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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory%20title
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Victory title
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A victory title is an honorific title adopted by a successful military commander to commemorate his defeat of an enemy nation. The practice is first known in Ancient Rome and is still most commonly associated with the Romans, but it was also adopted as a practice by many later empires, especially the French, British and Russian Empires.
Roman victory titles
Victory titles were suffixed to the commander's name and were usually the name of the enemy defeated by the commander. Some victory titles became hereditary cognomina, while others were personal agnomina and not carried on by later family members. Names like Africanus ("the African"), Numidicus ("the Numidian"), Isauricus ("the Isaurian"), Creticus ("the Cretan"), Gothicus ("the Goth"), Germanicus ("the German") and Parthicus ("the Parthian") expressed the triumphal subjugation of these peoples or their territories, or commemorated the locations of general's successful campaigns, equivalent to modern titles like Lawrence of Arabia, and were not indicators of origin.
The practice of awarding victory titles was established in the Roman Republic. The most famous grantee of a Republican victory title was Publius Cornelius Scipio, who for his great victories in the Second Punic War, specifically the Battle of Zama was awarded by the Roman Senate the title "Africanus" and is thus known to history as "Scipio Africanus" (his adopted grandson Scipio Aemilianus Africanus was awarded the same title after the Third Punic War and is known as "Scipio Africanus the Younger"). Other notable holders of such victory titles include Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, who was replaced by Gaius Marius as command-in-chief of the Jugurthine War; Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus, who commanded Roman anti-pirate operations in the eastern Mediterranean (and was father of Julius Caesar's colleague in his second consulate); Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus in 48 BC), while Marcus Antonius Creticus, another anti-piracy commander, (and father of Caesar's magister equitum, Mark Antony) actually lost in Crete and was called Creticus mockingly, as it also meant "Man made of Chalk". Marcus Porcius Cato "Uticensis" received his title posthumously from those glorifying his suicide, rather than defeat, at Utica.
The practice continued in the Roman Empire, although it was subsequently amended by some Roman Emperors who desired to emphasise the totality of their victories by adding Maximus ("the Greatest") to the victory title (e.g., Parthicus Maximus, "the Greatest Parthian"). This taste grew to be rather vulgar by modern standards, with increasingly grandiose accumulations of partially fictitious victory titles.
In a broader sense, the term victory title is sometimes used to describe the repeatable awarding of the invariable style of Imperator (Greek equivalent Autokrator; see those articles), which is the highest military qualification (as modern states have awarded a non-operational highest rank, sometimes instituted for a particular general), but even when it marks the recipient out for one or more memorable victories (and the other use, as a permanent military command for the ruler, became in fact the more significant one), it does not actually specify one.
Medieval victory titles
After the fall of Western Rome, the practice continued in modified form.
Charlemagne, the first Carolingian emperor of the Franks, styled himself Dominator Saxonorum ("Dominator of the Saxons") after subduing by force the last major pagan people in the empire
Byzantine Emperor Basil II (r. 960–1025) — "the Bulgar-slayer"
King Richard I of England (r. 1189–1199) — "the Lionheart"
King Edward I of England (r. 1272–1307) — "Hammer of the Scots"
King Afonso IV of Portugal (r. 1325–1357) — "the Brave" for his victory in the Battle of Río Salado
Ruler of Epirus Thomas Preljubović (r. 1367–1384) — "the Albanian-slayer"
Prince Alexander Yaroslavich of Novgorod was called Alexander Nevsky for his victory in the Battle of Neva.
Prince Dmitry of Moscow was styled Dmitry Donskoy for his victory over Mamai Khan at Kulikovo on the Don.
Modern victory titles
The term "victory-title" occurs in English from as early as 1938.
Modern monarchs awarded titles in commemoration of major military victories, but in the guise of a feudal aristocratic title, often hereditary, but only in appearance: an actual fief was not required, indeed they often were granted in chief of a battlefield where the awarding monarch simply had no constitutional authority to grant anything validly under local law.
This new form was even more specific than the Roman practice. Instead of naming the enemy — which could well need to be repeated — it linked the name of a battle, which was almost always unique. A further level of protection was available by naming a nearby place, such as 'Austerlitz' which Napoleon declared sounded better than the alternative.
Russian Empire
In the Russian Empire, many victory titles originated in the period between the accession of Catherine the Great (1762) and the death of Nicholas I of Russia (1855). But as early as 1707, after Alexander Menshikov occupied Swedish Ingria (Izhora) during the Great Northern War, Peter I of Russia officially designated him Duke or Prince of Ingria ( - gertsog Izhorsky). Other Russian victory titles (sometimes referencing whole campaigns rather than specific battles) include:
1775 — Chesmensky ("Chesmean") for Count Aleksey Orlov for his victory in the naval Battle of Chesma
1775 — Zadunaisky ("Transdanubian") for Count Pyotr Rumyantsev for his crossing the Danube during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774)
1775 — Krymsky ("Crimean") for Prince Vasily Mikhailovich Dolgorukov for his victories in the Crimea during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774)
1783 — His Serene Highness Prince Tavrichesky for Grigori Potemkin for his annexation of the Crimea and New Russia (the ancient Greeks called this area Taurida; see also Tauride Palace)
1789 — Rymniksky for Alexander Suvorov for his victory in the Battle of Rymnik (Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792)
1799 — Prince Italiysky ("Italian") for Suvorov, for the Italian Campaign of 1799 after the Battle of Trebbia
1813 — His Serene Highness Prince Smolensky for Mikhail Kutuzov for his 1812 defeat of Napoleon at Krasnoi near Smolensk during Napoleon's invasion of Russia
1827 — Count Erivansky for Ivan Paskevich for his capture of Erivan (Yerevan) in Armenia during the Russo-Persian War, 1826–1828
1829 — Zabalkansky ("Transbalkan") for Count Ivan Dibich for having crossed the Balkan Mountains during the Russo-Turkish War, 1828–1829
1831 — His Serene Highness Prince Varshavsky ("Varsovian") for Paskevich for having taken Warsaw during the Polish November Uprising of 1830–1831
1855 — Karssky for Count Nicholas Muravyov for his capture of Kars after the Siege of Kars
Furthermore, similar titles were awarded for comparable non-military services to the empire, e.g. in 1858 — Amursky for another Nicholas Muravyov, who had negotiated a new border between Russian and China along the Amur River under the Treaty of Aigun.
General Wrangel awarded the last victory-title in Russia (Krymsky – "Crimean") unofficially after the abolition of the monarchy: to the White Lieutenant-General Yakov Aleksandrovich Slashchyov in August 1920 for his defence of the Crimea in 1919–1920.
France
First Empire
Napoleon I, the founder of the Bonaparte dynasty and only head of the First French Empire, owed his success – both his personal rise and the growth of his empire – above all to his military excellence, and he bestowed elaborate honours on his generals, especially those raised to the supreme army rank of maréchal (marshal).
The bestowing of a victory title (), commemorating a specific victory, was an ideal form of honour, and many incumbents were victorious marshals (or posthumously, in chief of the widow).
The highest of these titles referenced four nominal principalities, in most cases awarded as a "promotion" to holders of ducal victory titles:
Marshal Davout, Prince d'Eckmühl – 1809 (extinct 1853) – also duc d'Auerstaedt (see below)
Marshal Masséna, Prince d'Essling – 1810 – also duc de Rivoli
Marshal Ney, Prince de la Moskowa – 1813 (extinct 1969) – also duc d'Elchingen – Bataille de la Moskowa is the French name for the Battle of Borodino of 1812
Marshal Berthier, Prince de Wagram – 1809 (extinct 1918) – also duc de Valengin, and Prince de Neuchâtel (a sovereign title granted in 1806), neither of which were victory titles.
Next in rank came ten dukedoms:
Marshal Ney, duc de Elchingen – 1808 (extinct 1969) – also Prince de la Moskowa
Marshal Lefebvre, duc de Dantzig – 28 May 1807 (extinct 1820) – Dantzig was then still a city republic, which became part of Prussia after Napoleon's defeat, and subsequently Gdańsk in Poland
General Junot, duc d'Abrantès – 1808 (extinct 1859 but extended in female line in 1869, again extinct 1985)
Marshal Davout, duc d'Auerstaedt – 1808 (extinct 1853, extended to collaterals) – also prince d'Eckmühl
Marshal Augereau, duc de Castiglione – 1808 (extinct 1915)
Marshal Lannes, duc de Montebello – 1808
Marshal Marmont, duc de Raguse – 1808 (extinct 1852) – present-day Dubrovnik, on the Croatian coast; conquered as part of Napoleon's own Italian kingdom, soon to become part of France's imperial exclave the Illyrian provinces (1809–1816)
Marshal Masséna, duc de Rivoli – 1808 – also Prince d'Essling
Marshal Kellermann, duc de Valmy – 1808 (extinct 1868)
Marshal Suchet, duc d'Albufera – 1813
Counts:
Georges Mouton, comte de Lobau – 1810
July Monarchy
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, duc d'Isly – 1844 (from the First Franco-Moroccan War)
Second Empire
Although Napoleon III never came close to his predecessor's military genius (history tends to remember his defeats), he loved tying into numerous aspects of the First Empire, so he not only revived many of its institutions and reestablished titles Napoleon I had awarded, but also made some new ones.
These included:
Marshal Pélissier, duc de Malakoff – 1856 (from the Crimean War, extinct 1864)
Marshal MacMahon, duc de Magenta – 1859 (from the Campaign of Italy; a newly invented dye took its name for the same battle)
Charles Cousin-Montauban, comte de Palikao – 1862 (from the Second Opium War)
British Empire
Many victory titles have been created in the peerages of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Examples include:
Godert de Ginkell, victor at the Battle of Aughrim, was created Baron of Aughrim as a subsidiary title of the Earldom of Athlone in 1692.
Admiral Edward Russell, 1st Earl of Orford, victor of the Battle of Barfleur, was created Viscount Barfleur as a subsidiary title of the Earldom of Orford in 1697.
James Stanhope, who captured Port Mahon during the War of the Spanish Succession, was created Viscount Stanhope of Mahon in 1717.
Sir George Augustus Eliott, victor of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, was created Lord Heathfield, Baron Heathfield of Gibraltar in 1787.
Admiral Sir Adam Duncan, victor of the Battle of Camperdown, was created Viscount Duncan of Camperdown in 1797. (His son was later created Earl of Camperdown.)
Admiral Sir John Jervis, victor of the Battle of Cape St Vincent, was created Earl of St Vincent in 1797, and was further created Viscount St Vincent in 1801.
Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the 1st Duke of Wellington), victor of the Battle of Douro, was in 1809 created Baron Douro as the subsidiary title granted to him with the Viscountcy of Wellington (see below). He was later, in 1814, created Marquess Douro as the subsidiary title granted to him with the Dukedom of Wellington.
General Sir Robert Napier, who commanded the Abyssinian Expedition of 1868 and captured the fortress of Magdàla, was created Baron Napier of Magdala in 1868.
The Earl of Dufferin, Governor-General of India during the Third Anglo-Burmese War that resulted in the annexation of Upper Burma including its former capital Ava, was created Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, in the County of Down and the Province of Burma, and Earl of Ava, in the Province of Burma in 1888.
Field Marshal Sir Julian Byng, who played an important role in the Battle of Vimy Ridge (1917), was created Baron Byng of Vimy in 1919 and was later promoted to a viscountcy.
Field Marshal Sir John French, the first commander of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War, was created Earl of Ypres in 1922.
Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, in honour of his 1942 victory in the Egyptian town of El Alamein against Rommel's Afrikakorps, was created Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946.
Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, victor of the Battle of North Cape in 1943, was created Baron Fraser of North Cape in 1946.
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, who oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese, was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma in 1946 and Earl Mountbatten of Burma in 1947.
Often the victory is commemorated in the territorial designation rather than the peerage itself. Examples include:
Robert Clive, victor of the Battle of Plassey, was created Baron Clive, of Plassey in the County of Clare in 1767.
The Lord Amherst, who captured Montreal during the French and Indian War, was created Baron Amherst, of Montreal in the County of Kent in 1788. Though the designation refers to Montreal Park in Kent, the estate had been named after the victory.
Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, victor of the Battle of the Nile, was created Baron Nelson, of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe in the County of Norfolk, in 1798, and (by this time a Vice-Admiral) was further created Viscount Nelson, of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe in the County of Norfolk. He was created Baron Nelson, of the Nile and of Hilborough in the County of Norfolk in August 1801. After his victory and death at the Battle of Trafalgar, his brother was created Earl Nelson, of Trafalgar and of Merton in the County of Surrey, and Viscount Merton, of Trafalgar and of Merton in the County of Surrey, in 1805, in his honour. (Nelson also earned the Dukedom of Bronte in Sicily, awarded to him in 1799 (in recognition of military support) by King Ferdinand III of the Kingdom of Sicily.)
Lady Abercromby, widow of Sir Ralph Abercromby, victor of the Battle of Aboukir, who had died of wounds received in that battle, was created Baroness Abercromby, of Aboukir and of Tullibody in the County of Clackmannan, in 1801, in honour of her late husband.
John Hely-Hutchinson, victor of the Siege of Alexandria, was created Baron Hutchinson, of Alexandria and Knocklofty in the County of Tipperary, in 1801.
Gerard Lake, victor of the Battle of Delhi (1803) and the Battle of Laswari (1803), was created Baron Lake, of Delhi and Laswary and of Aston Clinton in the County of Buckingham in 1804 and Viscount Lake with the same designation in 1807.
Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the 1st Duke of Wellington), victor of the Battle of Talavera, was created Viscount Wellington, of Talavera and of Wellington in the County of Somerset, in 1809.
William Carr Beresford, victor of the Battle of Albuera (1811), was created Baron Beresford, of Albuera and Dungarvan in the County of Waterford in 1814.
Rowland Hill, victor of the Battle of Almaraz (1812), was created Baron Hill, of Almaraz and of Hawkestone in the County of Shropshire in 1814 and Baron Hill, of Almaraz and of Hardwicke in the County of Shropshire in 1816.
George Harris, victor of the Siege of Seringapatam (1799) against the Kingdom of Mysore, was created Baron Harris, of Seringapatam and Mysore in the East Indies and of Belmont in the County of Kent in 1815.
William Amherst, 2nd Baron Amherst, Governor-General of India during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826) that resulted in the annexation of Arakan, was created Earl Amherst, of Arracan in the East Indies in 1826.
The Lord Combermere, who captured the fort at Bharatpur in 1826 while serving as Commander-in-Chief, India, was created Viscount Combermere, of Bhurtpore in the East Indies and Combermere in the County Palatine of Chester in 1827.
Sir John Keane, commander at the Battle of Ghazni (1839), was created Baron Keane, of Ghuznee in Affghanistan and of Cappoquin in the County of Waterford in 1839.
Sir Hugh Gough, victor at the Battle of Chinkiang (1842), in the Gwalior campaign (1843) and in the First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-1846), was created Baron Gough, of ChingKangFoo in China and of Maharajpore and the Sutlej in the East Indies in 1846, and following the Battle of Gujrat (1849) was further created Viscount Gough, of Goojerat in the Punjab and of the City of Limerick in 1849.
Sir Henry Hardinge, who concluded the Treaty of Lahore (1846) that ended the First Anglo-Sikh War, was created Viscount Hardinge, of Lahore and of King's Newton in the County of Derby in 1846.
The Earl of Dalhousie, who was Governor-General of India during the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-1849) that resulted in the British annexation of the Punjab, was created Marquess of Dalhousie, of Dalhousie Castle in the County of Edinburgh, and of the Punjab in 1849.
Hugh Henry Rose, who captured Jhansi (1858) during the Indian Mutiny, was created Baron Strathnairn, of Strathnairn in the County of Nairn and of Jhansi in the East Indies in 1866.
Sir John Lawrence, who served as Chief Commissioner of the Punjab during the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1859, was created Baron Lawrence, of the Punjab and of Grateley in the County of Southampton in 1869.
Sir Garnet Wolseley, who captured Cairo after the Battle of Tel el-Kebir (1882), was created Baron Wolseley, of Cairo and of Wolseley in the County of Stafford, in 1882.
Sir Frederick Sleigh Roberts, victor of the Battle of Kandahar in 1880, was created Baron Roberts, of Kandahar in Afghanistan and of the City of Waterford in 1892. Following the Battle of Diamond Hill near Pretoria in 1900, he was further created Earl Roberts, of Kandahar in Afghanistan and of Pretoria in the Transvaal Colony and of the City of Waterford in 1901.
Major-General Sir Herbert Kitchener, in recognition of his victory in the Battle of Omdurman (1898), was created Baron Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk (Khartoum being the less obscure but relatively nearby capital of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), in 1898. In 1902 (by this time a full General) he was further created Viscount Kitchener of Khartoum, of Khartoum and of the Vaal in the Colony of Transvaal and of Aspall in the County of Suffolk (having been Administrator of Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony in 1901). In June 1914 (having achieved the rank of Field Marshal in 1909) he was further created Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and of Broome, of Khartoum and of Broome in the County of Kent.
Field Marshal Sir John French, the first commander (1914-1915) of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War, was created Viscount French, of Ypres and of High Lake in the County of Roscommon, in 1916.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir David Beatty, the First Sea Lord (1919-1927) and formerly Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet (1916-1919) during the last years of the First World War, was, as one of the subsidiary titles granted to him with the Earldom of Beatty, created Baron Beatty, of the North Sea and of Brooksby in the County of Leicester, in 1919.
Field Marshal Sir Edmund Allenby, victor of the Battle of Megiddo (1918), was created Viscount Allenby, of Megiddo and of Felixstowe in the County of Suffolk, in 1919.
Field Marshal Sir Herbert Plumer, commander in the Battle of Messines (1917), was created Baron Plumer, of Messines and of Bilton in the County of York, in 1919 and Viscount Plumer, of Messines and of Bilton in the County of York, in 1929.
Field Marshal Sir William Birdwood, best known as the commander (1914-1918) of ANZAC troops in the First World War, was created Baron Birdwood, of Anzac and of Totnes in the County of Devon, in 1938.
Field Marshal Sir Edmund Ironside, who commanded the British forces around Arkhangelsk in the North Russia Campaign of 1918-1920, was created Baron Ironside, of Archangel and Ironside in the County of Aberdeen, in 1941.
Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, a senior British general in the Second World War, was created Baron Wilson, of Libya and of Stowlangtoft in the County of Suffolk, in 1946.
Austrian Empire
In the Austrian empire titles of nobility could be amended with territorial designations, the so-called predicates. These were usually named after the estates of the family in question, but sometimes the Habsburg rulers of Austria also granted victory titles. This happened particularly during World War I (1914-1918). Examples include:
Colonel General Viktor Dankl, who in 1914 defeated Russian forces in the Battle of Kraśnik. When he was made a Graf (count) in 1918, he received the title of Graf Dankl von Krasnik.
Colonel General Josef Roth, who played a decisive role in the Battle of Limanowa in 1914, when the Austro-Hungarian Army repelled a Russian breakthrough, was ennobled as Freiherr (baron) in 1918 with the style of Freiherr Roth von Limanowa-Lapanów.
Major General Ignaz Trollmann, whose XIX. Corps helped to conquer the Lovćen mountain near Kotor in 1916, was ennobled as Freiherr (baron) in 1917 with the style of Freiherr Trollmann von Lovcenberg.
Kingdom of Hungary
The system used in the Kingdom of Hungary by the Habsburgs resembled the one employed in Austria. Titles of nobility could be amended with territorial designations, also called predicates. These were usually named after the estates of the family in question, but sometimes also specific victory titles were granted. Examples include:
General Baron Pál Kray de Krajova et Topolya (1705–1804), who received the predicate de Krajova or Krajovai after he conquered the Romanian town of Craiova during the Austro-Turkish War (1787–1791).
Colonel General Stefan Sarkotić, the Commanding General in Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War I, was ennobled as a Hungarian baron and the style of Baron Sarkotić von Lovćen in early 1917 after Trollmann's XIX. Corps had conquered the Lovćen mountain near Kotor.
Sándor Szurmay was created baron by King Charles IV with the predicate de Uzsok or Uzsoki. He was the hero of the battle of Uzsok (March 1915).
During the Regency of Hungary after World War I, the Regent Miklós Horthy was not authorized to grant titles of nobility, but conferred the Order of Vitéz which sometimes but necessarily also carried noble predicates. Initially membership was restricted to men who had served with special distinction in the war. Examples commemorating military action include:
Captain Rihmer de Granasztó granted the title vitéz Gerlefalvi for his bravery at Gerlefalva, today Girovce, Slovakia.
Kingdom of Italy
The Kingdom of Italy under the House of Savoy of Piemonte-Sardinia granted many victory titles. The practice of bestowing such titles became especially common after the unification of Italy and again after World War I, when the Mussolini government (1922–1943) made a number of nominations. Examples include:
General Enrico Cialdini, created Duca di Gaeta for his role during the Siege of Gaeta (1860). This was the concluding event of the war between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, through which Cialdini's Piemonte-Sardinian forces secured victory over King Francis II of the Two Sicilies. The choice of this title was somewhat ironic as it had been the name of a Napoleonic duché grand-fief but only the withdrawal of the French fleet made the bombardment of Gaeta from the sea by Cialdini's forces possible.
General Armando Diaz, created 1st Duca della Vittoria ("Duke of the Victory") in 1922. He had been the Chief of Staff of the Italian Army (1917–1918) during World War I.
Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, created 1st Duca del Mare ("Duke of the Sea") in 1922. He had been the Chief of the Italian Naval Staff (1913–1915 and 1917–1919) during World War I.
Commodore Luigi Rizzo, created 1st Conte di Grado e di Premuda for his services as naval commander in World War I during which he also sank the Austrian battleship SMS Szent István.
Costanzo Ciano, created 1st Conte di Cortellazzo e di Buccari, a naval commander in World War I and President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies between 1934 and 1939.
Cesare Maria De Vecchi, created 1st Conte di Val Cismon in memory of the battles fought by his arditi on Monte Grappa in 1918. Later served as colonial administrator and Fascist politician.
Gabriele D'Annunzio, created 1st Principe di Montenevoso in 1924 for his services as poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist and aviator during World War I.
Marshal Pietro Badoglio, created 1st Marchese del Sabotino and later 1st Duca di Addis Abeba after the invasion of Abyssinia in 1935.
General Rodolfo Graziani, created 1st Marchese di Neghelli for his services as leader of military expeditions in Africa before and during World War II.
Prince Maurizio Ferrante Gonzaga di Vescovato, created 1st Marchese del Vodice in 1932. Also received the Gold Medal of Military Valor. (Full Titles and decorations, in Italian)
Other monarchies
The Spanish crown has awarded similar titles, such as Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo (hereditary) for the English Viscount Wellington (later Duke of Wellington). General O'Donnell was granted the title Duke of Tetuán by Isabella II after his success at the Battle of Tétouan. José Malcampo, 3rd Marquess of San Rafael, Prime Minister of Spain in 1871, during the reign of Amadeo I, was granted the titles of Count of Jolo and Viscount of Mindanao after he victoriously took the city of Jolo from the Sultanate of Sulu during his governorship-general (1874-1877) of the Philippines.
So did the Portuguese kingdom, as Duque da Vitória (Duke of Victory), Marquês de Torres Vedras (from the Lines of Torres Vedras of 1809-1810) and Conde de Vimeiro (from the Battle of Vimeiro of 1808) awarded to the Duke of Wellington.
The Kingdom of Naples awarded the title of Conte di Maida (Count of Maida) to British general John Stuart, commemorating the Battle of Maida in 1806.
The Dutch royal house of Orange, then of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, created the first Duke of Wellington Prince of Waterloo (in Belgium) in 1815.
Sources and references
François R. Velde. Napoleonic Titles and Heraldry: Victory Titles
References
Roman naming conventions
Ancient Roman titles
Monarchy
Noble titles
Military awards and decorations of ancient Rome
Victory
Honorary titles
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%20Brand
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Jo Brand
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Josephine Grace Brand (born 23 July 1957) is an English comedian, writer, presenter and actress. Starting her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene and early performances on Saturday Live, she went on to appear on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On and various television appearances including as a regular guest on QI, Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie to You?. She also makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4 in programmes such as The News Quiz and Just a Minute. Since 2014 she has been the presenter of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice. In 2003, Brand was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
Early life
Brand was born in Clapham, London, near St Paul's Church in a house which was "a little terraced Victorian place on the Wandsworth Road with an outside toilet", and grew up in Hastings, East Sussex. Her mother was a social worker at Charing Cross Hospital and her father was a structural engineer. Her father suffered from depression from the age of 12, until he was successfully treated with antidepressants in his mid-50s. Her parents separated when she was a teenager. Brand is the middle of three children, with two brothers. When she was about four, the family moved to the village of St Mary's Platt near Sevenoaks in Kent, and a year later, to Benenden. Brand was educated at St Mary's Platt Primary School, Benenden Village Primary School, Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School until the age of 16, Hastings High School for Girls and Bexhill College.
Career
Early
After working in a pub, for Barnardo's, and as a nursing assistant in a residential unit for adults with learning disabilities she took a joint social science degree with a Registered Mental Nurse qualification at Brunel University. She then worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years, at the South London Bethlem hospital, Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea and Maudsley Hospital in south London.
Comedy
When Brand began her career in comedy, she used the stage name the "Sea Monster". She was part of the British alternative comedy movement, working in London alternative comedy clubs in the mid-1980s, and appearing initially on the Saturday Live television show. She shared a flat with fellow comic and comedy club owner Ivor Dembina.
Brand's early style involved her delivering jokes in a bored monotone, one line at a time, with pauses in between. It drew heavily from pop culture and the media, with many jokes containing references to celebrities and public figures. Brand has said that she drank heavily before her first gig, was heckled throughout, and received no applause at the end of the set. Her Doc Marten boots, large size and short hair led to false rumours that she was a lesbian.
In 2007, Brand narrated Laughter & Tears: The Les Dawson Story, a documentary tribute to Les Dawson, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in October 2007.
In 2010, Brand took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London on 30 March.
Brand played the Demon Dinner Lady in the British live-action film Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011). She also provided a voice-over for the Lyric, Hammersmith Theatre's 2011 pantomime Aladdin.
In August 2015, Brand judged the first ever Class Clowns competition at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, she also announced the winner at the Gilded Balloon on the night.
Brand has written a feature-film adaptation of her novel The More You Ignore Me. She will also star in the film.
Television
In 1993, Brand became a resident panellist, along with Tony Hawks, on BBC monologue show The Brain Drain. Her transition into mainstream television continued when she starred in her own series on Channel 4, Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, co-written with comedy writer Jim Miller, who was already her main stand-up writer. Brand has had several solo television series, and presented shows such as Jo Brand's Commercial Breakdown. She had a cameo appearance in an episode of Absolutely Fabulous entitled "New Best Friend" (1994), and also appeared on Star Spell, a spin-off from Hard Spell in 2004.
Her television success continued with guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News for You and QI, to the extent where she became the most frequently appearing guest on the latter, appearing in a total of 34 episodes. As a fan of Countdown, Brand achieved an ambition when she was invited to appear in the show's "Dictionary Corner" as the celebrity guest. She later became a friend of the host, Richard Whiteley, and after his death in 2005 attended his memorial service at York Minster. She has appeared on Countdown as a Dictionary Corner guest 88 times.
In 2004, Brand appeared in a special episode of What Not to Wear, where fashion gurus Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine gave her a makeover.
On 25 March 2007, Brand appeared on Play It Again, where she was required to learn how to play the organ in just four months. This was in preparation to perform Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for an audience of 8,000 people at London's Royal Albert Hall on the second largest pipe organ in the United Kingdom. In order to practise her performance, she played "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind", a favourite hymn of hers at a church service in her former village church in Benenden, Kent, and accompanied dancers at Blackpool Tower. Prior to this, her only experiences with musical instruments had been childhood piano and violin lessons.
Brand took part in the first celebrity version of Comic Relief Does Fame Academy. In 2007 she appeared as a celebrity contestant on Comic Relief Does The Apprentice. In 2009 she participated in Let's Dance for Comic Relief, another Comic Relief fundraiser, dancing as Britney Spears, reaching the final. She has also been a judge on the show. In January 2013 Brand took part in a special Comic Relief series of The Great British Bake Off.
Brand has been a fill-in host on The Paul O'Grady Show and The One Show. Brand co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in the BBC Four sitcom Getting On opposite Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine, for which she won the 2011 Best TV Comedy Actress BAFTA award. The series, directed by Peter Capaldi and Susan Tully, is a gritty and realistic satire on the current state of the NHS, set in a geriatric ward.
In April 2009 Brand was as a judge with John Amaechi and Jeremy Stockwell on the BBC Two series The Speaker, charting the search for "Britain's Best Young Speaker".
In 2011, Brand presented Jo Brand's Big Splash, a television programme where she performed a stand-up routine and visited people with a love of water and it was produced by her production company, What Larks! Productions.
In January 2013 and 2014, Brand was a judge, with Andy Banks and Leon Taylor, on the ITV show Splash! .
On 14 January 2014, Brand presented an episode of The Great Sport Relief Bake Off on BBC Two, a charity version of The Great British Bake Off. In February 2015 she also presented an episode of The Great Comic Relief Bake Off.
Brand is the presenter of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice, which premiered on 8 August 2014. A second series aired from August 2015, third from August 2016 and a fourth from August 2017.
In 2014, Brand co-wrote and starred as Rose in a comedy pilot for Sky Arts called Damned. The show was commissioned for a full series by Channel 4, airing in 2016; its second series aired in 2018.
Since 2017, she has presented the Channel 5 series Jo Brand's Cats & Kittens. The show is available in the United States on Netflix as Kitten Rescuers.
On 28 January 2019, the BBC television series Imagine, presented by Alan Yentob, documented Jo's life and career, with contributions from many of her comedy peers, in a programme titled Jo Brand: No Holds Barred.
In 2019, Brand became a contestant on Taskmaster.
Brand appeared in BBC's Antique Roadshow: Nursing Special (which aired on Sunday 26th February 2023) talking to Fiona Bruce about her time as a psychiatric nurse. Brand spoke about her experience working in emergency mental health clinics, as well lighter moments performing in hospital pantos.
Personal life
Brand married Bernie Bourke, a psychiatric nurse, in 1997 in Shropshire. They have two daughters, Maisie Bourke and Eliza Bourke. Her husband and two daughters are vegetarian, but Brand prefers to "pursue pork-pies in service stations when no-one is looking".
Brand delivered a guest lecture on the subject of psychiatric nursing for the University of Derby Psychology Society in 1997 in return for a donation to Derby Rape Crisis. Also in 1997, she opened at Lambeth Hospital in South London, the first major exhibition of the Adamson Collection since the death of Edward Adamson, the pioneer of Art Therapy, in 1996.
In February 2009, Brand was among a group of British entertainers who wrote an open letter to The Times of London in support of the leaders of the Baháʼí Faith who were then on trial in Iran.
Charity
Brand is a supporter of the charity ActionAid and has taken part in fundraising events for the organisation.
In November 2014, Brand was a part of Gareth Malone's All Star Choir, who released a cover version of "Wake Me Up" to raise money for the BBC's Children in Need.
On 28 January 2016, Brand completed a 150-mile walk across Britain, in aid of Sport Relief, in Liverpool. Brand crossed the finish line at the Albert Dock at 7.30pm, having set off from the banks of the River Humber on 22 January. Her efforts were shown in a 60-minute documentary, which aired on 17 March 2016, called Jo Brand's Hell of a Walk for Sport Relief.
Brand is a patron of the National Self Harm Network (NSHN), International Animal Rescue, and the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, as well as London Nightline. She is the president of the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust.
Brand is an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society.
Politics
Brand is a supporter of the Labour Party. She was still a contributor to and supporter of the party in 2012.
Brand introduced and spoke at the celebration of Michael Foot's life at London's Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on 8 November 2010. She is also a republican. In January 2012, she gave the South Shields annual lecture at Harton Technology College alongside the Member of Parliament (MP) for the town, David Miliband.
In August 2014, Brand was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.
Brand is a supporter of the Women's Equality Party.
In June 2019, Brand was featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy show Heresy, after a number of right-wing and far-right European election candidates had been doused with milkshakes during campaign walkabouts the previous month. Brand said "Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?" She later added: "That's just me, sorry, I'm not gonna do it, it's purely a fantasy, but I think milk shakes are pathetic, I honestly do. Sorry." The BBC later defended Brand, explaining "the jokes made on Heresy are deliberately provocative as the title implies" and that they were "not intended to be taken seriously". The Prime Minister at the time, Theresa May, said the BBC should explain why a joke about throwing battery acid was "appropriate content" for broadcast and the BBC later announced that the remark would be edited out of any future broadcasts. The Metropolitan Police confirmed that it had "received an allegation of incitement to violence that was reported to the MPS on 13 June". and that they were investigating the matter. Appearing at an event in Henley, Oxfordshire, on the same day, the comedian was said to have apologised for making the joke, saying "Looking back it probably was somewhat a crass and ill-judged joke that might upset people." It was understood that the allegation reported to the police was not made by Nigel Farage or the Brexit Party. Ofcom said it has received 65 complaints about the episode of Heresy. The police dropped the investigation two days later. On 29 August 2019, the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) partially upheld complaints about the joke, saying: 'Whilst the ECU recognised that the wider message from this episode is an argument for more civility in political discourse, not less, and Ms Brand's contribution is not intended to be taken as face value, the ECU felt that it went beyond what was appropriate for the show.'
In a 2018 interview, Brand recalled an incident where she was forcibly kissed by a financial trader during a charity event in Canary Wharf, commenting that she chose not to report the incident because 'it would ruin the day and I was worried no one would believe me'.
Awards and honours
On 17 July 2007 Brand was awarded an honorary doctorate for her work as a psychiatric nurse from the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales). Professor Donna Mead, Dean of the School of Health, Sport and Science, who read Brand up for the award commented, "Jo incorporates much of her experience working in the field of mental health into her current work as a comedian. This has increased awareness of the work done by nurses in the mental health field. She has also used her experiences of working with individuals with conditions such as Alzheimer's to promote awareness of and raise funds for the Alzheimer's Society."
In December 2007 she received a Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Lifetime Achievement Award, an award associated with the Eileen Skellern Memorial Lecture. At this event she was praised for making mental health nursing more visible to the general public.
In October 2009, she was awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of Suffolk.
In January 2014, Brand was awarded a second honorary doctorate from Canterbury Christ Church University, for her work in raising awareness of mental health issues and challenging the stigma surrounding such illnesses.
Bibliography
Novels
Mental (with Helen Griffin. HTV Sherman Plays series. Cardiff: Drama Association of Wales, 1996).
Sorting Out Billy (novel. London: Review, 2004).
It's Different for Girls (novel. London: Headline Review, 2005).
The More You Ignore Me (novel. London: Headline Review, 2009).
Autobiographies
Look Back in Hunger. The Autobiography (London: Headline Review, 2009).
Can't Stand Up For Sitting Down. The Autobiography – Part 2 (London: Headline Review, 2010).
Non fiction
A Load of Old Balls: Men in History (London: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
A Load of Old Ball Crunchers: Women in History (London: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
Filmography
Television
Film
Stand-up releases
A Big Slice of Jo Brand VHS (1994)
Through the Cakehole VHS (1996), DVD (2006)
Brand New CD (1997)
Live Again CD (2001)
Barely Live DVD (2003)
Jo Brand Live CD (2006)
A Load of Old Balls CD (2007)
Awards and nominations
British Comedy Award 1992: Top comedy club performer
British Comedy Award 1995: Best stand-up comic
British Comedy Award 2010: Best female TV comic
BAFTA 2011: Best Female Performance in a Comedy Role
British Comedy Award 2012: Best female TV comic
References
External links
Jo Brand: Me? Singing? I couldn't get arrested? Interview by Jasper Rees, The Telegraph, 30 January 2008.
Keep on running: Jo Brand Interview by Tarquin Cooper, The Telegraph, 9 April 2005.
Article about Brand's career for TV show The Speaker, BBC website
BBC Interview by Matt Stadlen – Five Minutes With: Jo Brand (2009-08-14)
1957 births
Living people
20th-century English comedians
20th-century English actresses
21st-century English comedians
21st-century English actresses
21st-century English women writers
Actresses from Kent
Actresses from London
Alumni of Brunel University London
Best Female Comedy Performance BAFTA Award (television) winners
BBC people
British feminists
British socialist feminists
British socialists
Comedians from London
English autobiographers
English non-fiction writers
Nurses from London
English stand-up comedians
English television actresses
English television presenters
English television writers
English women comedians
Fellows of King's College London
English feminist writers
Labour Party (UK) people
People educated at Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School
Actors from Hastings
Actors from Clapham
Psychiatric nurses
English socialists
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20Kashmir
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History of Kashmir
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The history of Kashmir is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent in South Asia with influences from the surrounding regions of Central and East Asia. Historically, Kashmir referred to only the Kashmir Valley of the western Himalayas. Today, it denotes a larger area that includes the Indian-administered union territories of Jammu and Kashmir (which consists of Jammu and the Kashmir Valley) and Ladakh, the Pakistan-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Chinese-administered regions of Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.
In the first half of the 1st millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later—under the Mauryas and Kushanas—of Buddhism. Later in the ninth century, during the rule of the Karkota Dynasty, a native tradition of Shaivism arose. It flourished in the seven centuries of Hindu rule, continuing under the Utpala and the Lohara dynasties, ending in mid-14th century.
Islamization in Kashmir began during the 13th century, accelerated under Muslim rule during the 14th and 15th centuries, and led to the eventual decline of the Kashmir Shaivism in Kashmir.
In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Shah Mir dynasty. For the next five centuries, Muslim monarchs ruled Kashmir, including the Mughal Empire, who ruled from 1586 until 1751, and the Afghan Durrani Empire, which ruled from 1747 until 1819. That year, the Sikhs, under Ranjit Singh, annexed Kashmir. In 1846, after the Sikh defeat in the First Anglo-Sikh War, the Treaty of Lahore was signed and upon the purchase of the region from the British under the Treaty of Amritsar, the Raja of Jammu, Gulab Singh, became the new ruler of Kashmir. The rule of his descendants, under the paramountcy (or tutelage) of the British Crown, lasted until 1947, when the former princely state became a disputed territory, now administered by three countries: India, Pakistan, and the People's Republic of China.
Etymology
According to folk etymology, the name "Kashmir" means "desiccated land" (from the Sanskrit: = water and = desiccate). In the Rajatarangini, a history of Kashmir written by Kalhana in the mid-12th century, it is stated that the valley of Kashmir was formerly a lake. According to Hindu mythology, the lake was drained by the great rishi or sage, Kashyapa, son of Marichi, son of Brahma, by cutting the gap in the hills at Baramulla (Varaha-mula). When Kashmir had been drained, Kashyapa asked Brahmins to settle there. This is still the local tradition, and in the existing physical condition of the country, there is some ground for the story which has taken this form. The name of Kashyapa is by history and tradition connected with the draining of the lake, and the chief town or collection of dwellings in the valley was called Kashyapa-pura, which has been identified with Kaspapyros of Hecataeus (apud Stephanus of Byzantium) and Kaspatyros of Herodotus (3.102, 4.44). Kashmir is also believed to be the country meant by Ptolemy's Kaspeiria. Cashmere is an archaic spelling of Kashmir, and in some countries it is still spelled this way.
Historiography
Nilamata Purana (complied c. 500–600 CE) contains accounts of Kashmir's early history. However, being a Puranic source, it has been argued that it suffers from a degree of inconsistency and unreliability. Kalhana's Rajatarangini (River of Kings), all the 8000 Sanskrit verses of which were completed by 1150 CE, chronicles the history of Kashmir's dynasties from earlier times to the 12th century. It relies upon traditional sources like Nilmata Purana, inscriptions, coins, monuments, and Kalhana's personal observations borne out of political experiences of his family. Towards the end of the work mythical explanations give way to rational and critical analyses of dramatic events between 11th and 12th centuries, for which Kalhana is often credited as "India's first historian".
During the reign of Muslim kings in Kashmir, three supplements to Rajatarangini were written by Jonaraja (1411–1463 CE), Srivara, and Prajyabhatta and Suka, which end with Akbar's conquest of Kashmir in 1586 CE. The text was translated into Persian by Muslim scholars such as Nizam Uddin, Farishta, and Abul Fazl. Baharistan-i-Shahi and Haidar Mailk's Tarikh-i-Kashmir (completed in 1621 CE) are the most important texts on the history of Kashmir during the Sultanate period. Both the texts were written in Persian and used Rajatarangini and Persian histories as their sources.
Early history
Earliest Neolithic sites in the flood plains of Kashmir valley are dated to c. 3000 BCE. Most important of these sites are the settlements at Burzahom, which had two Neolithic and one Megalithic phases. First phase (c. 2920 BCE) at Burzahom is marked by mud plastered pit dwellings, coarse pottery and stone tools. In the second phase, which lasted until c. 1700 BCE, houses were constructed on ground level and the dead were buried, sometimes with domesticated and wild animals. Hunting and fishing were the primary modes of subsistence though evidence of cultivation of wheat, barley, and lentils has also been found in both the phases. In the megalithic phase, massive circles were constructed and grey or black burnish replaced coarse red ware in pottery. During the later Vedic period, as kingdoms of the Vedic tribes expanded, the Uttara–Kurus settled in Kashmir.
In 326 BCE, Porus asked Abisares, the king of Kashmir, to aid him against Alexander the Great in the Battle of Hydaspes. After Porus lost the battle, Abhisares submitted to Alexander by sending him treasure and elephants.
During the reign of Ashoka (304–232 BCE), Kashmir became a part of the Maurya Empire and Buddhism was introduced in Kashmir. During this period, many stupas, some shrines dedicated to Shiva, and the city of Srinagari (Srinagar) were built. Kanishka (127–151 CE), an emperor of the Kushan dynasty, conquered Kashmir and established the new city of Kanishkapur. Buddhist tradition holds that Kanishka held the Fourth Buddhist council in Kashmir, in which celebrated scholars such as Ashvagosha, Nagarjuna and Vasumitra took part. By the fourth century, Kashmir became a seat of learning for both Buddhism and Hinduism. Kashmiri Buddhist missionaries helped spread Buddhism to Tibet and China and from the fifth century CE, pilgrims from these countries started visiting Kashmir. Kumārajīva (343–413 CE) was among the renowned Kashmiri scholars who traveled to China. He influenced the Chinese emperor Yao Xing and spearheaded translation of many Sanskrit works into Chinese at the Chang'an monastery.
The Alchon Huns under Toramana crossed over the Hindu Kush mountains and conquered large parts of western India including Kashmir. His son Mihirakula (c. 502–530 CE) led a military campaign to conquer all of North India. He was opposed by Baladitya in Magadha and eventually defeated by Yasodharman in Malwa. After the defeat, Mihirakula returned to Kashmir where he led a coup on the king. He then conquered of Gandhara where he committed many atrocities on Buddhists and destroyed their shrines. Influence of the Huns faded after Mihirakula's death.
Hindu Dynasties
A succession of Hindu dynasties ruled over the region from the 7th-14th centuries. After the seventh century, significant developments took place in Kashmiri Hinduism. In the centuries that followed, Kashmir produced many poets, philosophers, and artists who contributed to Sanskrit literature and Hindu religion. Among notable scholars of this period was Vasugupta (c. 875–925 CE) who wrote the Shiva Sutras which laid the foundation for a monistic Shaiva system called Kashmir Shaivism. Dualistic interpretation of Shaiva scripture was defeated by Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025 CE) who wrote many philosophical works on Kashmir Shaivism. Kashmir Shaivism was adopted by the common masses of Kashmir and strongly influenced Shaivism in Southern India.
In the eighth century, the Karkota Empire established themselves as rulers of Kashmir. Kashmir grew as an imperial power under the Karkotas. Chandrapida of this dynasty was recognized by an imperial order of the Chinese emperor as the king of Kashmir. His successor Lalitaditya Muktapida lead a successful military campaign against the Tibetans. He then defeated Yashovarman of Kanyakubja and subsequently conquered eastern kingdoms of Magadha, Kamarupa, Gauda, and Kalinga. Lalitaditya extended his influence of Malwa and Gujarat and defeated Arabs at Sindh. After his demise, Kashmir's influence over other kingdoms declined and the dynasty ended in c. 855–856 CE.
The Utpala dynasty founded by Avantivarman followed the Karkotas. His successor Shankaravarman (885–902 CE) led a successful military campaign against Gurjaras in Punjab. Political instability in the 10th century made the royal body guards (Tantrins) very powerful in Kashmir. Under the Tantrins, civil administration collapsed and chaos reigned in Kashmir until they were defeated by Chakravarman. Queen Didda, who descended from the Hindu Shahis of Udabhandapura on her mother's side, took over as the ruler in second half of the 10th century. After her death in 1003 CE, the throne passed to the Lohara dynasty. Suhadeva, last king of the Lohara dynasty, fled Kashmir after Zulju (Dulacha), a Turkic–Mongol chief, led a savage raid on Kashmir. His wife, Queen Kota Rani ruled until 1339. She is often credited for the construction of a canal, named "Kutte Kol" after her, diverting the waters of the Jhelum to prevent frequent flooding in Srinagar.
During the 11th century, Mahmud of Ghazni made two attempts to conquer Kashmir. However, both his campaigns failed because he could not take by siege the fortress at Lohkot.
Muslim rulers
Prelude and Kashmir Sultanate (1346–1580s)
Historian Mohibbul Hasan states that the oppressive taxation, corruption, internecine fights and rise of feudal lords (Damaras) during the unpopular rule of the Lohara dynasty (1003–1320 CE) paved the way for foreign invasions of Kashmir. Rinchana was a Tibetan Buddhist refugee in Kashmir, who had established himself as the ruler after Zulju. Rinchana's conversion to Islam is a subject of Kashmiri folklore. He was persuaded to accept Islam by his minister Shah Mir, probably for political reasons. Islam had penetrated into countries outside Kashmir and in absence of the support from Hindus, who were in a majority, Rinchana needed the support of the Kashmiri Muslims. Shah Mir's coup on Rinchana's successor secured Muslim rule and the rule of his dynasty in Kashmir.
In the 14th century, Islam gradually became the dominant religion in Kashmir. With the fall of Kashmir, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared. Islamic preacher Sheikh Nooruddin Noorani, who is traditionally revered by Hindus as Nund Rishi, combined elements of Kashmir Shaivism with Sufi mysticism in his discourses. The Sultans between 1354 and 1470 CE were tolerant of other religions with the exception of Sultan Sikandar (1389–1413 CE). Sultan Sikandar imposed taxes on non–Muslims, forced conversions to Islam, and earned the title But–Shikan for destroying idols. Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin (c. 1420–1470 CE) invited artists and craftsmen from Central Asia and Persia to train local artists in Kashmir. Under his rule the arts of wood carving, papier-mâché , shawl and carpet weaving prospered. For a brief period in the 1470s, states of Jammu, Poonch and Rajauri which paid tributes to Kashmir revolted against the Sultan Hajji Khan. However, they were subjugated by his son Hasan Khan who took over as ruler in 1472 CE. By the mid 16th century, Hindu influence in the courts and role of the Hindu priests had declined as Muslim missionaries immigrated into Kashmir from Central Asia and Persia, and Persian replaced Sanskrit as the official language. Around the same period, the nobility of Chaks had become powerful enough to unseat the Shah Mir dynasty.
Mughal general Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, a member of ruling family in Kashgar, invaded Kashmir in c. 1540 CE on behalf of emperor Humayun. Persecution of Shias, Shafi'is and Sufis and instigation by Suri kings led to a revolt which overthrew Dughlat's rule in Kashmir.
Mughals (1580s–1750s)
Kashmir did not witness direct Mughal rule until the reign of Mughal badshah (emperor) Akbar the Great, who took control of Kashmir and added it to his Kabul Subah in 1586. Shah Jahan carved it out as a separate subah (imperial top-level province), with seat at Srinagar. During successive Mughal emperors many celebrated gardens, mosques and palaces were constructed. Religious intolerance and discriminatory taxation reappeared when Mughal emperor Aurangzeb ascended to the throne in 1658 CE. After his death, the influence of the Mughal Empire declined.
In 1700 CE, a servant of a wealthy Kashmir merchant brought Mo-i Muqqadas (the hair of the Prophet), a relic of Muhammad, to the valley. The relic was housed in the Hazratbal Shrine on the banks of Dal Lake. Nadir Shah's invasion of India in 1738 CE further weakened Mughal control over Kashmir.
Durrani Empire (1752–1819)
Taking advantage of the declining Mughal Empire, the Afghan Durrani Empire under Ahmad Shah Durrani took control of Kashmir in 1752. In the mid-1750s the Afghan-appointed governor of Kashmir, Sukh Jiwan Mal, rebelled against the Durrani Empire before being defeated in 1762. After Mal's defeat, the Durrani engaged in the oppression of the remaining Hindu population through forced conversions, killings, and forced labor. Repression by the Durrani extended to all classes, regardless of religion, and a heavy tax burden was levied on the Kashmiri populace.
A number of Afghan governors administered the region on behalf of the Durrani Empire. During the Durrani rule in Kashmir, income from the region constituted a large part of the Durrani Empire's revenue. The empire controlled Kashmir until 1819, after which the region was annexed by the Sikh Empire.
Sikh rule (1820–1846)
[[File:Sheik Imam-Ud-Din, Runjur Sing, and Dewan Dina Nath..jpg|thumb|left|Sheikh Imam-ud-din, governor of Kashmir under the Sikhs, shown along with Ranjur Singh and Dewan Dina Nath. 1847. (James Duffield Harding)]]
After four centuries of Muslim rule, Kashmir fell to the conquering armies of the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh of Punjab after the Battle of Shopian in 1819. As the Kashmiris had suffered under the Afghans, they initially welcomed the new Sikh rulers. However, the Sikh governors turned out to be hard taskmasters, and Sikh rule was generally considered oppressive, protected perhaps by the remoteness of Kashmir from the capital of the Sikh Empire in Lahore. The Sikhs enacted a number of anti-Muslim laws, which included handing out death sentences for cow slaughter, closing down the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, and banning the azaan, the public Muslim call to prayer. Kashmir had also now begun to attract European visitors, several of whom wrote of the abject poverty of the vast Muslim peasantry and of the exorbitant taxes under the Sikhs. High taxes, according to some contemporary accounts, had depopulated large tracts of the countryside, allowing only one-sixteenth of the cultivable land to be cultivated. However, after a famine in 1832, the Sikhs reduced the land tax to half the produce of the land and also began to offer interest-free loans to farmers; Kashmir became the second highest revenue earner for the Sikh empire. During this time Kashmiri shawls became known worldwide, attracting many buyers especially in the west.
Earlier, in 1780, after the death of Ranjit Deo, the kingdom of Jammu (to the south of the Kashmir valley) was also captured by the Sikhs and made a tributary. Ranjit Deo's grandnephew, Gulab Singh, subsequently sought service at the court of Ranjit Singh, distinguished himself in later campaigns and got appointed as the Raja of Jammu in 1820. With the help of his officer, Zorawar Singh, Gulab Singh soon captured for the Sikhs the lands of Ladakh and Baltistan.
Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu (Dogra Rule, 1846–1947)
In 1845, the First Anglo-Sikh War broke out, and Gulab Singh "contrived to hold himself aloof until the battle of Sobraon (1846), when he appeared as a useful mediator and the trusted advisor of Sir Henry Lawrence. Two treaties were concluded. By the first the State of Lahore (i.e. West Punjab) handed over to the British, as equivalent for (rupees) ten million of indemnity, the hill countries between Beas and Indus; by the second the British made over to Gulab Singh for (Rupees) 7.5 million all the hilly or mountainous country situated to the east of Indus and west of Ravi" (i.e. the Vale of Kashmir). The Treaty of Amritsar freed Gulab Singh from obligations towards the Sikhs and made him the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir. The Dogras' loyalty came in handy to the British during the revolt of 1857 which challenged British rule in India. Dogras refused to provide sanctuary to mutineers, allowed English women and children to seek asylum in Kashmir and sent Kashmiri troops to fight on behalf of the British. British in return rewarded them by securing the succession of Dogra rule in Kashmir. Soon after Gulab Singh's death in 1857, his son, Ranbir Singh, added the emirates of Hunza, Gilgit and Nagar to the kingdom.
The Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu (as it was then called) was constituted between 1820 and 1858 and was "somewhat artificial in composition and it did not develop a fully coherent identity, partly as a result of its disparate origins and partly as a result of the autocratic rule which it experienced on the fringes of Empire." It combined disparate regions, religions, and ethnicities: to the east, Ladakh was ethnically and culturally Tibetan and its inhabitants practised Buddhism; to the south, Jammu had a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs; in the heavily populated central Kashmir valley, the population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, however, there was also a small but influential Hindu minority, the Kashmiri brahmins or pandits; to the northeast, sparsely populated Baltistan had a population ethnically related to Ladakh, but which practised Shi'a Islam; to the north, also sparsely populated, Gilgit Agency, was an area of diverse, mostly Shi'a groups; and, to the west, Punch was Muslim, but of different ethnicity than the Kashmir valley.
Despite being in a majority the Muslims were made to suffer severe oppression under Hindu rule in the form of high taxes, unpaid forced labor and discriminatory laws. Many Kashmiri Muslims migrated from the Valley to Punjab due to famine and policies of Dogra rulers. The Muslim peasantry was vast, impoverished and ruled by a Hindu elite. The Muslim peasants lacked education, awareness of rights and were chronically in debt to landlords and moneylenders, and did not organize politically until the 1930s.
1947
Ranbir Singh's grandson Hari Singh, who had ascended the throne of Kashmir in 1925, was the reigning monarch in 1947 at the conclusion of British rule of the subcontinent and the subsequent partition of the British Indian Empire into the newly independent Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan. An internal revolt began in the Poonch region against oppressive taxation by the Maharaja. In August, Maharaja's forces fired upon demonstrations in favour of Kashmir joining Pakistan, burned whole villages and massacred innocent people. The Poonch rebels declared an independent government of "Azad" Kashmir on 24 October. Rulers of Princely States were encouraged to accede their States to either Dominion – India or Pakistan, taking into account factors such as geographical contiguity and the wishes of their people. In 1947, Jammu and Kashmir's population was "77% Muslim and 20% Hindu". To postpone making a hurried decision, the Maharaja signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan, which ensured continuity of trade, travel, communication, and similar services between the two. Such an agreement was pending with India. Following huge riots in Jammu, in October 1947, Pashtuns from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province recruited by the Poonch rebels, invaded Kashmir, along with the Poonch rebels, allegedly incensed by the atrocities against fellow Muslims in Poonch and Jammu. The tribesmen engaged in looting and killing along the way.Pathan Tribal Invasion into Kashmir The ostensible aim of the guerilla campaign was to frighten Hari Singh into submission. Instead the Maharaja appealed to the Government of India for assistance, and the Governor-General Lord Mountbatten agreed on the condition that the ruler accede to India. Once the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession, Indian soldiers entered Kashmir and drove the Pakistani-sponsored irregulars from all but a small section of the state. India accepted the accession, regarding it provisional until such time as the will of the people can be ascertained. Kashmir leader Sheikh Abdullah endorsed the accession as ad hoc which would be ultimately decided by the people of the State. He was appointed the head of the emergency administration by the Maharaja. The Pakistani government immediately contested the accession, suggesting that it was fraudulent, that the Maharaja acted under duress and that he had no right to sign an agreement with India when the standstill agreement with Pakistan was still in force.
Post-1947
In early 1948, India sought a resolution of the Kashmir Conflict at the United Nations. Following the set-up of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), the UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 on 21April 1948. The UN mission insisted that the opinion of people of J&K must be ascertained. The then Indian Prime Minister is reported to have himself urged U.N. to poll Kashmir and on the basis of results Kashmir's accession will be decided. However, India insisted that no referendum could occur until all of the state had been cleared of irregulars.
On 5 January 1949, UNCIP (United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan) resolution stated that the question of the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan will be decided through a free and impartial plebiscite. As per the 1948 and 1949 UNCIP Resolutions, both countries accepted the principle, that Pakistan secures the withdrawal of Pakistani intruders followed by withdrawal of Pakistani and Indian forces, as a basis for the formulation of a Truce agreement whose details are to be arrived in future, followed by a plebiscite; However, both countries failed to arrive at a Truce agreement due to differences in interpretation of the procedure for and extent of demilitarisation one of them being whether the Azad Kashmiri army of Pakistan is to be disbanded during the truce stage or the plebiscite stage.
In the last days of 1948, a ceasefire was agreed under UN auspices; however, since the plebiscite demanded by the UN was never conducted, relations between India and Pakistan soured, and eventually led to three more wars over Kashmir in 1965, 1971 and 1999. India has control of about half the area of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir; Pakistan controls a third of the region, governing it as Gilgit–Baltistan and Azad Kashmir. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir before the 1947 partition and its economic, cultural, and geographic contiguity with the Muslim-majority area of the Punjab (in Pakistan) could be convincingly demonstrated, the political developments during and after the partition resulted in a division of the region. Pakistan was left with territory that, although basically Muslim in character, was thinly populated, relatively inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim group, situated in the Valley of Kashmir and estimated to number more than half the population of the entire region, lay in Indian-administered territory, with its former outlets via the Jhelum valley route blocked."
The UN Security Council on 20 January 1948 passed Resolution 39 establishing a special commission to investigate the conflict. Subsequent to the commission's recommendation the Security Council, ordered in its Resolution 47, passed on 21 April 1948 that the invading Pakistani army retreat from Jammu & Kashmir and that the accession of Kashmir to either India or Pakistan be determined in accordance with a plebiscite to be supervised by the UN. In a string of subsequent resolutions the Security Council took notice of the continuing failure by India to hold the plebiscite. However, no punitive action against India could be taken by the Security Council because its resolution, requiring India to hold a Plebiscite, was non-binding. Moreover, the Pakistani army never left the part of the Kashmir, they managed to keep occupied at the end of the 1947 war. They were required by the Security Council resolution 47 to remove all armed personnels from the Azad Kashmir before holding the plebiscite.
The eastern region of the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir has also been beset with a boundary dispute. In the late 19th- and early 20th centuries, although some boundary agreements were signed between Great Britain, Afghanistan and Russia over the northern borders of Kashmir, China never accepted these agreements, and the official Chinese position did not change with the communist revolution in 1949. By the mid-1950s the Chinese army had entered the north-east portion of Ladakh.: "By 1956–57 they had completed a military road through the Aksai Chin area to provide better communication between Xinjiang and western Tibet. India's belated discovery of this road led to border clashes between the two countries that culminated in the Sino-Indian war of October 1962." China has occupied Aksai Chin since 1962 and, in addition, an adjoining region, the Trans-Karakoram Tract was ceded by Pakistan to China in 1965.
In 1949, the Indian government obliged Hari Singh to leave Jammu and Kashmir and yield the government to Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of a popular political party, the National Conference Party. Since then, a bitter enmity has been developed between India and Pakistan and three wars have taken place between them over Kashmir. The growing dispute over Kashmir and the consistent failure of democracy also led to the rise of Kashmir nationalism and militancy in the state.
In 1986, the Anantnag riots broke out after the CM Gul Shah ordered the construction of a mosque at the site of a Hindu Temple in Jammu and Gul Shah made an incendiary speech. Hindu-Muslim riots (a reaction to the opening of Babri Masjid to Hindu worshippers) were a national event, taking place in seven other states as well. Following the 1987 Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election that were widely perceived to have been rigged, disgruntled Kashmiri youth such as the so-called 'HAJY group' – Abdul Hamid Shaikh, Ashfaq Majid Wani, Javed Ahmed Mir and Mohammed Yasin Malik – joined the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front(JKLF) as an alternative to the ineffective democratic setup that was prevalent in Kashmir. This led to gain in the momentum of the popular insurgency in the Kashmir Valley. The year 1989 saw the intensification of conflict in Jammu and Kashmir as Mujahadeens from Afghanistan slowly infiltrated the region following the end of the Soviet–Afghan War the same year. Pakistan provided arms and training to both indigenous and foreign militants in Kashmir, thus adding fuel to the smouldering fire of discontent in the valley.Pakistan admission over Kashmir
In August 2019, the Government of India repealed the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian constitution in 2019, and the Parliament of India passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, which contained provisions to dissolve the state and reorganise it into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir in the west and Ladakh in the east. These changes came into effect from 31 October 2019.
Historical demographics of Kashmir
In the 1901 Census of the British Indian Empire, the population of the princely state of Kashmir was 2,905,578. Of these 2,154,695 were Muslims, 689,073 Hindus, 25,828 Sikhs, and 35,047 Buddhists. The Hindus were found mainly in Jammu, where they constituted a little less than 50% of the population. In the Kashmir Valley, the Hindus represented "only 524 in every 10,000 of the population (i.e. 5.24%), and in the frontier wazarats of Ladhakh and Gilgit only 94 out of every 10,000 persons (0.94%)." In the same Census of 1901, in the Kashmir Valley, the total population was recorded to be 1,157,394, of which the Muslim population was 1,083,766, or 93.6% of the population. These percentages have remained fairly stable for the last 100 years. In the 1941 Census of British India, Muslims accounted for 93.6% of the population of the Kashmir Valley and the Hindus constituted 4%. In 2003, the percentage of Muslims in the Kashmir Valley was 95% and those of Hindus 4%; the same year, in Jammu, the percentage of Hindus was 67% and those of Muslims 27%.
Among the Muslims of the Kashmir province within the princely state, four divisions were recorded: "Shaikhs, Saiyids, Mughals, and Pathans. The Shaikhs, who are by far the most numerous, are the descendants of Hindus, but have retained none of the caste rules of their forefathers. They have clan names known as krams ..." It was recorded that these kram names included "Tantre", "Shaikh", "Bat", "Mantu", "Ganai", "Dar", "Damar", "Lon", etc. The Saiyids, it was recorded, "could be divided into those who follow the profession of religion and those who have taken to agriculture and other pursuits. Their kram name is 'Mir.' While a Saiyid retains his saintly profession Mir is a prefix; if he has taken to agriculture, Mir is an affix to his name." The Mughals who were not numerous were recorded to have kram names like "Mir" (a corruption of "Mirza"), "Beg", "Bandi", "Bach" and "Ashaye". Finally, it was recorded that the Pathans "who are more numerous than the Mughals, ... are found chiefly in the south-west of the valley, where Pathan colonies have from time to time been founded. The most interesting of these colonies is that of Kuki-Khel Afridis at Dranghaihama, who retain all the old customs and speak Pashtu." Among the main tribes of Muslims in the princely state are the Butts, Dar, Lone, Jat, Gujjar, Rajput, Sudhan and Khatri. A small number of Butts, Dar and Lone use the title Khawaja and the Khatri use the title Shaikh the Gujjar use the title of Chaudhary. All these tribes are indigenous of the princely state which converted to Islam from Hinduism during its arrival in region.
Among the Hindus of Jammu'' province, who numbered 626,177 (or 90.87% of the Hindu population of the princely state), the most important castes recorded in the census were "Brahmans (186,000), the Rajputs (167,000), the Khattris (48,000) and the Thakkars (93,000)."
Gallery
See also
United Nations Security Council Resolution 47
Kashmiriyat
Sharada Peeth
Buddhism in Kashmir
Harsha of Kashmir
List of topics on the land and the people of "Jammu and Kashmir"
Notes
References
Bibliography
Primary sources
Muḥammad, A. K., & Pandit, K. N. (2009). A Muslim missionary in mediaeval Kashmir: Being the English translation of Tohfatu'l-ahbab. New Delhi: Voice of India.
Pandit, K. N. (2013). Baharistan-i-shahi: A chronicle of mediaeval Kashmir. Srinagar: Gulshan Books.
Historiography
covers 1846 to 1997
External links
Baharistan -i Shahi A Chronicle of Medieval Kashmir translated into English
Conflict in Kashmir: Selected Internet Resources by the Library, University of California, Berkeley, USA; Bibliographies and Web-Bibliographies list
Kashmir Website with Historical Timeline
Coins of the Kashmir Sultanate (1346–1586)
"The Great History of the Events of Kashmir" from 1821
History of India by location
History of Pakistan by location
History of China by location
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin%20Lincoln
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Benjamin Lincoln
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Benjamin Lincoln (January 24, 1733 (O.S. January 13, 1733) – May 9, 1810) was an American army officer. He served as a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Lincoln was involved in three major surrenders during the war: his participation in the Battles of Saratoga (sustaining a wound shortly afterward) contributed to John Burgoyne's surrender of a British army, he oversaw the largest American surrender of the war at the 1780 siege of Charleston, and, as George Washington's second in command, he formally accepted the British surrender at Yorktown.
Lincoln served from 1781 to 1783 as the first United States Secretary of War. While Secretary of War, Lincoln became an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati of the state of Massachusetts and was elected as the first president of the Massachusetts Society on June 9, 1783. After the war, Lincoln was active in politics in his native Massachusetts, running several times for lieutenant governor but only winning one term in that office. In 1787, Lincoln led a militia army (privately funded by Massachusetts merchants) in the suppression of Shays' Rebellion, and was a strong supporter of the new United States Constitution. He was for many of his later years the politically influential customs collector of the Port of Boston. He has no direct relation to Abraham Lincoln.
Early life
Benjamin Lincoln was born on January 24, 1733, in Hingham, Province of Massachusetts Bay, the sixth child and first son of Colonel Benjamin Lincoln and his second wife Elizabeth Thaxter Lincoln. Lincoln's ancestors were among those who first settled in Hingham, beginning with Thomas Lincoln 'the cooper,' who was among several Lincolns who settled in Hingham when it was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Lincoln's father, one of the wealthiest men in Suffolk County, served as a member of the governor's council from 1753 until 1770, and occupied many other civic posts before his death in 1771. Lincoln's maternal grandfather, Col. Samuel Thaxter, one of the most prominent and influential citizens in Hingham, became Colonel in a regiment and one of those commissioned to settle the boundary between Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1719.
In his early life, Lincoln worked on the family farm, and attended the local school. He followed his father into government, becoming town constable at 21, and in 1755 he joined the 3rd Regiment of the Suffolk County militia (where his father was colonel) as an adjutant. In 1756, at the age of 23, Lincoln married Mary Cushing, daughter of Elijah Cushing of Pembroke, Massachusetts, whose ancestors were also among the founders of Hingham. They had eleven children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. In 1757, he was elected the town clerk of Hingham, a post he held for twenty years. He continued to be active in the militia during the French and Indian War, but saw no action, and was promoted to major by the end of the conflict in 1763.
Lincoln was elected a Hingham town selectman in 1765, a post to which he held for six years. During this tenure political opposition rose in the province to Parliamentary tax measures, polarizing the political landscape of the colony. Lincoln sided with the opposition, eventually becoming a leading force among Hingham's Patriots. In 1770, in a list of resolutions passed by the inhabitants of Hingham, Lincoln outlined the measures urged by residents towards the non-importation of British goods, and he condemned the Boston Massacre. In 1772, Lincoln was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 3rd Regiment of the Suffolk militia. That same year he won election as a representative of the town to the provincial assembly.
American Revolution
With the arrival of General Thomas Gage as governor of the colony in 1774, the provincial assembly was dissolved, but reformed itself into the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Lincoln continued to win election to this body, and was placed on committees overseeing militia organization and supply, a position that came to be of utmost importance when the American Revolutionary War broke out with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. He was then appointed to the congress' committee of safety, and also was elected to its executive council, which exercised executive authority over the province outside besieged Boston. He was deeply involved in ensuring that supplies of all sorts reached the nascent Continental Army outside Boston, procuring supplies from blankets to gunpowder.
Defense of New York
In January 1776, Lincoln was promoted to major general of the Massachusetts militia, overseeing the coastal defenses of the state. After the British evacuated Boston, he and Continental Army General Artemas Ward oversaw attempts to improve the state's coastal fortifications, and he was ordered to hold the state's militia brigades in readiness in case the British returned. In May 1776 he directed the state forces that successfully drove the last Royal Navy ships from Boston Harbor.
Despite his lack of combat experience, Lincoln began lobbying state representatives to the Continental Congress for a Continental Army officers commission, anticipating that the aging and ill General Ward might soon step down. The idea was generally well received, with one representative writing that Lincoln was "a good man for a Brigadier General" and "a man of abilities", even though he had not "had much experience". While a Continental commission was not immediately forthcoming, Lincoln was placed in command of a brigade of militia the state sent to join General George Washington at New York Town in September 1776.
When Lincoln reached southwestern Connecticut, Washington first ordered him to prepare an expedition across Long Island Sound to raid British positions on Long Island. The expedition was aborted when Washington began to retreat from New York after the Battle of Long Island (Brooklyn) in August 1776, and Lincoln was ordered to bring two regiments to join Washington's army as it later retreated northward from New York Town. Lincoln's troops secured the Continental retreat to White Plains, New York, and were in the main Continental formation during the subsequent Battle of White Plains in October 1776; this portion of the troops saw no action in the battle. The enlistment terms of his men expiring, Lincoln returned briefly to Massachusetts to take command of new recruits for the coming year's campaigns. Based on a recommendation from General Washington as "a gentleman well worthy of notice in the Military Line", Congress commissioned Lincoln a major general in the Continental Army on February 14, 1777.
Lincoln's first command was that of a forward outpost at Bound Brook, New Jersey, only from British sentries outside New Brunswick. He established his headquarters at the nearby Van Horne House. After months of skirmishing, his post was the target of a surprise attack on April 13, 1777. In the Battle of Bound Brook he was defeated by a much larger force under the command of Lord Cornwallis, barely escaping capture.
Saratoga
In July 1777, Washington dispatched three of his best officers, Colonel Morgan, General Arnold and General Lincoln north to assist Philip Schuyler, and afterward Schuyler's replacement Horatio Gates, in the defense of upstate New York against the advance of General John Burgoyne's expedition from Quebec. Lincoln was ordered to coordinate the activities of the New England militia being recruited for the effort. General Schuyler asked Lincoln, from a base in southern Vermont, to harass the British supply line as the British moved south from Fort Ticonderoga toward Albany. Lincoln's job was complicated by New Hampshire's militia leader John Stark, who categorically refused to put his forces under Lincoln's command. Stark had previously held a Continental commission and resigned over a promotion snub, and had only agreed to serve in his native New Hampshire if he was not under Continental authority. Stark led his forces to victory in the Battle of Bennington in mid-August, which led to the capture or deaths of 1,000 Hessian soldiers from Burgoyne's army, while Lincoln's force was still growing.
By early September Lincoln had 2,000 men under his command, and launched several detachments at the British supply line. One of those detachments, led by Colonel John Brown, successfully harassed British positions outside Fort Ticonderoga, freeing American prisoners and even making an unsuccessful attempt to capture the fort in late September. By this time General Gates, who had taken command from Schuyler in August, had ordered Lincoln's force to join him near Stillwater, New York. Lincoln arrived on September 22, three days after the strategically conclusive Battle of Freeman's Farm where Colonel Morgan's sharpshooters killed most of the officers and three quarters of the artillerymen, resulting in the capture of 6 of the 10 British cannons. There Lincoln's militia were to hold the eastern shore of the Hudson River.
Lincoln's militia played no role in the American victory at the October 7 Battle of Bemis Heights, since the action took place on the western side of the river, but Lincoln was in command of the American right in the battle. These forces saw little action, which was concentrated on the American left. American forces, led by Generals Benedict Arnold and Enoch Poor, successfully breached the British defenses, undoing the small gains the British had made at Freeman's Farm and compelling Burgoyne to retreat a short distance. That evening Gates ordered Lincoln to perform reconnaissance; the British left fell back as Lincoln and his 1,500 man force probed them, and Lincoln was able to occupy the former British lines. In council that evening Lincoln recommended that the ford at Fort Edward be fortified against the possibility that Burgoyne would attempt to reach it and cross the river in an attempt to return to Ticonderoga. Gates agreed with the plan, and ordered Lincoln's militia to do so. During these movements Lincoln encountered a British company; in the ensuing skirmish Lincoln's right ankle was shattered by a musket ball, much like General Arnold was hit in the leg during his charge during the Battle of Bemis Heights, even though General Gates had already relieved Arnold of command due to insubordination in Arnold's manner of disagreement with Gates' battle plans.
Lincoln was transported to Albany, where he was treated, and where he learned of Burgoyne's October 17 surrender. His son helped him return to Hingham in February 1778, where he convalesced for several months. The injury left his right leg two inches shorter than the left, and for many years the ankle wound was prone to reopening and the danger of infection. During his recovery Lincoln learned that General Arnold's seniority had been restored, reducing Lincoln to the lowest-ranked major general. Although he considered resignation over the slight, Washington and supporters in the Continental Congress assured him of his value to the army.
Southern theater (1778–1781)
Lincoln rejoined Washington outside New York in August 1778, and was appointed commander of the Southern department in September. Washington sent Lincoln, Lafayette and Lee (Henry "Light Horse Harry") to the Southern Department to oppose the British army under Clinton and Cornwallis. Lincoln participated in the unsuccessful French-led siege of Savannah, Georgia in October 1779, after which he retreated to Charleston, South Carolina. He took command of the garrison of Charleston. In March 1780, the city was surrounded by a sizable British force dispatched from New York. After a relatively brief siege, Lincoln was forced to surrender more than 5,000 men to Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton on May 12, 1780, but did so in a way that allowed the South Carolina militia to escape as well as some Continental forces, that annoyed the British toward Lincoln.
Lincoln, desperate for more troops, had pleaded with the South Carolina legislature to arm 1,000 enslaved African Americans to ward off the approaching British. Rather than see armed slaves, the legislature began negotiations with the British commanders to allow the British forces to pass through South Carolina.
The loss of the southern army at Charleston was one of the worst Continental defeats of the war. He was denied the honors of war in surrendering, due to the British annoyance at his facilitating the escape of South Carolina militia units and some Continental forces, such as those with Lafayette and Lee, which deeply rankled Lincoln. Lincoln was paroled, and in the court of inquiry no charges were ever brought against him.
After being exchanged for the British Major General William Phillips in November 1780, Lincoln returned to Washington's main army. He led a large portion of the Army south from Head of Elk Maryland to Hampton, Virginia, to march to the west to Yorktown where the British were encamped. Lincoln played a major role in the siege of Yorktown and the surrender of Lord Cornwallis on October 19, 1781. Cornwallis plead illness, and so did not attend the surrender ceremony, choosing instead to send his second-in-command, the Irish General Charles O'Hara. General Washington refused to accept Cornwallis' sword from O'Hara, directing O'Hara to present it instead to Lincoln, Washington's own second-in-command.
Secretary at War (1781–1783)
From 1781 to late 1783, Lincoln served as the first United States Secretary at War. He was appointed by the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, adopted 1781. He was succeeded in the post by Continental Army artillery chief, Major General Henry Knox, (who later continued in the position as the first United States Secretary of War from 1789 to 1795 under the new Federal Constitution of 1787, during George Washington's two terms as the first President of the United States). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1781.
While Secretary at War, Lincoln was admitted as an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Massachusetts and was elected as the first president of the Massachusetts Society on June 9, 1783, subsequently supporting the election of George Washington as the first President General of The Society of the Cincinnati on June 19.
Post-war politics
In early 1787, Lincoln helped put an end to an uprising of western Massachusetts farmers opposed to increased taxation and government coercion in their trade, known as Shays' Rebellion; Lincoln commanded 3,000 privately funded militia to disperse the opposition, and captured over one hundred. The uprising with the near-capture of a federal arsenal by rebels caused a national uproar, and it was an important part of the national crisis that justified calling the Constitutional Convention. The next year, as a Suffolk County, Hingham delegate, Lincoln voted to support the United States Constitution at the Massachusetts Federal Convention, which ratified 187 to 168 on February 6, 1788.
On February 4, 1789, Lincoln was one of only 12 men who received electoral votes during the first election for President and Vice President of the United States, receiving the vote of an unrecorded elector from the State of Georgia.
Lincoln also served as one of the first trustees of Derby Academy, founded in Hingham by Sarah Hersey Derby, widow of a wealthy Salem shipping magnate.
He stayed active in public life in various capacities, including a term as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and many years as the Collector of the Port of Boston. In 1806, Lincoln attempted to resign as Collector but President Thomas Jefferson requested he stay until he appointed a successor. This act led to Representative Josiah Quincy III to attempt to have Jefferson impeached in January 1809, even though Jefferson was set to leave office in March of that year. He retired from public life in 1809 and died in Hingham on May 9, 1810.
Legacy
Lincoln is buried in the Old Ship Burying Ground behind the Old Ship Church in Hingham. Among the pallbearers at Lincoln's funeral were John Adams, Cotton Tufts, Robert Treat Paine, Richard Cranch and Thomas Melvill. In Lincoln's honor, the bells at Boston and other places were tolled for an hour; the flags of vessels, and those at Fort Independence and Fort Warren, as well as those at the Charlestown Navy Yard were lowered to half-mast.
He was one of the few men to have been involved in the three major surrenders of the American Revolutionary War: twice as a victor (at Yorktown and Saratoga), and once as the defeated party (at Charleston). In spite of the major role he played during the war, he tends to be less well-remembered than many of his contemporaries in the Continental Army.
He was a founding member of The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture (M.S.P.A.) one of the earliest agricultural societies in the United States. The Society was incorporated by an act of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on March 7, 1792.
Places named "Lincoln" in the American South tend to be named after Benjamin Lincoln rather than Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President. Counties and/or towns in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee are named in his honor, as are communities in North Carolina (Lincolnton), Georgia (Lincolnton), Vermont (Lincoln), and Maine (Lincolnville). Streets in Columbia, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia (Lincoln Street), bear his name, as does Lincoln Hall at the United States Coast Guard Training Center in Yorktown, Virginia.
Lincoln's lifelong home still stands. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Benjamin Lincoln is believed to have married Mary Cushing.
Notes
References
Benjamin Lincoln
The Articles of Confederation
Journal of the Senate, Vol 1, 1789, p8
Mattern, David B. Benjamin Lincoln and the American Revolution. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. googlebooks Retrieved December 30, 2008.
Thomas, William Sturgis Members of the Society of the Cincinnati, Original, Hereditary and Honorary; With a Brief Account of the Society's History and Aims (New York: T.A. Wright, 1929)
Metcalf, Bryce Original Members and Other Officers Eligible to the Society of the Cincinnati, 1783-1938: With the Institution, Rules of Admission, and Lists of the Officers of the General and State Societies (Strasburg, Va.: Shenandoah Publishing House, Inc., 1938)
External links
National Park Service Museum Collections
The Society of the Cincinnati
The American Revolution Institute
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1733 births
1810 deaths
American Revolutionary War prisoners of war held by Great Britain
Continental Army generals
American people of English descent
American shooting survivors
Continental Army officers from Massachusetts
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Lieutenant Governors of Massachusetts
Massachusetts militiamen in the American Revolution
Members of the colonial Massachusetts House of Representatives
Militia generals in the American Revolution
People from Hingham, Massachusetts
Candidates in the 1788–1789 United States presidential election
Collectors of the Port of Boston
People of colonial Massachusetts
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%20%28Red%20Dwarf%29
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Cat (Red Dwarf)
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Cat (sometimes The Cat) is a fictional character in the British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. He is played by Danny John-Jules. He is a descendant of Dave Lister's pregnant pet house cat Frankenstein, whose descendants evolved into a humanoid form over three million years while Lister was in stasis (suspended animation). As a character he is vain and aloof, and loves to dress in extravagant clothing. He is simply referred to as "Cat" in lieu of a real name.
Fictional history
Television
1980s
The "Cat" first appeared in Red Dwarfs first episode "The End" (1988). The computer of the mining ship Red Dwarf, Holly (Norman Lovett), mentions that after a crisis where all of Red Dwarfs crew had died in a radiation leak, chicken soup machine repairman Dave Lister's (Craig Charles) pregnant cat, along with her unborn kittens, were sealed in the hold while Lister was put into stasis as punishment for keeping an unquarantined cat on board. Lister is left in stasis for three million years until the radiation reaches normal levels. This cat, Frankenstein, is mentioned by the Cat as a story he learnt about at school, describing her as "The holy mother, saved by Cloister the Stupid, who was frozen in time, and who gaveth of his life that we might live ... who shall returneth to lead us to Fuchal, the promised land," with Lister realising that "Cloister the Stupid" refers to Lister. Holly also mentions that the Cat evolved from the cats who have been breeding in the hold for three million years. After reawakening from stasis, Lister, the only known human being in existence, tells Holly to set a course for Fuchal, which is actually the archipelago of Fiji, where Lister had originally intended to take Frankenstein three million years earlier as part of his five-year plan.
In "Waiting for God" (1988), Holly translates a holy book written by the Cat's people for Lister, in which Lister is described as the cats' god "Cloister", and that his plan of buying a farm on Fiji and opening up a hot dog and doughnut diner has become their idea of Heaven, with Fiji known to the cat people as "Fuchal". Holly also tells of thousands of years of holy wars fought by two factions: those who believed the humorous hats at Fuchal should be red and those who believed they should be blue. Ironically, Lister had wanted them to be green. Eventually, the two factions formed a truce and built two great space arks to go and search for Lister and the promised land. One of the two arks, following a set of sacred directions (Lister's laundry list, which he lined Frankenstein's basket with), promptly crashed into an asteroid. According to a dying cat priest (Noel Coleman), "the sick and the lame" cat people did not go on the arks with the rest of the cats, and were left on Red Dwarf to die. Two of these cats were the Cat's parents, a female "cripple" and a male "idiot" who ate his own feet. Over time, the rest of the cat people died off.
According to Lister in "Me²" (1988), there are no other cats apart from the Cat himself aboard Red Dwarf.
"Parallel Universe" (1988) shows Holly's "Holly Hop Drive" trying to get to Earth within a few seconds. Instead, however, it lands the crew in a female-oriented parallel universe with another version of Red Dwarf. Rather than having a female Cat on board, however, this universe's version of Red Dwarf instead has a male humanoid Dog (played by Matthew Devitt). He is depicted as flea-ridden, and having an interest in smelling people's behinds and a fear of baths.
In "Timeslides" (1989), the Cat race temporarily ceases to exist after Lister is seen travelling back in time by entering a photographic slide with mutated developing fluid to convince his younger self (played by Emile Charles) to become wealthy and successful and not join the Space Corps. The hologram Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) unwittingly reverses this new timeline by going back in time to his boyhood self (played by Simon Gaffney), causing the Cat race to come back into existence.
1990s
The pleasure genetically-engineered lifeform (GELF) Camille appears in the episode "Camille" (1991), and is perceived differently depending on who is looking at her. Camille is seen as whatever the person who is looking at her desires the most, being described by the Cat as what his "perfect mate" is. The way she appears to the Cat is revealed to be a double of the Cat himself (also played by John-Jules).
In "Demons and Angels" (1992), Red Dwarf is blown up when the beam of a device called the triplicator is put into reverse, putting the engine core into meltdown, while creating a "high" and "low" version of Red Dwarf, complete with their own versions of the Cat (both played by John-Jules). Before the lifespans of both versions of Red Dwarf expire after an hour, the crew collect pieces of the triplicator from both Red Dwarfs, and restore the original Red Dwarf by amalgamating the two copies with a rebuilt triplicator. The "high" version of the Cat is blown up by a bomb the "lows" throw at him, while the "low" version disappears with his version of Red Dwarf.
In "Back to Reality" (1992), ink from a "despair squid" causes Lister, Rimmer, the Cat and mechanoid Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) to share a hallucination, with the hallucinations attacking things they each consider "quintessential to [their] self-esteem". In the hallucination, the Cat loses his "cool", and becomes a "no-style gimbo" with a massive overbite and unflattering clothes called Duane Dibley. The four nearly commit suicide together, but a mood stabiliser saves them at the last second.
In "Psirens" (1993), Kryten explains that Red Dwarf was "stolen", with the crew now based inside the shuttlecraft Starbug chasing after Red Dwarf to recover it.
In "Emohawk: Polymorph II" (1993), an emotion-leeching "emohawk" attacks Starbug and consumes the Cat's "cool", turning him into his "Duane Dibley" persona. The emohawk is captured, and Lister freezes it with liquid dilinium. The crew plan to extract the emohawk's DNA strands and re-inject the Cat with them to return his emotions to normal, but the Cat clumsily freezes everyone else before this can be done.
In "Out of Time" (1993), Rimmer mentions that all trace of Red Dwarf has been lost. In the episode, a Starbug from fifteen years hence arrives, with Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten's future selves intending to copy some components from the present Starbugs time drive so they can fix the fault in their own drive and continue their lives of opulence, socialising with notorious figures of history such as the Habsburgs, the Borgias, Louis XVI, Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring. Lister tells the future crew to leave, and the future Starbug fires upon the present day one, apparently killing the crew and blowing Starbug up.
In the following episode, "Tikka to Ride" (1997), Lister mentions in a video log that the future Starbug destroying the Starbug of the present meant the time drive they had used ceased to exist in both the present and the future, or in other words, killing the present crew of Starbug in the present also killed the crew in the future, making it impossible for the future crew from ever going back in time to kill themselves in the present. The Cat later mentions in the episode that time returned to the point before the time drive was discovered.
In "Ouroboros" (1997), a Cat from a parallel dimension (played by John-Jules) is briefly seen, when a "linkway" through "non-space" is opened when the membrane between the two realities temporarily collapses.
In "Epideme" (1997), the Cat mentions he brought himself up, and as a result had no formal education. Because there was no one else around, the Cat had to teach himself, and because the Cat barely knew anything to begin with, lessons were "long and slow", especially on Thursdays when he had "double nothing". Lister has his right arm amputated in an attempt to rid his body of the Epideme virus (voiced by Gary Martin). Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski (Chloë Annett) ultimately gets rid of the virus by temporarily stopping Lister's heart and containing the virus in deceased Red Dwarf crewmember Caroline Carmen's (Nicky Leatherbarrow) arm, injected with blood and adrenaline, and tricking the virus into thinking the arm belongs to Kochanski. In the following episode, "Nanarchy" (1997), Kryten tries looking for his self-repairing nanobots to rebuild Lister's arm. Returning to the part of space where they were last seen, the crew discovers Red Dwarf has been converted by the nanobots into a planetoid made of sand and Holly restored to his old settings and abandoned there, with the Red Dwarf Starbug spent years chasing after being a subatomic version shrunken down and eventually exploring Lister's laundry basket, and the remaining bits they didn't want being left on the planetoid. Kryten orders the nanobots to rebuild Lister's arm and turn the planetoid back into Red Dwarf.
In Back in the Red (1999), Holly creates a new set of nanobots to bring the entire crew on board Red Dwarf back to life after Kryten's had gone missing again. Included among the resurrected crew is Rimmer, after the hologrammatic simulation of Rimmer left Starbug. Lister, Rimmer, Cat, Kryten and Kochanski are sentenced to two years in the ship's brig for misuse of confidential information. In "Cassandra" (1999), the five of them get signed up by Lister to the convict army the Canaries after Holly lies to Lister that they're a singing troupe.
In "Only the Good..." (1999), a corrosive micro-organism is shown eating apart Red Dwarf. Rimmer crosses into a "mirror universe" where everything is opposite, and obtains the formula to antidote to the micro-organism from that universe's version of the Cat (played by John-Jules), an intelligent professor who does "stupid sciencey brainbox type stuff". However, upon returning to the normal universe, the paper with the formula on it turns into the micro-organism's formula. Not being able to find anyone on Red Dwarf, a vending machine (voiced by Tony Slattery) informs Rimmer that everyone crossed back into the mirror universe. The machine opening the way to the mirror universe is shown to have been destroyed by the micro-organism, leaving Rimmer stranded and the only crew member aboard Red Dwarf in his universe.
2000s
In Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2009), set nine years later, Red Dwarf is intact; the human race is apparently "virtually extinct" in the universe apart from Lister again; Lister, Rimmer, the Cat and Kryten are the only people on board the ship; and Rimmer is shown to be a hard light hologram and the most senior officer on board again; how these have come about and what happened to the micro-organism is not explained. In this special, a female "despair squid", whose ink causes joy and elation instead of despair to defend herself, causes Lister, Rimmer, the Cat and Kryten to share a hallucination where they believe they are fictional characters from a TV series called Red Dwarf, and their dimension is "invalid". This leads them to be shown being pulled into the nearest "valid" reality. They confront the "Creator" of Red Dwarf (Richard O'Callaghan) on a version of 21st century Earth who is ready to kill off the characters, and Lister accidentally kills him. The four subconsciously realise that they're hallucinating, and they wake up on board Red Dwarf. Kryten and Rimmer speculate that they were able to choose whether or not they wanted to wake up because of the strengthened antibodies of the four from the previous encounter with the despair squid.
2010s
In "The Beginning" (2012), the Cat deduces that Rimmer's long-dead father (Simon Treves) is continuing to haunt him, preventing Rimmer from coming up with a plan to battle a simulant fleet. The Cat tells Rimmer to let his father go. Rimmer does so by playing his father's message, which he is only supposed to do once he becomes an officer. This proves that Rimmer no longer cares what his father has to say, and is free of this "demon" inside of him messing up his head, leading to a successful attack devised by Rimmer which defeats the simulants.
In "Can of Worms" (2016), the Cat becomes the host body of a genetically engineered polymorph's eggs after the polymorph disguises herself as a female Felis sapien (played by Dominique Moore) and goes on a date with the Cat. The polymorph reaches the end of her life cycle after implanting the eggs, and Lister and the Cat kill the offspring after the Cat gives birth to them. In this episode he inadvertently reveals himself to be a virgin, and insists that being impregnated by the polymorph "still counts".
In "Cured" (2017), it is revealed that Cat is a psychopath as he has many of the qualities of a psychopath such as narcissism, selfishness, and an inability to understand other people's feelings.
In "Skipper" (2017), Rimmer uses a quantum skipper to travel to a universe where Lister is kind and hardworking. Here, Lister got put into stasis because he smuggled a pet rat on board, rather than a pet cat. The rat race did not have a religious war when they evolved, but stayed on Red Dwarf, living on most of its decks.
Novels
According to the novel Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (1989), the cause of the Cat's people's civil war was over whether their god was named Cloister or Clister.
Character
The Cat exhibits qualities of vanity, such as in "The End" (1988), where his first words are "How am I looking? I'm looking nice!"
In early episodes, the Cat exhibits typical feline behaviours such as licking anyone who gives him food, playing with "shiny things" and marking his territory, for which purpose he carries a small spray-can in his pocket. While scent-marking, he repeats, "This is mine, this is mine, and all of this is mine." He bats his food around when it is served on the table, explaining to his startled shipmates, "that is what cats do with [live] food!"
His extreme self-confidence results in him thinking himself to be irresistible to women. He is originally very self-centred, acting purely without concern when his old mentor the "Cat Priest" dies, giving Kryten an earring that the Cat hates on the day before Kryten's automatic self-destruct is scheduled and choosing to finish his lunch rather than carry Lister to the medical bay when he collapses. In the episode "Backwards" (1989), Lister asks the Cat if he cares about anyone but himself, to which the Cat responds, "Hell no! I don't even care about you." This behaviour becomes less prevalent as the series goes on. In the episode Cured it is revealed that he is a psychopath because of these characteristics.
By Series IV, the Cat becomes less obsessed with mating, and begins to develop a friendship with Dave Lister and Kryten, although he maintains a strong dislike for Rimmer. As he learns to relate to the crew, he stops licking them and marking his territory, and even begins to show genuine concern for others on several occasions. He becomes a skilled pilot of Starbug and develops an ability to "smell" dangerous phenomena, even in space— although he does not grasp scientific terms, describing anomalies as a "swirly thing" in the episode "Legion" (1993), and in the episode "Ouroboros" (1997), when asked by Kryten if something "weird" on Starbugs long-range scan is a "wibbly thing" or a "swirly thing", the Cat says he would "hate to commit [himself]" at such an early stage.
Style
The Cat is obsessed with his own superficial attractiveness and has an enormous and flamboyant wardrobe, which he couples with an obsession with his reflection and a penchant for preening. He has been described as "a vain, preening fashion plate who resembles James Brown with fangs", and Danny John-Jules has described the character of Cat as based on a combination of Little Richard's look, James Brown's moves and Richard Pryor's facial expressions. When auditioning for the show John-Jules attended the audition in character, wearing his father's wedding suit, which he described as a "zoot suit". In order to understand the role, John-Jules studied the 1986 book Catwatching by Desmond Morris, learning, among other things, not to blink while in character.
In the first episode the Cat is introduced wearing a pink suit, which Danny John-Jules described as feeling "like an old Cab Calloway suit". Concerning his character, Danny John-Jules has said "He's probably like a little girl the first time she puts on makeup and says 'Hey this stuff looks good...'."
During the first two series, the Cat typically dressed in various 1940s-era suits (often gray or pink, with big shoulders and pocket handkerchiefs). He would also wear Cuban-heeled shoes with most of his outfits. He would also wear suits with tailed jackets and ruffled shirts (most notably cream-coloured or reddish-pink). Over the next three seasons, the Cat began wearing flashier outfits (like a tartan three-piece suit) and more leather and vinyl outfits (with boots). He also began wearing brightly coloured hats and coats, such as his zebra-print coat (later revamped to yellow and black). He began sporting more jewellery and earrings.
Starting with series 6 and on through 7, The Cat's wardrobe was drastically simplified (John-Jules jokingly speculated that this was done as a cost-saving measure). He wore a black pvc jumpsuit (often with gloves) with a limited number of coats or suits worn over it. Ironically, he spent most of series 8 either in his prison jumpsuit or his battle fatigues.
In other media
In the episode "Parallel Universe", the Cat performs the song "Tongue Tied", which appears as a dream sequence on a "dream monitor". The song was later released as a single and reached number 17 in October 1993 in the UK Singles Chart. The artist was listed simply as "The Cat".
US pilot
In the first and second pilot episodes of an American version of the television series, the Cat was played by Hinton Battle and Terry Farrell respectively. (Farrell's version was more outwardly catlike in appearance.)
References
Red Dwarf characters
Television characters introduced in 1988
Fictional cats
Evolution in popular culture
Fictional characters without a name
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Frost
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David Frost
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Sir David Paradine Frost (7 April 1939 – 31 August 2013) was a British television host, journalist, comedian and writer. He rose to prominence during the satire boom in the United Kingdom when he was chosen to host the satirical programme That Was the Week That Was in 1962. His success on this show led to work as a host on American television. He became known for his television interviews with senior political figures, among them the Nixon interviews with US president Richard Nixon in 1977 which were adapted into a stage play and film. Frost interviewed all eight British prime ministers serving from 1964 to 2016, from Alec Douglas-Home to David Cameron, and all eight American presidents in office from 1969 to 2008, from Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush.
Frost was one of the people behind the launch of ITV station TV-am in 1983. He was the inaugural host of the US news magazine programme Inside Edition. He hosted the Sunday morning interview programme Breakfast with Frost for the BBC from 1993 to 2005, and spent two decades as host of Through the Keyhole. From 2006 to 2012, he hosted the weekly programme Frost Over the World on Al Jazeera English, and the weekly programme The Frost Interview from 2012. He received the BAFTA Fellowship from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2005 and the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmy Awards in 2009.
Frost died on 31 August 2013, aged 74, on board the cruise ship , where he had been engaged as a speaker. His memorial stone was unveiled in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in March 2014.
Early life
David Paradine Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent, on 7 April 1939, the son of a Methodist minister of Huguenot descent, the Rev. Wilfred John "W. J." Paradine Frost, and his wife, Mona (Aldrich); he had two elder sisters.
While living in Gillingham, Kent, he was taught in the Bible class of the Sunday school at his father's church (Byron Road Methodist) by David Gilmore Harvey, and subsequently started training as a Methodist local preacher, which he did not complete.
Frost attended Barnsole Road Primary School in Gillingham, St Hugh's School, Woodhall Spa, Gillingham Grammar School and finally – while residing in Raunds, Northamptonshire – Wellingborough Grammar School. Throughout his school years he was an avid football and cricket player, and was offered a contract with Nottingham Forest F.C. For two years before going to university he was a lay preacher, following his witnessing of an event presided over by Christian evangelist Billy Graham.
Frost studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from 1958, graduating with a Third in English. He was editor of both the university's student paper, Varsity, and the literary magazine Granta. He was also secretary of the Footlights Drama Society, which included actors such as Peter Cook and John Bird. During this period Frost appeared on television for the first time in an edition of Anglia Television's Town And Gown, performing several comic characters. "The first time I stepped into a television studio", he once remembered, "it felt like home. It didn't scare me. Talking to the camera seemed the most natural thing in the world."
According to some accounts, Frost was the victim of snobbery from the group with which he associated at Cambridge, which has been confirmed by Barry Humphries. Christopher Booker, while asserting that Frost's one defining characteristic was ambition, commented that he was impossible to dislike. According to satirist John Wells, Old Etonian actor Jonathan Cecil congratulated Frost around this time for "that wonderfully silly voice" he used while performing, but then discovered that it was Frost's real voice.
After leaving university, Frost became a trainee at Associated-Rediffusion. Meanwhile, having already gained an agent, Frost performed in cabaret at the Blue Angel nightclub in Berkeley Square, London during the evenings.
That Was the Week That Was
Frost was chosen by writer and producer Ned Sherrin to host the satirical programme That Was the Week That Was, or TW3, after Frost's flatmate John Bird suggested Sherrin should see his act at The Blue Angel. The series, which ran for less than 18 months during 1962–63, was part of the satire boom in early 1960s Britain and became a popular programme.
The involvement of Frost in TW3 led to an intensification of the rivalry with Peter Cook who accused him of stealing material and dubbed Frost "the bubonic plagiarist". The new satirical magazine Private Eye also mocked him at this time. Frost visited the U.S. during the break between the two series of TW3 in the summer of 1963 and stayed with the producer of the New York City production of Beyond The Fringe. Frost was unable to swim, but still jumped into the pool, and nearly drowned until he was saved by Peter Cook. At the memorial service for Cook in 1995, Alan Bennett recalled that rescuing Frost was the one regret Cook frequently expressed.
For the first three editions of the second series in 1963, the BBC attempted to limit the team by scheduling repeats of The Third Man television series after the programme, thus preventing overruns. Frost took to reading synopses of the episodes at the end of the programme as a means of sabotage. After the BBC's Director General Hugh Greene instructed that the repeats should be abandoned, TW3 returned to being open-ended. More sombrely, on 23 November 1963, a tribute to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, an event which had occurred the previous day, formed an entire edition of That Was the Week That Was.
An American version of TW3 ran after the original British series had ended. Following a pilot episode on 10 November 1963, the 30-minute US series, also featuring Frost, ran on NBC from 10 January 1964 to May 1965. In 1985, Frost produced and hosted a television special in the same format, That Was the Year That Was, on NBC.
After TW3
Frost fronted various programmes following the success of TW3, including its immediate successor, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, which he co-chaired with Willie Rushton and poet P. J. Kavanagh. Screened on three evenings each week, this series was dropped after a sketch was found to be offensive to Catholics and another to the British royal family. More successful was The Frost Report, broadcast between 1966 and 1967. The show launched the television careers of John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett, who appeared together in the Class sketch.
Frost signed for Rediffusion, the ITV weekday contractor in London, to produce a "heavier" interview-based show called The Frost Programme. Guests included Oswald Mosley and Rhodesian premier Ian Smith. His memorable dressing-down of insurance fraudster Emil Savundra, regarded as the first example of "trial by television" in the UK, led to concern from ITV executives that it might affect Savundra's right to a fair trial. Frost's introductory words for his television programmes during this period, "Hello, good evening and welcome", became his catchphrase and were often mimicked.
Frost was a member of a successful consortium, including former executives from the BBC, that bid for an ITV franchise in 1967. This became London Weekend Television, which began broadcasting in July 1968. The station began with a programming policy that was considered "highbrow" and suffered launch problems with low audience ratings and financial problems. A September 1968 meeting of the Network Programme Committee, which made decisions about the channel's scheduling, was particularly fraught, with Lew Grade expressing hatred of Frost in his presence. Frost, according to Kitty Muggeridge in 1967, had "risen without a trace."
He was involved in the station's early years as a presenter. On 20 and 21 July 1969, during the British television Apollo 11 coverage, he presented David Frost's Moon Party for LWT, a ten-hour discussion and entertainment marathon from LWT's Wembley Studios, on the night Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. Two of his guests on this programme were British historian A. J. P. Taylor and entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. Around this time Frost interviewed Rupert Murdoch whose recently acquired Sunday newspaper, the News of the World, had just serialised the memoirs of Christine Keeler, a central figure in the Profumo scandal of 1963. For the Australian publisher, this was a bruising encounter, although Frost said that he had not intended it to be. Murdoch confessed to his biographer Michael Wolff that the incident had convinced him that Frost was "an arrogant bastard, [and] a bloody bugger".
In the late 1960s Frost began an intermittent involvement in the film industry. Setting up David Paradine Ltd in 1966, he part-financed The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), in which the lead character was based partly on Frost, and gained an executive producer credit. In 1976, Frost was the executive producer of the British musical film The Slipper and the Rose, retelling the story of Cinderella.
Frost was the subject of This Is Your Life in January 1972 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at London's Quaglino's restaurant.
American career from 1968 to 1980
In 1968, he signed a contract worth £125,000 to appear on American television in his own show on three evenings each week, the largest such arrangement for a British television personality at the time. From 1969 to 1972, Frost kept his London shows and fronted The David Frost Show on the Group W (U.S. Westinghouse Corporation) television stations in the U.S. His 1970 TV special, Frost on America, featured guests such as Jack Benny and Tennessee Williams.
In a declassified transcript of a 1972 telephone call between Frost and Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security advisor and secretary of state, Frost urged Kissinger to call chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer and urge him to compete in that year's World Chess Championship. During this call, Frost revealed that he was working on a novel.
Frost interviewed heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali in 1974 at his training camp in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania before "The Rumble in the Jungle" with George Foreman. Ali remarked, "Listen David, when I meet this man, if you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait till I whip Foreman's behind."
In 1977, the Nixon Interviews, which were five 90-minute interviews with former U.S. President Richard Nixon, were broadcast. Nixon was paid $600,000 plus a share of the profits for the interviews, which had to be funded by Frost himself after the U.S. television networks turned down the programme, describing it as "checkbook journalism". Frost's company negotiated its own deals to syndicate the interviews with local stations across the U.S. and internationally, creating what Ron Howard described as "the first fourth network". Frost taped around 29 hours of interviews with Nixon over four weeks. Nixon, who had previously avoided discussing his role in the Watergate scandal that had led to his resignation as president in 1974, expressed contrition saying, "I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life". Frost asked Nixon whether the president could do something illegal in certain situations such as against antiwar groups and others if he decides "it's in the best interests of the nation or something". Nixon replied: "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal", by definition.
Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Frost was the last person to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran. The interview took place on Contadora Island in Panama in January 1980, and was broadcast by the American Broadcasting Company in the U.S. on 17 January. The Shah talks about his wealth, his illness, the SAVAK, the torture during his reign, Khomeini, his threat of extradition to Iran and draws a summary of the current situation in Iran.
Frost was an organiser of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly in 1979. Ten years later, he was hired as the anchor of new American tabloid news program Inside Edition. He was dismissed after only three weeks because of poor ratings. It seems he was "considered too high-brow for the show's low-brow format."
After 1980
Frost was one of the "Famous Five" who launched TV-am in February 1983; however, like LWT in the late 1960s, the station began with an unsustainable "highbrow" approach. Frost remained a presenter after restructuring. Frost on Sunday began in September 1983 and continued until the station lost its franchise at the end of 1992. Frost had been part of an unsuccessful consortium, CPV-TV, with Richard Branson and other interests, which had attempted to acquire three ITV contractor franchises prior to the changes made by the Independent Television Commission in 1991. After transferring from ITV, his Sunday morning interview programme Breakfast with Frost ran on the BBC from January 1993 until 29 May 2005. For a time it ran on BSB before moving to BBC 1.
Frost hosted Through the Keyhole, which ran on several UK channels from 1987 until 2008 and also featured Loyd Grossman. Produced by his own production company, the programme was first shown in prime time and on daytime television in its later years.
Frost worked for Al Jazeera English, presenting a live weekly hour-long current affairs programme, Frost Over The World, which started when the network launched in November 2006. The programme regularly made headlines with interviewees such as Tony Blair, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. The programme was produced by the former Question Time editor and Independent on Sunday journalist Charlie Courtauld. Frost was one of the first to interview the man who authored the Fatwa on Terrorism, Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri.
During his career as a broadcaster, Frost became one of Concorde's most frequent fliers, having flown between London and New York an average of 20 times per year for 20 years.
In 2007, Frost hosted a discussion with Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi as part of the Monitor Group's involvement in the country. In June 2010, Frost presented Frost on Satire, an hour-long BBC Four documentary looking at the history of television satire.
Achievements
Frost was the only person to have interviewed all eight British prime ministers serving between 1964 and 2016 (Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron) and all seven U.S. presidents in office between 1969 and 2008 (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush).
He was a patron and former vice-president of the Motor Neurone Disease Association charity, as well as being a patron of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, Hearing Star Benevolent Fund, East Anglia's Children's Hospices, the Home Farm Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. He was also recognised for his contributions to the women's charity "Wellbeing for Women".
After having been in television for 40 years, Frost was estimated to be worth £200 million by the Sunday Times Rich List in 2006, a figure he considered a significant overestimate in 2011. The valuation included the assets of his main British company and subsidiaries, plus homes in London and the country.
Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon was originally a play written by Peter Morgan, developed from the interviews that Frost had conducted with Richard Nixon in 1977. Frost/Nixon was presented as a stage production in London in 2006 and on Broadway in 2007. Frank Langella won a Leading Actor Tony Award for his portrayal of Nixon; the play also received nominations for Best Play and Best Direction.
The play was adapted into a Hollywood motion picture entitled Frost/Nixon and starring Michael Sheen as Frost and Langella as Nixon, both reprising their stage roles. The film was released in 2008 and directed by Ron Howard. It was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, winning none: Best Motion Picture-Drama, Best Director-Drama, Best Actor-Drama (Langella), Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score. It was also nominated for five Academy Awards, again winning none: Best Picture, Best Actor (Langella), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.
In February 2009, Frost was featured on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's international affairs programme Foreign Correspondent in a report titled "The World According To Frost", reflecting on his long career and portrayal in the film Frost/Nixon.
Personal life
Frost had several relationships with high-profile women. In the mid-1960s, he dated British actress Janette Scott, between her marriages to songwriter Jackie Rae and singer Mel Tormé; from 1970 to 1973, he was engaged to American actress Diahann Carroll; in 1974, he was briefly engaged to American model Karen Graham; between 1972 and 1977 he had a relationship with British socialite Caroline Cushing; in 1981, he married Lynne Frederick, widow of Peter Sellers, but they divorced the following year. He also had an 18-year intermittent affair with American actress Carol Lynley.
On 19 March 1983, Frost married Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard, daughter of the 17th Duke of Norfolk. Three sons were born to the couple over the next five years. His second son, Wilfred Frost, followed in his father's footsteps and currently works as an anchor at Sky News and CNBC. They lived for many years in Chelsea, London, and kept a weekend home at Michelmersh Court in Hampshire.
Death
On 31 August 2013, Frost was aboard the Cunard cruise ship when he died of a heart attack at the age of 74.<ref name="bbc obit"/ Cunard said that the vessel had left Southampton for a ten-day cruise in the Mediterranean, ending in Rome. A post-mortem found that Frost had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Frost's son Miles died from the same condition at the age of 31 in 2015.
A funeral service was held at Holy Trinity Church in Nuffield, Oxfordshire, on 12 September 2013, after which he was interred in the church's graveyard.
On 13 March 2014, a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey, at which Frost was honoured with a memorial stone in Poets' Corner.
Tributes
British Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute, saying: "He could be—and certainly was with me—both a friend and a fearsome interviewer." Michael Grade commented: "He was kind of a television renaissance man. He could put his hand to anything. He could turn over Richard Nixon or he could win the comedy prize at the Montreux Golden Rose festival."
Selected awards and honours
1970: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
1970: Honorary Doctor of Laws degree of Emerson College
1993: Knight Bachelor
1994: Honorary doctoral degree of the University of Sussex
2000: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
2005: Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA
2009: Honorary Doctor of Letters degree of the University of Winchester
2009: Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmy Awards
Bibliography
Non-fiction
How to Live Under Labour – or at Least Have as Much Chance as Anyone Else (1964)
To England with Love (1968). With Antony Jay.
The Presidential Debate, 1968: David Frost talks with Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey (and others) (1968).
The Americans (1970)
Billy Graham Talks with David Frost (1972)
Whitlam and Frost: The Full Text of Their TV Conversations Plus Exclusive New Interviews (1974)
"I Gave Them a Sword": Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews (1978). Reissued as Frost/Nixon in 2007.
David Frost's Book of Millionaires, Multimillionaires, and Really Rich People (1984)
The World's Shortest Books (1987)
An Autobiography. Part 1: From Congregations to Audiences (1993)
With Michael Deakin and illustrated by Willie Rushton
I Could Have Kicked Myself: David Frost's Book of the World's Worst Decisions (1982)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (1983)
If You'll Believe That (1986)
With Michael Shea
The Mid-Atlantic Companion, or, How to Misunderstand Americans as Much as They Misunderstand Us (1986)
The Rich Tide: Men, Women, Ideas and Their Transatlantic Impact (1986)
References
External links
David Frost BBC News profile
David Frost on TV Cream
TV Cream on Paradine Productions
1939 births
2013 deaths
20th-century British journalists
20th-century English comedians
21st-century British journalists
21st-century English comedians
20th-century English memoirists
Al Jazeera people
Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
BAFTA fellows
BBC newsreaders and journalists
British broadcast news analysts
British male comedians
British male journalists
British political writers
British reporters and correspondents
British television journalists
British television personalities
British television presenters
British television producers
English game show hosts
English male comedians
English male journalists
English Methodists
English reporters and correspondents
English political writers
English satirists
English television journalists
English television personalities
English television presenters
English television producers
English television talk show hosts
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Knights Bachelor
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Gillingham Grammar School, Kent
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming
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Brainstorming
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Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members.
In other words, brainstorming is a situation where a group of people meet to generate new ideas and solutions around a specific domain of interest by removing inhibitions. People are able to think more freely and they suggest as many spontaneous new ideas as possible. All the ideas are noted down without criticism and after the brainstorming session the ideas are evaluated.
The term was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in the classic work Applied Imagination (1953). Once a new product has passed through the screening process, the next step is to conduct a business analysis. Business analysis is a basic assessment of a product's compatibility in the marketplace and its potential profitability. Both the size of the market and competing products are often studied at this point. The most important question relates to market demand: How will a product affect a firm's sales, costs, and profits? If a product survives the first three steps, it is developed into a prototype that should reveal the intangible attributes it possesses as perceived by the consumer.
History
In 1939, advertising executive Alex F. Osborn began developing methods for creative problem-solving. He was frustrated by employees' inability to develop creative ideas individually for ad campaigns. In response, he began hosting group-thinking sessions and discovered a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of ideas produced by employees. He first termed the process as organized ideation, but participants later came up with the term "brainstorm sessions", taking the concept after the use of "the brain to storm a problem".
During the period when Osborn made his concept, he started writing on creative thinking, and the first notable book where he mentioned the term brainstorming was How to Think Up (1942).
Osborn outlined his method in the subsequent book Your Creative Power (1948), in chapter 33, "How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas".
One of Osborn's key recommendations was for all the members of the brainstorming group to be provided with a clear statement of the problem to be addressed prior to the actual brainstorming session. He also explained that the guiding principle is that the problem should be simple and narrowed down to a single target. Here, brainstorming is not believed to be effective in complex problems because of a change in opinion over the desirability of restructuring such problems. While the process can address the problems in such a situation, tackling all of them may not be feasible.
Osborn's method
Two principles
Osborn said that two principles contribute to "ideative efficacy":
Defer judgment;
Reach for quantity.
Four rules
Following these two principles were his four general rules of brainstorming, established with intention to:
reduce social inhibitions among group members;
stimulate idea generation;
increase overall creativity of the group.
These four rules were:
Go for quantity: This rule is a way of enhancing divergent production, aiming at facilitation of problem solution through the maxim quantity breeds quality. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas generated the bigger the chance of producing a radical and effective solution.
Withhold criticism: In brainstorming, criticism of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'. Instead, participants should focus on extending or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a later 'critical stage' of the process. By suspending judgment, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas.
Welcome wild ideas: To get a good long list of suggestions, wild ideas are encouraged. They can be generated by looking from new perspectives and suspending assumptions. These new ways of thinking might give better solutions.
Combine and improve ideas: As suggested by the slogan "1+1=3". It is believed to stimulate the building of ideas by a process of association.
Applications
Osborn said brainstorming should address a specific question; he held that sessions addressing multiple questions were inefficient.
Further, the problem must require the generation of ideas rather than judgment; he uses examples such as generating possible names for a product as proper brainstorming material, whereas analytical judgments such as whether or not to marry do not have any need for brainstorming.
Groups
Osborn envisioned groups of around 12 participants, including both experts and novices. Participants are encouraged to provide wild and unexpected answers. Ideas receive no criticism or discussion. The group simply provide ideas that might lead to a solution and apply no analytical judgment as to the feasibility. The judgments are reserved for a later date.
Variations
Nominal group technique
Participants are asked to write their ideas anonymously. Then the facilitator collects the ideas and the group votes on each idea. The vote can be as simple as a show of hands in favor of a given idea. This process is called distillation.
After distillation, the top-ranked ideas may be sent back to the group or to subgroups for further brainstorming. For example, one group may work on the color required in a product. Another group may work on the size, and so forth. Each group will come back to the whole group for ranking the listed ideas. Sometimes ideas that were previously dropped may be brought forward again once the group has re-evaluated the ideas.
It is important that the facilitator is trained in this process before attempting to facilitate this technique. The group should be primed and encouraged to embrace the process. Like all team efforts, it may take a few practice sessions to train the team in the method before tackling the important ideas.
Group passing technique
Each person in a circular group writes down one idea, and then passes the piece of paper to the next person, who adds some thoughts. This continues until everybody gets his or her original piece of paper back. By this time, it is likely that the group will have extensively elaborated on each idea.
The group may also create an "idea book" and post a distribution list or routing slip to the front of the book. On the first page is a description of the problem. The first person to receive the book lists his or her ideas and then routes the book to the next person on the distribution list. The second person can log new ideas or add to the ideas of the previous person. This continues until the distribution list is exhausted. A follow-up "read out" meeting is then held to discuss the ideas logged in the book. This technique takes longer, but it allows individuals time to think deeply about the problem.
Team idea mapping method
This method of brainstorming works by the method of association. It may improve collaboration and increase the quantity of ideas, and is designed so that all attendees participate and no ideas are rejected.
The process begins with a well-defined topic. Each participant brainstorms individually, then all the ideas are merged onto one large idea map. During this consolidation phase, participants may discover a common understanding of the issues as they share the meanings behind their ideas. During this sharing, new ideas may arise by the association, and they are added to the map as well. Once all the ideas are captured, the group can prioritize and/or take action.
Directed brainstorming
Directed brainstorming is a variation of electronic brainstorming (described below). It can be done manually or with computers. Directed brainstorming works when the solution space (that is, the set of criteria for evaluating a good idea) is known prior to the session. If known, those criteria can be used to constrain the ideation process intentionally.
In directed brainstorming, each participant is given one sheet of paper (or electronic form) and told the brainstorming question. They are asked to produce one response and stop, then all of the papers (or forms) are randomly swapped among the participants. The participants are asked to look at the idea they received and to create a new idea that improves on that idea based on the initial criteria. The forms are then swapped again and respondents are asked to improve upon the ideas, and the process is repeated for three or more rounds.
In the laboratory, directed brainstorming has been found to almost triple the productivity of groups over electronic brainstorming.
Guided brainstorming
A guided brainstorming session is time set aside to brainstorm either individually or as a collective group about a particular subject under the constraints of perspective and time. This type of brainstorming removes all cause for conflict and constrains conversations while stimulating critical and creative thinking in an engaging, balanced environment.
Participants are asked to adopt different mindsets for pre-defined period of time while contributing their ideas to a central mind map drawn by a pre-appointed scribe. Having examined a multi-perspective point of view, participants seemingly see the simple solutions that collectively create greater growth. Action is assigned individually.
Following a guided brainstorming session participants emerge with ideas ranked for further brainstorming, research and questions remaining unanswered and a prioritized, assigned, actionable list that leaves everyone with a clear understanding of what needs to happen next and the ability to visualize the combined future focus and greater goals of the group nicely.
Individual brainstorming
Individual brainstorming is the use of brainstorming in solitary situations. It typically includes such techniques as free writing, free speaking, word association, and drawing a mind map, which is a visual note taking technique in which people diagram their thoughts. Individual brainstorming is a useful method in creative writing and has been shown to be superior to traditional group brainstorming.
Question brainstorming
This process involves brainstorming the questions, rather than trying to come up with immediate answers and short-term solutions. Theoretically, this technique should not inhibit participation as there is no need to provide solutions. The answers to the questions form the framework for constructing future action plans. Once the list of questions is set, it may be necessary to prioritize them to reach to the best solution in an orderly way.
"Questorming" is another term for this mode of inquiry.
Methods to improving brainstorming sessions
Groups can improve the effectiveness and quality of their brainstorming sessions in a number of ways.
Avoid face-to-face groups: Using face-to-face groups can increase production blocking, evaluation apprehension, social matching and social loafing.
Stick to the rules: Brainstorming rules should be followed, and feedback should be given to members that violate these rules. Violations of brainstorming rules tend to lead to mediocre ideas.
Pay attention to everyone's ideas: People tend to pay more attention to their own ideas, however brainstorming requires exposure to the ideas of others. A method to encourage members to pay attention to others' ideas is to make them list the ideas out or ask them to repeat others' ideas.
Include both individual and group approaches: One method that helps members integrate their ideas into the group is brainwriting. This is where members write their ideas on a piece of paper and then pass it along to others who add their own ideas.
Take breaks: Allow silence during group discussions so that members have time to think things through.
Do not rush: Allow plenty of time for members to complete the task. Although working under pressure tends to lead to more solutions initially, the quality is usually lower than if more time is spent on the task.
Stay persistent: Members should stay focused and persist at the task even when productivity is low.
Facilitate the session: A skilled discussion leader should lead and coordinate the brainstorming sessions. This leader can motivate members, correct mistakes, and provide a clear standard of work. They can also be used to keep track of all the ideas and make sure that these ideas are available to everyone.
Alternatives to brainstorming
If brainstorming does not work for a group, some alternatives are available:
Buzzgroups: Larger groups can form subgroups that come up with ideas when the larger group is stumped. Afterwards, these subgroups come back together and discuss their ideas as a whole group.
Bug list: Group members write down all the little problems or irritations concerning the issue they are working on, and then the group discusses solutions for each of these "bugs".
Stepladder technique: A method where new members state their ideas before listening to the group's position.
Synectics: A leader guides the group and discusses their goals, wishes, and frustrations using analogies, metaphors, and fantasy.
TRIZ: This method is primarily used in science and engineering, and involves following a specific sequence of problem analysis, resource review, goal setting, and review of prior approaches to the problem.
Electronic brainstorming
Although the brainstorming can take place online through commonly available technologies such as email or interactive web sites, there have also been many efforts to develop customized computer software that can either replace or enhance one or more manual elements of the brainstorming process.
Early efforts, such as GroupSystems at University of Arizona or Software Aided Meeting Management (SAMM) system at the University of Minnesota, took advantage of then-new computer networking technology, which was installed in rooms dedicated to computer supported meetings. When using these electronic meeting systems (EMS, as they came to be called), group members simultaneously and independently entered ideas into a computer terminal. The software collected (or "pools") the ideas into a list, which could be displayed on a central projection screen (anonymized if desired). Other elements of these EMSs could support additional activities such as categorization of ideas, elimination of duplicates, assessment and discussion of prioritized or controversial ideas. Later EMSs capitalized on advances in computer networking and internet protocols to support asynchronous brainstorming sessions over extended periods of time and in multiple locations.
Introduced along with the EMS by Nunamaker and colleagues at University of Arizona was electronic brainstorming (EBS). By utilizing customized computer software for groups (group decision support systems or groupware), EBS can replace face-to-face brainstorming. An example of groupware is the GroupSystems, a software developed by University of Arizona. After an idea discussion has been posted on GroupSystems, it is displayed on each group member's computer. As group members simultaneously type their comments on separate computers, those comments are anonymously pooled and made available to all group members for evaluation and further elaboration.
Compared to face-to-face brainstorming, not only does EBS enhanced efficiency by eliminating travelling and turn-taking during group discussions, it also excluded several psychological constraints associated with face-to-face meetings. Identified by Gallupe and colleagues, both production blocking (reduced idea generation due to turn-taking and forgetting ideas in face-to-face brainstorming) and evaluation apprehension (a general concern experienced by individuals for how others in the presence are evaluating them) are reduced in EBS. These positive psychological effects increase with group size. A perceived advantage of EBS is that all ideas can be archived electronically in their original form, and then retrieved later for further thought and discussion. EBS also enables much larger groups to brainstorm on a topic than would normally be productive in a traditional brainstorming session.
Computer supported brainstorming may overcome some of the challenges faced by traditional brainstorming methods. For example, ideas might be "pooled" automatically, so that individuals do not need to wait to take a turn, as in verbal brainstorming. Some software programs show all ideas as they are generated (via chat room or e-mail). The display of ideas may cognitively stimulate brainstormers, as their attention is kept on the flow of ideas being generated without the potential distraction of social cues such as facial expressions and verbal language. EBS techniques have been shown to produce more ideas and help individuals focus their attention on the ideas of others better than a brainwriting technique (participants write individual written notes in silence and then subsequently communicate them with the group). The production of more ideas has been linked to the fact that paying attention to others' ideas leads to non-redundancy, as brainstormers try to avoid to replicate or repeat another participant's comment or idea. Conversely, the production gain associated with EBS was less found in situations where EBS group members focused too much on generating ideas that they ignored ideas expressed by others. The production gain associated with GroupSystem users' attentiveness to ideas expressed by others has been documented by Dugosh and colleagues. EBS group members who were instructed to attend to ideas generated by others outperformed those who were not in terms of creativity.
According to a meta-analysis comparing EBS to face-to-face brainstorming conducted by DeRosa and colleagues, EBS has been found to enhance both the production of non-redundant ideas and the quality of ideas produced. Despite the advantages demonstrated by EBS groups, EBS group members reported less satisfaction with the brainstorming process compared to face-to-face brainstorming group members.
Some web-based brainstorming techniques allow contributors to post their comments anonymously through the use of avatars. This technique also allows users to log on over an extended time period, typically one or two weeks, to allow participants some "soak time" before posting their ideas and feedback. This technique has been used particularly in the field of new product development, but can be applied in any number of areas requiring collection and evaluation of ideas.
Some limitations of EBS include the fact that it can flood people with too many ideas at one time that they have to attend to, and people may also compare their performance to others by analyzing how many ideas each individual produces (social matching).
Incentives
Some research indicates that incentives can augment creative processes. Participants were divided into three conditions. In Condition I, a flat fee was paid to all participants. In the Condition II, participants were awarded points for every unique idea of their own, and subjects were paid for the points that they earned. In Condition III, subjects were paid based on the impact that their idea had on the group; this was measured by counting the number of group ideas derived from the specific subject's ideas. Condition III outperformed Condition II, and Condition II outperformed Condition I at a statistically significant level for most measures. The results demonstrated that participants were willing to work far longer to achieve unique results in the expectation of compensation.
Challenges to effective group brainstorming
A good deal of research refutes Osborn's claim that group brainstorming could generate more ideas than individuals working alone. For example, in a review of 22 studies of group brainstorming, Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe found that, overwhelmingly, groups brainstorming together produce fewer ideas than individuals working separately. However, this conclusion is brought into question by a subsequent review of 50 studies by Scott G. Isaksen showed that a misunderstanding of the tool, and weak application of the methods (including lack of facilitation), and the artificiality of the problems and groups undermined most such studies, and the validity of their conclusions.
Several factors can contribute to a loss of effectiveness in group brainstorming.
Production blocking: Because only one participant may give an idea at any one time, other participants might forget the idea they were going to contribute or not share it because they see it as no longer important or relevant. Further, if we view brainstorming as a cognitive process in which "a participant generates ideas (generation process) and stores them in short-term memory (memorization process) and then eventually extracts some of them from its short-term memory to express them (output process)", then blocking is an even more critical challenge because it may also inhibit a person's train of thought in generating their own ideas and remembering them. Group members can be given notepads to write their ideas on and the meeting can organize who will get to speak next. However, this brainstorming technique does not perform as well as individuals using the nominal group technique.
Collaborative fixation: Exchanging ideas in a group may reduce the number of domains that a group explores for additional ideas. Members may also conform their ideas to those of other members, decreasing the novelty or variety of ideas, even though the overall number of ideas might not decrease.
Evaluation apprehension: Evaluation apprehension was determined to occur only in instances of personal evaluation. If the assumption of collective assessment were in place, real-time judgment of ideas, ostensibly an induction of evaluation apprehension, failed to induce significant variance. Furthermore, when an authority figure watches the group members brainstorm the effectiveness lowers because members worry their ideas may be viewed negatively. Especially individuals with high social anxiety are particularly unproductive barnstormers and report feeling more nervous, anxious, and worried than group members who are less anxiety prone.
Free-writing: Individuals may feel that their ideas are less valuable when combined with the ideas of the group at large. Indeed, Diehl and Stroebe demonstrated that even when individuals worked alone, they produced fewer ideas if told that their output would be judged in a group with others than if told that their output would be judged individually. However, experimentation revealed free-writing as only a marginal contributor to productivity loss, and type of session (i.e., real vs. nominal group) contributed much more.
Personality characteristics: Extroverts have been shown to outperform introverts in computer mediated groups. Extroverts also generated more unique and diverse ideas than introverts when additional methods were used to stimulate idea generation, such as completing a small related task before brainstorming, or being given a list of the classic rules of brainstorming.
Social matching: One phenomenon of group brainstorming is that participants will tend to alter their rate of productivity to match others in the group. This can lead to participants generating fewer ideas in a group setting than they would individually because they will decrease their own contributions if they perceive themselves to be more productive than the group average. On the other hand, the same phenomenon can also increase an individual's rate of production to meet the group average.
Illusion of group productivity: Members tend to overestimate their group's productivity and so work less. Members of the group can only guess at the quantity and quality of their group's product and their personal contributions to the process but there is no standard to determine how well it is performing. A combination of processes explain why members are incorrectly overestimating productivity:
Group member(s) may intuitively mistake others' ideas for their own, and so when they think about their own performance they cognitively claim a few ideas that others actually suggested
Group members compare themselves to others who generate relatively few ideas, reassuring them that they are one of the high performers
Group brainstorming may "feel" more successful because participants rarely experience failure in a communal process. When individuals are trying to think creatively alone, people repeatedly find that they are unable to come up with a new idea. In a group setting, people are less likely to experience this failure in their search for new ideas because others' ideas are being discussed.
See also
Amygdala hijack
6-3-5 Brainwriting
Affinity diagram
Group concept mapping
Eureka effect
Lateral thinking
Mass collaboration
Nominal group technique
Thinking outside the box
What? Where? When?
References
Bibliography
Osborn, Alex F. (1953). Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.
External links
Creativity techniques
Group problem solving methods
Collaboration
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara%20Movement
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Niagara Movement
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The Niagara Movement (NM) was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and took Niagara Falls as its symbol. The group did not meet in Niagara Falls, New York, but planned its first conference for nearby Buffalo (at the last minute, to avoid disruptions, moved across the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada).
The Niagara Movement was organized to oppose racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Its members felt "unmanly" the policy of accommodation and conciliation, without voting rights, promoted by Booker T. Washington.
The Niagara Movement was the immediate predecessor of the NAACP.
Background
During the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War, African Americans had an unprecedented level of civil freedom and civic participation. In the South, for the first time the former slaves could vote, hold public office, and contract for their labor. With the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, their freedoms began to narrow. From 1890 to 1908, all the Southern states ratified new constitutions or laws that disenfranchised most blacks and significantly restricted their political and civil rights. All of them passed laws imposing legal racial segregation in public facilities. These policies were entrenched after the United States Supreme Court in 1896 ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that laws requiring "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. However, the separate facilities were often shabby, or they did not exist at all.
The most prominent African-American spokesman during the 1890s was Booker T. Washington, leader of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute. In an 1895 speech in Atlanta, Georgia, Washington discussed what became known as the Atlanta Compromise. He believed that Southern African-Americans should not agitate for political rights (such as exercising the right to vote or having equal treatment under the law) as long as they were provided economic opportunities and basic rights of due process. He believed they needed to focus on education and work, to raise their race. Washington politically dominated the National Afro-American Council, the first nationwide African-American civil rights organization.
By the turn of the 20th century, other activists within the African-American community began demanding a challenge to racist government policies and higher goals for their people than those advocated by Washington. They believed that Washington was "accommodationist". Opponents included Northerner W. E. B. Du Bois, then a professor at Atlanta University, and William Monroe Trotter, a Boston activist who in 1901 founded the Boston Guardian newspaper as a platform for radical activism. In 1902 and 1903 groups of activists sought to gain a larger voice in the debate at the conventions of the National Afro-American Council, but they were marginalized because the conventions were dominated by Washington supporters (also known as Bookerites). Trotter in July 1903 orchestrated a confrontation with Washington in Boston, a stronghold of activism, that resulted in a minor melee and the arrest of Trotter and others; the event garnered national headlines.
In January 1904, Washington, with funding assistance from white philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, organized a meeting in New York to unite African American and civil rights spokesmen. Trotter was not invited, but Du Bois and a few other activists were. Du Bois was sympathetic to the activist cause and suspicious of Washington's motives; he noted that the number of activists invited was small relative to the number of Bookerites. The meeting laid the foundation for a committee to include both Washington and Du Bois, but it quickly fractured. Du Bois resigned in July 1905. By this time, both Du Bois and Trotter recognized the need for a well-organized anti-Washington activist group.
Founding
Along with Du Bois and Trotter, Fredrick McGhee of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Charles Edwin Bentley of Chicago had also recognized the need for a national activist group. The foursome organized a conference to be held July 11–13, 1905, in Buffalo, New York. 59 carefully selected anti-Bookerites were invited to attend; 29 showed up, including prominent community leaders and a notable number of lawyers. At the last minute, to avoid disruption, the meeting was moved to the Erie Beach Hotel in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, across the Niagara River from Buffalo.
The organization founded at this meeting chose Du Bois as its general secretary and Cincinnati lawyer George H. Jackson as treasurer. It set up a number of committees to oversee progress on the organization's goals. State chapters would advance local agendas and disseminate information about the organization and its goals. Its name was chosen to reflect the site of its first meeting and to be representative of a "mighty current" of change its leaders sought to bring about. 17 founders were each appointed as state secretary to individually represent 17 of the states of the union:
Massachusetts – CG Morgan
Georgia – John Hope
Arkansas – FB Coffin
Illinois – CE Bentley
Kansas – B.S. Smith
D.C. – L.M. Henshaw
New York – G.F. Miller
Virginia – J.L.R. Diggs
Colorado – C.A. Franklin
Pennsylvania – G.W. Mitchell
Rhode Island – Byron Gunner
New Jersey – T.A. Spraggins
Maryland – G.R. Waller
Iowa – G.H. Woodson
Tennessee – Richard Hill
Minnesota – F.L. McGhee
West Virginia – J.R. Clifford
Founders
The 29 founders who traveled to the inaugural meeting of the Niagara Movement came from 14 states, and became known as "The Original Twenty-nine":
James Robert Lincoln Diggs – College president; pastor; ninth African American to receive a doctorate in the United States
Dr. Henry Lewis "H. L." Bailey (January 17, 1866 – July 16, 1933) – Teacher and medical doctor.
William Justin "W. Justin" Carter, Sr. (May 28, 1866 – March 23, 1947) – Pennsylvania lawyer; civil right activist; scholar; early NAACP member
William Henry "W. H." Scott (June 15, 1848 – June 27, 1910) – Born to slavery, soldier, teacher, bookseller, Baptist pastor, activist, founder of Massachusetts Racial Protective League and the National Independent Political League
Isaac F. "I.F." Bradley, Sr. (1862 – 1938) – Assistant county attorney, Wyandotte County; justice of the peace; judge; publisher and editor of The Wyandotte Echo (1930 – 1938); father of Isaac F. Bradley, Jr., who was assistant attorney general for Kansas (1937-39)
Alonzo F. Herndon – Born to slavery; entrepreneur; one of the first African-American millionaires in the United States
William Henry "W. H." Richards (January 15, 1856 – 1941) – Lawyer and law professor; secured funding from Congress, with William Henry Harrison Hart, for first law school building at Howard University; activist; alderman; mayor;William H. Richards: A remarkable life of a remarkable man, was a biography by Julia B. Nelson, published about 1900
Brown Sylvester "B. S." Smith – Kansas City lawyer and City Councillor, activist. Born to parents who were born into slavery; orphaned young.
Frederick L. McGhee
William Monroe Trotter
Garnett Russell "G.R." Waller (February 17, 1857 – March 7, 1941) – Shoemaker; pastor
Harvey A. Thompson — H. A. Thompson (July 24, 1863 – ), Columbus, Ohio native; Fisk University, Le Moyne College and Meharry Medical College alumni; Ninth United States Cavalry (1883 – 1888); adjutant and first lieutenant of the Eighth Illinois (1894); Chicago political and business figure; clerkship at the central police station; married Frances Gowins
William Henry Harrison Hart — Born to a white slave trader; jailed activist; secured funding from Congress, with W. H. Richards, for first law school building at Howard University; law professor; worked for United States Treasury, United States Department of Agriculture; assistant librarian of Congress; first black lawyer appointed as special U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia
Lafayette M. Hershaw
W. E. B. Du Bois – Co-founder of the NAACP
Charles E. Bentley
Clement G. Morgan
Freeman H. M. Murray
J. Max Barber
George Frazier Miller (November 28, 1864 – May 9, 1943) — rector of St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, Brooklyn; socialist; civil rights activist
George Henry "G. H." Woodson (December 15, 1865 – July 7, 1933) — Criminal trial attorney, born to newly emancipated slaves; founder and president of both the Iowa Negro Bar Association in 1901 and — subsequent to being denied membership in the American Bar Association (along with Gertrude Rush, S. Joe Brown, James B. Morris, and Charles P. Howard, Sr.) — the National Negro Bar Association, in 1925, which became the National Bar Association (NBA), of which he also served as president emeritus; President Coolidge appointed Woodson chairman of the first all-Negro commission ever sent overseas, with a mandate to investigate the economic conditions of the Virgin Islands (illustrated report available from the U. S. department of labor archives)
James S. Madden — Bookkeeper; activist; desegregationist; worked to establish the Chicago branch of the Niagara Movement with Charles E. Bentley; Provident Hospital trustee; assisted in the founding of the Equal Opportunity League
Henry C. Smith – Musician, composer; civil rights activist; Ohio deputy oil inspector; co-founder and editor of The Cleveland Gazette
Emery T. "E.T." Morris (1849 - 1924) — Massachusetts deputy sealer of weights and measures; druggist; rail porter; stationary steam engineer; lay teacher who created extensive antislavery libraries in New England; founder of the Boston branch of the Movement
Richard Hill (October 12, 1864 – ) – Native of Nashville, Tennessee; teacher and city schools supervisor; insurance and real estate entrepreneur; served as NM Secretary for Tennessee; father of civil rights activist and lawyer Richard Hill, Jr.
Robert H. Bonner – Beverly, Massachusetts artist; Yale University alumni; Colored Yale Quartette singer; lawyer; long associated the Trotter family
Byron Gunner (July 4, 1857 – February 9, 1922) – Congregational minister; president of the National Equal Rights League; later a strong ally of William Monroe Trotter; Rhode Island Niagara Movement secretary; father of playwright Mary Frances Gunner
Edwin Bush "E.B." Jourdain — Boston lawyer; hosted "the New Bedford Annex for Boston Radicals"; father of journalist, activist and first black alderman of Evanston, Illinois Edwin B. Jourdain, Jr.
George W. Mitchell – Washington, DC attorney; Howard University Latin and Greek professor; Pennsylvania NM secretary; father of lawyer and real estate investor George Henry Mitchell
Inaugural meeting location
The First Niagara Conference was originally scheduled for Buffalo, New York, but because of threatened disruptions from partisans of the politically powerful Booker T. Washington fled at the last minute to the Erie Beach Hotel in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. Du Bois described the meeting as "secret". One Bookerite, Clifford Plummer, traveled to Buffalo to check up on the proceedings, looked around, and "happily" reported back that there was no conference.
To disguise this, it was said that they were refused accommodation in Buffalo. However, no evidence supports this. According to contemporary reports, Buffalo hotels complied with a statewide anti-discrimination law passed in 1895, and in a recent article it is called an "unlikely...legend".
Declaration of Principles
The attendees of the inaugural meeting drafted a "Declaration of Principles," primarily the work of Du Bois and Trotter. The group's philosophy contrasted with the conciliatory approach by Booker T. Washington, who proposed patience over militancy. The declaration defined the group's philosophy and demands: politically, socially and economically. It described the progress made by "Negro-Americans",
"particularly the increase of intelligence, the buy-in of property, the checking of crime, the uplift in home life, the advance in literature and art, and the demonstration of constructive and executive ability in the conduct of great religious, economic and educational institutions."
It called for blacks to be granted manhood suffrage, for equal treatment for all American citizens alike. Very specifically, it demanded equal economic opportunities, in the rural districts of the South, where many blacks were trapped by sharecropping in a kind of indentured servitude to whites. This resulted in "virtual slavery". The Niagara Movement wanted all African Americans in the South to have the ability to "earn a decent living".
On the subject of education, the authors declared that not only should it be free, but it should also be made compulsory. Higher education, they declared, should be governed independently of class or race, and they demanded action to be taken to improve "high school facilities." This they emphasized: "either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States." They demanded for judges to be selected independently of their race, and for convicted criminals, white or black, to be given equal punishments for their respective crimes.
In his address to the nation, W. E. B. Du Bois stated, "We are not more lawless than the white race; we [are] more often arrested, convicted and mobbed. We want justice, even for criminals and outlaws." He called for the abolition of the convict lease system. Established after the Civil War before southern states built prisons, convicts were leased out to work as cheap laborers for "railway contractors, mining companies and those who farm large plantations." Southern states had passed laws targeting blacks and leasing them out to pay off fines or fees they could not manage. The system continued, earning money for local jurisdictions and the state from leasing out prisoners. There was little oversight, and many prisoners were abused and worked to death. Urging a return to the faith of "our fathers," the declaration appealed for every person to be considered equal and free.
The declaration also targeted the treatment blacks received from labor unions, often oppressed and not fully protected by their employers nor granted permanent employment. It validated the already announced affirmation that such protest against outright injustice would not cease until such discrimination did. Secondly, Du Bois and Trotter stated the irrationality of discriminating based on one's "physical peculiarities", whether it be place of birth or color of skin. Perhaps one's ignorance, or immorality, poverty or diseases are legitimate excuses, but not the matters over which individuals have no control. Near its end, the document condemns the Jim Crow laws, the rejection of blacks for enlistment in the Navy and by the military academies, the non-enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments protecting the rights of blacks, and the "unchristian" behaviors of churches that segregate and show prejudice to their black brothers. The Declaration thanked those who "stand for equality" and the advancement of this cause.
Opposition
Booker T. Washington and his supporters tried to discourage growth of this rival movement. Washington, Thomas Fortune, and Charles Anderson met after learning of the Movement's formation, and agreed to suppress news of it in the black press. They acquired supporters in Archibald Grimké and Kelly Miller, two moderates who had been friendly with Trotter, but had not been invited by Du Bois to the convention (Grimké was hired by Fortune's New York Age). The Age editorialized that the Movement was little more than an attempt to tear down the house that Washington had labored to set up. A Boston supporter of Washington convinced the printer of Trotter's Guardian to withdraw his services, but Trotter managed to continue printing anyway. Prominent white activists, including Francis Jackson Garrison and Oswald Garrison Villard (family of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, a hero of Trotter), refused to attend Trotter-organized commemorations of their father's birth centennial. They chose a celebration organized by Bookerites.
Despite Washington's attempts at suppression, Du Bois reported at the end of 1905 that a number of black publications had published accounts of the Movement's activities, and it received further publicity as a consequence of Bookerite press attacks against it. Washington also attacked the Constitution League, a multi-racial civil rights group that was also opposed to his accommodationist policies. The Movement made common cause with this organization.
Activities
After the initial meeting, delegates returned to their home territories to establish local chapters. By mid-September 1905, they had established chapters in 21 states, and the organization had 170 members by year's end. Du Bois founded a magazine, The Moon, in an attempt to establish an official mouthpiece for the organization. Due to lack of funding, it failed after a few months of publication. A second publication, The Horizon, was started in 1907 and survived until 1910.
The movement's second meeting, the first to be held on U.S. soil and arguably the movement's high point, took place at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the site of abolitionist John Brown's 1859 raid. The three-day gathering, from August 15 to 18, 1906, took place at the campus of Storer College (now part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park). The Hill Top House Hotel hosted many of the guests. Convention attendees discussed how to secure civil rights for African Americans, and the meeting was later described by Du Bois as "one of the greatest meetings that American Negroes ever held." Attendees walked from Storer College to the nearby Murphy Family farm, relocation site of the historic fort where John Brown's quest to end slavery reached its bloody climax. Once there, they removed their shoes and socks to honor the hallowed ground and participated in a ceremony of remembrance.
Several of the organization's chapters made substantive contributions to the advance of civil rights in 1906. The Massachusetts chapter successfully lobbied against state legislation for the segregation of railroad cars, but was unable to stop the state from helping to fund the Jamestown Exposition, a commemoration of the founding of racially motivated Jamestown, Virginia, in which Virginia sought to limit black admission. The Illinois chapter convinced Chicago theater critics to ignore a production of The Clansman.
During the early months of 1906 friction began to develop between Du Bois and Trotter over the admission of women to the organization. Du Bois supported the idea, and Trotter opposed it, but eventually relented, and the matter was smoothed over during the 1906 meeting. Their division became more significant when Trotter split with longtime supporter and Movement member Clement Morgan over Massachusetts politics and control of the local Movement chapter, with Du Bois siding with the latter. When the Movement met in Boston in 1907 Du Bois not only admitted Grimké and Miller to the organization, he reappointed Morgan to a leading position in the organization. Further attempts to heal the rift failed, and Trotter then resigned from the Movement.
In 1906 there were several proposals floated in the black press that the Movement be merged with other organizations. None of these proposals got off the ground, with the only substance being a meeting between the Movement's Washington, DC chapter and members of the Bookerite National Afro-American Council.
The Movement, in conjunction with the Constitution League (which took Du Bois on as a director), began organizing legal challenges to segregationist laws in early 1907. For an organization with a limited budget, this was an expensive proposition: the single case they mounted challenging Virginia's railroad segregation law put the organization into debt.
Du Bois had sought to return to Harpers Ferry for the 1907 annual meeting, but Storer College refused to grant them permission, claiming the group's presence in 1906 had been followed by financial and political pressure from its supporters to distance itself from them. The 1907 meeting was held in Boston, with conflicting attendance reports. Du Bois claimed 800 attendees, while the Bookerite Washington Bee claimed only about 100 in attendance. The convention published an "Address to the World" in which it called on African-Americans not to vote for Republican Party candidates in the 1908 presidential election, citing President Theodore Roosevelt's support for Jim Crow laws.
End of the Movement
William Monroe Trotter's departure after the 1907 meeting had a serious negative impact on the organization, as did disagreements about which party to support in the 1908 election. Du Bois, with some reluctance, endorsed Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan, but many African-Americans could not bring themselves to break from the Republicans, and William Howard Taft won the election, receiving significant African-American support. The 1908 annual meeting, held in Oberlin, Ohio, was a much smaller affair, and exposed disunity and apathy within the group at both local and national levels. Du Bois invited Mary White Ovington, a settlement worker and socialist he had met in 1904, to address the organization. She was the only white woman to be so honored. By 1908, Washington and his supporters successfully made serious inroads with the press (both white and black), and the Oberlin meeting received almost no coverage. Believing the Movement to be "practically dead", Washington also prepared an obituary of the organization for the New York Age to publish.
In 1909, chapter activities continued to dwindle, membership dropped, and the 1910 annual meeting (held at Sea Isle City, New Jersey) was a small affair that again received no significant press. It was the organization's last meeting.
Legacy
In the wake of the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, a major race riot in Springfield, Illinois, a number of prominent white civil rights activists called for a major conference on race relations. Held in New York City in early 1909, the conference laid the foundation for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was formally established in 1910. In 1911, Du Bois (who was appointed the NAACP's director of publications) recommended that the remaining membership of the Niagara Movement support the NAACP's activities. William Monroe Trotter attended the 1909 conference, but did not join the NAACP; he instead led other small activist civil rights organizations and continued to publish the Guardian until his death in 1934.
The Niagara Movement did not appear to be very popular with the majority of the African-American population, especially in the South. Booker T. Washington, at the height of the Movement's activities in 1905 and 1906, spoke to large and approving crowds across much of the country. The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot hurt Washington's popularity, giving the Niagarans fuel for their attacks on him. However, given that Washington and the Niagarans agreed on strategy (opposition to Jim Crow laws and support of equal protection and civil rights) but disagreed on tactics, a reconciliation between the factions began after Washington died in 1915. The NAACP went on to become the leading African-American civil rights organization of the 20th century.
See also
Nadir of American race relations
References
Further reading
Capeci, Dominic J., and Jack C. Knight. 1999. "W.E.B. Du Bois's Southern Front: Georgia" Race Men" and the Niagara Movement, 1905-1907." Georgia Historical Quarterly 83.3 (1999): 479-507 online.
Jones, Angela. 2016. "Lessons from the Niagara movement: Prosopography and discursive protest." Sociological Focus 49.1 (2016): 63-83 online.
Jones, Angela. 2011. African American civil rights: Early activism and the Niagara Movement (ABC-CLIO, 2011). details
Primary sources
Du Bois, W. E. B. "Niagara movement speech." (1905). online.
External links
Niagara's Declaration of Principles
Details from the 1908 Niagara Conference at Oberlin
Du Bois Central. Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst
"The Early Black Experience", The Pan African Historical Museum (PAHMUSA)
Niagara Falls, Ontario
NAACP
African Americans' rights organizations
Organizations established in 1905
Organizations disestablished in 1910
Progressive Era in the United States
Civil rights organizations in the United States
1905 establishments in New York (state)
Storer College
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%20Colonial%20Revival%20architecture
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Spanish Colonial Revival architecture
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The Spanish Colonial Revival Style () is an architectural stylistic movement arising in the early 20th century based on the Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
In the United States, the Panama-California Exposition of 1915 in San Diego, highlighting the work of architect Bertram Goodhue, is credited with giving the style national exposure. Embraced principally in California and Florida, the Spanish Colonial Revival movement enjoyed its greatest popularity between 1915 and 1931.
In Mexico, the Spanish Colonial Revival in architecture was tied to the nationalist movement in arts encouraged by the post-Mexican Revolution government. The Mexican style was primarily influenced by the Baroque architecture of central New Spain, in contrast to the U.S. style which was primarily influenced by the northern missions of New Spain. Subsequently, the U.S. interpretation saw popularity in Mexico and was locally termed colonial californiano.
Tract home design in Southern California and Florida largely descends from the early movement. The iconic terracotta shingles and stucco walls have been standard design of new construction in these regions from the 1970s to present.
Development of style
Mediterranean Revival
The antecedents of the Spanish Colonial Revival Style in the United States can be traced to the Mediterranean Revival architectural style. For St. Augustine, Florida (a former Spanish colony), three northeastern architects, New Yorkers John Carrère and Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings and Bostonian Franklin W. Smith, designed grand, elaborately detailed hotels in the Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Revival styles in the 1880s. With the advent of the Ponce de Leon Hotel (Carrère and Hastings, 1882), the Alcazar Hotel (Carrère and Hastings, 1887) and the Casa Monica Hotel (later Hotel Cordova) (Franklin W. Smith, 1888) thousands of winter visitors to 'the Sunshine State' began to experience the charm and romance of Spanish influenced architecture. These three hotels were influenced not only by the centuries-old buildings remaining from the Spanish rule in St. Augustine but also by The Old City House, constructed in 1873 and still standing, an excellent example of early Spanish Colonial Revival architecture.
Mission Revival
The possibilities of the Spanish Colonial Revival Style were brought to the attention of architects attending late 19th and early 20th centuries international expositions. For example, California's Mission Revival style Pavilion in white stucco at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, and the Mission Inn, along with the Electric Tower of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1900 introduced the potential of Spanish Colonial Revival. They also integrated porticoes, pediments and colonnades influenced by Beaux Arts classicism as well.
Florida
By the early years of the 1910s, architects in Florida had begun to work in a Spanish Colonial Revival style. Frederick H. Trimble's Farmer's Bank in Vero Beach, completed in 1914, is a fully mature early example of the style. The city of St. Cloud, Florida, espoused the style both for homes and commercial structures and has a fine collection of subtle stucco buildings reminiscent of colonial Mexico. Many of these were designed by architectural partners Ida Annah Ryan and Isabel Roberts. Another significant example of the emerging popularity of Spanish Colonial Revival can be seen in the architecture of south Florida's Coral Gables, a planned city established in the 1920s that prominently incorporates the style.
California
The major location of design and construction in the Spanish Colonial Revival style was California, especially in the coastal cities. In 1915 the San Diego Panama-California Exposition, with architects Bertram Goodhue and Carleton Winslow Sr., popularized the style in the state and nation. It is best exemplified in the California Quadrangle, built as the grand entrance to that Exposition. In the early 1920s, architect Lilian Jeannette Rice designed the style in the development of the town of Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County.
The city of Santa Barbara adopted the style to give it a unified Spanish character after widespread destruction in the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake. The County Courthouse designed by William Mooser III and the Arlington Theatre designed by Edwards and Plunkett are prime examples. George Washington Smith designed many residences in Santa Barbara including Casa del Herrero and Jackling House, along with businesses Lobero Theatre and the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Real estate developer Ole Hanson favored the Spanish Colonial Revival style in his founding and development of San Clemente, California in 1928. The Pasadena City Hall by John Bakewell, Jr. and Arthur Brown, Jr. , the Sonoma City Hall, and the Beverly Hills City Hall by Harry G. Koerner and William J. Gage are other notable civic examples in California. Between 1922 and 1931, architect Robert H. Spurgeon constructed 32 Spanish colonial revival houses in Riverside and many of them have been preserved.
Mexico
The Spanish Colonial Revival of Mexico has a distinct origin from the style developed in the United States. Following the Mexican Revolution, there was a wave of nationalism that emphasized national culture, including in architecture. The neocolonial style arose as a response to European eclecticism (favored during the Porfiriato). The 1915 book La patria y la arquitectura nacional by architect Federico E. Mariscal (es) was influential in advocating viceregal architecture as integral to national identity. During the government of President Venustiano Carranza (serving 1917 to 1920), tax exemptions were offered to those that built houses in a colonial style. In the early 1920s there was a surge of houses built with Plateresque elements; such as grotesques, pinnacles and mixtilinear arches (es).
Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos (who shaped the cultural philosophy of the post-Revolution government) was an active promoter of neocolonial architecture. Traditional materials such as tezontle, cantera and Talavera tiles were incorporated into neocolonial buildings.
The colonial-era National Palace was significantly altered between 1926 and 1929: the addition of a third floor and changes to the facade. The modifications were done in a manner corresponding to the original style. Similarly, the colonial Mexico City government building was remodeled in the 1920s and a neocolonial companion building was built in the 1940s.
Colonial californiano
The style, as developed in the United States, came full circle to its geographic point of inspiration as in the late 1930s, single-family houses were built in Mexico City's then-new upscale neighborhoods in what is known in Mexico as colonial californiano (Californian Colonial). That is, a Mexican reinterpretation of the California interpretation of Spanish Colonial Revival. Many houses of this style can still be seen in the Colonia Nápoles, Condesa, Polanco and Lomas de Chapultepec areas of Mexico City. The Pasaje Polanco shopping court is an example of the style's application in commercial architecture.
Australia
Influential Australian architects such as Emil Sodersten and Professor Leslie Wilkinson brought back styles from Italy and Spain in the early 20th century convinced that Mediterranean styles would be well-suited for the Australian climate and lifestyle. Mediterranean style became popular in places like Sydney suburbs Manly and Bondi in the 1920s and 1930s. One variant, known as Spanish Mission or Hollywood Spanish, became popular as Australians saw films of and read in magazines about the glamorous mansions in that style that Hollywood movie stars had. Spanish mission houses began to appear in the wealthier suburbs, the most famous being Boomerang, at Elizabeth Bay. The Plaza Theatre in Sydney is a celebrated cinema in the style.
China
In the 1930s, numerous houses in Spanish Revival style were built in Shanghai, particularly in the former French Concession. Although Shanghai was not culturally linked to the Spanish-speaking world, these buildings were probably inspired by Hollywood movies, which were highly influential in the city at the time. Local architectural magazines of the period like The Chinese Architect and The Builder regularly printed detailed examples of the style for local builders to copy and implement.
Spanish East Indies
After being conquered and ruled for the Spanish crown, and for the most part being administered as a territory under the jurisdiction of the kingdom of New Spain (Mexico), the Philippines and Mariana islands received Iberian and Latin-American influences in its architecture. By the time the United States occupied the Philippines, the Mission-style and Spanish Colonial Revival architecture also arrived, with inspirations from California. American architects further developed this style in the Philippines, modernizing the buildings with American amenities.
The best example of the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and California mission style is the famed Manila Hotel designed by William E. Parsons and built in 1909. Other examples exist throughout the country such as Gota de Leche, Paco Market, and thousands more, especially in the churches and cathedrals throughout the country.
Design elements
Spanish Colonial Revival architecture shares some elements with the earlier Mission Revival style derived from the architecture of the California missions, and Pueblo Revival style from the traditional Puebloan peoples in New Mexico. Both precedents were popularized in the Western United States by the Fred Harvey and his Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Depots and Hotels. The Spanish Colonial Revival style is also influenced by the American Craftsman style and Arts and Crafts Movement.
Spanish Colonial Revival architecture is characterized by a combination of detail from several eras of Spanish Baroque, Spanish Colonial, Moorish Revival and Mexican Churrigueresque architecture. The style is marked by the prodigious use of smooth plaster (stucco) wall and chimney finishes, low-pitched clay tile, shed, or flat roofs, and terracotta or cast concrete ornaments. Other characteristics typically include small porches or balconies, Roman or semi-circular arcades and fenestration, wood casement or tall, double–hung windows, canvas awnings, and decorative iron trim.
Structural form:
Rectangular, courtyard, or L-plan.
Horizontal massing.
Predominantly one-story.
Interior or exterior courtyards.
Asymmetrical shape with cross-gables and side wings.
Notable architects
One of the most accomplished architects of the style was George Washington Smith who practiced during the 1920s in Santa Barbara, California. His own residences El Hogar (1916, a.k.a. Casa Dracaena) and Casa del Greco (1920) brought him commissions from local society in Montecito and Santa Barbara. An example landmark house he designed is the Steedman estate Casa del Herrero in Montecito, now a registered National Historic Landmark and restored historic house—landscape museum. Other examples are the Jackling House and Lobero Theatre also in California.
In California
Bertram Goodhue and Carleton Winslow initiated the style as the dominant historical regional style in California; they also influenced Hawaiian architecture in the 1920s. Notable in Californian architecture were the following architects:
John Byers, AIA
Birge Clark, FAIA
Edwards and Plunkett
Elmer Grey, AIA
Sumner P. Hunt, AIA
Reginald Johnson, FAIA
William Templeton Johnson, FAIA
Julia Morgan, AIA (AIA Gold Medalist)
Wallace Neff, FAIA
Lionel Pries
Richard Requa
Lilian Jeannette Rice, AIA
Lutah Maria Riggs, FAIA
Clarence J. Smale
George Washington Smith
Robert H. Spurgeon Jr.
Paul Revere Williams, FAIA (AIA Gold Medalist)
Currently:
Kevin A. Clark
Marc Appleton, AIA
Michael Burch, FAIA
Thomas Bollay, AIA
In Florida
In Florida notable architects include:
John Elliot
Maurice Fatio, AIA
Harry Griffin, AIA
Richard Kiehnel, AIA of Kiehnel and Elliott
Addison Mizner
Wallace Neff, FAIA
Albert Pierce
James Gamble Rogers II, FAIA
Robert Weed, FAIA
Marion Wyeth, FAIA
In Hawaii
Louis Davis
G. Robert Miller, AIA
Bertram Goodhue FAIA's junior partner, Hardie Phillip, FAIA
List of example structures
California Quadrangle and El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, California: by Bertram Goodhue, for the Panama–California Exposition (1915-15).
Casa del Herrero, Montecito, California, architects George Washington Smith and Lutah Maria Riggs, 1926.
The Main Quad and many buildings in the campus of Stanford University, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, 1886–1891.
"Casa Dracaena" (a.k.a. El Hogar or Heberton House), George Washington Smith residence #1, 1916.
Glendale Southern Pacific Railroad Depot, by Maurice Couchot & Kenneth MacDonald, Jr. in Glendale, California, opened 1923.
Santa Barbara County Courthouse, by William Mooser III, in Santa Barbara, California, completed 1929.
George Fearn House in Mobile, Alabama, completed 1904.
Farmer's Bank in Vero Beach, Florida, completed in 1914.
Adamson House, "Taj Mahal of Tile" by Stiles O. Clements, in Malibu, California, completed 1930.
Alice Lynch Residence in Los Angeles, California, completed in 1922
Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California, 1917–1930
Naval Training Center, San Diego, California, completed 1923 (Buildings 1–26, and Officer's Quarters "A"-"D"). Other phases completed 1936 (Barracks 27–30, Camp Lawrence), and 1942 (Camp Luce).
Quapaw Baths building in Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs, Arkansas, completed in 1922.
"Casa de las Campañas" in Hancock Park district, Los Angeles, California, completed in 1928.
C.E. Toberman Estate, by Russell & Alspagh, in Hollywood, California, completed 1924.
Frank H. Upham House in Altadena, California, completed 1928.
Azalea Court Apartments in Mobile, Alabama, completed in 1928.
"La Casa Nueva", Workman and Temple Family Estate, in City of Industry, California, completed 1927.
Castillo Serrallés in Ponce, Puerto Rico, completed in the 1930s.
William S. Hart "La Loma de los Vientos" Ranch, arch. Arthur R. Kelly, Newhall, California, completed in the early 1920s.
Gaylord Suites in San Francisco, California, completed in 1928.
Randolph Air Force Base (various structures) near San Antonio, Texas, designed in 1929.
Hollywood, Homewood, Alabama, a 1926 residential development in Homewood, Alabama.
El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood, built in 1928.
"Death Valley Ranch", "Scotty's Castle", a landmark in Death Valley National Park, which was begun in 1922 and had construction on the original design continue sporadically as late as 1943.
Scripps College, by Gordon Kaufmann and Sumner Hunt, in Claremont, California, women's college and campus established in 1926 by Ellen Browning Scripps.
Hamilton Air Force Base, in San Francisco Bay Area near Novato, California, completed in 1934.
Pima County Courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, designed by Roy Place.
Benedictine Monastery in Tucson, Arizona, also designed by Roy Place. http://www.tucsonmonastery.com/
Louis P. and Clara K. Best Residence and Auto House, Clausen & Clausen, Davenport, Iowa, constructed in 1909.
Pasadena City Hall, by Bakewell and Brown, in Pasadena, California, completed 1927.
Hortonville Community Hall, by Robert Messmer, in Hortonville, Wisconsin, built in 1912.
Thomas Jefferson Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama, opened in 1929.
Adler Hotel in Sharon Springs, New York, built in 1928.
El Reno Municipal Swimming Pool Bath House in El Reno, Oklahoma, completed in 1935.
Plaza del Lago in Wilmette, Illinois, completed in 1928 by Henry Gage
Camarillo State Hospital in Camarillo, California, first phase completed in 1936 by State Architect Howard Spencer Hazen, built to completion in 1957. With the hospital's closure in 1997, the site has been redeveloped into California State University Channel Islands (opened in 2002), with all the new college buildings retaining the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and Mission Revival architecture, except the John Spoor Broome Library--the only modern-style building on campus.
Antiga Estação Transmissora da Rádio Farroupilha (former Farroupilha Radio Broadcast Station), an example from Porto Alegre, city in far southern Brazil, opened in 1952, closed in 1986.
Gallery
See also
Mediterranean Revival Style architecture
Mission Revival Style architecture
Mar del Plata style - eclectic vernacular architecture from Argentina featuring some Spanish Colonial characteristics
Revivalism (architecture)
Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 - several pavilions erected for this event fall under the style
Category: Spanish Revival architecture
Spanish Revival architects
Spanish Colonial Revival architects
Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in California
References
Notes
Further reading
Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art of Colonial Latin America. London: Phaidon Press, 2005.
Newcomb, Rexford, Mediterranean Domestic Architecture in the United States. Marc Appleton, intro. New York: Acanthus Press, 2000.
Nolan, David, The Houses of St. Augustine. Sarasota, Pineapple Press, 1995.
Nylander, Justin A., Casas to Castles: Florida's Historic Mediterranean Revival Architecture. Schiffer, 2010.
Mockler, Kim. Maurice Fatio: Palm Beach Architect. New York: Acanthus Press, 2010.
External links
Colonial Architecture Project with 7,000 pictures of colonial buildings, most of them Spanish
American architectural styles
House styles
Revival architectural styles
20th-century architectural styles
Addison Mizner
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William%20Monroe%20Trotter
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William Monroe Trotter
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William Monroe Trotter, sometimes just Monroe Trotter (April 7, 1872 – April 7, 1934), was a newspaper editor and real estate businessman based in Boston, Massachusetts. An activist for African-American civil rights, he was an early opponent of the accommodationist race policies of Booker T. Washington, and in 1901 founded the Boston Guardian, an independent African-American newspaper he used to express that opposition. Active in protest movements for civil rights throughout the 1900s and 1910s, he also revealed some of the differences within the African-American community. He contributed to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Trotter was born into a well-to-do family and raised in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. J. M. Trotter a Recorder of Deeds and Virginia Trotter were his parents. He earned his graduate and post-graduate degrees at Harvard University, and was the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there. Seeing an increase in segregation in northern facilities, he began to engage in a life of activism, to which he devoted his assets. He joined with W. E. B. Du Bois in founding the Niagara Movement in 1905, a forerunner of the NAACP. Trotter's style was often divisive, and he ended up leaving that organization for the National Equal Rights League. His protest activities were sometimes seen to be at cross purposes to those of the NAACP.
In 1914, he had a highly publicized meeting with President Woodrow Wilson, in which he protested Wilson's introduction of segregation into the federal workplace. In Boston, Trotter succeeded in shutting down productions of The Clansman in 1910, but he was unsuccessful in 1915 with screenings of the movie The Birth of a Nation, which also portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in favorable terms. He was not able to influence the peace talks at the end of World War I, and was in later years a marginalized voice of protest. In 1921, in an alliance with Roman Catholics, he got a revival screening of The Birth of a Nation banned. He died on his 62nd birthday after a possibly suicidal fall from his Boston home.
Early life and education
William was the third child, and first to survive infancy, of James Monroe Trotter and Virginia (Isaacs) Trotter. His father James was born into slavery in Mississippi; James' mother Letitia was enslaved, and his father was her white master Richard S. Trotter. Letitia, her son and two daughters were freed by their master after his marriage and sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, which had a thriving free black community. After working as a teacher, James Trotter enlisted in the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War, and was the first man of color to be promoted to lieutenant in the 55th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Colored).
Virginia Isaacs, also of mixed race, was born free in 1842 in either Ohio or Virginia. Her mother Ann-Elizabeth Fossett was born into slavery at Monticello, where she was a daughter of Joseph Fossett and Edith Hern Fossett, and great granddaughter of Elizabeth Hemings. Virginia's father Tucker Isaacs was a free person of color. He purchased the freedom of Ann-Elizabeth Fossett, Virginia's mother. The family moved to Chillicothe in the free state of Ohio, where Virginia grew up in its thriving black community. There she met and married James Trotter.
Shortly after the Civil War, the Trotters moved from Ohio to settle in Boston, Massachusetts. After their first two children died in infancy, they returned to the Isaacs farm of Virginia's parents, where their son William Monroe Trotter was born on April 7, 1872. When he was seven months old, the family moved back to Boston, where they settled in the South End, far from the predominantly African-American west side of Beacon Hill. The family later moved to suburban Hyde Park, a white neighborhood. The Trotters had two more children, both daughters.
Trotter's father broke through many racial obstacles placed before him, but was often frustrated in his attempts to gain equal treatment or fair consideration. While serving in the Union Army, he protested the inequality of pay between blacks and whites. In Boston he was the first man of color to be employed by the Post Office Department (now the U.S. Postal Service), a job he left after he was repeatedly passed over for promotion because of discriminatory Republican-led federal government policy. Politically active, the elder Trotter was a leading African-American Democrat in New England. He supported Grover Cleveland for President, and was rewarded in 1886 when Cleveland appointed him Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, the highest federal position filled by black men at the time. Two other prominent men of color of that era, Frederick Douglass and Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, also held the post. The job was a lucrative one, and the Trotter family prospered.
The young Trotter (who was usually called by his middle name "Monroe") grew up in this environment, and was introduced to Archibald Grimké, another politically active African American who also lived in Hyde Park. He excelled in school, graduating from the otherwise all-white Hyde Park High School as valedictorian and president of his high school class. He went on to Harvard University, where he continued to distinguish himself academically. He was awarded merit scholarships after his father died, and was the first man of color to be awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key at Harvard. He earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in 1895 and a Masters in 1896, working a variety of odd jobs to help pay his tuition.
During his years at Harvard, he adopted a number of habits which he maintained for much of his life. He organized and led the Total Abstinence League, a temperance organization; he was a teetotaler and never drank alcohol. He was active in the Baptist church, in which he had considered becoming a minister.
Marriage and family
Following his graduation, Trotter participated in the upper echelons of Negro society in Boston, a number of whose members had ancestors free before the Civil War. He belonged to an exclusive literary society that met at the home of Cambridge educator Maria Baldwin. On June 27, 1899, Trotter married Geraldine Louise ("Deenie") Pindell (October 3, 1872 – October 8, 1918), who was from another activist family. He had known her since childhood. She assisted him throughout his career until her death in the 1918 flu pandemic. The couple had no children.
Early career
Trotter's career began inauspiciously. His initial attempts to get jobs at established banking and real estate firms were unsuccessful, leading him through a succession of lower-paying clerking jobs. He finally landed a job in a white-owned real estate firm in 1898, but decided the next year to open his own business selling insurance and brokering mortgages. He was not particularly active in agitating for civil rights in these years, although his strong opinions on racial equality were evident in an 1899 paper in which he called on African Americans to seek admission to institutions of higher learning. (It was a common practice of the time to direct African Americans away from higher education opportunities and into industrial training programs.) Trotter's business was relatively successful, and he was able to purchase investment properties.
Trotter was increasingly troubled by what he saw as the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington, one of the leading African-American figures of the 1890s and founder of the Tuskegee Institute. Washington's policies were enshrined in the Atlanta Compromise, outlined in an 1895 speech he gave in Atlanta, Georgia. He said that Southern African Americans should not agitate for political rights (such as the right to vote and equal treatment under the law) as long as they were provided economic opportunities and basic rights of due process. Washington actively promoted the idea that African Americans, once they had proven themselves as productive members of society, would be granted full political rights. Trotter, Grimké, W. E. B. Du Bois, and other northern radicals disagreed with these ideas, arguing that it was necessary for African Americans to agitate for equal treatment and full constitutional rights, because doing so would bring other benefits. By the turn of the century, African Americans in the South had been effectively disfranchised by violence around elections, and restrictions in voting registration rules, and, finally, constitutional amendments or new constitutions in Southern states.
Although Boston was comparatively congenial when compared to other parts of the country, Trotter and others felt that Washington's stance was leading to an increase in more typically Southern racist attitudes in the city. "The conviction grew upon me", he wrote, that his business successes could be endangered "if race prejudice and persecution and public discrimination from mere color was to spread up from the South and result in a fixed caste of color".
The Guardian
Trotter's racial activism blossomed in 1901. He helped found the Boston Literary and Historical Association, which became, according to biographer Stephen Fox, "a forum for militant race opinion". He also joined the Massachusetts Racial Protective Association, another local group that promoted political goals of equality. Under the aegis of the latter group, Trotter in October 1901 gave his first major protest speech, attacking Washington's accommodationist stance: "In Boston [Washington] said that the Negro should wait for the franchise until he had got property, education and character. Washington's attitude has ever been one of servility."
With George W. Forbes, another Protective Association member, in 1901 Trotter co-founded the Guardian, a weekly newspaper. At first Forbes, an Amherst College graduate with some experience in publishing, was the driving operational force in its production, while Trotter funded the effort and served as its managing editor. The paper became a forum for a more outspoken and forceful approach to gaining racial equality, and its contributors and editorials (which were generally written by Trotter) regularly attacked Washington. The paper's editorial stance brought a stream of criticism from more mainstream African-American publications: the New York Age, calling it "putrescent", wrote that "Editor Trotter ... makes himself smelt if not felt"; another wrote that the Guardian was "carrying its cases too fast and too far", and that Trotter suffered from a "mental malady". The Guardian had limited circulation, but was highly influential as one of only 200 African-American publications in the country. It suffered financially due to Trotter's poor accounting and inattention due to his heavy schedule. Forbes, who principally worked as a librarian in the city library, left the business in 1904 because of Booker T. Washington's legal assaults on the newspaper and pressure by Washington supporters on his employers. Trotter's wife, and later his sister, assisted in the paper's publication.
Trotter, in a deliberate move, transferred the Guardian offices in 1907 to the same building that had once housed William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator. Trotter idolized Garrison, a leading abolitionist agitator before the Civil War, and had studied his methods. He was a regular correspondent with Garrison's sons William Jr. and Francis Garrison.
The Guardian was always unprofitable, a condition that was exacerbated by Trotter's refusal to take advertising for alcohol and tobacco. He sold off all of his Boston-area properties by 1910 to raise funds for the newspaper, and he was lax in collecting payments from his subscribers. In his later years, the quality of the publication noticeably declined, and its operations were propped up by a local community group's fund-raising activities.
Attacking the African-American establishment
In the early 1900s Trotter noticed that racial segregation was spreading in Boston: the number of hotels, restaurants, and other public establishments refusing service to African Americans was increasing. He came to realize that, in order to effect real change, the radical message needed to be taken out of Boston, and began organizing protest meetings across New England in 1903. At the suggestion of Trotter, William H. Ferris went to Washington D.C. in January 1903. Ferris gave a presentation critical to Booker T. Washington in front of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society on January 6, 1903. Richard W. Thompson spoke in support of Washington as replies at the Second Baptist Lyceum on January 25 and Jesse Lawson did the same on February 3. In 1999, Jacqueline M. Moore argued that Thompson's paper failed to hold his ground against Ferris, who was present at the talk.
His long-term objective was to effect policy changes in the National Afro-American Council, then the only national-level organization of African Americans. At the group's annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, Trotter and others introduced resolutions calling for more activism, but Booker T. Washington supporters (also known as "Bookerites"), who controlled the council, saw to their defeat. One commentator wrote that the "Boston idiots" had been treated "in delightful fashion". The Guardian described the convention as "dominated to death by one man". The activities of the radicals at the convention did bring them some national press. Trotter continued to criticize Washington in the Guardian; his attacks were particularly harsh and personal, and brought a bitter tinge to the disagreement.
In this period, while the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South to the North was beginning, blacks in the two regions dealt with different conditions. The vast majority of the millions of African Americans still lived in the South, many in rural areas where they were the majority population. But they were effectively disfranchised by new electoral rules and state constitutions, utterly closed out of the political process. This situation would continue, despite some temporarily effective court challenges, through the 1960s. Washington believed he had to help this population within the constraints of their environment. At the same time, he secretly funded legal challenges against the voter registration and electoral restrictions. Trotter and other radicals tended to come from the North, where African Americans exercised more rights in daily life, including the suffrage, were more urbanized, and had achieved more in work and education, but were still subject to discrimination.
Following their failure to advance the radical agenda in Louisville, Trotter and the other radicals sought a more sympathetic forum in which to attack Booker T. Washington. An opportunity arrived when Washington was set to speak in Boston in July 1903. When the Tuskegee Institute leader was introduced to a visibly hostile crowd, a small riot broke out. Trotter, who had arrived prepared with several provocative questions to ask Washington, attempted to read them over the din of the melee. He was among the arrested, and the "Boston riot" received national press coverage. Trotter later claimed that there was no plan to break up the meeting. Bookerites pressed charges against Trotter for disrupting the meeting; defended by Archibald Grimké, Trotter was convicted and spent thirty days in the Charles Street Jail. Although the Bookerites had hoped to discredit the radicals with the trial, they gained them wider publicity. After the trial, Trotter founded the Boston Suffrage League (1903), and when a New England Suffrage League was founded in 1904, Trotter was elected president.
Washington countered Trotter's attacks with a variety of tactics. He took various legal actions against Trotter, including at least one libel suit and criminal charges. In addition, he used his network to apply pressure to Trotter's supporters in their workplaces (in some cases government and academic positions). In addition, he had other sympathizers secretly infiltrate and report on activist meetings organized by Trotter and others. Washington also provided financial support and expertise to start other publications in Boston to counter Trotter's radical voice. As a result of such activities, Trotter's printer dropped the activist and his newspaper as a client. But Trotter found another printer and continued publishing the Guardian despite the setback.
Niagara Movement and the NAACP
In the early months of 1905, Booker T. Washington sought to create an umbrella organization to represent all the major African-American leaders of the day. Du Bois and Grimké were the two most radical leaders invited to its early organizational meetings, but both eventually refused to ally with Washington, whom they saw as dominating the group. Du Bois, Trotter, and two others organized a meeting of radicals from across the nation in western New York. Meeting in July just across the Canada–US border in Fort Erie, Ontario they founded the Niagara Movement. Organized so that no one man could dominate it, the group espoused a radical declaration of principles (authored by Trotter and Du Bois), calling for agitation for equal economic opportunity and exercise of full civil rights for African Americans. The organization was soon divided internally by political and personal disagreements, and Washington worked from outside against its growth.
During the early months of 1906, friction began to develop between Du Bois and Trotter over the admission of women to the organization. Du Bois supported the idea, and Trotter opposed it, but eventually relented. The matter was smoothed over during the 1906 meeting. Their division became more significant when Trotter split with Clement Morgan, a longtime supporter and Movement member, over Massachusetts politics and control of the local Movement chapter. Du Bois sided with Morgan and, when the Movement met in Boston in 1907, he reappointed Morgan to a leading position in the organization. Attempts to heal the rift failed, and Trotter resigned from the Movement. Because of these difficulties, the organization had effectively collapsed by 1908. The break between Trotter and Du Bois was permanent, and they never worked directly together again. Du Bois wrote in 1909 that it was "utterly impossible to work with Mr. Trotter."
Despite the Niagara Movement's failure, its goals had appealed to white supporters of racial equality. They participated in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which drew an inter-racial coalition of support. Trotter and Du Bois were both present at meetings in 1909 in which its foundation was laid. Although some of Trotter's proposals were accepted (to address segregated transportation as a grievance), others were not (such as his proposal for a bill to make lynching a federal crime). Trotter was not invited to be on the organization's executive committee; neither was Booker T. Washington, who boycotted the effort.
Trotter never played a significant role in the NAACP, and in its early years actively competed with it. In 1911 Trotter's group and the NAACP both held rallies in Boston to mark the centennial of abolitionist Charles Sumner's birth. Trotter was peripherally involved with the NAACP for a few years, but he did not approve of the amount of white involvement in the interracial group. His feud with Du Bois ran deep, so he rarely contributed to the organization at the national level. He was also troubled by the attitudes expressed in the Boston chapter, which he told NAACP leader Joel Spingarn needed more "radical, courageous activity." He eventually drifted away from the NAACP.
National Equal Rights League
After Trotter split from the Niagara Movement, he helped organize a conference of like-minded activists held in Philadelphia in April 1908, and served as the conference chair. In this capacity, he excluded any attendees whose racial ideology he opposed, as well as those who supported Republican William Howard Taft in the upcoming presidential election. (Trotter opposed Taft because he had tired of what he considered the Republican Party laissez-faire policies on race.) This conference led to the formation of the Negro-American Political League, which eventually became known as the National Equal Rights League (NERL). Trotter described this group as "of the colored people and for the colored people and led by the colored people."
NERL, which biographer Fox describes as Trotter's "personal fief", was unable to attract high-profile membership as the NAACP did. Trotter did not want white members, and was unable to work effectively with other African-American leaders. NERL and the NAACP, while both working toward similar goals, regularly feuded over matters public and personal.
As the NAACP attracted more money and talent, and became the center of anti-Bookerite civil rights activity, Trotter and the NERL became increasingly marginalized on the left. Trotter would not have as prominent a role in the civil rights dialogue again. By 1921 the League had been reduced to a handful of Trotter supporters.
Trotter and Woodrow Wilson
Trotter's opposition to Booker T. Washington placed him at odds with Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Republican presidents who relied on Washington as an adviser and otherwise enjoyed widespread African-American support. Trotter supported the Southern Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election. Wilson, in a brief meeting with Trotter and other NERL members, made vague statements about fair treatment of African Americans. But, he succumbed to pressure from Southerners in his cabinet and agreed to segregate federal offices. The NAACP and NERL (then known as the National Independent Political League, or NIPL) protested, and Trotter secured a meeting with Wilson at the White House in November 1913. Wilson said that his policies were not segregationist, but Trotter characterized Wilson's denial as "preposterous".
Trotter continued his protests, eventually gaining a second invitation to the White House in November 1914. This meeting with Wilson ended with a heated exchange between the two men. Wilson claimed to be dealing with a "human problem" from which politics should be left out, and suggested to Trotter's group that they could always vote for someone else in the next election. Trotter continued to argue that the segregationist policy was humiliating to African Americans. Wilson responded, "If you take it as a humiliation, which it is not intended as, and sow the seed of that impression all over the country, why the consequences will be very serious." After Trotter said this was an insult, Wilson angrily ordered him to leave, saying "If this organization wishes to approach me again, it must choose another spokesman ... your tone, sir, offends me."
Trotter's second meeting with the President was widely covered in the press, featured on the front page of The New York Times and other leading newspapers. A white Texas newspaper described Trotter as "merely a nigger" and "not a Booker T. Washington type of colored man", and Northern papers also criticized him for his "insolence" to the president. The Boston Evening Transcript, while observing that Wilson's policy was segregationist and divisive, pointed out that although Trotter was basically correct, he "offends many of his own color by his ... untactful belligerency". African Americans were divided in their response to the incident: some claimed that he did not represent them, while others, notably Du Bois, grudgingly admired Trotter's audacity. Du Bois wrote that Wilson was "insulting & condescending" in the meeting. Trotter parlayed the publicity into a series of speaking engagements, in which he denied "that in language, manner, tone, in any respect or to the slightest degree I was impudent, insolent, or insulting to the President."
Trotter continued to protest segregationist policies of the Wilson administration. When the country began large-scale recruiting for the military in World War I, Trotter opposed the establishment of segregated officer training facilities. Through his influence, recruitment of blacks in the Boston area was lower than expected. During World War II, the military integrated the officer corps, and President Harry Truman afterward completed integration of the armed services.
When the Great War ended, Trotter sought to use the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as a vehicle to raise international awareness of US government policy toward African Americans. He viewed the reality of segregation as incompatible with Wilson's war vision to "make the world safe for Democracy." Trotter organized a meeting in Washington, DC related to the peace conference; he and ten other African-American delegates were chosen to attend the peace conference. The State Department refused to issue passports to those delegates, or to African Americans planning to attend a Pan-African Congress that Du Bois was organizing to be held concurrently with the peace conference in Paris. Du Bois and other African Americans were supporting African colonies' desire for independence.
To get to Europe, Trotter posed as a seaman seeking work in New York, and got a job as a cook on the SS Yarmouth to gain passage to France. He arrived in Paris alone and with little more than his cook's clothing, only to find that the principal peace negotiations had already taken place. The powers did not include any statement of racial equality. Trotter attracted the French press in his accounts of racial mistreatment in the United States, but he could not gain access to any of the official delegations to the peace conference. He also missed Du Bois' Pan-African Congress, which was held in February 1919 while he was still seeking passage.
Trotter returned to the United States in July 1919 to learn of ongoing race riots at major cities across the country. Postwar economic and social tensions had erupted, and blacks fought back against white violence in cities such as Chicago and Omaha. Trotter quickly supported active resistance to white-on-black violence, writing, "Unless the white American behaves, he will find that in teaching our boys to fight for him he was starting something that he will not be able to stop." His writings prompted calls in Congress for the censorship of the Negro press: South Carolina Congressman James F. Byrnes accused Trotter of "doing his utmost to incite riots and bloodshed." Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge gave Trotter a chance to testify during Senate deliberations on ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, which Lodge opposed on grounds other than Trotter's. Lodge's opposition was successful: the Senate never ratified the treaty.
Other protests and later years
Trotter mounted a campaign against Thomas Dixon's play The Clansman when it opened in Boston in 1910; the play portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in heroic terms during Reconstruction. His protests succeeded in closing the production. While on his speaking tour in early 1915, he learned that D. W. Griffith's movie, The Birth of a Nation, adapted from The Clansman, would be opening in Boston. He rushed back to lead protests against the film. In April, the Tremont Theatre denied Trotter and a group of African Americans tickets to the showing. When they refused to leave the lobby, plainclothes police moved in, sparking a scuffle. Trotter and ten others were arrested; other protests took place both inside and outside the theater. Trotter, united with other factions of the African-American community, tried but could not get the film banned in Boston. This united front, along with the death later in 1915 of Booker T. Washington, reduced for a time the internal hostilities in the Boston African-American community.
The KKK had a revival for a decade after 1915, especially in industrial cities and the Midwest. In 1921, Trotter was successful in shutting down new screenings of The Birth of a Nation in Boston; he allied with Roman Catholic organizations, who objected to the KKK's anti-Catholic stance of the 20th century, and were strong in the city as a result of extensive Irish and Italian immigration.
Trotter's wife had died in the 1918 influenza pandemic. She had been a partner in all his activities and he missed her greatly.
Through the 1920s and 1930s, Trotter subsided into a genteel poverty, using the Guardian as an ongoing voice of protest. He lobbied for anti-lynching bills in Congress, with limited success. Even when the House overwhelmingly passed such a bill in 1922, the Southern bloc in the Senate filibustered and effectively killed passage of the bill for three years running. (White Democrats effectively controlled nearly all the Congressional seats apportioned to the total population of the South, after having disfranchised blacks.) They controlled chairmanships of numerous important committees, which were established by seniority.
In 1923 Trotter eventually came to an uneasy truce with the NAACP. His attempts to promote his style of activism, however, were eclipsed by activities of younger leaders, such as Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant in New York City and leader of the UNIA.
Through these years, Trotter routinely wrote in the Guardian about incidents of racial injustice, including the 1931 trials of the Scottsboro boys. They had been accused and were convicted of raping two white women in Alabama. Historians have concluded they were innocent.
On the morning of April 7, 1934, his 62nd birthday, William Monroe Trotter died after a fall from the roof of his home in Boston. The cause is uncertain, but it is known that he was depressed and troubled at the time. He may have committed suicide. He was buried in Boston's Fairview Cemetery.
Legacy and honors
Several schools and academic institutions were named for him: the William Monroe Trotter Elementary School in Dorchester, the William Monroe Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston (a research institute for the study of black history and black culture), and the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center (aka Trotter House) at the University of Michigan.
Trotter's first home in Dorchester, the William Monroe Trotter House, was designated a National Historic Landmark in recognition of his significance in the civil rights cause.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed William Monroe Trotter among his 100 Greatest African Americans.
Notes
References
Further reading
Activists for African-American civil rights
Harvard University alumni
Businesspeople from Boston
20th-century American newspaper founders
American newspaper publishers (people)
1872 births
1934 deaths
African-American activists
Deaths from falls
People from South End, Boston
American temperance activists
People from Hyde Park, Boston
Hyde Park High School (Massachusetts) alumni
African-American history in Boston
Hemings family
Niagara Movement
African-American temperance activists
African-American businesspeople
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%20Volcker
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Paul Volcker
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Paul Adolph Volcker Jr. (September 5, 1927 – December 8, 2019) was an American economist who served as the 12th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. During his tenure as chairman, Volcker was widely credited with having ended the high levels of inflation seen in the United States throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, with measures known as the Volcker shock. He previously served as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1975 to 1979.
President Jimmy Carter nominated him to succeed G. William Miller as Fed chairman and President Ronald Reagan renominated him once. Volcker did not seek a third term at the Fed and was succeeded by Alan Greenspan. After his retirement from the Board, he chaired the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011 during the subprime mortgage crisis.
Early life and education
Volcker was born in Cape May, New Jersey, the son of Alma Louise (née Klippel, 1892–1990) and Paul Adolph Volcker (1889–1960). All his grandparents were of German origin. Volcker grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, where his father was the township's first municipal manager. Paul Sr. thrived in the role for 20 years as he improved the burgeoning town's economic stability and the local government's effectiveness. Paul Jr. had four older sisters: Ruth (1916–1991), Louise (1918–1966), Elinor (1922–1923) and Virginia Streitfeld (1924–2011). As a child, he attended his mother's Lutheran church, while his father went to an Episcopal church. Volcker graduated from Teaneck High School in 1945, where he participated in several student groups and impressed his peers and teachers with his knowledge of politics.
Volcker attended Princeton University as an undergraduate student and graduated with highest honors from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (now the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs) in 1949. In his senior thesis, titled "The Problems of Federal Reserve Policy since World War II", Volcker criticized the Federal Reserve's post-WWII policies for failing to curb inflationary pressures, writing, "a swollen money supply presented a grave inflationary threat to the economy. There was a need to bring this money supply under control if the disastrous effects of a sharp price rise were to be avoided." Following a summer as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he moved to Harvard University to earn an M.A. in political economy from its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Public Administration. He worked a second summer as a New York Fed research assistant before graduating in 1951. After Harvard, Volcker attended the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1952 as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellow under Rotary's Ambassadorial Scholarships program.
Career
In 1952 Volcker joined the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a full-time economist. He left that position in 1957 to become a financial economist with the Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1962, Robert Roosa, who had been his mentor at the Federal Reserve, hired him at the Treasury Department as director of financial analysis. In 1963, he became deputy under secretary for monetary affairs. He returned to Chase Manhattan Bank as vice president and director of planning in 1965.
Appointed by the Nixon Administration, Volcker served under secretary of the Treasury for international monetary affairs from 1969 to 1974. He played an important role in President Richard Nixon's decision to suspend gold convertibility of the dollar on August 15, 1971, which resulted in the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Volcker considered the suspension of gold convertibility "the single most important event of his career." Because of his position as under secretary, Volcker served as a board member for OPIC and Fannie Mae. Across the policies he worked on, he acted as a moderating influence on policy, advocating the pursuit of an international solution to monetary problems and acting as a negotiator with other nations' policymakers. After leaving the U.S. Treasury, he spent a year as a senior fellow at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School (his alma mater). In 1975, he became President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and he retained that role until he became Federal Reserve Chairman in August 1979.
Chairman of the Federal Reserve
After G. William Miller's confirmation as Secretary of the Treasury, President Jimmy Carter's confirmation of Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Frederick H. Schultz's role as Acting Chairman sent markets panicking. Carter resultingly sought a reassuring, qualified nominee who would confront inflation head-on, and nominated Paul Volcker to serve as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on July 25, 1979. He was confirmed by the
U.S. Senate on August 2, 1979, and took office on August 6, 1979. President Ronald Reagan renominated Volcker to a second term in 1983.
Inflation emerged as an economic and political challenge in the United States during the 1970s. The monetary policies of the Federal Reserve board, led by Volcker, were widely credited with curbing the rate of inflation and expectations that inflation would continue. US inflation, which peaked at 14.8 percent in March 1980, fell below 3 percent by 1983. The Federal Reserve board led by Volcker raised the federal funds rate, which had averaged 11.2% in 1979, to a peak of 20% in June 1981. The prime rate rose to 21.5% in 1981 as well, which helped lead to the 1980–1982 recession, in which the national unemployment rate rose to over 10%. In addition to the rises in key interest rates, the so-called 'Volcker shock' included monetarist-inspired policies, such as monetary targeting. Despite monetarist economists did not recognize Volcker policies to be totally monetarist, some members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) claimed to follow monetarist principles.
Volcker's Federal Reserve board elicited the strongest political attacks and most widespread protests in the history of the Federal Reserve (unlike any protests experienced since 1922), due to the effects of high interest rates on the construction, farming, and industrial sectors, culminating in indebted farmers driving their tractors onto C Street NW in Washington, D.C. and blockading the Eccles Building. US monetary policy eased in 1982, helping lead to a resumption of economic growth.
The US current account was in permanent deficit by the 1990s. Volcker himself tried to remedy the situation by the Plaza Accord in 1986, which called for Germany and Japan to revalue relative to the US dollar.
The combination of the Fed's tight money policies and the expansive fiscal policy of the Reagan Administration (large tax cuts and a major increase in military spending) produced large federal budget deficits and significant macroeconomic imbalances in the U.S. economy. The combination of growing federal debt and high interest rates led to a substantial rise in federal net interest costs. The sharp rise of interest costs and large deficits led Congress to take some steps towards fiscal constraint.
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said about him in an interview:
Paul Volcker, the previous Fed Chairman known for keeping inflation under control, was fired because the Reagan administration didn't believe he was an adequate de-regulator.
Congressman Ron Paul, well known as a harsh critic of the Federal Reserve, offered qualified praise of Volcker:
Being in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s and serving on the House Banking Committee, I met and got to question several Federal Reserve chairmen: Arthur Burns, G. William Miller, and Paul Volcker. Of the three, I had the most interaction with Volcker. He was more personable and smarter than the others, including the more recent board chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.
In 1983, Volcker received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
Post-Federal Reserve
After leaving the Federal Reserve in 1987, he became chairman of the prominent New York investment banking firm, Wolfensohn & Co., a corporate advisory and investment firm run by James D. Wolfensohn (who later became President of the World Bank).
In 1992, Volcker was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1993 he chaired the Group of 30 Report on the Derivatives market entitled "Derivatives: Practices and Principles" with several appendices and a survey on how practices may have changed since the original 1993 report. The Group of 30 is a "consultative group on international economic and monetary affairs." Volcker was their Chairman emeritus.
In 1996, he took up the chair of the Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (Volcker Commission) to look into the dormant accounts of Jewish victims of the Holocaust lying in Swiss banks. This included a "massive accounting of Swiss bank records." In the midst of a contentious process (the committee was formed by three Jewish representatives and three representatives of Swiss banks), he was able to bring about an agreement among the parties for a settlement of $1.25 billion.
Volcker was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1992.
In 2000 he accepted the Chairmanship of the IFRS Trustees, the not-for-profit funding arm of the International Accounting Standards Board (later the IFRS Foundation). The IFRS Foundation is a private sector enterprise based in London which seeks to develop a single global accounting model, subject to adoption country by country under their rules of law.
In April 2004, the United Nations assigned Volcker to research possible corruption in the Iraqi Oil for Food program. In the report summarizing its research, Volcker criticized Kojo Annan, son of then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection SA, Kojo's employer, for trying to conceal their relationship. He concluded in his March 2005, report that "there is no evidence that the selection of Cotecna, in 1998, was subject to improper influence of the Secretary General in the bidding or selection process." While Volcker did not implicate the Secretary General in the selection process, however, he did cast serious doubt on Kofi Annan, whose "management performance ... fell short of the standards that the United Nations Organization should strive to maintain." Volcker was a director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America between 2000 and 2004, prior to his being appointed to the Independent Inquiry by Kofi Annan.
As of October 2006, he was the chairman of the board of trustees of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty, and a member of the Trilateral Commission. He had a long association with the Rockefeller family, not only with his positions at Chase Bank and the Trilateral Commission, but also through membership of the trust committee of Rockefeller Group, Inc., which he joined in 1987. That entity managed, at one time, the Rockefeller Center on behalf of the numerous members of the Rockefeller family. He was a chairman and an honorary trustee of International House, the cultural exchange residence and program center in New York City. He was a founding member of the Trilateral Commission and a long-time member of the Bilderberg Group.
In January 2008, he endorsed Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election.
On April 8, 2008, he was the featured speaker at The Economic Club of New York. Volcker discussed "what appears to be in substance a direct transfer of mortgage and mortgage-backed securities of questionable pedigree from an investment bank to the Federal Reserve," and offered his detailed analysis and evaluation of interrelationships among the U.S. capital markets, Federal Reserve policies, and the economy as whole.
Paul Volcker appeared in the Charles Ferguson's movie Inside Job. He was interviewed about current Wall Street CEO pay, claiming it is "excessive."
Volcker was an economic advisor to President Barack Obama, heading the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Volcker had also been Obama's first pick as United States Secretary of the Treasury, but he was considered too old. During the financial crisis, Volcker was extremely critical of banks, saying that their response to the financial crisis was inadequate, and that more regulation of banks is called for. Specifically, Volcker called for a break-up of the nation's largest banks, prohibiting deposit-taking institutions from engaging in riskier activities such as proprietary trading, private equity, and hedge fund investments (see Volcker Rule). Volcker left the board when its charter expired on February 6, 2011, without being included in discussions on how the board would be reconstituted.
On January 21, 2010, President Barack Obama proposed bank regulations which he dubbed "The Volcker Rule," in reference to Volcker's aggressive pursuit of these regulations. Volcker appeared with the president at the announcement. The proposed rules would prevent commercial banks from owning and investing in hedge funds and private equity, and limit the trading they do for their own accounts. According to SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar, "[t]he success or failure of the Volcker Rule will depend on the manner in which banking entities comply with the letter and spirit of the rule, and on the willingness of regulators to enforce it."
Volcker was known to defy the stereotype of a Wall Street insider. A profile in The Week for February 5, 2010, stated that Volcker does not agree with the conventional wisdom that "financial innovation" is necessary for a healthy economy. In fact, he likes to say, "the only useful banking innovation was the invention of the ATM."
On April 6, 2010, at the New-York Historical Society's Global Economic Panel, Volcker commented that the United States should consider adding a national sales tax similar to the Value Added Tax (VAT) imposed in European countries, stating "If, at the end of the day, we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes."
In 2011, Volcker and former Secretary of State George Shultz authored an article in The Wall Street Journal voicing their opinion that the War on Drugs had failed. They did not advocate for the legalization of drugs, but rather for a reexamination of the costs of drug prohibition in the United States.
In 2015, Volcker donated his public service papers to Princeton University's Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
World Justice Project
Volcker served as an honorary co-chairman for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multi-disciplinary effort to strengthen the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.
Volcker Alliance
In 2013, Volcker founded the nonprofit organization the Volcker Alliance to address the challenge of effective execution of public policies and to rebuild public trust in government. The nonpartisan Alliance works toward that objective by partnering with other organizations—academic, business, governmental, and public interest—to strengthen professional education for public service, conduct needed research on government performance, and improve the efficiency and accountability of governmental organization at the federal, state, and local levels.
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
Volcker served on the board of directors of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The nonpartisan organization is "committed to educating the public on issues with significant fiscal policy impact."
Personal life
Volcker married Barbara Bahnson, the daughter of a physician, on September 11, 1954. They had two children, Janice, a nurse and a Georgetown University graduate, and James, a research assistant and a New York University graduate who was born with cerebral palsy. They also had four grandchildren. His younger sister died young, and two of his three older sisters, Louise and Ruth, never married. His other older sister, Virginia, was married to and divorced from Harold Streitfeld; they have five children.
Volcker was an avid fly-fisherman, who recounted in 1987, "The greatest strategic error of my adult life was to take my wife to Maine on our honeymoon on a fly-fishing trip."
Volcker was known as "Tall Paul" for his height of , standing exactly a foot (30 cm) taller than his first wife, Barbara, when they first met. She died on June 14, 1998, having suffered from lifelong diabetes, as well as rheumatoid arthritis.
Over Thanksgiving, 2009, he became engaged to Anke Dening, a long-time assistant. They married in February 2010.
Death
Volcker died in New York City on December 8, 2019, at age 92. He had reportedly been treated for prostate cancer since being diagnosed the year prior.
Honorary degrees
Volcker received honorary degrees from several educational institutions, including: Baytown Christian Academy, Hamilton College (1980), University of Notre Dame, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, New York University, University of Delaware, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Bryant College, Adelphi University, Lamar University, Bates College (1989), Fairfield University (1994), York University (2001), Williams College (2003), Northwestern University (2004), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2005), Brown University (2006), Georgetown University (2007), Syracuse University (2008), Queen's University (2009), Amherst College (2011), and at the University of Toronto (2015).
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where Volker served on the advisory board from 2001 until his death, established the "Paul Volcker Chair" in Behavioral economics in 2011.
Works
Changing Fortunes, Paul Volcker and Toyoo Gyohten, Crown, May 26, 1992,
Forbes Great Minds Of Business, Fred Smith, Peter Lynch, Andrew Grove, Paul Volcker (Author), Pleasant Rowland, John Wiley and Paul A. Volcker, Simon and Schuster Audio, October 1, 1997,
Good Intentions Corrupted: The Oil for Food Scandal And the Threat to the U.N., Paul Volcker, Jeffrey A. Meyer and Mark G. Califano, Public Affairs Gorgias Press, August 28, 2006,
Keeping at it: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government (Memoir); Public Affairs 2018,
In popular culture
The political rock band Volcker from Portland, Oregon, formed in early 2015, was named after him. It released an eponymous album on January 27, 2016. The band was featured on BBC Radio 4's Economics with Subtitles on August 28, 2016.
See also
Distinguished German-American of the Year
List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines
Volcker Rule
References
Sources
External links
Paul Volcker Interview
Official biography from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
The Independent Inquiry Committee into The United Nations' Oil-for-Food Program official website
Interview transcript from PBS Commanding Heights, September 26, 2000
Time for Paul Volcker To Resign, Nile Gardiner, PhD, The Heritage Foundation, April 21, 2005
Current Economic Recovery Fragile, Corporations Undergo "Healthy Changes," Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker Says in Ubben Lecture, Paul Volcker, DePauw University, October 8, 2003
Rethinking the Bright New World of Global Finance, Paul Volcker, International Finance, Spring 2008
How to Reform Our Financial System, Paul Volcker, The New York Times, January 30, 2010
Statements and Speeches of Paul A. Volcker in FRASER
Paul A. Volcker Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
Former Fed Chairman Blasts McKinsey and Hedge-Fund Billionaires
"Other People's Blood", Tim Barker, n+1, Spring 2019
1927 births
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20th-century American economists
Alumni of the London School of Economics
American Lutherans
American people of German descent
Carter administration personnel
Chairs of the Federal Reserve
Economists from New Jersey
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican%20chronology
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Mesoamerican chronology
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Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and Postcolonial, or the period after independence from Spain (1821–present).
The periodisation of Mesoamerica by researchers is based on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and modern cultural anthropology research dating to the early twentieth century. Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, historians, and cultural anthropologists continue to work to develop cultural histories of the region.
Overview
Paleo-Indian period
10,000–3500 BCE
The Paleo-Indian (less frequently, Lithic) period or era is that which spans from the first signs of human presence in the region, which many believe to have happened due to the Bering Land Bridge, to the establishment of agriculture and other practices (e.g. pottery, permanent settlements) and subsistence techniques characteristic of proto-civilisations. In Mesoamerica, the termination of this phase and its transition into the succeeding Archaic period may generally be reckoned at between 10,000 and 8000 BCE. This dating is approximate only and different timescales may be used between fields and sub-regions.
Archaic Era
Before 2600 BCE
During the Archaic Era agriculture was developed in the region and permanent villages were established. Late in this era, use of pottery and loom weaving became common, and class divisions began to appear. Many of the basic technologies of Mesoamerica in terms of stone-grinding, drilling, pottery etc. were established during this period.
Preclassic Era or Formative Period
2000 BCE – 250 CE
During the Preclassic Era, or Formative Period, large-scale ceremonial architecture, writing, cities, and states developed. Many of the distinctive elements of Mesoamerican civilisation can be traced to this period, including the dominance of corn, the building of pyramids, human sacrifice, jaguar-worship, the complex calendar, and many of the gods.
The Olmec civilization developed and flourished at such sites as La Venta and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, eventually succeeded by the Epi-Olmec culture between 300–250 BCE. The Zapotec civilization arose in the Valley of Oaxaca, the Teotihuacan civilisation arose in the Valley of Mexico. The Maya civilization began to develop in the Mirador Basin (in modern-day Guatemala) and the Epi-Olmec culture in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (in modern-day Chiapas), later expanding into Guatemala and the Yucatan Peninsula.
In Central America, there were some Olmec influences, the archaeological sites of Los Naranjos and Yarumela in Honduras stand out, built by ancestors of the Lencas, which reflect an architectural influence of this culture on Central American soil. Other sites with possible Olmec influence have been reported, such as Puerto Escondido, in the Sula Valley, near La Lima, and Hato Viejo in the department of Olancho, where a jadeite statuette has been found that shares many characteristics with those found in Mexico.
Classic Period
250–900 CE
The Classic Period was dominated by numerous independent city-states in the Maya region and also featured the beginnings of political unity in central Mexico and the Yucatán. Regional differences between cultures grew more manifest. The city-state of Teotihuacan dominated the Valley of Mexico until the early 8th century, but little is known of the political structure of the region because the Teotihuacanos left no written records. The city-state of Monte Albán dominated the Valley of Oaxaca until the late Classic, leaving limited records in their script, which is as yet mostly undeciphered. Highly sophisticated arts such as stuccowork, architecture, sculptural reliefs, mural painting, pottery, and lapidary developed and spread during the Classic era.
In the Maya region, under considerable military influence by Teotihuacan after the "arrival" of Siyaj K'ak' in 378 CE, numerous city states such as Tikal, Uaxactun, Calakmul, Copán, Quirigua, Palenque, Cobá, and Caracol reached their zeniths. Each of these polities was generally independent, although they often formed alliances and sometimes became vassal states of each other. The main conflict during this period was between Tikal and Calakmul, which fought a series of wars over the course of more than half a millennium. Each of these states declined during the Terminal Classic and were eventually abandoned.
Postclassic Period
900–1521 CE
In the Postclassic Period many of the great nations and cities of the Classic Era collapsed, although some continued, such as in Oaxaca, Cholula, and the Maya of Yucatan, such as at Chichen Itza and Uxmal. This is sometimes thought to have been a period of increased chaos and warfare.
The Postclassic is often viewed as a period of cultural decline. However, it was a time of technological advancement in architecture, engineering, and weaponry. Metallurgy (introduced c. 800) came into use for jewelry and some tools, with new alloys and techniques being developed in a few centuries. The Postclassic was a period of rapid movement and population growth—especially in Central Mexico post-1200—and of experimentation in governance. For instance, in Yucatan, 'dual rulership' apparently replaced the more theocratic governments of Classic times, while oligarchic councils operated in much of central Mexico. Likewise, it appears that the wealthy pochteca (merchant class) and military orders became more powerful than was apparently the case in Classic times. This afforded some Mesoamericans a degree of social mobility.
The Toltec for a time dominated central Mexico in the 9th–10th century, then collapsed. The northern Maya were for a time united under Mayapan. Oaxaca was briefly united by Mixtec rulers in the 11th–12th centuries.
The Aztec Empire arose in the early 15th century and appeared to be on a path to asserting dominance over the Valley of Mexico region not seen since Teotihuacan. By the 15th century, the Mayan 'revival' in Yucatan and southern Guatemala and the flourishing of Aztec imperialism evidently enabled a renaissance of fine arts and science. Examples include the 'Pueblan-Mexica' style in pottery, codex illumination, and goldwork, the flourishing of Nahua poetry, and the botanical institutes established by the Aztec elite.
Spain was the first European power to contact Mesoamerica. Its conquistadors, aided by numerous native allies, conquered the Aztecs.
Colonial Period
1521–1821 CE
The Colonial Period was initiated with the Spanish conquest (1519–1521), which ended the hegemony of the Aztec Empire. It was accomplished with Spaniards' strategic alliances with enemies of the empire, most especially Tlaxcala, but also Huexotzinco, Xochimilco, and even Texcoco, a former partner in the Aztec Triple Alliance. Although not all parts of Mesoamerica were brought under control of the Spanish Empire immediately, the defeat of the Aztecs marked the dramatic beginning of an inexorable process of conquest in Mesoamerica and incorporation that Spain completed in the mid-seventeenth century. Indigenous peoples did not disappear, although their numbers were greatly reduced in the sixteenth century by new infectious diseases brought by the Spanish invaders; they suffered high mortality from slave labor, and during epidemics. The fall of Tenochtitlan marked the beginning of the three-hundred-year colonial period and the imposition of Spanish rule.
