).
The Danish government claims that most families in Denmark take advantage of the guaranteed access to center-based child care in the county. These institutions for child care in Denmark include those run by municipalities and some private facilities. Some facilities are not centered in a child care facility but in the home of a woman who is not a professional child care administrator. Certain scholars and individuals accredit the near universal participation in the Danish child care system as a model that other countries should follow in order to increase educational attainment and equality. Danish policies that support families also include parental leave programs.
France
Childcare systems in France put great value into childcare providers having received a certain level of formal education in order to properly care for children. They have two separate branches of early childhood childcare. These two branches are called crèche and école maternelle. Crèche is the program for infants and toddlers and école maternelle is part of the education system. They both require teachers to have a college degree with an occasional specialized degree on top of that.
France also couples public child care services with private and family child care services. These services are part of the 3.6% of the French GDP spent on family policies. Services in France are offered to people with full-time French residence and people whose children are vaccinated.
Germany
In Germany, preschool education is the domain of the Kindertagesstätte (literally "children's day site", often shortened to Kita or KITA), which is usually divided into the Kinderkrippe (crèche) for toddlers (age up to 3 years), and the Kindergarten for children who are older than three years and before school. Children in their last Kindergarten year may be grouped into a Vorschule ("preschool") and given special pedagogic attention; special preschool institutions comparable to the US-American kindergarten are the exception.
Kitas are typically run by public (i. e. communal) and "free" carriers (such as the churches, other religious organizations, social organizations with a background in the trade unions and profit-orientated corporations), and subsidized by the states (Länder). In this case, the care is open to the general public—e. g. a Protestant or Muslim child may claim a place in a Kita run by the catholic church.
Preschool education, unlike school and university, is not in the exclusive domain of the states. The federal government regulates daycare through the Kinder- und Jugendhilfegesetz (KJHG), which stipulates a legal claim to daycare:
for children over the age of three and before school (i. e. Kindergarten; this law became effective in 1996)
for children under the age of three and before Kindergarten (i. e. Kinderkrippe; this law becomes effective 1 August 2013)
Alternative daycare can be provided through Tagespflegepersonen (usually Tagesmütter, "day mothers"), i. e. stay-at-home parents who provide commercial day care to other children. This form of daycare is also federally regulated through the KJHG.
Preschool education (Frühpädagogik) is increasingly seen as an integral part of education as a whole; several states such as Bavaria have released detailed educational plans for daycare carriers who claim state subsidies. "Early pedagogics" has increasingly moved into the academic domain, with an increasing number of staff being trained at universities of applied science (Fachhochschulen) and regular universities. Non-academic personnel in daycare facilities have usually attended specialized schools for several years. In the state of Bavaria for example, daycare assistants (Kinderpfleger) will have attended school for two years, daycare teachers (Erzieher) for three years with an additional two-year internship.
India
India has a system of universal childcare which is free and provided by the state through the Integrated Child Development Services. It provides food, preschool education, primary healthcare, immunization, contraceptive counselling, health check-up and referral services to children under 6 years of age and their mothers. For nutritional purposes ICDS provides 500 kilocalories (with 12–15 gm grams of protein) every day to every child below 6 years of age. For adolescent girls it is up to 500 kilo calories with up to 25 grams of protein every day. The services of Immunisation, Health Check-up and Referral Services are delivered through Public Health Infrastructure under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. During the 2018–19 fiscal year, free childcare cost the state .
Additionally, private childcare services also exist in the country for wealthier families.
In 2008, the GOI adopted the World Health Organization standards for measuring and monitoring the child growth and development, both for the ICDS and the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). These standards were developed by WHO through an intensive study of six developing countries since 1997. They are known as New WHO Child Growth Standard and measure of physical growth, nutritional status and motor development of children from birth to 5 years age. Despite increasing funding over the past three decades, the ICDS fell short of its stated objectives and still faces a number of challenges. Also, though it has widespread coverage, operational gaps mean that service delivery is not consistent in quality and quantity across the country. The World Bank has highlighted certain key shortcomings of the programme including inability to target the girl child improvements, participation of wealthier children more than the poorer children and lowest level of funding for the poorest and the most undernourished states of India. Additionally, private childcare services also exist in the country for wealthier families.
Japan
Licensed childcare in Japan falls under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, but each licensed daycare facilities are run by private or public organizations, which are licensed and inspected by the local prefectural, ordinance city, or core city governments.
Japan has a universal childcare system and childcare is free or relatively affordable as the national government provides subsidies and a framework for working families. Fee schedules for a childcare age 2 and under are set by the local municipal governments based on household incomes and the number of children requiring childcare. Fees are reduced by 50% for the second child requiring care and waived for the third child or low-income households. Licensed childcare for ages 3 to 5 is free for a single-parent or when both parents are working. The national government only covers the cost of core childcare program and does not cover the cost of transportation, special activities, meals or snacks, although meals and snacks are partially covered for low-income households.
Parents apply to licensed childcare in Japan through a single point of access by visiting their local municipal government, which handles all the payments and manages the master waiting list for the neighbourhood. The waiting list is not on a first-come, first-served basis but rather a priority list based on the points system. A child from single-parent families, parents with illness or disabilities and low-income households are typically prioritized over children from other households.
Because of the popularity for licensed childcare and the increasing number of women in the workforce, many children are placed on a waiting list. This is one of the biggest social problems in Japan, known as in larger cities.
As of April 2019, Okinawa had the highest percentage of children on the waitlist at 2.8% of all the applicants (1,702 children), while Tokyo had the largest number of children on the waitlist at 3,690 children (1.19% of applicants). On a nationwide scale, the average percentage of children placed on the waitlist was 0.6% and there was an excess supply of licensed childcare with 2,679,651 children filling 2,888,159 spots available throughout Japan. Of all children on the waitlist, 63% of applicants resided in larger cities.
The number of taiki jidō may not represent the actual numbers as those parents who can afford may choose unlicensed childcare or baby sitters due to a lack of space in the licensed childcare system. Although unlicensed childcare and babysitters are also eligible for government subsidies, a parent must apply with local municipal government for funding and the maximum funding is capped at 37,000 yen per month.
Mexico
In Mexico, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa created a Social Program named "Programa de Estancias Infantiles" that included more than 8,000 daycare spaces for children between 1 and 3.11 years old. This program subsidizes mothers that work and study and also single fathers in a vulnerable situation. It has a great success having more than 125,000 children over the country. This is regulated by the Social Development Minister (Secretaría de Desarrollo Social).
Childcare has been on the rise in Mexico due to the increasing interest it has within the people and the effect it has on the government. This is due to the rise of urban areas in developing countries and the need to keep up with the economic development. There has always been many child care services available but due to the high costs, they were mainly unavailable for the low income families. Childcare became a hot topic of discussion when more women were joining the workforce and the debate of how this would affect how the children would be raised. Another topic of debate is how would the women pay for these expensive services while working minimum wage jobs or having limited times they could work, so the idea of subsidies arose. In specific to the child, the topic of "street children", how and where children should grow up, was debated, and if they should be allowed to be considered part of the street instead of a particular home. This issue was of great debate because it not only affects the child but also the community the child is in, since they usually seek out public spaces for shelter, food and play. Childcare is generally broken into three general categories such as governmental institutions, religious organizations, and independent agencies (such as NGOS). All of these take on the same objectives which are "containment, paternalist cure approach and street education."
The creation of childcare programs in Mexico is quite different from others because it focuses on the "defeminization of labor and the defamilization of care." Female participation is a goal that the government has so it set in place many policies and modes to achieve this. The creation of a successful program of child care has been sought out and many different aspects have been changed over the years but it can be seen that there is an increase in early childhood education and care services (ECEC). ECEC services can be broken down into three different time periods and models which were implemented. The first would be in the 1970s when the Institute for Social Security focuses on covering children for mothers who were covered by Social Security services. This caused a huge gap in the children that could be covered due to the fairly large number of women working in the informal sector and being denied these services. The second stage would be in the early 200s when the Ministry of Public education made preschool mandatory for all children from ages 3 to 5. This was useful in theory because all of the children in this age range would be cared for, but in reality caused a strain in the amount of time that the parents had to go and work or dedicate their time elsewhere. The last stage would be in 2007 when the Ministry of Social Development created a childcare program in which was focuses on helping out children and mothers who were not covered by the social security services. This was successful since it targeted low income families specifically. For families to be eligible for this service the mothers had to be working or searching for a job, the income was taken into consideration in comparison to that of minimum wage, and that they did not have any other access to services. Women's participation in the workforce and be directly tied to the availability of childcare services and how it would affect their household.
The program that was created in 2007 became known as the Federal Daycare Programme for Working Mothers. This program allowed for subsidized home and community based childcare. The one running the care centers would only have to have a training component, which consisted of a psychological test and training courses to understand the principles of childcare, before being able to open their business in which they would be given money to furnish the facility as necessary for a safe caring center to be created. Another way this program was set into place was by subsidizing the care of non-profits, private for profits, or religious institutions who were based in the area of need.
Norway
Many children in Norway start daycare between 10 months and 3 years old. Funded parental leave for working parents is either 44 weeks with full pay, or 54 weeks with 80% pay (both up to a certain level only). The government guarantees daycare for all children that are at least 1 year old by 1 August. Coverage is still not 100%, but most regions are getting close (2011). There's a maximum price to enable all families to afford it.
The World Economic Forum lauds Norway as one of the best countries to raise a child. Like other Scandinavian countries, Norway has a prominent welfare system that offers family benefits and policies. Norway's child care services include a Maternity Package that provides new mothers with products for their new child. Additionally, parents in Norway receive an allowance that can be used on child care. Norway also caps fees for child care in kindergarten at NOK 2,500.
Spain
Spain provides paid maternity leave of 16 weeks to mothers and 5 weeks of paternity leave to fathers.
In Spain, beyond maternity leave provisions of four months, families frequently choose to enroll their children in pre-school programs, including about 95-97% of three to four year olds that attend a combination of state and private nurseries. The Spanish government does subsidize child care, and state led childcare services require proof of low income.
United Kingdom
In England, childcare is inspected and regulated by His Majesty's Inspectors (Office for Standards in Education). Care for children under five is split into childcare on domestic premises (childminding and daycare). In the UK being a 'Childminder' is a protected title and can only be used by registered professionals. Registered childminders are trained, insured and qualified in Pediatric First Aid. They comply and work with the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework provided by the Department for Education. All pupils in the Early Years must follow a programme of education in seven areas, divided into 'prime areas' and 'specific areas'.
The three prime areas:
communication and language
physical development
personal, social and emotional development
The four specific areas:
literacy
mathematics
understanding the world
expressive arts and design
The Early Years Foundation Stage sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children's 'school readiness' and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.
Childminders have the same responsibilities for education as nurseries and reception classes. They generally work from their own homes and are always self-employed setting their own terms and conditions. The Professional Association for Childcare & Early Years promotes and supports high-quality child-minding expertise, and provides information for childminders and parents. The UK has a wide range of childcare options, including childminders, day nurseries, playgroups and pre-school education at school. Childcare in both the state and public sector is regulated and registered by the Office for Standards in Education in England and Care Inspectorate Wales for Wales, which operate the application and inspection process for the sector.
Every child in England at the first school term after their third birthday is entitled to 15 hours per week free childcare funding. Childcare is primarily funded by parents after this age, however, the Single Funding Formula (pre-school funding) can be used at some day nurseries, playgroups and schools for a maximum of 5 sessions per week, after a child reaches 3 years. The government introduced childcare vouchers for businesses.
In Scotland Care Commission is responsible for improving care and education for children from birth to age eighteen. Inspection reports include feedback from staff and parents as well as the inspectors, aiming to provide parents and carers information to help them decide whether a particular child care setting is providing good quality child care and meeting government standards.
United States
According to one 2001 journal article more than one half of the children in the United States attended childcare facilities. This number has increased as the number of working parents has increased. The increase in the number of children that are required to have some sort of childcare service has made childcare facilities more necessary than they have ever been.
State legislation may regulate the number and ages of children allowed before the home is considered an official daycare program and subject to more stringent safety regulations. Each state has different regulations for teacher requirements. In some states, teachers must have an associate degree in child development. States with quality standards built into their licensing programs may have higher requirements for support staff such as teacher assistants. And in Head Start programs, by 2012, all lead teachers must have a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education. States vary in the standards set for daycare providers, such as teacher to child ratios.
Family childcare can also be nationally accredited by the National Association of Family Childcare if the provider chooses to go through the process. National accreditation is only awarded to those programs who demonstrate the quality standards set forth by the NAFCC.
A number of universities and institutions undertake research on child care in the United States, including University of Florida's Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences (IFAS) from 2006, the Public Agenda from 2001, the National Child Care Information and Technical Assistance Center (NCCIC) from 2009, the government resource, Childcare,
and the IRS Child and Dependent Care Credit information from 2003.
In 1971, the Comprehensive Child Development Act was passed by Congress, but was vetoed by then President Richard Nixon. It "would have created nationally funded child care centers providing early childhood services and after-school care, as well as nutrition, counseling, and even medical and dental care. The centers would charge parents on a sliding scale." Various proposals have been considered, but to date, none leading to legislation that would establish a national policy supporting day care in the United States.
In 1990, the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 was enacted under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, creating a dedicated federal funding stream for child care subsidies to low-income families.
According to the 1995 U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), over 36% of families of preschoolers with working mothers primarily relied on childcare in the home of a relative, family daycare provider or other non-relative.
In 1996, the 104th Congress passed The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), consolidating three federal child care programs previously serving low-income families under the program formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
A 2001 article by Nancy W. Wiltz in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly journal said that the quality of the center based child care can be very influential on the child and on their overall development. Recent study showed that children in low end classrooms saw the activities as forced while the children in high end classrooms had more memorable experiences. Wiltz said that, not only is this age crucial for the improvement of their social skills, but also it begins the stages of understanding a classroom setting. These early ages of the child's life are crucial or it would otherwise have a negative impact on their future paths. Wiltz said that by 2001, in the United States, childcare had become an important aspect of society with more than "thirteen million American children under 5 years of age experiencing some form of child care before entering formal school."
By 2003, almost 26% of families used organized childcare facilities as their primary arrangement.
A 2009 series on the economy and the economics of everyday life in the United States The New York Times, by a University of Massachusetts economics professor, Nancy Folbre, reported on the Commission for the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in Paris. She said that one of the major weaknesses of the press coverage of the commission's report in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times was the omission of under-appreciated unpaid work, such as that of caregivers who make society function. They prepare the next generation for school, work, and decision-making. The way in which a child is nurtured at a young age and through adolescence has both psychological and developmental effects that effect their future. Not only does the child depend on caregiving, but schools and employers depend on the childcare. The government also benefits because these children turn into productive members of society. Eventually, they will be the ones running the country.'
In March 2014, the U.S. Senate passed a reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant program that included "some baseline changes to make sure there’s safe child care", said Nick Vucic, a senior government affairs associate at Child Care Aware of America." Child Care Aware of America supported the bill, saying that it is "time to strengthen minimum protections for children," which they believed the reauthorization and amendments would do. The organization supported having background checks on workers, requiring training basic CPR and health training, and holding unannounced inspections. Afterschool Alliance also supported the bill, saying "it is important to emphasize the value of quality school-age child care to achieve positive outcomes for children, including improved academic performance, work habits and study skills. On 12 September 2014, House and Senate leaders reached a bipartisan agreement to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act. Negotiated by Representatives John Kline (R-MN), George Miller (D-CA), Todd Rokita (R-IN), and David Loebsack (D-IA), and Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and Richard Burr (R-NC), the agreement will enhance transparency, strengthen health and safety protections, and improve the quality of care. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the amended version of the bill on 15 September 2014.
On 19 November 2014, President Barack Obama signed S.1086, the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014 into law.
In addition to the cost of childcare in the United States, the quality of institutions and programs is inferior to other countries. A 2013 The New Republic cover story entitled, "The Hell of American Day Care", said that there are potential benefits and harms related to formal child care.The article cited a National Institute of Child Health Development survey from 2007 that indicated the lack in quality of American healthcare centers.
According to a 29 January 2021 article in Bloomberg, in the United States—unlike many other wealthy countries—a full economy recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis has been "hampered" by one of its "most daunting obstacles"—"America's already fragile child-care system". In a Bloomberg interview the University of California, Berkeley's Center for the Study of Child Care Employment said that the American child-care system had been "upended".
New Zealand
By 2006, New Zealand began to use learning stories as a learning model in their curriculum called "Te Whaariki". It highlights children's learning outcomes as 'disposition' which are "situated learning strategies plus motivation-participation repertoires from which a learner recognize, selects, edits, responds
to, resists, searches for and constructs learning opportunities". This was adopted in other places, including Australia. Learning stories are documents that are used by caregivers and educators in childcare settings. They use a storytelling format instead of a traditional 'observation' report to document the different ways that young children learn, and capture the moment in greater detail and provide parents with a greater insight into the events that occur in their child's time in childcare. Learning stories include the story of the child's progress, pictures of the experiences, the child's strengths, interests and needs, and spaces for parent feedback
Types
In the child's home
At home, care is typically provided by nannies, au pairs, or friends and family. The child is watched inside the home. This is done with a motive to avoid illnesses from outside interactions. Depending on the number of children in the home, the children utilizing in-home care could enjoy the greatest amount of interaction with their caregiver, in turn forming a close bond. There are no required licensing or background checks for in-home care, making parental vigilance essential in choosing an appropriate caregiver. Nanny and au pair services provide certified caregivers and the cost of in-home care is the highest of childcare options per child, though a household with many children may find this the most convenient and affordable option. Many nannies study towards childcare qualifications. This training is intended to teach a carer how to create a safe and stimulating environment for children to enjoy and thrive in. Typically, au pairs or nannies provide more than routine child care, often providing assistance with daily household activities which include running errands, shopping, doing laundry, fixing meals, and cleaning the house.
The most now common way to find a nanny is online on dedicated websites specializing in carer services, or through a nanny agency. Nanny agencies may provide a more thorough check of an applicant's references and run a criminal background check on the successful candidate. Depending on local prices for daycares, a nanny could be cheaper than putting multiple children in a daycare setting full-time. Proponents believe in-home care may provide stability for the child provided the same carer is retained over time. Nannies often work overtime and babysit. Some also care for sick children whereas nurseries typically do not. This enables the parents to continue working normally without being interrupted. Depending on local laws, some carers can be subject to visits from their local childcare regulatory bodies. Proponents also claim nannies could also be well socialized as nannies could be able to take them out and attend more playdates.
In the provider's home
Family child care providers care for children in the provider's own home. The children could be in a mixed age group with a low adult-to-child ratio. Care can also potentially be personalized and individual. The hours may be more flexible and the provider may offer evening and weekend care for parents who work shifts. The cost in a family child care could be significantly lower on average than that of a center.
Child care facilities in the US have the option of becoming accredited. This standard is set and regulated by an outside agency. In centers, National Association for the Education of Young Children institutes it. For family child care providers, the National Association of Family Child Care Providers award the credentials.
Licensed or unlicensed home daycare is also referred to as family child care, or in home care. It refers to the care provided to a group of children in the home of a caregiver. State laws differ regarding rules for licensed versus unlicensed care. In Canada, most home daycares are unlicensed, and this is completely lawful. Licensing home daycares in Canada can help greatly with oversight, but at the cost of a large portion of the daycare provider's pay. Family child cares are small in size and provide families the same securities as a daycare center, and also has the benefits of flexible hours, lower costs, accessibility, and cultural compatibility. Home-based providers can give more individualized care and therefore better meet the needs of working families. In addition, family care generally has a small ratio of children in care, allowing for more interaction between child and provider than would be had at a commercial care center. Family child care helps foster emotionally secure interpersonal relationships for everyone involved. The providers are able to communicate each day with parents on a personal level and share information about the development of the child. Providers care for multi-aged groups of children allowing children to remain with one caregiver for many years which helps children develop a sense of trust and security. Multi-aged settings allow children to learn from one another and allow siblings to stay together. Some family child care providers may offer parents more flexibility with hours of operation such as evening, weekend, overnight, and before and after school care.
Center based childcare
In a childcare center, teachers focus on the physical and mental developments of their students. In order to have a greater understanding of the student, teachers in centers must incorporate a relationship with their students that benefits their wants and needs while pushing them toward a higher set of values. This type of teaching with a caring relationship will improve a student's moral and incidental learning.
Commercial care center also known as daycares are open for set hours, and provide a standardized and regulated system of care for children. Parents may choose from a commercial care center close to their work, and some companies may even offer care at their facilities. A form in which parents pick the child care facility can be based on their mission statement and the objectives they find necessary to be addressed. Center based child care should have their mission written out and include one of the main components which is health promotion. These objectives should be shaped to the needs of every child and can change from one to another. The child care provider must see how these objectives are most fit for the child and mend them case by case to their specific needs. In setting up activities for these objectives, both indoor and outdoor activities must be taken into account. The child must have an experience that partakes in all the different forms. This may then cause discussion between the parents and the caregivers. The parents tend to give their input on what they deem as necessary when the needs of their children may be different. Parents are able to communicate with the staff of these facilities because workers who speak the same native language or language of preference must be available for these conversations.
Even though this being the case between high and low end classrooms, other aspects such as the child's background and living situation can play an important role in their development. Active children may thrive in the educational activities provided by a quality commercial care center, but according to the National Center for Early Development and Learning, children from low quality centers may be significantly less advanced in terms of vocabulary and reading skills. Classes are usually largest in this type of care, ratios of children to adult caregivers will vary according to state licensing requirements. Some positive aspects of commercial care are that children may gain a sense of independence, academic achievement, and socialization. Not only is this age crucial for the improvement of their social skills, but also it begins the stages of understanding a classroom setting. Childcare is seen as a reasonable option because it is different from parenting, since it can be seen as more of a routine for the child. This in turn will only have a negative impact on the child if the parent is not there for the emotional needs of the child. Children are placed into centers of socialization and learn many similarities and differences from one another from a very young age. Children are also placed into settings to develop their linguistics and cognitive abilities, which can be measured through observations.
Pre-school is often the term used to refer to child care centers that care primarily for 3 and 4-year-old children. Preschool can be based in a center, family child care home or a public school. Older children, in their turn, in most countries are cared in an educational setting, usually a primary school environment. The children are supervised by a teacher all day long, who is responsible for their physical, intellectual, emotional and social development. In this regard, most western countries have compulsory education during which the great majority of children are at school starting from five or six years of age. The school will act in loco parentis meaning "in lieu of parent supervision." In many locales, government is responsible for monitoring the quality of care.
Staff
For all providers, the largest expense is labor. In a 1999 Canadian survey of formal child care centers, labor accounted for 63% of costs and the industry had an average profit of 5.3%. Given the labor-intensive nature of the industry, it is not surprising that the same survey showed little economies of scale between larger and smaller operators.
Local legislation may regulate the operation of daycare centers, affecting staffing requirements. Laws may mandate staffing ratios (for example 6 weeks to 12 months, 1:4; 12 to 18 months, 1:5; 18 to 24 months, 1:9; et and even higher ratios for older children). Legislation may mandate qualifications of supervisors. Staff typically do not require any qualifications but staff under the age of eighteen may require supervision. Typically, once the child reaches the age of twelve, they are no longer covered by daycare legislation and programs for older children may not be regulated.
In Canada, the workforce is predominantly female (95%) and low paid, averaging only 60% of average workforce wage. Many employees are at local minimum wage and are typically paid by the hour rather than salaried. In the United States, "child care worker" is the fifth most female-dominated occupation (95.5% female in 1999). In the US, staffing requirements vary from state to state.
Non-profit daycare
"Considerable research has accumulated showing that not-for-profits are much more likely to produce the high quality environments in which children thrive." Not-for-profit organizations are more likely to provide good services to a vulnerable population under conditions that are very hard to monitor or measure.
Non-profit day cares have some structural advantages over for-profit operations:
They may receive preferential treatment in rents especially if they are affiliated with a church that is otherwise unoccupied during the week, or with a school that has surplus space.
Location within a school may have the advantage of coordinated programs with the school and the advantage of a single location for parents who have older school-age children as well.
Parents are typically the legal owners of the non-profit day care and will routinely provide consulting services in areas in which they are professionally qualified (for example accounting, legal advice, or human resources) for free. (There are some non-profits not operated by parents, but by a board of directors made up of community representatives who want what is good for the children.)
Non-profits have an advantage in fund-raising, as most people will not donate to a for-profit childcare organization.
Non-profits, however, are typically limited in size to a single location, as the parent-owners have no motivation to manage other locations where their children are not present.
They may suffer from succession issues as children grow and parents leave the management of the day care to other parents.
Local governments, often municipalities, may operate non-profit day care centers. In non-profits, the title of the most senior supervisor is typically "executive director", following the convention of most non-profit organizations.
Family child care homes
Family child care homes can be operated by a single individual out of their home. In most states, the legal age of 18 is only required. There may be occasions when more than one individual cares for children in a family childcare home. This can be a stay-at-home parent who seeks supplemental income while caring for their own child. There are also many family childcare providers who have chosen this field as a profession. Both state and county agency legislation regulate the ratios (number and ages of children) allowed per family child care home. Some counties have more stringent quality standards that require licensing for family child care homes while other counties require little or no regulations for childcare in individuals' homes. Some family child care homes operate illegally with respect to tax legislation where the care provider does not report fees as income and the parent does not receive a receipt to qualify for childcare tax deductions. However, licensing a family child care home is beneficial for family child care home providers so that they can have access to financial benefits from their state government, or the federal government where they are allowed to accept children from parents who meet the criterion to benefit from the government childcare subsidy funding. Examples of such benefits are: free Professional Development and training courses, Child and adult Care Food Program (which allows eligible childcare and family childcare home providers to claim a portion of costs relating to nutritious meals served to children), and more.
Family childcare may be less expensive than center-based care because of the lower overhead (lower ratios mean less staff are required to maintain regulated ratios. Many family childcare home providers may be certified with the same credentials as center based staff potentially leading to higher level of care.
Franchising of family child care home facilities attempts to bring economies of scale to home daycare. A central operator handles marketing, administration and perhaps some central purchasing while the actual care occurs in individual homes. The central operator may provide training to the individual care providers. Some providers even offer enrichment programs to take the daycare experience to a more educational and professional level.
Informal care
Informal childcare is a childcare system that utilizes both family and community members. This includes but is not limited to grandparents, siblings, and both children and adult neighbors. This system is inexpensive and many cultures utilize and embrace informal childcare as beneficial to a child's upbringing and education.
In monetary- and production-based societies (such as in the United States), informal childcare is seen in families who do not have enough funds to finance placing their children in a more expensive child care facility. A study done by Roberta Iversen and Annie Armstrong explains that due to long and irregular working hours of working parents, low- socioeconomic families are more likely to utilize informal childcare. Those low income families are also more apt to work longer hours on an irregular and inflexible schedule, which ultimately makes using a childcare facility, that has regular business hours, unlikely.
Children caring for adults
Many types of childcare discuss the different ways in which children are cared for by adults or older children. One additional type of child care involves children caring for adults. Children as caretakers are most often seen in developing countries with restricted or hard-to-access medical assistance. Child caretakers are common in families where the parents are affected by HIV/AIDS and other illnesses that might limit their parental functioning.
Developmentally, these child caretakers have shown certain positive associations that affect their future resilience in the face of adversity. Caring for disabled parents raises their sense of responsibility and maturity, increases social and life skills, fosters closer parent-child relationships, and enhances a child's early sense of purpose. Children caring for sick or disabled parents also experience less anxiety surrounding their parents compared to children who have an additional caregiver for their disabled parent. This is because the children understand more about the illness and feel more in control over the situation.
Effects on child development
A variety of researchers have studied the impacts of childcare on child development, and these findings suggest the importance of childcare for development and health outcomes for children.
Childcare centers and development
Child development researcher Lian Tong analysed the results from a Haley and Stansbury experiment and concluded that, "parent responsiveness also facilitates cognitive, social, and emotional development and reduces negative emotions in infants." That is, the amount of time that a parent or teacher is willing to spend teaching, listening to, playing with, and exploring with the child the more socially, emotionally, and educationally developed the child will become. Whether that child receives the majority of his or her care at a center or at its house, the biggest factor in deciding what will have the best effect on the child will be those willing to put in the time and effort it takes to properly develop a child's social, physical, and academic skills.
The quality of childcare given by a facility is generally indicated by the center's cost of enrollment. If the center charges more for the service, it will generally provide better care to the children. Centers that charge more for their services can provide quality education, more current resources, and nicer facilities. These are all helpful when trying to educate a child academically. A higher standard for teachers, such as requiring a degree in early childhood education or a degree of the like, has shown to result in improved growth in the development of a child.
Whether at an expensive facility or relatively inexpensive, children who attend daycare facilities tend to develop social skills more quickly than children of the same age group that are reared at home. They communicate better with children of the same age and often try harder to communicate with those that are younger than them, by using patience and taking different approaches at presenting the data. A study done by Erik Dearing proved that negative social behavioral patterns are not directly connected to daycare. By studying a large selection of children from the Norwegian childcare system, he concluded that the number of hours a child spends at a daycare and their behavior do not have a dependent relationship. Though in America, children who attend childcare systems have a higher risk of externalizing the symptoms of negative social behavior, exhibiting these traits can directly correlate with their time spent in the center.
A study that followed up on the randomized Abecedarian Early Intervention Project showed that 5 years of high-quality, targeted cognitively and linguistically stimulating center-based care starting between 3 and 21 weeks of age resulted in significant changes in midlife brain structure in males. MRI scans showed that several brain region and total brain volumes were substantially larger in participants of the child care program than in the control group.
Several studies undertaken in the United States from 2000 to 2007, said that good daycare for non-infants is not harmful. In some cases, good daycare can provide different experiences than parental care does, especially when children reach two years old and are ready to interact with other children. Bad daycare puts the child at physical, emotional and attachment risk. Higher quality care was associated with better outcomes. Children in higher quality childcare had somewhat better language and cognitive development during the first 4½ years of life than those in lower quality care. They were also somewhat more cooperative than those who experienced lower quality care during the first 3 years of life.
The National Institute of Health released a study in March, 2007 after following a group of children through early childhood to the 6th grade. The study found that the children who received a higher quality of childcare scored higher on 5th grade vocabulary tests than the children who had attended childcare of a lower quality. The study also reported that teachers found children from childcare to be "disobedient", fight more frequently, and more argumentative. The study reported the increases in both aggression and vocabulary were small. "The researchers emphasized that the children's behavior was within the normal range and were not considered clinically disordered."
As a matter of social policy, consistent, good daycare, may ensure adequate early childhood education for children of less skilled parents. From a parental perspective, good daycare can complement good parenting.
One 2003 American study appearing in Child Development said that the amount of time spent in daycare before four-and-a-half tended to correspond with the child's tendency to be less likely to get along with others, to be disobedient, and to be aggressive, although still within the normal range.
Health issues
Childcare infection
Childcare infection is the spread of infection during childcare, typically because of contact among children in daycare or school. This happens when groups of children meet in a childcare environment, and there is an individual with an infectious disease who may then spread it to the entire group. Commonly spread diseases include influenza-like illness and enteric illnesses, such as diarrhea among babies using diapers. Illnesses and diseases may also include ringworm, head lice, and hand, feet, mouth disease. It is uncertain how these diseases spread, but hand washing reduces some risk of transmission and increasing hygiene in other ways also reduces risk of infection.
Due to social pressure, parents of sick children in childcare may be willing to give unnecessary medical care to their children when advised to do so by childcare workers and even if it is against the advice of health care providers. In particular, children in childcare are more likely to take antibiotics than children outside of childcare.
Inequities in access to and provision of childcare
Based on the previous sections in this article, it is evident that various countries focus on childcare as a means of supporting their workforces, that childcare leads to beneficial health and developmental outcomes for children, and that childcare takes many forms for many different communities. Given the importance of these outcomes, an analysis of which communities are not able to receive adequate childcare can yield insight into various other issues about race, gender, and class.
There are links between the income, education, and importance of consistency and the well-being of the child, to the parents, and the development of their child. Higher educated parents place more importance on the education of their children than the parents who do not have a college degree or have not graduated from high school. Likewise, parents who have a higher income level are more willing to part with their money to purchase a private tutor or nanny to assist the parent in the education of their child. They also tend to stress the importance of being socially inept. The first few years of a child's life are important to form a basis for good education, morality, self-discipline and social integration. Consistency of approach, skills and qualifications of caregivers have been shown in many studies to improve the chances of a child reaching his or her full potential. Child care in much of western society is currently in crisis: there are not enough daycare spots, the cost for most parents is beyond their means, and child care staff are grossly underpaid. Starting wages for Early Childcare Educators start at $11 or $12, causing a high turnover rate, and decreases the likelihood of potentially safe, effective, and loving child care providers from even entering the field. For preschool teachers the average salary is about $28,570. According to a survey done by HiMama, 68% of for-profit child care organizations ranked 'Labor' as their top risk and 65% ranked 'Talent and Recruitment' as their top priority for 2017.
Another consideration in the inequities in childcare is who is providing childcare disproportionately. Historically, the task has fallen onto Black and immigrant women—two groups who have not been able to advocate for themselves due to historical, structural, and social tensions. The authors of the article "Suited for Service: Racialized Rationalizations for the Ideal Domestic Servant from the Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century" argue that the racial legacy of domestic service in the United States has created a relationship of servitude between those who hire domestic caregivers and the caregivers themselves.
Value of unpaid childcare
Caregivers nurture and develop their children into being functional members of society. For centuries it has been assumed that women will stay home and take care of the children while their husbands go out and work. In most cases, the husbands get all the credit for providing for the family. However, the homemaker deserves credit for care work. Caregivers do not receive monetary compensation and, because they spend a significant amount of time raising their children, must pay a 'care-penalty' (the opportunity costs in both time and money that one pays for doing care work for a family member). Instead of taking care of a family member, a caregiver could spend time working or performing leisure activities. Care penalties are not strictly related to childcare – they can also refer to taking care of a sick family member, babysitting a younger sibling, or taking an elderly family member on errands such as grocery shopping or doctor's appointments.
Monetary value
Studies have been done to get an annual salary estimate for a female caregiver. One survey suggested that the value of a mother's work, if she were paid the average wage for each task she performs in running the household and caring for her children, is $117,867 per year. The reason for the high salary is because mothers typically perform about 10 different job functions throughout the week. Some of these job functions are poorly paid, including cleaning, driving, caring for children, and washing laundry, but others, especially financial and managerial tasks that the survey equated with being the chief executive officer of a company, are highly paid. Neither a nanny nor a housekeeper makes nearly as much money, and almost all of these tasks except direct child care also have to be done by non-parents. The value of unpaid childcare is also an important figure in various legal entities. Expert witnesses (most often economists) are occasionally brought into court cases to give estimates on the value of unpaid labor. By giving estimation, the plaintiff or defendant can be fairly compensated for their labor.
Developmental benefits are also seen for older siblings or relatives tasked to care for younger children. For example, children with siblings are more likely to exhibit prosocial behaviors (such as the ability to take another's perspective or sharing with others) than children without siblings. Additionally, sibling caretakers have the opportunity to develop deeper communication skills as they teach younger siblings to participate in everyday tasks.
History
According to Chris Knight, the first humans were few; then the population "exploded Population expansion on such a scale is inconsistent with female tolerance of infanticide, harassment, or the heavy costs to mothers of male philandering and double standards. If unusually large numbers of unusually large-brained offspring were being successfully raised to maturity, the quality of childcare must have been exceptional. We know what the optimal solution would have been. There can be no doubt that mothers would have done best by taking advantage of every available childcare resource."
Plato, according to Elaine Hoffman Baruch, around 394 B.C., argued that a system of child care would free women to participate in society. Among the early English authors to devote a book to child care in the modern sense was Elizabeth Dawbarn (The Rights of Infants, or... Nursing of Infants, 1805).
The first crèche was opened by Firmin Marbeau on 14 November 1844 in Paris, The Société des Crèches was recognized by the French government in 1869. Originating in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th century, day cares were established in the United States by private charities in the 1850s, such as the Charity Organization Society founded by Ansley Wilcox. The Fitch Creche in Buffalo, New York was known as the first day center for working mothers in the United States. Another at that time was the New York Day Nursery in 1854.
In English-speaking and other conservative countries, the vast majority of childcare is still performed by the parents, in-house nannies or through informal arrangements with relatives, neighbors or friends, but most children are in daycare centers for most of the day in Nordic Countries, for example. Child care in the child's own home is traditionally provided by a nanny or au pair, or by extended family members including grandparents, aunts and uncles. Child care is provided in nurseries or crèches or by a nanny or family child care provider caring for children in their own homes. It can also take on a more formal structure, with education, child development, discipline and even preschool education falling into the fold of services.
The day care industry is a continuum from personal parental care to large, regulated institutions. Some childminders care for children from several families at the same time, either in their own home (commonly known as "family day care" in Australia) or in a specialized child care facility. Some employers provide nursery provisions for their employees at or near the place of employment.
For-profit day care corporations often exist where the market is sufficiently large or there are government subsidies.
Independent studies suggest that good daycare is not harmful. In some cases, good daycare can provide different experiences than parental care does, especially when children reach two and are ready to interact with other children. Children in higher quality childcare had somewhat better language and cognitive development during the first 4½ years of life than those in lower quality care.
Early cross-cultural research on child care outside the home
In their 1977 Thomas S. Weisner and Ronald G. Gallimore article said that by 1969 there had been no crosscultural work reference to caretaking of children by anyone other than parents published in The Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research included in its 1,182 pages virtually no reference to caretaking of children by anyone other than parents.reported on Their 1977 article reported on their study of over a hundred countries. They found that in agricultural/ horticultural societies where work is done to provide sustenance for the community, siblings and similar-aged children are responsible for younger children. Other factors of childcare that vary cross-culturally are the relative ages of both caretaker and child, parental expectations, demands of the child, culturally-varied conceptions of children's maturity, and factors affecting demographic makeup. They said that there are discrepancies attributed to the homestead and household environments. That is, the type of work performed by adult caretakers in a given community strongly influence the type of childcare used. Weisner said that children that receive informal care may or may not receive the same educational and preparatory regimens as those in a center- or home-based center often do. In many situations, there will be no curriculum or teaching schedule, and instead learning occurs informally as a direct result of the caretaker and charge's interactions. Learning and development occur differently for every individual. Different periods of a child's growth are known to affect the care taking styles associated with them, from the care of an infant to that of an older adolescent. Other influences on caretaking include the expectations of the three parties involved- the parents, caretakers, and children. Many agricultural communities highly value sibling- and peer- caretaking. Accounts from the Idakho tribe in Kenya portray infants being left to the care and guidance of other relatively young children in the community with adults and other tribe members merely within shouting distance should a problem arise. The same pattern of caregiving is seen in the Kikuyu people in Kenya, where mothers in the horticultural society are often away working, which relies on siblings, cousins, and neighbors to care for children as young as 4 months old. In most cases children are taken care of by their parents, legal guardians, or siblings. In some cases, it is also seen that children care for other children. This informal care includes verbal direction and other explicit training regarding the child's behavior, and is often as simple as "keeping an eye out" for younger siblings. Care given by unpaid providers in an informal setting affect multiple developmental and psychological dimensions in children. Whether the providers are the child's siblings or a member of the family/community, research dictates this type of care influences factors such as sense achievement, affiliation, conformity, and individual interests. More specifically, further research indicates that children being cared for by siblings or similarly aged children (a trend more commonly seen in agriculturally-based cultural communities) have certain psychological and developmental effects on those being cared for. These effects include but are not limited to: mother-child attachment, emergence of childhood developmental stages, formation of playgroups, development of social responsibility, sex differences, personality differences, cognition, and motivation and performance in the classroom.
Business
The day care industry is a continuum from personal parental care to large, regulated institutions.
The vast majority of childcare is still performed by the parents, in-house nanny or through informal arrangements with relatives, neighbors or friends. For example, in Canada, among two parent families with at least one working parent, 62% of parents handle the childcare themselves, 32% have other in-home care (nannies, relatives, neighbours or friends) and only 6.5% use a formal day care center.
However, for-profit day care corporations often exist where the market is sufficiently large or there are government subsidies. For instance, in North America, KinderCare Learning Centers, one of the largest of such companies, has approximately 1,600 centers located in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Bright Horizons Family Solutions another of the largest has over 600 daycare centers. Similarly the Australian government's childcare subsidy has allowed the creation of a large private-sector industry in that country.
Another factor favoring large corporate daycares is the existence of childcare facilities in the workplace. Large corporations will not handle this employee benefit directly themselves and will seek out large corporate providers to manage their corporate daycares. Most smaller, for-profit daycares operate out of a single location.
In general, the geographic limitations and the diversity in type of daycare providers make child daycare a highly fragmented industry. The largest providers own only a very small share of the market. This leads to frustration for parents who are attempting to find quality child daycare, with 87% of them describing the traditional search for child daycare as "difficult and frustrating".
Access
The availability of child care, whether with other family members or professional care, affects the ability of parents to work. This includes both single parents and families where both parents need or want to earn money. Many governments in higher-income countries provide subsidies for child care programs for the benefit of low-income families or parents in general. In the United States, where few subsidies are provided, there is a political debate over whether universal child care services should be provided by the government. Related debates include those over universal preschool and paid family leave.
Standards and requirements
Some jurisdictions require licensing or certification. Parents may also turn to independent rating services, or rely on recommendations and referrals. Some places develop voluntary quality networks, for example in Australia most childcare services are part of a national Quality Assurance system. Some places require caregivers to take classes in pediatric CPR and first aid. Most countries have laws relating to childcare, which seek to keep children safe and prevent and punish child abuse. Such laws may add cost and complexity to childcare provision and may provide tools to help ensure quality childcare.
Additionally, legislation typically defines what constitutes daycare (e.g., so as to not regulate individual babysitters). It may specify details of the physical facilities (washroom, eating, sleeping, lighting levels, etc.). The minimum window space may be such that it precludes day cares from being in a basement. It may specify the minimum floor space per child (for example 2.8 square metres) and the maximum number of children per room (for example 24). It may mandate minimum outdoor time (for example 2 hours for programs 6 hours or longer). Legislation may mandate qualifications of supervisors. Staff typically do not require any qualifications but staff under the age of eighteen may require supervision. Some legislation also establishes rating systems, the number and condition of various toys, and documents to be maintained. Typically, once children reach the age of twelve, they are no longer covered by daycare legislation and programs for older children may not be regulated.
Legislation may mandate staffing ratios (for example, 6 weeks to 12 months, 1:4; 12 to 18 months, 1:5; 18 to 24 months, 1:9; etc.). The caregiver-to-child ratio is one factor indicative of quality of care. Ratios vary greatly by location and by daycare center. Potential consequences of a caregiver:child ratio which is too high could be very serious . However, many states allow a higher numbers of toddlers to caregivers and some centers do not comply consistently. For example, within the US: Pennsylvania, ages 1–3, 1 teacher to 5 children; Missouri: age 2, 1 teacher to 8 children; North Carolina: 1 teacher to 10 children.
Many organizations in the developed world campaign for free or subsidized childcare for all. Others campaign for tax breaks or allowances to provide parents a non-finance driven choice. Many of the free or subsidized childcare programs in the United States are also Child Development programs, or afterschool programs which hire certified teachers to teach the children while they are in their care. There are often local industry associations that lobby governments on childcare policy, promote the industry to the public or help parents choose the right daycare provider.
In the United States, childcare in regulated commercial or family childcare home setting is administered or led by teachers who may have a Child Development Associate or higher credentials. These higher credentials include Associate, Bachelor, and even master's degrees in the field of Early Childhood Education (ECE). Although childcare professionals may obtain a degree, many states require that they attend workshops yearly to upgrade their knowledge and skill levels. Many day cares require a teacher to obtain a certain amount of training. For example, Texas requires a minimum of 25 hours a year, and a first-year teacher is required to have 50 hours.
See also
Adult daycare center
After-school activity
Day care sexual abuse hysteria
Ladies' Deborah and Child's Protectory
Preschool
Day care
Corporate child care
Nanny
Babysitting
Parental leave
Magda Gerber
Au pair
Nursery school
Kindergarten
Forest kindergarten
Playwork
Child development
Forgotten baby syndrome
Work-family balance in the United States
Cost of raising a child
Notes
References related to the United States
References
External links
Family economics
Home economics
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389712
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priestley%20Riots
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Priestley Riots
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The Priestley Riots (also known as the Birmingham Riots of 1791) took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England; the rioters' main targets were religious dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Joseph Priestley. Both local and national issues stirred the passions of the rioters, from disagreements over public library book purchases, to controversies over Dissenters' attempts to gain full civil rights and their support of the French Revolution.
The riots started with an attack on the Royal Hotel, Birmingham—the site of a banquet organised in sympathy with the French Revolution. Then, beginning with Priestley's church and home, the rioters attacked or burned four Dissenting chapels, twenty-seven houses, and several businesses. Many of them became intoxicated by liquor that they found while looting, or with which they were bribed to stop burning homes. A small core could not be bribed, however, and remained sober. The rioters burned not only the homes and chapels of Dissenters, but also the homes of people they associated with Dissenters, such as members of the scientific Lunar Society.
While the riots were not initiated by Prime Minister William Pitt's administration, the national government was slow to respond to the Dissenters' pleas for help. Local officials seem to have been involved in the planning of the riots, and were later reluctant to prosecute ringleaders. Industrialist James Watt wrote that the riots "divided [Birmingham] into two parties who hate one another mortally". Those who had been attacked gradually left, leaving Birmingham a more conservative city than previously.
Historical context
Birmingham
Over the course of the eighteenth century, Birmingham became notorious for its riots, which were sparked by a number of causes. In 1714 and 1715, the townspeople, as part of a "Church-and-King" mob, attacked Dissenters (Protestants who did not adhere to the Church of England or follow its practices) in the Sacheverell riots during the London trial of Henry Sacheverell, and in 1751 and 1759 Quakers and Methodists were assaulted. During the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, large crowds assembled in Birmingham. In 1766, 1782, 1795, and 1800 mobs protested about high food prices. One contemporary described Birmingham rioters as the "bunting, beggarly, brass-making, brazen-faced, brazen-hearted, blackguard, bustling, booby Birmingham mob".
Up until the late 1780s, religious divisions did not affect Birmingham's elite. Dissenter and Anglican lived side by side harmoniously: they were on the same town promotional committees; they pursued joint scientific interests in the Lunar Society; and they worked together in local government. They stood united against what they viewed as the threat posed by unruly plebeians. After the riots, however, scientist and clergyman Joseph Priestley argued in his An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Birmingham Riots (1791) that this cooperation had not in fact been as amicable as generally believed. Priestley revealed that disputes over the local library, Sunday Schools, and church attendance had divided Dissenters from Anglicans. In his Narrative of the Riots in Birmingham (1816), stationer and Birmingham historian William Hutton agreed, arguing that five events stoked the fires of religious friction: disagreements over inclusion of Priestley's books in the local public library; concerns over Dissenters' attempts to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts; religious controversy (particularly involving Priestley); an "inflammatory hand-bill"; and a dinner celebrating the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Once Birmingham Dissenters started to agitate for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which restricted Dissenters' civil rights (preventing them, for instance, from attending the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or from holding public office), the semblance of unity among the town's elite disappeared. Unitarians such as Priestley were at the forefront of the repeal campaign, and orthodox Anglicans grew nervous and angry. After 1787, the emergence of Dissenting groups formed for the sole purpose of overturning these laws began to divide the community; however, the repeal efforts failed in 1787, 1789 and 1790. Priestley's support of the repeal and his heterodox religious views, which were widely published, inflamed the populace. In February 1790, a group of activists came together not only to oppose the interests of the Dissenters but also to counteract what they saw as the undesirable importation of French Revolutionary ideals. Dissenters by and large supported the French Revolution and its efforts to question the role monarchy should play in government.
One month before the riots, Priestley attempted to found a reform society, the Warwickshire Constitutional Society, which would have supported universal suffrage and short Parliaments. Although this effort failed, the efforts to establish such a society increased tensions in Birmingham.
In addition to these religious and political differences, both the lower-class rioters and their upper-class Anglican leaders had economic complaints against the middle-class Dissenters. They envied the ever-increasing prosperity of these industrialists as well as the power that came with that economic success. Historian R. B. Rose refers to these industrialists as belonging to "an inner elite of magnates". Priestley himself had written a pamphlet, An Account of a Society for Encouraging the Industrious Poor (1787), on how best to extract the most work for the smallest amount of money from the poor. Its emphasis on debt collection did not endear him to the poverty-stricken.
British reaction to the French Revolution
The British public debate over the French Revolution, or the Revolution Controversy, lasted from 1789 through 1795. Initially many on both sides of the Channel thought the French would follow the pattern of the English Glorious Revolution of a century before, and the Revolution was viewed positively by a large portion of the British public. Most Britons celebrated the storming of the Bastille in 1789, believing that France's absolute monarchy should be replaced by a more democratic form of government. In these heady early days, supporters of the Revolution also believed that Britain's own system would be reformed as well: voting rights would be broadened and redistribution of Parliamentary constituency boundaries would eliminate so-called "rotten boroughs".
After the publication of statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in which he surprisingly broke ranks with his liberal Whig colleagues to support the French aristocracy, a pamphlet war discussing the Revolution began in earnest. Because Burke had supported the American colonists in their rebellion against Great Britain, his views sent a shockwave through the country. While Burke supported aristocracy, monarchy, and the Established Church, liberals such as Charles James Fox supported the Revolution, and a programme of individual liberties, civic virtue and religious toleration, while radicals such as Priestley, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft, argued for a further programme of republicanism, agrarian socialism, and abolition of the "landed interest". Alfred Cobban calls the debate that erupted "perhaps the last real discussion of the fundamentals of politics in [Britain]".
Hints of trouble
On 11 July 1791, a Birmingham newspaper announced that on 14 July, the second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, there would be a dinner at the local Royal Hotel to commemorate the outbreak of the French Revolution; the invitation encouraged "any Friend to Freedom" to attend:
Alongside this notice was a threat: "an authentic list" of the participants would be published after the dinner. On the same day, "an ultra-revolutionary" handbill, written by James Hobson (although his authorship was not known at the time), entered circulation. Town officials offered 100 guineas for information regarding the publication of the handbill and its author, to no avail. The Dissenters found themselves forced to plead ignorance and decry the "radical" ideas promoted by the handbill. It was becoming clear by 12 July that there would be trouble at the dinner. On the morning of 14 July graffiti such as "destruction to the Presbyterians" and "Church and King for ever" were scrawled across the town. At this point, Priestley's friends, fearing for his safety, dissuaded him from attending the dinner.
14 July
About 90 hardy sympathisers of the French Revolution came to celebrate on 14 July; the banquet was led by James Keir, an Anglican industrialist who was a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. When the guests arrived at the hotel at 2 or 3 p.m., they were greeted by 60 or 70 protesters who temporarily dispersed while yelling, rather bizarrely and confusingly, "no popery". By the time the celebrants ended their dinner, around 7 or 8 p.m., a crowd of hundreds had gathered. The rioters, who "were recruited predominantly from the industrial artisans and labourers of Birmingham", threw stones at the departing guests and sacked the hotel. The crowd then moved on to the Quaker meeting-house, until someone yelled that the Quakers "never trouble themselves with anything, neither on one side nor the other" and convinced them instead to attack the New Meeting chapel, where Priestley presided as minister. The New and Old Meeting Houses, two Dissenting chapels, were set alight.
The rioters proceeded to Priestley's home, Fairhill at Sparkbrook. Priestley barely had time to evacuate and he and his wife fled from Dissenting friend to friend during the riots. Writing shortly after the event, Priestley described the first part of the attack, which he witnessed from a distance:
His son, William, stayed behind with others to protect the family home, but they were overcome and the property was eventually looted and razed to the ground. Priestley's valuable library, scientific laboratory, and manuscripts were largely lost in the flames.
15, 16 and 17 July
The Earl of Aylesford attempted to stem the mounting violence on the night of 14 July, but despite having the help of other magistrates, he was unable to control the crowd. On 15 July, the mob liberated prisoners from the local gaol. Thomas Woodbridge, the Keeper of the Prison, deputised several hundred people to help him quell the mob, but many of these joined in with the rioters themselves. The crowd destroyed John Ryland's home, Baskerville House, and drank the supplies of liquor which they found in the cellar. When the newly appointed constables arrived on the scene, the mob attacked and disarmed them. One man was killed. The local magistrates and law enforcement, such as it was, did nothing further to restrain the mob and did not read the Riot Act until the military arrived on 17 July. Other rioters burned down banker John Taylor's home at Bordesley Park.
On 16 July, the homes of Joseph Jukes, John Coates, John Hobson, Thomas Hawkes, and John Harwood (the latter a blind Baptist minister) were all ransacked or burned. The Baptist Meeting at Kings Heath, another Dissenting chapel, was also destroyed. William Russell and William Hutton, tried to defend their homes, but to no avail—the men they hired refused to fight the mob. Hutton later wrote a narrative of the events:
When the rioters arrived at John Taylor's other house at Moseley, Moseley Hall, they carefully moved all of the furniture and belongings of its current occupant, the frail Dowager Lady Carhampton, a relative of George III, out of the house before they burned it: they were specifically targeting those who disagreed with the king's policies and who, in not conforming to the Church of England, resisted state control. The homes of George Russell, a Justice of the Peace, Samuel Blyth, one of the ministers of New Meeting, Thomas Lee, and a Mr. Westley all came under attack on the 15th and 16th. The manufacturer, Quaker, and member of the Lunar Society Samuel Galton only saved his own home by bribing the rioters with ale and money.
By 2 p.m. on 16 July, the rioters had left Birmingham and were heading towards Kings Norton and the Kingswood Chapel; it was estimated that one group of the rioters totalled 250 to 300 people. They burned Cox's farm at Warstock and looted and attacked the home of a Mr. Taverner. When they reached Kingswood, Warwickshire, they burned the Dissenting chapel and its manse. By this time, Birmingham had shut down—no business was being conducted.
Contemporary accounts record that the mob's last sustained assault was around 8 p.m. on 17 July. About 30 "hard core" rioters attacked the home of William Withering, an Anglican who attended the Lunar Society with Priestley and Keir. But Withering, aided by a group of hired men, managed to fend them off. When the military finally arrived to restore order on 17 and 18 July, most of the rioters had disbanded, although there were rumours that mobs were destroying property in Alcester and Bromsgrove.
All in all, four Dissenting churches had been severely damaged or burned down and twenty-seven homes had been attacked, many looted and burned. Having begun by attacking those who attended the Bastille celebration, the "Church-and-King" mob had finished up by extending their targets to include Dissenters of all kinds as well as members of the Lunar Society.
Aftermath and trials
Priestley and other Dissenters blamed the government for the riots, believing that William Pitt and his supporters had instigated them; however, it seems from the evidence that the riots were actually organised by local Birmingham officials. Some of the rioters acted in a co-ordinated fashion and seemed to be led by local officials during the attacks, prompting accusations of premeditation. Some Dissenters discovered that their homes were to be attacked several days before the rioters arrived, leading them to believe that there was a prepared list of victims. The "disciplined nucleus of rioters", which numbered only thirty or so, directed the mob and stayed sober throughout the three to four days of rioting. Unlike the hundreds of others who joined in, they could not be bribed to stop their destructions. Essayist William Hazlitt's first published work was a letter to the Shrewsbury Chronicle, printed later in July 1791, condemning the Priestley riots; Priestley had been one of (then 13-year-old) Hazlitt's teachers.
If a concerted effort had been made by Birmingham's Anglican elite to attack the Dissenters, it was more than likely the work of Benjamin Spencer, a local minister, Joseph Carles, a Justice of the Peace and landowner, and John Brooke (1755-1802), an attorney, coroner, and under-sheriff. Although present at the riot's outbreak, Carles and Spencer made no attempt to stop the rioters, and Brooke seems to have led them to the New Meeting chapel. Witnesses agreed "that the magistrates promised the rioters protection so long as they restricted their attacks to the meeting-houses and left persons and property alone". The magistrates also refused to arrest any of the rioters and released those that had been arrested. Instructed by the national government to prosecute the riot's instigators, these local officials dragged their heels. When finally forced to try the ringleaders, they intimidated witnesses and made a mockery of the trial proceedings. Only seventeen of the fifty rioters who had been charged were ever brought to trial; four were convicted, of whom one was pardoned, two were hanged, and the fourth was transported to Botany Bay. But Priestley and others believed that these men were found guilty not because they were rioters but because "they were infamous characters in other respects".
Although he had been forced to send troops to Birmingham to quell the disturbances, King George III commented, "I cannot but feel better pleased that Priestley is the sufferer for the doctrines he and his party have instilled, and that the people see them in their true light." The national government forced the local residents to pay restitution to those whose property had been damaged: the total eventually amounted to £23,000. However, the process took many years, and most residents received much less than the value of their property.
After the riots, Birmingham was, according to industrialist James Watt, "divided into two parties who hate one another mortally". Initially Priestley wanted to return and deliver a sermon on the Bible verse "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," but he was dissuaded by friends convinced that it was too dangerous. Instead, he wrote his Appeal:
The riots revealed that the Anglican gentry of Birmingham were not averse to using violence against Dissenters whom they viewed as potential revolutionaries. They had no qualms, either, about raising a potentially uncontrollable mob. Many of those attacked left Birmingham; as a result, the town became noticeably more conservative after the riots. The remaining supporters of the French Revolution decided not to hold a dinner celebrating the storming of the Bastille the next year.
See also
Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Notes
Bibliography
—. An Authentic Account of the Riots in Birmingham, also … the trials of the Rioters. Birmingham: n.p., 1791.
—. Views of the Ruins of the Principal Houses Destroyed during the Riots at Birmingham. London: J. Johnson, 1791.
Butler, Marilyn, ed. Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. .
Hutton, William. "A Narrative of the Riots in Birmingham, July 1791". The Life of William Hutton. London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, Paternoster Row; and Beilby and Knotts, Birmingham, 1816. Google Books. Retrieved on 28 February 2008.
Maddison, R. E. S. and Francis R. Maddison. "Joseph Priestley and the Birmingham Riots." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 12.1 (August, 1956): 98–113.
Martineau, Dennis. "Playing Detective: The Priestley Riots of 1791." Birmingham Historian 12–13 (1997): 11–18.
Priestley, Joseph. An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson, 1791. On line, Internet Archive.
Rose, R. B. "The Priestley Riots of 1791." Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
Schofield, Robert E. The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. .
Sheps, Arthur. "Public Perception of Joseph Priestley, the Birmingham Dissenters, and the Church-and-King Riots of 1791." Eighteenth-Century Life 13.2 (1989): 46–64.
History of Birmingham, West Midlands
Lunar Society of Birmingham
Religious riots
Religiously motivated violence in England
Riots and civil disorder in the West Midlands
Sectarian violence
1791 riots
1791 in England
Attacks on religious buildings and structures in Europe
Christianity and violence
18th century in Birmingham, West Midlands
English Dissenters
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander%20Luria
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Alexander Luria
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Alexander Romanovich Luria (; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He developed an extensive and original battery of neuropsychological tests during his clinical work with brain-injured victims of World War II, which are still used in various forms. He made an in-depth analysis of the functioning of various brain regions and integrative processes of the brain in general. Luria's magnum opus, Higher Cortical Functions in Man (1962), is a much-used psychological textbook which has been translated into many languages and which he supplemented with The Working Brain in 1973.
It is less known that Luria's main interests, before the war, were in the field of cultural and developmental research in psychology. He became famous for his studies of low-educated populations of nomadic Uzbeks in the Uzbek SSR arguing that they demonstrate different (and lower) psychological performance than their contemporaries and compatriots under the economically more developed conditions of socialist collective farming (the kolkhoz). He was one of the founders of Cultural-Historical Psychology, and a leader of the Vygotsky Circle, also known as "Vygotsky-Luria Circle". Apart from his work with Vygotsky, Luria is widely known for two extraordinary psychological case studies: The Mind of a Mnemonist, about Solomon Shereshevsky, who had highly advanced memory; and The Man with a Shattered World, about Lev Zasetsky, a man with a severe traumatic brain injury.
During his career Luria worked in a wide range of scientific fields at such institutions as the Academy of Communist Education (1920-1930s), Experimental Defectological Institute (1920-1930s, 1950-1960s, both in Moscow), Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy (Kharkiv, early 1930s), All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, and the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery (late 1930s). A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Luria as the 69th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Life and career
Early life and childhood
Luria was born to Jewish parents in Kazan, a regional center east of Moscow. Many of his family were in medicine. According to Luria's biographer Evgenia Homskaya, his father, Roman Albertovich Luria was a therapist who "worked as a professor at the University of Kazan; and after the Russian Revolution, he became a founder and chief of the Kazan institute of Advanced Medical Education." Two monographs of his father's writings were published in Russian under the titles, Stomach and Gullet Illnesses (1935) and Inside Look at Illness and Gastrogenic Diseases (1935). His mother, Evgenia Viktorovna Khaskina (maiden name), became a practicing dentist after finishing college in Poland. Luria was one of two children; his younger sister Lydia became a practicing psychiatrist.
Early education and move to Moscow
Luria finished school ahead of schedule and completed his first degree in 1921 at Kazan State University. While still a student in Kazan, he established the Kazan Psychoanalytic Society and briefly exchanged letters with Sigmund Freud. Late in 1923, he moved to Moscow, where he lived on Arbat Street. His parents later followed him and settled down nearby. In Moscow, Luria was offered a position at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology, run from November 1923 by Konstantin Kornilov.
In 1924, Luria met Lev Vygotsky, who would influence him greatly. The union of the two psychologists gave birth to what subsequently was termed the Vygotsky, or more precisely, the Vygotsky-Luria Circle. During the 1920s Luria also met a large number of scholars, including Aleksei Leontiev, Mark Lebedinsky, Alexander Zaporozhets, Bluma Zeigarnik, many of whom would remain his lifelong colleagues. Following Vygotsky and along with him, in mid-1920s Luria launched a project of developing a psychology of a radically new kind. This approach fused "cultural", "historical", and "instrumental" psychology and is most commonly referred to presently as cultural-historical psychology. It emphasizes the mediatory role of culture, particularly language, in the development of higher psychological functions in ontogeny and phylogeny.
Independently of Vygotsky, Luria developed the ingenious "combined motor method," which helped diagnose individuals' hidden or subdued emotional and thought processes. This research was published in the US in 1932 as The Nature of Human Conflicts and made him internationally famous as one of the leading psychologists in Soviet Russia. In 1937, Luria submitted the manuscript in Russian and defended it as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Tbilisi (not published in Russian until 2002).
Luria wrote three books during the 1920s after moving to Moscow, The Nature of Human Conflicts (in Russian, but during Luria's lifetime published only in English translation in 1932 in the US), Speech and Intellect in Child Development, and Speech and Intellect of Urban, Rural and Homeless Children (both in Russian). The second title came out in 1928, while the other two were published in the 1930s.
In early 1930s both Luria and Vygotsky started their medical studies in Kharkiv, then, after Vygotsky's death in 1934, Luria completed his medical education at 1st Moscow Medical Institute.
Multiculturalism and neurology
The 1930s were significant to Luria because his studies of indigenous people opened the field of multiculturalism to his general interests. This interest would be revived in the later twentieth century by a variety of scholars and researchers who began studying and defending indigenous peoples throughout the world. Luria's work continued in this field with expeditions to Central Asia. Under the supervision of Vygotsky, Luria investigated various psychological changes (including perception, problem solving, and memory) that take place as a result of cultural development of undereducated minorities. In this regard he has been credited with a major contribution to the study of orality.
In response to Lysenkoism's purge of geneticists, Luria decided to pursue a physician degree, which he completed with honors in the summer of 1937. After rewriting and reorganizing his manuscript for The Nature of Human Conflicts, he defended it for a doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Tbilisi in 1937, and was appointed Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences. "At the age of thirty-four, he was one of the youngest professors of psychology in the country." In 1933, Luria married Lana P. Lipchina, a well-known specialist in microbiology with a doctorate in the biological sciences. The couple lived in Moscow on Frunze Street, where their only daughter Lena (Elena) was born.
Luria also studied identical and fraternal twins in large residential schools to determine the interplay of various factors of cultural and genetic human development. In his early neuropsychological work in the end of the 1930s as well as throughout his postwar academic life he focused on the study of aphasia, focusing on the relation between language, thought, and cortical functions, particularly on the development of compensatory functions for aphasia.
World War II and aftermath
For Luria, the war with Germany that ended in 1945 resulted in a number of significant developments for the future of his career in neuropsychology. He was appointed Doctor of Medical Sciences in 1943 and Professor in 1944. Of specific importance for Luria was that he was assigned by the government to care for nearly 800 hospitalized patients with traumatic brain injury caused by the war. Luria's treatment methods dealt with a wide range of emotional and intellectual dysfunctions. He kept meticulous notes on these patients, and discerned from them three possibilities for functional recovery: "(1) disinhibition of a temporarily blocked function; (2) involvement of the vicarious potential of the opposite hemisphere; and (3) reorganization of the function system", which he described in a book titled Functional Recovery From Military Brain Wounds, (Moscow, 1948, Russian only.) A second book titled Traumatic Aphasia was written in 1947 in which "Luria formulated an original conception of the neural organization of speech and its disorders (aphasias) that differed significantly from the existing western conceptions about aphasia." Soon after the end of the war, Luria was assigned a permanent position in General Psychology at the central Moscow State University in General Psychology, where he would predominantly stay for the remainder of his life; he was instrumental in the foundation of the Faculty of Psychology, and later headed the Departments of Patho- and Neuropsychology. By 1946, his father, the chief of the gastroenterological clinics at Botkin Hospital, had died of stomach cancer. His mother survived several more years, dying in 1950.
1950s
Following the war, Luria continued his work in Moscow's Institute of Psychology. For a period of time he was removed from the Institute of Psychology, and in the 1950s he shifted to research on intellectually disabled children at the Defectological Institute. Here he did his most pioneering research in child psychology, and was able to permanently disassociate himself from the influence that was then still exerted in the Soviet Union by Pavlov's early research. Luria said publicly that his own interests were limited to a specific examination of "Pavlov's second signal system" and did not concern Pavlov's simplified primary explanation of human behavior as based on a "conditioned reflex by means of positive reinforcement". Luria's continued interest in the regulative function of speech was further revisited in the mid-1950s and was summarized in his 1957 monograph titled The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Normal and Abnormal Behavior. In this book Luria summarized his principal concerns in this field through three succinct points summarized by Homskaya as: "(1) the role of speech in the development of mental processes; (2) the development of the regulative function of speech; and (3) changes in the regulative functions of speech caused by various brain pathologies."
Luria's main contributions to child psychology during the 1950s are well summarized by the research collected in a two-volume compendium of collected research published in Moscow in 1956 and 1958 under the title of Problems of Higher Nervous System Activity in Normal and Anomalous Children. Homskaya summarizes Luria's approach as centering on: "The application of the Method of Motor Associations (which) allowed investigators to reveal difficulties experienced by (unskilled) children in the process of forming conditioned links as well as restructuring and compensating by means of speech ... (Unskilled) children demonstrated acute dysfunction of the generalizing and regulating functions of speech." Taking this direction, already by the mid-1950s, "Luria for the first time proposed his ideas about the differences of neurodynamic processes in different functional systems, primarily in verbal and motor systems." Luria identified the three stages of language development in children in terms of "the formation of the mechanisms of voluntary actions: actions in the absence of a regulative verbal influence, actions with a nonspecific influence, and, finally, actions with a selective verbal influence." For Luria, "The regulating function of speech thus appears as a main factor in the formation of voluntary behavior ... at first, the activating function is formed, and then the inhibitory, regulatory function."
Cold War
In the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, Luria's career expanded significantly with the publication of several new books. Of special note was the publication in 1962 of Higher Cortical Functions in Man and Their Impairment Caused by Local Brain Damage. The book has been translated into multiple foreign languages and has been recognized as the principal book establishing Neuropsychology as a medical discipline in its own right. Previously, at the end of the 1950s, Luria's charismatic presence at international conferences had attracted almost worldwide attention to his research, which created a receptive medical audience for the book.
Luria's other books written or co-authored during the 1960s included: Higher Brain and Mental Processes (1963), The Neuropsychological Analysis of Problem Solving (1966, with L. S. Tzvetkova; English translation in 1990), Psychophysiology of the Frontal Lobes (first published in 1973), and Memory Disorders in Patients with Aneurysms of the Anterior Communicating Artery (co-authored with A. N. Konovalov and A. N. Podgoynaya). In studying memory disorders, Luria oriented his research to the distinction of long-term memory, short-term memory, and semantic memory. It was important for Luria to differentiate neuropsychological pathologies of memory from neuropsychological pathologies of intellectual operations. These two types of pathology were often characterized by Luria as; "(1) the inability to make particular arithmetical operations while the general control of intellectual activity remained normal (predominantly occipital disturbances)... (2) the disability of general control over intellectual processes (predominantly frontal lobe disturbances." Another of Luria's important book-length studies from the 1960s which would only be published in 1975 (and in English in 1976) was his well-received book titled Basic Problems of Neurolinguistics.
Late writings
Luria's productive rate of writing new books in neuropsychology remained largely undiminished during the 1970s and the last seven years of his life. Significantly, volume two of his Human Brain and Mental Processes appeared in 1970 under the title Neuropsychological Analysis of Conscious Activity, following the first volume from 1963 titled The Brain and Psychological Processes. The volume confirmed Luria's long sustained interest in studying the pathology of frontal lobe damage as compromising the seat of higher-order voluntary and intentional planning. Psychopathology of the Frontal Lobes, co-edited with Karl Pribram, was published in 1973.
Luria published his well-known book The Working Brain in 1973 as a concise adjunct volume to his 1962 book Higher Cortical Functions in Man. In this volume, Luria summarized his three-part global theory of the working brain as being composed of three constantly co-active processes, which he described as:
the attentional (sensory-processing) system
the mnestic-programming system
the energetic maintenance system, with two levels: cortical and limbic
This model was later used as a structure of the Functional Ensemble of Temperament model matching functionality of neurotransmitter systems. The two books together are considered by Homskaya as "among Luria's major works in neuropsychology, most fully reflecting all the aspects (theoretical, clinical, experimental) of this new discipline."
Among his late writings are also two extended case studies directed toward the popular press and a general readership, in which he presented some of the results of major advances in the field of clinical neuropsychology. These two books are among his most popular writings. According to Oliver Sacks, in these works "science became poetry".
In The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968), Luria studied Solomon Shereshevsky, a Russian journalist with a seemingly unlimited memory, sometimes referred to in contemporary literature as "flashbulb" memory, in part due to his fivefold synesthesia.
In The Man with the Shattered World (1971) he documented the recovery under his treatment of the soldier Lev Zasetsky, who had experienced a brain wound in World War II.
In 1974 and 1976, Luria presented successively his two-volume research study titled The Neuropsychology of Memory. The first volume was titled Memory Dysfunctions Caused by Local Brain Damage and the second Memory Dysfunctions Caused by Damage to Deep Cerebral Structures. Luria's book written in the 1960s titled Basic Problems of Neurolinguistics was finally published in 1975, and was matched by his last book, Language and Cognition, published posthumously in 1980. Luria's last co-edited book, with Homskaya, was titled Problems of Neuropsychology and appeared in 1977. In it, Luria was critical of simplistic models of behaviorism and indicated his preference for the position of "Anokhin's concept of 'functional systems,' in which the reflex arc is substituted by the notion of a 'reflex ring' with a feedback loop." In this approach, the classical physiology of reflexes was to be downplayed while the "physiology of activity" as described by Bernshtein was to be emphasized concerning the active character of human active functioning.
Luria's death is recorded by Homskaya in the following words: "On June 1, 1977, the All-Union Psychological Congress started its work in Moscow. As its organizer, Luria introduced the section on neuropsychology. The next day's meeting, however, he was not able to attend. His wife Lana Pimenovna, who was extremely sick, had an operation on June 2. During the following two and a half months of his life, Luria did everything possible to save or at least to soothe his wife. Not being able to comply with this task, he died of a myocardial infarction on August 14. His funeral was attended by an endless number of people -- psychologists, teachers, doctors, and just friends. His wife died six months later."
Main areas of research
In her biography of Luria, Homskaya summarized the six main areas of Luria's research over his lifetime in accordance with the following outline: (1) The Socio-historical Determination of the Human Psyche, (2) The Biological (Genetic) Determination of the Human Psyche, (3) Higher Psychological Functions Mediated by Signs-Symbols; The Verbal System as the Main System of Signs (along with Luria's well-known three-part differentiation of it), (4) The Systematic Organization of Psychological Functions and Consciousness (along with Luria's well-known four-part outline of this), (5) Cerebral Mechanisms of the Mind (Brain and Psyche); Links between Psychology and Physiology, and (6) The Relationship between Theory and Practice.
Principal research trends
As examples of the vigorous growth of new research related to Luria's original research during his own lifetime are the fields of linguistic aphasia, anterior lobe pathology, speech dysfunction, and child neuropsychology.
Linguistic aphasia
Luria's neuropsychological theory of language and speech distinguished clearly between the phases that separate inner language within the individual consciousness and spoken language intended for communication between individuals intersubjectively. It was of special significance for Luria not only to distinguish the sequential phases required to get from inner language to serial speech, but also to emphasize the difference of encoding of subjective inner thought as it develops into intersubjective speech. This was in contrast to the decoding of spoken speech as it is communicated from other individuals and decoded into subjectively understood inner language. In the case of the encoding of inner language, Luria expressed these successive phases as moving first from inner language to semantic set representations, then to deep semantic structures, then to deep syntactic structures, then to serial surface speech. For the encoding of serial speech, the phases remained the same, though the decoding was oriented in the opposite direction of transitions between the distinct phases.
Anterior (frontal) lobes
Luria's studies of the frontal lobes were concentrated in five principal areas: (1) attention, (2) memory, (3) intellectual activity, (4)emotional reactions, and (5) voluntary movements. Luria's main books for investigation of these functions of the frontal lobes are titled, (a) The Frontal Lobes (1966), Problems of Neuropsychology (1977), and (c) Functions of the Frontal Lobes (1982, posthumously published).
Speech dysfunction
Luria's research on speech dysfunction was principally in the areas of (1) expressive speech, (2) impressive speech, (3) memory, (4) intellectual activity, and (5) personality.
Child neuropsychology
This field was formed largely based upon Luria's books and writings on neuropsychology integrated during his experiences during the war years and later periods. In the area of child neuropsychology, "The need for its creation was dictated by the fact that children with localized brain damage were found to reveal specific different features of dissolution of psychological functions. Under Luria's supervision, his colleague Simernitskaya began to study nonverbal (visual-spatial) and verbal functions, and demonstrated that damage to the left and right hemispheres provoked different types of dysfunctions in children than in adults. This study initiated a number of systematic investigations concerning changes in the localization of higher psychological functions during the process of development." Luria's general research was mostly centered on the treatment and rehabilitation "of speech, and observations concerning direct and spontaneous rehabilitation were generalized." Other areas involving "Luria's works have made a significant contribution in the sphere of rehabilitation of expressive and impressive speech (Tzvetkova, 1972), 1985), memory (Krotkova, 1982), intellectual activity (Tzvetkova, 1975), and personality (Glozman, 1987) in patients with localized brain damage."
Luria-Nebraska neuropsychological test
The Luria-Nebraska is a standardized test based on Luria's theories regarding neuropsychological functioning. Luria was not part of the team that originally standardized this test; he was only indirectly referenced by other researchers as a scholar who had published relevant results in the field of neuropsychology. Anecdotally, when Luria first had the battery described to him he commented that he had expected that someone would eventually do something like this with his original research.
Books
The Nature of Human Conflicts - or Emotion, Conflict, and Will: An Objective Study of Disorganisation and Control of Human Behaviour. New York: Liveright Publishers, 1932.
Higher Cortical Functions in Man. Moscow University Press, 1962. Library of Congress Number: 65-11340.
Summary at BrainInfo
(With Solotaroff, Lynn) The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound, Harvard University Press, 1987. .
In cinema
Paolo Rosa's film Il mnemonista (2000) is based on his book The Mind of a Mnemonist.
Chris Doyle's auteur film Away with Words is largely inspired by Luria's The Mind of a Mnemonist.
Jacqueline Goss's 28-minute feature How to Fix the World (2004) is a digitally animated lighthearted parody that "draws from Luria's study of how the introduction of literacy affected the thought-patterns of Central Asian peasants"—description taken from the cover of the DVD Wendy and Lucy (2008), OSC-004, which includes it as an independent supplement to the unrelated feature film. Educational parody. Full 28-minute film is viewable at Vimeo.
See also
Cultural-historical psychology
Elkhonon Goldberg
Lev Vygotsky
Solomon Shereshevsky
References
Sources
Proctor, H. (2020). Psychologies in Revolution: Alexander Luria's 'Romantic Science' and Soviet Social History. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Yasnitsky, A. (Ed.) (2019). Questioning Vygotsky's Legacy: Scientific Psychology or Heroic Cult. London and New York: Routledge [ book preview ]
Yasnitsky, A. (2018). Vygotsky: An Intellectual Biography. London, Routledge. [ book preview ]
Yasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R., Aguilar, E. & García, L.N. (Eds.) (2016). Vygotski revisitado: una historia crítica de su contexto y legado. Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila Editores
Yasnitsky, A. & van der Veer, R. (Eds.) (2016). Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies. Routledge,
Proctor, H. (2016). Revolutionary thinking: a theoretical history of Alexander Luria's 'Romantic science'. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London
Yasnitsky, A. (2011). Vygotsky Circle as a Personal Network of Scholars: Restoring Connections Between People and Ideas. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, .
Homskaya, E. (2001). Alexander Romanovich Luria: A Scientific Biography, New York, NY: Plenum Publishers, .
External links
A.R Luria Archive at marxists.org
A.R. Luria Archive @ Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at lchc.ucsd.eduA Small Book About a Big Memory - Translation by Ivan Samokish"'' A free translation from the original Russian available in PDF format.
Alexander Luria - The Mind of a Mnemonist Jerome Brunner 1987 Harvard University Press
Luria's Areas of the Human Cortex Involved in Language. Illustrated summary of Luria's book Traumatic Aphasia.
Luria publication list, (pages 9 - 51 of the pdf) and more at Springer page for Evgenia D. Homskaya's biography
1902 births
1977 deaths
20th-century psychologists
People from Kazan
Academic staff of Moscow State University
Academicians of the RSFSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences
Academicians of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University alumni
Kazan Federal University alumni
Recipients of the Order of the Badge of Honour
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Cognitive psychologists
Literacy and society theorists
Memory researchers
Neuropsychologists
Jewish physicians
Russian Jews
Russian Marxists
Russian neurologists
Russian psychologists
Soviet Jews
Soviet Marxists
Soviet neurologists
Soviet psychologists
Burials at Kuntsevo Cemetery
Russian scientists
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford%2C%20Lincolnshire
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Stamford, Lincolnshire
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Stamford is a town and civil parish in the South Kesteven District of Lincolnshire, England. The population at the 2011 census was 19,701 and estimated at 20,645 in 2019. The town has 17th- and 18th-century stone buildings, older timber-framed buildings and five medieval parish churches. It is a frequent film location. In 2013 it was rated a top place to live in a survey by The Sunday Times. Its name has been passed on to Stamford, Connecticut, founded in 1641.
History
Roman and Medieval Stamford
The Romans built Ermine Street across what is now Burghley Park and forded the River Welland to the west of Stamford, eventually reaching Lincoln. They also built a town to the north at Great Casterton on the River Gwash. In 61 CE Boudica followed the Roman legion Legio IX Hispana across the river. The Anglo-Saxons later chose Stamford as the main town, being on a larger river than the Gwash.
The place-name Stamford is first attested in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it appears as Steanford in 922 and Stanford in 942. It appears as Stanford in the Domesday Book of 1086. The name means "stony ford".
In 972 King Edgar made Stamford a borough. The Anglo-Saxons and Danes faced each other across the river. The town had grown as a Danish settlement at the lowest point that the Welland could be crossed by ford or bridge. Stamford was the only one of the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw not to become a county town. Initially a pottery centre making Stamford Ware, it had gained fame by the Middle Ages for its production of the woollen cloth known as Stamford cloth or haberget, which "In Henry III's reign... was well known in Venice."
Stamford was a walled town, but only a small portion of the walls remains. Stamford became an inland port on the Great North Road, the latter superseding Ermine Street in importance. Notable buildings in the town include the medieval Browne's Hospital, several churches and the buildings of Stamford School, a public school founded in 1532.
A Norman castle was built about 1075 and apparently demolished in 1484. The site stood derelict until the late 20th century, when it was built over and now includes a bus station and a modern housing development. A small part of the curtain wall survives at the junction of Castle Dyke and Bath Row.
In 1333–1334, a group of students and tutors from Merton and Brasenose colleges, dissatisfied with conditions at the university, left Oxford to found a rival college at Stamford. Oxford and Cambridge universities petitioned Edward III, and the King ordered the closure of the college and the return of the students to Oxford. MA students at Oxford were obliged to take an oath: "You shall also swear that you will not read lectures, or hear them read, at Stamford, as in a University study, or college general." This remained in force until 1827. The site and limited remains of the former Brazenose College, Stamford, where Oxford secessionists lived and studied, now form part of Stamford School.
Stamford has been hosting an annual fair since the Middle Ages. It is mentioned in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 (Act 3, Scene 2). Held in mid-Lent, it is now the largest street fair in Lincolnshire and among the largest in the country. On 7 March 1190, men at the fair who were preparing to go on the crusade led a pogrom, in which several of the Stamford Jews were killed, and the rest, who escaped with difficulty, were given refuge in the castle. Their houses, however, were plundered, and a great quantity of money was seized.
Religious houses and hospitals
Stamford's importance and wealth in the Middle Ages meant that a number of religious houses and hospitals were established in or near the town. The monasteries and friaries were all closed at the Dissolution by 1539. Street names are indicative of their presence: Priory Street, Austin Street etc.
Monasteries
Benedictine Priory of St Leonard – certainly established by 1082 with the possibility of it having been founded originally in the 7th century. Part of the church still stands on Priory Road.
Priory of Austin Canons at Newstead, just east of Stamford. Originally founded as a hospital at the end of the 12th century it became a priory of Austin Canons in the 1240s.
Priory of St Michael – this was a nunnery established by an abbot of Peterborough in or before 1155 in Stamford Baron. It was a large establishment for about 40 nuns. In 1354 it was amalgamated with the Augustinian nunnery of Wothorpe which had been depopulated by plague. The reredorter is a Scheduled Monument.
Friaries
At least five orders of Friars were established within the town of Stamford from the 13th century onwards.
The Austin Friars established in the 1340s in a house near St Peter's Gate on land formerly occupied by the Friars of the Sack. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 the land was eventually bought by the Cecil family of Burghley
The Dominican Friars probably arrived in the 1230s and were regularly supported with donations by the monarchy. The house was dissolved by 1539.
The Franciscan Friars had a house - Greyfriars, Stamford - in the east suburb near St Paul's gate;
The Carmelite Friars founded about 1268 in the east part of the town. The friary is said to have been a magnificent structure, famous for its beautiful church
The Friars of the Sack or Brothers of Penitence – the sack referred to their clothes, made of sackcloth.
Hospitals
Hospital of St John Baptist and St Thomas the Martyr on Stamford Bridge. This hospital was certainly in existence from 1323 until the eve of the Reformation
Hospital of St Giles This hospital, which was built just outside Stamford as it was intended for lepers and was certainly operating in the 14th century.
Hospital of All Saints was founded in 1485 by William Browne, a wool merchant, for the support of two chaplains, and for the distribution of alms to twelve poor persons, who should pray for the soul of the founder. Browne's Hospital is still used for this purpose.
Tudor and Stuart Stamford
By the early 1500s the wool and broadcloth industry in England, on which Stamford depended, had declined significantly. Stamford was sufficiently poor, financially and demographically, that in 1548 it had to amalgamate its eleven parishes into six and its population had reduced to 800.
However, by the second half of the 17th century, after almost 150 years of stagnation, the population started to increase. As Stamford emerged into the 17th century, leather and fibre working (in the widest sense; weavers, ropers and tailors) were the main activities along with wood and stone working.
In the 1660s the various efforts to make the River Welland navigable again were finally successful. Stamford then became a centre for the malting trade as the barley from nearby fenlands to the east and heathlands to the north and west could make its way more easily and cheaper to the town.
The Great North Road passed through Stamford. It had always been a halting town for travellers; Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, James I and Charles I all passed through and it had been a post station for the postal service journey in Elizabeth's reign. By the later 17th century roads start to be used more for longer distance travelling. In 1663 an Act of Parliament was passed to set up turnpikes on the Great North Road, and this was to make a notable difference to Stamford's fortunes in the following century.
During the English Civil War local loyalties were split. Thomas Hatcher MP was a Parliamentarian. Royalists used Wothorpe and Burghley as defensive positions. In the summer of 1643 the Royalists were besieged at Burghley on 24 July after a defeat at Peterborough on 19 July. The army of Viscount Campden was heavily outnumbered and surrendered the following day.
Bull Run
For over 600 years Stamford was the site of the Stamford bull run, held annually on 13 November, St Brice's day, until 1839. Local tradition says it began after William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey had seen two bulls fighting in the meadow beneath his castle. Some butchers came to part the combatants and one bull ran into the town. The earl mounted his horse and rode after the animal; he enjoyed the sport so much that he gave the meadow where the fight began to the butchers of Stamford, on condition that they continue to provide a bull to be run in the town every 13 November.
Victorian period to 21st century
The East Coast Main Line would have gone through Stamford, as an important postal town at the time, but resistance led to routing it instead through Peterborough, whose importance and size increased at Stamford's expense.
During the Second World War, the area round Stamford contained several military sites, including RAF station, airborne encampments and a prisoner-of-war camp. Within the town, Rock House held the headquarters of Stanisław Sosabowski and the staff of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. A memorial plaque was unveiled there in 2004.
Stamford Museum occupied a Victorian building in Broad Street from 1980 until June 2011, when it succumbed to Lincolnshire County Council budget cuts. Some exhibits have been moved to a "Discover Stamford" space at the town library and to Stamford Town Hall.
Governance
Stamford belongs to the parliamentary constituency of Grantham and Stamford. The incumbent is Gareth Davies of the Conservative Party, who won the seat at the 2019 General Election. His predecessor, Nick Boles, had left the Conservatives in March 2019.
In local government, Stamford before 1974 was a municipal borough based at Stamford Town Hall. Since April 1974 it has come under Lincolnshire County (upper tier) and South Kesteven District Council (lower tier). It previously belonged to Kesteven County Council.
Stamford's town council has arms: Per pale dexter side Gules three Lions passant guardant in pale Or and the sinister side chequy Or and Azure. The three lions are the English royal arms, granted to the town by Edward IV for its part in the "Lincolnshire Uprising". The blue and gold chequers are the arms of the De Warenne family, which held the manor here in the 13th century.
Geography
Stamford, on the bank of the River Welland, forms a south-westerly protrusion of Lincolnshire between Rutland to the north and west, Peterborough to the south, and Northamptonshire to the south-west. There have been mistaken claims of a quadripoint where four ceremonial counties – Rutland, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire – would meet at a point but the location actually has two tripoints some apart.
The River Welland forms the border between two historic counties: Lincolnshire to the north and Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire to the south.
In 1991, the boundary between Lincolnshire and Rutland (then part of Leicestershire) in the Stamford area was redrawn. It now mostly follows the A1 to the railway line. The conjoined parish of Wothorpe is in the city of Peterborough. Barnack Road is the Lincolnshire/Peterborough boundary where it borders St Martin's Without.
The river downstream of the town bridge and some of the meadows fall within the drainage area of the Welland and Deepings Internal Drainage Board.
Geology
Much of Stamford is built on Middle Jurassic Lincolnshire limestone, with mudstones and sandstones.
The area is known for limestone and slate quarries. Cream-coloured Collyweston stone slate is found on the roofs of many Stamford stone buildings. Stamford Stone in Barnack has quarries at Marholm and Holywell. Clipsham Stone has two quarries in Clipsham.
Palaeontology
In 1968, a specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Cetiosaurus oxoniensis was found in the Williamson Cliffe Quarry, close to Great Casterton in adjacent Rutland. Some long, it is about 170 million years old, from the Aalenian or Bajocian era of the Jurassic period. It is one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons found in the UK and was installed in 1975 in the Leicester Museum & Art Gallery.
Economy
Tourism is important to Stamford's economy, as are professional law and accountancy firms. Health, education and other public-service employers also feature, notably a hospital, a large medical general practice, schools (some independent) and a further education college. Hospitality is provided by several hotels, licensed premises, restaurants, tea rooms and cafés.
The licensed premises reflect the history of the town. The George Hotel, Lord Burghley, William Cecil, Danish Invader and Jolly Brewer are among nearly 30 premises serving real ale. Surrounding villages and Rutland Water provide other venues and employment opportunities, as do several annual events at Burghley House.
Retail
The town centre's major retail and service sector has many independent boutique stores and draws shoppers from a wide area. Several streets are traffic-free. Outlets include gift shops, eateries, men's and women's outfitters, shoe shops, florists, hairdressers, beauty therapists and acupuncture and health-care services. Harrison Dunn, Dawson of Stamford, the George Hotel and The Crown Arts Centre are other popular places. Stamford has several hotels, coffee shops and restaurants. Its branch of the national jeweller F. Hinds can trace its history back to the clockmaker Joseph Hinds, who worked in Stamford in the first half of the 19th century. In the summer months, Stamford Meadows attract visitors.
National supermarkets Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Morrisons are represented. There are two retail parks a little way from the centre. One has Homebase DIY, Curry's electrical, Carpetright floor covering and McDonald's fast-food, the other Sainsbury's, Argos, Lidl, and Halfords car spares and bicycle shop. The town has three builders' merchants and several other specialist trade outlets and skilled trades such as roofers, builders, tilers etc. There are two car showrooms and a number of car-related businesses. Local services include convenience stores, post offices, newsagents and take-aways.
Engineering
South of the town is RAF Wittering, a main employer which was until 2011 the home of the Harrier. The base opened in 1916 as RFC Stamford. It closed in 1919, but reopened in 1924 under its present name.
The engineering company, largely closed since June 2018, is Cummins Generator Technologies (formerly Newage Lyon, then Newage International), a maker of electrical generators in Barnack Road. C & G Concrete (now part of Breedon Aggregates) is in Uffington Road.
The Pick Motor Company was founded in Stamford in about 1898. A number of smaller firms — welders, printers and so forth — feature in collections of industrial units or more traditional premises in older, mixed-use parts of the town. Blackstone & Co was a farm implement and diesel engine manufacturing company.
Stamford lies amidst some of England's richest farmland and close to the famous "double-cropping" land of parts of the fens. Agriculture still provides a small, but steady number of jobs in farming, agricultural machinery, distribution and ancillary services.
Publishing and broadcasting
The Stamford Mercury claimed to have been published since 1695 as "Britain's oldest newspaper", but in fact it was founded in 1710 as the Stamford Post. However, it is the oldest provincial continuous newspaper title, as The Stamford Mercury has been in print since 1712.
Local radio provision was shared between Peterborough's Heart East (102.7 – Heart Peterborough closed in July 2010) and Greatest Hits Radio Stamford and Rutland (formerly Rutland Radio) (a 97.4 transmitter on Little Casterton Road) from Oakham. Since March 2021, Rutland and Stamford Sound has been providing a locally based service via the internet. Other stations include BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (95.7 from Peterborough), BBC Radio Northampton (103.6 from Corby) and BBC Radio Lincolnshire (94.9). NOW Digital broadcasts from an East Casterton transmitter covering the town and Spalding, which provides the Peterborough 12D multiplex (BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and Heart East). Stamford has a lower-power television relay transmitter, due to it being in a valley, which takes its transmission from Waltham, not Belmont.
Local publishers include Key Publishing (aviation) and the Bourne Publishing Group (pets). Old Glory, a specialist magazine for steam power and traction engines, was published in Stamford.
Landmarks
Stamford was the first conservation area designated in England and Wales, under the Civic Amenities Act 1967. There are over 600 listed buildings in and around the town. Significant unlisted properties include the Corn Exchange in Broad Street which was completed in 1859.
The Industrial Revolution left Stamford largely untouched. Much of the centre was built in the 17th and 18th centuries in Jacobean or Georgian style. It is marked by streets of timber-framed and stone buildings using local limestone and by little shops tucked down back alleys. Several former coaching inns survive, their large doorways being a feature. The main shopping area was pedestrianised in the 1970s.
Near Stamford (but in the historical Soke of Peterborough) is Burghley House, an Elizabethan mansion, built by the First Minister of Elizabeth I, Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley. It is the ancestral seat of the Marquess of Exeter. The tomb of William Cecil is in St Martin's Church, Stamford. The parkland of the Burghley Estate adjoins the town on two sides. Another country house near Stamford, Tolethorpe Hall, hosts outdoor theatre productions by the Stamford Shakespeare Company.
Tobie Norris had a bell foundry in the town in the 17th century. His name is borne by a pub in St Paul's Street.
Transport
Road
Lying on the main north–south Ermine Street, the Great North Road, and the A1) from London to York and Edinburgh, Stamford hosted several Parliaments in the Middle Ages. The George Hotel, Bull and Swan, Crown and London Inn were well-known coaching inns. The town coped with heavy north–south traffic through its narrow streets until 1960, when a bypass was built to the west of the town. The old route is now the B1081. There is only one road bridge over the Welland, excluding the A1: a local bottleneck.
Until 1996 there were plans to upgrade the bypass to motorway standard, but these have been shelved. The Carpenter's Lodge roundabout south of the town has been replaced by a grade-separated junction. The old A16, now the A1175 (Uffington Road) to Market Deeping, meets the northern end of the A43 (Kettering Road) in the south of the town.
On foot
Footbridges cross the Welland at the Meadows, some 200 metres upstream of the Town Bridge, and at the Albert Bridge 250 metres downstream.
The Jurassic Way runs from Banbury to Stamford. The Hereward Way runs through the town from Rutland to the Peddars Way in Norfolk, along the Roman Ermine Street and then the River Nene. The Macmillan Way heads through the town, finishing at Boston. Torpel Way follows the railway line, entering Peterborough at Bretton.
Rail
The town is served by Stamford railway station, previously Stamford Town to distinguish it from the now closed Stamford East station in Water Street. The station building is a stone structure in Mock Tudor style, influenced by nearby Burghley House and designed by Sancton Wood.
The station has direct services to Leicester, Birmingham and Stansted Airport (via Cambridge) on the Birmingham to Peterborough Line. CrossCountry operates most services as part of their Birmingham–Stansted Airport route. Trains to and from Peterborough pass through a short tunnel beneath St Martin's High Street.
Buses
The town bus station occupies part of the old castle site in St Peter's Hill. The main routes are to Peterborough via Helpston or Wansford and to Oakham, Grantham, Uppingham and Bourne. There are less frequent services to Peterborough by other routes. Delaine Buses services terminate at its depot in North Street. Other active operators include CentreBus, Blands and Peterborough Council.
On Sundays and Bank Holidays from 16 May 2010, there have been five journeys to Peterborough operated by Peterborough City Council on routes via Wittering/Wansford, Duddington/Wansford, Burghley House/Barnack/Helpston and Uffington/Barnack/Helpston. There is a National Express coach service between London and Nottingham each day, including Sundays. Route maps and timetables appear on Lincolnshire County Council's website.
Waterways
Commercial shipping was carried along a canal from Market Deeping to warehouses in Wharf Road until the 1850s. This is no longer possible, due to abandonment of the canal and the shallowness of the river above Crowland. There is a lock at the sluice in Deeping St James, but it is not in use. The river was not conventionally navigable upstream of the Town Bridge.
Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC East Midlands and ITV Central. TV signals are received from the Waltham TV transmitter and the local relay transmitter. BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and ITV Yorkshire, can also be received from the Belmont TV transmitter.
Local radio stations are BBC Radio Lincolnshire on 104.7 FM, Greatest Hits Radio Midlands (which used to be Rutland Radio) on 97.4 FM and Lincs FM, an DAB radio station.
Stamford Mercury is the town’s local newspaper.
Education
Stamford has five state primary schools: Bluecoat, St Augustine's (RC), St George's, St Gilbert's and Malcolm Sargent, and the independent Stamford Junior School, a co-educational school for children aged two to eleven.
The one state secondary school is Stamford Welland Academy (formerly Stamford Queen Eleanor School), formed in the late 1980s from the town's two comprehensive schools: Fane and Exeter. It became an academy in 2011. In April 2013, a group of parents announced an intention to establish a Free School in the town, but failed to receive government backing. Instead, the multi-academy trust that submitted the bid was invited to take over the running of the existing school.
Stamford School and Stamford High School are long-established independent schools with about 1,500 pupils between them. Stamford School for boys was founded in 1532, the High School for girls in 1877. They have run co-educational classes in the sixth form since 2000. Together with Stamford Junior School, they form the Stamford Endowed Schools.
Most of Lincolnshire still has grammar schools. In Stamford, their place was long filled by a form of the Assisted Places Scheme, providing state funding to send children to one of two independent schools in the town that were formerly direct-grant grammars. The national scheme was abolished by the 1997 Labour government. The Stamford arrangements remained in place as a protracted transitional arrangement. In 2008, the council decided no new places could be funded and the arrangement ended in 2012. The rest of South Kesteven, apart from Market Deeping, has the selective system.
Other secondary pupils travel to Casterton College or further afield to The Deepings School or Bourne Grammar School.
New College Stamford offers post-16 further education: work-based, vocational and academic; and higher education courses including BA degrees in art and design awarded by the University of Lincoln and teaching-related courses awarded by Bishop Grosseteste University. The college also offers a range of informal adult learning.
Churches
In the 2011 Census, less than 67 per cent of the population of Stamford identified themselves as Christian, over 25 per cent as of "no religion".
Stamford has many current or former churches:
All Saints' Church on Red Lion Square
Christ Church, Green Lane
Stamford and District Community Church (ceased to meet)
Stamford Free Church (Baptist), Kesteven Road
St George's Church in St George's Square
St John the Baptist
St Leonard's Priory
St Mary's Church on St Mary's Street
St Mary and St Augustine (Roman Catholic), on Broad Street
St Martin's Church on High Street, St Martin's
St Michael the Greater, High Street (now converted as shops)
St Paul's Church (now the chapel of Stamford School)
Strict Baptist Chapel, North Street
Salvation Army, East Street (now demolished; the congregation worships elsewhere)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Hillside House, Tinwell Road
Stamford Methodist Church, Barn Hill (also known as Trinity Methodist Church)
United Reformed Church, on Star Lane
Filming location
Television shows
Middlemarch (1994)
The Buccaneers (1995)
The Golden Bowl (2000)
Bleak House (2005)
My Mad Fat Diary (2013–2015)
Films
Pride & Prejudice (2005) – used as the village of Meryton
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
The Golden Bowl (2000)
Notable residents
In alphabetical order by section. References appear on each person's page.
Arts and broadcasting
Michael Asher (born 1953), FRSL, Stamford-born award-winning author and explorer, attended Stamford School in 1964–1971.
Torben Betts (born 1968), Stamford-born playwright, attended Stamford School in 1979–1986.
Colin Dexter (1930–2017), author, creator of Inspector Morse
Rae Earl (born 1971), author and broadcaster
Lady Angela Forbes (1876–1950), novelist and First World War forces sweetheart
Andrew Lycett (born 1948), biographer
James Mayhew (born 1964), writer and illustrator of children's books
Mahomet Thomas Phillips (1876-1943), Anglo/Congolese sculptor and carver
Wilfrid Wood (1888–1976), artist
Business
John Drakard (c. 1775–1854), newspaper proprietor
Arthur Kitson (1859–1937), managing director of Kitson Empire Lighting Company and monetary theorist
Crime
John George Haigh (1909–1949), "The Acid Bath Murderer", was born in Stamford.
Government and armed forces
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598), Elizabethan statesman
Sir Mike Jackson (born 1944), British army general
Performance
Sarah Cawood (born 1972), television presenter
James Bradshaw (born 1976) stage and television actor
Tom Davis, actor and comedian
Tom Ford, broadcaster and presenter 5th Gear
Colin Furze (born 1979), YouTube personality, twice a Guinness World Record holder
David Jackson (born 1947), progressive rock saxophonist, flautist and composer
Nicola Roberts (born 1985), singer, best known as a member of Girls Aloud
George Robinson (born 1997), actor
Sir Malcolm Sargent (1895–1967), conductor
Sir Michael Tippett (1905–1998), composer
Scholarship
Harry Burton (1879–1940), Egyptologist and archaeological photographer
Robert of Ketton (с. 1110 – с. 1160), medieval theologian, was the first European translator of the Quran.
Sports
David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter (Lord Burghley till 1956; 1905–1981), politician, Governor of Bermuda, and Gold Medal-winning hurdler at 1928 Summer Olympics
Malcolm Christie (born 1979), former professional footballer
Darren Ferguson (born 1972), manager of Peterborough United, son of Alex Ferguson
Thomas Goodrich (1823–1885), cricketer
Paul Rawden (born 1973), former cricketer
M. J. K. Smith (born 1933), captain of England cricket team and last English double international (cricket and rugby), attended Stamford School.
Sport
Football teams
Blackstones F.C.
Stamford A.F.C.
Stamford Belvedere F.C.
There are a number of junior teams in each age group and also school teams.
Rugby teams
Stamford College Old Boys R.F.C.
Stamford College Rugby Team
Stamford Rugby Club
Cricket teams
Burghley Park Cricket Club
Stamford Town Cricket Club
Festivals and events
Burghley Horse Trials, held annually in early September
Stamford Blues Festival
Stamford International Music Festival held in the spring
Stamford Riverside Festival, last held in 2010
Stamford Mid Lent Fair
Stamford Georgian Festival, held in September
Stamford Diversity Festival, held in 2021
See also
Blackstone & Co
Outline of England
Kings Mill, Stamford
Niagara Falls, Ontario – Part of the area was named Stamford by John Graves Simcoe in 1791.
References
Further reading
External links
Stamford – finest stone town in England
Stamford Town Council
Towns in Lincolnshire
Market towns in Lincolnshire
Civil parishes in Lincolnshire
Castles in Lincolnshire
South Kesteven District
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth%20Anger
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Kenneth Anger
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Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927 – May 11, 2023) was an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning in 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle". Anger's films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle". He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers", with several films released before homosexuality was legalized in the U.S. Anger also explored occult themes in many of his films; he was fascinated by the English occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.
Born in a middle-class Presbyterian family in Santa Monica, California, Anger later claimed to have been a child actor who appeared in the film A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935); the accuracy of this claim is disputed. He began making short films when he was 14 years old, although his first film to gain any recognition was the homoerotic Fireworks (1947). The work's controversial nature led to his trial on obscenity charges, but he was acquitted. A friendship and working relationship subsequently began with pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey. Moving to Europe, Anger produced a number of shorts inspired by the avant-garde scene there, such as Eaux d'Artifice (1953) and Rabbit's Moon (1971).
Returning to the U.S. in the early 1950s, Anger began work on several new projects, including the films Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), and the gossip book Hollywood Babylon (1965). The latter became infamous for various dubious and sensationalist claims, many of which were disproved, though some remain urban legends. Getting to know several notable countercultural figures of the time, Anger involved them in his subsequent Thelemite-themed works, Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972). After failing to produce a sequel to Lucifer Rising, which he attempted through the mid-1980s, Anger retired from filmmaking, instead focusing on Hollywood Babylon II (1984). In the 2000s he returned to filmmaking, producing shorts for various film festivals and events.
Anger described filmmakers such as Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Maya Deren as influences, and was cited as an important influence on directors like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and John Waters. Kinsey Today argued that Anger had "a profound impact on the work of many other filmmakers and artists, as well as on music video as an emergent art form using dream sequence, dance, fantasy, and narrative."
Biography
1927–1936: Early life
Kenneth Anger was born as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer on February 3, 1927, in Santa Monica, California. His family was Presbyterian, but he became more interested in the occult. His father, Wilbur Anglemyer, was of German ancestry and was born in Troy, Ohio, while his disabled mother, Lillian Coler (the older of the pair), had English ancestry. Anger's parents met at Ohio State University and after marrying had their first child, Jean Anglemyer, in 1918, followed by a second, Robert "Bob" Anglemyer, in 1921. That year they moved to Santa Monica to be near Lillian's mother, Bertha Coler, who had recently moved there. There Wilbur got a job as an electrical engineer at Douglas Aircraft, earning enough money that they could live comfortably as a middle-class family.
Kenneth Anger, their third and final child, was born in 1927. Growing up, he did not get along with his parents or siblings. His brother Bob later claimed that as the youngest child, Kenneth had been spoiled by his mother and grandmother and became somewhat "bratty". His grandmother Bertha was a strong influence on the young Kenneth and supported the family financially during the Great Depression. It was she who first took Kenneth to the cinema, to see a double bill of The Singing Fool and Thunder Over Mexico. Bertha encouraged his artistic interests and later moved into a house in Hollywood with another woman, Miss Diggy, who also encouraged Kenneth. He developed an early interest in film and enjoyed reading the movie tie-in Big Little books. Kenneth later said, "I was a child prodigy who never got smarter." He remembered attending the Santa Monica Cotillion, where he met Shirley Temple, with whom he once danced.
Anger claimed in Hollywood Babylon II that he played the Changeling Prince in the 1935 Warner Brothers film A Midsummer Night's Dream, but the character was played by a girl named Sheila Brown. Anger's unofficial biographer, Bill Landis, remarked in 1995 that the Changeling Prince was definitely "Anger as a child; visually, he's immediately recognizable".
1937–1946: First films
Anger's first film was created in 1937, when he was ten years old. The short, Ferdinand the Bull, was shot on the remains of 16 mm film that had been left unused after the Anglemyers had made home movies with it on a family vacation to Yosemite National Park. In Ferdinand the Bull, which has never been made publicly available, Kenneth dressed as a matador, wearing a cape, while two of his friends from the Boy Scouts played the bull. His second work, Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941), which Anger has often called his first proper film, was made from footage of children playing during the summer, accompanied with popular songs by bands, including the Ink Spots. Anger had created Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat when he was 14. The next year, he produced another amateur film, Prisoner of Mars, which was heavily influenced by Flash Gordon. In this science fiction-inspired feature, in which he played the protagonist, Anger added elements taken from the Greek mythological myth of the Minotaur and constructed a small volcano in his back yard as a homemade special effect. Many of these early films are considered lost, with Anger burning much of his previous work in 1967.
In 1944, the Anglemyers moved to Hollywood to move in with family, and Kenneth began attending Beverly Hills High School. It was here that he met Maxine Peterson, who had once been the stand-in for Shirley Temple, and he asked her – alongside another classmate and an older woman – to appear in his next film project, which was ultimately titled Escape Episode. Revolving partially around the occult, the picture was filmed in a "spooky old castle" in Hollywood and was subsequently screened at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles. Around this time, Anger also began attending screenings of silent films at Clara Grossman's art gallery, through which he met a fellow filmmaker, Curtis Harrington, with whom he formed Creative Film Associates (CFA). Harrington is said to have introduced Anger to the work of English occultist Aleister Crowley. Crowley's philosophy of Thelema exerted a profound influence on Anger's career. CFA was founded to distribute experimental or "underground" films, such as those of Maya Deren and John and James Whitney, as well as Anger's and Harrington's.
Anger's interest in the occult deepened in high school. He first indirectly encountered the subject through reading L. Frank Baum's Oz books as a child, with their accompanying Rosicrucian philosophies. He was also interested in the works of the French ceremonial magician Eliphas Levi, as well as Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough, although his favorite writings were Crowley's; he eventually converted to Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.
1947–1949: Fireworks and early career
Anger discovered his homosexuality at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in the United States, and he began associating with the underground gay scene. At some point in the mid-1940s, he was arrested by police in a "homosexual entrapment", after which he decided to move out of his parents' home, gaining his own apartment largely financed by his grandmother, and abandoning the name Anglemyer in favor of Anger. He started attending the University of Southern California (USC), where he studied cinema, and also began experimenting with the use of mind-altering drugs like cannabis and peyote. It was then that he decided to produce a film that would deal with his sexuality, just as other gay avant-garde filmmakers like Willard Maas were doing in that decade. The result was the short film Fireworks, which was created in 1947 and exhibited publicly in 1948.
Upon Fireworks's release, Anger was arrested on obscenity charges. He was acquitted after the case went to the Supreme Court of California, which deemed the film art, not pornography. Twenty years old when he made Fireworks, Anger claimed to have been 17, presumably to present himself as more of an enfant terrible. A homoerotic work lasting only 14 minutes, the film revolves around a young man (played by Anger) associating with various navy sailors, who eventually turn on him, stripping him naked, beating him to death, and ripping open his chest to find a compass inside. Several fireworks then explode, accompanied by a burning Christmas tree. The final shot shows the young man lying in bed next to another shirtless man. Of this film, Anger said in 1966: "This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas and the fourth of July." He continuously altered and adapted the film until 1980. It was distributed on VHS in 1986.
One of the first people to buy a copy of Fireworks was the sexologist Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research. He and Anger struck up a friendship that lasted until Kinsey's death, during which time Anger aided Kinsey in his research. According to Anger's unofficial biographer Bill Landis, Kinsey became a "father figure" whom Anger "could both interact with and emulate." In 1949, Anger began work on the film Puce Women, which unlike Fireworks was filmed in color. It starred Yvonne Marquis as a glamorous woman going about her daily life; Anger later said: "Puce Women was my love affair with Hollywood ... with all the great goddesses of the silent screen. They were to be filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts." Due to lack of funding, only one scene was ever produced, eventually released under the title Puce Moment. That same year, Anger directed The Love That Whirls, a film based on Aztec human sacrifice; because of the nudity it contained, it was destroyed by technicians at the film lab who deemed it obscene.
1950–1953: France, Rabbit's Moon and Eaux d'Artifice
In 1950, Anger moved to Paris, France, where he initially stayed with friends of his who had been forced to leave Hollywood after being blacklisted for having formerly belonged to trade union organizations. He later said he traveled to Paris after receiving a letter from the French director Jean Cocteau in which he told Anger of his admiration for Fireworks (shown in 1949 at Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz). Upon Anger's arrival, the two became friends, with Cocteau giving him his permission to make a movie of his ballet The Young Man and Death, although at the time the project had no financial backers. In Paris, Anger continued producing short films; in 1950 he started filming Rabbit's Moon (also known as La lune des lapins), about a clown who stares up at the Moon, where a rabbit lives, as in Japanese mythology. Anger produced 20 minutes of footage at the Films du Pantheon Studio before he was rushed out of the building, leaving the film uncompleted. He stored the footage in the disorganized archives of the Cinémathèque Française and retrieved it in 1970, when he finally finished and released the film. Cinémathèque Française head Henri Langlois gave Anger prints of Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, which he attempted to put into Eisenstein's original order.
In 1953, Anger traveled to Rome, Italy, where he planned to make a film about the 16th-century occultist Cardinal d'Este. To do so, he began filming at the garden of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, in which a lady in 18th-century dress walked through the gardens, which featured many waterfalls (an allusion to the fact that d'Este allegedly sexually enjoyed urination), accompanied by the music of Vivaldi. This was supposed to be only the first of four scenes, but the others were not made; the resulting one-scene film was titled Eaux d'Artifice. Landis remarked, "It's one of Anger's most tranquil works; his editing makes it soft, lush, and inviting. Eaux d'Artifice remains a secretive romp through a private garden, all for the masked figure's and the viewer-voyeur's pleasure."
1953–1960: Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Hollywood Babylon
In 1953, soon after the production of Eaux d'Artifice, Anger's mother died, and he temporarily returned to the U.S. to assist with the distribution of her estate. During this return, he began to once more immerse himself in California's artistic scene, befriending the filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who had been inspired by Fireworks. The two collaborated on a film, but it was confiscated at the film lab for obscenity and presumably destroyed. Around this time, two of Anger's friends, the couple Renate Druks and Paul Mathison, held a party with the theme "Come As Your Madness"; Anger attended dressed in drag as the ancient Greek goddess Hekate. The party and its many costumes inspired Anger, who produced a painting of it, and asked several of those who attended to appear in a new film he was creating, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Inauguration, which was created in 1954, is a 38-minute surrealist work featuring many Crowleyan and Thelemite themes, with many of the various characters personifying various pagan gods such as Isis, Osiris, and Pan. One of the actresses in the film was Marjorie Cameron, the widow of Jack Parsons, the influential American Thelemite who had died a few years earlier. Anger played Hekate. He subsequently exhibited the film at various European film festivals, winning the Prix du Ciné-Club Belge and the Prix de l'Age d'Or, as well as screening it in the form of a projected triptych at Expo 58, the World Fair held in Brussels in 1958.
In 1955, Anger and Kinsey traveled to the derelict Abbey of Thelema at Cefalù in Sicily to film a short documentary, Thelema Abbey. Crowley had used the abbey for his commune during the 1920s, and Anger restored many of the erotic wall paintings that were found there, as well as performing certain Crowleyan rituals at the site. The documentary was made for the British television series Omnibus, but was later lost. The next year, after Kinsey's death, Anger decided to return to Paris; he was described at the time as being "extremely remote and lonely".
In desperate need of money, Anger and ghostwriter Elliott Stein wrote a book, Hollywood Babylon, in which he compiled gossip about celebrities, some of which he claimed (with no corroboration or citing of sources) he had been told, including that Rudolph Valentino liked to play a sexually submissive role to dominant women; that Walt Disney was addicted to opiates (reflected in the character of Goofy, who's perpetually stoned on cannabis); and the nature of the deaths of Peg Entwistle and Lupe Vélez. The work was not published in the U.S. initially, and was first released by the French publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert. A pirated (and incomplete) version was printed in the U.S. in 1965, with the official American version not published until 1974. In response to a lawsuit Gloria Swanson filed against Anger and his publishers, he sent her a foot-long, sugar-filled coffin with "Here lies Gloria" painted on the lid and lined with a paper printed with Hebrew letters spelling "shalom". The coffin is preserved at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center collection. After obtaining some financial backing from the publication of Hollywood Babylon, his next film project was The Story of O; it was essentially a piece of erotica loosely based on the novel of the same name featuring a heterosexual couple engaged in sadomasochistic sexual activities, although it refrained from showing any explicit sexual images.
1961–1965: Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos
In 1961, Anger once more returned to the U.S., where he lived for a time with Marjorie Cameron. He began work on a new feature, Scorpio Rising, about the biker subculture. For this, he employed a biker named Richard McAuley, and filmed him and some of his friends messing around, adding to it scenes of McAuley, or "Scorpio" as he became known, desecrating a derelict church. Anger incorporated more controversial visuals into the piece, including Nazi iconography, nudity, and clips of the life of Jesus Christ taken from the Family Films' The Living Bible: Last Journey to Jerusalem, images of Jesus which are intercut with those of Scorpio. The film has a soundtrack of popular 1960s songs, including "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, "Torture" by Kris Jensen, and "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March. Anger called the film "a death mirror held up to American culture ... Thanatos in chrome, black leather, and bursting jeans." It immediately became popular on the underground cinema scene but was soon brought to court on obscenity charges. The jury ruled in favor of the prosecutors and Scorpio Rising was banned; the ban was overturned on appeal to the California Supreme Court.
Now living in San Francisco, Anger approached the Ford Foundation, which had just started a program of grants to filmmakers. He showed the foundation his ideas for a new artistic short, Kustom Kar Kommandos, which they approved of, giving him a grant of $10,000. Anger spent much of the money on living expenses and alterations to some of his films, so that by the time he actually created Kustom Kar Kommandos, it was only one scene long. The homoerotic film involved various shots of a young man polishing a drag strip racing car, accompanied by a pink background and The Paris Sisters' song "Dream Lover". Soon after, Anger struck a deal that allowed Hollywood Babylon to be officially published for the first time in the U.S., where it proved a success, selling two million copies during the 1960s. Around the same time Anger also translated Lo Duca's History of Eroticism into English for American publication.
1966–1969: The hippie movement and Invocation of My Demon Brother
The mid-1960s saw the emergence of the hippie scene and increasing use of the mind-altering drugs Anger had been using for many years. In particular, the hallucinogen LSD, at the time still legal in the U.S., was very popular, and in 1966 Anger released a version of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome he called the "Sacred Mushroom Edition", which was screened to people while taking LSD, thereby heightening their sensory experience. By this time, Anger had become well known in the American underground scene, and several cinemas screened his better-known films all in one event. With his growing fame, Anger began to react to publicity much as his idol Crowley had done, for instance calling himself "the most monstrous moviemaker in the underground", a pun on the fact that British tabloids had labeled Crowley "the wickedest man in the world" in the 1920s.
Anger's underground fame allowed him to increasingly associate with other celebrities, including Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, who named Anger godfather to his daughter Zeena Schreck. Despite their differing philosophies, Anger and LaVey became good friends and remained so for many years. But Anger also resented some celebrities, such as Andy Warhol, who at the time was achieving success not only in the art world but also in the underground film scene. In 1980, Anger threw paint on the front door of a house Warhol had recently moved out of.
In 1966, Anger moved into the ground floor of the William Westerfield House, a large 19th-century Victorian house in San Francisco also known as the "Russian Embassy". Around this time he began planning a new film, Lucifer Rising, echoing his Thelemite beliefs about the emerging Aeon of Horus. He tattooed Lucifer's name on his chest and began searching for a young man who could symbolically become Lucifer, "the Crowned and Conquering Child" of the new Aeon, for the film. While living at the Russian Embassy, he met and lived with various young men who could fill the role, eventually settling on Bobby Beausoleil. Beausoleil founded a band, the Magic Powerhouse of Oz, to record the film's soundtrack. In 1967, Anger said the footage he had been filming for Lucifer Rising had been stolen, accusing Beausoleil, who denied it. Landis quotes Beausoleil as saying, "[W]hat had happened was that Kenneth had spent all the money that was invested in Lucifer Rising" and that he therefore invented the story to satisfy the film's creditors. Beausoleil and Anger fell out, with the former getting involved with Charles Manson and the Manson Family. Beausoleil later tortured and murdered Gary Hinman in a drug robbery gone wrong, for which he is serving a life sentence as of 2023.
In the October 26, 1967, issue of The Village Voice, Anger publicly reinvented himself by placing a full-page ad declaring, "In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Filmmaker 1947–1967". He soon publicly reappeared, this time to claim he had burned all of his early work. The next year he traveled to London, where he first met John Paul Getty, Jr., who became Anger's patron, and also met and befriended Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, members of The Rolling Stones, as well as actress/model Anita Pallenberg. Anger decided to use much of the footage created for Lucifer Rising in a new film, Invocation of My Demon Brother, which starred Beausoleil, LaVey, Jagger, Richards, and Anger, the music for which was composed by Jagger. It was released in 1969 and explored many of the Thelemic themes Anger had originally intended for Lucifer Rising. Author Gary Lachman believes the film "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at the Elgin Theatre." The story of the film, its making, and the people involved inspired Zachary Lazar's novel Sway.
1970–1981: Lucifer Rising
Having used up much of the footage originally intended for Lucifer Rising in Invocation of My Demon Brother, Anger made a second attempt to complete Lucifer Rising. He persuaded the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull to appear in the film, and unsuccessfully tried to convince Jagger to play Lucifer; instead he offered his brother Chris the part. Anger subsequently filmed eight minutes of film and showed it to the British National Film Finance Corporation, which agreed to provide £15,000 for Anger to complete it – something that caused a level of outrage in the British press. With this money he could afford to fly the cast and crew to both West Germany and Egypt for filming.
Anger befriended Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page around this time, the two sharing a great interest in Crowley. At Page's invitation, he traveled to Page's new home in Scotland, Crowley's former residence Boleskine House, to help Page exorcise the building of what Page believed to be a headless man's ghost. Page agreed to produce the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising, and used the editing suite in his London home to shape the music. Anger later fell out with Page's partner, Charlotte, who kicked him out of the house. In retaliation he called a press conference in which he ridiculed Page and threatened to "throw a Kenneth Anger curse" on him. Page's music was dumped from the film and replaced in 1979 by music written and recorded by the imprisoned Beausoleil, with whom Anger had reconciled.
Meanwhile, Anger, who had moved to a small apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, took the footage he had filmed for Rabbit's Moon in the 1950s, finally released the film in 1972, and again in a shorter version in 1979. Around the same time he also added a new soundtrack to Puce Moment and rereleased it. Also around this time, the publisher Marvin Miller produced a low-budget documentary film based on Hollywood Babylon without Anger's permission, which upset Anger and led to a lawsuit. Anger also created a short film, Senators in Bondage, available only to private collectors and never made publicly available. He had plans to make a film about Aleister Crowley titled The Wickedest Man in the World, but this project never got off the ground.
In 1981, a decade after starting the project, Anger finally finished and released the 30-minute Lucifer Rising. Based upon the Thelemite concept that mankind had entered a new period known as the Aeon of Horus, Lucifer Rising was full of occult symbolism, starring Miriam Gibril as the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, Donald Cammell as her consort Osiris, Faithfull as Jewish mythological figure Lilith, and Leslie Huggins as Lucifer. Anger once again appeared in the film, as the Magus, the same role he played in Invocation of My Demon Brother.
1982–1999: Retirement
Soon after the release of Lucifer Rising, a PBS documentary about Anger and his films, Kenneth Anger's Magick, was made. It was directed by Kit Fitzgerald, who later recalled interviewing Anger in his Manhattan apartment on a very hot July evening, during which he revealed that he was so broke that he had been forced to sell his air conditioner. Anger himself considered producing other films that would continue on from Lucifer Rising in a series, and he began calling his finished film Part I: Sign Language, to be followed by two further parts. But those projects were never finished, and Anger did not produce any further films for nearly two decades. In need of money, he released Hollywood Babylon II in 1984, as well as continuing to screen his films at various festivals and universities and continuing to attempt to produce Lucifer Rising II; around this time he began wearing an eyepatch to these public events, likely due to having been beaten up and getting a bruised eye, a story he told in various interviews, although partly changing the assailant in various versions.
A notorious incident occurred when Anger was invited to appear on Coca Crystal's television show in 1984. Upon arriving at the studio he demanded that somebody pay for his taxi ride there, and when they refused, he attacked talent coordinator Maureen Ivice and tried to drag her into his taxi before she was rescued by other members of staff. Anger reportedly escaped the scene by flinging a $100 bill at the cab driver and screaming, "Get me out of here!"
In 1986, Anger sold the video rights to his films, which finally appeared on VHS, allowing them to have greater publicity. The next year, he attended the Avignon Film Festival in France, where his work was being celebrated in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Fireworks. Soon thereafter, he appeared in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, a BBC documentary directed by Nigel Finch for the Arena series. In 1991, he moved to West Arenas Boulevard in Palm Springs, California, living in what was formerly the estate of his friend Ruby Keeler, where the British Film Institute sent Rebecca Wood to assist him in writing a never-produced autobiography. Instead, in 1995, Bill Landis, who had been an associate of Anger's in the early 1980s, wrote an unofficial biography of him. Anger condemned Landis's book, calling Landis "an avowed enemy".
In 1993, Anger visited Sydney and lectured at a season of his films at the Australian Film Institute Cinema. In an interview given at the time to Black and White magazine, he said he was staying in King's Cross and putting the finishing touches on the final treatment of a feature film about Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton. This project was unrealized.
2000–2023: Return to filmmaking and final years
In 2000, Anger began screening a new short film, the anti-smoking Don't Smoke That Cigarette, followed a year later by The Man We Want to Hang, which comprised images of Crowley's paintings that had been shown at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London. In 2004, he began showing Anger Sees Red, a short surrealistic film starring himself, and the same year also began showing another work, Patriotic Penis. Anger soon followed this with a flurry of other shorts, including Mouse Heaven, which consisted of images of Mickey Mouse memorabilia; Ich Will!; and Uniform Attraction, all of which he showed at various public appearances. Anger's final project was Technicolor Skull, with musician Brian Butler, described as a "magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance", in which Anger plays the theremin and Butler plays the guitar and other electronic instruments amid a psychedelic backdrop of colors and skulls.
Anger made an appearance in Nik Sheehan's 2008 feature documentary about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine, FLicKeR. He also appeared alongside Vincent Gallo in the 2009 short film Night of Pan, written and directed by Brian Butler. In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the MoMA PS1 in New York City, and the next year a similar exhibition took place in London.
Anger finished writing Hollywood Babylon III but did not publish it, fearing severe legal repercussions if he did. Of this, he said: "The main reason I didn't bring it out was that I had a whole section on Tom Cruise and the Scientologists. I'm not a friend of the Scientologists." Despite withholding legal action against the highly critical 2015 film Going Clear, the Church of Scientology is known to sue those making accusations against it.
Anger died at a care facility in Yucca Valley, California, on May 11, 2023, at the age of 96. The announcement of his death was delayed until May 24 while his estate was being settled.
Themes
Several recurring themes can be seen in Anger's cinematic work. One of the most notable is homoeroticism, first seen in Fireworks (1947), which was based on Anger's own homosexual awakening and featured various navy officers flexing their muscles and a white fluid (often thought to symbolize semen) pouring over the protagonist's body. There is similar homoerotic imagery in Scorpio Rising (1963), which stars a muscled, topless, leather-clad biker, and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), where a young man sensually polishes a car, with close-up shots of his tight-fitting jeans and crotch. Images of naked men also appear in Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), where they are eventually filmed wrestling, and Anger Sees Red (2004), in which a muscled, topless man performs press-ups.
Another recurring theme in Anger's films is the occult, particularly the symbolism of his own esoteric religion, Thelema. This is visible in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising, all of which are based on the Thelemite concept of the Aeon of Horus and feature actors portraying pagan gods. Anger linked the creation of film to the occult, particularly the practice of ceremonial magic, something of which Crowley had been a noted practitioner. Anger once said, "making a movie is casting a spell."
One of the central recurring images in Anger's work is flames and light; Fireworks has various examples, including a burning Christmas tree. This relates to Lucifer, a deity to whom Anger devoted one of his films, whose name is Latin for "light bearer".
In many of his films, heavy use is made of music, both classical and pop, to accompany the visual imagery. In Scorpio Rising he makes use of the 1950s/1960s pop songs "Torture" by Kris Jensen, "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March, and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton. He first used music to accompany visuals in the 1941 work Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?, which uses tracks by the Mills Brothers. His use of popular music to accompany his films has been cited as a key influence on the development of music videos and MTV, although he stated his dislike for the music video industry. On one occasion the band Combustible Edison asked Anger to direct a video to accompany its song "Bluebeard"; he declined, believing that while music could be used to accompany film, it was pointless to do it the other way around.
Awards
Maya Deren Award, 1996
Silver Lake Film Festival Spirit of Silver Lake Award (2000)
San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award (2001)
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Douglas Edwards Independent/Experimental Film/Video Award (2002), "for his body of work"; tied with Michael Snow, for *Corpus Callosum
Anthology Film Archives, Life Achievement Award (2010)
Personality and beliefs
Anger was known for his reclusive nature and had been called an "extremely private individual", although he gave various interviews over the years, with one interviewer, David Wingrove, describing him in 2008 as "a joy. Gentle, soft-spoken, immaculately tanned, he looks a good two decades younger than his 78 years". In such interviews, he refused to discuss his name change from Anglemyer to Anger, telling one interviewer: "You're being impertinent. It says 'Anger' on my passport. That's all you need to know. I would stay away from that subject if I were you." But in a 2010 interview, he said: "I just condensed my name. I knew it would be like a label, a logo. It's easy to remember."
Anger once joked that he was "somewhat to the right of the KKK" in his views about black people, opening him up to criticism for racism, though this was likely a "Crowley-esque joke". He supported the Tibetan independence movement.
Anger was a Thelemite and belonged to the main Thelemic organization, the Ordo Templi Orientis. He viewed many of the men he associated with as living embodiments of Lucifer, a symbol of the Aeon of Horus in Thelemic philosophy, and had his own name inked onto his chest with the Lucifer tattoo. Anger showed an interest in various other religious movements, particularly those that related in some way to occultism. For instance, he was a lifelong friend of Anton LaVey from before the founding of the Church of Satan in the 1960s, even living with him and his family during the 1990s. LaVey also appeared in Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother as a devilish priest. Anger called himself a pagan and did not consider himself a Satanist. He has called Wicca a "lunar", feminine religion in contrast to Thelema's "solar" masculinity.
Filmography
Books
References
Notes
Citations
Works cited
Further reading
Eaton, Thomas Dylan (2008). Cinema, Messianism and Crime, Parkett 83, pp. 197–205.
Eaton, Thomas Dylan (2008), 1000 WORDS; KENNETH ANGER, Artforum, September, pp. 412–415.
.
External links
bentclouds.com. Essay on Kustom Kar Kommandos Non-Normative Sex in Kustom Kar Kommandos.
The Film Journal. Review of Alice Hutchison's book on Anger
Artforum 1000 Words
Esquire Kenneth Anger: Where The Bodies Are Buried, by Mick Brown.
1927 births
2023 deaths
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American LGBT screenwriters
American Thelemites
American expatriates in France
American experimental filmmakers
American gay actors
American gay artists
American gay writers
American male child actors
American modern pagans
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
Film directors from California
Gay screenwriters
American LGBT film directors
LGBT people from California
Male actors from Santa Monica, California
Writers from Santa Monica, California
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana%20Scully
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Dana Scully
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Dr. Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is a fictional character and one of the two protagonists in the Fox science-fiction, supernatural television series The X-Files, played by Gillian Anderson. Scully is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent and a medical doctor (MD), partnered with fellow Special Agent Fox Mulder for seasons one to seven and seasons 10 and 11, and with John Doggett in the eighth and ninth seasons. In the television series, they work out of a cramped basement office at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC to investigate unsolved cases labeled "X-Files." In 2002, Scully left government employment, and in 2008, she began working as a surgeon in Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital – where she stayed for seven years, until rejoining the FBI. In contrast to Mulder's credulous "believer" character, Scully is the skeptic for the first seven seasons, choosing to base her beliefs on what science can prove. She later on becomes a "believer" after Mulder's abduction at the end of season seven.
Scully has appeared in all but five episodes of The X-Files, and in the 20th Century Fox films The X-Files, released in 1998, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released 10 years later. The episodes in which she does not appear are "3," "Zero Sum," "Unusual Suspects," "Travelers" and "The Gift" (excluding archive footage). The 11th season marked Anderson's final time portraying the character.
Background
Dr. Dana Katherine Scully was born on February 23, 1964, in Annapolis, Maryland, to William (Don S. Davis) and Margaret Scully (Sheila Larken), into a close-knit Catholic family with Irish ancestry. She has an older brother, Bill Jr., an older sister, Melissa, and a younger brother, Charles, who is never seen on the show except in flashbacks. In the canonical 2016 comic book series, published by IDW Publishing, the two-part issue "Ishmael" revealed Scully had a paternal half-brother, named Tam Minh Nguyen. Scully's father was a navy captain, who died of a heart attack in early January 1994. Dana Scully grew up in Annapolis, Maryland and later in San Diego, California. As a young girl, Scully's favorite book was Moby-Dick and she came to nickname her father "Ahab" from the book, and in return, he called her "Starbuck." Due to this, she named her dog Queequeg.
Scully attended the University of Maryland, and in 1986, received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. Her undergraduate thesis was titled Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation. Just out of medical school at Stanford University, she was recruited by the FBI; she accepted the agency's offer of employment because she felt she could distinguish herself there. After two years in the bureau, Section Chief Scott Blevins assigned her to work with agent Fox Mulder.
Storylines
Upon being partnered with Mulder, Scully maintained her medical skills by acting as a forensic pathologist, often performing or consulting on autopsies of victims on X-Files cases.
In season two, Scully was kidnapped by an ex-FBI agent turned mental patient named Duane Barry, and then taken from Barry by a military covert operation that was working with the alien conspirators, but was later returned. In season three, she found out that a super hi-tech microchip had been implanted in the back of her neck. After having it removed, she developed cancer in the fourth season and was hospitalized after the cancer became terminal. She was saved after Mulder broke into the Department of Defense to retrieve another chip to be implanted back into her neck. At the time, Scully was also undergoing experimental medical treatments and was having a dramatic renewal of her faith.
Scully was pronounced infertile during the fifth season. In the season five episode "Emily," Scully discovers that she unknowingly mothered a daughter during her abduction (in season two). Her daughter Emily was adopted by another family. Emily died shortly afterwards, and they were unable to further investigate after Emily's body went missing. In the seventh-season finale, "Requiem," Scully mysteriously became pregnant. The child, named William, after her own father, as well as Mulder's father, was born at the end of the eighth season. The show did not initially reveal the cause of Scully's pregnancy, but later episodes and movies would see Mulder and Scully call William "our son"; the pair had unsuccessfully tried for a child through in vitro fertilization. Around this time, Mulder was fired from the FBI by Deputy Director Alvin Kersh, and Scully left the field to teach forensics at Quantico. William was placed for adoption during the end of the ninth season after Scully felt she could no longer provide the safety that William needed. William was a "miracle child," of some importance to the alien conspirators. He demonstrated extraordinary powers, including telekinesis.
In The X-Files: I Want to Believe, she is shown working as a medical doctor at the Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital in Virginia. Early on in the film, Scully is contacted by the FBI, who are looking for Fox Mulder in the hope that he will assist them with the investigation of a missing FBI agent. In exchange for his help, the charges against him will be dropped. Unlike Mulder, Scully was apparently not considered a fugitive by the FBI. However, she did continue to maintain her romantic relationship with Mulder throughout the six years that he was on the run from the American government. In the movie, they are shown to be living together in a secluded house.
In the first episode of season 10, "My Struggle" (2016), Scully is still working as a doctor for Our Lady of Sorrows hospital, now performing surgeries on children with severe birth defects. She has extraterrestrial DNA, as the test that she performs on herself confirms. After the FBI reopens the X-Files, 14 years after their closure, she rejoins the bureau. In "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster," Scully jokes that she often enters dangerous situations alone due to the immortality she seemingly obtained during the events of the episode "Tithonus." At the end of "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster," Scully steals a dog from an animal control center, named Daggoo, which is named after yet another character from Moby-Dick. In "Home Again" Dana's mother, Margaret Scully, dies after suffering a heart attack. In the show's 10th-season finale, "My Struggle II," Scully is in a race against time to save humankind, creating a vaccine from her own extraterrestrial DNA.
Characterization
Throughout the series, Scully's Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, although a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism of the paranormal. Due to her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic Christian upbringing, but remained somewhat entrenched in her religious beliefs.
Scully almost always wears a gold cross necklace. Two conflicting stories exist of how Scully received the necklace. After Scully's abduction in season two, Scully's mother told Fox Mulder she gave Scully the necklace as a 15th birthday present. In season five, Scully recalls receiving the necklace as a Christmas present. Scully's sister, Melissa, also receives a similar necklace on that occasion. When she was abducted by Duane Barry, a self-proclaimed alien abductee, it was the only item left behind in Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it as a talisman of her until Scully miraculously reappeared in a Washington, DC, hospital. After she recovered from the trauma of her abduction, he returned the cross to her.
The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faithMulder believes that Scully was taken aboard an alien spaceship and was subjected to tests. Because of Scully's skepticism, though, she believes she was kidnapped by men, not aliens, and subjected to tests. She believes she could have been brought there by Barry, and she began to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on a case involving a murdering fetishist named Donnie Pfaster. This psychological re-victimization continued after Pfaster escaped from prison five years later and again attempted to kill her in her home, ending only after she fatally shot him. She struggled with what motivated her actions to kill Pfaster, and questioned whether it was God compelling her to kill him, or "something else."
Sometime after her recovery from cancer, Scully began to regularly attend mass again. At the request of Father McCue, Scully got involved in a case concerning a paraplegic girl who was found dead in a kneeling position with her palms outstretched and eye sockets charred. After Scully discovered the girl was a quadruplet and two more were murdered, Father McCue shared with her the story of the seraphim and the nephilim, which Scully interpreted as a possible explanation for the deformations and deaths of the girls. Scully continued to have visions of Emily, and when the last girl died, Scully believed she was returning the girl to God. Upon her return to Washington, DC, she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death. In confession, she regretted her decision of letting the girl go. This suggests Scully had doubts about her faith.
In the sixth-season episode "Milagro," Agent Scully's vulnerability is exposed. In this episode, the murderer takes the victim's heart out. The suspect, a writer named Phillip Padgett, has a particular interest in Scully and is fascinated by her beauty and personality. When she goes to a church to observe a painting, the writer is there and talks to her about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the conversation he says she visits the church because she likes art, but not as place of worship. Scully doesn't say otherwise and later she says to Agent Mulder the writer told her her life story. All this suggests that Scully isn't a devout Roman Catholic, although she attempted to approach again the Catholic community and the Catholic faith to which she was devout in her youth, after handling the strange case presented in "Revelations" and also after dealing with life-threatening cancer during the fourth season.
Relationships
While in medical school, Scully carried on an affair with her married instructor, Dr. Daniel Waterston, who may have been the "college boyfriend" mentioned in "Trust No 1." In the show, whether or not the relationship became sexual is never indicated. According to Anderson in the episode's audio commentary, Scully came very close to having an affair with the married Waterston, but left before she could break up his marriage. The end of her relationship with Waterston came about following her decision to go into the FBI. After her entrance to the FBI's Academy at Quantico, Scully began a year-long relationship with her Academy instructor, Jack Willis, with whom she shared a birthday.
Towards the end of the series, her previously platonic friendship with partner Fox Mulder developed into a romantic relationship. When Mulder was injured in a boat crash, he awakened in a hospital and told Scully that he loved her. In the season six episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas," a ghost that seems to know the inner workings of Scully's mind suggests that her source of intimacy for Mulder comes from her desire to always prove him wrong. By the end of the sixth season, Mulder and Scully were increasingly shown enjoying more light-hearted activities together, such as practicing baseball, using FBI funds for a "night out" during a movie premiere, and watching a movie at Mulder's apartment. In the season seven episode "all things," Scully is shown getting dressed in Mulder's bathroom, while Mulder sleeps, apparently naked, in the bedroom. In "Trust No 1" a man reveals to Scully that he works for a new Syndicate like-organization, and his job requires him and a few other colleagues to spy on her around the clock. Due to this he knows intimate details of Scully's personal life, right down to her "natural hair color" (Titian, as later confirmed by Chris Carter). It is suggested by this man that Scully ultimately initiated a sexual relationship with Mulder, as he remarked that he was very surprised when she invited Mulder "into her bed." The last scene of the series finale featured Mulder and Scully holding each other on a bed, facing an uncertain future together in love.
In the film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which takes place six years later, Mulder and Scully are still in a relationship. Scully was concerned that Mulder's continuing pursuit of the unknown was taking its toll on their relationship, and they could not be together if he could not "escape the darkness." However, the film ends with the couple sharing a passionate kiss, and in the "secret ending" after the majority of the credits, a happily-smiling Scully is seen in a small rowboat with Mulder, both clad in swimwear, in a tropical sea, having taken him up on his offer to run away together. In the 10th season, Scully and Mulder are no longer a couple, as she chose to leave him. At the end of the season, Scully gets a vision, which is revealed to have come from her son, William, at the beginning of season 11. Over the course of season 11, Scully and Mulder search for William. Skinner learns from the Smoking Man that the Smoking Man, who is Mulder's father, also artificially impregnated Scully, thus is William's father, as well. In the third episode of the 11th season, "Plus One," Scully and Mulder are intimate again. In the season 11 finale, "My Struggle IV," she reveals to Mulder that she is pregnant with his child.
Conceptual history
Chris Carter named Scully after his favorite sportscaster, Vin Scully of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John Doggett was likewise named after Vin Scully's longtime broadcasting partner, Jerry Doggett. Scully's character was also inspired by Jodie Foster's portrayal of Clarice Starling in the film The Silence of the Lambs.
The casting for Scully caused a conflict between Carter and the Fox network. Carter had chosen 24-year-old Gillian Anderson, whom Carter felt was perfect for the role. Of her audition, Carter said, "she came in and read the part with a seriousness and intensity that I knew the Scully character had to have and I knew [...] she was the right person for the part." However, Fox executives had wanted a more glamorous "bombshell" for the part (in a 2008 interview Anderson stated that Pamela Anderson had actually been the network's first choice), hoping that this would lead to the series involving a romantic element. This led Carter to insist that he did not want the roles of Mulder and Scully to become romantically involved. Carter decided Scully would be the skeptic to play against established stereotypes; typically on television the quality was attributed to a male. Because Duchovny was much taller than Anderson, during scenes where Mulder and Scully stand or walk next to each other Anderson stood on "the Gilly-Board," an apple box named after her.
Scully appears in every episode of the 11-season series with the exceptions of "3," "Zero Sum," "Unusual Suspects," and "Travelers." She has appeared outside The X-Files on numerous occasions, the most notable being in the Millennium (also created by Chris Carter) episode "Lamentation," in which the main character, Frank Black, visits the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and Mulder and Scully are briefly seen descending a stairway. In fact, they are Duchovny and Anderson's stand-ins.
An animated version of Scully, which featured the voice acting of Anderson, appeared on season eight of The Simpsons, in the episode "The Springfield Files," as well as Canadian animated series Eek! The Cat, on the episode "Eek Space 9." The animated television series ReBoot featured characters Fax Modem and Data Nully, obvious spoofs of Mulder and Scully, in the episode "Trust No One." Anderson provided her voice work for the episode, but co-star Duchovny declined.
Reception
Anderson won many awards for her portrayal of Special Agent Scully during the ten seasons of The X-Files, including an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1997, a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series in 1997, two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1996 and 1997 and a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television in 1997. In total, Anderson received for the role, four Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe nominations, nine SAG nominations and eight Saturn nominations.
Film critic Scott Mendelson, writing in The Huffington Post, cited Scully as an example of strong female characters on television, calling her "one of the most iconic characters in the science-fiction genre." Radio Times Laura Pledger also named her as a strong TV woman, placing her at No. 1. Rebecca Traister of Salon.com opined that Scully had a better character arc than Mulder. She wrote, "The very fact that her character was such a hard sell made her repeated brushes with the supernatural all the more powerful. Mulder's desire to believe was so expansive, his credulity so flexible, that it's not as though he was ever going to have either shaken from him. But Scully's surety was solid, stable, rigid; every time she saw something she thought she'd never see, we saw it crack, sparks fly from it. She was forced to question herself, grow, change." She praised her for being more "rational, resilient, [and] mature" than her partner and for their mature relationship. In a review of "Irresistible," Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote that it was a cliché to put Scully in danger, as "Scully is [the show's] heart, and any time she's in danger, it feels like the show itself is about to be stabbed through the heart."
The character of Scully has become something of a sci-fi heroine due to her intelligence and resilience, frequently appearing on lists of important female science fiction characters, such as Total Sci-Fi Onlines list of The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi, where she came in fourth. TV Squad named her the thirteenth greatest woman on television, while the site also listed her among the most memorable female science fiction television characters. She is also often cited as being an unlikely sex symbol, frequently being included in lists of sexy TV characters. She was listed in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters. The pairing Mulder/Scully was ranked number 15 on Sleuth Channel's poll of America's Top Sleuths.
Angelica Jade Bastién of Vulture emphasized the importance of Scully's character in popular culture by listing all the strong female characters she inspired or may have influenced in some aspects, including: Temperance "Bones" Brennan of Bones, Peggy Carter of Agent Carter, Veronica Mars of Veronica Mars, Olivia Moore of iZombie, Dr. Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles, Olivia Benson of Law and Order: SVU, Joan Watson of Elementary, Sydney Bristow of Alias, Abbie Mills of Sleepy Hollow, Zoë Washburne of Firefly, Stella Gibson (another character portrayed by Anderson) of The Fall and Olivia Dunham of Fringe. Jade Bastién wrote: "Do all the characters Scully has influenced live up to her? Definitely not. Gillian Anderson's performance and her chemistry with David Duchovny aren't exactly elements that can be replicated. But these characters prove that Scully isn't only the heart of The X-Files, but also the character who had the most profound influence on popular culture."
Indiewire's Liz Shannon Miller ranked Scully as the No. 1 most important character of The X-Files, writing: "Scully's legacy is so important in so many ways, from giving us the gift of Gillian Anderson's acting, to inspiring an entire generation of young women to pursue careers in STEM. Intelligent, loyal, flawed and brave, Scully was the show's beating heart and saving grace even in its lowest years. As Chris Carter himself has said: 'It's Scully's show'."
"The Scully Effect"
The character is believed by some to have initiated a phenomenon referred to as "The Scully Effect," as the character's role as a medical doctor and FBI Special Agent inspired many young women to pursue careers in science, medicine, engineering, and law enforcement, and as a result brought a perceptible increase in the number of women in those fields. At the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con International, Anderson noted that she has long been aware of "The Scully Effect" and stated: "We got a lot of letters all the time, and I was told quite frequently by girls who were going into the medical world or the science world or the FBI world or other worlds that I reigned, that they were pursuing those pursuits because of the character of Scully. And I said, 'Yay!'" Anne Simon, a biology professor and a science adviser for the series recalls: "I asked my Intro Bio class back then how many of them were influenced by the character of Scully on The X-Files to go into science and half of the hands in the room went up. That's huge! That was saying that the show was really having an effect." "The Scully Effect" remains a subject of academic inquiry.
References
Bibliography
External links
Dana Scully on IMDb
The Scully Effect on Fanlore
The X-Files characters
American female characters in television
Catholicism in fiction
Fictional characters with cancer
Fictional characters who awoke from a coma
Fictional characters from Maryland
Fictional Christians
Television characters introduced in 1993
Fictional alien hunters
Fictional special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Fictional American police detectives
Fictional female doctors
Fictional feminists and women's rights activists
Fictional forensic scientists
Fictional paranormal investigators
Fictional American physicians
Fictional surgeons
Fictional female scientists
Fictional Irish American people
Fictional characters with post-traumatic stress disorder
Fictional characters from the 20th century
Fictional characters from the 21st century
de:Akte X – Die unheimlichen Fälle des FBI#Hauptdarsteller
sv:Lista över figurer i Arkiv X#Dana Scully
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%20Francis%20Bernard%2C%201st%20Baronet
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Sir Francis Bernard, 1st Baronet
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Sir Francis Bernard, 1st Baronet (bapt. 12 July 1712 – 16 June 1779) was a British colonial administrator who served as governor of the provinces of New Jersey and Massachusetts Bay. His uncompromising policies and harsh tactics in Massachusetts angered the colonists and were instrumental in the building of broad-based opposition within the province to the rule of Parliament in the events leading to the American Revolution.
Appointed governor of New Jersey in 1758, he oversaw the province's participation in the later years of the French and Indian War, and had a generally positive relationship with its legislature. In 1760 he was given the governorship of Massachusetts, where he had a stormy relationship with the assembly. Early actions turned the colony's populists against him, and his responses to protests against Parliament's attempts to tax the colonies deepened divisions. After protests against the Townshend Acts in 1768, Bernard sought British Army troops be stationed in Boston to oversee the colonists. He was recalled after the publication of letters in which he was critical of the colony.
After returning to England, he continued to advise the British government on colonial matters, calling for hardline responses to ongoing difficulties in Massachusetts that culminated in the 1773 Boston Tea Party. He suffered a stroke in 1771 and died in 1779, leaving a large family.
Early life
Bernard was born in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, (then in Berkshire, but part of Oxfordshire since 1974), England to the Rev. Francis and Margery (Winslowe) Bernard and was christened on 12 July 1712. His father died three years later. His mother remarried, but died of smallpox in 1718. He was thereafter probably raised by an aunt for several years since his stepfather was forced by a failed courtship to flee to Holland. His stepfather, Anthony Alsop, returned to Berkshire a few years later, and continued to play a role in the boy's upbringing. Bernard's formal education began at Westminster in 1725, and he then spent seven years at Oxford, where Christ Church granted him a Master of Arts in 1736. He read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1737, after only four years (instead of the typical seven) of study. He settled in Lincoln, where he practised law and took on a variety of municipal posts. Among his neighbours in Lincoln were the Pownalls, who had one son (John) serving in the Colonial Office, and another, Thomas, who went to the North American colonies in 1753 and was appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1757.
Bernard married Amelia Offley, daughter of the sheriff of Derbyshire, in December 1741, and the couple raised a large family: by 1757 the couple had eight living children. Because his prospects for further income to support this large family were unlikely in Lincoln, he apparently decided to seek a posting in the colonies. John Adams later described Bernard as "avaricious to a most infamous degree; needy at the same time, having a numerous family to provide for".
Governor of New Jersey
Bernard's wife was cousin to Lord Barrington, who became a Privy councillor in 1755. Probably through his connections to Barrington and the Pownalls, he secured an appointment as governor of the Province of New Jersey on 27 January 1758, a post that became available upon the death of Jonathan Belcher. Leaving some of his children with relatives, the couple sailed for North America with four of their children, arriving at Perth Amboy on 14 June 1758.
The colonies were in the middle of the French and Indian War at the time of Bernard's arrival. He established a good working relationship with New Jersey's assembly, and was able to convince the province to raise troops and funds for the ongoing war effort. He signed the Treaty of Easton, an agreement between New Jersey and Pennsylvania on one side, and a group of Indian tribes (the Minisink and Lenape being of principal concern to New Jersey) fixing boundaries between colonial and Indian lands. This effort was important, for it reduced raiding on the frontiers and made possible the reallocation of provincial military strength to the war with New France. It and other agreements negotiated by Bernard extinguished all of the remaining Indian titles to New Jersey. Negotiations with the Lenape also resulted in the establishment of the first formal Indian reservation, Brotherton, near present-day Indian Mills. This reservation was only sparsely populated, and was abandoned in 1801 when its remaining inhabitants joined the Stockbridge Indians in upstate New York.
Bernard also signed and secured the Charter of Bernardston, authorized and signed by King George II formally recognizing Bernardston, New Jersey (Bernards Township, New Jersey) on 24 May 1760. Records indicate that he officially resigned on 4 July 1760 to prepare for his voyage to Boston, MA, to take on his new role there as Governor of Massachusetts Bay, the area in New England that covered Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut were excluded.
Governor of Massachusetts
Through the influence of his connections in the Colonial Office, Bernard was appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in late 1759. Delays in communications and slow travel were such that Bernard did not arrive in Boston until 2 August 1760. Although initially warmly welcomed, his tenure in Massachusetts was difficult. Bernard sought to vigorously enforce the Navigation Acts, in part because crown officials (including the governor and the customs officials) received shares of the proceeds from the seizure of ships that were caught violating the acts. The legal actions involving these seizures were heard in a jury-less admiralty court before a Crown-appointed judge, and were extremely unpopular. Bernard also made an early opponent of James Otis Jr. by appointing Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson to be chief justice of the province's highest court, a post that had been promised by several previous governors to Otis' father. Upset over the snub the younger Otis resigned his post as advocate general (i.e. the Crown's representative, equivalent to a government prosecutor) before the admiralty court, and devoted himself instead to arguing (sometimes pro bono) on behalf of the merchants in defence of their ships. These early actions during Bernard's tenure drew a clear dividing line between the "popular party" (exemplified by the Otises) opposed to British colonial policy and the "court party" (exemplified by Hutchinson) who supported it.
Bernard's difficulties were compounded when, after the death in late 1760 of King George II, it became necessary to reissue writs of assistance to customs tax collectors. These writs, which were essentially open-ended search warrants, were judicially controversial and so unpopular that their issuance was later explicitly disallowed by the United States Constitution. Hutchinson, who approved the writs in one of his first acts as chief justice, saw his popularity fall, and Otis, who argued the writs violated the Rights of Englishmen, gained in popularity. He was elected to the provincial legislature in May 1761, where he was well placed to continue his attacks on Bernard's policies. In the 1761 session of the assembly Otis engineered the gift of Mount Desert Island to Bernard, a partially successful stratagem to divert Bernard's attention from ongoing customs seizures.
Bernard's unpopularity continued through other tax measures, including the Sugar Act (1763) and the Stamp Act (1765). While the passage of both acts occasioned protest, the response to the Stamp Act included rioting in the streets, and united many factions in the province against the governor. In 1767 the passage by Parliament of the Townshend Acts again raised a storm of protest in the colonies. In Massachusetts the provincial assembly issued a circular letter, calling on the other colonies to join it in a boycott of the goods subject to the Townshend taxes. Bernard was ordered in April 1768 by Lord Hillsborough, who had recently been appointed to the newly created office of Colonial Secretary, to dissolve the assembly if it failed to retract the letter. The assembly refused, and Bernard prorogued it in July.
Bernard commissioned Boston printer Richard Draper as the official printer for the Massachusetts provincial government and employed him to use his newspaper, The Boston News-Letter, to give voice to the Loyalist factions in Boston. Maier maintains that Bernard's letters to London greatly influenced officials there, but they "distorted" reality. "His misguided conviction that the 'faction' had espoused violence as its primary method of opposition, for example, kept him from recognizing the radicals' peace-keeping efforts....Equally dangerous, Bernard's elaborate accounts were sometimes built on insubstantial evidence." Warden argues that Bernard was careful not to explicitly ask London for troops, but his exaggerated accounts strongly suggested they were needed. In the fall of 1767 he warned about a possible insurrection in Boston any day, and his exaggerated report of one disturbance in 1768, "certainly had given Lord Hillsboro the impression that troops were the only way to enforce obedience in the town". Warden notes that other key British officials in Boston wrote London with the "same strain of hysteria". Four thousand British Army troops arrived in Boston in October 1768, further heightening tensions. Bernard was vilified in the local press, and accused of writing letters to the ministry that mischaracterized the situation. Although he was challenged to release those letters he refused. Opposition agents in London were eventually able to acquire some of his letters, which reached members of the Sons of Liberty in April 1769. They were promptly published by the radical Boston Gazette, along with deliberations of the governor's council. One letter in particular, in which Bernard called for changes to the Massachusetts charter to increase the governor's power by increasing the council's dependence on him, was the subject of particularly harsh treatment, and prompted the assembly to formally request that "he might be forever removed from the Government of the Province". He was recalled to England, and Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson became acting governor. When Bernard left Boston on 1 August, the town held an impromptu celebration, decorated the Liberty Tree, and rang church bells.