Chronology
Cultural horizons of Mesoamerica
Mesoamerican civilisation was a complex network of different cultures. As seen in the time-line below, these did not necessarily occur at the same time. The processes that gave rise to each of the cultural systems of Mesoamerica were very complex and not determined solely by the internal dynamics of each society. External as well as endogenous factors influenced their development. Among these factors, for example, were the relations between human groups and between humans and the environment, human migrations, and natural disasters.
Historians and archaeologists divide pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican history into three periods. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire (1519–1521) marks the end of indigenous rule and the incorporation of indigenous peoples as subjects of the Spanish Empire for the 300 year colonial period. The postcolonial period began with Mexican independence in 1821 and continues to the present day. European conquest did not end the existence of Mesoamerica's indigenous peoples, but did subject them to new political regimes. In the chart below of prehispanic cultures, the dates mentioned are approximations, and that the transition from one period to another did not occur at the same time nor under the same circumstances in all societies.
Timeline of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica
Preclassic Era
The Preclassic period ran from 2500 BCE to 200 CE. Its beginnings are marked by the development of the first ceramic traditions in the West, specifically at sites such as Matanchén, Nayarit, and Puerto Marqués, in Guerrero. Some authors hold that the early development of pottery in this area is related to the ties between South America and the coastal peoples of Mexico. The advent of ceramics is taken as an indicator of a sedentary society, and it signals the divergence of Mesoamerica from the hunter-gatherer societies in the desert to the north.
The Preclassic Era (also known as the Formative Period) is divided into three phases: the Early (2500–1200 BCE), Middle (1500–600 BCE), and Late (600 BCE – 200 CE). During the first phase, the manufacture of ceramics was widespread across the entire region, the cultivation of maize and other vegetables became well-established, and society started to become socially stratified in a process that concluded with the appearance of the first hierarchical societies along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In the early Preclassic period, the Capacha culture acted as a driving force in the process of civilizing Mesoamerica, and its pottery spread widely across the region.
By 2500 BCE, small settlements were developing in Guatemala's Pacific Lowlands, places such as Tilapa, La Blanca, Ocós, El Mesak, Ujuxte, and others, where the oldest ceramic pottery from Guatemala have been found. From 2000 BCE a heavy concentration of pottery in the Pacific Coast Line has been documented. Recent excavations suggest that the Highlands were a geographic and temporal bridge between Early Preclassic villages of the Pacific coast and later Petén lowlands cities. In Monte Alto near La Democracia, Escuintla, in the Pacific lowlands of Guatemala, some giant stone heads and potbelly sculptures () have been found, dated at , of the so-named Monte Alto Culture.
Around 1500 BCE, the cultures of the West entered a period of decline, accompanied by an assimilation into the other peoples with whom they had maintained connections. As a result, the Tlatilco culture emerged in the Valley of Mexico, and the Olmec culture in the Gulf. Tlatilco was one of the principal Mesoamerican population centers of this period. Its people were adept at harnessing the natural resources of Lake Texcoco and at cultivating maize. Some authors posit that Tlatilco was founded and inhabited by the ancestors of today's Otomi people.
The Olmecs, on the other hand, had entered into an expansionist phase that led them to construct their first works of monumental architecture at San Lorenzo and La Venta. The Olmecs exchanged goods within their own core area and with sites as far away as Guerrero and Morelos and present day Guatemala and Costa Rica. San José Mogote, a site that also shows Olmec influences, ceded dominance of the Oaxacan plateau to Monte Albán toward the end of the middle Preclassic Era. During this same time, the Chupícuaro culture flourished in Bajío, while along the Gulf the Olmecs entered a period of decline.
One of the great cultural milestones that marked the Middle Preclassic period is the development of the first writing system, by either the Maya, the Olmec, or the Zapotec. During this period, the Mesoamerican societies were highly stratified. The connections between different centers of power permitted the rise of regional elites that controlled natural resources and peasant labor. This social differentiation was based on the possession of certain technical knowledge, such as astronomy, writing, and commerce. Furthermore, the Middle Preclassic period saw the beginnings of the process of urbanization that would come to define the societies of the Classic period. In the Maya area, cities such as Nakbe c. 1000 BCE, El Mirador c. 650 BCE, Cival c. 350 BCE, and San Bartolo show the same monumental architecture of the Classic period. In fact, El Mirador is the largest Maya city. It has been argued that the Maya experienced a first collapse c. 100 CE, and resurged c. 250 in the Classic period. Some population centers such as Tlatilco, Monte Albán, and Cuicuilco flourished in the final stages of the Preclassic period. Meanwhile, the Olmec populations shrank and ceased to be major players in the area.
Toward the end of the Preclassic period, political and commercial hegemony shifted to the population centers in the Valley of Mexico. Around Lake Texcoco there existed a number of villages that grew into true cities: Tlatilco and Cuicuilco are examples. The former was found on the northern bank of the lake, while the latter was on the slopes of the mountainous region of Ajusco. Tlatilco maintained strong relationships with the cultures of the West, so much so that Cuicuilco controlled commerce in the Maya area, Oaxaca, and the Gulf coast. The rivalry between the two cities ended with the decline of Tlatilco. Meanwhile, at Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca, the Zapotec had begun developing culturally independent of the Olmec, adopting aspects of that culture but making their own contributions as well. On the southern coast of Guatemala, Kaminaljuyú advanced in the direction of what would be the Classic Maya culture, even though its links to Central Mexico and the Gulf would initially provide their cultural models. Apart from the West, where the tradition of the Tumbas de tiro had taken root, in all the regions of Mesoamerica the cities grew in wealth, with monumental constructions carried out according to urban plans that were surprisingly complex. The circular pyramid of Cuicuilco dates from this time, as well as the central plaza of Monte Albán, and the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan.
Around the start of the common era, Cuicuilco had disappeared, and the hegemony over the Mexican basin had passed to Teotihuacan. The next two centuries marked the period in which the so-called city of the gods consolidated its power, becoming the premier Mesoamerican city of the first millennium, and the principal political, economic, and cultural center for the next seven centuries.
The Olmec
For many years, the Olmec culture was thought to be the 'mother culture' of Mesoamerica, because of the great influence that it exercised throughout the region. However, more recent perspectives consider this culture to be more of a process to which all the contemporary peoples contributed, and which eventually crystallized on the coasts of Veracruz and Tabasco. The ethnic identity of the Olmecs is still widely debated. Based on linguistic evidence, archaeologists and anthropologists generally believe that they were either speakers of an Oto-Manguean language, or (more likely) the ancestors of the present-day Zoque people who live in the north of Chiapas and Oaxaca. According to this second hypothesis, Zoque tribes emigrated toward the south after the fall of the major population centers of the Gulf plains. Whatever their origin, these bearers of Olmec culture arrived at the leeward shore some eight thousand years BCE, entering like a wedge among the fringe of proto-Maya peoples who lived along the coast, a migration that would explain the separation of the Huastecs of the north of Veracruz from the rest of the Maya peoples based in the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala.
The Olmec culture represents a milestone of Mesoamerican history, as various characteristics that define the region first appeared there. Among them are the state organization, the development of the 260-day ritual calendar and the 365-day secular calendar, the first writing system, and urban planning. The development of this culture started 1600 to 1500 BCE, though it continued to consolidate itself up to the 12th century BCE. Its principal sites were La Venta, San Lorenzo, and Tres Zapotes in the core region. However, throughout Mesoamerica numerous sites show evidence of Olmec occupation, especially in the Balsas river basin, where Teopantecuanitlan is located. This site is quite enigmatic, since it dates from several centuries earlier than the main populations of the Gulf, a fact which has continued to cause controversy and given rise to the hypothesis that the Olmec culture originated in that region.
Among the best-known expressions of Olmec culture are giant stone heads, sculptured monoliths up to three meters in height and several tons in weight. These feats of Olmec stonecutting are especially impressive when one considers that Mesoamericans lacked iron tools and that the heads are at sites dozens of kilometers from the quarries where their basalt was mined. The function of these monuments is unknown. Some authors propose that they were commemorative monuments for notable players of the ballgame, and others that they were images of the Olmec governing elite.
The Olmec are also known for their small carvings made of jade and other greenstones. So many of the Olmec figurines and sculptures contain representations of the were-jaguar, that, according to José María Covarrubias, they could be forerunners of the worship of the rain god, or maybe a predecessor of the future Tezcatlipoca in his manifestation as Tepeyolohtli, the "Heart of the Mountain"
The exact causes of the Olmec decline are unknown.
In the Pacific lowlands of the Maya Area, Takalik Abaj c. 800 BCE, Izapa c. 700 BCE, and Chocola c. 600 BCE, along with Kaminaljuyú c. 800 BCE, in the central Highlands of Guatemala, advanced in the direction of what would be the Classic Maya culture. Apart from the West, where the tradition of the Tumbas de tiro had taken root, in all the regions of Mesoamerica the cities grew in wealth, with monumental constructions carried out according to urban plans that were surprisingly complex. La Danta in El Mirador, the San Bartolo murals, and the circular pyramid of Cuicuilco date from this time, as do the central plaza of Monte Albán and the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan.
Toward the end of the Preclassic period, political and commercial hegemony shifted to the population centers in the Valley of Mexico. Around Lake Texcoco there existed a number of villages that grew into true cities: Tlatilco and Cuicuilco are examples. The former was found on the northern bank of the lake, while the latter was on the slopes of the mountainous region of Ajusco. Tlatilco maintained strong relationships with the cultures of the West, so much so that Cuicuilco controlled commerce in the Maya area, Oaxaca, and the Gulf coast. The rivalry between the two cities ended with the decline of Tlatilco. Meanwhile, at Monte Albán in Oaxaca, the Zapotec had begun developing culturally independent of the Olmec, adopting aspects of that culture and making their own contributions as well.
In Peten, the great Classic Maya cities of Tikal, Uaxactun, and Seibal, began their growth at c. 300 BCE.
Cuicuilco's hegemony over the valley declined in the period 100 BCE to 1 CE. As Cuicuilco declined, Teotihuacan began to grow in importance. The next two centuries marked the period in which the so-called City of the gods consolidated its power, becoming the premier Mesoamerican city of the first millennium, and the principal political, economic, and cultural center in Central Mexico for the next seven centuries.
Classic period
The Classic period of Mesoamerica includes the years from 250 to 900 CE. The end point of this period varied from region to region: for example, in the center of Mexico it is related to the fall of the regional centers of the late Classic (sometimes called Epiclassic) period, toward the year 900; in the Gulf, with the decline of El Tajín, in the year 800; in the Maya area, with the abandonment of the highland cities in the 9th century; and in Oaxaca, with the disappearance of Monte Albán around 850. Normally, the Classic period in Mesoamerica is characterized as the stage in which the arts, science, urbanism, architecture, and social organization reached their peak. This period was also dominated by the influence of Teotihuacan throughout the region, and the competition between the different Mesoamerican states led to continuous warfare.
This period of Mesoamerican history can be divided into three phases. Early, from 250 to 550 CE; Middle, from 550 to 700; and Late, from 700 to 900. The early Classic period began with the expansion of Teotihuacan, which led to its control over the principal trade routes of northern Mesoamerica. During this time, the process of urbanization that started in the last centuries of the early Preclassic period was consolidated. The principal centers of this phase were Monte Albán, Kaminaljuyu, Ceibal, Tikal, and Calakmul, and then Teotihuacan, in which 80 per cent of the 200,000 inhabitants of the Lake Texcoco basin were concentrated.
The cities of this era were characterized by their multi-ethnic composition, which entailed the cohabitation in the same population centers of people with different languages, cultural practices, and places of origin. During this period the alliances between the regional political elites were strengthened, especially for those allied with Teotihuacan. Also, social differentiation became more pronounced: a small dominant group ruled over the majority of the population. This majority was forced to pay tribute and to participate in the building of public structures such as irrigation systems, religious edifices, and means of communication. The growth of the cities could not have happened without advances in agricultural methods and the strengthening of trade networks involving not only the peoples of Mesoamerica, but also the distant cultures of Oasisamerica.
The arts of Mesoamerica reached their high-point in this era. Especially notable are the Maya stelae (carved pillars), exquisite monuments commemorating the stories of the Royal families, the rich corpus of polychrome ceramics, mural painting, and music. In Teotihuacan, architecture made great advances: the Classic style was defined by the construction of pyramidal bases that sloped upward in a step-wise fashion. The Teotihuacan architectural style was reproduced and modified in other cities throughout Mesoamerica, the clearest examples being the Zapotec capital of Monte Alban and Kaminal Juyú in Guatemala. Centuries later, long after Teotihuacan was abandoned c. 700 CE, cities of the Postclassic era followed the style of Teotihuacan construction, especially Tula, Tenochtitlan, and Chichén Itzá.
Many scientific advances were also achieved during this period. The Maya refined their calendar, script, and mathematics to their highest level of development. Writing came to be used throughout the Mayan area, although it was still regarded as a noble activity and practiced only by noble scribes, painters, and priests. Using a similar system of writing, other cultures developed their own scripts, the most notable examples being those of the Ñuiñe culture and the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, although the Mayan system was the only fully developed writing system in Precolumbian America. Astronomy remained a matter of vital significance because of its importance for agriculture, the economic basis of Mesoamerican society, and to predict events in the future such as lunar and solar eclipses, an important feature for the rulers, proving to the commoners their links with the heavenly world.
The Middle Classic period ended in Northern Mesoamerica with the decline of Teotihuacan. This allowed other regional power centers to flourish and compete for control of trade routes and natural resources. In this way the late Classic era commenced. Political fragmentation during this era meant no city had complete hegemony. Various population movements occurred, caused by the incursion of groups from Aridoamerica and other northern regions, who pushed the older populations of Mesoamerica south. Among these new groups were the Nahua, who would later found the cities of Tula and Tenochtitlan, the two most important capitals of the Postclassic era. In addition, southern peoples established themselves in the center of Mexico, including the Olmec-Xicalanca, who came from the Yucatán Peninsula and founded Cacaxtla and Xochicalco.
In the Maya region, Tikal, an ally of Teotihuacan, experienced a decline, the so-called Tikal Hiatus, after being defeated by Dos Pilas, and Caracol, ally of Calakmul, lasted about another 100 years. During this hiatus, the cities of Dos Pilas, Piedras Negras, Caracol, Calakmul, Palenque, Copán, and Yaxchilán were consolidated. These and other city-states of the region found themselves involved in bloody wars with changing alliances, until Tikal defeated, in order, Dos Pilas, Caracol, with the help of Yaxha and El Naranjo, Waka, Calakmul's last ally, and finally Calakmul itself, an event that took place in 732 with the sacrifice of Yuknom Cheen's son in Tikal. That led to construction of monumental architecture in Tikal, from 740 to 810; the last date documented there was 899. The ruin of the Classic Maya civilization in the northern lowlands, begun at La Passion states such as Dos Pilas, Aguateca, Ceibal and Cancuén, c. 760, followed by the Usumacinta system cities of Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, and Palenque, following a path from south to north.
Toward the end of the late Classic period, the Maya stopped recording the years using the Long Count calendar, and many of their cities were burned and abandoned to the jungle. Meanwhile, in the Southern Highlands, Kaminal Juyú continued its growth until 1200. In Oaxaca, Monte Alban reached its apex c. 750 and finally succumbed toward the end of the 9th century for reasons that are still unclear. Its fate was not much different from that of other cities such as La Quemada in the north and Teotihuacan in the center: it was burned and abandoned. In the last century of the Classic era, hegemony in the valley of Oaxaca passed to Lambityeco, several kilometers to the east.
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan ("The City of the Gods" in Nahuatl) originated toward the end of the Preclassic period, c. 100 CE. Very little is known about its founders, but it is believed that the Otomí had an important role in the city's development, as they did in the ancient culture of the Valley of Mexico, represented by Tlatilco. Teotihuacan initially competed with Cuicuilco for hegemony in the area. In this political and economic battle, Teotihuacan was aided by its control of the obsidian deposits in the Navaja mountains in Hidalgo. The decline of Cuicuilco is still a mystery, but it is known that a large part of the former inhabitants resettled in Teotihuacan some years before the eruption of Xitle, which covered the southern town in lava.
Once free of competition in the area of the Lake of Mexico, Teotihuacan experienced an expansion phase that made it one of the largest cities of its time, not just in Mesoamerica but in the entire world. During this period of growth, it attracted the vast majority of those then living in the Valley of Mexico.
Teotihuacan was completely dependent on agricultural activity, primarily the cultivation of maize, beans, and squash, the Mesoamerican agricultural trinity. However, its political and economic hegemony was based on outside goods for which it enjoyed a monopoly: Anaranjado ceramics, produced in the Poblano–Tlaxcalteca valley, and the mineral deposits of the Hidalgan mountains. Both were highly valued throughout Mesoamerica and were exchanged for luxury merchandise of the highest caliber, from places as far away as New Mexico and Guatemala. Because of this, Teotihuacan became the hub of the Mesoamerican trade network. Its partners were Monte Albán and Tikal in the southeast, Matacapan on the Gulf coast, Altavista in the north, and Tingambato in the west.
Teotihuacan refined the Mesoamerican pantheon of deities, whose origins dated from the time of the Olmec. Of special importance were the worship of Quetzalcoatl and Tláloc, agricultural deities. Trade links promoted the spread of these cults to other Mesoamerican societies, who took and transformed them. It was thought that Teotihuacan society had no knowledge of writing, but as Duverger demonstrates, the writing system of Teotihuacan was extremely pictographic, to the point that writing was confused with drawing.
The fall of Teotihuacan is associated with the emergence of city-states within the confines of the central area of Mexico. It is thought that these were able to flourish due to the decline of Teotihuacan, though events may have occurred in the opposite order: the cities of Cacaxtla, Xochicalco, Teotenango, and El Tajín may have first increased in power and then were able to economically strangle Teotihuacan, trapped as it was in the center of the valley without access to trade routes. This occurred around 600 CE, and even though people continued to live there for another century and a half, the city was eventually destroyed and abandoned by its inhabitants, who took refuge in places such as Culhuacán and Azcapotzalco, on the shores of Lake Texcoco.
The Maya in the Classic period
The Maya created one of the most developed and best-known Mesoamerican cultures. Although authors such as Michael D. Coe believe that the Maya culture is completely different from the surrounding cultures, many elements present in Maya culture are shared by the rest of Mesoamerica, including the use of two calendars, the base 20 number system, the cultivation of corn, human sacrifice, and certain myths, such as that of the fifth sun and cultic worship, including that of the Feathered Serpent and the rain god, who in the Yucatec Maya language is called Chaac.
The beginnings of Maya culture date from the development of Kaminaljuyu, in the Highlands of Guatemala, during the middle Preclassic period. According to Richard D. Hansen and others researchers, the first true political states in Mesoamerica consisted of Takalik Abaj, in the Pacific Lowlands, and the cities of El Mirador, Nakbe, Cival and San Bartolo, among others, in the Mirador Basin and Peten. Archaeologists believe that this development happened centuries later, around the 1st century BCE, but recent research in the Petén basin and Belize have proven them wrong. The archaeological evidence indicates that the Maya never formed a united empire; they were instead organized into small chiefdoms that were constantly at war. López Austin and López Luján have said that the Preclassic Maya were characterized by their bellicose nature. They probably had a greater mastery of the art of war than Teotihuacan, yet the idea that they were a peaceful society given to religious contemplation, which persists to this day, was particularly promoted by early- and mid-20th century Mayanists such as Sylvanus G. Morley and J. Eric S. Thompson. Confirmation that the Maya practiced human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism came much later (e.g. by the murals of Bonampak).
Writing and the Maya calendar were quite early developments in the great Maya cities, c. 1000 BCE, and some of the oldest commemorative monuments are from sites in the Maya region. Archaeologists once thought that the Maya sites functioned only as ceremonial centers and that the common people lived in the surrounding villages. However, more recent excavations indicate the Maya sites enjoyed urban services as extensive as those of Tikal, believed to be as large as 400,000 inhabitants at its peak, circa 750, Copan, and others. Drainage, aqueducts, and pavement, or Sakbe, meaning "white road", united major centers since the Preclassic. The construction of these sites was carried out on the basis of a highly stratified society, dominated by the noble class, who at the same time were the political, military, and religious elite.
The elite controlled agriculture, practiced by means of mixed systems of ground-clearing, and intensive platforms around the cities. As in the rest of Mesoamerica, they imposed on the lowest classes taxes—in kind or in labor—that permitted them to concentrate sufficient resources for the construction of public monuments, which legitimized the power of the elites and the social hierarchy. During the Early Classic Period, c. 370, the Maya political elite sustained strong ties to Teotihuacan, and it is possible that Tikal may have been an important ally of Teotihuacan that controlled commerce with the Gulf coast and highlands. Finally, it seems the great drought that ravaged Central America in the 9th century, internal wars, ecological disasters, and famine destroyed the Maya political system, which led to popular uprisings and the defeat of the dominant political groups. Many cities were abandoned, remaining unknown until the 19th century, when descendants of the Maya led a group of European and American archaeologists to these cities, which had been swallowed over the centuries by the jungle.
Postclassic period
The Postclassic period is the time between the year 900 and the conquest of Mesoamerica by the Spaniards, which occurred between 1521 and 1697. It was a period in which military activity became of great importance. The political elites associated with the priestly class were relieved of power by groups of warriors. In turn, at least a half-century before the arrival of the Spaniards, the warrior class was yielding its positions of privilege to a very powerful group that was unconnected to the nobility: the pochtecas, merchants who obtained great political power by virtue of their economic power.
The Postclassic period is divided into two phases. The first is the early Postclassic, which includes the 10th to the 13th century, and is characterized by the Toltec hegemony of Tula. The 12th century marks the beginning of the late Postclassic period, which begins with the arrival of the Chichimec, linguistically related to the Toltecs and the Mexica, who established themselves in the Valley of Mexico in 1325, following a two-century pilgrimage from Aztlán, the exact location of which is unknown. Many of the social changes of this final period of Mesoamerican civilization are related to the migratory movements of the northern peoples. These peoples came from Oasisamerica, Aridoamerica, and the northern region of Mesoamerica, driven by climate changes that threatened their survival. The migrations from the north caused, in turn, the displacement of peoples who had been rooted in Mesoamerica for centuries; some of them left for Centroamerica.
There were many cultural changes during that time. One of them was the expansion of metallurgy, imported from South America, and whose oldest remnants in Mesoamerica come from the West, as is the case also with ceramics. The Mesoamericans did not achieve great facility with metals; in fact, their use was rather limited (a few copper axes, needles, and above all jewelry). The most advanced techniques of Mesoamerican metallurgy were developed by the Mixtec, who produced fine, exquisitely handcrafted articles. Remarkable advances were made in architecture as well. The use of nails in architecture was introduced to support the sidings of the temples, the mortar was improved, and the use of columns and stone roofs was widespread—something that only the Maya had used during the Classic period. In agriculture, the system of irrigation became more complex; in the Valley of Mexico especially, chinampas were used extensively by the Mexica, who built a city of 200,000 around them.
The political system also underwent important changes. During the early Postclassic period, the warlike political elites legitimized their position by means of their adherence to a complex set of religious beliefs that López Austin called zuyuanidad. According to this system, the ruling classes proclaimed themselves the descendants of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, one of the creative forces, and a cultural hero in Mesoamerican mythology. They likewise declared themselves the heirs of a no less mythical city, called Tollan in Nahuatl, and Zuyuá in Maya (from which López Austin derives the name for the belief system). Many of the important capitals of the time identified themselves with this name (for example, Tollan Xicocotitlan, Tollan Chollollan, Tollan Teotihuacan). The Tollan of myth was for a long time identified with Tula, in Hidalgo state, but Enrique Florescano and López Austin have claimed that this has no basis. Florescano states that the mythical Tollan was Teotihuacan; López Austin argues that Tollan was simply a product of the Mesoamerican religious imagination. Another feature of the zuyuano system was the formation of alliances with other city-states that were controlled by groups having the same ideology; such was the case with the League of Mayapan in Yucatán, and the Mixtec confederation of Lord Eight Deer, based in the mountains of Oaxaca. These early Postclassic societies can be characterized by their military nature and multi-ethnic populations.
However, the fall of Tula checked the power of the zuyuano system, which finally broke down with the dissolution of the League of Mayapán, the Mixtec state, and the abandonment of Tula. Mesoamerica received new immigrants from the north, and although these groups were related to the ancient Toltecs, they had a completely different ideology than the existing residents. The final arrivals were the Mexica, who established themselves on a small island on Lake Texcoco under the dominion of the Texpanecs of Azcapotzalco. This group would, in the following decades, conquer a large part of Mesoamerica, creating a united and centralized state whose only rivals were the Purépecha Empire of Michoacán. Neither one of them could defeat the other, and it seems that a type of non-aggression pact was established between the two peoples. When the Spaniards arrived many of the peoples controlled by the Mexica no longer wished to continue under their rule. Therefore, they took advantage of the opportunity presented by the Europeans, agreeing to support them, thinking that in return they would gain their freedom, and not knowing that this would lead to the subjugation of all of the Mesoamerican world.
Aztec
Of all prehispanic Mesoamerican cultures, the best-known is the Mexica of the city-state of Tenochtitlan, also known as the Aztecs. The Aztec Empire dominated central Mexico for close to a century before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire (1519–1521).
The Mexica people came from the north or the west of Mesoamerica. The Nayaritas believed that the mythic Aztlán was located on the island of Mexcaltitán. Some hypothesize that this mythical island could have been located somewhere in the state of the Zacatecas, and it has even been proposed that it was as far north as New Mexico. Whatever the case, they were probably not far removed from the classic Mesoamerican tradition. In fact, they shared many characteristics with the people of central Mesoamerica. The Mexicas spoke Nahuatl, the same language spoken by the Toltecs and the Chichimecs who came before them.
The date of the departure from Aztlán is debated, with suggested dates of 1064, 1111, and 1168. After much wandering, the Mexicas arrived at the basin of the Valley of Mexico in the 14th century. They established themselves at various points along the bank of the river (for example, Culhuacán and Tizapán), before settling on the Islet of Mexico, protected by Tezozómoc, king of the Texpanecas. The city of Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325 as an ally of Azcapotzalco, but less than a century later, in 1430, the Mexicas joined with Texcoco and Tlacopan to wage war against Azcapotzalco and emerged victoriously. This gave birth to the Triple Alliance that replaced the ancient confederation ruled by the Tecpanecas (which included Coatlinchan and Culhuacán).
In the earliest days of the Triple Alliance, the Mexica initiated an expansionist phase that led them to control a good part of Mesoamerica. During this time only a few regions retained their independence: Tlaxcala (Nahua), Meztitlán (Otomí), Teotitlán del Camino (Cuicatec), Tututepec (Mixtec), Tehuantepec (Zapotec), and the northwest (ruled at that time by their rivals, the Tarascans). The provinces controlled by the Triple Alliance were forced to pay a tribute to Tenochtitlan; these payments are recorded in another codex known as the Matrícula de Los tributos (Registry of Tribute). This document specifies the quantity and type of every item that each province had to pay to the Mexicas.
The Mexica state was conquered by the Spanish forces of Hernán Cortés and their Tlaxcalan and Totonac allies in 1521. The defeat of Mesoamerica was complete when, in 1697, Tayasal was burned and razed by the Spanish.
Postconquest era
Colonial Period, 1521–1821
With the destruction of the superstructure of the Aztec Empire in 1521, central Mexico was brought under the control of the Spanish Empire. Over the course of the succeeding decades, virtually all of Mesoamerica was brought under Spanish control, which resulted in a fairly uniform policies toward indigenous populations. Spaniards' established the fallen Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan as Mexico City, the seat of government for the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The great initial project for Spanish conquerors was converting the indigenous peoples to Christianity, the only permitted religion. This endeavor was undertaken by Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian friars immediately after conquest. Divvying up of the spoils of the war was of key interest to the Spanish conquerors. The major ongoing benefit to conquerors after the obvious material plunder was to appropriate the existing system of tribute and obligatory labor to the Spanish victors. This was done by the establishment of the encomienda, which awarded the tribute and labor from individual indigenous polities to particular Spanish conquerors. In that way, the economic and political arrangements at the level of the indigenous community were largely kept intact. The indigenous polity (altepetl) in the Nahua area, cah in the Maya region was the key to cultural survival of indigenous under Spanish rule, while at the same time also providing the structure for their economic exploitation. Spaniards classified all indigenous peoples as "Indians" (indios), a term that the indigenous peoples never embraced. They were classified legally as being under the jurisdiction of the República de Indios. They were legally separated from the República de Españoles, which comprised Europeans, Africans, and mixed-race castas. In general, indigenous communities in Mesoamerica kept much of their prehispanic social and political structures, with indigenous elites continuing to function as leaders in their communities. These elites acted as intermediaries with the Spanish crown, so long as they remained loyal. There were significant changes in Mesoamerican communities during the colonial era, but during the entire colonial period Mesoamericans were the largest single non-Hispanic group in the colonial Mexico, far larger than the entire Hispanic sphere. Although the Spanish colonial system imposed many changes on Mesoamerican peoples, they did not force the acquisition of Spanish and Mesoamerican languages continued to flourish to the present day.
Postcolonial Period, 1821–present
Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, with some participation of indigenous in decade-long political struggles, but for their own motivations. With the fall of colonial government, the Mexican state abolished distinctions between ethnic groups, that is the separate governance for indigenous populations in the República de Indios. The new sovereign country made, in theory at least, all Mexicans citizens of the independent nation-state rather than vassals of the Spanish crown, with different legal standing. A long period of political chaos in the post-independence period among white elites largely did not affect indigenous peoples and their communities. Mexican conservatives were largely in charge of the national government and kept in place practices from the old colonial order. However, in the 1850s, Mexican liberals gained power and attempted to formulate and implement reforms that did affect indigenous communities, as well as the Catholic Church. The Mexican Constitution of 1857 abolished the ability of corporations to hold land, which aimed at taking assets out of the hands of the Catholic Church in Mexico and forcing indigenous communities to divide their community-held lands. Liberals' aimed at turning indigenous community members pursuing subsistence farming into yeoman farmers holding their own land. Mexican conservatives repudiated the liberal reform laws since they attacked the Catholic Church, but indigenous communities also participated in a three-year civil war. In the late nineteenth century, liberal army general Porfirio Díaz, a Mestizo did much for modernizing Mexico and integrating it into the world economy, but there were renewed pressures on indigenous communities and their lands. These exploded in certain areas of Mexico during the ten-year long civil war, the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). In the aftermath of the Revolution, the Mexican government attempted simultaneously shore up indigenous culture, while at the same time also attempting to integrate the indigenous as citizens of the nation, turning indigenous into peasants (campesinos). This has proved more difficult than policy planners imagined, with resilient indigenous communities continuing to struggle for rights within the nation.
See also
Regional communications in ancient Mesoamerica
History of Central America, the colonial to post-colonial period
History of the west coast of North America
List of pre-Columbian civilizations
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
Spanish conquest of Yucatán
References
Bibliography
Duverger, Christian (1999): Mesoamérica, arte y antropología. CONACULTA-Landucci Editores. Paris.
Luján Muñoz, Jorge; Chinchilla Aguilar, Ernesto; Zilbermann de Luján, Maria Cristina; Herrarte, Alberto; Contreras, J. Daniel. (1996) Historia General de Guatemala. .
Miller, Mary Ellen. (2001). El arte de mesoamérica. "Colecciones El mundo del arte". Ediciones Destino. Barcelona, España. .
Ramírez, Felipe (2009). "La Altiplanicie Central, del Preclásico al Epiclásico"/en El México Antiguo. De Tehuantepec a Baja California/Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo (coordinador)/CIDE-FCE/México.
External links
The Civilizations of Ancient Mesoamerica (archived 12 December 2009)
Mesoamerica
History, Myth, and Migration in Mesoamerica (archived 24 June 2010)
Mesoweb Research Center
FAMSI, Foundation for Mesoamerican Study (archived 4 September 2019)
European Mayanist
The Mirador Basin Project
Guatemala Cradle of the Maya Civilization (archived 18 July 2007)
Archaeological cultures of North America
Archaeology timelines
Timelines of North American history
History of Central America by period
Mexico history-related lists
Chronology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concussion
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Concussion
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A concussion, also known as a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is a head injury that temporarily affects brain functioning. Symptoms may include loss of consciousness; memory loss; headaches; difficulty with thinking, concentration, or balance; nausea; blurred vision; dizziness; sleep disturbances, and mood changes. Any of these symptoms may begin immediately, or appear days after the injury. Concussion should be suspected if a person indirectly or directly hits their head and experiences any of the symptoms of concussion. Symptoms of a concussion may be delayed by 1–2 days after the accident. It is not unusual for symptoms to last 2 weeks in adults and 4 weeks in children. Fewer than 10% of sports-related concussions among children are associated with loss of consciousness.
Common causes include motor vehicle collisions, falls, sports injuries, and bicycle accidents. Risk factors include physical violence, drinking alcohol and a prior history of concussion. The mechanism of injury involves either a direct blow to the head or forces elsewhere on the body that are transmitted to the head. This is believed to result in neuron dysfunction, as there are increased glucose requirements, but not enough blood supply. A thorough evaluation by a qualified medical provider working in their scope of practice (such as a physician or nurse practitioner) is required to rule out life-threatening head injuries, injuries to the cervical spine, and neurological conditions and to use information obtained from the medical evaluation to diagnose a concussion. Glasgow coma scale score 13 to 15, loss of consciousness for less than 30 minutes, and memory loss for less than 24 hours may be used to rule out moderate or severe traumatic brain injuries. Diagnostic imaging such as a CT scan or an MRI may be required to rule out severe head injuries. Routine imaging is not required to diagnose concussion.
Prevention of concussions includes the use of a helmet when bicycling or motorbiking. Treatment includes physical and mental rest for 1–2 days, with a gradual step-wise return to activities, school, and work. Prolonged periods of rest may slow recovery and result in greater depression and anxiety. Paracetamol (acetaminophen) or NSAIDs may be recommended to help with a headache. Prescribed aerobic exercise may improve recovery. Physiotherapy may be useful for persisting balance problems, headache, or whiplash; cognitive behavioral therapy may be useful for mood changes. Evidence to support the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and chiropractic therapy is lacking.
Worldwide, concussions are estimated to affect more than 3.5 per 1,000 people a year. Concussions are classified as mild traumatic brain injuries and are the most common type of TBIs. Males and young adults are most commonly affected. Outcomes are generally good. Another concussion before the symptoms of a prior concussion have resolved is associated with worse outcomes. Repeated concussions may also increase the risk in later life of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Parkinson's disease and depression.
Signs and symptoms
Concussion symptoms vary between people and include physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms. Symptoms may appear immediately or be delayed by 1–2 days. Delayed onset of symptoms may still be serious and require a medical assessment. Up to one-third of people with concussion experience longer or persisting concussion symptoms, also known as post concussion syndrome or persisting symptoms after concussion, which is defined as concussion symptoms lasting for 4 weeks or longer in children and adolescents, and symptoms lasting for more than 14 days in an adult. The severity of the initial symptoms is the strongest predictor of recovery time in adults.
Physical
Headaches are the most common mTBI symptom. Others include dizziness, vomiting, nausea, lack of motor coordination, difficulty balancing, or other problems with movement or sensation. Visual symptoms include light sensitivity, seeing bright lights, blurred vision, and double vision. Tinnitus, or a ringing in the ears, is also commonly reported. In one in about seventy concussions, concussive convulsions occur, but seizures that take place during or immediately after a concussion are not "post-traumatic seizures", and, unlike post-traumatic seizures, are not predictive of post-traumatic epilepsy, which requires some form of structural brain damage, not just a momentary disruption in normal brain functioning. Concussive convulsions are thought to result from temporary loss or inhibition of motor function and are not associated either with epilepsy or with more serious structural damage. They are not associated with any particular sequelae and have the same high rate of favorable outcomes as concussions without convulsions.
Cognitive and emotional
Cognitive symptoms include confusion, disorientation, and difficulty focusing attention. Loss of consciousness may occur, but is not necessarily correlated with the severity of the concussion if it is brief. Post-traumatic amnesia, in which events following the injury cannot be recalled, is a hallmark of concussions. Confusion may be present immediately or may develop over several minutes. A person may repeat the same questions, be slow to respond to questions or directions, have a vacant stare, or have slurred or incoherent speech. Other concussion symptoms include changes in sleeping patterns and difficulty with reasoning, concentrating, and performing everyday activities.
A concussion can result in changes in mood including crankiness, loss of interest in favorite activities or items, tearfulness, and displays of emotion that are inappropriate to the situation. Common symptoms in concussed children include restlessness, lethargy, and irritability.
Mechanism
Forces
The brain is surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid, which protects it from light trauma. More severe impacts, or the forces associated with rapid acceleration, may not be absorbed by this cushion. Concussions, and other head-related injuries, occur when external forces acting on the head are transferred to the brain. Such forces can occur when the head is struck by an object or surface (a 'direct impact'), or when the torso rapidly changes position (i.e. from a body check) and force is transmitted to the head (an 'indirect impact').
Forces may cause linear, rotational, or angular movement of the brain or a combination of them. In rotational movement, the head turns around its center of gravity, and in angular movement, it turns on an axis, not through its center of gravity. The amount of rotational force is thought to be the major component in concussion and its severity.
As of 2007, studies with athletes have shown that the amount of force and the location of the impact are not necessarily correlated with the severity of the concussion or its symptoms, and have called into question the threshold for concussion previously thought to exist at around 70–75 g.
The parts of the brain most affected by rotational forces are the midbrain and diencephalon. It is thought that the forces from the injury disrupt the normal cellular activities in the reticular activating system located in these areas and that this disruption produces the loss of consciousness often seen in concussion. Other areas of the brain that may be affected include the upper part of the brain stem, the fornix, the corpus callosum, the temporal lobe, and the frontal lobe. Angular accelerations of 4600, 5900, or 7900 rad/s2 are estimated to have 25, 50, or 80% risk of mTBI respectively.
Pathophysiology
In both animals and humans, mTBI can alter the brain's physiology for hours to years, setting into motion a variety of pathological events. As one example, in animal models, after an initial increase in glucose metabolism, there is a subsequent reduced metabolic state which may persist for up to four weeks after injury. Though these events are thought to interfere with neuronal and brain function, the metabolic processes that follow concussion are reversible in a large majority of affected brain cells; however, a few cells may die after the injury.
Included in the cascade of events unleashed in the brain by concussion is impaired neurotransmission, loss of regulation of ions, deregulation of energy use and cellular metabolism, and a reduction in cerebral blood flow. Excitatory neurotransmitters, chemicals such as glutamate that serve to stimulate nerve cells, are released in excessive amounts. The resulting cellular excitation causes neurons to fire excessively. This creates an imbalance of ions such as potassium and calcium across the cell membranes of neurons (a process like excitotoxicity).
At the same time, cerebral blood flow is relatively reduced for unknown reasons, though the reduction in blood flow is not as severe as it is in ischemia. Thus cells get less glucose than they normally do, which causes an "energy crisis".
Concurrently with these processes, the activity of mitochondria may be reduced, which causes cells to rely on anaerobic metabolism to produce energy, increasing levels of the byproduct lactate.
For a period of minutes to days after a concussion, the brain is especially vulnerable to changes in intracranial pressure, blood flow, and anoxia. According to studies performed on animals (which are not always applicable to humans), large numbers of neurons can die during this period in response to slight, normally innocuous changes in blood flow.
Concussion involves diffuse (as opposed to focal) brain injury, meaning that the dysfunction occurs over a widespread area of the brain rather than in a particular spot. It is thought to be a milder type of diffuse axonal injury, because axons may be injured to a minor extent due to stretching. Animal studies in which rodents were concussed have revealed lifelong neuropathological consequences such as ongoing axonal degeneration and neuroinflammation in subcortical white matter tracts. Axonal damage has been found in the brains of concussion patients who died from other causes, but inadequate blood flow to the brain due to other injuries may have contributed. Findings from a study of the brains of deceased NFL athletes who received concussions suggest that lasting damage is done by such injuries. This damage, the severity of which increases with the cumulative number of concussions sustained, can lead to a variety of other health issues.
The debate over whether concussion is a functional or structural phenomenon is ongoing. Structural damage has been found in the mildly traumatically injured brains of animals, but it is not clear whether these findings would apply to humans. Such changes in brain structure could be responsible for certain symptoms such as visual disturbances, but other sets of symptoms, especially those of a psychological nature, are more likely to be caused by reversible pathophysiological changes in cellular function that occur after concussion, such as alterations in neurons' biochemistry. These reversible changes could also explain why dysfunction is frequently temporary. A task force of head injury experts called the Concussion In Sport Group met in 2001 and decided that "concussion may result in neuropathological changes but the acute clinical symptoms largely reflect a functional disturbance rather than structural injury."
Using animal studies, the pathology of a concussion seems to start with mechanical shearing and stretching forces disrupting the cell membrane of nerve cells through "mechanoporation". This results in potassium outflow from within the cell into the extracellular space with the subsequent release of excitatory neurotransmitters including glutamate which leads to enhanced potassium extrusion, in turn resulting in sustained depolarization, impaired nerve activity and potential nerve damage. Human studies have failed to identify changes in glutamate concentration immediately post-mTBI, though disruptions have been seen 3 days to 2 weeks post-injury. In an effort to restore ion balance, the sodium-potassium ion pumps increase activity, which results in excessive ATP (adenosine triphosphate) consumption and glucose utilization, quickly depleting glucose stores within the cells. Simultaneously, inefficient oxidative metabolism leads to anaerobic metabolism of glucose and increased lactate accumulation. There is a resultant local acidosis in the brain and increased cell membrane permeability, leading to local swelling. After this increase in glucose metabolism, there is a subsequent lower metabolic state which may persist for up to 4 weeks after injury. A completely separate pathway involves a large amount of calcium accumulating in cells, which may impair oxidative metabolism and begin further biochemical pathways that result in cell death. Again, both of these main pathways have been established from animal studies and the extent to which they apply to humans is still somewhat unclear.
Diagnosis
Head trauma recipients are initially assessed to exclude a more severe emergency such as an intracranial hemorrhage or other serious head or neck injuries. This includes the "ABCs" (airway, breathing, circulation) and stabilization of the cervical spine which is assumed to be injured in any athlete who is found to be unconscious after head or neck injury. Indications that screening for more serious injury is needed include 'red flag symptoms' or 'concussion danger signs': worsening headaches, persisting vomiting, increasing disorientation or a deteriorating level of consciousness, seizures, and unequal pupil size. Those with such symptoms, or those who are at higher risk of a more serious brain injury, require an emergency medical assessment. Brain imaging such as a CT scan or MRI may be suggested, but should be avoided unless there are progressive neurological symptoms, focal neurological findings, or concern of skull fracture on exam.
Diagnosis of concussion requires an assessment performed by a physician or nurse practitioner to rule out severe injuries to the brain and cervical spine, mental health conditions, or other medical conditions. Diagnosis is based on physical and neurological examination findings, duration of unconsciousness (usually less than 30 minutes) and post-traumatic amnesia (usually less than 24 hours), and the Glasgow Coma Scale (people with mTBI have scores of 13 to 15). A CT scan or MRI is not required to diagnose concussion. Neuropsychological tests such as the SCAT5/child SCAT5 may be suggested measure cognitive function. Such tests may be administered hours, days, or weeks after the injury, or at different times to demonstrate any trend. Some athletes are also being tested pre-season (pre-season baseline testing) to provide a baseline for comparison in the event of an injury, though this may not reduce risk or affect return to play and baseline testing is not required or suggested for most children and adults.
If the Glasgow coma scale is less than 15 at two hours or less than 14 at any time, a CT is recommended. In addition, a CT scan is more likely to be performed if observation after discharge is not assured or intoxication is present, there is suspected increased risk for bleeding, age greater than 60, or less than 16. Most concussions, without complication, cannot be detected with MRI or CT scans. However, changes have been reported on MRI and SPECT imaging in those with concussion and normal CT scans, and post-concussion syndrome may be associated with abnormalities visible on SPECT and PET scans. Mild head injury may or may not produce abnormal EEG readings. A blood test known as the Brain Trauma Indicator was approved in the United States in 2018 and may be able to rule out the risk of intracranial bleeding and thus the need for a CT scan for adults.
Concussion may be under-diagnosed because of the lack of the highly noticeable signs and symptoms while athletes may minimize their injuries to remain in the competition. Direct impact to the head is not required for a concussion diagnosis, as other bodily impacts with a subsequent force transmission to the head are also causes. A retrospective survey in 2005 suggested that more than 88% of concussions are unrecognized. Particularly, many younger athletes struggle with identifying their concussions, which often result in the non-disclosure of concussions and consequently under-representing the incidence of concussions in the context of sport.
Diagnosis can be complex because concussion shares symptoms with other conditions. For example, post-concussion symptoms such as cognitive problems may be misattributed to brain injury when, in fact, due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
There are no fluid biomarkers (i.e., blood or urine tests) that are validated for diagnosing concussion in children or adolescents.
Classification
No single definition of concussion, minor head injury, or mild traumatic brain injury is universally accepted. In 2001, the expert Concussion in Sport Group of the first International Symposium on Concussion in Sport defined concussion as "a complex pathophysiological process affecting the brain, induced by traumatic biomechanical forces." It was agreed that concussion typically involves temporary impairment of neurological function that heals by itself within time, and that neuroimaging normally shows no gross structural changes to the brain as the result of the condition.
However, although no structural brain damage occurs according to the classic definition, some researchers have included injuries in which structural damage has occurred, and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence definition includes physiological or physical disruption in the brain's synapses. Also, by definition, concussion has historically involved a loss of consciousness. However, the definition has evolved over time to include a change in consciousness, such as amnesia, although controversy continues about whether the definition should include only those injuries in which loss of consciousness occurs. This debate resurfaces in some of the best-known concussion grading scales, in which those episodes involving loss of consciousness are graded as being more severe than those without.
Definitions of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) were inconsistent until the World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) provided a consistent, authoritative definition across specialties in 1992. Since then, various organizations such as the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have defined mTBI using some combination of loss of consciousness, post-traumatic amnesia, and the Glasgow Coma Scale.
Concussion falls under the classification of mild TBI, but it is not clear whether concussion is implied in mild brain injury or mild head injury. "mTBI" and "concussion" are often treated as synonyms in medical literature but other injuries such as intracranial hemorrhages (e.g. intra-axial hematoma, epidural hematoma, and subdural hematoma) are not necessarily precluded in mTBI or mild head injury, as they are in concussion. mTBI associated with abnormal neuroimaging may be considered "complicated mTBI". "Concussion" can be considered to imply a state in which brain function is temporarily impaired and "mTBI" to imply a pathophysiological state, but in practice, few researchers and clinicians distinguish between the terms. Descriptions of the condition, including the severity and the area of the brain affected, are now used more often than "concussion" in clinical neurology.
Prevention
Prevention of mTBI involves general measures such as wearing seat belts, using airbags in cars, and protective equipment such as helmets for high-risk sports. Older people are encouraged to reduce fall risk by keeping floors free of clutter and wearing thin, flat shoes with hard soles that do not interfere with balance.
Protective equipment such as helmets and other headgear and policy changes such as the banning of body checking in youth hockey leagues have been found to reduce the number and severity of concussions in athletes. Secondary prevention such as a Return to Play Protocol for an athlete may reduce the risk of repeat concussions. New "Head Impact Telemetry System" technology is being placed in helmets to study injury mechanisms and may generate knowledge that will potentially help reduce the risk of concussions among American Football players.
Educational interventions, such as handouts, videos, workshops, and lectures, can improve concussion knowledge of diverse groups, particularly youth athletes and coaches. Strong concussion knowledge may be associated with greater recognition of concussion symptoms, higher rates of concussion reporting behaviors, and reduced body checking-related penalties and injuries, thereby lowering risk of mTBI.
Due to the incidence of concussion in sport, younger athletes often do not disclose concussions and their symptoms. Common reasons for non-disclosure include a lack of awareness of the concussion, the belief that the concussion was not serious enough, and not wanting to leave the game or team due to their injury. Self-reported concussion rates among U-20 and elite rugby union players in Ireland are 45–48%, indicating that many concussions go unreported. Changes to the rules or enforcing existing rules in sports, such as those against "head-down tackling", or "spearing", which is associated with a high injury rate, may also prevent concussions.
Treatment
Adults and children with a suspected concussion require a medical assessment with a doctor or nurse practitioner to confirm the diagnosis of concussion and rule out more serious head injuries. After life-threatening head injuries, injuries to the cervical spine, and neurological conditions are ruled out, exclusion of neck or head injury, observation should be continued for several hours. If repeated vomiting, worsening headache, dizziness, seizure activity, excessive drowsiness, double vision, slurred speech, unsteady walk, or weakness or numbness in arms or legs, or signs of basilar skull fracture develop, immediate assessment in an emergency department is needed. Observation to monitor for worsening condition is an important part of treatment. People may be released after assessment from their primary care medical clinic, hospital, or emergency room to the care of a trusted person with instructions to return if they display worsening symptoms or those that might indicate an emergent condition ("red flag symptoms") such as change in consciousness, convulsions, severe headache, extremity weakness, vomiting, new bleeding or deafness in either or both ears. Education about symptoms, their management, and their normal time course, may lead to an improved outcome.
Rest and return to physical and cognitive activity
Physical and cognitive rest is recommended for the first 24–48 hours following a concussion after which injured persons should gradually start gentle low-risk physical and cognitive activities that do not make current symptoms worse or bring on new symptoms. Any activity for which there is a risk of contact, falling, or bumping the head should be avoided until the person has clearance from a doctor or nurse practitioner. Low-risk activities can be started even while a person has symptoms, as long as the activity does not worsen existing symptoms or bring on new concussion symptoms. Resting completely for longer than 24–48 hours follow concussion has been shown to be associated with longer recovery.
Return-to-school
The resumption of low-risk school activities should begin as soon as the student feels ready and has completed an initial period of cognitive rest of no more than 24–48 hours following the acute injury. Long absences from school are not suggested, however, the return to school should be gradual and step-wise. Prolonged complete mental or physical rest (beyond 24–48 hours after the accident that lead to the concussion) may worsen outcomes, however, rushing back to full school work load before the person is ready, has also been associated with longer-lasting symptoms and an extended recovery time. Students with a suspected concussion are required to see a doctor for an initial medical assessment and for suggestions on recovery, however, medical clearance is not required for a student to return to school. Since students may appear 'normal', continuing education of relevant school personnel may be needed to ensure appropriate accommodations are made such as part-days and extended deadlines. Accommodations should be based on the monitoring of symptoms that are present during the return-to-school transition including headaches, dizziness, vision problems, memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and abnormal behavior. Students must have completely resumed their school activities (without requiring concussion-related academic supports) before returning to full-contact or competitive sports.
Return-to-sport
For persons participating in athletics, it is suggested that participants progress through a series of graded steps. These steps include:
Stage 1 (Immediately after injury): 24–48 hours (maximum) of relative physical and cognitive rest. This can include gentle daily activities such as walking in the house, gentle housework, and light school work that do not make symptoms worse. No sports activities.
Stage 2: Light aerobic activity such as walking or stationary cycling
Stage 3: Sport-specific activities such as running drills and skating drills
Stage 4: Non-contact training drills (exercise, coordination, and cognitive load)
Stage 5: Full-contact practice (requires medical clearance)
Stage 6: Return to full-contact sport or high-risk activities (requires medical clearance)
At each step, the person should not have worsening or new symptoms for at least 24 hours before progressing to the next. If symptoms worsen or new symptoms begin, athletes should drop back to the previous level for at least another 24 hours.
Intercollegiate or professional athletes, are typically followed closely by team athletic trainers during this period but others may not have access to this level of health care and may be sent home with minimal monitoring.
Medications
Medications may be prescribed to treat headaches, sleep problems and depression. Analgesics such as ibuprofen can be taken for headaches, but paracetamol (acetaminophen) is preferred to minimize the risk of intracranial hemorrhage. Concussed individuals are advised not to use alcohol or other drugs that have not been approved by a doctor as they can impede healing. Activation database-guided EEG biofeedback has been shown to return the memory abilities of the concussed individual to levels better than the control group.
About one percent of people who receive treatment for mTBI need surgery for a brain injury.
Return to work
Determining the ideal time for a person to return to work will depend on personal factors and job-related factors including the intensity of the job and the risk of falling or hitting one's head at work during recovery. After the required initial recovery period of complete rest (24–48 hours after the concussion began), gradually and safely returning to the workplace with accommodations and support in place, should be prioritized over staying home and resting for long periods of time, to promote physical recovery and reduce the risk of people becoming socially isolated. The person should work with their employer to design a step-wise "return-to-work" plan. For those with a high-risk job, medical clearance may be required before resuming an activity that could lead to another head injury. Students should have completed the full return-to-school progression with no academic accommodations related to the concussion required before starting to return to part-time work.
Prognosis
The majority of children and adults fully recover from a concussion, however some may experience a prolonged recovery. There is no single physical test, blood test (or fluid biomarkers), or imaging test that can be used to determine when a person has fully recovered from concussion.
A person's recovery may be influenced by a variety of factors that include age at the time of injury, intellectual abilities, family environment, social support system, occupational status, coping strategies, and financial circumstances. Factors such as a previous head injury or a coexisting medical condition have been found to predict longer-lasting post-concussion symptoms. Other factors that may lengthen recovery time after mTBI include psychological problems such as substance abuse or clinical depression, poor health before the injury or additional injuries sustained during it, and life stress. Longer periods of amnesia or loss of consciousness immediately after the injury may indicate longer recovery times from residual symptoms. Other strong factors include participation in a contact sport and body mass size.
Pediatric concussion
Most children recover completely from concussion in less than four weeks, however 15–30% of youth may experience symptoms that last longer than a month.
People aged 65+ with concussion
Mild traumatic brain injury recovery time in people over age 65 may have increased complications due to elevated health concerns, or comorbidities. This often results in longer hospitalization duration, poorer cognitive outcomes, and higher mortality rates.
Repeat concussion
For unknown reasons, having had one concussion significantly increases a person's risk of having another. Having previously sustained a sports concussion has been found to be a strong factor increasing the likelihood of a concussion in the future. People who have had a concussion seem more susceptible to another one, particularly if the new injury occurs before symptoms from the previous concussion have completely gone away. It is also a negative process if smaller impacts cause the same symptom severity. Repeated concussions may increase a person's risk in later life for dementia, Parkinson's disease, and depression.
Post-concussion syndrome
In post-concussion syndrome, symptoms do not resolve for weeks, months, or years after a concussion, and may occasionally be permanent. About 10% to 20% of people have post-concussion syndrome for more than a month. Symptoms may include headaches, dizziness, fatigue, anxiety, memory and attention problems, sleep problems, and irritability. Rest, a previously recommended recovery technique, has limited effectiveness. A recommended treatment in both children and adults with symptoms beyond 4 weeks involves an active rehabilitation program with reintroduction of non-contact aerobic activity. Progressive physical exercise has been shown to reduce long-term post-concussive symptoms. Symptoms usually go away on their own within months but may last for years. The question of whether the syndrome is due to structural damage or other factors such as psychological ones, or a combination of these, has long been the subject of debate.
Cumulative effects
As of 1999, cumulative effects of concussions were poorly understood, especially the effects on children. The severity of concussions and their symptoms may worsen with successive injuries, even if a subsequent injury occurs months or years after an initial one. Symptoms may be more severe and changes in neurophysiology can occur with the third and subsequent concussions. As of 2006, studies had conflicting findings on whether athletes have longer recovery times after repeat concussions and whether cumulative effects such as impairment in cognition and memory occur.
Cumulative effects may include chronic traumatic encephalopathy, psychiatric disorders and loss of long-term memory. For example, the risk of developing clinical depression has been found to be significantly greater for retired American football players with a history of three or more concussions than for those with no concussion history. An experience of three or more concussions is associated with a fivefold greater chance of developing Alzheimer's disease earlier and a threefold greater chance of developing memory deficits.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or "CTE", is an example of the cumulative damage that can occur as the result of multiple concussions or less severe blows to the head. The condition was previously referred to as "dementia pugilistica", or "punch drunk" syndrome, as it was first noted in boxers. The disease can lead to cognitive and physical disabilities such as parkinsonism, speech and memory problems, slowed mental processing, tremor, depression, and inappropriate behavior. It shares features with Alzheimer's disease.
Second-impact syndrome
Second-impact syndrome, in which the brain swells dangerously after a minor blow, may occur in very rare cases. The condition may develop in people who receive a second blow days or weeks after an initial concussion before its symptoms have gone away. No one is certain of the cause of this often fatal complication, but it is commonly thought that the swelling occurs because the brain's arterioles lose the ability to regulate their diameter, causing a loss of control over cerebral blood flow. As the brain swells, intracranial pressure rapidly rises. The brain can herniate, and the brain stem can fail within five minutes. Except in boxing, all cases have occurred in athletes under age 20. Due to the very small number of documented cases, the diagnosis is controversial, and doubt exists about its validity. A 2010 Pediatrics review article stated that there is debate whether the brain swelling is due to two separate hits or to just one hit, but in either case, catastrophic football head injuries are three times more likely in high school athletes than in college athletes.
Epidemiology
Most cases of traumatic brain injury are concussions. A World Health Organization (WHO) study estimated that between 70 and 90% of head injuries that receive treatment are mild. However, due to under reporting and to the widely varying definitions of concussion and mTBI, it is difficult to estimate how common the condition is. Estimates of the incidence of concussion may be artificially low, for example, due to under reporting. At least 25% of people with mTBI fail to get assessed by a medical professional. The WHO group reviewed studies on the epidemiology of mTBI and found a hospital treatment rate of 1–3 per 1000 people, but since not all concussions are treated in hospitals, they estimated that the rate per year in the general population is over 6 per 1000 people.
Age
Young children have the highest concussion rate among all age groups. However, most people with a concussion are young adults. A Canadian study found that the yearly incidence of mTBI is lower in older age groups (graph at right). Studies suggest males develop mTBI at about twice the rate of their female counterparts. However, female athletes may be at a higher risk of sustaining a concussion than their male counterparts.
Sports
Up to five percent of sports injuries are concussions. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 300,000 sports-related concussions occur yearly in the U.S., but that number includes only athletes who lost consciousness. Since loss of consciousness is thought to occur in less than 10% of concussions, the CDC estimate is likely lower than the real number. Sports in which concussion is particularly common include American football, the rugby codes, MMA and boxing (a boxer aims to "knock out", i.e. give a mild traumatic brain injury to, the opponent). The injury is so common in the latter that several medical groups have called for a ban on the sport, including the American Academy of Neurology, the World Medical Association, and the medical associations of the UK, the US, Australia, and Canada.
Workplace
Concussions may also be common and occur in the workplace. According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, the most common causes of mTBI-related hospitalizations and deaths from the workplace are falls, force of heavy objects, and vehicular collisions. As a consequence, jobs in the construction, transportation, and natural resource industries (e.g. agriculture, fishing, mining) have more elevated mTBI incidence rates ranging from 10 to 20 cases per 100,000 workers. In particular, as vehicular collisions are the leading cause of workplace mTBI-related injuries, workers from the transportation sector often carry the most risk. Despite these findings, there still remain important gaps in data compilation on workplace-related mTBIs, which has raised questions about increased concussion surveillance and preventive measures in private industry.
History
The Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of medical works from ancient Greece, mentions concussion, later translated to commotio cerebri, and discusses loss of speech, hearing, and sight that can result from "commotion of the brain". This idea of disruption of mental function by "shaking of the brain" remained the widely accepted understanding of concussion until the 19th century. In the 10th century, the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi was the first to write about concussion as distinct from other types of head injury. He may have been the first to use the term "cerebral concussion", and his definition of the condition, a transient loss of function with no physical damage, set the stage for the medical understanding of the condition for centuries.
In the 13th century, the physician Lanfranc of Milan's Chiurgia Magna described concussion as brain "commotion", also recognizing a difference between concussion and other types of traumatic brain injury (though many of his contemporaries did not), and discussing the transience of post-concussion symptoms as a result of temporary loss of function from the injury. In the 14th century, the surgeon Guy de Chauliac pointed out the relatively good prognosis of concussion as compared to more severe types of head trauma such as skull fractures and penetrating head trauma. In the 16th-century, the term "concussion" came into use, and symptoms such as confusion, lethargy, and memory problems were described. The 16th century physician Ambroise Paré used the term commotio cerebri, as well as "shaking of the brain", "commotion", and "concussion".
Until the 17th century, a concussion was usually described by its clinical features, but after the invention of the microscope, more physicians began exploring underlying physical and structural mechanisms. However, the prevailing view in the 17th century was that the injury did not result from physical damage, and this view continued to be widely held throughout the 18th century. The word "concussion" was used at the time to describe the state of unconsciousness and other functional problems that resulted from the impact, rather than a physiological condition. In 1839, Guillaume Dupuytren described brain contusions, which involve many small hemorrhages, as contusio cerebri and showed the difference between unconsciousness associated with damage to the brain parenchyma and that due to concussion, without such injury. In 1941, animal experiments showed that no macroscopic damage occurs in concussion.
Society and culture
Costs
Due to the lack of a consistent definition, the economic costs of mTBI are not known, but they are estimated to be very high. These high costs are due in part to the large percentage of hospital admissions for head injury that is due to mild head trauma, but indirect costs such as lost work time and early retirement account for the bulk of the costs. These direct and indirect costs cause the expense of mild brain trauma to rival that of moderate and severe head injuries.
Terminology
The terms mild brain injury, mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), mild head injury (MHI), and concussion may be used interchangeably; although the term "concussion" is still used in sports literature as interchangeable with "MHI" or "mTBI", the general clinical medical literature uses "mTBI" instead, since a 2003 CDC report outlined it as an important strategy. In this article, "concussion" and "mTBI" are used interchangeably.
The term "concussion" is from Latin concutere, "to shake violently" or concussus, "action of striking together".
Research
Minocycline, lithium, and N-acetylcysteine show tentative success in animal models.
Measurement of predictive visual tracking is being studied as a screening technique to identify mild traumatic brain injury. A head-mounted display unit with eye-tracking capability shows a moving object in a predictive pattern for the person to follow with their eyes. People without brain injury will be able to track the moving object with smooth pursuit eye movements and correct trajectory while it is hypothesized that those with mild traumatic brain injury cannot.
Grading systems
National and international clinical practice guidelines do not recommend a concussion grading system for use by medical professionals.
Historical information on grading systems
In the past, the decision to allow athletes to return to participation was frequently based on the grade of concussion. However, current research and recommendations by professional organizations including the National Athletic Trainers' Association recommend against such use of these grading systems. Currently, injured athletes are prohibited from returning to play before they are symptom-free during both rest and exertion and until results of the neuropsychological tests have returned to pre-injury levels.
Three grading systems have been most widely followed: by Robert Cantu, the Colorado Medical Society, and the American Academy of Neurology. Each employs three grades, as summarized in the following table:
At least 41 systems measure the severity, or grade, of a mild head injury, and there is little agreement about which is best. In an effort to simplify, the 2nd International Conference on Concussion in Sport, meeting in Prague in 2004, decided that these systems should be abandoned in favor of a 'simple' or 'complex' classification. However, the 2008 meeting in Zurich abandoned the simple versus complex terminology, although the participants did agree to keep the concept that most (80–90%) concussions resolve in a short period (7–10 days) and although the recovery time frame may be longer in children and adolescents.
See also
Concussions in American football
Concussions in rugby union
Head injury criterion
Helmet removal (sports)
References
Further reading
Harrison, Emily A. "The first concussion crisis: head injury and evidence in early American football." American journal of public health 104.5 (2014): 822-833. online
Shurley, Jason P., and Janice S. Todd. "Boxing lessons: An historical review of chronic head trauma in boxing and football." Kinesiology Review 1.3 (2012): 170-184. online
External links
Share your views on sports-related concussions with Wikiversity
"Facts about Concussion and Brain Injury and Where to Get Help" US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"Concussion in High School Sports" US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2018 CDC Guideline on MTBI in children
Athletic training
Neurotrauma
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child%20harness
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Child harness
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A child harness (alternative: child tether, walking harness, British English: walking reins) is a safety device worn by children when walking with a parent or carer. Child harnesses are most commonly used with toddlers and children of preschool age, though they may also be used with older children, especially if they have special supervisory needs such as ADHD or autism. Various types exist, though all are worn by the child and have a lead (tether) or rein which is held by a parent or caregiver. As child harness designs and purposes have evolved with cultural norms and parenting techniques, they have become subject to common debate.
Use and purpose
Child harnesses are designed to provide safety for a child when walking by preventing them from being separated from their parent or caregiver. Additionally, some may be used to help keep a child safely seated in a stroller or high chair. Typically used for children between one and four years of age, the use of child harnesses depends on a variety of factors including the age and maturity of the child, as well as any perceived dangers such as busy roads, large crowds, and potential distractions. Other factors such as neurological and health conditions may also be considered, particularly for older children with unique supervisory requirements.
History
Pre-1900
While there is little documentation on child harnesses before the twentieth century, they may have emerged from leading strings used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the late nineteenth century, evidence suggests they were mostly considered as items of clothing, primarily worn by young children learning to walk. The "Baby-Exercising Corset" patented in New Jersey in 1874 aimed to "enable them to learn to walk much sooner, and much more readily, than they could with out its use."
Early 20th century
After 1900, designs evolved from a type of garment into dedicated safety harnesses most commonly "in the form of a waist belt, shoulder straps connecting the waist belt...and a suspending strap for a person to sustain the weight of the child." While earlier patent applications for child harnesses mention protection from potential dangers, designs beginning in the twentieth century were "particularly directed to the prevention of injury.", With the transition towards safety as the main priority, designs changed "to provide a readily applicable harness for retaining a child in standing position in a chair, go-cart, or the like, and thereby obviating the danger of the child falling.". Harnesses at this time were usually made of leather, and some designs also had small bells attached.
1940s–1980s
By the 1940s in the United Kingdom, child harnesses were fairly common. Designs in the United Kingdom and the United States began to change in the 1950s with the straps being made of webbing instead of leather, and purposely designed fittings to make the harnesses easier to use for parents and caregivers.
In the mid-1950s, various local campaign groups in the United Kingdom began to recommend the use of child harnesses as part of road safety campaigns. In addition to recommendations, the campaigns also focused on abolishing the thirty percent sales tax payable on child harnesses, arguing removing the tax would be "a sign that the Government was sincerely interested in the safety of young children." The debate around possible legislation for child harnesses continued into the 1960s, with the British Standards Institute issuing new safety standards. The "stringent specifications" sought to address the "harnesses on the market which were not sufficiently strong to restrain a bouncing baby in a pram, or to take the weight of a falling toddler," with all designs after November 1964 being subject to "rigorous performance tests" for both design and materials.
Designs advanced further in the 1960s with Roland Cheetham (W.H. Cheetham & Sons Limited) inventing the first terylene webbing harness in 1961. Going on sale in 1962, the new webbing material had "a high resistance...to abrasion and moisture" with the company claiming the design was "virtually ever-lasting." The new materials were lighter than previous versions, and the company also claimed the material was more hygienic as the harness could be washed and dried in five minutes. The new design and was awarded the certificate of the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene. The design also featured improved fittings "so that the mother does not have to bother with buckles" and could "vary the size easily." The harness was sold in four different colors with a suggested retail price of twelve shillings and sixpence.
Child harness designs remained largely unchanged between the 1970s and 1990s, the most significant change being the replacement of metal parts with plastic parts. The most notable exception, patented in 1987, was the "wrist link" or "wrist strap" which dispensed with the chest harness section, instead consisting of a length of webbing with a loop at each end. One loop secures around the wrist of the child, while the other is held by the parent or caregiver. The idea was to address how parents and/or caregivers could find it "very impractical to use one hand to hold the child at all times" and thus "leaves the parent's hands free." The wrist link/strap design was also noted to be "adaptable to children of any size or age". Other hands-free adaptions to the established designs of child harnesses were also developed in the late 1980s.
Post-1990
In the United Kingdom, following the 1993 James Bulger murder case, sales of child harnesses "dramatically increased" and some stores sold out when "trying desperately to meet demand." Two years later, child harnesses were recommended by the Child Accident Prevention Trust as part of their "Seven Steps for Safety Campaign."
In 2005, after a largely standardized design for forty years, an alternative design for child harnesses was created which merged the basic strap elements with a soft toy. The new design, developed by Goldbug, Inc. in the United States, evolved into "a backpack...in the form of a novelty character of animal or human form" which also included a "storage pouch" with "the shoulder and waist straps of the harness representing the limbs or extremities of the character, and a tether attached to the harness in the form of a character tail." The alternative designs, which included a variety of popular soft toys such as monkeys, giraffes, and teddy bears, were developed and marketed as "Harness Buddies" to discourage any objections of a child to wearing a safety harness through providing more comfort, padding, and overall novelty.
In 2007, Scottish primary school teacher Elaine Stephen, MBE launched the Walkodile harness. The design, developed in partnership with The Design Unit at De Montfort University, was the first child harness which could be used for multiple children, allowing for two or more children to walk together side-by-side. Each child has their own simplified safety belt which can be attached to any connection point located on an extendable modular section which is located between the parallel rows of children.
In May 2014, British retailer Boots was criticized for its range of child harnesses as some felt the colors and designs reinforced traditional gender roles. The company sold two harnesses; a blue version with the words "Train Driver" and another pink version which featured the words "Little Cupcake" specifically labelled as a "Girls Walking Rein and Harness". After a consumer photo of the harnesses went viral, the retailer responded by promising to change the packaging to demonstrate their "commitment to prevent gender stereotyping."
Types
Standard harness
The standard design usually consists of a waist or chest strap and two shoulder straps forming a simple chest harness, most commonly with the closure behind the child. A walking lead, tether, or rein attaches at the back or sides of the chest harness and is held by the parent or caregiver behind the child. This design is sometimes used to safely secure a child in a stroller or high chair as well as for walking. The most historically established design, standard style child harnesses are made of either leather or webbing and are primarily sold for children between four years of age or younger.
Character harness
Character harnesses integrate the functions of the standard child harness and a soft toy. Some designs are based around simple generic soft toy characters such as monkeys, teddy bears, or bunnies; while others are based around well-known children's entertainment characters. Character harnesses share the same basic features as standard child harnesses, but often have a front closure and are designed to be more appealing for the child, parent, and/or caregiver via additional comfort and novelty. Some also feature small storage pockets.
Backpack harness
Backpack harnesses integrate the functions of a standard child harness and a backpack. Designs are generally based around a basic backpack, suitably sized for a child with a connection for a lead or tether. Like character harnesses, backpack harnesses usually feature closures at the front of the harness and are marketed as an alternative to standard child harnesses for a similar age group.
Wrist link
A wrist link (sometimes called a wrist strap or wrist rein), is a simple length of webbing with two loops; one at each end. One loop is worn on the child's wrist and the other is held by the parent or caregiver. Usually, the loops are adjustable for size and the strap often features an elastic section to prevent injury by absorbing shock from any sudden movements. Some wrist links use a strong coiled line instead of webbing or elastic. Wrist links are sometimes marketed as suitable for those in the "junior" age range and are occasionally worn by children who may have outgrown the standard or backpack style child harnesses.
Special needs harness
For older children and adolescents who have special supervision requirements due to health or behavioral conditions, larger, and sometimes bespoke, versions of child harnesses are available. These designs vary, but often include features atypical of standard child harnesses designed for younger kids such as support handles, lockable closures, and additional straps to prevent removal.
Sports/recreational harness
While not designed for everyday use, some specialist child harnesses exist for specific recreational purposes such as hiking or skiing. These types of harnesses feature unique elements such as longer leads to assist children in sports training techniques.
Common debate
There is some disagreement about the use of child harnesses which focuses on a number of aspects including safety, physical health, mental development/behavior, as well as parenting philosophies and styles. Opinion is divided among parents (and non-parents) but also among childcare and educational professionals.
Safety
Those who use or suggest using child harnesses say that they provide more safety for the child, especially for more active children. Parents and caregivers who advocate using child harnesses cite the impulsivity of toddlers or young children to unknowingly put themselves in danger as a main reason for their use. Some childcare professionals cite the preventative principle of child harnesses to help avert situations where the child might place themselves at risk. A 1991 report in the Archives of Disease in Childhood journal stated that six childhood fatalities which occurred within the Greater London and Birmingham areas of the United Kingdom could have been prevented by the use of child harnesses (reins). For those involved in childcare who believe that "care and safety is their number one priority," harnesses can be "the best option" in some circumstances.
Others contend that the safety benefits of child harnesses are minimal, or at least unknown according studies. In 2019, Benjamin Hoffman, the Chair of the Injury Prevention Council at the American Academy of Pediatrics stated that there was no "data on injuries associated with [safety] leashes" and that there was a "lack information about why parents use them, and what any benefit might be," adding that "from an injury standpoint" there are potential concerns over entanglement or choking similar to the cords on window blinds and that "there's also the risk of accidentally tripping your child with the tether." Other medical professionals have also stated that certain designs of child harnesses such as the wrist link/strap maybe potentially dangerous for children as they do not provide adequate physical support when needed and also require a degree of cooperation from the child which maybe intermittent.
Physical health
Those who use, or agree with the use of child harnesses, often contend that they improve the physical health of child by allowing them to walk and thereby provide opportunities for exercise. These arguments are especially prevalent when the use of child harnesses is compared to the time a child might otherwise spend in a stroller and thus not able to walk (or jog or run). A 2001 textbook aimed at students studying for the Child Development GCSE states that "walking reins with a safety harness are essential for toddlers, as they can experience walking skills while remaining under the control of an adult." The 2019 OCR handbook for the Cambridge National qualification in Child Development lists child harnesses as a "key factor" in considering the right equipment to "promote the well-being and development" of children aged between one and five years.
Those who oppose child harnesses on grounds of physical health often cite the risk of injury and/or misuse of harnesses. Such concerns include how some parents or caregivers might "tug on the tether or drag the child.". Additionally, some individuals who oppose the use of child harnesses often contend they function as a "leash" to restrict movement and therefore offer negligible, little, or even reduced physical health benefits compared to children who are able to explore beyond the limits of movement which harnesses create. Furthermore, some opponents contend child harnesses operate as a substitute for rule making which can result in parents generating (albeit knowingly or unknowingly) "more freedom to be less present" and reduce their awareness of their child's behavior in "potentially dangerous places".
Mental development/behavior
Advocates and users of child harnesses argue that harnesses allow a safe range of exploration for the child, as well as being a useful "communication tool and teaching method to help children learn to stay beside their parent or caregiver" and thus assist them in understanding boundaries, recognizing potential dangers, and when exploration maybe unsafe or improper. Proponents claim that when used in the appropriate "manner as a teaching tool" harnesses will "not have a negative effect" on the child. Additionally, some supporters of child harness use have cited their own memories of how wearing a harness could be a form of enjoyment or play. In certain circumstances, child harnesses are also recommended by professionals specializing in the health of special needs children whose supervisory requirements may be different from those of neurotypical children.
Many who oppose child harnesses view them as a tool which delays or restricts learning and mental development about rules and potential dangers. Some contend child harnesses are substitute "babysitters," a way for parents or caregivers to "check out," and equate to a "short-term, Band-Aid" solution which results in parents not teaching children important safety and cultural rules. Some psychologists have argued that child harnesses limit the natural curiosity of young children and prohibit them from acquiring skills in self-control which subsequently reduces their ability to understand and respect rules as they grow older. Additionally, other psychologists contend child harnesses could be a source of embarrassment for the child.
Parenting/caregiver philosophy/style
The advocacy or disapproval of child harnesses is also determined by parenting styles and beliefs.
Parents and caregivers who use child harnesses often cite safety as the primary reason for doing so, fearing losing contact with the child. However, for some the use of child harnesses is only a temporary and/or reserve measure during the education and generation of trust in a child. Once the child has proved they have learned such knowledge "the use of the tether can be faded" showing that "when used short term and in a loving manner as a teaching tool" a harness "should not have a negative effect on the child.”. Some parents and caregivers also claim that the use of harnesses can be more comfortable for the child as having to raise their arm to hold their parent's hand for extended periods can be uncomfortable. Similarly, some parents argue that compared to having their child in a stroller, a using a harness allows for more awareness of their child's needs or wants. Equally, some parents have also observed that their children are more positive and happier during outdoor activity when wearing a harness compared to being a stroller, and that using a child harness "has more to do with how it reflects on us as parents than how it actually affects our children." Additionally, some argue if a "parent experiences a lot of anxiety" to such an extent that "it interferes with them taking their children outdoors or on other events" if "the tether increases the parents' feelings of competence and allows the child to go places...than tethering could be beneficial" for both adult and child.
Those who disapprove of child harnesses argue that their use can be socially degrading for children "like treating a child like a dog or an animal" which results in others possibly perceiving "a parent who can't control her toddler." Such viewpoints claim that making and enforcing appropriate rules is the primary job of the parent and a child harness avoids such responsibilities. Other childcare specialists have also raised concerns over the effect on the confidence of parents and caregivers with the "worst part of using these harnesses and wrist links are the stares that you get from other people who don't understand that they are a safety precaution." Others have expressed similar concerns regarding how such "reactions could negatively impact a child" as well as the parent or caregiver as "the stigma from being stared at...could play a larger role in traumatizing the child than the correct use of a tether." Some have also drawn philosophical parallels between using child harnesses for toddlers and the use of GPS and smartphone tracking apps for older children. These arguments contend that children benefit when having to solve problems alone or by seeking appropriate help, neither of which are possible if the child has a permanent form attachment to their parent or caregiver.
Governmental and regulatory positions
European Union and United Kingdom
Regulations can be traced back to old British Standards for mass-manufactured child harnesses. These British regulations were further developed within the European Union, where the harnesses must comply with the safety requirements as defined in the EN13210:2004 "Children's harnesses, reins and similar type articles" standard. These rules cover a range of attributes such as strength, durability, use of small parts, shapes of components, substances or chemicals used for manufacturing, safety markings, and instructional information on safe use. They also define testing procedures. This European Standard still has the status of a British Standard (BS EN 13210:2004) in the UK.
A new version of the standard is under preparation in the EU; it will split into Part 1 (Children’s harnesses, reins –
Safety requirements and test methods) and Part 2 (Children’s harnesses incorporating backpacks and reins – Safety requirements and test methods).
In 2013, the European Child Safety Alliance (Eurosafe) recommended that a child harness approved to the EN13210:2004 safety standard will provide additional safety for children when using a second-hand stroller not yet equipped with a five-point harness.
As of 2019, rule four of the Highway Code of the United Kingdom, recommends that parents or caregivers use child harnesses (reins) for very young pedestrian children when walking alongside or crossing roads as a possible alternative to a pushchair (stroller) to ensure safety.
The use of such child harnesses is sometimes recommended by local authorities in certain areas where risk and potential dangers to children are considered much higher than usual. These include areas such as mountain paths which are steep or unpredictable underfoot thereby posing an increase of slipping or falling to young children or children inexperienced walking on such terrain.
Other regions
In the United States, the standards, safety, and potential recall process for child harnesses is overseen by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. In Australia, parallel standards of safety are developed and enforced through the Australian Product Safety System, overseen by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.
See also
Leading strings
Stroller
High chair
References
Child safety
Protective gear
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence%20Project
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Innocence Project
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Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States between 1% and 10% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld who gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the "Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
, the Innocence Project has helped to successfully overturn over 300 convictions through DNA-based exonerations. In 2021, Innocence Project received the biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty by Cato Institute, awarded in recognition and gratitude for its work to ensure liberty and justice for all. In March 2022, The Innocence Project won two Webby Awards for its Happiest Moments video, winning the Best Humanitarian & Services campaign in both the brand and non-profit categories. Happiest Moments was the organizations first-ever public service announcement that premiered in June 2021 and was produced by Hayden5.
Founding
The Innocence Project was established in the wake of a study by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Senate, in conjunction with Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, which claimed that incorrect identification by eyewitnesses was a factor in over 70% of wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Scheck and Neufeld as part of a law clinic at Cardozo. It became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization on January 28, 2003, but it maintains institutional connections with Cardozo. Madeline deLone was the executive director from 2004 until 2020, succeeded by Christina Swarns on September 8, 2020.
The Innocence Project is the headquarters of the Innocence Network, a group of nearly 70 independent innocence organizations worldwide. One such example exists in the Republic of Ireland where in 2009 a project was set up at Griffith College Dublin.
Mission
The Innocence Project's mission is "to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment."
The Innocence Project focuses exclusively on post-conviction appeals in which DNA evidence is available to be tested or retested. DNA testing is possible in 5–10% of criminal cases. Other members of the Innocence Network also help to exonerate those in whose cases DNA testing is not possible.
In addition to working on behalf of those who may have been wrongfully convicted of crimes throughout the United States, those working for the Innocence Project perform research and advocacy related to the causes of wrongful convictions.
Some of the Innocence Project's successes have resulted in releasing people from death row. The successes of the project have fueled American opposition to the death penalty and have likely been a factor in the decision by some American states to institute moratoria on criminal executions.
In District Attorney's Office v. Osborne (2009), US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts wrote that post-conviction challenge "poses questions to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality better left to elected officials than federal judges." In the opinion, another justice wrote that forensic science has "serious deficiencies". Roberts also said that post-conviction DNA testing risks "unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice." Law professor Kevin Jon Heller wrote: "It might lead to a reasonably accurate one."
The Innocence Project, as of June 2018, receives 55% of its funding from individual contributions, 16% from foundations, 16% from events, 8% from investments, and the remaining 5% from corporations, Yeshiva University, and other sources.
Work
The Innocence Project originated in New York City but accepts cases from other parts of the country. The majority of clients helped are of low socio-economic status and have used all possible legal options for justice. Many clients hope that DNA evidence will prove their innocence, as the emergence of DNA testing allows those who have been wrongly convicted of crimes to challenge their cases. The Innocence Project also works with the local, state and federal levels of law enforcement, legislators, and other programs to prevent further wrongful convictions.
All potential clients go through an extensive screening process to determine whether or not they are likely to be innocent. If they pass the process, the Innocence Project takes up their case, resources permitting. About 2,400 prisoners write to the Innocence Project annually, and at any given time the Innocence Project is evaluating 6,000 to 8,000 potential cases. In addition to their co-directors and a managing attorney, the Innocence Project has six full-time staff attorneys and nearly 300 active cases.
In almost half of the cases that the Innocence Project takes on, the clients' guilt is reconfirmed by DNA testing. Of all the cases taken on by the Innocence Project so far, about 43% of clients were proven innocent, 42% were confirmed guilty, and evidence was inconclusive and not probative in 15% of cases. In about 40% of all DNA exoneration cases, law enforcement officials identified the actual perpetrator based on the same DNA test results that led to an exoneration.
Overturned convictions
, 375 people previously convicted of serious crimes in the United States had been exonerated by DNA testing since 1989, 21 of whom had been sentenced to death. Almost all (99%) of the wrongful convictions were males, with minority groups constituting approximately 70% (61% African American and 8% Latino). The National Registry of Exonerations lists 2,939 convicted defendants who were exonerated through DNA and non-DNA evidence from January, 1989 through January, 2022 with more than 25,600 years imprisoned.
According to a study published in 2014, at least 4.1% of persons overall sentenced to death from 1973 to 2004 are probably innocent. The following are some examples of exonerations they helped bring about:
Steven Avery was exonerated in 2003 after serving 18 years in prison for a sexual assault charge. After his release, he was convicted of murder.
Cornelius Dupree was convicted of sexual assault and robbery in 1980, and exonerated by DNA evidence in 2011 by the Innocence Project.
Douglas Echols and Samuel Scott were convicted in 1987 of sexual assault and robbery, and exonerated in 2002 by DNA evidence by the Innocence Project.
Clarence Elkins was convicted in 1999 for rape and murder, and exonerated by DNA evidence in 2005; defended by Ohio Innocence Project.
Ryan Ferguson was convicted in 2005 for a 2001 murder, and exonerated in 2013 because the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence and the witnesses who testified against him recanted their testimony; defended by Missouri Innocence Project.
Glenn Ford was exonerated in 2014 in the murder of Isadore Newman. Ford, an African American, had been convicted by an all-white jury without any physical evidence linking him to the crime and with testimony withheld. He served 30 years on death row in Angola Prison before his release.
Darryl Hunt was exonerated in 2004 after serving years in prison of a life sentence for the rape and murder of a newspaper copy editor, Deborah Sykes.
Michael Morton was convicted of murder in 1987, spent over 24 years in prison, and exonerated through DNA and withholding of evidence in 2011 with help from the Innocence Project. In 2013 his prosecutor was convicted of withholding evidence, agreed to disbarment, and spent 4 days in jail.
Anthony Porter was convicted of murder in 1983, and exonerated in 1999 by the Medill Innocence Project.
James Calvin Tillman was exonerated in 2007 after an investigation begun by the Innocence Project, and after serving years in prison for a rape he did not commit. His sentence was 45 years.
Archie Williams was convicted in 1983 of sexual assault and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, but was exonerated in 2019 due to DNA evidence after over three decades in prison.
Ken Wyniemko was convicted in 1994 of sexual assault, and exonerated in 2003 through DNA evidence by the Innocence Project.
Michael Sutton and Kenny Phillips went out for Phillips' birthday in May 2006, they were wrongfully arrested and incarcerated for 15 years. In 2023, their attempted murder convictions were overturned and the University of Akron granted them full scholarships to earn their college degrees.
Innocence Network
The Innocence Project is a founding member of the Innocence Network, a coalition of independent organizations and advocates, including law schools, journalism schools, and public defense offices that collaborate to help convicted felons prove their innocence. , there were 68 organizations in the network, operating in all 50 US states and 12 other countries, and had helped exonerate 625 people.
In South Africa, the Wits Justice Project investigates South African incarcerations. In partnership with the Wits Law Clinic, the Julia Mashele Trust, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), the US Innocence Project, and the Justice Project investigate individual cases of prisoners wrongly convicted or awaiting trial.
Causes of wrongful conviction
Wrongful convictions are a common occurrence with various causes that land innocent defendants in prison. Most common are false eyewitness accounts, where the accused are incorrectly identified by viewers of a crime. Most times eyewitnesses will select the individual in a lineup for example that most resemble their memories of the suspect. This relies on the person’s ability to perceive and later recall faces accurately, which studies have shown is more than lacking. This accounts for 69% of the exonerations that took place due to the Innocence Project, further proving that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. While it is known that eyewitness identification can lead to wrongful convictions little has been done to prevent this inaccuracy and this is why it remains a leading cause of the conviction of the innocent. Eyewitness testimonies are still used in court and studies have shown that jurors have a limited ability to determine the reliability of eyewitnesses as evidence. In fact, they tend to over-believe eyewitnesses instead of weighing out the potential errors. This measure has proven to be inaccurate in many police lineups, as there is much bias, and suspects can be singled out based on their appearance and the frequency that they are placed in front of witnesses.
Additionally, 52% of the Innocence Project cases’ wrongful convictions have resulted from the misapplication of forensic science. These include faulty hair comparisons, arson artifacts, and comparative bullet lead analysis. These methods of evidence collection evolve as new technology arises, but said technology can take decades to create, making cases based on the faulty forensic science cases difficult to overturn.
In 26% of DNA exoneration cases—and more than double that number in homicide cases—innocent people were coerced into making false confessions. Many of these false confessors went on to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit (usually to avoid a harsher sentence or even the death penalty). Currently, there is a racial aspect of this issue where many black people are discriminated against during both their trial and while in jail. The hashtag #blackbehindbars has allowed those exonerated after false confessions to share their stories and the injustice they faced due to the failure of the criminal justice system.
Another large contributor of wrongful convictions is fabricated testimonies that falsely incriminate defendants. The Innocence Project has found that 17% of its cases have been caused by false testimonies, allowing the person who gave the testimony a shorter or better sentence while the accused face harsher repercussions. Many of these stories are given by inmates who have been given an incentive to falsely testify against certain people with rewards such as reduction of their sentences or leniency in prison.
In popular culture
Film
After Innocence (2005) is a documentary featuring the stories of eight wrongfully convicted men who were exonerated by the Innocence Project.
Conviction (2010) is a film about the exoneration of Kenneth Waters, who was a client of the Innocence Project. Hilary Swank plays Waters' sister Betty Anne, who went to college and law school to fight for his freedom, and Sam Rockwell plays Waters. Barry Scheck is portrayed by Peter Gallagher.
Happiest Moments (2021) is a Webby Award winning video by Innocence Project. Its the organizations first-ever public service announcement, produced by Hayden5.
Literature
In his nonfiction book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town (2006), John Grisham recounted the cases of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, who were assisted on appeal by the Innocence Project and freed by DNA evidence after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of Debra Ann Carter.
Podcasts
Serial in its first season referenced the Innocence Project in episode 7 when Deirdre Enright, director of investigation for the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, and a team of law students analyzed the case against Adnan Syed.
Television
Castle, an American television series, in the episode "Like Father, Like Daughter" (season 6, episode 7), mentioned the Innocence Project, as well as Frank Henson who was wrongfully convicted in 1998 of the death of Kimberly Tolbert.
The Innocence Project, a BBC One drama series that aired from 2006 to 2007, is based on a UK version of the organization.
The Innocence Project was discussed in season 2, episode 9 of The Good Wife, "Nine Hours" (December 14, 2010). Project co-founder Barry Scheck played himself in the episode, which was largely based on the actual Innocence Project case of Cameron Todd Willingham. Cary Agos, a recurring character on The Good Wife, is written to have worked for the Innocence Project after law school (and is a family friend of Scheck's).
In season six of Suits, a US legal dramedy, law student and paralegal Rachel Zane takes on an Innocence Project for a man wrongfully accused of murder.
In season three of Riverdale, a dark reimagining of the Archie Comics universe, Veronica Lodge mentions starting a chapter of the organization to help free her boyfriend Archie Andrews from prison following being falsely convicted of murder.
Making a Murderer, a two-season (of 10 episodes each) documentary relating Steven Avery wrongful conviction. The episodes were released on Netflix between 2015 and 2018.
The Innocence Files (2020) is a series of nine documentary films based on the work of the Innocence Project, released on Netflix in April 2020.
Quantum Leap, in the episode "Ben Song for the Defense" the Innocence Project is mentioned after Ben, having leapt into a public defender, successfully defends a teenager wrongfully accused of killing a gang recruiter.
The Innocent Man (2018) is a Netflix mini series composed of six episodes based on the Grisham nonfiction book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.
See also
Miscarriage of justice
List of miscarriage of justice cases
List of wrongful convictions in the United States
Innocent prisoner's dilemma
Related groups and regional chapters
Alaska Innocence Project
California Innocence Project
Georgia Innocence Project
Illinois Innocence Project
Innocence Canada
Investigating Innocence
The Justice Project (Australia)
Los Angeles Innocence Project (LAIP)
Medill Innocence Project, Illinois
Nebraska Innocence Project
References
Further reading
External links
Innocence Network
Innocence Network UK (INUK) – An organisation to facilitate casework on alleged wrongful convictions by innocence projects
Innocent.org.uk – Website of UK cases of alleged and proven miscarriages of justice
Yeshiva University
Government watchdog groups in the United States
Legal advocacy organizations in the United States
Non-profit organizations based in New York City
Overturned convictions in the United States
Prison-related organizations
Innocence Project
Criminal defense organizations
Organizations established in 1992
DNA profiling techniques
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric%20Roberts
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Eric Roberts
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Eric Anthony Roberts (born April 18, 1956) is an American actor and the older brother of actress Julia Roberts. His career began with a leading role in King of the Gypsies (1978) for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He was nominated again at the Golden Globes for his acclaimed role as Paul Snider in Bob Fosse's Star 80 (1983). Roberts' performance in Runaway Train (1985), as prison escapee Buck McGeehy, earned him a third Golden Globe nod and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In a career spanning over 40 years Roberts has amassed more than 700 credits, Roberts has appeared in blockbusters, independent films, television series, animation, short films and student films. Notable films he has appeared in include Raggedy Man (1981), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Final Analysis (1992), The Specialist (1994), The Cable Guy (1995), Cecil B. Demented (2000), National Security (2003), A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), The Expendables (2010), Lovelace (2013), Inherent Vice (2014), The Human Centipede 3 (2015), and Babylon (2022).
His varied television work includes being the only non-UK actor to play the Master in the 1996 Doctor Who television film, a main role on the sitcom Less than Perfect (2002–2005), as well as recurring roles on the NBC drama Heroes (2007–2010), the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless (2010–2011), the legal drama Suits (2014–2019), and the HBO series The Righteous Gemstones (2022).
Early life
Eric Anthony Roberts was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on April 18, 1956, to Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts, one-time actors and playwrights, who met while touring with a production of George Washington Slept Here for the armed forces. In 1963, they co-founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Atlanta off Juniper Street in Midtown. They ran a children's acting school in Decatur, Georgia. Roberts' mother became a church secretary and real estate agent, and his father was a vacuum cleaner salesman. Roberts' younger siblings, Julia Roberts (from whom he was estranged until 2004) and Lisa Roberts Gillan, are also actors.
In 1971, Roberts' parents filed for divorce, which was finalized in early 1972. He stayed with his father, who died of cancer in March 1977, in Atlanta. After the divorce, his sisters moved with their mother to Smyrna, a suburb of Atlanta. In 1972, their mother married Michael Motes. In 1976, they had a daughter, Nancy Motes, who died February 9, 2014, at age 37, of an apparent drug overdose. Michael Motes was abusive and often unemployed. In 1983, she divorced Motes, citing "cruelty"; she later said that marrying him was the biggest mistake of her life.
Career
Roberts got his start on the now-defunct NBC daytime soap opera Another World originating the role of Ted Bancroft from February 14 to June 17, 1977.
Roberts received Golden Globe Award nominations for his early starring roles in King of the Gypsies (1978) and Star 80 (1983). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1985 for his role as the escaped convict Buck in the film Runaway Train; the award went to Don Ameche for Cocoon. In 1987, he won the Theatre World Award for his Broadway debut performance in Burn This.
Roberts' other starring roles included Paul's Case (1980), Raggedy Man (1981), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), The Coca-Cola Kid (1985), Nobody's Fool (1986), Best of the Best (1989), By the Sword (1991), Final Analysis (1992), Best of the Best 2 (1993), The Specialist (1994), The Immortals (1995), La Cucaracha (1998), and Purgatory (1999).
In 1996, he appeared in the Doctor Who television film in the role of the Master. When SFX listed previous Masters in Doctor Who, the magazine said of Roberts: "Out-acted by a CGI snake in the same production." The onscreen wife of Roberts' human character, who is killed by her newly possessed husband taken over by the Master, is played by his real-life wife. He also co-starred in the 1996 television miniseries version of In Cold Blood, in the role of Perry Smith; he was nominated as Best Actor in a Miniseries or a Motion Picture Made for Television. He starred in C-16 for its entire 1997 to 1998 run. He starred opposite John Ritter in the movie Tripfall in 1998. He played the Archangel Michael in The Prophecy II (1997).
Roberts co-starred on the ABC situation comedy Less than Perfect. He appeared in an episode of CSI: Miami as Ken Kramer, a murderer on death row convicted of killing a young couple. Another notable TV appearance was the episode "Victims" of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit where he played Sam Winfield, a former cop turned vigilante. In the same year, he was also guest-starred on The L Word as Gabriel McCutcheon, the father of Shane McCutcheon.
Roberts voiced the Superman villain Mongul in the animated series Justice League, and reprised his role in Justice League Unlimited in the episode "For the Man Who Has Everything". He performed the voice of Dark Danny in Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom. He appeared in the first season of Heroes as Thompson, an associate of Mr. Bennet. He then reprised the role in the third-season episode "Villains" and in the fourth-season "The Wall".
In 2000, Roberts played a serial killer in The Flying Dutchman. In 2002, he portrayed an FBI detective in Ja Rule's music video for his song "Down Ass Bitch", as well as its sequel "Down 4 U".
In 2003, Roberts also appeared in The Killers' music video for their song "Mr. Brightside", later reprising the role in the music video for their 2012 single "Miss Atomic Bomb".
In 2005, he appeared in the music videos for Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" and "It's Like That".
In 2006, he starred in the drama movie A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. The movie was a success and earned $2,035,468 at the box-office and holds a 75% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. he appeared in the video for Akon's "Smack That", featuring Eminem. The same year, he had a role in the romantic comedy film Phat Girlz, starring Mo'Nique, which receive good review and generate $7,401,890 in theaters worldwide. He had a major role in the British-German-American martial arts action film DOA: Dead or Alive, based on the famous videogame of the same name, which grossed $7.5 million on a budget of $30 million.
In early January 2007, Roberts starred in the two-part miniseries Pandemic as the mayor of Los Angeles. In 2007, he appeared in the video for Godhead's "Hey You". He appeared as a panelist on the television game show Hollywood Squares.
On July 18, 2008, he appeared in The Dark Knight as Sal Maroni, a Gotham City Mafia boss who hires The Joker to kill Batman and a renegade mob accountant.
In February 2009, Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke, who starred with Roberts in The Pope of Greenwich Village, said he hoped that Roberts would soon be offered a role which would resurrect his career in the way that The Wrestler rejuvenated Rourke's. He portrayed Seth Blanchard on the second season of the Starz series Crash, from 2009. In 2009, Roberts appeared as himself in "Tree Trippers", a season five episode of Entourage. He is portrayed as a mushroom and drug fanatic as he gives the boys mushrooms and joins them in Joshua Tree National Park to trip as they contemplate Vince's next movie decision.
The same year, he appeared in the independent movie The Chaos Experiment, starring Val Kilmer which had a limited theatrical release, playing to small audiences on two screens for one week in Grand Rapids, and for one week in nearby Lansing. He also appeared in the independent movie Rock Slyde, starring Patrick Warburton, Andy Dick, Rena Sofer, and Elaine Hendrix. He had the main role in the action movie The Butcher. He was acted in the psychological thriller film Royal Kill. He also appeared in the Canadian-American thriller Bloodwork.
It was announced in June 2010 that he would be joining the cast of the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless starting July 12. The following month saw the release of the action film The Expendables in which Roberts plays a lead villain. It was directed by and starred Sylvester Stallone, with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, Gary Daniels, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, David Zayas, and Mickey Rourke. The film is about a group of elite mercenaries called The Expendables (Stallone, Statham, Li, Lundgren, Couture, and Crews) who are on a mission to overthrow dictator General Garza (Zayas) in Vilena, an island in the Gulf of Mexico. It is revealed that an ex-CIA officer James Munroe (Roberts) is keeping Garza in power as a figurehead for his own profiteering operations. With his two deadly bodyguards Dan Paine (Austin) and The Brit (Daniels), they become a major obstacle in the way of The Expendables. Later that year, he appeared with Steve Austin and Gary Daniels, his co-stars from The Expendables, in the 2010 action film Hunt to Kill. In October 2010, he played the major role in the American family movie First Dog, which received positive reviews. December 2010 saw the premiere of the fourth season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, which documented Roberts' struggle with dependency on medical marijuana. His wife Eliza and his stepson Keaton Simons appeared in episode 6 to discuss the effects of his addiction on their lives.
In 2011, he guest-starred in USA Network's Burn Notice season 5 finale ("Fail Safe") as an "off the books" spy recruiter. In the same year, he acted in the drama and family film Shannon's Rainbow, based on Mowod's own experiences seeing his brother rehabilitate an injured horse and win a championship horse race. Later that year he acted in the horror comedy anthology film Chillerama, consisting of four stories, with each segment being an homage to a different genre and style. The movie was acclaimed by critics and has gained a cult following.
Roberts starred in the 2012 mystery thriller Deadline, playing the role of politically incorrect reporter Ronnie Bullock. He appeared in the horror film Snow White: A Deadly Summer, directed by David DeCoteau. He is featured as Uncle Shadrack, head of a Romani family, in 2012's The Finder on FOX. He had a recurring role in the TV series The Finder as a gypsy who had the title of king among a gypsy community in southern Florida. The same year, he was starred in the catastrophe movie The Mark. He also appeared in the Christmas comedy film Christmas in Compton, starring Keith David and Omar Gooding, which received positives reviews.
On February 18, 2013, he was featured in independent children's film A Talking Cat!?!, directed by David DeCoteau. In 2013, he had a small role in the film Lovelace, a biopic film about adult film actress Linda Lovelace. The film had its world premiere on January 22, 2013, at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and opened in a U.S. limited release on August 9, 2013. The same year, he was starred in the movie Pop Star, including the actors Christian Serratos, Robert Adamson, Ross Thomas and Rachele Brooke Smith. He had also in the drama film Before I Sleep, which received good critics and premiered in competition at the Heartland Film Festival on October 19, 2013. On November 1, 2013, he had a major role in the thriller drama film Assumed Killer, starring and produced by Casper Van Dien. The movie received good review and had the film two stars out of five. On November 24, 2013, he had voiced in the short animated movie Dante's Hell Animated.
In 2014, he starred in neo-noir period comedy-drama film Inherent Vice, including Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Jeannie Berlin, Maya Rudolph, Michael K. Williams, and Martin Short. Inherent Vice premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 4, 2014, and began a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 12, 2014. Critical reception was divided; while some argued the film had a convoluted plot and lacked coherence, others praised the cast, particularly Brolin, Phoenix and Waterston. The film was nominated for a number of awards, including two Academy Awards and a Best Actor Golden Globe Award for Phoenix. The National Board of Review named it one of the ten best films of the year. Some critics have said that Inherent Vice has the makings of a cult film. In 2016, it was voted the 75th best film since 2000 in an international critics' poll. The drama film Starcrossed, co-starring Mischa Barton, premiered at the San Diego International Film Festival on 28 September 2014. This was followed by a limited theatrical release in Los Angeles in May 2016. He had also a role in the small-budget indie film The Opposite Sex, starring Kristin Chenoweth, Mena Suvari, Jennifer Finnigan, and Geoff Stults, which received favorable reviews.
Between 2014 and 2015 Roberts played the recurring character Charles Forstman in the TV legal drama Suits.
In 2015, he appeared in season 5 of Lost Girl, a Canadian TV show on Showcase, as the main character, Bo's, father. In 2015 he appeared in the Rihanna video "Bitch Better Have My Money" and in Chris Cornell's video for "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart."
The Nigerian comedy drama movie A Trip to Jamaica, starring Eric Roberts, Ayo Makun, Funke Akindele, Nse Ikpe Etim, and Dan Davies, had its worldwide premiere on September 25, 2016 in Lagos State. In November 2016, the film was reported to have grossed 168 million naira, breaking the previous record set by 30 Days in Atlanta. It also broke records for the first film to hit 35 million in first weekend, the first film to hit 62 million in its first week, the fastest film to gross 100 million (17 days) and the fastest film to gross 150 million (six weeks). It opened at the Odeon Cinemas in London in December 2016 and became the highest-grossing film that weekend in London while also becoming the highest per screen average film in the UK during its limited run. It won the Africa Entertainment Legends Award (AELA) for Best Cinema Film of 2016 and received four nominations at the 2017 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards, including categories for best actress in a comedy, best writer, best movie (West Africa) and best actor in a comedy. The award show was held in March 2017 in Lagos State. The same year, Roberts was featured in season 4 of the hit American TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine; he portrayed the character of Jimmy Figgis. He played Robert Avery in Grey's Anatomy.
In 2017, he had a major role in the horror thriller film The Institute, alongside James Franco and Pamela Anderson.
Roberts is a Ficore member of SAG-AFTRA and works on union as well as non-union projects.
In 2018, he appeared in the third series of UK Channel4 reality show Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls where he completed the 4 weeks on the island. The same year, he also featured in the video of Enrique Iglesias' latest track "El Baño" as a bartender. He had a role in the drama film Papa, alongside Robert Scott Wilson, Paul Sorvino, Daryl Hannah, Mischa Barton, Frankie Avalon, Ann-Margret, and Michael Madsen which received favorables reviews. In 2018, he acted in the movie Head Full of Honey which stars Matt Dillon.
In a 2018 Vanity Fair interview, Roberts traced his prolific filmography to when he stopped getting consistent offers from major film studios and started doing B movies. “I start making a bunch of B movies—bam bam bam bam bam bam—one after the other, and then suddenly two, three years have passed, and I made like 30 films in two, three years," Roberts recalled.
In 2019, he starred in the crime thriller drama Night Walk, starring Mickey Rourke. He had a major role in the action movie The Reliant, alongside Kevin Sorbo. He also appears on the sci-fi movie The Immortal Wars: Resurgence. He acted in the crime/thriller 90 Feet From Home, including Dean Cain. He also played a supporting role in the family movie A Karate Christmas Miracle. Also in 2019, 23 years after initially playing the role, Roberts reprised his version of the Master, working with Big Finish Productions. He made his debut in series 5 of the spinoff series, The Diary of River Song. Later that year, he appeared in the finale of the Eighth Doctor story line, Ravenous, once more working opposite Paul McGann.
In 2020, he starred in several movies including Reboot Camp, Angels Fallen, The Unbreakable Sword, Deported, Collision Earth, Hayalet : 3 Yasam and Top Gunner. Furthermore, he starred in the DC Comics short movie Pamela & Ivy and appeared in the fan-made movie Gambit: Playing for Keeps.
Roberts has reprised the role of the Master in Doctor Who audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions. In January 2021, Roberts reprised the role of the Master in Masterful, a special audio drama release celebrating the 50th anniversary of the debut of that character. In March 2021, he appeared in his own spinoff series, Master! as well. The same year, he took part in the horror movie Escape to the Cove, appeared in the acclaimed short drama The Sleepless, guest starred again in season 17, episode 14 on the TV show Grey's Anatomy, acted in the comedy Peach Cobbler, starred in the TV movie Mommy's Deadly Con Artist. He was also involved in the drama movie After Masks, the horror film 616 Wilford Lane and the comedy Mr. Birthday. In 2022, he co-starred with Lana Wood in Dog Boy, and as a recurring character in the second season of the HBO series The Righteous Gemstones
Personal life
Roberts holds a black belt in taekwondo and has demonstrated his skills as a fighter in the Best of the Best franchise.
Relationships and family
A 1989 profile of actress Sandy Dennis in People says she had a live-in relationship with Roberts for five years at a seven-bedroom house she rented in Connecticut. The relationship began several years after her 1974 parting from boyfriend Gerry Mulligan, a jazz musician who had lived with Dennis in the same house (whose Connecticut location was identified as Westport or Wilton in different People magazine articles).
In 1981, some months after Roberts began living with Dennis, he was in a debilitating car accident near their home. His ordeal was described by People magazine years later as “a month-long hospital stay after a bad car accident in 1981." Leaving the Wilton house he lived with Dennis, Roberts went for a Jeep ride with his girlfriend's German shepherd. When the dog seemed to lean out too far, Roberts tried to get hold of him. He let go of the steering wheel, and the car ended up hitting a tree. He was in a coma for three days. Dennis, an animal lover who cared for many dogs and cats, was relieved to learn her German shepherd was not injured in the accident. After Roberts recovered, his live-in relationship with Dennis lasted a few more years. Author James Spada claimed that it came to an end because of his affair with actress Ellen Barkin, while Roberts cited Dennis' refusal to start an animal shelter for some 100 stray cats living in the couple's shared home as the reason for their split.
Roberts has a daughter, Emma, from a live-in relationship with Kelly Cunningham; Emma was born on February 10, 1991. She eventually became an actress as well, making her major-film debut at age 10 in the 2001 drama Blow. After Roberts' relationship with Cunningham, he married Eliza Garrett (daughter of actors David Rayfiel and Lila Garrett) in 1992. His stepson, Keaton Simons, is a singer-songwriter, and his stepdaughter, Morgan Simons, is a chef. Roberts became a grandfather for the first time in December 2020 when Emma gave birth to her first child, a son named Rhodes, with actor Garrett Hedlund.
On January 12, 2001, Roberts visited The Howard Stern Radio Show with Garrett, during a segment called "The Gossip Game" with Mike Walker of the National Enquirer. He confirmed that he and his sister, Julia, had been estranged for several years. The source of the estrangement had been his past drug abuse and her siding with his ex-girlfriend over the custody of his daughter. In 2004, he told People magazine that he and his sister reconciled when he visited her in the hospital after she gave birth to twins.
Legal issues
In 1987, Roberts was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana, and resisting arrest after he tried to assault a New York police officer.
In February 1995, Roberts was arrested for shoving his wife into a wall.
References
External links
Official channel on YouTube
The Oracle of Bacon - The Center of the Hollywood Universe
1956 births
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
American male film actors
American male soap opera actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
American male taekwondo practitioners
Living people
Male actors from Atlanta
Male actors from Mississippi
People from Biloxi, Mississippi
Eric
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd%20Nerdrum
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Odd Nerdrum
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Odd Nerdrum (born 8 April 1944) is a Norwegian figurative painter, born in Sweden.
His work is held by museums worldwide. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and narrative. Primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio help place his work in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of Norway. Nerdrum creates six to eight paintings a year. They include still life paintings of small, everyday objects (like bricks), portraits and self-portraits, and large paintings allegorical and apocalyptic in nature. The figures in Nerdrum's paintings are often dressed as if from another time and place.
Nerdrum was born in Helsingborg, Sweden, because his parents were resistance fighters who had fled German-occupied Norway during World War II. At the end of the war Nerdrum returned to Norway with his parents. By 1950 Nerdrum's parents had divorced leaving the mother to raise Nerdrum and his younger brother. In 1993, Nerdrum discovered his father was not his biological father; his mother had had a relationship with the architect David Sandved. Nerdrum was born from this liaison.
Nerdrum was educated in a Rudolf Steiner school and later at the Art Academy of Oslo. Disillusioned with the art form taught at the academy and with modern art in general Nerdrum began to teach himself to paint in a post-modern style with Rembrandt and Caravaggio as influences. In 1965, he began a several-months study with the German artist Joseph Beuys. Nerdrum says that his art should be understood as kitsch rather than art as such. On Kitsch, a manifesto composed by Nerdrum, describes the distinction he makes between kitsch and art.
Nerdrum's philosophy has spawned the Kitsch movement among his students and followers, who call themselves kitsch painters rather than artists.
Biography
Early life
Odd Nerdrum was born in Helsingborg, Sweden in 1944. His parents, Resistance fighters, had been sent to Sweden from German-occupied Norway to direct guerrilla activities from outside the country. A year later, at the end of the war, Odd and his parents moved back to Norway. Lillemor, his mother, soon after went to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The feeling of being unwanted and abandoned Nerdrum felt at this time would stay with him until he was in his late forties, and he often felt emotionally distanced. In 1950, Nerdrum's parents divorced, leaving Nerdrum's mother, Lillemor, to raise two small children, Odd, and his younger brother.
Nerdrum's father, Johan Nerdrum, later remarried. Although he was supportive of Odd, he kept an emotional distance between himself and his son. At his death, Odd was asked not to attend the funeral. He found out three years later that Johan was not his biological father. Odd, was in fact, the result of a liaison between David Sandved and Lillemor. Lillemor and Sandved had had a relationship prior to Lillemor's marriage, and this was resumed during the war in a period when Johan was absent. Richard Vine, art critic, describes this episode in Nerdrum's life as one which created "a conflicted preoccupation with origins and personal identity", that "came natural to Nerdrum" and was represented in his pictures. He would go on to make paintings about these experiences.
Early education
Nerdrum began his formal education in 1951 in Oslo, in the private Oslo Waldorf School (Rudolf Steiner school) rather than in the standard, public school system. This education would set Odd apart from his contemporaries. The system was based on anthroposophy that saw mankind as once living in harmony with the universe but now existing in a lesser state of rationality. Through spiritual or esoteric practice, Steiner believed mankind could find its way back to a connection with higher realities and to renewed harmony with the universe. Learning for students was often kinesthetic, for example, through dramatic enactments of history and fantasy, and through musical exercises that were reminiscent of the patterns found on ancient Greek vases, depicting figures moving in parallel patterns. These parallel patterns could be found in later Nerdrum work, as can a sensibility for iconographic images and costume.
Jens Bjørneboe, Norwegian author and mentor, said Nerdrum even at a young age exhibited tendencies of innate talent and industry, but also impatience with those with less ability than himself.
Personal life
Odd Nerdrum has been married to fellow painter Turid Spildo since 1995. Spildo is artistic director of the Nerdrum Studio. They have two sons, Öde and Bork; and twin daughters, Aftur and Myndin. Their adult children are engaged in creative endeavors, including art, documentary, plays and acting, much of which are engaged with the Nerdrum family.
Artistic study
Nerdrum began study at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, but became dissatisfied with the direction of modern art, notably Rauschenberg's work, and began to teach himself how to paint in a Neo-Baroque style, with the guidance of Rembrandt's technique and work as a primary influence. Nerdrum had seen Rembrandt's painting, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Nerdrum says seeing the painting was "a shock... Pervasive. Like finding home. I can say I found a home in this picture,... The wonderful thing with Rembrandt is the confidence he inspires - like when you warm your hands on a stove. Without Rembrandt I would have been so poor". By abandoning the accepted path of modern art, Nerdrum had placed himself in direct opposition to most aspects of the school, including his primary painting instructor, his fellow students, and a curriculum designed to present Norway as a country with an up-to-date artistic culture. He, in his own words, was chased from the academy after a two-year period like a "scroungy mutt". Years later Nerdrum said:
I saw that I was in the process of making a choice that would end in defeat. By choosing those qualities that were so alien to my own time, I had to give up at the same time the art on which the art of our time rests. I had to paint in defiance of my own era without the protection of the era's superstructure. Briefly put I would paint myself into isolation.
Nerdrum later studied with Joseph Beuys, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. However, he continued to feel isolated from the other students, who nicknamed him "Zorn" from the notorious Swedish "flesh-painter."
Influences
Rembrandt and Caravaggio are primary influences on Nerdrum's work, while secondary influences include Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, and the less obvious influences, according to Vine and either mentioned by Nerdrum himself or other critics, that include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Goya, Chardin, Millet, as well as the even less apparent Henry Fuseli, Caspar David Friedrich, Ferdinand Hodler, Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Salvador Dalí, Chaïm Soutine and Lars Hertervig.
Direction
Early work (1964–1982)
Nerdrum's work from the first twenty years of his artistic life consisted of large canvasses, generally polemic in nature, that served to refute accepted social or economic viewpoints. The work from this period was highly representational and detailed in nature with often careful attention to contemporary references, such as in clothing, or in the model of a bicycle as in the painting The Arrest. Vine notes that, Nerdrum's influence was not, as might be expected, given the themes of the work, the ideological Ashcan school movement, although similar in subject matter. In 1968, Nerdrum had viewed for the first time the works of Caravaggio whose psychologically intense work, use of cross lighting, strongly suggested shadow that implied three dimensionality, and use of the faces of real, everyday people impacted him intensely, and provided one of the major influences for his work of this time period. He would revisit Italy and Caravaggio's work for on-going inspiration for many years.
As well, Nerdrum was a reader of visionary literature that included works by Rudolf Steiner, the prophetic William Blake, the dark Dostoyevsky, and the mystical Swedenborg. This would influence him towards a more vertical sensibility rather than the linear Marxist view based on revolution that influenced most artists with socially reformist sensibilities.
As a young student, Nerdrum had encountered the works of the master painters in the National Museum. In particular, Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661) acted as a powerful antidote to his sensibilities. His disillusionment with modern art, such as Robert Rauschenberg's Monogram, a stuffed goat with a tire around its middle section standing on a flat, littered surface, which Nerdrum had encountered in the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, filled the young artist with disgust.
These influences both positive and negative would impact all of Nerdrum's work. A turning point in Nerdrum's work - the end of Nerdrum's more contemporary scene-like work, and the movement towards more Rembrandt-like painting elements- revolved around the enormous (11x16¾ foot) Refugees At Sea (1979–1980). Nerdrum, according to Vine, later considered the work to be naive in the sense that Rousseau defines the word, in which mankind is seen as innocent and innately good. In the painting Nerdrum endows the refugees, 27 Vietnamese boat people, with heroic stature, but in a highly sentimentalized manner that Nerdrum later described as "cloying".
Change in direction
In 1981 Nerdrum created a seminal work that would serve to indicate a change in direction from the sentimentalized view of Refugees at Sea to a starker, unadorned view of reality. Twilight, a rear view of a young woman alone in a wooded landscape defecating, offers nothing sentimental or ideal in its betrayal, but instead offers a stripped away view of life and reality.
Paintings were no longer as multi-figured as they had been with Refugees at Sea, and still lifes were of individual objects such as a brick or loaf of bread. The individuals who now populated Nerdrum's paintings were imbued with great quiet and stillness, but as Vine says, additionally were vitally alive, evoking a cosmic oneness that transcended individuality.
These figures — types rather than endowed with features or apparent stories that might distinguish them as individual — were costumed in garments that seemed timeless such as furs, skins, or leather caps, rather than in clothing that would link the viewer to a specific time and place.
Archetypal-like, these beings, inhabited pre-social, apocalyptic-like circumstances that included stark, severe landscapes, a reference to some place beyond our own time and space.
Painting technique
Nerdrum's approach to painting is based on traditional methods that included mixing and grinding his own pigments, working on canvas he had stretched or stretched by assistants rather than on pre-stretched canvas, and working from live models, often himself, and in many cases members of his own family. In 2011, Nerdrum stated that the technique he used in the 1980s was faulty, "a special mixture of oils and paint in an effort to recreate the style of the old masters" which subsequently melted and disintegrated.
Process
Of his process Nerdrum says: "When I paint as if I struggle in the water. I will try with all means not to drown. Sandpaper, rags, my fingers, the knife--in short everything. The brush is rarely used."
Drawings and prints
Odd Nerdrum prints are based on his paintings. For example, an etching entitled Baby is based on a painting of the same title from 1982. Nerdrum refers to his highly finished, charcoal drawings as "paintings" Often his drawings are large in scale and are works in their own right, as well as being studies for future paintings.
On kitsch
Odd Nerdrum has declared himself to be a kitsch-painter identifying himself with kitsch rather than with the contemporary art world. Initially, Nerdrum's declaration was thought to be a joke but later, and with the publication of articles and books on the subject, Nerdrum's position can be seen as an implied criticism of contemporary art.
Court cases
In 2011, Nerdrum was convicted in Norway of tax evasion and sentenced to two years in prison. An appeal was filed. His defense claimed that a very large amount of money stored in a safe deposit box in Austria was "a safety measure against future claims" for some 36 paintings that Nerdrum had created in the 1980’s using an experimental medium which began to melt when exposed to heat." The sentence was criticised as excessive while art professor Øivind Storm Bjerke called the sentence "strict" Supporters stated that there were flaws in the proceedings of the trial, such as faulty evidence. Nerdrum claimed the case was an attempt at political persecution.
In January 2012, the Norwegian court of appeal granted Nerdrum a new trial. The trial began on 11 June. After three trial days, Nerdrum was once again convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to two years and ten months in prison. In 2013, the verdict was set aside by the Supreme Court of Norway; in 2014 court of appeals found him guilty of tax evasion and he was sentenced to 20 months in prison; 8 months were suspended. Under Norwegian law, Nerdrum would be forbidden from any painting activity in prison, as prisoners in Norway are not allowed to pursue business activities while incarcerated.
In October 2012, Nerdrum lost a suit filed against the regional tax authority. The Oslo court ruled that the funds that Nerdrum had set aside in Austria did not constitute a 'loan, security, depot or committed funds' and should have been disclosed as income.
In September 2017 Nerdrum was pardoned by King Harald of Norway.
Nerdrum's work as inspiration
A 2000 horror film, The Cell, contains a scene that was heavily influenced by Nerdrum's 1989 painting Dawn. The scene features three identical figures sitting down, looking upwards with pained, trance-like expressions on their faces. Director Tarsem Singh in the film's audio commentary says that the painting was the inspiration for the scene's imagery. Singh had seen the painting while visiting the owner of the painting, David Bowie.
Australian choreographer, Meryl Tankard's 2009 dance piece, The Oracle, was inspired by the work of Nerdrum. The work, featuring the dancer Paul White, was about the human being in constant struggle with forces outside of itself.
The Norwegian classical composer Martin Romberg wrote a collection of piano pieces inspired by three of Nerdrum's works in 2014, named Tableaux Kitsch. The pieces are inspired by the paintings To the Lighthouse, Stranded, and Drifting, and were premiered at Nerdrum's exhibitions in Paris 2013 and Barcelona 2016.
Collections
Odd Nerdrum's work is held in public collections worldwide including the National Gallery, in Oslo, the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, in Oslo, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, the New Orleans Museum of Art, in New Orleans, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, in San Diego, and the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis.
Odd Nerdrum is represented by the Forum Gallery, New York.
Exhibitions
Skiens Kunstforening, Skien, Norway "Minner" June–September 2017
Galleri Agardh Tornvall, Stockholm, Sweden "Making Painting Great again" November 2017
Mollbrink's Art Gallery, Uppsala, Sweden "Making Painting great again" March 2018
Publications
Odd Nerdrum, Joacim Ericsson, Per Lundgren, David Molesky, Richard T. Scott, Richard Vine. The Nerdrum School: The Master and His Students. Oslo, Norway: Orfeus Publishing, Nov. 2013. .
Odd Nerdrum, Jan-Ove Tuv, Bjorn Li, Dag Solhjell, Tommy Sorbo, Maria Kreyn, Kitsch: More than Art. Oslo, Norway: Schibsted 2011. .
Odd Nerdrum, Bjørn Li. Odd Nerdrum: themes: paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. Oslo, Norway: Press Publishing, 2007. .
Odd Nerdrum and Richard Vine. Odd Nerdrum: paintings, sketches and drawings. Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Fakta, 2001. .
Odd Nerdrum, On Kitsch Oslo, Norway: Kagge Publishing, 2001
Odd Nerdrum and Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen. Odd Nerdrum: paintings. Oslo, Norway: Aschehoug, 1995. .
Odd Nerdrum, Jan Åke Pettersson and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst. Odd Nerdrum: storyteller and self-revealer. Oslo, Norway: Astrup Fearnley museet for moderne kunst: Aschehoug, 1999. .
Odd Nerdrum, Richard Vine, E John Bullard and New Orleans Museum of Art. Odd Nerdrum, the drawings. New Orleans, Louisiana: New Orleans Museum of Art, 1994. .
References
External links
Odd Nerdrum: A collection of 63 works (HD), Video 6:49.
Odd Nerdrum: The Self-portrait (2015), Video 34:29.
Odd Nerdrum official website
Forum Gallery - the gallery representing Nerdrum
1944 births
Living people
20th-century Norwegian painters
21st-century Norwegian painters
Norwegian male painters
21st-century male artists
Postmodern artists
Painters from Oslo
People educated at Oslo Waldorf School
Norwegian expatriates in Iceland
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni
Students of Joseph Beuys
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian%20Certificate%20of%20Education
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Victorian Certificate of Education
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The Victorian Certificate of Education (often abbreviated VCE) is one credential available to secondary school students who successfully complete year 11 and 12 in the Australian state of Victoria as well as in some international schools in China, Malaysia, Philippines, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.
About 67% of all 19-year-olds in Victoria had completed the VCE in 2020.
Study for the VCE is usually completed over two years, but can be spread over a longer period in some cases.
The VCE was established as a pilot project in 1987. The earlier Higher School Certificate (HSC) was abolished in 1992.
Delivery of the VCE Vocational Major, an "applied learning" program within the VCE, began in 2023.
Structure
The Victorian Certificate of Education is generally taught in years 11 and 12 of secondary education in Victoria; but some students are able to start their VCE studies in year 10 or earlier if the school or institution allows it.
All VCE studies are organised into units. VCE subjects typically consist of four units with each unit covering one semester of study. Each unit comprises a set number of outcomes (usually two or three); an outcome describes the knowledge and skills that a student should demonstrate by the time the student has completed the unit. Subject choice depends on each individual school. Units 3/4 of a subject must be studied in sequential order, whereas units 1/2 can be mixed and matched. Students are not required to complete all the units of a subject as part of the VCE course, meaning they are able to change subject choice between years 11 and 12.
On completing a unit, a student receives either a 'satisfactory' (S) or 'non-satisfactory' (N) result. If a student does not intend to receive an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), a 'satisfactory' result is all that is required to graduate with the VCE.
To gain an ATAR a student must satisfactorily complete three units of any subject in the English field (at least one English field subject is compulsory) and twelve units in any other subjects.
Assessment
VCE studies are assessed both internally (in school) and externally (through the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA). During units 1/2 all assessment is internal, while in units 3/4 assessment is conducted both internally and externally.
VCE Vocational Major units are only assessed internally.
Internal assessment
Internal assessment is conducted via "school assessed coursework" (SACs) and "school assessed tasks" (SATs).
"School assessed coursework" (SACs) are the primary avenue of internal assessment, with assessment in every VCE study consisting of at least one SAC. SACs are tasks that are written by the school and must be done primarily in class time; they can include essays, reports, tests, and case studies. Some studies in the visual arts and technology areas are also assessed via "school assessed tasks" (SATs). SATs are generally practical tasks that are examined in school. Both SACs and SATs are scaled by VCAA against external assessment; this is to eliminate any cheating or variances in task difficulty.
External assessment
External assessment is conducted in the form of examinations set by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority for units 3/4 studies. As of 2013, only the General Achievement Test (GAT) will be examined in June, with all subjects now only having one external assessment with the exceptions of mathematics subjects, LOTE studies, which consist of both a written and oral external test, performance studies, which consist of both a written external test and a performance, and Extended Investigations, which consist of an oral presentation and a Critical Thinking Test. All examinations except the Critical Thinking Test for Extended Investigation and the GAT are held in late October and most of November.
Subjects in the LOTE field (languages other than English) are also assessed in the form of oral examinations. Subjects in the Dance, Drama/Theatre Studies and Music fields, as well as Extended Investigations, are assessed by a performance for a VCAA panel of examiners as part of their external assessment. All performance-based external assessments (Oral Examinations and Music Performances) are typically held in early October.
General Achievement Test (GAT)
The GAT is an essential part of VCE external assessment. It provides the basis for a quality assurance check on the marking of examinations, and for deriving an indicative study score if the student misses the external assessment with a valid reason. All students who are enrolled in a VCE units 3/4 study are required to some or all of the GAT, including students completing the VCE Vocational Major.
Scoring
Study scores
Students will be eligible for a study score of between 0 and 50 if they have completed at least two Graded Assessments, and have satisfactorily completed both units 3/4 of a VCE study. Study scores are calculated by VCAA, and indicate a student's performance in relation to all other students who undertook that study.
Study scores are calculated by combining the standardised scores for each Graded Assessment with specific percentages, then ranked against all students in the subject according to a normal distribution, where the mean is 30 and the standard deviation is 7, with most study scores falling between 23 and 37. For studies with many enrolments (1000 or more), a study score of 40 or more places a student in the top 9% of all students in that subject.
If a student is ill or affected by other personal circumstances during an external assessment, and whose result is unlikely to be a fair or accurate demonstration of their learning or achievement, they may apply for a derived examination score (DES). Long-term illness or other ongoing conditions that have been present over the year are not eligible for a DES. Students will need to supply independent evidence to apply for a DES, and will be examined case by case by VCAA. The derived score is calculated statistically from the student's other assessments, including school-based assessments, GAT scores, other external assessment scores (if available) and grades provided by the school.
Scaling
Scaling is the process that adjusts VCE study scores into ATAR subject scores. The Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) adjusts all VCE study scores to equalise results between studies with stronger cohorts, and those with weaker ones. Contrary to common perception, scaling is not based on the difficulty of the subject, as each study score is in fact a ranking. The score adjustment ensures that in those subjects where it is easier to overtake the cohort, the score is adjusted downward, while in subjects where it is difficult to score highly, it is moved upwards. This makes sure obtaining the average score in one study required the same level of achievement as every other study.
Mathematics subjects and language subjects have additional scaling rules. In mathematics subjects (General Mathematics, Mathematical Methods and Specialist Mathematics), all three studies are scaled against each other in addition to being scaled against all other studies, then the higher of the two scaling scores will then be used. This is due to mathematics having a distinct hierarchy of studies with varying difficulties, so students studying the harder subjects will not be disadvantaged by the level of difficulty. In LOTE (Languages Other Than English) subjects, study scores are adjusted by adding up to five to the initial scaled study score average. This adjustment is different for each subject and score, and decreases as the study score moves away from 30.
ATAR
Unscored VCE
It is possible for students to complete an unscored VCE. Under this option, students complete the VCE course but do not sit final exams and are not given an ATAR. The number of students completing an unscored VCE has increased every year since 2015, with 8.3% of VCE students completing an unscored VCE in 2020.
Studies
VCE studies refer to the various subjects available to students to contribute to their successful completion of the qualification. There are currently 128 VCE studies, ranging from diverse fields such as the humanities, science, technology and mathematics. Studies are also permitted to study one or more VCE VET programs, vocational education-based subjects which contribute to the completion of the VCE, while also resulting in a nationally recognised VET qualification.
Although a student may choose to study any VCE subject in theory, this is dependent on availability of the specified study at the student's school. Certain schools do not offer certain studies, and as a result, students may pick alternate ones, or choose to study a particular subject through an external institution such as Virtual School Victoria (formerly Distance Education Centre Victoria).
To be awarded the VCE, a student must successfully complete at least:
3 units of an English subject, with two of those being units 3 and 4
Three additional Unit 3/4 sequences
Pass with a satisfactory of at least 16 units out of the normal 20–24 units
This therefore means that a student must study at least four subjects to be awarded the VCE. Selection of studies depends on other factors as well, such as prerequisites for university courses.
The following is a list of all VCE studies available: † indicates that study is only available at 3/4 level, * indicates that study is only available at 1/2 level.
There are also University Extension studies available for high-achieving students. These subjects are carried out through multiple universities, including The University of Melbourne, Swinburne University and Deakin University. Monash University formerly offered extension subjects, but cancelled the program in 2019.
Controversies
2011 English exam
The 2011 English exam contained a column about tattoos attributed to "part-time journalist and blogger Helen Day", who wrote for the fictional "Street Beat" blog. The Age newspaper accused VCAA of plagiarism and breach of copyright as the column was very similar to an opinion piece featured in the newspaper's 23 September 2010 edition, written by Melbourne writer Helen Razer. The newspaper called the exam's column "clumsily edited".
2012 History: Revolutions exam
In 2012, the History: Revolutions exam was meant to include a picture of Nikolai Kochergin's artwork Storming the Winter Palace on 25th October 1917, depicting the events of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Instead, a doctored picture was used in the exam, in which a large robot had been edited in to the background of the scene. (Said robot was a Marauder from BattleTech, a science fiction setting in which a fictional 28th century general named 'Aleksandr Kerensky' like the nonfictional October Revolution leader played an important role during a pivotal coup and civil war.) A VCAA spokesperson admitted that the image was "sourced and acknowledged by the VCAA as coming from the Internet", and new internal guidelines were issued for using internet-sourced content in exams. Of the 5,738 students that sat the exam, 2,379 chose the Russia section, of which 130 received an adjusted score.
2016 Early Release of results
In 2016, a computer error allowed for 2075 students (approximately 2.5% of VCE candidates) to receive their ATAR score and VCE results five days earlier than they were supposed to be announced. External SMS provider for VCAA and the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC), Salmat Digital, created an error that enabled students to receive their results before the expected release date by texting VCAA. Suzanne Connelly, a spokeswoman for VTAC and VCAA, apologised on behalf of all agencies involved.
This sparked outrage from parents of students who did not receive their scores, considering it as "unfair". Students who were able to receive their results also questioned its legitimacy and reliability. The VCAA and VTAC acted to contact affected students and their schools to reassure them regarding the accidental early results release. The release of the remaining 97.5% of results took place without further issue at the planned time. Education Minister James Merlino ordered an investigation into the situation, which had compromised results that are normally closely guarded until the official release.
2018 English exam
The 2018 English exam included an article in which fictional writer Jonty Jenkins scathingly attacked a café franchise named "Calmer Coffee" opening in his local town, criticising its unfriendly staff and unwelcoming ambience that he described as "an assault on the senses". After the exam completed, students discovered that a real "Calmer Cafe" existed in Aberfeldie, a suburb just north-west of Melbourne. The café's manager, Elise Jenkins, shares the same surname as the exam question's fictional writer. Within hours, the café received over 100 negative reviews on Google Maps from Year 12 students, bringing down its rating from nearly 5 stars to as low as 3.3. Google Maps temporarily removed the café from search results, and later reinstated it but kept reviews inaccessible. At the time, the café had 405 reviews.
The next day, Tara Conron, owner of the cafe, told The Age she had hired a lawyer and would be pursuing legal action against VCAA for "uncanny" similarities between the exam and the actual cafe. Conron noted the identical surnames of Jenkins, stated that she employs someone with a "man bun", as does the employer in the exam article, and both the fictional and actual cafe "stand out" in their respective suburbs.
A year later, it was reported that Conron was no longer pursuing legal action against VCAA, telling The Age that the café staff had placed the matter behind them, and saying "we’ve just loved to joke about it this year".
2022 Specialist Mathematics Exam 2
On 11 November 2022 The Age newspaper published an article ("For some, this VCE maths exam didn't add up") alleging errors on the 2022 Specialist Mathematics Exam 2 that included:
Section A Question 4: No correct answer (because the values of a and c can be any real number),
Section A Question 19: No correct answer (because confidence intervals are calculated for unknown population means, not for sample means),
Section B: Question 6 part (f) (the question cannot be answered because the relevant random variables are not stated to be independent).
The Examination Report published by the VCAA for this Exam makes no acknowledgement of these alleged errors. The answers used by the VCAA to mark this exam are not available to the public. It is reasonable to assume they are the same as the answers given in the Examination Report.
The alleged errors in this exam (as well as an alleged error in the marking scheme used for 2022 Specialist Mathematics Exam 1 Question 3 part (b)) form part of a public submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the state of education in Victoria (Parliamentary Inquiry submission 32). The Herald Sun has reported on this submission (Herald-Sun 7 September 2023 front page and page 7 "Maths exams don't add up") (Mistake-riddled VCE exams robbing students) and it received further media coverage on Sky News Australia (VCE maths exams riddled with errors for decades, expert claims). A supplement (32.3) to the aforementioned submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry includes a detailed mathematical rebuttal of the VCAA's claims that the "questions did not present errors" (Herald-Sun 7 September 2023 page 7 "Maths exams don't add up").
Allegations of other mathematical errors
The public submission (Parliamentary Inquiry) also alleges errors on many other VCE mathematics exams over a twenty year period (reported in the Herald-Sun 7 September 2023 front page and page 7 "Maths exams don't add up") (Mistake-riddled VCE exams robbing students)), including:
1. 2016 Mathematical Methods Exam 2 Section B Question 3 part (h) where a function is incorrectly claimed to be a probability density function (pdf). An amended Examination Report (2016 Mathematical Methods Exam 2 Report) acknowledges that the function was not a pdf but does not admit an error and does not explain why, contrary to the instruction in the exam question, "Answers that were correct to the nearest integer were accepted".
2. Northern Hemisphere Timetable 2021 Mathematical Methods Exam 2 Section A Question 8, for which there is no correct answer. The original Examination Report (no longer publicly available) stated Option D as the correct answer. This answer is deleted in an amended Examination Report (2021 Mathematical Methods Exam 2 Report). No answer is stated and no explanation is given for why no answer is stated.
Question 4 from an official 2010 VCAA document (Mathematical Methods Sample Questions) contains the same error. It is reasonable to assume that this document is the source of the 2021 exam error. There is no evidence that the VCAA has ever alerted teachers to the error in this document.
Mathematician, educator and author Marty Ross has extensively documented and discussed many alleged VCE Mathematical Methods Exam errors and VCE Specialist Mathematics Exam errors.
2022 Geography exam
On 8 September 2023 the Herald Sun newspaper published an article about colour blind students being given red-green scaled maps in the 2022 Geography Exam (Herald-Sun 8 September 2023 page 11 "Students see red ... or not") (Colour blind students forgotten in VCE Geography exam).
2023 General Mathematics Exam 2
It was reported in The Western Australian (31 October 2023 “Investigation ordered after maths exam doesn’t add up”) that the
“VCAA has launched an investigation after typographical errors appeared in Monday's second general maths exam. One error was picked up after printing, with students instructed to amend the paper. But the second error in a matrix-related question [(Q9d)] was not spotted until after the exam.”
In an ABC Radio Melbourne interview between Rafael Epstein and an exam invigilator, it was claimed by the invigilator that the initial VCAA instruction for fixing the first error was unclear and potentially wrong.
It was reported in the Herald Sun (31 October 2023 “Investigation into VCE exam errors as students left in tears”) that
"A spokesman for the Department of Education admitted the two errors ...
"The VCAA will conduct further analysis to investigate how this error appeared in the exam, and will ensure that no student’s score is unfairly impacted because of this
mistake, and apologises for undue stress this has caused"
... Education minister Ben Carroll [said] it’s “unacceptable” the maths exam contained two mistakes and ordered an investigation into the latest VCE testing bungle.” The Minister unreservedly apologised and said that "he had spoken with the chief of the VCAA and ordered an immediate investigation".
It was reported in the Herald Sun (1 November 2023 “VCE maths students awarded bonus mark for exam errors”) that the VCAA decided to "... award all students who attempted the exam a correct score for the [matrix-related] question" (Q9d) that contained the error.
See also
Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre
General Achievement Test
Department of Education, Victoria
Engage Education Foundation
Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank
Education in Australia
Senior Secondary Certificate of Education
University admission
Notes
References
External links
School qualifications
Education in Victoria (state)
Australian Certificate of Education
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bewitched
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Bewitched
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Bewitched is an American fantasy sitcom television series that originally aired for eight seasons on ABC from September 17, 1964, to March 25, 1972. It is about a witch who marries an ordinary mortal man and vows to lead the life of a typical suburban housewife. The show was popular, finishing as the second-rated show in America during its debut season, staying in the top ten for its first three seasons, and ranking in eleventh place for both seasons four and five. The show continues to be seen throughout the world in syndication and on recorded media.
Bewitched was created by Sol Saks under executive producer Harry Ackerman and starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, Dick York (1964–1969) as Darrin Stephens, and Agnes Moorehead as Endora, Samantha's mother. Dick Sargent replaced an ailing York for the final three seasons, 1969–1972.
Hanna-Barbera produced the opening and closing animation credits. In 2002, Bewitched was ranked No. 50 on "TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time". In 1997, the same magazine ranked the season 2 episode "Divided He Falls" #48 on their list of the "100 Greatest Episodes of All Time".
Plot
A beautiful witch named Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) meets and marries a mortal named Darrin Stephens (originally Dick York, later Dick Sargent). While Samantha complies with Darrin's wishes to become a normal suburban housewife, her magical family disapproves of the mixed marriage and frequently interferes in the couple's lives. Episodes often begin with Darrin becoming the victim of a spell, the effects of which wreak havoc with mortals such as his boss, clients, parents, and neighbors. By the epilogue, however, Darrin and Samantha most often embrace, having overcome the devious elements that failed to separate them. The witches and their male counterparts, warlocks, are very long-lived; while Samantha appears to be a young woman, many episodes suggest she is actually hundreds of years old. To keep their society secret, witches avoid showing their powers in front of mortals other than Darrin. Nevertheless, the effects of their spells—and Samantha's attempts to hide their supernatural origin from mortals—drive the plot of most episodes. Witches and warlocks usually use physical gestures along with their incantations. To perform magic, Samantha often twitches her nose to create a spell. Special visual effects are accompanied by music to highlight such an action.
Setting
The main setting for most episodes is the Stephenses' home at 1164 Morning Glory Circle, in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood, either in Westport, Connecticut or Patterson, New York as indicated by conflicting information presented throughout the series. Many scenes also take place at the fictional Madison Avenue advertising agency McMann and Tate, where Darrin works.
Cast and characters
Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens;
Dick York (1964–1969) as Darrin Stephens, her husband (Dick Sargent replaced an ailing York for the final three seasons, 1969–1972);
Agnes Moorehead as Endora, Samantha's mother;
David White as Larry Tate, Darrin's boss;
Irene Vernon (1964–1966) & later Kasey Rogers (1966–1972) as Louise Tate, Larry's wife;
Alice Pearce (1964–1966) as Gladys Kravitz;
George Tobias (1964–1971) as her husband, Abner Kravitz;
Erin Murphy (1966–1972) as Tabitha Stephens (she shared this role for 18 episodes with her fraternal twin sister, Diane Murphy).
In 1966, Sandra Gould took over the part of Gladys Kravitz (1966–1971) after the death of Alice Pearce.
Annual semi-regulars:
Paul Lynde as Samantha's Uncle Arthur (1965–1971)
Maurice Evans as Maurice, Samantha's father;
Marion Lorne as Samantha's Aunt Clara (1964–1968);
Alice Ghostley as Esmeralda, Tabitha's babysitter (1969–1972);
Bernard Fox as Dr. Bombay (1967-1972);
Mabel Albertson as Darrin's mother, Phyllis Stephens (1964–1971);
Robert F. Simon & Roy Roberts alternating the role of Frank Stephens, Darrin's father (1964–1971).
During its run, the series had a number of major cast changes, often because of illness or death of the actors.
Precursors
Creator Sol Saks' inspirations for this series were the film I Married a Witch (1942), developed from Thorne Smith's unfinished novel The Passionate Witch, and the John Van Druten Broadway play Bell, Book and Candle, which was adapted into the 1958 film.
In I Married a Witch, Wallace Wooley (Fredric March) is a descendant of people who executed witches at the Salem witch trials. As revenge, a witch (Veronica Lake) prepares a love potion for him. She ends up consuming her own potion and falling for her enemy. Her father is against this union. In the film of Bell, Book and Candle, modern witch Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) uses a love spell on Shep Henderson (James Stewart) to have a simple fling with him but she genuinely falls for the man.
Both films were properties of Columbia Pictures, which also owned Screen Gems, the company that produced Bewitched.
Production and broadcasting
Sol Saks received credit as the creator of the show; he wrote the pilot of Bewitched but was not involved with the show after the pilot. Creator Saks, executive producer Harry Ackerman, and director William Asher started rehearsals for the pilot on November 22, 1963; this coincided with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Asher felt personally affected by the event, as he knew Kennedy; he had produced the 1962 televised birthday party where Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President". The pilot concerned "the occult destabilization of the conformist life of an upwardly mobile advertising man". For that first episode, "I Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha", Academy Award-winning actor José Ferrer served as the narrator. First season producer and head writer Danny Arnold set the initial style and tone of the series, and he also helped develop supporting characters such as Larry Tate and the Kravitzes. Arnold, who wrote for McHale's Navy and other shows, thought of Bewitched essentially as a romantic comedy about a mixed marriage; his episodes kept the magic element to a minimum. One or two magical acts drove the plot, but Samantha often solved problems without magic. Many of the first season's episodes were allegorical, using supernatural situations as metaphors for the problems any young couple would face. Arnold stated that the two main themes of the series were the conflict between a powerful woman and a husband who cannot deal with that power, and the anger of a bride's mother at seeing her daughter marry beneath her. Though the show was a hit right from the beginning, finishing its first year as the number 2 show in the United States, ABC wanted more magic and more farcical plots, causing battles between Arnold and the network.
In its first season, Bewitched was American Broadcasting Company's number one show and the best rated sitcom among all three networks, coming second in ratings only to Bonanza. Bewitched aired at 9 pm Thursday evenings. It was preceded on the air by another sitcom, My Three Sons, and followed by the soap opera Peyton Place. My Three Sons finished 13th in the ratings and Peyton Place ninth. The block formed by the three shows was the strongest ratings grabber in ABC's schedule. Arnold left the show after the first season, leaving producing duties to his friend Jerry Davis, who had already produced some of the first season's episodes (though Arnold was still supervising the writing). The second season was produced by Davis, and, with Bernard Slade as head writer, misunderstandings and farce became more prevalent elements, though this season still included a number of more low-key episodes in which the magical element was not strongly emphasized. With the third season and the switch to color, Davis left the show, and was replaced as producer by William Froug. Slade also left after the second season. According to William Froug's autobiography, William Asher (who had directed many episodes) wanted to take over as producer when Jerry Davis left, but the production company was not yet ready to approve the idea. Froug, a former producer of Gilligan's Island and the last season of The Twilight Zone, was brought in as a compromise. By his own admission, Froug was not very familiar with Bewitched and found himself in the uncomfortable position of being the official producer even though Asher was making most of the creative decisions. After a year, Froug left the show, and Asher took over as full-time producer of the series for the rest of its run. The first two seasons had aired Thursdays at 9:00, and the time was moved to 8:30 shortly after the third year (1966–1967) had begun. Nevertheless, the ratings for Bewitched remained high and it placed among the top fifteen shows through the 1968–69 season. It was the seventh highest-rated show in both the U.S. '65–'66 and '66–'67 schedules. Similarly, it was number 11 the following two years.
At the time, the show had won three Emmy Awards. William Asher won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series in 1966. Alice Pearce posthumously won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Gladys Kravitz and Marion Lorne won the same award posthumously in 1968 for her portrayal of Aunt Clara. Producers were faced with how to deal with the deaths of both these actresses. When Pearce died in early 1966, Mary Grace Canfield was hired to play Gladys's sister-in-law Harriet Kravitz in four episodes. Comedienne Alice Ghostley was approached to take over the role of Gladys the next season, but turned it down. She and Pearce were good friends so Ghostley decided to decline the role out of respect for Pearce. (from the 2020 online blog "Do You Remember?" article 'Here's What Happened to ‘Bewitched’ Actress Alice Pearce Before and After Playing “Mrs. Kravitz” ' in which Ed Gross interviews Bewitched author Herbie J. Pilato talking about Alice Ghostley being approached to replace Alice Pearce) In the fall of 1966, Sandra Gould was hired as Gladys Kravitz. Gould would remain with the show until the spring of 1971. After Marion Lorne's death in the spring of 1968, she was not replaced, and the character of Aunt Clara was not seen after the fourth season. Beginning in the show's sixth year, Alice Ghostley was finally used to play the character of Esmeralda, a kind but shy and inept witch who served as a nanny and nursemaid to Darrin and Samantha's children, Tabitha and Adam. (Ironically, Ghostley had appeared in a similar role as Naomi, an incompetent domestic, hired by Darrin to do housecleaning for a pregnant Samantha in the second-season episode "Maid To Order".) In another notable casting change, Louise Tate, played by Irene Vernon during the first two seasons, was played by Kasey Rogers thereafter.
The fifth season of Bewitched (1968-1969) proved to be a turning point for the series, most notably with the mid-season departure of Dick York and the record eight episodes which were filmed without him afterwards (although aired out of order with previously filmed episodes). York was suffering from recurring back problems, the result of an accident during the filming of They Came To Cordura (1959). As a result, many episodes in seasons three and four had York's character of Darrin out of town on business. Towards the end of the season five, York's increased disability, which had caused numerous shooting delays and script rewrites, resulted in his collapsing on the set in January 1969 while filming the episode "Daddy Does His Thing". He was immediately rushed to the hospital and after a long talk with producer-director William Asher, York decided to leave the series. At about the same time, Montgomery and Asher announced that they were expecting another baby and it was decided that Samantha and Darrin would also have another child in the fall of that year. On screen, Samantha tells Darrin over the phone the news of her second pregnancy in the fifth-season episode "Samantha's Good News". That same month, Dick Sargent was cast to play Darrin beginning in the sixth season. It was also during this season that Serena (Samantha's identical cousin, also played by Montgomery) was used more frequently. Filming of scenes involving both Samantha and Serena was accomplished by using Melody McCord, Montgomery's stand-in.
Beginning with the sixth season's (1969–1970) opening credits, in addition to York being replaced with Sargent, Elizabeth Montgomery was billed above the title, and David White now received billing as well, after Agnes Moorehead's. During this year, the show saw a significant decline in ratings, falling from eleventh to 24th place. In mid-1970, the set of the Stephenses' home was being rebuilt due to a fire. In June, the cast and crew traveled to Salem, Magnolia, and Gloucester, Massachusetts to film an eight-part story arc in which Samantha, Darrin, and Endora travel to Salem for the centennial Witches Convocation. These location shoots marked the only times the show would film away from its Hollywood studio sets and backlot. Season seven premiered with eight so-called 'Salem Saga' episodes. These on-location episodes helped the show's sagging ratings. However, during that year, scripts from old episodes were recycled frequently. By the end of the 1970–1971 season, the ratings for Bewitched had noticeably dropped and the show did not even rank in the list of the top thirty programs. ABC moved Bewitcheds airtime from Thursdays at 8:30 pm to Wednesdays at 8:00 pm at the beginning of the eighth season. The schedule change did not help ratings as the show was now pitted against CBS's popular The Carol Burnett Show. Fewer recurring characters were used this season; the Kravitzes, Darrin's parents and Uncle Arthur did not appear at all, and Louise Tate only featured in three episodes. Filming ended in December 1971, and in January 1972 the show was finally moved to Saturday night at 8:00 pm, opposite television's number one show, All in the Family, where it fared even worse, with Bewitched finishing in 72nd place for the year.
During its first five seasons, Bewitched was sponsored by both General Motors’ Chevrolet division and the Quaker Oats Company. As a result, Chevrolet vehicles were often prominently featured on the series, even as a part of the storyline (an example of product placement), and there were many scenes of the Stephenses having breakfast in the kitchen. Sponsors in later seasons included Bristol-Myers, Eastman Kodak and Oscar Mayer.
Sets and locations
The 1959 Columbia Pictures film Gidget was filmed on location at a real house in Santa Monica (at 267 18th Street). The blueprint design of this house was later reversed and replicated as a house facade attached to an existing garage on the backlot of Columbia's Ranch. This was the house seen on Bewitched. The patio and living room sets seen in Columbia's Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) were soon adapted for the permanent Bewitched set for 1964. The interior of the Stephenses' house can be seen, substantially unaltered, in the Jerry Lewis film Hook, Line & Sinker (1969). The set was also used several times in the television series Gidget and I Dream of Jeannie, as well as the television film Brian's Song (1971). It was also used, as a setting for an opening tag sequence, for the final episode of the first season of another Screen Gems property, The Monkees and in an episode of The Fantastic Journey. The house served as Doctor Bellows' house on I Dream of Jeannie, and was seen in an episode of Home Improvement when Tim Taylor took Tool Time on location to the house of Vinnie's mother to repair a gas leak in the basement furnace (with a second gas leak at the kitchen stove, unbeknownst to Tim). The Stephens house was also featured in a Fruit of the Loom Christmas commercial and it was used as Clark Griswold's boyhood home in his old home movies in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. On Marvel Studios' 2021 limited series WandaVision, which pays homage to Bewitched in a number of episodes, the house's exterior serves throughout the series as the home of neighbor Agatha Harkness, while the interior set briefly appears in one episode as the ever-evolving home of the titular characters, Wanda and Vision.
On the Columbia studio backlot, the Kravitzes' house was actually down the street from the Stephenses' house exterior. Both houses' exterior doors opened to an unfinished entry, as the interiors were shot on studio sound stages elsewhere. A "front porch" set, replicating the porch of the backlot house was created as well. From 1964 through 1966, the Kravitzes' house was the same as used for The Donna Reed Show. Beginning with season 3 color episodes in 1966, the Kravitz house sets were the same as what would (years later) be featured as The Partridge Family house.
Production and filming for Bewitched was based in Los Angeles and, although the setting is assumed to be New York, several episodes feature wide-angle exterior views of the Stephenses' neighborhood showing a California landscape with mountains in the distance. Another example of questionable continuity regarding the location can be seen in Season 6, Episode 6: Darrin's parents drive home after visiting the new baby, passing several large palm trees lining the street.
Cancellation and aftermath
Despite the low ratings, Bewitched still had a contract for two more seasons on ABC. The network was willing to honor that contract by renewing the sitcom for a ninth season. Montgomery had grown tired of the series and wanted other roles. She and her husband William Asher had separated and divorced in 1974. Asher pitched an idea to ABC for a sitcom starring Paul Lynde. The concept was based on the play Howie, about a lawyer, Paul Simms (played by Lynde), whose daughter marries a slacker named Howard, or "Howie". The Lynde character despises him, as he is not interested in earning money or traditional pursuits. In creating a series for Paul Lynde, Asher decided to resurrect the Howie concept for ABC and Screen Gems as a replacement for Bewitched the following year. Asher designed The Paul Lynde Show to be ABC's counterpart to CBS's All In the Family but the show lacked the controversial and topical issues brought up by that series, due to ABC's restriction on social realism. This was despite Lynde's rewrite of the show's dialog to make the series more lively and comedic. When The Paul Lynde Show debuted on ABC in the fall of 1972, it inherited Bewitched’s time slot during its last season on Wednesday nights opposite the first half of the Top 30 hit The Carol Burnett Show on CBS and the Top 20 hit Adam-12 on NBC. While the first episode of The Paul Lynde Show did well in the ratings, strong negative reactions not only to Lynde's character but also the premise of the series led to bad word of mouth and a collapse in viewership.
The show bore some similarities to Bewitched. Some of the sets used for the Simms' house and backyard were used from Samantha and Darrin Stephens's home. The name of Paul's law firm McNish & Simms was very similar to the name of Darrin Stephens's advertising agency McMann & Tate. Many actors regularly seen on Bewitched were also used on Lynde's series including Mabel Albertson, Herb Voland, Jack Collins, Richard X. Slattery, and Dick Wilson.
At the same time, to help fulfill the network's contract with Bewitched, Asher and Harry Ackerman created another ABC sitcom for the 1972–1973 season called Temperatures Rising. The series starred James Whitmore and Cleavon Little. In its first year, the sitcom was not only struggling with its format but with ratings. In mid-season, Asher was replaced as producer by Bruce Johnson and Duke Vincent. Despite its challenges, the series ended its first year with a respectable 29 share and was renewed for the 1973–1974 season. To improve ratings and help Paul Lynde fulfill his contract with the network, ABC wanted to make some changes. When The New Temperatures Rising Show debuted in September 1973, Whitmore was replaced by Lynde and the emphasis on black comedy in the show became more prominent. Ratings for the series fell well below those of the previous season.
When Screen Gems head John Mitchell and ABC chief programmer Barry Diller noticed that The New Temperatures Rising Show was failing, they contacted William Asher and asked him to come back and salvage the series. The show was resurrected on July 18, 1974, after a six-month hiatus with its original title Temperatures Rising. Joining Lynde and Little in the cast was Bewitched alum Alice Ghostley. Despite the changes in cast and format, the attempt to resuscitate the series failed and ABC finally cancelled it. The final episode of Temperatures Rising aired on August 29, 1974, which ended William Asher's original contract with Bewitched and ABC.
Cultural context
In February 1964, feminist Betty Friedan's two-part essay "Television and the Feminine Mystique" for TV Guide criticized the portrayal of women in television shows as simplistic, manipulative, and insecure household drudges whose time was spent dreaming of love and plotting revenge on their husbands. Samantha's character differed from this stereotype and Endora used Friedan-like language to criticize the boring drudgery of household life. Others have looked how the series 'play[ed] into and subvert[ed] a rich load of cultural stereotypes and allusions' regarding witches, gender roles, advertising and consumerism. In the episode "Eat at Mario's" (May 27, 1965), Samantha and Endora use their powers to defend and promote a quality Italian restaurant. They take delight in an active, aggressive role in the public space, breaking new ground in the depiction of women in television.
Airing during the civil rights era, Bewitched broached taboos about interracial marriage.
In a 1992 interview, Elizabeth Montgomery was asked if the show was an allegory about closeted homosexuality. She answered, "Don't think that didn't enter our minds at the time. We talked about it on the set—certainly not in production meetings—that this was about people not being allowed to be what they really are. If you think about it, Bewitched is about repression in general and all the frustration and trouble it can cause."
Reception
Walter Metz attributes the success of the series to its snappy writing, the charm of Elizabeth Montgomery, and the talents of its large supporting cast. The show also made use of respected film techniques for its special effects. The soundtrack was unique, notably where it concerned the synthesized sound of nose twitching.
The first episodes featured a voice-over narrator "performing comic sociological analyses" of the role of a witch in middle class suburbia. The style was reminiscent of Hollywood films such as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957).
In a 1991 audio interview with film historian Ronald Haver, Elizabeth Montgomery revealed that her father Robert Montgomery was originally approached and asked to narrate these episodes but he refused. Instead, the narration was done by Academy Award-winning actor José Ferrer, who did not receive credit.
The series inspired the rival show I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970) on NBC, which was produced by the same studio as Bewitched (Screen Gems).
On June 15, 2005, TV Land unveiled a Samantha statue in Salem to mark the show's 40th anniversary. On hand were three surviving actors from the show, Bernard Fox (Dr. Bombay), Erin Murphy (Tabitha), and Kasey Rogers (Louise Tate), as well as producer/director William Asher.
Spin-offs, crossovers, and remakes
The Flintstones
The 1965 episode of The Flintstones titled "Samantha" (1965) featured Dick York and Elizabeth Montgomery as Darrin and Samantha Stephens, who have just moved into the neighborhood. This crossover was facilitated by both series being broadcast on ABC.
Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family
An animated TV special made in 1972 by Hanna-Barbera Productions for The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, this featured teenage versions of Tabitha and Adam visiting their aunt and her family who travel with a circus. The show aired on December 2, 1972.
Tabitha
In 1977, a short-lived spin-off titled Tabitha aired on ABC. Lisa Hartman played Tabitha, now an adult working with her brother Adam at television station KXLA. There were several continuity differences with the original series. Adam and Tabitha had both aged far more than the intervening five years between the two series would have allowed. Adam also had become Tabitha's older mortal brother, rather than her younger warlock brother, as he was in Bewitched. Supporting character Aunt Minerva (Karen Morrow) says she has been close to Tabitha since childhood, though she had never been mentioned once in the original series. Tabitha's parents are mentioned but never appear. However Bernard Fox, Sandra Gould, George Tobias and Dick Wilson reprised their roles as Dr. Bombay, Gladys Kravitz, Abner Kravitz, and "various drunks."
Passions
The 1999-2008 NBC soap opera Passions featured several appearances by Bernard Fox, playing Dr. Bombay. In another echo of Bewitched, the resident witch on Passions, Tabitha Lenox (Juliet Mills), named her daughter "Endora."
Theatrical movie
Bewitched inspired a 2005 film starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. This film was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film, departing from the show's family-oriented tone, is not a remake but takes a metafictional approach, with the action focused on arrogant, failing Hollywood actor Jack Wyatt (Ferrell) who is offered a career comeback playing Darrin in a remake of Bewitched. The role is contingent upon him finding the perfect woman to play Samantha. He chooses an unknown named Isabel Bigelow (Kidman), who is an actual witch. The film was written, directed, and produced by Nora Ephron, and was poorly received by most critics and was a financial failure. It earned $22 million less than the production cost domestically. However it earned an additional $68 million internationally. The New York Times called the film "an unmitigated disaster."
Comic adaptations
Dell Comics adapted the series into a comic book series in 1964. The art work was provided by Henry Scarpelli.
In 1966, the series was adapted as a strip in Lady Penelope, beginning from issue 12 and lasting until the comic's demise in 1969.
Television remakes
Argentina: A remake called , produced by Telefé, aired in early 2007. It starred Florencia Peña as Samantha, Gustavo Garzón as her husband, Eduardo, and Georgina Barbarrosa as Endora. This show adapted original scripts to an Argentinian context, with local humor and a contemporary setting. The show was cancelled due to low ratings after a few weeks.
Japan: TBS, a flagship station of Japan News Network, produced a remake called (, meaning '(My) Wife is a Witch'), also known as Bewitched in Tokyo. Eleven episodes were broadcast on JNN stations Fridays at 10 pm, from January 16 to March 26, 2004, and a special on December 21, 2004. The main character, Arisa Matsui, was portrayed by Ryoko Yonekura. is also the Japanese title for the original American series.
India: In 2002, Sony Entertainment Television began airing Meri Biwi Wonderful, a local adaptation of Bewitched.
Russia: In 2009, TV3 broadcast a remake titled Моя любимая ведьма ('My Favorite Witch'), starring Anna Zdor as Nadia (Samantha), Ivan Grishanov, as Ivan (Darrin) and Marina Esepenko as Nadia's mother. The series is very similar to the original, with most episodes based on those from the original series. American comedy writer/producer Norm Gunzenhauser oversaw the writing and directing of the series.
United Kingdom: In 2008, the BBC made a pilot episode of a British version, with Sheridan Smith as Samantha, Tom Price as Darrin, and veteran actress Frances de la Tour as Endora.
Proposed reboots
In August 2011, it was reported that CBS ordered a script to be written by Marc Lawrence for a rebooted series of Bewitched.
On October 22, 2014, Sony Pictures Television announced that it sold a pilot of Bewitched to NBC as a possible entry for the 2015—2016 US television season. This show would have concerned Tabitha's daughter Daphne, a single woman who despite having the same magical powers as her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, is determined not to use her special abilities to find a soul mate. The new version of the proposed series, written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, had been on the radar of several major networks, including ABC, after Sony began shopping the project to interested parties.
On August 23, 2018, ABC announced that it had bought a pilot for a single camera Bewitched remake from Black-ish creator Kenya Barris. This was Barris's last new project for the network before his exclusive contract with Netflix went into effect. Around the same time, an animated reboot series was optioned by 9 Story Entertainment and GO-N Productions but never got off the ground.
On June 8, 2023, it was announced Sony will be producing an animated Bewitched series that will center on Samantha and Darrin's daughter Tabitha as a teenager. The series was previewed at MIPJunior on October 3, 2023.
WandaVision
The second episode of drama-mystery television miniseries WandaVision, titled "Don't Touch That Dial", alludes to the series through an animated title sequence and the premise of Wanda Maximoff and Vision living an idyllic suburban life trying to conceal their true natures. Exteriors of the neighborhood were filmed at the now Warner Ranch Backlot with Maximoff's nosy neighbor Agnes living in the Stephens house.
Episodes
Episode availability
Syndication history
After completing its original run, ABC Daytime and ABC Saturday Morning continued to air the series until 1973. Since then, Bewitched has been syndicated on many local US broadcast stations, first from 1973 to 1982 and then since 1993, including Columbia TriStar Television as part of the Screen Gems Network syndication package from 1999 to 2001, which featured bonus wraparound content during episode airings in 1999.
From 1973 to 1982, the entire series was syndicated by Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures. By the late '70s, many local stations skipped the black and white episodes or they only ran them in the summer due to the perception that black-and-white shows usually had less appeal than shows which were filmed in color. From 1981 to about 1991, only the color episodes were syndicated in barter syndication by DFS Program Exchange. The first two seasons, which were in black and white, were not included because Columbia retained the rights to them. Beginning in 1989, Nick at Nite only aired the black-and-white episodes, which were originally unedited. CBS began airing 74 black-and-white episodes (Seasons 1 and 2) and 180 color episodes (Seasons 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8) of Bewitched from March 14, 1991 to September 30, 1994, in which both Columbia Pictures Television and The Program Exchange syndicated. The edited versions of the episodes continued in barter syndication until 1992. Columbia syndicated the entire series beginning in 1991. The remaining six color seasons were added to Nick at Nite's lineup in March 1998 in a week-long Dueling Darrins Marathon. Later, seasons 1–2 were colorized and made available for syndication. Eventually, they were made available for DVD sales. The cable television channel WTBS carried seasons 3–8 throughout the 1980s and 1990s from DFS on a barter basis like most local stations that carried the show.
The show aired on the Hallmark Channel from August 6, 2001 to May 24, 2003. Bewitched then aired on TV Land from May 31, 2003 to November 10, 2006, and it returned to TV Land on March 3, 2008, but left the schedule on September 30, 2011.
In September 2008, the show began to air on WGN America, and in October 2012, it began to air on Logo, limited to the middle seasons.
MeTV aired the show in conjunction with I Dream of Jeannie from December 31, 2012, to September 1, 2013. The cable and satellite network FETV also airs the show together with I Dream of Jeannie. The show now airs on Antenna TV, Logo TV, and GAC Family.
The episodes on GAC Family air in HD and have been remastered.
Overseas markets
In Australia, this series aired on the Nine Network's digital channel GO! later it moved to the Seven Network's digital channels 7TWO later 7flix. Prior to this, the show aired in reruns on Network Ten in 1995 before moving to the Seven Network a year later.
In Italy, the series aired on Raiuno, Telemontecarlo, Italia 1, Rai 3, Canale 5, Retequattro, Boing & Paramount Network under the name Vita da strega (Life as a Witch) from 1967 until 1979.
The Russia-based channel Domashny aired the show from 2008 to 2010.
Internet
Selected episodes may be viewed on iTunes, YouTube, Tubi, IMDb, Hulu, The Minisode Network, Crackle, and Amazon.com. The show also airs on free streaming TV station Pluto TV.
Home media
Beginning in 2005, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released all eight seasons of Bewitched. In regions 1 and 4, seasons 1 and 2 were each released in two versions—one as originally broadcast in black-and-white, and one colorized. The complete series set only contains the colorized versions of Seasons 1–2. Only the colorized editions were released in regions 2 and 4. A disc of the first three episodes was also released in Region 1 to coincide with the 2005 movie.
On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library including Bewitched. They have subsequently re-released the first six seasons, with seasons 1 & 2 available only in their black and white versions.
On October 6, 2015, Mill Creek Entertainment re-released Bewitched - The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. Special features were stripped from the release. The first two seasons are in black and white only.
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
Spencer, Beth. "Samantha every witch way but lose." The Age, 25 June 2005.
External links
1964 American television series debuts
1972 American television series endings
1960s American sitcoms
1970s American sitcoms
American Broadcasting Company original programming
American romantic comedy television series
Black-and-white American television shows
English-language television shows
Dell Comics titles
American fantasy comedy television series
Fictional characters who can teleport
Television about magic
Television series about marriage
Television series by Sony Pictures Television
Television shows set in New York (state)
Television shows set in Connecticut
Television series about witchcraft
Television shows adapted into films
Television shows adapted into comics
Television series about advertising
Television series by Screen Gems
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilia%20Chavchavadze
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Ilia Chavchavadze
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Prince Ilia Chavchavadze (; 27 October 1837 – 12 September 1907) was a Georgian public figure, journalist, publisher, writer and poet who spearheaded the revival of Georgian nationalism during the second half of the 19th century and ensured the survival of the Georgian language, literature, and culture during the last decades of Tsarist rule. He is Georgia's "most universally revered hero" and is regarded as the "Father of the Nation."
He was a leader of contemporary youth intellectual movement named "Tergdaleulebi". They spread modern and European liberal ideals in Georgia. Ilia Chavchavadze founded two modern newspapers: Sakartvelos Moambe and Iveria. He played an important role in the creation of the first financial structure in Georgia – Land Bank of Tbilisi, with the aim of protecting Georgian land from being bought by Armenian bourgeoisie. During 30 years he was a chairman of this Bank, through which he financed and promoted most of the cultural, educational, economical and charity events which took place in Georgia.
Continuing the educational work started in Constantinople by Fr. Peter Kharischirashvili and the Servites of the Immaculate Conception, Ilia Chavchavadze also participated in the foundation of "Society for the Spreading of Literacy among Georgians" – an organization that established schools that taught in the Georgian language. This was instrumental in halting the Russification policy of Russian Empire in Georgia.
Inspired by the contemporary liberal and nationalist movements throughout Europe, Chavchavadze directed much of his efforts toward awakening national and liberal ideals among Georgians. Chavchavadze was the author of numerous articles that were published in his newspaper Iveria, as well as in other periodicals that were published in Georgia. In his articles, Chavchavadze discussed literature, education, theater, politics, economics, current affairs. His views on self-government, judicial system, social issues, human rights, women's rights, and civic activism were ahead of their time and contributed to Georgia's sense of national identity. He was a devoted protector of the Georgian language and culture from Russification. He coined the phrase "Ena, Mamuli, Sartsmunoeba" ("Language, Homeland, Faith"), which is widely acknowledged slogan of Georgian nationalism.
During the 1905 Russian Revolution Chavchavadze was elected as a representative of the Georgian nobility to the imperial State Council. However, he stated that he would represent the whole nation, not just one particular social class. He advocated against capital punishment and lobbied for Georgian autonomy.
His most important literary works were: The Hermit, The Ghost, Otaraant Widow, Kako The Robber, Happy Nation, Letters of a Traveler and Is a man a human?!.
Chavchavadze was killed in Tsitsamuri, near Mtskheta, by a gang of assassins. Details of his murder are still matter of debate. His legacy earned him the broad admiration of the Georgian people. In 1987 he was canonized as Saint Ilia the Righteous (, tsminda ilia martali) by the Georgian Orthodox Church. Today, Georgians revere Chavchavadze as The Uncrowned King (, ugvirgvino mepe) and the "Father of the Nation."
Life
Ancestry and early life
Ilia Chavchavadze was born in Qvareli, a village in Kvareli, located in the Alazani Valley, in the Kakheti province of Georgia, which was part of the Russian Empire at that time. Ilia was a tavadi, the Georgian title of prince. It is thought that the noble Chavchavadze family came from the Pshav-Khevsureti region of Georgia, and, in 1726, King Constantine II granted the Chavchavadze family the rank of Prince in recognition of their knighthood and valor to the nation. This resulted in the family moving and settling in the Alazani Gorge in Kakheti.
Ilia was the third son of Grigol Chavchavadze and Mariam Beburishvili. Grigol, like his father and his famous ancestors, had a military background. He, along with the local militiamen protected the village from numerous Dagestani invasions. This can be seen in the architecture of the Ilia Chavchavadze museum house in Kvareli, incorporating a Medieval castle style in the two-storey castle in the yard, which was designed to protect the house during invasions.
Chavchavadze was educated at the elementary level by the deacon of the village before he moved to Tbilisi where he attended the prestigious Academy for Nobility in 1848. However, from an early age, Ilia was influenced by his parents who were highly educated in classical literature, Georgian history and poetry. From his parents, Ilia learned the inspiring stories of Georgian heroism in classical historical novels. In his autobiography, Ilia refers to his mother, Princess Mariam Chavchavadze, who knew most Georgian novels and poems by heart and encouraged her children to study them. Ilia also described the influence of the deacon's storytelling, which gave him an artistic inspiration, later applied in his novel writing.
Ilia's mother, Mariam, died on 4 May 1848, when Ilia was ten years old, and his father asked his sister, Makrine, to help bring up the children. Aunt Makrine had a significant impact on Ilia's life, because, after 1852, when Ilia's father Grigol died, she was the only remaining caretaker of the family.
In 1848, after the death of Princess Chavchavadze, Ilia was sent to Tbilisi by his father to begin his secondary education. Ilia attended a private school for three years before he entered the 1st Academy of Tbilisi in 1851. Soon after, Ilia's father died and Aunt Makrine looked after the family. His secondary school years were very stressful, due to his father's death. However, the Chavchavadze family suffered another devastating blow when Ilia's brother, Constantine, was killed during the Dagestani raid on Kakheti. Ilia expressed his anguish and grief in one of his first short-poems called Sorrow of a Poor Man. In addition to his personal problems, the political situation in Georgia worsened under the harsh authority of the Russian Empire, which played a destructive role to the nation and its culture.
Student years
After graduating from the academy, Ilia decided to continue his education at the University of St. Petersburg, Russia. Before leaving for St. Petersburg, Ilia composed one of his most remarkable poems, To the Mountains of Kvareli in the village of Kardanakhi on 15 April 1857, in which he expressed his lifelong admiration for the Greater Caucasus Mountains and his sorrow at leaving his homeland.
That same year, Ilia was admitted to the University of St. Petersburg. During his student years, numerous revolutions sprang up in Europe which Ilia observed with great interest. Ilia's attention focused on the events in Italy and the struggle of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whom he admired for many years. While in St.Petersburg, Ilia met Princess Catherine Chavchavadze, from whom he learned about the poetry and lyrics of the Georgian romantic Prince Nik'oloz Baratashvili. Due to the harsh climate in St Petersburg, Ilia became very ill and returned to Georgia for several months in 1859.
Ilia finally returned to Georgia after the completion of his studies in 1861. During his journey back, Ilia wrote one of his greatest masterpieces, The Traveler's Diaries, in which he outlines the importance of nation-building and provides an allegorical comparison of Mt. Kazbegi and the Tergi River in the Khevi region of Georgia.
Political life
Ilia's main political and social goals were based on Georgian nationalism. He urged nationwide resistance to the House of Romanov's policy of forced Russification, the revival of the Georgian language, and the cultivation of Georgian literature. Even more subversive from the State's perspective, Chavchavadze also pushed for reviving the independence of the Georgian Orthodox Church from the control of the Russian Tsar and the Holy Synod.
In the 1860s, "Tergdaleulebi", the new generation of Georgian intellectuals, educated at Russian universities and exposed to European ideas, promoted national culture against assimilation by the Imperial center. Led by Ilia Chavchavadze, their program attained more nationalist colors as the nobility declined and capitalism progressed, further stimulated by the rule of the Russian bureaucracy and economic and demographic dominance of the Armenian bourgeoisie in the capital city of Tbilisi. Chavchavadze prominently founded "The Bank of the Nobility" of Tbilisi, with the aim of protecting Georgian land from being sold off by poor Georgian nobles to rich Armenian bourgeoisie. In his work Outcrying Stones, Chavchavadze denounced Armenians for falsifying Georgian history, buying up Georgian land and appropriating Georgian churches, as well as indebting poor Georgian peasant families. Chavchavadze attacked Armenians for their mercantilism and condemned them in his newspaper Iveria for "eating the bread baked by someone else or drinking that which is created by another's sweat", as well as being "sly moneylenders and unscrupulous traders". He also created slogan "Language, Homeland, Religion", which served as a motto of Georgian nationalism. Chavchavadze and his associates called for the unity of all Georgians and put national interests above class and provincial divisions. Their vision did not envisage an outright revolt for independence, but demanded autonomy within the reformed Russian Empire, with greater cultural freedom, promotion of the Georgian language, and support for Georgian educational institutions and the national church, whose independence had been suppressed by the Russian government.
As the number of supporters for Chavchavadze's ideas grew, so did opposition to Chavchavadze from both the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and particularly from Noe Zhordania. The SD's main aims were focused on toppling the Tsarist autocracy and upon an Atheist and Marxist transformation of a still unified Russian Empire. This did not include the revival of the Georgian Church, State, language, or of a distinctly Georgian identity. Ilia was viewed as bourgeois and as an old aristocrat who failed to realize the importance of the revolutionary and Atheist future.
In addition to his works described above, Chavchavadze was also the founder and chairman of many public, cultural and educational organizations (Society for the Spreading of Literacy Among Georgians, "The Dramatic Society", "The Historical-Ethnographical Society of Georgia", etc.). He was also a translator of British literature. His main literary works were translated and published in French, English, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian and other languages. Between 1906 and 1907, he was a member of the State Council (Gosudarstvennaya Duma) in Russia. His eclectic interests also led him to be a member of, among others, the Caucasian Committee of the Geographical Society of Russia, the Society of Ethnography and Anthropology of Moscow University, the Society of Orientalists of Russia and the Anglo-Russian Literary Society (London).
Prince Chavchavadze briefly acted as a literary mentor to a young Joseph Stalin, who was then an Orthodox seminarian in Tbilisi. According to historian Simon Sebag Montefiore: "The Prince was sufficiently impressed to show the teenager's work to his editors. He admired Stalin's verse, choosing five poems to publish – quite an achievement. Prince Chavchavadze called Stalin the 'young man with the burning eyes.'"
Death
After serving as a member of the Upper House in the first Russian Duma, Ilia decided to return to Georgia in 1907. On 28 August 1907, while travelling with his wife Olga from Tbilisi to Saguramo, Prince Ilia Chavchavadze was ambushed and murdered by a crew of six assassins in the small village of Tsitsamuri, near Mtskheta.
The Prince's murder was seen as a national tragedy and was mourned by all classes of Georgian society. Prince Akaki Tsereteli, who was suffering from serious health problems at the time, spoke at the funeral and dedicated an outstanding oration to Ilia: "Ilia's inestimable contribution to the revival of the Georgian nation is an example for future generations". Famous Georgian poet Vazha-Pshavela said: "Ilia's murderers would have killed Georgia if they could".
Following the unfortunate passing of Ilia, the news coverage pertaining to his assassination was primarily limited to a single newspaper called Isari (ისარი). Notably, Isari, despite being a relatively small publication, provided extensive coverage of the incident. Surprisingly, larger mainstream newspapers did not report on the intricate details surrounding Ilia's assassination.
Investigation
In 1907, the Tsarist authorities launched investigation into Chavchavadze's death and arrested four suspects: Giorgi Khizanishvili, Ivane Inashvili, Gigola Modzghvrishvili and Tedo Labauri. One suspect (Gigla Berbichashvili, the head of the crew) went into hiding in Iran, while another one (Pavle Aptsiauri) died during clashes with the police. According to investigation, during the incident Chavchavadze appealed to the crew: "Do not shoot, I am Ilia", while Gigla replied: "That's why we have to shoot you". In 1909, according to the decision of the Stolypin tribunal, the entire gang was sentenced to capital punishment. Following the October Revolution, Gigla Berbichashvili returned to Georgia in 1921 and worked in the various positions within the Soviet Georgian government. In 1936, the investigation was launched against him for participating the murder of Ilia Chavchavadze. In December 1941, he was tried in the court, which sentenced him to capital punishment in January 1942. However, this was later changed to 10 years imprisonment.
Theories
The assassination of Ilia Chavchavadze remains controversial today. The Tsarist investigation concluded that the murderers were part of Bolshevik "Red Squad", while the Soviet investigation blamed the Tsarist secret police and administration for being involved in the assassination. The unofficial versions mostly blame Bolsheviks as well as Mensheviks for orchestrating the murder. Chavchavadze had publicly and very successfully undermined the growth of both Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Social Democratic Labour Party. Furthermore, Prince Chavchavadze's Orthodox Christian and socially conservative vision for Georgian nationalism and his enormous popularity and influence upon the Georgian people may have been additional causes. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suspects, while Prince Chavchavadze's assassination may have been a rare instance of cooperation between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the SDLP, that Joseph Stalin may have been at least tangentially involved in the murder of his former publisher and literary mentor.
According to Montefiore: "The Bolshevik position in Georgia was undermined by the assassination of the hugely popular Prince Ilya Chavchavadze, in August 1907. The Bolsheviks had attacked his patriarchal vision of Georgian culture and, it was widely believed, had decided to kill him. There is some evidence that Stalin's friends Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Filipp Makharadze organized or took part in the assassination. It may be that the SDs took no part in the murder at all. Stalin always praised Chavchavadze's poetry in his old age and there is no evidence that he ordered the hit, but he was very close to Sergo and he was certainly more than capable of separating literary merit from cruel necessity: politics always came first."
Legacy
Ilia Chavchavadze is considered to be "the founding father of modern Georgian nation". Ilia's legacy of national awakening earned him the everlasting admiration of the Georgian people and the title of Uncrowned King of the Nation. His work was acknowledged in his lifetime, as well as Soviet period. His legacy is cherished in modern-day Georgia too. In 1937, the Soviet authorities celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Ilia Chavchavadze. During Soviet times, Chavchavadze's rejection and criticism of serfdom was particularly emphasized.
After the Soviet invasion of Georgia and the nation's annexation into the Soviet Union in 1921, Chavchavadze became for Georgian nationalists the symbol of Georgian freedom and national liberation. In 1987, Chavchavadze was formally canonized by the Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church, as "Saint Ilia the Righteous." In October 1987 the Ilia Chavchavadze Society, an organisation that promoted Georgian national revival and political independence, was established by Soviet dissident intellectuals. In 1989, during the anti-Soviet protests in Tbilisi, the poems, novels and political beliefs of Prince Ilia Chavchavadze became a driving force behind the Georgian struggle for independence.
In 1998, Stephen Kinzer wrote about the widespread admiration of Chavchavadze across the political spectrum: "Today leftists in Georgia embrace Chavchavadze for his hatred of injustice, centrists love him for his nonviolent humanism, and right-wing nationalists have adopted his slogan Motherland, Language, Faith." Faith, in this context, exclusively means Georgian Orthodoxy.
In 2006, Ilia State University was named after Ilia Chavchavadze. Various streets and avenues are also named after him, including Tbilisi's central avenue, Ilia Chavchavadze Avenue. Chavchavadze's main works, including his Is a man a human?!, are taught in Georgian schools within Georgian Language and Literature classes.
Published works
Georgian Poetry: Rustaveli to Galaktion: A Bilingual Anthology. Translations by Lyn Coffin, with the assistance of Gia Jokhadze, featuring an introduction by Dodona Kiziria. Slavica, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013.
Georgische Dichter. Translated and compiled by Arthur Leist, Dresden-Leipzig, 1887 (Poems of Ilia Chavchavadze and other Georgian poets, in German)
The Hermit by Prince Ilia Chavchavadze. Translated from the Georgian by Marjory Wardrop, London: Bernard Quaritch, 1895
See also
Chavchavadze
List of Georgian writers
History of Georgia
Ilia State University
References
Sources
Reisner, Oliver: The Tergdaleulebi: Founders of Georgian National Identity. In: Ladislaus Löb, István Petrovics, György E. Szonyi (eds.): Forms of Identity: Definitions and Changes. Attila Jozsef University, Szeged 1994, pp. 125–37
External links
Sharadze, Guram (ed., 1987).Ilia Chavchavadze works, translated by Marjory and Oliver Wardrops. Tbilisi: Ganatleba, 1987. Online version at NPLG.
1837 births
1907 deaths
19th-century writers from the Russian Empire
19th-century novelists
19th-century poets from Georgia (country)
19th-century writers from Georgia (country)
20th-century Christian saints
20th-century writers from Georgia (country)
Assassinated activists
Assassinated politicians from Georgia (country)
Burials at Mtatsminda Pantheon
Christian poets
Historical novelists from Georgia (country)
Male poets from Georgia (country)
Nationalists from Georgia (country)
Nobility of Georgia (country)
Nobility from the Russian Empire
People murdered in Georgia (country)
Politicians from Georgia (country)
Politicians from the Russian Empire
Saints of Georgia (country)
Unsolved murders in the Russian Empire
1907 murders in the Russian Empire
1900s assassinated politicians
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick%20Rubin
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Rick Rubin
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Frederick Jay Rubin (, ; born March 10, 1963) is an American record executive and record producer. He is a co-founder (alongside Russell Simmons) of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records.
Rubin helped popularize hip hop by producing records for acts such as the Beastie Boys, Geto Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J. He has also produced hit records for acts from a variety of other genres, predominantly heavy metal (Danzig, Metallica and Slayer), alternative rock (the Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Strokes and Weezer), hard rock (Audioslave and Aerosmith), nu-metal (Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down), and country (Johnny Cash and the Chicks).
In 2007, Rubin was called "the most important producer of the last 20 years" by MTV and was named on Time list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World".
Early life
Frederick Jay Rubin was born into a Jewish family in Long Beach, New York, on March 10, 1963, the son of housewife Linda and shoe wholesaler Michael Rubin. He grew up in Lido Beach, New York. While a student at Long Beach High School, Rubin befriended the school's audiovisual department director, who gave him a few lessons in guitar playing and songwriting. He then played in a band with three friends, performing at garage gigs and school shows until a teacher helped him create a punk band called the Pricks. Their biggest claim to fame was being thrown off the stage at CBGB after performing two songs due to brawling with hecklers, which had actually been instigated by friends of the band who had been instructed to do so to get the show shut down and create a buzz. Although he had no authority in New York City, his father traveled to Manhattan wearing his Long Beach auxiliary police uniform as he attempted to "shut down" the show.
Career
Def Jam
Rubin founded Def Jam Recordings while in college at New York University. He moved on to form the band Hose, influenced by San Francisco's Flipper. In 1982, a Hose track became Def Jam's first release, a 45 rpm 7" vinyl single in a brown paper bag, and no label. The band played in and around the NYC punk scene, toured the Midwest and California, and played with seminal hardcore bands like Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, and Minor Threat, becoming friends with Fugazi frontman and Dischord Records owner Ian MacKaye. The band broke up in 1984 as Rubin's passion moved toward the NYC hip hop scene.
Having befriended Zulu Nation's DJ Jazzy Jay, Rubin began to learn about hip hop production. By 1983, the two had produced "It's Yours" for Bronx rapper T La Rock, and released it on Def Jam. Producer Arthur Baker helped to distribute the record worldwide on Baker's Streetwise Records in 1984. Jazzy Jay introduced Rubin to concert promoter/artist manager Russell Simmons in the Negril club, and Rubin explained he needed help getting Def Jam off the ground. Simmons and Rubin edged out Jazzy Jay and the official Def Jam record label was founded while Rubin was attending New York University in 1984. Its first release was LL Cool J's "I Need a Beat". Rubin went on to find more hip-hop acts outside the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem, including rappers from Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island, which eventually led to Def Jam's signing of Public Enemy. Rubin was instrumental in pointing the members of the Beastie Boys away from their punk roots and into rap, resulting in Kate Schellenbach's departure from the group. The Beastie Boys' 1985 "Rock Hard"/"Party's Gettin' Rough"/"Beastie Groove" EP came out on the success of Rubin's production work with breakthrough act Run-DMC, of which previous recordings were produced by Simmons and Orange Krush's musician Larry Smith. His productions were characterized by occasionally fusing rap with heavy rock. Rubin tapped Adam Dubin and Ric Menello to co-direct the videos for the Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" and "No Sleep till Brooklyn", effectively launching the band's mainstream hip hop career.
It was the idea of Rubin's friend Sue Cummings, an editor at Spin magazine, to have Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaborate on a cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". This 1986 production is often credited with both introducing rap hard rock to mainstream ears and revitalizing Aerosmith's career. In 1986, he worked with Aerosmith again on demos for their forthcoming album, but their collaboration ended early and resulted in only rough studio jams. In the same year, Rubin began his long musical partnership with Slayer, producing Reign in Blood, considered a classic of the heavy metal genre. This was his first work with a metal band.
In 1987, the Cult released its pivotal third album, Electric. Produced by Rubin, the album remains one of the Cult's trademark and classic works. Rubin worked with the Cult again on the 1992 single "The Witch". He is credited as music supervisor for the film Less than Zero and as the producer of its soundtrack. Rubin portrayed a character based on himself in the 1985 hip-hop motion picture Krush Groove, which was inspired by the early days of Simmons's career as an artist manager and music producer. He then directed and co-wrote (with Ric Menello) a second Run–DMC film, Tougher Than Leather in 1988.
In 1988, Rubin and Simmons went their separate ways after Rubin had a falling out with then Def Jam president Lyor Cohen. Rubin left for Los Angeles to start Def American Records, while Simmons remained at Def Jam in New York. In Los Angeles, Rubin signed a number of rock and heavy metal acts, including Danzig, Masters of Reality, the Four Horsemen, and Wolfsbane, as well as alternative rock group the Jesus and Mary Chain and stand-up comedian Andrew Dice Clay. Though Rubin's work at this time focused mainly on rock and metal, he still retained a close association with rap, signing the Geto Boys and continuing to work with Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and Run-DMC.
American Recordings
Rubin had originally given his new label the name "Def American Recordings". In 1993, he found that the word "def" had been accepted into the standardized dictionary and held an actual funeral for the word, complete with a casket, grave, celebrity mourners, and a eulogy by Al Sharpton. Def American became American Recordings. Rubin has said: "When advertisers and the fashion world co-opted the image of hippies, a group of the original hippies in San Francisco literally buried the image of the hippie. When 'def' went from street lingo to mainstream, it defeated its purpose."
The first major project on the renamed label was Johnny Cash's American Recordings (1994), a record including six cover songs and new material written by others for Cash at Rubin's request. The album was a critical and commercial success, and helped revive Cash's career after a fallow period. The formula was repeated for five more Cash albums: Unchained (on which Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers served as the backing band), Solitary Man, The Man Comes Around (the last album released before Cash's death), A Hundred Highways, and Ain't No Grave. The Man Comes Around earned a 2003 Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance ("Give My Love to Rose") and a nomination for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("Bridge over Troubled Water" with Fiona Apple). Rubin introduced Cash to Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", and the resulting cover version of it on The Man Comes Around became a defining song of Cash's later years. Rubin also produced two of Joe Strummer's final songs, "Long Shadow", a song Strummer wrote for Cash to record although he never did, and a cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song". Both were released on Strummer's final album, Streetcore, which was released after his death. Rubin also produced a version of "Redemption Song" with Strummer and Cash together, which was featured in Cash's posthumous box set, Unearthed.
Rubin has also produced a number of records with other artists, which were released on labels other than American. Arguably his biggest success as a producer came from working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom Rubin produced six studio albums from 1991 to 2011, starting with the band's fifth release, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which launched the band to mainstream success thanks to the hit singles "Give It Away" and "Under the Bridge". Other albums include One Hot Minute, Californication, By the Way, Stadium Arcadium and I'm With You. The six albums with the Chili Peppers also spawned 12 number-one singles on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, a record the band as of 2015 still holds, and various awards, including 16 Grammy nominations (with six wins), and a Producer of the Year Grammy award for 2006's Stadium Arcadium, which was also nominated for Album of the Year. The band has sold over 80 million albums worldwide, most of which are the Rubin-produced albums. Various members of the Chili Peppers have also been used on other projects by Rubin, John Frusciante featured on Johnny Cash and Chad Smith featured on the Dixie Chicks. After 24 years of working with Rubin, the band announced in late 2014 that it would be working with Danger Mouse on its 11th studio album. Rubin returned to the role of producer for the band's two albums released in 2022, seven months apart from one another: Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen. Again these two albums both featured no.1 singles on the Alternative Songs chart.
Rubin also produced Mick Jagger's 1993 Wandering Spirit album, Lords of Acid's 1994 Voodoo-U album, Tom Petty's 1994 Wildflowers, AC/DC's 1995 Ballbreaker, Donovan's 1996 Sutras, System of a Down's 1998 System of a Down, and Metallica's 2008 Death Magnetic. In 2005, Rubin executive-produced Shakira's two-album project Fijación Oral Vol. 1 and Oral Fixation, Vol. 2. He was to appear on the Talib Kweli's album Eardrum, Clipse's album Til the Casket Drops and Lil Jon's album Crunk Rock. Rubin also produced the Jay-Z track "99 Problems", and was featured in the song's video. He also worked with Eminem on the song and music video "Berzerk".
Rubin produced Black Sabbath's 2013 album 13 and Billy Corgan's comeback solo album Ogilala.
Columbia
In May 2007, Rubin was named co-head of Columbia Records. He co-produced Linkin Park's 2007 album Minutes to Midnight with Mike Shinoda. Rubin and Shinoda have since co-produced the band's 2010 album A Thousand Suns and its 2012 release Living Things.
In 2007, Rubin won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for his work with the Chicks, Michael Kranz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Green Day, and Johnny Cash released in 2006 Rubin won the award again in 2009, for production work for Metallica, Neil Diamond, Ours, Jakob Dylan, and Weezer in 2008.
In 2007 and 2012, Rubin won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The former was for his work on the Chicks album Taking the Long Way and the latter came for his contribution to Adele's album 21.
Post-Columbia
Rubin left Columbia in 2012, and revived the American Recordings imprint through a deal with Republic Records. The first albums released under this new deal were ZZ Top's La Futura and the Avett Brothers' The Carpenter.
Rubin attempted to record a cover album with Crosby, Stills & Nash in 2012, but the brief sessions were unsuccessful. Graham Nash called the sessions "irritable" and "not a great experience".
In July 2021, Rubin signed with Endeavor Content to further develop his home studio, Shangri-La Recording Studios.
Other work
Rubin has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss's book Tools of Titans, and often gives advice on creativity via his Instagram page.
Rubin was featured as one of Supreme's "photo tees" during their fall/winter 2021 season. The t-shirt came in seven different colors and featured Rubin in a meditative sitting position while wearing the brand's iconic box logo white t-shirt.
Rubin's debut book, published on January 17, 2023, by Penguin Press, is The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It is a nonfiction work about creativity. He said, "I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be."
Production style
Praise
Rubin's biggest trademark as a producer has been a "stripped-down" sound, which involves eliminating production elements such as string sections, backup vocals, and reverb, and instead having naked vocals and bare instrumentation. But by the 2000s, Rubin's style had been known to include such elements, as noted in The Washington Post: "As the track reaches a crescendo and [Neil] Diamond's portentous baritone soars over a swelling string arrangement, Rubin leans back, as though floored by the emotional power of the song."
Of Rubin's production methods, Dan Charnas, a music journalist who worked as vice president of A&R and marketing at American Recordings in the 1990s, said, "He's fantastic with sound and arrangements, and he's tremendous with artists. They love him. He shows them how to make it better, and he gets more honest and exciting performances out of people than anyone." Natalie Maines of the Chicks has praised his production methods, saying, "He has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured. Come to think of it, maybe he is a guru." Producer Dr. Dre has said that Rubin is "hands down, the dopest producer ever that anyone would ever want to be, ever".
Despite having never worked with Rubin, British band Muse praised him for his "hands off" approach to production and credited him as an influence on its first self-produced album, The Resistance. The album's lead single, "Uprising", was named UK Single of the Year at the 2010 Music Producers Guild Awards, and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy while accepting the award said, "I'd like to thank John Leckie for teaching us how to produce and Rick Rubin for teaching us how not to produce." The statement was initially interpreted as a criticism of Rubin, but Bellamy later clarified it was meant as a self-deprecating comment on the band's similarly "hands-off" attitude to production.
Criticism
In 2014, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor said that he met Rubin only four times during the entire recording process of Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses): "We were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. I don't care who you are! [...] The Rick Rubin of today is a shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He is overrated, he is overpaid, and I will never work with him again."
In 2016, Taylor expressed regret and said he wanted to make amends with Rubin, attributing the friction to being "freshly sober [...] unsure of [himself]" and to never having previously worked with anyone whose methods were like Rubin's.
In 2019, when comparing Rubin to Greg Fidelman (who had recently produced Slipknot's album We Are Not Your Kind), Taylor again criticized Rubin for his absences from the studio due to other work commitments. He said that Rubin was "a nice guy, absolutely nice guy" but claimed that "he just wasn't fucking there" and that the band did not see him more than once a week until it finished recording the vocals at his house.
In 2022, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler said of Rubin's production of the band's 2013 album 13: "Some of it I liked, some of it I didn't like particularly. It was a weird experience, especially with being told to forget that you're a heavy metal band. That was the first thing [Rubin] said to us. He played us our very first album, and he said, 'Cast your mind back to then when there was no such thing as heavy metal or anything like that, and pretend it's the follow-up album to that,' which is a ridiculous thing to think." Butler also stated that vocalist Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Tony Iommi had frustrations with Rubin's suggestions, and said: "I still don't know what [Rubin] did. It's, like, 'Yeah, that's good.' 'No, don't do that.' And you go, 'Why?' [And he'd say], 'Just don't do it.
Loudness war
Since at least 1999, listeners have criticized Rubin for contributing to a phenomenon in music known as the loudness war, in which the dynamic range of recorded music is compressed and sometimes clipped in order to increase the general loudness. Albums Rubin produced that have been criticized for such treatment include:
Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1999) – Tim Anderson of The Guardian criticized its "excessive compression and distortion", and Stylus Magazine said it suffered from so much digital clipping that "even non-audiophile consumers complained about it".
Death Magnetic by Metallica (2008) – some fans prefer the Guitar Hero video game version of Death Magnetic, even though it was released for gameplay and not listening, because it was not subject to the same compression.
13 by Black Sabbath (2013) – Ben Ratliff of The New York Times said, "The new Black Sabbath album was produced by Rick Rubin, who some believe to be a prime offender in the recent history of highly compressed and loudly mastered music – a major cause of ear fatigue ... 13 is mastered loudly, too ... Your ears aren't given room to breathe." Jon Hadusek of Consequence of Sound wrote, "Rubin ... deserves disparagement for the way he mixed the audio levels, which are crushed by distortion and compression. Otherwise well-recorded songs are blemished, an affliction all too pervasive in the modern music industry".
Personal life
Rubin has been a meditator since 14 years old
Rubin began dating former actress and model Mourielle Hurtado Herrera in 2010, and they were married at an unknown date. They have a son named Ra (born February 2017) and reside in Malibu, California.
Rubin was a vegan for over 20 years, but later began eating meat again. He is a fan of professional wrestling and held season tickets to WWE events at Madison Square Garden throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He has cited wrestlers Roddy Piper and Ric Flair as influences on his work, and has said that villainous wrestlers were hugely influential in the development of the Beastie Boys' public image. He financially backed wrestling promoter Jim Cornette's company Smoky Mountain Wrestling from 1991 to 1995.
Filmography
Discography
References
External links
Originally from Mix Magazine
1963 births
American hip hop record producers
American music industry executives
Record producers from New York (state)
Beastie Boys members
Businesspeople from New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
Jewish American musicians
New York University alumni
People from Lido Beach, New York
American rap rock musicians
Jewish hip hop record producers
Def Jam Recordings
Guitarists from New York (state)
Living people
20th-century American guitarists
Long Beach High School (New York) alumni
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella%20%281950%20film%29
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Cinderella (1950 film)
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Cinderella is a 1950 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale of the same title, it was directed by Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi. The film features the voices of Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Rhoda Williams, James MacDonald, Luis van Rooten and Don Barclay with Helene Stanley and Claire Du Brey each serving as the live model for Cinderella and Fairy Godmother respectively.
During the early 1940s, Walt Disney Productions had suffered financially after losing connections to the European film markets due to the outbreak of World War II. Because of this, the studio endured box office bombs such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Bambi (1942), all of which would later become more successful with several re-releases in theaters and on home video. By 1947, the studio was over $4 million in debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Walt Disney and his animators returned to feature film production in 1948 after producing a string of package films with the idea of adapting Charles Perrault's Cendrillon into an animated film.
Cinderella was released to theatres on February 15, 1950, receiving critical acclaim and becoming a box office success, which made it Disney's biggest hit since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and helped reverse the studio's fortunes. It also received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, Best Sound Recording, and Best Original Song for "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo".
The film was followed by two direct-to-video sequels, Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002) and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time (2007), and a live-action remake in 2015. In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
When Cinderella is a young girl, her widowed father marries Lady Tremaine, a widow with two daughters of her own, but dies shortly thereafter. Lady Tremaine, jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty and determined to forward her own daughters' interests, orders Cinderella to become a scullion in her own château, overburdening her with chores. Cinderella's stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella, also take advantage of her meekness, mocking her and adding to her workload. Despite this, Cinderella remains kind of heart, obediently doing her chores whilst taking care of the mice and birds that live in the château, making friends of them, mainly of two mice named Jaq and Gus. She also protects them from being eaten by her stepmother's cat Lucifer, who makes her duties even harder in retaliation.
One day, the local King becomes impatient for his son to provide him with grandchildren. Despite the objections of the Grand Duke, the King invites all the eligible maidens in the kingdom to a royal ball, so that the Prince will choose one as his wife. Wanting to attend, Cinderella finds a dress of her late birth mother's to fix up. Her stepmother and stepsisters, afraid she will upstage them at the ball, deliberately keep her busy with no time to spare. Jaq, Gus, and the other animals decide to fix up the dress for Cinderella, using beads and a sash discarded by the stepsisters. However, when Cinderella attempts to go to the ball with her family, her stepsisters recognize their belongings and angrily tear the dress apart, before leaving Cinderella behind.
A distraught Cinderella runs out to the garden in tears, kneeling on a stone bench. There, she is met by her Fairy Godmother, who has come to help. She transforms Jaq, Gus, and two other mice into four white horses, a pumpkin into a coach, and Cinderella's old horse Major and bloodhound Bruno into a coachman and footman, respectively. The fairy godmother also gives Cinderella a shimmering ball gown and glass slippers, but warns her that all the magic will end on the stroke of midnight.
Cinderella arrives at the ball, and is not recognized by her stepsisters, though her stepmother believes something is familiar about her. The Prince is instantly smitten, so the King orders the Grand Duke to make sure the romance goes without a hitch. The Duke prevents anyone from interfering as Cinderella and the Prince dance a waltz and wander out to the palace grounds, falling deeper in love. However, when Cinderella hears the clock tolling midnight, she runs away before she and the Prince can exchange names. Despite the efforts of the Grand Duke, Cinderella flees the palace, losing one of her slippers on the staircase. The palace guards pursue, but when the magic ends on the stroke of 12, Cinderella and the animals revert to their former appearances and hide in the woods. Cinderella discovers the other glass slipper is still on her foot, and takes it home with her.
The Prince promises he will marry none but the girl who fits the glass slipper. Elated, the King orders the Grand Duke to try the shoe on every girl in the kingdom until he finds a match. When the news reaches the chateau, Cinderella is shocked to realize it was the Prince she met. Hearing Cinderella humming the waltz from the ball, Lady Tremaine realizes the truth and locks Cinderella in her attic bedroom. While the stepsisters unsuccessfully try on the slipper, Jaq and Gus steal the key back from Lady Tremaine. As they take the key to Cinderella, Lucifer attempts to stop them by trapping Gus and battling the other mice. The birds summon Bruno, who scares Lucifer out of the house, and a freed Cinderella hurries to meet the Grand Duke.
In a last effort to prevent Cinderella from overshadowing her daughters, Lady Tremaine causes a page to trip and break the glass slipper. Cinderella reveals she has the other slipper, which the Grand Duke places on her foot, much to Lady Tremaine's shock. Cinderella and the Prince are married, and share a kiss as they set off in a carriage for their honeymoon.
Voice cast
Ilene Woods as Cinderella, a humble and hard-working young woman who is forced to become a maidservant due to abuse by her stepmother and stepsisters.
Eleanor Audley as Lady Tremaine, Cinderella's cruel and abusive stepmother, who despises her stepdaughter for being more charming and beautiful than her own daughters.
Verna Felton as the Fairy Godmother, a kind-hearted and slightly absent-minded sorceress who enables Cinderella to attend the ball and meet the Prince.
Rhoda Williams and Lucille Bliss as Drizella and Anastasia Tremaine, Lady Tremaine's spoiled and awkward daughters and Cinderella's stepsisters.
James MacDonald as Jaq and Gus, Cinderella's loyal and helpful mice friends.
MacDonald also voiced Bruno, Cinderella's pet dog.
Luis van Rooten as The King, the Prince's loud and short-tempered father who wants his son to get married and have children.
Van Rooten also voiced the Grand Duke, the King's fussy majordomo and confidant.
William Edward Phipps voiced the Prince Charming, the King's son, who falls in love with Cinderella; his singing voice was provided by Mike Douglas. June Foray voiced Lucifer, Lady Tremaine's mean-spirited cat who attempts to hunt down Jaq and Gus. Betty Lou Gerson was the narrator.
Production
Story development
Walt Disney first adapted Charles Perrault's fairy tale Cinderella as part of his series of cartoon shorts for the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in 1922. He was interested in producing a second version in December 1933 as a Silly Symphony short; Burt Gillett was attached as the director while Frank Churchill was assigned as the composer. A story outline included "white mice and birds" as Cinderella's playmates. To expand the story, storyboard artists suggested visual gags, some of which ended up in the final film. However, by early 1938, the story proved to be too complicated to be condensed into a short so it was suggested as a potential animated feature film, starting with a fourteen-page outline written by Al Perkins. Two years later, a second treatment was written by Dana Cofy and Bianca Majolie, in which Cinderella's stepmother was named Florimel de la Pochel; her stepsisters as Wanda and Javotte; her pet mouse Dusty and pet turtle Clarissa; the stepsisters' cat Bon Bob; the Prince's aide Spink, and the stepsisters' dancing instructor Monsieur Carnewal. This version stuck closely to the original fairy tale until Cinderella arrives home late from the second ball. Her stepfamily then imprisons Cinderella in a dungeon cellar. When Spink and his troops arrive at the la Pochel residence, Dusty takes the slipper and leads them to free Cinderella.
By September 1943, Disney had assigned Dick Huemer and Joe Grant to begin work on Cinderella as story supervisors and given a preliminary budget of $1 million. However, by 1945, their preliminary story work was halted. During the writing stages of Song of the South (1946), Dalton S. Reymond and Maurice Rapf quarreled, and Rapf was reassigned to work on Cinderella. In his version, Cinderella was written to be a less passive character than Snow White, and more rebellious against her stepfamily. Rapf explained, "My thinking was you can't have somebody who comes in and changes everything for you. You can't be delivered on a platter. You've got to earn it. So in my version, the Fairy Godmother said, 'It's okay till midnight but from then on it's up to you.' I made her earn it, and what she had to do to achieve it was to rebel against her stepmother and stepsisters, to stop being a slave in her own home. So I had a scene where they're ordering her around and she throws the stuff back at them. She revolts, so they lock her up in the attic. I don't think anyone took (my idea) very seriously."
In spring 1946, Disney held three story meetings, and subsequently received treatment from Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, and Harry Reeves dated March 24, 1947. In the treatment, the Prince was introduced earlier in the story reminiscent of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and there was a hint of the cat-and-mouse conflict. By May 1947, the first rough phase of storyboarding was in the process, and an inventory report that same month suggested a different approach with the story "largely through the animals in the barnyard and their observations of Cinderella's day-to-day activities".
Following the theatrical release of Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Walt Disney Productions' bank debt declined from $4.2 million to $3 million. Around this time, Disney acknowledged the need for sound economic policies but emphasized to the loaners that slashing production would be suicidal. To restore the studio to full financial health, he expressed his desire to return to producing full-length animated films. By then, three animated projects—Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953)—were in development. Disney felt the characters in Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan were too cold, while Cinderella contained elements similar to Snow White, and greenlit the project. Selecting his top-tier animation talent, Ben Sharpsteen was assigned as supervising producer while Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, and Clyde Geronimi became the sequence directors. Nevertheless, production on Alice resumed so that both animation crews would effectively compete against each other to see which film would finish first.