His accomplishments in Massachusetts included the design of Harvard Hall at Harvard University and the construction of a summer estate on Pond Street in Jamaica Plain.
Return to England
Upon his return to England, he asked for and received a hearing concerning the colonial petition against his rule. The Privy Council in February 1770 considered the petition, and after deliberation dismissed all of the charges as "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous". Despite this vindication, Bernard resigned as governor in 1771. He was confirmed in the ownership of Mount Desert Island, a recognition he had been seeking since it was awarded to him in 1761. Although he had been promised a baronetcy and a pension of £1,000 for his service, he learned after his return that the pension had been reduced to £500 (the baronetcy, of Nettleham, was awarded at crown expense). His appeals on the matter were at first rejected, but when Lord North became Prime Minister in 1770, the pension was raised, but shortly after replaced by an appointment as commissioner on the Board of Revenue for Ireland, which paid the same amount.
Bernard became an advisor to the North administration on matters concerning the colonies. He generally took a harder line than his predecessor Thomas Pownall, who advocated for colonial interests in Parliament. Proposals he made in 1771 included ideas central to the 1774 Massachusetts Government Act, which severely constrained colonial political power, including a council appointed by the governor rather than one elected by the assembly. Bernard may also have played a role in the difficulties Benjamin Franklin had in being recognized as a colonial agent; after Franklin's credentials were refused by the colonial secretary, he encountered Bernard in an antechamber. Biographer Colin Nicolson observes that Bernard's presence as an advisor to the ministry "cast a shadow on virtually every American measure regarding Massachusetts that [Lord Frederick] North pursued between 1770 and 1774", because of Bernard's role in breaking the trust between the colonists and the London government and the subsequent radicalization of Massachusetts politics.
In 1774, when the North government was considering how to respond to the Boston Tea Party, Bernard published Select Letters on Trade and Government, containing proposals on how to deal with the ongoing difficulties in the colonies. He proposed to reconcile the constitutional grievances of the British and radical Americans by the possible introduction of American representatives into the Parliament of Great Britain. In the Select Letters, which included the essay Principles of Law and Polity which he drafted in 1764, he laid out a point-by-point exposition of his viewpoints concerning imperial governance. Some of his ideas were enacted, notably those enshrined in the Massachusetts Government Act; the outrage in London even sparked the sympathetic colonial advocate Thomas Pownall to propose the closure of Boston's port, which was enacted in the Boston Port Act.
Decline and death
In late 1771 Bernard was bequeathed the manor at Nether Winchendon upon the death of a cousin to whom he had been close since childhood. Combined with other uncertainties about where various family members would reside after he received the Irish appointment, the stress of the situation led Bernard to suffer a stroke. His mobility was impaired, but he took the waters at Bath, which appear to have helped his recovery. He applied for permission to resign from the Irish post, and settled first at the Nether Winchendon manor; in 1774 his resignation was accepted and his pension restored. He was well enough in 1772 to travel to Oxford, where he received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law from his alma mater, Christ Church. Because of his health he moved later in 1772 to a smaller house in nearby Aylesbury. He died on 16 June 1779, after an epileptic seizure, at Nether Winchendon; his grave is in St Mary's churchyard, Aylesbury.
Legacy
Bernard never believed the difficulties he had in Massachusetts were personal: instead of accepting some responsibility, he blamed his problems on the policies emanating from London that he was instructed to implement. John Adams wrote that Bernard's "antagonistic reports" of matters in Massachusetts were instrumental in turning British government policymakers against colonial interests. Bernard's name headed a list drawn up in Massachusetts after the American Revolutionary War broke out of "notorious conspirators against the government", and most of his property there was confiscated. Mount Desert Island was not entirely taken; Bernard's son John, who resided in Maine during the war and sided with the victorious colonials, was able to receive Massachusetts title to half of the island.
Upon the election of James Bowdoin to be Governor of Massachusetts in 1786, Reverend William Gordon in his sermon warned Bowdoin that he ignored the state's legislature at his peril, as Bernard had.
The Charter of Bernardston, authorized and signed by King George II formally recognized Bernardston in the Province of New Jersey on 24 May 1760. At the time, Bernardston included the current areas of Basking Ridge, Lyons, Liberty Corner, Bernardsville and Far Hills. The area would later be renamed Bernards Township. Vealtown, New Jersey, a town first settled around 1715 and located in Bernards Township, was renamed Bernardsville in Bernard's honour in 1840. Bernardston, Massachusetts was incorporated during his Massachusetts administration and is named for him. Bernard also named Berkshire County, Massachusetts (after his county of birth) and Pittsfield, Massachusetts (after British Prime Minister William Pitt).
Notes
References
(Volume 2)
Primary sources
Nicolson, Colin, ed. The Papers of Francis Bernard, Governor of Colonial Massachusetts, 1760–69, 6 vols. Colonial Society of Massachusetts and Univ. of Virginia Press, Boston: 2007-. Vols. 1 to 5 published to date.
vol. 5: 1768–1769. (2015). xxvi, 460 pp.
External links
1712 births
1779 deaths
Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
Baronets in the Baronetage of Great Britain
Colonial governors of New Jersey
Colonial governors of Massachusetts
People from South Oxfordshire District
English barristers
Members of the Middle Temple
People of colonial Massachusetts
Neo-Latin poets
People from Jamaica Plain
People from Brightwell-cum-Sotwell
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force
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G-force
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The g-force or gravitational force equivalent is mass-specific force (force per unit mass), expressed in units of standard gravity (g, not to be confused with "g", the symbol for grams).
It is used for sustained accelerations, that cause a perception of weight. For example, an object at rest on Earth's surface is subject to 1 g, equaling the conventional value of gravitational acceleration on Earth, about .
More transient acceleration, accompanied with significant jerk, is called shock.
When the g-force is produced by the surface of one object being pushed by the surface of another object, the reaction force to this push produces an equal and opposite force for every unit of each object's mass. The types of forces involved are transmitted through objects by interior mechanical stresses. Gravitational acceleration is one cause of an object's acceleration in relation to free fall.
The g-force experienced by an object is due to the vector sum of all gravitational and non-gravitational forces acting on an object's freedom to move. In practice, as noted, these are surface-contact forces between objects. Such forces cause stresses and strains on objects, since they must be transmitted from an object surface. Because of these strains, large g-forces may be destructive.
For example, a force of 1 g on an object sitting on the Earth's surface is caused by the mechanical force exerted in the upward direction by the ground, keeping the object from going into free fall. The upward contact force from the ground ensures that an object at rest on the Earth's surface is accelerating relative to the free-fall condition. (Free fall is the path that the object would follow when falling freely toward the Earth's center). Stress inside the object is ensured from the fact that the ground contact forces are transmitted only from the point of contact with the ground.
Objects allowed to free-fall in an inertial trajectory under the influence of gravitation only feel no g-force, a condition known as weightlessness. It is also termed "zero-g", although the more correct excision is "zero g-force". This is demonstrated by the zero g-force conditions inside an elevator falling freely toward the Earth's center (in vacuum), or (to good approximation) conditions inside a spacecraft in Earth orbit. These are examples of coordinate acceleration (a change in velocity) without a sensation of weight.
In the absence of gravitational fields, or in directions at right angles to them, proper and coordinate accelerations are the same, and any coordinate acceleration must be produced by a corresponding g-force acceleration. An example here is a rocket in free space, in which simple changes in velocity are produced by the engines and produce g-forces on the rocket and passengers.
Unit and measurement
The unit of measure of acceleration in the International System of Units (SI) is m/s2. However, to distinguish acceleration relative to free fall from simple acceleration (rate of change of velocity), the unit g is often used. One g is the force per unit mass due to gravity at the Earth's surface and is the standard gravity (symbol: gn), defined as metres per second squared, or equivalently newtons of force per kilogram of mass. The unit definition does not vary with location—the g-force when standing on the Moon is almost exactly that on Earth.
The unit g is not one of the SI units, which uses "g" for gram. Also, "g" should not be confused with "G", which is the standard symbol for the gravitational constant. This notation is commonly used in aviation, especially in aerobatic or combat military aviation, to describe the increased forces that must be overcome by pilots in order to remain conscious and not g-LOC (g-induced loss of consciousness).
Measurement of g-force is typically achieved using an accelerometer (see discussion below in section #Measurement using an accelerometer). In certain cases, g-forces may be measured using suitably calibrated scales.
Acceleration and forces
The term g-"force" is technically incorrect as it is a measure of acceleration, not force. While acceleration is a vector quantity, g-force accelerations ("g-forces" for short) are often expressed as a scalar, based on the vector magnitude, with positive g-forces pointing downward (indicating upward acceleration), and negative g-forces pointing upward. Thus, a g-force is a vector of acceleration. It is an acceleration that must be produced by a mechanical force, and cannot be produced by simple gravitation. Objects acted upon only by gravitation experience (or "feel") no g-force, and are weightless.
g-forces, when multiplied by a mass upon which they act, are associated with a certain type of mechanical force in the correct sense of the term "force", and this force produces compressive stress and tensile stress. Such forces result in the operational sensation of weight, but the equation carries a sign change due to the definition of positive weight in the direction downward, so the direction of weight-force is opposite to the direction of g-force acceleration:
Weight = mass × −g-force
The reason for the minus sign is that the actual force (i.e., measured weight) on an object produced by a g-force is in the opposite direction to the sign of the g-force, since in physics, weight is not the force that produces the acceleration, but rather the equal-and-opposite reaction force to it. If the direction upward is taken as positive (the normal cartesian convention) then positive g-force (an acceleration vector that points upward) produces a force/weight on any mass, that acts downward (an example is positive-g acceleration of a rocket launch, producing downward weight). In the same way, a negative-g force is an acceleration vector downward (the negative direction on the y axis), and this acceleration downward produces a weight-force in a direction upward (thus pulling a pilot upward out of the seat, and forcing blood toward the head of a normally oriented pilot).
If a g-force (acceleration) is vertically upward and is applied by the ground (which is accelerating through space-time) or applied by the floor of an elevator to a standing person, most of the body experiences compressive stress which at any height, if multiplied by the area, is the related mechanical force, which is the product of the g-force and the supported mass (the mass above the level of support, including arms hanging down from above that level). At the same time, the arms themselves experience a tensile stress, which at any height, if multiplied by the area, is again the related mechanical force, which is the product of the g-force and the mass hanging below the point of mechanical support. The mechanical resistive force spreads from points of contact with the floor or supporting structure, and gradually decreases toward zero at the unsupported ends (the top in the case of support from below, such as a seat or the floor, the bottom for a hanging part of the body or object). With compressive force counted as negative tensile force, the rate of change of the tensile force in the direction of the g-force, per unit mass (the change between parts of the object such that the slice of the object between them has unit mass), is equal to the g-force plus the non-gravitational external forces on the slice, if any (counted positive in the direction opposite to the g-force).
For a given g-force the stresses are the same, regardless of whether this g-force is caused by mechanical resistance to gravity, or by a coordinate-acceleration (change in velocity) caused by a mechanical force, or by a combination of these. Hence, for people all mechanical forces feels exactly the same whether they cause coordinate acceleration or not. For objects likewise, the question of whether they can withstand the mechanical g-force without damage is the same for any type of g-force. For example, upward acceleration (e.g., increase of speed when going up or decrease of speed when going down) on Earth feels the same as being stationary on a celestial body with a higher surface gravity. Gravitation acting alone does not produce any g-force; g-force is only produced from mechanical pushes and pulls. For a free body (one that is free to move in space) such g-forces only arise as the "inertial" path that is the natural effect of gravitation, or the natural effect of the inertia of mass, is modified. Such modification may only arise from influences other than gravitation.
Examples of important situations involving g-forces include:
The g-force acting on a stationary object resting on the Earth's surface is 1 g (upwards) and results from the resisting reaction of the Earth's surface bearing upwards equal to an acceleration of 1 g, and is equal and opposite to gravity. The number 1 is approximate, depending on location.
The g-force acting on an object in any weightless environment such as free-fall in a vacuum is 0 g.
The g-force acting on an object under acceleration can be much greater than 1 g, for example, the dragster pictured at top right can exert a horizontal g-force of 5.3 when accelerating.
The g-force acting on an object under acceleration may be downwards, for example when cresting a sharp hill on a roller coaster.
If there are no other external forces than gravity, the g-force in a rocket is the thrust per unit mass. Its magnitude is equal to the thrust-to-weight ratio times g, and to the consumption of delta-v per unit time.
In the case of a shock, e.g., a collision, the g-force can be very large during a short time.
A classic example of negative g-force is in a fully inverted roller coaster which is accelerating (changing velocity) toward the ground. In this case, the roller coaster riders are accelerated toward the ground faster than gravity would accelerate them, and are thus pinned upside down in their seats. In this case, the mechanical force exerted by the seat causes the g-force by altering the path of the passenger downward in a way that differs from gravitational acceleration. The difference in downward motion, now faster than gravity would provide, is caused by the push of the seat, and it results in a g-force toward the ground.
All "coordinate accelerations" (or lack of them), are described by Newton's laws of motion as follows:
The Second Law of Motion, the law of acceleration, states that meaning that a force F acting on a body is equal to the mass m of the body times its acceleration a.
The Third Law of Motion, the law of reciprocal actions, states that all forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Newton's third law of motion means that not only does gravity behave as a force acting downwards on, say, a rock held in your hand but also that the rock exerts a force on the Earth, equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
In an airplane, the pilot's seat can be thought of as the hand holding the rock, the pilot as the rock. When flying straight and level at 1 g, the pilot is acted upon by the force of gravity. His weight (a downward force) is . In accordance with Newton's third law, the plane and the seat underneath the pilot provides an equal and opposite force pushing upwards with a force of 725 N. This mechanical force provides the 1.0 g-force upward proper acceleration on the pilot, even though this velocity in the upward direction does not change (this is similar to the situation of a person standing on the ground, where the ground provides this force and this g-force).
If the pilot were suddenly to pull back on the stick and make his plane accelerate upwards at 9.8 m/s2, the total g‑force on his body is 2 g, half of which comes from the seat pushing the pilot to resist gravity, and half from the seat pushing the pilot to cause his upward acceleration—a change in velocity which also is a proper acceleration because it also differs from a free fall trajectory. Considered in the frame of reference of the plane his body is now generating a force of downwards into his seat and the seat is simultaneously pushing upwards with an equal force of 1450 N.
Unopposed acceleration due to mechanical forces, and consequentially g-force, is experienced whenever anyone rides in a vehicle because it always causes a proper acceleration, and (in the absence of gravity) also always a coordinate acceleration (where velocity changes). Whenever the vehicle changes either direction or speed, the occupants feel lateral (side to side) or longitudinal (forward and backwards) forces produced by the mechanical push of their seats.
The expression means that for every second that elapses, velocity changes metres per second (≡). This rate of change in velocity can also be denoted as (metres per second) per second, or For example: An acceleration of 1 g equates to a rate of change in velocity of approximately for each second that elapses. Therefore, if an automobile is capable of braking at 1 g and is traveling at 35 km/h, it can brake to a standstill in one second and the driver will experience a deceleration of 1 g. The automobile traveling at three times this speed, , can brake to a standstill in three seconds.
In the case of an increase in speed from 0 to v with constant acceleration within a distance of s this acceleration is v2/(2s).
Preparing an object for g-tolerance (not getting damaged when subjected to a high g-force) is called g-hardening. This may apply to, e.g., instruments in a projectile shot by a gun.
Human tolerance
Human tolerances depend on the magnitude of the gravitational force, the length of time it is applied, the direction it acts, the location of application, and the posture of the body.
The human body is flexible and deformable, particularly the softer tissues. A hard slap on the face may briefly impose hundreds of g locally but not produce any real damage; a constant for a minute, however, may be deadly. When vibration is experienced, relatively low peak g levels can be severely damaging if they are at the resonant frequency of organs or connective tissues.
To some degree, g-tolerance can be trainable, and there is also considerable variation in innate ability between individuals. In addition, some illnesses, particularly cardiovascular problems, reduce g-tolerance.
Vertical
Aircraft pilots (in particular) sustain g-forces along the axis aligned with the spine. This causes significant variation in blood pressure along the length of the subject's body, which limits the maximum g-forces that can be tolerated.
Positive, or "upward" g, drives blood downward to the feet of a seated or standing person (more naturally, the feet and body may be seen as being driven by the upward force of the floor and seat, upward around the blood). Resistance to positive g varies. A typical person can handle about (meaning some people might pass out when riding a higher-g roller coaster, which in some cases exceeds this point) before losing consciousness, but through the combination of special g-suits and efforts to strain muscles—both of which act to force blood back into the brain—modern pilots can typically handle a sustained (see High-G training).
In aircraft particularly, vertical g-forces are often positive (force blood towards the feet and away from the head); this causes problems with the eyes and brain in particular. As positive vertical g-force is progressively increased (such as in a centrifuge) the following symptoms may be experienced:
Grey-out, where the vision loses hue, easily reversible on levelling out
Tunnel vision, where peripheral vision is progressively lost
Blackout, a loss of vision while consciousness is maintained, caused by a lack of blood flow to the head
G-LOC, a g-force induced loss of consciousness
Death, if g-forces are not quickly reduced
Resistance to "negative" or "downward" g, which drives blood to the head, is much lower. This limit is typically in the range. This condition is sometimes referred to as red out where vision is literally reddened due to the blood-laden lower eyelid being pulled into the field of vision. Negative g is generally unpleasant and can cause damage. Blood vessels in the eyes or brain may swell or burst under the increased blood pressure, resulting in degraded sight or even blindness.
Horizontal
The human body is better at surviving g-forces that are perpendicular to the spine. In general when the acceleration is forwards (subject essentially lying on their back, colloquially known as "eyeballs in"), a much higher tolerance is shown than when the acceleration is backwards (lying on their front, "eyeballs out") since blood vessels in the retina appear more sensitive in the latter direction.
Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate a range of accelerations depending on the time of exposure. This ranged from as much as for less than 10 seconds, to for 1 minute, and for 10 minutes for both eyeballs in and out. These forces were endured with cognitive facilities intact, as subjects were able to perform simple physical and communication tasks. The tests were determined to not cause long- or short-term harm although tolerance was quite subjective, with only the most motivated non-pilots capable of completing tests. The record for peak experimental horizontal g-force tolerance is held by acceleration pioneer John Stapp, in a series of rocket sled deceleration experiments culminating in a late 1954 test in which he was clocked in a little over a second from a land speed of Mach 0.9. He survived a peak "eyeballs-out" acceleration of 46.2 times the acceleration of gravity, and more than for 1.1 seconds, proving that the human body is capable of this. Stapp lived another 45 years to age 89 without any ill effects.
The highest recorded g-force experienced by a human who survived was during the 2003 IndyCar Series finale at Texas Motor Speedway on October 12, 2003 in the 2003 Chevy 500 when the car driven by Kenny Bräck made wheel-to-wheel contact with Tomas Scheckter's car. This immediately resulted in Bräck's car impacting the catch fence that would record a peak of .
Short duration shock, impact, and jerk
Impact and mechanical shock are usually used to describe a high-kinetic-energy, short-term excitation. A shock pulse is often measured by its peak acceleration in ·s and the pulse duration. Vibration is a periodic oscillation which can also be measured in ·s as well as frequency. The dynamics of these phenomena are what distinguish them from the g-forces caused by a relatively longer-term accelerations.
After a free fall from a height followed by deceleration over a distance during an impact, the shock on an object is · . For example, a stiff and compact object dropped from 1 m that impacts over a distance of 1 mm is subjected to a 1000 deceleration.
Jerk is the rate of change of acceleration. In SI units, jerk is expressed as m/s3; it can also be expressed in standard gravity per second (/s; 1 /s ≈ 9.81 m/s3).
Other biological responses
Recent research carried out on extremophiles in Japan involved a variety of bacteria (including E. coli as a non-extremophile control) being subject to conditions of extreme gravity. The bacteria were cultivated while being rotated in an ultracentrifuge at high speeds corresponding to 403,627 g. Paracoccus denitrificans was one of the bacteria that displayed not only survival but also robust cellular growth under these conditions of hyperacceleration, which are usually only to be found in cosmic environments, such as on very massive stars or in the shock waves of supernovas. Analysis showed that the small size of prokaryotic cells is essential for successful growth under hypergravity. Notably, two multicellular species, the nematodes Panagrolaimus superbus and Caenorhabditis elegans were shown to be able to tolerate 400,000 × g for 1 hour.
The research has implications on the feasibility of panspermia.
Typical examples
Measurement using an accelerometer
An accelerometer, in its simplest form, is a damped mass on the end of a spring, with some way of measuring how far the mass has moved on the spring in a particular direction, called an 'axis'.
Accelerometers are often calibrated to measure g-force along one or more axes. If a stationary, single-axis accelerometer is oriented so that its measuring axis is horizontal, its output will be 0 g, and it will continue to be 0 g if mounted in an automobile traveling at a constant velocity on a level road. When the driver presses on the brake or gas pedal, the accelerometer will register positive or negative acceleration.
If the accelerometer is rotated by 90° so that it is vertical, it will read +1 g upwards even though stationary. In that situation, the accelerometer is subject to two forces: the gravitational force and the ground reaction force of the surface it is resting on. Only the latter force can be measured by the accelerometer, due to mechanical interaction between the accelerometer and the ground. The reading is the acceleration the instrument would have if it were exclusively subject to that force.
A three-axis accelerometer will output zero‑g on all three axes if it is dropped or otherwise put into a ballistic trajectory (also known as an inertial trajectory), so that it experiences "free fall", as do astronauts in orbit (astronauts experience small tidal accelerations called microgravity, which are neglected for the sake of discussion here). Some amusement park rides can provide several seconds at near-zero g. Riding NASA's "Vomit Comet" provides near-zero g for about 25 seconds at a time.
See also
Artificial gravity
Earth's gravity
Euthanasia Coaster
Gravitational acceleration
Gravitational interaction
Hypergravity
Load factor (aeronautics)
Peak ground acceleration – g-force of earthquakes
Relation between g-force and apparent weight
Shock and vibration data logger
Shock detector
Notes and references
Further reading
External links
"How Many Gs Can a Flyer Take?", October 1944, Popular Science—one of the first detailed public articles explaining this subject
Enduring a human centrifuge at the NASA Ames Research Center at Wired
Acceleration
Gravimetry
Units of acceleration
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial%20University%20of%20Newfoundland
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Memorial University of Newfoundland
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Memorial University of Newfoundland, also known as Memorial University or MUN (), is a public research university in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, based in St. John's, with satellite campuses in Corner Brook, elsewhere in Newfoundland and in Labrador, Saint Pierre, and Harlow, England.
Memorial University offers certificate, diploma, undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate programs, as well as online courses and degrees.
Founded in September 1925 as a living memorial to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who died in the First World War, Memorial is the largest university in Atlantic Canada, and Newfoundland and Labrador's only university. As of 2018, there were a reported 1,330 faculty and 2,474 staff, supporting 18,000 students from nearly 100 countries.
History
Founding
At its founding, Newfoundland was a dominion of the United Kingdom.
Memorial University began as Memorial University College (MUC), which opened in September 1925 at a campus on Parade Street in St. John's. It was founded to honour the war dead from World War I, to provide a way of educating school teachers for the local religious schools, and to offer students higher education locally. Before that, there was no post-secondary education in the dominion with high ranking; students often went to Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States. Students were first admitted into a non-degree program in 1925. The original location on Parade Street in St. Johns was established with the help of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The college was established as a memorial to the Newfoundlanders who had lost their lives on active service during the First World War. It was later rededicated to also encompass the province's war dead of the Second World War.
The first president was J. L. Paton. It offered the first two years of university studies. MUC's initial enrolment was 57 students, rising to a peak of over 400 in the 1940s. In 1933 it merged with the adjacent Normal School and took responsibility for teacher training.
Early period
The period from the founding in 1925 until 1949 in Newfoundland was chaotic, reflecting Newfoundland's shifting economic and political situation, from the last flowering of independence to depression and life on the dole. The 1940 discovery of Newfoundland as a strategic military asset brought a new period of prosperity. Enrolment at the university went through ups and downs during this period, reflecting the shifting fortunes of Newfoundland.
Newfoundland gave up dominion status in 1934, ending self-government in exchange for British Commission of Government rule as a crown colony. Newfoundland remained a crown colony until it joined Canada as a province in 1949.
The post-Confederation government elevated the status of Memorial University College to full university status in August 1949, renaming the institution to Memorial University of Newfoundland. Memorial University was established by the Memorial University Act.
The enrolment in Memorial's first year was 307 students.
Expansion
In 1959 Memorial pioneered the Extension Service as a model for field education and community development.
In 1961, enrolment having increased to 1400, Memorial moved from Parade Street to its present location on Elizabeth Avenue (St. John's Campus).
On 8 March 1965, the government of Newfoundland announced free tuition for first-year students enrolled at Memorial University in St. John's.
The Faculty of Medicine of Memorial University of Newfoundland was established in 1967, and the first students were admitted in 1969. It admits approximately 80 students into the M.D. program each year, and also offers MSc and PhD programs.
Memorial maintains a campus in Harlow, England which opened to students in 1969. This campus has been a popular location for internships in education, and now offers credit courses, work terms, and internships in a number of areas. The campus accommodates approximately 50 students.
Memorial established the Institut Frecker in St. Pierre in 1973, to offer one-semester French immersion programs. It was housed in a building provided by the archdiocese of St. Pierre until 2000. Now known as the Program Frecker, it is currently run from the FrancoForum, a language teaching facility owned by the government of St. Pierre. The program is partially supported by the governments of Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador.
In September 1975 a campus was opened in Corner Brook; it was first renamed Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in 1979 and renamed again in 2010 as Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Currently, 1300 students attend Grenfell, which offers full degree programs in several disciplines, including Fine Arts, and partial programs, which can be completed at the St. John's campus, in many other subjects.
In 1977, the Memorial University of Newfoundland Educational Television Centre implemented the Telemedicine project.
In 1992, the Institute of Fisheries and Marine Technology in St. John's became affiliated with Memorial University as the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Today it is named the Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. It offers both degree and non-degree programs with a high place in international ranking systems.
The modern day
In 2008, the university's hiring process for incoming presidents came under scrutiny for political interference by the province's education minister, Joan Shea.
In May 2021, the Board of Regents of Memorial University recommended that the institution should proceed with officially changing its name to Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, changing the university's legal name will require an act of the province's House of Assembly, and has not yet taken effect.
In September 2019, the Memorial University Senate voted unanimously to create a degree-granting campus in Labrador. Memorial University subsequently established the School of Arctic and Sub-Arctic Studies in 2020. A campus in Happy Valley-Goose Bay (renovated from the former provincial courthouse on Hamilton River Road) is expected to offer courses in Fall 2022.
In October 2023, a report by the Auditor-General found a number of concerns with the University's operations and expenses.
Presidents
John Lewis Paton (1925 to 1933)
Albert Hatcher (1933 to 1952)
Raymond Gushue (1952 to 1966)
Moses Morgan (pro tempore, 1966 to 1967)
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Taylor of Harlow (1967 to 1973)
Moses Morgan (1973 to 1981)
Leslie Harris (1981 to 1990)
Arthur May (1990 to 1999)
Axel Meisen (1999 to 2007)
Eddy Campbell (pro tempore, 2008 to 2009)
Chris Loomis (pro tempore, 2009 to 2010)
Gary Kachanoski (2010 to 2020)
Vianne Timmons (2020 to 2023)
Neil Bose (pro tempore, 2023 to present)
Chancellors
Viscount Rothermere of Hemsted (1952 to 1961)
Lord Thomson of Fleet (1961 to 1968)
G. Alain Frecker (1971 to 1979)
Paul G. Desmarais (1979 to 1988)
John Crosbie (1994 to 2008)
Rick Hillier (2008 to 2012)
Susan Dyer Knight (2012 to 2022)
Earl Ludlow (2022 to present)
Motto, shield, and arms
The university's motto is Provehito in Altum, 'to launch forth into the deep'. The arms of the university, designed by Alan Beddoe, have as their charges a cross moline, three books, and waves representing the sea, and were registered with the Canadian Heraldic Authority on 10 September 1992.
Academics
Schools and faculties
Memorial has seven faculties (Arts, Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Medicine, Nursing, and Science) and six Schools (Graduate Studies, Music, Pharmacy, Human Kinetics, Recreation, and Social Work). These offer a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate degree programs.
Memorial's Faculty of Business Administration is recognised as a leader in Canadian business education with a high ranking, offering programs at undergraduate and graduate levels, including a bachelor of commerce, international bachelor of business administration, bachelor of business administration, master of business administration, master of employment relations and PhD degrees.
Students can choose to specialise in the following engineering disciplines: Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering (combined degree), Engineering Management, and Process Engineering.
The St. John's campus is home to the Faculty of Medicine co-located with the Newfoundland Health Science Center General Hospital. The Faculty of Medicine grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in medicine, while also providing residential and advanced training. It is one of only four medical schools in Atlantic Canada (the others are Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine, University of New Brunswick Medical Training Centre and Université de Moncton Medical Training Centre.
The Department of Biochemistry has a dietetic program accredited by the Dietitians of Canada and the university's graduates may subsequently become registered dietitians.
Queen's College, an affiliated College of Memorial University, offers diploma and degree studies in theology, pastoral studies, church history, and related programs. It is an associate member of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and has 166 students.
The university operates the Bonne Bay Marine Station in Gros Morne National Park.
Research
Research at Memorial University spans six faculties and six schools on the St. John's campus, three schools at Grenfell Campus, and three schools at the Marine Institute, covering a broad range of basic, interdisciplinary, and applied research topics. It also includes specialised centres in marine learning that study ocean technology, aquaculture, sustainable fishery, and offshore safety. Over 40% of Memorial's research is ocean-related (68% in the Faculty of Science alone).
Memorial University recently joined with Dalhousie University and the University of Prince Edward Island to form the Ocean Frontier Institute, a collaborative research initiative aimed at harnessing the vast potential of the world's oceans. Memorial University is a member of the University of the Arctic, an international cooperative network of universities, colleges, and other organizations concerned with education and research in Arctic region. Memorial is also a member of the International Association of Universities, Universities Canada, Association of Commonwealth Universities, Canadian Virtual University, and the Canadian Bureau for International Education.
In 2009, Memorial University launched Yaffle to provide researchers and community partners an opportunity to connect and exchange ideas, expertise, research interests, and publicly engaged activities in an open and accessible way. Yaffle is managed by the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University.
Research impact
Out of 50 universities in Canada, Research Infosource ranked Memorial University the 20th most research-intensive for fiscal year 2016, with a sponsored research income of $91.178 million, averaging $93,500 per faculty member. Times Higher Education ranked Memorial University 17th among Canadian universities for subject-normalised total citations.
According to Memorial University's President's Report 2017, Memorial's total research funding for fiscal year 2016-17 was over $100 million. Memorial is the seat of 20 active Canada Research Chairs, and 13 sponsored research chairs.
Research centres and institutes
Memorial University operates and manages over 30 research units. Some fall under the direct authority of their respective faculties or schools, while others have a pan-university mandate or multi-organization consortium. Below is a sampling of the more prominent units:
Aging Research Centre – Newfoundland and Labrador
Autonomous Oceans Systems Laboratory
Bonne Bay Marine Station
Boreal Ecosystem Research Initiative, Grenfell Campus
Bruneau Centre for Excellence in Choral Music
Centre for Applied Ocean Technology, Marine Institute
Centre for Aquaculture and Seafood Development (CASD), Marine Institute
Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research, Marine Institute
Centre for Marine Simulation (CMS), Marine Institute
Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Resources (CSAR), Marine Institute
Craig L. Dobbin Genetics Research Centre
Digital Research Centre for Qualitative Fieldwork
eHealth Research Unit
English Language Research Centre
Environmental Policy Institute, Grenfell Campus
Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA)
Health Research Unit
Hibernia Enhanced Oil Recovery Laboratory
Institute of Social and Economic Research
Janeway Pediatric Research Unit
Lewisporte Regional Fisheries and Marine Centre
Maritime History Archive
Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Applied Health Research
North West River Research Station, Labrador Institute
Nursing Research Unit
Ocean Engineering Research Centre (OERC)
Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI)
Ocean Sciences Centre
Offshore Safety and Survival Centre (OSSC), Marine Institute
Primary Healthcare Research Unit
Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place (MMaP)
SafetyNet
Support for People and Patient-Oriented Research and Trials (SUPPORT) Unit
The Centre for Risk, Integrity and Safety Engineering (CRISE)
The J.R. Smallwood Foundation for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies
Research awards and honours
Exchange programs
Presently, Memorial has 134 student programs, exchanges, and research partnership agreements in 40 countries. The Internationalization Office, formerly the International Student Advising Office, stands available to assist international students with housing, health insurance, academics, immigration, and career options. Memorial also has a British campus in Harlow, Essex, and is one of only two universities in Canada with a foothold in the United Kingdom.
Rankings
In Maclean's 2023 Canadian university rankings, Memorial University of Newfoundland placed seventh in the magazine's comprehensive university category. The university has also placed in several global university rankings. In 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities, the university ranked 701–800 in the world. The 2024 QS World University Rankings ranked the university 601-649 in the world. 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed the university 601–800 in the world. In the U.S. News & World Report 2022–23 ranking, the university placed 698th in the world.
Campuses and facilities
Memorial University has the following campuses: St. John's Campus on Elizabeth Avenue, Signal Hill, St. John's, Grenfell Campus, Corner Brook, Bonne Bay Marine Station, Holyrood Marine Base, Labrador Institute, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Ocean Sciences Centre, Institut Frecker on the French island of St-Pierre, off Newfoundland's south coast, and in Harlow, England. The largest campus in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador is split by Prince Philip Drive.
The university also operates the Memorial University of Newfoundland Botanical Garden.
St. John's campus
The largest campus is located in St. John's. Prince Philip Drive runs east–west through the St. John's campus, with Westerland Road bordering it to the west, Elizabeth Avenue to the south, and Allandale Road to the east. The majority of the academic buildings are located south of Prince Philip Drive; the Arts and Administration building, the Science building, Chemistry and Physics, Mathematics, Music, Education, Physical Education, and the Bruneau Centre for Research and Innovation. The University Centre is home to the food court, bookstore, campus bar ("Breezeway"), and the CHMR-FM campus radio station.
Libraries and archives
The Memorial University Libraries contain collections of university Archives, Fine Arts from the 1880s to present; Human History and Natural Sciences. Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive collection consists of manuscripts, tapes, records, photographs and artifacts pertaining to Maritime Provinces, specifically Newfoundland and Labrador. The Queen Elizabeth II Library contains 1,072,588 monographs, 104,587 maps, 5,655 audio-visual titles and 9,081 journal titles. The Commons, located on the main floor of the library, has computers available for use by students as well as a Digital Media Centre.
Marine Institute
The Marine Institute is a marine polytechnic institution located on Ridge Road in St. John's within Pippy Park, north of the city. It has unique facilities such as a full ship's bridge simulator and the world's largest flume tank. It offers degrees, diplomas, certifications and industry training for the maritime sector.
Grenfell Campus
Grenfell Campus is a site in Corner Brook. It has approximately 1400 students, 156 faculty, and 235 staff and offers programs in the Arts, Fine Arts, Business, Science, and Nursing. It was formerly known as Sir Wilfred Grenfell College until 10 September 2010.
Harlow
The Harlow Campus, located in Old Harlow, Essex, England consists of the Maltings, which can accommodate 30 students, and Cabot House which can accommodate 10 students. A former schoolhouse and a teacher's cottage have been converted into a lecture facility and an apartment and a former shop has been converted into apartments. Memorial's Harlow Campus is not a school unto itself. Rather, professional schools and academic departments at Memorial use the Harlow Campus to deliver special programs. Harlow offers courses in Biology, Business, Drama & Performance, English Cultural Landscape, Fine Arts (both Theatre and Visual Arts), Faith, Love & Lore, and History & Political Science.
Signal Hill Campus
In 2013, Memorial University purchased the former Battery Hotel located on Signal Hill, overlooking St. John's harbour. The hotel was a landmark property with a long history in the cultural life of the province. To transform the space from a hotel to a university campus, a number of necessary upkeep and maintenance jobs were performed while Memorial conducted a province-wide public consultation to seek input from the Memorial University community and its public partners.
Emera Innovation Exchange
Signal Hill Campus opened to the public in September 2018. A large portion of the campus, the Emera Innovation Exchange, serves as Memorial's innovation and public engagement hub to facilitate university-community collaboration. The campus houses several public-facing university organizations, a large conference centre, and graduate student living accommodations.
Current tenants are the Harris Centre, Gardiner Centre, Genesis, Office of Public Engagement, Office of Strategic Operations (Signal Hill Campus) and Conference Services, MUN Pensioners' Association, Newfoundland Quarterly, and Business & Arts NL.
Conference Centre
The Conference Centre on Signal Hill Campus is a convening space within the Emera Innovation Exchange. It houses several distinct convening spaces, each with full AV connectivity. The Conference Hall overlooks St. John's harbour and can be divided into three separate venues, or combined as one larger venue with the capacity to host up to 450 people. The Atrium, a multifunctional event space spread over two levels and connected by a seated staircase, was designed to serve as a venue for public events and presentations. YAFFLE Connect, a space operating as a physical manifestation of the Yaffle application, Memorial's online connecting tool, was designed with small meetings, co-working sessions, dialogues and debates in mind. There are also eight meeting rooms on the lower level of the Atrium and a dining room with a built-in kitchen for private lunches or small dinner receptions.
Accommodations
The Harbour Wing and Tower areas of Signal Hill Campus are dedicated to graduate student living accommodations. There are 87 furnished rooms available, each of them single occupancy with a private washroom. The kitchen and lounge facilities on each floor are common areas shared between about 15 students.
Botanical Garden
The collection consists of perennial and annual plants, aquatic plants, spruce, fir, and alder trees. The garden, founded in 1972, is located at Oxen Pond along Mount Scio Road. The park has adopted the Twinflower (Linnaea borealis) as its emblem.
Student body and campus life
There are over 19,000 students currently enrolled in full and part-time studies at Memorial University. This number includes both undergraduate and graduate students. Approximately 85% of students are from Newfoundland and Labrador.
International students
There are currently 2,744 full-time and part-time international students enrolled at Memorial, hailing from 119 countries around the world pursuing high-quality education with high ranking as well. International students comprise 15 percent of the student population, and are served by the Internationalisation Office, headquartered at Corte Real.
Campus housing
Student Residences provides on-campus housing at the St. John's campus in three residential complexes: Paton College, Macpherson College, and Burton's Pond Apartments. There is a dining hall for students in residence, R. Gushue Hall, serviced by Aramark. A meal plan is mandatory for students in Paton College and Macpherson College.
The Paton College dormitories offer traditional dormitory-style accommodations for approximately 1000 students in nine residences, called Houses, and named after persons associated with the university or Newfoundland and Labrador: Barnes, Blackall, Bowater, Burke, Curtis, Doyle, Hatcher, Rothermere, and Squires.
The newer Macpherson College consists of two similarly named Halls: Shiwak and Cluett, which house 250 students each, and were officially opened in 2013.
The five Courts of Burton's Pond apartments accommodate a total of 640 students (inclusive of any dependents) in four-bedroom apartments and provide a more independent lifestyle on campus. They are, in alphabetical order, Baltimore, Cabot, Cartier, Gilbert, and Guy.
Sports, clubs, and traditions
Memorial's sports teams, the Memorial Sea-Hawks (formerly The Beothuks), are part of the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) league of U Sports. There are varsity teams in men's and women's basketball, cross-country, soccer, swimming, and women's volleyball. Curling, track and field and wrestling are also available as club sports. The university also has student media, including a radio station, CHMR-FM, and a newspaper, The Muse.
Cultural impact
Postage stamp
On 1 January 1943, and again on 21 March 1946, 'Memorial University College' stamps were issued based on a design by Herman Herbert Schwartz. The 2¢ / 30¢ stamps were perforated 12 and were printed by the Canadian Bank Note Company, Limited.
Sponsors
Memorial University's Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and Faculty of Science are major sponsors of Women in Science and Engineering Newfoundland and Labrador (WISE NL). MUN has provided support to WISE NL's Student Summer Employment Program, Aboriginal Youth Conference, and the WinSETT Leadership Program - St. John's series.
Hudson and Rex
The Canadian crime comedy/drama series Hudson & Rex, based on the Austrian show Inspector Rex, is filmed at Memorial University on a regular basis. The Bruneau Centre stands in for the headquarters of the fictional St. John's Police department, whilst the rest of the campus has been used to portray the equally fictional Heritage University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Notable faculty and alumni
Arms
See also
Canadian government scientific research organizations
Canadian industrial research and development organizations
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Canadian university scientific research organizations
Higher education in Newfoundland and Labrador
Memorial University of Newfoundland Students' Union
References
Books
External links
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada Profile
Directory of Canadian Universities’ programs database
Education: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage
Fact Book
The Muse Memorial University's student newspaper
Universities and colleges established in 1925
Universities and colleges in Newfoundland and Labrador
Universities in Canada
Distance education institutions based in Canada
1920s establishments in Newfoundland
1925 establishments in North America
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston%20Grand%20Opera
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Houston Grand Opera
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Houston Grand Opera (HGO) is an American opera company located in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1955 by German-born impresario Walter Herbert and three local Houstonians, the company is resident at the Wortham Theater Center. This theatre is also home to the Houston Ballet. In its history, the company has received a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards, and three Emmy Awards, the only opera company in the world to win these three honours. Houston Grand Opera is supported by an active auxiliary organization, the Houston Grand Opera Guild, established in October 1955.
History
In 1955, the German-born impresario Walter Herbert and Houstonians Elva Lobit, Edward Bing, and Charles Cockrell founded the company. Its inaugural season featured two performances of two operas, Salome (starring Brenda Lewis in the title role) and Madama Butterfly. David Gockley succeeded Walter Herbert as general director in 1972. During Gockley's tenure, the company began regularly commissioning and producing new works, primarily from American composers. Gockley remained as general director until 2005.
Anthony Freud succeeded Gockley as general director in 2005, and held the post until 2011. Following Freud's departure, joint leadership was shared between Patrick Summers, who had been music director at HGO since 1998, and Perryn Leech, who joined the company in 2006 and became chief operating officer in 2010. Summers took the titles of artistic director and music director, and Leech became managing director. For the 2017–2018 season, HGO performed at the 'HGO Resilience Theater', a temporary space created in an exhibit hall at the George R. Brown Convention Center, after the Wortham Theater Center was closed due to flooding from Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Leech stood down as managing director of the company in December 2020.
In June 2021, the company announced the appointment of Khori Dastoor as its next general director and CEO, effective January 2022. Dastoor is the first woman ever named to the posts.
Musical forces
The Houston Grand Opera Orchestra consists of 49 part time professional musicians and plays all Houston Grand Opera performances. The orchestra is a member of the Regional Orchestra Players Association and is a per service orchestra.
No music director was appointed during the Walter Herbert years (1955–72) until 1971, when longtime assistant conductor and chorus master Charles Rosekrans was named. Later music directors/principal conductors include Chris Nance (1974–77), John DeMain (1977–94), and Vjekoslav Šutej (1994–97). Patrick Summers has been the music director since 1998. With the 2019–20 season, Eun Sun Kim became principal guest conductor, the first female conductor ever to hold the post.
The Houston Grand Opera Chorus has been led since 1988 by chorus master Richard Bado, an alumnus of HGO's young artist training program, the Houston Grand Opera Studio.
Young Artist Training
Houston Grand Opera Studio
Houston Grand Opera's young artist development program, the Houston Grand Opera Studio, was founded in 1977 to help young artists make the transition between their academic training and professional careers. The HGO Studio primarily trains young singers and pianist/coaches but has also trained aspiring conductors in a residency program of up to three years. An annual competition, now called the Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, was inaugurated in 1989 to help identify a pool of potential international artists for the Studio, which is currently directed by Brian Speck. Studio alumni include sopranos Jan Grissom, Marquita Lister, Ana María Martínez, Edrie Means, Erie Mills, Albina Shagimuratova, Heidi Stober, Rachel Willis-Sørensen, and Tamara Wilson; mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton, Joyce DiDonato, Denyce Graves, Susanne Mentzer, and Marietta Simpson; tenors Bruce Ford, and Norman Reinhardt; baritones Richard Paul Fink, and Scott Hendricks; bass-baritones Greer Grimsley, Ryan McKinny, and Eric Owens; and bass Eric Halfvarson. Other alumni include HGO Chorus Master Richard Bado, composer/conductor David Hanlon, former Lyric Opera of Kansas City Artistic Director Ward Holmquist, conductor/arranger/composer James Lowe, conductor/pianist Eric Melear, conductor Evan Rogister, and conductor/pianist Craig Terry.
Young Artists Vocal Academy
The HGO Young Artists Vocal Academy, established in 2011 and administered by the HGO Studio, is a one-week intensive program for undergraduate vocal music students. Participants selected for the program receive training that includes daily voice lessons and coachings as well as classes in characterization, movement, diction, and score preparation.
HGOco (see below) offers training to high school juniors and seniors.
HGOco
In 2007, HGO established HGOco, an initiative designed to create partnerships between the company and the community. HGOco's first project, the ongoing Song of Houston initiative, creates new works focused on people and groups in Houston—the most culturally diverse city in the United States, according to a report of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas.
For its first commissioned work in 2007, The Refuge, by Christopher Theofanidis and Leah Lax, HGOco identified seven statistically significant immigrant communities in Houston and the creators began interviewing residents of those communities. The libretto was created from the actual words of some of the residents, and the premiere included performances by members from these communities.
In 2009, HGOco received the Leading Lights Diversity Award in Arts and Culture from the National MultiCultural Institute (NCMI) for Song of Houston.
As of May 2018, HGOco has premiered 22 new works, including eight short chamber operas focusing on various Asian communities in Houston, which were commissioned and premiered during a four-year series titled East + West. Recent HGOco premieres include Laura Kaminsky and Mark Campbell/Kimberly Reed's Some Light Emerges, about Houston philanthropist and humanitarian Dominique de Menil and her quest to create the Rothko Chapel; Gregory Spears and Royce Vavrek's O Columbia, realized through the collaboration of Houston-based NASA astronauts, scientists, and engineers; and David Hanlon and Stephanie Fleischmann's After the Storm, about the impact that Hurricane Ike and the Great Storm of 1900 had upon Galveston and the Gulf Coast. Song cycles have also been created in cooperation with workers in the Houston Ship Channel, the veterans community, and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
HGOco also administers:
Houston Grand Opera's Bauer Family High School Voice Studio, a scholarship program for high school juniors and seniors preparing to study vocal music at the college/conservatory level
Summer Opera Camps for students in Pre-K through grade 12.
Opera to Go!, a touring company that focuses on short musical works for children and families.
Houston Grand Opera and new works
HGO has been commissioning and premiering new works since 1974. These include full-length operas for the main stage and chamber works with a community focus or for children/families.
World premieres
Full-length operas
The relationship between HGO and composer Carlisle Floyd is the longest ongoing relationship of any composer with an organization. HGO has commissioned five works from Floyd: Bilby's Doll (1976), Willie Stark (1981), The Passion of Jonathan Wade (new version, 1991), Cold Sassy Tree (2000), and Prince of Players (2016). Floyd lived in Houston for a two-decade period after relocating in 1976 from Tallahassee, Florida, to accept the M.D. Anderson Professorship at the University of Houston School of Music (now the Moores School of Music). In 1977, he cofounded the Houston Grand Opera Studio, HGO's young artist training program, which was initially a joint program between HGO and the University of Houston, and was an active participant in training Studio artists.
The John Adams opera Nixon in China debuted at the Wortham Theater Center in 1987. It was co-commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Netherlands Opera and the Washington Opera.
Chamber operas
HGO has commissioned and premiered 15 chamber operas created for children/families. These chamber works are staged and are approximately 45 minutes long.
American premieres
HGO has presented seven American premieres. Among them, the most significant are the first staged version of Handel's Rinaldo in 1975 (a concert version had been given in 1972 by the Handel Society of New York), starring Marilyn Horne in the title role and Samuel Ramey as Argante; Rossini's La donna del lago in a new critical edition in 1981, and more recently, Weinberg's The Passenger, a long-suppressed Holocaust opera composed in 1968 and performed by HGO in 2014. Besides presenting the American premiere in Houston, HGO was also invited to bring the production to the Park Avenue Armory as part of the 2014 Lincoln Center Festival.
Non-traditional opera
During the 2017–18 season, HGOco began a web-only series of 15-minute operas titled Star-Cross'd, based on true stories with a Romeo and Juliet theme. The series pilot, "Boundless," by composer Avner Dorman and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, was released online April 20, 2018. Two more episodes are scheduled for release during 2019.
In 2010, HGO commissioned and premiered the world's first "mariachi opera", composed by the late José "Pepe" Martínez, the longtime music director of the ensemble Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, with a libretto by Leonard Foglia. This work, titled Cruzar la Cara de la Luna/To Cross the Face of the Moon, has been performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and by a number of opera companies in the United States.
In addition to commissioning and premiering new works, HGO has played a role in bringing certain existing works to the attention of the opera world. HGO presented a "triumphant" and "groundbreaking" production of Porgy and Bess in 1976 that restored portions of the work that had been cut for previous productions (including some made by composer George Gershwin himself for the New York premiere in 1935), thus allowing the public to experience the original vision for the work and making it clear that it was indeed an opera. After the Houston premiere, the production, featuring Donnie Ray Albert as Porgy and Clamma Dale as Bess and conducted by John DeMain, toured to Broadway and won a 1977 Tony Award for Most Innovative Production of a Revival. The complete recording won the 1977 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording.
Scott Joplin's Treemonisha, which comprises a variety of musical styles even though it is often called a "ragtime opera," received its first fully staged performances at Houston Grand Opera in 1976 with a score HGO commissioned from ragtime expert Gunther Schuller. Treemonisha also toured to Broadway and was recorded.
Houston Grand Opera and Innovation
Supertitles
In 1984, Houston Grand Opera began using supertitles on all non-English productions, becoming one of the first opera companies in the United States to do so.
Descriptive Services
HGO was one of the first opera companies in the United States (and possibly the first) to offer descriptive services for patrons with vision loss. It has offered descriptive services since the 1987–88 season, the inaugural season in the Wortham Theater Center. The service is offered free of charge and by request for any performance with 48 hours notice.
The Genevieve P. Demme Archives and Resource Center
In 1989, HGO became the first performing arts organization in Houston and the second major U.S. opera company to establish its own archives and resources center. The archives/resource center is named for the late Genevieve P. Demme, a longtime trustee and historian of Houston Grand Opera Association.
Plazacasts
On November 10, 1995, Houston Grand Opera became the first performing arts company in the United States to simulcast a live performance to an audience in another location. (The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, was the only other company at the time to have staged a similar event.) The performance of Rossini's La Cenerentola featuring mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli that was taking place inside the Wortham Theater Center's Brown Theater was projected in real time onto a large screen mounted on the outside of the theater building. The event was free to the public. The audience was seated on the Ray C. Fish Plaza outside the theater, which prompted HGO to call the event a Plazacast. HGO held free public Plazacasts each year through the 2004–05 season (HGO's 50th season). In April 2005, the company simulcast both a performance of Gounod's Romeo and Juliet and its 50th anniversary gala concert.
Multimedia Modular Stage
In May 1998, Houston Grand Opera unveiled its Multimedia Modular Stage, a large steel structure with moving lights, projection screens for live-feed video and still images, and a big sound system. It was designed for large outdoor venues but could be adapted for other locations. HGO used it several times for outdoor performances in Houston and on tour, and once for an indoor production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music in 1999. Its last use in Houston was the night of June 8, 2001, in a production of Carmen at Houston's Miller Outdoor Theatre. That night, Tropical Storm Allison struck Houston, where the storm's worst flooding occurred. The two remaining performances in Houston were canceled, although the production went on tour as scheduled on June 15 and 16 to the Mann Center in Philadelphia. The effects of the storm, along with the impact of 9/11 and the collapse of Enron just months afterward, led to the retirement of the Multimedia Modular Stage, which was costly to assemble and disassemble.
OperaVision
In the fall of 2000, HGO devised and implemented a system of plasma and projection screens mounted in the Grand Tier and Balcony sections of the larger of the two halls in the Wortham Theater Center. This system—designed to provide close-up views of the action on stage and improve sightlines in the unusually steep Grand Tier and Balcony areas—was called OperaVision and received mixed appraisals from opera patrons. OperaVision was discontinued at the end of the 2004–05 season.
Awards
Emmy Awards
HGO: The Ring Cycle, Sculpting With Time Productions (Alex Douglas and Whitney Douglas), 2017, regional Emmy Awards for directing and photography
Hitting the High Cs, Marion Kessell and Rick Christie, 1998, regional Emmy for editing
Nixon in China, John Adams and Alice Goodman, 1988, for Outstanding Musical Program
Grammy Awards
Nixon in China, John Adams and Alice Goodman, 1988, Best Contemporary Composition
Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, 1977, Best Opera Recording
Grand Prix du Disque
Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, 1977
National MultiCultural Institute Award
HGOco's Song of Houston initiative, 2009, Leading Lights Diversity Award in Arts and Culture
Tony Award
Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, 1977, Most Innovative Production of a Revival
Premieres, recordings, and television appearances
World premieres through the 2022–23 season
The Seagull, Thomas Pasatieri and Kenward Elmslie, 1974
Bilby's Doll, Carlisle Floyd, 1976
Willie Stark, Carlisle Floyd, 1981
Starbird, Henry Mollicone and Kate Pogue, 1980
A Quiet Place, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Wadsworth, 1983
Nixon in China, John Adams and Alice Goodman, 1987
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, Philip Glass and Doris Lessing, 1988
Where's Dick?, Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie, 1989
New Year, Sir Michael Tippett, 1989
The Passion of Jonathan Wade (new version), Carlisle Floyd, 1991
ATLAS: an opera in three parts, Meredith Monk, 1991
Desert of Roses, Robert Moran and Michael John LaChiusa, 1992
The Achilles Heel, Craig Bohmler and Mary Carol Warwick, 1993
TEXAS!, Mary Carol Warwick and Kate Pogue, 1993
The Dracula Diary, Robert Moran and James Skofield, 1994
The Outcast (fully realized version), Noa Ain, 1994
Harvey Milk, Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie, 1995
Puppy and the Big Guy, Sterling Tinsley and Kate Pogue, 1995
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a liberation through hearing, Ricky Ian Gordon and Jean-Claude van Itallie, 1996
Florencia en el Amazonas, Daniel Catán and Marcela Fuentes-Berain, 1996
Jackie O, Michael Daugherty and Wayne Koestenbaum, 1997
Cinderella in Spain/Cinderella en España, Mary Carol Warwick and Kate Pogue, 1998
Little Women, Mark Adamo, 1998
Resurrection, Tod Machover and Laura Harrington with additional materials by Braham Murray, 1999
Cold Sassy Tree, Carlisle Floyd, 2000
The Emperor's New Clothes, Mary Carol Warwick and Kate Pogue, 2001
Sibanda!, Michael Remson, 2003
The Little Prince, Rachel Portman and Nicholas Wright, 2003
The Velveteen Rabbit, Mary Carol Warwick and Kate Pogue, 2004
The End of the Affair, Jake Heggie and Heather McDonald, 2004
Salsipuedes, a tale of Love, War and Anchovies, Daniel Catán and Eliseo Alberto / Francisco Hinojosa, 2004
The Princess and the Pea, Mary Carol Warwick and Mary Ann Pendino, 2005
Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, Mark Adamo, 2005
Strega Nona, Mary Carol Warwick and Mary Ann Pendino, 2006
Send (who are you? I love you), Michael John LaChiusa, 2006
The Refuge, Christopher Theofanidis and Leah Lax, 2007
Three Decembers (premiered under the title Last Acts), Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, 2008
Sleeping Beauty, Edward Charles Winkler, 2008
Brief Encounter, André Previn and John Caird, 2009
A Way Home, Ethan Frederick Greene and Irene Keliher, 2010
Cruzar la Cara de la Luna / To Cross the Face of the Moon, José "Pepe" Martínez and Leonard Foglia, 2010
Courtside, Jack Perla and Eugene Chan, 2011
Your Name Means the Sea, Franghiz Alizadeh, 2011
Pieces of 9/11, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, 2011
The Clever Wife—a Chinese Folktale, Mary Carol Warwick and Hugh Behm-Steinberg, 2012
The Bricklayer, Gregory Spears and Farnoosh Moshiri, 2012
New Arrivals, John Glover and Catherine Filloux, 2012
From My Mother's Mother, Jeeyoung Kim and Janine Joseph, 2012
Past the Checkpoints, David Hanlon and Joann Farías, 2013
The Memory Stone, Marty Regan and Kenny Fries, 2013
Rapunzel, Mary Carol Warwick and Alvaro Saar Rios, 2014
Bound, Huang Ruo and Bao-Long Chu, 2014
A Coffin in Egypt, Ricky Ian Gordon and Leonard Foglia, 2014
River of Light, Jack Perla and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, 2014
A Christmas Carol, Iain Bell and Simon Callow, 2014
The Pastry Prince, Mark Buller and Charles Anthony Silvestri, 2015
O Columbia, Gregory Spears and Royce Vavrek, September 2015
The Puffed-Up Prima Donna, Mark Buller and Charles Anthony Silvestri, January 2016
Prince of Players, Carlisle Floyd, March 2016
What Wings They Were: The Case of Emeline, John L. Cornelius II and Janine Joseph, April 2016
After the Storm, David Hanlon and Stephanie Fleischmann, May 2016
It's a Wonderful Life, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, December 2016
Some Light Emerges, Laura Kaminsky and Mark Campbell/Kimberly Reed, March 2017
The House without a Christmas Tree, Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek, November 2017
Monkey & Francine in the City of Tigers, Kamala Sankaram and David Johnston, January 2018
The Phoenix, Tarik O'Regan and John Caird, April 2019
El Milagro del Recuerdo, Javier Martínez and Leonard Foglia, December 2019
Marian's Song, Damien Sneed and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, March 2020
The Impresario of Oz, Mark Buller and Charles Anthony Silvestri, June 2020
The Snowy Day, Joel Thompson and Andrea Davis, December 2021
Another City, Jeremy Howard Beck and Stephanie Fleischmann, March 2023
American premieres
Hugh the Drover, Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1973
Rinaldo (stage premiere), George Frideric Handel, 1975
Robinson Crusoé, Jacques Offenbach, 1977
The Panther, Philip Glass, 1981
La donna del lago (new critical edition), Gioacchino Rossini, 1981
Akhnaten, Philip Glass, 1984
The Passenger, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, 2014
Video recordings
Treemonisha, Kultur Video, VHS, 1982
La Cenerentola, London/Decca, VHS and DVD, 1996
Little Women, Naxos, DVD, 2010
Nationally televised productions
Willie Stark, PBS's Great Performances, October 1981
Treemonisha, PBS, February 1986
Aida, PBS's Great Performances, October 1987
Nixon in China, PBS's Great Performances, April 1988
La Cenerentola, PBS's Great Performances, April 1996
Little Women, PBS's Great Performances, August 2001
Audio recordings
Porgy and Bess, RCA, 1977
Treemonisha, Deutsche Grammophon, 1982
Nixon in China, Nonesuch, 1988
ATLAS: an opera in three parts, ECM, 1992
The Dracula Dia, Catalyst/BMG, 1994
The Song of Majnun, Delos, 1997
Jackie O, Argo/Decca, 1997
Little Women, Ondine, 2001
Resurrection, Albany, 2002
Florencia en el Amazonas'''', Albany, 2002
Of Mice and Men, Albany, 2003
Cold Sassy Tree, Albany, 2005
The Refuge, Albany, 2008
Three Decembers, Albany, 2008
Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, Albany, 2011
Brief Encounter, Deutsche Grammophon, 2011
Dead Man Walking, Virgin Classics, 2012
A Coffin in Egypt, Albany, 2014
It's a Wonderful Life, PENTATONE, 2017
The House Without a Christmas Tree, PENTATONE, 2018
External links
HGO's official website
HGO's main stage repertoire
"Up From Houston", Opera News, 1998 (by subscription)
References
Culture of Houston
American opera companies
Texas classical music
Music of Houston
Musical groups from Houston
Tourist attractions in Houston
1955 establishments in Texas
Musical groups established in 1955
Articles containing video clips
Performing arts in Texas
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward%20Steichen
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Edward Steichen
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Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.
Steichen was credited with transforming photography into an art form. His photographs appeared in Alfred Stieglitz's groundbreaking magazine Camera Work more often than anyone else during its publication run from 1903 to 1917. Stieglitz hailed him as "the greatest photographer that ever lived".
As a pioneer of fashion photography, Steichen's gown images for the magazine Art et Décoration in 1911 were the first modern fashion photographs to be published. From 1923 to 1938, Steichen served as chief photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair, while also working for many advertising agencies, including J. Walter Thompson. During these years, Steichen was regarded as the most popular and highest-paid photographer in the world.
After the United States' entry into World War II, Steichen was invited by the United States Navy to serve as Director of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. In 1944, he directed the war documentary The Fighting Lady, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 17th Academy Awards.
From 1947 to 1961, Steichen served as Director of the Department of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art. While there, he curated and assembled exhibits including The Family of Man, which was seen by nine million people. In 2003, the Family of Man photographic collection was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in recognition of its historical value.
In February 2006, a print of Steichen's early pictorialist photograph, The Pond—Moonlight (1904), sold for US$2.9 million—at the time, the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction. A print of another photograph of the same style, The Flatiron (1904), became the second most expensive photograph ever on November 8, 2022, when it was sold for $12,000,000, at Christie's New York – well above the original estimate of $2,000,000-$3,000,000.
Early life
Steichen was born Éduard Jean Steichen on March 27, 1879, in a small house in the village of Bivange, Luxembourg, the son of Jean-Pierre and Marie Kemp Steichen. His parents facing increasingly straitened circumstances and financial difficulties, decided to make a new start and emigrated to the United States when Steichen was eighteen months old. Jean-Pierre Steichen immigrated in 1880, with Marie Steichen bringing the infant Éduard along after Jean-Pierre had settled in Hancock in Michigan's Upper Peninsula copper country. According to noted Steichen biographer, Penelope Niven, the Steichens were “part of a large exodus of Luxembourgers displaced in the late nineteenth century by worsening economic conditions.”
Éduard's sister and only sibling, Lilian Steichen, was born in Hancock on May 1, 1883. She would later marry poet Carl Sandburg, whom she met at the Milwaukee Social Democratic Party office in 1907. Her marriage to Sandburg the following year helped forge a life-long friendship and partnership between her brother and Sandburg.
By 1889, when Éduard was 10, his parents had saved up enough money to move the family to Milwaukee. There he learned German and English at school, while continuing to speak Luxembourgish at home.
In 1894, at fifteen, Steichen began attending Pio Nono College, a Catholic boys' high school, where his artistic talents were noticed. His drawings in particular were said to show promise. He quit high school to begin a four-year lithography apprenticeship with the American Fine Art Company of Milwaukee. After hours, he would sketch and draw, and he began to teach himself painting. Having discovered a camera shop near his work, he visited frequently until he persuaded himself to buy his first camera, a secondhand Kodak box "detective" camera, in 1895. Steichen and his friends who were also interested in drawing and photography pooled their funds, rented a small room in a Milwaukee, WI office building, and began calling themselves the Milwaukee Art Students League. The group hired Richard Lorenz and Robert Schade for occasional lectures. In 1899, Steichen's photographs were exhibited in the second Philadelphia Photographic Salon.
Steichen became a U.S. citizen in 1900 and signed the naturalization papers as Edward J. Steichen, but he continued to use his birth name of Éduard until after the First World War.
Career
Paris, New York, and Partnerships with Stieglitz and Rodin
In April 1900, Steichen left Milwaukee for Paris to study art. Clarence H. White thought Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz should meet, and thus produced an introduction letter for Steichen, and Steichen —then en route to Paris from his home in Milwaukee— met Stieglitz in New York City in early 1900. In that first meeting, Stieglitz expressed praise for Steichen's background in painting and bought three of Steichen's photographic prints.
In 1902, when Stieglitz was formulating what would become Camera Work, he asked Steichen to design the logo for the magazine with a custom typeface. Steichen was the most frequently shown photographer in the journal.
Steichen began experimenting with color photography in 1904 and was one of the earliest in the United States to use the Autochrome Lumière process. In 1905, Stieglitz and Steichen created the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, in what had been Steichen's portrait studio; it eventually became known as the 291 Gallery after its address. It presented some of the first American exhibitions of Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brâncuși.
According to author and art historian William A. Ewing, Steichen became one of the earliest "jet setters", constantly moving back and forth between Europe and the U.S. by steamship, in the process cross-pollinating art from Europe to the United States, helping to define photography as an art form, and at the same time widening America's understanding of European art and art in general.
Pioneering fashion photography
Fashion photography began with engravings reproduced from photographs of modishly-dressed actresses by Leopold-Emile Reutlinger, Nadar and others in the 1890s. After high-quality half-tone reproduction of photographs became possible, most credit as pioneers of the genre goes to the French Baron Adolph de Meyer and to Steichen who, borrowing his friend's hand-camera in 1907, candidly photographed dazzlingly-dressed ladies at the Longchamp Racecourse Fashion then was being photographed for newspaper supplements and fashion magazines, particularly by the Frères Séeberger, as it was worn at Paris horse-race meetings by aristocracy and hired models.
In 1911, Lucien Vogel, the publisher of Jardin des Modes and La Gazette du Bon Ton, challenged Steichen to promote fashion as a fine art through photography. Steichen took photos of gowns designed by couturier Paul Poiret, which were published in the April 1911 issue of the magazine Art et Décoration. Two were in colour, and appeared next to flat, stylised, yellow-and-black Georges Lepape drawings of accessories, fabrics, and girls.
Steichen himself, in his 1963 autobiography, asserted that his 1911 Art et Décoration photographs "were probably the first serious fashion photographs ever made," a generalised claim since repeated by many commentators. What he (and de Meyer) did bring was an artistic approach; a soft-focus, aesthetically retouched Pictorialist style that was distinct from the mechanically sharp images made by his commercial colleagues for half-tone reproduction, and that he and the publishers and fashion designers for whom he worked appreciated as a marketable idealisation of the garment, beyond the exact description of fabrics and buttonholes.
After World War I, during which he commanded the photographic division of the American Expeditionary Forces, he gradually reverted to straight photography for his fashion photography and was hired by Condé Nast in 1923 for the extraordinary salary of $35,000 (equivalent to over $500,000 in 2019 value).
World War II
At the commencement of World War II, Steichen, then in his sixties, had retired as a full-time photographer. He was developing new varieties of delphinium, which in 1936 had been the subject of his first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and the only flower exhibition ever held there.
When the United States joined the global conflict, Steichen, who had come out of the first World War an Army Colonel, was refused for active service because of his age. Later, invited by the Navy to serve as Director of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, he was commissioned a Lieutenant-Commander in January 1942. Steichen selected for his unit six officer-photographers from the industry (sometimes irreverently called "Steichen's chickens"), including photographers Wayne Miller and Charles Fenno Jacobs. A collection of 172 silver gelatin photographs taken by the Unit under his leadership is held at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Their war documentary The Fighting Lady, directed by Steichen, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 17th Academy Awards.
In 1942, Steichen curated for the Museum of Modern Art the exhibition Road to Victory, five duplicates of which toured the world. Photographs in the exhibition were credited to enlisted members of the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps and numbers by Steichen's unit, while many were anonymous and some were made by automatic cameras in Navy planes operated while firing at the enemy. This was followed in January 1945 by Power in the Pacific: Battle Photographs of our Navy in Action on the Sea and In the Sky. Steichen was released from Active Duty (under honorable conditions) on December 13, 1945, at the rank of Captain. For his service during World War II, he was awarded the World War II Victory Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (with 2 campaign stars), American Campaign Medal, and numerous other awards.
Museum of Modern Art
In the summer of 1929, Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. had included a department devoted to photography in a plan presented to the Trustees. Though not put in place until 1940, it became the first department of photography in a museum devoted to twentieth-century art and was headed by Beaumont Newhall. On the strength of attendances of his propaganda exhibitions Road to Victory and Power in the Pacific, and precipitating curator Newhall's resignation along with most of his staff, in 1947 Steichen was appointed Director of Photography until 1962, later assisted by Grace M. Mayer.
His appointment was protested by many who saw him as anti-art photography, one of the most vocal being Ansel Adams who on April 29, 1946, wrote a letter to Stephen Clark (copied to Newhall) to express his disappointment over Steichen's hiring for the new position of director; “To supplant Beaumont Newhall, who has made such a great contribution to the art through his vast knowledge and sympathy for the medium, with a regime which is inevitably favorable to the spectacular and 'popular' is indeed a body blow to the progress of creative photography.”
Nevertheless, Ansel Adams' image Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico was first published in U.S. Camera Annual 1943, after being selected by Steichen, who was serving as judge for the publication. This gave Moonrise an audience before its first formal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1944.
Steichen as director held a strong belief in the local product, of the "liveness of the melting pot of American photography,’’ and worked to expand and organise the collection, inspiring and recognising the 1950s generation while keeping historical shows to a minimum. He worked with Robert Frank even before his The Americans was published, exhibited the early work of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, and purchased two Rauschenberg prints in 1952, ahead of any museum. Steichen also kept international developments in his scope and held shows and made important acquisitions from Europe and Latin America, occasionally visiting those countries to do so. Three books were published by the Department during his tenure (The Family of Man, Steichen the Photographer, and The Bitter Years: 1935–1941: Rural America as Seen by the Photographers of the Farm Security Administration). Despite his solid career in photography, Steichen displayed his own work at MoMA—his retrospective, Steichen the Photographer—only after he had already announced his retirement in 1961.
Among accomplishments that were to redeem initial resentment at his appointment, Steichen created The Family of Man, a world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition that, while arguably a product of American Cold War propaganda, was seen by 9 million visitors and still holds the record for most-visited photography exhibit. Now permanently housed and on continuous display in Clervaux (Luxembourgish: Klierf) Castle in northern Luxembourg, his country of birth, Steichen regarded the exhibition as the "culmination of his career.". Comprising over 500 photos that depicted life, love and death in 68 countries, the prologue for its widely purchased catalogue was written by Steichen's brother-in-law, Carl Sandburg. As had been Steichen's wish, the exhibition was donated to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, his country of birth.
MoMA exhibitions curated or directed by Steichen
The following are exhibitions curated or directed by Steichen during his tenure as Director of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art:
1947: Three Young Photographers: Leonard McCombe, Wayne F. Miller, Homer Page, September 30–December 7
1948: In and Out of Focus: A Survey of Today's Photography. “A survey of photography today, including prints by 76 photographers from many parts of the country, the first large exhibition organized by Captain Edward J. Steichen, Director of the Museum's Department of Photography”, April 6–July 11
1948: 50 Photographs by 50 Photographers. “50 prints from the Museum Collections that form an abbreviated history of the development of pictorial photography during the past 100 years.” July 27–September 26
1948: Photo-Secession (American Photography 1902–1910), September 29–November 28
1948/1949 Photographs by Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, Ted Croner, Lisette Model, November 30, 1948–February 10
1949: This Exact Instant, Events And Pages in 100 Years of News Photography, February 8–May 1
1949: Roots of Photography, comprising works by Hill and Adamson, Julia Margaret Cameron and Henry Fox Talbot, April 26–July 24
1949: Realism in Photography. Works by Ralph Steiner, Wayne F. Miller, Tosh Matsumoto, Frederick Sommer, July 26–September 25
1949: Photographs by Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, Tana Hoban, Esther Bubley, and Hazel-Frieda Larsen. “Sixty prints by 6 women photographers” October 11–November 15
1950: Roots of French Photography, November 29, 1949–January 15
1950: Photographs of Picasso by Gjon Mili and by Robert Capa, January 24–March 19,
1950: Photography Recent Acquisitions: Stieglitz, Atget, March 28–May 7,
1950: Color Photography, May 9–July 4,
1950: Photographs by 51 Photographers, August 1–September 17,
1950: Photographs by Lewis Carroll, September 26–December 3,
1951: Korea - The Impact of War in Photographs, February 13–April 22,
1951: Abstraction in Photography, May 1–July 4,
1951: 12 Photographers, July 12–August 12,
1951: Forgotten Photographers, August 23–November 4,
1951: Memorable 'Life' Photographs, November 20–December 12,
1952: Christmas Photographs, November 29, 1951–January 6,
1952: Five French Photographers, December 18, 1951–February 24,
1952: We Create for Pleasure, January 23–March 2,
1952: Diogenes with a Camera, May 20–September 1,
1952: Then and Now, August 5–18,
1953: Always the Young Strangers, February 26–April 1,
1953: Postwar European Photography, May 26–August 23,
1955: The Family of Man, January 24–May 8,
1956: Diogenes with a Camera III, January 17–March 18,
1956: Diogenes with a Camera IV, April 4–June 3,
1956/7: Language of the Wall: Parisian Graffiti Photographed by Brassaï, October 24, 1956 – January 13, 1957
1958: 70 Photographers Look at New York, November 27, 1957–April 15, in collaboration with Grace Mayer
1959: Photographs from the Museum Collection, November 26, 1958–January 18,
1960: Photographs for Collectors, October 1–16, “Photographs for Collectors, more than 250 prints by 66 photographers…priced at $25 and up, in color or in black and white, some framed for hanging. Styles range from photo-journalism to abstraction…and…familiar classics of photography
1962: Photographs by Harry Callahan and Robert Frank, January 30–April 1
1962: 50 Photographs by 50 Photographers, April 3–May 15,
1962: The Bitter Years: 1935–1941, October 18–November 25, selected by Steichen (described in the press release as ‘Director Emeritus’) from 270,000 taken for the F.S.A., assisted by picture researcher Davis Pratt for an installation designed by Kathleen Haven.
In the latter years of his tenure after her appointment by Steichen as Assistant Curator, it was Grace Mayer, 'overseen' by Steichen, who selected and organized the shows Recent Acquisitions (December 21, 1960 – February 5, 1961), 1960: The Sense of Abstraction, February 17–April 10, Steichen the Photographer (March 28–May 30, 1961), A Bid For Space (4 installations, 1960 to 1963), Diogenes with a Camera V (September 26–November 12, 1961), and Walker Evans: American Photographs (June 8, 1962 – February 14, 1963).
Steichen hired John Szarkowski to be his successor at the Museum of Modern Art on July 1, 1962. On his appointment, Szarkowski promoted Mayer to Curator.
Later life
On December 6, 1963, Steichen was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Though then 88 years old and unable to attend in person, in 1967 Steichen, as a still-active member of the copyright committee of the American Society of Magazine Photographers, wrote a submission to the U.S. Senate hearings to support copyright law revisions, requesting that "this young giant among the visual arts be given equal rights by having its peculiar problems taken into account."
In 1968, the Edward Steichen Archive was established in MoMA's Department of Photography. The Museum's then-Director René d’Harnoncourt declared that its function was to "amplify and clarify the meaning of Steichen’s contribution to the art of photography, and to modern art generally.” Creator of the Archive was Grace M. Mayer, who in 1959 started her career as an assistant to the director, Steichen, and who became Curator of Photography in 1962, retiring in 1968. Mayer returned after her retirement to serve in a voluntary capacity as Curator of the Edward Steichen Archive until the mid-1980s to source materials by, about, and related to Steichen. Her detailed card catalogs are housed in the Museum's Grace M. Mayer Papers.
Steichen's 90th birthday was marked with a dinner gathering of photographers, editors, writers, and museum professionals at the Plaza Hotel in 1969. The event was hosted by MoMA trustee Henry Allen Moe, and U.S. Camera magazine publisher Tom Maloney.
In 1970, an evening show was presented in Arles during The Rencontres d'Arles festival: "Edward Steichen, photographe" by Martin Boschet.
Steichen bought a farm that he called Umpawaug in 1928, just outside West Redding, Connecticut. He lived there until his death on March 25, 1973, two days before his 94th birthday. After his death, Steichen's farm was made into a park, known as Topstone Park. As of 2018, Topstone Park was open seasonally.
In 1974, Steichen was posthumously inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
Legacy
Steichen's career, especially his activities at MoMA, did much to popularise and promote the medium, and both before and since his death photography, including his own, continued to appreciate as a collectible art form.
In February 2006, a print of Steichen's early pictorialist photograph, The Pond—Moonlight (1904), sold for what was then the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction, .
Steichen took the photograph in Mamaroneck, New York, near the home of his friend, art critic Charles Caffin. It shows a wooded area and pond, with moonlight appearing between the trees and reflecting on the pond. While the print appears to be a color photograph, the first true color photographic process, the autochrome process, was not available until 1907. Steichen created the impression of color by manually applying layers of light-sensitive gums to the paper. Only three prints of the Pond—Moonlight are still known to exist and, as a result of the hand-layering of the gums, each is unique. (The two prints not auctioned are held in museum collections.) The extraordinary sale price of the print is in part attributable to its one-of-a-kind character and to its rarity.
A show of early color photographs by Steichen was held at the Mudam (Musée d'Art moderne) in Luxembourg City from July 14 to September 3, 2007.
Personal life
Steichen married Clara E. Smith (1875–1952) in 1903. They had two daughters, Mary Rose Steichen (1904-1998) and Charlotte "Kate" Rodina Steichen (1908-1988). In 1914, Clara accused her husband of having an affair with artist Marion H. Beckett, who was staying with them in France. The Steichens left France just ahead of invading German troops. In 1915, Clara Steichen returned to France with her daughter Kate, staying in their house in the Marne in spite of the war. Steichen returned to France with the Photography Division of the American Army Signal Corps in 1917, whereupon Clara returned to the United States. In 1919, Clara Steichen sued Marion Beckett for having an affair with her husband, but was unable to prove her claims. Clara and Edward Steichen eventually divorced in 1922.
Steichen married Dana Desboro Glover in 1923. She died of leukemia in 1957.
In 1960, aged 80, Steichen married 27-year-old Joanna Taub and remained married to her until his death, two days before his 94th birthday. Joanna Steichen died on July 24, 2010, in Montauk, New York, aged 77.
Exhibitions
Solo
1900 Photo Club. Paris
1900 Mrs. Arthur Robinson Home. Milwaukee (USA)
1901 La Maison des Artistes, Paris
1902 Photo-Club, Paris
1902 Eduard Steichen, Paintings and Photographs; Maison des artistes; Paris, France
1905 Photo-Secession Gallery, New York
1906 Photographs by Eduard Steichen; Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (291 Gallery); New York, New York
1908 Eduard Steichen, Photographs in Monochrome and Color; Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession; New York, New York
1909 Photo-Secession Gallery, New York
1910 Photo-Secession Gallery, New York
1910 Montross Gallery. London
1910 Little Gallery. New York City (USA)
1915 M. Knoedler & Company, New York (USA)
1938 Museum of Modern Art, New York ( USA )
1938 Edward Steichen; Baltimore Museum of Art; Baltimore, Maryland
1938 Retrospective, Baltimore Museum of Art (USA)
1950 Edward Steichen, Retrospective; American Institute of Architects Headquarters; Washington, D.C.
1961 Steichen the Photographer; Museum of Modern Art; New York, New York
1965 Retrospective, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
1976 Allan Frumkin Gallery. Chicago (USA)
1978 Museum of Modern Art. New York (USA)
1979 George Eastman House, Rochester ( USA)
2000 Edward Steichen; Whitney Museum of American Art; New York, New York
2002 Edward Steichen: Art as Advertising/ Advertising as Art; Norsk Museum for Fotografi-Preus Fotomuseum; Horten, Norway
2004: Hollywood Celebrities: Edward Steichen, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands, 17 Jan – 25 Apr
2005: Edward Steichen, Botschaft von Luxemburg, Germany, 22 Apr – 21 May
2005: Hollywood Celebrity: Edward Steichen’s Vanity Fair Portraits, Multimedia Art Museum, Russia, 14 Mar – 14 May
2007: Steichen; une épopée photographique, Jeu de Paume, France, 9 Oct – 30 Dec
2008: Edward Steichen, Palazzo Magnani, Italy, 30 Apr – 8 Jun
2008: Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography / Une épopée photographique, Musée de l'Elysée, Switzerland, 18 Jan – 24 Mar
2008: Edward Steichen: Une Epopée Photographique, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Spain, 25 Jun – 22 Sep
2008 Edward Steichen: In High Fashion 1923-1937, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, 11 Jan – 30 Mar
2009: Edward Steichen: 1915-1923, Howard Greenberg Gallery, USA, 20 Mar – 16 May
2009: Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 11 Oct 2008 – 2 Jan
2009: Edward Steichen: In High Fashion the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937, Williams College Museum of Art, USA, 6 Jun – 8 Nov
2009: Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937, International Center of Photography, USA, 16 Jan – 3 May
2009: Edward Steichen: The Early Years, Museum of Photographic Arts, USA, 31 Jan – 17 May
2009/10: Edward Steichen. In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937, AGO Art Gallery Ontario, Canada, Canada, 26 Sep 2009 – 3 Jan 2010
2011: Edward Steichen: Celebrity Design, Museum Folkwang, Germany, 6 Nov 2010 – 16 Jan
2011: Edward Steichen: The Last Printing, Danziger Gallery, USA, 15 Sep – 29 Oct
2012: Edward Steichen: gli anni Condé Nast, Fondazione Sozzani, Italy, 20 Nov 2011 – 12 Feb
2013: Edward Steichen, Museum of Photography, Denmark, 12 Oct 2012 – 9 Feb
2013: In High Fashion: the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937, foam Fotografiemuseum Netherlands, 28 Jun – 6 Sep
2013: Modern Age Light and Shadow: 1923-1937, Setagaya Art Museum, Japan, 26 Jan – 7 Apr
2013: Talk of the Town: Portraits by Edward Steichen from the Hollander Collection, LACMA Museum, USA, 3 Aug – 8 Dec
2014: Sharp, Clear Pictures. Edward Steichen's World War I and Condé Nast Years, Art Institute of Chicago, USA, 28 Jun – 28 Sep
2014: Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, 18 Oct 2013 – 2 Mar
2014: Steichen in the 1920s and 1930s: A Recent Acquisition, Whitney Museum Art, USA, 6 Dec 2013 – 1 Aug
2014/ 2015: In High Fashion: Edward Steichen, The Conde Nast Years 1923 - 1937, Photographers' Gallery UK, 31 Oct 2014 – 18 Jan 2015
2015: Edward Steichen, Galerie Clairefontaine, Luxembourg, 8 Sep – 17 Oct
2015: Edward Steichen In High Fashion. The Condé Nast Years. 1923-1937, Multimedia Art Museum, Russia, 9 Sep – 22 Nov
2015: In High Fashion: Edward Steichen, WestLicht, Austria, 18 Feb – 24 May
2016 Making Meaning of a Legacy: Edward Steichen, Centre for Fine Arts - Bozar, Belgium, 13 Nov 2015 – 5 Jan
2017: Twentieth-Century Photographer Edward Steichen, DeCordova Museum, US, 7 Oct 2016 – 26 Mar
Group
1900 The New School of American Photography; Royal Photographic Society; London, England and Paris, France
1902 American Pictorial Photography; National Arts Club; New York, New York.
1904 Salon International de Photographie, Paris.
1905 Opening Exhibition; Little Galleries of the Photo Secession; New York, New York.
1906 Photographs Arranged by the Photo Secession; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1910 The Younger American Painters; Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession; New York, New York.
1910 International Exhibit of Pictorial Photography; Albright Art Gallery; Rochester, New York
1932 Murals by American Painters and Photographers; Museum of Modern Art; New York, New York
1955 The Family of Man, MOMA, New York (USA)
Bibliography
Steichen, Edward (1955). The Family of Man: The Greatest Photographic Exhibition of All Time. New York: Maco Pub. Co for the Museum of Modern Art.
DePietro, Anne Cohen (1985). The Paintings of Eduard Steichen. Huntington, NY: The Heckscher Museum. (Exhibition Catalog).
Sandeen, Eric J. (1995). Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950's America. University of New Mexico Press.
Niven, Penelope (1997). Steichen: A Biography. New York: Clarkson Potter. .
Smith, Joel (1999). Edward Steichen: The Early Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Haskell, Barbara (2000). Edward Steichen. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art.
DePietro, Anne Cohen; Goley, Mary Anne (2003). Eduard Steichen: Four Paintings in Context.Hollis Taggart Galleries.
Mitchell, Emily (2007). The Last Summer of the World. Norton. (A fictional narrative about Steichen.)
Gallery
References
External links
Edward Steichen official website
Works by Edward Steichen at the George Eastman Museum
The Steichen Family Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
Works by Edward Steichen - Oochens Series at the National Gallery of Art
Steichen Collection at the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art, Luxembourg
The Family of Man at Clervaux Castle, Luxembourg
Works by Edward Steichen - The Bitter Years at Waasertuerm Gallery, Luxembourg
Carl Sandburg Home, North Carolina from the National Park Service
Mary Steichen Calderone Papers at Schlesinger Library, Harvard University
Rodin and Steichen at Musee Rodin
Grace M. Mayer Papers at Museum of Modern Art
Alfred Stieglitz Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Carl Sandburg Papers at University of Illinois
American Expeditionary Force Photo Section (Steichen) Collection 1917-1919 at Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum
Edward J. Steichen World War II Navy Photographs Collection, 1941-1945 at Smithsonian, National Air and Space Museum
Works by Edward Steichen at the International Center of Photography
Alfred Stieglitz Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago
—David Joseph (DJ) Marcou's cover-story Edward Steichen, HonFRPS: Renaissance Man in March 2004 RPS Journal, pp. 72–75.
"From Luxembourg and America to the World: Edward Steichen's Photographic Legacy" at La Crosse History Unbound
Works by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art
Edward Steichen
1879 births
1973 deaths
American art curators
Photography critics
Photography curators
Fashion photographers
American portrait photographers
American war photographers
Photographers from New York (state)
Artists from New York City
People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
Vanity Fair (magazine) people
Vogue (magazine) people
Académie Julian alumni
Luxembourgian emigrants to the United States
20th-century American photographers
People from Redding, Connecticut
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
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389912
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael%20Oakeshott
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Michael Oakeshott
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Michael Joseph Oakeshott FBA (; 11 December 1901 – 19 December 1990) was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about the philosophies of history, religion, aesthetics, education, and law.
Biography
Early life and education
Oakeshott was the son of Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant (latterly divisional head in the Inland Revenue) and member of the Fabian Society, and Frances Maude, daughter of George Thistle Hellicar, a well-off Islington silk-merchant. Though there is no evidence that he knew her, he was related by marriage to the women's rights activist Grace Oakeshott, and to the economist and social reformer Gilbert Slater.
Michael Oakeshott attended St George's School, Harpenden, a new co-educational and 'progressive' boarding school from 1912 to 1920. He enjoyed his schooldays, and the Headmaster, the Rev. Cecil Grant, a disciple of Maria Montessori, later became a friend. In 1920, Oakeshott matriculated with a Scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read history, taking the Political Science options in both parts of the Tripos (Cambridge degree examinations). He graduated in 1923 with a first-class degree, subsequently (as is still normal at Cambridge) took an unexamined MA, and was elected a Fellow of Caius in 1925. While at Cambridge he admired the British idealist philosophers J. M. E. McTaggart and John Grote, and the medieval historian Zachary Nugent Brooke. He said that McTaggart's introductory lectures were the only formal philosophical training he ever received. The historian Herbert Butterfield was a contemporary, friend and fellow member of the Junior Historians society.
After graduation in 1923 he pursued his interests in theology and German literature in a summer course at the Universities of Marburg and Tuebingen, and again in 1925. In between, for a year, he taught literature as Senior English Master at King Edward VII Grammar School, Lytham St Anne's, while simultaneously writing his (successful) Fellowship dissertation, which he said was a 'dry run' for his first book, Experience and its Modes.
1930s
Oakeshott was dismayed by the political extremism that occurred in Europe during the 1930s, and his surviving lectures from this period reveal a dislike of Nazism and Marxism. He is said to have been the first at Cambridge to lecture on Marx. At the suggestion of Sir Ernest Barker, who wished to see Oakeshott succeed to his own Cambridge Chair of Political Science, in 1939 he produced an anthology, with commentary, of The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe. For all its muddle and incoherence (as he saw it), he found Representative Democracy the least unsatisfactory, in part because 'the imposition of a universal plan of life on a society is at once stupid and immoral'.
Second World War
Although in his essay "The Claim of Politics" (1939), Oakeshott defended individuals' right to eschew political commitment, he joined the British Army after the autumn of France in 1940, when he could have avoided conscription on grounds of age. He volunteered for the virtually suicidal Special Operations Executive (SOE), where the average life expectancy was about six weeks, and was interviewed by Hugh Trevor-Roper, but it was decided that he was "too unmistakably English" to conduct covert operations on the Continent. He saw active service in Europe with the battlefield intelligence unit Phantom, a semi-freelance quasi-Signals organisation which also had connections with the Special Air Service (SAS). Though always at the front, the unit was seldom directly involved in any actual fighting. Oakeshott's military competence did not go unnoticed, and he ended the war as Adjutant of Phantom's 'B' Squadron and acting major.
Postwar
In 1945 Oakeshott was demobilised and returned to Cambridge. In 1949 he left Cambridge for Nuffield College, Oxford, but after only two years, in 1951, he was appointed Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics (LSE), succeeding the leftist Harold Laski, an appointment noted by the popular press. Oakeshott was deeply unsympathetic to the student activism at LSE during the late 1960s, and highly critical of (as he saw it) the authorities' insufficiently robust response. He retired from the LSE in 1969, but continued teaching and conducting seminars until 1980.
In his retirement he retreated to live quietly in a country cottage in Langton Matravers in Dorset with his third wife. He was twice divorced and had numerous affairs, many of them with wives of his students, colleagues and friends, and even with his son Simon's girlfriend. He also had a son out of wedlock, whom he abandoned together with the mother when the child was two, and whom he did not meet again for nearly twenty years. Oakeshott's most famous lover was Iris Murdoch.
Oakeshott lived long enough to experience increasing recognition, although he has become much more widely written about since his death. Oakeshott declined an offer to be made a Companion of Honour, for which he was proposed by Margaret Thatcher.
Philosophy
Early works
Oakeshott's early work, some of which has been published posthumously as What is History? and Other Essays (2004) and The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence (2007), shows that he was more interested in the philosophical problems that derived from his historical studies than he was in the history, even though he was officially a historian. Some of his very early essays are on religion (of a Christian 'modernist' kind), though after his first marital break-up () he published no more on the topic except for a couple of pages in his magnum opus, titled On Human Conduct. However, his posthumously published and voluminous Notebooks (1919-) show a lifelong preoccupation with religion and questions of mortality. In his youth he had considered taking Holy Orders, but later inclined towards a non-specific Romantic mysticism.
Philosophy and modes of experience
Oakeshott published his first book in 1933, Experience and its Modes, when he was thirty-one. He acknowledged the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and F. H. Bradley; commentators also noticed resemblances between this work and the ideas of thinkers such as R. G. Collingwood and Georg Simmel.
The book argued that our experience is usually modal, in the sense that we almost always have a governing perspective on the world, be it practical or theoretical. One may take various theoretical approaches to the world: natural science, history and practice, for example, are quite separate, immiscible modes of experience. It is a mistake, he declared, to treat history on the model of the sciences, or to read into it one's current practical concerns.
Philosophy, however, is not a mode. At this stage of his career Oakeshott understood philosophy as the world seen, in Spinoza's phrase, , literally "under the aspect of eternity", free from presuppositions, whereas science and history and the practical mode rely on certain assumptions. Later (there is disagreement about exactly when) Oakeshott adopted a pluralistic view of the various modes of experience, with philosophy just one voice among others, though it retained its self-critical character.
According to Oakeshott, the dominating principles of scientific and historical thought are quantity (the world ) and pastness (the world ) respectively. Oakeshott distinguished the academic perspective on the past from the practical, in which the past is seen in terms of its relevance to our present and future. His insistence on the autonomy of history places him close to Collingwood, who also argued for the autonomy of historical knowledge.
The practical world view (the world ) presupposes the ideas of will and value. It is only in terms of these that practical action, for example in politics, economics, and ethics, makes sense. Because all action is conditioned by presuppositions, Oakeshott saw any attempt to change the world as reliant upon a scale of values, which themselves presuppose a context in which this is preferable to that. Even the conservative disposition to maintain the status quo (so long as the latter is tolerable) relies upon managing inevitable change, a point he later elaborated in his essay "On Being Conservative".
Post-war essays
During this period, Oakeshott published what became his best known work during his lifetime, the collection entitled Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962), and notable for its elegance of style. Some of his near-polemics against the direction that Britain was taking, in particular towards socialism, gained Oakeshott a reputation as a traditionalist conservative, sceptical about rationalism and rigid ideologies. Bernard Crick described him as a "lonely nihilist".
Oakeshott's opposition to political utopianism is summed up in his analogy (possibly borrowed from a pamphlet by the 17th-century statesman George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, The Character of a Trimmer) of a ship of state that has "neither starting-place nor appointed destination...[and where] the enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel". He was a severe critic of E. H. Carr, the Cambridge historian of Soviet Russia, claiming that Carr was fatally uncritical of the Bolshevik regime and took some of its propaganda at face value.
On Human Conduct and Oakeshott's political theory
In his essay "On Being Conservative" (1956) Oakeshott characterised conservatism as a disposition rather than a political stance: "To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."
Oakeshott's political philosophy, as advanced in On Human Conduct (1975), is free of any recognisable party politics. The book's first part ("On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct") develops a theory of human action as the exercise of intelligent agency in activities such as wanting and choosing, the second ("On the Civil Condition") discusses the formal conditions of association appropriate to such intelligent agents, described as "civil" or legal association, and the third ("On the Character of a Modern European State") examines how far this understanding of human association has affected politics and political ideas in post-Renaissance European history.
Oakeshott suggests that there had been two major modes or understandings of political organization. In the first, which he calls "enterprise association" (or ), the state is (illegitimately) understood as imposing some universal purpose (profit, salvation, progress, racial domination) on its subjects. (As its name indicates, enterprise association is perfectly appropriate to the management of enterprises; however, except in emergencies such as war, where all resources must be commandeered into the pursuit of victory, the state is not an enterprise, properly so called.) By contrast, "civil association" (or ) is primarily a legal relationship in which laws impose obligatory conditions of action but do not require the associates to choose one action rather than another. (Compare Robert Nozick on 'side-constraints'.)
The complex, technical and often rebarbative style of On Human Conduct found few readers, and its initial reception was mostly one of bafflement. Oakeshott, who rarely responded to critics, replied sardonically in Political Theory to some of the contributions made in a symposium on the book in the same journal.
In his posthumously published The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism Oakeshott describes enterprise associations and civil associations in different terms. In politics, an enterprise association is based on a fundamental faith in human ability to ascertain and grasp some universal good (leading to the Politics of Faith), and civil association is based on a fundamental scepticism about human ability to either ascertain or achieve this good (leading to the Politics of Scepticism). Oakeshott considers power (especially technological power) as a necessary prerequisite for the Politics of Faith, because it allows people to believe that they can achieve something great and to implement the policies necessary to achieve their goal. The Politics of Scepticism, on the other hand, rests on the idea that government should concern itself with preventing bad things from happening, rather than enabling ambiguously good events. Oakeshott was presumably dissatisfied with this book, which, like much of what he wrote, he never published. It was evidently written well before On Human Conduct.
In the latter book Oakeshott employs the analogy of the adverb to describe the kind of restraint that law involves. Laws prescribe "adverbial conditions": they condition our actions, but they do not determine their substantive chosen ends. For example, the law against murder is not a law against killing as such, but only a law against killing "murderously". Or, to choose a more trivial example, the law does not dictate that I have a car, but if I do, I must drive it on the same side of the road as everybody else. This contrasts with the rules of enterprise associations, in which the actions required by the management are made compulsory for all.
Philosophy of history
In the final work that Oakeshott published in his lifetime, On History (1983), he returned to the idea that history is a distinct mode of experience, but this time building on the theory of action developed in On Human Conduct. Much of On History had emerged from Oakeshott's post-retirement graduate seminars at LSE, and had been written at the same time as On Human Conduct, in the early 1970s.
During the mid-1960s Oakeshott declared an admiration for Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the pioneers of hermeneutics. On History can be interpreted as an essentially neo-Kantian enterprise of working out the conditions of the possibility of historical knowledge, work that Dilthey had begun.
The first three essays set out the distinction between the present of historical experience and the present of practical experience, as well as the concepts of historical situation, historical event, and what is meant by change in history. On History includes an essay on jurisprudence ("The Rule of Law"). It also includes a retelling of The Tower of Babel in a modern setting in which Oakeshott expresses disdain for human willingness to sacrifice individuality, culture, and quality of life for grand collective projects. He attributes this behaviour to fascination with novelty, persistent dissatisfaction, greed, and lack of self-reflection.
Other works
Oakeshott's other works included a reader, already mentioned, on The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe. It consisted of selected texts illustrating the main doctrines of liberalism, national socialism, fascism, communism, and Roman Catholicism (1939). He edited Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1946), with an introduction that has been recognised as a significant contribution to the literature by some later scholars. Several of Oakeshott's writings on Hobbes were collected and published in 1975 as Hobbes on Civil Association.
With his Cambridge colleague Guy Thompson Griffith, Oakeshott wrote A Guide to the Classics, or How to Pick The Derby Winner (1936), a guide to the principles of successful betting on horse-racing. This was his only published non-academic work.
Oakeshott was the author of well over 150 essays and reviews, most of which have now been republished.
Just before he died Oakeshott approved two edited collections of his works, The Voice of Liberal Learning (1989), a collection of his essays on education, and a second, revised and expanded edition of Rationalism in Politics (1991). Posthumous collections of his writings include Morality and Politics in Modern Europe (1993), a lecture series he gave at Harvard in 1958; Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life (1993), essays mostly from his early and middle periods; and The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism (1996), an already-mentioned manuscript from the 1950s contemporary with much of Rationalism in Politics but written in a more considered tone.
The bulk of his papers are now in the Oakeshott Archive at the London School of Economics. Further volumes of posthumous writings are in preparation, as is a biography, and a series of monographs devoted to his work were published during the first decade of the 21st century, and continue to be produced.
Bibliography
1933. Experience and Its Modes. Cambridge University Press
1936. A Guide to the Classics, or, How to Pick the Derby Winner. With G.T. Griffith. London: Faber and Faber
1939. The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
1941. The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
1942. The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe with five additional prefaces by F.A. Ogg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
1947. A New Guide to the Derby: How to Pick the Winner. With G.T. Griffith. London: Faber and Faber
1955. La Idea de Gobierno en la Europa Moderna. Madrid: Ateneo
1959. The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind: an essay. Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes
1962. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. London: Methuen (Expanded edition – 1991, by Liberty Fund)
1966. Rationalismus in der Politik. (trans. K. Streifthau) Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhard
1975. On Human Conduct. Oxford: Oxford University Press
1975. Hobbes on Civil Association. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
1983. On History and Other Essays. Basil Blackwell
1985. La Condotta Umana. Bologna: Società Editrice il Mulino
1989. The Voice of Liberal Learning. New Haven and London: Yale University Press
Posthumous
1991. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Press
1993. Morality and Politics in Modern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press
1993. Religion, Politics, and the Moral Life. New Haven: Yale University Press
1996. The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism. New Haven: Yale University Press
2000. Zuversicht und Skepsis: Zwei Prinzipien neuzeitlicher Politik. (trans. C. Goldmann). Berlin: Fest
2004. What Is History? And Other Essays. Thorverton: Imprint Academic
2006. Lectures in the History of Political Thought. Thorverton: Imprint Academic
2007. The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926–51. Thorverton: Imprint Academic
2008. The Vocabulary of a Modern European State: Essays and Reviews 1952–88. Thorverton: Imprint Academic
2010. Early Political Writings 1925–30. Thorverton: Imprint Academic
References
Further reading
Corey Abel & Timothy Fuller, eds. The Intellectual Legacy of Michael Oakeshott (Imprint Academic, 2005, )
Corey Abel, ed, The meanings of Michael Oakeshott's Conservatism (Imprint Academic, 2010, )
Elizabeth Campbell Corey, Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics (University of Missouri Press, 2006, )
Paul Franco, Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction (Yale, 2004, )
Paul Franco & Leslie Marsh, eds, A Companion to Michael Oakeshott (Penn State University Press, 2012) .
Robert Grant, Oakeshott (The Claridge Press, 1990).
W. H. Greenleaf, Oakeshott's Philosophical Politics (Longmans, 1966).
Alexandre Guilherme and W. John Morgan, 'Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990)-dialogue as conversation'. Chapter 8 in Philosophy, Dialogue, and Education: Nine modern European philosophers, Routledge, London and New York, pp. 127–139. .
Till Kinzel, Michael Oakeshott. Philosoph der Politik (Perspektiven, 9) (Antaios, 2007, )
Terry Nardin, The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (Penn State, 2001, )
Efraim Podoksik, In Defence of Modernity: Vision and Philosophy in Michael Oakeshott (Imprint Academic, 2003, )
Efraim Podoksik, ed, The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott (Cambridge University Press, 2012) .
Andrew Sullivan, Intimations Pursued: The Voice of Practice in the Conversation of Michael Oakeshott (Imprint Academic, 2007)
External links
Michael Oakeshott Association
The Michael Oakeshott Bibliography
Michael Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics". Cambridge Journal, Volume I, 1947 (broken link – go through your State or Provincial library's subscription service)
Catalogue of the Oakeshott papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.
1901 births
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20th-century British non-fiction writers
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver%20Evans
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Oliver Evans
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Oliver Evans (September 13, 1755 – April 15, 1819) was an American inventor, engineer and businessman born in rural Delaware and later rooted commercially in Philadelphia. He was one of the first Americans building steam engines and an advocate of high pressure steam (as opposed to low pressure steam). A pioneer in the fields of automation, materials handling and steam power, Evans was one of the most prolific and influential inventors in the early years of the United States. He left behind a long series of accomplishments, most notably designing and building the first fully automated industrial process, the first high-pressure steam engine, and the first (albeit crude) amphibious vehicle and American automobile.
Born in Newport, Delaware, Evans received little formal education and in his mid-teens was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Going into business with his brothers, he worked for over a decade designing, building and perfecting an automated mill with devices such as bucket chains and conveyor belts. In doing so Evans designed a continuous process of manufacturing that required no human labor. This novel concept would prove critical to the Industrial Revolution and the development of mass production. Later in life Evans turned his attention to steam power, and built the first high-pressure steam engine in the United States in 1801, developing his design independently of Richard Trevithick, who built the first in the world a year earlier. Evans was a driving force in the development and adoption of high-pressure steam engines in the United States. Evans dreamed of building a steam-powered wagon and would eventually construct and run one in 1805. Known as the Oruktor Amphibolos, it was the first automobile in the country and the world's first amphibious vehicle, although it was too primitive to be a success as either.
Evans was a visionary who produced designs and ideas far ahead of their time. He was the first to describe vapor-compression refrigeration and propose a design for the first refrigerator in 1805, but it would be three decades until his colleague Jacob Perkins would be able to construct a working example. Similarly, he drew up designs for a solar boiler, machine gun, steam-carriage gearshift, dough-kneading machine, perpetual baking oven, marine salvage process, quadruple-effect evaporator, and a scheme for urban gas lighting, ideas and designs which would not be made reality until some time after his death. Evans had influential backers and political allies, but lacked social graces and was disliked by many of his peers. Disappointed and then angry at the perceived lack of recognition for his contributions, Evans became combative and bitter in later years, which damaged his reputation and left him isolated. Despite the importance of his work, his contributions were frequently overlooked (or attributed to others after his death) so he never became a household name alongside the other steam pioneers of his era.
Early life, 1755–83
Oliver Evans was born in Newport, Delaware on September 13, 1755, to Charles and Ann Stalcop Evans. His father was a cordwainer by trade, though he purchased a large farm to the north of Newport on the Red Clay Creek and moved his family there when Oliver was still in his infancy. Oliver was the fifth of twelve children; he had four sisters and seven brothers. Little else is known of Evans's early life, and surviving records provide few details as to his formative years. The nature and location of his early education has not been preserved, however his literacy was demonstrably strong from a young age, both as a writer and an avid reader on technical subjects. Aged 17, Evans was apprenticed to a wheelwright and wagon-maker in Newport. An anecdote from the period recalls that his master, an illiterate and extremely frugal man, forbade Evans the use of candles to illuminate his reading in the evenings. Evans found another way by collecting scraps and shavings of wood from his work during the day to serve as fuel for small fires. The Revolutionary War began when Evans was 19. He enlisted in a Delaware militia company, but saw no active service during the war.
By the age of 22, Evans moved out of wheel-making and became a specialist in forming the fine wire used in textile cards, which were used to comb fibers in preparation for the spinning process to make thread or yarn. A desire to increase the efficiency of this process led him to his first invention—a machine which would bend wire into teeth and cut them off rapidly to aid the assembly of cards. George Latimer, then a justice of the peace in Newport, saw its potential and tasked a blacksmith with creating the machine, which became one of Evans's early successes when it was introduced in 1778. Evans wished to go further in mechanizing the production of textile cards by developing a machine which could puncture the leather into which the wire teeth were inserted. His invention greatly speeded the card manufacturing process, producing around 1,500 teeth every minute, though Evans himself was unable to find financial backing to commercialize his invention. Nevertheless, over the next two decades card manufacturing innovations inspired by Evans's led to the development of automated textile card production, then in great demand due to the growth of the Southern cotton industry. Early pioneers of mechanized textile-card production, including Giles Richards and Amos Whittemore, are thought to have borrowed heavily from his original designs.
Evans also began experimenting in this period with steam power and its potential for commercial application. His early ideas culminated in a Delaware state patent application in 1783 for a steam-powered wagon, but it was denied as Evans had yet to produce a working model. That same year, aged 27, Evans married Sarah Tomlinson, daughter of a local farmer, in Old Swedes' Episcopal Church in Wilmington.
Developing the automatic flour mill, 1783–90
Evans's attention turned to flour milling in the early 1780s, an industry which was booming in rapidly industrializing northern Delaware. In this era, the operation of grist mills was labor-intensive. Although the stages of the milling process—grinding, cooling, sifting and packing—were beginning to be mechanized to various degrees, gravity or manual labor was required to move grain from one stage to the next. Additionally, some stages (particularly cooling) were slow and inefficient, creating significant production process bottlenecks. Mills were becoming commonplace in populated areas and those with ready access to waterways for power, but the bulk of milling in the 1780s was done in the home through hand milling. Furthermore, the quality of milled wheat was poor in colonial America. Hard wheat varieties were insufficiently ground and sifted by mills, leaving a flour that was coarse and brown. Cross-contamination was a major problem: mill processes were not well-partitioned; the many people moving about the mill contaminated the flour with dirt, grain and other impurities. The end result, Evans recognized, was a low quality product that took too many laborers to make.
In 1783, two of Evans's brothers began building a mill in Newport on part of the family's farm estate which they purchased from their father, and Evans was recruited to oversee its construction on the Red Clay Creek. When the mill opened in 1785 it was of a conventional design, but over the next five years Evans began to experiment with inventions to reduce the reliance upon labor for milling. Moving wheat from the bottom to the top of the mill to begin the process was the most onerous task of all in contemporary mills. Evans's first innovation was a bucket elevator to facilitate this process. Chains of buckets to raise water was a Roman technology that had been used in various guises since antiquity. Evans had seen diagrams of their use for marine applications and realized with some modification and careful engineering they could be used to raise grain, so a series of bucket elevators around a mill could move grain and flour from one process to the next. Another labor-intensive task was that of spreading meal. This came out of the grinding process warm and moist, needing cooling and drying before it could be sifted and packed. Traditionally the task was done by manually shoveling meal across large floors. In response, Evans developed the "hopper boy", a device which gathered meal from a bucket elevator and spread it evenly over the drying floor—a mechanical rake would revolve around the floorspace. This would even out newly deposited meal for cooling and drying, while a gentle incline in the design of the rake blades would slowly move the flour towards central chutes, from which the material would be sifted. Used in conjunction, the two innovations saved many hours of labor and greatly reduced the risk of contamination.
Despite their technical complexity, neither device was revolutionary by the standards of the time. However, the total vision of their design was. Evans was attempting a radical shift in thinking about the manufacturing process, treating it as a continuous integrated whole rather than a series of isolated processes. Thus, manufacturing could be a fully automated production line. The missing link was materials handling, and Evans's mill designs sought to feed materials continuously through a system without the need for any human intervention. This was the first fully automated industrial process, and the idea of continuous production was proved to be a critical ingredient of the industrial revolution, and would ultimately lay the foundation for modern mass production.
Constructing the machinery to realize this vision was complicated. Evans struggled to find the money to pay the highly skilled carpenters needed to construct his complex machines. The nearby flour milling industry on the Brandywine River was large, but dominated by the Quaker millers of Wilmington who saw little potential in Evans's designs. James Latimer, a Newport flour merchant upon hearing Evans's ideas exclaimed "Ah! Oliver, you cannot make water run uphill, you cannot make wooden millers!" Latimer's son, George, however once more saw the promise in Evans's ideas and helped him to secure patent protection over the inventions throughout 1787 and 1788. By this time Evans converted his brothers' mill at Red Clay Creek into a fully automated prototype based on his perfected designs, and the Evans brothers sent handbills and diagrams to the major milling centers of the United States offering free licensing of the designs for the first miller in each county who would commission Evans to refit their mills. Yet this campaign was to prove a major disappointment, and little commercial interest materialized.
Evans lacked patience however, and coupled with a prickly disposition, was prone to display frustration and bewilderment towards those who could not immediately see the value of his ideas. His ideas and designs were often far ahead of their time, and the idea of a fully automated production process was difficult for contemporaries to comprehend. Evans recalled when some Brandywine millers happened to visit the Red Clay Creek mill in the early years of its operation after it was fully automated. He was alone at the mill that day and making hay in a nearby field, and purposely stayed out of sight so his visitors could observe the mill running independently without human supervision. Evans then appeared and at great length explained how the feat they witnessed was possible, and was convinced that the chance visit would bring about a breakthrough with the Brandywine millers. However, he was frustrated at reports that the millers returned to Wilmington and reported that the Evans mill was "a set of rattletraps, unworthy the notice of any man of sense". Disinterest continued even after Evans convinced a Brandywine miller to have his mill converted.
After years of persistence and attempts at marketing, Evans's designs were finally given a trial on larger scales and adopted elsewhere. A breakthrough came in 1789 when the Ellicotts, a progressively minded Quaker family in Baltimore, invited Evans to refit their mills on the Patapsco River. The refits proved a success, and Evans worked with Jonathan Ellicott to develop a modified form of Archimedean screw that could act as a horizontal conveyor to work alongside the vertically orientated bucket elevators. He added a rake-drill and conveyor belt to his designs, and now possessed a full complement of materials handling machines for just about every possible configuration. In 1790, Evans moved from Newport to Wilmington and constructed a working model of his designs in the town. Evans's inventions were given a major boost when leading miller Joseph Tatnall converted his mills to the Evans system, and estimated that in one year the changes saved his operation a small fortune amounting to $37,000. Local millers quickly followed suit, and Brandywine Village was soon a showcase for Evans's milling technology. After almost a decade, the Brandywine millers were finally convinced, and within a short period automated mills began to spread across the eastern seaboard. In 1790, upon introduction of federal patent law, Evans immediately applied for protection for his milling designs and was granted the third US patent, with his application personally examined and approved by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney-General Edmund Randolph.
Writer and merchant, 1790–1801
Having secured patent protection for his designs and general adoption by the Brandywine millers, Evans now turned his attention outside Delaware. His brother Joseph travelled widely to promote Evans's work, and according to some sources, by 1792 over one hundred mills were operating Evans machinery. When George Washington called upon Joseph Tatnall in 1790 to thank him for the flour he provided to feed the Continental Army during the War of Independence, he saw Evans's technology at work in the mills in Brandywine Village and was so impressed that had his own gristmill at Mount Vernon converted to the Evans system in 1791, the completion of which was overseen by Evans's brothers. In 1793, Evans sold his share in the Red Clay Creek mill and moved his family from Wilmington to Philadelphia, where he opened a store for milling supplies.
His early years in Philadelphia though were dominated by writing. Initially Evans intended to write a pamphlet to assist millers in the construction of milling machinery, as well as promoting his own automated designs. However, Evans became so engrossed in the project that he ultimately devoted several years to writing a comprehensive book on milling technology that included long chapters on the basic principles of physics, hydraulics and mechanics; at times neglecting his family's financial security in order to complete it. The Young Mill-wright and Miller's Guide when it appeared consisted of five parts: 'Principles of Mechanics and Hydraulics', 'Of the different Kinds of Mills', 'Description of the Author's Improvements', 'On the Manufacturing of Grain into Flour', 'Ellicott's Plans for Building Mills', and a lengthy appendix in which Evans detailed various ideas for other inventions, such as a hot-air system of central heating. Thomas Ellicott, whose family were early adopters of Evans's designs in Baltimore, contributed a section on mill construction. Much of the theoretical work of the book was based on earlier scientific work on mechanical principles, yet Evans insisted that theoretical sections align with observations in the practical sections, and hence often revised standing theories to comport with experiments he conducted and observations he made. For example, he found what was written on the theoretical mechanical principles of waterwheels did not match what he could replicate in practice, so he revised them based on observation to form a "true theory" and concluded that "neither the old or new theories agree with practice, therefore we must suspect that they are founded on error. But if, what I call the true theory, should continue to agree with practice, the practitioner need not care on what it is founded."
The guide's list of subscribers was topped by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph when the first edition appeared in print in 1795. The book proved very popular and remained a staple manual for millers for over half a century, undergoing several revisions and fifteen printed editions between 1795 and 1860. The book's popularity rested on its detailed practical explanations of mill design and construction, and as the principal guidebook for American milling it would not be superseded until after the Civil War.
After the publication of the Guide, Evans concentrated on his work as a milling supply merchant and gaining financial security through licensing his patented designs. With enough millers now using Evans's machinery, adoption began to accelerate rapidly after 1800, as did his considerable wealth from the license fees. In these years Evans concentrated on growing his commercial operations in Philadelphia, expanding his store several times, becoming an agent for English imports, and taking on blacksmiths to complete more complicated metal work for mills. All the while Evans continued to refine various elements of mill design, including patenting a new process for making millstones and developing a screw mill for grinding plaster of Paris, which was in great demand in Philadelphia for stucco work. Evans and his younger brother Evan, along with blacksmith Thomas Clark, developed a device for packing flour barrels using a wooden disc operating by a compound lever and a toggle joint.
Developing the high-pressure steam engine, 1801–06
Steam engines appeared in the United States as a source of power in the late 18th century, and living in Delaware and Philadelphia meant Evans was exposed to early examples of their application there. John Fitch had launched the first rudimentary steamboat onto the Delaware River in the late 1780s, and the Philadelphia waterworks was by 1802 operating two low-pressure steam engines to pump water from the Schuylkill River, but these were rare examples and most instances of this new technology were to be found in Europe. Much of the development of steam power had occurred in Great Britain, with Thomas Newcomen and James Watt instrumental in developing and commercializing steam power there and elsewhere in Europe, with several hundred of machines operating there in industrial and labor-saving applications by 1800.
Evans had first begun to consider the potential applications of steam power for transportation while still an apprentice in the 1780s, and had developed rudimentary designs for 'steam carriages' in the 1790s. In 1801, Evans definitively began work on making his long-held dream of a steam carriage a reality, although British engineers such as Richard Trevithick had already begun work on such ideas. Other early steam engineers, most notably Watt contemporary, William Murdoch, had developed plans for a steam-propelled carriage incorporating a heavy flywheel, in which pressure was converted directly to rotary power, however it became apparent in experimentation that a low-pressure, rotary steam engine would never be powerful enough to propel a carriage of any weight forward. Evans's attention thus turned to a reciprocating engine, not only for his steam carriage ideas, but also for industrial application. Importantly, Evans became an early proponent, like Trevithick, of 'strong steam' or high-pressure engines, an idea long resisted by Watt and earlier steam pioneers because the necessary iron making and metal working technology was lacking in America. Evans recognized that a high-pressure steam engine would be essential to the development of a steam carriage because they could be built far smaller while providing similar or greater power outputs to low-pressure equivalents. Some experiments with high-pressure steam engines had been made in Europe, most notably Trevithick's Puffing Devil, in 1801, and his later London Steam Carriage of 1803, which circumvented Watt's condenser patent by simply removing it. The prevailing fear of early steam engineering, however, was that no boiler could safely contain high-pressure steam. Watt, for example, wanted to have Trevithick imprisoned because of the danger his high-pressure engines introduced. Evans ignored the potential drawbacks, and developed similarly different designs of engines operating at high-pressure while eliminating Watt's condenser. His designs also incorporated a grasshopper beam, a double-acting cylinder, and four steam valves, very similar to Trevithick's designs. Each valve was independently operated by one of four cams. The resulting design was a high-pressure steam engine that had a higher power-to-weight ratio than Newcomen engines, setting it among the ranks of other engineers' engines in their quest to make locomotives and steamboats practical. These engines were also mechanically simpler than condensing engines, making them less costly to build and maintain, and did not require large volumes of condensing water. These features made the engines equally well suited for a variety of industrial applications.
As with the automated mill, Evans's ideas were harshly criticized by other engineers—most notably some of the Philadelphia engineering community including the influential Benjamin Latrobe. As it happened, Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick had previously developed nearly identical ideas in favor of high-pressure engines and begun to experiment with them in developing the first locomotives, but it is assumed Evans was unaware of Trevithick's work.
Constructing his designs proved far more difficult than Evans initially envisaged—with just six working steam engines in the United States at this time, and a handful of workshops with any experience making them, it took Evans much of his savings and two years to yield a working example to display to the public in 1803. This first engine was powered by a double-acting cylinder six inches in diameter and with a piston stroke length of eighteen inches. Many components, such as the flywheel and crosshead, were made of wood in order to simplify construction. The boiler, the engineering of which was critical to the safe operation of the engine, consisted of a large copper shell encased in wood and cast iron rings in order to contain the pressure. The output of the machine was approximately five horsepower. This work output was modest by contemporary standards—the low-pressure engine of the nearby waterworks produced about twelve horsepower. But his steam engine was just a fraction of the size of pre-existing machines—the waterworks machine was over twenty-five times larger in volume. Evans unveiled his engine at his store and put it to work crushing plaster of Paris and, more sensationally, sawing slabs of marble. The showmanship paid off, and thousands came to see the machine in operation, while the Philadelphia newspaper Aurora declared "a new era in the history of the steam engine."
Oruktor Amphibolos
Evans received a patent for his new steam engine in 1804, and set about looking for commercial applications. The first of his proposals was for the Lancaster Turnpike Company. He proposed to construct a steam wagon with the capacity to carry 100 barrels of flour between Philadelphia and Lancaster in two days, which by his estimation would greatly increase profits compared to the equivalent five horse wagons, for whom the trip took three days. Evans declared in his proposal that "I have no doubt but that my engines will propel boats against the current of the Mississippi, and waggons on turnpike roads with great profit." With the company unsure of the reliability and cost of the technology, the proposal was rejected.
Despite this setback, within a year Evans had found a client. The Philadelphia Board of Health was concerned with the problem of dredging and cleaning the city's dockyards and removing sandbars: in 1805 Evans convinced them to contract him to develop a steam-powered dredge. The result was the Oruktor Amphibolos, or "Amphibious Digger". The vessel consisted of a flat-bottomed scow with bucket chains to bring up mud and hooks to clear away sticks, stones and other obstacles. Power for the dredging equipment and propulsion was supplied by a high-pressure Evans engine. The end result was a craft nearly thirty feet long, twelve feet wide and weighing some seventeen tons. To move this ungainly hulk to the waterfront, as well to give a demonstration of his long-held beliefs in the possibility of land-based steam transportation, Evans mounted the hull on four wheels (twice, as the first set collapsed under the weight) and connected the engine to them in order to drive the Oruktor from his workshop through the Philadelphia streets on the way to the Schuylkill River on July 13, 1805. The Oruktor Amphibolos is thus believed to have been the first automobile in the United States, and the first motorized amphibious craft in the world. However, very few contemporary accounts of the craft survive, and Evans's tendency to exaggerate its success in his own annals make verification of its performance difficult. Although Evans himself claimed it proceeded successfully around Philadelphia (and circled his erstwhile rival Benjamin Latrobe's Philadelphia waterworks) before launching into the river and paddling at speed to Philadelphia harbor; the great weight of the craft make land-propulsion based on its limited engine capacity and jury-rigged power train fairly improbable over any significant distance. It is similarly unknown how well, if at all, the Oruktor functioned as a steamboat, and Evans's claims on this point vary significantly over the years. Nevertheless, it is known that the invention proved ineffective for its ostensible purpose as a dredger, and it was scrapped for parts by the Board of Health in 1808. Nevertheless, Evans's ideas of steam carriages were not an impossible dream. Evans would continue to promote the idea. In 1812 he published a futuristic description of a world connected by a network of shipping lines railroad tracks and steam locomotives, accurately describing what will happen in the future. long before any such potential could be realized:
"The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines, from one city to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles in an hour"The Italian automobile model company, Brumm, made a 1/43 scale model of this steam carriage in their 'Old Fire' series, a series of 8 models of important early steam vehicles. It is no longer in production. It is fairly basic but it seems faithful representation judging by the images of the original to be found online. A rarely modelled example of a vehicle from this period.
Steam Engineer's Guide
Evans frequently quarrelled with fellow inventors and engineering peers over steam technology in the mid-1800s. His increasing frustration led to his premature publication of what he had hoped would be the equivalent of his earlier manual for millers—the petulantly titled The Abortion of the Young Steam Engineer's Guide. The Steam Engineer's Guide was significantly shorter than this first book and less structured in its approach. A third of the book is devoted to an ongoing argument between Evans and John Stevens (another prominent steam engineer of the day), much of which had previously appeared in the journal The Medical Repository and to which now Evans added various additional criticisms of Stevens' contentions. Evans concludes his book by renouncing inventing and any further work on his designs, complaining of the ingratitude of the public and the unprofitability of the endeavour, although this would prove to be just one of many such assertions by Evans over the coming years. Regardless, the Steam Engineer's Guide proved to be a popular work, though not on the same scale as his guide to milling, however it was the first book in the United States to make accessible to anyone ideas and techniques for steam engineering.
The book begins with an introductory discussion of the principles of steam engines and the relevant physical principles, as well as designs for the Evans high-pressure steam engine, boilers, screw-mills and others. Evans developed a similar suite of tools and tables for potential steam engineers as he had for potential millers, such as tables itemizing the heat and pressure tolerances of various metals, instructions for assembling the basic components of a steam-powered system, and schematics for useful components such as valves and boilers. Evans also used the book to justify the safety of high-pressure steam engines if properly constructed, despite the fact that by this time Evans himself had experienced several boiler explosions in his workshop. However, thermodynamics were little understood in his time. As such, many of Evans's theoretical contentions, including the 'grand principle' of steam he develops to guide the mathematical modelling of pressure and fuel in steam engines, were substantially flawed. Although Evans was to be quite successful in the development of high-pressure steam engines (and his designs were widely used), his theoretical understanding of them was limited and he was generally unable to accurately predict the inputs and outputs of his machines. The guide also indulged in a far wider range of topics of interest to Evans, including a compendium of inventions from others which he deemed to be worthy of further circulation—such as a straw-cutter and flour press developed by his brother Evan, and a horse-drawn scraper and earth mover invented by Gershom Johnson. Evans also used the opportunity to encourage government sponsorship of research:
"If government would, at the expense of uncertainty, employ ingenious persons, in every art and science, to make with care every experiment that might lead to the extension of our knowledge of principles, carefully recording the experiments and results so that they might be fully relied on, and leaving readers to draw their own inferences, the money would be well expended; for it would tend greatly to aid the progress of improvement in the arts and sciences."
This suggestion stemmed from the observation that many engineers relied on the basic principles of physics and mechanics to guide their work, and yet this often required inventors and engineers to become scientists as well to obtain experimental data—something that they were rarely qualified or resourced to do. Short of government funding of such research, Evans also attempted to create in the aftermath of the Steam Engineer's Guide what he called 'The Experiment Company', which would be a private research consortium to conduct reliable experiments and gather data for the benefits of subscribed members. The venture failed and Evans could find no paying stockholders to launch it, possibly due to Evans committing the new venture to developing a steam wagon of his own design. The Franklin Institute would be founded in Philadelphia a few years after Evans's death on similar principles.
Refrigeration
Despite an incomplete understanding of the principles behind them, in some ways Evans's thinking about the potential for steam engines was once again far ahead of its time. In the postscript of the Steam Engineer's Guide, Evans noted that drawing a vacuum on water reduces its boiling point and cools it. He further observed that a vacuum would have the same effect upon ether, and the resulting cooling should be sufficient to produce ice. He went on to describe a piston vacuum pump apparatus to produce this effect, and also showed that a compression cylinder, or the compression stroke of the vacuum pump, should produce heat in a condenser. Thus Evans had produced the first detailed and theoretically coherent design for a vapor-compression refrigerator, identifying all the major components (expander, cooling coil, compressor and condenser) of a refrigeration cycle, leaving some to credit him as the 'grandfather of refrigeration'. Although Evans never developed a working model of his designs, and there is no evidence that he ever attempted to, Evans in his later life worked and associated extensively with fellow inventor Jacob Perkins on steam engines and the potential for refrigeration. Perkins would later develop and build a refrigeration device for which he received patents in 1834–1835, employing much the same principles originally put forward by Evans.
Mars Works, 1806–12
Having, in his view, perfected many of his ideas and designs for steam engines, Evans turned his attention once more to the commercial propagation of his inventions. His first steam engines had been constructed on an ad-hoc basis, often with improvised tools and workers, and he had relied heavily on blacksmiths and other metal-working shops in Philadelphia with little experience in the more precise metal-work required to build steam engines. In particular, Evans soon realized that unlike his milling machines of wood and leather he would need specialist skills, precision tools and a large foundry in order to build steam machines on a commercial basis. Thus, Evans constructed the Mars Works on a large site a few blocks north of his store in Philadelphia. The choice of name, after the Roman god of war, is thought to have been aspirational and a challenge to the Soho Foundry near Birmingham in the United Kingdom, famous for building the Watt and Boulton engines. Indeed, the completed Mars Works was one of the largest and best equipped outfits of its kind in the United States—by contemporary accounts it featured a substantial foundry, moldmaker's shop, blacksmith's shops, millstone maker, a steam engine works and a large steam engine of its own to grind materials and work wrought iron. With over thirty-five staff, the Mars Works produced a wide range of manufactures ranging from working steam engines to cast iron fittings, as well as milling and farming machines for Evans's now well-established agricultural clientele. Steam engine orders alone proved insufficient to support the extensive business costs; hence the works became highly experienced in producing all kinds of heavy machinery, contributing to Philadelphia's emergence as a leading center for such work in the 19th century. Indeed, the works even received military orders, casting naval cannons during the War of 1812. Evans also proved highly innovative in designing steam power solutions for his clients. In one example where the Mars Works was commissioned to build engines for wool processing factories in Middletown, Connecticut, Evans designed a network of accompanying pipes with radiators to heat the factory with engine exhaust.
Although there are no records as to the designs of the early steam engines produced by the Mars Works, Evans's most famous engine design appeared around 1812. Called the Columbian Engine as a patriotic gesture, it would prove to be the most advanced and successful steam engine design created by Evans—he brought to bear his now extensive experience in designing and building high-pressure steam engines. This horizontally oriented engine allowed the crankshaft and piston rod to work closely together at one end of the machine, thus reducing the need for a heavy working beam like those required for conventional engines. The piston rod itself was kept working to a straight line while by a new type of linkage wherein two sets of pivoted bars guided the movements of the working bar. This linkage is still known as the Evans straight-line linkage, though it was superseded within a few years by more precise straight line mechanisms. The Columbian was also the culmination of the grasshopper-style of steam engine. Perfected designs like the Columbian saw a popularization of the grasshopper-style and its wide use in a range of applications. In 1813 he made the decision to introduce a condenser to the Columbian design. This significantly cut the running cost to the engine, and at this point his engines were as efficient and powerful as low-pressure Watt-Boulton designs, yet far cheaper to build and smaller in size. Within a year 27 Columbian engines were operating or under construction in applications ranging from sawmilling and grain milling to the manufacturing of paper, wire and wool.
Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company
As the reputation of the Mars Works grew, so too did the demand for its products. After a few years the Mars Works began exporting its engines inland. Oliver Evans's son George was the first such order, having moved to Pittsburgh in 1809 to operate the Pittsburgh Steam Flour Mill. George and the mill were highly successful, and generated a great deal of interest in Evans's engines across the interior. However exporting engines to western Pennsylvania, Kentucky or Ohio was challenging and expensive from a logistical perspective. In 1811 Evans and George, as well as another successful steam miller and engineer Luther Stephens, founded the Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company, which in addition to engines would, like the Mars Works, produce heavy machinery and castings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With high demand for industrial products and relatively little industrial capacity, the Pittsburgh works added to its repertoire the capacity for brasswork, as well as producing finer products for domestic purposes like hinges and fittings.
The location of the Pittsburgh factory in the Mississippi River watershed was important in the development of high-pressure steam engines for the use in steamboats, and the new company began to promote its engines for river transport. Evans had long been a believer in the application of steam engines for maritime purposes. In his book of 1805, Evans had stated:
"The navigation of the river Mississippi, by steam engines, on the principles here laid down, has for many years been a favorite subject of the author, and among the fondest wishes of his heart"
Evans had long been an acquaintance of John Fitch, the first to build a steamboat in the United States, and the two had worked together on steam projects. The Oruktor Amphibolos was Evans's lone attempt at building his own steamboat powered by a high-pressure engine and Evans himself was often vague in appraising its capabilities. Yet Robert Fulton had found success with the North River Steamboat on the Hudson River in 1807, and thereafter steamboats became a reality. Although he used low-pressure engines, Fulton had in 1812 contacted Evans about the possibility of using Evans's engines, though that correspondence did not lead to the implementation of any of Evans's designs for Fulton's steamships. The Mississippi and tributaries experienced far stronger currents than eastern counterparts, and low-pressure steamboats lacked the power to counteract these. The Enterprise was the first viable steamboat to run on these rivers, and its designer Daniel French employed an adapted Evans' engine for the purpose. High-pressure engines became the standard on the Mississippi, though relatively few of those were actually built by the Pittsburgh works as Evans' patent on high-pressure engines was not widely enforced, and many other engine shops opened on the Mississippi that freely adapted Evans' designs for their own purposes.
Notable examples of river steamboats that were constructed by the Pittsburgh and Mars Works include the Franklin, the Aetna and the Pennsylvania. Another, christened the Oliver Evans but renamed the Constitution by its eventual owners, was lost along with the eleven crew members when its boiler exploded near Point Coupee, Louisiana. Evans was deeply distressed by the news, although he defended the safety of high-pressure engines and cited any explosions as an extremely rare occurrences.
Patent battles
Evans found himself in battles to protect his intellectual property many times throughout his career, but he pursued the cause most doggedly during his latter years. His first and most successful patents concerning flour-milling proved the most problematic to defend, and Evans' battles proved influential in setting precedent for the newly established area of federal patent law. His original patent for his automated flour-mill expired in January 1805, but Evans believed that the fourteen year patent term was too brief and petitioned the Congress to extend it. In January 1808 An Act for the Relief of Oliver Evans was passed and signed by President Jefferson, a long-time admirer of Evans's work. The act took the extraordinary step of reviving to Evans his expired patent and giving it another fourteen year term— Evans was delighted, but the move was to highly problematic, particularly regarding those who had implemented Evans's designs in the intervening three year period between the patent terms, as many millers had waited for Evans's patent to expire before upgrading their mills.
Evans and his agents set about aggressively collecting royalties from those using his designs. Furthermore, Evans significantly raised the license fees for his use of his patented technology, raising claims of extortion from those being asked to pay, and a great many cases ended up in court. The 1808 act had indemnified those who had adopted Evans's technologies from 1805 to 1808, but did not specify whether this indemnity was perpetual (as defendants argued) or whether it was only for the three years in question (as Evans argued). Evans by this stage of his life had also established a poor reputation for himself amongst the milling community, and his abrasive and often petty pursuit of patent rights stiffened resistance. Several major legal cases questioned whether laws to extend private patents in this manner were even constitutional, but Evans ultimately prevailed in each case.
The most bitter legal battle began in 1809. Evans sued Samuel Robinson—a miller near Baltimore who was using Evans's improvements without a license to produce a very modest amount of flour—for damages of $2,500. That sum was deemed unjustifiably high and harsh by many, and Evans's actions rallied the Baltimore community against him, and when the case was finally heard in 1812 many appeared in support of the defendant. Evans's detractors presented evidence and witnesses at the trial to press the argument that Evans did not truly invent much of what his patents protected. Although the hopper-boy was undoubtedly original, the use of bucket chains and Archimedean screws had been used since ancient times and Evans had only modified some of their features and adapted them for use in a milling context. A now retired Thomas Jefferson weighed into the debate in letters to both Evans and his detractors, questioning the philosophy of patent law and what truly defined 'invention' and 'machine' (and to some extent the validity of his claims) but ultimately defended the purpose of patent law, which was to incentivize innovation by rewarding inventors for their development and sharing of new technology. And Jefferson noted that though Evans's designs consisted of devices that had long existed beforehand, everyone had access to these and yet only Evans had thought to modify and use them in conjunction to build an automatic mill. Ultimately the jury found in favor of Evans, but it was a pyrrhic victory as Evans had put most of the milling community offside in the process, and ultimately reduced his claim against Robinson to $1,000. In response, prominent Evans critic Isaac McPherson, made submission to Congress in the wake of the trial entitled Memorial to the Congress of Sundry Citizens of the United States, Praying Relief from the Oppressive Operations of Oliver Evans' Patent, seeking to limit the compensation Evans could seek for his patent's use or for Congress to void it altogether. Although the Senate drafted a bill that would roll-back some of Evans's patent rights, it did not pass, and he continued to vigorously pursue his patent fees. It would not be until the Patent Act of 1836 that many of these issues, including what constituted originality in the context of a patent, would be addressed.
Later life and death, 1812–19
Although Evans had always suffered from bouts of depression, and bitterness towards those he felt did not appreciate his inventions, such sentiments seemed to peak in his later years. During one of his many legal battles in 1809, comments from the presiding judge sent Evans into a particular fury in which he dramatically incinerated many schematics and papers regarding his inventions, both prior and future. Evans declared at the time that inventing had led only to heartache, disappointment and under-appreciation; and committed himself to business and material acquisition for the sake of his family. Ultimately what was burned represents only a small proportion of what survives from Evans, and he did continue his interest in inventing, but the tone of Evans's later life was undoubtedly one of hostility and disappointment.
Evans gradually withdrew from the operations of his workshops, with his son George managing operations in Pittsburgh and his sons-in-law James Rush and John Muhlenberg likewise in Philadelphia. The Mars Works was by now an established entity, receiving prestigious commissions such as the engines for the Philadelphia Mint in 1816. Records indicate the Mars Works would turn out more than one hundred steam engines by the time of Evans death. In retirement Evans became increasingly consumed with pursuing his patent dues from those using his technology, which was now widespread. In 1817 he stated that his time was "wholly engrossed by law suits". Evans had become somewhat obsessed and took on a siege mentality, penning to his numerous lawyers (at its height he had fifteen working on his various cases across the United States) his final work, known as Oliver Evans to His Counsel: Who are Engaged in Defence of His Patent Rights, for the Improvements He Has Invented: Containing a Short Account of Two Out of Eighty of His Inventions, Their Rise and Progress in Despite of All Opposition and Difficulties, and Two of His Patents with Explanations. Evans undertook travel to distant areas of the country in order to find offenders. On a trip to Vermont, Evans visited various mills and then promptly engaged a lawyer there to press charges against twenty-two of them for perceived breaches of his patent rights.
In his last years Evans compiled a list, since lost, of all his inventions—eighty in total, as alluded to in the title of his last publication to his lawyers. Some of his unfinished ideas that are known include a scheme for the gas lighting of cities in the United States, a means for raising sunken ships, a machine gun, a self-oiling shaft bearing, various types of gearshift for steam carriages, a dough-kneading machine and a perpetual baking oven. In one proposal in 1814, as the British Navy threatened Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812, Evans ventured to build a steam-powered frigate, but the scheme didn't get far.
In 1816 his wife Sarah died, although the cause is unrecorded. Evans remarried two years later in April 1818 to Hetty Ward, who was many years his junior and the daughter of the New York innkeeper. In these last years Evans lived in New York with his new wife. In early 1819 Evans developed an inflammation of the lungs and, after a month of illness, died on April 15, 1819. Just four days prior, on April 11, news had reached him in New York that the Mars Works in Philadelphia had burned down, though his sons-in-law were committed to re-establishing the business and did so further outside of the city. Evans was buried at Zion Episcopal Church in Manhattan, but when that church was sold his body was moved several times until finally resting in 1890 in an unmarked common grave at Trinity Cemetery, Broadway at 157th Street, New York City.
Legacy
Undoubtedly, Evans' contributions to milling were profound and the most rapidly adopted. Within his lifetime American milling had undergone a revolution, and his designs allowed mills to be built on industrial-scales with far greater efficiency. Now a more profitable enterprise, the number of mills increased dramatically across the United States. The price of flour fell significantly, availability increased, and the automated drying and bolting processes increased the quality and fineness of flour. In turn this led to major shift in bread making—cheaper and better quality flour lowered the cost of bread production and within a generation the majority of bread consumption shifted from the home-made to store-bought. The revolution was even more far-reaching in Europe where the so-called "American System" was quickly adopted by the milling industry and triggered major increases in food production—sorely needed in a period of almost continual warfare at the turn of the 18th century.
Although several key elements of Evans's designs—such as bucket elevators and Archimedean screws—were merely modified rather than invented by him, the combination of many machines into an automated and continuous production line was a unique idea that would prove pivotal to both the Industrial Revolution and the development of mass production. Scientific and technical historians now generally credit Evans as the first in a line of industrialists that culminated with Henry Ford and the modern assembly line. His concept of industrial automation was far ahead of its time, and the paradigm shift within manufacturing towards that concept would take more than a century to be fully realized. However continuous process manufacturing would spread from Evans's milling designs, first to related industries such as brewing and baking, then eventually to a wide variety of products, as technology and prevailing opinion caught up. Evans contributions were later deemed to be so important that eminent industrial historian Sigfried Giedion would conclude that in this respect, Evans "opens a new chapter in the history of mankind".
Evans' contributions to steam were not as ground-breaking as his earlier work in milling but he played a critical role by inventing and propagating the high-pressure steam engine in the United States. Evans' engines, particularly the Columbian, were highly influential in early steam-power applications in United States (particularly in the evolution of steamboats and steam-powered industrial processes). Yet once more Evans was ahead of the curve with many of his ideas, and his death during steam's infancy in the United States meant that it would be some time before many of his ideas would come to fruition. For example, although a leading advocate for high-pressure engines, it would not be until the 1830s that such engines definitively replaced low-pressure designs. And Evans' dream of a steam wagon, notwithstanding the brave attempt of the Oruktor Amphibolos, would not see widespread adoption until even later. And unlike his earlier contributions, Evans was just one of many brilliant minds in steam technology. It would be another inventor, Richard Trevithick, working totally independently of Evans who would develop the high-pressure engine that would make that dream possible.
And yet despite his formidable record and undoubted importance in the history of technology, Evans never became a household name. In this respect Evans was his own worst enemy. He was deeply affected by a perceived lack of recognition and appreciation from his peers for his work, and his bouts of depression would lead him to act in the extreme, prematurely ending projects and vowing to give up inventing many times over the course of his life. In time these feelings turned to bitterness and vengeance towards those who criticized or doubted him, and led him to become notoriously bombastic and combative, often aggrandizing his accomplishments and fiercely denouncing critics (such as the wild exaggerations as to the success of the Oruktor Amphibolos at the end of his life). While his relentless pursuit of patent rights did indeed force people to pay him his due, the process badly damaged his reputation and made him many enemies. A leading Philadelphia merchant summed it up in 1802, stating "few if any [millers] are inclined to give pompous blockhead, Oliver Evans, the credit of inventing any of the useful contrivances in milling for which he now enjoys patents."
And yet in spite of his anguish and the weight of his detractors, Evans was steadfastly persistent in the pursuit of his ideas, a quality which Evans felt would ultimately see him triumph. The French translator of the Young Steam Engineer's Guide agreed, concluding "posterity will place his name among those who are most truly distinguished for their eminent services rendered to their country and to humanity."
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Works by Evans
Biographies
General Histories
Periodicals
External links
Oliver Evans, a brief biography at Inventors.about.com
Oliver Evans, a biography from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Oliver Evans, a biography from PBS's 'Who Made America' series.
Schematics and detailed explanations of Evans' Automatic-Mill and Hopper-Boy from Theodore Hazen.
Reference Works on Oliver Evans, a comprehensive compilation from Theodore Hazen.
1755 births
1819 deaths
People from Newport, Delaware
American people of Welsh descent
18th-century American inventors
19th-century American inventors
Millwrights
American railroad pioneers
American railroad mechanical engineers
Steam road vehicles
People of colonial Delaware
18th-century American engineers
Engineers from Delaware
19th-century American engineers
Inventors from Delaware
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel%20locomotive
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Diesel locomotive
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A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the power source is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotives have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels. The most common are diesel-electric locomotives and diesel-hydraulic.
Early internal combustion locomotives and railcars used kerosene and gasoline as their fuel. Rudolf Diesel patented his first compression-ignition engine in 1898, and steady improvements to the design of diesel engines reduced their physical size and improved their power-to-weight ratios to a point where one could be mounted in a locomotive. Internal combustion engines only operate efficiently within a limited power band, and while low-power gasoline engines could be coupled to mechanical transmissions, the more powerful diesel engines required the development of new forms of transmission. This is because clutches would need to be very large at these power levels and would not fit in a standard -wide locomotive frame, or wear too quickly to be useful.
The first successful diesel engines used diesel–electric transmissions, and by 1925 a small number of diesel locomotives of were in service in the United States. In 1930, Armstrong Whitworth of the United Kingdom delivered two locomotives using Sulzer-designed engines to Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway of Argentina. In 1933, diesel–electric technology developed by Maybach was used to propel the DRG Class SVT 877, a high-speed intercity two-car set, and went into series production with other streamlined car sets in Germany starting in 1935. In the United States, diesel–electric propulsion was brought to high-speed mainline passenger service in late 1934, largely through the research and development efforts of General Motors dating back to the late 1920s and advances in lightweight car body design by the Budd Company.
The economic recovery from World War II hastened the widespread adoption of diesel locomotives in many countries. They offered greater flexibility and performance than steam locomotives, as well as substantially lower operating and maintenance costs.
History
Adaptation for rail use
The earliest recorded example of the use of an internal combustion engine in a railway locomotive is the prototype designed by William Dent Priestman, which was examined by William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin in 1888 who described it as a "Priestman oil engine mounted upon a truck which is worked on a temporary line of rails to show the adaptation of a petroleum engine for locomotive purposes." In 1894, a two-axle machine built by Priestman Brothers was used on the Hull Docks. In 1896, an oil-engined railway locomotive was built for the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, England, using an engine designed by Herbert Akroyd Stuart. It was not a diesel, because it used a hot-bulb engine (also known as a semi-diesel), but it was the precursor of the diesel.
Rudolf Diesel considered using his engine for powering locomotives in his 1893 book Theorie und Konstruktion eines rationellen Wärmemotors zum Ersatz der Dampfmaschine und der heute bekannten Verbrennungsmotoren (Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Motor). However, the large size and poor power-to-weight ratio of early diesel engines made them unsuitable for propelling land-based vehicles. Therefore, the engine's potential as a railroad prime mover was not initially recognized. This changed as research and development reduced the size and weight of the engine.
In 1906, Rudolf Diesel, Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing diesel engines since 1898. The Prussian State Railways ordered a diesel locomotive from the company in 1909, and after test runs between Winterthur and Romanshorn, Switzerland, the diesel–mechanical locomotive was delivered in Berlin in September 1912. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive was operated in the summer of 1912 on the same line from Winterthur, but was not a commercial success. During test runs in 1913 several problems were found. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 prevented all further trials. The locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was with a maximum speed of .
Small numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through the mid-1920s.
Early diesel locomotives and railcars in Asia
China
One of the first domestically developed Diesel vehicles of China was the DMU Dongfeng (东风), produced in 1958 by CSR Sifang. Series production of China's first Diesel locomotive class, the DFH 1, began in 1964 following the construction of a prototype in 1959.
India
Japan
In Japan, starting in the 1920s, some petrol–electric railcars were produced. The first diesel–electric traction and the first air-streamed vehicles on Japanese rails were the two DMU3s of class Kiha 43000 (キハ43000系). Japan's first series of diesel locomotives was class DD50 (国鉄DD50形), twin locomotives, developed since 1950 and in service since 1953.
Early diesel locomotives and railcars in Europe
First functional diesel vehicles
In 1914, the world's first functional diesel–electric railcars were produced for the Königlich-Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen (Royal Saxon State Railways) by Waggonfabrik Rastatt with electric equipment from Brown, Boveri & Cie and diesel engines from Swiss Sulzer AG. They were classified as DET 1 and DET 2 (). Because of a shortage of petrol products during World War I, they remained unused for regular service in Germany. In 1922, they were sold to Swiss Compagnie du Chemin de fer Régional du Val-de-Travers, where they were used in regular service up to the electrification of the line in 1944. Afterwards, the company kept them in service as boosters until 1965.
Fiat claims to have built the first Italian diesel–electric locomotive in 1922, but little detail is available. Several Fiat-TIBB Bo'Bo' diesel–locomotives were built for service on the narrow gauge Ferrovie Calabro Lucane and the Società per le Strade Ferrate del Mediterrano in southern Italy in 1926, following trials in 1924–25. The six-cylinder two-stroke motor produced at 500rpm, driving four DC motors, one for each axle. These locomotives with top speed proved quite successful.
In 1924, two diesel–electric locomotives were taken in service by the Soviet railways, almost at the same time:
The engine Ээл2 (Eel2 original number Юэ 001/Yu-e 001) started on October 22. It had been designed by a team led by Yuri Lomonosov and built 1923–1924 by Maschinenfabrik Esslingen in Germany. It had five driving axles (1'E1'). After several test rides, it hauled trains for almost three decades from 1925 to 1954. It became a model for several classes of Soviet diesel locomotives.
The engine Щэл1 (Shch-el 1, original number Юэ2/Yu-e 2), started on November 9. It had been developed by Yakov Modestovich Gakkel and built by Baltic Shipyard in Saint Petersburg. It had ten driving axles in three bogies (1' Co' Do' Co' 1'). From 1925 to 1927, it hauled trains between Moscow and Kursk and in Caucasus region. Due to technical problems, afterwards, it was out of service. Since 1934, it was used as a stationary electric generator.
In 1935, Krauss-Maffei, MAN and Voith built the first diesel–hydraulic locomotive, called V 140, in Germany. Diesel–hydraulics became the mainstream in diesel locomotives in Germany since the German railways (DRG) were pleased with the performance of that engine. Serial production of diesel locomotives in Germany began after World War II.
Switchers
In many railway stations and industrial compounds, steam shunters had to be kept hot during many breaks between scattered short tasks. Therefore, diesel traction became economical for shunting before it became economical for hauling trains. The construction of diesel shunters began in 1920 in France, in 1925 in Denmark, in 1926 in the Netherlands, and in 1927 in Germany. After a few years of testing, hundreds of units were produced within a decade.
Diesel railcars for regional traffic
Diesel-powered or "oil-engined" railcars, generally diesel–mechanical, were developed by various European manufacturers in the 1930s, e.g. by William Beardmore and Company for the Canadian National Railways (the Beardmore Tornado engine was subsequently used in the R101 airship). Some of those series for regional traffic were begun with gasoline motors and then continued with diesel motors, such as Hungarian BCmot (The class code doesn't tell anything but "railmotor with 2nd and 3rd class seats".), 128 cars built 1926–1937, or German Wismar railbuses (57 cars 1932–1941). In France, the first diesel railcar was Renault VH, 115 units produced 1933/34.
In Italy, after six Gasoline cars since 1931, Fiat and Breda built a lot of diesel railmotors, more than 110 from 1933 to 1938 and 390 from 1940 to 1953, Class 772 known as Littorina, and Class ALn 900.
High-speed railcars
In the 1930s, streamlined highspeed diesel railcars were developed in several countries:
In Germany, the Flying Hamburger was built in 1932. After a test ride in December 1932, this two-coach diesel railcar (in English terminology a DMU2) started service at Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRG) in February 1933. It became the prototype of DRG Class SVT 137 with 33 more highspeed DMUs, built for DRG till 1938, 13 DMU 2 ("Hamburg" series), 18 DMU 3 ("Leipzig" and "Köln" series), and two DMU 4 ("Berlin" series).
French SNCF classes XF 1000 and XF 1100 comprised 11 high-speed DMUs, also called TAR, built 1934–1939.
In Hungary, Ganz Works built the , a kind of a luxurious railbus in a series of seven items since 1934, and started to build the in 1944.
Further developments
In 1945, a batch of 30 Baldwin diesel–electric locomotives, Baldwin 0-6-6-0 1000, was delivered from the United States to the railways of the Soviet Union.
In 1947, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) introduced the first of a pair of Co-Co diesel–electric locomotives (later British Rail Class D16/1) for regular use in the United Kingdom, although British manufacturers such as Armstrong Whitworth had been exporting diesel locomotives since 1930. Fleet deliveries to British Railways, of other designs such as Class 20 and Class 31, began in 1957.
Series production of diesel locomotives in Italy began in the mid-1950s. Generally, diesel traction in Italy was of less importance than in other countries, as it was amongst the most advanced countries in the electrification of the main lines and as Italian geography makes freight transport by sea cheaper than rail transportation even on many domestic connections.
Early diesel locomotives and railcars in North America
Early North American developments
Adolphus Busch purchased the American manufacturing rights for the diesel engine in 1898 but never applied this new form of power to transportation. He founded the Busch-Sulzer company in 1911.
Only limited success was achieved in the early twentieth century with internal combustion engined railcars, due, in part, to difficulties with mechanical drive systems.
General Electric (GE) entered the railcar market in the early twentieth century, as Thomas Edison possessed a patent on the electric locomotive, his design actually being a type of electrically propelled railcar. GE built its first electric locomotive prototype in 1895. However, high electrification costs caused GE to turn its attention to internal combustion power to provide electricity for electric railcars. Problems related to co-ordinating the prime mover and electric motor were immediately encountered, primarily due to limitations of the Ward Leonard current control system that had been chosen. GE Rail was formed in 1907 and 112 years later, in 2019, was purchased by and merged with Wabtec.
A significant breakthrough occurred in 1914, when Hermann Lemp, a GE electrical engineer, developed and patented a reliable control system that controlled the engine and traction motor with a single lever; subsequent improvements were also patented by Lemp. Lemp's design solved the problem of overloading and damaging the traction motors with excessive electrical power at low speeds, and was the prototype for all internal combustion–electric drive control systems.
In 1917–1918, GE produced three experimental diesel–electric locomotives using Lemp's control design, the first known to be built in the United States. Following this development, the 1923 Kaufman Act banned steam locomotives from New York City, because of severe pollution problems. The response to this law was to electrify high-traffic rail lines. However, electrification was uneconomical to apply to lower-traffic areas.
The first regular use of diesel–electric locomotives was in switching (shunter) applications, which were more forgiving than mainline applications of the limitations of contemporary diesel technology and where the idling economy of diesel relative to steam would be most beneficial. GE entered a collaboration with the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and Ingersoll-Rand (the "AGEIR" consortium) in 1924 to produce a prototype "boxcab" locomotive delivered in July 1925. This locomotive demonstrated that the diesel–electric power unit could provide many of the benefits of an electric locomotive without the railroad having to bear the sizeable expense of electrification. The unit successfully demonstrated, in switching and local freight and passenger service, on ten railroads and three industrial lines. Westinghouse Electric and Baldwin collaborated to build switching locomotives starting in 1929. However, the Great Depression curtailed demand for Westinghouse's electrical equipment, and they stopped building locomotives internally, opting to supply electrical parts instead.
In June 1925, Baldwin Locomotive Works outshopped a prototype diesel–electric locomotive for "special uses" (such as for runs where water for steam locomotives was scarce) using electrical equipment from Westinghouse Electric Company. Its twin-engine design was not successful, and the unit was scrapped after a short testing and demonstration period. Industry sources were beginning to suggest "the outstanding advantages of this new form of motive power". In 1929, the Canadian National Railways became the first North American railway to use diesels in mainline service with two units, 9000 and 9001, from Westinghouse. However, these early diesels proved expensive and unreliable, with their high cost of acquisition relative to steam unable to be realized in operating cost savings as they were frequently out of service. It would be another five years before diesel–electric propulsion would be successfully used in mainline service, and nearly ten years before fully replacing steam became a real prospect with existing diesel technology.