By early 1948, Cinderella had progressed further than Alice in Wonderland, and was fast-tracked to become the first full-length animated film since Bambi (1942). During a story meeting on January 15, 1948, the cat-and-mouse sequences began to grow into an important element in the film so much that Disney placed veteran story artist Bill Peet in charge of the cat-and-mouse segments.
By the late 1940s, Disney's involvement during production had shrunken noticeably. As he was occupied with trains and the filming of Treasure Island (1950), the directors were left to exercise their own judgment more on details. Although Disney no longer held daily story meetings, the three directors still communicated with him by mailing him memoranda, scripts, Photostats of storyboards, and acetates of soundtrack recordings while he was in England for two and a half months during the summer of 1949. When Disney did not respond, work resumed and then had to be undone when he did. In one instance, when Disney returned to the studio on August 29, he reviewed Luske's animation sequences and ordered numerous minor changes, as well as a significant reworking of the film's climax. Production was finished by October 13, 1949.
Casting
Around 380 applicants auditioned for the role of Cinderella, until Ilene Woods was cast in March 1948.
Mack David and Jerry Livingston had asked Woods to sing on several demo recordings of the songs. They had previously known her from her eponymous radio show, which was broadcast on ABC. The show featured fifteen minutes of music, in which David and Livingston had their music presented. Two days later, Woods received a telephone call from Disney, with whom she immediately scheduled an interview. Woods recalled in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "We met and talked for a while, and he said, 'How would you like to be Cinderella?'," to which she agreed.
For the role of Lucifer, a studio representative asked June Foray if she could provide the voice of a cat. "Well, I could do anything," recalled Foray, "So he hired me as Lucifer the cat in Cinderella".
Animation
Live-action reference
Starting in spring 1948, actors were filmed on large soundstages mouthing to a playback of the dialogue soundtrack. Disney had previously used live-action reference on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), and Fantasia (1940), but as part of an effort to keep the production cost down, the footage was used to check the plot, timing, and movement of the characters before animating it. The footage was then edited frame-by-frame onto large Photostat sheets to duplicate, in which the animators found too restrictive as they were not allowed to imagine anything that the live actors did not present since that kind of experimentation might necessitate changes and cost more money. Additionally, the animators were instructed to draw from a certain directorial perspective to avoid difficult shots and angles. Frank Thomas explained, "Anytime you'd think of another way of staging the scene, they'd say: 'We can't get the camera up there'! Well, you could get the animation camera up there! So you had to go with what worked well in live-action."
Walt Disney hired actress Helene Stanley to perform the live-action reference for Cinderella, allowing artists to draw animated frames based on the movements of the actress. She later did the same kind of work for the characters of Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Anita Radcliffe in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). Animators modeled Prince Charming on actor Jeffrey Stone, who also provided some additional voices for the film. Claire Du Brey served as the live-action reference for the Fairy Godmother, although the design for the character was based on Mary Alice O'Connor (the wife of layout artist Ken O'Connor).
Character animation
By 1950, the animation board, which had been established as early as 1940 to help with the management of the animation department, had settled down to nine supervising animators, including Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl, John Lounsbery, and Marc Davis. Although they were still in their thirties, they were jokingly referred by Disney as the "Nine Old Men" after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's denigration of the Supreme Court.
Eric Larson and Marc Davis were both tasked with designing and animating Cinderella. Larson was the first to animate the character whom he envisioned as a "sixteen-year-old with braids and a pug nose". However, Disney grew displeased with this approach and assigned Davis as the second supervising animator, whose designs suggested a "more the exotic dame" with a long swan-like neck. To minimize the differences and set the final design, Disney assigned animator Ken O'Brien who, as Larson said, made "his gals and Marc's gals look like the same gal." Due to the extensive use of the live-action reference for the film, Helene Stanley's physical features also influenced the character's final appearance.
Frank Thomas was assigned as the supervising animator of Lady Tremaine, which he was "astounded" with, since he had previously mainly specialized in more "charming" characters, like Pinocchio or Bambi.
Milt Kahl was the directing animator of the Fairy Godmother, the King, and the Grand Duke. Originally, Disney intended for the Fairy Godmother to be a tall, regal character as he viewed fairies as tall, motherly figures (as seen in the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940)), but Kahl disagreed with this characterization. Following the casting of Verna Felton, Kahl managed to convince Disney of his undignified concept of the Fairy Godmother.
Unlike the human characters, the animal characters were animated without live-action reference. During production, none of Kimball's designs for Lucifer had pleased Disney. After visiting Kimball's steam train at his home, Disney saw his calico cat and remarked, "Hey—there's your model for Lucifer". Reitherman animated the sequence in which Jaq and Gus laboriously drag the key up the flight of stairs to Cinderella.
Music
In 1946, story artist and part-time lyricist Larry Morey joined studio music director Charles Walcott to compose the songs. Cinderella would sing three songs: "Sing a Little, Dream a Little" while overloaded with work, "The Mouse Song" as she dressed the mice, and "The Dress My Mother Wore" as she fantasizes about her mother's old wedding dress. To recycle an unused fantasy sequence from Snow White, the song, "Dancing on a Cloud" was used as Cinderella and the Prince waltz during the ball. After the ball, she would sing "I Lost My Heart at the Ball" and the Prince would sing "The Face That I See in the Night." However, none of their songs were used.
Two years later, Disney turned to Tin Pan Alley songwriters Mack David, Jerry Livingston, and Al Hoffman to compose the songs. They were the first professional composers to be hired outside the production company. The trio had previously written the song "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba" that Disney heard on the radio and decided would work well with the Fairy Godmother sequence. They finished the songs in March 1949. In total six songs were performed in the film: "Cinderella", "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes", "Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale", "The Work Song", "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo", and "So This is Love".
Oliver Wallace and Paul Smith composed the score, but only after the animation was ready for inking, which was incidentally similar to scoring a live-action film. This was a drastic change from the earlier Disney animated features in which the music and action were carefully synchronized in a process known as Mickey Mousing.
The film also marked the launching of the Walt Disney Music Company. The soundtrack was also a first in using multi-tracks for vocals – with the song "Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale", Ilene Woods recorded a second and third vocal track to enable her to sing harmony with herself.
On February 4, 1950, Billboard announced that RCA Records and Disney would release a children's album in conjunction with the theatrical release. The RCA Victor album release sold about 750,000 copies during its first release, and hit number-one on the Billboard pop charts.
In 1995, a special edition of the soundtrack was released to coincide with the film's re-release on home video entitled Walt Disney Records Presents The Music of Cinderella. The album opened with cover versions of the songs from the film including Linda Ronstadt singing "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" in English and Spanish, Take 6 singing "The Work Song", James Ingram singing "So This is Love", David Benoit and David Sanborn performing a jazz medley from the film, and Bobby McFerrin's take on "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo".
The soundtrack for Cinderella was released by Walt Disney Records on CD and audio cassette on February 4, 1997, and included a bonus demo. On October 4, 2005, Disney released a special edition of the soundtrack album of Cinderella, for the Platinum Edition DVD release, which includes several demo songs cut from the final film, a new song, and a cover version of "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes". The soundtrack was released again on October 2, 2012, and consisted of several lost chords and new recordings of them. A Walmart exclusive limited edition "Music Box Set" consisting of the soundtrack without the lost chords or bonus demos, the Song and Story: Cinderella CD and a bonus DVD of Tangled Ever After was released on the same day.
In conjunction with the film's 65th anniversary, the soundtrack for Cinderella was re-released in 2015 as part of the Legacy Collection.
Songs
Original songs performed in the film include:
Release
The film was originally released in theaters on February 15, 1950, in Boston, Massachusetts. It also screened at the inaugural edition of the Berlin International Film Festival in June 1951, where it won the Golden Bear for Best Music Film. Cinderella was re-released in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981 and 1987. Cinderella also played a limited engagement in select Cinemark Theatres from February 16–18, 2013. To celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, the film was re-released in cinemas across the UK from August 25 to 31, 2023, and Latin American theaters from October 12 to 18, 2023, alongside Toy Story (1995).
2023 4K restoration
A 4K remastered version of the film premiered at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on February 19, 2023, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company. The restoration was described as a "multi-year effort" involving Disney's Restoration and Preservation team and key members of Walt Disney Animation Studios, including Eric Goldberg, Michael Giaimo, Dorothy McKim, and Bob Bagley. It involved obtaining the original 35mm Technicolor negative from the Library of Congress and re-scanning it in 4K resolution, with dirt digitally removed frame by frame to bring the film back "to its original grandeur, authentic to the artistic ambitions of the Studio's creative team, and which looks and sounds better than ever." The 4K version began streaming on Disney+ on August 25.
Critical reaction
The film became a critical success garnering the best reception for a Disney animated film since Dumbo. In a personal letter to Walt Disney, director Michael Curtiz hailed the film as the "masterpiece of all pictures you have done." Producer Hal Wallis declared, "If this is not your best, it is very close to the top." A review in Chicago Tribune remarked: "The film not only is handsome, with imaginative art and glowing colors to bedeck the old fairy tale, but it also is told gently, without the lurid villains which sometimes give little tots nightmares. It is enhanced by the sudden, piquant touches of humor and the music which appeal to old and young." Time magazine wrote that "Cinderella is beguiling proof that Walt Disney knows his way around fairyland. Harking back to the style of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), a small army of Disney craftsmen have given the centuries-old Cinderella story a dewy radiance of comic verve that should make children feel like elves and adults feel like children."
However, the characterization of Cinderella received a mixed reception. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "The beautiful Cinderella has a voluptuous face and form—not to mention an eager disposition—to compare with Al Capp's Daisy Mae." However, criticizing her role and personality, Crowther opined, "As a consequence, the situation in which they are mutually involved have the constraint and immobility of panel-expressed episodes. When Mr. Disney tries to make them behave like human beings, they're banal." Similarly, Variety claimed the film found "more success in projecting the lower animals than in its central character, Cinderella, who is on the colorless, doll-faced side, as is the Prince Charming."
Contemporary reviews have remained positive. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film three out of four stars during its 1987 re-release. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote the film "shows Disney at the tail end of his best period, when his backgrounds were still luminous with depth and detail and his incidental characters still had range and bite." The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported the film received an approval rating of 98% based on 40 reviews with an average score of 8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The rich colors, sweet songs, adorable mice and endearing (if suffering) heroine make Cinderella a nostalgically lovely charmer."
Box office
The film was Disney's greatest box office success since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, earning nearly $4.28 million in distributor rentals (the distributor's share of the box office gross) from the United States and Canada. It was the fifth highest-grossing film released in North America in 1950. It was the fifth most popular movie at the British box office in 1951. The film is France's sixteenth biggest film of all time in terms of admissions with 13.2 million tickets sold.
The success of Cinderella allowed Disney to carry on producing films throughout the 1950s by which the profits from the film's release, with the additional profits from record sales, music publishing, publications, and other merchandise gave Disney the cash flow to finance a slate of productions (animated and live-action), establish his own distribution company, enter television production, and begin building Disneyland during the decade, as well as developing the Florida Project, later known as Walt Disney World.
Cinderella has had a lifetime domestic gross of $93 million, and a lifetime worldwide gross of $182 million across its original release and several reissues. Adjusted for inflation, and incorporating subsequent releases, the film has had a lifetime gross of $565 million.
Accolades
In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "10 Top 10"— the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Cinderella was acknowledged as the 9th greatest film in the animation genre.
American Film Institute recognition:
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
Lady Tremaine (Stepmother) – Nominated Villain
AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo – Nominated
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes – Nominated
AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – Nominated
AFI's 10 Top 10 – #9 Animated film
Home media
Cinderella was released on VHS and LaserDisc on October 4, 1988, as part of the Walt Disney Classics collection. The release had a promotion with a free lithograph reproduction for those who pre-ordered the video before its release date. Disney had initially shipped 4.3 million VHS copies to retailers, but due to strong consumer demand, more than seven million copies were shipped. At the time of its initial home video release, it was the best-selling VHS title until it was overtaken by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The VHS release was placed into moratorium (i.e., into Disney Vault on April 30, 1989, with copies sold and having grossed in sales revenue.
On October 4, 1995, a digitally remastered edition of film was released on VHS and LaserDisc as part of the "Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection", and later in the UK on November 24, 1997. Both editions were accompanied by "The Making of Cinderella" featurette. A Deluxe LaserDisc included the featurette, an illustrated, hardcover book retelling the story with pencil tests and conceptual art from the film, and a reprint of the film's artwork. Disney shipped more than 15 million VHS copies, of which 8 million were sold in the first month.
On October 4, 2005, Disney released the film on DVD with a digitally remastered transfer. This release was the sixth installment of the Walt Disney Platinum Editions series. According to Home Media Magazine, Disney sold 3.2 million copies in its first week, which earned over $64 million in sales. The Platinum Edition was also released on VHS, but the only special feature was the "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" music video by the Disney Channel Circle of Stars. The Platinum Edition DVD, along with the sequels to the film, went into the Disney Vault on January 31, 2008. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a "Royal Edition" of Cinderella was released on DVD on April 4, 2011, to commemorate the UK Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. This release had a unique limited edition number on every slipcase and an exclusive art card.
On October 2, 2012, a 3-disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo Diamond Edition was released. The Diamond Edition release also included a 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo and a 6-disc "Jewelry Box Set" that included the first film alongside both its sequels. A 1-disc DVD edition was released on November 20, 2012. The Diamond Edition release went back into the Disney Vault on January 31, 2017.
Cinderella was re-released on HD digital download on June 18, 2019, with a physical media re-release on Blu-ray on June 25, 2019, as part of the Walt Disney Signature Collection commemorating the film's 70th anniversary.
On March 18, 2023, Cinderella was re-released on 4K Ultra HD as a Disney Movie Club exclusive, with a steelbook packaging release on August 1 as well as a standard release on October 17 as part of the Disney100 promotion. It utilized the 4K remastered print from the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival screening, marking it as the first animated film made during the studio's "golden era" to receive this treatment. The 4K version, dubbed as the "Ultimate Restoration," began streaming on Disney+ on August 25.
Sequels and other media
A direct-to-video sequel Cinderella II: Dreams Come True was released in 2002.
A second direct-to-video sequel Cinderella III: A Twist in Time was released in 2007.
Several characters from the film have appeared as guests in House of Mouse, as well in its direct-to-video films Mickey's Magical Christmas and Mickey's House of Villains.
Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother appear in the video game Kingdom Hearts. A world based on the film, known as Castle of Dreams, as well several characters, appear in the games Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts χ. The Fairy Godmother returns in the Kingdom Hearts III DLC Re Mind and in Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory.
A scaled-down stage musical version of the film known as Disney's Cinderella KIDS is frequently performed by schools and children's theaters.
A live-action adaptation of the film produced by Walt Disney Pictures, directed by Kenneth Branagh, was released in 2015; starring Lily James, Richard Madden, Cate Blanchett, and Helena Bonham Carter.
The Fairy Godmother (played by Melanie Paxson) appears in all the films of the Descendants live-action film series, with Lady Tremaine (played by Linda Ko) appearing in Descendants 3, and Cinderella (played by Brandy Norwood) and Prince Charming (played by Paolo Montalban) appearing in Cinderella (1997 film) and Descendants: The Rise of Red.
Some characters of the film appear as payable characters in the video game Disney Magic Kingdoms.
Cinderella, Jaq and Gus have guest appearances in the 2018 film Ralph Breaks the Internet.
The film was featured in the 2021 biographical drama film King Richard.
Cultural impact and legacy
Smithsonian magazine discussed how Cinderella endures and resonates, saying: "Dozens of other filmmakers have borrowed elements of the tale, starting as early as 1899 with a French version directed by the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès." Time magazine also discussed the film's popularity saying: "References to Cinderella proliferated in popular culture and were widely used to sell consumer goods. Shell Petroleum used an image of a fashionably dressed Cinderella exiting her pumpkin coach in an advertisement of the 1940s, Revlon lipstick boasted a new lipstick in a "Cinderella pumpkin" shade of orange, and Coty packaged perfume in a faux glass slipper." In 2023, Ben Mankiewicz, host of Turner Classic Movies, told Parade magazine, "Disney was on the ropes. Cinderella saved Disney." He also said, "It has everything you want in a princess story, and it's done in this authentic, beautiful way."
Cinderella is referred by many as one of the most recognizable tales in history. Parade magazine listed the film among the greatest animated films of all time. In 2008, American Film Institute ranked Cinderella as the ninth best animated film of all time, writing: "one of the most recognizable fairytale stories ever, Cinderella has stood the test of time." Reader's Digest also listed the film as one of the most popular fairy tales of all time.
See also
Lists of animated feature films
List of Disney animated films based on fairy tales
List of Disney theatrical animated feature films
References
Bibliography
External links
Cinderella (franchise)
1950 animated films
1950 films
1950s American animated films
1950s children's fantasy films
1950s romantic fantasy films
1950s romantic musical films
1950s English-language films
1950s children's animated films
1950s musical fantasy films
American children's animated fantasy films
American children's animated musical films
American romantic fantasy films
American romantic musical films
American animated feature films
Animated films about mice
Animated romance films
Disney Princess films
Films about abuse
Films about fairies and sprites
Animated films about royalty
Films about weddings
Films about wish fulfillment
Films based on Charles Perrault's Cinderella
Films directed by Clyde Geronimi
Films directed by Hamilton Luske
Films directed by Wilfred Jackson
Films produced by Walt Disney
Films scored by Oliver Wallace
Films scored by Paul Smith (film and television composer)
Animated films set in country houses
Animated films set in palaces
Animated films set in France
Films set in the 1850s
Golden Bear winners
Rotoscoped films
United States National Film Registry films
Walt Disney Animation Studios films
Walt Disney Pictures animated films
Films with screenplays by Winston Hibler
Animated films based on Cinderella
Films with screenplays by Ken Anderson
Animated films set in the 19th century
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas%20%281995%20film%29
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Pocahontas (1995 film)
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Pocahontas is a 1995 American animated musical historical drama film based on the life of Powhatan woman Pocahontas and the arrival of English colonial settlers from the Virginia Company. The film romanticizes Pocahontas's encounter with John Smith and her legendary saving of his life. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures.
The film was directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Jim Pentecost, from a screenplay written by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant, and Philip LaZebnik. It stars the voices of Irene Bedard and Mel Gibson as Pocahontas and Smith, respectively, with David Ogden Stiers, Russell Means, Christian Bale, Michelle St. John, James Apaumut Fall, Billy Connolly, Joe Baker, Gordon Tootoosis, and Linda Hunt in supporting roles. The score was composed by Alan Menken, who also wrote the film's songs with lyricist Stephen Schwartz.
After making his directorial debut with The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Gabriel conceived the film during a Thanksgiving weekend. Goldberg, who had just finished up work as the supervising animator of the Genie in Aladdin (1992), joined Gabriel as co-director shortly after that film was released. The project went into development concurrently with The Lion King (1994), and attracted most of Disney's top animators. Meanwhile, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg decided that the film should be an emotional romantic epic in the vein of Beauty and the Beast (1991), in hope that like Beauty, it would also be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Screenwriters Binder, Grant, and LaZebnik took creative liberties with history in an attempt to make the film palatable to audiences.
Pocahontas premiered at Central Park on June 10, 1995, and was released in the United States on June 16, to mixed reactions from critics and audiences, who praised its animation, voice performances, and music, but criticized its story with its lack of focus on tone. The film's historical inaccuracies and artistic license received polarized responses. Pocahontas earned over $346 million at the box office. The film received two Academy Awards for Best Musical or Comedy Score for Menken and Best Original Song for "Colors of the Wind". According to critics, the depiction of Pocahontas as an empowered heroine influenced subsequent Disney films like Mulan (1998) and Frozen (2013).
Plot
In 1607, the Susan Constant travels from London to the New World, carrying English settlers from the Virginia Company. The settlers, including Captain John Smith, talk of adventure, finding gold, fighting "Injuns" and potentially settling in the new land.
In the Powhatan tribe in Werowocomoco, Tsenacommacah, Virginia, Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, fears being possibly wed to Kocoum, a warrior whom she sees as too serious for her own free-spirited personality. After having a dream about a spinning arrow, Pocahontas visits Grandmother Willow, a spiritual talking willow tree that alerts her to the arriving English.
The voyage's leader Governor Ratcliffe, who only seeks wealth and status, has Jamestown built in a wooded clearing and immediately has the crewmen dig for gold. John departs to explore the wilderness and encounters Pocahontas. At first, she hides her ability to speak English, but Grandmother Willow lets her know there is nothing to be afraid of. They quickly bond, fascinated by each other's worlds, and end up falling in love. After a fight between settlers and natives, Powhatan orders the natives to stay away from the Englishmen. Pocahontas, however, disobeys him and keeps meeting with John. Unfortunately, Pocahontas's best friend, Nakoma, discovers the secret relationship and warns Kocoum. Ratcliffe also learns of John's encounters and angrily warns him against sparing any Natives.
Later, John and Pocahontas meet with Grandmother Willow and plan to bring peace between the colonists and the tribe. While by both parties spy on the couple, John and Pocahontas share a kiss. Furious, Kocoum attacks and attempts to kill John, but a young settler, Thomas, whose life John previously saved and who had been ordered by Ratcliffe to follow John, intervenes and kills Kocoum. John orders Thomas to leave before the tribesmen arrive and capture John, before retrieving Kocoum’s body. Enraged at Kocoum's death, Powhatan angrily berates Pocahontas for leaving the village and declares war on the English, beginning with John's execution at dawn.
After reaching Jamestown, Thomas warns the settlers of John's capture. Ratcliffe then rallies his men to battle, using this as an excuse to annihilate the tribe and find their nonexistent gold. That same night, Powhatan also orders his men to prepare for battle. A desperate Pocahontas visits Grandmother Willow and realizes the arrow from John's compass is the same spinning arrow from her dream, which leads to her destiny. Morning comes, and Powhatan and his tribe drag John to a cliff for his execution. Meanwhile, Ratcliffe leads the armed colonists to fight Powhatan's warriors. Just as Powhatan is about to execute John and start the war, Pocahontas intervenes and finally convinces him to end the fighting between the two groups and spare John's life. Both sides stand down, and John is released. Unmoved, Ratcliffe orders his men to attack anyway, but they refuse. Ratcliffe fires his musket at Powhatan, but John takes the shot to save him. Livid, the settlers turn on Ratcliffe and detain him for hurting their comrade.
John is nursed back to health by the tribe but must return to England for his wounds to fully heal. Ratcliffe is also sent back to face punishment for his crimes against the settlement. John asks Pocahontas to come with him, but she chooses to stay with her tribe to help keep the peace. John leaves without Pocahontas, but with Powhatan's blessing to return anytime in the future. At the end, Pocahontas stands atop a cliff, watching the ship carrying John depart.
Voice cast
Irene Bedard as Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan. She is a very adventurous person who defies her father's strict prohibition of meeting the English settlers and falls in love with Captain John Smith.
Judy Kuhn as the singing voice of Pocahontas
Mel Gibson as John Smith, the love interest of Pocahontas. He is the only settler in Jamestown willing to befriend the Natives due to his love for Pocahontas which made him change his point of view on other cultures.
Although Gibson provides most of Smith's singing in the film, Jess Harnell claims he provided about 20 percent of Smith's singing voice in certain scenes.
David Ogden Stiers as Governor Ratcliffe, the greedy and arrogant governor of the settlers who leads an expedition to Virginia to find gold and other riches that he wants to keep for himself.
Stiers also provided the voice of Wiggins, Ratcliffe's manservant. Unlike Ratcliffe, Wiggins is gentle and good-hearted, but he's stuck serving a terrible man.
John Kassir as Meeko, Pocahontas' mischievous pet raccoon who is friendly to John Smith and loves eating.
Russell Means as Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas' father and chief of the Powhatan tribe who is, at first, distrustful of the English settlers, but eventually learns to make peace with them through his daughter.
Jim Cummings provides the singing voice of Chief Powhatan
Christian Bale as Thomas, a loyal friend of John Smith who, like the other English settlers, is ordered by Ratcliffe to fire upon the Natives on sight, but eventually defies his orders.
Billy Connolly as Ben and Joe Baker as Lon, two settlers and friends of John Smith.
Linda Hunt as Grandmother Willow, a speaking willow tree that acts as Pocahontas' guide in times of uncertainty.
Danny Mann as Percy, Governor Ratcliffe's snooty and short-tempered pet pug who, at first, harbors animosity towards Meeko, but eventually befriends him and abandons his owner.
Frank Welker as Flit, Pocahontas' feisty pet hummingbird who prefers Kocoum over John Smith but eventually befriends the latter.
Michelle St. John as Nakoma, Pocahontas' best friend who is more easygoing as opposed to Pocahontas' adventurous spirit.
James Apaumut Fall as Kocoum, a strong and brave but stern and aggressive Powhatan warrior whom Chief Powhatan wants Pocahontas to marry.
Gordon Tootoosis as Kekata, the medicine man of the Powhatan.
Jim Cummings provides the singing voice of Kekata
Three actors in the film have been involved in other Pocahontas-related projects. Gordon Tootoosis acted as Chief Powhatan in Pocahontas: The Legend (1995). Christian Bale and Irene Bedard would portray John Rolfe and Pocahontas' mother, respectively, in Terrence Malick's The New World (2005).
Production
Development
Following the release of The Rescuers Down Under (1990), director Mike Gabriel was eager to collaborate with veteran Disney story artist Joe Grant on a follow-up project that was vastly different from the animated adventure film. In April and May 1991, they first partnered on an adaptation of Swan Lake with both of them writing story outlines and creating conceptual artwork. Gabriel and Grant then submitted their outline for approval, but it was negatively received by the studio's live-action script readers. Earlier, during Thanksgiving weekend, 1990, Gabriel had wanted to direct an animated musical set in the American West. At a relative's Thanksgiving dinner, while glancing through numerous titles in their bookcase, Gabriel struck on the idea of adapting the life of Pocahontas after finding a book about her. Following the cancellation of Swan Lake, Gabriel returned to the idea.
Shortly after, Gabriel pitched his idea at the "Gong Show" meeting held by Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Peter Schneider, and Roy E. Disney. He had written the title Walt Disney's Pocahontas on an image of Tiger Lily from Peter Pan (1953) to the back of which he taped a brief pitch that read "an Indian princess who is torn between her father's wishes to destroy the English settlers and her wishes to help them – a girl caught between her father and her people, and her love for the enemy." Coincidentally, Feature Animation president Peter Schneider had been developing an animated version of William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, and observed several similarities between his idea and Gabriel's Pocahontas pitch; Schneider recalled: "We were particularly interested in exploring the theme of 'If we don't learn to live with one another, we will destroy ourselves.'" Gabriel's pitch was quickly accepted, becoming the quickest story turnaround in Disney studio history.
After Beauty and the Beast (1991) was unprecedentedly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards, then-studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg opted to produce another animated romance film in the hopes of achieving a similar feat. While Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994) were considered to be too far into development, Katzenberg deemed Pocahontas a promising candidate, and thus pushed for the heroine to be older, the romance between her and Smith to be more mature, and the animals to be mute. Head of story Tom Sito went on the record stating he wanted to include "broader" jokes, but the "higher-ups wanted it more winsome, more gentle. Some of the folks were so concerned about political correctness, they didn't want to be cuckoo-wacky about it."
Eric Goldberg—following his contributions to Aladdin as the supervising animator of the Genie and with all animation units for The Lion King already occupied—was asked to co-direct Pocahontas alongside Gabriel, to which he agreed. Likewise, he had originally expected the film to be more comedic and cartoonish like Aladdin, but Schneider informed him that the film would be produced in a vein more similar to that of Beauty and the Beast; the then-ongoing 1992 Los Angeles riots further convinced Goldberg to commit to the film due to its racial themes. However, executive interference would grow so much that Goldberg himself decided to work for Chuck Jones Productions under the pseudonym "Claude Raynes" during production. It eventually reached a peak when Joe Grant drew Percy wearing a Native American feather, by which the animators took the concept one step further by placing a Spanish ruff on Meeko. One executive exclaimed, "Animals don't have the intelligence to switch their clothes! They don't even have opposing thumbs." The animators would retain their concept for the film.
Under Katzenberg, Frank Wells, and Michael Eisner, the Disney studios had begun a correlation of hiring Broadway personnel to manage the Disney animation staff on their feature films that brought such producers as Amy Pell to Aladdin and Sarah McArthur and Thomas Schumacher to The Lion King. Before making his producing debut on Pocahontas, James Pentecost had earlier worked as a production stage manager on several Broadway productions including La Cage aux Folles and Crimes of the Heart.
In June 1992, the filmmakers embarked on a research trip to the Jamestown Settlement where Pentecost first met Shirley "Little Dove" Custalow-McGowan and Debbie "White Dove" Custalow, both descendants of the Powhatan Native Americans. The trip also included a visit to the Pamunkey Indian Reservation, and conducted interviews with historians at Old Dominion University. Following the research trip, Custalow-McGowan served as a consultant traveling to the Disney studios three times, and while Custalow-McGowan offered her services for free, Disney paid her a $500 daily consulting fee plus expenses. Ultimately, when it came to light that historical accuracy was not being pursued to the extent she had hoped, McGowan has voiced her feelings of shame she felt in conjunction with her work on the film, saying "[she] wish[ed her] name wasn't on it". Additional Native American consultants were brought in to authenticate the clothing and war dance choreography. That same month, Katzenberg held a meeting with the Feature Animation staff in which he predicted that Pocahontas would be a commercial hit, while deeming The Lion King experimental and less likely to succeed. As a result, most of the animators of Walt Disney Feature Animation decided to work on Pocahontas instead, believing it would be the more prestigious and successful of the two.
Writing
In January 1993, Carl Binder joined the project, having previous expertise as a television writer on shows such as Punky Brewster, War of the Worlds, Friday the 13th: The Series, and Top Cops. Four months later, Susannah Grant and Philip LaZebnik joined the writing team. Susannah Grant was selected by Disney as a screenwriter on Pocahontas after winning the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences the year before while still attending film school. On board as a screenwriter, she was only one of the many who was contributing the specific vision the upper management at Disney had in mind, and collaborated with Native American consultants. While working on the film, Susannah Grant wrote to a specific story outline, and no scene was rewritten less than thirty-five times until she felt it was perfect.
Story supervisor Tom Sito, who became the project's unofficial historical consultant, did extensive research into the early colonial era and the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, but was confronted over the historical inaccuracies by historians. Already knowing that in reality, Pocahontas married John Rolfe, Gabriel explained it was felt that "the story of Pocahontas and Rolfe was too complicated and violent for a youthful audience" so instead, they would focus on Pocahontas's meeting with John Smith. The filmmakers discovered that Pocahontas was around twelve years old and Smith was "not a very likeable character", in which producer James Pentecost confessed that dramatic license was needed to be taken. Likewise, when searching for an appropriate age for Pocahontas to begin her relationship with Smith, Glen Keane explained, "We had the choice of being historically accurate or socially responsible, so we chose the socially responsible side" by increasing Pocahontas's age from a girl into a young woman.
One of Gabriel's early ideas was for Pocahontas's mother to be embodied in a certain star in the sky that would help Pocahontas find her path to Smith. The Lion King however had concurrently carried a similar idea of the ancestors giving wisdom and guidance to the protagonist so the idea was discarded. Michael Eisner pushed for Pocahontas to have a mother, lamenting that "We're always getting fried for having no mothers." The writers countered that Powhatan was polygamous and formed dynastic alliances among other neighboring tribes by impregnating a local woman and giving away the child, so it was believed that Pocahontas herself probably did not see her mother that much. "Well", Eisner conceded, "I guess that means we're toasted." Ultimately, her mother's spirit would become the swirling wind that occurs throughout the film.
For the villain, they chose John Ratcliffe, whose portrayal was based on actual English captains, including John Martin, Christopher Newport, and Edward Maria Wingfield. In reality, it was Wingfield who despised John Smith, but the filmmakers preferred the sinister sound of "Ratcliffe". The writers tried to adapt actual events from Pocahontas's life into the film such as her warning Smith that the Native Americans were after him so he could escape in the middle of the night, Powhatan ordering the captured Smith to make bead necklaces to humiliate him, and Pocahontas being captured by Ratcliffe (instead of Samuel Argall), though none of them worked with the story.
Sito mentioned that Joe Grant contributed heavily towards the film, as he was the creator of Redfeather, Meeko, and Flit. Redfeather was a wise-cracking turkey who was intended to be voiced by John Candy, and Percy, who was to be voiced by Richard E. Grant, was revised to become mute. Following the death of John Candy in March 1994, co-screenwriter Susannah Grant decided the turkey was inappropriate for the script she co-wrote for Pocahontas, and a more realistic approach would have the animals pantomime instead of talking. Joe Grant stated Redfeather "had comic potential–he thought he was handsome, a lady's man. When we decided he couldn't talk, and, having no hands, he couldn't mime ...".
Joe Grant would later draw a concept sketch of a hair-braiding raccoon, which Glen Keane animated and claimed the directors "loved the idea and got rid of the turkey character." Similarly, according to Sito, Meeko was created because they were "naturally enigmatic, because they have little hands and a little mask over their face like a thief." Gabriel described the inspiration for Flit the hummingbird from having "hummingbirds all over my backyard, [and] I thought, 'That's a great animal to animate.'" According to the directors, Governor Ratcliffe's pampered pet, Percy, was based on history as the royalty of the time often carried small pugs wherever they went.
For the spiritual ancestor, a male character named Old Man River was originally envisioned, and Gregory Peck was cast in the role. Peck later realized that the character ought to be a maternal figure and reluctantly turned down the role. Conceived as a tree of life whose seasonal changes would frame the story, Grandmother Willow grew out of a concept sketch of a sawed-off tree with a branch pointing to its rings drawn by Joe Grant, which would serve as a narrator that would "remember back to Pocahontas 300 years earlier". Joe Grant would continue to protest to have the tree be more a character within the story, and her character flowered into the idea of a grandmotherly spiritual adviser to Pocahontas. Because of Katzenberg's opposition to having Grandmother Willow in the story, Joe Grant assisted fellow veteran story artist Burny Mattinson with coming up tree puns such as "My bark is worse than my bite", "The roots of all problems", and "They're barking up the wrong tree." Mattinson reluctantly added them to his pitch for the next morning, and during the story meeting, he exclaimed, "Everybody loved it! All of a sudden: 'Oh, I want her in!' 'Let's build her part bigger!'"
Casting
In September 1992, Disney began casting actors for Pocahontas telling talent agents that they were particularly interested in Native American actors for the project. For the role of Pocahontas, Broadway actress-singer Judy Kuhn was hired to provide the singing voice for the eponymous character before Irene Bedard was cast. Kuhn explained "They said, 'You are going to do the dialogue unless we find a Native American actress whose singing voice matched yours.' I was cast before Irene, so it actually went backwards." Bedard herself was filming Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee (1994) where she was informed by the casting director that they were looking for someone to voice the title role. According to Bedard, she took a train to Buffalo, New York, where she walked in wearing a sundress and a straw hat, and read for the part. Back on the set of Lakota Woman, she learned that she was cast in the role. Michelle St. John had also auditioned for the role of Pocahontas, and was given the role of Nakoma after Bedard was cast.
Mel Gibson was cast as English settler John Smith following a desire to make "something for my kids." In a notable contrast to previous voice actors for Disney animated features, Gibson provided the singing voice for his character, which the actor has described as the most difficult part of his role.
Christian Bale auditioned for the role of Thomas. As he explained in an interview with Disney Adventures, "the directors played with Thomas being Irish and Scottish and younger than I am, so I had to raise my voice and do different accents. But the more we did it, the more he became like me–older and English." Richard White, the voice of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, was supposed to voice Ratcliffe, but the crew was worried he might sound too much like Gaston, so he was replaced by his co-star David Ogden Stiers, who also voices Ratcliffe's dimwitted assistant Wiggins.
Russell Means was cast as Chief Powhatan, though he initially expressed displeasure with the script in that Native Americans addressed each other using proper names rather than the traditional "my father" or "my friend". Indigenous Canadian actor Gordon Tootoosis was also cast as the tribal medicine man Kekata. Throughout most of the production, the cast members performed their dialogue in separate recording sessions.
Design and animation
Renowned for his animation of Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989), supervising animator Glen Keane was immediately tapped to draw the titular Native American princess. Following the demands of Jeffrey Katzenberg to make the title character "the most idealized and finest woman ever made", Keane first sought his inspirations for his depictions of Pocahontas from Shirley 'Little Dove' Custalow-McGowan and Devi White Dove, women he had met during the research trip to Virginia. Keane recalled meeting the women:So I turned around and there's this beautiful Indian woman walking up; a Native American. She said 'Are you Glen Keane? The animator that's going to do Pocahontas?' I said 'Well, yeah.' And then from behind another tree another woman came up and she said, 'Well, my name is Shirley Little Dove, and this is my sister Devi White Dove, and we are descended from Pocahontas.' And as they stood there, I mean I took a picture of both of them, and between their faces was Pocahontas' face in my mind – I could see her.
Other inspirations were Natalie Belcon, Naomi Campbell, Jamie Pillow, supermodel Kate Moss, Charmaine Craig, Christy Turlington, Dyna Taylor, and her own voice actress Irene Bedard. For almost three years, Taylor herself sat for four three-hour modeling sessions in which she was videotaped so the animators could draw poses of her from different angles. Keane also looked to a 1620 depiction of Pocahontas from a history book, though he would state the depiction was "not exactly a candidate for Peoples 'Most Beautiful' issue [so] I made a few adjustments to add an Asian feeling to her face." Due to the complexity of the color schemes, shapes, and expressions in the animation, a total of 55 animators worked on the animation of Pocahontas' character alone, including Mark Henn and Pres Romanillos.
After working at Sullivan-Bluth Studios for over fourteen years, John Pomeroy, who notoriously resigned alongside Don Bluth during work on The Fox and the Hound (1981) in 1979, returned to Disney and worked on the film. Pomeroy noted that initially John Smith was portrayed as well-groomed before the animators tried designs where the character was "sloppier", bearded, and carried daggers and knives. Pomeroy grew more satisfied with the character's design the more simple it became. Additionally, Pomeroy cited inspiration for John Smith from Errol Flynn and the facial features of Gibson.
Initially assigned as a supervising animator on The Lion King, Nik Ranieri did character designs and test animation for Timon, but moved over to Pocahontas growing frustrated with an indecisive vision from the directors. There, he was assigned to animate Redfeather until Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered for the animals to be mute. Finding feathers difficult for Redfeather to gesture with, he was again assigned to animate Meeko using a Little Golden Books animal book illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen as reference. Duncan Marjoribanks utilized geometric shapes to create Ratcliffe. In early drafts of the character, he had a body similar to a pear, but to make him appear more arrogant, the animator increased the force of gravity on his chest so that he seemed more pompous and physically threatening. Chris Buck served as the supervising animator for Percy, Wiggins, and Grandmother Willow. For Grandmother Willow, the face was traditionally animated by Buck, while the cowl and the trunk of the tree were digitally animated under the supervision of Steve Goldberg. Assisted by the effect animators, a 3D software program was employed for the bark to be individually manipulated and for the face to match with the computer-generated texture. The following supervising animators also included Anthony DeRosa for Nakoma, Michael Cedeno for Kocoum, Ken Duncan for Thomas, T. Daniel Hofstedt for the settlers Lon and Ben, and Dave Pruiksma for Flit. While Mulan (1998) was within its pre-production stages, 18 minutes were animated by 170 animators and artists at the Disney-MGM Studios.
Initially, Gabriel asked Michael Giaimo to create conceptual paintings for the film as they both shared in a style of shape-based and secondary art details. Giaimo, himself a former assistant animator and then a CalArts teacher, accepted in which he worked several months on a freelance basis. After Goldberg became the film's co-director, the two directors asked Giaimo to officially join the staff, in which he was promoted to being the film's art director. For Giaimo, he relied on a color-saturated, elegant designs in a less-than-realistic format inspired by "prehistory Caribbean themes and creatures derived from Mexican and African folk art." Giaimo also sought out inspiration for the visual design from the works produced by earlier Disney art designers such as Richard Kelsey (who had done story sketches for his unproduced film Hiawatha), Eyvind Earle, who worked on Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Mary Blair.
Music
Howard Ashman and Alan Menken were planning to write songs for Pocahontas once they were finished working on Aladdin, but Ashman died in 1991. Following the death of his longtime collaborator, Menken wrote the remaining songs for Aladdin with Tim Rice at his home in London, which the New York-based composer found to be difficult. When Aladdin was finished, Menken was expected to write songs for Pocahontas with Rice. Kevin Bannerman, the studio's director of development, stated Rice "was always gallivanting around the world and it was difficult to get him and Alan together ... And so here was Stephen [Schwartz], who had written scores that we all loved and we were huge fans of, and he lived in the New York area." Disney immediately contacted Stephen Schwartz, who, after working on Working, Rags, and Children of Eden, had quit theater and was taking psychology courses at New York University; he was brought on board to write the lyrics. This would mark the first time Menken had collaborated without Ashman for a Disney animated film. Menken commented that their work included moments of tension because Schwartz was also capable of writing music and Menken had experience with lyrics.
Due to corporate interest in the film surrounding its theme of promoting understanding between different groups, and its inclusion of violence and threats of greater conflict, Schwartz became heavily involved in the storytelling. Bannerman estimated that he spent a week with one of the screenwriters and helped work out the overall themes of tolerance and cooperation. In June 1992, Schwartz researched Jamestown, Virginia where he absorbed the atmosphere and bought tapes of Native American music and English sea shanties, as well as other music from the early 17th century that helped inspire numbers in the film. Schwartz modeled his lyrical writing for people of other ethnicities on that of Oscar Hammerstein II and Sheldon Harnick. "Colors of the Wind" was the first song to be written for the film. Gabriel, Goldberg, and Pentecost stated the song had defined the film's "heart and soul". Schwartz began "Colors" with a few draft ideas for lyrics taking inspiration from Chief Seattle's letter to the United States Congress. Then, Menken wrote the melody with Schwartz listening at the piano and making suggestions. Schwartz would add lyrics before a session together where they were refined.
"Just Around the Riverbend", also composed by Menken and Schwartz, was devised by Schwartz's wife Carole, with the idea that Pocahontas would have a recurring dream that suggested something coming her way, paving the way for her "I Want" song. The song almost did not make it into the completed film when Disney executives doubted whether her song would have the kind of impact they wanted at that point. Schwartz however stated he and Menken "believed in it very strongly. Indeed, at one point we wrote a different song for that spot, but Alan and I were never as happy with the second song and ultimately everybody at Disney came to feel that way, too."
The filmmakers had planned for a song for when Pocahontas and Smith met in the glade, just before Kocoum attacks Smith. There were an estimated three to four songs at this point, including "Different Drummer", "In the Middle of the River", "First to Dance", which was deemed too silly as it took place before Kocoum's death, and "Powerful Magic", which was another attempt at a cheerful song. A love song, titled "If I Never Knew You", had been finished by the animators, but following a test screening where child and teen audiences were not interested in the song as it played, Menken suggested that the song be removed. It was, although its melody remained in the orchestral underscoring. The soundtrack was successful, reaching number-one on the Billboard 200 charts during the week of July 22, 1995. It received a triple platinum certification.
Release
Marketing
To replicate the promotional buzz of The Lion King, the four-minute musical number, "Colors of the Wind", was released in November 1994, accompanying a theatrical re-release of The Lion King. On February 3, 1995, Disney began its promotional marketing campaign starting in San Diego, California, launching a nationwide 18-week tour of fashion malls located within twenty-five cities where a mall exhibit named Pocahontas Animation Discovery Adventure was created to help promote the release. There, a Disney animator would guide shoppers on a presentation tour, which featured a walk-through maze with interactive lily pads, flying birds, and huge video wall, a studio workshop where visitors can become the voice of their favorite animated character, and an area where visitors can electronically manipulate images. Additionally, they would demonstrate animation techniques and discuss the design and creation of Pocahontas' character. Further promotional tie-ins included Burger King distributing 55 million toy replicas of the characters with kids' meals, Payless Shoes selling a line of moccasins, and Mattel peddling a Barbie-like Pocahontas doll.
A behind-the-scenes documentary television special titled The Making of Pocahontas: A Legend Comes to Life aired on the Disney Channel on June 20, 1995, where the animators, voice cast, crew, and studio heads were interviewed on the production of the film. The special was hosted by actress Irene Bedard.
The film had the largest premiere in history, on June 10, 1995, in New York's Central Park, followed by a live performance by Vanessa Williams. Disney officials estimated the crowd at 100,000. The premiere's attendees included then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Caroline Kennedy, Mariah Carey and Michael Eisner.
Home media
At first announced to be released on March 6, 1996, Pocahontas was first released on VHS and LaserDisc in the United States on February 28, 1996, under the "Masterpiece Collection" lineup. A deluxe VHS edition included supplemental features such as a making-of documentary, alongside a special edition of The Art of Pocahontas book and Disney-certified lithograph prints. On November 13, 1996, the CAV laserdisc Deluxe Edition contained the film, a historical documentary on Pocahontas, and The Making of Pocahontas, along with added storyboards, character design artwork, concept art, rough animation, publicity and promotional trailers, the deleted "If I Never Knew You" musical sequence, and an audio commentary on a total of four double sided discs. The release was also accompanied with a Special Edition of the Art of Pocahontas book. Disney initially shipped 17 million VHS copies to retail stores, with nine million copies sold within its first weekend. By mid-1998, the operating income of the VHS release had accumulated to in worldwide sales.
In January 2000, Walt Disney Home Video launched the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection, with Pocahontas re-issued on VHS and DVD on June 6, 2000. The DVD contained the film in its 1.66:1 aspect ratio enhanced with 5.1 surround sound, and was accompanied with special features including two music videos, a trivia game, the theatrical trailer, and a "Fun with Nature" activity booklet. Five years later, the film was remastered for a THX-certified 10th Anniversary 2-disc Special Edition DVD, which was released on May 3, 2005. This release features two versions of the film, which are a new extended cut with two performances of "If I Never Knew You" and the original theatrical version.
On August 21, 2012, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Pocahontas, alongside its sequel Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, on Blu-ray Disc as a 2-Movie Collection. Pocahontas was re-released yet again in 2016 as a Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD combo pack, available exclusively through the Disney Movie Club. It featured brand-new cover art, and, for the first time, a digital copy download of the film alongside the physical release.
Reception
Box office
Timed with Pocahontas' 400th birthday, Pocahontas had a limited release in North America on June 16, 1995, playing in only six selected theaters in Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, St. Louis and Los Angeles. The film grossed $2.7 million during its first weekend, standing at the eighth place in the box office ranking. It beat the record set by The Lion King the previous year for the highest-grossing opening weekend on fewer than 50 screens, a record that has not been beaten. The wide release followed on June 23, 1995, in 2,596 screens. Studio estimates initially anticipated Pocahontas earning $30.5 million, ranking first and beating out the previous box office champion Batman Forever (1995). The figure was later revised to $28.8 million with Pocahontas falling second behind Batman Forever. The final estimates placed Pocahontas narrowly ranking first grossing $29.5 million in its first weekend with Batman Forever falling into second place taking $29.2 million.
By January 1996, the film grossed $141.5 million in the United States, being the fourth-highest-grossing film in North America of 1995, behind Apollo 13, Toy Story, and Batman Forever. Overseas, the film was projected to gross $225 million, though foreign box office grosses eventually amounted to $204.5 million. Cumulatively, Pocahontas grossed $346.1 million worldwide. Although at the time it was seen as a commercial box office disappointment in comparison to The Lion King, in January 1996, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner contested in an annual shareholders' meeting that "Pocahontas is well on its way to being one of our most successful films of all time. It has equalled Beauty and the Beasts box office numbers domestically, and now it has taken Europe by storm and is playing well in every country in which it is being shown. Sales of Pocahontas merchandise have been phenomenal."
Critical response
Pocahontas received generally mixed reviews from film critics. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 54% of critics gave the film a positive review based on reviews, with an average score of . The site's consensus states "Pocahontas means well, and has moments of startling beauty, but it's largely a bland, uninspired effort, with uneven plotting and an unfortunate lack of fun." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 from top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 58 based on 23 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, writing that Pocahontas was "the best-looking of the modern Disney animated features, and one of the more thoughtful" though he was more critical of the story and portrayal of the villain, ultimately summarizing that "on a list including Mermaid, Beauty, Aladdin and Lion King, I'd rank it fifth. It has a lot of good intentions, but a severe scoundrel shortage." On the television program Siskel & Ebert, Ebert repeated the same sentiment, while his partner Gene Siskel was more praising of the film. Both critics gave the film a "Thumbs Up". In his print review for the Chicago Tribune, Siskel awarded the film 3 stars out of 4, stating it is a "surprisingly serious, thoughtful and beautifully drawn Disney animated feature about the American birthright of exploitation and racism". He praised it for "sending powerful images to children about threats to the natural order", restoring "a certain majesty to the Indian culture", and for having "the courage that leads to the life-goes-on ending."
The film's writing and lack of humor received mixed reviews. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly stated: "With dismay, I realize that virtually everything in the movie – every character, every story twist, every song – is as generic as the two hygienic lovers. As a fairy-tale confection, a kind of West Side Story in Jamestown, Pocahontas is pleasant to look at, and it will probably satisfy very small kiddies, but it's the first of the new-era Disney cartoons that feels less than animated." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone bemoaned that there were "no funny, fast-talking animals – Meeko the raccoon and Flit the hummingbird remain silent pals to Pocahontas and make you miss the verbal fun that Nathan Lane's wisecracking meerkat brought to The Lion King." Desson Howe, reviewing for The Washington Post, likewise criticized the writing as recycling "elements from Snow White to The Lion King, with a father-child clash, a heroine's saintly pureness that transforms an entire people, a forbidden love, consultations with an oracle/shaman (in this case a tree spirit, voiced by Linda Hunt) and the usual sideshow of funny, fuzzy animals." While calling the screenplay the "film's weakest element", Janet Maslin of The New York Times summarized in her review: "Gloriously colorful, cleverly conceived and set in motion with the usual Disney vigor, Pocahontas is one more landmark feat of animation. It does everything a children's movie should do except send little viewers home humming its theme song."
According to Chief Roy "Crazy Horse" Johnson of the Powhatan Renape Nation, an unrecognized tribe in New Jersey, the film "distorts history beyond recognition" and "perpetuates a dishonest and self-serving myth at the expense of the Powhatan Nation". Roy claimed that Disney had refused the tribe's offers to help create a more culturally and historically accurate film. In the Los Angeles Times, Angela Aleiss said that Pocahontas and other portrayals of the Native princess rarely show her having anything more important in her life than her relationships with men. Professor and Director of Indigenous Nations Studies Cornel Pewewardy argues that the film presents damaging stereotypes of the Native American population. Pewewardy feels that the representation of Native characters, like Grandmother Willow, Meeko, and Flit, as animals, has a marginalizing effect. Anthropologist Kiyomi Kutsuzawa also observed that in the film, Kocoum and John Smith fight for Pocahontas's affection. Kutsuzawa viewed Smith's victory over Kocoum in this arena as symbolic of Western Europe's domination of the Americas and white men's domination over men of color.
Conversely, Native American activist Russell Means, who portrays Chief Powhatan in the film, praised the film's racial overtones, stating that "Pocahontas is the first time Eurocentric male society has admitted its historical deceit", and that it makes the "stunning admission" that the purpose of the European colonization of the Americas was "to kill Indians and rape and pillage the land." Means also said that the film marked "the first time, other than on Northern Exposure, that a human face has been put on an Indian female," dubbing Pocahontas "the finest feature film on American Indians Hollywood has turned out." Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic concurred, stating that the film's narrative "had a progressive attitude when it came to interpreting history", portraying the settlers as "plunderers searching for non-existent gold who were intent upon murdering the 'heathen savages' they encountered in the process", although she criticized the depiction of Pocahontas as stereotypical.
Accolades
Historical accuracy
Pocahontas' real name was Matoaka. "Pocahontas" was only a nickname, and it can variously be translated to "little wanton", "playful one", "little brat", or "the naughty one". Pocahontas was around 10 or 11 at the time John Smith arrived with the Virginia Company in 1607, in contrast to her portrayal as a young adult in the film.
Smith is portrayed as an amiable man; in reality, he was described as having a harsh exterior and a very authoritarian personality by his fellow colonists.
Historically, there is no evidence of a romantic relationship emerging between Pocahontas and John Smith. Whether or not Pocahontas saved Smith's life is debated. A group of colonists led by Samuel Argall captured Pocahontas three years after John Smith departed for England; she converted to Christianity in Henricus and later married John Rolfe, who was known for introducing tobacco as a cash crop.
Governor Ratcliffe did not return to England, but was killed by the Powhatan in 1609.
Ebert criticized the film's deviations from history, writing "Having led one of the most interesting lives imaginable, Pocahontas serves here more as a simplified symbol". Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic wrote that "The movie might have fudged some facts", but that this allowed it to tell "a compelling romantic story".
Animator Tom Sito defended the film's relationship to history, stating that "Contrary to the popular verdict that we ignored history on the film, we tried hard to be historically correct and to accurately portray the culture of Virginia's Algonquins."
Legacy
A live musical show titled The Spirit of Pocahontas was performed at the Fantasyland Theatre at Disneyland during the film's theatrical release. A video game titled Disney's Pocahontas based on the film was released on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1996. The film was followed by a direct-to-video sequel, titled Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, released on August 25, 1998. Bedard and Kuhn reprised their roles as Pocahontas' speaking and singing voices, respectively. Donal Gibson starred as John Smith and Billy Zane starred as John Rolfe. Pocahontas, alongside other Disney Princesses, briefly appeared in the 2018 film Ralph Breaks the Internet, with Bedard reprising the role.
Critics have also discussed the influence of Pocahontas on other films. Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic argues that the strong and brave title character of Pocahontas influenced the portrayal of subsequent heroines of Disney animated films, specifically Mulan, Rapunzel, Merida, and Elsa. Similarly, The Verge Tasha Robinson wrote that Moana (2016) "draws on" Pocahontas in its portrayal of a woman buoyed by her culture. According to HuffPost, James Cameron's Avatar (2009) is a "rip-off" of Pocahontas. Avatars producer Jon Landau has said that Avatar is akin to Pocahontas with the Na'vi aliens taking the place of Native Americans. Cameron has said that he first conceived of Avatar in the 1960s, long before Pocahontas was released, but he has also said that Avatar does reference the story of Pocahontas, the historical figure. Kirsten Acuna of Business Insider wrote that, while Avatar may be based on Cameron's own ideas, it nevertheless takes inspiration from animated films like Pocahontas and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992).
References
Bibliography
External links
Pocahontas: 10th Anniversary Edition DVD Review and Interview
Disney's Pocahontas: Conversations with Native American and Euro-American Girls - Report on focus groups conducted by Amy Aidman with girls ages nine to thirteen
Pocahontas (franchise)
1995 films
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1990s children's animated films
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1995 romantic drama films
1990s English-language films
American children's animated adventure films
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American children's animated fantasy films
American children's animated musical films
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American folklore films and television series
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Animation based on real people
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey%20Lolich
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Mickey Lolich
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Michael Stephen Lolich (born September 12, 1940) is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a left-handed pitcher from 1963 until 1979, almost entirely for the Detroit Tigers. A three-time All-Star, Lolich is most notable for his performance in the 1968 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals when he earned three complete-game victories, including a win over Bob Gibson in the climactic Game 7. At the time of his retirement in 1979, Lolich held the Major League Baseball record for career strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher.
Early years
Lolich was born in Portland, Oregon of Croatian descent. He was born right-handed but, began to throw left-handed after a childhood accident. At age two, he rode his tricycle into a parked motorcycle, which fell on him. The accident broke his left collarbone, requiring him to wear a cast for four months. Post-injury efforts to strengthen the left arm helped Lolich develop into throwing left-handed. Known as an eccentric, a sports writer in 1964 wrote of Lolich: "He now eats, writes and bats right-handed, pitches left-handed and thinks sideways."
As a teenager, he excelled playing in American Legion Baseball and in the Babe Ruth League, setting Oregon state records for strikeouts. He attended Lincoln High School in Portland and posted a record of 19 wins against 5 losses for the school team in 1958.
Professional baseball
Knoxville and Durham
Lolich was signed by the Detroit Tigers as an amateur free agent at age 17 on June 30, 1958. He began his professional career playing the 1959, 1960, and 1961 seasons with the Knoxville Smokies of the South Atlantic League and the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League. In his first three seasons, he compiled a 17–29 record in 82 games.
Denver and Portland
Lolich was assigned to the Triple-A Denver Bears at the start of the 1962 season and went 0–4 with a 16.50 ERA in nine games. After the poor start, Detroit ordered him back to Knoxville. Lolich refused to report to Knoxville and was placed under indefinite suspension. He returned home to Oregon and struck out all 12 batters he faced in a four-inning outing in semi-pro ball with the Archer Blower team in Portland. In early June, Lolich was acquired by the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League in a deal with the Tigers. Lolich turned his career around, compiling a 10–9 record and 3.95 ERA with 138 strikeouts in 23 games with the Beavers. The key to Lolich's turnaround was finding control of his pitches. He had developed a reputation as "a flamethrowing wildman" in the minors but developed his control while playing for Portland.
Detroit Tigers
1963–1967
Buoyed by a strong performance with Portland, Lolich was reclaimed by the Tigers in 1963. He irked Detroit's management by reporting late to spring training, saying he had remained in Portland to take an examination to become a mailman during the off-season. He was cut by the Tigers on April 3 and optioned to the Syracuse Chiefs, then recalled to Detroit on May 9 after compiling a 2.45 ERA in 22 innings at Syracuse. He made his major league debut on May 12 and secured his first win on May 28, allowing one run in nine innings against the Los Angeles Angels. He was plagued by lack of run support during his rookie campaign, losing a 2–1 decision on July 29, allowing only one hit through innings before giving up a home run in the ninth inning. He finished the 1963 season with a 5–9 record, 3.55 ERA, and 103 strikeouts in innings pitched.
Lolich blossomed in 1964 with an 18–9 record and 3.41 ERA in 232 innings pitched. He pitched his first shutout, a three-hitter against the Minnesota Twins, on April 24. On September 9, he pitched his sixth shutout of the season and struck out 12 Yankees. For the season, Lolich ranked fourth in the American League with six shutouts and fifth with 192 strikeouts.
In November 1964, Lolich married Joyce Fleenor, a former airline stewardess from Los Angeles. At spring training in 1965, Lolich told reporter Joe Falls that marriage had a calming influence on him: "She's done so much for me, to settle me down, that I can hardly put it into words. She's made me a very happy guy."
In 1965, he compiled a 15–9 record with a 3.44 ERA. His 226 strikeouts ranked second in the American League behind Sam McDowell. Always known as a weak hitter, Lolich hit .058 and struck out 37 times in 86 at-bats during the 1965 season.
After two strong seasons, Lolich regressed in 1966. His ERA jumped by more than a run to 4.77, and he compiled a 14–14 record in 40 games. After the season, Lolich rejected claims that his weight was the problem. He noted that he weighed 200 pounds when he won 18 games in 1964 and weighed only two pounds more in 1966. Lolich instead opined: "The big problem for me was loss of concentration. I blew a lot of leads this year."
In 1967, the Tigers hired former major league pitcher Johnny Sain as their pitching coach. Sain helped develop Lolich's pitching skills and taught him psychological aspects of pitching. The 1967 season was a memorable one for the tight four-way pennant race among the Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox. The Tigers were in contention until the final day of the 1967 season, finishing one game behind the Red Sox. Lolich finished the season with a 14–13 record, but led the league with six shutouts.
In late July 1967, Lolich was called to active duty with the Michigan Air National Guard in response to the ongoing riot. Lolich spent twelve days on active duty and was promoted to Airman First Class. Upon returning to the team, he received death threats, allegedly from the Black Panthers, for his role in quelling the riot. In response, the Federal Bureau of Investigation placed a team of snipers on the roof of Tiger Stadium during his subsequent two starts.
1968 World Series championship
In 1968, the Tigers quickly rose to first place, winning nine straight after losing the season opener to Boston. Lolich was overshadowed by teammate Denny McLain's 31-win season, and was sent to the bullpen in August due to a late-season slump. He made six appearances as a relief pitcher before returning to the starting rotation. He posted a 17–9 record with 197 strikeouts, as the Tigers won the American League pennant by 12 games over the second-place Baltimore Orioles.
After Bob Gibson defeated McLain in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series in St. Louis, Lolich helped Detroit recover by allowing only one run to win Game 2 8–1. He also helped his own cause by hitting the only home run of his 16-year career. But the Tigers lost the next two games at home to fall behind the Cardinals 3–1 and were facing elimination when Lolich returned to pitch in Game 5, just four days after pitching a complete game. Despite an unsettled start, when he surrendered an RBI single to Curt Flood and a two-run home run to Orlando Cepeda in the first inning, Lolich remained calm and proceeded to pitch eight scoreless innings as the Tigers scored two runs in the fourth and took the lead in the seventh on Al Kaline's bases loaded two-run single. They added another run for a 5–3 win, staving off elimination.
Back in St. Louis, the Tigers then won Game 6 by a score of 13–1 behind McLain's solid pitching and a grand slam home run from Jim Northrup in a Series-record-tying ten-run third inning rally to force Game 7. With just two days of rest, and having pitched two complete games in the past week, Lolich faced Gibson in Game 7, both having won their previous two starts. They each pitched six scoreless innings, Lolich picking off Lou Brock and Curt Flood to end a Cardinal threat in the bottom of the sixth, before the Tigers broke through with three runs in the top of the seventh starting with a two-out, two-run triple to deep center by Northrup just over Flood's head for an eventual 4–1 Tigers win and a 4–3 Series triumph.
Detroit became only the third team in World Series history to rally from a 3–1 series deficit to win in seven games. Having completed Game 7, Lolich became the 12th pitcher to win three games in a World Series, and the last with three complete games in a single Series. He was the last pitcher with three victories in the same World Series until Randy Johnson won 3 games in the 2001 World Series. He is the only left-handed pitcher with three complete-game wins in the same World Series in baseball history. No other pitcher has thrown three complete game World Series victories in the same series since. Lolich's performance earned him the World Series Most Valuable Player Award.
1969–1975
In 1969, Lolich won 19 games and earned his first All-Star selection. He struck out 16 batters in a game twice in 1969, his career high. 1971 marked the best season of Lolich's career when, he led the American League in victories (25), games started (45), complete games (29), strikeouts (308) and innings pitched (376), all career-highs. His 308 strikeouts is also a Tigers' team record. He finished second to Vida Blue in the 1971 Cy Young Award voting. Lolich became known for his endurance and his ability to pitch complete games. He reached the 300-innings pitched mark every season between 1971 and 1974.
Lolich won 22 games and posted a career-best 2.50 ERA in 1972 to help the Tigers win the American League Eastern Division championship. He pitched impressively in the 1972 American League Championship Series against the Oakland Athletics, posting a 1.42 ERA in two starts. In Game 1, he pitched 10 innings allowing only 1 run before losing the game in the bottom of the 11th inning on an unearned run. He pitched nine innings in Game 4, again allowing only 1 run, but the win went to reliever John Hiller as the Tigers rallied in the 10th inning. The Tigers eventually lost the series to Oakland in five games. He finished third in the 1972 Cy Young Award voting behind Gaylord Perry and Wilbur Wood.
Lolich won 16 games in 1973 and 1974. However, the Tigers dropped to last place in the American League East. In 1975, Lolich eclipsed Warren Spahn’s Major League Baseball record of 2,583 career strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher. Although Lolich pitched effectively in 1975, the Tigers' poor performance continued as they failed to provide him with much offensive support. He received only 14 runs of support during a 14-game stretch in which his win–loss record was 1–13, even though he managed to post a respectable 3.88 earned run average in that period.
Mets and Padres
Lolich was traded with Billy Baldwin to the New York Mets for Rusty Staub and Bill Laxton on December 12, 1975. As a major leaguer for at least ten years with the last five on the same ballclub, he had initially exercised his right to veto, which he eventually lifted after his attorney and Mets administrators M. Donald Grant, Joe McDonald and Bob Scheffing convinced him that the transaction was financially beneficial and would not negatively affect his family.
Lolich posted an 8–13 record with a respectable 3.22 ERA for the Mets in 1976; however, he had disagreements with the Mets pitching coach as well as the Mets trainer and retired after the season. He opened a doughnut shop in suburban Detroit and sat out the 1977 season. He returned to baseball in 1978, signing with the San Diego Padres as a free agent.
He played mostly as a relief pitcher for the Padres in 1978, going 2–1 with a 1.56 ERA in 20 games. The following season, Lolich added a knuckleball to his pitching. Lolich had an inconsistent season in 1979 and decided to retire. He pitched in his final major league game on September 23, 1979, at the age of 39.
Career statistics
In a 16-year major league career, Lolich played in 586 games, accumulating a 217–191 win–loss record along with a 3.44 earned run average. He struck out 200 or more batters in a season seven times in his career. His 2,832 career strikeouts were the most by a left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball history until he was surpassed by Steve Carlton in 1981 and, he held the American League record for strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher until being surpassed by CC Sabathia in 2017. His 2,832 strikeouts ranks 20th all-time and fourth among left-handed pitchers behind Randy Johnson, Carlton and Sabathia. Lolich threw 41 shutouts and 195 complete games during his career, completing nearly 40 percent of his starts. He holds Detroit Tigers team records in single-season strikeouts (308), career strikeouts (2,679), shutouts (39), games started (459) and home runs allowed (329). During his tenure with the Detroit Tigers between 1963 and 1975, Lolich started 324 games with Bill Freehan playing as catcher, setting a major league record for most starts together as a battery that stood until Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals broke it in 2022.
In 1,017 plate appearances, he had 105 walks and 90 hits. He has the most career plate appearances of anyone with more walks than hits.
Life after baseball
In 1979, Lolich invested in a doughnut shop in Rochester, Michigan, with the understanding that his partner would run the business. Following disagreements, Lolich bought out his partner and began running the business. After losing his lease, he moved the doughnut business to Lake Orion in 1983. In the late 1990s, Lolich sold the doughnut shop and retired. He remained active in charity work and served as a coach at the Detroit Tigers' baseball fantasy camp in Lakeland, Florida. Because of his humble "everyman" qualities, many long-time Tiger fans celebrate him as one of the most popular sports figures in a working man's city. As The Detroit News put it, "He didn't act like a big shot superstar, he was one of us."
Lolich also had a small role in The Incredible Melting Man, a 1977 horror movie released during his first retirement. He plays a security guard who is killed by the Melting Man near the end of the movie.
In 2003, Lolich was one of 26 players chosen for the final ballot by the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee but garnered only 13 votes, far below the 75% required for election.
In 1982, Lolich was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame. In October 2022, he was inaugurated in the Croatian-American Sports Hall of Fame.
Lolich's other records and accomplishments
His 2,679 strikeouts is the second-most in AL history by a left-hander.
His 2,832 career strikeouts in both leagues ranked in the top 10 in major league history when he retired in 1979.
His 1,538 batters faced in 1971 was the most in the majors since George Uhle faced 1,548 in 1923. Only two other pitchers have faced at least 1,500 hitters since 1923, Wilbur Wood with 1,531 in 1973 and Bob Feller with 1,512 in 1946.
His 376 innings pitched in 1971 is the second highest in the majors since 1917. Wilbur Wood holds the modern record with just a year later, 1972. Only four have pitched 350 or more innings in a season since 1929: Wilbur Wood (1972 and 1973), Lolich (1971), Bob Feller (1946) and Tiger forerunner Dizzy Trout (1944).
His 29 complete games in 1971 was the highest in the AL since Bob Feller's 36 in 1946.
In the 1965–74 decade, he struck out more (2,245) than any other major league pitcher. Bob Gibson was second with 2,117 during the same period.
In the same decade, he was second in major league innings pitched () to Gaylord Perry's 2,978.
In the same decade, he had more wins (172) than any other AL pitcher. Gaylord Perry led the majors with 182.
In the same decade, he threw more complete games (155) than any other AL hurler. Gaylord Perry led the majors with 205.
He is the only left-hander with three complete World Series games in the same Series.
See also
1968 Detroit Tigers season
List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual strikeout leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual wins leaders
List of Major League Baseball career strikeout leaders
Top 100 Major League Baseball hit batsmen leaders
Best pitching seasons by a Detroit Tiger
References
External links
"Workhorse Lolich could always be counted on to finish what he started"
Mickey Lolich - Baseballbiography.com
USA Today Article on Lolich, Oct. 2006
1940 births
American League All-Stars
American League strikeout champions
American League wins champions
American people of Croatian descent
Baseball players from Portland, Oregon
Denver Bears players
Detroit Tigers players
Knoxville Smokies players
Living people
Major League Baseball pitchers
Michigan National Guard personnel
New York Mets players
Portland Beavers players
San Diego Padres players
Syracuse Chiefs players
World Series Most Valuable Player Award winners
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie%20Harwell
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Ernie Harwell
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William Earnest Harwell (January 25, 1918 – May 4, 2010) was an American sportscaster, known for his long career calling play-by-play of Major League Baseball games. For 55 seasons, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers, Harwell called the action on radio and/or television. In January 2009, the American Sportscasters Association ranked Harwell 16th on its list of Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time.
Biography
Early life and career
Ernie Harwell grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, working in his youth as a paperboy for The Atlanta Georgian; one of his customers was writer Margaret Mitchell. An avid baseball fan from an early age, Harwell became visiting batboy for the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association at the age of five, and never had to buy a ticket to get into a baseball game again. At sixteen he began working as a regional correspondent for The Sporting News.
Harwell attended Emory University, where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and helped edit The Emory Wheel. After graduating, Harwell worked as a copy editor and sportswriter for The Atlanta Constitution. In 1943, he began announcing games for the Crackers on WSB radio, after which he served four years in the United States Marine Corps. Harwell would leave the service in January 1946
as a sergeant. During his enlistment he was stationed in Camp Lejeune as a writer for The Globe, and later in Washington, D.C. as a writer for Leatherneck.
Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and Baltimore Orioles
The Crackers were a Class AA team, two rungs below the majors. Nonetheless, Harwell had achieved considerable notoriety due to the Crackers airing their games on WSB, a 50,000-watt station that reached much of the eastern half of the United States at night. Brooklyn Dodgers general manager and part-owner Branch Rickey was impressed enough with Harwell that he believed he would be an appropriate substitute for longtime Dodgers announcer Red Barber, who was recuperating from a bleeding ulcer. He traded catcher Cliff Dapper to the Crackers in exchange for breaking Harwell's broadcasting contract, the only known instance in baseball history where a player was traded for a broadcaster.
Harwell broadcast for the Dodgers through 1949, the New York Giants from 1950 to 1953, and the Baltimore Orioles from 1954 to 1959. Harwell was the lead broadcaster on Orioles broadcasts on WCBM-AM and WMAR-TV in 1955, working alongside Chuck Thompson. The next year Thompson moved on to Washington D.C. to broadcast the Senator games until returning to the Orioles in 1962. Early in Harwell's career, he also broadcast The Masters golf tournament, as well as pro and college football.
Detroit Tigers
Harwell joined the Detroit Tigers' broadcast crew in 1960, replacing Van Patrick after the latter was dismissed owing to a sponsorship change. George Kell, who had begun calling Tigers games with Patrick the year before, and had previously played for the Orioles in 1956–57 while Harwell was announcing their games, was instrumental in bringing Harwell to Detroit. "George called and said, 'I recommended you and the Tigers asked me to get in touch with you.'" Harwell said. "I came and that was it."
Harwell shared TV and radio duties with Kell through 1963, then with Bob Scheffing in 1964. He began working radio exclusively in 1965, teaming with Gene Osborn for two seasons and then with Ray Lane from 1967 to 1972. Paul Carey replaced Lane in 1973, joining Harwell to form the Tigers' best-known and longest-lasting radio team, which lasted until the end of the 1991 season. Harwell gained a large following outside of Detroit because the Tigers aired their games on WJR, a 50,000-watt station that reached most of the eastern half of North America at night.
On December 19, 1990, the Tigers and WJR announced that the station wanted to go in a "new direction" and that the 1991 season would be Harwell's last, as his contract was "non-renewed". Carey then announced that he had already planned to retire after the 1991 season, and that the decision was unrelated to Harwell's contract situation. Fans across Michigan and throughout the baseball world were outraged, but the ballclub and the radio station (who eventually wound up blaming each other for the decision) stood firm: "[Harwell's situation is] not going to change no matter how much clamor is made over it," said team president Bo Schembechler. The situation caused outrage so much that some made threats of violence against Schembechler. Some, such as Mitch Albom, blamed the situation causing as much negative feeling as it did on WJR executive Jim Long who was the one who pushed the quick, no severance pay removal of Harwell. The movement in favor of keeping Harwell was so strong that even billboards in favor of his remaining were put up. Rick Rizzs was hired away from the Seattle Mariners to replace Harwell in 1992, teaming with Bob Rathbun.
Harwell worked a part-time schedule for the California Angels in 1992. The following year, the Tigers were purchased by Mike Ilitch, who made it one of his first priorities to bring Harwell back. In 1993 Harwell teamed with Rizzs and Rathbun on the WJR broadcasts, calling play-by-play of the middle innings in each game. From 1994 to 1998, Harwell called television broadcasts for the Tigers on PASS Sports, WKBD-TV, and later Fox Sports Detroit (now Bally Sports Detroit) for select broadcasts. In 1999, he resumed full-time radio duties with the team, swapping roles with Frank Beckmann (who had replaced Rizzs in the radio booth following the 1994 season), teaming with analyst Jim Price, and continuing in that role even as the team's radio rights changed from WJR to WXYT in 2001. During spring training in 2002, Harwell announced that he would retire at the end of the season; his final broadcast came on September 29, 2002. Dan Dickerson, who had joined Harwell and Price in 2000, took over as the Tigers' lead radio voice.
National broadcast work
Harwell's broadcast for the Giants of the third and final game of the 1951 National League tie-breaker series against the Dodgers, which ended with the pennant-clinching "Shot Heard 'Round the World" home run by the Giants' Bobby Thompson, was carried nationally on NBC television.
Harwell helped broadcast two All-Star Games (, ) and two World Series (1963, 1968) for NBC Radio, numerous ALCS and ALDS for CBS Radio and ESPN Radio, and the CBS Radio Game of the Week from 1992 to 1997. He also called the 1984 World Series locally for the Tigers and WJR. For CBS TV's coverage of the 1991 World Series, Harwell narrated an opening prologue prior to Game 1 and a closing epilogue (an excerpt from A. Bartlett Giamatti's "The Green Fields of the Mind") after Game 7.
Post-retirement broadcasting works
Following his retirement, Harwell came back briefly in 2003 to call a Wednesday Night Baseball telecast on ESPN, as part of that network's "Living Legends" series of guest announcers. In 2005, Harwell guested for an inning on the Fox network's coverage of the All-Star Game (which was held in Detroit for the first time since 1971), as well as an inning on the ESPN Radio broadcast. For Game 3 of the 2006 American League Division Series between the Tigers and New York Yankees, he provided guest commentary on ESPN's telecast for two innings, called an inning of play-by-play on the Tigers' radio flagship WXYT, and guested for an inning on ESPN Radio. Harwell also called an inning of Game 1 of the 2006 World Series for WXYT.
Harwell served as a guest color commentator for two Tiger games on FSN Detroit on May 24 and 25, 2007. Harwell worked the telecasts (alongside play-by-play man Mario Impemba) as a substitute for regular analyst Rod Allen, who took the games off to attend his son's high school graduation. (Harwell had filled in for Allen once before, on a 2003 telecast.)
He also appeared as a guest on an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball telecast in Detroit on July 1, 2007.
Harwell occasionally did vignettes on the history of baseball for Fox Sports Detroit's magazine program Tigers Weekly.
Broadcasting style
Harwell was known for his low-key delivery, southern accent (Detroit "Ti-guhs"), and conversational style. Some of his trademark phrases were:
"That one is long gone!" (His trademark home run call, with an emphasis on "long")
"He stood there like the house by the side of the road, and watched it go by." (After a called strikeout)
"Called out for excessive window shopping." (Also after a called strikeout)
"It's two for the price of one!" (After a double play)
"A fan from [insert a city] will be taking that ball home today." (When a fan would catch a foul ball)
"The Tigers need instant runs." (When the team was behind in the late innings)
Harwell would also begin the first spring training broadcast of each season with a reading from Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (KJV): "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."
Non-broadcast activities
Harwell's 1955 essay "The Game for All America", originally published in The Sporting News and reprinted numerous times, is considered a classic of baseball literature. He also authored several books, including Life After Baseball, Tuned to Baseball, and Breaking 90: Nine Decades Young and Still Loving Baseball. He was an occasional columnist for the Detroit Free Press.
Harwell also wrote popular music. His first recorded song was "Upside Down" on the Something Stupid album by Homer and Jethro in the mid-1960s. In the liner notes of the album, it says: "Detroit Tiger baseball announcer wrote this one, and we think it's a fine observation of the world today, as seen from the press box at Tiger Stadium. We were up there with Ernie one day and from there the world looks upside down. In fact, the Mets were on top in the National League." All told, 66 songs written by Ernie Harwell have been recorded by various artists. "Needless to say, I have more no-hitters than Nolan Ryan." – Ernie Harwell in article published May 31, 2005, in the Detroit Free Press
Harwell made a cameo appearance in the 1994 film Cobb and in the made-for-television movies Aunt Mary (1979), Tiger Town (1983), and Cooperstown (1993). His voice can be briefly heard in the films Paper Lion (1968) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and in the TV movie The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2004). Harwell appeared as an interview subject in the 1998 documentary film The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg and contributed to numerous other baseball-themed documentaries and retrospectives over the years.
The 1997 text-based computer simulation game APBA for Windows: Broadcast Blast features play-by-play commentary by Harwell.
Harwell served as a spokesman for Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan. His contract with the organization, which began in 2003, ran for ten years with an option for another ten. Had Harwell fulfilled the entire contract (by which time he would have been 95 years old), Blue Cross had pledged to extend it for yet another decade. Harwell formerly ran a blog about healthy living and fitness for BCBS. He retired from it on March 5, 2009.
A devout Christian (he was born again at a 1961 Billy Graham crusade), Harwell was long involved with Baseball Chapel, an evangelistic organization for professional ballplayers.
In 2004, the Detroit Public Library dedicated a room to Ernie Harwell and his wife, Lulu, which will house Harwell's collection of baseball memorabilia valued at over two million dollars.
On April 26, 2008, Harwell was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from The University of Michigan at their Spring Commencement ceremony. One week later, on May 3, 2008, he was presented with another Honorary Degree of Laws this time from Wayne State University.
In late 2008, Harwell began to appear in television public service announcements for the Michigan Association of Broadcasters, advising viewers about the Digital television transition in the United States.
Harwell was a member of the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy Board, an organization which attempted to save portions of Tiger Stadium. He offered to donate a large portion of his historic collection of baseball memorabilia, which he had collected over the course of his storied career, if part of Tiger Stadium could have been saved for a museum.
Harwell lived in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and moved to Novi in the late 1990s, where he lived until his death. Up until just before his death, he still exercised regularly, did sit-ups, used a treadmill, and lifted weights.
Awards and honors
The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association named Harwell as Michigan Sportscaster of the Year 19 times, and inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1991, Harwell was inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame. Harwell was also honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981 as the fifth broadcaster to receive its Ford C. Frick Award, and was elected to the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1998, among many other honors. In 2001, Harwell was the recipient of the prestigious Ty Tyson Award for Excellence in Sports Broadcasting, awarded by the Detroit Sports Media Association (DSMA). In 2009, Harwell was named the first recipient of the DSMA's Ernie Harwell Lifetime Contribution Award (the "Ernie".) The award honor individuals from sports media who have contributed outstanding time and effort to the betterment of sports broadcasting through a lifetime body of work. He was named a Lifetime Member of the Detroit Sports Media Association. Emory University inducted Harwell to its Hall of Fame in 1990. The Georgia Sports Hall of Fame inducted Harwell in 2008. In 2010 Harwell was named as a recipient of the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award from Fordham University radio station WFUV. The press box at Detroit's Comerica Park was officially named the "Ernie Harwell Media Center" following his retirement from broadcasting. The Cleveland Indians also named their visiting radio booth at Progressive Field after Harwell. The site of Tiger Stadium at one time had a sign on the fence as "Ernie Harwell Park", but it is not currently or officially a city park.
Harwell Field
On June 6, 2013, the Wayne State University Department of Athletics in conjunction with the Ernie Harwell Estate and the Ernie Harwell Foundation announced the establishment of the Harwell Field Project.
This project is an outreach effort that built a baseball stadium in recognition of Ernie and his wife of 62 years, Lula "Lulu" Harwell. Harwell Field has grandstands, press box, team clubhouse and a foyer to recognize the achievements and contributions of the Harwells.
Illness and death
On September 3, 2009, Harwell announced that he had been diagnosed with incurable bile duct cancer, and that he, his family and doctors had decided against surgery or other treatment of the condition. On September 16, Harwell gave a farewell address to fans at Comerica Park between innings of a game between the Tigers and the Kansas City Royals.
Harwell sat down for a 60-minute interview on an episode of MLB Network's Studio 42 with Bob Costas, his final television appearance. The episode premiered November 17, 2009. In the interview, Costas correctly foresaw the 2009 World Series would unfortunately be Harwell's last.
Harwell died on May 4, 2010, at his home in Novi, Michigan, surrounded by his wife of 68 years, Lulu, and three of their four children.
He was set to receive the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting on May 5 in New York City. Harwell considered Scully to be the best broadcaster of all time. However, in accepting the award on Harwell's behalf, Al Kaline noted "We Tiger fans respectfully disagree."
Harwell lay in repose at Comerica Park on May 6. Over 10,000 fans filed past the open casket. May 10 was declared Ernie Harwell Day at Comerica Park. Several players and broadcasters hoisted a flag in center field bearing his initials, similar to the ones that were also sewn onto all Tigers uniforms. Harwell's longtime broadcasting partner Paul Carey threw out the ceremonial first pitch that night.
Bibliography
(1985). Tuned to Baseball. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
(1993). Ernie Harwell's Diamond Gems, edited by Geoff Upward. Ann Arbor, MI: Momentum Books.
(1995). The Babe Signed My Shoe: Baseball As It Was – And Will Always Be, edited by Geoff Upward. South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications.
(2001). Stories from My Life in Baseball. Detroit, MI: Detroit Free Press.
(2002). Ernie Harwell: My 60 Years in Baseball, with Tom Keegan. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books.
(2004). Life After Baseball. Detroit, MI: Detroit Free Press.
(2006). Ernie Harwell's Audio Scrapbook, by Ernie Harwell and Bob Harris. Grosse Pointe, MI: AudioBook Publishing.
(2007). Breaking 90. Detroit, MI: Detroit Free Press.
References
External links
Ernie Harwell Ford C. Frick Award biography at the National Baseball Hall of Fame
Baseball Bids Farewell to Voice of the Tigers
Harwells to receive honor from library
Detroit News career article
Salon.com tribute
NPR Feature
Ernie Harwell Collection from the Detroit Public Library.
Ernie Harwell passes away at age 92
Ernie Harwell statue at Comerica Park
1918 births
2010 deaths
American radio sports announcers
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Deaths from cancer in Michigan
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle%20bone
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Oracle bone
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Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. Scapulimancy is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, plastromancy if turtle plastrons were used. A recent count estimated that there were about 13,000 bones with a total of a little over 130,000 inscriptions in collections in China and some fourteen other countries.
Diviners would submit questions to deities regarding weather, crop planting, the fortunes of members of the royal family, military endeavors, and similar topics. These questions were carved onto the bone or shell in oracle bone script using a sharp tool. Intense heat was then applied with a metal rod until the bone or shell cracked due to thermal expansion. The diviner would then interpret the pattern of cracks and write the prognostication upon the piece as well. Pyromancy with bones continued in China into the Zhou dynasty, but the questions and prognostications were increasingly written with brushes and cinnabar ink, which degraded over time.
The oracle bones bear the earliest known significant corpus of ancient Chinese writing, using an early form of Chinese characters. The inscriptions contain around 5,000 different characters, though the total is uncertain because some may be different versions of the same character. Specialists have agreed on the form, meanings, and sound of a little more than a quarter of them, roughly 1,200 with certainty, but several hundred more under discussion. These known characters comprise much of the core vocabulary of modern Chinese. They provide important information on the late Shang period, and scholars have reconstructed the Shang royal genealogy from the cycle of ancestral sacrifices they record. When they were discovered in the end of the nineteenth century and deciphered in the early twentieth century, these records confirmed the existence of the Shang, which some scholars had until then doubted.
Oraculology is the discipline for the study of oracle bones and the oracle bone script.
Discovery
The Shang-dynasty oracle bones are thought to have been unearthed periodically by local farmers since as early as the Sui and Tang dynasties, and perhaps starting as early as the Han dynasty, but local inhabitants did not realize what the bones were and generally reburied them. During the 19th century, villagers in the area who were digging in the fields discovered a number of bones, and used them as "dragon bones" (), a reference to the traditional Chinese medicine practice of grinding up Pleistocene fossils into tonics or poultices. The turtle shell fragments were prescribed for malaria, while the other animal bones were used in powdered form to treat knife wounds.
In 1899, an antiques dealer from Shandong Province who was searching for Chinese bronzes in the area acquired a number of oracle bones from locals, several of which he sold to Wang Yirong, the chancellor of the Imperial Academy in Beijing. Wang was a knowledgeable collector of Chinese bronzes, and is believed to be the first person in modern times to recognize the oracle bones' markings as ancient Chinese writing similar to that on Zhou dynasty bronzes. A legendary tale relates that Wang was sick with malaria, and his scholar friend Liu E was visiting him and helped examine his medicine. They discovered, before it was ground into powder, that it bore strange glyphs, which they, having studied the ancient bronze inscriptions, recognized as ancient writing. As Xu Yahui states:
It is not known how Wang and Liu actually came across these "dragon bones", but Wang is credited with being the first to recognize their significance. Wang killed himself in 1900 in connection with his involvement in the Boxer Rebellion, and his son later sold the bones to friend Liu E, who published the first book of rubbings of the oracle bone inscriptions in 1903. News of the discovery of the oracle bones spread quickly throughout China and among foreign collectors and scholars, and the market for oracle bones exploded, though many collectors sought to keep the location of the bones' source a secret. Although scholars tried to find their source, antique dealers falsely claimed that the bones came from Tangyin in Henan. In 1908, scholar Luo Zhenyu discovered the source of the bones near Anyang and realized that the area was the site of the last Shang dynasty capital.
Decades of uncontrolled digs followed to fuel the antiques trade, and many of these pieces eventually entered collections in Europe, the US, Canada, and Japan. The first Western collector was the American missionary Frank H. Chalfant (1862–1914). Chalfant also first coined the term "oracle bone" in his 1906 book Early Chinese Writing, which was then calqued into Chinese as in the 1930s.
Only a small number of dealers and collectors knew the location of the source of the oracle bones or visited it until they were found by Canadian missionary James Mellon Menzies, the first person to scientifically excavate, study, and decipher them. He was the first to conclude that the bones were records of divination from the Shang dynasty, and was the first to come up with a method of dating them (in order to avoid being fooled by fakes). In 1917 he published the first scientific study of the bones, including 2,369 drawings and inscriptions and thousands of ink rubbings. Through the donation of local people and his own archaeological excavations, he acquired the largest private collection in the world, over 35,000 pieces. He insisted that his collection remain in China, though some were sent to Canada by colleagues who were worried that they would be either destroyed or stolen during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. The Chinese still acknowledge the pioneering contribution of Menzies as "the foremost western scholar of Yin-Shang culture and oracle bone inscriptions". His former residence in Anyang was declared a "Protected Treasure" in 2004, and the James Mellon Menzies Memorial Museum for Oracle Bone Studies was established.
Official excavations
By the time of the establishment of the Institute of History and Philology headed by Fu Sinian at the Academia Sinica in 1928, the source of the oracle bones had been traced back to modern Xiǎotún () village at Anyang in Henan Province. Official archaeological excavations in 1928–1937 led by Li Ji, the father of Chinese archaeology, discovered 20,000 oracle bone pieces, which now form the bulk of the Academia Sinica's collection in Taiwan and constitute about 1/5 of the total discovered. When deciphered, the inscriptions on the oracle bones turned out to be the records of the divinations performed for or by the royal household. These, together with royal-sized tombs, proved beyond a doubt for the first time the existence of the Shang dynasty, which had recently been doubted, and the location of its last capital, Yin. Today, Xiǎotún at Anyang is thus also known as the Ruins of Yin, or Yinxu.
Publication
Oracle bone inscriptions were published as they were discovered, in fascicles. Subsequently, many collections of inscriptions were also published. The following are the main collections.
(1954)
(1951)
Observing that the citation of these different works was becoming unwieldy, an effort was made to comprehensively publish all bones hitherto discovered. The result—the (, 1978–1982) edited by Hu Houxuan, with its supplement (1999) edited by Peng Bangjiong, is the most comprehensive catalogue of oracle bone fragments. The 20 volumes contain reproductions of over 55,000 fragments. A separate work published in 1999 contains transcriptions of the inscriptions into standard characters.
Dating
The vast majority of the inscribed oracle bones were found at the Yinxu site in modern Anyang, and date to the reigns of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty. The diviners named on the bones have been assigned to five periods by Dong Zuobin:
The kings were involved in divination in all periods, but in later periods most divinations were done personally by the king.
The extant inscriptions are not evenly distributed across these periods, with 55% coming from period I and 31% from periods III and IV.
A few oracle bones date to the beginning of the subsequent Zhou dynasty.
The earliest oracle bones (corresponding to the reigns of Wu Ding and Zu Geng) record dates using only the 60-day cycle of stems and branches, though sometimes the month was also given.
Attempts to determine an absolute chronology focus on a number of lunar eclipses recorded in inscriptions by the Bīn group, who worked during the reign of Wu Ding, possibly extending into the reign of Zu Geng.
Assuming that the 60-day cycle continued uninterrupted into the securely dated period, scholars have sought to match the recorded dates with calculated dates of eclipses.
There is general agreement on four of these, spanning dates from 1198 to 1180 BCE.
A fifth is assigned by some scholars to 1201 BCE.
From these data, the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project, relying on the statement in the "Against Luxurious Ease" chapter of the Book of Documents that the reign of Wu Ding lasted 59 years, dated it from 1250 to 1192 BCE. David Keightley argued that the "Against Luxurious Ease" chapter should not be treated as a historical text, because was composed much later, presents reign lengths as moral judgements, and gives other reign lengths that are contradicted by oracle bone evidence.
He dated the reign of Wu Ding as approximately from 1200 to 1181 BCE. Ken-ichi Takashima dates the earliest oracle bone inscriptions to 1230 BCE. Twenty-six oracle bone divinations of Wu Ding's reign have been radiocarbon dated to 1254–1197 BC±10 years.
Period V inscriptions often identify numbered ritual cycles, making it easier to estimate the reign lengths of the last two kings.
The start of this period is dated 1100–1090 BCE by Keightley and 1101 BCE by the XSZ project.
Most scholars now agree that the Zhou conquest of the Shang took place close to 1046 or 1045 BCE, over a century later than the traditional date.
Shang divination
Since divination (-mancy) was by heat or fire (pyro-) and most often on plastrons or scapulae, the terms pyromancy, plastromancy and scapulimancy are often used for this process.
Materials
The oracle bones are mostly tortoise plastrons (ventral or belly shells, probably female) and ox scapulae (shoulder blades), although some are the carapace (dorsal or back shells) of tortoises, and a few are ox rib bones, scapulae of sheep, boars, horses, and deer, and some other animal bones. The skulls of deer, oxen, and humans have also been found with inscriptions on them, although these are very rare and appear to have been inscribed for record keeping or practice rather than for actual divination; in one case, inscribed deer antlers were reported, but Keightley (1978) reports that they are fake. Interestingly, tortoises are not native to the areas oracle bones were discovered and thus it is theorized they were presented to the region as tribute. Neolithic diviners in China had long been heating the bones of deer, sheep, pigs, and cattle for similar purposes; evidence for this in Liaoning has been found dating to the late fourth millennium BCE. However, over time, the use of ox bones increased, and use of tortoise shells does not appear until early Shang culture. The earliest tortoise shells found that had been prepared for divinatory use (i.e., with chiseled pits) date to the earliest Shang stratum at Erligang (Zhengzhou, Henan). By the end of the Erligang, the plastrons were numerous, and at Anyang, scapulae and plastrons were used in roughly equal numbers. Due to the use of these shells in addition to bones, early references to the oracle bone script often used the term "shell and bone script", but since tortoise shells are actually a bony material, the more concise term "oracle bones" is applied to them as well.
The bones or shells were first sourced and then prepared for use. Their sourcing is significant because some of them (especially many of the shells) are believed to have been presented as tribute to the Shang, which is valuable information about diplomatic relations of the time. We know this because notations were often made on them recording their provenance (e.g., tribute of how many shells from where and on what date). For example, one notation records that " () sent 250 (tortoise shells)", identifying this as, perhaps, a statelet within the Shang sphere of influence. These notations were generally made on the back of the shell's bridge (called bridge notations), the lower carapace, or the xiphiplastron (tail edge). Some shells may have been from locally raised tortoises, however. Scapula notations were near the socket or a lower edge. Some of these notations were not carved after being written with a brush, proving (along with other evidence) the use of the writing brush in Shang times. Scapulae are assumed to have generally come from the Shang's own livestock, perhaps those used in ritual sacrifice, although there are records of cattle sent as tribute as well, including some recorded via marginal notations.
Preparation
The bones or shells were cleaned of meat, and then prepared by sawing, scraping, smoothing, and even polishing, to create convenient, flat surfaces. The predominance of scapulae, and later of plastrons, is also thought to be related to their convenience as large, flat surfaces that needed minimal preparation. There is also speculation that only female tortoise shells were used, as these are significantly less concave. Pits or hollows were then drilled or chiseled partway through the bone or shell in an orderly series. At least one such drill has been unearthed at Erligang, exactly matching the pits in size and shape. The shape of these pits evolved over time, and is an important indicator for dating the oracle bones within various sub-periods in the Shang dynasty. The shape and depth also helped determine the nature of the crack that would appear. The number of pits per bone or shell varied widely.
Cracking and interpretation
Divinations were typically carried out for the Shang kings in the presence of a diviner. A very few oracle bones were used in divination by other members of the royal family or nobles close to the king. By the latest periods, the Shang kings took over the role of diviner personally.
During a divination session, the shell or bone was anointed with blood, and in an inscription section called the "preface", the date was recorded using the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, and the diviner name was noted. Next, the topic of divination (called the "charge") was posed, such as whether a particular ancestor was causing a king's toothache. The divination charges were often directed at ancestors, whom the ancient Chinese revered and worshiped, as well as natural powers and (), the highest god in the Shang society. A wide variety of topics were asked, essentially anything of concern to the royal house of Shang, from illness, birth and death, to weather, warfare, agriculture, tribute and so on. One of the most common topics was whether performing rituals in a certain manner would be satisfactory.
An intense heat source was then inserted in a pit until it cracked. Due to the shape of the pit, the front side of the bone cracked in a rough shape. The character (pinyin: or ; Old Chinese: *puk; "to divine") may be a pictogram of such a crack; the reading of the character may also be an onomatopoeia for the cracking. A number of cracks were typically made in one session, sometimes on more than one bone, and these were typically numbered. The diviner in charge of the ceremony read the cracks to learn the answer to the divination. How exactly the cracks were interpreted is not known. The topic of divination was raised multiple times, and often in different ways, such as in the negative, or by changing the date being divined about. One oracle bone might be used for one session or for many, and one session could be recorded on a number of bones. The divined answer was sometimes then marked either "auspicious" or "inauspicious", and the king occasionally added a "prognostication", his reading on the nature of the omen. On very rare occasions, the actual outcome was later added to the bone in what is known as a "verification". A complete record of all the above elements is rare; most bones contain just the date, diviner and topic of divination, and many remained uninscribed after the divination.
The uninscribed divination is thought to have been brush-written with ink or cinnabar on the oracle bones or accompanying documents, as a few of the oracle bones found still bear their brush-written divinations without carving, while some have been found partially carved. After use, shells and bones used ritually were buried in separate pits (some for shells only; others for scapulae only), in groups of up to hundreds or even thousands (one pit unearthed in 1936 contained over 17,000 pieces along with a human skeleton).
Changes in the nature of divination
The targets and purposes of divination changed over time. In the reign of Wu Ding, diviners were likely to ask the powers or ancestors about things like the weather, success in battle, or building settlements. Offerings were promised if they would help with earthly affairs.
Crack-making on jiazi (day 1) Zheng divined “In praying for harvest to the sun, (we) will cleave ten dappled cows, and pledge one hundred dappled cows.”
Keightley explains that this divination is unique in being addressed to the sun, but typical in that 10 cattle are being offered, with 100 more to follow if the harvest is good.
Later divinations were more likely to be perfunctory, optimistic, made by the king himself, addressed to his ancestors, on a regular cycle, and unlikely to ask the ancestors to do anything. Keightley suggests that this reflects a change in ideas about what the powers and ancestors could do, and the extent to which the living could influence them.
Archaeological evidence of pre-Anyang pyromancy
While the use of bones in divination has been practiced almost globally, such divination involving fire or heat has generally been found only in Asia and the Asian-derived North American cultures. The use of heat to crack scapulae (pyro-scapulimancy) originated in ancient China, the earliest evidence of which extends back to the 4th millennium BCE, with archaeological finds from Liaoning, but these were not inscribed. In neolithic China at a variety of sites, the scapulae of cattle, sheep, pigs, and deer used in pyromancy have been found, and the practice appears to have become quite common by the end of the third millennium BCE. Scapulae were unearthed along with smaller numbers of pitless plastrons in the Nánguānwài () stage at Zhengzhou, Henan; scapulae as well as smaller numbers of plastrons with chiseled pits were also discovered in the lower and upper Erligang stages.
Significant use of tortoise plastrons does not appear until the Shang culture sites. Ox scapulae and plastrons, both prepared for divination, were found at the Shang culture sites of Táixīcūn () in Hebei and Qiūwān () in Jiangsu. One or more pitted scapulae were found at Lùsìcūn () in Henan, while unpitted scapulae have been found at Erlitou in Henan, Cíxiàn () in Hebei, Níngchéng () in Liaoning, and Qíjiā () in Gansu. Plastrons do not become more numerous than scapulae until the Rénmín () Park phase.
At other sites
Four inscribed bones have been found at Zhengzhou in Henan: three with numbers 310, 311, and 312 in the Hebu corpus, and one that has a single character (), which also appears in late Shang inscriptions. HB 310, which contained two brief divinations, has been lost, but is recorded in a rubbing and two photographs. HB 311 and 312 each contain a short sentence that is similar to the late Shang script. HB 312 was found in an upper layer of the Erligang culture. The others were found accidentally in river management earthworks, and so lack archaeological context. Pei Mingxiang argued that they predated the Anyang site. Takashima, referring to character forms and syntax, argues that they were contemporaneous with the reign of Wu Ding.
A few inscribed oracle bones have also been unearthed in the Zhōuyuán, the original political center of the Zhou in Shaanxi and in Daxinzhuang, Jinan, Shandong.
Some bones from the Zhouyuan are believed to be contemporaneous with the reign of Di Xin, the last Shang king.
Post-Shang oracle bones
After the founding of Zhou, the Shang practices of bronze casting, pyromancy, and writing continued. Oracle bones that were found in the 1970s have been dated to the Zhou dynasty, with some of them dating to the Spring and Autumn period. However, very few of those were inscribed. It is thought that other methods of divination supplanted pyromancy, such as numerological divination using milfoil (yarrow) in connection with the hexagrams of the I Ching, leading to the decline in inscribed oracle bones. However, evidence for the continued use of plastromancy exists for the Eastern Zhou, Han, Tang, and Qing dynasty periods, and Keightley mentions its use in Taiwan as late as 1972.
See also
Kau Cim
Jiaobei
Tung Shing
Futomani
Bamboo and wooden slips
Notes
References
Works cited
Pbk. ed. with minor corr. and a new preface.
Paperback 2nd edition (1985) .
Now issued by Joint Publishing, Hong Kong.
Illustrated guide to the Special Exhibition of Oracle Bone Inscriptions from the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. Govt. Publ. No. 1009100250.
York, Geoffrey. "The Unsung Canadian Some Knew as 'Old Bones'". The Globe and Mail. March 27, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
External links
Oracle bones, United College Library, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Includes 45 inscribed fragments.
Oracle Bone Collection, Institute of History and Philology, Taipei City.
High-resolution digital images of oracle bones, Cambridge Digital Library.
Couling-Chalfant oracle bone collection 甲骨 (Or 7694/1506–2125), British Library.
Yīnxū shūqì 殷虛書契 by Luo Zhenyu – a collection of rubbings or oracle bone fragments.
Guījiǎ shòugǔ wénzì 龜甲獸骨文字 by Hayashi Taisuke – another collection of rubbings.
四方风 or Winds of the Four Directions World Digital Library. National Library of China.
Archaeological database documenting the origins of Oracle Bone divination in Ancient East Asia
Archaeology of China
Chinese inscriptions
Chinese inventions
Objects used for divination
Shang dynasty
Writing media
Oraculology
Bone carvings
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%20Brothers
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Sherman Brothers
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The Sherman Brothers were an American songwriting duo that specialized in musical films, made up of brothers Robert B. Sherman (December 19, 1925 – March 6, 2012) and Richard M. Sherman (born June 12, 1928). Together they received various accolades including two Academy Awards and three Grammy Awards. They received nominations for a Laurence Olivier Award, a BAFTA Award, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 1976 they received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008 the National Medal of the Arts.
The Sherman Brothers wrote more motion-picture musical song scores than any other songwriting team in film history. Their work includes the live action films The Parent Trap (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and the animated films The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967, except “The Bare Necessities,” which Terry Gilkyson wrote), Charlotte's Web (1973), The Aristocats (1970), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). Among their most famous works are the theme park songs There's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow and It's A Small World (After All). According to Time magazine, the latter song is the most performed song of all time.
Life and work
1950s
Sons of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Robert and Richard Sherman began writing songs together in 1951 on a challenge from their father, Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman. The brothers wrote together and with different songwriting partners throughout the rest of the decade.
In 1958, Robert founded the music publishing company Music World Corporation, which later enjoyed a landmark relationship with Disney's BMI-affiliated publishing arm, Wonderland Music Company. That same year, the Sherman Brothers had their first top-ten hit with "Tall Paul", sung by Mouseketeer Judy Harriet on the Surf Records label and then covered by Mouseketeer Annette Funicello. They wrote the international hit "You're Sixteen," first recorded in 1960 by rockabilly singer Johnny Burnette, and a chart success again in 1973 for Ringo Starr. They also wrote the title song for Doris Day's album Bright and Shiny, recorded in 1960 and released a year later.
1960s
The success of these songs gained the attention of Walt Disney, who eventually hired the Sherman Brothers as staff songwriters for Walt Disney Studios. The first song they wrote on personal assignment by Walt Disney was "Strummin' Song" in 1961. It was used in the Annette Funicello made-for-television movie called The Horsemasters. The first song that the Sherman Brothers contributed to a Disney movie was "Medfield Fight Song" from the film The Absent-Minded Professor (1961).
While at Disney, the Sherman Brothers wrote more motion-picture musical scores than any other songwriters in the history of film. They also wrote what is perhaps their best-known song, "It's a Small World (After All)", for the 1964 New York World's Fair. Since then, some have claimed that this has become the most translated and performed song on Earth, although this is largely due to the fact that it is played continuously at Disney's theme park "It's a Small World" attractions of the same name.
In 1965, the Sherman Brothers won two Academy Awards for Mary Poppins, which includes the songs "Feed The Birds," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and the Oscar-winning "Chim Chim Cher-ee." Since Mary Poppins''' premiere, the Shermans have subsequently earned nine Academy Award nominations, two Grammy Awards, four Grammy Award nominations, and 23 gold- and platinum-certified albums.
Robert and Richard Sherman worked directly for Walt Disney, completing the scores for the live-action musical films The Happiest Millionaire and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band until Disney's death in 1966. Since leaving the company, the brothers have worked freelance as songwriters on scores of motion pictures, television shows, theme-park exhibits, and stage musicals.
Their first non-Disney assignment came with Albert R. Broccoli's motion picture production Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for United Artists in 1968, which garnered the brothers their third Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for its particularly memorable titular song.
1970s
In 1970, the Shermans returned to Disney for a brief stint where they completed work on The Aristocats and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The latter film garnered the brothers their fourth and fifth Oscar nominations. 1972 saw the release of Snoopy Come Home, for which the brothers received a Grammy nomination.
In 1973, the Sherman Brothers also made history by becoming the only Americans ever to win First Prize at the Moscow Film Festival for Tom Sawyer, for which they also authored the screenplay.
In 1976, The Slipper and the Rose was picked to be the Royal Command Performance of the year. The performance was attended by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. A modern musical adaptation of the classic Cinderella story, Slipper also featured songs, score, and screenplay by the Sherman Brothers. Two further Academy Award nominations were garnered by the brothers for the film. That same year the Sherman Brothers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame directly across from Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
The Sherman Brothers' numerous other Disney and non-Disney top box office film credits include The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), The Parent Trap (1961), The Parent Trap (1998), Charlotte's Web (1973), Huckleberry Finn (1974), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), Snoopy, Come Home (1972), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), and Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989).
Outside the motion-picture realm, their Tony Award-nominated smash hit Over Here! (1974) was the biggest-grossing original Broadway musical of that year and broke box-office records for its Off-Broadway revival (2019). The Sherman Brothers have also written numerous top-selling songs including "You're Sixteen," which reached [[Billboard Hot 100|Billboards Hot 100]] top 10 twice: first with Johnny Burnette in 1960 and then at #1 with Ringo Starr more than thirteen years later. Other top-ten hits include "Pineapple Princess," "Let's Get Together," and more.
2000s
In 2000, the Sherman Brothers wrote the song score for the Disney film The Tigger Movie. This film marked the brothers' first major motion picture for the Disney company in over 28 years, and was also their final film credit as duo because of Robert's death in 2012.
In 2002, Chitty hit the London stage, receiving rave reviews. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is currently the most successful stage show ever produced at the London Palladium, boasting the longest run in that century-old theater's history. On April 28, 2005, a second Chitty company premiered on Broadway (New York City) at the Foxwoods Theatre. The Sherman Brothers wrote an additional six songs specifically for the new stage productions.
In 2003, four Sherman Brothers' musicals ranked in the Top 10 Favorite Children's Films of All Time in a British nationwide poll reported by the BBC. Most notably, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) topped the list at #1. In later years, with Robert's move to London, the brothers wrote new songs for the stage musical presentation of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. For their contributions to the motion picture industry, the Sherman brothers have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6918 Hollywood Blvd. and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 9, 2005. On November 16, 2006, Mary Poppins premiered at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway.
On November 17, 2008, the Sherman Brothers received the National Medal of Arts, which is the highest honor conferred on artists or patrons of the arts by the United States Government. The award was presented by United States President George W. Bush in an East Room ceremony at The White House.
On May 22, 2009, The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, a critically acclaimed documentary film about the pair, was theatrically released. The film was directed and produced by their sons, Gregory V. Sherman and Jeff Sherman, and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. In October 2009, Disney released a 59-track, two-CD compendium of their work for the studio spanning 42 years. The CD is titled The Sherman Brothers Songbook. On March 11, 2010, the Sherman Brothers were presented with a specialized window on Main Street, U.S.A., at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in honor of their contribution to Disney theme parks. On May 17, 2010, the Sherman Brothers received the "Career Achievement Award" at The Theatre Museum's 2010 Awards Gala in New York City.
From 2002, Robert Sherman lived in London, England. He moved from Beverly Hills, while Richard Sherman remained in California. Robert Sherman died in London on March 6, 2012.
Influence and recognition
In 2000, the Sherman Brothers wrote the award-winning score to The Tigger Movie which achieved number-one status in both theatrical box office and video sales. They also composed a song for the movie called "Your Heart Will Lead You Home", co-written and performed by Kenny Loggins.
The Sherman Brothers' motion picture Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was adapted into a London West End Musical in 2002 and premiered at the London Palladium on April 16, 2002, featuring many new songs and a reworked score by both Sherman Brothers. It was nominated for a 2003 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best New Musical. The Sherman Brothers each received the Musical Theatre Award from the Variety Club of Great Britain that year as well for Chitty, which finished a record breaking three-and-a-half-year run at the Palladium, becoming the longest running show in the theater's century long history. In 2004, the premiere of Mary Poppins arrived on the stage. In 2005, Poppins was nominated for nine Olivier Awards. In 2005, Chitty went to Broadway and was nominated for nine Tonys and also began its nationwide (UK) tour.
On June 9, 2005, both Shermans were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Bill Withers, Steve Cropper, John Fogerty, Isaac Hayes, and David Porter.
On November 16, 2006, the Cameron Mackintosh/Disney production of Mary Poppins made its Broadway premiere at the New Amsterdam Theater featuring the Sherman Brothers' classic songs.
In 2007, during the 40th-anniversary DVD rerelease of The Jungle Book London press junket, the Sherman Brothers were witnessed by press working on a new song for Inkas (see below) in the same Brown's Hotel room where The Jungle Book was originally penned by British writer Rudyard Kipling over a hundred years earlier.
In February 2008, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang began a second UK tour. In 2008 and 2009, Poppins premiered in numerous cities throughout the world including Stockholm, Copenhagen, Budapest, Toronto, Shanghai, Sydney, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Helsinki. Full UK and US tours of Poppins also commenced in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively.
On May 21, 2011, the Sherman Brothers were each awarded honorary doctorate degrees in Fine Arts from their alma mater, Bard College. This was Robert's second honorary doctorate. His first was granted by Lincoln College on May 12, 1990. Robert's critically acclaimed autobiography, Moose: Chapters From My Life was published posthumously by AuthorHouse Publishers on November 27, 2013, in anticipation of the release of the Walt Disney Pictures film Saving Mr. Banks. Set in 1961 and based on the stories behind the original development meetings for Disney's film version of Mary Poppins, Saving Mr. Banks features actors B. J. Novak as Robert Sherman and Jason Schwartzman as Richard Sherman.
In 2014, the Sherman Brothers, alongside their father Al Sherman, were the subjects of a London musical concert titled A Spoonful of Sherman written, produced, and hosted by Robert's son, Robert J. Sherman. The concert received generally very positive reviews including four stars from The Times. A CD produced by Nick Lloyd Webber was released by SimG Records in 2015.
In 2017 A Spoonful of Sherman was revived, playing at the venue, "Live At Zédel" in London.
On July 31, 2018, the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California renamed Soundstage A the Sherman Brothers Stage.
In 2018 the first A Spoonful of Sherman UK/Ireland Tour began with previews on February 14, 2018, at the EM Forester Theatre in Tonbridge, Kent. The tour played in 28 cities in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. Cast members for the tour included Sophie-Louise Dann, Mark Read, Glen Facey, Jenna Innes and Ben Stock.
Filmography
Film
The Parent Trap, 1961
A Symposium on Popular Songs, 1962
In Search of the Castaways, 1962
Summer Magic, 1963
The Sword in the Stone, 1963
Big Red, 1963
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, 1964
Mary Poppins, 1964
The Monkey's Uncle, 1965
That Darn Cat!, 1965
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, 1966
The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, 1967
The Happiest Millionaire, 1967
The Jungle Book, 1967 (all songs except "The Bare Necessities")
The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, 1968
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, 1968
The Aristocats, 1970
Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 1971
Snoopy, Come Home, 1972
Charlotte's Web, 1973
Tom Sawyer, 1973
Huckleberry Finn, 1974
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, 1974
The Slipper and the Rose, 1976
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, 1977
The Magic of Lassie, 1978
Magic Journeys, 1982
Welcome to Pooh Corner, 1983
Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, 1983
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, 1992
The Mighty Kong, 1998
Seasons of Giving, 1999
The Tigger Movie, 2000
Winnie the Pooh, 2011 – theme song and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" rendition only
Saving Mr. Banks, 2013 – songs from the original 1964 Mary Poppins film
The Jungle Book, 2016
Christopher Robin, 2018
Mary Poppins Returns, 2018 – music references from the original 1964 film
Inkas the Ramferinkas, 2023 – (announced). Film Screenplays A Symposium on Popular Songs, 1962 (uncredited)
Mary Poppins, 1964 (treatment only)
Tom Sawyer, 1973 (screenplay)
Huckleberry Finn, 1974 (screenplay)
The Slipper and the Rose, 1976 (screenplay)
The Magic of Lassie, 1978 (screenplay) / (story)
Ferdinand the Bull, 1986 (*TV screenplay)
Theatre
Victory Canteen, 1971 (Ivar Theatre, L.A.)
Over Here!, 1974 (Broadway, NY)
Dawgs, 1983 (Variety Arts Center, L.A.)
Busker Alley, 1995 (U.S. Tour)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2002 (London)
Mary Poppins, 2004 (London)
On the Record 2004-5 (U.S. Tour) (several songs included)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2005 (Broadway, NY)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2005 (UK Tour)
Busker Alley, 2006 (Broadway, NY – *one night only)
Mary Poppins, 2006 (Broadway, NY)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2007 (Singapore)
Mary Poppins, 2008 (UK Tour)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2008 (Second UK Tour)
Mary Poppins, 2008 (Gothenburg)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (First US Tour)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (Copenhagen)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (Budapest)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (Shanghai)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (Australia)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (South Africa)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (Scheveningen)
Mary Poppins, 2009 (Helsinki)
Mary Poppins, 2012–13 (Second US Tour)
A Spoonful of Sherman, 2014 (London)
A Spoonful of Sherman, 2017 (London)
A Spoonful of Sherman, 2018 (UK/Ireland Tour)
A Spoonful of Sherman, 2019 (Singapore)
Over Here!, 2019 (Off-Broadway, NY – *one night only)
Mary Poppins, 2019– (London Revival)
Bedknobs And Broomsticks, 2021– (UK tour)
Theme park songs
Adventure Thru Inner Space
"Miracles from Molecules"
America on Parade
"The Glorious Fourth"
CommuniCore
"The Astuter Computer Revue" (for the 1982 premiere of the pavilion at EPCOT Center)
Epcot Center Opening & Dedication
"The World Showcase March"
Pepsi Presents Walt Disney's "It's a Small World" – a Salute to UNICEF and the World's Children for the 1964 New York World's Fair
"It's a Small World (After All)" was then adapted for each Disney park's "It's a Small World" attraction installation.
Journey Into Imagination (and Journey Into Imagination With Figment)
"One Little Spark"
Magic Journeys
"Magic Journeys"
"Makin' Memories"
Meet the World in Tokyo Disneyland
"Meet the World"
"We Meet the World with Love"
Rocket Rods
"Magic Highways"
Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress
"The Best Time of Your Life"
"There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow"
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room
"The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room"
Disneyland Forever
"Live the Magic"
"A Kiss Goodnight" Other Three songs plus underscore for the NBC-TV animated musical Goldilocks produced in 1969 by DePatie-Freleng (of Pink Panther fame) starring Bing Crosby, his wife Kathryn Grant and two youngest children Mary Frances and Nathaniel.
"The Spectrum Song" – for Walt Disney's The Wonderful World of Color. Sung by Paul Frees as Ludwig Von Drake.
Three unfinished film scores for a musical adaptation of James Thurber's novel The 13 Clocks, another of Roman Holiday, and one for Jack Kinney titled Sir Puss in Boots.
Richard Sherman wrote the "theme park" song "Make Way For Tomorrow Today" for the movie Iron Man 2.
Awards and nominations
Academy Awards
1964 WON Academy Award in the category of "Best Original Song" for "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins
1964 WON Academy Award in the category of "Best Substantially Original Score" for Mary Poppins
1968 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Original Song" for "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
1971 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Original Song" for "The Age of Not Believing" from Bedknobs & Broomsticks
1971 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score" for Bedknobs & Broomsticks
1973 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Scoring Original Song Score And/Or Adaptation" for Tom Sawyer
1977 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Original Song" for "The Slipper and the Rose Waltz" from The Slipper and the Rose
1977 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Scoring Original Song Score And/Or Adaptation" for The Slipper and the Rose
1978 Nominated Academy Award in the category of "Best Original Song" for "When You're Loved" from The Magic of Lassie
Annie Awards
2000 Nominated Annie in the category of "Outstanding Individual Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature Production" for the song "Round My Family Tree" from The Tigger Movie
2003 "Winsor McCay Award" for lifetime achievement and contribution to animation
BAFTA Awards
1977 Nominated "Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music" for The Slipper and the Rose
BMI
1977 "Pioneer Award" awarded in Los Angeles, California.
1991 "Lifetime Achievement Award" awarded at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
Christopher Award
1964 "Christopher Award" for "Best Original Song Score" for Mary Poppins
1973 "Christopher Award" for "Best Original Song Score" for Tom Sawyer
Disney
1985 "Mousecar" awarded at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California in front of 20 thousand people.
1990 "Disney Legends" awarded at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.
2010 Main Street, U.S. Window presented at Disneyland in Anaheim, California in honor of the Sherman Brothers' contribution to Disney theme parks.
Golden Globes
1965 Nominated Golden Globe in the category of "Best Original Score" for Mary Poppins
1969 Nominated Golden Globe in the category of "Best Original Score" for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
1969 Nominated Golden Globe in the category of "Best Original Song" for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
1974 Nominated Golden Globe in the category of "Best Original Score" for Tom Sawyer
1977 Nominated Golden Globe in the category of "Best Original Score" for The Slipper and the Rose
Golden Videocassette Award
1984 Best Selling Video Cassette (of all time) for Mary Poppins
Grammy Awards
1965 Won Grammy in the category of "Best Original Score for a Motion Picture or Television Show" for Mary Poppins
1965 Won Grammy in the category of "Best Recording for Children" for Mary Poppins
1966 Nominated Grammy in the category of "Best Recording for Children" for Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree
1968 Nominated Grammy in the category of "Best Recording for Children" for The Jungle Book
1970 Nominated Grammy in the category of "Best Recording for Children" for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
1971 Nominated Grammy in the category of "Best Recording for Children" for The Aristocats
1973 Nominated Grammy in the category of "Best Original Score for a Children's Show" for Snoopy Come Home
1974 Nominated Grammy in the category of "Best Original Score for a Musical Show" for Over Here!
1975 Won Grammy in the category of "Best Recording for Children" for Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too
Laurel Awards
1965 Won "Golden Laurel" in the category of "Best Song" "Chim Chim Cher-ee" for Mary Poppins
1965 2nd Place "Golden Laurel" in the category of "Music Men"
1966 3rd place "Golden Laurel" in the category of "Best Song" "That Darn Cat!" for That Darn Cat!
Moscow Film Festival
1973 First Place Award in the category of "Best Music" for Tom Sawyer
National Medal of Arts
2008 National Medal of Arts awarded to Richard and Robert Sherman on November 17, 2008, at the White House by President George W. Bush. This is the highest honor the United States Government bestows on artists.
Olivier Awards
2002 Nominated "Best Musical" for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Songwriters Hall of Fame
2005 induction at the Marriott Hotel on Times Square in New York City.
Theatre Museum Award
2010 Career Achievement Award presented on May 17, 2010, at The Players Club in New York City.
Variety Club Awards
2003 Won' "Best Musical" for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang''.
Walk of Fame
1976 A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame awarded to "Richard & Robert Sherman" on November 17, 1976, located at 6914 Hollywood Blvd.
References
Further reading
External links
Robert Sherman Art
Inkas the Ramferinkas
Music World Corporation
Internet Movie Database entries:
Internet Broadway Database entries:
Sherman Brothers
American lyricists
American musical duos
American musical theatre composers
American musical theatre lyricists
American male screenwriters
Bard College alumni
Broadway composers and lyricists
Brother duos
Sherman family (show business)
Best Original Song Academy Award-winning songwriters
Disney imagineers
Animation composers
Disney music
Grammy Award winners
Jewish American musicians
Jewish American songwriters
Sibling duos
Songwriters from California
Songwriters from New York (state)
American songwriting teams
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
Disney Theatrical Productions
Walt Disney Animation Studios people
Screenwriters from California
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiedler%20contingency%20model
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Fiedler contingency model
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The contingency model by business and management psychologist Fred Fiedler is a contingency theory concerned with the effectiveness of a leader in an organization.
Premises
The most common situational theory was developed by Fred Fiedler. Fiedler believed that an individual's leadership style is the result of their experiences throughout the lifespan, and therefore extremely difficult to change. Fiedler argued that one should concentrate on helping people understand their particular leadership style and how to match that style to the particular situation rather than teaching people a particular leadership style. Fiedler developed the Least-Preferred Coworker Scale in order to help one understand their specific leadership style. According to Fiedler, because leadership behavior is fixed, effectiveness could only be improved by restructuring tasks or changing the amount of power the leader had over organizational factors (such as salary, disciplinary action, and promotions).
Fiedler's model does have some weaknesses. For example, some leaders may be more effective in certain situations than others. The LPC scale can be questioned because the assessment is performed by one individual on another.
The theory holds that the effectiveness of a task group or of an organization depends on two main factors: the personality of the leader and the degree to which the situation gives the leader power, control, and influence over the situation or, conversely, the degree to which the situation confronts the leader with uncertainty.
To Fiedler, stress is a key determinant of leader effectiveness, and a distinction is made between stress related to the leader's superior, and stress related to subordinates or the situation itself. In stressful situations, leaders dwell on the stressful relations with others and cannot focus their intellectual abilities on the job. Thus, intelligence is more effective and used more often in stress-free situations. Fiedler concludes that experience impairs performance in low-stress conditions but contributes to performance under high-stress conditions. As with other situational factors, for stressful situations Fiedler recommends altering or engineering the leadership situation to capitalize on the leader's strengths.
Fiedler's situational contingency theory holds that group effectiveness depends on an appropriate match between a leader's style (essentially a trait measure) and the demands of the situation. In other words, effective leadership is contingent on matching leader's style to the right setting. Fiedler considers situational control the extent to which a leader can determine what their group is going to do to be the primary contingency factor in determining the effectiveness of leader behavior.
Fiedler's contingency model is a dynamic model where the personal characteristics and motivation of the leader are said to interact with the current situation that the group faces. Thus, the contingency model marks a shift away from the tendency to attribute leadership effectiveness to personality alone.
Least preferred co-worker (LPC)
The leadership style of the leader, thus, fixed and measured by what he calls the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale, an instrument for measuring an individual's leadership orientation. The LPC scale asks a leader to think of all the people with whom they have ever worked and then describe the person with whom they have worked least well, using a series of bipolar scales of 1 to 8, such as the following:
A high LPC score suggests that the leader has a "human relations orientation", while a low LPC score indicates a "task orientation". Fiedler assumes that everybody's least preferred coworker in fact is on average about equally unpleasant. But people who are indeed relationship motivated, tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner, e.g., more pleasant and more efficient. Therefore, they receive higher LPC scores. People who are task motivated, on the other hand, tend to rate their least preferred coworkers in a more negative manner. Therefore, they receive lower LPC scores. So, the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale is actually not about the least preferred worker at all, instead, it is about the person who takes the test; it is about that person's motivation type. This is so, because, individuals who rate their least preferred coworker in relatively favorable light on these scales derive satisfaction out of interpersonal relationship, and those who rate the coworker in a relatively unfavorable light get satisfaction out of successful task performance. This method reveals an individual's emotional reaction to people they cannot work with. Critics point out that this is not always an accurate measurement of leadership effectiveness. Fiedler expanded his studies outside of the lab and showed the interrelations between adjustment, group performance and leadership style in a volunteer medical team under different conditions of stress while working in isolated villages of Central America. The task-oriented leader performed better in situations that were favorable and relatively unfavorable while the relationship-oriented leader only fared better in situations of intermediate favorableness. As the LPC is a personality measure, the score is believed to be quite stable over time and not easily changed. Low LPCs tend to remain low and high LPCs tend to remain high which shows that the test-reliability of the LPC is strong.
Situational Favorability
According to Fiedler, the ability to control the group situation (the second component of the contingency model) is crucial for a leader. This is because only leaders with situational control can be confident that their orders and suggestions will be carried out by their followers. Leaders who are unable to assume control over the group situation cannot be sure that the members they are leading will execute their commands. Because situational control is critical to leadership efficacy, Fiedler broke this factor down into three major components: leader-member relations, task structure, and position power. Moreover, there is no ideal leader. Both low-LPC (task-oriented) and high-LPC (relationship-oriented) leaders can be effective if their leadership orientation fits the situation. The contingency theory allows for predicting the characteristics of the appropriate situations for effectiveness. Three situational components determine the favourableness of situational control:
Leader-Member Relations, referring to the degree of mutual trust, respect and confidence between the leader and the subordinates. When leader-member relations in the group are poor, the leader has to shift focus away from the group task in order to regulate behavior and conflict within the group.
Task Structure, referring to the extent to which group tasks are clear and structured. When task structure is low (unstructured), group tasks are ambiguous, with no clear solution or correct approach to complete the goal. In contrast, when task structure is high (structured), the group goal is clear, unambiguous and straightforward: members have a clear idea about the how to approach and reach the goal.
Leader Position Power, referring to the power inherent in the leader's position itself.
The basic findings of the Contingency Model are that task-motivated leaders perform generally best in very "favorable" situations; that is, either under conditions in which their power, control, and influence are very high (or, conversely, where uncertainty is very low) or where the situation
is unfavorable, where they have low power, control, and influence. Relationship-motivated leaders tend to perform best in situations in which they have moderate power, control, and influence. Both the relationship and the task-motivated leaders perform well under some situations but not under others. It is not accurate to speak of a "good" or a "poor" leader; rather, a leader may perform well in one type of situation but not in another. Outstanding directors of research teams do not necessarily make good production foremen or military leaders, and outstanding battle field commanders, like General Patton, do not necessarily make good chiefs of staff or good chairmen of volunteer school picnic committees.
When there is a good leader-member relation, a highly structured task, and high leader position power, the situation is considered a "favorable situation." Fiedler found that low-LPC leaders are more effective in extremely favourable or unfavourable situations, whereas high-LPC leaders perform best in situations with intermediate favourability. Leaders in high positions of power have the ability to distribute resources among their members, meaning they can reward and punish their followers. Leaders in low position power cannot control resources to the same extent as leaders in high power, and so lack the same degree of situational control. For example, the CEO of a business has high position power, because she is able to increase and reduce the salary that her employees receive. On the other hand, an office worker in this same business has low position power, because although they may be the leader on a new business deal, they cannot control the situation by rewarding or disciplining their colleagues with salary changes.
Leader-situation match and mismatch
Since personality is relatively stable though it can be changed, the contingency model suggests that improving effectiveness requires changing the situation to fit the leader. This is called "job engineering" or "job restructuring". The organization or the leader may increase or decrease task structure and position power, also training and group development may improve leader-member relations. In his 1976 book Improving Leadership Effectiveness: The Leader Match Concept, Fiedler (with Martin Chemers and Linda Mahar) offers a self paced leadership training programme designed to help leaders alter the favourableness of the situation, or situational control. The advantage of contingency theory is that it “does not require that people be effective in all situations”. According to Northouse, although one person may be successful in one role, they may not be successful in another based on the environment.
One implication of "job engineering" or "job restructuring" through additional training is that if all leaders are given the same training regardless of their position in the contingency model, it could create a mismatch between the leader and situation. "The right person for a particular job today may be the wrong person in six months or in one or two years." For example, if a company has a workshop for all managers that effectively changed the task structure from low to high, it might seem good for the company at first glance, but it is important to note that leaders who were effective in a low task structure situation could become very ineffective in a situation with a high task structure.
Examples
A company that might be hiring a new manager to take on a leadership position in which has poor current leader member relations, high task structure and authority, the company would be best positioned to fill this role with a high LPC or leader- member relations to improve poor relations. By hiring someone who is more relation oriented will help rebuild those the poor current leader member relations.
Task-oriented leadership would be advisable in natural disaster, like a flood or fire. In an uncertain situation the leader-member relations are usually poor, the task is unstructured, and the position power is weak. The one who emerges as a leader to direct the group's activity usually does not know subordinates personally. The task-oriented leader who gets things accomplished proves to be the most successful. If the leader is considerate (relationship-oriented), they may waste so much time in the disaster, that things get out of control and lives are lost.
Blue-collar workers generally want to know exactly what they are supposed to do. Therefore, their work environment is usually highly structured. The leader's position power is strong if management backs their decision. Finally, even though the leader may not be relationship-oriented, leader-member relations may be extremely strong if they can gain promotions and salary increases for subordinates. Under these situations the task-oriented style of leadership is preferred over the (considerate) relationship-oriented style.
The considerate (relationship-oriented) style of leadership can be appropriate in an environment where the situation is moderately favorable or certain. For example, when (1) leader-member relations are good, (2) the task is structured, and (3) position power is either strong or weak. Situations like this exist with research scientists, who do not like superiors to structure the task for them. They prefer to follow their own creative leads in order to solve problems. In a situation like this a considerate style of leadership is preferred over the task-oriented.
The last example of a task-oriented leader is one that is in charge of large products. They have to oversee all of the operations and make decisions on behalf of the entire project. They have many tasks and goals to be set.
Opposing views
Researchers often find that Fiedler's contingency theory falls short on flexibility. They also noticed that LPC scores can fail to reflect the personality traits they are supposed to reflect.
Fiedler's contingency theory has drawn criticism because it implies that the only alternative for an unalterable mismatch of leader orientation and an unfavorable situation is changing the leader. The model's validity has also been disputed, despite many supportive tests. The contingency model does not take into account the percentage of "intermediate favourability" situations vs. "extremely favourable or unfavourable situations", hence, does not give a complete picture of the comparison between low-LPC leaders and high-LPC leaders.
Other criticisms concern the methodology of measuring leadership style through the LPC inventory and the nature of the supporting evidence. Fiedler and his associates have provided decades of research to support and refine the contingency theory.
Cognitive Resource Theory (CRT) modifies Fiedler's basic contingency model by adding traits of the leader. CRT tries to identify the conditions under which leaders and group members will use their intellectual resources, skills and knowledge effectively. While it has been generally assumed that more intelligent and more experienced leaders will perform better than those with less intelligence and experience, this assumption is not supported by Fiedler's research.
See also
Leadership
Trait leadership
Substitutes for Leadership Theory
References
Further reading
Fiedler, F. E. (1958) Leader Attitudes and Group Effectiveness, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Fiedler, F. E. (1967) A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fiedler, F. E. (1971) Leadership, New York: General Learning Press.
Fiedler, F. E. (1981) Leader Attitudes and Group Effectiveness, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Fiedler, F. E. (1992) Life in a Pretzel-shaped Universe, in A.G. Bedeian (ed.), Management Laureates: A Collection of Autobiographical Essays, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, vol. 1, 301–34.
Fiedler, F. E. (1997) Directory of the American Psychological Association, Chicago: St James Press, 419.
Fiedler, F. E. and Chemers, M. M. (1974) Leadership and Effective Management, Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Co.
Fiedler, F. E., Garcia, J. E. and Lewis, C. T. (1986) People Management, and Productivity, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Fiedler, F. E., Gibson, F. W. and Barrett, K. M. (1993) ‘Stress, Babble, and the Utilization of the Leader’s Intellectual Abilities’, Leadership Quarterly 4(2): 189–208.
Fiedler, F. E., Godfrey, E. P. and Hall, D. M. (1959) Boards, Management and Company Success, Danville, IL: Interstate Publishers.
Hooijberg, R. and Choi, J. (1999) "From Austria to the United States and from Evaluating Therapists to Developing Cognitive Resources Theory: An Interview with Fred Fiedler", Leadership Quarterly 10(4): 653–66.
King, B., Streufert, S. and Fiedler, F. E. (1978) Managerial Control and Organizational Democracy, Washington, DC: V. H. Winston and Sons.
Organizational behavior
Leadership
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei%20Kirilenko
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Andrei Kirilenko
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Andrei Gennadyevich Kirilenko (; born February 18, 1981) is a Russian-American basketball executive and former professional basketball player.
At age fifteen, Kirilenko began playing professional basketball in the Russian Basketball Super League. He played for CSKA Moscow from 1998 to 2001, winning the Russian league MVP award in 2000. In 1999, the Utah Jazz of the National Basketball Association selected Kirilenko with the twenty-fourth overall pick of the NBA draft. He became the first Russian player selected in the first round of an NBA draft and the youngest European player ever chosen in the NBA draft. Kirilenko joined the Jazz in 2001 and played for the team until 2010. He made the NBA All-Rookie First Team, was an NBA All-Defensive Team pick three times, played in the 2004 All-Star Game, and led the NBA in blocked shots in the 2004-2005 season. During the 2011 NBA lockout, Kirilenko returned to Russia to play for CSKA Moscow, leading the team to the 2012 EuroLeague Final. That year, he was named the EuroLeague MVP, earned an All-EuroLeague first team selection and won the EuroLeague Best Defender award. Kirilenko returned to the NBA for the 2012-2013 season to play for the Minnesota Timberwolves before finishing his NBA career as a member of the Brooklyn Nets in 2014.
At the 2000 Summer Olympics, Kirilenko became a regular member of the Russian national team. With Russia, he won the EuroBasket title in 2007, earning MVP honors in the process. In 2011, he and his team won a bronze medal. He was selected to the All-Tournament Team on both occasions. Kirilenko was named FIBA Europe Men's Player of the Year twice and won a Euroscar Player of the Year award in 2012.
Kirilenko was elected president of the Russian Basketball Federation in 2015.
Early life
Kirilenko was born in the Soviet city of Izhevsk, Russia. When he was ten, he began playing organized basketball.
Professional career
Spartak St. Petersburg (1997–1998)
In 1997, Kirilenko became the youngest player ever to compete in the Russian Super League, spending two seasons with Spartak Saint Petersburg.
CSKA Moscow (1998–2001)
Kirilenko joined CSKA Moscow in 1998. In his first season, he helped his new team win the Russian Super League championship. He was also selected to participate in the Russian All-Star game, helping the West beat the East 138–107 and winning the slam dunk contest.
Utah Jazz (2001–2011)
On June 30, 1999, at age , Kirilenko was the youngest foreign player at the time to be drafted in the National Basketball Association, when the Utah Jazz selected him with the 24th pick. Kirilenko was also the first Russian picked in the first round of an NBA Draft. However, he remained with CSKA Moscow for the next two seasons. In the 1999–2000 season, he helped his team win the championship of the North European Basketball League and its second Russian Super League championship in a row. On April 23, 2000, he participated in his second Russian All-Star game, helping the West beat the East 122–111. Despite being the odds-on favorite to win the slam dunk contest, he finished second to Harold Deane of Lokomotiv Mineralnye Vody.
Kirilenko participated in the 2000 Summer Olympics as a member of the Russian national basketball team, which finished 8th in the tournament. He showed off his all-around skills in the SuproLeague, finishing in the top ten in 7 out of 8 statistical categories.
Kirilenko joined the Utah Jazz in 2001. On March 15, 2002, when starting in place of injured teammate Karl Malone, Kirilenko scored a then-career-high 27 points during a 100–97 win over the Detroit Pistons. He was named to the first team on the NBA All-Rookie Team. He would emerge as one of the top young players in the NBA, and one of the league's top weak-side defenders. He was selected to play in the 2004 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles. In the 2003–04 NBA season, he ranked third in the league in blocked shots per game and fourth in the league in steals per game, becoming just the second player in NBA history to rank in the top five in both categories (David Robinson ranked first in blocked shots per game and fifth in steals per game in the 1991–92 NBA season). During the NBA off-season, Kirilenko played for the Russian national basketball team.
Kirilenko became the leader of the Jazz in 2003 after John Stockton retired and Karl Malone left Utah to join the Los Angeles Lakers. He played and started in 78 of the Utah's 82 games and led them to a 42–40 record. Utah missed the playoffs by one game behind the Denver Nuggets. He finished fifth in Defensive Player of the Year voting and fourth in Most Improved Player voting and was named to the second team on the All-NBA Defensive Team. Kirilenko led the Jazz in many statistical categories:
Total points: 1,284
Points per game: 16.5
Total rebounds: 629
Rebounds per game: 8.1
Blocks: 215
Blocks per game: 2.8
Steals: 150
Steals per game: 1.9
Free throws made: 392
Free throws attempted: 496
Three-pointers made: 68
Three-pointers attempted: 201
In the middle of the 2004–05 season against the Washington Wizards, Kirilenko sustained a broken right wrist, sidelining him for the remainder of the season. Despite only playing in 41 of 82 games for the Jazz, he amassed enough blocked shots during the season to qualify as the league leader in blocks per game, and was named to the second team on the NBA All-Defensive Team.
In the 2005–06 season Kirilenko was again among the league's best shot blockers and defenders. He recorded a career high 10 blocks against Indiana on March 26, and finished first in the league with total blocks (220) and second in blocks per game with 3.2, just behind league leader Marcus Camby at 3.3. He was named to the first team on the NBA All-Defensive Team.
Kirilenko averaged 15.3 points, 8 rebounds, 1.5 steals, 3.2 blocks and 4.3 assists per game in the 2005–2006 season.
Kirilenko and Hakeem Olajuwon are the only 2 NBA players who have finished a game with at least 6 steals, 6 blocks, 6 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists since 1985–86.
The 2006–2007 season was a tremendous disappointment for Kirilenko. While playing in 70 games and not missing much playing time, he averaged career lows in points (8.3) and field goal attempts (6.0). It has been said that much of this decline can be attributed to the main offensive emphasis on Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, and Mehmet Okur, and that Kirilenko was uncomfortable losing his position as the main go-to guy on the team. His frustration eventually culminated in a widely publicized breakdown near the end of the Jazz's first-round playoffs series against the Houston Rockets. Kirilenko bounced back to lead Russia to the championship in EuroBasket 2007, and was named MVP of the tournament. Following his performance in the 2007 EuroBasket, he asked to be released from his contract to return to Russia to play basketball.
Despite the trade rumors and controversy created by these statements, he rebounded in the 2007–08 NBA season and backed off on trade demands. His statistics for the 2007–08 NBA season were 11.0 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 4.0 apg, 1.2 spg, and 1.5 bpg, all of which were improvements over his previous season's stats (with the exception of blocks and rebounds). He worked out personally with former Jazz shooting guard Jeff Hornacek on his shooting in the 2007 off-season, and his field goal percentage improved from 47% to 51%. Most impressively, his 3-point shooting improved from 21% to a career-high 38%.
Return to CSKA (2011–2012)
Amid the 2011 NBA lockout, Kirilenko returned to Russia to play for his old team CSKA Moscow. Although the lockout was resolved in December, Kirilenko remained with CSKA Moscow for the rest of the season rather than pursuing an immediate return to the NBA. Over 17 games in the EuroLeague, he averaged 14.1 points and 7.5 rebounds in 29.9 minutes per game, leading the team to the 2012 EuroLeague Final. Kirilenko was named the EuroLeague MVP, earned an All-EuroLeague first team selection and won the EuroLeague Best Defender award.
Minnesota Timberwolves (2012–2013)
On July 27, 2012, Kirilenko signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He was the team's starting small forward, playing in 64 games during the 2012–13 NBA season. Kirilenko missed 18 games because of back spasms, then a right quadriceps strain, and finally a calf strain. He finished the season with averages of 12.4 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists, and a 51% field goal percentage per game. He had his best game on November 14, 2012, when he had 26 points and 12 rebounds on an 89-87 loss to the Charlotte Bobcats. On June 29, 2013, Kirilenko opted out of the final year of his contract with the Timberwolves (worth $10 million) to become a free agent.
Brooklyn Nets (2013–2014)
On July 12, 2013, Kirilenko signed a two-year deal with the Brooklyn Nets. On June 23, 2014, he exercised his $3.3 million player option, re-signing with the Nets for the 2014–15 season. On November 21, 2014, he took a leave of absence from the Nets due to personal reasons.
Third stint with CSKA (2015)
On December 11, 2014, Kirilenko was traded, along with Jorge Gutiérrez, the Nets' second round draft pick in 2020 and the right to swap second round picks in 2018, to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Brandon Davies. The 76ers suspended Kirilenko without pay on January 9, 2015 for failing to report after the trade, and on February 21, he was waived by the 76ers before playing in a game for them.
On February 24, 2015, Kirilenko signed with CSKA Moscow of the VTB United League for the rest of the 2014–15 season, returning to the club for a third stint. With Kirilenko at the club for the second half of the season, CSKA Moscow managed to advance to the EuroLeague Final Four for the fourth straight season, after eliminating Panathinaikos for the second straight season in the quarterfinals, with a 3–1 series win. However, in the semi-final game, despite being dubbed by media as an absolute favorite to advance, Kirilenko's team, CSKA, once again lost to Olympiacos. The final score was 70–68, after a great Olympiacos comeback in the fourth quarter, led by Vassilis Spanoulis. CSKA Moscow eventually won the third place game, after defeating Fenerbahçe 86–80. Over 11 games played in the EuroLeague, he averaged 8.5 points and 5.3 rebounds per game. CSKA Moscow finished the season by winning the VTB United League, after eliminating Khimki with a 3–0 series win in the league's finals series.
On June 23, 2015, Kirilenko announced his retirement as a professional basketball player.
National team career
As a member of the Russian junior national team, Kirilenko was the MVP of the 1999 FIBA Under-19 World Cup. Kirilenko's first major international tournament with the senior Russian national basketball team was at the 2000 Summer Olympics, where Russia finished the games in 8th place. Later, he played at the EuroBasket 2001, where Russia finished 5th among 16 teams. The only time that Kirilenko played in a FIBA World Cup was at the 2002 FIBA World Championship, where the Russian team finished 10th out of 16 teams. Kirilenko has also played at 4 more EuroBaskets: the EuroBasket 2003, the EuroBasket 2005, the EuroBasket 2007, where he won the gold medal of the competition, and was named the MVP of the tournament, and the EuroBasket 2011. With the win in the 2007 EuroBasket, Russia qualified to the 2008 Summer Olympics, where Kirilenko also played for Russia, and he was also named Russia's flag bearer for the Opening Ceremony of the games.
In the first game of the 2008 Olympics tournament against Iran, Kirilenko scored 15 points, pulled down 5 rebounds, and blocked 3 shots. Against Croatia, he led his team in points scored with 18, and he scored his personal best in the games against Argentina, scoring 23.
Kirilenko won a bronze medal with Russia at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Career as executive
In August 2015, Kirilenko was elected president of the Russian Basketball Federation. He was re-elected to the post in August 2020.
Career statistics
NBA
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 82 || 40 || 26.2 || .450 || .250 || .768 || 4.9 || 1.1 || 1.4 || 1.9 || 10.7
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 80 || 11 || 27.7 || .491 || .325 || .800 || 5.3 || 1.7 || 1.5 || 2.2 || 12.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 78 || 78 || 37.1 || .443 || .338 || .790 || 8.1 || 3.1 || 1.9 || 2.8 || 16.5
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 41 || 37 || 32.9 || .493 || .299 || .784 || 6.2 || 3.2 || 1.6 ||style="background:#cfecec;"| 3.3* || 15.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 69 || 63 || 37.7 || .460 || .308 || .699 || 8.0 || 4.3 || 1.5 || 3.2 || 15.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 70 || 70 || 29.3 || .471 || .213 || .728 || 4.7 || 2.9 || 1.1 || 2.1 || 8.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 72 || 72 || 30.8 || .506 || .379 || .770 || 4.7 || 4.0 || 1.2 || 1.5 || 11.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 67 || 10 || 27.3 || .449 || .274 || .785 || 4.8 || 2.6 || 1.2 || 1.1 || 11.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 58 || 35 || 29.0 || .506 || .292 || .744 || 4.6 || 2.7 || 1.4 || 1.2 || 11.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 64 || 62 || 31.2 || .467 || .367 || .770 || 5.1 || 3.0 || 1.3 || 1.2 || 11.7
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Minnesota
| 64 || 64 || 31.8 || .507 || .292 || .752 || 5.7 || 2.8 || 1.5 || 1.0 || 12.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Brooklyn
| 45 || 4 || 19.0 || .513 || .200 || .513 || 3.2 || 1.6 || .9 || .4 || 5.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Brooklyn
| 7 || 0 || 5.1 || 0.0 || 0.0 || .750 || 1.1 || .1 || .1 || .0 || .4
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Career
| 797 || 546 || 30.2 || .474 || .310 || .754 || 5.5 || 2.7 || 1.4 || 1.8 || 11.8
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| All-Star
| 1 || 0 || 12.0 || .333 || .000 || .000 || 1.0 || .0 || .0 || 1.0 || 2.0
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2002
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 4 || 4 || 30.5 || .393 || .000 || .813 || 3.8 || 1.0 || 1.8 || 2.5 || 8.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2003
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 5 || 0 || 29.0 || .419 || .143 || .875 || 4.8 || 1.4 || .6 || 2.0 || 11.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2007
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 17|| 17 || 31.0 || .447 || .333 || .785 || 5.2 || 2.6 || .9 || 2.4 || 9.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2008
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 12 || 12 || 32.3 || .447 || .227 || .714 || 3.4 || 2.5 || 1.5 || 1.7 || 11.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2009
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 5 || 3 || 27.2 || .468 || .200 || .714 || 2.8 || 2.0 || 2.2 || .6 || 11.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2010
| style="text-align:left;"| Utah
| 2 || 0 || 15.0 || .500 || .000 || 1.000 || 3.0 || .0 || .5 || .5 || 5.5
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2014
| style="text-align:left;"| Brooklyn
| 10 || 0 || 14.4 || .467 || .000 || .647 || 2.3 || 1.0 || 1.0 || .3 || 2.5
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Career
| 55 || 36 || 27.1 || .445 || .208 || .767 || 3.9 || 1.9 || 1.2 || 1.6 || 8.7
EuroLeague
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2011–12
| style="text-align:left;"| CSKA Moscow
| 17 || 17 || 29.9 || .533 || .417 || .758 || style="background:#cfecec;"| 7.5 || 2.4 || 1.5 || style="background:#cfecec;"| 1.9 || 14.1 || style="background:#cfecec;"| 24.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 2014–15
| style="text-align:left;"| CSKA Moscow
| 11 || 9 || 19.3 || .518 || .462 || .682 || 5.3 || 1.2 || 1.1 || 1.2 || 8.5 || 13.9
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Career
| 28 || 26 || 25.7 || .529 || .426 || .734 || 6.6 || 1.9 || 1.4 || 1.6 || 11.9 || 20.2
Player profile
Kirilenko was a versatile "big man" who could play either forward spot. He was noted for his high-level play in both offense (11.8 points and 5.5 rebounds per game NBA career averages) and defense (twice topping three blocks per game for a season). On offense, he was proficient in drawing fouls, passing, and possessed a quick first step. He was three times selected into the NBA All-Defensive First or Second Team. Staples of Kirilenko's defensive power were his shot blocking (with an NBA career average of 1.8 per game) and in stealing the ball (NBA career average of 1.4 per game).
On January 3, 2006, against the Los Angeles Lakers, Kirilenko posted a stat line of 14 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists, 6 steals, and 7 blocks. This was the third time in his career he achieved a five-by-five, making him one of only two players (the other being Hakeem Olajuwon) to achieve this feat more than once in NBA history. It was also the first-ever regulation "5×6" — a game in which a player registers at least 6 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 6 blocks, and 6 steals — since the NBA began recording blocks and steals in the 1973–74 season. In 1987, Olajuwon had 38 points, 17 rebounds, 12 blocks, 7 steals, and 6 assists for the Houston Rockets, in a double-overtime win over the Seattle SuperSonics, the only other time a player has earned a 5×6.
In June 2015, FiveThirtyEight reviewed Kirilenko's statistics, finding that his efficiency in scoring, steals, blocks, assists, offensive rebounds, and all-around versatility would justify consideration for the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Kirilenko is nicknamed "AK-47" in reference to his initials, the jersey number he wore, and the AK-47 rifle. Coincidentally, Kirilenko was born in the city of Izhevsk, in the former Soviet Union (now in Russia) where the weapon was first manufactured.
Personal life
Kirilenko is married to Russian pop singer Masha "Marina" Lopatova, whose stage name is MaLo. Lopatova is the daughter of Russian basketball player Andrey Lopatov. Kirilenko met Lopatova at a youth basketball camp in Moscow, and Kirilenko appeared in one of Lopatova's music videos. In January 2011, Kirilenko and his wife acquired American citizenship. The couple have three sons, Fedor, Stepan and Andrey, and a daughter named Alexandra. ESPN The Magazine reported in 2006 that Masha allows Andrei to have sex with another woman once per year and quoted her: "Male athletes in this country are extremely attractive. They get chased by women. It's hard to resist. It's the way men are by nature."
Sources suggest Kirilenko was a World of Warcraft (WoW) gamer while playing in the NBA. In the words of former NBA player Channing Frye, he shared a story about being up at 3am the night before an NBA game while playing WoW, when he noticed Kirilenko was online as well. Frye asked Kirilenko if he was ready for the next day's NBA game, and Kirilenko replied "Yeah, probably."
See also
List of National Basketball Association career blocks leaders
List of National Basketball Association single-game blocks leaders
2008 Summer Olympics national flag bearers
List of European basketball players in the United States
References
External links
Former official website
Andrei Kirilenko at beijing2008.cn
Andrei Kirilenko at euroleague.net
Andrei Kirilenko at fiba.com
1981 births
Living people
2002 FIBA World Championship players
American men's basketball players
Basketball players at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Basketball players at the 2012 Summer Olympics
BC Spartak Saint Petersburg players
Brooklyn Nets players
Euroscar award winners
FIBA EuroBasket-winning players
Medalists at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Minnesota Timberwolves players
National Basketball Association All-Stars
National Basketball Association players from Russia
Olympic basketball players for Russia
Olympic bronze medalists for Russia
Olympic medalists in basketball
PBC CSKA Moscow players
Power forwards (basketball)
Russian emigrants to the United States
Russian expatriate basketball people in the United States
Russian men's basketball players
Small forwards
Sportspeople from Izhevsk
Basketball players from Saint Petersburg
Utah Jazz draft picks
Utah Jazz players
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar%20Rafsanjan%C4%AB
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Akbar Rafsanjanī
|
Ali Akbar Hashemi Bahramani Rafsanjani (; 25 August 19348 January 2017) was an Iranian politician and writer who served as the fourth president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. One of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic, Rafsanjani was the head of the Assembly of Experts from 2007 until 2011 when he decided not to nominate himself for the post. He was also the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council.
During his 40-year tenure, Rafsanjani amassed a large amount of power serving as the speaker of parliament, Commander-in-Chief during the Iran–Iraq War, President, and chose Ali Khamenei as the supreme leader of Iran.
Rafsanjani became president of Iran after winning the 1989 election. He served another term by winning the election in 1993. In the 2005 election he ran for a third term in office, placing first in the first round of elections but ultimately losing to rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the run-off. He and his family faced political isolation for their support of the opposition in 2009. Rafsanjani entered the race for the 2013 presidential election, but he was disqualified by the Guardian Council. With Hassan Rouhani's election, in which Rafsanjani openly supported him, the Rafsanjani family gradually recovered their political reputation. Rafsanjani died in 2017, following a heart attack, in a hospital in Tehran at the age of 82. Although government officials attributed his death to cardiac arrest, his sudden death prompted speculation that he had been assassinated. His family strongly asserted that he had been murdered. Further investigation revealed that his body was highly radioactive.
Rafsanjani has been described as a pragmatic Islamic conservative. The Economist called him a "veteran kingmaker". He supported a capitalist free market position domestically, favoring privatization of state-owned industries and a moderate position internationally, seeking to avoid conflict with the United States and the West. He was also the founder of, and one of the Board of Trustees of, Azad University. In 2003, Forbes estimated his personal wealth to be in excess of .
Early life and education
Rafsanjani was born on 25 August 1934 in the village of Bahraman near the city of Rafsanjan in Kerman Province, to a wealthy family of pistachio farmers. He had seven siblings. His father, Mirza Ali Hashemi Behramani, was a pistachio merchant, one of Kerman's famous businessmen. His mother, Hajie Khanom Mahbibi Hashemi, died at the age of 90 on 21 December 1995. One of his brothers, Mohammad Hashemi, is the former director of IRIB. From childhood onward Rafsanjani did not see himself as a peasant, according to family members.
He left at the age of 14 to study theology in Qom. There he became acquainted with the ideas of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the most senior dissident cleric who later became the founder of the Islamic Republic, on the political rule of the clergy. He studied theology. His other teachers were Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani, Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi, Shahab al-Din Mar'ashi Najafi, Nematollah Salehi Najafabadi, Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, and Hussein-Ali Montazeri.
Political career
Pre-Revolution struggles
When he was studying at Qom Seminary, he became interested in politics under Ruhollah Khomeini. He was one of the opposers of Mohammad Reza Shah's White Revolution and accompanied Khomeini. With Khomeini's exile, Hashemi's role in the fight against the Shah and representing Khomeini in the country was highlighted. This opposition eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment. He was arrested 7 times from 1960 until 1979 and was in jail for four years and 5 months in total due to his clandestine activities against the Pahlavi regime. Despite the anti-Western attitude of revolutionaries, he had traveled to 20 states of the United States. Khomeini made him the financial manager of the revolutionary struggle as well as the bridge with other revolutionary groups.
Among the groups that had a deep bond with Hashemi, was the Islamic Coalition Party, which is known as responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur. This communication was another reason for his arrest. In prison, he found the opportunity to become familiar with other groups opposed to the Shah.
After the revolution
After the victory of Iranian Revolution, Hashemi became one of the members of Council of Islamic Revolution. He was one of the powerful members of the council from its establishment. He was also deputy interior minister at that time and later became the acting interior minister.
He was one of the 28 founders of Traditional right-wing Combatant Clergy Association and also one of the members of the central committee of Islamic Republican Party at the first years of the revolution. Years later, it was he who requested IRP's dissolution. His political acumen and Khomeini's full trust helped Rafsanjani as one of the most powerful politicians in Iran at that time. At the time, he was the closest person to the Khomeini and ruled as his "eyes and ears". According to the Gold, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was established with the help of Hashemi.
During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, Hashemi Rafsanjani mentioned it as "one of the largest manufacturer in the history". However, on the tenth anniversary of the revolution, he said in an interview that according to the experiences of these years, the hostage was "wrong".
Hashemi served as one of the Tehran's Friday Prayer Imams (for next thirty years), Representative of Khomeini at Defense High Council (after death of Mostafa Chamran) and Second-in-Command of Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last year of Iran–Iraq War. He forced Khomeini to accept to end the war. Only three months after his appointment as Iran's deputy commander-in-chief, Iran accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 and eight-year war was ended.
Chairmanship of the Parliament (1980–1989)
Iran's first Election Law was developed with Hashemi's partnership. He nominated as one of the Islamic Republican Party's candidates in the 1980 legislative election in Tehran. He gained 1,151,514 (54%) votes and ranked 15. Rafsanjani was the Speaker of Parliament of Iran for 9 years. He was elected as the speaker in 1980 in the first season of Parliament after the Iranian Revolution. He was also chairman in the second season and first year of the third parliament. After the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic and election of then-President Ali Khamenei as new supreme leader, he joined the 1989 presidential race and became the President, leaving Parliament.
He had a determining role in the dismissal of Abulhassan Banisadr as commander-in-chief of Iranian military and then his impeachment in the parliament as Iran's first president in June 1981. In the summer of 1981, he protested to the veto of the parliament's plan by the Guardian Council and informed it to Ruhollah Khomeini. This led to the establishment of Expediency Discernment Council, which later he chaired the council. He had an active role in Iran–Contra affair, which was divulged by Mehdi Hashemi and failed. Mehdi Hashemi was executed but Rafsanjani was the loser at internal dimension.
In October 1981 presidential election, when he voted to Ali Khamenei, he said its vote of "Imam (Khomeini), clerics and the parliament". During differences between Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Khamenei, Hashemi cleverly managed to keep the position favor or against these two perspectives and take the middle position. According to Bahman Bakhtiari, at that time Mousavi was the leader of the left-wing, and Khamenei the right-wing. With the death of Khomeini (one of the supporters of leftists), leftists were weakened. In such circumstances, Hashemi leaped for a powerful presidency.
Presidency (1989–1997)
Rafsanjani's presidency reportedly began on 16 August 1989. adopted an "economy-first" policy, supporting a privatization policy against more state-owned economic tendencies in the Islamic Republic. Another source describes his administration as "economically liberal, politically authoritarian, and philosophically traditional" which put him in confrontation with more radical deputies in the majority in the Majles of Iran.
As president, Rafsanjani was credited with spurring Iran's reconstruction following the 1980–88 war with Iraq. His reforms, despite attempting to curb the powers of the ultra-conservatives, failed to do so, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards received increasing power from Khamenei during his presidency. He was also accused of corruption by both conservatives and reformists, and was known for tough crackdowns on dissent.
Domestic policy
Rafsanjani advocated a free market economy. With the state's coffers full, Rafsanjani pursued an economic liberalization policy. Rafsanjani's support for a deal with the United States over Iran's nuclear program and his free-market economic policies contrasted with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies, who advocate maintaining a hard line against Western intervention in the Middle East while pursuing a policy of economic redistribution to Iran's poor. By espousing World Bank inspired structural adjustment policies, Rafsanjani desired a modern industrial-based economy integrated into the global economy.
Rafsanjani urged universities to cooperate with industries. Turning to the quick pace of developments in today's world, he said that with "the world constantly changing, we should adjust ourselves to the conditions of our lifetime and make decisions according to present circumstances". Among the projects he initiated are Islamic Azad University.
During his presidency, a period in which Rafsanjani is described by western media sources as having been the most powerful figure in Iran, people ordered executed by the judicial system of Iran included political dissidents, drug offenders, Communists, Kurds, followers of the Baháʼí Faith, and even Islamic clerics.
Regarding the Iranian People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, Rafsanjani said (Ettela'at, 31 October 1981):
Rafsanjani also worked with Khamenei to maintain the stability of government after the death of Khomeini.
Foreign policy
Following years of deterioration in foreign relations under Khomeini during the Iran–Iraq War, Rafsanjani sought to rebuild ties with Arab states as well as with countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. However, relations with European countries and the United States remained poor, even though Rafsanjani had a track record of handling difficult situations and defusing crises.
He condemned both the United States and Ba'athist Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. After the war he strove to renew close ties with the West, although he refused to lift Khomeini's fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses.
Rafsanjani said that Iran is ready to assist Iraq, "expecting nothing in return", he also said that "peace and stability" is a function of the "evacuation of the occupiers."
Iran gave humanitarian help to the victims of the conflict. Iran sent truckloads of food and medicine to Iraq, and thousands of Kuwaiti refugees were given shelter in Iran.
Rafsanjani voiced support to Prince Abdullah's peace initiative and to "everything the Palestinians agree to". He also stated that what he called "Iran's international interests" must take precedence over those of Iranian allies in Syria and Lebanon.
Ayatollah Rafsanjani was a supporter of Iran's nuclear program. In 2007 Rafsanjani reiterated that the use of weapons of mass destruction was not part of the Islamic Republic culture. Rafsanjani said: "You [US and allies] are saying that you cannot trust Iran would not use its nuclear achievements in the military industries, but we are ready to give you full assurances in this respect." According to The Economist, he is regarded by many Iranians "as the only person with the guile and clout to strike a deal with the West to end economic sanctions" imposed upon the country due to its nuclear program.
Construction
After the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the need for a road map for the future was felt in order to end the historical gap between the country Iran development programs in the first government of Hashemi Rafsanjani. The fifth government soon managed to recover the economy and moved the arrowhead of the indicators in a different direction. The first action of the fifth government was devoted to designing the first development plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The men that Hashemi had chosen to run the country took over the task of drafting the plan, and the first development plan was approved by the parliament at the end of 1990. The general goals of this program are rebuilding and equipping the defense base, rebuilding and modernizing production and infrastructure capacities and population centers damaged during the imposed war, quantitative expansion and qualitative improvement of public culture, creating economic growth, providing the minimum basic needs of the people, determining and modifying the pattern Consumption, organization reform and executive and judicial management of the country were considered. The most important characteristics of the two periods of Hashemi Rafsanjani's government were the developmental and building approach, the establishment of a free economy in the country, and the use of Extraterritorial jurisdiction managers and technocrats. Characteristic of the construction government was that it paid much attention to the development of industrial and transportation infrastructure.
After the presidency
Post-presidency, Rafsanjani delivered a sermon at Tehran University in the summer of 1999 praising government use of force to suppress student demonstrations.
In 2000, in the first election after the end of his presidency, Rafsanjani ran again for Parliament. In the Tehran contest, Rafsanjani came in 30th, or last, place. At first, he was not among the 30 representatives of Tehran elected, as announced by the Iranian Ministry of the Interior, but the Council of Guardians then ruled numerous ballots void, leading to accusations of ballot fraud in Rafsanjani's favor.
In December 2006, Rafsanjani was elected to the Assembly of Experts representing Tehran with more than 1.5 million votes, which was more than any other candidate. Ahmadinejad's opponents won the majority of local election seats. On 4 September 2007 he was elected Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the body that selects Iran's supreme leader, in what was considered a blow to the supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He won the chairmanship with 41 votes of the 76 cast. His ultraconservative opponent, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, received 31 votes. Rafsanjani was re-elected to the position on 10 March 2009, running against Mohammad Yazdi. He received 51 votes compared to Yazdi's 26. On 8 March 2011, he withdrew from the election and Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani was elected as his replacement.
Following his presidency, Rafsanjani also became an advocate of greater freedom of expression and tolerance in Iranian society. In a speech on 17 July 2009, Rafsanjani criticized restriction of media and suppression of activists, and put emphasis on the role and vote of people in the Islamic Republic constitution. The event has been considered by analysts as the most important and most turbulent Friday prayer in the history of contemporary Iran. Nearly 1.5 to 2.5 million people attended the speech in Tehran.
2009 election protests
During the 2009 presidential election, Rafsanjani's former rival and incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, won a disputed landslide victory over challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi. His daughter was arrested on 21 June by plain clothes Basij during the subsequent protest and later sentenced to six months in jail on charges of spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic.
Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani was chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for appointing or removing the Supreme Leader, who has been rumored to not be in the best of health. After the disputed results of the election were certified by the Supreme Leader, Rafsanjani was reported to have called a meeting of the Assembly of Experts, but it is unknown what the outcome or disposition of this meeting actually was. During this time Rafsanjani relocated from Tehran to Qom, where the country's religious leaders sit. However, for the most part, Rafsanjani was silent about the controversial 12 June election and its aftermath.
On 17 July 2009, Rafsanjani publicly addressed the election crisis, mass arrests and the issue of freedom of expression during Friday prayers. The prayers witnessed an extremely large crowd that resembled the Friday prayers early after the revolution. Supporters of both reformist and conservative parties took part in the event. During prayers, Rafsanjani argued the following:
All of us the establishment, the security forces, police, parliament and even protestors should move within the framework of law... We should open the doors to debates. We should not keep so many people in prison. We should free them to take care of their families. ... It is impossible to restore public confidence overnight, but we have to let everyone speak out. ... We should have logical and brotherly discussions and our people will make their judgments. ... We should let our media write within the framework of the law and we should not impose restrictions on them. ... We should let our media even criticize us. Our security forces, our police and other organs have to guarantee such a climate for criticism.
His support for the Green Movement reinvigorated his image among the urban middle-class segments of Iranian society who made up the bulk of the movement and solidified Rafsanjani's role as a backer of factions within Iran that advocated the reform of the system to ensure its survival.
Assembly of Experts election
On 8 March 2011 Rafsanjani lost his post as chairman of the powerful Assembly of Experts, replaced by Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani. Rafsanjani stated that he withdrew from the election for chairman to "avoid division." The loss was said to be the result of intensive lobbying "in recent weeks" by "hardliners and supporters" of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and part of Rafsanjani's gradual loss of power over the years.
2013 presidential elections
On 11 May 2013, Rafsanjani registered for the 14 June presidential election with just minutes to spare. Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami endorsed him. However, on 21 May 2013, Iran's electoral center, Guardian Council disqualified him from standing in the presidential election. On 11 June 2013, Rafsanjani endorsed moderate Hassan Rouhani in the elections for Iran's presidency saying the candidate was "more suitable" than others for presidency.
Later years
Reformers had enjoyed his support in recent years, helping to tilt the balance of power towards more moderate forces who managed to win the presidential poll in 2013 with the victory of Hassan Rouhani and parliamentary elections in 2016.
Rafsanjani could not act as a political horse trader—for example, he could not prevent reformist candidates from being disqualified—but his role in guiding reformist politicians was a crucial one and, up to a point, he was able to influence Khamenei by preventing him from making one-sided decisions. Hardliners now have a chance to completely surround the Supreme Leader and block moderate influences. Rafsanjani played politics the way it was played during the time of Ayatollah Khomeini—or at least, that is what he wanted you to believe—but with his death the so-called "Imam's Line", key figures from the beginning of the Revolution, who were close to Khomeini—is near its end.
He also kept his traditional connections with the clergy in the holy city of Qom and with conservative forces within the political establishment, which made it difficult for hardliners to form a strong front against moderate forces.
After winning reelection to his seat at Assembly of Experts as Tehran district's first person, Rafsanjani announced that it was the last time that he joined an election as a candidate and will be retired from politics at the end of the current term. He also said "Now I can die with peace of mind" after seeing election of a moderate parliament in the 2016 legislative election.
Death
Rafsanjani died on 8 January 2017, at 19:30 (UTC+03:30) due to a heart attack in a pool. He was brought immediately to Tajrish's Shohada-ye Tajrish Hospital in north Tehran, as reported by Iranian state-run media. He was 82 years old at the time of his death. The government announced three days of national mourning and a public holiday on his funeral day. Black banners were raised in Tehran and other cities and some posters showed the Supreme Leader and Rafsanjani together smiling. Five days of mourning also observed in the southern province of Kerman, where Ayatollah Rafsanjani's hometown of Rafsanjan is located.
Two months after his death, a highway in Northern Tehran was renamed in his honour. Many streets in other cities also named Hashemi Rafsanjani. The central building of Azad University also named as Hashemi Building and a statue of him was installed outside of the building. Kerman International Airport was also renamed to Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani Airport.
In 2018 Hassan Rouhani ordered the Iranian supreme national security council to reopen an investigation into Rafsanjani's death. Family members stated that although an autopsy had not been performed, the level of radioactivity in his body was "10 times what is considered permissible" and that Rafsanjani's daughter Fatemeh and his wife also had unusually high levels of radioactivity.
Controversies
Accusations
Rafsanjani was sought by the Argentinian government for ordering the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. It was based on the allegation that senior Iranian officials planned the attack in an August 1993 meeting, including Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, Mohammad Hejazi, Khamenei's intelligence and security advisor, Rafsanjani, then president, Ali Fallahian, then intelligence minister, and Ali Akbar Velayati, then foreign minister.
Tension with Ahmadinejad
After his loss at the presidential elections in 2005, a growing tension between him and President Ahmadinejad arose. Rafsanjani had criticized Ahmadinejad's administration several times for conducting a purge of government officials, slow move towards privatization and recently hostile foreign policy in particular the atomic energy policy. In return Ahmadinejad fought back that Rafsanjani failed to differentiate privatization with the corrupt takeover of government-owned companies and of foreign policies which led to sanctions against Iran in 1995 and 1996. He also implicitly denounced Rafsanjani and his followers by calling those who criticize his nuclear program as "traitors".
During a debate with Mir-Hossein Moussavi in 2009 presidential election, Ahmadinejad accused Hashemi of corruption. Hashemi released an open letter in which he complained about what he called the president's "insults, lies and false allegations" and asked the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to intervene.
Tension with Khamenei
In his latter years, Rafsanjani had disagreements with Ali Khamenei who has the last say in everything in Iran. Khamenei even indirectly called Rafsanjani a traitor. Following his death, Khamanei said of Rafsanjani, " I don't know any other figure with whom I have had so many shared experiences and long history in ups and downs of this era which made history."
Views
Political parties
Before Iranian Revolution, Rafsanjani was active in the anti-Shah activities and reportedly associated with the Islamic Coalition's shura-ye ruhaniyat () and the People's Mujahidin.
Although Rafsanjani was a member of the pragmatic-conservative Combatant Clergy Association, he had a close bond to the Executives of Construction Party and Moderation and Development Party. In 2009, Rafsanjani ceased activity in the Combatant Clergy Association, despite remaining a member.
He was regarded as flip-flopping between conservative and reformist camps since the election of Mohammad Khatami, supporting reformers in that election, but going back to the conservative camp in the 2000 parliamentary elections as a result of the reformist party severely criticizing and refusing to accept him as their candidate. Reformists, including Akbar Ganji, accused him of involvement in murdering dissidents and writers during his presidency. In the end, the major differences between the Kargozaran and the reformists party weakened both and eventually resulted in their loss at the presidential elections in 2005. However, Rafsanjani regained close ties with the reformers since he lost the 2005 presidential elections to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Electoral history
Personal life
From his marriage to Effat Marashi in 1958, Rafsanjani had three sons: Mohsen, Mehdi, and Yasser, as well as two daughters, Fatemeh and Faezeh. Only Faezeh Hashemi chose a political life, which led to her becoming a Majlis representative and then the publisher of the weekly newspaper Zan (meaning Woman in English), which was closed in February 1999. In 2016, his daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, sparked a debate on religious persecution in Iran by visiting the female leader of the persecuted Baháʼí religious minority. The two women had met in prison, when Faezeh was serving a six-month sentence for "spreading propaganda against the system". Rafsanjani's daughter, Fatemeh is President of Charity Foundation for Special Diseases and Mohsen was chairman of Tehran Metro Organization and now is vice president of Azad University. His wife, Effat is the granddaughter of Mohammed Kazem Yazdi.
Family tree
Assets
The Rafsanjani family took their name from his great grandfather, whose last name was Hashem. When Akbar Hashemi was born, his father was a rich businessman with a valuable pistachio business.
Hashemi and his partners also owned Islamic Azad University, worth an estimated .
Assassination attempts
Only months after the revolution, Rafsanjani was shot once in the stomach by gunmen from one of the groups vying for power amid the political turmoil. He was not seriously wounded, and neither was his wife who jumped in front to shield him from the attack. "Great men of history do not die", Khomeini said in announcing that Rafsanjani had survived.
Books
Memories
The Combat Era
Amir Kabir: the Hero of Fighting against Imperialism (1968)
Tafsir Rahnama
Explicit Letters
In addition, the full text of his Friday Prayer sermons and his congress keynote speeches are also published separately. Based on his diary, viewpoints, speeches and interviews, several independent books have been published so far.
Encyclopedia of Quran (Farhang-e-Quran)
The book in fact considered as a key to the subjects and concepts of Quran. The book has been written by Hashemi and several other scholars.
Reception and legacy
Although he was a close follower of Ayatollah Khomeini and considered as a central elite during Islamic revolution, at the same time he was fan of reconstruction of shattered country after war and according to this fact, he selected his cabinets from western-educated technocrats and social reformers. His cabinet largely was a reformist one. Rafsanjani acquired both the support of Imam Khomeini in one hand and Majlis in other hand. In fact, he tried to transfer the economy towards the free-market system. There was a gap among Rafsanjani and Khatami and reform agenda because of his partnership with those who were conservative. The first face of reformist movements began by Rafsanjani. His powerful role and control over Iranian politics earned him the name "Akbar Shah".
See also
Government of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–97)
List of Ayatollahs
List of members in the First Term of the Council of Experts
References
Further reading
Torbat, Akbar (2017), The Legacy Of Iran's Powerful Cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Pesaran, Evaleila, Iran's Struggle for Economic Independence: Reform and Counter-Reform in the Post-Revolutionary Era, Editor: Taylor & Francis
Amir Arjomand, Said, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors , Editor: Oxford University Press
Moin, Baqer, (1999) Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah, Editor: I.B.Tauris
Nabavi, Negin,Iran: From Theocracy to the Green Movement, Editor: Palgrave Macmillan
External links
Official
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's Official Website
Other
All News About Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
Iranian Economy in Six Snapshots
Rafsanjani's response to some allegations (ISNA, in Persian)
ISNA interview with Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani about the Rafsanjani family (in Persian)
Friday Sermon at Tehran University: We Will Soon Join The Nuclear Club – For Peaceful Purposes (video clip from 3 December 2004)
Video Archive of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
"The U.S. and Iran" by George Church
Arms for Hostage Deals
1934 births
2017 deaths
Centrism in Iran
Combatant Clergy Association politicians
Executives of Construction Party politicians
Government ministers of Iran
Iran–Contra affair
Iranian ayatollahs
Iranian businesspeople
Iranian memoirists
Central Council of the Islamic Republican Party members
Members of the 1st Islamic Consultative Assembly
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Members of the Expediency Discernment Council
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People of the Iranian Revolution
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail%20Suslov
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Mikhail Suslov
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Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (; 25 January 1982) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial chief ideologue of the party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and power separation within the Communist Party. His hardline attitude resisting change made him one of the foremost orthodox communist Soviet leaders.
Born in rural Russia in 1902, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921 and studied economics for much of the 1920s. He left his job as a teacher in 1931 to pursue politics full-time, becoming one of the many Soviet politicians who took part in the mass repression begun by Joseph Stalin's regime. He was made First Secretary of Stavropol Krai administrative area in 1939. During World War II, Suslov headed the local Stavropol guerrilla movement.
After the war, Suslov became a member of the Organisational Bureau (Orgburo) of the Central Committee in 1946. In June 1950, he was elected to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. From 16 October 1952 onwards, he was a full member of the 19th Presidium of the CPSU. In the ensuing shuffle of the Soviet leadership following Stalin's death, Suslov lost much of the recognition and influence he had previously earned. However, by the late 1950s, he had risen to become the leader of the party opposition to First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. When Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Suslov supported the establishment of a collective leadership. He also supported inner-party democracy and opposed the reestablishment of the one-man rule as seen during the Stalin and Khrushchev eras. During the Brezhnev era, Suslov was considered to be the party's chief ideologue and second-in-command. His death on 25 January 1982 is viewed as starting the battle to succeed Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary.
Early years and career
Suslov was born in Shakhovskoye, a rural locality in Pavlovsky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russian Empire on 21 November 1902. Suslov began work in the local Komsomol organisation in Saratov in 1918, eventually becoming a member of the Poverty Relief Committee. After working in the Komsomol for nearly three years, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (the Bolsheviks) in 1921. After graduating from the rabfak, he studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy between 1924 and 1928. In the summer of 1928, after graduating from the Plekhanov institute, he became a graduate student (research fellow) in economics at the Institute of Red Professors, teaching at Moscow State University and at the Industrial Academy.
In 1931, he abandoned teaching in favour of the party apparatus. He became an inspector on the Communist Party's Party Control Commission and on the People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate. His main task there was to adjudicate large numbers of "personal cases", breaches of discipline, and appeals against expulsion from the party.
In 1933 and 1934, Suslov directed a commission charged with purging the party in the Ural and Chernigov provinces. The purge was organised by Lazar Kaganovich, then Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission. Author Yuri Druzhnikov contends that Suslov was involved with setting up several show trials, and contributed to the Party by expelling all members deviating from the Party line, meaning Trotskyists, Zinovievists, and other left-wing deviationists.
From 1936-1937, Suslov studied at the Postgraduate Course of the Economic Institute of Red Professors. He gained a reputation as a unsociable, modest, and serious student who carefully studied and memorized the works and speeches of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin and became known for keeping a complete record of their statements on economic and political issues in boxes of cards and file cabinets in his tiny room in a communal apartment. Somehow, Stalin urgently needed Lenin's opinion on one narrow economic issue and dispatched his secretary Lev Mekhlis to locate the answer. Mekhlis, Suslov's classmate at the Institute, approached him and instantly found the necessary quote. An amazed Stalin asked how he managed to find the quote so quickly, upon which Mekhlis introduced Stalin to Suslov. Stalin immediately had Suslov promoted to Party Secretary of Rostov and carried out a purge of the city in 1938. Impressed with his work, Suslov was made First Secretary of the Stavropol Krai's Communist Party in 1939.
Wartime activities (1941–1945)
On the Eastern Front in World War II, Suslov was a member of Military Council of the North Caucasian Front and led the Stavropol Krai Headquarters of the Partisan Divisions (the local guerrilla movement) after the Germans occupied the area. Suslov spent much of his time mobilising workers to fight against the German invaders. The guerrilla movement he led was operated by the regional party cells; Suslov for his part maintained close contact with the Red Army. Suslov also supervised the deportations of Chechens and other Muslim minorities from the Caucasus during the war.
According to Soviet historiography, Suslov's years as a guerrilla fighter were highly successful; however, testimonies from participants differ from the official account. These participants claim that there were a number of organizational problems which reduced their effectiveness on the battlefield. Suslov also suffered badly from tuberculosis, which he had contracted in his youth, that was further exacerbated in the dense partisan forests and hampered his ability as an effective combatant. Fearing further relapses, for the rest of his life, he continued to wear galoshes on his shoes as well as a hat and raincoat at all times, even in the hot summer weather, which made him the butt of jokes among his colleagues in Brezhnev's Politburo.
Suslov later purged the Baltic region in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War. From 1944 to 1946, he chaired the Central Committee Bureau for Lithuanian Affairs. Anti-Soviet samizdat literature from the height of his power in the 1970s would accuse him of being personally responsible for the deportation and killings of nationalist Lithuanians who became political opponents of the Soviets during the course of Soviet re-entry into the Baltic states on their drive to Berlin in 1944.
Stalin's protégé
In 1946, Suslov was made a member of the Orgburo and immediately became the Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Central Committee. Within a year, Suslov was appointed Head of the Central Committee Department for Agitation and Propaganda. He also became a harsh critic of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the post-war years. On 26 November 1946, Suslov sent a letter to Andrei Zhdanov, accusing the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee of spying. Suslov's letter, which was well-received among Soviet leadership, would serve as the basis for prosecution of the Committee during the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. After becoming head of the Agitprop, at the height of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign, Suslov also purged Jews from media and public institutions.
In 1947, Suslov was transferred to Moscow and elected to the Central Committee Secretariat; he would retain this seat for the rest of his life. Suslov had the full confidence of Stalin and in 1948 he was entrusted with the task of speaking on behalf of the Central Committee before a solemn meeting on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's death. From September 1949 to 1950, he was editor-in-chief of the central Party daily Pravda.
In 1949, Suslov became a member, along with Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, and Lazar Kaganovich, of a commission created to investigate charges levied against Moscow's local Communist Party First Secretary, Georgy Popov. Russian historian Roy Medvedev speculates in his book, Neizvestnyi Stalin, that Stalin had made Suslov his "secret heir". Lavrentiy Beria, who hated Suslov, evidently felt so threatened by him that after his arrest, documents were found in Beria's safe labeling Suslov as the No. 1 person he wanted to "eliminate".
In June 1950, Suslov was elected to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. He was promoted to the CPSU Presidium (later known as the Politburo) in 1952 following the 19th Party Congress. He suffered a temporary reversal when Stalin died and was dismissed from the Presidium in 1953. He continued to work in the Supreme Soviet, even becoming Chairman of the Commission of Foreign Affairs in the years immediately following Stalin's death.
Khrushchev era
Suslov recovered his authority in 1955 and was elected to a seat in the Presidium, bypassing the customary candidate membership. In the 20th Party Congress of 1956, Khrushchev delivered the famous Secret Speech about Stalin's cult of personality. In Suslov's ideological report on 16 February, he updated his criticism of Stalin and his personality cult:
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Suslov, along with Anastas Mikoyan, operated in close proximity to Budapest in order to direct the activities of the Soviet troops and to lend assistance to the new Hungarian leadership. Suslov and Mikoyan attended the Politburo meeting of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party which elected János Kádár to the office of General Secretary. In a telegram to the Soviet leadership, Suslov and Mikoyan acknowledged that the situation had become more dire, but both were content with the dismissal of Ernő Gerő as General Secretary and the choice of Kádár as his successor.
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet criticised Suslov's and Mikoyan's concessions to the new government in the People's Republic of Hungary. Despite his initial reservations, Suslov eventually supported the Presidium's decision to intervene in Hungary militarily and replace the government's leadership there.
In June 1957, Suslov backed Khrushchev during his struggle with the Anti-Party Group led by Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Dmitry Shepilov. Mikoyan later wrote in his memoirs that he convinced Suslov to support Khrushchev by telling him that Khrushchev would emerge the winner even if he did not have enough support in the Presidium.
The following October Suslov accused Georgy Zhukov, the Minister of Defence, of "Bonapartism" at the Central Committee plenum that removed him from all Party and government posts. The removal of Zhukov had the effect of firmly subordinating the armed forces to Party control.
In a speech on 22 January 1958, Khrushchev officially proposed to dissolve the Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS), state organizations that owned and maintained the farm machinery used by kolkhozy. This reform had a particular significance in Soviet ideology. In Marxist-Leninist doctrine, cooperative ownership of property was considered a "lower" form of public ownership than state ownership. Khrushchev's proposal to expand cooperative ownership ran contrary to the Marxist theory as interpreted by Stalin.
Suslov, who supported Stalin's economic policy, regarded Khrushchev's proposal as unacceptable on ideological grounds. In an election speech to the Supreme Soviet in March 1958, Suslov refused to recognise the ideological significance of Khrushchev's reform, preferring instead to focus on the reform's practical benefits in improving productivity. Unlike other Party leaders, Suslov avoided mentioning Khrushchev as the MTS reform's initiator.
The 21st Party Congress convened in January 1959. Khrushchev wanted to consider the draft of a new Seven-Year plan. Suslov cautiously demonstrated against Khrushchev's statement that the country had developed from the socialist state of development to the higher state of communist development. He saw Khrushchev's view as flawed, and countered that his view had not been approved by the Party. To discredit Khrushchev's assertion further, Suslov invoked Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin:
Suslov was becoming progressively more critical of Khrushchev's policies, his political intransigence, and his campaign to eliminate what was left of the Stalinist old guard. There were also deep-seated divergences in foreign and domestic policy between Suslov and Khrushchev. Suslov opposed the idea of improving Soviet Union–United States relations and was against Khrushchev's attempts at rapprochement with Yugoslavia. Domestically, Suslov opposed Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinisation and his economic decentralisation scheme.
Suslov visited the United Kingdom in 1959 as a parliamentarian for the Supreme Soviet. The visit was a success, and Hugh Gaitskell, the Leader of the Labour Party, travelled to the Soviet Union later that year as a guest.
Sino–Soviet relations had long been strained and, as Suslov told the Central Committee in one of his reports, "The crux of the matter is that the Leadership of the CCP has recently developed tendencies to exaggerate the degree of maturity of socialist relations in China... There are elements of conceit and haughtiness. [These shortcomings] are largely explained by the atmosphere of the cult of personality of comrade Mao Zedong... who, by all accounts, himself has come to believe in his own infallibility." Suslov compared Mao's growing personality cult with that seen under Joseph Stalin.
Suslov was highly critical of Maoist China, as he led the Sino-Soviet Dispute and criticized Maoism in various ways under the Khrushchev administration, particularly its split from the Soviet leadership in the Socialist Camp, the rejection of the theory of Peaceful Coexistence, and Mao’s support of anti-Soviet rival communist militant groups globally. Suslov also compared Mao’s China to Titoist Yugoslavia and Trotskyism, and denounced him as a Bourgeois nationalist and left-deviationist.
In the years following the failure of the Anti-Party Group, Suslov became the leader of the faction in the Central Committee opposed to Khrushchev's leadership, known as the "Moscow faction". Khrushchev was able to hold on to power by conceding to various opposition demands in times of crisis, such as during the 1960 U-2 incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the aftermath of the U-2 Crisis Suslov was able to remove, and replace, several of Khrushchev's appointees in the Politburo with new anti-Khrushchevist members. Khrushchev's position was greatly weakened further after the failure of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Suslov's power greatly increased.
A campaign to oust Khrushchev from office was initiated in 1964. Although leader of the opposition, Suslov had fallen seriously ill during his trip to the People's Republic of China the previous year; instead, Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin led the opposition.
Brezhnev era
Collective leadership
In October 1964, Khrushchev was ousted. Suslov played a crucial role in the event.
Suslov was, alongside Premier Alexei Kosygin and First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, one of the most influential Soviet politicians of the 1960s following the ousting of Khrushchev. Having led the opposition against Khrushchev for years, Suslov had acquired and wielded great power within the Central Committee when Brezhnev rose to power. However, Suslov was never interested in becoming the leader of the Soviet Union, and was content to remain the man behind the scenes. During most of his term, Suslov was one of four people who had both a seat in the Secretariat and the Politburo; the three others were Brezhnev, Andrei Kirilenko and Fyodor Kulakov.
A collective leadership was founded immediately after the ousting of Khrushchev, consisting of Brezhnev as First Secretary, Kosygin as head of government, and Anastas Mikoyan (replaced in 1965 by Nikolai Podgorny) as head of state, who formed an unofficial Triumvirate (also known by its Russian name Troika). From the beginning, Suslov was a vocal critic of one-man rule such as that seen under Joseph Stalin and Khrushchev.
While he condemned Stalin's one-man rule, he equally criticised the individualistic assertiveness of Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation policy. A strong supporter of democratic centralism, Suslov prevented Brezhnev from taking over Kosygin's post as head of government in 1970. Kirilenko, Brezhnev, and Suslov were members of an unofficial Troika within the Communist Party leadership. Suslov was ranked fourth in the Politburo hierarchy behind Brezhnev, Podgorny and Kosygin, ahead of Kirilenko.
Throughout the Brezhnev era, Suslov became increasingly hardline. Suslov was opposed to any sort of anti-Soviet policies attempted by the Eastern Bloc leaders, but voted against Soviet military intervention in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1968 during the Prague Spring. Suslov was regarded, according to Christian Schmidt-Häuer, as the "pope" for "Orthodox communists" in the Eastern Bloc. Throughout his political career, Suslov became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union's leading role in the communist movement would be compromised. Häuer, in his book Gorbachev: The Path to Power, argues that Suslov "was a Russian nationalist" who believed "Russia was the centre of the universe".
It was during the Brezhnev era that Suslov was given the unofficial title "Chief Ideologue of the Communist Party". Suslov spent much time in memorializing the legacies of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. However, Suslov followed the party line and supported the retreat from some of the beliefs of Marxism-Leninism. Examples of ideological retreat include the end of single, Party-approved natural science versions of biology, chemistry and physics.
There still existed, on the other hand, a tight ideological control over literature. This included not only literature critical of Soviet rule: much of Lenin's work was also routinely censored.
Later life and death
At the beginning of the 1980s, the political and economic turmoil in the Polish People's Republic had seriously eroded the authority of the Polish United Workers' Party. Suslov's position on this matter carried particular weight as he chaired a Politburo Commission, established on 25 August 1980, on how to deal with the Polish crisis. Members of the commission included such high-ranking Soviets as KGB Chairman Andropov, Minister of Defence Dmitriy Ustinov, Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, and Brezhnev's long-time associate Konstantin Chernenko.
On 28 August, the Commission considered Soviet military intervention to stabilize the region. Wojciech Jaruzelski, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, was able to persuade the Commission that a Soviet military intervention would only aggravate the situation. Suslov agreed with Jaruzelski's argument, stating that "if troops are introduced, that will mean a catastrophe. I think that we all share the unanimous opinion here that there can be no discussion of any introduction of troops". Suslov was able to persuade Jaruzelski and the Polish leadership to establish martial law in Poland.
In January 1982, Yuri Andropov revealed to Suslov that Semyon Tsvigun, the First Deputy Chairman of the KGB, had shielded Galina and Yuri, Brezhnev's children, from corruption investigations. When these facts were revealed to him, Suslov challenged Tsvigun to make a statement on the matter. Suslov even threatened Tsvigun with expulsion from the Communist Party, but Tsvigun died on 19 January 1982 before he could challenge Suslov's statement.
Two days later, Suslov had a coronary thrombosis, and died on 25 January of arteriosclerosis and diabetes at 16:05. His death is viewed as starting the battle to succeed Brezhnev, in which Andropov, who assumed Suslov's post as the Party's Second Secretary, sidelined Kirilenko and Chernenko during the last days of Brezhnev's rule.
Suslov was buried on 29 January at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall. Brezhnev expressed great sadness at Suslov's passing.
Recognition
Suslov was awarded several decorations and medals during his life; among them were two Hero of Socialist Labour awards, five Orders of Lenin, one Order of the October Revolution, and one first degree Order of the Patriotic War. The USSR Academy of Sciences awarded Suslov the Gold Medal of Karl Marx. Suslov was awarded the highest state awards of the German Democratic Republic, the Mongolian People's Republic, and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
Soviet Union
Foreign
Personal life
Suslov married Yelizaveta Alexandrovna (1903–1972), who worked as the Director of the Moscow Institute for Stomatology. In her life, she badly suffered from internal diseases, especially diabetes in a severe form, but ignored her physician's recommendations.
Bernard Lown, a Lithuanian-born American M.D., was once requested to see her in the Kremlin Hospital; it was one of the few cases where a renowned foreign doctor was invited to visit the Kremlin Hospital. Suslov expressed his gratitude for Lown's work, but avoided meeting Lown in person because he was a representative of an "imperialistic" country.
Yelizaveta and Suslov had two children, Revoly (born 1929), named after the Russian Revolution, and his second child, Maya (born 1939), named after May Day.
References
Bibliography
External links
Selected Writings and Speeches published in 1980 by Pergamon Press.
1902 births
1982 deaths
People from Ulyanovsk Oblast
People from Khvalynsky Uyezd
Bolsheviks
Members of the Central Auditing Commission of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry%20Ustinov
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Dmitry Ustinov
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Dmitriy Fyodorovich Ustinov (; 30 October 1908 – 20 December 1984) was a Soviet politician and a Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as a Central Committee secretary in charge of the Soviet military–industrial complex from 1965 to 1976 and as Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death in 1984.
Ustinov was born in the city of Samara to a Russian working-class family in 1908. Upon reaching adulthood, he joined the Communist Party in 1927 before pursuing a career in engineering. After graduating from the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in 1934, he became a construction engineer at the Leningrad Artillery Marine Research Institute. By 1937, he transferred to the Bolshevik "Arms" Factory where he ultimately rose to become the director. While serving as People's Commissar of Armaments during World War II, he achieved distinction within the party's ranks by successfully overseeing the evacuation of Leningrad's industries to the Ural Mountains, a feat for which he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. At the war's end, he was entrusted with seizing raw materials, scientists and research left over from Germany's missile programme.
Under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership, Ustinov joined the Central Committee Secretariat and rose to become a candidate member of the Politburo by 1965. Following his rise to the central party apparatus, he was given the task of administering the Soviet Union's defense industry and its armed forces. By 1976, he succeeded Andrei Grechko as Minister of Defense and received the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Thereafter, Ustinov's hardline attitudes towards the West and unreserved backing for the Soviet arms buildup would dominate his country's national security policy up until his death in 1984.
Early life
Dmitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a working-class family in Samara. During the Civil War, when hunger became intolerable, his sick father went to Samarkand, leaving Dmitry as head of the family. Shortly after that, in 1922, his father died. In 1923, he and his mother, Yevrosinya Martinovna, moved to the city of Makarev (near Ivanovo-Voznesensk) where he worked as a fitter in a paper mill. Shortly after that, in 1925, his mother died.
Ustinov joined the Communist Party in 1927. In 1929, he started training at the Faculty of Mechanics in the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Polytechnic Institute. Afterward, Ustinov was transferred to the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School. Then, in March 1932, he entered the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in Leningrad from where he graduated in 1934. Afterward, he worked as a construction engineer at the Leningrad artillery Marine Research Institute. In 1937, he was transferred to the "Bolshevik" Arms Factory as an engineer. He later became the director of the Factory.
War service
At the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, Joseph Stalin appointed the 32-year-old Ustinov to the post of People's Commissar of Armaments. From this position, he supervised the massive evacuation of the defence industry from the besieged city of Leningrad to east of the Ural Mountains. Over 80 military industries were evacuated that together employed over six hundred thousand workers, technicians, and engineers. Stalin later rewarded Ustinov, whom he called "the Red-head", with the Soviet Union's highest civilian honour, Hero of Socialist Labour. After the war was over, Ustinov played a crucial role in requisitioning the German missile programme, developed during World War II, as an impetus to the Soviet missile and space programmes.
Post-war career
In 1952, Ustinov became a member of the Central Committee. In March 1953, after Stalin died, the Ministry of Armaments was combined with the Ministry of Aviation Industry to become the Ministry of Defense Industry, with Ustinov assigned as head of this new ministry. In 1957, he was appointed as a Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and became chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission.
Rise to the Soviet leadership
Leonid Brezhnev took power after the ousting of Khrushchev, and Ustinov returned to the defence industry. In 1965, Brezhnev made Ustinov a candidate member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee with oversight of the military, the defense industry, and certain security organs. He was also placed in charge of developing the Soviet Union's strategic bomber force and intercontinental ballistic missile system. Ustinov was known in the defense industry as Uncle Mitya. He was also missile engineer Vladimir Chelomey's stolid personal adversary. He issued a directive, in February 1970, that ordered Chelomey's OKB-52 design bureau to combine its Almaz space station with Sergei Korolyov's OKB-1 design bureau, then headed by Vasili Mishin. This order was designed as an impetus towards the development of the Salyut space station.
Ustinov gained power in the bureaucracy as he rose in the defence industry.
Minister of Defence
In 1976, after Andrei Grechko died on 26 April, Ustinov became the Defence Minister and was promoted to General of the Army on 29 April. On 30 July, he was promoted to the highest military rank in the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union, although he had no prior military career. Together, with Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov and the Soviet General Staff, Ustinov embarked on a programme to enhance and modernise the Soviet Union's development of military sciences. In 1979, he confidently asserted that "The armed forces of the USSR are on a high level that ensures the accomplishment of any tasks set by the party and the people".
The growing influence of the Soviet military gave Ustinov the role of Kremlin kingmaker, for his support was decisive in allowing Yuri Andropov to succeed Brezhnev. Ustinov was also influential in the Chernenko regime, compensating for the latter's serious health problems and inexperience in military affairs.
In 1979, Hafizullah Amin assassinated the leader of Afghanistan, Nur Muhammad Taraki. In October 1979, the sentiment for Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan grew stronger in the Soviet politburo where Ustinov and Andropov were the strongest proponents of military intervention. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko also lent his support for an invasion. The introduction of US forces into the Persian Gulf after the 1979 Iran hostage crisis particularly alarmed the Soviet General Staff. Ustinov began to wonder, "If the Americans do all these preparations under our noses, then why should we hunker down, play cautious, and lose Afghanistan?" In November, Ustinov and Andropov began to formulate plans for a Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan. On 12 December 1979, the Politburo approved the Ustinov-Andropov plan to invade Afghanistan. On 24 December 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.
In the early 1980s, the development of the Space Shuttle program in the United States caused considerable concern in the Soviet defense industry. While Defence Minister, Ustinov received a report from his analysts that the US Shuttle could be used to deploy space based nuclear missiles over Soviet territory. Russian space programme academic Boris Chertok recounts that Ustinov was so worried about the US Shuttle that he gave the development of the Soviet response program, the Buran Shuttle, top priority.
Involvement in the KAL 007 Disaster
In 1992, Russian president Boris Yeltsin disclosed five top-secret memos dating from late 1983, memos that had been written within weeks of the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. These memos were published in Izvestia number 228 on October 16, 1992. According to these memos, the Soviet Union had been able to recover the "Black Box" from KAL 007 and decipher its tapes. Thereafter, Ustinov, along with Viktor Chebrikov, head of the KGB, recommended to premier Yuri Andropov that their possession of the Black Box not be made public since its tapes could not support the Soviet contention that KAL 007 was on a U.S. espionage mission.
"In connection with all mentioned above it seems highly preferable not to transfer the flight recorders to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) or any third party willing to decipher their contents. The fact that the recorders are in possession of the USSR shall be kept secret. As far as we are aware neither the US nor Japan has any information on the flight recorders. We have made necessary efforts in order to prevent any disclosure of the information in future." (Memo 5.)
Death and legacy
On 7 November 1984, Ustinov did not preside over the annual Red Square Military Parade on the October Revolution Day. First Deputy Defense Minister Marshal Sergey Sokolov stood in for Ustinov to both inspect the troops and deliver the commemoration speech. Ustinov had contracted pneumonia in late October. Emergency surgery had to be performed to correct an aneurysm in his aortic valve. His liver and kidneys later deteriorated. Eventually, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died on 20 December 1984. He was honored with a state funeral, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis on 24 December 1984.
The RFS Marshal Ustinov is a Russian warship named after him in his honor. The Baltic State Technical Military-Mechanical University in Saint Petersburg changed its name to the Ustinov Baltic State Technical Military-Mechanical University. The city of Izhevsk was also renamed after him from 1984 to 1987; however, under Mikhail Gorbachev, cities that had been renamed for recent Soviet leaders were reverted to their former names.
Ustinov placed great importance on the military for many decades. For example, he succeeded in always keeping the USSR's intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, current. Ustinov also wrote several books throughout his life. These included "Selected Speeches and Articles" (1979), and "To serve my country - the cause of Communism" (1982).
Personality and family
In his memoirs Mikhail Gorbachev describes Ustinov as a man who normally had an energetic and bright personality. When Gorbachev was facing opposition in the Politburo shortly after Andropov's death, Ustinov told Gorbachev to "stand firm" and to "take heart".
Soviet Army Colonel General Igor Illarionov, an assistant of Ustinov for 30 years, described him as "the most Stalinist of all the Commissars". Indeed, Ustinov had been groomed by Stalin to maintain the established system. Illarionov also said that Ustinov, like many of his contemporaries, was shaped by his experiences in the Great Patriotic War. Illarionov described Ustinov as a man who was very passionate about his work and had a habit of working late at night and sleeping for a couple of hours during the day.
The former head of the 4th Chief of the Ministry of Health, Academician Yevgeniy Chazov wrote about Ustinov: "I met him for the first time thanks to Andropov, who was his close friend. From the first moment I liked his will power, quick decision making, optimism, drive, expertise, combined with a certain simplicity and openness. In my mind, he represented the best representatives of the so-called command-and-control systems by which we defeated Germany during World War II. I think his only mistake, which he may not have realized, was the Afghan war. A bad politician and diplomat, he, as a representative of the old Stalinist "guard", believed that all issues could be solved via a position of strength. On the other hand, I saw Andropov tossed and nervous because of the Afghan war. I believe that he ultimately understood their mistake. Ustinov, however, was always calm and apparently convinced that he was right."
However, Ustinov's unwillingness to support any kind of reforms, even if popular within the Politburo itself, led to him frequently clashing with the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov. Ogarkov and many Officers of the General Staff resented Ustinov's influence over Brezhnev, viewing him as a lobby for the interests of the Defense Industries against those of the Military. This became problematic for Ogarkov, since he favored reducing the massive Soviet military into a more compact strike force that utilized high-technology conventional arms and centered on Special Forces operations. Ustinov on the other hand (his lobbying for the defense industries notwithstanding), favored the usual emphasis on manpower and nuclear deterrence to maintain his "high intensity non-nuclear conflict" strategy, despite the lack of efficiency that became apparent in Afghanistan. In light of this, although Ustinov dramatically increased the technological capabilities of the Soviet Armed forces, most of the improvements were directed towards the operation of Strategic Nuclear Weapons, such as the Typhoon-class submarine, the Tu-160 bomber, and the SS-20 Saber.
Ustinov was married to Taisa Alekseevna Briekalova-Ustinova (1903–1975). They had a daughter, Vera Dmitriyevna Ustinova, and a son, Nikolai Dmitriyevich Ustinov (1931–1992). Ustinov also had a granddaughter, Nastya Nemtsova.
In popular culture
Ustinov appears briefly in Tom Clancy's 1984 novel The Hunt for Red October in his capacity as Defense Minister; his death is mentioned by the titular spy Colonel Filitov in The Cardinal of the Kremlin. He is given a more important role in the 2002 novel Red Rabbit, which takes place in between the events of Patriot Games and Red October.
Ustinov is also a character of The Manhattan Projects, a comic book by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra. He is depicted as a disembodied brain mounted on a robot body.
Honours and awards
Soviet
Hero of the Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor, twice (1942, 1961)
Order of Lenin, 11 times (1939, 1942, 1944, 1951, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1968, 1971, 1978, 1983)
Order of Suvorov, 1st class (1945)
Order of Kutuzov, 1st class (1944)
Lenin Prize (1982)
Stalin Prize winner, 1st class (1953)
USSR State Prize (1983)
campaign and jubilee medals
Foreign
Mongolian People's Republic
Hero of the Mongolian People's Republic (6 August 1981)
Order of Sukhbaatar, three times (1975, 1978, 1981)
Order of the Red Banner (1983)
6 other medals
Czechoslovakia
Hero of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (6 October 1982)
Order of Klement Gottwald, twice (1978, 1983)
Order of the White Lion, 1st class (1977)
2 other medals
Vietnam
Order of Ho Chi Minh (1983)
Bulgaria
Order of Georgi Dimitrov, twice (1976, 1983)
7 other medals
Poland
Cross of Grunwald, 1st class (1976)
Peru
Order of Aeronautical Merit
People's Republic of Hungary
Order of the Flag of the People's Republic of Hungary with rubies, twice (1978, 1983)
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Order of the Sun of Liberty (1982)
East Germany
Order of Karl Marx, twice (1978, 1983)
Scharnhorst Order (1977)
Finland
Order of the White Rose, 1st class (1978)
Cuba
Order of Playa Girón (1983)
2 other medals
References
Bibliography
External links
Устинов Д.Ф. Memorial website on the life and career of Dmitriy Ustinov.
1908 births
1984 deaths
People from Samara, Russia
People from Samarsky Uyezd
Members of the Central Committee of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Candidates of the Presidium of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Candidates of the Politburo of the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Candidates of the Politburo of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Politburo of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Politburo of the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Secretariat of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Secretariat of the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Secretariat of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Secretariat of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Soviet Ministers of Defence
Second convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Fourth convocation members of the Soviet of Nationalities
Fifth convocation members of the Soviet of Nationalities
Sixth convocation members of the Soviet of Nationalities
Seventh convocation members of the Soviet of Nationalities
Eighth convocation members of the Soviet of Nationalities
Ninth convocation members of the Soviet of Nationalities
Tenth convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Eleventh convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Marshals of the Soviet Union
Soviet engineers
Russian military leaders
Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Heroes of the Soviet Union
Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Grunwald, 1st class
Grand Crosses of the Order of the White Lion
Recipients of the Order of Suvorov, 1st class
Recipients of the Order of Kutuzov, 1st class
Recipients of the Lenin Prize
Recipients of the Stalin Prize
Heroes of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Recipients of the Scharnhorst Order
Recipients of the USSR State Prize
Burials at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%20Salad%20Surgery
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Brain Salad Surgery
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Brain Salad Surgery is the fourth studio album by English progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released on 7 December 1973 by their new record label, Manticore Records, and distributed by Atlantic Records.
Following the tour in support of their previous album, Trilogy (1972), the group acquired rehearsal facilities to work on new material, which would blend classical and rock themes. To control things, they launched their own record company, Manticore, in March 1973. The album was recorded from June to September at Olympic and Advision Studios and mixed in October 1973 at AIR Studios in London. As were all the group's previous works, it was produced by Greg Lake. The album includes a cover designed by H. R. Giger.
Released to a mixed critical response, it has received more favourable reviews since its release. Brain Salad Surgery continued the group's commercial success, reaching number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 11 in the United States, and eventually gaining Gold certifications in both countries. In its support, the trio embarked on their largest world tour to date, including a headlining spot at the California Jam festival.
The album has been remastered/remixed and reissued numerous times, including stereo and 5.1 surround sound remixes by Jakko Jakszyk.
Background
After the release of their third album, Trilogy, in June 1972, the group toured across Europe and the United States, playing in sold-out venues. By the beginning of 1973, Emerson, Lake & Palmer had become commercially successful in both the UK and the US.
The group had become somewhat dissatisfied with their record label Atlantic Records for a lack of involvement. Around January 1973 Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Carl Palmer, and their manager Stewart Young decided to form their own record company. Together, they bought an abandoned ABC cinema in Fulham, West London and converted it into a rehearsal room and company headquarters, which would later be named Manticore Records. Lake said: "We set up Manticore to try and make the entire record process as good as it could be. We were also aware of a number of artists who we knew were having problems getting their music released and getting a record deal". Since the group knew that they would not have enough time to run their company, Atlantic promoter Mario Medious, who had worked with the group since their debut album, was brought in to serve as the president of Manticore in April 1973. Atlantic handled distribution duties.