Before diesel power could make inroads into mainline service, the limitations of diesel engines circa 1930 – low power-to-weight ratios and narrow output range – had to be overcome. A major effort to overcome those limitations was launched by General Motors after they moved into the diesel field with their acquisition of the Winton Engine Company, a major manufacturer of diesel engines for marine and stationary applications, in 1930. Supported by the General Motors Research Division, GM's Winton Engine Corporation sought to develop diesel engines suitable for high-speed mobile use. The first milestone in that effort was delivery in early 1934 of the Winton 201A, a two-stroke, mechanically aspirated, uniflow-scavenged, unit-injected diesel engine that could deliver the required performance for a fast, lightweight passenger train. The second milestone, and the one that got American railroads moving towards diesel, was the 1938 delivery of GM's Model 567 engine that was designed specifically for locomotive use, bringing a fivefold increase in life of some mechanical parts and showing its potential for meeting the rigors of freight service.
Diesel–electric railroad locomotion entered mainline service when the Burlington Route and Union Pacific used custom-built diesel "streamliners" to haul passengers, starting in late 1934. Burlington's Zephyr trainsets evolved from articulated three-car sets with 600 hp power cars in 1934 and early 1935, to the Denver Zephyr semi-articulated ten car trainsets pulled by cab-booster power sets introduced in late 1936. Union Pacific started diesel streamliner service between Chicago and Portland Oregon in June 1935, and in the following year would add Los Angeles, CA, Oakland, CA, and Denver, CO to the destinations of diesel streamliners out of Chicago. The Burlington and Union Pacific streamliners were built by the Budd Company and the Pullman-Standard Company, respectively, using the new Winton engines and power train systems designed by GM's Electro-Motive Corporation. EMC's experimental 1800 hp B-B locomotives of 1935 demonstrated the multiple-unit control systems used for the cab/booster sets and the twin-engine format used with the later Zephyr power units. Both of those features would be used in EMC's later production model locomotives. The lightweight diesel streamliners of the mid-1930s demonstrated the advantages of diesel for passenger service with breakthrough schedule times, but diesel locomotive power would not fully come of age until regular series production of mainline diesel locomotives commenced and it was shown suitable for full-size passenger and freight service.
First American series production locomotives
Following their 1925 prototype, the AGEIR consortium produced 25 more units of "60 ton" AGEIR boxcab switching locomotives between 1925 and 1928 for several New York City railroads, making them the first series-produced diesel locomotives. The consortium also produced seven twin-engine "100 ton" boxcabs and one hybrid trolley/battery unit with a diesel-driven charging circuit. ALCO acquired the McIntosh & Seymour Engine Company in 1929 and entered series production of and single-cab switcher units in 1931. ALCO would be the pre-eminent builder of switch engines through the mid-1930s and would adapt the basic switcher design to produce versatile and highly successful, albeit relatively low powered, road locomotives.
GM, seeing the success of the custom streamliners, sought to expand the market for diesel power by producing standardized locomotives under their Electro-Motive Corporation. In 1936, EMC's new factory started production of switch engines. In 1937, the factory started producing their new E series streamlined passenger locomotives, which would be upgraded with more reliable purpose-built engines in 1938. Seeing the performance and reliability of the new 567 model engine in passenger locomotives, EMC was eager to demonstrate diesel's viability in freight service.
Following the successful 1939 tour of EMC's FT demonstrator freight locomotive set, the stage was set for dieselization of American railroads. In 1941, ALCO-GE introduced the RS-1 road-switcher that occupied its own market niche while EMD's F series locomotives were sought for mainline freight service. The US entry into World War II slowed conversion to diesel; the War Production Board put a halt to building new passenger equipment and gave naval uses priority for diesel engine production. During the petroleum crisis of 1942–43, coal-fired steam had the advantage of not using fuel that was in critically short supply. EMD was later allowed to increase the production of its FT locomotives and ALCO-GE was allowed to produce a limited number of DL-109 road locomotives, but most in the locomotive business were restricted to making switch engines and steam locomotives.
In the early postwar era, EMD dominated the market for mainline locomotives with their E and F series locomotives. ALCO-GE in the late 1940s produced switchers and road-switchers that were successful in the short-haul market. However, EMD launched their GP series road-switcher locomotives in 1949, which displaced all other locomotives in the freight market including their own F series locomotives. GE subsequently dissolved its partnership with ALCO and would emerge as EMD's main competitor in the early 1960s, eventually taking the top position in the locomotive market from EMD.
Early diesel–electric locomotives in the United States used direct current (DC) traction motors, but alternating current (AC) motors came into widespread use in the 1990s, starting with the Electro-Motive SD70MAC in 1993 and followed by General Electric's AC4400CW in 1994 and AC6000CW in 1995.
Early diesel locomotives and railcars in Oceania
The Trans-Australian Railway built 1912 to 1917 by Commonwealth Railways (CR) passes through 2,000 km of waterless (or salt watered) desert terrain unsuitable for steam locomotives. The original engineer Henry Deane envisaged diesel operation to overcome such problems. Some have suggested that the CR worked with the South Australian Railways to trial diesel traction. However, the technology was not developed enough to be reliable.
As in Europe, the usage of internal combustion engines advanced more readily in self-propelled railcars than in locomotives.
Some Australian railway companies bought McKeen railmotors.
In the 1920s and 1930s, more reliable Gasoline railmotors were built by Australian industries.
Australia's first diesel railcars were the NSWGR 100 Class (PH later DP) Silver City Comet cars in 1937.
High-speed vehicles for those days' possibilities on were the ten Vulcan railcars of 1940 for New Zealand.
Transmission types
Diesel–mechanical
A diesel–mechanical locomotive uses a mechanical transmission in a fashion similar to that employed in most road vehicles. This type of transmission is generally limited to low-powered, low-speed shunting (switching) locomotives, lightweight multiple units and self-propelled railcars.
The mechanical transmissions used for railroad propulsion are generally more complex and much more robust than standard-road versions. There is usually a fluid coupling interposed between the engine and gearbox, and the gearbox is often of the epicyclic (planetary) type to permit shifting while under load. Various systems have been devised to minimise the break in transmission during gear changing; e.g., the S.S.S. (synchro-self-shifting) gearbox used by Hudswell Clarke.
Diesel–mechanical propulsion is limited by the difficulty of building a reasonably sized transmission capable of coping with the power and torque required to move a heavy train. A number of attempts to use diesel–mechanical propulsion in high power applications have been made (e.g., the British Rail 10100 locomotive), although none have proved successful in the end.
Diesel–electric
In a diesel–electric locomotive, the diesel engine drives either an electrical DC generator (generally, less than net for traction), or an electrical AC alternator-rectifier (generally 3,000hp net or more for traction), the output of which provides power to the traction motors that drive the locomotive. There is no mechanical connection between the diesel engine and the wheels.
The important components of diesel–electric propulsion are the diesel engine (also known as the prime mover), the main generator/alternator-rectifier, traction motors (usually with four or six axles), and a control system consisting of the engine governor and electrical or electronic components, including switchgear, rectifiers and other components, which control or modify the electrical supply to the traction motors. In the most elementary case, the generator may be directly connected to the motors with only very simple switchgear.
Originally, the traction motors and generator were DC machines. Following the development of high-capacity silicon rectifiers in the 1960s, the DC generator was replaced by an alternator using a diode bridge to convert its output to DC. This advance greatly improved locomotive reliability and decreased generator maintenance costs by elimination of the commutator and brushes in the generator. Elimination of the brushes and commutator, in turn, eliminated the possibility of a particularly destructive type of event referred to as a flashover (also known as an arc fault), which could result in immediate generator failure and, in some cases, start an engine room fire.
Current North American practice is for four axles for high-speed passenger or "time" freight, or for six axles for lower-speed or "manifest" freight. The most modern units on "time" freight service tend to have six axles underneath the frame. Unlike those in "manifest" service, "time" freight units will have only four of the axles connected to traction motors, with the other two as idler axles for weight distribution.
In the late 1980s, the development of high-power variable-voltage/variable-frequency (VVVF) drives, or "traction inverters", allowed the use of polyphase AC traction motors, thereby also eliminating the motor commutator and brushes. The result is a more efficient and reliable drive that requires relatively little maintenance and is better able to cope with overload conditions that often destroyed the older types of motors.
Diesel–electric control
A diesel–electric locomotive's power output is independent of road speed, as long as the unit's generator current and voltage limits are not exceeded. Therefore, the unit's ability to develop tractive effort (also referred to as drawbar pull or tractive force, which is what actually propels the train) will tend to inversely vary with speed within these limits. (See power curve below). Maintaining acceptable operating parameters was one of the principal design considerations that had to be solved in early diesel–electric locomotive development and, ultimately, led to the complex control systems in place on modern units.
Throttle operation
The prime mover's power output is primarily determined by its rotational speed (RPM) and fuel rate, which are regulated by a governor or similar mechanism. The governor is designed to react to both the throttle setting, as determined by the engine driver and the speed at which the prime mover is running (see Control theory).
Locomotive power output, and therefore speed, is typically controlled by the engine driver using a stepped or "notched" throttle that produces binary-like electrical signals corresponding to throttle position. This basic design lends itself well to multiple unit (MU) operation by producing discrete conditions that assure that all units in a consist respond in the same way to throttle position. Binary encoding also helps to minimize the number of trainlines (electrical connections) that are required to pass signals from unit to unit. For example, only four trainlines are required to encode all possible throttle positions if there are up to 14 stages of throttling.
North American locomotives, such as those built by EMD or General Electric, have eight throttle positions or "notches" as well as a "reverser" to allow them to operate bi-directionally. Many UK-built locomotives have a ten-position throttle. The power positions are often referred to by locomotive crews depending upon the throttle setting, such as "run 3" or "notch 3".
In older locomotives, the throttle mechanism was ratcheted so that it was not possible to advance more than one power position at a time. The engine driver could not, for example, pull the throttle from notch 2 to notch 4 without stopping at notch 3. This feature was intended to prevent rough train handling due to abrupt power increases caused by rapid throttle motion ("throttle stripping", an operating rules violation on many railroads). Modern locomotives no longer have this restriction, as their control systems are able to smoothly modulate power and avoid sudden changes in train loading regardless of how the engine driver operates the controls.
When the throttle is in the idle position, the prime mover receives minimal fuel, causing it to idle at low RPM. In addition, the traction motors are not connected to the main generator and the generator's field windings are not excited (energized) – the generator does not produce electricity without excitation. Therefore, the locomotive will be in "neutral". Conceptually, this is the same as placing an automobile's transmission into neutral while the engine is running.
To set the locomotive in motion, the reverser control handle is placed into the correct position (forward or reverse), the brake is released and the throttle is moved to the run 1 position (the first power notch). An experienced engine driver can accomplish these steps in a coordinated fashion that will result in a nearly imperceptible start. The positioning of the reverser and movement of the throttle together is conceptually like shifting an automobile's automatic transmission into gear while the engine is idling.
Placing the throttle into the first power position will cause the traction motors to be connected to the main generator and the latter's field coils to be excited. With excitation applied, the main generator will deliver electricity to the traction motors, resulting in motion. If the locomotive is running "light" (that is, not coupled to the rest of a train) and is not on an ascending grade, it will easily accelerate. On the other hand, if a long train is being started, the locomotive may stall as soon as some of the slack has been taken up, as the drag imposed by the train will exceed the tractive force being developed. An experienced engine driver will be able to recognize an incipient stall and will gradually advance the throttle as required to maintain the pace of acceleration.
As the throttle is moved to higher power notches, the fuel rate to the prime mover will increase, resulting in a corresponding increase in RPM and horsepower output. At the same time, main generator field excitation will be proportionally increased to absorb the higher power. This will translate into increased electrical output to the traction motors, with a corresponding increase in tractive force. Eventually, depending on the requirements of the train's schedule, the engine driver will have moved the throttle to the position of maximum power and will maintain it there until the train has accelerated to the desired speed.
The propulsion system is designed to produce maximum traction motor torque at start-up, which explains why modern locomotives are capable of starting trains weighing in excess of 15,000 tons, even on ascending grades.
Current technology allows a locomotive to develop as much as 30% of its loaded driver weight in tractive force, amounting to of tractive force for a large, six-axle freight (goods) unit.
In fact, a consist of such units can produce more than enough drawbar pull at start-up to damage or derail cars (if on a curve) or break couplers (the latter being referred to in North American railroad slang as "jerking a lung"). Therefore, it is incumbent upon the engine driver to carefully monitor the amount of power being applied at start-up to avoid damage. In particular, "jerking a lung" could be a calamitous matter if it were to occur on an ascending grade, except that the safety inherent in the correct operation of fail-safe automatic train brakes installed in wagons today, prevents runaway trains by automatically applying the wagon brakes when train line air pressure drops.
Propulsion system operation
A locomotive's control system is designed so that the main generator electrical power output is matched to any given engine speed. Given the innate characteristics of traction motors, as well as the way in which the motors are connected to the main generator, the generator will produce high current and low voltage at low locomotive speeds, gradually changing to low current and high voltage as the locomotive accelerates. Therefore, the net power produced by the locomotive will remain constant for any given throttle setting (see power curve graph for notch 8).
In older designs, the prime mover's governor and a companion device, the load regulator, play a central role in the control system. The governor has two external inputs: requested engine speed, determined by the engine driver's throttle setting, and actual engine speed (feedback). The governor has two external control outputs: fuel injector setting, which determines the engine fuel rate, and current regulator position, which affects main generator excitation. The governor also incorporates a separate overspeed protective mechanism that will immediately cut off the fuel supply to the injectors and sound an alarm in the cab in the event the prime mover exceeds a defined RPM. Not all of these inputs and outputs are necessarily electrical.
As the load on the engine changes, its rotational speed will also change. This is detected by the governor through a change in the engine speed feedback signal. The net effect is to adjust both the fuel rate and the load regulator position so that engine RPM and torque (and therefore power output) will remain constant for any given throttle setting, regardless of actual road speed.
In newer designs controlled by a "traction computer," each engine speed step is allotted an appropriate power output, or "kW reference", in software. The computer compares this value with actual main generator power output, or "kW feedback", calculated from traction motor current and main generator voltage feedback values. The computer adjusts the feedback value to match the reference value by controlling the excitation of the main generator, as described above. The governor still has control of engine speed, but the load regulator no longer plays a central role in this type of control system. However, the load regulator is retained as a "back-up" in case of engine overload. Modern locomotives fitted with electronic fuel injection (EFI) may have no mechanical governor; however, a "virtual" load regulator and governor are retained with computer modules.
Traction motor performance is controlled either by varying the DC voltage output of the main generator, for DC motors, or by varying the frequency and voltage output of the VVVF for AC motors. With DC motors, various connection combinations are utilized to adapt the drive to varying operating conditions.
At standstill, main generator output is initially low voltage/high current, often in excess of 1000 amperes per motor at full power. When the locomotive is at or near standstill, current flow will be limited only by the DC resistance of the motor windings and interconnecting circuitry, as well as the capacity of the main generator itself. Torque in a series-wound motor is approximately proportional to the square of the current. Hence, the traction motors will produce their highest torque, causing the locomotive to develop maximum tractive effort, enabling it to overcome the inertia of the train. This effect is analogous to what happens in an automobile automatic transmission at start-up, where it is in first gear and thereby producing maximum torque multiplication.
As the locomotive accelerates, the now-rotating motor armatures will start to generate a counter-electromotive force (back EMF, meaning the motors are also trying to act as generators), which will oppose the output of the main generator and cause traction motor current to decrease. Main generator voltage will correspondingly increase in an attempt to maintain motor power, but will eventually reach a plateau. At this point, the locomotive will essentially cease to accelerate, unless on a downgrade. Since this plateau will usually be reached at a speed substantially less than the maximum that may be desired, something must be done to change the drive characteristics to allow continued acceleration. This change is referred to as "transition", a process that is analogous to shifting gears in an automobile.
Transition methods include:
Series / Parallel or "motor transition".
Initially, pairs of motors are connected in series across the main generator. At higher speed, motors are reconnected in parallel across the main generator.
"Field shunting", "field diverting", or "weak fielding".
Resistance is connected in parallel with the motor field. This has the effect of increasing the armature current, producing a corresponding increase in motor torque and speed.
Both methods may also be combined, to increase the operating speed range.
Generator / rectifier transition
Reconnecting the two separate internal main generator stator windings of two rectifiers from parallel to series to increase the output voltage.
In older locomotives, it was necessary for the engine driver to manually execute transition by use of a separate control. As an aid to performing transition at the right time, the load meter (an indicator that shows the engine driver how much current is being drawn by the traction motors) was calibrated to indicate at which points forward or backward transition should take place. Automatic transition was subsequently developed to produce better-operating efficiency and to protect the main generator and traction motors from overloading from improper transition.
Modern locomotives incorporate traction inverters, AC to DC, capable of delivering 1,200 volts (earlier traction generators, DC to DC, were capable of delivering only 600 volts). This improvement was accomplished largely through improvements in silicon diode technology. With the capability of delivering 1,200 volts to the traction motors, the need for "transition" was eliminated.
Dynamic braking
A common option on diesel–electric locomotives is dynamic (rheostatic) braking.
Dynamic braking takes advantage of the fact that the traction motor armatures are always rotating when the locomotive is in motion and that a motor can be made to act as a generator by separately exciting the field winding. When dynamic braking is utilized, the traction control circuits are configured as follows:
The field winding of each traction motor is connected across the main generator.
The armature of each traction motor is connected across a forced-air-cooled resistance grid (the dynamic braking grid) in the roof of the locomotive's hood.
The prime mover RPM is increased and the main generator field is excited, causing a corresponding excitation of the traction motor fields.
The aggregate effect of the above is to cause each traction motor to generate electric power and dissipate it as heat in the dynamic braking grid. A fan connected across the grid provides forced-air cooling. Consequently, the fan is powered by the output of the traction motors and will tend to run faster and produce more airflow as more energy is applied to the grid.
Ultimately, the source of the energy dissipated in the dynamic braking grid is the motion of the locomotive as imparted to the traction motor armatures. Therefore, the traction motors impose drag and the locomotive acts as a brake. As speed decreases, the braking effect decays and usually becomes ineffective below approximately 16 km/h (10 mph), depending on the gear ratio between the traction motors and axles.
Dynamic braking is particularly beneficial when operating in mountainous regions; where there is always the danger of a runaway due to overheated friction brakes during descent. In such cases, dynamic brakes are usually applied in conjunction with the air brakes, the combined effect being referred to as blended braking. The use of blended braking can also assist in keeping the slack in a long train stretched as it crests a grade, helping to prevent a "run-in", an abrupt bunching of train slack that can cause a derailment. Blended braking is also commonly used with commuter trains to reduce wear and tear on the mechanical brakes that is a natural result of the numerous stops such trains typically make during a run.
Electro-diesel
These special locomotives can operate as an electric locomotive or as a diesel locomotive. The Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and New Jersey Transit Rail Operations operate dual-mode diesel–electric/third-rail (catenary on NJTransit) locomotives between non-electrified territory and New York City because of a local law banning diesel-powered locomotives in Manhattan tunnels. For the same reason, Amtrak operates a fleet of dual-mode locomotives in the New York area. British Rail operated dual diesel–electric/electric locomotives designed to run primarily as electric locomotives with reduced power available when running on diesel power. This allowed railway yards to remain unelectrified, as the third rail power system is extremely hazardous in a yard area.
Diesel–hydraulic
Diesel–hydraulic locomotives use one or more torque converters, in combination with fixed ratio gears. Drive shafts and gears form the final drive to convey the power from the torque converters to the wheels, and to effect reverse. The difference between hydraulic and mechanical systems is where the speed and torque is adjusted. In the mechanical transmission system that has multiple ratios such as in a gear box, if there is a hydraulic section, it is only to allow the engine to run when the train is too slow or stopped. In the hydraulic system, hydraulics are the primary system for adapting engine speed and torque to the train's situation, with gear selection for only limited use, such as reverse gear.
Hydrostatic transmission
Hydraulic drive systems using a hydrostatic hydraulic drive system have been applied to rail use. Modern examples included shunting locomotives by Cockerill (Belgium), 4 to 12 tonne narrow gauge industrial locomotives by Atlas Copco subsidiary GIA. Hydrostatic drives are also utilised in railway maintenance machines (tampers, rail grinders).
Application of hydrostatic transmissions is generally limited to small shunting locomotives and rail maintenance equipment, as well as being used for non-tractive applications in diesel engines such as drives for traction motor fans.
Hydrokinetic transmission
Hydrokinetic transmission (also called hydrodynamic transmission) uses a torque converter. A torque converter consists of three main parts, two of which rotate, and one (the stator) that has a lock preventing backwards rotation and adding output torque by redirecting the oil flow at low output RPM. All three main parts are sealed in an oil-filled housing. To match engine speed to load speed over the entire speed range of a locomotive some additional method is required to give sufficient range. One method is to follow the torque converter with a mechanical gearbox which switches ratios automatically, similar to an automatic transmission in an automobile. Another method is to provide several torque converters each with a range of variability covering part of the total required; all the torque converters are mechanically connected all the time, and the appropriate one for the speed range required is selected by filling it with oil and draining the others. The filling and draining is carried out with the transmission under load, and results in very smooth range changes with no break in the transmitted power.
Locomotives
Diesel-hydraulic locomotives are less efficient than diesel–electrics. The first-generation BR diesel hydraulics were significantly less efficient (c. 65%) than diesel electrics (c. 80%), Moreover, initial versions were found in many countries to be mechanically more complicated and more likely to break down. Hydraulic transmission for locomotives was developed in Germany. There is still debate over the relative merits of hydraulic vs. electrical transmission systems: advantages claimed for hydraulic systems include lower weight, high reliability, and lower capital cost.
By the 21st century, for diesel locomotive traction worldwide the majority of countries used diesel–electric designs, with diesel-hydraulic designs not found in use outside Germany and Japan, and some neighbouring states, where it is used in designs for freight work.
In Germany and Finland, diesel–hydraulic systems have achieved high reliability in operation. In the UK the diesel–hydraulic principle gained a poor reputation due to the poor durability and reliability of the Maybach Mekydro hydraulic transmission. Argument continues over the relative reliability of hydraulic systems, with questions over whether data has been manipulated to favour local suppliers over non-German ones.
Multiple units
Diesel–hydraulic drive is common in multiple units, with various transmission designs used including Voith torque converters, and fluid couplings in combination with mechanical gearing.
The majority of British Rail's second generation passenger DMU stock used hydraulic transmission. In the 21st century, designs using hydraulic transmission include Bombardier Turbostar, Talent, RegioSwinger families; diesel engined versions of the Siemens Desiro platform, and the Stadler Regio-Shuttle.
Examples
Diesel–hydraulic locomotives have a smaller market share than those with diesel–electric transmission – the main worldwide user of main-line hydraulic transmissions was the Federal Republic of Germany, with designs including the 1950s DB class V 200, and the 1960 and 1970s DB Class V 160 family. British Rail introduced a number of diesel-hydraulic designs during its 1955 Modernisation Plan, initially license-built versions of German designs (see Category:Diesel–hydraulic locomotives of Great Britain). In Spain, Renfe used high power to weight ratio twin-engine German designs to haul high speed trains from the 1960s to 1990s. (See Renfe Classes 340, 350, 352, 353, 354)
Other main-line locomotives of the post-war period included the 1950s GMD GMDH-1 experimental locomotives; the Henschel & Son built South African Class 61-000; in the 1960s Southern Pacific bought 18 Krauss-Maffei KM ML-4000 diesel–hydraulic locomotives. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad also bought three, all of which were later sold to SP.
In Finland, over 200 Finnish-built VR class Dv12 and Dr14 diesel–hydraulics with Voith transmissions have been continuously used since the early 1960s. All units of Dr14 class and most units of Dv12 class are still in service. VR has abandoned some weak-conditioned units of 2700 series Dv12s.
In the 21st century series production standard gauge diesel–hydraulic designs include the Voith Gravita, ordered by Deutsche Bahn, and the Vossloh G2000 BB, G1206 and G1700 designs, all manufactured in Germany for freight use.
Diesel–steam
Steam-diesel hybrid locomotives can use steam generated from a boiler or diesel to power a piston engine. The Cristiani Compressed Steam System used a diesel engine to power a compressor to drive and recirculate steam produced by a boiler; effectively using steam as the power transmission medium, with the diesel engine being the prime mover
Diesel–pneumatic
The diesel-pneumatic locomotive was of interest in the 1930s because it offered the possibility of converting existing steam locomotives to diesel operation. The frame and cylinders of the steam locomotive would be retained and the boiler would be replaced by a diesel engine driving an air compressor. The problem was low thermal efficiency because of the large amount of energy wasted as heat in the air compressor. Attempts were made to compensate for this by using the diesel exhaust to re-heat the compressed air but these had limited success. A German proposal of 1929 did result in a prototype but a similar British proposal of 1932, to use an LNER Class R1 locomotive, never got beyond the design stage.
Multiple-unit operation
Most diesel locomotives are capable of multiple-unit operation (MU) as a means of increasing horsepower and tractive effort when hauling heavy trains. All North American locomotives, including export models, use a standardized AAR electrical control system interconnected by a 27-pin MU cable between the units. For UK-built locomotives, a number of incompatible control systems are used, but the most common is the Blue Star system, which is electro-pneumatic and fitted to most early diesel classes. A small number of types, typically higher-powered locomotives intended for passenger only work, do not have multiple control systems. In all cases, the electrical control connections made common to all units in a consist are referred to as trainlines.
The result is that all locomotives in a consist behave as one in response to the engine driver's control movements.
The ability to couple diesel–electric locomotives in an MU fashion was first introduced in the EMC EA/EB of 1937. Electrical interconnections were made so one engine driver could operate the entire consist from the head-end unit.
In mountainous regions, it is common to interpose helper locomotives in the middle of the train, both to provide the extra power needed to ascend a grade and to limit the amount of stress applied to the draft gear of the car coupled to the head-end power. The helper units in such distributed power configurations are controlled from the lead unit's cab through coded radio signals. Although this is technically not an MU configuration, the behaviour is the same as with physically interconnected units.
Cab arrangements
Cab arrangements vary by builder and operator. Practice in the U.S. has traditionally been for a cab at one end of the locomotive with limited visibility if the locomotive is not operated cab forward. This is not usually a problem as U.S. locomotives are usually operated in pairs, or threes, and arranged so that a cab is at each end of each set. European practice is usually for a cab at each end of the locomotive as trains are usually light enough to operate with one locomotive. Early U.S. practice was to add power units without cabs (booster or B units) and the arrangement was often A-B, A-A, A-B-A, A-B-B, or A-B-B-A where A was a unit with a cab. Center cabs were sometimes used for switch locomotives.
Cow-calf
In North American railroading, a cow-calf set is a pair of switcher-type locomotives: one (the cow) equipped with a driving cab, the other (the calf) without a cab, and controlled from the cow through cables. Cow-calf sets are used in heavy switching and hump yard service. Some are radio controlled without an operating engineer present in the cab. This arrangement is also known as master–slave. Where two connected units were present, EMD called these TR-2s (approximately ); where three units, TR-3s (approximately ).
Cow-calves have largely disappeared as these engine combinations exceeded their economic lifetimes many years ago.
Present North American practice is to pair two 3,000hp GP40-2 or SD40-2 road switchers, often nearly worn-out and very soon ready for rebuilding or scrapping, and to utilize these for so-called "transfer" uses, for which the TR-2, TR-3 and TR-4 engines were originally intended, hence the designation TR, for "transfer".
Occasionally, the second unit may have its prime-mover and traction alternator removed and replaced by concrete or steel ballast and the power for traction obtained from the master unit. As a 16-cylinder prime-mover generally weighs in the range, and a 3,000hp traction alternator generally weighs in the range, this would mean that would be needed for ballast.
A pair of fully capable "Dash 2" units would be rated . A "Dash 2" pair where only one had a prime-mover/alternator would be rated 3,000hp, with all power provided by master, but the combination benefits from the tractive effort provided by the slave as engines in transfer service are seldom called upon to provide 3,000hp much less 6,000hp on a continuous basis.
Fittings and appliances
Flameproofing
A standard diesel locomotive presents a very low fire risk but "flame proofing" can reduce the risk even further. This involves fitting a water-filled box to the exhaust pipe to quench any red-hot carbon particles that may be emitted. Other precautions may include a fully insulated electrical system (neither side earthed to the frame) and all electric wiring enclosed in conduit.
The flameproof diesel locomotive has replaced the fireless steam locomotive in areas of high fire risk such as oil refineries and ammunition dumps. Preserved examples of flameproof diesel locomotives include:
Francis Baily of Thatcham (ex-RAF Welford) at Southall Railway Centre
Naworth (ex-National Coal Board) at the South Tynedale Railway
Latest development of the "Flameproof Diesel Vehicle Applied New Exhaust Gas Dry Type Treatment System" does not need the water supply.
Lights
The lights fitted to diesel locomotives vary from country to country. North American locomotives are fitted with two headlights (for safety in case one malfunctions) and a pair of ditch lights. The latter are fitted low down at the front and are designed to make the locomotive easily visible as it approaches a grade crossing. Older locomotives may be fitted with a Gyralite or Mars Light instead of the ditch lights.
Environmental impact
Although diesel locomotives generally emit less sulphur dioxide, a major pollutant to the environment, and greenhouse gases than steam locomotives, they are not completely clean in that respect. Furthermore, like other diesel powered vehicles, they emit nitrogen oxides and fine particles, which are a risk to public health. In fact, in this last respect diesel locomotives may perform worse than steam locomotives.
For years, it was thought by American government scientists who measure air pollution that diesel locomotive engines were relatively clean and emitted far less health-threatening emissions than those of diesel trucks or other vehicles; however, the scientists discovered that because they used faulty estimates of the amount of fuel consumed by diesel locomotives, they grossly understated the amount of pollution generated annually. After revising their calculations, they concluded that the annual emissions of nitrogen oxide, a major ingredient in smog and acid rain, and soot would be by 2030 nearly twice what they originally assumed. In Europe, where most major railways have been electrified, there is less concern.
This would mean that in the USA diesel locomotives would be releasing more than 800,000tons of nitrogen oxide and 25,000tons of soot every year within a quarter of a century, in contrast to the EPA's previous projections of 480,000tons of nitrogen dioxide and 12,000tons of soot. Since this was discovered, to reduce the effects of the diesel locomotive on humans (who are breathing the noxious emissions) and on plants and animals, it is considered practical to install traps in the diesel engines to reduce pollution levels and other methods of pollution control (e.g., use of biodiesel).
Diesel locomotive pollution has been of particular concern in the city of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune reported levels of diesel soot inside locomotives leaving Chicago at levels hundreds of times above what is normally found on streets outside. Residents of several neighborhoods are most likely exposed to diesel emissions at levels several times higher than the national average for urban areas.
Mitigation
In 2008, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated regulations requiring all new or refurbished diesel locomotives to meet Tier II pollution standards that slash the amount of allowable soot by 90% and require an 80% reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions. See List of low emissions locomotives.
Other technologies that are being deployed to reduce locomotive emissions and fuel consumption include "Genset" switching locomotives and hybrid Green Goat designs. Genset locomotives use multiple smaller high-speed diesel engines and generators (generator sets), rather than a single medium-speed diesel engine and a single generator. Because of the cost of developing clean engines, these smaller high-speed engines are based on already developed truck engines. Green Goats are a type of hybrid switching locomotive utilizing a small diesel engine and a large bank of rechargeable batteries. Switching locomotives are of particular concern as they typically operate in a limited area, often in or near urban centers, and spend much of their time idling. Both designs reduce pollution below EPA Tier II standards and cut or eliminate emissions during idle.
Advantages over steam
As diesel locomotives advanced, the cost of manufacturing and operating them dropped, and they became cheaper to own and operate than steam locomotives. In North America, steam locomotives were custom-made for specific railway routes, so economies of scale were difficult to achieve. Though more complex to produce with exacting manufacturing tolerances ( for diesel, compared with for steam), diesel locomotive parts were easier to mass-produce. Baldwin Locomotive Works offered almost 500 steam models in its heyday, while EMD offered fewer than ten diesel varieties. In the United Kingdom, British Railways built steam locomotives to standard designs from 1951 onwards. These included standard, interchangeable parts, making them cheaper to produce than the diesel locomotives then available. The capital cost per drawbar horse power was £13 6s (steam), £65 (diesel), £69 7s (turbine) and £17 13s (electric).
Diesel locomotives offer significant operating advantages over steam locomotives. They can safely be operated by one person, making them ideal for switching/shunting duties in yards (although for safety reasons many main-line diesel locomotives continue to have two-person crews: an engineer and a conductor/switchman) and the operating environment is much more attractive, being quieter, fully weatherproof and without the dirt and heat that is an inevitable part of operating a steam locomotive. Diesel locomotives can be worked in multiple with a single crew controlling multiple locomotives in a single train – something not practical with steam locomotives. This brought greater efficiencies to the operator, as individual locomotives could be relatively low-powered for use as a single unit on light duties but marshaled together to provide the power needed on a heavy train. With steam traction, a single very powerful and expensive locomotive was required for the heaviest trains or the operator resorted to double heading with multiple locomotives and crews, a method which was also expensive and brought with it its own operating difficulties.
Diesel engines can be started and stopped almost instantly, meaning that a diesel locomotive has the potential to incur no fuel costs when not being used. However, it is still the practice of large North American railroads to use straight water as a coolant in diesel engines instead of coolants that incorporate anti-freezing properties; this results in diesel locomotives being left idling when parked in cold climates instead of being completely shut down. A diesel engine can be left idling unattended for hours or even days, especially since practically every diesel engine used in locomotives has systems that automatically shut the engine down if problems such as a loss of oil pressure or coolant loss occur. Automatic start/stop systems are available which monitor coolant and engine temperatures. When the unit is close to having its coolant freeze, the system restarts the diesel engine to warm the coolant and other systems.
Steam locomotives require intensive maintenance, lubrication, and cleaning before, during, and after use. Preparing and firing a steam locomotive for use from cold can take many hours. They can be kept in readiness between uses with a low fire, but this requires regular stoking and frequent attention to maintain the level of water in the boiler. This may be necessary to prevent the water in the boiler freezing in cold climates, so long as the water supply is not frozen. After use a steam locomotive requires a lengthy disposal operation to perform cleaning, inspection, maintenance and refilling with water and fuel before it is ready for its next duty. By contrast, as early as 1939 EMD was promoting its FT Series locomotive as needing no maintenance between 30-day inspections beyond refuelling and basic fluid level and safety checks which could be performed with the prime mover still running. Railways converting from steam to diesel operation in the 1940s and 1950s found that for a given period diesel locomotives were available for, on average, three or four times more revenue-earning hours than equivalent steam locomotives, allowing locomotive fleets to be cut drastically in size while maintaining operational capacity.
The maintenance and operational costs of steam locomotives were much higher than diesels. Annual maintenance costs for steam locomotives accounted for 25% of the initial purchase price. Spare parts were cast from wooden masters for specific locomotives. The sheer number of unique steam locomotives meant that there was no feasible way for spare-part inventories to be maintained. With diesel locomotives spare parts could be mass-produced and held in stock ready for use and many parts and sub-assemblies could be standardized across an operator's fleet using different models of locomotive from the same builder. Modern diesel locomotive engines are designed to allow the power assemblies (systems of working parts and their block interfaces) to be replaced while keeping the main block in the locomotive, which greatly reduces the time that a locomotive is out of revenue-generating service when it requires maintenance.
Steam engines required large quantities of coal and water, which were expensive variable operating costs. Further, the thermal efficiency of steam was considerably less than that of diesel engines. Diesel's theoretical studies demonstrated potential thermal efficiencies for a compression ignition engine of 36% (compared with 6–10% for steam), and an 1897 one-cylinder prototype operated at a remarkable 26% efficiency.
However, one study published in 1959 suggested that many of the comparisons between diesel and steam locomotives were made unfairly, mostly because diesels were a newer technology. After painstaking analysis of financial records and technological progress, the author found that if research had continued on steam technology instead of diesel, there would be negligible financial benefit in converting to diesel locomotion.
By the mid-1960s, diesel locomotives had effectively replaced steam locomotives where electric traction was not in use. Attempts to develop advanced steam technology continue in the 21st century, but have not had a significant effect.
See also
Alternative fuels for diesel engines
Diesel multiple unit
Diesel–electric transmission
Diesel engine
Electric locomotive
Electrification
Electro-diesel locomotive
Gas turbine locomotive
Heilmann locomotive
Hybrid electric vehicle
Hybrid locomotive
Non-road engine
References
Sources
External links
US Government test of GP38-2 locomotive with biodiesel fuel.
A 1926 article The Diesel Engine in Railway Transportation on Diesel locomotives
Diesel locomotive
Locomotive
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahendra%20Chaudhry
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Mahendra Chaudhry
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Mahendra Pal Chaudhry (; born 9 February 1942) is a Fijian politician and the leader of the Fiji Labour Party. Following a historic election in which he defeated the long-time former leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, the former trade union leader became Fiji's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister on 19 May 1999, but exactly one year later, on 19 May 2000 he and most of his Cabinet were taken hostage by coup leader George Speight, in the Fiji coup of 2000. Unable to exercise his duties, he and his ministers were sacked by President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara on 27 May; Mara intended to assume emergency powers himself but was himself deposed by the military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama.
After 56 days in captivity, Chaudhry was released on 13 July and subsequently embarked on a tour of the world to rally support. He was one of the leading voices raised in opposition to the Qarase government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, which he said was just a mechanism to grant amnesty to persons guilty of coup-related offences. In January 2007, he was appointed as Minister of Finance, Sugar Reform Public Enterprise and National Planning in the interim Cabinet of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, following another coup. Chaudhry was also co-chair of the task force focusing on economic growth within the National Council for Building a Better Fiji. In August 2008, he left the government and became an outspoken critic of it.
Family background
Mahendra Chaudhry born in an Indo-Fijian family of the Balhara clan in the town of Ba in Fiji. His paternal grandfather Ram Nath Chaudhry was from the village of Bahu Jamalpur in Haryana, India (then the British Raj) and arrived in the British Colony of Fiji in 1902, as an indentured labourer, to work on Fiji's sugarcane plantations. On his arrival in Fiji he disputed the agreement to work in the plantations and was employed as a store manager until he started his own business. He later returned to India with his wife, Ram Kalia, who died 22 September 1930 at the age of 45, and whom he had met and married in Fiji. His daughter, Raj Kumari also went to India with them. His sons Ram Gopal and Krishan Gopal Chaudhry remained in Fiji. Ram Gopal had fifteen children, one of them and the eldest son being Mahendra. Mahendra's maternal grandfather was from the Indian state of Kerala, and he has settled in Fiji in the early 1900s.
He worked as a government auditor, then as secretary of the Fiji Public Service Association during its 1973 strike, and later as vice-president of the Fiji Trades Union Congress. He also served on the board of the Fiji National Provident Fund until 1986.
In 2004, Chaudhry received the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, which is granted to members of the Indian diaspora to honor their contributions to the countries of which they are members. Chaudhry was the first Fijian citizen to receive this award.
Political career
Cabinet member after 1987 election win
Chaudhry helped to launch the Fiji Labour Party in 1985, and served as its assistant secretary. The Labour got its first chance to test its popularity in the by-election for the North Central Indian National Seat in December 1985, following the resignation of Vijay R. Singh. FLP decided to field Mahendra Chaudhry, who was also the general secretary of the National Farmers Union, as its candidate. Chaudhry lost the election by only 204 votes.
He was elected to Parliament for the first time in the 1987 general election and appointed Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in the coalition government of Timoci Bavadra. This government held office for barely a month; on 14 May, Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka deposed the government in the first of two military coups. In the aftermath of the coup he was repeatedly detained by the military. In January 1988 in his role as PSA secretary he led a strike by Suva firefights, which the military regime declared illegal. He was subsequently elected general secretary of the FTUC, and in this role led union resistance to the military regime. In June 1988 he was detained by the police and interrogated over the seizure of several tons of Soviet-made weaponry, but no charges were laid. He subsequently warned the military regime that Australian and New Zealand unions would be asked to take action against Fiji if the harassment of unions continued.
In June 1990 he led the National Farmers Union of Fiji in a boycott of the sugar cane harvest, threatening international action if the army used force. Later that month he led opposition to the military's draft constitution. His home was subsequently attacked by a gang of masked men, who smashed windows and damaged his car. In July 1991 he threatened a national strike by FTUC unions against the regime's proposal to jail those disrupting essential industries; the threat was successful, and the regime's industrial decree was revoked.
Leader of Labour Party from 1991
Chaudhry remained active in the Labour Party, and assumed leadership of the party in 1991 from Adi Kuini Bavadra, widow of Timoci Bavadra who had died in 1989. In 1990 a new constitution had been imposed on Fiji by presidential decree. This constitution discriminated against the Indian community in seats allocated to it in the House of Representatives, by not guaranteeing any seats in the Senate and by restricting Indo-Fijians from holding prominent positions in the civil service. Both the NFP and FLP decided to boycott the elections scheduled for May 1992. At the last minute, the NFP decided to contest the election. Mahendra Chaudhry, then had no choice but to lead the FLP into the election. With little time to prepare for the campaign, the FLP managed to win only 13 of the 27 seats reserved for Indians.
After the election, Chaudhry made the controversial decision to support Sitiveni Rabuka in Parliament, in exchange for a promise to review the 1990 Constitution, which Fiji Indians generally regarded as discriminating against them. Rabuka did not follow through on the deal, and Chaudhry and the Labour Party were punished at the parliamentary election of 1994, losing 6 of their 13 seats.
In the mid-1990s, after Rabuka finally did agree to a constitutional review, Chaudhry led campaign to change the electoral system from one based on "communal rolls" (with parliamentary seats reserved by ethnicity, elected by voters enrolled as members of particular ethnic groups), to one based on universal suffrage. Eventually, a compromise formula was agreed upon. Meanwhile, the Rabuka government was losing popularity. His admissions of womanizing, together with allegations of corruption in his administration, alienated him from powerful sections of the electorate. Chaudhry, meanwhile, forged the People's Coalition, an electoral alliance consisting of his Labour Party, and two other parties, both led by indigenous Fijians disaffected by Rabuka's administration. Another indigenous-led party, the Christian Democratic Alliance, joined the coalition later.
The 1999 election and the 2000 coup
The 1999 election resulted in a landslide win for the People's Coalition, with 58 of the 71 seats in the House of Representatives. The Labour Party won an absolute majority, 37 seats, in its own right. From the outset, voices both within the coalition and without attempted to persuade Chaudhry to forego the office of Prime Minister in favour of an ethnic Fijian, such as his deputy Tupeni Baba or Adi Kuini Speed (by now, the leader of the Fijian Association Party, part of the People's Coalition), but he refused. President Mara reportedly persuaded indigenous Fijian members of the coalition to accept Chaudhry's leadership. Chaudhry was duly appointed Prime Minister on 19 May 1999. To shore up his support among the indigenous community, Chaudhry appointed indigenous Fijians to two-thirds of all ministerial positions.
Few in Chaudhry's caucus had had any previous political experience, a factor that created difficulties for his government. Some Fijian nationalists opposed his administration and stirred up fears in the mostly rural ethnic Fijian population that land reform measures proposed by the Chaudhry government would expropriate their land (notwithstanding constitutional guarantees of indigenous control over five-sixths of the land, which could not be changed without the support of 9 of the 14 chiefly representatives in the Senate). Despite widespread fears of civil unrest, the takeover of the parliamentary complex by George Speight on 19 May 2000 (one year to the day since Chaudhry's appointment as Prime Minister) happened without warning.
More details concerning the overthrow of the Chaudhry government may be found in 2000 Fijian coup d'état and the linked Timeline, Mutinies, and Aftermath.
The election of 2001 and aftermath
When democracy was restored in 2001, Chaudhry fought a hotly contested election, but was defeated by Laisenia Qarase of the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL). It is thought that attrition within the Labour Party was a factor in his defeat; high-profile party members like Tupeni Baba had split to form the New Labour Unity Party and he had barely survived a leadership challenge. Mutual enmity between his party and the National Federation Party, the only other political party with significant Fiji-Indian support at that time, prevented a preference-swapping deal. In Fiji's system of transferable voting, such a deal would almost certainly have made him Prime Minister again. (Fiji's electoral laws, modelled at the time on those of Australia, allowed the votes of any two or more candidates in a particular constituency to be combined according to the candidates' preferences; voters could specify a different choice by ranking the candidates numerically in the order of their own preference).
Chaudhry rebuilt the Labour Party, which won several key by-elections throughout 2004. He challenged in the courts the refusal of the Qarase government to include his party in the Cabinet; on 18 July 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in his favour, saying that the exclusion of a party with more than 8 seats in the House of Representatives violated the Constitution. Appeals, counter-appeals, and negotiations delayed the appointment of Labour Ministers to the Cabinet, however. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled in June 2004 that the Labour Party was entitled to 14 out of 30 cabinet posts. Qarase announced that he would implement the order, but his refusal to include Chaudhry himself in any cabinet lineup continued to stall negotiations on the composition of the cabinet. Late in 2004, Chaudhry announced that the Labour Party had decided to remain in opposition for the remainder of the parliamentary term, seeing no way to resolve the impasse without making unacceptable compromises. By remaining outside of the government, the Labour Party was able to distance itself from unpopular decisions made by the administration, and position itself to challenge the ruling SDL for power in 2006.
2006 general election
The Fiji Labour Party formed an electoral alliance with the Party of National Unity (PANU) and United Peoples Party (UPP) of Mick Beddoes to contest the 2006 general elections. The SDL Party of Prime Minister Qarase had joined a grand coalition of ethnic Fijian parties to unite the indigenous Fijian vote. During the election, the issue of race was again raised and this galvanised Fijian support behind Qarase. Although the FLP increased its share of votes to 39% and won four more seats to make a total of 31, it was unable to unseat the Qarase Government.
Internal dissent
Chaudhry was criticised by some prominent members of the FLP, including Krishna Datt and Poseci Bune, for finalising his list of Senate nominees without consulting the Party. The Party threatened action against those members who spoke out publicly against Chaudhry.
Chaudhry's decision that the Labour Party should join the multi-party cabinet (although Chaudhry himself did not join it), was a course for friction within the party. Prime Minister Qarase demanded that all cabinet members vote for the budget or face dismissal, but Chaudhry advised the Labour cabinet members to oppose it because of the increase in VAT tax. In the end four members voted against the budget while others were absent from Parliament.
Participation in interim government
Following the December 2006 coup that ousted Qarase, Chaudhry accepted the post of Minister of Finance in the interim government formed under Frank Bainimarama in January 2007.
Chaudhry resigned as Minister of Finance on 18 August 2008, along with the Labour Party's two other ministers; Bainimarama took over Chaudhry's portfolio. According to Chaudhry, they did so voluntarily in preparation for the planned general election, although Bainimarama said that "there was a communication from me to [Chaudhry] about him resigning", while dismissing the issue's importance. Prior to the resignation, there had already been widespread rumors that Bainimarama wanted to remove Chaudhry from the government.
Chaudhry defended his record as Finance Minister, saying that "the value of our dollar today would have been about 20 cents had we not taken the measures that we took." While stating that Chaudhry's resignation was a positive development, deposed Prime Minister Qarase was sharply critical of Chaudhry's performance as Finance Minister, saying that he "failed badly as Finance Minister and the economy has shown very little sign of progress. He's just running away from the mess he has created." Qarase also condemned Chaudhry's participation in what he described as "an illegal administration".
Following the April 2009 constitutional crisis, Chaudhry spoke out to criticise the interim government, "def[ying] a press and political crackdown on dissent" in so doing. He described the abrogation of the Constitution as "tragic and unfortunate", and Commodore Bainimarama's leadership as "autocratic and dictatorial", adding that it was now "imperative" to set up multi-party talks – involving Qarase and other leaders – to prepare a speedy restoration of democracy. In October 2010 he was arrested for "meeting with sugar farmers in Rakiraki", in breach of the government's "emergency regulations that ban public meetings". In reporting on the arrest, the BBC described Chaudhry as "one of the main opposition voices" to the Bainimarama government; The Australian subsequently called him one of Bainimarama's "two most effective critics" within Fiji, along with Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika.
Elections in 2014
In April 2014 Chaudhry was convicted of breaching the Exchange Control Act by investing money outside Fiji without informing the Reserve Bank, and fined US$1.1 million. The conviction meant he was ineligible to contest the upcoming 2014 elections. An appeal against his conviction was unsuccessful. Choudhry was nominated as an FLP candidate, but ruled to be ineligible. The Labour Party won only 2.4 percent of the vote, and no parliamentary seats, and Chaudhry joined the leaders of other opposition parties in alleging electoral fraud.
On 3 July 2015, Chaudhry was quoted by Radio New Zealand as announcing his retirement from the leadership of the FLP, having served in that capacity for 23 years. The next day, however, he denied having made such a statement.
In September 2016 he was one of a number of politicians arrested after attending a meeting to discuss the country's constitution. He subsequently accused Fiji of still being a dictatorship. No charges were filed against anyone arrested.
He attempted to contest the 2018 election, but was ruled to be ineligible as a candidate due to his past criminal conviction. An appeal against the ruling was dismissed by the High Court of Fiji.
On 26 July 2021 he was taken in for questioning by Fijian police over comments he had made about a proposed government land bill.
He contested the 2022 election, winning 5760 votes, but did not win a seat as the Labour Party failed to make the 5% threshold.
Chaudhry's views and policies
Chaudhry is known for his combative style of leadership, which has won him both admirers and enemies.
Relationship with NFP
He remained at loggerheads with the National Federation Party, whose support dropped sharply in 1999, 2001 and 2006 elections, but continued to do well in local government elections. Although it would have been to his advantage to reach a deal on an exchange of preferences with the NFP, competition for support from Indian voters, particularly in the sugar cane growing areas, where FLP and NFP endorsed rival unions, prevented this.
Attracting ethnic Fijian vote
He failed to make significant inroads into the ethnic Fijian electorate, less than ten percent of whom voted for his party in 2001 or 2006. He was successful, however, in attracting several high-profile ethnic Fijians, such as Poseci Bune, to his party.
Brain drain
Chaudhry expressed alarm at the high rate of emigration from Fiji, especially of Fiji-Indians, and also of educated indigenous Fijians. "If the trend continues, Fiji will be left with a large pool of poorly educated, unskilled work force with disastrous consequences on our social and economic infrastructure and levels of investment," he said in a statement on 19 June 2005. He blamed the coups of 1987 for "brain drain" which had, he said, had adversely affected the sugar industry, the standard of the education and health services, and the efficiency of the civil service. This was creating a vacuum that would lead to increased levels of crime, drug abuse, and money laundering, he considered. He lamented the "indications of a growing feeling of insecurity, frustration and disaffection among people of all races at the direction in which Fiji appears to be headed," and said that only way to reverse the trend was to elect a government that would provide stability, raise living standards, and create a climate of confidence for investors and opportunities for job seekers.
Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill
From May–June 2005, Chaudhry was at the forefront of a campaign against the government's controversial Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, which proposes to establish a Commission with the power, subject to presidential approval, to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the 2000 coup. Speaking on 20 May, he said that a "culture of coups" had developed in Fiji and that it needed to be eradicated. Pardoning persons involved in the earlier coups of 1987 had been a serious mistake, he believed.
Bringing Fijians into the mainstream
Chaudhry also spoke in favour of bringing more ethnic Fijians into the economic mainstream. He attacked what he called the "divide and rule" policies of Fiji's former British colonial rulers, saying that indigenous Fijians had been isolated from other communities and marginalized economically. This colonial legacy had remained the status quo in society, even since independence in 1970, he maintained. "The status quo is not good for the ordinary Fijians. It is good for the elites in society but not for the ordinary Fijians," Chaudhry said. Positive discrimination programs would not achieve much without a dismantling of the traditional communal mindset, he said. He called for a more individualistic approach to society, based on incentives and appropriate training. He did not believe that modernization would threaten the communal structure of Fijian society. "No you can still fulfil your traditional obligations but the contradiction in the system between the communal approach and the free market approach needs to be addressed," he said. He also insisted that culture could not be allowed to be stagnant.
Universal Declaration on Human Rights
He condemned Prime Minister Qarase for speaking against the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Qarase had told a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Nadi the day before that western-style democracy was an alien concept in Fiji, and that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not compatible with Fiji's hierarchical order. Chaudhry countered by saying that Qarase was like a proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand. "The rule of law must apply equally to everyone, irrespective of status in society or class divisions it is this equal application that is the bulwark of modern democracies," he said.
Calls for electoral reform
Chaudhry periodically called for Fiji's electoral system to be reformed. He said on 20 November 2005 that communal voting, which reserved almost two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives for persons registered on ethnic electoral rolls, tended to polarize the nation and gave foundation to politicians with what he called extreme views. He said that any move to change this provision in the Constitution would be supported by the Opposition.
Gay rights
Chaudhry said on 18 October 2005 that he and the FLP would not support Prime Minister Qarase's attempts to close constitutional loopholes that undermine Fiji's anti-gay laws. Chaudhry said that gays rights were guaranteed by the constitution and must be upheld; the Prime Minister, who needed a two-thirds majority in Parliament to change the constitution, was just wasting his time trying to gain FLP support for the measure, he said.
Pro-business policies
Chaudhry also protested strongly against Qarase's claims, made at the annual conference of Fiji Employers Federation on 2 September, that the Labour Party was unsympathetic to business and held "a classic left-wing suspicion of ... the profit motive." Chaudhry countered that his party was in fact pro-business and had enacted a number of policies aimed at stimulating economic growth when it was in power. "It was the FLP that was committed to reducing the cost of doing business and started by lowering the cost of utilities, and requested the commercial banks and lending organizations to reduce their fees, charges and interest rates ... that saw the economy record an unprecedented growth of 9.6% in 1999," Chaudhry declared. He said that in the five years of Qarase's leadership, public debt had doubled to F$2.3 billion, that basic infrastructure had deteriorated, and that the economy was on the brink of collapse.
Controversies
Chaudhry has been involved in a number of controversial circumstances over the years, ranging from a manslaughter conviction in 1978 to allegations of misuse of funds as recently as 2005.
1978 conviction
In 1978, Chaudhry was involved in a fatal automobile accident and was convicted of failing to stop after a fatal accident. He was sentenced to nine months's imprisonment, but was released on parole after serving 17 days of his sentence.
Prime Minister Qarase drew media attention to Chaudhry's conviction and his almost immediate release, in response to Chaudhry's criticism of government decisions to show leniency towards persons convicted of involvement in the 2000 coup, including former Vice-President Ratu Jope Seniloli and Cabinet Minister Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu. Qarase accused Chaudhry and his supporters of "living in glasshouses." Chaudhry pointed out that there was no comparison between a premeditated act of treason and a mere traffic offence.
Hate speech allegations
The Fiji Times reported on 4 September 2005 that Chaudhry and his principal opponent, Prime Minister Qarase, had traded mutual accusations of using hate speech to win political support.
Fundraising allegations
On 8 December 2005, Chaudhry announced his decision to sue Prime Minister Qarase and Fiji Television for defamation.
Addressing the House of Representatives on 23 November 2005, Prime Minister Qarase alleged that Chaudhry had had money raised for him in the Indian state of Haryana, and called on Chaudhry to reveal what had happened to the money since. On 2 December, he told Parliament that he was aware that money had been raised in his name in Haryana, but denied having authorized the appeal or receiving any of its proceeds. He had raised the issue with then Chief Minister of Haryana Om Prakash Chautala, he said, after being hounded by the media in both Fiji and India. He claimed to have discovered only during his 2005 visit to India that Chautala's record with money is not transparent. "My anger about the whole episode is that Shri Chautala should exploit the feelings of the ordinary and poor folks of Haryana who are emotionally tied to me and to the people of Indian origin in Fiji and play on them a game of deceit for self enrichment," Chaudhry said.
On 30 November, the Government of Haryana state ordered an investigation into the allegations. This followed reports in the Indian media that an Indian political party, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), had raised over a million crore (F$376,557) for Chaudhry in 2001, who was then visiting India to raise support following his overthrow in the 2000 coup. According to Webindia, however, the money had not been delivered to him, because of currency regulations, and was instead deposited in the Oriental Bank of Commerce account of the Indo-Fiji Friendship Society. INLD Secretary General Ajay Singh Chautala, whose father Om Prakash Chautala was Chief Minister of Haryana at the time, welcomed the probe. The Haryana authorities were not mollified by his comments, and on 20 December Ranbir Singh Surjewala, the Haryana State Transport and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, called for the passports of Chautala and his two sons to be seized to prevent them from leaving the country.
It was announced on 7 December 2005 that India's Bureau of Investigation had cleared Chaudhry of the allegations.
Sugar industry commission allegations
In another twist, Qarase had also declared on 25 November that he had unspecified "evidence", which he claimed to have received from India, that a senior member of the FLP had attempted to get commissions from Indian companies that had applied for contracts with respect to the reform of Fiji's sugar industry. He warned Chaudhry that he did not make unfounded allegations, and that he would use the evidence "when the time comes." He later repeated the allegations outside of Parliament. Reacting angrily to the charges, Chaudhry threatened on 4 December to sue Qarase if he failed to apologize for or substantiate his claims. "It is the Prime Minister's duty to provide the evidence. These are serious allegations that have cast a slur on my integrity and reputation," he said. The following day, his son and lawyer, Rajendra Chaudhry, wrote to the Prime Minister giving him three days to apologize or else face a lawsuit. On 7 December, Qarase refused the ultimatum. "I don't apologize for nothing," the Fiji Times reported him as saying.
When the three-day deadline set by Chaudhry expired, he announced on 8 December that he would be suing Qarase as an individual, not as Prime Minister, meaning that Qarase would be unable to use state funds to fight his case. The writ, which named Qarase the first defendant, also named Fiji Television as the second defendant. "Qarase had been reluctant to furnish evidence to substantiate his claims ... The imputations are very serious and a direct question on my integrity and leadership. As such I have had the resort to legal action," Chaudhry declared.
At the scheduled press conference on 9 December, the Prime Minister revealed a confidential letter from Mahendra Chaudhry, written on National Farmers Union (NFU) letterhead in his capacity as General Secretary of the Union, to Charles Walker, chairman of the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC), in September 2003. The letter proposed that the NFU purchase shares in the FSC, and stated that he, Senator Anand Singh, and United Consultancy of Auckland, New Zealand, were in talks with "an India-based milling company" to restructure the FSC. According to the Prime Minister, the deal would have transferred shares, that the government was considering selling, not to cane farmers but to their trade union representatives. "The benefit was only to the NFU," Qarase said. Qarase called for an audit of the office of the Leader of the Opposition, saying that it would prove his connections to the Indian company. Equipment in Chaudhry's office had been used to communicate with the company since 2002, he alleged.
Chaudhry derided the revelations as "laughable," and said that they showed no connection whatsoever between himself and India's Exim Bank, or with the Indian government loan. "It was clear that having made wild baseless allegations, the PM was clutching at straws to try and validate his claims," Chaudhry said. "There is absolutely no connection between the loan and a letter that I wrote to PM's steering committee Charles Walker as chairman on sugar industry reforms that Qarase released to the media as his 'proof' that I had received a commission from the loan," he added. Nor did it substantiate, he said, Qarase's claims that he had sought a commission from the Indian companies.
Also on 9 December, FLP Senator and former Attorney-General Anand Singh announced his decision to sue the Indian government and the Head of the Indian Technical Mission, J.J. Bhagat, for compensation for providing the ideas, which he says were adopted without acknowledgement by the Fijian and Indian governments. Prime Minister Qarase had earlier alleged on 5 December that Chaudhry had been a party to the negotiations, and called on the FLP to reveal whether it was involved with Singh's compensation claim.
On 14 December, High Court Justice Anthony Gates dismissed a call from Chaudhry to impose a gag order on Prime Minister Qarase, from making media statements until Chaudhry's lawsuit is heard. Whether the Prime Minister's statements were defamatory was an issue that would have to be resolved in the trial itself, Gates ruled; in the meantime, the court would not interfere with constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech. Chaudhry was ordered to pay F$750 to Qarase and Fiji Television Limited to cover court costs. 9 January 2006 has been set for the hearing of the defamation suit. Chaudhry had failed, Gates said, to provide "credible evidence" that Qarase's words were untruthful, and therefore there was no grounds to prohibit their publication.
On 9 January 2006, Gates announced that he was withdrawing from the case against the Prime Minister and against Fiji Television. He was fully booked judging criminal cases, and had no time to devote to civil suits, he said.
Chaudhry released correspondence on 20 January 2006, citing it as proof that neither he nor his party had tried to collect a commission on Indian loans granted for sugar industry reform. The letter, from the Indian High Commission to Fiji, said that the Exim Bank had confirmed that there was no attempt to secure a commission on the loan, and that the bank never pays commissions on loans. In reply, the Prime Minister said that a number of unanswered questions remained, which would be addressed when the case was heard in court.
Chaudhry announced on 27 February that as of 16 January, he had withdrawn his case against Fiji Television, but not against the Prime Minister.
Lawsuit against Daily Post
On 5 December 2005, lawyer Rajendra Chaudhry filed a writ against the Daily Post, on behalf of his father, Fiji Labour Party (FLP) leader Mahendra Chaudhry. The writ against the government-owned newspaper, whose editor Mesake Koroi is a cousin of Prime Minister Qarase's, concerns what Chaudhry claims are "untrue and malicious" allegations, suggesting a leadership struggle within the FLP. The article in question also claimed that the FLP was no longer the party founded by Timoci Bavadra, Tupeni Baba, and Adi Kuini Speed, but had turned into a hard-line Indian nationalist party.
Abuse of privilege investigation
It was revealed on 23 December 2005 that Auditor-General Eroni Vatuloka was investigating a complaint from Prime Minister Qarase, accusing Chaudhry of abuse of office. The Prime Minister alleges that Chaudhry has allowed Senator Anand Singh to use office equipment for commercial purposes. Chaudhry has dismissed the Prime Minister's complaint as "frivolous" and "childish."
Fiji Television revealed on 31 January 2006 that the National Farmers Union had put the parliamentary telephone number on a letter faxed to a business client, and that the letter was signed by Shareen Prasad, an employee at the FLP parliamentary office. Chaudhry again refused to comment on the claims, saying they were "trivial."
Pramod Rae, General Secretary of the National Federation Party (NFP), the chief rival of the FLP for the Indo-Fijian vote, called for a thorough investigation into the allegations.
Support for Sun Myung Moon
Chaudhry was registered as an advisor to the Inter-Religious Federation For World Peace International, an organization affiliated with the Unification Church. The Fijian government abruptly revoked permission for Sun Myung Moon, the group's 85-year-old founder, to visit Fiji, where he was to be the keynote speaker at a conference in Nadi. Dr. Lesi Korovavala, Chief Executive Officer of the Immigration Department described Moon's doctrines as "misleading, repugnant and divisive," said that his visit would not be conducive to "peace, good order, public safety and public morality," and concluded that he was "not a fit and proper person to enter the country."
Chaudhry slammed the government decision, saying that it was treating Moon like a terrorist or a criminal. "Rev Dr. Moon is not a criminal or a terrorist to be treated in this manner," Chaudhry said. "He is a man dedicated to a mission of peace through the promotion of moral and spiritual values. He has founded an organisation that believes in the inculcation of moral and family values to bring about better global understanding and harmony." Chaudhry was joined by Senate President Taito Waqavakatoga, registered as a coordinator of the group, who said that Moon would have made a positive contribution to Fiji.
Tax Allegations
Chaudhry was cleared of any taxation breaches after the Inquiry team brought from Australia studied the evidence and documents provided by the FIRCA, stating that Mr Chaudhry had not breached any taxation laws. The tax assessment by FIRCA with respect to Mr Chaudhry between 2000 and 2006 was carried out in accordance with the Tax Act and other relevant tax laws in Fiji. The inquiry team was headed by Bruce Cowley a partner in the law firm Minter Ellison in Brisbane, Russel Postle a partner in the accounting firm of BDO Kendalls, also in Brisbane, and former deputy PM, Taufa Vakatale.
Elections contested
Awards
Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, 2004
Krishna Menon Award, 2018.
References
1942 births
Living people
Prime Ministers of Fiji
Finance Ministers of Fiji
Leaders ousted by a coup
Fijian Hindus
Fiji Labour Party politicians
Fijian trade unionists
Fiji sugar industry
Fijian politicians of Indian descent
Fijian people convicted of manslaughter
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
Politicians from Ba (town)
Leaders of the Opposition (Fiji)
Recipients of Pravasi Bharatiya Samman
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogger
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Frogger
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is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and manufactured by Sega. In North America, it was released by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct a series of frogs to their homes by crossing a busy road and a hazardous river.
Frogger was positively received as one of the greatest video games ever made and followed by several clones and sequels. By 2005, 20 million copies of its various home video game incarnations had been sold worldwide. It entered popular culture, including television and music.
Gameplay
The objective of the game is to guide a frog to each of the empty homes at the top of the screen. The game starts with three, five, or seven frogs, depending on the machine's settings. Losing all frogs is game over. The player uses the 4-direction joystick to hop the frog once. Frogger is either single-player or two players alternating turns.
The frog starts at the bottom of the screen, which contains a horizontal road occupied by speeding cars, trucks, and bulldozers. The player must guide the frog between opposing lanes of traffic to avoid becoming roadkill and losing a life. After the road, a median strip separates the two major parts of the screen. The upper part consists of a river with logs, alligators, and turtles, all moving horizontally across the screen. By jumping on swiftly moving logs and the backs of turtles and alligators, the player can guide the frog to safety. The player must avoid snakes, otters, and the open mouths of alligators. A brightly colored female frog is sometimes on a log and may be carried for bonus points. The top of the screen contains five "frog homes". These sometimes contain bonus insects or deadly alligators.
The opening tune is the first verse of a Japanese children's song called "Inu No Omawarisan" ("The Dog Policeman"). Other Japanese tunes include the themes to the anime series Hana no Ko Lunlun and Rascal the Raccoon. The American release has the same opening song plus "Yankee Doodle".
In 1982, Softline stated that "Frogger has earned the ominous distinction of being 'the arcade game with the most ways to die'." There are many different ways to lose a life (illustrated by a skull and crossbones symbol where the frog was), including being hit by the driver of a road vehicle; jumping into the river; running into snakes, otters, or an alligator's jaws; staying on top of a diving turtle; riding a log, alligator, or turtle off the side of the screen; jumping into a home already occupied by a frog; jumping into the side of a home or the bush; or running out of time.
When all five frogs are in their homes, the game progresses to the next level with increased difficulty. After five levels, the difficulty briefly eases and yet again progressively increases after each level. The timer gives 30 seconds to guide each frog into one of the homes, and resets whenever a life is lost or a frog reaches home safely.
Scoring
Every forward step scores 10 points, and every frog arriving safely home scores 50 points. 10 points are also awarded per each unused ½ second of time. Guiding a lady frog home or eating a fly scores 200 points each, and when all 5 frogs reach home to end the level the player earns 1,000 points. A single bonus frog is 20,000 points. 99,990 points is the maximum high score that can be achieved on an original arcade cabinet. Players may exceed this score, but the game only keeps the last 5 digits.
Release
The game was developed by Konami. On July 22, 1981, Sega gained the exclusive rights to manufacture the game worldwide.
North America
Sega/Gremlin was skeptical about Froggers earning potential in North America. This was because no other company licensed the game. Also, an earlier game called Frogs that was developed there had flopped. It was believed that Eliminator would be the company's next big hit. Elizabeth Falconer, a market researcher at Sega/Gremlin, was tasked by Gremlin founder Frank Fogleman to check Gremlin's library of video presentations to see if there was anything worth licensing, and she stumbled across Frogger.
Thinking the game deserved a chance though being "cute", she requested a licensing window for playtesting. She reminded executives who denigrated Frogger as a "women and kids game" by reminding them of Pac-Man. Sega/Gremlin agreed to pay Konami $3,500 per day for a 60-day licensing window. A prototype was playtested in a San Diego bar and was so successful that distributors agreed to resell the game based on the test alone.
Wanting to broaden the player base demographics, Jack Gordon, the director of video game sales at Sega/Gremlin, noted that women shied away from the "shoot em' ups" on the market and that games like Frogger "filled the void".
Ports
Frogger was ported to many contemporary home systems. Several platforms such as the Commodore 64 support both ROM cartridges and magnetic media, so they received multiple versions of the game.
Sierra On-Line gained the magnetic media rights and sublicensed them to developers who published for systems not normally supported by Sierra. Cornsoft published the official TRS-80/Dragon 32, Timex Sinclair 1000, and Timex Sinclair 2068 ports. Because of that, even the Atari 2600 received multiple releases: a standard cartridge and a cassette for the Starpath Supercharger. Sierra released disk or tape versions for the Commodore 64, Apple II, original Macintosh, IBM PC, and Supercharger-equipped 2600, and cartridge versions for the TRS-80 Color Computer
Parker Brothers received the license from Sega for cartridge versions which it released for the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit family, TI-99/4A, VIC-20, and Commodore 64. Parker Brothers spent $10 million on advertising Frogger. The Atari 2600 version was programmed by Ed English.
Coleco released stand-alone Mini-Arcade tabletop versions of Frogger, which, along with Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Donkey Kong, had three million sales combined.
The game was ported to systems such as the PC-6001 and Game Boy (with two separate releases for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color in 1998). Frogger is one of the 6 launch games for the 1983 Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy.
Reception
Froggers appeal was seen to lack barriers of age or sex. Its success increased production, becoming one of the top-grossing arcade games in North America during 1981. The arcade game earned over (equivalent to $ in ) for Sega/Gremlin in US cabinet sales, becoming the most successful Sega/Gremlin release. In Japan, Frogger was the 12th highest-grossing arcade game of 1981.
Home versions of Frogger had high sales. The 1982 Atari 2600 version earned its publisher Parker Brothers in orders upon launch. By the end of the year, Atari 2600 cartridges were sold with in wholesale revenue. It became the company's most successful first-year product, beating the sales and revenues of its previous best-seller, Merlin. By 2005, copies of the various home versions had been sold worldwide, including in the United States.
In 1981, Computer and Video Games reviewed the arcade game as "one of the popular new generation of arcade games which are getting way from space themes". In his 1982 book Video Invaders, Steve Bloom described Frogger as a "climbing game" along with Space Panic (1980) and Nintendo's Donkey Kong (1981). He said it was one of the "most exciting variations" on Pac-Mans maze theme along with Donkey Kong due to how players need to "scale from the bottom of the screen to the top" which make them "more like obstacle courses than mazes" since "you always know where you're going—up." Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame later reviewed the arcade game, calling it one of "the most beloved videogames ever created" and "pure, undiluted gaming at its finest". He said the "graphics are cute and detailed, the sound effects are crisp and clear, and the controls are sharp and responsive".
Arcade Express reviewed the Atari VCS version in 1982, calling it "a highly authentic translation of the coin-op hit" that combines "great graphics with sophisticated play action". Ed Driscoll reviewed the Atari VCS version in The Space Gamer, commenting that, "All in all, if you liked the arcade version, this should save you a lot of quarters. The price is in line with most cartridges. It also proves that Atari isn't the only one making home versions of the major arcade games for the VCS." Danny Goodman of Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games wrote in 1983 that the Atari 2600 version "is one of the most detailed translations I have seen", noting the addition of the wraparound screen. In 2013, Entertainment Weekly named Frogger one of the top ten games for the Atari 2600.
Reviews
Games
Legacy
Remakes and sequels
In 1997, Hasbro Interactive released Frogger, a vastly expanded remake of the original for Windows and the PlayStation. Unlike the original, it consists of multiple different levels. It was a commercial success, with Windows sales alone at nearly one million units in less than four months. In 1998, Hasbro released a series of versions of the original game for the Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game com, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color. Each version has different graphics, with the Genesis version having the same as the original arcade game. The Genesis and SNES versions are the last games released for those consoles in North America. Though using the same box art, they are otherwise unrelated to the 1997 remake.
In 2005, InfoSpace worked with Konami Digital Entertainment to create the mobile game Frogger for Prizes, in which players across the U.S. competed in multiplayer tournaments to win daily and weekly prizes. In 2006, the mobile game version of Frogger grossed over $10 million in the United States. A Java version was released for compatible mobile phones.
Frogger was released on the Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 on July 12, 2006. It was developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Konami. It has two new gameplay modes: versus speed mode and co-op play. Some of the music was replaced, including the familiar Frogger theme. This version is in the compilation Konami Classics Vol. 1.
The original 1981 arcade version joined the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 Arcade Archives on December 12, 2019.
A remake of the game has been announced for release exclusively for the Intellivision Amico.
The home versions of Frogger had numerous sequels, remakes, and spin-offs:
Frogger II: ThreeeDeep! (1984)
Frogger (PlayStation, Windows) (1997)
Frogger (Tiger Electronic) (1998, LCD Game)
Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge (PlayStation, Windows, Dreamcast) (2000)
Frogger 2 (Game Boy Color) (2000)
Frogger: The Great Quest (PlayStation 2, Windows) (2001)
Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog (Game Boy Advance) (2001)
Frogger Advance: The Great Quest (Game Boy Advance) (2002)
Frogger Beyond (PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox, GameCube) (2002)
Frogger's Adventures 2: The Lost Wand (Game Boy Advance) (2002)
Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic (Game Boy Advance) (2003)
Frogger's Adventures: The Rescue (PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows) (2003)
Frogger (mobile) (2003)
Frogger: Ancient Shadow (PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox) (2005)
Frogger: Helmet Chaos (Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable) (2005)
Frogger Puzzle (mobile game) (2005)
Frogger's 25 Anniversary (Xbox 360) (2006)
Frogger Evolution (J2ME) (2006)
My Frogger Toy Trials (Nintendo DS) (2006)
Konami Kids Playground: Frogger Hop, Skip & Jumpin' Fun (PlayStation 2) (2007)
Frogger Launch (Windows Mobile) (2007)
Frogger Hop Trivia (arcade) (2007)
Frogger 2 (Xbox 360) (2008)
Frogger Returns (Wii, PlayStation 3) (2009)
Frogger Beats 'n' Bounces (J2ME) (2008)
Frogger Inferno (iOS) (2010)
Frogger (Windows Phone) (2010)
Frogger 3D (Nintendo 3DS) (2011)
Frogger Free (iOS) (2011)
Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition (Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS, Android) (2012)
Frogger Free (iPhone, Android) (2012)
Frogger's Crackout (Windows Store) (September 11, 2013)
Frogger: Get Hoppin (casino game) (2017)
Frogger In Toy Town (Apple Arcade) (2019)
Frogger and the Rumbling Ruins (Apple Arcade) (2022)
Frogger (Intellivision Amico) (TBA)
Clones
Unofficial clones include Ribbit for the Apple II (1981), Acornsoft's Hopper (1983) for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, A&F Software's Frogger (1983) for BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum, PSS's (Personal Software Services) Hopper for the Oric 1 in the UK (1983) and a later release for the ORIC Atmos, Froggy for the ZX Spectrum released by DJL Software (1984), Solo Software's Frogger for the Sharp MZ-700 (1984) in the UK, and Leap Frog for the NewBrain.
Several clones retain the basic gameplay of Frogger and change the style or plot. Pacific Coast Highway (1982), for the Atari 8-bit family, splits the gameplay into two alternating screens: one for the highway, one for the water. Preppie! (1982), for the Atari 8-bit family, changes the frog to a preppy retrieving golf balls at a country club. Frostbite (1983), for the Atari 2600, uses the Frogger river gameplay with an arctic theme. Crossy Road (2014), for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, has a randomly generated series of road and river sections in one endless level, with only one life and a single point given for each forward hop.
In popular culture
In 1983, Frogger made its animated television debut as a segment on CBS's Saturday Supercade cartoon lineup. Frogger, voiced by Bob Sarlatte, worked as an investigative reporter.
On the 1984 Bad Religion album "Back to the Known", the song "Frogger" describes Los Angeles traffic as "playing Frogger with my life". The song uses a sample from the game as its intro.
In the 1998 Seinfeld episode "The Frogger", Jerry and George visit a soon-to-be-closed pizzeria they frequented as teenagers and discover the Frogger machine still in place, with George's decade-old high score still recorded.
Frogger appears in the films Wreck-It Ralph, Pixels, and Ralph Breaks the Internet.
A scene in the Teen Titans episode "Cyborg the Barbarian" parodies the game.
In 2006, a group in Austin, Texas, used a modified Roomba dressed as Frogger to play a real-life version of the game.
In science, Frogger is the name given to a transposon ("jumping gene") family in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
In 2008, the City of Melbourne created a spin-off called Grogger as part of a public service campaign to encourage people to take safe transportation home after a night of drinking.
Game show
Konami announced that a Frogger game show was in production for Peacock, produced by Konami Cross Media NY and Eureka Productions. It debuted on September 9, 2021.
Competition
On November 26, 1999, Rickey's World Famous Sauce offered $10,000 to the first person who could score 1,000,000 points on Frogger or $1,000 for a new world record prior to January 1, 2000. On March 25, 2005, Robert Mruczek offered $1,000 for beating the fictitious world record of 860,630 as set by George Costanza in an episode of Seinfeld or $250 for a new world record by the end of that year. On December 1, 2006, John Cunningham offered $250 for exceeding the same fictitious world record of 860,630 points by February 28, 2007. These scores were surpassed only after the bounties had all expired.
The first score to have been verified as having beaten George Costanza's fictional score of 860,630 points was set by Pat Laffaye on December 22, 2009, with 896,980 points. This was surpassed by Michael Smith of Springfield, Virginia, with a score of 970,440 points on July 15, 2012. On August 15, 2017 Pat Laffaye reclaimed the record, scoring 1,029,990 points, becoming the first person to break one million points on an original arcade machine. The current Frogger world record holder is Michael Smith, now of Durham, North Carolina, after scoring 1,356,520 on February 27, 2022.
Notes
References
External links
Frogger at the Arcade History database
1981 video games
Action games
Apple II games
Atari 2600 games
Atari 5200 games
Atari 8-bit family games
BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games
Cancelled Game Gear games
Classic Mac OS games
ColecoVision games
Commodore 64 games
Dragon 32 games
Fictional frogs
Game Boy Color games
Game.com games
Gremlin Industries games
Hamster Corporation games
Handheld video games
Intellivision games
IOS games
Konami arcade games
Konami franchises
Konami games
Mobile games
MSX games
NEC PC-6001 games
Nintendo Switch games
Parker Brothers video games
PlayStation 4 games
Sega arcade games
Sega Genesis games
Sierra Entertainment games
Single-player video games
Starpath games
Super Nintendo Entertainment System games
TI-99/4A games
Top-down video games
TRS-80 Color Computer games
TRS-80 games
VIC-20 games
Video game franchises
Video games adapted into television shows
Video games developed in Japan
Magnavox Odyssey 2 games
Windows games
Windows Mobile Professional games
Windows Mobile Standard games
Windows Phone games
Xbox 360 Live Arcade games
Z80
ZX81 games
ZX Spectrum games
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%20of%20Jesus%20Christ%20of%20Latter%20Day%20Saints%20%28Strangite%29
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—usually distinguished with a parenthetical (Strangite)—is one of the several organizations that claim to be the legitimate continuation of the church founded by Joseph Smith on April 6, 1830. It is a separate organization from the considerably larger and better known Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Both churches claim to be the original organization established by Smith. The Strangite church is headquartered in Voree, Wisconsin, just outside Burlington, and accepts the claims of James Strang as successor to Smith. It had approximately 300 members in 1998. An undated FAQ on the church's offical website reports there are around 130 active members throughout the United States.
After Smith was murdered in 1844 with no clear successor, several claimants sought to take leadership of the church which Smith founded. Among them was Strang, who competed with other prominent members, notably Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon.
At its peak, the Strangite Church had about 12,000 members, making them noteworthy rivals to the larger faction led by Young. Strang was murdered in 1856, after which most of his followers joined Joseph Smith III and his Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now called the Community of Christ.
History
Before Strang
Strangites share the same history with other Latter Day Saint denominations up until the assassination of Joseph Smith. During the resulting succession crisis, several early Mormon leaders asserted claims to succeed Smith, including Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young and James Strang. Rigdon's claim rested on his status as the senior surviving member of Smith's First Presidency, the church's highest leadership quorum. Rejected by the main church body in Nauvoo, Illinois, Rigdon and his followers moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his organization faltered. A descendant of the Rigdonite church lives on today as The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), which is not recognized as legitimate by Strangites.
Brigham Young initially argued that Smith could have no immediate successor, but rather that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (of which he was president) should be sustained as the presiding body of the church. Young and his followers migrated west to the Salt Lake Valley, in what became Utah Territory, continuing to use Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as their name until incorporating in 1851, when the spelling was standardized as "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". This organization has become the largest Latter Day Saint body in the world today. Both the Utah LDS Church and the Strangite church posit themselves as the sole legal continuation of Smith's organization; neither considers the other to be legitimate, nor do they recognize the validity of numerous other Latter Day Saint sects.
James Strang and the Voree plates
Although he was a relatively recent convert at the time of Smith's death, James Strang posed a formidable—and initially quite successful—challenge to the claims of Young and Rigdon. Strang was a Mormon elder charged with establishing a stake or "place of refuge" in Wisconsin, should the Mormons be forced to abandon their headquarters in Nauvoo. He possessed a document that came to be known as the "letter of appointment", alleged to have been written by Smith prior to his death. Critics{{who?)) asset the handwriting of the letter does not graphologically resemble any extant letters written by Smith. Furthermore, wording in the letter was ambiguous; some insist that it only appointed Strang to be president of the new Voree Stake of the church, while Strang and his followers interpreted it as a call to follow Smith as President of the Church. Strang also claimed at the moment of Smith's death, he was visited by angels who ordained him to be Smith's successor, though he claimed no other witnesses to the event.
Strang's assertion appealed to many Latter Day Saints who were attracted to Mormonism's doctrine of continuing revelation through a living prophet. In the face of protracted Mormon anguish at Smith's death, Strang insisted that there still was, indeed, a Mormon seer who communed with God and conversed with angels. Strang's claim was bolstered by his discovery of the Voree plates, purporting to contain the last testament of an ancient Native American, one "Rajah Manchou of Vorito". These plates were found in the Hill of Promise, which would become the temple site in the new Strangite town of Voree. This event was reminiscent of Smith's translations of the golden plates (the Book of Mormon) and the Book of Abraham, and may have encouraged some Latter Day Saints to accept Strang over any of his competitors, who had not produced any such "records".
Early successes and losses
Many prominent Latter Day Saints believed in Strang's "letter of appointment" and accepted him as Mormonism's second "Prophet, Seer, Revelator and Translator"—at least in the short term. These included the church's Presiding Patriarch and apostle William Smith (Smith's only surviving brother); Book of Mormon witness Martin Harris (who left and later rejoined the LDS Church in Utah); Nauvoo Stake President William Marks; second Bishop of the Church and church trustee-in-trust George Miller; apostle John E. Page; former apostle William E. McLellin; Smith's mother Lucy Mack Smith; and other members of the Smith family.
Another adherent was John C. Bennett, former mayor of Nauvoo and a former member of the First Presidency. Bennett had been in Smith's innermost circle but had broken with the founding prophet and had written an anti-Mormon exposé. Bennett founded a secretive Strangite fraternal society known as the "Order of Illuminati", but his presence disrupted Strang's church and ultimately led to his excommunication. Bennett's "order" fell by the wayside and no longer exists among the Strangites.
All of these persons—with the exception of Miller, who would remain loyal to Strang until death—left the Strangite church by 1850. Many of these defections were due to Strang's seemingly abrupt "about-face" on the turbulent subject of polygamy. Vehemently opposed to the practice at first, Strang reversed course in 1849 to become one of plural marriage's strongest advocates. Since many of his early disciples had looked to him as a monogamous counterweight to Young's polygamous version of Mormonism, Strang's decision to embrace plural marriage proved costly to him and his church.
Strang found his greatest support among the scattered outlying branches of Mormonism, which he frequently toured. His followers may have numbered as many as 12,000, at a time when Young's group had just over 50,000. After Strang won a debate at a conference in Norway, Illinois, he converted the entire branch. While in Voree, the Strangites published a periodical known as the Voree Herald. Strang's church also fielded a mission to England, one of the primary sources of converts to Mormonism. This mission was led by Martin Harris, the financier of the Book of Mormon and one of its Three Witnesses. Harris proved a poor spokesman, however, and the English missions sided with the LDS Church led by Young.
Establishing a kingdom on Beaver Island
Because the high price of land in the Voree area made it difficult for Latter Day Saints to "gather" there, Strang moved his church headquarters to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. Here his disciples founded a town known as St. James (now St. James Township), and in 1850, openly established an ecclesiastical monarchy with Strang as the spiritual "king" of his church. The date of his coronation, July 8, is still mandated as one of the two most important days in the Strangite church calendar (the other is April 6, the anniversary of the founding of Smith's church).
Contrary to popular belief, Strang never claimed to be king over Beaver Island, or any other geographical entity. Rather, he asserted that he was king over his church, which he saw as the one, true "Kingdom of God" prophesied in scripture and destined to spread over all the earth. The constitution of this kingdom was contained within the Book of the Law of the Lord, which Strang claimed to have translated from the Plates of Laban mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Originally published in 1851, this new book of Strangite scripture would be republished in a greatly expanded edition in 1856, just after Strang's murder. The book is still revered by Strangites today, remaining a vital part of their canon of scripture.
In addition to printing religious materials, the Strangite printing press on Beaver Island became the source of a new periodical, the Northern Islander, which was the first real newspaper in all of northern Michigan. As St. James became an entrepôt for Great Lakes shipping, the Strangites began to compete with more established commercial lake ports such as Mackinac Island. Tensions grew between Mormons on Beaver Island and their non-Mormon neighbors, which frequently exploded into violence. Accusations of thuggery and thievery were leveled by both parties against each other, compounded by ever-increasing dissension among some of Strang's own disciples, who chafed at what they saw as his increasingly tyrannical rule.
In 1854, Strang published Ancient and modern Michilimackinac, including an account of the controversy between Mackinac and the Mormons. Dale Morgan, a historian of the Latter Day Saint movement, writes: "Strang surveys the geography and history of Mackinac and the surrounding region, particularly the islands of Lake Michigan, and after giving an account of the Mormon settlement upon Big Beaver Island, addresses himself to the bitter controversies between the people of Mackinac and the Mormons. Although dealing with controverted matters and colored by Strang's indignation at the outrages he and his people had to endure, the pamphlet is a responsible source on the events of which it treats, and is also interesting for the considerable measure of learning it reveals in Strang".
Tensions finally came to a head on June 20, 1856, when two Strangite malcontents shot Strang in the back, leading to his death three weeks later. Since Strang refused to appoint a successor, and insisted that the next Strangite prophet must be chosen and ordained by angels just as he and Smith had been, Strang's church was left leaderless and vulnerable. One day before his death, vigilantes from Mackinac Island and other Lake Michigan communities converged on Beaver Island. The Strangites were rounded up, forced onto hastily commandeered steamships, and removed from the island. Most were simply dumped onto docks in Chicago and Green Bay, destitute and deprived of all their property.
After Strang
Strang's death and the loss of his Beaver Island settlement were twin catastrophes for his church. Despondent and spiritually adrift after the Strangite organization failed to provide a successor for Strang, most Strangites eventually chose to join what was then known as the "New Organization" of Latter Day Saints. This group had chosen not to follow Young and would eventually accept the leadership of Joseph Smith III, eldest son of Smith. This "New Organization" was later incorporated as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, becoming the second-largest body in the Latter Day Saint movement.
A few congregations of Strangites, however, remained loyal to their prophet's memory. Wingfield W. Watson, a high priest who had known and served under Strang, kept the Strangite church alive into the 20th century. Strang's disciples today are divided into two main factions; one is led by a Presiding High Priest, who does not claim to have the authority or office possessed by Smith or Strang. The other claims that this first assemblage is in error, and that by incorporating in 1961 and allegedly organizing a new order of the priesthood to rule them and a new man-made set of laws to govern them, it lost its identity as a faithful continuation of Strang's organization. This second group claims that it is the sole true remnant of Strang's church.
The first group no longer emphasizes missionary work, as they tend to believe that after three murdered prophets (Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Strang), God closed his dispensation to the "gentiles" of the West. Consequently, this group's congregation remains small. Current membership figures vary between 50 and 300 persons, depending upon the source consulted.
There are two groups among the second. One group has a website based in Independence, Missouri, and the second has a website based in Shreveport, Louisiana. Both conduct missionary work on the Internet.
Scriptures
The Strangites "believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; [and] also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God," just as do most other Latter Day Saint denominations. They consider editions of the Doctrine and Covenants published prior to Smith's death (which contained the Lectures on Faith) to be scripture.
Strangites hold the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible to be inspired, but do not believe modern publications of the text are accurate, so they "cautiously use the publication of his earliest corrections published as the 'Inspired Version' or 'Joseph Smith Translation' by the sons of Joseph Smith in Plano, Ill., 1867." Strangites do not have any official stance on the Book of Abraham.
Strang's Book of the Law of the Lord is accepted as scripture in its expanded 1856 form; it is believed to be the same "Book of the Law of the Lord" mentioned in the Bible, and Strang claimed to have translated it from the Plates of Laban mentioned in the Book of Mormon.
The Strangites also hold as scripture several prophecies, visions, revelations, and translations printed by Strang, and published in the Revelations of James J. Strang. This text contains his purported "letter of appointment" from Smith and his translation of the Voree plates. The Book of Jasher was consistently used by both Smith and Strang, but as with other Latter Day Saint denominations, there is no official stance on its authenticity and it is not considered canonical.
Doctrines
Monarchy and priesthood
One distinctive difference between Strangites and other Latter Day Saints concerns the singular subdivisions Strang makes within the Melchizedek priesthood, which his Book of the Law refers to as "The Priesthood of an endless life," and the Aaronic priesthood, referred to as "the Priesthood of life."
In the Melchizedek priesthood, Strang enumerates two "orders," that of "Apostles," and that of "Priests."
Apostles are subdivided into four "degrees":
The Prophet/President of the Strangite church is openly referred to throughout the book as a "King," rather than as a "President".
The President's Counselors are designated as "Viceroys." Viceroys are referred to as "kings," too, though this does not indicate a share in the unique royal dignity accorded to the President/King.
Strang's Twelve Apostles are named as "Princes in his Kingdom forever." The leader of Strang's Apostles is designated as "Prince and Grand Master of the Seventies."
A quorum of "Evangelists" (not to be confused with the office of Patriarch) is established, to be Apostles to a single "nation, kindred, tongue or people"—unlike the Twelve, who were sent to all nations. Seven Evangelists form a quorum, and Strang noted that such a body had never been organized "in this dispensation" (and nor did Strang organize one). This is a unique priesthood office in the Latter Day Saint movement.
Priests are subdivided into two "degrees":
High Priests are to include "all inferiour Kings, Patriarchs, or heads of tribes, and Nobles, or heads of clans." Furthermore, Strang continued, "They who hold it are called Sons of God." From this group, said the Book of the Law, the king is to select "counsellors, judges and rulers." Furthermore, the Book of the Law limits consecration of the Eucharist to High Priests and Apostles, as opposed to other Latter Day Saint sects, who follow the Doctrine and Covenants in permitting Elders and Priests also to do so.
The "degree" of Elder includes both the offices of Seventy and Elder as generally constituted in Smith's church.
In the Aaronic priesthood, Strang enumerates three "orders":
Priests are subdivided into two "courses": Sacrificators and Singers. The course of Singers is opened to women. Each temple is to have a Chief Priest, assisted by a first and second High Priest. Strangite "Sacrificators" are to kill sacrifices in accordance with appropriate provisions of the Book of the Law. Female priests are specifically barred from killing sacrifices. The Doctrine and Covenants functions of preaching and baptizing are retained as well.
Teachers are subdivided into five "degrees": Rabboni, Rabbi, Doctor, Ruler, and Teacher. This office, like that of Priest, is open to women. Teachers are not merely to instruct in spiritual matters, but in secular ones as well. They are to staff schools throughout the kingdom.
Deacons are subdivided into three "degrees": Marshals, Stewards and Ministers. They are to serve as "Stewards and keepers of the King's prisons, and Stewards of the King's Courts."
In addition, a "King's Council" and a "King's Court" are established, though none function within the Strangite church today. While no direct link is made between the King's Court and the "High Council" established in the Doctrine and Covenants, certain parallels exist, such as requiring all members to hold the High Priesthood, and limiting their number to twelve.
Although Strang briefly retained the services of Apostle William Smith as "Chief Patriarch" of his church, he makes no mention of this office anywhere in his book.
No Apostles (of any degree) exist within the Strangite organization today, as all must be appointed by a Strangite prophet, and the prophet himself must be appointed by God through the direct ministry of angels. The "incorporated" group of Strangites has high priests, but the "non-incorporated" group does not, insisting that the first body does not currently possess authority to ordain any. Both factions enjoy the ministry of Elders and Aaronic Priesthood offices.
The Decalogue
Another unique feature of Strangite doctrine is its singular version of the Ten Commandments. The Strangite Decalogue differs from any other Jewish, Catholic, Islamic or Protestant version, by including the commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
While not in the list of commandments, this admonition appears in the Hebrew Bible in Leviticus 19:18, and five times in the New Testament. In his "Note on the Decalogue," Strang asserted that no other version of the Decalogue contains more than nine commandments and speculated that his fourth commandment was lost perhaps as early as Josephus' time (circa 37-100 AD). Strang's version of the Decalogue (together with the rest of his teaching) are rejected by all non-Strangite Mormon factions, including the mainline LDS Church.
The full text of the fourth commandment according to the Strangites reads:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: thou shalt not revile him, nor speak evil of him, nor curse him: thou shalt do no injustice unto him; and thou shalt maintain his right, against his enemy: thou shalt not exact rigorously of him, nor turn aside from relieving him: thou shalt deliver him from the snare and the pit, and shalt return his ox when he strayeth: thou shalt comfort him when he mourns, and nurture him when he sickens: thou shalt not abate the price of what thou buyest of him, for his necessity; nor shalt thou exact of him, because he leaneth upon thee: for in so doing thousands shall rise up and call thee blessed, and the Lord thy God shall strengthen thee in all the work of thy hand.
Ordination of women
As noted above, the Strangite organization opens two priesthood offices to women: Priest and Teacher. While only the "course" of "Singer" in the office of Priest (as opposed to "Sacrificator") is permitted to females, all five "degrees" in the office of Teacher are available. Women may serve as "leaders" of the Singers. Strang ordained women to these ministries as early as 1851, and allowed them to lecture in his School of the Prophets by 1856. Another denomination, the Community of Christ, began ordaining women to the priesthood in 1984, while most other Latter Day Saint churches do not ordain women to the priesthood.
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice was instituted in the Strangite church under Strang's leadership, primarily as a part of Strangite celebration rituals. Though the chapter on "Sacrifices" in Strang's Book of the Law of the Lord speaks of them as being offered for sins, the prohibition on such sacrifices contained in 3 Nephi 9:19–20, meant that Strang focused instead on sacrifice as an element of religious festivities, especially the commemoration of his own coronation as king (July 8, 1850). The head of every house, from the king to his lowest subject, was to offer "a heifer, or a lamb, or a dove. Every man a clean beast, or a clean fowl, according to his household."
The killing of sacrifices was a prerogative of Strangite Priests, but female Priests were specifically barred from participating in this aspect of the priestly office. "Firstfruits" offerings were also demanded from all Strangite agricultural harvests.
Animal sacrifices are no longer practiced by the Strangites, but belief in their correctness is still required.
Monotheism and the vocation of Jesus Christ
Strangites reject both the traditional Christian doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ and the Mormon doctrine of plurality of gods. They insist that there is but one eternal God, the Father, and that alleged progression to godhood (a doctrine supposedly taught by Smith, but Strangites reject that assertion) is impossible. They believe that God has always been God, and he is one Person (not three, as in the traditional Christian Trinity).
Jesus Christ, Strangites believe, was the natural-born son of Mary and Joseph, who was chosen from before all time to be the Savior of mankind, but who had to be born as an ordinary mortal of two human parents (rather than being begotten by the Father or the Holy Spirit) to be able to truly fulfill his Messianic role. Strang claimed that the earthly Christ was in essence "adopted" as God's son at birth, and fully revealed as such during the transfiguration. After proving himself to God by living a perfectly sinless life, he was thus enabled to provide an acceptable sacrifice for the sins of men, prior to his resurrection and ascension.
Free agency
Musing at length on the nature of sin and evil, Strang wrote that of all things that God could give to man, he could never give him experience. Thus, if "free agency" were to be real, humanity must be given the opportunity to fail and to learn from its own mistakes. The ultimate goal for each human being, according to Strangites, is to willingly conform oneself to the revealed character of God in every way, preferring good to evil not out of any fear of punishment or desire for reward, but rather "on account of the innate loveliness of undefiled goodness; of pure unalloyed holiness."
Sabbatarianism
Strangites observe the seventh-day Sabbath — i.e., Saturday — as the Book of the Law commanded it, in lieu of Sunday.
Baptism for the dead
Strangites believe in baptism for the dead and practiced it to a limited extent in Voree and on Beaver Island. However, rather than simply baptizing for anyone whose name can be located, Strang required a revelation for those seeking to have a baptism done for someone outside of a close relative "within the fourth degree of consanguinity". This could come through dreams, angelic appearances, or other means listed within Strang's revelation on the subject. While still believed in, baptisms for the dead are not currently performed in the Strangite church due to the lack of a temple and prophetic leadership.
Eternal marriage
Eternal marriage is taught in the Strangite church, but unlike in the LDS Church, it is not required to be performed in a temple. Strangite Priests, Elders, High Priests or Apostles (of all four degrees) may perform this ceremony. Eternal marriages are still contracted among the Strangites today.
Same-sex marriage and homosexuality in general are not permitted within the Strangite organization.
Conservation of resources
Conservation of forests and resources is mandated by the Strangites. Within Strang's Beaver Island kingdom and other places where Strangites were numerous, groves of trees were to be maintained upon each farm, village and town. Farms and cities without trees were required to plant them, and to establish parklands so that "the aged and the young may go there to rest and to play." Although Strang's kingdom has disappeared, his followers still endeavor to practice basic conservation measures.
Polygamy
Plural marriage is sanctioned but not expressly commande, in the Book of the Law. The applicable text reads: "Thou shalt not take unto thee a multitude of wives disproportioned to thy inheritance, and thy substance: nor shalt thou take wives to vex those thou hast; neither shalt thou put away one to take another." Any wife already married to the prospective polygamist was given the right to express her opinion, and even to object, but not to veto the marriage. This passage seems to offer any aggrieved wife an appeal to the "Judges," but how this was to be carried out is not made clear.
Strang's defense of polygamy was rather woman-centered. He claimed that far from enslaving or demeaning women, it liberated and "elevated" them by allowing them to choose the best possible mate based upon any factors deemed important to them even if that mate were already married to someone else. Rather than being forced to wed "corrupt and degraded sires" from the scarcity of more suitable men, a woman could wed the one she saw as the most compatible to herself, the best candidate to father her children and the man who could give her the best possible life, no matter how many other wives he might have.
The practice of plural marriage has never been officially proscribed in the Strangite church, unlike in the LDS Church. Only twenty-two men entered into polygamy, and most of them took only one additional wife. Strang took four additional wives, the most of any member in his church.
Polygamy was apparently practiced by a few Strangites up to 1880 or so, including by Wingfield W. Watson, a Strangite High Priest who knew and served under Strang. However, with federal and state bans on the practice, and a divine injunction to obey "the law of the land," plural marriage has been given up in the contemporary Strangite organization, though belief in its correctness is still required and affirmed.
Strangites reject Section 132 of the LDS Church's Doctrine and Covenants, regarding it as a forgery from 1852 that was never received or approved by Smith.
Temples
Strang attempted to construct a temple in Voree, but was prevented from completing it because of the poverty and the lack of co-operation of his followers. No "endowment" rituals comparable to those in the LDS Church appear to have existed among his followers, and Strangites believe that only a prophet of God has the ability to receive a revelation to direct the building of a Temple. Because there is no current prophet of the church, there are no current plans for the creation of a Temple.
African Americans
Strangites welcomed African Americans into their church when some other factions (such as the LDS Church, until 1978) denied them the priesthood or certain other benefits of membership. Strang ordained at least two African Americans to the eldership during his lifetime.
See also
George J. Adams
Current state of polygamy in the Latter Day Saint movement
Footnotes
References
External links
Websites
Three different websites exist for various branches of the Strangite church:
Official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
Mormon Beliefs, unincorporated Strangites based in Shreveport, Louisiana
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
Publications
These publications are believed in by all Strangites, regardless of faction:
The Voree Plates A detailed description of the "Voree Plates" and the story behind them, from a Strangite point of view.
Book of the Law of the Lord, Edition of 1851 First Edition, without Strang's commentary.
Book of the Law of the Lord, Edition of 1856 Second Edition of this work; contains Strang's commentary and notes, also considered to be scripture by Strangites.
The Revelations of James J. Strang contains text of "Letter of Appointment", together with translation of the "Voree Plates" and other revelations given by Strang. Includes a facsimile of the "plates".
Other
"A Strangite Time" backstoryradio.org
Strangite denominations in the Latter Day Saint movement
History of Wisconsin
History of Michigan
Latter Day Saint movement in Michigan
Latter Day Saint movement in Wisconsin
Racine County, Wisconsin
Walworth County, Wisconsin
Organizations based in Wisconsin
Nontrinitarian denominations
Seventh-day denominations
Denial of the virgin birth of Jesus
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%20L.%20Berger
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Peter L. Berger
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Peter Ludwig Berger (17 March 1929 – 27 June 2017) was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and theoretical contributions to sociological theory.
Berger is arguably best known for his book, co-authored with Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966), which is considered one of the most influential texts in the sociology of knowledge and played a central role in the development of social constructionism. In 1998 the International Sociological Association named this book as the fifth most-influential book written in the field of sociology during the 20th century. In addition to this book, some of the other books that Berger has written include: Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963); A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969); and The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967).
Berger spent most of his career teaching at The New School for Social Research, at Rutgers University, and at Boston University. Before retiring, Berger had been at Boston University since 1981 and was the director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture.
Biography
Family life
Peter Ludwig Berger was born on March 17, 1929, in Vienna, Austria, to George William and Jelka (Loew) Berger, who were Jewish converts to Christianity. He emigrated to the United States shortly after World War II in 1946 at the age of 17 and in 1952 he became a naturalized citizen. He died on June 27, 2017, in his Brookline, Massachusetts, home after a prolonged illness.
On September 28, 1959, he married Brigitte Kellner, herself an eminent sociologist who was on the faculty at Wellesley College and Boston University where she was the chair of the sociology department at both schools. Brigitte was born in Eastern Germany in 1928. She moved to the United States in the mid-1950s. She was a sociologist who focused on the sociology of the family, arguing that the nuclear family was one of the main causes of modernization. Although she studied traditional families, she supported same-sex relationships. She was on the faculties of Hunter College of the City University of New York, Long Island University, Wellesley College, and Boston University. Additionally, she was author of Societies in Change (1971), The Homeless Mind (1974), The War over the Family (1984), and The Family in the Modern Age (2002). Brigitte Kellner Berger died May 28, 2015.
They had two sons, Thomas Ulrich Berger and Michael George Berger. Thomas is himself a scholar of international relations, now a Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and author of War, Guilt and World Politics After World War II (2012) and Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (2003).
Education and career
After the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, Berger and his family emigrated to Palestine, then under British rule. He attended a British High school, St. Luke's. Following the German bombings of Haifa, he was evacuated to Mount Carmel, where he developed his life-long interest in religion. In 1947 Berger and his family emigrated again, this time to the United States, where they settled in New York City. Berger attended Wagner College for his Bachelor of Arts and received his MA and PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York in 1954. Berger, in his memoir, described himself as an "accidental sociologist", enrolling here in an effort to learn about American society and help become a Lutheran minister, and learning under Alfred Schütz. In 1955 and 1956 he worked at the Evangelische Akademie in Bad Boll, West Germany. From 1956 to 1958 Berger was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; from 1958 to 1963 he was an associate professor at Hartford Theological Seminary. The next stations in his career were professorships at the New School for Social Research, Rutgers University, and Boston College. Since 1981 Berger was the University Professor of Sociology and Theology at Boston University. He retired from BU in 2009. In 1985 he founded the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, which later transformed into the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA), and is now part of the Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies. He remained the Director of CURA from 1985 to 2010.
The original Peter L. Berger Papers are deposited in the Social Science Archive Konstanz.
CURA
Berger founded the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University in 1985. It is a world-center for research, education, and public scholarship on religion and world affairs. Some of the questions it attempts to answer are: How do religion and values affect political, economic, and public ethical developments around the world? Defying earlier forecasts, why have religious actors and ideas become more rather than less globally powerful in recent years? and In a world of increasing religious and ethical diversity, what are the implications of the revival of public religion for citizenship, democracy, and civil coexistence? CURA has over 140 projects in 40 countries.
Religious views
Berger was a moderate Christian Lutheran conservative whose work in theology, secularization, and modernity at times has challenged the views of contemporary mainstream sociology which tends to lean away from any right-wing political thinking. Ultimately, however, Berger's approach to sociology was humanist with special emphasis on "value-free" analysis.
Sociological thought
The social construction of reality
As explained in Berger's and Thomas Luckmann's book The Social Construction of Reality (1966), human beings construct a shared social reality. This reality includes things ranging from ordinary language to large-scale institutions. Our lives are governed by the knowledge about the world that we have and we use the information that is relevant to our lives. We take into account typificatory schemes, which are general assumptions about society.
As one encounters a new scheme, one must compare it to the ones that are already established in one's mind and determine whether to keep those schemes or replace the old ones with new ones. Social structure is the total of all these typificatory schemes. While Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) did not elaborate a sociology of knowledge, Berger and Luckmann acknowledge the centrality of Schutz
for their understanding of what theoretical ingredients ought to be added.
The reality of everyday life
Berger and Luckmann present "the reality of everyday life" as the sphere of reality that impinges upon human existence most intensely and immediately. Everyday life contrasts with other spheres of reality – dreamworlds, theatre – and is considered by a person to be objective, intersubjective (shared with others) and self-evident. Life is ordered spatially and temporally.
Spatial ordering allows interaction with other people and objects; the human ability to manipulate zones of space can intersect with another's ability.
Social interactions in everyday life favour personal, face-to-face encounters as the best scenarios where human beings can actually connect with each other through interactions. Humans perceive the other in these interactions as more real than they would themselves; we can place a person in everyday life by seeing them, yet we need to contemplate our own placement in the world, as it is not so concrete. Berger believes that although you know yourself on a much deeper scale than you would the other person, they are more real to you because they are constantly making "What he is" available to you. It is difficult to recognize "What I am" without separating oneself from the conversation and reflecting on it. Even then, that self-reflection is caused by the other person's interactions leading to that self contemplation.
Language is imperative to the understanding of everyday life. People understand knowledge through language. The knowledge relevant to us is the only necessary knowledge to our survival, but humans interact through sharing and connecting the relevant structures of our lives with each other. Language helps create shared symbols and stocks of knowledge, and participation in these things inherently makes us participate in society.
Social reality on two levels
Social reality exists at both the subjective and objective levels. At the subjective level, people find reality personally meaningful and created by human beings in aspects such as personal friendships. At the objective level, people find reality in aspects such as government bureaucracies and large corporations, where reality is seen as more out of one's control.
Society as objective and subjective
Objectively, social order is a product of our social enterprise: it is an ongoing process that results from human activity. Institutions are a product of the historicity and need to control human habitualization (the repeated behaviours or patterns). The shared nature of these experiences and their commonality results in sedimentation, meaning they lose their memorability. Many behaviours lose sedimented institutional meanings. Institutional order involves specified roles for people to play. These roles are seen as performing as this objective figure – an employee is not judged as a human but by that role they have taken.
The process of building a socially-constructed reality takes place in three phases:
Externalization is the first step in which humans pour out meaning (both mental and physical) into their reality, thus creating things through language. In externalization, social actors create their social worlds and it is seen through action.
Following that, reality becomes established by the products of externalization through the course of objectivation (things and ideas "harden" in a sense). People see either a social practice or institution as an objective reality that cannot be changed, such as something like language.
Lastly, this newly-made and man-made reality (or society) has an effect on humans themselves. In this third phase, internalization, the external, objective world to a person becomes part of their internal, subjective world. As social actors we internalize norms and values, accepting them as givens, and make them our reality.
Levels of socialization
Subjectively, we experience first and second socializations into society. Firstly, family members and friends socialize one into the world during one's childhood. Secondly, during one's adulthood, one internalizes institutional "sub worlds" put in various positions in the economy. We maintain our subjective world through reaffirmation with social interactions with others. Our identity and our society are seen as dialectically related: our identity is formed by social processes, which are in turn ordered by our society. Berger and Luckmann see socialization as very powerful and able to influence things such as sexual and nutritional choices. People have the ability to do whatever they want in these spheres, but socialization causes people to only choose certain sexual partners or certain foods to eat to satisfy biological needs.
Humanistic perspective
The humanistic perspective is generally outside of mainstream, contemporary sociology. It is considered as a view that relates more to the humanities – literature, philosophy – than to social science. Its ultimate purpose lies in freeing society of illusions to help make it more humane. In this sense, we are the "puppets of society", but sociology allows us to see the strings that we are attached to, which helps to free ourselves. Berger's Invitation to Sociology outlines his approach to the field of sociology in these humanistic terms. Methodologically, sociologists should attempt to understand and observe human behaviour outside the context of its social setting and free from whatever influence a sociologist's personal biases or feelings might be. The study of sociology, Berger posits, should be value-free. Research should be accrued in the same manner as the scientific method, using observation, hypothesis, testing, data, analysis and generalization. The meaning derived from the results of research should be contextualized with historical, cultural, environmental, or other important data.
View of sociology
Berger saw the field of sociology as not only just a way to help people and the community, but sociological insights are also important to all people interested in instilling action in society. Sociologists are a part of a multitude of fields, not just social work. Berger stated that sociology is not a practice, but an attempt to understand the social world. These understandings could be used by people in any field for whatever purpose and with whatever moral implications. He believed that sociologists, even if their values varied greatly, should at the very least have scientific integrity. Sociologists are only humans and will still have to deal with things such as convictions, emotions, and prejudices, but being trained in sociology should learn to understand and control these things and try to eliminate them from their work. A sociologist's job is to accurately report on a certain social terrain. Sociology is a science, and its findings are found through observation of certain rules of evidence that allow people to repeat and continue to develop the findings.
Religion and society
Religion and the human problems of modernity
Berger believed that society is made aware of what he referred to as the nomos, or the patterns a particular society wants its members to see as objectively right and to internalize. The nomos is all the society's knowledge about how things are, and all of its values and ways of living. This is upheld through legitimacy, either giving special meaning to these behaviors or by creating a structure of knowledge that enhances the plausibility of the nomos. The existence of an eternal cosmic entity that legitimizes a nomos makes the nomos itself eternal; an individual's actions within its set society are all based on a universal and orderly pattern based on their beliefs.
Modern pluralization, which has stemmed from the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, set forth a new set of values, including: separation of the religious and secular spheres of life, a person's wealth as a determinant of value, maximizing freedom to enhance wealth, increasing prediction and control to increase wealth, and identifying oneself as a member of a nation-state. This, in turn, spread capitalism and its ideals and beliefs of individualism and rationalization and separated Christians from their God. With globalization, even more beliefs and cultures were confronted with this.
Berger believed that modernity – technological production paradigms of thinking and bureaucracy, namely – alienated the individual from primary institutions and forced individuals to create separate spheres of public and private life. There is no plausibility structure for any system of beliefs in the modern world; people are made to choose their own with no anchors to our own perceptions of reality. This lowers feelings of belonging and forces our own subjectivities onto themselves. Berger called this a "homelessness of the mind." It is the product of the modern world, he believed, as it has transformed the technology of production into our consciousness, making our cognition componential, always searching for a "means to an end." Ideas and beliefs are varied in the modern world, and an individual, not sharing their system of beliefs with the public whole, relegates any behaviors that are contingent on it to their private life. Certain beliefs that an individual has that may not be widely accepted by society as a whole, are then kept to one's self and may only be seen within one's private life and are not seen by society.
The socialist myth, a non-pejorative term of Berger's, actually arises from intellectual leftism masking a need to resolve the lacking sense of community in the modern world through the promise to destroy the oppression of capitalism. Berger believed resolving community in modern society needs to emphasize the role of "mediating structures" in their lives to counter the alienation of modernity. Human existence in the age of modernity requires there to be structures like church, neighbourhood, and family to help establish a sense of belonging rooted in a commitment to values or beliefs. This builds a sense of community and belonging in an individual. In addition, these structures can serve a role in addressing larger social problems without the alienation that larger society creates. The role of mediating structures in civil society is both private and public, in this sense.
Pluralism
The general meaning of pluralism is the coexistence, generally peaceful, of different religions, worldviews, and value systems within the same society. Berger believes pluralism exists in two ways. The first being that many religions and worldviews coexist in the same society. The second is the coexistence of the secular discourse with all these religious discourses. Some people avoid pluralism by only operating within their own secular or religious discourse, meaning they do not interact with others outside of their beliefs.
A feature of pluralism generally today is that it is globalized. Berger sees benefits in pluralism. One is that very rarely is there complete consensus in beliefs; this allows people to form and hold their own differing beliefs: society is such that people do not all try to hold and conform to the same beliefs. This ties into a second benefit: that pluralism gives freedom and allows people free decisions.
A third benefit is that - if pluralism is connected to religious freedom - then religious institutions now become voluntary associations. Lastly, pluralism influences individual believers and religious communities to define the core of their faith separately from its less central elements. This allows people to pick and choose between certain aspects of their chosen form of belief - that they may or may not agree with - while still remaining true to the central parts of it.
Transcendence
In daily life, people experience symbols and glimpses of existence beyond empirical order and of transcendent existence. Berger calls these "rumours of angels". People feel in times of great joy, in never-ending pursuit of order against chaos, in the existence of objective evil, and in the sense of hope that there exists some supernatural reality beyond that of human existence. People who choose to believe in the existence of a supernatural other require faith – a wager of belief against doubt – in the modern rationalised world. Knowledge can no longer sufficiently ground human belief in the pluralized world, forcing people to wager their own beliefs against the current of doubt in our society.
Secularization theory
Like most other sociologists of religion of his day, Berger once predicted the all-encompassing secularization of the world. He has admitted to his own miscalculations about secularization, concluding that the existence of resurgent religiosity in the modernised world has proven otherwise. In The Desecularization of the World, he cites both Western academia and Western Europe itself as exceptions to the triumphant desecularization hypothesis: that these cultures have remained highly secularized despite the resurgence of religion in the rest of the world. Berger finds that his and most sociologists' misconsensus about secularization may have been the result of their own bias as members of academia, which is a largely atheist concentration of people.
Theoretical contributions
In Making Sense of Modern Times: Peter L. Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology, James Davison Hunter and Stephen C. Ainlay build upon the social theories of Berger's. Hunter and Ainlay use Berger's ideologies as a foundation and framework for this particular book. Nicholas Abercrombie begins by examining his reformation of the sociology of knowledge. Shifting his focus on the subjective reality of everyday life, Berger enters a dialogue with traditional sociologies of knowledge – more specific, those of Karl Marx and Karl Mannheim. Abercrombie digs deeper into this dialogue Berger brings up, and he considers ways in which Berger goes beyond these figures. Stephen Ainlay then pursues the notable influence on Berger's work.
In the field of sociology, Berger has been somewhat excluded from the mainstream; his humanistic perspective was denounced by much of the intellectual elite in the field, though it sold well over a million copies. Berger's leftist criticisms do not help him much in that regard either. Berger's theories on religion have held considerable weight in contemporary neoconservative and theological fields of thinking, however.
In 1987 Berger argued about the emergence of a new social class he called the "knowledge class". He views it as a result of what was known as the middle class into two groups: the "old middle class" of those who produce material goods and services and the "knowledge class" whose occupations relate to the production and distribution of "symbolic knowledge." He followed Helmut Schelsky's definition of Sinn- und Hellsvermittler, "agents (intemediaries) of meanings and purposes".
Influences
Berger's work was notably influenced by Max Weber. Weber focused on the empirical realities of rationality as a characteristic of action and rationalization. In comparison, Berger proposed the usage of the word 'options' rather than freedom as an empirical concept. Therefore, much of the empirical work of Berger and Weber have revolved around the relationship between modern rationalization and options for social action. Weber argued that rationalism can mean a variety of things at the subjective level of consciousness and at the objective level of social institutions. The connection between Berger's analysis of the sociology of religion in modern society and Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism aligns. Weber saw capitalism as a result of the Protestant secularization of work ethic and morality in amassing wealth, which Berger integrates into his analysis about the effects of losing the non-secular foundations for belief about life's ultimate meaning.
Berger's own experiences teaching in North Carolina in the 1950s showed the shocking American prejudice of that era's Southern culture and influenced his humanistic perspective as a way to reveal the ideological forces from which it stemmed.
Honors
Berger was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982.
He was doctor honoris causa of Loyola University, Wagner College, the College of the Holy Cross, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Geneva, and the University of Munich, and an honorary member of many scientific associations.
In 2010, he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize by the University of Tübingen.
Works
The Precarious Vision: A Sociologist Looks at Social Fictions and Christian Faith (1961)
The Noise of Solemn Assemblies (1961)
Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963)
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966) with Thomas Luckmann
The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)
A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969)
Movement and Revolution (1970) with Richard John Neuhaus
Sociology (1972) with Brigitte Berger. Basic Books. – Dutch translation: Sociologie (1972). Basisboeken
The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (1973) with Brigitte Berger and Hansfried Kellner. Random House
Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change (1974)
Facing Up to Modernity: Excursions in Society, Politics and Religion (1979)
The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (1979)
Sociology Reinterpreted, (with Hansfried Kellner) (1981)
The Other Side of God: A Polarity in World Religions (editor, 1981)
The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground (1983) with Brigitte Berger
The Capitalist Revolution (1986) New York: Basic Books
The Capitalist Spirit: Toward a Religious Ethic of Wealth Creation (editor, 1990)
A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (1992)
Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (1997)
Four Faces of Global Culture (The National Interest, Fall 1997)
The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies: A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome (1998)
The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (editor, et al., 1999)
Peter Berger and the Study of Religion (edited by Linda Woodhead et al., 2001; includes a Postscript by Berger)
Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World (2002) with Samuel P. Huntington. Oxford University Press
Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (2003). Blackwell Publishing
Religious America, Secular Europe? (with Grace Davie and Effie Fokas) (2008)
In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic (2009) with Anton Zijderveld. HarperOne
Dialogue Between Religious Traditions in an Age of Relativity (2011) Mohr Siebeck
The Many Altars of Modernity. Towards a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age (2014)
Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore (2011) Prometheus Books
Notes
References
Further reading
Hein, David. "Christianity and Honor." The Living Church, August 18, 2013, pp. 8–10. [analysis and application of Berger's "On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honor" (1970)]
James D. Hunter, Stephen C. Ainley. Making Sense of Modern Times: Peter L. Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology Robert Wuthnow. Cultural Analysis: The Work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas''
External links
Original Peter L. Berger Papers - Social Science Archive Konstanz
Peter Berger's blog
1929 births
2017 deaths
Austrian emigrants to the United States
American sociologists
American Lutheran theologians
Austrian Lutherans
Austrian Jews
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Hartford Seminary faculty
Sociologists of religion
Boston University faculty
Humor researchers
Wagner College alumni
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Social constructionism
People from Vienna
Presidents of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%20Flagler
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Henry Flagler
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Henry Morrison Flagler (January 2, 1830 – May 20, 1913) was an American industrialist and a founder of Standard Oil, which was first based in Ohio. He was also a key figure in the development of the Atlantic coast of Florida and founder of the Florida East Coast Railway. He is also known as a founder of the cities of Miami and Palm Beach, Florida.
Early life and education
Flagler was born in Hopewell, New York. His father was Isaac Flagler, a Presbyterian minister and great-grandson of Zacharra Flegler, whose family had emigrated from the German Palatinate region to Holland in 1688. Zacharra worked in England for several years before moving to Dutchess County, New York, in 1710. His grandson Solomon changed the spelling of the surname to Flagler and passed it on to his 11 children. Flagler's mother was Elizabeth Caldwell Harkness Flagler, Isaac's third wife and a widow who had a stepson, Stephen V. Harkness, and a son, Daniel M. Harkness, from her marriage to deceased widower David Harkness of Milan, Ohio.
Flagler attended local schools through eighth grade. His half-brother Daniel had left Hopewell to live and work with his paternal uncle Lamon G. Harkness, who had a store in Republic, Ohio. He recruited Henry Flagler to join him, and the youth went to Ohio at age 14, where he started work in 1844 at a salary of US$5 per month plus room and board. By 1849, Flagler was promoted to the sales staff at a salary of $40 per month. He later joined Daniel in a grain business started with his uncle Lamon in Bellevue, Ohio, and made a small fortune distilling whiskey. He sold his stake in the business in 1858.
In 1862, Flagler and his wife's brother-in-law Barney Hamlin York (1833–1884) founded the Flagler and York Salt Company, a salt mining and production business in Saginaw, Michigan. He found that salt mining required more technical knowledge than he had and struggled in the industry during the Civil War. The company collapsed when the war undercut commercial demand for salt. Flagler returned to Bellevue having lost his initial $50,000 investment and an additional $50,000 he had borrowed from his father-in-law and Daniel. Flagler believed that he had learned a valuable lesson: invest in a business only after thorough investigation.
Business and Standard Oil
After the failure of his salt business in Saginaw, Flagler returned to Bellevue in 1866 and reentered the grain business as a commission merchant with the Harkness Grain Company. During this time he worked to pay back his stepbrother. Through this business, Flagler became acquainted with John D. Rockefeller, who worked as a commission agent with Hewitt and Tuttle for the Harkness Grain Company. By the mid-1860s, Cleveland had become the center of the oil refining industry in America and Rockefeller left the grain business to start his own oil refinery. Rockefeller worked in association with chemist and inventor Samuel Andrews.
Needing capital for his new venture, Rockefeller approached Flagler in 1867. Flagler's stepbrother Stephen V. Harkness invested $100,000 (equivalent to $ in ) on the condition that Flagler be made a partner. The Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler partnership was formed with Flagler in control of Harkness' interest. The partnership eventually grew into the Standard Oil Corporation. It was Flagler's idea to use the rebate system to strengthen the firm's position against competitors and the transporting enterprises alike. Flagler was in a special position to make those deals due to his connections as a grain merchant. Equivalent to a 15% discount, they put Standard Oil in position to significantly undercut other oil refineries. By 1872, it led the American oil refining industry, producing . In 1877, Flagler and his family moved to New York City, which was becoming the center of commerce in the U.S.. In 1885, Standard Oil moved its corporate headquarters to New York City to the iconic 26 Broadway location.
By the end of the American Civil War, Cleveland was one of the five main refining centers in the U.S. (besides Pittsburgh, New York City, Philadelphia, and the region in northwestern Pennsylvania where most of the oil originated).
By 1869, there was three times more kerosene refining capacity than needed to supply the market, and the capacity remained in excess for many years.
In June 1870, Flagler and Rockefeller formed Standard Oil of Ohio, which rapidly became the most profitable refiner in Ohio. Standard Oil grew to become one of the largest shippers of oil and kerosene in the country. The railroads were fighting fiercely for traffic and, in an attempt to create a cartel to control freight rates, formed the South Improvement Company in collusion with Standard and other oil men outside the main oil centers. The cartel received preferential treatment as a high-volume shipper, which included not just steep rebates of up to 50% for their product but also rebates for the shipment of competing products. Part of this scheme was the announcement of sharply increased freight charges. This touched off a firestorm of protest from independent oil well owners, including boycotts and vandalism, which eventually led to the discovery of Standard Oil's part in the deal. A major New York refiner, Charles Pratt and Company, headed by Charles Pratt and Henry H. Rogers, led the opposition to this plan, and railroads soon backed off. Pennsylvania revoked the cartel's charter, and non-preferential rates were restored for the time being.
Undeterred, though vilified for the first time by the press, Flagler and Rockefeller continued with their self-reinforcing cycle of buying competing refiners, improving the efficiency of operations, pressing for discounts on oil shipments, undercutting competition, making secret deals, raising investment pools, and buying rivals out. In less than four months in 1872, in what was later known as "The Cleveland Conquest" or "The Cleveland Massacre", Standard Oil had absorbed 22 of its 26 Cleveland competitors. Eventually, even former antagonists Pratt and Rogers saw the futility of continuing to compete against Standard Oil: in 1874, they made a secret agreement with their old nemesis to be acquired. Pratt and Rogers became Flagler and Rockefeller's partners. Rogers, in particular, became one of Flagler and Rockefeller's key men in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust. Pratt's son, Charles Millard Pratt, became Secretary of Standard Oil. For many of the competitors, Flagler and Rockefeller had merely to show them the books so they could see what they were up against and make them a decent offer. If they refused the offer, Flagler and Rockefeller told them they would run them into bankruptcy and then cheaply buy up their assets at auction. Flagler and Rockefeller saw themselves as the industry's saviors, "an angel of mercy" absorbing the weak and making the industry as a whole stronger, more efficient, and more competitive. Standard was growing horizontally and vertically. It added its own pipelines, tank cars, and home delivery network. It kept oil prices low to stave off competitors, made its products affordable to the average household, and, to increase market penetration, sometimes sold below cost if necessary. It developed over 300 oil-based products from tar to paint to Vaseline petroleum jelly to chewing gum. By the end of the 1870s, Standard was refining over 90% of the oil in the U.S.
In 1877, Standard clashed with Thomas A. Scott the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, its chief hauler. Flagler and Rockefeller had envisioned the use of pipelines as an alternative transport system for oil and began a campaign to build and acquire them. The railroad, seeing Standard's incursion into the transportation and pipeline fields, struck back and formed a subsidiary to buy and build oil refineries and pipelines.This subsidiary, the Empire Transportation Company, which Joseph D. Potts created in 1865 and also ran, owned other assets including a small fleet of ships on the Great Lakes. Standard countered and held back its shipments and, with the help of other railroads, started a price war that dramatically reduced freight payments and caused labor unrest as well. Flagler and Rockefeller eventually prevailed and the railroad sold all its oil interests to Standard. But in the aftermath of that battle, in 1879 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania indicted Flagler and Rockefeller on charges of monopolizing the oil trade, starting an avalanche of similar court proceedings in other states and making a national issue of Standard Oil's business practices. The New York State Legislature's Hepburn Committee in 1879 conducted hearings in response to the complaints of local merchants that were not involved in the oil trade in order to investigate railroad rebate practices. The committee ultimately discovered the previously unknown scope of Standard Oil's business interests.
Monopoly
Standard Oil gradually gained almost complete control of oil refining and marketing in the United States through horizontal integration. In the kerosene industry, Standard Oil replaced the old distribution system with its own vertical system. It supplied kerosene by tank cars that brought the fuel to local markets, and tank wagons then delivered to retail customers, thus bypassing the existing network of wholesale jobbers. Despite improving the quality and availability of kerosene products while greatly reducing their cost to the public (the price of kerosene dropped by nearly 80% over the life of the company), Standard Oil's business practices created intense controversy. Standard's most potent weapons against competitors were underselling, differential pricing, and secret transportation rebates. The firm was attacked by journalists and politicians throughout its existence, in part for these monopolistic methods, giving momentum to the antitrust movement. By 1880, according to the New York World, Standard Oil was "the most cruel, impudent, pitiless, and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country." To the critics Flagler and Rockefeller replied, "In a business so large as ours... some things are likely to be done which we cannot approve. We correct them as soon as they come to our knowledge."
At that time, many legislatures had made it difficult to incorporate in one state and operate in another. As a result, Flagler and Rockefeller and their associates owned dozens of separate corporations, each of which operated in just one state; the management of the whole enterprise was rather unwieldy. In 1882, Flagler and Rockefeller's lawyers created an innovative form of corporation to centralize their holdings, giving birth to the Standard Oil Trust. The "trust" was a corporation of corporations, and the entity's size and wealth drew much attention. Nine trustees, including Rockefeller, ran the 41 companies in the trust. The public and the press were immediately suspicious of this new legal entity, and other businesses seized upon the idea and emulated it, further inflaming public sentiment. Standard Oil had gained an aura of invincibility, always prevailing against competitors, critics, and political enemies. It had become the richest, biggest, most feared business in the world, seemingly immune to the boom and bust of the business cycle, consistently racking up profits year after year.
Its vast American empire included 20,000 domestic wells, 4,000 miles of pipeline, 5,000 tank cars, and over 100,000 employees. Its share of world oil refining topped out above 90% but slowly dropped to about 80% for the rest of the century. In spite of the formation of the trust and its perceived immunity from all competition, by the 1880s Standard Oil had passed its peak of power over the world oil market. Flagler and Rockefeller finally gave up their dream of controlling all the world's oil refining. Rockefeller admitted later, "We realized that public sentiment would be against us if we actually refined all the oil." Over time foreign competition and new finds abroad eroded his dominance. In the early 1880s, Flagler and Rockefeller created one of their most important innovations. Rather than try to influence the price of crude oil directly, Standard Oil had been exercising indirect control by altering oil storage charges to suit market conditions. Flagler and Rockefeller then decided to issue certificates against oil stored in Standard Oil's pipelines. These certificates became traded by speculators, thus creating the first oil-futures market which effectively set spot market prices from then on. The National Petroleum Exchange opened in Manhattan in late 1882 to facilitate the oil futures trading.
Even though 85% of world crude production was still coming from Pennsylvania wells in the 1880s, overseas drilling in Russia and Asia began to reach the world market. Robert Nobel had established his own refining enterprise in the abundant and cheaper Russian oil fields, including the region's first pipeline and the world's first oil tanker. The Paris Rothschilds jumped into the fray providing financing. Additional fields were discovered in Burma and Java. Even more critical, the invention of the light bulb gradually began to erode the dominance of kerosene for illumination. But Standard Oil adapted, developing its own European presence, expanding into natural gas production in the U.S., then into gasoline for automobiles, which until then had been considered a waste product.
Standard Oil moved its headquarters to New York City, at 26 Broadway, and Flagler and Rockefeller became central figures in the city's business community.
In 1887, Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was tasked with enforcing equal rates for all railroad freight, but by then Standard depended more on pipeline transport. More threatening to Standard's power was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, originally used to control unions, but later central to the breakup of the Standard Oil trust. Ohio was especially vigorous in applying its state anti-trust laws, and finally forced a separation of Standard Oil of Ohio from the rest of the company in 1892, the first step in the dissolution of the trust.
Upon his ascent to the presidency, Theodore Roosevelt initiated dozens of suits under the Sherman Antitrust Act and coaxed reforms out of Congress. In 1901, U.S. Steel, now controlled by J. Pierpont Morgan, having bought Andrew Carnegie's steel assets, offered to buy Standard's iron interests as well. A deal brokered by Henry Clay Frick exchanged Standard's iron interests for U.S. Steel stock and gave Rockefeller and his son membership on the company's board of directors.
One of the most effective attacks on Flagler and Rockefeller and their firm was the 1905 publication of The History of the Standard Oil Company, by Ida Tarbell, a leading muckraker. She documented the company's espionage, price wars, heavy-handed marketing tactics, and courtroom evasions. Although her work prompted a huge backlash against the company, Tarbell claims to have been surprised at its magnitude. "I never had an animus against their size and wealth, never objected to their corporate form. I was willing that they should combine and grow as big and wealthy as they could, but only by legitimate means. But they had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me." Tarbell's father had been driven out of the oil business during the South Improvement Company affair.
Flagler and Rockefeller began a publicity campaign to put the company and themselves in a better light. Though Flagler and Rockefeller had long maintained a policy of active silence with the press, they decided to make themselves more accessible and responded with conciliatory comments such as "capital and labor are both wild forces which require intelligent legislation to hold them in restriction."
Flagler and Rockefeller continued to consolidate their oil interests as best they could until New Jersey, in 1909, changed its incorporation laws to effectively allow a re-creation of the trust in the form of a single holding company. Rockefeller retained his nominal title as president until 1911 and he kept his stock. At last in 1911, the Supreme Court of the United States found Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. By then the trust still had a 70% market share of the refined oil market but only 14% of the U.S. crude oil supply. The court ruled that the trust originated in illegal monopoly practices and ordered it to be broken up into 34 new companies. These included, among many others, Continental Oil, which became Conoco, now part of ConocoPhillips; Pennzoil, now part of Shell; Standard of Indiana, which became Amoco, now part of BP; Standard of California, which became Chevron, still a separate company; Standard of New Jersey, which became Esso (and later, Exxon), now part of ExxonMobil; Standard of New York, which became Mobil, now part of ExxonMobil; and Standard of Ohio, which became Sohio, now part of BP.
Flagler's contributions
When Flagler envisioned successes in the oil industry, he and Rockefeller started building their fortune in refining oil in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland became very well known for oil refining, as, "More and more crude oil was shipped from the oil regions to Cleveland for the refining process because of transportation facilities and the aggressiveness of the refiners there. It was due largely to the efforts of Henry M. Flagler and John D. Rockefeller." Flagler and Rockefeller worked hard for their company to achieve such prominence. Henry explained: "We worked night and day, making good oil as cheaply as possible and selling it for all we could get." Not only did Flagler and Rockefeller's Standard Oil company become well known in Ohio, they expanded to other states, as well as gained additional capital in purchasing smaller oil refining companies across the nation. According to Allan Nevins, in John D. Rockefeller (p 292), "Standard Oil was born as a big enterprise, it had cut its teeth as a partnership and was now ready to plunge forward into a period of greater expansion and development. It soon was doing one tenth of all the petroleum business in the United States. Besides its two refineries and a barrel plant in Cleveland, it possessed a fleet of tank cars and warehouses in the oil regions as well as warehouses and tanks in New York."
By 1892, Standard Oil had a monopoly over all oil refineries in the United States. In an overall calculation of America's oil refineries' assets and capital, Standard Oil surpassed all. Standard Oil's combined assets equalled approximately $42,882,650 (equivalent to $ in ) in Indiana, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York and Ohio. Standard Oil also had the highest capitalization, totaling $26,000,000 (equivalent to $ in ). The history of American oil refining begins with Flagler and Rockefeller, as they built the biggest, most prosperous and monopolizing oil empire of their time: Standard Oil.
Although Standard Oil was a partnership, Flagler was credited as the brain behind the booming oil refining business. "When John D. Rockefeller was asked if the Standard Oil company was the result of his thinking, he answered, 'No, sir. I wish I had the brains to think of it. It was Henry M. Flagler.'" Flagler served as an active part of Standard Oil until 1882, when he stepped back to take a secondary role at Standard Oil. He served as a vice president through 1908 and was part of ownership until 1911.
Florida: resort hotels and railroads
When Flagler's first wife Mary (née Harkness) fell sick, his physician recommended they travel to Jacksonville for the winter to escape the brutal conditions of the North. For the first time, Flagler was able to experience the warm, sunny atmosphere of Florida. Two years after his first wife died in 1881, he married again. Ida Alice (née Shourds) Flagler had been a caregiver for Mary. After their wedding, the couple traveled to Saint Augustine. Flagler found the city charming, but the hotel facilities and transportation systems inadequate. Franklin W. Smith had just finished building Villa Zorayda and Flagler offered to buy it for his honeymoon. Smith would not sell, but he planted the seed of St. Augustine's and Florida's future in Flagler's mind.
Although Flagler remained on the board of directors of Standard Oil, he gave up his day-to-day involvement in the corporation to pursue his interests in Florida. He returned to St. Augustine in 1885 and made Smith an offer. If Smith could raise $50,000, Flagler would invest $150,000 and they would build a hotel together. Perhaps fortunately for Smith, he couldn't come up with the funds, so Flagler began construction of the 540-room Ponce de Leon Hotel by himself, but spent several times his original estimate. Smith helped train the masons on the mixing and pouring techniques he used on Zorayda.
Realizing the need for a sound transportation system to support his hotel ventures, Flagler purchased short line railroads in what would later become known as the Florida East Coast Railway. He used convict leasing — "a method undertaken by the Southern States to replace the economic setup of slavery" — to modernize the existing railroads, allowing them to accommodate heavier loads and more traffic.
His next project was the Ponce de Leon Hotel, now part of Flagler College. He invested with the guidance of Dr. Andrew Anderson, a native of St. Augustine. After many years of work, it opened on January 10, 1888, and was an instant success.
This project sparked Flagler's interest in creating a new "American Riviera." Two years later, he expanded his Florida holdings. He built a railroad bridge across the St. Johns River to gain access to the southern half of the state and purchased the Hotel Ormond, just north of Daytona. He also built the Alcazar Hotel as an overflow hotel for the Ponce de Leon Hotel. The Alcazar is today the Lightner Museum, next to the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine that Flagler bought from Franklin W. Smith. His personal dedication to the state of Florida was demonstrated when he began construction on his private residence, Kirkside, in St. Augustine.
An immense engineering effort was required to cut through the wilderness and marsh from St. Augustine to Palm Beach. The state provided incentive in the form of for every mile () of track constructed.
Flagler completed the 1,100-room Royal Poinciana Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach and extended his railroad to its service town, West Palm Beach, by 1894, founding Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. The Royal Poinciana Hotel was at the time the largest wooden structure in the world. Two years later, Flagler built the Palm Beach Inn (renamed The Breakers in 1901), overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach.
Flagler originally intended West Palm Beach to be the terminus of his railroad system, but in 1894 and 1895, severe freezes hit the area, causing Flagler to reconsider. south, the area today known as Miami was reportedly unharmed by the freeze. To further convince Flagler to continue the railroad to Miami, he was offered land in exchange for laying rail tracks from private landowners, the Florida East Coast Canal and Transportation Company, and the Boston and Florida Atlantic Coast Land Company. The land owners were Julia Tuttle, whom he had met in Cleveland, Ohio, and William Brickell, who ran a trading post on the Miami River.
Such incentive led to the development of Miami, which was an unincorporated area at the time. Flagler encouraged fruit farming and settlement along his railway line and made many gifts to build hospitals, churches and schools in Florida.
By 1896, Flagler's railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway, reached Biscayne Bay. Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the city's first newspaper, The Metropolis. When the city was incorporated in 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for its growth by naming it "Flagler". He declined the honor, persuading them to use an old Indian name, "Mayaimi". Instead, an artificial island was constructed in Biscayne Bay called Flagler Monument Island. In 1897, Flagler opened the exclusive Royal Palm Hotel on the north bank of the Miami River where it overlooked Biscayne Bay. He became known as the Father of Miami, Florida.
Flagler's second wife, the former Ida Alice Shourds, was declared insane by Flagler's friend Dr. Anderson in 1896 and was institutionalized on and off starting that year. At the same time, he began to have an affair with Mary Lily Kenan; by 1899, newspapers began to openly question whether the two were having an affair. That year he reportedly gave her more than $1 million in jewelry. In 1901, Flagler bribed the Florida Legislature and Governor to pass a law that made incurable insanity grounds for divorce, opening the way for Flagler to remarry. Flagler was the only person to be divorced under the law before it was repealed in 1905. It was not until 1969 that a spouse's incurable insanity (mental incapacity) again became a ground for divorce in Florida. It remains a ground today, but since Florida became a "no fault" divorce state in 1971, there is less need to use that ground to obtain a divorce (dissolution of marriage).
On August 24, 1901, 10 days after his divorce, Flagler married Mary Lily at her family's plantation, Liberty Hall, and the couple soon moved into their new Palm Beach estate, Whitehall, a 55-room beaux arts home designed by the New York-based firm of Carrère and Hastings, which also had designed the New York Public Library and the Pan-American Exposition. Built in 1902 as a wedding present to Mary Lily, Whitehall (now the Flagler Museum) was a 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m²) winter retreat that established the Palm Beach "season" of about 8–12 weeks, for the wealthy of America's Gilded Age.
By 1905, Flagler decided that his Florida East Coast Railway should be extended from Biscayne Bay to Key West, a point past the end of the Florida peninsula. At the time, Key West was Florida's most populous city, with a population of 20,000, and it was also the United States' deep water port closest to the canal that the U.S. government proposed to build in Panama. Flagler wanted to take advantage of additional trade with Cuba and Latin America as well as the increased trade with the west that the Panama Canal would bring.
In 1912, the Florida Overseas Railroad was completed to Key West. Over 30 years, Flagler had invested about $50 million in railroad, home and hotel construction and had made donations to suffering farmers after the freeze in 1894. When asked by the president of Rollins College in Winter Park about his philanthropic efforts, Flagler reportedly replied, "I believe this state is the easiest place for many men to gain a living. I do not believe any one else would develop it if I do not..., but I do hope to live long enough to prove I am a good business man by getting a dividend on my investment."
Alleged use of convict leasing and debt peonage
Flagler allegedly used convicts leased from Florida prison camps, the majority of them African-American, to clear land for the Royal Palm Hotel in Miami and to build the Florida East Coast Railway from West Palm Beach to Miami and the rail extension to Key West. He also used labor agencies to bring around 4,000 new immigrants to Florida who contracted to work until their transportation costs had been paid off. Due to the harsh working and living conditions in the railway construction camps, many workers became victims of debt slavery.
When the Department of Justice prosecuted four Flagler employment agents in 1908 for "conspiracy to hold workmen in peonage and slavery," the Flagler-owned The Florida Times-Union and other Florida newspapers depending on the Times-Union for material or owned by Flagler published articles to "influence juries and public opinion." The judge instructed the jury to find them not guilty because the "prosecution had failed to prove 'an agreement of minds with evil intent to conspire'."
A congressional investigation in 1909 concluded that "there had been little immigrant peonage in the South and none in the ... [railway camps] camps in the Keys. Congress concluded that newspapers in Florida and across the South spread the deceitful news against Flagler."
According to historian Joe Knetsch, reformers and muckrakers exaggerated charges of peonage regarding construction of the Florida East Coast Railway in 1893 to 1909. Flager and his lawyers defeated all legal challenges and neither the company or its employees were ever convicted in court. However there were many reports of harsh working conditions and forced indebtedness to the company, and malfeasance by labor agents who hired men for the railway. Knetsch concludes that "Flagler in fact provided health care for his employees and was a far better employer than the press alleged."
Death and legacy
In March 1913, Flagler fell down a flight of marble stairs at Whitehall. He never recovered and died in Palm Beach of his injuries on May 20, 1913, at 83 years of age. At 3 p.m. on the day of the funeral, May 23, 1913, every engine on the Florida East Coast Railway stopped wherever it was for ten minutes as a tribute to Flagler. It was reported that people along the railway line waited all night for the passing of the funeral train as it traveled from Palm Beach to St. Augustine.
Flagler was entombed in the Flagler family mausoleum at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine alongside his first wife, Mary Harkness; daughter, Jenny Louise; and granddaughter, Marjorie. Only his son Harry Harkness Flagler survived of the three children by his first marriage in 1853 to Mary Harkness. A large portion of his estate was designated for a "niece" who was said actually to be a child born out of wedlock.
When looking back at Flagler's life, after Flagler's death, George W. Perkins, of J.P. Morgan & Co., reflected, "But that any man could have the genius to see of what this wilderness of waterless sand and underbrush was capable and then have the nerve to build a railroad here, is more marvelous than similar development anywhere else in the world."
Miami's main east-west street is named Flagler Street and is the main shopping street in Downtown Miami. There is also a monument to him on Flagler Monument Island in Biscayne Bay in Miami; Flagler College and Flagler Hospital are named after him in St. Augustine. Flagler County, Florida, Flagler Beach, Florida, and Flagler, Colorado, are also named for him. Whitehall, Palm Beach, is open to the public as the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum; his private railcar No. 91 is preserved inside a Beaux Arts pavilion built to look like a 19th-century railway palace.
On February 24, 2006, a statue of Flagler was unveiled in Key West near the spot where the Over-Sea Railroad once terminated. Also, on July 28, 2006, a statue of Flagler was unveiled on the southeast steps of Miami's Dade County Courthouse, located on Miami's Flagler Street.
The Overseas Railroad, also known as the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway, was heavily damaged and partially destroyed in the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. The railroad was financially unable to rebuild the destroyed sections, so the roadbed and remaining bridges were sold to the State of Florida, which built the Overseas Highway to Key West, using much of the remaining railway infrastructure.
Flagler's third wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham was born in North Carolina. The top-ranked Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is named for Flagler and his wife, who was an early benefactor of UNC along with her family and descendants. After Flagler's death, she married an old friend, Robert Worth Bingham, who used an inheritance from her to buy the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper. The Bingham-Flagler marriage (and questions about her death or possible murder) figured prominently in several books that appeared in the 1980s, when the Bingham family sold the newspaper in the midst of great acrimony. Control of the Flagler fortune largely passed into the hands of Mary Lily Kenan's family of sisters and brother, who survived into the 1960s.
See also
Standard Oil
Florida East Coast Railway
Mary Flagler Cary
St. Augustine, Florida
Casa Monica Hotel - purchased by Flagler and renamed Cordova
Ponce de León Hotel - Built by Flagler
The Alcazar Hotel now the Lightner Museum
Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church St. Augustine, FL
Palm Beach, Florida
Royal Poinciana Hotel
Whitehall now Henry Morrison Flagler Museum
Breakers Hotel
Miami
Royal Palm Hotel (Miami)
Flagler Beach, Florida
Flagler, Colorado
List of railroad executives
References
Bibliography
Knetsch, Joe. "The Peonage Controversy and the Florida East Coast Railway," Tequesta (1999), Vol. 59, pp 5–28.
Further reading
online
Noted by the author as the official history of the Florida East Coast Railway.
Graham, Thomas. "Henry M. Flagler's Hotel Ponce de León." Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts (1998): 97-111. [
Graham, Thomas. Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine (University Press of Florida, 2014), online.
Keys, Leslee F. Hotel Ponce de Leon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Flagler’s Gilded Age Palace (University Press of Florida, 2015) online.
Mendez, Jesus. "1892-A Year of Crucial Decisions in Florida", Florida Historical Quarterly, Summer 2009, Vol. 88 Issue 1, pp 83–106, focus on Flager's aggressive urban development of the city of St. Augustine, his improvement of the local railroad networks between several Florida communities, and negotiations regarding international government trade policies and regulations.
Ossman, Laurie; Ewing, Heather (2011). Carrère and Hastings, The Masterworks. Rizzoli USA. .
External links
Henry Flagler biography
History of The Breakers Hotel
Flagler College
Indiana Transportation Museum exhibit of Henry Flagler's private railroad car (Florida East Coast No.90)
Photo of Flagler and his wife
Ohio Historical Marker 5-39 located in Bellevue, Ohio
Railroad Bells at A History of Central Florida Podcast
1830 births
1913 deaths
19th-century American railroad executives
American hoteliers
American businesspeople in the oil industry
American railway entrepreneurs
20th-century American railroad executives
American real estate businesspeople
American city founders
Businesspeople from Florida
Businesspeople from Michigan
Businesspeople from New York (state)
Florida pioneers
Harkness family
History of Key West, Florida
History of Miami
Businesspeople from Cleveland
People from Bellevue, Ohio
People from Hopewell, New York
People from Palm Beach, Florida
People from Saginaw, Michigan
People from St. Augustine, Florida
Standard Oil
West Palm Beach, Florida
American Presbyterians
Gilded Age
Florida East Coast Railway
American people of German descent
Flagler family
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo%20L%C3%B3pez%20Mateos
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Adolfo López Mateos
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Adolfo López Mateos (; 26 May 1909 – 22 September 1969) was a Mexican politician who served as President of Mexico from 1958 to 1964. Previously, he served as Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare from 1952 to 1957 and a Senator from the State of Mexico from 1946 to 1952.
Beginning his political career as a campaign aide of José Vasconcelos during his run for president, López Mateos encountered repression from Plutarco Elías Calles, who attempted to maintain hegemony within the National Revolutionary Party (PNR). He briefly abandoned politics and worked as a professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State, becoming a member of the PNR (renamed Party of the Mexican Revolution) in 1941. López Mateos served as senator for the State of Mexico from 1946 to 1952 and Secretary of Labor during the administration of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines from 1952 to 1957. He secured the party's presidential nomination and won in the 1958 general election.
Declaring his political philosophy to be "left within the Constitution", López Mateos was the first self-declared left-wing politician to hold the presidency since Lázaro Cárdenas. His administration created the Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers, the National Commission for Free Textbooks and the National Museum of Anthropology. An advocate of non-intervention, he settled the Chamizal dispute with the United States and led the nationalization of the Mexican electrical industry during a period of economic boom and low inflation known as Desarrollo Estabilizador.
There were also acts of repression during his administration, such as the arrest of union leaders Demetrio Vallejo and Valentín Campa, and the murder of peasant leader Rubén Jaramillo by the Mexican Army. López Mateos engaged with revolutionary Marcos Ignacio Infante, leader of the Zapata Movement (Political ally of John F. Kennedy). Shortly before the killing of Jaramillo, Infante would visit the UN Demanding President López Mateos to step down or face a revolution. Infante attacked an Army Post outside of Mexico City, with over 300 men in 1962.
López Mateos has been praised for his policies including land redistribution, energy nationalization, and health and education programs, but has also been criticized for his repressive actions against labor unions and political opponents. Along with Cárdenas and Ruiz Cortines, he is usually ranked as one of the most popular Mexican presidents of the 20th century.
Early life and education
López Mateos was born, according to official records, in Atizapán de Zaragoza – a small town in the State of Mexico, now called Ciudad López Mateos – to Mariano Gerardo López y Sánchez Roman, a dentist, and Elena Mateos y Vega, a teacher. His family moved to Mexico City upon his father's death when López Mateos was still young. However, there exists a birth certificate and several testimonies archived at El Colegio de México that place his birth on 10 September 1909, in Patzicía, Guatemala.
In 1929, he graduated from the Scientific and Literary Institute of Toluca, where he was a delegate and student leader of the anti-re-electionist campaign of former Minister of Education José Vasconcelos, who ran in opposition to Pascual Ortiz Rubio, handpicked by former President Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles had founded the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) in the wake of the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregón. After Vasconcelos's defeat, López Mateos attended law school at National Autonomous University of Mexico and shifted his political allegiance to the PNR.
Career
Political career
Early in his career, he served as the private secretary to Col. Filiberto Gómez, the governor of the state of Mexico. In 1934, he became the private secretary of the president of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), Carlos Riva Palacio.
He filled a number of bureaucratic positions until 1941, when he met Isidro Fabela. Fabela helped him into a position as the director of the Literary Institute of Toluca after Fabela resigned the post to join the International Court of Justice. López Mateos became a senator of the state of Mexico in 1946, while at the same time serving as Secretary General of the PRI. He organized the presidential campaign of PRI candidate Adolfo Ruiz Cortines and was subsequently appointed Secretary of Labor in his new cabinet. He did an exemplary job, and for the first and only time, a Secretary of Labor was tapped to be the PRI's candidate for the presidency. As the candidate for the dominant party with only weak opposition, López Mateos easily won election, serving as president until 1964.
Presidency (1958–1964)
López Mateos assumed the presidency on December 1, 1958. As president of Mexico, along with his predecessor, Ruiz Cortines (1952–1958), López Mateos continued the outline of policies by President Miguel Alemán (1946–1952), who set Mexico's postwar strategy. Alemán favored industrialization and the interests of capital over labor. All three were heirs to the legacy of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), but Alemán Valdés and López Mateos were too young to have participated directly. In the sphere of foreign policy, López Mateos charted a course of independence from the U.S. but cooperated on some issues despite his opposition to the hostile U.S. policy toward the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Domestic policy
Labor
López Mateos sought the continuation of industrial growth in Mexico, often characterized as the Mexican Miracle, but it required the cooperation of organized labor. Organized labor was increasingly restive. It was a sector of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and controlled through the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), led by Fidel Velázquez. Increasingly, however, unions pushed back against government control and sought gains in wages, working conditions, and more independence from so-called charro union leaders, who followed government and party dictates. López Mateos had mainly success when he served as his predecessor's Secretary of Labor, but as president, he was faced with major labor unrest. The previous strategy of playing off one labor organization against another, such as the CTM, the Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants (CROC), and the General Union of Workers and Peasants of Mexico (UGOCM), ceased to work.
In July 1958, the militant railway workers' union, under the leadership of Demetrio Vallejo and Valentín Campa, began a series of strikes for better wages, which culminated in a major strike during Holy Week 1959. The Easter holiday was when many Mexicans traveled by train and so the choice of the date was designed for maximum impact on the general public. López Mateos depended on the forceful cabinet minister Gustavo Díaz Ordaz to deal with the striking railway workers. The government arrested all of the leaders of the union and filled Lecumberri Penitentiary. Valentín Campa and Demetrio Vallejo were given lengthy prison sentences for violating Article 145 of the Mexican Constitution for the crime of "social dissolution." The article empowered the government to imprison "whomever it decided to consider an enemy of Mexico." Also imprisoned for that crime was the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who remained in Lecumberri Penitentiary until the end of López Mateos's presidential term. López Mateos depended on Díaz Ordaz as the enforcer of political and labor peace to allow president to attend to other matters. "Throughout the years of López Mateos, in every situation of conflict, Díaz Ordaz was directly involved."
The government attempted to reduce labor unrest by setting up a National Commission for the Implementation of Profit Sharing which apportioned between 5% and 10% of each company's profits to organized labor. In 1960, Article 123 of the Constitution of 1917 was amended. There were guarantees written into the constitution concerning salaries, paid holidays, vacations, overtime, and bonuses to government civil servants. However, government workers were required to join the Federation of Union Workers in Service to the State (FSTSE) and forbidden to join any other union. Tight price controls and sharp increases in the minimum wage also ensured that the workers' real minimum wage index reached its highest level since the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas.