Production
Emerson, Lake & Palmer began working on new material at the end of 1972. As Lake explained in an interview, the group's previous record, Trilogy, was recorded with the use of 24-track machines and featured too many overdubs that made the music very difficult to recreate properly on stage. So the trio agreed to record an album that they could perform live. The rehearsal facilities equipped in the former cinema allowed the group to play live, then write, play live again, write again, etc., resulting in a feeling of addressing an audience, that would be alluded to in the well-known line "Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...".
Writing
During writing sessions around the end of 1972 and the beginning of 1973, the first two tracks began to take shape. One of them was the first movement of what would become the dominating composition of the forthcoming album, the epic "Karn Evil 9", and the other was an adaptation of the 4th Movement of Alberto Ginastera's 1st Piano Concerto.
At nearly 30 minutes long, "Karn Evil 9" would consist of three movements (called "impressions"). Due to time limitations, the first movement initially had to be split into two parts between sides one and two of the vinyl record. Although the original Atlantic CD retained the division of the suite, subsequent editions have presented it in an uninterrupted version. All music of the epic was written by Emerson and can be described as a futuristic fusion of classical and rock themes. Structurally, the first and third movements are separated by an extended instrumental passage in spite of the whole composition having initially been conceived as an instrumental. All lyrics in the first movement are credited to Lake. To assist in creating lyrics for the third movement, he brought in lyricist Pete Sinfield, with whom Lake had worked at the time he was in King Crimson. Sinfield had been planning to make a solo album and had asked Lake for help to release it on Manticore. Lake had agreed that the record label would support Sinfield's project and additionally suggested his contributing to lyrics for the group's next album. Sinfield recalled: "I was half way through making a solo album when Greg called me to say that Manticore wanted to release it. The catch was that he wanted me to collaborate on lyrics for a long piece that had begun to take shape". The main theme of the epic is the battle between artificial and natural intelligence, which would end with a man being taken over by the computer he had invented. It had initially been titled by Emerson as "Ganton 9" after a fictional planet to which all evil and decadence had been thrown out. However, Sinfield believed that the music Emerson had written sounded just like a carnival, and so he came up with the title "Karn Evil 9".
The most recognisable section of "Karn Evil 9" is the second part of the first movement, containing the famous line "Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...", which was eventually taken as the title of the group's second live album. It is often used as a song dedicated to the opening of sports seasons. It is also a common radio staple.
Emerson had contemplated recording an adaptation of the 4th Movement ("Toccata concertata") of Ginastera's 1st Piano Concerto as far back as the beginning of 1971. He had heard the toccata for the first time when he was a member of The Nice and had been "struck with the music immediately". Emerson had not considered a possibility of Emerson, Lake & Palmer playing the piece until Palmer proposed to incorporate a drum solo into the trio's repertoire, which would be a core part of the composition. When Emerson played the toccata to Palmer, the latter approved it, and then, the piece was rehearsed by the entire group, although it was quite difficult, since Lake did not read music and Palmer was unable to apply a score written for piano to the drums.
Both "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression" and "Toccata" were included in the setlist for a series of concerts across Europe beginning at the end of March 1973. Around that time, a new semi-acoustic number, "Still....You Turn Me On", was introduced to the public. Written by Lake alone, the song has commonly been regarded as a necessary balance in the content, which is dominated by aggressive compositions. The next track intended for inclusion in the album was an adaptation of Hubert Parry's hymn "Jerusalem", with the lyrics from "And did those feet in ancient time", a short poem from the preface to William Blake's epic Milton. Finally, the last piece, which would make the album, was the honky-tonk piano-based song "Benny the Bouncer" composed by Emerson, with Lake and Sinfield writing the words.
After the album was almost completely recorded, three additional tracks, which would be put on the shelf for a while, were written: the instrumental "When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Windmills of Your Mind I'll Be Your Valentine", credited to the entire group, "Tiger in a Spotlight" and the title song, both composed by Emerson, with Lake and Sinfield providing lyrics. Brain Salad Surgery was the first album to have no songwriting contributions from Palmer (aside from the drum solo in "Toccata"), who, nevertheless, has regarded it as his favourite by far.
Recording
The recording sessions began in June 1973 at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London, with Lake, as he had done on the group's previous records, serving as the producer, and Chris Kimsey as the engineer. The only track committed to tape at Olympic was the first movement of "Karn Evil 9". Following a period of further writing, the work on the upcoming album continued in August at Advision Studios in Fitzrovia, London, with engineer Geoff Young. The second and third movements of "Karn Evil 9" were completed in the first half of that month, with the third impression being the first track to be recorded at Advision. The muse's sped-up and altered voice from the second movement and the 'computer' voice from the third movement were contributed by Emerson, and his only vocal credit in the trio's repertoire. In order to achieve the "computer" voice, he ran his voice through the Moog's ring modulator.
Although an arrangement of Ginastera's toccata had been performed by the group on their European tour from March to April 1973, the composition had received additional instrumentation before its final version was recorded. Palmer had written a percussion movement with the use of eight specially developed drum synthesizers. This movement with an "atmospheric" electronic sound was inserted in the middle section of "Toccata". Soon after the adaptation was committed to tape in September, the group became aware that they did not have the rights to release this music. Emerson contacted Ginastera's publishers who responded that the composer would not allow any adaptation of his works, but they advised him to talk to him personally. So Emerson flew to Geneva to discuss the issue with Ginastera himself. Once Ginastera heard the new arrangement, he gave the authorization to use his piece. To quote Emerson: "He played our recording of "Toccata" on a tape recorder. After a few bars he stopped the tape ... and exclaimed 'Diabolic!' I thought he said 'diabolical' and expected him to show us the door. He had been listening to the tape in mono and our recording was in stereo. I jumped up and switched the machine to stereo hoping he would listen again. It transpired that he wasn't concerned about that at all. He listened again and declared 'Terrible!' which actually was a compliment. 'You've captured the essence of my music like no one else has before', the great maestro said."
The next songs recorded at Advision were "Still....You Turn Me On" and "Jerusalem". The adaptation of the hymn is notable for the debut of the first polyphonic synthesizer in history, the Moog Apollo, which was just a prototype of the Polymoog at that time. Together with the Lyra monophonic and the Taurus bass synthesizers, it formed the Moog Polyphonic Ensemble, also known as the Constellation. The Apollo synthesizer was also used by Emerson on "Benny the Bouncer", which was the last track recorded for the album.
In addition to its considerable evolution of synthesizer technology, Brain Salad Surgery also contained a higher proportion of songs featuring acoustic and electric guitars than their earlier work. Whereas the first three studio albums contained only one or two tracks each with guitars, "Toccata", "Benny The Bouncer" and both parts of "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression" all feature electric guitar texturing, with two lengthy guitar solos highlighting Karn Evil 9. "Still You Turn Me On" additionally features multiple acoustic guitars and wah-wah guitar accents in addition to Emerson on harpsichord and accordion. From this point onward, the guitar would become a more common addition to ELP albums although it would remain subordinate to Emerson's keyboard work.
Mixing
The results of the four-month recording sessions were mixed in the first week of October 1973 at AIR Studios in London. The original mix was turned down by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and as a result, most of the material was remixed once more to their satisfaction. The first mixes of several tracks have been released on some more recent reissues of the album.
Artwork and packaging
Since cover art for the impending album was required, Manticore manager Peter Zumsteg introduced Emerson to a popular artist, Hans Ruedi Giger, who was living in Zurich. In April 1973, as a part of their European tour, the group played a two-day concert there. After the concert, Emerson with Zumsteg visited the artist at his home. At that time, the working title for the album was Medious' expression Whip Some Skull on Ya, which is translated as fellatio. Coincidentally, under the impact of the music, including Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Giger had just created a human skull-based triptych entitled Work 216: Landscape XIX. When he revealed the triptych to his guests, Emerson immediately felt that it was completely appropriate for the album cover art.
Subsequently, the album title was changed to Brain Salad Surgery, which has the same meaning as Whip Some Skull on Ya. The phrase was probably taken from the song "Right Place, Wrong Time" by Dr. John, which had been a hit single in summer 1973 and contains the line "I been running trying to get hung up in my mind, got to give myself a little talking to this time, just need a little brain salad surgery, got to cure this insecurity".
Giger painted two new pieces approximately the actual size of the vinyl record entitled Work 217: ELP I and Work 218: ELP II. The first painting was chosen by the group as the front cover. It contains the artist's distinctive monochromatic biomechanical artwork, integrating an industrial mechanism with a human skull and the new 'ELP' logotype, which was also designed by Giger and has been standard for Emerson, Lake & Palmer ever since. The lower part of the skull is covered by a circular screen, which displays the mouth and chin in its flesh-covered state, as well as what appears to be the top of a phallus below the chin, arising from the 'ELP' tube. Art director Fabio Nicoli insisted on a non-standard construction of the vinyl sleeve rather than being a normal gatefold. The front cover of the novelty triptych sleeve was split in half down the centre, except for the circular screen, which was attached to the right flap, and was opened up like a gate. Opening the flaps revealed the second painting, featuring the full face of a human female (modelled after Giger's partner Li Tobler) with ringlets of wire hair framing the closed eyes and multiple scars, including the infinity symbol and a scar from a frontal lobotomy. The illustration originally had the complete phallus, but when the artwork was presented to the record company, it was rejected and dismissed as pornographic. As Giger refused to take the penis off the painting, the group had another artist airbrush it into a shaft of glowing light. The back cover was entirely black with the large white lettering 'Brain Salad Surgery'. Work 217: ELP I was also used as a custom label, with the spindle of the turntable penetrating through the lips. The vinyl packaging included a 12-panel fold-out poster with photographs of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, which were taken by Rosemary Adams.
When Manticore Records went defunct in 1977, Atlantic Records reissued the album with the initial design as well as with an ordinary vinyl packaging, which consisted of simple non fold-out outer and inner sleeves. The 'face' painting was used as the back cover of the outer sleeve.
After the exhibition Giger in Prague was closed on 31 August 2005, the two original 34×34 cm acrylic-on-paper paintings Work 217: ELP I and Work 218: ELP II were lost or stolen and have not yet been found.
Release
Prior to the album becoming available, British newspaper New Musical Express released an issue with an attached free promotional flexi disc on 10 November 1973. Packaged in a miniature facsimile of the original album sleeve, the one-sided flexi disc, playing at 33 1⁄3 rpm, contained the song "Brain Salad Surgery", along with excerpts from all five tracks of the forthcoming album. Being a late-recorded track, the title song had not been intended for Brain Salad Surgery and was not included in its track listing. However, it was later used as the B-side to the UK number two hit single "Fanfare for the Common Man" and ended up on the compilation of studio outtakes Works Volume 2 (1977).
Brain Salad Surgery was released in the United Kingdom on 7 December 1973 by Manticore Records and was available on vinyl record, cassette, and 8-track cartridge through distribution by Atlantic Records. The very first vinyl pressings were manufactured in the United States, along with the sleeves due to their non-standard construction. The album was a large seller, peaking at number 2 on the UK Albums Chart and spending there 18 weeks. It was held from the top spot for two weeks in a row only by Tales from Topographic Oceans from the arch-rival group Yes. On 1 March 1974, the album was certified Gold by British Phonographic Industry for sales in excess of 100,000 copies.
In spite of the feeling that Lake's acoustic song "Still....You Turn Me On" stood out as an evident single choice, Emerson, Lake & Palmer did not select it for a release, both because Palmer did not play on the track and because it was least representative of the album or their general direction. Instead of that song, the group's interpretation of "Jerusalem" was chosen for the single, which would be backed with another studio out-take, "When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Windmills of Your Mind I'll Be Your Valentine". The single was released on 30 November 1973, but its success was inhibited by the BBC, which banned the song from airplay. As a result, "Jerusalem" failed to chart in the United Kingdom.
In the United States, Brain Salad Surgery was released in December 1973 by Manticore on vinyl record, cassette, and 8-track cartridge, and distributed by Atlantic. Although no singles were issued, it climbed to number 11 on the Billboard 200 and stayed in the charts for 47 weeks, more than any other Emerson, Lake & Palmer album. It has been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling at least 500,000 copies in the United States.
Reissues
The album was released for the first time on CD, which was mastered by Barry Diament, in 1986. The earliest copies for the U.S. market were pressed in Japan. It was also released on CD in 1987 in West Germany under the Manticore label by RCA/Ariola and was the first to feature Karn Evil 9 playing in its entirety (While the tracks for Karn Evil 9 is split up, 1st Impression Part 1 & Part 2 does not fade out and fade in). Since then Brain Salad Surgery has been remastered/remixed, expanded, and reissued multiple times in different formats, with the studio outtakes "Brain Salad Surgery" and "When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Windmills of Your Mind I'll Be Your Valentine" having often been added as bonus tracks. In 1993, the album was remastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio. In 2000, Rhino Entertainment Company released a DVD-Audio containing a 5.1 surround sound mix, done by John Kellogg and Paul Klingberg.
Because of its length, "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression" had originally been split into two parts for vinyl, with a fade-out at the end of side 1 and a fade-in at the beginning of side 2. Some early CD editions continued to split the track, but since then it has been presented as a single, uninterrupted piece.
In 2008, a remastered and expanded three-disc 35th-anniversary deluxe edition was released by Sanctuary Records, a subsidiary label of Universal Music Group at that time. Disc 1 (CD) contained the original album, remastered by Paschal Byrne. Disc 2 (CD) consisted of different recordings and mixes of tracks associated with Brain Salad Surgery, as well as two bonus tracks: "When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Windmills of Your Mind I'll Be Your Valentine" and "Brain Salad Surgery". Disc 3 was a hybrid SACD containing the original album in stereo and surround sound. For the 5.1 mix, the 2000 Rhino version was taken.
In 2014, a limited six-disc super deluxe box set edition was released by Legacy/Sony Music. Disc 1 (CD) contained the original album, remastered by Andy Pearce. Disc 2 (CD) was composed of bonus tracks associated with Brain Salad Surgery. Disc 3 (CD) contained a new stereo version of the album. The original and new stereo versions in high resolution along with a brand new 5.1 surround sound mix by Jakko Jakszyk were featured on Disc 4 (DVD-Audio). The Manticore Special Documentary film, photo gallery, and Giger's original artwork were included in Disc 5 (DVD-Video). Finally, Disc 6 was a 180gm vinyl record with the original album. A cut-down three-disc edition, which consisted of the Discs 1, 2, and 4 (but without the 5.1 mix), received international release around the same time. In Japan, the 40th anniversary 3 disc edition, on the Victor Entertainment label, contains the new stereo and 5.1 surround mixes as well as original stereo mixes on DVD-audio on the first disc, the original album remastered on the second disc, and on the third disc the Alternate Brain Salad Surgery with bonus tracks.
To mark the 50th anniversary a picture disc depicting the original Geiger album artwork was released in the UK for Record Store Day on 22 April 2023.
Critical reception
Upon its initial release, the album was met with a remarkably polarized critical reception. Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone considered that although Emerson, Lake & Palmer managed to vanquish "insufficient intensity and lack of worthy material" of their previous records in live performances, these flaws overwhelmed all the group's positives in the studio, resulting in things like Brain Salad Surgery, which was deemed as a "sadly uneven album from a group with technical gifts equal to that of any British trio". In particular, he counted the lyrics of "Still....You Turn Me On" to be somewhat overblown and dismissed "Benny the Bouncer" as "a needless nonsensical whimsey". Writing for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau, who had never been favourable towards Emerson, Lake & Palmer, submitted a review, which consisted entirely of rhetorical questions, and assigned the album a very low "C−" rating. On the other side, Pete Erskine of Sounds was positive about the record, calling it the group's "most uncluttered and melodic album to date and certainly their rockiest". Before its release in the United States in December 1973, Brain Salad Surgery was reviewed by Billboard and described as "a complex, exciting sonic experience which touches on several bases—heavy rock, flowing jazz and some zesty pop material".
Retrospective response has been predominantly favourable. AllMusic contributor Bruce Eder cited the record as "Emerson, Lake & Palmer's most successful and well-realized album, and their most ambitious as a group, as well as their loudest". He summarized that it represents "a high point that the trio would never again achieve, or even aspire to". Paul Stump, in his 1997 History of Progressive Rock, characterized the album as frustratingly uneven, but highlighted the "demonic" version of "Toccata" and the group instrumental workout in the third part of "Karn Evil 9" as among the band's finest moments. While reviewing the box set A Time and a Place for the online All About Jazz magazine, John Kelman mentioned Brain Salad Surgery as a "crowning masterpiece" and the group's "undeniable high water mark". The album was included in the musical reference book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, where it was called "the most fully realized—and still decidedly brazen—ELP statement".
In 2005, Q Classic and Mojo magazines placed Brain Salad Surgery at number 5 on their "40 Cosmic Rock Albums", which was published in the special edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock. In 2015, it was ranked the 12th greatest progressive rock album of all time by Rolling Stone, whose reviewer Will Hermes characterised the record as "prescient and pretty damn rocking".
Tour
Soon after the recording sessions ended and the tracks were mixed in October 1973, the group rehearsed for their upcoming world tour to promote the album. Spanning from 14 November 1973 to 21 August 1974, and including 100 live performances, it comprised four parts: Leg 1—North America (from 14 November 1973 to 18 December 1973, 28 shows), Leg 2—North America (from 24 January 1974 to 6 April 1974, 29 shows), Leg 3—Europe (from 18 April 1974 to 1 June 1974, 26 shows), and Leg 4—North America (from 26 July 1974 to 21 August 1974, 17 shows).
On stage, Emerson, Lake & Palmer mixed the complex musicianship of their material with theatrics which attracted criticism. These included Emerson playing a grand piano while it revolved in mid-air, and abusing the Hammond organ by sticking knives in the manuals, throwing it around the stage and letting it feed back, while Palmer played on a revolving drum kit. The group carried almost 40 tons of equipment, which took five hours to unpack and set up, including a 30-channel board discrete quadraphonic public address sound system provided by International Entertainers Service, and a state-of-the-art lighting system, designed by Judy Rasmussen, which consisted of large ladders at each corner of the stage and two arches installed above the performance area.
Their 2 February 1974 concert, which was played in the main arena at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, was documented on the three-disc anthology Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends ~ Ladies and Gentlemen, released on 19 August 1974. Much of the performance was also used for broadcasting on the American rock music radio show King Biscuit Flower Hour. The live album reached number 6 on the UK charts and number 4 on the Billboard 200, which was the highest U.S. chart position the trio ever achieved.
Arguably the most high-profile performance was on 6 April 1974, when Emerson, Lake & Palmer co-headlined with Deep Purple at the California Jam festival, held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California, with an attendance of 350,000 paying fans. Only 55 minutes of the group's -hour festival-closing set was aired by ABC television network, which was a sponsor of the festival, on 7 May and 10 June 1974. The remaining footage of ELP's entire performance has thus far not surfaced (unlike Deep Purple, whose entire 1-hour set has been issued in various audio and video releases). The extant ELP footage was eventually released on video in 2005 as a part of Beyond the Beginning DVD-Video. The audio recordings first appeared in 1998 on the album Then & Now.
After the tour was completed in August 1974, Emerson, Lake & Palmer took an extended hiatus from recording and performing. In 1976, the group reunited to work on their next album, Works Volume 1 (1977).
Track listing
All lyrics written by Greg Lake and all music written by Keith Emerson, except where noted.
Some CD editions have the entire suite "Karn Evil 9" as a one track, giving the album a total of five tracks.
Personnel
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Keith Emerson – Hammond B3 & L-100 organs, acoustic and electric pianos, harpsichord, Clavinet, Moog synthesizers, Moog Polyphonic Ensemble (known as the Constellation, comprising the Apollo polyphonic, the Lyra monophonic, and the Taurus Moog bass pedals synthesizers), computer voice (on "Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression")
Greg Lake – vocals, bass, electric and acoustic guitars; production
Carl Palmer – drums, percussion, percussion synthesizers
Technical
Geoff Young – engineer (all tracks except "Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression")
Chris Kimsey – engineer ("Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression")
Barry Diament – CD mastering (at Atlantic Studios, New York)
Joseph M. Palmaccio – 1993 remastering (at PolyGram Studios)
Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch – 1996 remastering
John Kellogg – 2000 5.1 remix production and mastering (at Magna Vision Studios, Santa Monica, California)
Paul Klingberg – 2000 5.1 remix engineering, mixing, and mastering (at Magna Vision Studios, Santa Monica, California)
Mark Chalecki – 2007 remastering (at Capitol Mastering, Hollywood)
Paschal Byrne – 2008 stereo remastering (at The Audio Archiving Company, London)
Andy Pearce – 2011 remastering, 2014 remastering
Matt Wortham – 2014 remastering
Jakko Jakszyk – 2014 stereo and 5.1 mixing (at Silesia Sound, Hertfordshire)
H. R. Giger – cover painting
Fabio Nicoli Associates – design and art direction
Rosemary Adams – photography
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
External links
Emerson Lake & Palmer Official Website
Emerson, Lake & Palmer albums
1973 albums
Manticore Records albums
Albums produced by Greg Lake
Albums with cover art by H. R. Giger
Albums recorded at Olympic Sound Studios
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting%20style
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Posting style
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When a message is replied to in e-mail, Internet forums, or Usenet, the original can often be included, or "quoted", in a variety of different posting styles.
The main options are interleaved posting (also called inline replying, in which the different parts of the reply follow the relevant parts of the original post), bottom-posting (in which the reply follows the quote) or top-posting (in which the reply precedes the quoted original message). For each of those options, there is also the issue of whether trimming of the original text is allowed, required, or preferred.
For a long time the traditional style was to post the answer below as much of the quoted original as was necessary to understand the reply (bottom or inline). Many years later, when email became widespread in business communication, it became a widespread practice to reply above the entire original and leave it (supposedly untouched) below the reply.
While each online community differs on which styles are appropriate or acceptable, within some communities the use of the "wrong" method risks being seen as a breach of netiquette, and can provoke vehement response from community regulars.
Quoting previous messages
In an e-mail reply, it is sometimes appropriate to include a full or partial copy of the original message that is being replied to; due to the asynchronous nature of Internet communication, people often engage in many conversations at the same time, and email responses may be received long after the original message was sent. For these reasons, the original poster may not be aware of what message a post is intended to be a response to, and providing context is helpful. Many email reading programs (mail user agents) encourage this behaviour by automatically including a copy of the original message in the reply editing window.
Quoted text from previous messages is usually distinguished in some way from the new (reply) text. Often, the two parts are given different indentation. In the example below, the first line is the original message, the second line is the reply:
I can't believe you would say something like this.
All these words are terrible.
They're hurtful and they make no sense.
-- DocEvil
Much like your posting.
-- Jim
Alternatively, special delimiter lines may be used:
Hey Joe, Paris is in France, not England. --Mary
--- original message ---
You just had a call from England, from Paris I think. --Joe
--- end of original message ---
For extra clarity, blank lines may also be inserted between the two parts. When using an email medium that supports text markup (such as HTML or RTF), the previous text may be indicated by a distinctive font and/or color:
The meeting has been postponed to next Friday. --Mary
Has the deadline for the report been moved too? --Joe
Quoted line prefix
A common convention in plain-text email is to prefix each line of the quoted text with a distinctive character or string. As of 2020 (and for many years previously), the greater-than sign (">", the canonical prefix) is almost universally used; but other characters such as the ASCII vertical bar character ("|") have been used as well, sometimes with one or more spaces inserted before or after the quoted text marker.
There is no standard declaring one quote-prefix to be "right" and others to be "wrong", but some standards depend on conventional quoting. The "never issued" and obsolete "son-of-1036" draft RFC 1849 recommends ">" as the quote-prefix; RFC 3676 depends on it and considers ">> " and "> > " to be semantically different. That is, ">> " has a quote-depth of two, while "> > " has a quote-depth of one, quoting a line starting with ">". Most e-mail clients treat the two sequences as equivalent, however.
The convention of quoting was common in Usenet newsgroups by 1990, and is supported by many popular email interfaces, either by default or as a user-settable option. In Microsoft Outlook, for instance, this behavior is controlled by an option labeled "Prefix each line of the original". Besides inserting markers automatically in quoted lines, some interfaces assume that a line starting with a ">" character or similar is quoted text, and will automatically display it in a distinctive font or color:
> How is the report coming? --Mary
It will be on your desk by noon. --Joe
Sometimes the insertion of a quoted line marker will cause one original line to be folded as two lines in the reply, and the continuation line may not have the proper marker. To avoid ambiguity in such cases, one may consider inserting blank lines after each block of quoted text:
>The board is asking again for the sales data. We really must provide
> them with some figures. How is the report coming? --Mary
It will be on your desk by noon. --Joe
Quoted line markers are most commonly used in plain-text messages. In HTML messages, other devices may be used to indicate quoted text, such as HTML indentation elements like blockquote or dl.
Reply level indication
A message often includes text from two or more messages exchanged in previous rounds of a long discussion. If an additional quotation marker is inserted at every round, without removing any existing markers, the number of markers at the beginning of each line will show the "level" of the reply, that is, how many rounds have occurred since that line was written. These accumulated markers are usually sufficient to distinguish the parts that came from each message. Some email interfaces recognize this convention and automatically render each level in a different color. For example:
>>> How is the report coming? --Mary
>>
>> It will be on your desk by noon. --Joe
>
> Sorry Joe, I need it by 11:00 at the latest. --Mary
OK, but it will be missing this month's figures. --Joe
If the discussion is between two parties only, then an even number of markers (including zero) identifies text written by the sender, while an odd number of markers identifies text by the recipient. (In the above example even numbers are Joe's text and odd numbers are Mary's.)
No problem. 6pm it is then. --Jim
At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote:
> Whoa! I need to email a report at 5:30.
> Could you push it back an hour? --Danny
>
> At 9.40am Wednesday, Jim wrote:
>
>> I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
>> minutes tonight, starting at 5pm. --Jim
In HTML messages, blockquote or dl elements may be nested to achieve the same effect.
Attribution lines
Quoted material is often preceded by an attribution line that identifies its author. These lines are particularly helpful in discussions between multiple parties. For example:
Nancy wrote:
> Peter wrote:
>> When will we have the performance figures?
> The tests will be completed next week.
Peter wrote:
> Mary wrote:
>> We should meet today to discuss the marketing strategy.
> Better wait, we do not have the West Coast sales data yet.
I agree with Peter. We need the sales data and also Nancy's
performance figures. Let's meet next Friday after lunch.
This reply quotes two messages, one by Nancy (itself a reply to Peter) and one by Peter (itself a reply to Mary).
Many mail agents will add these attribution lines automatically to the top of the quoted material. Note that a newly added attribution line should not get the quotation marker, since it is not part of the quoted text; so that the level indicator of the attribution line is always one less than the corresponding text. Doing otherwise may confuse the reader and also e-mail interfaces that choose the text color according to the number of leading markers.
Instead of an attribution line, one may indicate the author by a comment in brackets, at the beginning of the quotation:
>> [Peter:] When will we have the performance figures?
> [Nancy:] The tests will be completed next week.
>> [Mary:] We should meet today to discuss the marketing strategy.
> [Peter:] Better wait, we do not have the West Coast sales data yet.
I agree with Peter. We need the sales data and Nancy's
performance figures. Let's meet next Friday after lunch.
Another alternative, used in Fidonet and some mail user agents, is to place the initials of the author before the quoting marker. This may be used with or without attribution lines:
Nancy wrote:
N> Peter wrote:
P>> When will we have the performance figures?
N> The tests will be completed next week.
Peter wrote:
P> Mary wrote:
M>> We should meet today to discuss the marketing strategy.
P> Better wait, we do not have the West Coast sales data yet.
I agree with Peter. We need the sales data and also Nancy's
performance figures. Let's meet next Friday after lunch.
Trimming and reformatting
When replying to long discussions, particularly in newsgroup discussions, quoted text from the original message is often trimmed so as to leave only the parts that are relevant to the reply—or only a reminder thereof. This practice is sometimes called "trim-posting" or "edited posting", and is recommended by some manuals of posting etiquette.
Sometimes an indicator of deleted text is given, usually in the form of a square bracketed tag as: "[snipped]", "[trimmed]", or simply "[...]". The text that is retained may be edited to some extent, e.g. by re-folding the lines. For example, if the original message was
This is a reminder that the project meeting which was canceled
last week will be held today in the 3rd floor conference room at
14:30 sharp. Everybody must attend. --Mary
the reply may be
> the project meeting [...] will be held today in the 3rd floor
> conference room
Mary, be sure to check the mics in that room. --Joe
or even just
> 3rd floor conference room
Mary, be sure to check the mics in that room. --Joe
Deleted text may also be replaced by a summary in brackets:
On Thursday, Jim wrote:
> The movie clearly adds a sense of menace to the story
> which is not present in the original book.
> [...claim that the darker tone weakens the movie...]
I disagree. The darker tone works well, once one understands
the two are aimed at different audiences.
Automatically included text (such as signature blocks, free e-mail service ads, and corporate disclaimers) are more likely to be deleted, usually without ellipses, than manually written text. Some posters may delete any parts of the original message that they are not replying to. Some posters delete only parts dealing with issues that they see as "closed", and leave any parts that, in their opinion, deserve further discussion or will be replied to in a later message.
How much to trim
Some style guides recommend that, as a general rule, quoted material in replies should be trimmed or summarized as much as possible, keeping only the parts that are necessary to make the readers understand the replies. That of course depends on how much the readers can be assumed to know about the discussion. For personal e-mail, in particular, the subject line is often sufficient, and no quoting is necessary; unless one is replying to only some points of a long message.
In particular, when replying to a message that already included quoted text, one should consider whether that quoted material is still relevant. For example:
>> [Mary:] Shall we meet this afternoon to discuss the
>> marketing strategy? >
> [Peter:] Perhaps, if we can get all the information we need.
> Do we have the West Coast sales data yet?
The LA office just sent them in.
Joe
The quote from Mary's message is relevant to Peter's reply, but not to Joe's reply. The latter could have been trimmed to
> [Peter:] Do we have the West Coast sales data yet?
The LA office just sent them in.
Joe
On the other hand, in some situations, any trimming or editing of the original message may be inappropriate. For example, if the reply is being copied to a third person who did not see the original message, it may be advisable to quote it in full; otherwise the trimmed message may be misinterpreted by the new recipient, for lack of context.
Also, when replying to a customer or supplier, it may be advisable to quote the original message in its entirety, in case the other party somehow failed to keep a copy of it.
Placement of replies
Interleaved style
In the interleaved reply style (also called "inline reply", "interlined reply", "point-by-point rebuttal", or, sometimes, "bottom posting"), the original message is broken into two or more sections, each followed by a specific reply or comment. A reply in inline style may also include some top-posted or bottom-posted comments that apply to the whole reply message, rather than to a specific point. For example:
I have been following the discussion about the new product line. Here are my thoughts.
Joe wrote:
> Will our prices be competitive?
That may not be a problem for now, we still have a quality edge.
> We do not have enough trained people on the West Coast. We have many
> new employees but they do not know our products yet.
We can bring them here for a crash training course.
Mary wrote:
> We still do not have a clear marketing plan.
Peter, would you take charge of that? Let me know if you need help.
On the whole, I am quite optimistic. It looks like we will be shipping
the basic system before the end of this quarter.
Nancy
The interleaved reply style can also be combined with top-posting: selected points are quoted and replied to, as above, and then a full copy of the original message is appended.
> Can you present your report an hour later?
Yes I can. The summary will be sent no later than 5pm.
Jim
At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote: >> 2.00pm: Present report > Jim, I have a meeting at that time. Can you present your report an hour later?
> >> 4.30pm: Send out summary of feedback > Also if you do the above, this may need to happen later too.
> Danny
>
> At 9.40am Wednesday, Jim wrote: >> My schedule for today will be:
>> 10.00am: Gather data for report
>> 2.00pm: Present report to team
>> 4.30pm: Send out summary of feedback
>> Jim
Interleaving was the predominant reply style in the Usenet discussion lists, years before the existence of the WWW and the spread of e-mail and the Internet outside the academic community.
Interleaving was also common originally in e-mail, because many internet users had been exposed to Usenet newsgroups and other Internet forums, where it is still used. The style became less common for email after the opening of the internet to commercial and non-academic personal use. One possible reason is the large number of casual e-mail users that entered the scene at that time. Another possible reason is the inadequate support provided by the reply function of some webmail readers, which either do not automatically insert a copy of the original message into the reply, or do so without any quoting prefix level indicators. Finally, most forums, wiki discussion pages, and blogs (such as Slashdot) essentially impose the bottom-post format, by displaying all recent messages in chronological order.. Interleaving continues to be used on technical mailing lists where clarity within complex threads is important..
Top-posting
In top-posting style, the original message is included verbatim, with the reply above it. It is sometimes referred to by the acronym TOFU ("text over, fullquote under"). It has also been colloquially referred to as Jeopardy! reply style: as in the game show's signature clue/response format, the answers precede the question.
Example:
No problem. 6pm it is then.
Jim
-------- Original Message --------
From: Danny <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:01 AM
To: Jim <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Job
Whoa! Hold on. I have a job scheduled at 5:30 which mails out
a report to key tech staff. Could you please push it back an hour?
Danny
-------- Original Message --------
From: Jim <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 9:40 AM
To: Danny <[email protected]>
Subject: Job
I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
minutes tonight, starting at 5pm, to install some updates
and important fixes.
Jim
Top-posting preserves an apparently unmodified transcript of a branch in the conversation. Often all replies line up in a single branch of a conversation. The top of the text shows the latest replies. This appears to be advantageous for business correspondence, where an e-mail thread can dupe others into believing it is an "official" record.
By contrast, excessive indentation of interleaved and bottom posting may turn difficult to interpret. If the participants have different stature such as manager vs. employee or consultant vs. client, one person's cutting apart another person's words without the full context may look impolite or cause misunderstanding.
In the earlier days of Usenet informal discussions where everyone was an equal encouraged bottom-posting. Until the mid-1990s, posts in a net.newcomers newsgroup insisted on interleaving replies. Usenet comp.lang hierarchy, especially comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++ insisted on the same as of the 2010s. The alt hierarchy tolerated top-posting. Newer online participants, especially those with limited experience of Usenet, tend to be less sensitive to arguments about posting style.
Top-posting can be problematic on mailing lists with ongoing discussions which eventually require someone to act on the top-posted material. For example, top-posting "Those changes look ok to me, go ahead and make them" can be very inconvenient, as readers may need to read through a long email trail to know which changes the top-poster is referring to. Inter-leaving the text directly below the text describing the changes is much more convenient in these cases.
Users of mobile devices, like smartphones, are encouraged to use top-posting because the devices may only download the beginning of a message for viewing. The rest of the message is only retrieved when needed, which takes additional download time. Putting the relevant content at the beginning of the message requires less bandwidth, less time, and less scrolling for the user.
Top-posting is a natural consequence of the behavior of the "reply" function in many current e-mail readers, such as Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and others. By default, these programs insert into the reply message a copy of the original message (without headers and often without any extra indentation or quotation markers), and position the editing cursor above it. Moreover, a bug present on most flavours of Microsoft Outlook caused the quotation markers to be lost when replying in plain text to a message that was originally sent in HTML/RTF.
For these and possibly other reasons, many users seem to accept top-posting as the "standard" reply style.
Partially because of Microsoft's influence, top-posting is very common on mailing lists and in personal e-mail.
Top-posting has always been the standard format for forwarding a message to a third party, in which case the comments at the top (if any) are a "cover note" for the recipient.
Bottom-posting
In the "bottom-posting" style, the reply is appended to a full or partial copy of the original message. The name bottom-posting is sometimes used for inline-style replies, and indeed the two formats are the same when only one point is being replied to.
At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote: > At 9.40am Wednesday, Jim wrote: >> I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
>> minutes tonight, starting at 5pm, to install some updates
>> and important fixes.
> Whoa! Hold on. I have a job scheduled at 5:30 which mails out
> a report to key tech staff. Could you push it back an hour?
>
> By the way, which systems will be updated? I had some network
> problems after last week's update. Will I have to reboot?
No problems. 6pm it is then.
Basically, I will update our WWW server and firewall.
No, you won't have to reboot.
Bottom-posting, like inline replies, encourages posters to trim the original message as much as possible, so that readers are not forced to scroll past irrelevant text, or text that they have already seen in the original message:
At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote: > Could you push it back an hour?
> [...] which systems will be updated?
> [...] Will I have to reboot?
No problems. 6pm it is then.
Basically, I will update our WWW server and firewall.
No, you won't have to reboot.
Choosing the proper posting style
The choice between interleaved, top and bottom posting generally depends on the forum and on the nature of the message. Some forums (such as personal e-mail) are quite tolerant, in which case the proper style is dictated by taste and effectiveness. In any case one should consider whether the reply will be easily read by the intended recipient(s). Their e-mail interfaces may have different rules for handling quoted line markers and long lines, so a reply that looks readable in one's screen may be jumbled and incorrectly colored on theirs. Blank lines and judicious trimming of the original text may help avoid ambiguity.
The interleaved reply style can require more work in terms of labeling lines, but possibly less work in establishing the context of each reply line. It also keeps the quotes and their replies close to each other and in logical reading order, and encourages trimming of the quoted material to the bare minimum. This style makes it easier for readers to identify the points of the original message that are being replied to; in particular, whether the reply misunderstood or ignored some point of the original text. It also gives the sender freedom to arrange the quoted parts in any order, and to provide a single comment to quotations from two or more separate messages, even if these did not include each other.
Top- and bottom-posting are sometimes compared to traditional written correspondence in that the response is a single continuous text, and the whole original is appended only to clarify which letter is being replied to. Customer service e-mail practices, in particular, often require that all points be addressed in a clear manner without quoting, while the original e-mail message may be included as an attachment. Including the whole original message may be necessary also when a new correspondent is included in an ongoing discussion. Especially in business correspondence, an entire message thread may need to be forwarded to a third party for handling or discussion. On the other hand, in environments where the entire discussion is accessible to new readers (such as newsgroups or online forums), full inclusion of previous messages is inappropriate; if quoting is necessary, the interleaved style is probably best.
If the original message is to be quoted in full, for any reason, bottom-posting is usually the most appropriate format—because it preserves the logical order of the replies and is consistent with the Western reading direction from top to bottom.
It is not uncommon during discussions concerning top-posting vs. bottom-posting to hear quotes from "Netiquette Guidelines (RFC 1855)". While many RFCs are vetted and approved though a committee process, some RFCs, such as RFC 1855, are just "Informational" and in reality, sometimes just personal opinions. (Additional information on "Informational" RFCs can be found in RFC 2026, under "4.2.2 Informational" and "4.2.3 Procedures for Experimental and Informational RFCs".) The nature of RFC 1855 should be considered while reading the following discussion.
According to RFC 1855, a message can begin with an abbreviated summary; i.e. a post can begin with a paraphrasing instead of quoting selectively. Specifically, it says:
Interleaved reply combined with top-posting combines the advantages of both styles. However this also results in some portions of the original message being quoted twice, which takes up extra space and may confuse the reader.
In forwarding it is sometimes preferred to include the entire original message (including all headers) as a MIME attachment, while in top-posted replies these are often trimmed or replaced by an attribution line. An untrimmed quoted message is a weaker form of transcript, as key pieces of meta information are destroyed. (This is why an ISP's Postmaster will typically insist on a forwarded copy of any problematic e-mail, rather than a quote.) These forwarded messages are displayed in the same way as top-posting in some mail clients. Top-posting is viewed as seriously destructive to mailing-list digests, where multiple levels of top-posting are difficult to skip. The worst case would be top-posting while including an entire digest as the original message.
Some believe that "top-posting" is appropriate for interpersonal e-mail, but inline posting should always be applied to threaded discussions such as newsgroups.
This example is occasionally used in mailing lists to mock and discourage top-posting:
Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
Top-posting.
What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Bottom-posting preserves the logical order of the replies and is consistent with the Western reading direction from top to bottom.
The major argument against bottom-posting is that scrolling down through a post to find a reply is inconvenient, especially for short replies to long messages, and many inexperienced computer users may not know that they need to scroll down to find a reply to their query. When sending an untrimmed bottom-posted message, one might indicate inline replies with a notice at the top such as "I have replied below." However, as many modern mail programs are capable of displaying different levels of quotation with different colors (as seen in the bottom-posting example on this page), this is not so much of an issue any more. Another method to indicate that there is more reply text still to come is to always end your text with a signature line. Then a reader who is familiar with your reply style will know to continue to read until your signature line appears. This method is particularly polite and useful when using the inline reply method, since it tells the reader that your response is complete at the point where your signature line appears.
Quoting support in popular mail clients
This widespread policy in business communication made bottom and inline posting so unknown among most users that some of the most popular email programs no longer support the traditional posting style. For example, Microsoft Outlook (when replying to an HTML message), AOL, and Yahoo! make it difficult or impossible to indicate which part of a message is the quoted original or do not let users insert comments between parts of the original. When replying to a plain text message with Microsoft Outlook when configured to plain text mode however, Outlook properly uses Quoted line markers allowing for easy insertion of comments between parts of the original. Unfortunately however, the default mode is HTML and few users bother to change the default settings.
Yahoo! does not have the option "Quote the text of the original message" in Mail Classic, but this setting is retained after turning it on in All-New Mail and then switching back to Mail Classic. Inline replying is broken in Microsoft Outlook, which despite choosing the setting to prefix each line of the original with the "greater-than" character (>) produces a blue line that makes answers inserted between quotes of an HTML email look like part of the original. The workarounds are to use the setting "read all standard mail in plain text", or to use the "Edit Message" option on the original email and convert it to plain text before replying (then discard the edited version).
References
External links
"top-post" in The Jargon File (version 4.4.7)
Quoting Style—How to use quote using interleaved quoting instead of top-posting
Why is Bottom-posting better than Top-posting
Outlook Quotefix, Outlook Express Quotefix and OE PowerTool—third party utilities for automatically reformatting quoted text in Microsoft mail products
The Trim-Posting Manifesto
Using Internet e-mail
The Aglami Top-Posting FAQ
(see #9 for comments on proper inline quoting)
(see the fourth paragraph)
Email
Etiquette
Internet culture
Usenet
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebulon%20Vance
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Zebulon Vance
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Zebulon Baird "Zeb" Vance (May 13, 1830 – April 14, 1894) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 37th and 43rd governor of North Carolina, a U.S. Senator from North Carolina, and a Confederate officer during the American Civil War.
A prolific writer and noted public speaker, Vance became one of the most influential Southern leaders of the Civil War and postbellum periods. As a leader of the New South, Vance favored the rapid modernization of the Southern economy, railroad expansion, school construction, and reconciliation with the North. In addition, he frequently spoke out against antisemitism. Although Vance was considered progressive by many during his lifetime, he was also a slave owner and is now regarded as a racist by modern historians and biographers.
Early life
Vance was born in a log cabin in the settlement of Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina near present-day Weaverville, and was baptized at the Presbyterian Church on Reems Creek. He was the third of eight children of Mira Margaret Baird and David Vance Jr., a farmer and innkeeper. His paternal grandfather, David Vance, was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons and a colonel in the American Revolutionary War, serving under George Washington at Valley Forge. His maternal grandfather was Zebulon Baird, a state senator from Buncombe County, North Carolina. His uncle was Congressman Robert Brank Vance, namesake of his elder brother, Congressman Robert B. Vance.
Around 1833, the Vance family moved to Lapland, now Marshall, North Carolina. There, David Vance operated a stand, providing drovers with provisions as they moved hogs and other animals along the Buncombe Turnpike to markets to the south and east. Although frequently short of cash, the family enslaved as many as eighteen people. Vance's family had an unusually large library for its era and location, left to them by an uncle.
At the age of six, Vance attended schools operated by M. Woodson, Esq., first at Flat Creek and, later, on the French Broad River. Both were far enough from home that he had to board with others. He also was a student at a school in Lapland run by Jane Hughey.
While a youth, Vance broke his thigh when he fell from a tree. This was treated by confining Vance in a box, as was common medical care at the time. As a result of this injury, his right leg was shorter, requiring him to wear a taller heel on the right shoe. Even so, it was said that Vance had "a peculiar and slightly ambling gate".
When he was thirteen years old in the fall of 1843, Vance went to the Washington College in Tennessee. In January 1844, his father died from a construction accident, forcing Vance to withdraw before the school year was over. Mira Vance sold much of the family's property to pay her husband's many debts and to support her seven children. As one writer noted, the family was "embarrassed with debt". She moved her family to nearby Asheville, bringing along enslaved women and children as household workers. However, the family still lacked the money to send Vance back to school in Tennessee. Instead, Vance and his brother Robert attended Newton Academy in Asheville.
To help support his family, Vance worked for John H. Patton as a hotel clerk in Warm Springs, now Hot Springs, North Carolina. In Asheville, Vance studied law under attorney John W. Woodfin. When he was 21 years old, Vance wrote family friend, David L. Swain, asking for a loan to study law in college. Swain was a former North Carolina governor and then president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Swain was also an elementary schoolmate of Vance's mother. Swain arranged for a $300 loan for Vance from the university.
Vance attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill starting in July 1851 and had a "brilliant academic year". One of his classmates, Major James W. Wilson, recalled Vance's arrival in Chapel Hill with "homemade shoes and clothes, about three inches of between pants and shoes, showing his sturdy ankles...." Another classmate, Kemp P. Battle, wrote Vance "had a brain large and active; a memory tenacious, a nature overflowing with joyous love of fun, and to a surprising degree accurate information of many subjects and many authors." While at the university, Vance was a member of the Dialectic Society which helped improve his oratory skills, as well as his ability to speak extemporarily. He also joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Vance received an LL.D in 1852 and repaid the loan from the university with interest.
Vance then went to Raleigh where he studied law with Judge William Horn Battle of the North Carolina Supreme Court and Samuel F. Phillips, former Solicitor General of the United States.
Antebellum career
Attorney
On January 1, 1852, Vance was admitted to the North Carolina Bar and received his county court license in Raleigh. He returned to Asheville where he practiced law. Vance said, "I went out to Court horseback, and carried a pair of saddle bags with a change of shirts and the North Carolina Form book...." Almost immediately, the Buncombe County magistrates elected Vance as Solicitor of the Court of Pleas. He was admitted to the state's superior courts in 1853. In 1858, he became partners with attorney William Caleb Brown.
Although he did not always prepare fully for cases, Vance was skilled at reading the jury and remembering every detail of testimony. However, his success in court "was usually the result of wit, humor, boisterous eloquence, and clever retorts, not knowledge of the law."
North Carolina Senate
After canvassing for Whig presidential candidate Winfield Scott in 1852, Vance became interested in his entry into politics. In 1853, he was a delegate representing Buncombe County at a railroad convention in Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. The goal of the convention was to convince the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad to build a route through the mountains in Western North Carolina.
Next, Vance ran as a Whig candidate for the North Carolina Senate, winning with a term starting in December 1854. Vance was a Whig in the mode of Henry Clay. He wrote, “I was raised in the Whig faith, and taught to revere the names of Clay, Webster, and other great leaders of that party.” Whig policies were more beneficial to Western North Carolina and its smaller farms where Vance was from, while the Democratic Party of that era tended to advocate for the owners of large slave plantations found in Eastern North Carolina.
While in the legislature, Vance worked on issues related to transportation in Western North Carolina, including introducing a bill for a public road in Yancey County and another bill to authorize subscriptions to fund the French Broad and Greenville Railroad. He also supported extending the Western North Carolina Railroad into the state's mountain counties, favoring a route that would take the tracks to Knoxville, Tennessee by way of Asheville, North Carolina.
When the Whig Party collapsed over the issue of slavery in 1854, Vance refused to join the primarily Southern Democratic Party or the anti-slavery Republicans, ultimately settling on the American Party or Know-Nothings. However, Vance lost his campaign for reelection to the North Carolina Senate in 1856 to David Coleman.
Journalism
In March 1855, John D. Hyman of the Asheville Spectator convinced Vance to join the newspaper as an editorial assistant. He predicted that Vance would have "a brilliant career in the editorial line". This weekly newspaper was published from 1853 to 1858 and was the leading Whig paper in the region. One of the stories Vance wrote was about the search for Dr. Elisha Mitchell who disappeared in June 1857, having fallen to his death while trying to prove which peak was the highest in North Carolina. Mitchell taught Vance geology at the University of North Carolina, and Vance immediately volunteered for the search party. His account of the search, published in the Spectator in July 1857, is considered the most complete record of the tragic event.
Vance stopped working as joint editor of the Spectator after a year, but became half-owner of the newspaper. However, Hyman's steadfast support of Vance in the Spectator was a huge help to Vance's political career. The opposition paper, the Asheville News wrote, "Mr. Vance is the Spectator's specialty, and at every mention of his name it sputters and snaps and snarls like a cat with its tail in a steel trap. To question the correctness of his views on a public issue, the Spectator seems to regard as little short of treason."
U.S. Congress
In 1858, Vance ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress opened by the resignation of Thomas Lanier Clingman. For this campaign, he went on a fifteen-county speaking tour that "set the mountains on fire". Vance was elected for a term starting in December 1858. At 28 years old, he was the youngest member of Congress at the time. He was reelected in 1859 over his former political opponent David Coleman.
Salaries and deficits
When Congress proposed giving a $10,000 or 25% increase in fringe benefits to each representative in the next session, Vance spoke out. He said, "I do not think he [my successor] is entitled to $10,000 more for miscellaneous items than I am myself...the whole bill reminds me very much of the bills I have seen of fast young men at fashionable hotels: For two days board, $5, sundries, $50. It is like a comet, a very small body with an exceedingly great tail."
Similarly, he showed a dislike for the recurring Treasury deficit. Ignoring the figures and charts presented by his colleagues, Vance said, "As we are in debt, and spending more than our income, and our income is derived principally from the tariff, we have to do one of three things; either raise that income, lower our expenses, or walk into the insolvent court and file our schedule. I do not think there is, or ever was, a political economist on earth who could deny these propositions."
Slavery and secession
While serving in Congress Vance was pro-slavery, saying in March 1860:
Plainly and unequivocally, common sense says keep the slave where he is now—in servitude. The interest of the slave himself imperatively demands it. The interest of the master, of the United States, of the world, nay of humanity itself, says, keep the slave in his bondage; treat him humanely, teach him Christianity, care for him in sickness and old age, and make his bondage light as may be; but above all, keep him a slave and in strict subordination; for that is his normal condition; the one in which alone he can promote the interest of himself or his fellows.
Despite his support for the institution of slavery, Vance was openly against North Carolina's secession from the union, preferring a strategy where both slavery and the union could be preserved. In writing to a friend, he advised caution about secession:
"We have everything to gain and nothing on earth to lose by delay, but by too hasty action we may take a fatal step that we never can retrace—may lose a heritage that we can never recover though we seek it earnestly and with tears.”
However, Vance was in favor of a secession convention so that the people of North Carolina could make their own decision. In March 1861, Vance traveled throughout North Carolina, trying to persuade the State not to follow South Carolina by seceding. In April, he was addressing a large crowd when a telegraph was read announcing the firing on Fort Sumter and President Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers. At that moment, Vance recalled sadly changing into a secessionist be he "preferred to shed northern rather than southern blood." On the spot, he shifted his speech to a call to fight for South Carolina. After the Battle of Fort Sumter, Vance resigned from Congress and headed home to Buncombe County.
Civil War
Soldier
On May 4, 1861, two weeks before North Carolina seceded, Vance raised a company of local men known as the Rough and Ready Guards and became their captain. The Rough and Ready Guards became part of Company F, 14th North Carolina Infantry, and encamped near Morganton, North Carolina. By June 1861, Vance and the 14th were in Suffolk, Virginia, helping to defend Norfolk. That August, Vance was elected colonel of the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, stationed at Fort Macon in Carteret County, North Carolina. The Rough and Ready Guards followed Vance to the 26th.
Vance and the 26th engaged in the Battle of New Bern in March 1862. Although outnumbered four to one, Vance's troops held back the enemy for five hours and were the last Confederates to leave the battlefield. Vance wrote his wife praising the performance of his men.” Even in their 35-mile forced retreat, Vance showed bravery. He nearly drowned swimming 75 yards across the flooded Bryce's Creek to get boats for his men—the three soldiers who swam with him drowned.
In July 1862, Vance and the 26th were at the Seven Days Battles at Malvern Hill outside of Richmond, Virginia. The Confederates were not victorious, but Vance again showed "unflinching leadership". When North Carolina needed a new governor, his name was immediately mentioned.
Governor, 1st term
Campaign
In 1862, Vance ran for governor as the "soldier's candidate" and easily won over secessionist Democrat William J. Johnston of Charlotte. Vance did not leave his troops to campaign, nor did he give any speeches or present a platform. Instead, he wrote a letter that was published in the Fayetteville Observer saying, "If, therefore, my fellow citizens believe that I could serve the great Cause better as Governor than I am now doing, and should see proper to confer this responsibility upon me without solicitation on my part, I should not feel at liberty to decline it, however conscious of my own unworthiness.”
His campaign was overseen by William W. Holden of Raleigh's North-Carolina Standard and Edward J. Hale, of the Fayetteville Observer. Holden had been driven out of the Democratic Party in 1860 because he opposed secession. Holden, like Vance, was now a member of the Conservative Democratic Party of North Carolina, a coalition of former Whigs and Democrats who were against secession. Holden simply wrote that voters should "elect the man who defended their homes", noting that Johnston was at home tending to his railroads while Vance was "in the face of the foe, with his sword drawn, ready for action". It also helped that Johnston's Democratic party could be blamed for "high prices, conscription, military defeats, suffering of the soldiers, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus".
Vance received 54,423 of 74,871 total votes, carrying all but twelve of the state's counties. This continues to be the largest margin of victory for a governor's race in the history of North Carolina. Vance was serving with the 26th in the trenches at Petersburg, Virginia when he learned about the outcome of the election. He resigned his commission and traveled to Raleigh to become governor. At the time, he was 32 years old.
War Governor
For his inauguration on September 8, 1862, Vance's old regimental band, the Johnny Rebs, performed “Governor Vance’s Inauguration March”. During his address, Vance said he would "prosecute the war until the South obtained its independence". This helped calm the North Carolina Democrats and the Confederate government whom both feared Vance would rejoin the union or withdraw from the Confederacy. General Robert E. Lee said, "Vance's oratory was worth 5,000 soldiers".
Vance's first objective was to confine the Union troops in the eastern counties, hold the state's main port Wilmington, and protect the Weldon Railroad. Thus, he worked with the Confederate war department to add troops at Kinston, North Carolina to protect the railroad and watch the enemy encampments. Despite Vance's continued requests to Richmond for more troops and reinforcements, he was ignored and North Carolina's defenses failed when 10,000 Union troops advanced on Kinston in December 1862. To help solve the shortage of soldiers, Vance offered amnesty to all deserters who returned to service; large numbers of North Carolina's soldiers returned to active duty in 1863.
Vance aspired to provide the state's troops with needed food, clothing, and weapons. He also demonstrated concern for the soldiers' families. He continued to operate salt works on the coast, selling the salt at one-third of its value and distributing salt supplies to every county for meat preservation. He also proposed a welfare system and kept the textile mills operational. To achieve this, Vance used blockade runners to export North Carolina's cotton abroad. This yielded funds to provide food and money for the general population and to keep mills open; the legislature was able to issue $6,000,000 to the poor. The blockade runners also brought needed shoes, blankets, and medicine. Vance used the material manufactured in the state’s mills to benefit the soldiers, getting women and children to make the uniforms in their homes. As a result, North Carolina was the only state to clothe and equip its regiments during the Civil War. Vance also shared surpluses with the rest of the Confederacy; General James Longstreet's troops received 12,000 uniforms from North Carolina after the Battle of Chickamauga.
Vance was a major proponent of individual rights and local self-government, often putting him at odds with the Confederate government. When President Jefferson Davis said to indefinitely imprison Southerners suspected of "disloyalty" without a trial, Vance refused to deprive North Carolinians of their constitutional right, saying he would rather recall the state's soldiers fighting in Virginia and use them to protect the liberties of North Carolinians. Davis did not risk challenging Vance; as a result, North Carolina was the only state to observe the right of habeas corpus and keep its courts fully functional during the war.
Vance also opposed Confederate conscription practices. He was especially against the policy that allowed the wealthy plantation owners to hire men to serve in the military in their place, a practice Vance called "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight". Postwar, Vance testified in the hearing investigating George Pickett's execution of 22 alleged Confederate deserters in the aftermath of the Battle of New Bern. He testified that the North Carolina's troops raised for local defense and that "the Confederate government did not keep faith with these local troops, who were transfer[red] to the regular service in violation of their enlistment agreement." His testimony questioned the legality of Pickett's decision to hang Confederate deserters who later fought for the Union and put Pickett at risk of prosecution for war crimes.
In his unpublished autobiography, Vance stated that his main reason for supporting the Confederate government was to preserve the institution of slavery. Historian Selig Adler wrote, "As war governor, Vance endeared himself forever to his people. He mitigated the horrors of war by insisting on the precedence of civil law, and stoutly protected the state from the uncomfortable militarism of the Confederate government."
Governor, 2nd term
Vance was reelected as governor in 1864, defeating former supporter, Unionist Democrat, and now peace candidate William Woods Holden.
In early April 1865, General William T. Sherman's troops neared Raleigh, North Carolina. Vance wrote to Sherman requesting a meeting, hoping to prevent the state's capital city from being pillaged. He requested safe conduct to discuss suspending hostilities and ending the war. Two of Vance's men met with Sherman; although they did not reach an agreement about ending the war, they did save Raleigh. Sherman was willing to talk to Vance, but by then Vance had been called to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet in Charlotte, North Carolina. At that meeting, the Confederate government released Vance from any obligations to defend the Confederacy.
On April 26, 1865, Vance learned that Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his forces to Sherman at the James Bennett farmhouse near Durham, North Carolina. On April 28, Vance gave a final proclamation to the people of his state, telling both civilians and soldiers "to retire quietly in their homes, and exert themselves in preserving order". He then surrendered to General John M. Schofield in the west parlor of Blandwood Mansion in Greensboro, North Carolina on May 2, 1865. Schofield accepted Vance's surrender and told him to go to Statesville, North Carolina where Mrs. Vance and their children were living, as he had no orders for Vance's arrest.
Some have said that Vance left Raleigh when it was captured by Sherman and that his house in Statesville was a temporary state capitol. These claims emerged as part of a political attack against Vance by Republicans during the 1876 governor's race. There is no evidence that Vance conducted official business in Statesville; rather, it seems he relinquished the office of governor once he left Raleigh.
On May 29, 1865, William Woods Holden, Vance's former political opponent, was appointed governor of North Carolina by President Andrew Johnson.
Prisoner
Vance was arrested in Statesville on May 13, 1865, his 35th birthday, by General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. Samuel Wittkowsky, the man who gave prisoner Vance a wagon ride to the train station, noted that Vance was silently shedding tears at first. Then, wiping his eyes, Vance expressed concern for his wife and children who had no money to live on and worried about the "indignities" that North Carolina might suffer in the aftermath of the war.
After a short imprisonment in Raleigh, Vance arrived at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C on May 20, 1865. There, he shared a small cell with John Letcher, the former Governor of Virginia. Each man had an iron bed and chair. They had to pay for their meals which came from a local restaurant. Vance filed for parole on June 3, 1865, using President Johnson's amnesty program. At the time, Vance's wife was very ill, and Johnson's sympathies lay with reuniting the family. He paroled Vance on July 6, 1865, after an imprisonment of 47 days.
Vance was formally pardoned on March 11, 1867; although no formal charges were filed against him before his arrest, during his imprisonment, or during his parole.
Postbellum career
Attorney
After the war, Vance practiced law in Statesville briefly before moving to Charlotte, North Carolina where he formed a practice with Clement Dow and R. D. Johnson. In addition to Charlotte, he had court cases in Concord, Dallas, Lexington, Lincolnton, Monroe, and Salisbury. Among his clients was former Confederate soldier, Tom Dula, who was accused of murdering his girlfriend Laura Foster in 1866. While he succeeded in having the trial moved from Wilkesboro to Statesville, believing Dula could not receive a fair trial in Wilkes County, Dula was nevertheless convicted and, although he was given a new trial on appeal, Dula was convicted again and hanged on May 1, 1868. To the end of his life, Vance maintained that Dula was innocent. This high–profile murder is the subject of the folk song "Tom Dooley".
Fourteenth Amendment
Vance and other former Confederates were banned from returning to public office by the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868. Vance was depressed during this period and resented this limitation, especially since the same Amendment that kept him out of the politics he loved, granted African American men citizenship and full political rights. Around 1868, he began supporting Conservative Party politicians, using racist dialogue to gain other supporters.
In February 1868, Vance attended the North Carolina Conservation Convention, also called the Rebel Convention, in Raleigh. The Dailey Standard noted that the convention was noteworthy for its hatred of the government and formerly enslaved people. After many calls from the attendees for him to speak, Vance spontaneously talked about his lack of prejudice toward the formerly enslaved, commending their conduct and fidelity during the war. However, he affirmed his belief that only educated whites should vote in the South.
In 1870, the North Carolina legislature appointed Vance to the United States Senate, but because of the Fourteenth Amendment, he was not eligible to serve unless authorized by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. Vance spent two years unsuccessfully petitioning the Republican-dominated Senate to seat him; he ended up resigning from the appointment.
Lecture circuit
While he was kept out of politics, Vance earned income in the lecture circuit. His first important lecture was "The Duties of Defeat" which he gave at the University of North Carolina's commencement on June 7, 1866. Shortly afterward, he was speaking in venues ranging from county fairs to large lecture halls in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Baltimore. By the early 1870s, Vance had a national reputation as an outstanding platform speaker. His style "was peculiarly his own". He had a remarkable ability to adapt "to every type of audience using local illustrations and interest, and his keen, sparkling wit… Like Lincoln, Vance was one of the few men who could successfully combine incessant jocularity with seriousness and get credit for seriousness". Some of his popular speeches were "The Humorous Side of Politics" and "The Demagogue". He also discussed the aspects of the Civil War in "The Last Days of the War in North Carolina" and "The Political and Social South During the War".
Starting around 1870, Vance gave a speech called "Scattered Nation" hundreds of times, praising Jews and calling for religious tolerance and justice. Although Vance's motives for "Scattered Nation" are not fully known, it was not for political gain as there were less than 500 Jews in North Carolina at the time and antisemitism was common. One modern writer suggests Vance's perspective may have been impacted by his involvement with Freemasonry as this organization accepted Jews. Historian Leonard Rogoff, president of Jewish Heritage North Carolina, also notes that Vance established a relationship with Samuel Wittkowsky, a Jew and fellow Mason. When Vance was arrested, he was physically unable to walk to the train station and was only offered a mule by the federal troops; Vance was rescued from this humiliation by Wittkowsky who gave Vance a ride in his wagon. The two men's later friendship may have impacted Vance's perspective.
Yet, within the "Scattered Nation" call for tolerance to Jews, Vance also made his prejudices clear, saying, "[In] contrast to the Jews, the 'African negro' had contributed nothing to…the civilization of mankind" and that “laws and partisan courts alike have been used to force [African American men] into an equality with those whom he could not equal."
Governor, 3rd term
In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant signed an amnesty bill that included Vance. Vance ran for an open seat in the U.S. Senate but lost to Augustus Merrimon. In 1876, Vance was elected to his third term of Governor as North Carolina. However, he only served two years of the four-year term. His swearing-in in 1877 was accompanied by festivities that began a tradition of lavish gubernatorial inaugurations in the state.
Education
As a postbellum governor, Vance was considered progressive for his era. He proposed agricultural reforms, the expansion of teacher training through normal schools, and the addition of more public schools, including separate but equal access for African Americans. In his 1877 message to the legislature about creating normal schools, Vance says, "A school of a similar character should be established for the education of colored teachers, the want of which is more deeply felt by the black race even than the white. In addition to the fact that it is our plain duty to make no discrimination in the matter of public education…their desire for education is an extremely credible one, and should be gratified as far as our means will permit. In short, I regard it as an unmistakable policy to imbue these black people with a hearty North Carolina feeling and make them cease to look abroad for the aids to their progress and civilization, and the protection of their rights as they have been taught to do, and teach them to look to their State instead...."
Two years later, his message to the legislature announced that the Board of Education had created two normal schools—a summer institute at the University of North Carolina for white teachers and a new permanent institution, the State Colored Normal School, for black teachers at the Howard School in Fayetteville. The State Colored Normal School became Fayetteville State University.
Railroads
During his third term as governor, Vance brought the railroad to Western North Carolina, finally realizing his dream from the meeting at Cumberland Gap in 1853. In his first message to the legislature on January 13, 1877, he suggested that convicts should be sent to work on the Western North Carolina Railroad in McDowell County. Many of the state's convicts were freed slaves arrested under North Carolina's vagrancy laws which essentially allowed the imprisonment of those without jobs. Having found a free labor source, Vance then had to resolve a cash shortfall—the State did not have the funds to both equip and transport the convicts. He turned to J. E. Rankin, chair of the Buncombe County Commission, asking that local elites provide the needed $25,000. When Rankin sent a negative reply, Vance wrote a heated response. He then asked the Federal government.
Another problem facing Vance was that this railroad was the greatest engineering challenge east of the Rockies, requiring a climb of some in just over . One modern historian notes that the Blue Ridge railroad project became Vance's "personal crusade." Despite his ambitious goal of completing the railroad in two years, Vance wanted the convicts to be treated well. In July 1877, he wrote the Penitentiary Board when he learned that convicts working on both the Chester & Lenoir Narrow Gauge Railroad and the Spartanburg and Asheville Railroad had been subjected to cruel treatment, including being overworked and whipped. Vance wrote that such conditions were "not to be tolerated for a moment" and requested immediate punishment of those who were guilty of "such disgraceful conduct." However, the state only provided seven cents a day to feed each convict and the schedule worked the men seven days a week.
Despite Vance's intervention, at least 125 of the 558 convicts died because of inclement weather, inadequate housing, lack of food, and dangerous working conditions such as the cave-ins and accidents at the Swannanoa Tunnel that killed 21 people. Guards also shot men trying to escape. Historian Gordan McKinney says, "This episode thereby qualifies as one of the most egregious industrial–construction disasters in Appalachian history." Yet, Vance continued to push for the grueling pace of work.
In his January 1879 address to the legislature, Vance acknowledged some problems with the convict labor program. However, he never acknowledged his role in the tragedy. What his voting public remembered was that the new railroad network transported supplies to farms and factories, and then to markets, helping to stimulate the economy across the state.
U.S. Senate
In 1878, Vance was again elected to the United States Senate where he became a leader of the Democratic Party. Although Vance fought for Southern interests while in the Senate, he showed "little bitterness" towards the North. As a result, he helped unify Congress which was still struggling with the discord between North and South.
Vance was reelected to the Senate in 1885 and 1891, serving until he died in 1894. During his tenure, he chaired the committee on enrolled bills, chaired the committee on privileges and elections, served on the joint committee of the library, and served on the finance committee during the McKinley Tariff debates.
Reconstruction
In one of his earliest speeches before the Senate, Vance advocated for H.R. 2 which called for the removal of military oversight in Southern elections, the repeal of laws that gave Federal marshals control of Southern elections, and the removal of the requirement for Federal Court jurors to take the oath of allegiance. Vance said:Peace then came—no, not peace, but the end of war came—no not the end of war, but the end of legitimate, civilized war, and for three years you dallied with us. One day we were treated as though we were in the Union, and as though we had legitimate State governments in operation; another day, we were treated as though we were out of the Union, and our State governments were rebellious usurpations...You deposed our State governments and ejected from office every official, from Governor to township constable. and remitted us to a state of chaos...You disenfranchised at least ten percent of our citizens, embracing the wisest, best, and most experienced. You enfranchised slaves, the lowest and most ignorant; and you placed them over them as leaders of a class of men who have attained to the highest positions of infamy known to modern ages...The new governments went to work, and in a short space of four years, they plundered those eleven Southern States to the extent of $262,000,000; that is to say, they took all that we had that was amenable to larceny...It would be well enough for Republican leaders to remember that the inflexible law of compensation exists in politics as well as in other things...If we violate the laws of health we suffer bodily pains or early dissolution; if we violate the laws of society we suffer in public esteem; if we violate the laws of man we are subject to its pains and penalties; if we violate the laws of God, we will suffer the penalties of sin; if we violate the laws of nature we can reap none of the benefits which our knowledge of them now enables us to derive therefrom. So it is in politics....Later on in his speech, Vance asked, "Was it the Union you fought for or political supremacy?" He pointed out that the nation has benefitted from the leadership of other political parties. He also said, "To suppose the States are either unable, unwilling, or too corrupt to hold peaceful and honest elections, is to declare unmistakably that the people therein are incapable of self-government...For one, I can say, with unspeakable pride and absolute truth, that the people of North Carolina who sent me here are able, willing, and virtuous enough to fulfill these and all other higher functions of government; that they have ever done so since the keels of Raleigh's ships first grated upon the white sands of her shores; and God helping them, they and their children will continue to do so, if not destroyed by centralization…"
Vance also supported the Blair Education Bill which requested federal funding to help educate the freed slaves in the South. Although, Vance says, "I admit that there is no special provision in the constitution or perhaps one looking directly toward it for public education. But the men who formed the constitution had no idea that there would be the great civil war that occurred. They had no idea that 500,000 slaves would be liberated by that war, and still less of an idea that the 500,000 slaves would be forced into…absolute equality of citizenship...They had no idea that their institutions and work of their hand would ever be committed to ignorant and unlettered Africans for protection and preservation." Vance also pointed out North Carolina's successes in creating schools to educate the freed slaves.
In a speech on January 30, 1890, regarding Senate Bill 1121 which authorized people of color to emigrate from Southern states, Vance comes close to speaking against slavery, saying, "Those of us in the South who had deprecated the war and deplored the agitation which led to it, as we sat in the ashes of our own homes and scraped ourselves with potsherds of desolation, yet consoled ourselves for the slaughter of our kindred and the devastation of our fields by the reflection that this, at least, was the end; that the great original wrong committed by our fathers had at last been atoned for...." Yet, Vance's racism shows when he talks about reconstruction. He said, "The truth is, he [the former slave] began to prosper when the [Southern] whites took control. Progress for him would have been impossible under his own rule as it was for the whites. Ten more years of such government as reconstruction fixed upon the South would have made the fairest portion of the American continent a wilderness. In short, it would have been Africanized..." However, Vance is "glad to say that North Carolina is one of the States in the South where there is the least complaint of infringement of the colored man's rights, either at the ballot box or in the courts of justice...That there are instances of mistreatment and occasionally of cruelty to the negros now and then occurring in the South I candidly admit and regret."
Vance also outlined his vision of the future, with a bit of sarcasm:The millennium has not yet arrived in the land of reconstruction; the reign of perfect righteousness, of absolute justice, has not yet been established south of Mason and Dixon's line, though of course, it is in full operation north of that imaginary division. There is no suppression of the popular vote by jerrymander or otherwise; there is no purchase of the floating vote in blocks of five, no ejection of colored children from white schools or colored men from theaters and barbers chairs, and where we may hope that, in the process of time and in the spread of intelligence and increased appreciation for the virtues of the negroes, one black man may soon be sent to Congress from the North; that some railroad attorney or millionaire will make room in the Senate of the United States for the colored brother; that one colored postmaster for a white town may be appointed in the North; that in the State of Kansas, the soil so prolific in friendships for the colored man, a respectable negro, duly nominated on the Republican ticket, may receive the full vote of his party, and not be scratched almost to the point of defeat by those who love him, as he was in Topeka; that one accomplished colored man may be sent abroad to represent his country in some other land than Hayti [sic] or Liberia.In reality, Vance believed in white supremacy. He said, "I am not only willing but anxious to have justice done them in everything, and to do all that may be required of me to aid them [former slaves] in the difficulties of their position; but I am not willing that they should rule my people."
Farmers' Alliance
Vance also faced a political challenge with the Farmers' Alliance in North Carolina. Some claimed Vance made concessions with this organization to gain reelection to the Senate because the Farmers' Alliance essentially served as a third political party at the time. On the flip side, Vance was accused of being insincere in his dealings with the Farmers' Alliance, such as introducing a bill on their behalf with no effort made towards getting it passed. However, from the beginning, Vance tended to side with the masses, including the farming class. In addition, both Vance and the farmers agreed on the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Furthermore, the organization's origins in North Carolina started with Vance. Because Vance was against tariffs which he felt enriched the few and impoverished the many, he encouraged North Carolina's farmers to organize so they could collectively defend themselves against outside forces. Later, he introduced Senate Bill 2806, aka the sub-treasury scheme, at the request of North Carolina's first Commissioner of Agriculture, Leonidas L. Polk, who had become president of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union. However, after investigating the sub-treasury scheme, Vance came to believe that it was both impracticable and unconstitutional. Although he was not on board for this solution to the farmer's needs, Vance nevertheless praised the Farmer's Alliance in correspondence to its president, noting, "For the past six months there has been more discussion upon the condition of the farmer and matters pertaining to their interests than have taken place within ten years prior. The more of this talk, the better for the farmers. Their wrongs are so palpable that the justice of readdressing them will become more and more irresistible as the light is turned on. The policy of the farmers, being right now, is to keep within the right. Demand nothing that is illegal, ask nothing that is unreasonable." Vance also hinted that the sub-treasury scheme could be harmful to him and that the farmers should stand by their friend.
When the North Carolina legislature stated that their appointed Senator for the 1891 term should vote for the sub-treasury scheme, Vance "positively and emphatically declined" to agree to be elected under such constraints. Rather than give up Vance, the legislature reworded their instructions to request that Vance "use all honorable means" to secure financial reforms. Yet Vance was loath to accept any such conditions. In a letter written to a member of the legislature on April 1, 1897, Thomas J. Jarvis said, "There is no power on earth that could induce Vance to have accepted an office under conditions which he felt could be justly held to forfeit the affection and high esteem in which he is held to the people of his State."
Vance, who was dealing with poor health at the time, wrote a letter, rather than speaking in public, about the need for Democrats to fight the Republicans who want to limit rights given by the Constitution. Vance stated that the "situation is most critical" and cautioned against splitting the Democratic Party into two parties as this would only benefit the Republicans. Vance also reminds everyone, "Since I have been your representative in the Senate I have both spoken and voted against that unjust legislation. At home, as you know, I never ceased to expose inequalities and to advise farmers to organize for resistance to it...My unfaltering confidence is in the true farmers of North Carolina, who as members of the Alliance will, I trust, not permit their noble order and their just cause to be perverted and debased."
National issues
In national politics, Vance generally supported conservative President Grover Cleveland. He made a speech in North Carolina saying:Many of our people, it is true, have objected to Mr. Cleveland and preferred that he should not have been nominated. I confess that I was among that number. But an individual preference before the nomination of a candidate is one thing and the duty of a true man after that nomination has been fairly made is another and very different thing indeed...If we refuse to abide by the voice of the majority of our fellow Democrats, freely and unmistakably expressed in friendly convention, there is an end of all associated party effort in the government of our country; if we personally participate in that...convention and then refuse to abide by the decision of its tribunal...then there is an end of all personal honor among all men, and the confidence which is necessary to all combined efforts is forever gone.Vance opposed important legislation of the era such as the McKinley Tariff, civil service programs, the internal revenue service, and the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act—gaining a reputation as an opposition senator. Vance was also against capitalistic monopolies and the government purchasing railroads and telegraph lines, as well as a monopoly by national banks. However, he did not believe railroads or other non-government entities should be allowed to own more public land than was needed for their primary function.
Vance supported increasing the volume of currency and silver coinage; at the time, the amount of paper and coin money released could not exceed the gold in the treasury. Vance made his last speech in the Senate on September 1, 1893, speaking against House Bill 1, regarding the unconditional repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act that was approved in 1890. Although noticeably weakened from illness, Vance spoke for two hours and gave what many consider the best speech of his career. Early in the speech, Vance simply explains, "When money is abundant prices are high; when money is scarce the prices of all products are low. Therefore, he that increases the abundance of money benefits the production and enhances prices and wages, and he that contracts or diminishes the amount of this money depreciates everything which is for sale, including wages...The effect upon the well-being of mankind which would follow the destruction of one-half of this currency—it is impossible to accurately describe."
Ku Klux Klan
After the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged as an organization of terror throughout the South, including North Carolina. Modern detractors and some modern biographers claim that Vance was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
The first known source to connect the two is an affidavit to the Congress's Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States from Thomas A. Hope of Lincoln County, North Carolina. In his affidavit, Hope states, "[I] frequently heard it talked among the [KKK] members that Z. B. Vance was the chief of the State; do not know this of my own knowledge, have only heard it talked of."
In her 1924 self-published book, Authentic History Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1877, Susan Lawrence Davis states that Vance was the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan for North Carolina. Davis had a history of fakery and appears to have plagiarized a 1906 historical romance novel by Thomas Dixon Jr. when writing her nonfiction Klan history. Modern experts note other discrepancies in Authentic History, including fabricated descriptions of Klan costumes, giving reason to question any claims she made about Vance.
However, Davis's report of Vance's association with the Klan is repeated in many credible books in the 20th century, such as historian Stanly Fitzgerald Horn's Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–187. Horne writes, "Ex-Governor Zebulon Baird Vance was generally supposed to be the Grand Dragon of the Realm, and the testimony of the confessed Ku Klux was to the effect that within the Klan Vance was generally looked upon as the chief of state."
In the 2004 biography, Zeb Vance: North Carolina's Civil War Governor and Gilded Age Political Leader, Gordon McKinney writes that Vance did publicly discuss the KKK in 1870 after a series of Ku Klux Klan incidents in Orange County, North Carolina. The statement issued by Vance reads: "I opposed the Ku Klux from the start...refusing to have anything to do with such an organization on the grounds that it was a secret society...I not only refused to approve of it but made a speech in a certain county against such organizations."
Similarly, in a review of Vance's writings of the era, historian Milton Ready notes, "[Vance] embraced the racial stereotypes of the time that deemed newly freed blacks inferior. Yet he loathed the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, condemning its members as cowards and 'ruffians,' its intimidating methods as unlawful." Regardless of what Vance was writing or saying, historian Joe T. Mobley says it is important to consider Vance's "acquiescence to the violence of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction." Vance also capitalized on "the tension created by the Klan in the mountain region to help the Conservatives sweep the western counties."
Personal life
Around 1851, Vance began to court Harriette "Hattie" Newell Espy, the orphaned daughter of Presbyterian minister Robert Espy. After he had passed the Bar and started a law practice, Vance married Harriette at Quaker Meadows, the home of her uncle Charles McDowell in Burke County, North Carolina on August 3, 1853. They had five sons: Robert Espy Vance (born 1854, died young), Charles Noel Vance (born 1856), David Mitchell Vance (born 1857), Zebulon Baird Vance Jr. (born 1860), and Thomas Malvern Vance (born 1862). The family lived on a lot in Asheville, North Carolina, purchased for $2,300 which came from Hattie's dowry. Vance enslaved six people—Isaac, Julia, Hannah, Marion, and two unnamed children—who cleaned the house, cooked, maintained the garden, did laundry, and helped rear the Vance children.
Vance joined the Mt. Hermon Lodge No. 118 Ancient Free and Accepted Masons in Asheville, reaching the degree of Master Mason on June 20, 1853. When he moved to Charlotte after the Civil War, Vance attended Phalanx Lodge No. 31. That lodge quickly grew in size with Vance's membership. In 1867, Vance co-founded the Excelsior Lodge No. 261 as the second lodge in Charlotte with Samuel Wittkowsky. However, Excelsior Lodge records show Vance as "Resident Mason—Not Member."
Vance was also one of the nineteen original stakeholders in the Asheville Cemetery Company which purchased land and hired landscape architect Charles T. Colyer to create Riverside Cemetery. In return, Vance received twenty grave plots and his choice of location within the cemetery.
Vance donated to keep the University of North Carolina operating. In 1875 when the university reopened after the war, he was asked to be its president, following in the footsteps of former Governor David Lowry Swain. However, Vance declined the offer. He said, "No, say to my friends that it would kill me in a few weeks to be obliged to behave as is required for a college president in order to furnish an example to the boys." He was a member of the Southern Historical Society, serving as its vice-president of North Carolina around 1873.
In February 1865, Vance had a stroke that caused temporary paralysis and “the muscles of the left cheek and eye to occasionally jerk and twitch....” In October 1878, the Vances moved into a residence on Fayetteville Street in Raleigh, the former home of Kemp P. Battle. Vance joined the church for the first time at the age of 48, choosing his wife's Presbyterian church. However, his wife Harriette died on November 3, 1878, after a long and painful illness, just one month after the death of Vance's mother. A train took Harriette's remains back to Asheville to be buried at Riverside Cemetery.
On January 21, 1880, Vance met Florence Steele Martin while attending a ball at the Riggs House hotel in Washington, D.C. Martin was a wealthy Catholic widow from Louisville, Kentucky, with a twelve-year-old son. When she returned home three weeks later, the two were engaged. Based on the more than 100 letters Vance sent her over the next four months, this was a love match. Vance told a friend that Mrs. Martin was perfect for him except for her religion. He wrote, "Think of it! What will my Presbyterian friends say to me?" In reality, there were legitimate concerns that her religion could negatively impact his political career, but Vance was not deterred. They married on June 17, 1880, some six months after meeting, in Oldham County, Kentucky at the home of her mother, Mrs. Samuel Steele. They did not have any children.
The couple lived at 1627 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., but also started building a house called Gombroom in Black Mountain, North Carolina. To fund Gombroom, Vance used his wife's money and sold land in downtown Asheville that he inherited from his mother. Vance was embarrassed that his new wife had more money than he did. Weeks before their wedding, he wrote her, "Tell them [her family] the simple truth about me Darling, as I told it to you—that I am a poor man & ever likely to be. You may boast of nothing for me except my love for you. …I do hope they will all learn to love me." Nevertheless, Gombroon was completed in 1887 and became their main home when Vance's health declined. Surrounded by forests, it was "the ideal retreat in the mountains of North Carolina" and had gardens, orchards, and vineyards, along with a dairy, springhouse, and other outbuildings.
In 1890, at the age of sixty, Vance gave more speeches than in any other year of his life. His nervous affliction from his previous stroke became worse, and back in Black Mountain, he fell from a wagon. His doctors feared he would go blind if they did not surgically remove one eye to save the other. The surgery was performed in early 1891, but he never returned to full health. Vance told William B. Bate, whom he sat next to in the Senate, "Misfortunes have their blessings, for surely no man can now deny that I have an eye single to the interests of my constituents."
In a kindness not always seen by political opponents, the entire Senate voted to pay for a private secretary for Vance from their contingency funds. However, Vance's health continued to decline from 1890 through 1894. As travel was believed to be curative in the 19th century, he visited Egypt, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scotland. Vance told his son that he "was home-sick while abroad and that the trip had made him a better American." In January 1894, he visited Jacksonville, Tampa, St. Augustine, and Suwannee Springs in Florida while the Senate was in session. When he returned to Washington, D.C. in April 1894, he could no longer walk. On April 14, 1894, Vance had another stroke, went into a coma, and died at his home in Washington D.C.
Services were held in the Senate chamber on April 16, 1894, which were attended by President Grover Cleveland, Vice President Adlai Stevenson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Melville Fuller and all but one of the associate justices, Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham, Secretary of the Treasury John G. Carlisle, Attorney General Richard Olney, Post Master General Wilson S. Bissell, Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert, Secretary of the Interior M. Hoke Smith, Secretary of Agriculture Julius Sterling Morton, the Speaker of the House Charles Frederick Crisp, and members of both the House of Representatives and Senate. The ambassador from England Sir Julian Paunceforte, other members of the diplomatic corps, and Bishop John J. Keane of Catholic University also attended. For the service, Vance's desk and chair were draped in black, and the floral decorations included pine to represent North Carolina. The service was followed by a funeral procession to the Pennsylvania Railroad Station.
Next, a funeral train took Vance's body to Raleigh, North Carolina for another service, and from there to Asheville, North Carolina for burial. He was accompanied by seven congressmen (John S. Henderson, William T. Crawford, and Sydenham B. Alexander of North Carolina; John C. Black of Illinois; Elijah V. Brookshire of Indiana; Luther M. Strong of Ohio; and Charles Daniels of New York), six senators (Matt W. Ransom of North Carolina, James Z. George of Mississippi, George Gray of Delaware, Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn of Kentucky, Fred DuBois of Idaho, and William E. Chandler of New Hampshire), the Secretary of the Senate William Ruffin Cox, and family members. In Raleigh, the group was joined by Governor Elias Carr, former Governor Thomas Jordan Jarvis, North Carolina Attorney General Frank I. Osborne, state North Railroad Commissioner James W. Wilson, North Carolina Secretary of State Octavius Coke, State Treasurer Samuel McDowell Tate, Auditor of North Carolina R. M. Furman, Judge Alphonso Calhoun Avery of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Richard Henry Battle who was Vance's personal secretary during his governorship, former North Carolina. Attorney General Thomas S. Kenan, The News & Observer owner Josephus Daniels, Edward J. Hale of The Fayetteville Observer, and many others.
Thousands of people lined the railroad tracks "to pay their last respects to one whom they loved and admired very much" as the funeral train headed south and west and stopped at towns and cities such as Richmond, Danville, Greensboro, Durham, and Raleigh. Thousands passed through the railroad car to pay their respects, filling it with a variety of flowers. Once the train arrived in Asheville, there were funeral services at First Presbyterian Church. Surviving members of Vance's Rough and Ready Guard led a procession of 710 carriages from the church to Riverside Cemetery where nearly 10,000 mourners attended his funeral and burial, including people he formerly enslaved. In 1890, the total population of Asheville was 10,235.
In his eulogy, former Governor Thomas Jordan Jarvis said, "He was the Mount Mitchell of all our great men, and in the affections and love of the people, he towered above them all. As ages to come will not be able to mar the grandeur and greatness of Mount Mitchell, so they will not be able to efface from the hearts and minds of the people the name of their beloved Vance."
Vance was buried by his first wife, Harriette, in Riverside Cemetery in the Vance family plot. Later, his second wife Florence had Vance moved to a grave in her family's plot in Riverside Cemetery. Vance's children, who were all born to his first wife, successfully petitioned to court to return Vance to his original burial site. Thus, Vance was buried three times in the same cemetery.
At the time of his death, Vance had $152.07 in the bank; when his effects and property were sold, his estate totaled less than $5,000.
Honors
In 1953, Frontis W. Johnston wrote, "North Carolina has loved, idolized, and rewarded no other man in her history as she has Zebulon Baird Vance." Johnston also states that North Carolina's towns "swarmed with literally hundreds of little Zebulons."
There are several monuments and memorials dedicated to Vance:
The Salem College Chapel contains a stained-glass window given in honor of Vance by the Class of 1894.
The Vance Monument, a granite obelisk was dedicated in Asheville, North Carolina in 1897 (demolished May 2021).
A statue of Vance by Henry Jackson Ellicott was dedicated on the grounds of the North Carolina State Capitol in Raleigh on August 22, 1900. It was moved from its original pedestal and relocated to Raleigh's Union Square in 1949.
A bronze statue of Vance by Gutzon Borglum was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. in 1916.
A small monument is located where his post-war home once stood at Sixth and College Streets, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Asheville Lodge of the B'nai B'rith dedicated a memorial plaque to Vance at Calvary Episcopal Church in Fletcher, North Carolina on October 14, 1928. The plaque is mounted on a large granite boulder that is part of the Open–Air Westminster Abbey of the South.
There are many historic markers and historic sites about Vance:
The Vance Birthplace is a State Historic Site in Weaverville, North Carolina.
The Historic Vance House and Civil War Museum is located in Statesville, North Carolina in his former residence.
The "Zeb Vance House" North Carolina State Highway Historical Marker is in Statesville, North Carolina.
The "Zebulon B. Vance" North Carolina State Highway Historical Marker is in Buncombe County, North Carolina.
The "Camp Vance" North Carolina State Highway Historical Marker is near Morganton, North Carolina.
The "Brothers in Service" Civil War Trails marker in Weaverville, North Carolina is about Vance and his brother Robert.
Several locations, schools, and more bear Vance's name:
Kerr-Vance Academy in Henderson, North Carolina
Northern Vance High School in Henderson, North Carolina
The World War II United States liberty ship SS Zebulon B. Vance
Vance Charter School in Henderson, North Carolina
Vance County, North Carolina was named in his honor in 1881.
Vance County Early College High School in Henderson, North Carolina
Vance County High School in Henderson, North Carolina
Vance County Middle School in Henderson, North Carolina
Vance Elementary in Asheville, North Carolina (name changed in February 2021).
Vance Hall at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (name changed in 2020).
Vance Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The town of Vanceboro in Craven County, North Carolina
Zebulon B. Vance High School in Charlotte, North Carolina (name changed on October 13, 2020).
Zeb Vance Elementary School in Kittrell, North Carolina
Zeb Vance High School in Vance County, North Carolina (now closed).
The town of Zebulon, in Wake County, North Carolina
Several organizations bear his name:
Vance Masonic Lodge A.F.&A.M. No. 293 in Weaverville, North Carolina
The Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp No. 15 is called the Zebulon Baird Vance Camp
Vance Policy Institute think tank for Asheville and Buncombe County
The Zeb Vance Ruritan Club in Kittrell, North Carolina
The Henderson, North Carolina chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is the Zeb Vance Chapter
The United Confederate Veterans Camp No. 681 was called the Zebulon Vance Camp in his honor.
Vance County Schools in Henderson, North Carolina
Also, on January 19, 1895, the United States Senate opened its floor for orations in his honor.
Legacy
About Vance, F. Lane Williamson wrote, "Did he moderate his racial views in later years? Perhaps, but who knows? It’s fair to say, though, that his legacy is that he set the stage for North Carolina to be perceived as at least somewhat more racially tolerant and culturally progressive than its Deep South neighbors, a tradition that held through the 20th–century and beyond until quite recently."
Samuel Wittkowsky, a Jewish intimate of Vance, wrote, "I speak for my race in North Carolina...the deceased has even by his words and writings demonstrated that he was their friend. His lecture on the Scattered Nation will ever remain green in the memory of my race, and will be one of the brightest jewels in his ever-liberal, fair, and untarnished escutcheon. And I venture the assertion that in the history of North Carolina, no Israelite has cast a vote against Z. B. Vance." Annually on Vance's birthday for more than 75 years, the Jewish organization, B'nai B'rith, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy held a joint ceremony and laid a galax wreath at the Vance Monument in Asheville. This event began in the late 1930s was discontinued in the early 2000s.
In 2004, author Sharyn McCrumb wrote the novel Ghost Riders with a fictionalized account of Vance's life told in the first person. She was also inspired to write The Ballad of Tom Dula because of Vance, saying "Despite his family's hard times after the early death of his father, Zeb Vance managed to get an education, read law, and get himself elected governor by the age of thirty. I thought that Vance could counteract the [negative Appalachian] stereotypes..."
Always a controversial political figure, Vance became even more of an issue in the early 21st century because of his connection to slavery and his history of racism. In September 2017, the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s Department of History and the Zebulon B. Vance Birthplace State Historic Site held a two-day symposium, "Zebulon B. Vance Reconsidered." Kimberly Floyd, site manager of the Vance Birthplace and symposium co-convener said, "Zebulon Vance was a prominent figure in our state for four decades, and his is the story of both a hero and scoundrel." In August 2020, the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Asheville voted to rename Vance Hall because Vance "maintained racist stances that do not align with UNC Asheville’s core values." In October 2020, the Charlotte–Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education voted to remove his name from its high school. In 2021, the City of Asheville and Buncombe County both voted to remove the Vance Monument from Pack Square in downtown Asheville. Also in 2021, Asheville City Schools changed the name of its Vance Elementary School.
See also
List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899)
List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests
References
External links
Online Books by Zebulon Baird Vance
1830 births
1894 deaths
Activists against antisemitism
Vance family
American people of Scotch-Irish descent
People from Buncombe County, North Carolina
University of North Carolina alumni
North Carolina lawyers
North Carolina Whigs
Members of the North Carolina House of Representatives
Members of the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina
Confederate States Army officers
People of North Carolina in the American Civil War
Confederate States of America state governors
Governors of North Carolina
Democratic Party governors of North Carolina
Democratic Party United States senators from North Carolina
North Carolina Democrats
19th-century American politicians
Race-related controversies
Proponents of scientific racism
American rhetoricians
American speechwriters
Lyceum movement
19th-century American newspaper editors
Philosemitism
American Presbyterians
American Freemasons
Southern Historical Society
United States senators who owned slaves
North Carolina Know Nothings
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Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
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The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST, also FGRST), formerly called the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), is a space observatory being used to perform gamma-ray astronomy observations from low Earth orbit. Its main instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), with which astronomers mostly intend to perform an all-sky survey studying astrophysical and cosmological phenomena such as active galactic nuclei, pulsars, other high-energy sources and dark matter. Another instrument aboard Fermi, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM; formerly GLAST Burst Monitor), is being used to study gamma-ray bursts and solar flares.
Fermi, named for high-energy physics pioneer Enrico Fermi, was launched on 11 June 2008 at 16:05 UTC aboard a Delta II 7920-H rocket. The mission is a joint venture of NASA, the United States Department of Energy, and government agencies in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden, becoming the most sensitive gamma-ray telescope on orbit, succeeding INTEGRAL. The project is a recognized CERN experiment (RE7).
Overview
Fermi includes two scientific instruments, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM).
The LAT is an imaging gamma-ray detector (a pair-conversion instrument) which detects photons with energy from about 20 million to about 300 billion electronvolts (20 MeV to 300 GeV), with a field of view of about 20% of the sky; it may be thought of as a sequel to the EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
The GBM consists of 14 scintillation detectors (twelve sodium iodide crystals for the 8 keV to 1 MeV range and two bismuth germanate crystals with sensitivity from 150 keV to 30 MeV), and can detect gamma-ray bursts in that energy range across the whole of the sky not occluded by the Earth.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (formerly Spectrum Astro and now Orbital Sciences) in Gilbert, Arizona, designed and built the spacecraft that carries the instruments. It travels in a low, circular orbit with a period of about 95 minutes. Its normal mode of operation maintains its orientation so that the instruments will look away from the Earth, with a "rocking" motion to equalize the coverage of the sky. The view of the instruments will sweep out across most of the sky about 16 times per day. The spacecraft can also maintain an orientation that points to a chosen target.
Both science instruments underwent environmental testing, including vibration, vacuum, and high and low temperatures to ensure that they can withstand the stresses of launch and continue to operate in space. They were integrated with the spacecraft at the General Dynamics ASCENT facility in Gilbert, Arizona.
Data from the instruments are available to the public through the Fermi Science Support Center web site. Software for analyzing the data is also available.
GLAST renamed Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
NASA's Alan Stern, associate administrator for Science at NASA Headquarters, launched a public competition 7 February 2008, closing 31 March 2008, to rename GLAST in a way that would "capture the excitement of GLAST's mission and call attention to gamma-ray and high-energy astronomy ... something memorable to commemorate this spectacular new astronomy mission ... a name that is catchy, easy to say and will help make the satellite and its mission a topic of dinner table and classroom discussion".
Fermi gained its new name in 2008: On 26 August 2008, GLAST was renamed the "Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope" in honor of Enrico Fermi, a pioneer in high-energy physics.
Mission
NASA designed the mission with a five-year lifetime, with a goal of ten years of operations.
The key scientific objectives of the Fermi mission have been described as:
To understand the mechanisms of particle acceleration in active galactic nuclei (AGN), pulsars, and supernova remnants (SNR).
Resolve the gamma-ray sky: unidentified sources and diffuse emission.
Determine the high-energy behavior of gamma-ray bursts and transients.
Probe dark matter (e.g. by looking for an excess of gamma rays from the center of the Milky Way) and early Universe.
Search for evaporating primordial micro black holes (MBH) from their presumed gamma burst signatures (Hawking Radiation component).
The National Academies of Sciences ranked this mission as a top priority. Many new possibilities and discoveries are anticipated to emerge from this single mission and greatly expand our view of the Universe.
Blazars and active galaxies
Study energy spectra and variability of wavelengths of light coming from blazars so as to determine the composition of the black hole jets aimed directly at Earth -- whether they are
(a) a combination of electrons and positrons or
(b) only protons.
Gamma-ray bursts
Study gamma-ray bursts with an energy range several times more intense than ever before so that scientists may be able to understand them better.
Neutron stars
Study younger, more energetic pulsars in the Milky Way than ever before so as to broaden our understanding of stars. Study the pulsed emissions of magnetospheres so as to possibly solve how they are produced. Study how pulsars generate winds of interstellar particles.
Milky Way galaxy
Provide new data to help improve upon existing theoretical models of our own galaxy.
Gamma-ray background radiation
Study better than ever before whether ordinary galaxies are responsible for gamma-ray background radiation. The potential for a tremendous discovery awaits if ordinary sources are determined to be irresponsible, in which case the cause may be anything from self-annihilating dark matter to entirely new chain reactions among interstellar particles that have yet to be conceived.
The early universe
Study better than ever before how concentrations of visible and ultraviolet light change over time. The mission should easily detect regions of spacetime where gamma-rays interacted with visible or UV light to make matter. This can be seen as an example of E=mc2 working in reverse, where energy is converted into mass, in the early universe.
Sun
Study better than ever before how our own Sun produces gamma rays in solar flares.
Dark matter
Search for evidence that dark matter is made up of weakly interacting massive particles, complementing similar experiments already planned for the Large Hadron Collider as well as other underground detectors. The potential for a tremendous discovery in this area is possible over the next several years.
Fundamental physics
Test better than ever before certain established theories of physics, such as whether the speed of light in vacuum remains constant regardless of wavelength. Einstein's general theory of relativity contends that it does, yet some models in quantum mechanics and quantum gravity predict that it may not. Search for gamma rays emanating from former black holes that once exploded, providing yet another potential step toward the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Determine whether photons naturally split into smaller photons, as predicted by quantum mechanics and already achieved under controlled, man-made experimental conditions.
Unknown discoveries
Scientists estimate a very high possibility for new scientific discoveries, even revolutionary discoveries, emerging from this single mission.
Mission timeline
Prelaunch
On 4 March 2008, the spacecraft arrived at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida. On 4 June 2008, after several previous delays, launch status was retargeted for 11 June at the earliest, the last delays resulting from the need to replace the Flight Termination System batteries. The launch window extended from 15:45 to 17:40 UTC daily, until 7 August 2008.
Launch
Launch occurred successfully on 11 June 2008 at 16:05 UTC aboard a Delta 7920H-10C rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17-B. Spacecraft separation took place about 75 minutes after launch.
Orbit
Fermi resides in a low-Earth circular orbit at an altitude of , and at an inclination of 28.5 degrees.
Software modifications
GLAST received some minor modifications to its computer software on 23 June 2008.
LAT/GBM computers operational
Computers operating both the LAT and GBM and most of the LAT's components were turned on 24 June 2008. The LAT high voltage was turned on 25 June, and it began detecting high-energy particles from space, but minor adjustments were still needed to calibrate the instrument. The GBM high voltage was also turned on 25 June, but the GBM still required one more week of testing/calibrations before searching for gamma-ray bursts.
Sky survey mode
After presenting an overview of the Fermi instrumentation and goals, Jennifer Carson of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory had concluded that the primary goals were "all achievable with the all-sky scanning mode of observing". Fermi switched to "sky survey mode" on 26 June 2008 so as to begin sweeping its field of view over the entire sky every three hours (every two orbits).
Collision avoided
On 30 April 2013, NASA revealed that the telescope had narrowly avoided a collision a year earlier with a defunct Cold War-era Soviet spy satellite, Kosmos 1805, in April 2012. Orbital predictions several days earlier indicated that the two satellites were expected to occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other. On 3 April, telescope operators decided to stow the satellite's high-gain parabolic antenna, rotate the solar panels out of the way and to fire Fermi's rocket thrusters for one second to move it out of the way. Even though the thrusters had been idle since the telescope had been placed in orbit nearly five years earlier, they worked correctly and potential disaster was thus avoided.
Extended mission 2013–2018
In August 2013 Fermi started its 5-year mission extension.
Pass 8 software upgrade
In June 2015, the Fermi LAT Collaboration released "Pass 8 LAT data". Iterations of the analysis framework used by LAT are called "passes" and at launch Fermi LAT data was analyzed using Pass 6. Significant improvements to Pass 6 were included in Pass 7 which debuted in August 2011.
Every detection by the Fermi LAT since its launch, was reexamined with the latest tools to learn how the LAT detector responded to both each event and to the background. This improved understanding led to two major improvements: gamma-rays that had been missed by previous analysis were detected and the direction they arrived from was determined with greater accuracy. The impact of the latter is to sharpen Fermi LAT's vision as illustrated in the figure on the right. Pass 8 also delivers better energy measurements and a significantly increased effective area. The entire mission dataset was reprocessed.
These improvements have the greatest impact on both the low and high ends of the range of energy Fermi LAT can detect - in effect expanding the energy range within which LAT can make useful observations. The improvement in the performance of Fermi LAT due to Pass 8 is so dramatic that this software update is sometimes called the cheapest satellite upgrade in history. Among numerous advances, it allowed for a better search for Galactic spectral lines from dark matter interactions, analysis of extended supernova remnants, and to search for extended sources in the Galactic plane.
For almost all event classes, Version P8R2 had a residual background that was not fully isotropic. This anisotropy was traced to cosmic-ray electrons leaking through the ribbons of the Anti-Coincidence Detector and a set of cuts allowed rejection of these events while minimally impacting acceptance. This selection was used to create the P8R3 version of LAT data.
Solar array drive failure
On 16 March 2018 one of Fermi's solar arrays quit rotating, prompting a transition to "safe hold" mode and instrument power off. This was the first mechanical failure in nearly 10 years. Fermi's solar arrays rotate to maximize the exposure of the arrays to the Sun. The motor that drives that rotation failed to move as instructed in one direction. On 27 March, the satellite was placed at a fixed angle relative to its orbit to maximize solar power. The next day the GBM instrument was turned back on. On 2 April, operators turned LAT on and it resumed operations on 8 April. Alternative observation strategies are being developed due to power and thermal requirements.
Further extension into 2022
In 2019, a NASA Senior Review concluded that Fermi should continue to be operated into 2022, a decision that was subsequently approved by NASA. Further extensions remain possible.
Discoveries
Pulsar discovery
The first major discovery came when the space telescope detected a pulsar in the CTA 1 supernova remnant that appeared to emit radiation in the gamma ray bands only, a first for its kind. This new pulsar sweeps the Earth every 316.86 milliseconds and is about 4,600 light-years away.
Greatest gamma-ray burst energy release
In September 2008, the gamma-ray burst GRB 080916C in the constellation Carina was recorded by the Fermi telescope. This burst is notable as having "the largest apparent energy release yet measured". The explosion had the power of about 9,000 ordinary supernovae, and the relativistic jet of material ejected in the blast must have moved at a minimum of 99.9999% the speed of light. Overall, GRB 080916C had "the greatest total energy, the fastest motions, and the highest initial-energy emissions" ever seen.
Galactic Center gamma ray excess
In 2009, a surplus of gramma rays from a spherical region around the Galactic Center of the Milky Way was found in data from the Fermi telescope. This is now known as the Galactic Center GeV excess. The source of this surplus is not known. Suggestions include self-annihilation of dark matter or a population of pulsars.
Cosmic rays and supernova remnants
In February 2010, it was announced that Fermi-LAT had determined that supernova remnants act as enormous accelerators for cosmic particles. This determination fulfills one of the stated missions for this project.
Background gamma ray sources
In March 2010 it was announced that active galactic nuclei are not responsible for most gamma-ray background radiation. Though active galactic nuclei do produce some of the gamma-ray radiation detected here on Earth, less than 30% originates from these sources. The search now is to locate the sources for the remaining 70% or so of all gamma-rays detected. Possibilities include star forming galaxies, galactic mergers, and yet-to-be explained dark matter interactions.
Milky Way Gamma- and X-ray emitting Fermi bubbles
In November 2010, it was announced that two gamma-ray and X-ray emitting bubbles were detected around our galaxy, the Milky Way. The bubbles, named Fermi bubbles, extend about 25 thousand light-years distant above and below the galactic center. The galaxy's diffuse gamma-ray fog hampered prior observations, but the discovery team led by D. Finkbeiner, building on research by G. Dobler, worked around this problem.
Highest energy light ever seen from the Sun
In early 2012, Fermi/GLAST observed the highest energy light ever seen in a solar eruption.
Terrestrial gamma-ray flash observations
Fermi telescope has observed and detected numerous terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and discovered that such flashes can produce 100 trillion positrons, far more than scientists had previously expected.
GRB 130427A
On 27 April 2013, Fermi detected GRB 130427A, a gamma-ray burst with one of the highest energy outputs yet recorded.
This included detection of a gamma-ray over 94 billion electron volts (GeV). This broke Fermi's previous record detection, by over three times the amount.
GRB coincident with gravitational wave event GW150914
Fermi reported that its GBM instrument detected a weak gamma-ray burst above 50 keV, starting 0.4 seconds after the LIGO event and with a positional uncertainty region overlapping that of the LIGO observation. The Fermi team calculated the odds of such an event being the result of a coincidence or noise at 0.22%. However, observations from the INTEGRAL telescope's all-sky SPI-ACS instrument indicated that any energy emission in gamma-rays and hard X-rays from the event was less than one millionth of the energy emitted as gravitational waves, concluding that "this limit excludes the possibility that the event is associated with substantial gamma-ray radiation, directed towards the observer." If the signal observed by the Fermi GBM was associated with GW150914, SPI-ACS would have detected it with a significance of 15 sigma above the background. The AGILE space telescope also did not detect a gamma-ray counterpart of the event. A follow-up analysis of the Fermi report by an independent group, released in June 2016, purported to identify statistical flaws in the initial analysis, concluding that the observation was consistent with a statistical fluctuation or an Earth albedo transient on a 1-second timescale. A rebuttal of this follow-up analysis, however, pointed out that the independent group misrepresented the analysis of the original Fermi GBM Team paper and therefore misconstrued the results of the original analysis. The rebuttal reaffirmed that the false coincidence probability is calculated empirically and is not refuted by the independent analysis.
In October 2018, astronomers reported that GRB 150101B, 1.7 billion light years away from Earth, may be analogous to the historic GW170817. It was detected on 1 January 2015 at 15:23:35 UT by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, along with detections by the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on board the Swift Observatory Satellite.
Black hole mergers of the type thought to have produced the gravitational wave event are not expected to produce gamma-ray bursts, as stellar-mass black hole binaries are not expected to have large amounts of orbiting matter. Avi Loeb has theorised that if a massive star is rapidly rotating, the centrifugal force produced during its collapse will lead to the formation of a rotating bar that breaks into two dense clumps of matter with a dumbbell configuration that becomes a black hole binary, and at the end of the star's collapse it triggers a gamma-ray burst. Loeb suggests that the 0.4 second delay is the time it took the gamma-ray burst to cross the star, relative to the gravitational waves.
GRB 170817A signals a multi-messenger transient
On 17 August 2017, Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor software detected, classified, and localized a gamma-ray burst which was later designated as GRB 170817A. Six minutes later, a single detector at Hanford LIGO registered a gravitational-wave candidate which was consistent with a binary neutron star merger, occurring 2 seconds before the GRB 170817A event. This observation was "the first joint detection of gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from a single source".
Instruments
Gamma-ray Burst Monitor
The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) (formerly GLAST Burst Monitor) detects sudden flares of gamma-rays produced by gamma ray bursts and solar flares. Its scintillators are on the sides of the spacecraft to view all of the sky which is not blocked by the Earth. The design is optimized for good resolution in time and photon energy, and is sensitive from (a medium X-ray) to (a medium-energy gamma-ray).
"Gamma-ray bursts are so bright we can see them from billions of light-years away, which means they occurred billions of years ago, and we see them as they looked then", stated Charles Meegan of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor has detected gamma rays from positrons generated in powerful thunderstorms.
Large Area Telescope
The Large Area Telescope (LAT) detects individual gamma rays using technology similar to that used in terrestrial particle accelerators. Photons hit thin metal sheets, converting to electron-positron pairs, via a process termed pair production. These charged particles pass through interleaved layers of silicon microstrip detectors, causing ionization which produce detectable tiny pulses of electric charge. Researchers can combine information from several layers of this tracker to determine the path of the particles. After passing through the tracker, the particles enter the calorimeter, which consists of a stack of caesium iodide scintillator crystals to measure the total energy of the particles. The LAT's field of view is large, about 20% of the sky. The resolution of its images is modest by astronomical standards, a few arc minutes for the highest-energy photons and about 3 degrees at 100 MeV. It is sensitive from to (from medium up to some very-high-energy gamma rays). The LAT is a bigger and better successor to the EGRET instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite in the 1990s. Several countries produced the components of the LAT, who then sent the components for assembly at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. SLAC also hosts the LAT Instrument Science Operations Center, which supports the operation of the LAT during the Fermi mission for the LAT scientific collaboration and for NASA.
Education and public outreach
Education and public outreach are important components of the Fermi project. The main Fermi education and public outreach website at http://glast.sonoma.edu offers gateways to resources for students, educators, scientists, and the public. NASA's Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) group operates the Fermi education and outreach resources at Sonoma State University.
Rossi Prize
The 2011 Bruno Rossi Prize was awarded to Bill Atwood, Peter Michelson and the Fermi LAT team "for enabling, through the development of the Large Area Telescope, new insights into neutron stars, supernova remnants, cosmic rays, binary systems, active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts."
In 2013, the prize was awarded to Roger W. Romani of Leland Stanford Junior University and Alice Harding of Goddard Space Flight Center for their work in developing the theoretical framework underpinning the many exciting pulsar results from Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
The 2014 prize went to Tracy Slatyer, Douglas Finkeiner and Meng Su "for their discovery, in gamma rays, of the large unanticipated Galactic structure called the Fermi bubbles."
The 2018 prize was awarded to Colleen Wilson-Hodge and the Fermi GBM team for the detection of , the first unambiguous and completely independent discovery of an electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational wave signal (GW170817) that "confirmed that short gamma-ray bursts are produced by binary neutron star mergers and enabled a global multi-wavelength follow-up campaign."
See also
Galactic Center GeV excess
GRB 160625B
List of gamma-ray bursts
eROSITA
References
External links
Fermi website at NASA.gov
Fermi website by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Fermi website at Sonoma.edu
Large Area Telescope website at Stanford.edu
Large Area Telescope publications
Gamma-ray Burst Monitor website by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
Gamma-ray Burst Monitor publications
Astrophysics
Sonoma State University
Space telescopes
Gamma-ray telescopes
Spacecraft launched in 2008
Spacecraft launched by Delta II rockets
Articles containing video clips
CERN experiments
Enrico Fermi
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy%20Snedden
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Billy Snedden
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Sir Billy Mackie Snedden, (31 December 1926 – 27 June 1987) was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party from 1972 to 1975. He was also a cabinet minister from 1964 to 1972, and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1976 to 1983.
Snedden was born in Perth, Western Australia. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II, and then studied law at the University of Western Australia. From 1951 to 1952, he was the inaugural federal chairman of the Young Liberal Movement. After a period working overseas for the Department of Immigration, Snedden returned to Australia in 1954 and settled in Melbourne. He was elected to the House of Representatives the following year, aged 28.
In 1964, Snedden was elevated to cabinet by Robert Menzies. He served as a government minister until the Liberal government's defeat at the 1972 election, under an additional four prime ministers. Snedden spent periods as Attorney-General (1964–1966), Minister for Immigration (1966–1969), Minister for Labour and National Service (1969–1971), and Treasurer (1971–1972). He was elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party in 1971, and replaced William McMahon as leader after the following year's election loss, thus becoming Leader of the Opposition.
Snedden led the Liberal Party to the 1974 federal election, which saw the Labor Party retain government with a narrow majority. Malcolm Fraser mounted two leadership challenges in early 1975, winning on the second attempt; by the end of the year he was prime minister. Snedden was elected to the speakership when the parliament next sat. He held the position for almost seven years, gaining a reputation for impartiality. In retirement, Snedden served as chairman of the Melbourne Football Club and on the board of the Victorian Football League. The unusual circumstances of his death in 1987, which involved the ex-girlfriend of his own son, attracted much public interest.
Early life
Birth and family background
Snedden was born on 31 December 1926 at a private hospital in Newcastle Street, West Perth, Western Australia. He was the youngest of six children born to Catherine (née Mackie) and Alan Snedden. His mother was 43 years old when he was born, and his siblings – one sister and four brothers – were much older than him.
Snedden's parents were born in Alva, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, and spoke "broad Scots". His grandparents were illiterate, and his parents had only limited schooling; they were both from coal-mining families. They immigrated to Australia in 1912 with their three oldest children, initially settling in the remote mining town of Meekatharra. The family moved to Perth in about 1921, after their house in Meekatharra burned down.
Snedden's father worked mostly as a stonemason, but also spent periods as a miner and general labourer when better work was not available. He reputedly left Scotland to escape a paternity suit, and had earlier been in trouble with the law for poaching. The family name was originally "Snaddon" (or "Snadon"), but was changed upon arrival in Australia.
Childhood
Snedden grew up in Perth's inner north near the suburb of Highgate, living initially on Robinson Avenue and later on Bulwer Street. His father left home when he was about three or four years old, and they had only limited contact thereafter. His oldest brother Bob became the family's main breadwinner, while his mother worked as a laundress and his other siblings also found jobs. He was close to his sister Jean, who often babysat him. Snedden worked part-time from about the age of eight, helping his brothers on construction sites and selling and delivering newspapers. He began his schooling at Highgate Primary School, and later attended the Perth Boys' School through to the ninth grade.
Snedden left school in April 1942 and began working as a junior law clerk for Thomas Hughes, who was a solicitor and independent state MP. He would not normally have been considered qualified for the job, but there was a shortage of applicants due to the war. Snedden was eventually able to receive his leaving certificate by attending night school at Perth Technical College. He fell out with Hughes late in 1943, and in January 1944 began working as a clerk at the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor's office. He was a talented sportsman as a youth, and played a few games for the West Perth Football Club during the 1944 WANFL season, at a time when the competition was age-restricted. He later represented Western Australia at the Australian Amateur Football Carnival in Melbourne in 1951.
Military service and university
Snedden and two friends attempted to join the merchant navy at the age of 15, but were unsuccessful. He also attempted to join the Royal Australian Navy when he was 17, but his mother refused her permission; three of his brothers were already on active service. Snedden eventually enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in January 1945, two days after his 18th birthday. He began an air crew training scheme, but as the war came to an end he was taken off the course and given more general duties; this included a period tending bar at an officers' mess. He was discharged in September 1945.
As part of his demobilisation, Snedden completed aptitude tests which showed he would be a suitable candidate for a university education. In combination with his earlier clerking experience, this allowed him to secure a place at the University of Western Australia's law school in 1946. Snedden failed two subjects in his first year, and was only able to continue when the law school dean Frank Beasley intervened on his behalf. He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1950, and completed his articles of clerkship with Harvey, Slattery, and Gibson. He was called to the bar in December 1951.
Professional career
In 1951, Snedden briefly returned to the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor's office. He resigned from the public service due to a pay cut, and began working for Angus & Coote as a hearing aid salesman. In early 1952, he secured a position as a migration officer with the Department of Immigration. He and his family moved to Italy for sixteen months, initially living in Taormina, Sicily, and later in Rome. He learnt to speak Italian, and travelled around the country conducting interviews with prospective migrants. In November 1953, Snedden was transferred to England. He stayed there for a year, and was then supposed to be moved on to Germany. However, he decided to return to Australia, and in January 1955 moved to Melbourne to work in a legal advice bureau for ex-servicemen. He and his family settled in Ringwood.
Political career
Early involvement
Snedden was state president of the Young Liberals, and from 1951 to 1952 served as the inaugural federal chairman of the organisation. As president of the UWA Liberal Club, he became acquainted with future prime minister Bob Hawke, who was president of the Labor Club. As a student, he made three unsuccessful attempts to enter politics, standing for the Liberal Party at the 1948 Boulder state by-election and at the 1949 and 1951 federal elections (in Fremantle and Perth, respectively).
Member of Parliament
In 1954 Snedden moved to Melbourne, where he practised law until 1955, when he was elected to the House of Representatives for the outer suburban seat of Bruce. He defeated Keith Ewert, the former Labor member for nearby Flinders. Snedden defeated Ewert by a similar margin in 1958.
In 1961, Snedden faced Ewert again, and this time trailed in initial counting. However, he was elected on Democratic Labor Party preferences. Snedden's narrow win was critical in the outcome of what was the closest election in Australian history up till that time. Had Labor won it, it would have toppled the Coalition after 12 years of rule. However, with Snedden's win, the best Labor could hope for was a hung parliament, though the Coalition was not assured of another term in government until later in the night, with its narrow victory in Moreton.
Cabinet
He served in the ministries of Sir Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John McEwen, John Gorton and William McMahon. In March 1964 Menzies appointed him Attorney-General. In that capacity he played a significant role in the 1967 constitutional referendum affecting the status of Aboriginals. On 7 April 1965, the Menzies Cabinet decided that it would seek to repeal Section 127 of the Constitution, which excluded indigenous people from the population count, but made no firm plans or timetable for such action. In August 1965, Snedden proposed to Cabinet that abolition of Section 127 was inappropriate unless Section 51(xxvi) was simultaneously amended to remove the words "other than the aboriginal race in any state". He was rebuffed, but he gained agreement when he made a similar submission to the Holt Cabinet in 1966. The referendum went ahead on 27 May 1967, and was resoundingly approved.
He was Minister for Immigration 1966–69, and Minister for Labour and National Service 1969–71, a difficult job which put him in charge of the government's highly unpopular policy of conscription for the Vietnam War. In 1967, following the death of Harold Holt, he was a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party, but his candidacy was not taken very seriously.
As Minister for Labour and National Service, Snedden commented on anti-war and anti-conscription activists' demonstrations. On the eve of the first Moratorium, he said in Parliament that the marchers were "political bikies pack-raping democracy". In 1971, Snedden was appointed Treasurer by William McMahon, and was elected Liberal Deputy Leader, making him the heir apparent to the leadership.
Leader of the Opposition
When McMahon was defeated by the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam in 1972, Snedden was elected as his replacement as Liberal leader, winning by a single vote over Nigel Bowen on the fifth ballot. Snedden promised a new and more "liberal" Liberal Party, but he suffered from his continuing image as a light-weight, and many Liberals believed he would never defeat Whitlam.
Snedden allowed himself to be persuaded to use the conservative majority in the Senate to block the Whitlam government's budget in 1974. Whitlam promptly called a double dissolution election for 18 May, at which he was returned to office, albeit with a reduced majority. Labor campaigned on the slogan "Oh no, not Snedden!". Snedden exposed himself to ridicule by refusing to concede defeat, saying at a press conference: "We were not defeated. We did not win enough seats in order to form a government".
After the election the conservative wing of the Liberal Party, led by Malcolm Fraser, challenged Snedden's leadership, but he was narrowly re-elected. When he failed to make any headway against Whitlam, Fraser mounted a second challenge, and Snedden was deposed in March 1975, becoming the first leader of the Liberal Party not to gain the prime ministership. He retired to the backbench until February 1976, when Fraser supported his election as Speaker of the House.
Speaker of the House
Snedden was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives on 17 February 1976, defeating the previous Speaker, Gordon Scholes, by a majority of 53 votes. He was re-elected on 21 February 1978, defeating Labor MP Dr Harry Jenkins by a majority of 44 votes, and on 25 November 1980, again defeating Dr Jenkins by a majority of 22 votes.
He was the last Speaker of the House of Representatives to wear the formal regalia of full-bottomed wig and gown inherited from the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, believing that it would restore the dignity of the office of Speaker.
As Speaker, Snedden sought to enhance the role and assert its independence. He preferred the Speaker to be recognised as an impartial umpire like the Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1979, he published a paper outlining his proposals for adopting some of the Westminster conventions, namely that the Speaker remain in office for five to seven years then resign and hold no further public office, that the Speaker be unopposed by the major political parties at general elections, and that the Speaker resign from his or her party upon becoming Speaker.
Snedden tried to strengthen the Parliament's ability to withstand pressures from the Executive. He believed that it was contrary to Parliament's independence for the Executive to control the funds allocated to Parliament, so he authorised parliamentary officers to write a paper in 1976 entitled The Parliamentary Budget. He later wrote, "You could not have a situation where the Executive decided the level at which Members could operate efficiently." This led to the introduction of the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill in 1982.
One of his most memorable actions as Speaker occurred in February 1982, when a Labor frontbencher, Bob Hawke, referred to then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, as a "liar" during question time. Fraser was answering a question about two joint royal commissions being conducted in Victoria at the time. Fraser allegedly selectively quoted a statement by the Victorian Leader of the Opposition, John Cain, which provoked Hawke to call Fraser a liar. Snedden followed parliamentary procedure and asked Hawke to withdraw the remark. When Hawke refused, Snedden named him and a motion for his suspension was moved. Snedden later wrote: "It was his [Fraser's] instigation which was making the Parliament unworkable, not the Opposition's response, like the classroom situation where the smart little man hits the fellow next to him who retaliates and is seen by the teacher". Members of the Opposition had by that point taken up "liar" as a chant, which put Snedden in the position where he would have to name every member, one by one. After realising that the House would be unworkable for that sitting day, he declined to put the motion for Hawke's suspension.
Fraser was furious and attempted to intimidate Snedden into punishing Hawke for not withdrawing or take his "punishment". Snedden refused and was convinced that he would be replaced as Speaker but, once Fraser realised that he had no support in the Liberal Party to remove Snedden from office, he sent a conciliatory message.
With the defeat of the Fraser government in 1983 and the election of Dr Harry Jenkins Sr. as Speaker, Snedden resigned from Parliament on 21 April 1983. In doing so, he honoured a feature of his 1979 paper. He believed that if he stayed in Parliament, he might be called on for advice on his successor's rulings, which would be undesirable because it would undermine the Chair. He said, "I am very conscious that, under the Westminster convention, when the Speaker leaves the chair he leaves the House. I think this is right." He formally resigned from Parliament later that day.
Later life
When the Fraser government was defeated by Hawke in 1983, Snedden immediately resigned from Parliament. He separated from his wife, Lady Snedden, and was later to withdraw from public life as his health declined from atherosclerosis and heart disease. Snedden was Chairman of the Melbourne Football Club from 1981 to 1986, later a Director of the Victorian Football League and also Patron of the Professional Boxing Association of Australia.
Death
On 27 June 1987, just hours after attending John Howard's election campaign launch, Snedden suffered a fatal heart attack at the Travelodge motel in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, while having sex with an ex-girlfriend of his son Drew, identified only as "Wendy". Melbourne newspaper The Truth headlined its report "Snedden died on the job", while the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Snedden was wearing a condom and that "it was loaded".
Personal life
Snedden married Joy Forsyth, a dental nurse, on 10 March 1950. They had two sons and two daughters together. His daughter Fiona was elected to the Melbourne City Council in 2004 after an unsuccessful candidature for the Liberal Party in the seat of Melbourne Ports in the 1998 federal election. She stood for re-election to council in 2008 but lost her seat.
Honours
Snedden was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in January 1978. He was appointed a Privy Councillor in 1972.
Notes
References
1926 births
1987 deaths
Members of the Cabinet of Australia
Treasurers of Australia
Attorneys-General of Australia
Leaders of the Opposition (Australia)
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 Bruce
Leaders of the Australian House of Representatives
Speakers of the Australian House of Representatives
Australian Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George
Australian King's Counsel
University of Western Australia alumni
Politicians from Perth, Western Australia
Melbourne Football Club presidents
20th-century Australian lawyers
Leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia
20th-century Australian politicians
Australian members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Australian monarchists
Australian Presbyterians
Australian public servants
Australian people of Scottish descent
Royal Australian Air Force personnel of World War II
Military personnel from Western Australia
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Liberal feminism
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Liberal feminism, also called mainstream feminism, is a main branch of feminism defined by its focus on achieving gender equality through political and legal reform within the framework of liberal democracy and informed by a human rights perspective. It is often considered culturally progressive and economically center-right to center-left. As the oldest of the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought, liberal feminism has its roots in 19th century first-wave feminism seeking recognition of women as equal citizens, focusing particularly on women's suffrage and access to education, the effort associated with 19th century liberalism and progressivism. Liberal feminism "works within the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into that structure." Liberal feminism places great emphasis on the public world, especially laws, political institutions, education and working life, and considers the denial of equal legal and political rights as the main obstacle to equality. As such liberal feminists have worked to bring women into the political mainstream. Liberal feminism is inclusive and socially progressive, while broadly supporting existing institutions of power in liberal democratic societies, and is associated with centrism and reformism. Liberal feminism tends to be adopted by white middle-class women who do not disagree with the current social structure; Zhang and Rios found that liberal feminism with its focus on equality is viewed as the dominant and "default" form of feminism. Liberal feminism actively supports men's involvement in feminism and both women and men have always been active participants in the movement; progressive men had an important role alongside women in the struggle for equal political rights since the movement was launched in the 19th century.
Historically, liberal feminism largely grew out of and was often associated with social liberalism; the modern liberal feminist tradition notably includes both social liberal and social democratic streams, as well as many often diverging schools of thought such as equality feminism, social feminism, care-ethical liberal feminism, equity feminism, difference feminism, conservative liberal feminism, and liberal socialist feminism. Some forms of modern liberal feminism have been described as neoliberal feminism or "boardroom feminism". Liberal feminism is often closely associated with liberal internationalism. In many countries, particularly in the West but also in a number of secular states in the developing world, liberal feminism is associated with the concept of state feminism, and liberal feminism emphasizes constructive cooperation with the government and involvement in parliamentary and legislative processes to pursue reforms. Liberal feminism is also called "mainstream feminism", "reformist feminism", "egalitarian feminism", or historically "bourgeois feminism" (or bourgeois-liberal feminism), among other names. As one of the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought, liberal feminism is often contrasted with socialist/Marxist feminism and radical feminism, but in contrast to them, liberal feminism seeks gradual social progress and equality on the basis of liberal democracy rather than a revolution or radical reordering of society. Liberal feminism and mainstream feminism are very broad terms, frequently taken to encompass all feminism that is not radical or revolutionary socialist/Marxist and that instead pursues equality through political, legal, and social reform within a liberal democratic framework. As such, liberal feminists may subscribe to a range of different feminist beliefs and political ideologies within the democratic spectrum from the centre-left to the centre-right.
Inherently pragmatic in orientation, liberal feminists have emphasized building far-reaching support for feminist causes among both women and men, and among the political centre, the government and legislatures. In the 21st century, liberal feminism has taken a turn toward an intersectional understanding of gender equality, and modern liberal feminists support LGBT rights as a core feminist issue. Liberal feminists typically support laws and regulations that promote gender equality and ban practices that are discriminatory towards women; mainstream liberal feminists, particularly those of a social democratic bent, often support social measures to reduce material inequality within a liberal democratic framework. While rooted in first-wave feminism and traditionally focused on political and legal reform, the broader liberal feminist tradition may include parts of subsequent waves of feminism, especially third-wave feminism and fourth-wave feminism. The sunflower and the color gold, taken to represent enlightenment, became widely used symbols of mainstream liberal feminism and women's suffrage from the 1860s, originally in the United States and later also in parts of Europe.
Origins
Terminology
The specific term "liberal feminism" is fairly modern, but its political tradition is much older. "Feminism" became the dominant term in English for the struggle for women's rights in the late 20th century, around a century after the organized liberal women's rights movement came into existence, but most western feminist historians contend that all movements working to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not (or do not) apply the term to themselves.
Historically, the bourgeois women's rights movement—the predecessor of modern liberal feminism—was mainly contrasted with the working-class or "proletarian" women's movements, which eventually developed into called socialist and Marxist feminism. Since the 1960s both liberal feminism and the "proletarian" or socialist/Marxist women's movements are also contrasted with radical feminism. Liberal feminism is usually included as one of the two, three, or four main traditions in the history of feminism.
Many liberal feminists embraced the term "feminism" in the 1970s or 1980s, although some initially expressed scepticism towards the term; for example the liberal feminist Norwegian Association for Women's Rights expressed scepticism towards the term "feminism" as late as 1980 because it could foster "unnecessary antagonism towards men", but accepted the term some years later as it increasingly became the mainstream general term for the women's rights struggle in the western world.
Movement
Liberal feminism ultimately has historical roots in classical liberalism and was often associated with social liberalism from the late 19th century. The goal for liberal feminists beginning in the late 18th century was to gain suffrage for women with the idea that this would allow them to gain individual liberty. They were concerned with gaining freedom through equality, diminishing men's cruelty to women, and gaining opportunities to become full persons. They believed that no government or custom should prohibit the due exercise of personal freedom. Early liberal feminists had to counter the assumption that only white men deserved to be full citizens. Pioneers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith Sargent Murray, and Frances Wright advocated for women's full political inclusion. In 1920, after nearly 50 years of intense activism, women were finally granted the right to vote and the right to hold public office in the United States, and in much of the Western world within a few decades before or a few decades after this time.
Liberal feminism was largely quiet in the United States for four decades after winning the vote. In the 1960s during the civil rights movement, liberal feminists drew parallels between systemic race discrimination and sex discrimination. Groups such as the National Organization for Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, and the Women's Equity Action League were all created at that time to further women's rights. In the U.S., these groups have worked, thus far unsuccessfully, for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment or "Constitutional Equity Amendment", in the hopes it will ensure that men and women are treated as equals under the law. Specific issues important to liberal feminists include but are not limited to reproductive rights and abortion access, sexual harassment, voting, education, fair compensation for work, affordable childcare, affordable health care, and bringing to light the frequency of sexual and domestic violence against women.
Equal Rights Amendment
A fair number of American liberal feminists believe that equality in pay, job opportunities, political structure, social security, and education for women especially needs to be guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Three years after women won the right to vote, the Equal Right Amendment (ERA) was introduced in Congress by Senator Charles Curtis Curtis and Representative Daniel Read Anthony Jr., both Republicans. This amendment stated that civil rights cannot be denied on the basis of one's sex. It was authored by Alice Paul, head of the National Women's Party, who led the suffrage campaign. Through the efforts of Alice Paul, the Amendment was introduced into each session of the United States Congress, but it was buried in committee in both Houses of Congress. In 1946, it was narrowly defeated by the full Senate, 38–35. In February 1970, twenty NOW leaders disrupted the hearings of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, demanding the ERA be heard by the full Congress. In May of that year, the Senate Subcommittee began hearings on the ERA under Senator Birch Bayh. In June, the ERA finally left the House Judiciary Committee due to a discharge petition filed by Representative Martha Griffiths. In March 1972, the ERA was approved by the full Senate without changes, 84–8. Senator Sam Ervin and Representative Emanuel Celler succeeded in setting a time limit of seven years for ratification. The ERA then went to the individual states for approval but failed to win in enough of them (38) to become law. In 1978, Congress passed a disputed (less than supermajority) three-year extension on the original seven-year ratification limit, but the ERA could not gain approval by the needed number of states.
The state legislatures that were most hostile to the ERA were Utah, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. The NOW holds that the single most obvious problem in passing the ERA was the gender and racial imbalance in the legislatures. More than 2/3 of the women and all of the African Americans in state legislatures voted for the ERA, but less than 50% of the white men in the targeted legislatures cast pro-ERA votes in 1982.
Philosophy
Equal rights
According to Anthony Giddens, liberal feminist theory "believes gender inequality is produced by reduced access for women and girls to civil rights and allocation of social resources such as education and employment." Catherine Rottenberg notes that the raison d'être of classic liberal feminism was "to pose an immanent critique of liberalism, revealing the gendered exclusions within liberal democracy’s proclamation of universal equality, particularly with respect to the law, institutional access, and the full incorporation of women into the public sphere." Rottenberg contrasts classic liberal feminism with modern neoliberal feminism which "seems perfectly in sync with the evolving neoliberal order."
At its core, liberal feminism believes in pragmatic "reforms against gender discrimination through the promotion of equal rights by engaging and formulating laws and policies that will ensure equality." Liberal feminists argue that society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and physically capable than men; thus it tends to discriminate against women in the academy, the forum, and the marketplace. Liberal feminists believe that "female subordination is rooted in a set of customary and legal constraints that blocks women's entrance to and success in the so-called public world", and strive for gender equality via political and legal reform. Cathrine Holst notes that "the bourgeois women's rights movement was liberal or liberal feminist. The bourgeois women's rights advocates fought for women’s civil liberties and rights: freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the right to vote, freedom of association, inheritance rights, property rights, and freedom of trade – and for women's access to education and working life. In short, women should have the same freedoms and rights as men."
Political liberalism gave feminism a familiar platform for convincing others that their reforms "could and should be incorporated into existing law". Liberal feminists argued that women, like men, be regarded as autonomous individuals, and likewise be accorded the rights of such. Inherently pragmatic, liberal feminists tend to focus on practical reforms of laws and policies in order to achieve equality; liberal feminism has a more individualistic approach to justice than left-wing branches of feminism such as socialist or radical feminism. Susan Wendell argues that "liberal feminism is an historical tradition that grew out of liberalism, as can be seen very clearly in the work of such feminists as Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill, but feminists who took principles from that tradition have developed analyses and goals that go far beyond those of 18th and 19th century liberal feminists, and many feminists who have goals and strategies identified as liberal feminist ... reject major components of liberalism" in a modern or party-political sense; she highlights "equality of opportunity" as a defining feature of liberal feminism. Helga Hernes notes that liberal feminism has often been critical of liberalist political positions and that liberal feminism and liberalism in general are not necessarily the same.
Lucy E. Bailey notes that liberal feminism is characterized by "its focus on individual rights and reform through the state" and that it has "been instrumental in fueling women's rights movements in diverse contexts and remains a familiar and widespread form of feminist thought. Liberal feminism emerged as a distinct political tradition during the Enlightenment (...) Liberal feminist theory emphasizes women's individual rights to autonomy and proposes remedies for gender inequities through, variously, removing legal and social constraints or advancing conditions that support women's equality."
LGBT rights
Liberal feminist organizations are broadly inclusive and thus tend to support LGBT rights in the modern era. For example, the two largest American feminist organizations, the liberal feminist National Organization for Women (NOW) and the League of Women Voters (LWV) both regard LGBT rights as a core feminist issue and vehemently support trans rights and oppose transphobia. NOW president Terry O'Neill said the struggle against transphobia is a feminist issue. NOW has affirmed that "trans women are women, trans girls are girls." In a further statement NOW said that "trans women are women. They deserve equal opportunity, health care, a safe community & workplace, and they deserve to play sports. They have a right to have their identity respected without conforming to perceived sex and gender identity standards. We stand with you."
Similarly, the traditionally dominant liberal feminist international non-governmental organization, the International Alliance of Women (IAW) and its affiliates are trans-inclusive; IAW's Icelandic affiliate, the Icelandic Women's Rights Association, has stated that "IWRA works for the rights of all women. Feminism without trans women is no feminism at all." On Women's Rights Day in Iceland in 2020, the Icelandic Women's Rights Association organised an event together with Trans Ísland that saw several different feminist organisations in the country discuss strategies to stop anti-trans sentiment from increasing its influence in Iceland. Later that year, Trans Ísland was unanimously granted status as a member association of the Icelandic Women's Rights Association. In 2021 the International Alliance of Women and the Icelandic Women's Rights Association organized an event on how the women's movement could counter "anti-trans voices [that] are becoming ever louder and [that] are threatening feminist solidarity across borders." The Danish Women's Society supports LGBTQA rights, and has stated that it takes homophobia and transphobia very seriously, and that "we support all initiatives that promote the rights of gay and transgender people." The Norwegian Association for Women's Rights is trans-inclusive and supports legal protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The Deutscher Frauenring is intersectional and opposes transphobia. In November 2020, on Trans Day of Remembrance, the National Women's Council of Ireland and Amnesty International Ireland co-signed a statement along with a number of LGBT+ and human rights groups condemning trans-exclusionary feminism. The letter called upon the media and politicians "to no longer provide legitimate representation for those that share bigoted beliefs, that are aligned with far-right ideologies and seek nothing but harm and division" and stated that "these fringe internet accounts stand against affirmative medical care of transgender people, and they stand against the right to self-identification of transgender people in this country. In summation, they stand against trans, women’s, and gay rights by aligning themselves with far-right tropes and stances."
UN Women works to promote gender equality and the rights of women and LGBTIQ+ people, and "urgently calls on communities and governments around the world to stand up for LGBTIQ+ rights." The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) supports LGBTIQ rights and opposes the anti-gender movement, and has described trans-exclusionary feminists as "trojan horses in human rights spaces" that seek to undermine human rights; AWID said that anti-trans activity is "alarming," that "the 'sex-based' rhetoric misuses concepts of sex and gender to push a deeply discriminatory agenda" and that "trans-exclusionary feminists (...) undermine progressions on gender and sexuality and protection of rights of marginalized groups." To be clear, while there are debates, UN Women is said to be a liberal feminist organization. As evidence, although they seem to acknowledge intersectionality, UN Women still evaluate gender equality in each country by looking at how integrated women are into hegemonic society, for example they measure how many women are in a position of CEO and politician.
Schools of thought
Liberal feminism as a broad school of thought and main tradition in feminism includes many different varieties, such as equality feminism, social feminism, equity feminism, and difference feminism. State feminism is often linked to liberal feminism, particularly in Western countries. Some forms of modern liberal feminism have been described as neoliberal feminism.
Neoliberal feminism
Neoliberal feminism emerged in the 2010s. In The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism, Rottenberg defines neoliberalism as a “new form of selfhood, which encourages people as individual subjects responsible for their own well-being” as well as it ensures the individual right to their own autonomous decision making (p. 421). The author argues that neoliberal feminism emerged from neoliberalism being espoused by “increasingly high-powered women”, for example Anne-Marie Slaughters and Sheryl Sandberg (p. 418). Even though Sandberg states in Lean In that she “supports who want to eliminate external barriers” so that every woman can lean in, she argues that as the first step, women should lean in so as to reform society (p. 3). Therefore, women who are worried about the possibility of having a child at the cost of her career should not “lean back” but keep leaning in (p. 51). Sandberg does not seek reformation of social system, which she even calls “the rat race” (p. 51). Neoliberal feminists apparently realize the gender inequality. However, they value women who accept the responsibility for taking balance between work and family following the theory of neoliberalism, in which they do not accuse the state but take care of their own well-being. As a political reason for emergence of neoliberal feminism, Rottenberg asserts that by “responsiblizing” women, neoliberalism feminism is useful for diffusing social issues (i.e., sexism, racism, capitalism).
Libertarian feminism
Individualist or libertarian feminism is sometimes grouped as one of many branches of feminism with historical roots in liberal feminism but tends to diverge significantly from mainstream liberal feminism on many issues. For example, "libertarian feminism does not require social measures to reduce material inequality; in fact, it opposes such measures ... in contrast, liberal feminism may support such requirements and egalitarian versions of feminism insist on them." Libertarian feminists tend to focus more on sexual politics, a topic traditionally of less concern to liberal feminists. Mainstream liberal feminists, such as the National Organization for Women, tend to oppose prostitution, but are somewhat divided on prostitution politics, unlike both libertarian and radical feminists.
Western feminism
Liberal feminist organizations such as the International Alliance of Women tend to be supportive of liberal democratic states' foreign and security policy, and maintained a clear pro-Western stance throughout the Cold War. From the second half of the 20th century women in development has increasingly become an important topic for liberal feminist organizations.
Hillary Clinton is often considered a liberal feminist, and has defined "feminist" in accordance with the liberal feminist definition as "someone who believes in equal rights." Some articles do not clearly describe her as a liberal feminist, yet argue that Clinton's policy and her white privilege ignore many women, for instance women of color, low-income women, and immigrants while NOW (2015) admire her as “a trailblazer for women with an impressive record of public service where she put women’s rights at the forefront”.
Equity feminism
Equity feminism is a form of liberal feminism discussed since the 1980s, specifically a kind of classically liberal or libertarian feminism, emphasizing equality under law, equal freedoms, and rights, rather than profound social transformations.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy refers to Wendy McElroy, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Cathy Young, Rita Simon, Katie Roiphe, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Christine Stolba, and Christina Hoff Sommers as equity feminists. Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist, identifies himself as an equity feminist, which he defines as "a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology". Barry Kuhle asserts that equity feminism is compatible with evolutionary psychology, in contrast to gender feminism.
Writers
Feminist writers associated with this theory include Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Helen Taylor, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Gina Krog; Second Wave feminists Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir; and Third Wave feminist Rebecca Walker.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) has been very influential in her writings as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman commented on society's view of women and encouraged women to use their voices in making decisions separate from decisions previously made for them. Wollstonecraft "denied that women are, by nature, more pleasure seeking and pleasure giving than men. She reasoned that if they were confined to the same cages that trap women, men would develop the same flawed characters. What Wollstonecraft most wanted for women was personhood." She argued that patriarchal oppression is a form of slavery that could no longer be ignored . Wollstonecraft argued that the inequality between men and women existed due to the disparity between their educations. Along with Judith Sargent Murray and Frances Wright, Wollstonecraft was one of the first major advocates for women's full inclusion in politics.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) was one of the most influential women in first wave feminism. An American social activist, she was instrumental in orchestrating the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, which was held in Seneca Falls, New York. Not only was the suffragist movement important to Stanton, she also was involved in women's parental and custody rights, divorce laws, birth control, employment and financial rights, among other issues. Her partner in this movement was the equally influential Susan B. Anthony. Together, they fought for a linguistic shift in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to include "female". Additionally, in 1890 she founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association and presided as president until 1892. She produced many speeches, resolutions, letters, calls, and petitions that fed the first wave and kept the spirit alive. Furthermore, by gathering a large number of signatures, she aided the passage of the Married Women's Property Act of 1848 which considered women legally independent of their husbands and granted the property of their own. Together these women formed what was known as the NWSA (National Women Suffrage Association), which focused on working with legislatures and the courts to gain suffrage.
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) believed that both sexes should have equal rights under the law and that "until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly assess the natural differences between women and men, distorted as they have been. What is natural to the two sexes can only be found out by allowing both to develop and use their faculties freely." Mill frequently spoke of this imbalance and wondered if women were able to feel the same "genuine unselfishness" that men did in providing for their families. This unselfishness Mill advocated is the one "that motivates people to take into account the good of society as well as the good of the individual person or small family unit". Similar to Mary Wollstonecraft, Mill compared sexual inequality to slavery, arguing that their husbands are often just as abusive as masters and that a human being controls nearly every aspect of life for another human being. In his book The Subjection of Women, Mill argues that three major parts of women's lives are hindering them: society and gender construction, education, and marriage. He also argues that sex inequality is greatly inhibiting the progress of humanity.
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan (1921-2006) was a liberal feminist prominent in the 1960s. She was a co-founder and the first president of NOW, and contributed to the second wave feminism. Her book The Feminine Mystique written in 1963 became a landmark bestseller and significantly influential by rebuking the fulfillment of middle-class women for domestic lives. In her book, Friedan reversed the discourse of American housewife as ideal and happy and pointed out dissatisfaction and loneliness which were faced by many American women in the 1950s and 1960s. She described these women's experience as problem without name and called for financial independence of women for liberation. Many articles argues that Friedan was blind of her white privilege and failed to realize intersectionality of women. For example, by stating that “only economic independence can free a woman to marry for love”, Friedan attempted to encourage every woman not to “be afraid of flying” and seek their own lives outside of household (p. 464, 476) She also argued the necessity of a social and political women's movement by raising black movement as a model. However, she did not try to combine those movements together, nor was black women's experience considered in feminist context. Instead, she presumed the separation of issues of race and sex.
Notable liberal feminists
18th century
Mary Wollstonecraft
Judith Sargent Murray
Frances Wright
19th century
John Stuart Mill
Harriet Taylor
Harriet Tubman
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Gina Krog
20th century
Margarete Bonnevie
Eva Kolstad
Nadine Strossen
Ellen Willis
Naomi Wolf
Betty Friedan
Rebecca Walker
Martha Nussbaum
Karin M. Bruzelius
Gloria Steinem
21st century
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Sheryl Sandberg
Hillary Clinton
Kamala Harris
Organizations
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the largest liberal feminist organization in the United States. It supports the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights including freer access to abortion, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights (LGBT rights), and economic justice. It opposes violence against women and racism.
Various other issues the National Organization for Women also deals with are:
Affirmative action
Disability rights
EcoFeminism
Family
Opposing right-wing causes contrary to NOW's interests
Global feminism
Women's health
Immigration
Promotion of nominating judges with feminist viewpoints
Legislation
Legal recognition of same-sex marriages
Media activism
Mothers' economic Rights
Working for peace; opposition to conflicts such as the Iraq War
Social Security
Supreme Court
Title IX/Education
Welfare
Workplace discrimination
Women in the Military
Young feminist programs
National Women's Political Caucus
The National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), founded in 1971, is the only national organization in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to increasing women's participation in all areas of political and public life as elected and appointed officials, as delegates to national party conventions, as judges in the state and federal courts, and as lobbyists, voters and campaign organizers.
Founders of NWPC include such prominent women as Gloria Steinem, author, lecturer and founding editor of Ms. Magazine; former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm; former Congresswoman Bella Abzug; Dorothy Height, former president of the National Council of Negro Women; Jill Ruckelshaus, former U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner; Ann Lewis, former Political Director of the Democratic National Committee; Elly Peterson, former vice-chair of the Republican National Committee; LaDonna Harris, Indian rights leader; Liz Carpenter, author, lecturer and former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson; and Eleanor Holmes Norton, Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives and former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
These women were spurred by Congress' failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970. They believed legal, economic and social equity would come about only when women were equally represented among the nation's political decision-makers. Their faith that women's interests would best be served by women lawmakers has been confirmed time and time again, as women in Congress, state legislatures and city halls across the country have introduced, fought for and won legislation to eliminate sex discrimination and meet women's changing needs.
Women's Equity Action League
The Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) was a national membership organization, with state chapters and divisions, founded in 1968 and dedicated to improving the status and lives of women primarily through education, litigation, and legislation. It was a more conservative organization than NOW and was formed largely by former members of that organization who did not share NOW's the assertive stance on socio-sexual issues, particularly on abortion rights. WEAL spawned a sister organization, the Women's Equity Action League Fund, which was incorporated in 1972 "to help secure legal rights for women and to carry on educational and research projects on sex discrimination". The two organizations merged in 1981 following changes in the tax code. WEAL dissolved in 1989.
The stated purposes of WEAL were:
to promote greater economic progress on the part of American women;
to press for full enforcement of existing anti-discriminatory laws on behalf of women;
to seek correction of de facto discrimination against women;
to gather and disseminate information and educational material;
to investigate instances of, and seek solutions to, economic, educational, tax, and employment problems affecting women;
to urge that girls be prepared to enter more advanced career fields;
to seek reappraisal of federal, state, and local laws and practices limiting women's employment opportunities;
to combat by all lawful means, job discrimination against women in the pay, promotional or advancement policies of governmental or private employers;
to seek the cooperation and coordination of all American women, individually or as organizations *to attain these objectives, whether through legislation, litigation, or other means and by doing any and all things necessary or incident thereto.
Norwegian Association for Women's Rights
Norway has had a tradition of government-supported liberal feminism since 1884, when the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights (NKF) was founded with the support of the progressive establishment within the then-dominant governing Liberal Party (which received 63.4% of the votes in the election the following year). The association's founders included five Norwegian prime ministers, and several of its early leaders were married to prime ministers. Rooted in first-wave liberal feminism, it works "to promote gender equality and women's and girls' human rights within the framework of liberal democracy and through political and legal reform". NKF members had key roles in developing the government apparatus and legislation related to gender equality in Norway since 1884; with the professionalization of gender equality advocacy from 1970s, the "Norwegian government adopted NKF's [equality] ideology as its own" and adopted laws and established government institutions such as the Gender Equality Ombud based on NKF's proposals; the new government institutions to promote gender equality were also largely built and led by prominent NKF members such as Eva Kolstad, NKF's former president and the first Gender Equality Ombud. NKF's feminist tradition has often been described as Norway's state feminism. The term state feminism itself was coined by NKF member Helga Hernes. Although it grew out of 19th-century progressive liberalism, Norwegian liberal feminism is not limited to liberalism in a modern party-political sense, and NKF is broadly representative of the democratic political spectrum from the center-left to the center-right, including the social democratic Labour Party. Norwegian supreme court justice and former NKF President Karin Maria Bruzelius has described NKF's liberal feminism as "a realistic, sober, practical feminism".
Other organizations
Feminist Majority Foundation
Ms. Magazine
EMILY's List
Icelandic Women's Rights Association
Symbolism
The sunflower (and sometimes by analogy the Sun) and the color yellow/gold (Or in heraldry), taken to represent enlightenment, became widely used symbols of the mainstream liberal women's rights movement and women's suffrage from the 1860s, originally in the United States and later also in parts of Europe. The suffragists and liberal feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony encouraged the use of the sunflower by wearing sunflower pins when campaigning for the right to vote in 1867 in Kansas. Hence the colors yellow and white became the main colors of the international liberal (also called mainstream or bourgeois) suffrage movement around the turn of the century, notably used by the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Historians Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler noted that
The sunflower and/or the color yellow/gold remain in use among the older liberal (bourgeois) feminist organizations such as the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights and the International Alliance of Women that were founded during the struggle for women's suffrage.
The color yellow is also widely used as a symbol of liberalism in general.
Criticism
Gender roles
Critics of liberal feminism argue that its individualist assumptions make it difficult to see the ways in which underlying social structures and values disadvantage women. They argue that even if women are not dependent upon individual men, they are still dependent upon a patriarchal state. These critics believe that institutional changes, like the introduction of women's suffrage, are insufficient to emancipate women.
According to Zhang and Rios, "liberal feminism tends to be adopted by 'mainstream' (i.e., middle-class) women who do not disagree with the current social structure." They found that liberal feminist beliefs were viewed as the dominant and "default" form of feminism.
One of the more prevalent critiques of liberal feminism is that it, as a study, allows too much of its focus to fall on a "metamorphosis" of women into men, and in doing so, it disregards the significance of the traditional role of women. One of the leading scholars who have critiqued liberal feminism is radical feminist Catherine A. MacKinnon, an American lawyer, writer, and social activist. Specializing in issues regarding sex equality, she has been intimately involved in cases regarding the definition of sexual harassment and sex discrimination. She, among other radical feminist scholars, views liberalism and feminism as incompatible, because liberalism offers women a "piece of the pie as currently and poisonously baked".
Racial attitudes
bell hooks' main criticism of the philosophies of liberal feminism is that they focus too much on an equality with men in their own class. She maintains that the "cultural basis of group oppression" is the biggest challenge, in that liberal feminists tend to ignore it.
Another important critique of liberal feminism posits the existence of a "white woman's burden" or white savior complex. The phrase "white woman's burden" derives from "The White Man's Burden". Critics such as Black feminists and postcolonial feminists assert that mainstream liberal feminism reflects only the values of middle-class, heterosexual, white women and fails to appreciate the position of women of different races, cultures, or classes. With this, white liberal feminists reflect the issues that underlie the white savior complex. They do not understand women that are outside the dominant society but try to "save" or "help" them by pushing them to assimilate into their ideals of feminism. According to such critics, liberal feminism fails to recognize the power dynamics that are in play with women of color and transnational women which involve multiple sources of oppression.
See also
Joint Organization of Nordic Women's Rights Associations
Explanatory notes
References
Further reading
Lucy E. Bailey. "Feminism, Liberal." The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, 2016.
Code, Lorraine. Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. Taylor and Francis Group. 2014.
Dundes, Lauren. "Concerned, Meet Terrified: Intersectional Feminism and the Women's March", Women's Studies International Forum, July 2018. .
Johnson, Pauline. "Normative tensions of Contemporary Feminism", Thesis Eleven Journal, May, 2010.
External links
Feminism and history
Feminist movements and ideologies
Feminist theory
Feminism
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth%20bear
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Sloth bear
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The sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), also known as the Indian bear, is a myrmecophagous bear species native to the Indian subcontinent. It feeds on fruits, ants and termites. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, mainly because of habitat loss and degradation. It is the only species in the genus Melursus.
It has also been called "labiated bear" because of its long lower lip and palate used for sucking up insects. It has long, shaggy fur, a mane around the face, and long, sickle-shaped claws. It is lankier than brown and Asian black bears.
It shares features of insectivorous mammals and evolved during the Pleistocene from the ancestral brown bear through divergent evolution.
Sloth bears breed during spring and early summer and give birth near the beginning of winter. When their territories are encroached upon by humans, they sometimes attack them. Historically, humans have drastically reduced these bears' habitat and diminished their population by hunting them for food and products such as their bacula and claws. Sloth bears have been tamed and used as performing animals and as pets.
Taxonomy
George Shaw in 1791 named the species Bradypus ursinus. In 1793, Meyer named it Melursus lybius, and in 1817, de Blainville named it Ursus labiatus because of its long lips. Illiger named it Prochilus hirsutus, the Greek genus name indicating long lips, while the specific name noted its long and coarse hair. Fischer called it Chondrorhynchus hirsutus, while Tiedemann named it Ursus longirostris.
Subspecies and range
Evolution
Sloth bears may have reached their current form in the Early Pleistocene, the time when the bear family specialised and dispersed. A fragment of fossilised humerus from the Pleistocene, found in Andhra Pradesh's Kurnool Basin is identical to the humerus of a modern sloth bear. The fossilised skulls of a bear once named Melursus theobaldi found in the Shivaliks from the Early Pleistocene or Early Pliocene are thought by certain authors to represent an intermediate stage between sloth bears and ancestral brown bears. M. theobaldi itself had teeth intermediate in size between sloth bears and other bear species, though its palate was the same size as the former species, leading to the theory that it is the sloth bear's direct ancestor. Sloth bears probably arose during the Middle Pliocene and evolved in the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear shows evidence of having undergone a convergent evolution similar to that of other ant-eating mammals.
Characteristics
Sloth bears adults are medium-sized bears. The typical weight range for females is from , and for males is from . Exceptionally large female specimens can reach and males up to . The average weight of sloth bears from the nominate subspecies in Nepal was in females and in males. Nominate bears in India were found to weigh average in males and in female per one study. Specimens from Sri Lanka (M. u. inornatus) may weigh up to in females and in males. However six Sri Lankan male sloth bears averaged only , and was the average for four females, so Sri Lankan bears could be around 30% lighter in body mass than nominate race bears and with more pronounced size sexual dimorphism. They are high at the shoulder, and have a body length of . Besides being smaller than males, females reportedly typically have more fur between their shoulders.
Sloth bear muzzles are thick and long, with small jaws and bulbous snouts with wide nostrils. They have long lower lips which can be stretched over the outer edge of their noses, and they lack upper incisors, thus allowing them to suck up large numbers of insects. The premolars and molars are smaller than in other bears, as they do not chew as much vegetation. In adults, the teeth are usually in poor condition, due to the amount of soil they suck up and chew when feeding on insects. The back of the palate is long and broad, as is typical in other ant-eating mammals. The paws are disproportionately large, and have highly developed, sickle-shaped, blunt claws which measure in length. Their toe pads are connected by a hairless web. They have the longest tail in the bear family, which can grow to . Their back legs are not very strong, though they are knee-jointed, and allow them to assume almost any position. The ears are very large and floppy. The sloth bear is the only bear with long hair on its ears.
Sloth bear fur is completely black (rusty for some specimens), save for a whitish Y- or V-shaped mark on the chest. This feature is sometimes absent, particularly in Sri Lankan specimens. This feature, which is also present in Asian black bears and sun bears, is thought to serve as a threat display, as all three species are sympatric with tigers (tigers usually do not carry out attacks on an adult bear if the bear is aware or facing the cat). The coat is long, shaggy, and unkempt, despite the relatively warm environment in which the species is found, and is particularly heavy behind the neck and between the shoulders, forming a mane which can be long. The belly and underlegs can be almost bare. Sloth bears are usually about the same size as an Asian black bear but are immediately distinctive for their shaggier coat, whitish claws, as well as their typically rangier build. Their head and mouth is highly distinct from that of a black bear with a longer, narrower skull shape (particularly the snout), loose-looking, flappier lips and paler muzzle colour. In few areas of overlap, sloth bear confusion with sun bears is unlikely, given the latter species considerably smaller size, much shorter fur, wrinkled folding skin (especially around the back), bolder chest marking and drastically different, more compact head structure and appearance.
Distribution and habitat
The sloth bear's global range includes India, the Terai of Nepal, temperate climatic zones of Bhutan and Sri Lanka. It occurs in a wide range of habitats including moist and dry tropical forests, savannahs, scrublands and grasslands below on the Indian subcontinent, and below in Sri Lanka's dry forests. It is regionally extinct in Bangladesh.
Behaviour and ecology
Adult sloth bears may travel in pairs. Males are often observed to be gentle with cubs. They may fight for food. They walk in a slow, shambling motion, with their feet being set down in a noisy, flapping motion. They are capable of galloping faster than running humans. Although they appear slow and clumsy, both young and adult sloth bears are excellent climbers. They occasionally will climb to feed and to rest, though not to escape enemies, as they prefer to stand their ground. Sloth bear mothers carry their cubs up trees as the primary defense against attacks by predators instead of sending them up trees. The cubs can be threatened by predators such as tigers, leopards, and other bears. They are adequate climbers on more accessible trees but cannot climb as quickly or on as varied surfaces as can black bears due to the sloth species' more elongated claw structure. Given their smaller size and still shorter claws, sloth bear cubs probably climb more proficiently than adults (much as brown bear cubs can climb well but not adults). They are good swimmers, and primarily enter water to play.
To mark their territories, sloth bears scrape trees with their forepaws, and rub against them with their flanks. Sloth bears are recorded to produce several sounds and vocals. Howls, squeals, screams, barks and trumpet-like calls are made during aggressive encounters while huffing is made as a warning signal. Chuffing calls are made when disturbed. Females keep in contact with their cubs with a grunt-whicker while cubs yelp when separated.
Reproduction
The breeding season for sloth bears varies according to location: in India, they mate in April, May, and June, and give birth in December and early January, while in Sri Lanka, it occurs all year. Sows gestate for 210 days, and typically give birth in caves or in shelters under boulders. Litters usually consist of one or two cubs, or rarely three. Cubs are born blind, and open their eyes after four weeks. Sloth bear cubs develop quickly compared to most other bear species: they start walking a month after birth, become independent at 24–36 months, and become sexually mature at the age of three years. Young cubs ride on their mother's back when she walks, runs, or climbs trees until they reach a third of her size. Individual riding positions are maintained by cubs through fighting. Intervals between litters can last two to three years.
Dietary habits
Sloth bears are expert hunters of termites and ants, which they locate by smell. On arriving at a mound, they scrape at the structure with their claws till they reach the large combs at the bottom of the galleries, and disperse the soil with violent puffs. The termites are then sucked up through the muzzle, producing a sucking sound which can be heard 180 m away. Their sense of smell is strong enough to detect grubs 3 ft below ground. Unlike other bears, they do not congregate in feeding groups. Sloth bears may supplement their diets with fruit, plant matter, carrion, and very rarely other mammals. In March and April, they eat the fallen petals of mowha trees and are partial to mangoes, sugar cane, jackfruit, and the pods of the golden shower tree. Sloth bears are extremely fond of honey. When feeding their cubs, sows are reported to regurgitate a mixture of half-digested jack fruit, wood apples, and pieces of honeycomb. This sticky substance hardens into a dark yellow, circular, bread-like mass which is fed to the cubs. This "bear's bread" is considered a delicacy by some of India's natives. Rarely, Sloth bears can become addicted to sweets in hotel waste visiting rubbish bins even inside populated towns all year long. Their diet includes animal flesh.
In Neyyar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kerala, seeds of six tree species eaten and excreted by sloth bears (Artocarpus hirsuta, A. integrifolia, Cassia fistula, Mangifera indica, Zizyphus oenoplina) did not see significantly different percentages of germination (appearance of cotyledon) when compared to germinated seeds that had not been passed through the gut of the bears. However, seeds germinated much faster after being ingested by bears for three species, Artocarpus hirsuta, Cassia fistula, and Zizyphus oenoplina. This experiment suggests that sloth bears may play an important role in seed dispersal and germination, with effects varying by tree species.
Relationships with other animals
The large canine teeth of sloth bears, relative to both its overall body size and to the size of the canine teeth of other bear species, and the aggressive disposition of sloth bears, may be a defense in interactions with large, dangerous animals, such as the tiger, elephant, and rhinoceros, as well as prehistoric species such as Megantereon.
Bengal tigers occasionally prey on sloth bears. Tigers usually give sloth bears a wide berth, though some specimens may become habitual bear killers, and it is not uncommon to find sloth bear fur in tiger scats. Tigers typically hunt sloth bears by waiting for them near termite mounds, then creeping behind them and seizing them by the back of their necks and forcing them to the ground with their weight. One tiger was reported to simply break its victim's back with its paw, then wait for the paralysed bear to exhaust itself trying to escape before going in for the kill. When confronted by tigers face to face, sloth bears charge at them, crying loudly. A young or already sated tiger usually retreats from an assertive sloth bear, as the bear's claws can inflict serious wounds, and most tigers end the hunt if the bears become aware of the tiger's presence before the pounce. Sloth bears may scavenge on tiger kills. As tigers are known to mimic the calls of sambar deer to attract them, sloth bears react fearfully even to the sounds made by deer themselves. In 2011, a female bear with cubs was observed to stand her ground and prevail in a confrontation against two tigers (one female, one male) in rapid succession.
Besides tigers there are few predators of sloth bears. Leopards can also be a threat, as they are able to follow sloth bears up trees. Bear cubs are probably far more vulnerable and healthy adult bears may be avoided by leopards. One leopard killed a three-quarters grown female sloth bear in an apparently lengthy fight that culminated in the trees. Apparently, a sloth bear killed a leopard in a confrontation in Yala National Park, Sri Lanka but was itself badly injured in the fight and was subsequently put down by park rangers. Sloth bears occasionally chase leopards from their kills. Dhole packs may attack sloth bears. When attacking them, dholes try to prevent the bear from retreating into caves. Unlike tigers which prey on sloth bears of all size, there is little evidence that dholes are a threat to fully-grown sloth bears other than exceptionally rare cases. In one case, a golden jackal (a species much smaller and less powerful than a sloth bear and not generally a pack hunter as is the dhole) was seen to aggressively displace an adult bear which passively loped away from the snapping canid, indicating the sloth bear does not regard other carnivores as competition.
Sloth bears are sympatric with Asiatic black bears in northern India, and the two species, along with the sun bear, coexist in some of the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. They are also found together in Assam, Manipur, and Mizoram, in the hills south of the Brahmaputra River, the only places occupied by all three bear species. The three species do not act aggressively toward each other. This may be because the three species generally differ in habit and dietary preferences.
Asian elephants apparently do not tolerate sloth bears in their vicinity. The reason for this is unknown, as individual elephants known to maintain their composure near tigers have been reported to charge bears. The Indian rhinoceros has a similar intolerance for sloth bears, and will charge at them.
Status and conservation
IUCN estimates that fewer than 20,000 sloth bears survive in the wilds of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka. The sloth bear is listed in Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which provides for their legal protection. Commercial international trade of the sloth bear (including
parts and derivatives) is prohibited as it is listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
To address the human-bear conflict, people may be educated about the conservation ethics, particularly among locals. To resolve this conflict, the basic issue of deteriorating habitat, which is the reason for the conflict between people and bears, improvements through government or community-based reforestation programmes, may be promoted.
The population of sloth bears grows when they live in high-profile reserves that protect species, such as tigers and elephants. Directly managed reserves could conserve the sloth bear, hence such reserves must be supported. Managing garbage, especially hotel waste with foods, is essential in situations where sloth bears get used to entering towns with an increase in the number of accidental attacks on humans.
The government of India has banned use of sloth bears for entertainment, and a 'Sloth Bear Welfare Project' in the country has the objective of putting an end to their use for entertainment. However, their number in such activity is still large. Many organisations are helping in the conservation and preservation of sloth bears in safe places. Sloth bears previously used for entertainment are being rehabilitated in facilities like Agra Bear Rescue Facility run by Wildlife SOS and others. Major sloth bear sanctuaries in India include the Daroji bear sanctuary, Karnataka.
Sloth bears have also been found dead in traps, electrocuted, or killed by other means by poachers, with body parts (i.e. canines, claws, gall bladder, paws, etc) usually removed for the illegal wildlife trade.
Relationships with humans
Attacks on humans
Sloth bears are one of the most aggressive extant bears and, due to large human populations often closely surrounding reserves that hold bears, aggressive encounters and attacks are relatively frequent, though in some places, attacks appear to be a reaction to encountering people accidentally. In absolute numbers, this is the species of bear that most regularly attacks humans. Only the Himalayan black bear subspecies of Asian black bear is nearly as dangerous. Sloth bears likely view humans as potential predators, as their reactions to them (roaring, followed by retreat or charging) are similar to those evoked in the presence of tigers and leopards. Their long claws, which are ideally adapted for digging at termite mounds, make adults less capable of climbing trees to escape danger, as are other bears such as Asian black bears. Therefore, sloth bears have seemingly evolved to deal with threats by behaving aggressively. For the same reason, brown bears can be similarly inclined, accounting for the relatively high incidence of seemingly nonpredatory aggression towards humans in these two bear species.
According to Robert Armitage Sterndale, in his Mammalia of India (1884, p. 62):
Captain Williamson in his Oriental Field Sports wrote of how sloth bears rarely killed their human victims outright, but would suck and chew on their limbs till they were reduced to bloody pulps. One specimen, known as the sloth bear of Mysore, was responsible for the deaths of 12 people and the mutilation of 24 others. It was shot by Kenneth Anderson. Although sloth bears have attacked humans, they rarely become man-eaters. Dunbar-Brander's Wild Animals of Central India mentions a case in which a sow with two cubs began a six-week reign of terror in Chanda, a district of the Central Provinces, during which more than one of their victims had been eaten, while the sloth bear of Mysore partially ate at least three of its victims. R.G. Burton deduced from comparing statistics that sloth bears killed more people than Asian black bears, and Theodore Roosevelt considered them to be more dangerous than American black bears. Unlike some other bear species, which at times make mock charges at humans when surprised or frightened without making physical contact, sloth bears frequently appear to initiate a physical attack almost immediately. When people living near an aggressive population of sloth bears were armed with rifles, it was found that it was an ineffective form of defense, since the bear apparently charges and knocks the victim back (often knocking the rifle away) before the human has the chance to defend themself. In Madhya Pradesh, sloth bear attacks accounted for the deaths of 48 people and the injuring of 686 others between 1989 and 1994, probably due in part to the density of population and competition for food sources. A total of 137 attacks (resulting in 11 deaths) occurred between April 1998 and December 2000 in the North Bilaspur Forest Division of Chhattisgarh. The majority of attacks were perpetrated by single bears, and occurred in kitchen gardens, crop fields, and in adjoining forests during the monsoon season. One Mr. Watts Jones wrote a first-hand account of how it feels to be attacked by a sloth bear, recalling when he failed to score a direct hit against a bear he had targeted:
In 2016, according to a forest official, a female bear had killed three people, and hurt five others in Gujarat State's Banaskantha district, near Balaram Ambaji Wildlife Sanctuary, with some of the casualties being colleagues. At first, an attempt was made to trace and cage it, but this failed, costing the life of one official, and so a team of both officials and policemen shot the bear.
In Karnataka's Bellary district, most of the attacks by sloth bears occurred outside forests, when they entered settlements and farmlands in search of food and water.
In Mount Abu town in southern Rajasthan, sloth bears attacked people inside towns where they were seeking hotel waste in rubbish bins and encountered people by chance. Though such attacks were concomitant with increasing tourism activity, quite remarkably, local residents have not retaliated against the sloth bears. The absence of retaliation in many locations of India appears related to cultural norms and the dominant religion Hinduism where nature and animals are worshipped as deities.
Hunting and products
One method of hunting sloth bears involved the use of beaters, in which case, a hunter waiting on a post could either shoot the approaching bear through the shoulder or on the white chest mark if it was moving directly to him. Sloth bears are very resistant to body shots, and can charge hunters if wounded, though someone of steady nerves could score a direct hit from within a few paces of a charging bear. Sloth bears were easy to track during the wet season, as their clear footprints could be followed straight to their lairs. The majority of sloth bears killed in forests were due to chance encounters with them during hunts for other game. In hilly or mountainous regions, two methods were used to hunt them there. One was to lie in wait above the bear's lair at dawn and wait for the bear to return from its nocturnal foraging. Another was to rouse them at daytime by firing flares into the cave to draw them out. Sloth bears were also occasionally speared on horseback. In Sri Lanka, the baculum of a sloth bear was once used as a charm against barrenness.
Tameability
Officers in British India often kept sloth bears as pets. The wife of Kenneth Anderson kept an orphaned sloth bear cub from Mysore, which she named "Bruno". The bear was fed all sorts of things and was very affectionate toward people. It was even taught numerous tricks, such as cradling a woodblock like a baby or pointing a bamboo stick like a gun.
Dancing bears were historically a popular entertainment in India, dating back to the 13th century and the pre-Mughal era. The Kalandars, who practised the tradition of capturing sloth bears for entertainment purposes, were often employed in the courts of Mughal emperors to stage spectacles involving trained bears. They were once common in the towns of Calcutta, where they often disturbed the horses of British officers.
Despite a ban on the practice that was enacted in 1972, as many as 800 dancing bears were in the streets of India during the latter part of the 20th century, particularly on the highway between Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. Sloth bear cubs, which were usually purchased at the age of six months from traders and poachers, were trained to dance and follow commands through coercive stimuli and starvation. Males were castrated at an early age, and their teeth were knocked out at the age of one year to prevent them from seriously injuring their handlers. The bears were typically fitted with a nose ring attached to a four-foot leash. Some were found to be blind from malnutrition.
In 2009, following a seven-year campaign by a coalition of Indian and international animal welfare groups, the last Kalandar dancing bear was set free. The effort to end the practice involved helping the bear handlers find jobs and education, which enabled them to reduce their reliance on dancing-bear income.
Cultural references
Charles Catton included the bear in his 1788 book Animals Drawn from Nature and Engraved in Aqua-tinta, describing it as an "animal of the bear-kind" and saying it was properly called the "Petre Bear".
In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Baloo "the sleepy old brown bear" teaches the Law of the Jungle to the wolf cubs of the Seeonee wolf pack, as well as to his most challenging pupil, the "man-cub" Mowgli. Robert Armitage Sterndale, from whom Kipling derived most of his knowledge of Indian fauna, used the Hindustani word bhalu for several bear species, though Daniel Karlin, who edited the Penguin Classics reissue of The Jungle Book in 1989, stated, with the exception of colour, Kipling's descriptions of Baloo are consistent with the sloth bear, as brown bears and Asian black bears do not occur in the Seoni area where the novel takes place. Also, the name "sloth" can be used in the context of sleepiness. Karlin states, however, that Baloo's diet of ".. only roots and nuts and honey" is a trait more common to the Asian black bear than to the sloth bear.
Local names:
, rīn̄ch; also rinchh
, bhālū;
, bhālu
, ślath bhaluk; kālō bhāluk; also bhaluk
, ṛkṣa; also rikspa
, karaḍi; kaddi
, karaṭi; kaddi
, karaṭi
, elugubaṇṭi; also elugu
, asval; also aswal
Gond: yerid, yedjal and asol
Kol: bana
Oraon: bir mendi
, valasā; also usa
, bhālu
, richh
References
Cited sources
External links
PDF1
PDF2
Field Trip Earth – Field Trip Earth is a conservation education website operated by the North Carolina Zoological Society.
Sloth Bear at Animal Diversity Web
Sloth Bear
Sloth Bear
Mammals of India
Mammals of Nepal
Mammals of Sri Lanka
Myrmecophagous mammals
Mammals described in 1791
Taxa named by George Shaw
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William-Adolphe%20Bouguereau
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown.
Life and career
Formative years
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France, on 30 November 1825, into a family of wine and olive oil merchants. The son of Théodore Bouguereau (born 1800) and Marie Bonnin (1804), known as Adeline, William was brought up a Catholic. He had an elder brother, Alfred, and a younger sister, Marie (known as Hanna), who died when she was seven. The family moved to Saint-Martin-de-Ré in 1832. Another sibling, Kitty, was born in 1834. At the age of twelve, Bouguereau went to Mortagne-sur-Gironde to stay with his uncle Eugène, a priest, and developed a love of nature, religion, and literature. In 1839, he was sent to study for the priesthood at a Catholic college in Pons. Here he learned to draw and paint from Louis Sage, who had studied under Ingres. Bouguereau then reluctantly left his studies to return to his family, now residing in Bordeaux. There he met a local artist, Charles Marionneau, and commenced at the Municipal School of Drawing and Painting in November 1841. Bouguereau also worked as a shop assistant, hand-colouring lithographs and making small paintings that were reproduced using chromolithography. He was soon the best pupil in his class and decided to become an artist in Paris. To fund the move, he sold portraits – 33 oils in three months. All were unsigned and only one has been traced. In 1845, he returned to Mortagne to spend more time with his uncle. He arrived in Paris in March 1846, aged twenty.
Bouguereau became a student at the . To supplement his formal training in drawing, he attended anatomical dissections and studied historical costumes and archeology. He was admitted to the studio of François-Édouard Picot, where he studied painting in the academic style. Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850) was an early example of his neo-classical works. Academic painting placed the highest status on historical and mythological subjects and Bouguereau determined to win the , which would gain him a three-year residence at the Villa Medici in Rome, Italy, where, in addition taking formal lessons, he could study firsthand the Renaissance artists and their masterpieces, as well as Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities.
Villa Medici, Rome 1851–1854
The young artist entered the contest in April 1848. Soon after work began there were riots in Paris, and Bouguereau enrolled in the National Guard. After an unsuccessful attempt to win the prize, he entered again in 1849. Following 106 days of competition, he again failed to win. His third attempt commenced unsuccessfully in April 1850 with Dante and Virgil but five months later, he heard he had won a joint first prize for Shepherds Find Zenobia on the Banks of the Araxes.
Along with other category winners, he set off for Rome in December and finally arrived at the Villa Medici in January 1851. Bouguereau explored the city, making sketches and watercolours as he went. He also studied classical literature, which influenced his subject choice for the rest of his career. He walked to Naples and on to Capri, Amalfi and Pompeii. Still based in Rome and working hard on course work, there were more explorations of Italy in 1852. Although he had a strong admiration for all traditional art, he particularly revered Greek sculpture, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens and Delacroix. In April 1854, he left Rome and returned to La Rochelle.
Height of career
Bouguereau, painting within the traditional academic style, exhibited at the annual exhibitions of the Paris Salon for his entire working life. An early reviewer stated, "M. Bouguereau has a natural instinct and knowledge of contour. The eurythmie of the human body preoccupies him, and in recalling the happy results which, in this genre, the ancients and the artists of the sixteenth century arrived at, one can only congratulate M. Bouguereau in attempting to follow in their footsteps ... Raphael was inspired by the ancients ... and no one accused him of not being original."
Raphael was a favourite of Bouguereau and he took this review as a high compliment. He had fulfilled one of the requirements of the by completing an old-master copy of Raphael's The Triumph of Galatea. In many of his works, he followed the same classical approach to composition, form, and subject matter. Bouguereau's graceful portraits of women were considered very charming, partly because he could beautify a sitter while also retaining her likeness.
Although Bouguereau spent most of his life in Paris, he returned to La Rochelle again and again throughout his professional life. He was revered in the town of his birth and undertook decorating commissions from local citizens. From the early 1870s, he and his family spent every summer in La Rochelle. In 1882, he decided that rather than rent he would purchase a house, as well as local farm buildings. By August of that year, the family's permanent summer base was on the rue Verdière. The artist commenced several paintings here and completed them in his Paris studio.
Bouguereau flourished after his Villa Medici residence. In 1854–55 he decorated a pavilion at the grand house of a cousin in Angoulins, including four large paintings of figures depicting the seasons. He was happy to undertake other commissions to pay off the debts accrued in Italy and to help his penniless mother. He decorated a mansion with nine large paintings of allegorical figures. In 1856, the Ministry of State for Fine Arts commissioned him to paint Emperor Napoleon III Visiting the Victims of the Tarascon Flood. There were decorations for the chapel at Saint-Clotilde. He received the Legion of Honour on 12 July 1859. By this time, Bouguereau was turning away from history painting and lengthy commissions to work on more personal paintings, with realistic and rustic themes.
By the late 1850s, he had made strong connections with art dealers, particularly Paul Durand-Ruel (later the champion of the Impressionists), who helped clients buy paintings from artists who exhibited at the Salons. Thanks to Durand-Ruel, Bouguereau met Hugues Merle, who later often was compared to Bouguereau. The Salons annually drew over 300,000 people, providing valuable exposure to exhibited artists. Bouguereau's fame extended to England by the 1860s. Three paintings were shown at the 1863 Salon and Holy Family (Now at Chimei Museum) was sold to Napoleon III, who presented it to his wife the Empress Eugénie, who hung it in her Tuileries apartment.
Bather (1864), a shocking nude, was submitted to an exhibition in Ghent, Belgium. It was a spectacular success and purchased by the museum at great expense. At this time, William took on decorative work at the Grand Théâtre, Bordeaux, which lasted four years. In 1875, with assistants, he began work on a La Rochelle chapel ceiling, producing six paintings on copper over the next six years. Once installed in the city in summer 1875 he began Pietà, one of his greatest religious paintings and shown at the 1876 Salon, in tribute to his son Georges. At the behest of King William III of the Netherlands, Bouguereau went to Het Loo Palace in May 1876. The king admired the artist and they spent intimate times together. In May 1878 the Paris Universal Exhibition opened to showcase French work. Bouguereau found and borrowed twelve of his paintings from their owners, including his new work Nymphaeum.
Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the naked female form. The idealized world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, nymphs, bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era.
Bouguereau employed traditional methods of working up a painting, including detailed pencil studies and oil sketches, and his careful method resulted in a pleasing and accurate rendering of the human form. His painting of skin, hands, and feet was particularly admired. He also used some of the religious and erotic symbolism of the Old Masters, such as the "broken pitcher" which connoted lost innocence.
Bouguereau received many commissions to decorate private houses and public buildings, and, early on, this added to his prestige and fame. As was typical of such commissions, he would sometimes paint in his own style, and at other times conform to an existing group style. He also made reductions of his public paintings for sale to patrons, of which The Annunciation (1888) is an example. He was also a successful portrait painter and many of his paintings of wealthy patrons remain in private hands.
Académie Julian
From the 1860s, Bouguereau was closely associated with the where he gave lessons and advice to art students, male and female, from around the world. During several decades he taught drawing and painting to hundreds, if not thousands, of students. Many of them managed to establish artistic careers in their own countries, sometimes following his academic style, and in other cases, rebelling against it, like Henri Matisse. He married his most famous pupil, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, after the death of his first wife.
Bouguereau received many honors from the Academy: he became a Life Member in 1876; received the Grand Medal of Honour in 1885; was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1885; and was made Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour in 1905. He began to teach drawing at the in 1875, a co-ed art institution independent of the , with no entrance exams and nominal fees.
Wives and children
In 1856, William began living with one of his models, Nelly Monchablon, a 19-year-old from Lisle-en-Rigault. Living together unmarried, the pair kept their liaison a secret. Their first child, Henriette, was born in April 1857; Georges was born in January 1859. A third child, Jeanne, was born 25 December 1861. The couple married quietly (as many assumed they were already married) on 24 May 1866. Eight days later, Jeanne died from tuberculosis. In mourning, the couple went to La Rochelle, and Bouguereau made a painting of her in 1868. A fourth child, Adolphe (known as Paul), was born in October 1868. Aged 15, Georges' health suffered, and his mother took him away from the bad air of Paris. However, he died on 19 June 1875. Nelly had a fifth child in 1876, Maurice, but her health was declining and the doctors suspected that she had contracted tuberculosis. She died on 3 April 1877, and baby Maurice died two months later.
The artist planned to marry Elizabeth Jane Gardner, a pupil whom he had known for ten years, but his mother was opposed to the idea. Soon after Nelly's death, she made Bouguereau swear he would not remarry within her lifetime. After his mother's death, and after a nineteen-year engagement, he and Gardner married in Paris in June 1896. His wife continued to work as his private secretary, and helped to organize the household staff. His son Paul contracted tuberculosis in early 1899; Paul, his stepmother, and Bouguereau went to Menton in the south. When the stay was prolonged, the artist found a room in which to paint. Paul died at his father's house in April 1900, aged 32; Bouguereau had outlived four of his five children, only Henriette outlived him. Elizabeth, who was with her husband to the end, died in Paris in January 1922.
Homes
When Bouguereau arrived in Paris in March 1846, he resided at the Hotel Corneille at 5 rue Corneille. In 1855, after his stay in Rome, he lived at 27 rue de Fleurus, and the following year rented a fourth-floor studio at 3 rue Carnot, near his apartment. In 1866, the year of his marriage to Nelly, he bought a vast plot of land on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and an architect was commissioned to design a grand house with a top-floor studio. The family was installed in 1868, together with five servants and with his mother, Adeline, visiting daily. Bouguereau spent the rest of his life here and at La Rochelle.
Later years and death
Bouguereau was an assiduous painter, often completing twenty or more easel paintings in a single year. Even during the twilight years of his life, he would rise at dawn to work on his paintings six days a week and would continue painting until nightfall. Throughout the course of his lifetime, he is known to have painted at least 822 paintings. Many of these paintings have been lost. Near the end of his life he described his love of his art: "Each day I go to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged to stop because of darkness I can scarcely wait for the next morning to come ... if I cannot give myself to my dear painting I am miserable."
In the spring of 1905, Bouguereau's house and studio in Paris were burgled. On 19 August 1905, aged 79, Bouguereau died in La Rochelle from heart disease. There was an outpouring of grief in the town of his birth. After a Mass at the cathedral, his body was placed on a train to Paris for a second ceremony. Bouguereau was laid to rest with Nelly and his children at the family vault at Montparnasse Cemetery.
Notable works
Reputation
In his own time, Bouguereau was considered to be one of the greatest painters in the world by the academic art community, and simultaneously he was reviled by the avant-garde. He also gained wide fame in Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Romania and in the United States, and commanded high prices. His works often sold within days of completion. Some were viewed by international collectors and bought before work had even finished.
Bouguereau's career was nearly a direct ascent with hardly a setback. To many, he epitomized taste and refinement, and a respect for tradition. To others, he was a competent technician stuck in the past. Degas and his associates used the term "Bouguereauté" in a derogatory manner to describe any artistic style reliant on "slick and artificial surfaces", also known as a licked finish. In an 1872 letter, Degas wrote that he strove to emulate Bouguereau's ordered and productive working style, although with Degas' famous trenchant wit, and the aesthetic tendencies of the Impressionists, it is possible the statement was meant to be ironic. Paul Gauguin loathed him, rating him a round zero in Racontars de Rapin and later describing in Avant et après (Intimate Journals) the single occasion when Bouguereau made him smile on coming across a couple of his paintings in an Arles brothel, "where they belonged".
Bouguereau's works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him the most important French artist of that time. For example, Nymphs and Satyr was purchased first by John Wolfe, then sold by his heiress Catharine Lorillard Wolfe to hotelier Edward Stokes, who displayed it in New York City's Hoffman House Hotel. Two paintings by Bouguereau in the Nob Hill mansion of Leland Stanford were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Gold Rush tycoon James Ben Ali Haggin and his family, who normally eschewed the nude, made an exception for Bouguereau's Nymphaeum.
However, even during his lifetime, there was critical dissent in assessing his work; the art historian Richard Muther wrote in 1894 that Bouguereau was a man "destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a cultured taste [who] reveals... in his feeble mawkishness, the fatal decline of the old schools of convention." In 1926, American art historian Frank Jewett Mather criticized the commercial intent of Bouguereau's work, writing that the artist "multiplied vague, pink effigies of nymphs, occasionally draped them, when they became saints and madonnas, painted on the great scale that dominates an exhibition, and has had his reward. I am convinced that the nude of Bouguereau was prearranged to meet the ideals of a New York stockbroker of the black walnut generation." Bouguereau confessed in 1891 that the direction of his mature work was largely a response to the marketplace: "What do you expect, you have to follow public taste, and the public only buys what it likes. That's why, with time, I changed my way of painting."
Bouguereau fell into disrepute after 1920, due in part to changing tastes. Comparing his work to that of his Realist and Impressionist contemporaries, Kenneth Clark faulted Bouguereau's painting for "lubricity", and characterized such Salon art as superficial, employing the "convention of smoothed-out form and waxen surface."
The New York Cultural Center staged a show of Bouguereau's work in 1974—partly as a curiosity, although curator Robert Isaacson had his eye on the long-term rehabilitation of Bouguereau's legacy and reputation. In 1984, the Borghi Gallery hosted a commercial show of 23 oil paintings and one drawing. In the same year, a major exhibition was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada. The exhibition opened at the Musée du Petit-Palais, in Paris, traveled to The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and concluded in Montréal. More recently, resurgence in the artist's popularity has been promoted by American collector Fred Ross, who owns a number of paintings by Bouguereau and features him on his website at Art Renewal Center.
In 2019, the Milwaukee Art Museum assembled more than 40 of Bouguereau's paintings for a major retrospective of his work, which according to The Wall Street Journal, asked the readers to "see Bouguereau through the eyes of an age when he was lionized, and Impressionism was dismissed as 'French freedom.' " The exhibition later was scheduled to travel to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tenn., and then to the San Diego Museum of Art.
Prices for Bouguereau's works have climbed steadily since 1975, with major paintings selling at high prices: $1,500,000 in 1998 for The Heart's Awakening, $2,600,000 in 1999 for The Motherland and Charity at auction in May 2000 for $3,500,000. Bouguereau's works are in many public collections.
Notre Dame des Anges ("Our Lady of the Angels") was last shown publicly in the United States at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. It was donated in 2002 to the Daughters of Mary Mother of Our Savior, an order of nuns affiliated with Clarence Kelly's Traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius V. In 2009, the nuns sold it for $450,000 to an art dealer, who was able to sell it for more than $2 million. Kelly was subsequently found guilty by a jury in Albany, New York, of defaming the dealer in remarks made in a television interview.
Name
Awards and honours
1848: Second , for Saint Pierre après sa délivrance de prison, vient retrouver les fidèles chez Marie.
1850: Premier , for Zenobie retrouvée par les bergers sur les bords de l'Araxe.
1859: Knight of the Legion of Honour
1876: Officer of the Legion of Honour
1881: Knight in the Order of Leopold
1885: Commander of the Legion of Honour
1885: Grand Medal of Honour
1890: Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium
1905: Grand Officier of the Legion of Honour
In literature
In The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers, he is mentioned in various tales as a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts.
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Sign of the Four (1890), the character Mr Sholto remarks, "there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school."
Selected works
La Danse (1856)
Bather (1864)
Loin du Pays (painting and two reductions) Far From Home (1867)
Alone in the World (Latest 1867)
The Knitting Girl (1869)
The Elder Sister (1869)
Italian Girl at the Fountain (1870)
Baigneuse (1870)
Nymphs and Satyr (1873)
Homer and his Guide (1874)
At the Edge of the River (1875)
Flora and Zephyr (1875)
The Grape Picker (1875)
The Little Knitter (1875)
La Jeunesse et l'Amour (1877)
The Donkey Ride (1878)
The Birth of Venus (1879)
Girl Defending herself against Cupid (1880)
Song of the Angels (1881)
Evening Mood (1882)
The Nut Gatherers (1882)
Alma Parens of Mother France (1883)
The Youth of Bacchus (1884)
Biblis (1884)
The Return of Spring (1886)
Woman with Captive Cupid (1886)
The First Mourning (1888)
The Shepherdess (1889)
Les murmures de l'Amour (1889)
Gabrielle Cot, a portrait of Cot's daughter, 1890
L'Amour et Psyché, enfants (1890)
The Bohemian (1890)
Little Beggars (1890)
Le Travail interrompu (1891)
The Goose Girl (1891)
The Wasps Nest (1892)
Innocence (1893)
Pleasant Burden (1895)
The Ravishment of Psyche (1895)
The Wave (1896)
Admiration (1897)
La Vierge au lys (1899)
Rêve de printemps (1901)
Yvonne on the Doorstep (1901)
The Oreads (1902)
Oceanid (1904)
In The Woods (1905)
Source
Gallery
See also
Gustave Doyen
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
References
Further reading
Bouguereau, William-Adolphe (1885). Catalogue illustré des œuvres de W. Bouguereau, Paris: L. Baschet.
External links
William-Adolphe Bouguereau: The Complete Works
1825 births
1905 deaths
19th-century French male artists
19th-century French painters
20th-century French male artists
20th-century French painters
Academic art
Academic staff of the Académie Julian
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
French male painters
French Realist painters
French Roman Catholics
Grand Officers of the Legion of Honour
Members of the Royal Academy of Belgium
Orientalist painters
People from La Rochelle
Pont-Aven painters
Prix de Rome for painting
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Hewson
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John Hewson
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John Robert Hewson AM (born 28 October 1946) is an Australian former politician who served as leader of the Liberal Party from 1990 to 1994. He led the Liberal-National Coalition to defeat at the 1993 Australian federal election.
Hewson was born in Sydney, New South Wales, and earned a PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins University. He has also attained degrees from the University of Sydney and the University of Regina. Before entering politics, Hewson worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank of Australia, an economic advisor to the Fraser government, a business journalist, and a director of Macquarie Bank.
In 1987, Hewson was elected to the House of Representatives. He was appointed to the shadow cabinet in 1988, serving under John Howard and Andrew Peacock. After Peacock lost the 1990 election, Hewson was elected leader of the Liberal Party in his place, thus becoming Leader of the Opposition. In 1991, he launched the Fightback! policy manifesto, which proposed a series of major economic reforms with a goods and services tax (GST) as its centrepiece.
Political platforms in the 1993 federal election focused mainly on economic policy, especially on how Australia should respond to the early 1990s recession. The Labor Party – led by Paul Keating – had been in power for 10 years at that point. Many polls suggested a Coalition victory, however Labor was able to mount a successful campaign, with the party's net increase in seats allowing Keating to remain prime minister. Hewson continued on as Liberal leader for another year, losing a leadership spill to Alexander Downer in 1994. He left parliament the following year. Since then, Hewson has continued to be a public expert in business and political commentary. He resigned his Liberal Party membership in 2019, having been a critic of its policy direction for a number of years, particularly on climate change.
Early life
Hewson was born at Baroda Private Hospital in Carlton, Sydney, New South Wales. He was the first of four children born to Eileen Isabella (née Tippett) and Donald Hewson. His mother was born in England and arrived in Australia at the age of six. His father worked as a fitter and turner. Hewson spent his early years in Carlton, where his parents lived with his paternal grandmother and his father's three sisters. His father eventually saved enough money to buy a house in Beverly Hills. Hewson attended Carlton Primary School and Beverly Hills North Primary School before matriculating to Kogarah High School, graduating in 1963. He subsequently completed a Bachelor of Economics degree at the University of Sydney in 1967. He then completed a master's degree at the Regina, Canada campus of the University of Saskatchewan (which since 1974 has been the University of Regina) and a second master's and a doctorate in economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1967, he married Margaret Deaves.
Upon returning to Australia, Hewson worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank of Australia. From 1976 to 1983 he was employed as an economic advisor to two successive Liberal treasurers, Phillip Lynch and John Howard. During this period he developed an interest in politics and became determined to enter politics himself. While he espoused strong liberal views, he was critical of what he saw as unconvincing and inconsistent Liberal Party economic policies. He was a supporter of some of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher.
After the defeat of the Fraser government in the 1983 election, Hewson went into business journalism and became a director of a private bank, the Macquarie Bank. After divorcing Margaret Deaves in 1985, Hewson would go on to marry Carolyn Somerville in 1988. Deaves claims that Hewson left her because he was under the impression she would not be able to cope with the responsibilities of public life as the wife of a prominent public servant despite her working to support him while he was studying overseas.
Politics
Hewson was elected to the House of Representatives for the affluent Sydney electorate of Wentworth in the 1987 federal election. Before the election he was told he would have to give up his Ferrari to be pre-selected. However, Hewson kept his car despite it attracting controversy. He entered Parliament at a time when there was a leadership vacuum amongst the conservatives. The Coalition, led by John Howard, lost the 1987 election, but a majority of Liberal MPs voted to keep him as leader over his predecessor Andrew Peacock.
Hewson was Howard's advisor when Howard was Treasurer and the two formed a friendship. However their friendship hit a low point when Hewson won Liberal preselection for Wentworth. After Hewson's preselection, Howard was seen talking to Dr. Jane Munro, who like Hewson was also an academic and was Hewson's main rival for the preselection. Hewson then angrily accused Howard of supporting Munro for the preselection instead of Hewson. Government and Opposition MPs who are new to Parliament usually take their place on the backbench but Hewson believed he was an exception to this due to his personal history with Howard. Hewson was therefore disappointed not to be offered a shadow portfolio by Howard.
Hewson instead sat on the backbench until September 1988 when Howard appointed Hewson as shadow finance minister. In May 1989, when Andrew Peacock replaced Howard as Leader after a challenge in which Hewson voted for Howard, Hewson became shadow treasurer. Even prior to Howard's removal, when Peacock was the shadow treasurer, Hewson had been seen as the real shadow treasurer. In the lead-up to the 1990 election, Hewson, the trained economist, was seen to have performed well against the then-treasurer Paul Keating. In December 1989, Hewson claimed that Keating was reluctant to debate with him on the economy.
Election to Leadership of the Opposition
When the Coalition were defeated at the 1990 federal elections, Peacock quit and supported Hewson, who was elected to the Liberal leadership despite having been in Parliament for only three years, as Hewson had been one of the top Liberal players in the 1990 election campaign. In the contest for leadership, Hewson defeated Peter Reith 62 votes to 13. Reith was then elected deputy leader over David Jull, with Hewson making Reith Shadow Treasurer. One of the reasons for Hewson's election to the leadership was that Peacock wanted to prevent Howard from regaining leadership. Another reason for Hewson's election was a desire by the Liberal party to have generational change, according to John Howard, who believed Hewson was not ready to be leader. Previously, Hewson had endorsed Peacock as his deputy, which created much resentment for him among Howard's supporters. Peacock, however, had no interest in becoming deputy leader again and withdrew his candidacy. In 1991, Hewson's ex-wife Margaret declared on 60 minutes that she would vote for him at the next election, as did his son Tim, who claimed Hewson had placed politics before his family and that was why his father had divorced Margaret. Margaret claimed the first six months of her divorce was the hardest and she had not realised someone else was on the scene. Hewson's shadow ministry included newly elected Member for Higgins Peter Costello; Hewson had told Costello he would not be a Minister in a Hewson government, a joke Costello would relay years later. In 1991, Hewson spoke at the Australian Council of Social Services, where he stated that the organisation was reinforcing the biblical reminder that "the Poor are with us forever" by making welfare provisions larger. This caused controversy for Hewson, who came to be seen as harsh and untrustworthy by Australian reporter Laurie Oakes.
Fightback! and the 1993 Federal Election
Shortly after gaining the leadership, Hewson made up ground on the Hawke government in the opinion polls as the Australian economy struggled with the early 1990s recession. Hewson was determined to make a break with what he saw as the "weak pragmatism of past Liberal leaders." In November 1991, the opposition launched the 650-page Fightback! policy document − a radical collection of "dry", economic liberal measures including the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), various changes to Medicare including the abolition of bulk billing for non-concession holders, the introduction of a nine-month limit on unemployment benefits, various changes to industrial relations laws including the abolition of awards, a $13 billion personal income tax cut directed at middle and upper income earners, $10 billion in government spending cuts, the abolition of state payroll taxes, and the privatisation of a large number of government owned enterprises − representing the start of a very different direction from the keynesian economic conservatism practiced by previous Liberal/National Coalition governments. The 15 percent GST was the centrepiece of the policy document.
In December 1991, Keating successfully defeated Hawke and became Prime Minister. In 1992, Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class, as it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation as a broad-based consumption tax. Keating memorably described the impact of Hewson's GST as "15% on this, 15% on that", and Hewson as a "feral abacus."
In 1992, Hewson attacked New South Wales Labor leader Bob Carr for his lack of a family life when compared to Liberal Premier John Fahey, stating, "You've got to be suspicious of a guy that doesn't drive, doesn't like kids and things like that. When he's up against a full-blooded Australian like John Fahey, he hasn't got a hope". Keating responded by saying "I don't think Ben Chifley had any trouble being a full-blooded Australian and he didn't have any children", and Hewson was later forced to withdraw the remark. Carr and his wife Helena did not respond to Hewson's attack.
Keating won the 1993 election, marking a record fifth consecutive Labor term, with the Coalition losing what many had described as "the unlosable election" for them. The issue of the GST was dropped from the Liberal Party's agenda until the 1998 election campaign. Apart from the GST, other factors were believed to have contributed to the 1993 election defeat, including the fear of changes to Medicare and the zero Tariff policy. Peter Costello stated that he believes Hewson's Fightback! campaign caused unnecessary confrontations and that Hewson lacked the experience to know which policies to fight for and which ones to leave alone. Notable confrontations including the GST proposal receiving opposition from Churches and Welfare as well as opposition to abolishing bulk billing and changing superannuation. An additional reason for the defeat was the partial backdown Hewson made in Fightback! policy in 1992 by agreeing not to levy the GST on food. This concession caused Hewson to be exposed to assertions of weakness and inconsistency, and also complicated the financial arithmetic of the whole package, as the weakening of the GST reduced the scope for tax cuts, the most attractive element of the package for middle-class voters. The complications of the revised Fightback! package were demonstrated in the "birthday cake interview", in which Hewson was unable to answer a question posed by journalist Mike Willesee about whether or not a birthday cake would cost more or less under a Coalition government. Hewson was instead forced into a series of circumlocutions about whether the cake would be decorated, have ice cream in it and so on, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. In reference to the birthday cake interview in an August 2006 interview, Hewson said: "Well I answered the question honestly. The answer's actually right. That doesn't count...I should have told him (Mike Willesee) to get stuffed!". According to Channel 9's 20 to 1 episode Unscripted and Unplanned, the Birthday Cake Interview incident was the moment Hewson lost the election with the interview held 10 days before polling day, even though polls supported a Coalition victory right up to election day.
Loss of leadership & retirement
Hewson announced that if the Coalition lost the 1993 election, he would resign as Liberal Leader. However, he changed his mind after the election and decided to not resign as Leader due to his objection to John Howard as his replacement, and the uncertainty this would create for issues like the Native Act and the Republic issue. Hewson felt he had to remain Leader, believing that Howard failed his Liberal leadership tenure from 1985 to 1989 and would not be a good leader of the party. Hewson also rejected suggestions like the one made by Senator Michael Baume that he was being used by Andrew Peacock and his supporters to block Howard from returning. Hewson defeated Howard in a post-election party leadership challenge in March 1993, which included the nomination of Bruce Reid, Member for Bendigo.
However, Hewson was not guaranteed to still be Coalition Leader by the time of the next Federal election in early 1996. Liberal MP's such as Peter Costello and Bronwyn Bishop consistently undermined his leadership over the subsequent year; the media coverage of Bishop's transfer from the Senate to the House of Representatives in 1994 damaged Hewson in a similar fashion to how the Joh for Canberra campaign damaged John Howard in the 1980s. Through persistent questions over his leadership, Hewson's consistent response was that "leadership is not an issue". Highly regarded Australian psephologist Antony Green believes that had the former deputy Liberal leader Fred Chaney not retired in 1993 he could have succeeded Hewson as Liberal leader in 1993. Chaney was described by Hewson as "the little ***** from the West".
As well as staying as Leader after the 1993 election defeat, Hewson also appointed himself Shadow Minister for Arts and Heritage, a position he held until the end of his leadership in May 1994. During this time he shadowed Arts Ministers Bob McMullan and Michael Lee.
In 1993, during Parliamentary question time, Hewson declared to Paul Keating that the passing of the Mabo act would be "a day of shame" for Australia, stating that an alternative solution should be sought for the Aborigines. Hewson claimed his inflammatory remarks were directed at Keating's policy and not extinguishing pastoral leases, but he never explained what better solution he was seeking and never withdrew his offensive remarks. In 1994, Hewson declared Fightback! to be dead. Around the same time, he declared his support for the Mardi Gras. Although the Labor Treasurer John Dawkins had presented a badly received 1993/1994 budget, Hewson seemed to not be making any momentum against the Federal Labor government as he had done in his previous parliamentary term. Hewson gave a speech arguing that hardline Monarchists were an anachronism, which resulted in John Howard storming into his office and shouting that Australia would be a republic over his dead body.
In early 1994, Labor Minister Ros Kelly became involved in a scandal known as the 'sports rorts' affair, which eventually led to her resignation. Kelly had previously stated that Hewson would be the only one resigning. In May 1994, Hewson asserted that he was leader of the Liberal party, and was surprised by negative internal party polling on an episode of Lateline, which led to his falling out with Liberal Federal Director Andrew Robb. Hewson attempted to silence leadership speculation in general by calling a leadership ballot on 23 May 1994. However, he lost the vote and the leadership to Alexander Downer, who had undermined Hewson while acting as Shadow Treasurer. Hewson had also lost the support of Federal Liberal Party President Tony Staley and Andrew Peacock, who had supported Hewson four years earlier and against Howard's 1993 leadership challenge. Staley broke it off with Hewson after being informed by fellow Liberal party member Ron Walker of difficulties in fundraising following the 1993 election defeat. Staley believed Hewson to be unelectable. Journalist Laurie Oakes claimed that Hewson viewed Peter Costello as his would-be challenger, unaware of the threat posed by Downer. Several days later after blaming Andrew Robb for his losing the leadership to Downer, Hewson was appointed as Shadow Minister for Industry, Commerce, Infrastructure, and Customs in Downer's shadow cabinet, becoming the third former Liberal leader in the group alongside Peacock (who quit politics later that year) and Howard.
Notwithstanding not foreseeing Downer as his replacement when he appointed him Shadow Treasurer, Hewson's strategy of saving his leadership was to promote rivals such as promoting Peter Costello to the Finance portfolio and bringing Bronwyn Bishop straight to Shadow Cabinet from the backbench with the new portfolio of Urban and Regional Strategy.
Despite his advocacy of right-wing economics, Hewson supported abortion, gay rights, and increasing working mothers' benefits. In August 1994, Hewson was dismissed by Downer from the shadow ministry after declaring his view on a Tasmanian homosexual law issue. . During January 1995, following a controversial joke about domestic violence policy several months prior, Downer, at the risk of a leadership challenge from John Howard, asked Hewson for his support against Howard. Hewson released a statement indicating that he would support either Downer or Howard for leadership, on the condition that he became Shadow Treasurer. This led to Peter Costello (The Shadow Treasurer) stating that Hewson's days had passed and describing him as a suicide bomber. Several days later, Downer resigned and Howard was elected Liberal leader for his second period. Hewson was not returned to the front bench as part of the Howard shadow cabinet and speculation spread that he intended to leave politics, a claim he denied while at the same time endorsing John Howard as Liberal party leader and Prime Minister. Former New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner confirmed he had advised Hewson to retire.
On 28 February 1995, Hewson announced in the House of Representatives that he would resign as Member for Wentworth, citing his second wife's pregnancy and the fact he was seen as interfering when he spoke up and as holding a seat he should vacate if he remained silent. He said in his resignation speech that while the Coalition might have won in 1993, if he had not released the Fightback! document before the election he would have had difficulty in passing legislation with the Senate, and he had therefore released it in an effort to secure support and gain a mandate for its goals. He also predicted that under Howard, the Coalition would win the next election as the electorate took its revenge on those who had pursued a "politics of fear and misrepresentation" in 1993. He is the only Liberal leader to leave politics without serving as a minister. Analysts had speculated that had he remained in Parliament, he would have been at risk of losing Liberal party endorsement in a party pre-selection challenge to his seat, unlike Downer, who, as a Shadow Minister, was not subjected to pre-selection challenges. Hewson's former chief of staff, Tony Abbott, who had just entered Parliament in the Warringah by-election, was among those who voted against Hewson in the May 1994 spill. In the immediate aftermath, Abbott told The 7.30 Report that Hewson should be remembered for his first three years as leader, when he united the party following divisions caused by the Peacock-Howard rivalry, and not for his last twelve months. Abbott also remarked that as Fightback! was central to a Hewson Prime Ministership, when the initiative was abandoned, Hewson had nothing to stand on as a leader. In fact unlike Peacock and Howard who led their party since it came into Opposition in 1983, there was never any possibility of Hewson returning to the leadership.
Hewson's career stands as one of the shortest of any political party leader in Australia. Former Liberal Federal director Andrew Robb believes Hewson and the Liberals were spooked into releasing the policies of Fightback! too early by the Hawke government and parts of the media. Despite the 1993 election being regarded as a rejection of Fightback!, several parts of it were later adopted into law during the final term of the Keating Labor government, and to a larger extent during the Howard Liberal government (including the GST), while unemployment benefits and bulk billing were re-targeted for a time by the Abbott Liberal government.