Conflict with Lázaro Cárdenas
Although Cárdenas had set a precedent for the ex-president to turn over complete government control to his successor, he re-emerged from political retirement to push the López Mateos government more toward leftist stances. The January 1959 taking of power by Fidel Castro gave Latin America another example of revolution. Cárdenas went to Cuba in July 1959 and was with Castro at a huge rally at which Castro declared himself to be prime minister of Cuba. Cárdenas returned to Mexico with the hope that the ideals of the Mexican Revolution could be revived, with land reform, support for agriculture, and an expansion of education and health services to Mexicans. He also directly appealed to López Mateos to free jailed union leaders. López Mateos became increasingly hostile to Cárdenas, who was explicitly and implicitly rebuking him. To Cárdenas he said, "They say the Communists are weaving a dangerous web around you." Cárdenas oversaw the creation of a new pressure group, the National Liberation Movement (MLN), composed of a wide variety of leftists, which participants considered a way to defend the Mexican Revolution was to defend the Cuban Revolution.
López Mateos found a way to counter Cárdenas's criticisms, by emulating his policies. The president nationalized the electric industry in 1960. It was not as dramatic an event as Cárdenas's expropriation of the oil industry in 1938, but it was nonetheless economic nationalism and the government could claim it as a victory for Mexico. Other reformist policies of his presidency can be seen as ways to counter the left's criticism, such as land reform, education reform, and social programs to alleviate poverty in Mexico. Cárdenas came back into the political fold of the PRI, when he supported López Mateos's choice for his successor in 1964, his enforcer, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.
Land reform
A wide range of social reforms were carried out during his presidency. Land reform was implemented vigorously, with 16 million hectares of land redistributed. It was the most significant amount of land distributed since the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas. The government also sought to improve the lives of ejidatarios. The government expropriated land that had been owned by U.S. interests in the extreme south, which helped to reduce land tension in that part of the country.
Public health and social welfare programs
Public health campaigns were also launched to combat diseases such as polio, malaria, and tuberculosis. Typhus, smallpox, and yellow fever were eradicated, and malaria was significantly reduced.
Tackling poverty became one of the priorities of his government, and social welfare spending reached a historical peak of 19.2% of total spending. A number of social welfare programs for the poor were set up, and the existing social-welfare programs were improved. Health care and pensions were increased, new hospitals and clinics were built, and the IMSS programme for rural Mexico was expanded. A social security institute was established, the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores al Servicio del Estado (ISSSTE), to provide childcare, medical services, and other social services to workers, especially state employees. A 1959 amendment to the Social Security Law also brought part-time workers within the auspices of social security. He established the National Institute for the Protection of Children to provide medical services and other aid to children.
A food distribution system was established to provide affordable staples for poor Mexicans and a market for farm produce. The government entered the housing business on a large scale for the first time in Mexican history, with a major program being initiated to build low-cost housing in major industrial cities, with over 50,000 units of low-income housing constructed between 1958 and 1964. One of the largest housing developments in Mexico City housed 100,000 people and contained several nurseries, four clinics, and several schools.
Museums and historical memory
López Mateos opened a number of major museums during his presidency, the most spectacular of which was the National Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec Park. Also opened in Chapultepec Park was the Museum of Modern Art. His Minister of Education Jaime Torres Bodet had played a major role in realizing the projects. Works from the colonial era were moved from the Historic Center of Mexico City to north of the capital in the former Jesuit colegio in Tepozotlan, creating the Museo del Virreinato. The Historical Museum of Mexico City was situated in Mexico City.
Educational reform
In an effort to reduce illiteracy, the idea of adult education classes was revived, and a system of free and compulsory school textbooks was launched. In 1959, the National Commission of Free Textbooks (Comisión Nacional de Libros de Textos Gratuitos) was created. The textbook program was controversial since the content would be created by the government, and the textbooks' use would be obligatory in schools. It was opposed by the Unión Nacional de Padres de Familia, a conservative organization, and the Roman Catholic Church, which also saw education as a private family matter. Education had become the largest single item in the federal budget by 1963, and there was a renewed emphasis on school construction. Almost every village was assisted in the construction of schools and provided with teachers and textbooks. Free student breakfasts for primary-school pupils were also restored.
Student activism
Increasingly, students were becoming politically engaged beyond the limited demands that affected them personally. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 captured leftist students' imagination. However, the government's repression of union and peasant activists was soon replicated against students. Students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) became more politicized, and their participation in demonstrations was met with government repression. The scale of the phenomenon would become much larger later in the 1960s, when Díaz Ordaz became president, but the early 1960s marked the beginnings of the antagonism.
Electoral reform
An attempt was made at political liberalization, with an amendment to the constitution that altered the electoral procedures in the Chamber of Deputies by encouraging greater representation for opposition candidates in Congress. The electoral reform of 1963 introduced so-called "party deputies" (diputados del partido) in which opposition parties were granted five seats in the Chamber of Deputies if they received at least 2.5 percent of the national vote and one more seat for each additional 0.5 percent (up to 20 party deputies). In the 1964 elections, for instance, the Popular Socialist Party (PPS) won 10 seats, and the National Action Party (PAN) won 20. By giving opposition political parties a greater voice in government, the country, controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, had the appearance and greater legitimacy as a democracy.
Armed forces
The army was the enforcer of government policy and intervened to break strikes. López Mateos created more social security benefits for the military in 1961. The army had been incorporated as a sector into the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM) under Lázaro Cárdenas, and when the Institutional Revolutionary Party was formed in 1946, the army was no longer sector, but remained loyal to the government and enforced order. During the presidency of López Mateos, the peasant leader Rubén Jaramillo, an ideological heir to peasant revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was murdered along with his family in 1962, "apparently at the instigation or with the foreknowledge of General Gómez Huerta, chief of the Presidential General Staff" under the president's personal command. Young writer and intellectual, Carlos Fuentes wrote a report of the murder for the magazine Siempre!, recording for an urban readership the grief of the peasant residents of Jojutla. The use of the army against a government opponent and the concern of a young urban intellectual about such an act being committed in his name were indicators marking a change in the political climate in Mexico.
Foreign policy
An important position for López Mateos's foreign policy was its stance on the Cuban Revolution. As Cuba moved leftward, the U.S. pressured all Latin America to join it to isolate Cuba, but Mexican foreign policy was to respect Cuba's independence. The U.S. had imposed an economic blockade on Cuba and organized Cuba's expulsion from the Organization of American States (OAS). Mexico took on principle the "nonintervention in the internal affairs of countries" and the "respect for the self-determination of nations." However, Mexico supported some U.S. foreign policy positions, such as barring China, as opposed to Taiwan, from holding a seat in the United Nations. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the Soviet Union placed missiles on Cuban territory, Mexico voted in favor of an OAS resolution for the removal of the weapons, but it also called for a ban on invading Cuba. Mexico supported Cuba's sovereignty but had its government begun a crackdown on demonstrations at home in solidarity with Cuba, which begun fomenting revolutionary movements abroad in Latin America and Africa, and Mexico could potentially have been fertile ground. Recently released documentation shows that Mexico's stance toward Cuba allowed it to claim solidarity with another Latin American revolution and raise its profile in the Western Hemisphere with other Latin American countries, but its overall support for revolution was weak for fear of destabilization at home.
López Mateos welcomed U.S. President John F. Kennedy to Mexico for a highly-successful visit in July 1962 although Mexico's relationship with Cuba differed from what U.S. policy sought. Mexico's firm stance on Cuba's independence despite U.S. pressure meant that Mexico had bargaining power with the U.S., which did not want to alienate Mexico, both of which had a long land border. At that juncture, the Chamizal conflict with the U.S. was resolved and a majority of the Chamizal area was granted to Mexico. Negotiations led to the successful conclusion of the Chamizal dispute, which had festered since the aftermath of the mid-19th-century Mexican–American War, a success for the López Mateos government.
Later life
In the last year of his presidency, López Mateos was visibly unwell. He looked worn-out and increasingly thin. On his very last months as president, a friend, Víctor Manuel Villegas, went to see him and later remembers asking him how he was; he replied that he was "screwed up." It turned out that López Mateos had seven aneurysms.
After finishing his presidential term, he briefly served as head of the Olympic Committee, responsible for the organization of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico and called the meeting that led to the creation of the World Boxing Council. He had to resign because of failing health. Manuel Velasco Suárez quoted him as saying, "In every way, life has smiled at me. Now I must accept whatever may come."
He rapidly became an invalid and was unable to walk, and after an emergency tracheotomy, he lost his voice. Enrique Krauze exclaimed in one of his books, "Gone was the voice of a once great orator."
Plagued with migraines during his adult life, he was diagnosed with several cerebral aneurysms, and after several years in a coma, he died in Mexico City 1969 of an aneurysm.
His wife, Eva Sámano, was buried next to him, in the Panteón Jardín in Mexico City, after her death in 1984.
Postmortem exile
When Carlos Salinas de Gortari became president of Mexico (1988-1994), he had the remains of López Mateos and his wife exhumed and moved to López Mateos's birthplace in Mexico State. A monument to the late president was erected there. This unusual step was likely due to Salinas' family animus toward López Mateos. Salinas's father Raúl Salinas Lozano had been a cabinet minister in López Mateos's government and was passed over for the party nomination to be the next president of Mexico. The town is now formally named Ciudad López Mateos.
See also
List of heads of state of Mexico
References
Further reading
Camp, Roderic A. Mexican Political Biographies. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona, 1982.
de María y Campos, Armando. Un ciudadano: Cómo es y cómo piensa Adolfo López Mateos. Mexico 1958
Díaz de la Vega, Clemente. Adolfo López Mateos: Vida y obra. Toluca 1986
Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power especially Chapter 20, "Adolfo López Mateos: The Orator." New York: HarperCollins 1997.
Pellicer de Brody, Olga. México y la Revolución Cubana. Mexico 1973.
Smith, Arthur K. Mexico and the Cuban revolution: foreign policy-making in Mexico under President Adolfo López Mateos (1958–1964). No. 17. Cornell University., 1970
Utley, Robert Marshall. Changing course: the international boundary, United States and Mexico, 1848–1963. Western National Parks Assoc, 1996.
Wilkie, James W. The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910, Second Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).
External links
Biography at Mexico Connect
Biography at Historical Text Archive
Biography
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1909 births
1969 deaths
Presidents of Mexico
People from Atizapán de Zaragoza
20th-century Mexican politicians
Institutional Revolutionary Party politicians
Founders of sporting institutions
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo%20Ruiz%20Cortines
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Adolfo Ruiz Cortines
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Adolfo Tomás Ruiz Cortines ( 30 December 1889 – 3 December 1973) was a Mexican politician who served as President of Mexico from 1952 to 1958. A member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he previously served in the Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revolution, as Secretary of the Interior, as Governor of Veracruz, and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Veracruz′s 3rd district. During his presidency, which coincided with the Mexican Miracle, women gained the right to vote, and he instigated numerous public health, education, infrastructure, and works projects.
A member of the Constitutionalist Army, Ruiz Cortines was the last Mexican president to have fought in the Mexican Revolution. He worked at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce during the administration of Adolfo de la Huerta and served as an official in the Department of Statistics from 1921 to 1935. Ruiz Cortines joined the Institutional Revolutionary Party and became Senior Official of the Government of the Federal District in 1935 and member of the Chamber of Deputies for Veracruz in 1937. In 1939 he was appointed treasurer of the presidential campaign of Manuel Ávila Camacho and worked as Governor of Veracruz from 1944 to 1948, a position he left to become Secretariat of the Interior during the administration of Miguel Alemán Valdés.
Ruiz Cortines protested as presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1951 and was elected a year later, after winning the disputed 1952 elections. During his administration, he put forward a reform to Article 34 of the Mexican Constitution, giving women the right to vote, and proposed several infrastructure bills, leading to the creation of the National Housing Institute and the National Nuclear Energy Commission. His social policies included the implementation of aguinaldos. Unlike previous administrations from the PRI, he was an advocate of fiscal austerity. His administration was noted for increased transparency in contrast to his predecessor.
One of the oldest presidents of Mexico, Ruiz Cortines has been credited with leading a strong economy during the period known as the "Mexican miracle", and has been praised for personal integrity and increasing confidence in the government through his anti-corruption policies.
He was also criticized for slower implementation of reforms than some of his predecessors. He has been ranked among the most popular Mexican presidents of the 20th century.
Early life and education
Adolfo Ruiz Cortines was born on 30 December 1889, in the state of Veracruz, into a family of Andalusian descent. His father, Adolfo Ruiz Tejada (1859–1889), regidor of Veracruz during the Porfirio Díaz regime, died two and a half months prior to his birth. His mother was María Cortines de la Cotera (1859–1932). Ruiz's grandfather was José Ruiz y Gómez de la Parra, better known as José Ruiz Parra, a member of the State of Veracruz's first Congress in 1824, who co-wrote the state's constitution. José Ruiz Parra was president of the junta that ruled over the Port of Alvarado during the American Invasion of Veracruz, having to personally sign the surrender of the port in 1847. He was also reputed for organizing fundraisers in favor of the Mexican Army during the Second French Invasion of Mexico, as well as for his deep involvement in the education of the local children. José Ruiz Parra was the maternal grandson of Isidro Gómez de la Parra, subdelegado of the Spanish Crown to the province of Tuxtlas (appointed by Bernaldo de Gálvez, viceroy of the New Spain), and of his wife Dominga Casado de Toro y Tamariz, herself a descendant of the Luna y Arellano family, holders of the hereditary title of Mariscal de Castilla.
Because of his father's premature death, Ruiz Cortines was raised and educated by his mother. María Cortines de la Cotera was the daughter of Diego Francisco Cortines y Gutiérrez de Celis (1829, Bielva, Cantabria, Spain), and María Dolores de la Cotera y Calzada (1824, Veracruz, Mexico), whose father was from Peñarrubia, also in Cantabria. His mother taught him to read and write at the age of 3. Later, he entered a school directed by Joaquín Jerónimo Díaz and Florencio Veyro, called Escuela Amiga, but did his secondary educational studies at the Colegio de los Jesuitas, and at the age twelve, he attended the reputed Instituto Veracruzano, famously directed by the poet Salvador Díaz Mirón. Adolfo learned from his mentors about liberalism, a political principle he would apply during his entire political career. In addition, it was at school where he acquired his fanatical interest in baseball. He always wanted to attend a university, but the American Invasion of 1914 forced him to abandon his studies. His first job was as an accounting assistant at a commercial textile company.
Military career
Military career during the Mexican Revolution
In 1909, Ruiz read the book La sucesión presidencial de 1910 (The Presidential Succession of 1910) published that year by Francisco I. Madero, the leader of the opposition against the presidency of General Díaz. This book motivated Ruiz's interest in politics. In 1910, the Mexican Revolution started and he became inspired by several of its main players such as Pascual Orozco and Francisco Villa. Because of this influence, in 1912 at the age of 23, he moved to Mexico City. During his stay in Mexico City, President Francisco I. Madero was assassinated and General Victoriano Huerta took power. Since Ruiz Cortines was opposed to the Huerta government, considered by a broad group of Mexicans as a usurper, he volunteered alongside other former students of the Instituto Veracruzano, under the command of Alfredo Robles, a right hand of the leader of the Constitutionalist faction, General Venustiano Carranza. Robles was in charge of the anti-Huerta forces in the south and center of Mexico. Ruiz Cortines did see military action in the Battle of El Ébano, but his main task was as a bookkeeper and paymaster. In 1920, General Carranza was attempting to flee the country after his defeat by the Sonoran generals (Adolfo de la Huerta, Alvaro Obregón, and Plutarco Elías Calles) who rejected Carranza's attempt to impose his successor, and took with him a large amount of the national treasure (150 million pesos in gold). When the generals captured his train and the national treasure's gold, it was the young and trusted officer, Major Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, who received it and delivered it safely and in presence of a notary to General Adolfo de la Huerta in Mexico City.
Early political career
With his reputation for precise accounting and bookkeeping, a reputation for honesty, and credentials as a veteran of the Mexican Revolution, there were several options open to him in the 1920s. He served in the government's Department of National Statistics. He took classes in statistics from Daniel Cosío Villegas, who was then a young teacher and later an important historian of Mexico. Ruiz Cortines argued in publications that the Department of National Statistics should be an autonomous agency.
In 1935 during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, Ruiz Cortines's political career began at age 45, as the director in charge of Mexico City. It was during that time that he met Miguel Alemán Valdés, son of a revolutionary soldier, now a young lawyer who would later become president of Mexico (1946–1952). In 1940, Ruiz Cortines managed the presidential campaign of Cárdenas's choice as successor, Manuel Avila Camacho. Miguel Alemán asked Ruiz to join him as his sub-secretary because of their personal friendship. This position gave Ruiz the opportunity to gain influence within the Institutional Revolutionary Party. After several years, the PRI designated him as candidate for governor of Veracruz.
Governor of Veracruz
In December 1944, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines became governor of Veracruz. During his administration, he expanded public education in the state. Some of the institutions he founded were the Technical Studies Institute (Departamento para Estudios Técnicos) which provided people with a practical education that allowed them to improve their quality of life. Furthermore, he founded the Institute of Anthropology and the State Planning Committee, among others. He also modified the local constitution to allow women to participate in the local and municipal elections. He built roads and bridges to develop Veracruz's infrastructure since it was one of the main ports of Mexico at that time.
Secretary of the Interior
In 1948, Alemán Valdés' Secretary of the Interior, , died in office, and Alemán Valdés needed to fill the position. Manuel Ávila Camacho recommended Ruiz Cortines, to which Alemán Valdés agreed. It was in this position that Ruiz Cortines distinguished himself and became a contender for the next presidential election.
Presidential nomination and campaign
In 1951, Miguel Alemán Valdés expressed his desire to be allowed to serve a second term, but Lázaro Cárdenas and Manuel Ávila Camacho had former president Abelardo L. Rodríguez tell Alemán Valdés that they didn't think, "extension of the presidential term or re-election is convenient for the country." On 14 October 1951, Ruiz Cortines was named candidate for the presidency by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) by the incumbent president, as had become practice. The PRI was the dominant party and Ruiz Cortines's electoral victory was entirely expected.
Ruiz Cortines is believed to have been chosen due to his more bland image in contrast to Alemán's more colorful personality, and was not seen as divisive to differin sectors of the PRI. Reportedly, Ruiz Cortines accepted the nomination, but he "apparently did not seek it and certainly did not intrigue to secure it." However, by September, Ruiz Cortines' base of support within the party had grown considerably, and included many young senators such as Adolfo López Mateos and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz. His campaign began on October 14, 1951, with his slogan being "austerity and work." In one of his first speaking events during his campaign, he stated to around 20,000 women in attendance, "If the vote favors us in the next elections, we intend to initiate before the Chambers the necessary legal reforms so that women enjoy the same political rights as men," a campaign promise he would later fulfill with an amendment to Article 34 of the Constitution.
General Miguel Henríquez Guzmán, formerly of the PRI, who had twice before attempted to secure the party's presidential nomination, was the candidate of the Federation of the Mexican People's Parties. His support was in largely urban areas, and included Cárdenas supporters alienated during Alemán Valdés' presidency, established military men, and members of the middle class who desired a multi-party democracy.
The National Action Party, eventually the PRI's largest political opposition party, first participated in this election, nominating .
Vicente Lombardo Toledano was the Popular Socialist Party's candidate.
The day after the election, Henríquez Guzmán's supporters gathered in the Alameda Central park in Mexico City to celebrate his "victory," although the results had not been announced yet. They were attacked by the police and army troops, with dozens being killed and wounded, and around 500 arrested.
When the results were announced, it was revealed that Ruiz Cortines won, with 74.31% of the popular vote (2, 713,419 votes). Henríquez Guzmán won 15.87% (579,745 votes), González Luna won 7.82% (285,555 votes), and Lombardo Toledano won 1.98% (72,482 votes).
President of Mexico
Inauguration
On 1 December 1952, he assumed the presidency of the republic. In his inaugural address, Ruiz Cortines pledged that fighting corruption in the government and in business would be key aspects of his administration, and that he would continue to maintain close relations with the United States.
Administration
Ruiz Cortines modified the law to promote responsibility and honesty among public servants to combat increasing amounts of corruption. He created a law that forced public servants to declare their assets before beginning to work in the government, including himself. Ruiz Cortines's purpose was to compare the public servants' fortune before and after their participation in public charges to combat illicit enrichment and corruption.
Domestic politics
After the corruption scandals of the Alemán years, he wanted to give a new image to the government and re-establish its credibility. His credo was "austerity and moralization". He prosecuted several of Alemán's political and business associates who had enriched themselves during the previous administration. He suspended all government contracts in 1953 to cut waste and to root out corruption.
He exercised tight control of public expenditure, supported the construction of roads, railways, dams, schools and hospitals. He also implemented a plan called "March to the Sea", which had the aim of shifting population from the highlands to the coast, and making better use and development of marine and coastal resources. Under this program, malaria was eradicated. He created the Rural Social Welfare Program to improve the living conditions of the rural population and encouraged land distribution. Large foreign estates were expropriated. Furthermore, he implemented the Farm Security program to protect farmers from natural disasters.
At the beginning of his term, President Ruiz Cortines sent a bill to amend Article 34 of the Constitution to grant women equal political rights with men, which granted the vote to Mexican women. To promote measures to meet the need for homes, he created the National Housing Institute. He gave a stimulus to industry, particularly small- and medium-sized, and laid the foundation for the development of the petrochemical industry and promoted the creation of jobs.
In response to the technical advances in the field of nuclear energy, and considering that Mexico could not remain unaffected by this development, he created the National Nuclear Energy Commission. Primary and secondary education were boosted greatly. He specially supported the polytechnic university. Ruiz Cortines equipped the facilities of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and began subsidies to support universities through the republic.
Another primary goal of his government was to improve the health of men and women in Mexico. Therefore, he fought malnutrition among children and promoted an immunization campaign. Ruiz Cortines turned his attention to social problems and imposed an era of austerity on the Mexican government.
Ruiz Cortines's government decided to reduce public spending, to consolidate public finances and fight inflation. These policies led to macroeconomic stability, and contributed to the Mexican economy high growth rates during the 1950s. For first time in many years the Mexican government generated a budget surplus. However, following Ruiz Cortines's 1953 suspension of all government contracts, construction companies were weakened, the national output fell, the foreign trade deficit rose by a third, and almost all employers announced layoffs. He chose to shift away from austerity and reoriented his policy towards boosting production, and announced a record $400 million spending plan to pump into public works projects. In April 1954, in the so-called "crisis de la Semana Santa", he had to devaluate the peso from $8.65 per dollar to $12.50 per dollar. Despite the devaluation, in 1955, Mexico's dollar reserves were roughly equivalent to $305 million, the highest since he took office. In December 1955, in a push for a balanced budget, Ruiz Cortines announced the next year's budget, 6,696,374,000 pesos ($535,709,920 in 1955), which was an increase from the previous year, but was still considered somewhat conservative given Mexico's rapidly growing economy.
By the end of his term in 1958, he had faced three social-political conflicts with peasants, teachers and the labor union of the railroad workers.
Mexico's real national income had increased 7% halfway through 1954, and 10% halfway through 1955. In 1954, Mexico's electric power output increased 10%, manufacturing increased 9.8%, and crude-oil production increased 15%. By 1955, Mexico's crop, coffee, and cotton production and yield had increased 20% since the start of Ruiz Cortines's term, at that point an all-time high for Mexico.
Earthquake of 1957
On July 28, 1957, an earthquake with an epicenter in the state of Guerrero shook Mexico City for about 90 seconds. It measured 7.7 on the Richter scale. Ruiz Cortines was in his office in the national palace at the time.
Foreign relations
During Ruiz' Cortines's term, Mexico had cold diplomatic relationships with the United States because Ruiz Cortines refused to make any agreements that committed Mexico to participate in international wars. During his term, Ruiz Cortines completed the construction of projects like Falcon Dam, built with a 58.6% American funds and 41.4% Mexican funds. In 1956, Ruiz Cortines attended a meeting with US President Dwight Eisenhower and Canadian Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent of Canada. During the meeting, the leaders discussed immigration issues, economic cooperation, civil aviation and illegal fishing in coastal areas. In general, President Ruiz Cortines's foreign policy was conservative and respectful of the sovereignty of other nations. His administration was looking for a closer relationship with Latin America and sought the integration into the institutional system of Latin America, the Organization of American States (OAS). In the Conference of Caracas, held in 1954, Mexico failed in its attempt to defend the self-determination of the people.
In total, Ruiz Cortines only made three foreign visits during his term, which was deliberately a small amount, as he did not want to waste money on planes or waste time on boats.
In 1935, under Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico was one of only five countries to condemn Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia (then the Ethiopian Empire or Abyssinia) during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
In 1953, Ruiz Cortines invited Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, to visit Mexico, who used the opportunity to thank Mexico for condemning the invasion against him. In 1955, Selassie accepted the invitation, and inaugurated at plaque in Mexico City with his country's name on it. He inaugurated a plaque with Mexico's name on it in his country's capital in 1958.
1958 presidential succession
In 1957, Ruiz Cortines, as was tradition, was to announce the PRI's next presidential candidate. Taking imput from ex-presidents Lázaro Cárdenas and Miguel Alemán Valdés, each symbolizing the left and right sectors of the PRI respectively, he announced his hard-working but little-known Labor Minister Adolfo López Mateos as the next candidate, with international observers seeing López Mateos as the sure winner despite his relative obscurity. López Mateos eventually won the election with 90% of the popular vote.
Post-presidency
On 1 December 1958, Ruiz handed over power to his successor López Mateos, and then he retired from public life almost altogether. In 1964, he attended the inauguration of López Mateos' successor, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz.
In his last days, his friend Manuel Caldelas García, a politician whom he had known in his youth, began living with him at his home in Veracruz. Caldelas helped with household chores and took care of the former president. On the afternoon of 3 December 1973, the health status of Ruiz Cortines became critical. Dr. Mario Díaz Tejeda went to the home to treat the condition of the former president. When the drugs took effect on him, Ruiz Cortines fell asleep. At 9:05 am on Monday, 3 December 1973, Adolfo Tomás Ruiz Cortines died at 82 years of age, a victim of heart failure caused by arteriosclerosis.
Personal life
In 1915 he married his first wife, Lucía Carrillo Guitiérrez, the daughter of Veracruz's then-governor, Lauro Carrillo. Ruiz Cortines and Lucía later divorced.
He married his second wife, an old girlfriend named María de Dolores Izaguirre, in 1941, who would serve as his First Lady. She would become the first woman in Mexico to cast a vote after her husband passed the constitutional amendment promised during his campaign.
See also
List of heads of state of Mexico
Mexican Miracle
References
Bibliography
Mexican government biography
Online biography
Further reading
Camp,Roderic A. Mexican Political Biographies. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona, 1982.
Luna Elizarrarás, Sara Minerva. "Enriquecimiento Y Legitimidad Presidencial: Discusión Sobre Identidades Masculinas Durante La Campaña Moralizadora De Adolfo Ruiz Cortines." Historia Mexicana, vol. 63, no. 3 (251), 2014, pp. 1377–1420. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24369004.
Pellicer De Brody, Olga Pellicer and José Luis Reyna. "Las Modalidades Ruizcortinistas Para Mantener La Estabilidad Politica." Historia De La Revolución Mexicana, Período 1952–1960: El Afianzamiento De La Estabilidad Política, and Jose Luis Reyna, 1st ed., vol. 22, Colegio De Mexico, México, D. F., 1978, pp. 13–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv233pb3.5.
External links
Mexican government biography
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Presidents of Mexico
Mexican Secretaries of the Interior
Governors of Veracruz
1889 births
1973 deaths
Institutional Revolutionary Party politicians
Politicians from Veracruz
People from Veracruz (city)
Grand Crosses Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
20th-century Mexican politicians
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.%20F.%20Stone
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I. F. Stone
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Isidor Feinstein Stone (December 24, 1907 – June 18, 1989) was an American investigative journalist, writer, and author.
Known for his politically progressive views, Stone is best remembered for I. F. Stone's Weekly (1953–1971), a newsletter which the New York University journalism department in 1999 ranked 16th among the top hundred works of journalism in the U.S. in the twentieth century and second place among print journalism publications.
Early life
I. F. Stone was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Jewish Russian immigrants who owned a shop in Haddonfield, New Jersey; the journalist and film critic Judy Stone was his sister.
Stone attended Haddonfield High School. He was ranked 49th in his graduating class of 52 students. His career as a journalist began in his second year of high school, when he founded The Progress newspaper. He later worked for the Haddonfield Press and for the Camden Courier-Post. After dropping out of the University of Pennsylvania, where he had studied philosophy, Stone joined The Philadelphia Inquirer, then known as the "Republican Bible of Pennsylvania".
After advice from a newspaper editor in 1937, Stone changed his professional journalistic byline from Isidore Feinstein Stone to I. F. Stone; the editor had told him that his political reportage would be better received if he minimized his Jewish identity. Years later, Stone acknowledged being remorseful about having changed his professional name, thereby yielding to the systemic anti-Semitism then prevalent in American society. Personally, Stone spoke of himself as "Izzy" throughout his life and career.
Politics in the 1930s
Influenced by the social work of Jack London, Stone became a politically radical journalist and joined the Philadelphia Record (the morning edition rival of The Philadelphia Inquirer) owned by J. David Stern, a Democrat. Stone later worked for the New York Post newspaper after Stern bought it during 1929. In late adolescence, Stone joined the Socialist Party of America, a political decision influenced by his reading of the works of Karl Marx, Jack London, Peter Kropotkin and Herbert Spencer. Later, he quit the Socialist Party due to the intractable sectarian divisions, ideological and political, that existed among the organizations that constituted the American Left.
During the 1930s, Stone was an active member of the communist-dominated Popular Front, which opposed Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. On May 1, 1935, Stone joined the League of American Writers (1935–1943), whose members included Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Frank Folsom, Alexander Trachtenberg, Louis Untermeyer, Myra Page, Millen Brand and Arthur Miller. (Members were largely either Communist Party members or fellow travelers.)
During the 1930s, as a left-wing journalist, Stone criticized Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the Soviet Union in an editorial for the New York Post (December 7, 1934) that denounced and likened Stalin's purge and execution of Soviet citizens to the political purges and executions occurring in Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and stated that Stalin's régime in Russia had adopted the tactics of "Fascist thugs and racketeers." As the Moscow Trials (1936–1938) proceeded, Stone attacked Stalin's actions as heralding a new Thermidor, which was the time of counterrevolution and reaction against the French Revolution (1789–1799). Additionally, Stone criticized Lenin and Trotsky for their "cruel and bloody ruthlessness" in executing the Romanov family. He scolded the US Socialist Workers Party, then followers of Trotsky, for believing he would have been less repressive than Stalin.
However, in 1939, following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he wrote to a friend that he would do "no more fellow traveling" for the U.S.S.R., and used his opinion column in The Nation magazine to denounce Joseph Stalin as "the Moscow Machiavelli who suddenly found peace as divisible as the Polish plains and marshes". Stone bitterly denounced the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in public and in private as a betrayal of leftist political principles.
Affiliations
A former editor of The Nation, Victor Navasky, said that plain, solid work characterized Stone's investigative journalism. He was an old-school reporter who did his homework and perused public-domain records (official government and private-industry documents) for the facts and figures, the data, and quotations that would substantiate his reportage about the matters of the day.
As a liberal, politically outspoken reporter from the American left wing, Stone often had to work in ideologically hostile environments (military, diplomatic, business) where information was controlled, making verifiability the essence of his journalism, corroborated by facts in the public domain, which the reader could verify. About his style of work as an investigative journalist, Stone said:
I made no claims to 'inside stuff'. I tried to give information which could be documented, so [that] the reader could check it for himself ... Reporters tend to be absorbed by the bureaucracies they cover; they take on the habits, attitudes, and even accents of the military or the diplomatic corps. Should a reporter resist the pressure, there are many ways to get rid of him. ... But a reporter covering the whole capital on his own – particularly if he is his own employer – is immune from these [political] pressures.
The journalistic professionalism and integrity of I. F. Stone derived from his intellectual willingness to scour and devour public documents, to bury himself in The Congressional Record, to study the transcripts of obscure congressional committee hearings, debates and reports. He prospected for news nuggets – published as boxed paragraphs in his weekly newsletter – such as contradictions in the line of official policy, examples of bureaucratic mendacity and political obscurantism. Stone especially sought evidence of the U.S. government's legalistic incursions against the civil liberties and the civil and political rights of American citizens.
The New York Post
In 1933, Stone worked as a reporter for the New York Post newspaper. He supported the politics of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–1945), especially the progressive reforms of the New Deal (1935–1938) programs FDR was instituting to rescue the U.S. economy from the poverty imposed by the Great Depression which started in 1929. In his first book, The Court Disposes (1937), Stone criticized what he described as the politically reactionary role of the U.S. Supreme Court in blocking the realization of the socio-economic reform programs of the New Deal.
In the course of working as publisher and reporter, Stern and Stone quarreled about journalism, its practice and its practices, especially about the content and tone of Stone's New York Post editorials critical of a business plan to refinance the public transit system of New York City. After an acrimonious quarrelling, Stern's concern about Stone's juvenile attitude prompted an inter-office note to Izzy and the managing editor, informing them that, henceforth, the reporter I. F. Stone was part of the news-department staff.
In response to his publisher's management decision – subordinating a reporter to the newsroom managing editor – Stone complained to the Newspaper Guild, presenting his case against the managers of the newspaper for unfair labor practices. The Post contested the case, which proceeded to an arbitration hearing that ruled against the reporter Stone, who consequently quit his job at the New York Post.
The Nation
In 1939, after leaving the New York Post, Stone worked for The Nation, first as associate editor and then as its Washington, D.C., editor. Two years later, in the book Business as Usual: The First Year of Defense (1941), Stone reported on perceived flaws the early stages of America's WW2 preparation. He alleged inefficient planning and execution, and the business-as-usual attitude, of the industrial and business monopolies — and its toleration by the U.S. military — that resulted in the tardy production of matériel for the Arsenal of Democracy with which President F. D. Roosevelt said the U.S. would help Europeans and Asians combat the totalitarianism of National Socialist German Workers Party, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan.
On August 4, 1939, Stone along with four hundred other writers and intellectuals signed a letter condemning anti-Soviet attitudes in the United States, called for better relations between the two countries, described the USSR as a supporter of world peace, and said "The Soviet Union considers political dictatorship a transitional form and has shown a steadily expanding democracy". The letter was published in September 1939 shortly after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was known in the United States and during the same month that the Soviet invasion of Poland began. Upon hearing of the Pact, Stone repudiated the letter and denounced the actions of the Soviet Union and would criticize it and the CPUSA, which repeated the views of the USSR about the war. In return the CPUSA denounced him as one of the leading "Imperialist war-mongers" until Operation Barbarossa which caused a change in communist views of the war."
In the matter of war-production employment, Stone's exposé of alleged institutional racism and anti–Semitism of the FBI's process for vetting job applicants is evident in the semantics of questions meant to discover, identify and exclude political subversives from civil service in the U.S. government. He characterized questions the FBI asked about job applicants as ideological and bigoted, such as, "Does he mix with Negroes?", "Does he ... have too many Jewish friends?", "Does he think the colored races are as good as the white?", "Why do you suppose he has hired so many Jews?" and "Is he always criticizing Vichy France?" All which Stone believed were poor questions to ask during a war in which collaborationist Vichy France (1940–44) actively participated in the military occupation as the puppet régime of France. To the mainstream American reader concerned with the affairs of daily life, Stone reported that, "Questions like these are being used as a sieve to strain anti-fascists and liberals out of the government. They serve no other purpose.". Readers thanked The Nation for Stone's informing the public of the FBI's racist, fascistic and anti-Semitic un–American activities. Concomitantly, some on the American political right wing criticized Stone for maintaining the anonymity of his FBI sources.
In 1946 Freda Kirchwey, the editor (1933–55) of The Nation, fired Stone from the magazine for accepting employment with the newspaper PM (picture magazine) as a foreign correspondent covering the anti–British Jewish Resistance Movement in Mandatory Palestine (1920–48), where the Jews awaited the foundation of the State of Israel.
PM (newspaper)
Stone was the Washington, D.C., correspondent for PM, and published a series of feature articles about the Jewish European refugees who ran the British blockade to reach Palestine. He later further developed that reportage and wrote the book Underground to Palestine. In 1948 Picture Magazine closed, and was replaced in Stone's career first by the New York Star (1948-1949) and then by The Daily Compass, published until 1952.
I. F. Stone's Weekly
Although Stone had been a mainstream journalist in the 1930s, appearing on shows like Meet the Press (then a radio show), in 1950 he found himself blacklisted and unable to get work, possibly because Stone publicly admitted to his "fellow traveler" tendencies. In 1953, inspired by the example of the muckraking journalist George Seldes and his political weekly, In Fact, Stone started his own independent newsletter, I. F. Stone's Weekly. Over the next few years, Stone's newsletter campaigned against McCarthyism and racial discrimination in the United States.
In 1964, using evidence drawn from a close reading and analysis of published accounts, Stone was the only American journalist to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson's account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. During the 1960s, Stone continued to criticize the Vietnam War. At its peak in the 1960s, the Weekly only had a circulation of 70,000, but it was regarded as very influential.
Articles originally published in I. F. Stone's Weekly later were compiled and published in The I. F. Stone's Weekly Reader (1973), in three of six volumes of A Noncomformist History of Our Times (1989), a compendium of Stone's writing, and The Best of I.F. Stone (2006).
Views
Zionism and the State of Israel
In 1945, at war's end, Stone went to Mandatory Palestine (1920-1948) to report on the mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to Mandatory Palestine—peoples whom the Nazis had displaced from the countries of Eastern Europe. In Underground to Palestine (1948), Stone reported that the political, financial and personal interests of those displaced Jews would have been, in his opinion, better served by emigrating to the U.S. rather than to the Zionist Homeland for the Jewish people promised in the Balfour Declaration. Nonetheless, they preferred the promise of Israel in Stone's estimation because:
They have been kicked around as Jews, and now they want to live as Jews. Over and over I heard it said: 'We want to build a Jewish country ... We are tired of putting our sweat and blood into places where we are not welcome. ... ' These Jews want the right to live as a people, to build as a people, to make their contribution to the world as a people. Are their national aspirations any less worthy of respect than those of any other oppressed people?
As a secular Jew, Stone agreed with the nationalist aspirations of Zionism and publicly supported the State of Israel (1948), before the U.S. government granted official recognition. As a politically moderate Zionist, and like the politician Abba Eban, Stone supported the one-state solution of Israel as a bi-national state that Jews and Arabs would inhabit as equal citizens. Yet, in observing the military conflict that established the Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine, Stone became sympathetic to the Arab resistance to their physical dispossession (jobs, homes, land) and the political disenfranchisement (voided civil and political rights).
Stone's reportage of the conflict in the Middle East irritated Minister Eban, both for embarrassing him (a politically moderate Zionist) and his government and for dimming the international public image of the State of Israel as a refuge for oppressed peoples.
The Arab–Israeli conflict
The practical and professional consequences of being an openly left-wing journalist in the U. S. continued for I. F. Stone, when the U.S. State Department refused to issue a passport for him to travel overseas as a journalist. Stone filed a lawsuit against the State Department. In court, his brother-in-law, the attorney Leonard Boudin, established the right of a journalist to freely travel in the course of practicing his profession, and so thwarted the federal government's political interference with a journalist; afterwards, Stone travelled to Israel in 1956—before the Suez War (Oct 29 – November 7, 1956)—and reported that:
Consequent to the establishment of British, French, and Russian imperial spheres of influence in Asia Minor, by way of the Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916), the internal politics of the State of Israel became the Arab–Israeli conflict (1948 to date), which the West conflated to the geopolitics of the Cold War (1945–90) with each belligerent party, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., claiming hegemony over the Middle East.
In the book review article "Holy War" (Les Temps Modernes, June 1967), Stone said that superpower geopolitics are of secondary importance to the discontent of the Arabs and the Jews in the Levant.
The Korean War
Stone was critical of the Cold War, and its consequent reductions of the civil liberties and the civil and political rights of American citizens – what he saw as totalitarianism effected with the moral panic of loyalty oaths and the Second Red Scare (1947–57) of the McCarthy Era — Stone wrote a book on the origin of the Korean War (1950–52). According to Stone, in an effort to convince the American people to support and fight in a war between two undemocratic Asian countries, U.S. government propaganda misrepresented the Korean War as necessary to the rollback fight against the international communist conspiracy for world domination, with Joseph Stalin controlling the conspiracy from Moscow.
In The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950–51, Stone said that South Korea had provoked North Korea to war, by way of continual guerrilla attacks across the border (38th parallel) into the north of Korea, and that, thus goaded, the North Koreans eventually counterattacked, and invaded the South, providing the official casus belli (June 25, 1950) required for Korean reunification. Stone asserted that such cross-border attacks, authorized by the South Korean government, were shaped by U.S. foreign policy for the worldwide containment of communism, which was advocated by John Foster Dulles, realized in the field by General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. commander in the Pacific Ocean military theater, and countenanced by Syngman Rhee, the strongman President of South Korea.
Allegations of espionage
Oleg Kalugin's comments
In The Independent newspaper in 1992, British journalist Andrew Brown reported that the Soviet Embassy attaché, KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, said that, "We had an agent—a well-known American journalist—with a good reputation, who severed his ties with us after 1956. I, myself, convinced him to resume them. But, in 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia ... he said he would never again take any money from us."
In "How Many I. F. Stones Were There?", Herbert Romerstein, formerly of USIA and of the HUAC, and Ray Kerrison reported that Kalugin had identified I. F. Stone as the secret agent of whom he [Kalugin] had spoken with the journalist Andrew Brown. Eight years later, in The Venona Secrets (2000), Romerstein and Eric Breindel (editorial page editor of the New York Post) developed Kalugin's allegations about I. F. Stone being a secret agent for the Soviet Union.
In "The Attack on I.F. Stone", Andrew Brown said that when he "used the phrase an agent, to describe someone who turned out to be I. F. Stone", he understood the term metaphorically, meaning someone who was a "useful contact", and that the expression "take any money" referred to the fact that the journalist I.F. Stone would not permit a Soviet embassy employee to pay for a luncheon meal, neither then nor in the future, despite earlier lunches in the 1930s and 1940s. That, in September 1992, at the Moscow Journalists' Club, Kalugin had explained to the lawyer Martin Garbus that, "I have no proof that Stone was an agent. I have no proof that Stone ever received any money from the KGB, or the Russian government, I never gave Stone any money and was never involved with him as an agent."
In "Who's Out to Lunch Here?: I. F. Stone and the KGB", Cassandra Tate said that the alleged evidence of Stone's secret agent involvement with the KGB is based upon a few lines of text at the end of a speech by a KGB officer. She concluded that Stone was neither a Soviet agent, nor a collaborator of the KGB in the U.S.
In American Radical:The Life and Times of I. F. Stone, 2009), D. D. Guttenplan cited Kalugin's denials in The Nation and in the New York Post, although an earlier article had pointed to the possible ambiguity of the KGB's definition of the term "agent of influence." In multiple interviews, Kalugin contradicted Romerstein's allegation that Stone was a Soviet secret agent; two Stone biographers reported Kalugin's third-party denials that Stone was a Soviet secret agent. Myra MacPherson (All Governments Lie! The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone, 2006) reported that Kalugin said: "We had no clandestine relationship. We had no secret arrangement. I was the press officer [of the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C.] ... I never paid him anything. I sometimes bought lunch."
In his KGB memoirs, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West (1994), about working as a press attaché in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., Kalugin said that, besides I. F. Stone, he often met with journalists such as Walter Lippmann, Joseph Kraft, Drew Pearson, Chalmers Johnson, and Murray Marder. That Stone occasionally had a working-lunch with the Soviet press-attaché on shift, but ended that luncheon relationship after his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1956, and after hearing On the Personality Cult and its Consequences (February 26, 1956), the secret speech with which Nikita Khrushchev denounced the tyranny of Josef Stalin. When he returned from the Soviet Union, in his weekly newsletter, Stone wrote:
Whatever the consequences, I have to say what I really feel, after seeing the Soviet Union, and carefully studying the statements of its leading officials. This is not a good society and it is not led by honest men ... Nothing has happened in Russia to justify cooperation abroad, between the independent Left and the Communists.
Stone's published statements, about the Soviet Union, its regimented society, and its totalitarian government, by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), provoked hundreds of subscribers to cancel their subscriptions to I.F. Stone's Weekly newsletter. Kalugin said that he persuaded Stone to continue having working-luncheons with him, but that, after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Stone refused to let Kalugin pay for the lunch, and consequently ceased meeting with him.
Venona Project
In 1995, the National Security Agency (NSA) published documents from the Venona Project (1943–80), a counter-intelligence program for the collection and decryption of KGB and GRU telegraph messages, collected from 1943 to 1980. On September 13, 1944, the KGB station in New York City transmitted a message to Moscow that Vladimir Pravdin, an NKVD officer working undercover as a reporter for TASS (the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union), had sought to communicate with a Soviet agent code-named BLIN, in Washington, DC, but that BLIN had been avoiding a meeting with Pravdin, claiming that his work schedule did not permit the requested meeting. He reported that Samuel Krafsur, an American NKVD agent codenamed IDE, who worked for TASS in the building that housed Stone's office, had tried to "sound him out, but BLIN did not react."
The Venona project transcript No. 1506 (October 23, 1944), indicated that Pravdin had succeeded in meeting with secret agent BLIN, and that he was "not refusing his aid" but explained that had "three children, and did not want to attract the attention of the FBI" and that BLIN's reluctance to meet Pravdin derived from "his unwillingness to spoil his career" because he "earned $1,500.00 per month but ... would not be averse to having a supplemental income."
In the article "Cables Coming in From the Cold" on the Venona Project transcripts, Walter Schneir and Miriam Schneir said that interpreting the transcriptions is difficult, because of the hearsay nature of the messages; the many steps between a conversation and the sending of a cable; language-translation difficulties; the possibility of an imperfect decryption; and concluded that "the Venona messages are not like the old TV show You Are There [1953–57], in which history was re‑enacted before our eyes. They are history seen through a glass, darkly."
In their Cold War history, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000), John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr said that Stone was the Soviet secret agent BLIN. They cited four Venona cables that mentioned the American journalist I. F. Stone and that two of the cables contained evidence of Stone's pro–Soviet espionage. As well, the files of the KGB, from 1936 to 1939, indicate that Stone was a Soviet secret agent, who worked as a talent spotter, as a courier to other secret agents, and that he provided private and journalistic information to KGB, and Stone collaborated with the Communist Victor Perlo group, who gave him materials for use in journalistic exposés.
Moreover, in The Venona Secrets: The Definitive Exposé of Soviet Espionage in America (2000), Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel re-published the allegation that the American journalist I. F. Stone was the Soviet secret agent BLIN. As evidence, they cited Stone's statement, in a column (November 11, 1951) that responded to New York Herald Tribune reportage about his left wing sympathies, and that he would be unsurprised to read in that newspaper, "that I was smuggled in from Pinsk, in a carton of blintzes". That Stone's use of the word blintzes (pancakes) betrayed his knowledge of the word BLIN, his code name as a Soviet secret agent.
In the event, Stone's biographer Myra MacPherson said that the FBI never identified BLIN as being I. F. Stone, and, instead, suspected Ernest K. Lindley, who also was father to three children. The FBI claimed that secret agent BLIN must have been someone "whose true, pro–Soviet sympathies were not known to the public", hence, could not have been the journalist Stone, who, on the contrary, far from being "fearful", did not hide his left wing beliefs. Indeed, rather than wishing to avoid FBI attention, as BLIN reportedly did, I. F. Stone made a point of suggesting to the Soviet press attaché Oleg Kalugin that they have lunch at Harvey's, a favorite haunt of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to "tweak his nose".
Alexander Vassiliev's allegations of espionage
In Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (2009), Klehr, Haynes, and Alexander Vassiliev, formerly of KGB, cite a KGB file [which Vassiliev saw in the Soviet Union] that named "Isidor Feinstein, a commentator for the New York Post" in the 1930s, as being secret agent BLIN, who "entered the channel of normal operational work" in 1936. That a note listed BLIN as an agent of the KGB station in New York City, in 1938. Klehr, Haynes, and Vassiliev said that Stone "assisted Soviet intelligence on a number of tasks, ranging from doing some talent spotting, acting as a courier, by relaying information to other agents, and providing private journalist tidbits and data [that] the KGB found interesting".
That BLIN was to help recruit and support the German resistance to Nazism in Berlin, from 1936 to 1938. Yet the authors admitted that Stone broke with the KGB after the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939, and speculate that later Soviet communications with Stone were meant to reactivate their previous relationship. As such, Klehr, Haynes, and Vassiliev conclude that: "The documentary record shows that I. F. Stone consciously cooperated with Soviet intelligence, from 1936 through 1938, [Stone's Popular Front period]. An effort was made, by Soviet intelligence, to reestablish that relationship in 1944–45; we do not know whether that effort succeeded. To put it plainly, from 1936 to 1939 I. F. Stone was a Soviet spy".
In the article "Commentary's Trumped-up Case Against I. F. Stone", Jim Naureckas counters that the allegations of Klehr, Haynes, and Vassiliev, if true, merely indicate that I. F. Stone was "just gossiping", and criticizes them their "nefarious" and "tendentious" magnification of "relatively innocuous behavior" on the basis of one anti–Nazi activity. As for Stone being listed as an "agent" of the KGB, Naureckas said that Walter Lippmann also is listed as a Soviet secret agent.
In the article "I.F. Stone: Encounters with Soviet Intelligence", Max Holland said there is no question that I. F. Stone was a "fully recruited and witting agent" for the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938; yet, admits that Stone "was not a 'spy' in that he did not engage in espionage, and had no access to classified material".
In the book review of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (May 25, 2009), D. D. Guttenplan said that "Spies never explains why we should believe KGB officers, pushed to justify their existence (and expense accounts), when they claim information comes from an elaborately recruited 'agent' rather than merely a source or contact". That the authors of Spies distort the report in Venona transcript No. 1506 (October 1944) and never prove that, in 1936, Soviet secret agent BLIN was I. F. Stone. That their allegations merely demonstrate that Stone "was a good reporter", and notes that Walter Lippmann is quoted in Spies as having professional contacts with "a Soviet journalist with whom he traded insights and information." This is the same man [Pravdin] whom Stone is said to have avoided. Nonetheless, the Vassilev notebook shows that Lippman was meeting Pravdin, not to pass the intelligence to him, but rather to find out what the true intentions of the Soviet government were. One of the KGB reports said, "He [Lippmann] is attempting to use his acquaintance with him [Pravdin] to determine our viewpoint on various issues of international politics. He is doing this, of course, very subtly, with the utmost tact. It should be recognized that by attempting to draw 'Sergei' into making candid comments, Imperialist [Lippmann] is sharing his own information with him".
In the book review of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (2010), Myra MacPherson said that the American co-author of the book, the journalist Max Holland, had persistently repeated discredited allegations that the American journalist I. F. Stone had accepted money from the Soviet Union, despite Holland's having acknowledged the unreliability of his source, KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin:
As for the conflicting tales, woven by former KGB agent Kalugin, about his relationship with Stone, from 1966 to 1968, Holland correctly notes that 'Kalugin seemed incapable of telling the same story more than once'. Still, this did not keep Holland from repeating the damaging and long-refuted lie that Herbert Romerstein, former HUAC sleuth, developed after talking with Kalugin, that Moscow Gold subsidized Stone's weekly. Nowhere is there any evidence that Stone took money for anything, except a possible lunch or two. Nor is there any evidence, as Holland points out, that Kalugin was able to plant [news] stories with Stone.
Retirement, classical scholarship, and death
In 1971, angina pectoris forced Stone to cease publication of the Weekly. After his retirement, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania, where he had dropped out years before. He earned a bachelor's degree in classical languages. Stone successfully learned Ancient Greek and wrote a book about the prosecution and death of Socrates, The Trial of Socrates, in which he argued that Socrates wanted to be sentenced to death to shame Athenian democracy, which he despised. The Trial of Socrates was a New York Times bestseller and was translated into 11 languages.
In 1970, Stone received the George Polk Award, and in 1976 he received the Conscience-in-Media Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Personal life
In 1929, Stone married Esther Roisman, who later worked as his assistant at I. F. Stone's Weekly. Their marriage produced three children, Celia, Jeremy, and Christopher. Esther's sister Jean, a poet, was the wife of radical lawyer Leonard Boudin. (Stone was thus the uncle of Weather Underground co-founder Kathy Boudin and conservative U.S. judge Michael Boudin.) The Stones' marriage lasted for sixty years. In 1989, Stone died of a heart attack in Boston at the age of 81.
Legacy
Memorial awards
On March 5, 2008, Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism announced plans to award an annual I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence and an associated I. F. Stone Workshop on Strengthening Journalistic Independence.
In 2008, the Park Center for Independent Media at the Roy H. Park School of Communications created the Izzy Award. The award goes to "an independent outlet, journalist, or producer for contributions to our culture, politics, or journalism created outside traditional corporate structures" for "special achievement in independent media".
Documentaries
On May 6, 2015, the non-profit peace organization, Catalytic Diplomacy, released The Legacy of I.F. Stone, Part One and Part Two, a pair of documentary videos exploring the legacy and influence of I. F. Stone and I.F. Stone's Weekly.
In 2016, the film ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone was released; a documentary on independent journalism in which the work and principles of I.F. Stone as an outcast journalist articulate the narrative.
Archive
The entire run of I.F. Stone's Weekly from January 17, 1953, through December 1, 1971, can be accessed through the ifstone.org website, along with many of Stone's speeches and other writings, and the documentary videos The Legacy of I.F. Stone, Part One and The Legacy of I.F. Stone, Part Two.
Music
Composer Scott Johnson makes extensive use of Stone's voice taken from a recorded 1981 lecture in his large-scale musical work, How It Happens, completed in 1991 on commission for the Kronos Quartet.
Influences
The 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards listed Stone's The Trial of Socrates as one of his three favorite books.
Publications
Books
The Court Disposes (1937)
Business as Usual (1941)
Underground to Palestine (1946)
This is Israel (1948)
The Killings at Kent State (1971) LCCN 73148389
The I. F. Stone's Weekly Reader (1973)
The Trial of Socrates (Anchor Books, 1988)
A Noncomformist History of Our Times (Little, Brown and Company, 1989)
The War Years, 1939–1945.
The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950–1951.
The Truman Era, 1945–1952.
The Haunted Fifties, 1953–1963.
In a Time of Torment, 1961–1967.
Polemics and Prophecies, 1967–1970.
Periodicals
I.F. Stone's Weekly, January 17, 1953, through December 1, 1971
I. F. Stone (1971–1989) New York Review of Books
Honorary Degree from Amherst College
Newspaper Guild of New York Honors Page One Must for "Underground to Palestine" awarded in 1947
The Eleanor Roosevelt Award
The George Polk Award of Long Island University
American Library Association Intellectual Freedom Award
Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Award
Lifetime Achievement Award from Haddenfield High School (I. F. Stone's high school)
A. J. Liebling Award for Journalistic Distinction
Columbia University Journalism Award
National Press Club Journalists' Journalist Award
The American Civil Liberties Union Award
The First Amendment Defender Award of the Catholic University's Columbus School of Law
The Florina Lasker Civil Liberties Award from the New York Civil Liberties Union
The Grand Prix Charles-Leopold Mayer of the French Academy of Sciences, November 1977
The Sidney Hillman Foundation Award
The Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications
Further reading
Documentaries
Biographies
Robert C. Cottrell. (1992). Izzy: A Biography of I. F. Stone, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. . 388 pages. 18 chapters. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index.
D. D. Guttenplan. 2009. American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Secret History of Izzy by D. D. Guttenplan, The Nation, May 13, 2009
"Armed With Words: D. D. Guttenplan's The Life and Times of I. F. Stone." Review by Tom Robbins in The Village Voice, June 2, 2009.
Myra MacPherson. (2006). All Governments Lie!: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone, Scribner.
(response to Paul Berman's review)
(response to Paul Berman's review)
Andrew Patner. (1988). I. F. Stone: A Portrait, Pantheon.
Related
Frank J. Donner. (1980). The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Victor S. Navasky. (1980). Naming Names: New York: The Viking Press. .
Ellen Schrecker. 1994. The Age Of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents. Boston: St. Martin's Press,
Oleg Kalugin and Fen Montaigne. (1994). The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.
Ellen Schrecker. 1998. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little Brown,
Stanley Sandler. 1999. The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished, University Press of Kentucky, 0813109671
Alexander Vassiliev, John Earl Haynes, and Harvey Klehr Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) () "I. F. Stone: The Icon" pp. 146–52.
References
External links
WebCitation archive. archive.org archive.
Video:
I. F. Stone Interview at UC Berkeley, 1970
Audio:
"I. F. Stone Remembered," Radio Open Source, September 22, 2006
John Whiting's 2009 review of D.D. Guttenplan's American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone which includes:
I. F. Stone Lecture, 1963 Vietnam Day Teach-in at U.C. Berkeley
I. F. Stone conversation, Part one, 1988 The New School, The Nation, WBAI
I. F. Stone conversation, Part two, 1988 The New School, The Nation, WBAI
Chris Koch's 1993 recount of Stone’s about-face over the 1962 exposé by former FBI Special Agent Jack Levine
Report of special agent Jack Levine
former FBI Special Agent Jack Levine 1962 Raw recording by Richard Elman and Chris Koch of WBAI
1907 births
1989 deaths
American foreign policy writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American political writers
American investigative journalists
American classical scholars
Burials at Mount Auburn Cemetery
Haddonfield Memorial High School alumni
Jewish American writers
People from Haddonfield, New Jersey
Writers from Philadelphia
Newsletter publishers (people)
Jewish American activists
Jewish scholars
Jewish socialists
American anti-fascists
American Zionists
20th-century American non-fiction writers
Jewish American journalists
The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
Activists from Philadelphia
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
Jewish anti-fascists
American anti–Vietnam War activists
American Jewish anti-racism activists
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger%20Reynolds
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Roger Reynolds
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Roger Lee Reynolds (born July 18, 1934) is an American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by technology. Beyond composition, his contributions to musical life include mentorship, algorithmic design, engagement with psychoacoustics, writing books and articles, and festival organization.
During his early career, Reynolds worked in Europe and Asia, returning to the US in 1969 to accept an appointment in the music department at the University of California, San Diego. His leadership there established it as a state of the art facility – in parallel with Stanford, IRCAM, and MIT – a center for composition and computer music exploration. Reynolds won early recognition with Fulbright, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Institute of Arts and Letters awards. In 1989, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a string orchestra composition, Whispers Out of Time, an extended work responding to John Ashbery’s ambitious Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Reynolds is principal or co-author of five books and numerous journal articles and book chapters. In 2009 he was appointed University Professor, the first artist so honored by University of California. The Library of Congress established a Special Collection of his work in 1998.
His nearly 150 compositions to date are published exclusively by the C. F. Peters Corporation, and several dozen CDs and DVDs of his work have been commercially released in the US and Europe. Performances by the Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego Symphonies, among others, preceded the most recent large-scale work, george WASHINGTON, written in honor of America's first president. This work knits together the Reynolds's career-long interest in orchestra, text, extended musical forms, intermedia, and computer spatialization of sound.
Reynolds's work embodies an American artistic idealism reflecting the influence of Varèse and Cage, as well as Xenakis, and has also been compared with that of Boulez and Scelsi. Reynolds lives with his partner of 59 years, Karen, in Del Mar, California, overlooking the Pacific.
Life and work
Beginnings and education (1934–1962)
Early influences: piano studies with Kenneth Aiken (1934–1952)
The seeds for Reynolds's focus on music were planted almost by accident when his father, an architect, recommended that he purchase some phonograph records. These recordings, including a Vladimir Horowitz performance of Frédéric Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 53, spurred Reynolds to take up piano lessons with Kenneth Aiken. Aiken demanded that his students delve into the cultural context behind the works of classic keyboard literature they played. Around the time that Reynolds graduated from high school in 1952, he performed a solo recital in Detroit that consisted of the Johannes Brahms Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, some Intermezzi, the Franz Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, as well as works by Claude Debussy, and Chopin. Reynolds remembers:
I don't recall public performance as being a particularly enjoyable experience. It served to bring what I cared about in music much closer than did mere phonographic idylls, but I did not, could not, feel that what was happening as I played was actually mine. It was not the applause that interested me, but the experience of the music itself.
University of Michigan: Engineering Physics (1952–1957)
Reynolds was uncertain about his prospects as a professional pianist, and entered the University of Michigan to study engineering physics, in line with his father's expectations. During what would be his first stint at the University of Michigan, he stayed connected to music and the arts because of the "virtual melting pot of disciplinary aspirations that then engaged him." Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man both left marks upon his perception of music and the arts. "I ... consumed [Joyce's Portrait] hungrily, stayed in my dormitory room for weeks, feverish over the allure of its issues, not attending classes and only narrowly escaping academic disaster...". Reynolds received a B.S.E. in physics from the University of Michigan in 1957.
Systems Development Engineer and Military Policeman
After completing his undergraduate studies, he went to work in the missile industry for Marquardt Corporation. He moved to the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, and worked as a systems development engineer. However, he quickly found that he was spending an inordinate amount of time practicing piano, and decided to go back to school to study music, with the goal of becoming a small liberal arts college teacher.
But prior to returning to school, Reynolds had a one-year obligation as a reservist in the military, which he fulfilled after his short time at Marquardt. As he recalls:
Knowing that I was an engineer, I presumed I would have been an Army engineer. But in fact my MSOs (military service obligations) were either light-truck driver or military policeman. So I chose military policeman, and I learned how to disable people and how to be extraordinarily brutal. It was a rather strange experience.
Return to University of Michigan: encounter with Ross Lee Finney
Reynolds returned to Ann Arbor in 1957, prepared to commit himself to life as a pianist. He was quickly diverted from this path upon encountering resident composer Ross Lee Finney, who introduced Reynolds to composition. Reynolds took a composition for non-composers class with Finney. At the end of the semester, Reynolds' string trio was performed for the class. According to Reynolds,
Finney just decimated it. ... I mean, everything about it, he destroyed. The sounds, the time, the pitches, the form, everything was wrong. I was chastened.
Despite the harsh introduction, Finney pulled Reynolds aside after the performance and recommended that he study composition with him over the summer. These summer lessons proved to be brutal. But when Reynolds was nearly ready to quit, at the end of the summer, Finney responded positively to what he brought in. Reynolds was engrossed by composing music, but he was still unsure what it meant to be a composer in America. He recalls that summer:
Although the process was by no means a smooth or an immediately encouraging one, by the time regular classes resumed in the fall of 1960 I was twenty-six, and I knew that I would do everything I could to become a composer. What did that actually mean? I have no recollection now of having had the slightest sense of what the life of a composer in America might involve.
Finney was particularly generous to Reynolds, programming three of his pieces on a Midwest Composers Symposium, something "unheard of" for student works. At these Midwest Composers Symposia, Reynolds also first encountered Harvey Sollberger, who would become a lifelong colleague and friend. From Finney, Reynolds learned of "the primacy of 'gesture,' which [Reynolds] took to be a composite of rhythm, contour, and physical energy: the empathic resonances that musical ideas could arouse — at root, perhaps, an American tendency to value sensation over analysis."
Composition studies with Roberto Gerhard
Subsequently, when the Spanish expatriate composer Roberto Gerhard came to Ann Arbor, Reynolds gravitated towards him:
I was captivated by the uncommon dimensionality of this man. Not only was he a superb musician and an inventive, even commanding composer of uncluttered, poised, and original music, but he was also both deeply intelligent and emotionally vulnerable. His susceptibility to injury, the outrage he displayed at ethical injustices, the touching warmth he offered from behind a vestigial Spanish crustiness these made an irresistible combination.
From Gerhard, Reynolds absorbed the idea that composition took "the whole man... you must put everything that you have and everything that you are into every musical act. And so where I live, who I interact with, what I hear, what the weather’s like, what my granddaughter says to me, and so on, they all affect the music."
Other early encounters; degrees conferred
During the later part of his composition studies at the University of Michigan, Reynolds also sought out encounters with other prominent musical personalities, including Milton Babbitt, Edgard Varèse, Nadia Boulanger, John Cage, and Harry Partch. Reynolds sought these composers outside of his academic studies:
It was outside class that I came upon and dug into the implications of Ives, Cage, Varèse and Partch. I sought out the last three and had personal contact with them. Perhaps it was the feeling of, if not exactly forbidden, then, certainly, "not favored" fruit that caused them to loom so large for me.
Reynolds met with Partch in 1958 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, at Antioch College, where he encountered a characteristic Antioch commandment: "'Examine your basic assumptions.'" Reynolds notes that such examination did not imply abandoning those assumptions.
During 1960, Reynolds met with both Varèse and Cage in New York (and the latter again in 1961 in Ann Arbor), with Babbitt in Ann Arbor in 1960, and with Nadia Boulanger in Ann Arbor in 1961.
During this time, Reynolds also composed The Emperor of Ice Cream (1961-1962), which combined aspects of music and theater, and contained many of the features of his later music. It was composed for the ONCE festivals, but was actually premiered later, in 1965, in Rome.
Reynolds received a second bachelor's degree in music in 1960 and an M.Mus. in composition in 1961.
ONCE Festivals 1961–1963
Reynolds co-founded the ONCE Group in Ann Arbor with Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma, and was active in the first three festivals in 1961 to 1963. Other important figures in these festivals included George Cacioppo, Donald Scavarda, Bruce Wise, filmmaker George Manupelli, and later, "Blue" Gene Tyranny. The ONCE Festival was probably the most significant nexus of avant-garde performance art and music in the Midwest in the early 1960s, with programs consisting of both American Experimentalism and European Modernism. Reynolds recalls:
I think the primary force in the beginning was Bob and Mary Ashley. Bob had been studying at the University of Michigan with Ross Finney. ... [Ashley] had [previously] been at the Manhattan School of Music; he was a pianist at that time. He was very intense and very rebellious in some regards. [Gordon] Mumma had been at Michigan but had dropped out and was working in some kind of research dealing with seismographic measurement... The two of them had become involved with a [visual] art professor named Milton Cohen, who had what he called a Space Theatre where he had taken canvas and stretched it to make a circular, tent-like situation ... in the middle there were projectors and mirrors which flashed imagery on the [surrounding] screens. Bob and Gordon had been involved in making electronic music in relation to Cohen’s [Space Theatre]. ...they realized that if they started a festival, they were going to need resources... I think that I came into the picture partly in that way. ... So there was a confluence of capacity, differential abilities, and common interest.
In 1963, C.F. Peters offered to publish Reynolds's work, a relationship which has been exclusive since that day.
Early career: travels abroad and to California (1962–1969)
Europe: Germany, France and Italy
After he left Ann Arbor the second time, Reynolds traveled throughout Europe with his partner Karen, a flutist. They visited Germany, France and then Italy with Fulbright, Guggenheim and Rockefeller support. This sojourn to Europe served as a way for Reynolds to find his voice as a composer:
The idea was to get out and to have the time to do the kind of growing that I thought I needed to do, because I had composed very few pieces by the time I had graduated from the University of Michigan. So at that time, although it seems odd now, going to Europe was a way of living cheaply. I lived in Europe for almost three years on nothing and with nothing, and that time was spent trying to find myself and my voice.
It emerged later that Philip Glass was in Paris during a similar period and living in the same way.
Before Paris, Reynolds had gone to Germany to study with Bernd Alois Zimmermann in Cologne, on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1962/1963. But things did not turn out the way he expected:
I was supposed to study with Zimmermann. I went to his class. And afterwards he took me to coffee and he said, “Look, there’s no point for you to be in this class.” He didn’t say why but he said, “Just do what you want, come back and see me at the end, and I’ll sign off.” So I actually never met with him, never had a lesson with him, never even had a conversation with him.
Instead, Reynolds worked with Gottfried Michael Koenig, and collaborated with Michael von Biel, who was living in the atelier of Karlheinz Stockhausen's friend Mary Bauermeister. Reynolds worked at the West German Radio's Electronic Music Studio, where he completed A Portrait of Vanzetti (1963)
The following academic year, 1963-1964, Karen received a Fulbright to study in Paris, although, ironically, one of the most influential moments during that year for Reynolds was in Berlin. He and Karen traveled there to meet Elliott Carter, and heard his Double Concerto while there. Reynolds was particularly struck by the spatial elements in the piece. This influenced his own composition Quick Are the Mouths of Earth (1964–1965).
Throughout their years in Europe, despite their lack of funding, Roger and Karen curated and performed in several contemporary music concerts in Paris and Italy.
Japan
Reynolds accepted a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs, which took him and Karen to Japan from 1966 to 1969. In Japan the Reynoldses organized the intermedia series CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA, which in 1969 culminated in a three-day festival in Kenzo Tangei's Olympic Gymnasium. He also met and became friends with composers Toru Takemitsu, Joji Yuasa, pianist Yūji Takahashi, electronics specialist Junosuke Okuyama, critic Kuniharu Akiyama, painter Keiji Usami and theatre director Tadashi Suzuki.
Reynolds' most significant work from his time in Japan was probably PING (1968), a multimedia composition for piano, flute, percussion, harmonium, live electronic sound, film, and visual effects, based on a text by Samuel Beckett. For the work he collaborated with Butoh dancer Sekiji Maro, cinematographer Kazuro Kato, who had previously worked as a cameraman for Akira Kurosawa, and Karen, who devised a strategy for projecting the Beckett text.
California
Roger and Karen were visiting the Seattle Symphony during 1965 with sponsorship from the Rockefeller Foundation. A trip down the West Coast to visit various university music programs was suggested by the foundation's Arts Officer, Howard Klein. The last stop on that trip was at the still young University of California, San Diego campus, in La Jolla. The nascent music life at this University was viewed with much promise:
We thought that the most dynamic social scene at that point – this was the late ’60s – was California, and so that’s where we went [when returning to the U.S.]. But there was not much in San Diego at that time. It was primarily a Navy town. There was a fledgling unit of the University of California ... it was an open playing field, so the possibility of doing things was very great. ... Partch was [also] in San Diego. That wasn’t a reason to go there, but it was certainly an attraction after we got there.
University of California, San Diego (1969–present)
Several years after their visit to La Jolla, Will Ogdon, then UCSD's Department of Music chair, invited the Reynolds back to the area, offering Reynolds a position as a tenured associate professor. He began work on establishing what became the Center for Music Experiment and Related Research in 1971, an organized research unit that later evolved into the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts. As was the case with the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the initial funding for CME came from the Rockefeller Foundation.
While at UCSD, Reynolds has taught courses on Music Notation, Extended Vocal Techniques, Late Beethoven Works, Text (in relation to the Red Act Project and Greek Drama), Collaboration (co-taught with Steven Schick), Extending Varèse (also co-taught with Steven Schick), and the Perils of Large Scale Form (co-taught with Chinary Ung), musical analysis, as well as private and group composition lessons.
After his arrival at the University of California, his interests diverged into several concurrently evolving paths. Thus, it is easier to talk about his work from this point based on common features between works.
Work
Reynolds has addressed the European musical tradition with three symphonies, four concertos and five string quartets, works that have been performed internationally as well as in North America.
Influence of technology
Aside from the traditional instruments of the Western Classical orchestra, Reynolds worked extensively with analog and digital electronic sound, typically employed to bolster the form and timbral richness of his works.
CCRMA
In the late 1970s, John Chowning invited Reynolds to come to Stanford's summer courses at the Center for Computing Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Because of the expense of computer equipment, electroacoustic work was done very differently at that time:
...[W]hen I went to Stanford to start working in computers at the end of the ’70s, I worked with a lot of different people there who were around the lab, because this was at a time when the so-called time-sharing machines meant that everyone in the building heard what everyone else was doing and everyone was involved with everyone else. So if something wasn’t working you just asked the person sitting next to you [for help] and you’d work it out together.
At CCRMA, Reynolds finished the sound synthesis portion of ...the serpent-snapping eye... (1978) (uses FM Synthesis) and VOICESPACE IV: The Palace (1978–80) (uses digital signal processing).
IRCAM
Shortly after his involvement at CCRMA, the French Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) offered Reynolds a commission and residency, which was followed up by two more residences over the course of two decades. When he first went to IRCAM, he made the choice to utilize technologically expert assistants to create software or hardware solutions to specific musical ideas inherent in his compositions. This practice has since spawned many collaborative ventures with various musical assistants, as Reynolds notes:
When I went to IRCAM ... there was this concept of the Musical Assistant. ... I realized right away that this allowed me to make a choice: whether I would decide to spend a few years not composing and learning what I would need to do to become a self-sufficient computer-music composer or that I was going to collaborate with other people.
[On collaboration:] You enter into a relationship with one or more people and you have to sacrifice some of your autonomy and they have to sacrifice some of theirs in order to get to a place that you couldn’t get without each other. And I like that kind of situation.
Archipelago (1982–83) was one of the first works that Reynolds did that used technology to drastically alter not only the sounds of the composition, but also the process of composing. The impetus was as the title suggests, a chain of islands, an idea which Reynolds elaborated on with a layered theme and variations process. With fifteen themes and their own variations, distributed unevenly over sub-groups of a thirty-two member chamber orchestra, Reynolds needed technology to transform both the timbres and the intricate fragmentation and reordering of the sounds in ways that live performers could not. This was the first time that Reynolds spent extended periods of time working with computers to transform musical material, along with spatialization. IRCAM was an extremely fertile environment for compositional innovation, allowing the Archipelago project to thrive:
...[T]he process [of composing the piece] was interactive because I was at IRCAM and had the privilege of working with a very smart young composer, Thierry Lancino, who was my musical assistant, and also consulting with people like David Wessel and Stephen McAdams and so on. It was an astonishing opportunity. But in this case, the tie between the impetus, the medium, and the need for technology was absolutely clear. If one listens to the piece, one hears that [technology] was needed and also that it works.
Odyssey (1989–93), primarily composed during the early 1990s, incorporates two singers, two speakers, instrumental ensemble, and six-channel computer sound. "Odyssey required me to settle on an ideal set of multilingual Beckett texts by means of which to portray the course of his life." There was a chaotic element in the text that Reynolds wished to portray in the music, and he undertook some of the first experiments with using strange attractors (specifically the Lorenz attractor) in music with this composition, citing influence from James Gleick. Reynolds notes that the process of creating musically beguiling results from a strange attractor was "arduous" and "grueling."
His last work at IRCAM, The Angel of Death (1998–2001), for solo piano, chamber orchestra, and 6-channel computer processed sound, was written with a substantial number of perceptual psychologists assisting and analyzing both the planning and the end results. His assistant on the project was Frédérique Voisin, and the principal psychologists were Steven McAdams (IRCAM) and Emannuel Bigand (University of Bourgone). The end results included a special issue of the journal Music Perception, edited by Daniel Levitin, an audio CD / CDROM publication by IRCAM, along with a day-long conference in Sydney, Australia.
UPIC (1983–84)
Shortly after his first trip to IRCAM, he was also invited to compose a work using the Les Ateliers UPIC System, which Iannis Xenakis had created for Mycenae Alpha (1978). This engagement resulted in Ariadne's Thread for string quartet and UPIC sound.
SANCTUARY (2003–07)
A composer-in-residence appointment at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (at UCSD) allowed Reynolds to finish his SANCTUARY project: an evening-length, four-movement piece for percussion quartet and real-time computer transformations. The completed work was premiered in 2007 at I.M. Pei’s National Gallery of Art, and later the same year repeated in the courtyard of the Salk Institute in La Jolla. The DVD that arose from this project was intended to alter the way contemporary classical music is received, because of the intimacy with which the performers knew the work and the audio-visual complexity with which it was presented. Steven Schick and red fish blue fish had been working on the piece for five years by the time the DVD was recorded. Ross Karre prepared a complexly scripted editing plan. The embodied experience that such intimacy breeds is very important to Reynolds:
A lot of our experience with music is empathic – that is, we, our bodies, our sensibilities, identify with and respond to, even literally move with the physicality of the sounds that are generating the musical experience. ... [The immersion of the performers in a work] allows our empathy as listeners to flow out and extend and commit. We see that the performers are really engaged and we get engaged; we trust them.
imAge/imagE
Around 2000, Reynolds began writing a series of short, complementary solos, entitled, for example, imagE/guitar and imAge/guitar. The “E” is more elegiac and evocative, the “A”, assertive and angular. As his interest in algorithmic transformation migrated towards real-time performance interaction, Reynolds produced a series of extended compositions using the materials of a solo pair as his thematic resource. Dream Mirror, for guitar and computer musician, is a duo whose internal sections are framed by completely notated music, but move into a collaboratively improvisational interaction within these frames.
The improvisatory interactions are algorithmically driven, with the soloist and computer musician interacting flexibly, but under well-defined conditions. Both Dream Mirror, for guitarist Pablo Gómez-Cano, and MARKed MUSIC,
for contrabassist Mark Dresser, involved close collaboration with computer musician, Jaime Oliver. Toward Another World: LAMENT for clarinet and computer musician, as well as similar duos involving violin (Shifting/Drifting) and cello (PERSISTENCE) followed.
When composing Shifting/Drifting, Reynolds worked closely with his frequent violin collaborator Irvine Arditti on the acoustic material, and computer musician Paul Hembree on the electronic sound. The French classical music periodical Diapason (magazine) described the piece as: Un espace aussi artificiel que vaste apporte une sensation de distance et de perspective assez vertigineuse. Le rendu sonore global frappe par l’expansion du lyrisme et d’une virtuosité violonistique qui prend en quelque sorte racine chez Bach (la Chaconne de la Partita no 2 fait d’ailleurs une apparition masquée)... (English: A space as artificial as it is vast brings a rather dizzying sensation of distance and perspective. The overall sound rendering is striking by the expansion of lyricism and a violin virtuosity which takes root, in a way, in Bach (the Chaconne from Partita no. 2 also makes a hidden appearance)...)
Influence of literature and poetry
Text has been an important resource for Reynolds's work, in particular, the poetry of Beckett, Borges, Stevens, and John Ashbery. Since the mid-1970s he has been engaged with the use of language as sound, "the ways in which a vocalist's manner of utterance – whether spoken, declaimed, sung, or indebted to some uncommon mode of production" affect the experience of the ideas that the text carries. Reynolds was stimulated by his UCSD colleagues Kenneth Gaburo and baritone Philip Larson, deploying extended vocal techniques, such as "vocal-fry" in the VOICESPACE works (quadraphonic tape compositions): Still (1975), A Merciful Coincidence (1976), Eclipse (1979), and The Palace (1980). The VOICESPACE works also involve the intricate spatialization of both the voices and computer-generated sounds.
While serving as Valentine Visiting Professor at Amherst College in the late 1980s, Reynolds immersed himself in poetry because of the connection of Amherst with poet Emily Dickinson. He came across John Ashbery's Self-Portrait a Convex Mirror (1974) while reading one evening:
The next morning I realized that things that I had understood the night before I couldn’t understand the next morning. In other words, there was something time specific about comprehension. ... That was very interesting. What usually happens when something like that occurs is that I want to write music about it, and so I decided to do a string orchestra piece. This string orchestra piece, Whispers Out of Time, was premiered in 1988 in Amherst, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1989. Reynolds later worked collaboratively with John Ashbery on the seventy-minute song cycle last things, I think, to think about (1994), which uses a spatialized recording of the poet speaking.
Influence of visual arts
Visual art has provided Reynolds with inspiration for several works, such as the Symphony [The Stages of Life] (1991–92), which drew from self-portraits by Rembrandt and Picasso, and Visions (1991), a string quartet that responded to Bruegel. A later project involving visual art was The Image Machine (2005), which arose from rather elaborate interdisciplinary collaboration called 22, headed by Thanassis Rikakis, then at Arizona State University. This large-scale work involved motion capture of a dancer, to be used as a control element:
At the center of this project was the idea that it would be possible to capture the complex motion [of a dancer] in real time, and to have a computer model and then monitor the motion in such a way that it could send control information to other artists who would create parallel and deeply responsive elements to a larger performance totality.
Reynolds worked with choreographer Bill T. Jones, clarinetist Anthony Burr, and percussionist Steven Schick on the project, along with audio software designers Pei Xiang and Peter Otto, and visual rendering artists Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, and Marc Downie. The process was not necessarily tranquil, though it was rewarding, as Reynolds recalls:
We achieved a meld of media, high technology, and aesthetic force unequaled by anything else I had experienced. The process was not smooth. In fact it was sometimes destructively rancorous. None-the-less, the product of long effort and mutual adjustment, one component resource to the other, showed vividly and thrillingly what one of art's futures might be.
Among the audio software resources created for 22 was MATRIX, a new algorithm designed by Reynolds which he has used since on various projects.
Influence of mythology
Myth has been an important resource for Reynolds's work, as evident in the title of his second symphony: Symphony [Myths] (1990). Later, this mythological preoccupation grew into the Red Act Project, the first installment of which was commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation. This piece, The Red Act Arias, was premiered at the 1997 Proms, animating text from Aeschylus with narrator, choir, orchestra and eight channel electronic sound. Perhaps the most powerful impression any narrative text has ever left on me, though, is that inscribed by Aeschylus in Agamemnon, the first play of the Oresteia trilogy. Again, there is an intersection of intellectual implication, moving narrative, associations through imagery and oppositions that is magnetic. Nevertheless, it is the flow of the language itself as rendered into English by Richmond Lattimore that cemented my resolve to embark upon the Red Act Project. I [was] engaged with it for more than a decade.
Responding to related texts, Reynolds produced Justice (1999-2001), commissioned by the Library of Congress, and Illusion (2006), commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with funding from the Koussevitsky and Rockefeller foundations.
Space: metaphoric, auditory, architectural
Reynolds has been involved with the concept of Space as a potential musical resource for most of his career, leading to a reputation that rests, in part, upon his “wizardry in sending music flying through space: whether vocal, instrumental, or computerized”. This signature feature first appeared in the notationally innovative theater piece, The Emperor of Ice-Cream (1961–62).. In this work, Reynolds sought to bring conceptual elements in the text to the fore with the aid of spatial movement of sound.
I began my own efforts to address space in modest fashion, in a music-theater composition [The Emperor of Ice Cream] intended for the ONCE Festivals but not actually premiered until 1965 in the context of the Nuova Consonanza Festival of Franco Evangelisti's, in Rome. ... So, in the case of [Wallace] Stevens's line "And spread it so as to cover her face," the eight singers, arrayed across the front of the stage, pass the phonemes of the associated melodic phrase back and forth by fading in and out successively.
Later, in Japan, Reynolds worked with engineer Junosuke Okuyama to build a "photo-cell sound distributor," which used a matrix of photoelectric cells to move sounds around a quadraphonic setup, with the aid of a flashlight as a kind of controller. This device was used in the multimedia composition PING (1968). More recently, Reynolds's Mode Records Watershed (1998) DVD was the first such disc to feature music conceived specifically for discrete multichannel presentation in Dolby Digital 5.1.
I wrote a piece, Watershed IV, for percussionist Steven Schick, which involved the very fundamental conceit that he was centered within an instrumental array. The idea was that the audience would be put in there with him, metaphorically. There would be speakers surrounding the audience that would reproduce, at some level, for the listener, the experience that Steve was having within his array of instruments. Steve and I worked almost a year on the setup for that piece, playing with different spiral arrangements and numbers of instruments and different geometries.
He is concerned not only with the physical locations of sound sources around a listener, but also metaphoric notions of space. As he notes, "'Space' can signify a physical framework by means of which we comprehend the conditions of the 'real world' around us, but it can also become a referential tool that helps us to place into relative and often revelatory relationships other less objectively characterizable data."
In addition to the auditory effects of spatial location and metaphoric notions of space, Reynolds has responded to various architectural spaces, creating works explicitly for performance in various buildings, including Arata Isozaki's Art Tower Mito and also his Gran Ship, Kenzō Tange's Olympic Gymnasium in Tokyo, Louis I. Kahn's Salk Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, Christian de Portzamparc's Cité de la Musique, Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, I.M. Pei's East Wing of the National Gallery of Art. Reynolds adapts his use of spatial audio to the performance space.
Gradually it became clear that blunter tools can work to greater advantage in large spaces with comparatively larger audiences. In composing The Red Act Arias for performance in London's cavernous, 6,000-seat Royal Albert Hall, for example, I decided to use a multileveled system with eight groups of loudspeakers. Rather than attempting to position sounds precisely on perceivable paths around the hall, I concentrated on broad, sweeping gestures that surged across or around the performance space in unmistakable fashion.
Other series of works
From the 1970s, when he produced the five VOICESPACE works, Reynolds has been interested in generating series of related works. He has performed multiple presentations of PASSAGE events (involving the reading and spatialization of original texts, projected images, and live performances), composed seven complementary pairs of imagE/ and imAge/ solo works, and, most recently, six works belonging to the “SHARESPACE” series of duos for individual instruments and computer musicians.
Mentorship, research and writing
In addition to his compositional activities, Reynolds's academic career has taken him to Europe, the Nordic countries, South America, Asia, Mexico and the United States, where he has lectured, organized events, and taught. Though his focus has been on the Music Department at UCSD, Reynolds has occupied visiting positions at various universities: the University of Illinois (Champaign–Urbana, IL, Spring 1971), CUNY-Brooklyn College (Spring 1985), the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Yale University (Spring 1982), Amherst College (Fall 1988), and at Harvard University as Fromm Visiting Professor (Fall 2013). In his role as a UC University Professor, Reynolds was artist-in-residence and taught courses at University of California, Washington Center, the University of California’s Washington, DC campus (2010–2015).
At the University of Illinois, Reynolds wrote his first book, Mind Models: New Forms of Musical Experience (1975). It covers a wide range of topics concerning the contemporary world and the role of art in that world, specific considerations of the materials of music, and the way those materials are shaped by contemporary composers.
At the time that Mind Models first appeared in print, no one else had attempted to rigorously define the issues raised by those composers who broke most deliberately with traditional European practice. ... Reynolds was the first to clearly identify and consolidate into a single framework the vast array of forces (cultural, political, perceptual, and technical) shaping this heterogeneous body of work.
Reynolds wrote A Searcher's Path (1987) while serving as visiting professor at CUNY – Brooklyn College, and Form and Method: Composing Music while serving as Randolph Rothschild Guest Composer at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. The later closely details Reynolds's compositional process. In addition to his books, he has written articles for periodicals including Perspectives of New Music, the Contemporary Music Review, Polyphone, Inharmoniques, The Musical Quarterly, American Music, Music Perception, and Nature.
Most recently, Reynolds completed the monograph Xenakis Creates in Architecture and Music: The Reynolds Desert House (2022), working with his wife Karen Reynolds to describe how Xenakis designed an unbuilt but fully-planned house for the Reynolds family in the Anza Borrego desert.
In addition to visiting positions, Reynolds has also given master classes around the world, in places such as Buenos Aires, Thessaloniki, Porto Alegre, IRCAM, Warsaw, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Furthermore, he has been a featured composer at numerous music festivals, including Music Today and the Suntory International Program in Japan, the Edinburgh and Proms festivals in the United Kingdom, the Helsinki and Zagreb biennales, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, New Music Concerts (Toronto), Warsaw Autumn, Why Note? (Dijon), musica viva (Munich), the Agora Festival (Paris), various ISCM festivals, and the New York Philharmonic's Horizons.
Notable students
Discography
MUSIC FROM THE ONCE FESTIVAL 1961–1966 (1966) – New World 80567-2 (5 CDs)
Epigram and Evolution (1960, piano)
Wedge (1961, chamber ensemble)
Mosaic (1962, flute and piano)
A Portrait of Vanzetti (1962–63, narrator, ensemble, and tape)
ROGER REYNOLDS: VOICESPACE (1980) – Lovely Music LCD 1801
The Palace (Voicespace IV) (1980, baritone and tape)
Eclipse (Voicespace III) (1979, tape)
Still (Voicespace I) (1975, tape)
ROGER REYNOLDS: ALL KNOWN ALL WHITE (1984) – Pogus P21025-2
…the serpent-snapping eye (1978, trumpet, percussion, piano, and tape)
Ping (1968, piano, flute, percussion, and live electronics)
Traces (1969, flute, piano, cello, and live electronics)
ROGER REYNOLDS: DISTANT IMAGES (1987) – Lovely Music VR 1803 7-4529-51803-1-9
Less than Two (1976–79, two pianos, two percussionists, and tape)
Aether (1983, violin and piano)
NEW MUSIC SERIES: VOLUME 2 (1988) – Neuma Records 45072
Autumn Island (1986, for marimba)
ARDITTI (1989) – Gramavision R2 79440
Coconino … a shattered landscape (1985, for string quartet)
COMPUTER MUSIC CURRENTS 4 (1989) – Wergo WER 2024-50
The Vanity of Words (1986, for computer processed vocal sounds)
ROGER REYNOLDS (1989) – New World 80401-2
Whispers Out of Time (1988, string orchestra)
Transfigured Wind II (1983, flute, orchestra, and tape)
ELECTRO ACOUSTIC MUSIC: CLASSICS (1990) – Neuma Records 450-74
Transfigured Wind IV (1985, flute and tape)
ROGER REYNOLDS (1990) – Neuma Records 450-78
Personae (1990, violin, ensemble, and tape)
The Vanity of Words [Voicespace V] (1986, tape)
Variation (1988, piano)
ROGER REYNOLDS: SOUND ENCOUNTERS (1990) – GM Recordings GM2039CD
Roger Reynolds: The Dream of Infinite Rooms (1986, cello, orchestra, and tape)
ROGER REYNOLDS: ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC (1991) – New World 80431-2
The Ivanov Suite (1991, tape)
Versions/Stages (1988–91, tape)
ROGER REYNOLDS: SONOR ENSEMBLE (1993) – Composers Recordings, Inc. / Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. NWCR652
Not Only Night (1988, soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano)
ROGER REYNOLDS: THE PARIS PIECES (1995) – Neuma Records 450-91 (2 CD)
Odyssey (1989–92, two singers, ensemble, and computer sound)
Summer Island (1984, oboe and computer sound)
Archipelago (1982–83, ensemble and computer sound)
Autumn Island (1986, marimba)
Fantasy for Pianist (1964, piano)
ROGER REYNOLDS (1996) – Montaigne 782083 (2 CD)
Coconino... a shattered landscape (1985, revised 1993, string quartet)
Visions (1991, string quartet)
Kokoro (1992, solo violin)
Ariadne's Thread (1994, string quartet)
Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... (1989, solo cello)
ROGER REYNOLDS: FROM BEHIND THE UNREASONING MASK (1998) – New World 80237-2
From Behind the Unreasoning Mask (1975, trombone, percussion, and tape)
ROGER REYNOLDS: WATERSHED (1998) – mode 70 DVD
Watershed IV (1995, percussion and real-time sound spatialization)
Eclipse (1979, computer generated and processed sound)
The Red Act Arias [excerpt] (1997, for 8-channel computer sound)
STEVEN SCHICK: DRUMMING IN THE DARK (1998) – Neuma Records 450-100
Watershed I (1995, solo percussion)
ROGER REYNOLDS: THREE CIRCUITOUS PATHS (2002) – Neuma Records 450-102
Transfigured Wind III (1984, flute, ensemble, and tape)
Ambages (1965, flute)
Mistral (1985, chamber ensemble)
ROGER REYNOLDS: LAST THINGS, I THINK, TO THINK ABOUT (2002) – EMF CD 044
last things, I think, to think about (1994, baritone, piano, and tape)
FLUE (2003) – Einstein Records EIN 021
...brain ablaze... she howled aloud (2000–2003, one, two or three piccolos, computer processed sound, and real time spatialization)
ROGER REYNOLDS: PROCESS AND PASSION (2004) – Pogus P21032-2 (2 CD)
Kokoro (1992, violin)
Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... (1989, cello)
Process and Passion (2002, violin, cello, and computer processed sound)
ROGER REYNOLDS: WHISPERS OUT OF TIME [works for orchestra] (2007) – mode 183
Symphony [Myths] (1990, orchestra)
Whispers Out of Time (1988, orchestra)
Symphony [Vertigo] (1987, orchestra, and computer processed sound)
ANTARES PLAYS WORKS BY PETER LIEBERSON AND ROGER REYNOLDS (2009) – New Focus Recordings FCR112
Shadowed Narrative (1978–81, clarinet, violin, cello, piano)
EPIGRAM AND EVOLUTION: COMPLETE PIANO WORKS OF ROGER REYNOLDS (2009) – mode 212/213
Fantasy for Pianist (1964, piano)
imAge/piano (2007, piano)
Epigram and Evolution (1960, piano)
Variation (1988, piano)
imagE/piano (2007, piano)
Traces (1968, flute, piano, live electronics)
Less than Two (1978, for 2 pianos, 2 percussionists and computer processed sound)
The Angel of Death (1998–2001, piano, chamber orchestra and computer processed sound)
MARK DRESSER: GUTS (2010) – Kadima Collective Recordings Triptych Series
imAge/contrabass and imagE/contrabass (2008–2010)
ROGER REYNOLDS: SANCTUARY (2011) – mode 232/33 DVD
Sanctuary (2003 – 2007, percussion quartet & live electronics)
ROGER REYNOLDS: VIOLIN WORKS (2022) – BMOP/Sound 1086
Personae (1989-1990, solo violin and chamber ensemble with computer processed sound)
Kokoro (1991-1992, solo violin)
Aspiration (2004-2005, solo violin and chamber orchestra)
ROGER REYNOLDS: ASPIRATION (2022) – Kairos 0015051KAI
Shifting/Drifting (2015, solo violin, real-time algorithmic transformation)
imagE/violin & imAge/violin (2015, solo violin)
Aspiration (2004-2005, solo violin and chamber orchestra)
Kokoro (1991-1992, solo violin)
ROGER REYNOLDS: ASPIRATION (2022) – Kairos 0015051KAI
Shifting/Drifting (2015, solo violin, real-time algorithmic transformation)
imagE/violin & imAge/violin (2015, solo violin)
Aspiration (2004-2005, solo violin and chamber orchestra)
Kokoro (1991-1992, solo violin)
ROGER REYNOLDS: THE imagE-imAge SET (2022) - Neuma 450-114
imAge/piano & imagE/piano (2007-2008, solo piano)
imAge/contrabass & imagE/contrabass (2008-2010, solo contrabass)
imAge/guitar & imagE/guitar (2009, solo guitar)
imagE/viola & imAge/viola (2012-2014, solo viola)
imagE/flute & imAge/flute (2009-2014, solo flute)
imagE/cello & imAge/cello (2007, solo cello)
ROGER REYNOLDS: COMPLETE CELLO WORKS (2014) - mode 277-278
Thoughts, Places, Dreams (2013, solo cello and chamber orchestra)
Colombi Daydream (2010, solo cello)
Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... (1989, solo cello)
imagE/cello & imAge/cello (2007, solo cello)
Process and Passion (2002, violin, cello and computer processed sound)
A Crimson Path (2000-2002, cello and piano)
ROGER REYNOLDS: ROGER REYNOLDS AT 85, VOL 1 (2020) - mode 326
FLiGHT (2012-2016, string quartet)
not forgotten (2007-2010, string quartet)
ROGER REYNOLDS: ROGER REYNOLDS AT 85, VOL 2 (2021) - mode 329
Piano Etudes: Books I & II (2010-17, solo piano)
References
External links
Roger Reynolds
Mode Artist Profile: Roger Reynolds
Edition Peters: Roger Reynolds
CDeMUSIC: Roger Reynolds
Lovely Music Artist: Roger Reynolds
The Modern Word: Roger Reynolds
Library of Congress: Music, Theater & Dance: The Roger Reynolds Collection
Roger Reynolds Interview, December 12, 1989
Art of the States: Roger Reynolds two works by the composer
1934 births
Living people
20th-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
21st-century classical composers
Pulitzer Prize for Music winners
Pupils of Roberto Gerhard
Pupils of Ross Lee Finney
University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni
University of California, San Diego faculty
Musicians from Detroit
21st-century American composers
20th-century American composers
Classical musicians from Michigan
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
Brooklyn College faculty
Fulbright alumni
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics%20processing%20unit
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Graphics processing unit
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A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed to accelerate computer graphics and image processing (either on a video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles). After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.
History
1970s
Arcade system boards have used specialized graphics circuits since the 1970s. In early video game hardware, RAM for frame buffers was expensive, so video chips composited data together as the display was being scanned out on the monitor.
A specialized barrel shifter circuit helped the CPU animate the framebuffer graphics for various 1970s arcade video games from Midway and Taito, such as Gun Fight (1975), Sea Wolf (1976), and Space Invaders (1978). The Namco Galaxian arcade system in 1979 used specialized graphics hardware that supported RGB color, multi-colored sprites, and tilemap backgrounds. The Galaxian hardware was widely used during the golden age of arcade video games, by game companies such as Namco, Centuri, Gremlin, Irem, Konami, Midway, Nichibutsu, Sega, and Taito.
The Atari 2600 in 1977 used a video shifter called the Television Interface Adaptor. Atari 8-bit computers (1979) had ANTIC, a video processor which interpreted instructions describing a "display list"—the way the scan lines map to specific bitmapped or character modes and where the memory is stored (so there did not need to be a contiguous frame buffer). 6502 machine code subroutines could be triggered on scan lines by setting a bit on a display list instruction. ANTIC also supported smooth vertical and horizontal scrolling independent of the CPU.
1980s
The NEC µPD7220 was the first implementation of a personal computer graphics display processor as a single large-scale integration (LSI) integrated circuit chip. This enabled the design of low-cost, high-performance video graphics cards such as those from Number Nine Visual Technology. It became the best-known GPU until the mid-1980s. It was the first fully integrated VLSI (very large-scale integration) metal–oxide–semiconductor (NMOS) graphics display processor for PCs, supported up to 1024×1024 resolution, and laid the foundations for the emerging PC graphics market. It was used in a number of graphics cards and was licensed for clones such as the Intel 82720, the first of Intel's graphics processing units. The Williams Electronics arcade games Robotron 2084, Joust, Sinistar, and Bubbles, all released in 1982, contain custom blitter chips for operating on 16-color bitmaps.
In 1984, Hitachi released ARTC HD63484, the first major CMOS graphics processor for personal computers. The ARTC could display up to 4K resolution when in monochrome mode. It was used in a number of graphics cards and terminals during the late 1980s. In 1985, the Amiga was released with a custom graphics chip including a blitter for bitmap manipulation, line drawing, and area fill. It also included a coprocessor with its own simple instruction set, that was capable of manipulating graphics hardware registers in sync with the video beam (e.g. for per-scanline palette switches, sprite multiplexing, and hardware windowing), or driving the blitter. In 1986, Texas Instruments released the TMS34010, the first fully programmable graphics processor. It could run general-purpose code, but it had a graphics-oriented instruction set. During 1990–1992, this chip became the basis of the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture ("TIGA") Windows accelerator cards.
In 1987, the IBM 8514 graphics system was released. It was one of the first video cards for IBM PC compatibles to implement fixed-function 2D primitives in electronic hardware. Sharp's X68000, released in 1987, used a custom graphics chipset with a 65,536 color palette and hardware support for sprites, scrolling, and multiple playfields. It served as a development machine for Capcom's CP System arcade board. Fujitsu's FM Towns computer, released in 1989, had support for a 16,777,216 color palette. In 1988, the first dedicated polygonal 3D graphics boards were introduced in arcades with the Namco System 21 and Taito Air System.
IBM introduced its proprietary Video Graphics Array (VGA) display standard in 1987, with a maximum resolution of 640×480 pixels. In November 1988, NEC Home Electronics announced its creation of the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) to develop and promote a Super VGA (SVGA) computer display standard as a successor to VGA. Super VGA enabled graphics display resolutions up to 800×600 pixels, a 36% increase.
1990s
In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the S3 86C911, which its designers named after the Porsche 911 as an indication of the performance increase it promised. The 86C911 spawned a host of imitators: by 1995, all major PC graphics chip makers had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. Fixed-function Windows accelerators surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in Windows performance, and such coprocessors faded from the PC market.
Throughout the 1990s, 2D GUI acceleration evolved. As manufacturing capabilities improved, so did the level of integration of graphics chips. Additional application programming interfaces (APIs) arrived for a variety of tasks, such as Microsoft's WinG graphics library for Windows 3.x, and their later DirectDraw interface for hardware acceleration of 2D games in Windows 95 and later.
In the early- and mid-1990s, real-time 3D graphics became increasingly common in arcade, computer, and console games, which led to increasing public demand for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. Early examples of mass-market 3D graphics hardware can be found in arcade system boards such as the Sega Model 1, Namco System 22, and Sega Model 2, and the fifth-generation video game consoles such as the Saturn, PlayStation, and Nintendo 64. Arcade systems such as the Sega Model 2 and SGI Onyx-based Namco Magic Edge Hornet Simulator in 1993 were capable of hardware T&L (transform, clipping, and lighting) years before appearing in consumer graphics cards. Another early example is the Super FX chip, a RISC-based on-cartridge graphics chip used in some SNES games, notably Doom and Star Fox. Some systems used DSPs to accelerate transformations. Fujitsu, which worked on the Sega Model 2 arcade system, began working on integrating T&L into a single LSI solution for use in home computers in 1995; the Fujitsu Pinolite, the first 3D geometry processor for personal computers, released in 1997. The first hardware T&L GPU on home video game consoles was the Nintendo 64's Reality Coprocessor, released in 1996. In 1997, Mitsubishi released the 3Dpro/2MP, a GPU capable of transformation and lighting, for workstations and Windows NT desktops; ATi used it for its FireGL 4000 graphics card, released in 1997.
The term "GPU" was coined by Sony in reference to the 32-bit Sony GPU (designed by Toshiba) in the PlayStation video game console, released in 1994.
In the PC world, notable failed attempts for low-cost 3D graphics chips included the S3 ViRGE, ATI Rage, and Matrox Mystique. These chips were essentially previous-generation 2D accelerators with 3D features bolted on. Many were pin-compatible with the earlier-generation chips for ease of implementation and minimal cost. Initially, 3D graphics were possible only with discrete boards dedicated to accelerating 3D functions (and lacking 2D graphical user interface (GUI) acceleration entirely) such as the PowerVR and the 3dfx Voodoo. However, as manufacturing technology continued to progress, video, 2D GUI acceleration, and 3D functionality were all integrated into one chip. Rendition's Verite chipsets were among the first to do this well. In 1997, Rendition collaborated with Hercules and Fujitsu on a "Thriller Conspiracy" project which combined a Fujitsu FXG-1 Pinolite geometry processor with a Vérité V2200 core to create a graphics card with a full T&L engine years before Nvidia's GeForce 256; This card, designed to reduce the load placed upon the system's CPU, never made it to market. NVIDIA RIVA 128 was one of the first consumer-facing GPU integrated 3D processing unit and 2D processing unit on a chip.
OpenGL appeared in the early '90s as a professional graphics API, but originally suffered from performance issues which allowed the Glide API to become a dominant force on the PC in the late '90s. These issues were quickly overcome and the Glide API fell by the wayside. Software implementations of OpenGL were common during this time, although the influence of OpenGL eventually led to widespread hardware support. DirectX became popular among Windows game developers during the late '90s. Unlike OpenGL, Microsoft insisted on providing strict one-to-one support of hardware. The approach made DirectX less popular as a standalone graphics API initially, since many GPUs provided their own specific features, which existing OpenGL applications were already able to benefit from, leaving DirectX often one generation behind. (See: Comparison of OpenGL and Direct3D.)
Microsoft began to work more closely with hardware developers and started to target the releases of DirectX to coincide with those of the supporting graphics hardware. Direct3D 5.0 was the first version of the API to gain widespread adoption in the gaming market, and it competed directly with more-hardware-specific, often proprietary, graphics libraries, while OpenGL maintained a strong following. Direct3D 7.0 introduced support for hardware-accelerated transform and lighting (T&L) for Direct3D; OpenGL had this capability from its inception. 3D accelerator cards moved beyond being simple rasterizers to add another significant hardware stage to the 3D rendering pipeline. The Nvidia GeForce 256 (also known as NV10) was the first consumer-level card with hardware-accelerated T&L; professional 3D cards already had this capability. Hardware transform and lighting—existing features of OpenGL—came to consumer-level hardware in the '90s and set the precedent for later pixel shader and vertex shader units which were far more flexible and programmable.
2000s
Nvidia was first to produce a chip capable of programmable shading: the GeForce 3. Each pixel could now be processed by a short program that could include additional image textures as inputs, and each geometric vertex could likewise be processed by a short program before it was projected onto the screen. Used in the Xbox console, this chip competed with the one in the PlayStation 2, which used a custom vector unit for hardware accelerated vertex processing (commonly referred to as VU0/VU1). The earliest incarnations of shader execution engines used in Xbox were not general purpose and could not execute arbitrary pixel code. Vertices and pixels were processed by different units which had their own resources, with pixel shaders having tighter constraints (because they execute at higher frequencies than vertices). Pixel shading engines were actually more akin to a highly customizable function block and did not really "run" a program. Many of these disparities between vertex and pixel shading were not addressed until the Unified Shader Model.
In October 2002, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon 9700 (also known as R300), the world's first Direct3D 9.0 accelerator, pixel and vertex shaders could implement looping and lengthy floating point math, and were quickly becoming as flexible as CPUs, yet orders of magnitude faster for image-array operations. Pixel shading is often used for bump mapping, which adds texture to make an object look shiny, dull, rough, or even round or extruded.
With the introduction of the Nvidia GeForce 8 series and new generic stream processing units, GPUs became more generalized computing devices. Parallel GPUs are making computational inroads against the CPU, and a subfield of research, dubbed GPU computing or GPGPU for general purpose computing on GPU, has found applications in fields as diverse as machine learning, oil exploration, scientific image processing, linear algebra, statistics, 3D reconstruction, and stock options pricing. GPGPU was the precursor to what is now called a compute shader (e.g. CUDA, OpenCL, DirectCompute) and actually abused the hardware to a degree by treating the data passed to algorithms as texture maps and executing algorithms by drawing a triangle or quad with an appropriate pixel shader. This entails some overheads since units like the scan converter are involved where they are not needed (nor are triangle manipulations even a concern—except to invoke the pixel shader).
Nvidia's CUDA platform, first introduced in 2007, was the earliest widely adopted programming model for GPU computing. OpenCL is an open standard defined by the Khronos Group that allows for the development of code for both GPUs and CPUs with an emphasis on portability. OpenCL solutions are supported by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ARM, and according to a report in 2011 by Evans Data, OpenCL had become the second most popular HPC tool.
2010s
In 2010, Nvidia partnered with Audi to power their cars' dashboards, using the Tegra GPU to provide increased functionality to cars' navigation and entertainment systems. Advances in GPU technology in cars helped advance self-driving technology. AMD's Radeon HD 6000 Series cards were released in 2010, and in 2011 AMD released its 6000M Series discrete GPUs for mobile devices. The Kepler line of graphics cards by Nvidia were released in 2012 and were used in the Nvidia's 600 and 700 series cards. A feature in this GPU microarchitecture included GPU boost, a technology that adjusts the clock-speed of a video card to increase or decrease it according to its power draw. The Kepler microarchitecture was manufactured .
The PS4 and Xbox One were released in 2013; they both use GPUs based on AMD's Radeon HD 7850 and 7790. Nvidia's Kepler line of GPUs was followed by the Maxwell line, manufactured on the same process. Nvidia's 28 nm chips were manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan using the 28 nm process. Compared to the 40 nm technology from the past, this manufacturing process allowed a 20 percent boost in performance while drawing less power. Virtual reality headsets have high system requirements; manufacturers recommended the GTX 970 and the R9 290X or better at the time of their release. Cards based on the Pascal microarchitecture were released in 2016. The GeForce 10 series of cards are of this generation of graphics cards. They are made using the 16 nm manufacturing process which improves upon previous microarchitectures. Nvidia released one non-consumer card under the new Volta architecture, the Titan V. Changes from the Titan XP, Pascal's high-end card, include an increase in the number of CUDA cores, the addition of tensor cores, and HBM2. Tensor cores are designed for deep learning, while high-bandwidth memory is on-die, stacked, lower-clocked memory that offers an extremely wide memory bus. To emphasize that the Titan V is not a gaming card, Nvidia removed the "GeForce GTX" suffix it adds to consumer gaming cards.
In 2018, Nvidia launched the RTX 20 series GPUs that added ray-tracing cores to GPUs, improving their performance on lighting effects. Polaris 11 and Polaris 10 GPUs from AMD are fabricated by a 14 nm process. Their release resulted in a substantial increase in the performance per watt of AMD video cards. AMD also released the Vega GPU series for the high end market as a competitor to Nvidia's high end Pascal cards, also featuring HBM2 like the Titan V.
In 2019, AMD released the successor to their Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture/instruction set. Dubbed RDNA, the first product featuring it was the Radeon RX 5000 series of video cards.
The company announced that the successor to the RDNA microarchitecture would be incremental (aka a refresh). AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 6000 series, its RDNA 2 graphics cards with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The product series, launched in late 2020, consisted of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. The RX 6700 XT, which is based on Navi 22, was launched in early 2021.
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S were released in 2020; they both use GPUs based on the RDNA 2 microarchitecture with incremental improvements and different GPU configurations in each system's implementation.
Intel first entered the GPU market in the late 1990s, but produced lackluster 3D accelerators compared to the competition at the time. Rather than attempting to compete with the high-end manufacturers Nvidia and ATI/AMD, they began integrating Intel Graphics Technology GPUs into motherboard chipsets, beginning with the Intel 810 for the Pentium III, and later into CPUs. They began with the Intel Atom 'Pineview' laptop processor in 2009, continuing in 2010 with desktop processors in the first generation of the Intel Core line and with contemporary Pentiums and Celerons. This resulted in a large nominal market share, as the majority of computers with an Intel CPU also featured this embedded graphics processor. These generally lagged behind discrete processors in performance. Intel re-entered the discrete GPU market in 2022 with its Arc series, which competed with the then-current GeForce 30 series and Radeon 6000 series cards at competitive prices.
2020s
In the 2020s, GPUs have been increasingly used for calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems, such as training of neural networks on enormous datasets that are needed for large language models. Specialized processing cores on some modern workstation's GPUs are dedicated for deep learning since they have significant FLOPS performance increases, using 4×4 matrix multiplication and division, resulting in hardware performance up to 128 TFLOPS in some applications. These tensor cores are expected to appear in consumer cards, as well.
GPU companies
Many companies have produced GPUs under a number of brand names. In 2009, Intel, Nvidia, and AMD/ATI were the market share leaders, with 49.4%, 27.8%, and 20.6% market share respectively. In addition, Matrox produces GPUs. Modern smartphones use mostly Adreno GPUs from Qualcomm, PowerVR GPUs from Imagination Technologies, and Mali GPUs from ARM.
Computational functions
Modern GPUs use most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. In addition to the 3D hardware, today's GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and framebuffer capabilities (usually with a VGA compatibility mode). Newer cards such as AMD/ATI HD5000–HD7000 lack dedicated 2D acceleration; it is emulated by 3D hardware. GPUs were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons. Later, were added to accelerate geometric calculations such as the rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems. Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations that are supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high-precision color spaces.
Several factors of GPU construction affect the performance of the card for real-time rendering, such as the size of the connector pathways in the semiconductor device fabrication, the clock signal frequency, and the number and size of various on-chip memory caches. Performance is also affected by the number of streaming multiprocessors (SM) for NVidia GPUs, or compute units (CU) for AMD GPUs, or Xe cores for Intel discrete GPUs, which describe the number of core on-silicon processor units within the GPU chip that perform the core calculations, typically working in parallel with other SM/CUs on the GPU. GPU performance is typically measured in floating point operations per second (FLOPS); GPUs in the 2010s and 2020s typically deliver performance measured in teraflops (TFLOPS). This is an estimated performance measure, as other factors can affect the actual display rate.
GPU accelerated video decoding and encoding
Most GPUs made since 1995 support the YUV color space and hardware overlays, important for digital video playback, and many GPUs made since 2000 also support MPEG primitives such as motion compensation and iDCT. This hardware-accelerated video decoding, in which portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing are offloaded to the GPU hardware, is commonly referred to as "GPU accelerated video decoding", "GPU assisted video decoding", "GPU hardware accelerated video decoding", or "GPU hardware assisted video decoding".
Recent graphics cards decode high-definition video on the card, offloading the central processing unit. The most common APIs for GPU accelerated video decoding are DxVA for Microsoft Windows operating systems and VDPAU, VAAPI, XvMC, and XvBA for Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. All except XvMC are capable of decoding videos encoded with MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP (MPEG-4 Part 2), MPEG-4 AVC (H.264 / DivX 6), VC-1, WMV3/WMV9, Xvid / OpenDivX (DivX 4), and DivX 5 codecs, while XvMC is only capable of decoding MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
There are several dedicated hardware video decoding and encoding solutions.
Video decoding processes that can be accelerated
Video decoding processes that can be accelerated by modern GPU hardware are:
Motion compensation (mocomp)
Inverse discrete cosine transform (iDCT)
Inverse telecine 3:2 and 2:2 pull-down correction
Inverse modified discrete cosine transform (iMDCT)
In-loop deblocking filter
Intra-frame prediction
Inverse quantization (IQ)
Variable-length decoding (VLD), more commonly known as slice-level acceleration
Spatial-temporal deinterlacing and automatic interlace/progressive source detection
Bitstream processing (Context-adaptive variable-length coding/Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding) and perfect pixel positioning
These operations also have applications in video editing, encoding, and transcoding.
3D graphics APIs
A GPU can support one or more 3D graphics API, such as DirectX, Metal, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan.
GPU forms
Terminology
In the 1970s, the term "GPU" originally stood for graphics processor unit and described a programmable processing unit working independently from the CPU that was responsible for graphics manipulation and output. In 1994, Sony used the term (now standing for graphics processing unit) in reference to the PlayStation console's Toshiba-designed Sony GPU. The term was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first GPU". It was presented as a "single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term "visual processing unit" or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002.
In personal computers, there are two main forms of GPUs. Each has many synonyms:
Dedicated graphics also called discrete graphics.
Integrated graphics also called shared graphics solutions, integrated graphics processors (IGP), or unified memory architecture (UMA).
Usage-specific GPU
Most GPUs are designed for a specific use, real-time 3D graphics, or other mass calculations:
Gaming
GeForce GTX, RTX
Nvidia Titan
Radeon HD, R5, R7, R9, RX, Vega and Navi series
Radeon VII
Intel Arc
Cloud Gaming
Nvidia GRID
Radeon Sky
Workstation
Nvidia Quadro
Nvidia RTX
AMD FirePro
AMD Radeon Pro
Intel Arc Pro
Cloud Workstation
Nvidia Tesla
AMD FireStream
Artificial Intelligence training and Cloud
Nvidia Tesla
AMD Radeon Instinct
Automated/Driverless car
Nvidia Drive PX
Dedicated graphics processing unit
Dedicated graphics processing units are not necessarily removable, nor does it necessarily interface with the motherboard in a standard fashion. The term "dedicated" refers to the fact that graphics cards have RAM that is dedicated to the card's use, not to the fact that most dedicated GPUs are removable. This RAM is usually specially selected for the expected serial workload of the graphics card (see GDDR). Sometimes, systems with dedicated, discrete GPUs were called "DIS" systems, as opposed to "UMA" systems (see next section). Dedicated GPUs for portable computers are most commonly interfaced through a non-standard and often proprietary slot due to size and weight constraints. Such ports may still be considered PCIe or AGP in terms of their logical host interface, even if they are not physically interchangeable with their counterparts.
Graphics cards with dedicated GPUs typically interface with the motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as PCI Express (PCIe) or Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). They can usually be replaced or upgraded with relative ease, assuming the motherboard is capable of supporting the upgrade. A few graphics cards still use Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots, but their bandwidth is so limited that they are generally used only when a PCIe or AGP slot is not available.
Technologies such as SLI and NVLink by Nvidia and CrossFire by AMD allow multiple GPUs to draw images simultaneously for a single screen, increasing the processing power available for graphics. These technologies, however, are increasingly uncommon; most games do not fully use multiple GPUs, as most users cannot afford them. Multiple GPUs are still used on supercomputers (like in Summit), on workstations to accelerate video (processing multiple videos at once) and 3D rendering, for VFX, GPGPU workloads and for simulations, and in AI to expedite training, as is the case with Nvidia's lineup of DGX workstations and servers, Tesla GPUs, and Intel's Ponte Vecchio GPUs.
Integrated graphics processing unit
Integrated graphics processing unit (IGPU), integrated graphics, shared graphics solutions, integrated graphics processors (IGP), or unified memory architecture (UMA) use a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than dedicated graphics memory. IGPs can be integrated onto the motherboard as part of the (Northbridge) chipset, or on the same die (integrated circuit) with the CPU (like AMD APU or Intel HD Graphics). On certain motherboards, AMD's IGPs can use dedicated sideport memory: a separate fixed block of high performance memory that is dedicated for use by the GPU. computers with integrated graphics account for about 90% of all PC shipments. They are less costly to implement than dedicated graphics processing, but tend to be less capable. Historically, integrated processing was considered unfit for 3D games or graphically intensive programs but could run less intensive programs such as Adobe Flash. Examples of such IGPs would be offerings from SiS and VIA circa 2004. However, modern integrated graphics processors such as AMD Accelerated Processing Unit and Intel Graphics Technology (HD, UHD, Iris, Iris Pro, Iris Plus, and Xe-LP) can handle 2D graphics or low-stress 3D graphics.
Since GPU computations are memory-intensive, integrated processing may compete with the CPU for relatively slow system RAM, as it has minimal or no dedicated video memory. IGPs use system memory with bandwidth up to a current maximum of 128 GB/s, whereas a discrete graphics card may have a bandwidth of more than 1000 GB/s between its VRAM and GPU core. This memory bus bandwidth can limit the performance of the GPU, though multi-channel memory can mitigate this deficiency. Older integrated graphics chipsets lacked hardware transform and lighting, but newer ones include it.
On its Apple Silicon M series processors Apple uses the term "Unified Memory Architecture" to refer to the fact that all the types of cores on the SoCs share the same memory, as with prior integrated GPU solutions from other makers. M series SoCs have a memory bandwidth of between 100 and 800 GB/sec which is on par with many dedicated GPUs.
Hybrid graphics processing
Hybrid GPUs compete with integrated graphics in the low-end desktop and notebook markets. The most common implementations of this are ATI's HyperMemory and Nvidia's TurboCache.
Hybrid graphics cards are somewhat more expensive than integrated graphics, but much less expensive than dedicated graphics cards. They share memory with the system and have a small dedicated memory cache, to make up for the high latency of the system RAM. Technologies within PCI Express make this possible. While these solutions are sometimes advertised as having as much as 768 MB of RAM, this refers to how much can be shared with the system memory.
Stream processing and general purpose GPUs (GPGPU)
It is common to use a general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) as a modified form of stream processor (or a vector processor), running compute kernels. This turns the massive computational power of a modern graphics accelerator's shader pipeline into general-purpose computing power. In certain applications requiring massive vector operations, this can yield several orders of magnitude higher performance than a conventional CPU. The two largest discrete (see "Dedicated graphics cards" above) GPU designers, AMD and Nvidia, are pursuing this approach with an array of applications. Both Nvidia and AMD teamed with Stanford University to create a GPU-based client for the Folding@home distributed computing project for protein folding calculations. In certain circumstances, the GPU calculates forty times faster than the CPUs traditionally used by such applications.
GPGPUs can be used for many types of embarrassingly parallel tasks including ray tracing. They are generally suited to high-throughput computations that exhibit data-parallelism to exploit the wide vector width SIMD architecture of the GPU.
GPU-based high performance computers play a significant role in large-scale modelling. Three of the ten most powerful supercomputers in the world take advantage of GPU acceleration.
GPUs support API extensions to the C programming language such as OpenCL and OpenMP. Furthermore, each GPU vendor introduced its own API which only works with their cards: AMD APP SDK from AMD, and CUDA from Nvidia. These allow functions called compute kernels to run on the GPU's stream processors. This makes it possible for C programs to take advantage of a GPU's ability to operate on large buffers in parallel, while still using the CPU when appropriate. CUDA was the first API to allow CPU-based applications to directly access the resources of a GPU for more general purpose computing without the limitations of using a graphics API.
Since 2005 there has been interest in using the performance offered by GPUs for evolutionary computation in general, and for accelerating the fitness evaluation in genetic programming in particular. Most approaches compile linear or tree programs on the host PC and transfer the executable to the GPU to be run. Typically a performance advantage is only obtained by running the single active program simultaneously on many example problems in parallel, using the GPU's SIMD architecture. However, substantial acceleration can also be obtained by not compiling the programs, and instead transferring them to the GPU, to be interpreted there. Acceleration can then be obtained by either interpreting multiple programs simultaneously, simultaneously running multiple example problems, or combinations of both. A modern GPU can simultaneously interpret hundreds of thousands of very small programs.
External GPU (eGPU)
An external GPU is a graphics processor located outside of the housing of the computer, similar to a large external hard drive. External graphics processors are sometimes used with laptop computers. Laptops might have a substantial amount of RAM and a sufficiently powerful central processing unit (CPU), but often lack a powerful graphics processor, and instead have a less powerful but more energy-efficient on-board graphics chip. On-board graphics chips are often not powerful enough for playing video games, or for other graphically intensive tasks, such as editing video or 3D animation/rendering.
Therefore, it is desirable to attach a GPU to some external bus of a notebook. PCI Express is the only bus used for this purpose. The port may be, for example, an ExpressCard or mPCIe port (PCIe ×1, up to 5 or 2.5 Gbit/s respectively) or a Thunderbolt 1, 2, or 3 port (PCIe ×4, up to 10, 20, or 40 Gbit/s respectively). Those ports are only available on certain notebook systems. eGPU enclosures include their own power supply (PSU), because powerful GPUs can consume hundreds of watts.
Official vendor support for external GPUs has gained traction. A milestone was Apple's decision to support external GPUs with MacOS High Sierra 10.13.4. Several major hardware vendors (HP, Alienware, Razer) released Thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosures. This support fuels eGPU implementations by enthusiasts.
Sales
In 2013, 438.3 million GPUs were shipped globally and the forecast for 2014 was 414.2 million. However, by the third quarter of 2022, shipments of integrated GPUs totaled around 75.5 million units, down 19% year-over-year.
See also
Texture mapping unit (TMU)
Render output unit (ROP)
Brute force attack
Computer hardware
Computer monitor
GPU cache
GPU virtualization
Manycore processor
Physics processing unit (PPU)
Tensor processing unit (TPU)
Ray-tracing hardware
Software rendering
Vision processing unit (VPU)
Vector processor
Video card
Video display controller
Video game console
AI accelerator
GPU Vector Processor internal features
Hardware
List of AMD graphics processing units
List of Nvidia graphics processing units
List of Intel graphics processing units
Intel GMA
Larrabee
Nvidia PureVideo – the bit-stream technology from Nvidia used in their graphics chips to accelerate video decoding on hardware GPU with DXVA.
SoC
UVD (Unified Video Decoder) – the video decoding bit-stream technology from ATI to support hardware (GPU) decode with DXVA
APIs
OpenGL API
DirectX Video Acceleration (DxVA) API for Microsoft Windows operating-system.
Mantle (API)
Vulkan (API)
Video Acceleration API (VA API)
VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix)
X-Video Bitstream Acceleration (XvBA), the X11 equivalent of DXVA for MPEG-2, H.264, and VC-1
X-Video Motion Compensation – the X11 equivalent for MPEG-2 video codec only
Applications
GPU cluster
Mathematica – includes built-in support for CUDA and OpenCL GPU execution
Molecular modeling on GPU
Deeplearning4j – open-source, distributed deep learning for Java
References
Sources
External links
NVIDIA – What is GPU computing?
The GPU Gems book series
– A Graphics Hardware History
How GPUs work
GPU Caps Viewer – Video card information utility
OpenGPU-GPU Architecture (In Chinese)
ARM Mali GPUs Overview
GPGPU
Graphics hardware
Virtual reality
OpenCL compute devices
Artificial intelligence
Application-specific integrated circuits
Hardware acceleration
Digital electronics
Electronic design
Electronic design automation
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaronic%20priesthood%20%28Latter%20Day%20Saints%29
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Aaronic priesthood (Latter Day Saints)
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The Aaronic priesthood (; also called the priesthood of Aaron or the Levitical priesthood) is the lesser of the two (or sometimes three) orders of priesthood recognized in the Latter Day Saint movement. The others are the Melchizedek priesthood and the rarely recognized Patriarchal priesthood. Unlike the Melchizedek priesthood, which is modeled after the authority of Jesus and the Twelve Apostles, or the Patriarchal priesthood, which is modeled after the authority of Abraham, the Aaronic priesthood is modeled after the priesthood of Aaron the Levite, the first high priest of the Hebrews, and his descendants. The Aaronic priesthood is thought to be a lesser or preparatory priesthood and an "appendage" of the more powerful Melchizedek priesthood.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) today, the holders of the Aaronic priesthood are primarily young men ages 11 to 18 and recent adult male converts to the church. The general leadership of the Aaronic priesthood, called the Presiding Bishopric, are administrative and financial agents of the church. Local leaders of the Aaronic priesthood are adult male bishops, who serve as pastoral leaders of individual congregations. Aaronic priesthood holders generally prepare, bless, and administer the sacrament, collect fast offerings, perform church and community service, assist in ministering, and occasionally perform baptisms. In their priesthood activities, holders of the Aaronic priesthood are also supported by the church's Young Men organization.
History
Latter Day Saints believe that John the Baptist conferred the Aaronic priesthood directly upon Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery on May 15, 1829. Smith relates the conferral of the Aaronic priesthood in Joseph Smith–History as follows:
[W]e ... went into the woods to pray and inquire of the Lord respecting baptism for the remission of sins, that we found mentioned in the translation of the plates [Book of Mormon] .... While we were thus employed, praying and calling upon the Lord, a messenger from heaven descended in a cloud of light, and having laid his hands upon us, he ordained us, saying:
Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.
He said this Aaronic Priesthood had not the power of laying on hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, but that this should be conferred on us hereafter, and he commanded us to go and be baptized, and gave us directions that I should baptize Oliver Cowdery, and that afterward, he should baptize me.
Accordingly, we went and were baptized.
The messenger who visited us on this occasion and conferred this Priesthood upon us, said that his name was John, the same that is called John the Baptist in the New Testament, and that he acted under the direction of Peter, James and John, who held the keys of the Priesthood of Melchizedek, which Priesthood, he said, would in due time be conferred on us, and that I should be called the first Elder of the Church, and he (Oliver Cowdery) the second.
Immediately on our coming up out of the water after we had been baptized, we experienced great and glorious blessings from our Heavenly Father. No sooner had I baptized Oliver Cowdery, than the Holy Ghost fell upon him, and he stood up and prophesied many things which should shortly come to pass. And again, so soon as I had been baptized by him, I also had the spirit of prophecy, when, standing up, I prophesied concerning the rise of this Church, and many other things connected with the Church, and this generation of the children of men. We were filled with the Holy Ghost, and rejoiced in the God of our salvation."
Early days
From the start of the Church of Christ, the first members of the Aaronic priesthood were mostly adults. Early priests included Joseph Smith Sr. (59), Martin Harris (47), and two 30-year-old members: Hyrum Smith and Newel Knight. Teachers were Hezekiah Peck (49), Christian Whitmer (32), Hiram Page (30), and William Smith (20). Among the early deacons in the church were Titus Billings (38).
There were some youth that were ordained to the Aaronic priesthood, including William F. Cahoon (17), Don Carlos Smith (14), and Erastus (15) and James Snow (17). In these early years, the holders of the priesthood had adult duties thrust upon them. For instance, in the Missouri Stake, the teachers quorum dealt with helping a brother quit tobacco, worked with a married couple in a dispute, settled neighborly disputes over cattle, and dealt with "lying and extortion." Adult deacons assisted priests and teachers in maintaining the houses of worship, seating people, making wine for the sacrament, and getting a license so that they could preach in homes. In 1833, plans for the Kirtland Temple included four rows for the presidencies of the Aaronic priesthood; these clearly were intended for adults and not youth. In Nauvoo between 1839 and 1846, the average age of the priests was 29; however, there were four teenagers between 17 and 19. (This practice with respect to age continued on in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.)
1849–77 in the LDS Church
After the succession crisis which followed Smith's death, between the years 1846 and 1877, changes started to occur as the members of the LDS Church moved west to Salt Lake City. Wards were created as the primary organizational unit of the church; however, the deacons, teachers, and priests were still stake-level positions. Adult men were still the major source for priests and teachers, as their duties entailed visiting ward members to check on spiritual well-being, settling disputes, collecting contributions, and helping those in need. Teachers occasionally would sit and judge in cases of wrongdoing, a job normally reserved for bishops. The church leadership would hold drives to ensure that positions were filled not as a need of the members to hold the priesthood, but as a need of the church to have the necessary males to accomplish the needed tasks.
By 1855, the Endowment House in Salt Lake City was completed and church leaders called for it to be busy in granting endowments to men and women. Each ward had quotas to fill in completing endowments, and the men that were sent to receive theirs were required to hold the Melchizedek priesthood. The average age of men who received the endowment at this time was 22; some were as young as 14. So many men were receiving the senior priesthood and their endowments that there were too few to fill the ranks of the junior priesthood. Brigham Young commented that perhaps men should receive the portion of the endowment pertaining to the Aaronic priesthood first before their missions. This would have allowed Aaronic priesthood holders to have served as missionaries; however, this idea was never implemented.
Melchizedek priesthood quorums also engaged in recruiting members from the Aaronic priesthood, which further depleted the ranks of the lesser priesthood. Unlike today, it was not a requirement to hold the Aaronic priesthood before receiving the Melchizedek priesthood, so the recruiting by the higher priesthood included the unordained as well. Presiding Bishop Edward Hunter and Brigham Young both lamented over the rush to ordain men to be high priests or seventies and the subsequent difficulty in keeping the Aaronic priesthood ranks filled. As examples, in 1857, Francis M. Lyman and Rudger Clawson were both ordained as elders at age 16; Clarence Merrill was ordained as a seventy at age 16.
In 1849, Young initiated an apprenticeship program whereby the holders of the Aaronic priesthood would take boys with them to teach them and give them experience. No age limits were specified. This helped to temporarily alleviate the problem arising from the dearth of Aaronic priesthood holders. By 1852, church leaders were instructing bishops to set apart members of the Melchizedek priesthood as "acting" teachers, priests, and deacons. Some bishops would ordain a few mature youth as teachers to accompany the "acting" teachers and learn the tasks. Whitney's successor, Edward Hunter, continued this practice of ordaining seventies and high priests as "acting" teachers, deacons, and priests. During the 19th century, home visits, which remained the paramount task of the Aaronic priesthood, entailed visiting from between eight and 20 families monthly, quarterly, or whenever possible. They also continued to be peacemakers and occasionally would judge wrongdoers. Hunter is quoted as saying, "The order of the church is to call in the labors of the teachers & if they cannot reconcile the parties it cannot be done."
Youth began to be ordained to the Aaronic priesthood and in 1854 one ward reported that "the principal portion of the young men had been ordained to the lesser priesthood." Possibly the youngest holders of the lesser priesthood were George J. Hunt, who was ordained a priest at age nine, and Solomon W. Harris, baptized and then ordained as a deacon at age eight. However, by the mid-1850s leaders were warning against ordaining unmarried men, and in the October 1856 general conference Young expressed disapproval regarding inexperienced "young men" being ordained:
When you have got your Bishop, he needs assistants, and he ordains Counsellors, Priests, Teachers, and Deacons, and calls them to help him; and he wishes men of his own heart and hand to do this. Says he, "I dare not even call a man to be a Deacon, to assist me in my calling, unless he has a family." It is not the business of an ignorant young man, of no experience in family matters, to inquire into the circumstances of families, and know the wants of every person. Some may want medicine and nourishment and be looked after, and it is not the business of boys to do this, but select a man who has got a family to be a Deacon.
The 1870s saw a reversal of the trend of less youth being ordained. Circumstances at the time dictated a change. First, the youth of the Salt Lake City, Provo, and St. George areas were misbehaving in ever-increasing numbers with ever-worsening acts. Some complaints from the era were as follows: "rowdyism is rampant"; "crowds of uncouth boys loitering around the stores halloing in the streets, and breaking horses on the Sabbath"; "uncouth and ill manners in refusing half the road on meeting teams"; "using pencils on walls and nails on the rails of the bannisters"; "strip[ping] of his clothes" (in reference to a mentally handicapped boy); "intoxicated and using the vilest language"; "a gang" spitting "tobacco juice on the floor". The church felt that it could help with such behavior, first by creating the auxiliary organizations for young women in 1869, young men in 1875, and Primary in 1878 for the younger children. This also led to a modest effort to recruit the young men into the Aaronic priesthood. Salt Lake Stake President Angus M. Cannon directed bishops "to draw the young men into positions in the Priesthood and thus an excellent experience, and, at the same time, preserve them from evil associations."
However, the lack of adult men willing to serve in Aaronic priesthood was ultimately the determining factor in the church ordaining youth. Young instructed Hunter in 1873 that each stake should have a full quorum of priests, teachers, and deacons; however, Hunter complained that he could not find willing men to fill these positions. One bishop noted, "It is a difficult task to find a sufficient quantity of efficient teachers. I have thought of calling upon some of the boys." Another stated, "It is very hard to get the older men to act as Teachers, but the young men come forward and are willing to take their parts and therefore we have to appoint young men where older ones should be." By the time of Young's death, he had taken the position that all boys needed some priesthood experience and that they should receive the Aaronic priesthood before reaching adulthood.
Role within the LDS Church today
In the LDS Church today, the Aaronic priesthood has taken on a role as a source of training, leadership, and service for adolescent boys and new converts. It is often called a "preparatory priesthood." Holders of the Aaronic priesthood whom the church considers worthy are ordained to an office in the Melchizedek priesthood as a matter of course around the age of18 Recently baptized men ages 18 and older are ordained elders after they have:
Received the Aaronic Priesthood and served as priests.
Developed sufficient understanding of the gospel.
Demonstrated their worthiness.
No specific time as a Church member is required. (Reference general handbook church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
The Aaronic priesthood is open only to men and boys, twelve years old or older, who are considered worthy after a personal interview with their bishop. Requirements for worthiness include abstaining from all extra-marital sexual practices, following the Word of Wisdom (a code requiring abstinence from drinking alcohol, smoking, and consumption of coffee and tea), payment of tithes, and attending church services.
With the exception of bishop, the offices of the Aaronic priesthood are organized primarily by age, and an adolescent boy will be ordained to the next office if found worthy upon reaching the appropriate age. Active Aaronic priesthood holders seldom stall their ordination to another priesthood office. The conferral and ordination to an office in the Aaronic priesthood is performed by the laying on of hands by a priest or by those holding the Melchizedek priesthood.
With the exception of bishop, Aaronic priesthood holders of the same office are organized into a quorum led by a president and counselors within each quorum. The president of the priest's quorum is the bishop or branch president of the congregation. Each ward has one or more quorums of each office of the priesthood if there are young men of the appropriate age group.
The church-wide titular head of the Aaronic priesthood is the Presiding Bishop. However, because the Aaronic priesthood is composed primarily of the youth of the church, the presidency of the Young Men organization supervises much of the church-wide organization involving the Aaronic priesthood.
Hierarchy
Holders of the Aaronic priesthood meet at the ward or branch where the priesthood holder lives. Young men who do not hold the office of the priesthood of the age group associated with each quorum are still invited and encouraged to attend with the quorum of their age group. However, priesthood duties can only be performed by those who are ordained.
Bishop
Priest
Teacher
In the LDS Church, the teacher is the second of four offices in the Aaronic priesthood. Male members of the church are eligible to be ordained teachers at the beginning of the year in which they turn 14 years of age. Approval by the bishop and an interview with him or one of his counselors is required before ordination. Prior to ordination, the proposed ordination must also be accepted by common consent by the members of the ward. With the approval of the bishop, a priest or a holder of the Melchizedek priesthood may ordain a person to the office of teacher by the laying on of hands.
As specified in the Doctrine and Covenants, a teachers quorum may not contain more than 24 members. As a result, in some larger wards there are two teacher quorums. A presidency, consisting of a president, first counselor, and second counselor, is called from members of the quorum by the bishopric and set apart to serve as the presidency of the teachers quorum. The president of the teachers quorum is given priesthood keys by the laying on of hands by the bishop to preside over the members of his quorum. A secretary to the presidency may also be called from the quorum membership. The members of the teachers quorum presidency and the secretary may not be set apart until after they have been accepted by the common consent of the members of the quorum.
The duties of a teacher are to assist the priests in taking care of the temporal needs of the church, and "to warn, expound, exhort, and teach, and invite all to come unto Christ". Teachers are permitted to assist in preparing the sacrament, usher during sacrament meeting, and perform all the duties of a deacon. Teachers are also typically paired with an adult male (often their father) to perform ministering.
An adult teachers quorum adviser may be called to assist the teachers. Sometimes an assistant adviser is also called.
After an interview with the bishop, teachers who are deemed worthy are ordained to the office of priest at the beginning of the year in which they turn 16 years of age, whereupon they will become members of the priests quorum.
Deacon
In the LDS Church, the deacon is the first of four offices of the Aaronic priesthood to which a male may be ordained. Male members of the church may become deacons at the beginning of the year in which they turn 12 years of age. A bishop may give approval for such members to receive the Aaronic priesthood and ordained to the office of deacon. Prior to ordination, the candidate must have an interview with the bishop or one of his counselors, and the proposed ordination must be accepted by common consent by the members of the ward. With the bishop's approval, a person who holds the office of priest or a holder of the Melchizedek priesthood is able to perform the ordination of a deacon by the laying on of hands.
Deacons in a ward are organized in quorums. The Doctrine and Covenants states that a president of a deacons quorum can preside over 12 deacons. As a result, in some large wards, there may be two or more quorums of deacons. From the members of each deacon's quorum, a president, first counselor, second counselor, and secretary may be called and set apart by the bishopric. The president and his two counselors constitute the deacon's quorum presidency. The president of the deacons quorum is given priesthood keys by the laying on of hands by the bishop to preside over the members of his quorum. The members of the deacons quorum presidency and the secretary may not be set apart until after they have been accepted by the common consent of the members of the quorum.
The duties of a deacon are to assist the teachers in taking care of the temporal needs of the church, and "to warn, expound, exhort, and teach, and invite all to come unto Christ". In modern practice, one of the deacons' primary duties is to pass the sacrament to the members of the congregation during sacrament meeting. Deacons also may receive fast offerings from the members of their ward on fast Sunday. A deacon may often sit beside the bishopric during sacrament meeting to act as a messenger or assistant to the bishop.
An adult advisor may be called to assist the deacon's quorum. Sometimes an assistant advisor is called.
See also
Priesthood (LDS Church)
High priest (Latter Day Saints)
Aaronic Priesthood Restoration Site
Notes
Footnotes
References
External links
Callings: Aaronic Priesthood at churchofjesuschrist.org (LDS Church)
Aaronic Priesthood, The Joseph Smith Papers (accessed May 14, 2012)
Aaronic Priesthood changes December 2018 [https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/multimedia/file/age-group-announcement-january-2019.pdf The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temples]
1829 establishments in the United States
1829 in Christianity
Aaron
John the Baptist
Latter Day Saint hierarchy
Latter Day Saint terms
Aaronic
Young Men (organization)
Young people and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic%20rifle
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Automatic rifle
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An automatic rifle is a type of autoloading rifle that is capable of fully automatic fire. Automatic rifles are generally select-fire weapons capable of firing in semi-automatic and automatic firing modes (some automatic rifles are capable of burst-fire as well). Automatic rifles are distinguished from semi-automatic rifles in their ability to fire more than one shot in succession once the trigger is pulled. Most automatic rifles are further subcategorized as battle rifles or assault rifles.
History
Maxim
In June 1883 Hiram Maxim filed his first patent to do with automatic firearms covering semi-automatic and fully automatic Winchester and Martini-Henry rifles as well as an original automatic rifle and blowback- and recoil-operated machine guns, both single and multi-barrelled.
Mannlicher
In 1885 Ferdinand Mannlicher made an experimental self-loader based on work begun in 1883 in both semi-automatic and fully automatic modes. It was an impractical failure due to fouling by its black powder ammunition, but it influenced later designs. Furthermore, Mannlicher produced smokeless powder automatic rifles from the early 1890s onwards until his death in 1904.
Cei-Rigotti
One of the world's first automatic rifles was the Italian Cei-Rigotti. This rifle started out as an 1886 gas-operated conversion of the Vetterli rifle, which received positive approval and was even adopted after further refinements in 1895 for the Royal Italian Navy but although up to 2000 rifles were ordered for as yet unknown reasons the order never came through. Another version of the Cei-Rigotti was presented in 1900, these 6.5mm Carcano or 7.65×53mm gas-operated, selective-fire carbines attracted considerable attention at the time. They used 10-, 20- and 50-round box magazines. The Cei-Rigotti had several failings, including frequent jams and erratic shooting. In the end, no Army took an interest in the design and the rifle was abandoned before it could be further developed. Although the rifle was never officially adopted by any military, aside from the 1895 variant which never came through, it was tested extensively by the Italian Army during the lead-up to the First World War.
Chauchat
The Chauchat, designed in 1907, was one of the first automatic rifles to be adopted by a military. Its official design was the Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG. It was placed into French Infantry in 1916, and was used by the French army in the First World War. The Chauchat in 8mm Lebel was also extensively used in 1917–18 by the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.), where it was officially designated as the "Automatic Rifle, Model 1915 (Chauchat)".
Lewis Gun
The Lewis Gun was invented in 1911 by Isaac Newton Lewis and first mass-produced in Belgium in 1913 for the .303 British cartridge, and widely used by the British army in the First World War, both by infantry and fitted to aircraft. Pan magazines are secured above the breech, holding either 47 or 97 rounds. Cooling fins surround the barrel. The weapon is gas operated and fires automatically at 500-600 rounds per minute.
More than 50,000 Lewis guns were produced during WW1, becoming the most common automatic weapon used by British and American troops. Although superseded by the Bren gun by 1939, nearly 60,000 Lewis guns were refurbished and reissued to British forces after the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940.
Fedorov Avtomat
The Fedorov Avtomat (also anglicized as Federov, Russian: Автомат Фёдорова) or FA was a select-fire, crew-served automatic rifle and was one of the first practical automatic rifles, designed by Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov in 1915 and produced in the Russian Empire and later in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. A total of 3,200 Fedorov rifles were manufactured between 1915 and 1924 in the city of Kovrov; the vast majority of them were made after 1920. The weapon saw limited combat in World War I, but was used more substantially in the Russian Civil War and in the Winter War. In 1916, the Weapons Committee of the Russian Army made a decision to order no less than 25,000 Fedorov automatic rifles. In the summer of 1916, a company from the 189th Izmail Regiment was equipped with 8 Fedorov Avtomats. Trained in tactics with the new weapon, they concluded that the Fedorov worked best as a crew served weapon. The gunner armed with the Fedorov and an ammo bearer armed with an Arisaka rifle. As both weapons used the same ammo and same 5 round stripper clips, this allowed for the greatest flexibility. It also allowed for the ammo bearer to fire defensively, while the gunner reloaded. It was also recommended that the primary mode of fire be in semi-automatic, as the Fedorov's would rapidly overheat in full-auto. Some consider it to be an "early predecessor" or "ancestor" to the modern assault rifle, while others believe that the Fedorov Avtomat was the world's first assault rifle.
Browning Automatic Rifle
The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was one of the first practical automatic rifles. The BAR made its successful combat debut in World War I, and approximately 50,000 were made before the war came to an end. The BAR arose from the concept of "walking fire", an idea urged upon the Americans by the French who used the Chauchat light machine gun to fulfill that role. The BAR never entirely lived up to the designer's hopes; being neither a rifle nor a machinegun. "For its day, though, it was a brilliant design produced in record time by John Browning, and it was bought and used by many countries around the world. It was the standard squad light automatic of the U.S. infantry during World War II and saw use in every theater of war." The BAR was praised for its reliability and stopping power. "The US forces abandoned the BAR in the middle 1950s, though it was retained in reserve stocks for several years; it survived in smaller countries until the late 1970s."
AVS-36
The AVS-36 (from Avtomaticheskaya Vintovka Simonova 1936 model; (АВС-36)) was a Soviet automatic rifle which saw service in the early years of World War II. It was among the early selective fire infantry rifles (capable of both single and full-automatic fire) formally adopted for military service. The designer, Sergei Simonov, began his work with a gas-operated self-loading rifle in 1930. The first prototype was ready in 1931 and appeared promising, and three years later a trial batch of an improved design was made. In 1935, a competition between Simonov's design and a rifle made by Fedor Tokarev was held. The Simonov rifle emerged as a winner and was accepted into service as the AVS-36. The AVS-36 was first seen in public in the 1938 May Day parade in Moscow, when it was displayed by the marching 1st Rifle Division. The American public became aware when it was covered in an August 1942 issue of the American Infantry Journal, in an article by John Garrett Underhill Jr. Simonov would later design an anti-tank rifle, the PTRS-41, and the SKS carbine, which employed simpler tilting bolt operation.
FG 42
The FG 42 is a selective fire automatic rifle or battle rifle produced in Germany during World War II. The weapon was developed specifically for the use of the Fallschirmjäger airborne infantry in 1942 and was used in limited numbers until the end of the war. It served as a squad automatic rifle in much the same role as the Browning BAR. It combined the firepower of a light machine gun in a lightweight package no larger than the standard-issue Kar 98k bolt-action rifle. It was considered one of the most advanced weapon designs of World War II. The FG 42 influenced post-war small arms development and most of its design was copied by the US Army when they developed the M60 machine gun.
Sturmgewehr 44
The Germans were the first to pioneer the assault rifle concept, during World War II, based upon research that showed that most firefights happen within 400 meters and that contemporary rifles were over-powered for most small arms combat. The Germans sought to develop a select-fire intermediate powered rifle combining the firepower of a submachine gun with the accuracy and range of a rifle. This was done by shortening the standard 7.92×57mm cartridge to 7.92×33mm and giving it a lighter 125-grain bullet, that limited range but allowed for more controllable automatic fire. The result was the Sturmgewehr 44.
AK-47
Like the Germans, the Soviets were influenced by experience showing most combat happens within 400 meters and that their soldiers were consistently outgunned by heavily armed German troops, especially those armed with the Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifles. The Soviets were so impressed with the Sturmgewehr 44, that after World War II, they held a design competition to develop an assault rifle of their own. The winner was the AK-47. It was finalized, adopted and entered widespread service in the Soviet army in the early 1950s. Its firepower, ease of use, low production costs, and reliability was perfectly suited for the Red Army's new mobile warfare doctrines. The AK-47 was widely supplied or sold to nations allied with the USSR and the blueprints were shared with several friendly nations (the People's Republic of China standing out among these with the Type 56). The AK-47 and AKM type rifles are the most produced firearms in history.
M14 rifle (battle rifle)
The U.S. Army was influenced by combat experience with semi-automatic weapons such as the M1 Garand and M1 carbine, which enjoyed a significant advantage over enemies armed primarily with bolt-action rifles. Although U.S. Army studies of World War II combat accounts had very similar results to that of the Germans and Soviets, the U.S. Army maintained its traditional views and preference for high-powered semi-automatic rifles.
After World War II, the United States military started looking for a single automatic rifle to replace the M1 Garand, M1/M2 Carbines, M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, M3 "Grease Gun" and Thompson submachine gun. However, early experiments with select-fire versions of the M1 Garand proved disappointing. During the Korean War, the select-fire M2 Carbine largely replaced submachine guns in US service. However, combat experience suggested that the .30 Carbine round was underpowered. American weapons designers reached the same conclusion as the Germans and Soviets: an intermediate round was necessary, and recommended a small caliber, high velocity-cartridge.
However, senior American commanders, having faced fanatical enemies and experienced major logistical problems during World War II and the Korean War, insisted that a single powerful .30 caliber cartridge be developed, that could not only be used by the new automatic rifle, but by the new general purpose machine gun (GPMG) in concurrent development. This culminated in the development of the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge and the M14 rifle which was basically an improved select-fire M1 Garand with a 20-round magazine. The U.S. also adopted the M60 GPMG. Its NATO partners adopted the FN FAL and HK G3 rifles, as well as the FN MAG and Rheinmetall MG3 GPMGs.
FN FAL
The FN FAL is a 7.62×51mm NATO, selective fire, automatic rifle produced by the Belgian armaments manufacturer Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN). During the Cold War, it was adopted by many North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, most notably with the British Commonwealth as the L1A1. It is one of the most widely used rifles in history, having been used by more than 90 countries. The FAL was predominantly chambered for the 7.62mm NATO round, and because of its prevalence and widespread use among the armed forces of many western nations during the Cold War it was nicknamed "The right arm of the Free World".
H&K G3
The H&K G3 is a 7.62×51mm NATO, selective fire, automatic rifle produced by the German armament manufacturer Heckler & Koch GmbH (H&K) in collaboration with the Spanish state-owned design and development agency CETME (Centro de Estudios Técnicos de Materiales Especiales). The rifle proved successful in the export market, being adopted by the armed forces of over 60 countries. After World War II, German technicians involved in developing the Sturmgewehr 45, continued their research in France at CEAM. The StG45 mechanism was modified by Ludwig Vorgrimler and Theodor Löffler at the Mulhouse facility between 1946 and 1949. Vorgrimler later went to work at CETME in Spain and developed the line of CETME automatic rifles based on his improved Stg45 design. Germany eventually purchased the license for the CETME design and manufactured the Heckler & Koch G3 as well as an entire line of weapons built on the same system, one of the most famous being the MP5 SMG.
M16 rifle
The first confrontations between the AK-47 and the M14 (assault rifle vs battle rifle) came in the early part of the Vietnam War. Battlefield reports indicated that the M14 was uncontrollable in automatic mode and that soldiers could not carry enough ammo to maintain fire superiority over the AK-47. A replacement was needed: A medium between the traditional preference for high-powered rifles such as the M14, and the lightweight firepower of the M2 Carbine.
As a result, the Army was forced to reconsider a 1957 request by General Willard G. Wyman, commander of the U.S. Continental Army Command (CONARC) to develop a .223 caliber (5.56 mm) select-fire rifle weighing 6 lbs (2.7 kg) when loaded with a 20-round magazine. The 5.56mm round had to penetrate a standard U.S. helmet at 500 yards (460 meters) and retain a velocity in excess of the speed of sound while matching or exceeding the wounding ability of the .30 Carbine cartridge.
This request ultimately resulted in the development of a scaled-down version of the ArmaLite AR-10, called ArmaLite AR-15 rifle. However, despite overwhelming evidence that the AR-15 could bring more firepower to bear than the M14, the Army opposed the adoption of the new rifle. In January 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that the AR-15 was the superior weapon system and ordered a halt to M14 production. At the time, the AR-15 was the only rifle available that could fulfill the requirement of a universal infantry weapon for issue to all services. After modifications (Most notably: the charging handle was re-located from under the carrying handle like AR-10 to the rear of the receiver), the new redesigned rifle was subsequently adopted as the M16.
The M16 entered U.S. service in the mid-1960s and was much lighter than the M14 it replaced, allowing soldiers to carry more ammunition. Despite its early failures, the M16 proved to be a revolutionary design and stands as the longest continuously serving rifle in American military history. It is a benchmark against which other assault rifles are judged, and used by 15 NATO countries, and more
than 80 countries worldwide
HK33
During the 1960s, other countries would follow the Americans lead and begin to develop 5.56×45mm assault rifles, most notably Germany with the Heckler & Koch HK33. The HK33 was essentially a smaller 5.56mm version of the 7.62×51mm Heckler & Koch G3 rifle. As one of the first 5.56mm assault rifles on the market, it would go on to become one of the most widely distributed assault rifles. The HK33 featured a modular design with a wide range of accessories (telescoping butt-stocks, optics, bipods, etc.) that could be easily removed and arranged in a various configurations.
5.56mm NATO
The adoption of the M16, the H&K33, and the 5.56×45mm cartridge inspired an international trend towards relatively small-sized, lightweight, high-velocity military service cartridges that allow a soldier to carry more ammunition for the same weight compared to the larger and heavier 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge. The 5.56mm cartridge is also much easier to shoot. In 1961 marksmanship testing, the U.S. Army found that 43% of ArmaLite AR-15 shooters achieved Expert, while only 22% of M-14 rifle shooters did so. Also, a lower recoil impulse allows for more controllable automatic weapons fire.
Therefore, in March 1970, the U.S. recommended that all NATO forces adopt the 5.56×45mm cartridge. This shift represented a change in the philosophy of the military's long-held position about caliber size. By the middle of the 1970s, other armies were looking at assault rifle type weapons. A NATO standardization effort soon started and tests of various rounds were carried out starting in 1977. The U.S. offered the 5.56×45mm M193 round, but there were concerns about its penetration in the face of the wider introduction of body armor. In the end, the Belgian 5.56×45mm SS109 round was chosen (STANAG 4172) in October 1980. The SS109 round was based on the U.S. cartridge but included a new stronger, heavier, 62 grain bullet design, with better long range performance and improved penetration (specifically, to consistently penetrate the side of a steel helmet at 600 meters).