Career after politics
Since his departure from politics, Hewson has written extensively for the business and general press and spent time on the lecture circuit. In his writings, he demonstrated an increasing focus on corporate social and environmental responsibility. In 2003 and 2004, he chaired a community advisory committee for RepuTex, a company that provides analysis and forecasting for the energy sector and issued an annual public listing of Australia's top 100 socially and environmentally conscious companies.
Business and academic activity
In 1995, in one of his few private enterprise successes, Hewson was invited to join IT&T Services as a non-executive director. IT&T was a specialist IT and telecommunications design and project management group that delivered major technology projects for both corporate and government clients such as Citigroup, the Department of Defence, News Limited, and Ernst & Young across the Asia Pacific region. IT&T Services was acquired by the public company Powerlan Ltd in 2000. Hewson then became a Professor of Management at Macquarie University, Sydney, and Dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in 2002, but resigned within two years. While at Macquarie University, he also served as a consultant to ABN AMRO.
In 2005, Hewson was elected to the Touring Car Entrants Group of Australia (TEGA) board as an independent member. He left in June 2006 after a dispute with V8 Supercars Australia chairman Tony Cochrane. Hewson held the position of chairman of the board of directors for the Elderslie Group, a company whose primary interests were corporate finance and property investments. Hewson touted the company to investors at a time when Elderslie was in financial difficulties, eventually leaving the company facing liquidation and large losses. When he resigned, he said that he was unsatisfied with the direction in which the Group was heading. On 2 July 2008, global accounting firm PWC was appointed as receiver and administrator of the failed Elderslie Group. Since around 2005, Hewson has been a member of the Trilateral Commission, an alliance of top political and economic leaders from North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. He is currently Chairman of General Security Australia Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd.
In December 2012, Hewson was appointed as a non-executive director of Larus Energy, an oil and gas company developing operations in Papua New Guinea.
Political commentary
After 1996 Hewson became increasingly critical of Prime Minister John Howard. In 2003 he opposed Howard's decision to take part in the Iraq War although in 2004 argued it would be electoral "suicide" for the Liberal Party to replace Howard with an alternate leader. In July 2006, Hewson gave an interview to ABC's Four Corners program in which he voiced concern at the growing influence of what he characterised as a "hardline right religious element" in the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party. This was in breach of a Liberal Party rule about speaking to the media and reports at the time claimed he could face expulsion from the party.
Hewson has repeatedly appeared in television interviews and on political panels and has been a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review since 2004.
In 2011 Hewson was among 140 Australian community leaders who pledged support for an Emissions trading scheme, despite the fact the Coalition and its leader Tony Abbott (Hewson's former Press Secretary) opposed the carbon tax. In July 2015, Hewson was critical of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's continuing support for Speaker Bronwyn Bishop during the travel expenses scandal, stating that the cost of that support would be "enormous".
Departure from the Liberal Party
In a 2019 interview on Sky News in which he was speaking alongside Greens MP Adam Bandt, Hewson said that he had let his membership of the Liberal Party lapse. He has criticised various Liberal Party members, including former Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison for their poor record on climate action. Hewson publicly campaigned for a price on carbon, a policy introduced by the Gillard Labor government and opposed by the Liberal Party's then leader Tony Abbott, who went on to scrap it as Prime Minister.
Awards
In 2000, Hewson was honored as a Member of the Order of Australia.
Personal life
Hewson married Margaret Deaves in 1967. Having divorced Deaves in 1985, he married Carolyn Somerville in 1988, who was described by the media as "a formidable figure in investment banking". They divorced in 2004.
In 2007, John Hewson married publicist Jessica Wilson. , they reside in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Hewson has five children.
Since leaving politics, Hewson has been involved in a range of non-profit organisations, including the Arthritis Foundation of Australia and KidsXpress, a charity providing expressive therapy for children.
References
External links
RepuTex corporate website
Elderslie Finance corporate website
GSA corporate website
KidsXpress Life website
1946 births
Australian economists
Leaders of the Opposition (Australia)
Australian republicans
Johns Hopkins University alumni
Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of Australia
Living people
Members of the Australian House of Representatives
Members of the Australian House of Representatives for Wentworth
Politicians from Sydney
University of Saskatchewan alumni
University of Sydney alumni
Members of the Order of Australia
Leaders of the Liberal Party of Australia
20th-century Australian politicians
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sania%20Mirza
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Sania Mirza
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Sania Mirza (; born 15 November 1986) is an Indian former professional tennis player. A former doubles world No. 1, she won six major titles – three in women's doubles and three in mixed doubles. From 2003 until her retirement from singles in 2013, she was ranked by the Women's Tennis Association as the No. 1 Indian in singles. Throughout her career, Mirza has established herself as one of the most known, highest-paid, and influential athletes in India.
In singles, Mirza had wins over Svetlana Kuznetsova, Vera Zvonareva, and Marion Bartoli, as well as former world-number-ones Martina Hingis, Dinara Safina, and Victoria Azarenka. She is the highest-ranked Indian female player ever, peaking at world No. 27 in mid-2007. However, a major wrist injury caused her to shift to doubles. Mirza has achieved a number of firsts for women's tennis in India, including reaching the one million-US$ mark in career earnings (currently over US$7.2 million), winning a singles WTA Tour title, and winning a major title, as well as qualifying for (and eventually winning) the WTA Finals in 2014 in doubles partnering Cara Black, and defending her title the following year partnering Martina Hingis. Mirza retired from professional tennis in February 2023.
She is one of only two Indian women to win a WTA Tour title, and the only one to be ranked within the top 100 in singles. Mirza is the third Indian woman in the Open Era (after Nirupama Mankad and Nirupama Sanjeev, and the second in singles after Sanjeev) to contest and win a match at a major, and the first to advance past the second round. In doubles, Mirza won 43 titles and spent 91 weeks as world No. 1. In 2005, Mirza was crowned the Newcomer of the Year by the WTA, and in 2015 she and Martina Hingis were the Doubles Team of the Year, going on to earn a 44-match winning streak, one of the longest in history. Mirza has also won a total of 14 medals (including six golds) at three major multi-sport events, namely the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games and the Afro-Asian Games.
Mirza was named one of the "50 Heroes of Asia" by Time in October 2005. In March 2010, The Economic Times named Mirza in its list of the "33 women who made India proud". She was appointed as the UN Women's Goodwill Ambassador for South Asia during the International Day To End Violence Against Women on 25 November 2013. She was named in Time magazine's 2016 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Early life
Sania Mirza was born on 15 November 1986 in Mumbai to Hyderabadi Muslim parents Imran Mirza, a sports journalist, and his wife Naseema, who worked in a printing business. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to Hyderabad where she and younger sister Anam were raised in a religious Sunni Muslim family. Anam is married to cricketer Mohammad Asaduddin, the son of former India national cricket team captain, Mohammad Azharuddin. She is the distant relative of former cricket captains Ghulam Ahmed of India, and Asif Iqbal of Pakistan. She took up tennis at the age of six. She has been coached by her father and also Roger Anderson.
She attended Nasr School in Hyderabad. She later graduated from the St. Mary's College, Hyderabad. Mirza also received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the Dr. M.G.R. Educational and Research Institute in Chennai on 11 December 2008.
Tennis career
2001–2003: Success on the ITF Junior Circuit
Mirza began playing tennis at the age of six, turning professional in 2003. She was trained by her father. Mirza won ten singles and thirteen doubles titles as a junior player. She won the 2003 Wimbledon Championships girls' doubles title, partnering Alisa Kleybanova. She also reached the semifinals of the 2003 US Open girls' doubles, with Sanaa Bhambri, and the quarterfinals of the 2002 US Open girls' doubles.
On the senior circuit, Mirza started to show early success as she made her debut in April 2001 on the ITF Circuit as a 15-year-old. Her highlights of 2001 include a quarterfinal showing in Pune and a semifinal finish in New Delhi. As the 2002 season began, she turned around a season of early losses to winning three straight titles; her first in her hometown Hyderabad and the other two in Manila, Philippines. Mirza clinched the women's gold medal in tennis in 2002 National Games of India in Hyderabad at the age of 16 years.
In February 2003, Mirza was given a wildcard to play in her first ever WTA tournament, at the Hyderabad Open, in her hometown. She lost the tough first round encounter to Australia's Evie Dominikovic in three sets. The following week, at the Qatar Ladies Open, she fell to Czech Olga Blahotová in the first qualifying round. She had a good result representing India on the Fed Cup, winning three straight matches. She helped India win a bronze medal in the mixed doubles event of the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, partnering Leander Paes. In addition, Mirza picked up four gold medals at the 2003 Afro-Asian Games in Hyderabad.
2004–2005: Success in WTA Tour and Grand Slam tournaments
At her hometown event, the Hyderabad Open, Mirza was a wildcard entrant. She put up a good fight against the fourth seed and eventual champion, Nicole Pratt, in round one, but lost in three sets. She won her first WTA doubles title at the same event, partnering Liezel Huber. She then received a wildcard to compete at Casablanca, Morocco, but suffered a first-round defeat by eventual champion Émilie Loit.
On the ITF Circuit, Mirza ended runner-up at the Palm Beach Gardens Challenger where she fell to Sesil Karatantcheva. Mirza won six ITF singles titles in 2004. Going into the 2005 Australian Open, she defeated Cindy Watson and Petra Mandula in the first and second rounds, respectively, to reach the third round where she was beaten in straight sets by eventual champion Serena Williams. In February, Mirza became the first-ever Indian woman to win a WTA Tour title, by winning her hometown event, the Hyderabad Open, defeating ninth-seeded Alona Bondarenko in the final. At Dubai, she upset in round two 4th seed and reigning US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova to reach the biggest quarterfinal of her career. In the second round of the Wimbledon Championships, she lost to Kuznetsova in a tight three-setter.
In August, she reached the third round at the Stanford Classic, falling to Morigami. Mirza reached her second WTA final at the Forest Hills Tennis Classic, falling to Lucie Šafářová. Mirza became the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament at the US Open, defeating Mashona Washington, Maria Elena Camerin and Marion Bartoli, before losing to top seed Maria Sharapova, in the round of 16. At the Japan Open, Mirza reached semifinals with wins over Vilmarie Castellvi, Aiko Nakamura and Vera Zvonareva, before being overpowered by Tatiana Golovin. Thanks to a successful 2005 season, Mirza was named the WTA Newcomer of the Year.
2006–2007: Top 30 singles breakthrough
Mirza was seeded at the 2006 Australian Open (the first female Indian to be seeded in a Grand Slam event), only falling to Michaëlla Krajicek. Next she fell to Camille Pin at the Bangalore Open, but won the doubles title partnering Huber. She played at the Dubai Tennis Championships but lost to Martina Hingis. At the Indian Wells Open, she reached the third round but lost to Elena Dementieva. She also lost in the first round of the French Open Grand Slam to Anastasia Myskina.
Her next tournament was the Birmingham Classic where she defeated Alona Bondarenko and Shenay Perry to reach the third round, where she was overpowered by Meilen Tu. She also reached the quarterfinals of the Cincinnati Open and the third round of the Stanford Classic, falling to Patty Schnyder and Elena Dementieva, respectively. She reached the second round of the US Open, losing to Francesca Schiavone. In September, she reached the semifinals of the San Diego Open, losing to eventual champion and top seed Martina Hingis. She also won the doubles title there partnering Huber. Mirza made the quarterfinals of the Korea Open (defeating top seed Hingis en route) and the Tashkent Open. In December, Mirza picked up three medals at the Doha Asian Games—gold, in mixed doubles and silver in women's singles and team.
In 2006, Mirza notched up three top-ten wins against Svetlana Kuznetsova, Nadia Petrova and Martina Hingis.
Mirza started 2007 in strong fashion, making it to the semifinals of Hobart, the second round of the Australian Open, semifinals in Pattaya, and the quarterfinals in Bangalore. At the French Open, Mirza lost the battle against Ana Ivanovic in the second round. She also fell in the second round at the Wimbledon Championships to Nadia Petrova. Mirza had the best results of her career during the 2007 summer hardcourt season, finishing eighth in the 2007 US Open Series standings and reaching her highest singles ranking of world No. 27.
She reached the quarterfinals in San Diego, the semifinals at Cincinnati, and made it to the final at Stanford. She also won the doubles event in Cincinnati with Shahar Pe'er. At the US Open, she reached the third round before losing to Anna Chakvetadze for the third time in recent weeks. She fared much better in the doubles competition, reaching the quarterfinals in mixed doubles with her partner Mahesh Bhupathi and the quarterfinals in the women's doubles with Bethanie Mattek, including a win over number two seeds Lisa Raymond and Samantha Stosur. She won four doubles titles in 2007.
2008–2009: Grand Slam mixed-doubles championship
Mirza reached the quarterfinals at Hobart as the No. 6 seed and lost to Flavia Pennetta in three sets. She reached the third round at the Australian Open as No. 31 seed, in which she lost to No. 8 seed Venus Williams having been up a break in the first set. She ended runner-up in the Australian Open mixed doubles partnering Mahesh Bhupathi, where they lost in straight sets to Sun Tiantian and Nenad Zimonjić.
She had to withdraw from the Pattaya Open because of a left abductor strain. She reached round four at Indian Wells as the No. 21 seed, defeating ninth seed Shahar Pe'er en route, but lost to No. 5 seed Daniela Hantuchová. On grass, Mirza was crushed in the second round of Birmingham by Marina Erakovic. At the 2008 Wimbledon Championships, as the No. 32 seed, Mirza was defeated by qualifier María José Martínez Sánchez in round two, having had several match points.
Mirza represented India at the Beijing Summer Olympics but was eliminated from singles when she retired during her match against Iveta Benešová because of a right wrist injury. For doubles, she got a walkover through the first round with Sunitha Rao, but lost in the second to the Russian duo. Throughout 2008, Mirza was plagued by a slew of wrist injuries, requiring her to withdraw from several matches including those of the French Open and US Open.
Mirza started her year by playing at the doubles event of the Hobart International. Partnering Francesca Schiavone, they reached the quarterfinals. At 2009 Australian Open, she won her first-round match against Marta Domachowska, but she fell against tenth seed Nadia Petrova in round two. In doubles she lost in the first round partnering Vania King. But in mixed doubles, Mirza picked up her first Australian Open Grand Slam title. Partnering with Mahesh Bhupathi, she beat Nathalie Dechy and Andy Ram in the final.
She then entered the Pattaya Women's Open and reached the final after a string of good performances but lost to Vera Zvonareva. She made the semifinals in doubles in the same tournament. Mirza then competed in Indian Wells where she lost in the second round to Flavia Pennetta. She then lost to Mathilde Johansson in the first round of the Miami Open. However, Mirza and her doubles partner Chuang Chia-jung made the semifinals of the women's doubles. Mirza also lost in the first round of the MPS Group Championships but won the doubles title with Chuang. She again lost in the first round at Roland Garros, to Galina Voskoboeva. On grass, Mirza participated at the Birmingham Classic and reached the semifinals, losing to Magdaléna Rybáriková. At Wimbledon, Mirza defeated Anna-Lena Grönefeld in the first round, before falling to No. 28 seed Sorana Cîrstea in the second. She also lost in the second round of the doubles (with Chuang) and mixed doubles (with Bhupathi).
Next, Mirza went to Lexington to compete in the Tennis Championships, and won the title after a few good wins. Her next two tournaments were in Canada, where she had mixed results. She managed it all the way to the final at the Vancouver Open but was beaten by Stéphanie Dubois. At the Rogers Cup, she fell to Heidi El Tabakh in the second qualifying round.
Playing in the US Open, she defeated Olga Govortsova in the first round, but was double-bageled by tenth seed Flavia Pennetta in the second. She also lost in the second round of the doubles event (partnering Francesca Schiavone) to Shahar Pe'er and Gisela Dulko. Mirza then went to Japan, where she qualified for the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo but lost in the first round to Zheng Jie. At Osaka, Mirza won against fifth seed Shahar Pe'er and Viktoriya Kutuzova and in the quarterfinal, she defeated second seed Marion Bartoli by retirement. Mirza moved on to the semifinal, where she lost to Francesca Schiavone.
2010–2012: Injury, struggles & doubles specialization
Mirza began her year at the Auckland Open where she won her first-round match against Stefanie Vögele, but was crushed by fourth seed Francesca Schiavone in the second round. Mirza then suffered two first-round losses at the Hobart International and the Australian Open. In February, she competed in the Pattaya Open as the sixth seed, but was upset by Tatjana Malek. She then played in Dubai but suffered a first-round defeat to Anabel Medina Garrigues. Mirza was forced to withdraw from the Miami Open, the Indian Wells Open and the Family Circle Cup due to a right wrist injury. This injury also caused her to pull out of the French Open.
She returned at the Birmingham Classic, where she lost in the second round to Tamarine Tanasugarn in three sets. Mirza then fell in the qualifying at Eastbourne and also lost in the first round of Wimbledon; however, she did manage to finish runner-up at the GB Pro-Series Wrexham. Her bad form continued, as she lost in the second round of the Vancouver Open and qualifying rounds of both the Cincinnati Open and the Rogers Cup. Mirza won her first round match against Michelle Larcher de Brito at the US Open, but she went down against 20th seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the second round.
In September, Mirza competed in the Guangzhou International Open where she made her first quarterfinal of the season. She then lost in the first round of the Tashkent Open, in the qualifying draw of the Luxembourg Open, and the first round of the Taipei Ladies Open. In doubles, Mirza won in Guangzhou (with Edina Gallovits) and finished as a runner-up in Taipei (with Hsieh Su-wei). In October, she represented India at the 2010 Commonwealth Games as the second seed. She defeated Brittany Teei (Cook Islands), Marina Erakovic (New Zealand), and Olivia Rogowska (Australia) before losing to Australian Anastasia Rodionova in the final. In doubles, she partnered with fellow Indian, Rushmi Chakravarthi, losing in the semifinals to Anastasia Rodionova and Sally Peers (Australia). Mirza and Chakravarthi beat compatriots Poojashree Venkatesha and Nirupama Sanjeev to win the bronze medal.
In November, she represented India at the 2010 Asian Games. The unseeded Indian defeated Chan Wing-yau in the first round. Next, she defeated sixth seed Zhang Shuai in straight sets to enter into quarterfinal. In the quarterfinal, Mirza won against second seed Tamarine Tanasugarn to move in semifinal, where she was defeated by third seed Akgul Amanmuradova and won bronze medal in singles. In mixed doubles, she partnered with India's Vishnu Vardhan losing in the finals to Chan Yung-jan and Yang Tsung-hua and won silver medal. In December, she went to Dubai to compete at the Al Habtoor Challenge. Coming unseeded, she won the tournament, defeating Ksenia Pervak, top seed Julia Görges and Evgeniya Rodina en route, and second seed Bojana Jovanovski in the final.
Mirza lost in the early rounds of the Australian Open and its warm-up tournaments. Following that, she received wildcards to play in the Dubai Open and the Qatar Open. She made the second rounds of both events, falling to Ayumi Morita and Jelena Janković, respectively. She also was the quarterfinalist in doubles at both, with Elena Vesnina. At the Premier Mandatory events in March, Mirza made the second rounds in both. In doubles, she won her first Premier Mandatory title at Indian Wells, with Vesnina, defeating Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Meghann Shaughnessy.
Mirza participated at the Premier-level Charleston Open in South Carolina. In singles, she made her first Premier quarterfinal since San Diego in August 2007. In doubles, Mirza won the title with Vesnina: the Indo-Russian duo beat Mattek-Sands and Shaughnessy in the final for the second time this season. Mirza won her 11th WTA Tour doubles title and second of the year.
Next, she also competed at the Madrid Open, losing in the first round against doubles partner Elena Vesnina. In doubles, with Vesnina, she managed to go up to the third round. Mirza took part in the Sparta Prague Open, but had to retire in her first round match against Aleksandra Krunić due to a back injury. Next she played at Strasbourg, but suffered a first round lost Alizé Cornet.
Mirza breezed through the first round of the French Open where she beat Kristina Barrois in straight sets. Then in round two, she lost to 12th seed Agnieszka Radwańska. In doubles, Mirza had what was probably the greatest highlight of her career- reaching the finals of a Grand Slam and she ended up runner-up with Vesnina losing out to Andrea Hlaváčková and Lucie Hradecká.
During the grass-court season Mirza lost in the first rounds of the singles and doubles competition at Eastbourne.
Playing at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, she came up with her personal best performance by reaching her first semifinals at Wimbledon alongside Vesnina losing out to Květa Peschke and Katarina Srebotnik. En route they beat 13th seeds Daniela Hantuchová and Agnieszka Radwańska in the round of 16 and the Spanish duo of Nuria Llagostera Vives and Arantxa Parra Santonja in the quarterfinal clash. In singles she lost in the first round to Virginie Razzano in a close three-setter.
She then could not cross the first round hurdles in her next five attempts in singles including the US Open where she lost yet another tight three setter to 23rd seed Shahar Pe'er. On two occasions Mirza scored two wins in qualifying rounds, defeated Heidi El Tabakh at Rogers Cup and Vania King at Cincinnati. She, however, continued her good run in doubles competition as she won the title at D.C. partnering Yaroslava Shvedova, defeating the second seeded Olga Govortsova and Alla Kudryavtseva in the final.
Partnering Vesnina, Mirza entered the Southern California Open but the duo had to withdraw from their first-round match against Elena Bovina and Zheng Jie while leading 5–2 in the first set. Playing at Rogers Cup, the pair lost to the future world No. 1, Italian duo of Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, in three sets. At Flushing Meadows, Mirza and Vesnina lost in the pre-quarterfinals to the Czech duo of Iveta Melzer and Barbora Záhlavová-Strýcová, having beaten Samantha Crawford and Madison Keys, Vitalia Diatchenko and Olga Savchuk, in straight sets in their previous encounters. After playing on the singles circuit regularly throughout the year, Mirza also re-entered top 60 in singles ranking in 2011.
Mirza kicked off her 2012 season ranked 104th in Auckland. She lost a first qualifying match against CoCo Vandeweghe. As for doubles, she partnered Elena Vesnina and made it to the semifinals, losing to Julia Görges and Flavia Pennetta. Her next tournament was in Sydney where she played doubles only alongside Roberta Vinci, but lost in round one.
Going into the Australian Open, Mirza was overpowered by Tsvetana Pironkova in the first round. In doubles, she reached her third Grand Slam semifinal, partnering Vesnina, where they fell to Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva. For the mixed-doubles event, Mirza played alongside compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi and reached her fourth Grand Slam semifinal.
Mirza then represented India at the Fed Cup in Shenzhen, China where they were facing Hong Kong. In singles, she defeated Zhang Ling. Partnering with Isha Lakhani, the pair beat Chan Wing-yau and Zhang in three sets. With this performance, India advanced to the Fed Cup Asia/Oceania Zone Group I for 2013. Mirza then played at the Pattaya Open where she won her first WTA main draw match since the 2011 French Open – coming from a set down to upset Ayumi Morita (ranked 47 spots higher). In second round she beat Anne Keothavong to enter in quarterfinal, where she lost to Hsieh Su-wei. In doubles with Anastasia Rodionova, she won her 13th WTA title: they defeated the Taiwanese sisters Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan.
Mirza then went to Doha to play at the Qatar Ladies Open but had to withdraw from the singles qualifying event, due to playing Pattaya doubles final. She lost in the second round of doubles with Elena Vesnina. Then, in Dubai, she was beaten by Aleksandra Wozniak in the first qualifying round. In doubles, Mirza and Vesnina were runners-up against top seeds Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond. Mirza then lost a tough three set encounter to Eleni Daniilidou in round one of the Malaysian Open.
Playing doubles at the Premier-line up of Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston, Mirza reached the final, lost in round one and made the quarterfinals, respectively. She also reached round two of singles in Indian Wells. She then would begin the European Clay Court Season at Estoril, where she was the semifinalist in doubles (with Anastasia Rodionova). She lost in round two of doubles in Madrid and also in Rome. Mirza returned on the singles circuit in May at Brussels where she won three good matches – including her first 'double bagel' – in the qualifying competition, where she beat Lesia Tsurenko, who was ranked 87 spots higher than her. She also won the doubles of the same event with Bethanie Mattek-Sands.
She then participated in the French Open in the women's doubles (with Mattek-Sands) and the French Open mixed doubles (with Bhupathi). In the doubles she suffered a first-round shock defeat but found great success in the French Open mixed-doubles where she and Bhupathi won the crown by defeating Santiago González of Mexico and Klaudia Jans-Ignacik of Poland in the final on 7 June 2012.
At Eastbourne, Mirza would play the last singles tournament of her career. She defeated Lisa Whybourn in the qualifying round one, before losing to Andrea Hlaváčková in the next round. Mirza and her partner Shvedova crashed out of the Birmingham Classic with a straight-set defeat by Iveta Benešová and Alla Kudryavtseva. Mirza then would go on to falling in the qualifying singles and first-round doubles at Eastbourne.
Mirza and her American partner Mattek-Sands advanced to the third round of the women's doubles competition at Wimbledon, where they fell to the Williams sisters. On 26 June 2012, Mirza was awarded a wildcard entry hence confirming her participation in women's doubles event of the London Olympics. On 17 July 2012, Mirza and her partner Mattek-Sands were ousted in the first round of WTA Premier event in the US.
Mirza, partnering Rushmi Chakravarthy in the women's doubles competition at Olympics, bowed out, losing to Chinese Taipei team in a tight match. She also lost in quarterfinals of mixed doubles with Leander Paes to Belarus in a tough encounter. At the Premier Mandatory events of Montréal and Cincinnati, partnering Mattek-Sands, Mirza reached the quarterfinals and lost in round one of doubles, respectively.
In October 2012 the prize purse for female winners of the "Fenesta Open National Tennis Championship" was increased to be equal to that of male winners at Mirza's suggestion to All India Tennis Association president Anil Khanna. Khanna also announced that "From now on we will see to it that all national tournaments have the same prize money for both categories women and men."
2013–2014: Top 5 doubles breakthrough
Mirza kicked off her 2013 season with a title Brisbane alongside Bethanie Mattek-Sands in the first tournament itself. The pair then unexpectedly lost in the first round of Australian Open, Mirza though reached the quarterfinals of the 2013 Australian Open mixed doubles partnering Bob Bryan. Mattek-Sands and Mirza then won the doubles title at the Dubai Tennis Championships in February. They had to retire in their round of 16 match at the French Open after having won the first set against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Šafářová. They also lost in the round of 16 at Wimbledon. Mirza then formed a brief successful partnership with Zheng Jie from China winning a title at New Haven and reaching the semis at US Open losing out to Australians Casey Dellacqua and Ashleigh Barty. Mirza then partnered Cara Black for the rest of the season and the pair won their first title in their first outing at Tokyo. They won their second title in a row as they lifted the China Open trophy defeating top seeds and world-number-ones, Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, en route. Mirza partnered different players during 2013 and won five WTA titles.
Mirza began 2014 playing with Cara Black in the Sydney International where they lost in the first round to Ajla Tomljanović and Jarmila Gajdošová. Her next tournament was the Australian Open. Seeded sixth, Mirza and Black reached the quarterfinals at the 2014 Australian Open – Women's doubles before losing to top seeds and eventual champions Errani and Vinci. She was more successful in the mixed doubles event, reaching the final partnering Horia Tecău of Romania. Tecău and Mirza lost to Kristina Mladenovic and Daniel Nestor in the final.
Mirza and Black next competed in the Qatar Open and lost to the pairing of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Nadia Petrova in the quarterfinals. The pair lost in the first round of the Dubai Championships to Andrea Hlaváčková and Lucie Šafářová. They reached their first WTA Tour doubles final of the year at the Indian Wells Open but lost to Hsieh Su-wei and Peng Shuai. Mirza and Black reached the semifinals of the Miami Open, before losing to wildcards Martina Hingis and Sabine Lisicki. They finished runners-up to Errani and Vinci once again in the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. They won their first title of the year at the 2014 Portugal Open, defeating Eva Hrdinová and Valeria Solovyeva in the final.
Mirza and Black recorded three consecutive quarterfinal finishes in the subsequent clay tournaments, namely the Madrid Open, the Italian Open, and the French Open. In the mixed doubles event at the 2014 French Open, Mirza and Horia Tecău lost in the second round to Tímea Babos and Eric Butorac. Mirza began grass-court season playing in Birmingham. She and Black lost to Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears in the semifinals. At the Eastbourne International, they reached the quarterfinals before losing to Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan. The pair next competed at the Wimbledon Championships and lost in the second round to the unseeded pairing of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Šafářová.
Mirza and Black next competed in the 2014 US Open and lost to the pairing of Martina Hingis and Flavia Pennetta in the semifinals. Mirza played the mixed doubles in the US Open pairing with Bruno Soares and went on to become the 2014 US Open mixed-doubles champions, thereby winning the third mixed doubles title in her career.
Sania won a gold and bronze at the 17th Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. She paired with Saketh Myneni to beat China's Hsien Yin Peng and Chan Hao-ching and win gold in the mixed doubles tournament. She also won a bronze medal in women's doubles, pairing with Prarthana Thombare.
Black and Mirza won their biggest title together at the WTA Finals defeating Hsieh Su-wei and Peng Shuai in the final. It was the heaviest defeat ever witnessed in the end-of-season competition's doubles final which dates back 41 years to 1973, the year the WTA was founded. Black and Mirza survived matchpoints in both their previous encounters against Květa Peschke/Katarina Srebotnik and Raquel Kops-Jones/Abigail Spears coming through in third set tiebreaks. This final would be the duo's final match as a team.
"It was great – we saved the best for the last. I think today was our best match. One of our best matches at least, and one of our best matches we played against them." Mirza told reporters after the win. "To end this way, we couldn't have asked for a better start or end. It kind of sums up our partnership", she added. She added that Black was her great friend "But I've also found a great friend in her. Almost like an older sister to me. I'm the oldest in my family, so I learned a lot from her on and off the court."
Mirza participated in the International Premier Tennis League starting on 28 November 2014, playing with the Micromax Indian Aces alongside tennis legend Roger Federer, countryman Rohan Bopanna, Ana Ivanovic and Gaël Monfils. She played all the mixed-doubles matches alongside Bopanna and partnered Federer who visited the country for his first match there in the New Delhi leg, much to her personal and fans' delight. Mirza won the majority of her matches and played a key role for the Indian Aces to win the inaugural edition of the IPTL 2014.
2015–2016: Rise to world No. 1 and women's doubles major titles
Mirza began her 2015 season ranked No. 6 in the doubles rankings. She started a new partnership with then world No. 5, Hsieh Su-wei from Chinese Taipei, after Cara Black decided to go for a limited 2015 season. The pair started their season at the 2015 Brisbane International as the top seeds and reached the semifinals losing out to fourth seeds Caroline Garcia and Katarina Srebotnik in the super tie-breaker after having won the first set.
Mirza paired up with former partner and good friend Bethanie Mattek-Sands for the Sydney International and went on to win the tournament for her 23rd career title (fifth with Mattek-Sands) beating the highly fancied second seeds Martina Hingis and Flavia Pennetta in the quarterfinals and top-seeds Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears in the finals, but lost in the second round at Melbourne. She also re-entered the top 5 in the rankings. Mirza also reached the finals of Qatar Ladies Open at Doha alongside Hsieh. The pair lost to Americans Raquel Kops-Jones and Abigail Spears.
Mirza then ended her partnership with Hsieh and paired up with Swiss legend Martina Hingis. The pair entered Indian Wells as the top seeds and went on to win the titles in their debut. They beat opponents including former world number ones Lisa Raymond and Sam Stosur. Hingis and Mirza didn't lose more than four games in any set. After cruising through the first set of the final, they fell behind in the second set but won the next four games to beat second seeds Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in straight sets. They also won the Miami masters event, again beating the same opponents. Mirza jumped two places on the ranking table to be ranked at her career best No. 3 in the doubles rankings.
The duo then entered the Miami Open and went to beat the same opponents in the finals making it their second title in as many tournaments. The pair did not lose a single set at the tournament, making the set score 20–0 for their newly formed partnership. Before reaching the finals at Miami the pair beat Elena Bogdan and Nicole Melichar, Gabriela Dabrowski and Alicja Rosolska, Anastasia Rodionova and Arina Rodionova, and seventh seeds Tímea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic. They overcame Vesnina and Makarova in the finals in straight sets.
Mirza and Hingis won Family Circle Cup's double title in April 2015 defeating Casey Dellacqua and Darija Jurak and with the title win Mirza became the first Indian to be ranked world No. 1 in WTA's doubles rankings. It was Mirza and Hingis' third successive title win and they have not lost as a single match since joining forces, winning 14 matches in a row. "It's a dream for every kid to be No. 1 one day." Mirza said after her win. And on reaching No. 1 in Charleston she added "No tournament has been as special to me as the Family Circle Cup and no tournament will ever be as special to me, because I became No. 1 here." They were routed in the first round at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. They reached the finals of Italian Open but lost to the team of Tímea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic. They lost in the quarterfinals of French Open to Mattek-Sands and Šafářová where the duo were the top seeds. Mirza was also given the top seeding with her partner Bruno Soares in the mixed doubles event. In spite of this, the pair lost in just 56 minutes against the unseeded Anna-Lena Grönefeld and Jean-Julien Rojer in the first round.
For the grass-court season, Mirza was seeded No. 1 in the Birmingham Premier level event and partnered with Casey Dellacqua. However, the team crashed out of the WTA event following a straight-set defeat in Birmingham on 18 June 2015. They lost to unseeded pair of Zheng Jie and Chan Yung-jan in the opening round. Mirza and Hingis were beaten in the semifinals at the WTA Aegon International doubles in Eastbourne. The top seeds lost to the fourth seeded French-Slovenian combine of Caroline Garcia and Katarina Srebotnik in 81 minutes.
Mirza and Hingis won the Wimbledon Championships, defeating Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in three tough sets in the final. After splitting two very close sets against two-time Grand Slam champions Makarova and Vesnina, Hingis and Mirza – who were playing just their second Grand Slam together – fell behind in the third set were a game away from going out. But a fierce rally saw them draw level at 5-all, and after a half hour break for the Centre Court roof to be closed due to fading light, the No. 1-seeded Swiss-Indian duo came out stronger, breaking the No. 2-seeded Russians one last time and then serving it out for a gritty victory. The win gave Mirza her first Grand Slam title in Women's Doubles and Hingis her tenth.
En route to the final, the pair did not lose a single set against any of their opponents. In the opening two rounds the duo beat unseeded opponents, Zarina Diyas and Zheng Saisai and veteran Japanese-Italian combine of Kimiko Date-Krumm and Francesca Schiavone. 16th seeded Spaniard duo of Anabel Medina Garrigues and Arantxa Parra Santonja beating them in the third round, ninth seeds Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova in the quarter finals, and dominated fifth seeded Kops-Jones and Spears (who beat them earlier) in the semifinals before finally overcoming Vesnina and Makarova in the marathon final. With the win Mirza and Hingis also regain the top spot in 2015 Road to Singapore standings trading spots with Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Šafářová and became the first team to qualify for WTA Finals.
The pair reached two consecutive finals at the Rogers Cup and Western & Southern Open losing out to Caroline Garcia, Katarina Srebotnik and Chan Hao-ching, Chan Yung-jan, respectively. At the US Open the pair entered the tournament as the top seed and went on to win the title defeating Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova in the finals. They did not lose a set throughout the fortnight defeating seeded opponents Michaëlla Krajicek, Barbora Strýcová, Chan sisters, Sara Errani, Flavia Pennetta. This was the pair's second straight Grand Slam title after Wimbledon. Their undefeated run continued through the rest of the year with titles at Guangzhou International Women's Open and Premier-level tournament 2015 Wuhan Open, and Premier Mandatory China Open defeating Xu Shilin and You Xiaodi, Irina-Camelia Begu and Monica Niculescu, Chan sisters again, respectively.
The pair then entered 2015 WTA Finals as heavy favourites and the top seeds and lived up to the expectations as they did not lose a single set en route to the title at the Premier Event. This was Mirza's second straight title at the Finals and she remains undefeated at the year ending tournament. The pair of Hingis-Mirza topped their group and beat the Chan's in the semi-finals and Garbiñe Muguruza and Carla Suárez Navarro in the finals to win the title. The pair thus ended the year with a 22 match winning streak and Mirza secured the year ending No. 1 ranking and wrapped up her 2015 season with ten WTA titles including two Grand Slams.
Mirza and Hingis kicked off their 2016 WTA Tour in Australia by winning the tournaments in Brisbane and Sydney. In the Australian Open they were seeded first and won the Doubles title which is Mirza's third Grand Slam title.
Mirza and Hingis then proceeded to the inaugural St. Petersburg Trophy and won the title there, defeating Dushevina/Krejčíková in the final. They next played at the Qatar Open, where they suffered a shock loss to Daria Kasatkina/Elena Vesnina. That loss ended Hingis and Mirza's 41 match winning streak. They then played the Indian Wells Open, where they played their first tournament together, and surprisingly lost their second-round match against Vania King/Alla Kudryavtseva.
At the Miami Open, Mirza and Hingis again lost in the second round to Margarita Gasparyan and Monica Niculescu. After losing three out of last five matches, Mirza and Hingis took a break and did not play in the Charleston Open, where they were the defending champions.
Mirza and Hingis started their clay season by reaching the finals of Porsche Grand Prix and Madrid Open, where they eventually lost to Kristina Mladenovic and Caroline Garcia in both the tournaments.
They, however, managed to reach and win their third consecutive clay-court final in Internazionali d'Italia, by defeating Makarova and Vesnina in the deciding tie-breaker.
2017–2018: Split with Hingis, maternity leave
In August 2016, Mirza and Hingis announced their mutual decision to split as a team, citing their last few under-par performances, with the 2016 WTA Finals in Singapore being their last event together. Mirza partnered with Barbora Strýcová in late 2016 (winning two titles) and some parts of the 2017 season. In 2017, her sole title came at Brisbane, where she played alongside her friend Mattek-Sands. However, Mirza struggled to find a committed partner to play with in the 2017 season, which resulted in her falling out of the top 5. The last tournament she played was the China Open, where she lost in the semifinals partnering Peng Shuai.
Mirza missed the first few tournaments of the 2018 season, including the Australian Open, citing a knee injury she sustained in October 2017. In early February 2018, Mirza said the same injury would keep her out of competition for a further two months. In April, Mirza announced on Instagram that she was pregnant with her first child, with husband Shoaib Malik. In late October, Mirza had delivered a baby boy.
2020: Winning return
In late 2018, Mirza announced she hoped to return to professional tennis in time for the 2020 Summer Olympics. After having celebrated her son's first birthday and having spent more than two years off the professional circuit, she returned to the tour at the Hobart International in January 2020 playing alongside Nadiia Kichenok. The newly formed team won the tournament beating second seeds Peng Shuai/Zhang Shuai in the final. However, the team lost their first round match at the 2020 Australian Open because of a calf injury suffered by Mirza. She played at the 2020 Summer Olympics with Ankita Raina, but lost to Ukrainian Pair of Lyudmyla Kichenok and Nadiia Kichenok in the first round. This was Mirza's third consecutive first round exit in women's doubles event at the Olympics.
2022: French Open third round, three WTA 1000 semifinals, back to top 25
She reached the semifinals at the WTA 1000 Qatar Open and the Italian Open as well as the French Open third round, partnering Lucie Hradecká.
At the Canadian Open, she reached the quarterfinals of a WTA 1000 level partnering Madison Keys where they defeated top seeds Elise Mertens and Veronika Kudermetova. Next they defeated Sofia Kenin and Yulia Putintseva to reach the semifinals.
2023: Retirement
On 7 January, she announced she would retire after her last tournament at the Dubai Championships, in February. Mirza started the season at Adelaide International with Anna Danilina where they lost to top seeds Storm Hunter and Barbora Krejčíková in three sets.
At the Australian Open, she and Danilina entered as the eighth seeds. They defeated Bernarda Pera and Dalma Gálfi in first round in straight sets but they lost in thesecond to Anhelina Kalinina and Alison Van Uytvanck in three sets. The second-round match became Mirza's last women's doubles match at a major.
In the mixed doubles, partnering with Rohan Bopanna, Mirza advanced to the final.
At Dubai, she partnered Madison Keys for the last tournament of her career.
Playing style
Mirza is an offensive baseliner with very powerful groundstroke and is known for setting up good attacks with the sheer velocity of her groundstrokes. Her main strength is her forehand, as well as her volleying skills. Her power game has drawn comparisons to Romanian legend Ilie Năstase. She is also a great returner of serve finding many return winners during matches. Mirza goes for winners, which means she goes for many angles. Mirza has said that "There's no doubt that my forehand and backhand can match anyone, it's about the place that they're put in. I can hit the ball as hard as anyone can". "I'm not that fast on my feet", she added as her most evident weakness is her movement around the court, where Mirza usually struggles moving up and around the court. Mirza's second serve and relatively poor mobility are often quoted as her big weaknesses. But by 2012, a series of injuries had effectively ended her singles career.
Awards and recognition
Arjuna Award (2004)
WTA Newcomer of the Year (2005)
Padma Shri (2006)
Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna (2015)
BBC list of 100 inspiring women (2015)
Padma Bhushan (2016)
NRI of the Year (2016)
Pinkvilla Style Icons Awards - Super Glam Sports Star of the Year (2023)
In the year 2014, the government of Telangana appointed Mirza as the brand ambassador of the state. Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao congratulated Sania Mirza on her being awarded Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award. She was named in the Time magazine's 2016 list of 100 most influential people in the world.
Personal life
In 2009, Mirza got engaged to Sohrab Mirza. However, the wedding was called off shortly after.
On 12 April 2010, she married Shoaib Malik in a traditional Hyderabadi Muslim wedding ceremony at the Taj Krishna Hotel in Hyderabad, India followed by Pakistani wedding customs for a mahr of 6.1 million (US$137,500). Their Walima ceremony was held in Sialkot, Pakistan.
The couple announced their first pregnancy on social media on 23 April 2018. In October 2018, Malik announced on Twitter that Mirza had delivered a baby boy and named him Izhaan Mirza Malik.
Other activities
In 2014, Mirza was the brand ambassador for the Indian state of Telangana to promote the interests of the then newly created state.
Mirza has established a tennis academy in Hyderabad. Former world No. 1s and multiple Grand Slam winners Cara Black and Martina Navratilova have both visited the academy on different occasions.
Mirza was announced the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador for South Asia. She is the first South Asian woman to be appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador in the organization's history.
Controversies
In 2006, some newspapers reported that Mirza declined to play doubles with Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe'er for fear of protests from India's Muslim community.
On 4 February 2008, Mirza said that she would stop appearing in tennis tournaments held in India, starting with the 2008 Bangalore Open the following month, citing the series of controversies and upon advice by her manager. But Mirza chose to participate at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
After both Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna refused to play in the men's doubles event at the 2012 Olympics with Leander Paes, Paes demanded that he be partnered with Mirza for the mixed doubles event. Mirza accused the All India Tennis Association (AITA) of using her as 'bait' to keep Paes happy as she wanted to play with Bhupathi, with whom she has won 2 grand slams. In the end, Mirza was paired with Paes and the pair lost in the quarterfinals of the mixed doubles.
Mirza, along with Sunitha Rao, was photographed violating the dress code at Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony parade in 2008. In response, Mirza reaffirmed loyalty to the land of her birth—"To see the national flag go up while standing on the podium is the proudest moment in an athlete's life and I will want to experience that for myself in London."
Mirza was referred to as "Pakistan's daughter-in-law" and unfit to be a representative of an Indian state after she was appointed the Telangana state's brand ambassador. The comment referred to Mirza's husband, Shoaib Malik being a Pakistani cricketer. Telangana chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao presented Mirza with 1 crore on two occasions.
She was summoned by the tax department for non-payment of service tax on the payment received, however she responded that the 1 crore given was training incentive, and not towards becoming state's brand ambassador.
Career statistics
Grand Slam performance timelines
Women's doubles
Mixed doubles
Grand Slam finals
Women's doubles: 4 (3 titles, 1 runner-up)
Mixed doubles: 8 (3 titles, 5 runner-ups)
Autobiography
In July 2016, Mirza published an autobiography titled Ace Against Odds chronicling her journey to the top. The book also lists some of her memorable encounters on and off the court and talks about the people and relationships that have contributed to Mirza's growth as a person and a sportsperson.
See also
Muslim women in sport
References
External links
1986 births
Living people
Asian Games gold medalists for India
Asian Games silver medalists for India
Asian Games bronze medalists for India
Asian Games medalists in tennis
Australian Open (tennis) champions
Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for India
Commonwealth Games silver medallists for India
French Open champions
Grand Slam (tennis) champions in girls' doubles
Grand Slam (tennis) champions in women's doubles
Grand Slam (tennis) champions in mixed doubles
Hopman Cup competitors
Indian female tennis players
Olympic tennis players for India
Indian expatriate sportspeople in the United Arab Emirates
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
Racket sportspeople from Hyderabad, India
Tennis players at the 2002 Asian Games
Tennis players at the 2006 Asian Games
Tennis players at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Tennis players at the 2010 Asian Games
Tennis players at the 2010 Commonwealth Games
Tennis players at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Tennis players at the 2014 Asian Games
Tennis players at the 2016 Summer Olympics
Tennis players at the 2020 Summer Olympics
Wimbledon junior champions
Sportswomen from Hyderabad, India
Commonwealth Games medallists in tennis
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
21st-century Indian women
21st-century Indian people
Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games
Medalists at the 2006 Asian Games
Medalists at the 2010 Asian Games
Medalists at the 2014 Asian Games
Sportswomen from Telangana
Recipients of the Khel Ratna Award
WTA number 1 ranked doubles tennis players
ITF World Champions
Medallists at the 2010 Commonwealth Games
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heydar%20Aliyev
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Heydar Aliyev
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Heydar Alirza oghlu Aliyev ( (Latin), (Cyrillic), ; , ; 10 May 1923 – 12 December 2003) was an Azerbaijani politician who served as the third president of Azerbaijan from October 1993 to October 2003. Originally a high-ranking official in the KGB of the Azerbaijan SSR, serving for 28 years in Soviet state security organs (1941–1969), he led Soviet Azerbaijan from 1969 to 1982 and held the post of First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1987.
Aliyev became president of independent Azerbaijan while the country was on the brink of civil war and suffering serious losses in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War with neighboring Armenia. Aliyev's supporters credit him with restoring stability to Azerbaijan and turning the country into a major international energy producer. His regime in Azerbaijan has been described as dictatorial, authoritarian, and repressive. He was also said to have run a heavy-handed police state where elections were rigged and dissent was repressed. A cult of personality developed around Aliyev, which has continued after his death in 2003. Shortly before his death, his son Ilham Aliyev was elected president in a controversial election and continues to lead Azerbaijan to this day.
Career in the Soviet era
Early life
Aliyev was born on 10 May 1923 in the city of Nakhchivan. His family had moved to Nakhchivan before his birth from the village of Jomardly (modern-day Tanahat in the Syunik Province of Armenia), located only a few miles from Nakhchivan. Some sources claim that Aliyev was actually born 2 years earlier in Jomardly, but that it was later decided that a senior Azerbaijani politician should not have an Armenian place of birth. His father was from Jomardly and his mother was from Vorotan (also in modern-day Syunik Province of Armenia). Aliyev had four brothers: Hasan, Huseyn, Jalal, and Agil, as well as three sisters: Sura, Shafiga and Rafiga.
After graduating from the Nakhchivan Pedagogical School, Aliyev attended the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University) from 1939 to 1941, where he studied architecture. In 1949 and 1950, he studied at the USSR Ministry of State Security Higher School in Leningrad. Aliyev's official biography also states that he studied at Baku State University, graduating with a degree in history in 1957. According to American journalist Pete Earley, Aliyev first attended the Ministry of State Security Academy in Leningrad and graduated in 1944. He also took Senior Staff Professional Development courses at the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB in Moscow in 1966.
In 1948, Aliyev married Zarifa Aliyeva. On 12 October 1955, their daughter Sevil Aliyeva was born. On 24 December 1961, their son Ilham was born. Zarifa Aliyeva died of cancer in 1985.
Early career
Aliyev served at the archive department of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1941 to 1944, before his appointment as head of the general department of the Council of People's Commissars of the Nakhchivan ASSR. He joined the Azerbaijan SSR People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) in 1944 and proceeded to become the department head of the State Security Committee of Azerbaijan SSR in 1950, after he graduated from the Senior Staff Training School of the USSR State Security Committee. In 1954, as part of a government reform, the NKGB, which was previously named the Ministry of State Security (MGB), was again renamed, this time as the KGB. Aliyev rose quickly through the KGB ranks, becoming a Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijani KGB in 1964 and its chairman in 1967, eventually receiving the rank of major general.
From KGB to leader of Azerbaijan SSR
As head of the Azerbaijani KGB, Aliyev ran an anti-corruption campaign. Following the campaign, he became the undisputed leader of Azerbaijan. He was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party at its Plenary Session held on 12 July 1969. Aliyev made some progress in the fight against corruption: a number of people were sentenced to prison terms, and in 1975, five factory and collective farm managers were sentenced to death for gross corruption. In the early 1980s, Aliyev barred the children of certain legal personnel from attending the republic's law school, in a purported effort to curb a self-perpetuating elite based on corruption. In 1977, he visited Iran.
During the period of his leadership of Soviet Azerbaijan, Aliyev's efforts led to considerably increased economic, social and cultural growth rates in Azerbaijan SSR. Aliyev became perhaps the most successful republican leader, raising the profile of the underprivileged republic and consistently promoting Azerbaijanis to senior posts.
Career in Moscow
Aliyev became a candidate (non-voting) member of the Soviet Politburo in 1976. He held this position until December 1982, when Yuri Andropov promoted him to the office of First Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and made him a full member of the Politburo. Aliyev also served at the Council of Ministers as the first deputy chairman in 1974–1979. On 22 November 1982, Andropov promoted Aliyev from a candidate to a full member of the Soviet Politburo and appointed him to the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, responsible for transportation and social services. Aliyev thus attained the highest position ever reached by an Azerbaijani in the Soviet Union.
Aliyev was dismissed from his position as First Deputy Premier and from the Politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, officially on health grounds.
Fall and re-invention
After his forced retirement in 1987, Aliyev remained in Moscow until 1990. He suffered a heart attack during this time. Aliyev publicly opposed the January 1990 Soviet military crackdown in Baku, which had followed the continuing conflict regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.
Almost immediately after this public appearance, Aliyev left Moscow for his native Nakhchivan. There, Aliyev reinvented himself as a moderate nationalist. He was elected the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR in Baku in October 1990. Under the pressure and criticism from groups connected to his nemesis, the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutallibov, Aliyev again returned to Nakhchivan, where he was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Nakhchivan in 1991. He resigned that same year from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
By December 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved and Azerbaijan formally became an independent state, Aliyev independently governed Nakhchivan in spite of Mutallibov's presidency. Early 1992 saw increased violence in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War following the fall of Shusha, the last Azerbaijani-populated town in Nagorno-Karabakh. These events resulted in Mutallibov's resignation and the subsequent rise to power of the Azerbaijan Popular Front led by Abulfaz Elchibey. During Elchibey's one year in power, Aliyev continued to govern Nakhchivan without any deference to the official government in Baku. The attempt by the Popular Front's Minister of Interior Isgandar Hamidov to forcibly overthrow Aliyev in Nakhchivan was thwarted by local militia at the regional airport. During the same period, Aliyev independently negotiated a cease-fire agreement in Nakhchivan with the then-President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
Aliyev was elected as the leader of New Azerbaijan Party at its constituent congress organized in Nakhchivan on 21 November 1992.
In May–June 1993, when a crisis in the government led the country to the brink of civil war and loss of independence, the people of Azerbaijan demanded to bring Aliyev to power. The leaders of Azerbaijan were obliged to officially invite Aliyev to Baku. On 24 June 1993, amidst the advancement of insurgent forces under Surat Huseynov's control towards Baku, Elchibey fled from the city to his native village of Keleki in Nakhchivan. Earlier, on 15 June 1993, Aliyev had been elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan, and after Elchibey's flight, he also assumed temporary presidential powers. In August 1993, Elchibey was stripped of his presidency by a nationwide referendum, and in October 1993, Aliyev was elected President of Azerbaijan. In May 1994, Aliyev agreed to ceasefire agreement to end the hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, which largely held until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.
Presidency
On 3 October 1993, as a result of nationwide voting, Heydar Aliyev was elected President of the Republic of Azerbaijan with 98.8 percent of the vote. On 11 October 1998, he was re-elected, winning 77 percent of the vote. Aliyev was nominated as a candidate in the 2003 presidential elections, but declined to run in the elections in connection with health problems.
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
Final year of war
When Aliyev became chairman of the Supreme Soviet in June 1993, Azerbaijan was suffering from internal division and military collapse, which allowed Armenian forces to capture most of five districts in the southwest of Azerbaijan without meeting significant resistance, leading to the displacement of around 350,000 people. After taking the office of president, Aliyev disbanded units loyal to the ousted Azerbaijani Popular Front and ordered the creation of a new national army. Tens of thousands of young men with no fighting experience were conscripted to this end. At the same time, Aliyev conducted negotiations with the Armenian side: he had already confidentially met with Karabakh Armenian leader Robert Kocharyan twice in Moscow soon before assuming the presidency, and Armenian and Azerbaijani representatives had agreed to prolong a ceasefire in September 1993. The negotiations bore no results and the ceasefire did not hold, however, and Armenian forces captured additional territories soon after Aliyev's inauguration. In the winter of 1993–1994, Azerbaijani forces attempted to recapture territories on different parts of the frontline. While Azerbaijani forces managed to recapture part of Fuzuli District, the operation to retake Kalbajar District was a disastrous failure, with thousands of Azerbaijani soldiers killed or frozen to death in the mountains north of Kalbajar.
1994 ceasefire and peace negotiations
In May 1994, with Aliyev's approval, a ceasefire agreement was signed by representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which successfully put an end to the hostilities in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. While agreeing to the ceasefire, Aliyev rejected Russian proposals to deploy a peacekeeping contingent to Nagorno-Karabakh. Following the ceasefire, Aliyev periodically engaged in negotiations with the Armenian side mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group and its co-chair countries (Russia, France and the United States) for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. At the OSCE Lisbon Summit in December 1996, all of the OSCE member states except for Armenia signed a declaration affirming Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and stating that Nagorno-Karabakh's right to self-determination should be realized in the form of "the highest degree of self-rule within Azerbaijan".
Aliyev reportedly agreed to a "phased solution" to the conflict proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs in September 1997, which envisioned the withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh (besides Lachin District) and the deployment of international peacekeepers, followed by negotiations on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh in subsequent phases; the proposal was never realized as Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosyan failed to win support for it from his own government and was forced to resign in February 1998. Aliyev participated in bilateral talks with the new president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, in spring 1999 and again in January 2001. Further, more substantial talks were held in Key West, Florida with American mediation in April 2001. The proposals negotiated at Key West have never been published, although it is reported that Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor were to be effectively ceded to Armenia while Azerbaijan would regain the seven occupied districts and receive land access to Nakhchivan through Armenian territory. Despite initial reports that the two sides were closer than ever to coming to a final agreement, Aliyev, who is said to have met significant opposition to the conditions from his inner circle, declined to go forward with the agreement after returning to Azerbaijan. The Key West negotiations were the last major negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict during Aliyev's presidency.
Domestic policy
Constitutional reform
Aliyev assembled the Constitutional Commission in June 1995 to create a constitution to replace the 1978 Azerbaijan SSR Constitution. The first draft was ready in October for public debate and the final version consisted of 5 chapters, 12 sections and 147 articles. The new constitution was confirmed by a referendum held on 12 November 1995. To ensure separation of power, the constitution created 3 divisions: legislative (Milli Majlis), executive (President) and judicial (courts).
Aliyev suggested amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan in June 2002. The first amendment to the Constitution of Azerbaijan was approved as the result of the 2002 Azerbaijani constitutional referendum. Consequently, 39 amendments to 23 articles of the Constitution of Azerbaijan were made. These included the abolition of proportional party-list elections to Parliament, a change in the presidential line of succession to favor the Prime Minister instead of the Chairman of Milli Majlis, the favoring of a simple majority when calculating presidential election results, and the establishment of rights for citizens, courts and ombudsmen to appeal directly to the Constitutional Court of Azerbaijan.
Abolition of death penalty
Aliyev requested the elimination of the death penalty on 3 February 1998. In his speech addressed to Milli Majlis, Aliyev stated: "I am convinced that the abolition of the death penalty is a crucial step in the humanization of criminal justice policy, moreover it is an important stage in the reform of the legal system as a whole. Taking into consideration all the facts, I am submitting a draft law on amendments and additions to the Criminal, Criminal-Procedure, and Corrective Labour Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan regarding the abolition of capital punishment in the Republic of Azerbaijan in accordance with Article 96 of the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan for the discussion." Milli Majlis approved the draft law, so on 10 February 1998 the "Law on Amendments and Additions to the Criminal, Criminal-Procedural and Corrective Labour Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan regarding the elimination of the death penalty in the Republic of Azerbaijan" was adopted. As a result, capital punishment was replaced with life imprisonment.
Azerbaijan joined the "Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty" on 22 January 1999.
Establishment of Ombudsman Institution
Aliyev issued a decree on "Measures for Ensuring Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms" on 22 February 1998. The State Program on the Protection of Human Rights was confirmed by a Presidential Order dated 18 June 1998. An Ombudsman institution in Azerbaijan was established based on this State Program, the Constitutional Law "On the Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) of the Republic of Azerbaijan" (28 December 2001), commitments before the Council of Europe, and a Presidential Decree dated 5 March 2002 on implementation of this law. Elmira Süleymanova was appointed the Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) among 3 nominees requested by President Aliyev, as recorded in Decision No. 362 of the Milli Majlis on 2 July 2002.
Agrarian and land reform
Agrarian reforms implemented during the Aliyev administration can be divided into 2 phases:
1995–1997 – During the first phase, the legislative base for an agrarian sector was reestablished through the adoption of a number of legislative documents. Privatization of Azerbaijani agriculture through the dissolution of the traditional collective and state farms was the focus of these laws. Examples of these laws include "the Basis of Agrarian Reform" (18 February 1995); "Reform of state and collective farms" (18 February 1995); and "Land Reform" (16 July 1996). On 10 January 1997 Aliyev issued a Decree on "Approval of some legal documents assuring implementation of agrarian reforms". The State Commission on Agrarian Reforms was formed by Aliyev on 2 March 1995.
1998–2001 – The second phase focused on post-privatization support and the removal of bureaucratic barriers for more effective implementation of these reforms. The Ministry of Agriculture was reorganized by a presidential decree dated 6 June 1998 (On Ratification of the Statue on the Ministry of Agriculture), the law on "State land cadaster, land monitoring and structure" (22 December 1998), a decree on "Land rent" (12 March 1999), and a law on "land market" (7 May 1999). The Land Code of Azerbaijani Republic was approved by the Law on "Approval of Land Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan" (25 June 1999).
Foreign policy
During the Aliyev administration, Azerbaijani foreign policy was rebalanced. The bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and other countries, as well as cooperation with international organizations, deepened.
Relations with United Nations
During Aliyev's presidency, Azerbaijan began actively participating within international organizations such as the United Nations. Aliyev attended the 49th session of the UN General Assembly (UN GA) in 1994 and the special session of UN GA dedicated to 50th anniversary of United Nations in October 1995. He received former Secretary General of UN Boutros Boutros-Ghali in October 1994 in Baku. Aliyev met with Secretary General Kofi Annan during his trip to the US in 1997 July. Aliyev addressed the Millennium Summit of UN held in September 2000, where he talked about the Armenian invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions, and mentioned UN resolutions 822, 853, 874, 884, which demanded unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories. After 11 September attacks, Azerbaijan joined the anti-terror coalition of UN and cooperated with Office of Counter-Terrorism and Sanctions Committee of the UN SC. In October 2001, Azerbaijan joined the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism adopted by UN SC in 1999.
Relations with NATO
The Partnership for Peace (PfP) Framework Document was signed to enhance security and defense cooperation with NATO on 4 May 1994. Aliyev approved the PfP Presentation Document on 19 April 1996. In November 1997, Azerbaijan joined the PfP Planning and Review Process. NATO PA also made Azerbaijan an associate member of NATO in November.
Relations with EU
The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Azerbaijan was signed in Luxembourg on 22 April 1996, and went into effect on 22 June 1999. It promises cooperation in the fields of trade, investment, economy, legislation, culture, immigration and the prevention of illicit trade. Azerbaijan received assistance from the EU for economic reforms in the country through the TACIS and TRACECA programmes. The “Restoration of the Historic Silk Road” international conference was organized in Baku on 8 September 1998 by Aliyev and President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia with the support of the TACIS and TRACECA programmes.
Relations with Council of Europe
Azerbaijan participated as a specially invited guest at the Council of Europe (CoE) on 28 June 1996. Consequently, a number of resolutions and legal acts were adopted from 1996–2001 to improve the Azerbaijani legislative system so it could fulfill the requirements of European standards and international law. On 28 June 2000, Azerbaijan's full admission to the CoE was recommended at the session of Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE. Azerbaijan became a full member of the CoE on 17 January 2001; the official ceremony was conducted on 25 January 2001. Presidential orders “On the implementation of the measures of the program of cooperation between the Council of Europe and the Republic of Azerbaijan” (8 July 1996), "On the measures of Deepening Cooperation between the Council of Europe and the Republic of Azerbaijan" (20 January 1998), and “On the measures of expanding cooperation between Azerbaijan and CoE for defending interests of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Council of Europe" (14 May 1999) were adopted by Aliyev.
Relations with Russia
Aliyev prioritized establishing warmer relations with Russia more than the previous leadership of Azerbaijan did. He stated in his speech at Milli Majlis on 15 June 1993, after being elected as the head of Parliament of Azerbaijan: "Russia, our northern neighbor, is absolutely a vast state. Undoubtedly, the relation based on independent principles between Azerbaijan and Russia must be better, broader and more fruitful." The Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Security between Russia and Azerbaijan was signed on 3 July 1997. Aliyev paid his first official trip to Russia as a President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in July 1997 with the invitation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Relations with Russia further developed through Aliyev-Putin negotiations during their bilateral visits (Vladimir Putin visited Azerbaijan in 2001 and Aliyev paid a reciprocal visit to Russia in 2002). The agreements on "The Status and Benefiting Principles of Gabala Radio Location Station", "Long term economic cooperation agreement between Russian Federation and the Azerbaijan Republic until the year 2010", and "The common declaration of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin and President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev" were signed in the latter meeting.
Relations with US
Establishing closer relations and developing cooperation with the US were among the main goals of Aliyev's foreign policy. He stated in one of his speeches regarding this issue: “The relations of Azerbaijan with the United States are important as we need to learn the Western democracy, culture, achievements, to benefit from them, to use and apply them in Azerbaijan. In this regard, the United States is a special country for us." Relations between the two countries strengthened after oil contracts were signed. Aliyev paid his first official visit to the US and met with President Bill Clinton on 1 August 1997. They signed a Joint Statement on future relations between the US and Azerbaijan in defense and military issues. During this trip (27 July-5 August 1997), a statement on intentions of formation of bilateral dialogue between the US and Azerbaijan regarding energy issues and the general agreement between the Government of the Azerbaijani Republic, the National Bank, and the US Export-Import Bank on the promotion of projects were signed. Additionally, 4 agreements on development and production sharing for the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea were signed. After the visit, Aliyev issued an order on “Measures to expand partnership relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the United States” on 2 September 1997. Azerbaijan joined a US-lead international coalition against terrorism after 11 September attacks, and sent a military contingent to Afghanistan. An amendment to the Freedom Support Act was adopted on 24 October 2002 by the US Senate to allow a US president to temporarily waive Section 907, which used to forbid to export any financial or humanitarian support to Azerbaijan.
Oil strategy
Aliyev used the oil potential of Azerbaijan to avoid the difficulties his country faced after the collapse of the Soviet Union by attracting foreign investment into Azerbaijan. After a year-long series of negotiations in Baku, Istanbul and Houston, the “Agreement on the Joint Development and Production Sharing for the Azeri and Chirag Fields and the Deep Water Portion of the Gunashli Field in the Azerbaijan Sector of the Caspian Sea” was signed in Baku on 20 September 1994 by the Government of Azerbaijan and a consortium of 11 oil companies from 6 countries (US, UK, Russia, Norway, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) in the presence of Aliyev.
The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan was established by Presidential Decree in December 1999 to gather the income gained from oil profit with the aim of financing social and economic projects. As a result of the oil strategy developed by Aliyev, Azerbaijani oil was planned to be carried through different routes as Baku–Supsa, Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), etc. In order to export Azerbaijani oil to the European market, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey agreed to construct the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in 1998 in Ankara. The ground-breaking ceremony of BTC took place in September 2002 with the participation of Aliyev, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, and Georgian President Edward Shevardnadze.
The decision to export Azerbaijani crude oil to the Port of Novorossiysk was made through a contract signed in Moscow on 18 February 1996. Oil transportation through this route was realized in October 1997. Establishment of the alternative Baku–Supsa route was agreed on 8 March 1996 by Aliyev and Shevardnadze. The Baku–Supsa route began operation in April 1999.
Death and successor
Aliyev's health began to fail in 1999 when he had a major heart bypass operation in the United States at the Cleveland Clinic. He later had prostate surgery and a hernia operation. He collapsed while giving a speech on live television in April 2003. On 6 August, Aliyev returned to the US for treatment of congestive heart failure and kidney problems. He stood down from the presidency at the start of October 2003 and appointed his son Ilham as his party's sole presidential candidate. On 12 December 2003, President Aliyev died at the Cleveland Clinic. He was given a large state funeral and buried at the Alley of Honor cemetery in Baku.
Heydar Aliyev's son Ilham Aliyev won a presidential election on 15 October 2003 widely considered to have been fraudulent. International observers criticized the contest as falling well below expected standards.
Honours
Throughout his life, Aliyev was awarded a number of state orders and medals, international awards, and elected honourable doctor of universities in many countries. Awards he has received include the Order of Lenin five times, the Order of the Red Star once, and Hero of the Socialist Labor twice. On 27 March 1997 in Kyiv, Ukraine, Aliyev received Ukraine's highest award, the Yaroslav Mudry Order, and on 13 April 1999, Turkey's highest honour, the Atatürk International Peace Prize. On 3 April 2003, he was elected a professor and authorized member of the Academy of Safety of the Russian Federation, and was subsequently awarded the Premium of Yuri Andropov. On 10 May 2003, he was decorated with the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle the First-Called—Russia's supreme award. A statue of Aliyev has been unveiled in a Tašmajdan Park in Belgrade; its renovation was aided by 2 million euros ($2.9 million) from the Azerbaijani government. In August 2012 a statue of Aliyev which had been gifted to Mexico by the Azerbaijani embassy was installed in a park in Mexico City but was removed the following January after proving controversial. On April 10, 2023, Heydar Aliyev Street was opened in the center of Astana, the Presidents of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan took part in the opening ceremony.
Full list of honours and awards
Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labour, twice (1979, 1983)
Five Orders of Lenin (1971, 1973, 1976, 1979, 1983)
Order of the October Revolution (1982)
Order of the Red Star (1962)
Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (1985)
Medal "For Battle Merit"
Medal "For Labour Valour"
Medal "For the Defence of the Caucasus" (1944)
Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945)
Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1965)
Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1975)
Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1985)
Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1969)
Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
Medal "Veteran of Labour" (1974)
Medal "Veteran of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1976)
Jubilee Medal "30 Years of the Soviet Army and Navy" (1948)
Jubilee Medal "40 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1957)
Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1967)
Jubilee Medal "60 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1978)
Jubilee Medal "70 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1988)
Medal "For Impeccable Service" Second Class (1959)
Medal "For Impeccable Service" First Class (1964)
Other
: First Class of the Order of the State of Republic of Turkey (1997)
: Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 1st class (20 March 1997) – "for outstanding contribution to the development of cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Azerbaijan and strengthening friendship between the Ukrainian and Azeri people"
: Silk Road Service Award by the Silk Road Fund (1998)
: Atatürk International Peace Prize (1999)
: Order of St. Andrew (10 May 2003) – "for his great personal contribution to strengthening friendship and cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan"
: Chuvash National Prize named after Ivan Yakovlev (2000)
: Order of the Golden Fleece (2001)
: Astana Medal
: Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour (2003)
: "Gloria Populi" award of Golden Fortune International Scientific Organization
Order "Sheikh-ul-Islam" (posthumously)
See also
President of Azerbaijan
Politics of Azerbaijan
Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan
Foreign relations of Azerbaijan
List of political parties in Azerbaijan
List of leaders of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic
Supreme Assembly of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic
References
External links
Official website
Official website Heydar Aliyev Foundation
Envisioning the Nation - Interview: Azerbaijan's President, Heydar Aliyev
1923 births
2003 deaths
First secretaries of the Azerbaijan Communist Party
Burials at Alley of Honor
Chairmen of the National Assembly (Azerbaijan)
Critics of Islamism
Deaths from congestive heart failure
Deniers of the Armenian genocide
Eighth convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Eleventh convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour
Heroes of Socialist Labour
KGB officers
Leaders who took power by coup
New Azerbaijan Party politicians
Ninth convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
People from Nakhchivan
Members of the Central Committee of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Candidates of the Politburo of the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Candidates of the Politburo of the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Politburo of the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Politburo of the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Presidents of Azerbaijan
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 1st class
Recipients of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Georgia)
Resigned Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
Tenth convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Leaders of political parties in Azerbaijan
Baku State University alumni
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20slaves
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List of slaves
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Slavery is a social-economic system under which people are enslaved: deprived of personal freedom and forced to perform labor or services without compensation. These people are referred to as slaves, or as enslaved people.
The following is a list of historical people who were enslaved at some point during their lives, in alphabetical order by first name. Several names have been added under the letter representing the person's last name.
A
Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori (1762–1829), a prince from West Africa and enslaved in the United States for 40 years until President John Quincy Adams freed him.
Abraham, an enslaved black man who carried messages between the frontier and Charles Town during wars with the Cherokee, for which he was freed.
Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781), adopted by Russian czar Peter the Great, governor of Tallinn (Reval) (1742–1752), general-en-chef (1759–1762) for building of sea forts and canals in Russia; great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin. See The Slave in European Art for portraits.
Absalom Jones (1746–1818), formerly-enslaved man who purchased his freedom, abolitionist and clergyman first ordained black priest of the Episcopal Church.
Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz (died 644), Persian craftsman and captive who killed the second Islamic caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab ().
Addas () an enslaved Christian boy who lived in Taif during the time of Muhammad, who was supposedly the first person from the western province of Taif to convert to Islam.
Adriaan de Bruin (–1766), earlier called Tabo Jansz, was an enslaved servant in the Dutch Republic who ended up a free man in Hoorn, North Holland. They were portrayed by Nicolaas Verkolje.
Claudia Acte, mistress of Roman emperor Nero.
Adam Brzeziński (died after 1797), Polish serf and Royal Ballet Dancer, donated to the king of Poland by will and testament.
Aelfsige, a male cook in Anglo-Saxon England, property of Wynflaed, who left him to her granddaughter Eadgifu in her will.
Aelus Perseus, a freedman of the late Roman Empire, whom T. Aelius Dionysius included by name on a stela for him, his wife, their freedman and those who came after them.
Aelstan, a man enslaved in Anglo-Saxon England freed with his wife and all their children (born and unborn) by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".
Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE), Greek poet and author or transcriber of Aesop's Fables.
Afak (12th century), an enslaved Kipchak girl who was given by Fakhr al-Din Bahramshah, ruler of Darband, to Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209). She became Ganjavi's wife and the mother of his only son, Mohammad. Through his poems, he expressed his grief at her premature death. It is disputed whether "Afak" (meaning Horizon or Snow White) was her birth name or a nickname.
Afanasy Grigoriev (1782–1868), Russian serf and Neoclassical architect.
Afrosinya (1699/1700–1748), Russian serf, possibly a Finnish captive, enslaved mistress of Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia.
Agathoclia (died c. 230), a martyr and patron saint of the town of Mequinenza in Spain.
Ng Akew (died 1880), famous Chinese businesswoman and smuggler, originally a slave.
Alam al-Malika (died 1130), enslaved singer who was promoted to become the de facto prime minister, adviser and ruler of the principality of Zubayd, in what is now Yemen.
Jehan Alard (fl. 1580), a French Huguenot who served as a galley slave in Italy, condemned by the Inquisition.
Alexina Morrison, a fugitive from slavery in Louisiana who claimed to be a kidnapped white girl and sued her master for her freedom on that ground, arousing such popular feeling against him that a mob threatened to lynch him.
Alfred "Teen" Blackburn (1842–1951), one of the last living survivors of slavery in the United States who had a clear recollection of it.
Alfred Francis Russell (1817–1884), 10th President of Liberia.
Alice Clifton (c. 1772–unknown), as an enslaved teenager, she was a defendant in an infanticide trial in 1787.
Alick was a man enslaved by John C. Calhoun, Vice President of the United States and a firm upholder of slavery. In 1831, Alick ran away when threatened with a severe whipping. Calhoun wrote to his second cousin and brother-in-law, asking him to keep a lookout for Alick, and if he was taken, to have him "severely whipped" and sent back. When Alick was captured, Calhoun wrote to the captor: "I am glad to hear that Alick has been apprehended and am much obliged to you for paying the expense of apprehending him ... He ran away for no other cause, but to avoid a correction for some misconduct, and as I am desirous to prevent a repetition, I wish you to have him lodged in Jail for one week, to be fed on bread and water and to employ some one for me to give him 30 lashes well laid on, at the end of the time. I hope you will pardon the trouble. I only give it, because I deem it necessary to our proper security to prevent the formation of the habit of running away, and I think it better to punish him before his return home than afterwards. Alick's case got considerable publicity, opponents of slavery regarding it as giving the lie to Calhoun's assertion that slavery was "not a Necessary Evil but a Positive Good" and that slaves get the "kind attention" of their masters.
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490–c. 1558), a Spanish explorer who was enslaved by Native Americans on the Gulf Coast of what is now the United States after surviving the collapse of the Narváez expedition in 1527.
Al-Khayzuran bint Atta (died 789), an enslaved Yemenite girl who became the wife of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mahdi and mother of both Caliphs Al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid, the most famous of the Abbasids.
Alp-Tegin (died 963), a member of the nomadic Turks of Central Asian steppes who was brought as slave when in childhood into the Samanid court at their capital Bukhara and who rose to become a commander of the army of the Samanid Empire in Khorasan. He later became the governor of Ghazna which then fell under the Samanid Empire. Later his son-in-law Sabuktigin would found the Ghaznavid Empire.
Amanda America Dickson (1849–1893), the daughter of white Georgian planter David Dickson and Julia Frances Lewis, who was enslaved by Dickson's mother. Although legally enslaved until her emancipation after the American Civil War, Amanda Dickson was raised as her father's favorite and inherited his $500,000 estate after his 1885 death.
Ammar bin Yasir (570–657), one of the most famous sahaba (companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad) freed by Abu Bakr.
Amos Fortune (1710–1801), an African prince who was enslaved in the United States for most of his life. A children's book about him, Amos Fortune, Free Man won the Newbery Medal in 1951.
Ana Velázquez, mother of Martin de Porres.
Anarcha Westcott (c. 1828–unknown), a black woman enslaved in the United States who was one of the several enslaved women experimented on by J. Marion Sims.
Andrey Voronikhin (1759–1814), Russian serf, architect and painter.
Andrea Aguyar (died 1849), a formerly-enslaved freed black man from Uruguay who joined Giuseppe Garibaldi during Italian revolutionary involvement in the Uruguayan Civil War of the 1840s and was killed fighting in defense of the Roman Republic of 1849.
Anne Calhoun, a white girl and cousin to John C. Calhoun who was enslaved from the age of 4 until she was 7 by Cherokees.
Anna Williams, an enslaved woman in Washington, D.C. who successfully sued the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit for her freedom.
Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964), author, educator, speaker and prominent African-American scholar.
Annice (died 1828), executed for the murders of five children.
Annika Svahn (fl. 1714), Finnish woman abducted by the Russians during the Great Northern War. The daughter of a vicar in Joutseno, she became perhaps the best-known victim of the abuse suffered by the civilian population in Finland during the Russian occupation Greater Wrath.
Antarah ibn Shaddad (525–608), pre-Islamic Arab born to an enslaved woman, freed by his father on the eve of battle, also a poet.
Anteia, a woman in ancient Greece described in Against Neaera as the property of Nicarete, who prostituted her c. 340 BC.
Anthony Burns (1834–1862), a Baptist preacher who escaped slavery to Boston only to be recaptured due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, then had his freedom bought by those who opposed his recapture in Boston.
Antonia Bonnelli (1786–1870), captured and enslaved by the Mikasuki tribe in Florida in 1802.
Antonio and Mundy, the presumed names of two 16th-century African slaves brought by Portuguese owners to Macau. They later managed to escape into Ming China. A popular legend states that one of them was the first to teach Chinese to an Englishman.
Antón Guanche (15th century), a Guanche from Tenerife, captured, enslaved, and returned to the island.
Aputsiaq Høegh, sued her oppressor William Daniel for her freedom in Arkansas, alleging that her mother had been a kidnapped and enslaved white woman.
Aqualtune Ezgondidu Mahamud da Silva Santos (died 1677), princess of Kongo, mother of Ganga Zumba and grandmother of Zumbi dos Palmares. She led 10,000 men during the Battle of Mbwila between Kingdom of Kongo and Kingdom of Portugal. She was captured by Portuguese forces, was brought to Brazil and sold as slave. She created the slave settlement of Quilombo dos Palmares with her son Ganga Zumba.
Archer Alexander (1810–1879), the model for the slave in the 1876 Emancipation Memorial sculpture.
Archibald Grimké (1849–1930), born into slavery, the son of a white father, became an American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader.
Aristocleia, a woman in ancient Greece described in Against Neaera as the property of Nicarete, who prostituted her c. 340 BC.
Arkil, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".
Arthur Crumpler (c. 1835–1910), escaped slavery in Virginia, second husband of Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler.
Aster Ganno (c.1872–1964), a young Ethiopian woman was rescued by the Italian Navy from a slave ship crossing to Yemen. She went on to translate the Bible into the Oromo language. Also she prepared literacy materials and went on to spend the rest of her life as a school teacher.
Augustine Tolton (1854–1897), the first black priest in the United States.
Aurelia Philematium, a freedwoman whose tombstone glorifies her marriage with her fellow freedman, Lucius Aurelius Hermia.
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (1701–1773), also known as Job ben Solomon, a Muslim of the Bundu state in West Africa who was enslaved for two years in Maryland, freed in 1734, and later wrote memoirs that were published as one of the earliest slave narratives.
B
Baibars (1223–1277), also known as Abu al-Futuh, a Kipchak Turk who became a Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria.
Florence Baker (6 August 1841 – 11 March 1916), a Hungarian-British explorer, sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire and saved by Samuel Baker whom she later married.
Harriet Balfour (c.1818–1858), Surinam-born enslaved woman who was freed in 1841 and moved to Scotland
Balthild (c. 626–680), an Anglo-Saxon woman of elite birth who was sold into slavery as a young girl and served in the household of Erchinoald, mayor of the palace of Neustria. Later she became queen consort by marriage to Clovis II, and then regent during the minority of her son Clotaire. She abolished the practice of trading Christian slaves and sought the freedom of children sold into slavery. She was canonized by Pope Nicholas I about 200 years after her death.
Bass Reeves (1838–1910), one of the first black Deputy U.S. Marshals west of the Mississippi River, credited with arresting over 3,000 felons as well as shooting and killing fourteen outlaws in self-defense.
Sarah Basset (died 1730), enslaved in Bermuda; executed in 1730 for the poisoning of three individuals.
Batteas, a black slave sold by Choctaw chief Francimastabe to Benjamin James, and later stolen by Robert Welsh.
Andrew Jackson Beard (1849–1921), inventor, emancipated at age 15 by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Belinda Sutton (1713–179?), born in Ghana, petitioned for support from her enslaver's estate, considered an early reparations case and inspired future activism.
Benkos Biohó, born into the royal family of the Bissagos Islands, who was abducted and enslaved. After transportation to Spanish New Granada in South America he managed to escape, help many other slaves to escape and established the maroon community of San Basilio de Palenque. He was betrayed and hanged Governor Diego Pacheco Téllez-Girón Gómez de Sandoval of Cartagena in 1621, but the community he founded survived in freedom and exists up to the present.
Betty Hemings (c. 1735–1807), an enslaved mixed-race woman in colonial Virginia whom in 1761 became the sex slave of her master, planter John Wayles, and had six mixed-race children with him over a 12-year period, including Sally Hemings and James Hemings.
Beverly Hemings, son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.
Henry Bibb (1815–1854), American author and abolitionist who was born a slave. After escaping from slavery to British Upper Canada, he founded an abolitionist newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive. He later returned to the U.S. and lectured against slavery.
Big Eyes (), Wichita woman enslaved by Tejas people before being captured and enslaved by conquistador Juan de Zaldívar.
Bilichilde (died 610), was a queen of Austrasia by marriage to Theudebert II.
Bilal ibn Ribah (580–640), freed in the 6th century. He converted to Islam and was Prophet Muhammad's muezzin.
Bill Richmond (1763–1829), born in America, was freed and became one of England's best-known boxers.
Billy, a 7-year-old black boy captured by Creek raiders in 1788; he passed through several hands before being sold at auction in Havana, Spanish Cuba.
Billy (born c. 1754), a man who escaped John Tayloe II's plantation and was charged with treason against Virginia during the American Revolutionary War. He was pardoned after arguing that, as a slave, he was not a citizen and thus could not commit treason against a government to which he owed no allegiance.
Bissula (fl. 368) enslaved Alemannic woman, and muse of the Roman poet Ausonius.
Blaesus and Blaesia, whose late Republican Rome tomb inscription names them as the freedman of Caius and the freedwoman of Aulus.
Blandina (c. 162–177), a slave and Christian martyr in Roman Gaul.
Boga, a man enslaved in Anglo-Saxon England who, along with all his family, was freed by his owner Æthelgifu's will.
Maria Boguslavka (17th century), Ukrainian woman enslaved in a harem, and became a heroine of assisting the escape of 30 Cossacks from slavery.
The Bodmin manumissions, a manuscript now in the British Library preserves the names and details of slaves freed in Bodmin (the then-principal town of Cornwall) during the 9th or 10th centuries.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), born into slavery, became an American educator, author and leader of the African-American community after the Civil War.
Nathaniel Booth (1826–1901), escaped slavery in Virginia and settled in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1851, the citizens of Lowell purchased his freedom from slave hunters.
John Boston (c. 1832–after 1880) a formerly-enslaved man who represented Darlington County for the South Carolina House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. He was involved in community endeavors and, as a minister, established the Lamar Colored Methodist Church in 1865. By 1880, he was a farmer.
Saint Brigid of Kildare, a major Irish Saint. According to tradition, Brigid was born in the year 451 AD in Faughart, just north of Dundalk in County Louth, Ireland. Her mother was Brocca, a Christian Pict slave who had been baptized by Saint Patrick. They name her father as Dubhthach, a chieftain of Leinster. Dubthach's wife forced him to sell Brigid's mother to a druid when she became pregnant. Brigid herself was born into slavery. The child Brigid was said to have performed miracles, including healing and feeding the poor. Around the age of ten, she was returned as a household servant to her father, where her habit of charity led her to donate his belongings to anyone who asked. In two Lives, Dubthach was so annoyed with her that he took her in a chariot to the King of Leinster to sell her. While Dubthach was talking to the king, Brigid gave away his jewelled sword to a beggar to barter it for food to feed his family. The king recognized her holiness and convinced Dubthach to grant his daughter her freedom, after which she started her career as a well-known nun.
Brigitta Scherzenfeldt (1698–1733), Swedish memoirist and weaving teacher who was captured during the Great Northern War and lived as a slave in the kingdom of the Kalmyk in Central Asia.
Bussa, born a free man in West Africa of possible Igbo descent and was captured by African slave merchants, sold to the British, and transported to Barbados (where slavery had been legal since 1661) in the late 18th century as a slave.
C
Caenis, a formerly-enslaved woman and secretary of Antonia Minor (mother of the emperor Claudius) and the mistress of Roman emperor Vespasian.
Caesar (c. 1737–1852), the last slave to be manumited in New York. A supercentenarian, he may have also been the earliest-born person ever photographed while alive, in 1851.
Caesar Nero Paul (c. 1741 - 1823), enslaved as a child in Africa and brought to Exeter, New Hampshire, he was freed and started a prominent New England family of abolitionists.
Pope Callixtus I (died 223), a formerly-enslaved man, pope from about 218 to about 223, during the reigns of Roman emperors Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus. He was martyred for his Christian faith and is a canonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Callistratus, an Athenian enslaved man and banker.
Carlota (died 1844), led a slave rebellion on Cuba in 1843–1844.
Castus, an enslaved Gaul and one of the leaders of slave rebellions people during the Third Servile War
Cato, an enslaved African-American man who served as an American Black Patriot spy and courier gathering intelligence with his owner, Hercules Mulligan.
Cato (died 1803), an enslaved man in Charleston, New York, who murdered twelve-year-old Mary Akins after an attempted rape. His confession was published in the murder literature of the time.
Celia (died 1855), a woman convicted and executed for the murder of Robert Newsom, her enslaver. During the trial, John Jameson argued she had killed him in self defense to stop Newsom from raping her.
Cesar Picton (c. 1765–1831), enslaved in Senegal, worked as a servant in England, and later became a wealthy coal merchant.
Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha (1713–1790), an enslaved Georgian in the Ottoman Empire who rose to be grand vizier, Kapudan Pasha and an army commander.
Cevri Kalfa, an enslaved Georgian girl at the sultan's harem in Istanbul, who saved Mahmud II's life and was rewarded for her bravery and loyalty by being appointed haznedar usta, the chief treasurer of the imperial Harem.
Charity Folks (1757–1834), African-American slave born in Annapolis, Maryland, released from slavery in 1797 and later became a property owner.
Charles Ayres Brown, enslaved mixed-raced man born in Buckingham County, Virginia around 1820 or 1821 who was a part of the contraband camp during the American Civil War in Corinth, Mississippi. He was in Company E. He was legally married to Minerva Brown in 1867 and they had six children.
Charles Deslondes, Haitian mulatto tasked with overseeing other slaves on the André plantation and leader of the 1811 German Coast Uprising in present-day Louisiana. He was brutally killed by the "militia" which put down the slave revolt.
Charles Taylor, an enslaved man freed by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, was described in a Harper's Weekly article as appearing white and having come to a school for emancipated slaves in Philadelphia.
Charlotte Aïssé, (c. 1694–13 March 1733), a French letter-writer, the daughter of a Circassian chief.
Charlotte Dupuy (c. 1787–1790–c. 1866), also called Lottie, filed a freedom suit in 1829 against her enslaver, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, and lost.
Chica da Silva (c. 1732–1796), also known as Xica da Silva, Brazilian courtesan who became famous for becoming rich and powerful despite having been born into slavery.
Chloe Cooley (), enslaved in Canada, her violent treatment and transport to the United States prompted Upper Canada's 1793 Act Against Slavery.
Christopher Shields (born 1774), enslaved by George Washington and kept in slavery at Mount Vernon. The location and year in which he died is unknown.
Christophorus Plato Castanis, (born 1814) a runaway Greek slave from Chios. He came to the United States with Samuel Gridley Howe and John Celivergos Zachos. Castanis was a Greek-American author and lecturer.
Claudia Prepontis, a Roman freedwoman who erected in the 1st century AD a funerary altar to her freedman husband T. Claudius Dionysius; their clasped hands, depicted on it, show the legitimacy of their marriage, possible only once they obtained their freedom.
Clara Brown (c. 1800–1885), a formerly enslaved Virginian woman who became a community leader, philanthropist and aided settlement of former slaves during Colorado's Gold Rush.
Pope Clement I (died 100), the fourth Pope according to Catholic tradition. He may have been a freedman of Titus Flavius Clemens.
Cleon (died 132 BC) leader in the First Servile War.
Cole, an enslaved woman in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".
Colonel Tye (1753–1780), also known as Titus Cornelius, formerly enslaved, he became a Black Loyalist soldier and guerrilla leader during the American Revolution.
Cooper, an enslaved black man around 20 years old who fled to the Creek. He was captured to be sold to the whites but killed after he wounded a warrior.
Crixus, a Gallic gladiator and military leader in the Third Servile War.
Cudjoe Lewis (c. 1840–1935), born Oluale Kossola, the third-to-last surviving victim in the United States of the Transatlantic slave trade. Transported upon the slave ship Clotilda.
Cuffy (died 1763), was an Akan man who was captured in his native West Africa, taken to work in the plantations of the Dutch colony of Berbice in present-day Guyana, and in 1763 led a revolt of more than 2,500 slaves against the colonial regime. Today, he is a national hero in Guyana.
D
Dabitum, slave in Old Babylonia known for her letter concerning a miscarriage.
Danae, "the new maidservant of Capito", named in lead curse tablet from Republican Rome, which aimed to destroy Danae.
Daniel Bell (c. 1802–1877) who tried for decades to obtain lasting freedom for himself, his wife, and his children. He helped organize what was called "the single largest known escape attempt by enslaved Americans", called the Pearl incident in Washington, D.C., in 1848.
Dave Drake (c. 1801–1876), also known as Dave the Potter.
David George, a black man who fled a cruel Virginia master and was captured by Creeks and enslaved by Chief Blue Salt.
Deborah Squash, with her husband Harvey escaped from George Washington's Mount Vernon, joined the British in New York during the American Revolutionary War, and were evacuated in 1783 as freedmen.
Denmark Vesey (c. 1767–1822), an enslaved African-American man and later a freeman who planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States had word of the plans not been leaked.
Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761–1804), born into slavery as the natural daughter of Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman in the West Indies, and Sir John Lindsay, a career Royal Navy officer. Lindsay took Belle with him when he returned to England in 1765, entrusting her raising to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Mansfield. The Murrays educated Belle, bringing her up as a free gentlewoman at their Kenwood House, together with their niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray. Belle lived there for 30 years. In his will of 1793, Lord Mansfield confirmed her freedom and provided an outright sum and an annuity to her, making her an heiress.
Diego was a formerly-enslaved freedman closely associated with the Elizabethan English navigator Francis Drake. In March 1573, Drake raided Darien (in modern Panama), in which he was greatly aided by Maroons – Africans who had escaped from Spanish slave owners and were glad to help their English enemies. One of them was Diego, who proved a capable ship builder and accompanied Drake back to England. In 1577, when Queen Elizabeth sent Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas – which eventually developed into Drake circumnavigating the world – Diego was once again employed under Drake; his fluency in Spanish and English would make him a useful interpreter when Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Portuguese were captured. He was employed as Drake's servant and was paid wages, just like the rest of the crew. Diego died while Drake's ship was crossing the Pacific, of wounds sustained earlier in the voyage. Drake was saddened at his death, Diego having become a good friend.
Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412–323 BCE), Greek philosopher kidnapped by pirates and sold in Corinth.
Dincă, half-Roma man enslaved by his father, a Cantacuzino boyar in the 19th-century Danubian Principalities (present-day Romania). Well-educated, working as a cook but not allowed to marry his French mistress and go free, which had led him to murder his lover and kill himself. The affair shocked public opinion and was one of the factors contributing to the abolition of slavery in Romania.
Diocletian (244–312), Emperor of Rome, was by some sources born as the slave of Senator Anullinus. By other sources, it was Diocletian's father (whose own name is unknown) who was a slave, and was freed prior to the birth of his son, the future emperor.
Dionysius I (? – 1492), Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, previously enslaved by the Ottomans after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Dolly Johnson (born late 1820s, died after 1887), African-American woman from Tennessee, enslaved by President Andrew Johnson, later a small small-business owner.
Dorota Sitańska (died after 1797), Polish serf and Royal Ballet Dancer, donated to the king of Poland by will and testament.
Dragut (1485–1565) Ottoman commander, gally slave during his Italian captivity.
Dred Scott (c. 1799–1858), an enslaved African-American man in Missouri who sued for his freedom in a nationally publicized trial, Scott v. Sandford, that reached the United States Supreme Court in 1857.
Dufe the Old, a man enslaved in Anglo-Saxon England who was freed by his mistress Æthelgifu's will.
E
Ecceard the Smith, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".
Ecgferð Aldun's daughter, a slave in Anglo-Saxon England freed by Geatflæd "for the love of God and the good of her soul".
Edmond Flint, a black person enslaved by the Choctaw Nation who later described it as very like slavery among the whites.
Ediþ, an enslaved woman in Anglo-Saxon England who bought her freedom and that of her children.
Edward Mozingo, Sr., (c. 1649 – 1712), kidnapped from Africa when about 10 years old, sold into slavery in Jamestown, Virginia. After his owner died, he sued for his freedom and won it. He married an impoverished white woman, Margaret Pierce Bayley (1645–1711) and together they, essentially, founded the Mozingo family line in North America.
Elijah Abel (1808–1884), born enslaved in Maryland and believed to have escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad into Canada. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its early days, was among the first blacks to receive its priesthood and the first black person to rise to the ranks of an elder and seventy.
Elizabeth Marsh (1735–1785) was an Englishwoman who was captured by corsairs and held in slavery in Morocco.
Edith Hern Fossett, a woman enslaved by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, was taught to cook by a French chef and created French cuisine at the White House and at Monticello.
Elias Polk (1806–1886), a conservative political activist of the 19th century.
Eliezer of Damascus, Abraham's slave and trusted manager of the Patriarch's household in the Hebrew Bible.
Elieser was a man enslaved by the family of Paulo de Pina, Portuguese Jews who moved to the Netherlands in 1610 to escape persecution and forced conversion in Portugal. He lived with the family in Amsterdam until his death in 1629 and was buried in the Beth Haim cemetery, oldest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands. He appears to have been set free, either de jure or in practice, and to have been on near equal footing with the family that owned him back in Portugal – indicated by the fact that he attended the funeral of the wife of his master, Sara de Pina, and contributed to that occasion six stuivers, and that he was buried alongside his (former) owners and alongside Jacob Israel Belmonte, the community's richest businessman. Elieser must have been converted to Judaism and widely accepted as Jewish, otherwise he would not have been buried inside the Jewish cemetery; the name "Elieser" was likely bestowed on him at conversion, recalling Eliezer of Damascus. In recent years, Elieser's memory was taken up by members of the Surinamese community in the Netherlands, who erected a statue of him and hold an annual pilgrimage to his grave on what came to be known as Elieser Day.
Elisenda de Sant Climent (1220–1275), enslaved during a slave raid on Mallorca and placed in the harem of the emir in Tunis.
Eliza Hopewell, a woman enslaved by Confederate spy Isabella Maria Boyd ("Belle Boyd"). In 1862 she aided her owner's espionage activities, carrying messages to the Confederate Army in a hollowed-out watch case.
Eliza Moore (1843–1948), one of the last proven African-American former slaves living in the United States.
Elizabeth Johnson Forby, mixed-race American woman enslaved by President Andrew Johnson, daughter of Dolly Johnson.
Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630–after 1665), the first woman of African ancestry in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom and win. Key and her infant son, John Grinstead, were freed on July 21, 1656, in the colony of Virginia, based on the fact that her father was an Englishman and that she was a baptized Christian.
Elizabeth Freeman (c. 1742 – 1829), known as Bett and later Mum Bett, was among the first enslaved black people in Massachusetts to file a freedom suit and win in court under the 1780 constitution, with a ruling that slavery was illegal.
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818–1907), best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady of the United States. Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868).
Ellen Craft (1826–1891), light-skinned wife of William Craft, who escaped with him from Georgia to Philadelphia, by posing as a white woman and her slave, in a case that became famous.
Ellen More, an enslaved woman brought to the royal Scottish court
Elsey Thompson, a white captive enslaved by a Creek. When trader John O'Reilly attempted to ransom her and Nancy Caffrey, he was told they were not taken captive to be allowed to go back, but to work.
Emilia Soares de Patrocinio (1805–1886) was a Brazilian slave, slave owner and businesswoman.
Emiline (age 23); Nancy (20); Lewis, brother of Nancy (16); Edward, brother of Emiline (13); Lewis and Edward, sons of Nancy (7); Ann, daughter of Nancy (5); and Amanda, daughter of Emiline (2), were freed in the 1852 Lemmon v. New York court case after they were brought to New York by their Virginia owners.
Emily Edmonson (1835–1895), along with her sister Mary, joined an unsuccessful 1848 escape attempt known as the Pearl incident, but Henry Ward Beecher and his church raised the funds to free them.
Enrique of Malacca, also known as Henry the Black, slave and interpreter of Ferdinand Magellan and possibly the first man to circumnavigate the globe in Magellan's voyage of 1519–1521.
Epictetus (55 – c. 135), ancient Greek stoic philosopher.
Epunuel, a native of Chappaquiddick who was taken captive by English explorers in the 1610s with twenty-nine others, and taken to London as a slave.
Estevanico (1500–1539), also known as Esteban the Moor. In principle he was a slave of the Portuguese to, later, be a servant of the Spaniards. He was one of only four survivors of the ill-fated Narváez expedition, later a guide in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold and possibly the first African person to arrive in what is now Arizona and New Mexico.
Eston Hemings (1808–1856), son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.
Eucharis, a Greek born freedwoman of Roman Licinia, described in her epitaph in the 1st century AD as fourteen when she died, a child actress and a professional dancer.
Eunus (died 132 BC), a Roman slave from Apamea in Syria, the leader of the slave uprising in the First Servile War in the Roman province of Sicily. Eunus rose to prominence in the movement through his reputation as a prophet and wonder-worker. He claimed to receive visions and communications from the goddess Atargatis, a prominent goddess in his homeland; he identified her with the Sicilian Demeter. Some of his prophecies were that the rebel slaves would successfully capture the city of Enna and that he would be a king some day.
Euphemia (died 520s), Empress of the Byzantine Empire by marriage to Justin I, originally a slave.
Euphraios, an Athenian slave and banker.
Exuperius and Zoe (died 127), 2nd-century Christian martyrs. They were a married couple who were enslaved by a pagan in Pamphylia. They were killed along with their sons, Cyriacus and Theodolus, for refusing to participate in pagan rites when their son was born.
F
Fabia Arete, Ancient Roman actress and freedwoman who is referred to as an elite actress or archimima who enjoyed a highly successful career and likely belonged to the minority of female actors to perform speaking parts.
Felicitas (died 203), Christian martyr and saint.
Fiddih, enslaved by the Báb when she was no older than 7 years of age, Fiddih served the Báb's wife Khadíjih-Bagum. Fiddih would die the same night as her owner.
Florence Johnson Smith, mixed-race American woman enslaved by President Andrew Johnson, daughter of Dolly Johnson.
Fountain Hughes (1848–1957), interviewed in June 1949 about his life by the Library of Congress as part of the Federal Writers' Project.
Francis Bok (born 1979), Dinka slave from South Sudan, now an abolitionist and author in the United States.
Francis Jackson (born 1815 to 1820), born free, he was kidnapped in 1850 and sold into slavery and was finally freed in 1855 with the resolution of Francis Jackson v. John W. Deshazer.
Francis James Grimké (1850 – 1937), minister.
Francisco Menéndez, a man enslaved in South Carolina who escaped to Spanish Florida, where he served in the Spanish militia, leading the garrison established in 1738 at Fort Mose. This site was the first legal free black community in what is now the United States.
François Mackandal (died 1758), Haitian Maroon leader.
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), born into slavery in Maryland and escaped to the Northeast in 1838, where he became an internationally renowned abolitionist writer, speaker, and diplomat.
French John, a French fur trader captured by the Cherokee and enslaved by Old Hop, apparently making no effort for his freedom for many years, until he ran away when the British offered to buy him.
C. Furius Cresimus, ancient Roman. As a freedman, he produced such crops from his small farm that he was accused of witching away other people's crops, but when he produced his agricultural implements in court, he was acquitted. Pliny the Elder recounts his tale as evidence that hard work is what counts in farming.
Fyodor Slavyansky (1817–1876), Russian serf painter.
G
Gabriel Prosser (1776–1800), leader of Virginia slave revolt.
Galeria Lysistrate (2nd century), mistress of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius.
Ganga Zumba or Ganazumba (c. 1630 – 1678), a descendant of an unknown king of Kongo who escaped slavery in colonial Brazil and became the first leader of the runaway slave settlement of Quilombo dos Palmares.
Gannicus, an enslaved Celt and one of the leaders of rebel slaves during the Third Servile War
Garafilia Mohalbi, (1817–1830) a Greek slave rescued by an American merchant and brought to Boston. She died young and inspired a huge art movement.
Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227), captured after a raid and enslaved by the Taichiud.
George Africanus (1763–1834), an enslaved African man from Sierra Leone who became a successful entrepreneur in Nottingham.
George Edward Doney (1758–1809), Gambian man enslaved by William Capell, 4th Earl of Essex.
George Colvocoresses (1816–1872), from Chios, Greece, who came to the United States and became a Captain in the U.S. Navy, was briefly enslaved as a child. Colvos Passage is named after him.
George Freeman Bragg (1863–1940), born into slavery in North Carolina and later became a leading Episcopal priest and social activist.
George Lewis (1794–1811), also known as Slave George, was an enslaved man murdered in Kentucky on the night of December 15–16, 1811.
George Moses Horton (1797–1884), the first African-American author; first book of poetry published in North Carolina.
George Sanders, a black person enslaved by the Cherokee, who described his enslavers as kind and providing clothes and food.
George Washington Carver (c. 1864–1943), an African-American scientist, botanist, educator and inventor known for encouraging cultivation of alternative crops to cotton such as sweet potatoes and peanuts in the South; born into slavery in Missouri and freed as a young child following the American Civil War.
George W. Hayes (1847–1933), a court crier and politician in Ohio of mixed African American and Native American heritage enslaved early in his life.
Gerónimo de Aguilar (1489–1531), a Franciscan friar, shipwrecked on the Yucatán Peninsula in 1511 and captured and enslaved by Mayans.
Giles, father of George Washington Carver.
Glaumur, enslaved by the outlaw Grettir in early medieval Iceland (protagonist of "Grettis saga"). Glaumur is mentioned as loyally sharing Grettir 's long exile on the lonely island of Drangey, off the northern tip of Iceland, though in the circumstances described in the saga he could have easily escaped.
Gosala, a sixth-century BC ascetic teacher of ancient India a contemporary (and rival) of Gautama Buddha was said to have been born into slavery, and became a naked ascetic after fleeing from his irate captor, who managed to grab hold of Gosala's garment and disrobe him as he fled.
Gonzalo Guerrero (died 1536), a sailor from Palos, Spain, who shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula in 1511 and was enslaved by the local Maya.
Gordon, also known as Whipped Peter, an enslaved African-American man who escaped to a Union Army camp from a plantation near Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1863. The images of Gordon's scourged back taken during a medical examination were published in Harper's Weekly and provided Northerners visual evidence of the brutality of slavery. They inspired many free blacks to enlist in the Union Army.
Gryphus Ancient Roman slave. The epigraph of the enslaved boy Iucundus describes him as the son of Gryphus and Vitalis.
Gülnuş Sultan (1642 – 6 November 1715) was Haseki Sultan of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV and Valide sultan to their sons Mustafa II and Ahmed III.
Guðríður Símonardóttir (1598–1682), Icelandic woman taken captive by North African slavers (Barbary Pirates).
Gustav Badin (died 1822), butler at the royal Swedish court.
H
Hababah, concubine of Caliph Yazid II.
Hagar, biblical figure, belonging to Sarah.
Hanna, an enslaved woman in Virginia, and grandmother of Jackey Wright, who sued for her freedom in Hudgins v. Wright (1806) on the grounds that three generations descended from Butterwood Nan, who was an American Indian, not African. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision by George Wythe, that because of Jackey's and Hanna's appearance as mixed Indian and European, she was entitled to the presumption of freedom, given the limited nature of Indian slavery. St. George Tucker and Spencer Roane said that, as most Africans had been imported as slaves and blacks descended from enslaved mothers, a black person would not have the same presumption of freedom.
Hannah Bond (born 1830s), pen name Hannah Crafts, wrote The Bondwoman's Narrative after gaining her freedom. Possibly the first novel by an African-American woman, it is the only known novel written by a woman fugitive from slavery.
Hark Olufs (1708–1754), Danish sailor, was captured by Algerian pirates. Sold to the Bey of Constantine, he became Commander in Chief of the Bey's cavalry. He was released in 1735.
Harriet Hemings (1801–after 1822), daughter of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.
Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897), author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Harriet Powers (1837–1910), American folk artist, and quilter.
Harriet Tubman (c. 1822 – 1913), nicknamed "Moses" because of her efforts in helping other American slaves escape through the Underground Railroad.
Harry, the plaintiff in the 1818 Harry v. Decker & Hopkins decision by the Supreme Court of Mississippi (the first among U.S. southern states) to free a person from slavery solely on the basis of prior residence in a free territory.
Harry Washington (died 1800), also known as Henry Washington, was enslaved by George Washington. Transported as a slave to America, he was bought by Washington in 1763 to work on a project for draining the Great Dismal Swamp.
Hafsa Sultan (died March 1534) was the wife of Selim I and the first valid sultan of the Ottoman Empire as the mother of Suleiman the Magnificent. Her background is disputed but some historians hold that she was a slave.
Helen Gloag (1750–1790), of Muthill, Perthshire, Scotland, became the Empress of Morocco as the harem slave of Morocco's sultan.
Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882), born an African-American slave in Maryland, escaped slavery in 1824, and became an abolitionist and educator.
Hercules (born c. 1755), head cook enslaved by George Washington at Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon. He escaped and gained his freedom in 1797, but his wife Alice and his three children remained enslaved.
Helvius Successus, freed slave, and father of Roman emperor Pertinax.
Hermas, author of the text The Shepherd of Hermas and brother of Pope Pius I.
Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, born in Cartagena, was enslaved at the age of 13 when the ship bearing him to Spain for education sank off Florida. A Calusa chief enslaved him and used him as a translator until he was ransomed at 30.
Horace King (1807–1885), American architect, engineer, and bridge builder, was born into slavery on a South Carolina plantation.
Hümaşah Sultan (fl. 1647–1672) was the wife of Sultan Ibrahim of the Ottoman Empire.
Hurrem Sultan (c. 1502 – 15 April 1558), also known as Roxelana, an Eastern European girl, was captured by slave traders and sold to the Imperial Harem, becoming the chief consort and legal wife of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent.
Halime Sultan (c. 1570-after 1623) was Valide Sultan and de facto co-ruler of the Ottoman Empire
Handan Sultan (c. 1568 – 9 November 1605) was Valide Sultan and de facto regent of the Ottoman Empire
I
İbrahim Pasha (c. 1495 – 1536), Suleiman the Magnificent's first appointed Grand Vizier. Greek by birth, at the age of six he was sold as a slave to the Ottoman palace for future sultans where he befriended Suleiman, who was the same age.
Icelus Marcianus, a slave and later freedman of Roman emperor Galba in the 1st century CE. He was one of three men said to completely control the emperor, increasing Galba's unpopularity.
Ida B. Wells (1862–1931), prominent African-American activist, born into slavery, who in later life campaigned against and succeeded in abolishing lynching. In 1909 she co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Imma, a Northumbrian aristocrat who was knocked unconscious in battle and later pretended to have been a peasant, so that his captors would not kill him. His manners and bearing soon betrayed him, and he was sold into slavery.
Isabel de Solís (), enslaved Castilian concubine of Abu l-Hasan Ali, Sultan of Granada.
Isabella Gibbons (1826–1890), became a schoolteacher in Virginia after her liberation in 1865.
Isfandíyár, an enslaved servant in Bahá'u'lláh's house in Tehran, Isfandíyár died in Mazandaran
Israel Jefferson (c. 1800 – after 1873), known as Israel Gillette before 1844, was born into slavery at Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson, and worked as a domestic servant close to Jefferson for years.
Isthmias, a woman in ancient Greece described in Against Neaera as the property of Nicarete, who prostituted her.
Iucundus, boy in Ancient Roman, described in his epitaph as the slave of Livia, the wife of Drusus Caesar, the son of Gryphus and Vitalis. It states he was seized and murdered by a witch, and warns parents to guard their children to prevent such a fate.
Ivan Bolotnikov (1565–1608), a fugitive kholop (enslaved in Russia) and leader of the Bolotnikov rebellion in 1606–1607.
Ivan Argunov (1729–1802), Russian serf painter, one of the founders of the Russian school of portrait painting.
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Jack Gladstone, leader of the Demerara rebellion of 1823.
Jackey Wright, an enslaved American woman who sued for and won her freedom in the famous 1806 Virginia case of Hudgins v. Wright. The opinion of the Virginia Supreme Court relied on Wright appearing white and Native American, whereas the lower court under George Wythe had tried to establish a presumption of freedom for all people, regardless of race.
James Armistead Lafayette (1760–1830), an enslaved African-American man who served the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War as a double agent.
James Baugh, an enslaved American who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his maternal grandmother had been an Indian.
James Hemings (1765–1801), mixed-race American man enslaved and later freed by Thomas Jefferson. He was the older brother of Sally Hemings and a half-sibling of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, through their father John Wayles.
James Leander Cathcart (1767–1843), a diplomat and sailor notable for his narrative of eleven years of enslavement in Algiers and for his diplomatic accomplishments while in slavery.
James Poovey (born c. 1769), a Philadelphian who was enslaved from birth and achieved manumission through non-violent disobedience.
James M. Priest (1819–1883), 6th Vice President of Liberia, born into slavery in Kentucky
James Somersett or Somerset, a man enslaved in colonial America whose escape while in England in 1771, supported by notable British abolitionists, led to the milestone legal case Somerset v Stewart, which effectively ended slavery in Britain, though not in its colonies.
James W. C. Pennington (c. 1807–1870), African-American writer and abolitionist.
Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852–1889), a Surinamese-American inventor in shoe manufacturing.
Jane Johnson (1814 or 1827 – 1872), gained freedom on July 18, 1855 with her two young sons while in Philadelphia with her owner and his family. She was aided by William Still and Passmore Williamson, abolitionists of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and its Vigilance Committee.
Jean Amilcar (c. 1781–1793), the Senegalese foster son of Marie Antoinette.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806), leader of the Haitian Revolution and first leader of independent Haiti.
Jean Marteilhe (1684–1777), French Huguenot slave narrator, he served as a galley slave.
Jean Saint Malo (died 1784), leader of runaway slaves (maroon colony) in Spanish Louisiana and namesake of Saint Malo, Louisiana.
Jean Parisot de Valette (1495–1568), a knight of the Order of Saint John was captured and made a galley slave in 1541 by Barbary pirates under the command of Turgut Reis. He was freed after about a year and later became Grandmaster of the Order.
Jeffrey Hudson (1619–c. 1682), an English courtier who spent 25 years enslaved in North Africa.
Jehu Grant (c. 1752–1840), Revolutionary War veteran.
Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813–1872), an African-American man who escaped slavery and became an abolitionist, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the author of a slave narrative.
Jerry – see William Henry
Jim Cuff or Jim Crow was a crippled enslaved African man, variously claimed to have resided in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh, whose song and dance supposedly inspired the blackface song and dance "Jump Jim Crow" by white comedian Thomas D. Rice. The great popularity of Rice's creation soon led to Jim Crow becoming a pejorative name for blacks, and later to the name being used for the segregationist Jim Crow Laws, a highly unfair posthumous memory of the original crippled slave.
Jim Henson, an African man who escaped slavery and published his memoirs, Broken Shackles, in Canada.
Joana da Gama (c. 1520–1586), a Portuguese maid-of-honor and writer.
Joe, a man enslaved by William B. Travis, one of the Texian commanders in the Battle of Alamo. After the Texian defeat, Mexican General Santa Anna spared Joe, hoping to convince other slaves in Texas to support the Mexican government over the Texian rebellion. Afterwards, Joe together with some other survivors were sent to Gonzales and encouraged to relate the events of the battle, and to inform the remainder of the Texian forces that Santa Anna's army was unbeatable.
John Axouch (1087–1150), a Seljuk Turk captured as a child by the Byzantine Empire, freed and raised in the imperial household as the companion of future emperor John II Komnenos, and on his accession given command of the empire's armies and remaining the emperor's only close personal friend and confidant.
John "Lit" Fleming, born into slavery in Virginia but later moved to Edmundson, Arkansas, with his parents and siblings. He would then move to Memphis, Tennessee, and was part-owner of the newspaper Memphis Free Speech with activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
John Munroe Brazealle, along with his mother, the subjects of Hinds v. Brazealle (1838), a case in the Supreme Court of Mississippi which denied the legality and inheritance rights in Mississippi of deeds of manumission executed by Elisha Brazealle, a Mississippi resident, in Ohio to free the pair.
John Brown (c. 1810–1876), escaped and wrote of conditions in the Deep South of the United States.
John Casor, the first to be enslaved as the result of a civil case in the Thirteen Colonies (Virginia Colony, 1655).
John Ezzidio (c. 1810–1872), enslaved Nigerian man who became a successful Sierra Leonese politician and businessman.
John Jea (born 1773), enslaved African-American man best known for his 1811 autobiography, The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher.
John Joyce born into slavery in Maryland, served in the United States Navy, held a variety of jobs after, and murdered a shopkeeper, Sarah Cross; his life and crime recounted in the murder literature of his day.
John R. Jewitt (1783–1821), an English armourer who spent three years as a captive of Maquinna of the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people on the Pacific coast of what is now Canada.
John Punch (fl. 1630s, living 1640), an enslaved African man in the Virginia Colony in the 17th century. In July 1640, the Virginia Governor's Council sentenced him to serve for the remainder of his life as punishment for running away to Maryland. Many historians consider Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies," and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake." Historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony, and a key milestone in the development of the institution of slavery in the United States.
John S. Jacobs (1815–1873), born into slavery in North Carolina, escaped, became an abolitionist speaker and author of a slave memoir. Brother of famed author Harriet Jacobs.
John Smith (1580–1631), English soldier, sailor, and author best known for his role in the survival of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. Smith was captured by the Crimean Tatars in 1602 while fighting in Wallachia and enslaved by the Ottoman Empire, but escaped and returned to England by 1604. As Smith described it: "we all sold for slaves, like beasts in a market-place."
Jordan Anderson (1825–1907), best known for a letter sent to his former oppressor/master in response to the latter's request that Jordan return to his service.
Jordan Winston Early (1814 – after 1894) was an American Methodist multiracial preacher who was the subject of a book about his life as a slave.
John White, an enslaved black boy who was captured by Creeks in 1797 and escaped back to New Orleans, where he was returned to slavery by Spanish officials.
John Ystumllyn, also known as Jac Du or Jack Black, an 18th-century Welsh gardener and the first well-recorded Black person of North Wales.
Jonathan Strong, the subject of one of the earliest legal cases relating to slavery in Britain.
José Antonio Aponte leader of the Aponte conspiracy.
Joseph, important figure in the Old Testament and the Quran.
Joseph Antonio Emidy (1775–1835), violinist and composer born in Africa, died in Cornwall.
Joseph Cinqué (1814–1879), also known as Sengbe Pieh, leader of a slave rebellion on the slave ship La Amistad and defendant in the subsequent Supreme Court case United States v. Amistad in 1839.
Joseph Jackson Fuller (1825–1908), one of the earliest slaves to be freed in Jamaica, initially under the partial freedoms of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.
Joseph Knight, successfully sought his freedom through a legal suit in Scotland in 1777, a case which established that Scots law would not uphold the institution of slavery.
Josephine Bakhita (c. 1869–1947), Sudanese-born Roman Catholic Canossian nun and saint.
Joshua Glover, fugitive from slavery aided by abolitionists at Racine, Wisconsin in 1854.
Juan Francisco Manzano (c. 1797–1854), Cuban poet.
Juan Gros, a free black soldier captured near Pensacola by an Upper Creek, who sold him to a white trader who sold him to Mitasuki chief Kinache, from whom Spaniards ransomed him.
Juan Latino, called "el negro Juan Latino", from Ethiopia, brought to Spain as a child, received an education and rose to be professor of Latin at the University of Granada, in 16th-century Spain.
Juan Ortiz, a young Andalusian nobleman enslaved by Chief Ucita in Florida to avenge injuries he suffered at the hands of the expedition Ortiz belonged to.
Julia Chinn, an octoroon enslaved woman and common-law wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, ninth Vice President of the United States.
Julia Frances Lewis, mother of Amanda American Dickson by the son of her owner.
Juliana, a Guaraní woman from present-day Paraguay, famous for killing her Spanish enslaver between 1538 and 1542 and urging other indigenous women to do the same.
Julius Soubise (1754 – 25 August 1798) was a freed Afro-Caribbean slave who became a well-known fop in late eighteenth-century Britain.
Julius Zoilos, enslaved by Julius Caesar. After obtaining his freedom, he rose to prominence in his home city of Aphrodisias after Caesar's death.
Jupiter Hammon (1711–before 1806), in 1761 became the first African-American writer to be published in the present-day United States. Born into slavery, Hammon was never emancipated. He is considered one of the founders of African-American literature.
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King Jaja of Opobo (1821–1891), sold at about the age of 12 into slavery in the Kingdom of Bonny in present-day Nigeria. Proving at an early age his aptitude for business, he not only earned his way out of slavery but also became a rich and powerful merchant prince and the founder of the Opobo city-state, his career eventually ended by the British colonizers whom he tried to defy.
Anna Kingsley (1793–1870), enslaved woman and then a planter and slave owner herself.
Kunta Kinte (c. 1750 – c. 1822), a character from the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family whom author Alex Haley was based on one of his actual ancestors. Kinte was a man of the Mandinka people who grew up in a small village called Juffure in what is now The Gambia and was raised as a Muslim before being captured and enslaved in Virginia. The historical accuracy of Haley's story is disputed.
Kizzy Kinte, the daughter of Kunta Kinte. As with her father, the existence of an historical Kizzy Kinte is disputed.
John Knox (c. 1514 – 24 November 1572) was a Scottish minister, galley slave in the French galleys, 1547–1549.
Kodjo (c. 1803–1833), a Surinamese slave who was burnt alive for starting the 1832 fire in Paramaribo, Dutch Suriname, possibly as an act of resistance.
Kösem Sultan (1589–1651), an Ottoman enslaved woman, later extremely powerful as wife, then mother and later grandmother of the Ottoman sultan during the 130-year period known as the Sultanate of Women.
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Lalla Balqis (1670 – after 1721), an Englishwoman captured and enslaved by Corsairs and included in the harem of the Sultan of Morocco.
Lamhatty, a Tawasa Indian captured and enslaved by Creek; he escaped.
Lampegia (died after 730), Aquitanian noblewoman, captured by Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd Allah al-Ghafiqi, who in 730 took the Llivia Fortress, executed her spouse Munuza and sent her as a slave to the harem of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in Damascus.
La Mulâtresse Solitude (1772–1802), a slave on the island of Guadeloupe freed in 1794 by the abolition of slavery during the French Revolution. She was executed after having fought for freedom when slavery was reintroduced by Napoleon in 1802.
Laurens de Graaf (c. 1653–1704), a Dutch pirate, mercenary, and naval officer, enslaved by Spanish slave traders when captured in what is now the Netherlands and transported to the Canary Islands to work on a plantation, prior to 1674.
Leo Africanus, (1494–1554), a Moor born in Granada who was taken by his family in 1498 to Morocco when expelled from Spain. As an adult he served on diplomatic missions. Captured by Crusaders while in the Middle East, he was enslaved in Rome and forced to convert to Christianity. He eventually regained his freedom and lived out his life in Tunis.
Leofgifu the dairy maid, an enslaved woman in Anglo-Saxon England, named in her manumission.
Leoflaed, an enslaved woman in Anglo-Saxon England, whose freedom was bought by a man who described her as a "kinswoman."
Leonor de Mendoza, an enslaved woman in colonial Mexico who tried to marry Tomás Ortega, a man enslaved by another master; when her master imprisoned Tomás she appealed to a church court for assistance, which threatened excommunication if he did not free Tomás.
Letitia Munson ( – after 1882), midwife and formerly enslaved, she was acquitted of performing an illegal abortion in Canada.
Lewis Adams (1842–1905), a formerly-enslaved man who co-founded the Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, in Alabama.
Lilliam Williams, a Tennessee settler who was captured by the Creek while pregnant. The Creek adopted her daughter (whom she named Molly and they named Esnahatchee,); they kept the girl when Williams' freedom was arranged.
Liol, a Chinese man enslaved by Mongol bannerman Soosar. He was rewarded with semi-independent status, as a separate register dependent. In 1735, his son Fuji tried to claim that he and his brother were in fact Manchus and detached household bannermen, but failed.
Lott Cary (c. 1780 – November 10, 1828), born an African-American slave in Virginia, bought his freedom c. 1813, emigrated to Liberia in 1822, where he later served as colonial administrator.
Louis Hughes (1832–1913), African-American man who escaped slavery, author, and businessman
Lovisa von Burghausen (1698–1733), Swedish writer who published an account of being enslaved in Russia after being taken prisoner during the Great Northern War.
Lucius Agermus, freedman of Agrippina the Elder.
Lucius Aurelius Hermia, a freedman butcher whose tombstone glorifies his marriage with his fellow freedwoman Aurelia Philematium.
Lucius Cancrius Primigenius, a freedman of Clemens in an inscription praising him for breaking spells against the city.
Lucius of Campione, who lost a lawsuit in the 8th century over a man Toto's claimed ownership of him.
Lucy, the black woman enslaved by John Lang. She was taken captive by the Creek when 12 years old and kept in slavery in Creek territory, where she had slave children and grandchildren.
Lucy Ann (Berry) Delaney (1830–1891), formerly-enslaved woman, daughter of Polly Berry.
Luís Gama (1830–1882), born free in Brazil, illegally sold into slavery as a child, he regained liberty as an adult and became a lawyer who freed hundreds from slavery without asking for recompense, notably in the Netto Case.
Lunsford Lane (1803 – after 1870), an enslaved African-American man and entrepreneur from North Carolina who bought freedom for himself and his family. He also wrote a slave narrative.
Lyde, an enslaved woman freed by Roman empress Livia.
Lydia, an enslaved woman who was shot and wounded by her captor when she struggled to escape a whipping. The action was ruled legal by the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1830 (see North Carolina v. Mann).
Lydia Carter, the "Little Osage Captive," captured and enslaved among the Cherokee. She was ransomed by Lydia Carter, who made her her namesake. The Osage attempted to reclaim her, but she took ill and died.
Lydia Polite, mother of Robert Smalls.
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Madison Hemings (1805–1877), son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.
Mae Louise Miller (1943–2014), American woman kept in modern-day slavery (peonage) until 1961.
Malik Ambar, born in 1548 as Chapu, a birth-name in Harar, Adal Sultanate in Somalia. He was from the now extinct Maya ethnic group. As a child he was sold in slavery by his parents Mir Qasim Al Baghdadi, one of his slave owners, eventually converted Chapu to Islam and gave him the name Ambar, after recognizing his superior intellectual qualities. Malik was brought to India as a slave. While in India he created a mercenary force numbering up to 1500 men. It was based in the Deccan region and was hired by local kings. Malik became a popular Prime Minister of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, showing administrative acumen. He is also regarded as a pioneer in guerilla warfare in the region. He is credited with carrying out a revenue settlement of much of the Deccan, which formed the basis for subsequent settlements. He is a figure of veneration to the Siddis of Gujarat. He humbled the might of the Mughals and Adil Shah of Bijapur and raised the low status of the Nizam Shah.
La Malinche (c. 1496 or c. 1501 – c. 1529), a Nahua woman given as a slave to Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. She became his personal interpreter, advisor, and mistress during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Mammy Lou (1804 – after 1918), a formerly-enslaved woman who lived to extreme old age and acted in the 1918 silent film The Glorious Adventure.
Manes, a man enslaved by Diogenes of Sinope. He ran away shortly after his owner arrived in Athens, and Diogenes failed to pursue him on the grounds that if Manes could live without him, it would be disgraceful if he could not equally live without Manes.
Manjeok, enslaved Korean person and leader of an abortive slave uprising.
Manjutakin (died 1007), a Turkish-born enslaved soldier (ghulam) and general of the Fatimids.
Mann, either of two men enslaved by Æthelgifu in Anglo-Saxon England and freed by the terms of her will. One was a goldsmith and the other's wife was freed at the same time.
Marcos Xiorro, a man enslaved in Puerto Rico who, in 1821, planned a revolt against the sugar plantation owners and the Spanish colonial government. Though the conspiracy was unsuccessful, he became a part of island's folklore.
Marcia, mistress of Roman emperor Commodus.
Marcius Agrippa (late 2nd and early 3rd century), an enslaved man who was not only freed but eventually elevated to senatorial rank by Roman emperor Macrinus.
Marcus Tullius Tiro (c. 103 – 4 BCE), Roman author, slave, and secretary of the Roman politician Cicero, later freed. He invented a long-lasting system of shorthand and wrote books that are now lost.
Margaret Garner (1835–1858), an enslaved woman in antebellum America infamous for killing her own daughter rather than see the child returned to slavery.
Margaret Himfi (before 1380 – after 1408), a Hungarian noblewoman who was abducted and enslaved by Ottoman marauders in the late 14th century. She later became an enslaved mistress of a wealthy Venetian citizen of Crete, with whom she had two daughters. Margaret returned to Hungary in 1405.
Marguerite Duplessis ( – after 1740), a Pawnee woman enslaved in Montreal who, in 1740, unsuccessfully sued for her freedom.
Maria ter Meetelen (1704 – fl. 1751), Dutch writer of a slave narrative, enslaved by pirates and sold to the Sultan of Morocco. Her 1748 biography is considered to be a valuable witness statement of the life of a former slave.
Marie (died 1759), an enslaved Cree woman sentenced to death in Trois-Rivières, New France.
Margaret Morgan, involved in the Prigg v. Pennsylvania United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the federal Fugitive Slave Act precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of Pennsylvania into slavery, and overturned the conviction of Edward Prigg as a result.
Marguerite Scypion (c. 1770s – after 1836), an African-Natchez woman born into slavery in St. Louis who sued for and eventually won her freedom.
Maria al-Qibtiyya (died 637), also known as "Maria the Copt" () or, alternatively, Maria Qupthiya, an enslaved Copt who was sent as a gift from Muqawqis, a Byzantine official, to the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 628, and became Muhammad's wife. She was the mother of Muhammad's son Ibrahim, who died in infancy. Her sister, Sirin, was also sent to Muhammad. Muhammad gave her to his follower Hassan ibn Thabit. Maria never remarried after Muhammad's death in 632, and died five years later.
Maria, (died 1716), the leader of a slave rebellion on Curaçao.
Maria Perkins, an enslaved woman from Virginia who wrote a letter to her husband in 1852 about their son being sold away.
Mariah Bell Winder McGavock Otey Reddick (died 1922), as a girl she was given as a wedding gift to Carrie Winder when she married John McGavock in 1848 in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. Mariah, born enslaved in Mississippi, was taken to Franklin, Tennessee, where she lived for most of the remainder of her life. She was matched with Harvey Otey after his first wife Phebe died. They had several children, including two sets of twins, born into slavery. During the Civil War, she was sent to Montgomery to be far from Union lines and possible freedom. She has been featured in three novels: Widow of the South and Orphan Mother both by Robert Hicks and in a book by her great-grandson William 'Damani' Keene and his wife Carole 'Ife' Keene entitled Clandestine: The Times and Secret Life of Mariah Otey Reddick.
Marianna Malińska (died after 1797), Polish serf and Royal Ballet Dancer, donated to the king of Poland by will and testament.
Marie-Cessette Dumas, a woman enslaved by Marquis Antoine de la Pailleterie, mother of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, and grandmother of famous author Alexandre Dumas, père.
Marie-Josèphe dite Angélique (died 1734), a black Portuguese enslaved woman who was tried and convicted, beaten and hanged for setting fire to her female owner's home, burning much of what is now referred to as Old Montreal.
Marie Thérèse Metoyer, a planter, and businesswoman at the colonial Louisiana outpost of Natchitoches after being freed.
Mark, Massachusetts man enslaved by Captain John Codman. Mark's body was displayed in chains publicly near Charlestown, Massachusetts for twenty years. The gruesome display of his body was so well known at the time, the site where Mark's body was displayed is mentioned by Paul Revere as a landmark, in his 1798 account of Revere's 1775 midnight ride.
Martha Ann Erskine Ricks (1817–1901), an African-American born enslaved in Tennessee, later an Americo-Liberian quilter
Marthe Franceschini (1755–1799), an Italian captured and enslaved by Corsairs and included in the harem of the Sultan of Morocco.
Mary, mother of George Washington Carver.
Mary (died 1838), teenager hanged for the murder of Vienna Brinker, a two-year-old girl she was babysitting
Mary Black, one of three enslaved women charged with witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692.
Mary Calhoun, white woman and cousin of John C. Calhoun who was kidnapped by Cherokee. She never returned home.
Mary Edmonson (1832–1853), along with her sister Emily, joined an unsuccessful 1848 escape attempt known as the Pearl incident, but Henry Ward Beecher and his church raised the funds to free them.
Mary Eliza Smith, described in various records as "slave" or "former slave," common-law wife of Michael Morris Healy and mother of his children, including James Augustine Healy, Patrick Francis Healy, Michael A. Healy, and Eliza Healy.
Mary Fields (c. 1832–1914): the first African-American female star route mail carrier in the United States.
Mary Mildred Williams, Nee Botts (born 1847), the original 'Poster Child' whose image was used to advance the abolitionist cause by propagandising 'White Slavery' in 1855.
Mary Prince (c. 1788 – after 1833), the account of her life galvanized the anti-slavery movement in England.
The Master of Morton and the eldest son of the Chief of Clan Oliphant, two Scottish nobles who were exiled from Scotland after being implicated in the 1582 Raid of Ruthven. The ship in which they sailed was lost at sea, and it was rumoured that they had been caught by a Dutch ship. The last report was that they were slaves on a Turkish ship in the Mediterranean. A plaque to their memory was raised in the church in Algiers.
Masúd, initially purchased as a youth by Khál-i Akbar, an uncle of the Báb, Masúd would serve Bahá'u'lláh in Acre.
Matilda McCrear (c. 1857 – 1940), the last surviving victim in the United States of the Transatlantic slave trade. Transported upon the slave ship Clotilda.
Mende Nazer (born c. 1982), a Nuba woman captured in Darfur and transported from Sudan to London, where she eventually won refugee status and wrote the memoir Slave: My True Story (2002).
Menecrates of Tralles a Greek physician during the 1st century BC.
Hans Mergest, a participant in the Crusade of Varna who was captured by the Ottomans in the Battle of Varna (1444) and spent 16 years in captivity. He was the protagonist of a song by minnesinger Michael Beheim.
Metaneira, a woman in ancient Greece described in Against Neaera as the property of Nicarete, who prostituted her.
Shadrach Minkins (1814–1875), a fugitive from slavery saved by abolitionists at Boston in 1850.
Michael Shiner (1805–1880), enslaved laborer, painter entrepreneur, civic leader and diarist at the Washington Navy Yard.
Miguel Perez was the Spanish name of a boy of the Yojuane people who was among 149 Yojuane women and children taken captive in 1759 during an attack on their camp by an expedition of Spaniards and Apaches along the Red River in what is now northern Texas. Many of the captives died of smallpox while those who survived were enslaved. The boy was sold to a Spanish soldier who bestowed the Spanish name on him. Perez became an Hispanicized Indian of San Antonio but he continued to maintain contact with the Yojuanes. In 1786, Perez was recruited to convince the Yojuanes and their Tonkawa allies to go to war with the Lipan Apache, which he did successfully.
Mikhail Matinsky (1750–1820), Russian serf scientist, dramatist, librettist and opera composer.
Michał Rymiński (died after 1797), Polish serf and Royal Ballet Dancer, donated to the king of Poland by will and testament.
Mikhail Shchepkin (1788–1863), Russian serf actor.
Mikhail Shibanov, Russian serf painter active during the 1780s.
Mikhail Tikhanov (1789–1862), Russian serf artist.
Mina Kolokolnikov (1708?–1775?), Russian serf painter and teacher.
Mingo, the 15–16 years old boy enslaved by the Titsworth family in Tennessee, who was captured in 1794 by Creeks in a raid on the house and kept as a slave by them.
Minerva (Anderson) Breedlove, mother of Madam C.J. Walker.
Moses A. Hopkins (1846–1886), African-American diplomat, U.S. minister to Liberia.
Hájí Mubárak, purchased at the age of 5 years old by Hájí Mírzá Abú'l-Qásím, the great-grandfather of Shoghi Effendi and brother-in-law of the Báb, Hájí Mubárak was sold to the Báb in 1842 at the age of 19 for fourteen tomans. Hájí Mubárak died at about the age of 40 and is buried in the grounds of the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala, Iraq.
Mustapha Khaznadar (1817–1878), born Georgios Kalkias Stravelakis, a Christian Greek on the island of Chios, captured by Ottoman troops during the 1822 Massacre of Chios, converted to Islam and given the name Mustapha, sold in Constantinople to an envoy of the Husainid Dynasty. He was raised by the family of Mustapha Bey, then by his son Ahmad I Bey while he was still crown prince. Initially, he worked as the prince's private treasurer before becoming Ahmad's state treasurer (khaznadar). He managed to climb to the highest offices of the Tunisian state, married Princess Lalla Kalthoum in 1839 and was promoted to lieutenant-general of the army, made bey in 1840 and then president of the Grand Council from 1862 to 1878.
Muyahid ibn Yusuf ibn Ali, 11th-century leader of the Saqaliba (slaves of supposed Slavic origin) in Dénia, Spain (then part of Muslim Al Andalus). Taking advantage of the crumbling of the Caliphate of Córdoba, he and his followers rebelled, freed themselves, seized control of the city and established the Taifa of Dénia, a city-state which at its peak extended its reach as far as the island of Majorca.
N
Nafisa al-Bayda, Egyptian investor and diplomat, referred to as a "white slave", originally bought as a slave concubine.
Nancy, otherwise called Ann, the plaintiff in the 1799 New Brunswick habeas corpus suit R v Jones
nancy brown Nancy Caffrey, a white captive enslaved by a Creek. When trader John O'Reilly attempted to ransom her and Elsey Thompson, he was told they were not taken captive to be allowed to go back, but to work.
Nanny of the Maroons, also known as Granny Nanny and Queen Nanny, Jamaican Maroons leader.
Nat Turner (1800–1831), escaped and led revolt in Southampton County, Virginia.
Nathan McMillian, who as a freedman sued for the admission of his children to a local "Croatan Indian" school on the grounds that it was for all non-white children, and that his children had Croatan blood on their mother's side.
Neaera, a formerly-enslaved woman and prostitute whom the Athenian Stephanus married against the law c. 340 BC, according to a speech of Demosthenes.
Nero Hawley (1742–1817), a formerly-enslaved freeperson who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and was buried in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Newport Gardner (1746–1826), a formerly-enslaved freeperson in colonial Newport, Rhode Island.
Ng Akew (died 1880), a Tanka enslaved woman in British Hong Kong famed for a piracy scandal.
Nicarete, a woman in ancient Greece, described in Against Neaera the freedwoman of Charisius the Elean and the wife of his cook Hippias, and as owning and prostituting several women c. 340 BC.
Saint Nino (c. 280 – c. 332), a 4th-century Roman woman from Constantinople who is greatly venerated for having brought Christianity to Georgia. By some of the accounts of her life, she originally came to Georgia as a slave kidnapped from her homeland.
Afife Nurbanu Sultan (c. 1525–1583), née Cecilia Venier-Baffo, an enslaved Venetian noblewoman who became the most favored wife of Ottoman sultan Selim II and the highly influential mother of sultan Murad III.
O
Oenomaus, a Gallic gladiator and one of the leaders of rebellious slaves during the Third Servile War.
Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, a prominent African-British author and figure in the abolitionist cause whose birthplace is heavily contested.
Omar ibn Said (1770–1864), a writer and Islamic scholar from Senegal who was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1807, where he spent the rest of his life enslaved.
Onesimus, a slave of Philemon of Colossae who ran away and, having met St. Paul, was converted by him. Paul sent him back to the Christian Philemon with a letter, which is the Epistle to Philemon. Ignatius of Antioch mentions an Onesimus as Bishop of Ephesus in the early 2nd century, but it is not certain that these are the same men.
Onesimus, a slave in colonial Boston who was instrumental in spreading knowledge about inoculation against smallpox.
Onesimos Nesib (c. 1856 – 21 June 1931), an Ethiopian bought out of slavery by Swedish missionaries when he was a boy. He went on to work with another former slave Aster Ganno to translate the Bible into the Oromo language.
Oney Judge (1773–1848), enslaved by the family of Martha Washington, and then by the First Lady herself, Judge worked at Mount Vernon and elsewhere as a personal servant to Martha Washington until she escaped in 1796 to Portsmouth New Hampshire.
Ottobah Cugoano, also known as John Stuart (c. 1757 – after 1791), was an abolitionist, political activist, and natural rights philosopher from West Africa who was active in Britain.
Owen Fitzpen, an English merchant who was taken captive by Barbary pirates in 1620 and subsequently escaped.
Owen Breedlove, father of Madam C.J. Walker.
P
Harriet Evans Paine, (c. 1822–1917), Texas enslaved woman and later oral historian and storyteller.
Pallas, secretary to Roman emperor Claudius.
Juan de Pareja (1606–1670), man enslaved by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. Velázquez trained him as a painter and freed him in 1650.
Pasion, an enslaved Athenian man and banker. Late in life, he received the rare honor for a freedman of citizenship.
Saint Patrick, abducted from Britain, enslaved in Ireland, escaped to Britain, returned to Ireland as a missionary.
Patsey (born c. 1830), an enslaved African-American person who lived in the mid-1800s in South Carolina.
Paul Jennings (1799–1874), personal servant enslaved by President James Madison during and after his White House years, bought his freedom in 1845 from Daniel Webster. Noted for publishing the first White House memoir, 1865's A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison.
Paul Smith, a free black who accused the Cherokee headman Doublehead of kidnapping him and forcing him into bondage.
Peggy Margaret Titsworth, enslaved at 13 years for three years, after a Creek raid in 1794 on her Tennessee home.
Pete and Hannah Byrne, freed slaves of the Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne family which traveled from Missouri to California overland (a six-month journey) in 1859, leaving the farm in Missouri and bringing six adults (including Pete & Hannah), the four Byrne children and a herd of cattle and settling in Berkeley, California. Pete and Hannah are considered the first blacks living in Berkeley and among the first African-Americans in California.
Peter Salem (c. 1750–1816), African American born into slavery in Massachusetts, served as a soldier in the American Revolutionary War
Petronia Justa, a woman in Herculaneum who sued her owner claiming to have been born after her mother's emancipation; the records of the lawsuit were preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius.
Phaedo of Elis, captured in war, enslaved in Athens and forced into prostitution, became a pupil of Socrates who had him freed, gave his name to one of Plato's dialogues, Phaedo and became a famous philosopher in his own right.
Phaedrus (c. 15 BCE – c. 50 CE), Roman fabulist.
Phillis, a Massachusetts woman enslaved by Captain John Codman. Convicted in the successful plot to poison her owner as she and her fellow enslaved "found the rigid discipline of their master unendurable", Phillis was burned to death in 1755.
Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784?), Colonial American poet, the second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman.
Phoebe, an enslaved woman who sued for her freedom in Tennessee, along with her sons Davy and Tom, claiming to be the descendants of an enslaved Indian woman whose sister and other relatives had proven that they were wrongly enslaved.
Philocrates, enslaved by 2nd-century BCE Roman reformer Gaius Gracchus. He remained at his master's side when Gracchus was fleeing from his enemies, forsaken by everybody else. Arriving at a grove sacred to the Furies, Philocrates first assisted Gracchus in his suicide before taking his own life, though some rumors held that Philocrates was only killed after he refused to let go of his master's body.
Phormion, an enslaved Athenian man and banker. Late in life, he received the rare honor for a freedman of citizenship.
Pierre d'Espagnac, sometimes Pierre d'Espagnal (1650–1689) was a French Jesuit missionary, enslaved by the Siamese.
Maria Guyomar de Pinha (1664–1728), Siamese royal chef of Japanese-Portuguese ancestry.
Pope Pius I, the Bishop of Rome from about 140 to about 154, during the reign of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius. He was the brother of the freedman Hermas and therefore likely to have been a former slave himself, though that is not mentioned explicitly in the scant records of his life.
Polly, the subject of the 1820 Indiana Supreme Court case Polly v. Lasselle, which resulted in all slaves held within Indiana to be freed.
Polly Berry, also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash, won an 1843 freedom suit in St. Louis, Missouri and also gained the freedom of her daughter Lucy Ann Berry.
Politoria, the subject of a lead curse tablet in ancient Rome; it was a curse on Clodia Valeria Sophrone, that she should not get Politoria into her power. She appears to have been a slave-courtesan who feared being sent to the brothel.
Praskovia Kovalyova-Zhemchugova (1768–1803) was a Russian serf actress and soprano opera singer.
Primus (1700–1791), enslaved by Daniel Fowle of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Primus operated the press for the New Hampshire Gazette which is the American newspaper in longest continuous print.
Prince was the slave of a Choctaw man named Richard Harkins. Angered that his owner failed to give his slaves a Christmas celebration, Prince brutally murdered him and then unceremoniously dumped the body into the river in 1858.
Prince Estabrook (1741–1830), enslaved by Benjamin Estabrook; fought in the Continental Army and was wounded at the Battle of Lexington and Concord
Prince Whipple (1750–1796), enslaved by American General William Whipple
Prosper, a slave murdered in 1807 in Virgin Islands by his owner Arthur William Hodge, for which Hodge was tried and executed in 1811, the first (and virtually only) such case ever recorded.
A pregnant Thrall whose name is not preserved, who was fleeing for her life in 11th-century Oslo, was given refuge on the boat of Hallvard Vebjørnsson, who tried to shield her but was killed together with her by the attackers' arrows, for which he was canonised and became the patron saint of Oslo.
Publilius Syrus (fl. 85 – 43 BCE), a Latin writer best known for his sententiae. He was a Syrian who was brought as a slave to Italy.
Q
Quamina Gladstone, father of Jack Gladstone and implicated in the Demerara rebellion of 1823.
Quassi van Timotebo or Kwasimukamba (1692–1787) Surinamese slave, freedman and Maroon hunter in Dutch Surinam. His name is given to the plant genus Quassia.
Quock Walker, also known as Kwaku or Quok Walker, sued for and won his freedom in 1781 in a case citing language in the new Massachusetts Constitution (1780) that declared all men to be born free and equal.
Qutb-ud-din Aybak or Qutbuddin Aibak (1150–1210), a formerly-enslaved Turk, became a soldier, the first of the Sultans of Delhi, founder of India's "slave dynasty".
R
Rachel, the subject of the 1834 Rachel v. Walker case in the Supreme Court of Missouri which ruled that a U.S. Army officer forfeited his slave if he took the person to territory where slavery is prohibited. This ruling was cited as precedent in 1856 in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Rachel of Kittery, Maine (died 1695), enslaved woman murdered by her owner whose case set a legal precedent in New England.
Rachel Knight (died 1889), initially enslaved by the grandfather of Newton Knight, the well-known Southern Unionist who during the American Civil War defied the Confederacy in the rebellion known as the Free State of Jones. After the war, Rachel was emancipated along with the other slaves. By the mid-1870s, Knight had separated from his wife, Serena, and married Rachel. In this period, Knight's grown son, Mat (from his first wife), married Rachel's grown daughter, Fannie, from a previous union. Knight's daughter, Molly, married Rachel's son, Jeff, making three interracial families in the community. Newton and Rachel Knight had several children before her death in 1889.
Rebecca Huger, an enslaved woman who was freed by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, and described in a Harper's Weekly article as being to all appearance white, and having come to a school for emancipated slaves in Philadelphia.
Redoshi (c. 1848 – 1937), also known as Sally Smith, the next-to-last surviving victim in the United States of the Transatlantic slave trade. Transported upon the slave ship Clotilda.
Rei Amador, leader of a slave rebellion in 1595 in Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe.
Remigio Herrera (c. 1810s – 1905), an enslaved Cuban person who became a revered priest in Regla.
Juana Ramírez (1790–1856), rebel soldier and heroine of the Venezuelan War of Independence.
Richard Preston (–1861), escaped slavery to become a religious leader and abolitionist in Nova Scotia.
Pleasant Richardson, escaped slavery and became a Union soldier and property owner in Fincastle, Virginia.
Robert Blake, earned the Medal of Honor as a sailor during the American Civil War, after becoming a "contraband" (i.e. a slave freed by Unionist forces) and enlisting.
Robert Drury (1687 – between 1743 and 1750), an English sailor who was shipwrecked on the island of Madagascar in 1702, and remained enslaved there until 1717.
Robert J. Patterson (1809–1884), escaped slavery in Virginia to become a restaurateur in Saint John, New Brunswick.
Robert Smalls (1839–1915), stole a Confederate ship and led a boatload of slaves to freedom, causing the Union to allow blacks to enlist; later served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for South Carolina's 5th congressional district.
Robin and Polly Holmes, the plaintiffs in the 1853 Holmes v. Ford court case in the Oregon Territory that freed their children. The decision re-affirmed that slavery was illegal in the territory as outlined in the Organic Laws of Oregon that were continued once the region became a U.S. territory.
Rosina Downs, an enslaved woman who was freed by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans, and described in a Harper's Weekly article as being to all appearance white, and having come to a school for emancipated slaves in Philadelphia.
Roustam Raza (1783–1845), Napoleon Bonaparte's Armenian bodyguard.
Samson Rowlie, Chief Eunuch and Treasurer of Algiers.
Roxelana see Hürrem Sultan
S
Sabuktigin (c. 942 – 997), full name Abu Mansur Sabuktigin, captured and sold into slavery at a young age, rose to become a general and eventually a king and the founder of the Ghaznavid Empire in medieval Iran.
Safiye Sultan (c. 1550 – c. 1619), an enslaved Venetian woman who was placed in the harem of the Ottoman sultan Murad III and became the mother of sultan Mehmed III.
Salem Poor (1747–1802), an enslaved African-American man who purchased his freedom, and a war hero during the American Revolutionary War.
Sally Hemings (1773–1835), a mixed-race woman enslaved by Thomas Jefferson believed by many to have had six children with him, four of whom survived to adulthood.
Sally Miller or Salomé Müller (born c. 1814), an enslaved American woman whose freedom suit in Louisiana was based on her claimed status as a free German immigrant and indentured servant.
Sally Seymour (died 1824), American pastry chef and restaurateur, an enslaved woman who was manumitted and became a slave owner herself.
Salonia the second wife of Cato the Elder
Salvius, also known as Tryphon, leader of the 104 BCE slave rebellion in Sicily known as the Second Servile War.
Sambo (died 1736), an enslaved boy who arrived at Sunderland Point, near Lancaster, England, around 1736 from the West Indies in the capacity of a servant a ship's captain. He is buried in an unconsecrated grave in a field near the small village of Sunderland Point, Lancashire, England.
Sambo, a black captive of Tiger King, a Lower Creek, who told the traveler William Bartram that Sambo was his family property.
Samuel Benedict (1792–1854), born an African-American slave, later became free and emigrated to Liberia, where he became a politician and judge.
Samuel Green (c. 1802 – 1877), an enslaved man who bought his freedom and freedom for his loved ones, was involved with the Underground Railroad, and was jailed in 1857 for carrying a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817–c. 1866), African-American abolitionist and journalist.
Sandy Jenkins, a slave mentioned by Frederick Douglass in his first autobiography.
Sanker, the enslaved manservant of Samuel R. Watkins, author of "Co. Aytch" (1882), which recounts Watkins’ life as a soldier in the 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment.
Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843–1880), an Egbado princess of the Yoruba who was orphaned in intertribal warfare, sold into slavery as a child, was rescued by Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy and taken to the United Kingdom where she became a goddaughter to Queen Victoria.
Sarah Johnson (1844–1920) whose life at the first president's plantation was published in the book Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon.
Satrelanus, from Gaul, sold by Ermedruda to Toto in Milan in 725.
Scipio Africanus (c. 1702 – 1720).
Scipio Moorhead, enslaved artist.
Scipio Vaughan (c. 1784 – c. 1840), was captured from his homeland in Africa at a young age and sold into slavery in the United States. He became a skilled artisan in Camden, South Carolina; gained his freedom and inspired a movement among some of his descendants.
Septimus Clarke (1787–1859), formerly enslaved, he became a successful farmer and community leader in Nova Scotia.
Servius Tullius, ancient King of Rome said to have started life enslaved (though this was disputed, among both Romans and modern historians).
Seymour Burr (1754/1762–1837), fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolution.
Shaghab (died 933), mother and co-ruler of the eighteenth Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir.
Silas Chandler (1838–1919), man who accompanied his enslavers in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
Sojourner Truth (c. 1797 – 1883), an abolitionist and women's rights activist.
Solomon Bayley (1771–1839), wrote a book in 1825 about his life as a slave.
Solomon Northup (1807 – ), a farmer, professional violinist, and free-born black man from New York who was lured to Washington, D.C., where slavery was legal, kidnapped, and sold in the South. He remained enslaved in Louisiana from 1841 until he was rescued and liberated in 1853. Author of Twelve Years a Slave.
Solomon Flores, enslaved man from northern Alabama.
Sosias the Thracian, an enslaved Athenian man, and later freedman, enslaved by Nicias, who later leased him a thousand slaves for his mining operation.
Spartacus (c. 111 – 71 BCE), a gladiator and rebel leader during the Servile Revolt.
Spendius a Campanian who escaped slavery and served as a Carthaginian mercenary during the First Punic War and then as a general in the Mercenary War against Carthage.
Stefan Holnicki (died after 1797), Polish serf and Royal Ballet Dancer, donated to the king of Poland by will and testament.
Stephen Bishop (c. 1821 – 1857), an enslaved mixed-race man in Kentucky known for being one of the first explorers and guides of Mammoth Cave.
Sue, a black woman enslaved by James Brown, who was captured along with several members of the Brown family and other slaves by Chickamaugas. When the warrior who had captured her threatened another captive, the other captor threatened to kill Sue in retribution. James' son Joseph later kidnapped Sue and her children and grandchildren—eight in all—in retribution for his captivity.
Suhayb ar-Rumi (born c. 587), also known as Suhayb ibn Sinan, enslaved in childhood in the Byzantine Empire, escaped as a young man to Mecca and went on to become an esteemed companion of Muhammad and revered member of the early Muslim community.
Sumayyah bint Khayyat (550–615), a woman enslaved in Mecca and one of the first seven converts to Islam made by the Prophet Muhammad in his early career. She was tortured and killed by enemies of the new faith, becoming the first Muslim Shahid.
Squanto (1585–1622), also known as Tisquantum, a Native American of what is now coastal Massachusetts who was captured by English pirates and sold as a slave. He was later freed and returned to New England, where he met the Pilgrims of the Mayflower in 1621.
Subh of Cordoba (940–999), an enslaved concubine of a Caliph and mother and regent of the next Caliph of Cordoba in the 10th century.
Suk-bin Choe (1670–1718), consort of Sukjong of Joseon and mother of Yeongjo of Joseon.
Surya Devi (died 715), Indian princess, enslaved by Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik.
T
Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861): The most prominent Ukrainian poet, artist and illustrator was born in a family of serfs. His artist friends bought his freedom in 1838.
Tatyana Shlykova (1773–1863), Russian serf ballerina and opera singer.
Thanadelthur (–1717), a woman of the Chipewyan Dënesųłı̨ne nation who served as a guide and interpreter for the Hudson's Bay Company.
Thomas Pellow (1704–1745), enslaved by Barbary pirates, taken to Morocco the selected and tortured by Ismail Ibn Sharif. Escaped after 23 years and returned home to Cornwall.
Thomas Peters (1738–1792), born Thomas Potters, one of the founding fathers of Sierra Leone. Formerly enslaved, he fled North Carolina during the American Revolutionary War. Peters was a Black Loyalist member of the British Black Company of Pioneers, became a sergeant, and settled and married in Nova Scotia. He recruited African settlers in Nova Scotia for the colonization of Sierra Leone and later became a leader in Freetown.
Thomas Sims (born 1834), an enslaved African American man who escaped slavery in Georgia to Boston, Massachusetts, only to be recaptured under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and to escape to Boston once more.
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas (1762–1806), a French general and father of Alexandre Dumas.
Thumal, administrator of justice to the eighteenth Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir.
T. Aelius Dionysius, a freedman of the late Roman Empire, who created a stela for himself, his wife, and Aelius Perseus, his fellow freedman, and their freedman and those who came after them.
T. Claudius Dionysius, a freedman whose freedwoman wife Claudia Prepontis erected a funerary altar to him. Their clasped hands, depicted on it, show the legitimacy of their marriage, possible only once they obtained their freedom.
Terence (c. 195/185 – c. 159 BCE), full name Publius Terentius Afer, Roman playwright and comic poet who wrote before and possibly after his freedom.
Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, freedman who was secretary to Roman emperor Claudius in the 1st century.
Tituba, a 17th-century Native American woman who was enslaved by Samuel Parris of Danvers, Massachusetts. She was the first person accused of practicing witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials.
Tomás Ortega, an enslaved man in colonial Mexico who attempted to marry Leonor de Mendoza, a woman enslaved by another master. When that man imprisoned Tomás, Leonor appealed to a church court for assistance, and it threatened excommunication if he did not free Tomás.
Titus Kent (1733–18??), enslaved by the Samuel Kent family in Suffield Connecticut. He was owned by Samuel Kent, who lived 1698–1772; Samuel Kent's 1772 probate recorded that Titus was bequeathed Samuel Kent's son, Elihu Kent. Revolutionary War records indicate that Titus served in different regiments from 1775–1783.
Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743–1803), a freedman who led the slave revolt that led to the independence of Haiti.
Tula (died 1795), a leader of the Curaçao Slave Revolt of 1795.
Turgut Reis (1485–1565), also known as Dragut, a well-known admiral of the Ottoman Navy of the 16th century who was captured by the Genoese at Corsica and forced to work as a galley slave for nearly four years. He was finally rescued by his fellow admiral Barbarossa, who laid siege to Genoa and secured Turgut Reis' release for the prodigious ransom of 3,500 gold ducats. Thereupon, Turgut Reis resumed his naval career (which included the enslavement of various other people).
Turhan Hatice Sultan (c. 1627 – 4 August 1683) was Haseki Sultan of the Ottoman sultan Ibrahim (reign 1640–1648) and Valide sultan as the mother of Mehmed IV (reign 1648–1687).
U
Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (1705–1775), also known as James Albert, a freedman turned writer whose autobiography is considered the first published by an African in Britain.
Ursula Granger (1738–1800), a woman enslaved by Thomas Jefferson who worked as a cook, dairymaid, laundress, and wet nurse, and has been referred to as the "Queen of Monticello"
V
Vasily Tropinin (1776–1857), Russian serf painter.
Venture Smith (1729–1805), an African captured as a child and transported to the American colonies as a slave. When an adult, he purchased his freedom and that of his family his wife Meg and their children Hannah, Solomon and Cuff. His history was documented and published by a schoolteacher, to whom he talked in his old age.
The Vestmenn ("West Men" in Old Norse, referring to the Irish) were a group of Irish slaves brought to Iceland by Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson, one of the early Norse settlers there. He treated them badly, and they killed him and escaped to a group of offshore islands. Ingólfur Arnarson, Hjörleifur's blood brother, tracked the escaped slaves and killed them all. Though their individual names are unknown, their memory lives on in Icelandic geography, the islands where they sought refuge being known up to the present as "Vestmannaeyjar": "Islands of the West Men" (i.e. of the Irish).
Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), a French priest who is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. He was taken captive by Turkish pirates, sold into slavery, and freed in 1607.
Vindicius, an ancient Roman slave who discovered Tarquin's plot to regain power.
Vibia Calybeni, a freedwoman of the late Roman Empire who unusually named herself as a madam on her tombstone.
Virginia Boyd, an enslaved American woman whose letter to R.C. Ballard, pleading not to be sold with her children among strangers, has been preserved. Ballard had undertaken to have her sold at the request of Judge Samuel Boyd, the children's father, to hide her existence from his family.
Violet Ludlow, an American woman sold into slavery several times despite her claims to be a free white woman.
Virginia Demetricia (1842–after 1867), an enslaved Aruban known as a heroin of resistance against enslavement.
Vitalis, ancient Roman slave. An epigraph describes an enslaved boy, Iucundus, as the son of Gryphus and Vitalis.
Volumnia Cytheris, an enslaved and later freedwoman in ancient Rome. An actress and courtesan, her lovers included Brutus, Mark Antony, and Cornelius Gallus; her rejection of Gallus provided the theme for Virgil's tenth Eclogue.
W
Wes Brady (born 1849), of Marshall, Texas, was included in the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narrative Collection.
West Ford (c. 1784–1863), enslaved by George Washington and served as caretaker at Mount Vernon. Claimed to be Washington's biological son.
William Ansah Sessarakoo (c. 1736–1770), African prince who became a victim of the transatlantic slave trade, was freed, and then became a slave trader himself.
William Beverly Nash (1822–1888), a North Carolina state senator.
William Ellison (1790–1861), an enslaved man of mixed race who, after gaining his freedom, became a slaveholder himself, producing cotton.
William Gardner (born 1759), a man enslaved by James Madison who Madison sold into indentured servitude for seven years before becoming emancipated and working as a merchant's agent.
William (1824–1900) and Ellen Craft (1826–1891), a married enslaved couple from Macon, Georgia, whose daring escape to the North in 1848 made them among the most famous fugitives from slavery in the country.
William Harvey Carney (1840–1908), a soldier during the American Civil War who received the Medal of Honor after his escape from slavery.
William Henry, nicknamed "Jerry", a man who escaped slavery in Missouri but was arrested in Syracuse, New York in 1851 before being rescued by abolitionists from being extradited under the Fugitive Slave Law.
William A. Jackson, man enslaved by Jefferson Davis who fled in 1861 with considerable detailed military intelligence about Confederate forces.
William Andrew Johnson, mixed-race American man enslaved by President Andrew Johnson, son of Dolly Johnson.
William D. Gibbons (1825–1886), enslaved domestic servant; became African Baptist minister after emancipation.
William Dorsey Swann (1860–1925), born a slave in Maryland, later became an LGBT activist and the first known person to self-identify as a drag queen.
William Jones was an enslaved man who was acquired by Ulysses S. Grant from his father-in-law in 1858. Jones was thirty-five years old at the time. Although Grant was not an abolitionist, he was not considered a "slavery man", and could not bring himself to force a slave to do work. In March 1859, Grant freed William by a manumission deed, potentially worth at least $1,000, when Grant needed the money. The case of William Jones received much attention from historians, and is used in debates on Grant's attitude to slavery.
William Lee (1750–1828), a man enslaved by George Washington who served as his personal servant with him during the American Revolutionary War and was the only person freed from slavery by Washington's will.
William Okeley Englishman enslaved by Algerian pirates.
William Wells Brown (c. 1814–1884), African-American writer, escaped from slavery 1834.
Wilson Chinn African American featuring in an 1863 photograph as "branded slave"
Wulfstan, a man enslaved in Anglo-Saxon England, and his two sons and stepdaughter. They were freed by his mistress Æthelgifu's will.
Wu Rui (吳瑞), a 15th-century enslaved eunuch in what is now Vietnam. He was the youngest of thirteen Chinese men from Wenchang whose ship was blown off course and who were subsequently enslaved by the Lê dynasty. As recorded in the Ming Shi-lu, his companions were made agricultural laborers while Wu Rui was castrated and became an attendant at the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long. After years of service, he was promoted at the death of the Vietnamese ruler in 1497 to a military position in northern Vietnam. A soldier told him of an escape route back to China and Wu Rui escaped to Longzhou. The local chief planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese, but Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the palace.
Wyatt Lee (c. 1822–1863), the first husband of Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler. He escaped slavery in Virginia.
X
Xenon, an enslaved Athenian man and banker.
Xing was the primary primary spouse of Gaozong, the brother of Qinzong, Chine Emperor of the Sung Dynasty. In 1127, the capital of Kaifeng was captured by the Jurchen during the Jin–Song Wars, and Xing was among more than 3000 people captured and exiled to Manchuria in what was called the Jingkang Incident. Xing was among The Imperial consorts, concubines, palace women and eunuchs who were captured, and distributed among the Jurchen as slaves. Xing's husband Gaozong, who avoided capture, became the new Emperor and declared Xing Empress in absentia, but was unable to get her free. She remained in captivity where she was coveted by her captors, attempted suicide to escape abuse but failed, and she died in captivity in 1139.
Y
Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229), an Arab biographer and geographer known for his encyclopedic writings on the Muslim world. He was sold into slavery in 12th-century Syria and taken to Baghdad, but was provided with a good education and later freed.
Yasār, a 7th-century Christian man who had been captured in a campaign of Khalid ibn al-Walid, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Yasār was taken to Medina and became the slave of Qays ibn Makhrama ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy. He accepted Islam, was manumitted and became his mawlā, thus acquiring the nisbat al-Muṭṭalibī. He had three sons Mūsā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Isḥāq. His grandson, Ibn Ishaq, became an important early Arab historian.
Yasuke, a 16th century African man who travelled to Japan in the service of Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano. Given to Oda Nobunaga, Yasuke became a confident of the daimyō and given official status as a trusted retainer.
York (1770–before 1832), an African-American man enslaved by William Clark, who was part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Z
Zalmoxis, a Dacian who was enslaved by Pythagoras on the island of Samos, according to Herodotus. Zalmoxis learned philosophy from his owner and other wise Greeks. Eventually he was liberated, gathered huge wealth and went back to his homeland, where he converted the Thracians to his beliefs, was greatly venerated for his wisdom and in later generations became worshiped as a god.
Zayd ibn Haritha (c. 581–629), given to Muhammad's wife Khadijah, freed, adopted, and became known as Zayd ibn Muhammad.
Ziryab (789–857), also known as Abul-Hasan Alí Ibn Nafí, a Muslim singer, musician, and polymath known for introducing the crop asparagus to Europe.
Zoe, a Christian martyr.
Zofia Potocka (1760–1822), a Greek-Ottoman enslaved courtesan who ended up as a Polish countess by marriage.
Zumbi (1655–1695), enslaved in Portuguese Brazil, he escaped and joined the Quilombo dos Palmares, the largest ever settlement of escaped slaves in colonial Brazil, becoming its last and most famous leader.
Zunairah al-Rumiya (, Zaneerah the Roman) (other transliterations include Zaneera, Zannirah, Zanira or in some sources Zinra or Zinnirah) was a companion of the Prophet Muhammad.
See also
List of the last surviving American slaves
List of enslaved people of Mount Vernon, George Washington's plantation
List of slave owners
Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
1926 Slavery Convention, an international treaty
1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
Comfort women, sex slaves in WWII
Human trafficking
Involuntary servitude
International Slavery Museum
U.S. National Museum of African American History and Culture
Slave trade
Slave Trade Acts
Slavery in the United States
References
Lists of people by occupation
Lists of people by legal status
Slavery-related lists
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399837
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herefordshire
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Herefordshire
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Herefordshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire and Powys to the west. The city of Hereford is the largest settlement and the county town.
The county is one of the most rural in England, with an area of and a population of 187,034, giving a density of 88/km2 (228/sq mi). After Hereford (53,112) the largest settlements are Leominster (10,938), Ross-on-Wye (10,582), and Ledbury (8,862). The county contains of a single local government district, a unitary area also called Herefordshire.
The centre of Herefordshire is comparatively flat and crossed by the River Wye and its tributary, the Lugg. To the east is the Malvern Hills AONB, which straddles the boundary with Worcestershire, and the south of the county contains the northern part of the Wye Valley AONB, which stretches into Wales. In the west the ground rises to the Black Mountains range; this contains the Black Mountain (Twyn Llech), which lies on the Powys border and is the highest point in the county at ,
The county is situated in the historic Welsh Marches. The land use is mostly agricultural, and the county is known for its fruit and cider production, and for the Hereford cattle breed.
Constitution
From 1974 to 1998, Herefordshire was part of the former non-metropolitan county of Hereford and Worcester.
Herefordshire was reconstituted both as a new district as "County of Herefordshire" (effective 19 July 1996) and as a new county (coextensive with the area of the aforementioned district) (effective 1 April 1998) by Statutory Instrument as defined in The Hereford and Worcester (Structural, Boundary and Electoral Changes) Order 1996. This Order established Herefordshire as a unitary authority on 1 April 1998, combining county and district functions into a single council. Herefordshire is also commonly called a unitary district, but this is not official nomenclature. Herefordshire is officially known as a unitary authority for local government purposes. It is governed by Herefordshire Council which was created in 1998 with the new unitary district that absorbed the previous administrative areas of Hereford City Council, South Herefordshire District Council, most of Leominster District Council, and part of Malvern Hills District Council, all within the previous non-metropolitan county of Hereford and Worcester, whose functions the new authority inherited within its area. The remainder of Malvern Hills district absorbed the Worcestershire part of Leominster district (the area around Tenbury Wells) and continued to constitute a (smaller) district within the new two-tier county of Worcestershire.
The Lieutenancies Act 1997 made Herefordshire a ceremonial county, covering the exact area of the unitary district. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region (code UKG11) and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region.
Physical geography
The River Wye, which at is the fifth-longest in the United Kingdom, enters the county after briefly being its border with Powys. It flows through both Hereford and Ross-on-Wye before returning to Wales. Leominster is situated on the River Lugg, a tributary of the Wye.
There are two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the county. The Wye Valley is located in the river's valleys south of Hereford, while the Malvern Hills are in the east of the county, along its border with Worcestershire.
History
Herefordshire is one of the 39 historic counties of England. Herefordshire County Council was created in 1889.
In 1974, the administrative county formed in 1889 was merged with that of neighbouring Worcestershire to form Hereford and Worcester. Within this, Herefordshire was covered by the local government districts of South Herefordshire, Hereford, and part of Malvern Hills and Leominster districts. However, the county was dissolved in 1998, resulting in the return of Herefordshire and Worcestershire as counties.
The current ceremonial county and unitary district have broadly the same borders as the historic county.
Demographics
Population growth
Herefordshire's growth rate has, in recent decades, been higher than the national average, with the population increasing by
14.4% between 1991 and 2011; the population of England as a whole increased by only 10.0%. However, this has been from a lower base, with only Northumberland and Cumbria having lower population densities than Herefordshire.
In the late 19th and early 20th century the population of the county declined steadily.
Travellers
Gypsies and Travellers have historically been Herefordshire's largest minority ethnic group. They are made up of three main groups:
Romanichal or Romani
Irish Travellers
New Travellers or New Age Travellers
Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers fall within the definition of a minority ethnic group under the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000). There were approximately 400 people (0.2%) within this minority group in the county at the 2011 Census.
Economy
Bulmers Cider in Hereford is the world's largest cider factory, and has the world's largest vat (for Strongbow), built in 1975. Painter Brothers (part of Balfour Beatty) in the north of Hereford, is the UK's largest manufacturer of electricity pylons (transmission towers), broadcasting masts, the Callender-Hamilton bridge, and rail electrification structures. Special Metals Wiggin, part of Special Metals Corporation, based at Hereford was the main producer of nickel alloys in Europe, with a large site directly north of Painter Brothers. Cargill Meats Europe (formerly Sun Valley) have a large poultry meat processing facility, processing chickens from around Herefordshire.
Cadbury (Mondelēz International) make milk chocolate crumb near Marlbrook (near Leominster). Weston's Cider is in Much Marcle, who also make Stowford Press. Wye Fruit Ltd is in the north of Ledbury on the B4214 and is a large site of Amcor, and further west is Universal Beverages (UBL), owned by Heineken since 2007 where it cans cider. The site of Ledbury Preserves of RHM made Robertson's jam, mincemeat and marmalade and closed in 2008 when production moved to Cambridgeshire. Holden Aluminium Technologies are a sports car chassis manufacturer at Linton. Kingspan Insulation is based at Pembridge. BT's Madley Communications Centre, claims to be the world's largest earth station. Tyrrells Potato Crisps are at Dilwyn west of Leominster.
This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Herefordshire at current basic prices published by the Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.
includes hunting and forestry
includes energy and construction
includes financial intermediation services indirectly measured
Components may not sum to totals due to rounding
Many well-known cider producers are based in Herefordshire. These include Weston's cider of Much Marcle, and Bulmer's cider, from Hereford, which produces the UK market leader Strongbow.
Cities, towns and villages
The major settlements in the county include Hereford, which is the county town and Herefordshire's only city, as well as the towns of Leominster, Ledbury, Ross-on-Wye, Kington and Bromyard.
Employment
Most employment in Herefordshire is in agriculture, manufacturing and services. According to Herefordshire Council's online document "worklessness", 10% of people are unemployed in Herefordshire including out-of-work, homeless, ill and disabled and their carers. Cargill Meats and H. P. Bulmers are two of the largest private sector employers, with the Council and NHS being the largest public sector employers.
Politics
Westminster Parliamentary
There are two parliamentary constituencies in Herefordshire. , Bill Wiggin represents North Herefordshire and Jesse Norman represents Hereford and South Herefordshire. Both politicians are members of the Conservative Party.
Council
The council operates a cabinet-style council and has been independently controlled since 2019. The chairman is Sebastian Bowen and the leader of the council is David Hitchiner.
The cabinet leader is appointed yearly by the full council of 53 councillors. The cabinet leader then picks their deputy and up to eight other councillors to form the executive cabinet. Each cabinet member makes the decisions about the portfolio that they are allocated. Elections to the council are held every four years. Elections are conducted under the FPTP system with the 53 wards returning one councillor each. Elections have been held in 2000, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019, with the next election due in 2023.
In the 2019 election, the Conservatives lost control of Herefordshire Council.
Education
Herefordshire has a comprehensive education system that also includes several independent schools. Most state secondary schools are for ages 11–16. Providers of further and higher education in the county include Hereford College of Arts, Hereford College of Education, Hereford Sixth Form College, Herefordshire and Ludlow College, Royal National College for the Blind, NMITE and Herefordshire and Worcestershire Group Training Association (HWGTA).
Agriculture
The agricultural economy has changed greatly in recent years within the county. The county is on the western edge of England which has been historically pastoral as opposed to the east which was more arable.
Beef
Probably Hereford's most famous export is its Hereford beef cattle. Herefords are docile but extremely hardy creatures and these attributes have led to their proliferation across the world, particularly the US, Canada, South America and Australia. The breed is so gentle that a Hereford bull was used as the mascot for Hereford United Football Club for many years, led around the club's Edgar Street ground before major matches.
Fruit
The county is famous for its apple and pear orchards, and its cider. There are many orchards around the county but not as many as there once were.
In the last few years, soft fruits such as strawberries have become a new and rapidly expanding area of the agricultural economy of the county. One of the main reasons for this was the introduction of the polytunnel or French tunnel. This allows the strawberries to be grown for a far longer season and with a higher quality (with no blemishes from the rain). The strawberries are mainly picked by Eastern European workers who come over for the season and often earn more money, more than they could working in their own country and with the bonus, for many of them, of learning or improving their English. The polytunnels have been a major issue in the county, as some people see them as a "blot on the landscape".
Although some polytunnel sites are illegal, Herefordshire Council has turned a blind eye in the belief that agriculture must be allowed to innovate; otherwise it will stagnate and the county will suffer.
Dairy
Previously, most farms in the county had dairy cattle. Due to the cost of investing in new equipment, long hours, BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and mainly falling milk prices, the county's milk production has drastically reduced, with only a few farms still in dairy farming.
Potatoes
The county is historically pastoral. The soils are mostly clay, meaning that large scale potato production was very difficult, as tractors were not powerful enough to pull the large machinery required to harvest the crop. Around the early 1990s new technology and more powerful machines overcame this problem. Potato production started to increase, fuelled by a few other key factors: The previously pastoral soils had not had potatoes grown in them; consequently they were not infected with eelworm (Heterodera rostochiensis and Heterodera pallida), which in the east of England had to be sprayed against weekly (a large cost). Also, the clay soil produced an unblemished potato of the highest grade. The intensive nature of the crop meant that potatoes could be grown viably on a given field in only one of every five years. Because potato growers always needed more land than they owned, they rented extra. This demand for rental fields came at a time when the rest of the industry was struggling and in serious decline. The potato farmers' rents of £300–500 per acre (as opposed to normally £80 per acre) were very helpful to many farmers in a difficult period.
Emblems
Coat of arms
Herefordshire County Council was granted a coat of arms on 28 February 1946. The arms became obsolete in 1974 on the abolition of the council, but were transferred to the present Herefordshire Council by Order in Council in 1997.
The arms are blazoned as follows:
Gules on a fesse wavy between in chief a lion passant guardant argent and in base a Herefordshire bull's head caboshed proper, a bar wavy azure; and for a Crest on a wreath of the colours a demi lion rampant gules holding in the sinister claw a fleece or; and for Supporters, on the dexter side a lion guardant or gorged with a wreath of hops fructed proper and on the sinister a talbot argent gorged with a collar or charged with three apples proper.
The red colouring ("gules") of the shield is taken from the arms of the City of Hereford. The red colour also represents the red earth of Herefordshire. The silver and blue wave across the centre of the shield represents the River Wye. The lions that form parts of the arms, crest and supporters are also taken from Hereford's arms. The agricultural produce of Herefordshire is represented by the bull's head, fleece, hops and apples. The talbot dog comes from the heraldry of the Talbot family, Marcher Lords of Shrewsbury and also from that of Viscount Hereford.
The Latin motto is: Pulchra terra Dei donum ("This fair land is the gift of God").
County flower
As part of a competition organised by the charity Plantlife to raise awareness of conservation issues, the public were asked to vote for "county flowers" that they felt best represented their county. Mistletoe was announced as the winning choice for Herefordshire in 2004. The emblem has no official status and has not been widely adopted. Herefordshire Council uses a logo consisting of a green apple.
Sport
Perhaps the most famous sporting team in Herefordshire is Hereford United football club, who were members of the Football League and played at Edgar Street stadium in the city of Hereford. The club was founded in 1924 on the merger of two local teams – St Martin's and RAOC – and became members of the Birmingham Combination League. The club then made its way upwards to the Southern Football League, finally gaining election to the Football League in 1972 – the same year that the club famously defeated First Division side Newcastle United in an FA Cup tie. Two successive promotions saw the club reach the Second Division in 1978, but two successive relegations followed and saw the club side back into the Fourth Division. Despite being situated within England, the club has competed in the Welsh Cup on a number of occasions, winning the trophy in 1990. The club suffered relegation from the Football League in 1997 and fell into the Football Conference, not regaining its Football League status until 2006. The club then played in Football League Two – the fourth tier of English football – for six years before once again being relegated out of the Football League at the end of the 2011–12 season. The club was wound up in 2014. A new phoenix club, Hereford F.C. was set up competing in the Midland Football League Premier Division (9th tier) for its first season, 2015–16. The club lost to Morpeth Town at Wembley Stadium on 22 May 2016 in the final of the FA Vase.
Cricket is widely played within the county, and Herefordshire County Cricket Club compete in the Minor Counties Championship, having been elected in 1992 to take Durham's place, when that county joined the First-class structure. The leading club sides in Herefordshire are Brockhampton CC and Eastnor CC, who both compete in the Birmingham and District Premier League, the ECB accredited Premier League for cricket clubs in the West Midlands, and one of the strongest cricket leagues in England. Below that in the cricketing pyramid system 7 other leading Herefordshire clubs compete in the Worcestershire County Cricket League, with the remaining 25 or so cricket clubs within the county competing in the Marches League, or just playing Sunday or mid-week 'friendly' matches.
Places of interest
Abbey Dore Court
Arthur's Stone
Berrington Hall
Brockhampton Estate
Courtyard Centre for the Arts – Hereford's main theatre and art performance centre
Croft Castle
Dore Abbey
Eastnor Castle
Edgar Street (Football Stadium Home to Hereford F.C.)
Eye Manor
Goodrich Castle
Hampton Court
Hellens Manor
Hereford Cathedral
Kilpeck Church
Malvern Hills
Herefordshire Beacon
Priory Church, Leominster
Sutton Walls Hill Fort
Wigmore Castle
Welsh Newton
Transport
Road
The M50, one of the first motorways to be built in the United Kingdom, runs through the south of the county and, with the A40 dual carriageway, forms part of the major route linking South Wales with the West Midlands and the north of England. The A49 runs north–south through the county and is a strategic route between North and South Wales as well as catering for local traffic.
Railways
The Welsh Marches Line also runs north–south with passenger trains operated by Transport for Wales offering links to Manchester as well as to North and South Wales. Hereford is the western end of the Cotswold Line which runs via Worcester with through services to Oxford and London Paddington (operated by Great Western Railway) and to Birmingham (operated by West Midlands Trains). The rural Heart of Wales Line linking Craven Arms in Shropshire to Llanelli in southwest Wales passes through the extreme north west of Herefordshire with stations at Knighton and Bucknell near the meeting point of the boundaries of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Powys. The majority of passengers between North and South Wales use the Marches line.
Former lines which are now closed were the Ledbury and Gloucester Railway; Ross & Monmouth Railway; Hereford to Hay-on-Wye; Pontrilas to Hay-on-Wye; Hay-on-Wye to Brecon; Leominster to New Radnor; Eardisley to Presteigne; and Leominster to Worcester via Bromyard. Part of the Titley Spur is opened annually by enthusiasts and a steam train is run along the track.
There has long been talk of a new station at Rotherwas, in the south of Hereford.
Air
There are no airports with scheduled air transport in Herefordshire. Birmingham Airport, Cardiff Airport and Bristol Airport are the nearest. The RailAir RailAir coach operated by First Berkshire & The Thames Valley provides connections to Heathrow Airport via Reading station or passengers can change at Reading station and then go all the way by train via Hayes & Harlington to Heathrow Airport. Shobdon Aerodrome near Leominster is a centre for general aviation and gliding. Hot air ballooning is also popular with Eastnor Castle being one of the favourite launch sites in the area.
Waterways
Historically, the rivers Wye, Teme and Lugg were navigable but the wide seasonal variations in water levels mean that few craft larger than canoes and coracles are now used. There are canoe centres at The Boat House, Glasbury-on-Wye (in Powys, Wales), the Hereford Youth Service and Kerne Bridge in Ross-on-Wye, as well as rowing clubs in Hereford and Ross-on-Wye.
The early 19th century saw the construction of two canals, The Herefordshire & Gloucestershire Canal and The Leominster & Stourport Canal but these were never successful and there are now few remains to be seen. The Herefordshire & Gloucestershire Canal is currently the subject a restoration project, which includes the construction of a new canal basin in Hereford city centre as part of the regeneration of the Edgar Street Grid. The project, however, is being undertaken by a small voluntary group and there is no expected date for any part of the canal to re-open for boating.
Notable people
Jarrod Bowen, footballer
Simon Carr, cyclist
Frank Oz, actor and voice actor, producer, director
Matthew Hall, writer
Dennis Potter, writer
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet
Richard Hammond, Top Gear and The Grand Tour presenter
Mary Duggan, cricketer
Noele Gordon, actress
Mike Oldfield, musician
Mick Ralphs, Mott the Hoople and Bad Company guitarist
Richard Ashcroft, songwriter and lead singer of The Verve
Thomas Britten, 19th-century footballer
Monty Don, BBC TV presenter
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I
Conroy Maddox, artist
Beryl Reid, actress
Jessica Raine, actress
Sir Edward Elgar, composer
Sir Roy Strong, art historian
David Garrick, renowned actor of the 18th century
Lady Godiva, wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia
Harold Godwinson, Earl of Hereford and last Anglo-Saxon King of England
Ellie Goulding, musician
Nell Gwynne, mistress of King Charles II of England
Terry Jenkins, professional darts player
St. John Kemble (martyr) Catholic priest
Francis Kilvert, 19th century diarist and Church of England clergyman
Mark Labbett, one of five Chasers on The Chase as well as its Australian counterpart
Albert Lee, guitarist
Peter Mandelson, politician and former resident of Foy
John Masefield, poet laureate
Sidney Nolan, Australian artist
John Oldcastle, Lollard leader and basis for Shakespeare's character Falstaff
Blanche Parry, lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I
Peter Scudamore, jockey
James Honeyman-Scott, guitarist the Pretenders
Pete Farndon, bass guitarist the Pretenders
Martin Chambers, drummer the Pretenders
Tom Spring, bare-knuckle boxer, champion of England in the 19th century
Thomas Traherne, 17th century poet
Alfred Watkins, pioneering archaeologist and photographer
Richard Johnson, jockey
Sir Walter Roper Lawrence, author
Allan Leonard Lewis, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, died 21 September 1918, commemorated on Vis-En-Artois Memorial, France
Richard Hakluyt, Elizabethan writer and geographer who recorded contemporary voyages of exploration and promoted the settlement of North America
Ronald Pennell, artist, engraver and sculptor
Geoffrey Wood, botanist
Lucy Letby, serial killer
Fred West, serial killer
See also
Healthcare in Herefordshire
Custos Rotulorum of Herefordshire – Keeper of the Rolls
Herefordshire (UK Parliament constituency) – Historical list of MPs for Herefordshire constituency
List of High Sheriffs of Herefordshire
List of schools in Herefordshire
List of Lord Lieutenants of Herefordshire
References
External links
Herefordshire Council
Visit Herefordshire
Full Guide To Herefordshire
Things To Do In Herefordshire
Where To Eat In Herefordshire
Events & What's On In Herefordshire
Ceremonial counties of England
Local government districts of the West Midlands (region)
NUTS 3 statistical regions of the United Kingdom
Unitary authority districts of England
West Midlands (region)
Counties of England established in antiquity
Counties of England disestablished in 1974
Counties of England established in 1998
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo%20Sanader
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Ivo Sanader
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Ivo Sanader (born 8 June 1953) is a Croatian former politician who served as Prime Minister of Croatia from 2003 to 2009. He is currently serving a prison sentence for corruption in Remetinec prison.
Sanader is to date the second longest-serving prime minister since independence, holding the office for over five and a half years before resigning in July 2009. He is one of only two Croatian prime ministers (along with Andrej Plenković) who have served more than one term, winning general elections in 2003 and 2007. He is also, along with Ivica Račan and Plenković, one of the three prime ministers who have been at the head of more than one government cabinet, chairing his first cabinet from 23 December 2003 until 12 January 2008, and his second cabinet from 12 January 2008 until his resignation on 6 July 2009.
Sanader obtained his education in comparative literature in Austria, where he also worked as a journalist, in marketing, publishing, and as an entrepreneur. In the 1990s, he was briefly the intendant of the Croatian National Theatre in Split before becoming Minister for Science and Technology as a member of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in the cabinet of Hrvoje Šarinić in 1992. In 1993, he moved into diplomacy and served two terms as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Following the death of Franjo Tuđman, Sanader was elected president of the HDZ in 2000, and again in 2002, and led the party to victory in the 2003, and 2007 elections, becoming Croatia's Prime Minister. In June 2009, he abruptly resigned his post, leaving scarce explanation for his actions and disappearing from public life for a while. In January 2010, he tried to stage a political comeback within the HDZ, but was ejected from party membership.
In December 2010, Croatian authorities indicted Sanader in two high-profile corruption cases. He fled the country but was apprehended in Austria and then extradited to Croatia in July 2011. In November 2012, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a first instance verdict, later reduced to years, for funneling 10.4 million euros in public money to the Fimi Media company. However, his sentence was annulled by Croatia's Constitutional Court in 2015. With the exception of numerous Croatian officials who were sentenced to imprisonment during the existence of the socialist Yugoslavia, he is the first Croatian head of government and highest ranking state official to be tried and sentenced to a jail term. In October 2018, Sanader was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for war profiteering and must return $570,000 in kickbacks from Hypo Bank. In November 2020, he was sentenced to eight years in jail for his role in a retrial of the Fimi Media case. Some Croatian journalists evaluate Sanader's leadership of Croatia as a "kleptocratic-clientelistic era".
Early life
Sanader was born in Split to a poor, religious, working-class family originating from Dugobabe, a village in the Split hinterland. He was one of five children so, as his family was financially unable to support their education, his mother asked the rector of the Archbishopric Classical Gymnasium to accept Ivo as a student. At the gymnasium, Sanader distinguished himself as one of the top students, excelling in history and languages. After completing high school, Sanader spent one year in Rome studying philosophy. Following his return from Rome he met Mirjana Šarić, whom he married in 1978.
After their wedding, Ivo and Mirjana, and Ivo's younger brother Miro left Split for Innsbruck, Austria. His wife studied archaeology, while Ivo studied comparative literature and Romance languages at the University of Innsbruck. During that time, Sanader worked as a correspondent for the Zagreb sport newspaper Sportske novosti.
In 1982, Sanader received his PhD degree, and returned to Croatia (then Yugoslavia) with his wife. He found a job in the marketing department of Dalmacijaturist (Dalmatia Tourist), for a brief period, followed by a lengthy period at the publishing house Logos from 1983, initially as a program editor. In 1988 he became a chief editor, at one time working on the magazine Mogućnosti (Possibilities). His career at the publishing house was later terminated. At that time, his wife also received a notice of termination from her workplace.
In 1987, Sanader decided to return to Austria with his family, where he co-founded two businesses, one in 1989 which was liquidated by a court in 1992, while the other existed between 1986 and 2001. Failure of his businesses prompted Sanader to enter politics in the 1990s.
Apart from his native Croatian, he is fluent in English, German, French, and Italian.
Political career
Beginnings (1990s–2000)
Unlike many Croatian political figures of Sanader's generation, he was not actively involved in politics in his younger years – neither as a member of the League of Communists of Croatia (Croatia's party which formed the single bloc which governed Yugoslavia), nor as a dissident in exile.
In October 1990, after multi-party system had returned to Yugoslavia, he founded the Tirol branch of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in Austria, and established contact with Franjo Tuđman. Sanader's organizational skills, erudition, and fluency in German left a favorable impression on HDZ members with whom he collaborated in Austria. He decided to return to Split, over the objections of his wife who saw war in Croatia looming. His first public office was intendant of the Croatian National Theatre in Split. Shortly after taking the office, he was joined by his wife, who got a job in the University Library in Split.
In 1992 he was elected as an HDZ deputy to the lower house of the Croatian parliament, and became Minister of Science and Technology (1992–1993). From 1993 to 1995 and 1996 to 2000, he was a Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, overseeing the termination of required visas for Croatian citizens who traveled to Greece. He also used his negotiation skills to bring people to the Croatian Democratic Union from other Croatian parliamentary parties.
At the end of November 1995, he became Chief of Staff of the President of Croatia's office and General Secretary of the Croatian National Security and Defense Council (VONS) after Hrvoje Šarinić and Goran Drozdek were released from their duties. In January 1996 he became a member of the Council for Cooperation between Croatia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
During his second term as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs he worked to bring Croatia and Israel together. Himself, Hrvoje Šarinić and Eytan Bentsur, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Israeli government, met in Budapest in 1997, at which point diplomatic relations between Croatia and Israel were established.
Leader of Opposition (2000–03)
In 2000, following Tuđman's death, HDZ suffered defeat in a parliamentary election. Furthermore, their candidate Mate Granić also failed to enter the second round of the presidential election. Granić then left to form the Democratic Centre party hoping to attract moderates from the HDZ. Inner-party election within the HDZ ensued in April that year and Sanader emerged victorious as a compromise candidate.
Initially, Sanader criticized the unpopular International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indictments against Croatian Army generals. In 2001, he took part in a massive rally protesting a war crimes indictment against general Mirko Norac. Sanader also criticised Ivica Račan and his cabinet's stance towards the ICTY. He gradually began to distance the party and himself from the protests, softening his criticism towards the government.
Sanader focused his efforts on transforming the HDZ into a modern pro-European right-of-center party. However, his course was challenged by the more conservative wing of the party led by Ivić Pašalić. The ensuing leadership struggle culminated at the 2002 party convention. Sanader, who was supported by Vladimir Šeks and Branimir Glavaš, managed to win his second mandate. Pašalić left the party to form his Croatian Bloc, but failed to draw many of his former supporters from the HDZ.
Sanader was later accused by Ivan Drmić, a former member of the Croatian Democratic Union, for rigging the presidential election at the 5th convention of the Croatian Democratic Union. Spokesman for the Croatian Democratic Union Ratko Maček said such accusations "belong in the anthology of political stupidity."
Sanader was able to concentrate on defeating Ivica Račan and his left-of-centre coalition at the 2003 parliamentary elections. HDZ won the election, but did not win an absolute majority in Sabor.
Prime Minister (2003–2009)
First term (2003–2008)
After the victory of his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) the President of the Republic named Sanader the Prime Minister-designate on 9 December 2003. In the post-election negotiations Sanader ensured the support of ethnic minority representatives, nominally left-wing Croatian Party of Pensioners and the Independent Democratic Serb Party. When the Croatian Parliament subsequently gave its consent by 88 votes (out of 152) on 23 December 2003, Sanader was formally appointed.
The Sanader government's main foreign goal was Croatia's entry into the European Union and NATO. As a result of the successful implementation of the Association Agreement – signed with the European Union in 2001 – Croatia did become an official candidate for entry into the EU. Sanader's HDZ also sought to establish better relations with minority parties and to promote minority rights. Amongst other factors contributing to the positive opinion of the European Commission and the European Council regarding Croatia's bid to become an EU member were Croatia's cooperation with the ICTY, continued economic growth and the country's compliance with political and economic criteria established by the 1993 Copenhagen European Council.
Sanader was the last statesman to visit Pope John Paul II in Vatican City, in February 2005, a few weeks before his death on 2 April 2005.
In October 2005, following the formal start of EU accession negotiations, opinion polls showed Sanader to be the most popular Croatian politician.
Škare Ožbolt reported that Sanader possessed a collection of wrist watches worth in excess of €150,000 which he had not declared as assets. Former Minister of Justice Vesna Škare-Ožbolt in the Sanader government was the one who reported Sanader to a resolution council for conflict of interests.
As Prime Minister, Sanader had close relations with other moderate conservative politicians in Europe: including former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, former Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, and Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern. The cabinet saw some changes during Sanader's term, notably the departure of the foreign minister Miomir Žužul who was accused of conflict of interest. His government was challenged by the rising tide of Euroscepticism in the country.
In July 2006, Sanader was named in the "Verona Affair", accused by the opposition in the Croatian parliament for fixing the sale of pharmaceutical company Pliva to Barr Pharmaceuticals from the US. The accusations were denied and never proved.
Nacional, an independent political weekly, reported Sanader was a part of two bankrupt businesses in Austria, and received bribes in 1995 and 1996 from a tycoon amounting to 800,000 DEM.
Second term (2008–2009)
After the closely contested 2007 parliamentary election, and the first ever situation of ambiguity on who gets the mandate to form a government, Sanader emerged as the winner when President Stjepan Mesić gave him his second mandate, though this time in a coalition with the HSS and the HSLS.
Owing in part to the global recession that set in during Sanader's term, Croatia's economic growth stalled and foreign direct investments slowed down. While displaying symptoms of economic decline shared by larger nations, Croatia's decline during Sanader's term was amplified in comparison with the fortunes of Serbia and next door Montenegro – who gained greater investments due to major reforms. Under Sanader, judicial reforms in Croatia stopped and the land registry issue was not resolved. Over 1.3 million court cases (in a country of 4.1 million people) were yet to be resolved in 2009.
Croatia was expected to complete negotiations with the EU in 2009. However, the negotiations were stalled for 10 months due to Slovenia's blockade of Croatia's EU accession in December 2008. On 1 July 2009, Sanader announced his resignation as the Prime Minister and Leader of the HDZ, as well as his complete withdrawal from all active politics, adding that he does not intend to return. At his press conference in Zagreb, Sanader remarked: "There is always a time in life for a new beginning. Such a moment has come and now it is time for others to take over." According to BBC News, the announcement "came as a surprise", as Croatian media had quite recently named Sanader as a potential candidate for the 2010 presidential election. He announced that his prime minister-designate would be deputy Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor.
The Croatian Parliament accepted his resignation on 2 July 2009 and informed the President. Sanader was elected Honorary President of the HDZ for life.
Departure and return to politics (2009–2010)
At the September 2009 Global Creative Economic Summit, Sanader discussed Croatia's shift from a heavily controlled economy to a bustling "knowledge-based" economy. According to Sanader, fostering the "competitiveness in everyday life" played an important role in this process.
On 3 January 2010, contrary to his earlier statements (1 July 2009), Sanader announced he would be returning to a more active role in politics, stating that his decision to withdraw was a mistake, and that the HDZ is a "winning party and not a party that wins 12% of the vote", a remark made in connection with the first round of the presidential election held one week before. He was supported by a dozen HDZ MPs, including Luka Bebić, but none of the members of the Government. Several of those MPs later disclaimed any association with Sanader and claimed they were misled.
On 4 January 2010, following an entire day of meetings of HDZ leadership, Ivo Sanader was expelled from the Croatian Democratic Union. Of 22 members of the party presidency, 16 voted for expulsion, three were against (Luka Bebić, Mario Zubović and Damir Polančec) and two abstained (Bianca Matković and Petar Selem). Sanader himself was not present at the meeting.
In October 2010, Sanader reactivated his parliamentary seat and regained parliamentary immunity.
Arrest in Austria
On 9 December 2010, he was spotted crossing the border into Slovenia, driven by his younger daughter Bruna shortly before the Croatian parliament voted to remove his immunity from prosecution by the Croatian Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK). The next day the Croatian police issued an arrest warrant and applied to Interpol requesting his arrest to face charges of corruption. He was arrested near Salzburg, Austria on 10 December 2010. Croatian authorities froze his assets and bank accounts, and formally applied for extradition on 13 December.
Austrian authorities, including a Carinthian parliamentary committee inquiring into the more recent Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International scandal, have questioned Sanader while in custody, while USKOK expanded its investigation of Sanader to include alleged bribes by the Hypo Bank in the 1990s.
Sanader is alleged to have received nearly $695,000 (£432,000) for arranging a loan from the Austrian Hypo Bank in 1995, launching accusations of war profiteering, and of receiving 10 million euros in bribes from the CEO of the Hungarian oil company MOL, Zsolt Hernádi, to secure MOL a dominant position in the Croatian oil company INA.
Extradition and trials (2011–present)
Sanader was extradited by Austria on 18 July 2011. He was transferred to Remetinec prison in Zagreb.
At his first court hearing on 28 October, he complained of heart problems, and he stated that he did not even know he was being taken to court. After hearing this, the judge decided to reschedule, and Sanader was taken to the hospital. His rescheduled court hearing took place in December 2011 and he was released on bail of $2.2 million on 16 December 2011. In January 2012, it was announced that Sanader was facing a new set of corruption charges. USKOK included Sanader in its investigation into Croatia's state-owned electric company HEP's financial irregularities, including losses of $100 million, based on a witness statement that Sanader accepted a bribe to ensure lower electricity prices.
In May 2012, it was announced that Sanader could be indicted again on corruption offences. It was alleged that he could be charged for his involvement in arranging the sale of electricity to Croatian petrochemical company Dioki Group at prices below market, which damaged the state electricity company HEP by several million Kunas. The former CEO and owner of Dioki, Ivan Mravak and Robert Jezic could also face charges.
In September 2012, A fifth indictment was filed against Ivo Sanader for damaging the state budget by 26 million kuna (3.6 million euro). Prosecutors claimed that the damage was done by selling a building built by Fiolic's firm to the Ministry of Regional Development for more than twice the price that the building was actually worth.
According to calculations of Croatian news site Politika Plus from 2012, total damage done to the budget due to corruption scandals involving Sanader counts at least 207,2 million kuna. He was indicted five times in total; in Fimi Media, Planinska, INA-MOL, Hypo and HEP cases.
On 20 November 2012 Sanader was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a first-degree verdict for Hypo and INA-MOL cases. He was the highest official in Croatia to be convicted of corruption. Sanader denied wrongdoing and stated that his trial was politically motivated. The judge, Ivan Turudić, said that Sanader had disgraced Croatia, adding that he had used his office for his own personal enrichment and not for the common good. Sanader was transferred from the court to the Remetinec prison.
In June 2014 the Supreme Court of Croatia confirmed the 2012 verdict, but reduced Sanader's prison sentence to years. On that occasion, president Ivo Josipović described Sanader's involvement in MOL's acquisition of INA as "high treason". In 2015, the verdict was quashed by the Constitutional Court based on procedural errors made during the trial. He was released after spending nearly 5 years both in custody and prison. He was set to stand a retrial.
In 2017, he was sentenced to years in Planinska case. In April 2019 this conviction was confirmed by Supreme Court and sentence raised to 6 years. Since then, Sanader is in prison.
In 2020, he was convicted and sentenced to 8 years in prison as the result of retrial in Fimi Media case. That same year, he was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in prison for INA-MOL case. Both of these verdicts were confirmed by Supreme Court in 2021, with sentence in Fimi Media case being reduced to 7 years. His acquittal verdict in HEP case was confirmed that same year.
In 2022, he was acquitted in Hypo case, and it is yet to be confirmed by Supreme Court. In 2023, his three sentences stemming from three convictions were merged into one sentence of 18 years and 8 months, later reduced to 18 years by Supreme Court.
As of 2023, he is serving his sentence at Remetinec prison.
Honors
Revoked
On 15 July 2014, President Ivo Josipović revoked all of Sanader's national decorations following the final judgment by the Supreme Court by which he was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 8 years and 6 months due to his corruption while he served as Prime Minister.
Order of Duke Trpimir
Grand Order of Queen Jelena
Order of the Croatian Trefoil
Homeland's Gratitude Medal
Order of Ante Starčević
Order of Danica Hrvatska with the face of Marko Marulić
See also
Cabinet of Ivo Sanader I
Cabinet of Ivo Sanader II
References
Bibliography
External links
Ivo Sanader biography at CIDOB
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1953 births
Living people
Croatian Democratic Union politicians
Government ministers of Croatia
Prime Ministers of Croatia
Order of Duke Trpimir recipients
Politicians from Split, Croatia
University of Innsbruck alumni
Croatian prisoners and detainees
Prisoners and detainees of Yugoslavia
People extradited from Austria
People extradited to Croatia
Croatian politicians convicted of corruption
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
Modern history of Croatia
Corruption in Croatia
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavkat%20Mirziyoyev
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Shavkat Mirziyoyev
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Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev (born 24 July 1957) is an Uzbek politician who has served as President of Uzbekistan and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Uzbekistan since 14 December 2016. Previously, Mirziyoyev led the government as a Prime Minister of Uzbekistan from 2003 to 2016.
Mirziyoyev's political career originally began after joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, where he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR in 1990. From mid-1990s, he headed several regions of Jizzakh and Samarqand as a governor (hakim) before his appointment as the head of government by then-President Islam Karimov.
Following the death of President Karimov, Mirziyoyev was appointed by the Oliy Majlis as acting president of Uzbekistan on 8 September 2016. He was subsequently elected to a full five-year term as president in the 2016 election from the Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party (O'zLiDeP), winning 88.6% of the vote. Mirziyoyev was re-elected for second five-year term with 80.3% of the vote in the 2021 presidential election, and then again for a renewed first seven-year term with 87.7% of the vote in a snap 2023 presidential election as an independent candidate with the O'zLiDeP backing, after a constitutional amendment had granted him to legally run for third time after resetting his presidential term of office.
Under his presidency, Mirziyoyev implemented a range of liberal reforms in Uzbekistan’s political and economic system by attracting foreign investment, improving relations with neighboring Central Asian countries, as well as release of political prisoners that was notably accompanied by closure of the infamous Jaslyk Prison in 2019. In late 2021, he announced a series of constitutional reforms which included an abolition of capital punishment and the protection of human rights, which were ratified following the 2023 constitutional referendum with an overwhelming 90.6% of support. One of the proposed changes had initially included a removal of the semi-autonomous Karakalpakstan's right to secession, which led to deadly unrest in the region in July 2022 with the protests being brutally suppressed and resulting in the scrapping of the controversial proposal.
Early life and career
Mirziyoyev was born on 24 July 1957 in the Jizzakh Region of the Uzbek SSR. Some media outlets alleged that he was really born in the village of Yakhtan in the Leninabad Oblast (now the Sughd Region) of Tajikistan, and even unconfirmed claims that he was allegedly a Tajik. After an investigation by several journalists, it was revealed that Yakhtan is the native home of Mirziyoyev's grandfather on his father's side, and that Mirziyoyev himself is an Uzbek, and not a Tajik. His father, Miromon Mirziyoyevich Mirziyoyev, worked as a physician for most of his life until death. He worked as the head physician of the tuberculosis dispensary in Zaamin. O‘rinbek Yoqubov, a cousin of Miromon, being a veteran of World War II, became a Hero of the Soviet Union in April 1944. Shavkat's mother Marifat, died at a young age from tuberculosis, which she contracted in the Zaamin tuberculosis dispensary, where she worked as a nurse. After the death of his wife, Miromon Mirziyoyev married a second time to a woman from Tatarstan.
In 1981, Mirziyoyev graduated from the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Melioration. He holds a Candidate (Ph.D.) degree in Technological Sciences. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. In early 1990, he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR's last legislative body before the independence of Uzbekistan in 1991. The ceremony took place in the Senate and State Legislative Assembly Building in Tashkent.
Political career
He served as governor (Hakim) of Jizzakh Region from 1996 to September 2001, then as governor of Samarqand Region from September 2001 until his appointment as prime minister in 2003. He was nominated as prime minister by President Islam Karimov on 12 December 2003, and approved by the Uzbek parliament. He replaced Prime Minister Oʻtkir Sultonov. His deputy was Ergash Shoismatov.
Mirziyoyev and Han Myeong-sook, the Prime Minister of South Korea, met in Tashkent on 25 September 2006. They signed several agreements, including one deal in which Uzbekistan was to send 300 tons of Uzbek uranium ore to South Korea every year from 2010 to 2014. The deal bypasses U.S. companies that acted previously as middlemen for South Korean imports of Uzbek uranium ore. Han also met with President Islam Karimov and parliament speaker Erkin Xalilov. Han and Mirziyoyev boosted cooperation in the energy, agriculture, construction, architecture, and information technology sectors. Trade between South Korea and Uzbekistan increased by nearly 40% between 2005 and 2006, to $565 million.
According to a 2017 report by Human Rights Watch on forced and child labour in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan, during his time as prime minister from 2003 to 2016 Mirziyoyev "oversaw the cotton production system, and as the previous governor of Jizzakh and Samarkand, he was in charge of two cotton-producing regions. The 2016 harvest, when Mirziyoyev was acting president and retained control over cotton production, continued to be defined by mass involuntary mobilization of workers under threat of penalty." The report states that during a 2015 conference call with local authorities and farmers, Mirziyoyev said “Go to the homes of farmers in debt, who can't repay their credit, take their cars, livestock, and if there are none, take the slate from their roofs!”
On 24 October 2021, Uzbekistan's Central Election Commission announced that Mirziyoyev received 80.1 percent of the vote and will serve a second five-year term.
Presidency
A member of the Samarkand clan, he was considered to be one of the leading potential successors to Islam Karimov as President of Uzbekistan. Mirziyoyev was reported to have friendly relations with Karimov's wife, Tatyana Karimova, and National Security Council chairman Rustam Inoyatov.
After the death of Karimov was announced on 2 September 2016, Mirziyoyev was appointed as head of the committee organizing the funeral of the President. That was taken as a sign that Mirziyoyev would succeed Karimov as president. On 8 September 2016, he was appointed as interim president of Uzbekistan by a joint session of both houses of parliament. Although the chairman of the Senate, Nigmatilla Yuldashev, was constitutionally designated as Karimov's successor, Yuldashev proposed that Mirziyoyev take the post of interim president instead in light of Mirziyoyev's "many years of experience". There were expectations that Mirziyoyev would repair Uzbek relations with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. He started to settle a long-running border dispute with Kyrgyzstan, and regular flights between the capitals of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan were set to resume in January 2017 for the first time since 1992.
The electoral commission announced on 16 September that Mirziyoyev would stand in the December 2016 presidential election as the candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Mirziyoyev won the election, held on 4 December 2016, with 88.6% of the vote according to official results, defeating three minor candidates. The election was described by The Economist as a sham; the paper wrote that Mirziyoyev's bent was as authoritarian as that of Karimov and that state media claimed the choice was between Mirziyoyev, chaos, or Islamic radicalism. It also claimed that the three opponents were only on the ballot to keep up the appearance of pluralism. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said the election lacked "a genuine choice," pointing to instances of ballot box stuffing and proxy voting.
On 12 December 2016, Deputy Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov was nominated to take over from Mirziyoyev as prime minister. Mirziyoyev was sworn in as president on 14 December, vowing to "continue the work of my dear teacher, the great statesman Islam Karimov", while also promising "many changes in the cabinet". Aripov was confirmed as prime minister by parliament on the same day; a cabinet reshuffle followed on 15 December. On 6 March 2017, he made a state visit to Turkmenistan; it was his first foreign trip after the election.
In the three months following the death of Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev began to hint at reforms to longstanding policies that had held back the Uzbek economy and isolated the country internationally, so many analysts believed that Mirziyoyev would be a better president than his predecessor.
However, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development noted that "The people of Uzbekistan play no part in political decision-making processes. So far, no parliamentary or presidential election held in the post-Soviet era has been considered as either free or fair by the international community... Given the sensitive political situation in Uzbekistan, development cooperation activities there are implemented as far away from government circles as possible." However, some positive results of his rule are visible. Uzbekistan created more than 336,000 new jobs in 2017. The volume of exports increased by almost 15 percent. In 2018, the total financial indicator of exports is expected at 12.1 billion US dollars. He initiated the project of "Tashkent City", intended to attract foreign investors to Uzbekistan. Mirziyoyev promised to resume negotiations with the World Trade Organization (WTO) on joining the organization in 2018. On several occasions, he sharply criticized the administration and officials in the presence of media.
On 22 December, the first time in the country's history, Shavkat Mirziyoyev made an appeal to the parliament. His speech lasted for four hours. He said:
Some analysts think Mirziyoyev wants to enter in history as a reformer. He removed most of Karimov's officials and urged government to employ "new, young people who love their country." After a year in office, Mirziyoyev is increasingly moving away from his predecessor's policy, which is especially visible in his active foreign policy. He visited all the Uzbek regions and big cities to get acquainted with the implementation of the projects and reforms which he had ordered. Many analysts and Western media compared his rule with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping or Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev; his rule has been quoted as being an "Uzbek Spring".
At the end of that year, he was named the "Asian of the Year of 2018" by the Asia Journalist Association (AJA).
In August 2019 he closed the notorious Jaslyk Prison.
In July 2021, Mirziyoyev's spokesperson attempted to generate some suspense as to whether or not the President would run in the elections again. It was widely acknowledged that Mirziyoyev would not only participate but likely win.
On 1 July 2022 protests broke out in the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan over proposed amendments to the Constitution of Uzbekistan which would have ended Karakalpakstan's status as an autonomous region of Uzbekistan and right to secede from Uzbekistan via referendum. They were brutally suppressed, at least 18 people were killed.
In April 2023, a referendum was held in Uzbekistan to change the constitution. The adopted amendments increased the presidential term from 5 to 7 years. The number of terms is still limited to two, but due to a change in the constitution, Mirziyoyev's previous presidencies are not counted. Shortly thereafter, the head of state called early elections. They passed on July 9, 2023. Mirziyoyev won with 87% of the vote on a turnout of almost 80%.
Foreign policy
Mirziyoyev's foreign policy is much more open than the policy of his predecessor. Uzbekistan was practically under international isolation after the Andijan massacre in 2005 and Karimov rarely travelled outside of Central Asia and other CIS states. Mirziyoyev promised to conduct an active foreign policy at the beginning of his tenure.
During the first 10 months of his tenure, Mirziyoyev visited Kazakhstan four times, Turkmenistan three times, Russia two times, as well as China, Saudi Arabia, United States, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan. At the different occasions, he met the presidents of Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Bulgaria, Belarus and the King of Spain. During the CIS Summit in Tashkent in November 2017, he met eight Prime Ministers of foreign countries.
One of his most significant foreign policy achievements is the gradual improvement of relations with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. On 5 September 2017, just 3 days after the anniversary of the death of his predecessor, he made a historic visit to Kyrgyzstan. This was the first state visit of an Uzbek president to the neighboring country since 2000. On 19 September 2017, Mirziyoyev addressed the UN General Assembly for the first time.
In 2018, a large number of foreign leaders visited or were expected in Uzbekistan, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, whose visit took place in September and was his first state visit to the country in 24 years. In March 2018, Mirziyoyev made a visit to Tajikistan, which made him the first Uzbek president to conduct a state visit to Dushanbe since 2000.
Mirziyoyev has also taken an important role in Afghanistan by offering to host peace talks between the government and the Taliban since March 2018. During the week of 6–10 August 2018, a Taliban delegation visited Tashkent, at the request of Mirziyoyev, to discuss issues including transport, power and peace in Afghanistan. Mirziyoyev attended the Vibrant Gujarat international investment summit as a key guest, being the first Central Asian leader to participate as a partner in the summit. In early 2019, it was announced that Mirziyoyev planned to visit 36 countries in official visits throughout the year.
In March 2019, Mirziyoyev held a telephone conversation with Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had resigned from office that day. In it, he expressed regret to the ex-president, saying that he was a "great politician". During a visit to Abu Dhabi in March 2019, Mirziyoyev came away from his talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed with over $10 billion in infrastructure, alternative energy and agriculture deals, as well as deals in other spheres.
In 2022 Uzbekistan hosted the 22nd Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Samarkand. During the summit, which was attended by world leaders Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iran's Ebrahim Raisi, Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev, presidents of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia, and the prime ministers of Pakistan and India, it was noted that the Chinese and Indian leaders chastised President Putin about his role in Ukraine. In preparation for the Summit, the president ordered that the city be redeveloped. This included the construction of a new international airport and a tourism complex that has had mixed reviews.
Culture policy
In October 2020, Mirziyoyev issued a decree to accelerate the full Latinization of the Uzbek language that outlined language policy for the 2020–30 period as the country continues an on-again, off-again attempt to reform the Uzbek language and widen its use. Some of the main parts of the degree called on the development of a road map for a full transition to the Uzbek alphabet based on the Latin alphabet, as well as government officials by April 2021 to be certified in their knowledge of Uzbek.
Personal life
He has two sisters, a half-brother, and sister. Mirziyoyev is married to Ziroatkhon Hoshimova and has two daughters, a son and five grandchildren. The eldest daughter of Said Mirziyoyev heads the sector for communications and information policy of the executive office of the administration of the head of state. His eldest son-in-law, Oybek Tursunov, is the current head of Mirziyoyev's presidential administration, while his younger son-in-law, Otabek Shahanov, is the head of the presidential security services.
Since coming to power, Mirziyoyev has built a new residence for himself in Qibray District, which could potentially include a presidential highway, and an interior that is decorated with Argentinian marble slabs and Swarovski crystals.
In February 2021, it was reported that Mirziyoyev was building an exclusive mountain compound, including a new reservoir. The compound, located about 100 kilometers by car from Tashkent, includes a luxurious mansion built for Mirziyoyev and his relatives. Two sources estimated the cost of the development at several hundred million dollars, though only a handful of publicly available official documents make reference to the compound and the adjacent reservoir, which were largely completed by 2019.
Awards
National
Order "Mehnat shuhrati"
Order "Fidokorona xizmatlari uchun"
Foreign
(Kyrgyzstan, 22 November 2017)
Honored Citizen of Seoul (South Korea, 14 April 2018)
Prize “For Merits to Eurasia” (Turkey, 24 April 2018)
Order of Friendship (Kazakhstan, 15 March 2018)
Honorary Doctorate from Nagoya University (Japan, 18 December 2019)
Order of the Crown (Tajikistan, 10 June 2021)
Order of Alexander Nevsky (Russia, 24 July 2022)
References
Notes
External links
Government of Uzbekist'on Official Website
Жаноб Президент, a 2018 documentary on Mirziyoyev commissioned by the Press Service of the president of Uzbekistan
Official account in Instagram
1957 births
Living people
People from Jizzakh Region
Presidents of Uzbekistan
Prime Ministers of Uzbekistan
Shavkat Mirziyoev
Self-Sacrifice National Democratic Party politicians
Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party politicians
Uzbekistan National Revival Democratic Party politicians
Recipients of the Order of Alexander Nevsky
Chairmen of the Organization of Turkic States
Uzbekistani Muslims
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian%20Democratic%20Union
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Croatian Democratic Union
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The Croatian Democratic Union (, HDZ) is a major conservative, centre-right political party in Croatia. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in Croatia, along with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP). It is currently the largest party in the Sabor with 62 seats. The HDZ governed Croatia from 1990 before the country gained independence from Yugoslavia until 2000 and, in coalition with junior partners, from 2003 to 2011, and since 2016. The party is a member of the European People's Party (EPP). The HDZ's leader, Andrej Plenković, is the current Prime Minister of Croatia, having taken office following the 2016 parliamentary election.
History
Origins
The HDZ was founded on 17 June 1989 by Croatian dissidents led by Franjo Tuđman. It was officially registered on 25 January 1990. The HDZ held its first convention on 24–25 February 1990, when Franjo Tuđman was elected its president. When the party was founded, the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia had just introduced a multi-party system in Croatia and scheduled elections for the Croatian Parliament.
The HDZ began as a nationalist party but also included former partisans and members of the Communist establishment, such as Josip Manolić and Josip Boljkovac. President Tuđman and other HDZ officials traveled abroad and gathered large financial contributions from Croatian expatriates. On the eve of the 1990 parliamentary elections, the ruling League of Communists of Croatia saw such tendencies within the HDZ as an opportunity to remain in power. At the beginning of democracy the communists called HDZ "the party of dangerous intentions". The HDZ won a majority in the Croatian Parliament, and Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia) became one of the few socialist countries where Communist single party rule was replaced by anti-Communist single party rule. 30 May 1990, the day the HDZ formally took power, was celebrated as Statehood Day.
1990–2000
A presidential election was held in 1992, and Tuđman, who would remain as undisputed party leader until his death in 1999, was elected president.
The party governed Croatia throughout the 1990s and under its leadership, Croatia became independent (1991), was internationally recognized (1992), and consolidated all of its pre-war territory (by 1998). During that period, the HDZ won both the 1992 and 1995 parliamentary elections.
As it strongly advocated Croatian independence, the HDZ was quite unpopular with the Serb minority and others who preferred to see Croatia remain inside the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was one of the factors contributing to the creation of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the subsequent armed conflict in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. The role of the HDZ in those events is matter of controversy, even in Croatia, where some tend to view HDZ policy in the early stages of the conflict as extremist and a contributing factor in the escalation of violence while others (such as Marko Veselica's Croatian Democratic Party) see the HDZ as having appeased Serbia and the Yugoslav People's Army, therefore being responsible for Croatia's unpreparedness for defense. However, the policies of Tuđman and the HDZ shifted according to the circumstances.
Transition to capitalism
The HDZ also began to lead Croatia toward a political and economic transition from socialism to capitalism. Notably, HDZ governments implemented privatization in the country in a manner that critics consider sub-optimal, and at times possibly illegal, due to the selective nature of the privatizations (see Croatian privatization controversy). According to the HDZ, this process proved a useful distraction from dealing with the baggage of post-World War II communist nationalizations. It was the HDZ in 1992 which enacted into law the right of corporations (the vast majority of which were under state ownership) the right to finally formally register themselves as the owners of nationalized property, thus completing their version of a process of quasi-nationalization started by the communist regime after WWII, in different targeted areas for their gain. Property returned included possessions nationalized from the Catholic Church or widely known individuals such as Gavrilović, the owner of a major meat-producing factory in Petrinja, south of Zagreb.
HDZ after Tuđman's death
The 2000 parliamentary elections were held 3 January, weeks after Tuđman's death. The HDZ was defeated by a centre-left coalition of six opposition parties, led by Ivica Račan's Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Dražen Budiša's Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS). The election was seen as a referendum on the HDZ with a poor economy, corruption and crony capitalism being major factors in their ouster.
At the subsequent presidential election, HDZ candidate Mate Granić who was favored to win in the weeks prior to the parliamentary elections, finished third and therefore failed to enter the second round of voting, won by Stipe Mesić.
In the period from 2000 and 2003, several businessmen who became tycoons under the initial HDZ rule were tried and convicted for abuses, though in general the privatization process implemented by the HDZ remained unaltered. This period proved to be a low point for the HDZ; many thought the party could not recover. These people included Mate Granić, who, together with Vesna Škare-Ožbolt, left to form the centre-right Democratic Centre (DC).
When the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) began to prosecute Croatian Army commanders, this provoked a major backlash among the Croatian public. As the opposition party, the HDZ supported this popular discontent and actively resisted the transfers of generals to the ICTY. This gradually changed as the HDZ and its new leader Ivo Sanader began to distance themselves from the more extreme rhetoric, becoming perceived as moderates. This tendency continued when the HSLS shifted rightwards, making Sanader's HDZ and HSLS appear as like-oriented parties. This process was completed in 2002 when Ivić Pašalić, leader of the HDZ hardliners and perceived to be associated with the worst excesses of Tuđman's era, challenged Sanader for the party leadership, accusing him of betraying Tuđman's nationalist legacy. At first it looked that Sanader would lose, but with the help of Branimir Glavaš and the tacit support of liberal sections of Croatian public opinion, he won at the party convention. Pašalić then left the HDZ to form the Croatian Bloc party.
First Sanader government (2003–2008)
At the 2003 Croatian parliamentary election, the party won 33.9% of the popular vote and 66 out of 152 seats. Although it failed to win a clear majority in the Croatian Parliament, even with the help of the allied DC and HSLS, it formed a government with the nominally left-wing Independent Democratic Serb Party and the Croatian Party of Pensioners.
With such a broad and diverse mandate, the Sanader-led government vigorously pursued policies that amounted to the implementation of the basic criteria for joining the European Union, such as the return of refugees to their homes, rebuilding houses damaged in the war, improving minority rights, cooperating with the ICTY, and continuing to consolidate the Croatian economy. Despite this, the EU's Council of Ministers postponed Croatia's membership negotiations with the union on the grounds of its non-cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over the case of indicted general Ante Gotovina.
This setback brought an increase in Eurosceptic views among the Croatian public, which also affected support for the HDZ. Since accession to the EU was a key part of Sanader's reformist course, opposition to his leadership within and outside the HDZ was on the rise. This opposition manifested itself at the 2005 local elections and the defection of Glavaš, who not only successfully challenged Sanader's authority but also managed to nominally deprive Sanader of his parliamentary majority.
Second Sanader government (2008–2009)
Despite this defeat, the first Sanader-led government was able to survive until the end of the legislature. The subsequent parliamentary election in late November 2007 saw the HDZ hard-pressed both by the SDP-led leftist coalition and by the extreme right-wing Croatian Party of Rights and Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja.
During the electoral campaign a vigorous and sometimes ruthless reaction from the party and Sanader himself, together with some capital errors from SDP, convinced part of the far-right electorate to support the HDZ to prevent what they perceived as the heirs of the former communist party to return to power. The party won a majority of both seats and votes in the election, and the first session of the newly elected parliament was called for 11 January 2008. However, the SDP repeatedly refused to acknowledge defeat, claiming that they had the most votes if the diaspora ballot was not taken into account. The HDZ gained the support of the "yellow–green coalition" (HSS-HSLS) and of the HSU and national minorities representatives; Sanader formed a second government.
Although that government had a larger majority than the former one, its existence remained troubled because of the worsening of the previously good economic situation and a weariness of Croatian public opinion about what was felt to be an overly long HDZ rule. Another major drawback was the Slovenian blocking of several chapters of Croatia's EU accession terms until border disputes between the two countries had been settled. Although this ultimately led to an indefinite suspension of the Croatian EU accession negotiations, it did not affect the government's popularity. In this case, as would be expected, considering Croatian staunch patriotism and national self-consciousness, all parties and nearly every Croatian citizen were absolutely adamant in refusing at any cost any concessions over matters of national interest.
In the local elections held in May 2009, the HDZ, against all expectations, managed to grow again, coming ahead of the SDP. However, HDZ support did weaken in the larger cities.
On 1 July 2009, Ivo Sanader abruptly announced his resignation from politics and appointed Jadranka Kosor as his successor. She was confirmed as the new leader of the party on 3 July and was appointed by president Stipe Mesić as the prime minister-designate. Two days later the Sabor confirmed Kosor as the new prime minister, the first woman to hold the position.
In the same resignation speech, Sanader also appointed Andrija Hebrang, who had formerly held the posts of defence minister and health minister, as HDZ candidate for the incoming presidential election, decreasing any speculation about his own ambitions for that position.
The "Fimi media" was a corruption scandal which resulted from former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader stealing money from the state budget. USKOK has charged former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, Fimi media CEO Nevenka Jurak, former treasurer of the Croatian Democratic Union Mladen Barišić, former spokesperson of the Croatian Democratic Union Ratko Maček and former chief accountant Branka Pavošević with damaging the state budget by 70 million kuna or approximately 9 million euros.
Government of Jadranka Kosor
The HDZ was faced with bad poll ratings and a large clean-up task that was still underway when Sanader left. The officials used the 2009 convention to elect Jadranka Kosor party president by acclamation. Andrija Hebrang accepted his designation as the presidential candidate only at the end of July, after he underwent a thorough medical examination, to exclude any remaining trace of a previous carcinoma.
The Kosor government remained mostly unchanged from the previous Sanader government, but the HDZ suffered some internal turmoil as ministers Berislav Rončević and Damir Polančec left their posts after allegations of corruption. Along with several anti-corruption investigations, the party had to deal with an economic crisis. It began tackling the issue in April 2010 with a recovery program.
In the next presidential elections, Croatia was looking for a replacement for Stipe Mesić who had held the position for ten years. But Hebrang finished third, failing to reach the second stage in which SDP candidate Ivo Josipović overwhelmingly defeated former SDP member Milan Bandić.
However, many Croatian people were dissatisfied with the government and protested on the streets against the HDZ government, demanding that new elections be held as soon as possible. The police placed a guard on St. Mark's Square to prevent civilians from entering.
From 26 October 2011 USKOK expanded its investigation about "Slush Funds" on the HDZ as a legal entity. Previously, the investigation had included only Ivo Sanader, treasurers Milan Barišić and Branka Pavošević, general secretaries Branko Vukelić and Ivan Jarnjak and spokesman Ratko Maček. Party president Jadranka Kosor stated that this was one of the most critical moments of the HDZ. The HDZ became the first political party in Croatia to be charged with corruption.
In the opposition
After the 2011 parliamentary elections, the HDZ become the opposition after 8 years in government. The HDZ won its smallest number of votes since its founding, 563,215.
On 20 May 2012, HDZ held a presidential election in which, a day later, Tomislav Karamarko become the winner and thus replaced Kosor as leader of the opposition. Karamarko announced that he would reestablish connections between Croatia and the Croatian diaspora.
Karamarko earlier announced that, after a process of the detudjmanization of the HDZ, he would return to the policies of Franjo Tuđman. He also stated that he could be "neither for Ante Pavelić nor Josip Broz Tito", as both of them represented totalitarian systems. On 1 July 2013, HDZ received full member status of the European People's Party (EPP). On 11 March 2014, the HDZ and Ivo Sanader were found guilty of corruption.
Plenković government (2016–present)
Following the collapse of the Tihomir Orešković government in June 2016, Tomislav Karamarko resigned as HDZ leader. The party elected former diplomat and member of the European Parliament Andrej Plenković as the new president, who won on a policy platform "devoid of extremes and populism". Plenković won the 2016 parliamentary election, in which he campaigned on a pro-European and moderate agenda. Plenković was appointed prime minister in October.
Ideology
In terms of ideology, the HDZ statute, as well as its President Andrej Plenković and Secretary Gordan Jandroković, define the political position of the party as centre-right. However, there have significant shifts in HDZ's ideological and political positions, and there are both moderate and right-wing factions within the party with different interpretations of its basic positions.
The HDZ leaders during the 1990s described their party as centrist and Christian-democratic, although in practice they pursued ultranationalistic policies. However, the party was at the time mostly characterized as conservative and nationalist with an extreme right-wing faction.
At its beginning, the HDZ was an ethnically exclusive party that emphasized Croatian identity. Slogans such as "God and Croats" and "Croats get together" were common, which were incidentally also by the leaders of the Ustaše-led Independent State of Croatia. Its discourse had a strong emotional appeal, evoking "fears, desires, material and symbolic benefits" to win over those who sought Croatian sovereignty over communism and drawing upon Croatian nationalist traditions. It did not recognize the plurality of identities when addressing its citizens, viewing them as "Catholic Croats" with anti-Serbian sentiments regularly appearing during its assemblies.
The HDZ's position regarding the European Union was soft Eurosceptic: there was no explicit opposition to the accession of Croatia to the EU, but the HDZ opposed some EU policies. Following the election of Ivo Sanader as the party president in 2000, the HDZ adopted a moderate centre-right position. Under Sanader, the party strongly pursued a pro-European policy, which continued under the leadership of Jadranka Kosor. Many observers considered the leadership of Tomislav Karamarko from 2012 to 2016 as a return of nationalism in the party. After Andrej Plenković, viewed as a moderate, came to power in 2016, the party moved back to a centre-right position. The HDZ has been described as Christian-democratic and pro-European.
In economic terms, the party advocates for a social market economy and expressed its opposition to economic liberalism in the 2002 programme.
Election results
Legislative
The following is a summary of the party's results in legislative elections for the Croatian Parliament. The "Total votes" and "Percentage" columns include sums of votes won by pre-election coalitions HDZ had been part of. After the preferential votes were included in the election system, the votes column also includes the sum of votes for HDZ's candidates on the coalition lists. The "Total seats" column includes sums of seats won by HDZ in election constituencies plus representatives of ethnic minorities affiliated with HDZ.
Presidential
The following is a list of presidential candidates endorsed by HDZ in elections for President of Croatia.
European Parliament
Party presidents since 1989
The chart below shows a timeline of the Croatian Democratic Union presidents and the Prime Ministers of Croatia. The left bar shows all the president of the HDZ, and the right bar shows the corresponding make-up of the Croatian government at that time. The blue (HDZ) and red (SDP) colours correspond to which party led the government. The last names of the respective prime ministers are shown, the Roman numeral stands for the cabinets.
See also
Elections in the Croatian Democratic Union
Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina
References
External links
1989 establishments in Croatia
Political parties established in 1989
Christian democratic parties in Europe
Conservative parties in Croatia
Catholic political parties
Nationalist parties in Croatia
International Democrat Union member parties
Member parties of the European People's Party
Pro-independence parties in Yugoslavia
Anti-communist parties
Pro-European political parties in Croatia
Croatian nationalism
Modern history of Croatia
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel%20Foote
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Samuel Foote
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Samuel Foote (January 1720 – 21 October 1777) was a British dramatist, actor and theatre manager. He was known for his comedic acting and writing, and for turning the loss of a leg in a riding accident in 1766 to comedic opportunity.
Early life
Born into a well-to-do family, Foote was baptized in Truro, Cornwall on 27 January 1720. His father, Samuel Foote, held several public positions, including mayor of Truro, Member of Parliament representing Tiverton and a commissioner in the Prize Office. His mother, née Eleanor Goodere, was the daughter of Sir Edward Goodere Baronet of Hereford. Foote may have inherited his wit and sharp humour from her and her family which was described as "eccentric. ..whose peculiarities ranged from the harmless to the malevolent." About the time Foote came of age, he inherited his first fortune when one of his uncles, Sir John Dineley Goodere, 2nd Baronet was murdered by another uncle, Captain Samuel Goodere. This murder was the subject of his first pamphlet, which he published around 1741.
Foote was educated at Truro Grammar School, the collegiate school at Worcester, and at Worcester College, Oxford, distinguishing himself in these places by mimicry and audacious pleasantries of all kinds. An undisciplined student, he frequently was absent from his Latin and Greek classes and subsequently, Oxford expelled him on 28 January 1740. Although he left Oxford without receiving his degree, he acquired a classical training which afterwards enabled him to easily turn a classical quotation or allusion, and helped to give to his prose style a certain fluency and elegance.
Foote was destined for the law, but certainly not by nature. In his chambers at the Inner Temple, and in the Grecian Coffee House nearby, he came to know something of lawyers if not of law, and was afterwards able to jest at the jargon and to mimic the mannerisms of the bar, and to satirize the Latitats of the other branch of the profession with particular success. Though he never applied himself to his studies at the Inner Temple, he well applied himself to spending money and living as a bon vivant, which led to him quickly running out of funds.
After finding himself in debt, Foote married a certain Mary Hickes (or Hicks) on 10 January 1741. With his wife also came a sizable dowry. Contemporaries note that Foote mistreated his wife, deserting her when his financial situation improved and Hickes may have died an early death. But a stronger attraction drew him to the Bedford Coffee-house in Covent Garden, and to the theatrical world of which it was the social centre. His extravagant living soon forced him into debtor's prison in 1742, and friends encouraged Foote's going onto the stage to make a living.
Initial theatrical ventures
Foote's first training for the stage came under the tutelage of Charles Macklin. By 1744, when they appeared onstage together, Macklin had made a name for himself as one of the most notable actors on the British stage, after David Garrick. His appearance as Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1741, mesmerized London audiences. Dismissing the conventional comedic approach to the character, Macklin played the character as consummately evil. Following his debut, George II reportedly could not sleep, while Georg Lichtenberg described Macklin's interpretation of Shylock's first line—"Three thousand ducats"—as being uttered "as lickerously as if he were savouring the ducats and all they would buy." Following less than a year of training, Foote appeared opposite Macklin's Iago as the titular role in Shakespeare's Othello at the Haymarket Theatre, 6 February 1744. While his first appearance was unsuccessful, it is noted that this production was produced illegally under the Licensing Act 1737 which forbade the production of plays by theatres not holding letters patent or the production of plays not approved by the Lord Chamberlain. In order to skirt this law, the Haymarket Theatre held musical concerts with plays included gratis.
Following his unsuccessful London appearance, Foote spent the summer season in Dublin at the Theatre Royal, Smock Alley where he found his first success. Returning to England, he joined the company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane which at that time included such noted actors as Peg Woffington, David Garrick and Spranger Barry. There he played comic roles including Harry Wildair in Farquhar's The Constant Couple, Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's The Relapse and most notably, the playwright, Bayes in Villiers' The Rehearsal. It was in this role that Foote publicly showed his gift of mimicry. Borrowing from David Garrick's interpretation of the role, Foote used this role to mock many leading contemporaries.
The Haymarket Theatre
Even with his success onstage, Foote remained impoverished. Attempting life as a theatre manager, he secured a lease on the Haymarket Theatre in 1746. Foote began writing in earnest, producing two pamphlets, A Treatise on the Passions and The Roman and English Comedy Considered. After illegally producing Othello, Foote opened one of his own plays, The Diversions of the Morning or, A Dish of Chocolate, a satire on contemporary actors and public figures performed by himself, on 22 April 1747. The Dish of Chocolate of the title referred to a dish or tea offered by Foote to accompany the musical entertainment while the performance was offered gratis, all done to avoid the Licensing Act. On the morning following the performance, the theatre was locked and audiences gathering for the noon performance (another gimmick to evade the law was to stage the show as a matinée) were turned away by authorities. Foote's jabs at other actors brought the ire of many at Drury Lane and the managers took steps to protect their patent.
Fortunately for Foote, some highly placed friends at court helped the theatre reopen and the play continued. In June, Foote offered A Cup of Tea, a revision of his revue, Diversions, again in the guise of a culinary offering. After a brief trip to Paris, Foote opened The Auction of Pictures which satirized satirist Henry Fielding. A war of wit was launched with each lambasting the other in ink and onstage. Among the verbal missiles hurled, Fielding denounced Foote in The Jacobite's Journal saying "you Samuel Fut [sic] be pissed upon, with Scorn and Contempt, as a low Buffoon; and I do, with the utmost Scorn and Contempt, piss on you accordingly."
The Author himself
The Fielding quarrel was followed by a more serious quarrel with actor Henry Woodward. This resulted in a small riot that was damaging not only to the Haymarket Theatre but to Foote's reputation. He began to deflect criticism only with the opening of his play, The Knights. This play, unlike his earlier satirical revues, was a romantic comedy set in the country, though he did use this play as a vehicle to satirize such things as Italian opera and the gentry of Cornwall.
At the close of the Haymarket season in 1749, Foote left London for Paris in order to spend money he had recently inherited. Upon his return to London in 1752, Foote's new comedy, Taste, was produced at Drury Lane. Foote took aim at the burgeoning art and antiquities market and particularly aristocratic collectors. In his preface to the play, Foote specifies his targets as the "barbarians who have prostituted the study of antiquity to trifling superficiality, who have blasted the progress of the elegant arts by unpardonable frauds and absurd prejudices, and who have vitiated the minds and morals of youth by persuading them that what serves only to illustrate literature is true knowledge and that active idelness is real business."
Taste opens with Lady Pentweazel who believes that the works of art, the Venus de' Medici and the Mary de Medici, are sisters in the Medici family. Two other collectors, Novice and Lord Dupe, claim to be able to determine the age and value of coins and medals by tasting them while Puff, an auctioneer, convinces them and Sir Positive Bubble that broken china and statuary are worth far more than perfect pieces. Lord Dupe follows this advice by purchasing a canvas with the paint scraped off. The foibles of ignorant art collectors and predatory dealers were presented by Foote in this high burlesque comedy. In order for an audience to appreciate high burlesque, they must understand the standards of true taste before they can recognize the conflict between those standards and the characters' standards. The audience that saw the premier of Taste evidently did not understand this conflict as the play was not successful and played only five performances.
Following the unsuccessful reception of Taste, Foote staged a new production, An Englishman in Paris, inspired by both his trip there and possibly, as Davison suggests, a French play, Frenchman in London which he may have seen. Here, Foote satirized the boorish behaviour of English gentlemen abroad. The play garnered wide acclaim and became a part of the repertoires of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres where it remained for a few decades. While his success was becoming more solidified as a writer, Foote was also in demand as an actor, working at Drury Lane and Covent Garden during the 1753–4 season.
When he found himself out of work in November 1754, Foote rented the Haymarket theatre and began to stage mock lectures. Satirizing Charles Macklin's newly opened school of oratory, these lectures created a sort of theatrical war, especially when Macklin began to appear at the lectures himself. At one particular lecture, Foote extemporized a piece of nonsense prose to test Macklin's assertion that he could memorise any text at a single reading.
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. "What! No soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
This introduced the nonsense term "The Grand Panjandrum" into the English language and the name was adopted for the Panjandrum or Great Panjandrum, an experimental World War II-era explosive device.
With Foote's success in writing An Englishman in Paris, Irish playwright Arthur Murphy was moved to create a sequel, The Englishman returned from Paris. While Foote readily encouraged Murphy's plan, Foote secretly wrote his own version which opened at Covent Garden on 3 February 1756. While early biographers scorned Foote's plagiarism of Murphy's play, the 1969 discovery of that manuscript laid it to rest when it was proven that Foote's play was far superior. The play was successful at Covent Garden and played regularly until 1760.
Two rival actresses captured the attention of London audiences and Foote's satire. Peg Woffington and George Anne Bellamy apparently took their roles rather seriously in a production of Nathaniel Lee's The Rival Queens. When Bellamy's Parisian fashions began to upstage Woffington, Bellamy was driven offstage by a dagger-wielding Woffington thus providing a source for Foote's The Green-Room Squabble or a Battle Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius. The text of this farce is now lost.
Having turned his satire on Englishmen abroad and actresses at home, Foote pointed his daggered pen towards himself, other writers and the condition of the "starving writer" in his play The Author which premiered at Drury Lane on 5 February 1757. The plot concerned a poor author's father who disguises himself in order to spy on his son. Again, Foote created the role of Cadwallader for himself and used it to satirize John Apreece, a patron of authors. While critics derided Foote's attack on Apreece, audiences flocked to the theatre. Apreece even appeared and sat "open-mouthed and silly, in the boxes, to the delight of the audience, and mystified by the reflection of himself, which he beheld on the stage." Foote noted later that Apreece finding "the resemblance [...] too strong, and the ridicule too pungent [...] occasioned an application for the suppression of the piece, which was therefore forbidden to be anymore performed." The play was forbidden further productions by the Lord Chamberlain. While success may have been limited, Richard Brinsley Sheridan adapted the plot in his School for Scandal. Modern critics would point out that The Author shows great development in Foote's ability in creating characters and sustaining plot.
Of mimicry and Methodists
Late in 1757, Foote faced himself in the guise of young actor and mimic, Tate Wilkinson. Wilkinson, like Foote, had failed somewhat as an actor, but was renowned for his satiric mimicry of others. Foote traveled with him to Dublin for part of the 1757–58 season and he also revived Diversions of the Morning as a vehicle to display Wilkinson's talents. The popularity of these talents crowded out all other performances at Drury Lane in the first half of the season, much to the chagrin of Garrick and the other actors. Soon, however, the luck ran out and by March, Foote was seeking employment elsewhere. With little luck in London, Foote traveled to perform a season in Edinburgh and found success with many of his works, including The Author which could not be staged in London. The following season found Foote in Dublin where Wilkinson was drawing crowds with his imitations and on 28 January 1760, Foote opened a new play, The Minor. The production was a failure.
Returning to London, Foote's financial situation was still quite poor. After renting the Haymarket theatre and revising The Minor into a three-act version (up from the two-act version presented in Dublin), the play opened in London. Doran remarks that while "The Minor failed in Dublin, very much to the credit of an Irish audience, [...] they condemned it on the ground of its grossness and immorality[,]" English society, nevertheless, while hearing condemnations of the play, filled the theatres. The play played for full houses for 38 nights.
The Minor utilizes a fairly pedestrian plot to satirize the Methodist movement. Before its premiere, Foote showed the text of The Minor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Secker. Secker objected to several passages, but particularly to Mrs Cole referring to herself as a "lost sheep". This expression, he said, was sacred to the pulpit. Foote besought the archbishop to take the manuscript and strike the exceptionable passages; he agreed on the condition that it should be published "Revised and Corrected by the Archbishop of Canterbury."
The Devil on Two Sticks
While riding with Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany in 1766, he was thrown from his horse and the injury cost him his leg. Even in this state, he continued to act and as possible compensation for his injury was granted a license to legally operate the Haymarket Theatre. He produced a summer season of "legitimate plays" in 1767, engaging Spranger Barry and his wife to perform. He bought the theatre outright and remodelled the interior the same year and continued to operate the theatre until he was forced to give up his patent to George Colman the Elder the following year. Near London, Foote lived and wrote in his much loved villa, 'The Hermitage', in North End village in the Parish of Fulham. He died on 21 October 1777 in Dover, while en route to France.
One play, The Cozeners, is clearly based on the politician Charles James Fox who was a spendthrift and gambler. He had been duped by Elizabeth Harriett Grieve who had promised that she could arrange for him to marry a West Indian heiress. Grieve was tried and transported in 1773 and in the following year The Cozeners opened with Mrs Gardner in the part of Mrs Fleece'em. Foote's satires are based on caricatures of characters and situations from his era. His facility and wit in writing these earned him the title "the English Aristophanes." While, often, his subjects found his literary jabs just as humorous as his audiences, they often both feared and admired him.
Legal troubles
In 1774, the Duke of Kingston's sister was able to invalidate the Duke's will, on the grounds that his widow, Elizabeth Chudleigh, was guilty of bigamy. Foote picked up this news and began work on a new play in which the character "Lady Kitty Crockodile" was clearly based on Chudleigh. In response a supporter of Chudleigh's, William Jackson, in 1775 began publishing in The Public Ledger veiled accusations of homosexuality. Not long after Chudleigh was convicted of bigamy in spring 1776, Foote's coachman accused Foote of sexual assault, leading to a trial at which Foote was eventually acquitted. In the interim, the Ledger filled its pages with the story, and an anonymous pamphlet (likely written by Jackson) aimed at Foote, "Sodom and Onan", appeared. The work was subtitled "A Satire Inscrib'd to [ – – ] Esqr, alias the Devil upon Two Sticks", with the blank filled by an engraving of a foot. Inevitably, these events provided more fodder for Foote's pen, with Jackson making a disguised appearance in The Capuchin.
Mentions of Foote
In the 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was later published as Barry Lyndon; The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. the protagonist claims Foote as a friend. Foote is also referred to in The Boswell Brothers by Philip Baruth.
Dramatic works
Books
Cooke, William. Memoirs of Samuel Foote, Esq: With a Collection of His Genuine Bon-mots, Anecdotes, Opinions, &c 1805. (Online.)
Foote, Samuel. The Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq.; to which is prefaced A Life of the Author. London, 1809. Reprinted by Benjamin Bloom, Bronx, New York.
Kelly, Ian. Mr Foote's Other Leg: Comedy, tragedy and murder in Georgian London, 2012. Picador; later adapted as a play under the same title
Notes
References
Davison, Peter. Samuel Foote. in Pickering, David, ed. International Dictionary of Theatre. Vol. 3. New York, St. James Press. 1996.
Doran, Dr. Annals of the English Stage from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean. Vol. II. London, John C. Nimmo. 1888. Reprinted by AMS Press, New York. 1968.
Douglas, Howard. Samuel Foote. in Backscheider, Paula, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 89: Restoration and Eighteenth Century Dramatists, 3rd Series. Detroit, Gale Research. 1989.
Findlay, Robert. Charles Macklin. in Pickering, David, ed. International Dictionary of Theatre. Vol. 3. New York, St. James Press. 1996.
Foote, Samuel. The Dramatic Works of Samuel Foote, Esq.; to which is prefaced A Life of the Author. London, 1809. Reprinted by Benjamin Bloom, Bronx, New York.
Hartnoll, Phyllis. ed. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.
Holland, Peter. "Samuel Foote." in Banham, Martin. ed. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Melville, Lewis (pseud.) (ed.) The Trial of the Duchess of Kingston ("The Notable British Trial Series) (New York: John Day & Co., 1928), 328p., illus. See the introduction pages 24–29.
Murphy, Mary C. and updated by Gerald S. Argetsinger. "Samuel Foote." in Rollyson, Carl and Frank N. Magill ed. Critical Survey of Drama, 2nd Revised Edition, Vol. 2. Pasadena, CA, Salem Press, 2003.
Parry, [His Honor Judge] Edward Abbott Vagabonds All (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), 264 p., illus. See "Chapter VIII: Samuel Foote, The Player of Interludes", pp. 158–183.
Thomson, Peter. "Haymarket, Theatre Royal." in Banham, Martin. ed. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
External links
Samuel Foote at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
1720 births
1777 deaths
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%20flight
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White flight
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White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They referred to the large-scale migration of people of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. The term has more recently been applied to other migrations by whites, from older, inner suburbs to rural areas, as well as from the U.S. Northeast and Midwest to the milder climate in the Southeast and Southwest. The term 'white flight' has also been used for large-scale post-colonial emigration of whites from Africa, or parts of that continent, driven by levels of violent crime and anti-colonial or anti-white state policies.
Migration of middle-class white populations was observed during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s out of cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Oakland, although racial segregation of public schools had ended there long before the Supreme Court of the United States' decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In the 1970s, attempts to achieve effective desegregation (or "integration") by means of busing in some areas led to more families' moving out of former areas. More generally, some historians suggest that white flight occurred in response to population pressures, both from the large migration of blacks from the rural Southern United States to urban cities of the Northern United States and the Western United States in the Great Migration and the waves of new immigrants from around the world. However, some historians have challenged the phrase "white flight" as a misnomer whose use should be reconsidered. In her study of West Side in Chicago during the post-war era, historian Amanda Seligman argues that the phrase misleadingly suggests that whites immediately departed when blacks moved into the neighborhood, when in fact, many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics. Leah Boustan, Professor of Economics at Princeton, attributes white flight both to racism and economic reasons.
The business practices of redlining, mortgage discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants contributed to the overcrowding and physical deterioration of areas with large minority populations. Such conditions are considered to have contributed to the emigration of other populations. The limited facilities for banking and insurance, due to a perceived lack of profitability, and other social services, and extra fees meant to hedge against perceived profit issues, increased their cost to residents in predominantly non-white suburbs and city neighborhoods. According to the environmental geographer Laura Pulido, the historical processes of suburbanization and urban decentralization contribute to contemporary environmental racism.
History
In 1870, The Nation covered the large-scale migrations of white Americans; "The report of the Emigration Commissioners of Louisiana, for the past year, estimates the white exodus from the Southern Atlantic States, Alabama, and Mississippi, to the trans-Mississippi regions, at scores of thousands". By 1888, with rhetoric typical of the time, Walter Thomas Mills's The Statesman publication predicted:
Social and political equality and the political supremacy of the negro element in any southern state must lead to one of three things: A white exodus, a war of races, or the destruction of representative institutions, as in the District of Columbia.
An 1894 biography of William Lloyd Garrison reveals the abolitionist's perception of the pre-Civil War tension and how "the shadows of the impending civil disruption, had brought about a white exodus" of Northerners to Southern states such as Georgia.
In the years leading up to World War I, the newspapers in the Union of South Africa were reporting on the "spectre of white flight", in particular due to Afrikaners travelling to the Port of Durban in search of ships for Britain and Australia.
Academic research
In 1958, political scientist Morton Grodzins identified that "once the proportion of non-whites exceeds the limits of the neighborhood’s tolerance for interracial living, whites move out." Grodzins termed this phenomenon the tipping point in the study of white flight.
In 2004, a study of UK census figures at the London School of Economics demonstrated evidence of white flight, resulting in ethnic minorities in inner-city areas becoming increasingly isolated from the ethnic White British population. The study, which examined the white population in London, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, and Greater Manchester between 1991 and 2001, also concluded that white population losses were largest in areas with the highest ethnic minority populations.
In 2018, research at Indiana University showed that between 2000 and 2010 in the US, of a sample size of 27,891 Census tracts, 3,252 experienced "white flight". The examined areas had "an average magnitude loss of 40 percent of the original white population." Published in Social Science Research, the study found "relative to poorer neighborhoods, white flight becomes systematically more likely in middle-class neighborhoods at higher thresholds of black, Hispanic, and Asian population presence."
Checkerboard and tipping models
In studies in the 1980s and 1990s, blacks said they were willing to live in neighborhoods with 50/50 ethnic composition. Whites were also willing to live in integrated neighborhoods, but preferred proportions of more whites. Despite this willingness to live in integrated neighborhoods, the majority still live in largely segregated neighborhoods, which have continued to form.
In 1969, Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling published "Models of Segregation", a paper in which he demonstrated through a "checkerboard model" and mathematical analysis, that even when every agent prefers to live in a mixed-race neighborhood, almost complete segregation of neighborhoods emerges as individual decisions accumulate. In his "tipping model", he showed that members of an ethnic group do not move out of a neighborhood as long as the proportion of other ethnic groups is relatively low, but if a critical level of other ethnicities is exceeded, the original residents may make rapid decisions and take action to leave. This tipping point is viewed as simply the end-result of a domino effect originating when the threshold of the majority ethnicity members with the highest sensitivity to sameness is exceeded. If these people leave and are either not replaced or replaced by other ethnicities, then this in turn raises the level of mixing of neighbors, exceeding the departure threshold for additional people.
Africa
South Africa
About 800,000 out of an earlier total population of 5.2 million whites left post-apartheid South Africa after 1995, according to a 2009 report in Newsweek. The country has suffered a high rate of violent crime, a primary stated reason for emigration. Other causes cited in the Newsweek report include attacks against white farmers, concern about being excluded by affirmative action programmes, political instability and worries about corruption. Many of those who leave are highly educated, resulting in skills shortages. Some observers fear the long-term consequences, as South Africa's labor policies make it difficult to attract skilled immigrants. In the global economy, some professionals and skilled people have been attracted to work in the U.S. and European nations.
Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia)
Until 1980, the unrecognised Republic of Rhodesia held a well-publicised image as being one of two nations in sub-Saharan Africa where a white minority of European descent and culture held political, economic, and social control over a preponderantly black African majority. Nevertheless, unlike white South Africans, a significant percentage of white Rhodesians represented recent immigrants from Europe. After World War II, there was a substantial influx of Europeans migrating into the region (formerly known as Southern Rhodesia), including former residents of India, Pakistan, and other parts of Africa. Also represented were working-class emigrants responding to economic opportunities. In 1969, only 41% of Rhodesia's white community were natural-born citizens, or 93,600 people. The remainder were naturalised European and South African citizens or expatriates, with many holding dual citizenship.
During the Rhodesian Bush War, almost the entire white male population between eighteen and fifty-eight was affected by various military commitments, and individuals spent up to five or six months of the year on combat duty away from their normal occupations in the civil service, commerce, industry, or agriculture. These long periods of service in the field led to an increased emigration of men of military age. In November 1963, state media cited the chief reasons for emigration as uncertainty about the future, economic decline due to embargo and war, and the heavy commitments of national service, which was described as "the overriding factor causing people to leave". Of the male emigrants in 1976 about half fell into the 15 to 39 age bracket. Between 1960 and 1976 160,182 whites immigrated, while 157,724 departed. This dynamic turnover rate led to depressions in the property market, a slump in the construction industry, and a decline in retail sales. The number of white Rhodesians peaked in 1975 at 278,000, and rapidly declined as the bush war intensified. In 1976, around 14,000 whites left the country, marking the first year since Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 that more whites had left the country than arrived, with most leaving for South Africa. This became known as the 'chicken run', the earliest use of which was recorded the following year, often by Rhodesians who remained to contemptuously describe those who had left. Other phrases such as 'taking the gap' or 'gapping it' were also used. As the outward flow increased, the phrase 'owl run' also came into use, as leaving the country was deemed by many to be a wise choice. Disfavour with the biracial Zimbabwe Rhodesia administration in 1979 also contributed to a mass exodus.
The establishment of the Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980 sounded the death knell for white political power, and ushered in a new era of black majority rule. White emigration peaked between 1980 and 1982 at 53,000 persons, with the breakdown of law and order, an increase in crime in the rural areas, and the provocative attitude of Zimbabwean officials being cited as the main causes. Political conditions typically had a greater impact on the decision to migrate among white than black professionals. Between 1982 and 2000 Zimbabwe registered a net loss of 100,000 whites, or an average of 5,000 departures per year. A second wave of white emigration was sparked by President Robert Mugabe's violent land reform programme after 2000. Popular destinations included South Africa and Australia, which emigrants perceived to be geographically, culturally, or sociopolitically similar to their home country.
From a strictly economic point of view, the departure figures were not as significant as the loss of the skills of those leaving. A disproportionate number of white Zimbabwean emigrants were well educated and highly skilled. Among those living in the United States, for example, 53.7% had a bachelor's degree, while only 2% had not completed secondary school. Most (52.4%) had occupied technical or supervisory positions of critical importance to the modern sector of the economy. Inasmuch as black workers did not begin making large inroads into apprenticeships and other training programs until the 1970s, few were in a position to replace their white colleagues in the 1980s.
Europe
Denmark
A study of school choice in Copenhagen found that an immigrant proportion of below 35% in the local schools did not affect parental choice of schools. If the percentage of immigrant children rose above this level, white Danes are far more likely to choose other schools. Immigrants who speak Danish at home also opt out. Other immigrants, often more recent ones, stay with local schools.
Finland
In Finland, white flight has been observed in districts where the share of non-Finnish population is 20% or above. In Greater Helsinki region, there are more than 30 such districts. Those include e.g. Kallahti in Helsinki, Suvela in Espoo, and Länsimäki in Vantaa. Outside the Greater Helsinki region, the phenomenon has been witnessed at least in Varissuo district of Turku.
Ireland
A 2007 government report stated that immigration in Dublin has caused "dramatic" white flight from elementary schools in a studied area (Dublin 15). 27% of residents were foreign-born immigrants. The report stated that Dublin was risking creating immigrant-dominated banlieues, on the outskirts of a city, similar to such areas in France. The immigrants in the area included Eastern Europeans (such as those from Poland), Asians, and Africans (mainly from Nigeria).
Norway
White flight in Norway has increased since the 1970s, with the immigration of non-Scandinavians from (in numerical order, starting with the largest): Poland, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Vietnam, Iran, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, the former Yugoslavia, Thailand, Afghanistan, and Lithuania. By June 2009, more than 40% of Oslo schools had an immigrant majority, with some schools having a 97% immigrant share. Schools in Oslo are increasingly divided by ethnicity. For instance, in the Groruddalen (Grorud valley), four boroughs which currently have a population of around 165,000 saw the ethnic Norwegian population decrease by 1,500 in 2008, while the immigrant population increased by 1,600. In thirteen years, a total of 18,000 ethnic Norwegians have moved from the borough.
In January 2010, a news feature from Dagsrevyen on the public Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation said, "Oslo has become a racially divided city. In some city districts the racial segregation starts already in kindergarten." Reporters said, "In the last years the brown schools have become browner, and the white schools whiter," a statement which caused a minor controversy.
Sweden
After the Second World War, immigration into Sweden occurred in three phases. The first was a direct result of the war, with refugees from concentration camps and surrounding countries in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. The second, prior to 1970, involved immigrant workers, mainly from Finland, Italy, Greece, and Yugoslavia. In the most recent phase, from the 1970s onwards, refugees immigrated from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, joined later by their relatives.
A study which mapped patterns of segregation and congregation of incoming population groups found that, if a majority group is reluctant to accept a minority influx, they may leave the district, avoid the district, or use tactics to keep the minority out. The minority group in turn react by either dispersing or congregating, avoiding certain districts in turn. Detailed analysis of data from the 1990s onwards indicates that the concentration of immigrants in certain city districts, such as Husby in Stockholm and Rosengård in Malmö, is in part due to an immigration influx, but primarily caused by white flight.
According to researcher Emma Neuman at Linnaeus University, the white flight phenomenon commences when the fraction of non-European immigrants reaches 3-4%, but European immigration shows no such effect. High income earners and the highly educated move out first, so the ethnic segregation also leads to class segregation.
In a study performed at Örebro University, mothers of young children were interviewed to study attitudes on Swedishness, multiculturalism and segregation. It concluded that while many expressed values such as ethnic diversity being an enriching factor, when, in practice, it came to choosing schools or choosing which district to move to, ensuring the children had access to a school with a robust Swedish majority was also a consideration. This was because they did not want their children to grow up in a school where they were a minority, and wanted them to be in a good environment for learning the Swedish language.
United Kingdom
For centuries, London was the destination for refugees and immigrants from continental Europe. Although all the immigrants were European, neighborhoods showed ethnic succession over time, as older residents moved out and new immigrants moved in, an early case of white flight (though the majority of London's population was still ethnic British).
In the 2001 census, the London boroughs of Newham and Brent were found to be the first areas to have non-white majorities. The 2011 census found that, for the first time, less than 50% of London's population were white British, and that in some areas of London white British people make up less than 20% of the population. A 2005 report stated that white migration within the UK is mainly from areas with a high ethnic minority population to those with predominantly white populations; white British families have moved out of London, as many immigrants have settled in the capital. The report's writers expressed concern about British social cohesion, and stated that different ethnic groups were living "parallel lives"; they were concerned that lack of contact between the groups could result in fear more readily exploited by extremists. In a study, the London School of Economics found similar results. A 2016 BBC documentary, Last Whites of the East End, covered the migration of whites from Newham to Essex. A 2019 Guardian article stated that "came to represent 'white flight' in the UK", and a 2013 Prospect magazine article gave Essex as an example of white flight.
Researcher Ludi Simpson has stated that the growth of ethnic minorities in Britain is due mostly to natural population growth (births outnumbering deaths), rather than immigration. Both white and non-white Britons who can do so economically are equally likely to leave mixed-race inner-city areas. In his opinion, these trends indicate counter urbanisation, rather than white flight.
North America
Canada
Toronto
In 2013, the Toronto Star examined the "identity crisis" of Brampton (a suburban city in the Greater Toronto Area), and referring to white Canadians, the "loss of more than 23,000 people, or 12 per cent, in a decade when the city’s population rose by 60 per cent". The paper reported University of Manitoba sociologist Jason Edgerton's analysis that "After you control for retirement, low birth rate, etc. some of the other (shrinkage) could be white flight — former mainstream communities not comfortable being the minority."
A 2016 article from The Globe and Mail, addressing the diversity of Brampton, acknowledged that while academics in Canada are sometimes reluctant to use the term of white flight, it reported that:
[...] the Brampton story reveals that we have our own version of white flight, and before we figure out how to manage hyper-diverse and increasingly polarized cities like Greater Toronto, we need to reflect on our own attitudes about race and ethnic diversity.
In 2018, The Guardian covered the white flight that had occurred in Brampton, and how the suburban city had been nicknamed "Bramladesh" and "Browntown", due to its "73% visible minority, with its largest ethnic group Indian". It was also reported how "the white population fell from 192,400 in 2001 to 169,230 in 2011, and now hovers around 151,000."
Vancouver
In 2014, the Vancouver Sun addressed the issue of white flight across Metropolitan Vancouver. Detailing the phenomenon of "unconscious segregation", the article points to large East Asian and South Asian enclaves within Greater Vancouver such as Burnaby, East Vancouver, Richmond, South Vancouver and Surrey. In contrast, other cities and neighbourhoods within the metropolitan region such as Tsawwassen, South Surrey, White Rock and Langley host equally large white enclaves.
United States
In the United States during the 1940s, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, low-cost mortgages through the G.I. Bill, and residential redlining enabled white families to abandon inner cities in favor of suburban living and prevent ethnic minorities from doing the same. The result was severe urban decay that, by the 1960s, resulted in crumbling "ghettos". Prior to national data available in the 1950 US census, a migration pattern of disproportionate numbers of whites moving from cities to suburban communities was easily dismissed as merely anecdotal. Because American urban populations were still substantially growing, a relative decrease in one racial or ethnic component eluded scientific proof to the satisfaction of policy makers. In essence, data on urban population change had not been separated into what are now familiarly identified its "components." The first data set potentially capable of proving "white flight" was the 1950 census. But original processing of this data, on older-style tabulation machines by the US Census Bureau, failed to attain any approved level of statistical proof. It was rigorous reprocessing of the same raw data on a UNIVAC I, led by Donald J. Bogue of the Scripps Foundation and Emerson Seim of the University of Chicago, that scientifically established the reality of white flight.
It was not simply a more powerful calculating instrument that placed the reality of white flight beyond a high hurdle of proof seemingly required for policy makers to consider taking action. Also instrumental were new statistical methods developed by Emerson Seim for disentangling deceptive counter-effects that had resulted when numerous cities reacted to departures of a wealthier tax base by annexation. In other words, central cities had been bringing back their new suburbs, such that families that had departed from inner cities were not even being counted as having moved from the cities.
During the later 20th century, industrial restructuring led to major losses of jobs, leaving formerly middle-class working populations suffering poverty, with some unable to move away and seek employment elsewhere. Real estate prices often fall in areas of economic erosion, allowing persons with lower income to establish homes in such areas. Since the 1960s and changed immigration laws, the United States has received immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, Asia, and Africa. Immigration has changed the demographics of both cities and suburbs, and the US has become a largely suburban nation, with the suburbs becoming more diverse. In addition, Latinos, the fastest growing minority group in the US, began to migrate away from traditional entry cities and to cities in the Southwest, such as Albuquerque, Phoenix and Tucson. In 2006, the increased number of Latinos had made whites a minority group in some western cities.
Catalysts
Legal exclusion
In the 1930s, states outside the South (where racial segregation was legal) practiced unofficial segregation via exclusionary covenants in title deeds and real estate neighborhood redlining – explicit, legally sanctioned racial discrimination in real property ownership and lending practices. Blacks were effectively barred from pursuing homeownership, even when they were able to afford it. Suburban expansion was reserved for middle-class and working-class white people, facilitated by their increased wages incurred by the war effort and by subsequent federally guaranteed mortgages (VA, FHA, HOLC) available only to whites to buy new houses, such as those created by the Federal Housing Administration.
Roads
After World War II, aided by the construction of the Interstate Highway System, many white Americans began leaving industrial cities for new housing in suburbs. The roads served to transport suburbanites to their city jobs, facilitating the development of suburbs, and shifting the tax base away from the city. This may have exacerbated urban decay. In some cases, such as in the Southern United States, local governments used highway road constructions to deliberately divide and isolate black neighborhoods from goods and services, often within industrial corridors. In Birmingham, Alabama, the local government used the highway system to perpetuate the racial residence-boundaries the city established with a 1926 racial zoning law. Constructing interstate highways through majority-black neighborhoods eventually reduced the populations to the poorest proportion of people financially unable to leave their destroyed community.
Blockbusting
The real estate business practice of "blockbusting" was a for-profit catalyst for white flight, and a means to control non-white migration. By subterfuge, real estate agents would facilitate black people buying a house in a white neighborhood, either by buying the house themselves, or via a white proxy buyer, and then re-selling it to the black family. The remaining white inhabitants (alarmed by real estate agents and the local news media), fearing devalued residential property, would quickly sell, usually at a loss. The realtors profited from these en masse sales and the ability to resell to the incoming black families, through arbitrage and the sales commissions from both groups. By such tactics, the racial composition of a neighborhood population was often changed completely in a few years.
Association with urban decay
Urban decay is the sociological process whereby a city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. Its characteristics are depopulation, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment (and thus poverty), fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape. White flight contributed to the draining of cities' tax bases when middle-class people left. Abandoned properties attracted criminals and street gangs, contributing to crime.
In the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay was associated with Western cities, especially in North America and parts of Europe. In that time, major structural changes in global economies, transportation, and government policy created the economic, then social, conditions resulting in urban decay.
White flight in North America started to reverse in the 1990s, when the rich suburbanites returned to cities, gentrifying the decayed urban neighborhoods.
Government-aided white flight
New municipalities were established beyond the abandoned city's jurisdiction to avoid the legacy costs of maintaining city infrastructures; instead new governments spent taxes to establish suburban infrastructures. The federal government contributed to white flight and the early decay of non-white city neighborhoods by withholding maintenance capital mortgages, thus making it difficult for the communities to either retain or attract middle-class residents.
The new suburban communities limited the emigration of poor and non-white residents from the city by restrictive zoning; thus, few lower-middle-class people could afford a house in the suburbs. Many all-white suburbs were eventually annexed to the cities their residents had left. For instance, Milwaukee, Wisconsin partially annexed towns such as Granville; the (then) mayor, Frank P. Zeidler, complained about the socially destructive "Iron Ring" of new municipalities incorporated in the post–World War II decade. Analogously, semi-rural communities, such as Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, and Franklin, formally incorporated as discrete entities to escape urban annexation. Wisconsin state law had allowed Milwaukee's annexation of such rural and suburban regions that did not qualify for discrete incorporation per the legal incorporation standards.
Desegregation of schools
In some areas, the post–World War II racial desegregation of the public schools catalyzed white flight. In 1954, the US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ordered the de jure termination of the "separate, but equal" legal racism established with the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case in the 19th century. It declared that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Many southern jurisdictions mounted massive resistance to the policy. In some cases, white parents withdrew their children from public schools and established private religious schools instead. These schools, termed segregation academies, sprung up in the American South between the late 1950s and mid-1970s and allowed parents to prevent their children from being enrolled in racially mixed schools.
Upon desegregation in 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, the Clifton Park Junior High School had 2,023 white students and 34 black students; ten years later, it had twelve white students and 2,037 black students. In northwest Baltimore, Garrison Junior High School's student body declined from 2,504 whites and twelve blacks to 297 whites and 1,263 blacks in that period. At the same time, the city's working class population declined because of the loss of industrial jobs as heavy industry restructured.
In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation busing of poor black students to suburban white schools, and suburban white students to the city to try to integrate student populations. In Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the dissenting Justice William Douglas observed, "The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer." Likewise, in 1977, the Federal decision in Penick v. The Columbus Board of Education (1977) accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio. Although the racial desegregation of schools affected only public school districts, the most vehement opponents of racial desegregation have sometimes been whites whose children attended private schools.
A secondary, non-geographic consequence of school desegregation and busing was "cultural" white flight: withdrawing white children from the mixed-race public school system and sending them to private schools unaffected by US federal integration laws. In 1970, when the United States District Court for the Central District of California ordered the Pasadena Unified School District desegregated, the proportion of white students (54%) reflected the school district's proportion of whites (53%). Once the federally ordered school desegregation began, whites who could afford private schools withdrew their children from the racially diverse Pasadena public school system. By 2004, Pasadena had 63 private schools educating some 33% of schoolchildren, while white students made up only 16% of the public school populace. The Pasadena Unified School District superintendent characterized public schools as "like the bogey-man" to whites. He implemented policies to attract white parents to the racially diverse Pasadena public school district.
Crime
Studies suggest that rising crime rates were one of the reasons that white households left cities for suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. Samuel Kye (2018) cites several studies that identified "factors such as crime and neighborhood deterioration, rather than racial prejudice, as more robust determinants of white flight". Ellen and O'Regan (2010) found that lower crime rates in city centers are associated with less out-migration to suburbs, but they did not find an effect on lower levels of crime attracting new households to the city.
Oceania
Australia
In Sydney, Australian-born minority (white and non-white) people in Fairfield and Canterbury fell by three percentage points, six percentage points in Auburn, and three percentage points in Strathfield between 1991 and 1996. Only in Liverpool, one of the more fast growth areas of Sydney, did both the Australia-born and overseas-born male population increase over the 1991-1996 period. However, the rate of growth of the overseas-born was far greater than that of the Australia-born, thus the sharp increase in Liverpool's population share from 43.5 per cent to 49 per cent by 1996. The Australia-born movers from the south-western suburbs relocated to Penrith in the northwest and Gosford and Wyong in the northeast.
According to the New South Wales Secondary Principals Council and the University of Western Sydney, public schools in that state have experienced white flight to private and Catholic schools wherever there is a large presence of Aboriginal and Middle Eastern students.
In 2018, NSW Labor Opposition leader Luke Foley talked about White flight, although he later apologised for the comments.
New Zealand
White flight has been observed in low socioeconomic decile schools in New Zealand. Data from the Ministry of Education found that 60,000 New Zealand European students attended low-decile schools (situated in the poorest areas) in 2000, and had fallen to half that number in 2010. The same data also found that high-decile schools (which are in the wealthiest areas) had a corresponding increase in New Zealand European students. The Ministry claimed demographic changes were behind the shifts, but teacher and principal associations have attributed white flight to racial and class stigmas of low-decile schools, which commonly have majority Maori and Pacific Islander rolls.
In one specific case, white flight has significantly affected Sunset Junior High School in a suburb of the city of Rotorua, with the total number of students reduced from 700 to 70 in the early 1980s. All but one of the 70 students are Maori. The area has a concentration of poor, low-skilled people, with struggling families, and many single mothers. Related to the social problems of the families, student educational achievement is low on the standard reading test.
See also
Auto-segregation
Black flight
Ethnic succession theory
Gentrification
Levittown
Multiculturalism
Planned shrinkage
Political demography
Residential segregation
Urban decay
White demographic decline
White genocide conspiracy theory
Xenophobia
References
Notes
Bibliography
Seligman, Amanda I. (2005), Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago's West Side Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Human migration
Internal migrations in the United States
Race and crime
Suburban culture
Urban decay in the United States
Urban studies and planning terminology
Flight
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral%20bleaching
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Coral bleaching
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Coral bleaching is the process when corals become white due to various stressors, such as changes in temperature, light, or nutrients. Bleaching occurs when coral polyps expel the zooxanthellae (dinoflagellates that are commonly referred to as algae) that live inside their tissue, causing the coral to turn white. The zooxanthellae are photosynthetic, and as the water temperature rises, they begin to produce reactive oxygen species. This is toxic to the coral, so the coral expels the zooxanthellae. Since the zooxanthellae produce the majority of coral colouration, the coral tissue becomes transparent, revealing the coral skeleton made of calcium carbonate. Most bleached corals appear bright white, but some are blue, yellow, or pink due to pigment proteins in the coral.
The leading cause of coral bleaching is rising ocean temperatures due to climate change. A temperature about 1 °C (or 2 °F) above average can cause bleaching. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, between 2014 and 2016, the longest recorded global bleaching events killed coral on an unprecedented scale. In 2016, bleaching of coral on the Great Barrier Reef killed between 29 and 50 percent of the reef's coral. In 2017, the bleaching extended into the central region of the reef. The average interval between bleaching events has halved between 1980 and 2016. The world's most bleaching-tolerant corals can be found in the southern Persian/Arabian Gulf. Some of these corals bleach only when water temperatures exceed ~35 °C.
Bleached corals continue to live, but they are more vulnerable to disease and starvation. Zooxanthellae provide up to 90 percent of the coral's energy, so corals are deprived of nutrients when zooxanthellae are expelled. Some corals recover if conditions return to normal, and some corals can feed themselves. However, the majority of coral without zooxanthellae starve.
Normally, coral polyps live in an endosymbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae. This relationship is crucial for the health of the coral and the reef, which provide shelter for approximately 25% of all marine life. In this relationship, the coral provides the zooxanthellae with shelter. In return, the zooxanthellae provide compounds that give energy to the coral through photosynthesis. This relationship has allowed coral to survive for at least 210 million years in nutrient-poor environments. Coral bleaching is caused by the breakdown of this relationship.
Process
The corals that form the great reef ecosystems of tropical seas depend upon a symbiotic relationship with algae-like single-celled flagellate protozoa called zooxanthellae that live within their tissues and give the coral its coloration. The zooxanthellae provide the coral with nutrients through photosynthesis, a crucial factor in the clear and nutrient-poor tropical waters. In exchange, the coral provides the zooxanthellae with the carbon dioxide and ammonium needed for photosynthesis. Negative environmental conditions, such as abnormally warm or cool temperatures, high light, and even some microbial diseases, can lead to the breakdown of the coral/zooxanthellae symbiosis. To ensure short-term survival, the coral-polyp then consumes or expels the zooxanthellae. This leads to a lighter or completely white appearance, hence the term "bleached". Under mild stress conditions, some corals may appear bright blue, pink, purple, or yellow instead of white, due to the continued or increased presence of the coral cells' intrinsic pigment molecules, a phenomenon known as "colourful bleaching". As the zooxanthellae provide up to 90 percent of the coral's energy needs through products of photosynthesis, after expelling, the coral may begin to starve.
Coral can survive short-term disturbances, but if the conditions that lead to the expulsion of the zooxanthellae persist, the coral's chances of survival diminish. In order to recover from bleaching, the zooxanthellae have to re-enter the tissues of the coral polyps and restart photosynthesis to sustain the coral as a whole and the ecosystem that depends on it.
If the coral polyps die of starvation after bleaching, they will decay. The hard coral species will then leave behind their calcium carbonate skeletons, which will be taken over by algae, effectively blocking coral regrowth. Eventually, the coral skeletons will erode, causing the reef structure to collapse.
Triggers
Coral bleaching may be caused by a number of factors. While localized triggers lead to localized bleaching, the large-scale coral bleaching events of recent years have been triggered by global warming. Under the increased carbon dioxide concentration expected in the 21st century, corals are expected to become increasingly rare on reef systems. Coral reefs located in warm, shallow water with low water flow have been more affected than reefs located in areas with higher water flow.
List of triggers
increased water temperature (marine heatwaves, most commonly due to global warming), or reduced water temperatures
increased solar irradiance (photosynthetically active radiation and ultraviolet light)
increased sedimentation (due to silt runoff)
bacterial infections
changes in salinity
herbicides
extreme low tide and exposure
cyanide fishing
elevated sea levels due to global warming (Watson)
mineral dust from African dust storms caused by drought
pollutants such as oxybenzone, butylparaben, octyl methoxycinnamate, or enzacamene: four common sunscreen ingredients that are nonbiodegradable and can wash off of skin
ocean acidification due to elevated levels of CO2 caused by air pollution
being exposed to oil or other chemical spills
changes in water chemistry, particularly an imbalance in the ratio of the macronutrients nitrate and phosphate
Trends due to climate change
The warming ocean surface waters can lead to bleaching of corals which can cause serious damage and coral death. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in 2022 found that: "Since the early 1980s, the frequency and severity of mass coral bleaching events have increased sharply worldwide". Coral reefs, as well as other shelf-sea ecosystems, such as rocky shores, kelp forests, seagrasses, and mangroves, have recently undergone mass mortalities from marine heatwaves. It is expected that many coral reefs will "undergo irreversible phase shifts due to marine heatwaves with global warming levels >1.5°C".
This problem was already identified in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the greatest threat to the world's reef systems.
The Great Barrier Reef experienced its first major bleaching event in 1998. Since then, bleaching events have increased in frequency, with three events occurring in the years 2016–2020. Bleaching is predicted to occur three times a decade on the Great Barrier Reef if warming is kept to 1.5°C, increasing every other year to 2°C.
With the increase of coral bleaching events worldwide, National Geographic noted in 2017, "In the past three years, 25 reefs—which comprise three-fourths of the world's reef systems—experienced severe bleaching events in what scientists concluded was the worst-ever sequence of bleachings to date."
Mass bleaching events
Elevated sea water temperatures are the main cause of mass bleaching events. Sixty major episodes of coral bleaching have occurred between 1979 and 1990, with the associated coral mortality affecting reefs in every part of the world. In 2016, the longest coral bleaching event was recorded. The longest and most destructive coral bleaching event was because of the El Niño that occurred from 2014 to 2017. During this time, over 70 percent of the coral reefs around the world have become damaged.
Factors that influence the outcome of a bleaching event include stress-resistance which reduces bleaching, tolerance to the absence of zooxanthellae, and how quickly new coral grows to replace the dead. Due to the patchy nature of bleaching, local climatic conditions such as shade or a stream of cooler water can reduce bleaching incidence. Coral and zooxanthellae health and genetics also influence bleaching.
Large coral colonies such as Porites are able to withstand extreme temperature shocks, while fragile branching corals such Acropora are far more susceptible to stress following a temperature change. Corals consistently exposed to low-stress levels may be more resistant to bleaching.
Scientists believe that the oldest known bleaching was that of the Late Devonian (Frasnian/Famennian), also triggered by the rise of sea surface temperatures. It resulted in the demise of the largest coral reefs in the Earth's history.
According to Clive Wilkinson of Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network of Townsville, Australia, in 1998 the mass bleaching event that occurred in the Indian Ocean region was due to the rising of sea temperatures by 2 °C coupled with the strong El Niño event in 1997–1998.
Impacts
Coral bleaching events and the subsequent loss of coral coverage often result in the decline of fish diversity. The loss of diversity and abundance in herbivorous fish particularly affect coral reef ecosystems. As mass bleaching events occur more frequently, fish populations will continue to homogenize. Smaller and more specialized fish species that fill particular ecological niches that are crucial for coral health are replaced by more generalized species. The loss of specialization likely contributes to the loss of resilience in coral reef ecosystems after bleaching events.
Economic and political impact
According to Brian Skoloff of The Christian Science Monitor, "If the reefs vanished, experts say, hunger, poverty and political instability could ensue." Since countless sea life depend on the reefs for shelter and protection from predators, the extinction of the reefs would ultimately create a domino effect that would trickle down to the many human societies that depend on those fish for food and livelihood. There has been a 44% decline over the last 20 years in the Florida Keys and up to 80% in the Caribbean alone.
Coral reefs provide various ecosystem services, one of which is being a natural fishery, as many frequently consumed commercial fish spawn or live out their juvenile lives in coral reefs around the tropics. Thus, reefs are a popular fishing site and are an important source of income for fishers, especially small, local fisheries. As coral reef habitat decreases due to bleaching, reef associated fish populations also decrease, which affects fishing opportunities. A model from one study by Speers et al. calculated direct losses to fisheries from decreased coral cover to be around $49–69 billion, if human societies continue to emit high levels of greenhouse gases. But, these losses could be reduced for a consumer surplus benefit of about $14–20 billion, if societies chose to emit a lower level of greenhouse gases instead. These economic losses also have important political implications, as they fall disproportionately on developing countries where the reefs are located, namely in Southeast Asia and around the Indian Ocean. It would cost more for countries in these areas to respond to coral reef loss as they would need to turn to different sources of income and food, in addition to losing other ecosystem services such as ecotourism. A study completed by Chen et al. suggested that the commercial value of reefs decreases by almost 4% every time coral cover decreases by 1% because of losses in ecotourism and other potential outdoor recreational activities.
Coral reefs also act as a protective barrier for coastlines by reducing wave impact, which lowers the damage from storms, erosions, and flooding. Countries that lose this natural protection will lose more money because of the increased susceptibility of storms. This indirect cost, combined with the lost revenue from tourism, will result in enormous economic effects.
Monitoring coral bleaching and reef sea surface temperature
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitors for bleaching "hot spots", areas where sea surface temperature rises 1 °C or more above the long-term monthly average. The "hot spots" are the locations in which thermal stress is measured, and with the development of Degree Heating Week (DHW), the coral reef's thermal stress is monitored. Global coral bleaching is being detected earlier due to the satellite remote sensing of the rise of sea temperatures. It is necessary to monitor the high temperatures because coral bleaching events are affecting coral reef reproduction and normal growth capacity, as well as it weakening corals, eventually leading to their mortality. This system detected the worldwide 1998 bleaching event, that corresponded to the 1997–98 El Niño event. Currently, 190 reef sites around the globe are monitored by the NOAA, and send alerts to research scientists and reef managers via the NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) website. By monitoring the warming of sea temperatures, the early warnings of coral bleaching alert reef managers to prepare for and draw awareness to future bleaching events. The first mass global bleaching events were recorded in 1998 and 2010, which was when the El Niño caused the ocean temperatures to rise and worsened the corals living conditions. The 2014–2017 El Niño was recorded to be the longest and most damaging to the corals, which harmed over 70% of our coral reefs. Over two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef have been reported to be bleached or dead.
To accurately monitoring the extent and evolution of bleaching events, scientist are using underwater photogrammetric techniques to create accurate orthophoto of coral reefs transects and AI-assisted image segmentation with open source tools like TagLab to identify from these photos the health status of the corals.
Changes in ocean chemistry
Increasing ocean acidification due to rises in carbon dioxide levels exacerbates the bleaching effects of thermal stress. Acidification affects the corals' ability to create calcareous skeletons, essential to their survival. This is because ocean acidification decreases the amount of carbonate ion in the water, making it more difficult for corals to absorb the calcium carbonate they need for the skeleton. As a result, the resilience of reefs goes down, while it becomes easier for them to erode and dissolve. In addition, the increase in CO2 allows herbivore overfishing and nutrification to change coral-dominated ecosystems to algal-dominated ecosystems. A recent study from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future found that with the combination of acidification and temperature rises, the levels of CO2 could become too high for coral to survive in as little as 50 years.
Coral bleaching due to photoinhibition of zooxanthellae
Zooxanthellae are a type of dinoflagellate that live within the cytoplasm of many marine invertebrates. Members of the phylum Dinoflagellata, they are round microalgae that share a symbiotic relationship with their host. They are also part of the genus Symbiodinium and Kingdom Alveolata. These organisms are phytoplankton and therefore photosynthesize. The host organism harnesses the products of photosynthesis, i.e. oxygen, sugar, etc., and in exchange, the zooxanthellae are offered housing and protection, as well as carbon dioxide, phosphates, and other essential inorganic compounds that help them to survive and thrive. Zooxanthellae share 95% of the products of photosynthesis with their host coral. According to a study done by D.J. Smith et al., photoinhibition is a likely factor in coral bleaching. It also suggests that the hydrogen peroxide produced in zooxanthealle plays a role in signaling themselves to flee the corals. Photo-inhibition of Zooxanthellae can be caused by exposure to UV filters found in personal care products. In a study done by Zhong et al., Oxybenzone (BP-3) had the most negative effects on zooxanthellae health. The combination of temperature increase and presence of UV filters in the ocean has further decreased zooxanthellae health. The combination of UV filters and higher temperatures led to an additive effect on photo-inhibition and overall stress on coral species.
Infectious disease
Infectious bacteria of the species Vibrio shiloi are the bleaching agent of Oculina patagonica in the Mediterranean Sea, causing this effect by attacking the zooxanthellae. V. shiloi is infectious only during warm periods. Elevated temperature increases the virulence of V. shiloi, which then become able to adhere to a beta-galactoside-containing receptor in the surface mucus of the host coral. V. shiloi then penetrates the coral's epidermis, multiplies, and produces both heat-stable and heat-sensitive toxins, which affect zooxanthellae by inhibiting photosynthesis and causing lysis.
During the summer of 2003, coral reefs in the Mediterranean Sea appeared to gain resistance to the pathogen, and further infection was not observed. The main hypothesis for the emerged resistance is the presence of symbiotic communities of protective bacteria living in the corals. The bacterial species capable of lysing V. shiloi had not been identified as of 2011.
By region
Pacific Ocean
Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef along the coast of Australia experienced bleaching events in 1980, 1982, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2016, 2017 and 2022. Some locations suffered severe damage, with up to 90% mortality. The most widespread and intense events occurred in the summers of 1998 and 2002, with 42% and 54%, respectively, of reefs bleached to some extent, and 18% strongly bleached. However, coral losses on the reef between 1995 and 2009 were largely offset by growth of new corals. An overall analysis of coral loss found that coral populations on the Great Barrier Reef had declined by 50.7% from 1985 to 2012, but with only about 10% of that decline attributable to bleaching, and the remaining 90% caused about equally by tropical cyclones and by predation by crown-of-thorns starfishes.
A global mass coral bleaching has been occurring since 2014 because of the highest recorded temperatures plaguing oceans. These temperatures have caused the most severe and widespread coral bleaching ever recorded in the Great Barrier reef. The most severe bleaching in 2016 occurred near Port Douglas. In late November 2016, surveys of 62 reefs showed that long term heat stress from climate change caused a 29% loss of shallow water coral. The highest coral death and reef habitat loss was inshore and mid-shelf reefs around Cape Grenville and Princess Charlotte Bay.
The IPCC's moderate warming scenarios (B1 to A1T, 2 °C by 2100, IPCC, 2007, Table SPM.3, p. 13) forecast that corals on the Great Barrier Reef are very likely to regularly experience summer temperatures high enough to induce bleaching.
Hawaii
In 1996, Hawaii's first major coral bleaching occurred in Kaneohe Bay, followed by major bleaching events in the Northwest islands in 2002 and 2004. In 2014, biologists from the University of Queensland observed the first mass bleaching event, and attributed it to The Blob. In 2014 and 2015, a survey in Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve on Oahu found 47% of the corals suffering from coral bleaching and close to 10% of the corals dying. In 2014 and 2015, 56% of the coral reefs of the big island were affected by coral bleaching events. During the same period, 44% of the corals on west Maui were effected. On 24 January 2019, scientists with The Nature Conservancy found that the reefs had begun to stabilize nearly 4 years after the last bleaching event. According to the Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR), there was still a considerable amount of bleaching in 2019. On Oahu and Maui, up to 50% of the coral reefs were bleached. On the big island, roughly 40% of corals experienced bleaching in the Kona coast area. The DAR stated that the recent bleaching events have not been as bad as the 2014–2015 events. In 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the first-ever nationwide coral reef status report. The report stated that the northwestern and main Hawaiian islands were in "fair" shape, meaning the corals have been moderately impacted.
Hawaiian Sunscreen Policy In May 2018, Hawaii passed the bill "SB-2571", banning the vending of sunscreen containing chemicals deemed conducive of coral bleaching on the island's local reefs. The bill was signed in by David Ige, of the Democratic party. A chemical deemed toxic in SB-2571 is the 'oxybenzone' (also banned; octinoxate), a chemical that becomes toxic to coral when exposed to sunlight. Up to one-tenth of the approximated 14,000 tons of sunscreen polluting coral reef areas contains oxybenzone, putting almost half of all coral reefs in danger of being exposed. Coral reefs show increased rates of bleaching in both controlled and natural environments when exposed to high levels of oxybenzone, found in many commercial sunscreen products. Another study showed that over time, the presence of oxybenzone in water will decrease a reef's strength to face other bleaching events such as increasing water temperatures. SB-2571 banned all sunscreen products with the exception of prescription products. Hawaii is the first U.S. state to introduce this type of ban, which went into effect in January 2021.
Jarvis Island
Eight severe and two moderate bleaching events occurred between 1960 and 2016 in the coral community in Jarvis Island, with the 2015–16 bleaching displaying the unprecedented severity in the record.
Japan
According to the 2017 Japanese government report, almost 75% of Japan's largest coral reef in Okinawa has died from bleaching.
Indian Ocean
Coral reef provinces have been permanently damaged by warm sea temperatures, most severely in the Indian Ocean. Up to 90% of coral cover has been lost in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Tanzania and in the Seychelles during the massive 1997–98 bleaching event. The Indian Ocean in 1998 reported 20% of its coral had died and 80% was bleached. The shallow tropical areas of the Indian Ocean are already experiencing what are predicted to be worldwide ocean conditions in the future. Coral that has survived in the shallow areas of the Indian Ocean may be proper candidates for coral restoration efforts in other areas of the world because they are able to survive the extreme conditions of the ocean.
Maldives
The Maldives has over 20,000 km2 of reefs, of which more than 60% of the coral has suffered from bleaching in 2016.
Thailand
Thailand experienced a severe mass bleaching in 2010 which affected 70% of the coral in the Andaman Sea. Between 30% and 95% of the bleached coral died.
Indonesia
In 2017, there was a study done on two islands in Indonesia to see how their coral cover was. One of the places was the Melinjo Islands and the other was the Saktu Islands. On Saktu Island, the lifeform conditions were categorized as bad, with an average coral cover of 22.3%. In the Melinjo Islands, the lifeform conditions were categorized as bad, with an average coral cover of 22.2%.
Atlantic Ocean
United States
In South Florida, a 2016 survey of large corals from Key Biscayne to Fort Lauderdale found that about 66% of the corals were dead or reduced to less than half of their live tissue.
Belize
The first recorded mass bleaching event that took place in the Belize Barrier Reef was in 1998, where sea level temperatures reached up to from 10 August to 14 October. For a few days, Hurricane Mitch brought in stormy weather on 27 October but only reduced temperatures by 1 degree or less. During this time period, mass bleaching in the fore-reef and lagoon occurred. While some fore reef colonies suffered some damage, coral mortality in the lagoon was catastrophic.
The most prevalent coral in the reefs Belize in 1998 was the lettuce coral, Agaricia tenuifolia. On 22 and 23 October, surveys were conducted at two sites and the findings were devastating. Virtually all the living coral was bleached white and their skeletons indicated that they had died recently. At the lagoon floor, complete bleaching was evident among A. tenuifolia. Furthermore, surveys done in 1999 and 2000 showed a near total mortality of A. tenuifolia at all depths. Similar patterns occurred in other coral species as well. Measurements on water turbidity suggest that these mortalities were attributed to rising water temperatures rather than solar radiation.
Caribbean
Hard coral cover on reefs in the Caribbean have declined by an estimated 80%, from an average of 50% cover in the 1970s to only about 10% cover in the early 2000s. A 2013 study to follow up on a mass bleaching event in Tobago from 2010 showed that after only one year, the majority of the dominant species declined by about 62% while coral abundance declined by about 50%. However, between 2011 and 2013, coral cover increased for 10 of the 26 dominant species but declined for 5 other populations.
Other areas
Coral in the south Red Sea does not bleach despite summer water temperatures up to .
Coral bleaching in the Red Sea is more common in the northern section of the reefs; the southern part of the reef has been plagued by coral-eating starfish, dynamite fishing and human impacts on the environment. In 1988, there was a massive bleaching event that affected the reefs in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, though the southern reefs were more resilient and it affected them very little. Previously, it was thought that the northern reef suffers more from coral bleaching and shows a fast turnover of coral, while the southern reef was thought to not suffer from bleaching as harshly and show more consistency. However, new research shows that where the southern reef should be bigger and healthier than the northern, it was not. This is believed to be because of major disturbances in recent history from bleaching events, and coral-eating starfish.
In 2010, coral bleaching occurred in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, where the temperature rose 10 to 11 degrees. Certain taxa experienced 80% to 100% of their colonies bleaching, while some showed on average 20% of that taxa bleaching.
Coral adaptation
In 2010, researchers at Penn State discovered corals that were thriving while using an unusual species of symbiotic algae in the warm waters of the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean. Normal zooxanthellae cannot withstand temperatures as high as was there, so this finding was unexpected. This gives researchers hope that with rising temperatures due to global warming, coral reefs will develop tolerance for different species of symbiotic algae that are resistant to high temperature, and can live within the reefs.
In 2010, researchers from Stanford University also found corals around the Samoan Islands that experience a drastic temperature increase for about four hours a day during low tide. The corals do not bleach or die regardless of the high heat increase. Studies showed that the corals off the coast of Ofu Island near America Samoa have become trained to withstand the high temperatures. Researchers are now asking a new question: can we condition corals, that are not from this area, in this manner and slowly introduce them to higher temperatures for short periods of time and make them more resilient against rising ocean temperatures.
Certain mild bleaching events can cause coral to produce high concentrations of sun-screening pigments in order to shield themselves from further stress. Some of the pigments produced have pink, blue or purple hues, while others are strongly fluorescent. Production of these pigments by shallow-water corals is stimulated by blue light. When corals bleach, blue light inside the coral tissue increases greatly because it is no longer being absorbed by the photosynthetic pigments found inside the symbiotic algae, and is instead reflected by the white coral skeleton. This causes an increase in the production of the sun-screening pigments, making the bleached corals appear very colourful instead of white – a phenomenon sometimes called 'colourful coral bleaching'.
Increased sea surface temperature leads to the thinning of the epidermis and apoptosis of gastrodermis cells in the host coral. The reduction in apoptosis and gastrodermis is seen via epithelium, leading to up to a 50% loss in the concentration of symbionts over a short period of time. Under conditions of high temperature or increased light exposure, the coral will exhibit a stress response that includes producing reactive oxygen species, the accumulation of this if not removed by antioxidant systems will lead to the death of the coral. Studies testing the structures of coral under heat stressed environments show that the thickness of the coral itself greatly decreases under heat stress compared to the control. With the death of the zooxanthellae in the heat stressed events, the coral must find new sources to gather fixed carbon to generate energy, species of coral that can increase their carnivorous tendencies have been found to have an increased likelihood of recovering from bleaching events.
After the zooxanthellae leaves the coral, the coral structures are often taken over by algae due to their ability to outcompete the zooxanthella since they need less resources to survive. There is little evidence of competition between zooxanthellae and algae, but in the absence of zooxanthellae the algae thrives on the coral structures. Once algae takes over and the coral can no longer sustain itself, the structures often begin to decay due to ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is the process by which carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean, this decreases the amounts of carbonate ions in the ocean, a necessary ion corals use to build their skeletons. Corals go through processes of decalcifying and calcifying during different times of the day and year due to temperature fluctuations. Under current IPCC emission pathway scenarios, corals tend to disintegrate, and the winter months with cooler temperatures will not serve ample time for the corals to reform.
Artificial assistance
In 2020, scientists reported to have evolved 10 clonal strains of a common coral microalgal endosymbionts at elevated temperatures for 4 years, increasing their thermal tolerance for climate resilience. Three of the strains increased the corals' bleaching tolerance after reintroduction into coral host larvae. Their strains and findings may potentially be relevant for the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change and further tests of algal strains in adult colonies across a range of coral species are planned.
In 2021, researchers demonstrated that probiotics can help coral reefs mitigate heat stress, indicating that such could make them more resilient to climate change and mitigate coral bleaching.
Recovery and macroalgal regime shifts
After corals experience a bleaching event to increased temperature stress some reefs are able to return to their original, pre-bleaching state. Reefs either recover from bleaching, where they are recolonized by zooxanthellae, or they experience a regime shift, where previously flourishing coral reefs are taken over by thick layers of macroalgae. This inhibits further coral growth because the algae produces antifouling compounds to deter settlement and competes with corals for space and light. As a result, macroalgae forms stable communities that make it difficult for corals to grow again. Reefs will then be more susceptible to other issues, such as declining water quality and removal of herbivore fish, because coral growth is weaker. Discovering what causes reefs to be resilient or recover from bleaching events is of primary importance because it helps inform conservation efforts and protect coral more effectively.
A primary subject of research regarding coral recovery pertains to the idea of super-corals, otherwise referred to as the corals that live and thrive in naturally warmer and more acidic regions and bodies of water. When transplanted to endangered or bleached reefs, their resilience and irradiance can equip the algae to live among the bleached corals. As Emma Camp, a National Geographic Explorer, marine bio-geochemist and an ambassador for Biodiversity for the charity IBEX Earth, suggests, the super-corals could have the capability to help with the damaged reefs long-term. While it can take 10 to 15 years to restore damaged and bleached coral reefs, the super-corals could have lasting impacts despite climate change as the oceans rise in temperature and gain more acidity. Bolstered by the research of Ruth Gates, Camp has looked into lower oxygen levels and the extreme, unexpected habitats that reefs can be found in across the globe.
Corals have shown to be resilient to short-term disturbances. Recovery has been shown in after storm disturbance and crown of thorns starfish invasions. Fish species tend to fare better following reef disturbance than coral species as corals show limited recovery and reef fish assemblages have shown little change as a result of short-term disturbances. In contrast, fish assemblages in reefs that experience bleaching exhibit potentially damaging changes. One study by Bellwood et al. notes that while species richness, diversity, and abundance did not change, fish assemblages contained more generalist species and less coral dependent species. Responses to coral bleaching are diverse between reef fish species, based on what resources are affected. Rising sea temperature and coral bleaching do not directly impact adult fish mortality, but there are many indirect consequences of both. Coral-associated fish populations tend to be in decline due to habitat loss; however, some herbivorous fish populations have seen a drastic increase due to the increase of algae colonization on dead coral. Studies note that better methods are needed to measure the effects of disturbance on the resilience of corals.
Until recently, the factors mediating the recovery of coral reefs from bleaching were not well studied. Research by Graham et al. (2015) studied 21 reefs around Seychelles in the Indo-Pacific in order to document the long-term effects of coral bleaching. After the loss of more than 90% of corals due to bleaching in 1998 around 50% of the reefs recovered and roughly 40% of the reefs experienced regime shifts to macroalgae dominated compositions. After an assessment of factors influencing the probability of recovery, the study identified five major factors: density of juvenile corals, initial structural complexity, water depth, biomass of herbivorous fishes, and nutrient conditions on the reef. Overall, resilience was seen most in coral reef systems that were structurally complex and in deeper water.
The ecological roles and functional groups of species also play a role in the recovery of regime shifting potential in reef systems. Coral reefs are affected by bioeroding, scraping, and grazing fish species. Bioeroding species remove dead corals, scraping species remove algae and sediment to further future growth, grazing species remove algae. The presence of each type of species can influence the ability for normal levels of coral recruitment which is an important part of coral recovery. Lowered numbers of grazing species after coral bleaching in the Caribbean has been likened to sea-urchin-dominated systems which do not undergo regime shifts to fleshy macroalgae dominated conditions.
There is always the possibility of unobservable changes, or cryptic losses or resilience, in a coral community's ability to perform ecological processes. These cryptic losses can result in unforeseen regime changes or ecological flips. More detailed methods for determining the health of coral reefs that take into account long-term changes to the coral ecosystems and better-informed conservation policies are necessary to protect coral reefs in the years to come.
Rebuilding coral reefs
Research is being done to help slow down the mortality rate of corals. Worldwide projects are being completed to help replenish and restore the coral reefs. Current coral restoration efforts include microfragmentation, coral farming, and relocation. The population of corals is rapidly declining, so scientists are doing experiments in coral growth and research tanks to help replenish their population. These research tanks mimic the coral reefs natural environment in the ocean. They are growing corals in these tanks to use for their experiments, so no more corals are being harmed or taken from the ocean. They are also transplanting the successfully grown corals from the research tanks and putting them into the areas of the ocean where the reefs are dying out. An experiment is being done in some coral growth and research tanks by Ruth Gates and Madelaine Van Oppen. They are trying to make "super corals" that can withstand some of the environmental factors that the corals are currently dying from. Van Oppen is also working on developing a type of algae that will have a symbiotic relationship with corals and can withstand water temperature fluctuations for long periods of time. This project may be helping to replenish our reefs, but the growing process of corals in research tanks is very time-consuming. It can take at least 10 years for the corals to fully grow and mature enough to where they will be able to breed. Following Ruth Gates' death in October 2018, her team at the Gates Coral Lab at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology continues her research on restoration efforts. Continuing research and restoration efforts at the Gates Coral Lab focuses on the effects of beneficial mutations, genetic variation, and relocation via human assistance on the resilience of coral reefs. As of 2019, the Gates Coral Lab team determined that large-scale restoration techniques would not be effective; localized efforts to restore coral reefs on an individual basis are tested to be more realistic and effective while research is conducted to determine the best ways to combat coral destruction on a mass scale.
Marine Protected Areas
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are sectioned-off areas of the ocean designated for protection from human activities such as fishing and un-managed tourism. According to NOAA, MPAs currently occupy 26% of U.S. waters. MPAs have been documented to improve and prevent the effects of coral bleaching in the United States. In 2018, research by coral scientists in the Caribbean concluded that areas of the ocean managed/protected by government had improved conditions that coral reefs were able to flourish in. MPAs defend ecosystems from overfishing, which allows multiple species of fish to thrive and deplete seaweed density, making it easier for young coral organisms to grow and increase in population/strength. From this study, a 62% increase in coral populations was recorded due to the protection of an MPA. Higher populations of young coral increase the longevity of a reef, as well as its ability to recover from extreme bleaching events.
Local impacts and solutions to coral bleaching
There are a number of stressors locally impacting coral bleaching, including sedimentation, continual support of urban development, land change, increased tourism, untreated sewage, and pollution. To illustrate, increased tourism is good for a country, however, it also comes with costs. An example is the Dominican Republic which relies heavily on its coral reefs to attract tourists resulting in increased structural damage, over fishing, nutrient pollution, and an increase in diseases to the coral reefs. As a result, the Dominican Republic has implemented a sustainable management plan for its land and marine areas to regulate ecotourism.
Economic value of coral reefs
Coral reefs provide shelter to an estimated quarter of all ocean species. Experts estimate that coral reef services are worth up to $1.2 million per hectare which translates to an average of $172 billion per year. The benefits of coral reefs include providing physical structures such as coastal shoreline protection, biotic services within and between ecosystems, biogeochemical services such as maintaining nitrogen levels in the ocean, climate records, and recreational and commercial (tourism) services. Coral reefs are one of the best marine ecosystems to use to as a food source. The coral reefs are also the perfect habitat for rare and economically important species of tropical fish, as they provide the perfect area for fish to breed and create nurseries in. If the populations of the fish and corals in the reef are high, then we can use the area as a place to gather food and things with medicinal properties, which also helps create jobs for people who can collect these specimens. The reefs also have some cultural importance in specific regions around the world.
Cost benefit analysis of reducing loss of coral reefs
In 2010, the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 created twenty distinct targets for sustainable development for post-2015. Target 10 indicates the goal of minimizing "anthropogenic pressures on coral reefs". Two programs were looked at, one that reduces coral reef loss by 50% that has a capital cost of $684 million and a recurrent cost of $81 million. The other program reduces coral reef loss by 80 percent and has a capital cost of $1.036 billion with recurring costs of $130 million. CBD acknowledges that they may be underestimating the costs and resources needed to achieve this target due to lack of relevant data but nonetheless, the cost-benefit analysis shows that the benefits outweigh the costs by a great enough amount for both programs (benefit cost ratio of 95.3 and 98.5) that "there is ample scope to increase outlays on coral protection and still achieve a benefit to cost ratio that is well over one".
See also
Effects of climate change on oceans
References
Sources
External links
Global information system on coral reefs.
Current global map of bleaching alert areas.
Coral reefs
Effects of climate change
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass%20clarinet
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Bass clarinet
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The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare (in contrast to the regular A clarinet, which is quite common in classical music). Bass clarinets regularly perform in orchestras, wind ensembles and concert bands, and occasionally in marching bands, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular.
Someone who plays a bass clarinet is called a bass clarinettist or a bass clarinetist.
Description
Most modern bass clarinets are straight-bodied, with a small upturned silver-colored metal bell and curved metal neck. Early examples varied in shape, some having a doubled body making them look similar to bassoons. The bass clarinet is fairly heavy and is supported either with a neck strap or an adjustable peg attached to its body. While Adolphe Sax imitated its upturned metal bell in his design of the larger saxophones, the two instruments are fundamentally different. Bass clarinet bodies are most often made of grenadilla (African Blackwood) or (more commonly for student-instruments) plastic resin, while saxophones are typically made of metal. (Metal bass clarinets exist, but are rare.) More significantly, all clarinets have a bore that is basically the same diameter along the body. This cylindrical bore differs from the saxophone's conical one and gives the clarinet its characteristic tone, causing it to overblow at the twelfth (octave + fifth) compared with the saxophone's octave.
A majority of modern bass clarinets, like other clarinets in the family, have the Boehm system of keys and fingering. However, bass clarinets are also manufactured in Germany with the Oehler system of keywork, which is most often known as the 'German" system in the US, because it is commonly used in Germany and Austria, as well as Eastern Europe and Turkey; bass clarinets produced with the Oehler system's predecessor, the Albert system, are still in use, particularly in these areas.
Most modern Boehm system bass clarinets have an "extension" key allowing them to play to the (written) E. This key was originally added to allow easy transposition of parts for the relatively rare bass clarinet pitched in A, but it now finds significant use in concert band and other literature. A significant difference between soprano and bass clarinet key work is a key pad played by the left-hand index finger with a vent that may be uncovered for certain high notes. This allows a form of "half-hole" fingering that allows notes in higher registers to be played on the instrument. In addition, older bass clarinets have two register keys, one for middle D and below, the other for middle E and higher. Newer models typically have an automatic register key mechanism, where a single left thumb key commands the two vent holes. Depending on whether the right hand ring finger (used in fingerings for middle D and below) is down or up, the lower or upper vent hole will open.
Many professional or advanced bass clarinet models extend down to a low C (sounding B, identical to the bassoon's lowest B), two octaves below written middle C. At concert pitch this note is the B below the second ledger line below the bass staff or B1 in scientific pitch notation. These three lowermost half-steps are played via additional keys operated by the right thumb, some of them often duplicated in the left- or right-hand little-finger key clusters. Overall, the instrument sounds an octave lower than the B soprano clarinet.
As with all wind instruments, the upper limit of the range depends on the quality of the instrument and skill of the clarinetist. According to Aber and Lerstad, who give fingerings up to written C7 (sounding B5), the highest note commonly encountered in modern solo literature is the E below that (sounding D5, the D above treble C). This gives the bass clarinet a usable range of up to four octaves, quite close to the range of the bassoon; indeed, many bass clarinetists perform works originally intended for bassoon or cello because of the plethora of literature for those two instruments and the scarcity of solo works for the bass clarinet.
Uses
The bass clarinet has been regularly used in scoring for orchestra and concert band since the mid-19th century, becoming more common during the middle and latter part of the 20th century. A bass clarinet is not always called for in orchestra music, but is almost always called for in concert band music. In recent years, the bass clarinet has also seen a growing repertoire of solo literature including compositions for the instrument alone, or accompanied by piano, orchestra, or other ensemble. It is also used in clarinet choirs, marching bands, and in film scoring, and has played a persistent role in jazz.
The bass clarinet has an appealing, rich, earthy and inky tone, quite distinct from other instruments in its range, drawing on and enhancing the qualities of the lower range of the soprano and alto instrument.
Musical compositions
Perhaps the earliest solo passages for bass clarinet—indeed, among the earliest parts for the instrument—occur in Mercadante's 1834 opera Emma d'Antiochia, in which a lengthy solo introduces Emma's scene in Act 2. (Mercadante actually specified a glicibarifono for this part.) Two years later, Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote an important solo for bass clarinet in Act 4 of his opera Les Huguenots.
French composer Hector Berlioz was one of the first of the Romantics to use the bass clarinet in his large-scale works such as the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, Op. 15 (1840), the Te Deum, Op. 22 (1849), and the opera Les Troyens, Op. 29 (1863). Later French composers to use the instrument included Maurice Ravel, who wrote virtuosic parts for the bass clarinet in his ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912), La valse (1920), and his orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (1924).
The operas of Richard Wagner also make extensive use of the bass clarinet, beginning with Tannhäuser (1845). He incorporated the instrument fully into the wind section as both a solo and supporting instrument. Wagner pioneered in exploiting the instrument's dark, somber tone to represent sadness and melancholy. Wagner was almost completely responsible for making the instrument a permanent member of the opera orchestra. The instrument plays an extensive role in Tristan und Isolde (1859), the operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876), and Parsifal (1882).
Also around this time, Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt wrote important parts for the instrument in his symphonic poems Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne (What One Hears on the Mountain), Tasso, and his Dante Symphony. Giuseppe Verdi followed suit, using it in Aida (1870), La forza del destino, Simon Boccanegra, Don Carlo and Falstaff. Following in Verdi's footsteps, Giacomo Puccini, composer of La Bohème, Tosca and Madame Butterfly, used the bass clarinet in all of his operas, beginning with Edgar in 1889. The Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote some prominent solos for the instrument in his last ballet, The Nutcracker.
The later Romantics used the bass clarinet frequently in their works. All of Gustav Mahler's symphonies include the instrument prominently, and often contain lengthy solos for the instrument, especially in his Symphony No. 6 in A minor. Richard Strauss wrote for the instrument in all of his symphonic poems except for Don Juan, and the instrument shared the spotlight with the tenor tuba in his 1898 tone poem, Don Quixote, Op. 35. Strauss wrote for the instrument as he did for the smaller clarinets, and the parts often include playing in very high registers, such as in Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30.
Composers of the Second Viennese School, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, often favored the instrument over the bassoon, the instrument's closest relative in terms of range. Russian composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev used the low concert C and B (equivalent to the bassoon's lowest two notes) in many of their compositions and an instrument with the extended range is necessary for works such as Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 4, 6, 7, 8, and 11, and Leoš Janáček's Sinfonietta. All of these works exploit the instrument's dark, powerful lower range.
Prokofiev wrote parts for the instrument in his Symphonies Nos. 2–7 and in his ballet Romeo and Juliet. Sergei Rachmaninoff used the instrument to great effect in his Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 and in his symphonic poem, Isle of The Dead. Igor Stravinsky also wrote complex parts for the instrument throughout his career, most prominently in his ballets The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913).
The bass clarinet has a solo at the opening of the third movement of Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite.
In the duet "A Boy Like That" from West Side Story (1957), Leonard Bernstein scored for "the inky sounds of three bass clarinets".
Early minimalist Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (1976) calls for two bass clarinets, featured prominently in the lower register. Used almost percussively, the effect of deep, staccato repetitions, played beneath a static rhythmic drone, is to create a feeling of slowly fluctuating cycles.
Many modern composers employ the bass along with the contra-alto and contrabass clarinets, such as Esa-Pekka Salonen in his Piano Concerto. A great amount of literature can be found in the wind ensemble, in which there is always a part for the instrument.
There are many important solo pieces, sonatas and concertos for bass clarinet, including:
Kalevi Aho Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra (2018)
Ann Callaway Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra (1985–1987)
Anders Eliasson Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra (1996)
Howard J. Buss "Lunar Vistas" for solo bass clarinet, "Three Euphonics for Solo Bass Clarinet," "Color'tudes" for bass clarinet and piano (2021)
Peter Maxwell Davies: The Seas of Kirk Swarf for bass clarinet and strings (2007).
Daniel Dorff: Flowers of St. Francis five scenes for bass clarinet
Daniel Dorff: In A Deep Funk dance set for bass clarinet (or contrabass or contralto)
Osvaldo Golijov: Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for Klezmer clarinetist (soprano clarinets, bass clarinet and/or basset horn) and string quartet, later arranged for solo clarinetist and string orchestra.
Rafael Leonardo Junchaya: Concerto Silvestre for bass clarinet and orchestra Op.14a. Premiered by Marco Antonio Mazzini and the GUSO Orchestra conducted by Steven Decraene in May 2009. First version for bass clarinet and string orchestra (Concertino Silvestre Op.14) premiered in Guatemala in July 2009.
Nigel Westlake: Invocations for bass clarinet and chamber orchestra
Jos Kunst (composer): Solo identity I (1972)
Guus Janssen: Met spoed (Urgent) for bass clarinet and piano
David Lang: Press Release for solo bass clarinet (1991) (For Evan Ziporyn)
Donald Martino: Triple Concerto for clarinet, bass clarinet, and contrabass clarinet.
Thea Musgrave: Concerto for bass clarinet and orchestra.
Jonathan Russell:
Bass clarinet concerto (2014)
Double bass-clarinet concerto.
Karlheinz Stockhausen:
In Freundschaft for unaccompanied bass clarinet,
Libra for bass clarinet and electronic music (a separable component of Sirius)
Harmonien for unaccompanied bass clarinet.
Benjamin Staern: Worried Souls: concerto for clarinet/bass clarinet and symphony orchestra (2012).
Johannes Maria Staud: Black Moon for solo bass clarinet
Ivana Loudova: Aulos for solo bass clarinet (can also be played as a duo with Claude Debussy's Syrinx for flute
Jeroen Speak: Epiesodos in a version for solo bass clarinet
James Gardner: Rendering for solo bass clarinet
Jörg Widmann: Kantate, bass clarinet solo in Praeludium
There is a rich and diverse chamber repertoire for bass clarinet and other instruments, including Leoš Janáček's suite Mládí (Youth), Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kontra-Punkte, Theo Loevendie's Plus One for flute, bass clarinet & piano and Beat Furrer's Gaspra for ensemble incl. bass clarinet.
Soloists and ensembles
It was not until the 1950s that classical performers began to adopt the bass clarinet as their primary instrument. The pioneer was the Czech performer Josef Horák (1931–2005), who is credited as having performed the first ever solo bass clarinet recital on March 23, 1955. This marked a turning point when the instrument first became thought of as a soloist's instrument.
Because the repertoire of solo music for the bass clarinet was quite small, most bass clarinet soloists specialize in new music, while also arranging works composed for other instruments from earlier eras (such as the Bach Cello Suites). Beginning with Horák, many players have commissioned works for the instrument, and consequently there now exists a repertoire of hundreds of solo works, many by prominent international composers such as Brian Ferneyhough and David Lang. In addition to Horák, other specialist performers include Henri Bok (Netherlands), his student Luís Afonso (Brazil), Dennis Smylie (United States), Tommie Lundberg (Sweden), Harry Sparnaay (Netherlands, who has worked with important composers such as Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, and Morton Feldman), Jason Alder, Evan Ziporyn (United States), and Michael Lowenstern (United States); the latter two are also composers.
In October 2005, the First World Bass Clarinet Convention was held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, at which Horák was the guest of honor and played in one of the many concerts given by the leading bass clarinetists from around the world (including all the aforementioned performers, as well as many others).
At least two professional bass-clarinet quartets exist. Rocco Parisi's Bass Clarinet Quartet is an Italian group whose repertoire includes transcriptions of music by Rossini, Paganini, and Piazzolla. Edmund Welles is the name of a bass clarinet quartet based in San Francisco. Their repertoire includes original "heavy chamber music" and transcriptions of madrigals, boogie-woogie tunes, and heavy metal songs. Two of the members of Edmund Welles also perform as a bass clarinet duo, Sqwonk.
In jazz
While the bass clarinet was seldom heard in early jazz compositions, a bass clarinet solo by Wilbur Sweatman can be heard on his 1924 recording "Battleship Kate" and a bass clarinet solo by Omer Simeon can be heard in the 1926 recording "Someday Sweetheart" by Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers. Additionally, Benny Goodman recorded with the instrument a few times early in his career.
Harry Carney, Duke Ellington's baritone saxophonist for 47 years, played bass clarinet in some of Ellington's arrangements, first recording with it on "Saddest Tale" in 1934. He was featured soloist on many Ellington recordings, including 27 titles on bass clarinet.
The first jazz album on which the leader solely played bass clarinet was Great Ideas of Western Mann (1957) by Herbie Mann, better known as a flautist. However, avant-garde musician Eric Dolphy (1928–1964) was the first major jazz soloist on the instrument, and established much of the vocabulary and technique used by later performers. He used the entire range of the instrument in his solos. Bennie Maupin emerged in the late 1960s as a primary player of the instrument, playing on Miles Davis's seminal record Bitches Brew as well as several records with Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi group. His style resembles Dolphy's in its use of advanced harmonies.
While the bass clarinet has been used often since Dolphy, it is typically used by a saxophonist or clarinetist as a second or third instrument; such musicians include David Murray, Marcus Miller, John Surman, John Gilmore, Bob Mintzer, John Coltrane (to whom Dolphy's mother left some of Dolphy's instruments including his bass clarinet), Brian Landrus, James Carter, Steve Buckley, Andy Biskin, Don Byron, Julian Siegel, Gunter Hampel, Michel Portal, Myron Walden, Yusef Lateef, Paul McCandless, Gianluigi Trovesi, and Chris Potter. Very few performers have used the instrument exclusively, but such performers include American Michael Pinz, Berlin-based bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, and French bass clarinetists Louis Sclavis and Denis Colin. Klezmer clarinetist Giora Feidman is known for idiosyncratic use of the bass clarinet on some klezmer and jazz tunes.
In rock
On The Beatles 1967 recording of George Harrison's "It's All Too Much", a prominent bass clarinet ostinato, scored and conducted by producer George Martin, is played by session musician Paul Harvey.
The Mascara Snake (Victor Hayden) was a member of Captain Beefheart's band in the late 1960s, playing bass clarinet on the 1969 album Trout Mask Replica.
On Steely Dan's 1980 song "Babylon Sisters", bass clarinets are played by George Marge and Walter Kane.
History
There are several instruments that can arguably be considered the first bass clarinet. Probably the earliest is a dulcian-shaped instrument in the Museum Carolino Augusteum in Salzburg. It is incomplete, lacking a crook or mouthpiece, and appears to date from the first half of the eighteenth century. Its wide cylindrical bore and its fingering suggest it was a chalumeau or clarinet in the bass range. Four anonymous bass chalumeaux or clarinets apparently dating from the eighteenth century and having from one to six keys also appear to be among the earliest examples, and one in particular has been suggested to date from before 1750. However, the authenticity of at least one of these instruments has been questioned.
In the Munich Stadtmuseum there is an instrument made c. 1770 by the Mayrhofers of Passau, who are often credited with the invention of the basset horn. It resembles early sickle-shaped basset horns, but has a larger bore and is longer, playing in low B. Whether this should be considered a low basset horn or a bass clarinet is a matter of opinion. In any case, no further work along this line is known to have been done.
A 1772 newspaper article describes an instrument called the , invented by G. Lott in Paris in 1772. This instrument has not survived and very little is known of it. The article has frequently been cited as the earliest record of a bass clarinet, but it has more recently been suggested that the basse-tube was in fact a basset horn.
The Klarinetten-Bass by Heinrich Grenser, c. 1793, had a folded, bassoon-like shape and an extended range, and was presumably intended to serve as a bassoon replacement in military bands. Desfontenelles of Lisieux built a bass clarinet in 1807 whose shape was similar to that of the later saxophone. It had thirteen keys, at a time when most soprano clarinets had fewer.
Additional designs were developed by many other makers, including Dumas of Sommières (who called his instrument a ) in 1807; Nicola Papalini, c. 1810 (an odd design, in the form of a serpentine series of curves, carved out of wood); George Catlin of Hartford, Connecticut () c. 1810; Sautermeister of Lyons () in 1812; Gottlieb Streitwolf in 1828; and Catterino Catterini () in the 1830s. These last four, and several others of the same period, had bassoon-like folded shapes, and most had extended ranges. A straight-bodied instrument without extended range was produced in 1832 by Isaac Dacosta and Auguste Buffet.
Finally, Adolphe Sax, a Belgian manufacturer of musical instruments, designed a straight-bodied form of the bass clarinet in 1838. Sax's expertise in acoustics led him to include such features as accurately-placed, large tone holes and a second register hole. His instrument achieved great success and became the basis for all bass clarinet designs since.
The instrument on which Anton Stadler first played Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's clarinet concerto was originally called a , but was not a bass clarinet in the modern sense; since the late eighteenth century this instrument has been called a basset clarinet.
Notation
Orchestral music for bass clarinet is written using one of four systems:
Music is occasionally encountered written for the bass clarinet in A, e.g., in Wagner operas, and Mahler or Rachmaninov symphonies. This music tends to be written in bass clef, although not invariably (e.g. Ravel's La Valse). Probably the first bass clarinet in A was made by Johann Adam Henkel, around 1850, and a number of greater and lesser known makers continued to produce examples over the next 70 years: e.g., Stengel, Moritz, Kruspe, et al. Both Buescher and Buffet made some instruments in the 1920s, but the bass in A was never produced in any great numbers, and after the 1920s very few instruments in A were made (although Franz Wurlitzer experimented with one in the 1940s).
Despite its relative rarity, important works by some prominent composers featured the bass clarinet in A, and in the early 20th century makers began regularly offering Bb bass clarinets equipped with an E extension key, so that bass parts in A could be transposed onto the Bb instrument.
In the 1970s there was a mild revival of interest in the instrument, and Selmer of Paris produced a few instruments pitched in A, with Boehm style keywork and keyed to low E (even though the original parts seldom descend below written low E). However, these instruments were expensive and many players were reluctant to haul around two heavy bass clarinets to rehearsals and performances, so few of the modern bass clarinets in A were sold. Selmer ceased production of the bass clarinet in A in the late 1980s, although examples are still available from factory stock. Today, very few players own a bass clarinet in A and these parts are generally played on the B instrument, transposing them down a semitone.
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Bass Clarinet Bibliography
Clarinet Fingering Charts
International Bass Clarinet Research Center
World Bass Clarinet Foundation
World Clarinet Alliance
Clarinet Fingering Chart
Bass Clarinet Quarter-Tone Fingering Chart
Clarinets
B-flat instruments
Bass (sound)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus%20Army
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Bonus Army
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The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – 17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.
Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment with compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.
On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt administration was defused in May with an offer of jobs with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) at Fort Hunt, Virginia, which most of the group accepted. Those who chose not to work for the CCC by the May 22 deadline were given transportation home. In 1936, Congress overrode President Roosevelt's veto and paid the veterans their bonus nine years early.
Origin of military bonuses
The practice of war-time military bonuses began in 1776, as payment for the difference between what a soldier earned and what he could have earned had he not enlisted. The practice derived from English legislation passed in the 1592–93 session of Parliament to provide medical care and maintenance for disabled veterans and bonuses for serving soldiers.
In August 1776, Congress adopted the first national pension law providing half pay for life for disabled veterans. Considerable pressure was applied to expand benefits to match the British system for serving soldiers and sailors but had little support from the colonial government until mass desertions at Valley Forge that threatened the existence of the Continental Army led George Washington to become a strong advocate.
In 1781, most of the Continental Army was demobilized. Two years later, hundreds of Pennsylvania war veterans marched on Philadelphia, then the nation's capital, surrounded the State House, where the U.S. Congress was in session, and demanded back pay. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, and several weeks later, the U.S. Army expelled the war veterans from Philadelphia. Congress progressively passed legislation from 1788 covering pensions and bonuses, eventually extending eligibility to widows in 1836.
Before World War I, the soldiers' military service bonus (adjusted for rank) was land and money; a Continental Army private received and $80.00 (2017: $1,968.51) at war's end, while a major general received . In 1855, Congress increased the land-grant minimum to , and reduced the eligibility requirements to fourteen days of military service or one battle; moreover, the bonus also applied to veterans of any Indian war. The provision of land eventually became a major political issue, particularly in Tennessee where almost 40% of arable land had been given to veterans as part of their bonus. By 1860, had been issued and lack of available arable land led to the program's abandonment and replacement with a cash-only system. Breaking with tradition, the veterans of the Spanish–American War did not receive a bonus and after World War I, that became a political matter when they received only a $60 bonus ($ in ). The American Legion, created in 1919, led a political movement for an additional bonus, although they took the sides of law enforcement against labor unions and were involved in attacks on Hoovervilles during the Great Depression.
On May 15, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed a bill granting bonuses to veterans of World War I, saying: "patriotism... bought and paid for is not patriotism." Congress overrode his veto a few days later, enacting the World War Adjusted Compensation Act. Each veteran was to receive a dollar for each day of domestic service, up to a maximum of $500 (), and $1.25 for each day of overseas service, up to a maximum of $625 ($ in ). Deducted from this was $60, for the $60 they received upon discharge. Amounts of $50 or less were immediately paid. All other amounts were issued as Certificates of Service maturing in 20 years.
There were 3,662,374 Adjusted Service Certificates issued, with a combined face value of $3.64 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ). Congress established a trust fund to receive 20 annual payments of $112 million that, with interest, would finance the 1945 disbursement of the $3.638 billion for the veterans. Meanwhile, veterans could borrow up to 22.5% of the certificate's face value from the fund; but in 1931, because of the Great Depression, Congress increased the maximum value of such loans to 50% of the certificate's face value. Although there was congressional support for the immediate redemption of the military service certificates, Hoover and Republican congressmen opposed such action and reasoned that the government would have to increase taxes to cover the costs of the payout and so any potential economic recovery would be slowed.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars continued to press the federal government to allow the early redemption of military service certificates.
The first march of the unemployed was Coxey's Army in 1894, when armies of men from various regions streamed to Washington as a "living petition" to demand that the federal government create jobs by investing in public infrastructure projects. In January 1932, a march of 25,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians, dubbed "Cox's Army", had marched on Washington, D.C., the largest demonstration to date in the nation's capital, setting a precedent for future marches by the unemployed.
Campsite
Most of the Bonus Army (Bonus Expeditionary Force or BEF) camped in a form of a "Hooverville" on the Anacostia Flats (now Section C of Anacostia Park), a swampy, muddy area away from the federal core of Washington. Other veterans lived much closer, in partially demolished buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Third Street SW. Although occupation of Anacostia Flats was against federal law, Glassford obtained permission off the record from his friend Major General Ulysses S. Grant III, Director of Public Buildings and Public Parks in the Capital, who promised to make no objection. The chosen site was located in the historically African American side of Anacostia; nearby were tennis courts and a baseball diamond, the latter of which was used by children of the camp. The War Department had refused a request by Senator James Hamilton Lewis to set up billets, so veterans, women and children lived in the shelters they built from materials dragged out of a junk pile nearby, which included old lumber, packing boxes, and scrap tin covered with roofs of thatched straw. The shack city was nicknamed Camp Marks, after the friendly Police Captain S.J. Marks.
Camp Marks was tightly controlled by the veterans, who laid out streets, built sanitation facilities, set up an internal police force and held daily parades. A vibrant community arose revolving around several key sections, including the religious tent, where marchers could be heard expressing forbearance, trust in God and gratitude for what they had compared to other victims of the Depression. Also popular was the Salvation Army lending library, where marchers wrote letters home in its makeshift post office (postage stamps were more prized than cigarettes, it was said). To live in the camps, veterans were required to register and to prove they had been honorably discharged or provided a bonus certificate, at which point a membership card would be issued. The Superintendent of the D.C. Police, Pelham D. Glassford, worked with camp leaders to supply the camp with food and supplies.
On June 15, 1932, the US House of Representatives passed the Wright Patman Bonus Bill (by a vote of 211–176) to move forward the date for World War I veterans to receive their cash bonus. Over 6,000 bonus marchers massed at the U.S. Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate voted on the Bonus Bill. The bill was defeated by a vote of 62–18.
Police shooting
On July 28, under prodding from President Herbert Hoover, the D.C. Commissioners ordered Pelham D. Glassford to clear their buildings, rather than letting the protesters drift away as he had previously recommended. When the veterans rioted, an officer (George Shinault) drew his revolver and shot at the veterans, two of whom, William Hushka and Eric Carlson, died later.
William Hushka (1895–1932) was an immigrant to the United States from Lithuania. When the US entered World War I in 1917, he sold his butcher shop in St. Louis, and joined the army. After the war, he lived in Chicago. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery a week after being shot and killed by police.
Eric Carlson (1894–1932) was a veteran from Oakland, California, who fought in the trenches of France in World War I. He was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
During a previous riot, the Commissioners asked the White House for federal troops. Hoover passed the request to Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, who told MacArthur to take action to disperse the protesters. Towards the late afternoon, cavalry, infantry, tanks and machine guns pushed the "Bonusers" out of Washington.
Reports on communist elements
An Army intelligence report claimed that the BEF intended to occupy the Capitol permanently and instigate fighting, as a signal for communist uprisings in all major cities. It also conjectured that at least part of the Marine Corps garrison in Washington would side with the revolutionaries, hence Marine units eight blocks from the Capitol were never called upon. The report of July 5, 1932, by Conrad H. Lanza in upstate New York was not declassified until 1991.
The Department of Justice released an investigative report on the Bonus Army in September 1932, noting that communists had attempted to involve themselves with the Bonus Army from the start, and had been arrested for various offenses during protests:
As soon as the bonus march was initiated, and as early as May, 1932, the Communist party undertook an organized campaign to foment the movement, and induced radicals to join the marchers to Washington. As early as the edition of May 31, 1932, the Daily Worker, a publication which is the central organ of the Communist party in the United States, urged worker veteran delegations to go to Washington on June 8th.
In 1932, Hoover stated that the bulk of Bonus Army members behaved reasonably and a minority of what he described as communists and career criminals were responsible for most of the unrest associated with the events: "I wish to state emphatically that the extraordinary proportion of criminal, Communist, and nonveteran elements amongst the marchers as shown by this report, should not be taken to reflect upon the many thousands of honest, law-abiding men who came to Washington with full right of presentation of their views to the Congress. This better element and their leaders acted at all times to restrain crime and violence, but after the adjournment of Congress a large portion of them returned to their homes and gradually these better elements lost control." In his 1952 memoir, Hoover stated that at least 900 of the Bonus Army were "ex-convicts and Communists."
In his memoir The Whole of Their Lives (1948) Benjamin Gitlow of the Communist Party USA reported that a number of communists had joined the Bonus Army during their trek across the nation, with the goal of recruiting people to the communist cause.
A 2009 Encyclopedia Britannica blog post asserted these would-be communist organizers were largely rejected by the Bonus Army marchers: "[T]here were communists present in the camps, led by John T. Pace from Michigan. But if Pace believed that Bonus Army was a ready-made revolutionary cadre, he was mistaken. The marchers routinely expelled avowed communists from the camps. They destroyed communist leaflets and other literature. And among their other slogans the veterans adopted a motto directed at the communists, 'Eyes front—not left!'"
Army intervention
At 1:40 pm, General Douglas MacArthur ordered General Perry Miles to assemble troops on the Ellipse immediately south of the White House. Within the hour the 3rd Cavalry led by George S. Patton, then a Major, crossed the Memorial Bridge, with the 12th Infantry arriving by steamer about an hour later. At 4 pm, Miles told MacArthur that the troops were ready, and MacArthur (like Eisenhower, by now in service uniform) said that Hoover wanted him to "be on hand as things progressed, so that he could issue necessary instructions on the ground" and "take the rap if there should be any unfavorable or critical repercussions."
At 4:45 pm, commanded by MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment, Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by five M1917 light tanks commanded by Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch. The Bonus Marchers, believing the troops were marching in their honor, cheered the troops until Patton ordered the cavalry to charge them, which prompted the spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"
After the cavalry charged, the infantry, with fixed bayonets and tear gas (adamsite, an arsenical vomiting agent) entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River to their largest camp, and Hoover ordered the assault stopped. MacArthur chose to ignore the president and ordered a new attack, claiming that the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow the US government. 55 veterans were injured and 135 arrested. A veteran's wife miscarried. When 12-week-old Bernard Meyer died in the hospital after being caught in the tear gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, and a hospital spokesman said the tear gas "didn't do it any good."
During the military operation, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th president of the United States, served as one of MacArthur's junior aides. Believing it wrong for the Army's highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there," he said later. "I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff." Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower wrote the Army's official incident report that endorsed MacArthur's conduct.
Although the troops were ready, Hoover twice sent instructions to MacArthur not to cross the Anacostia bridge that night, both of which were received. Shortly after 9 pm, MacArthur ordered Miles to cross the bridge and evict the Bonus Army from its encampment in Anacostia. This refusal to follow orders was claimed by MacArthur's assistant chief of staff George Van Horn Moseley. However, MacArthur's aide Dwight Eisenhower, Assistant Secretary of War for Air F. Trubee Davison, and Brigadier General Perry Miles, who commanded the ground forces, all disputed Moseley's claim. They said the two orders were never delivered to MacArthur and they blamed Moseley for refusing to deliver the orders to MacArthur for unknown reasons. The shacks in the Anacostia Camp were then set on fire, although who set them on fire is somewhat unclear.
Aftermath
Joe Angelo, a decorated hero from the war who had saved Patton's life during the Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 26, 1918, approached him the day after to sway him. Patton, however, dismissed him quickly. This episode was said to represent the proverbial essence of the Bonus Army, each man the face of each side: Angelo the dejected loyal soldier; Patton the unmoved government official unconcerned with past loyalties.
Though the Bonus Army incident did not derail the careers of the military officers involved, it proved politically disastrous for Hoover, and it is considered a contributing factor to his losing the 1932 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Police Superintendent Glassford was not pleased with the decision to have the Army intervene, believing that the police could have handled the situation. He soon resigned as superintendent.
MGM released the movie Gabriel Over the White House in March 1933, the month Roosevelt was sworn in as president. Produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures, it depicted a fictitious President Hammond who, in the film's opening scenes, refuses to deploy the military against a march of the unemployed and instead creates an "Army of Construction" to work on public works projects until the economy recovers. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt judged the movie's treatment of veterans superior to Hoover's.
During the presidential campaign of 1932, Roosevelt had opposed the veterans' bonus demands. A second bonus march planned for the following year in May by the "National Liaison Committee of Washington," disavowed by the previous year's bonus army leadership, demanded that the Federal government provide marchers housing and food during their stay in the capital. Despite his opposition to the marchers' demand for immediate payment of the bonus, Roosevelt greeted them quite differently than Hoover had done. The administration set up a special camp for the marchers at Fort Hunt, Virginia, providing forty field kitchens serving three meals a day, bus transportation to and from the capital, and entertainment in the form of military bands.
Administration officials, led by presidential confidant Louis Howe, tried to negotiate an end to the protest. Roosevelt arranged for his wife, Eleanor, to visit the site unaccompanied. She lunched with the veterans and listened to them perform songs. She reminisced about her memories of seeing troops off to World War I and welcoming them home. The most that she could offer was a promise of positions in the newly created Civilian Conservation Corps. One veteran commented, "Hoover sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife." In a press conference following her visit, the First Lady described her reception as courteous and praised the marchers, highlighting how comfortable she felt despite critics of the marchers who described them as communists and criminals.
On May 11, 1933, Roosevelt issued an executive order allowing the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the CCC, exempting them from the normal requirement that applicants be unmarried and under the age of 25. Congress, with Democrats holding majorities in both houses, passed the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act in 1936, authorizing the immediate payment of the $2 billion in World War I bonuses, and then overrode Roosevelt's veto of the measure. The House vote was 324 to 61, and the Senate vote was 76 to 19.
In literature
The shootings are depicted in Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Lacuna.
The Bonus Marchers are detailed in John Ross's novel Unintended Consequences (novel)
A fictionalized version of the Bonus March is depicted in the opening scenes of the 1995 movie In Pursuit of Honor
See also
Coxey's Army
Fry's Army
List of rallies and protest marches in Washington, D.C.
List of incidents of political violence in Washington, D.C.
On-to-Ottawa Trek by Canadian veterans, 1935
References
Sources
Burner, David. (1979). Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. .
Daniels, Roger. (1971). The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Depression. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing.
Dickson, Paul, and Thomas B. Allen. (2004). The Bonus Army: An American Epic. New York: Walker and Company. .
Dickson, Paul, and Thomas B. Allen. "Marching On History," in Smithsonian, February 2003
James, D. Clayton. (1970). The Years of MacArthur, Volume I, 1880–1941. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Laurie, Clayton D. and Ronald H. Cole. (1997). The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877–1945. Washington, DC: Center of Military History
Lisio, Donald J. (1974). The President and Protest: Hoover, Conspiracy, and the Bonus Riot. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press.
Smith, Richard Norton. (1984). An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover. New York: Simon & Schuster. .
Liebovich, Louis W. (1994). Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, and the U.S. News Media
Bennett, Michael J. (1999). When Dreams Come True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America
Perret, Geoffrey (1996). "MacArthur and the Marchers" in MHQ: the Quarterly Journal of Military History. Vol 8, No 2 American Historical Publication, Inc
Further reading
Morrow, Felix. (1932). The Bonus March. International Pamphlets No. 31. New York: International Publishers.
Ortiz, Stephen R. 2006. "Rethinking the Bonus March: Federal Bonus Policy, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Origins of a Protest Movement". Journal of Policy History. 18, no. 3: 275–303.
Rawl, Michael J. (2006). Anacostia Flats. Baltimore: Publish America. .
Smith, Gene. (1970). The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. New York: William Morrow and Company.
External links
The Bonus Army (EyeWitness to History)
Vets Owe Debt to WWI's "Bonus Army from military.com
FBI file on the Bonus Army
The Sad Tale of the Bonus Marchers
Memory: The Bonus Army March, Library of Congress
Paul Dickson & Thomas B. Allen on The Bonus Army: An American Epic, a lecture recorded at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library
1932 protests
1932 in Washington, D.C.
Aftermath of World War I in the United States
Conflicts in 1932
Great Depression in the United States
History of veterans' affairs in the United States
Political repression in the United States
Protest marches in Washington, D.C.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpeth%2C%20Northumberland
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Morpeth, Northumberland
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Morpeth is a historic market town in Northumberland, England, lying on the River Wansbeck. Nearby towns include Ashington and Bedlington. In the 2011 census, the population of Morpeth was given as 14,017, up from 13,833 in the 2001 census. The earliest evidence of settlement is believed to be from the Neolithic period, and some Roman artifacts have also been found.
The first written mention of the town is from 1080, when the de Merlay family was granted the barony of Morpeth. The meaning of the town's name is uncertain, but it may refer to its position on the road to Scotland and a murder which occurred on that road. The de Merlay family built two castles in the town in the late 11th century and the 13th century. The town was granted its coat of arms in 1552. By the mid-1700s it had become one of the main markets in England, having been granted a market charter in 1200, but the opening of the railways in the 1800s led the market to decline. The town's history is celebrated in the annual Northumbrian Gathering.
Morpeth is governed by Northumberland County Council and Morpeth Town Council. The town is split into three wards – North, Kirkhill and Stobhill – for the purposes of parish elections. In 2008 the town suffered a severe flood, which was repeated in 2012, resulting in the construction of new flood defences. Morpeth railway station is on the east coast line and a curve to the south of it has caused several rail crashes. Several sports teams compete in Morpeth, with Morpeth Town A.F.C. having been the winner of the FA Vase in 2016. The town hosted its own Olympics from 1873 to 1958. Two middle schools, a high school and seven first schools are situated in Morpeth, as well as several churches of Anglican, Roman Catholic, United Reformed and Methodist denominations. Morpeth's Carlisle Park, the recipient of several awards, contains one of the four floral clocks in England.
History
Morpeth was founded at a crossing point of the River Wansbeck. Remains from prehistory are scarce, but the earliest evidence of occupation found is a stone axe thought to be from the Neolithic period. There is a lack of evidence of activity during the Roman occupation of Britain, although there were probably settlements in the area at that time. The first written reference is from 1080 when William de Merlay was rewarded for his part in suppressing a rebellion in Northumbria with "the Barony of Morthpeth stretching from the Tyne to the Coquet". The name derives from Old English morð pæð and literally means "murder path"; writing in 1666, the antiquarian John Stainsby attributed this moniker to "the many robberies and murders in those parts committed".
The barony of Morpeth was granted to the de Merlay family in around 1080, and by 1095 a motte-and-bailey castle had been built by William de Merlay. It is uncertain whether there was any settlement at Morpeth at the time that the barony was created, and documents relating to the foundation of an abbey in 1137 refer to the "new town of Morpeth". Newminster Abbey, located on the outskirts of Morpeth, was founded in 1138 by William's son, Ranulf de Merlay, lord of Morpeth, and his wife, Juliana, daughter of Gospatric II, Earl of Lothian, as one of the first daughter houses of Fountains Abbey. King John granted a market charter for the town to Roger de Merlay in 1200. It became one of the main markets in Northern England by the mid-1700s and by the mid 18th century was one of the key cattle markets in England selling cattle driven by drovers over the border from Scotland; however, the opening of the railways made transport to Newcastle easier in the 19th century, and the market accordingly declined. The market is still held on Wednesdays.
The town was badly damaged by fire set by the barons in 1215 during the First Barons' War, in an attempt to block the military operations of King John. Whilst it is common report that the motte-and-bailey castle was burnt down by King John in 1216 and a new Morpeth Castle was built later in the 13th century by Ranulph de Merlay, to the south of Haw Hill, there is no firm evidence that King John destroyed the castle and an alternative narrative suggests that the second castle was in fact "completed by William de Merlay (the 2nd) in the year of his death" (). In the 13th century, a stone bridge was built over the Wansbeck in Morpeth, to the west of the current bridge, replacing the ford previously in use in Morpeth. For some months in 1515–16, Margaret Tudor (Henry VIII's sister) who was the Queen Consort of Scotland (James IV's widow), had laid ill in Morpeth Castle, having been brought there from Harbottle Castle. The only remains of the castle are the inner gatehouse, which was restored by the Landmark Trust, and parts of the ruined castle walls.
In 1540, Morpeth was described by the royal antiquary John Leland as "long and metely well-builded, with low houses" and "a far fairer town than Alnwick". During the 1543–51 war of the Rough Wooing, Morpeth was occupied by a garrison of Italian mercenaries, who "pestered such a little street standing in the highway" by killing deer and withholding payment for food. In 1552, William Hervey, Norroy King of Arms, granted the borough of Morpeth a coat of arms. The arms were the same as those granted to Roger de Merlay, but with the addition of a gold tower. In the letters patent, Hervey noted that he had included the arms of the "noble and valyaunt knyght ... for a p'petuall memory of his good will and benevolence towardes the said towne".
Morpeth was a borough by prescription, but received its first charter of confirmation from Charles II. The corporation it created was controlled by seven companies: the Merchant Tailors, the Tanners, the Fullers and Dyers, the Smiths, the Cordwainers, the Weavers and the Butchers. This remained the governing charter until the borough was reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. During the Second World War, RAF Morpeth, an air-gunnery training school, opened at nearby Tranwell.
The town and the county's history and culture are celebrated at the annual Northumbrian Gathering. The gathering is held over a weekend in mid-April and includes the Border Cavalcade and Pageant. The 50th gathering took place in 2017.
Governance
Morpeth has two tiers of local government.
The lower tier is Morpeth Town Council, which has 15 members. Morpeth is a civil parish with the status of a town. For the purposes of parish elections the town is divided into three wards: North, Kirkhill and Stobhill, each returning five town councillors. Each ward also elects one County Councillor. In May 2021, the political make up of the Town Council was ten Conservatives, two Liberal Democrats, two Green and one Labour member.
The upper tier of local government is Northumberland County Council, which meets at County Hall in Morpeth. Since April 2009 the county council has been a unitary authority. Previous to this there was an intermediate tier, the non-metropolitan district of Castle Morpeth, which has been abolished along with all other districts in the county. The county council has 67 councillors, of whom three represent Morpeth, one each from the electoral wards of Morpeth Kirkhill, Morpeth North and Morpeth Stobhill. The 2017 and 2021 County Council elections both elected three Conservative councillors for the three wards.
Climate
Cockle Park, located slightly north of Morpeth, contains a Met Office weather station, founded in 1897.
2008 and 2012 floods
On 6 September 2008, Morpeth suffered a severe flood, causing damage to 1,000 properties and leading 400 residents to be evacuated. The town's flood defences were breached after 12 hours, when a month's worth of rain fell on Morpeth.
In September 2012, flooding occurred again, causing damage to properties, although floodwaters were reportedly shallower than in 2008.
Flood defences
Work on flood defences started in 2013 in response to the 2008 floods. New flood defences were built in the town centre and a dam with a storage reservoir was built on the Mitford Estate. A second £27m dam was completed in May 2017 to reduce flooding from the Cotting Burn and marked the completion of the Morpeth flood defence plan.
Transport
Road
The A1, the longest numbered road in the UK, used to pass through Morpeth until the bypass was opened in 1970. Other roads that pass though the town are: A192, A196, A197, B1337, B6343 and the B6524.
Morpeth Northern Bypass
The Morpeth Northern Bypass was a project to decrease traffic congestion in Morpeth town centre and decrease journey times from Pegswood, Ashington and Newbiggin to the A1 and beyond. The Bypass follows on from the Pegswood Bypass at Whorral Bank Roundabout and continues to the St George's Roundabout and then onto Northgate Roundabout and St Leonard's A1 Junction. The Project was completed in 2017, which has allowed increased connectivity to SE Northumberland and beyond.
Rail
Morpeth's railway station is on the main East Coast Main Line which runs between London and Edinburgh. To the south of the station is a sharp curve which has been the scene of several train crashes. A non-passenger line operates between Morpeth and Bedlington. A former line, closed in 1966, ran west from Morpeth to Scots Gap (from where there was a branch line to Rothbury), then west to Redesmouth, and lastly south to Hexham.
Bus
Arriva North East are the main operator of bus services in the town, with services going to nearby towns and villages such as Pegswood, Guide Post, Ashington, Bedlington or to Newcastle, Alnwick, Amble, Berwick or Widdrington.
Education
The local state school, King Edward VI School, was originally founded as a chantry school in the early 14th century and was located in the Morpeth Chantry. The school was refounded in 1552 by royal charter as the Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth, being commonly referred to as the Morpeth Grammar School by locals. The school was renamed to King Edward VI Grammar School by 1947 and in the 1970s lost its grammar school status, becoming a comprehensive under the current name.
The town has two middle schools, Newminster and Chantry, which are built next door to one another. It also has several first schools: Abbeyfields First School in Kirkhill, Morpeth First School in Loansdean to the south of the town, Stobhillgate First School in the Stobhillgate housing estate, and Morpeth All Saints' Church of England-aided First School in Lancaster Park, which is located north of the town. Additionally, St. Robert's R.C. First School, a primary school for Roman Catholics, is located in Oldgate, Morpeth.
Religious sites
Church of England
The ancient Church of England parish church of Morpeth is St Mary's at High Church, which was the main Anglican place of worship in the area until the 1840s. The church is mostly in the 14th century style. The grave of Emily Wilding Davison lies in St Mary's graveyard.
In 1843, a public meeting was called to address the lack of attendance at the church, and it was found that the walk to the current church, then on the southern edge of the town, was too much for many of the parishioners. From this meeting, it was decided to build a new church in the town centre and accordingly, the church of St James the Great was consecrated for worship on 15 October 1846. Benjamin Ferrey designed the church in a "Neo-Norman" style, based on the 12th century Monreale Cathedral, Sicily.
A third parish church, St Aidan's, was founded as a mission church in 1957, located on the Stobhill estate on the south-east of the town.
Roman Catholic Church
Morpeth's Roman Catholic Church, St Robert of Newminster Church, was built off Oldgate on land adjacent to Admiral Lord Collingwood's house. It was consecrated on 1 August 1850 by the Right Reverend William Hogarth, Bishop of Samosata (later Bishop of Hexham). Collingwood House is now the presbytery (residence) for the priest in charge of the Church.
United Reformed Church
Morpeth has had a Presbyterian ministry since 1693. Their first service was held in a tannery loft in the town in February 1693 and in 1721 a chapel was built in Cottingwood Lane, which still exists as a private home. The construction of St. George's United Reformed Church began in 1858 and the first service in the new building was held on 12 April 1860. The Church stands immediately to the north of the Telford Bridge and is in the style of the early English era, containing a stained glass rose window and an octagonal spirelet.
Methodist Church
The present Methodist Church in Howard Terrace was opened as a Primitive Methodist place of worship on 24 April 1905. Designed by J. Walton Taylor, it was built from local quarry stone. Although the Primitive Methodists were united with the Wesleyan Church to form the Methodist Church of Great Britain in 1932, a separate Wesleyan Church continued to function in Manchester Street until 1964, when the congregations were united at Howard Terrace. The former Wesleyan Church (built in 1883) is currently used as the Boys' Brigade headquarters.
Sport
Morpeth Town A.F.C., Morpeth RFC and the Morpeth Golf Club play competitively within Morpeth. In addition, the Morpeth Harriers compete in athletics. The town also offers opportunities to play sport on a non-competitive basis through facilities such as Carlisle Park, the common for playing golf and football, and the Riverside leisure centre for swimming, indoor sports and fitness gym activities. Morpeth Town A.F.C. was the 2016 winner of the FA Vase.
The Morpeth Olympic Games, a professional event consisting mainly of athletics and wrestling, were staged from 1873 until 1958, barring interruptions during the two world wars. The Games were held on the Old Brewery Field until 1896, then at Grange House Field until the First World War. After two years at the town's cricket pitch at Stobhill (1919–20), the Olympics moved to Mount Haggs Field until 1939, and then back to Grange House Field after the war until the end of the games in 1958.
In 1730, a racecourse was built for horse racing, which was used until 1854, when the racetrack was replaced with St. George's Hospital.
The town was the start point of the Morpeth To Newcastle Road Race. It was held annually on New Year's Day from 1902 to 2004, when insurance and policing costs became prohibitively high, and winners included Commonwealth champion Jack Holden and Olympic medallist Mike McLeod.
Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North East and Cumbria and ITV Tyne Tees. Television signals are received from the Pontop Pike and local relay transmitters.
Local radio stations are BBC Radio Newcastle on 95.4 FM, Capital North East on 105.3 FM, Heart North East on 101.8 FM, Smooth North East on 97.5 FM, Metro Radio on 97.1 FM, and Koast Radio, a community based radio station which broadcast on 106.6 FM.
The Morpeth Herald is the town's local weekly newspaper.
Landmarks
The historical layout of central Morpeth consisted of Bridge Street, Oldgate Street and Newgate Street, with burgage plots leading off them. Traces of this layout remain: Old Bakehouse Yard off Newgate Street is a former burgage plot, as is Pretoria Avenue, off Oldgate. The town stands directly on what used to be the Great North Road, the old coaching route between London and Edinburgh.
Carlisle Park is located on the southern bank of the River Wansbeck in Morpeth. The park has the William Turner Garden, one of the only four floral clocks in England, a statue of Emily Wilding Davison, as well as other facilities and attractions. Morpeth's Mafeking Park, at the bottom of Station Bank, was unsuccessfully put forward by locals to be listed as the smallest park in the world in the Guinness Book of Records.
Other landmarks are:
Morpeth Clock Tower, a free-standing 17th century clock tower
Morpeth Town Hall, originally designed by Sir John Vanbrugh (rebuilt 1869)
Collingwood House, the Georgian home of Admiral Lord Collingwood
Morpeth Chantry, a 13th-century chapel that now houses the town's tourist information centre and the Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum
Morpeth Castle, which stands on a hill to the south, is now operated by the Landmark Trust as holiday accommodation
A nuclear bunker located underneath Morpeth County Hall
A gateway on High Stanners framed by a whale's jawbone
Ruins of Newminster Abbey, a former Cistercian abbey about one mile to the west of Morpeth
Morpeth Court, former courthouse and prison, now converted into apartments
Notable people
Bill Rutherford (1955-), Professor and Chair in Biochemistry of Solar energy in the Department of Life sciences at Imperial College London.
Lawrence William Adamson (1829–1911), High Sheriff of Northumberland, who died at Linden Hall near Morpeth in 1911
James (Jim) Alder (born 1940), athlete, who spent his childhood in Morpeth after being adopted by Adler family
Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge (1817–1892), founder of Bainbridge Department Store – the first such store in the world – in Newcastle upon Tyne, who, from 1877, lived near Morpeth at Eshott Hall
Arthur Bigge, 1st Baron Stamfordham (1849–1931), born at Linden Hall, near Morpeth, who became private secretary to Queen Victoria and George V
Robert Blakey (1795–1878), radical journalist and philosopher, born in Manchester Street, Morpeth
Luke Clennell (1781–1840), engraver and painter, born in Morpeth
Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood (1748–1810), Royal Navy Admiral. He lived at Collingwood House in Oldgate and once said "Whenever I think how I am to be happy again, my thoughts carry me back to Morpeth".
Emily Wilding Davison, a suffragette who was killed when she fell under the King's horse during the Epsom Derby in 1913. Following her funeral in London, her coffin was brought by train to Morpeth for burial in St Mary's churchyard.
William Elliott, Baron Elliott of Morpeth (1920–2011), Conservative politician born in Morpeth
Toby Flood (born 1985), rugby union player for Leicester Tigers and England, who attended Morpeth Chantry School
Hamish Turnbull (born 1999), Cyclist representing British Cycling and Great Britain.
John Cuthbert Hedley (1837–1913), Benedictine monk and Roman Catholic Bishop of Newport born at Carlisle House, Morpeth
Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle (1669–1738), MP for Morpeth in 1689–1692
Robert Morrison (1782–1834), translator of the Bible into Chinese and first Protestant missionary in China, born in Buller's Green, Morpeth
John Peacock (–1817), piper, born in Morpeth
John Urpeth Rastrick (1780–1856), railway engineer, born in Morpeth
Joe Robinson (1919–1991), footballer, born in Morpeth, who played for Blackpool in the 1948 FA Cup Final
Walter Trevelyan (1821 – 1894), first-class cricketer and barrister, born in Morpeth
William Turner (naturalist) (c. 1508 – 13 July 1568), an English divine and reformer, physician and natural historian. The William Turner Garden is situated in Carlisle Park, Morpeth.
Dr. N. T. Wright (born 1948), Anglican theologian and author, born in Morpeth
See also
Viscount Morpeth, the heir apparent to the Earl of Carlisle.
References
External links
Market towns in Northumberland
Towns in Northumberland
County towns in England
Civil parishes in Northumberland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American%20Museum%20of%20Natural%20History
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American Museum of Natural History
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The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 20 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain about 35 million specimens of plants, animals, fungi, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than . AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.
The AMNH is a private 501(c)(3) organization. The naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore devised the idea for the American Museum of Natural History in 1861, and, after several years of advocacy, the museum opened within Central Park's Arsenal on May 22, 1871. The museum's first purpose-built structure in Theodore Roosevelt Park was designed by Calvert Vaux and J. Wrey Mould and opened on December 22, 1877. Numerous wings have been added over the years, including the main entrance pavilion (named for Theodore Roosevelt) in 1936 and the Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000.
History
Founding
Early efforts
The naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore devised the idea for the American Museum of Natural History in 1861. At the time, he was studying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Louis Agassiz's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Observing that many European natural history museums were in populous cities, Bickmore wrote in a biography: "Now New York is our city of greatest wealth and therefore probably the best location for the future museum of natural history for our whole land." For several years, Bickmore lobbied for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York. Upon the end of the American Civil War, Bickmore asked numerous prominent New Yorkers, such as William E. Dodge Jr., to sponsor his museum. Although Dodge himself could not fund the museum at the time, he introduced the naturalist to Theodore Roosevelt Sr., the father of future U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt.
Calls for a natural history museum increased after Barnum's American Museum burned down in 1868. Eighteen prominent New Yorkers wrote a letter to the Central Park Commission that December, requesting the creation of a natural history museum in Central Park. Central Park commissioner Andrew Haswell Green indicated his support for the project in January 1869. A board of trustees was created for the museum. The next month, Bickmore and Joseph Hodges Choate drafted a charter for the museum, which the board of trustees approved without any changes. It was in this charter that the "American Museum of Natural History" name was first used. Bickmore said he wanted the museum's name to reflect his "expectation that our museum will ultimately become the leading institution of its kind in our country", similar to the British Museum. Before the museum was established, Bickmore needed to secure approval from Boss Tweed, leader of the powerful and corrupt Tammany Hall political organization. The legislation to establish the American Museum of Natural History had to be signed by John Thompson Hoffman, the governor of New York, who was associated with Tweed.
Creation and new building
Hoffman signed the legislation creating the museum on April 6, 1869, with John David Wolfe as its first president. Subsequently, the chairman of the AMNH's executive committee asked Green if the museum could use the top two stories of Central Park's Arsenal, and Green approved the request in January 1870. Insect specimens were placed on the lower level of the Arsenal, while stones, fossils, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles were placed on the upper level. The museum opened within the Arsenal on May 22, 1871. The AMNH became popular in the following years. The Arsenal location had 856,773 visitors in the first nine months of 1876 alone, more than the British Museum had recorded for all of 1874.
Meanwhile, the AMNH's directors had identified Manhattan Square (bounded by Eighth Avenue/Central Park West, 81st Street, Ninth Avenue/Columbus Avenue, and 77th Street) as a site for a permanent structure. Several prominent New Yorkers had raised $500,000 to fund the construction of the new building. The city's park commissioners then reserved Manhattan Square as the site of the permanent museum, and another $200,000 was raised for the building fund. Numerous dignitaries and officials, including U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant, attended the museum's groundbreaking ceremony on June 3, 1874.
The museum opened on December 22, 1877, with a ceremony attended by U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes. The old exhibits were removed from the Arsenal in 1878, and the AMNH was debt-free by the next year.
19th century
Originally, the AMNH was accessed by a temporary bridge that crossed a ditch, and it was closed during Sundays. The museum's trustees voted in May 1881 to complete the approaches from Central Park, and work began later that year. The landscape changes were nearly complete by mid-1882, and a bridge over Central Park West opened that November. At this point, the AMNH's Manhattan Square building and the Arsenal could not physically fit any more objects, and the existing facilities, such as the 100-seat lecture hall, were insufficient to accommodate demand. The trustees began discussing the possibility of opening the museum on Sundays in May 1885, and the state legislature approved a bill permitting Sunday operations the next year. Despite advocacy from the working class, the trustees opposed Sunday operations because it would be expensive to do so. At the time, the museum was open to the general public on Wednesdays through Saturdays, and it was open exclusively to members on Mondays and Tuesdays. The museum's collections continued to grow during the 1880s, and it hosted various lectures through the 19th century.
With several departments having been crowded out of the original building, New York state legislators introduced bills to expand the AMNH in early 1887; thousands of teachers endorsed the legislation. City parks engineer Montgomery A. Kellogg was directed to prepare plans for landscaping the site. In March 1888, the trustees approved an entrance pavilion at the center of the 77th Street elevation. The New York City Board of Estimate began soliciting bids from general contractors in late 1889. Many of the objects and specimens in the museum's collection could not be displayed until the annex was opened. The original building was refurbished during 1890, and the museum's library was transferred to the west wing that year. The AMNH's trustees considered opening the museum on Sundays by February 1892 and stopped charging admission that July. The museum began Sunday operations in August, and the southern entrance pavilion opened that November. Even with the new wing, there was still not enough space for the museum's collection. The city's Park Board approved a new lecture hall in January 1893, but the hall was postponed that May in favor of a wing extending east on 77th Street. A contract to furnish the east wing was awarded in June 1894.
When the east wing was nearly completed in February 1895, the AMNH's trustees asked state legislators for $200,000 to build a wing extending west on 77th Street. The east wing was still being furnished by August; its ground floor opened that December. The museum's funds and collections continued to grow during this time. A hall of mammals opened within the museum in November 1896. That year, the AMNH received approval to extend the east wing northward along Central Park West, creating an "L"-shaped structure. Plans for an expanded east wing were approved in June 1897, and a contract was awarded two months later. The museum's director Morris K. Jesup also sponsored worldwide expeditions to obtain objects for the collection. By mid-1898, the west wing, the expanded east wing, and a lecture hall at the center of the museum were underway; however, the project encountered delays due to a lack of city funding. The west and east wings, with several exhibit halls, were nearly complete by late 1899, but the lecture hall had been delayed. A hall dedicated to ancient Mexican art opened that December.
20th century
1900s to 1940s
The museum's 1,350-seat lecture hall opened in October 1900, as did the Native American and Mexican halls in the west wing. During the 1900s, the AMNH sponsored several expeditions to grow its collection, including a trip to Mexico, a trip to collect fauna from the Pacific Northwest, a trip to collect art in China, and an expedition to collect rocks in local caves. One such exhibition yielded a brontosaurus skeleton, which was the centerpiece of the dinosaur hall that opened in February 1905.
In the early 1920s, museum president Henry Fairfield Osborn planned a new entrance for the AMNH, which was to contain a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. Also around that time, the New York state government formed a commission to study the feasibility of a Roosevelt memorial. After a dispute over whether to put the memorial in Albany or in New York City, the government of New York City offered a site next to the AMNH for consideration. The commission rejected a "conventional Greek mausoleum" design, instead opting to design a triumphal arch and hall in a Roman style. In 1925, the AMNH's trustees hosted an architectural design competition, selecting John Russell Pope to design the memorial hall. Construction began in 1929, and the trustees approved final plans the next year. J. Harry McNally was the general contractor. Roosevelt's cousin, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, dedicated the memorial on January 19, 1936.
1950s to 1990s
The original building was later known as "Wing A". During the 1950s, the top floor was renovated into a library, being redecorated with what Christopher Gray of The New York Times described as "dropped ceilings and the other usual insults". The ten-story Childs Frick Building, which contained the AMNH's fossil collection, was added to the museum in the 1970s.
The architect Kevin Roche and his firm Roche-Dinkeloo have been responsible for the master planning of the museum since the 1990s. Various renovations to both the interior and exterior have been carried out. Renovations to the Dinosaur Hall were undertaken beginning in 1991, and Roche-Dinkeloo designed the eight-story AMNH Library in 1992. The museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space was completed in 2000.
21st century
The museum's lecture hall was renamed the Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Theater in 2001 after Samuel J. LeFrak donated $8 million to the AMNH. The museum's south facade, spanning 77th Street from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue, was cleaned, repaired, and re-emerged in 2009. Steven Reichl, a spokesman for the museum, said that work would include restoring 650 black-cherry window frames and stone repairs. The museum's consultant on the latest renovation was Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., an architectural and engineering firm with headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois. The museum also restored the mural in Roosevelt Memorial Hall in 2010.
In 2014, the museum published plans for a $325 million, annex, the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, on the Columbus Avenue side. On October 11, 2016, the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved the expansion. Construction of the Gilder Center, which was expected to break ground the next year following design development and Environmental Impact Statement stages, would entail demolition of three museum buildings built between 1874 and 1935. The museum filed plans for the expansion in August 2017, but due to community opposition, construction did not start until June 2019.
The Gilder Center opened on May 4, 2023, and the museum saw 1.5 million visitors over the next three months. In late 2023, the museum announced that it would stop displaying human remains from its collection. Despite the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, the American Museum of Natural History is estimated to hold more than 1,900 Native American remains that have not been repatriated.
Original structure
The original Victorian Gothic building was designed by Calvert Vaux and J. Wrey Mould, both already closely identified with the architecture of Central Park. Vaux and Mould's original plan was intended to complement the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the opposite side of Central Park. The original building, as constructed, was at the center of the 77th Street frontage and measured across; it featured a gallery measuring long tall. This gallery contained a raised basement, three stories of exhibits, Venetian Gothic arches, and an attic with dormers and a slate roof. The rear of the gallery included two towers: one containing a stairwell and the other containing curators' rooms. The original structure still exists but is hidden from view by the many buildings in the complex that today occupy most of Manhattan Square. The museum remains accessible through its 77th Street foyer, which has since been renamed the Grand Gallery.
The full plan called for twelve pavilions similar in design to the original building. Eight pavilions would have been arranged as the sides of a square, while the remaining four would be perpendicular to each other in the interior of the square. There were to be eight towers along the perimeter of the square, as well as a dome in the center, at the intersection of the four interior pavilions. In each pavilion, there was to be a ground floor; the second floor was to contain a gallery; the third floor was to exhibit specimens; and the fourth floor was to be used for research. Upon the intended completion of the master plan, the museum would measure from north to south and from west to east, including projections from the square. The finished structure, with a ground area of over , would have been the largest building in North America, as well as the largest museum building in the world. The master plan was never fully realized; by 2015, the museum consisted of 25 separate buildings that were poorly connected.
The original building was soon eclipsed by the west and east wings of the southern frontage, designed by J. Cleaveland Cady as a brownstone neo-Romanesque structure. It extends along West 77th Street, with corner towers tall. Its pink brownstone and granite, similar to that found at Grindstone Island in the St. Lawrence River, came from quarries at Picton Island, New York. The southern wing contains several halls ranging in size from to . At the ends of either wings are rounded turret-like towers.
New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt
The main entrance hall on Central Park West is formally known as the New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt. Completed by John Russell Pope in 1936, it is an over-scaled Beaux-Arts monument to former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. The hall was originally supposed to have formed one end of an "Intermuseum Promenade" through Central Park, connecting with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the east, but the promenade was never completed.
The memorial hall has a pink-granite facade, which is modeled after Roman arches. In front of the hall on Central Park West is a terrace measuring long, as well as a series of steps. The main entrance consists of an arch measuring high. The underside of the arch is a coffered granite vestibule, which leads to a bronze, glass, and marble screen. On either side of the arch are niches that contain sculptures of a bison and a bear. It is flanked by two pairs of columns, which are topped by figures of American explorers John James Audubon, Daniel Boone, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark. These figures were sculpted by James Earle Fraser and are about high. In the attic above the main archway, there is an inscription describing Roosevelt's accomplishments. The words "Truth", "Knowledge", and "Vision" are carved into the entablature under this inscription.
Fraser also designed an equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt, flanked by a Native American and an African American, which originally stood outside the memorial hall. In the 21st century, the statue generated controversy due to its subordinate depiction of these figures behind Roosevelt. This prompted AMNH officials to announce in 2020 that they would remove the statue. The statue was removed in January 2022 and will be on a long-term loan to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.The interior of the Memorial Hall measures across, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling measuring tall. The ceiling contains octagonal coffers, while the floors are made of mosaic marble tiles. The lowest of the walls are wainscoted in marble, above which the walls of the memorial hall are made of limestone. The top of each wall contains a marble band and a Corinthian entablature. Each of the Memorial Hall's four sides contains two red-marble columns, each measuring tall and rising from a Botticino marble pedestal. There are rounded windows at clerestory level on the north and south walls. William Andrew MacKay designed three murals depicting important events in Roosevelt's life: the construction of the Panama Canal on the north wall, African exploration on the west wall, and the Treaty of Portsmouth on the south wall. The east and west walls, contain four quotes from Roosevelt under the headings "Nature", "Manhood", "Youth", and "The State".
The Memorial Hall originally connected to various classrooms, exhibition rooms, and a 600-person auditorium. Directly underneath the Memorial Hall is an entrance to the 81st Street–Museum of Natural History station. Today, the hall connects to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals and the Hall of Asian Mammals. The Memorial Hall contains four exhibits that describe Theodore Roosevelt's conservation activities in his youth, early adulthood, U.S. presidency, and post-presidency.
Mammal halls
Old World mammals
Akeley Hall of African Mammals
Named after taxidermist Carl Akeley, the Akeley Hall of African Mammals is a two-story hall on the second floor, directly west of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. It connects to the Hall of African Peoples to the west. The Hall of African Mammals' 28 dioramas depict in meticulous detail the great range of ecosystems found in Africa and the mammals endemic to them. The centerpiece of the hall is a pack of eight African elephants in a characteristic 'alarmed' formation. Though the mammals are typically the main feature in the dioramas, birds and flora of the regions are occasionally featured as well. The hall in its current form was completed in 1936.
The Hall of African Mammals was first proposed to the museum by Carl Akeley around 1909; he proposed 40 dioramas featuring the rapidly vanishing landscapes and animals of Africa. Daniel Pomeroy, a trustee of the museum and partner at J.P. Morgan & Co., offered investors the opportunity to accompany the museum's expeditions in Africa in exchange for funding. Akeley began collecting specimens for the hall as early as 1909, famously encountering Theodore Roosevelt in the midst of the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African expedition. On these early expeditions, Akeley was accompanied by his former apprentice in taxidermy, James L. Clark, and artist, William R. Leigh. When Akeley returned to Africa to collect gorillas for the hall's first diorama, Clark remained behind and began scouring the country for artists to create the backgrounds. The eventual appearance of the first habitat groups impacted the design of other diorama halls, including Birds of the World, the Hall of North American Mammals, the Vernay Hall of Southeast Asian Mammals, and the Hall of Oceanic Life.
After Akeley's unexpected death during the Eastman-Pommeroy expedition in 1926, responsibility of the hall's completion fell to James L. Clark, who hired architectural artist James Perry Wilson in 1933 to assist Leigh in the painting of backgrounds. Wilson made many improvements on Leigh's techniques, including a range of methods to minimize the distortion caused by the dioramas' curved walls. In 1936, William Durant Campbell, a wealthy board member with a desire to see Africa, offered to fund several dioramas if allowed to obtain the specimens himself. Clark agreed to this arrangement, resulting in the acquisition of numerous large specimens. Kane joined Leigh, Wilson, and several other artists in completing the hall's remaining dioramas. Though construction of the hall was completed in 1936, the dioramas gradually opened between the mid-1920s and early 1940s.
Hall of Asian Mammals
The Hall of Asian Mammals, sometimes referred to as the Vernay-Faunthorpe Hall of Asian Mammals, is directly south of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. It contains 8 complete dioramas, 4 partial dioramas, and 6 habitat groups of mammals and locations from India, Nepal, Burma, and Malaysia. The hall opened in 1930 and, similar to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, is centered around 2 Asian elephants. At one point, a giant panda and Siberian tiger were also part of the Hall's collection, originally intended to be part of an adjoining Hall of North Asian Mammals (planned in the current location of Stout Hall of Asian Peoples). These specimens can currently be seen in the Hall of Biodiversity.
Specimens for the Hall of Asian Mammals were collected over six expeditions led by British-born antiques dealer Arthur S. Vernay and Col. John Faunthorpe (as noted by stylized plaques at both entrances). The expeditions were funded entirely by Vernay, who characterized the expense as a British tribute to American involvement in World War I. The first Vernay-Faunthorpe expedition took place in 1922, when many of the animals Vernay was seeking, such as the Sumatran rhinoceros and Asiatic lion, were facing the possibility of extinction. Vernay made many appeals to regional authorities to obtain hunting permits; in later museum-related expeditions headed by Vernay, these appeals helped the museum gain access to areas previously restricted to foreign visitors. Artist Clarence C. Rosenkranz accompanied the Vernay-Faunthorpe expeditions as field artist and painted the majority of the diorama backgrounds in the hall. These expeditions were also well documented in both photo and video, with enough footage of the first expedition to create a feature-length film, Hunting Tigers in India (1929).
New World mammals
Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals
The Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals is on the first floor, directly west of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. features 43 dioramas of various mammals of the American continent, north of tropical Mexico. Each diorama places focus on a particular species, ranging from the largest megafauna to the smaller rodents and carnivorans. Notable dioramas include the Alaskan brown bears looking at a salmon after they scared off an otter, a pair of wolves, a pair of Sonoran jaguars, and dueling bull Alaska moose.
The Hall of North American Mammals opened in 1942 with only ten dioramas. Another 16 dioramas were added in 1963. A massive restoration project began in late 2011 following a large donation from Jill and Lewis Bernard. In October 2012 the hall was reopened as the Bernard Hall of North American Mammals.
Hall of Small Mammals
The Hall of Small Mammals is an offshoot of the Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals, directly to the west of the latter. There are several small dioramas featuring small mammals found throughout North America, including collared peccaries, Abert's squirrel, and a wolverine.
Birds, reptiles, and amphibian halls
Sanford Hall of North American Birds
The Sanford Hall of North American birds is a one-story hall on the third floor, between the Hall of Primates and Akeley Hall's second level. There are over 20 dioramas depicting birds from across North America in their native habitats. At the far end of the hall are two large murals by ornithologist and artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes. The hall also has display cases devoted to large collections of warblers, owls, and raptors.
Conceived by museum ornithologist Frank Chapman, the Hall is named for Chapman's friend and amateur ornithologist Leonard C. Sanford, who partially funded the hall and also donated the entirety of his own bird specimen collection to the museum. Construction began on the hall's dioramas as early as 1902, and the dioramas opened in 1909. They were the first to be exhibited in the museum and are the oldest still on display. The hall was refurbished in 1962.
Although Chapman was not the first to create museum dioramas, he was the first to bring artists into the field with him in the hopes of capturing a specific location at a specific time. In contrast to the dramatic scenes that Akeley created for the African Hall, Chapman wanted his dioramas to evoke a scientific realism, ultimately serving as a historical record of habitats and species facing a high probability of extinction. Each of Chapman's dioramas depicted a species, their nests, and of the surrounding habitat in each direction.
Hall of Birds of the World
The Hall of Birds of the World is on the south side of the second floor. The global diversity of bird species is exhibited in this hall. 12 dioramas showcase various ecosystems around the world and provide a sample of the varieties of birds that live there. Example dioramas include South Georgia featuring king penguins and skuas, the East African plains featuring secretarybirds and bustards, and the Australian outback featuring honeyeaters, cockatoos, and kookaburras.
Whitney Memorial Hall of Oceanic Birds
The Whitney Memorial Wing, originally named after Harry Payne Whitney and comprising 750,000 birds, opened in 1939. Later known as the Hall of Oceanic Birds, it was completed and dedicated in 1953. It was founded by Frank Chapman and Leonard C. Sanford, originally museum volunteers, who had gone forward with creation of a hall to feature birds of the Pacific islands. The hall was designed as a completely immersive collection of dioramas, including a circular display featuring birds-of-paradise. In 1998, the Butterfly Conservatory was installed inside the hall.
Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians
The Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians is near the southeast corner of the third floor. It serves as an introduction to herpetology, with many exhibits detailing reptile evolution, anatomy, diversity, reproduction, and behavior. Notable exhibits include a Komodo dragon group, an American alligator, Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise, and poison dart frogs.
In 1926, W. Douglas Burden, F.J. Defosse, and Emmett Reid Dunn collected specimens of the Komodo Dragon for the museum. Burden's chapter "The Komodo Dragon", in Look to the Wilderness, describes the expedition, the habitat, and the behavior of the dragon. The hall opened in 1927 and was rebuilt from 1969 to 1977 at a cost of $1.3 million.
Biodiversity and environmental halls
Hall of Biodiversity
The Hall of Biodiversity is underneath the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. It opened in May 1998. The hall primarily contains exhibits and objects highlighting the concept of biodiversity, the interactions between living organisms, and the negative impacts of extinction on biodiversity. The hall includes a diorama depicting the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve rainforest with over 160 animal and plant species. The diorama shows the rainforest in three states: pristine, altered by human activity, and destroyed by human activity. Another attraction in the hall is "The Spectrum of Habitats", a video wall displaying footage of nine ecosystems. There is a "Transformation Wall", containing information and stories detailing changes to biodiversity, and a "Solutions Wall", containing suggestions on how to increase biodiversity.
Hall of North American Forests
The Hall of North American Forests is a one-story hall on the museum's first floor in between the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall and the Warburg Hall of New York State Environments. It contains ten dioramas depicting a range of forest types from across North America as well as several displays on forest conservation and tree health. The hall was constructed under the guidance of botanist Henry K. Svenson and opened in 1958. Each diorama specifically lists both the location and exact time of year depicted. Trees and plants featured in the dioramas are constructed of a combination of art supplies and actual bark and other specimens collected in the field. The entrance to the hall features a cross section from the Mark Twain Tree, 1,400-year-old sequoia taken from the King's River grove on the west flank of the Sierra Mountains in 1891.
Warburg Hall of New York State Environments
Warburg Hall of New York State Environments is a one-story hall on the museum's ground floor in between the Hall of North American Forests and the Grand Hall. Based on the town of Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, the hall gives a multi-faceted presentation of the eco-systems typical of New York. Aspects covered include soil types, seasonal changes, and the impact of both humans and nonhuman animals on the environment. It is named for the German-American philanthropist Felix M. Warburg and opened on May 14, 1951, as the Warburg Memorial Hall of General Ecology. It has changed little since and is now frequently regarded for its retro-modern styling.
Milstein Hall of Ocean Life
The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life is in the southeastern quadrant of the first floor, west of the Hall of Biodiversity. It focuses on marine biology, botany and marine conservation. The center of the hall contains a -long blue whale model. The upper level of the hall exhibits the vast array of ecosystems present in the ocean. Dioramas compare and contrast the life in these different settings including polar seas, kelp forests, mangroves, coral reefs and the bathypelagic. It attempts to show how vast and varied the oceans are while encouraging common themes throughout. The lower half of the hall consists of 15 large dioramas of larger marine organisms. It is on this level that the famous "Squid and the Whale" diorama sits, depicting a hypothetical fight between the two creatures. Other notable exhibits in this hall include the two-level Andros Coral Reef Diorama.
In 1910, museum president Henry F. Osborn proposed the construction of a large building in the museum's southeast courtyard to house a new Hall of Ocean Life in which "models and skeletons of whales" would be exhibited. The hall opened in 1924 and was renovated in 1962. In 1969, a renovation gave the hall a more explicit focus on oceanic megafauna, including the addition of a lifelike blue whale model to replace a popular steel and papier-mâché whale model that had hung in the Biology of Mammals hall. Richard Van Gelder oversaw the creation of the hall in its current incarnation. The hall was renovated once again in 2003, this time with environmentalism and conservation being the main focal points, and was renamed after developer Paul Milstein and AMNH board member Irma Milstein. The 2003 renovation included refurbishment of the famous blue whale, suspended high above the exhibit floor; updates to the 1930s and 1960s dioramas; and electronic displays.
Human origins and cultural halls
Cultural halls
Stout Hall of Asian Peoples
The Stout Hall of Asian Peoples is a one-story hall on the museum's second floor in between the Hall of Asian Mammals and Birds of the World. It is named for Gardner D. Stout, a former president of the museum, and was primarily organized by Dr. Walter A. Fairservis, a longtime museum archaeologist. Opened in 1980, Stout Hall is the museum's largest anthropological hall and contains artifacts acquired by the museum between 1869 and the mid-1970s. Many famous expeditions sponsored by the museum are associated with the artifacts in the hall, including the Roy Chapman Andrews expeditions in Central Asia and the Vernay-Hopwood Chindwin expedition.
Stout Hall has two sections: Ancient Eurasia, a small section devoted to the evolution of human civilization in Eurasia, and Traditional Asia, a much larger section containing cultural artifacts from across the Asian continent. The latter section is organized to geographically correspond with two major trade routes of the Silk Road. Like many of the museum's exhibition halls, the artifacts in Stout Hall are presented in a variety of ways including exhibits, miniature dioramas, and five full-scale dioramas. Notable exhibits in the Ancient Eurasian section include reproductions from the archaeological sites of Teshik-Tash and Çatalhöyük, as well as a full size replica of a Hammurabi Stele. The Traditional Asia section contains areas devoted to major Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Tibet, and India, while also including a vast array of smaller Asian tribes including the Ainu, Semai, and Yakut.
Hall of African Peoples
The Hall of African Peoples is behind Akeley Hall of African Mammals and underneath Sanford Hall of North American Birds. It is organized by the four major ecosystems found in Africa: River Valley, Grasslands, Forest-Woodland, and Desert. Each section presents artifacts and exhibits of the peoples native to the ecosystems throughout Africa. The hall contains three dioramas and notable exhibits include a large collection of spiritual costumes on display in the Forest-Woodland section. Uniting the sections of the hall is a multi-faceted comparison of African societies based on hunting and gathering, cultivation, and animal domestication. Each type of society is presented in a historical, political, spiritual, and ecological context. A small section of African diaspora spread by the slave trade is also included. Tribes and civilizations featured include:
River Valley: Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, Kuba, Lozi
Grasslands: Pokot, Shilluk, Barawa
Forest-Woodland: Yoruba, Kofyar, Mbuti
Desert: Ait Atta, Tuareg
Hall of Mexico and Central America
The Hall of Mexico and Central America is a one-story hall on the museum's second floor behind Birds of the World and before the Hall of South American Peoples. It presents archaeological artifacts from a broad range of pre-Columbian civilizations that once existed across Mesoamerica, including the Maya, Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec. Because the great majority of the written records of these civilizations did not survive the Spanish conquest, the overarching aim of the hall is to piece together what it is possible to know about them from the artifacts alone.
The museum has displayed pre-Columbian artifacts since its opening, only a short time after the discovery of the civilizations by archaeologists, with its first hall dedicated to the subject opening in 1899. As the museum's collection grew, the hall underwent major renovations in 1944 and again in 1970 when it re-opened in its current form. Notable artifacts on display include the Kunz Axe and a full-scale replica of Tomb 104 from the Monte Albán archaeological site, originally displayed at the 1939 World's Fair.
South American Peoples
Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples
The Hall of Pacific Peoples is on the southwestern corner of the third floor, accessed through the Hall of Plains Indians. The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead had founded the Hall of Pacific Peoples in 1971. From the time Mead began curatorial work on the hall in 1945, she conceived an exhibit environment that would emulate sights and sounds from the Pacific regions on display. After Mead's death in 1978, the hall reopened in December 1984 as the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples. The new hall, designed by Eugene Burgmann, maintained the blue-themed ocean and sky ambiance of the original hall. The hall was once again closed in 1997 and reopened in 2001 with an updated design that retained the geocultural "alcoves" first installed with the 1984 remodel.
The Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples contains artifacts from New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Micronesia, Melanesia and other Pacific islands. Mead had collected 250 of the 1,500 items in the hall. Some of these were probably selected from the 3,284 items she collected for the American Museum of Natural History during fieldwork in New Guinea and other Pacific island locations, 1928-1939. Others, such as the theatrical set from a puppet play in Bali, were chosen from among the approximately 600 items that Mead and her anthropologist husband Gregory Bateson had sent to the American Museum of Natural History while they were conducting fieldwork in Bali, 1936-1938. The exhibits in the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples also include a fiberglass cast of an Easter Island moai statue and capes made of honeycreeper feathers.
Native American halls
Hall of Northwest Coast Indians
The Hall of Northwest Coast Indians is a one-story hall on the museum's ground floor behind the Grand Gallery and in between Warburg and Spitzer Halls. it is the museum's oldest hall, having been established in 1899 by anthropologist Franz Boas as the Jesup North Pacific Hall. The hall now contains artifacts and exhibits of the tribes of the North Pacific Coast cultural region (Southern Alaska, Northern Washington, and a portion of British Columbia). Featured prominently in the hall are four "House Posts" from the Kwakwaka'wakw nation and murals by William S. Taylor depicting native life. , there are 9,000 items in total, including 78 totem poles, as well as a Haida canoe suspended from the ceiling (relocated from the Grand Gallery in 2020). The artifacts are accompanied by text in numerous Native American languages.
Artifacts in the hall originated from three main sources. The earliest of these was a gift of Haida artifacts collected by John Wesley Powell and donated by future trustee Heber R. Bishop in 1882. This was followed by the museum's purchase of two collections of Tlingit artifacts collected by Lt. George T. Emmons in 1888 and 1894. The remainder of the hall's artifacts were collected during the famed Jesup North Pacific Expedition between 1897 and 1902. Led by Boas and financed by museum president Morris Ketchum Jesup, the expedition was the first for the museum's Division of Anthropology and is now considered the "foremost expedition in American anthropology". Many famous ethnologists took part, including George Hunt, who secured the Kwakwaka'wakw House Posts in the hall. Other tribes featured in the hall include Coastal Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, Tsimshian, and Nuxalk.
At the time of its opening, the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians was one of four halls dedicated to the native peoples of United States and Canada. It was originally organized in two sections, the first being a general area pertaining to all peoples of the region and the second a specialized area divided by tribe. This was a point of contention for Boas who wanted all artifacts in the hall to be associated with the proper tribe (much like it is currently organized), eventually leading to the dissolution of Boas's relationship with the museum. In May 2022, the hall reopened after a five-year, $19 million renovation, with more than 1,000 artifacts on view. The new display includes work from contemporary artists such as Greg Colfax KlaWayHee and Robert Davidson.
Hall of Plains Indians
The Hall of Plains Indians is on the south side of the third floor, near the western end of the museum. This hall opened in February 1967. The primary focus of this hall is the North American Great Plains peoples as they were at the middle of the 19th century, including depictions of Blackfeet (see also: Blackfoot Confederacy), Hidatsa, and Dakota cultures. Of particular interest is a Folsom point discovered in 1926 New Mexico, providing evidence of early American colonization of the Americas.
Hall of Eastern Woodlands Indians
The Hall of Eastern Woodlands Indians is next to the Hall of Plains Indians, on the south side of the third floor. This hall opened in May 1966. It details the lives and technology of traditional Native American peoples in the woodland environments of eastern North America. These include Cree, Mohegan, Ojibwe, and Iroquois cultures. The exhibit features examples of indigenous basketry, pottery, farming techniques, food preparation, metal jewelry, musical instruments, and textiles. Other highlights include a model of a Menominee birchbark canoe and various traditional lodgings such as an Ojibwa domed wigwam, an Iroquois longhouse, a Creek council house, and other eastern woodland dwelling styles.
Human origins halls
Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins
The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, formerly The Hall of Human Biology and Evolution, is on the south side of the first floor, near the western end of the museum. It opened under its current name on February 10, 2007. When it first opened in 1921, the hall was known as the "Hall of the Age of Man", the only major exhibition in the United States to present an in-depth investigation of human evolution. The displays traced the story of Homo sapiens, illuminated the path of human evolution and examined the origins of human creativity.
Many of the displays from the original hall can still be viewed in the present expanded format. These include life-size dioramas of our human predecessors Australopithecus afarensis, Homo ergaster, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon, showing each species demonstrating the behaviors and capabilities that scientists believe they were capable of. Also displayed are full-sized casts of important fossils, including the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton and the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy, and Homo erectus specimens including a cast of Peking Man. The hall also features replicas of ice age art found in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. The limestone carvings of horses were made nearly 26,000 years ago and are considered to represent some of the earliest artistic expression of humans.
Earth and planetary science halls
Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites
The Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites is on the southwest corner of the first floor. It contains some of the finest specimens in the world including Ahnighito, a section of the 200-ton Cape York meteorite which was first made known to non-Inuit cultures on their investigation of Meteorite Island, Greenland. Its great weight, 34 tons, makes it the largest displayed in the Northern Hemisphere. It has support by columns that extend through the floor and into the bedrock below the museum.
The hall also contains extra-solar nanodiamonds (diamonds with dimensions on the nanometer level) more than 5 billion years old. These were extracted from a meteorite sample through chemical means, and they are so small that a quadrillion of these fit into a volume smaller than a cubic centimeter.
Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals
The Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals (formerly the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Gems and Minerals) is on the first floor, north of the Ross Hall of Meteorites. It houses thousands of rare gems, minerals specimens and pieces of jewelry. The halls closed in 2017 to undergo a $32 million redesign by Ralph Appelbaum Associates and reopened to the general public in June 2021. The redesigned exhibits adopt newer philosophies in exhibit design, including a focus on storytelling, interactivity, and connecting ideas across disciplines. The halls explore a range of topics, including the diversification of mineral species over the course of Earth's history, plate tectonics, and the stories of specific gems.
The halls display rare samples chosen from among the more than 100,000 pieces in the museum's collection including the Star of India, the Patricia Emerald, and the DeLong Star Ruby.
David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth
The David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth is on the first floor at the northeast corner of the museum. Opened in 1999, it is a permanent hall devoted to the history of Earth, from accretion to the origin of life and contemporary human impacts on the planet. The hall was designed to answer five key questions: "How has earth evolved? Why are there ocean basins, continents and mountains? How do scientists read rocks? What causes climate and climate change? Why is earth habitable?" The hall features rocks and other objects collected over 28 expeditions; the oldest rock is 4.3 billion years old, while the youngest was collected from a volcano on the day that it solidified. There is also a 30-seat granite amphitheater, with a globe, at the center of the hall.
Several sections also discuss the studies of Earth systems, including geology, glaciology, atmospheric sciences, and volcanology. The exhibit has several large, touchable rock specimens. The hall features striking samples of banded iron and deformed conglomerate rocks, as well as granites, sandstones, lavas, and three black smokers. The north section of the hall, which deals primarily with plate tectonics, is arranged to mimic the Earth's structure, with the core and mantle at the center and crustal features on the perimeter.
Fossil halls
Storage facilities
Most of the museum's collections of mammalian and dinosaur fossils remain hidden from public view and are kept in many repositories deep within the museum complex. The most significant storage facility among these is the ten-story Childs Frick Building, which started construction in 1969 and was completed in 1973. When the Frick Building was completed, the museum's collection of fossilized mammals and dinosaurs was the world's largest such collection, weighing . The Frick Building's top three floors contain laboratories and offices.
Other areas of the museum contain repositories of life from the past. The Whale Bone Storage Room is a cavernous space in which powerful winches come down from the ceiling to move the giant fossil bones about. The museum attic upstairs includes even more storage facilities, such as the Elephant Room, while the tusk vault and boar vault are downstairs from the attic.
Public displays
The great fossil collections that are open to public view occupy the entire fourth floor of the museum. The fourth floor exhibits are accessed by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Orientation Center, which opened in 1996. On the 77th Street side of the museum the visitor begins in the Orientation Center and follows a carefully marked path, which takes the visitor along an evolutionary tree of life. As the tree "branches" the visitor is presented with the familial relationships among vertebrates, called cladograms. A video projection on the museum's fourth floor introduces visitors to the concept of the cladogram.
Many of the fossils on display represent unique and historic pieces that were collected during the museum's golden era of worldwide expeditions (1880s–1930s). On a smaller scale, expeditions continue into the present and have resulted in additions to the collections from Vietnam, Madagascar, South America, and central and eastern Africa.
Halls
The first dinosaur hall in the museum opened in 1905. The 4th floor includes the following halls:
Hall of Vertebrate Origins
Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs (recognized by their grasping hand, long mobile neck, and the downward/forward position of the pubis bone, they are forerunners of the modern bird)
Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs (defined for a pubic bone that points toward the back)
Hall of Primitive Mammals
Hall of Advanced Mammals
The dinosaur halls were temporarily closed for renovation starting in 1990. The first halls to reopen were the primitive-mammal and advanced-mammal halls, part of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives, which opened in 1994. The Halls of Saurischian Dinosaurs and Ornithischian Dinosaurs reopened in 1995 as part of a $12 million expansion. The Hall of Vertebrate Origins opened in 1996.
Fossils on display
The fossils on display include:
Tyrannosaurus rex: Composed almost entirely of real fossil bones, it is mounted in a horizontal stalking pose balanced on powerful legs. The specimen is actually composed of fossil bones from two T. rex skeletons discovered in Montana in 1902 and 1908 by famous dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown.
Mammuthus: Larger than its relative the woolly mammoth, these fossils are from an animal that lived 11,000 years ago in Indiana.
Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus: This giant specimen was discovered at the end of the 19th century. Although most of its fossil bones are original, the skull is not, since none was found on site. The skeleton is composed primarily of the specimen AMNH 460, as well as specimens AMNH 222, AMNH 339, AMNH 592, and casts of the Brontosaurus excelsus holotype YPM 1980. It was only many years later that the first Apatosaurus skull was discovered, and so a plaster cast of that skull was made and placed on the museum's mount. A Camarasaurus skull had been used mistakenly until a correct skull was found. It is not entirely certain whether this specimen is a Brontosaurus or an Apatosaurus, and therefore it is considered an "unidentified apatosaurine", as it could also potentially be its own genus and species.
Brontops: Extinct mammal distantly related to the horse and rhinoceros. It lived 35 million years ago in what is now South Dakota. It is noted for its magnificent and unusual pair of horns.
A skeleton of Edmontosaurus annectens, a large herbivorous ornithopod dinosaur. The specimen is an example of a "mummified" dinosaur fossil in which the soft tissue and skin impressions were imbedded in the surrounding rock. The specimen is mounted as it was found, lying on its side with its legs drawn up and head drawn backwards.
On September 26, 2007, an 80-million-year-old, diameter fossil of an ammonite, which is composed entirely of the gemstone ammolite, made its debut at the museum. Neil Landman, curator of fossil invertebrates, explained that ammonites (shelled cephalopod mollusks in the subclass Ammonoidea) became extinct 66 million years ago, in the same extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. Korite International donated the fossil after its discovery in Alberta, Canada.
One skeleton of an Allosaurus scavenging from a Brontosaurus corpse based on fossils found at Bone Cabin Quarry preserving large bite marks on Apatosaurine vertebrae.
The only known skull of Andrewsarchus mongoliensis.
A display of various species of ground sloths including Megalocnus rodens, Scelidotherium cuvieri, Megalonyx wheatleyi and Glossotherium robustus
A Triceratops and a Stegosaurus are also both on display, among many other specimens.
Besides the fossils in museum display, many specimens are stored in the collections available for scientists. Those include important specimens such as complete diplodocid skull, tyrannosaurid teeth, sauropod vertebrae, and many holotypes.
Rose Center for Earth and Space
The Hayden Planetarium, connected to the museum, is now part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space on the north side of the museum. The original Hayden Planetarium was founded in 1933 with a donation by philanthropist Charles Hayden, and it opened in 1935. The AMNH announced the modern Rose Center for Earth and Space in early 1995, and demolition began the same year.
The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space was completed in 2000 at a cost of $210 million. Designed by James Stewart Polshek, the new building consists of a six-story high glass cube enclosing an illuminated sphere that appears to float, although it is actually supported by truss work. Polshek has referred to his work as a "cosmic cathedral". The sphere is known as the Space Theater.
The facility encloses of research, education, and exhibition space as well as the Hayden planetarium. Also in the facility is the Department of Astrophysics, the newest academic research department in the museum. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium. In addition, Polshek designed the Weston Pavilion, a high transparent structure of "water white" glass along the museum's west facade. This structure, a small companion piece to the Rose Center, offers a new entry way to the museum as well as opening further exhibition space for astronomically related objects. The Heilbrun Cosmic Pathway is one of the most popular exhibits in the Rose Center.
Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation
Designed by Studio Gang, Higgins Quasebarth & Partners and landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand, the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation opened in May 2023. It spans five stories and covers . Its pink Milford granite facade has a textural, curvilinear design inspired by natural topographical elements showcased in the museum. This contrasts with the earlier High Victorian Gothic, Richardson Romanesque and Beaux Arts structures. The interior itself would contain a new entrance from Columbus Avenue north of 79th Street; a multiple-story storage structure containing specimens and objects; rooms to display these objects; an insect hall; an "interpretive" "wayfinding wall", and a theater.
This expansion was originally supposed to be north of the existing museum, occupying parts of Theodore Roosevelt Park. The expansion was relocated to the west side of the existing museum, and its footprint was reduced in size, due to opposition to construction in the park. The annex replaced three existing buildings along Columbus Avenue's east side, with more than 30 connections to the existing museum.
The Richard Gilder Center houses new exhibition and display areas devoted to insects, a restaurant, visible storage, a library, classrooms, laboratories and more. It includes a butterfly vivarium, where visitors can walk among hundreds of live specimens as they flutter about in a lush tropical setting. Another permanent fixture is an immersive and interactive video experience called “Invisible Worlds” that focuses on miniature and microscopic natural processes like firing brain neurons, the exchange of nutrients and water between tree roots and the importance of plankton to ocean ecosystems.
Exhibitions Lab
Founded in 1869, the AMNH Exhibitions Lab has since produced thousands of installations. The department is notable for its integration of new scientific research into immersive art and multimedia presentations. In addition to the famous dioramas at its home museum and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, the lab has also produced international exhibitions and software such as the Digital Universe Atlas.
The exhibitions team currently consists of over sixty artists, writers, preparators, designers and programmers. The department is responsible for the creation of two to three exhibits per year. These extensive shows typically travel nationally to sister natural history museums. They have produced, among others, the first exhibits to discuss Darwinian evolution, human-induced climate change and the mesozoic mass extinction via asteroid.
Research Library
The Research Library is open to staff and public visitors, and is on the fourth floor of the museum. The Library collects materials covering such subjects as mammalogy, earth and planetary science, astronomy and astrophysics, anthropology, entomology, herpetology, ichthyology, paleontology, ethology, ornithology, mineralogy, invertebrates, systematics, ecology, oceanography, conchology, exploration and travel, history of science, museology, bibliography, genomics, and peripheral biological sciences. The collection has many retrospective materials, some going back to the 15th century, that are difficult to find elsewhere.
In its early years, the Library expanded its collection mostly through such gifts as John Clarkson Jay's conchological library, Carson Brevoort's library on fishes and general zoology, Daniel Giraud Elliot's ornithological library, S. Lowell Elliot's collection of books and pamphlets on various subjects, Harry Edwards's entomological library, the Hugh Jewett collection of voyages and travel, and Jules Marcou's geology collection. In the 1900s, the library continued to grow with donations from figures and organizations such as Egbert Viele, the American Ethnological Society, Joel Asaph Allen, Hermon Carey Bumpus, and Henry Fairfield Osborn.
The new Library was designed by the firm Roche-Dinkeloo in 1992. The space is and includes five different "conservation zones", including the 50-person reading room, public offices, and temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms. Today, the Library's collections contain over 550,000 volumes of monographs, serials, pamphlets, reprints, microforms, and original illustrations, as well as film, photographic, archives and manuscripts, fine art, memorabilia and rare book collections.
Special collections include:
Institutional Archives, Manuscripts, and Personal Papers: Includes archival documents, field notebooks, clippings and other documents relating to the museum, its scientists and staff, scientific expeditions and research, museum exhibitions, education, and general administration.
Art and Memorabilia Collection.
Moving Image Collection.
Vertical Files: Relating to exhibitions, expeditions, and museum operations.
Activities
Research activities
The museum has a scientific staff of more than 225, and sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year. Many of the fossils on display represent unique and historic pieces that were collected during the museum's golden era of worldwide expeditions (1880s–1930s). Examples of some of these expeditions, financed in whole or part by the AMNH are: Jesup North Pacific Expedition, the Whitney South Seas Expedition, the Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition, the Crocker Land Expedition, and the expeditions to Madagascar and New Guinea by Richard Archbold. On a smaller scale, expeditions continue into the present. The museum also publishes several peer-reviewed journals, including the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.
Southwestern Research Station
The AMNH operates a biological field station in Portal, Arizona, among the Chiricahua Mountains. The Southwestern Research Station was established in 1955, purchased with a grant from philanthropist David Rockefeller, and with entomologist Mont Cazier as its first director. The station, in a "biodiversity hotspot", is used by researchers and students, and offers occasional seminars to the public.
Educational outreach
AMNH's education programs include outreach to schools in New York City by the Moveable Museum. The AMNH offers a wide variety of educational programs, camps, and classes for students from pre-K to post-graduate levels. The AMNH sponsors the Lang Science Program, a comprehensive 5th–12th grade research and science education program, and the Science Research Mentorship Program (SRMP), in which pairs of students conduct a full year of intensive original research with an AMNH scientist.
Richard Gilder Graduate School
On October 23, 2006, the museum launched the Richard Gilder Graduate School, becoming the first American museum in the United States to award doctoral degrees in its own name. The school is named for businessman Richard Gilder, who contributed $50 million toward the school. Accredited in 2009, the school had 11 students enrolled in 2011, who work closely with curators and have access to the collections. The first seven graduates were awarded their degrees in 2013. The AMNH offers a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in Earth Science and a PhD in Comparative Biology.
The MAT Earth Science Residency program was launched in 2012 to address a critical shortage of qualified science teachers in New York state. In 2015, the MAT program officially joined the Richard Gilder Graduate School, with the NYS Board of Regents authorizing the Gilder School to grant the MAT degree.
Notable people
Presidents
The museum's first three presidents were all cofounders. John David Wolfe served from 1869 until his death in 1872; he was followed by Robert L. Stuart, who resigned in 1881. The third president, Morris K. Jesup, was president for over 25 years, serving until his death in 1908. Upon his death, Jesup bequeathed $1 million to the museum.
The fourth president, Henry Fairfield Osborn, appointed on the death of Jesup, consolidated the museum's expansion and developed it further. Under Osborn, the museum embraced a growing eugenics movement. Osborn's friend, noted eugenicist Madison Grant, a member of the museum's executive committee, was the author of the 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race. He also was a funder and shaper of the 1921 Second International Congress of Eugenics, held at the museum. Davenport presided also the 1932 Third International Eugenics Congress.
After Osborn resigned in 1933, F. Trubee Davison became the AMNH's fifth president. Davison stepped down in 1951, and Alexander M. White was elected as the museum's president. Gardner D. Stout then served as president from 1968 to 1975, when Robert Guestier Goelet was elected in his place. Goelet served until 1987, when he was placed on the board of trustees. He was succeeded by George D. Langdon Jr., the first president in the museum's history to receive a salary; all previous presidents had served without pay.
Ellen V. Futter became the museum's first female president in 1993. Futter announced in June 2022 that she planned to step down when the Gilder Center opened in March 2023. Sean M. Decatur was named as Futter's successor in December 2022 and became the first African American president of the museum on April 3, 2023.
Other associated names
Famous names associated with the museum include the dinosaur-hunter of the Gobi Desert, Roy Chapman Andrews (one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones); photographer Yvette Borup Andrews; George Gaylord Simpson; biologist Ernst Mayr; pioneer cultural anthropologists Franz Boas and Margaret Mead; explorer and geographer Alexander H. Rice Jr.; and ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy.
Surroundings
The museum is at 79th Street and Central Park West. There is a direct entrance into the museum from the New York City Subway's station, served by the .
On a pedestal outside the museum's Columbus Avenue entrance is a stainless steel time capsule, which was created after a design competition that was won by Santiago Calatrava. The capsule was sealed at the beginning of 2000, to mark the beginning of the 3rd millennium. It takes the form of a folded saddle-shaped volume, symmetrical on multiple axes, that explores formal properties of folded spherical frames. Calatrava described it as "a flower". The capsule is to be opened in the year 3000.
The museum is in a city park known as Theodore Roosevelt Park that extends from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue, and from West 77th to 81st Streets and that contains park benches, gardens and lawns, and also a dog run. On the west side of the park, between 80th and 81st Streets near Columbus Avenue, is the Nobel Monument honoring Nobel Prize winners from the United States.
In popular culture
The museum is featured in many works of art and popular culture, including:
A large portion of the 2017 film Wonderstruck takes place in the museum, showing the museum in 1927 as well as 1977.
The museum in the film Night at the Museum (2006) is based on a 1993 book that was set at the AMNH (The Night at the Museum). The interior scenes were shot at a sound stage in Vancouver, British Columbia, but exterior shots of the museum's facade were done at the actual AMNH. AMNH officials have credited the movie with increasing the number of visitors during the holiday season in 2006 by almost 20 percent. Its sequels, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014), were also partially set in this museum.
Gallery
See also
List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
List of most-visited museums in the United States
List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 59th to 110th Streets
National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan from 59th to 110th Streets
Education in New York City
Margaret Mead Film Festival
Constantin Astori
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
External links
American Museum of Natural History at About.com
American Museum of Natural History at Google Cultural Institute
Early history of the AMNH
1869 establishments in New York (state)
African art museums in the United States
Asian art museums in New York (state)
Association of Science-Technology Centers member institutions
Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan
Central Park West Historic District
Historic district contributing properties in Manhattan
Dinosaur museums in the United States
Geology museums in New York (state)
Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums
Mesoamerican art museums in the United States
Museums established in 1869
Museums in Manhattan
Museums on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state)
Native American museums in New York (state)
Natural history museums in New York (state)
Natural Science Collections Alliance members
New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan
New York City interior landmarks
Paleontology in New York (state)
Planetaria in the United States
Pre-Columbian art museums in the United States
Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in New York City
Science museums in New York City
Shell museums
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%20Graham%2C%201st%20Marquess%20of%20Montrose
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James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose
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James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose (1612 – 21 May 1650) was a Scottish nobleman, poet, soldier and later viceroy and captain general of Scotland. Montrose initially joined the Covenanters in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, but subsequently supported King Charles I as the English Civil War developed. From 1644 to 1646, and again in 1650, he fought in the civil war in Scotland on behalf of the King. He is referred to as the Great Montrose.
Following his defeat and capture at the Battle of Carbisdale, Montrose was tried by the Scottish Parliament and sentenced to death by hanging, followed by beheading and quartering. After the Restoration, Charles II paid £802 sterling for a lavish funeral in 1661, when Montrose's reputation changed from traitor or martyr to a romantic hero and subject of works by Walter Scott and John Buchan. His spectacular victories, which took his opponents by surprise, are remembered in military history for their tactical brilliance.
Background and family
James Graham, Chief of Clan Graham, was the youngest of six children and the only son of John Graham, 4th Earl of Montrose, and Lady Margaret Ruthven. The exact date and place of his birth are unknown, but it was probably in mid-October. His maternal grandparents were William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, and Dorothea Stewart, a daughter of Henry Stewart, 1st Lord Methven and his second wife Janet Stewart, daughter of John Stewart, 2nd Earl of Atholl.
Montrose studied at age twelve at the college of Glasgow under William Forrett who later tutored his sons. At Glasgow, he read Xenophon and Seneca, and Tasso in translation. In the words of biographer John Buchan, his favourite book was a "splendid folio of the first edition" of History of the World by Walter Raleigh. Montrose became 5th Earl of Montrose by his father's death in 1626. He was then educated at Saint Salvator's College at the University of St Andrews.
At the age of seventeen, he married Magdalene Carnegie, who was the youngest of six daughters of David Carnegie (afterwards Earl of Southesk). They were parents of four sons, among them James Graham, 2nd Marquess of Montrose.
Montrose traveled extensively in Europe through France, Italy and the German principalities. He had a famous love-affair with Princess Louise Hollandine, daughter of the Elector Palatine and sister of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
Covenanter to royalist
In 1638, after King Charles I had attempted to impose an Episcopalian version of the Book of Common Prayer upon the reluctant Scots, resistance spread throughout the country, eventually culminating in the Bishops' Wars. Montrose joined the party of resistance, and was for some time one of its most energetic champions. He had nothing puritanical in his nature, but he shared in the ill-feeling aroused by the political authority King Charles had given to the bishops. He signed the National Covenant, and was part of Alexander Leslie's army sent to suppress the opposition which arose around Aberdeen and in the country of the Gordons. Though often cited as commander of the expedition, the Aberdeen Council letter books are explicit that the troops entered Aberdeen "under the conduct of General Leslie" who remained in charge in the city until 12 April. Three times Montrose entered Aberdeen. On the second occasion, the leader of the Gordons, the Marquess of Huntly entered the city under a pass of safe conduct but ended up accompanying Montrose to Edinburgh, with his supporters saying as a prisoner and in breach of the pass, but Cowan is clear Huntly chose to go voluntarily, rather than as prisoner, noting "by giving out he had been forced to accompany Montrose he was neatly easing his own predicament and at the same time sparing Montrose a great deal of embarrassment". Spalding also supports that Huntly went voluntarily. Montrose was a leader of the delegation who subsequently met at Muchalls Castle to parley regarding the 1638 confrontation with the Bishop of Aberdeen. With the Earl Marischal he led a force of 9000 men across the Causey Mounth through the Portlethen Moss to attack Royalists at the Battle of the Brig of Dee. These events played a part in Charles I's decision to grant major concessions to the Covenanters.
In July 1639, after the signing of the Treaty of Berwick, Montrose was one of the Covenanting leaders who visited Charles. His change of mind, eventually leading to his support for the King, arose from his wish to get rid of the bishops without making Presbyterians masters of the state. His was essentially a layman's view of the situation. Taking no account of the real forces of the time, he aimed at an ideal form of society in which the clergy should confine themselves to their spiritual duties, and the King should uphold law and order. In the Scottish parliament which met in September, Montrose found himself opposed by Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, who had gradually assumed leadership of the Presbyterian and national party, and of the estate of burgesses. Montrose, on the other hand, wished to bring the King's authority to bear upon parliament to defeat Argyll, and offered the King the support of a great number of nobles. He failed, because Charles could not even then consent to abandon the bishops, and because no Scottish party of any weight could be formed unless Presbyterianism were established as the ecclesiastical power in Scotland.
Rather than give way, Charles prepared in 1640 to invade Scotland. Montrose was of necessity driven to play something of a double game. In August 1640 he signed the Bond of Cumbernauld as a protest against the particular and direct practising of a few, in other words, against the ambition of Argyll. But he took his place amongst the defenders of his country, and in the same month displayed his gallantry in action at the forcing of the River Tyne at Newburn. On 27 May 1641 he was summoned before the Committee of Estates and charged with intrigues against Argyll, and on 11 June he was imprisoned by them in Edinburgh Castle. Charles visited Scotland to give his formal assent to the abolition of Episcopacy, and upon the King's return to England, Montrose shared in the amnesty tacitly accorded to all Charles's partisans.
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
The king signed a warrant for his Marquessate and appointed Montrose Lord Lieutenant of Scotland, both in 1644. A year later in 1645, the king commissioned him captain general. His military campaigns were fought quickly and used the element of surprise to overcome his opponents even when sometimes dauntingly outnumbered. At one point, Montrose dressed himself as the groom of the Earl of Leven and travelled away from Carlisle, and the eventual capture of his party, in disguise with "two followers, four sorry horses, little money and no baggage".
Highlanders had never before been known to combine, but Montrose knew that many of the West Highland clans, who were largely Catholic, detested Argyll and his Campbell clansmen, and none more so than the MacDonalds who with many of the other clans rallied to his summons. The Royalist allied Irish Confederates sent 2000 disciplined Irish soldiers led by Alasdair MacColla across the sea to assist him. The Irish proved to be formidable fighters.
In two campaigns, distinguished by rapidity of movement, he met and defeated his opponents in six battles. At Tippermuir and Aberdeen he routed Covenanting levies; at Inverlochy he crushed the Campbells, at Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth his victories were obtained over well-led and disciplined armies.
The fiery enthusiasm of the Gordons and other clans often carried the day, but Montrose relied more upon the disciplined infantry from Ireland. His strategy at Inverlochy, and his tactics at Aberdeen, Auldearn and Kilsyth furnished models of the military art, but above all his daring and constancy marked him out as one of the great soldiers of his time. His career of victory was crowned by the great Battle of Kilsyth on 15 August 1645. Such was the extent of his military fame that King Louis XIV offered him the position of Marshal of France.
Now Montrose found himself apparently master of Scotland. After Kilsyth, the king's secretary arrived with letters from Charles documenting that Montrose was lieutenant and captain general. He first conferred knighthood on Alasdair. Then he summoned a parliament to meet at Glasgow on 20 October, in which he no doubt hoped to reconcile loyal obedience to the King with the establishment of a non-political Presbyterian clergy. That parliament never met. Charles had been defeated at the Battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645, and Montrose had to come to his aid if there was to be still a king to proclaim. David Leslie, one of the best Scottish generals, was promptly dispatched against Montrose to anticipate the invasion. On 12 September he came upon Montrose, who had been deserted by his Highlanders and was guarded only by a little group of followers, at Philiphaugh. He won an easy victory. Montrose cut his way through to the Highlands; but he failed to organise an army. In September 1646 he embarked for Norway. Stories of his victories as documented in Latin by George Wishart reached the continent and he was offered an appointment as lieutenant-general in the French army, and the Emperor Ferdinand III awarded him the rank of field marshal, but Montrose remained devoted to the service of King Charles and so his son, Charles II.
Montrose was to appear once more on the stage of Scottish history. In June 1649, eager to avenge the death of the King, he was restored by the exiled Charles II to the now nominal lieutenancy of Scotland. Charles, however, did not scruple soon afterwards to disavow his noblest supporter to become King on terms dictated by Argyll and his adherents. In March 1650 Montrose landed in Orkney to take command of a small force which he had sent on before him with George Hay, 3rd Earl of Kinnoull. Crossing to the mainland, he tried in vain to raise the clans, and on 27 April was surprised and routed at the Battle of Carbisdale in Ross-shire. His forces were defeated in battle but he escaped. After wandering for some time he was surrendered by Neil MacLeod of Assynt at Ardvreck Castle, to whose protection, in ignorance of MacLeod's political enmity, he had entrusted himself. He was brought a prisoner to Edinburgh, and on 20 May sentenced to death by the parliament. He was hanged on the 21st, with Wishart's laudatory biography of him around his neck. He protested to the last that he was in truth a Covenanter and a loyal subject. Grant states that the execution was overseen by the Edinburgh City Guard under command of Major Weir.
His head was removed and stood on the "prick on the highest stone" of the Old Tolbooth outside St Giles' Cathedral from 1650 until the beginning of 1661.
Shortly after Montrose's death the Scottish Argyll Government switched sides to support Charles II's attempt to regain the English throne, provided he was willing to impose the Solemn League and Covenant in England for a trial period at least. After the Restoration Montrose was officially rehabilitated in the public memory.
On 7 January 1661 Montrose's mangled torso was disinterred from the gallows ground on the Burgh Muir and carried under a velvet canopy to the Tolbooth, where his head was reverently removed from the spike, before the procession continued on its way to Holyrood Abbey. The diarist John Nicoll wrote the following eyewitness account of the event,
[A guard of honour of four captains with their companies, all of them in] thair armes and displayit colouris, quha eftir a lang space marching up an doun the streitis, went out thaireftir to the Burrow mure quhair his corps wer bureyit, and quhair sundry nobles and gentrie his freindis and favorites, both hors and fute wer thair attending; and thair, in presence of sundry nobles, earls, lordis, barones and otheris convenit for the tyme, his graif [grave] was raisit, his body and bones taken out and wrappit up in curious clothes and put in a coffin, quhilk, under a canopy of rich velwet, wer careyit from the Burrow-mure to the Toun of Edinburgh; the nobles barones and gentrie on hors, the Toun of Edinburgh and many thousandis besyde, convoyit these corpis all along, the callouris [colours] fleying, drums towking [beating], trumpettis sounding, muskets cracking and cannones from the Castell roring; all of thame walking on till thai come to the Tolbuith of Edinburgh, frae the quhilke his heid wes very honorablie and with all dew respectis taken doun and put within the coffin under the cannopie with great acclamation and joy; all this tyme the trumpettis, the drumes, cannouns, gunes, the displayit cullouris geving honor to these deid corps. From thence all of thame, both hors and fute, convoyit these deid corps to the Abay Kirk of Halyrudhous quhair he is left inclosit in ane yll [aisle] till forder ordour be by his Majestie and Estaites of Parliament for the solempnitie of his Buriall.
Montrose's limbs were brought from the towns to which they had been sent (Glasgow, Perth, Stirling and Aberdeen) and placed in his coffin, as he lay in state at Holyrood. A splendid funeral was held in the church of St. Giles on 11 May 1661.