During the 1970s, the USSR developed the AK-74 and the 5.45×39mm cartridge, which has similar physical characteristics to the U.S. 5.56×45mm cartridge. Also during the 1970s, Finland, Israel, South Africa and Sweden introduced AK type rifles in 5.56×45mm. During the 1990s, the Russians developed the AK-101 in 5.56×45mm NATO for the world export market. In addition, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and former countries of Yugoslavia have also rechambered their locally produced assault rifle variants to 5.56mm NATO. The adoption the 5.56mm NATO and 5.45×39mm cemented the worldwide trend toward small caliber, high-velocity cartridges.
Steyr AUG (bullpup rifle)
In 1977, Austria introduced the 5.56×45mm Steyr AUG bullpup rifle, often cited as the first successful bullpup rifle, finding service with the armed forces of over twenty countries. It was highly advanced for the 1970s, combining in the same weapon the bullpup configuration, a polymer housing, dual vertical grips, an optical sight as standard, and a modular design. Highly reliable, light, and accurate, the Steyr AUG showed clearly the potential of the bullpup layout. In 1978, France introduced the 5.56×45mm FAMAS bullpup rifle. In 1985, the British introduced the 5.56×45mm L85 bullpup rifle. In the late 1990s, Israel introduced the Tavor TAR-21 and China's People's Liberation Army's adopted QBZ-95. By the turn of the century, the bullpup design had achieved world-wide acceptance.
See also
Other weapons:
Madsen machine gun
Chauchat
Fedorov Avtomat
Farquhar-Hill rifle
Leichtes Maschinengewehr Modell 1925 "Lmg 25"
Huot Automatic Rifle
Mors submachine gun
Knötgen automatic rifle
Sieg automatic rifle
Colt Automatic Rifle
M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle
Howell Automatic Rifle
Rieder Automatic Rifle
SIG SG 510
Other related articles:
Semi-automatic rifle
Assault rifle
Battle rifle
Marksman rifle
Sniper rifle
Light machine gun
Squad automatic weapon
List of firearms
References
Light machine guns
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine%20Act
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Blaine Act
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The Blaine Act, formally titled Joint Resolution Proposing the Twenty-First Amendment to the United States Constitution, is a joint resolution adopted by the United States Congress on February 20, 1933, initiating repeal of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which established Prohibition in the United States. Repeal was finalized when the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the required minimum number of states on December 5, 1933.
Initial activity in the 72nd Congress
The Volstead Act implemented the 18th Amendment (Prohibition). The act defined "intoxicating beverage" as one with 0.5 percent alcohol by weight. Numerous problems with enforcement and a desire to create jobs and raise tax revenue by legalizing beer, wine, and liquor led a majority of voters and members of Congress to turn against Prohibition by late 1932.
Political situation
When the first legislative session of the 72nd United States Congress opened on December 7, 1931, more than two dozen bills were offered amending the Volstead Act or repealing the 18th Amendment altogether. Republicans, who controlled both houses in the previous Congress, had previously been united in their support for Prohibition and, with the support of "dry" (pro-Prohibition) Democrats, easily garnered more than the two-thirds majority needed to block any vote on even the slightest easing of the Volstead Act. Now, however, 64 "wet" Republicans formed a caucus in the House of Representatives to work with Democrats (who had a slim majority after winning a number of special elections) to seek modification or repeal. The Democrats also changed the rules of the House, adopting a discharge petition procedure which would force a bill to the floor for a vote if 145 members requested it.
Legislative activity initially focused on the Senate. Among the bills filed at the start of the session was one by Senator Hiram Bingham III (R-Conn.), which amended the Volstead Act to permit the manufacture of beer which was 4 percent alcohol by weight. His bill would not have modified the 18th Amendment. Republican "wets" were able to win a minor victory on December 23, 1931, when they secured an agreement establishing a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee which would hold hearings regarding modification of the Volstead Act and repeal of the 18th Amendment. Senator John J. Blaine (R-Wisc.), a leader of the Senate's Republican "wets", was named subcommittee chair. Although the five-member subcommittee had a three-member "dry" majority, "wets" only wanted to use the subcommittee to lay the groundwork for a vote (at some indeterminate future) on a Prohibition bill (of some undetermined type). "Wets" won another victory a few days later when the Senate Committee on Manufactures agreed to hold hearings on Bingham's 4 percent beer bill.
These small victories emboldened "wet" forces. On December 26, Senator Bingham submitted legislation to repeal the 18th Amendment. Three-fourths of the state legislatures were required to approve any amendment, and Bingham believed that too many legislatures still supported Prohibition. Bingham's bill therefore proposed submitting the amendment to the public via a national referendum or ratification by conventions specially elected by voters in each state. In the House, where "wet" forces were in somewhat disarray, Majority Leader Henry T. Rainey (D-Ill.) (a "dry" himself) tried to block legislation by telling "wets" that they would have a single opportunity for a vote. It didn't matter if the bill was modification or repeal, he said. In response, a bipartisan caucus of "wets" decided to submit a plan to modify the 18th Amendment according to the recommendations issued in 1931 by the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (the Wickersham Commission), a panel established by President Herbert Hoover to study law enforcement problems under Prohibition.
In the first direct vote on the issue since Prohibition began, the Senate rejected the Bingham repeal resolution, 55 to 15, on January 21, 1932. "Drys" hailed the vote as symbolic of the weakness of the repeal forces.
Wavering support for changing Prohibition
"Wets" in Congress perceived that support for Prohibition was waning. A week after the defeat of the Bingham repeal proposal, House "wets" began drafting legislation to amend the Volstead Act to permit the manufacture of beer once more. Their goal was to force a vote before the session of Congress ended in July 1932. With only 34 "wet" votes in the Senate and 190 in the House, repeal lobbyists believed no action could be taken until after the November 1932 elections.
Congressional "wets" received a major boost on February 20 when a leading Democratic candidate for president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, announced he supported repeal of the 18th Amendment as a means of generating tax revenues for the federal government and states. Roosevelt's support for repeal boosted "wet" support in the House. On February 16, the House Judiciary Committee had voted 14-to-9 against the Beck-Linthicum resolution, which would have asked state legislatures to reaffirm or repeal the 18th Amendment. House "wets" then shocked political leaders in both sides on February 25 by obtaining 110 signatures on a discharge petition for the Beck-Linthicum resolution. The "wets" secured the required 145 signatures for discharge on March 1. The Beck-Linthicum resolution received 187 votes, resulting in the smallest majority "drys" had managed to muster since the start of Prohibition. House "wets", who considered the vote on Beck-Linthicum only a test of their growing strength, were thrilled by the vote.
The House test vote was encouraging to Senate "wets" as well. On March 19, Blaine's Judiciary subcommittee favorably reported a bill by Senator Bingham proposing the legalization of 4 percent beer. Surprisingly, the subcommittee report even called modification of the 18th Amendment useless. Three days later, a bipartisan group of 38 senators surprised the Senate by signing a letter demanding a vote to modify or repeal the 18th Amendment. The letter referred to four resolutions before Blaine's subcommittee. Senator George W. Norris (R-Neb.), chair of the full Judiciary Committee, promised the group that his committee would report at least one of the bills (favorably or not), and give senators a chance to vote on it on the Senate floor.
House "wets" appeared to suffer a setback on March 25 when the House rejected a bill, proposed by Rep. Thomas H. Cullen (D-N.Y.), to amend the Volstead Act to permit the manufacture of 2.75 percent beer and tax it.
"Wets" in the Senate also lost ground. Blaine began holding hearings on repeal of the 18th Amendment in mid April, and on April 19 the Senate Manufactures Committee unfavorably reported a 4 percent beer bill which had the perverse outcome of enabling a floor vote. In this test vote, "wets" were able to secure only 24 votes.
In May 1932, House "wets" shocked the political establishment again by securing enough signatures on a discharge petition to free the O'Connor-Hull bill from the House Ways and Means Committee. The House defeated the bill, which would have permitted 2.75 percent beer and taxed it at a rate of 3 percent of its retail value, 228 to 169. It was a significant drop in anti-Prohibition support.
Election of 1932 and effect on Prohibition repeal
The political situation among voters in the various states was strongly in favor of Prohibition repeal, however. Although a majority of delegates to the 1932 Republican National Convention, held in Chicago June 14 to 16, were in favor of repealing the 18th Amendment, President Hoover was not. A compromise was reached in which the convention adopted a party platform plank which advocated amending Prohibition to permit states to follow the law in whole or in part (subject to federal control). The plank also rejected a national referendum in favor of approval/disapproval by state legislatures. The platform plan was widely criticized for not taking a stand on Prohibition. "Dry" organizations, however, backed Hoover strongly, seeing in him their only chance of preserving Prohibition in any form.
At the 1932 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago from June 27 to July 2, an overwhelming majority supported a repeal of the 18th Amendment. The party's platform contained a plank proposing repeal by conventions specially elected by voters in each state (the Bingham proposal from earlier in the year). The plank also proposed allowing states and their localities to stay "dry" if they so chose. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the party's nominee for President of the United States, campaigned strongly in favor of repeal.
"Wets" of both parties in Congress were elated by the Democratic Party platform, and agreed, at a minimum, to seek significant amendment of the Volstead Act before the end of the 72nd Congress in March 1933. Senate "wets" were particularly encouraged after Senator Cameron A. Morrison (D-N.C.), a radical "dry", was defeated for reelection in the June 1932 Democratic primary and Senator Carter Glass (D-Va.), another strong "dry", abruptly began advocating repeal. However, when Senator Bingham attempted to move his repeal resolution forward, Senate leaders blocked the move. In the House, "wets" rushed to circulate discharge petitions on four bills which would make beer legal again.
By late fall, it was clear to many leaders in Congress that the "wet" movement already had majority support. Polls of candidates for Congress showed that at least 80 percent of them supported repeal of the 18th Amendment. Rep. John W. Summers (R-Wash.), "dry" chair of the House Judiciary Committee, now believed it was inevitable that the 18th Amendment would be resubmitted to the states. Speaker of the House John Nance Garner believed Congress would approve the sale of beer by the end of the session. Prominent "wets" in the Senate were less hopeful, as their forces were divided between supporting modification of the Volstead Act and outright repeal of the 18th Amendment.
On Election Day, more than 100 "dry" candidates lost their seats in Congress. In the House, a super-majority of new and reelected members supported outright repeal, while in the Senate the repeal super-majority was just three votes short. Two more repeal votes were gained when Senator Thomas J. Walsh (D-Mont.), a leading "dry", agreed to vote for modification or repeal on November 12, followed by Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) on November 18.
Passage of the Blaine Act
As the lame-duck session of Congress opened in November, House Majority Leader Rainey—bowing to the wishes of his caucus—announced that House leaders would move with all due speed on Prohibition changes. A survey of House members showed a strong majority for amending the Volstead Act to make beer legal again, with fewer in favor of a repeal of the 18th Amendment. Despite President Hoover's pledge to veto the legislation, Speaker Garner said he would clear all legislative calendars to give a "beer bill" priority before Congress was forced to adjourn.
On December 6, Senator Blaine introduced Senate Joint Resolution 211, whose text amended and rewrote the 18th Amendment to read that Congress shall not have "the power to authorize the transportation or importation into any State or Territory of the United States for use therein of intoxicating liquors for beverage or other purposes within the State or Territory if the laws in force therein prohibit such transportation or importation". Alcohol imported into a prohibited area was subject to local (not federal) law, and Congress was authorized to enact legislation to aid states in enforcing their own liquor laws.
Repeal failure in the House
The first attempt at repeal of the 18th Amendment came in the House. Speaker Garner (a "wet") surprised "wet" forces by announcing on November 23 that he himself had drafted a resolution (H.J.Res. 480) calling for repeal of the amendment and was prepared to suspend the rules of the House in order to get it passed. The Garner plan received a setback on December 2 when the House Judiciary Committee voted 13 to 6 to reject the resolution. Observers disputed whether the Garner resolution was flawed, or whether "drys" had decided to oppose it at last.
The House went into session again on December 5, and the Garner resolution went to the floor for a vote. Although Democratic Party whips had counted 275 votes in favor of repeal, the resolution failed to win the necessary two-thirds majority. The final vote was 272 to 144, with 79 former "drys" (66 Democrats and 13 Republicans) voting in favor of repeal. Angry and dejected, Garner proclaimed the issue "dead" for the remainder of the lame-duck session and said Congress would have to wait until the new "wet" majority took power in the 73rd Congress on March 4, 1933.
Rep. James M. Beck (R-Pa.), co-sponsor of the Beck-Linthicum bill (which had gone down to defeat nine months earlier), believed the House would have adopted Garner's resolution if he had not tried to force the issue on the first day of the lame-duck session.
The "beer bills"
The House leadership resigned itself to action on the "Collier bill", legislation sponsored by Rep. James Collier (D-Miss.) which would legalize 2.75 percent beer and wine and levy a $5 per barrel tax ($ in dollars) on beer and a 20 percent retail sales tax on wine. On December 15, the Ways and Means Committee voted 17 to 7 in favor of this bill (which was amended to legalize 3.2 percent beer). The bill was amended to prohibit legal sales of wine, but attempts to include a ban on bars and saloons were beaten back. Although proposed amendments threatened to split "wet" ranks, the House passed the Collier bill on December 21 by a surprising large margin of 230 to 165. An amendment to the bill restricted shipments of beer into states which chose to retain Prohibition.
In the Senate, both "beer bills" and 18th Amendment repeal resolutions were pursued. Senator Tydings proposed legislation authorizing the sale of beer with any percentage of alcohol, and taxing beer at 16 percent of its retail value. Senator Bingham, however, sought passage of a measure identical to the original Collier bill. "Wets" in the Senate also sought to bring a repeal resolution to the floor as swiftly as possible. The Senate voted down, 48 to 23, an attempt on December 23 to bring the Bingham bill to the floor for debate and a vote. Senators pointed out that the bill did not actually amend the Volstead Act, but was stand-alone legislation. They feared that the Bingham-Collier bill would be found unconstitutional unless the Volstead Act itself were amended. Senator Blaine promised an immediate redraft to meet these concerns.
Moving the Blaine bill in the Senate
On January 5, 1933, the Blaine subcommittee substantially amended S.J.Res. 211 during markup. Section one of the proposed constitutional amendment now explicitly repealed the 18th amendment. New language in section two prohibited the sale of intoxicating beverages in any state or territory which prohibited them, while section three gave Congress the concurrent power to regulate or prohibit the consumption of intoxicating beverages in certain establishments. The final section provided for ratification by state legislatures, with a seven-year time limit. The new text was sharply criticized by repeal advocates, who saw the new ratification procedure as a breach of faith and who strongly objected to the concurrent federal power granted in section three.
The full Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported S.J.Res. 211 on January 9 in an 11 to 5 vote.
Blaine moved to have the Senate consider S.J.Res. 211 on February 14. "Drys" in the Senate engaged in an eight-hour filibuster, led by Senators Morris Sheppard (D-Tex.) and Smith W. Brookhart (R-Iowa). Finally, frustrated by the filibuster's blockage of all Senate business (including emergency legislation to deal with the Great Depression's banking crisis), a successful cloture vote occurred at 10 P.M. which ended the filibuster.
During debate on the Blaine bill on February 15, the Senate made two substantive changes to the resolution. Senator Joseph T. Robinson (D-Ark.) offered an amendment in the form of a substitution to provide for ratification by state convention rather than state legislatures. The amendment was agreed to by a vote of 45 to 15. Senator Robinson then offered an amendment striking section two, but then modified his own motion to strike instead section three. The amendment was agreed to by a vote of 33 to 32. The Senate resumed debate on February 16. Senator David A. Reed (R-Pa.) asked for reconsideration of the vote to strike section three, and Senator Carter Glass attempted to offer S.J.Res. 202 as an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Glass' motion was rejected by a vote of 14 to 70. Senator Tydings attempted to prevent Congress from taxing any intoxicating beverage it chose to prohibit, but his amendment was rejected in a voice vote. Glass attempted again to substitute S.J.Res. 202 (this time as an amendment), and was again rejected 38 to 46. Reed's amendment to restore section three was also rejected, by a vote of 37 to 47. Senator Thomas Gore (D-Okla.) attempted to amend section two to bar the sale of intoxicating beverages for private profit, but his motion was rejected by voice vote.
The Senate then approved the amended resolution by a vote of 63 to 23, five more votes than the required two-thirds majority.
Moving the Blaine bill in the House
Adoption of S.J.Res. 211 created new repeal activity in the House. Majority Leader Rainey called an immediate meeting of the Democratic caucus, and Speaker Garner said he intended to seek suspension of the rules in order to bring repeal to a quick vote and to bar any attempt to amend the resolution on the floor.
On February 20, Majority Leader Rainey asked for suspension of the rules and immediate adoption of S.J.Res. 211. Debate was limited to just 20 minutes pro and con. The House adopted Rainey's motion on a vote of 289 to 121. S.J.Res. 211 was passed with 15 more votes than the required two-thirds majority.
Adoption of the 21st Amendment
S.J.Res. 211 was sent to the United States Secretary of State on February 20, 1933.
On March 21, 1933, Congress enacted the Cullen-Harrison Act, which redefined "intoxicating beverage" as one with 3.2 percent alcohol by weight. The Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect on April 7, 1933.
The 21st Amendment was ratified by state ratifying conventions on December 5, 1933. A nationwide radio audience listened in as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
1933 in American law
72nd United States Congress
Prohibition in the United States
United States federal controlled substances legislation
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full%20Metal%20Panic%21
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Full Metal Panic!
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is a series of light novels written by Shoji Gatoh and illustrated by Shiki Douji. The series follows Sousuke Sagara, a member of the covert anti-terrorist private military organization known as Mithril, tasked with protecting Kaname Chidori, a hot-headed Japanese high school girl.
Individual chapters are published on Monthly Dragon Magazine, followed by a paperback compilation released by Fujimi Shobo's Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. The novels are split between stories focusing on Sousuke's mission as a soldier of Mithril and comedic side stories centered on his life at Jindai High School.
The series has been adapted into different media; including four anime television series: Full Metal Panic! by Gonzo in 2002, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu and Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid by Kyoto Animation in 2003 and 2005 respectively. An OVA was also released in 2006; and the newest television series, Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory by Xebec, premiered in April 2018. The series also had several different manga series.
Tokyopop licensed the novels for English-language publication in North America and released parts of the series, while ADV Films licensed and dubbed the first season and the spin-off. The second season was licensed by Kadokawa Pictures USA with ADV Films producing the dub yet again. Mandalay Pictures acquired the film rights to the series in 2009. At Anime USA 2009, Funimation announced that it had acquired the rights to the first and second series of Full Metal Panic! and both were re-released and remastered on DVD and Blu-ray in 2010. The series began airing in North America on November 22, 2010, on the Funimation Channel. The Fumoffu series made its North American television debut on the Funimation Channel on November 15, 2010.
A spin-off to the light-novel series called Full Metal Panic! Another was serialized between 2011 and 2016. Another received a manga adaptation split in two series.
The light novels have sold 11 million copies.
Plot
The series follows Sousuke Sagara, a member of a covert anti-terrorist private military organization known as Mithril, tasked with protecting Kaname Chidori, a spirited Japanese high school girl. He moves to Japan to study at Chidori's school, Jindai High School, with assistance from his comrades Kurz Weber and Melissa Mao. Having never experienced social interactions, Sousuke is seen as a military maniac by his schoolmates as he interprets everyday situations from a combat perspective. He comes to relate with Chidori who realizes that Sousuke is protecting her, but he does not reveal the reasons due to orders as well as the fact that he does not know why Chidori is being targeted by different organizations.
Development
When starting the series, Shoji Gatoh commented that as the series' theme was "Boy Meets Girl." Gatoh worked in the order to keep that as the focus regardless of the several other conflicts the story presented. Gatoh and Shiki Douji had a close relationship in the making of the novels. Gatoh gave Douji freedom in the design of the characters such as Sagara and Leonardo who were given multiple traits. On the other hand, Gatoh also gave Douji references for "gentlemen" featured in the story.
In the making of the series Gatoh did not find difficulties in creating a balance between sci-fi and realistic elements since multiple Japanese series like Tetsujin 28 and Mazinger Z already provide the demographic a mixture between those elements. Originally, Douji felt that the characters were too realistic. Believing the teenage demographic would not like them, the author changed them so that were seen as cooler characters. While the duo did not have difficulties with the novels' serious storylines, they still had problems with comedy.
Chidori and Sousuke's relationship was based on Japanese comedy due to how the two interact. In order to create a more interesting dynamic between the two leads, Gatoh wanted to change the ways Sagara and Chidori interact as he was tired of female characters requiring to be protected in the making for the light novels. As a result, Chidori instead supports Sagara multiple times.
Media
Light novels
The light novel series Full Metal Panic! is written by Shoji Gatoh and illustrated by Shiki Douji. It was serialised by Fujimi Shobo in its monthly magazine Gekkan Dragon Magazine since June 1998 and published under the Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint in tankōbon format since September 1998. Gatoh often found delays in writing of the novels, which led to delays to the publication of the series' volumes. The series focuses on Sergeant Sousuke Sagara's arrival to the Jindai High School where he was assigned to protect the student Kaname Chidori while also acting as a student.
A total of twelve full length volumes have been released from September 18, 1998, to August 20, 2010. In parallel to the twelve volumes, nine standalone light novels of the series (which form the short story collection) have also been published from December 17, 1998, to August 20, 2011. Finally two more volumes titled Side Arms focusing on the past of some characters (which form the side story collection) and the birth of Mithril and Amalgam have been published on April 20, 2004, and July 20, 2006. In contrast to the full length volumes, short story collection focuses on the comedy elements from the series. In January 2010, Gatoh wrote another of these stories in celebration of Gekkan Dragon Magazines 300th issue, which has been included in the last short story collection volume. Another series of spin-off novels has been released by Naoto Ōguro with supervision of Shoji Gatoh from August 20, 2011, to February 20, 2016, consisting of thirteen volumes and set years after the original series' ending. The light novels have also been adapted into various manga, as well as three anime television series and an OVA episode for which Gatoh was also part of the staff.
Tokyopop licensed the Full Metal Panic! series for North America release, publishing the first regular light novel on September 11, 2007. The latest released volume is the fourth on February 1, 2011, which is a compilation from the original fourth and fifth full-length volumes from the series. No short story collection volumes nor side story collection ones have been published and the company has shut down its publishing operations in North America on May 31, 2011. In 2015, at Anime Expo and San Diego Comic-Con, Tokyopop announced that it would be relaunching its publishing operations in North America in 2016 and that they will consider light novels, but nothing has been disclosed about Full Metal Panic! novels publication.
On March 18, 2019, J-Novel Club announced that all the original 12 novels will be translated again and released in English. The series was released as e-books starting that year, with the final volume released in 2021. Hardcover "Collectors Editions," each compiling three novels per volume, were released by J-Novel Club starting in 2020. On July 1, 2022, J-Novel announced that they were translating the short stories.
On May 19, 2023, Kadokawa announced that a new Full Metal Panic! series will be published, centering on Sousuke and Kaname two decades after the events of FMP!
Manga
The Full Metal Panic! light novel series has been adapted to manga on multiple occasions. The first manga series: Full Metal Panic, was serialized in Monthly Comic Dragon by Retsu Tateo. This manga was collected in nine tankōbon volumes published from August 30, 2000, to July 1, 2005. Announced in July 2003, Full Metal Panic! became one of the first manga series licensed by ADV Manga. They released all of the volumes between November 10, 2003 and April 11, 2006.
A parallel series titled which focused more on the comedic elements from the franchise was also written by Retsu Tateo and ran for seven volumes between November 1, 2003, and September 1, 2006.
was a spin-off series by Tomohiro Nagai. Five volumes were released between January 30, 2001, and April 1, 2003. Overload was licensed by ADV Manga in December 2004, and all of its volumes were published in English between June 6, 2005, and May 24, 2006.
Tomohiro Nagai also wrote which is a single tankōbon manga published on July 1, 2003, focused more on the action elements from the franchise.
, written by Shoji Gatoh and illustrated by Hiroshi Ueda, focuses on the missions of Sousuke as a sergeant. The first volume was published on August 1, 2005, and the final volume: the nineteenth, was published on September 20, 2013. The story and events of this manga adaption are based on the fourth Full Metal Panic! light novel and onwards.
Anime
Full Metal Panic!
The anime series was produced by Gonzo Digimation and originally aired in 2002 after its original air date was canceled because of the September 11 attacks. The series was licensed by ADV Films for North American release in 2003. The first three novels form the basis for the anime. The series was available on the Anime Network on Demand from 2003 to 2004.
The production of 3 director's cut movies based on the first television series was announced in 2017. The 1st SECTION Boy Meets Girl premiered on November 25, 2017, at Kadokawa Cinema Shinjuku in Japan,
2nd SECTION One Night Stand premiered on January 13, 2018, and 3rd SECTION Into the Blue premiered on January 20, 2018. Home video releases for the films were planned for February 28, 2018, for the 1st film, followed by March 28 for the 2nd film, and April 28 for the 3rd film.
Fumoffu
is a companion series to the anime series Full Metal Panic! by Kyoto Animation, and takes place between the first season and The Second Raid. Markedly different in tone to the first series, Fumoffu is based on the more comical short stories Gatou published alongside the main novels, emphasizing the high school romantic comedy aspects of Full Metal Panic! with often crude humor and focuses on the romantic tension between Sousuke Sagara and Kaname Chidori. It frequently parodies itself and anime stereotypes. None of the mecha combat or political intrigue, which characterized much of the original Full Metal Panic!, can be seen in the series. The only reference to the mecha aspect of Full Metal Panic! is the Bonta-kun, which is one of the most prominent parodies in the anime. Sousuke uses spare Bonta-kun costumes to make highly effective suits of power armor, but they look like teddy bears wearing army gear and can only say: "Fu" and "Mo" in different combinations.
The Second Raid
is the direct sequel to the original anime series. It was produced by Kyoto Animation and ran for 13 episodes. The series is based on the Ending Day by Day novels and takes place three months after the events that occurred in the Tuatha de Danaan at the end of the original Full Metal Panic! series. Mithril learns of a secret organization that has technology able to counter the ECS (Electronic Conceal System) mode. The organization, known as Amalgam, has access to Black Technology, which was obtained from the Whispered. Like the other intelligence agencies, Amalgam intends to obtain more. Sousuke's mission to protect Chidori is terminated by Mithril, instead leaving her in the care of an anonymous agent known as Wraith.
There is a one episode OVA that takes place after Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid. It is a humorous stand-alone story. It focuses on the Captain of the Tuatha De Danaan: Teletha Tessa Testarossa, rather than the two main characters of the series. The OVA is based on short story Wari to Hima na Sentaichou no Ichi Nichi (A comparatively leisurely day of the squadron commander) in short story collection Dounimo Naranai Gori Muchuu (Helpless in the thick of it). The story is also told in chapters 13 & 14 of Full Metal Panic Sigma manga volume 4.
Home video releases also included an "episode 000" and a 7-part Location Scouting in Hong Kong documentary. Episode 000 includes footage from various parts of the television broadcast episodes, but also includes new scenes. The Location Scouting in Hong Kong documentary includes various locations the television production staff members had gone to as inspiration for creating scenes used in the Hong Kong episodes, featuring appearances from the series producers, and commentaries from them.
Invisible Victory
is the fourth TV series in the franchise. Kyoto Animation had not returned to produce the fourth anime adaptation. Instead, it was produced by studio Xebec. It premiered in April 2018. During Anime Expo 2017, the series creator confirmed that Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory is a "continuation" that won't contain any "explanation or expository episodes." He stated that the pacing of the story is going to be "full throttle from the get-go" although it would still "follow the original work pretty closely." The series consisted of 12 episodes. The opening song is "Even...if" and the ending song is "Yes", both performed by Tamaru Yamada.
Live action film
A live action film adaptation was announced by Mandalay Pictures in April 2009, with Zac Efron rumored to be attached to the project. Efron has since confirmed a meeting took place regarding the project but added that the adaptation was unlikely to happen.
Video game
Full Metal Panic! Fight! Who Dares Wins, developed by B.B. Studio and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., was released on May 31, 2018. Specialist Box limited edition includes Invisible Victory behind-the-scenes Blu-ray, a special novel by Shoji Gatoh, drama CD, replica autographed mini script of "Megami no Rainichi: Date Hen," a case for the Blu-ray and CD, and a special Shiki Douji-illustrated box. Early purchases include download code for the 'Armed Slave-Use Special Weapons Three Set' (Boxer 2nd Revision 76mm Shot Cannon (Armor-Piercing Ammunition) Cartridge Extension Model, ASG96-B Revision 57mm Glide Cannon, GRAW-X Single Molecule Cutter (Repulsion Field Prototype Model)).
Reception
The second DVD volume of Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid was given a favorable review by Theron Martin of Anime News Network for pushing the character developments of Sousuke and Kaname as well as dramatic elements beyond comedy and action. Describing the impact of the volume, Martin explains that "[t]he full impact of that [Sousuke and Kaname's relationship] comes out beautifully in episode 7, when Kaname seeks out Sousuke in a moment of fear and, for the first time, Sousuke isn't there for her. It's one of those telling moments that can define an entire series."
THEM Anime Reviews has noted that the Arm Slaves, like most real life vehicles, are done so meticulously that fans of mecha series would "scour online catalogues for tech books and sketches." Bureau 42 says that the "mecha[Arm Slave] action in the show is very well done. While I can't compare the action with other more grounded mecha shows like Patlabor, the combat is very well done and easy to follow, and visually interesting." Triforce commented that Arm Slave battles in the Full Metal Panic! series would be able to keep viewer's attention to the show.
Negative criticism has surfaced on the role of the Arm Slaves throughout the Full Metal Panic! series. For instance, Ender's review states that their mecha roles are confusing that the Arm Slaves are both "08th MS Team soldiers and Dragon Ball Z-type fighters, hurling energy balls at each other and going "Super Saiya-jin." Anime Database rated the Full Metal Panic! series 4 out of 5 because of the Arm Slaves battles since they start out from being good to being very unrealistic. GameSpot Union comments on the relationship between the Arm Slaves and the animation done on Full Metal Panic!, saying both animation and camera views were bad.
The novels have over 11 million copies in print.
See also
Amagi Brilliant Park, another series written by Shoji Gatoh
References
Further reading
External links
1998 Japanese novels
2000 manga
2001 manga
2002 anime television series debuts
2003 manga
2003 anime television series debuts
2005 anime television series debuts
2006 anime OVAs
2011 Japanese novels
2012 manga
Action anime and manga
ADV Films
ADV Manga
Afghanistan in fiction
Alternate history anime
Anime and manga based on light novels
Fujimi Fantasia Bunko
Fujimi Shobo manga
Funimation
Gonzo (company)
J-Novel Club books
Japan in fiction
Japanese alternate history novels
Kadokawa Dwango franchises
Kadokawa Shoten manga
Kyoto Animation
Light novels
Military anime and manga
Real robot anime and manga
Science fiction anime and manga
Seinen manga
Shōnen manga
Television shows based on light novels
Terrorism in fiction
Wowow original programming
Xebec (studio)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendre%20transformation
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Legendre transformation
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In mathematics, the Legendre transformation (or Legendre transform), first introduced by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1787 when studying the minimal surface problem, is an involutive transformation on real-valued functions that are convex on a real variable. Specifically, if a real-valued multivariable function is convex on one of its independent real variables, then the Legendre transform with respect to this variable is applicable to the function. In physical problems, it is used to convert functions of one quantity (such as position, pressure, or temperature) into functions of the conjugate quantity (momentum, volume, and entropy, respectively). In this way, it is commonly used in classical mechanics to derive the Hamiltonian formalism out of the Lagrangian formalism (or vice versa) and in thermodynamics to derive the thermodynamic potentials, as well as in the solution of differential equations of several variables.
For sufficiently smooth functions on the real line, the Legendre transform of a function can be specified, up to an additive constant, by the condition that the functions' first derivatives are inverse functions of each other. This can be expressed in Euler's derivative notation as
where is an operator of differentiation, represents an argument or input to the associated function, is an inverse function such that ,
or equivalently, as and in Lagrange's notation.
The generalization of the Legendre transformation to affine spaces and non-convex functions is known as the convex conjugate (also called the Legendre–Fenchel transformation), which can be used to construct a function's convex hull.
Definition
Let be an interval, and a convex function; then the Legendre transform of is the function defined by
where denotes the supremum over , e.g., in is chosen such that is maximized at each , or is such that as a bounded value throughout exists (e.g., when is a linear function).
The transform is always well-defined when is convex. This definition requires to be bounded from above in in order for the supremum to exist.
The generalization to convex functions on a convex set is straightforward: has domain
and is defined by
where denotes the dot product of and .
The function is called the convex conjugate function of . For historical reasons (rooted in analytic mechanics), the conjugate variable is often denoted , instead of . If the convex function is defined on the whole line and is everywhere differentiable, then
can be interpreted as the negative of the -intercept of the tangent line to the graph of that has slope .
The Legendre transformation is an application of the duality relationship between points and lines. The functional relationship specified by can be represented equally well as a set of points, or as a set of tangent lines specified by their slope and intercept values.
Understanding the Legendre transform in terms of derivatives
For a differentiable convex function on the real line with the first derivative and its inverse , the Legendre transform of , , can be specified, up to an additive constant, by the condition that the functions' first derivatives are inverse functions of each other, i.e., and .
To see this, first note that if as a convex function on the real line is differentiable and is a critical point of the function of , then the supremum is achieved at (by convexity, see the first figure in this Wikipedia page). Therefore, the Legendre transform of is .
Then, suppose that the first derivative is invertible and let the inverse be . Then for each , the point is the unique critical point of the function (i.e., ) because and the function's first derivative with respect to at is . Hence we have for each . By differentiating with respect to , we find
Since this simplifies to . In other words, and are inverses to each other.
In general, if as the inverse of , then so integration gives . with a constant .
In practical terms, given , the parametric plot of versus amounts to the graph of versus .
In some cases (e.g. thermodynamic potentials, below), a non-standard requirement is used, amounting to an alternative definition of with a minus sign,
Formal Definition in Physics Context
In analytical mechanics and thermodynamics, Legendre transformation is usually defined as follows: suppose is a function of , then we have
.
performing Legendre transformation on this function means that we take as the independent variable, so that the above expression can be written as
,
and according to Leibniz's rule , then we have
,
and taking , we have , which means
When is a function of variables , then we can perform the Legendre transformation on each one or several variables: we have
where . Then if we want to perform Legendre transformation on, e.g. , then we take together with as independent variables, and with Leibniz's rule we have
.
so for function , we have
.
We can also do this transformation for variables . If we do it to all the variables, then we have
where .
In analytical mechanics, people perform this transformation on variables of the Lagrangian to get the Hamiltonian:
and in thermodynamics, people perform this transformation on variables according to the type of thermodynamic system they want. E.g. starting from the cardinal function of state, the internal energy , we have
,
we can perform Legendre transformation on either or both of yielding
and each of these three expressions has a physical meaning.
This definition of Legendre transformation is the one originally introduced by Legendre in his work in 1787, and still applied by physicists nowadays. Indeed, this definition can be mathematically rigorous if we treat all the variables and functions defined above, e.g. as differentiable functions defined on an open set of or on a differentiable manifold, and their differentials (which are treated as cotangent vector field in the context of differentiable manifold). And this definition is equivalent to the modern mathematicians' definition as long as is differentiable and convex for the variables .
Properties
The Legendre transform of a convex function, of which double derivative values are all positive, is also a convex function of which double derivative values are all positive.Let us show this with a doubly differentiable function with all positive double derivative values and with a bijective (invertible) derivative. For a fixed , let maximize or make the function bounded over . Then the Legendre transformation of is , thus,by the maximizing or bounding condition . Note that depends on . (This can be visually shown in the 1st figure of this page above.) Thus where , meaning that is the inverse of that is the derivative of (so ). Note that is also differentiable with the following derivative (Inverse function rule),Thus, the Legendre transformation is the composition of differentiable functions, hence it is differentiable. Applying the product rule and the chain rule with the found equality yieldsgiving so is convex with its double derivatives are all positive.
It follows that the Legendre transformation is an involution, i.e., : By using the above identities as , , and its derivative , Note that this derivation does not require the condition to have all positive values in double derivative of the original function .
Identities
As shown above, for a convex function , with maximizing or making bounded at each to define the Legendre transform and with , the following identities hold.
,
,
.
Examples
Example 1
Consider the exponential function which has the domain . From the definition, the Legendre transform is
where remains to be determined. To evaluate the supremum, compute the derivative of with respect to and set equal to zero:
The second derivative is negative everywhere, so the maximal value is achieved at . Thus, the Legendre transform is
and has domain This illustrates that the domains of a function and its Legendre transform can be different.
To find the Legendre transformation of the Legendre transformation of ,
where a variable is intentionally used as the argument of the function to show the involution property of the Legendre transform as . we compute
thus the maximum occurs at because the second derivative over the domain of as As a result, is found as
thereby confirming that as expected.
Example 2
Let defined on , where is a fixed constant.
For fixed, the function of , has the first derivative and second derivative ; there is one stationary point at , which is always a maximum.
Thus, and
The first derivatives of , 2, and of , , are inverse functions to each other. Clearly, furthermore,
namely .
Example 3
Let for .
For fixed, is continuous on compact, hence it always takes a finite maximum on it; it follows that the domain of the Legendre transform of is .
The stationary point at (found by setting that the first derivative of with respect to equal to zero) is in the domain if and only if . Otherwise the maximum is taken either at or because the second derivative of with respect to is negative as ; for a part of the domain the maximum that can take with respect to is obtained at while for it becomes the maximum at . Thus, it follows that
Example 4
The function is convex, for every (strict convexity is not required for the Legendre transformation to be well defined). Clearly is never bounded from above as a function of , unless . Hence is defined on and . (The definition of the Legendre transform requires the existence of the supremum, that requires upper bounds.)
One may check involutivity: of course, is always bounded as a function of , hence . Then, for all one has
and hence .
Example 5: several variables
Let
be defined on , where is a real, positive definite matrix.
Then is convex, and
has gradient and Hessian , which is negative; hence the stationary point is a maximum.
We have , and
Behavior of differentials under Legendre transforms
The Legendre transform is linked to integration by parts, .
Let be a function of two independent variables and , with the differential
Assume that the function is convex in for all , so that one may perform the Legendre transform on in , with the variable conjugate to (for information, there is a relation where is a point in maximizing or making bounded for given and ). Since the new independent variable of the transform with respect to is , the differentials and in devolve to and in the differential of the transform, i.e., we build another function with its differential expressed in terms of the new basis and .
We thus consider the function so that
The function is the Legendre transform of , where only the independent variable has been supplanted by . This is widely used in thermodynamics, as illustrated below.
Applications
Analytical mechanics
A Legendre transform is used in classical mechanics to derive the Hamiltonian formulation from the Lagrangian formulation, and conversely. A typical Lagrangian has the form
where are coordinates on , is a positive real matrix, and
For every fixed, is a convex function of , while plays the role of a constant.
Hence the Legendre transform of as a function of is the Hamiltonian function,
In a more general setting, are local coordinates on the tangent bundle of a manifold . For each , is a convex function of the tangent space . The Legendre transform gives the Hamiltonian as a function of the coordinates of the cotangent bundle ; the inner product used to define the Legendre transform is inherited from the pertinent canonical symplectic structure. In this abstract setting, the Legendre transformation corresponds to the tautological one-form.
Thermodynamics
The strategy behind the use of Legendre transforms in thermodynamics is to shift from a function that depends on a variable to a new (conjugate) function that depends on a new variable, the conjugate of the original one. The new variable is the partial derivative of the original function with respect to the original variable. The new function is the difference between the original function and the product of the old and new variables. Typically, this transformation is useful because it shifts the dependence of, e.g., the energy from an extensive variable to its conjugate intensive variable, which can often be controlled more easily in a physical experiment.
For example, the internal energy is an explicit function of the extensive variables entropy , volume , and chemical composition (e.g., )
which has a total differential
where .
(Subscripts are not necessary by the definition of partial derivatives but left here for clarifying variables.) Stipulating some common reference state, by using the (non-standard) Legendre transform of the internal energy with respect to volume , the enthalpy may be obtained as the following.
To get the (standard) Legendre transform of the internal energy with respect to volume , the function is defined first, then it shall be maximized or bounded by . To do this, the condition needs to be satisfied, so is obtained. This approach is justified because is a linear function with respect to (so a convex function on ) by the definition of extensive variables. The non-standard Legendre transform here is obtained by negating the standard version, so .
is definitely a state function as it is obtained by adding ( and as state variables) to a state function , so its differential is an exact differential. Because of and the fact that it must be an exact differential, .
The enthalpy is suitable for description of processes in which the pressure is controlled from the surroundings.
It is likewise possible to shift the dependence of the energy from the extensive variable of entropy, , to the (often more convenient) intensive variable , resulting in the Helmholtz and Gibbs free energies. The Helmholtz free energy , and Gibbs energy , are obtained by performing Legendre transforms of the internal energy and enthalpy, respectively,
The Helmholtz free energy is often the most useful thermodynamic potential when temperature and volume are controlled from the surroundings, while the Gibbs energy is often the most useful when temperature and pressure are controlled from the surroundings.
Variable capacitor
As another example from physics, consider a parallel conductive plate capacitor, in which the plates can move relative to one another. Such a capacitor would allow transfer of the electric energy which is stored in the capacitor into external mechanical work, done by the force acting on the plates. One may think of the electric charge as analogous to the "charge" of a gas in a cylinder, with the resulting mechanical force exerted on a piston.
Compute the force on the plates as a function of , the distance which separates them. To find the force, compute the potential energy, and then apply the definition of force as the gradient of the potential energy function.
The electrostatic potential energy stored in a capacitor of the capacitance and a positive electric charge or negative charge on each conductive plate is (with using the definition of the capacitance as ),
where the dependence on the area of the plates, the dielectric constant of the insulation material between the plates, and the separation are abstracted away as the capacitance . (For a parallel plate capacitor, this is proportional to the area of the plates and inversely proportional to the separation.)
The force between the plates due to the electric field created by the charge separation is then
If the capacitor is not connected to any electric circuit, then the electric charges on the plates remain constant and the voltage varies when the plates move with respect to each other, and the force is the negative gradient of the electrostatic potential energy as
where as the charge is fixed in this configuration.
However, instead, suppose that the voltage between the plates is maintained constant as the plate moves by connection to a battery, which is a reservoir for electric charges at a constant potential difference. Then the amount of charges is a variable instead of the voltage; and are the Legendre conjugate to each other. To find the force, first compute the non-standard Legendre transform with respect to (also with using ),
This transformation is possible because is now a linear function of so is convex on it. The force now becomes the negative gradient of this Legendre transform, resulting in the same force obtained from the original function ,
The two conjugate energies and happen to stand opposite to each other (their signs are opposite), only because of the linearity of the capacitance—except now is no longer a constant. They reflect the two different pathways of storing energy into the capacitor, resulting in, for instance, the same "pull" between a capacitor's plates.
Probability theory
In large deviations theory, the rate function is defined as the Legendre transformation of the logarithm of the moment generating function of a random variable. An important application of the rate function is in the calculation of tail probabilities of sums of i.i.d. random variables, in particular in Cramér's theorem.
If are i.i.d. random variables, let be the associated random walk and the moment generating function of . For , . Hence, by Markov's inequality, one has for and
where . Since the left-hand side is independent of , we may take the infimum of the right-hand side, which leads one to consider the supremum of , i.e., the Legendre transform of , evaluated at .
Microeconomics
Legendre transformation arises naturally in microeconomics in the process of finding the supply of some product given a fixed price on the market knowing the cost function , i.e. the cost for the producer to make/mine/etc. units of the given product.
A simple theory explains the shape of the supply curve based solely on the cost function. Let us suppose the market price for a one unit of our product is . For a company selling this good, the best strategy is to adjust the production so that its profit is maximized. We can maximize the profit
by differentiating with respect to and solving
represents the optimal quantity of goods that the producer is willing to supply, which is indeed the supply itself:
If we consider the maximal profit as a function of price, , we see that it is the Legendre transform of the cost function .
Geometric interpretation
For a strictly convex function, the Legendre transformation can be interpreted as a mapping between the graph of the function and the family of tangents of the graph. (For a function of one variable, the tangents are well-defined at all but at most countably many points, since a convex function is differentiable at all but at most countably many points.)
The equation of a line with slope and -intercept is given by ( ) For this line to be tangent to the graph of a function at the point requires
and
Being the derivative of a strictly convex function, the function is strictly monotone and thus injective. The second equation can be solved for allowing elimination of from the first, and solving for the -intercept of the tangent as a function of its slope where denotes the Legendre transform of
The family of tangent lines of the graph of parameterized by the slope is therefore given by
or, written implicitly, by the solutions of the equation
The graph of the original function can be reconstructed from this family of lines as the envelope of this family by demanding
Eliminating from these two equations gives
Identifying with and recognizing the right side of the preceding equation as the Legendre transform of yield
Legendre transformation in more than one dimension
For a differentiable real-valued function on an open convex subset of the Legendre conjugate of the pair is defined to be the pair , where is the image of under the gradient mapping , and is the function on given by the formula
where
is the scalar product on . The multidimensional transform can be interpreted as an encoding of the convex hull of the function's epigraph in terms of its supporting hyperplanes. This can be seen as consequence of the following two observations. On the one hand, the hyperplane tangent to the epigraph of at some point has normal vector . On the other hand, any closed convex set can be characterized via the set of its supporting hyperplanes by the equations , where is the support function of . But the definition of Legendre transform via the maximization matches precisely that of the support function, that is, . We thus conclude that the Legendre transform characterizes the epigraph in the sense that the tangent plane to the epigraph at any point is given explicitly by
Alternatively, if is a vector space and is its dual vector space, then for each point of and of , there is a natural identification of the cotangent spaces with and with . If is a real differentiable function over , then its exterior derivative, , is a section of the cotangent bundle and as such, we can construct a map from to . Similarly, if is a real differentiable function over , then defines a map from to . If both maps happen to be inverses of each other, we say we have a Legendre transform. The notion of the tautological one-form is commonly used in this setting.
When the function is not differentiable, the Legendre transform can still be extended, and is known as the Legendre-Fenchel transformation. In this more general setting, a few properties are lost: for example, the Legendre transform is no longer its own inverse (unless there are extra assumptions, like convexity).
Legendre transformation on manifolds
Let be a smooth manifold, let and be a vector bundle on and its associated bundle projection, respectively. Let be a smooth function. We think of as a Lagrangian by analogy with the classical case where , and for some positive number and function .
As usual, the dual of is denote by . The fiber of over is denoted , and the restriction of to is denoted by . The Legendre transformation of is the smooth morphism defined by , where .
In other words, is the covector that sends to the directional derivative .
To describe the Legendre transformation locally, let be a coordinate chart over which is trivial. Picking a trivialization of over , we obtain charts and . In terms of these charts, we have , where for all . If, as in the classical case, the restriction of to each fiber is strictly convex and bounded below by a positive definite quadratic form minus a constant, then the Legendre transform is a diffeomorphism. Suppose that is a diffeomorphism and let be the “Hamiltonian” function defined by where . Using the natural isomorphism , we may view the Legendre transformation of as a map . Then we have
Further properties
Scaling properties
The Legendre transformation has the following scaling properties: For ,
It follows that if a function is homogeneous of degree then its image under the Legendre transformation is a homogeneous function of degree , where . (Since , with , implies .) Thus, the only monomial whose degree is invariant under Legendre transform is the quadratic.
Behavior under translation
Behavior under inversion
Behavior under linear transformations
Let be a linear transformation. For any convex function on , one has
where is the adjoint operator of defined by
and is the push-forward of along
A closed convex function is symmetric with respect to a given set of orthogonal linear transformations,
if and only if is symmetric with respect to .
Infimal convolution
The infimal convolution of two functions and is defined as
Let be proper convex functions on . Then
Fenchel's inequality
For any function and its convex conjugate Fenchel's inequality (also known as the Fenchel–Young inequality) holds for every and , i.e., independent pairs,
See also
Dual curve
Projective duality
Young's inequality for products
Convex conjugate
Moreau's theorem
Integration by parts
Fenchel's duality theorem
References
Fenchel, W. (1949). "On conjugate convex functions", Can. J. Math 1: 73-77.
Further reading
External links
Legendre transform with figures at maze5.net
Legendre and Legendre-Fenchel transforms in a step-by-step explanation at onmyphd.com
Transforms
Duality theories
Concepts in physics
Convex analysis
Mathematical physics
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubular%20Bells
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Tubular Bells
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Tubular Bells is the debut studio album by the British musician Mike Oldfield, released on 25 May 1973 as the first album on Virgin Records. It comprises two mostly instrumental tracks. Oldfield, who was 19 years old when it was recorded, played almost all the instruments.
Tubular Bells initially sold slowly, but gained worldwide attention in December 1973 when its opening theme was used for the soundtrack to the horror film The Exorcist. This led to a surge in sales which increased Oldfield's profile and played an important part in the growth of the Virgin Group. It stayed in the top ten of the UK Albums Chart for one year from March 1974, during which it reached number one for one week. It reached number three on the US Billboard 200, and number one in Canada and Australia. It has sold more than 2.7 million copies in the UK and an estimated 15 million copies worldwide.
An orchestral version produced by David Bedford was released in 1975 as The Orchestral Tubular Bells. It was followed by the albums Tubular Bells II (1992), Tubular Bells III (1998), The Millennium Bell (1999), and a re-recorded version, Tubular Bells 2003, for its 30th anniversary. A remastered edition was released in 2009. Its contribution to British music was recognised when Oldfield played extracts during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. In 2010, Tubular Bells was one of ten classic album covers from British artists commemorated on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail.
Background
Oldfield learned to play the guitar at an early age, and as a teenager he became the bass player for the Whole World, a band put together by Kevin Ayers formerly of Soft Machine. The Whole World recorded their album Shooting at the Moon (1970) at Abbey Road Studios over several months in 1970, when Oldfield was 17. When the group did not have a recording session booked in the morning, Oldfield would arrive early and experiment with the different instruments, including pianos, harpischords, a Mellotron and various orchestral percussion instruments, and learned to play each of them.
The Whole World broke up in mid-1971 and Ayers lent Oldfield a two-track Bang & Olufsen Beocord " tape recorder. Oldfield blocked off the erase head of the tape machine, which allowed him to record onto one track, bounce the recording onto the second, and record a new instrument onto the first track, thus overdubbing his playing one instrument at a time, and effectively making multitrack recordings.
In his flat in Tottenham in north London, Oldfield recorded demos of four tracks he had been composing in his head for some years, using the tape recorder, his guitar and bass, some toy percussion instruments, and a Farfisa organ borrowed from the Whole World keyboardist David Bedford. The demos comprised three shorter melodies (early versions of what would become the sections "Peace", "Bagpipe Guitars", and "Caveman" on Tubular Bells 2003), and a longer piece he had provisionally titled "Opus One". Oldfield was inspired to write a long instrumental after hearing Septober Energy (1971), the only album by Centipede. He was also influenced by classical music, and by A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969) by the experimental composer Terry Riley, on which Riley played all the instruments himself and used tape loops and overdubs to build up a long, repetitive piece of music.
Late in 1971, Oldfield joined the band of Arthur Louis, who were recording demos at the Manor Studio. The studio was being constructed in the former squash court of an old manor house in Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, which had recently been bought by the young entrepreneur Richard Branson and which was being turned into a residential recording facility run by his music production team of Tom Newman and Simon Heyworth. Oldfield was shy and socially awkward, but struck up a friendship with the producers after they heard his guitar playing. Oldfield asked Newman to listen to his demos, but they were in his Tottenham flat, so one of Louis' roadies drove Oldfield to London and back to retrieve them. Newman and Heyworth made a copy of the demos onto 4-track tape, and promised Oldfield that they would speak to Branson and his business partner Simon Draper about them. After the album was released, Newman said he preferred the demo versions: "They were complete melodies in themselves – with intros and fade-outs or ends. I liked them very much and was a little nonplussed when Mike strung them all together."
Oldfield spent much of 1972 working with his old bandmates from the Whole World on their solo projects while trying to find a record label interested in his demos. Oldfield approached labels including EMI and CBS, but each rejected him, believing the piece was unmarketable without vocals. Increasingly frustrated and short of money, Oldfield heard that the Soviet Union paid musicians to give public performances, and was at the point of looking through the telephone directory for the phone number of the Soviet embassy when Draper called him with an invitation to dinner with Branson on Branson's houseboat moored in London. Branson told Oldfield that he liked the demos, and wanted Oldfield to spend a week at the Manor recording "Opus One".
Recording
Tubular Bells was recorded on an Ampex 2-inch 16-track tape recorder with the Dolby noise-reduction system, which was the Manor's main recording equipment at the time. Oldfield had Virgin hire instruments including guitars, keyboards and percussion instruments. Oldfield has recounted differing stories over the years regarding the inclusion of the tubular bells; in 2001 he suggested that they were among the instruments he asked Branson to hire, but in 2013, he said that he saw them among the instruments being removed from the studios after John Cale had finished recording there, and asked for them to be left behind.
Oldfield, Newman, and Heyworth spent their evenings drinking in a pub, after which they returned to the Manor and recorded through the night. Heyworth recalled several disasters, including one instance where half a day's work was accidentally erased. Final mixing was an involved process, with the faders operated by Oldfield, Newman, Heyworth, and two others simultaneously. They followed detailed tracking charts and the process was restarted if one person made even a slight mistake. Heyworth recalled difficulty in cutting the album due to vinyl's limited dynamic range, and insisted on heavy vinyl normally used for classical records.
Oldfield played the majority of the instruments as a series of overdubs, which was an uncommon recording technique at the time. In total, 274 overdubs were made and an estimated two thousand "punch-ins", although Newman said "it was really only 70 or 80" in total. Despite various guitars being listed on the album sleeve, such as "speed guitars", "fuzz guitars" and "guitars sounding like bagpipes", the only electric guitar used on the album was a 1966 blonde Fender Telecaster which used to belong to Marc Bolan and to which Oldfield had added an extra Bill Lawrence pickup. The guitars were recorded via direct injection into the mixing desk. To create the "speed guitar" and "mandolin-like guitar" named in the sleeve notes, the tape was recorded at half speed. An actual mandolin was used only for the ending of Part Two. Oldfield also used a custom effects unit, the Glorfindel box, to create the "fuzz guitars" and "bagpipe guitars" distortion. In 2011, Oldfield's Telecaster was sold for £6,500, and the money was donated to the mental health charity SANE. According to the engineer Phil Newell, the bass guitar used on the album was one of his Fender Telecaster Basses.
Side one
Oldfield recorded side one, known as "Opus One" at the time, during his one allotted week at the Manor in November 1972. He was particularly interested in starting the piece with a repeating riff, and devised the opening piano sequence after experimenting with an idea for several minutes on Bedford's Farfisa organ. He wanted a slight variation on its 16/8 time signature by dropping the sixteenth beat, and chose the key of A minor as it was easy to play. Oldfield recorded the opening riff on a Steinway grand piano, but struggled to perform in time. Heyworth solved the problem by placing a microphone next to a metronome in another room and feeding it into Oldfield's headphones. The short honky-tonk piano section was included as a tribute to Oldfield's grandmother, who had played the instrument in pubs before World War II. The staff and workers at the Manor made up the "nasal choir" that accompanies it. Oldfield had difficulty in producing a sound from the tubular bells, as he wanted a loud note from them but both the standard leather-covered and bare metal hammers did not produce the volume that he wanted. In the end, Newman obtained a heavier claw hammer and Oldfield used it to produce the desired sound intensity but cracked the bells in the process.
The track closes with a segment featuring Vivian Stanshall, formerly of the comedic rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, introducing each instrument being played one by one. The idea originated when the band were due to use the Manor after Oldfield, and had arrived while he was still recording. Oldfield had liked the way Stanshall introduced the instruments one at a time on the Bonzos' song "The Intro and the Outro" on Gorilla (1967), and told Newman that he would like Stanshall to do the same. Newman agreed, but had to persuade the shy Oldfield to ask Stanshall if he would carry out the request. Stanshall readily agreed to the idea and is credited on the liner notes as "Master of Ceremonies", but Newman recalled that the job proved to be more difficult than anticipated, as Stanshall forgot the names of the instruments and introduced them at the wrong points. Oldfield wrote a list of the instruments in order, indicating where Stanshall should introduce them. The way in which Stanshall said "plus... tubular bells" inspired Oldfield to use it as the album's title.
Side two
After Part One had been recorded, Oldfield was allowed to stay on at the Manor to record additional overdubs during studio downtime. He spent Christmas and New Year at his family's home, but returned to the Manor from February to April 1973 to record the second part of his planned album. Oldfield had "Part Two" mapped out and sequenced by the time he came to record it.
The "caveman" section is the only part of Tubular Bells that features a drum kit, which is played by Steve Broughton of the Edgar Broughton Band. The section begins with a backing track of bass and drums, with Oldfield overdubbing all other instruments. The shouting vocals developed near the end of the recording, when he had practically finished recording the instruments for the section but felt it needed something else. Heyworth recalled that Branson was getting impatient and pressured Oldfield to deliver the album, and to include vocals on one of the tracks so he could release it as a single. Angered by Branson's suggestion, Oldfield returned to the Manor where he drank half a bottle of Jameson's whiskey from the studio's cellar and demanded that the engineer take him to the studio where, intoxicated, he "screamed his brains out for 10 minutes" into a microphone. The incident left Oldfield so hoarse that he was unable to speak for two weeks. The engineer ran the tape at a higher speed during the recording, so that upon playback the tape ran at normal speed, thus dropping the pitch of the voice track and producing the "Piltdown Man" vocals listed on the credits.
Side two closes with a rendition of "The Sailor's Hornpipe", a track Oldfield had been performing since he was in the Whole World. It was originally preceded by a longer version of the piece, featuring a vocal contribution from Stanshall over musical backing and marching footsteps. This session occurred at 4 a.m. after Oldfield, Stanshall, and Newman had spent the night drinking. Newman placed microphones in various rooms of the Manor and began recording, and the trio set off on an unplanned tour of the house, with Oldfield on mandolin and Newman on acoustic guitar playing "The Sailor's Hornpipe" while Stanshall gave an inebriated, improvised tour of the Manor. In the end, a more traditional instrumental version of the tune was put on the album although Stanshall's version was included on the Boxed compilation. It is also found on the 2001 and 2009 remasters as a bonus track.
Artwork
The cover of Tubular Bells was created by designer and photographer Trevor Key, who was suggested by Sue Steward, a press officer at Virgin Records at the time. Key was invited to present his portfolio, and one of his designs depicted a boiled egg with blood dripping from it, which Branson liked and wanted to use for the cover because he wanted to call the album Breakfast in Bed. Oldfield hated both the image and the title and rejected them. A modified version of the image, with the blood replaced by egg yolk, was used as the cover for Heaven's Open (1991), Oldfield's final album for Virgin.
Steward accompanied Key to a beach on the Sussex coast to photograph the cover's backdrop. Key brought with him bones shown burning on the beach on the back cover, but the day was bitterly cold and it took some time to set light to them. The perfectionist Key also spent several hours photographing the seascape until he had a shot of the waves that he was happy with. The triangular "bent bell" on the front was inspired by the damage Oldfield had caused to the tubular bells while playing them on the record. Key designed and constructed one, which he then photographed in his studio and superimposed on the beach backdrop. Oldfield was captivated by the finished artwork, and insisted that his name and the album title be in small letters and coloured pale orange, so as not to distract from the overall image. According to Steward, Key was paid £100 for his work, but he went on to design several other sleeves for Virgin and Factory Records artists, including Technique (1989) by New Order and "Genetic Engineering" (1983) by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.
The "bent bell" has become the image most associated with Oldfield, appearing on the cover of every Tubular Bells sequel album. It is also the logo of his personal music company, Oldfield Music Ltd. The cover of Tubular Bells was among ten images chosen by Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps, issued in January 2010.
Release
In January 1973, Branson visited the MIDEM music conference in Cannes, France and pitched side one to various music companies with the hope of securing a record deal. One American executive offered $20,000 if vocals were added to the music. The unsuccessful visit led Branson and Draper to consider putting the album out through mail order, before they chose to form their own label, Virgin Records, and use Tubular Bells as their first release. The album was released in the UK on 25 May 1973, and in North America in October 1973.
Early sales were slow, and it was not until July 1973 that the album appeared in the UK Albums Chart, reaching an initial peak of number seven. The situation changed following the release of The Exorcist in December 1973, Oldfield later attributing the music's successful use on the soundtrack to its unusual 15/8 opening time signature. From February 1974 to May 1975, Tubular Bells dropped out of the UK top 10 for only four weeks. Sixteen months after its release, it went to number one for the week ending 5October 1974, having spent 10 consecutive weeks in second place behind Band on the Run (1973) by Wings, and Oldfield's second album Hergest Ridge (1974).
In surpassing Hergest Ridge for the number one album, Oldfield became only the second artist in history to replace himself at the top of the UK album chart, after the Beatles in 1963, and again in 1964. The feat was later achieved by Michael Jackson and David Bowie, although on both occasions this followed the death of the artist. Prior to the 2020s, the album had re-entered the charts in every decade since its release, most recently appearing in the week ending 22 March 2018 (its 287th week in total).
On 22 April 2007, British newspaper The Mail on Sunday gave away 2.25 million free copies of Tubular Bells to its readers in a card packet displaying the artwork. The release was organised by EMI, who had bought out Virgin Records, and the newspaper claimed that its promotion increased sales of the album by 30%. Oldfield was unhappy about the deal, as he had not been consulted about it and felt it devalued the work.
Tubular Bells has sold more than 2.63 million copies in the UK, and an estimated 15 million worldwide. As of July 2016, it was the 42nd best-selling album of all time in the UK.
Singles
The first single released from the album was created by the original US distributor, Atlantic Records. The single was an edit of the first three sections from Part One and was not authorised by Oldfield. The single was released in February 1974 in the United States and Canada only, where it peaked at number seven on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart on 11 May 1974, making Oldfield a one-hit wonder on the US charts. The track also reached number 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart. In Canada, the single was released as "Tubular Bells (Theme from Exorcist)", peaking at number three on the RPM Top Singles chart on 18 May 1974, and was placed at number 103 in the top 200 singles of the year.
"Mike Oldfield's Single (Theme from Tubular Bells)" was the first 7-inch single released by Oldfield in the UK, in June 1974, peaking at number 31. The A-side was a re-recording of Part Two's "bagpipe guitars" section, arranged in a more pastoral version with acoustic guitars and featuring the oboe (played by Lindsay Cooper) as the lead instrument, with "Froggy Went A-Courting" as the B-side.
Reissues
2009 reissue
In 2008, Oldfield's original 35-year deal with Virgin Records ended and the rights to the album returned to him. After signing to Mercury Records in 2005, Oldfield's albums originally released on Virgin were transferred to Mercury and re-released, starting the following year. Tubular Bells was reissued in June 2009 in a number of formats, including vinyl, 2-CD and DVD, and includes a new stereo mix by Oldfield in March 2009 from his home studio in Nassau, Bahamas. The Deluxe Edition contains a 5.1 surround sound mix and the Ultimate Edition contains an accompanying book and memorabilia.
The release was promoted by a series of bell-ringing events at 6 p.m. on 6 June 2009, a reference to the Number of the Beast. One of the events was held at the British Music Experience at The O2, featuring the 29-piece Handbell Ringers of Great Britain and a performance by The Orb named "Orbular Bells". There were also bell-ringing workshops and competitions at the Experience. The album reached number 11 in the UK.
2023 reissue
A 50th anniversary edition of the album was released on 26 May 2023 on CD and half-speed mastered 2LP. It features a new master of the original album along with additional previously released tracks including the 2012 Olympics recording, the Tubular Beats recording with York, "Tubular X" (from The X-Files), and one new 8-minute track, the "Introduction to Tubular Bells 4" which was recorded by Oldfield as a demo in 2017. A Blu-ray audio version was also being produced which includes new Dolby Atmos and Stereo mixes by David Kosten as well as Mike Oldfield's 2009 5.1 mix and the 1975 Quadrophonic mix by Phil Newell. Oldfield's record label has indicated that after recording the 8-minute demo he decided not to go forward with the Tubular Bells 4 project, and that this "may well be the last piece ever to be recorded by Oldfield".
Live performances
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 1973
After recording Tubular Bells, Oldfield felt he had "got it out of his system" and was reluctant to do any promotional engagements. However, Branson and Draper felt a live performance of the work was the best way to present it to journalists and the public, and organised a concert at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on 25 June 1973. Oldfield was convinced that the music would not come off well in a live setting, and despite several well-known and accomplished musicians agreeing to the one-off show, refused to do it. Desperate to prevent Oldfield pulling out, Branson offered to give Oldfield his Bentley car, which he had bought from George Harrison and knew Oldfield liked, if he went through with the gig. Oldfield agreed, and following rehearsals at Shepperton film studios, Oldfield still had reservations about the performance until Mick Taylor of The Rolling Stones brought frontman Mick Jagger backstage to meet Oldfield, whose support gave Oldfield the confidence to "at least walk on stage." The concert went ahead and was well received, leaving Oldfield "stunned".
The concert featured members of Henry Cow and musicians associated with the Canterbury scene, as well as Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones. Steve Winwood and Robert Wyatt were also due to take part, but Winwood pulled out as he was unable to find time to attend the rehearsals, and Wyatt was recovering from the recent accident that had left him paralysed.
Musicians:
Kevin Ayers – bass guitar
David Bedford – grand piano, accordion, organ, choir master, string arrangements
Steve Broughton – drums
Jon Field – flute
Fred Frith – electric guitar, bass guitar
John Greaves – Davoli electric piano, Farfisa organ, tin whistle, Vox organ
Nick Haley – violin
Tim Hodgkinson – Farfisa organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano, Vox organ
Steve Hillage – electric guitar
Simon Ingram Hill – cello, organ
Geoff Leigh (misspelt on the programme as "Jeff Leig") – flute
Ashley Mason – viola
Pierre Moerlen – cymbals, glockenspiel, gongs, tam-tam, tubular bells, timpani
Tom Newman – nasal chorus
Mike Oldfield – acoustic and electric guitars, bass, Lowrey organ, mandolin, "prehistoric poem"
Terry Oldfield – flute
Ted Speight – electric guitar
Vivian Stanshall – master of ceremonies
Mick Taylor – electric guitar
Janet Townley – violin
Vulpy – viola
Girlie Chorus: Sarah Greaves, Kathy Williams, Sally Oldfield, Maureen Rossini, Lynette Asquith, Amanda Parsons, Maggie Thomas, Mundy Ellis, Julie Clive, Liz Gluck, Debbie Scott, Hanna Corker.
BBC TV 2nd House, 1973
Oldfield and many of the musicians who had taken part in the Queen Elizabeth Hall concert performed Part One again later in the year for the BBC arts programme 2nd House, this time as a pre-recorded performance in a studio setting without an audience. The performance was recorded on 30 November 1973 and transmitted on BBC2 on 5 January 1974. The arrangement included a new part for oboe, played by Soft Machine's Karl Jenkins, and accompanied on-screen visuals of tubular steel sculptures and sequences from the film Reflections, both created by artist William Pye. The performance was released on the Elements (2004) DVD and as part of the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions of the 2009 reissue of Tubular Bells.
Musicians:
Jon Field – flute
Fred Frith – bass, guitar
John Greaves – keyboards
Steve Hillage – guitar
Tim Hodgkinson – keyboards
Karl Jenkins – oboe
Geoff Leigh – flute
Pierre Moerlen (credited as "Pierre de Strasbourg" in the Radio Times programme listing) – percussion
Tom Newman – voice (nasal choir) and mixing
Mike Oldfield – bass, guitar, Hammond organ
Terry Oldfield – flute
Mike Ratledge – keyboards
Ted Speight – guitar, bass
Mick Taylor – guitar
Choir (unknown)
Reception
Influential British DJ John Peel was an early admirer of the record, and played it on his Top Gear radio show on BBC Radio 1 on 29 May 1973, four days after the album's release, calling it "one of the most impressive LPs I've ever had the chance to play on the radio, really a remarkable record". Branson and Oldfield were listening to the show on Branson's houseboat, and Oldfield stated in his autobiography that Peel played the album in its entirety, although the running order from the BBC archives and existing audio copies of the programme show that Peel played Part One only.
Peel reviewed the album for The Listener magazine the following week, describing it as "a new recording of such strength and beauty that to me it represents the first break-through into history that any musician has made". The UK's major music magazines were also unanimous in their praise of the album. Al Clark of NME said that the "veritable orgy of over-dubbing results in a remarkable piece of sustained music, never content with the purely facile yet equally disinclined towards confusing the listener". He concluded that "Tubular Bells ... is a superlative record which owes nothing to contemporary whims. It is one of the most mature, vital, rich and humerous [sic] pieces of music to have emerged from the pop idiom." Melody Makers Geoff Brown observed that "Tubular Bells is a vast work, almost classical in its structure and in the way a theme is stated and deftly worked upon" and that it was "an enjoyable, evocative album which bodes well for the future of both the country's newest label and of Mike Oldfield". Reviewing the whole batch of Virgin's first album releases in Sounds, Steve Peacock named Tubular Bells the best, saying that after careful listening he "ended up convinced that it really is a remarkable album", noting the "complex, interlocking carefully woven music that works its way through an enormous dynamic and emotional range", and stating, "I can't think of another album that I'd as unhesitatingly recommend to everyone who's likely to read this". A more reserved review came from Simon Frith in Let It Rock who felt that Tubular Bells was "more than an attractive wall-paper, more than a nature-film score, because of Mike Oldfield's ability to make what happens to the music self-sufficient and satisfying", but questioned why Peel and other critics viewed the album as rock music, and concluded that "Oldfield's concern is the sound of rock, but Tubular Bells lacks rock's other essence — energy. This is no way body music — no sex, no violence, no ecstasy; nothing uncontrolled, nothing uncontrollable."
Paul Gambaccini wrote an enthusiastic review of the album for Rolling Stone, calling it "the most important one-shot project of 1973" and "a debut performance of a kind we have no right to expect from anyone. It took Mike Oldfield half a year to lay down the thousands of overdubs required for his 49 minutes of exhilarating music. I will be playing the result for many times that long." He concluded, "I can say that this is a major work". On the other hand, in an article in the same magazine seven months later which discussed the current top twenty albums on the Billboard chart, Jon Landau dismissed the record as "a clever novelty" and said, "Light, rather showy and cute in places, it probably makes pleasant background music for a dinner or conversation". Writing for Creem, Robert Christgau was also left unmoved, saying, "The best I can come up with here is 'pleasant' and 'catchy'. Oldfield isn't Richard Strauss or even Leonard Cohen — this is a soundtrack because that's the level at which he operates."
In a retrospective review for AllMusic Mike DeGagne called the album "arguably the finest conglomeration of off-centered instruments concerted together to form a single, unique piece" and stated that "the most interesting and overwhelming aspect of this album is the fact that so many sounds are conjured up, yet none go unnoticed, allowing the listener a gradual submergence into each unique portion of the music. Tubular Bells is a divine excursion into the realm of new-age music."
Accolades
Oldfield won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018.
In Q magazine's 1998 list of "The 50 Best Albums of the '70s", Tubular Bells was placed at number six. In the Q & Mojo Classic special issue Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock in 2005, the album was listed at number nine in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Legacy
The Exorcist
The introduction to Part One was chosen to feature in the 1973 horror film The Exorcist. According to the British film critic Mark Kermode, the decision to include the music was the result of chance – the director, William Friedkin, had decided to discard the original score by Lalo Schifrin and was looking for music to replace it. Friedkin was visiting the offices of Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records (which distributed Tubular Bells in the US), and picking up a white label of the album from the selection of records in Ertegun's office, he put it on the record player and instantly decided that the music would be perfect for the film. Although the introduction only features briefly in two scenes, it has become the track most commonly associated with the film. Oldfield said he did not want to see the film because he believed he would find it too frightening.
Sequels and other albums
Tubular Bells remains the album most identified with Oldfield, and he has released three sequels. Tubular Bells II was released in 1992 which, like its predecessor, reached number one in the UK. It was followed by the electronic and dance-oriented Tubular Bells III (1998) and The Millennium Bell (1999). On the thirtieth anniversary of Tubular Bells, Oldfield re-recorded the original Tubular Bells with contemporary technology, making several corrections to what he saw as flaws in the album's original production. Since Stanshall died in 1995, the re-recording features new narration provided by actor John Cleese. Tubular Bells 2003 went to number 51 in the UK.
In 1975, an orchestral arrangement of the original album was released as The Orchestral Tubular Bells.
Compilations:
The Best of Tubular Bells (2001)
The Complete Tubular Bells (2003)
Oldfield and York's 2013 remix album Tubular Beats contains two remixes of sections of Tubular Bells.
Virgin Group
Richard Branson recognised the significance of Tubular Bells to the Virgin Group's success, who named one of his first Virgin America aircraft, an Airbus A319-112, N527VA Tubular Belle. Prior to this Virgin Atlantic had named a Boeing 747-4Q8, G-VHOT Tubular Belle, in 1994.
In the United Kingdom Virgin Money signalled its entry into the banking sector in January 2012 with a television advertisement titled '40 Years of Better'. The advertisement opened with an image of a record orbiting the Earth accompanied by the music of the introduction to Tubular Bells, signifying the beginnings of Virgin, and ended with a shot of the same record framed and hanging on the wall of the new bank. Two months later a Virgin Media TV advertisement starring Branson and actor David Tennant also featured the record, where a younger version of Branson is seen holding a copy of Tubular Bells under his arm upon exiting a time machine. However, the advert was withdrawn shortly afterwards following objections from the BBC that it was being used to endorse a rival TV service (in the advert Tennant is shown searching on Virgin's TiVo on-demand service for episodes of Doctor Who, a BBC series in which he formerly played the titular character).
In May 2021, Virgin Orbit, the commercial rocket launch provider subsidiary of the Virgin Group, announced the first operational mission of their LauncherOne air-launched rocket would be named after the first track of the album, Tubular Bells, Part One.
Cultural references
The use of the opening theme in the 1973 film The Exorcist gained the record considerable publicity and introduced the work to a broader audience. Along with a number of other Oldfield pieces the theme was used in the 1979 NASA movie The Space Movie. It has gained cultural significance as a "haunting theme", partly due to the association with The Exorcist, and has been sampled by many other artists.
In television it was used in several episodes of the Dutch children's series Bassie en Adriaan, an episode ("Ghosts") of the BBC series My Family. It was used in a television advertisement for the Volkswagen Golf Diesel in 2002 and in various films.
Computer tie-ins
With the aid of the software house CRL and distributor Nu Wave, Mike Oldfield released an interactive Commodore 64 version of the album in 1986, which used the computer's SID sound chip to play back a simplified re-arrangement of the album, accompanied by some simple 2D visual effects. The "interactivity" offered by the album/program was limited to controlling the speed and quantity of the visual effects, tuning the sound's volume and filtering, and skipping to any part of the album.
In 2004, Oldfield launched a virtual reality project called Maestro which contains music from Tubular Bells 2003. The original title of the game was The Tube World. This was the second game which was released under the MusicVR banner, the first being Tres Lunas. MusicVR set out to be a real-time virtual reality experience combining imagery and music, as a non-violent and essentially a non-goal driven game.
In 2012 Universal and Indaba Music created a Tubular Bells remix contest, where users could download original stem recordings to create their own pieces and the winner of the $1,000 prize was judged by Oldfield.
2012 Olympic Games
On 27 July 2012 at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony Mike Oldfield performed during a segment about the NHS and children’s literature. 600 dancers, all of whom were NHS staff, along with 1,200 volunteers recruited from British hospitals, along with people from the Great Ormond Street Hospital, entered along with children on 320 hospital beds, some of which functioned as trampolines. The show's director Danny Boyle stated that he had wanted to make Tubular Bells a "cornerstone" of a 20-minute sequence of the ceremony. A studio version of Oldfield's performance appears on the soundtrack album Isles of Wonder. Although listed as "Tubular Bells"/"In Dulci Jubilo", the track consists of a number of parts, the first being the introduction piece to his Tubular Bells in its normal arrangement, then this is followed by a rearranged version of that same theme that during interviews Oldfield has called "swingular bells". The piece that is used when children's literature villains appear features two arrangements of "Far Above the Clouds" (from Tubular Bells III), and finally as the Mary Poppins characters appear to drive off the villains, there is a rendition of "In Dulci Jubilo" followed by a short coda.
The Olympics version was released as a 500-copy limited edition pink/blue vinyl single on 8 October 2012. This was also released on iTunes as "Tubular Bells/In Dulci Julio (Music from the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games)" as well as on the official 2012 Olympics album. In 2023, this rendition appeared on the 50th anniversary release of Tubular Bells.
This lists the movements as:
"Tubular Bells (Part One Excerpt)"
"Tubular Bells (Part One Swing)"
"Tubular Bells (Part Two Excerpt)"
"Tubular Bells III (Far Above the Clouds)"
"Mary Poppins Arrival"
"Fanfare for the Isles of Wonder"
"In Dulci Jubilo"
"Olympic Tubular Bells Coda"
Adaptations
American artist Tori Amos has frequently used the opening Tubular Bells theme in her live shows. It began during the 1996 Dew Drop Inn Tour where she let "Father Lucifer" segue into Tubular Bells on the piano while singing words from Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy" as well as playing it on the harpsichord during songs "Love Song" (a Cure cover) and "Bells for Her" (from the album Under the Pink), usually while mixing in lyrics from a third song such as Björk's "Hyperballad" or "Blue Skies". It appeared again in 2005 as part of "Yes, Anastasia", and on the 2007 tour promoting her album American Doll Posse where it was performed with full band as an intro to "Devils and Gods". On the 2011 tour, promoting her album Night of Hunters it is being performed as the intro to and backing melody for "God."
Tubular Bells for Two is a music-theatre production created by two Australian multi-instrumentalists, Aidan Roberts and Daniel Holdsworth, in 2009. The two musicians perform over twenty instruments to recreate the original album 'as faithfully as physically possible'. The show won a Sydney Fringe Award for Best Musical Moment in the 2010 Festival, and has been performed at festivals around Australia and the Pacific. The show made its European debut at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2012, where it won two awards.
In 2013, Oldfield invited Branson to the opening of St. Andrew's International School of The Bahamas, where two of Oldfield's children were pupils. This was the occasion of the debut of Tubular Bells for Schools, a piano solo adaptation of Oldfield's work.
Track listing
Personnel
Credits are adapted from album sleeve notes.
Mike Oldfield – grand piano, glockenspiel, Farfisa organ, bass guitar, electric guitar (including "speed guitar", "fuzz guitar", "mandolin-like guitar" and "guitars sounding like bagpipes"), taped motor drive amplifier organ chord, assorted percussion, acoustic guitar, flageolet, honky tonk piano, Lowrey organ, tubular bells, concert tympani, Hammond organ, Spanish guitar, vocals ("Piltdown Man" and "Moribund chorus")
Additional musicians
Steve Broughton – drums
Lindsay Cooper – string basses
Jon Field – flutes
Mundy Ellis – backing vocals ("Girlie Chorus")
Sally Oldfield – backing vocals ("Girlie Chorus")
Vivian Stanshall – Master of Ceremonies
Nasal Choir (uncredited)
Bootleg Chorus – the Manor Choir conducted by Mike Oldfield
Production
Mike Oldfield – producer, 2009 stereo and 5.1 surround sound mix
Simon Heyworth – producer, engineer, mastering
Tom Newman – producer, engineer
Trevor Key – artwork
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
Certifications and sales
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Mike Oldfield Discography – Tubular Bells at Tubular.net
1973 debut albums
Albums produced by Tom Newman (musician)
Instrumental albums
Mercury Records albums
Mike Oldfield albums
Mike Oldfield songs
The Exorcist
Virgin Records albums
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS%20America%20%28CV-66%29
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USS America (CV-66)
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USS America (CVA/CV-66) was one of three supercarriers built for the United States Navy in the 1960s. Commissioned in 1965, she spent most of her career in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, but did make three Pacific deployments serving in the Vietnam War. She also served in the Persian Gulf War's operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
America was the first large aircraft carrier since Operation Crossroads in 1946 to be expended in weapons tests. In 2005, she was scuttled southeast of Cape Hatteras, after four weeks of tests, despite a large protest of former crew members who wanted to see her instituted as a memorial museum. She was the largest warship ever to be sunk.
Construction and shakedown
Originally ordered as an Enterprise-class nuclear carrier, the ballooning costs of during construction caused the cancellation of the nuclear CVAN-66 and her reordering as a conventionally powered Kitty Hawk-class carrier. She was laid down on 1 January 1961 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Corp.; launched on 1 February 1964, sponsored by Mrs. Catherine McDonald, wife of Admiral David L. McDonald, the Chief of Naval Operations; and commissioned at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 23 January 1965, Captain Lawrence Heyworth Jr., in command.
After fitting out there until 15 March 1965, America remained in Hampton Roads for operations off the Virginia Capes until getting underway on 25 March. She conducted her first catapult launch on 5 April 1965, with Commander Kenneth B. Austin, the carrier's executive officer, piloting a Douglas A-4C Skyhawk. Proceeding thence to the Caribbean, the carrier conducted shakedown training and concluded it at Guantánamo Bay on 23 June.
Entering the Norfolk shipyard for post-shakedown availability on 10 July, she remained there until 21 August. She next operated locally through late August and then proceeded to the operating areas off the Virginia Capes and to Bermuda, arriving back at Norfolk on 9 September. On 25 September, Rear Admiral J. O. Cobb broke his flag as Commander, Carrier Division 2 (CarDiv 2).
First deployment (1965–1966)
America sailed for her first Mediterranean deployment late in 1965. New Year's Day, 1966, found her at Livorno, Italy. Over the ensuing weeks, the ship visited Cannes, Genoa, Toulon, Athens, Istanbul, Beirut, Valletta, Taranto, Palma, and Pollensa Bay in Spain. She sailed on 1 July for the United States. Early in the deployment, from 28 February – 10 March, America participated in a joint Franco-American exercise "Fairgame IV", which simulated conventional warfare against a country attempting to invade a NATO ally. She arrived at Naval Station Norfolk on 10 July, remaining there for only a short time before shifting to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 15 July for availability.
America operated locally in the Norfolk area from 29 August – 19 September, after which time she proceeded to Guantánamo Bay to carry out training. After Hurricane Inez swirled through the region, her sailors spent an estimated 1,700-man-hours in helping the naval base at Guantanamo to recover and return to normal operations.
The following month, America initiated into carrier service the A-7 Corsair II, conducting its flight qualifications off the Virginia Capes, while she also conducted automatic carrier landing system trials which demonstrated the feasibility of "no hands" landings of F-4 Phantom, F-8 Crusader and A-4 Skyhawk aircraft.
On 16 Oct 1965, two Phantom jets collided in midair from America, and both pilots ejected safely. On 3 September 1965 on the way to Taranto, a plane and pilot were lost when the catapult malfunctioned and tore the front landing gear off the plane; the plane's auxiliary fuel tank ruptured, and the plane went over the side. An airman was burned in the catwalk and the RA ejected safely, but the pilot went down with the plane. Since leaving Norfolk, America had lost five planes.
From 28 November – 15 December, America took part in "LANTFLEX 66", gaining experience in the areas of antiair, antisubmarine, and carrier strike operations. The ship also participated in a mine drop and missile shoots, and provided air support for amphibious operations. She returned to Norfolk on 15 December, remaining there through the end of the year 1966.
Second deployment (1967)
On 10 January 1967, America departed Norfolk for her second Mediterranean cruise and relieved at Pollensa Bay on 22 January. While crossing the Atlantic, America conducted: carrier qualifications for her SH-3A crews, missile shoots in the mid-Atlantic, day and night air operations and various other exercises. Upon nearing Gibraltar, she received a visit from Soviet long-range reconnaissance aircraft, Tu-95 "Bears" on 18 January. Two F-4B Phantom jets met the "Bears" as they approached and escorted them past the ship.
Before anchoring at Athens, on 4 February, America participated with Italian control and reporting centers in an intercept-controller exercise. Shortly afterwards, she again met with Italian forces in an exercise involving raids upon an attack carrier by fast patrol boats.
The beginning of March found America and her consorts, operating as Task Group 60.1 (TG 60.1)of Task Force 60, participating in the United States/United Kingdom exercise "Poker Hand IV" with the British carrier . America and Hermes provided raid aircraft to test each other's antiaircraft defenses.
On 1 April, "Dawn Clear", a two-day NATO exercise, commenced with TG 60.1 units participating. During the first day, America provided raid aircraft against Greek and Turkish "targets". The following day, the exercise continued as Greek aircraft flew raids against TG 60.1 surface units. Following "Dawn Clear", the ship conducted routine training operations in the Ionian Sea.
America anchored at Valletta at 10:00 on 5 April for a five-day visit. Weighing anchor on 10 April, the carrier departed Malta to sail for TG 60.1 operations in the Ionian Sea. She conducted an open sea missile exercise with the guided missile destroyers and . Other operational aspects of the at-sea period consisted of routine day/night flight operations and a major underway replenishment with other units of TG 60.1.
The following days saw the threat of civil war in Greece commencing with the military coup that ended parliamentary rule in that country. Although King Constantine II of Greece held his throne, the possibility of violence in the streets of Athens loomed as a potential threat to the American citizens suddenly caught up in the turmoil. Evacuation by ship seemingly might be necessary and the United States Sixth Fleet commander ordered the formation of a special operations task force. Under the command of Rear Admiral Dick H. Guinn, Task Force 65, with America as flagship, sailed eastward to stand by for evacuation, should that step be necessary. Fortunately, violence never materialized in Greece, and the task force was not called upon to act. On 29 April, Rear Admiral Lawrence R. Geis relieved Rear Admiral Guinn as Commander, Carrier Division 4, Commander, TF 60, Commander, TF 65, and Commander, TF 502 (NATO). With a new admiral on board, and the Greek political crisis behind her, America sailed into Taranto Harbor, Italy, on the first day of May for eight days of relaxation. During three days of general visiting in Taranto, America hosted 1,675 visitors, who came aboard to tour the hangar and flight decks. America and TG 60.1 departed Taranto on 8 May for routine operations in the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas, she followed these with a port visit to Livorno.
Crisis in the Middle East
By 25 May 1967, evidence arose that a crisis was brewing in the Middle East. As soon as the ship was slated to finish with the last of her "Poop Deck" exercises, she would be heading back to the Sea of Crete.
For the next 48 hours, America steamed east and south from the coast of Spain, through Malta Channel and on to the Sea of Crete to join up with the ships of TG 60.2, the carrier and her destroyers. The carrier task force, under the command of Rear Admiral Geis, prepared for any contingency.
The situation worsened. First, Egypt moved troops into the Gaza Strip, demanding that the United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping Force be withdrawn. Then, Israel beefed up her forces, and in turn, each of the other Arab countries put its armed forces on alert. As war clouds darkened, the United Arab Republic closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping.
During this time, the carrier conducted normal training operations off the island of Crete and held two major underway replenishment operations. On 5 June, seven American newsmen from the wire services, the three major American television networks, and several individual newspapers across the country flew on board. These seven were soon joined by others, 29 in all, including media representatives from England, Greece, and West Germany.
Their presence was evident everywhere on board the carrier. They lined the signal bridge and the flight deck, with their cameras recording the cycle of flight operations, refueling, and the tempo of shipboard routine. At night, Robert Goralski of NBC News and Bill Gill of ABC News teamed up to present the WAMR "Gill-Goralski Report", a half-hour on the latest developments in the Mideast and around the world.
Americas presence was soon noted by the potential belligerents. The carrier also attracted other observers. A Soviet destroyer had maneuvered nearby in the morning of 2 June. Armed with surface-to-air missiles, the Russian ship constantly cut in and out of the carrier's formation. Shortly after noon on 7 June, Vice Admiral William I. Martin, Commander 6th Fleet sent the following message to the Soviet ship, in Russian and English:
Although that particular Soviet guided missile destroyer left America, her sister ships soon arrived to follow the carrier and her escorting destroyers for days.
The Six Day War
On the morning of 5 June 1967, the Israelis and the Arabs were announced to be at war. That afternoon, the bosun's pipe called the crew to a general quarters drill, and the excitement of the moment was evident as all hands rushed to their battle stations. When general quarters were secured, the word was passed over the 1-MC, the ship-wide general announcement system, to set condition three, an advanced state of defensive readiness.
On 7 June, the destroyer , in company with America, obtained a sonar contact, which was classified as a "possible" submarine. Rear Admiral Geis immediately dispatched Lloyd Thomas and the guided missile destroyer to investigate the contact. Sampson obtained contact quickly and coordinated with Lloyd Thomas in tracking the possible submarine.
America launched one of her antisubmarine helicopters, a Sikorsky SH-3A Sea King of Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron 9, and gained sonar contact. At midnight, the contact was reclassified as a "probable" submarine. At that time, no known or friendly submarines were reported to be in the area of the contact. The destroyers maintained good sonar contact through the night.
At 05:30 on 8 June, a Lockheed SP-2H Neptune antisubmarine patrol plane of Patrol Squadron 7, coordinating with the destroyers and helicopters, obtained a magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) confirmation over the contact. The MAD equipment allows an ASW aircraft to confirm that a contact detected in the sea by other means is actually a very large metal object.
Rear Admiral Geis announced the "probable" submarine's presence at noon. The newsmen, still embarked, dashed off stories to their home offices. Other events, however, soon overshadowed the story about a 'probable' submarine lurking near an American carrier task force.
Attack on USS Liberty
At about 14:00 local time on 8 June 1967, the technical research ship was attacked by Israeli torpedo boats and jet fighters, about north of the Sinai port of El Arish, in international waters.
However, the first word that reached America and the Department of Defense in Washington gave no indication as to the identity of the attackers. Americas flight deck came alive. In a matter of minutes, F-4B Phantom interceptors were in the air to ward off any possible attack against task force units. At the same time, bombs and rockets moved from the magazines deep within the ship to the flight deck. Two A-4 Skyhawks were loaded and launched together with fighter cover. As the planes sped towards Liberty's position, however, word was received from Tel Aviv that the attackers had been Israeli and that the attack had been made in error. The planes outbound from America were recalled with their ordnance still in the racks, with the A-4s landing ashore to unload their ordnance.
The attack on Liberty had cost the lives of 34 men, with 173 wounded. Admiral Martin dispatched two destroyers, and , with Lt. Cmdr. Peter A. Flynn, MC, USN, one of America's junior medical officers, and two corpsmen from the carrier on board. The destroyers rendezvoused with Liberty at 06:00 on 9 June, and the medical personnel, including a second doctor from one of the destroyers, were transferred immediately to the damaged research ship.
At 10:30, two helicopters from America met with Liberty and began transferring the more seriously wounded to the carrier. An hour later, about east of Souda Bay Crete, America met with Liberty. The carrier's crew lined every topside vantage point, silent, watching the helicopters bring 50 wounded and nine dead from Liberty to America. As Liberty drew alongside, listing, her sides perforated with rockets and cannon shell, nearly 2,000 of the carrier's crew were on the flight deck, and spontaneously moved by the sight, gave the battered Liberty and her brave crew a tremendous cheer.
Americas medical team worked around the clock removing shrapnel, and treating various wounds and burns. Doctors Gordon and Flynn and Lieutenant Donald P. Griffith, MC, worked for more than 12 hours in the operating room, while other doctors, Lt. George A. Lucier and Lt. Frank N. Federico, made continuous rounds in the wards to aid and comfort the wounded. Their jobs were not finished that day, for the next week and more, Libertys wounded required constant attention.
Since the fighting had started between the Israelis and the Arabs, a quiet settled over the carrier's flight deck. Ready, the ship waited for any possible situation, but the planes never left the decks.
As the Israeli forces moved to speedy victory in the Six-Day War, the Arabs charged that 6th Fleet aircraft were providing air cover for Israeli ground forces. The newsmen on board reported that these charges were false. The 6th Fleet, as with all other American forces, had remained neutral. In addition, the Soviet destroyers also knew the charges were false.
On Wednesday morning 7 June, Admiral Martin issued a statement to the press:
The admiral gave members of the press copies of both Americas and Saratogas flight plans for the days in question and a rundown of the task force's position at all times during the conflict. He pointed out that a check of the carriers' ordnance inventory would refute the charges, that both the number of pilots and aircraft embarked had changed only with the return of personnel and planes from the Paris Air Show.
America conducted a memorial service on 10 June, on the carrier's flight deck.
Atlantic and Mediterranean Service
As Israeli forces advanced towards the Suez Canal and the Jordan River, and appeals for a cease-fire came, the tension relaxed aboard ship. The crew took time out for an 11-bout boxing smoker in the hangar bay. With a running commentary by the Gill-Goralski team, nearly 2,000 crew members crowded around the ring while others watched the action over closed circuit television. America continued on station for several more days, but the tension seemed to have gone. The newsmen left, the uninvited Soviet guests called no more, and regular flight operations resumed.
On a lighter note, during the same period, other activities were happening aboard ship, and in Paris, France. Two squadrons of CVW-6 participated in the 27th Paris Air Show held at the French capital's Le Bourget Airport from 25 May – 5 June. A Fighter Squadron 33 (VF 33) F-4B Phantom II and an Early Warning Squadron 122 (VAW-122) Grumman E-2A Hawkeye were on display at the airfield throughout the show.
America next hosted, commencing on 14 June, forty-nine midshipmen from the United States Naval Academy and Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) units across the country. For six weeks the "middies", under the watchful eyes of the ship's officers, filled junior officer billets in all of the departments in the ship. In late July, the second group of 41 "middies" arrived for their six-week cruise.
America transited the Dardanelles on 21 June and arrived at Istanbul, where Rear Admiral Geis laid a wreath at the foot of the grave of the Unknown Soldier as a tribute to the Turkish war dead. Three days later, however, a group of angry demonstrators burned the wreath. Then, approximately 600 students with 1,500 spectators and sympathizers, participated in an anti-American/6th Fleet protest march, culminating in speeches in the area of the fleet landing. Liberty for the crew was cancelled for most of the afternoon-however, by early evening the situation had quieted down enough so that liberty could be resumed. All was peaceful for the remainder of the visit.
America departed Istanbul on 26 June for five days of operations in the Aegean Sea. On 1 July, the carrier steamed into the port of Thessaloniki, Greece for her first visit to that port. For Fourth of July celebrations aboard ship, Rear Admiral Geis and Americas commanding officer, Capt. Donald D. Engen hosted the Prefect of Thessaloniki, the Mayor of Thessaloniki, the American Consul and approximately 75 Greek Army officers and civilians. On 8 July, Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery USN (Ret.) arrived on board via "COD" (Carrier Onboard Delivery) aircraft. Admiral Gallery was visiting as many 6th Fleet ships as possible during his month stay in the Mediterranean to gather material for articles and books. He also departed by COD, on 9 July.
On 16 July, America anchored at Athens for her second visit to that port of the 1967 cruise, before she proceeded thence to Valletta on 29 July. On 7 August, America anchored in the Bay of Naples. After visits to Genoa and Valencia, the carrier sailed into Pollensa Bay and commenced the turnover of her 6th Fleet materials to her relief, the attack carrier .
America moored at Norfolk on 20 September and entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 6 October. She remained there, undergoing a restricted availability, into early January 1968. From 6–8 January, the ship steamed for three days of sea trials in the Virginia Capes operating area. After a four-day ammunition onload at anchorage X-ray in Hampton Bay and a brief stay at Norfolk, America departed for a month-long cruise to the Caribbean for the naval technical proficiency inspection (NTPI), refresher training with the Fleet Training Group, Guantánamo Bay, and type training in the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range (AFWR) before she could proceed to the Jacksonville Operating area for carrier qualifications.
America departed Norfolk on 16 January, arriving at Guantánamo Bay for extensive drills, exercises and inspections. General quarters was a daily routine as the ship strove to reach the peak of proficiency required in its upcoming combat deployment to the western Pacific (WestPac).
On 1 February, America departed the Guantanamo area, bound for the AFWR. The next day, 2 February, representatives from the AFWR came on board to brief America representatives and Carrier Air Wing 6 pilots on forthcoming operations. The training consisted of invaluable and highly successful exercises in environmental tracking, antimissile defense, airborne jamming against radars, emergency aircraft recovery, and simulated PT boat attacks. With this phase of her combat training completed, America departed the AFWR on 9 February for carrier qualifications in the Jacksonville operating area, and held them from the 12th through the 15th.
On the 17th, America moored at berths 23 and 24 at Norfolk Naval Shipyard to prepare for final type training, prior to her upcoming WestPac deployment. On 7 March, America again put to sea, back to the AFWR for further type training and exercise "Rugby Match". En route to the Caribbean, the ship held various exercises in weapons loading, electronic countermeasures (ECM), and general quarters. On 10 March, America flew off the first of eight simulated air strikes. America's CVW flew "attack" sorties against "enemy" positions on Vieques, Puerto Rico. A search and rescue exercise (SAREX) was conducted to test the ship and air wing response to the distress call of a downed aviator. She also held several missile defense exercises to test the ship's reflexes against a surface threat.
Americas planes flew photographic reconnaissance sorties over Vieques, and "found" simulated targets on film. Communications exercises simulated conditions in Gulf of Tonkin, as a high volume of message traffic similar to that to be experienced in southeast Asia was generated by Commander, CarDiv 2, who was embarked in the ship. On 13 and 14 March, the weapons department also flexed their muscles by firing two Terrier missiles.
Exercise "Rugby Match", a major Atlantic Fleet exercise involving approximately eighty ships was held in the AFWR from 7–29 March. America and Commander, CarDiv 2 (as commander, Task Group 26.1 (TG 26.1)), participated from the 18th to the 20th.
As the "Blue" Force attack carrier, America and her air wing pilots provided close air support (CAS), photo reconnaissance and combat air patrol (CAP) sorties for Task Force 22 (TF 22), the "Blue" amphibious landing force, during a landing on the island of Vieques. Prior to America's main participation during this period, CVW-6 flew an aerial mining mission in the amphibious operating area on the 15th. D-Day was 19 March. On return from their missions as CAS and CAP, several aircraft tested the antiaircraft defenses of the task force by flying raids against America.
Bound for Vietnam
On 10 April 1968, America stood out of Hampton Roads, bound for "Yankee Station", off the coast of Vietnam. The next day, the ship's complement of men and machines was brought up to full strength as America recovered the remainder of CVW-6's aircraft off the coast of the Carolinas. En route, she conducted one last major training exercise. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the next stop en route to southeast Asia, Americas first to that city and continent. Now with her course set almost due east, America sailed through waters she had never traveled before. Across the southern Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, past Madagascar and to Subic Bay, Philippine Islands. From Subic, the ship sailed northwest through the South China Sea towards "Yankee Station". En route, on 26 May, the ship participated in exercise "Newboy" and the next day held carrier qualifications. At 10:00, 30 May, she arrived at "Yankee Station, and at 06:30 the next morning the first aircraft since commissioning to leave her deck in anger was launched against the enemy."
During four line periods, consisting of 112 days on "Yankee Station", Americas aircraft pounded at roads and waterways, trucks and waterborne logistics craft (WBLCS), hammered at petroleum storage areas and truck parks and destroyed bridges and cave storage areas in the attempt to impede the flow of men and war materials to the south. On 10 July 1968, Lt. Roy Cash, Jr. (pilot) and Lt. j.g. Joseph E. Kain, Jr. (radar intercept officer), in an F-4J Phantom from VF-33 downed a MiG-21 'Fishbed', northwest of Vinh, North Vietnam, for the ship's first MiG kill in the Vietnam War. America and her embarked air wing, CVW-6, would later be awarded the Navy Unit Commendation for their work during that time.
Between line periods, America visited Hong Kong, Yokosuka and Subic Bay. With Americas mission on "Yankee Station" nearing completion, she launched the last of her attack aircraft at 10:30 on 29 October. The next day, she set sail for Subic Bay and the offload of various "Yankee Station" assets. In addition, a heavy attack squadron, VAH-10, and an electronic countermeasures squadron, VA-130, departed the ship on 3 November as they began a transpacific movement of their entire detachments to Alameda, and 144 aviators along with several members of the ship's company departed for the United States on the "Magic Carpet" flight.
The days the ship spent en route to Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Norfolk were, of necessity, more relaxed than those of her six months of combat. Nine hundred ninety-three "Pollywogs" were initiated into the realm of Neptunus Rex on the morning of 7 November as the ship again crossed the Equator. On 9 November, a flight deck "cookout" was sponsored by the supply department as the entire crew enjoyed char-broiled steaks and basked in the equatorial sun. After mooring at 13:30 on 16 December in Norfolk, her "round-the-world" cruise completed, post-deployment and holiday leave began, continuing through the first day of the year 1969.
On 8 January 1969, she headed for the Jacksonville operating area where she served as the platform for carrier qualifications. On 24 January, America arrived at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard to begin a nine-month overhaul. Upon completion of the overhaul, the carrier conducted post-repair trials and operated locally off the Virginia Capes. During one period of local operations, between 21 and 23 November 1969, America took part in carrier suitability tests for the Lockheed U-2R reconnaissance plane.
On 5 January 1970, the carrier departed the Norfolk area to commence a nine-week cruise in the Guantánamo Bay operating area. From 15 to 21 February, America participated in Operation "SPRINGBOARD 70", the annual series of training exercises conducted in the Caribbean. The program was established to take advantage of good weather and the extensive modern training facilities, including targets of all kinds, which are available in order to achieve maximum training during the period. This exercise included submarine operations, air operations, and participation by the Marine Corps. At the completion of this testing and training, America departed the Guantanamo area to arrive at the Jacksonville area on 1 March in order to conduct carrier qualification landings with the various squadrons stationed in and around the Jacksonville/Cecil Field area.
America arrived in Norfolk on 8 March and remained there for approximately one month making last minute preparations for an eight-month deployment.
Second Vietnam War deployment
On 10 April 1970, with CVW-9 on board, America left Norfolk and paused briefly in the Caribbean for an operational readiness inspection before proceeding on a voyage that took her across the equator to Rio de Janeiro, round the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean, into the Pacific Ocean and finally to Subic Bay in the Philippines.
On 26 May, America began its first day of special operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, when Cmdr. Fred M. Backman, commanding officer of VA-165, and his bombardier/navigator, Lt. Cmdr. Jack Hawley, in a Grumman A-6C Intruder flew the ship's first combat sortie of the 1970 WestPac cruise. On the same day, the Navy's newest light attack aircraft, the A-7E Corsair II received its first taste of combat. At 12:01, Lt. (j.g.) Dave Lichterman, of VA-146, was catapulted from the deck in the first A-7E ever to be launched in combat. He and his flight leader, Cmdr. Wayne L. Stephens, the squadron's commanding officer, subsequently delivered their ordnance with devastating accuracy using the A-7E's digital weapons computer. Shortly after 13:00, Cmdr R. N. Livingston, skipper of the "Argonauts" of VA-147, and Lt Cmdr. Tom Gravely rolled in on an enemy supply route to deliver the first bombs in combat in an A-7E, reportedly "all on target".
For five line periods, consisting of 100 days on "Yankee Station", Americas aircraft pounded at roads and waterways, trucks and waterborne logistic craft (WBLC), hammered at petroleum storage areas and truck parks in an attempt to impede the flow of men and war materials to the south.
On 20 August, at Manila, Vice Admiral Frederic A. Bardshar, Commander, Attack Carrier Striking Force, 7th Fleet, hosted the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand E. Marcos, on board America. Marcos was given a 21-gun salute as he and his wife Imelda Marcos arrived on board from their presidential yacht to visit the ship. Accompanied by U.S. ambassador Henry A. Byroade and his wife, they were greeted by Vice Admiral Bardshar and Americas commanding officer, Capt. Thomas B. Hayward and were subsequently escorted to the ship's hangar deck where the carrier division band and the ship's marine detachment rendered honors. Following their arrival, the visiting party dined with Vice Admiral Bardshar and Capt. Hayward, and were later given a brief tour of the ship.
On 17 September, America completed her fourth line period and headed for special operations off the coast of Korea and subsequently, the Sea of Japan. On 23 September, the carrier entered the Tsushima Straits, remained in the Sea of Japan for approximately five days and exited on 27 September through the Tsugaru Strait.
During this period, America and CVW-9 engaged in three exercises: "Blue Sky", with elements of the Republic of China Air Force; "Commando Tiger", conducted in the Sea of Japan, involving air units of the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF); and, after exiting the Tsugara Straits, "Autumn Flower", air defense exercises with the Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) and the United States Fifth Air Force.
On 7 November, America completed her fifth line period and departed for her last visit to Subic Bay. Through five line periods, the carrier had flown off 10,600 sorties (7,615 combat plus combat support), 2,626 actual combat sorties, completed 10,804 carrier landings, expended 11,190 tons of ordnance, moved of cargo, handled 6,890 packages and transferred of mail. She had accomplished this without a single combat loss and only one major landing accident with fortunately, no fatalities.
The day before the carrier arrived at Sydney, Australia, for a three-day rest and recreation visit, United States ambassador to Australia and his wife, the Honorable and Mrs. Walter L. Rice, flew on board to accompany the ship into Sydney.
America celebrated two Thanksgivings. At exactly 23:29 on 26 November, America crossed the International Date Line. Moments later it became Thanksgiving Day again.
After rounding Cape Horn on 5 December 1970, America headed north, stopped briefly at Rio de Janeiro for fuel, and arrived in Norfolk, on 21 December. She remained there until 22 January 1971, when the ship entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for a three-month restricted availability. She departed the yard, on schedule, on 22 March. Over the ensuing weeks, the ship operated locally in the Virginia Capes operating areas. She then carried out exercises in Puerto Rican waters, with United States Navy as well as Royal Navy warships-including , , and .
After a return to Norfolk, America stood out of Hampton Roads on 6 July 1971 for the Mediterranean. On 16 July 1971, America dropped anchor at Naval Station Rota, Spain in order to receive her turnover information from the ship she was relieving on station, Franklin D. Roosevelt. America then entered the Mediterranean for the third time since her commissioning. Between the time the ship left Rota, until she reached Naples, she participated in three major exercises.
Following a port call at Naples, America proceeded on a course toward Palma, Majorca. While en route, she participated in "PHIBLEX 2–71", in which she covered a mock amphibious landing at Capoteulada, Sicily. After a port visit at Palma, Majorca, America participated from 16 to 27 August in "National Week X", one of the largest exercises conducted in the Mediterranean. At the termination of the exercise, America proceeded to Corfu, Greece, her next liberty port. She then visited Athens shortly afterwards.
After conducting routine operations in the eastern Mediterranean and making a port call at Rhodes, Greece, the ship proceeded to the Aegean Sea to participate in Operation "Deep Furrow 71", America and CVW-8 providing close air support for almost the entire exercise.
Proceeding to Thessaloniki, Greece, for a port visit America then participated in "National Week XI", in the central Mediterranean. The carrier subsequently visited Naples before she steamed into the western Mediterranean to participate in exercises with British, Dutch, Italian, and French forces in exercise "Ile D'Or", completing her part in the evolutions by 19 November. America then conducted port visits to Cannes and Barcelona before proceeding to Rota. There, on 9 December, she was relieved on station by .
Arriving back at Norfolk on 16 December, America moored in Norfolk, for post-deployment stand down before unloading ammunition in preparation for availability at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. After the two-month overhaul, the carrier conducted sea trials. Soon afterwards America embarked on a program of training, accelerated due to the fact that the date of her deployment had been advanced one month, and participated in exercise "Exotic Dancer V." She returned to Norfolk, upon conclusion of the exercises.
Third deployment to Vietnam
On 2 June 1972, three days before America was to sail Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, the Chief of Naval Operations, visited the ship and explained the reason why her orders had been changed sending her to the Gulf of Tonkin instead of the Mediterranean. Sailing on 5 June, America crossed the equator on 12 June and held the usual initiation of "pollywogs" into the realm of Neptune.
Escorted by destroyers and , and accompanied by the fleet oiler , America proceeded toward southeast Asia, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 21 June. Joining the 7th Fleet later in June, America relieved the attack carrier on station, and commenced combat operations on 12 July. A ruptured main feed pump, however, prompted an early return to Subic Bay on 25 July for repairs, the ship arriving in the Philippines during a time of natural devastationfloods and landslides.
The repair work was delayed for two weeks while needed parts were rushed to Subic Bay. America stood out on 9 August to return to the line, and soon resumed carrying out strike operations against communist targets in North Vietnam. On 6 October, bombs from her planes dropped the Thanh Hoa Bridge, a major objective since the bombing of the North had begun years before.
Completing her line period and stopping over briefly at Subic Bay, America steamed to Singapore, departing that port on 20 October to resume operations on "Yankee Station." Less than a month later, a fire broke out on board America, at 14:10 on 19 November 1972, in the number two catapult spaces. The ship went to general quarters as smoke began to fill the 03 level, and damage control parties soon had the blaze extinguished. Clean-up and repair work ensued, and despite not having the services of one of her catapults, America remained on the line and continued to meet her commitments.
After an extended line period of 43 days, America reached Subic Bay on 2 December, where the number two catapult was repaired, and departed the Philippines on 8 December to return to "Yankee Station". A week before Christmas, America learned that the breakdown of peace talks in Paris had led to a resumption of bombing of targets in North Vietnam. America swung into action, and the pace proved hectic until the Christmas cease-fire. "Christmas away from home is never good", America's historian wrote, "but the men of America made the best of it with homemade decorations." There were services to celebrate the season, "and carolers were noted strolling through the passageways ...."
America received five battle stars for her service in the Vietnam War.
Cessation of hostilities
On 28 December, the carrier anchored in Hong Kong harbor, and remained there until 4 January 1973, when she stood out for the Philippines and the period of rest and repairs at Subic Bay that would precede the ship's return to the line. All hands avidly followed the progress of the peace talks as America returned to "Yankee Station", and resumed operations. After two weeks on the line, the ship learned that peace had been secured and that an agreement was to be signed in Paris. At 08:00 on 28 January 1973, the Vietnam Warat least that stage of itwas at an end. Rumors swept the ship that her deployment would be shortened because of the cessation of hostilities, and hope ran high as the ship moored at Subic Bay on 3 February.
America did return to "Yankee Station" one last time, but her time on station proved short, as she returned to Subic Bay on 17 February and sailed thence for the United States three days later, on 20 February. The carrier arrived at Mayport Florida, disembarking men from CVW-8 and embarking the teen-aged sons of some of the ship's company officers and men, thus allowing them to ride the ship back to Norfolk with their fathers.
On 24 March, America arrived back at Norfolk, bringing to a close her sixth major deployment since commissioning. She immediately began preparations for a 30-day stand down and the restricted availability to follow at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. She entered the yard on 11 May and emerged after that period of repairs and alterations on 10 August.
America conducted local operations out of Norfolk into October, and during this period the ship celebrated a significant milestone in the life of a carrier: she logged her 100,000th landing on 29 August 1973, when her COD aircraft (nicknamed "Miss America"), piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Lewis R. Newby and Lt. Cmdr. Ronnie B. Baker, landed on board. Cake-cuttings on the hangar deck and in the wardroom celebrated the occasion.
On 29 October, America cleared Hampton Roads for Jacksonville and a period of carrier qualifications. She was conducting routine training operations on 1 November when she went to the assistance of the crippled sailing schooner Harry W. Adams of Nova Scotia. The schooner, her engine disabled and without power for her pumps, was taking on water. Helicopters from America sped to the scene, and the ship provided rescue specialists and underwater demolition experts to assist in the effort. The ship's captain and his crew of nine all escaped serious injury, although the carrier's helicopters brought three of the crew on board for medical examinations and a warm meal. America stood by until the late afternoon, when the Coast Guard cutter PORT ROBERTS arrived to assist Harry W. Adams into port at Jacksonville.
After concluding her operations in the Jacksonville area America paid a port call at Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, from 4–8 November. She proceeded thence to sea for exercises of various kinds to hone the skills of the ship-air wing team and, following her operational readiness inspection off Mayport, proceeded back to Norfolk, on 21 November.
America then steamed south after the Thanksgiving holiday, for Atlantic Fleet readiness exercises, returned via Mayport to Norfolk on 13 December, and remained in her home port until sailing for the Mediterranean on 3 January 1974.
[[File:Flight deck washdown system test on USS America (CV-66) 1976.JPEG|thumb|left|The flight deck washdown system is tested during America'''s 1976 Mediterranean cruise]]
Relieving Independence at Rota, Spain, on 11 January, she became the flagship for Rear Admiral Frederick C. Turner, Commander, TF 60. America commenced operations in the western Mediterranean that day and, over the next few weeks; divided her time between at-sea periods and port visits to Toulon, Barcelona, and Valencia. From 15 to 19 February, the carrier participated in exercise "National Week XVI", and upon the conclusion of that evolution anchored in Souda Bay, Crete. She proceeded thence for a port call at Athens.
Standing out of the waters of that Greek port on 1 March, America participated in "PHIBLEX 9–74", in which the ship's air wing, CVW, practiced supporting an amphibious landing. The carrier then operated north of Crete on exercises in early April, after which time she put into Athens on 9 April.America then participated in NATO exercise, "Dawn Patrol", in which units of the navies of the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and West Germany participated. During one phase of this exercise, the carrier's marine detachment embarked in and stormed ashore from that amphibious ship while Americas planes provided close air support.
Upon the conclusion of Dawn Patrol, the carrier paid another visit to Athens, proceeding thence on 19 May for a four-day period of exercises, after which time she steamed to Istanbul, arriving there on 23 May.
Immediately following this port call, the ship returned to Athens and sailed thence for exercise "Shahbaz" to test the air defense capability of NATO ally Turkey early in June. America then anchored off the island of Rhodes, Greece, on 6 June for a four-day port visit, after which time she returned to Athens to embark Naval Academy midshipmen for their summer training cruise. America then participated in exercise "Flaming Lance", off the coast of Sardinia, during which time controlled over 1,000 intercepts by Americas aircraft.
Making her last port call at Athens for the deployment, the carrier steamed to Souda Bay on 1 July, loading minesweeping equipment that had been used in Operation Nimbus Star, the clearance of the Suez Canal. America then proceeded to Corfu, and began the transit out of the eastern Mediterranean on 6 July, arriving at Palma, Majorca, three days later.America anchored off Rota on 15 July, for what was scheduled to have been an off-load of the equipment of Commander, TF 60, staff. Clashes between Greek and Turkish forces on Cyprus, however, prompted the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order America to remain at Rota until the arrival of her relief, Independence, on 28 July. As soon as that attack carrier entered the 6th Fleet operating area, America commenced her homeward voyage, ultimately reaching Norfolk, on 3 August.
A little over a month later, America sailed for the North Sea, to participate in a NATO exercise, "Northern Merger", departing Norfolk on 6 September. America joined with HMS Ark Royal in providing air support for a NATO task force and for an amphibious landing. Throughout the exercise Soviet surface units, as well as "Bear" and Tu-16 'Badger' aircraft, conducted surveillance missions over and near the NATO force.
Upon the conclusion of "Northern Merger", America steamed to Portsmouth, England, arriving there on 29 September to commence a five-day port visit. The carrier proceeded thence back to the United States, reaching Norfolk on 12 October, to commence preparations for a major overhaul at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Entering the yard on 27 November 1974, America remained there until 27 September 1975, when the ship got underway to conduct post-overhaul sea trials.America departed Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 16 October 1975 for local operations off the Virginia Capes and, after a few weeks in Norfolk, departed Hampton Roads for Cuban waters and refresher training.
While steaming north of Cuba and preparing for the operational readiness inspection that concludes refresher training, America picked up distress calls, immediately deploying helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to search for a disabled motorized sailboat, Ruggentino. One of the carrier's helicopters located a boat in distress and guided a tug to the scene which took the disabled craft in tow. The boat, however, was the Content, so America and her aircraft resumed the search for Ruggentino. One of her planes soon located Ruggentino, and the ship dispatched a motor whaleboat to assist. America sailors soon had the boat pumped out and headed for port.America completed her schedule of training in Cuban waters and then returned north, arriving back at Norfolk on 16 December 1975. Following the year-end stand down, the carrier resumed local operations out of Norfolk in January 1976 and, in March participated in exercise "Safe Pass '76" with ships of the Canadian, West German, Dutch and British navies. She ultimately sailed for the Mediterranean on 15 April 1976 with CVW-6 and Commander, Carrier Group 4 (CarGru 4), Rear Admiral James B. Linder, embarked.
Crisis in Lebanon
Soon after her arrival in the turnover port of Rota, America participated in a NATO exercise, "Open Gate", before entering the Mediterranean. Passing the Pillars of Hercules on 3 May, the ship entered into the eastern Mediterranean in support of Operation "Fluid Drive", a contingency operation for the evacuation of non-combatants from war-torn Lebanon. For the next three months, the carrier maintained a high state of readiness. In conjunction with "Fluid Drive", the ship and her air wing maintained continuous surveillance of the Soviet Mediterranean fleet, which at that point was at its largest since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
On 24 May, America anchored in Rhodes, Greece, to commence her first liberty of the deployment-but violent anti-American demonstrations prevented the carrier's crew from going ashore, and the ship stood out two days later. America conducted a port visit to Taranto Italy, instead, but the deteriorating situation in the eastern Mediterranean required the ship to sail sooner than scheduled.
The assassination of the United States ambassador to Lebanon Francis E. Meloy, and Economic Counselor Robert O. Waring as they were on their way to visit Lebanese President Elias Sarkis on 16 June 1976 prompted the evacuation of Americans from that nation a week later, on the 20th. America remained on alert while landing craft from the dock landing ship transferred the evacuees from the beach to safety. Following the successful evacuation, the carrier proceeded westward for a few days of liberty in Italian ports celebrating the country's bicentennial Independence Day, 4 July 1976, at Bari, Italy.
Proceeding back into the eastern Mediterranean on 11 July to conduct a missile exercise north of Crete, the ship continued to maintain responsibility for "Fluid Drive." On 27 July, as more Americans were evacuated from Lebanon on board , the carrier provided support. Relieved of her responsibilities in the eastern Mediterranean on 2 August, America reached Naples soon afterwards, and remained in port for two weeks. The carrier returned to sea on 18 August and participated in exercise "National Week XXI" with other 6th Fleet units.
Upon the termination of "National Week XXI", America proceeded to Palma, whence she proceeded to participate in "Poop Deck 76" with Spanish Air Force units and United States Air Force units based in Spain. Then, following visits to the Spanish ports of Barcelona and Málaga, America took part in the final exercise of her Mediterranean cruise, exercise "Display Determination". teamed with America, and ships from the navies of Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Turkey participated as well. The American carrier conducted convoy escort duties, simulated close air support for amphibious operations, and simulated strikes against military targets. Upon conclusion of "Display Determination", the carrier proceeded to Rota, where she was relieved by Franklin D. Roosevelt. America ultimately reached Norfolk on 25 October 1976.
On 6 November, the carrier proceeded up the Elizabeth River to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, where she remained into February 1977. America then operated locally out of Norfolk into the spring of 1977 until sailing for the Mayport, Florida, operating area on 3 May. Following her participation in exercise "Solid Shield 77", a joint service amphibious training exercise, the carrier returned to Norfolk on 24 May.America sailed from Hampton Roads on 10 June 1977 for a five-week South Atlantic deployment as a unit of TG 20.4. Other ships in company included , , , and . Following her return to Norfolk, America operated locally before she sailed to conduct operations in the Caribbean.
After returning to Norfolk on 27 August, America sailed for the Mediterranean on 29 September, with CVW-6 embarked, and reached Rota on 9 October. Departing that port on 14 October the carrier proceeded to the Tyrrhenian Sea, where she operated until 26 October. Following a port call at Brindisi, Italy, America began operations in the Ionian Sea on 7 November, and anchored at Souda Bay, Crete, two days later. She operated locally in these waters until 12 November, when she sailed for Kithira Island, Greece, anchoring there on the 19th.
Weighing anchor the following morning, America sailed for the Adriatic Sea, bound for Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. Visiting this seaport from 22 to 26 November, the carrier transited the Adriatic for a port call at Trieste, staying there from 28 November to 3 December. Returning to operate in the waters of Souda Bay for more exercises, America subsequently departed Crete on 12 December for Palma, where she spent Christmas.
Departing Palma two days later, America proceeded through the Ligurian Sea to her next port of call, Genoa, which she reached on 30 December. She remained there until 8 January 1978, when she sailed to carry out antisubmarine exercises in the Tyrrhenian Sea, upon the conclusion of which she anchored in Golfo di Palma, Sicily. Operations in the western Mediterranean and again in the Tyrrhenian Sea rounded out most of January 1978, and the ship rested briefly at Catania, Italy, before getting underway for exercise "National Week" on 5 February.
She returned to the Tyrrhenian Sea and western Mediterranean for further exercises during March, and then visited Barcelona before she brought the deployment to a close with further exercises in the western Mediterranean. At Rota, she was relieved by , and sailed for Norfolk, arriving home on 25 April 1978.
Following post-deployment stand down, America conducted carrier qualifications off the Virginia Capes, and then entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard for an availability. Upon the conclusion of that period of repairs and alterations, the carrier conducted post-availability sea trials on 19–20 September 1978, and conducted carrier qualifications with CVW from 12 to 20 October. Tragedy marred the last day of operations, when a Lockheed S-3 Viking antisubmarine aircraft went over the side upon landing; hung on the safety nets momentarily, then plunged into the sea. Although the pilots, Lt. Cmdr. Ziolowski and Lt. (j.g.) Renshaw ejected clear of the plane, they were not recovered.America subsequently conducted refresher training out of Guantánamo Bay early in November, before she called at Ft. Lauderdale on 10 November to commence a four-day stay. Returning to Norfolk soon afterwards, the carrier remained in the Norfolk area, alternating periods of time in port with type-training and exercises off the Virginia Capes.
The carrier cleared Norfolk on 5 January 1979 for the Caribbean operating areas, and conducted type training there from 5–23 January after which time the ship visited St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, from 24 to 29 January. America then resumed type training in the waters of the Caribbean and West Indies, concluding those evolutions on 12 February to return to Norfolk.
After bringing CVW-11 on board off the Virginia Capes on 8 and 9 March, America spent the next two days moored in Norfolk making final preparations for her departure for the Mediterranean. The carrier sailed on 13 March. Two days later, on 15 March, America conducted a "BEAREX" with a Lockheed P-3 Orion from Bermuda simulating a Russian "Bear" reconnaissance aircraft. Such practice proved timely, for the following day, A-7 and Grumman F-14 Tomcat aircraft from America intercepted a pair of the long-range "Bear D" planes that were en route to Cuba from their bases in the Soviet Union. The "Bears" never came within visual range of the carrier's battle group.
Reaching Rota on 24 March, America relieved and commenced operations in the western Mediterranean on 29 March. During this deployment, the ship visited a variety of ports, starting with Naples, Taranto, and Catania. Moving into the Adriatic, the carrier stopped at Split, Croatia, before moving north to Venice and Trieste. In the eastern Mediterranean, America called at Alexandria, Egypt, at Souda Bay, Crete. Returning west, she visited Palma and Barcelona in Spain, Marseille on the coast of France, Genoa in northern Italy and Valencia in Spain before heading for Rota. She completed turnover proceedings at Rota on 10–11 September 1979, and got underway immediately to commence the homeward voyage.
Highlighting this period were numerous multilateral and unilateral exercises, as in previous Mediterranean deployments. During one phase of "National Week XXVII", America and her consorts took part in an open sea exercise that took them into the waters of the Gulf of Sidra (Sirte) – claimed by Libya as territorial waters since 11 October 1973. The Libyan government serving notice that any ship or aircraft operating south of the 32-30 north latitude would be violating its territory, Americas battle group maintained an alert, in view of the proximity of Libyan airfields and Soviet-made aircraft operating therefrom. Departing Augusta Bay, Sicily, on 26 July, the task group arrived in its exercise area on the 28th. As planes from CVW-11 maintained nearly continuous fighter cover, the ships conducted their exercise unhindered.
Ultimately departing Rota on 12 September 1979 to conduct a blue water turnover with , America encountered her second pair of "Bears". F-14 Tomcats of VF-213 intercepted the two, however, and caused them to turn away to the north, having never sighted a single ship in the carrier's battle group. Reaching Norfolk on 22 September, America stood down after her 6th Fleet deployment.
The carrier departed Norfolk again on 15 October for Mayport, and conducted local operations off the coast of Florida before moving into the Gulf of Mexico to conduct carrier qualifications. Returning north upon completion of those evolutions, America put to sea on 30 October for more carrier qualifications-these, however, involved the first arrested carrier landings of the new McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. This aircraft underwent rigorous testing over the days which followed, before America returned to Norfolk on 3 November.
Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 6 November 1979, America underwent repairs and alterations for much of 1980 commencing her post-repair trials on 23 September 1980. Among the work performed during the availability was the installation of the NATO "Sea Sparrow" missile and close-in weapon systems such as the multi-barreled "Phalanx" machine gun.
The ship carried out a second period of post-repair trials from 16 to 21 October, after which time she returned to Norfolk whence she conducted sea trials from 27 to 29 October. Subsequently, conducting refresher training out of Guantánamo Bay, America returned to the Virginia Capes operating area to conduct carrier qualifications in early December. She spent the remainder of the year 1980, undergoing upkeep at Norfolk.America operated locally in the Virginia Capes area into January 1981 and, during these operations on 14 January 1981, brought on board a Grumman C-1A "Trader" COD aircraft piloted by Ens. Brenda Robinson, USNR. Ens. Robinson became the first black female naval aviator to be carrier qualified. The ship later conducted carrier qualifications for CVW-11.
On 29 January 1981, as America was returning to Norfolk, she received a message from a Greek motor vessel, Aikaterini, in distress. America, diverted to the scene to render assistance until the Coast Guard could arrive, sent helicopters from her embarked HS-12 with damage control equipment, members of the ship's fire department, and damage control assistance to the stricken ship.
Returning to Norfolk on 2 February, America proceeded thence for carrier qualifications off the Virginia Capes, and thence to the Caribbean for type training. Returning to Norfolk on 19 March, America – in company with her consorts and subsequently sailed for the Mediterranean on 14 April 1981, destined, ultimately, for the Indian Ocean.
Reaching Palma on 23 April, America then participated in NATO exercise "Daily Double", with the amphibious assault ship , as well as with Greek and Italian Navy units on the 28th before she steamed to Port Said, Egypt.
Originally scheduled to have commenced her transit of the Suez Canal on 5 May, the tense situation in Lebanon prompted a 24-hour "hold" on the evolution. Given the go-ahead soon after, America made the transit on 6 May, in ten hours – the first United States Navy carrier to steam through the Suez Canal since had made the passage shortly before the Arab-Israeli "Six-Day War" of 1967. It was also the first "super-carrier" to transit the canal since it had been modified to permit passage of supertankers.America operated in the Indian Ocean, on "Gonzo" Station, for the first time from 12 May – 3 June, after which time she visited Singapore. On 18 June, the carrier departed that port for her second stint on "Gonzo Station". This deployment was to last 35 days. America and her embarked air wing provided a vital U.S. presence in the North Arabian Sea and ensured freedom of the seas for all nations operating ships through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf. These operations were conducted in a routine manner through three line periods (except for the loss of the ship's anchor while mooring off of Masirah Island).
On 15 July, America was requested to provide search and rescue (SAR) aircraft to assist in locating a merchant ship in distress in the northern Arabian Sea. The Greek merchantman Irene Sincerity was reportedly afire. Americas planes located the ship and California rescued the 39 crewmen and disembarked them in good condition in Karachi, Pakistan.
Upon completion of her second northern Arabian Sea line period on 4 August, America shaped a course for Australian waters conducting a "Weapons Week" exercise in the vicinity of Diego Garcia. During "Weapons Week", a Lockheed P-3 "Orion" of Patrol Squadron (VP) 50 requested two F-14 Tomcats from America, flying in the vicinity of Pierre Island, near Diego Garcia, to assist in contacting their ship for SAR assistance. California sped to the island and located an individual stranded on Pierre Island, he had been on a treasure-hunting expedition bound from Sri Lanka to Mauritius. The cruiser took the man to Diego Garcia.
Departing the Diego Garcia operating area on 15 August, America conducted a unique burial-at-sea on the 18th, when the remains of the late Lt. Stephen O. Musselman were consigned to the ocean. Musselman had been shot down on 10 September 1972 in an A-7 Corsair II from America, over North Vietnam, and his remains had been returned by the Vietnamese government on 8 July 1981. Lt. Musselman's widow requested that these remains be consigned to the last ship he had served in and buried thence.America anchored in Gage Roads at Fremantle, Western Australia on 25 August, and remained there for six days, sailing for "Gonzo Station" on the 31st. During her third line period, the ship spent 34 days on station. On 23 September, a fire broke out in a steam trunk line that carries steam from the main engineering spaces to the flight deck catapult system, at about 17:45. Soon after Americas fire party arrived on the scene to isolate the fire, smoke began filling the areas adjacent to the crew berthing areas, so Capt. James F. Dorsey, Jr., ordered general quarters sounded.America's firefighters soon managed to quell the blaze, and the ship secured from battle stations at 23:16. The carrier resumed normal flight operations the next morning at sunrise, and remained on station until relieved by Coral Sea on 16 October. Two days later, while America steamed toward the Bab el Mandeb Strait, the ship went to general quarters, in view of threats issued by the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. The ship passed without incident, and continued her journey through the Red Sea unhindered.
On 21 October 1981, America commenced the northbound transit of the Suez Canal. This transit, unlike the comparatively light-hearted one of 6 May, proved more tense. As a result of the unsettled conditions in Egypt following 6 October 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian government accorded Americas passage through the Suez Canal the utmost security considerations. The Egyptian Navy provided a patrol vessel to escort the carrier, while an Egyptian Air Force helicopter conducted reconnaissance flight over both banks of the waterway. Egyptian Army units patrolled the adjacent canal roads. Additionally, liaison officers on board the carrier maintained constant touch with the security forces by radio.
Making the passage of the canal without incident, America continued on across the Mediterranean, reaching Palma on 25 October. After a three-day port call, the carrier conducted exercises with Spanish forces, and subsequently sailed for home on 1 November, departing the Mediterranean the following day. She arrived at Norfolk on 12 November.
Following a short stand down, America conducted carrier qualifications in the Virginia Capes operating area, before she moored at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 14 December. Emerging from the naval shipyard on 20 April 1982, America operated locally off the Virginia Capes. Departing Norfolk on 10 May, the ship steamed to the Guantánamo Bay operating area and returning to her home port on 28 May.
Following further carrier qualifications off the Virginia Capes the carrier then steamed south to conduct type training in the West Indies, interspersing these evolutions with a port visit to St. Thomas. Returning to Norfolk on 8 July, America operated locally from 22 to 24 July, before she sailed on 22 August, with CVW-1 embarked, to participate in joint NATO exercises "United Effort" and "Northern Wedding 82".America visited Edinburgh, Scotland, from 15 to 21 September and proceeded thence to Portsmouth, England, arriving there on 23 September. Sailing for the Mediterranean on 26 September, the carrier operated briefly with the 6th Fleet, participating in exercise "Display Determination" from 30 September – 8 October. She then sailed for the United States, and, following her operational readiness evaluation in the Caribbean operating areas, reached Mayport to disembark CVW-1. America returned to Norfolk on 4 November.
Returning to LebanonAmerica departed Norfolk on 8 December 1982, proceeded to the Virginia Capes operating area and embarked CVW-1, and set out across the Atlantic. Visiting Palma on 22 December America remained there through the Christmas holiday, weighing anchor on 28 December to sail for the Lebanese coast, where she was to take up duty in support of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force in strife-torn Lebanon. Relieving USS Nimitz on station on 2 January 1983, America spent the next 18 days off Lebanon, before Nimitz took over on 20 January. Steaming thence to Piraeus, Greece, America, along with and , anchored there on 23 January for a five-day port visit to Athens.
Underway on 29 January, the carrier transited the Sea of Crete en route to an overnight anchorage at Port Said. Transiting the Suez Canal on 31 January, America reached the Red Sea the same day and reported for duty with the 7th Fleet on 4 February. On 9 February, the carrier and her accompanying battle group conducted exercise "Beacon Flash 83". Subsequently, on 28 February, America and her consorts conducted a "Weapons Week" exercise in the vicinity of Diego Garcia. Following those evolutions, the carrier visited Colombo, Sri Lanka, anchoring on 7 March. Weighing anchor on 12 March, America resumed operations in the Indian Ocean soon afterwards, culminating in "Beacon Flash 83-4", and a subsequent port visit to Masirah Island, Oman.
Steaming thence to Mombasa, Kenya, and a five-day port visit America departed that port for a week of intense flight operations, followed by participation in "Beacon Flash 85" on 19 April. Returning to anchor at Masirah Island again three days later, the carrier and her battle group operated in the northern Arabian Sea, en route to the Suez Canal. Transiting that waterway on 4 May, America headed for Souda Bay, reaching an anchorage there on 7 May. Five days later, the carrier got underway for Málaga, Spain, reaching her destination on 14 May for a nine-day port visit. The ship subsequently departed Málaga on 23 May, and reached Norfolk on 2 June.America then entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 8 July. For four months, the ship underwent a period of repairs and alterations, emerging from the yard on 28 October. She then operated locally off the Virginia Capes with CVW-1 embarked, before she proceeded thence to Mayport, and, ultimately, to Puerto Rican waters for refresher training. Subsequently, visiting Nassau, in the Bahamas, for a five-day port visit, America returned to the East Coast of the United States, reaching Mayport on 8 December. She then conducted carrier qualifications for both East and West Coast squadrons en route to her home port reaching Norfolk on 14 December.
The carrier operated locally from Norfolk into February 1984 alternating periods of upkeep in port with carrier qualifications and exercises. She then conducted two periods of type training (6–20 February and 25 March – 8 April), interspersing these with an in-port period at Ft. Lauderdale from 21 to 24 February and then calling at St. Thomas upon conclusion of the second period of training. Returning to Norfolk on 22 March, America spent the next month preparing for her next deployment, and got underway to participate in exercise "Ocean Venture" on 24 April. Visiting Caracas, Venezuela, upon conclusion of that evolution, America departed on 9 May for the Mediterranean.
Reaching Málaga, Spain, on 21 May, the carrier commenced her transit of the Mediterranean on 29 May and reached Port Said on 3 June. Transiting the Suez Canal on the following day she passed through the Red Sea and joined the 7th Fleet on 8 June, relieving Kitty Hawk. On 10 July, while operating in the Indian Ocean, America lost an EA-6B Prowler from the VAQ-135 Black Ravens due to a failure of the waist catapult system. The crew ejected but the pilot, LTJG Michael Debartolomeo was killed in the process. An investigation into the Class A mishap revealed that faulty maintenance of the catapult system was to blame. Returning to the 6th Fleet on 29 August, America transited the Suez Canal on 2 September bound for Naples.
The carrier visited Monaco from 13 to 22 September before she participated in one phase of NATO exercise, "Display Determination". After stopping briefly to Naples, America returned to sea soon afterwards, and took part in the second phase of "Display Determination" before visiting Catania. She reached Augusta Bay on 27 October, where she was relieved by and sailed for the United States.
Arriving at Norfolk on 14 November, America conducted carrier qualifications in the Virginia Capes operating areas from 29 November – 17 December before returning to port on 18 December. The ship remained in an upkeep status until 18 January 1985, when she shifted to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for overhaul.
Emerging from the yard on 13 May for sea trials off the Virginia Capes, America remained at Norfolk until 28 May, when she sailed to conduct refresher training. Then, following a port call at Port Everglades, Florida (13–17 June), America conducted carrier qualifications before returning to Norfolk on 25 June. The ship operated locally out of Norfolk through mid-August.America sailed on 24 August to participate in "Ocean Safari", a six-week NATO exercise which ultimately took her to Norwegian waters. After visiting Portsmouth, United Kingdom, upon conclusion of her training, America returned to Norfolk on 9 October. She spent the remainder of the year 1985 alternating periods of upkeep in Norfolk, with local operations in the Virginia Capes operating area.
Crisis in Libya
As the new year, 1986, began, tensions in the Mediterranean basin would result in Americas sailing to deploy with the 6th Fleet one month earlier than planned. On 7 January 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered all U.S. citizens out of Libya, and broke off all remaining ties between the two nations. At the same time, President Reagan directed the dispatch of a second carrier battle group to the Mediterranean, and directed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to look into military operations against Libya, a country strongly suspected of fomenting terrorist activity.
Operations near Libya began at the end of January. These evolutions, collectively named "Attain Document", were carried out from 24 to 31 January 1986 and from 10 to 15 February, by surface ships and aircraft. America, with CVW-1 embarked, and her accompanying battle group departed Norfolk on 10 March 1986, and arrived in the Mediterranean in time to participate in the third phase of "Attain Document", a freedom of navigation (FON) exercise in the Gulf of Sidra.
Late on 23 March, American planes flew south of latitude 32-30° N – the "Line of Death" proclaimed by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadaffi. On 24 March, , accompanied by two destroyers, and , moved south of the "Line", covered by fighter aircraft, at 06:00.
A Libyan missile installation near Surt (Sirte) launched two Soviet-made SA-5 "Gammon" surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at 07:52, toward F-14A Tomcats of Americas VF-102. Later that afternoon, the installation at Surt (Sirte) fired additional SAMs at U.S. planes, but, like the first pair, went wide of their mark. About 14:30, a Libyan missile-equipped Combattante II G-type patrol craft sortied from Misratah, Libya, and approached Ticonderoga and her consorts. Two A-6E Intruders from Americas Attack Squadron 34 (VA 34) fired AGM-84 Harpoon missiles at the craft and sank her in the first use of the Harpoon in combat. Shortly afterwards, when American radars detected the Libyan installation at Sirte activating its target acquisition radars, two A-7 Corsairs from Saratogas VA-81 put the site out of action with AGM-88 HARMs (high-speed anti-radiation missiles).
One hour after the first patrol boat had sortied, a Soviet-built Nanuchka-type patrol craft began heading out into the Gulf of Sidra. Intruders from VA-34 and Saratogas VA-85 attacked with Rockeye cluster bombs, but the craft sought refuge alongside a neutral merchant ship, and avoided destruction. Damaged, she returned to the Port of Benghazi after nightfall.
The following day, at 02:00 25 March, another Nanuchka-II-type patrol boat entered International waters and came under attack from Intruders from VA-85 and Coral Seas VA-55; the former utilized Rockeyes in the attack, the latter then sank the craft with a Harpoon. The same squadrons then attacked and damaged a second Nanuchka-II, forcing her to put into Benghazi.
"Attain Document III" came to a close at 09:00 on 27 March, three days ahead of schedule and after 48 hours of largely unchallenged use of the Gulf of Sidra by the U.S. Navy. Thence steaming to Augusta Bay, Sicily, America relieved Saratoga on station, and subsequently visited Livorno, Italy, from 4–8 April 1986.
In the meantime, however, in the wake of the strikes designed to let Col. Qaddafi know that the United States had not only the desire but the capability to respond effectively to terrorism, intelligence information indicated that Qaddafi intended to retaliate.
Libyan retaliation
On 5 April 1986, two days after a bomb exploded on board a Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight en route to Athens from Rome, killing four U.S. citizens, a bomb exploded in the La Belle Discothèque in West Berlin, killing two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish civilian. Another 222 people were wounded in the bombing – 78 Americans among them. Colonel Qaddafi threatened to escalate the violence against Americans, civilian and military, throughout the world.
Repeated efforts by the United States to persuade the Libyan leader to forsake terrorism as an instrument of policy, including an attempt to persuade other western nations to isolate Libya peacefully, failed. Rumors of retaliation by the United States were soon followed by Qaddafi's threat to take all foreigners in Libya hostage, to use them as a shield to protect his military installations. In light of that threat, and of the failure to gain peaceful sanctions against Libya, and citing "incontrovertible evidence" of Libyan complicity in the recent terrorist acts, President Reagan directed that attacks on terrorist-related targets in Libya be carried out.
Operation El Dorado Canyon
See main article on Operation El Dorado CanyonOperation "El Dorado Canyon" commenced early on the afternoon of 14 April 1986 around 1700 hours British Time as tanker aircraft took off from American RAF bases in England to support the US Air Force General Dynamics F-111F Aardvark and EF-111A Raven planes that soon followed them into the air from other American RAF bases. Thus began their trip to the target, flying around the Iberian Peninsula and through the Strait of Gibraltar, thereby avoiding over flight over France, Spain, and possibly Portugal. Later that afternoon, between 17:45 and 18:20 local time in the Mediterranean Sea, America launched six A-6 Intruder strike aircraft from VA-34 and six A-7E Corsair IIs (strike support); Coral Sea launched her strike/strike support aircraft, eight A-6Es from VA-55 and six F/A-18 Hornets between 17:50 and 18:20. Both carriers launched additional aircraft to support the strike to provide CAP and other functions.
"In a spectacular feat of mission planning and execution", the Navy and Air Force planes, based apart, reached their targets on time at 19:00. The F-18 Hornets from Coral Sea and A-7 Corsair IIs from America launched air-to-surface Shrike and HARM missiles against Libyan SAM sites at Benghazi and Tripoli. Moments later, VA-34's A-6E Intruders dropped their Mk. 82 bombs on the Benghazi military barracks, believed to be an alternate command and control facility for terrorist activities and a billeting area for Qaddafi's elite Jamahiriya Guard, as well as a warehouse for components for MiG aircraft. VA-34's attack heavily damaged the warehouse, destroying four crated MiGs and damaging a fifth.
Following that counter-terrorist strike, America visited Naples from 28 April – 4 May, and then participated in NATO exercise "Distant Hammer" with units of the Italian and Turkish Air Forces, and visited Nice/Monaco upon conclusion of the evolution. During June, the carrier operated with Coral Sea and the newly arrived , and took part in a "poopdeck" exercise with Spanish and United States Air Force units off the coast of Spain, arriving at Palma soon after.
Participating in a NATO exercise, "Tridente", in late June, America visited Naples before she participated in a "National Week" exercise. Subsequently, visiting Catania and operating in the central and western Mediterranean, the carrier wound up the month of July at Benidorm, Spain, before returning to sea for further operations at sea in that region. Visiting Naples from 11 to 17 August, America spent the rest of her deployment in operations in the western and central Mediterranean before John F. Kennedy relieved her at Rota from 28 to 31 August. America arrived back at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 20 November 1986 for an overhaul which lasted until 11 February 1988. She spent the remainder of that year operating along the East Coast and in the Caribbean.America participated in Operation North Star during February and March 1989, an exercise to rehearse the Vestfjord operations planned to project power over the Kola peninsula against the Soviet Union. She was shadowed by a Soviet Slava-class cruiser, but shed her tail on departure from the fjord. She returned to Norfolk from the mini-deployment in April to prepare for her upcoming major deployment. America departed Norfolk 11 May 1989 for her sixteenth major deployment, to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. Her journey was not without incident. On 13 May 1989, a failed turnover of JP-5 pumproom monitors resulted in a fire and explosion, killing two crew members. The ship was briefly endangered, but after 7 hours of firefighting the situation was under control and normal operations resumed. On 11 August, Coral Sea and America departed early from separate port visits when they were diverted to the eastern Mediterranean as a show of force in the wake of the suspected hanging of Marine Corps LtCol William R. Higgins by Middle East terrorists, and threats to other hostages. LtCol Higgins had been kidnapped in February 1988 while a member of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Lebanon. After operations in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, America returned home on 10 November 1989.
She later evacuated the American Embassy in Lebanon in 1989, and also went on a six-month deployment from May 1989 to November 1989 and served during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991. America also Participated in Operation Deny Flight in the mid-1990s.
Persian Gulf War: Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm
On 2 August 1990, the day America departed the Norfolk Naval Shipyard following a four-month Selected Restricted Availability, Iraq invaded Kuwait. As the international community geared toward possible military action against Iraq, America and CVW-1 rushed toward a much accelerated deployment schedule.
On 28 December, just over four months after her SRA and having completed a five-month training cycle into two months, America deployed to the Red Sea in support of Operation Desert Shield with Captain J. J. Mazach in command. At that time, the combined Command, Control, Communication, Cryptology, and Intelligence (C4I) package installed aboard America included systems such as the Navy Tactical Command System Afloat (NTCSA), the Contingency Tactical Action Planning System (CTAPS) and Advance Tracking Prototype. Although these systems were not unique to the fleet, it was the first time they had been integrated into one comprehensive package. Coupled with the disseminated capabilities of the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), Americas C4I package allowed intelligence and operations information to be meshed together into one single tactical picture. Utilizing digital data links between other ships, America had intelligence processing capabilities unparalleled by any other ship in the fleet. America also deployed with B57 and B61 nuclear weapons aboard.
On 9 January 1991, the America Battle Group transited the Strait of Gibraltar and sailed into the Mediterranean. Less than a week later, on 15–16 January, she passed through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea on the UN-imposed deadline for Iraq's unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. The America joined and battle groups to form Battle Force Red Sea. At 02:00 hours (Saudi time) on 17 January, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm. Americas embarked airwing, CVW-1, initially provided Combat Air Patrol coverage over the battle force. On the second day of the war, America launched its first air strikes, targeting and destroying an ammunition depot north of Baghdad. In the next day's darkness, CVW-1 flew its first night strike of the war against an oil production facility. Strikes of up to five hours into Iraq against bridges, mobile Scud sites, oil production facilities and Iraqi Republican Guard units continued for three weeks, when the focus of the air war changed. On 9 February Captain Kent W. Ewing took command of the great warship at an informal ceremony on the flight deck and newly selected
Rear Admiral Mazach departed under orders to his new assignment.
On 14 February, America entered the Persian Gulf to become the fourth carrier of Battle Force Zulu. Joining , and strikes were flown into the Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO), with attacks on Iraqi military forces in Kuwait proper, as well as targets in eastern Iraq. This would make America the only carrier to operate on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula during Desert Storm. On 20 February, America's VS-32 became the first S-3 squadron to engage, bomb and destroy a hostile vesselan Iraqi gunboat. On 23 February, aircraft from America destroyed a Silkworm (anti-ship) missile battery after Iraq unsuccessfully fired a missile at . The focus of the war changed again on 24 February with the beginning of the ground assault into Iraq and Kuwait. America aircraft provided air support for coalition troops by attacking Iraqi troop, tank and artillery sites in Kuwait, including the highway of death. One hundred hours later, Kuwait was successfully liberated and a cease-fire was ordered. CVW-1's aircraft were credited with destroying close to 387 armored vehicles and tanks in the KTO.America departed the Persian Gulf on 4 March, with CVW-1 having conducted 3,008 combat sorties, dropped over of ordnance and suffered no aircraft losses during the war. The Red Sea coastal town of Hurghada, Egypt would be Americas only port visit from 16 to 22 March, following 78 consecutive days at sea.
After passing through the Suez Canal and exiting the Mediterranean, America reached Norfolk on 18 April. She and CVW-1 earned a Navy Unit Commendation, a third for America, for service during Desert Storm. After a short stay at home, and participating in New York City's Operation Welcome Home/Fleet Week festivities, America and CVW-1 once again headed for the Northern Atlantic to participate in NATO exercise "North Star". Departing Norfolk in August for eight weeks, she became the first carrier to conduct flight operations within Havesfjord, Norway. Less than two months later, America departed on 2 December for her second deployment of the year. This uneventful six-month deployment would see America return to the Persian Gulf, and thus become the first carrier to redeploy to the region following the Gulf War. The entire Kuwaiti leadership and US Ambassador visited for a day to extend their praise and thanks for saving their country.
Exercises would also place her in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, as well as the Mediterranean, before returning to Norfolk in June 1992.
Final deployments
[[File:USS America (CV-66) sailors marching down gangway decommissioning 1996 US Navy 960809-N-4004O-005.jpg|thumb|America's crew leave the ship for the last time during her decommissioning ceremony in August 1996]]America and her Joint Task Group departed Norfolk and other east Coast ports on 11 August 1993 for another major Mediterranean deployment to relieve Theodore Roosevelt in Operation Deny Flight. After several weeks supporting United Nations peacekeeping efforts over Bosnia and Herzegovina, America transited the Suez on 29 October 1993 to relieve in the Indian Ocean in support of UN humanitarian efforts in Somalia. She was followed, on 1 November by members of her battle group, and the replenished oiler . America covered over in a week. Supporting the U.N humanitarian efforts in Somalia was the Naval Battle Force Somalia, commanded by Rear Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, Commander, Carrier Group 6 on America. Other elements of naval battle force Somalia include Simpson, amphibious vessels , , , and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Before returning to the Mediterranean, CVW-1 aircraft flew missions into southern Iraq from the Red Sea in support of Operation Southern Watch. On 12 December 1993, America transited the Suez before returning to Norfolk in February 1994.
A unique operation developed 12 September 1994 due to the situation in Haiti. Dwight D. Eisenhower and America deployed with a large contingent of Army helicopters on board, but no air wings. The carriers headed for the Caribbean in support of President Bill Clinton policy to restore democracy to Haiti. Dwight D. Eisenhower also embarked Navy squadrons HS-7, HCS-4 and HC-2. This was the first time that carriers deployed operationally with a large contingent of Army helicopters and no air wing on board.
On 28 August 1995, America departed Norfolk on her 20th and final deployment in her 30-year history for anything but a routine six-month deployment to the Mediterranean, the Adriatic Sea and the Persian Gulf. She crossed the Atlantic Ocean in three days rather than the usual six-day transit through a Perfect Storm after leaving Norfolk. The carrier participated in Operation Deny Flight and Operation Deliberate Force, in association with the UN and NATO, and also flew missions in support of Operation Southern Watch over Iraq. America visited the capital city of Valletta, Malta, in January 1996 – the first U.S. Navy carrier to visit this historical port in over 24 years. America, operating from the Adriatic Sea, supported the NATO Implementation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina for Operation Joint Endeavor before returning to Norfolk, Virginia on 24 February 1996.
Decommissioning
Originally scheduled to undergo a Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) in 1996 for subsequent retirement in 2010, CV-66 fell victim to budget cuts and was instead retired early by the U.S. Navy.
She was decommissioned in a ceremony at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia on 9 August 1996. Americas final commanding officer was Capt. Robert E. Besal. The guest speaker for the ceremony was Adm. Leighton W. Smith, a former America commanding officer. Following the decommissioning, America was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register and was transferred to the Ready Reserve Fleet at the Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Though already decommissioned, she was awarded the 1995 Battenberg Cup in recognition of her crew's achievements in her last full year in service.
Post decommissioning service
America was planned to be sold for scrapping. However, she was chosen to be a live-fire test and evaluation platform in 2005, to aid the design of future aircraft carriers. There was some objection to a ship being named America being deliberately sunk at sea, and a committee of her former crew members and other supporters attempted to save the ship for use as a museum ship. Their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. In a letter to them, then-Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John B. Nathman explained:
On 25 February 2005, a ceremony to salute America and her crew was held at the ship's pier in Philadelphia, sponsored by the USS America Carrier Veterans Association, Inc. and the America Museum Foundation, and attended by former crew members and various dignitaries. She departed the Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility on 19 April 2005 to conduct the aforementioned tests. The experiments lasted approximately four weeks. The Navy tested America with underwater explosives, watching from afar and through monitoring devices placed on the vessel. These explosions were designed to simulate underwater attacks.
After the completion of the tests, America was sunk in a controlled scuttling on 14 May 2005 at approximately 11:30, although the sinking was not publicized until six days later. At the time, no warship of that size had ever been sunk, and effects were closely monitored; theoretically, the tests would reveal data about how supercarriers respond to battle damage.
On 16 May 2005, Naval Sea Systems Command released the following statement:
Scuttling location
The U.S. Navy released the exact location where America was sunk: , around southeast of Cape Hatteras. The wreck lies upright in one piece below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
See also
List of aircraft carriers
List of aircraft carriers of the United States Navy
References
External links
The USS America CVA/CV 66: A Virtual Museum. The USS America Museum Foundation
USS America. U.S. Navy
USS America (CVA-66) (photo gallery). Maritime Quest website
USS America Carrier Veterans Association website
Report on 16 January 2006, naming ceremony at Pentagon (including link to 35-minute video of naming ceremony for CVN78 USS Gerald R. Ford). 21 January 2007. "Name CVN78 USS America: A new flagship for America!" (CVN78.com) website
Navy plans to sink America: Explosive tests will send aircraft carrier to bottom of Atlantic. 3 March 2005. NBC News
FoIA Response: Exact Sinking Location Released (including Message from NAVSEA, 16 May 2005) (with post-sinking photo). "Name CVN78 USS America'': A new flagship for America!" (CVN78.com) website
Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carriers
Cold War aircraft carriers of the United States
Vietnam War aircraft carriers of the United States
Gulf War ships of the United States
1964 ships
Ships sunk as targets
Ships built in Newport News, Virginia
Scuttled vessels
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy%202000
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Tandy 2000
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The Tandy 2000 is a personal computer introduced by Radio Shack in September 1983 based on the 8 MHz Intel 80186 microprocessor running MS-DOS. By comparison, the IBM PC XT (introduced in March 1983) used the older 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor, and the IBM PC/AT (introduced in 1984) would later use the newer 6 MHz Intel 80286. Due to the 16-bit data bus and more efficient instruction decoding of the 80186, the Tandy 2000 ran significantly faster than other PC compatibles, and slightly faster than the PC AT. (Later IBM upgraded the 80286 in new PC AT models to 8 MHz, though with wait states.) The Tandy 2000 was the company's first computer built around an Intel x86 series microprocessor; previous models used the Zilog Z80 and Motorola 6809 CPUs.
While touted as being compatible with the IBM XT, the Tandy 2000 was different enough that most existing PC software that was not purely text-oriented failed to work properly.