The torso of an executed person would have normally been given to friends or family; but Montrose was the subject of an excommunication, which was why it was originally buried in unconsecrated ground. In 1650 his niece, Lady Napier, had sent men by night to remove his heart. This relic she placed in a steel case made from his sword and placed the whole in a gold filigree box, which had been presented to her family by a Doge of Venice. The heart in its case was retained by the Napier family for several generations until lost amidst the confusion of the French Revolution.
Battle history
Montrose had successive victories at the Battle of Tippermuir, with the support of Alasdair MacColla and his Irish soldiers, the Battle of Aberdeen, the Battle of Inverlochy, the Battle of Auldearn, the Battle of Alford, and the Battle of Kilsyth. After several years of continuous victories, Montrose was finally defeated at the Battle of Philiphaugh on 13 September 1645 by the Covenanter army of David, Lord Newark, restoring the power of the Committee of Estates.
In March 1650 he captured Dunbeath Castle of the Clan Sinclair, who would later support him at Carbisdale. Montrose was defeated at the Battle of Carbisdale by the Munros, Rosses, Sutherlands and Colonel Archibald Strachan.
In literature
In fiction
A Legend of Montrose (1819) by Sir Walter Scott
John Splendid (1898) by Neil Munro
Witch Wood by John Buchan (1927)
And No Quarter by Maurice Walsh (1937)
The Bride (1939) and The Proud Servant (1949) by Margaret Irwin
The Young Montrose (1972) and Montrose:The Captain-General (1973) by Nigel Tranter
Graham came by Cleish (1973) by James L. Dow
Lady Magdalen (2003) by Robin Jenkins. Focuses primarily on Magdalen, Montrose's wife.
In poetry
In his 1751 poetry collection Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich ("The Resurrection of the Old Scottish Language"), which was the first published secular book in the history of Scottish Gaelic literature, the Jacobite war poet and military officer Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair both translated into Gaelic and versified several famous statements made by Montrose expressing his loyalty to the House of Stuart during the English Civil War.
References
Bibliography
Montrose (1952) by CV Wedgwood
Montrose: The King's Champion (1977) by Max Hastings
Authorities for Montrose's career include George Wishart's Res gestae, etc. (Amsterdam, 1647), published in English as Memoirs of the Most Renowned James Graham, Marquis of Montrose; Patrick Gordon's Short Abridgment of Britanes Distemper (Spalding Club); and the comprehensive works of Napier. These include Montrose and Covenanters; his Memorials of Montrose is abundantly documented, containing Montrose's poetry, including the celebrated lyric "My dear and only love."
External links
1st Marquis of Montrose Society
Lyrics to "Montrose" by the Battlefield Band and historical notes in English and German
Lyrics to "Montrose" by Steeleye Span
Discussion thread at the Mudcat Cafe – a website for folk musicians (Mudcat Café) – about the Battlefield Band song
Mudcat Cafe thread about the Steeleye Span song about Montrose (scroll down 2/3 for lyrics)
Civil War re-enactors – includes regiments associated with Montrose such as Manus O'Cahan's Regiment.
Scottish generals
Scottish politicians
17th-century Scottish writers
17th-century Scottish peers
Covenanters
Alumni of the University of St Andrews
Knights of the Garter
1612 births
1650 deaths
17th-century executions by Scotland
Nobility from Angus, Scotland
Military personnel from Angus, Scotland
Executed Scottish people
Scottish poets
People executed by the Kingdom of Scotland by hanging
Members of the Parliament of Scotland 1639–1641
Marquesses of Montrose
Burials at the kirkyard of St Giles
Field marshals of the Holy Roman Empire
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady%20Mary%20Wortley%20Montagu
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont; 15 May 168921 August 1762) was an English aristocrat, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762.
Although having regularly socialised with the court of George I and George Augustus, Prince of Wales (later King George II) , Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which Billie Melman describes as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient". Aside from her writing, Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey. Her writings address and challenge the hindering contemporary social attitudes towards women and their intellectual and social growth.
Early life
Lady Mary Pierrepont was born on 15 May 1689 at Holme Pierrepont Hall in Nottinghamshire, and baptised on 26 May 1689 at St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden, London. She was the eldest child of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull (c.1655–1726), and his first wife Mary Feilding (d. 20 December 1697), the only daughter of the third Earl of Denbigh (d.1685). Lady Mary had three younger siblings, two girls, Frances and Evelyn, and a boy, William.
Lady Mary was a bright, free-spirited child who dreamed of greatness. She wrote in her diary, "I am going to write a history so uncommon." Aged seven, members of the newly formed Kit-Cat Club, a group of fashionable men, nominated her as the subject of their toast to the beauty of the season, and they had her name engraved on the glass goblet used for this purpose. As a child, she had a "desire of catching the setting sun" and she would run across the meadow to "catch hold of the great golden ball of fire sinking on the horizon". However, she then realized that this activity "was impossible". Overall, the pursuit of achieving the impossible became a recurring pattern throughout her life.
However, misfortune occurred. Her mother, who she thought would have supported her aspirations, died. Then her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Pierrepont raised Mary and her siblings until she died when Mary was eight years old. Then, after Mrs. Pierrepont's death, Mary was passed to the care of her father, who did not believe he was obliged to assist with her education.
Education
Mary Wortley Montagu's education was divided between a governess and the use of the library at the family property Thoresby Hall. According to Lady Mary, the governess gave her "one of the worst [educations] in the world" by teaching Lady Mary "superstitious tales and false notions". To supplement the instruction of a despised governess, Lady Mary used the well-furnished library to "steal" her education by hiding in the library, between 10am and 2pm, and "every afternoon from four to eight". She taught herself Latin, a language usually reserved for men at the time. She secretly got a hold of a "Latin dictionary and grammar" and by the age of thirteen, her handling with the language was on par to most men. Furthermore, she was also a voracious reader. She jotted the list of characters and titles she read into a notebook. Some of the works she read included "plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Dryden, Rowe, Lee, Otway" and French and English romances, including "Grand Cyrus, Pharamond, Almahide, and Parthenissa." By 1705, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, Mary Pierrepont had written two albums entitled "Poems, Songs &c" filled with poetry, a brief epistolary novel, and a prose-and-verse romance modelled after Aphra Behn's Voyage to the Isle of Love (1684). She also corresponded with two bishops, Thomas Tenison and Gilbert Burnet, who supplemented the instruction of the governess. Overall, Mary impressed her father, who was not a scholar, with her progress.
Marriage and embassy to Ottoman Empire
Engagement
By 1710, Lady Mary had two possible suitors to choose from: Edward Wortley Montagu (born 8 February 1678) and Clotworthy Skeffington. The friendship between Lady Mary and Edward Wortley Montagu, the son of Sidney Wortley Montagu, began through Edward's younger sister Anne Wortley. In London, Anne and Lady Mary met frequently at social functions and exchanged visits to each other's homes. They also communicated through writing, in which they filled their letters with "trivial gossip" and "effusive compliments". After Anne died in November 1709, Lady Mary began conversing with Anne's brother Edward Wortley Montagu. Lady Mary often met Edward at "friends’ houses" and "at Court". On 28 March 1710, she wrote the first letter she addressed to Edward. Lady Mary corresponded with Edward Wortley Montagu via letters until 2 May 1711 without her father's permission.
Keeping up with their communication became harder when Lady Mary's father bought a house at Acton, a suburban village famous for its mineral springs. Lady Mary hated the house because it was ‘dull and disagreeable,’ and it did not have a library in it. A few weeks after moving, Lady Mary had the measles, and she asked her maid to write Edward a letter to tell him about the illness. Soon, there were misunderstandings between Edward and Lady Mary. Edward hurried to Acton. There, he left a note, revealing his love: "I should be overjoyed to hear your Beauty is very much impaired, could I be pleased with anything that would give you displeasure, for it would lessen the number of Admirers." In response, she scolded his indiscretion by saying, "Forgive and forget me." Then, in his reply, Edward stated that "he would deal with her father if he were sure they could be happy together." This reply helped Lady Mary forget her irritation. Lady Mary in Acton and Edward in London kept writing to each other until the early summer of 1710.
Lady Mary's primary concern with her engagement was financial, not romantic. Lady Mary denied transient emotions guiding her life: "I can esteem, I can be a friend, but I don’t know whether I can love." Then, after setting forth all her terms, including her deference, she warned to Edward that "Make no answer to this, if you can like me on my own terms" and that his proposals not be made for her. However, these correspondences soon endangered Edward. In one particular letter, Edward wrote, "Her being better in 1710, the consequence of its being known that I write to her." A servant in Lady Mary's household found this letter and gave it to her father; this letter put her father "in the utmost rage." However, Wortley was flattered that Lady Mary "had given the father as ‘an artifice to bring the affair to a proper conclusion.’" The next day, Wortley called Lady Mary’s father about a formal proposal. Mary's father, now Marquess of Dorchester had insisted on one condition in the marriage contract: "that Wortley’s estate be entailed on the first son born to him." However, Wortley refused to do this as it would require £10,000.
Consequently, in order to convince Lady Mary's father, Edward thought of publishing the marriage contract in the Tatler, a British journal. On the Tatlers issue of 18 July, Wortley wrote the following: "Her first lover has ten to one against him. The very hour after he has opened his heart and his rent rolls he is made no other use of but to raise her price…While the poor lover very innocently waits, till the plenipotentiaries at the inns of court have debated about the alliance, all the partisans of the lady throw difficulties in the way, till other offers come in; and the man who came first is not put in possession, until she has been refused by half the town." These arguments did not persuade Lord Dorchester. Even though these negotiations reached an impasse, Lady Mary and Edward continued corresponding with one another.
At the end of March 1711, Lady Mary's father 'determined to end her friendship with Wortley'. Her father summoned her to a conference, forced her to promise to not to write, and hustled her to West Dean. However, Lady Mary broke her promise to tell Wortley about her rights and duty: "Had you had any real Affection for me, you would have long go applied yourself to him, from whose hand only you can receive me." After their exchanges of disagreements and realizing she did not like him, he realized their friendship must end. On 2 May, he replied, "Adieu, Dearest L[ady] M[ary]. This once be assur’d you will not deceive me. I expect no answer." Consequently, Lady Mary did not respond that summer. In that same summer, her father Lord Dorchester decided to find a husband other than Edward Wortley Montagu for his daughter.
Lady Mary's father pressured her to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, the heir to the Irish Viscount Massereene. Skeffington's marriage contract included "an allowance of £500 a year as ‘pin-money,’ and £1,200 a year if he died." However, she rejected him. Thus, to avoid marriage to Skeffington, she eloped with Montagu. In a letter to Wortley, she wrote, "He [my father] will have a thousand plausible reasons for being irreconcilable, and ‘tis very probable the world will be on his side…I shall come to you with only a night-gown and petticoat, and that is all you will get with me. I told a lady of my friends what I intended to do. You will think her a very good friend when I tell you she has proffered to lend us her house if we would come there the first night…If you determine to go to that lady’s house, you had better come with a coach and six at seven o’clock to-morrow." The marriage license is dated 17 August 1712, and the marriage probably took place on 23 August 1712.
Early married life before travelling to the Ottoman Empire
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Edward Wortley Montagu spent the first years of their married life in England. She had a son, Edward Wortley Montagu the younger, named after his father Edward Wortley Montagu, on 16 May 1713, in London. On 13 October 1714, her husband accepted the post of Junior Commissioner of the Treasury. When Lady Mary joined him in London, her wit and beauty soon made her a prominent figure at court. She was among the society of George I and George Augustus, Prince of Wales, and counted amongst her friends Molly Skerritt, Lady Walpole, John, Lord Hervey, Mary Astell, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Abbé Antonio Schinella Conti.
In December 1715, at the age of twenty-six, Lady Mary contracted smallpox. She survived, but while she was ill someone circulated the satirical "court eclogues" she had been writing. One of the poems was read as an attack on Caroline, Princess of Wales, in spite of the fact that the "attack" was voiced by a character who was herself heavily satirised.
Husband's assignment to Constantinople
In 1716, Edward Wortley Montagu was appointed Ambassador at Constantinople to negotiate an end to the Austro-Turkish War. In August 1716, Lady Mary accompanied him to Vienna, and thence to Adrianople and Constantinople. He was recalled in 1717, but they remained at Constantinople until 1718. While away from England, the Wortley Montagus had a daughter on 19 January 1718, who would grow up to be Mary, Countess of Bute. After an unsuccessful delegation between Austria and the Ottoman Empire, they set sail for England via the Mediterranean, and reached London on 2 October 1718. In the same year, the Austrians and Turkish signed the Treaty of Passarowitz at the conclusion of the Austro-Turkish War.
The story of this voyage and of her observations of Eastern life is told in Letters from Turkey, a series of lively letters full of graphic descriptions; Letters is often credited as being an inspiration for subsequent female travelers and writers, as well as for much Orientalist art. During her visit she was sincerely charmed by the beauty and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered. In letters she wrote about how different fashion was as she made her way to Turkey. In a letter to Lady Mar, from Vienna, she wrote: "They build certain fabrics of gauze on their heads, about a yard high, consisting of three or four stories, fortified with numberless yards of heavy ribbon…Their whalebone petticoats outdo ours by several yards’ circumference, and cover some acres of ground." Furthermore, she recorded her experiences in a Turkish bath, which are reserved for both diversion and health. In a letter, she wrote, "They [Ottoman women] generally take this diversion once a week, and stay there at least four or five hours, without getting cold immediately coming out of the hot bath into the cold room, which was surprising to me." She also recorded a particularly amusing incident in which a group of Turkish women at a bath in Sofia, horrified by the sight of the stays she was wearing, exclaimed that "they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband." Lady Mary wrote about the misconceptions that previous travelers, specifically male travelers, had recorded about the religion, traditions and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire. Her gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to males. Her personal interactions with Ottoman women enabled her to provide, in her view, a more accurate account of Turkish women, their dress, habits, traditions, limitations and liberties, at times irrefutably more a critique of the Occident than a praise of the Orient. Montagu also carefully constructed Ottoman female spaces, and her own engagement with Ottoman women, as full of homoerotic desire, which is consistent with the gender and sexual fluidity that characterized much of her life and writings.
Ottoman smallpox inoculation
Smallpox inoculation
In the 18th century, Europeans began an experiment known as inoculation or variolation to prevent, not cure the smallpox. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu defied convention, most memorably by introducing smallpox inoculation to Western medicine after witnessing it during her travels and stay in the Ottoman Empire. Previously, Lady Mary's brother had died of smallpox in 1713, and although Lady Mary recovered from the disease in 1715, it left her with a disfigured face. In the Ottoman Empire, she visited the women in their segregated zenanas, a house for Muslims and Hindus, making friends and learning about Turkish customs. There in March 1717, she witnessed the practice of inoculation against smallpox – variolation – which she called engrafting, and wrote home about it in a number of her letters. The most famous of these letters was her "Letter to a Friend" of 1 April 1717. Variolation used live smallpox virus in the pus taken from a mild smallpox blister and introduced it into scratched skin of the arm or leg (the most usual spots) of a previously uninfected person to promote immunity to the disease. Consequently, the inoculate would develop a milder case of smallpox than the one he/she might have contracted.
Lady Mary was eager to spare her children, thus, in March 1718 she had her nearly five-year-old son, Edward, inoculated there with the help of Embassy surgeon Charles Maitland. In fact, her son was the "first English person to undergo the operation." In a letter to a friend in England, Montagu wrote, "There is a set of old women [here], who make it their business to perform the operation, every autumn…when then great heat is abated…thousands undergo this operation...[and there] is not one example of anyone that has died in it." Afterwards, she updated the status of Edward to her husband: "The Boy was engrafted last Tuesday, and is at this time singing and playing, and very impatient for his supper. I pray God my next may give as good an account of him." On her return to London, she enthusiastically promoted the procedure, but encountered a great deal of resistance from the medical establishment, because it was a folk treatment process.
In April 1721, when a smallpox epidemic struck England, she had her daughter inoculated by Maitland, the same physician who had inoculated her son at the Embassy in Turkey, and publicised the event. This was the first such operation done in Britain. She persuaded Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, to test the treatment. In August 1721, seven prisoners at Newgate Prison awaiting execution were offered the chance to undergo variolation instead of execution: they all survived and were released. Despite this, controversy over smallpox inoculation intensified. However Caroline, Princess of Wales, was convinced of its value. The Princess's two daughters Amelia and Caroline were successfully inoculated in April 1722 by French-born surgeon Claudius Amyand. In response to the general fear of inoculation, Lady Mary, under a pseudonym, wrote and published an article describing and advocating in favour of inoculation in September 1722. Later, other royal families soon followed Montagu's act. For instance, in 1768, Catherine the Great of Russia had herself and her son, the future Tsar Paul, inoculated. The Russians continued to refine the process.
Nevertheless, inoculation was not always a safe process; inoculates developed a real case of smallpox and could infect others. The inoculation resulted in a "small number of deaths and complications, including serious infections." Subsequently, Edward Jenner, who was 13 years old when Lady Mary died in 1762, developed the much safer technique of vaccination using cowpox instead of smallpox. Jenner's method involves "engrafting lymph taken from a pustulate of cowpox on the hand of a milkmaid into the arm of an inoculate." Jenner first tested his method on James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, and when Phipps did not have any reaction after the procedure, Jenner claimed that his procedure "bestowed immunity against smallpox." Then, after spending the next few years experimenting his new procedure, he discovered that his hypothesis was correct. As vaccination gained acceptance, variolation gradually fell out of favour. In the 20th century, a concerted campaign by the WHO to eradicate smallpox via vaccination would succeed by 1979. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's introduction of smallpox inoculation had ultimately led to the development of vaccines, and the later eradication of smallpox.
Later years
After returning to England, Lady Mary took less interest in court compared to her earlier years. Instead, she was more focused on the upbringing of her children, reading, writing and editing her travel letters—which she then chose not to publish.
Before starting for the East, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had met Alexander Pope, and during her Embassy travels with her husband, they wrote each other a series of letters. While Pope may have been fascinated by her wit and elegance, Lady Mary's replies to his letters reveal that she was not equally smitten. Very few letters passed between them after Lady Mary's return to England, and various reasons have been suggested for the subsequent estrangement. In 1728, Pope attacked Lady Mary in his Dunciad, which inaugurated a decade in which most of his publications made some sort of allegation against her.
Difficulties with family
Lady Mary went through a series of trials with her children. In 1726 and 1727, Lady Mary's son Edward ran away from Westminster School several times. He was then entrusted to a tutor with strict orders to keep him abroad. In later years, her son managed to return to England without permission and continued to have a strained relationship with both his parents.
In the summer of 1736, Lady Mary's daughter, also named Mary, fell in love with John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, but he had little fortune; Lady Mary warned her daughter about the disadvantages of living in poverty. Lady Mary similarly had concerns regarding the 1734 marriage of her niece Lady Mary Pierrrepont (1711-1795) who had eloped with Philip Meadows, Deputy Ranger of Richmond Park saying that her "ruin" was due to the "silly good people that had the care of her".
In August 1736, Lady Mary's daughter married Bute, despite her parents' disapproval of the match. Later, Lady Mary wrote to Lord Gower, 1st Earl Gower, about her daughter's disobedience. In response, Lord Gower tried to console Lady Mary: "I hope by her future conducts she will atone for her past, and that choice will prove more happy than you and Mr. Wortley expect." In the same year, she met and fell in love with Count Francesco Algarotti, who competed with an equally smitten John Hervey for her affections.
Lady Mary wrote many letters to Francesco Algarotti in English and in French after his departure from England in September 1736. In July 1739, Lady Mary departed England without her husband ostensibly for health reasons, possibly from a disfiguring skin disease, and declared her intentions to winter in the south of France; after she left England, she and her husband never met again. In reality, she left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice. Their relationship ended in 1741 after Lady Mary and Algarotti were both on a diplomatic mission in Turin. Lady Mary stayed abroad and travelled extensively. After travelling to Venice, Florence, Rome, Genoa and Geneva, she finally settled in Avignon in 1742. She left Avignon in 1746 for Brescia, where she fell ill and stayed for nearly a decade, leaving for Lovere in 1754. In the summer of 1756, Lady Mary travelled to Venice for an undisclosed business errand. After August 1756, she resided in Venice and Padua and saw Algarotti again in November. Throughout the time, Lady Mary exchanged letters with her daughter, Lady Bute, discussing topics such as philosophy, literature, and the education of girls, as well as conveying details of her geographical and social surroundings.
Lady Mary received news of her husband Edward Wortley Montagu's death on 1 January 1761, and he was buried at Wortley. As soon as she learned of her husband's death, Lady Mary left Venice for England. She had a self-imposed exile because of her strained relationship with , but her return made sense because she wanted to see her daughter and her grandchildren before she died. On 1 September 1761, she began her journey back home; she decided to go through Germany and Holland because France, which was deemed the easier route, was at war. However, the journey was dangerous and exhausting. When she reached Augsburg on 1 October, she wrote to Sir James and Lady Francis Steuart that "she hoped to meet them in Holland." She recorded her perils and fatigues to Sir James in a letter: "I am dragging my ragged remnant of life to England. The wind and the tide are against me; how far I have strength to struggle against both, I know not." While detained at Rotterdam, she handed her Embassy Letters to the Reverend Benjamin Sowden of Rotterdam, for safe keeping and "to be dispos'd of as he thinks proper." After she left Rotterdam on 12 December, a hard, impenetrable frost hindered her voyage. Towards the end of the month, she sailed for England, but a mountainous sea obstructed the passage and the captain returned to harbor. On the next attempt a few days later, Lady Mary reached London in January 1762. After arriving in London, Lady Mary rented a house in Great George Street, Hanover Square, and her daughter and grandchildren often visited her.
In June 1762, it became known that Lady Mary was suffering from cancer. Even though she tried to conceal her illness from her family as long as possible, she grew rapidly weaker that month. She wrote her last letter but with difficulty on 2 July to Lady Frances Steuart; in this letter, she wrote "I have been ill a long time, and am now so bad I am little capable of writing, but I would not pass in your opinion as either stupid or ungrateful. My heart is always warm in your service, and I am always told your affairs shall be taken care of." Lady Frances's son was in London, and when he visited Lady Mary's house, he was summoned to her bedroom where he was surrounded by her relatives, including Lord and Lady Bute. Lady Mary then ordered her relatives to leave the room, saying of Lady Frances's son, "My dear young friend has come to see me before I die, and I desire to be left alone with him." She died on 21 August 1762 at her house in Great George Street, and was buried in Grosvenor Chapel the day after she died.
Important works and literary place
Although Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is now best known for her Turkish Embassy Letters, she wrote poetry and essays as well. A number of Lady Mary's poems and essays were printed in her lifetime, either without or with her permission, in newspapers, in miscellanies, and independently.
Montagu did not intend to publish her poetry, but it did circulate widely, in manuscript, among members of her own social circle. Lady Mary was highly suspicious of any idealizing literary language. She wrote most often in heroic couplets, a serious poetic form to employ, and, according to Susan Staves, "excelled at answer poems". Some of her widely anthologized poems include "Constantinople" and "Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband". "Constantinople", written in January 1718, is a beautiful poem in heroic couplets describing Britain and Turkey through human history, and representing the states of mind "of knaves, coxcombs, the mob, and party zealous—all characteristic of the London of her time". "Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband", written in 1724, stages a letter from Mrs. Yonge to her libertine husband and exposes the social double standard which led to the shaming and distress of Mrs. Yonge after her divorce. In 1737 and 1738, Lady Mary published anonymously a political periodical called the Nonsense of Common-Sense, supporting the Robert Walpole government. The title was a reference to a journal of the liberal opposition entitled Common Sense. She wrote six Town Eclogues and other poems.
During the twentieth century Lady Mary's letters were edited separately from her essays, poems and plays. She wrote notable letters describing her travels through Europe and the Ottoman Empire; these appeared after her death in three volumes. Lady Mary corresponded with Anne Wortley and wrote courtship letters to her future husband Edward Wortley Montagu, as well as love letters to Francesco Algarotti. She corresponded with notable writers, intellectuals and aristocrats of her day. She wrote gossip letters and letters berating the vagaries of fashionable people to her sister, Lady Mar, the daughter of the Whig Duke of Kingston. They met when the Wortleys visited Paris, France on 29 September 1718. During her visit, Montagu observed the beauties and behaviors of Parisian women. She wrote "their hair cut short and curled round their faces, loaded with powder that makes it look like white wool!" In one of their correspondences, Lady Mary informed her sister of the ‘surprising death’ of her father. Furthermore, they exchanged intellectual letters with Montagu's only daughter, Lady Bute. Lady Mary and Lady Mar discontinued their correspondence in 1727. Although not published during her lifetime, her letters from Turkey were clearly intended for print. She revised them extensively and gave a transcript to the Reverend Benjamin Sowden, a British clergyman, in Rotterdam in 1761. Sowden also lent the book to two English travelers, including Thomas Becket. Furthermore, during that night, the travelers made copies of her letters. After the travelers returned the book, Sowden handed the book to Lord Bute, the husband of Lady Mary's only daughter, in exchange for two hundred pounds. In 1763 in London, the year after Montagu's death, Becket and De Hondt published this error-laden version manuscript in three volumes, entitled Letters of the Right Honourable Lady My W—y M----e: Written, during her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, to Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, &c. in different Parts of Europe; Which contain, Among other curious Relations, Accounts of the Policy and Manners of the Turks, commonly referred to as the Embassy Letters or Turkish Embassy Letters because it was "composed during and after Montagu’s journey through Europe to Constantinople in the company of her husband." The first edition of the book sold out; in fact, the Critical Review newspaper editor, Tobias Smollett, wrote that the letters were "never equaled by any letter-writer of any sex, age or nation" and Voltaire also had high praise of these letters. Four years later in 1767, editor John Cleland added five spurious letters, along with previous printed essays and verses, to the previous edition of the book.
Despite the immediate success following the publication of Turkish Embassy Letters, Lady Bute was furious and worried about how an unauthorized publication would impact the family's reputation. One of the manuscript volumes that others found was Lady Mary's famous diary, and Lady Bute did not have any knowledge of this existence until a few days before her mother's death. After she received these volumes, Lady Bute "kept it always under lock and key, and though she often looked over it herself, and read passages aloud to her daughters and friends, excepting the first five or six copy-books, which at a late period, she permitted Lady Louisa Stuart to peruse alone, upon condition that nothing should be transcribed." Lady Louisa Stuart, the youngest of Lady Bute's daughters, was scolded for reading books and wanting to be like her grandmother. Later, Lady Louisa followed her grandmother's footsteps and became a writer. Then when Lady Bute felt that the end of her life was near, in 1794, she burnt the diary that her mother kept since her marriage. She chose to burn the diary because Lady Bute always spoke to her mother with great respect, and she feared the possibility of a scandal.
According to O'Quinn, although The Turkish Embassy Letters has been considered one of the best literary works published in the eighteenth century, the work has not been as appreciated as those published by her male peers, such as Alexander Pope and Horace Walpole. She was the "target of vicious attacks" from printing presses and male peers. Although she describes her travels through Europe to the Ottoman Empire in The Turkish Embassy Letters to her correspondents, very few of the letters survived, and the letters in the book may not be accurate transcriptions of the actual correspondence. According to Daniel O'Quinn, the book was not a culmination of facts but of opinions, and there must be some filtering during the editing processes. Furthermore, to avoid public censure, Montagu used pseudonyms, such as "a Turkey merchant" and "Lady President", in her publications. Lastly, Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters was published posthumously-Walpole affirmed that it was Montagu’s deathbed wish to get the letters published.
An important early letter was published, probably without Montagu's consent, titled "The Genuine Copy of a Letter Written From Constantinople by an English Lady" in 1719. Both in this letter and in the Turkish Embassy Letters more broadly, particularly in the letters about the scholar Achmet Beg, Montagu participates in a wider English dialogue on Enlightenment ideas about religion, particularly deism, and their overlap with Islamic theology. Montagu, along with many others, including the freethinking scholar Henry Stubbe, celebrated Islam for what they saw as its rational approach to theology, for its strict monotheism, and for its teaching and practice around religious tolerance. In short, Montagu and other thinkers in this tradition saw Islam as a source of Enlightenment, as evidenced in her calling the Qur'an "the purest morality delivered in the very best language" By comparison, Montagu dedicated large portions of the Turkish Embassy Letters to criticizing Catholic religious practices, particularly Catholic beliefs around sainthood, miracles, and religious relics, which she frequently excoriated. In relation to these practices, she wrote, "I cannot fancy there is anything new in letting you know that priests can lie, and the mob believe all over the world."
Montagu's Turkish letters were to prove an inspiration to later generations of European women travellers and writers. In particular, Montagu staked a claim to the authority of women's writing, due to their ability to access private homes and female-only spaces where men were not permitted. The title of her published letters is "Sources that Have Been Inaccessible to Other Travellers". The letters themselves frequently draw attention to the fact that they present a different, and Montagu asserts more accurate description than that provided by previous (male) travellers: "You will perhaps be surpriz'd at an Account so different from what you have been entertained with by the common Voyage-writers who are very fond of speaking of what they don't know." In general, Montagu dismisses the quality of European travel literature of the 18th century as nothing more than "trite observations…superficial…[of] boys [who] only remember where they met with the best wine or the prettiest women". Montagu writes about the "warmth and civility" of Ottoman women. She describes the hammam, a Turkish bath, "as a space of urbane homosociality, free of cruel satire and disdain". She mentions that "hammam are remarkable for their undisguised admiration of the women's beauty and demeanor", which creates a space for female authority. Montagu provides an intimate description of the women's bathhouse in Sofia, in which she derides male descriptions of the bathhouse as a site for unnatural sexual practices, instead insisting that it was "the Women's coffee house, where all the news of the Town is told, Scandal invented, etc." Montagu's reference to "women's coffee house" represents the political and social freedom that women had access to in the Ottoman Empire during the 18th century. Even though Montagu refused to undress for the bath at first, the girls managed to persuade her to "open my shirt, and show them my stays, which satisfied them very well". In one letter to her sister Lady Mar, she wrote, "nothing will surprise you more than the sight of my person, as I am now in my Turkish habit."
During Montagu's time in the Ottoman Empire, she saw and wrote extensively concerning the practise of slavery along with the treatment of slaves by the Turks. Montagu wrote many letters with positive descriptions of the various enslaved people that she saw in the elite circles of Istanbul, including eunuchs and large collections of serving and dancing girls dressed in expensive outfits. In one of her letters written back home, famously from the interior of a bath house, she dismisses the idea that slaves of the Ottoman elite should be figures to be pitied. In response to her visit to the slave market in Istanbul, she wrote "you will imagine me half a Turk when I don't speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me, but I cannot forbear applauding the humanity of the Turks to those creatures. They are never ill-used, and their slavery is in my opinion no worse than servitude all over the world."
Montagu's Turkish letters were frequently cited by Western female travellers, more than a century after her journey. Such writers cited Montagu's assertion that women travellers could gain an intimate view of Turkish life that was not available to their male counterparts. However, they also added corrections or elaborations to her observations.
In 1739, a book was printed by an unknown author under the pseudonym "Sophia, a person of quality", titled Woman not Inferior to Man. This book is often attributed to Lady Mary.
Her Letters and Works were published in 1837. Montagu's octogenarian granddaughter Lady Louisa Stuart contributed to this, anonymously, an introductory essay titled "Biographical Anecdotes of Lady M. W. Montagu", from which it was clear that Stuart was troubled by her grandmother's focus on sexual intrigues and did not see Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Account of the Court of George I at his Accession as history. However, Montagu's historical observations, both in the "Anecdotes" and the Turkish Embassy Letters, prove quite accurate when put in context. Despite the availability of her work in print and the revival efforts of feminist scholars, the complexity and brilliance of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's extensive body of work has not yet been recognized to the fullest.
Notes
References
Backscheider, Paula R., and Ingrassia, Catherine E., eds., British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Print.
Baratta, Luca, "Embassy to Constantinople: the Image of the Orient and the De-construction of the Canon in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Letters", in Iona Both, Ayse Saraçgil, Angela Tarantino (a cura di), Storia, Identità e Canoni Letterari, Firenze, Firenze University Press, 2013, pp. 19–36.
Bowles, Emily, and Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660–1789. Eds. Gary Day and Jack Lynch. Blackwell Publishing, 2015.
Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.
Grundy, Isobel. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Halsband, Robert (1956). The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Clarendon Press. .
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Selected Letters. Ed. Isobel Grundy. Penguin Books, 1997. Print.
Lindemann, Mary (2013). Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. .
Lewis, Melville; Montagu, Mary Wortley (1925). Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Her Life and Letters (1689–1762). Hutchinson. {{ISBN|978-1419129087}}.
Looser, Devoney. British Women Writers and the Writing of History 1670–1820. JHU Press, 2000. Print.
Montagu, Mary Wortley (1971). Letters from the Levant during the Embassy to Constantinople, 1716–18. Arno Press. .
Montagu, Mary Wortley, and Halsband, Robert. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1708–1720. Oxford University Press, 1965. .
O'Loughlin, Katrina. Women, Writing, and Travel in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, 2018. .
O’Quinn, Daniel. Engaging the Ottoman Empire: Vexed Medications, 1690–1815. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. .
Paston, George. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu And Her Times. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907. .
Melman, Billie. Women's Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918, University of Michigan Press, 1992. Print.
Rictor Norton, "John, Lord Hervey: The Third Sex". The Great Queers of History, 8 August 2009. Web. 10 November 2015.
Rosenhek, Jackie, "Safe Smallpox Inoculations". Doctor's Review: Medicine on the Move, February 2005. Web. 10 November 2015.
South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text. Eds. Catherine Davies, Claire Brewster, and Hilary Owen. Liverpool University Press, 2006. Print.
Staves, Susan. "Battle Joined, 1715–1737". A Literary History of Women's Writing in Britain, 1660–1789. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.
Attribution
Further reading
Romance Writings, edited by Isobel Grundy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
The Turkish Embassy Letters, edited by Teresa Heffernan and Daniel O'Quinn, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2012.
Essays and Poems and Simplicity, a Comedy, edited by Isobel Grundy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, revised 2nd 1993.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment, Isobel Grundy, Oxford University Press, USA; New edition 2001 714 pp
The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Wharncliffe and W. Moy Thomas, editors. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1861.
Book reviews
Prescott, Sarah. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment, Isobel Grundy 1999. Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 51, No. 202 (May 2000), pp. 300–303.
External links
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lord Wharncliffe (great-grandson), ed. 2 Vols. Third Edition, with Additions and Corrections Derived from the Original Manuscripts, Illustrative Notes, and a New Memoir By W. Moy Thomas. Henry G. Bohn, London: York Street, Covent Garden, 1861.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu biography at the Montagu Millennium family history website
1689 births
1762 deaths
18th-century English writers
18th-century English poets
18th-century English women writers
British women dramatists and playwrights
Daughters of British dukes
English dramatists and playwrights
English letter writers
Women letter writers
English orientalists
English women poets
Feminism and history
Smallpox vaccines
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Talbot%2C%201st%20Earl%20of%20Shrewsbury
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John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury
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John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, 1st Earl of Waterford, 7th Baron Talbot, KG (17 July 1453), known as "Old Talbot", was an English nobleman and a noted military commander during the Hundred Years' War. He was the most renowned in England and most feared in France of the English captains in the last stages of the conflict. Known as a tough, cruel, and quarrelsome man, Talbot distinguished himself militarily in a time of decline for the English. Called the "English Achilles" and the "Terror of the French", he is lavishly praised in the plays of Shakespeare. The manner of his death, leading an ill-advised charge against field artillery, has come to symbolize the passing of the age of chivalry. He also held the subsidiary titles of 10th Baron Strange of Blackmere and 6th Baron Furnivall jure uxoris.
Origins
He was descended from Richard Talbot, the son of William "Le Sire" Talbot, whose estate (wife and infant son Hugh) was a tenant in 1086 of Walter Giffard at Woburn and Battlesden in Bedfordshire. The Talbot Family descends from William d'Hiemois, the illegitimate son of Richard I, Duke of Normandy. William's son Hugh, Bishop of Lisieux, was the father of William "Le Sire" Talbot (1046-1066). The Talbots were cousins of William "The Conqueror", King of England, and also the Giffard family. It is incorrect to suggest that the Talbot family were vassals of the Giffards in Normandy. Hugh Talbot, Richard's son, made a grant to Beaubec Abbey, confirmed by his son Richard Talbot in 1153. This Richard (died 1175) is listed in 1166 as holding three fees of the Honour of Giffard in Buckinghamshire. He also held a fee at Linton in Herefordshire, for which his son Gilbert Talbot (died 1231) obtained a fresh charter in 1190. Gilbert's grandson Gilbert (died 1274) married Gwenllian ferch Rhys Mechyll, who was incorrectly assumed to be the sole heiress of the Welsh Prince Rhys Mechyll, whose armorials were of the House of Deheubarth, and which the Talbots thenceforth assumed in lieu of their own former arms! Their son Sir Richard Talbot, who signed the Barons' Letter of 1301, held the manor of Eccleswall in Herefordshire in right of his wife Sarah, sister of William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick. In 1331 Richard's son Gilbert Talbot (1276–1346) was summoned to Parliament, which is considered evidence of his baronial status – see Baron Talbot. Gilbert's son Richard married Elizabeth Comyn, bringing with her the inheritance of Goodrich Castle.
John Talbot was born in about 1384 or more likely around 1387, the second son of Richard Talbot, 4th Baron Talbot of Goodrich Castle, by Ankaret, daughter and sole heiress of the 4th Baron Strange of Blackmere. His birthplace was Black Mere Castle (the caput of his mother's estates) near Whitchurch, Shropshire, which is now a scheduled monument listed as Blakemere Moat, site of the demolished fortified manor house. His younger brother Richard became Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland: he was one of the most influential Irish statesmen of his time, and his brother's most loyal supporter during his often troubled years in Ireland. John also had an elder brother, Gilbert (born 1383), who was heir to their parents' baronies of Talbot and Strange.
His father died in 1396 when Talbot was around nine years old, and so it was Ankaret's second husband, Thomas Neville, 5th Baron Furnivall, who became the major influence in his early life. The marriage (1401) also gave the opportunity of a title for her second son, as Neville had no sons, with the title Baron Furnivall going through his eldest daughter Maud (Talbot's stepsister), who would become John's first wife. Their marriage resulted in John styling himself as John Talbot, 6th Baron Furnivall.
Marriages and issue
Talbot was married before 12 March 1407 to Maud Neville, 6th Baroness Furnivall, daughter and heiress of his stepfather Thomas Neville, 5th Baron Furnivall, the son of John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby. The couple are thought to have had six children:
John Talbot, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury (c. 141310 July 1460)
Thomas Talbot (19 June 1416, Finglas, Ireland10 August 1416)
Lady Katherine Talbot (c. 1418c. 1500) married Sir Nicholas Eyton (c. 1405c. 1450), Sheriff of Shropshire 1440 & 1449.
Sir Christopher Talbot (141910 August 1443)
Lady Joan Talbot (c. 1422), married James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley
Lady Ann Talbot, married John Bottreaux, of Abbot's Salford.
By the death of his niece in 1421 he acquired the Baronies of Talbot and Strange. His first wife, Maud, died on 31 May 1422. It has been suggested that she died as an indirect result of giving birth to her daughter Joan, although there is a lack of evidence about Joan's life before her marriage to Lord Berkeley. There is even a theory that she was actually Talbot's daughter-in-law through marriage to Sir Christopher Talbot.
On 6 September 1425, in the chapel at Warwick Castle, he married Lady Margaret Beauchamp, eldest daughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and Elizabeth de Berkeley. They had five children:
John Talbot, 1st Baron Lisle and 1st Viscount Lisle, who was killed along with his father at Castillon on 17 July 1453.
Sir Louis Talbot (c. 14291458) of Penyard
Sir Humphrey Talbot (before 14341492, Mount Sinai), marshal of Calais. Married Mary, daughter and co-heiress of John Champernoun, no issue. Died probably at Saint Catherine's Monastery.
Lady Eleanor Talbot (c. February/March 143630 June 1468) married to Sir Thomas Butler, and mistress or wife of King Edward IV.
Lady Elizabeth Talbot (c. December 1442/January 14436 November 1506/10 May 1507). She married John de Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk.
Talbot is known to have had at least one illegitimate child, Henry. He may have served in France with his father as it is known that a bastard son of the Earl of Shrewsbury was captured by the Dauphin Louis on 14 August 1443.
Early career and service in Ireland
From 1404 to 1413 he served with his elder brother Gilbert in the Welsh revolt or the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr. Meanwhile, he was summoned to Parliament in his wife's right from 1409. Then for five years from February 1414 he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where he did some fighting. He had a dispute with James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond and Reginald Grey, 3rd Baron Grey de Ruthyn over the inheritance for the honour of Wexford which he held. Complaints were made against him both for his harsh government in Ireland and for acts of violence in Herefordshire, where he was a friend of the Lollard Sir John Oldcastle, and for land disputes with retainers of the Earl of Arundel.
The dispute with the Earl of Ormond escalated into a long-running feud between Talbot and his brother, the Archbishop of Dublin, on the one hand, and the Butler family and their allies the Berkeleys on the other. Relations between the two sides became so poisonous that it was said that real hatred was involved. The feud reached its height in the 1440s, and in the end just about every senior official in Ireland had taken sides in the quarrel. Both sides were reprimanded by the Privy Council for weakening English rule in Ireland: the Council implored them to make up their differences. Friendly relations were finally achieved by the marriage of Talbot's son and heir to Ormond's daughter, Lady Elizabeth Butler.
During John's first term in Ireland, his elder brother Gilbert was serving as a soldier in France. Gilbert died on 19 October 1418 at the siege of Rouen, and his lands were inherited by his only daughter and heiress Ankaret Talbot, John's niece. Ankaret, 6th Baroness Talbot, died shortly after on 13 December 1421 and the Talbot family lands were thus inherited by her uncle John, who became 7th Baron Talbot.
From 1420 to 1424 he served in France, apart from a brief return at the end of the first year to organise the festivities of celebrating the coronation of Catherine of Valois, the bride of Henry V. He returned to France in May 1421 and took part in the Battle of Verneuil on 17 August 1424 earning him the Order of the Garter.
In 1425, he was lieutenant again for a short time in Ireland; he served again in 1446–47. On the latter appointment he was made Earl of Waterford and hereditary Lord High Steward of Ireland.
Service in France
So far his career was that of a turbulent Marcher Lord, employed in posts where a rough hand was useful. It was for his actions in France that he would acquire his fame, however.
In 1427 he went again to France, where he fought alongside the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Warwick with distinction in Maine and at the Siege of Orléans. He fought at the Battle of Patay on 18 June 1429 where he was captured and held prisoner for four years. He was released in exchange for the French leader Jean Poton de Xaintrailles and returned to England in May 1433. He stayed until July when he returned to France under the Earl of Somerset.
Talbot was a daring and aggressive soldier, perhaps the most audacious captain of the age. He and his forces were ever ready to retake a town and to meet a French advance. His trademark was rapid aggressive attacks. He was rewarded by being appointed governor and lieutenant general in France and Normandy and, in 1434, the Duke of Bedford made him Count of Clermont. He also reorganized the army with captains and lieutenants, trained the men for sieges, and equipped them accordingly. But when the Duke of Bedford died in 1435, the Burgundian government in Paris defected to the French, leaving Talbot, known as le roi talbot ("king Talbot") as the main English general in the field.
On 2 February 1436, he led a small force including Sir Thomas Kyriell and Sir Thomas Scales and routed La Hire and Xaintrailles at the battle of Ry near Rouen. Later that year, he did much to recover large portions of land on the Pays de Caux in eastern Normandy which had been lost to the French a few months earlier. On the dawn of 13 February 1437, in spectacular fashion, he took the town of Pontoise north of Paris by surprise, threatening the capital itself for a time. The same year at Crotoy, after a daring passage of the Somme, he put a numerous Burgundian force to flight. At night on 22–23 December 1439, following a surprise flank attack on their camp, he dispersed the 6000-strong army of the Constable Richemont, and on 7 July 1440 he retook Harfleur. In 1441, he pursued the French army four times over the Seine and Oise rivers in an unavailing attempt to bring it to battle.
Lord Shrewsbury
Around February 1442, Talbot returned to England to request urgent reinforcements for the Duke of York in Normandy. In March, under king's orders, ships were requisitioned for this purpose with Talbot himself responsible for assembling ships from the Port of London and from Sandwich.
On Whit Sunday, 20 May, Henry VI created him Earl of Shrewsbury. Just five days later, with the requested reinforcements, Talbot returned to France where in June they mustered at Harfleur. During that time, he met his six-year-old daughter Eleanor for the first time and almost certainly left the newly created Countess Margaret pregnant with another child.
In June 1443, Talbot again returned to England on behalf of the Duke of York to plead for reinforcements, but this time the English Council refused, instead sending a separate force under Shrewsbury's brother-in-law, Edmund Beaufort. His son, Sir Christopher, stayed in England where shortly afterwards he was murdered with a lance at the age of 23 by one of his own men, Griffin Vachan of Treflidian on 10 August at "Cawce, County Salop" (Caus Castle).
The English Achilles
He was appointed in 1445 by Henry VI (as the disputed king of France) as Constable of France. Taken hostage at Rouen in 1449 he promised never to wear armour against the French King again. He was true to the letter of his word, but continued to command English forces against the French without personally fighting. In England, he was widely renowned as the best general King Henry VI had. The king relied upon his support at Dartford in 1452, and in 1450 to suppress Cade's Revolt. In 1452 he was ordered to Bordeaux as the king's lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine, and landed there on 17 October. He repaired castle garrisons facing mounting pressure from France, when some reinforcements arrived with his son John, Viscount Lisle in spring 1453, and he captured Fronsac.
Death
Talbot was decisively defeated and killed on 17 July 1453 at the Battle of Castillon near Bordeaux, which effectively ended English rule in Aquitaine, a principal cause of the Hundred Years' War. It was reported at the time that when his horse was fatally struck by enemy ordinance, it fell on top of Talbot and pinned him down, enabling a French soldier to finish him off with a battleaxe. His heart was buried in the doorway of St Alkmund's Church, Whitchurch, Shropshire.
The victorious French generals raised a monument to Talbot on the field called Notre Dame de Talbot and a French Chronicler paid him handsome tribute:
"Such was the end of this famous and renowned English leader who for so long had been one of the most formidable thorns in the side of the French, who regarded him with terror and dismay" – Matthew d'Escourcy
Although Talbot is generally remembered as a great soldier, some have raised doubts as to his generalship. In particular, charges of rashness have been raised against him. Speed and aggression were key elements in granting success in medieval war, and Talbot's numerical inferiority necessitated surprise. Furthermore, he was often in the position of trying to force battle on unwilling opponents. At his defeat at Patay in 1429 he was advised not to fight there by Sir John Fastolf, who was subsequently blamed for the debacle, but the French, inspired by Joan of Arc, showed unprecedented fighting spirit – usually they approached an English position with trepidation. The charge of rashness is more justifiable at Castillon, where Talbot, misled by mistaken reports of a French retreat, attacked their entrenched camp frontally with his advance force, facing wheel to wheel field artillery and refusing to temporarily back off and allow his full force to arrive.
On a political level, his governorship of Ireland degenerated into bitter feuding and personal hatreds. The Crown itself reprimanded him for weakening English rule in Ireland, though in fairness he was far from being the only culprit.
Ancestry
Cultural influence
He is portrayed heroically in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 1: "Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Created, for his rare success in arms". Talbot's failures are all blamed on Fastolf and feuding factions in the English court. Thomas Nashe, commenting on the play in his booklet Pierce Penniless, stated that Talbot's example was inspiring Englishmen anew, two centuries after his death,
How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding. I will defend it against any collian or clubfisted usurer of them all, there is no immortality can be given a man on earth like unto plays.
Fiction
John Talbot is shown as a featured character in Koei's video game Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War, appearing as the left-arm of Edward, the Black Prince, in which he assists the former and the respective flag of England throughout his many portrayals.
Talbot appears as one of the primary antagonists in the PSP game Jeanne d'Arc.
See also
Talbot Shrewsbury Book
Talbot (dog)
Château Talbot
HMS Talbot (1895)
Footnotes
References
Other sources
Allmand, C T (1983) Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450: The History of a Medieval Occupation. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, pp. xiii, 349
Barker, J. (2000) The Hundred Years War
Bradbury, M. (1983) Medieval Archery
Mortimer, I. (2008), 1415: A Year of Glory
Pollard, A.J. (1983) John Talbot and the War in France, 1427–1453, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, Inc
Sumption, J. (2004) The Hundred Years War: Trial by Fire vol. 2 of 2
Talbot, Rev H., (1980) The English Achilles: the life of John Talbot
Further reading
External links
A brief short history of Lord John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury
Lord John Talbot
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14th-century births
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15th-century English nobility
Barons Talbot
Constables of France
Earls of Shrewsbury
Earls of Waterford
English military personnel killed in action
English soldiers
Knights of the Garter
Le Strange family
Lords Lieutenant of Ireland
Male Shakespearean characters
People of the Hundred Years' War
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Barons Strange of Blackmere
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%20Kavan
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Anna Kavan
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Anna Kavan (born Helen Emily Woods; 10 April 1901 – 5 December 1968) was a British novelist, short story writer and painter. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939, not only as a pen name but as her legal identity.
Biography
Early life
Anna Kavan was born Helen Emily Woods in Cannes, South of France, the only child of a wealthy British family. Her parents travelled frequently and Kavan grew up in Europe and the United States. As an adult she remembered her childhood as lonely and neglected. Her father died by suicide in 1911. After his death, Kavan returned to the UK where she was a boarder at Parsons Mead School in Ashstead and Malvern College in Worcestershire.
Disregarding her daughter's desire to go to Oxford, her mother arranged an encounter with Donald Ferguson, her mother's former lover. Helen Emily Woods married him in 1920, a few months before he took a position with the Railway Company in Burma. She moved with her husband, began to write and gave birth to her son Bryan. In 1923, Kavan left Ferguson and returned with her son to the UK. These biographical events match the underlying narrative of her initial Bildungsroman Let Me Alone (1930) while Who Are You? (1963), written in a Nouveau Roman style, is an experimental variation of her time in Burma.
Living alone in London during the mid-1920s, she began studying painting at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts, and continued to paint throughout her life. Kavan regularly travelled to the French Riviera where she was introduced to heroin by racing car drivers she took up with.
In 1928 she divorced Ferguson and married an artist named Stuart Edmonds whom she had met near Toulon. They travelled together through France, Italy, Spain and the Pyrenees before resettling in England. A year later, she published her first novel, A Charmed Circle, under the name Helen Ferguson, followed by five more books over the next eight years.
Kavan and Edmonds had a daughter, Margaret, who died soon after childbirth and they then adopted a child whom they named Susanna. In 1938, when her second marriage ended, she attempted suicide and was admitted to a clinic in Switzerland. These were the first of what would be multiple hospitalizations and asylum incarcerations throughout Kavan's life for both depression and her lifelong heroin addiction.
As Anna Kavan
Asylum Piece (1940), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, was her first book under the name Anna Kavan, heroine of her previous novels Let Me Alone (1930) and A Stranger Still (1935). All subsequent works would feature a radically altered writing style. From that moment, the brunette Ferguson disappeared and the crystal-blond Kavan set about a career as an avant-garde writer using her legal name in the United States.
An inveterate traveller, Kavan initiated a long journey at the outset of World War II. From September 1939 to February 1943, she spent six months in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in 1940. The stay inspired her novella, My Soul in China, published posthumously in 1975. She also visited the island of Bali, Indonesia, and stayed for twenty-two months in Napier, New Zealand, her final destination. Her travel itinerary was complicated by the war, which severely restricted many ordinary boat routes. As a consequence, her path took her through New York City three times and the Suez Canal twice.
Returning to England early 1943, she worked briefly with soldiers suffering from war neurosis at the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital and studied for a diploma in Psychological Medicine. She also took a secretarial position at Horizon, an influential literary magazine edited by Cyril Connolly and founded by Peter Watson, one of her friends. She contributed with stories, articles and reviews from 1944 to 1946.
In February 1944, Kavan's son from her first marriage, Bryan Gratney Ferguson, died serving in No. 3 Commando during the Second World War.
After her return to the UK, Kavan began treatment with the German psychiatrist . He became Kavan's close friend and sometime creative collaborator until his death in 1964. They co-wrote The Horse's Tale (1949) and Kavan dedicated several short stories to her doctor published in the posthumous collection Julia and the Bazooka (1970). It was Bluth who arranged for Kavan to be treated at , a modern clinic where important psychiatric advances were made (1857–1980). There, Kavan received treatment from Ludwig Binswanger, a psychiatrist, pioneer in the field of existential psychology and lifelong friend of Freud.
Kavan continued to undergo sporadic inpatient treatments for heroin addiction and in her later years in London lived as a virtual recluse. She enjoyed a late triumph in 1967 with her novel Ice, inspired by her time in New Zealand and the country's proximity to the inhospitable frozen landscape of Antarctica. The original manuscript was titled The Cold World. When her publisher Peter Owen sent Kavan his initial response, neither rejecting nor accepting her text, he described it as a cross between Kafka and The Avengers. This post-apocalyptic novel brought critical acclaim. It is her best-known novel, still puzzling the reader for its strangeness and nowadays rather introduced as a slipstream novel than a science fiction one.
The first six of her novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work published after her detox treatment. Asylum Piece definitely heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. Her development of "nocturnal language". involved the lexicon of dreams and addiction, mental instability and alienation. She has been compared to Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath. Brian Aldiss described her as Kafka's sister. Anaïs Nin was an admirer and unsuccessfully pursued a correspondence with Kavan.
Death and legacy
Although popularly supposed to have died of heroin overdose, Kavan died of heart failure at her home in Kensington and was found dead on 5 December 1968. The previous night she had failed to attend a reception in honor of Anaïs Nin at the home of her London-based publisher Peter Owen.
Many of her works were published posthumously, some edited by her friend and legatee, the Welsh writer Rhys Davies. London-based Peter Owen Publishers have been long-serving advocates of Kavan's work and continue to keep her work in print. Doris Lessing, J. G. Ballard, Anaïs Nin, Jean Rhys, Brian Aldiss, Christopher Priest, Nina Allan, Virginia Ironside and Maggie Gee are among the writers who have praised her work.
In 2009 the Anna Kavan Society was founded in London with the aim of encouraging wider readership and increasing academic scholarship of Kavan's work.
Kavan's paintings have been recently exhibited at the Zarrow Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Unconventional Anna Kavan: Works on Paper exhibition displayed thirty-six paintings created by Kavan drawn from the McFarlin Library Special Collections, University of Tulsa. The exhibition Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors at Freud Museum London traced key moments in the history of hysteria and counterpointed these with women's inventive art.
Modern scholarship and interpretations
In September 2014, the Anna Kavan Society organized a one-day symposium at the Institute of English Studies in association with Liverpool John Moores University Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History and Peter Owen Publishers. The Anna Kavan Symposium brought together scholars and writers to historicize Kavan's work (from the post-colonial aspects of Kavan's fiction and journalism to the interwar and World War II period), situate her within the literary and intellectual context of her times, and chart her legacy as a writer.
Feminist readings
On Ice and protofeminism, L.Timmel Duchamp said "First published in 1967, on the eve of the second wave of feminism, Ice has never been regarded as a significant work of proto-feminist literature, although scholars occasionally include it on lists of science fiction written by women before the explosion of the genre in the 1970s. The novel's surrealist form demands a different sort of reading than that of science fiction driven by narrative causality, but the text's obsessive insistence on linking the global political violence of the Cold War with the threateningly lethal sexual objectification of Woman and depicting them as two poles of the same suicidal collective will to destroy life makes Ice an interesting feminist literary experiment."
Genre-bending and experimental writing
Kavan's reception as a 'woman writer' has been complicated by her perceived lack of attention to gender politics, and her fiction has most often been interpreted as autobiography rather than experimental and aesthetic writing.
Kavan's work is difficult to situate in fixed literary categories; the scope of her work shows her experimenting with realism, surrealism and absurdism. Her work often abandons linear plot and narrative structure and portrays nameless landscapes and nameless characters. Her disruptive narratives are close to the technique of stream of consciousness associated with modernist novelists. Her best-known novel Ice has been described as slipstream, a non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries, where Borges' Fictions, Calvino's Invisible Cities or Ballard's Crash are cited as 'canon of slipstream writing'.
Politics of madness
Kavan's writing of madness, asylum incarceration and opiate addiction offer a complex and thought-provoking perspective on early twentieth-century psychiatry and psychotherapy. As well as being treated in private asylums and nursing homes, Kavan underwent a short analysis at the Tavistock Clinic, experienced Ludwig Binswanger's method of existential psychotherapy at the Bellevue Sanatorium, and had a close personal relationship with her longtime psychiatrist Karl Bluth. In her fiction and journalism Kavan promoted a radical politics of madness, giving voice to the disenfranchised and marginalized psychiatric patient and presaging the anti-psychiatry movement.
In the exhibition Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors at the Freud Museum in London (2013), her work was presented alongside other female explorers of the mind, among them: Mary Lamb, Theroigne de Méricourt, Alice James, Anna O, Ida Bauer, Augustine, Elizabeth Severn, Bryher, Annie Winifred Ellerman, Hilda Doolittle, Princess Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Zelda Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Marilyn Monroe and Sylvia Plath.
Influences
Literature
Kavan was friends with the Welsh writer Rhys Davies, who based his 1975 novel Honeysuckle Girl on her early life.
Theater and performance
Choreographer and stage director, adapted Ice for the theater in 2008.
Silverglass by DJ Britton is a play about the relationship between Rhys Davies and Anna Kavan. It was presented as a premiere during the Rhys Davies Short Story Conference 2013 held in Swansea. The play is set in the late 1960s and depicts Davies' late literary recognition as well as Kavan's final tragedy. Both writers lived 'a life of self-invention, in which secrets, sexuality and deep questions of personal identity lurked constantly in the shadows'.
Music and sound art
Thalia Zedek is an American singer and guitarist, active since the early 1980s and member of several notable alternative rock groups, including Live Skull and Uzi. 'Sleep Has His House was the inspiration for the album Sleep Asylum of Uzi' released in 1986.
David Tibet, the primary creative force behind the experimental music/neofolk music group Current 93, named the group's album Sleep Has His House after Anna Kavan's book of the same title.
San Francisco post-rock band Carta titled a song Kavan on their album "The Glass Bottom Boat" after Anna Kavan. The song was subsequently released as a remix by The Declining Winter on their album Haunt the Upper Hallways.
Floriane Pochon, French artist, created a sound artwork untitled Ice Lady based on the novel Ice. It was presented during Les Nuits de la Phaune, a live broadcast event initiated by the Marseille-based in 2008.
Visual arts
In an installation named Anna, the Wales-based artist duo Heather and Ivan Morison investigate the construction of the self based on ambiguous narratives. They developed an allegorical piece of object theatre draws on the life and works of Kavan using performance and puppetry to connect the objects and play out "a brutal tale of love and loss set against the approaching threat of the ice". It has been first presented in 2012 at The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, England.
Bibliography
As Helen Ferguson
Re-issues after 1939 are under the name Anna Kavan.
A Charmed Circle (London : Jonathan Cape, 1929, Open Library)
Let Me Alone (London : Jonathan Cape, 1930, Open Library)
The Dark Sisters (London : Jonathan Cape, 1930, Open Library)
A Stranger Still (London : Jonathan Cape, 1935, Open Library)
Goose Cross (London : John Lane, 1936, Open Library)
Rich Get Rich (London : John Lane, 1937, Open Library)
As Anna Kavan
Asylum Piece (London : Jonathan Cape, 1940, Open Library)
Change The Name (London : Jonathan Cape, 1941, Open Library)
I Am Lazarus (London : Jonathan Cape, 1945, Open Library)
Sleep Has His House (a.k.a. The House of Sleep (New York : Doubleday, US ed., 1947) – Sleep Has His House (London: Cassel, UK ed., 1948) Open Library)
The Horse's Tale (with K. T. Bluth) (London : Gaberbocchus Press, 1949, Open Library)
A Scarcity of Love (Southport, Lancashire: Angus Downie, 1956, Open Library)
Eagle's Nest (London : Peter Owen, 1957, Open Library)
A Bright Green Field and Other Stories (London : Peter Owen, 1958, Open Library)
Who Are You? (Lowestoft, Suffolk: Scorpion Press, 1963, Open Library)
Ice (Peter Owen Publishers, London 1967, scheduled for reissue in Christmas 2017. Open Library)
Published posthumously
Julia and the Bazooka (London : Peter Owen, 1970)
My Soul in China (London : Peter Owen, 1975)
My Madness: Selected Writings (London : Macmillan, 1990)
Mercury (London : Peter Owen, 1994)
The Parson (London : Peter Owen, 1995)
Guilty (London : Peter Owen, 2007)
Machines in the Head: the Selected Short Writing of Anna Kavan (London : Peter Owen, 2019)
Journalism
All work published in Horizon : A Review of Literature and Art
'New Zealand: Answer to an Inquiry', Horizon 45, Sept 1943
'The Case of Bill Williams', Horizon 50, Feb 1944
'Reviews', Horizon 50, Feb 1944
'Reviews', Horizon 52, April 1944
'Reviews', Horizon 59, Nov 1944
'Reviews', Horizon 62, Feb 1945
'Reviews', Horizon 67, July 1945
'Reviews', Horizon 73, Jan 1946
Anthologized work by Anna Kavan
"Department of Slight Confusion." In Book: A Miscellany. No. 3, edited by Leo Bensemann & Denis Glover. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1941.
"Ice Storm." In New Zealand New Writing, edited by Ian Gordon. Wellington: Progressive Publishing Society, 1942.
"I Am Lazarus." Horizon VII, no. 41, 1943, 353–61.
"New Zealand: An Answer to an Inquiry." Horizon VIII, no. 45, 1943, 153–61.
"The Big Bang." In Modern Short Stories, edited by Denys Val Baker. London: Staples & Staples, 1943.
"Face of My People." Horizon IX, no. 53, 1944, 323–35.
"Face of My People." In Little Reviews Anthology 1945, edited by Denys Val Baker. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1945.
"I Am Lazarus." In Stories of the Forties Vol. 1, edited by Reginald Moore & Woodrow Wyatt. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1945.
"Two New Zealand Pieces." In Choice, edited by William Sansom. London: Progressive Publishing, 1946.
"Brave New Worlds." In Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly. London, 1946.
"The Professor." In Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly. London, 1946.
"Face of My People." In Modern British Writing, edited by Denys Val Baker. New York: Vanguard Press, 1947.
"I Am Lazarus." In The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time, edited by Mary Louise W. Aswell. New York: McGraw-Hill Books, 1947.
"The Red Dogs." In Penguin New Writing, Vol. 37, edited by John Lehmann. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949.
"The Red Dogs." In Pleasures of New Writing: An Anthology of Poems, Stories, and Other Prose Pieces from the Pages of New Writing, edited by John Lehmann. London: John Lehmann, 1952.
"Happy Name." In London Magazine, edited by Alan Ross. London, 1954.
"Palace of Sleep." In Stories for the Dead of Night, edited by Don Congdon. New York: Dell Books, 1957
"A Bright Green Field." In Springtime Two: An Anthology of Current Trends, edited by Peter Owen & Wendy Owen. London: Peter Owen Ltd., 1958.
"High in the Mountains." In London Magazine, edited by Alan Ross. London, 1958.
"Five More Days to Countdown." In Encounter XXXI, no. 1, 1968, 45–49.
"Julia and the Bazooka." In Encounter XXXII, no. 2, 1969, 16–19.
"World of Heroes." In Encounter XXXIII, no. 4, 1969, 9–13.
"The Mercedes." In London Magazine 1970, 17–21.
"Edge of Panic." In Vogue, 1 October 1971, 75–83.
"Sleep Has His House" excerpts. In The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers' Dreams. Foreword by Anthony Stevens. London: Serpent's Tail, 1996
"The Zebra Struck" In The Vintage Book of Amnesia, edited by Jonathan Lethem. New York: Vintage Books, 2000
Further sources
Biographies
The Case of Anna Kavan : A Biography, by David Callard. London: Peter Owen, 1994
A Stranger on Earth: The Life and Work of Anna Kavan, by Jeremy Reed. London: Peter Owen, 2006
Anna Kavan's New-Zealand, by Jennifer Sturm. Auckland: Random House Books, 2009
Stranger Still: The Works of Anna Kavan, by Francis Booth. London:Lulu.com, 2013
Major archives
The largest collection of archival material from Kavan is held by the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library, Department of Special Collections and University Archives. This includes her personal archive of manuscripts and artwork in the Anna Kavan papers, 1867–1991; further material in the Meic Stephens collection of Anna Kavan ephemera, 1943–1971; the Richard R. Centing collection of Anna Kavan, 1943–1991; David A. Callard collection of Anna Kavan; and the Anais Nin papers, 1969–1992. Other collections beyond Tulsa include The Peter Owen Archives at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas with correspondence between Kavan and her publisher Peter Owen and related material. Other archives contain letters from Kavan to publishers include the William A Bradley Literary Agency, Francis Henry King, Scorpion Press, John Lehmann, Kay Dick and Gerald Hamilton.
Letters from Kavan and papers relating to posthumous publication are included in the Rhys Davis Archive in the National Library of Wales. Letters from Kavan to Walter Ian Hamilton Papers between 1940 and 1955 are in the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand. Other correspondence can be found at the Jonathan Cape files in the Random House Archives at the University of Reading and the Koestler Archive in Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections.
See also
Modernism
Women's Writing
Autobiographical novel
Nonlinear narrative
Notes
External links
Anna Kavan Society
Peter Owen Publishers
Anna Kavan aka Helen Ferguson (redmood.com/kavan) – created by Jan Hanford, archived 2004-12-04
Anna Kavan on Open Library
Anna Kavan by Jennifer Sturm at CulturalIcons.co.uk – discussion by Dr Jennifer Sturm and Debbie Knowles for the Cultural Icons project (audio and video)
Anna Kavan papers, 1867-1991, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
Meic Stephens collection of Anna Kavan ephemera, 1943-1971, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
Richard R. Centing collection of Anna Kavan, 1943-1991, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
David A. Callard collection of Anna Kavan, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
Anais Nin papers, 1969-1992, Department of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa
1901 births
1968 deaths
English short story writers
People educated at Parsons Mead School
British women short story writers
British women novelists
20th-century British women writers
20th-century British novelists
20th-century British short story writers
British expatriates in France
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George%20Gordon%2C%202nd%20Marquess%20of%20Huntly
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George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly
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George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly (1592March 1649), styled Earl of Enzie from 1599 to 1636, eldest son of George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly by Lady Henrietta Stewart, daughter of Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox, born at Huntly Castle, Huntly, Aberdeenshire, in Scotland was brought up in England as a Protestant, and later created Viscount Aboyne by Charles I.
Life
George, Lord Gordon was brought to royal court in Edinburgh February 1596 and in November 1596 at the time of the baptism of Princess Elizabeth as a pledge or hostage for his father's good behaviour, and to be brought up in the Protestant religion and taught by Robert Rollock. In July 1602 Anne of Denmark suggested he should marry a sister of the Earl of Moray, one of her ladies-in-waiting, possibly Margaret Stewart. A committee of arbitrators in the feud between Huntly and Moray, called the "4 Stewarts" advised he marry a daughter of the Earl of Argyll, which he later did.
Some of his earlier years, when he was still Lord Gordon, were spent in England at the court of James I, who took care to educate him in the Protestant faith and created him Earl of Enzie. In 1609 he received a commission of justiciary under the great seal against the members of a rebellious society in the north called the "Society of Boys". In 1613, he was employed by his father in connection with a dispute regarding his superiority over a portion of Lochaber, held by Lochiel and the Camerons. A treaty was at last signed between Lochiel and Enzie on 24 March 1618, by which Lochiel, on certain terms, agreed to renounce his rights to several estates under dispute, one of the stipulations being that he should obtain assistance against his old enemies the Mackintoshes.
Enzie had also a private ground of quarrel against Mackintosh on account of his failure to perform certain services for lands held of the earl and his father. Having on this account obtained a decree against him from the privy council, he besieged him in his castle of Culloden, and compelled him to flee southwards, first to Edinburgh and then to England. Enzie cited him to appear before the privy council, and on his failing to appear he was denounced as a rebel. Mackintosh, being at court, appealed to the king, but after Enzie went to London to give his version of the matter in dispute, Mackintosh was ordered to enter himself in ward in the castle of Edinburgh until he should give the earl satisfaction. In 1622 Enzie received a commission from the privy council to proceed against the Earl of Caithness, but before the commission was carried into effect it was superseded by another from the king to proceed on a mission to France. He remained in that country for some years in command of a company of gens d'armes. On 20 April 1632 he was created Viscount of Aboyne. On the death of his father in June 1636 he was still in France, but in October following returned to England along with his wife, his sister Lady Anne, and two sons, and on 23 June 1637 arrived in Strathbogie.
Covenanter movement
Notwithstanding his father's differences with the government, the second Marquess found himself in the enjoyment of the royal favour. He had been educated at court along with Prince Henry and Prince Charles; and as a Protestant episcopalian he was naturally relied on to render the utmost assistance to the government in their policy towards the covenanters. His supreme influence in the north served to balance that of Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll in the west. In 1638 he caused the royal proclamation to be read at the New Aberdeen's mercat cross. At the beginning of the dispute with the king the covenanters sent to him Colonel Robert Munro as their ambassador, offering, if he would cast in his lot with them, not only to make him their leader, but to pay all his debts, which were said to amount to £100,000 sterling. But "to this proposition," says Gordon, "Huntly pave a short and resolute repartee, that his family had risen and stood by the kings of Scotland, and for his part, if the event proved the ruin of the king, he was resolved to lay his life, honours, and estate under the rubbish of the king his ruins". He therefore not only refused to subscribe the covenant, but in September, alone of the other noblemen appointed in the north, accepted the commission of the king to cause the people to subscribe the king's covenant and band.
In 1639, Huntly was secretly appointed the king's lieutenant in the north, and, information reaching him that a gathering of the covenanters was to be held at Turriff on 14 February, he resolved to disperse them, but when Montrose marched to their support with a body of eight hundred men Huntly contented himself with making a demonstration by marching past them in battle array with a force of two thousand men, without "ony kind of offence or inurious word", and immediately afterwards disbanded his troops. As a reason for this indecision, Huntly is stated to have affirmed that he had no warrant from the king to strike the first blow. This is confirmed by Burnet, but Burnet also attributes his indecisive action during the whole covenanting struggle to his astrological studies, by which he had become convinced that neither the king, nor the Hamiltons, nor Montrose (who afterwards opposed the covenanters) would prosper. On this account, though ‘naturally a gallant man,’ says Burnet, ‘he made a poor figure during the whole course of the wars’.
At the beginning it is, however, evident that he was insufficiently supported from the south, and though inclined to do what he could for the king, he was not disposed to run too great risks. He had been promised the assistance of five thousand men under Hamilton, but they failed to make their appearance, and the covenanters displayed such energy that Huntly on 15 March sent commissioners to treat with Montrose. The answer of Montrose was unsatisfactory, and Huntly, having caused his lieutenancy to be proclaimed at the cross of Aberdeen, began to collect his forces at Inverurie. Meanwhile, he again sent commissioners to Montrose, but before their return he had disbanded his followers and retired to Stathbogie. Aberdeen, having been thus wholly abandoned, was entered by Montrose without opposition on 30 March. On 1 April Montrose and Leslie set out for Inverurie with ‘resolution to discusse and find out Huntly’. There they remained ‘upon free quarter,’ allowing their men to rifle, or, according to a term now introduced by Leslie and his soldiers into the English language from the German, to ‘plunder’ the houses of those who had fled. Huntly, who had retired to the Bog of Gight, deeming further resistance to be meanwhile vain, sent commissioners to request an interview with Montrose. This took place at the village of Lewes in Fyvie on 5 April, when Huntly, though not subscribing the covenant, agreed to throw no hindrance in the way of his followers doing so, and engaged that those who had scruples in signing should enter into an obligation to maintain the laws and liberties of Scotland. He was then permitted to return to Strathbogie, Montrose retiring to Aberdeen. Soon afterwards a meeting of the covenanting leaders was held at Aberdeen for the settlement of the north. On being summoned to the meeting Huntly agreed to attend it on receiving a safe-condnct, guaranteeing that he should be at full liberty to return home after the conference was over. This was granted him by Montrose, probably in good faith, but, apparently overborne by the clamour of the Frasers, the Forbeses, the Crichtons, and other sworn enemies of Huntly, he contrived to find excuses for arresting him, notwithstanding his safe-conduct. On the evening of 11 April he invited Huntly and his sons to supper, and there hinted to him the advisability of his resigning the lieutenandry, and also writing favourably to the king of the covenanters as good and loyal subjects. Huntly readily agreed, but perhaps Montrose suspected that he was only temporising, for that evening guards were placed at his lodging to prevent his escape. On the morrow he had another interview with Montrose, who now solicited his aid in defraying the expenses of the expedition, and also required him to take steps to apprehend James Grant and others who had opposed the covenanters. Huntly declined to comply with either of these demands, and when he was further requested to take his hereditary enemy Crichton of Frendraught by the hand, he declared that this last he would do on no condition whatever. Montrose then ingenuously asked him if he had any objection to accompany him to Edinburgh, and on Huntly confessing that he would rather not, expressed the opinion that it would be well for him to do it. Huntly then demanded back the bond he had signed at Inverurie before he gave an answer, and on receiving it asked whether he wished him to go south as a captive or as a volunteer. ‘Make your choice,’ said Montrose. ‘Then,’ said Huntly, ‘I will not go as a captive, but as a volunteer’. Huntly, accordingly, with his two eldest sons accompanied Montrose to Edinburgh ‘under a guard, though not disarmed or a prisoner’. On his arrival in Edinburgh an attempt was made by the leaders of the covenanters to induce him to sign the covenant, ‘very honourable terms being offered him,’ but to their demand he gave a written refusal, dated 20 April, and afterwards published, which concluded with these words: ‘For my oune pairt, I am in your power, and resolved not to leave that foule title of traitor as ane inheritance upon my posteritye. Yow may tacke my heade from my shoulders, but not my heart from my soveraigne’.
In accordance with the first article of the treaty of Berwick, on 20 June of the same year he received his liberty, and immediately with his son proceeded southwards to the king's camp, where he remained till the king's departure for London on 29 July. Returning to Edinburgh, Huntly remained for some time with his three daughters in a lodging in the Canongate, and at the ensuing parliament he signed the covenant; but after the festivities connected with the marriage of two of his daughters were over, he gave up his house in the Canongate and joined the king in England. While Huntly was confined in the castle of Edinburgh, the Gordons, encouraged by the rumours of the king's advance towards Scotland, began to plunder the covenanters, and, having convened all the inhabitants of Turriff, compelled them to sign the king's covenant; but shortly afterwards the minister of Turriff convened the inhabitants, and, after causing them to crave public pardon for their breach of the covenant, absolved them from their oath and subscription of the covenant of the king. After Huntly had gone to England, his second son, James Gordon, second Viscount Aboyne, endeavoured to uphold the cause of the king in his father's territories, but was routed by Montrose at the Battle of the Brig of Dee, 19 June 1639, after a fiercely fought two-day battle. In 1640, Huntly's lands were plundered, and his castle of Strathbogie taken by General Monro, who placed a garrison in it.
Charles I
In 1641 Huntly accompanied Charles I to Scotland, and in the procession to the parliament rode after the lord high commissioner, but as he refused to subscribe the covenant he was debarred from taking part in the deliberations. He was nominated one of the king's privy councillors, but his name was subsequently deleted by the estates. On the king's departure for London he attended him to Berwick. On 1 January 1642 he arrived at Aberdeen on his way to Strathbogie, having been absent from his own territory since April 1639. He now found his affairs in so ruinous a condition that on the advice of his friends he renounced the estate to his son Lord Gordon, for the payment of his debts and provision of his children, reserving to himself the sum of 10,000 merks of yearly rent, with his castle of Strathbogie and his house in Old Aberdeen. In August 1643, he was summoned to appear before a convention of the estates at Edinburgh, and failing to do so he was denounced and registered at the horn.
He therefore wrote, sending apologies for his non-appearance, but they were rejected, and when he offered to retire to France, a license was refused him. On 20 December 1643 he was visited in the Bog of Gight by a deputation of ministers sent to require him to subscribe the covenant, but this he declined. In the following January the sheriff principal of Aberdeen was directed to secure his apprehension, but declined to do so on the plea that the Bog of Gight was outside his jurisdiction. The duty was then transferred to the sheriff of Banff, but on his appearing at the Bog of Gight Huntly refused to recognise his commission.
Hiding
Huntly was apparently inclined to peace, but the action of the government drove him to assume hostilities in self-defence. On 19 March 1643-4 a band of his followers ‘came galloping through the Old Town to New Aberdeen,’ and taking the provost and other magistrates prisoners, brought them to Strathbogie. On 16 March Huntly had published a declaration protesting that any acts of hostility he might commit were in self-defence, and on the 20th explained that his reason for seizing the provost and other magistrates was that they ‘were well known to have been scandalous fomenters of a dangerous distraction’. On the 24th he entered the city at the head of 240 horse, and on the 28th plundered the town of its arms and ammunition. Before leaving the city he drew up a band disclaiming the covenant, and binding all who signed it to the service of the king against the covenanters. A party of his followers afterwards made an attack on the town of Montrose, but retreated northwards to Aberdeen on the approach of the forces of the covenanters under Argyll. Huntly, notwithstanding the resolute words of his own band, did not await Argyll's appearance, but, though urged by his followers to give battle, left the city on the last day of April, ‘contrary to the expectation of many’.
On Sunday 12 May 1644 his excommunication was read from the pulpit of Old Aberdeen. Argyll then advanced into his territories, but already Huntly had disbanded his followers, and shut himself up in Auchindown. Learning Argyll's approach he went to the Bog of Gight, and, having taken a supply of gold and silver and other necessaries, crossed over to Sutherlandshire in a boat. He then rode to Caithness, and went by sea to Strathnaver, where he remained till 5 October 1645. During his absence Argyll marched to Strathbogie and spoiled his lands. Huntly's sudden collapse and flight was not altogether occasioned by the advance of Argyll, but by disinclination to co-operate with his old enemy Montrose, who had now joined the king's party, and had been appointed lieutenant-general of the forces in Scotland. "The Marquis of Huntly," said Gordon, "could never be got to join cordially" with Montrose, "or swallow that indignity", and Guthry affirms that Huntly "did his utmost to spoil the business in Montrose's hands".
But Huntly's conduct was entirely passive. On the appearance of Montrose in Strathbogie the Gordons withdrew before him, and as all his efforts to open up communication with Huntly himself were vain, it was impossible to induce them to join the standard of the king. After the defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh (13 September 1645), Huntly, who had some time previously returned to his territories, raised a force of sixteen hundred foot and six hundred horse, with which he stormed Aberdeen; but with his usual indecision he soon returned again to Strathbogie. In December of the same year Charles sent Robert Leslie, brother of General David Leslie, to Huntly, informing him of his desire to escape from the Scots army to the north, and asking him to levy a force to maintain his cause. This Huntly proceeded to do, but his preparations were to no purpose, as the king remained a prisoner in England. Huntly was excepted from the general pardon of 12 March 1647, and a reward of £1,000 was offered for his apprehension. General David Leslie was despatched against him, and on his approach Huntly fled to the Lochaber mountains.
Capture
After evading pursuit for several months by constantly changing his hiding-place, he was at last, in December, captured by Lieutenant-colonel Menzies at midnight, as he was retiring to bed, at Delnabo in Strathavon. The capture was effected after a severe struggle with the ten gentlemen and servants who were in attendance on him, six of whom were slain in their efforts to defend him. On the news of his capture becoming known, about five hundred men under Grant of Carron assembled to effect his rescue, but Menzies, for greater security, carried him to the castle of Blairfindie in Glenlivet. Huntly, on learning their intentions, also sent them a message, dissuading them from the enterprise. When news of his capture reached the committee of estates, it was debated whether he should be immediately executed or reprieved till the meeting of parliament, and the latter motion was carried by one vote. After remaining two days at Leith, he was delivered up to the magistrates of Edinburgh, and sent to the Tolbooth. There he remained till 22 March 1649, when by order of the Scots parliament he was beheaded on the block at the Market Cross of Edinburgh on the Royal Mile.
On being asked by one of the presbyterian ministers who attended him whether he wished to be absolved from the sentence of excommunication that had been passed against him, he answered "that as he was not accustomed to give ear to false prophets, he did not wish to be troubled by him." Although he refused to admit that he had acted contrary to the laws, or had done anything to deserve death, he declared that he freely forgave those who had voted for his death. His body was brought to Seton, and was interred in the burial-place of that family.
Family
By his wife, Lady Anna Campbell, eldest daughter of Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll, he had five sons and five daughters, including:
Lord George Gordon, killed at the battle of Alford in 1645.
James Gordon, 2nd Viscount Aboyne (d. 1649).
Lewis Gordon, 3rd Marquess of Huntly, who succeeded as third Marquess, and was the father of George, fourth Marquess,
These three older sons all distinguished themselves in the defence of the royal cause.
Charles Gordon, was in 1660 created Earl of Aboyne by Charles II
Henry Gordon, who distinguished himself in the service of Poland.
Anne Gordon was married to the third Earl of Perth.
Henrietta Gordon , first to George, Lord Seton, secondly to John, second Earl of Traquair.
Alexander Gordon, (b.1642) married to Jane Robinson
Jean Gordon, married to Thomas Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Haddington.
Mary Gordon, married to Alexander Irvine of Drum.
Catherine Gordon became a lady-in-waiting to Marie Louise Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, consort of both brothers Kings Władysław IV Vasa and John II Casimir Vasa.; married to Jan Andrzej Morsztyn with whom she had descendants including their great-grandson Stanisław II Augustus of Poland
Ancestry
References
Attribution:
1592 births
1649 deaths
Executed Scottish people
Scottish politicians convicted of crimes
2
17th-century Scottish peers
Peers of Scotland created by Charles I
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng%20Shicai
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Sheng Shicai
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Sheng Shicai (; 3 December 189513 July 1970) was a Chinese warlord who ruled Xinjiang from 1933 to 1944. Sheng's rise to power started with a coup d'état in 1933 when he was appointed the duban or Military Governor of Xinjiang. His rule over Xinjiang is marked by close cooperation with the Soviet Union, allowing the Soviets trade monopoly and exploitation of resources, which effectively made Xinjiang a Soviet puppet state. The Soviet era ended in 1942, when Sheng approached the Nationalist Chinese government, but still retained much power over the province. He was dismissed from this post in 1944 and named Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. Growing animosity against him led the government to dismiss him again and appoint him to a military post. At the end of the Chinese Civil War, Sheng fled mainland China to Taiwan with the rest of Kuomintang.
Sheng Shicai was a Manchurian-born Han Chinese, educated in Tokyo, Japan, where he studied political economy and later attended the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Having become a Marxist in his youth, Sheng participated in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement in 1919. He participated in the Northern Expedition, a military campaign of the Kuomintang against the Beiyang government.
In 1929, he was called into service of the Governor of Xinjiang, Jin Shuren, where he served as Chief of Staff of the Frontier Military and Chief Instructor at the Provincial Military College. With the Kumul Rebellion ongoing, Jin was overthrown in a coup on 12 April 1933 and Sheng was appointed duban or Military Governor of Xinjiang. Since then, he led a power struggle against his rivals, of whom Ma Zhongying and Zhang Peiyuan were most notable. The first to be removed were the coup leaders and by them appointed Civil Governor Liu Wenlong by September 1933. Ma and Zhang were defeated militarily by June 1934 with help from the Soviet Union, whom Sheng invited to intervene, subordinating himself to the Soviets in return. He was dubbed the "King of Xinjiang" during his rule.
As ruler of Xinjiang, Sheng implemented his Soviet-inspired policies through his political program of Six Great Policies, adopted in December 1934. His rule was marked by his nationality policy which promoted national and religious equality and identity of various nationalities of Xinjiang. The province saw a process of modernization, but also the subordination of economic interests in Soviet favor. The Soviets had a monopoly over Xinjiang trade and exploited its rare materials and oil. In 1937, in parallel with the Soviet Great Purge, Sheng conducted a purge on his own, executing, torturing to death and imprisoning 100,000 people, the majority of which were Uyghurs.
With the Soviets distracted by its war with Germany, Sheng approached the Chinese government in July 1942 and expelled the Soviet military and technical personnel. However, he still maintained effective power over Xinjiang. In the meantime, the Soviets managed to hold off the Germans and the Japanese launched an extensive offensive against the Chinese, which led Sheng to try to change sides again by arresting the Kuomintang officials and invoking Soviet intervention for the second time in 1944. The Soviets ignored the request and the Chinese government removed him from the post naming him Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in August 1944.
Sheng held the ministerial post by July 1945 and later worked as an adviser to Hu Zongnan and held a military post. He joined the rest of the Kuomintang in Taiwan after the defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. In Taiwan, Sheng lived in a comfortable retirement and died in Taipei in 1970.
Early life
Sheng, an ethnic Han Chinese, was born in Kaiyuan, Manchuria in a well-to-do peasant family on 3 December 1895. His great grandfather, Sheng Fuxin(盛福信), was originally from Shandong Province and later fled to Kaiyuan. Sheng enrolled at the Provincial Forestry and Agricultural School in Mukden, aged 14. Aged 17, Sheng enrolled at the Wusong Public School in Shanghai, where he studied political science and economy. There, he became friendly with students and teachers of "radical inclinations". After graduating in 1915, under their advice he went to study in Tokyo, Japan. There, Sheng enrolled at the Waseda University, where he studied political economy for a year. During that time, Sheng expressed nationalistic attitudes and was exposed to "The ABC of Communism" () and other leftist publications.
Ferment in China made him return to homeland. In 1919, he participated in the May Fourth Movement as a representative of the Liaoning students. During this period, he developed radical and anti-Japanese sentiments. By his own admission, Sheng became a Marxist the very same year and his political opponents claimed he became a communist during his second stay in Japan in the 1920s. During that time, he realised the "futility of book learning", and decided to enter a military career. He took military training in the southern province of Kwantung, known for liberal and reformist views. Later, he enrolled at the Northeastern Military Academy.
Sheng entered military service under Guo Songling, Deputy of Zhang Zuolin, a Manchurian warlord. He rapidly rose to become Staff Officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was given command of a company. Because of his commendable service, Guo sponsored his admission to the Imperial Japanese Army Academy for advanced military studies. Three years later he completed his studies, with minor interruptions in 1925, when he was involved in Manchurian politics.
At that time, Sheng supported a campaign against Zhang, briefly returning to Manchuria. Although he supported the anti-Zhang coup, he was able to return to Japan with the support of Feng Yuxiang and Chiang Kai-Shek, from whom he received financial help and considered him as his patron.
Sheng returned from Japan in 1927 to participate in the Northern Expedition A rising young officer, Sheng was given the rank of colonel and served as a Staff Officer of the Chiang's field headquarters under He Yingqin. During the Northern Expedition, Sheng proved himself as a worthy officer, serving in various command staff capacities.
Sheng was a member of the Guominjun, a leftist nationalist faction that supported the Nationalist government in China. However, Sheng did not join the Kuomintang because of his belief in Marxism. After the Expedition was completed, he was made chief of the war operations section of the general staff in Nanjing, but resigned in 1929 over a disagreement with his superiors. After the apparent setback in his career, Sheng dedicated himself to the question of strengthening China's border defences.
Power struggle
Rise to power
Not long after Sheng's resignation, a delegation from Xinjiang came to Nanjing to ask for financial aid. The Governor of Xinjiang Jin Shuren asked one of the members of the delegation, the Deputy General Secretary of Xinjiang Guang Lu, to find a competent officer to reorganise the provincial military. After discreet enquiries, Sheng was appointed to Jin's staff and arrived in Xinjiang via Soviet Union in the winter of 1929–30. Chiang Kai-Shek may have endorsed Sheng's decision to go to Xinjiang. Therefore, the appointment of Ma Zhongying, a Sheng's rival, as a commander of the 36th Division in Xinjiang embarrassed and frustrated Sheng. Sheng's welcome in Xinjiang was cold. Jin considered him a potential threat. Despite the doubts, Jin appointed him Chief of Staff of the Frontier Army and subsequently named him Chief Instructor at the Provincial Military College.
In the summer of 1932, the fighting between Ma and Jin had significantly intensified. Ma's Hui forces were able to break the defence lines at Hami and enter Xinjiang through the Hexi Corridor. In December 1932, Ma's forces started the siege of Ürümqi, but the White Russians and Sheng's troops successfully defended the city. In March 1933, the Manchurian Salvation Army, part of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), came to their aid through the Soviet territory. During these events, Jin's prestige declined and correspondingly Sheng became increasingly popular. The culmination was the coup staged by the White Russians and a group of provincial bureaucrats led by Chen Zhong, Tao Mingyue and Li Xiaotian on 12 April 1933, who overthrew Jin, who escaped to China proper via Siberia.
Sheng, who was marshalling the provincial forces in eastern Xinjiang, returned to Ürümqi to seize power in the midst of the chaos. Without conferring the Chinese government, the coup leaders appointed Sheng the Commissioner of the Xinjiang Border Defence, i. e., Military Governor or duban on 14 April 1933, resurrecting the old title. Liu Wenlong, a powerless provincial bureaucrat was installed as the Civil Governor.
Rivalry with Ma and Zhang
Sheng's appointment as duban did not mean that his position was secured. Installment of Wenlong as governor meant that the bureaucrats had the upper hand over Sheng, whom they considered their protege. His position was also challenged by Ma, as well as Zhang Peiyuan, Jin's old ally and a commander of the Yining region. The Chinese government, having learned that Zhang refused to cooperate with the new regime in Xinjiang and that Ma's forces represented the gravest threat to the new regime, tried to take the advantage of the situation and take control over the province. Without clearly stating whether it recognized the changes in Xinjiang, the government appointed Huang Musong, then a Deputy Chief of General Staff, a "pacification commissioner" in May 1933. He arrived in Ürümqi on 10 June. The appointment of Huang as a pacification commissioner further strained the relations between Shang and the Chinese government.
Sheng expected that the Chinese government would recognise him as duban, and that Huang's visit would affect that decision. Huang was ignorant of the frontier problems and his arrogant behaviour offended some of the provincial leaders. The rumours spread that Huang was already named a new governor or that Chiang decided to split Xinjiang into several smaller provinces. However, the true Huang's task was to secure the cooperation between the coup leaders and establish a new provincial mechanism with a pro-Nanjing stance. Sheng exploited the rumours and charged that Huang, an agent of Wang Jingwei had plotted with Liu, Zhang and Ma to overthrow the provincial government. On 26 June Huang was placed under house arrest, and the three coup leaders were also arrested and immediately executed. After the Chinese government apologised and promised Sheng the recognition of his position, Huang was allowed to return to Nanjing three weeks after the arrest.
Shortly afterwards, in August Chiang sent Foreign Minister Luo Wengan, as a sign of goodwill, to preside over Sheng's inauguration ceremony as a Commissioner of the Xinjiang Border Defence. However, at the same time, the Chinese government used Luo's visit to contact two of Sheng's rivals, Ma in Turpan and Zhang in Yining. They were encouraged to launch an attack against Sheng. As soon as Luo left the province, a war broke out between Sheng on one side, and Ma and Zhang on the other. Sheng accused Luo not only for plotting but also of an assassination attempt. Luo's left Xinjiang in early October, and his departure marked the beginning of the era of deep alienation between Sheng and the Chinese government.
In September 1933, Sheng accused Civil Governor Liu Wenlong of plotting with Ma and Zhang through Luo with Nanjing in order to overthrow him. He was forced to resign and was replaced by Zhu Ruichi, a more controllable official. Sheng created a new bureaucratic hierarchy, nepotistically appointing new officials and replacing one of his predecessors.
Confronted by Ma's army outside of Ürümqi, Sheng sent a delegation to Soviet Central Asia to request assistance. Sheng later claimed that the delegation was sent under the aegis of Jin's request for military equipment. However, Sheng made a more comprehensive deal with the Soviets. His delegation returned in December 1933, together with Garegin Apresov, who would later be appointed as the Soviet General Consul in Ürümqi. The Soviets provided substantive military assistance to Sheng, who in return gave the Soviets wide political, economic and military control over Xinjiang.
Ma sieged Ürümqi for the second time in January 1934. This time, the Soviets assisted Sheng with air support and two brigades of the Joint State Political Directorate. With their aid, Sheng again defeated Ma's forces, who retreated south from Tien Shan, in a region controlled by the East Turkestan Republic (ETR). The same month, Ma's forces arrived in Kashgar, extinguishing the ETR. Hoja-Niyaz, president of the ETR escaped upon the arrival of Ma's troops to the Xinjiang-Soviet border, and in town Irkeshtam signed an agreement that abolished the East Turkestan Republic and supported Sheng's regime. In early 1934, Zhu Ruichi died and was replaced by Li Rong as Civil Governor.
In January, the Chinese government approved Huang Shaohong's plan for military operation in Xinjiang, in order to put the province under its effective control. Huang had in mind to act pragmatically, offering support either to Sheng or Ma, whoever was willing to cooperate with the Chinese government. The pretext for the operation was the development of Xinjiang and adjacent provinces. For that purpose, the Xinjiang Construction Planning Office was established in Xinjiang with Huang in charge. With enthusiasm from the Minister of Finance H. H. Kung, Huang purchased foreign-manufactured armored vehicles. By April, the preparations reached their final stage. However, the whole plan came to a halt in May because the Soviets have already entered Xinjiang and assisted Sheng against Ma.
Under pressure from Sheng's strengthened military forces, Ma's troops retreated from Kashgar in June–July 1934 to the southeast towards Hotan and Yarkand, where they remained until 1937. Ma himself retreated via Irkeshtam to Soviet Central Asia, accompanied by several officers and a Soviet official. Sheng sent requests to the Soviets to turn him in, but they refused. By this move, the Soviets intended to achieve dual benefits. First, by removing Ma from Xinjiang's political arena, they wanted to increase Sheng's rule, which would give them higher control over the province; and second, they intended to use Ma as leverage against Sheng in case he did not comply with their interests in the province. The armistice between the Hui forces and the Xinjiang government was agreed upon in September 1934. Zhang, after suffering defeat, committed suicide.
Following the withdrawal of the Hui forces to Hotan in July 1934, Ma Hushan consolidated his power over the remote oases of the Tarim Basin, thus establishing a Hui satrapy, where Hui Muslims ruled as colonial masters over their Turkic Muslim subjects. The region was named Tunganistan by Walther Heissig. Tunganistan was bordering on two, eventually, three sides with Xinjiang province, and on the fourth side bordered the Tibetan Plateau. Despite the fact that negotiations were underway with the command of the 36th Division, the Dungan command did not make concessions on any issues. Moreover, the Soviets, intending to keep the 36th Division as a fallback against Sheng, vacillated regarding the complete annihilation of the 36th Division, giving refuge to the Dungan commanders and establishing trade relations with the 36th Division.
Rule
Consolidation
On the anniversary of the 12 April coup in 1934, the Xinjiang provincial government published an administrative plan called the "Great Eight-Point Manifesto" or "Eight Great Proclamations". These included: the establishment of racial equality, guarantee of religious freedom, equitable distribution of agricultural and rural relief, reform of government finance, the cleaning up of government administration, the expansion of education, the promotion of self-government and the improvement of the judiciary. The program was practicable since each point represented a grievance that one nationality had against the previous government, which enabled Sheng to enact the reforms. The first two points which dealt with "the realisation of equality for all nationalities" and "the protection of the rights of believers" advanced the national and religious rights of the Xinjiang nationalities.
Sheng sent a letter to Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Kliment Voroshilov in June 1934. In the letter, Sheng expressed his belief in the victory of Communism and referred to himself as "convinced supporter of Communism". He called for the "fastest possible implementation of Communism in Xinjiang". Sheng also not only denounced the Nationalist government, but expressed his aim in overthrowing it, suggesting support for the Chinese Soviet Republic and joint offensive against the Chinese government. Sheng also expressed his wish to join the Communist Party of Soviet Union. In a letter sent to the Soviet General Consul Garegin Apresov in Ürümqi, Stalin commented that the Sheng's letter made a "depressing impression on our comrades". The content of Sheng's letter led Stalin to refer him as "a provocateur or a hopeless "leftist" having no idea about Marxism". In a reply to Sheng, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov refused all of his proposals.
In August 1934, Sheng affirmed that the nine duties of his government are to eradicate corruption, to develop economy and culture, to maintain peace by avoiding war, to mobilise all manpower for the cultivation of land, to improve communication facilities, to keep Xinjiang permanently a Chinese province, to fight against imperialism and Fascism and to sustain a close relationship with Soviet Russia, to reconstruct a "New Xinjiang", and to protect the positions and privileges of religious leaders.
The dependency of the Sheng regime on the Soviet Union was further highlighted with the publication of the "Six Great Policies" in December 1934. The Policies guaranteed his previously enacted "Great Eight-Point Manifesto" and included "anti-imperialism, friendship with the Soviet Union, racial and national equality, clean government, peace and reconstruction". Sheng referred to them as "a skillful, vital application of Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism in the conditions of the feudal society of economically and culturally backward Xinjiang". They served as the ideological basis of Sheng's rule. With the proclamation of the Six Great Policies, Sheng adopted a new flag with a six-pointed star to represent these policies.
On 1 August 1935, Sheng founded the People's Anti-Imperialist Association in Ürümqi. Garegin Apresov submitted a presentation to the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which accepted the creation of the association on 5 August. The association had to be composed of representatives of the Soviet special services bodies. As the leader of the association, Sheng became one of the main figures of Soviet regional policy. The creation of the association strengthened the Soviet position in Xinjiang.
The propaganda of the association was the Anti-Imperialist War Front. Xinjiang's Youth and Xinjiang's Women served as the association's youth and women's wing respectively. In 1935, the association had 2,489 members, and in 1939, the Association's membership rose to 10,000. The membership was nationally diverse, and included Han, Hui and various Turkic peoples.
In 1935 the British consul in Kashgar sent a report to the Foreign Office which stated that the influence of the Soviet Union on Xinjiang and its population increased. In order to check the reliability of these claims, the Chinese government sent a special commission to Ürümqi. However, the commission concluded that Soviet assistance is friendly and commensurate with the assistance previously provided to the province by the Soviet Union. Only after this, the governments of Xinjiang, China, and the Soviet Union issued a joint statement in which the allegedly impending annexation of Xinjiang to the USSR was characterised as untrue. Sheng and the "reliable people" he appointed in the province played a special role in the fact that the Chinese authorities came to this conclusion. After this joint statement, the Soviet Union felt even more comfortable in Xinjiang politics. In 1935 the Politburo made several secret decisions to strengthen Soviet influence in the region.
When in December 1936 Zhang Xueliang rebelled against the Chinese government and arrested Chiang Kai-shek, which led to the Xi'an Incident. Sheng sided with Zhang, who asked for his help, and intended to proclaim that his rebels were under Xinjiang's protection. Only after the Soviets condemned the incident and characterised it as a Japanese provocation, and demanded from Sheng to drop his support for Zhang, did Sheng refuse to support Zhang.
Kashgar region and Islamic Rebellion
Two weeks after Ma Zhongying left for the Soviet territory, in early July 1934, Kashgar was occupied by a unit of 400 Chinese soldiers under the command of Kung Cheng-han on 20 July. He was accompanied by the 2,000 strong Uighurs commanded by Mahmut Muhiti, a wealthy ex-merchant. Thus, Kashgar was peacefully taken over by Xinjiang's provincial authority after almost a year.
To reassure the local population and to give himself additional time to consolidate his power in the northern and eastern parts of the province, Sheng appointed Muhiti as the overall Military Commander for the Kashgar region. Sheng was not comfortable with the Muslim officials in Kashgar, therefore a month later, he appointed his fellow Manchurian Liu Pin to the position of Commanding Officer in Kashgar. Muhiti was demoted and retained the position of Divisional Commander.
Sheng's Han Chinese appointees took effective control over the Kashgar region, and foremost amongst them was Liu, a Chinese nationalist, and a Christian. Liu understood little about the local Muslim culture. Immediately upon his arrival, he ordered that the picture of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic, be hung in the Kashgar mosque. The local Muslim population was dismayed by the developments in Kashgar and considered that the "Bolsheviks had taken over the country and were bent on destroying religion". Also Sheng's educational reform which attacked basic Islamic principles, as well as atheistic propaganda, contributed to the alienation of the Xinjiang's Muslim population.
Also in 1936, in the Altay region in northern Xinjiang, local Muslim nationalists, led by Younis Haji, founded the Society of National Defence. This society included influential Muslim figures. Sheng received information on the preparation of a powerful protest movement by this society. However, he did not have the capacity to suppress this movement with his own forces.
In Afghanistan, Muhammad Amin Bughra, the exiled leader of the East Turkestan Republic, approached the Japanese ambassador in 1935 proposing the establishment of the ETR under Japanese patronage and proposed Mahmut Muhiti as the leader of the newly established puppet state. The plan was later aborted when Mahmud in fear for his life fled from Kashgar to British India in April 1937.
Muhiti became the focal point of the opposition to Sheng's government. From the middle of 1936, he and his supporters began to propagate the idea of creating an "independent Uyghur state". In this case, he was supported by Muslim religious leaders and influential people from Xinjiang. Muhiti, having entered into contact with the Soviet consul in Kashgar Smirnov, even tried to get weapons from the Soviet Union, but his appeal was rejected. Then, by contacting former Dungan opponents, in early April 1937, Muhiti was able to raise an uprising against the Xinjiang authorities. However, only two regiments of the 6th Uyghur Division, stationed north and south of Kashgar in Artush and Yengihissar, came out in his defence, while the other two regiments, 33rd and 34th, stationed in Kashgar itself, declared their loyalty to the Sheng's government.
Urged by the Soviets, Sheng's government sent a peacekeeping mission to Kashgar to resolve the conflict. The negotiations, however, did not take place. The Soviets tried to contact Ma Hushan, the new commander of the Dungan 36th Division, via Ma Zhongying, to disarm Muhiti's rebels. However, Muhiti, with 17 of his associated fled to British India on 2 April 1937.
After Muhiti's flight to British India, Muhiti's troops revolted. The revolt was Islamic in its nature. Muhiti's officer Abdul Niyaz succeeded him and was proclaimed a general. Niyaz took Yarkand and moved towards Kashgar, eventually capturing it. Those with pro-Soviet inclinations were executed and thus new Muslim administration was established. Simultaneously, the uprising spread amongst the Kirghiz near Kucha and among Muslims in Hami. After capturing Kashgar, Niyaz's forces started to move towards Karashar, receiving assistance from the local population along the way.
In order to jointly fight against the Soviets and Chinese, Niyaz and Ma Hushan signed a secret agreement on 15 May. Ma Hushan used the opportunity and moved from Khotan to take over Kashgar from the rebels in June, as promulgated by the agreement. However, 5,000 Soviet troops, including airborne and armoured vehicles were marching towards southern Xinjiang on Sheng's invitation along with Sheng's forces and Dungan troops.
The Turkic rebels were defeated and Kashgar retook. After the defeat of the Turkic rebels, the Soviets also stopped maintaining the 36th Division. Ma Hushan's administration collapsed. By October 1937, along with the collapse of the Turkic rebellion and the Tungan satrapy, Muslim control over the southern part of the province ended. Soon afterwards, Yulbars Khan troops in Hami were also defeated. Thus, Sheng became the ruler of the whole province for the first time.
1937–38 purges
During the Islamic rebellion, Sheng launched his own purge in Xinjiang to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge. Sheng started the elimination of "traitors", "pan-Turkists", "enemies of the people", "nationalists" and "imperialist spies". His purges swept the entire Uyghur and Hui political elite. The NKVD provided the support during the purges. In the later stages of the purge, Sheng turned against the "Trotskyites", mostly a group of Han Chinese sent to him by Moscow. In the group were Soviet General Consul Garegin Apresov, General Ma Hushan, Ma Shaowu, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang, and Hoja-Niyaz. Xinjiang came under virtual Soviet control. It is estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people perished during the purge.
In 1937, Sheng initiated a three-year plan for reconstruction, for which he received a Soviet loan of 15 million rubles. At Joseph Stalin's request, Sheng joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in August 1938 and received Party Card No.1859118 directly from Molotov during his secret visit to Moscow. However, Sheng did not set up the provincial branch of the CPSU in Xinjiang.
Having eliminated many of his opponents, Sheng's administration had a staff shortage. For this reason, he turned to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Ya'an for help. In the circumstances of the Second United Front against the Japanese, the CCP sent dozens of its cadres to Xinjiang. The CCP members were mostly employed in high-level administrative, financial, educational and cultural ministerial posts in Ürümqi, Kashgar, Khotan and elsewhere, helping to implement Sheng's policies. They also maintained the only open communication line between Ya'an and the Soviet Union. Among those sent by the CCP was Mao Zemin, a younger brother of Mao Zedong, who served as Deputy Finance Minister.
Nationality policy
During Sheng's rule, the Han Chinese represented only a small minority in Xinjiang. F. Gilbert Chan claimed that they made up only 6% of the population at the time, while Sheng himself during his visit in Moscow in 1938, told Kliment Voroshilov that the Han made around 10% (roughly 400,000 people) of the population of Xinjiang. In his relationship with Xinjiang's non-Han populace, Sheng adopted the Soviet nationality policy. The non-Han nationalities were for the first time included in the provincial government. The first principle of his Declaration of Ten Guiding Principles stated that "all nationalities enjoy equal rights in politics, economy, and education". He also reorganized Xinjiang Daily, the only regional newspaper at the time, to be issued in Mandarin, Uyghur and Kazakh language. The educational programme encouraged the Han to learn Uyghur and the Uyghurs to learn Mandarin. Sheng's nationality policy also entailed the establishment of the Turkic languages schools, the revival of madrassas (Islamic schools), the publication of the Turkic languages newspapers and the formation of the Uyghur Progress Union.
Sheng initiated the idea of 14 separate nationalities in Xinjiang, and these were Han Chinese, Uyghurs, Mongols, Kazakhs, Muslims or Dungan, Sibe, Solon, Manchu, Kyrgyz, White Russian, Taranchi, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. To foster this idea, he encouraged the establishment of cultural societies for each nationality. The description of Xinjiang as a home of 14 nationalities, both in Xinjiang, as well as in proper China, brought Sheng popularity. However, Sheng's policy was criticized by the Pan-Turkic Jadidists and East Turkestan Independence activists Muhammad Amin Bughra and Masud Sabri, who rejected the Sheng's imposition of the name "Uyghur people" upon the Turkic people of Xinjiang. They wanted instead the name "Turkic nationality" (Tujue zu in Chinese) to be applied to their people. Sabri also viewed the Hui people as Muslim Han Chinese and separate from his own people. Bughra accused Sheng of trying to sow disunion among the Turkic peoples. However, Sheng argued that such separation was necessary in order to guarantee the success of the future union.
Another agenda from the Soviet Union Sheng implemented in Xinjiang was secularization with the purpose of undermining religious influence. Moreover, many Uyghurs and non-Han people were sent for education abroad, most notably in Tashkent, Uzbek SSR to the Central Asia University or Central Asia Military Academy. With their return, these students would find employment as teachers or within the Xinjiang administration.
Sheng's nationality policy served as a basis for the later Communist regime's nationality policy in Xinjiang, with few exceptions.
Relations with the Soviet Union
In March 1935, Lazar Kaganovich, who headed a newly established commission for developing areas of cooperation with Xinjiang, submitted a proposal to Politburo. Based on these proposals Politburo adopted a number of resolutions. Xinjiang received loans at low-interest rates, various economic assistance, and the sending of numerous consultants and specialists, which strengthened the position of Sheng's regime.
Kaganovich proposed a trade turnover with Xinjiang in 1935 of 9750 thousand rubles, of which 5000 thousand rubles were to come to the share of import, and 4,750 thousand rubles from export operations. Since Kaganovich's proposal was deemed unrealistic, Politburo once again discussed the issue and adopted the resolution "On Trade with Xinjiang" in June. According to the resolution, imports from Xinjiang were reduced, while exports remained the same. The imports from Xinjiang included cotton, wool, leather, livestock, and other raw materials.
The second section of the proposal deals with financial issues. To improve the financial sector of the Xinjiang economy and strengthen the provincial currency, it was proposed to balance the budget as a priority task. To this end, it was envisaged to reduce costs in administrative and managerial and military areas, centralise expenses and tax operations, replace all taxes with general provincial taxes, ban the issuance of counterfeit money, reconstruct a provincial bank, etc.
The proposal's third section were concerned with agriculture and the fourth with transport issues. In that matter, the construction of the main road connecting Xinjiang and the Soviet Union, the increase of cargo transportation along the Ili and Kara Irtysh Rivers and a number of other measures were planned here. These works were later expanded. In October 1937, begun the construction of the Sary-Tash–Sary-Ozek–Ürümqi–Lanzhou road with a length of 2,925 km, of which 230 km passed through the territory of the Soviet Union, 1,530 km through Xinjiang, and 1,165 km through the province of Gansu. Several thousands of Soviet citizens worked on the construction of the road.
The fifth section of the proposals prepared by the Kaganovich Commission regulated the issues of commodity credit. According to this section, machines and equipment supplied by the Soviets for the industrial enterprises being built and reconstructed in Xinjiang were to be registered as commodity loans.
The document related to the exploration work in Xinjiang stated that "geological exploration of minerals and, first of all, tin, in Xinjiang, was done at the expense of the USSR" and that the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry (NKTP) was to send a geological expedition. The search for tin, tungsten, and molybdenum was very important for the Soviets, so they established a special expedition for this task.
The sixth section of the proposal dealt with personnel issues. The section suggests that the departments sending advisers and instructors to Xinjiang pay special attention to the qualitative selection of workers sent to Xinjiang. According to the Kaganovich Commission, the number of advisers and instructors sent to Xinjiang, including military consultants and instructors, should not exceed 50 people.
On 11 September 1935, Politburo adopted five resolutions regarding Xinjiang. In the second resolution, it decided to amend the Kaganovich proposal for the establishment of the joint-stock company and to replace it with a special Soviet trading office. Additionally, Politburo discussed the issue of "Xinjiang Oil" and adopted a resolution. The resolution called for the preparation of the development of oil near the Soviet border under the firm of the Xinjiang government. Exploration was carried out in accordance with this decision and in 1938 oil fields were discovered in Shikho. The same year, the joint Xinjiang-Soviet company "Xinjiangneft" was established. Also, General Consul Apresov was given extended powers. Soviet officials in Xinjiang needed his permission to take any action and he could dismiss any Soviet worker "who did not know how to behave in a foreign country". Two days later he was awarded the Order of Lenin "for successful work in Xinjiang".
Along with decisions concerning the economy, Politburo also adopted a resolution on the possibility for Xinjiang young people to receive education in the USSR. At first, there was a quota for 15 students, which was expanded to 100 in June 1936. In the 1930s, 30,000 Xinjiang people, preferably Chinese, received education in the various specialties in the Soviet Union.
The resolutions also concerned the reconstruction of the Xinjiang army. The Soviet Union sent equipment and instructors for this end. Xinjiang received aircraft, equipment for aviation, rifle-machine-guns and artillery workshops, uniforms, personal supplies, and other military equipment. Soviets also opened pilot schools to train local airmen. The Soviets also proposed the reduction of army to 10,000 men, but Sheng refused this proposal and instead reduced it to 20,000 men.
In an agreement from 16 May 1935, ratified without consent from the Chinese government, the Soviet government provided substantial financial and material aid, including a five-year loan of five million "gold rubles" (Sheng actually received silver bullion). At about the same time, again without consent from the Chinese government, Soviet geologists started a survey of Xinjiang's mineral resources. The result was Soviet oil drilling at Dushanzi. During Sheng's rule, Xinjiang's trade came under Soviet control. The Soviet General Consul in Ürümqi was effectively in control of governing, with Sheng required to consult them for any decision he made. Alexander Barmine, the Soviet official responsible for supplying arms to Sheng, wrote that Xinjiang was "a Soviet colony in all but name".
The Soviet stranglehold around Xinjiang was further enhanced through a secret agreement signed on 1 January 1936. The agreement included a Soviet guarantee to come to the aid of Xinjiang "politically, economically and by armed force... in case of some external attack upon the province". By mid-1936, a significant number of Soviet specialists were active in Xinjiang involved in construction, education, health, and military training. The Russian language replaced English as the foreign language taught in schools. A number of Muslim youths, including Muslim girls, were sent to Soviet Central Asia for education. Sheng's government implemented atheistic propaganda, and Muslim women were encouraged to appear in public without a veil.
Approachment to the Chinese government
Between 1934 and 1942, there were no significant relations between the Sheng's government and the Nationalist government. As the full-scale War of Resistance/WWII broke out between China and the Empire of Japan, the Chinese government entered the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in a joint war effort against imperial Japan. However, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Sheng saw an opportunity to strike down Soviet proxies, the CCP and to mend his relationship with the Chinese government now seated in Chongqing.
Sheng had long prepared to purge the CCP in Xinjiang. In 1939, his agents filled reports on clandestine meetings, the constant exchange of letters, and the unauthorized content of some of their propaganda. A month after the German invasion, in July 1941, the CCP cadre had been demoted or cashiered. Chen Tanqiu, the chief liaison of the CCP reported in Yan'an that his relations with Sheng became "extremely cold".
In the same month, the first sign of a thaw in the relationship between Xinjiang and the Chinese government occurred, a month after the German invasion, when Sheng allowed the Chinese diplomat in Moscow to visit Xinjiang for an official tour.
On 19 March 1942, Sheng's brother Sheng Shiqi was mysteriously murdered. According to one version, the Soviets, fearing that Sheng Shicai might switch sides, tried to overthrow him. The coup started with Sheng Shiqi's murder committed by his wife, convinced to do so by the Soviet agents. The other version is that he was murdered by Sheng Shicai because of his close ties to Moscow. After his brother's death, Sheng continued his crackdown on the CCP. On 1 July 1942 he ordered their relocation in the Ürümqi outskirts for "protection".
On 3 July 1942, a major delegation of the Chinese government's officials arrived at Ürümqi upon Sheng's invitation. Chiang Kai-Shek designated Zhu Shaoliang as a leader of the mission. The mission was initiated by Sheng's younger brother Sheng Shiji a few months earlier. The reaction of the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov followed soon after, as he presented Chiang the Sheng's ideas about the implementation of Communism in Xinjiang, his support for Chiang's arrest in Xi'an Incident and the offer to make Xinjiang a Soviet republic. However, the Chinese government disregarded Molotov's presentation. On 9 July, Chiang informed the Soviet ambassador that the Soviet authorities "must now deal with the central government of China" and are not permitted to "discuss anything with Sheng duban [i. e. military governor]". Chiang designated Zhu Shaoliang as a contact person for the Soviets.
The later publication of Sheng's correspondence with the Soviet authorities, allowed the Chinese government to set up a special office in Ürümqi, from where they handled Xinjiang's foreign affairs, and to set up the Kuomintang roots throughout the province, replacing the People's Anti-Imperialist Association, which he disbanded in April 1942. Sheng was appointed the head of the provincial Kuomintang. Both dubanship and civil governorship remained in Sheng's hands. The National Revolutionary Army troops were not allowed to enter Xinjiang.
As Wu Shaoliang shuttled between Ürümqi and Chongqing, Sheng requested a permanent liaison to be appointed to handle his foreign affairs. The Chinese government appointed Wu Zexiang Minister of Foreign Affairs of Xinjiang. Ministerial position for a domestic post was unusual but approved by Chiang due to "special conditions and circumstances" in Xinjiang. Minister Wu's post was of consultative nature, and the Chinese government acted as an arbiter in the case of a dispute between him and the provincial authorities. Sheng demanded that Wu assumes more responsibility in dealings with the Soviets.
The final months of 1942 saw the most turbulent period in Xinjiang-Soviet relations. In October 1942 Sheng demanded from the Soviet General Consul that all Soviet technical and military personnel be withdrawn from Xinjiang within three months. To the Soviets, who were engaged in the Battle of Stalingrad and desperate to retain the oil reserves at Dushanzi, which oil quality was comparable with product of Baku oil fields, this demand represented numerous logistical difficulties. On 3 November 1942 Sheng issued a directive prohibiting "organizations, groups, and private persons" to engage in "any trade activity involving foreign imports and exports." The aim of the directive was to end the Soviet trade monopoly in Xinjiang. The Soviets withdrew their military and civilian personnel in March 1943. Despite Sheng's ultimatum, only in March–April 1943 did the Soviets notify Sheng and the Chinese government of their withdrawal.
With the Soviet gradual withdrawal, the Kuomintang representatives and personnel filled the void. In June 1943, four divisions of the NRA New 2nd Army commanded by Zhu Shaoliang were transferred to Xinjiang from Gansu. In October 1943, the Kuomintang effectively removed Soviet influence from Xinjiang. With the Soviets gone, in September Sheng ordered the arrest and execution of the CCP cadres. Among them was Mao Zemin, Mao Zedong's younger brother, who was among eighty-eight conspirators involved in the Soviet plot to overthrow Sheng.
Later tenures and retirement
As the Germans lost the Battle for Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk, Sheng tried to return to the pro-Soviet policy. He ordered the arrest of the Kuomintang personnel, telling Stalin that they were Japanese spies, and telling Chiang that they were communists. Stalin, however, refused to intervene and left Sheng at the mercy of the Chinese government, which engineered his removal from office. Zhu Shaoliang convinced him to resign and accept the post of Minister of Agriculture. Sheng officially resigned from his post and was appointed as Minister of Agriculture and Forestry on 29 August 1944. He left Xinjiang on 11 September 1944 to join the Chinese government in Chongqing. The post of Minister of Agriculture under Kuomintang was reserved for men out of power since the post was insignificant with the increasing power of the landlords. Chiang signed an order allowing Sheng to recoup the wealth beneath the governor's building. The storehouse contained fifty thousand taels of gold, chests full of valuable antelope horns, and endless blocks of opium. In total, Sheng removed 135 truckloads of wealth.
Sheng's stay in Chongqing was troublesome. In April 1945, his former Finance Minister Peng Jiyuan was beaten in Ürümqi, and sought refuge with Sheng after his recovery. Wu Zhongxin, his successor in Xinjiang, wrote that Sheng "started to lose his mind in Chongqing" and that in accordance with the tenets of Buddhism and as recompense for his past crimes, he has descended to the lowest depths of hell". At the Sixth Party Congress held in May 1945, a figurehead Uyghur leader Masud Sabri called for Sheng's head, however, Sheng was defended by Chiang. Sheng held the ministerial post until 30 July 1945. Sheng later worked as an adviser to Hu Zongnan in Xi'an.
In 1949, Sheng accompanied the Kuomintang in Taiwan where he lived in comfortable retirement with his wife and four children. Sheng was interviewed by Allen S. Whiting and wrote his own accounts under the title Red failure in Sinkiang in Sinkiang: pawn or pivot?, published in 1958.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th%20Cavalry%20Regiment
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7th Cavalry Regiment
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The 7th Cavalry Regiment is a United States Army cavalry regiment formed in 1866. Its official nickname is "Garryowen", after the Irish air "Garryowen" that was adopted as its march tune. The regiment participated in some of the largest battles of the Indian Wars, including its famous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, where its commander Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer was killed. The regiment also committed the Wounded Knee Massacre, where more than 250 men, women and children of the Lakota were killed.
The 7th Cavalry became part of the 1st Cavalry Division in the 1920s, it went on to fight in the Pacific Theater of World War II and took part in the Admiralty Islands, Leyte and Luzon campaigns. It later participated several key battles of the Korean War. During the Korean War the unit committed the No Gun Ri massacre, in which between 250 and 300 South Korean refugees were killed, mostly women and children. The unit later participated in the Vietnam War. It distinguished itself in the Gulf War and in the Global War on Terror where its squadrons and battalions now serve as Combined Arms Battalions or as reconnaissance squadrons for Brigade Combat Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.
American Indian Wars
At the end of the American Civil War, the ranks of the Regular cavalry regiments had been depleted by war and disease, as were those of the other Regular regiments. Of the 448 companies of cavalry, infantry, and artillery authorized, 153 were not organized, and few, if any, of these were at full strength. By July 1866 this shortage had somewhat eased since many of the members of the disbanded Volunteer outfits had by then enlisted as Regulars. By that time, however, it became apparent in Washington, D.C. that the Army, even at full strength, was not large enough to perform all its duties. It needed occupation troops for the Reconstruction of the South and it needed to replace the Volunteer regiments still fighting Native Americans in the West. Consequently, on 28 July 1866 Congress authorized 4 additional cavalry regiments and enough infantry companies to reorganize the existing 19 regiments (then under two different internal organizations) into 45 regiments with 10 companies each. After this increase there were 10 regiments of cavalry, 5 of artillery, and 45 of infantry. The new cavalry regiments, numbered 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, were organized under the same tables as the 6 already in existence. A regiment consisted of 12 companies formed into 3 squadrons of 4 companies each. Besides the commanding officer who was a colonel, the regimental staff included 7 officers, 6 enlisted men, a surgeon, and 2 assistant surgeons. Each company was authorized 4 officers, 15 non-commissioned officers, and 72 privates. A civilian veterinarian accompanied the regiment although he was not included in the table of organization.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment was constituted in the Regular Army on 28 July 1866 at Fort Riley, Kansas and organized on 21 September 1866. Andrew J. Smith, a Veteran of the Mexican–American War, who had been a distinguished cavalry leader in the Army of the Tennessee during the Civil War, promoted to colonel, took command of the new regiment. Subsequently, Smith resigned from the US Army and Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis took command of the regiment on May 6, 1869. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer had been serving as second in command of the regiment since July 1866. Neither Smith nor Sturgis served with the regiment in the field, were involved in mostly administrative matters with the regiment, and were in command in name only. Meanwhile, Custer commanded the regiment in the various campaigns against the Native American tribes and during Reconstruction duty in the southern states. Sturgis commanded the regiment until his retirement and Colonel James W. Forsyth took command of the regiment in June 1886. Forsyth commanded the regiment during the controversial Wounded Knee Massacre in December 1890 and he left the regiment in 1894 when Forsyth was promoted to brigadier general.
First campaigns
On 26 November 1868, Custer's Osage scouts located the trail of an Indian war party. Custer's troops followed this trail all day without a break until nightfall, when they rested briefly until there was sufficient moonlight to continue. They followed the trail to Chief Black Kettle's village, where Custer divided his force into four parts, moving each into position so that at first daylight they could simultaneously converge on the village. (Separating his forces into several columns in order to surround the faster Indians before they could flee became one of the 7th Cavalry's standard operating procedures.) At daybreak, the 7th charged as the Regimental band played Garryowen (many of the musicians' lips froze to their instruments), Double Wolf awoke and fired his gun to alert the village; he was among the first to die in the charge. The Cheyenne warriors hurriedly left their lodges to take cover behind trees and in deep ravines. The 7th Cavalry soon controlled the village, but it took longer to quell all remaining resistance.
The Osage, enemies to the Cheyenne, were at war with most of the Plains tribes. The Osage scouts led Custer toward the village, hearing sounds and smelling smoke from the camp long before the soldiers. The Osage did not participate in the initial attack, fearing that the soldiers would mistake them for Cheyenne and shoot them. Instead, they waited behind the color-bearer of the 7th Cavalry on the north side of the river until the village was taken. The Osage rode into the village, where they took scalps and helped the soldiers round up fleeing Cheyenne women and children.
Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman, were shot in the back and killed while fleeing on a pony. Following the capture of Black Kettle's village, Custer was in a precarious position. As the fighting began to subside, he saw large groups of mounted Indians gathering on nearby hilltops and learned that Black Kettle's village was only one of many Indian encampments along the river, where thousands of Indians had gathered. Fearing an attack, he ordered some of his men to take defensive positions while the others seized the Indians' property and horses. They destroyed what they did not want or could not carry, including about 675 ponies and horses. They spared 200 horses to carry prisoners.
Near nightfall, fearing the outlying Indians would find and attack his supply train, Custer began marching his forces toward the other encampments. The surrounding Indians retreated, at which point Custer turned around and returned to his supply train. This engagement would soon be known as the Battle of Washita River.
Yellowstone Expedition
From 20 June – 23 September 1873, Custer led ten companies of the 7th Cavalry in the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873, during which, they fought several engagements with the Lakota Sioux Indians. The first of which was the Battle of Honsinger Bluff, on 4 August 1873. Near present-day Miles City, Montana, the 7th Cavalry's horses were grazing when a raiding party led by Chief Rain-in-the-Face approached upon them. Custer ordered the men to saddle up and began pursuit of the band alongside LT Calhoun and his aide, LT William W. Cooke. The Indians retreated into a wooded area, where a hidden force of 100–300 rode out to counterattack. Custer and his men retreated, covered by C Company (led by CPT Thomas Custer, George's younger brother), and dismounted his troops, forming a semicircular perimeter along a former channel of the Yellowstone in a wooded area. The bank of the dry channel served as a natural parapet. The Indian forces laid siege to the cavalry troops, but with little effect. About an hour into the battle, a force of nearly 50 warriors attempted to flank the cavalry's perimeter by traveling down along the river. They were hidden by the high bank, however a scout accompanying them was spotted and drew fire. The group, thinking they had been discovered, retreated.
The flanking tactic having failed, the Indians set fire to the grass hoping to use the smoke as a screen to approach the cavalry perimeter. However, 7th Cavalry Troopers likewise used the smoke as a screen to move closer to the Indian forces and the tactic did not favor either side. The siege continued for about three hours in reported heat. The 7th Cavalry's senior veterinary surgeon, Dr. John Horsinger, was riding approximately 2–3 miles from the battle with Suttler Augustus Baliran, and believed the sporadic shooting in the distance to be Custer's men hunting game. When warned by an Arikara scout, he ignored him. Meanwhile, PVTs Brown and Ball of CPT Yates' Troop were napping by the river. Ball saw Dr. Horsinger and rode to join him, however, Chief Rain in the Face and five warriors ambushed the men and killed all three. PVT Brown, unnoticed by the Indians, galloped toward friendly positions yelling "All down there are killed!" The remaining 7th Cavalry elements, under 2LT Charles Braden, charged the Indian positions. Simultaneously, Custer ordered his men to break out of the woods and charge, effectively scattering the Indians and forcing them to withdraw.
A few days later, on the morning of 11 August 1873, the 7th Cavalry was encamped along the north side of the Yellowstone River near present-day Custer, Montana. In the early morning hours the Battle of Pease Bottom began when warriors from the village of Sitting Bull started firing at Custer's camp from across the river. By dawn skirmishing had broken out in several locations. After shooting at least 3 warriors across the river, Private John Tuttle of Company E, 7th Cavalry was killed in the morning fighting, warriors then crossed the Yellowstone River above and below the camp of the 7th Cavalry and attacked Custer's troops. The 7th Cavalry successfully defended their rear, front and center from this attack, then counter-attacked with a charge, breaking the warrior positions and driving the warriors eight or more miles from the battlefield. At about the same time, Colonel Stanley's column appeared in the distance several miles away and hurried to support the engagement. During the battle Second Lieutenant Charles Braden of the 7th Cavalry was critically wounded, along with three other Privates of the same regiment. Braden's thigh was shattered by an Indian bullet and he remained on permanent sick leave until his retirement from the Army in 1878. He would posthumously be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1925 for his actions during the battle. At least one army horse was wounded during the engagement. Indian losses were unknown, however, estimates from Custer's post-battle report claim "their losses in killed and wounded were beyond all proportion to that which they were enabled to inflict on us, our losses being one officer badly wounded, four men killed, and three wounded. Careful investigation justifies the statement that including both day's battles, the Indian losses will number forty warriors, while their wounded on the opposite bank of the river may increase this number."
The Black Hills and Yellowstone
Over the next several years, the 7th Cavalry Regiment was involved in several important missions in the American West; one of which was the Black Hills Expedition in 1874. The Troopers escorted prospectors into the Black Hills of South Dakota (considered sacred by many Indians, including the Sioux) to protect them as they searched for gold. In 1875, several 7th Cavalry Troops escorted a railroad survey team into the Yellowstone River Valley. This expedition brought them into constant contact with Native raiding parties. Custer repeatedly requested to share surplus food and grain with the Indians in order to prevent conflict, but was denied by the Standing Rock Indian Agency under the Department of the Interior. Corrupt Indian agents in the area sold food, supplies, and weapons promised to the Natives to white settlers, and what they did sell to the Indians was at unreasonable prices. Given their treatment at the hand of the Indian Agency, the Indians were forced to migrate. Custer found President Ulysses S. Grant's brother Orvil Grant to be the worst culprit of all. He was corrupt, paid and took bribes, and was accused of cheating, abuse, and dishonesty. President Grant promptly relieved COL Custer of his position when the latter spoke the truth about Orvil and other agents.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn
General Philip H. Sheridan intervened, however, and had Custer returned to his command in early 1876 in order to join the upcoming campaign against the Dakota Sioux. Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment would be under the command of General Alfred H. Terry, and departed Fort Abraham Lincoln on 17 May 1876. The plan for the 1876 Sioux Expedition involved three marching columns under the commands of Major General George Crook, Colonel Custer, and Major General John Gibbon. Crook's column was stopped by the Indians at the Battle of the Rosebud, leaving two columns remaining. The 7th marched on 22 June with 700 troopers and Native Scouts, and made contact with the Indians the next day, causing him to turn west towards the Little Bighorn River. On 24 June, Custer's Arikara and Osage scouts identified a party of Sioux shadowing their movements, but they fled when approached. That night, Custer gave his attack plans for 25 June 1876, precipitating the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Reno's attack
The first group to attack was Major Marcus Reno's second detachment (Companies A, G and M) after receiving orders from Custer written out by Lt. William W. Cooke, as Custer's Crow scouts reported Sioux tribe members were alerting the village. Ordered to charge, Reno began that phase of the battle. The orders, made without accurate knowledge of the village's size, location, or the warriors' propensity to stand and fight, had been to pursue the Native Americans and "bring them to battle." Reno's force crossed the Little Bighorn at the mouth of what is today Reno Creek around 3:00 pm on 25 June. They immediately realized that the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne were present "in force and not running away."
Reno advanced rapidly across the open field towards the northwest, his movements masked by the thick bramble of trees that ran along the southern banks of the Little Bighorn River. The same trees on his front right shielded his movements across the wide field over which his men rapidly rode, first with two approximately forty-man companies abreast and eventually with all three charging abreast. The trees also obscured Reno's view of the Native American village until his force had passed that bend on his right front and was suddenly within arrow-shot of the village. The tepees in that area were occupied by the Hunkpapa Sioux. When Reno came into the open in front of the south end of the village, he sent his Arikara and Crow Indian scouts forward on his exposed left flank. Realizing the full extent of the village's width, Reno quickly suspected what he would later call "a trap" and stopped a few hundred yards short of the encampment.
He ordered his troopers to dismount and deploy in a skirmish line, according to standard Army doctrine. In this formation, every fourth trooper held the horses for the troopers in firing position, with five to ten yards separating each trooper, officers to their rear and troopers with horses behind the officers. This formation reduced Reno's firepower by 25 percent. As Reno's men fired into the village and killed, by some accounts, several wives and children of the Sioux leader, Chief Gall (in Lakota, Phizí), the mounted warriors began streaming out to meet the attack. With Reno's men anchored on their right by the impassable tree line and bend in the river, the Indians rode hard against the exposed left end of Reno's line. After about 20 minutes of long-distance firing, Reno had taken only one casualty, but the odds against him had risen (Reno estimated five to one), and Custer had not reinforced him. Trooper Billy Jackson reported that by then, the Indians had begun massing in the open area shielded by a small hill to the left of Reno's line and to the right of the Indian village. From this position the Indians mounted an attack of more than 500 warriors against the left and rear of Reno's line, turning Reno's exposed left flank. They forced a hasty withdrawal into the timber along the bend in the river. Here the Indians pinned Reno and his men down and set fire to the brush to try to drive the soldiers out of their position.
After giving orders to mount, dismount and mount again, Reno told his men, "All those who wish to make their escape follow me," and led a disorderly rout across the river toward the bluffs on the other side. The retreat was immediately disrupted by Cheyenne attacks at close quarters. Later, Reno reported that three officers and 29 troopers had been killed during the retreat and subsequent fording of the river. Another officer and 13–18 men were missing. Most of these missing men were left behind in the timber, although many eventually rejoined the detachment. Reno's hasty retreat may have been precipitated by the death of Reno's Arikara scout Bloody Knife, who had been shot in the head as he sat on his horse next to Reno, his blood and brains splattering the side of Reno's face.
Reno and Benteen on Reno Hill
Atop the bluffs, known today as Reno Hill, Reno's depleted and shaken troops were joined by Captain Frederick Benteen's column (Companies D, H and K), arriving from the south. This force had been returning from a lateral scouting mission when it had been summoned by Custer's messenger, Italian bugler John Martin (Giovanni Martini) with the handwritten message "Benteen. Come on, Big Village, Be quick, Bring packs. P.S. Bring Packs.". Benteen's coincidental arrival on the bluffs was just in time to save Reno's men from possible annihilation. Their detachments were soon reinforced by CPT Thomas Mower McDougall's Company B and the pack train. The 14 officers and 340 troopers on the bluffs organized an all-around defense and dug rifle pits using whatever implements they had among them, including knives.
Despite hearing heavy gunfire from the north, including distinct volleys at 4:20 pm, Benteen concentrated on reinforcing Reno's badly wounded and hard-pressed detachment rather than continuing on toward Custer's position. Around 5:00 pm, Capt. Thomas Weir and Company D moved out to make contact with Custer. They advanced a mile, to what is today Weir Ridge or Weir Point, and could see in the distance native warriors on horseback shooting at objects on the ground. By this time, roughly 5:25 pm, Custer's battle may have concluded. The conventional historical understanding is that what Weir witnessed was most likely warriors killing the wounded soldiers and shooting at dead bodies on the "Last Stand Hill" at the northern end of the Custer battlefield. Some contemporary historians have suggested that what Weir witnessed was a fight on what is now called Calhoun Hill, some minutes earlier. The destruction of CPT Myles Keogh's battalion may have begun with the collapse of L, I and C Company (half of it) following the combined assaults led by Crazy Horse, White Bull, Hump, Chief Gall and others. Other native accounts contradict this understanding, however, and the time element remains a subject of debate. The other entrenched companies eventually followed Weir by assigned battalions, first Benteen, then Reno, and finally the pack train. Growing attacks around Weir Ridge by natives coming from the concluded Custer engagement forced all seven companies to return to the bluff before the pack train, with the ammunition, had moved even a quarter-mile. The companies remained pinned down on the bluff for another day, but the natives were unable to breach the tightly held position.
Benteen was hit in the heel of his boot by an Indian bullet. At one point, he personally led a counterattack to push back Indians who had continued to crawl through the grass closer to the soldier's positions.
Custer's fight
The precise details of Custer's fight are largely conjectural since none of the men who went forward with Custer's battalion (the five companies under his immediate command) survived the battle. Later accounts from surviving Indians are useful, but sometimes conflicting and unclear.
While the gunfire heard on the bluffs by Reno and Benteen's men was probably from Custer's fight, the soldiers on Reno Hill were unaware of what had happened to Custer until General Terry's arrival on 27 June. They were reportedly stunned by the news. When the army examined the Custer battle site, soldiers could not determine fully what had transpired. Custer's force of roughly 210 men had been engaged by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne about to the north of Reno and Benteen's defensive position. Evidence of organized resistance included an apparent skirmish line on Calhoun Hill and apparent breastworks made of dead horses on Custer Hill. By the time troops came to recover the bodies, the Lakota and Cheyenne had already removed most of their dead from the field. The troops found most of Custer's dead stripped of their clothing, ritually mutilated, and in a state of decomposition, making identification of many impossible. The soldiers identified the 7th Cavalry's dead as best as possible and hastily buried them where they fell.
Custer was found with shots to the left chest and left temple. Either wound would have been fatal, though he appeared to have bled from only the chest wound, meaning his head wound may have been delivered postmortem. Some Lakota oral histories assert that Custer committed suicide to avoid capture and subsequent torture, though this is usually discounted since the wounds were inconsistent with his known right-handedness. (Other native accounts note several soldiers committing suicide near the end of the battle.) Custer's body was found near the top of Custer Hill, which also came to be known as "Last Stand Hill". There the United States erected a tall memorial obelisk inscribed with the names of the 7th Cavalry's casualties.
Several days after the battle, Curley, Custer's Crow scout who had left Custer near Medicine Tail Coulee (a drainage which led to the river), recounted the battle, reporting that Custer had attacked the village after attempting to cross the river. He was driven back, retreating toward the hill where his body was found. As the scenario seemed compatible with Custer's aggressive style of warfare and with evidence found on the ground, it became the basis of many popular accounts of the battle.
According to Pretty Shield, the wife of Goes-Ahead (another Crow scout for the 7th Cavalry), Custer was killed while crossing the river: "...and he died there, died in the water of the Little Bighorn, with Two-bodies, and the blue soldier carrying his flag". In this account, Custer was allegedly killed by a Lakota called Big-nose. However, in Chief Gall's version of events, as recounted to Lt. Edward Settle Godfrey, Custer did not attempt to ford the river and the nearest that he came to the river or village was his final position on the ridge. Chief Gall's statements were corroborated by other Indians, notably the wife of Spotted Horn Bull. Given that no bodies of men or horses were found anywhere near the ford, Godfrey himself concluded "that Custer did not go to the ford with any body of men".
Cheyenne oral tradition credits Buffalo Calf Road Woman with striking the blow that knocked Custer off his horse before he died.
By the end of the day on 26 June 1876, the 7th Cavalry Regiment has been effectively destroyed as a fighting unit. Although MAJ Reno's and CPT Benteen's commands managed to make good their escape, 268 Cavalrymen and Indian scouts lay dead. Among the fallen was Custer's younger brother, Thomas Custer, in command of C Company. Other 7th Cavalry officers who were killed or wounded in action include;
Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, Regimental Commander
1st Lt. William W. Cooke, Adjutant
Assistant Surgeon George Edwin Lord
Acting Assistant Surgeon James Madison DeWolf
2nd Lt. Charles Varnum, Chief of Scouts (detached from A Company, wounded)
2nd Lt. Benjamin Hodgson, Adjutant to Major Reno
Capt. Thomas Custer, C Company Commander
2nd Lt. Henry Moore Harrington, C Company
1st Lt. Algernon Smith, E Company Commander
2nd Lt. James G. Sturgis, E Company
Capt. George Yates, F Company Commander
2nd Lt. William Reily, F Company
1st Lt. Donald McIntosh, G Company Commander
Capt. Myles Keogh I Company Commander
1st Lt. James Porter, I Company
1st Lt. James Calhoun, L Company Commander
2nd Lt. John J. Crittenden, L Company
Nez Perce War
In 1877, one year after the 7th Cavalry's defeat at the Little Bighorn, the Nez Perce War began. The Nez Perce were a coalition of tribal bands led by several chiefs; Chief Joseph and Ollokot of the Wallowa band, White Bird of the Lamátta band, Toohoolhoolzote of the Pikunin band, and Looking Glass of the Alpowai band. Together, these bands refused to be relocated from their tribal lands to a reservation in Idaho, a violation of the 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla. When a US Army expedition loomed, the Nez Perce attempted to break out and flee to Canada to seek the aid of Sitting Bull, who had fled there after the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Battle of Canyon Creek
As the Army pursued the Indians through Idaho into Montana, elements of the 7th Cavalry joined the chase. Major Lewis Merrill and Captain Frederick Benteen, a veteran of the Little Bighorn, each led a battalion of the 7th. Merrill's Battalion consisted of Company F (CPT James M. Bell), Company I (CPT Henry J. Nowlan), and Company L (1LT John W. Wilkinson). Benteen's Battalion consisted of Company G (1LT George O. Wallace), Company H (2LT Ezra B. Fuller), and Company M (CPT Thomas H. French). In September 1877, these battalions were with COL Samuel D. Sturgis's column when they caught up to the Nez Perce raiding ranches up and down the Yellowstone River. The 7th Cavalry troopers were exhausted from their forced march and anticipated a rest after they crossed the Yellowstone River on the morning of 13 September, but Crow scouts reported the Nez Perce were moving up Canyon Creek six miles away.
Seeing an opportunity, Sturgis sent Major Merrill and his battalion ahead atop a long ridge to head off the Nez Perce traversing the shallow canyon below. Benteen's battalion followed, while Sturgis stationed himself with the rear guard. Merrill was halted on the ridge by a scattering of rifle shots from Nez Perce warriors. In the words of his civilian scout, Stanton G. Fisher, Merrill's battalion dismounted and deployed "instead of charging which they should have done." According to Yellow Wolf, a single Nez Perce, Teeto Hoonod, held up the advance for a crucial ten minutes, firing 40 well-aimed shots at the cavalry from behind a rock. The caution of the soldiers was perhaps due to the formidable reputation of the Nez Perce for military prowess and marksmanship. Gale-force winds impacted marksmanship, a factor explaining low casualties on both sides.
When Sturgis arrived at the battleground, he perceived that his troops still had the possibility of capturing the Nez Perce horse herd. He sent Captain Benteen and his men on a swing to the left to plug the exits from the canyon and trap the women, children, and horses. Merrill was told to advance into the canyon to threaten the rear of the Nez Perce column, but he was held up by an increasing number of Nez Perce warriors firing at long distance at his soldiers. He succeeded only in capturing a few horses. Benteen also ran into opposition and was unable to head off the horse herd, the Nez Perce occupying high ground and firing at the soldiers. A rearguard of the Nez Perce held off the soldiers until nightfall. Most of their horse herd and their women and children reached the plains and continued north. Three Troopers were killed and eleven wounded (one mortally) when the shooting stopped. Martha Jane Cannary, better known as "Calamity Jane," accompanied the wounded by boat down the Yellowstone River as a nurse. According to Yellow Wolf, three Nez Perce were killed and three wounded.
Despite pursuing the band for two days (traveling 37 miles the first day alone), the weary 7th was unable to catch up to their quarry. They awaited reinforcements and supplies on the Musselshell River for two days and continued on once they arrived.
Battle of Bear Paw
In late September, the US Army expedition finally caught up with Chief Joseph's band of Nez Perce. Under General Oliver Otis Howard and Colonel Nelson A. Miles the expedition consisted of a Battalion of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a Battalion of the 5th Infantry Regiment, Cheyenne and Lakota scouts (many of which had fought against Custer at the Little Bighorn a year earlier), and a Battalion of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. The 7th Cavalry element was commanded by Captain Owen Hale and consisted of Company A (CPT Myles Moylan), Company D (CPT Edward Settle Godfrey), and Company K (under CPT Owen Hale himself). Captains Moylan and Godfrey were both survivors of the Battle of Little Bighorn, as were many of their men, making them a battle-hardened outfit.
On 30 September 1877, the Battle of Bear Paw began. Miles' Indian scouts located the Nez Perce camp and the Cavalry were hastily deployed. At 9:15 AM, while still about six miles from the camp, the cavalry started at a trot, organized as follows: the 30 Cheyenne and Lakota scouts led the way, followed by 160 Troopers of the 2nd Cavalry. The 2nd Cavalry was ordered to charge into the Nez Perce camp. 110 Troopers of the 7th Cavalry followed the 2nd as support on the charge into the camp. 145 Soldiers of the 5th Infantry, mounted on horses, followed as a reserve with a Hotchkiss gun and the pack train. Miles rode with the 7th Cavalry.
The Nez Perce camp was alerted by sentries to the US charge and quickly began to prepare. Women and children rushed north towards Canada, some Nez Perce began gathering the horse herd, some began packing up the camp, and the warriors prepared to fight. Rather than rushing the camp directly, the Cheyenne scouts veered off to the Nez Perce horse herd for plunder, and the 2nd Cavalry followed them. However, the 7th under CPT Hale followed the plan and charged into the enemy camp. As they approached, a group of Nez Perce rose up from a coulee and opened fire, killing and wounding several soldiers, forcing them to fall back. Miles ordered two of the three companies in the 7th Cavalry to dismount and quickly brought up the mounted infantry, the 5th, to join them in the firing line. Hale's Company K meanwhile had become separated from the main force and was also taking casualties. By 3:00 PM, Miles had his entire force organized and on the battlefield and he occupied the higher ground. The Nez Perce were surrounded and had lost all their horses. Miles ordered a charge on the Nez Perce positions with the 7th Cavalry and one company of the infantry, but it was beaten back with heavy casualties.
At nightfall on 30 September, Miles' casualties amounted to 18 dead and 48 wounded, including two wounded Indian scouts. The 7th Cavalry took the heaviest losses. Its 110 men suffered 16 dead and 29 wounded, two of them mortally. The Nez Perce had 22 men killed, including three leaders: Joseph's brother Ollokot, Toohoolhoolzote, and Poker Joe – the last killed by a Nez Perce sharpshooter who mistook him for a Cheyenne. Several Nez Perce women and children had also been killed. Miles later said of the battle that "the fight was the most fierce of any Indian engagement I have ever been in....The whole Nez Perce movement is unequalled in the history of Indian warfare."
The end of the pitched battle marked the beginning of a long siege while negotiations commenced. As the year 1877 began falling to winter, the cold siege ended when Chief Joseph surrendered, famously saying
Crow War
In 1887, the state of Montana was host to a minor war between the Crow and the Blackfoot Indians where both tribes raided each other's reservations in order to steal horses. In late spring, a Blackfoot war party made off with several Crow horses, prompting Crow war-leader Sword Bearer to lead a retaliatory raid against his Chief's decision. The raid stepped off in September, and the war party consisted of teenage braves eager to prove themselves in battle. During the raid, a number of Blackfoot braves were killed and the Crow recovered their horses without loss, but when they returned to the reservation, on 30 September, Sword Bearer made the mistake of showing off his victory to the Indian agent, Henry E. Williamson, who was known for being disliked by the native population. In what was called the Crow Incident, Sword Bearer and his men circled around Williamson's home and fired into the air and at the ground near Williamson's feet, prompting him to wire the Army at Fort Custer for help. When the Army force arrived, their cannon failed to fire, allowing Sword Bearer and his men to flee into the Big Horn Mountains.
An expedition under Brigadier General Thomas H. Ruger and Colonel Nathan Dudley was sent to occupy the reservation to hamper Sword Bearer's recruitment. The force included five troops of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, one Company from the 3rd Infantry Regiment, and A Company from the 7th Cavalry Regiment under the command of Captain Myles Moylan, a veteran of the Battle of Little Bighorn and a recipient of the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Bear Paw. Heading into the mountains on 4 November 1887, the expedition caught up with the Crow band camped on the Little Bighorn River, some three miles from the site of Custer's Last Stand (some of Sword Bearer's followers were veterans of the battle). Company A, 7th Cavalry was posted on the right flank of the US line at the time of the battle. Sword Bearer charged with 150 mounted warriors but was repulsed and forced to retreat to a series of rifle pits dug into a wooded area near the river.
The American cavalry then counterattacked. In the words of Private Morris; "The cavalry charged and took a volley from the Indian camp. At 200 yards we leaped from our horses and flattened out behind clumps of sagebrush. We traded shots for a while, until two Hotchkiss field guns on the hill began dumping two-inch into the Indian camp. That broke them." During the fighting, Sword Bearer attempted to encourage his men by riding out in front of the soldiers but he was struck by rifle fire and fell to the ground wounded. Eventually some of the Crow began to surrender but Sword Bearer and the others remained in the mountains, only to surrender later on to the Crow police. It was during the march out of the Big Horn that one of the policemen shot Sword Bearer in the head, killing him instantly and ending the war. One soldier was killed and two others were wounded during what is now called the Battle of Crow Agency. Seven Crow warriors were killed and nine were wounded. An additional nine men were also taken prisoner and all of those who had not taken part in the battle were taken to Fort Snelling, Minnesota. The expedition returned to Fort Custer on 13 November.
Ghost Dance War
In 1890, a great phenomena spread among the Indian tribes of the Great Plains. It was called the Ghost Dance, and it promised its believers that the white man would be thrown from the American continent, and the bison herds would be returned to their former range and size. White settlers near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation were alarmed by the number of Ghost Dance performers, which included the famous Lakota Chief Sitting Bull. James McLaughlin, the Standing Rock Indian Agent, requested military aid to stop what he saw as the beginnings to a dangerous uprising. Military leaders wanted to use Buffalo Bill Cody, a friend of Sitting Bull's, as an intermediary to avoid violence, but were overruled by McLaughlin who sent in the Indian agency police to arrest Sitting Bull.
On 15 December 1890, forty Indian Police arrived at Sitting Bull's house to arrest him. When he refused, the police moved in, prompting Catch-the-Bear, a Lakota, to fire his rifle, hitting LT Bullhead. LT Bullhead responded by shooting Sitting Bull in the chest, and Policeman Red Tomahawk subsequently shot the Chief in the head, killing him. Fearing reprisals for the incident, 200 of Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa fled to join Chief Spotted Elk at the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Spotted Elk, in turn, fled to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to join Chief Red Cloud.
A detachment of the 7th Cavalry Regiment under Major Samuel Whitside was sent to maintain order, and on 28 December they met with Red Cloud's band southwest of Porcupine Butte as they moved to Pine Ridge. John Shangreau, a scout and interpreter who was half Sioux, advised the troopers not to disarm the Indians immediately, as it would lead to violence. The troopers escorted the Native Americans about five miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek where they told them to make camp. Later that evening, Colonel James W. Forsyth and the rest of the 7th Cavalry arrived, bringing the number of troopers at Wounded Knee to 500.
Wounded Knee
At daybreak on 29 December 1890, Forsyth ordered the surrender of weapons and the immediate removal of the Lakota from the "zone of military operations" to awaiting trains. A search of the camp confiscated 38 rifles, and more rifles were taken as the soldiers searched the Indians. None of the old men were found to be armed. A medicine man named Yellow Bird allegedly harangued the young men who were becoming agitated by the search, and the tension spread to the soldiers. Yellow Bird began to perform the Ghost Dance, telling the Lakota that their "ghost shirts" were bulletproof. As tensions mounted, Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle; he spoke no English and was deaf, and had not understood the order. Another Indian said: "Black Coyote is deaf," and when the soldier persisted, he said, "Stop. He cannot hear your orders." At that moment, two soldiers seized Black Coyote from behind, and (allegedly) in the struggle, his rifle discharged. At the same moment, Yellow Bird threw some dust into the air, and approximately five young Lakota men with concealed weapons threw aside their blankets and fired their rifles at Troop K of the 7th. After this initial exchange, the firing became indiscriminate.
At first all firing was at close range; half the Indian men were killed or wounded before they had a chance to get off any shots. Some of the Indians grabbed rifles from the piles of confiscated weapons and opened fire on the soldiers. With no cover, and with many of the Indians unarmed, this lasted a few minutes at most. While the Indian warriors and soldiers were shooting at close range, other soldiers (from Battery E, 1st Artillery) used the Hotchkiss guns against the tipi camp full of women and children. It is believed that many of the soldiers were victims of friendly fire from their own Hotchkiss guns. The Indian women and children fled the camp, seeking shelter in a nearby ravine from the crossfire. The officers had lost all control of their men. Some of the soldiers fanned out and finished off the wounded. Others leaped onto their horses and pursued the Natives (men, women, and children), in some cases for miles across the prairies. In less than an hour, at least 150 Lakota had been killed and 50 wounded. Historian Dee Brown, in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, mentions an estimate of 300 of the original 350 having been killed or wounded and that the soldiers loaded 51 survivors (4 men and 47 women and children) onto wagons and took them to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Army casualties numbered 25 dead and 39 wounded.
Drexel Mission Fight
On 30 December 1890, the day after Wounded Knee, COL Forsyth and 8 Troops of the 7th Cavalry and one platoon of Artillery (the same units that had been engaged at Wounded Knee), conducted a reconnaissance to see if the nearby Catholic Mission had been torched by the Indians. In what became known as the Drexel Mission Fight, the 7th Cavalry was ambushed in a valley by Brulé Lakota under Chief Two Strike from the Rosebud Indian Reservation. After exchanging fire with the Indians, the shots were heard by the nearby 9th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) under Major Guy Vernor Henry who rode to the rescue. The Indians were driven off. The 7th Cavalry suffered 2 killed and 7 wounded;
1LT James D. Mann – Troop K, DOW
PVT Dominick Franceshetti – Troop G, KIA
PVT Marrion C. Hillock – Troop B, WIA
PVT William S. Kirkpatrick – Troop B, WIA
PVT Peter Claussen – Troop C, WIA
PVT William Kern – Troop D, WIA
Farrier Richard J. Nolan – Troop I, WIA
1SG Theodore Ragnor – Troop K, WIA
Medal of Honor recipients
A total of 45 men earned the Medal of Honor while serving with the 7th Cavalry during the American Indian Wars: 24 for actions during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, two during the Battle of Bear Paw, 17 for being involved in the Wounded Knee Massacre or an engagement at White Clay Creek the next day, and two during other actions against the Sioux in December 1890.
Little Bighorn, 25–26 June 1876
Private Neil Bancroft, Troop A
Private Abram B. Brant, Troop D
Private Thomas J. Callan, Troop B
Sergeant Banjamin C. Criswell, Troop B
Corporal Charles Cunningham, Troop B
Private Frederick Deetline, Troop D
Sergeant George Geiger, Troop H
Private Theodore W. Goldin, Troop G
Sergeant Richard P. Hanley, Troop C
Private David W. Harris, Troop A
Private William M. Harris, Troop D
Private Henry Holden, Troop D
Sergeant Rufus D. Hutchinson, Troop B
Blacksmith Henry W. B. Mechlin, Troop H
Sergeant Thomas Murray, Troop B
Private James Pym, Troop B
Sergeant Stanislaus Roy, Troop A
Private George D. Scott, Troop D
Private Thomas W. Stivers, Troop D
Private Peter Thompson, Troop C
Private Frank Tolan, Troop D
Saddler Otto Voit, Troop H
Sergeant Charles H. Welch, Troop D
Private Charles Windolph, Troop H
Bear Paw, 30 September 1877
Captain Edward Settle Godfrey
Captain Myles Moylan
Sioux campaign, December 1890
Sergeant Bernhard Jetter, Troop K
Private Adam Neder, Troop A
Wounded Knee and White Clay Creek, 29–30 December 1890
Sergeant William G. Austin, Troop E
Private Mosheim Feaster, Troop E
First Lieutenant Ernest Albert Garlington
First Lieutenant John Chowning Gresham
Private Mathew H. Hamilton, Troop G
Private Marvin C. Hillock, Troop B
Private George Hobday, Troop A
Sergeant George Loyd, Troop I
Sergeant Albert W. McMillan, Troop E
Farrier Richard J. Nolan, Troop I
First Sergeant Theodore Ragnar, Troop K
Private Thomas Sullivan, Troop E
First Sergeant Frederick E. Toy, Troop C
First Sergeant Jacob Trautman, Troop I
Captain Charles Varnum, Troop B
Sergeant James Ward, Troop B
Private Hermann Ziegner, Troop E
Overseas and the Mexican border
From 1895 until 1899, the regiment served in New Mexico (Fort Bayard) and Oklahoma (Ft. Sill), then overseas in Cuba (Camp Columbia) from 1899 to 1902. An enlisted trooper with the Seventh Cavalry, "B" Company, from May 1896 until March 1897 at Fort Grant Arizona Territory was author Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The regiment served in the Philippines during the Philippine–American War from 1904 through 1907, with a second tour from 1911 through 1915. Here they conducted counter-insurgency operations against Filipino guerrillas in the jungles and rural areas of the islands.
Border war
Back in the United States, the regiment was again stationed in the southwest, in Arizona (Camp Harvey J. Jones), where it patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border and later was part of the Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1916 to 1917. During this expedition, the 7th Cavalry executed what is regarded as America's "last true Cavalry charge" at the Battle of Guerrero. Colonel George A. Dodd, commanding a force of 370 from the 7th Cavalry, led his Troopers into the Mexican State of Chihuahua in pursuit of Pancho Villa. After riding 400 miles in 14 days, Dodd's exhausted Troopers finally caught up with Villa's force in the town of Guerrero on 29 March 1916.
The 7th Cavalry was low on rations, and had to fight a battle against a well defended town. According to varying sources, there were between 200 and 500 Villistas at Guerrero, spread out across the town, and for the first couple of hours after the 7th Cavalry's arrival, Dodd had his men attempt to ascertain the number of enemy forces. It was not until 8:00 am that the order to attack was given. Dodd divided his command into three contingents with instructions to charge and surround the town in order to cut off the Villistas's avenue of escape. When the Americans charged, fighting erupted at three points. After the charge the Americans dismounted to fight the Mexicans on foot. Guerrero was flanked by mountains on two sides which made it difficult to surround the town and the Villistas used them for cover. There were also not enough cavalrymen to cover all of the escape routes so the majority of the Mexicans got away, including Pancho Villa. Part of the Villista army mounted up and retreated east through a valley. They were pursued by some of the American cavalrymen in a ten-mile running engagement. Another force of Mexicans calmly rode out of Guerrero, pretending to be Carrancistas by displaying a Mexican national flag, this group went unmolested by the 7th Cavalry. Villa lost his friend, General Elicio Hernandez, and fifty-five others killed in the battle and another thirty-five wounded. The Americans suffered only five wounded during a five-hour battle. Colonel Dodd and his men also captured thirty-six horses and mules, two machine guns, many small arms and some war supplies. Several condemned Carrancista prisoners were liberated.
Initially the Battle of Guerrero was thought to be a great opening success in the campaign but it later proved to be a disappointment as it would be the closest they came to capturing Villa in battle. However, the battle was considered the "most successful single engagement of Pershing's Punitive Expedition." After the retreat the Villista army dispersed and for the next three months they no longer posed a significant threat to the United States military. Villa himself hid out in the hills while his knee healed. One day, not long after the battle, Villa was camped at the end of a valley and watched a troop of Pershing's cavalrymen ride by. Villa heard them singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," this would be the last time Americans got so close to the rebel. News of the victory was widely circulated in the United States, prompting the Senate's approval of Colonel Dodd's promotion to brigadier general.
In December 1917, eight months after the American entry into World War I, the 7th Cavalry was assigned to the 15th Cavalry Division, an on-paper organization designed for service in France during World War I that was never more than a simple headquarters. This was because no significant role emerged for mounted troops on the Western Front during the 19 months between the entry of the United States into the war and the Armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918. The 7th Cavalry was released from this assignment in May 1918.
On 15 June 1919, Pancho Villa fought his last battle with the Americans. At the Battle of Ciudad Juárez, Villista and Carrancista forces engaged in combat in Ciudad Juárez just south of El Paso, Texas across the Rio Grande. The 7th Cavalry was temporarily at Fort Bliss and responded to the battle when Villista snipers killed and wounded US Soldiers of the 82nd Field Artillery Regiment. The 12th Infantry Regiment, the 82nd Field Artillery, the 5th Cavalry Regiment, and the 7th Cavalry Regiment quickly crossed the Santa Fe Bridge into Mexico to deal with the threat. Advancing towards the enemy, the 7th Cavalry covered the main body's flank, and then, under the protection of artillery fire, charged the Villistas and routed them.
Interwar period
On 13 September 1921, 7th Cavalry Regiment was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, which assignment was maintained until 1957. The division and its 2nd Cavalry Brigade was garrisoned at Fort Bliss, Texas, while the 1st Cavalry Brigade was garrisoned at Douglas, Arizona. Additional garrison points were used as well.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment continued to train as horse cavalry right up to the American entry into World War II, including participation in several training maneuvers at the Louisiana Maneuver Area on 26 April – 28 May 1940; 12–22 August 1940; and 8 August – 4 October 1941.
World War II
On 7 December 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked the US fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, thrusting the United States into World War II, which had already been raging since 1939. The Troopers of the 1st Cavalry Division readied their horses, their equipment, and themselves for the coming war, and were finally alerted for deployment in 1943. Despite being a mounted Cavalry unit since 1866, the 7th Cavalry left its mounts behind in Texas as they left for war; the age of the horse-cavalry was over. The newly dismounted 7th Cavalry Regiment was sent to fight in the Pacific Theater of Operations and the last units left Fort Bliss for Camp Stoneman, CA in June 1943. On 3 July, the 7th Cavalry boarded the SS Monterey and the SS George Washington bound for Australia. The regiment arrived on 26 July, and was posted to Camp Strathpine, Queensland where they underwent six months of intensive jungle warfare training, and conducted amphibious assault training at nearby Moreton Bay.
Admiralty Islands campaign
In January 1944, the 7th Cavalry sailed for Oro Bay on the island of New Guinea. Despite the ongoing New Guinea Campaign, the 7th Cavalry was held in reserve and was organized into "Task Force Brewer" for another mission. On 27 February, TF Brewer embarked from Cape Sudest under the command of Brigadier General William C. Chase. Their objective was the remote Los Negros Island in the Admiralty Islands which had an important airfield occupied by the Japanese. The 5th Cavalry Regiment landed on 29 February and began the invasion.
The morning of 4 March saw the arrival of the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, which relieved the 2nd Squadron, 5th Cavalry. The next day Major General Innis P. Swift, the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, arrived aboard Bush and assumed command. He ordered the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry to attack across the native skidway. The 2nd Squadron, 5th Cavalry therefore went back into the line to relieve them. While the relief was taking place, the Japanese launched a daylight attack. This was repulsed by the cavalrymen, with the help of artillery and mortar fire, but the American attack was delayed until late afternoon. It then ran into a Japanese minefield and by dawn the advance had only reached as far as the skidway. On the morning of 6 March, another convoy arrived at Hyane Harbour: five LSTs, each towing an LCM, with the 12th Cavalry and other units and equipment including five Landing Vehicles Tracked (LVTs) of the 592nd EBSR, three M3 light tanks of the 603rd Tank Company, and twelve 105mm howitzers of the 271st Field Artillery Battalion. The 12th Cavalry was ordered to follow the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry in its advance to the north, and to capture the Salami Plantation. The road to Salami was little more than a muddy track in which vehicles soon became bogged. The Japanese also obstructed the route with ditches, felled trees, snipers, and booby traps. Despite incessant rain and suicidal Japanese counterattacks, the 7th Cavalry captured their objectives and mop-up operations were being conducted from 10 to 11 March. Manus Island, to the west, was the next target.
The main landing was to be at Lugos Mission, but General Swift postponed the landing there and ordered the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry to capture Hauwei. The landing was covered by the destroyers Arunta, Bush, Stockton and ; a pair of rocket-firing LCVPs and the LCM (flak), which fired 168 rockets; the guns of the 61st Field Artillery Battalion on Los Negros; and six Kittyhawks of No. 76 Squadron dropped bombs. The assault was made from three cargo-carrying LVTs. To save wear and tear, they were towed across Seeadler Harbour by LCMs and cut loose for the final run in to shore. The cavalrymen found well constructed and sited bunkers with interlocking fields of fire covering all approaches, and deadly accurate snipers. The next morning an LCM brought over a medium tank, for which the Japanese had no answer, and the cavalrymen were able to overcome the defenders at a cost of eight killed and 46 wounded; 43 dead Japanese naval personnel were counted.
The 8th Cavalry Regiment began the main assault on Manus on 15 March and attacked the important Lorengau Airfield on 17 March. After initially quickly overrunning the enemy positions, the cavalry resumed its advance, and occupied a ridge overlooking the airstrip without opposition. In the meantime, the 7th Cavalry had been landed at Lugos from the LST on its second trip and took over the defense of the area, freeing the 2nd Squadron, 8th Cavalry to join the attack on Lorengau. The first attempt to capture the airstrip was checked by an enemy bunker complex. A second attempt on 17 March, reinforced by the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry and tanks, made good progress. The advance then resumed, with Lorengau itself falling on 18 March.
Although there had been plenty of fighting, the main Japanese force on Manus had not been located. Advancing inland towards Rossum, the 7th Cavalry found it on 20 March. Six days of fighting around Rossum were required before the 7th and 8th Cavalry reduced the entrenched Japanese positions there. The Japanese bunkers, actually log and earth pillboxes, proved resistant to artillery fire. These weary Troopers were relieved by the 7th Cavalry on 18 March. That day, the 7th Cavalry attacked, and drove the enemy out of Lorengau Village.
The Admiralty Islands campaign ended on 18 May 1944 with the islands and airfields secured and 3,317 Japanese dead. The 7th Cavalry Regiment suffered 43 killed in action, 17 wounded, and 7 dead from non-battle injuries. Having faced down suicidal Japanese counterattacks and a stubborn defense in the rainy jungles of the Southwest Pacific, the 7th Cavalry Troopers were now veterans.
Battle of Leyte
After a period of 5 months in rehabilitation and extensive combat training, the 7th Cavalry Regiment received instructions on 25 September 1944 to prepare for future combat operations. On 20 October, the regiment began the assault of Leyte Island.
The Battle of Leyte began when the first waves of the 7th Cavalry Regiment stormed ashore at White Beach at 1000, H-Hour, and were met with small arms and machine gun fire. 1st Squadron-7th Cavalry Regiment (1-7 Cavalry) landed on the right flank and was to attack north into the Cataisan Peninsula to capture Tacloban Aerodrome. To the left, 2-7 Cavalry was to attack inland, capture San Jose, and seize a beachhead line west of Highway 1. They were met with slight opposition, and within the first 15 minutes, 2-7 Cavalry knocked out two Japanese defensive pillboxes firing into the landing zone. After a house-to-house assault, San Jose was captured by 1230. 2-7 Cavalry's largest obstacle was the terrain. "Directly beyond the landing beaches the troops ran into a man-enveloping swamp. All along the line, men cursed as they wallowed toward their objective in mud of arm-pit depth. This unexpectedly tough obstacle however, failed to deter their dogged advance." By 1545 2-7 Cavalry had crossed Highway No 1. Meanwhile, 1-7 Cavalry, under the command of Major Leonard Smith, had secured the Cataisan Peninsula and the Tacloban Airfield with the aid of the 44th Tank Battalion. All the 7th Cavalry's A-Day objectives had been seized before nightfall.
The following day, 21 October 1944, saw 7th Cavalry begin the attack on Tacloban. At 0800, the 1st and 2nd Squadrons advanced abreast toward the city. 1-7 Cavalry entered the city and were overwhelmed by crowds of exuberant Filipinos giving them gifts of eggs and fruit. 2-7 Cavalry, meanwhile, was halted by a force of 200 Japanese entrenched in prepared fighting positions. The Regimental Weapons Troop and Anti-Tank Platoon arrived to break the stalemate but were quickly pinned down by machine gun fire from a bunker as well. PFC Kenneth W. Grove, an ammunition carrier, singlehandedly cut through the jungle, charged the bunker and killed the weapons crew, and allowed the advance to resume. By the end of 22 October the capital of Leyte and its hill defenses were securely in American hands. The 7th Cavalry was one day ahead of schedule, a fact partly explained by the unexpectedly light resistance of the Japanese and partly by the vigor of the 7th Cavalry's advance
On 23 October, the 7th was relieved by the 8th Cavalry and prepared to undertake operations to secure the San Juanico Strait across from the island of Samar. On 24 October, landed at Babatngon at 1330 and sent out patrols to secure the beachhead. The landing was unopposed, and 1-7 Cavalry made several other over-water movements to secure the area, making the most of the scant Japanese resistance. By 27 October, (minus 1st Squadron) was in reserve. 1-7 Cavalry, in Babatngon, was ordered to secure the Barugo and Carigara area. Troop C, under 1LT Tower W. Greenbowe, advanced on 28 October without incident, but received fire from Carigara. In the ensuing firefight, C Troop eliminated 75 enemies at the cost of 3 killed, 9 wounded, and 1 missing (the mutilated body of the missing man was found later) before withdrawing to Barugo, where it was joined by the rest of the Squadron on 29 October for an assault on Carigara. They attacked across the Canomontag River by using 2 native canoes, and occupied Carigara by 1200 with no resistance.
After remaining in a reserve role, 2-7 Cavalry relieved elements of the 12th Cavalry operating in the central mountain range of the island. Between 11 and 14 December, they continually assaulted a series of well-defended ridges and hills and only were able to wrest control over them by calling in over 5,000 rounds of artillery support. The 1st Cavalry Division continued to push west toward the coast through the mountainous and dense jungle interior of the island. On the morning of 23 December 1944, 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry assault units pushed across Highway 2 and set up night positions on line with the other divisional units. They pushed off for the attack the next morning meeting only scattered resistance. By 29 December, units reached the west coast, north of the village of Tibur, and drove north, capturing the town of Villaba, and killing 35 Japanese there. On 31 December, the Japanese launched four counterattacks on the 7th Cavalry, each starting with a bugle call. The first occurred at 0230 and the last one was at dawn. An estimated 500 enemy attacked the positions, but they were driven off by the stalwart defenders and by American artillery superiority. 77th Infantry Division elements began relieving the 7th Cavalry later that day. Leyte was soon declared secure, despite the large number of Japanese soldiers remaining hidden in the thick jungle of the island's interior, and elements of the 7th Cavalry were kept busy by conducting mop-up missions and patrols until their next big operation.
Battle of Luzon
For the forces of General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area the reconquest of Luzon and the Southern Philippines was the climax of the Pacific war. Viewed from the aspect of commitment of U.S. Army ground forces, the Luzon Campaign (including the seizure of Mindoro and the central Visayan Islands) was exceeded in size during World War II only by the drive across northern France. The Luzon Campaign differed from others of the Pacific war in that it alone provided opportunity for the employment of mass and maneuver on a scale even approaching that common to the European and Mediterranean theaters.
The initial Army units in the invasion had landed on 9 January and secured a beachhead, but GEN MacArthur needed more forces on the island to begin his drive to Manila. Despite not receiving adequate rest and replacements from the Battle of Leyte, the 1st Cavalry Division was sent ahead to take part in the Battle of Luzon and landed in Lingayen Gulf on 27 January 1945. The 7th Cavalry quickly moved inland toward Guimba, but as A Troop passed through Labit, they were attacked by a Japanese ambush unit. Technical Sergeant John B. Duncan, of Los Angeles, CA, was cited for his courageous and determined effort to drive the attackers back. He succeeded in doing so, but was mortally wounded. MacArthur ordered that the 1st Cavalry Division assemble three "Flying Columns" for the drive on Manila. The 7th Cavalry was tasked with providing security for them, and air cover on the left flank was provided by the Marine Aircraft Groups 24 and 32 of the 1st Marine Air Wing. As elements of the 8th Cavalry swung south, the 7th Cavalry advanced by foot and kept the Japanese occupied while their counterparts broke through. On 4 February 1945, LTC Boyd L. Branson, the Regimental operation officer from San Mateo, CA, earned the Silver Star by voluntarily leading the advance units over more than 40 miles of un-reconnoitered, enemy-held terrain. While the rest of the Division was fighting in Manila, the 7th Cavalry engaged the enemy near the Novaliches watershed east of the city to prevent their reinforcement. On 20 February, they handed over their positions to elements of the 6th Infantry Division and moved south to begin the attack on the Shimbu Line.
Attacking eastward on the 20th during the onset of the Battle of Wawa Dam, 2-7 Cavalry spearheaded deep into the Japanese line but were quickly fired upon by a heavy barrage of artillery. Drawing on their experiences from the Admiralties and Leyte for attacking entrenched enemy positions in mountainous jungle terrain, the Troopers advanced and destroyed the pillboxes and mortar positions. By 25 February, the 7th Cavalry was 2 kilometers from their objective at Antipolo. The advance continued, and on 4 March, the 7th Cavalry was hit by a strong Japanese counterattack that managed to destroy two of the American's supporting tanks before it was defeated. The battle for Antipolo was marked by bitter struggle in unforgiving terrain, and the 1st Cavalry Division was relieved by the 43rd Infantry Division on 12 March after finally capturing the ruined village. Out of the 92 Silver Stars awarded to men of the 1st Cavalry Division in their drive to Antipolo, the largest share went to men of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, with 41 being awarded. PFC Calvin T. Lewis, of Glasgow, KY, B Troop 7th Cavalry, was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for heroism in defeating an enemy bunker. After his platoon was halted by accurate machine gun fire from a concealed bunker, he volunteered to go find it. Wielding a Browning Automatic Rifle, he located the position and poured heavy and accurate fire through the bunker's opening. After pinning the enemy down, he moved up and fired into the opening from close range, but was mortally wounded in doing so. Despite his wounds he continued to engage the enemy until all were killed.
After being relieved in their sector on 20 April, the 7th Cavalry prepared for another mission; the capture of Infanta on the east coast of Luzon, which was held by 9,000 troops of the Manila Naval Defense Forces of the Japanese Imperial Navy under Capt. Takesue Furuse who were able to escape the encirclement by the 11th Airborne Division at Fort McKinley mid-February. On 6 May 1945 the 7th Cavalry began moving south into the Santa Maria Valley toward Lamon Bay along Route 455. Along the hairpin curves of the highway, they encountered tough Japanese resistance at the Kapatalin Sawmill. For several days the advance was stalled as patrols reconnoitered the position and pinpointed targets for US Army Air Corps planes. They overran the enemy by mid-afternoon of 9 May. They had killed 350 Japanese for the loss of 4 KIA and 17 WIA. They reached Lamon Bay on 13 May. Sweeping aside Japanese resistance on their march to the coast, the 7th Cavalry Troopers occasionally encountered determined defenders, and the fighting along the advance was characterized by small unit action. On 18 May, A Troop was moving to Real when the lead platoon was pinned down by enemy rifle and machine gun fire. Thinking quickly, Lieutenant Joe D. Crane of Athens, TX led his platoon in a flanking maneuver and annihilated the enemy force, saving his comrades. Near Gumian on 22 May, D Troop was attacked by a large force of 150 Japanese with machine guns, mortars, grenades, and rifles. The foliage was thick enough to conceal the enemy, allowing them to come within ten yards of the Cavalrymen's positions before being detected. LT Charles E. Paul of Camden, AR moved to an observation post in the thick of the fighting and called in close and accurate mortar fire, driving the enemy away, and earning the Silver Star for his actions. Accompanied by Philippines guerrillas, the 7th Cavalry captured Infanta on 25 May and soon after secured the surrounding rice-fields. They remained here for some time patrolling the area for Japanese holdouts. By 1 June 1945, most of southern Luzon was in American hands, but there were still determined Japanese forces in the area. On 2 June, 30 Japanese attacked F Troop's positions just before dawn broke and the Americans were forced to fight in hand-to-hand combat. SGT Jessie Riddell of Irvine, KY earned his second Silver Star in this attack when he saw one of his Troopers in a death struggle with a Japanese officer wielding a samurai sword. SGT Riddell ran to his aid, shooting 3 attackers on the way, and killed the enemy officer before he could kill the American.
Continuing their patrolling of southern Luzon, a patrol from B Troop ran into an unexpectedly heavy ambush on 19 June 1945. Despite the shock of the ambush, PVT Bernis L. Stringer of Visalia, CA, the patrol's BAR-man, ran forward, killing one Japanese and wounding another. He then reloaded in plain sight of the last enemy soldier before dispatching him too. PVT Stringer lost his life soon after in the closing days of the campaign. The Battle of Luzon was officially declared over on 30 June 1945 but scattered Japanese resistance remained. The battle was the longest the 7th Cavalry had fought in World War II, and it would be their last. After pulling out of the combat zone on 4 July, The regiment began to rest and refit as it prepared for the inevitable invasion of the main Japanese islands. On 20 July, the 7th Cavalry again reorganized—this time entirely under Infantry Tables of Organization & Equipment, but still designated as a Cavalry Regiment, in order to bring it up to the full strength of a 1945 Army infantry regiment. Thankfully for the men of the 7th Cavalry, the invasion was terminated after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced the Japanese to surrender. 7th Cavalry Regiment was at Lucena, Tayabas (now. Quezon) in the Philippines until 2 September 1945, when it was moved to Japan to start occupation duty.
Occupation of Japan
On 13 August 1945, the 7th Cavalry was alerted that it would accompany General Douglas MacArthur to Tokyo and would be part of the Eighth Army's occupation force. On 2 September, the 7th Cavalry landed in Yokohama and began setting up a base of operation. On 8 September, the 1st Cavalry Division sent a convoy under Major General William C. Chase from Hara-Machida to Tokyo to occupy the city. This convoy was made up of one combat veteran from every Troop in the division, and it marched through Hachiōji, Fuchū, and Chōfu before reaching Tokyo; this convoy of the 1st Cavalry Division, with many veterans of the 7th Cavalry Regiment in the ranks, became the first Allied unit to enter the city. The 7th Cavalry set its headquarters at the Japanese Imperial Merchant Marine Academy and were assigned to guard the US embassy and GEN MacArthur's residence. For five years they remained in Tokyo. On 25 March 1949, the 7th Cavalry was reorganized under a new table of organization, and its Troops were renamed Companies as in a standard infantry division.
Korean War
When World War II ended, the communist Soviet Union and the countries of the Soviet bloc and the United States and its allies became locked in an ideological Cold War. They vied for power across the world using proxy states, but this tension boiled over in the Korean Peninsula. On 25 June 1950, the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the democratic Republic of Korea. Their military overwhelmed that of their southern neighbors and North Korean tanks were in Seoul within two days. The United States decided to intervene in favor of South Korea and quickly sent in troops with the promise that more were en route. On 18 July 1950, the 1st Cavalry Division's 5th and 8th Cavalry Regiments landed at Pohang-dong, 80 miles north of Pusan, in the war's first amphibious landing. The 7th Cavalry landed at Pohang-dong on July 22.
The 7th Cavalry, under the command of Colonel Cecil W. Nist, was the 8th Army reserve at Pohang, but when the 5th Cavalry to the north was attacked in great force, the 7th moved up to reinforce them on 25 July. Between 26 and 29 July, 7th Cavalry troopers were dug in astride the main highway 100 miles southeast of Seoul, but were unprepared for the waves of refugees fleeing south. Commanders feared the refugee columns might harbor North Korean infiltrators, and orders came down to stop refugee movements, with gunfire if necessary. The troopers and officers of 2-7 Cavalry opened fire on innocent civilians, mostly women and children, in the No Gun Ri massacre. In 2005, a South Korean government inquest committee certified the names of 150 No Gun Ri dead, 13 missing, and 55 wounded, including some who later died of their wounds. It said reports were not filed on many other victims. Survivors claim the number of dead was closer to 400.
During the next few days a defensive line was formed at Hwanggan with the 7th Cavalry moving east and the 5th Cavalry replacing elements of the 25th Infantry Division. On 1 August, the 1st Cavalry Division was ordered to set up a defensive position near Kumchon on the rail route from Taegu to Pusan. For more than 50 days between late July and mid September 1950, 7th Cavalry Troopers and UN Soldiers performed the bloody task of holding on the vital Pusan Perimeter. At dawn on 9 August, North Korea hurled five divisions against the American lines along the Naktong River near Taegu and managed to gain some high ground. Major General Hobart R. Gay, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, withheld counterattacking until he had more information, but soon learned that 750 Korean People's Army (KPA) troops had occupied Hill 268, soon to be known as "Triangulation Hill. At about 09:30, General Gay ordered 1-7 Cavalry to counter the KPA penetration. The Battalion moved from its bivouac area just outside Taegu, accompanied by five tanks of A Company, 71st Heavy Tank Battalion. This motorized force proceeded to the foot of Hill 268. Meanwhile, the 61st Field Artillery Battalion shelled the hill heavily."However, 1st Battalion-7th Cavalry Regiment counterattacked their flanks at 0930 that day, and managed to seize Hill 268, "Trianglation Hill", and killed 400 enemy. The morning of 10 August, a combined tank and infantry attack next reached the crest of the Triangulation Hill without much trouble, and this battle was over by about 16:00. US artillery and mortar fire was now shifted westward, and this cut off the KPA retreat. White phosphorus shells fired from the 61st Field Artillery Battalion caught KPA troops in a village while they attempted to retreat, and they were then routed by US infantry, suffering over 200 killed. That evening the 1-7 Cavalry, returned to the serve as the division reserve, and elements of the 5th Cavalry finished securing Hill 268.
On 26 August 1950, to replenish losses suffered in battle and to build the 7th Cavalry up to its authorized strength, 2nd Battalion-30th Infantry Regiment, from the 3rd Infantry Division, was attached to the 1st Cavalry Division and was redesignated as the 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. By 5 September, enemy pressure along the sector of the 1st Cavalry Division had increased tremendously. General Gay ordered a general withdrawal of the 1st Cavalry Division in order to shorten lines and occupy better defensive positions. The withdrawal movement began on the right with the 8th Cavalry, then the 7th Cavalry in the Hill 518 area and finally the 5th Cavalry in vicinity of Waegwan. The key to the withdrawal was Hill 464, behind the 2nd Battalion-7th Cavalry, that dominated the Waegwan – Tabu-dong road. The withdrawal was slowed by mud created by heavy rains which fell 5–6 September, hampering the movement of wheeled and tracked vehicles. On 6 September, at 0300 hours, 2-7 Cavalry disengaged from the enemy on Hill 464 and fought its way to the east. The 5th Cavalry, occupying positions on Hill 303, came under heavy fire and was driven from key terrain, however, they were able to recapture the lost ground with the aid of elements of the 70th Tank Battalion attached to the 1st Cavalry Division. During the next few days, the situation was precarious. The North Koreans had gained large footholds east of Naktong and south to within about 8 miles of Taegu in the vicinity of Hills 314 and 570. On 12 September, the 3rd Battalion-7th Cavalry was tasked to retake Hill 314. After a fierce struggle, the hill was taken. The North Korean drive halted on 13 September, seven miles short of Taegu. Their momentum began to slow and plans were laid for an all-out offensive.
The turning point in this bloody battle came on 15 September 1950, when GEN MacArthur unleashed his plan to go around the advancing North Korean Army; Operation Chromite – an amphibious landing at Incheon, far behind the North Korean lines. In spite of the many negative operational reasons given by critics of the plan, the Inchon landing was an immediate success allowing the 1st Cavalry Division to break out of the Pusan Perimeter and start fighting north. Task Force Lynch was formed to execute a rapid breakthrough to link up with the Inchon landing forces; it was composed of the 3rd Battalion-7th Cavalry, B Co 8th Engineer Battalion, C Co and the I&R Platoon of 70th Tank Battalion, 77th Field Artillery Battalion (-), 3rd Platoon Heavy Mortar Company, and a tactical air support liaison team. On 22 September, TF Lynch attacked north, breaking out of the Pusan Perimeter and fighting across 106 miles of enemy territory. On 27 September, north of Osan, at a small bridge, L Co, 3-7 Cavalry, linked up with H Co, 31st Infantry, 7th Infantry Division of the landing force. On 28 September, K Co, 3-7 Cavalry, along with C Co 70th Tank Battalion and with the strong assistance of fighter-bombers, destroyed at least seven of ten North Korean T-34's in the Pyongtaek area, five by air strikes. After linking up with the rest of the 1st Cavalry Division by 4 October, continued its advance north, securing Kaesong by the 8th, and crossing the 38th parallel on 9 October 1950. The 7th Cavalry rounded up 2,000 prisoners. In one of the ironic moments of the war, Troopers took into custody a small North Korean cavalry unit and all its horses. The Troopers of the 1st Cavalry crashed into Pyongyang, capturing the capital city of North Korea on 19 October 1950.
In late October 1950, the 7th Cavalry moved north again. The North Korean Army was shattered and the UN Troops were nearing the Chinese border; the war seemed to be all but over. On 25 October, Communist China intervened on behalf of North Korea and began pushing UN Troops back. On 24 November, the 7th Cavalry was involved in a grand UN counterattack, but Chinese attacks shattered the ROK Army II Corps on the 1st Cavalry Division's flank, leaving it exposed. On 26 November, the Chinese penetrated the front companies of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 7th Cavalry and tried to exploit the gap. At 0200 hours they were hit by elements of the 3rd Battalion reinforced by tanks. Red troops were stopped and retreated back into an area previously registered for artillery fire. Enemy losses were high and the shoulder was held. On 29 November, the Chinese attacked the 7th Cavalry again, and the Americans were forced to fall back to Sinchang-ni, North Pyongan Province. At midnight, the Chinese attacked again. They were repulsed, but small infiltration teams managed to attack a Battalion command post before being driven off. At the Battle of Sinchang-ni, 7th Cavalry suffered 39 KIA, 107 WIA, and 11 MIA. Enormous Chinese numbers, the surprise of their attack, and the bitter cold of the North Korean winter forced UN troops to fall back. During the withdrawal, the Greek Army's Sparta Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Georgios Koumanakos was attached to the 7th Cavalry Regiment and became 4th Battalion (GEF)-7th Cavalry on 16 December 1950. The Greeks soon proved themselves to be gallant soldiers in battle. By 28 December 1950, 7th Cavalry Troopers were in defensive positions near Uijeongbu. The year of 1951 would begin as a cold and dark time for the men of the 7th Cavalry. They had been pushed back into South Korea by the Chinese after having seemingly all but defeated North Korean Communist forces, but the fight was not over yet.
On 22 January 1951, 7th Cavalry began an attack on Chinese lines near Kyong-ni. Here, the Greek Battalion on Hill 381 was counterattacked by a large enemy force. The battle began before dawn and raged on for the rest of the day. By afternoon, the Chinese had enough and retreated leaving 800 dead. The regiment continued its slow drive north. By 12 February, the 7th Cavalry ran into effective enemy defensive positions. On 14 February, heavy fighting erupted around an objective known as Hill 578, which was finally taken by the 7th Cavalry after overcoming stiff Chinese resistance. During this action General MacArthur paid a welcome visit to the First Team. By 22 April 1951, 1st Cavalry Division approached the Hwachon Reservoir on "Phase Line Kansas." The 7th Cavalry was ordered to capture the dam which would eliminate the possibility of the enemy destroying it and flooding the area. The approaches to the dam severely restricted vehicular movement and the artillery could not be brought into range to support an attack. In an alternate approach, the 4th Ranger Company, attached to the 7th Cavalry, was to cross the reservoir by boat and attack from the east as the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry attacked from the southwest. The Troopers made three separate assaults on the defenders, but none was successful in evicting them. Before another attempt could be organized, the troopers were pulled out for another fight.
From 9 June to 27 November, the 7th Cavalry took on various roles in the summer-fall campaign of the United Nations. On 18 July, a year after it had entered the war, the 1st Cavalry Division was assigned to a reserve status. This type of duty did not last for long. On the nights of 21 and 23 September, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 7th Cavalry repulsed waves of Red Chinese involving hand-to-hand fighting. Earlier in the war, the Chinese attacks, which were accompanied by a cacophony of bells, bugles, whistles, and war cries, terrified the Americans; but after stopping the Chinese counterattack, 7th Cavalry Troopers lost their fear and stood their ground against the sometimes relentless and self-sacrificial enemy. Harder fighting soon followed when Operation Commando, a mission to push the Chinese out of their winter defense positions south of the Yokkok River, was launched. During this operation, the objective was designated as the Jamestown Line.
On 3 October 1951, the 5th and 7th Cavalry attacked abreast along the division front at 0600 hours. Attacking with the Greek, 2nd and 3rd Battalions abreast, they stormed Hills 313 and 418 along the ridge. Both the Greek and 2nd Battalion fought their way to the ridge line, but suffering heavy casualties, neither could hold the ground. Despite heavy fighting on 4 October, there was little forward progress. Elements of the 8th Cavalry reinforced the 7th Cavalry on the right and assaulted the ridges west of Hill 418, but the enemy clung stubbornly to its positions. During the day, elements of the Chinese 140th Division moved up to reinforce their 139th Division which had been hit hard by the constant attacks of the 1st Cavalry Division. On 5 October, it was discovered that the Chinese had withdrawn much of their force in the night and 2-7 Cavalry occupied Hills 418 and 313 without opposition. The following day, at Hill 287, 1-7 Cavalry, fought its way to the crest and held on to part of the hill at nightfall. Enemy prisoners taken indicated that many of the Chinese units were defeated in the opening days of the operation and were falling back to prepared defensive lines to the northwest. On 7 October, the 7th Cavalry effected the seizure of Hill 287 and sent the 3rd Battalion forward two miles southwest to take Hill 347. Attacking from the south, 3-7 Cavalry cleared the hill at the end of the day. The fall of Hill 347 meant that the 1st Cavalry Division now controlled the high ground overlooking the Jamestown Line.
The 7th Cavalry Troopers did not know it, but the battle for Line Jamestown would be their last major combat of the Korean War. On 18 December 1951, the 7th Cavalry left for Hokkaido, Japan after 549 days of continuous fighting. On 12 December 1952, 7th Cavalry returned to Korea, relieving the 8th Cavalry, and held reserve defensive positions as forward UN troops continued skirmishing with Communist forces as the peace talks occurred. 7th Cavalry returned to Hokkaido on 20 February 1953, and the Korean War finally "ended" when the long-awaited armistice was signed at 10:00 on 27 July 1953. While still technically at war, UN and Communist forces ceased all combat operations. The war had been tough; the 7th Cavalry Regiment suffered defeats early in the 1950, but rebounded and took the fight to the northern end of North Korea, where they suffered an agonizing reverse at the hand of the Chinese in the harsh winter. Despite this, they managed to hold their lines and counterattack, learning from their early mistakes and serving with valor and skill.
Cold War and Vietnam
The regiment was relieved from its assignment to the 1st Cavalry Division on 15 October 1957, and reorganized under the Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS) on 1 November 1957. HQ & HQ Company transferred to the control of the Department of the Army. 1 November,
As part of this reorganization, Company "A" was redesignated 1st Battle Group, 7th Cavalry and assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. Company "B" was redesignated 2nd Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry and Company "C" was redesignated 3rd Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry and assigned to the 10th Infantry Division.
After the Korean War, 7th Cavalry was used mainly in a reconnaissance role. It received the M14 rifle, along with various other new weapons and equipment (including the Patton tank). Also, a few OH-13 helicopters were used by the reconnaissance squadrons.
Three battalions, the 1st, 2nd and 5th, served during the Vietnam War as the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. 3rd Brigade often referred to itself as the "Garryowen Brigade". These troopers were armed with the new M16 rifle, M1911A1 Pistols and the M79 grenade launcher. The use of Bell UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" helicopters transformed the 1st Cavalry into an "Air-mobile" unit. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 7th Cavalry fought in one of the first American engagements of the Vietnam War, the Battle of Ia Drang. Over the course of the war, seven men earned the Medal of Honor while serving with the 7th Cavalry in Vietnam: Private First Class Lewis Albanese, Company B, 5th Battalion; First Lieutenant Douglas B. Fournet, Company B, 1st Battalion; Sergeant John Noble Holcomb, Company D, 2nd Battalion; Second Lieutenant Walter Joseph Marm Jr., Company A, 1st Battalion; Private First Class William D. Port, Company C, 5th Battalion; Specialist Four Héctor Santiago-Colón, Company B, 5th Battalion; and First Lieutenant James M. Sprayberry, Company D, 5th Battalion.
The other two units, the 3rd and 4th reconnaissance Squadrons, were based in Germany, and South Korea.
The 1st, 2nd, and 5th Battalions were deactivated after the Vietnam War, and only the 3rd and 4th Squadrons remained as divisional reconnaissance squadrons assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Infantry Division respectively. Both the 3rd and 4th squadrons were aviation-tank cavalry squadrons using the M48 Patton tank, M113A1 Armored Personnel Carrier and M114A1E1 armored reconnaissance vehicle. Both squadrons had an air cavalry "Delta" Troop, that had both reconnaissance & gunship UH-1B's. The gunships were armed with M-5 rocket launchers, and M-22 anti-tank guided missiles. In 1963, the 3rd Squadron became the divisional cavalry squadron for the 3rd Infantry Division and was stationed at Ledward & Conn Barracks, Schweinfurt, West Germany. The squadron consisted of three ground troops and a Headquarters Troop at Ledward Barracks and an aviation troop at Conn Barracks in Schweinfurt. The ground troops were equipped with M60A3 TTS Patton tanks, M113A1 armored personnel carriers, ITV (Improved TOW Vehicle, an M113 variant) and a mortar section with the M106A1, an M113 variant with a 4.2 in mortar. In 1984 the M60A3 TTS Patton were replaced with M3 Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicle (CFV) and also replaced with M1A1 Abrams. The reorganization created two M3-equipped ground troops, one long range surveillance (LRSU) ground troop and two aviation troops equipped with OH-58 scout helicopters and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. On 16 November 1992, the squadron was inactivated in Germany and relieved of assignment to the 8th Infantry Division. The Headquarters and Headquarters Troop consolidated on 16 December 1992 with the 3rd Reconnaissance Company and designated as Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry.
On 16 February 1996, the squadron was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division and activated at Fort Stewart, Georgia as the Division Cavalry Squadron. The squadron has been involved in several deployments since then, including Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait, Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The squadron was reassigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division in 2004 as the brigade's Armored Reconnaissance Squadron. Combat operations for Operation Iraqi Freedom III began on 4 February 2005 when the squadron arrived at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah located in southeast Baghdad. Immediately on arrival, the squadron began patrolling the area east of the Tigris River in the Rusafa and New Baghdad districts as well as securing Route Pluto North, one of the primary supply routes for the division.
Between 1974 and 1975, other units were reactivated. The 1st Battalion became an armored unit, the 2nd Battalion remained an air mobile unit with a recon platoon using motorcycles moved by helicopters. After 1975, the 2nd and 5th Battalion were reorganized as mechanized infantry. In 1978, the 5th Battalion was once again deactivated.
The Persian Gulf War
The 1st and 4th Squadrons fought in Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991. Ground troops were armed with the M3A1 Bradley CFV. Air cavalry troops AH-1F Cobras, OH-58C scouts.
The 1st Squadron, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Walter L. Sharp, was the divisional cavalry squadron for the 1st Cavalry Division and assigned to the division's aviation brigade. The squadron was organized as a headquarters troop, one ground troop (Troop A), and two air troops (Troops C and D). Prior to deployment, the squadron also attached two ground troops, Troop A, and Troop B, 2d Squadron, 1st Cavalry, from the inactivating 2d Armored Division, also at Fort Hood. After attachment, the additional troops were provisionally flagged as Troop B, and Troop E, 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry. The squadron was in Southwest Asia from October 1990 until May 1991. During the campaign, 1-7 CAV overwatched the border area of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait did numerous recon missions into Iraq and led the 1st Cavalry Division during its attack into Iraq after being released as the CENTCOM theater reserve. After the war, Trp E/1-7 CAV remained in the squadron's task organization through its reorganization in 1993, exchanging its guidons with Trp C/1-7 CAV in 1994.
The 4th Squadron, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Terry L. Tucker, was the divisional cavalry squadron for 3rd Armored Division, taking part of the Battle of Phase Line Bullet. The squadron was inactivated in 1992 with the rest of the 3d Armored Division. In 1996, the squadron was reactivated as a subordinate element of Aviation Brigade, 2d Infantry Division at Camp Pelham, Korea (later renamed Camp Garryowen), using the equipment and personnel of the inactivating 5th Squadron, 17th Cavalry. In 2004, the squadron was reassigned as a subordinate element of the 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 2d Infantry Division, Camp Hovey, Korea.
The Iraq War
The 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry was the spearhead and the screening force for the main elements of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division during the Iraq War. The 3d Squadron launched an attack under the command of LTC Terry Ferrell on 20 March 2003.
The 3rd Squadron was the "Eyes and Ears" for the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) and the "Iron Fist" for the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps. The Squadron was engaged with the enemy earlier and more often during the war than any other unit in modern warfare history.
Combat operations for Operation Iraqi Freedom began on 20 March 2003, when the squadron crossed into Iraq as the lead element of the 3rd Infantry Division. The Squadron attacked towards Baghdad fighting both the Republican Guard and the Sadam Fedayeen. With the capture of Baghdad, the division and the squadron transitioned to stabilization operations. By the time the Squadron had redeployed, it had killed 2,200 Iraqi personnel, 64 tanks, 41 armored vehicles, numerous active air defense systems, as well as trucks and civilian vehicles used as suicide bombers.
They were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest award given to a unit. The 3rd Squadron remains the only "spearhead" element to complete a combat tour without suffering a casualty.
The 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry returned to Iraq as part of the 2nd Brigade Heavy Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom III. Between 21 January 2005 and 10 January 2006, the Squadron conducted combat operations in the burroughs of Rustamiyah, in southern Baghdad, the town of Salman Pak, and the Tigris river. The Squadron was led by LTC Michael J. Johnson. The Squadron fought through multiple engagements with insurgent forces; which, unfortunately resulted in the death of several Troopers and attached personnel. The Squadron was awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation for its performance in their Area of Operations.
The 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry was mobilized yet again during the surge, OIV V May 9, 2007 – August 15, 2008, as part of the 2nd Brigade Heavy Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. As fate would have it, the 2nd HBCT was commanded by Colonel Terry L. Ferrel who commanded the Squadron during the drive to Baghdad in 2003. Unfortunately, the Squadron led by LTC Jeffery D. Broadwater was detached to a Brigade of the 82nd Airbone Division to conduct combat operations in the borough of Adamiyah in Baghdad. The Squadron fought through tough built up conditions against a determined insurgency resulting again in Troopers and attachments making the ultimate sacrifice. The Squadron returned to Fort Stewart, Georgia knowing it will deploy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in the near future.
The 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry served in the 1st Cavalry Division's 5th Brigade Combat Team (BCT) during its first deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom II from 1 April 2004 to 1 April 2005. The 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry, commanded by LTC William R. Salter executed combat operations in the Al Rashid District of Baghdad, Iraq. The squadron defeated a surge of enemy attacks and neutralized insurgent and terrorist elements within its area of operations (AO) through a combination of constant day to day interaction with the populace and adaptable tactics. In addition to securing an AO of 68 km2 with a population of more than 1.2 million, the Squadron also secured Route Irish, a strategic highway and Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) Main Supply Route connecting the International Zone (IZ) to the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). The squadron also helped provide a secure environment during the first Iraqi democratic election in January 2005. 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment was awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation for its actions during this campaign.
Most recently, 1-7 CAV, commanded by LTC Kevin S. MacWatters, deployed as the Armed Reconnaissance Squadron for 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08 (6 October 2006 to 15 January 2008). The squadron conducted full-spectrum operations as a part of Multi-National Division-Baghdad (MND-B)in the Taji Area of Operations. During this deployment the squadron destroyed multiple improvised explosive device (IED) and vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) terrorist cells as a part of the "Surge", enhancing MND-B's ability to secure Baghdad. The secure environment created by the squadron in the Taji area enabled local government to take hold, local police and Iraqi Army forces to take over security operations, and the "Reconciliation" to successfully spread throughout the Area of Operations.
The 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was attached to the 39th BCT although assigned to 3d BCT, 1st CAV. The unit deployed to Iraq under the command of LTC Charles Forshee seven months after arrival in Iraq and was succeeded by LTC James Eugene Rainey in August 2004, the 2nd Battalion supported US Marine Corps operations during the battle of Najaf (2004) and the Battle of Fallujah.
The 2nd Battalion moved from 3rd BCT, 1st Cavalry Division, Ft Hood Texas, to Ft Bliss to become part of the newly formed 4th BCT and in October 2006 The 2nd Battalion again headed for Iraq, this time to Mosul. 2-7 Cav consisting of only four infantry companies were tasked with eliminating AQI and patrolling Iraq's third largest city, dividing the sprawling urban area into quarters. Within the first several months the battalion took the first casualties of the 4th BCT. Since October 2006, C Co. 2-7 Cav. has endured 6 KIA and numerous wounded.
2nd Battalion redeployed in December 2007 to Fort Bliss, TX. In 2008, it deployed from Fort Hood, TX to Iraq in support of OIF 08–09. Maintaining control of the northern half of the Maysan province of Iraq, it operated out of FOB Garryowen. FOB Garryowen, located in Amarah, Iraq's border city with Iran, was established in June 2008 for the battalion by a team of 23 Air Force enlisted engineers and 2nd PLT C/2-7 CAV prior to the arrival of the battalion's main body. 08-09 B/2-7 CAV was relieved by the OIF 06-08 B 2-7 CAV (now 4-6 INF out of Ft.Bliss) who along with the Iraqi Police in Majar al Kabir captured the criminals responsible for murdering 6 British Military Police in November 2004. Among its other accomplishments, 2-7 CAV worked with the Iraqi Security Forces to provide successful security to Iraq's provincial elections in January 2009 and is responsible for several large volume cache finds. During its tour, the 10th Iraqi Army Division conducted Operation "Lion's Roar," a combined live-fire exercise in Maysan province in April 2009.
As part of the Army's modularity program, the 3rd Infantry Division converted the 1-3 Air Defense Artillery battalion to become 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, an armored reconnaissance squadron. The 5th Squadron deployed in 2005 and most recently in January 2007. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Cliff Wheeler, the squadron initially operated north of Ramadi, and remained under the operational control of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. In April 2007, the squadron conducted a full-scale movement to contact, clearing from Ramadi, to the south of Lake Habbaniyah, and then east to Route Iron in Fallujah, while attaching to the Marine Corps' 6th Regimental Combat Team and basing at Camp Baharia. Due to the firepower and mobility inherent within a cavalry squadron, 5-7 CAV was assigned the largest battlespace within RCT 6's area of operations.
The squadron also suffered from the limitations in assigned troopers that also comes with the cavalry. For eight months, the squadron conducted security and COIN operations across the Warpaint AO. The squadron established and maintained freedom of movement along Routes Michigan, Iron, San Juan and Gold, and maintained a secure environment in the towns of Saqliwiyah, North Saqliwiyah, Amariyah, and Farris. Additional operations at both the troop and squadron level cleared and held new terrain within the regimental security zone. In December 2007, the squadron was attached to the operational control of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team at FOB Kalsu. The squadron conducted relief-in-place with two USMC rifle battalions and redeployed to Kalsu in approximately eight days. An additional week of training and preparations were required before they attacked into Arab Jabour and cleared the town of Sayafiyah (30,000 residents) in conjunction with the Iraqi "Sons of Iraq" program. The squadron occupied an area that had seen no long-term coalition forces presence, and conducted operations in an austere environment. The squadron secured all routes with fixed positions while simultaneously building COP Meade, clearing all routes, terrain and structures within the new Warpaint AO. The squadron completed the mission in March 2008, and conducted a relief-in-place with 1-187 IN, the Rakkasans, before redeploying to Fort Stewart in April 2008.
During OIF V, the squadron suffered six KIA and numerous wounded. During 20 months of subsequent dwell time, the squadron participated, as part of the 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, in the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosive consequence management reaction force (CCMRF) mission in support of the requirements of defense support to civil authority. This mission requires the unit, at the request of local, state or national civil authorities, to deploy within the United States in response to a catastrophic event.
Operation Enduring Freedom
In November 2012, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was deployed to Kapisa and Kabul provinces in RC-East, operating from FOBs Tagab and Naglu High, positions formerly held by the French Army.
From September 2012 to May 2013, the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry was mobilized to Region Command North (Major General Erich Pfeffer, Germany) Camp Marmal, Mazar – e- Sharif. Led by LTC Lance Varney, the Squadron operated with distinction as Task Force Garry Owen in the Kunduz province.
In January 2013, 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry was deployed to Qalat District, Zabul province, Afghanistan Operating from FOB Apache.
Operation Atlantic Resolve
1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment deployed from Fort Hood, Texas to Europe as part of 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve from May 2018 to February 2019. 1st Squadron moved by sea, rail, and drove over 900 kilometers across Europe to establish their headquarters in Świętoszów, Poland. During their time in Poland, the Squadron partnered with their hosts, the Polish 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade. They maintained this partnership until the Squadron moved from Świętoszów, Poland to Hohenfels Training Area, Germany November 2018 in support of Combined Resolve XI.
While the Squadron was headquartered in Świętoszów, Poland for a majority of the deployment, elements constantly deployed abroad across Europe in order to partner with various NATO Allies. A Troop, C Troop, and D Troop deployed to Pabradė, Lithuania; Tata and Várpalota, Hungary; and Lest, Slovakia, respectively. Each Troop, including B Troop who remained in Świętoszów, Poland, conducted joint combined arms live fire exercises with their partnered hosts. Live fire exercises were normally accompanied by "force-on-force" situational training exercises. In total, 1st Squadron partnered with 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade from Poland, Mechanized Infantry Brigade "Iron Wolf" from Lithuania, 5th and 25th Mechanized Infantry Brigades from the Hungarian Ground Forces, and 112th Mechanized Infantry Battalion from the Slovakian Ground Forces.
The Squadron moved to Hohenfels Training Area, Germany in November 2018 in order to participate in Combined Resolve XI. The exercise included over 5500 participants from 16 different NATO allies and partners. A 10-day force-on-force exercise was held at Hohenfels Training Area where all 16 participants acted as either friendly or opposing forces (OPFOR). The Squadron relocated to Grafenwoehr Training Area in late December 2018, and participated in a Brigade live fire exercise from 13 to 25 January 2019. 1st Squadron conducted redeployment operations from February to April 2019.