The Tandy 2000 and its special version of MS-DOS supported up to 768 KB of RAM, significantly more than the 640 KB limit imposed by the IBM architecture. It used 80-track double-sided quad-density floppy drives of 720 KB capacity; the IBM standard at the time of the introduction of the Tandy 2000 was only 360 KB.
The Tandy 2000 had both "Tandy" and "TRS-80" logos on its case, marking the start of the phaseout of the "TRS-80" brand.
History
The introduction of IBM's Model 5150 Personal Computer in August 1981 created an entirely new market for microcomputers. Many hardware and software companies were founded specifically to exploit IBM's and Microsoft's new presence as a standard-setter for small computers, and most other established manufacturers shifted focus to it as well.
By this date Tandy/Radio Shack had been in the small-computer market for four years, since its August 1977 introduction of the TRS-80 Model I. The new computer division followed in October 1979 with the TRS-80 Model II—a high-end business-oriented system. In 1983 the TRS-80 Model 4 succeeded the Model III (which itself had replaced the Model I) in the consumer and educational markets. In the business segment the TRS-80 Model 12 and Model 16 succeeded the Model II, adding higher-end features. Thus far Tandy/Radio Shack's computer lines occupied their own niches in the market because of their proprietary system software and applications. Tandy attempted to monopolize software and peripheral sales by not offering third-party products in company stores. Until the IBM PC was introduced, the nearest thing to an industry standard in small computers was CP/M-80; no single manufacturer dominated.
By 1983 the IBM PC, and Tandy's discouraging of third-party products, had halved the company's market share and stopped profit growth. Tandy's motive for moving into the new MS-DOS domain was twofold: to capitalize on the new market, and to leverage sales opportunities afforded by their solid position in small computers. Marketing management believed that many Tandy customers would prefer to stay with Tandy products when (inevitably, it seemed) they made the jump onto the burgeoning IBM/Microsoft bandwagon; it was figured that the company was well-positioned in this regard because of its large base of customers in both the consumer and business markets (with its Z80-based TRS-80 Models I/III/4 and 68000-based Models 12 and 16, respectively). Tandy's large presence as a computer retailer, with several thousand Radio Shack stores throughout the US, was deemed an advantage as well. All other PC manufacturers, especially IBM, relied mainly on sales to corporate accounts, not consumer retail as did Tandy/Radio Shack. Thus the company would become the market leader offering the hottest new trend—affordable 16-bit computers running MS-DOS—directly to the computing public.
Therefore, Tandy would have to produce an IBM-style computer running the emerging industry-standard MS-DOS. The company decided to distinguish it from similar products by producing a better computer. The new machine would be aimed at the mid-price market between high-end consumers and low-end businesses. This was deemed prudent in order not to seriously cannibalize their current product lines serving both market segments. Most other big-name computer manufacturers made the same leap into the PC/MS-DOS market:
Shortly after IBM's introduction of its 286-based PC/AT, one reviewer remarked, "The bottom line is that the Tandy 2000 is still one of the hottest single-user machines on the market, and a full year after its introduction, its superiority remains unchallenged."
Applications software compatible with the MS-DOS operating system would run properly on the Tandy 2000. This means that the software had to access the computer's hardware (particularly the video display) strictly through calls to the operating system's BIOS. However, programs written to run under the similar PC DOS operating system on an actual IBM PC computer often bypassed calls to the operating system because the IBM BIOS was poorly designed and implemented. To function with adequate speed of execution, and to perform operations not provided for by the IBM BIOS, applications programmers often coded their programs to directly address the hardware of the IBM PC. Therefore any computer such as the Tandy 2000 that had hardware that differed in its details from an IBM PC would not execute programs the same way, which most often manifested incorrect results by those programs.
Tandy engineers tested one hundred of the most popular PC programs and half were found to be incompatible with the 2000's hardware. Tandy's marketing department failed to appreciate that similar non-compatible computers from DEC, TI and Eagle were not successful. Its strategy of offering a high-performance PC was the origin of the Tandy 2000's technical specifications. Some of the rival computers improved the PC hardware and matched the Tandy 2000 in one or two dimensions, but none offered across-the-board enhancement. Except as noted, they ran MS-DOS but were incompatible with the IBM PC at the hardware level. The copycat computers competed primarily on lower pricing and, like Tandy, exploiting their installed customer bases.
Tandy described the 2000 as having a "'next generation' true 16-bit CPU", and with "More speed. More disk storage. More expansion" than the IBM PC or "other MS-DOS computers". While admitting in 1984 that many MS-DOS programs did not support the computer, the company stated that "the most popular, sophisticated software on the market" was available, either immediately or "over the next six months".
Two models of Tandy 2000 were introduced: a dual-drive floppy-only model for and the 2000HD with a single floppy drive and a half-height 10 MB hard drive for . The dual-floppy model had 128 KB RAM and the hard-drive-equipped 2000HD had 256 KB. For comparison, at this time the low-end TRS-80 Model 4 with two floppy drives cost and the high-end Model 16 with two floppy drives cost .
Tandy executive Ed Juge said that within six months Tandy realized that it had erred with the 2000. By early 1985 InfoWorld reported that Tandy introduced the Tandy 1000 because it "found that the market prefers true PC compatibility" to the 2000's incomplete compatibility. The Tandy 2000 received a lukewarm welcome by the market and the computer press because of its inability to run most popular MS-DOS applications. This was not anticipated by Tandy because, at the time, it was accepted practice for new software to be created for each new computer that came to market. This is also why so many of the other PC-style computers by other manufacturers were not hardware-compatible with the IBM PC. Though the company supported the machine with hardware add-ons and software tailored specially for it (including bestsellers like Lotus 1-2-3 Release 1A and AutoCAD), the computer failed to gain popular acceptance and was never developed further. It would not be until late 1986, with the introduction of the Tandy 3000, that Tandy offered a PC-style computer with performance comparable with the Tandy 2000.
The Tandy 2000 was marketed through early 1988 with continual price cuts. Eventually they were closed out for $999 and the remaining unsold computers were converted into Radio Shack store operations terminals (which, coincidentally, had been one of the backup plans for the original TRS-80 Model I).
Specifications
8 MHz Intel 80186
128 KB RAM (expandable to 256 KB on CPU board with two banks of type 4164 DRAMs)
One or two 720 KB -inch floppy drives
10 MB MFM hard drive (upgradable to two 32 MB hard drives, or two 80 MB drives with ROM modifications and third-party software)
8-pin DIN monochrome monitor port
DB-25 RS-232 serial port
Proprietary parallel printer port (required adapter cable to connect to a Centronics-port printer)
Optional 8087 math coprocessor board plugged directly into CPU board
Four card slots on the back could accept expansion boards without any need to open the case, using a rail system. Available expansion boards/cards included:
256 KB RAM card (1 or 2 could be added for 768KB total; each card had two 128KB banks of nine 64 KB DRAM chips, type 4164)
Monochrome Graphics Card with optional color graphics expansion (must occupy bottom slot; Tandy monochrome VM-1 or color CM-1 monitor required)
Serial I/O expansion board providing four RS-232 ports (proprietary driver software required)
Hard disk controller card with two ribbon cables to an outboard hard drive up to 35 MB capacity
External 10 MB Disk Cartridge System
Mouse/Clock controller, including mouse controller and battery-backed real-time clock
ViaNet Network card (ARCNET BNC)
Compatibility issues
The Tandy 2000 was nominally BIOS-compatible with the IBM XT, so well-behaved DOS software ran on both platforms. However, most DOS software of the time bypassed the operating system and BIOS and directly accessed the hardware (especially video and external ports) to achieve higher performance. This rendered such software incompatible with the Tandy 2000.
Graphics
The base-model Tandy 2000 supported only a text-mode display in monochrome. The Tandy VM-1 monitor used the 8-pin DIN video port on the computer's rear panel. The text-mode address space was in a different location but third-party memory-resident software hacks remedied this by copying the PC-compatible text-mode memory to the Tandy 2000's text space at a rate of 5–10 times per second. This sometimes caused some choppiness in the display. It produced a fast text display rate—often too fast to read—but the 'HOLD' key on the keyboard could be used to pause text output.
The bit pattern for each text character's raster image was maintained in RAM and could be modified by the user. With clever programming the display's ability to present fine lines provided by the 640x400 screen resolution could be accessed in text mode even without the optional graphics board.
The display was upgradable to support pixel-addressable graphics via the Tandy 2000 Graphics Adapter, a circuit board that fit into an expansion slot. It had its own connector for the monochrome VM-1 monitor; the video connector in the rear-panel cabinet was disabled when this expansion board was installed. The graphics resolution was 640x400 and supported high intensity pixels.
Color capability was provided by the Color Graphics Option, which was a set of chips that were inserted into the empty sockets on the monochrome Graphics Adapter provided for this purpose. Resolution for the color board was the same 640x400, non-interlaced, and eight colors out of a palette of sixteen available colors were displayable on the Tandy CM-1 monitor (~$799). This was a particularly high-resolution and colorful display for its day. The CM-1 accepted, as input from the color graphics board, digital RGBI signals (indicating separate Red, Green, and Blue signals with an Intensity bit). CGA compatibility was hit-or-miss.
There were only three non-Tandy monitors that worked with the Tandy 2000 graphics card, all of which are long out of production. These were the original (1986–88) Mitsubishi Diamond Scan, and the NEC Multisync and Multisync GS (grayscale). The required horizontal scan frequency for the Tandy 2000 is 26.4 kHz. Modern flat-panel multisync computer monitors cannot sync at frequencies below 30 kHz. The CM-1 monitor is also digital RGB; all modern CRT monitors are analog-only.
Media
The Tandy 2000 used quad-density 5.25" floppy disks formatted at 720k. This format (80-track disks at the double-density bitrate) was not used by PC-compatibles, although some CP/M machines and the Commodore 8050/8250 drives had them. Normal PCs of the time had 40-track double-density floppy drives and could not read quad-density due to the drive heads being too wide to read the narrower tracks. 1.2 MB 5.25" drives (introduced on the IBM AT) could read quad-density disks because they were 80-track and had thinner heads. Various utility programs for DOS existed that could read nonstandard formats such as the Tandy 2000's disks. Much like 1.2 MB drives, the Tandy 2000 had problems reliably writing 360k PC disks due to the smaller heads not completely erasing the tracks and causing 40-track drives to become confused by residual magnetic signals on the outer edge of the track. Tandy distributed the computer with a utility called PC-Maker that would read and format 40-track disks in the 2000s 80-track drives, and were readable in drives on ordinary PCs.
The floppy controller on the Tandy 2000 is compatible with 3.5" double-density 720 KB floppy drives.
As of May 2019, there is an abandonware site (winworldpc.com) that has available for download a disk image for the latest version of MS-DOS for the Tandy 2000. It includes instructions for using the IBM 1.2 MB 5.25" disk drive (80-track) to create a system disk bootable in the Tandy 2000 5.25" drive. This procedure can also be used to create a bootable 3.5-inch system disk using an ordinary 720KB 3.5-inch PC drive; this will boot a Tandy 2000 if its 5.25" boot drive has been replaced with a double-density 720 KB 3.5 inch PC drive.
Keyboard
The keyboard was a new design made for the Tandy 2000. It would later be the same keyboard shipped with the Tandy 1000 and its successors.
The arrangement of the function keys was changed from that of the IBM PC/XT, which had ten on the left side of the keyboard in two columns of five. Tandy was among the first PC manufacturers to change this to the modern arrangement of twelve function keys arranged horizontally across the top. IBM gave a nod to the new standard by using this arrangement for the Model M keyboard.
Serial port
The serial port hardware was completely different from the PC/XT's. PC-compatible terminal emulation software had to either access the serial hardware strictly through BIOS or use a FOSSIL driver, a software wrapper that virtualized the serial hardware (see also DEC Rainbow), to run on a wider variety of hardware.
Several terminal programs were available for the Tandy 2000, making it possible to log in on BBSes, e-mail, and other remote systems.
Operating system
The Tandy 2000 required a specific version of MS-DOS that would run only on this machine. Standard MS-DOS or PC DOS (for generic IBM-compatibles) would not run on a Tandy 2000. It was standard practice and Microsoft's expectation at the time that a customized version of MS-DOS would be prepared for each different machine, with I/O drivers designed for the hardware of that model. The highest version of DOS that Tandy Corporation released for the Tandy 2000 was 2.11.03, with a few minor third-party patches after the fact. A modified version of Windows 1.0 was able to run on the Tandy 2000.
MS-DOS for the Tandy 2000 resided entirely in RAM, unlike on IBM PCs where the BIOS portion of the OS resided in ROM. The complete MS-DOS system (BIOS and BDOS) occupied about 53 KB of RAM. This means that the RAM required to run applications on the Tandy 2000 was a little greater. However, the Tandy 2000 fared better in comparison to the later IBM PC-AT in that the AT was required to run MS-DOS version 3.x in order to operate its 1.2 MB floppy drives and hard drive. Version 3 of MS-DOS was rather larger than Version 2.x running on the Tandy 2000. It also proved advantageous that the Tandy 2000's OS resided entirely in RAM and therefore could be updated and hacked with rather less effort.
The Microsoft BASIC interpreter was supplied with the computer. It was highly customized for the Tandy 2000 hardware, particularly its high-resolution color graphics. Although IBM produced the Enhanced Graphics Adapter a little more than a year later (October 1984), the Microsoft BASIC interpreter would not support its greater color and resolution capabilities until 1988.
Tandy/Radio Shack produced print advertising featuring Bill Gates of Microsoft extolling the superior performance of the Tandy 2000 and how it was advantageous in Microsoft's development of Windows 1.0.
Software
Software packages that were released for the Tandy 2000 included WordPerfect 4.2 (WP5.1 could work with software patches), Lotus 1-2-3, Ashton-Tate's Framework, DBase, MultiMate, Pfs:Write, AutoCAD, Lumena (from Time Arts) shareware office programs, and the complete line of Microsoft language products. Microsoft released a version of Xenix for the Tandy 2000 (used with Western Digital's ViaNet network card, distributed by Tandy).
Better BASIC for both the Tandy 2000 and the PC was used to write BBS software for the Tandy 2000 and later ported to the IBM PC.
Radio Shack's DeskMate was also used with the Tandy 2000 and the Tandy 1000.
MicroPro's Wordstar (versions 3.3 and 4.0 only) would run on the Tandy 2000 provided the user ran the WINSTALL installation utility and, when prompted for the type of video display to be used, selected "ROM BIOS". While this would result in a functional installation, none of the T2000's special features would be operative (except for increased speed and storage).
The only version of Lotus 1-2-3 offered for the Tandy 2000 was Release 1A. This was customized to take advantage of the unique hardware of the computer, including its full 768K of RAM, high resolution color graphics, and two extra function keys.
Release 1A's executable code was about 60 KB smaller than the later Release 2, which provided greater macro programming facilities. This extra space for data, with the additional 128 KB of RAM available to a fully expanded Tandy 2000, made it possible to construct larger worksheets than later PCs running Release 2 (until the advent of machines with Expanded memory). For nearly two years following its introduction, the Tandy 2000 was the top performer for processing large models in Lotus 1-2-3.
The Tandy 2000's 720 KB floppy drives were a distinct advantage for running Lotus, because they were large enough to store even the largest worksheets on a single diskette. This is in stark contrast to the IBM PC and XT with 360 KB floppy disks. In order to store the largest worksheets, a PC user would have to split them and save them on two disks—and then recombine them in memory later. Although the XT had a hard drive that could store large Lotus worksheets in a single file, a user could not rely on a single storage device for permanent storage of important data files; again they would be forced to segment worksheets for storage on separate disks. The Tandy 2000's large-capacity floppy disks made backup maintenance relatively effortless.
End of life
After Tandy dropped support of the Tandy 2000, a group of users formed the Tandy 2000 Orphans, with software reviews, software and hardware hacks, and a shareware/freeware repository. It was discovered by amateur programmers that many commercial MS-DOS applications needed only minor modifications to function on the Tandy 2000's unique hardware.
There was also a BBS based in Texas that had an extensive library of compatible software available for download; neither the BBS nor its web-based descendant is active today.
See also
Tandy 1000
Mindset (computer), another PC compatible with enhanced graphics using the 80186
Note
References
External links
Old Computers museum Web site
FAQ @ CCHAVEN.COM
Tandy 2000 advertisement featuring Bill Gates, InfoWorld, Nov 5, 1984
Tandy 2000 Programmers Reference PDF
Tandy 2000 Technical Reference Manual PDF
WinWorldPC.com page - download for Tandy version of MS-DOS 2.11, 5.25-DSQD 720 KB
Low End Mac's retrospective on the Tandy 2000 computer and Tandy 1000 series (Daniel Knight - 2015-12-19)
Byte review of the T2000
80 Micro preview of T2000 introduction
80 Micro Review Roundup of T2000 Multimate, dBase II and Multiplan
80 Micro MS-DOS Overview for T2000 version
Home computers
IBM PC compatibles
RadioShack
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20computer%20term%20etymologies
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List of computer term etymologies
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This is a list of the origins of computer-related terms or terms used in the computing world (i.e., a list of computer term etymologies). It relates to both computer hardware and computer software.
Names of many computer terms, especially computer applications, often relate to the function they perform, e.g., a compiler is an application that compiles (programming language source code into the computer's machine language). However, there are other terms with less obvious origins, which are of etymological interest. This article lists such terms.
A
ABEND – originally from an IBM System/360 error message, short for "abnormal end". Jokingly reinterpreted as German Abend ("evening"), because "it is what system operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want to call it a day."
Ada – named after Ada Lovelace, who is considered by many to be the first programmer.
Apache – originally chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache. It was suggested that the name was appropriate, as Apache began as a series of patches to code written for NCSA's HTTPd daemon. The result was "a patchy" server.
AWK – composed of the initials of its authors Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan.
B
B – probably a contraction of "BCPL", reflecting Ken Thompson's efforts to implement a smaller BCPL in 8 KB of memory on a DEC PDP-7. Or, named after Bon.
biff – named after a dog known by the developers at Berkeley, who – according to the UNIX manual page – died on 15 August 1993, at the age of 15, and belonged to a certain Heidi Stettner. Some sources report that the dog would bark at the mail carrier, making it a natural choice for the name of a mail notification system. The Jargon File contradicts this description, but confirms at least that the dog existed.
bit – first used by Claude E. Shannon in his seminal 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". Shannon's "bit" is a portmanteau of "binary digit". He attributed its origin to John W. Tukey, who had used the word in a Bell Labs memo of 9 January 1947.
Bon – created by Ken Thompson and named either after his wife Bonnie, or else after "a religion whose rituals involve the murmuring of magic formulas" (a reference to the Tibetan native religion Bön).
booting or bootstrapping – from the phrase "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps", originally used as a metaphor for any self-initiating or self-sustaining process. Used in computing due to the apparent paradox that a computer must run code to load anything into memory, but code cannot be run until it is loaded.
bug – often (but erroneously) credited to Grace Hopper. In 1946, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she traced an error in the Harvard Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book. However, use of the word 'bug' to describe defects in mechanical systems dates back to at least the 1870s, perhaps especially in Scotland. Thomas Edison, for one, used the term in his notebooks and letters.
byte – coined by Werner Buchholz in June 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer.
C
C – a programming language.
Dennis Ritchie, having improved on the B language, named his creation New B. He later renamed it C. (See also D).
C++ – an object-oriented programming language, a successor to the C programming language.
C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup named his new language "C with Classes" and then "new C". The original language began to be called "old C" which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C. In C the '++' operator increments the value of the variable it is appended to, thus C++ would increment the value of C.
computer – from the human computers who carried out calculations mentally and possibly with mechanical aids, now replaced by electronic programmable computers.
cookie – a packet of information that travels between a browser and the web server.
The term was coined by web browser programmer Lou Montulli after the term "magic cookies" used by Unix programmers. The term "magic cookie" in turn derives from "fortune cookie", a cookie with an embedded message.
Cursor (user interface) - Cursor is Latin for 'runner.' A cursor is the name given to the transparent slide engraved with a hairline that is used for marking a point on a slide rule. The term was then transferred to computers through analogy.
D
D – a programming language.
Designed by Walter Bright as an improved C, avoiding many of the design problems of C (e.g., extensive pointer manipulation, unenforced array boundaries, etc.).
daemon – a process in an operating system that runs in the background.
It is not an acronym for Disk And Execution Monitor: according to the original team that introduced the concept, the use of the word daemon was inspired by the Maxwell's demon of physics and thermodynamics (an imaginary agent which helped sort molecules with differing velocities and worked tirelessly in the background) The term was embraced, and possibly popularized, by the Unix operating systems which supported multiple background processes: various local (and later Internet) services were provided by daemons. This is exemplified by the BSD mascot, John Lasseter's drawing of a friendly imp.
Dashboard - Originally, the word dashboard applied to a barrier of wood or leather fixed at the front of a horse-drawn carriage or sleigh to protect the driver from mud or other debris "dashed up" (thrown up) by the horses' hooves.[1] The first known use of the term (hyphenated as dash-board, and applied to sleighs) dates from 1847.[2] Commonly these boards did not perform any additional function other than providing a convenient handhold for ascending into the driver's seat, or a small clip with which to secure the reins when not in use.
Debian – a Linux distribution.
A portmanteau of the names Ian Murdock, the Debian Project creator, and Debra Lynn, Ian's then girlfriend and future wife.
default – an initial value for a variable or user setting.
The original meaning of the word 'default' is 'failure to fulfill an obligation'. The obligation here is to provide an input that is required by a program. In the early days of programming, if an input value was missing, or 'null', the program would almost certainly crash. This is often to do with variable 'typing' – for example, a simple calculation program would expect a number as an input: any other type of input such as a text string or even a null (no value), would make any mathematical operation such as multiplication impossible. In order to guard against this possibility, programmers defined initial values that would be used if the user *defaulted* or failed to fulfill the obligation of providing the correct input value. Over time, the term 'default' has come to refer to the initial value itself.
E
Ethernet – a computer networking technology.
According to Robert Metcalfe (one of its initial developers), he devised the name in an early company memo as an endocentric compound of "luminiferous ether"—the "substance" that was widely believed to be the medium through which electromagnetic radiation propagated in the late 19th century—and "net", short for "network". When the networking team would describe data flowing into the network infrastructure, they would routinely describe it as data packets going "up into the ether".
F
finger – Unix command that provides information about users logged into a system.
Les Earnest wrote the finger program in 1971 to provide for users who wanted information about other users on a network or system. According to Earnest, it was named after the act of pointing, because it "bypassed the need to point to a user ID and ask, 'Who is that?'"
foobar – from the U.S. Army slang acronym, FUBAR. Both foo and bar are commonly used as metasyntactic variables.
G
Gentoo – a Linux distribution.
Named after a variety of penguin, the universal Linux mascot.
Git – a distributed version control system.
In the project's initial README file, Linus Torvalds wrote that "'git' can mean anything, depending on your mood", and offers several definitions:
A random three-letter combination which is pronounceable and not a preexisting Unix command
British English slang, meaning a stupid or contemptible person
An acronym for "global information tracker" (when it works)
An acronym for "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t" (when it breaks)
When asked about the origin of the name, Torvalds jokingly stated, "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself."
GNU – a project with an original goal of creating a free operating system.
Gnu (also called wildebeest) are a genus of African antelopes resembling cattle. The founder of the GNU project Richard Stallman liked the name because of the humour associated with its pronunciation (officially, ), and was also influenced by The Gnu Song, by Flanders and Swann, which is sung by a gnu. It is also an early example of a recursive acronym: "GNU's Not Unix".
Google – a search engine.
The name started as an exaggerated boast about the amount of information the search engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. The word was originally invented by Milton Sirotta, nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner, in 1938 during a discussion of large numbers and exponential notation.
Gopher – an early protocol for distributing documents over a network. Declined in favor of the World Wide Web.
The name was coined by developer Farhad Anklesaria, as a play on , an assistant who fetches things, and a gopher, who digs, as if through nested hierarchies. The name was also inspired by Goldy Gopher, the mascot for the University of Minnesota where the protocol was developed.
grep – a Unix command line utility
The name comes from a command in the Unix text editor ed that takes the form g/re/p meaning search globally for a regular expression and print lines where instances are found. "Grep" like "Google" is often used as a verb, meaning "to search".
H
Hotmail – free email service, now named Outlook.com.
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "HTML" – the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.
I
i18n – short for "internationalization".
"18" is for the number of letters between the i and the n. Related, less common terms include l10n (for localization), g11n (for globalization) and a11y (for accessibility).
ICQ – an instant messaging service.
ICQ is not an initialism. It is a play on the phrase "I seek you" or "Internet seek you" (similar to CQ in ham radio usage).
ID10T – pronounced "ID ten T" – is a code frequently used by a customer service representative (CSR) to annotate their notes and identify the source of a problem as the person who is reporting the problem rather than the system being blamed. This is a thinly veiled reference to the CSR's opinion that the person reporting the problem is an IDIOT. Example: Problem reported caused by ID10T, no resolution possible. See also PEBKAC.
J
Jakarta Project – a project constituted by Sun and Apache to create a web server for Java servlets and JSPs.
Jakarta was the name of the conference room at Sun where most of the meetings between Sun and Apache took place. The conference room was most likely named after Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, which is located on the northwest coast of the island of Java.
Java – a programming language by Sun Microsystems, later acquired by Oracle.
Named after , a blend of coffee from the island of Java, and also used as slang for coffee in general. The language was initially called "Greentalk" and later "Oak", but this was already trademarked by Oak Technologies, so the developers had to choose another name shortly before release. Other suggested names were "WebRunner", "DNA", and "Silk".
JavaScript – a programming language.
It was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name "Mocha", which was later renamed to "LiveScript", and finally to "JavaScript". The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. JavaScript was first introduced and deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3 in December 1995. The naming has caused confusion, giving the impression that the language is a spin-off of Java, and it has been characterized by many as a marketing ploy by Netscape to give JavaScript the cachet of what was then the hot new web-programming language.
K
Kerberos – a computer network authentication protocol that is used by both Windows 2000 and Windows XP as their default authentication method.
When created by programmers at MIT in the 1970s, they wanted a name that suggested high security for the project, so they named it after Kerberos, in Greek mythology the three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades. The reference to Greek mythology is most likely because Kerberos was developed as part of Project Athena.
L
Linux – an operating system kernel, and the common name for many of the operating systems which use it.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds originally used the MINIX operating system on his computer, didn't like it, liked DOS less, and started a project to develop an operating system that would address the problems of MINIX. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). Originally, however, Linus had planned to have it named Freax (free + freak + x). His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory named linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax.
Lisa – A personal computer designed at Apple Computer during the early 1980s.
Apple stated that Lisa was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture; however, it is often inferred that the machine was originally named after the daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and that this acronym was invented later to fit the name. Accordingly, two humorous suggestions for expanding the acronym included Let's Invent Some Acronyms, and Let's Invent Silly Acronyms.
liveware – computer personnel.
A play on the terms "software" and "hardware". Coined in 1966, the word indicates that sometimes the computer problem is not with the computer itself, but with the user.
Lotus Software – Lotus founder Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' ('Padmasana' in Sanskrit). Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
M
Macintosh, Mac – a personal computer from Apple Computer.
From McIntosh, a popular type of apple.
N
Nerd – A colloquial term for a computer person, especially an obsessive, singularly focused one. Originally created by Dr. Seuss from his book If I Ran the Zoo.
O
Oracle – a relational database management system (RDBMS).
Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was Oracle (the CIA evidently saw this as a system that would give answers to all questions). The project was designed to use the newly written SQL database language from IBM. The project eventually was terminated but they decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine.
P
Pac-Man – a video arcade game.
The term comes from paku paku which is a Japanese onomatopoeia used for noisy eating; similar to chomp chomp. The game was released in Japan with the name Puck-Man, and released in the US with the name Pac-Man, fearing that kids may deface a Puck-Man cabinet by changing the P to an F.
Patch – A set of changes to a computer program or its supporting data designed to update, fix, or improve it.
Historically, software suppliers distributed patches on paper tape or on punched cards, expecting the recipient to cut out the indicated part of the original tape (or deck), and patch in (hence the name) the replacement segment
PCMCIA – the standards body for PC card and ExpressCard, expansion card form factors.
The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association is an international standards body that defines and promotes standards for expansion devices such as modems and external hard disk drives to be connected to notebook computers. Over time, the acronym PCMCIA has been used to refer to the PC card form factor used on notebook computers. A twist on the acronym is People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.
PEBKAC – an acronym for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair", which is a code frequently used by a customer service representative (CSR) to annotate their notes and identify the source of a problem as the person who is reporting the problem rather than the system being blamed. This is a thinly veiled reference to the CSR's opinion that the person reporting the problem is the problem. Example: PEBKAC, no resolution possible. See also ID10T.
Pentium – a series of microprocessors from Intel.
The fifth microprocessor in the 80x86 series. It would have been named i586 or 80586, but Intel decided to name it Pentium (penta = five) after it lost a trademark infringement lawsuit against AMD due to a judgment that numbers like "286", "386", and "486" cannot be trademarked. According to Intel, Pentium conveys a meaning of strength, like titanium.
Since some early Pentium chips contained a mathematical precision error, it has been jokingly suggested that the reason for the chip being named Pentium rather than 586 was that Intel chips would calculate 486 + 100 = 585.99999948.
Perl – an interpreted scripting language.
Perl was originally named Pearl, after the "pearl of great price" of Matthew 13:46. Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, wanted to give the language a short name with positive connotations and claims to have looked at (and rejected) every three- and four-letter word in the dictionary. He even thought of naming it after his wife Gloria. Before the language's official release Wall discovered that there was already a programming language named Pearl, and changed the spelling of the name. Although the original manuals suggested the backronyms "Practical Extraction and Report Language" and "Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister", these were intended humorously.
PHP – a server-side scripting language
Originally named "Personal Home Page Tools" by creator Rasmus Lerdorf, it was rewritten by developers Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans who gave it the recursive name "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor". Lerdorf currently insists the name should not be thought of as standing for anything, for he selected "Personal Home Page" as the name when he did not foresee PHP evolving into a general-purpose programming language.
Pine – e-mail client.
Many people believe that Pine stands for "Pine Is Not Elm". However, one of its original authors, Laurence Lundblade, insists this was never the case and that it started off simply as a word and not an acronym; his first choice of a backronym for pine would be "Pine Is Nearly Elm". Over time it was changed to mean Program for Internet News and E-mail.
ping – a computer network tool used to detect hosts.
The author of ping, Mike Muuss, named it after the pulses of sound made by a sonar called a "ping". Later Dave Mills provided the backronym "Packet Internet Groper".
Python – an interpreted scripting programming language.
Named after the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus.
R
Radio button – a GUI widget used for making selections.
Radio buttons got their name from the preset buttons in radio receivers. When one used to select preset stations on a radio receiver physically instead of electronically, depressing one preset button would pop out whichever other button happened to be pushed in.
Red Hat Linux – a Linux distribution from Red Hat.
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) by his grandfather while at college. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as "that guy in the red hat". He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return the hat if found by anyone.
RSA – an asymmetric algorithm for public key cryptography.
Based on the surnames of the authors of this algorithm – Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Len Adleman.
S
Samba – a free implementation of Microsoft's networking protocol.
The name samba comes from inserting two vowels into the name of the standard protocol that Microsoft Windows network file system use, named Server Message Block (SMB). The author searched a dictionary using grep for words containing S M and B in that order; the only matches were Samba and Salmonberry.
shareware – coined by Bob Wallace to describe his word processor PC-Write in early 1983. Before this Jim Knopf (also known as Jim Button) and Andrew Fluegelman called their distributed software "user supported software" and "freeware" respectively, but it was Wallace's terminology that prevailed.
spam – unwanted repetitious messages, such as unsolicited bulk e-mail.
The term spam is derived from the Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where everything on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. While a customer plaintively asks for some kind of food without SPAM in it, the server reiterates the SPAM-filled menu. Soon, a chorus of Vikings join in with a song: "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM", over and over again, drowning out all conversation.
SPIM – a simulator for a virtual machine closely resembling the instruction set of MIPS processors, is simply MIPS spelled backwards. In recent time, spim has also come to mean SPam sent over Instant Messaging.
Swing – a graphics library for Java.
Swing was the code-name of the project that developed the new graphic components (the successor of AWT). It was named after swing, a style of dance band jazz that was popularized in the 1930s and unexpectedly revived in the 1990s. Although an unofficial name for the components, it gained popular acceptance with the use of the word in the package names for the Swing API, which begin with javax.swing.
T
Tomcat – a web server from the Jakarta Project.
Tomcat was the code-name for the JSDK 2.1 project inside Sun. Tomcat started off as a servlet specification implementation by James Duncan Davidson who was a software architect at Sun. Davidson had initially hoped that the project would be made open-source, and since most open-source projects had O'Reilly books on them with an animal on the cover, he wanted to name the project after an animal. He came up with Tomcat since he reasoned the animal represented something that could take care of and fend for itself.
troff – a document processing system for Unix.
Troff stands for "typesetter roff", although many people have speculated that it actually means "Times roff" because of the use of the Times font family in troff by default. Troff has its origins from roff, an earlier formatting program, whose name is a contraction of "run off".
Trojan horse – a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software.
The term is derived from the classical myth of the Trojan Horse. Analogously, a Trojan horse appears innocuous (or even to be a gift), but in fact is a vehicle for bypassing security.
Tux – The penguin mascot used as the primary logo for the Linux kernel, and Linux-based operating systems.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, suggested a penguin mascot because he "likes penguins a lot", and wanted Linux to be associated with something "kind of goofy and fun". The logo was originally created by Larry Ewing in 1996 as an entry in a Linux Logo competition. The name Tux was contributed by James Hughes, who suggested "(T)orvolds (U)ni(X) — TUX!"
U
Ubuntu Linux – a Debian-based Linux distribution sponsored by Canonical Ltd.
Derived from ubuntu, a South African ideology.
Unix – an operating system.
When Bell Labs pulled out of the MULTiplexed Information and Computing System (MULTICS) project, which was originally a joint Bell Labs/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson of Bell Labs, soon joined by Dennis Ritchie, wrote a simpler version of the operating system for a spare DEC minicomputer, allegedly found in a corridor. They needed an OS to run the game Space Travel, which had been compiled under MULTICS. The new OS was named UNICS – UNiplexed Information and Computing System by Brian Kernighan.
V
vi – a text editor,
Initialism for visual, a command in the ex editor which helped users to switch to the visual mode from the ex mode. the first version was written by Bill Joy at UC Berkeley.
Vim – a text editor.
Acronym for Vi improved after Vim added several features over the vi editor. Vim however had started out as an imitation of Vi and was expanded as Vi imitation.
Virus – a piece of program code that spreads by making copies of itself.
The term virus was first used as a technical computer science term by Fred Cohen in his 1984 paper "Computer Viruses Theory and Experiments", where he credits Len Adleman with coining it. Although Cohen's use of virus may have been the first academic use, it had been in the common parlance long before that. A mid-1970s science fiction novel by David Gerrold, When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One, includes a description of a fictional computer program named VIRUS that worked just like a virus (and was countered by a program named ANTIBODY). The term "computer virus" also appears in the comic book "Uncanny X-Men" No. 158, published in 1982. A computer virus's basic function is to insert its own executable code into that of other existing executable files, literally making it the electronic equivalent to the biological virus, the basic function of which is to insert its genetic information into that of the invaded cell, forcing the cell to reproduce the virus.
W
Wiki or WikiWiki – a hypertext document collection or the collaborative software used to create it.
Coined by Ward Cunningham, the creator of the wiki concept, who named them for the "wiki wiki" or "quick" shuttle buses at Honolulu Airport. Wiki wiki was the first Hawaiian term he learned on his first visit to the islands. The airport counter agent directed him to take the wiki wiki bus between terminals.
Worm – a self-replicating program, similar to a virus.
The name 'worm' was taken from a 1970s science fiction novel by John Brunner entitled The Shockwave Rider. The book describes programs known as "tapeworms" which spread through a network for the purpose of deleting data. Researchers writing an early paper on experiments in distributed computing noted the similarities between their software and the program described by Brunner, and adopted that name.
WYSIWYG – describes a system in which content during editing appears very similar to the final product.
Acronym for What You See Is What You Get, the phrase was originated by a newsletter published by Arlene and Jose Ramos, named WYSIWYG. It was created for the emerging Pre-Press industry going electronic in the late 1970s.
X
X Window System – a windowing system for computers with bitmap displays.
X derives its name as a successor to a pre-1983 window system named the W Window System.
Y
Yahoo! – internet portal and web directory.
Yahoo!'s history site says the name is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", but some remember that in its early days (mid-1990s), when Yahoo! lived on a server named akebono.stanford.edu, it was glossed as "Yet Another Hierarchical Object Organizer." The word "Yahoo!" was originally invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
Z
zip – a file format, also used as a verb to mean compress.
The file format was created by Phil Katz, and given the name by his friend Robert Mahoney. The compression tool Phil Katz created was named PKZIP. Zip means "speed", and they wanted to imply their product would be faster than ARC and other compression formats of the time.
See also
Glossary of computer terms
List of company name etymologies
Lists of etymologies
References
Etymologies
Computer terms
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon%20Magsaysay
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Ramon Magsaysay
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Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay Sr. (August 31, 1907 – March 17, 1957) was a Filipino statesman who served as the seventh president of the Philippines, from December 30, 1953, until his death in an aircraft disaster on March 17, 1957. An automobile mechanic by profession, Magsaysay was appointed military governor of Zambales after his outstanding service as a guerrilla leader during the Pacific War. He then served two terms as Liberal Party congressman for Zambales's at-large district before being appointed Secretary of National Defense by President Elpidio Quirino. He was elected president under the banner of the Nacionalista Party. He was the youngest to be elected as president, and second youngest to be president (after Emilio Aguinaldo). He was the first Philippine president born in the 20th century and the first to be born after the Spanish colonial era.
Biography
Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay, of mixed Filipino Spanish, and Chinese descent, was born in Iba, Zambales on August 31, 1907, to Exequiel Magsaysay y de los Santos (April 18, 1874 in San Marcelino, Zambales – January 24, 1969 in Manila), a blacksmith, and Perfecta del Fierro y Quimson (April 18, 1886 in Castillejos, Zambales – May 5, 1981 in Manila), a Chinese mestizo schoolteacher, nurse.
He spent his grade school life somewhere in Castillejos and his high school life at Zambales Academy in San Narciso, Zambales. After college, Magsaysay entered the University of the Philippines in 1927, where he enrolled in a Mechanical Engineering course. He first worked as a chauffeur to support himself as he studied engineering; and later, he transferred to the Institute of Commerce at José Rizal College (now José Rizal University) from 1928 to 1932, where he received a baccalaureate in commerce. He then worked as an automobile mechanic for a bus company and shop superintendent.
Career during World War II
At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the motor pool of the 31st Infantry Division of the Philippine Army.
When Bataan surrendered in 1942, Magsaysay escaped to the hills, narrowly evading Japanese arrest on at least four occasions. There he organised the Western Luzon Guerrilla Forces, and was commissioned captain on April 5, 1942. For three years, Magsaysay operated under Col. Merrill's famed guerrilla outfit & saw action at Sawang, San Marcelino, Zambales, first as a supply officer codenamed Chow and later as commander of a 10,000-strong force.
Magsaysay was among those instrumental in clearing the Zambales coast of the Japanese prior to the landing of American forces together with the Philippine Commonwealth troops on January 29, 1945.
Family
He was married to Luz Rosauro Banzon on June 16, 1933, and they had three children: Teresita (1934–1979), Milagros (b. 1936) and Ramon Jr. (b. 1938).
Other Relatives
Several of Magsaysay's relatives became prominent public figures in their own right:
Ramon "Jun" Banzon Magsaysay Jr., son; former Congressman and Senator
Francisco "Paco" Delgado Magsaysay, entrepreneur
Genaro Magsaysay, brother; former Senator
Vicente Magsaysay, nephew; Former Governor of Zambales
JB Magsaysay, grandnephew; actor, politician, and businessman
Antonio M. Diaz, nephew; Congressman and Assemblyman of Zambales
Anita Magsaysay-Ho, cousin; painter
House of Representatives
On April 22, 1946, Magsaysay, encouraged by his fellow ex-guerrillas, was elected under the Liberal Party to the Philippine House of Representatives. In 1948, President Manuel Roxas chose Magsaysay to go to Washington, D.C. as Chairman of the Committee on Guerrilla Affairs, to help to secure passage of the Rogers Veterans Bill, giving benefits to Philippine veterans. In the so-called "dirty election" of 1949, he was re-elected to a second term in the House of Representatives. During both terms, he was Chairman of the House National Defense Committee.
Secretary of National Defense
In early August 1950, he offered President Elpidio Quirino a plan to fight the Communist guerrillas, using his own experiences in guerrilla warfare during World War II. After some hesitation, Quirino realized that there was no alternative and appointed Magsaysay Secretary of National Defence in September 1950. He intensified the campaign against the Hukbalahap guerrillas. This success was due in part to the unconventional methods he took up from a former advertising expert and CIA agent, Colonel Edward Lansdale. In the counterinsurgency the two utilized deployed soldiers distributing relief goods and other forms of aid to outlying, provincial communities. Prior to Magsaysay's appointment as Defense Secretary, rural citizens perceived the Philippine Army with apathy and distrust. However, Magsaysay's term enhanced the Army's image, earning them respect and admiration.
In June 1952, Magsaysay made a goodwill tour to the United States and Mexico. He visited New York, Washington, D.C. (with a medical check-up at Walter Reed Hospital) and Mexico City, where he spoke at the Annual Convention of Lions International.
By 1953, President Quirino thought the threat of the Huks was under control and Secretary Magsaysay was becoming too weak. Magsaysay met with interference and obstruction from the President and his advisers, in fears they might be unseated at the next presidential election. Although Magsaysay had at that time no intention to run, he was urged from many sides and finally was convinced that the only way to continue his fight against communism, and for a government for the people, was to be elected president, ousting the corrupt administration that, in his opinion, had caused the rise of the communist guerrillas by bad administration. He resigned his post as defense secretary on February 28, 1953, and became the presidential candidate of the Nacionalista Party, disputing the nomination with Senator Camilo Osías at the Nacionalista national convention.
1951 Padilla incident
When news reached Magsaysay that his political ally Moises Padilla was being tortured by men of provincial governor Rafael Lacson, he rushed to Negros Occidental, but was too late. He was then informed that Padilla's body was drenched in blood, pierced by fourteen bullets, and was positioned on a police bench in the town plaza. Magsaysay himself carried Padilla's corpse with his bare hands and delivered it to the morgue, and the next day, news clips showed pictures of him doing so. Magsaysay even used this event during his presidential campaign in 1953.
The trial against Lacson started in January 1952; Magsaysay and his men presented enough evidence to convict Lacson and his 26 men for murder. In August 1954, Judge Eduardo Enríquez ruled the men were guilty and Lacson, his 22 men and three other mayors of Negros Occidental municipalities were condemned to the electric chair.
Manila Railroad leadership
Magsaysay was also the general manager of the Manila Railroad Company between October and December 1951. His tenure later motivated him to modernize the rail operator's fleet after stepping into presidency. He also set the first steps in building what has been the discontinued Cagayan Valley Railroad Extension project.
1953 presidential campaign
Presidential elections were held on November 10, 1953, in the Philippines. Incumbent President Elpidio Quirino lost his opportunity for a second full term as President of the Philippines to former Defense Secretary Magsaysay. His running mate, Senator José Yulo lost to Senator Carlos P. García. Vice President Fernando López did not run for re-election. This was the first time that an elected Philippine President did not come from the Senate. Moreover, Magsaysay began the practice in the Philippines of "campaign jingles" during elections, for one of his inclinations and hobbies was dancing. The jingles that were used during the election period was "Mambo Magsaysay"", "We Want Magsaysay", and "The Magsaysay Mambo"
The United States Government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, had strong influence on the 1953 election, and candidates in the election fiercely competed with each other for U.S. support.
Presidency (1953–1957)
In the election of 1953, Magsaysay was decisively elected president over the incumbent Elpidio Quirino. He was sworn into office wearing the Barong Tagalog, a first by a Philippine President. He was then called "Mambo Magsaysay". Also dressed in Barong Tagalog was the elected vice-president Carlos P. Garcia.
As President, he was a close friend and supporter of the United States and a vocal spokesman against communism during the Cold War. He led the foundation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, also known as the Manila Pact of 1954, that aimed to defeat communist-Marxist movements in Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Southwestern Pacific.
During his term, he made Malacañang literally a "house of the people", opening its gates to the public. One example of his integrity followed a demonstration flight aboard a new plane belonging to the Philippine Air Force (PAF): President Magsaysay asked what the operating costs per hour were for that type of aircraft, then wrote a personal check to the PAF, covering the cost of his flight. He restored the people's trust in the military and in the government.
Administration and cabinet
Domestic policies
Presidential Inauguration Day
Ushering a new era in Philippine government, President Magsaysay placed emphasis upon service to the people by bringing the government closer to the former.
This was symbolically seen when, on inauguration day, President Magsaysay ordered the gates of Malacañan Palace be opened to the general public, who were allowed to freely visit all parts of the Palace complex. Later, this was regulated to allow weekly visitation.
True to his electoral promise, he
created the Presidential Complaints and Action Committee. This body immediately proceeded to hear grievances and recommend remedial action. Headed by soft-spoken, but active and tireless, Manuel Manahan, this committee would come to hear nearly 60,000 complaints in a year, of which more than 30,000 would be settled by direct action and a little more than 25,000 would be referred to government agencies for appropriate follow-up. This new entity, composed of youthful personnel, all loyal to the President, proved to be a highly successful morale booster restoring the people's confidence in their own government. He appointed Zotico "Tex" Paderanga Carrillo in 1953 as PCAC Chief for Mindanao and Sulu. He became a close friend to the president because of his charisma to the common people of Mindanao.
Zotico was a local journalist and an esteemed writer from a prominent family on Camiguin, (then sub-province of Misamis Oriental), Zotico become a depository of complaints and an eye of the president in the region his diplomatic skills helped the government, moro and the rebels to learn the true situation in every city and municipalities. With his zero corruption mandate he recognized a turn of achievement of Zotico that made him his compadre when Zotico named his fifth child after the President when he was elected in 1953, even making the President godfather to the boy. Magsaysay personally visited Mindanao several times because of this friendship, becoming the first President to visit Camiguin, where he was warmly received by thousands of people who waited for his arrival.
Agrarian reform
To amplify and stabilize the functions of the Economic Development Corps (EDCOR), President Magsaysay worked for the establishment of the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration (NARRA). This body took over from the EDCOR and helped in the giving some sixty-five thousand acres to three thousand indigent families for settlement purposes. Again, it allocated some other twenty-five thousand to a little more than one thousand five hundred landless families, who subsequently became farmers.
As further aid to the rural people, the president established the Agricultural Credit and Cooperative Financing Administration (ACCFA). The idea was for this entity to make available rural credits. Records show that it did grant, in this wise, almost ten million dollars. This administration body next devoted its attention to cooperative marketing.
Along this line of help to the rural areas, President Magsaysay initiated in all earnestness the artesian wells campaign. A group-movement known as the Liberty Wells Association was formed and in record time managed to raise a considerable sum for the construction of as many artesian wells as possible. The socio-economic value of the same could not be gainsaid and the people were profuse in their gratitude.
Finally, vast irrigation projects, as well as enhancement of the Ambuklao Power plant and other similar ones, went a long way towards bringing to reality the rural improvement program advocated by President Magsaysay.
President Magsaysay enacted the following laws as part of his Agrarian Reform Program:
Republic Act No. 1160 of 1954 – Abolished the LASEDECO and established the National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Administration (NARRA) to resettle dissidents and landless farmers. It was particularly aimed at rebel returnees providing home lots and farmlands in Palawan and Mindanao.
Republic Act No. 1199 (Agricultural Tenancy Act of 1954) – governed the relationship between landowners and tenant farmers by organizing share-tenancy and leasehold system. The law provided the security of tenure of tenants. It also created the Court of Agrarian Relations.
Republic Act No. 1400 (Land Reform Act of 1955) – Created the Land Tenure Administration (LTA) which was responsible for the acquisition and distribution of large tenanted rice and corn lands over 200 hectares for individuals and 600 hectares for corporations.
Republic Act No. 821 (Creation of Agricultural Credit Cooperative Financing Administration) – Provided small farmers and share tenants loans with low interest rates of six to eight percent.
Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon
In early 1954, Benigno Aquino Jr. was appointed by President Magsaysay to act as his personal emissary to Luis Taruc, leader of the rebel group, Hukbalahap. Also in 1954, Lt. Col. Laureño Maraña, the former head of Force X of the 16th PC Company, assumed command of the 7th BCT, which had become one of the most mobile striking forces of the Philippine ground forces against the Huks, from Colonel Valeriano. Force X employed psychological warfare through combat intelligence and infiltration that relied on secrecy in planning, training, and execution of attack. The lessons learned from Force X and Nenita were combined in the 7th BCT.
With the all out anti-dissidence campaigns against the Huks, they numbered less than 2,000 by 1954 and without the protection and support of local supporters, active Huk resistance no longer presented a serious threat to Philippine security. From February to mid-September 1954, the largest anti-Huk operation, "Operation Thunder-Lightning" was conducted that resulted in Taruc's surrender on May 17. Further cleanup operations of the remaining guerrillas lasted throughout 1955, cutting their number to less than 1,000 by year's end.
Foreign policies
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
The administration of President Magsaysay was active in the fight against the expansion of communism in Asia. He made the Philippines a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which was established in Manila on September 8, 1954, during the "Manila Conference". Members of SEATO were alarmed at the possible victory of North Vietnam over South Vietnam, which could spread communist ideology to other countries in the region. The possibility that a communist state can influence or cause other countries to adopt the same system of government is called the domino theory.
The active coordination of the Magsaysay administration with the Japanese government led to the Reparation Agreement. This was an agreement between the two countries, obligating the Japanese government to pay $550 million as reparation for war damages to the Philippines.
Defense Council
Taking the advantage of the presence of U.S. Secretary John Foster Dulles in Manila to attend the SEATO Conference, the Philippine government took steps to broach with him the establishment of a Joint Defense Council. Vice-President and Secretary of Foreign Affairs Carlos P. Garcia held the opportune conversations with Secretary Dulles for this purpose. Agreement was reached thereon and the first meeting of the Joint United States–Philippines Defense Council was held in Manila following the end of the Manila Conference. Thus were the terms of the Mutual Defense Pact between the Philippines and the United States duly implemented.
Laurel-Langley Agreement
The Magsaysay administration negotiated the Laurel-Langley Agreement which was a trade agreement between the Philippines and the United States which was signed in 1955 and expired in 1974. Although it proved deficient, the final agreement satisfied nearly all of the diverse Filipino economic interests. While some have seen the Laurel-Langley agreement as a continuation of the 1946 trade act, Jose P. Laurel and other Philippine leaders recognized that the agreement substantially gave the country greater freedom to industrialize while continuing to receive privileged access to US markets.
The agreement replaced the unpopular Bell Trade Act, which tied the economy of the Philippines to that of United States.
Bandung Conference
The culmination of a series of meetings to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by either the United States or the Soviet Union in the Cold War, or any other imperialistic nations, the Asian–African Conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955, upon invitation extended by the Prime Ministers of India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, and Indonesia. This summit is commonly known as the Bandung Conference. Although, at first, the Magsaysay Government seemed reluctant to send any delegation. Later, however, upon advise of Ambassador Carlos P. Rómulo, it was decided to have the Philippines participate in the conference. Rómulo was asked to head the Philippine delegation. At the very outset indications were to the effect that the conference would promote the cause of neutralism as a third position in the current cold war between the capitalist bloc and the communist group. John Kotelawala, Prime Minister of Ceylon, however, broke the ice against neutralism. He was immediately joined by Rómulo, who categorically stated that his delegation believed that "a puppet is a puppet", no matter whether under a Western Power or an Asian state.
In the course of the conference, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru acidly spoke against the SEATO. Ambassador Rómulo delivered a stinging, eloquent retort that prompted Prime Minister Nehru to publicly apologize to the Philippine delegation. According to their account, the Philippine delegation ably represented the interests of the Philippines and, in the ultimate analysis, succeeded in turning the Bandung Conference into a victory against the plans of its socialist and neutralist delegates.
Reparation agreement
Following the reservations made by Ambassador Rómulo, on the Philippines' behalf, upon signing the Japanese Peace Treaty in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, for several years of series of negotiations were conducted by the Philippine government and that of Japan. In the face of adamant claims of the Japanese government that it found impossible to meet the demand for the payment of eight billion dollars by the way of reparations, President Magsaysay, during a so-called "cooling off" period, sent a Philippine Reparations Survey Committee, headed by Finance Secretary Jaime Hernandez, to Japan for an "on the spot" study of that country's possibilities.
When the Committee reported that Japan was in a position to pay, Ambassador Felino Neri, appointed chief negotiator, went to Tokyo. On May 31, 1955, Ambassador Neri reached a compromise agreement with Japanese Minister Takazaki, the main terms of which consisted in the following: The Japanese government would pay eight hundred million dollars as reparations. Payment was to be made in this wise: Twenty million dollars would be paid in cash in Philippine currency; thirty million dollars, in services; five million dollars, in capital goods; and two hundred and fifty million dollars, in long-term industrial loans.
On August 12, 1955, President Magsaysay informed the Japanese government, through Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama, that the Philippines accepted the Neri-Takazaki agreement. In view of political developments in Japan, the Japanese Prime Minister could only inform the Philippine government of the Japanese acceptance of said agreement on March 15, 1956. The official Reparations agreement between the two government was finally signed at Malacañang Palace on May 9, 1956, thus bringing to a rather satisfactory conclusion this long drawn controversy between the two countries.
Death
Magsaysay's term, which was to end on December 30, 1957, was cut short by a plane crash. On March 16, 1957, Magsaysay left Manila for Cebu City where he spoke at a convention of USAFFE veterans and the commencement exercises of three educational institutions, namely: University of the Visayas, Southwestern Colleges, and the University of San Carlos. At the University of the Visayas, he was conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws. That same night, at about 1:00 am PST, he boarded the presidential plane "Mt. Pinatubo", a C-47, heading back to Manila. In the early morning hours of March 17, the plane was reported missing. By late afternoon, newspapers had reported the airplane had crashed on Mount Manunggal in Cebu, and that 36 of the 56 aboard were killed. The actual number on board was 25, including Magsaysay. Only newspaperman Nestor Mata survived. Vice-President Carlos García, who was on an official visit to Australia at the time, returned to Manila and acceded to the presidency to serve out the remaining eight months of Magsaysay's term.
An estimated 2 million people attended Magsaysay's state funeral on March 22, 1957. He was posthumously referred to as the "Champion of the Masses" and "Defender of Democracy". After his death, vice-president Carlos P. Garcia was inducted into the presidency on March 18, 1957, to complete the last eight months of Magsaysay's term. In the presidential elections of 1957, Garcia won his four-year term as president, but his running mate was defeated.
Legacy
Magsaysay's administration was considered as one of the cleanest and most corruption-free in modern Philippine history; his rule is often cited as the Philippines's "Golden Years". Trade and industry flourished, the Philippine military was at its prime, and the country gained international recognition in sports, culture, and foreign affairs. The Philippines placed second on a ranking of Asia's clean and well-governed countries.
His presidency is seen as people-centered as government trust was high among the Filipino people, earning him the nickname "Champion of the masses" and his sympathetic approach to the Hukbalahap rebellion that the Huk rebels were not Communists; they were simple peasants who thought that rebellion was the only answer to their sufferings. He also gained nationwide support for his agrarian reforms on farmers and took action on government corruption that his administration inherited from prior administrations.
Honors
National Honors
: Quezon Service Cross - posthumous (July 4, 1957)
: Order of the Golden Heart, Grand Collar (Maringal na Kuwintas) - posthumous (March 17, 1958)
Military Medals (Foreign)
:: Commander, Legion of Merit (13 June 1952)
Foreign Honors
: Knight Grand Cordon(Special Class) of The Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant (April 1955)
: Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Cambodia (January 1956)
Ancestry
See also
President of the Philippines
Ramon Magsaysay Award
Ramon Magsaysay, Jr.
References
External links
Ramon Magsaysay on the Presidential Museum and Library
Ramon Magsaysay on the Official Gazette
Stanley J. Rainka Papers Finding Aid, 1945–1946, AIS.2009.04, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh. (Correspondence with Ramon Magsaysay)
"Did the CIA use pop music to help elect president of the Philippines?" by Robert Tollast, The National News, Jan 21, 2022
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1907 births
1957 deaths
Burials at the Manila North Cemetery
Candidates in the 1953 Philippine presidential election
Filipino anti-communists
20th-century Filipino engineers
Filipino Roman Catholics
Governors of Zambales
Ilocano people
José Rizal University alumni
Ramon
Members of the House of Representatives of the Philippines from Zambales
Nacionalista Party politicians
Paramilitary Filipinos
People from Zambales
Filipino people of Spanish descent
Filipino people of Chinese descent
Filipino people of Kapampangan descent
Knights Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Cambodia
Presidents of the Philippines
Quirino administration cabinet members
Recipients of the Quezon Service Cross
Secretaries of National Defense of the Philippines
State leaders killed in aviation accidents or incidents
Tagalog people
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1957
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the Philippines
Filipino politicians of Chinese descent
Filipino military personnel of World War II
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%20State%20University
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Ball State University
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Ball State University (Ball State, State or BSU) is a public research university in Muncie, Indiana. It has two satellite facilities in Fishers and Indianapolis.
In 1917, the Ball brothers, industrialists and founders of the Ball Corporation, acquired the foreclosed Indiana Normal Institute and gave the school and surrounding land to the State of Indiana. The Indiana General Assembly accepted the donation in the spring of 1918, with an initial 235 students enrolling at the Indiana State Normal School – Eastern Division on June 17, 1918.
Ball State is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". The university is composed of seven academic colleges. , total enrollment was 21,597 students, including 15,205 undergraduates and 5,817 postgraduates. The university offers about 120 undergraduate majors and 130 minor areas of study and more than 100 master's, doctoral, certificate, and specialist degrees.
Ball State athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are known as the Ball State Cardinals. The university is a member of the Mid-American Conference and the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association. In fall 2020, the university formed a varsity esports team and joined the Esports Collegiate Conference.
History
Predecessor schools
The location of today's Ball State University had its start in 1899 as a private university called the Eastern Indiana Normal School. The entire school, including classrooms, a library, and the president's residence were housed in what is today's Frank A. Bracken Administration Building. The one-building school had a peak enrollment of 256 and charged $10 for a year's tuition. It operated until the spring of 1901, when it was closed due to lack of funding. In 1902, the school reopened as Palmer University for the next three years when Francis Palmer, a retired Indiana banker, gave the school $100,000 as an endowment.
Between 1905 and 1907, the school dropped the Palmer name and operated as the Indiana Normal College. It had two divisions, the Normal School for educating teachers and the College of Applied Sciences. The school had an average enrollment of about 200 students. Due to diminishing enrollment and lack of funding, the school closed at the end of the 1906–1907 school year. In 1912, a group of local investors led by Michael Kelly reopened the school as the Indiana Normal Institute. To pay for updated materials and refurbishing the once-abandoned Administration Building, the school operated under a mortgage from the Muncie Trust Company. Although the school had its largest student body with a peak enrollment of 806, officials could not maintain mortgage payments, and the school was forced to close once again in June 1917 when the Muncie Trust Company initiated foreclosure proceedings.
The Ball brothers and Ball State Teachers College era (1917–1960)
On July 25, 1917, the Ball brothers, local industrialists and founders of the Ball Corporation, bought the Indiana Normal Institute from foreclosure. The Ball brothers also founded Ball Memorial Hospital and Minnetrista, and were the benefactors of Keuka College, founded by their uncle, George Harvey Ball. For $35,100, the Ball brothers bought the Administration Building and surrounding land. In early 1918, during the Indiana General Assembly's short session, state legislators accepted the gift of the school and land by the Ball brothers. The state granted operating control of the Muncie campus and school buildings to the administrators of the Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute. That same year, the Marion Normal Institute relocated to Muncie, adding its resources to what would officially be named the Indiana State Normal School – Eastern Division. An initial 235 students enrolled in 1918, with William W. Parsons serving as the first president of the university.
The close relationship between the Balls and the school led to an unofficial moniker for the college, with many students, faculty, and local politicians casually referring to the school as "Ball State," a shorthand alternative to its longer, official name. During the 1922 short session of the Indiana legislature, the state renamed the school Ball Teachers College. This was in recognition of the Ball family's continuing beneficence to the institution. During this act, the state also reorganized its relationship with Terre Haute and established a separate local board of trustees for the Muncie campus. In 1924, Ball Teachers College's trustees hired Benjamin J. Burris as the successor to President Linnaeus N. Hines. The Ball brothers continued giving to the university and partially funded the construction of the Science Hall (now called Burkhardt Building) in 1924 and an addition to Ball Gymnasium in 1925. By the 1925–1926 school year, Ball State enrollment reached 991 students: 697 women and 294 men. Based on the school's close relationship with the Ball Corporation, a long-running nickname for the school was "Fruit Jar Tech."
During the regular legislative session of 1929, the General Assembly nominally separated the Terre Haute and Muncie campuses of the state teachers' college system, but it placed the governing of the Ball State campus under the Indiana State Teachers College Board of Trustees based in Terre Haute. With this action, the school was renamed Ball State Teachers College. The following year, enrollment increased to 1,118, with 747 female and 371 male students.
In 1935, the school added the Fine Arts Building for art, music, and dance instruction. Enrollment that year reached 1,151: 723 women and 428 men. As an expression of the many gifts from the Ball family since 1917, sculptor Daniel Chester French was commissioned by Muncie's chamber of commerce to cast a bronze fountain figure to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Ball brothers' gift to the state. His creation, Beneficence, stands between the Administration Building and Lucina Hall where Talley Avenue ends at University Avenue.
Ball State, like the rest of the nation, was affected by the onset of World War II. There were several dramatic changes on Ball State's campus during World War II. In 1939 Ball State began its Civilian Pilot Training program which had popular enrollment. This program allowed students and local resident to learn to fly, instructed by the Muncie Aviation Company. By the Fall of 1941 Ball State reached its peak enrollment to this point of 1,588 students. When the United States entered the war, Ball State like many other college campuses, saw a decline in male enrollment. At this time Ball State partnered with the United States military and established two training programs on campus, the Army Specialized Training Program and Navy V-1 Program. Each of these programs encouraged male enrollment in the college that also trained them to go on as pilots in the military service.
Ball State students and staff also contributed to the war effort by supporting the troops abroad. Students and staff led by Sherly DeMotte, a member of the English faculty, wrote dozens of letters to Ball State students and staff serving overseas. By 1943 a dozen students from Ball State had become war casualties. To bring awareness to their service, in 1943 the War Morale Committee dedicated the Roll of Honor; it listed the names of all those who served during the war.
Independent institution (1961-present)
In 1961, Ball State became independent of Indiana State University through the creation of the Ball State College Board of Trustees. The official name of the school was also changed to Ball State College. The Indiana General Assembly approved the development of a state-assisted architecture program, establishing the College of Architecture and Planning, which opened on March 23, 1965. The Center for Radio and Television (now named the College of Communication, Information, and Media) opened the following year, in 1966.
Recognizing the college's expanding academic curriculum and growing enrollment (10,066 students), the General Assembly approved renaming the school to Ball State University in 1965. Most of the university's largest residence halls were completed during this period of high growth, including the DeHority Complex (1960), Noyer Complex (1962), Studebaker Complex (1965), LaFollette Complex (1967), and Johnson Complex (1969). Academic and athletic buildings, including Irving Gymnasium (1962), Emens Auditorium (1964), Cooper Science Complex (1967), Scheumann Stadium (1967), Carmichael Hall (1969), Teachers College Building (1969), Pruis Hall (1972), and Bracken Library (1974), also expanded the university's capacity and educational opportunities.
The university experienced another building boom beginning in the 2000s, with the openings of the Art and Journalism Building (2001), Shafer Tower (2001), the Music Instruction Building (2004), the David Letterman Communication and Media Building (2007), Park Hall (2007), Kinghorn Hall (2010), Marilyn K. Glick Center for Glass (2010), and the Student Recreation and Wellness Center (2010).
Under the university's 14th president, Dr. Jo Ann Gora, over $520 million was committed to new construction and renovation projects throughout the Ball State campus. Within the last decade, Ball State University adopted Education Redefined as its motto, focusing on "immersive learning" to engage students across all academic programs in real-world projects. To date, there have been over 1,250 immersive learning projects, impacting residents in all of Indiana's 92 counties under the mentoring of faculty from every academic department.
The university has also adopted environmental sustainability as a primary component of the university's strategic plan and vision. Starting in the mid-2000s, all building additions and renovations are designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification standards. Ball State announced in 2009 that it would begin construction on the largest geothermal energy conversion project in U.S. history.
The university was defendant in the U.S. Supreme Court case Vance v. Ball State University, which dealt with who can be regarded as a "supervisor" for harassment lawsuits. The case was argued on November 26, 2012. In a 5–4 decision, the court ruled in favor of Ball State.
Campus
Main campus
Ball State University's campus spans and includes 109 buildings at centered mostly on three main quadrangles. (The university also has just over 400 additional acres of research property.)
The original quadrangle, "Old Quad," anchors the south end of campus and includes most of the university's earliest academic buildings, Christy Woods, and the Wheeler-Thanhauser Orchid Collection and Species Bank. The focal points of the Old Quad are Beneficence and the Fine Arts Building, home to the David Owsley Museum of Art since 1935. The museum contains some 11,000 works valued at more than $40 million. The museum expanded its total exhibition space in 2013 from . The Fine Arts Terrace, overlooking the Old Quad, hosts the annual spring commencement ceremonies.
The University Green quadrangle is located to the north and consists of a variety of modern buildings (1960–present), with such landmarks as Bracken Library, Emens Auditorium, and the Frog Baby Fountain, located on University Green. Shafer Tower is the focal point of the quadrangle. Located in the median of McKinley Avenue, Shafer Tower is a free-standing bell tower with a 48-bell carillon.
McKinley Avenue, which runs north-south through campus, acts as a spine or axis of activity connecting the quadrangles. The Scramble Light at the intersection of Riverside and McKinley is a pedestrian scramble that halts vehicular traffic in 30-second sequences, allowing pedestrians to cross the intersection in every direction, including diagonally.
The newest quadrangle, the East Quad, sits directly east of the Old Quad. The East Quad is made up of the Sursa Performance Hall, the Honors College, and two new buildings; the Health Professions Building (Opened 2019) and the Foundational Sciences Building (Opened 2021).
The North Residential Neighborhood was completed in 2022 and comprises Beyerl Hall, Botsford/Swinford Halls, North West Hall, Schmidt/Wilson Halls, and the North Dining Hall.
York Prairie Creek, also known as Cardinal Creek, is an intra-campus creek that begins at the pond outside Park Hall on campus, winding northwest and connecting to the Duck Pond before heading west toward the White River.
The university's campus includes nearly 8,000 trees of about 625 species.
Campus transportation
The University provides a free shuttle service each semester. Shuttles run on red, green, and blue loops every five to ten minutes. The Muncie Indiana Transit System (MITS) also provides free bus service to students on local routes, particularly on Routes 1, 2, 14, and 16 which run through campus.
The University also provides a late-night pickup service, Charlie's Charter. Upon request, Charlie's Charter will transport students throughout the campus.
Athletic facilities
Most of Ball State University's athletic facilities and intramural fields are located on the northernmost portion of campus near the intersection of McGalliard Road and Tillotson Avenue. These facilities include First Merchants Ballpark Complex (Ball Diamond and Softball Field), Briner Sports Complex, the Earl Yestingsmeier Golf Practice Facility, the Fisher Football Training Complex, the Scheumann Family Indoor Practice Facility, and the 22,500-seat Scheumann Stadium, home to Ball State Cardinals football.
The 11,500-seat John E. Worthen Arena anchors the central campus athletic facilities. There are also tennis courts on campus.
Architecture
Most campus facilities feature red or brown brick façades with the exceptions of the Frank A. Bracken Administration Building made of yellow brick and Elliott and Pruis Halls each made of Indiana limestone.
Completed in 1899 as the university's first building, the Frank A. Bracken Administration Building was built in Neoclassical style with a yellow brick façade.
Most campus facilities built before 1960 feature Collegiate Gothic architecture, including Ball Gymnasium, Burris Laboratory School, Fine Arts Building, and L. A. Pittenger Student Center. Other examples include Burkhardt Building, North Quad Building, and Lucina Hall.
Several modern campus buildings (early-1960s to early-1980s) have been built in Brutalist architecture, embracing blank walls and exposed concrete. Examples of this style include the Architecture Building, Bracken Library, and Whitinger Business Building.
The Teachers College Building, built in 1968, is the tallest building on campus, at 10 floors and .
Building additions and expansions from the early-1990s to the mid-2010s shied away from Brutalist designs, and instead, have been built to respect the scale and style of the university's older Collegiate Gothic buildings. While red and brown brick accented by limestone has remained the favored façade materials, large windows have become more commonplace in buildings constructed since the late-1990s to emphasize natural lighting. Examples of this architecture include the Alumni Center, Dehority Hall, Park Hall, Kinghorn Hall, Sursa Performance Hall, the Art and Journalism Building, Music Instruction Building, and the David Letterman Communication and Media Building.
Recent buildings (mid-2010s to present) have embraced contemporary architecture featuring open atriums, large windows, and sustainable elements. Examples of this architecture include the Health Professions Building, the Foundational Sciences Building, Beyerl Hall, North West Hall, Botsford/Swinford Halls, Schmidt/Wilson Halls, and the North Dining Hall.
Sustainability
Ball State has adopted environmental sustainability as a primary component of the university's strategic plan and vision. Starting in the mid-2000s, all building additions and renovations are designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification standards. Standards include environmentally-friendly site selection, energy and water efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality, among others. The university diverts 20 percent of its waste from landfills through recycling efforts and also invests in hybrid vehicles, hybrid-electric shuttle buses, and vehicles that use E85.
Since 2007, 13 campus buildings have achieved LEED certification. The Marilyn K. Glick Center for Glass and Teachers College Building is considered LEED certified. The David Letterman Communication and Media Building, Park Hall, DeHority Hall, Kinghorn Hall, and the Jo Ann Gora Student Recreation and Wellness Center have earned LEED Silver certification. Studebaker East Residence Hall, District Energy Station North, Applied Technology Building, Botsford/Swinford Residence Hall, Schmidt/Wilson Residence Hall, and District Energy Station South have earned LEED Gold certification. The university's first green roof was installed on the North District Energy Station in 2011.
Former president Jo Ann Gora was a founding member of the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment, an initiative by several institutions to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their campuses. In 2011, the Sustainable Endowments Institute gave the university a College Sustainability Report Card grade of "C+."
Geothermal system
In 2009, then-president Jo Ann Gora announced the university's plans for installing the largest geothermal energy project of its kind in the U.S. Ball State committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 80,000 tons annually through the installation of a $65 million geothermal heating and cooling system and closure of all four coal-fired boilers on campus. The geothermal system, completed in 2017, consists of 3,600 boreholes and two energy stations on campus. The system consists of two underground loops with more than of pipes to circulate water for heating and cooling throughout campus.
Satellite facilities
Ball State University manages two satellite facilities in the state of Indiana: CAP: INDY and the Fishers Center for Academic and Economic Innovation.
Since 2001, the Estopinal College of Architecture and Planning has operated a satellite facility in Indianapolis. Known as CAP: INDY, it houses the Center for Civic Design and provides interdisciplinary studio space for graduate students in the college's master of architecture and master of urban design programs. In 2019, the center moved to the Elevator Hill section of the city's Holy Cross neighborhood near downtown Indianapolis. CAP: INDY occupies of the Glass Building at 25 N. Pine St.
The Fishers Center for Academic and Economic Innovation, located in Fishers, Indiana, was established in 2015. The center occupies at Launch Fishers, a co-working/business incubator. The site offers academic programs, community engagement, and professional development sessions to students, alumni, and organizations. During the spring semester, entrepreneurship student teams are paired with six Launch Fishers companies to develop growth strategies for each company.
Academics
Student body
Ball State University enrolls approximately 21,500 students who come from throughout Indiana, the United States, and around the world. Out-of-state students make up about 25 percent of enrollment, and ethnic minorities account for about 23 percent. The university enrolls more than 300 international students.
As of the 2020–2021 school year, Ball State University's student population primarily consisted of Indiana residents (74 percent) with 25 percent being nonresidents. Sixty-five percent of the student body is female. The university admitted 77 percent of applicants in 2019.
Tuition
For the 2021–2022 academic year, annual undergraduate tuition is $8,284 for in-state students taking 12 to 18 credits per semester and $25,518 for out-of-state students. Including technology, recreation, Health Center, and room and board fees, annual undergraduate expenses total about $21,086 for in-state students and $38,320 for out-of-state students. For the 2021–2022 academic year, annual graduate tuition is $7,748 for in-state students taking nine credits per semester and $21,222 for out-of-state students. Including other fees, in-state graduate student expenses total $20,560, and $34,024 for out-of-state graduate students.
Colleges
Ball State University offers five associate degrees, 119 bachelor's, 78 master's,15 doctoral degrees, 60 post-baccalaureate certificates, and three post-masters certificates. In fall 2020, the average campus class size was 21 students, with a student-to-teacher ratio of 16 to 1.
Ball State University has been accredited by The Higher Learning Commission continuously since 1925.
Library system
Bracken Library is the university's main library. Completed in 1975, Bracken houses five floors of classrooms, computer labs, private study suites, and video viewing suites. The library provides access to about 2.3 million books, periodicals, microforms, audiovisual materials, software, government publication maps, musical scores, archival records, and other information sources. Bracken Library hosts the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, an open-access resource containing over 130,000 digital objects in 64 collections, as well as the Center for Middletown Studies. System branches include the Architecture Library and the Science–Health Science Library. Over 1.1 million visits were made throughout the University Libraries system between 2011 and 2012.
Rankings
Ball State ranked 191st nationally on U.S. News & World Reports 2021 “Top Performers on Social Mobility” list. College Magazine ranked the university No. 6 in the country for “Top 10 Campuses for Students with Disabilities.” The Princeton Review also classifies Ball State as among its “Best Midwestern” universities and “Green Colleges.” Insight into Diversity has awarded a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award every year since 2016.
The entrepreneurial management program ranked among the top 50 in the U.S. in The Princeton Review 2020 rankings. U.S. News & World Report ranked Ball State 36th in 2021 for First-Year Experiences, 46th in the U.S. in audiology programs, 47th in rehabilitation counseling programs, 84th in “Best Education Schools,” 92nd in speech-language pathology programs, 166th in public affairs programs, and 202nd in psychology programs.
Several programs are nationally ranked in their respective categories in U.S. News & World Reports “Best Online Programs” list: the master’s in curriculum and educational technology 4th, master’s in nursing education 5th, master’s in educational administration and supervision 11th, master of business administration 15th, master’s in special education 16th, master’s in nursing 17th, and bachelor’s programs 29th.
Student life
Housing
Ball State University operates 14 residence halls for its students, with a 15th expected to open during the 2021-2022 school year. A 16th residence hall, Burkhardt/Jeep Hall in the Wagoner Complex, houses students of the Ball State-operated Indiana Academy.
Anthony and Scheidler Apartments on campus accommodate upper-level single students, students with families, and university faculty and staff. Prices vary for on-campus living with meal plan access to dining facilities. LaFollette Complex had previously contained about 1,900 students, the highest capacity residence hall complex on campus, but began undergoing demolition in 2017. As of 2020, Brayton/Clevenger residence hall was the only remaining hall in the complex.
The majority of residence halls are home to living-learning communities in which students enrolled in the same majors or similar majors are housed together and participate in special activities.
Student organizations and activities
More than 400 student organizations at Ball State include numerous student government, departmental and professional, special interest, and service groups, all sanctioned by the Office of Student Life in the L. A. Pittenger Student Center. Multicultural organizations include the Asian American Student Association, Black Student Association, Latinx Student Union, and Spectrum, for LGBTQ equity. Ball State is often credited as one of the first universities in the nation to begin a Safe Zone training program, which began in 1992, to educate the public and empower LGBTQ allies and advocates.
Ball State University is home to about 30 on-campus Greek letter organizations.
Media
Eight student-run media organizations operate as part of Ball State's Unified Media Lab in its College of Communication, Information, and Media. The lab includes the Ball State Daily News, Ball Bearings magazine, Byte, Cardinal Metrics, Cardinal WX, Newslink Indiana, Ball State Sports Link, and WCRD radio station.
Ball State Daily News
The Ball State Daily News is a student newspaper with articles published daily online and a weekly print circulation of 10,000 copies, published every Thursday during the academic year, excluding exams and vacation. Originally founded in 1922 as The Easterner, the newspaper was among the first student publications to be inducted into the Associated Collegiate Press’ Hall of Fame in 1988 and has won numerous national pacemaker awards.
Ball Bearings magazine
Ball Bearings is an online and print student magazine that focuses on in-depth articles.
Byte
Byte is a multimedia student organization that produces news, features, reviews, graphics, podcasts, and videos focusing on entertainment, technology, and culture.
Cardinal Metrics
Cardinal Metrics is an analytics agency in which students work with professional clients to provide analysis and consultation services.
Cardinal WX
Cardinal WX, or "Waking up with Cardinal Weather," is a morning mobile show that provides news, weather, and lifestyle trends.
NewsLink Indiana
NewsLink Indiana is a three-times-weekly 30-minute broadcast. The show covers local news, national news, entertainment, weather, and sports. NewsLink has won numerous Lower Great Lakes Regional Emmy Awards.
Ball State Sports Link
Ball State Sports Link started in 2009 as one of the university's immersive learning projects. Students cover athletics, including live remote productions, live-to-tape events, television programs, student-athlete features, Facebook live shows, and social media content. The programs also include a digital radio broadcast, social media management and analytics, and podcasts.
WCRD
WCRD is a non-commercial radio station operated full-time by Ball State students from studios in the David Letterman Communication and Media Building.
The McKinley Avenue Agency
The Department of Journalism supports The McKinley Avenue Agency, a student-run public relations and advertising agency that works with other university offices and community businesses. Services include media sales, creative services, public relations and communications, and events and contests. The organization merged with the former Cardinal Communications, which focused on public relations services.
Ball State Public Media
The university announced in October 2020 the formation of Ball State Public Media, a partnership between Ball State PBS (formerly WIPB) and Indiana Public Radio (WBST).
Athletics
Ball State competes in the NCAA Division I (FBS) and is part of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) in all sports except for men's volleyball, where it competes in the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (MIVA).
In 2018, Beth Goetz was named as the director of athletics, proceeding Mark Sandy. Goetz is Ball State's second female director of athletics in the history of the department.
Ball State Cardinals football was established in the 1924 season and has a 461-434-32 (.515) record as of January 2021. Ball State has won six conference championships in football, most recently in 2020, and has appeared in seven NCAA Division I postseason bowl games, most recently in 2020 defeating San Jose State, 34-13, in the Offerpad Arizona Bowl for the Cardinals’ first-ever bowl victory. Ball State has a 1-7-1 bowl game record. Ball State annually competes against conference rival Northern Illinois, playing for the Bronze Stalk Trophy; Ball State holds a 3–10 record in the contest. Mike Neu is the current head coach, a position he has held since 2016.
Ball State Cardinals men's basketball began in 1920. Although there was little success in the program from its start until the 1970s, the next two decades would be the highlight of the program's performance. Ball State became a powerhouse in the Mid-American Conference, winning a record seven MAC tournaments and with subsequent appearances in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament between 1981 and 2000. The Cardinals' most successful year was 1990 when the team reached the Sweet Sixteen but lost to eventual national champion UNLV, 69-67. Even though the Cardinals lost the game, BSU player Chandler Thompson recorded what is considered to be one of the most memorable put-back dunks in college basketball history. The team's last NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament appearance was in 2000. James Whitford became head coach in 2013.
Charlie Cardinal is Ball State's mascot, modeled after Indiana's state bird, the northern cardinal.
Traditions
Beneficence
The statue Beneficence (aka "Benny") is a bronze statue dedicated in 1937 on Ball State's quad. The statue was sculpted by Daniel Chester French, creator of the Abraham Lincoln statue in the Lincoln Memorial. Beneficence was selected to recognize the generosity of the five Ball brothers, who founded the university and made many other contributions to Muncie, Indiana. The statue serves as a primary symbol for the university, including being the focus of Ball State's official logo.
Frog Baby
The Frog Baby statue has been the center of legend and tradition since it was presented by Frank Ball in 1937. While initially on display in the David Owsley Museum of Art, students began a tradition of rubbing the statue's nose for good luck before taking exams. Over the years, the nose was worn away, and in 1993, the statue was sent overseas for refurbishment. Today, Frog Baby is situated in a fountain on University Green. Since its move and restoration, students have started a new tradition of dressing the statue to reflect weather patterns (scarves and hats in the winter) or current university events (jerseys and helmets for upcoming football games). Despite 24/7 surveillance, the statue has been a repeated target of vandals.
The Naked Lady
Forest Idyl, more commonly known by students and faculty as "The Naked Lady," is a bronze statue of a partially nude woman mingling with two wild deer. The statue is one of four known original castings by sculpture artist Albin Polasek.
The statue is located in the lobby of Bracken Library.
Homecoming
Beginning in 1926, Homecoming has brought several traditions. Homecoming Parade was first held in 1939. The parade route begins at Muncie Central High School downtown, travels west down University Avenue through The Village, and ends at McKinley and Neely avenues on campus. The 75th anniversary of the parade in 2012 saw over 100 float entries. Since the inaugural event in 1980, the Homecoming Bed Race has been held the Friday before homecoming. The annual event consists of five-person teams within seven divisions, racing beds down a 100-yard course on Riverside Avenue in zany costumes. Other Homecoming traditions include the Air Jam lip-sync competition and Talent Search scholarship talent show.
Other traditions
Starting in 2004, Ball State students adopted "Chirp! Chirp!" as a school chant to cheer on teams during sporting events. Traditionally, The Chirp chant begins on the opposing team's third down during Ball State Cardinals football games. Accompanying the chant, participants usually place their index finger and thumb together, extending the other three fingers straight up, and moving their arm in an up-and-down motion.
For at least a decade, it had become a tradition for students and visitors to stick pieces of chewed gum to a honey locust tree between Emens Parking Garage and Pruis Hall. The trunk of the "Gum Tree," as it had been named, was covered in colorful wads of used gum. The tree was removed in 2017 by the university in preparation for construction of the East Mall.
Notable alumni
Ball State University has about 197,000 alumni worldwide. A few of Ball State's most notable graduates include:
Kent C. "Oz" Nelson (BA 1959, LLD 1994), former president and CEO of UPS
Jim Davis (BA 1967, LittD (h.c.) 1991), creator of the Garfield comic strip
David Letterman (BA 1969), Emmy Award-winning former host of the Late Show
Actress Joyce DeWitt (BA 1972)
Architect Craig W. Hartman (BArch 1973, DA 2009)
Angela Ahrendts (BA 1981, DHL 2010), former CEO of Burberry and former Apple Inc. executive
Jeffrey D. Feltman (BS 1981, LLD 2013), United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon
Brian Gallagher (BSW 1981), former president and CEO of United Way Worldwide
Actor Doug Jones (BA 1982)
John Schnatter (BA 1983, LLD 2015), founder and former chairman of Papa John's Pizza
Angelin Chang, (BA and BM 1990) Grammy Award-winning classical pianist
Jarrod Jones (born 1990), American-Hungarian basketball player in the Israeli Basketball Premier League
Jason Whitlock (BS 1990), sportswriter and host of Speak for Yourself
Tiara Thomas (BA 2012), Grammy Award and Academy Award-winning singer-songwriter
See also
List of colleges and universities in Indiana
List of Ball State University Presidents
Notes
References
Further reading
Ball, Edmund F., From fruit jars to satellites: The story of Ball Brothers Company, Incorporated, Newcomen Society, 1960
Ball State University, The Elisabeth Ball Collection of paintings, drawings, and watercolors: Ball State University Art Gallery, January 15 – February 26, 1984, Indiana University Press, 1984,
Birmingham, Frederic A., Ball Corporation, the first century, Curtis Publishing, 1980,
Bullock, Kurt E., Ball State University: A sense of place, Ball State University Alumni Association, 1993,
Edmonds, Anthony O., & Geelhoed, E. Bruce, Ball State University: An Interpretive History, Indiana University Press, 2001,
Hoover, Dwight W., Middletown revisited, Ball State University Press, 1990,
External links
Ball State Athletics website
Universities and colleges established in 1918
Ball State
Buildings and structures in Muncie, Indiana
Education in Delaware County, Indiana
Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association
Tourist attractions in Muncie, Indiana
1918 establishments in Indiana
Universities and colleges accredited by the Higher Learning Commission
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Silesian Wars
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The Silesian Wars () were three wars fought in the mid-18th century between Prussia (under King Frederick the Great) and Habsburg Austria (under Empress Maria Theresa) for control of the Central European region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland). The First (1740–1742) and Second (1744–1745) Silesian Wars formed parts of the wider War of the Austrian Succession, in which Prussia was a member of a coalition seeking territorial gain at Austria's expense. The Third Silesian War (1756–1763) was a theatre of the global Seven Years' War, in which Austria in turn led a coalition of powers aiming to seize Prussian territory.
No particular event triggered the wars. Prussia cited its centuries-old dynastic claims on parts of Silesia as a casus belli, but Realpolitik and geostrategic factors also played a role in provoking the conflict. Maria Theresa's contested succession to the Habsburg monarchy under the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 provided an opportunity for Prussia to strengthen itself relative to regional rivals such as Saxony and Bavaria.
All three wars are generally considered to have ended in Prussian victories, and the first resulted in Austria's cession of the majority of Silesia to Prussia. Prussia emerged from the Silesian Wars as a new European great power and the leading state of Protestant Germany, while Catholic Austria's defeat by a lesser German power significantly damaged the House of Habsburg's prestige. The conflict over Silesia foreshadowed a wider Austro-Prussian struggle for hegemony over the German-speaking peoples, which would later culminate in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
Context and causes
In the early 18th century the Kingdom of Prussia's ruling House of Hohenzollern held dynastic claims to several duchies within the Habsburg province of Silesia, a populous and prosperous region contiguous with Prussia's core territory in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Besides its value as a source of tax revenue, industrial output and military recruits, Silesia held great geostrategic importance to multiple parties. The valley of the Upper Oder formed a natural military conduit between Brandenburg, the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia, and whichever power held the territory could threaten its neighbours. Silesia also lay along the north-eastern frontier of the Holy Roman Empire, allowing its controller to limit the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and of the Russian Empire within Germany.
Prussia's claims
Prussia's claims in Silesia were based, in part, on a 1537 inheritance treaty between the Silesian Piast Duke Frederick II of Legnica and the Hohenzollern Prince-Elector JoachimII Hector of Brandenburg, whereby the Silesian Duchies of Liegnitz, Wohlau and Brieg were to pass to the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg should the Piast dynasty in Silesia become extinct. At the time, the Habsburg King FerdinandI of Bohemia (Silesia's feudal overlord) rejected the agreement and pressed the Hohenzollerns to repudiate it. In 1603, Hohenzollern Elector JoachimIII Frederick of Brandenburg separately inherited the Silesian Duchy of Jägerndorf from his cousin, Margrave George Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and installed his second son, Johann Georg, as duke.
In the 1618 Bohemian Revolt and the ensuing Thirty Years' War, Johann Georg joined the Silesian estates in revolt against the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor FerdinandII. After the Catholic victory in the 1621 Battle of White Mountain, the Emperor confiscated Johann Georg's duchy and refused to return it to his heirs after his death, but the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg continued to assert themselves as the legitimate rulers of Jägerndorf. In 1675 the "Great Elector" Frederick William laid claim to Liegnitz, Wohlau and Brieg when the Silesian Piast line ended with the death of Duke George William of Liegnitz, but the Habsburg Emperor disregarded the Hohenzollern claims, and the lands escheated to the Bohemian crown.
In 1685, when Austria was engaged in the Great Turkish War, Emperor LeopoldI gave Great Elector Frederick William immediate control of the Silesian exclave of Schwiebus in return for military support against the Turks and the surrender of the outstanding Hohenzollern claims in Silesia. After the accession of the Great Elector's son and successor, FrederickIII of Brandenburg, the Emperor took back control of Schwiebus in 1694, claiming that the territory had only been personally assigned to the late Great Elector for life. As a young prince, FrederickIII had secretly agreed to this repossession in return for Leopold's payment of some of his debts, but as monarch he repudiated the agreement and reasserted the old Hohenzollern claims to Jägerndorf and the Silesian Piast heritage.
Austrian succession
Two generations later, the newly crowned Hohenzollern King Frederick II of Prussia formed designs on Silesia soon after succeeding to the throne in May 1740. Frederick judged that his dynasty's claims were credible, and he had inherited from his father a large and well trained Prussian army and a healthy royal treasury. Austria was in financial distress, and its army had not been reinforced or reformed after an ignominious performance in the 1737–1739 Austro-Turkish War. The European strategic situation was favourable for an attack on Austria, as Britain and France were occupying each other's attentions in the War of Jenkins' Ear, and Sweden was moving toward war with Russia. The Electors of Bavaria and Saxony also had claims against Austria and seemed likely to join in the attack. Though the Hohenzollerns' dynastic claims provided a legalistic casus belli, considerations of Realpolitik and geostrategy played the leading role in provoking the war.
An opportunity arose for Brandenburg–Prussia to press its claims when Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor CharlesVI died in October 1740 without a male heir. With the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, Charles had established his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, as the successor to his hereditary titles. Upon his death she duly became ruler of Austria, as well as of the Bohemian and Hungarian lands within the Habsburg monarchy. During Emperor Charles's lifetime the Pragmatic Sanction was generally acknowledged by the imperial states, but when he died it was promptly contested by Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony.
Moves toward war
Frederick saw in Austria's female succession an opportune moment for the seizure of Silesia, calling it "the signal for the complete transformation of the old political system" in a 1740 letter to Voltaire. He argued that the Pragmatic Sanction did not apply to Silesia, which was held by the Habsburgs as a part of the imperial demesne rather than as a hereditary possession. Frederick also argued that his father, King Frederick WilliamI, had assented to the Sanction in return for assurances of Austrian support for Hohenzollern claims on the Rhenish Duchies of Jülich and Berg, which had not yet materialised.
Meanwhile, Prince-Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria and Prince-Elector Frederick AugustusII of Saxony had each married one of Maria Theresa's older cousins from a senior branch of the House of Habsburg, and they used these connections to justify claims to Habsburg territory in the absence of a male heir. Frederick Augustus, who ruled the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth in personal union, was especially interested in gaining control of Silesia to connect his two realms into one contiguous territory (which would nearly surround Brandenburg); Frederick's concern to prevent this outcome contributed to his haste in moving against Austria when the contested succession provided an opportunity.
Methods and technologies
European warfare in the early modern period was characterised by the widespread adoption of firearms in combination with more traditional bladed weapons. 18th-century European armies were built around units of massed infantry armed with smoothbore flintlock muskets and bayonets. Cavalrymen were equipped with sabres and pistols or carbines; light cavalry were used principally for reconnaissance, screening and tactical communications, while heavy cavalry were used as tactical reserves and deployed for shock attacks. Smoothbore artillery provided fire support and played the leading role in siege warfare. Strategic warfare in this period centred around control of key fortifications positioned so as to command the surrounding regions and roads, lengthy sieges being a common feature of armed conflict. Decisive field battles were relatively rare, though they played a larger part in Frederick's theory of warfare than was typical among his contemporary rivals.
The Silesian Wars, like most European wars of the 18th century, were fought as so-called cabinet wars in which disciplined regular armies were equipped and supplied by the state to conduct warfare on behalf of the sovereign's interests. Occupied enemy territories were regularly taxed and extorted for funds, but large-scale atrocities against civilian populations were rare compared with conflicts in the previous century. Military logistics was the decisive factor in many wars, as armies had grown too large to support themselves on prolonged campaigns by foraging and plunder alone. Military supplies were stored in centralised magazines and distributed by baggage trains that were highly vulnerable to enemy raids. Armies were generally unable to sustain combat operations during winter and normally established winter quarters in the cold season, resuming their campaigns with the return of spring.
First Silesian War
After Emperor Charles's death on 20 October 1740, Frederick quickly resolved to strike first; on 8November he ordered the mobilisation of the Prussian army, and on 11 December he issued an ultimatum to Maria Theresa demanding the cession of Silesia. In return, he offered to guarantee all other Habsburg possessions against any attack, pay a large cash indemnity, acknowledge the Pragmatic Sanction, and give his vote as elector of Brandenburg to Maria Theresa's husband, Duke Francis Stephen of Lorraine, in the forthcoming imperial election to replace the deceased Charles.
Not waiting for a response and without a declaration of war, he led Prussian troops across the lightly defended Silesian frontier on 16 December, beginning the First Silesian War. By the end of January 1741 almost the entirety of Silesia was under Prussian control, and the remaining Austrian strongholds of Glogau, Brieg and Neisse were besieged. In late March an Austrian force relieved the siege of Neisse, but the main Prussian force engaged and defeated it in the Battle of Mollwitz on 10 April, securing Prussian control of the region.
Seeing Austria's defeat at Mollwitz, other powers were emboldened to attack the beleaguered monarchy, widening the conflict into what would become the War of the Austrian Succession. As Bavaria, Saxony, France, Naples and Spain attacked Austria on multiple fronts during the succeeding months, Frederick began secret peace negotiations with Maria Theresa, with British urging and mediation; on 9October Austria and Prussia agreed to a secret armistice known as the Convention of Klein Schnellendorf, under which Austria committed to eventually concede Lower Silesia in return for peace.
As Austria concentrated its forces against its other enemies and gained ground in the wider war, Frederick concluded that the Austrians did not intend to honour the Convention and concede territory in Silesia. To press Austria further, he repudiated the armistice and renewed offensive operations of his own. In December 1741 Prussian forces advanced into Moravia, occupying the capital at Olmütz, and besieged the fortress at Glatz on the edge of Bohemia. In January 1742 Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria won the 1742 Imperial election and became Holy Roman Emperor. In February Frederick organised a joint advance through Moravia toward Vienna with the Saxons and French, but Prussia's allies were reluctant and uncooperative, and the campaign was abandoned in April, after which the Prussians withdrew into Bohemia and Upper Silesia.
An Austrian counter-advance into Bohemia engaged Frederick's Prussians on 17 May and was narrowly defeated at the resulting Battle of Chotusitz. This defeat left Austria with no immediate means of driving its enemies out of Bohemia, and renewed peace talks with Prussia began in Breslau. Under British pressure, Austria agreed to cede to Prussia the large majority of Silesia, along with the County of Glatz in Bohemia, while Austria would retain two small portions of the extreme southern end of Silesia, including the Duchy of Teschen and parts of the Duchies of Jägerndorf, Troppau and Neisse. Prussia also agreed to take on some of Austria's debts and to remain neutral for the remainder of the ongoing war. This peace agreement was adopted with the Treaty of Breslau, which ended the First Silesian War on 11 June 1742, and was later formalised in the Treaty of Berlin.
Second Silesian War
Peace with Prussia allowed the Austrians and their British–Hanoverian allies to reverse the gains made by the French and Bavarians in 1741. By mid 1743 Austria recovered control of Bohemia, drove the French back across the Rhine, and occupied Bavaria. In September 1743 Britain, Austria and Savoy–Sardinia concluded a new alliance under the Treaty of Worms, which led Frederick to suspect that Maria Theresa meant to retake Silesia as soon as the war elsewhere was concluded. So, on 7August 1744 Prussia declared its intervention in the ongoing conflict on behalf of Emperor Charles Albert, and Frederick led soldiers across the frontier into Bohemia on 15 August, beginning the Second Silesian War.
Prussian forces converged upon Prague, seizing the city on 16 September, and this new threat drew the Austrian army back from France through Bavaria. The French failed to harass and disrupt the Austrian redeployment, so Austria's army was able to return to Bohemia quickly and at full strength. Frederick gathered his forces around Prague and tried to force a decisive engagement, but Austrian commander Otto Ferdinand von Traun focused on harassing the invaders' supply lines, eventually forcing the Prussians to abandon Bohemia and retreat into Upper Silesia in November.
With the January 1745 Treaty of Warsaw, Austria established a new "Quadruple Alliance" between Austria, Britain, Saxony and the Dutch Republic. Meanwhile, Emperor Charles Albert died on 20 January, destroying the rationale behind Frederick's alliance. Austria renewed its offensive against Bavaria in March 1745, decisively defeating the Franco-Bavarian army at the 15 April Battle of Pfaffenhofen, and making peace with MaximilianIII of Bavaria (the son of the late Emperor Charles Albert) by the Treaty of Füssen on 22 April.
Having defeated Bavaria, Austria began an invasion of Silesia. At the end of May an Austrian–Saxon army crossed through the Giant Mountains into Silesia, only to be surprised and decisively defeated by Frederick in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on 4June, removing any immediate prospect of Austria recovering Silesia. The Prussians followed the retreating Austrian–Saxon army into Bohemia, encamping along the Elbe while Frederick pursued a peace agreement. During the following months Maria Theresa won the support of enough prince-electors to see her husband named Holy Roman Emperor FrancisI on 13 September in Frankfurt, achieving one of her major goals in the war.
On 29 September the Austrians attacked Frederick's camp in Bohemia, resulting in a Prussian victory at the Battle of Soor, despite the Austrian surprise and superior numbers. Soon low supplies forced the Prussians to withdraw into Upper Silesia for the winter. In November Austria and Saxony prepared a surprise double invasion of Brandenburg, hoping to seize Berlin and end the war outright. On 23 November Frederick surprised the Austrian invaders in the Battle of Hennersdorf, confusing and scattering the larger Austrian force. Meanwhile, another Prussian army under LeopoldI of Anhalt-Dessau advanced into western Saxony, attacking and destroying the main Saxon army in the Battle of Kesselsdorf on 15 December, after which the Prussians occupied Dresden.
In Dresden the belligerents quickly negotiated a peace treaty, under which Maria Theresa acknowledged Prussian control of Silesia and Glatz, while Frederick recognised FrancisI as Holy Roman Emperor and again committed to neutrality for the remainder of the War of the Austrian Succession. For its part in the Austrian alliance, Saxony was compelled to pay one million rixdollars in reparations to Prussia. The region's borders were thus confirmed at the status quo ante bellum, which had been Prussia's principal goal. This Treaty of Dresden was signed on 25 December 1745, ending the Second Silesian War between Austria, Saxony and Prussia.
Interbellum
After Prussia's withdrawal the wider War of the Austrian Succession continued for another two years, ending with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Despite the commitments made under the Treaty of Dresden, Maria Theresa still refused to give the Holy Roman Empire's recognition of Prussia's sovereignty in Silesia, and Frederick in turn still declined to recognise Maria Theresa's legitimacy as sovereign in the Bohemian lands under the Pragmatic Sanction. The underlying conflict over Silesia was unresolved, and both sides spent the years of peace making preparations for renewed conflict.
Prussia built and expanded fortifications at strategic points in Silesia, and the army began to reequip its artillery units with heavier guns. The crown established Prussia's first central bank, and the treasury gathered its surpluses into a growing war chest throughout the peace. In diplomacy, Frederick worked to maintain Prussia's alliance with France while easing British concerns over the security of the Electorate of Hanover, which British King GeorgeII also ruled in personal union. By these means, and by avoiding any provocations toward Russia, he hoped to manage the Austrian threat and preserve the balance of power.
After the Treaty of Dresden, Maria Theresa initiated a wave of so-called Theresian reforms of Austria's administration and military, as well as ordering a review of her government's diplomatic policy. Her Chancellor Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz oversaw a dramatic reform of the realm's systems of taxation, which funded a significant expansion of Austria's field armies. Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun standardised the army's equipment and professionalised its training, drawing on the Prussian model. In 1746 Maria Theresa entered a defensive pact with Empress Elizabeth of Russia that aligned their two realms against Prussia. Beginning in 1753 Foreign Minister Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz pursued warmer relations with Austria's traditional rival, the Kingdom of France. In 1756 these efforts led Austria to abandon its alliance with Britain in favour of a new Franco-Austrian alliance, while Prussia and Britain entered a defensive alliance by the Convention of Westminster, completing a diplomatic reordering of the European powers known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
Third Silesian War
As Austria, France and Russia formed a new anti-Prussian coalition, Frederick became convinced that Prussia would be attacked in early 1757 and once again chose to strike first. On 29 August 1756 he preemptively invaded neighbouring Saxony, beginning the Third Silesian War. As Austria's and Prussia's allies joined the fighting, the conflict quickly widened into what became the pan-European Seven Years' War. The Prussians occupied Saxony in late 1756 and made large advances in Bohemia in early 1757, winning a series of battles while advancing to Prague. In May Prussian forces drove back the Austrian defenders in the Battle of Prague, taking great losses, and then besieged the city. An Austrian counter-attack culminated in the major Austrian victory at the Battle of Kolín on 18 June, which drove the Prussians out of Bohemia entirely. Meanwhile, Russian and Swedish invasions from the east and north divided Prussia's forces. The Russian invaders in East Prussia won the Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf on 30 August, but they made little strategic progress due to recurring logistical problems.
In late 1757 Imperial and French forces attempted to retake Saxony from the west, only to experience a decisive defeat in the Battle of Rossbach on 5November. This battle secured Prussia's control of Saxony for a time, and the defeat greatly reduced French willingness to contribute further to the Silesian War. Another Austrian army invaded Silesia, making significant progress until it was decisively defeated at the Battle of Leuthen on 5December, after which the Prussians pursued the defeated Austrian army back to Bohemia and recovered control of nearly all of Silesia. Over the winter a combined Prussian-Hanoverian army launched a series of offensives that eventually drove the French out of Westphalia and across the Rhine, securing Prussia's western flank for the duration of the war.
In mid-1758 Prussia invaded Moravia, besieging Olmütz in late May. The city was well defended, and by late June the Prussians' supplies were exhausted. Austrians intercepted and destroyed a major Prussian supply convoy on 30 June in the Battle of Domstadtl, and the invaders abandoned the siege, retreating into Upper Silesia. Russian forces advanced through East Prussia to threaten Brandenburg, fighting the Prussians to a costly draw on 25 August at the Battle of Zorndorf. An Austrian army advancing into Saxony made little progress, despite winning a substantial victory at the Battle of Hochkirch on 14 October.
In 1759 a united Austrian and Russian advance into eastern Brandenburg culminated in a major Prussian defeat at the Battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August, but the victorious allies did not pursue the defeated Prussians or occupy the Prussian capital at Berlin. After Kunersdorf Frederick had briefly believed the war totally lost, but the coalition's internal conflicts and hesitant leadership gave Prussia a second chance, an event that Frederick later termed the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg". The succeeding months saw the Austrians retake Dresden and most of Saxony, with intermittent skirmishing in Saxony continuing into the next year.
In 1760 the Austrians advanced into Lower Silesia, where the Prussian and Austrian armies manoeuvred against each other for some time before engaging in the Battle of Liegnitz on 15 August; the battle ended in a solid Prussian victory, disrupting the Austrians' advance and restoring Prussian control of Lower Silesia. In late 1760 the Russians and Austrians briefly occupied Berlin, and on 3November the main Prussian and Austrian armies fought the Battle of Torgau, a narrow Prussian victory that proved costly for both sides. The year 1761 saw little activity by the exhausted Prussian and Austrian forces, but Russian forces made advances in Pomerania and eastern Brandenburg that threatened a decisive end to the war the following year.
In January 1762, Austria was suddenly abandoned by its Russian ally upon the death of Empress Elizabeth. She was succeeded by the ardently pro-Prussian Peter III of Russia, who immediately recalled his armies from Berlin and Pomerania and made peace with Prussia by the Treaty of Saint Petersburg on 5May. Peter was overthrown and assassinated within months, but by then the war had again shifted in Prussia's favour, and Russia did not resume hostilities. Both sides were nearing exhaustion, and peace talks to end the wider Seven Years' War began in late 1762. In the end, negotiators agreed again on a return to the status quo ante bellum, confirming Prussia's control of Silesia in the Treaty of Hubertusburg in February 1763. Prussia also committed to support the election of Maria Theresa's son, Archduke Joseph, as Holy Roman Emperor.
Outcomes
The Silesian Wars ended in Prussian victory over Austria, a view universal among contemporaries and broadly supported by historiography since. Prussia seized and defended a long-held Habsburg territory, and the status quo ante outcomes of the second and third wars confirmed this basic fact. These conflicts provoked a broad realignment in the European diplomatic system of the time, establishing an Austria–Prussia rivalry that would define German politics for a century until after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
Prussia
Prussia's unexpected victory over the Habsburg monarchy set it apart from German rivals such as Bavaria and Saxony, marking Prussia's rise to the status of a European great power, as well as the leading power of Protestant Germany. The kingdom had gained some of new territory and around a million new subjects in Glatz and Silesia, a populous and densely industrialised region that would contribute substantial manpower and taxes to the Prussian state. Geostrategically, Silesia also gave Prussia a threatening position with respect to Saxony and Austria and a strong defence against encirclement by Poland. Frederick's personal reputation was enormously enhanced by his successes in the wars, winning him the epithet "Frederick the Great". His debts to fortune (Russia's about-face after Elizabeth's death) and to British financial support were soon forgotten, while the memories of his energetic leadership and tactical genius were strenuously promoted. His small kingdom had defeated the Habsburg monarchy and defended its prize against Austria, Britain, Saxony, Russia, Sweden, and France, an accomplishment that appeared miraculous to contemporary observers.
Though sometimes depicted as a key moment in Prussia's rise to greatness, the wars nonetheless left the kingdom's economy and population devastated, and much of the remainder of Frederick's reign was spent repairing the damage. To mitigate population losses, the King continued his father's policy of encouraging Protestant refugees from Catholic realms to resettle in Prussia. The repeated currency devaluations imposed to finance the conflicts led to rapid inflation and great economic disruption in Prussia (and in occupied Saxony). After the wars the state began using its network of military grain depots and the excise on grain to stabilise food prices and alleviate grain shortages. Prussia also established a rudimentary social welfare system for impoverished and disabled veterans of the Silesian Wars.
Prussia's armed forces experienced heavy casualties in the wars, and the officer corps was severely depleted. After the peace of Hubertusburg the state had neither the money nor the manpower to rebuild the army to what it had been at Frederick's accession. In the succeeding War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–1779) the Prussians fought poorly, despite again being personally led by Frederick, and the Prussian army did not fare well against revolutionary France in 1792–1795. In 1806 the Prussians were shattered by Napoleon's Grande Armée at the Battle of Jena; only after a series of reforms motivated by the disasters of 1806–1807 did Prussian military power again begin to grow.
Austria
The defeats of the Silesian Wars cost the Habsburg monarchy its wealthiest province, and capitulating to a lesser German prince significantly dented the House of Habsburg's prestige. Prussia's confirmation as a first-rate power and the enhanced prestige of its king and army were long-term threats to Austria's hegemony in Germany. Still, by winning Prussia's support for the Imperial elections of her husband and son, Maria Theresa ensured the continuation of her family's titular pre-eminence in the Holy Roman Empire, though this was far less than she had hoped for. Defeat in the first two Silesian Wars at the hands of an enemy so apparently inferior created a strong impetus for change within the Habsburg monarchy, resulting in the first wave of Theresian reforms: a broad restructuring of the Habsburg administration and military, and a total realignment of Habsburg foreign policy through the "Diplomatic Revolution".
After the renewed disappointment of the Third Silesian War, a second wave of Theresian reforms ensued. In 1761 the Habsburg monarchy implemented newly centralised administrative and policymaking bodies to streamline what had often been a chaotic executive process. The 1760s and 1770s saw vigorous efforts to improve tax collection, particularly in the Duchy of Milan and the Austrian Netherlands, which led to significant increases in state revenues. In 1766 the crown promulgated its first common code of laws, the Codex Theresianus, in an effort to unify the realm's legal systems. Aiming to increase the peasantry's ability to contribute to the state's tax base, Maria Theresa issued a series of Robot Patents between 1771 and 1778 restricting forced peasant labour in her German and Bohemian lands, and her son would carry the process further with his Serfdom Patent. The state also implemented compulsory primary education and established a system of secular public schools. Beginning with these steps, wide-ranging efforts to modernise the Habsburg monarchy over the next half century grew out of Austria's defeats, culminating in the Josephinism of the 1780s.
See also
Wars and battles involving Prussia
Imperial Army (Holy Roman Empire)
Prussian Army
References
Sources
External links
Frederick the Great
Seven Years' War
War of the Austrian Succession
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Sîn-šar-iškun
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Sîn-šar-iškun (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: or , meaning "Sîn has established the king") was the penultimate king of Assyria, reigning from the death of his brother and predecessor Aššur-etil-ilāni in 627 BC to his own death at the Fall of Nineveh in 612 BC.
Succeeding his brother in uncertain, but not necessarily violent circumstances, Sîn-šar-iškun was immediately faced by the revolt of one of his brother's chief generals, Sîn-šumu-līšir, who attempted to usurp the throne for himself. Though Sîn-šumu-līšir was defeated relatively quickly, the instability caused by his revolt, combined with an ongoing interregnum in Babylonia in the south (neither Sîn-šar-iškun nor Sîn-šumu-līšir had formally proclaimed themselves as kings of Babylon) might be what made it possible for Nabopolassar, a southerner of unclear origin, to rise up and seize power in Babylonia. Sîn-šar-iškun's inability to defeat Nabopolassar, despite repeated attempts over the course of several years, allowed Nabopolassar to consolidate power and form the Neo-Babylonian Empire, restoring Babylonian independence after more than a century of Assyrian rule.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the newly formed Median Empire under Cyaxares, then invaded the Assyrian heartland. In 614 BC, the Medes captured and sacked Assur, the ceremonial and religious heart of the Assyrian Empire, and in 612 BC their combined armies attacked, brutally sacked, and razed Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. Sîn-šar-iškun's fate is unknown but it is assumed that he died in the defense of his capital. He was succeeded as king only by Aššur-uballiṭ II, possibly his son, who rallied what remained of the Assyrian army at the city of Harran.
Despite the catastrophic fall of Assyria during his time as king, there is nothing to suggest that Sîn-šar-iškun was any less competent than his successful warrior-king predecessors. He employed the same tactics as his predecessors and appears to have utilized his forces rationally and strategically, fighting entirely in-line with traditional Assyrian warfare. What doomed Assyria might instead have been the lack of an effective defensive plan for the Assyrian heartland, which had not been invaded in five hundred years, combined with having to face an enemy which aimed to outright destroy Assyria rather than simply conquer it.
Background
Chronology
As a consequence of Assyria's violent downfall, the period from a few years before the death of Ashurbanipal to the Fall of Nineveh in 612 BC suffers from a distinct lack of surviving sources. The annals of Ashurbanipal, the primary sources for his reign, go no further than 636 BC. Although Ashurbanipal's final year is often repeated as 627 BC, this follows an inscription at Harran made by the mother of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus nearly a century later. The final contemporary evidence for Ashurbanipal being alive and reigning as king is a contract from the city of Nippur made in 631 BC. To get the attested lengths of the reigns of his successors to match, most scholars agree that Ashurbanipal either died, abdicated or was deposed in 631 BC. Of the three options, a death in 631 BC is the most accepted. If Ashurbanipal's reign would have ended in 627 BC, the inscriptions of his successors Aššur-etil-ilāni and Sîn-šar-iškun in Babylon, covering several years, would have been impossible since the city was seized by the Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar in 626 BC to never again fall into Assyrian hands.
Ashurbanipal had named his successor as early as 660 BC, when documents referencing a crown prince (probably Aššur-etil-ilāni) were written. He had been the father of at least one son, and probably two, early on in his reign. These early sons were likely Aššur-etil-ilāni and Sîn-šar-iškun. Aššur-etil-ilāni succeeded Ashurbanipal as king in 631 BC and ruled until his own death in 627 BC. It is frequently assumed, without any supporting evidence, that Sîn-šar-iškun fought with Aššur-etil-ilāni for the throne.
Sîn-šar-iškun has sometimes historically and erroneously been known as Esarhaddon II after a letter written by Šērūʾa-ēṭirat, a daughter of Sîn-šar-iškun's grandfather Esarhaddon. The chronology and relations of the royal family were uncertain and Šērūʾa-ēṭirat was believed to have been too young to refer to the famous Esarhaddon. The idea of a separate Esarhaddon II as king has been abandoned by Assyriologists since the late 19th century, but the name sometimes appears as a synonym of Sîn-šar-iškun.
Assyria and Babylonia
In the middle of the seventh century BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled the entire Near East. Due to their powerful standing army and their sophisticated administration, the Assyrians had managed to create the best organized and largest empire that the world had yet seen. Though Babylonia in the south had also once been a large kingdom, it had typically been weaker than its northern neighbor due to internal divisions and the lack of a well-organized army. The population of Babylonia was divided into various ethnic groups with different priorities and ideals. Though old native Babylonians ruled most of the cities, such as Kish, Ur, Uruk, Borsippa, Nippur, and Babylon itself, the Chaldean tribes, led by chieftains who often squabbled with each other, dominated most of the southernmost land. The Arameans lived on the fringes of settled land and were notorious for plundering surrounding territories. Because of the infighting of these three major groups, Babylonia often represented an appealing target for Assyrian campaigns. The two kingdoms had competed since the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, and in the 8th century BC, the Assyrians consistently gained the upper hand. Babylon's internal and external weakness led to its conquest by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 729 BC.
During the expansion of Assyria into a major empire, the Assyrians had conquered various neighboring kingdoms, either annexing them as Assyrian provinces or turning them into vassal states. Because the Assyrians venerated the long history and culture of Babylon, it was preserved as a full kingdom, either ruled by an appointed client king, or by the Assyrian king in a personal union. The relationship between Assyria and Babylonia was similar to the relationship between Greece and Rome in later centuries; much of Assyria's culture, texts and traditions had been imported from the south. Assyria and Babylonia also shared the same language (Akkadian). The relationship between Assyria and Babylon was emotional in a sense; Neo-Assyrian inscriptions implicitly gender the two countries, calling Assyria the metaphorical "husband" and Babylon its "wife". In the words of the Assyriologist Eckart Frahm, "the Assyrians were in love with Babylon, but also wished to dominate her". Though Babylon was respected as the well-spring of civilization, it was expected to remain passive in political matters, something that Assyria's "Babylonian bride" repeatedly refused to be.
The Assyrians attempted various strategies to appease their Babylonian subjects throughout the eighth and seventh centuries BC; ranging from violent subjugation through war to direct rule either by the Assyrian king or by a representative (sometimes a relative such as a son or brother). Though there was some success in pacifying the urban population of Babylonians, the Arameans and Chaldeans remained unconvinced and repeatedly rebelled whenever they saw an opportunity. Despite the enormous effort spent in keeping the region, Babylonia was seen as too important economically and strategically to allow to secede, but no matter what the Assyrians attempted, rebellion and civil war was the inevitable result each time. Prolonged Assyrian control of Babylonia proved so impossible that modern researchers have dubbed it the "Babylonian problem".
Reign
Rise to the throne and revolt of Sîn-šumu-līšir
In the middle of 627 BC, Ashurbanipal's son and successor Aššur-etil-ilāni died, leading to Aššur-etil-ilāni's brother Sîn-šar-iškun ascending to the Assyrian throne. Although it has been suggested by several historians, there is no evidence to prove the idea that Aššur-etil-ilāni was deposed in a coup by his brother. Sîn-šar-iškun's inscriptions state that he was selected for the kingship from among several of "his equals" (i.e., his brothers) by the gods.
Also dying at roughly the same time as Aššur-etil-ilāni was the vassal king of Babylon, Kandalanu, which led to Sîn-šar-iškun also becoming the ruler of Babylon, as proven by inscriptions by him in southern cities such as Nippur, Uruk, Sippar and Babylon itself. Sîn-šar-iškun's rule of Babylon did not last long, and almost immediately in the wake of him coming to the throne, the general Sîn-šumu-līšir rebelled. Sîn-šumu-līšir had been a key figure in Assyria during Aššur-etil-ilāni's reign, putting down several revolts and possibly being the leader of the country. The rise of another king might have endangered his position and as such led him to revolt and attempt to seize power for himself. Sîn-šumu-līšir was a eunuch and the only eunuch to claim the throne of Assyria. The possibility that a eunuch, normally trusted due to their perceived lack of political ambition, would do so had never been entertained prior to Sîn-šumu-līšir's attempt.
Sîn-šumu-līšir successfully seized control of some cities in northern Babylonia, including Nippur and Babylon itself and would rule there for three months before Sîn-šar-iškun defeated him. Though both of them exercised control there, it is unclear if Sîn-šar-iškun and Sîn-šumu-līšir actually claimed the title "king of Babylon" (or only used "king of Assyria"), meaning that Babylonia could have experienced an interregnum of sorts. Modern historians typically include both Sîn-šumu-līšir and Sîn-šar-iškun in lists of Babylonian kings, as did some ancient Babylonian king lists.
Rise of Babylon under Nabopolassar
Some months after Sîn-šumu-līšir's revolt, another revolt began in Babylon. An official or general called Nabopolassar, possibly using the political instability caused by the previous revolt and the ongoing interregnum in the south, assaulted both Nippur and Babylon. Nabopolassar's armies took the cities from the garrisons left there by Sîn-šar-iškun but the Assyrian response was swift and in October of 626 BC, the Assyrian army recaptured Nippur and besieged Nabopolassar at Uruk. A simultaneous Assyrian attempt at recapturing Babylon itself, the last Assyrian action against the city, was repulsed by Nabopolassar's garrison and the attack at Uruk also failed.
In the aftermath of the failed Assyrian counterattack, Nabopolassar was formally crowned king of Babylon on November 22/23 626 BC, restoring Babylonia as an independent kingdom. In 625–623 BC, Sîn-šar-iškun's forces again attempted to defeat Nabopolassar, campaigning in northern Babylonia. Initially, these campaigns were successful; in 625 BC the Assyrians took the city of Sippar and Nabopolassar's attempted reconquest of Nippur failed. Another of Assyria's vassals, Elam, also stopped paying tribute to Assyria during this time and several Babylonian cities, such as Der, revolted and joined Nabopolassar. Realizing the threat this posed, Sîn-šar-iškun led a massive counterattack himself which saw the successful recapture of Uruk in 623 BC.
Sîn-šar-iškun might have ultimately been victorious had it not been for another revolt, led by an Assyrian general in the empire's western provinces in 622 BC. This general, whose name remains unknown, took advantage of the absence of Sîn-šar-iškun and the Assyrian army to march on Nineveh, met a hastily organized army which surrendered without fighting and successfully seized the Assyrian throne. The surrender of the army indicates that the usurper was an Assyrian and possibly even a member of the royal family, or at least a person that would be acceptable as king. Understandably alarmed by this development, Sîn-šar-iškun abandoned his Babylonian campaign and though he successfully defeated the usurper after a hundred days of civil war, the absence of the Assyrian army saw the Babylonians conquer the last remaining Assyrian outposts in Babylonia in 622–620 BC. The Babylonian siege of Uruk had begun by October 622 BC and though control of the ancient city would shift between Assyria and Babylon, it was firmly in Nabopolassar's hands by 620 BC. Nippur was also conquered in 620 BC and Nabopolassar pushed the Assyrians out of Babylonia. Though he had successfully driven out the Assyrian army, pro-Assyrian factions still existed in some Babylonian cities, for instance Ur and Nippur, by 617 BC, making Nabopolassar's full consolidation of control in the south slow. The fighting in Babylonia in the last stages of the localized conflict turned conditions so desperate in some places that parents sold their children into slavery to avoid them starving to death.
Fighting in Assyria
While unlikely to have been received positively, the end of Assyrian rule in Babylonia would probably not have been regarded as significant to the Assyrians at the time. All fighting had happened in Babylonia and the outcome was not yet decisive, characteristic of previous Assyro-Babylonian conflicts in the Neo-Assyrian period. In previous uprisings, the Babylonians had sometimes temporarily gained the upper hand as well and there was no reason to believe that Nabopolassar's success would be anything but a temporary inconvenience.
In 616 BC, Nabopolassar entered Assyrian territory for the first time, leading his armies along the Euphrates river into lands in present-day Syria. As he marched on, he took the Assyrian city Hindanu and reached the Balikh River, where he defeated an Assyrian force near the city Gablinu. Nabopolassar then pushed north, reaching as far as the Khabur River. The Assyrians swiftly regrouped in order to deal with the threat. Realizing that the situation was dire, Assyria's ally, Pharaoh Psamtik I of Egypt, marched his troops to aid Sîn-šar-iškun. Psamtik had over the last few years campaigned to establish dominance over the small city-states of the Levant and it was in his interests that Assyria survived as a buffer state between his own empire and those of the Babylonians and Medes in the east. A joint Egyptian-Assyrian campaign to capture the city of Gablinu was undertaken in October of 616 BC, but ended in failure after which the Egyptian allies kept to the west of the Euphrates, only offering limited support. Both the Assyrians and the Babylonians then withdrew, though the Babylonians retained Hindanu and now controlled the middle Euphrates, a major strategical victory and probably the first step in Nabopolassar's plan to counteract the possibility of an Assyrian invasion of Babylonia. That Nabopolassar withdrew at the same time as the Assyrians did suggests that the Babylonians were not yet ready to conduct a full invasion of Assyria and that their plans were at this time just to secure Babylonian independence, not to conquer and destroy Assyria.
In March 615 BC, Nabopolassar inflicted a crushing defeat on the Assyrian army at the banks of the Tigris, pushing them back to the Little Zab. This victory weakened Assyrian control of the buffer zone that had established around the middle of the Tigris river between the two kingdoms, meaning that the Babylonians now controlled lands directly bordering the Assyrian heartland itself.
Fall of the Assyrian Empire
In May 615 BC, Nabopolassar and the Babylonians assaulted Assur, the ceremonial and religious center of Assyria and the Assyrian Empire's southernmost remaining city. Sîn-šar-iškun swiftly rallied his army and counterattacked, lifting the siege of Assur and forcing Nabopolassar to retreat to the city of Takrit. There, Sîn-šar-iškun besieged Nabopolassar, but he was eventually forced to abandon the siege. Though the conflict had shifted to Assyria becoming the defender, the war was at this point still being fought according to standard Mesopotamian practice, with attacks, counterattacks and retreats and neither side having the confidence or means to force a decisive confrontation. Despite constant defeats and setbacks, the Assyrian army remained powerful and capable of being deployed rapidly.
In late 615 BC or in 614 BC, the Medes under their king Cyaxares entered Assyria and conquered the region around the city of Arrapha in preparation for a campaign against Sîn-šar-iškun. Although there are plenty of earlier sources discussing Assyro-Median relations, none are preserved from the period leading up to Cyaxares's invasion and as such, the political context and reasons for the sudden attack are not known. Perhaps, the war between Babylonia and Assyria had disrupted the economy of the Medes and inspired a direct intervention.
In July or August of 614 BC, the Medes mounted attacks on the cities of Nimrud and Nineveh and successfully conquered the city of Tarbisu. They then besieged Assur. This siege was successful and the Medes captured the ancient heart of Assyria, plundering it and killing many of its inhabitants. The brutal sack of Assur came as a shock to people throughout the Near East. Even the Babylonian chronicles, hostile to Assyria, speak of the Medes as unnecessarily brutal, stating that they "inflicted a terrible defeat on a great people, pillaged and looted them and robbed them". Nabopolassar only arrived at Assur after the plunder had already begun and met with Cyaxares, allying with him and signing an anti-Assyrian pact. The treaty between the Babylonians and Medes was sealed through the marriage of Nabopolassar's son and heir, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyaxares's daughter, Amytis. The onset of winter after the fall of Assur meant that both the Medes and Babylonians then returned to their homelands, preparing for further campaigns in the next year. The Assyrians appear to have not recognized the severity of their situation as they did not use the pause in the fighting to fall back into, and prepare, defensive positions. Instead of repairing the damage in Nimrud, the populace there dismantled the walls further to prepare for future renovation work (which would never happen).
In an attempt to keep the enemies out of Assyria, Sîn-šar-iškun went on the offensive in 613 BC, attacking Nabopolassar's forces in the middle Euphrates, occupied at the time with suppressing an Assyrian-supported rebellion of a local tribe. Sinshariskun successfully rescued the tribe's besieged city of Rahilu, but Nabopolassar's army retreated before a battle could take place. Around this time, Sîn-šar-iškun, apparently finally recognizing the disaster that was about to befall his kingdom, sent a letter to Nabopolassar, attempting to broker peace. Sîn-šar-iškun pleaded with Nabopolassar to avoid any more bloodshed and wrote that he should "quiet his fuery heart". Nabopolassar was not interested; Sîn-šar-iškun had waited too long and there was no longer anything he could offer that the Babylonians and Medes would not be able to take for themselves in battle. A harsh response was sent, in which Nabopolassar declared that "[Nineveh's] roots I shall pluck out and the foundations of the land I shall obliterate". The original tablets containing these letters have not been preserved, with the known text instead having been derived from tablets made during Seleucid times, centuries later. Whether the letters are copies of authentic, more ancient, originals, or fabrications entirely is a matter of debate.
In April or May 612 BC, at the start of Nabopolassar's fourteenth year as king of Babylon, the combined Medo-Babylonian army marched on Nineveh. Sîn-šar-iškun rallied his forces to make a final stand at the capital but stood little chance at defending it on account of the city's massive size. From June to August 612 BC, the Medo-Babylonian army besieged the Assyrian capital and in August the walls were breached, leading to a lengthy and brutal sack. The city was looted, depictions of the Assyrian kings were mutilated and inhabitants as young as the age of ten were slaughtered en masse before the entire city was razed and burned to the ground. Sîn-šar-iškun's fate is not entirely certain but it is commonly accepted that he died in the defense of Nineveh.
Legacy
Succession
With the destructions of Assur in 614 BC and Nineveh in 612 BC, the Assyrian Empire had essentially ceased to exist. Sîn-šar-iškun was succeeded by another Assyrian king, Aššur-uballiṭ II, possibly his son and probably the same person as a crown prince mentioned in inscriptions at Nineveh from 626 and 623 BC. Aššur-uballiṭ established himself at Harran in the west. Because Assur had been destroyed, Aššur-uballiṭ could not undergo the traditional coronation of the Assyrian monarchs and could thus not be invested with the kingship by the god Ashur and because of this, inscriptions from his brief reign indicate that he was viewed as the legitimate ruler by his subjects, but still with the title of crown prince and not king. To the Assyrians, Sîn-šar-iškun was the last true king.
Aššur-uballiṭ's rule at Harran lasted just three years and he fled the city when Nabopolassar's army approached in 610 BC. An attempt at recapturing Harran carried out with the remnants of the Assyrian army and Egyptian reinforcements in 609 BC failed, after which Aššur-uballiṭ and the Assyrians he commanded disappear from history, never again to be mentioned in Babylonian sources.
The Biblical Book of Nahum "prophetically" discusses the Fall of Nineveh, but it is unclear when it was written. It may have been written as early as during Ashurbanipal's Egyptian campaign in the 660s BC, or as late as around the time of Nineveh's actual fall. If it was written around 612 BC, the "king of Assyria" mentioned would be Sîn-šar-iškun.
Reasons for the fall of Assyria
Although it has been a commonly circulated idea that one of the primary reasons that led to the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was a civil war between Aššur-etil-ilāni and Sîn-šar-iškun over the throne which weakened Assyria, there is no contemporary text which suggests that this is true. No inscriptions mention a war or even a dispute between the two brothers. There were revolts at the beginnings of both the reign of Aššur-etil-ilāni and Sîn-šar-iškun, but these were minor and dealt with relatively quickly. As such, protracted civil war between contenders to the Assyrian throne was probably not the reason for Assyria's fall.
The primary reason for Assyria's collapse in the reign of Sîn-šar-iškun is more likely to be the failure to resolve the "Babylonian problem" which had plagued Assyrian kings since Assyria first conquered southern Mesopotamia. Despite the many attempts of the kings of the Sargonid dynasty to resolve the constant rebellions in the south in a variety of different ways; Sennacherib's destruction of Babylon and Esarhaddon's restoration of it, rebellions and insurrections remained common. Nabopolassar's revolt was the last in a long line of Babylonian uprisings against the Assyrians and Sîn-šar-iškun's failure to stop it, despite trying for years, doomed his kingdom. The Neo-Babylonian threat, combined with the rise of the Median Empire (Assyria had for many years attempted to stop the formation of a unified Median state through repeated campaigns into Media) culminated in Assyria's destruction.
It would be easy to ascribe Assyria's catastrophic defeat to a weakened Assyrian military and an incompetent king, but there is no evidence to suggest that Sîn-šar-iškun was an incompetent ruler. Assyria was unprepared for foreign attacks into its heartland since the heartland had not been penetrated for five hundred years; no defensive plan existed because in their experience one had never been needed. Sîn-šar-iškun did not use his forces to defend his territory, instead repeatedly going on the offensive, but he kept entirely faithful to the traditional ways of Assyrian warfare. He used the proven principles of war, as used by his successful ancestors before him; supporting rebellions in enemy countries, using flanking maneuvers, concentrating on one point of the position of the enemy and pressing the attack through taking the war to the enemy. Using alternate tactics probably never occurred to him and with an Assyrian mindset considered, he appears to have been a capable military leader who deployed his forces rationally and strategically. In a normal war, he might have been victorious, but he was wholly unprepared to go on the defensive against an enemy that was both numerically superior and that aimed to destroy his country rather than conquer it.
Titles
From one of his inscriptions commemorating his building projects at Nineveh, Sîn-šar-iškun's titles read as follows:
In another inscription, commemorating his restoration of a temple, Sîn-šar-iškun incorporates his ancestry:
See also
List of Assyrian kings
Military history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Notes
References
Cited bibliography
Cited web sources
External links
Daniel David Luckenbill's Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia Volume 2: Historical Records of Assyria From Sargon to the End, containing translations of Sinsharishkun's inscriptions.
7th-century BC Assyrian kings
7th-century BC Babylonian kings
612 BC deaths
Kings of the Universe
Monarchs killed in action
Sargonid dynasty
Year of birth unknown
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.%20Mary%27s%20City%2C%20Maryland
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St. Mary's City, Maryland
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St. Mary's City (also known as Historic St. Mary's City) is a former colonial town that was Maryland's first European settlement and capital. It is now a large, state-run historic area, which includes a reconstruction of the original colonial settlement, and a living history area and museum complex. Half of the area is occupied by the campus of the public honors college, St. Mary's College of Maryland. The area also contains a community of about 933 residents (not counting about 1,400 student residents in campus dorms and apartments).
It is an unincorporated community under state law, and is located in southern St. Mary's County, which is the southernmost tip of the state of Maryland on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. St. Mary's City is bordered by the St. Mary's River, a short, brackish water tidal tributary of the Potomac River, near where it empties into the Chesapeake.
St. Mary's City is the historic site of the founding of the Colony of Maryland (then called the Province of Maryland), and served as its capital from its founding until 1695. The original settlement was also the fourth oldest permanent English settlement in the United States.
St. Mary's City is also considered the birthplace of religious freedom in the United States, with the earliest North American colonial settlement ever established with the specific mandate of being a haven for both Catholic and Protestant Christian faiths.
It is also an internationally recognized archaeological research area and training center for archaeologists, and is home to the Historical Archaeology Field School. There have been over 200 archeological digs in St. Mary's City over the last 30 years. Archaeological research continues in the city.
Historic St. Mary's City: Reconstructed colonial town and living history
Historic St. Mary's City is a large public access historic interpretation area with four public museums and is a re-creation of the original colonial capital of Maryland and also the original settlers village.
It has several living history museums, and the entire complex is staffed by period dressed actors who recreate history theatrically, as well as archeologists and archeology students who provide scientific and historical interpretation, public archeological site displays, reconstructed colonial buildings, including ongoing year-round outdoor historical reenactments, a working colonial farm and the fully working replica of The Dove sailing ship, which was one of the "two original settlers ships that established the first Maryland colony" (Maryland's historical equivalent of the Mayflower).
Historic St. Mary's City also provides presentations on different aspects of colonial era woodland Indian life. At special times of the year, members of the Piscataway Indian Nation also provide reenactments and other cultural demonstrations. The Piscataway people were the original inhabitants of St. Mary's City and also befriended and helped the early colonists.
The area also hosts summer stock theater productions (with historical themes) and other special events. Historic St. Mary's City is owned by the State of Maryland and runs under a registered nonprofit charter. In addition to general tourism, the organization hosts special tours for school children, handling more than 20,000 students on field trips per year.
Historic St. Mary's is under the administration of the "Historic St. Mary's City Commission", a government agency of the State of Maryland.
St. Mary's College of Maryland
The public honors college, St. Mary's College of Maryland, is a state-funded coed undergraduate liberal arts college. It is only one of two "Public Honors Colleges" in the nation and one of only a handful of small public liberal arts colleges. It was specifically tasked by the state of Maryland to be modeled after far more expensive private elite liberal arts colleges with the intention of offering such an education in the public sector.
The school is secular (nonreligious); the name commemorates the original colonial settlement by that name, half of which was located where the college now stands.
In 2014, U.S. News & World Report, in its annual "Best Colleges and Universities" report, ranked St. Mary's College as "5th" in the nation under the category "Top Public Schools" in the "Colleges" ranking.
History of St. Mary's City
Beginnings
George Calvert
Colonial St. Mary's City was first envisioned by an English Lord, George Calvert. Calvert had been born in Yorkshire to a Catholic family, but when he was twelve, the local authorities compelled his parents to send George and his brother Christopher to a Protestant tutor. From then on George conformed to the established religion and had a successful career in service to the crown. His first attempt at establishing a colony was in 1621 in the Province of Avalon on land he purchased in Newfoundland, but after a few years, Calvert decided a warmer climate would be a better location.
After his wife's death in 1622, and a shift in his political fortunes, in 1625 Calvert resigned his position as a secretary of state and returned to the religion of his childhood, at a time of continued religious persecution of the Roman Catholics in England. In 1631, Calvert obtained a grant from King Charles I in recognition of his services to king and country. It had been a dream of George Calvert to establish a colony in North America and to also make it a haven for persecuted Catholics.
Cecil Calvert
George Calvert died shortly before the Maryland charter received the royal seal; however, the King continued the grant to his eldest son and heir, Cecil. Cecil Calvert continued and expanded his father's plans. While their interest in providing a haven for fellow Catholics was genuine, it was imperative that the enterprise be profitable. Supporters in England of the Virginia colony opposed the Charter, as they had little interest in having a competing colony to the north. Rather than going to the colony himself, Baltimore stayed behind in England to deal with the political threat and sent his next younger brother Leonard in his stead. He never travelled to Maryland.
Leonard spent the rest of his life there, leading the settlers through many trials and tribulations, as well as to great successes in the farming and selling of tobacco back to Britain. Leonard, more than anyone else in his family, became the actual founder of colonial Maryland.
The Ark and the Dove
Led by Leonard Calvert, in November 1633, two ships, The Ark and The Dove, set sail from the Isle of Wight, loaded with settlers, Jesuit missionaries and indentured servants. After a long, rough sea voyage with a stopover to resupply in Barbados, they arrived in what is now Maryland in March 1634. They made their first permanent settlement in what is now St. Mary's County, Maryland choosing to settle on a bluff overlooking the St. Mary's River, a relatively calm, tidal tributary near the mouth of the Potomac River where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay.
The site had been occupied by members of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscataway Indian Nation, who had abandoned it as being vulnerable to attack by the Susquehanna. The settlers had with them a former Virginia colonist who was fluent in their language and they met quickly with the chief of the region. The Tayac Kittamaquund, paramount chief of the Piscataway Indian Nation, sold thirty miles of land there to the English newcomers. He wanted to develop them as allies and trading partners (especially because of their advanced technology, such as farming implements, metal-working, gunpowder and weapons, types of food and liquor, etc.). For some time, the Piscataway, their tributary tribes, and the English Marylanders coexisted peacefully.
Naming of St. Mary's City
St. Mary's City was officially named and founded on the site of the new settlement on March 27, 1634. "The name derived from the king's suggestion that the colony be named "Marianus" in honor of the queen, Henrietta Maria...They settled on "Terra Mariae". The original group of settlers numbered 300, mostly English and also some Irish. There may also have been at least one mixed race (African and European heritage) indentured servant who had been picked up on the way over in Barbados. There were also other indentured servants from England and Ireland.
The group was a mix of Catholics and Protestants during a time of religious persecution of Catholics in the British Isles. Leonard Calvert (1606-1647), himself a Roman Catholic, became the governor of the new colony and continued to lead the settlers. St. Mary's City became the capital of the new Maryland colony, and remained so for sixty one years until 1694.
1634–1635: First Maryland legislative assembly
The first Maryland assembly, the first session of a non-native legislative body in Maryland, convened in 1634 and met periodically through 1635. The assembly quickly began to challenge a number of Cecil Calvert's edicts (sent in a letter along with the settlers), although they did not challenge his proprietorship over the new colony or his requirement for religious tolerance. Nevertheless, they pushed successfully for more personal freedoms and to adapt Calvert's edicts to the realities on the ground in the colony, which were not always the same as his expectations. For example, he wanted them to live in regimented fashion within the newly constructed fort in St. Mary's City but the greatest need perceived by the assembly was to allow for more spread-out farming. Leonard Calvert diplomatically lent support to the assembly's wishes in letters to his brother, and Cecil Calvert largely acceded.
Mathias de Sousa was a settler in the colony who was described in historical records by one witness as being "mulatto" (mixed African and European heritage, although sometimes this meant anyone who was dark skinned). He originally arrived in the new colony as an indentured servant working for the Jesuit missionaries who had come with the settlers. He later gained his freedom and went on to become an assemblyman, making him (possibly) the first person of African heritage to participate in a legislative body in North America.
Early mandates for religious tolerance
Instructions from George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore, and the holder of the grant to the new Maryland Colony specified in 1633 that the new governor and all settlers were to practice religious tolerance. Upon the death of George Calvert, additional instructions written by his son Cecil Calvert, the new Lord Baltimore, also required religious tolerance in the new colony. They were sent along with his younger brother Leonard Calvert who accompanied the first settlers to Maryland in 1634 and who was appointed the first governor of the Maryland Colony, although they also encouraged Catholics to be reserved about expressions of their faith in order not to antagonize Protestants. These instructions became the first laws of Maryland.
This intent was carried forward and expanded upon by the majority of early settlers of the time, who upon forming their first legislative assembly, called "The Assembly of the Province of Maryland", passed the Maryland Toleration Act in 1649, further codifying the protection of religious freedom.
First colonial town
The original St. Mary's settlement was laid out according to a Baroque town plan, with the settlers living closely in a town with church, stores and homes close by and outlying farms, fields, woods and orchards laid out in a grid or strips of land. However, most residents of St. Mary's City later preferred to live on their tobacco plantations in the surrounding countryside. The settlement was meant to be the capital of the new Maryland Colony and Province of Maryland.
Expansion
Tobacco successes and the expansion of slavery
St. Mary's City experienced an economic boom due to successful tobacco farming, which was the most important export commodity. Tobacco became an extremely valuable cash crop in the colony. This also drove the expansion of African chattel slavery. Older practices of allowing chattel slaves to gain freedom by converting to Catholicism or by eventually grandfathering indentured rights to them after many years of servitude were abolished. The character of the colony began to change more and more to a slave-based economy and slavery began to embed itself into the culture.
An increasing town population contributed to the desire for constructing public buildings, some of which were a state house, a Jesuit chapel, a jail, and an inn.
Growing religious tensions
During and after the English Civil War, fights between Protestants and Catholics developed in the colony. Often this tension went in long cycles, with extended periods where the tension was more repressed followed by acute periods where religious divisions would flare up, sometimes driving change in St. Mary's City and Maryland in the process.
Margaret Brent
Margaret Brent was a business-savvy and successful Catholic settler in St. Mary's City, who, contrary to the mores of the time that discouraged women from managing their own estates, although this was legal, insisted on managing her own business affairs. She had also traveled to the colony as a single, unmarried woman which was contrary to expectations of the time.
The law, in writing, had always been on Brent's side, but the common practices and beliefs of the day did not always guarantee enforcement, especially in the male-dominated frontier environment of the colonies, far away from the courts of England. As a woman, she had to defend her legal rights in order to be sure they were respected.
Brent defended her right to run her own estate in common law court before the assembly in St. Mary's City, making a spirited case, and won, making her the first woman in English North America to stand for herself in a court of law and before an assembly. She also demanded the right to vote in the assembly.
Brent also served as an attorney before the colonial court, mostly representing women of the colony. She is considered to have been very legally astute. Surviving records indicate that she pleaded at least 134 cases. Although she did not explicitly campaign for women's rights in general, she is credited for having done so implicitly.
The Plundering Time
1644–46: Plundering Time
The violence stemming from the English civil war eventually spread to the colonies and a Protestant raiding party attacked St. Mary's City, driving off many settlers and burning several structures. After the attack there were only about 100 people still living in the town. The raiders took control of the city and added further fortifications.
The raiders plundered the homes of all the Catholic residents of the city who refused to renounce their faith and anyone who professed friendship to a Catholic. This would later be called the Plundering Time by the colonists.
1647: Leonard Calvert retakes St. Mary's City
Leonard Calvert had spent a few years in exile from St. Mary's City but remained in the colonies. During this time he married Margaret Brent's sister which also brought Margaret Brent into the Calvert family as an in-law, advancing her in some ways to her advantage and in other ways to her detriment. Nearly two years later, Leonard Calvert managed to raise a militia and led an attack to retake St. Mary's City. They succeeded in driving off the Protestant militia and regained control of the town.
Then Calvert and his men carried out successful raids on Kent Island in the Chesapeake, which had become a stronghold of his foes, defeating the force there. At this point Calvert had the upper hand, although the threat still remained. However, within a year, Leonard Calvert became sick and died, creating a temporary power vacuum in the colony and also worryingly for the residents of St. Mary's City, leaving Calvert's militia, which had been protecting the city, unpaid.
Margaret Brent intervenes at a personal cost
Margaret Brent had been named by Leonard Calvert as the executor of his last will and testament, a very unusual designation for a woman of her time. She therefore handled the liquidation of Leonard Calvert's estate. However at the same time, Calvert's still-unpaid militia had become a security issue for St. Mary's City. Even if the militia simply disbanded due to the soldiers remaining unpaid, the City would then be vulnerable again to attack. And so Brent successfully petitioned the Maryland Assembly to grant her power of attorney over the holdings of Cecil Calvert, the Lord Baltimore, who was Leonard's brother living in England. She then used proceeds from liquidating some of these holdings to pay the militiamen.
Although her actions were later defended by the Maryland assembly as necessary in an emergency, a strain emerged between the Calvert family in England and Brent. Even though the assembly stated that Brent's actions may have in fact, helped to save the colony, the Calverts did not approve of Brent making a decision to spend money raised from Cecil Calvert's assets.
In defense of Brent, the Maryland Assembly issued the following proclamation about her:
However this did not sway Cecil Calvert.
This dispute also set off racial tensions between the Brent family and Cecil Calvert in England, because Brent's brother, who had also been in St. Mary's City, had married a Native American princess. In the same letter accusing Margaret Brent of mishandling Leonard Calvert's estate, Cecil Calvert also disparaged her brother, Giles Brent, for having married a Native American woman. At the end of the letter, Cecil Calvert ordered Brent and her brother and sisters to leave the Maryland Colony.
Although the assembly was largely supportive of Brent and largely took her side in the dispute with the surviving Calvert family in England, during this time she also petitioned for the right to vote in the assembly. However the assembly denied her that right because she was a woman. This was the first known attempt by a woman in English North America to gain the right to vote.
Despite appeals on her behalf by the Maryland assembly, Cecil Calvert had demanded by letter that she and her brother and sisters leave the Maryland colony. Consequently, Brent left the colony with her sister. They lived for a year on an island in the Potomac River and then moved to the Virginia colony. Other relatives moved directly to Virginia. Brent established a new estate there which she called "Peace". She eventually became very successful and stayed in Virginia for the rest of her life.
1649: Maryland assembly ratifies the "Maryland Toleration Act"
The Maryland Toleration Act, crafted and passed by the reinstated Maryland assembly in St. Mary's City, was the first law codified to mandate religious tolerance among Christians of various sects (especially Catholics and Protestants). It was approved not only to carry out the wishes of George Calvert and his son and Cecil Calvert that the colony be a place of religious toleration between Catholics and Protestants. More urgently, the act, which applied to all of the Maryland Colony, sought to settle once and for all the religious divisions that had triggered the recent fighting. The assembly at the time was majority Protestant, and the aristocratic leadership, including the governorship of the colony was Catholic.
The act remained in effect for 40 years, and contributed to relative peace in the colony during that time.
Stagnation
1660s: Problems in the tobacco economy
In the 1660s tobacco, which had long been a lucrative boom crop, began to experience price declines. This was likely due to increased production and competition in other colonies. The problem was then aggravated by Maryland planters cutting their tobacco product with other leaves in order to make up for the decrease in the price of a tobacco barrel. Although helpful in the very short run, in the longer run this cutting practice hurt the reputation of Maryland tobacco in England and further devalued the yearly tobacco crops. All of this began, in stages, to have a destabilizing effect on the Maryland Colony, which then further aggravated latent religious tensions between the majority Protestant planters and the Catholic aristocratic leadership.
All of this further intensified reliance on slavery in St. Mary's City, as plantation owners sought to eliminate the cost of paid labor in producing tobacco.
1676: Original brick Maryland Statehouse constructed
In 1676, the original Maryland Statehouse, the home of the Maryland colonial assembly, was finished. The current reconstructed statehouse is not in the original location, which today lies under the churchyard of the adjacent Trinity Episcopal Church. When the original statehouse was dismantled in 1829, Trinity was built out of the statehouse bricks.
1678: First printing house in southern colonies opens in St. Mary's City
Moving to St. Mary's City in 1678, William and Dinah Nuthead became the first printers in Maryland. While Dinah Nuthead was illiterate, she would often help her husband in operating the printing press. By copying the letters and the processes of her husband, Dinah was able to continue the printing business following her husband's death in 1695. After gaining a license to print from the colonial government, Dinah became the first female printer in the colony. When Dinah moved to Annapolis, Maryland in 1695, she was able to continue their printing business in the new location.
Decline
1689: Watershed eruption of religious conflict
In 1689, about forty years after the passage of the Maryland Toleration Act, sectarian tensions between Protestants and Catholics became so great that Protestant settlers revolted against the Lords Baltimore in the Protestant uprising in Maryland. The English Crown took over the Maryland colony and appointed royal governors, replacing the Calverts.
Legally mandated religious tolerance was abolished, first by Royal decree and then later by a law passed by a now majority-Protestant state assembly, in the new capital in Annapolis.
1690s: Catholics lost the right to vote, other anti-Catholic policies implemented
In 1692 Catholics in the Maryland Colony lost the right to vote. Catholics were also no longer allowed to worship in public and could only worship in their private homes. Laws were also passed limiting new Roman Catholic immigration to the colony.
Although a Catholic person's right to vote in Maryland would be reinstated by the state assembly some decades later, other forms of discrimination against Catholics would continue through most of the next century and would leave lasting religious tensions in Maryland felt all the way through to the election of John F. Kennedy just past the mid-20th century.
Relocation of Maryland Capital
The new Protestant Maryland governor Sir Francis Nicholson relocated the capital from St. Mary's City to the more central Annapolis (then called "Anne Arundel Town") in 1695. The colonial statehouse in St. Mary's was turned into a Protestant church the same year.
In 1695 St. Peters freehold, the former home of Maryland governors in St. Mary's City, was destroyed in an explosion. Whether this was an intentional act or an accident is not known, as a large gunpowder magazine had been stored in its basement. The freehold had briefly been the home of the new Protestant Governor Francis Nicholson until he ordered the colonial capital moved to Annapolis. Prior to this the freehold had been the home of Philip Calvert, the former Catholic Governor of the Maryland colony and Cecil Calvert's half-brother until his death in 1682.
Anti-Catholic policies and discrimination in the 18th century
During the 18th century, Catholics became a persecuted minority group in Maryland, including St. Mary's county. Catholics were denied the right to serve in the militia, taxed double when money had to be raised for the military, and continued to be discouraged from immigrating. Wealthy Catholics often became crypto-Catholics (practicing their religion in secret and sending their children abroad to get Catholic educations), but poor Catholics could not afford this and were more vulnerable to discrimination practices. Consequently, over the generations, many converted to Protestantism in order to avoid discrimination. By the late 18th century, the Catholic population had dropped to 9%.
Abandonment of the city
With the seat of government gone, the town lost its reason to exist. Remaining inhabitants were mostly farmers. The former town center was converted to agricultural land, and archaeological remains from the colonial town were undisturbed in the ground.
1700–1865: Antebellum slave plantation era
Early 18th century: Consolidation of farms
The small remaining farms in St. Mary's City were consolidated into a large antebellum-style slave plantation by the Brome-Howard family, which operated through a majority of the 19th century. The main plantation house was built over the ruins of one of the Calvert residences.
Civil War
During the Civil War, Union troops occupied St. Mary's County, which like a large part of Maryland at the time, had Southern sympathies. Piers and wharfs in St. Mary's County were burned by Union forces in order to stop trade with the confederacy which was only across the Potomac River. Brome's Wharf in St. Mary's City was also burned, as it was a part of what was by then the Brome-Howard Plantation, owned by Doctor Brome, a slave-owner and a likely confederate sympathizer. There is archeological evidence that the Union Army may have occupied the plantation for some time. Records show that Brome later complained that Union troops had damaged his piano while ransacking the main plantation house.
Records show that one quarter of the 66 people living under slavery at Doctor Brome's plantation in St. Mary's City escaped during the Civil War and at least two of them then joined the Union Army. Even before slavery was legally abolished, the Union Army had a policy allowing enslaved men to gain their freedom if they became Union soldiers. Other records show that the total number of people living under slavery there during this time was 59.
Two men who had escaped slavery from the St. Mary's City area, Alexander Gough and William Gross, joined the famed 38th United States Colored Infantry Regiment of the Union Army, which won unit citations for valor in the Battle of Chaffin's Farm (also known as the "Battle of New Market Heights") in the American Civil War. Gough is known to have survived the war and lived the rest of his life in Baltimore. Two other African American men from the area, William H. Barnes and James H. Harris both from Great Mills (which is just to the north of St. Mary's City), who had been free tenant farmers before the war, also served in the same regiment. Harris and Barnes each received the Medal of Honor for their actions in the Battle of Chaffin's Farm. There is evidence suggesting that additional slaves from the Brome plantation fought in the war as well. In total, over 700 African Americans from St. Mary's County served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
The United States Colored Troops Memorial Statue, in Lexington Park, Maryland, seven miles north of St. Mary's City, honors and memorializes African American soldiers from St. Mary's County, including the men of the 38th United States Colored Troops Regiment, who served as soldiers or sailors in the Union cause during the American Civil War. An educational plaque at the site specifically mentions Barnes and Harris and how they received the Medal of Honor.
Post-Civil War farming
The Civil War ended slavery on the plantation and the area remained mostly under a large farm, worked by tenant farmers and owned by descendants of the original owners until the 20th century. By the mid-20th century, few 17th-century buildings still stood. The town center site appeared to be farmland with the exception of a few private residences, and also after 1840, a slowly expanding female seminary school that began with just a small part of the total area.
Writings about the decline of St. Mary's City
In 1838 the novel Rob of the Bowl was published; it was a story about the struggle for religious tolerance in Maryland and was written by John Pendleton Kennedy, and was set in St. Mary's City and also neighboring St. Inigoes, Maryland. The book opens with a poem that Kennedy selected as a re-attribution to describe St. Mary's City long after its abandonment as the capital of Maryland.
This also refers to part of the 19th-century history and mythology of St. Mary's City (in the State of Maryland) as a place where great things happened (such as the founding of the Colonial Government of Maryland and the birthplace of religious freedom in the United States) but which eventually became a ghost town.
St. Mary's City's resurgence
1840: Establishment of St. Mary's Female Seminary
The book Rob of the Bowl tells a somewhat fictionalized story of the original St. Mary's City. The author, after the book became popular, publicly lamented that there was no monument to memorialize the original St. Mary's City and what happened there.
A few years later, in 1840, a women's nondenominational seminary high school was established on the grounds of old St. Mary's City, in response to Kennedy's call for a monument. Its founders described it as a "living monument" to the beginnings of religious tolerance and established it to meet the educational needs of young women in the county and the state. The school was called St. Mary's Seminary.
The school was intentionally made nondenominational, to honor, promote and memorialize religious tolerance, and also to help heal Protestant-Catholic tensions that still haunted St. Mary's County at the time.
The name was changed to St. Mary's Female Seminary, to clarify the school's already existing female student-only mission.
Early 1900s
In 1926, the former St. Mary's women's Catholic seminary school (a boarding high school within the proper of old St. Mary's City that was founded in 1840) was expanded to a two-year seminary female junior college combined with the last two years of high school (four years total). This was seen as a natural outgrowth of its former role as a now elite, state-funded women's high school.
Through an act of the Maryland Legislature, St. Mary's gender limitation was removed, and the word "female" was consequently dropped from the school's name. However, although males may enroll, they are not offered housing. The name of the school was changed to St. Mary's Seminary Junior College.
The St. Mary's City Commission was chartered in 1966 by the State Assembly of Maryland and the Governor, Millard Tawes. The charter created the commission as "a new, independent state agency" reporting directly to the Governor of Maryland "to preserve, develop and maintain" St. Mary's City as a state "monument", and also to oversee ongoing archeological work.
The Junior College was ordered to be expanded to a four-year institution in 1966 (effective in 1968) and renamed "St. Mary's College of Maryland". It was chartered as a four-year public liberal arts college. Its mission was to provide a liberal arts college in the public sector to students who could not afford to attend elite private colleges. Reorganization was completed in 1967.
1969: St. Mary's City declared a National Landmark
St. Mary's was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1969.
The plan "recommends acquisition of 1200 acres" and suggests a museum, visitor center, working tobacco farm, public transportation, and reconstruction of the Ark and Dove as first steps in the reconstruction of the historic city.
1976: World premiere of Wings of the Morning, by Kermit Hunter
Commissioned to celebrate the founding of St. Mary's City, Hunter's outdoor drama prominently featured the characters of Leonard Calvert, William Claiborne, Ann Arundel, Richard Ingel, Mathias de Sousa and others, and launched the career of two-time Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington, who made his stage debut as DeSousa. Also in the cast were Tony winner Debra Monk as Ann Arundel), and actor/writer/director Jackson Heath as Ingel. On July 4, 1976, a Washington Post review of the play was read aloud on the floor of Congress and permanently entered in the Congressional Record.
1980–present
After years of exploratory test digs and historical detective work, and with the possible original key town locations having been narrowed down, archeological dig activity was increased significantly in a determined effort to finish uncovering the original layout of the colonial settlement.
In 1984, Lord Baltimore's World was a large-scale, months-long colonial reenactment that was staffed by professional actors and also included live Shakespearean theater. It occurred within St. Mary's City proper and celebrated the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Maryland's first colonists.
After four years of intensified archeological digging, most of the original town layout had been discovered. It had been originally expected that the layout would be chaotic, but instead it was revealed that the town was actually carefully planned in a Baroque style, similar to Williamsburg, Virginia and Annapolis Maryland. Old St. Mary's City, Annapolis and Williamsburg are the only three towns in North America planned and built in a Baroque layout.
The St. Mary's City Commission, which had evolved through a variety of roles and slight name variations assigned to its historical research, reconstruction and preservation charter, was assigned a new name in 1991 by the State of Maryland: the Historic St. Mary's Commission. This commission still has administrative authority over about half of St. Mary's City; it is responsible for the preservation of more than 800 acres of land and 3 miles of shoreline.
Present
Historic St. Mary's City is now a significant tourist attraction in the state of Maryland, visited by approximately 20,000 students per year, in addition to approximately 25,000 other tourists per year (a rough yearly total of 45,000 people). Expansion and development of the historic area continues, including reconstruction and replica creation of additional period sites. Historic St. Mary's City is operated as an outdoor living history museum, and includes costumed actors portraying colonial-era life, museum exhibitions, and numerous reconstructed buildings.
St. Mary's College of Maryland is now a nationally recognized elite educational institution in the public sector. In 2014, U.S. News & World Report, in its annual report, ranked St. Mary's College as 5th in the nation under the category "Top Public Schools" in the "Colleges" category.
Archaeological research in St. Mary's City
The National Park Service has described St. Mary's City as "probably the most intact 17th-century English town surviving in our nation represented entirely by archaeological resources." Numerous archaeological digs and research projects continue in St. Mary's City. In the last 30 years, there have been more than 200 archaeological digs in the city.
First excavations
After explorations by Henry Chandlee Forman in the 1940s, excavations began in 1971 with the creation of the St. Mary's City Historic Commission, a state institution tasked with discovering and preserving archaeological remains in St. Mary's City, establishing a museum on the site, and conducting related historical research. Since then, much of the original colonial St. Mary's City has been found. The Historic St. Mary's City Commission continues to excavate the area today.
The Historical Archaeology Field School
In conjunction with St. Mary's College of Maryland, the Historic St. Mary's Commission (formerly the "St. Mary's City Commission") runs the Historic Archeological Field School every summer that is attended by students from all over the United States and other countries as well. Many of its graduates now hold prominent positions in the field. The students not only study, but also work in many of the active archeological dig sites in St. Mary's City. Providing extensive hands-on experience, the school teaches all aspects of professional archeological work, including working in real archeological digs, analyzing and conserving artifacts, as well as cataloging, archiving and related historical research. The school has been in existence for more than 40 years.
Current work
St. Mary's City has numerous active archeological dig sites, focusing on precolonial, colonial and antebellum (slavery era) history.
Notable discoveries
Some important archeological discoveries in St. Mary's City include:
The site of the first printing house in the Southern colonies; a quantity of lead print type (for printing words), indicating that the site where it was found was the documented William Nuthead Printing House
A 1645 fort with a surrounding moat, claimed to be the only structural remains of the English Civil War in the American Colonies
Discovery of the site of St. John's Freehold, where Maryland's citizen government was instituted
Façon de Venise glassware
A set of Kütahya ceramics, one of only two known examples found in the United States
19th-century slave quarters from St. Mary's City's later plantation period
Three 17th-century lead coffins. One of these is suspected of being the coffin of the former colonial chancellor and also judge, Philip Calvert.
The foundation of a Jesuit chapel
Discovery of the site of St. Peters Freehold, the former home of Maryland Chancellor Philip Calvert. St. Peters freehold was destroyed in a violent explosion in 1695 when 900 pounds of gunpowder stored in its cellar were set off. Whether the explosion was intentional or an accident is unknown. The discovery was made by a team of visiting British scientists, and was featured in a British Time Team documentary that aired on The Learning Channel.
Garret Van Sweringen's Inn, a 17th-century inn founded by Garret Van Sweringen an Innkeeper and a leader in St. Mary's City's development
Extensive artifacts from successive Native American occupations
The 18th-century house of merchant and planter John Hicks, with an extensive ceramic assemblage
Former slaves quarters and living area discovered on current campus grounds of St. Mary's College of Maryland, monument in honor of enslaved people erected by college
These findings come along with thousands of artifacts and bone fragments that have been cataloged and processed into St. Mary's City historical museums and storage archives. These artifacts continue to be analyzed, and continue to advance period research in various fields.
St. Mary's Fort
In late 2019, St. Mary's Fort was unearthed to be later revealed in March 2021. The structure was built in 1634 by the first English colonists, to be their fourth colony in the New World after Jamestown (1607), Plymouth (1620), and Massachusetts Bay (1630). Moreover, a silver coin was discovered there, dated back to the reign of King Charles I.
See also
History of Maryland
Piscataway tribe, a Native American people in St. Mary's City prior to the arrival of British colonists
Economic history of Colonial Maryland
History of slavery in Maryland
Freedom of religion in the United States
Plundering Time
Battle of the Severn
List of National Historic Landmarks in Maryland
National Register of Historic Places listings in St. Mary's County, Maryland
References
Sources
Curran, Robert Emmett. Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, CUA Press, 2014,
King, Julia A., Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past: The View from Southern Maryland, Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2012,
External links
Free online resource for students on history of St. Mary's City and Colonial Maryland Historic St. Mary's City
St. Mary's College of Maryland website
Personal account written by Father Andrew White, passenger on the first voyage that established the St. Mary's City settlement
"All of Us Would Walk Together: A History of the Transition from Slavery to Freedom in St. Mary's City" Online digital exhibit, Historic St. Mary's City Commission
, including aerial photo from 1987, at Maryland Historical Trust
Boundary map of the St. Mary's City Historic District, St. Mary's County, at Maryland Historical Trust
"Brick Chapel at St. Mary's City stands as a landmark of religious freedom," My Catholic Standard, by Mark Zimmermann, July 22, 2010.
A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland narrative online history, prepared by the Maryland State Archives
Mary Carter Roberts papers, at the University of Maryland libraries. Contain correspondence between Roberts and the St. Mary's City Commission.
Province of Maryland
Archaeological sites in St. Mary's County, Maryland
1634 establishments in Maryland
Populated places established in 1634
Former colonial and territorial capitals in the United States
National Historic Landmarks in Maryland
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Maryland
Museums in St. Mary's County, Maryland
Open-air museums in Maryland
Living museums in Maryland
Protected areas of St. Mary's County, Maryland
English-American culture in Maryland
History of slavery in Maryland
History museums in Maryland
Historic districts in St. Mary's County, Maryland
Populated places in colonial Maryland
Unincorporated communities in St. Mary's County, Maryland
National Register of Historic Places in St. Mary's County, Maryland
Unincorporated communities in Maryland
Society of Jesus in Maryland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%20Air%20Flight%20655
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Iran Air Flight 655
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Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3July 1988 by two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired by , a guided-missile cruiser of the United States Navy. The missiles hit the aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed. The attack occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, which had been continuing for nearly eight years. Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits.
The reason for the downing has been disputed between the governments of the two countries. According to the United States, the Vincennes crew had incorrectly identified the Airbus as an attacking F-14 Tomcat, a U.S.-made jet fighter that had been part of the Iranian Air Force inventory since the 1970s. While the F-14s had been supplied to Iran in an air-to-air configuration, the Vincennes crew had been briefed that the Iranian F-14s were equipped with air-to-ground ordnance. The U.S. military asserts that the Vincennes had made ten attempts to contact the aircraft both on military and civilian frequencies but received no response. According to Iran, the cruiser negligently shot down the aircraft, which was transmitting IFF squawks in Mode III, a signal that identified it as a civilian aircraft, and not Mode II as used by Iranian military aircraft. The event generated a great deal of criticism of the United States. Some analysts blamed the captain of Vincennes, William C. Rogers III, for overly aggressive behavior in a tense and dangerous environment. In the days immediately following the incident, President Ronald Reagan issued a written diplomatic note to the Iranian government, expressing deep regret. When Reagan was directly asked if he considered the statement an apology, he replied, "Yes." However, the U.S. continued to insist that Vincennes was acting in "self-defense".
In 1996, during the Clinton Administration, the governments of the U.S. and Iran reached a settlement at the International Court of Justice, which included the statement "...the United States recognized the aerial incident of 3July 1988 as a terrible human tragedy and expressed deep regret over the loss of lives caused by the incident..." As part of the settlement, even though the U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran, it agreed to pay US$61.8 million on an ex gratia basis in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims. The shootdown was the deadliest aviation disaster involving an Airbus A300 as well as the deadliest aviation disaster in 1988. It was also the deadliest airliner shootdown incident until 2014 when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine.
Background
In 1984, the war between Iraq and Iran had expanded to include air attacks against oil tankers and merchant shipping of neighboring countries, some of whom were providing aid to Iraq by shipping Iraqi oil. The Flight 655 incident occurred a year after the USS Stark incident, during which the Iraqi Air Force attacked the U.S. Navy guided missile frigate on 17 May 1987, killing 37 American sailors. U.S. naval forces had also exchanged gunfire with Iranian gunboats in late 1987, and the guided missile frigate had struck an Iranian sea mine in April 1988. Two months before the incident, the U.S. had engaged in Operation Praying Mantis, resulting in the sinkings of the Iranian frigate Sahand, the Iranian fast attack craft Joshan, and three Iranian speedboats. Also, the Iranian frigate Sabalan was crippled, two Iranian platforms were destroyed, and an Iranian fighter was damaged. A total of at least 56 Iranian crew were killed, while the U.S. suffered the loss of only one helicopter, which crashed apparently by accident, killing its two pilots. Tensions were high in the Strait of Hormuz at the time of the incident with Flight 655.
In response to the pattern of attacks on shipping, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a NOTAM on 8September 1987, warning all Persian Gulf countries that civilian aircraft must monitor the 121.5 MHz VHF International Air Distress or the 243.0 MHz UHF Military Air Distress frequencies and be prepared to identify themselves to U.S. Navy ships and state their intentions.
On 29 April 1988, the U.S. expanded the scope of its navy's protection to all friendly neutral shipping in the Persian Gulf outside declared exclusion zones, which set the stage for the shootdown. At about the same time, Vincennes was rushed to the area on a short-notice deployment, as a result of high-level decisions, to compensate for the lack of AWACS coverage, which was hampering U.S. monitoring of the southern Persian Gulf. Vincennes was fitted with the then-new Aegis Combat System and under the command of Captain William C. Rogers III at the time of the shootdown.
As the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest is wide, in order to traverse the strait, ships must stay within sea lanes that pass through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman under the transit passage provisions of customary Law of the Sea. It is normal for ships, including warships, entering or leaving the Persian Gulf to transit Iranian territorial waters. During the Iran–Iraq War the Iranian forces frequently boarded and inspected neutral cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz in search of contraband destined for Iraq. While legal under international law, these inspections added to the tensions in the area.
Shootdown of Flight 655
The plane, an Airbus A300 (registered as ), was under the control of 37-year-old Captain Mohsen Rezaian (a veteran pilot with 7,000 hours of flight time), 31-year-old First Officer Kamran Teymouri, and 33-year-old Flight Engineer Mohammad Reza Amini. It left Bandar Abbas at 10:17 Iran time (UTC+03:30), 27 minutes after its scheduled departure time. It should have been a 28-minute flight. After takeoff, it was directed by the Bandar Abbas tower to turn on its transponder and proceed over the Persian Gulf. The flight was assigned routinely to commercial air corridor Amber 59, a -wide lane on a direct line to Dubai airport. The short distance made for a simple flight pattern: climb to , cruise, and descend into Dubai. The airliner was transmitting the correct transponder "squawk" code typical of a civilian aircraft and maintained radio contact in English with appropriate air traffic control facilities.
On the morning of 3 July 1988, USS Vincennes was passing through the Strait of Hormuz returning from an escort duty. A helicopter deployed from the cruiser reportedly received small arms fire from Iranian patrol vessels as it observed from high altitude. Vincennes moved to engage the Iranian vessels, in the course of which they all violated Omani waters and left after being challenged and ordered to leave by a Royal Navy of Oman warship. Vincennes then pursued the Iranian gunboats, entering Iranian territorial waters. Two other U.S. Navy ships, and , were nearby. Admiral Crowe said the cruiser's helicopter was over international waters when the gunboats first fired upon it.
Flight 655 was first detected by Vincennes immediately after takeoff when it received a short IFF Mode II, possibly leading the crew of Vincennes to believe the airliner was an Iranian F-14 Tomcat (capable of carrying unguided bombs since 1985) diving into an attack profile. Contrary to the accounts of various Vincennes crew members, the cruiser's Aegis Combat System recorded that the airliner was climbing at the time and its radio transmitter was squawking on only the Mode III civilian frequency, and not on the military Mode II.
Since the USS Stark incident, all aircraft in the area had to monitor 121.5 MHz, the International Air Distress (IAD) radio frequency. A total of 10 attempts were made to warn the airliner, seven on the Military Air Distress (MAD) frequency, and three on the IAD frequency. There were no responses.
With the aircraft not answering radio challenges and continuing towards Vincennes, the ship's crew commenced the process to engage it. The naval officer responsible for authorizing a missile launch, the watch's Anti-Air Warfare Coordinator (AAWC), pushed wrong buttons no fewer than five times in response to a system message to select a weapon. In the meantime, the officer in charge of firing missiles, the watch's Missile System Supervisor (MSS), pushed "REQUEST RADIATION ASSIGN" no fewer than 22 times, all without effect due to the AAWC not completing the appropriate process at his console. The AAWC finally selected the correct input at his console, allowing the MSS to again push "REQUEST RADIATION ASSIGN" and continue the procedure.
At 10:24:22, with the aircraft at a range of , Vincennes fired two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles. The first missile intercepted the airliner at 10:24:43 at a range of , and the second missile intercepted the airliner shortly after. The plane disintegrated immediately in three pieces (cockpit, wing section and the tail section) and soon crashed into the water. None of the 290 passengers and crew on board survived. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were never found.
At the time the missiles were launched, the Vincennes was located at , placing it within the twelve-mile limit of Iranian territorial seas. The location of Vincennes in Iranian territorial waters at the time of the incident was admitted by the U.S. government in legal briefs and publicly by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William J. Crowe, on Nightline.
Nationalities of the victims
According to the documents Iran submitted to the International Court of Justice, the aircraft was carrying 290 people: 274 passengers and a crew of 16. Of these 290, 254 were Iranian, 13 were Emiratis, 10 were Indians, six were Pakistanis, six were Yugoslavs and one was an Italian.
U.S. government accounts
Pentagon officials initially said Vincennes had shot down an Iranian F-14, but issued a retraction within hours and confirmed Iranian reports that the target was instead a civilian Airbus. According to the U.S. government, Vincennes mistakenly identified the airliner as an attacking military fighter and misidentified its flight profile as being similar to that of an F-14A Tomcat during an attack run; however, the cruiser's Aegis Combat System recorded the plane's flight plan as climbing (not descending as in an attack run) at the time of the incident. The flight had originated at Bandar Abbas which served both as a base for Iranian F-14 operations and as a hub for commercial flights. According to the same reports, Vincennes unsuccessfully tried to contact the approaching aircraft, seven times on the military emergency frequency and three times on the civilian emergency frequency. The civilian aircraft was not equipped to receive military frequencies and the messages on the civilian emergency channel could have been directed at any aircraft. More confusion arose as the hailed speed was the ground speed, while the pilot's instruments displayed airspeed, a difference. In 1990 investigative journalist Roger Charles obtained a full copy of the Fogarty report which included a map and coordinates of Vincennes. Charles concluded that Vincennes was about 4 km inside Iran territorial waters at the time of the shootdown.
This was admitted in a report by Admiral William Fogarty, entitled Formal Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on 3July 1988 (the "Fogarty report"). An edited version of the Fogarty report is released to the public. The Fogarty report stated, "The data from USS Vincennes''' tapes, information from USS Sides and reliable intelligence information, corroborate the fact that [Iran Air Flight 655] was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile, in the assigned airway, squawking Mode III 6760, on a continuous ascent in altitude from takeoff at Bandar Abbas to shoot-down.".
The Fogarty report also stated, "Iran must share the responsibility for the tragedy by hazarding one of their civilian airliners by allowing it to fly a relatively low altitude air route in close proximity to hostilities that had been ongoing."
When questioned in a 2000 BBC documentary, the U.S. government stated in a written answer that they believed the incident may have been caused by a simultaneous psychological condition amongst the eighteen bridge crew of Vincennes, called "scenario fulfillment", which is said to occur when persons are under pressure. In such a situation, the men will carry out a training scenario, believing it to be reality while ignoring sensory information that contradicts the scenario. In the case of this incident, the scenario was an attack by a lone military aircraft.
Iranian government account
According to the Iranian government, the shootdown was an intentionally performed and unlawful act. Even if there was a mistaken identification, which Iran never accepted, it argues that this constituted negligence and recklessness amounting to an international crime, not an accident.
In particular, Iran expressed skepticism about claims of misidentification, noting that the cruiser's advanced Aegis radar correctly tracked the flight and its Mode III beacon; two other U.S. warships in the area, Sides and Montgomery, also identified the aircraft as civilian; and the flight was well within a recognized international air corridor. It also noted that the crew of Vincennes were trained to handle simultaneous attacks by hundreds of enemy aircraft. Iran found it more plausible that Vincennes "hankered for an opportunity to show its stuff".
According to Iran, the U.S. had previously issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), warning aircraft that they were at risk of "defensive measures" if they had not been cleared from a regional airport and if they came within of a warship at an altitude of less than . Flight 655 had been cleared from a regional airport and was well outside those limits when it was attacked. Even if the plane had truly been an Iranian F-14, Iran argued that the U.S. would not have had the right to shoot it down, as it was flying within Iranian airspace and did not follow a path that could be considered an attack profile, nor did it illuminate Vincennes with radar. Prior to the incident, Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters and was inside these waters when it launched its missiles. Even had the crew of Flight 655 made mistakes, the U.S. government would remain responsible for the actions of Vincennes' crew, under international law.
Iran pointed out that in the past "the United States has steadfastly condemned the shooting down of aircraft, whether civil or military, by the armed forces of another State" and cited El Al Flight 402, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114, and Korean Air Lines Flight 007, among other incidents. Iran also noted that when Iraq attacked the USS Stark, the U.S. found Iraq fully responsible on the grounds that the Iraqi pilot "knew or should have known" he was attacking a U.S. warship.
Independent sources
In 1989, prior to the public exposure of Vincennes' position inside Iranian waters on Nightline by Admiral William Crowe, Professor Andreas Lowenfeld of the editing board of the American Journal of International Law criticized the official U.S. position that the U.S. was not legally liable for the incident:Andreas Lowenfeld, The Downing of Iran Air Flight 655: Looking Back and Looking Ahead, 83 A.J.I.L. 336, 336 (1989)
Lowenfeld also pointed out that the amount of compensation paid for Iranian victims was one-tenth the amount demanded from Iraq for American dead aboard the USS Stark.
One legal scholar noted in the Yale Journal of International Law: "The downing of Flight 655 should not be deemed lawful merely because the Vincennes' commanding officer reasonably mistook the situation as presenting an integrated surface and air attack. Reconceptualizing the incident as a mistake problem does not excuse the Vincennes from liability."
In an article published in Newsweek magazine on 13 July 1992, John Barry and Roger Charles argued that Rogers behaved recklessly and without due care. The Newsweek article also accused the U.S. government of a cover-up but, on July 21, Admiral Crowe denied any knowledge: An analysis of the events by the International Strategic Studies Association described the deployment of an Aegis cruiser in the zone as irresponsible and felt that the value placed on Aegis cruisers by the U.S. Navy had played a major part in the setting of a low threshold for opening fire. Vincennes had been nicknamed "RoboCruiser" by crew members and other U.S. Navy ships, in reference to both its Aegis system and the supposed aggressive tendencies of its captain.
The International Court of Justice case relating to "the Aerial Incident of July 3, 1988" (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America), was dropped on 22 February 1996 following settlement and reparations by the United States.
Three years after the incident, Admiral Crowe admitted on American television show Nightline that Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters when it launched the missiles, contradicting earlier Navy statements. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) report of December 1988 placed Vincennes well inside Iran's territorial waters.
Commander David Carlson, commanding officer of USS Sides, the warship stationed nearest to Vincennes at the time of the incident, is reported to have said that the destruction of the aircraft "marked the horrifying climax to Captain Rogers's aggressiveness, first seen four weeks ago". His comment referred to incidents on 2June, when Rogers had sailed Vincennes too close to an Iranian frigate undertaking a lawful search of a bulk carrier, launched a helicopter within of a small Iranian craft despite rules of engagement requiring a four-mile (6.4 km) separation, and opened fire on small Iranian military boats. Of those incidents, Carlson commented: "Why do you want an Aegis cruiser out there shooting up boats? It wasn't a smart thing to do." He said that Iranian forces he had encountered in the area a month prior to the incident were "pointedly non-threatening" and professional. At the time of Rogers's announcement to higher command that he was going to shoot down the plane, Carlson is reported to have been thunderstruck: "I said to folks around me, 'Why, what the hell is he doing?' I went through the drill again. F-14. He's climbing. By now this damn thing is at 7,000 feet." Carlson thought the Vincennes might have more information and was unaware that Rogers had been wrongly informed that the plane was diving. Carlson is reported to have written in the U.S. Naval Proceedings that he had "wondered aloud in disbelief" on hearing of Vincennes' intentions. In speculating on the "climate" that led up to the incident, Carlson stated that the Vincennes, shortly beforehand dubbed by officers aboard Sides as "RoboCruiser" for its aggressiveness, engaged in a pattern of aggressive behavior over the prior month because the crew of Vincennes "felt a need to prove the viability of Aegis in the Persian Gulf, and that they hankered for the opportunity to show their stuff."
Radio communication
The official ICAO report stated that 10 attempts were made to contact Iran Air Flight 655: seven on military frequencies and three on commercial frequencies, addressed to an "unidentified Iranian aircraft" and giving its speed as , which was the ground speed of the aircraft their radar reported. Flight 655's crew, however, would have seen a speed of on their cockpit instruments, which was their indicated airspeed, possibly leading them to conclude that Vincennes was talking to another aircraft. Both Sides and Vincennes tried contacting Flight 655 on several civilian and military frequencies. International investigations concluded that Flight 655's crew assumed the three calls they received before the missiles struck must have been directed at an Iranian P-3 Orion (see below). The International Civil Aviation Organization said the flight crew should have been monitoring the civilian frequency. They also said "American warships in the gulf had no equipment that allowed them to monitor civilian air traffic control radio frequencies, and thus no means of hearing the many radio transmissions between Iran Air Flight 655 and air traffic controllers that would have identified the aircraft to the Vincennes' crew."
Potential factors
The Aegis System software at that time reused tracking numbers in its display, constituting a user interface design flaw. The Aegis software initially assigned the on-screen identifier TN4474 to Flight 655. Before Vincennes fired, the Aegis software switched the Flight 655 tracking number to TN4131 and recycled Flight 655's old tracking number of TN4474 to label a fighter jet 110 miles away. When the captain asked for a status on TN4474, he was told it was a fighter and descending. Scientific American rated it as one of the worst user interface disasters.
A psychological evaluation of the crew, requested by Admiral Fogarty, concluded that stress and inexperience of the crew in warfare resulted in misjudgment and unconscious distortion of data, which played a significant role in the misinterpretation of the data of the Aegis System.
In the last minutes leading to shootdown, tactical information coordinator Leech reports loudly that Flight 655's altitude is declining, but all combat crew including lieutenant commander Scott Lustig (anti-air warefare coordinator) ignore to verify this information using data clearly shown on their computer systems in the combat information center. IR655 was never descending according to detailed data recorded by Vincennes.
As Flight 655 takes off, an Iranian Air Force F-14 is also on the tarmac at Bandar Abbas. When aircraft identification supervisor Anderson hooks Flight 655 when it takes off, he leaves it hooked for almost 90 seconds by neglecting to move the ball tab off of Bandar Abbas. Though the hook moves towards the Vincennes, the system is still reading IFF signals from Bandar Abbas.
The ship's commanding officer believes Iran 655 is an F-14 that is involved in a coordinated surface and air strike.
As IR655 starts to ascend, Lieutenant Montford warns Captain Will Rogers multiple times regarding possible commercial aircraft, captain acknowledges that he has heard him but eventually ignores his warnings.
The Vincennes transmits three radio warnings on the civil distress frequency in the very last minutes, but they fail to identify who exactly they are addressing. Its radio crew cite the aircraft's ground speed while Flight 655 is operating on airspeed. The plane's airspeed could have been 50 knots slower than the speed mentioned by the Vincennes.
During its flight, Flight 655 transmits a unique squawk code that tells radars what flight it is. Had the Vincennes used this specific code when addressing the flight crew, the pilots could have immediately realized they were in a danger zone. However, the U.S. Navy does not train radio personnel to use this standard code when talking to civilian aircraft.
The radar, for all its sophistication, cannot detect the type or size of the aircraft.
Despite its complex technology, the ship does not have a radio tuned to specific civil air frequencies.
IFF on the ship marks Iran Air 655 as Mode 3, a generic frequency that is insufficient to identify a plane as friend or foe.
The ship's crew did not efficiently consult commercial airliner schedules, due to confusion over which time zone the schedules referred to—the scheduled flight times used Bandar Abbas airport time while Vincennes was on Bahrain time. The airliner's departure was 27 minutes later than scheduled. "The Combat Information Center (CIC) was also very dark, and the few lights that it did have flickered every time Vincennes fired at the speedboats. This was of special concern to Petty Officer Andrew Anderson, who first picked up Flight 655 on radar and thought it might be a commercial aircraft. As he was searching in the navy's listing of commercial flights, he apparently missed Flight 655 because it was so dark."
An Iranian P-3 was in the area some time before the attack, and some reports explained why no radar signals were detected from Iran Air Flight 655. Other reports state that the Airbus was immediately detected after takeoff by the cruiser's AN/SPY-1 radar at a range of .
According to Capt. Richard McKenna (surface commander of Capt. Will Rogers), Vincennes was initially authorized to send a helicopter to investigate the situation with the gun boats. Later on when he realizes that Vincennes had turned north and swapped positions with Montgomery, he commanded Vincennes to leave the helicopter in place and return immediately. According to an interview after his retirement, Capt. McKenna believed that he felt the situation was not initially out of control and maybe Vincennes was looking for trouble. He said "my own personal opinion is it really did feel that they were looking for action when they went to see the Elmer Montgomery, um my own feeling is that the situation was not out of control, it was really my call and yet even though they were assigned another station, they took it upon themselves to be there and to that extent I feel that you know, I mean that's that's where the general feeling and not not just my own, comes that maybe they were looking for trouble"
The psychology and mindset after engaging in a battle with Iranian gunboats. There are claims that Vincennes was engaged in an operation using a decoy cargo ship to lure Iranian gunboats to a fight. These claims were denied by Fogarty in Hearing Before The Investigation Subcommittee and The Defense Policy Panel of The Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session, 21 July 1992. Also, the initial claims of Vincennes being called for help by a cargo ship attacked by Iranian gunboats have been ruled out. That leads to claims that the Iranian gunboats were provoked by helicopters inside Iranian waters, not the other way around.
Criticism of U.S. media coverage
In 1991, political scientist Robert Entman of George Washington University compared U.S. media coverage of the incident with the similar shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviet Union five years earlier by studying material from Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post and CBS Evening News. According to Entman, framing techniques were used to frame the Korean Airlines incident as sabotage while framing the Iran Air incident as a tragic mistake, stating "the angle taken by the U.S. media emphasized the moral bankruptcy and guilt of the perpetrating nation. With Iran Air 655, the frame de-emphasised guilt and focused on the complex problems of operating military high technology." By "de-emphasizing the agency and the victims and by the choice of graphics and adjectives, the news stories about the U.S. downing of an Iranian plane called it a technical problem while the Soviet downing of a Korean jet was portrayed as a moral outrage." Entman included polling that appeared to show that the unbalanced coverage swayed public opinion against the Soviet Union and Iran. In July 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in Ukraine, some commentators noted the discrepancy between the U.S. official position and media coverage of the two similar incidents.
Aftermath
The event sparked an intense international controversy, with Iran condemning the attack. In mid-July 1988, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati asked the United Nations Security Council to condemn the United States saying the attack "could not have been a mistake" and was a "criminal act", a "massacre", and an "atrocity". George H. W. Bush, then-vice president of the United States in the Reagan administration, defended his country at the UN by arguing that the U.S. attack had been a wartime incident and the crew of Vincennes had acted appropriately to the situation. The Soviet Union asked the U.S. to withdraw from the area and supported efforts by the Security Council to end the Iran–Iraq War. Most of the remainder of the 13 delegates who spoke supported the U.S. position, saying one of the problems was that a 1987 resolution to end the Iran–Iraq war had been ignored. Following the debate, Security Council Resolution 616 was passed expressing "deep distress" over the U.S. attack and "profound regret" for the loss of human lives, and stressing the need to end the Iran–Iraq War as resolved in 1987.
Inside Iran, this shootdown was perceived as a purposeful attack by the United States, signalling that the U.S. was about to enter into a direct war against Iran on the side of Iraq.
In February 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran US$131.8 million in settlement to discontinue a case brought by Iran in 1989 against the U.S. in the International Court of Justice relating to this incident, together with other earlier claims before the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal. US$61.8 million of the claim was in compensation for the 248 Iranians killed in the shootdown: $300,000 per wage-earning victim and $150,000 per non-wage-earner.
The U.S. government issued notes of regret for the loss of human lives, but never formally apologized or acknowledged wrongdoing. On 5July 1988 President Ronald Reagan expressed regret; when directly asked if he considered the statement an apology, Reagan replied, "Yes." George H. W. Bush, then Vice President of the United States, commented on another occasion, in a televised recording, while addressing a group of Republican ethnic leaders during the 1988 presidential campaign: "I will never apologize for the United States—I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." The quote, although unrelated to the downing of the Iranian airliner and not in any official capacity, has been mistakenly attributed as such. Bush used the phrase frequently during the 1988 presidential election campaign and promised to "never apologize for the United States" months prior to the July 1988 shoot-down and as early as January 1988.
The incident overshadowed Iran–United States relations for many years. The former CIA analyst Kenneth M. Pollack wrote: "The shoot-down of Iran Air Flight 655 was an accident, but that is not how it was seen in Tehran." Following the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 five months later, the United States government initially blamed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian militant group backed by Syria, with assumptions of assistance from Iran in retaliation for Flight 655. The distrust generated between the U.S. and Iran as a result of the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 was a challenge in the development of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, which was agreed to on 14 July 2015.
Post-tour of duty medals
Despite the mistakes made in the downing of the plane, the crew of USS Vincennes were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. The air warfare coordinator on duty received the Navy Commendation Medal, but The Washington Post reported in 1990 that the awards were for his entire tour from 1984 to 1988 and for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats. In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer [...] from April 1987 to May 1989". The award was given for his service as the commanding officer of Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989. The citation made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655.
Maps
In popular culture
The events of Flight 655 were featured in "Mistaken Identity", a season 3 (2005) episode of the Canadian TV series Mayday (called Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the U.S., and Air Crash Investigation in the UK).
In Raymond Khourys book “The Templar Salvation” the shooting down is the key motivation for the Iranian protagonist.
See also
List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
List of airliner shootdown incidents
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, commercial aircraft shot down by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Iran) in 2020
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Korean Air Lines Flight 902
Notes
References
Additional resources
"Nunn Wants to Reopen Inquiry into Vincennes' Gulf Location". Washington Times, 4July 1992. Abstract: Senator Sam Nunn called on the Pentagon to probe allegations that the Navy "deliberately misled Congress" about the location of USS Vincennes when it shot down an Iranian civilian airliner four years ago.
Fisk, Robert. The Great War for CivilisationThe Conquest of the Middle East. London: Fourth Estate, 2005. 318–328.
Marian Nash Leich, "Denial of Liability: Ex Gratia Compensation on a Humanitarian Basis" American Journal of International Law Vol. 83 p. 319 (1989)
USS Vincennes Incident; Dan Craig, Dan Morales, Mike Oliver; M.I.T. Aeronautics & Astronautics, Spring 2004
"Assumed Hostile" An academic case study by Pho H. Huynh, Summer 2003
Further reading
International Court of Justice, (2001), "Case Concerning the Aerial Incident of July 3, 1988: v. 1: Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America", United Nations,
Rogers, Sharon, (1992) Storm Center: The USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655: A Personal Account of Tragedy and Terrorism'', U.S. Naval Institute Press,
External links
July 1988 events in Asia
Flight
20th-century aircraft shootdown incidents
Accidents and incidents involving the Airbus A300
Airliner shootdown incidents
Aviation accidents and incidents in Iran
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1988
Flight
History of Hormozgan Province
United States Navy in the 20th century
655
Iran–United States relations
Strait of Hormuz
Reagan administration controversies
Mass murder in 1988
Massacres committed by the United States military
United States military scandals
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konin
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Konin
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Konin (is a city in central Poland, on the Warta River. It is the capital of Konin County and is located within the Greater Poland Voivodeship. Prior to 1999, it was the capital of the Konin Voivodeship (1975–1998). In 2021 the population of the city was 71,427, making it the fourth-largest city in Greater Poland after Poznań, Kalisz and Piła.
History
Prehistory
The earliest evidence of human habitation in Konin has been dated to the Paleolithic Era. On the dunes near the Warta, various ancient flint tools and implements have been found, among them being knives, burins, and tanged points. These earliest artifacts are of the Swiderian culture (Kultura Świderska) of 9000–8000 BC.
Ancient times
A permanent settlement arose along the Amber Road, which led from the Roman Empire to the Baltic Sea, traversing the area of present-day Konin. A map drawn by Ptolemy identified the settlement as Setidava (or Getidava), a probable spot to wade across the Warta and containing an emporium of some importance to merchants travelling along the route. The settlement's primary burial ground, situated on the dunes west of the centre of today's Konin, dates back to the Przeworsk culture (Kultura Przeworska) of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
Middle Ages
Toward the end of the early Middle Ages, Gród Kaszuba was the most significant of the fortified settlements near present-day Konin. Inhabited from the 10th through 12th centuries, Gród Kaszuba was situated on the meadows near the Warta. Its abandonment was likely a consequence of floods which damaged its fortifications. The remains of Gród Kaszuba are visible on the south bank of the river.
During the 12th and 13th centuries, in the high to late Middle Ages, a complex of settlements was centred on the location of today's Stare Miasto, where there existed a large settlement named Konin and a market place and a church built of sandstone. (The name Stare Miasto first appeared in use later, after Konin had been reestablished elsewhere.) What remains from that time is SS Peter and Paul's Parish Church, with its magnificent carved portal and a solar clock on the south wall, perhaps the oldest solar clock in Greater Poland. In 1331, the settlement was plundered and burnt by the Teutonic Knights. What remained was soon abandoned and the town of Konin was reestablished, six kilometres () to the northeast, in the more defensible spot where the Old Town of Konin is situated today.
Since the 13th century, Konin has been situated on the marshy grounds of an island within a ford of the Warta River. The oldest available written work confirming the location of the town is associated with Gosław, the chief officer of a group of settlers, and was recorded in 1293. The town may have been chartered by the Duke of Greater Poland, Przemysł II, who visited Konin in 1284 and 1292. At that time, the town's north–south axis equalled 430 meters, while its east–west axis equalled 210 meters. Also, the town's area was eight hectares, and its circumference was 1100 meters. By the standards of the time, Konin was a town of medium size.
Konin's significance grew during the 14th century. Records from that era indicate that Konin possessed a Castellan, an office of significance in feudal Poland, and one which only the oldest towns in the country were granted. At approximately the midpoint of the century, Konin became the judicial seat of the Kalisz Voivodeship and functioned under the authority of a Starost. There may have also been a school in Konin at the time, as a student from Konin is listed in a 14th-century record of the Charles University in Prague.
The second half of the 14th century and the entire 15th are believed to have been a period of rapid development for Konin. During the reign of the Polish King Casimir III the Great (1310–1370), a king's castle was erected in Konin and the town was encircled with walls and a moat, marking the beginning of Konin as a king's town Later, King Władysław II Jagiełło (1351/52 - 1434) was a guest of Konin, visiting in the years of 1403, 1425, and 1433. (Władysław engineered a historic debilitation of the political and military power of the Teutonic Knights by means of his Polish-Lithuanian victory at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.) His last stay at Konin, in 1433, was his longest. Throughout that year's summer, he resided in the town's castle, obtaining reports on a Polish retaliatory strike against the Knights.
In 1458, during the Thirteen Years' War (1454–66) against the Teutonic Order, there was a call for military recruitment throughout Poland. Every Polish town was bound to put up a number of soldiers, the number of which was a sign of the size and power of a given town. With regard to Konin, it was 15 infantrymen; by comparison, Poznań, the capital of Greater Poland, was bound to put up 60, while Kalisz, nearby Słupca and Kłodawa, and Koło were to provide 30, 20, 20, and 15 men, respectively. These quantities suggest that Konin was still a town of medium size. Notwithstanding, the town continued its development of handicraft trades and enlarged the area of its Starosty District. In 1425, Konin was granted a charter to conduct two fairs each year.
Renaissance
The 16th century, the period of Poland's golden age, was a time of significant economic, political, military, cultural, and territorial growth. In 1504, the village of Kurów, located on the river bank opposite the main body of Konin, was incorporated into the town. Furthermore, a description of the town, written in 1557, lists a brickyard and a mill as well as eight butchers, 14 bakers, 21 shoemakers, and four fishermen. However, Konin may have been one of the smaller towns of the time in eastern Greater Poland, based on its "Szos", the tax assessed on its earnings and the possessions of its townspeople. Konin was obliged to pay 32 zlotych, while Poznań (the capital of Greater Poland) was assessed 1400 zlotych; Kalisz, 230; nearby Słupca, 96; and both Koło and Pyzdry, 64.
Concerning religious matters and the Reformation, the starost of Konin, Jakub Ostroróg, was a notable supporter of the Protestants, and a local parish-priest, Stanisław Lutomirski, played a role in the Reformation in the region surrounding Konin.
17th century
During the 17th century, epidemics and war greatly afflicted Konin. A plague of three years' length (1628-1631) decimated the town's population. Subsequent efforts to revitalize Konin included King Władysław IV's 1646 proclamation, confirming the town's right to conduct two fairs annually and promoting participation in those events by offering military protection to merchants who attended them, and a 1652 edict of the Starost, licensing the Scottish community of Konin to erect breweries. Thereafter, the town was invaded and occupied by the Swedish Army in 1656 during the Second Northern War (The Deluge), suffering extensive damage (see Castles and Ancient town walls) and a reduction in the number of its houses, from 127 prior to the war to 25 in 1659. By war's end, the town's population had been reduced to not more than 200 persons. Another plague occurred shortly afterwards, in 1662.
18th century
The 18th century began with the turmoil of the Great Northern War, during which Konin was so severely devastated, in 1707, that its restoration required the remainder of the century to complete. The second half of the century was a time of advanced crisis for the nation, as an irreversible decline of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth culminated in the Partitions of Poland and the loss of national independence. Poland's territory was occupied and divided among three bordering countries - Russia, Prussia, and Austria - in three stages, occurring in the years of 1772, 1793 and 1795.
As a consequence of the second partition, Konin was incorporated into Prussia, ending Konin's status as a royal town. At the time, the town's population was 780, with 165 houses, of which only one was made of brick. Inhabitants earned their living in agriculture and handicrafts. Among craftsmen, there were 22 shoemakers, 13 potters, and eight furriers. Eight fairs took place each year, together with a round-up of cattle. Poles, Jews, Germans and Scots were the town's four main ethnic groups. In 1794, Konin joined the first Polish insurrection, the Kościuszko Uprising; the act of joining is recorded in the town's books of that period. Polish insurgents also took control of the town multiple times - e.g., in September 1794, when the town was entered by the soldiers of the corps of Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, the namesake of the Polish national anthem - the so-called "Dąbrowski's Mazurka". In 1796, the town was damaged by fire.
19th century
The 19th century began with the general, European disorder of the Napoleonic Wars, which neither eastern Greater Poland nor Konin escaped. At the start of the century, the Duchy of Warsaw was created as a Polish formally independent state, de facto dependent upon Napoleon I Bonaparte. The Napoleonic Wars gave Poles hope of regaining national independence, and they strongly supported Napoleon. On November 9, 1806, Poles took control of Konin and quickly organized a new, town government. The following year, the town was formally incorporated into the Duchy of Warsaw.
The subsequent collapse of the Napoleonic Empire resulted in the establishment of a new order in Europe, as well as within the Polish territories, including Konin. The Congress of Vienna, assembled in 1814–1815 to arrange political changes on the continent, awarded Russia the majority of territories formerly held by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Konin itself was incorporated into Russia as a part of Congress Poland (formally the Kingdom of Poland), a pseudo-autonomous region that was a Russian dependency and which recognized the tzar as its ruler. The town was also designated as the capital of a sector within the Kalisz Governorate; the sector encompassed two counties, Konin County and Pyzdry County. From an administrative standpoint, Konin's sector constituted the westernmost territory of the Russian state.
The November Uprising erupted in 1830. Although Konin was not directly involved in this Polish uprising, as with other Polish cities and towns it suffered the political and cultural consequences of its failure. Those consequences included the denial of higher offices to Poles, the elimination of Polish as the official language, and the systematic russification of the primary and secondary schools.
The January Uprising of 1863 had a greater effect on Konin than had the 1830 rebellion. As many as several dozen battles and skirmishes took place in and near Konin, to which many present-day monuments attest.
From 1815 onwards, trade and handicraft activities increased substantially in Konin. A description of the town, from 1820, states that among the 2,456 inhabitants, there were 161 craftsmen, ten merchants, and 42 peasants. During the course of the century the population of Konin increased steadily, rising from 4,195 people in 1850 to 7,391 in 1896. In comparison, nearby Koło had an 1896 population of 8,800 inhabitants, while Turek's population that same year was 9,900. However, while nearby Łódź was becoming one of the most significant textile industrial centres in the world, only 12 cloth workshops and small factories existed in Konin in 1820.
During the 1830s, a general renewal of the town led to the construction of new streets and squares. Also, building lots were developed for industrial expansion, and dilapidated buildings were demolished.
By the end of the century, there were two factories that produced machines and special tools for agriculture - the larger of them belonged to L. Reymond, a citizen of Switzerland, who settled permanently in Konin. His factory was equipped with a 12 horse-power steam engine and a cast iron foundry. Apart from these enterprises, the town held 18 windmills, four tanneries, four workshops producing soap, three vinegar factories, two small factories producing boilers, two breweries, two oil-mills, a sparkling water factory, and a distillery.
20th century
For Konin, the early 20th century was a period of rapid development in the fields of culture, education, and social life. The Musical Society of Kalisz (Towarzystwo Muzyczne w Kaliszu) had as many as 72 members in Konin, and Konin's Jewish Library was one of the finest within the Gubernya of Kalisz, with a number of books and a general readership that significantly exceeded similar libraries in Kalisz, a much larger urban area. Also, a branch of the Rowing Club of Kalisz (Kaliskie Towarzystwo Wioślarskie) was founded in Konin in 1908 and, by 1914, had 95 members. Its building, displaying the club's coat of arms, still stands in Old Konin, in Zofii Urbanowskiej Street.
Workers' associations were also established in Konin. In 1905, when significant strikes occurred in Polish industrial centres such as Warsaw and Łódź, there were some minor strikes and turmoil in Konin as well.
A branch of the Polish gymnastic society, Sokół, was founded in Konin. A quasi-military association, its objective was to maintain the fitness of teenagers, to improve their health, and to provide for readily trainable military recruits in the event of a possible national uprising or a defence need. Similar Jewish and German associations also existed.
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, battles between Russian and German troops occurred near Konin. Ultimately, the city came under German occupation and deteriorated. In November 1918, when Poland regained independence, the German Landsturm opened fire on members of the Polish Military Organisation and Polish scouts and students, who tried to liberate the city. The Germans also threw grenades at local inhabitants who gathered at the local Market Square, killing six people and wounding many. Nevertheless, Konin was soon reintegrated with the reborn Polish state. The economic situation of the town did not improve. Living conditions of residents were still miserable, exacerbated by the lack of functioning water distribution and sewer systems. The subsequent inter-war economic crisis was harsh, and conditions did not begin to improve until the désenclavement of the town, attributable to the opening of a major railway, between Poznań and Warsaw, and the construction of a canal to Gopło Lake. Jews represented 30% of Konin's population in the 1930s.
During the Second World War, Konin was part of the land annexed by Nazi Germany (Reichsgau Wartheland). During the German occupation, mass murders of Poles were committed by the Germans at the local Jewish cemetery in November 1939 and in the spring of 1940, in which 94 people were killed, some as part of the German Intelligenzaktion and some as punishment for their involvement in the defense of Poland during the German invasion of Poland of September 1939. The Germans established and operated a Nazi prison in the city, and two forced labour camps for Jews. Poles were also subjected to expulsions to the so-called General Government, carried out in late 1939 and in 1940, which especially pertained to owners of more well-kept houses, shops and workshops, which were then handed over to German colonists as part of the Lebensraum policy. Three Polish men from Konin were also murdered by the Soviets in the large Katyn massacre committed in April–May 1940. In the town's surrounding forests, the Nazis carried out mass executions of Jews, 95% of which were killed or sent to concentration camps. In August 1943, the Jews at the labour camp at Konin, led by Rabbi Joshua Moshe Aaronson, burned down the huts in the camp and tried to escape. Almost all of them were killed.
Jewish community of Konin
The first written evidence of Jews settling in Konin dates to 1397. In the 15th century, 180 Jews were counted in the city. Over the course of the 17th century, the number of Jews in the city shrank as a result of fires, plagues, and restrictions upon Jewish residency. Administratively, the Jews of Konin were subordinate to the larger community in nearby Kalisz until the end of the 18th century.
A wooden synagogue was built in 1763–1766. The current standing building was built in 1829. The first rabbi in Konin was Rabbi Amsterdam, between 1810 and 1849.
Between the two world wars, some 3,000 Jews lived in the city, constituting roughly a quarter of its residents. In 1918, the first Jewish gymnasium was established. The community had a beit midrash, mikvaot, synagogues, a few prayer halls (such as "Hevra Tehilim"), active youth movements, a library, a Jewish elementary school and a Jewish high school. During this period, movements such as Agudat Yisrael, Beitar, and other Zionist parties, and the Bund were active there. The majority of Jews in Konin were Mitnagdim, though two small communities of Hasidim lived within the Konin Jewish community, mostly adherents of Gerer Hasidism, with a small group of Aleksander Hasidim.
The Germans occupied Konin in September 1939 and shortly after the area was incorporated into the Reich as part of the Warthegau. In late 1939, about 1000 of the town's Jews were deported to a settlement near Radom. The Germans confined the remainder of the Jews to a ghetto in 1940 and their former residences were given to German officials and ethnic Germans who came from the east. Later in the year, groups of Konin's Jews were deported to other ghettos, being allowed to take only a few items with them. By the end of 1940, almost all had been deported. In November 1941, some Konin Jews were part of the 3000 Jews murdered by the German SS in the forests of Kaziemesh (Kleczew), north of the city. Out of 6000 Jewish people living in the city before the German occupation perhaps 200 survived the war and 46 returned to Konin. None of them continued living in Konin due to the hostility of the non-Jewish population.
The town survivors published, in 1968, an extensive Yizkor (memorial) book (803 pages) in memory of the flourishing Jewish community. The book was written in Yiddish, Hebrew and English.
A descendant of Konin Jews, Theo Richmond, wrote Konin: A Quest, the most extensive history of Jewish life in the town to appear in English. The book won the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize in 1996.
Castles
The 14th-century castle, built of brick with some details made of sandstone (probably taken from the nearby quarry of Brzeźno village), had a perimeter in the shape of a regular quadrangle. The main buildings were massive, with an octagonal watchtower in the southeast corner of the compound and a kind of great hall on its western side. The castle was also encircled with a double wall and a moat. During the Deluge of the 17th century, it was partially damaged by the Swedish army and abandoned to slow decay. The derelict structure was demolished during the 19th century, with its larger sections being removed about 1844–1855). Today, there are no remains of the castle itself. Castle Square (Plac Zamkowy) is located in approximately the spot where the castle had stood. Another castle, erected during the 15th century in the former Gosławice village, now Konin's Gosławice district, was restored during the 1980s.
Ancient town walls
The construction of the town walls started, as in the case of the castle, in the second half of the 14th century. They encircled the town as a defence line, especially on the settlement's southern and eastern sides and partially on the western. The line of walls, however, never entirely formed a closed circuit, as the Warta River and its nearby marshy grounds, bogs, earthworks, and retrenchments provided adequate protection in the gaps. On the north side of town, the Toruńska Gatehouse (Brama Toruńska) sat just in front of the river crossing, while the south side was guarded from the Kaliska Gatehouse (Brama Kaliska); both gatehouses were named for towns that were primary destinations for merchants travelling through Konin.
The walls were reinforced by a series of rectangular towers that projected from the walls, creating a bastion-like structure. The towers themselves, each consisting of three walls, were open to the side that faced the town. These fortifications were seriously damaged during the Deluge, especially in the 1656 siege of Konin. They were never repaired afterwards, so at the turn of the 18th century the town's authorities chose to have them deconstructed or demolished if necessary. Their last conspicuous elements were removed sometime after 1816, and today there are no remains.
Architectural landmarks
Konin County (Powiat Koniński) contains examples of the following architectural forms: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, and Rococo; 18th century Classicism; 19th century Neo-Gothic, Neoromanesque, Neoclassicism, and Eclecticism; and 20th century Modernism, Nazi architecture, Socialist Realism, and Postmodernism. Also near Konin are the remains of the reinforced concrete bunkers employed by Poland's Armia Poznań during World War II.
Architecturally, the city of Konin is divided into two historical parts - Old Town (Stary Konin), situated on the south bank of the Warta; and New Konin (Nowy Konin), spreading northward from the river and developed primarily after 1945.
Romanesque
The Stone Signpost of Konin is the oldest European signpost beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Made of local sandstone from the quarry near Brzeźno, it was commissioned in 1151 AD by either Duke Piotr Włost Włostowicz or Piotr Stary Wszeborowic. Containing Romanesque inscriptions, some scholars hypothesize that the stone itself was originally a Celtic sculpture.
St Bartholomew's parish church was rebuilt in the second half of the 14th century, but its Romanesque features are still visible in the external walls, particularly the north wall. The features include dressed stones made of sandstone and a massive stone cross built into the wall.
Gothic
St Bartholomew's Parish Church is Konin's most notable example of Gothic architecture and art. It contains a gothic net and vault inside the church and stained glass in the chancel.
St Andrew's Church, in Konin's Gosławice district, is a rural Gothic church with an unusual Greek cross. The building also contains a rare fan vault. Sandstone bosses and other details are richly carved. The external walls are embellished with a number of coats of arms.
The 15th-century mediaeval castle in Gosławice, currently a regional museum, was built at the direction of Poznań's Bishop Andrzej Łaskarz in 1418–1426. It was designed to be defended with firearms. Gosławice contains a rare collection of historical buildings, with its ancient village, Gothic church, mediaeval castle, and old Polish manor.
Renaissance
On the grounds of St. Bartholomew's Church is the Late Renaissance chapel of Jan Zemełko (Zemelius), a local physician, Renaissance man, and well-known member of the middle class in Konin and Kalisz.
The former home of Jan Zemełko, on the Plac Wolności, has been refurbished many times since Zemełko's era, but the main hall still contains the original barrel vault. At the ground floor level, the walls are exceedingly thick (1 to 2 m).
Mannerism
The Manneristic tombstone of Stanisław Przyjemski is located at the north wall of the main nave of St. Bartholomew's Parish Church.
Manneristic wooden stalls, with inlaid work, are located in the Chapel of Jan Zemełko (Zemelius).
Baroque
St. Bartholomew's Parish Church contains many Baroque altars, epitaphs, and stalls, and a Late Baroque wall crucifix hangs in the porch. The Late Baroque church organ dates from the 18th century.
The Baroque monastery and church building at St. Mary Magdalene's Church of Reformed Franciscans were built in 1631.
Rococo
At St. Bartholomew's Parish Church, Rococo elements are found in the wall crucifix above the entrance to the porch at the north wall of the main nave and in the main altar at the Chapel of Jan Zemełko.
Classicism
The Town Hall, built at the beginning of the 19th century, has a façade encompassing four, tall Toscany Columns bearing a large pediment. Above the pediment is a small tower with a clock and a tall flagstaff from which the official flag of Konin is hung on local and state holidays.
Old Town contains many Classicist tenement houses as well as a former butcher's shop in the same style, near the Town Hall.
The Municipal Council Building, near the Plac Wolności, is of the Classicist style.
The Presbytery of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Ghost is a Classicist manor house, situated in the small garden at the center of the Old Town.
Neo-Gothic (19th and 20th centuries)
St Bartholomew's Parish Church has a Neo-Gothic main altar made of wood, with many Neo-Gothic statues decorating it.
St Andrew's Church, in the Gosławice District, originally was built in the Gothic style. It was refurbished in the Neo-Gothic manner. Its central turret and the façades of its chapels were built in the 19th century.
Eclecticism (19th and 20th centuries)
The Lutheran Church of the Holy Ghost, constructed in 1856 and rebuilt in 1901-1915 and 1981–1985, is a representation of Eclecticism. Built when Konin was under the control of the Russian Empire, it is somewhat reminiscent of the style of Russian Orthodox churches. Constructed of dark brick, its massive main tower is covered with spires and many decorative details.
St. Adalbert's Church, in the Morzysław District, was built in the 18th century on the site of an earlier wooden church and its churchyard. It was completely refurbished, enlarged, and altered at the beginning of the 20th century, resulting in an impressive large temple, with a tall main tower topped by a high spire. This church, also, shows the slight influence of Russian Orthodox architecture.
Many tenement houses in Old Town have eclectic façades displaying the features of many different architectural manners and styles.
Other examples of Eclecticism in Konin are found in the Jewish buildings, including the Konin Synagogue, the ritual baths, and the Talmudic schoolhouse. These buildings were constructed in the 19th century, and the synagogue is considered to be one of the most beautiful buildings of its kind in Greater Poland. Erected in 1832, it was enlarged and renovated in 1883. Its southern façade refers to the history of the Ashkenazi Jews and comprises a mix of architectural styles, with a predominance of the Moorish and Neo-Gothic styles. The north façade is more composed and unencumbered, referring mainly to Classicism, as in its huge pediment.
The Romani Gypsy palaces of ulica Stodolniana and ulica Europejska, in the Old Town, exhibit impressive onion domes and sculptures shaped like miniature, richly embellished mediaeval castles. Built mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, they represent a unique element within the city's residential districts.
Modernism: Pre-War (1920–19390
Ulica Szarych Szeregów 1 is an impressive renovated tenement house with a distinguished façade and an infamous history. Built in the 1930s by a local MP, it housed the World War II offices of the Nazi Gestapo, who tortured prisoners there. After 1945, the building was occupied by the Communist secret state police, the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa. The building now houses private apartments.
Ulica 3 Maja 48 is a fine example of pre-war Modernism. The Guild of Handicrafts (Cech Rzemiosł Różnych) is situated there, as are various shops.
Modernism: Post-War (1945-1960s)
The town's library (Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna / MBP), at ulica Dworcowa, is a bulky, cube-shaped Modernistic structure. Perpendicular ribs of concrete divide its windows into narrow segments, and its stark, black on white façade rises strikingly from the thick greenery that surrounds it. Before becoming a library, it served as a branch of the National Bank of Poland (Narodowy Bank Polski / NBP).
Formerly the Centrum Department Store, the Dino Supermarket on ulica Dworcowa exhibits an upper, street-side façade that is covered entirely by the tilted glass.
Nazi Architecture
Several examples of Nazi architecture exist in Konin, including a row of buildings in ulica Kolejowa, in New Konin, that were built as lodgings for railwaymen. Just across the street is a monument, commemorating an August, 1943, Jewish uprising. Another set of Nazi buildings stand in the Old Town, near ulica Szpitalna. This area is known locally as Heimat, emphasizing its German connection.
Socialist Realism
Aleje 1-go Maja (Avenue of the First of May), the main street of Nowy Konin, is lined with the city's earliest examples of Socialist Realism architecture. Among these are the hospital and various public buildings. Because New Konin was developed primarily after the 1946 installation of the Communist government, it contains very little other than buildings constructed in the stark, Socialist Realism style.
Osiedle V (Housing Estate No. 5), designed and built during the 1970s and the early 1980s, it consists characteristically of blocks of flats set in regular rows and devoid of any architectural decoration, a sombre testament to the economic difficulties of the People's Republic of Poland at the time of construction.
The Zatorze District, built during the 1980s, consists largely of massive blocks of flats built of prefabricated, grey concrete structural elements, attended by shops and schools of the same style.
Postmodernism
Representing Catholic ecclesiastical Postmodernism, ten kilometres () from Konin stands the monumental Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, the world's sixth largest Christian church.
The PKO BP S.A. bank and office building at ulica 11-go Listopada (Eleventh of November) 20 was one of the first large buildings erected in Konin after the 1989 fall of Communism in Poland. While having many features rooted in Socialist Realism, it incorporates Postmodernist elements not previously seen in Konin.
The Skarpa office and commercial building at ulica Energetyka 6b was completed during the first decade of the 21st century. The utilitarian character of the building and its interior is in accord with the subtly adorned outer façades, which are covered with wide strips and plates in the colour of inox. The exterior pavement is covered with granite cuboids, and its inner floors are inlaid with dark granite plates.
PTTK (Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society)
Perhaps owing to Konin being located at the junction of some of Poland's most historic lands - Greater Poland, Cuiavia, Mazovia, and Łódzkie - the local branch of the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society is very active. Moreover, the interest of non-Poles is piqued by the traces of, and monuments to, the many national minorities who have lived over the centuries in Konin and Konin County: Jews, Scots, Germans, Frenchmen, Russians, Romanis, Czechs, Swiss, Dutch Olędrzy, Vietnamese, Chinese, Romanians, and Africans.
Notably, Konin was one of the towns along the Scottish Trail - the route through urban areas of Greater Poland and Lower Silesia that connected the various Scottish trading communities that settled in Poland from the 15th century onward.
Gallery
Education
Wyższa Szkoła Kupiecka in Łódź, branch in Konin
Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa (The State School of Higher Professional Education in Konin) - see http://www.pwsz.konin.edu.pl/
Akademia Humanistyczno-Ekonomiczna in Łódź, branch in Konin
Sports
Górnik Konin - football team, currently playing in the Polish fourth division, also playing in the second division in the 1990s and 2000s, 1998 Polish Cup runner-up
KKPK Medyk Konin - women's football team, playing in the top division, multiple Polish champion
Greenpeace Climate Rescue Station
Greenpeace chose the town to set up its Climate Rescue Station. A four-story energy self-sufficient globe replica was erected beside the Jozwin IIB open-cast coal mine. The location of the Rescue Station was intended to draw attention to Poland's over-reliance on coal and formed part of Greenpeace's campaign to get its message across at the United Nations' global warming Conference in nearby Poznań. The presence of Greenpeace was generally well received by locals who came in the hundreds to participate in activities and listen to lectures about the environmental situation. The Rescue station moved to Poznań following its stay at Konin.
Politics
Members of Parliament (Sejm) elected from Konin constituency
Paweł Arndt, PO
Alfred Budner, non-party
Zbigniew Dolata, PiS
Eugeniusz Grzeszczak, PSL
Adam Hofman, PiS
Tomasz Nowak, PO
Józef Pilarz, non-party
Andrzej Ruciński, PiS
Tadeusz Tomaszewski, SLD
International relations
Twin towns—sister cities
Konin is twinned with:
Former twin towns
Bryansk, Bryansk Oblast, Russia – On March 4, 2022, Konin broke the agreement due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Notable people
Mieczysław G. Bekker (1905–1989), Polish engineer and scientist
Krystian Bielik (born 1998), Polish Footballer
Szymon Bobrowski (born 1972), Polish actor
Antoni Czubiński (1928–2003), Polish historian
Julius Fromm (1883–1945), Polish-German entrepreneur, chemist and inventor
Gosław, first known chief officer of group of settlers in Konin from 1293 CE
Leopold Infeld (1898–1968), Polish physicist
Marcin Kamiński (born 1992), Polish footballer
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980), Polish poet, essayist, dramatist and writer
Reni Jusis (born 1974), Polish pop singer, songwriter and producer
Jan A. P. Kaczmarek (born 1953), Polish Academy Award-winning composer
Józef Lewandowski (1923–2007), Polish-born Swedish historian
Przemysł II (1257–1296), Polish ruler who possibly founded the town of Konin by signing up a charter to settlers in 1284 CE, or 1292 CE
References
Further reading
Jerzy Łojko Digital Encyclopaedia of Greater Poland(Polonia maior - Fontes)
"Konin" - Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland (Pinkas HaKehillot) http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol1_00235.html
Theo Richmond "Konin - a quest" Pantheon Books, 1995,
External links
Official town website
Town website of Old City - www.konin-starowka.pl
"Konin" - Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland (Pinkas HaKehillot) - JewishGen.org
Small Ads Konin
Papers Relating to the Scots in Poland, 1576-1798
Cities and towns in Greater Poland Voivodeship
City counties of Poland
Kalisz Governorate
Poznań Voivodeship (1921–1939)
Historic Jewish communities in Poland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William%20Buckley%20%28convict%29
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William Buckley (convict)
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William Buckley (born 1776–1780died 30 January 1856), also known as the "wild white man", was an English bricklayer, and served in the military until 1802, when he was convicted of theft. He was then transported to Australia, where he helped construct buildings for the fledgling penal settlement at Port Phillip Bay in what is now Victoria, Australia.
He escaped the settlement in 1803, and was given up for dead, while he lived among the Indigenous Wallarranga tribe of the Wathaurong nation for 32 years. In 1835, he was pardoned and became an Indigenous culture recorder. From 1837 to 1850 he was a public servant in Tasmania.
Early life
William Buckley was born in 1776 or 1780 in the village of Marton in the Macclesfield area of Cheshire, England. His father was a farmer.
As a child, he was adopted by his mother's father, who lived in Macclesfield. His grandfather paid for his schooling, and at the age of 15 Buckley became an apprentice bricklayer working under Robert Wyatt. After his adoption, he was separated from his parents, two sisters, and a brother.
Buckley grew to the approximate height of , which was very unusual for the time. According to an acquaintance George Russell, Buckley "was a tall, ungainly man ... and altogether his looks were not in his favour; he had a bushy head of black hair, a low forehead with overhanging eyebrows nearly concealing his small eyes, a short snub nose, a face very much marked by smallpox, and was just such a man as one would suppose fit to commit burglary or murder." That general description was echoed by other reports of the day, although not always as flattering. He was generally represented as being of low intelligence, but biographer Marjorie J. Tipping stated that "according to his easy assimilation into an unfamiliar way of life may also suggest that he was intelligent, shrewd and courageous".
At about 19, Buckley enlisted in the Cheshire Militia, beginning a four-year military career. He was later at the 4th (King's Own) Regiment of Foot. Because of his height, he was given the role of pivot man for the regiment. He had a good reputation with the officers. In 1799, his regiment went to The Netherlands to fight against Napoleon, under the command of the Duke of York. Buckley was severely wounded in his right hand.
The corps then was stationed at Chatham, where Buckley became restless and associated with several soldiers of bad character. According to Buckley, he was asked by a woman to carry a roll of cloth to the garrison where his regiment was stationed, not knowing that the fabric was stolen. Buckley was convicted on 2 August 1802 at the Sussex Assizes of knowingly receiving a roll of stolen cloth. He was sentenced to transportation to New South Wales for fourteen years or life. Due to the manner in which the military was prosecuted at the time, he was unaware of his final sentence. After his conviction, he never saw nor heard of his family again.
Transportation and escape
Buckley left England in April 1803 aboard , one of two ships sent to Port Phillip to form a new settlement under Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins. They arrived at the eastern side of Port Phillip Bay in October 1803 and landed at one of its small bays, Sullivan Bay near what is now Sorrento. Royal Marines and labourers encamped together. Skilled labourers, including Buckley, lived in huts nearer building sites. The skilled labourers were given a degree of freedom because there was more than of wilderness to the nearest settlement at Sydney, which made escape treacherous.
The new settlement lacked fresh water and arable soil, and a decision was made a couple of months later to abandon the site and move to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Buckley and five others escaped during a rain storm on 27 December 1803, to avoid being sent to Tasmania, hoping to escape to Port Jackson (Sydney). Of the six, Charles Shaw was shot by a soldier and was captured with another convict. Daniel Allender surrendered to Lieutenant Governor David Collins on 16 January 1804. The three remaining men subsisted on rations of food that they brought with them as well as seafood and berries that they collected, but they struggled to find enough food and fresh water. After travelling along the coast of Port Phillip Bay to what is now Melbourne and across the plains to the Yawong Hills (now in the Shire of Buloke), the men finished the last of their rations. They realised that to survive they needed to return to the bay for food. They doubled back to the west side of the bay to what is now Corio, Victoria and then to Swan Island. Along the way, they avoided huts of Indigenous people. The men attempted to signal a ship anchored in Port Phillip Bay without success for a week. His two fellow travellers decided to walk back to the eastern edge of Port Phillips Bay (Sullivan Bay). Buckley decided to try his luck on his own.
Over the next several days, Buckley became increasingly ill due to dehydration, starvation, and painful sores from poor nutrition. Buckley was near death when he arrived at Aireys Inlet where he found embers from an earlier fire, fresh water, seafood, and a cave for shelter. He stayed awhile to build back his strength and then he followed the Victorian coast south to a spot near a stream where he established a hut for himself of tree branches and seaweed. He foraged for plants, berries, and seafood to sustain himself.
Life with the Wathaurong people
Buckley met three spear-carrying Wathaurong people, who befriended him at a place called Nooraki (Mount Defiance Lookout, Wye River, Great Ocean Road). His visitors made him a meal of crayfish. They then asked Buckley to follow him to their huts, where they arrived by nightfall. In the morning the trio went on further into the woods, but Buckley communicated that he would remain in the area.
He returned to his hut along the creek on the western side of Port Phillip Bay. Winter was approaching and he was finding it increasingly difficult to collect adequate amounts of food and keep warm. Lonely and worn-down, he journeyed to the eastern portion of the bay in the hope that there were some English escapees that remained in the area. On his journey, he found a burial mound with a spear sticking out of the ground. He took it and used it as a walking stick. Further on his trek, he stumbled while crossing a stream and he was carried away by the current. He managed to get to the shore but was too exhausted to walk. The next morning, still quite feeble, he walked to a lake or lagoon known as Maamart by the Indigenous people. There he met two women who realised that he needed help, and with assistance of their husbands, they led Buckley to their huts. The people were members of the Wallarranga tribe of the Wathaurong nation. They believed him to be the spirit of a deceased tribal chief, whose spear he had taken from the burial mound. Buckley was given the name Murrangurk, which McHugh says was the chief's name. Tim Flannery states that Muuranong guurk means "one who has been killed and brought back to life again".
For the next several days, there were ceremonies of mourning and rejoicing. He was cared for and given food specifically selected and prepared to strengthen him. Buckley was taken in by the former chief's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. He was adopted into the tribe about one year after he had escaped. The Wallarranga tribe shared their food with him and taught him their language, customs, and bush skills. He learnt to catch fish and eels, cook in their manner, skin possums and kangaroo, and make thread from animal sinew. The tribe appeared to hunt and gather sufficient food. They had little illness and lived long lives. During the evenings, Buckley often shared his campfire with tribal members and told stories of life in England, on ships, and at war.
For thirty-two years, Buckley lived among the Wallarranga tribe of the Wathaurong nation on the Bellarine Peninsula of southern Victoria. He lived primarily near the mouth of Bream Creek, now known as Thompsons Creek, near present-day Breamlea and he also lived east at the mouth of the Barwin River. Living on the western side of the bay, he had access to fresh water, yam daisy (murnong), bream, seafood, and birds. His diet was supplemented with game—including kangaroo, wombat, koala, wallaby and turkey—that he hunted on the basalt plains. There were several shipwrecks along the coast in which no one survived. Buckley and other tribal members collected tools, blankets, and other items.
When Buckley showed himself to be a successful hunter, fisherman, and forager who provided for himself and the tribe, he was given a wife, with whom he had a daughter. A Buninyong woman, Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin, was 15 years old when she met Buckley and became his wife and she may have been the mother of his daughter. By 1881, she lived in Victoria's Western District at the Framlingham Mission. He is also said to have been given a wife when he was single, but there was jealousy among some of the tribesmen and he was once again single.
He was treated with great affection and respect. "By virtue of his age and peaceful ways, Buckley ... became a Ngurungaeta, a person of considerable respect among his people and his voice was influential in deciding matters of war and peace." Buckley became expert with Aboriginal weapons, though despite this, as a revered spirit, he was banned from participating in tribal wars. During one battle, the family who had taken him in and many other members of the clan were killed. Buckley then decided to live by himself, first along the Bass Strait coast and then along Bream Creek. He leveraged all that he had been taught about foraging for food, and then he figured out how to catch fish in greater number using a weir. He also began to dehydrate and preserve food. Members of the clan he had previously lived with joined him there. Over time, he forgot the English language and his hair grew very long.
Buckley had periods of time where he lived as a hermit, but he had become accustomed to his life among the Wallarranga tribe. For many years, he avoided meeting Europeans who visited or settled in the area. An escaped convict, he was afraid what would happen to him if he turned himself over to the Englishmen.
Pardon
In July 1835, a ship arrived at Indented Head and Buckley learnt that some of the Aboriginal people intended to murder the English passengers and rob the ship. On 6 July 1835, William Buckley and a party of Indigenous people appeared at the camp site of John Batman's Port Phillip Association, led by John Wedge.
He wore kangaroo skins, carried Aboriginal weapons, and wore a tattoo with the initials 'W.B.' and tattoo marks. William Todd recalled in his journal entry for 6 July 1835:
The tattoo of initials proved he was the convict William Buckley. who had been given up for dead three decades ago. Legally, he was still a convict and could be imprisoned again. Buckley had not used the English language for many years and had forgotton how to speak English, but it returned to him over time. Although still intent on raiding the Englishmen, Buckley convinced the Indigenous people not to attack the Englishmen, and he promised to reward them if they remained peaceful. Wedge obtained a pardon for Buckley through Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur.
Return to Western culture
Buckley was employed by John Batman to be an interpreter and help build his house in Melbourne. He was then an Indigenous language interpreter for the government.
On 4 February 1836, William Buckley accompanied Joseph Gellibrand and his party, which included William Robertson, one of the financiers of the Port Phillip Association, on a trip west from Melbourne, heading toward Geelong, where they met with a group of Wathaurong people with whom Buckley had lived. From Gellibrand's diary:
February 5th, 1836: I directed Buckley to advance and we would follow him at a distance of a quarter of a mile. Buckley made towards a native well and after he had rode about 8 miles, we heard a cooey and when we arrived at the spot I witnessed one of the most pleasing and affecting sights. There were three men five women and about twelve children. Buckley had dismounted and they were all clinging around him and tears of joy and delight running down their cheeks.... It was truly an affecting sight and proved the affection which these people entertained for Buckley ... amongst the number were a little old man and an old woman, one of his wives. Buckley told me this was his old friend with whom he had lived and associated thirty years.
By this time, Buckley was wearing clothes of the Englishmen. As he prepared to leave the gathering, his friends were disheartened to realise that he would not be living with them again.
During the course of his career as an interpreter and mediator, he tried to manage his role working for the government while also being concerned about equitable treatment of Aboriginal people. He felt that Indigenous people and influential white men were suspicious of him and he decided to move to Van Diemen's Land. In December 1837, he left Port Phillip and on 10 January 1838 he arrived in Hobart in what was then known as Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). He worked at the Immigrants' Home as assistant storekeeper. Four years later, he worked at the Female Factory as a gatekeeper.
On 27 June 1840, he was married to Julia Higgins, at St. John's Church, New Town, Hobart, by the Reverend T. J. Ewing. According to a contemporary, George Russell, she is said to have been as short as he was tall—so much so that when out walking she was too short to even reach his arm. To remedy this problem he would tie two corners of his handkerchief together, and after fastening this to his arm, she would put her arm through the loop. Julia was the 26 year-old widow of Daniel Higgins (he changed his surname from Eagers to Higgins upon coming to Australia), who allegedly had been murdered by Aboriginal people while en route overland from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1839. He had met the Higgins family, Daniel, Julia, and their daughter when he worked at the Immigrant's Home. After Daniel's death, Buckley asked his widow to marry him.
Buckley lived in the Arthur Circus neighbourhood of Battery Point, Hobart. He retired in 1850. Buckley was seriously injured after he was thrown from his gig at Greenpond near Hobart. He died of his injuries on 30 January 1856 at the age of 76. Buckley was interred at the burial ground of St. George's Anglican Church, Battery Point.
After his death, his widow Julia moved north to live with her daughter and son-in-law, William Jackson, and their family. Eventually they moved to Sydney. She died there at the Hyde Park Asylum on 18 August 1863.
Legacy
A plaque commemorates him at Buckley's Rest, a small park in Sandy Bay, Hobart.
Buckley's Falls near Woorongo was named after Buckley by John Helder Wedge.
John Morgan's The Life and Adventures of William Buckley as history
Almost all we know of Buckley's life with the Wathaurung people is based on the 1852 account written by John Morgan (1792–1866), Life and Adventures of William Buckley.
Written when the illiterate Buckley was 72 years old, it was clearly intended to make money for the insolvent Morgan and Buckley. As a result, the account has sometimes been dismissed as more the product of Morgan's fertile imagination than a true representation of Buckley's experiences. Its references to the mythical Bunyip and tribe of copper-coloured, pot-bellied "Pallidurgbarrans" who supposedly lived in the Otway forests are often cited as evidence of this. However, while acknowledging its limitations, some scholars, such as Lester Hiatt, see it as consistent with "modern understandings of Aboriginal social life". Tim Flannery suggests that Buckley's story has been "ignored or mentioned only in passing by historians" because it is "so at odds with contemporary preconceptions". Another factor, he suggests, is that "studies of Aboriginal Victoria have long relied heavily on archaeological research". Flannery cites Edward Curr, an early author of Aboriginal studies, who claimed Morgan's book gave "a truer account of Aboriginal life than any work I have read".
"You've got Buckley's chance"
Buckley's improbable survival is believed by many Australians to be the source of the vernacular phrase, "you've got Buckley's or none" (or simply "you've got Buckley's"), which means "no chance", or "it's as good as impossible". The Macquarie Dictionary supports this theory. The Australian National Dictionary Centre deprecates a second theory: that the expression was a pun on the name of a now defunct Melbourne department store chain, Buckley & Nunn because this second explanation "appears to have arisen after the original phrase was established".
The phrase “Buckley’s chance” spread outward from Australia with emigration and into the vernacular of other countries. For example, John Kennedy O’Brien (1907–1979, AKA Jack O’Brien) used this phrase to highlight inter-town travel difficulties following New Zealand’s Murchison Earthquake of 1929; “...from what Mr O’Brien saw of the country, the...man had only Buckley’s chance of reaching his goal”. Although John himself was born in New Zealand, his father, Kennedy Hugh O’Brien (1874-1927), was a native of Victoria, Australia, having emigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1890s, bringing some forms of colloquial language with him. “Buckley’s chance”, it seems, came with him.
See also
List of convicts transported to Australia
People rescued and taken in by Aboriginal people
Eliza Fraser
James Morrill (castaway)
Narcisse Pelletier
Strandloper, a novel about Buckley by Cheshire author Alan Garner.
Notes
References
Sources
External links
Moore, Bruce Buckley's (chance) at Australian National University and Oxford University Press periodical Ozwords, April 2011, p. 7 (folio 6)
William Buckley, Hindsight, Australian Broadcasting Corporation / Radio National
William Buckley story on Culture Victoria
18th-century births
1856 deaths
19th-century English criminals
Australian folklore
British people convicted of theft
Convicts transported to Australia
British emigrants to the Colony of New South Wales
English escapees
Escapees from British detention
People from Cheshire
Recipients of British royal pardons
Convict escapees in Australia
Escapees from Victoria (state) detention
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390538
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A4hler%20manifold
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Kähler manifold
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In mathematics and especially differential geometry, a Kähler manifold is a manifold with three mutually compatible structures: a complex structure, a Riemannian structure, and a symplectic structure. The concept was first studied by Jan Arnoldus Schouten and David van Dantzig in 1930, and then introduced by Erich Kähler in 1933. The terminology has been fixed by André Weil. Kähler geometry refers to the study of Kähler manifolds, their geometry and topology, as well as the study of structures and constructions that can be performed on Kähler manifolds, such as the existence of special connections like Hermitian Yang–Mills connections, or special metrics such as Kähler–Einstein metrics.
Every smooth complex projective variety is a Kähler manifold. Hodge theory is a central part of algebraic geometry, proved using Kähler metrics.
Definitions
Since Kähler manifolds are equipped with several compatible structures, they can be described from different points of view:
Symplectic viewpoint
A Kähler manifold is a symplectic manifold equipped with an integrable almost-complex structure J which is compatible with the symplectic form ω, meaning that the bilinear form
on the tangent space of X at each point is symmetric and positive definite (and hence a Riemannian metric on X).
Complex viewpoint
A Kähler manifold is a complex manifold X with a Hermitian metric h whose associated 2-form ω is closed. In more detail, h gives a positive definite Hermitian form on the tangent space TX at each point of X, and the 2-form ω is defined by
for tangent vectors u and v (where i is the complex number ). For a Kähler manifold X, the Kähler form ω is a real closed (1,1)-form. A Kähler manifold can also be viewed as a Riemannian manifold, with the Riemannian metric g defined by
Equivalently, a Kähler manifold X is a Hermitian manifold of complex dimension n such that for every point p of X, there is a holomorphic coordinate chart around p in which the metric agrees with the standard metric on Cn to order 2 near p. That is, if the chart takes p to 0 in Cn, and the metric is written in these coordinates as , then
for all a, b in
Since the 2-form ω is closed, it determines an element in de Rham cohomology , known as the Kähler class.
Riemannian viewpoint
A Kähler manifold is a Riemannian manifold X of even dimension 2n whose holonomy group is contained in the unitary group U(n). Equivalently, there is a complex structure J on the tangent space of X at each point (that is, a real linear map from TX to itself with ) such that J preserves the metric g (meaning that ) and J is preserved by parallel transport.
Kähler potential
A smooth real-valued function ρ on a complex manifold is called strictly plurisubharmonic if the real closed (1,1)-form
is positive, that is, a Kähler form. Here are the Dolbeault operators. The function ρ is called a Kähler potential for ω.
Conversely, by the complex version of the Poincaré lemma, known as the local -lemma, every Kähler metric can locally be described in this way. That is, if is a Kähler manifold, then for every point p in X there is a neighborhood U of p and a smooth real-valued function ρ on U such that . Here ρ is called a local Kähler potential for ω. There is no comparable way of describing a general Riemannian metric in terms of a single function.
Space of Kähler potentials
Whilst it is not always possible to describe a Kähler form globally using a single Kähler potential, it is possible to describe the difference of two Kähler forms this way, provided they are in the same de Rham cohomology class. This is a consequence of the -lemma from Hodge theory.
Namely, if is a compact Kähler manifold, then the cohomology class is called a Kähler class. Any other representative of this class, say, differs from by for some one-form . The -lemma further states that this exact form may be written as for a smooth function . In the local discussion above, one takes the local Kähler class on an open subset , and by the Poincaré lemma any Kähler form will locally be cohomologous to zero. Thus the local Kähler potential is the same for locally.
In general if is a Kähler class, then any other Kähler metric can be written as for such a smooth function. This form is not automatically a positive form, so the space of Kähler potentials for the class is defined as those positive cases, and is commonly denoted by :
If two Kähler potentials differ by a constant, then they define the same Kähler metric, so the space of Kähler metrics in the class can be identified with the quotient . The space of Kähler potentials is a contractible space. In this way the space of Kähler potentials allows one to study all Kähler metrics in a given class simultaneously, and this perspective in the study of existence results for Kähler metrics.
Kähler manifolds and volume minimizers
For a compact Kähler manifold X, the volume of a closed complex subspace of X is determined by its homology class. In a sense, this means that the geometry of a complex subspace is bounded in terms of its topology. (This fails completely for real submanifolds.) Explicitly, Wirtinger's formula says that
where Y is an r-dimensional closed complex subspace and ω is the Kähler form. Since ω is closed, this integral depends only on the class of Y in . These volumes are always positive, which expresses a strong positivity of the Kähler class ω in with respect to complex subspaces. In particular, ωn is not zero in , for a compact Kähler manifold X of complex dimension n.
A related fact is that every closed complex subspace Y of a compact Kähler manifold X is a minimal submanifold (outside its singular set). Even more: by the theory of calibrated geometry, Y minimizes volume among all (real) cycles in the same homology class.
Kähler identities
As a consequence of the strong interaction between the smooth, complex, and Riemannian structures on a Kähler manifold, there are natural identities between the various operators on the complex differential forms of Kähler manifolds which do not hold for arbitrary complex manifolds. These identities relate the exterior derivative , the Dolbeault operators and their adjoints, the Laplacians , and the Lefschetz operator and its adjoint, the contraction operator . The identities form the basis of the analytical toolkit on Kähler manifolds, and combined with Hodge theory are fundamental in proving many important properties of Kähler manifolds and their cohomology. In particular the Kähler identities are critical in proving the Kodaira and Nakano vanishing theorems, the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem, Hard Lefschetz theorem, Hodge-Riemann bilinear relations, and Hodge index theorem.
The Laplacian on a Kähler manifold
On a Riemannian manifold of dimension N, the Laplacian on smooth r-forms is defined by
where is the exterior derivative and , where is the Hodge star operator. (Equivalently, is the adjoint of with respect to the L2 inner product on r-forms with compact support.) For a Hermitian manifold X, and are decomposed as
and two other Laplacians are defined:
If X is Kähler, the Kähler identities imply these Laplacians are all the same up to a constant:
These identities imply that on a Kähler manifold X,
where is the space of harmonic r-forms on X (forms α with ) and is the space of harmonic (p,q)-forms. That is, a differential form is harmonic if and only if each of its (p,q)-components is harmonic.
Further, for a compact Kähler manifold X, Hodge theory gives an interpretation of the splitting above which does not depend on the choice of Kähler metric. Namely, the cohomology of X with complex coefficients splits as a direct sum of certain coherent sheaf cohomology groups:
The group on the left depends only on X as a topological space, while the groups on the right depend on X as a complex manifold. So this Hodge decomposition theorem connects topology and complex geometry for compact Kähler manifolds.
Let H(X) be the complex vector space , which can be identified with the space of harmonic forms with respect to a given Kähler metric. The Hodge numbers of X are defined by . The Hodge decomposition implies a decomposition of the Betti numbers of a compact Kähler manifold X in terms of its Hodge numbers:
The Hodge numbers of a compact Kähler manifold satisfy several identities. The Hodge symmetry holds because the Laplacian is a real operator, and so . The identity can be proved using that the Hodge star operator gives an isomorphism . It also follows from Serre duality.
Topology of compact Kähler manifolds
A simple consequence of Hodge theory is that every odd Betti number b2a+1 of a compact Kähler manifold is even, by Hodge symmetry. This is not true for compact complex manifolds in general, as shown by the example of the Hopf surface, which is diffeomorphic to and hence has .
The "Kähler package" is a collection of further restrictions on the cohomology of compact Kähler manifolds, building on Hodge theory. The results include the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem, the hard Lefschetz theorem, and the Hodge-Riemann bilinear relations. A related result is that every compact Kähler manifold is formal in the sense of rational homotopy theory.
The question of which groups can be fundamental groups of compact Kähler manifolds, called Kähler groups, is wide open. Hodge theory gives many restrictions on the possible Kähler groups. The simplest restriction is that the abelianization of a Kähler group must have even rank, since the Betti number b1 of a compact Kähler manifold is even. (For example, the integers Z cannot be the fundamental group of a compact Kähler manifold.) Extensions of the theory such as non-abelian Hodge theory give further restrictions on which groups can be Kähler groups.
Without the Kähler condition, the situation is simple: Clifford Taubes showed that every finitely presented group arises as the fundamental group of some compact complex manifold of dimension 3. (Conversely, the fundamental group of any closed manifold is finitely presented.)
Characterizations of complex projective varieties and compact Kähler manifolds
The Kodaira embedding theorem characterizes smooth complex projective varieties among all compact Kähler manifolds. Namely, a compact complex manifold X is projective if and only if there is a Kähler form ω on X whose class in is in the image of the integral cohomology group . (Because a positive multiple of a Kähler form is a Kähler form, it is equivalent to say that X has a Kähler form whose class in is in .) Equivalently, X is projective if and only if there is a holomorphic line bundle L on X with a hermitian metric whose curvature form ω is positive (since ω is then a Kähler form that represents the first Chern class of L in ). The Kähler form ω that satisfies these conditions (that is, Kähler form ω is an integral differential form) is also called the Hodge form, and the Kähler metric at this time is called the Hodge metric. The compact Kähler manifolds with Hodge metric are also called Hodge manifolds.
Many properties of Kähler manifolds hold in the slightly greater generality of -manifolds, that is compact complex manifolds for which the -lemma holds. In particular the Bott–Chern cohomology is an alternative to the Dolbeault cohomology of a compact complex manifolds, and they are isomorphic if and only if the manifold satisfies the -lemma, and in particular agree when the manifold is Kähler. In general the kernel of the natural map from Bott–Chern cohomology to Dolbeault cohomology contains information about the failure of the manifold to be Kähler.
Every compact complex curve is projective, but in complex dimension at least 2, there are many compact Kähler manifolds that are not projective; for example, most compact complex tori are not projective. One may ask whether every compact Kähler manifold can at least be deformed (by continuously varying the complex structure) to a smooth projective variety. Kunihiko Kodaira's work on the classification of surfaces implies that every compact Kähler manifold of complex dimension 2 can indeed be deformed to a smooth projective variety. Claire Voisin found, however, that this fails in dimensions at least 4. She constructed a compact Kähler manifold of complex dimension 4 that is not even homotopy equivalent to any smooth complex projective variety.
One can also ask for a characterization of compact Kähler manifolds among all compact complex manifolds. In complex dimension 2, Kodaira and Yum-Tong Siu showed that a compact complex surface has a Kähler metric if and only if its first Betti number is even. An alternative proof of this result which does not require the hard case-by-case study using the classification of compact complex surfaces was provided independently by Buchdahl and Lamari. Thus "Kähler" is a purely topological property for compact complex surfaces. Hironaka's example shows, however, that this fails in dimensions at least 3. In more detail, the example is a 1-parameter family of smooth compact complex 3-folds such that most fibers are Kähler (and even projective), but one fiber is not Kähler. Thus a compact Kähler manifold can be diffeomorphic to a non-Kähler complex manifold.
Kähler–Einstein manifolds
A Kähler manifold is called Kähler–Einstein if it has constant Ricci curvature. Equivalently, the Ricci curvature tensor is equal to a constant λ times the metric tensor, Ric = λg. The reference to Einstein comes from general relativity, which asserts in the absence of mass that spacetime is a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold with zero Ricci curvature. See the article on Einstein manifolds for more details.
Although Ricci curvature is defined for any Riemannian manifold, it plays a special role in Kähler geometry: the Ricci curvature of a Kähler manifold X can be viewed as a real closed (1,1)-form that represents c1(X) (the first Chern class of the tangent bundle) in . It follows that a compact Kähler–Einstein manifold X must have canonical bundle KX either anti-ample, homologically trivial, or ample, depending on whether the Einstein constant λ is positive, zero, or negative. Kähler manifolds of those three types are called Fano, Calabi–Yau, or with ample canonical bundle (which implies general type), respectively. By the Kodaira embedding theorem, Fano manifolds and manifolds with ample canonical bundle are automatically projective varieties.
Shing-Tung Yau proved the Calabi conjecture: every smooth projective variety with ample canonical bundle has a Kähler–Einstein metric (with constant negative Ricci curvature), and every Calabi–Yau manifold has a Kähler–Einstein metric (with zero Ricci curvature). These results are important for the classification of algebraic varieties, with applications such as the Miyaoka–Yau inequality for varieties with ample canonical bundle and the Beauville–Bogomolov decomposition for Calabi–Yau manifolds.
By contrast, not every smooth Fano variety has a Kähler–Einstein metric (which would have constant positive Ricci curvature). However, Xiuxiong Chen, Simon Donaldson, and Song Sun proved the Yau–Tian–Donaldson conjecture: a smooth Fano variety has a Kähler–Einstein metric if and only if it is K-stable, a purely algebro-geometric condition.
In situations where there cannot exist a Kähler–Einstein metric, it is possible to study mild generalizations including constant scalar curvature Kähler metrics and extremal Kähler metrics. When a Kähler–Einstein metric can exist, these broader generalizations are automatically Kähler–Einstein.
Holomorphic sectional curvature
The deviation of a Riemannian manifold X from the standard metric on Euclidean space is measured by sectional curvature, which is a real number associated to any real 2-plane in the tangent space of X at a point. For example, the sectional curvature of the standard metric on CPn (for ) varies between 1/4 and 1. For a Hermitian manifold (for example, a Kähler manifold), the holomorphic sectional curvature means the sectional curvature restricted to complex lines in the tangent space. This behaves more simply, in that CPn has holomorphic sectional curvature equal to 1. At the other extreme, the open unit ball in Cn has a complete Kähler metric with holomorphic sectional curvature equal to −1. (With this metric, the ball is also called complex hyperbolic space.)
The holomorphic sectional curvature is intimately related to the complex geometry of the underlying complex manifold. It is an elementary consequence of the Ahlfors Schwarz lemma that if is a Hermitian manifold with a Hermitian metric of negative holomorphic sectional curvature (bounded above by a negative constant), then it is Brody hyperbolic (i.e., every holomorphic map is constant). If X happens to be compact, then this is equivalent to the manifold being Kobayashi hyperbolic.
On the other hand, if is a compact Kähler manifold with a Kähler metric of positive holomorphic sectional curvature, Yang Xiaokui showed that X is rationally connected.
A remarkable feature of complex geometry is that holomorphic sectional curvature decreases on complex submanifolds. (The same goes for a more general concept, holomorphic bisectional curvature.) For example, every complex submanifold of Cn (with the induced metric from Cn) has holomorphic sectional curvature ≤ 0.
For holomorphic maps between Hermitian manifolds, the holomorphic sectional curvature is not strong enough to control the target curvature term appearing in the Schwarz lemma second-order estimate. This motivated the consideration of the real bisectional curvature, introduced by Xiaokui Yang and Fangyang Zheng. This also appears in the work of Man-Chun Lee and Jeffrey Streets under the name complex curvature operator.
Examples
Complex space Cn with the standard Hermitian metric is a Kähler manifold.
A compact complex torus Cn/Λ (Λ a full lattice) inherits a flat metric from the Euclidean metric on Cn, and is therefore a compact Kähler manifold.
Every Riemannian metric on an oriented 2-manifold is Kähler. (Indeed, its holonomy group is contained in the rotation group SO(2), which is equal to the unitary group U(1).) In particular, an oriented Riemannian 2-manifold is a Riemann surface in a canonical way; this is known as the existence of isothermal coordinates. Conversely, every Riemann surface is Kähler since the Kähler form of any Hermitian metric is closed for dimensional reasons.
There is a standard choice of Kähler metric on complex projective space CPn, the Fubini–Study metric. One description involves the unitary group , the group of linear automorphisms of Cn+1 that preserve the standard Hermitian form. The Fubini–Study metric is the unique Riemannian metric on CPn (up to a positive multiple) that is invariant under the action of on CPn. One natural generalization of CPn is provided by the Hermitian symmetric spaces of compact type, such as Grassmannians. The natural Kähler metric on a Hermitian symmetric space of compact type has sectional curvature ≥ 0.
The induced metric on a complex submanifold of a Kähler manifold is Kähler. In particular, any Stein manifold (embedded in Cn) or smooth projective algebraic variety (embedded in CPn) is Kähler. This is a large class of examples.
The open unit ball B in Cn has a complete Kähler metric called the Bergman metric, with holomorphic sectional curvature equal to −1. A natural generalization of the ball is provided by the Hermitian symmetric spaces of noncompact type, such as the Siegel upper half space. Every Hermitian symmetric space X of noncompact type is isomorphic to a bounded domain in some Cn, and the Bergman metric of X is a complete Kähler metric with sectional curvature ≤ 0.
Every K3 surface is Kähler (by Siu).
See also
Almost complex manifold
Hyperkähler manifold
Quaternion-Kähler manifold
K-energy functional
Notes
References
External links
Riemannian manifolds
Algebraic geometry
Complex manifolds
Symplectic geometry
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390561
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krosno
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Krosno
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Krosno (in full The Royal Free City of Krosno, ) is a historical town and county in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in southeastern Poland. The estimated population of the town is 47,140 inhabitants as of 2014.
The functional urban area of Krosno has a population of 115,000 inhabitants.
Krosno is a medieval fortified town, a former Royal Free Town and centre of cloth, linen, canvas, baize and Hungarian wine trade. It is also notable for its glassmaking traditions, which became known as the Krosno Glassware. Until recently it was a provincial capital.
Krosno is the site of the first oil well (or "mine") in the world.
Geography
The River Wisłok passes by Krosno. Slovakia is about south, and Ukraine is about east of the city. It is located in the heartland of the Doły (Pits), and its average altitude is above sea level, but some hills are located within the confines of the city.
Neighbouring municipalities are Korczyna, Krościenko Wyżne, Miejsce Piastowe, Chorkówka, Jedlicze, and Wojaszówka.
Situated in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (since 1999), previously it was the capital of Krosno Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the capital of Krosno County.
Krosno covers an area of , and has seven separate town quarters and 5 housing estates. The historical centre is situated on a hill between the fork of the Lubatówka and Wisłok Rivers (tributary of the San River).
History
Middle Ages
The first mention of the town, which names Krosno as one of 34 estates in Lesser Poland granted to the Bishopric of Lubusz, appears in a document signed by High Duke of Poland Leszek II the Black in 1282. However, the oldest traces of settlement in the fork of the Wisłok and Lubatówka Rivers, found during archaeological research, date back to the 10th and 11th centuries. The area was inhabited by the old Polish tribe of Lendians.
Today it is difficult to clearly determine the etymology of the place-name of Krosno. Scholars give several versions explaining the origin of the name. Some researchers thought that the name is connected with "weaving loom" (in Polish: krosno), while others traced it back to "pustules", "pimples" or "being pimply" (in Polish: krosta, krostowatość), which apparently reflected the bumpy shape of the area where the first settlement was founded. Finally an opinion was adopted that the original Polish name disappeared and the existing name is the result of a transformation of the German (see: Walddeutsche) name "Krossen".
The date of the first foundation charter of the town is not known though we may presume that the oldest preserved royal document of Casimir the Great, dating from 1367, regarding the sale of the Krosno aldermanship, was modelled on an earlier foundation act. Hence it should be assumed that about the middle of the 14th century, King Casimir transformed Krosno from a settlement into a town chartered according to the Magdeburg rights and brought in numerous groups of German settlers.
Krosno, a royal town from its origin, used the coat of arms of the Kuyavian branch of the Piast dynasty (half an eagle and half a lion with a crown over their heads) and, owing to the king's foundation, was surrounded with a defensive wall as early as the 14th century. During the reign of Casimir III the Great the construction of stone fortifications was begun to encircle the hill. But it was only under King Władysław II Jagiełło that the full-length stone and partly earth town fortifications were completed. Two gates led into the town: the Hungarian one from the south-east and the Kraków one from the north-west. The well-fortified and secure town provided perfect conditions for the development of craft and trade. The statutes of the butchers guild were known as early as 1403 and in the middle of the 15th century the guilds of bakers, shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths as well as clothiers and fullers were constituted. Krosno became an important production centre of cloths and fustians.
The medieval town had waterworks and a sewage system, which is evidence of its importance and the wealth of its inhabitants. The privilege granted by King Casimir IV Jagiellon in 1461 shows that Krosno, next to Kraków and Lwów, was the third town in the Kingdom of Poland with such facilities. The archaeological research conducted recently, based on the dendrochronological method, enabled scholars to move the date of the system's installation back to the middle of the 14th century. The pipe-line master dealt with repairs and maintenance of the whole water-supply and sewage systems. From the research conducted by the Krosno archaeologists it appears that the system was used until the beginning of the 19th century.
The 15th century meant the beginning of commerce development for Krosno. Apart from local trade during weekly Monday fairs the town participated in a large-scale import-export and transit commerce. The main trade routes led to the Red Ruthenia, Hungary and the countries of southern Europe. The largest transactions were made during yearly fairs held three times a year. The trade was mainly in local cloths and baizes, horses, cattle, copperware and imported commodities made of copper and iron, and obviously, in Hungarian wine, on which several Krosno merchant families made fortunes. The first Jews to settle in Krosno were the brothers Nechemia and Lazar of Regensburg who received special permits from the Polish King, Władysław II Jagiełło in the 15th century.
Early modern era
In spite of natural disasters (flood in 1497, the fire of a suburb in 1474 and of the town in 1500), Thomas Tarczay's troops raids (1473 and 1474), pestilence, which nearly depopulated the town, the 16th century was the most favourable for the development of Krosno. The town had its own bleachery, fullery, brickyard, flour mill, municipal baths, it enjoyed the royal privilege for limestone excavation, it had the customs chamber and the right of storage of commodities. High standards of living in Krosno, called at that time parva Cracovia, resulted partially from the activity of the local parish school. In the years 1400-1600 173 natives of Krosno studied in the Kraków Academy, which is evidenced by the entries in Album studiosorum.
Krosno of the 16th century was renowned not only for the wealth of its inhabitants, thrift and wide commercial contacts. It was also one of the most populous towns in the province of Lesser Poland: the population is estimated at about 4 thousand. The view of Krosno was included in the work of J. Braun and F. Hoghenberg entitled ‘The Towns of the World’, published in Cologne in 1617 or in Andreas Cellarius's work entitled ‘Regin Poloniae Magnique Ducatus Lithuaniae omniumque regionum subiectorum novissima descriptio’, published in Amsterdam in 1659.
At the beginning of the 17th century there were about 11 collective guilds in which craftsmen representing 79 production and service trades were associated. Apart from traditional specialities connected with basic functions of the town there were also goldsmiths, painters, comb-makers, armourers, pavers, leather-dressers, violin makers and soapboilers. But it was commerce that provided the town with most revenues, both from goods exchange and from services for visiting merchants. Local clerks, scribes, innkeepers, brewers, and even townspeople providing accommodation and letting shops and cellars earned a lot. Higher donations were given to the clergy for church expenses. At that time many Hungarian merchants settled in Krosno, mainly those trading in wine. Scots, who specialised in large-scale commerce, also came to stay and the most outstanding person among them was Robert Porteous, a wine trader from Langside, Dalkeith, who used his wealth to become a benefactor of institutions within the city. There were also Armenians and Ruthenians from Lwów, but the most numerous group of traders were Jews, although Krosno had a privilege ‘de non tolerandis Judeis’, barring Jews from residing and trading within the city walls. Jewish traders living in nearby townships of Korczyna, Rymanów or Dukla were frequently jailed and their wares confiscated for attempting to enter Krosno.
The middle of the 17th century witnessed the beginning of a gradual loss of the earlier position of the town. Natural disasters, raids of the Swedish, Transylvanian, and Tartar troops, pestilences and war requisitions brought Krosno to a desperate state at the end of 17th century.
19th century and interbellum
In the time of the partitions of Poland and under the Austrian rule, once rich and important, the town experienced a period of severe impoverishment. It became one of many small towns of Galicia. Weaving was the only handicraft which enjoyed prosperity at that time. Large-scale flax and hemp plantations provided work for many weaving shops near Krosno. Korczyna and Kombornia were the strongest centres of this industry but there were thousands of home weaving shops in the vicinity of Krosno.
It was not until the middle of the 19th century, the period of the Galician autonomy from 1867 to the outbreak of the World War I, that Krosno started to rise from the decline. The birth of Polish oil industry undoubtedly contributed to the notable and rapid increase of importance of the town. The first oil company started by Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Tytus Trzecielski and Karol Klobassa in 1856 and the refinery they erected in Chorkówka caused gradual inflow of foreign capital. As a results of the new administrative division the Krosno district (powiat) was established and in 1867 Krosno became the seat of the offices of the district authorities (starostwo). At the turn of the 20th century many societies, schools and institutions were established in the town: Loan Society, Nationwide Weaving School, Teacher Training School, Real Secondary School, "Zgoda" (Accord) Townspeople's Society, "Sokół" (Falcon) Gymnastic Society, Bleach and Finish Plant, an oil refinery, the First Domestic Factory of Tower Clocks. This state of relative progress lasted until the outbreak of World War I.
During the war Krosno suffered serious damages. The inhabitants of the town, bombed and looted several times, suffered both from the Austrian and the Russian troops. After the war, in 1918, Poland regained independence and control of the town. In interwar Poland, Krosno was a county seat administratively located in the Lwów Voivodeship, and the town evolved gradually into an important industrial centre: a licence was issued to establish a flax straw breaking plant and a linen weaving plant, in the 1920s Polish Glass Factory, Joint-Stock Company was set up, in 1928 the construction of the airfield was begun and the aviation school was moved to Krosno from Bydgoszcz, in the 1930s the hangars were erected.
World War II
During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, on 4 September 1939, the Poles evacuated the local aviation school in three groups to Łuck in then-eastern Poland. After the Soviet invasion of Poland from the east, two groups were captured by the Soviets, while one managed to escape through the Polish-Romanian border.
Krosno was under German occupation from 8 September 1939 to 11 September 1944. On 25 September 1939, the German Einsatzgruppe I entered the town to commit various atrocities against the populace. As a result of the genocidal policy of Nazi Germany, which goal was also the biological extermination of Polish children, about 80% of Polish children in the area suffered from anemia. 100 Poles who were either born, lived or studied in Krosno were murdered by the Russians in April–May 1940 in the large Katyn massacre. Among the victims were many local policemen. 24 students of the local aviation school were murdered in Katyn and Kharkiv. From 1942 to 1944, the Germans operated a forced labour camp for Jews in the town.
The war interrupted the prosperous development of Krosno. The machinery and equipment of the glass factory, the refinery and the flax processing plant were stolen or devastated. The Krosno industry was completely ruined.
Post-war period
In September 1944, almost immediately after liberation, the reconstruction of the industry, destroyed during World War II, began. The glass factory and the flax plant were put into operation. Later on research in geology and oil drilling began, "Polmo" Shock Absorbers Factory and Transport and Aircraft Equipment Factory (WSK) were set up. Oil industry was and still is of importance for the town. Oil Industry Engineering Institute, "Naftomet" Oil Drilling Equipment Factory, Oil Drilling Establishment and "Naftomontaż" enterprise ( assembling oil drilling equipment on oil fields) are organizations which continue the oil industry traditions of the region.
Climate
Krosno has an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfb) using the isotherm or a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb) using the isotherm. Krosno has warm summers and cold winters.
Tourism
Due to a continuously rising number of travelers from Poland and abroad, the town authorities, in 2016, launched a website for tourists (available in English): visitkrosno
Some of Krosno highlights are:
The Old Town with the Town Square, the Portius Tower and multiple historic townhouses
Holy Trinity church
Franciscan church
Glass Heritage Centre
Subcarpathian Museum
The Museum of Crafts
In the nearest neighbourhood:
the Kamieniec Castle in Odrzykoń
Assumption of Holy Mary Church, Haczów
health resort and spa Iwonicz-Zdrój
Petroleum Industry Museum in Bóbrka, Krosno County
Maria Konopnicka Museum in Żarnowiec
Education
Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa in Krosno
Wyzsza Szkoła Informatyki i Zarzadzania in Rzeszów, branch in Krosno
I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Mikołaja Kopernika in Krosno, in 2000 best of the region,
Politics
The Krosno constituency includes several other smaller cities.
Sport and Culture
Several cultural and sporting events on local, national and international scale are held in the town. Culture is celebrated by the Krosno Days of Music, the theatrical Encounters, the Musical Spring, the Krosno Fairs, the Galicia Festival, reviews of children theatres, hiker's songs and poetry singing festivals, the "Kontakt" Euro-Regional Fair, the "Soli Deo Gloria" Euro-Regional Concerts of Christmas Carols. Every two years Krosno hosts the National Biennial of Photography "Krosno - Town and People", International Biennial of Artistic Linen Tapestry "Z Krosna do Krosna", Biennial of Krosno Plastic Arts. Fans of sports throng to international volleyball and basketball tournaments organized annually, the International Mountain Ballooning Contest, the National Tournament of Ballroom Dancing for the Podkarpacie Cup. The band Decapitated hails from Krosno.
Karpaty Krosno - a football team.
Wilki Krosno - speedway team
UKS Krosno - cycle speedway
Economy
Krosno is located in an oil bearing region. Surface seepage of oil was locally used (unrefined) in lamps as early as the 16th century. In the 19th century Ignacy Łukasiewicz a local pharmacist began exploiting the deposits from hand-dug wells, years before the drilling at Titusville, Pennsylvania which is usually said to be the beginning of modern petroleum development.
One of the things that Krosno is well known for is the quality glassware and crystal that is produced in the town, and distributed throughout the world. The history of the company Krosno Glass S.A. (former Krosno Glassworks) dates back to 1923. The company employs nearly 2,200 people and is the largest employer in the region. A long tradition in glass production and the influence of the glass industry on the local economy have made Krosno known as the "City of Glass".
Notable people
Stanisław Bergman (1862–1930), Polish painter
Seweryn Bieszczad (1852–1923), Polish painter
Kacper Bieszczad (born 2002), footballer
Decapitated, Polish Death Metal band established in 1996
Władysław Gomułka (1905–1982), communist leader of Poland
Fabius Gross (1906–1950), Austrian marine zoologist
Andrzej Pikul (born 1954), Polish pianist
Paweł Przytocki (born 1958), Polish conductor of classical music
Kamil Radulj (born 1988), football player
Jerzy Werner (1909–1977), Polish car designer
Karolina Zmarlak (born 1982), Polish-American fashion designer
International relations
Twin towns — Sister cities
Krosno is twinned with:
Gallery
See also
Oświęcim Chapel
External links
https://www.visitkrosno.pl/en (English)
http://www.krosno.pl/en/ (English, Polish, German)
http://www.krosnocity.pl/ (Polish)
http://www.krosno24.pl/ (Polish)
References
Bibliography
Krosno – studia z dziejów miasta i regionu, T. I, red. Garbarcik J., Kraków 1972
Krosno – studia z dziejów miasta i regionu, T. II, red. Garbarcik J., Kraków 1973
Krosno – studia z dziejów miasta i regionu, T. III, red. Cynarski St., Kraków 1995
Orłowicz M.: Ilustrowany przewodnik po Galicyi, Bukowinie, Spiszu, Orawie i Śląsku Cieszyńskim. Książnica Polska. Lwów 1919, Reprint: Ruthenus Rafał Barski. Krosno 2002
Wojnar T., Kyc A.: Tradycja i współczesność. Monografia Krośnieńskich Hut Szkła "Krosno" SA 1923-1998, KHS "Krosno" SA. Krosno 1998
Notes
Cities and towns in Podkarpackie Voivodeship
Ruthenian Voivodeship
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Lwów Voivodeship
City counties of Poland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical%20symbols
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Astronomical symbols
|
Astronomical symbols are abstract pictorial symbols used to represent astronomical objects, theoretical constructs and observational events in European astronomy. The earliest forms of these symbols appear in Greek papyrus texts of late antiquity. The Byzantine codices in which many Greek papyrus texts were preserved continued and extended the inventory of astronomical symbols. New symbols have been invented to represent many planets and minor planets discovered in the 18th to the 21st centuries.
These symbols were once commonly used by professional astronomers, amateur astronomers, alchemists, and astrologers. While they are still commonly used in almanacs and astrological publications, their occurrence in published research and texts on astronomy is relatively infrequent, with some exceptions such as the Sun and Earth symbols appearing in astronomical constants, and certain zodiacal signs used to represent the solstices and equinoxes.
Unicode has encoded many of these symbols, mainly in the Miscellaneous Symbols, Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs,
and Alchemical Symbols blocks.
Symbols for the Sun and Moon
The use of astronomical symbols for the Sun and Moon dates to antiquity. The forms of the symbols that appear in the original papyrus texts of Greek horoscopes are a circle with one ray () for the Sun and a crescent for the Moon. The modern Sun symbol, a circle with a dot (☉), first appeared in Europe in the Renaissance.
In modern academic writing, the Sun symbol is used for astronomical constants relating to the Sun. Teff☉ represents the solar effective temperature, and the luminosity, mass, and radius of stars are often represented using the corresponding solar constants (, , and , respectively) as units of measurement.
Symbols for the planets
Symbols for the classical planets appear in many medieval Byzantine codices in which many ancient horoscopes were preserved. The written symbols for Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn have been traced to forms found in late Greek papyrus texts. The symbols for Jupiter and Saturn are identified as monograms of the corresponding Greek names, and the symbol for Mercury is a stylized caduceus. According to A.S.D. Maunder, antecedents of the planetary symbols were used in art to represent the gods associated with the classical planets; Bianchini's planisphere, discovered by Francesco Bianchini in the 18th century, produced in the 2nd century, shows Greek personifications of planetary gods charged with early versions of the planetary symbols: Mercury has a caduceus; Venus has, attached to her necklace, a cord connected to another necklace; Mars, a spear; Jupiter, a staff; Saturn, a scythe; the Sun, a circlet with rays radiating from it; and the Moon, a headdress with a crescent attached.
A diagram in Byzantine astronomer Johannes Kamateros's 12th century Compendium of Astrology shows the Sun represented by the circle with a ray, Jupiter by the letter Zeta (the initial of Zeus, Jupiter's counterpart in Greek mythology), Mars by a shield crossed by a spear, and the remaining classical planets by symbols resembling the modern ones, without the cross-mark at the bottom of the modern versions of the symbols for Mercury and Venus. These cross-marks first appear around the 16th century. According to Maunder, the addition of crosses appears to be "an attempt to give a savour of Christianity to the symbols of the old pagan gods."
The symbols for Uranus were created shortly after its discovery. One symbol, , invented by J. G. Köhler and refined by Bode, was intended to represent the newly discovered metal platinum; since platinum, commonly called white gold, was found by chemists mixed with iron, the symbol for platinum combines the alchemical symbols for the planetary elements iron, ♂, and gold, ☉.
Another symbol, , was suggested by Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande in 1784. In a letter to William Herschel, Lalande described it as "un globe surmonté par la première lettre de votre nom" ("a globe surmounted by the first letter of your name"). Today, Köhler's symbol is more common among astronomers, and Lalande's among astrologers, although it is not uncommon to see each symbol in the other context.
Several symbols were proposed for Neptune to accompany the suggested names for the planet. Claiming the right to name his discovery, Urbain Le Verrier originally proposed the name Neptune and the symbol of a trident, while falsely stating that this had been officially approved by the French Bureau des Longitudes. In October, he sought to name the planet Leverrier, after himself, and he had loyal support in this from the observatory director, François Arago, who in turn proposed a new symbol for the planet (). However, this suggestion met with stiff resistance outside France. French almanacs quickly reintroduced the name Herschel for Uranus, after that planet's discoverer Sir William Herschel, and Leverrier for the new planet. Professor James Pillans of the University of Edinburgh defended the name Janus for the new planet, and proposed a key for its symbol. Meanwhile, German-Russian astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve presented the name Neptune on December 29, 1846, to the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In August 1847, the Bureau des Longitudes announced its decision to follow prevailing astronomical practice and adopt the choice of Neptune, with Arago refraining from participating in this decision.
The International Astronomical Union discourages the use of these symbols in journal articles, though they do occur. In certain cases where planetary symbols might be used, such as in the headings of tables, the IAU Style Manual permits certain one- and (to disambiguate Mercury and Mars) two-letter abbreviations for the names of the planets.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+ Planets
|-
! scope="col" | Planet !! scope="col" | IAUabbreviation !! scope="col" | Symbol !! scope="col" | Unicodecode point !! scope="col" | Unicodedisplay !! scope="col" | Represents
|-
| scope="row" | Mercury
| H, Me
| align=center |
| U+263F
|
| style="text-align: left;" | Mercury's caduceus, with a cross
|-
| scope="row" | Venus
| V
| align=center |
| U+2640
|
| style="text-align: left;" | Perhaps Venus's necklace or a (copper) hand mirror, with a cross
|-
| scope="row" rowspan="2" | Earth
| rowspan="2" | E
| align=center |
| U+1F728
|
| style="text-align: left;" | the four quadrants of the world, divided by the four rivers descending from Eden
|-
| align=center |
| U+2641
|
| style="text-align: left;" | a globus cruciger
|-
| scope="row" | Mars
| M, Ma
| align=center |
| U+2642
|
| style="text-align: left;" | Mars's shield and spear
|-
| scope="row" | Jupiter
| J
| align=center |
| U+2643
|
| style="text-align: left;" | the letter Zeta with an abbreviation stroke (for Zeus, the Greek equivalent to the Roman god Jupiter)
|-
| scope="row" | Saturn
| S
| align=center |
| U+2644
|
| style="text-align: left;" | the letters kappa-rho with an abbreviation stroke (for Kronos, the Greek equivalent to the Roman god Saturn), with a cross
|-
| scope="row" rowspan=2| Uranus
|rowspan=2| U
|align=center|
| U+26E2
|
| style="text-align: left;" | symbol of the recently described element platinum, which was invented to provide a symbol for Uranus
|-
| align=center |
| U+2645
|
| style="text-align: left;" | a globe surmounted by the letter H (for Herschel, who discovered Uranus)(more common in older or British literature)
|-
| scope="row" rowspan=2|Neptune
| rowspan=2|N
| align=center |
| U+2646
|
| style="text-align: left;" | Neptune's trident
|-
| align=center |
| U+2BC9
|
| style="text-align: left;" | a globe surmounted by the letters "L" and "V", (for Le Verrier, who discovered Neptune)(more common in older, especially French, literature)
|}
Symbols for asteroids
Following the discovery of Ceres in 1801 by the astronomer and Catholic priest Giuseppe Piazzi, a group of astronomers ratified the name, which Piazzi had proposed. At that time, the sickle was chosen as a symbol of the planet.
The symbol for 2 Pallas, the spear of Pallas Athena, was invented by Baron Franz Xaver von Zach, who organized a group of twenty-four astronomers to search for a planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The symbol was introduced by von Zach in 1802.
In a letter to von Zach, discoverer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (who had discovered and named Pallas) expressed his approval of the proposed symbol, but wished that the handle of the sickle of Ceres had been adorned with a pommel instead of a crossbar, to better differentiate it from the sign of Venus.
German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding created the symbol for 3 Juno. Harding, who discovered this asteroid in 1804, proposed the name Juno and the use of a scepter topped with a star as its astronomical symbol.
The symbol for 4 Vesta was invented by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. Olbers, having previously discovered and named 2 Pallas, gave Gauss the honor of naming his newest discovery. Gauss decided to name the new asteroid for the goddess Vesta, and also designed the symbol (): the altar of the goddess, with the sacred fire burning on it. Other contemporaneous writers use a more elaborate symbol () instead.
Karl Ludwig Hencke, a German amateur astronomer, discovered the next two asteroids, 5 Astraea (in 1845) and 6 Hebe (in 1847). Hencke requested that the symbol for 5 Astraea be an upside-down anchor; however, a weighing scale was sometimes used instead. Gauss named 6 Hebe at Hencke's request, and chose a wineglass as the symbol.
As more new asteroids were discovered, astronomers continued to assign symbols to them. Thus, 7 Iris (discovered 1847) had for its symbol a rainbow with a star; 8 Flora (discovered 1847), a flower; 9 Metis (discovered 1848), an eye with a star; 10 Hygiea (discovered 1849), an upright snake with a star on its head; 11 Parthenope (discovered 1850), a standing fish with a star; 12 Victoria (discovered 1850), a star topped with a branch of laurel; 13 Egeria (discovered 1850), a buckler; 14 Irene (discovered 1851), a dove carrying an olive branch with a star on its head; 15 Eunomia (discovered 1851), a heart topped with a star; 16 Psyche (discovered 1852), a butterfly wing with a star; 17 Thetis (discovered 1852), a dolphin with a star; 18 Melpomene (discovered 1852), a dagger over a star; and 19 Fortuna (discovered 1852), a star over Fortuna's wheel.
In most cases the discovery reports only describe the symbols and do not draw them; from Hygiea onward, there are significant glyph variants as well as a significant delay between the discovery and the symbols having been communicated to the astronomical community as a whole. Consequently, astronomical publications were not always complete. The discovery reports for Melpomene and Fortuna do not even describe the symbols, which only appear in a later reference work by the discoverer; the symbols are drawn in the reports for Astraea, Hebe, and Thetis. Benjamin Apthorp Gould criticised the symbols in 1852 as being often inefficient at suggesting the bodies they represented and difficult to draw, and pointed out that the symbol that had been described for Irene had to his knowledge never actually been drawn. The same year, John Russell Hind expressed the contrary view that the symbols were easier to remember than the numbers, but also admitted that the names were more commonly used than either the numbers or the symbols.
The last edition of the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch (BAJ, Berlin Astronomical Yearbook) to use asteroid symbols was for the year 1853, published in 1850: although it includes eleven asteroids up to Parthenope, it only includes symbols for the first nine (up to Metis), noting that the symbols for Hygiea and Parthenope had not yet been made definitively known. The last edition of the British The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris to include asteroid ephemerides was that for 1855, published in 1852: despite fifteen asteroids being known (up to Eunomia), symbols are only included for the first nine.
Johann Franz Encke made a major change in the BAJ for the year 1854, published in 1851. He introduced encircled numbers instead of symbols, although his numbering began with Astraea, the first four asteroids continuing to be denoted by their traditional symbols. This symbolic innovation was adopted very quickly by the astronomical community. The following year (1852), Astraea's number was bumped up to 5, but Ceres through Vesta were not listed by their numbers until the 1867 edition. The Astronomical Journal edited by Gould adopted the symbolism in this form, with Ceres at 1 and Astraea at 5. This form had previously been proposed in an 1850 letter by Heinrich Christian Schumacher to Gauss. The circle later became a pair of parentheses, which were easier to typeset, and the parentheses were sometimes omitted altogether over the next few decades. Thus the iconic asteroid symbols fell out of use; reference works continued giving them for the next few decades, though they often noted them as being obsolete.
A few asteroids were given symbols by their discoverers after the encircled-number notation became widespread. 26 Proserpina (discovered 1853), 28 Bellona (discovered 1854), 35 Leukothea (discovered 1855), and 37 Fides (discovered 1855), all discovered by German astronomer Robert Luther, were assigned, respectively, a pomegranate with a star inside; a whip and spear; an antique lighthouse; and a cross. These symbols were drawn in the discovery reports. 29 Amphitrite was named and assigned a shell for its symbol by George Bishop, the owner of the observatory where astronomer Albert Marth discovered it in 1854, though the symbol was not drawn in the discovery report.
All these symbols are rare or obsolete in modern astronomy, though NASA has used Ceres' symbol when describing the dwarf planets. The major use of symbols for minor planets today is by astrologers, who have invented symbols for many more objects, though they sometimes use symbols that differ from the historical symbols for the same bodies.
Table
The missing historical symbols for the asteroids were proposed for inclusion in Unicode in 2023.
Symbols for trans-Neptunian objects
Pluto's name and symbol were announced by the discoverers on May 1, 1930.
The symbol, a monogram of the letters PL, could be interpreted to stand for Pluto or for Percival Lowell, the astronomer who initiated Lowell Observatory's search for a planet beyond the orbit of Neptune. Pluto has an alternative symbol consisting of a planetary orb over Pluto's bident: it is more common in astrology than astronomy, and was popularised by the astrologer Paul Clancy, but has been used by NASA to refer to Pluto as a dwarf planet. There are a few other astrological symbols for Pluto that are used locally. Pluto also had the IAU abbreviation P when it was considered the ninth planet.
The other large trans-Neptunian objects were only discovered around the dawn of the 21st century. They were not generally thought to be planets on their discovery, and planetary symbols had in any case mostly fallen out of use among astronomers by then. Denis Moskowitz, a software engineer in Massachusetts, proposed astronomical symbols for the dwarf planets Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, Haumea, Eris, Makemake, and Gonggong. These symbols are somewhat standard among astrologers (e.g. in the program Astrolog), which is where planetary symbols are most used today. Moskowitz has also proposed symbols for Varuna, Ixion, and Salacia, and others have done so for additional TNOs, but there is little consistency between sources.
NASA has used Moskowitz's symbols for Haumea, Makemake, and Eris in an astronomical context, and Unicode labels the symbols for Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, and Orcus (added to Unicode in 2022) as "astronomy symbols". Therefore, symbols mentioned in the Unicode proposal for Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, and Orcus have been shown below to fill out the list of named TNOs down to 600 km diameter, even though not all of them are actually attested in astronomical use. (Grundy et al. suggest 600 to 700 km diameter as a speculative upper limit for a trans-Neptunian object to retain substantial pore space.)
Symbols for zodiac and other constellations
The zodiac symbols have several astronomical interpretations. Depending on context, a zodiac symbol may denote either a constellation, or a point or interval on the ecliptic plane.
Lists of astronomical phenomena published by almanacs sometimes included conjunctions of stars and planets or the Moon; rather than print the full name of the star, a Greek letter and the symbol for the constellation of the star was sometimes used instead.
The ecliptic was sometimes divided into 12 signs, each subdivided into 30 degrees,
and the sign component of ecliptic longitude was expressed either with a number from 0 to 11. or with the corresponding zodiacal symbol.
In modern astronomical writing, all the constellations, including the twelve of the zodiac, have dedicated three-letter abbreviations, which specifically refer to constellations rather than signs.
The zodiac symbols are also sometimes used to represent points on the ecliptic, particularly the solstices and equinoxes. Each symbol is taken to represent the "first point" of each sign, rather than the place in the visible constellation where the alignment is observed.
Thus, ♈︎ the symbol for Aries, represents the March equinox;
♋︎, for Cancer, the June solstice;
♎︎, for Libra, the September equinox;
and ♑︎, for Capricorn, the December solstice.
Although the use of astrological sign symbols is rare, the particular symbol ♈︎ for Aries, is an exception; it is commonly used in modern astronomy to represent the location of the (slowly) moving reference point for the ecliptic and equatorial celestial coordinate systems.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
|+ Zodiacal symbols
|-
!scope="col"| Constellation
!scope="col"| IAUabbreviation
!scope="col"| Number
!scope="col"| Astrologicallocation
!scope="col"| Symbol
!scope="col"| Translation
!scope="col"| Unicodecode point
!scope="col"| Unicodedisplay
|-
|scope="row"| Aries
| Ari
| 0
| 0°
|
| ram
| U+2648
|
|-
|scope="row"| Taurus
| Tau
| 1
| 30°
|
| bull
| U+2649
|
|-
|scope="row"| Gemini
| Gem
| 2
| 60°
|
| twinned
| U+264A
|
|-
|scope="row"| Cancer
| Cnc
| 3
| 90°
|
| crab
| U+264B
|
|-
|scope="row"| Leo
| Leo
| 4
| 120°
|
| lion
| U+264C
|
|-
|scope="row"| Virgo
| Vir
| 5
| 150°
|
| maiden
| U+264D
|
|-
|scope="row"| Libra
| Lib
| 6
| 180°
|
| scales
| U+264E
|
|-
|scope="row"| Scorpio
| Sco
| 7
| 210°
|
| scorpion
| U+264F
|
|-
|scope="row"| Sagittarius
| Sgr
| 8
| 240°
|
| archer
| U+2650
|
|-
|scope="row"| Capricorn
| Cap
| 9
| 270°
|
| having a goat's horns
| U+2651
|
|-
|scope="row"| Aquarius
| Aqr
| 10
| 300°
|
| water-carrier
| U+2652
|
|-
|scope="row"| Pisces
| Psc
| 11
| 330°
|
| fishes
| U+2653
|
|}
Ophiuchus has been proposed as a thirteenth sign of the zodiac by astrologer Walter Berg in 1995, who gave it a symbol that has become popular in Japan.
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None of the constellations have official symbols. However, occasional symbols for the modern constellations, as well as older ones that occur in modern nomenclature, have appeared in publication. The symbols below were devised by Denis Moskowitz (except those for the thirteen constellations already listed above).
Andromeda
Antlia
Apus
Aquarius
Aquila
Ara
Argo Navis
Aries
Auriga
Boötes
Caelum
Camelopardalis
Cancer
Canes Venatici
Canis Major
Canis Minor
Capricornus
Carina
Cassiopeia
Centaurus
Cepheus
Cetus
Chamaeleon
Circinus
Columba
Coma Berenices
Corona Australis
Corona Borealis
Corvus
Crater
Crux
Cygnus
Delphinus
Dorado
Draco
Equuleus
Eridanus
Fornax
Gemini
Grus
Hercules
Horologium
Hydra
Hydrus
Indus
Lacerta
Leo
Leo Minor
Lepus
Libra
Lupus
Lynx
Lyra
Mensa
Microscopium
Monoceros
Musca
Norma
Octans
Ophiuchus
Orion
Pavo
Pegasus
Perseus
Phoenix
Pictor
Pisces
Piscis Austrinus
Puppis
Pyxis
Quadrans Muralis
Reticulum
Sagitta
Sagittarius
Scorpius
Sculptor
Scutum
Serpens
Serpens Cauda
Serpens Caput
Sextans
Taurus
Telescopium
Triangulum
Triangulum Australe
Tucana
Ursa Major
Ursa Minor
Vela
Virgo
Volans
Vulpecula
Other symbols
Symbols for aspects and nodes appear in medieval texts, although medieval and modern usage of the node symbols differ; the modern ascending node symbol (☊) formerly stood for the descending node, and the modern descending node symbol (☋) was used for the ascending node. In describing the Keplerian elements of an orbit, ☊ is sometimes used to denote the ecliptic longitude of the ascending node, although it is more common to use Ω (capital omega, and inverted ℧), which were originally typographical substitutes for the astronomical symbols.
The symbols for aspects first appear in Byzantine codices. Of the symbols for the five Ptolemaic aspects, only the three displayed here — for conjunction, opposition, and quadrature — are used in astronomy.
Symbols for a comet (☄) and a star () have been used in published astronomical observations of comets. In tables of these observations, ☄ stood for the comet being discussed and for the star of comparison relative to which measurements of the comet's position were made.
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|scope="row"| ascending node
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| scope="row" | conjunction
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|scope="row"| opposition
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|scope="row"| occultation
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|scope="row"| lunar eclipse
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|scope="row"| quadrature
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|scope="row"| comet
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| U+2604
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|scope="row"| star
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| (various)
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| planetary rings(rare)
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See also
Astrological symbols
Alchemical symbols
Maya calendar for the logograms used in Maya astronomy
Solar symbol
Zodiac
Footnotes
References
Symbols, astronomical
Astronomy
Heraldic charges
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390602
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaeta
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Gaeta
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Gaeta (; ; Southern Laziale: Gaieta) is a city in the province of Latina, in Lazio, Southern Italy. Set on a promontory stretching towards the Gulf of Gaeta, it is from Rome and from Naples.
The town has played a conspicuous part in military history; its walls date to Roman times and were extended and strengthened in the 15th century, especially throughout the history of the Kingdom of Naples (later the Two Sicilies).
Present-day Gaeta is a fishing and oil seaport, and a renowned tourist resort. NATO maintains a naval base of operations at Gaeta.
History
Ancient times
The ancient Caieta, situated on the slopes of the Torre di Orlando, a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was inhabited by the Oscan-speaking Italic tribe of the Aurunci at least by the 10th-9th century BC. Only in 345 BC did the territory of Gaeta come under Rome's influence.
In the Republican era Caieta became one of the earliest locations of villae maritimae, seaside villas and luxurious retreats for the Roman elite owned, for example, by Scipio Africanus (236-183 BC) and Gaius Laelius. Caieta was linked to the capital of the Empire by the Via Appia and its extension the Via Flacca, through a link road. In the Roman imperial age Caieta, famous for its lovely and temperate climate, like the neighbouring Formia and Sperlonga, continued a popular resort for many important and rich characters of Rome.
Emperor Antoninus Pius restored the port, given its great strategic relevance. Among its antiquities is the mausoleum of Lucius Munatius Plancus.
The mausoleum of Lucius Sempronius Atratinus is also an impressive monument, which was inside a large clearing within his vast villa located on Monte Orlando overlooking the Gulf of Gaeta. He was buried there after his death in 7 AD. The great sepulchral monument was built at the end of the 1st century BC. Atratinus was suffect Consul in 40 and 34 BC, propraetor in Greece in 39 BC, and first admiral of Mark Antony's fleet from 38-34 BC. He was appointed proconsul of Africa by Augustus in 21 BC, where he obtained a triumph.
Emperor Domitian (r.81-96 AD) also had a villa in the area.
Middle Ages
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, after the Lombard invasion, Gaeta remained under suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire. In the following years, like Amalfi, Sorrento and Naples, it would seem to have established itself as a practically independent port and to have carried on a thriving trade with the Levant.
As Byzantine influence declined in Southern Italy, the town began to grow. For fear of the Saracens, in 840, the inhabitants of the neighbouring Formiæ fled to Gaeta. Though under the suzerainty of Byzantium, Gaeta had then, like nearby ports Naples and Amalfi, a republican form of government with a dux ("duke", or commanding lord under the command of the Byzantine Exarch of Ravenna), as a strong bulwark against Saracen invasion.
Around 830, it became a lordship ruled by hereditary hypati, or consuls: the first of these was Constantine (839–866), who in 847 aided Pope Leo IV in the naval fight at Ostia. At this same time (846), the episcopal see of Gaeta was founded when Constantine, Bishop of Formiae, fled thither and established his residence. He was associated with his son Marinus I. They were probably violently overthrown (they disappeared suddenly from history) in 866 or 867 by Docibilis I, who, looking rather to local safety, entered into treaties with the Saracens and abandoned friendly relations with the papacy. Nevertheless, he greatly expanded the duchy and began the construction of the palace. The greatest of the hypati was possibly John I, who helped crush the Saracens at Garigliano in 915 and gained the title of patricius from the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII.
The principle of co-regency governed the early dynasties: Docibilis associated John with him, and John, in turn, associated his son Docibilis II with him. In 933, three generations were briefly co-ruling: John I, Docibilis II, and John II. On the death of Docibilis II (954), who first took the title dux, the duchy passed from its golden age and entered a decline marked by a division of territory. John II ruled Gaeta and his brother, Marinus, ruled Fondi with the equivalent title of duke. Outlying lands and castles were given away to younger sons, and thus the family of the Docibili slowly declined after the mid-century.
Allegedly, but improbably, from the end of the 9th century, the principality of Capua claimed Gaeta as a courtesy title for the younger son of its ruling prince. In the mid-10th century, the De Ceremoniis of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus lists the ceremonial title "prince of Gaeta" among the protocols for letters written to foreigners.
Prince Pandulf IV of Capua captured Gaeta in 1032 and deposed Duke John V, assuming the ducal and consular titles. In 1038, Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno took it from him and, in 1041, established the Norman counts of Aversa, who were afterwards princes of Capua, as puppet dukes. The native dynasty made a last attempt to wrest the duchy from Guaimar in 1042 under Leo the Usurper.
In 1045, the Gaetans elected their own Lombard duke, Atenulf I. His son, Atenulf II, was made to submit to the Norman Prince Richard I of Capua in 1062, when Gaeta was captured by Jordan Drengot. In 1064, the city was placed under a line of puppet dukes, appointed by the Capuan princes, who had usurped the ducal and consular titles. These dukes, usually Italianate Normans, ruled Gaeta with some level of independence until the death of Richard of Caleno in 1140. In that year, Gaeta was definitively annexed to the Kingdom of Sicily by Roger II, who bestowed on his son Roger of Apulia, who was duly elected by the nobles of the city. The town did maintain its own coinage until as late as 1229 after the Normans had been superseded by the centralising Hohenstaufen.
Gaeta, owing to its important strategic position, was often attacked and defended bravely in the many wars for possession of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1194 the Pisans, allies of Emperor Henry VI in the conquest of the kingdom, took possession of the city and held it as their own.
In 1227, Frederick II, who was King of Sicily since 1198, was in the city and strengthened the castle. However, in the struggle between Frederick and the Papacy, in 1228, it rebelled against Frederick II and surrendered to the pope after the Papal forces destroyed the castle in the fray. After the peace of San Germano of 1230, it was returned to the Sicilian kingdom. In 1233, Frederick regained control of the important port and fortress. Following the division between the Kingdom of Sicily, Gaeta became a possession of the new Kingdom of Naples. In 1279 Charles I of Anjou rebuilt the castle and enhanced the fortifications. In 1289 King James II of Aragon besieged the city in vain. From 1378 Gaeta hosted for some years antipope Clement VII. The future King of Naples Ladislaus lived in Gaeta from 1387. Here, on 21 September, he married Costanza Chiaramonte, whom he repudiated three years later.
King Alfonso V of Aragon (as Alfonso I of Naples) made Gaeta his beachhead for the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples in 1435, besieged it, and to his disadvantage, displayed great generosity by aiding those unable to bear arms which had been driven out from the besieged town. After a disastrous naval battle, he captured it and gained control of the kingdom. He enlarged the castle, which became his royal palace, and created a mint. In 1451 the city was home to the Treaty of Gaeta, stipulated between Alfonso V and the Albanian lord, Skanderbeg: the treaty ensured protection of the Albanian lands in exchange for political suzerainty of Skanderbeg to Alfonso.
Modern era
In 1495, king Charles VIII of France conquered the city and sacked it. The following year, however, Frederick I of Aragon regained it with a tremendous siege which lasted from 8 September to 18 November.
In 1501 Gaeta was retaken by the French; however, after their defeat at the Garigliano (3 January 1504), they abandoned it to Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, Ferdinand the Catholic's general.
In 1528 Andrea Doria, admiral of Charles V, defeated a French fleet in the waters off Gaeta and gave the city to its emperor. Gaeta was thenceforth protected with a new and more extensive wall encompassing Monte Orlando.
In the War of the Spanish Succession, on 30 September 1707, Gaeta was stormed and taken after a three-month siege by the Austrians under General Daun. On 6 August 1734, it was taken by French, Spanish and Sardinian troops under the future King Charles of Naples after a stubborn defense by the Austrian viceroy of four months. Charles' daughter Infanta Maria Josefa of Spain was born here in 1744. The fortifications were again strengthened; in 1799, the French temporarily occupied it.
On 18 July 1806, the French captured it under André Masséna, after a heroic defence. It was created a duché grand-fief in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples, but under the French name Gaète, for finance minister Martin-Michel-Charles Gaudin, in 1809 (family extinguished in 1841).
On 8 August 1815, it capitulated to the Austrians after a three months siege. It had been attacked and partially reduced by ships of the Royal Navy on 24 July 1815.
After his flight from the Roman Republic, Pope Pius IX took refuge at Gaeta in November 1848. He remained in Gaeta until 4 September 1849.
On 1 August 1849, USS Constitution while in port at Gaeta, received onboard King Ferdinand II and Pope Pius IX, giving them a 21-gun salute. This was the first time a Pope set foot on American territory or its equivalent.
Finally, in 1860, Gaeta was the scene of the last stand of Francis II of the Two Sicilies against the forces of United Italy. The king offered a stubborn defense, shut up in the fortress with 12,000 men and was inspired by the heroic example of Queen Maria Sophie after Garibaldi's occupation of Naples. It was not until 13 February 1861 that Francis II was forced to capitulate when the withdrawal of the French fleet made bombardment from the sea possible, thus sealing the annexation of the Kingdom of Naples to the Kingdom of Italy. Cialdini, the Piedmontese general, received the victory title of Duke of Gaeta. During the functioning of the Government of Montenegro in exile from 1919 to 1924, that supported the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty and opposed the rule of the house of Karađorđević in Yugoslavia (The Greens) were located in Gaeta.
Contemporary age
After the Risorgimento and until World War II, Gaeta grew in importance and wealth as a seaport. The nearby town of Elena, separated after the Risorgimento and named after the queen of Italy, was reunited with Gaeta following World War I. Mussolini transferred Gaeta from the southern region known today as Campania (formerly Terra di Lavoro, to which it is historically and culturally attached) to the central region of Lazio.
After the king dismissed Mussolini in the summer of 1943, the latter was initially taken via Gaeta to the island prison of Ponza. After Italy surrendered to the Allies, however, the town's fortunes began to decline. Recognizing its strategic importance and fearing an Allied landing in the area, German troops occupied the city and expelled most of the population. The exclusion zone extended five kilometres from the historical city centre. Soon after, however, the population was expelled even beyond this point. The Gaetani were finally ordered to leave the area completely. Those who could not be placed in a concentration camp, and a few were taken to Germany.
Following the Allied advance across the Garigliano and the Allied occupation of Rome, the Gaetani were allowed to return to their city and begin the process of rebuilding. In subsequent decades the city has boomed as a beach resort, and it has seen some success marketing its agricultural products, primarily its tomatoes and olives. Many of its families count seamen among their number. However, the decades since World War II have been as difficult for Gaeta as they have been for most of Italy's Mezzogiorno. In particular, its importance as a passenger seaport has nearly vanished: ferries to Ponza and elsewhere now leave from the nearby town of Formia. All attempts to build a permanent industry as a source of employment and economic well-being for the town have failed. Notable losses include the Littorina rail line (now used as a parking lot and a marketplace), the AGIP refinery (nowadays a simple depot), and the once-thriving glass factory, which has become an unused industrial relic.
Gaeta does have a viable tourism industry, as it is a popular seaside resort. Its warm, rain-free summers attract people to its numerous beaches along the coastline, such as Serapo and Sant'Agostino Beaches. Nearly equidistant to Naples and Rome, Gaeta is a popular summer tourist destination for people from both cities' metropolitan areas.
Main sights
The main attractions of the city include:
The massive Aragonese-Angevine Castle. Its origins are uncertain: most likely it was built in the 6th century, in the course of the Gothic War, or during the 7th century to defend the town from the Lombards' advance. The first documents mentioning it date to the age of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, who strengthened it in 1233. The current structure is made of two different edifices: the "Angevine" one, in the lower sector, dating to the House of Anjou's rule in the Kingdom of Naples; and the "Aragonese", at the top, built by emperor Charles V, together with the other fortifications that made Gaeta one of the strongest fortresses in southern Italy. The Angevine wing housed a military jail until the 1980s (German war criminal officers Walter Reder and Herbert Kappler were imprisoned here). Now it is a property of the Gaeta municipality, which uses it for conferences and exhibitions. In the dome of the tallest tower is the Royal Chapel, built by King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies in 1849.
The Mausoleum of Lucius Munatius Plancus (22 BCE) is a cylindrical travertine monument at the top of Monte Orlando (168 m). It stands at 13.20 m and has a diameter of 29.50 m. Another important Roman public man, Lucius Sempronius Atratinus, Mark Antony's fleet commander, has a mausoleum sited in the more recent district of Gaeta: of similar diameter; it is, however not as well preserved.
The Sanctuary of SS. Trinità, mentioned as early as the 11th century and visited, among the others, by St. Francis and Saint Philip Neri. The Crucifix Chapel was built in 1434 over a rock which had fallen from the nearby cliffs. From the sanctuary, the Grotta del Turco can be visited: it is a grotto which ends directly in the sea and where the waves create atmospheric effects of light.
Sanctuary of Santissima Annunziata - A church and adjacent hospital were built at the site in the 14th century but rebuilt at the beginning of the 17th century in Baroque style by Andrea Lazzari. It houses works by Renaissance painters including A Sabatini and GF Criscuolo; as well as late-Baroque artists such as Giordano, Conca and Brandi. The church has a Gothic-style sarcophagus of Enrico Caracciolo. Also notable is the Golden Chapel or Grotto, a Renaissance-style chapel where Pope Pius IX meditated before issuing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The ceiling is gilded, and the walls contain 19 canvases (1531) by Criscuolo. The main altarpiece is an Immacolata by Pulzone.
San Giovanni a Mare - The church was initially built outside the old sea walls by the hypate Giovanni IV in the 10th century. It combines the basilica form with the Byzantine one. The simple façade has a Gothic portal and a dome, while the interior has a nave with two aisles. The inner pavement is slightly inclined to allow waters to flow away in the case of maritime floods.
The Cathedral of Assunta e Sant'Erasmo was erected over a more ancient church, Santa Maria del Parco, and consecrated by Pope Paschal II in 1106: it had a nave with six aisles separated by columns with Gothic capitals. In 1778, however, two of the aisles were suppressed, and the Gothic lines hidden. In the 13th century, Moorish arches were added over the capitals. In 1663 the crypt was decorated in Baroque style. The interior houses a banner from the Battle of Lepanto, donated by Pope Pius V to Don John of Austria, who used it as his admiral's flag. The main sight of the church is, however, the marble Paschal candelabrum, standing 3.50 m tall, from the late 13th century: it is in Romanesque style, decorated with 48 reliefs in 4 vertical rows, telling the Stories of the Life of Jesus. There are also paintings by Giacinto Brandi and Giovanni Filippo Criscuolo. The cathedral contains the relics of St. Erasmus, transferred from Formia; the remarkable campanile, in Arab-Norman style, dates from the 12th century. At the base are slabs and parts of columns from ancient Roman edifices.
The Cathedral has a great bell tower, standing at 57 m, which is considered the city's finest piece of art. The base has two marble lions, and the whole construction largely reused ancient Roman architectural elements. The upper part, octagonal in plan, with small Romanesque arches with majolica decoration, was completed in 1279.
The Chapel of the Crucifix is a curiosity: built on a huge mass of rock that hangs like a wedge between two adjoining walls of rock. Legend tells how the rock was thus split at Christ's death.
San Francesco - According to the legend, the church was constructed by the saint himself in 1222. In reality, Frederick II ordered the construction. The church features a fine Gothic-Italian style and hosts paintings and sculptures by many of the most famous Neapolitan artists.
The parish church of Santa Lucia, the former St. Maria in Pensulis, was once a Royal chapel and here prayed Margherita of Durazzo and king Ladislaus. It originally had Romanesque and Sicilian-Arab lines, but in 1456 it was rebuilt in Renaissance style, and in 1648 adapted to a Baroque one. The side has a Mediaeval pronaos with ancient fragments and figures of animals.
The Medieval Quarter of Gaeta is itself of interest. It lies on the steep sides of Mount Orlando and has characteristic houses from the 11th-13th centuries.
Gaeta is also the centre of the Regional Park of Riviera di Ulisse, which includes Monte Orlando, Gianola and the Scauri Mounts, and the two promontories of Torre Capovento and that of Tiberius' Villa at Sperlonga.
U.S. Navy base
In 1967, the homeport of the U.S. Sixth Fleet flagship relocated from Villefranche-sur-Mer to Gaeta. Support facilities were established on Monte Orlando. This was done following the transfer of the responsibilities of Lead Nation for NATO Naval Forces in the Mediterranean from the United Kingdom to the United States. The British Mediterranean Fleet was abolished - its former base in Malta was no longer exclusively under British control due to that nation having achieved independence from the UK.
It is currently used as the home port for the flagship of the United States' Sixth Fleet. The Sixth Fleet commander, typically a 3-Star US Navy Vice-Admiral, has operational control of Naval task forces, battle groups, amphibious forces, support ships, land-based surveillance aircraft, and submarines in the Mediterranean Sea. Gaeta's role has been important since the early 19th century to the US Navy's commitment to forward presence. Pope Pius IX and King Ferdinand II of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, paid visits to the while in Gaeta in 1849. Nine ships have been stationed in Gaeta, with the primary mission of serving as the flagship for the Sixth Fleet commander. The first was . Other Sixth Fleet flagships included , , , , and . The current flagship is .
The town is host to the families of the crews who work on the ship. There was a DOD school for American children and the US Naval Support Activity, Gaeta, which provided health care and other services until it was closed down in 2005. The NATO base itself was located on Monte Orlando, which overlooks the Gulf of Gaeta. It has recently been transferred to a shore-based facility where the Commander Sixth Fleet also operates.
Culture
Gaeta has erected a monument to Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), who, according to many sources, was born there - though other sources give Genoa or Chioggia. Other people associated to the town include the painters Giovanni da Gaeta and Giovan Filippo Criscuolo. For a full list, see People from Gaeta.
Gaetani speak a dialect of Italian that, while similar to the nearby Neapolitan, is one of the few Italian dialects to preserve Latin's neuter gender.
Distinctive local cuisine includes the tiella, which resembles both a pizza and a calzone. Tiella can be made with a number of stuffings. Typical stuffings include diced calamari with parsley, garlic, oil, hot pepper and just enough tomato sauce for color. Other stuffings include escarole and baccalà (dried codfish), egg and zucchini, spinach, rapini and sausage, and ham and cheese. The town is also known for its distinctive brand of olives, marketed throughout the world (the main production, however, takes place in neighbouring Itri), and its beaches (Serapo, Fontania, Ariana, Sant'Agostino). Sciuscielle, mostaccioli, susamelli, and roccocò are also local desserts most often made during the Christmas season. A Latin text found in Gaeta dating from 997 AD contains the earliest known usage of the word "pizza".
The most famous folklore event of Gaeta is Gliu Sciuscio of 31 December, in which bands of young Gaetani in traditional costumes head to the city's streets, playing mainly self-built instruments.
International relations
Gaeta is twinned with:
Cambridge, USA, since 1982
Frontignan, France
Mobile, United States
Somerville, United States
Cetinje, Montenegro, since 2012
Babolsar, Iran, since 2016
See also
Diocese of Gaeta
List of Hypati and Dukes of Gaeta
Siege of Gaeta
University of Cassino and Southern Lazio
References
Sources
External links
Gaetanet.it, all on Gaeta
All on medieval Gaeta
Gaeta.it
Heraldica.org - Napoleonic heraldry
Links for further development
Photos 2006
Cities and towns in Lazio
Coastal towns in Lazio
Municipalities of the Province of Latina
Baroque architecture in Lazio
Castles in Italy
Gothic sites in Lazio
Norman architecture in Italy
Pope Pius IX
Roman sites in Lazio
Roman towns and cities in Italy
Samian colonies
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390606
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20world%20heavyweight%20boxing%20champions
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List of world heavyweight boxing champions
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At boxing's beginning, the heavyweight division had no weight limit, and historically the weight class has gone with vague or no definition. During the 19th century many heavyweights were 170 pounds (12 st 2 lb, 77 kg) or less, though others weighed considerably more. John L. Sullivan was the first widely recognized champion under Marquess of Queensberry rules. Known as the "Boston Strong Boy," Sullivan weighed around 200 pounds when in shape, and helped transition the sport from its bare-knuckle era. Sullivan would be defeated for the title by "Gentleman" Jim Corbett over 21 rounds on September 7, 1892, the first heavyweight titleholder solely under Queensberry rules.
In 1920 a de facto minimum weight for a heavyweight was set at 175 pounds (12 st 7 lb, 79 kg) with the standardization of a weight limit for the light heavyweight division. The addition of the cruiserweight division, which began in 1979, reset the de facto minimum, first to 190 pounds and then to 200 pounds in 2004 when boxing's major sanctioning bodies universally raised the weight limit at which they'd recognize champions. The World Boxing Council created a new division called bridgerweight for boxers weighing between 200 and 225 pounds. As of June 2022 no other major organization has recognized the division.
The championship of the heavyweight division has been fractured or disputed at various times in its history. Until the 1960s, such disputes were settled in the ring, typically with alternate title claimants largely being forgotten. The rise of sanctioning organizations, however, have produced an environment where typically there is no single world heavyweight champion, with titleholders recognized by one of these organizations (a "World Champion") or more (a "Super Champion," a "Unified Champion," or, in the rare cases where the four most prominent organizations recognize the same boxer, an "Undisputed Champion").
Some title reigns are considered dubious owing to long periods of inactivity, the legitimacy of the organization granting championship recognition, and other factors. In 1967, for example, Muhammad Ali was denied a boxing license in every U.S. jurisdiction and stripped of his passport because of his refusal to be inducted into the armed forces. On April 29, 1967, his recognition as champion by both the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council was withdrawn. Yet Ali remained the lineal champion and was recognized by The Ring magazine and most boxing purists until his defeat in 1971. In pursuit of greater revenues, some organizations have now adopted a practice of simultaneously recognizing multiple champions in a weight division, creating a situation in which a champion may be unable not only to secure recognition from multiple sanctioning bodies but to secure sole recognition from a single one.
Championship recognition
Public Acclamation: 1884 to 1921
World champions were initially recognized by wide public acclamation, with heavyweight champions winning and losing championship recognition solely in the ring. Retirements periodically resulted in no one, true champion being recognized, while in other cases new champions were proclaimed only to see a previously recognized champion come out of retirement. Public interest in boxing resulted in a true champion being determined by means of title claimants facing one another in the ring, with the winner being recognized as world champion.
The Ring Magazine: 1922 to present
The Ring magazine has recognized heavyweight champions during two periods, commencing with its inaugural issue in 1922 and continuing until the 1990s, then again from 2002 to the present day. Under its original policy, a champion earned championship recognition in the ring, defeating the preceding champion or winning a bout between its top rated contenders. Once awarded, championship recognition could be lost only by death, retirement, or loss in the ring. In 2012, this policy was revised so championship recognition could be more easily awarded or withdrawn.
Sanctioning Bodies: 1921 to present
The National Boxing Association (NBA) was organized in 1921 to serve as a regulating authority for boxing in the United States. The prominence of New York City as an epicenter of boxing would lead to its state boxing regulatory body, the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) joining the NBA in recognizing world champions in each weight class. A third entity, the European Boxing Union (IBU) would follow suit, but with limited exception in the heavyweight division the three organizations recognized the same champion.
At its 1962 convention, the NBA's non-United States members exploited a membership rule and took effective control of the organization, rebranding it as the World Boxing Association. The now WBA would be joined the following year by a combination of state and national boxing commissions (including the NYSAC and IBU) to form a new organization, the World Boxing Council (WBC). In time, each organization would have its own spin-off sanctioning organization break from its ranks: the United States Boxing Association, which disassociated with the WBA in the late 1970s and became the International Boxing Federation in 1983, and the World Boxing Organization, whose members would split from the WBC in 1988. Today there are over a dozen sanctioning organizations which recognize champions and sanction world championship bouts, but the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO are recognized by the International Boxing Hall Of Fame as major sanctioning bodies.
Current status of prominent championship titles
List of champions
Footnotes
Won vacant championship title.
Voluntarily relinquished championship title.
Championship recognition withdrawn by sanctioning organization upon his refusal to fight an opponent of the organization's designation.
In 1882, Sullivan defeated Paddy Ryan to win the bare-knuckle championship of America. A lack of legitimate challengers elsewhere gradually resulted in Sullivan earning worldwide recognition. On August 29, 1885, he defeated Dominick McCaffrey in a bout described as "the Marquess of Queensberry glove contest for the championship of the world."
Corbett announced his retirement from boxing in 1895, nominating Steve O'Donnell as his successor. As tradition demanded the title be won in the ring, O'Donnell was matched against Peter Maher on November 11, 1895, at Maspeth, New York. Maher won via first-round knockout, but the public generally didn't accept Maher and Maher himself expressed a desire to fight Corbett for the "real" title. In Maher's next bout, Bob Fitzsimmons defeated him via first-round knockout on February 21, 1896. Fitzsimmons in turn was defeated by Tom Sharkey of Dundalk on December 2, 1896, in a contest billed as for the heavyweight title. Corbett announced his return to the ring shortly thereafter, at which time the championship claims of Maher, Fitzsimmons, and Sharkey were for the most part dismissed. Sharkey's title claims lapsed when he was defeated by Jeffries in May 1898.
Jeffries announced his retirement, relinquishing the title and promoting a match between Marvin Hart and Jack Root for the championship. Jeffries returned to the ring to challenge Jack Johnson.
The British National Sporting Club withdrew its recognition of Johnson as champion when he refused to defend his title against the British champion William "Iron" Hague. The NSC matched Hague with Canadian Sam Langford for its title on May 24, 1909. Langford won via fourth-round knockout but never pursued a championship claim.
Schmeling earned championship recognition by defeating Jack Sharkey by controversial disqualification. The New York State Athletic Commission withdrew its recognition of Schmeling when he refused to grant Sharkey an immediate rematch. The NYSAC did not recognize a champion until Sharkey defeated Schmeling in 1932.
In late 1934, the International Boxing Union (IBU) ordered Baer to defend his title against European champion Pierre Charles of Belgium. When Baer refused, the IBU sanctioned a bout between Charles and American George Godfrey for their title on October 2, 1935. Godfrey won via fifteen-round decision but never pursued a championship claim. The IBU ultimately recognized Baer's successor James J. Braddock as champion.
Two months after Louis' retirement announcement, the International Boxing Union sanctioned a bout between British champion Bruce Woodcock and American Lee Savold for its version of the title. The bout was not staged until June 1950, however, due to delays caused by injuries suffered by Woodcock in an automobile accident. Meanwhile, Ezzard Charles defeated Jersey Joe Walcott to win the vacant National Boxing Association championship title. Savold defeated Woodcock in four rounds to win the IBU title, while Charles gained New York State Athletic Commission recognition and wide public acclaim as champion upon defeating former champion Joe Louis in September 1950. On June 15, 1951, Joe Louis defeated Savold via sixth-round knockout, after which the IBU withdrew its recognition of Savold and proclaimed Ezzard Charles as champion.
Following Marciano's retirement, Patterson was matched against Tommy "Hurricane" Jackson in a championship eliminator on June 8, 1956. Winning via controversial split decision, Patterson then faced light heavyweight titleholder Archie Moore for the vacant title. Upon defeating Moore, Patterson fought (and defeated) Jackson a second time on July 29, 1957.
The World Boxing Association withdrew their championship recognition of Clay (by then known as Muhammad Ali) upon agreeing to an immediate rematch against former champion Sonny Liston, in violation of WBA rules. The newly founded World Boxing Council and other sanctioning groups continued to recognize Ali as champion.
The World Boxing Association, World Boxing Council, New York State Athletic Commission and others withdrew their championship recognition of Ali following his refusal to be inducted into the United States Army subsequent to his conscription.
To fill its vacant championship title, the World Boxing Association organized a single-elimination tournament involving eight of their ranked contenders (Joe Frazier, who was ranked No. 2, declined to participate): Oscar Bonavena, Jimmy Ellis, Leotis Martin, Karl Mildenberger, two-time former champion Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Thad Spencer, and former WBA champion Ernie Terrell. In first round matches, Ellis defeated Martin, Quarry defeated Patterson, Spencer defeated Terrell, and Bonavena defeated Mildenberger. In the semi-finals, Ellis defeated Bonavena while Quarry defeated Spencer; and Ellis defeated Quarry for the championship title. Frazier, meanwhile, was matched against Buster Mathis for a championship recognized by the New York State Athletic Commission together with the commissions of Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Similar "world" championship recognition was bestowed upon him by the Texas Athletic Commission following a victory over Dave Zyglewicz on April 22, 1969.
Frazier defeated Ellis to unify the heavyweight championship, but did not gain World public acclaim as champion until defeating Muhammad Ali on March 8, 1971.
In an unprecedented move, upon withdrawing its recognition of Leon Spinks as champion, the World Boxing Council immediately recognized Ken Norton as champion, based on an earlier victory over Jimmy Young. As a condition of being named champion, Norton was ordered to face the WBC's new mandatory challenger, Larry Holmes within 120 days.
Holmes relinquished his World Boxing Council championship and accepted championship recognition bestowed by the newly organized International Boxing Federation.
Following its 1978 precedent, upon withdrawing championship recognition from Riddick Bowe, the World Boxing Council immediately awarded championship recognition to Lennox Lewis, on the basis of his victory in an October 31, 1992 "championship eliminator" over Donovan Ruddock.
Following its withdrawal of recognition from George Foreman, the International Boxing Federation sanctioned a December 9, 1995, match between Francois Botha and Axel Schulz for its championship. Botha won the bout by split decision, but the bout result and Botha's championship title were vacated after Botha's post-fight drug test revealed he had taken illegal anabolic steroids. A subsequent bout between Schulz and Michael Moorer was sanctioned for the IBF championship.
Upon defeating John Ruiz, Roy Jones Jr. simultaneously held the World Boxing Association's heavyweight and light heavyweight titles. At his request, the WBA suspended its rule prohibiting simultaneous title holding. It later declared Jones its "Champion in Recess," and sanctioned a December 13, 2003, bout between Ruiz and Hasim Rahman for its "interim" championship. Ruiz won the bout. On February 20, 2004, Jones relinquished his heavyweight title to resume boxing as a light heavyweight, at which point Ruiz was elevated to full championship recognition. On April 30, 2005, Ruiz was defeated by James Toney in a championship defense, but post-fight drug testing determined Toney had taken Nandrolone, an anabolic steroid. The bout's result was subsequently changed to a "no contest," whereupon the WBA reinstated Ruiz as champion.
Following repeated injuries to champion Vitali Klitschko, the World Boxing Council sanctioned an August 13, 2005, bout between Hasim Rahman and Monte Barrett for its "interim" championship. Rahman won the bout, and when Klitschko relinquished his title three months later, the WBC elevated Rahman to full championship recognition.
Following repeated injuries which prevented him from defending his title, the World Boxing Association designated Chagaev a "Champion in Recess," sanctioning an August 30, 2008, bout between former champions John Ruiz and Nikolai Valuev for its "interim" title; a bout won by Valuev. Upon his recovery however, Chagaev opted to face Wladimir Klitschko rather than Valuev, whereupon the WBA withdrew championship recognition.
The World Boxing Association modified its championship structure, creating a new "Super Champion" status to be awarded to champions who hold multiple titles simultaneously. Now subordinated to this was the status of "World Champion," commonly referred to as the "Regular" champion. The organization then sanctioned a bout between Povetkin and former champion Ruslan Chagaev for this "regular" title. Povetkin's reign as the WBA's "regular champion" ended upon a loss to "Super Champion" Wladimir Klitschko, at which point the "regular" title was vacant.
Browne defeated Ruslan Chagaev for the World Boxing Association's "regular" championship title, but Browne subsequently tested positive for Clenbuterol, a banned substance. Following confirmation of the positive result, the WBA withdrew its recognition of Browne's "regular" championship.
On October 29, 1877, a fight between British fighters Tom Allen and Tompkin Gilbert at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London was billed as for the World heavyweight title under Marquess of Queensberry Rules. Allen won in seven rounds.
Bryan was due to fight Manuel Charr on January 29, 2021, for the WBA Regular championship, but Charr was unable to attain the right visa to come to the US, where the fight was to be held. Due to the long period of inactivity, Charr was stripped of the title and Bryan fought Bermane Stiverne for the now vacant title instead.
List of combined reigns
As of September 25, 2021.
Keys:
Active title reign
Reign has ended
WBO heavyweight title bouts before August 1997 are not included
List of individual reigns
The list includes The Ring belt. Career total time as champion (for multiple time champions) does not apply.
Keys:
Active Title Reign
Reign has ended
The WBO heavyweight title bouts before August 1997 are not included
By country
See also
World heavyweight boxing championship records and statistics
List of Olympic medalists in heavyweight boxing
List of WBA heavyweight world champions
List of WBA female heavyweight world champions
List of WBC heavyweight world champions
List of WBC female heavyweight world champions
List of IBF heavyweight world champions
List of IBF female heavyweight world champions
List of WBO heavyweight world champions
List of WBO female heavyweight world champions
List of British world boxing champions
Further reading
References
Sources
Boxing Title Fights
NBA World Heavyweight Champion - BoxRec
NYSAC World Heavyweight Champion – BoxRec
The BoxRec – Boxing's Official Record Keeper
The BoxRec Wiki Encyclopedia
The Boxing Register: International Boxing Hall Of Fame Official Record Book (archive)
Heavyweight champions
World boxing champions by weight class
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kebab
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Kebab
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Kebab (, ; , , , ; , ), kabob (North American), or kebap or kabab is roasted meat that originates from the Middle East but has been popularised by Iranian cuisine & Turkish cuisine. Many variants of the category are popular around the world, including the skewered shish kebab and the doner kebab with bread.
Kebabs consist of cut up or ground meat, sometimes with vegetables and various other accompaniments according to the specific recipe. Although kebabs are typically cooked on a skewer over a fire, some kebab dishes are oven-baked in a pan, or prepared as a stew such as tas kebab. The traditional meat for kebabs is most often lamb meat, but regional recipes may include beef, goat, chicken, fish, or even pork (depending on whether or not there are specific religious prohibitions).
History
In Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's 10th-century Baghdadi cookbook (), a compendium of much of the legacy of Mesopotamian, Persian, and Arab cuisine, there are descriptions of as cut-up meat, either fried in a pan or grilled over a fire.
However, while the word kebab or shish kebab may sometimes be used in English as a culinary term that refers to any type of small chunks of meat cooked on a skewer, kebab is mainly associated with a diversity of meat dishes that originated in the medieval kitchens of Persia and Anatolia. Though the word has ancient origins, it was popularized in the West by Turks to refer to this range of grilled and broiled meat, which may be cooked on skewers, but also as stews, meatballs, and other forms. This cuisine has spread around the world, in parallel with Muslim influence. According to Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan traveller, kebab was served in the royal houses during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 CE), and even commoners would enjoy it for breakfast with naan. Kebab dishes have been adopted and integrated with local cooking styles and innovations, from the now-ubiquitous doner kebab fast food, to the many variations of shish kebab, such as the satays of Southeast Asia.
The word likely came to English in the late 17th century from the Arabic , partly through Hindustani, Persian and Turkish. According to linguist Sevan Nişanyan, the Turkish word is also derived from the Arabic word , meaning roasted meat. It appears in Turkish texts as early as the 14th century, in (), though still in the Arabic form. Nişanyan states that the word has the equivalent meaning of 'frying, burning' with in the old Akkadian language, and in Aramaic. In contrast, food historian Gil Marks says that the medieval Arabic and Turkish terms were adopted from the Persian kabab, which probably derived from the Aramaic.
The American Heritage Dictionary also gives a probable East Semitic root origin with the meaning of 'burn', 'char', or 'roast', from the Aramaic and Akkadian. The Babylonian Talmud instructs that Temple offerings not be (burned). These words point to an origin in the prehistoric Proto-Afroasiatic language: *kab-, to burn or roast.
Varieties by region
In most English-speaking countries, a kebab may be the classic shish kebab or souvlaki – small cubes of meat cooked on a skewer – or made with minced (ground) meat, as in doner kebab. By contrast, in Indian English, Bangladeshi English, Pakistani English and in the languages of the Middle East, other parts of Asia, and the Muslim world, a kebab is any of a wide variety of grilled meat dishes. Some dishes ultimately derived from Middle Eastern kebab may have different names in their local languages, such as the Chinese chuan.
East Asia
China
Chuan (), often referred to as "chuan" throughout the north, or kawap (كاۋاپ) in Uyghur, is a variation of kebab originating from the Uyghur people in the western province of Xinjiang and a popular dish in Chinese Islamic cuisine. The dish has since spread across the rest of the country and become a popular street food.
Although the most traditional form of chuan uses lamb or mutton, other types of meat, such as chicken, beef, pork, and seafood, may be used as well. Small pieces of meat are skewered and either roasted or deep-fried. Common spices and condiments include cumin called "ziran", pepper, sesame, and sesame oil.
South Korea
Meat skewers are a very popular food in South Korea.
Europe
Greece
While the history of street foods in Greece goes back to ancient times, the iconic Greek gyros and souvlaki as it is known today arose only following the Second World War. Introduced to Athens in the 1950s by Greek refugees from Turkey and the Middle East, gyros was originally known simply as döner kebab. It is typically served as a sandwich rolled in pita bread, or on a plate, with french fries and various salads and sauces such as tzatziki. Later in the 1960s, vendors also began selling dishes in the same style made with souvlaki, which resembles Turkish shish kebab, but is usually made with pork.
Around the same time, the Greek word gyros replaced döner kebab, and the Greek style of the dish spread to become popular, particularly in North America, and various other parts of the world.
In contrast to other areas of Greece, in Athens, both types of sandwich may be called souvlaki, with the skewered meat being called kalamaki.
Although gyros is unquestionably of Middle Eastern origin, the issue of whether modern-day souvlaki came to Greece via Turkish cuisine, and should be considered a Greek styling of shish kebab, or is a contemporary revival of Greek tradition dating as far back as 17th century BC Minoan civilization, is a topic of sometimes heated debate, at least between Greeks and Turks. While English speakers may refer to souvlaki skewers as kebabs, they are not properly called that in Greece.
Middle East/Western Asia and North Africa
South Caucasus
Both Armenian and Azerbaijani cuisine feature oblong kofta-style mincemeats kebabs known as lula or lyulya kebab, while
Armenian cuisine refers to shish-style kebabs as khorovats, and doner kebab as Karsi khorovats after the city of Kars which became known for the dish during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
Iran
There are several distinct Persian varieties of kebab (). Kebab may be served with either steamed, saffroned basmati or Persian rice and called chelow kabab (), which is considered the national dish of Iran. It may also be served with the various types of bread that are the most commonly eaten in Iran, such as lavash.
It is served with the basic Iranian meal accompaniments, in addition to grilled tomatoes on the side of the rice and butter on top of the rice. It is an old northern tradition (probably originating in Tehran) that a raw egg yolk should be placed on top of the rice as well, though this is strictly optional, and most restaurants will not serve the rice this way unless it is specifically requested. "Somagh", powdered sumac, is also made available and its use varies based on tastes to a small dash on the rice or a heavy sprinkling on both rice and meat, particularly when used with red (beef/veal/lamb) meat.
At Persian restaurants, the combination of one kabab barg and one kabab koobideh is typically called Soltani, meaning "sultan's feast". The combination of one kabab barg, one jujeh kabab and kabab koobideh is typically called Sah abbasi, meaning "shah's meal". The traditional beverage of choice to accompany kebab is doogh, a sour yogurt drink with mint and salt.
In the old bazaar tradition, the rice (which is covered with a tin lid) and accompaniments are served first, immediately followed by the kebabs, which are brought to the table by the waiter, who holds several skewers in his left hand, and a piece of flat bread (typically nan-e lavash) in his right. A skewer is placed directly on the rice and while holding the kebab down on the rice with the bread, the skewer is quickly pulled out. With the two most common kebabs, barg and koobideh, two skewers are always served. In general, bazaar kebab restaurants only serve these two varieties, though there are exceptions.
In Iranian Azerbaijan, "Binab (also Bonab) Kebabi" is very famous in Azerbaijani cuisine for its large size. It is named after the city of Binab in East Azerbaijan province. This kebab and other types (e.g., Shishlik, kubide, Berge, Gelin, etc.) can be served alone or with rice and fresh salad on the side. In this region Kebabs come usually with yogurt, hot bread, tomato, onion, parsley and paprika-salt, and tarragon.
Kabab koobideh () it kūbide () is an Iranian minced meat kabab which is made from ground lamb, beef, or chicken, often mixed with parsley and chopped onions.
Kabab Koobideh contains: ground meat, onion, salt, pepper, turmeric, and seasoning. These ingredients are mixed together until the mixture becomes smooth and sticky. One egg is added to help the mix stick together. The mixture is then pressed around a skewer. Koobideh Kabab is typically long.
Kabāb-e barg () is a Persian style barbecued lamb, chicken or beef kebab dish. The main ingredients of Kabab Barg – a short form of this name – are fillets of beef tenderloin, lamb shank or chicken breast, onions and olive oil.
Marinade is prepared by the mixture of half a cup of olive oil, three onions, garlic, half teaspoon saffron, salt and black pepper. One kilogram of lamb is cut into 1 cm thick and 4–5 cm long pieces. It should be marinated overnight in refrigerator, and the container should be covered. The next day, the lamb is threaded on long, thin metal skewers. It is brushed with marinade and is barbecued for 5–10 minutes on each side. Kabab-e Barg
Jūje-kabāb () consists of pieces of chicken first marinated in minced onion and lemon juice with saffron then grilled over a fire. It is sometimes served with grilled tomato and pepper. Jujeh kabab is one of the most popular Persian dishes.
Kabab Bakhtiari is a combination of Jujeh kabab (chicken kabab) and Kabab barg (beef or lamb meat) on the same skewer. Its name comes from the Bakhtiari region of Iran.
Kabab Kenjeh, also known as Chenjeh (, ) is a kabab traditionally made with chunks of marinated lamb meat. It is typically served with grilled tomatoes and rice or bread.
Kabab torsh is an Iranian kabab from the northern provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran, renowned for its sour, pomegranate based seasoning.
Kabab Lari, Kabab Tabe (pan), Dande Kabab, Kabab Shandiz, Shishlik Kabab, Kabab Ghafghazi, Uzun kabab of Tabriz, Doosh Kabab of Guilan, Chump (Jump) kabob of Sistan, Kabab Toori of Tabriz, Kabob Golpayegan, Kabab Tanoorcheh of Baluchestan, Kabab Soltani, Kabob Vaziri, Kabob Loghmeh, Taas kabab, Mahi kabab (fish kabab) and Kabab Jegar (sheep liver) are among other types of Kabab popular in Iran.
Iraq
Several types of kebab are popular in Iraqi cuisine, although the word kebab in local use is reserved for skewers of spiced ground lamb, traditionally grilled on natural wood charcoal to give the kebab its special flavor. Skewers of grilled marinated meat chunks are called tikka.
The Levant and Egypt
Several varieties of kebabs can be found in Levantine cuisine. Among the most common are shish taouk, which are grilled chicken skewers marinated in olive oil and spices, and lahem meshwi, charcoal-grilled skewers of prime lamb cubes lightly seasoned with herbs.
Mizrahi Jews brought various types of grilled meat from their native Middle Eastern countries to Israel, where they have become an essential part of Israeli cuisine. Among the most popular are skewers of elongated spiced ground meat, called kabab (), which have become a staple dish of meat restaurants and the main dish of the traditional holiday barbecues, alongside the shishlik. They are commonly made of beef, though lamb is also occasionally used, and are almost always served with the local pita bread.
Shawarma, although not considered a kebab in most countries of the Levant and Egypt, is another very popular type of grilled meat preparation that characterizes this region.
Turkey
Adana kebap (or kıyma kebabı) is a long, hand-minced meat kebab mounted on a wide iron skewer and grilled over charcoal. Named after the Turkish city of Adana, the kebab is generally "hot" or piquant. The traditional Adana kebab is made using lamb, with a high fatty content cooked over hot coals. Only three ingredients are used in a proper Adana kebab, minced lamb, red capsicum (pepper) and salt.
Ali Paşa kebabı, "Ali Pasha kebab" – cubed lamb with tomato, onion and parsley wrapped in phillo.
Alinazik – Ground meat kebab sautéed in a saucepan, with garlic, yogurt and eggplants added.
Beyti kebap – Ground lamb or beef, seasoned and grilled on a skewer, often served wrapped in lavash and topped with tomato sauce and yogurt, traced back to the famous kebab house Beyti in Istanbul and particularly popular in Turkey's larger cities.
Bostan kebabı – Lamb and aubergine casserole.
Buğu kebabı – Steam kebab, is a Turkish stew which is cooked in a pan or an earthenware casserole. The casserole's lid is sealed in order to cook the meat in its own juices. The dish is prepared with pearl onions, garlic, thyme and other spices. In Tekirdağ, it is served with cumin; in Izmir, it is served with mastic.
Cağ kebap, 'spoke kebab' – Cubes of lamb roasted first on a cağ (a horizontal rotating spit) and then on a skewer, a specialty of Erzurum region with recently rising popularity.
Ciğer kebabı, 'liver kebab' - usually eaten with sliced onions, salad and bread.
Çökertme kebabı – Sirloin veal kebap stuffed with yogurt and potatoes.
Çöp şiş, "small skewer kebab" – a speciality of Selçuk and Germencik near Ephesus, pounded boneless meat with tomatoes and garlic marinated with black pepper, thyme and oil on wooden skewers.
Döner kebap, literally "rotating kebab" in Turkish, is sliced lamb, beef, or chicken, slowly roasted on a vertical rotating spit. The Middle Eastern shawarma, Mexican tacos al pastor, and Greek gyros are all derived from the Turkish döner kebab, which was invented in Bursa in the 19th century. The German-style döner kebab sandwich, sometimes called simply "a kebab" in English, was introduced by Turkish immigrants in Berlin in the 1970s, and has become one of the most popular take-away foods in Germany and much of Europe. It is commonly sold by Turks, and considered a Turkish-German specialty, in Germany.
Hünkâri kebabı, 'Sultan's kebab' – Sliced lamb meat mixed with patlıcan beğendi (aubergine purée), basil, thyme and bay leaf.
İskender kebap – döner kebab served with yogurt, tomato sauce and butter, originated in Bursa. This kebab was invented by İskender Efendi in 1867. He was inspired from Cağ kebab and turned it from horizontal to vertical.
İslim kebabı, 'steamed kebab' – Another version of the aubergine kebab without its skin, marinated in sunflower oil.
Kağıt kebabı – Lamb cooked in a paper wrapping.
Kuzu şiş – Shish prepared with marinated milk-fed lamb meat.
Manisa Kebab – This Manisa region version of the kebab is smaller and flat size shish meat on the sliced pide bread, flavored with butter, and stuffed with tomato, garlic and green pepper.
Patlıcan kebabı, 'aubergine kebab' – Special kebap meat marinated in spices and served with eggplant (aubergine), hot pide bread and a yogurt sauce.
Shish kebap – is a dish consisting of small cubes of meat or fish threaded on a skewer and grilled. Şiş, pronounced , is a Turkish word meaning "sword" or "skewer". According to tradition, the dish was invented by medieval soldiers who used their swords to grill meat over open-field fires. In Turkey, shish kebab does not normally contain vegetables, though they may be cooked on a separate skewer. It can be prepared with lamb, beef, chicken, or fish, but pork is not used. The Pontian Greeks made a dish similar to shish kebabs, although theirs were cooked in a saucepan.
Tavuk şiş – Yogurt-marinated chicken grilled on a stick.
Testi kebabı, 'earthenware-jug kebab' – is a dish from Central Anatolia and the Mid-Western Black Sea region, consisting of a mixture of meat and vegetables cooked in a clay pot or jug over fire (testi means jug in Turkish). The pot is sealed with bread dough or foil and is broken when serving.
South Asia
South Asia has a rich kebab tradition with a great variety of different kebab dishes. Many modern kebabs in Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani cuisine trace their origins back to the time of the Mughals and the strong influence of Mughlai cuisine. Kebab dishes common to one or more of these countries include:
Tandoori kebab ()
Naga doner kebab
Shami kebab
Seekh kebab
Tikka kebab
Kathi Kebab (including Porota Kababs, kebab wraps)
Shami kebab () - A Shami kebab is a small patty of minced beef or chicken and ground chickpeas and spices.
Seekh kebab () - A long skewer of beef mixed with herbs and seasonings, it takes its name from the skewer.
Tunde ke kabab ()
Bun kebab () - A unique kebab sandwich with beef, lamb, fish or chicken.
Bihari kebab
Shatkora doner kebab
Chapli kebab () - A spiced, tangy round kebab made of ground beef and cooked in animal fat. A speciality of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Bihari kebab () - Skewer of beef mixed with herbs and seasoning.
Kalmi kebab ()
Sheesh kebab ()
Burrah kebab - made from goat or lamb chops, liberally marinated with spices and charcoal grilled.
Afghanistan
Afghan kebab (Pashto/Dari: کباب) is most often found in restaurants and outdoor vendor stalls. The most widely used meat is lamb. Recipes differ with every restaurant. In Afghan cuisine, kebab is served with naan, rarely rice, and customers have the option to sprinkle sumac or ghora, dried ground sour grapes, on their kebab. The quality of kebab is solely dependent on the quality of the meat. Pieces of fat from the sheep's tail (jijeq) are usually added with the lamb skewers to add extra flavor.
Other popular kebabs include the lamb chop, ribs, beef, buffalo, and chicken, all of which are found in better restaurants.
Chapli kebab, a specialty of Eastern Afghanistan, is a patty made from beef mince. It is prepared flat and round, and served with naan. The original recipe of chapli kebab dictates a half meat (or less), half flour mixture, which renders it lighter in taste and less expensive.
Bangladesh
In Bangladesh they make versions of pakistani kebabs (Bengali কাবাব or "Kabab"). In the old Mughal province of Bengal Subah's capital of Dhaka, various pakistani and indian-influenced dishes started to be made. Amongst these were kebabs. In Bangladeshi cuisine, most kebabs are made using fish or beef.
India
Modern-day kebabs in India mostly trace their origin to the influence of Mughlai cuisine. Some Indian kebabs have very specific geographic attributions, such as Kakori kebab, which is made of finely ground, soft mince and attributed to the city of Kakori in Uttar Pradesh, where legend has it that it was first prepared for old and toothless pilgrims.
Pakistan
In Pakistan kebabs trace back their origin during the time of the Mughals Mughlai cuisine, and their influence on the cuisine of modern-day Pakistan. There are all sorts of kebab varieties such as seekh, chapli, shammi and other forms of roasted and grilled meats. As Pakistan is a predominantly Muslim country, pork is not used. Instead meats like beef, chicken, lamb, fish and sometimes buff are used in the making of kebabs.
Southeast Asia
Satay is a kebab of seasoned, skewered, and grilled meat, served with a sauce. It is a dish of Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Satay may consist of diced or sliced chicken, goat, lamb, mutton, beef, pork, fish, other meats, or tofu. Traditionally skewers from the midrib of the coconut palm frond are used, although bamboo skewers are often used instead. It is grilled or barbecued over a wood or charcoal fire with spicy seasonings. It may be served with various sauces, though most often a combination of soy and peanut sauce. Hence, peanut sauce is often called satay sauce.
Satay was developed by Javanese street vendors as a unique adaptation of Indian kebab. The introduction of satay, and other now-iconic dishes such as tongseng and gulai kambing based on meats such as goat and lamb, coincided with an influx of Indian and Arab traders and immigrants starting in the 18th century. It is available almost anywhere in Indonesia, where it has become a national dish. In Sri Lanka, it has become a staple of the local diet as a result of the influences from the local Malay community.
Sub-Saharan Africa
South Africa
Sosatie (plural sosaties) is a traditional South African dish of meat (usually lamb or mutton) cooked on skewers. The term derives from sate ("skewered meat") and saus (spicy sauce). It is of Cape Malay origin. Sosatie recipes vary, but commonly the ingredients can include cubes of lamb, beef, chicken, dried apricots, red onions and mixed peppers.
West Africa
Suya is a spicy kebab which is a popular food item in West Africa that originated in Nigeria. It is traditionally prepared by the Hausa people of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Ghana and some parts of Sudan (where it is called agashe).
Kyinkyinga is common and popular in West Africa. It is a Ghanaian dish, very similar to or synonymous with the Hausa suya kebab, also known as sooya, tsinga, chichinga, tsire agashi, chachanga or tankora.
Other variants
Ćevapi
Ćevapi () or ćevapčići (formal diminutive, , ), which comes from the word kebab, is a grilled dish of minced meat, a type of skinless sausage, found traditionally in the countries of southeastern Europe (the Balkans). They are considered a national dish in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and are also common in Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, Slovenia, as well as in North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania. Ćevapi has its origins in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Ottoman period, and represents a regional speciality similar to the kofte kebab. A dish with similar origins is in Romania called mititei.
Pinchitos
Pinchitos or Pinchos Morunos is a Moorish-derived kebab dish in Spanish cuisine. The name pinchitos is used in the southern Spanish autonomous communities of Andalusia and Extremadura. They consist of small cubes of meat threaded onto a skewer () which are traditionally cooked over charcoal braziers. Similar dishes in North Africa or other Muslim majority countries tend to be lamb-based, but pork and chicken are the most popular meats for the dish in Spain. Pinchitos are also extremely popular in Venezuela, due to the heavy influence Spain had in Venezuelan cuisine during many years.
Shashlik
Shashlik is similar to, or sometimes a synonym for, shish kebab. It is popular in many countries, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe, the Caucasus, and the Baltics. In non-Muslim-majority countries, shashlik and equivalent dishes like Romanian frigărui may sometimes be prepared with pork.
Kebab in Western culture
Kebab cuisine has spread around the world together with Muslim influence. Although non-Muslim Westerners may be increasingly familiar with some of the many other international kebab dishes, only two have become an established and widely popular part of the culture in many Western countries. In English, the word kebab commonly refers to shish kebab and, outside of North America, to döner kebab or related fast-food dishes. These dishes are also served in many other countries, where they may have different names.
Kebabs have also met opposition: in Italy, several cities banned kebab shops in order to preserve Italian culinary culture. Many protested against these bans as "racist".
Shish kebab
In English, kebab, or in North America also kabob, often occurring as shish kebab, is now a culinary term for small pieces of meat cooked on a skewer. The word kebab, most likely derived from Arabic, has been used with various spellings in this sense since at least the 17th century, while the Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest known publication of the term shish kebab, derived from , in 1914.
There are two etymologies suggested for Shish Kabob in the Persian dictionary of Dehkhoda: Shish being the Persian word "Shish" for the number 6, which refers to the original six pieces of meat of a standard Kabob skewer, or "Shish" being driven from Late Middle Persian (aka. Sassanid Pahlavi) "Sich" meaning a skewer. The word "Kabob" is most probably driven from the Arhameic word kbābā (to roast).
In many English-speaking countries, it refers to the now well-known dish prepared with marinated meat or seafood together with vegetables such as onions, tomatoes, and bell peppers threaded onto the skewer, also sometimes known as shashlik. This preparation is different from the typical Turkish shish kebab style, where vegetables are usually cooked on a separate skewer. Shish kebabs are customarily prepared in homes and restaurants, and are usually cooked on a grill or barbecue, or roasted in an oven.
The word kebab may also be used as a general term in English to describe any similar-looking skewered food, such as brochette, satay, souvlaki, yakitori, or numerous small chunks of any type of food served on a stick. This is different from its use in the Middle East, where shish (Persian/Mazandarani: شیش, ) is the word for skewer, while kebab comes from the word for grilling.
Doner kebab
English speakers from countries outside North America may also use the word kebab generally to mean the popular fast food version of the Turkish döner kebab, or the related shawarma or gyros, and the sandwiches made with them, available from kebab shops as take-away meals. This usage may be found in some non-English parts of Europe as well. In North America, the Greek variant gyros is most widely known.
The döner kebab originated in 19th century Turkey, but it became widely popular in the West only in the latter half of the 20th century. Many layers of meat are stacked onto a large vertical rotating spit; the outer surface is gradually cooked and sliced off, and typically served either mixed or topped with vegetables and sauces in a sandwich made with pita or other flatbreads. Certain regional variants also include cheeses. Sandwiches served in the same manner, but with other meats or cheese, may also sometimes be called a "kebab". It is available in most parts of Europe, and many other countries, though sometimes with different names or serving styles. In Germany, the highly popular sandwich, introduced by Turkish immigrants, is called a Döner, though Arab shops there serve shawarma.
Similar dishes
Americas
City chicken (U.S.)
Spiedies (New York State)
Anticuchos (Andean)
Espetinho (Brazilian)
Africa
Sosatie (South African)
Suya (Nigerian)
Kyinkyinga (Ghanaian)
Asia
Chuan (Chinese)
Kkochi and jeok (Korean)
Kushiyaki and kushikatsu (Japanese)
Satay (Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean and Thai)
Europe
Kebakko (Finnish)
Brochette (French)
Espetada (Portuguese)
Souvlaki (Σουβλάκι; Greek)
Arrosticini (Italian)
Pinchitos (Spanish)
Shashlik (Шашлык; Russian)
See also
Kazakh cuisine
List of barbecue dishes
List of kebabs
List of spit-roasted foods
Ottoman cuisine
Syrian cuisine
Uzbek cuisine
References
Skewered foods
Spit-cooked foods
Street food
Ancient dishes
Arab cuisine
Balkan cuisine
Central Asian cuisine
Levantine cuisine
Ottoman cuisine
South Asian cuisine
Food watchlist articles
Types of food
Middle Eastern grilled meats
Pontic Greek cuisine
Middle Eastern cuisine
Turkish cuisine
Azerbaijani cuisine
Israeli cuisine
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicksburg%20campaign
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Vicksburg campaign
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The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. The Union Army of the Tennessee under Major General Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the river by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The campaign consisted of many important naval operations, troop maneuvers, failed initiatives, and eleven distinct battles from December 26, 1862, to July 4, 1863. Military historians divide the campaign into two formal phases: operations against Vicksburg (December 1862 – January 1863) and Grant's operations against Vicksburg (March – July 1863).
Grant initially planned a two-pronged approach in which half of his army, under Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, would advance to the Yazoo River and attempt to reach Vicksburg from the northeast, while Grant took the remainder of the army down the Mississippi Central Railroad. Both of these initiatives failed. Grant conducted a number of "experiments" or expeditions—Grant's bayou operations—that attempted to enable waterborne access to the Mississippi south of Vicksburg's artillery batteries. All five of these initiatives failed as well. Finally, Union gunboats and troop transport boats ran the batteries at Vicksburg and met up with Grant's men who had marched overland in Louisiana. On April 29 and April 30, 1863, Grant's army crossed the Mississippi and landed at Bruinsburg, Mississippi. An elaborate series of demonstrations and diversions fooled the Confederates and the landings occurred without opposition. Over the next 17 days, Grant maneuvered his army inland and won five battles, captured the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi, and assaulted and laid siege to Vicksburg.
After Pemberton's army surrendered on July 4 (one day after the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg), and when Port Hudson surrendered to Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks on July 9, Texas and Arkansas were effectively cut off from the Confederacy, and the Mississippi River was once again open for northern commerce to reach the Gulf of Mexico, and as a supply line for the Union Army. Grant's Vicksburg campaign is studied as a masterpiece of military operations and a major turning point of the war.
Background
Military situation
Vicksburg was strategically vital to the Confederates. Jefferson Davis said, "Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South's two halves together." While in their hands, it blocked Union navigation down the Mississippi; together with control of the mouth of the Red River and of Port Hudson to the south, it allowed communication with the states west of the river, upon which the Confederates depended extensively for horses, cattle and reinforcements. The natural defenses of the city were ideal, earning it the nickname "The Gibraltar of the Confederacy". It was located on a high bluff overlooking a horseshoe-shaped bend in the river, De Soto Peninsula, making it almost impossible to approach by ship. North and east of Vicksburg was the Mississippi Delta (sometimes known as the Yazoo Delta), an area 200 miles (320 km) north to south and up to 50 miles (80 km) across, which has been described by geographer Warren E. Grabau as an "astonishingly complex network of intersecting waterways", some of which were navigable by small steamboats. The regions between modern rivers and bayous formed closed basins called backswamps, of which Grabau judged, "Whether permanently flooded or not, the backswamps were, for all practical purposes, untamed wildernesses, utterly impassable by a man on horseback or by any form of wheeled vehicle, and very difficult even for a man on foot." About twelve miles (19 km) up the Yazoo River were Confederate batteries and entrenchments at Haynes Bluff. The Louisiana land west of Vicksburg was also difficult, with many streams and poor country roads, widespread winter flooding, and it was on the opposite side of the river from the fortress.
The city had been under Union naval attack before. Admiral David Farragut moved up the river after his capture of New Orleans and on May 18, 1862, demanded the surrender of Vicksburg. Farragut had insufficient troops to force the issue, and he moved back to New Orleans. He returned with a flotilla in June 1862, but their attempts (June 26–28) to bombard the fortress into surrender failed. They shelled Vicksburg throughout July and fought some minor battles with a few Confederate vessels in the area, but their forces were insufficient to attempt a landing, and they abandoned attempts to force the surrender of the city. Farragut investigated the possibility of bypassing the fortified cliffs by digging a canal across the neck of the river's bend, the De Soto Peninsula. On June 28, Brig. Gen. Thomas Williams, attached to Farragut's command, began digging work on the canal by employing local laborers and some soldiers. Many of the men fell victim to tropical diseases and heat exhaustion, and the work was abandoned by July 24. (Williams was killed two weeks later in the Battle of Baton Rouge).
In the fall of 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck was promoted from command of the Western Theater to General-in-Chief of all Union armies. On November 23, he indicated to Grant his preference for a major move down the Mississippi to Vicksburg; in Halleck's style, he left considerable initiative to design a campaign, an opportunity that the pugnacious Grant seized. Halleck has received criticism for not moving promptly overland from Memphis, Tennessee, to seize Vicksburg during the summer when he was in command on the scene. He believed that the Navy could capture the fortress on its own, not knowing that the naval force was insufficiently manned with ground troops to finish the job. What might have achieved success in the summer of 1862 was no longer possible by November because the Confederates had amply reinforced the garrison by that time. Also, reliable navigation on the river was seasonal, and the natural fall in the level of the river during the fall and winter months limited the utility of shipping, the usable draft of riverboats, and the quantity of men, supplies, and equipment, they could transport.
Grant's army marched south down the Mississippi Central Railroad, making a forward base at Holly Springs. He planned a two-pronged assault in the direction of Vicksburg. His principal subordinate, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, was to advance down the river with four divisions (about 32,000 men) and Grant would continue with the remaining forces (about 40,000) down the railroad line to Oxford, where he would wait for developments, hoping to lure the Confederate army out of the city to attack him in the vicinity of Grenada, Mississippi.
On the Confederate side, forces in Mississippi were under the command of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, an officer from Pennsylvania who chose to fight for the South. Pemberton had approximately 12,000 men in Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi, and Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn had approximately 24,000 at Grenada.
Meanwhile, political forces were at work. President Abraham Lincoln had long recognized the importance of Vicksburg; he wrote "Vicksburg is the key. ...The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket." Lincoln also envisioned a two-pronged offensive, but one up and down the river. Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand, a War Democrat politician, had convinced Lincoln that he could lead an army down the river and take Vicksburg. Lincoln approved his proposal and wanted Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks to advance up river from New Orleans at the same time. McClernand began organizing regiments, sending them to Memphis. Back in Washington, D.C., Halleck was nervous about McClernand and gave Grant control of all troops in his own department. McClernand's troops were split into two corps, one under McClernand, the other under Sherman. McClernand complained but to no avail. Grant appropriated his troops, one of several maneuvers in a private dispute within the Union Army between Grant and McClernand that continued throughout the campaign.
Battles in the operations against Vicksburg, December 1862 – January 1863
The "operations against Vicksburg" phase of the Vicksburg campaign comprises the following battles:
Chickasaw Bayou (December 26–29, 1862)
Sherman disembarked with three divisions at Johnson's Plantation on the Yazoo River to approach the Vicksburg defenses from the northeast. On December 27, the Federals pushed their lines forward through the swamps toward the Walnut Hills, which were strongly defended. On December 28, several futile attempts were made to get around these defenses. On December 29, Sherman ordered a frontal assault, which was repulsed with heavy casualties, and then withdrew.
During this period, the overland half of Grant's offensive was failing. His lines of communication were disrupted by raids by Van Dorn and Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who destroyed his large supply depot at Holly Springs. Unable to subsist his army without these supplies, Grant abandoned his overland advance.
In early January, McClernand arrived at Memphis with the corps he had recruited (the XIII Corps under Brig. Gen. George W. Morgan) and commenced his operation down the Mississippi. On January 4, he ordered Sherman to attach his XV Corps to the expedition, calling his combined 32,000-man force the Army of the Mississippi. This was a direct provocation against Grant, but Sherman acceded to the senior officer. Sherman suggested beginning with a combined land and naval movement against Fort Hindman, on the Arkansas River at Arkansas Post, 50 miles up the Arkansas from its confluence with the Mississippi, a base from which Confederate gunboats were attacking Union shipping on the river. The expedition started without notifying Grant.
Arkansas Post (January 9–11, 1863)
Union boats under Rear Adm. David Dixon Porter began landing troops near Arkansas Post in the evening of January 9. The troops started up river towards Fort Hindman. Sherman's corps overran Confederate trenches, and the defenders retreated to the protection of the fort and adjacent rifle-pits. Porter, on January 10, moved his fleet towards Fort Hindman and bombarded it, withdrawing at dusk. Union artillery fired on the fort from positions across the river on January 11, and the infantry moved into position for an attack. Union ironclads commenced shelling the fort and Porter's fleet passed it to cut off any retreat. As a result of this envelopment, and the attack by Morgan's troops, the Confederate command surrendered in the afternoon. Although Union losses were high and the victory did not contribute to the capture of Vicksburg, it did eliminate one more impediment to Union shipping on the Mississippi.
Grant was not happy to learn that McClernand had conducted the operation without his approval, considering it a distraction from his main objective of Vicksburg, but since it had been successful and his ally Sherman had suggested it, he took no punitive action. However, he ordered McClernand back to the Mississippi and assumed personal command of the campaign on January 13 at Milliken's Bend, 15 miles northwest of Vicksburg.
Grant's bayou operations, January–March 1863
That winter, Grant conducted a series of initiatives to approach and capture Vicksburg, termed "Grant's bayou operations". Their general theme was to use or construct alternative waterways so that troops could be positioned within striking distance of Vicksburg, without requiring a direct approach on the Mississippi under the Confederate guns.
Grant's Canal
The Williams Canal across De Soto Peninsula had been abandoned by Adm. Farragut and Brig. Gen. Williams in July 1862, but it had the potential to offer a route downriver that bypassed Vicksburg's guns. In late January 1863, Sherman's men, at the urging of Grant—who was advised by the navy that President Lincoln liked the idea—resumed digging. Sherman derisively called the work "Butler's Ditch" (since it was Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler who had sent Williams upriver to do the work), which was barely 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep. Grant, undoubtedly influenced by Lincoln's continual inquiries as to the status of the canal, ordered Sherman to expand the canal to 60 feet wide and 7 feet deep and the effort became known as Grant's Canal. It was not properly engineered based upon the hydrology of the Mississippi River, however, and a sudden rise in the river broke through the dam at the head of the canal and flooded the area. The canal began to fill up with back water and sediment. In a desperate effort to rescue the project, two huge steam-driven dipper dredges, Hercules and Sampson, attempted to clear the channel, but the dredges were exposed to Confederate artillery fire from the bluffs at Vicksburg and driven away. By late March, work on the canal was abandoned. (Remnants of about 200 yards of Grant's Canal are maintained by the Vicksburg National Military Park in Louisiana).
Lake Providence expedition
Grant ordered Brig. Gen. James B. McPherson to construct a canal of several hundred yards from the Mississippi to Lake Providence, northwest of the city. This would allow passage to the Red River, through Bayous Baxter and Macon, and the Tensas and Black Rivers. Reaching the Red River, Grant's force could join with Banks at Port Hudson. McPherson reported that the connection was navigable on March 18, but the few "ordinary Ohio River boats" that had been sent to Grant for navigation of the bayous could only transport 8,500 men. The boats through Lake Providence increased the Union soldiers to a force of 30,000 and provided the field commander the flexibility of a 4:1 advantage, potentially more than enough to ensure a successful siege of Port Hudson. Although this was the only one of the bayou expeditions to successfully bypass the Vicksburg defenses, historian Ed Bearss diminishes this exploit as the "Lake Providence Boondoggle".
Yazoo Pass expedition
The next attempt was to get to the high ground of the loess bluffs above Hayne's Bluff and below Yazoo City by blowing up the Mississippi River levee near Moon Lake, some 150 miles (240 km) above Vicksburg, near Helena, Arkansas, and following the Yazoo Pass (an old route from Yazoo City to Memphis, which was curtailed by the 1856 levee construction that sealed off the Pass from the Mississippi River to Moon Lake) into the Coldwater River, then to the Tallahatchie River, and finally into the Yazoo River at Greenwood, Mississippi. The dikes were blown up on February 3, beginning what was called the Yazoo Pass Expedition. Ten Union boats, under the command of Lt. Cmdr. Watson Smith, with army troops under the command of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss, began moving through the pass on February 7. But low-hanging trees destroyed anything on the gunboats above deck and Confederates felled more trees to block the way. These delays allowed the Confederates time to quickly construct a "Fort Pemberton" near the confluence of the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha Rivers near Greenwood, Mississippi, which repulsed the naval force on March 11, March 14, and March 16. The Union effort collapsed in early April.
Steele's Bayou expedition
Admiral Porter started an effort on March 14 to go up the Yazoo Delta via Steele's Bayou, just north of Vicksburg, to Deer Creek. This would outflank Fort Pemberton and allow landing troops between Vicksburg and Yazoo City. Confederates once again felled trees in their path, and willow reeds fouled the boats' paddlewheels. This time the Union boats became immobilized, and Confederate cavalry and infantry threatened to capture them. Sherman sent infantry assistance to repel the Confederates bedeviling Porter, but Porter's approach was abandoned as too difficult.
Duckport Canal
Grant's final attempt was to dig another canal from Duckport Landing to Walnut Bayou, aimed at getting lighter boats past Vicksburg. By the time the canal was almost finished, on April 6, water levels were declining, and none but the lightest of flatboats could get through. Grant abandoned this canal and started planning anew.
From December through March, including Chickasaw Bayou and the Mississippi Central advance, seven initiatives, or "experiments", by Grant had failed. Grant claimed in his memoirs that he had undertaken these experiments primarily to keep his troops busy during the flooded and disease-laden winter months and that he had had no expectation of success. This claim is contradicted by correspondence from Grant at the time.
Plan for the 1863 campaign and initial movements
All of the bayou operations were failures, but Grant was well known for his stubborn determination and would not quit. His final option was bold but risky: March the Union army down the west side of the Mississippi, cross the river south of Vicksburg, and either attack Vicksburg from the south and the east or join forces with Banks, capture Port Hudson, and then together reduce Vicksburg. Porter would have to sneak past the guns to get sufficient gunboats and transport ships south of the city. Once they had completed the downstream passage, they would not be able to return past Vicksburg's guns because the river current would slow them too much.
On March 29, McClernand set his troops to work building bridges and corduroy roads. They filled in the swamps in their way as well, and by April 17 they had a rough, tortuous 70-mile (110 km) road from Milliken's Bend to the proposed river crossing at Hard Times, Louisiana, below Vicksburg.
On April 16, a clear night with no moon, Porter sent seven gunboats and three empty troop transports loaded with stores to run the bluff, taking care to minimize noise and lights. But the preparations were ineffective. Confederate sentries sighted the boats, and the bluff exploded with massive artillery fire. Fires were set along the banks to improve visibility. The Union gunboats answered back. Porter observed that the Confederates mainly hit the high parts of his boats, reasoned that they could not depress their guns, and had them hug the east shore, right under Confederate cannon, so close he could hear their commanders giving orders, shells flying overhead. The fleet survived with little damage; thirteen men were wounded and none killed. The Henry Clay was disabled and burned at the water's edge. On April 22, six more boats loaded with supplies made the run; one boat did not make it, though no one was killed. The crew floated downstream on the boat's remnants.
The final piece of Grant's strategy was to divert Pemberton's attention from the river crossing site that the Union troops would use. Grant chose two operations: a feint by Sherman against Snyder's Bluff, Mississippi, north of Vicksburg (see the Battle of Snyder's Bluff below), and a daring cavalry raid through central Mississippi by Col. Benjamin Grierson, known as Grierson's Raid. Both were eminently successful. Of Sherman's feint, Grant writes:"My object was to compel Pemberton to keep as much force about Vicksburg as I could, until I could secure a good footing on high land east of the river. The move was eminently successful and, as we afterwards learned, created great confusion about Vicksburg and doubts about our real design."Grierson was able to draw out significant Confederate forces to chase him, and Pemberton's defenses were dispersed too far around the state. (Pemberton was also wary of Nathaniel Banks's impending advance up the river from Baton Rouge to threaten Port Hudson.). Of Grierson's raid, Grant writes:"It was at Port Gibson I first heard through a Southern paper of the complete success of Colonel Grierson, who was making a raid through central Mississippi...This raid was of great importance, for Grierson had attracted the attention of the enemy from the main movement against Vicksburg."
Opposing forces
Union
Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Union Army of the Tennessee started the campaign with about 44,500 men, which grew by July to 75,000. The army was composed of five corps: the XIII Corps, under Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand; the XV Corps, under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman; the XVII Corps, under Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson; a three-division detachment of the XVI Corps, under Maj. Gen. Cadwallader C. Washburn; and a detachment from the District of Northeast Louisiana, under Brig. Gen. Elias S. Dennis. The IX Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. John G. Parke, joined the army in mid-June.
Confederate
Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's Confederate Army of Mississippi, approximately 30,000 men, consisted of five divisions, under Maj. Gens. William W. Loring, Carter L. Stevenson, John H. Forney, Martin L. Smith, and John S. Bowen.
General Joseph E. Johnston's forces in Raymond and Jackson, Mississippi, about 6,000 men, were elements of his Department of the West, including the brigades of Brig. Gen. John Gregg, and Col. Peyton H. Colquitt. Loring's division had joined Johnston on May 17 after the retreat from Champion Hill and Johnston was further reinforced by Brig. Gen. William H.T. Walker's division, and the cavalry division of Brig. Gen. William Hicks Jackson in late May, followed by the divisions of Maj. Gens. John C. Breckinridge and Samuel G. French in June, bringing his total strength to about 36,000 when Vicksburg surrendered.
Battles in Grant's operations against Vicksburg, April – July 1863
The "Grant's operations against Vicksburg" phase of the Vicksburg campaign comprises the following battles:
Grand Gulf (April 29, 1863)
Admiral Porter led seven ironclads in an attack on the fortifications and batteries at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, with the intention of silencing the Confederate guns and then securing the area with troops of McClernand's XIII Corps who were on the accompanying transports and barges. The attack by the seven ironclads began at 8 a.m. and continued until about 1:30 p.m. During the fight, the ironclads moved within 100 yards of the Confederate guns and silenced the lower batteries of Fort Wade. The Confederate upper batteries at Fort Cobun remained out of reach and continued to fire. Due to the strong Confederate resistance, Grant and Porter decided it was not feasible to make an amphibious landing at Grand Gulf, but later landed at Bruinsburg, Mississippi, instead. The Union ironclads (one of which, the Tuscumbia, had been put out of action) and the transports temporarily drew off, but later that afternoon, while the angle of the sun interfered with Confederate aiming, Porter again sent his ships to Grand Gulf. While the ironclads screened them, the steamboats and barges ran the gauntlet. Meanwhile, Grant marched his men overland across Coffee Point to below the Gulf. After the transports had passed Grand Gulf, they embarked the troops at Disharoon's plantation and disembarked them on the Mississippi shore at Bruinsburg, below Grand Gulf. Grant landed 17,000 soldiers there, the largest amphibious operation in American military history until the Invasion of Normandy. The men immediately began marching overland towards Port Gibson, Mississippi, where, on May 1, they fought the Battle of Port Gibson with Bowen's Confederates. Bowen's right flank was driven in, and Bowen's men conducted a fighting withdrawal from the field. On May 3, the Confederates abandoned the fortifications at Grand Gulf. The Confederates had won a hollow victory, since the loss at Grand Gulf caused just a slight change in Grant's offensive.
Snyder's Bluff (April 29 – May 1)
To ensure that troops would not be withdrawn to Grand Gulf to assist Confederates there, a combined Union army-navy force feigned an attack on Snyder's Bluff. After noon on April 29, Lt. Cdr. K. Randolph Breese, with his eight gunboats and ten transports carrying Maj. Gen. Francis P. Blair's division, inched up the Yazoo River to the mouth of Chickasaw Bayou where they spent the night. At 9 a.m., the next morning, the force, minus one gunboat, continued upriver to Drumgould's Bluff and engaged the enemy batteries. During the fighting, Choctaw suffered more than fifty hits, but no casualties occurred. Around 6 p.m., the troops disembarked and marched along Blake's Levee toward the guns. As they neared Drumgould's Bluff, a battery opened on them, creating havoc and casualties. The Union advance halted and, after dark, the men reembarked on the transports. The next morning, transports disembarked other troops. The swampy terrain and enemy heavy artillery fire forced them to retire. The gunboats opened fire again, about 3 p.m. on May 1, causing some damage. Later, the boats' fire slackened and stopped altogether after dark. Sherman had received orders to land his troops at Milliken's Bend, so the gunboats returned to their anchorages at the mouth of the Yazoo.
Port Gibson (May 1)
Grant's army began marching inland from Bruinsburg. Advancing on the Rodney Road towards Port Gibson, they ran into Confederate outposts after midnight and skirmished with them for around three hours. After 3 a.m., the fighting stopped. Union forces advanced on the Rodney Road and a plantation road at dawn. At 5:30 a.m., the Confederates engaged the Union advance and the battle ensued. Federals forced the Confederates to fall back. The Confederates established new defensive positions at different times during the day but they could not stop the Union onslaught and left the field in the early evening. This defeat demonstrated that the Confederates were unable to defend the Mississippi River line, and the Federals had secured their beachhead.
At this point, Grant faced a decision. His original orders were to capture Grand Gulf and then proceed south to link up with Banks and reduce Port Hudson, after which their combined armies would return and capture Vicksburg. Unfortunately for Grant, such a course would put him under the command of the more senior major general and the credit for any success in the theater would go to Banks. Since Banks was occupied with operations on the Red River and had informed Grant that he was not ready to begin operations against Port Hudson within the next few days, Grant decided to move on his own against Vicksburg. He sent a message to Halleck about his intentions, knowing that it would take as many as eight days for Washington to receive the message and respond.
After the Union army seized the crossing at Grindstone Ford, any Confederate forces between the Big Bayou Pierre and the Big Black River were compromised. Realizing this, Bowen evacuated Grand Gulf and proceeded with all speed to Hankinson's Ford across the Big Black, barely escaping the Union trap. Grant's intention at this time was to move north over this same route and advance directly on Vicksburg. However, scouting parties that he sent out found that Pemberton had good defensive positions to the south of the city. Instead, he decided to break the city's supply line by seizing the railroad from Jackson to Vicksburg. He gave orders for his three corps (Sherman having arrived across the river) to advance over three separate routes to attack the railroad at Edwards Station (the westernmost objective, with McClernand's corps), Clinton (easternmost, with McPherson's) and Midway Station (center, with Sherman's).
Raymond (May 12)
On May 10, Pemberton ordered all reinforcements arriving at Jackson to march to Raymond, 20 miles (32 km) to the southwest. Brig. Gen. John Gregg's overstrength brigade, having endured a grueling march from Port Hudson, Louisiana, began marching to Raymond the next morning, arriving late in the afternoon of May 11. On May 12, Gregg's brigade moved to ambush a Union raiding party at Fourteen Mile Creek. The raiding party turned out to be Maj. Gen. John A. Logan's Division of the XVII Corps. Gregg decided to dispute the crossing of Fourteen Mile Creek and arrayed his men and artillery accordingly. As Logan's men approached, the Confederates opened fire, initially causing heavy casualties. Some Union troops broke, but Logan rallied a force to hold the line. Confederate troops attacked the line but were forced to retire. Additional Union troops arrived and counterattacked. Heavy fighting ensued that continued for six hours, but the overwhelming Union force prevailed. Gregg's men left the field. Although they lost the battle, they had held up a much superior Union force for a day. General Gregg, under orders to withdraw to Jackson in the face of a superior force, withdrew five miles (8 km) in the direction of Jackson to Mississippi Springs, Mississippi. This retrograde movement exposed the Southern Railroad of Mississippi to Union forces, thus severing the lifeline of Vicksburg.
Despite McPherson's victory, the presence of Confederate forces attacking Grant's right flank caused him to reconsider his plan. He learned that Gen. Joseph E. Johnston was due in Jackson with reinforcements within the next couple of days, and there was a rumor that Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard would also arrive on the scene. In this situation, the Union army would be between enemy forces on each flank. Therefore, he chose to deal with the threat from the east first and ordered Sherman and McPherson to seize Jackson.
Jackson (May 14)
On May 9, Gen. Johnston received a dispatch from the Confederate Secretary of War directing him to "proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief command of the forces in the field". When he arrived in Jackson on May 13 from Middle Tennessee, he learned that two army corps—Sherman's and McPherson's—were advancing on Jackson and that Gregg had only about 6,000 troops available to defend the city. Johnston ordered the evacuation of Jackson, but Gregg was to defend Jackson until the evacuation was completed. By 10 a.m., both Union army corps were near Jackson and had engaged the enemy. Rain, Confederate resistance, and poor defenses prevented heavy fighting until around 11 a.m., when Union forces attacked in numbers and slowly but surely pushed the enemy back. In mid-afternoon, Johnston informed Gregg that the evacuation was complete and that he should disengage and follow. Soon after, the Union troops entered Jackson and had a celebration hosted by Grant, who had been traveling with Sherman's corps, in the Bowman House. They then burned part of the town, destroyed numerous factories, and cut the railroad connections with Vicksburg. Johnston's evacuation is seen as a mistake because he could, by late on May 14, have had 11,000 troops at his disposal and by the morning of May 15, another 4,000. The fall of the Mississippi state capital was a blow to Confederate morale. Having broken the rail links, Grant temporarily abandoned the city to allow his troops to concentrate on Vicksburg.
Johnston retreated with most of his army up the Canton Road, but he ordered Pemberton to leave Edwards Station and attack the Federals at Clinton. Pemberton and his generals felt that Johnston's plan was dangerous and decided instead to attack the Union supply trains moving from Grand Gulf to Raymond. On May 16, however, Pemberton received another order from Johnston repeating his former directions. Pemberton had already started after the supply trains and was on the Raymond-Edwards Road with his rear at the crossroads one-third mile south of the crest of Champion Hill. Thus, when he ordered a countermarch, his rear, including his many supply wagons, became the vanguard of his force.
Champion Hill (May 16)
On May 16, about 7 a.m., the Union forces engaged the Confederates and the Battle of Champion Hill began. Pemberton's force drew up into a defensive line along a crest of a ridge overlooking Jackson Creek. Pemberton was unaware that one Union column was moving along the Jackson Road against his unprotected left flank. For protection, Pemberton posted Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Lee's men atop Champion Hill where they could watch for the reported Union column moving to the crossroads. Lee spotted the Union troops and they soon saw him. If this force was not stopped, it would cut the Confederates off from their Vicksburg base. Pemberton received warning of the Union movement and sent troops to his left flank. Union forces at the Champion House moved into action and emplaced artillery to begin firing. When Grant arrived at Champion Hill, around 10 a.m., he ordered the attack to begin. By 11:30 a.m., Union forces had reached the Confederate main line and about 1 p.m., they took the crest while the Confederates retreated in disorder. The Federals swept forward, capturing the crossroads and closing the Jackson Road escape route. One of Pemberton's divisions (Bowen's) then counterattacked, pushing the Federals back beyond the Champion Hill crest before their surge came to a halt. Grant then counterattacked, committing forces that had just arrived from Clinton by way of Bolton. Pemberton's men could not stand up to this assault, so he ordered his men from the field to the one escape route still open: the Raymond Road crossing of Bakers Creek. Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman's brigade formed the rearguard, and they held at all costs, including the loss of Tilghman. In the late afternoon, Union troops seized the Bakers Creek Bridge, and by midnight, they occupied Edwards. The Confederates were in full retreat towards Vicksburg.
Big Black River Bridge (May 17)
The Confederate retreat reached Big Black River Bridge the night of May 16–17. Pemberton ordered Brig. Gen. Bowen, with three brigades, to man the fortifications on the east bank of the river and impede any Union pursuit. Three divisions of McClernand's corps moved out from Edwards Station on the morning of May 17. The corps encountered the Confederates behind breastworks and took cover as enemy artillery began firing. Union Brig. Gen. Michael K. Lawler formed his 2nd Brigade, Brig. Gen. Eugene A. Carr's Division, which surged out of a river meander scar, across the front of the Confederate forces, and into the enemy's breastworks, held by Brig. Gen. John C. Vaughn's inexperienced East Tennessee Brigade. Confused and panicked, the Confederates began to withdraw across the Big Black on two bridges: the railroad bridge and the steamboat dock moored athwart the river. As soon as they had crossed, the Confederates set fire to the bridges, preventing close Union pursuit. The fleeing Confederates who arrived in Vicksburg later that day were disorganized. The Union forces captured approximately 1,800 troops at Big Black, a loss that the Confederates could ill afford.
Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4)
The Union army converged on Vicksburg, trapping Pemberton's force. Grant attempted two assaults to break through the strong Confederate fieldworks: May 19 and May 22. The latter assault initially achieved some success in McClernand's sector, but it was repulsed with 3,200 casualties. Johnston ordered Pemberton to evacuate the city and save his army, but Pemberton thought it impossible to withdraw safely. Johnston planned to attack Grant and relieve Pemberton but was unable to arrange it in time. Grant besieged the Confederate army. On July 4, after six weeks in which the soldiers and civilians of Vicksburg had no food supplies and were bombarded constantly, Pemberton surrendered the city and his army.
In addition to Pemberton at his front, Grant had to be concerned with Confederate forces in his rear. He stationed one division in the vicinity of the Big Black River bridge and another reconnoitered as far north as Mechanicsburg, both to act as a covering force. By June 10, the IX Corps, under Maj. Gen. John G. Parke, was transferred to Grant's command. This corps became the nucleus of a special task force whose mission was to prevent Johnston, gathering his forces at Canton, from interfering with the siege. Sherman was given command of this task force and Brig. Gen. Frederick Steele replaced him at the XV Corps on June 22. Johnston eventually began moving to relieve Pemberton and reached the Big Black River on July 1, but he delayed a potentially difficult encounter with Sherman until it was too late for the Vicksburg garrison, and then fell back to Jackson.
Louisiana operations
During the siege of Vicksburg, three other battles took place in the vicinity:
Milliken's Bend (June 7)
In an effort to cut Grant's supply line during the siege, the Confederates attacked the Milliken's Bend supply area up the Mississippi. This was mainly defended by untrained black troops, who fought with inferior weaponry and finally repelled the Confederates with help from gunboats, although at significant cost; the defenders lost 652 to the Confederate 185.
Goodrich's Landing (June 29–30)
After Union forces began occupying the Louisiana river parishes, thousands of escaped slaves flocked to them. The Federals, therefore, leased some plantations and put the freedmen to work growing cotton or other crops; the proceeds from the sale of the crops helped defray expenses for food, clothing, etc. African-American troops were assigned to protect these plantations, releasing other troops to fight. Confederates, determined to recapture some of these freedmen and destroy the crops, undertook an expedition from Gaines's Landing, Arkansas, to Lake Providence. Although the Confederates disrupted these operations, destroyed much property, and captured many supplies and weapons, the raid was only a minor setback for the Union. The Confederates could cause momentary disturbances, but they were unable to effect any lasting changes.
Helena (July 4)
Confederate Lt. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes's troops attacked Helena, Arkansas, in an attempt to relieve pressure on Vicksburg. Although the Confederates had more troops and did initially capture some of the fortifications, the Union forces repelled them.
Aftermath
Although the Confederate killed and wounded in the battle and siege of Vicksburg were a relatively small 2,872, and Union 4,910, Grant captured his second Confederate army in its entirety (the first being at Fort Donelson): 29,495 surrendered. Most of the Confederates were paroled. The Union also captured significant quantities of artillery, small arms, and ammunition. The full campaign, since March 29, claimed 10,142 Union and 9,091 Confederate killed and wounded.
This was the second major blow to the Confederacy in the summer of 1863. On July 3, Gen. Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North collapsed at Gettysburg. On July 4, the Stars and Stripes rose over Vicksburg. To the Confederates, surrendering on Independence Day was a bitter defeat. Union troops behaved well, mixing with Confederates and giving rations to starving soldiers. Speculators who had been hoarding food for higher prices saw their stores broken open and the contents thrown on the streets for the starving rebels. In his Personal Memoirs, Grant observed, "The men of the two armies fraternized as if they had been fighting for the same cause." But resentments lingered: allegedly tradition holds that the Fourth of July holiday was not celebrated by Vicksburg until World War II. This claim has been challenged because large Fourth of July celebrations were being held by 1907.
The most significant result of the campaign was control of the Mississippi River, which the Union obtained completely after Port Hudson, which had been besieged by Banks since May 27, heard news of Vicksburg's fall and surrendered on July 9. The Confederacy was now cut in two; one week later, an unarmed ship arrived in Union-held New Orleans from St. Louis after an uneventful trip down the river. President Lincoln announced, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."
Grant deployed Sherman and 50,000 troops against Johnston's 31,000 in Jackson. Johnston tried to lure Sherman into a frontal assault, but Sherman had seen the results of such at Vicksburg. He demurred and began surrounding the city. Johnston escaped with his army, which was more than Pemberton had achieved, but all of central Mississippi was now under Sherman's control. He used a subsequent operation against Meridian, Mississippi, as a harbinger of the scorched earth tactics he later employed in his March to the Sea through Georgia, and then South Carolina.
One of Grant's actions during the siege was to settle a lingering rivalry. On May 30, General McClernand wrote a self-adulatory note to his troops, claiming much of the credit for the soon-to-be victory. Grant had been waiting six months for him to slip, ever since they clashed early in the campaign, around the Battle of Arkansas Post. Grant finally relieved McClernand on June 18. McClernand's XIII Corps was turned over to Maj. Gen. Edward Ord. In May 1864, McClernand was restored to a command in remote Texas.
Grant was the undisputed victor of the Vicksburg campaign. He was rewarded for his victory with a promotion to major general in the regular army, effective on July 4, 1863. He also received an unusual letter:
Grant went on to rescue Union forces besieged at Chattanooga and then replaced Halleck as general in chief of all Union armies, with the recently re-activated rank of lieutenant general. Despite his ultimate success in winning the war, historians have often considered Vicksburg his finest campaign—imaginative, audacious, relentless, and a masterpiece of maneuver warfare. James M. McPherson called Vicksburg "the most brilliant and innovative campaign of the Civil War"; T. Harry Williams described it as "one of the classic campaigns of the Civil War and, indeed, of military history"; and the U.S. Army Field Manual 100–5 (May 1986) called it "the most brilliant campaign ever fought on American soil".
Historian Steven E. Woodworth wrote that Pemberton "had a strong claim to the title of the most hated man in the South, certainly the most hated to wear a Confederate uniform". There were accusations that adequate supplies had been on hand and that it was only his treachery that caused the surrender. Even his friend, Confederate general Richard Taylor, wrote after the war that a large part of the population believed "He had joined the South for the express purpose of betraying it, and this was clearly proven by the fact that he surrendered on the 4th of July, a day sacred to the Yankees." Davis maintained full confidence in Pemberton, pointing out that he would have been severely criticized and denounced if he had not attempted to defend Vicksburg, but had wound up with the same result by trying to do so. Still, Pemberton's unpopularity made it impossible for Davis to assign him another command after he returned to the Confederate army once he was exchanged. Eventually he resigned his rank of Lt. General to receive a commission as lieutenant colonel in command of the artillery defenses of Richmond.
The blame for losing Vicksburg fell not only on John Pemberton, but on the overcautious Joseph E. Johnston. Jefferson Davis said of the defeat, "Yes, from a want of provisions inside and a General outside who wouldn't fight." Anguished soldiers and civilians starving in the siege held hopes that he would come to their aid, but he never did. Accusations of cowardice that had dogged him since the 1862 Peninsula Campaign continued to follow him in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign against Sherman. However, Johnston was far outnumbered. While he was one of few Confederate generals whom Grant respected, he was outgeneraled.
See also
Troop engagements of the American Civil War, 1863
List of costliest American Civil War land battles
Armies in the American Civil War
Commemoration of the American Civil War
Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps
Vicksburg National Military Park
References
Notes
Bibliography
Ballard, Michael B. Vicksburg, The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. .
Bearss, Edwin C. The Campaign for Vicksburg. Vol. 1, Vicksburg is the Key. Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1985. .
Bearss, Edwin C. The Campaign for Vicksburg. Vol. 2, Grant Strikes a Fatal Blow. Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1986. .
Bearss, Edwin C. The Campaign for Vicksburg. Vol. 3, Unvexed to the Sea. Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1986. .
Bonekemper, Edward H. A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant's Overlooked Military Genius. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2004. .
Catton, Bruce. The Centennial History of the Civil War. Vol. 3, Never Call Retreat. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965. .
Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. .
Esposito, Vincent J. West Point Atlas of American Wars. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959. . The collection of maps (without explanatory text) is available online at the West Point website.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol. 2, Fredericksburg to Meridian. New York: Random House, 1958. .
Gabel, Christopher R., Staff ride handbook for the Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862 – July 1863. Fort Leavenworth, Kan.: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2001. .
Grabau, Warren E. Ninety-Eighty Days: A Geographer's View of the Vicksburg Campaign. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000. .
Kennedy, Frances H., ed. The Civil War Battlefield Guide. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. .
Korn, Jerry, and the Editors of Time-Life Books. War on the Mississippi: Grant's Vicksburg Campaign. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1985. .
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. .
Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. .
Winschel, Terrence J. Vicksburg: Fall of the Confederate Gibraltar. Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 1999. .
Woodworth, Steven E. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990. .
National Park Service battle descriptions
Memoirs and primary sources
Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. 2 vols. Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86. .
U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.
Organization of the Department of the Tennessee, Major General Ulysses S. Grant, U. S. Army, commanding, April 30, 1863: Official Records, Series I, Volume XXIV, Part 3, pages 250–259.
Further reading
Bearss, Edwin C. Receding Tide: Vicksburg and Gettysburg: The Campaigns That Changed the Civil War. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2010. .
Groom, Winston. Vicksburg, 1863. New York: Knopf, 2009. .
Huffstodt, James. Hard Dying Men: The Story of General W. H. L. Wallace, General Thomas E. G. Ransom, and the "Old Eleventh" Illinois Infantry in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Bowie, MD: Heritage Press. .
Smith, Timothy B. Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2004. .
Winschel, Terrence J. Triumph & Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign. Campbell, CA: Savas Publishing Company, 1999. .
Woodworth, Steven E., ed. Grant's Lieutenants: From Cairo to Vicksburg. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. .
Woodworth, Steven E. Nothing but Victory: The Army of the Tennessee, 1861–1865. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. .
External links
National Park Service, Vicksburg
Vicksburg Battlefield: Battle maps, photos, history articles, and battlefield news (Civil War Trust)
Animated map of the Vicksburg Campaign (Civil War Trust)
First Vicksburg Campaign
Animated history of the Siege of Vicksburg
Confederate Command Failure at Vicksburg
Military operations of the American Civil War in Mississippi
Campaigns of the Western Theater of the American Civil War
Battles commanded by Ulysses S. Grant
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%20Borneo
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North Borneo
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North Borneo (usually known as British North Borneo, also known as the State of North Borneo) was a British protectorate in the northern part of the island of Borneo, which is present day Sabah. The territory of North Borneo was originally established by concessions of the Sultanates of Brunei and Sulu in 1877 and 1878 to a German-born representative of Austria-Hungary, a businessman and diplomat, Gustav Overbeck.
Overbeck had recently purchased a small tract of land in the western coast of Borneo in 1876 from American merchant Joseph William Torrey, who had promoted the territory in Hong Kong since 1866.
Overbeck then transferred all his rights to Alfred Dent before withdrawing in 1879. In 1881, Dent established the North Borneo Provisional Association Ltd to manage the territory, which was granted a royal charter in the same year. The following year, the Provisional Association was replaced by the North Borneo Chartered Company. The granting of a royal charter worried both the neighbouring Spanish and Dutch authorities; as a result, the Spanish began to stake their claim of northern Borneo. A protocol known as the Madrid Protocol was signed in 1885 to recognise Spanish presence in the Philippine archipelago, in return establishing the definite border of Spanish influence beyond northern Borneo. To avoid further claims from other European powers, North Borneo was made a British protectorate in 1888.
North Borneo produced timber for export; along with agriculture this industry remained the main economic resource for the British in Borneo. As the population was too small to effectively serve the economy, the British sponsored various migration schemes for Chinese workers from Hong Kong and China to work in the European plantations, and for Japanese immigrants to participate in the economic activities of North Borneo. The starting of World War II with the arrival of Japanese forces however brought an end to protectorate administration, with the territory placed under a military administration and then designated as a crown colony.
History
Foundation and early years
North Borneo was founded in 1877–1878 through a series of land concessions in northern Borneo from the Sultanate of Brunei and Sulu to an Austrian-German businessman and diplomat, Gustav Overbeck. A former American Trading Company of Borneo territory in the western coast of northern Borneo had already passed to Overbeck, requiring him to go to Brunei to renew the concession of the land he bought from Joseph William Torrey. William Clark Cowie played an important role as a close friend of the Sultanate of Sulu in helping Overbeck to buy additional land in the eastern coast of Borneo. Meanwhile, the Sultanate of Bulungan's influence also reached Tawau in eastern southern coast, but came under the influence of the more dominating Sulu Sultanate.
Following his success in leasing a large tract of lands from both the western and eastern parts of northern Borneo, Overbeck went to Europe to promote the territory in Austria-Hungary and Italy as well as in his own country of Germany, but none showed any real interest. Only Great Britain, which had sought to control trade routes in the Far East since the 18th century, responded. The interest of the British was strengthened by their presence in the Crown Colony of Labuan since 1846. As a result, Overbeck received financial support from the British Dent brothers (Alfred Dent and Edward Dent) and diplomatic and military support from the British government. Following the entrance of support from the British side, a clause was included in the treaties that the ceded territories could not be sold or given to another party without the permission of the British government.
Unable to attract the interest of the governments of Austria, Italy and Germany, Overbeck withdrew in 1879; all his treaty rights with the Sultanates were transferred to Alfred Dent, who in 1881 formed the North Borneo Provisional Association Ltd with the support of countrymen Rutherford Alcock, Admiral Henry Keppel, Richard Biddulph Martin, Admiral Richard Mayne, and William Henry Read. The Provisional Association then applied to Queen Victoria for a royal charter, which was granted on 1 November 1881. William Hood Treacher was appointed as the first governor, and Kudat at the northern tip of Borneo was chosen as the Provisional Association administration capital. The granting of the royal charter had worried both the Dutch and the Spanish, who feared that Britain might threaten the position of their colonies.
In May 1882, the Provisional Association was replaced by the newly formed North Borneo Chartered Company, with Alcock acting as the first President and Dent becoming the company managing director. The administration is not considered as a British acquisition of the territory, but rather simply as a private enterprise with government guidelines to protect the territory from being encroached upon by other European powers. Under Governor Treacher, the company gained more territories on the western coast from the Sultanate of Brunei. The company subsequently acquired further sovereign and territorial rights from the sultan of Brunei, expanding the territory under control to the Putatan river (May 1884), the Padas district (November 1884), the Kawang river (February 1885), the Mantanani Islands (April 1885) and additional minor Padas territories (March 1898).
At the early stage of the administration, there was a claim in northern Borneo by the Spanish authorities in the Philippines, and an attempt to raise the Spanish flag over Sandakan was met with interference by a British warship. To prevent further conflict and to end the Spanish claim to northern Borneo, in 1885 an agreement known as the Madrid Protocol was signed in Madrid between the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain, recognising the Spanish presence in the Philippine archipelago. As the company did not wish to be involved in further foreign affairs issues, North Borneo was made a British Protectorate on 12 May 1888. In 1890, the Crown Colony of Labuan was incorporated into the administration of North Borneo, before returning to British government direct rule in 1904. There were several local insurrections from 1894 to 1900 by Mat Salleh and by Antanum in 1915. The First World War did not greatly affect the territory, and logging business grew during the interwar period.
World War II and decline
In World War II, the Japanese invasion of the island of Borneo started with the unopposed landing of the Japanese forces at Miri and Seria on 16 December 1941, with the objective of securing oil supplies. On 1 January 1942, the Japanese navy landed unopposed in Labuan. The next day, 2 January 1942, the Japanese landed at Mempakul on North Borneo territory. After negotiations with the Officers-in-charge of Jesselton as to its surrender, while they were waiting for troop reinforcements, Jesselton was occupied by the Japanese on 8 January. Another strong Japanese army detachment arrived from Mindanao and began to land on Tarakan Island, before proceeding to Sandakan on 17 January. The Japanese arrival was met with no strong resistance, as the protectorate mainly relied on the Royal Navy for defence. Although North Borneo has a police force, it never had its own army or navy. By the end of January, North Borneo was completely occupied by the Japanese. It was administered as part of the Empire of Japan, with the officers of the chartered company being allowed to continued administration under Japanese supervision.
The arrival of the Japanese forces to Borneo and the fall of Anglo-Japanese Alliance had already been predicted by revelation through secret telegrams that Japanese ships docked regularly at Jesselton were engaged in espionage. Many of the British and Australian soldiers captured after the fall of Malaya and Singapore were brought to North Borneo and held as a prisoners of war (POWs) in Sandakan camp where they were then forced to march from Sandakan to Ranau. Other POWs were also sent to Batu Lintang camp in neighbouring Sarawak. The occupation drove residents in the coastal areas to the interior in searching for food and escaping the brutality during the war period, which led to the creation of several resistance movements; one of the such movement known as the Kinabalu Guerrillas which led by Albert Kwok and supported by indigenous groups in North Borneo.
As part of the Allied Campaign to retake their possessions in the East, Allied forces deployed to Borneo under the Borneo Campaign to liberate the island. The Australian Imperial Force (AIF) played a significant part in the mission, with the force being sent to Tarakan and Labuan islands to secure the east and western Borneo. The Allied Z Special Unit provided intelligence gatherings and other information from the Japanese that could facilitated the AIF landings, while US submarines were used to transport Australian commandos to Borneo. Most of the major towns of North Borneo were heavily bombed during these period. The war ended on 15 August 1945 following the Japanese surrender and the administration of North Borneo was undertaken by the British Military Administration (BMA) from September. The company official administration returned to administer the territory but, unable to finance the reconstruction cost after the war, ceded administration of the protectorate to the crown colony government on 15 July 1946.
Government
The Chartered Company's system of administration was based on standard British colonial empire administration structures, with the land divided into Residencies, and sub-divided into Districts. Initially, there were only two Residencies: East Coast and West Coast, with Residents based at Sandakan and Jesselton respectively. Each Residency was divided into Provinces, later known as Districts, which were run by district officers. By 1922, there were five Residencies to accommodate new areas that were opened up for development. These were the West Coast, Kudat, Tawau, Interior and East Coast Residencies. These Residencies were in turn divided into 17 districts. Under this system, British held top posts, while native chiefs managed the people at grassroots level. This was not a conscious attempt by the British to instill indirect rule but a convenient arrangement for the district officers who were unfamiliar with local customs and politics.
The company administration established a foundation for economic growth in North Borneo by restoring peace to a land where piracy and tribal feuds had grown rampant. It abolished slavery and set up transport, health and education services for the people, and allowed indigenous communities to continue their traditional lifestyles. The British North Borneo Constabulary, the territory's police force, in 1883 comprised 3 Europeans, 50 Indians (Punjabis and Pashtuns), 30 Dayaks, 50 Somalis and 20 Malays. Constables trained at depot an average of three days per week. In 1884 the force had a total of 176 members, which increased to about 510 over three years. While under the protectorate, international relations fell under the purview of the British government, internally North Borneo was governed by the North Borneo Chartered Company as an independent state with British protection. The treaty signed on 12 May 1888 stipulated:
I. The State of North Borneo comprises the territories specified in the said Royal Charter, and such other territories as the Company have acquired, or may hereafter acquire, ‘under the provisions of Article XV of the said Charter.
It is divided into nine Provinces, namely:
Province Alcock;
Province Cunliffe;
Province Dent;
Province Dewhurst;
Province Elphinstone;
Province Keppel;
Province Martin;
Province Mayne;
Province Myburgh.
II. The State of North Borneo shall continue to be governed and administered as an independent State by the company in conformity with the provisions of the said Charter; under the protection of Great Britain; but such protection shall confer no right on Her Majesty's Government to interfere with the internal administration of the State further than is provided herein or by the Charter of the Company.
III. The relations between the State of North Borneo and all foreign States, including the States of Brunei and of Sarawak, shall be conducted by Her Majesty's Government, or in accordance with its directions; and if any difference should arise between the Government of North Borneo and that of any other State, the Company, as representing the State of North Borneo, agrees to abide by the decision of Her Majesty's Government, and to take all necessary to give effect thereto.
IV. Her Majesty's Government shall have the right to establish British Consular officers in any part of the said territories, who shall receive exequaturs in the name of the Government of North Borneo. They shall enjoy whatever privileges are usually granted to Consular officers, and they shall be entitled to hoist the British flag over their residences and public offices.
V. British subjects, commerce, and shipping shall enjoy the same right, privileges, and advantages as the subjects, commerce, and shipping of the most favoured nation, as well as any other rights, privileges, and advantages which may be enjoyed by the subjects, commerce and shipping of North Borneo.
VI. No cession or other alienation of any part of the territory of the State of North Borneo shall be made by its Government to any foreign State, or the subjects or the citizens thereof, without the consent of Her Majesty's Government; but this restriction shall not apply to ordinary grants or leases of lands or houses to private individuals for purposes of residence, agriculture, commerce, or other business.
Economy
With the beginning of well-planned economic activities under British administration, the North Borneo authorities began to open land for agriculture, and native land rights began to be formed. The government however felt that the native population was too small and unsuited to meet the requirements of modern development, so they began to sponsor various schemes for the migration of Chinese workers from Hong Kong and China. In 1882, the North Borneo authorities appointed Walter Henry Medhurst as Commissioner for Chinese Immigration in the mission to attract more businessmen to invest in North Borneo by providing a workforce. Medhurst's efforts were costly and unsuccessful; however, the Hakka, not part of the plan, began to migrate to North Borneo where they formed an agricultural community.
Since the 18th century, tobacco was North Borneo's foremost planting industry. The logging history in North Borneo can be traced since the 1870s. From 1890s, hardwood exports increased, with logging expanding especially during the interwar period. In the 1900s, North Borneo joined the rubber boom. The completion of North Borneo Railway Line helped to transport the resources to a major port on the west coast. By 1915, around of land, in addition to Chinese and North Borneo smallholdings, had been planted with rubber tree. In the same year, North Borneo Governor Aylmer Cavendish Pearson invited Japanese emigrants to participate in the economic activities there. The Japanese government received the request warmly and send researchers to discover potential economic opportunities.
At the early stage, the Japanese encouraged their farmers to go to North Borneo to cultivate rice, as their country depended on rice imports. With increasing economic interest from the Japanese side, they purchased a rubber estate owned by the North Borneo government. By 1937, North Borneo exported 178,000 cubic metres of timber, surpassing Siam, which exporting 85,000 cubic metres of timber. Many of the privately owned Japanese estates and companies had been involved in the economic sectors of North Borneo since been invited by the British. With the increasing numbers of Japanese investments, many Japanese also migrate with their family to the east coast of North Borneo, primarily to Tawau and Kunak.
Currency
The original monetary unit of North Borneo was the Mexican dollar, equal to 100 cents. The dollar was later matched to the Straits dollar and rated at 9 Straits dollars (equal to 5 US dollars at the time). Different notes were issued throughout the administration, with backgrounds featuring the Mount Kinabalu or the company arms.
Society
Demography
In 1881, 60,000 to 100,000 indigenous people lived in North Borneo. The people on the coast were mainly Muslims, with the aborigines mostly located inland. The Kadazan-Dusun and Murut were the largest indigenous group in the interior, while Bajau, Bruneian, Illanun, Kedayan and Suluk dominated the coastal areas. Following various immigration schemes initiated by the British, the population increased to 200,000 in 1920, 257,804 in 1930, 285,000 in 1935, and 331,000 in 1945. Under company rule, the government of North Borneo not only recruited Chinese workers but also Japanese immigrants to overcome the shortage of manpower in the economic sectors. From 1911 until 1951, the total of Chinese population increased from only 27,801 to 74,374 which is divided between Hakka (44,505), Cantonese (11,833), Hokkien (7,336), Teochew (3,948), some Hailam (Hainan) (3,571) and other Chinese groups (3,181).
Public service infrastructure
North Borneo was connected to the Singapore-Hongkong submarine cable by a link from the island of Labuan to Menumbok. The first message from the Borneo mainland to London was sent on 19 May 1894. A few days later, the work on a telegraph line from the West Coast to Sandakan was started. It took three years and exacted a heavy toll in human life to push the line through the almost uninhabited interior territory, until on 7 April 1897 a congratulatory message from the Governor in Sandakan for transmission to the Court of Directors in London was successfully transmitted from Sandakan to Labuan. In the early 1910s the technical and financial problems with the telegraph line prompted the company to venture into the construction of a wireless network, based on the quench-spark system of the German Telefunken Company. The first stage of this network comprised stations in Sandakan, Jesselton, Tawau and Kudat. The first wireless communication was established on 24 October 1913 between British North Borneo and Jolo on the Philippine Islands. Inland communication was effected on 14 January 1914 between Sandakan and Jesselton.
The North Borneo Railway opened to the public on 1 August 1914 as the main transportation facility for west coast communities. Postal service was also available throughout the administration.
Media
The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (since 1820) and British North Borneo Herald (since 1883) held a significant amount of records regarding North Borneo before and during the British administration.
See also
History of Sabah
Postage stamps and postal history of North Borneo
Postal orders of British North Borneo
Notes
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
North Borneo Historical Society – More information on heritage of North Borneo
1882 establishments in Asia
1882 establishments in the British Empire
States and territories established in 1882
1946 disestablishments in Asia
1946 disestablishments in the British Empire
Borneo
British rule in Malaysian history
North Borneo
Former countries in Borneo
Former countries in Bruneian history
Former countries in Malaysian history
Former British colonies and protectorates in Asia
History of Sabah
Maritime Southeast Asia
States and territories disestablished in 1946
Disputed territories in Asia
Territorial disputes of the Philippines
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel%2C%20LLC
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Lionel, LLC
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Lionel, LLC is an American designer and importer of toy trains and model railroads that is headquartered in Concord, North Carolina. Its roots lie in the 1969 purchase of the Lionel product line from the Lionel Corporation by cereal conglomerate General Mills and subsequent purchase in 1986 by businessman Richard P. Kughn forming Lionel Trains, Inc. in 1986. The Martin Davis Investment Group (Wellspring) bought Lionel Trains, Inc. in 1995 and renamed it Lionel, LLC.
According to its reorganization papers filed as part of its bankruptcy plan on May 21, 2007, about 95% of the company's sales come from O gauge trains. The plan estimated that about US$70 million worth of O gauge trains are sold each year, and that Lionel accounts for about 60% of that market, making it the largest manufacturer of O gauge trains.
Lionel Racing
In late 2010, Lionel, LLC entered a joint venture with NASCAR Team Properties to produce NASCAR diecast vehicles. In 2013, Lionel would acquire full ownership and rename it to Lionel Racing. Lionel has also produced NHRA and ARCA diecast.
Lionel Eras
Early history
MPC/General Mills era (1970–1986)
Lionel Corporation sold the tooling for its then-current product line and licensed the Lionel name to General Mills in 1969, who then operated Lionel as a division of its subsidiary Model Products Corporation, or MPC, beginning in 1970. General Mills did not buy the company, however. The Lionel Corporation became a holding company and invested in a number of ventures, including what would eventually become an East Coast chain of toy stores known as "Lionel Leisure World".
Lionel struck a deal with General Mills to lease the Lionel name for ten years starting in 1970. This deal included the purchase of a portion of the Lionel tooling and as part of the agreement, production & sale of the 1969 train product line would be handled by the Lionel Corporation. The balance of the tooling was purchased on December 31, 1969. The lease was renegotiated in 1974.
Due to General Mills' cost-cutting measures, production of Lionel-branded toy and model trains returned to profitability, but sometimes at the expense of quality. Detail was often sacrificed, and most of the remaining metal parts were replaced with molded plastic. A number of MPC's changes to the product line endure to the present day, the most noticeable being the use of needlepoint axles and trucks made of Delrin, two changes made to reduce friction and allow longer trains. Also starting in 1973, MPC experimented with a line of cars it called "Standard O," which were scaled to 1:48 (most postwar Lionel and MPC production was undersize for O scale). The experiment's failure is generally blamed on MPC's lack of a 1:48 locomotive and caboose to go with the cars; when it was repeated in the 1980s with locomotives of appropriate size, it proved more successful.
An internal reorganization after 1973 caused Lionel to become part of General Mills' Fundimensions group. Although Lionel's tenure with MPC was relatively short, "MPC" is the most commonly used term for the 1970–1985 era.
In 1979, General Mills resurrected the American Flyer brand and product line, which Lionel Corporation had originally purchased in 1967 from its bankrupt competitor (The A. C. Gilbert Company of New Haven, Connecticut). American Flyer products by Gilbert made after World War II are scaled roughly to a 1:64 proportion and are known as S gauge; their most distinctive feature, however, is that they operate on two-rail track as opposed to Lionel's three-rail trackage system.
After a period of time of absence in the market, Gilbert American Flyer S gauge trains were no longer considered a direct competitor to Lionel's 1:48 proportion O gauge trains. To this day, Lionel markets American Flyer S gauge in limited quantities for the operator and collector markets.
The year 1982 brought General Mills' poorly received move of train production from the United States to Mexico. Some Lionel fans were angry simply because the trains had been made in the United States for more than 80 years, while others criticized the quality of the Mexican-produced trains. Lionel production returned to the United States by 1984. During this time, corporate offices were retained at the company's Mount Clemens (later, Chesterfield), Michigan, location.
When General Mills spun off its Kenner-Parker division in 1985, Lionel became part of Kenner-Parker. The Lionel product line was sold again in 1986, this time to toy-train collector and real estate developer Richard P. Kughn of Detroit, Michigan, who formed Lionel Trains, Inc. (LTI).
Lionel Trains, Inc./Richard Kughn era (1986–1995)
In 1986, Detroit-based real estate developer (and railroad enthusiast) Richard Kughn bought the brand and established Lionel Trains, Inc.
In 1989, Lionel, LLC made the switch from the MPC Sound of Steam to the new and improved Railsounds 1.0, heralding a new era of high-tech audio realism. Some of the engines to get this new sound system were the A6 switcher, Reading T1, and the New York Central Mohawk. In 1995, Lionel introduced the Trainmaster Command Control (TMCC) system along with the fully digital Railsounds 2.5. Engines that got this control and sound system were mostly Hudsons, like the 1995 Lionel No. 490 C&O Hudson, the 1995 Boston and Albany 618 Hudson, and the 1996 Lionel Commodore Vanderbilt. Others soon followed like the articulated engines in 1999 and 2000.
In 1991, the most popular toy train, the Santa Fe F3 was reintroduced with RailSounds. In 1992 Richard Kughn and musician Neil Young, an avid model railroader, created Liontech, chartered to develop exclusive new model train control and sound systems. Liontech's RailSounds II debuted in 1994.
In 1994, TMCC (Trainmaster Command Control), the brainchild of Neil Young, was introduced. Abbreviated as TMCC, it is a technology similar to Digital Command Control which permits, among other things, the operation of Lionel trains by remote control. This allowed collectors to walk around their layout while still being in control of their trains. It introduced new features like whistle, bell, chugging, diesel roar, electro-couplers, and the ability to turn RailSounds on or off.
Richard Kughn sold Lionel in 1995 to the Martin Davis Investment Group (Wellspring), which owned Lionel, LLC from 1995 to 2000 before giving the CEO rights to Richard Maddox.
Wellspring era (1995–present)
Lionel changed hands again in 1995, when Kughn sold controlling interest in the company to an investment group that included Neil Young and the holding company Wellspring Capital Management, which was headed by former Paramount Communications (formerly Gulf+Western) chairman Martin Davis (he had left the board of Viacom, which bought Paramount the previous year). The new company became known as Lionel, LLC. The company continued marketing reproductions of its vintage equipment, and the trend towards producing new equipment that was ever-more-detailed continued. Young now had a 20% stake in the company.
In order to proliferate Trainmaster Command Control as a standard, Lionel licensed it to several of its competitors, including K-Line. Lionel, LLC continued to manufacture and market trains and accessories in O scale under the Lionel brand and S gauge under the American Flyer brand. While most of the American Flyer products are re-issues using old Gilbert tooling from the 1950s, the O scale equipment is a combination of new designs and reissues.
In 1996 and 1997, the Lionel Century Club was unveiled to the public. It featured the 726 Berkshire, the GG-1, the 773 Hudson, the NYC F3, and the Pennsy O-27 scale turbine. All retained their postwar look with the latest technology at the time. In 1998, Century Club II was announced and released with one of the engines being a NYC 4-8-4 Niagara with cab number No. 6024.
Also in 1997 and 1998, the Postwar Celebration Series began. This series featured postwar trains, accessories, transformers, and cars retaining postwar looks with the latest technologies. The series lasted from 1997–2011.
In 1999 and 2000, there was big demand for high-end articulated steam engines. In 1999, Lionel, LLC manufactured the first three articulated steam engines. Those three are the N&W A Class, The Allegheny, and the Big Boy, manufactured in early 1998, 1999, and 2000, respectively. Since 1998, Lionel has made more than 10 different types of articulated steam engines.
Lionel made a gold and platinum plated 700E hudson to celebrate their centennial in 2000. It featured Trainmaster command control, Railsounds, and Electrocouplers.
In 1999, The Texas Special was fitted with RailSounds and critics pointed out that it had the best diesel horn Lionel ever produced. The set came with a powered A-unit, a non-powered B-unit, a non-powered A-unit, two coach cars, a dome car, and an observation car. The train came in a Lionel Postwar Celebration Series box and was a TMCC engine.
In April 2000, competitor and former partner MTH Electric Trains filed a trade secret misappropriation lawsuit against Lionel, LLC, saying that one of Lionel's subcontractors had acquired plans for an MTH locomotive design and used them to design locomotives for Lionel. The suit eventually went to trial, and on June 7, 2004, a jury in Detroit, Michigan, found Lionel liable and awarded MTH US$40,775,745. Lionel announced it would appeal, and two weeks later filed for bankruptcy, citing the judgment as the main reason. On November 1, 2004, a federal judge upheld the jury's decision. On December 14, 2006, the judgment was overturned on appeal, citing legal mistakes in the jury trial, and a new trial was ordered.
In 2001, Lionel closed its last manufacturing plant in the United States, outsourcing production to Korea and China. While this move proved unpopular with some longtime fans, the backlash was minor in comparison to the failed move of production to Mexico in the 1980s. The company also licensed the Lionel name to numerous third parties, who have marketed various Lionel-branded products since 1995.
In early 2002, Lionel decided to put out fantastic models in black boxes that read "Joshua Lionel Cowen Series". The JLC Series ran from 2002–2012 as a 10-year anniversary for Lionel's first CEO and president, Joshua Lionel Cowen. It became a hit with collectors.
In 2003, Lionel made RailSounds sets for the first time under NYC and Santa Fe Railroads. In 2006, TMCC was phased out when Lionel unveiled their new "Legacy" system.
On May 27, 2004, Union Pacific Railroad sued Athearn (another manufacturer of model railroad equipment) and Lionel for trademark infringement. The railroad claimed both companies put the names and logos of UP, as well as the names and logos of various fallen flag railroads UP had acquired over the years, on their model railroad products without a license. While Athearn quickly settled and acquired a license, Lionel initially resisted, arguing that it and its predecessor companies had been using the logos for more than 50 years, and had been encouraged or even paid to do so. On September 13, 2006, Lionel and UP settled the suit for US$640,000 plus a royalty on future sales.
In September 2004, the company dismissed its CEO, Bill Bracy, and replaced him with Jerry Calabrese, a former Marvel Comics and NASCAR executive. Along with Bracy, another 17 high-level employees were also dismissed.
In July 2005, Lionel sued competitor K-Line for theft of trade secrets. The two companies settled out of court but the settlement quickly fell apart, leading to K-Line declaring bankruptcy and selling its assets to Sanda Kan, a Chinese subcontractor who did manufacturing for both K-Line and Lionel. In January 2006, Sanda Kan licensed the K-Line name and intellectual property to Lionel.
On March 27, 2008, a bankruptcy judge approved Lionel's reorganization plan, including a settlement with MTH. Although the specifics were to remain sealed, the Associated Press reported that Lionel settled with MTH for US$12 million.
The 2004 Christmas movie Polar Express, based on the children's book of the same name, provided Lionel with its first hit in years. Lionel produced a train set based on the movie, and stronger-than-anticipated demand caused highly publicized shortages. Various news stories told of a reporter's quest to locate a set, and some dealers marked the prices up above the suggested retail price of US$229. Sets turned up on eBay with buy-now prices of $449 as Lionel ordered an additional production run but said it would not be able to deliver the additional sets until March of the following year. The set remains a popular seller in the product line in 2012.
In 2006, the Lionel electric train was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, along with the Easy-Bake Oven. It was the first time an electric toy had ever been inducted. That same year, Lionel made a bigger push to sell its train sets outside of hobby shops, selling them in stores such as FAO Schwarz, Macy's, and Target. By November 2006, the company had turned a US$760,000 profit on sales of US$55 million.
In 2009, Lionel launched a series of the most highly detailed model trains they have ever made called Visionline. The latest addition to Visionline is the GS series of steam locomotives.
In 2010, Lionel decided to remove RailSounds from train sets, using basic TrainSounds instead. In 2013, Lionel introduced "LionChief" Remote control trains to introduce wireless remote control to their starter sets. These sets feature enhanced sounds and long distance wireless control. In 2013, Lionel RailSounds sets were discontinued when Lionel unveiled the LionChief system. In 2014, Lionel revealed LionChief Plus as a new standard for their train sets.
In April 2014, Jerry Calabrese stepped down as president and CEO and was replaced by Howard Hitchcock, former senior vice president and general manager. In August of that year, Lionel moved their service center to their headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In July 2016, Lionel re-entered into the HO scale market for the first time since 1990 by introducing the Polar Express in HO. In 2020, a large expansion to Lionel's HO scale lineup happened when they released a 2-8-2 Mikado and many other stock products.
In 2021, Lionel moved their main manufacturing plant from China to Vietnam.
Bankruptcy
On November 15, 2004, Lionel, LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing the US$40 million-plus judgment in the MTH lawsuit as the primary factor. In the filing, it listed $55 million in debt and $42 million in assets. The largest secured creditor was PNC Financial Services Corp., owed $31 million. The MTH judgment was not included in the $55 million figure. On July 26, 2006, Lionel's bankruptcy judge ordered that Lionel submit a plan for emerging from bankruptcy within 75 days of the appeals court's verdict on the MTH lawsuit. On December 14, 2006, a federal appeals court determined that the company was entitled to a new trial, and that their reorganized plan should be filed by March 1, 2007.
Subsequently, on March 27, 2008 Judge Burton R. Lifland, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, approved Lionel LLC's Chapter 11 reorganization plan, clearing the way for the company to exit bankruptcy. According to Lionel chief executive Jerry Calabrese, the plan called for the company to pay all its creditors in full with interest, whilst the company itself would also obtain up to US$40 million in loans to fund its exit from Chapter 11, pay off its creditors and fund its working capital needs in the future.
In regard to the MTH lawsuit, recent filings revealed Lionel agreed to pay MTH $12 million in cash to settle the lawsuit and a separate suit involving patented smoke-puffing technology.
Lionel's Chapter 11 plan also called for private equity firm Guggenheim Partners to contribute $37.1 million to the reorganized Lionel company, which consequently would now own 48.6 percent of the new Lionel. Similarly, the plan also called for the estate of the deceased Martin S. Davis (former chairman of Gulf+Western Industries/Paramount Communications Inc.) to provide $21.9 million to Lionel, and the Davis estate would now have a 28.6 percent share in the reorganized company. Guggenheim Partners's and the Davis estate's funding totaled $59 million for the reorganization plan; they would also loan Lionel an additional $10 million in second-lien debt. As a result, Calabrese expected the company to be out of bankruptcy "within a week".
Following the reorganization plan, Young was no longer a minority shareholder in the Lionel company; however, Calabrese insisted that the company wanted him to remain involved, claiming that he would have an "ongoing role in the company", but that this role would be "up to [Neil]". The pair organized a meeting on March 28, 2008. As of 2012, Young remains an active consultant in the company's Legacy and other high-end products.
On May 1, 2008, Lionel was fully out of bankruptcy.
Collector value
Lionel trains are often sought by collectors, but the value of each piece can vary greatly. In general, older pieces tend to be more sought after due to age, rarity and nostalgia. The collector value of "modern era" Lionel trains has been limited by comparison to the trains produced by Lionel Corporation prior to 1969. As another generation grows nostalgic for this era, values may increase. As with any collectible, condition and rarity are important in assessing value. In addition, reissues and reproductions by Lionel and others have somewhat decreased the collector value and made it more difficult to authenticate vintage Lionel and American Flyer equipment. There are numerous collectors guides to help buyers make informed decisions on authenticity and value.
Currently, Lionel markets its products to several levels of skills and budget. As in the past, the higher-end, limited run products tend to retain the highest collectible value for the future. These products include the Legacy equipped steam and diesel locomotives which are accurate and highly detailed scale models. Lionel introduced the Vision Line of locomotives and cars in 2009, with the goal of providing the most innovative and detailed O gauge models available. Ready-to-run sets and cars are also offered at lower price points. These sets are in the tradition of, and many are reproductions of, the entry-level sets of the classic Lionel era. In March 2012, Lionel released the first American Flyer exclusive catalog, featuring many all-new models with advanced electronic features and increased scale compatibility.
Lionel also produces lines for children, including battery-powered G scale trains and "Little Lines" sets for children as young as four.
Lionel gauges and scales history
This shows all the scales that Lionel has been associated with for over 100 years total.
Pre-standard gauge: 1900–1906
Standard gauge: 1906–1939, 1986–1990, 1999–2002
O gauge: 1915–1941, 1946–present
OO gauge: 1938–1942
HO gauge: 1957–1967, 1974–1990, 2016–present
G scale: 1987–1995 and 2005–present
S scale: 1967 (Purchase of A.C. Gilbert American Flyer), 1979–present
1959–1963
1959–1967
1970–1986
1986–1995
1986–1995
1995–2000
1995–1999
1999–2001
2001–2004
Lionel Collectors Club of America
In 1974, the LCCA was created in Des Moines, Iowa, with 83 other charter members. The club mainly focuses on having members show an interest in Lionel trains with train meets, swap meets, and annual conventions. In 2012, the LCCA and the Lionel Railroaders Club (LRRC) merged, with LCCA as the name of the combined group. Before the merger, one membership was needed to receive publications by LCCA and another separate membership was needed to attend the annual conventions in the summer. After the merger, they changed the arrangement so that junior membership and regular membership can get the publications and the invitation to the annual conventions with just one membership instead of two.
(1988–1989)
(1990–1991)
(1998–1999)
(2002–2003)
(2004–2005)
Notes
External links
http://www.lionel.com
Toy train manufacturers
Model railroad manufacturers
American companies established in 1995
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent%20Hill
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Silent Hill
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is a horror anthology media franchise centered on a series of survival horror games created by Keiichiro Toyama and published by Konami. The first four video games in the series, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and Silent Hill 4: The Room, were developed by an internal group called Team Silent, a development staff within former Konami subsidiary Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo.
The later six games, Origins, Homecoming, Shattered Memories, Downpour, Book of Memories and P.T. (a Silent Hills playable teaser), were developed by other, mostly Western developers. The Silent Hill franchise has expanded to include various print pieces, two feature films, and spin-off video games. As of 2013, the game series has sold over 8.4 million copies worldwide.
Silent Hill is set in the series' eponymous fictional American town. The series is heavily influenced by the literary genre of psychological horror, with its player characters being mostly "everymen".
Installment overview
Main series
Silent Hill (1999)
The first installment in the series follows Harry Mason as he searches for his missing adopted daughter in the mysterious New England town of Silent Hill. Stumbling upon a cult conducting a ritual to revive a deity it worships, Harry discovers his daughter's true origin. Multiple game endings are possible, depending on in-game actions taken by the player. It was released in 1999 for the PlayStation. In 2009, the game became available for download from the European PlayStation Network store for the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Portable, and later, in the same year, from the North American PlayStation Network store.
Silent Hill 2 (2001)
The second installment in the series follows James Sunderland searching for his deceased wife in Silent Hill after having received a letter from her informing him that she is waiting for him there. After searching in and exploring the mysterious town, he ultimately realizes her death's true nature. It was released in September 2001 for the PlayStation 2. An extended version of the game was released for the Xbox in December of the same year as Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams in North America and Silent Hill 2: Inner Fears in Europe, and for the PlayStation 2 in 2003 as Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut, with a port of Director's Cut to Microsoft Windows released in February 2003.
Silent Hill 3 (2003)
The third installment in the series follows a teenage girl named Heather as she becomes caught in a conflict within Silent Hill's cult and discovers her true origin. It was released in May 2003 for the PlayStation 2, with a port to Microsoft Windows released in October of the same year. Silent Hill 3 is a direct sequel to the first installment in the series.
Silent Hill 4: The Room (2004)
The fourth installment in the series follows Henry Townshend, who finds himself locked in his apartment as strange phenomena begin to unfold around him and other residents of the building. It was released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows and it also marked the end of Team Silent's contributions to the series.
Silent Hill: Origins (2007)
The fifth installment in the series is a prequel to Silent Hill that follows trucker Travis Grady, who becomes trapped in Silent Hill after rescuing a girl from a burning house. During his quest to find the fate of the burned girl, he encounters characters from the first game and is forced to face his past. It was developed by Climax Studios and released in 2007 for the PlayStation Portable, with a port for the PlayStation 2 released in 2008 and was also the first Silent Hill title developed outside Japan. It is known as Silent Hill Zero in Japan.
Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008)
The sixth installment in the series follows Alex Shepherd, a soldier who has returned from a war overseas. Alex discovers upon his arrival that his father has gone missing, his mother has become catatonic, and no one can provide the whereabouts of his younger brother, Joshua. The game chronicles Alex's search to find his missing brother. It was developed by Double Helix Games and released in 2008 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and in 2009 for Microsoft Windows.
Silent Hill: Downpour (2012)
The eighth installment in the series follows Murphy Pendleton, a prisoner who is stranded in Silent Hill after his prison transport vehicle crashes. Formerly announced in April 2010 and developed by Vatra Games for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the game was released on March 13, 2012. It is the only game in the series that can be played in 3D (stereoscopic).
Silent Hill ƒ (TBA)
A new mainline game, entitled Silent Hill ƒ, was announced in October 2022. Developed by studio NeoBards, with creative contributions from writer Ryukishi07, character designer "kera" and producer Motoi Okamoto. It is a story set in Japan during the Shōwa period. The story is being written by Ryukishi07, who wrote the When They Cry visual novel series.
Remakes
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (2009)
A reimagining of the first installment. Developed by Climax Studios for the Wii in December 2009, ports for the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation Portable were released in January 2010. Shattered Memories retains the premise of the original game—Harry Mason's quest to find his missing daughter in the American town of Silent Hill—but is set in what appears to be a different fictional universe, following a different plot, with characters from the first game appearing altered alongside new ones. Gameplay takes place in two parts: a framing, first-person psychotherapy session with an unseen patient, and an over-the-shoulder perspective of Harry's journey through Silent Hill, periodically interrupted by the occurrence of an environmental shift where he is pursued by monsters.
Shattered Memories gameplay focuses on completion of psychological tests which alter in-game elements while in the first setting, and exploration, puzzle solving, and monster evasion when in the second setting. The game's developers avoided integrating combat into the second setting's gameplay, centering instead on a weaponless player character attempting to rescue himself from powerful opponents, as they considered this to be more fear-inducing. The game received generally positive reviews, with its graphics, storyline, voice acting, soundtrack, and use of the Wii Remote as the Wii version's controller praised by reviewers; Shattered Memories chase sequences were criticized by some reviewers, because they deemed them potentially frustrating and short.
Silent Hill 2 (TBA)
A remake of Silent Hill 2 was announced in October 2022 for the PlayStation 5 and PC. It will be console exclusive on the PlayStation 5 for the first 12 months but will also be released for PC. Akira Yamaoka, the original composer, returns to write the score.
Other games
Play Novel: Silent Hill (2001)
Play Novel: Silent Hill is a visual novel adaptation of the original Silent Hill, released exclusively for the Game Boy Advance in Japan on March 21, 2001.
Silent Hill: The Arcade (2007)
Silent Hill: The Arcade is an arcade game that deals with two characters, Eric and Tina, who have entered the town of Silent Hill and must battle monsters while uncovering the mystery behind Eric's nightmares about a girl and a steamship. The Arcade has a multiplayer element, where each player can choose to be either Eric or Tina. A second player can join the game at any time.
Silent Hill: Orphan (2007)
Silent Hill: Orphan is a mobile game. The game is set in an abandoned orphanage and is played through first-person, point-and-click gameplay.
Silent Hill: The Escape (2007)
Silent Hill: The Escape is a mobile game. It was released in Japan for the FOMA phone December 19, 2007, and was released for the iOS internationally in 2009. The goal of the game is to guide the player through ten stages by finding a key and opening the locked door. The game is played in a first-person perspective. The game achieved mixed reviews due to lack of storyline and poor execution.
Silent Hill: Orphan 2 (2008)
Silent Hill: Orphan 2 is a mobile game, and a sequel to Silent Hill: Orphan.
Silent Hill: Orphan 3 (2010)
Silent Hill: Orphan 3 is a mobile game, and a sequel to Silent Hill: Orphan 2.
Silent Hill HD Collection (2012)
Silent Hill HD Collection is a high-definition re-release of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, featuring high-resolution visuals, new sounds, new voices and Trophies/Achievements for both games. Silent Hill 2 features the option to use both the old and new voices; however, Silent Hill 3 features only a new voice track, with the old voices unavailable due to legal reasons. Silent Hill 2 features both the main scenario and the Born from a Wish sub-scenario seen in later re-releases, such as the Director's Cut.
This pack marked the first time Silent Hill 3 was playable on an Xbox console. The collection got mixed to negative reviews due to severe issues with both games, such as severe framerate problems, lockups and more. While the PlayStation 3 version was patched, the Xbox 360 patch was cancelled and Konami offered refunds to all Xbox 360 owners of the game.
Silent Hill: Book of Memories (2012)
Silent Hill: Book of Memories was released for the PlayStation Vita. Book of Memories utilizes an overhead isometric view, follows a different storyline and features returning creatures from the series' fictional universe, as well as cooperative gameplay; the game is the first installment in the series to feature multiplayer gameplay, apart from The Arcade. According to series producer Tomm Hulett, Book of Memories gameplay is largely different from the one established in previous installments in the series, focusing on cooperative multiplayer action rather than traditional psychological horror.
Silent Hill: Ascension (2023)
An interactive media experience known as Silent Hill: Ascension was announced in October 2022. It is being developed by Bad Robot Productions, Behavior Interactive, Genvid Entertainment and DJ2 Entertainment.
Silent Hill: Townfall (TBA)
A new game, Silent Hill: Townfall, was announced in October 2022 with a reveal trailer. It will be developed by No Code and published by Annapurna Interactive.
Cancelled games
Nintendo DS titles
WayForward Technologies, developers of Silent Hill: Book of Memories, worked on a series installment for the Nintendo DS in 2006. They developed a one-room prototype demo using the lead character and assets from Silent Hill 2 before the game was cancelled.
Renegade Kid pitched their DS title Dementium: The Ward as a Silent Hill spin-off title. It was rejected by Konami for various reasons involving Konami not wanting to trust a small company with the Silent Hill license. Renegade Kid later pitched a modified version of Dementium II which was also rejected, but for Konami simply not wanting to enter the DS space with a horror title at the time.
Silent Hill 5
Before Silent Hill: Origins was made, Team Silent was tasked with working on a fifth installment in the Silent Hill series, simply titled "Silent Hill 5", and development started as early as Silent Hill 3. The game was delayed due to demand from fans wanting to get proper closure for the first game. The planned story of Silent Hill 5 was to focus on a damaged human being summoned to Silent Hill for a certain reason. Akira Yamaoka described the story as "the darkest story we have come up with".
Another unique feature of the game was to be the fact that it started off in Silent Hill as an everyday town with people going about their lives, which would slowly begin to rot away as players progress in the game.
Broken Covenant
Before Climax Studios started working on what would later become Silent Hill: Origins, they had originally pitched a different game idea to Konami in 2006. Intended to be a PlayStation 3 exclusive, the proposed game would have taken place in Arizona and starred protagonist Father Hector Santos. The priest would have utilized water, a major motif in the game, to perform "holy rites and rituals". The proposal never received a greenlight from Konami, and it was reimagined as an original title called Broken Covenant, but that too was eventually shelved.
Cold Heart
Silent Hill: Cold Heart was the originally planned version of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The game would have followed a female protagonist called Jessica Chambers as she decides to take a trip to visit her parents. However, in doing so she becomes trapped in an enormous snowstorm. To save her herself, she follows an ambulance in hopes of finding a safe place, which would leave her to suddely end up in Silent Hill. Compared to Shattered Memories where running is the only way to avoid enemies, the game would have retained the use of Melee Combat from previous games. These combat moments were meant to take advantage of the Wii controller to create a real and intense experience using improvised weapons.
The Box
Silicon Knights announced the titles in production when the company ceased development in 2012. One of these games was called Silent Hill: The Box, but later became known as The Box, which could have been the codename for the title after a publishing deal fell through given the company's financial status. Some early conceptual screenshots from the game can be seen in the Silent Hill Memories website.
2013 sequel
In 2013, Masahiro Ito was involved in a direct sequel to Silent Hill 3. Ito was displeased with the way the character Pyramid Head was used in later installments of the series and wanted to reintroduce the antagonist Valtiel. An opening scene in the Otherworld involving a baby carriage was also envisioned, in which Valtiel would slaughter Pyramid Head. The game was eventually cancelled, but as late as 2017, Ito has stated that if he ever makes a new game, he would carry out his plan to kill Pyramid Head or just not use him.
Silent Hills
During Sony Computer Entertainment's presentation at Gamescom 2014, an interactive teaser titled P.T. (initialism for "playable teaser") was released on the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 4. The teaser revealed a new Silent Hill game entitled Silent Hills, being developed by Kojima Productions using the Fox Engine, and a collaboration between Hideo Kojima and film director Guillermo del Toro, featuring actor Norman Reedus. On September 1, Sony revealed during its pre-TGS press conference that P.T. had been downloaded over a million times and had been viewed over 30,000,000 times across platforms.
During the 2015 San Francisco Film Festival on April 26, del Toro revealed that he would no longer be involved in the project with Kojima, presumably due to Kojima leaving Konami. Konami later released a statement confirming the departure of Reedus but clarified the series would continue to be developed, with no mention of the current status of Silent Hills. Days later, Konami confirmed that Silent Hills was cancelled, but was open to future collaborations with Reedus and del Toro. P.T. was also pulled from the PlayStation Store and is no longer available for download.
The cancellation of the game was met with significant backlash from fans, who later started a petition on Change.org asking for Konami to continue the project. The petition has received 194,279 signatures . Numerous remakes of P.T. have spawned as a result of the game's extremely limited availability; it remains unavailable on the PlayStation Store, and has since been blocked from running on the PlayStation 5.
Future
In June 2022, in an interview with French gaming website JeuxVideo.Com, Christophe Gans (director of the 2006 Silent Hill movie) confirmed that he had completed a script for a third Silent Hill film, and is aiming for a 2023 release for the project. He later reiterated this in an interview with JeuxActu, and elaborated that the third film project is to be part of what will be a "relaunch" of the Silent Hill brand, accompanied by new video games.
In October, Gans spoke once again about the upcoming relaunch and his third film, stating during an interview at the Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival that "I know a bit about the [next Silent Hill game]. I work with Team Silent, the original creators. I work in collaboration with Konami", suggesting that members of the original development team, Team Silent, are involved with the upcoming game(s). On October 19, Konami released a video revealing a new film, Return to Silent Hill, and several new Silent Hill games: a Silent Hill 2 remake, Silent Hill: Townfall and Silent Hill f. Both Akira Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito are confirmed to be returning for the Silent Hill 2 remake; Yamaoka as composer and Ito as the lead concept artist.
Cast and characters
Recurring elements
Plot traits and symbolism
The plots of the installments in the Silent Hill series, except Shattered Memories and The Room, share a common setting: the foggy rural American town of Silent Hill, which is a fictional location set in the northeastern United States: some games specifically reference the town as being located in Maine, whereas in the film the town is set in West Virginia. The town in the first three games was inspired by concepts of a small town in America as depicted by various media from various countries of origin. While some of the development planning is more reminiscent of that of a Japanese village, indirect influence comes from perhaps two factual American towns in particular: Cushing, Maine and Snoqualmie, Washington. The town from the film series, however, was inspired by Centralia, Pennsylvania. Silent Hill is depicted in Shattered Memories as a heavily snow-covered town in the midst of a blizzard, while the events of The Room primarily occur in the fictional neighboring city of South Ashfield, with the player venturing forth to smaller locales around Silent Hill.
The series' player characters experience an occasional dark alteration of reality called the "Otherworld". In that reality, physical law often does not apply, with varying forms but most frequently ones whose physical appearance is based on that of Silent Hill, and the series' characters experience delusions and encounter tangible symbols of elements from their unconscious minds, mental states, and innermost thoughts when present in it, manifested into the real world. The origin of these manifestations is a malevolent power native to Silent Hill, which materializes human thoughts; this force was formerly non-evil, but was corrupted by the occurrence of certain events in the area.
Some recurring monsters include the Nurses, who are included in almost every Silent Hill game, typically due to the sexual frustration or health conditions many of the protagonists experience during the course of the game's events; Pyramid Head, another recurring monster who became the series mascot, whose canon appearances have been contested; and Robbie the Rabbit, an amusement park mascot. A dog named Mira is also included in many joke endings. Another recurring plot trait in the Silent Hill series is a fictional religious cult known only as The Order. The organization has certain members who act as antagonists in most of the series' installments (such as Dahlia in the first and prequel, Claudia in 3, Walter in The Room, and Judge Holloway in Homecoming), and operates the "Wish House" (also called "Hope House"), an orphanage for poor and homeless children built by a charity organization called the "Silent Hill Smile Support Society".
The religion followed by the Order is focused on the worship of a chief deity, who is named Samael in Origins, but simply referred to as "God" in the previous games. The group's dogma is derived from a myth: the deity set out to create paradise, but ran out of power during the process; she will someday be resurrected, thus becoming able to finally create paradise and save mankind. The town's cult repeatedly participates in illegal acts: ritual human sacrifices whose purpose is the deity's resurrection, illegal drug trade, and kidnapping and confinement of children in a facility to teach them its dogma through brainwashing, while presenting the facility as an orphanage. Also repeatedly featured are various religious items with magical properties, appearing widely in the games of the series.
Three thematic elements consistently drive the narratives of Silent Hill games: the theme of a main protagonist who is depicted as an "everyman" (with the exception of Homecoming, where the protagonist is thought to be a soldier and the game's mechanics operate as such), and the everyman's quest, either a search for a missing loved one or a situation where the protagonist wanders into the town apparently by accident but is in fact being "summoned" by a spiritual force in the town.
Multiple endings are a staple of the series, with all installments featuring some, the realization of which often depends on in-game actions performed by the player. In all but three of the series' games, one of these endings is a joke ending in which the main protagonist comes in contact with unidentified flying objects: there is no joke ending in Silent Hill 4: The Room, and the only joke ending in Downpour is a surprise party for the player featuring characters from previous installments of the franchise, with a similar joke ending in Book of Memories.
The installments in the Silent Hill series contain various symbolism. The symbols are images, sounds, objects, creatures, or situations, and represent concepts and facts, as well as feelings, emotions, and mental states of the characters.
Gameplay
The installments in the Silent Hill series utilize a third-person view, with occasional fixed camera angles. While visibility is low due to the alternating fog and darkness, all of the series' player characters, except Henry Townshend of Silent Hill 4: The Room, are equipped with a flashlight and a portable device which warns the player of nearby monsters by emitting static (a transistor radio in Origins and the first three installments, a walkie-talkie in Homecoming and Downpour, and a mobile phone in Shattered Memories).
The player characters of every Silent Hill game have access to a variety of melee weapons and firearms, with Origins and Downpour also featuring rudimentary hand-to-hand combat. Shattered Memories is the sole exception: it is designed without combat and based around evasion of the creatures. Another key feature of the series' gameplay is puzzle-solving, which often results in the acquisition of an item essential to advance in the games.
Development
Concept and influences
Development of the Silent Hill series started in September 1996 with the beginning of the development of its first installment, Silent Hill. The game was created by Team Silent, a group of staff members within the Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo studio. The new owners of its parent company Konami sought to produce a game that would be successful in the United States. For this reason, a Hollywood-like atmosphere was proposed for it. Despite the profit-oriented approach of the parent company, however, the developers of Silent Hill had much artistic freedom because the game was still produced in the era of lower-budget 2D titles. Eventually, the development staff decided to ignore the limits of Konami's initial plan, and to make Silent Hill a game that would appeal to the emotions of players instead.
The first installment's scenario was created by director Keiichiro Toyama. The story of the second installment, Silent Hill 2, was conceived by CGI director Takayoshi Sato, who based it on the novel Crime and Punishment, with individual members of the team collaborating on the game's actual scenario; the main writing was done by Hiroyuki Owaku and Sato.
The first game, Silent Hill, utilizes real-time 3D environments. To mitigate limitations of the hardware, developers liberally used fog and darkness to muddle the graphics.
Sato estimated the budget of the first installment at US$3–5 million and Silent Hill 2s at US$7–10 million. He said that the development team intended to make Silent Hill a masterpiece rather than a traditional sales-oriented game, and that they opted for an engaging story, which would persist over time – similar to successful literature.
The games are known to have drawn influence from media such as Jacob's Ladder; Phantoms; Session 9; Alien; Stephen King's The Mist; and the art of Francis Bacon, largely through cultivating a technique of inducing fear through more psychological levels of perception. Many sequences and tropes from these films share identical concepts. The films and television series of American filmmaker David Lynch are also acknowledged to have influenced Team Silent during the initial games' production, especially that of Silent Hill 2.
Another major influence is Japanese horror, with comparisons made to classical Japanese Noh theatre and early 20th-century fiction writers such as the Japanese Edogawa Rampo. The town of Silent Hill is a small rural American town imagined by the creative team. It was based on Western literature and films, as well as on depictions of American towns in European and Russian culture. The version of the town from the film adaptations of the first and third games is loosely based on the central Pennsylvania town of Centralia.
The Order's religion is based on various characteristics of different religions, such as the origins of Christianity, Aztec rituals, Shinto shrines, as well as Japanese folklore. The names of gods in the organization's religion were conceived by Hiroyuki Owaku, but they have Aztec and Mayan motifs, as Owaku used pronunciations from these civilizations as a reference. Certain religious items appearing in the series were conceived by the team and for some others various religions were used as a basis: the evil spirit-dispelling substance Aglaophotis, which appears in the first installment and Silent Hill 3, is based on a herb of similar name and nature in the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism); the name of the talisman called "Seal of Metatron" references the angel Metatron.
Audio
The installments in the Silent Hill series feature various sound effects, some of them being ambient, as well as silence; the sound effects have been added with the intent of inducing certain emotions and feelings in the player, such as urgency, displeasure, or a sense of disturbance of their psyche. According to the series' former sound director Akira Yamaoka, atmosphere is an emphasized element of the series, if which had not been given importance, the series' production would have been impossible. The games also feature soundtracks scored by Yamaoka.
The genres of the musical pieces range from industrial to trip hop to rock, and some pieces include vocals by voice actress Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. The music of Silent Hill 3 and 4 also contains performance and songwriting contributions from musician and voice actor Joe Romersa. Downpour and Book of Memories feature soundtracks scored by composer Daniel Licht; Downpour includes music belonging to the industrial genre and vocals by McGlynn as well as by Jonathan Davis of the band Korn.
Spin-off video games based on the series include the visual novel Play Novel: Silent Hill for the Game Boy Advance, the arcade game Silent Hill: The Arcade, and the mobile games Silent Hill: The Escape and Silent Hill: Orphan.
Reception and legacy
The Silent Hill franchise has been praised for its graphics, atmosphere, and narrative. While the first three installments received critical acclaim, and the fourth game received general praise from critics, later games in the series were less well received.
The first installment in the series, Silent Hill, received a positive response from critics on its release and was commercially successful. It is considered a defining title in the survival horror genre, moving away from B movie horror elements toward a psychological style of horror emphasizing atmosphere.
Silent Hill 2 received critical acclaim. It was named the fourteenth best game of the PS2 by IGN, saying that "it preserved most of the original game's what-might-be-out-there fear, but with major advances to the graphics and sound, the game was able to deliver a far more immersive, frightful and compelling storyline". Silent Hill 2 is considered one of the best horror games of all time by many, as it features on several "best games ever" lists by critics.
Praise was particularly aimed at the dark, cerebral narrative and storytelling, exploration and handling of mature themes and concepts, such as mental illness and domestic abuse, the sound design and musical composition, the atmospheric and frightening tone and direction, fear-inducing and tense gameplay, along with the graphics, and the symbolic nature of the monster designs. Silent Hill 2 is widely considered to be the best installment in the Silent Hill game series and is considered by many to be a masterpiece of the horror game genre.
Silent Hill 3 was well received by critics, especially in its presentation, including its environments, graphics and audio, as well as the overall horror elements and themes that are continued from past installments. The game received praise for its story, which was a continuation of the first game's story.
In comparison to the previous three installments, Silent Hill 4: The Room was met with a mostly positive reception, though lower than that of the game's predecessors; many reviewers disliked the increased emphasis on combat, lessening the focus on the horror aspect of gameplay, while praise was aimed at the atmospheric tone and direction, the sound design, graphics and the storyline, while the changes from the series' conventions were met with a range of responses, varying from positive to negative. 1UP.com said that Konami went "backwards" with this game, though reviewers such as GameSpot still praised the game's atmosphere.
Origins received positive reviews despite some criticism. It was praised for going back to the old gameplay formula—according to IGN, Origins does justice to the series as a whole. However, some criticized the series' increasing predictability. GameSpot stated that "this old fog needs to learn some new tricks".
Homecoming received mixed reviews. It was praised for its graphics and audio, but the horror and gameplay have been met with mixed reactions. Some critics, such as GameSpot, felt that it lost "the psychological horror factor that the series is so well-known for". Some critics were harsher; IGN called the game a "letdown".
Shattered Memories received more positive reviews. GameSpot praised the game's effort at reinventing the first game's plot, rather than being a simple remake.
Downpour received mixed reviews. While certain critics praised the soundtrack and story elements, it has been let down by "sluggish combat" and "occasional freezes".
HD Collection has also received mixed reviews. Critics criticised towards many technical issues plaguing both games and artistic changes made to the games. Book of Memories, while receiving mixed reviews, has been the least well received game in the series, with most criticism regarding the game's shift in genre.
The Duffer Brothers have cited Silent Hill as an influence on their 2016 television show Stranger Things. They noted that it inspired the Upside Down, a parallel dimension in the series.
Other media
Print media of the Silent Hill franchise include a series of comic book adaptations; the novels Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 by Sadamu Yamashita, which are novelizations of their eponymous video games; the guide book Lost Memories; and the art book Drawing Block: Silent Hill 3 Program.
Konami has announced Silent Hill-themed pachinko machines, one in 2015 and another titled Silent Hill: Escape in 2019.
Downloadable content for the video games Dead by Daylight and Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals, were released in June 2020 and March 2021 respectively.
Film series
A film adaptation of the first game in the series, Silent Hill, was released in 2006. It was adapted and directed by French film director, producer and writer Christophe Gans. Gans himself is a big fan of the Silent Hill game series. A second film adaptation, titled Silent Hill: Revelation written and directed by M. J. Bassett and based on Silent Hill 3, was released in 2012. Christophe Gans expressed an interest in making a third film in a 2020 interview, stating that a script is being developed centred on puritanism. In October 2022, a sequel to the first film was announced to be in early development, referred to as Return to Silent Hill, with Gans returning to direct and the film being based on Silent Hill 2.
In popular culture
The Axis of Perdition, an industrial black metal band, recorded Physical Illucinations in the Sewer of Xuchilbara (The Red God), a 2004 EP named after a god from the franchise. There's also a reference to being recorded "in the confines of Toluca Prison", a location from Silent Hill 2. The track lists and tracks themselves also reference Silent Hill and feature music and voice samples, most notably of Claudia Wolf, the main antagonist of Silent Hill 3.
Dementium: The Ward, a survival horror game for the Nintendo DS, was originally pitched as a Silent Hill game, though it was turned down by Konami.
The "Upside Down", a location in Stranger Things, a horror series released in 2016, is inspired by the series' foggy town.
References
Notes
External links
Fictional populated places in the United States
Mass media franchises
Psychological horror games
Konami franchises
Video game franchises introduced in 1999
Video game franchises
Video games set in Maine
Video games adapted into comics
Video games adapted into films
Video games adapted into novels
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead%20end%20%28street%29
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Dead end (street)
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A dead end, also known as a cul-de-sac (, from French for 'bag-bottom'), no through road or no exit road, is a street with only one inlet or outlet.
"Dead end" is also understood in all varieties of English, but the official terminology and traffic signs include many different alternatives. Some of these are used only regionally. In the United States and other countries, cul-de-sac is often not an exact synonym for dead end and refers to dead ends with a circular end. In Australia and Canada, they are usually referred to as a court when they have a bulbous end.
Dead ends are added to road layouts in urban planning to limit through-traffic in residential areas. While some dead ends provide no possible passage except in and out of their road entry, others allow cyclists, pedestrians or other non-automotive traffic to pass through connecting easements or paths, an example of filtered permeability. The International Federation of Pedestrians proposed to call such streets "living end streets" and to provide signage at the entry of the streets that make this permeability for pedestrians and cyclists clear. Its application retains the dead end's primary function as a non-through road, but establishes complete pedestrian and bicycle network connectivity.
History
The earliest examples of dead ends were unearthed in the El Lahun workers' village in Egypt, which was built circa 1885 BC. The village is laid out with straight streets that intersect at right angles, akin to a grid but irregular. The western part of the excavated village, where the workers lived, shows fifteen narrow and short dead-ends laid out perpendicularly on either side of a wider, straight street; all terminate at the enclosing walls.
Dead-end streets also appeared during the classical period of Athens and Rome. The 15th century architect and planner Leon Battista Alberti implies in his writings that dead-end streets may have been used intentionally in antiquity for defense purposes. He writes:
The same opinion is expressed by an earlier thinker, Aristotle, when he criticized the Hippodamian grid:
In the UK, their prior existence is implied by the Public Health Act 1875 which banned their use in new developments.
Inferential evidence of their earlier use can also be drawn from the text of a German architect, Rudolf Eberstadt, that explains their purpose and utility:
It was in the United Kingdom that the cul-de-sac street type was first legislated into use, with the Hampstead Garden Suburb Act 1906. The proponents of the Act, Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker, thus gained permission to introduce culs-de-sac in their subsequent site plans, and they promoted it as a suitable street type for Garden Suburbs. Unwin's applications of the cul-de-sac and the related crescent always included pedestrian paths independent of the road network. This design feature reflects the predominance of pedestrian movement for local trips at the turn of the 20th century, and presages the current planning priority for increased pedestrian accessibility. The 1906 Act defined the nature of the cul-de-sac as a non-through road and restricted its length to . Garden cities in the UK that followed Hampstead, such as Welwyn Garden City, all included culs-de-sac.
In the 1920s, the garden city movement became more popular in the United States and, with it, came its design elements, such as the cul-de-sac. Clarence Stein, a main proponent of the movement, incorporated it in the Radburn, New Jersey (1929) subdivision, which was to become a model for subsequent neighborhood developments. The first modern cul-de-sac (1922) in America might be found in Buffalo, New York.
The country's Federal Housing Authority (FHA) recommended and promoted their use through their 1936 guidelines and the power of lending development funds.
In Canada, a variation of Stein's Radburn 1929 plan that used crescents (loops) instead of culs-de-sac was built in 1947: Wildwood Park, Winnipeg, designed by Hubert Bird. In 1954, the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation published its own guidelines in which the cul-de-sac was strongly recommended for local streets and, as the FHA in the US, used its lending power to see its inclusion in development plans. The Varsity Village and Braeside, subdivisions in Calgary, Alberta also used the Radburn model in the late 1960s.
In the 1960s the cul-de-sac attained systematic international application in planned new cities such as Doxiadis' Islamabad (1960). In the UK, new towns such as Harlow (1947) by Sir Frederick Gibberd and Milton Keynes (1967) incorporated culs-de-sac and crescents in their layouts.
Planning theorists have suggested the use of alternatives to culs-de-sac. Most notably, Christopher Alexander et al., in his 1977 book "A Pattern Language" (pattern #49) suggests the use of looped local roads which do not abruptly stop. Although dead end streets (culs-de-sac), would fit his definition of looped local roads Alexander suggestions that "cul-de-sacs [sic] are very bad from a social standpoint—they force interaction and they feel claustrophobic, because there is only one entrance". Doxiadis has additionally argued their important role in separating man from machine.
Originally-unplanned dead ends
Originally-unplanned dead ends have been added in city centers that are laid out on a grid by blocking through-traffic. Whole neighbourhood street reconfigurations emerged in several cities, mainly concentrated in North America and the UK, which include Berkeley, California; Seattle, Washington; and Vancouver, British Columbia. The transformation of grid plans since the 1970s limits access to an existing road that is newly designated as a major artery, enabling traffic to move smoothly on it, alleviating residents' concerns.
This selective, sporadic transformation is continuing. As traffic volumes increase and as cities decide to remove or reduce traffic on specific streets of central areas, streets are closed off using bollards or landscaping thus making new, originally unplanned dead ends and producing a new, functional blend of the inherited grid with newer street types. A recent variation of limiting traffic is managed closure by using retractable bollards that are activated only by designated card-holders.
Suburban use and benefits
Since the end of World War II, new subdivisions in the United States and Canada, as well as New Towns in England and other countries have made extensive use of the cul-de-sac and crescent (loops) street types. Typically, there is one or several central roads in the subdivision with many cul-de-sac streets of varying length, branching out from the main roads, to fill the land in the subdivision, a dendrite or hierarchical pattern. Since the 1960s, the pattern has been the dominant road network structure of suburbs and exurbs in the United States, Canada, and Australia. It is also increasingly popular in Latin America, Western Europe, and China. In this pattern, there are only a few roads (relative to the number of cul-de-sac streets) leading out of the subdivision and into other subdivisions or onto major roads.
In the US, these changes can be attributed to real-estate developers' desire to meet FHA guidelines and make federal home loans available to their customers. In Canada, a similar incentive was provided to developers by CMHC. The incentives, which were discontinued in the 1970s, gave the initial impetus for the application of the hierarchical pattern. In other countries, such incentives do not exist, and adoption is motivated by customer preferences.
American urban planning, in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, emphasized a grid plan, partly out of extensive reliance on foot, horse and trams for transportation. In such earlier urban development, alleys were included to allow for deliveries of soiled supplies, such as coal, to the rear of houses that are now heated by electricity, piped natural gas or oil.
The use of culs-de-sac reduces the amount of car traffic on residential streets within the subdivision, thus reducing noise, air pollution and the probability of accidents. Ben-Joseph (1995), and Lovegrove and Sayed (2006), indicate a substantially lower collision rate for street networks based on the cul-de-sac street type. Dumbaugh and Rae (2009) suggest that land-use patterns play a significant role in traffic safety and should be considered in conjunction with the network pattern. While all intersection types in general increase the incidence of fatal crashes, four-way intersections, which rarely occur in a network with cul-de-sac or loop streets, increase total and injurious crashes significantly. The study recommends hybrid street networks with dense concentrations of T-intersections and concludes that a return to the 19th century gridiron is undesirable.
The decrease in traffic, in turn, is thought to lower the incidence of crime and increase desirability, because in most cases the people who traverse the cul-de-sac either live there or are guests of those who do. CPTED planning principles suggest increased natural surveillance and sense of ownership as a means of fostering security in a neighbourhood. Both of these phenomena occur naturally on a cul-de-sac street as does social networking. Design guidelines based on the CPTED perspective recommend its use for those reasons.
Cul-de-sac streets increase spontaneous outdoor activity by children. A study in California examined the amount of child play that occurred on the streets of neighbourhoods with different characteristics; grid pattern and culs-de-sac. The findings indicate that culs-de-sac showed substantial increase in play activity than the open grid street pattern. Culs-de-sac reduce perceived danger from traffic, thereby encouraging more outdoor play.
Similar studies in Europe and Australia found that children's outdoor play is significantly reduced on through roads where traffic is, or perceived by parents to be, a risk. In addition, they confirmed the results of the seminal Donald Appleyard 1982 study, which showed the negative correlation between amount of traffic and social networks. The inverse correlation between amounts of traffic and sociability of streets was reconfirmed by a newer study that repeated Appleyard's San Francisco analysis in Bristol, UK. It showed that the cul-de-sac street with the lowest traffic of the three streets had the highest level of social interaction.
The studies recommend the use of the cul-de-sac or strong traffic calming measures. When culs-de-sac are interconnected with foot and bike paths, as for example in Vauban, Freiburg and Village Homes in Davis, California, they can increase active modes of mobility among their residents.
Real estate developers prefer culs-de-sac because they allow builders to fit more houses into oddly-shaped tracts of land and facilitate building to the edges of rivers and property lines. They also choose these discontinuous network patterns of cul-de-sac and loop streets because of the often significant economies in infrastructure costs compared to the grid plan.
From an environmental perspective, culs-de-sac allow greater flexibility than the common grid in adapting to the natural grades of a site and to its ecologically sensitive features, such as streams, creeks, and mature forest growth.
The desirability of the cul-de-sac street type among home buyers is implied by the evidence that they often pay up to a 20% premium for a home on such a street, according to one study. That could be because there is considerably less passing traffic, resulting in less noise and reduced actual or perceived risk, increasing the sense of tranquility. A survey of residents on three types of streets: cul-de-sac, loop, and through (grid) recorded their preferences among these types. It found that 82% of cul-de-sac residents preferred their own street type, 18% preferred a loop, and 0% the grid. Only 13% of grid street residents preferred their own type and 54% would choose a cul-de-sac.
Two other studies, reported in 1990 and 2009 respectively, confirmed the upward trend and determined the premium that cul-de-sac streets command. The first found a 29% premium over the streets in a grid. The second, focused on trails and greenbelts, found that other amenities including cul-de-sac streets add significantly to the home value.
The positive feelings that a cul-de-sac street could evoke, that residents value, are expressed vividly by Allan Jacobs in describing Roslyn Place, a short (), narrow (), densely built (), and wood-paved cul-de-sac in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: "Step into Roslyn Place and you are likely to sense, immediately, that you are in a place, a special place, a handsome place, a safe place, a welcoming place, a place where you might wish to live." "narrowness and enclosure and intimacy bring a feeling of safety to Roslyn Place... 'Stay on our street' is all the kids have to know".
Gated communities, whose numbers steadily increase worldwide, use cul-de-sac and loop street networks because the dendrite structure reduces the number of through roads and thus the corresponding number of entries and exits that need to be controlled.
Criticisms and discussion
Traffic safety issues
Dead ends are traditionally considered safer traffic environments for children than normal streets, but research shows that areas with many dead ends in fact have higher rates of traffic accidents involving young children.
This increased risk of death is due to multiple factors, including:
families living on dead-end streets drive longer distances to reach their destinations,
parents living on dead-end streets spend less time teaching their children to be as wary of traffic, and
an increased risk of the parents accidentally driving over the children in front of their own homes.
Environmental, health, and crime issues
Culs-de-sac are criticised by urban designers like those of the Foundation for the Built Environment in the UK for encouraging car transport for even short distances, as more direct connections are precluded by the geometry, which necessitates long travel distances even to physically-nearby locations. This increases fuel consumption and vehicle emissions and has negative effects on health by reducing walking and cycling rates. Related research in the United States by Richard Jackson has shown that people in car-based (cul-de-sac heavy) communities weigh on average more than those in traditional towns (with open grid networks).
An extensive analysis of the research evidence by TRB, however, shows only an association between the built environment and physical activity levels, not causal connections. The evidence also does not identify with certainty which characteristics of the built environment are most closely associated with physical activity behaviour. The study also warns against confusing inadequate physical activity with obesity which is the outcome of an energy imbalance. Many contemporary lifestyle trends, some inevitable (sedentary work) and some avoidable (frequent energy-rich food consumption or the watching of television [four hours per day]), contribute to the imbalance and must be considered in understanding and combating obesity.
The impermeability deficiency of the typical cul-de-sac street can be addressed by applying a modified, improved version of it, mentioned above, that enables pedestrian and bicycle through-movement. While this more permeable version can be applied in new developments easily, modifying existing impermeable cul-de-sac streets is problematic as it encounters property ownership issues. Efforts in that direction are, however, being made. Because of the complicated legal process and the sheer number of existing cul-de-sac streets, however, such efforts would be slow to produce results and may have little impact in changing the landscape of existing districts. Conversely, transforming existing streets that are part of a grid plan into permeable, linked culs-de-sac, as was done in Berkeley, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia, is physically and administratively easy due to the public ownership of the street right-of-way. However, residents on adjacent through roads may resent the potential traffic increase and delay the process. In Berkeley, the barriers used were permeable to both pedestrian and bicycle traffic and became the backbone of the bicycle boulevard system in that region.
Increases in pedestrian and bicycle permeability may result in a displacement of local car trips for short-distance destinations and consequently a reduction in neighbourhood vehicle emissions. The impermeable cul-de-sac not only discourages walking and biking but also increases the length of car trips by the circuitous geometry of the dendrite network structure of which it is a part. Research studies examined the influence of several variables on the amount of car travel that residents of several types of districts recorded. Results vary considerably among them, but there is general agreement on a number of key correlations: a) the wealthier and the larger the family is, the more cars they own, and the more they drive, b) the farther away a family lives from the city centre, and the fewer the jobs in the vicinity, plus a slow bus service, the more they drive, and c) street patterns may add a 10% length to local trips, but the total VKTs are affected more by the "macro" urban than the "micro" neighbourhood structure.
Culs-de-sac, especially those that also limit pedestrian routes instead of only road-traffic routes, have also been criticised for negative effects on safety because they decrease the amount of through-traffic (vehicular or pedestrian) that might notice an accident or crime victim in need of help. Proponents of culs-de-sac and gated communities have in turn countered that the reduction in through-traffic makes any "stranger" much more recognisable in the closed local environment and thus reduces crime danger. That view has in turn been characterized as unrealistic. It is argued that, since only very few of all non-locals passing through the area are potential criminals, increased traffic should increase rather than decrease safety.
Research has expanded the discussion on the disputed issue. A 2008 study did extensive spatial analysis and correlated several building, site plan and social factors with crime frequencies and identified subtle nuances to the contrasting positions. The study looked at, among others, a) dwelling types, b) unit density (site density) c) movement on the street, d) culs-de-sac or grids, and e) the permeability of a residential area. Among its conclusions are, respectively, that a) flats are always safer than houses and the wealth of inhabitants matters, b) density is generally beneficial but more so at ground level, c) local movement is beneficial but larger-scale movement not so, d) relative affluence and the number of neighbours has a greater effect than either being on a cul-de-sac or being on a through-street. It also established again that simple, linear culs-de-sac with good numbers of dwellings that are joined to through streets tend to be safe. As for permeability, it suggests that residential areas should be permeable enough to allow movement in all directions but no more. The overprovision of poorly-used permeability is a crime hazard.
More generally, the New Urbanism movement has offered criticism of the cul-de-sac and crescent (loop) street types not intended to network with each other. It has been suggested that such street layouts can cause increased traffic on the collector streets. It is recognized that culs-de-sac and looped streets inherently remove car traffic through them and restrict access to residents only. Resident traffic is naturally channelled to minor residential collectors and to arterials that provide inter-neighbourhood and inter-district connectivity. A study, reported in 1990, compared the traffic performance in a development that was laid out using two approaches, one with and the other without hierarchy or cul-de-sac streets. It concluded that the non-hierarchical, traditional layout generally shows lower peak speed and shorter, more frequent intersection delays than the hierarchical pattern. The traditional pattern is not as conducive to long trips as the hierarchical but more conducive to short trips. Local trips in it are shorter in distance but about equivalent in time with the hierarchical layout. A later similar comparative traffic study of about concluded that all types of layouts perform adequately in most land-use scenarios and that a refined hierarchical, dendrite network can improve traffic performance.
Anecdotal and research evidence suggests that navigation (especially on foot) in a disconnected network of cul-de-sac and looped streets is inconvenient and non-intuitive, particularly when combined with curvilinear geometry. Loss of orientation and sense of direction is also a common experience in older cities with cul-de-sac streets (Medina of Arab cities or Mediterranean hill towns) as well as in cities with highly-irregular block geometries and sizes and corresponding street alignments that produce a labyrinthine effect. The long history of such cities implies that an irregular, complicated street network that appears entirely illegible to a visitor is well understood and used by the inhabitants. More convincing about its workability for their permanent residents are the case histories of cities such as Regensburg that show a gradual transformation of an imported or imposed orthogonal, "legible" grid to the traditional "confusing" street networks.
Cul-de-sac and loop streets can reduce the size of any given neighbourhood to a single street. Neighbourhoods can be defined by geographic boundaries but more often it is shared ethnic, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics that produce social cohesion irrespective of apparent physical "boundaries". Mehaffy et al. (2010), who propose a model for structuring an urban network, suggest that neighbourhoods cannot be designed into being. "Community" is viewed as a dynamic social and cultural construct, especially in contemporary, open, multicultural cities. Residential area street configuration can assist its emergence only by reducing through-traffic and increasing local pedestrian movementa design goal for which connected cul-de-sac and looped streets are suited.
Issues of pedestrian trip length and isolation are very evident in the back-to-front housing arrangement where the front of the house fronts onto the cul-de-sac street while the rear fronts onto the main roads. Some of the problems can be mitigated by the newer practice of connecting the neighbouring roads and culs-de-sac with public pedestrian or cycle paths. In effect, this removes the discontinuity aspect for these modes of transport. Built examples of such connected culs-de-sac can be found in the United States (such as Radburn, New Jersey, and Village Homes, California), England (such as Milton Keynes), and Greece (such as Papagou, a suburb of Athens). Acknowledging their use, Germany, under the 2009 amendment to the Road Traffic Act, introduced an additional sign for culs-de-sac that are permeable to pedestrians and cyclists (see under signage below). A new system for organizing connected, permeable culs-de-sac into complete neighbourhoods, the fused grid, has been developed by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
In the development context and planning literature of North America, culs-de-sac have been associated with low-density residential development. Sustainable development theorists and proponents claim that to be, in some undefined way, inefficient. The increased prevalence of cul-de-sac streets occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of rapid economic and city expansion, when a detached house on a large lot meant an ideal form of habitation. The temporal coincidence of the wide adoption of a street type and an increasing demand for large lots and houses suggests a necessary relationship between street type and unit density. Historically, however, the earliest systematic application of the cul-de-sac street type by Raymond Unwin (1909) had a unit density between , considerably higher than mid-to-late 20th century. Even in the 21st century, developments rarely achieve densities above in the suburbs. Conversely, early 1950s suburban developments that were laid out on a grid exhibit similar low densities. Evidently, street, network type and density are not linked causally; other factors, such as land scarcity and income, influence the outcome as, for example, in cities that are landlocked or that have low average incomes.
Another concern is often voiced by emergency services, which can have difficulty locating streets when a community consists of a large number of similarly named culs-de-sac; also, large fire response vehicles, in particular, can have great difficulty with turning around in a cul-de-sac. However, confusing street naming is not a necessary outcome of street network design and can be improved. The practice of naming orthogonal networks by numbers and letters in the corresponding cardinal directions has been criticized by Camilo Sitte as lacking imagination. Nonetheless, police and fire departments now use advanced GPS systems that quickly locate the destination and the shortest path to follow.
School buses can also have a hard time turning around, which means that children who live in a cul-de-sac must often walk to a bus stop on a main through-road. However, recent research on obesity and urban planning suggests that to be a possible advantage because it enables children to get daily physical activity. Longer walking distances, however, reduce interest to use buses especially when a car is available. This disincentive to walking to a school bus-stop can be overcome in planned cul-de-sac streets by regulating their maximum length to about , as was recommended and practiced by R. Unwin and others.
Weighing available evidence has led a few US cities including Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Portland, Oregon, to restrict and regulate the inclusion of cul-de-sac streets in new suburbs. However, a 2010 study on sprawl in North America by a legal expert concludes that "neighborhoods dominated by culs-de-sac are less walkable than those that include street grids.... On the other hand, culs-de-sac do have a countervailing public benefit: because of their very inaccessibility, they tend to have less automobile traffic. Given the existence of important public policy goals on both sides, a city seeking to maximize walkability should not favor culs-de-sac over grids, but should also allow some culs-de-sac as a legitimate residential option.... In addition, there are "middle ground" alternatives between prohibiting culs-de-sac and mandating them. For example, a city could encourage culs-de-sac combined with pedestrian walkways." This design combination is shown in the Village Homes layout and is an integral part of the Fused Grid.
Terminology
George Orwell wrote in his 1946 article "Politics and the English Language" that the term "cul de sac" is another foreign word used in English as pretentious diction and is unnecessary.
The word "cul-de-sac" and its synonyms or near synonyms "dead end" and "no exit" have inspired metaphorical uses in literature and in culture, often with the result that a word or phrase seeming to have a negative connotation is replaced in street signs with a new coinage ("no outlet" is another alternative name used on street signs).
The expression cul-de-sac comes from French, where it originally meant "bottom of a sack". It was first used in English in anatomy (since 1738). It was used for dead-end streets since 1800 in English (since the 14th century in French). The often-heard erroneous folk etymology "arse/ass [buttocks] of the sack" is based on the modern meaning of cul in French, Catalan, and Occitan, but cul does not have that meaning in cul-de-sac, which is still used to refer to dead ends in modern Frenchalthough the terms and are more common.
J. R. R. Tolkien used the name Bag End as a translation of "cul-de-sac" to poke fun at the British use of French terms.
Australia
In Australia, dead-end streets are signposted as and often referred to as a "No Through Road". Suffixes for these types of streets include "court", "close" or "place". The term "cul-de-sac" generally only refers to a reasonably short street with a bulbous end, or even only to the end portion. A long road that is a no-through road and terminates abruptly is usually called a dead end.
Canada
In Canada, "cul-de-sac" is commonly used in speech but "no exit" or "no through road" is more common in road signs, especially in western Canada. In Quebec and Newfoundland, "Cul-de-Sac" is in far more common use, although Quebec is using "Impasse" too.
France
Cul de sac is French for 'bag-bottom'.
New Zealand
In New Zealand, dead-end streets are sometimes signposted as "No Exit", but are often not signposted at all. The terms 'cul-de-sac' and 'dead end' have the same senses as in Australia. Similarly to Australia, residential cul-de-sacs with bulbous ends are often suffixed with "Place", abbreviated to "Pl" on street signs.
United Kingdom
In British English, the phrase "close" is generally used as a suffix for residential cul-de-sac roads, although several variants exist similar to those used in Commonwealth countries.
United States
U.S. Federal Highway Administration rules state: "The Dead End sign may be used at the entrance of a single road or street that terminates in a dead end or cul-de-sac. The No Outlet sign may be used at the entrance to a road or road network from which there is no other exit." There is no federal regulation on "no exit".
The phrase "No Exit" is also preferred for Chicago signs, although "dead end" is still used there. New York City has favored "dead end" since at least the 1930s, when Sidney Kingsley used the phrase to title his Broadway play about poor, tough East Side youths with lives of little promise, in contrast to the dead-end streets of the nearby Sutton Place neighborhood. (Similarly, French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre titled a play about three damned sinners, Huis Clos, translated into English as "No Exit".) Kingsley's play was later made into a movie, Dead End, which proved so popular that it spawned similar movies, many starring a group of recurring characters known as the Dead End Kids. The play and movies produced such a strong image of bleak futures and an unfair society that some municipalities changed the sign terminology for culs-de-sac, often to "no outlet" or "no exit". (The "dead end" signs currently at Sutton Place are bright yellow with black lettering.)
In New York City, as of 2008, there were 4,659 "dead end" traffic signs, along with 160 "no outlet" signs. The city records, which go back to the 1960s, show only a couple of "no exit" signs once existing near the approaches to the Midtown Tunnel, and which are no longer there. New York City Commissioner of Transportation Janette Sadik-Khan said in 2008: "We hear that some towns use 'no outlet' instead of 'dead end' because they think it sounds less morbid." "We tell New Yorkers the truth: it's a 'dead end', and we think that motorists get the point quickly."
California uses the phrase Not a Through Street or Not a Through Road to mark roads or road systems that end in culs-de-sac. More recently, No Outlet has been shown on some signs as well (an example being Meyers Avenue south of Eureka Street in the Pine Hills area).
Other uses
In military parlance, a "cul-de-sac" refers to a situation where an army is "hemmed in on all sides but behind". "Cul-de-sac" is also used metaphorically to mean a line of thought or action that leads nowhere.
In medicine, the expression is used to refer to the recto-uterine pouch, also known as the Pouch of Douglas, the deepest point of the female peritoneal cavity.
Signage
See also
Fused Grid
Permeability (spatial and transport planning)
Turnaround (road)
References
External links
Types of streets
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