Current status
1st Squadron is the Division Cavalry Squadron (DIV CAV) of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Cavazos, Texas.
2nd Battalion is a combined arms battalion of the 3rd BCT, 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Cavazos, Texas.
3rd Squadron, part of the 2nd BCT, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, was inactivated on 7 January 2015.
4th Squadron, an armored cavalry squadron of the 1st BCT, 2nd Infantry Division, was inactivated on 1 July 2015 in South Korea.
5th Squadron is an armored Cavalry squadron of the 1st ABCT, 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
Lineage
7th Cavalry Regiment
Regiment Constituted 28 July 1866 in the Regular Army as the 7th Cavalry Regiment.
Company A Organized 10 September 1866 at Fort Riley, Kansas
Regiment Organized 21 September 1866 at Fort Riley, Kansas
Cavalry companies officially designated as troops in 1883
Assigned in December 1917 to the 15th Cavalry Division
Relieved in May 1918 from assignment to the 15th Cavalry Division
Assigned 13 September 1921 to the 1st Cavalry Division.
HHT, 4th Squadron, Constituted 13 November 1943 in the Regular Army as Troop D, 7th Cavalry Regiment.
Regiment Reorganized 4 December 1943 partly under cavalry and partly under infantry tables of organization and equipment. Troop D concurrently reorganized and redesignated as Headquarters Troop, 1st Cavalry Division, Special. Replacement Troop D Activated concurrently in Australia, partly under cavalry and partly under infantry tables of organization and equipment.
Regiment reorganized 25 July 1945 wholly as infantry, but retained cavalry designations.
Regimental troops redesignated 25 March 1949 as companies (1st Cavalry Division, Special concurrently reorganized and redesignated as the 1st Cavalry Division)
Regiment Relieved 15 October 1957 from assignment to the 1st Cavalry Division
Regiment Reorganized and redesignated 1 November 1957 as a parent regiment under the Combat Arms Regimental System. Squadrons were concurrently redesignated as Battle Groups.
Headquarters Company, 1st Cavalry Division (Ex-D Troop, 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment) Disbanded 1 July 1960 in Korea.
EX-Headquarters Company, 1st Cavalry Division, EX-D Company, 7th Cavalry Regiment Reconstituted 2 July 1960 in the Regular Army, consolidated with Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 4th Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry (see below), and consolidated unit designated as Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 4th Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment.
HHT, 4th Reconnaissance Squadron Redesignated 25 January 1963 as Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, and assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division (organic elements concurrently constituted).
4th Squadron activated 20 February 1963 at Fort Benning, Georgia.
1st Battle Group Redesignated 1 September 1963 as the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment.
1st Battalion Inactivated 22 August 1972 at Fort Hood, Texas.
1st Battalion Activated 20 June 1974 at Fort Hood, Texas
1st Battalion Reorganized and redesignated 16 October 1986 as the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment.
4th Squadron Inactivated 18 January 1988 in Korea and relieved from assignment to the 2d Infantry Division
Regiment Withdrawn 16 February 1989 from the Combat Arms Regimental System and reorganized under the United States Army Regimental System. 4th Squadron concurrently Assigned to the 3d Armored Division, and activated in Germany.
4th Squadron Inactivated 16 October 1991 in Germany and relieved from assignment to the 3d Armored Division.
HHT, 4th Squadron consolidated 5 April 1996 with the 2nd Reconnaissance Company (see below) and consolidated unit designated as Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment; Squadron concurrently assigned to the 2d Infantry Division and activated in Korea
2nd Reconnaissance Company
2nd Reconnaissance Troop Constituted 20 July 1940 in the Regular Army and was assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division.
2nd Reconnaissance Troop Activated 1 August 1940 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
2nd Reconnaissance Troop Redesignated 1 April 1942 as the 2nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop.
2nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop Redesignated 1 March 1943 as the 2d Reconnaissance Troop.
2nd Reconnaissance Troop Redesignated 6 July 1944 as the 2nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized
2nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized Redesignated 16 June 1945 as the 2nd Mechanized Reconnaissance Troop.
2nd Mechanized Reconnaissance Troop Redesignated 30 July 1945 as the 2nd Mechanized Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop
2nd Mechanized Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop Reorganized and redesignated 15 October 1948 as the 2nd Reconnaissance Company
2nd Reconnaissance Company Inactivated 20 June 1957 in Alaska and relieved from assignment to the 2d Infantry Division.
2nd Reconnaissance Company consolidated with HHT, 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment on 5 April 1996 and consolidated unit designated as Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 4th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment; Squadron concurrently assigned to the 2d Infantry Division and activated in Korea.
Honors
Campaign participation credit
Decorations
Presidential Unit Citation (Army) for:
Antipolo, Luzon
Yonchon, Korea
Taegu, Korea
Pusan, Korea
4th Battalion Hongchon
Pleiku province
Troop B, 1st Battalion, Binh Thuan province
3rd Squadron embroidered Iraq (2003)
HHC, A and C Companies 2d Battalion Fallujah (2004)
Valorous Unit Award for:
Troop B, 1st Battalion Tay Ninh province
1st, 2d, 5th Battalions Quang Tin province
1st, 2d, 5th Battalions Fish Hook
4th Squadron Southwest Asia (1991)
HHT, A, B, C Troops of 1st Squadron, Iraq (2007)
HHC, A, B, C, D, E Companies, 2nd BN, 7th Cavalry Regiment (2007)
E Company, 27th Support BN (2007)
HHT, A, B, C Troops of 3rd Squadron, Iraq (2008)
HHT, A, B, C Troops of 1st Squadron, Iraq (2009)
Meritorious Unit Commendation (Army) for:
1st Squadron Southwest Asia (1991)
1st Squadron Iraq (2004, 2008)
3rd Squadron Iraq (2006)
5th Squadron Iraq (2010)
Navy Unit Commendation (NUC):
HHC, A, B, C Companies, 2nd Battalion embroidered Anbar Province (2005)
5th Squadron 7th Cavalry Regiment, OIF with II MEF (23JUN07–09FEB08)
Belgian Fourragere:
4th Squadron 1940
Cited in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action:
4th Squadron In the Ardennes
4th Squadron At Elsenborn Crest
French Croix de Guerre: World War II
Streamer embroidered COLMAR (3rd Reconnaissance Trp, cited; DA GO 43, 1950)
Streamer embroidered COLMAR (3rd Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Cavalry, cited; WD GO 43, 1950)
Fourragere (3rd Reconnaissance Trp cited; DA GO 43, 1950)
Philippine Presidential Unit Citation for:
17 October 1944 to 4 July 1945
Republic of Korea presidential unit citation for:
Waegwan-Taegu
Korea 1952–1953
Greek Gold Cross of Valour for:
Korea
1st Battalion
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965 (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 14 to 16 November 1965; DA GO 21, 1969, amended DA GO 48, 1968)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965–1969 (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the periods 9 Aug – 13 November 1965 and 17 Nov Nov 1965 to 19 May 1969; DA GO 70, 1969, amended DA GO 59, 1969)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1969–1970 (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period May 1969 to Feb 1970; DA GO 11, 1973, amended DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1970–1971 (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 21 February 1970 to 28 February 1971; DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965–1972 (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 17 September 1965 to Jun 1972; DA GO 54, 1974)
Troop B additionally entitled to: Streamer embroidered BINH THUAN PROVINCE ("B" Co, 1st Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 12 December 1966 to 18 February 1967; DA GO 02, 1973)
Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Honor Medal, First Class for:
Streamer embroidered VIETNAM (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 1 January 1969 to 1 February 1970; DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Honor Medal, First Class,
Streamer embroidered VIETNAM (1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 1 January 1969 to 1 February 1970; DA GO 42, 1972)
2nd Battalion
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965 ("A" Co, 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 15 to 16 November 1965; DA GO 21, 1969, DA GO 70, 1969, amended DA GO 46, 1968)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965–1969 ("A" Co, 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the periods 9 Aug – 14 November 1965 and 17 Nov Nov 1965 to 19 May 1969; DA GO 70, 1969, amended DA GO 59, 1969)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965 ("B" Co, 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 14 to 16 November 1965; DA GO 21, 1969, DA GO 70, 1969, amended DA GO 46, 1968)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965–1969 ("B" Co, 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the periods 9 Aug – 13 November 1965 and 17 Nov Nov 1965 to 19 May 1969; DA GO 70, 1969, amended DA GO 59, 1969)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1969–1970 (2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period May 1969 to Feb 1970; DA GO 11, 1973, amended DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1970–1971 (2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 21 February 1970 to 28 February 1971; DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965–1969 (earned by the 3rd Reconnaissance Trp as part of the 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period ;)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1969–1970 (earned by the 3rd Reconnaissance Trp as part of the 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period ;)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1970–1971 (earned by the 3rd Reconnaissance Trp as part of the 2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period ;)
Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Honor Medal, First Class,
Streamer embroidered VIETNAM (2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 1 January 1969 to 1 February 1970; DA GO 42, 1972)
5th Battalion
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1965–1969 (5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 9 Aug – 19 May 1969; DA GO 59, 1969)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1969–1970 (5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period May 1969 to Feb 1970; DA GO 11, 1973, amended DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm, Streamer embroidered VIETNAM 1970–1971 (5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 21 February 1970 to 28 February 1971; DA GO 42, 1972)
Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Honor Medal, First Class,
Streamer embroidered VIETNAM (5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, cited for the period 1 January 1969 to 1 February 1970; DA GO 42, 1972)
In popular culture
In the 1956 movie 7th Cavalry, directed by Joseph H. Lewis, Captain Benson (Randolph Scott), who has been on furlough, comes back to the fort just after the Battle of the Little Bighorn and discovers half of the men died. Others hold Benson in contempt, not only for not being at the battle in command of his company of men, but for what they perceived as Custer's favoritism of him.
The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms is Episode 130 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone in which the 7th Cavalry plays a major role. It originally aired on 6 December 1963 on CBS.
The experiences of the 1st and 2nd Battalions at the November 1965 Battle of Ia Drang are recounted in the book We Were Soldiers Once...And Young by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore, then a lieutenant colonel and commander of the 1st Battalion, and United Press International correspondent Joseph L. Galloway. The book was later adapted into the film We Were Soldiers, with Mel Gibson as Moore and Barry Pepper as Galloway.
1991 TV miniseries Son of the Morning Star based on the life of Lt. Col. George A. Custer, and the 7th Cavalry, which ends with the battle of Little Bighorn engagement where 5 companies of the 7th Cavalry are wiped out, along with George Custer, Thomas Custer, Boston Custer and Audie Reed.
See also
Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer
Notes
Further reading
Willey, P. and Douglas D. Scott, ed. Health of the Seventh Cavalry: A Medical History (2015). excerpt
Sources
The 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment Association (Savage, James W.)
Army Regulations 600-8-27 dated 2006
1st Cavalry Division – Army Modular Forces Webpage explaining division's transition to new modular organisation, along with new order of battle.
United States Army Center of Military History; CMH Publication 60-1; "Army Lineage Series: Armor–Cavalry, Part I: Regular Army and Army Reserve." .
Shelby L. Stanton; Order of Battle: U.S. ArmyR, World War II; 1984; Presidio Press; .
Cavalrymen photos-Pictures of the cavalry during Custer's Last Stand Reenactment.
External links
7th Cavalry Association Units: 1-7, 2-7, 3-7, 4-7, 5-7
1-7th Official Website
2-7th Official Website
Oklahoma Digital Maps: Digital Collections of Oklahoma and Indian Territory
007th Cavalry
Comanche campaign
Cavalry regiments of the United States Army
007th Cavalry Regiment
United States Army regiments in World War II
7th Cavalry Regiment
7th Cavalry
Military units and formations established in 1866
United States Army units and formations in the Korean War
Military units of the United States Army in South Korea
1866 establishments in Kansas
United States
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilder%20Penfield
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Wilder Penfield
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Wilder Graves Penfield (January 26, 1891April 5, 1976) was an American-Canadian neurosurgeon. He expanded brain surgery's methods and techniques, including mapping the functions of various regions of the brain such as the cortical homunculus. His scientific contributions on neural stimulation expand across a variety of topics including hallucinations, illusions, and déjà vu. Penfield devoted much of his thinking to mental processes, including contemplation of whether there was any scientific basis for the existence of the human soul.
Biography
Early life and education
Born in Spokane, Washington, on January 26, 1891, Penfield spent most of his early life in Hudson, Wisconsin. He studied at Princeton University, where he was a member of Cap and Gown Club and played on the football team. After graduation in 1913, he was hired briefly as the team coach. In 1915 he obtained a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, where he studied neuropathology under Sir Charles Scott Sherrington. After one term at Merton, Penfield went to France where he served as a dresser in a military hospital in the suburbs of Paris. He was wounded in 1916 when the ferry he was aboard, the SS Sussex, was torpedoed. The following year, he married Helen Kermott, and began studying at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, attaining his medical degree in 1918; this was followed by a short period as a house surgeon at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Returning to Merton College in 1919, Penfield spent the next two years completing his studies; during this time he met Sir William Osler. In 1924, he worked for five months with Pío del Río Hortega characterising the type of glial cells known as oligodendroglia. He also studied in Germany with Fedor Krause and Otfrid Foerster, as well as in New York City. In 1928, during the 6 months he spent in Germany with Foerster, he learned how to use local anesthesia to keep brain surgery patients awake.
Medical career
After taking a surgical apprenticeship under Harvey Cushing, he obtained a position at the Neurological Institute of New York, where he carried out his first solo operations to treat epilepsy. While in New York, he met David Rockefeller, who wished to endow an institute where Penfield could further study the surgical treatment of epilepsy. Academic politics amongst the New York neurologists, however, prevented its establishment in New York, so, in 1928, Penfield accepted an invitation from Sir Vincent Meredith to move to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. There, Penfield taught at McGill University and the Royal Victoria Hospital, becoming the city's first neurosurgeon.
In 1934, Penfield, along with William Cone, founded and became the first director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University, established with the Rockefeller funding. That year, he also became a Canadian citizen (a British subject within what was then the British Empire).
Penfield was unable to save his only sister, Ruth, who died from brain cancer, though complex surgery he performed added years to her life.
Penfield was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950 and retired ten years later in 1960. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in the 1953 New Year Honours list. He turned his attention to writing, producing a novel as well as his autobiography No Man Alone. A later biography, Something Hidden, was written by his grandson Jefferson Lewis.
In 1960, the year he retired, Penfield was awarded the Lister Medal for his contributions to surgical science. He delivered the corresponding Lister Oration, "Activation of the Record of Human Experience", at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on April 27, 1961. In 1967, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada and, in 1994, was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Much of his archival material is housed in the Osler Library at McGill University.
Later life
In his later years, Penfield dedicated himself to the public interest, particularly in support of university education. With his friends Governor-General Georges Vanier and Pauline Vanier, he co-founded the Vanier Institute of the Family "to promote and guide education in the homeman's first classroom." He was also an early proponent of childhood bilingualism.
Penfield died on April 5, 1976, of abdominal cancer at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He and his wife, Helen, had their ashes buried on the family property in East Bolton (Bolton-Est), Quebec on Sargent's Bay, Lake Memphremagog.
Scientific contributions
Neural stimulation
Penfield was a groundbreaking researcher and original surgeon. His development of a neurosurgical technique using an instrument known as the Penfield dissector, which produced the least injurious meningo-cerebral scar, became widely accepted in the field of neurosurgery and remains in regular use. With his colleague Herbert Jasper, he invented the "Montréal Procedure" in which he treated patients with severe epilepsy by destroying nerve cells in the brain where the seizures originated. Before operating, he stimulated the brain with electrical probes while the patients were conscious on the operating table (under only local anesthesia), and observed their responses. In this way he could more accurately target the areas of the brain responsible, reducing the side-effects of the surgery.
This technique also allowed him to create maps of the sensory and motor cortices of the brain (see cortical homunculus) showing their connections to the various limbs and organs of the body. These maps are still used today, practically unaltered. Along with Herbert Jasper, he published this work in 1951 (2nd ed., 1954) as the landmark Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain. This work contributed a great deal to understanding the localization of brain function. Penfield's maps showed considerable overlap between regions (e.g. the motor region controlling muscles in the hand sometimes also controlled muscles in the upper arm and shoulder) a feature which he put down to individual variation in brain size and localisation: it has since been established that this is due to the fractured somatotopy of the motor cortex. From these results he developed his cortical homunculus map, which is how the brain sees the body from an inside perspective.
Penfield reported that stimulation of the temporal lobes could lead to vivid recall of memories. Oversimplified in popular psychology publications, including the best-selling I'm OK – You're OK, this seeded the common misconception that the brain continuously "records" experiences in perfect detail, although these memories are not available to conscious recall. Reported episodes of recall occurred in less than five percent of his patients, though these results have been replicated by modern surgeons. Penfield's hypothesis on this subject was revised in 1970.
Hallucinations
Penfield's scientific contributions go past the somatosensory and the motor cortices; his extensive work of the functions of the brain also included charting the functions of the parietal and temporal cortices. Of his 520 patients, 40 reported that while their temporal lobe was stimulated with an electrode they would recall dreams, smells, visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as out-of-body experiences. In his studies, Penfield found that when the temporal lobe was stimulated it produced a combination of hallucinations, dream, and memory recollection. These experiences would only last as long as the electrode stimulations were present on the cortex, and in some cases when patient experienced hallucinatory experiences that evoked certain smells, sensations of flashing light, stroking the back of their hand, and many others. Other stimulations had patients experiencing déjà vu, fear, loneliness, and strangeness. Certain areas of patients' temporal lobes were stimulated with an electrode in order to experience memories. Penfield called these perceptual illusions (physical hallucinations) interpretive responses. According to Penfield, when the temporal lobe was stimulated there were two types of perceptions experienced by patients:
Experential experience – where the patient recorded hearing a song, or seeing a flash of light.
Strip experience – The recall seems familiar to the patient and comes from the patient's past even though the patient may not be able to pinpoint the exact occasion. The recall of a memory or memories could reinforce the emotion tied to the experience.
Penfield stressed that the "things that have been recorded are the things which once came within the spot-light of attention". Penfield had over 25 years of research using electrical stimulation to produce experiential hallucinations. His conclusions show that patients experience a range of hallucinations from simple to complex. They also show that hallucinations can be stimulated.
Déjà vu
Penfield's expansion of the interpretive cortex includes the phenomenon of déjà vu. Déjà vu is the sensation that an experience a person is having has previously been experienced. Déjà vu is typically experienced by people between the ages of 15 and 25, and affects approximately 60-70% of the population. It is thought to be a mismatch of the sensory input people receive and the system in which the brain recalls memory. Another thought on the cause of déjà vu is that there is a malfunction in the brain's short- and long-term memory systems where memories become stored in incorrect systems. There are several ways one can recognize familiar experiences – by mentally retrieving memories of a previous experience, or by having a feeling that an experience has occurred when it actually has not. Déjà vu is having that feeling of familiarity in a situation that is completely new. Memory is good at being familiar with objects, however it does not do well with the configuration or organization of objects. Déjà vu is an extreme reaction to the mind telling an individual that they are having a familiar experience. Déjà vu is thought to be a consistent phenomenon. However, it has been associated with epilepsy, and with multiple psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and anxiety, but there has not been a clear, frequent diagnostic correlation between déjà vu and neurological or psychiatric disorders, except with patients that have a possibility of being epileptic. Temporal lobe epilepsy affects the hippocampus. Patients that have this medical diagnosis are said to have a misfiring of the brain's neurons. The neurons transmit at random which results in the false sense of experiencing a familiar situation that had previously been experienced. Different types of déjà vu are difficult to pinpoint because researchers who have studied déjà vu have developed their own categories and differentiations. On a broad perspective of research that is available, déjà vu can be divided into two categories: associative déjà vu and biological déjà vu. Associative déjà vu is typically experienced by normal, healthy individuals who experience things with the senses that can be associated to other experiences or past events. Biological déjà vu occurs in individuals who have temporal lobe epilepsy. Their experience of déjà vu occurs usually just before they experience a seizure. Recent research is looking at the new occurrence of chronic déjà vu. Chronic déjà vu is when an individual is experiencing a constant state of déjà vu. Failure of the temporal lobe is thought to be the cause of this phenomenon because the circuits that connect to memories get stuck in an active state, and create memories that never happened.
Global policy
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
Legacy
Penfield was designated a National Historic Person in 1988 by the government of Canada. As such, a federal historical marker from the national Historic Sites & Monuments Board and Parks Canada was erected, located at a building that bears his name on University Street, part of the McGill University campus in Montreal.
A postage stamp honouring Penfield was issued by Canada Post on March 15, 1991.
Avenue du Docteur-Penfield (), on the slope of Mount Royal in Montreal, was named in Penfield's honour on October 5, 1978. Part of this avenue borders McGill University's campus and intersects with Promenade Sir-William-Oslermeaning medical historians and the like may amuse themselves by arranging to "meet at Osler and Penfield".
A portrait of Wilder Penfield hangs in Rhodes House at the University of Oxford, England.
Penfield was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) of the United Kingdom in 1943.
In honour of Wilder Graves Penfield's contribution to the public sector in Montreal, notably alongside his interest in further developing education, Wilder Penfield Elementary School was also established as part of the Lester B. Pearson School Board.
Penfield building, one of John Abbott College's ten buildings, also bears the name of the famous neurosurgeon.
Penfield was the subject of a Google doodle on January 26, 2018, marking the 127th anniversary of his birth. The doodle appeared on the Google homepage in selected countries on five continents.
Penfield Children's Center In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is named for Dr. Penfield for his advocacy of early intervention for children with developmental delays and disabilities.
Eponyms
Penfield's homunculus (neuroanatomic feature first characterized by Penfield in 1937)
Penfield syndrome (a form of autonomic epileptic seizure)
Penfield dissector (a type of surgical instrument used in neurosurgery and other disciplines)
Honorary degrees
Penfield was awarded many honorary degrees in recognition of his medical career. These include:
In popular culture
Wilder Penfield was the subject of a Heritage Minute, dramatizing his development of the Montreal procedure. When Dr. Penfield stimulates the seizure-producing part of her brain, an epileptic patient exclaims: "I can smell burnt toast!" This Heritage Minute was widely shown and again made Penfield a household name in Canada.
In Robert J. Sawyer's 2012 novel Triggers, it is revealed that the major character of Dr. Ranjip Singh, a Canadian, was inspired to pursue his career in neuroscience by having seen the "I can smell burnt toast" Heritage Minute about Penfield.
In science fiction author Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, characters use a household device called a Penfield Mood Organ to dial up emotions on demand.
Shirow Masamune's anime series Ghost Hound makes several references to Penfield and his studies.
The song "Wilder Penfield" by the Dead Sea Apes, a UK-based psychedelic rock group, from The Sun Behind The Sun, a collaboration with Black Tempest released in February 2013 on Cardinal Fuzz records.
In Ray Loriga's 1999 novel Tokio ya no nos quiere, Penfield's method of stimulating the temporal lobes is described and modified to treat the main character who has issues with memory recollection.
In the video game Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, "Penfield Mapping" is seemingly the process of drawing a cortical homunculus, necessary for one to enter a virtual environment.
Wilder Penfield's, Sensory & Motor Homunculus 3D figures have been on permanent exhibition in the National History Museum, London. Penfield's Homunculi have become popular exhibits.
College football coaching record
Between his graduation from Princeton and his studies at Oxford, Penfield served as Princeton's head football coach for one season.
References
Selected books and publications
Books
Cytology and Cellular Pathology of the Nervous System. By various authors. Edited by W. Penfield. Three volumes, 1280 pages, 1932 (read online)
"Epilepsy and Cerebral Localization: A Study of the Mechanism, Treatment and Prevention of Epileptic Seizures". By Wilder Penfield and Theodore C. Erickson. Chapter XIV by Herbert H. Jasper. Chapter XX by M. R. Harrower-Erickson. Charles C. Thomas, 1941.
Penfield, Wilder (1941). Canadian Army of Military Neurosurgery. Ottawa: Government Distribution Office. (read online)
Penfield, Wilder; Kristiansen, Kristian (1951). Epileptic seizure patterns; a study of the localizing value of initial phenomena in focal cortical seizures,. Springfield, Ill.: Thomas. .
Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain. 2nd edition. Jasper, H., and Penfield, W. Little, Brown and Co., 1954.
(read online)
Speech and Brain Mechanisms, Penfield, Wilder and Roberts, Lamar, Princeton University Press, 1959. (read online)
The Torch, a story of Hippocrates. Penfield, W. Little, Brown and Co.; 1960. . (Historical novel) "A story of love, treachery, and the battle for truth in ancient Greece." (read online)
The Mystery of the Mind : A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain. Penfield, Wilder. Princeton University Press, 1975. (read online)
No Man Alone: A Neurosurgeon's Life, Little, Brown and Co., 1977. . Penfield's autobiography. (read online)
Something hidden : a biography of Wilder Penfield. Jefferson Lewis, Doubleday and Co., 1981. . (read online)
Articles
External links
1958 Gateways To The Mind - Note: Starting at 46 minutes there is a 3 minutes video talk by Wilder Penfield (watch online)
1981 Something Hidden : A Portrait of Wilder Penfield by Bob Lower and Jefferson Lewis, National Film Board of Canada and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. VHS and DVD (watch video dailies online)
Penfield's Order of Canada citation
Wilder Penfield Fonds at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University.
Searchable database of the Penfield Fonds from the Osler Library of the History of Medicine
A selection of items from the fonds have been digitized: Wilder Penfield Digital Collection
Jefferson Lewis Fonds at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, contains materials assembled by Jefferson Lewis for the purpose of writing his biography of Penfield, Something Hidden
Penfield biography at the "Great Canadian Psychology" website (University of Alberta).
Wilder Graves Penfield, MD, OM, CC, FRS, 1891-1976 / text by Kate Williams and Wilder G. Penfield III (archive)
1891 births
1976 deaths
Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
American emigrants to Canada
American Rhodes Scholars
Anglophone Quebec people
Canadian medical researchers
Canadian Presbyterians
Deaths from cancer in Quebec
Canadian cognitive neuroscientists
Companions of the Order of Canada
Canadian Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Canadian Fellows of the Royal Society
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Foreign Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine alumni
Academic staff of McGill University
Members of the Order of Merit
Canadian neurosurgeons
Neuropsychologists
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
People from Hudson, Wisconsin
Princeton Tigers football coaches
Princeton Tigers football players
Players of American football from Spokane, Washington
Members of the American Philosophical Society
20th-century Canadian psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
World Constitutional Convention call signatories
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt%27s%20Manufacturing%20Company
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Colt's Manufacturing Company
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Colt's Manufacturing Company, LLC (CMC, formerly Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company) is an American firearms manufacturer, founded in 1855 by Samuel Colt and now a subsidiary of Czech holding company Colt CZ Group. It is the successor corporation to Colt's earlier firearms-making efforts, which started in 1836. Colt is known for the engineering, production, and marketing of firearms, most especially between the 1850s and World War I, when it was a dominating force in its industry and a seminal influence on manufacturing technology. Colt's earliest designs played a major role in the popularization of the revolver and the shift away from single-shot pistols. Although Samuel Colt did not invent the revolver concept, his designs resulted in the first very successful model.
The most famous Colt products include the Colt Walker, made in 1847 in the facilities of Eli Whitney Jr., the Colt Single Action Army, the Colt Python, and the Colt M1911 pistol, which is currently the longest-standing military and law enforcement service handgun in the world and is still used today. Though they did not develop it, for a long time Colt was also primarily responsible for all AR-15 and M16 rifle production, as well as many derivatives of those firearms. The most successful and famous of these are numerous M16 carbines, including the Colt Commando family, and the M4 carbine.
In 2002, Colt Defense was split off from Colt's Manufacturing Company. Colt's Manufacturing Company served the civilian market, while Colt Defense served the law enforcement, military, and private security markets worldwide. The two companies remained in the same West Hartford, Connecticut location cross-licensing certain merchandise before reuniting in 2013. Following the loss of its M4 contract in 2013, the reunited Colt was briefly in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, starting in 2015 and emerging in January 2016. The company was bought by Česká zbrojovka Group in 2021. In April 2022, Česká zbrojovka Group announced it had changed its name to Colt CZ Group.
History
19th century
1830s–1850s
Samuel Colt received a British patent on his improved design for a revolver in 1835, and two U.S. patents in 1836, one on February 25 (later numbered U.S. Patent 9430X) and another on August 29 (). That same year, he founded his first corporation for its manufacture, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, Colt's Patent. The first firearm manufactured at the new Paterson plant, however, was the Colt First Model Ring Lever rifle beginning in 1837. This was followed shortly thereafter in late 1837 by the introduction of the Colt Paterson. This corporation suffered quality problems in production. Making firearms with interchangeable parts was still rather new (it had reached commercial viability only about a decade before), and it was not yet easy to replicate across different factories. Interchangeability was not complete in the Paterson works, and traditional gunsmithing techniques did not fill the gap entirely there. The Colt Paterson revolver found patchy success and failure; some worked well, while others had problems. The United States Marine Corps and United States Army reported quality problems with these earliest Colt revolvers. Production had ended at the New Jersey corporation by 1842.
Colt made another attempt at revolver production in 1846 and submitted a prototype to the US government. During the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), this prototype was seen by Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker who made some suggestions to Colt about making it in a larger caliber. Having no factory or machinery to produce the pistols, Samuel Colt collaborated with the Whitney armory of Whitneyville, Connecticut. This armory was run by the family of Eli Whitney. Eli Whitney Jr (born 1820), the son of the cotton-gin-developer patriarch, was the head of the family armory and a successful arms maker and innovator of the era. Colt used a combination of renting the Whitney firm's facilities and subcontracting parts to the firm to continue his pursuit of revolver manufacture.
Colt's new revolvers found favor with Texan volunteers (the progenitors of later Texas Rangers cavalry groups), and they placed an order for 1,000 revolvers that became known as the Colt Walker, ensuring Colt's continuance in manufacturing revolvers. In 1848, Colt was able to start again with a new business of his own, and 1855, he converted it into a corporation under the name of Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut.
Colt purchased a large tract of land beside the Connecticut River, where he built his first factory in 1848, a larger factory called the Colt Armory in 1855, a manor that he called Armsmear in 1856, and employee tenement housing. He established a ten-hour day for employees, installed washing stations in the factory, mandated a one-hour lunch break, and built the Charter Oak Hall, a club where employees could enjoy games, newspapers, and discussion rooms. Colt ran his plant with a military-like discipline, he would fire workers for tardiness, sub-par work or even suggesting improvements to his designs.
In an attempt to attract skilled German workers to his plant, Colt built a village near the factory away from the tenements which he named Coltsville and modeled the homes after a village near Potsdam. In an effort to stem the flooding from the river he planted German osiers, a type of willow tree in a 2-mile long dike. He subsequently built a factory to manufacture wicker furniture made from these trees.
The 1850s were a decade of phenomenal success for the new Colt corporation. Colt was the first to widely commercialize the total use of interchangeable parts throughout a product. It was a leader in assembly line practice. It was a major innovator and training ground in manufacturing technology in this decade (and several after). Soon after establishing his Hartford factory, Colt set out to establish a factory in Europe and chose London, England. He organized a large display of his firearms at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Hyde Park, London and ingratiated himself by presenting cased engraved Colt revolvers to such appropriate officials as Britain's Master General of the Ordnance. At one exhibit Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. As the world's leading proponent of mass production techniques, Colt went on to deliver a lecture on the subject to the Institution of Civil Engineers in London. The membership rewarded his efforts by awarding him the Telford Gold Medal.
Colt's presence in the British market caused years of acrimony and lawsuits among British arms makers, who doubted the validity of Colt's British patent and the desirability of the American system of manufacturing. It took many more years and a UK government commission before the point became universally accepted that such manufacture was possible and economical. Colt opened his London plant on the River Thames at Pimlico and began production on January 1, 1853. Many English people saw Colt's advanced steam-powered machinery as proof of America's growing position as a leader in modern industrial production. On a tour of the factory, Charles Dickens was so impressed with the facilities that he recorded his favorable comments of Colt's revolvers in an 1854 edition of Household Words. Most significant, the Colt factory's machines mass-produced interchangeable parts that could be easily and cheaply put together on assembly lines using standardized patterns and gauges by unskilled labor as opposed to England's top gunmakers.
In 1854 the British Admiralty ordered 4,000 Navy Model Colt revolvers. In 1855 the British Army placed an order for 5,000 of these revolvers for army issue. Despite a following order later in the year for an additional 9,000 revolvers, Colt failed to convince the British to adopt his revolver as the issue sidearm for the army. Colt began to realize that British sales were failing to meet his expectations. Unable to justify the London factory's expenses, Colt closed the London factory in 1856. Over the next few months his workmen crated and shipped the machinery and disassembled firearms back to America.
Though the U.S. was not directly involved in the Crimean War (1854–1856), Colt's weapons were used by both sides. In 1855 Colt unveiled new state-of-the-art armories in the Hartford and London factories stocked with the latest machine tools (some of which were of Colt's devising), many built by Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, who would found the original Pratt & Whitney tool building firm a few years later. For example, the Lincoln miller debuted to industry at these armories.
Colt had set up libraries and educational programs within the plants for his employees. Colt's armories in Hartford were seminal training grounds for several generations of toolmakers and other machinists, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century. Prominent examples included F. Pratt and A. Whitney (as mentioned above); Henry Leland (who would end up at Cadillac and Lincoln); Edward Bullard Sr of the Bullard firm; and, through Pratt & Whitney, Worcester R. Warner and Ambrose Swasey (of Warner & Swasey).
In 1852 an employee of Colt's, Rollin White, came up with the idea of having the revolver cylinder bored through to accept metallic cartridges. He took this idea to Colt who flatly rejected it and ended up firing White within a few years. Colt historian RL Wilson has described this as the major blunder of Sam Colt's professional life. Rollin White left Colt's in December 1854 and registered a patent on April 3, 1855, in Hartford, Connecticut, as patent number 12,648: Improvement in Repeating Fire-arms. On November 17, 1856, White signed an agreement with Smith & Wesson for the exclusive use of his patent. The contract stipulated that White would be paid 25 cents for every revolver, but that it was up to him to defend his patent against infringement as opposed to Smith & Wesson.
During the 1850s and 1860s, Rollin White had been permanently trying to keep control on his breech-loading system patent, bringing a lawsuit to any breech-loaded manufactured gun. He nevertheless obtained an advance against royalties for using his patent from Smith & Wesson, a company that not only introduced its first revolver in 1857 (Smith & Wesson Model 1, a rear-loader) but also started, as of 1858, to convert cap & ball percussion guns into rear-loaders, even with formerly Colt manufactured revolvers. But the Colt's company itself was prevented by American laws from infringing the Rollin White patent and all along the 1850s and 1860s continued manufacturing percussion guns. In 1860 it produced a new revolver model for the United States Army. This Colt Army Model 1860 appeared just in time for the American Civil War.
1860–1865: American Civil War
The American Civil War was a boon to firearms manufacturers such as Colt's, and the company thrived during the conflict. Sam Colt had carefully developed contacts within the ordnance department, signing the very first government contract for 25,000 rifles. Colt's Factory was described as "an industrial palace topped by a blue dome", powered by a 250-horsepower steam engine. During the American Civil War, Colt had 1,500 employees who produced 150,000 muskets and pistols a year. In 1861 and 1863, the company sold 107,000 of the Colt Army Model 1860 alone, with production reaching 200,500 by the end of the war in 1865.
During the war, Colt's was still prevented by the American laws from infringing Rollin White's patent. Nevertheless, the war made a huge fortune for the company, allowing Sam Colt to become America's first manufacturing tycoon, though he did not live to see the end of the war; he died of rheumatic fever on January 10, 1862. His close friend and firearms engineer, Elisha K. Root, took over as Colt's company president. On February 4, 1864, a fire destroyed most of the factory, including arms, machinery, plans, and factory records. On September 1, 1865, Root died, leaving the company in the hands of Samuel Colt's brother-in-law, Richard Jarvis. The company's vice-president was William B. Franklin, who had recently left the Army at the end of the Civil War. With the Civil War over and having no new military contracts, Colt's Manufacturing was forced to lay off over 800 employees.
The company found itself in a precarious situation. The original revolver patents had expired, allowing other companies to produce copies of his designs. Additionally, metallic cartridge revolvers were gaining in popularity, but Colt could not produce any because of the Rollin White patent held by rival Smith & Wesson. Likewise, Colt had been so protective of its own patents that other companies had been unable to make revolvers similar to their design. As the Rollin White patent neared expiration, Colt moved to develop its own metallic cartridge revolver.
The New York Daily Tribune denounced Colt and his company by asserting, “the traitors have found sympathizers among us, men base enough to sell arms when they knew they would be… in the hands of the deadly enemies of the Union… Col. Colt’s manufactory can turn probably 1,000 a week and has been doing so for the past four months for the South.” This article even chided the Federal Government for not taking action against Colt: “Every man who makes arms should be watched, and if he will not work for a fair equivalent for the Government, his manufactory should be taken away from him.” Despite secession and growing tensions between the North and the South, “Colt’s sales to Alabama, Virginia, Georgia, and Mississippi in 1860 alone were at least $61,000 (today’s equivalent of about 3.35 million).” Until just days before the first shot at Fort Sumter, Colt received orders from various states, some participating in secession. In his memoir on Colt, written in 1866, Henry Barnard reported, “before the rebellion broke out, Col. Colt, foreseeing that his weapons must ere long be in double demand, had made all preparations to extend his factory.”
1865–1880s: Post–Civil War
It was 1914 when Colt's first effort toward a metallic cartridge revolver was by conversion of existing percussion revolvers. The first of these conversions was patented on September 15, 1868, by Colt engineer, F. Alexander Thuer as patent number 82258. The Thuer conversion was made by milling off the rear of the receiver and replacing it with a breechplate containing six internal firing pins. The cartridges were loaded through the mouths of the chambers. Colt made 5000 of these but they were not well accepted. Colt found the mechanism so complex it included a spare percussion cylinder with each revolver.
Colt tasked its superintendent of engineering, Charles Richards, to come up with a solution. The Richards conversion was performed on the Colt 1860 Army revolver. The caliber was .44 Colt and the loading lever was replaced by an ejector rod. This conversion added a breech plate with a firing pin and a rear sight mounted on the breechplate. Cartridges were loaded into the cylinder one at a time via a loading gate. Colt manufactured 9000 of these revolvers between 1873 and 1878. In 1873, Colt performed the same conversion on the M1851 and M1861 revolvers for the US Navy in .38 rimfire. Another of Colt's engineers, William Mason, improved this conversion by placing the rear sight on the hammer and, along with Richards, he was granted patents in 1871 to convert percussion revolvers into rear-loading metallic-cartridge revolvers. Those converted revolvers are identified as the "Richards-Mason conversion". There were approximately 2100 Richards-Mason M1860 Army conversions made from 1877 to 1878 in a serial-number range 5800 to 7900.
In November 1865, Franklin had attempted to purchase a license to the Rollin White patent from competitor Smith & Wesson. White and Smith & Wesson would take no less than $1.1 million, but Franklin and Colt's directors decided it was too large an investment on a patent that would expire in 1868. In the meantime, Colt turned its attention to manufacturing goods other than firearms, such as watches, sewing machines, typewriters and bicycles. In 1868 Rollin White requested an extension to his patent, but the request was rejected. He then turned to the Congress, but the request was again rejected, this time by the Senate and on the initiative of President Ulysses Grant, in January 1870. This led the patent to expire, allowing competitors to develop their own breech-loading guns and metallic cartridges. Following this, on that same year of 1870, Colt's bought the National Arms Company, a Brooklyn, New York company known for manufacturing derringers and for circumventing the Rollin White patent by utilizing a unique cartridge. Colt continued to produce the .41 Short derringer after the acquisition, as an effort to help break into the metallic-cartridge gun market, but also introduced its own three Colt Derringer Models, all of them also chambered in a .41 rimfire unique cartridge. The last model to be in production, the third Colt Derringer, was not dropped until 1912. The first metallic cartridge breech-loading weapons sold by Colt's were those Derringers, in 1870, that were formerly conceived by the National Arms Company, but Colt's also started developing its own rear-loading guns and cartridges.
In 1871, Colt's introduced its first revolver models using rear-loaded metallic cartridges: the .41 caliber Colt House Revolver (also known as the Cloverleaf for its four-round cylinder configuration) and the .22 cal Colt Open Top Pocket Model Revolver. However, Colt's wanted a more powerful practical handgun loaded with metallic cartridges so the company put forward William Mason, who in 1871 began work on Colt's first .44 caliber metallic-cartridge revolver: the Colt Model 1871-72 Open Top. The company registered two patents for the Open Top, one in 1871, the other in 1872, the same patents mentioned in the markings of Colt Single Action Army revolvers, a nowadays legendary and long produced model, improved and based on the Open Top. Production of the Open Top started in 1872 and stopped in 1873 when the Single Action Army model started to be delivered to the US Army. However, the Open Top was already a completely new design. The parts, for example, would not interchange with the older percussion pistols. Mason moved the rear sight to the rear of the barrel as opposed to the hammer or the breechblock of the earlier efforts. The caliber was .44 rimfire and it was submitted to the US Army for testing in 1872. The Army rejected the pistol and asked for a more powerful caliber with a stronger frame. Mason redesigned the frame to incorporate a topstrap, similar to the Remington revolvers, and placed the rear sight on the rear of the frame; he consulted with Richards on some other improvements. The first prototype of the new gun was still chambered in .44 rimfire, but the first model was in the newest caliber known as the .45 Colt.
The revolver was chosen by the Army in 1872, with the first order, for 8000 revolvers, shipping in the summer of 1873: The Colt Single Action Army or "Peacemaker", also known as the Colt Model 1873, was born. This revolver was one of the most prevalent firearms in the American West during the end of the 19th century and Colt still produces it, in six different calibers, two finishes and three barrel lengths.
In the new market of metallic cartridge rear-loading pocket revolvers, Colt's not only introduced its three Derringer Models (as of 1870) or the Colt House and the Open Top Pocket (the last two as of 1871) but also introduced in 1873 a subsequent design called its "New Line" revolver models, based on William Mason's patents.
After the success of the Colt Single Action Army and Colt's conversion of existing percussion revolvers to Richards-Mason conversions, Mason went on to design Colt's first Double-action revolver, the Colt M1877. Following this, he once again teamed up with Richards to produce a larger-framed version, the Colt M1878 Frontier. It was Colt's first large-frame, double-action revolver. It combined the front end of the Single Action Army revolver with a double-action, 6-shot frame mechanism. It was available commercially in numerous calibers.
The 1870s and 1880s provided sales opportunity to the Colt company via the spread of European-American society ever further westward across the continent, and the demand for firearms that it engendered in various ways. As white Americans displaced Indians from the Indian Territory, both sides were eager for firearms. On the white side, both the U.S. Army and civilians were customers of Colt. The Army carried Colt revolvers through the last of its Indian Wars. On the Indian side, Colt weapons were captured when possible, or bought from whoever was selling. Even among whites in towns where Indians had been vanquished, a thriving demand for guns existed, from the criminals to the police to self-defending civilians. Memoirs of Americans including Walter Chrysler and Jack Black speak of what it was like growing up in Western towns where most people had guns and open carry was common (such as in Kansas and Missouri, which were considered "out West" at the time—now considered the Old West).
1890s
Colt finally left the "loading gate concept" for a swing-out cylinder on its revolvers with the Colt M1889 Navy revolver, which resembled the Colt M1878 and was based on another design by Mason. The model was produced for three years between 1889 and 1892, and eclipsed by the Colt M1892 chambered in .38 Long Colt. The M1892 was replaced by the New Service Double Action revolver in 1899. In caliber .45 Colt, the New Service was accepted by the U.S. Military as the Model 1909 .45 revolver. The New Service revolver was available in other calibers such as .38 Special and, later in the 20th century, .45 ACP (as the M1917 revolver) and .357 Magnum.
Under a contract with the U.S. Army, Colt Arms built the Model 1895 ten-barrel variant of the Gatling Gun, capable of firing 800–900 .30 Army rounds per minute, and used with great effect at the Battle of San Juan Hill. The M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun or "Potato Digger" was built by Colt. The Colt–Browning was one of the first gas-operated machine guns, originally invented by John Browning. It became the first automatic machine gun adopted by the United States and saw limited use by the U.S. Marine Corps at the invasion of Guantánamo Bay and by the 1st Volunteer Infantry in the Santiago campaign during the Spanish–American War. In 1901, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt sold the company to a group of outside investors based in New York and Boston.
20th century
1900–1920s
During World War I, Colt surpassed all previous production achievements. John Browning worked for Colt for a time, and came up with a design for a semiautomatic pistol, which debuted as the Colt M1900 pistol and eventually evolved into the M1911. Prior to America's entry into the war, orders from Canada and the United Kingdom swelled the backlog of orders to three years. Colt hired 4,000 more workers, making a total of 10,000 employees—and its stock's price increased by 400%. By 1918, Colt had produced and sold 425,500 of the famous Browning-designed M1911. Because the factory could not keep up with demand for this pistol, the US Military decided to accept Colt New Service revolvers in caliber .45 ACP, called the M1917 revolver, as a substitute weapon. Competing manufacturer Smith & Wesson made double-action revolvers in .45 ACP, which were accepted and issued by the U.S. military under the same name. Colt produced 151,700 revolvers during the war as well as 13,000 Maxim-Vickers machine guns and 10,000 Browning machine guns with an additional 100,000 under subcontract to other companies.
Since Auto-Ordnance had no tooling for production of the newly developed Thompson submachine gun, John T. Thompson, in August 1920, entered into contract with Colt's to manufacture 15,000 Thompson 1921 submachine guns. The contract was signed on August 18, 1920. Colt's tooled up and produced the 15,000 units between April 1921 and March 1922.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression resulted in a slowing down of production for Colt. In anticipation of this, company presidents William C. Skinner and Samuel M. Stone implemented a diversification program similar to that done at the close of the American Civil War. Colt acquired contracts for business machines, calculators, dishwashers, motorcycles, and automobiles; all marketed under a name other than Colt. Samuel Stone acquired a firm that manufactured plastics and renamed it "Colt rock" as well as a company that manufactured electrical products. Colt weathered the financial crises of the time by cutting the work week, reducing salaries, and keeping more employees on the payroll than they needed. These measures kept the company in business but ate up the cash surplus they had acquired during the World War I years.
1930s: Great Depression
In 1935, after employees voted to disband a labor union, 1,000 workers went on strike for 13 weeks. Strikers became violent, attacking workers and detonating a bomb in front of company president Samuel M. Stone's house. The company set up a barracks, dining room, and recreation room for workers within the Colt Armory during the strike. On June 3, 1935, the National Recovery Administration ruled that the company was within its rights not to deal with the union and the strike ended. In the year following the strike, the factory was hit by a hurricane and flood. Many company shipping records and historical documents were lost as a result.
1939–1945: World War II
At the beginning of World War II, Colt ceased production of the Single Action Army revolver to devote more time to filling orders for the war. During the war Colt manufactured over 629,000 M1911A1 pistols as well as a large number of M1917 water-cooled machineguns. The company had a workforce of 15,000 men and women in three factories and production ran on three shifts, 24 hours a day, and won the Army-Navy rating of "E" for excellence. Colt ranked 99th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. However, the company was losing money every year due to mismanagement, an embittered workforce that had been stretched to its limits, and manufacturing methods which were becoming obsolete.
1945–1950s
As the war ended and demand for military arms came to a halt, production literally ceased. Many long-time workers and engineers retired from the company and nothing was built from 1945 to 1947. Mismanagement of funds during the war had a serious impact as the 105-year-old firm faced possible bankruptcy. In September 1955 the board of directors voted to merge Colt with an upstart conglomerate called Penn-Texas, which had acquired Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool the same year. Also in 1955, Colt released one of the most famous revolvers in history, the Colt Python. In 1958 Penn-Texas merged with Fairbanks-Morse to form the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation and in 1964 the conglomerate reorganized as Colt Industries. In 1956 Colt resumed production of the Single Action Army revolver and in 1961 began making commemorative versions of their classic models.
1960s–1970s
The 1960s were boom years for Colt with the escalation of the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara shutting down the Springfield Armory, and the U.S. Army's subsequent adoption of the M16, for which Colt held the production rights and would sell over 5 million units worldwide. Colt would capitalize on this with a range of AR-15 derivative carbines. They developed AR-15-based Squad Automatic Weapons, and the Colt SCAMP, an early PDW design. The Colt XM148 grenade launcher was created by Colt's design project engineer, gun designer Karl R. Lewis. The May 1967 "Colt's Ink" newsletter announced that he had won a national competition for his selection and treatment of materials in the design. The newsletter stated in part "In only 47 days, he wrote the specifications, designed the launcher, drew all the original prints, and had a working model built". At the end of the 1970s, there was a program run by the Air Force to replace the M1911A1. The Beretta 92S won, but this was contested by the Army. The Army ran their own trials, leading eventually to the Beretta 92F being selected as the M9.
In the early 1960s, Colt threatened legal action against Major League Baseball's new Houston franchise, the Colt .45s, citing trademark infringement. In December 1964 the team backed down, renaming itself the Astros.
1980s–1990s
The 1980s were fairly good years for Colt, but the coming end of the Cold War would change all that. Colt had long left innovation in civilian firearms to their competitors, feeling that the handgun business could survive on their traditional revolver and M1911 designs. Instead, Colt focused on the military market, where they held the primary contracts for the production of rifles for the US military. This strategy dramatically failed for Colt through a series of events in the 1980s. In 1984, the U.S. military standardized on the Beretta 92F. This was not much of a loss for Colt's current business, as M1911A1 production had stopped in 1945. Meanwhile, the military rifle business was growing because the U.S. military had a major demand for more upgraded M16s; the M16A2 model had just been adopted and the military needed hundreds of thousands of them.
In 1985, Colt's workers, members of the United Auto Workers went on strike for higher wages. This strike would ultimately last for five years, and was one of the longest-running labor strikes in American history. With replacement workers running production, the quality of Colt's firearms began to decline. Dissatisfied with Colt's production, in 1988 the U.S. military awarded the contract for future M16 production to Fabrique Nationale. The strike finally ended when an agreement was reached on 22 March 1990.
Some criticized Colt's range of handgun products in the late 1980s as out of touch with the demands of the market, and their once-vaunted reputation for quality had suffered during the UAW strike. Colt's stable of double-action revolvers and single-action pistols was seen as old-fashioned by a marketplace that was captivated by the new generation of "wondernines" – high-capacity, 9×19mm Parabellum caliber handguns, as typified by the Glock 17. Realizing that the future of the company was at stake, labor and management agreed to end the strike in an arrangement that resulted in Colt being sold to a group of private investors, the State of Connecticut, and the UAW itself.
The new Colt first attempted to address some of the demands of the market with the production in 1989 of the Double Eagle, a double-action pistol heavily based on the M1911 design, which was seen as an attempt to "modernize" the classic Browning design. Colt followed this up in 1992 with the Colt All American 2000, which was unlike any other handgun Colt had produced before—being a polymer-framed, rotating-barrel, 9×19mm handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 rounds. It was designed by Reed Knight, with parts manufactured by outside vendors and assembled by Colt; its execution was disastrous. Early models were plagued with inaccuracy and unreliability, and suffered from the poor publicity of a product recall. The product launch failed and production of the All American 2000 ended in 1994. This series of events led to the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992.
In 1992, the creditors, state and shareholders enlisted the aid of turnaround specialist RC (Ron) Whitaker to overcome the bankruptcy challenge. He developed a new team to address the company's situation. In addition to creating a positive working relationship with the UAW to introduce new techniques like cellular manufacturing, operator quality assurance and single-piece flow, they developed a renewed focus on product development. This resulted in the M4 carbine and Colt 22 pistol, two of the most successful new product offerings in the late 1990s, capturing 50% market shares in the first year of production.
The 1990s brought the end of Cold War, which resulted in a large downturn for the entire defense industry. Colt was hit by this downturn, though it would be made worse later in the 1990s by a boycott by the shooting public in America. In 1994, the assets of Colt were purchased by Zilkha & Co, a financial group owned by Donald Zilkha. It was speculated that Zilkha's financial backing of the company enabled Colt to begin winning back military contracts. In fact, during the time period it won only one contract, the M4 carbine. However, the U.S. military had been purchasing Colt carbines for the past 30 years (See Colt Commando). During a 1998 The Washington Post interview, CEO Ron Stewart stated that he would favor a federal permit system with training and testing for gun ownership. This led to a massive grassroots boycott of Colt's products by gun stores and US gun owners.
Zilkha replaced Stewart with Steven Sliwa and focused the remainder of Colt's handgun design efforts into "smart guns," a concept favored politically, but that had little interest or support among handgun owners or police departments. This research never produced any meaningful results due to the limited technology at the time. Colt announced the termination of its production of double-action revolvers in October 1999.
21st century
2002–present
The boycott of Colt gradually faded out after William M. Keys, a retired U.S. Marine Lt. General, took the helm of the company in 2002. Keys salvaged Colt's reputation and brought Colt from the brink of bankruptcy to an international leader in Defense production. In 2010 Gerald R. Dinkel replaced Keys as CEO of Colt Defense LLC, while Keys remained on the board of directors for Colt Defense.
Colt has to compete with other companies that make M1911-style pistols such as Kimber and AR-15 rifles such as Bushmaster. Bushmaster has subsequently overtaken Colt in the number of AR-15s sold on the civilian market. Colt suffered a legal defeat in court when it sued Bushmaster for trademark infringement claiming that "M4" was a trademark that it owned. The judge ruled that since the term M4 is a generic designation that Colt does not specifically own, Colt had to pay monetary reimbursement to Bushmaster to recoup Bushmaster's legal fees. The M4 designation itself comes from the U.S. military designation system, whose terms are in the public domain.
Colt has entered in several US contracts with mixed results. For example, Colt had an entry in the Advanced Combat Rifle (ACR) program of the 1980s, but along with other contestants failed to replace the M16A2. Colt and many other makers entered the US trials for a new pistol in the 1980s, though the Beretta entry would win and become the M9 Pistol. The Colt OHWS handgun was beaten by H&K for what became the MK23 SOCOM, it was lighter than the H&K entry but lost in performance. Colt did not get to compete for the XM8 since it was not an open competition. Colt is a likely entrant in any competition for a new US service rifle. Current M16 rifles have been made primarily by FN USA since 1988. However, Colt remained the sole source for M4 carbines for the US military. Under their license agreement with Colt, the US military could not legally award second-source production contracts for the M4 until July 1, 2009. In 2007 Colt won a contract to produce M4 carbines for the US military worth $71 million. In 2008 this was followed by a $151 million order for 89,000 M4 carbine rifles.
In a 2002 restructuring, Colt's Manufacturing Company, Inc, spun off Colt Defense, LLC, to supply military, law enforcement and security markets. Colt's Manufacturing Company itself become a subsidiary of New Colt Holding Corp, LLC. In 2013 Colt Defense acquired New Colt Holding Corp., in part to protect a licensing agreement set to expire in 2014, where Colt's Manufacturing sold sporting rifles marketed to consumers that were manufactured by Colt Defense. This formed a single company to develop, manufacture and sell firearms under the Colt name for all markets for the first time since the 2003 completion of the restructuring.
In 2013, Dennis R. Veilleux assumed the role of president & chief executive officer for Colt Holding Co. LLC and president & chief executive officer of Colt Defense LLC. Mr. Veilleux previously occupied the position of Principal at Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc., Principal at General Electric Co., president & chief executive officer at Colt's Manufacturing Co. LLC and president & chief executive officer at New Colt Holding Corp.
Following persistent reliability problems, the reunited Colt lost its contract with the US military for M4 rifles in 2013. Parent company Colt Defense, LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 15, 2015, citing both assets and debts in the $100 million to $500 million range. According to analysts, Colt's problems were due to the loss of the contract and low demand for its civilian handguns. In January 2016, Colt announced that the bankruptcy court had approved its restructuring plan.
After restructuring, a reinvigorated Colt introduced several new versions of its 1911 pistols, including stainless-steel competition and target models. In 2017, Colt returned to the production of double-action revolvers with the .38 Colt Cobra, followed in 2019 by an improved version of the 1999 .357 Magnum Carry, the King Cobra. In 2020, Colt reintroduced a modernized Colt Python in stainless steel, followed by the reintroduction of 6 and 8 inch stainless steel versions of the Colt Anaconda in 2021.
In 2021, Colt was purchased by the Česká zbrojovka Group (CZG), which would rename itself Colt CZ Group in 2022. Lubomír Kovařík, the chairman of the CZG, stated that the acquisition would allow for co-operative research and development between the two companies, and specified that Colt products would continue to be manufactured in the United States.
Presidents
Samuel Colt (1855–1862)
Elisha K. Root (1862–1865)
Richard Jarvis (1865–1901)
John Hall (1901–1902)
Lewis C. Grover (1902–1909)
William C. Skinner (1909–1911)
Col. Charles L.F. Robinson (1911–1916)
William C. Skinner (1916–1921)
Samuel M. Stone (1921–1944)
Graham H. Anthony (1944–1949)
B. Franklin Conner (1949–1955)
Chester Bland (1955–1958)
Fred A. Roff Jr. (1958–1962)
David C. Scott (1962–1963)
Paul A. Benke (1963–1968)
David I. Margolis (1968–1990)
Richard F. Gamble (1990)
Ronald E. Stilwell (1990–1992)
Ronald C. Whitaker (1992–1995)
John F. Jastrem (1995–1996)
Donald Zilkha (1996)
Ronald L. Stewart (1996–1999)
Steven Sliwa (1999)
William M. Keys (1999–2013)
Dennis R. Veilleux (2013–present)
Archives
The company's factory collection was donated to the Museum of Connecticut History in 1957. At the same time, the company's business records were donated to the Connecticut State Library.
Samuel Colt's personal firearm collection resides at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. A collection of his personal papers is owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
Products
Handguns
The years in parentheses indicate the year when production started, not the year of the model's patent.
Percussion revolvers
Colt Paterson (1836)
Colt Walker (1847)
Colt Dragoon (1848)
Colt Model 1849 Pocket Revolver (1849)
Colt 1851 Navy (1851)
Colt 1855 Sidehammer (1855)
Colt 1860 Army (1860)
Colt 1861 Navy (1861)
Colt Model 1862 Pocket Police (1862)
Metallic cartridge revolvers
Colt House (1871)
Colt Open Top Pocket Model Revolver (1871)
Colt Model 1871-72 Open Top (1872)
Colt Single Action Army "Peacemaker" (1873)
Colt New Line (1873)
Colt Lightning, Thunderer and Rainmaker (1877)
Colt Model 1878 Frontier (1878)
Colt M1889 (1889)
Colt M1892 (1892 to 1903)
Colt New Police Revolver (1896–1905)
Colt New Service (1898)
Colt M1905 New Marine
Colt M1917
Colt Anaconda (AA frame)
Colt Police Positive (D frame)
Colt Police Positive Special / Viper (D frame)
Colt Detective Special (D frame)
Colt Cobra (D frame)
Colt Diamondback (D frame)
Colt Official Police revolver
Colt SF VI
Colt Python (I frame)
Colt Trooper (I frame)
Colt King Cobra (V frame)
Semi-automatic pistols
Colt M1900 (1900)
Colt M1902 (1902)
Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless (Model M, 1903)
Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket (Model N, 1908)
Colt M1911 (Model O, 1911)
Colt M1911A1
Colt 2000
Colt Cadet 22
Colt Target Model 22
Colt Mustang
Colt Mustang Plus II
Colt Mustang XSP
Colt Delta Elite
Colt Double Eagle
Colt New Agent
Colt Officer's ACP
Colt Woodsman (Model S)
Colt T-4 (prototype)
Colt Commander
Colt Defender
Machine pistols
Colt SCAMP
Long guns
Colt 1855 Revolving carbine/rifle
Colt 1878 Hammer Shotgun
Colt-Burgess rifle
Colt–Browning M1895 machine gun
Colt Lightning Carbine
Colt Stagecoach .22 LR semi-automatic rifle
Colt ACR
Colt Double rifle
ArmaLite AR-15 type rifles
Colt Monitor – produced under license
Thompson SMG – produced under license
Cartridges
.25 ACP
.32 ACP
.32 Short Colt
.32 Long Colt
.38 ACP
.38 Super
.380 ACP
.38 Short Colt
.38 Long Colt
.41 Long Colt
.44 Colt
.45 ACP
.45 Colt
See also
List of modern armament manufacturers
Sodium silicate, used as a cement for paper cartridges used in early Colt revolvers during the American Civil War
References
Bibliography
External links
Colt official site
The Colt Revolver in the American West
Colt Automatic Pistols Home Page
Jarvis-Robinson Family Papers. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Most of the following are filed under 36-150 Huyshope Avenue, 17-170 Van Dyke Avenue, 49 Vredendale Avenue, Hartford, Hartford County, CT:
Firearm manufacturers of the United States
Historic American Engineering Record in Connecticut
Military in Connecticut
1836 establishments in Connecticut
Manufacturing companies established in 1836
Western (genre) staples and terminology
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20English%20words%20of%20Dutch%20origin
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List of English words of Dutch origin
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This is an incomplete list of Dutch expressions used in English; some are relatively common (e.g. cookie), some are comparatively rare. In a survey by Joseph M. Williams in Origins of the English Language it is estimated that about 1% of English words are of Dutch origin.
In many cases the loanword has assumed a meaning substantially different from its Dutch forebear. Some English words have been borrowed directly from Dutch. But typically, English spellings of Dutch loanwords suppress combinations of vowels of the original word which do not exist in English and replace them with existing vowel combinations respectively. For example, the oe in koekje or koekie becomes oo in cookie, the ij (considered a vowel in Dutch) and the ui in vrijbuiter becomes ee and oo in freebooter, the aa in baas becomes o in boss, the oo in stoof becomes o in stove.
As languages, English and Dutch are both West Germanic, and descend further back from the common ancestor language Proto-Germanic. Their relationship however, has been obscured by the lexical influence of Old Norse as a consequence of Viking expansion from the 9th till the 11th century, and Norman French, as a consequence of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Because of their close common relationship - in addition to the large Latin and French vocabulary both languages possess - many English words are essentially identical to their Dutch lexical counterparts, either in spelling (plant, begin, fruit), pronunciation (pool = pole, boek = book, diep = deep), or both (offer, hard, lip) or as false friends (ramp = disaster, roof = robbery, mop = joke). These cognates or in other ways related words are excluded from this list.
Dutch expressions have been incorporated into English usage for many reasons and in different periods in time. These are some of the most common ones:
From Old Dutch
Many Latinate words in the English lexicon were borrowed from Latin. Quite a few of these words can further trace their origins back to a Germanic source - usually Old Low Franconian. Old Dutch is the western variant of this language. In cases it is not clear whether the loanword is from Old Dutch (Old West Low Franconian) or another Germanic language, they have been excluded from the list. See also: List of English Latinates of Germanic origin
Since speakers of West Germanic languages spoken along the North Sea coast from the 5th to the 9th century lived close enough together to form a linguistic crossroads - water was the main way of transportation - Dutch and English share some traits that other West Germanic languages do not possess. Lexical examples are Dutch vijf / English five (compare German: Fünf) and Dutch leef / English live (compare German Leben). These words have been excluded from the list. See also: Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
Since the Norman conquest of 1066 many Latinate words entered the English lexicon via French, which has – via Old French – a substantial base of Old Dutch (or Old Low Franconian) and Middle Dutch. For instance, French boulevard comes from Dutch bolwerk. In cases it is not clear whether the loanword in French is from Dutch or another Germanic language, they have been excluded from the list. See also: Influence of Franconian language on French
For some loanwords stemming from this period it is not always clear whether they are of Old Dutch, Old Norse, another Germanic language or an unknown Old English origin. These words have been excluded from the list, or indicated as such.
From Middle Dutch
About one-third of the invading Norman army of 1066 came from Dutch speaking Flemish. Many Flemings stayed in England after the Conquest and influenced the English language.
The main part of refugees to England, Wales and Scotland from the 11th till the 17th century were from the Low Countries; particularly Flemish skilled weavers and textile workers immigrated as a result of floods, overpopulation and warfare in Flanders. In 1527, when England's population numbered 5 million, London alone had tens of thousands of Flemings, while an estimated third of the Scottish population has a Flemish background.
The Hanseatic League had in the late Middle Ages a trade network along the coast of Northern Europe and England, using to Dutch related Middle Low German as lingua franca. Some loanwords from this period could come from either language. These words have been excluded from the list, or indicated as such.
From Modern Dutch
In the Dutch Golden Age, spanning most of the 17th century, Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world, and many English words of Dutch origin concerning these areas are stemming from this period.
English and Dutch rivalry at sea resulted in many Dutch naval terms in English. See also: Dutch linguistic influence on naval terms
Via settlements in North America and elsewhere in the world Dutch language influenced English spoken there, particularly American English. That resulted also in numerous place names based on Dutch words and places. These are excluded from the list unless they are well known, like Brooklyn (from the Dutch town Breukelen) and Wall Street (from Dutch Walstraat). See also: List of place names of Dutch origin
Due to contact between Afrikaans and English speakers in South Africa, many Dutch words entered English via Afrikaans, which has an estimated 90 to 95% vocabulary of Dutch origin. Only the words that entered standard English are listed here. Afrikaans words that do not stem from Cape Dutch but from an African, Indian or other European language, are not listed here. See also: List of English words of Afrikaans origin and List of South African slang words
A
Aardvark from South African Dutch aardvark (earth + pig)
Aboard from Dutch Aan boord
Afrikaans from Dutch Afrikaans (Africanish)
Aloof from Old French lof, based on Middle Dutch lof (windward direction), now oploeven + Middle English a
Apartheid from Afrikaans Apartheid, from Dutch apart + suffix -heid (separate + -hood)
Avast from 17th century Dutch hou'vast (hold fast, hold steady)
B
Bamboo from 16th century Dutch bamboe, based on Malay mambu
Batik from Dutch batik, based on Javanese amba + titik (to write + dot, point)
Bazooka from US slang bazoo (mouth), based on Dutch bazuin (trompet)
Beaker from either Old Norse bikarr or Middle Dutch beker (mug, cup)
Beleaguer from 16th century Dutch belegeren (besiege)
Berm from French berme, based on Old Dutch b(a)erm
Bicker from Middle Dutch bicken (to slash, attack) + Middle English frequentative suffix -er
Blare from an unrecorded Old English *blæren or from Middle Dutch blaren and blèren (to bleat, to shout)
Blasé via French blasé, past participle of blaser (="to satiate"), perhaps from Dutch blazen (="to blow"), with a sense of "puffed up under the effects of drinking"
Blaze (to make public, often in a bad sense, boastfully) from Middle Dutch blasen (="to blow, on a trumpet)
Blink perhaps from Middle Dutch blinken (="to glitter")
Blister via Old French blestre, perhaps from a Scandinavian source or from Middle Dutch blyster (="swelling")
Block (solid piece) via Old French bloc (="log, block"), from Middle Dutch blok (="trunk of a tree")
Bluff (poker term) from Dutch bluffen (="to brag, boast") or verbluffen (="to baffle, mislead")
Bluff (landscape feature) from Dutch blaf (="flat, broad"), apparently a North Sea nautical term for ships with flat vertical bows, later extended to landscape features
Blunderbuss from Dutch donderbus, from donder (="thunder") + bus (="gun," originally "box, tube"), altered by resemblance to blunder
Boer (Dutch colonist in South Africa) from Dutch boer (="farmer"), from Middle Dutch
Bogart after Humphrey Bogart. Boomgaard means "orchard" ("tree-garden").
Bokkoms from Dutch bokking (="buckling"), a type of salter fish
Boodle from Dutch boedel (="property")
Boom from boom (="tree"); cognate to English beam
Boomslang from boomslang (="tree snake"), a type of snake
Booze from Middle Dutch busen (="to drink in excess"); according to JW de Vries busen is equivalent to buizen
Boss from baas
Boulevard from "bolwerk", which came as boulevard into French, then into English. "Bolwerk" was also directly borrowed as 'bulwark'
Bow (front of a ship) from Old Norse bogr, Low German boog or Dutch boeg
Brackish from Middle Dutch or Low German brac (="salty", also "worthless"), now brak
Brandy (wine) from brandewijn (literally "burnt wine")
Brooklyn after the town of Breukelen near Utrecht
Bruin/Bruins archaic English word for brown bear, derived from the Dutch word for brown bruin
Buckwheatfrom Middle Dutch boecweite (="beech wheat") because of its resemblance to grains and seed of beech wheat
Bully from boel (="lover", "brother").
Bulwark from bolwerk
Bumpkin from bommekijn ('little barrel')
Bundle from Middle Dutch bondel or perhaps a merger of this word and Old English byndele ('binding')
Bung from Middle Dutch bonge (="stopper")
Buoy from boei (="shackle" or "buoy")
Bush (uncleared district of a British colony) probably from Dutch bosch, now bos or bosje in the same sense, since it seems to appear first in former Dutch colonies
C
Caboose from kambuis or kombuis (="ship's kitchen", "galley")
Cam from 18th century Dutch cam (cog of a wheel", originally comb, cognate of English comb), nowadays kam, or from English camber (having a slight arch)
Captain from kapitein
Cockatoo from kaketoe
Cashier from Middle Dutch cassier
Coleslaw from 18th century Dutch koolsla (cabbage salad)
Commodore probably from Dutch kommandeur, from French commandeur, from Old French comandeor
Cookie from koekje, or in informal Dutch koekie (="biscuit", "cookie")
Coney Island (English dialect word for Rabbit) from Conyne Eylandt (literally "Rabbit Island"), in modern Dutch konijn and eiland.
Cramp (metal bar bent at both ends) from Middle Dutch crampe or Middle Low German krampe.
Cricket from Old French criquet 'goal post', 'stick', perhaps from Middle Dutch cricke 'stick, staff'
Crimp from Old English gecrympan, perhaps reintroduced from Low German or Dutch krimpen (to shrink)
Croon via Scottish, from Middle Dutch kronen (= to lament, mourn)
Cruise from Dutch kruisen (="to cross, sail to and fro"), from kruis (="cross")
Cruller from 19th century Dutch krullen (to curl)
D
Dam from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German dam, or from Old Norse dammr
Dapper from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German dapper (bold, sturdy)
Deck from 16th century Middle Dutch dec or dekken (to cover)
Decoy possibly from 16th century Dutch de (the) + kooi (cage, used of a pond surrounded by nets, into which wildfowl were lured for capture) . Or from 16th century Dutch "eendekooi" (duck cage; a cage with an artificial duck to lure wild ducks); mistranslated as "een" dekooi; should have been read as "eend (duck)" -e- "kooi (cage)"-> a (article) dekooi -> (a) decoy
Delve from Dutch delven / opdelven
Dingus from Dutch dinges, literally "thing".
Dock from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German docke, nowadays dok
Dollar from Dutch (Rijks)daalder
Domineer from late 16th century Dutch dominieren (to rule), based on Middle French dominer
Dope from American English dope, based on Dutch doop (sauce) or dopen (to dip or to baptise)
Dredge from Scottish dreg-boat (boat for dredging), perhaps based on Middle Dutch dregghe (drag-net), nowadays dreggen
Drill (verb) from 17th century Dutch drillen
Drug from Old French drogue, based on Middle Dutch droge-vate (dry barrels, with first element mistaken as word for the contents)
Drum probably from Middle Dutch tromme, now trom
Dune from French dune, based on Middle Dutch dune, now duin
E
Easel from ezel (=originally (and still) "donkey"; "(schilders)ezel"=easel, lit. "painter's donkey")
Elope from ontlopen (run away)
Etch from Dutch ets or etsen
Excise (noun) (="tax on goods") from Middle Dutch excijs, apparently altered from accijns (="tax"); English got the word, and the idea for the tax, from the Netherlands.
F
Filibuster from Spanish filibustero from French flibustier ultimately from Dutch vrijbuiter (="pirate" or "freebooter")
Flag from vlag
Flushing, Queens from Vlissingen, a city in the Netherlands
Foist from Dutch vuisten (="take in hand"), from Middle Dutch vuist (="fist")
Forlorn hope from verloren hoop (literally "lost heap or group", figuratively "suicide mission," "cannon fodder") Forlorn also has identical cognates in German and the Scandinavian languages.
Fraught from vrecht, vracht
Freebooter from vrijbuiter
Freight from vracht
Frolic from vrolijk (="cheerful")
Frigate from Dutch fregat
Furlough from verlof (="permission (to leave)")
G
Galoot (="awkward or boorish man"), originally a sailor's contemptuous word (="raw recruit, green hand") for soldiers or marines, of uncertain origin; "Dictionary of American Slang" proposes galut, Sierra Leone creole form of Spanish galeoto (="galley slave"); perhaps rather Dutch slang kloot (="testicle"), klootzak (="scrotum"), used figuratively as an insult
Gas from gas, a neologism from Jan Baptista van Helmont, derived from the Greek chaos
Geek from geck (gek) (="fool")
Gherkin from Dutch plural of gurk "cucumber", shortened form of East Frisian augurk
Gimp (cord or thread) from Dutch gimp
Gin from jenever
Gnu from gnoe, earlier t’gnu, from a Khoikhoi word
Golf from kolf (="bat, club," but also a game played with these)
Grab from grijpen (="to seize, to grasp, to snatch")
Gruff from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German grof (="coarse (in quality), thick, large")
Guilder from gulden
Gulp likely from Flemish gulpe or Dutch gulpen (="to gush, pour forth, guzzle, swallow"), probably of imitative origin.
H
Hale (verb) (="drag, summon"), from Old Frankonian haler (="to pull, haul"), from Frankonian *halon or Old Dutch halen, both from Proto Germanic
Hankering from Middle Dutch hankeren or Dutch hunkeren
Harlem called after the city of Haarlem near Amsterdam
Hartebeest from both Afrikaans (Hartebees) and Dutch (Hartenbeest)
Heckle from Middle Dutch hekelen
Hoboken possibly named after the Flemish town Hoboken, from Middle Dutch Hooghe Buechen or Hoge Beuken (="High Beeches" or "Tall Beeches")
Howitzer from Dutch houwitzer, which in turn comes from German Haussnitz and later Haubitze.
Hoist from Middle Dutch hijsen (=raise)
Holster from holster
Hooky from hoekje (=corner) in the sense of "to go around the corner"
Hoyden maybe from heiden (=backwoodsman), from Middle Dutch (=heathen)
Hump perhaps from Dutch homp (="lump")
Hustle, Hustler from Dutch hutselen, husseln "to shake, to toss"
I
Iceberg from Dutch ijsberg (literally 'ice mountain')
Ietsism from Dutch ietsisme (literally: somethingism) an unspecified faith in an undetermined higher or supernatural power or force
Isinglass from Dutch huizenblas (No longer used) from Middle Dutch huusblase, from huus sturgeon + blase bladder
J
Jeer (to deride, to mock) Perhaps from Dutch gieren "to cry or roar," or German scheren "to plague, vex," literally "to shear"
Jib (foresail of a ship) from Dutch gijben (boom or spar of a sailing ship) and Dutch gijpen (turn the boat using foresail)
K
Keelhauling from kielhalen (literally "to haul keel"), kiel (= keel)
Keeshond prob. from special use of Kees (nickname corresponding to proper name Cornelis) + hond "dog"
Kill (body of water) from kil from Middle Dutch kille (literally "riverbed")
Kink from kink referring to a twist in a rope or cable
Knapsack from Middle Dutch knapzak (snack + bag) http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/knapzak
Knickerbocker The pen-name was borrowed from Washington Irving's friend Herman Knickerbocker, and literally means "toy marble-baker." Also, descendants of Dutch settlers to New York are referred to as Knickerbockers and later became used in reference to a style of pants
L
Landscape from 16th century Dutch landschap (land + -ship)
Leak from Middle Dutch lekken (to leak, to drip) and lek (=leak)
Loiter from Middle Dutch loteren
Luck from Middle Dutch luc, shortening of gheluc (happiness, good fortune), now geluk
M
Maelstrom from 17th century Dutch mael + stroom (turning + current), possibly based on Old Norse mal(u)streymur
Manikin from Middle Dutch manneken (little man)
Mannequin from French Mannequin, based on Middle Dutch manneken (little man)
Mast from mast
Marshal from Old French, based on Frankish (Old Dutch) marhskalk, now maarschalk
Mart from Middle Dutch markt (market)
Measles possibly from Middle Dutch mazelen (blemish)
Meerkat from South African Dutch meer + kat (lake + cat), perhaps an alteration of Hindi markat (ape)
Morass from Middle Dutch marasch (swamp), partly based on Old French marais (marsh), in modern Dutch: moeras
Mud from Middle Dutch modde (="thick mud") now modder, and/or Middle Low German mudde
N
Nasty perhaps from Old French nastre "miserly, envious, malicious, spiteful," or from Dutch nestig "dirty," literally "like a bird's nest."
O
Offal possibly from Middle Dutch afval (leftovers, rubbish)
Onslaught From Middle Dutch aanslag (attack''')
P
Patroon from patroon (="patron")
Peg from Middle Dutch pegge, now peg (="peg")
Pickle c.1440, probably from Middle Dutch and still pekel
Pinkie From Dutch Pink / Pinkje / Pinkie
Pit the stone of a drupaceous fruit : from pit
Plug from plugge, originally a maritime term, still plug in Dutch.
Polder from polder Poppycock from pappekak (=dialect for "soft dung")
Potassium from potaschen c. 1477 see Potash
Prop probably from Middle Dutch proppe (="vine prop, support; stop for a bottle"), now still prop
Pump from pomp
Puss perhaps from early 16th century Dutch poes (still in use as poes / poesje) or Low German puus (pet name for cat), but probably much older than the record, because present in many Indo-European languages.
Q
Quack shortened from quacksalver, from kwakzalver (literally "someone who daubs ointments")
R
Roster from rooster (="schedule, or grating/grill")
Rover from rover (="robber")
Rowing from roeien. Roeiboot (= rowing boat)
Rucksack from rugzak (="back sack")
Rudder from roer
S
Sail from zeil
Santa Claus from Middle Dutch Sinterklaas (="Saint Nicholas"), bishop of Minor Asia who became a patron saint for children. (Dutch and Belgian feast celebrated on the 5th and 6 December respectively) (Origins of Santa Claus in US culture)
School (group of fish) from Dutch school (group of fish)
Scone via Scottish, shortened from Middle Dutch schoonbrood "fine bread", from schoon (bright) + brood (bread)
Scow from schouw (a type of boat)
Scum (as in lowest class of humanity) from schuim (froth, foam)
Ship from Dutch schip
Shoal from Middle Dutch schole (="large number (of fish)") (modern Dutch: school) (etymology not sure)
Skate from schaats. The noun was originally adopted as in Dutch, with 'skates' being the singular form of the noun; due to the similarity to regular English plurals this form was ultimately used as the plural while 'skate' was derived for use as singular."
Sketch from schets
Scour from Middle Dutch scuren (now "schuren") , cognate of the English word "shower".
Skipper from Middle Dutch scipper (now schipper, literally "shipper")
Sled, sleigh from Middle Dutch slede, slee
Slim "thin, slight, slender," from Dutch slim "bad, sly, clever, smart" from Middle Dutch slim "bad, crooked, smart, intelligent"
Slobber from Middle Dutch slabberen.
Sloop from sloep
Slurp from slurpen
Smack (boat) possibly from smak "sailboat," perhaps so-called from the sound made by its sails
Smearcase from smeerkaas (="cheese that can be spread over bread, cottage-cheese") or smeerkees (="someone who is very dirty")
Smelt from smelten (="to melt")
Smuggler from Low German smukkelen and Dutch smokkelen (="to transport (goods) illegally"), apparently a frequentative formation of a word meaning "to sneak"
Snack perhaps from Middle Dutch snakken (="to long" (snakken naar lucht="to gasp for air") originally "to eat"/"chatter")
Snap from Middle Dutch or Low German snappen (to bite, seize)
Snicker from Dutch snikken (="to gasp, sob")
Snoop from 19 century Dutch snoepen (to eat (possibly in secret) something sweet)
Snoot, Snooty from Middle Dutch snute, now snuit (=face)
Snout from Middle Dutch snute Snuff from snuiftabak (literally "sniff tobacco")
Spa The term is derived from the name of the town of Spa, Belgium, whose name is known from Roman times, when the location was called Aquae Spadanae, sometimes incorrectly connected to the Latin word spargere meaning to scatter, sprinkle or moisten.
Spangle probably from Middle Dutch spange (=brooch, clasp)
Splice from Middle Dutch splissen (="to splice") now splijten
Splinter from splinter
Split from Middle Dutch splitten
Spook from spook (="ghost(ly image)")
Spoor from both Afrikaans and Dutch spoor (="track"/"trail")
Spray from Middle Dutch sprayen Sprinkle from Middle Dutch/Middle Low German sprenkel (="spot, speck")
Spout related to Middle Dutch spoiten (="to spout"):
Starboard from Dutch stuurboord Still life from Dutch stilleven
Stoker from stoken (="stoke a fire")
Stoop (steps) from stoep (=road up a dike, usually right-angled)
Stockfish from Dutch stokvis (= "stick fish")
Stock from Dutch stok (= "stick"). The Dutch word stok, pronounced similarly, was a wooden stick with carvings taken out of it and then split in half, one half was kept at the stock exchange and the other half was proof that the owner owned a certain amount of stock in something.
Stove from Middle Dutch stove (="heated room"). The Dutch word stoof, pronounced similarly, is a small (often wooden) box with holes in it. One would place glowing coals inside so it would emanate heat, and then put one's feet on top of it while sitting (in a chair) to keep one's feet warm.
Stripe from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German stripe (="stripe, streak"), now strip
Sutler from zoetelaar (="one who sweetens", sweetener, old-fashioned for "camp cook")
Swab From Dutch zwabberT
Tackle from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German takel (="the rigging of a ship,") perhaps related to Middle Dutch taken (="grasp, seize")
Tattle probably from Middle Flemish tatelen (="to stutter,") parallel to Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, East Frisian tateren (="to chatter, babble,") possibly of imitative origin.
Tattoo (military term) from taptoe (literally "close the tap"). So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to shut off the taps of casks.
Tickle from kietelen
Trek from Dutch trekken ("to march, journey") via Afrikaans
Trigger from trekker (Trekken ="to pull")
Tub from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, or Middle Flemish tubbe, of uncertain origin. Now tobbe and wastobbe (=washing tub)
U
Upsy-daisy (baby talk extension of up) from late 17th century Dutch op zijn, and also occasionally as an adverb, "extremely"
V
Vang from Dutch vangen (=to catch)
Veld from Cape Dutch veldt, now veld, used in South African English and in Dutch to describe a field
W
Waffle (noun) from Dutch wafel, from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German wafel
Walrus from walrus
Wagon from Dutch wagen, Middle Dutch waghen (= "cart, carriage, wagon")
Wentletrap from Dutch wenteltrap: wentelen (= "winding, spiraling") and trap (= "stairway")
Wiggle from wiggelen (= "to wobble, to wiggle") or wiegen (= "to rock")
Wildebeest from Dutch "wilde" (= "wild") and "beest" (= "beast") Wildebeest
Witloof from Belgian Dutch witloof (literally wit "white" + loof "foliage"), Dutch witlof
X
Y
Yacht from Dutch jacht, short for jachtschip (literally "hunting ship")
Yankee from Jan Kees'', a personal name, originally used mockingly to describe pro-French revolutionary citizens, with allusion to the small keeshond dog, then for "colonials" in New Amsterdam. This is not the only possible etymology for the word yankee, however; the Oxford English Dictionary has quotes with the term from as early as 1765, quite some time before the French Revolution. Nowadays it commonly refers to Americans from the United States.
Z
See also
Lists of English words of international origin
List of English words of Afrikaans origin
List of place names of Dutch origin
List of South African slang words
List of English Latinates of Germanic origin
References
External links
Online Etymology Dictionary
Alan Hope, "Talk the talk" - article in Flanders Today on the influence of Dutch on other languages
Low Germanic loanwords in modern English
English
Dutch
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold%20seep
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Cold seep
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A cold seep (sometimes called a cold vent) is an area of the ocean floor where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluid seepage occurs, often in the form of a brine pool. Cold does not mean that the temperature of the seepage is lower than that of the surrounding sea water. On the contrary, its temperature is often slightly higher. The "cold" is relative to the very warm (at least ) conditions of a hydrothermal vent. Cold seeps constitute a biome supporting several endemic species.
Cold seeps develop unique topography over time, where reactions between methane and seawater create carbonate rock formations and reefs. These reactions may also be dependent on bacterial activity. Ikaite, a hydrous calcium carbonate, can be associated with oxidizing methane at cold seeps.
Types
Types of cold seeps can be distinguished according to the depth, as shallow cold seeps and deep cold seeps. Cold seeps can also be distinguished in detail, as follows:
oil/gas seeps
gas seeps: methane seeps
gas hydrate seeps
brine seeps are formed in brine pools
pockmarks
mud volcanoes
Formation and ecological succession
Cold seeps occur over fissures on the seafloor caused by tectonic activity. Oil and methane "seep" out of those fissures, get diffused by sediment, and emerge over an area several hundred meters wide.
Methane () is the main component of what we commonly refer to as natural gas. But in addition to being an important energy source for humans, methane also forms the basis of a cold seep ecosystem. Cold seep biota below typically exhibit much greater systematic specialization and reliance on chemoautotrophy than those from shelf depths. Deep-sea seeps sediments are highly heterogeneous. They sustain different geochemical and microbial processes that are reflected in a complex mosaic of habitats inhabited by a mixture of specialist (heterotrophic and symbiont-associated) and background fauna.
Chemosynthetic communities
Biological research in cold seeps and hydrothermal vents has been mostly focused on the microbiology and the prominent macro-invertebrates thriving on chemosynthetic microorganisms. Much less research has been done on the smaller benthic fraction at the size of the meiofauna (<1 mm).
Community composition's orderly shift from one set of species to another is called ecological succession:
The first type of organism to take advantage of this deep-sea energy source is bacteria. Aggregating into bacterial mats at cold seeps, these bacteria metabolize methane and hydrogen sulfide (another gas that emerges from seeps) for energy. This process of obtaining energy from chemicals is known as chemosynthesis.
During this initial stage, when methane is relatively abundant, dense mussel beds also form near the cold seep. Mostly composed of species in the genus Bathymodiolus, these mussels do not directly consume food. Instead, they are nourished by symbiotic bacteria that also produce energy from methane, similar to their relatives that form mats. Chemosynthetic bivalves are prominent constituents of the fauna of cold seeps and are represented in that setting by five families: Solemyidae, Lucinidae, Vesicomyidae, Thyasiridae and Mytilidae.
This microbial activity produces calcium carbonate, which is deposited on the seafloor and forms a layer of rock. During a period lasting up to several decades, these rock formations attract siboglinid tubeworms, which settle and grow along with the mussels. Like the mussels, tubeworms rely on chemosynthetic bacteria (in this case, a type that needs hydrogen sulfide instead of methane) for survival. True to any symbiotic relationship, a tubeworm also provides for their bacteria by appropriating hydrogen sulfide from the environment. The sulfide not only comes from the water, but is also mined from the sediment through an extensive "root" system a tubeworm "bush" establishes in the hard, carbonate substrate. A tubeworm bush can contain hundreds of individual worms, which can grow a meter or more above the sediment.
Cold seeps do not last indefinitely. As the rate of gas seepage slowly decreases, the shorter-lived, methane-hungry mussels (or more precisely, their methane-hungry bacterial symbionts) start to die off. At this stage, tubeworms become the dominant organism in a seep community. As long as there is some sulfide in the sediment, the sulfide-mining tubeworms can persist. Individuals of one tubeworm species Lamellibrachia luymesi have been estimated to live for over 250 years in such conditions.
The Benthic Filter
The organisms living at cold seeps have a large impact on the carbon cycle and on climate. Chemosynthetic organisms, specifically methanogenic (methane-consuming) organisms, prohibit the methane seeping up from beneath the seafloor from being released into the water above. Since methane is such a potent greenhouse gas, methane release could cause global warming, as hypothesized in earth’s past when gas hydrate reservoirs destabilize. The consumption of methane by aerobic and anaerobic seafloor life is called “the benthic filter”. The first part of this filter is the anaerobic bacteria and archaea underneath the seafloor that consume methane through the Anaerobic Oxidation of Methane (AOM). If the flux of methane flowing through the sediment is too large, and the anaerobic bacteria and archaea are consuming the maximum amount of methane, then the excess methane is consumed by free-floating or symbiotic aerobic bacteria above the sediment at the seafloor. The symbiotic bacteria have been found in organisms such as tube worms and clams living at cold seeps; these organisms provide oxygen to the aerobic bacteria as the bacteria provide energy they obtain from the consumption of methane.
Understanding how efficient the benthic filter is can help predict how much methane escapes the seafloor at cold seeps and enters the water column and eventually the atmosphere. Studies have shown that 50-90% of methane is consumed at cold seeps with bacterial mats. Areas with clam beds have less than 15% of methane escaping. Efficiency is determined by a number of factors. The benthic layer is more efficient with low flow of methane, and efficiency decreases as methane flow or the speed of flow increases. Oxygen demand for cold seep ecosystems is much higher than other benthic ecosystems, so if the bottom water does not have enough oxygen, the efficiency of aerobic microbes in removing methane is reduced. The benthic filter cannot affect methane that is not traveling through the sediment. Methane can bypass the benthic filter if they bubble to the surface or travel through cracks and fissures in the sediment. These organisms are the only biological sink of methane in the ocean.
Comparison with other communities
Cold seeps and hydrothermal vents of deep oceans are communities that do not rely on photosynthesis for food and energy production. These systems are largely driven by chemosynthetic derived energy. Both systems share common characteristics such as the presence of reduced chemical compounds (H2S and hydrocarbonates), local hypoxia or even anoxia, a high abundance and metabolic activity of bacterial populations, and the production of autochthonous, organic material by chemoautotrophic bacteria. Both hydrothermal vents and cold seeps show regularly, highly increased levels of metazoan biomass in association with a low local diversity. This is explained through the presence of dense aggregations of foundation species and epizootic animals, living within these aggregations. Community-level comparisons reveal that vent, seep and organic-fall macrofauna are very distinct in terms of composition at the family level, although they share many dominant taxa among highly sulphidic habitats.
However, hydrothermal vents and cold seeps differ also in many ways. Compared to the more stable cold seeps, vents are characterized by locally high temperatures, strongly fluctuating temperatures, pH, sulfide and oxygen concentrations, often the absence of sediments, a relatively young age, and often unpredictable conditions, such as waxing and waning of vent fluids or volcanic eruptions. Unlike hydrothermal vents, which are volatile and ephemeral environments, cold seeps emit at a slow and dependable rate. Likely owing to the cooler temperatures and stability, many cold seep organisms are much longer-lived than those inhabiting hydrothermal vents.
End of cold seep community
Finally, as cold seeps become inactive, tubeworms also start to disappear, clearing the way for corals to settle on the now exposed carbonate substrate. The corals do not rely on hydrocarbons seeping out of the seafloor. Studies on Lophelia pertusa suggest they derive their nutrition primarily from the ocean surface. Chemosynthesis plays only a very small role, if any, in their settlement and growth. While deepwater corals do not seem to be chemosynthesis-based organisms, the chemosynthetic organisms that come before them enable the corals' existence. This hypothesis about establishment of deep water coral reefs is called hydraulic theory.
Distribution
Cold seeps were discovered in 1983 by Charles Paull and colleagues on the Florida Escarpment in the Gulf of Mexico at a depth of . Since then, seeps have been discovered in many other parts of the world's oceans. Most have been grouped into five biogeographic provinces: Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, Mediterranean, East Pacific and West Pacific, but cold seeps are also known from under the ice shelf in Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean, North Sea, Skagerrak, Kattegat, Gulf of California, the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, off southern Australia and in the inland Caspian Sea. In the Pacific North West a cold seep called Pythia's Oasis was discovered in 2015. With the recent discovery of a methane seep in the Southern Ocean, cold seeps are now known in all major oceans. Cold seeps are common along continental margins in areas of high primary productivity and tectonic activity, where crustal deformation and compaction drive emissions of methane rich fluid. Cold seeps are patchily distributed and they occur most frequently near ocean margins from intertidal to hadal depths. In Chile cold seeps are known from the intertidal zone, in Kattegat the methane seeps are known as "bubbling reefs" and are typically at depths of , and off northern California they can be found as shallow as . Most cold seeps are located considerably deeper, well beyond the reach of ordinary scuba diving, and the deepest seep community known is found in the Japan Trench at a depth of .
In addition to cold seeps existing today, the fossil remains of ancient seep systems have been found in several parts of the world. Some of these are located far inland in places formerly covered by prehistoric oceans.
In the Gulf of Mexico
Discoveries
The chemosynthetic communities of the Gulf of Mexico have been studied extensively since the 1990s, and communities first discovered on the upper slope are likely the best understood seep communities in the world. The history of the discovery of these remarkable animals has all occurred since the 1980s. Each major discovery was unexpected―from the first hydrothermal vent communities anywhere in the world to the first cold seep communities in the Gulf of Mexico.
Communities were discovered in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico in 1983 using the manned submersible DSV Alvin, during a cruise investigating the bottom of the Florida Escarpment in areas of "cold" brine seepage, where they unexpectedly discovered tubeworms and mussels (Paull et al., 1984). Two groups fortuitously discovered chemosynthetic communities in the Central Gulf of Mexico concurrently in November 1984. During investigations by Texas A&M University to determine the effects of oil seepage on benthic ecology (until this investigation, all effects of oil seepage were assumed to be detrimental), bottom trawls unexpectedly recovered extensive collections of chemosynthetic organisms, including tube worms and clams (Kennicutt et al., 1985). At the same time, LGL Ecological Research Associates was
conducting a research cruise as part of the multiyear MMS Northern Gulf of Mexico Continental Slope Study (Gallaway et al., 1988). Bottom photography (processed on board the vessel) resulted in clear images of vesicomyid clam chemosynthetic communities coincidentally in the same manner as the first discovery by camera sled in the Pacific in 1977. Photography during the same LGL/MMS cruise also documented tube-worm communities in situ in the Central Gulf of Mexico for the first time (not processed until after the cruise; Boland, 1986) prior to the initial submersible investigations and firsthand descriptions of Bush Hill () in 1986 (Rosman et al., 1987a; MacDonald et al., 1989b). The site was targeted by acoustic "wipeout" zones or lack of substrate structure caused by seeping hydrocarbons. This was determined using an acoustic pinger system during the same cruise on the R/V Edwin Link (the old one, only 113 ft (34 m)), which used one of the Johnson Sea Link submersibles. The site is characterized by dense tubeworm and mussel accumulations, as well as exposed carbonate outcrops with numerous gorgonian and Lophelia coral colonies. Bush Hill has become one of the most thoroughly studied chemosynthetic sites in the world.
Distribution
There is a clear relationship between known hydrocarbon discoveries at great depth in the Gulf slope and chemosynthetic communities, hydrocarbon seepage, and authigenic minerals including carbonates at the seafloor (Sassen et al., 1993a and b). While the hydrocarbon reservoirs are broad areas several kilometers beneath the Gulf, chemosynthetic communities occur in isolated areas with thin veneers of sediment only a few meters thick.
The northern Gulf of Mexico slope includes a stratigraphic section more than 10 km (6 mi) thick and has been profoundly influenced by salt movement. Mesozoic source rocks from Upper Jurassic to Upper Cretaceous generate oil in most of the Gulf slope fields (Sassen et al., 1993a and b). Migration conduits supply fresh hydrocarbon materials through a vertical scale of 6–8 km (4–5 mi) toward the surface. The surface expressions of hydrocarbon migration are referred to as seeps. Geological evidence demonstrates that hydrocarbon and brine seepage persists in spatially discrete areas for thousands of years.
The time scale for oil and gas migration (combination of buoyancy and pressure) from source systems is on the scale of millions of years (Sassen, 1997). Seepage from hydrocarbon sources through faults towards the surface tends to be diffused through the overlying sediment, carbonate outcroppings, and hydrate deposits so the corresponding hydrocarbon seep communities tend to be larger (a few hundred meters wide) than
chemosynthetic communities found around the hydrothermal vents of the Eastern Pacific (MacDonald, 1992). There are large differences in the concentrations of hydrocarbons at seep sites. Roberts (2001) presented a spectrum of responses to be expected under a variety of flux rate conditions varying from very slow seepage to rapid venting. Very slow seepage sites do not support complex chemosynthetic communities; rather, they usually only support simple microbial mats (Beggiatoa sp.).
In the upper slope environment, the hard substrates resulting from carbonate precipitation can have associated communities of non-chemosynthetic animals, including a variety of sessile cnidarians such as corals and sea anemones. At the rapid flux end of the spectrum fluidized sediment generally accompanies hydrocarbons and formation fluids arriving at the seafloor. Mud volcanoes and mud flows result. Somewhere between these two end members exists the conditions that support densely populated and diverse communities of chemosynthetic organisms (microbial mats, siboglinid tube worms, bathymodioline mussels, lucinid and vesicomyid clams, and associated organisms). These areas are frequently associated with surface or near-surface gas hydrate deposits. They also have localized areas of lithified seafloor, generally authigenic carbonates but sometimes more exotic minerals such as barite are present.
The widespread nature of Gulf of Mexico chemosynthetic communities was first documented during contracted investigations by the Geological and Environmental Research Group (GERG) of Texas A&M University for the Offshore Operators Committee (Brooks et al., 1986). This survey remains the most widespread and comprehensive, although numerous additional communities have been documented since that time. Industry exploring for energy reserves in the Gulf of Mexico has also documented numerous new communities through a wide range of depths, including the deepest known occurrence in the Central Gulf of Mexico in Alaminos Canyon Block 818 at a depth of 2,750 m (9,022 ft). The occurrence of chemosynthetic organisms dependent on hydrocarbon seepage has been documented in water depths as shallow as 290 m (951 ft) (Roberts et al., 1990) and as deep as 2,744 m (9,003 ft). This depth range specifically places chemosynthetic communities in the deepwater region of the Gulf of Mexico, which
is defined as water depths greater than 305 m (1,000 ft).
Chemosynthetic communities are not found on the continental shelf although they do appear in the fossil record in water shallower than 200 m (656 ft). One theory explaining this is that predation pressure has varied substantially over the time period involved (Callender and Powell 1999). More than 50 communities are now known to exist in 43 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) blocks. Although a systematic survey has not been done to identify all chemosynthetic communities in the Gulf of Mexico, there is evidence indicating that many more such communities may exist. The
depth limits of discoveries probably reflect the limits of exploration (lack of submersibles capable of depths over 1,000 m (3,281 ft)).
MacDonald et al. (1993 and 1996) have analyzed remote-sensing images from space that reveal the presence of oil slicks across the north-central Gulf of Mexico. Results confirmed extensive natural oil seepage in the Gulf of Mexico, especially in water depths greater than 1,000 m (3,281 ft). A total of 58 additional potential locations were documented where seafloor sources were capable of producing perennial oil slicks (MacDonald et al., 1996). Estimated seepage rates ranged from to compared to less than for ship discharges (both normalized for 1,000 mi2 (640,000 ac)). This evidence considerably increases the area where chemosynthetic communities dependent on hydrocarbon seepage may be expected.
The densest aggregations of chemosynthetic organisms have been found at water depths of around 500 m (1,640 ft) and deeper. The best known of these communities was named Bush Hill by the investigators who first described it (MacDonald et al., 1989b). It is a surprisingly large and dense community of chemosynthetic tube worms and mussels at a site of natural petroleum and gas seepage over a salt diapir in Green Canyon Block 185. The seep site is a small knoll that rises about 40 m (131 ft) above the surrounding seafloor in about 580-m (1,903-ft) water depth.
Stability
According to Sassen (1997) the role of hydrates at chemosynthetic communities has been greatly underestimated. The biological alteration of frozen gas hydrates was first discovered during the MMS study entitled "Stability and Change in Gulf of Mexico Chemosynthetic Communities". It is hypothesized (MacDonald, 1998b) that the dynamics of hydrate alteration could play a major role as a mechanism for regulation of the release of hydrocarbon gases to fuel biogeochemical processes and could also play a substantial role in community stability. Recorded bottom-water temperature excursions of several degrees in some areas such as the Bush Hill site (4–5 °C at 500-m (1,640-ft) depth) are believed to result
in dissociation of hydrates, resulting in an increase in gas fluxes (MacDonald et al., 1994). Although not as destructive as the volcanism at vent sites of the mid-ocean ridges, the dynamics of shallow hydrate formation and movement will clearly affect sessile animals that form part of the seepage barrier. There is potential of a catastrophic event where an entire layer of shallow hydrate could break free of the bottom and considerably affect local communities of chemosynthetic fauna. At deeper depths (>1,000 m, >3,281 ft), the bottom-water temperature is colder (by approximately 3 °C) and undergoes less fluctuation. The formation of more stable and probably deeper hydrates influences the flux of light hydrocarbon gases to the sediment surface, thus influencing the surface morphology and characteristics of chemosynthetic communities. Within complex communities such as Bush Hill, petroleum seems less important than previously thought (MacDonald, 1998b).
Through taphonomic studies (death assemblages of shells) and interpretation of seep assemblage composition from cores, Powell et al. (1998) reported that, overall, seep communities were persistent over periods of 500–1,000 years and probably throughout the entire Pleistocene(<- doubtful. Holocene?). Some sites retained optimal habitat over geological time scales. Powell reported evidence of mussel and clam communities persisting in the same sites for 500-4,000 years. Powell also found that both the composition of species and trophic tiering of hydrocarbon seep communities tend to be fairly constant across time, with temporal variations only in numerical abundance. He found few cases in which the community type changed (from mussel to clam communities, for example) or had disappeared completely. Faunal succession was not observed. Surprisingly, when recovery occurred after a past destructive event, the same chemosynthetic species reoccupied a site. There was little evidence of catastrophic burial events, but two instances were found in mussel communities in Green Canyon Block 234. The most notable observation reported by Powell (1995) was the uniqueness of each chemosynthetic community site.
Precipitation of authigenic carbonates and other geologic events will undoubtedly alter surface seepage patterns over periods of many years, although through direct observation, no changes in chemosynthetic fauna distribution or composition were observed at seven separate study sites
(MacDonald et al., 1995). A slightly longer period (19 years) can be referenced in the case of Bush Hill, the first Central Gulf of Mexico community described in situ in 1986. No mass die-offs or large-scale shifts in faunal composition have been observed (with the exception of collections for scientific purposes) over the 19-year history of research at this site.
All chemosynthetic communities are located in water depths beyond the effect of severe storms, including hurricanes, and there would have been no alteration of these communities caused from surface storms, including hurricanes.
Biology
MacDonald et al. (1990) has described four general community types. These are communities dominated by Vestimentiferan tube worms (Lamellibrachia c.f. barhami and Escarpia spp.), mytilid mussels (Seep Mytilid Ia, Ib, and III, and others), vesicomyid clams (Vesicomya cordata and Calyptogena ponderosa), and infaunal lucinid or thyasirid clams (Lucinoma sp. or Thyasira sp.). Bacterial mats are present at all sites visited to date. These faunal groups tend to display distinctive characteristics in terms of how they aggregate, the size of aggregations, the geological and chemical properties of the habitats in which they occur and, to some degree, the heterotrophic fauna that occur with them. Many of the species found at these cold seep communities in the Gulf of Mexico are new to science and remain undescribed.
Individual lamellibrachid tube worms, the longer of two taxa found at seeps can reach lengths of 3 m (10 ft) and live hundreds of years (Fisher et al., 1997; Bergquist et al., 2000). Growth rates determined from recovered marked tube worms have been variable, ranging from no growth of 13 individuals measured one year to a maximum growth of 9.6 cm/yr (3.8 in/yr) in a Lamellibrachia individual (MacDonald, 2002). Average growth rate was 2.19 cm/yr (0.86 in/yr) for the Escarpia-like species and 2.92 cm/yr (1.15 in/yr) for lamellibrachids. These are slower growth rates than those of their hydrothermal vent relatives, but Lamellibrachia individuals can reach lengths 2–3 times that of the largest known hydrothermal vent species. Individuals of Lamellibrachia sp. in excess of 3 m (10 ft) have been collected on several occasions, representing probable ages in excess of 400 years (Fisher, 1995). Vestimentiferan tube worm spawning is not seasonal and recruitment is episodic.
Tubeworms are either male or female. One recent discovery indicates that the spawning of female Lamellibrachia appears to have produced a unique association with the large bivalve Acesta bullisi, which lives permanently attached to the anterior tube opening of the tubeworm, and feeds on the periodic egg release (Järnegren et al., 2005). This close association between the bivalves and tubeworms was discovered in 1984 (Boland, 1986) but not fully explained. Virtually all mature Acesta individuals are found on female rather than male tubeworms. This evidence and other experiments by Järnegren et al. (2005) seem to have solved this mystery.
Growth rates for methanotrophic mussels at cold seep sites have been reported (Fisher, 1995). General growth rates were found to be relatively high. Adult mussel growth rates were similar to mussels from a littoral environment at similar temperatures. Fisher also found that juvenile mussels at hydrocarbon seeps initially grow rapidly, but the growth rate drops markedly in adults; they grow to reproductive size very quickly. Both individuals and communities appear to be very long lived. These methane-dependent mussels have strict chemical requirements that tie them to areas of the most active seepage in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result of their rapid growth rates, mussel recolonization of a disturbed seep site could occur relatively rapidly. There is some evidence that mussels also have some requirement of a hard substrate and could increase in numbers if suitable substrate is increased on the seafloor (Fisher, 1995). Two associated species are always found associated with mussel beds – the gastropod Bathynerita naticoidea and a small Alvinocarid shrimp – suggesting these endemic species have excellent dispersal abilities and can tolerate a wide range of conditions (MacDonald, 2002).
Unlike mussel beds, chemosynthetic clam beds may persist as a visual surface phenomenon for an extended period without input of new living individuals because of low dissolution rates and low sedimentation rates. Most clam beds investigated by Powell (1995) were inactive. Living individuals were rarely encountered. Powell reported that over a 50-year timespan, local extinctions and
recolonization should be gradual and exceedingly rare. Contrasting these inactive beds, the first community discovered in the Central Gulf of Mexico consisted of numerous actively plowing clams. The images obtained of this community were used to develop length/frequency and live/dead ratios as well as spatial patterns (Rosman et al., 1987a).
Extensive bacterial mats of free-living bacteria are also evident at all hydrocarbon seep sites. These bacteria may compete with the major fauna for sulfide and methane energy sources and may also contribute substantially to overall production (MacDonald, 1998b). The white, nonpigmented mats were found to be an autotrophic sulfur bacteria Beggiatoa species, and the orange mats possessed an unidentified non-chemosynthetic metabolism (MacDonald, 1998b).
Heterotrophic species at seep sites are a mixture of species unique to seeps (particularly molluscs and crustacean invertebrates) and those that are a normal component from the surrounding environment. Carney (1993) first reported a potential imbalance that could occur as a result of chronic disruption. Because of sporadic recruitment patterns, predators could gain an advantage, resulting in exterminations in local populations of mussel beds. It is clear that seep systems do interact with the background fauna but conflicting evidence remains as to what degree outright predation on some specific community components such as tubeworms occurs (MacDonald, 2002). The more surprising results from this recent work is why background species do not utilize seep production more than seems to be evident. In fact, seep-associated consumers such as galatheid crabs and nerite gastropods had isotopic signatures, indicating that their diets were a mixture of seep and background production. At some sites, endemic seep invertebrates that would have been expected to obtain much if not all their diet from seep production actually consumed as much as 50 percent of their diets from the background.
In the Atlantic Ocean
Cold-seep communities in the western Atlantic Ocean have also been described from a few dives on mud volcanoes and diapirs between depth in the Barbados accretionary prism area and from the Blake Ridge diapir off North Carolina. More recently seep communities have been discovered in the eastern Atlantic, on a giant pockmark cluster in the Gulf of Guinea near the Congo deep channel, also on other pockmarks of the Congo margin, Gabon margin and Nigeria margin and in the Gulf of Cádiz.
The occurrence of chemosymbiotic biota in the extensive mud volcano fields of the Gulf of Cádiz was first reported in 2003. The chemosymbiotic bivalves collected from the mud volcanoes of the Gulf of Cadiz were reviewed in 2011.
Cold seeps are also known from the Northern Atlantic Ocean, even ranging into the Arctic Ocean, off Canada and Norway.
Extensive faunal sampling has been conducted from in the Atlantic Equatorial Belt from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Guinea including Barbados accretionary prism, the Blake Ridge diapir, and in the Eastern Atlantic from the Congo and Gabon margins and the recently explored Nigeria margin during Census of Marine Life ChEss project. Of the 72 taxa identified at the species level, a total of 9 species or species complexes are identified as amphi-Atlantic.
The Atlantic Equatorial Belt seep megafauna community structure is influenced primarily by depth rather than by geographic distance. The bivalves Bathymodiolinae (within Mytilidae) species or complexes of species are the most widespread in the Atlantic. The Bathymodiolus boomerang complex is found at the Florida escarpment site, the Blake Ridge diapir, the Barbados prism and the Regab site of Congo. The Bathymodiolus childressi complex is also widely distributed along the Atlantic Equatorial Belt from the Gulf of Mexico across to the Nigerian Margin, although not on the Regab or Blake ridge sites. The commensal polynoid, Branchipolynoe seepensis is known from the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Guinea and Barbados. Other species with distributions extending from the eastern to western Atlantic are: gastropod Cordesia provannoides, the shrimp Alvinocaris muricola, the galatheids Munidopsis geyeri and Munidopsis livida and probably the holothurid Chiridota heheva.
There have been found cold seeps also in the Amazon deepsea fan. High-resolution seismic profiles near the shelf edge show evidence of near-surface slumps and faulting in the subsurface and concentrations (about ) of methane gas. Several studies (e.g., Amazon Shelf Study—AMASEDS, LEPLAC, REMAC, GLORIA, Ocean Drilling Program) indicate that there is evidence for gas seepage on the slope off the Amazon fan based on the incidence of bottom-simulating reflections (BSRs), mud volcanoes, pock marks, gas in sediments, and deeper hydrocarbon occurrences. The existence of methane at relatively shallow depths and extensive areas of gas hydrates have been mapped in this region. Also, gas chimneys have been reported, and exploratory wells have discovered sub-commercial gas accumulations and pock marks along fault planes. A sound geological and geophysical understanding of the Foz do Amazonas Basin is already available and used by the energy companies.
Exploration of new areas, such as potential seep sites off of the east coast of the U.S. and the Laurentian fan where chemosynthetic communities are known deeper than , and shallower sites in the Gulf of Guinea are need to study in the future.
In the Mediterranean
The first biological evidence for reduced environments in the Mediterranean Sea was the presence of Lucinidae and Vesicomyidae bivalve shells cored on the top of the Napoli mud volcano (; "Napoli" is only a name of a seamount. It locates south of Crete), located at 1,900 m depth on the Mediterranean Ridge in the subduction zone of the African plate. This was followed by the description of a new Lucinidae bivalve species, Lucinoma kazani, associated with bacterial endosymbionts. In the southeastern Mediterranean, communities of polychaetes and bivalves were also found associated with cold seeps and carbonates near Egypt and the Gaza Strip at depths of 500–800 m, but no living fauna was collected. The first in situ observations of extensive living chemosynthetic communities in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea prompted cooperation between biologists, geochemists, and geologists. During submersible dives, communities comprising large fields of small bivalves (dead and alive), large siboglinid tube worms, isolated or forming dense aggregations, large sponges, and associated endemic fauna were observed in various cold seep habitats associated with carbonate crusts at 1,700–2,000 m depth. Two mud volcano fields were first explored, one along the Mediterranean Ridge, where most of them were partially (Napoli, Milano mud volcanoes) or totally (Urania, Maidstone mud volcanoes) affected by brines, and the other on the Anaximander mounds south of Turkey. The latter area includes the large Amsterdam mud volcano, which is affected by recent mudflows, and the smaller Kazan or Kula mud volcanoes. Gas hydrates have been sampled at the Amsterdam and Kazan mud volcanoes, and high methane levels have been recorded above the seafloor. Several provinces of the Nile deep-sea fan have been explored recently. These include the very active brine seepage named the Menes Caldera in the eastern province between 2,500 m and 3,000 m, the pockmarks in the central area along mid- and lower slopes, and the mud volcanoes of the eastern province, as well as one in the central upper slope (North Alex area) at 500 m depth.
During these first exploratory dives, symbiont-bearing taxa that are similar to those observed on the Olimpi and Anaximander mud fields were sampled and identified. This similarity is not surprising, as most of these taxa were originally described from dredging in the Nile fan. Up to five species of bivalves harboring bacterial symbionts colonized these methane- and sulfide-rich environments. A new species of Siboglinidae polychaete, Lamellibrachia anaximandri, the tubeworm colonizing cold seeps from the Mediterranean ridge to the Nile deep-sea fan, has just been described in 2010. Moreover, the study of symbioses revealed associations with chemoautotrophic Bacteria, sulfur oxidizers in Vesicomyidae and Lucinidae bivalves and Siboglinidae tubeworms, and highlighted the exceptional diversity of Bacteria living in symbiosis with small Mytilidae. The Mediterranean seeps appear to represent a rich habitat characterized by megafauna species richness (e.g., gastropods) or the exceptional size of some species such as sponges (Rhizaxinella pyrifera) and crabs (Chaceon mediterraneus), compared with their background counterparts. This contrasts with the low macro- and mega-faunal abundance and diversity of the deep Eastern Mediterranean. Seep communities in the Mediterranean that include endemic chemosynthetic species and associated fauna differ from the other known seep communities in the world at the species level but also by the absence of the large size bivalve genera Calyptogena or Bathymodiolus. The isolation of the Mediterranean seeps from the Atlantic Ocean after the Messinian crisis led to the development of unique communities, which are likely to differ in composition and structure from those in the Atlantic Ocean. Further expeditions involved quantitative sampling of habitats in different areas, from the Mediterranean Ridge to the eastern Nile deep-sea fan. Cold seeps discovered in the Sea of Marmara in 2008 have also revealed chemosynthesis-based communities that showed a considerable similarity to the symbiont-bearing fauna of eastern Mediterranean cold seeps.
In the Indian Ocean
In the Makran Trench, a subduction zone along the northeastern margin of the Gulf of Oman adjacent to the southwestern coast of Pakistan and the southeastern coast of Iran, compression of an accretionary wedge has resulted in the formation of cold seeps and mud volcanoes.
In the West Pacific
Native aluminium has been reported also in cold seeps in the northeastern continental slope of the South China Sea and Chen et al. (2011) have proposed a theory of its origin as resulting by reduction from tetrahydroxoaluminate Al(OH)4− to metallic aluminium by bacteria.
Japan
Deep sea communities around Japan are mainly researched by Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). DSV Shinkai 6500, Kaikō and other groups have discovered many sites.
Methane seep communities in Japan are distributed along plate convergence areas because of the accompanying tectonic activity. Many seeps have been found in the Japan Trench, Nankai Trough, Ryukyu Trench, Sagami Bay and Suruga Bay, and the Sea of Japan.
Members of cold seep communities are similar to other regions in terms of family or genus, such as Polycheata; Lamellibrachia, Bivalavia; Solemyidae, Bathymodiolus in Mytilidae, Thyasiridae, Calyptogena in Vesicomyidae and so forth. Many of species in cold seeps of Japan are endemic.
In Kagoshima Bay, there are methane gas seepages called "tagiri" (boiling). Lamellibrachia satsuma live around there. The depth of this site is only 80 m, which is the shallowest point Siboglinidae living. L. satsuma may be kept in an aquarium for a long period in 1 atm. Two aquariums in Japan are keeping and displaying L. satsuma. An observation method to introduce it into a transparent vinyl tube is being developed.
DSV Shinkai 6500 discovered vesicomyid clam communities in the Southern Mariana Forearc. They depend on methane which originates in serpentinite. Other chemosynthetic communities would depend on hydrocarbon origins organic substance in crust, but these communities depend on methane originating from inorganic substances from the mantle.
In 2011, was performed around the Japan Trench which is epicenter of Tōhoku earthquake. There are cracks, methane seepages and bacterial mats which were probably created by the earthquake.
New Zealand
Off the mainland coast of New Zealand, shelf-edge instability is enhanced in some locations by cold seeps of methane-rich fluids that likewise support chemosynthetic faunas and carbonate concretions. Dominant animals are tube worms of the family Siboglinidae and bivalves of families Vesicomyidae and Mytilidae (Bathymodiolus). Many of its species appear to be endemic. Deep bottom trawling has severely damaged cold seep communities and those ecosystems are threatened. Depths down to 2,000 m including cold seeps belongs among as-yet-unmapped topographic and chemical complexity of habitats. The scale of new-species discovery in these poorly studied or unexplored ecosystems is likely to be high.
In the East Pacific
In the deep sea the COMARGE project has studied the biodiversity patterns along and across the Chilean margin through a complexity of ecosystems such as methane seeps and oxygen minimum zones reporting that such habitat heterogeneity may influence the biodiversity patterns of the local fauna. Seep fauna include bivalves of families Lucinidae, Thyasiridae, Solemyidae (Acharax sp.), and Vesicomyidae (Calyptogena gallardoi) and polychaetes Lamellibrachia sp. and two other polychaete species. Furthermore, in these soft reduced sediments below the oxygen minimum zone off the Chilean margin, a diverse microbial community composed by a variety of large prokaryotes (mainly large multi-cellular filamentous "mega bacteria" of the genera Thioploca and Beggiatoa, and of "macrobacteria" including a diversity of phenotypes), protists (ciliates, flagellates, and foraminifers), as well as small metazoans (mostly nematodes and polychaetes) has been found. Gallardo et al. (2007) argue that the likely chemolithotrophic metabolism of most of these mega- and macrobacteria offer an alternative explanation to fossil findings, in particular to those from obvious non-littoral origins, suggesting that traditional hypotheses on the cyanobacterial origin of some fossils may have to be revised.
Cold seeps (pockmark) are also known from depths of 130 m in the Hecate Strait, British Columbia, Canada. Unobvious fauna (also unobvious for cold seeps) has been found there with these dominating species: sea snail Fusitriton oregonensis, anemone Metridium giganteum, encrusting sponges and bivalve Solemya reidi.
Cold seeps with chemosynthetic communities along the USA Pacific coast occur in Monterey Canyon, just off Monterey Bay, California on a mud volcano. There have been found, for example Calyptogena clams Calyptogena kilmeri and Calyptogena pacifica and foraminiferan Spiroplectammina biformis.
map of cold seeps in the Monterey Bay
Additionally, seeps have been discovered offshore southern California in the inner California Borderlands along several fault systems including the San Clemente fault, San Pedro fault, and San Diego Trough fault. Fluid flow at the seeps along the San Pedro and San Diego Trough faults appears controlled by localized restraining bends in the faults.
In the Antarctic
The first cold seep was reported from Southern Ocean in 2005. The relatively few investigations to the Antarctic deep sea have shown the presence of deep-water habitats, including hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, and mud volcanoes. Other than the Antarctic Benthic Deep-Sea Biodiversity Project (ANDEEP) cruises, little work has been done in the deep sea. There are more species waiting to be described.
Detection
With continuing experience, particularly on the upper continental slope in the Gulf of Mexico, the successful prediction of the presence of tubeworm communities continues to improve, however chemosynthetic communities cannot be reliably detected directly using geophysical techniques. Hydrocarbon seeps that allow chemosynthetic communities (Guaymas Basin) to exist do modify the geological characteristics in ways that can be remotely detected, but the time scales of co-occurring active seepage and the presence of living communities is always uncertain. These known sediment modifications include (1) precipitation of authigenic carbonate in the form of micronodules, nodules, or rock masses; (2) formation of gas hydrates; (3) modification of sediment composition through concentration of hard chemosynthetic organism remains (such as shell fragments and layers); (4) formation of interstitial gas bubbles or hydrocarbons; and (5) formation of depressions or pockmarks by gas expulsion. These features give rise to acoustic effects such as wipeout zones (no echoes), hard bottoms (strongly reflective echoes), bright spots (reflection enhanced layers), or reverberant layers (Behrens, 1988; Roberts and Neurauter, 1990). "Potential" locations for most types of communities can be determined by careful interpretation of these various geophysical modifications, but to date, the process remains imperfect and confirmation of living communities requires direct visual techniques.
Fossilized records
Cold seep deposits are found throughout the Phanerozoic geologic record, especially in the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Notable examples can be found in the Permian of Tibet, the Cretaceous of Hokkaido, the Palaeogene of Honshu, the Neogene of Northern Italy, and the Pleistocene of California. These fossil cold seeps are characterized by mound-like topography (where preserved), coarsely crystalline carbonates, and abundant mollusks and brachiopods.
Environmental impacts
Major threats that cold seep ecosystems and their communities face today are seafloor litter, chemical contaminants and climate change. Seafloor litter alters the habitat, by providing hard substrate where none was available before or by overlying the sediment, inhibiting gas exchange, and interfering with organisms on the bottom of the sea. Studies of marine litter in the Mediterranean include surveys of seabed debris on the continental shelf, slope, and bathyal plain. In most studies, plastic items accounted for much of the debris, sometimes as much as 90% or more of the total, owing to their ubiquitous use and poor degradability.
Weapons and bombs have also been discarded at sea and their dumping in open waters contributes to seafloor contamination. Another major threat to the benthic fauna is the presence of lost fishing gear, such as nets and longlines, which contribute to ghost fishing and can damage fragile ecosystems such as cold-water corals.
Chemical contaminants such as persistent organic pollutants, toxic metals (e.g., Hg, Cd, Pb, Ni), radioactive compounds, pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceuticals are also accumulating in deep-sea sediments. Topography (e.g. presence of canyons) and hydrography (e.g., cascading events) play a major role in the transportation and accumulation of these chemicals from the coast and shelf to the deep basins, affecting the local fauna. Recent studies have detected the presence of significant levels of dioxins in the commercial shrimp Aristeus antennatus and significant levels of persistent organic pollutants in mesopelagic and bathypelagic cephalopods
Climate driven processes and climate change will affect the frequency and intensity of cascading, with unknown effects on the benthic fauna. Another potential effect of climate change is related to energy transport from surface waters to the seafloor. Primary production will change in the surface layers according to sun exposure, water temperature, major stratification of water masses, for example and this will affect the food chain down to the deep seafloor, which will be subject to differences in quantity, quality, and timing of organic matter input. As commercial fisheries move into deeper waters, all of these effects will affect the communities and populations of organisms in cold seeps and the deep sea in general.
See also
Chemotroph
Gas hydrate pingo
Guaymas Basin
References
This article incorporates a public domain work of the United States Government from references and CC-BY-2.5 from references and CC-BY-3.0 text from the reference
Further reading
External links
Paul Yancy's vents and seeps page
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's seeps page
ScienceDaily News: Tubeworms in deep sea discovered to have record long life spans
Aquatic ecology
Bodies of water
Coastal and oceanic landforms
Marine geology
Oceanographical terminology
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbanda
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Umbanda
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Umbanda () is a religion that emerged in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the 1920s. Deriving largely from Spiritism, it also combines elements from Afro-Brazilian traditions like Candomblé as well as Roman Catholicism. There is no central authority in control of Umbanda, which is organized around autonomous places of worship termed centros or terreiros, and is broadly divided between White Umbanda, which is closer to Spiritism, and Africanized Umbanda, which is closer to Candomblé.
A monotheistic religion, Umbanda believes in a single God that is distant from humanity. Beneath this entity are powerful non-human spirits called orixás; in White Umbanda these are viewed as divine energies or forces of nature, while in African-oriented forms they are seen as West African deities and are offered animal sacrifices. The emissaries of the orixás are the pretos velhos and caboclos, spirits of enslaved Africans and of indigenous Brazilians respectively, and these are the main entities dealt with by Umbandists. At Umbandist rituals, spirit mediums sing and dance in the hope of being possessed by these spirits, through whom the congregations receive guidance, advice, and healing. Umbanda teaches a complex cosmology rooted in spiritual evolution through a system of reincarnation according to the law of karma. The religion's ethical systems emphasise charity and social fraternity.
Umbanda was established by Zélio Fernandino de Moraes and those around him in Niterói during the 1920s. He had been involved in Spiritism but disapproved of the negative attitude that many Spiritists held towards contact with the spirits common in Afro-Brazilian religious traditions. Umbanda gained increased social recognition and respectability amid the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, despite growing opposition from both the Roman Catholic Church and Pentecostal groups. Since the 1970s, Umbanda has seen some decline, in places due to the resurgent popularity of Candomblé.
In its heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, Umbanda was estimated to have between 10 and 20 million followers in Brazil. In the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians identify as Umbandists. Umbanda is found primarily in urban areas of southern Brazil although has spread throughout the country and to other parts of the Americas.
Definitions
Formed in Rio de Janeiro during the 1920s, Umbanda combines elements of Spiritism (Espiritismo) with ideas from Afro-Brazilian religions like Candomblé. Umbanda also incorporates elements of Roman Catholicism, with many Umbandists identifying as Roman Catholics. Additionally, Umbanda has been influenced by Asian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, while some Umbandist groups have adopted New Age practices. Some Umbandists have also practiced Santo Daime.
Practitioners are called Umbandistas. Historically, Umbanda has often been referred to as Macumba, a pejorative term for Afro-Brazilian popular religious traditions, and some Umbandists have referred to themselves as macumbeiros, often in jest due to the negative connotations of these terms.
Umbanda is not a unified religion, and has no central authority. It displays considerable variation and eclecticism, being highly adaptable, and taking various different forms. Much of this variation is regional. Umbandist groups exist on a spectrum from those emphasising connections to Spiritism to those emphasising links with Candomblé and related Afro-Brazilian religions. Groups taking the former position often refer to themselves as practicing Umbanda branca ("White Umbanda"), Umbanda pura ("Pure Umbanda"), or Umbanda limpa ("Clean Umbanda"). The anthropologist Lindsay Hale referred to the more Africanist wing as "Afro-Brazilian Umbanda", while fellow anthropologist Diana Brown called it "Africanized Umbanda". Most Umbandist groups exist at points between these two extremes. Reflecting this variation, Hale deemed it appropriate to talk about "Umbandas", in the plural, as much as a singular Umbanda.
Reflecting its origins in Spiritism, Umbanda has been labelled a Western esoteric tradition. It has also been called an Afro-Brazilian religion, although the scholar of religion Steven Engler cautioned that Africanised ritual elements are not present in all Umbandist groups and that the Spiritist influence was more significant over Umbanda as a whole. Scholars often regard these Afro-Brazilian traditions as existing on a continuum rather than being firmly distinct from each other. In practice, Afro-Brazilian religions often mix, rather than existing in pure forms. Groups combining elements of Umbanda and Candomblé are sometimes termed "Umbandomblé", although this is rarely embraced by practitioners themselves. Omolocô was founded in Rio de Janeiro as an intermediate religion between Candomblé and Umbanda.
Umbanda is often presented as being opposed to Quimbanda, with Umbandists claiming that they work for good, and that Quimbandists work for evil.
Beliefs
Various Umbandists have claimed that theirs is not a new religion but an ancient tradition brought to Brazil from elsewhere. Some practitioners have claimed that it derives from ancient Egypt, India, or China, or from the Aztecs or Incas. Others have maintained that Umbanda's origins are either extraterrestrial or from Atlantis. These sort of origin stories reflect the influence of Theosophy. Brown suggested that these explanations were adopted by Umbandists eager to dismiss the possibility of their religion having Sub-Saharan African origin. In contrast, various practitioners of Africanised forms of Umbanda have maintained that the religion ultimately comes from Africa.
Theology and cosmology
Although it has no authoritative source ensuring a standardised cosmological belief among practitioners, Umbanda has an elaborate cosmology, An important distinction is made between the material and the spiritual, with the latter considered far superior. Umbandist theology is largely Spiritist in basis, adopting the Spiritist emphasis on reincarnation and spiritual evolution, and with spirits ranked hierarchically according to their "degree of evolution". Brown described the Umbandist pantheon as operating in "a complex, impersonal bureaucracy". The pantheon reflects syncretic origins.
Many Umbandists believe in a three-part cosmos, divided between the astral spaces, the earth, and the underworld. The more highly evolved spirits dwell in the astral realm, spirits incarnated in physical form reside temporarily on earth, while malevolent and ignorant spirits inhabit the underworld. Spirits from both the astral and underworld realms can also visit the earth.
Umbanda is monotheistic. It regards God as the creator and controller of the universe, an entity that presides over the astral world but who is distant from humanity. He is sometimes called Olorun, a name of Yoruba origin.
Umbandists often refer to the plano astral (astral plane) as the além (beyond). Sometimes, the realm of the evolved spirits is also called Aruanda, a term that likely derives from Luanda, a port in modern Angola, but which in Umbanda has looser connotations of an area within the astral plane.
The astral world is deemed to be divided into a hierarchy of seven vertical levels, the Sête Linhas de Umbanda (Seven Lines of Umbanda), although the specific identity of each line varies among Umbandists. This seven-fold division may derive from Theosophy. Each of the Seven Lines is governed by one of the orixás, highly evolved spiritual entities who each also has an identity as a Roman Catholic saint. The underworld is also divided into Seven Lines, each of which is led by an Exú spirit.
Each of these Lines is also sub-divided into seven sub-lines; each of these is then divided into seven legions; these divide into seven sub-legions; these into seven falanges (phalanges); and these into seven sub-falanges. Umbandists often liken this cosmological structure to the organization of an army, and it may reflect the prominent role that various military figures have played in Umbanda's history. The spirits inhabiting these groups are usually arranged on the basis of regional or racial origin.
Orixás
At the top of Umbanda's hierarchy of spirits are the orixás, entities often regarded as deities. The term orixá derives from the Yoruba language of West Africa, as do the names of the various orixás themselves, which in the Brazilian context are also employed in the Nagô tradition of Candomblé. Although the names of the orixás are drawn from Candomblé, Umbandists do not typically interpret these beings in the same way that Candomblé's practitioners do. There is nevertheless variation according to group, with African-oriented Umbandists placing particular emphasis on the orixás, while White Umbandist groups often barely mention them. Accordingly, White Umbandist groups accord the orixás a far less important role in ritual than their African-oriented counterparts.
For Umbandists, the orixás are Olorun's intermediaries, and represent elemental forces of nature as well as humanity's primary economic activities. White Umbandist groups often perceive the orixás primarily as frequencies of spiritual energy, vibrations, or forces of energy. They are regarded as beings that are so highly evolved that they have never incarnated in physical form. Like God, they are distant from humanity, permanently residing on the astral plane. Many Umbandists rarely expect orixás to manifest during rituals, for the orixás are preoccupied with important spiritual matters. They are also thought too powerful for many humans to handle, meaning that their manifestation could be dangerous for the ritual's participants. Instead, the orixás send their emissaries, the caboclos and pretos velhos, to appear in their place.
Nine orixás are commonly found in Umbanda, fewer than the 16 more usually found in Candomblé.
The supreme deity is Olorun. The son of Olorun, Oxalá is associated with the sky and regarded as the creator of humanity.
Iemanjá is a maternal figure associated with the sea. Nanã is also a maternal figure associated with water, but in her case the waters of the lake and swamp.
Omolu is the orixá of sickness and healing. Xangô is linked to thunder and lightning, as well as to stone working and quarrying. Ogúm is the orixá of war, metalworking, agriculture, and transportation. Oxúm is associated with fertility and with flowing water, especially streams and waterfalls. Iansã is a female warrior who manifests in storms. Oxóssi is a hunter who lives in the forest. Exu is a trickster and the guardian of the crossroads, being the intermediary between the orixás and humanity. He will often be paid homage first during a ritual, to stop him being disruptive later in the rite.
Each of the orixás is deemed to have their own desires and emotions. The orixás are also associated with particular colors; Oxum with blue, for instance, and Oxossi with green. Each is also linked to particular days of the week; Iansã with Wednesday, and Nanã with Tuesday, for example. They are also associated with a particular celestial body, such as
Xango with the planet Jupiter and Yemanja with the moon.
Each orixá is typically associated with a Roman Catholic saint. It is in this form that they are often represented on Umbandist altars, and these links are also reinforced in praise songs. Xangô for instance is often identified with Saint Geronimo, Nanã with Saint Anne, and Omolu with Saint Roch and Saint Lazarus. Many Umbandists identify Exu with the Devil of Christian theology, and Oxalá with Jesus Christ. There is often regional variation in these associations; in Rio de Janeiro, Iemanjá is typically linked to Our Lady of Glory, while in Salvador she is associated with Our Lady of the Conception. There are nevertheless differences of opinion among Umbandists as to the nature of the relationship between orixás and saints. Many Umbandists regard the orixás and saints as manifestations of the same spiritual force rather than being exactly the same figure; some practitioners believe that these saints were once humans who were physical manifestations of the orixás.
Relationships with the orixás
Umbanda often teaches that each person has a coroa (crown) of protective spirit entities. The most important of these is the orixá da frente ("the front orixá"), an orixá deemed to be that individual's spiritual parent. These entities are a person's protectors and patrons. They are also demed to influence the personality traits of a person. Umbandists believe that these entities are deserving of respect and that treating them well will improve a person's life.
In Umbanda, it is usual for a medium to determine the identity of a person's spirit patrons. This is different from Candomblé, where the identity is more often ascertained through forms of divination. Knowing the identity of these orixás is deemed to offer a person insights about themselves.
Lesser evolved spirits
Although very different in tone from one another, the preto velhos and the caboclos are together the most important spirit types in Umbanda. Umbanda split from Spiritism over the value placed on these entities, with Umbandists believing that Spiritists often negatively misjudge the preto velhos and the caboclos because of their appearance. For Umbandists, the caboclos and pretos velhos are "beings of light", entities who inhabit the lower echelons of the Seven Lines of the astral plane.
Although they are only the emissaries of the orixas, the pretos velhos and caboclos take centre stage in Umbandist rituals. They are particularly prominent during rituals in which practitioners seek assistance with their problems, with Umbandists approaching these entities in the hope of receiving advice and protection. In practice, Umbanda strongly emphasises practitioner's personal relationships with these spirit beings, with ritual homage given to them in exchange for cures and advice. This relationship bears similarities with that between devotees and the saints in popular Catholicism.
Pretos Velhos
The pretos velhos ("old blacks") are usually, although not always, regarded as the spirits of deceased African slaves. They are usually conceived as being elderly, and thus referred to with respectful terms like vovó ("grandfather") and vovô ("grandmother"). The pretos velhos are deemed to be kind, patient, and wise. Despite the suffering they endured in life, they are thought to preach forgiveness and love. They are regarded as healers and counsellors, with Umbandists bringing their problems to the pretos velhos.
The names of these pretos velhos often reflect Catholic forenames followed by an African national affiliation, as with Maria Congo or Maria d'Aruanda. They will sometimes be addressed collectively as the Povo de Bahia (People from Bahia) or as members of a particular nation, such as the Povo da Congo (People from Congo). These spirits are commemorated on the feast of the old slaves, held on May 13, marking the day in 1888 when slavery was abolished in Brazil. Wayside shrines dedicated to the pretos velhos can be found in various places in Brazil.
Brown suggested that the portrayal of the pretos velhos reflected the stereotype of the faithful slave common in the writings of Brazilians like Castro Alves and Artur Azevedo. This literary trope had in turn been influenced by the popularity of Portuguese translations of the American novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Caboclos
Caboclos are usually the spirits of indigenous Brazilians, especially those who lived in the Amazon Rainforest. In Umbanda, they are regarded as hunters and warriors who are highly intelligent and brave, but also vain and arrogant. As spirits, they are considered to be "highly evolved". Their power comes from the forces of nature, including the sun and moon, waterfalls, and the forest. Their individual names often reflect these links to nature, for instance Caboclo Mata Virgem (Caboclo Virgin Forest) or Caboclo Coral (Caboclo Coral Snake). They are often described as living in the forest, or alternatively in a paradisiacal city in the forest called Jurema.
These spirits often have snakes as their companions, something alluded to in the songs sung about them, and which may derive from certain Afro-Brazilian traditions from northeast Brazil. The caboclos are deemed to have been people who roamed free, and thus can be contrasted with the pretos velhos, who in life were held in bondage. While performing healing, these spirits are often thought to blow cigar smoke over the patient.
The caboclos do not derive from any prolonged contact that Umbanda's founders had with indigenous peoples, but instead reflect the popular Indianismo of Brazilian culture. Their portrayal often draws on the stereotype of Brazil's indigenous peoples being "Noble Savages", and reflect the heroic depiction of indigenous Brazilians that developed in the country's Romantic literature from the mid-19th century. The term caboclo may derive from the Tupi language term kari'boka ("deriving from the white"). Although associated primarily with indigenous spirits, it is also sometimes used for the spirits of cowboys or frontiersmen, or—in parts of northeast Brazil—Turkish kings.
Other evolved spirits
Below the caboclos and preto velhos in the Seven Lines of the astral realm are a large number of unidentified guias (spirit guides) and espíritos pretetores (spirit protectors). Other types of spirit include the boiadeiros (cowboys), crianças (children), marinheiros (sailors), malandros (rogues), ciganos (gypsies) and sereias (mermaids).
The crianças are spirits of children and are valued largely for the joy and humor that they bring. Like living children, they are deemed to like sweets and toys. In Umbandist rites they are thought to often appear towards the end of proceedings, after tiring adult issues have been dealt with. Those possessed by the crianças often giggle, sing nursery rhymes, and perform in a child-like fashion. Umbandists often hold an annual birthday party for these spirits on the Roman Catholic feast day of the child martyr saints Cosmas and Damian. It is possible that the crianças derive in part from beliefs about the Ibeji twins, spirits venerated in parts of West Africa.
Exus and Pombagiras
In Umbanda, the exus are spirits yet to complete the process of karmic evolution. They are unevolved spirits of darkness which, by working for good, can gradually become spirits of light. Interpretations of these exus nevertheless differs depending on the Umbandist group, with more African-oriented Umbandists often taking a more positive attitude towards them. In Umbanda, Friday is associated with the exus. The term exu derives from the name of a Yoruba orisha spirit regarded as a trickster.
Exus fall into two main categories. The exus da luz (exus of the light) or exus batizades (baptised exus) have repented for their sins and seek redemption and karmic advancement by serving the orixas. In life, the exus da luz were often sinners who performed immoral acts through noble intentions. The other type of exus are the exus das trevas (exus of the shadows), spirits who are unrepentant and who afflict and torment the living. They may act as "obsessors", finding a human victim and "leaning" (encostado) on them, causing the latter problems such as bad luck, compulsive behaviours, or addiction. The exus das trevas may do this due to their resentment of the living, or because they have been commanded to do so by a feiticero (sorcerer) practicing Quimbanda. These negative exus are sometimes also called Exú pagão (pagan exu), reflecting the influence of Christian thought. In Umbanda, theexus are often referred to with Christian-derived names like the Devil, Satan, or Lucifer, and are portrayed as being red with horns and tridents, reflecting Christian iconographical influence.
The female counterparts of the exus, Pombagiras are the spirits of immoral women, such as prostitutes. They are associated with sexuality, blood, death, and cemeteries. Linked to marginal and dangerous places, they are often presented as being ribald and flirty, speaking in sexual euphemisms and double entendres. They wear red and black clothing, and only possess women and gay men, who will then often smoke or drink alcohol, using obscene language and behaving lasciviously. The term pombagira may derive from the Bantu word bombogira, the name of a male orixa in Candomblé's Bantu or Angola tradition. In Brazilian Portuguese, the term pomba is a euphemism for the vulva.
Mediumship
In Umbanda, mediums are responsible for contacting the good spirits, and Brown described Umbandist mediums as "a sort of intermediate category of semi-specialists" within the religion.
Umbandists mediums may be regarded as being capable of vidéncia (seeing) spirit entities, and others sensing their presence through intuition. A medium's relationship with their exu or pombagira is considered close, and is mediated through the giving of gifts.
Most Umbandist mediums take on this role as a result of an initial personal crisis, often physical illness or emotional distress, that they come to believe is being caused by spirits as a means of alerting them. Often, they report that they initially resisted the call to become a medium but that the problems faced became too much and so they relented. In Umbanda, it may take seven years of more to train as a medium.
Each of a medium's spirits will often have their own unique character.
Some Umbandist mediums operate out of their home, rather than running a centre.
Mediums are often expected to abstain from alcohol or sex prior to a ceremony.
Reciprocity is expected when engaging with the spirits, with those seeking their services often providing them with gifts. A person's misfortunes may be interpreted as a reminder that obligations to the spirits have not been met.
Reincarnation
Umbanda teaches that everyone has a spirit that survives bodily death. Umbandists sometimes refer to living people as espíritos enćarnados (incarnate spirits). Like Spiritists, Umbandists typically believe that each person has a perispirit, a transparent membrane around the body that mediates between the body and soul. They believe that disturbances is either body and soul can impact the perispirit.
From Spiritism, Umbanda takes the ideas of reincarnation and karmic evolution; the terms reincarnacâo and karma were largely introduced to Brazilian Portuguese via Kardec's ideas. Umbandists believe that the spirit survives bodily death and goes on successive reincarnations, seeking ever higher levels of spiritual evolution. Everyone is subject to karma, and a person can spiritually evolve through their incarnations.
Reincarnation is a central idea for many Umbandists. Practitioners believe that by serving the spirits and assisting the living they can build up their karmic credit. The higher a person's karmic credit, the higher their level on the astral plane, and then the better the status of their next incarnation. Umbandists believe that disincarnate spirits can also build up karmic credit. Practitioners sometimes believe that the events of previous incarnations can influence a person, for instance generating certain irrational fears. Some Umbandists think that the same spirits can meet repeatedly over successive incarnations.
Morality, ethics, and gender roles
Umbandist morality places key emphasis on caridade (charity), something also evident in Spiritism, and which for both religions may derive ultimately from Roman Catholicism. As in Spiritism, for Umbandists charity is regarded as a key motor for spiritual evolution. Practitioners for instance may give gifts and food to poor children to mark the festival of the crianças. Umbandists also place value on humility.
Brown argued that Umbanda inherited the Roman Catholic view that the world was a battleground between good and evil. Umbandists often embody all the things that they oppose in the term Quimbanda. In the Umbandist view, Quimbanda is associated with evil, immorality, and pollution, and particularly with the use of Exús.
Brown noted that Quimbanda represented "a crucial negative mirror image against which to define Umbanda," suggesting that it could also serve as an "ideological vehicle for expressing prejudices" towards African-derived and lower class religions.
Umbandists often believe that things happen for a reason, rather than being mere coincidence, and are part of a person's path in life.
Afro-Brazilian religions are often stereotyped as attracting gay men, and to avoid this stereotype some male Umbandists refuse to be possessed by female spirits.
Umbanda has been recognized for its openness toward sexual diversity. Homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, and transexual people are welcomed without distinction. In places where Candomblé's influence is greater, men and women may fulfill different roles, but they are of equal dignity and importance. Another important aspect is that people who are not heterosexual have the possibility of becoming priests or priestesses, mediums, and so forth without distinction. Many homosexual couples marry religiously at the hands of Umbanda priests.
The orixá Oxumaré, as an entity that spends six months being male and six months being female, is sometimes cited as a patron of gay and bisexual people.
Practices
Umbandist practices often revolve around clients who approach practitioners seeking assistance, for instance in diagnosing a problem, healing, or receiving a blessing. In Umbanda, spiritual knowledge and ethical behaviour are generally seen as being more important than ritual action.
Houses of Worship
Umbandist places of worship are termed centros, or alternatively tendas (tents), or terreiros, the latter a term from Candomblé. As the latter term has distinct Afro-Brazilian associations it is avoided by some practitioners of White Umbanda. An insignia, the ponto riscado (sacred sign) may be on the exterior of the centro to identify its function. Not all ceremonies take place here; certain rituals may be held outdoors, for instance beside a stream or the sea if that location is deemed particularly appropriate to the rite.
These groups have both formal and informal hierarchies, with leadership often rooted in individual charisma. They are typically led by an individual called a mãe-de-santo ("mother-of-saint") or pai-de-santo ("father-of-saint"), and alternatively sometimes the chefe ("chief"). In some groups, leaders may be called a babalaô, a term that may be borrowed from the Yoruba word babalawo, a diviner in the Ifá system. The second-in-command is the mãe pequena ("little mother"). A figure called the presidente will often be responsible for the group's business affairs.
The main ritual space is called the barracão. Often this will face east, a direction deemed most conducive to astral forces. Sacred objects will often be buried beneath the floor, and these are termed axés. This main room will typically have paintings of the spirits on the walls, a space for practitioners to dance, and an altar. The altar will often have figurines of the caboclos, preto velhos, and orixas, often in their form as Roman Catholic saints. Also usually present will be flowers and glasses of water to attract good forces, the latter a direct influence from Spiritism. Afro-Brazilian oriented terreiros may have multiple outdoor shrines to different orixás.
Some centres will also have a kitchen and office, or a place for the mediums to change clothing. There will often also be seating in rows to face the main ritual area.
If a building is not available, rituals are performed in a private backyard.
The Tendas or Terreiros are also used directly or in a support capacity for charitable works to provide child care, medical clinics, assistance to orphanages, and distribution of medicines and/or food.
here is much work involved in running a Umbanda centre, for instance overseeing maintenance and paying bills.
Each Umbanda Terreiro practices the same religion with variations, according to the policies of the pai-de-santo's or the mãe-de-santo's spiritual mentor, as well as in accordance with the teachings and philosophies of the various traditions within Umbanda. During these ceremonies, the priests, priestesses, and initiates wear white costumes and pay homage to the spirits and Orixás.
Rituals and ceremonies
Umbandists typically hold public ceremonies called sessões (sessions) several times a week. These will take place in the centro, or if an Umbandist group lacks one it will instead be in rented premises or a private home. The purpose of these rituals is to invoke spirits to come to earth, where they may take possession of the mediums and thus offer spiritual consultations to the congregation.
Mediums and others engaged in Umbandist rituals typically wear white clothing. This distinguishes them from Candomblé practitioners, who may wear more complex outfits. On arriving at the ritual space, participants will often genuflect to the altar.
To start a ceremony, a ritual purification using incense, the defumacão, is used to banish harmful spirits. At sessões, the exus will be placated and asked to remain absent.
Songs sung at ceremonies are called pontos. Usually sung in Portuguese, they celebrate the powers and exploits of the spirits. In a ritual, pontos will often be sung in honor of the leader of each of the Seven Lines. These may be accompanied by hand clapping or drumming, depending on the Umbanda group in question. In ritual, offerings of food may be prepared for the spirits.
The gira is a dance to celebrate the orixás. In White Umbanda, the singing of hymns may be accompanied by clapping. While possessed, the medium is considered a cavalos (horse). A possessing spirit may then "open the way" for others to follow it. If Exus possess a medium during the spirit, they will generally be exorcised.
Umbandist mediums generally do not charge for working with the spirits, but clients will typically support them with material gifts.
During the ceremonies the priests and priestesses (pai-de-santo, mãe-de-santo, filhos-de-santo, initiates) and the public attending the meeting sing together, dance, drink beverages and smoke cigars under the spirit's influence. However, the use of such elements by these spirits aren't due to any addictions – they are used as sacred elements that help the spirits to nullify any negative energies surrounding the assisted person. The priests and priestesses are separated from the attending public, usually by a small fence. The priests, priestesses and some of the public gradually get immersed in the singing and dancing, and suddenly get possessed by deities and spirits, starting to act and speak with their personas.
Intervention by spiritual beings in followers' daily lives is a central belief, so participation in Umbanda rites is important to appease deities and spirits.
Umbandist practice can often incorporate Roman Catholic elements. In São Paulo, for instance, it is common for Umbandist groups to recite the Lord's Prayer or Hail Mary during their rituals. Many Umbandist groups have also embraced New Age practices such as aromatherapy, crystal healing, numerology, tarot cartomancy, and chakra realignment.
A particular orixa will be paid ritual homage on the saint's day that correlates with them. These acts of ritual homage are called obrigações (obligations) and will usually take place at a place in the natural environment associated with the orixa in question, for instance a pile of rocks for Xango, at fresh water for Oxum, or at salt water for Yemanja. Ritual homage will also sometimes be made to exus, in which case it is usually done at the crossroads. Offerings to the exus typically include candles, cachaca, cigarettes, and sacrificed black chickens. Many Umbandists believe that performing a homage to these entities goes beyond the bounds of Umbanda and becomes Quimbanda.
In Afro-Brazilian Umbanda
More African-oriented Umbandist groups will often feature practices like animal sacrifice, dancing, and drumming which are found in Afro-Brazilian religions like Candomblé. These are typically avoided by White Umbanda traditions, the practitioners of which sometimes regard such practices as primitive.
The drumming is performed to summon the spirits to appear at the ceremony; different rhythms are often selected for different orixás. Amid the drumming, singing, and dancing in a circle, Umbandists believe that the caboclos, as representatives of the orixás, will appear and possess one of the participants. Later in the ceremony, other caboclos, as well as pretos velhos, exus, and pomba giras, will appear and possess people to offer advice, protection, and healing.
Animals sacrificed in these African-oriented terreiros are usually chickens, although sometimes guinea fowl, sheep, goats, or more rarely bulls are used. Typically, the animal's throat will be cut, after which its corpse may be butchered and body parts placed on the altar. In White Umbanda, these sacrifices are deemed misguided, unnecessary, and cruel, with White Umbandists believing that blood sacrifice attracts the lowest types of spirits and generate bad karma for those engaging in the sacrifice. Various White Umbandists have also questioned why spiritual beings would require nourishment from physical blood.
Healing
Malevolent and ignorant spirits from the underworld are regarded as a common cause of harm.
A person may come to Umbanda because they believe that they are being tormented by a malevolent spirit. Umbandist mediums will then cajole the spirit to leave. If a person is repeatedly attacked by spirits, Umbandists may deem that individual to be especially sensitive to spirits and recommend that they become a medium themselves so as to learn to control the issue.
Umbandists often employ herbal baths or washes called banhos to cleanse and fortify themselves. Another type of herbal infusion, amacis, are more commonly found in Afro-Brazilian Umbanda and are often rooted in Afro-Brazilian medicinal traditions. Herbs used may be collected on specific days based on their astrological associations. Also found in Afro-Brazilian Umbandist groups is a complex healing rite termed the sacudimento (shaking), in which offerings are given to the spirits and prayers and songs are offered.
Practitioners of White Umbanda generally place great faith in mainstream medicine, reflecting the ideological positivism inherited from Spiritism. For these adherents, the spirits are thought to deal primarily with the spiritual aspects of illness, rather than the physical ones.
History
Background
Umbanda derives from the combination of Afro-Brazilian religions with Spiritism. A variant of the American religion of Spiritualism, Spiritism was developed by the Frenchman Allan Kardec. Kardec's Spiritism combined Spiritualism's general emphasis on spirit mediumship with the Hindu ideas of karma and reincarnation, Christian ethical systems, and the social evolutionism and positivism of Auguste Comte. It placed emphasis on the idea of spirits progressing on a path of moral and intellectual evolution, meaning that there is a distinction between higher, or "evolved" spirits, as well as lesser ones.
Spiritism arrived in Brazil circa 1857, where it was often called Kardecismo or Espiritismo. Brazil's Spiritists still often regarding themselves as Roman Catholics. Spiritism proved popular among the largely white Brazilian bourgeoisie, with Rio becoming the hub for Brazilian Spiritist activity. The first Brazilian Spiritist Federation forming in 1884 as an attempt to unify the movement. Throughout Latin America, Spiritism often hybridised with other religious traditions from the 1860s on.
Amid the Atlantic slave trade, between 3.5 and 4 million enslaved Africans were transported to Brazil, with the numbers reaching their highest levels in the 19th century. The trade continued until 1851, with slavery ultimately being abolished in the country in 1888. In Brazil, enslaved Africans were allowed to join Roman Catholic religious brotherhoods, and it was within these that they privately continued the practice of African-derived religious traditions. Different names for Afro-Brazilian traditions arose in different parts of the country; in Salvador, Bahia, these traditions became Candomblé. The 19th century saw Rio de Janeiro become Brazil's economic hub, resulting in growing numbers of Afro-Brazilians moving there. Afro-Brazilian religious groups were first recorded in Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century, although were probably present in the city beforehand. Candomblé was likely introduced to the city by migrants from Bahia.
In the early decades of the 20th century, Candomblé was subject to considerable disapproval from the bourgeoise classes and the dominant Roman Catholic Church, with its terreiros often experiencing police repression.
Brown noted that Umbanda was "deeply influenced" by Spiritism but "diverged from it in many important ways". Umbanda would make the spirits of African and Indigenous American people central to many of its rituals, but in Spiritism these entities were often perceived as being low on the level of spiritual evolution and thus avoided. Umbanda departed from Candomblé in various ways; it reduced the pantheon of orixas found in Candomblé, dropped the practice of animal sacrifice, and simplified the initiation process.
Foundation
Although there may have been various groups merging Spiritist and Afro-Brazilian religious ideas in the early 20th century, Umbanda formed in Rio de Janeiro during the 1920s. Its founders were Kardecist Spiritists who were disappointed with the orthodoxy of Spiritism, and who were interested in the country's Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, which they deemed more exciting and dramatic than those of the Spiritists.
A key figure was Zélio Fernandino de Moraes, founder of the first Umbandist group, the Centro Espírita Nossa Senhora da Piedade (Spiritism Center of Our Lady of Mercy). This initially operated in Niterói from the mid-1920s before moving to the centre of Rio de Janeiro in 1938. According to claims that gained prominence in the 1970s, in 1908, when he was 17 years old, Moraes had been cured of an illness by a highly evolved spirit. His parents then took him to a Spiritist ritual, where the spirit Caboclo Seven Crossroads (Caboclo das Sete Encruzilhadas) incorporated into him. This spirit defended the appearance of African and indigenous spirits that then incorporated in other mediums, despite the Spiritist prejudice towards them.
The term Umbanda may derive from the Portuguese uma banda, meaning "one group". The religion's founding members were mostly white men, largely occupied in middle-class professions involving commerce, government bureaucracy, and the military. Brown suggested that Umbanda could be seen as an attempt by middle-class white Brazilians to exert control over the popular religion of the lower classes.
By combining Afro-Brazilian and European ideas, Umbanda was presented as a national religion for Brazil at a time when the country was increasingly being presented as a cultural melting pot.
In 1939, Zélio de Moraes formed the first Umbandist federation, the Umbandist Spiritist Union of Brazil. In 1941, the Primero Congresso do Espiritismo de Umbanda (First Congress of the Spiritism of Umbanda) was held in Rio de Janeiro, representing a collective attempt to codify Umbandist teaching. The congress' proceedings were published in 1942 and highlight Umbanda's origins in Spiritism and the early Umbandists' desire to distinguish themselves from Afro-Brazilian traditions. In turn, some Umbandist groups whose membership was predominantly Afro-Brazilian began maintaining that Umbanda was a religion with African origins, and that anyone not using drumming and animal sacrifice in their rites was not truly practicing Umbanda. In turn, White Umbandist leaders retorted that the Africanised traditions were in fact Quimbanda or Candomblé and were falsely using the term "Umbanda". This confusion may be explained if the term "Umbanda" had been adopted independently both by Zélio de Moraes' group and by certain Afro-Brazilian practitioners.
From the 1950s on, six other Umbandist federations formed in Rio, three of them open to more Africanised elements. The most important of these was the Umbandist Spiritist Federation, founded in 1952 by Tancredo da Silva Pinto, and which adopted a more African-focused approach. Umbanda began to split into two poles, one closer to Kardecism and eager for social respectability, the other more open to emphasising its Afro-Brazilian roots.
In 1967, Moraes stepped down as leader of his group, with the role being taken by his daughter.
Although remaining concentrated in the major cities of southern Brazil, Umbanda spread throughout the country in the years following the Second World War. Brazil's dominant Roman Catholic Church recognised Umbanda's growth, as well as that of Kardecism and Pentecostalism, and mounted a campaign against them. This approach formally ended in 1962, with the changes brought on by the Second Vatican Council.
The first stage of the Umbanda expansion coincides with the social and political changes that occurred in the 1930s and with the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1930—1945).
Getúlio Vargas became known as "pai dos pobres" (Father of the Poor) and, also, as "pai da Umbanda" (Father of the Umbanda) among the emergent urban and working class. Until 1966 many Umbanda Terreiros had a Getúlio Vargas picture in a place of honor.
Despite the identification with the objectives of the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship, the Umbanda followers were persecuted. The police repression interrupted religious meetings, beat the psychics and followers and confiscated their instruments of Umbanda. An entire collection of icons, costumes, garbs, amulets, instruments, and objects of traditional religions confiscated by policemen is still kept in the Museu da Polícia (Museum of Police) in Rio de Janeiro city. A notable victim of the police repression was former soccer player Euclydes Barbosa (1909—88). Jaú was also a pai-de-santo or babalorixá, priest of Umbanda, the founder of the Umbanda religion in São Paulo city and one of the first organizers in the 1950s of the Yemanjá feast in the São Paulo State beaches. Jaú was illegally imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and publicly humiliated by the police because of his religious activities. Some Umbanda leaders call him the great martyr of their religion.
Military Dictatorship and after
In 1964, a military dictatorship took power in Brazil. The military government largely protected Umbanda; many soldiers were Umbandists and the junta regarded the religion as a counter to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which they perceived as having grown increasingly sympathetic to the political left since the 1950s. From 1965, Umbandist centros/terreiros were permitted to secure legal recognition with just a civil registration.
Umbanda also gained recognition as a religion on the Brazilian census. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rapid growth of middle-class participation in Umbanda. After the 1960s and 1970s, the number of Umbandists declined. During the 1970s, Candomblé spread from Bahia into São Paulo, where it grew rapidly, largely at the expense of Umbanda.
In 1974 Umbanda practitioners (including declared and undeclared) were estimated to be about 30 million in a population of 120 million Brazilians.
After the 1970s the Umbanda cults begun to be opposed by Pentecostals. Evangelical Pentecostal Churches have begun attempting to evangelize and, in some cases, persecute practitioners of Umbanda and other traditional religions.
In the latter half of the 20th century Umbanda grew rapidly among transformation of Candomblé that was first noticed in Bahia.
Meanwhile, some non-Brazilian scholars, including French sociologist Roger Bastide, who from 1938 to 1957 was professor of sociology at the University of São Paulo, produced sympathetic accounts of Umbanda and defended its practitioners’ rights to religious freedom. Bastide believed that Umbanda, unlike Candomblé, had a bright future in Brazil and may eventually become a mainline religion.
Research conducted by the anthropologists Lísias Nogueira Negrão and Maria Helena Concone revealed that in the 1940s in São Paulo, just 58 religious organizations were registered as Umbanda Terreiros, but 803 organizations declared themselves as Spiritism Centers. In the 1950s, positions inverted: 1,025 organizations declared themselves as Umbanda Terreiros, 845 as Spiritism Centers and only one Candomblé Terreiro. The apex was during the 1970s, with 7,627 Umbanda Terreiros, 856 Candomblé Terreiros and 202 Spiritism Centers.
Umbanda practitioners have taken cases to national courts and achieved a high measure of success. In 2005 the Superior Órgão de Umbanda do Estado de São Paulo (Superior Organization of Umbanda in São Paulo State) won a judicial case in the Federal Court against the television broadcasting systems Rede Record and Rede Mulher, that belong to the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, a Neo Pentecostal Church. The Public Attorney (Ministério Público) denounced television programs that treated the traditional religions in a derogatory and discriminating way.
Demographics
Umbanda grew rapidly after the Second World War. Diana Brown noted that by the 1970s, there were estimates that between 10 and 20 million people, as much as ten percent of Brazil's population, were practicing Umbanda. In 1969, there were estimates that 100,000 Umbandist centros were then active in Brazil. The number of Umbandists declined following the 1970s, although in 1986 Brown suggested that Umbanda still had millions of followers in Brazil. In the 2000 Brazilian census, 432,000 Brazilians declared themselves Umbandistas, a 20% drop in relation to the 1991 census. Many people attend the Terreiros of Umbanda seeking counseling or healing, but they do not consider themselves Umbandistas. In 2009, Hale suggested that the number of "occasional participants" ran into the millions.
Although originally concentrated in Brazil's large southern cities, the religion has spread throughout the country. Brazilian immigrants have also taken the religion to other parts of Latin America like Uruguay as well as to the United States.
While Umbanda has attracted followers from across Brazil's racial and class spectrum, most practitioners are people of color and are working or lower class. Among its middle-class following have been high-ranking military figures, journalists, and politicians, and Brown suggested that middle-class practitioners have been more influential in Umbanda's history. Different Umbandist groups vary in their typical racial and class demographic. The main reason that people get involved in Umbanda is because they have a problem and hope that the religion's spirits will be able to identify the cause and provide a remedy.
Some Umbandists move on to join Candomblé, believing that the latter deals with more powerful supernatural forces and thus resolves problems more readily. Umbanda is sometimes described as an appropriate preparation for Candomblé, and the move from Umbanda to Candomblé can also bring greater prestige within Brazilian society. Umbandist mediums sometimes hold critical views of Candomblé, regarding it as authoritarian, and criticising the high prices charged for initiation into it.
Reception and influence
From the 1950s, Brazil's Roman Catholic establishment campaigned against Umbanda, portraying it as a primitive religion that was frequented by ignorant people. Throughout much of the 20th century, Umbanda also faced hostility from Brazilian intellectuals on both the left and right. Brazilian Spiritists have also often looked down upon Umbanda because of the way it deals with what these Spiritists regard as less developed spirits.
Scholarly research into Afro-Brazilian religions began in the late 19th century, although for much of the 20th century the focus was on Candomblé and other traditions deemed to have a "purer" African origin than the more syncretic Umbanda. In the early 1960s, a group of sociologists at the University of São Paulo began to study Umbanda, the most prominent being Roger Bastide, who saw the religion as an expression of urban industrial change. Over following decades, research focused primarily among Afro-Brazilian Umbandists, rather than White Umbandist groups.
Umbanda has also influenced some practitioners of Santo Daime and a tradition called Umbandaime has emerged as a hybridized religion combining elements of both. Umbandist trance states have also been studied by Heathens seeking to create new forms of seiðr.
Neopentecostal Protestantism
In Brazil, Umbanda and other religions with an African basis suffer due to religious intolerance, with born-again neopentecostal religions being the most intolerant with regards to Umbanda, Candomblé, and Kardecism.
Traditional Branches of Candomblé
Some radical practitioners of Candomblé criticize Umbanda because they consider it superficial and believe it does not acknowledge the most important rites of worship of Orixás. Some have also criticized Umbanda for not separating the worship of spirits from the worship of entities, since Candomblé considers Orixás and gods to be purer and of a more primordial energy, and that for that reason, they should not be confounded with the energy of spirits that have lived on Earth.
Praise and Honors
Intangible Cultural Heritage
In 2016, following a study done by the Instituto Rio Patrimônio da Humanidade (Rio Heritage of Humanity Institute), Umbanda became one of Rio de Janeiro's Intangible Cultural Heritages. The study recognized the importance of syncretic Afro-indigenous Brazilian culture, with its religious syncretism being a driving force behind various social facets of great sociocultural impact.
In addition, the Inventário Nacional de Referências Culturais (National Inventory of Cultural References) is in the process of recognition of multiple Umbanda terreiros as cultural heritage sites throughout the state of Rio de Janeiro.
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
DaMatta, Roberto. "Religion and Modernity: Three studies of Brazilian religiosity". Journal of Social History. Winter 1991, Vol. 25 Issue 2, pp. 389–406, 18p.
Sybille Pröschild: "Das Heilige in der Umbanda. Geschichte, Merkmale und Anziehungskraft einer afro-brasilianischen Religion. Kontexte. Neue Beiträge zur historischen und systematischen Theologie, Band 39. Edition Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009.
Maik Sadzio: Gespräche mit den Orixás: Ethnopsychoanalyse in einem Umbanda Terreiro in Porto Alegre/Brasilien, Transkulturelle Edition, München, 2012.
External links
Tenda Espirita Mirim – One of the oldest, most celebrated centers of Umbanda in Brazil
Templo de Umbanda Caboclo Ubirajara – Grande conteúdo sobre Umbanda 100% Gratuito
Terreiro de Umbanda Pai Maneco
Tenda Espirita Mirim Eighth Affiliate in the United States – The Way of the Sun
Núcleo Umbandista São Sebastião – O que a Umbanda faz e o que ela não faz
La Religión Umbanda
Afro-American religion
Afro-Brazilian culture
Religious syncretism in Brazil
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt%20Earp
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Wyatt Earp
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Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp was involved in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw Cochise County Cowboys. While Wyatt is often depicted as the key figure in the shootout, his brother Virgil was both Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal that day and had considerably more experience in law enforcement as a sheriff, constable, and marshal than did Wyatt. Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys. Wyatt was only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother.
In 1874, Earp arrived in the boomtown of Wichita, Kansas, where his reputed wife opened a brothel. Wyatt was arrested more than once for his presence in a brothel where he may have been a pimp. He was later appointed to the Wichita police force and developed a solid reputation as a lawman but was fined and "not rehired as a police officer" after getting into a physical altercation with a political opponent of his boss. Earp immediately left Wichita, following his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas where his brother's wife, Bessie, and Earp's common law wife, Sally, operated a brothel. He later became an assistant city marshal. In late 1878, he went to Texas to track down an outlaw and met John "Doc" Holliday, whom Earp credited with saving his life.
Throughout his life, Earp moved between boom towns. He left Dodge in 1879 and moved with his brothers James and Virgil to Tombstone where a silver boom was underway. The Earps clashed with a group of outlaws known as the "Cowboys". Wyatt, Virgil, and younger brother Morgan held various law-enforcement positions that put them in conflict with Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, Ike Clanton, and Billy Clanton who threatened to kill the Earps on several occasions. The conflict escalated, culminating in the shootout at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, where the Earps and Doc Holliday killed three Cowboys. During the next five months, Virgil was ambushed and maimed, and Morgan was murdered. Wyatt, Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, and others formed a federal posse that killed three more Cowboys whom they thought responsible. Wyatt was never wounded in any of the gunfights, unlike his brothers Virgil and Morgan or Doc Holliday, which added to his mystique after his death.
After leaving Tombstone, Earp went to San Francisco where he reunited with Josephine Marcus, and they lived as husband and wife. They joined a gold rush to Eagle City, Idaho, where they owned mining interests and a saloon. Back in San Francisco, Wyatt raced horses, but his reputation suffered irreparably when he refereed the Fitzsimmons vs. Sharkey boxing match and called a foul, which led many to believe he fixed the fight. Earp and Marcus joined the Nome Gold Rush in 1899. He and Charlie Hoxie paid for a liquor license to open the Dexter, a two-story saloon, and made an estimated . But, Josephine had a notorious gambling habit and the money didn't last. Around 1911, Earp began working several mining claims in Vidal, California, retiring in the hot summers with Josephine to one of several small, modest cottages they rented in Los Angeles. He made friends among early Western actors in Hollywood and tried to get his story told, but he was portrayed during his lifetime only very briefly in one film: Wild Bill Hickok (1923).
Earp died on January 13, 1929. Known as a Western lawman, gunfighter, and boxing referee, he had earned notoriety for his handling of the Fitzsimmons–Sharkey fight and his role in the O.K. Corral gunfight. This changed only after his death when the extremely flattering biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake was published in 1931, becoming a bestseller and creating his reputation as a fearless lawman. Since then, Earp's fame and notoriety have been increased by films, television shows, biographies, and works of fiction. Long after his death, he has many devoted detractors and admirers.
Early life
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born on March 19, 1848, the fourth child of Nicholas Porter Earp and his second wife, Virginia Ann Cooksey. He was named after his father's commanding officer in the Mexican–American War, Captain Wyatt Berry Stapp, of the 2nd Company Illinois Mounted Volunteers. Some evidence supports Wyatt Earp's birthplace as 406 S. 3rd St. in Monmouth, Illinois, though the street address is disputed by Monmouth College professor and historian William Urban.
The Wyatt Earp Birthplace, Inc., 1986, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places 1999. The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency visited the home at 406 So. 3rd St. and submitted the nomination. Wyatt had seven full siblingsJames, Virgil, Martha, Morgan, Warren, Virginia, and Adeliaand an elder half-brother, Newton, from his father's first marriage.
In March 1849, or in early 1850, Nicholas Earp joined about a hundred other people in a plan to relocate to San Bernardino County, California, where he intended to buy farmland. Just west of Monmouth on the journey, their daughter Martha became ill. The family stopped and Nicholas bought a new farm northeast of Pella, Iowa. Martha died there on May 26, 1856.
Nicholas and Virginia Earp's last child, Adelia, was born in June 1861 in Pella. Newton, James, and Virgil joined the Union Army on November 11, 1861. Their father was busy recruiting and drilling local companies, so Wyatt and his two younger brothers, Morgan and Warren, were left in charge of tending of corn. Wyatt was only 13 years old, too young to enlist, but he tried on several occasions to run away and join the army. Each time, his father found him and brought him home. James was severely wounded in Fredericktown, Missouri, and returned home in summer 1863. Newton and Virgil fought several battles in Missouri, Mississippi, and Tennessee, and later followed the family to California.
Adult life
California
On May 12, 1864, Nicholas Earp organized a wagon train and headed to San Bernardino, California, arriving on December 17. By late summer 1865, Virgil found work as a driver for Phineas Banning's stage coach line in California's Imperial Valley, and 16-year-old Wyatt assisted. In spring 1866, Wyatt became a teamster transporting cargo for Chris Taylor. From 1866-68, he drove cargo over on the wagon road from Wilmington through San Bernardino, then Las Vegas, Nevada, to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory.
In spring 1868 Earp was hired to transport supplies needed to build the Union Pacific Railroad. He learned gambling and boxing while working on the rail head in the Wyoming Territory. He developed a reputation from officiating boxing matches and refereed a fight between John Shanssey and Prof. Mike Donovan on July 4, 1869, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in front of 3,000 spectators.
Lawman and marriage
In spring 1868 the Earps moved east again to Lamar, Missouri, where Wyatt's father Nicholas became the local constable. Wyatt rejoined the family the next year. Nicholas resigned as constable on November 17, 1869, to become the Justice of the Peace. Wyatt was appointed constable in his place.
First gunfight
Virgil soon went to Missouri and Wyatt to Beardstown, Illinois, south, where he spent the summer of 1869. Beardstown was undergoing a boom thanks to a rail line being laid through town.
During that summer in Beardstown, a railroad brakeman named Tom Pinard mocked Wyatt, calling him "the California boy", a euphemism for coward, implying that Wyatt had gone to California to avoid serving in the Civil War. Although Wyatt had attempted to join the armyhe was 13 and been stopped by his fatherhe took offense at Piner's remarks. They fought inside Walden’s Hotel, a brothel owned by John T. Walton, and Wyatt tossed Pinard outside. Pinard drew his gun and so did Wyatt. The two men exchanged shots; Wyatt wounded Pinard in the hip.
Marriage to Urilla Sutherland
In late 1869 Earp courted 20-year-old Urilla Sutherland, daughter of William and Permelia Sutherland who operated the Exchange Hotel in Lamar, Missouri, the Barton County seat. They were married by Earp's father on January 10, 1870. Wyatt bought a lot on the outskirts of town for $50 where he built a house in August 1870. Urilla was about to deliver their first child when she died from typhoid fever. In November, Earp sold the lot and house for $75. He ran against his elder half-brother Newton for the office of constable and won by 137 votes to Newton's 108, but their father lost the election for Justice of the Peace in a very close four-way race.
Lawsuits and charges
Earp went through a downward spiral after Urilla's death, and he had a series of legal problems. On March 14, 1871, Barton County filed a lawsuit against him in the amount of $200 (about $4,500 today) and his sureties which included his father. He was in charge of collecting license fees for Lamar, which were designated to fund local schools, but had failed to turn the money over to the county.
On March 28, 1871, Earp, Edward Kennedy, and John Shown were charged with stealing two horses from William Keys while in the Indian country, "each of the value of $100". Only three days later on March 31, James Cromwell filed a lawsuit against him alleging that he had erased and rewritten a dollar figure on a judgement against Cromwell and that Earp had collected and kept the difference. The court seized Cromwell's mowing machine and sold it for $38 to make up the difference between what Earp turned in and what Cromwell owed. Cromwell's suit claimed that Earp owed him $75, the estimated value of the machine.
On April 6, Deputy U.S. Marshal J. G. Owens arrested Earp for the horse theft. Commissioner James Churchill arraigned him on April 14 and set bail at $500. Wyatt was summoned to appear at a hearing on the matter. Before he could appear, Wyatt sold his property, escaped through the roof of jail, and headed for Peoria, Illinois.
On May 15, an indictment was issued against Earp, Kennedy, and Shown. John Shown's wife Anna claimed that Earp and Kennedy got her husband drunk and then threatened his life to persuade him to help steal the horses. On June 5, Kennedy was acquitted while the case remained against Earp and Shown. The new constable wrote that he had "good reason to believe [and] does believe that Wyatt S. Earp def[initely] is not a resident of this state, that Wyatt S. Earp has absconded or absented himself from his usual place of abode in this state so that the ordinary process of law cannot be processed against him."
Pimping Arrests in Peoria
Peoria had grown to a city of 22,000 in the 1870s and had earned a reputation as a wide-open city whose community leaders mostly ignored illegal alcohol use, gambling, prostitution, and other vices. But Peoria police raided a brothel on February 24, 1872 and arrested Wyatt and Morgan Earp, George Randall, and four women including Jane Haspel. The men were charged with "keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame", and later fined $20 and court costs. In Root's Peoria City Directory for 1872–73, published on March 1, 1872, Wyatt is a resident in the home of Jane Haspel at Washington Street near the corner of Hamilton. When he was arrested, he was not merely a customer.
Both Earps were arrested for the same crime again on May 11. "Wyat Earp and his brother Morgan Earp were each fined $44.55 and as they had not the money and would not work, they languish in the cold and silent calaboose..." They were freed in time for their sister Adelia's eleventh birthday on June 16, 1872. Wyatt and Morgan visited her in the family home in Lamar, Missouri. Wyatt returned to the Peoria area.
On September 10, 1872, he was arrested aboard the Beardstown Gunboat, a 50-foot keelboat fitted with a ramshackle, eight-bedroom house and used as a floating brothel. To evade the local authorities, the boat picked up passengers and made slow runs along the Illinois River, tying up at various points along the way. It was owned by John T. Walton, the same man who three years earlier operated the brothel in Beardstown where Wyatt had his first gunfight. A prostitute named Sally Heckell was arrested with him, and she called herself his wife; she was likely the 16-year-old daughter of Jane Haspel.
The Peoria Daily National Democrat reported:
By calling Earp the "Peoria Bummer", the newspaper put him in a class of "contemptible loafers who impose on hard-working citizens", a "beggar" and worse than tramps. They were men of poor character who were chronic lawbreakers, and Peoria constables probably considered him to be a pimp. Earp and Walton were fined $44, more than any others who were arrested. The size of the fines may indicate that the judge considered them to be pimps and not merely customers. Wyatt soon left Peoria for Wichita, Kansas.
During a conversation with Earp years later, Stuart N. Lake took notes in which Earp claimed that he'd been hunting buffalo during the winter of 1871–1872. Earp told Lake that he "arrived in Wichita direct from my buffalo hunt in '74", but there's no evidence that he ever hunted buffalo. He may have made up the story to account for the time he was pimping in Illinois and Missouri.
Wichita, Kansas
In early 1874 Earp and Sally moved southwest to the growing cow town of Wichita where his brother James ran a brothel with his wife Nellie "Bessie" Ketchum. Local arrest records show that Sally and Nellie managed a brothel there from early 1874 to the middle of 1876. Wyatt was likely a pimp, although historian Gary L. Roberts believes that he was an enforcer or bouncer. When the Kansas state census was completed in June 1875, Sally was no longer living with Wyatt, James, and Bessie.
Wichita was a railroad terminal and a destination for cattle drives from Texas. The town would fill with drunken, armed cowboys celebrating the end of their long journey when the cattle drive arrived, and lawmen were kept busy. Most drovers arrived in town in June and completed shipping by early fall. When the annual cattle drive ended and the cowboys left, Earp searched for something else to do. The Wichita City Eagle reported on October 29, 1874, that he had helped an off-duty police officer find thieves who had stolen a man's wagon. Earp officially joined the Wichita marshal's office on April 21, 1875, after the election of Mike Meagher as city marshal (or police chief), making $100 per month. He also dealt faro at the Long Branch Saloon. In late 1875 the Wichita Beacon published this story:
Earp's stint as a Wichita deputy came to a sudden end on April 2, 1876, when former marshal Bill Smith accused him of using his office to hire his brothers as lawmen. Earp beat Smith in a fist-fight and was fined $30. The local newspaper reported, "It is but justice to Earp to say he has made an excellent officer." Meagher won the election, but the city council voted against rehiring Earp.
Texas Longhorn cattle carried a tick that spread Texas cattle fever to other cattle breeds. Alarmed Kansas farmers persuaded the Kansas State Legislature in 1866 to establish a quarantine line in central Kansas. This prohibited Texas Longhorns from entering the heavily settled, eastern portion of the state. In 1876, farmers in central Kansas renewed pressure on the Kansas State Legislature to move the quarantine line further west, eliminating Wichita and the other cowtowns from the cattle trade. As a result, Dodge City became the "queen of the cow towns." Wyatt's brother James and his wife moved in 1876 west to Dodge City and opened a new brothel, and Wyatt soon followed them.
Dodge City and Deadwood
After 1875 Dodge City, Kansas, became a major terminal for cattle drives from Texas along the Chisholm Trail. Earp was appointed assistant marshal in Dodge City under Marshal Lawrence Deger around May 1876. At some point he met prostitute Mattie Blaylock, who became his common-law wife until 1881. He and Morgan left Dodge for Deadwood in the Dakota Territory on September 9, 1876, with a team of horses only to find that all the land was already tied up in mining claims, so Morgan decided to return to Dodge. Earp remained and made a deal to buy all the wood that a local individual had cut and put his horses to work during the winter of 1876–1877 hauling firewood into camp. He made about $5,000 in profit but was unable to file any mining claims, so he returned to Dodge City in the spring.
On Sunday, January 9, 1876, while sitting in the back room of the Custom House saloon, Earp's revolver slipped from his holster. He'd left the hammer on a loaded chamber and when the gun hit his chair, a .45 caliber round discharged, leaving a hole in Earp's coat. The shot "got up a lively stampede from the room." Earp rejoined the Dodge City police in spring 1877 at the request of Mayor James H. Kelley. The Dodge City newspaper reported in July 1878 that he'd been fined one dollar for slapping a muscular prostitute named Frankie Bell, who "heaped epithets upon the unoffending head of Mr. Earp to such an extent as to provide a slap from the ex-officer", according to the account. Bell spent the night in jail and was fined twenty dollars, while Earp's fine was the legal minimum.
In October 1877 outlaw Dave Rudabaugh robbed a Santa Fe Railroad construction camp and fled south. Earp was given a temporary commission as deputy U.S. Marshal and left Dodge City, following Rudabaugh over through Fort Clark, Texas, where the newspaper reported his presence on January 22, 1878, and then on to Fort Griffin, Texas.
In Fort Griffin, located between the military fort bearing the same name and the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, he went to the Bee Hive Saloon. It was the largest in town and owned by John Shanssey, whom Earp had known since he was 21. Shanssey told Earp that Rudabaugh had passed through town earlier in the week, but didn't know where he was headed. Shanssey suggested that Earp ask gambler Doc Holliday, who played cards with Rudabaugh. Doc told Earp that Rudabaugh was headed back into Kansas.
By May 11, 1878, the Dodge newspapers reported that Earp had returned. The Dodge City Times noted on May 14 that he'd been appointed Assistant Marshal for $75 per month, serving under Charlie Bassett. Doc Holliday also showed up in Dodge City with his common-law wife Big Nose Kate during mid 1878. Ed Morrison and another two dozen cowboys rode into Dodge and shot up the town, galloping down Front Street. They entered the Long Branch Saloon, vandalized and harassed the customers. Hearing the commotion, Earp burst through the front door to find numerous guns pointing at him; another version of the story has it that only 3-5 cowboys were there. In both versions Holliday was playing cards in the back and he put his pistol at Morrison's head, forcing him and his men to disarm. Earp credited Holliday with saving his life that day, and the two became life-long friends.
While in Dodge City Earp became acquainted with brothers James and Bat Masterson and gambler Luke Short.
George Hoyt shooting
George Hoyt (spelled sometimes "Hoy") and other drunken cowboys shot their guns wildly around 3:00 am on July 26, 1878, including three shots into Dodge City's Comique Theater, causing comedian Eddie Foy, Sr. to throw himself to the stage floor in the middle of his act. Fortunately, no one was injured. Assistant Marshal Earp and policeman Bat Masterson responded, along with several citizens, and opened fire with their pistols at the fleeing horsemen. The riders crossed the Arkansas River bridge south of town but Hoyt fell from his horse, wounded in the arm or leg. Earp later told biographer Stuart Lake that he saw Hoyt through his gun sights, illuminated against the morning horizon, and he fired a fatal shot that killed him that day; but the Dodge City Times reported that Hoyt developed gangrene and died on August 21 after his leg was amputated.
Move to Tombstone, Arizona
Dodge City had been a frontier cowtown for several years, but by 1879 it had begun to settle down. Virgil Earp was the town constable in Prescott, Arizona Territory, and he wrote to Wyatt about the opportunities in the silver-mining boomtown of Tombstone. He later wrote, "In 1879 Dodge was beginning to lose much of the snap which had given it a charm to men of reckless blood, and I decided to move to Tombstone, which was just building up a reputation."
Earp resigned from the Dodge City police force on September 9, 1879, and traveled to Las Vegas in New Mexico Territory with his common-law wife Mattie, his brother Jim, and Jim's wife Bessie. There they reunited with Holliday and Big Nose Kate, and the six of them went on to Prescott. Virgil was appointed deputy U.S. marshal for the Tombstone mining district on November 27, 1879, three days before they left for Tombstone, by U.S. Marshal for the Arizona Territory Crawley P. Dake.
Virgil was to operate out of Tombstone, from Prescott. His territory included the entire southeast area of the Arizona Territory. Wyatt, Virgil, and James Earp traveled to Tombstone. Tombstone had been founded on March 5, 1879, with about a hundred people living in tents and a few shacks. The Earps arrived with their wives on December 1, 1879, while Doc Holliday remained in Prescott where the gambling afforded better opportunities.
Tombstone had already grown to about 1,000 residents. Wyatt brought horses and a buckboard wagon which he planned to convert into a stagecoach, but he found two established stage lines already running. He later said that he made most of his money in Tombstone as a professional gambler. The three Earps and Robert J. Winders filed a location notice on December 6, 1879, for the First North Extension of the Mountain Maid Mine. They also bought an interest in the Vizina mine and some water rights.
Jim worked as a barkeep, but none of their other business interests proved fruitful. Wyatt was hired in April or May 1880 by Wells Fargo agent Fred J. Dodge as a shotgun messenger on stagecoaches when they transported Wells Fargo strongboxes. In late July 1880 younger brother Morgan arrived, leaving his wife Lou in Temescal, California (near San Bernardino). Warren Earp moved to Tombstone. Doc Holliday arrived from Prescott in September with in gambling winnings in his pocket.
First confrontation with the outlaw Cowboys
On July 25, 1880, Army Captain Joseph H. Hurst asked Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp to assist him in tracking outlaw Cowboys who had stolen six Army mules from Fort Rucker, Arizona. Virgil requested the assistance of his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, along with Wells Fargo agent Marshall Williams, and they found the mules at the McLaurys' ranch. McLaury was a 'Cowboy,' a term in that region that generally referred to a loose association of outlaws, some of whom also were land-owners and ranchers. Legitimate cowmen were referred to as cattle herders or ranchers. They found a branding iron that the Cowboys had used to change the "U.S." brand into "D.8." Stealing mules was a federal offense because the animals were government property.
Cowboy Frank Patterson made an agreement with Captain Hurst, and Hurst persuaded the posse to withdraw, with the understanding that the mules would be returned. The Cowboys showed up two days later without the mules and laughed at Hurst and the Earps. In response Hurst printed a handbill describing the theft, and he charged McLaury with hiding the mules. He also reproduced the handbill in The Tombstone Epitaph on July 30, 1880. McLaury angrily printed a response in the Cowboy-friendly Nuggett, calling Hurst "unmanly", "a coward, a vagabond, a rascal, and a malicious liar", and accusing him of stealing the mules himself. Hurst later cautioned the Earp brothers that the Cowboys had threatened their lives. Virgil reported that McLaury had accosted him and said, "If you ever again follow us as close as you did, then you will have to fight anyway." A month later, Earp ran into Frank and Tom McLaury in Charleston, and they told him that they would kill him if he ever followed them as he had done before.
Becomes deputy sheriff
County Sheriff Charles A. Shibell appointed Virgil Earp as deputy sheriff for the eastern part of Pima County, Arizona, on July 28, 1880, which included Tombstone. The sheriff's position was worth more than per year, because he was also county assessor and tax collector, and the board of supervisors allowed him to keep ten percent of the amounts paid. Former Democrat state legislator Johnny Behan, a future rival of Wyatt's, arrived in September 1880. Wyatt, appointed a deputy by his brother, then passed his Wells Fargo job as shotgun messenger to his brother Morgan. Wyatt did his job well, and his name was mentioned nearly every week from August through November in The Tombstone Epitaph or the Nugget newspapers.
Town marshal shot
On October 28, 1880, Tombstone town marshal Fred White attempted to break up a group of five late-night, drunken revelers shooting at the moon on Allen Street. Deputy Sheriff Earp was in Owens Saloon a block away, though unarmed. Morgan and Fred Dodge were in a cabin nearby. Wyatt heard the shooting and ran to the scene. He borrowed a pistol from Fred Dodge and went to assist White. As he approached White, he saw White attempt to disarm Curly Bill Brocius and the gun discharged, striking White in the groin. Throughout the shooting Earp was standing by a chimney that was struck repeatedly by gunfire. He buffaloed Brocius, knocking him to the ground, then he grabbed Brocius by the collar and told him to get up. Brocius asked, "What have I done?" Fred Dodge recalled in a letter he wrote to Stuart Lake in 1928 what he had witnessed:
Earp altered his story later on, telling John H. Flood Jr. that he did not see Brocius's pistol on the ground in the dark until afterward. The pistol contained one expended cartridge and five live rounds.
Brocius waived a preliminary hearing so that his case could be transferred to Tucson District Court, and Virgil and Wyatt escorted him to Tucson to stand trialpossibly saving him from a lynching. White, age 31, died of his wound two days after his shooting. On December 27, 1880, Earp testified that White's shooting was accidental. Brocius expressed regret, saying that he had not intended to shoot White. Gunsmith Jacob Gruber testified that Brocius's single-action revolver was defective, allowing it to be discharged at half-cock. A statement was introduced, which White had made, stating that the shooting was accidental. The judge agreed and released Brocius. Brocius, however, remained intensely angry about how Earp had pistol-whipped him, and became an enemy to the Earps.
Shibell election
On November 2, 1880, the Democratic incumbent Charles Shibell ran for re-election as county sheriff against Republican challenger Robert H. Paul. Initially, Shibell was declared the winner by a margin of 58 votes under suspicious circumstances. James C. Hancock reported that Cowboys Curly Bill Brocius and Johnny Ringo had served as election officials in San Simon Precinct, although biographer David Johnson places Ringo in New Mexico with Ike Clanton on November 1, the day before the election.
Curly Bill had been arrested and jailed in Tucson on October 28 for shooting Marshal White, and he was still there on election day. The home of John Magill was used as the polling place. The precinct only contained about 10 eligible voters (another source says 50), but the Cowboys gathered non-voters such as the children and Chinese and had them cast ballots. They then gave names to all the dogs, donkeys, and poultry and cast ballots in their names for Shibell. Precinct 27 in the San Simon Valley in northern Cochise County, turned out 104 votes, 103 of them for Shibell. The election board met on November 14 and declared Shibell the winner.
Paul filed a lawsuit on November 19 contesting the election results, alleging that Shibell's Cowboy supporters Ike Clanton, Curly Bill Brocius, and Frank McLaury had conspired in ballot stuffing. In late January 1881 Chief Justice of Arizona C. G. W. French ruled in Paul's favor, but Shibell appealed. A recount found that Paul had 402 votes and Shibell had 354. In April 1881 the election commission found that a mysterious "Henry Johnson" was responsible for certifying the ballots. This turned out to be the same James K. Johnson who had been shooting up Allen Street on the night when Marshal White was killed. Moreover, he had testified at Curly Bill's preliminary hearing after he had shot Fred White. Johnson later testified in the election hearing and said that the ballots had been left in the care of Ike Clanton's brother Phineas. None of the witnesses during the election hearing reported any ballots being cast by dogs.
Paul was declared the winner of the Pima County sheriff election. However, the election was a moot point by then, as Paul could not replace Behan with Earp because Cochise County was created out of the eastern portion of Pima County on January 1, 1881.
Earp loses reappointment
Earp served as deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County for only three months. The region was strongly Republican and Bob Paul had been expected to defeat Shibell. Earp was a Republican and believed that he would continue in the job. Given how fast eastern Pima County was growing, many expected that it would soon be split off into its own county, with Tombstone as its seat; Earp hoped to win the job as the new county sheriff and continue receiving ten percent of all tax money collected. Southern Pacific was the major landholder, so tax collection was a relatively easy process. In 1882 the Cochise County sheriff earned in fees.
Earp resigned from the sheriff's office on November 9, 1880, and Shibell immediately appointed Johnny Behan as the new deputy sheriff for eastern Pima County. Behan had considerably more political experience than Earp, as he had served as Yavapai County sheriff from 1871 to 1873. He had been elected to the Arizona Territorial Legislature twice, representing Yavapai Country in the 7th Territorial Legislature in 1873 and Mohave County in the 10th in 1879. Behan moved to the northwest Arizona Territory, where he served as the Mohave County recorder in 1877 and then deputy sheriff of Mohave County at Gillet in 1879.
Behan wins election
Earp and Behan applied for the new position of Cochise County sheriff, which paid the office holder ten percent of the fees and taxes collected, as did the Pima County sheriff job. Earp thought that he had a good chance to win because he was the former undersheriff in the region and a Republican, like Arizona Territorial Governor John C. Fremont. However, Behan had greater political experience and influence in Prescott.
Earp later testified at the O.K. Corral hearing that he and Behan had made a deal. He said that Behan and he agreed that, if Earp withdrew his application, Behan would appoint him as undersheriff. Behan received the appointment in February 1881, but he did not keep his end of the bargain and instead chose Harry Woods as undersheriff, who was a prominent Democrat. Behan testified at first that he had not made any deal with Earp, although he later admitted that he had lied. He said that he broke his promise to Earp because of an incident which occurred shortly before his appointment when Earp learned that Ike and Billy Clanton had one of his prize horses which had been stolen more than a year before.
Earp and Holliday rode to the Clanton ranch near Charleston to recover the horse and overtook Behan along the way, who was riding in a wagon. Behan also was heading to the ranch to serve an electioneering subpoena on Ike Clanton. Accounts differ as to what happened next, but Earp testified that Billy Clanton gave up the horse when Earp arrived at the ranch, even before being presented with ownership papers. According to Behan's testimony, however, Earp had told the Clantons that Behan was on his way to arrest them for horse theft. The incident embarrassed the Clantons and Behan, and Behan later testified that he did not want to work with Earp and chose Woods instead.
Relationship with Sadie Marcus
Later in life, Josephine Sarah Marcus aggressively protected hers and Wyatt's privacy while in Tombstone. Marcus was deliberately vague about this period, causing modern researchers to question what she was hiding. She said that she first visited Tombstone as part of the Pauline Markham Theater Troupe on December 1, 1879, for a one-week engagement, but modern researchers have not found any record that she was ever part of the theater company. The many contradictions in her story have led to considerable speculation about her past.
Researchers have identified two women with similar names in the same region of the Arizona Territory whose lives bear many striking parallels. Sadie Mansfield and Sadie Marcus both made a stagecoach journey from San Francisco to Prescott, Arizona Territory; both traveled with a black woman named Julia; both were sexual partners with Behan; both were 19 years old, born in New York City, and had parents from Prussia. The only difference noted in the 1880 census is in their occupations: the Sadie who lived in San Francisco is listed as "At home", while the Sadie in Tip Top is recorded as a "Courtesan". Marcus said that her parents hid her activities, and they may have been covering for her when the census taker was a neighbor who knew the family.
Behan owned a saloon in Tip Top, Arizona, where he maintained a prostitute named Sadie Mansfield, and he moved to Tombstone in September 1880. "Sadie" was a popular nickname for "Sarah", and prostitutes commonly changed their first names. Sadie Mansfield, the Tip Top prostitute, may have returned to San Francisco and then rejoined Behan in Tombstone in September 1880 as Sadie Marcus, where they continued their relationship.
In early 1881, Sadie found Behan in bed with the wife of a friend and kicked him out, although she still used the Behan surname through mid-year. Wyatt was in a relationship with Mattie Blaylock, a former prostitute. Earp named a mining claim he filed on February 16, 1880 "Mattie Blaylock". Modern researchers have found Blaylock listed as Earp's wife in the June 1880 census. She suffered from severe headaches and became addicted to laudanum, a commonly used opiate and painkiller, and later committed suicide. When Marcus learned that Stuart Lake had discovered the existence of Blaylock, she successfully demanded that he omit her from his book I Married Wyatt Earp.
After Marcus arrived in Tombstone with Behan, Earp apparently developed an interest in her, although there are no records in Tombstone of a relationship between them. Tombstone diarist George W. Parsons never mentioned seeing Wyatt and Sadie together and neither did John Clum in his memoirs. But Earp and Marcus certainly knew each other, as Behan and Earp had offices above the Crystal Palace Saloon.
In April 1882, shortly after he left Tombstone, there is evidence that Earp had developed feelings for Marcus. The Earp posse, by that time on their vendetta ride, arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, intending to stay for two weeks. Wyatt and Holliday had been fast friends since Holliday saved Earp's life in Dodge City three years prior. Wyatt was staying with prominent businessman Henry N. Jaffa, who was also president of the local board of trade. Like Marcus, Jaffa was Jewish.
During their stay in Albuquerque, Earp and Holliday ate at the Retreat Restaurant owned by "Fat Charlie". Former New Mexico Territory Governor Miguel Otero wrote in 1940 that "Holliday said something about Earp becoming 'a damn Jew-boy'. Earp became angry and left. [Henry] Jaffa told me later that Earp's woman was a Jewess. Earp did mezuzah when entering the house." The Albuquerque Evening Review reported that Doc Holliday "became intoxicated and indiscreet in his remarks, which offended Wyatt and caused the party to break up, Holliday going with Tipton."
Earp's anger at Holliday's ethnic slur may indicate that his feelings for Marcus were more serious at the time than is commonly known. The information in the letter is compelling because at that time in the 1940s, the possibility of a prior relationship between Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus while in Tombstone was unknown. Otero could know these things only if he had a relationship with someone who had personal knowledge of the people involved.
Marcus went to great lengths to sanitize her own and Wyatt's history. For example, as mentioned, she worked hard to keep her name and the name of Wyatt's second wife Mattie out of Stuart Lake's 1931 book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, and Marcus threatened litigation to keep it that way. Marcus also told Earp's biographers and others that Earp never drank, did not own gambling saloons, and that he never provided prostitutes to customers, although strong evidence to the contrary exists.
Interest in mining and gambling
Losing the undersheriff position left Earp without a job in Tombstone; however, he and his brothers were beginning to make some money on their mining claims in the area. In January 1881, Oriental Saloon owner Milt Joyce gave Earp a quarter-interest in the faro concession at the Oriental Saloon in exchange for his services as a manager and enforcer. Gambling was regarded as a legitimate profession at the time. Earp invited his friend Bat Masterson to Tombstone to help him run the faro tables in the saloon, and he telegraphed Luke Short in June 1881 to offer him a job as a faro dealer. Masterson remained until April 1881, when he returned to Dodge City to assist his brother Jim.
On October 8, 1881, Doc Holliday got into a dispute with Cowboy and outlaw John Tyler in the Oriental Saloon. A rival gambling concession operator hired someone to disrupt Wyatt's business. When Tyler started a fight after losing a bet, Wyatt threw him out of the saloon. Holliday later wounded Oriental owners Milt Joyce and his partner William Parker and was convicted of assault.
Facing down a lynch mob
Michael O'Rourke killed Henry Schneider, chief engineer of the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company, and said that it was in self defense. Schneider was well liked, and a mob of miners quickly gathered and threatened to lynch O'Rourke on the spot. Lake's biography describes Earp single-handedly dispersing the mob, but the Epitaph gave primary credit to Ben Sippy for calming the crowd, assisted by Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp and Johnny Behan. Nevertheless, Lake's account added to Earp's modern legend as a lawman.
Stagecoach robbers kill two
Tensions increased between the Earps and both the Clantons and McLaurys through 1881. Three Cowboys attempted to rob a Kinnear & Company stagecoach on March 15, 1881, at 10:00pm, which was reportedly carrying in silver bullion. The amount of bullion that the stagecoach actually carried is questioned by modern researchers because it would have weighed about ; the value of silver at the time was $1 an ouncea significant weight for a team of horses. According to Wells Fargo agent John Q. Jackson, a stagecoach typically carried an Express Box containing bullion weighing only .
The holdup took place near Benson, during which the robbers killed driver Eli "Budd" Philpot and passenger Peter Roerig. The Earps and a posse tracked the men down and arrested Luther King, who confessed that he had been holding the reins while Bill Leonard, Harry "The Kid" Head, and Jim Crain robbed the stage. They arrested King, and Sheriff Johnny Behan escorted him to jail, but somehow King walked in the front door and out the back door.
During the hearing into the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt testified that he offered Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury the $3,600 in Wells Fargo reward money ($1,200 per robber) in return for information about the identities of the three robbers. He testified that he had other motives for his plan; he hoped that arresting the murderers would boost his chances for election as Cochise County sheriff. He told the court that he had taken the extra step of obtaining a second copy of a telegram for Clanton from Wells Fargo, ensuring that the reward applied for capturing the killers dead or alive. According to testimony given by Wyatt and Virgil, both McLaury and Clanton agreed to provide information to assist in capturing Leonard, Head, and Crain, but they never had a chance to fulfill the agreement. All three suspects were killed when attempting other robberies.
In his testimony at the court hearing, Clanton said that Earp did not want to capture the men but to kill them. He told the court that Earp wanted to conceal his family's involvement in the Benson stage robbery and had sworn him to secrecy, and that Morgan Earp had confided in him that he and Wyatt had "piped off $1,400 to Doc Holliday and Bill Leonard", who were supposed to be on the stage the night when Bud Philpot was killed. Clanton told the court, "I was not going to have anything to do with helping to capture..." and then he corrected himself "...kill Bill Leonard, Crane, and Harry Head." Clanton denied having any knowledge of the Wells Fargo telegram confirming the reward money.
September stagecoach robbery
Meanwhile, tensions increased between the Earps and the McLaurys when Cowboys robbed the passenger stage on the Sandy Bob Line in the Tombstone area on September 8, bound for nearby Bisbee, Arizona. The masked robbers robbed the passengers and the strongbox, but they were recognized by their voices and language. They were identified as Deputy Sheriff Pete Spence (an alias for Elliot Larkin Ferguson) and Deputy Sheriff Frank Stilwell, a business partner of Spence's. Stilwell was fired a short while later as a deputy sheriff for Sheriff Behan (for county tax "accounting irregularities").
Wyatt and Virgil Earp rode with the sheriff's posse to track the stage robbers, and Wyatt discovered an unusual boot heel print in the mud. The posse checked with a shoemaker in Bisbee and found a matching heel that he had just removed from Stilwell's boot. A further check of a Bisbee corral turned up both Spence and Stilwell, who were arrested by sheriff's deputies Billy Breakenridge and Nagel.
Spence and Stilwell were arraigned on the robbery charges before Justice Wells Spicer, who set their bail at $7,000 each. They were released after paying the bail, but they were rearrested by Virgil for the Bisbee robbery a month later on October 13 on the new federal charge of interfering with a mail carrier. The newspapers, however, reported that they had been arrested for a different stage robbery which occurred on October 8 near Contention City, Arizona, less than two weeks before the O.K. Corral shootout, and this final incident may have been misunderstood by the McLaurys. Wyatt and Virgil were still out of town for the Spence and Stilwell hearing when Frank McLaury confronted Morgan Earp, telling him that the McLaurys would kill the Earps if they tried to arrest Spence, Stilwell, or the McLaurys again.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
The tension came to a head between the Earps and the Cowboys on Wednesday, October 26, 1881. Ike Clanton, Billy Claiborne, and other Cowboys had been threatening to kill the Earps for several weeks, and Tombstone city Marshal Virgil Earp learned that they were armed and had gathered near the O.K. Corral. He asked Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday to assist him, as he intended to disarm them. Wyatt had been deputized by Virgil a few days prior as a temporary assistant marshal and Morgan was a deputy city marshal.
Around 3:00 pm the Earps and Holliday headed towards Fremont Street, where the Cowboys had been gathering. They found five Cowboys in a vacant lot adjacent to the O.K. Corral's rear entrance on Fremont Street. The lot was narrow between the Harwood House and Fly's Boarding House and Photography Studio; the two parties were initially only about apart. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne fled, but Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton stood their ground and were killed. Morgan was clipped by a shot across his back that nicked both shoulder blades and a vertebra. Virgil was shot through the calf, and Holliday was grazed by a bullet.
Charged with murder
Ike Clanton filed murder charges against the Earps and Holliday on October 30. Justice Wells Spicer convened a preliminary hearing on October 31 to determine whether enough evidence existed to go to trial. In an unusual proceeding, he took written and oral testimony from about thirty witnesses over more than a month. Sheriff Behan testified that the Cowboys had not resisted but had thrown up their hands and turned out their coats to show that they were not armed. He said that Tom McLaury threw open his coat to show that he was not armed and that the first two shots were fired by the Earp party. Behan insisted that Holliday had fired first using a nickel-plated revolver, although other witnesses reported seeing him carrying a messenger shotgun immediately beforehand.
The Earps hired experienced trial lawyer Thomas Fitch as defense counsel. Since Virgil was confined to bed due to his wounds, Wyatt testified in a written statement that he drew his gun only after Clanton and McLaury went for their pistols. He detailed the Earps' previous troubles with the Clantons and McLaurys and explained that they had intended to disarm the Cowboys, and that his party had fired in self defense. Fitch produced contradictory testimony from prosecution witnesses during cross-examination, during which they appeared to dodge his questions or said that they could not remember.
Justice Spicer ruled on November 30 that there was not enough evidence to indict the men. He said that the evidence indicated that the Earps and Holliday acted within the law and that Virgil had deputized Holliday and Wyatt. The Earps and Holliday were free but their reputations had been tarnished. The Cowboys in Tombstone looked upon the Earps as robbers and murderers and plotted revenge.
Cowboys' revenge
Virgil was ambushed on December 28 while walking between saloons on Allen Street in Tombstone, and he was maimed by a shotgun blast that struck his left arm and shoulder. Ike Clanton's hat was found in the back of the building across Allen Street from where the shots were fired. Wyatt wired U.S. Marshal Crawley P. Dake asking to be appointed deputy U.S. marshal with authority to select his own deputies. Dake granted the request in late January and provided the Earps with some funds that he borrowed from Wells Fargo, variously reported as between $500 and $3,000.
In mid-January Earp's ally Rickabaugh sold the Oriental Saloon to Earp's adversary Milt Joyce, and Wyatt sold his gambling concessions at the hotel. The Earps also raised some funds from sympathetic business owners in town. Wyatt and Virgil submitted their resignations to Dake on February 2, 1882, being tired of the criticism leveled against them, but he refused to accept them because their accounts had not been settled. That same day, Wyatt sent a message to Ike Clanton that he wanted to reconcile their differences, which Clanton refused.
That day, Clanton was also acquitted of the charges against him in the shooting of Virgil. The defense brought in seven witnesses who testified that Clanton was in Charleston at the time of the shooting. The Earps needed more funds to pay for the extra deputies and associated expenses, as contributions from supportive business owners were not enough. On February 13, Wyatt mortgaged his home to lawyer James G. Howard for ; he was never able to repay the loan and Howard foreclosed on the house in 1884.
Morgan Earp was murdered on March 18 while playing billiards, shot by gunmen firing from a dark alley through a door window into the billiard room. He was struck in the right side; the bullet shattered his spine, passed through his left side, and lodged in the thigh of George A. B. Berry, while another round narrowly missed him. A doctor was summoned and Morgan was moved from the floor to a nearby couch, while the murderers escaped in the dark. He died 40 minutes later. Wyatt felt that he could not rely on civil justice and decided to take matters into his own hands and kill the murderers himself.
Earp vendetta ride
The day after Morgan's murder, Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp formed a posse made up of his brothers James and Warren, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster, Jack "Turkey Creek" Johnson, Charles "Hairlip Charlie" Smith, Dan Tipton, and Texas Jack Vermillion to protect the family and pursue the suspects, paying them $5 a day. They took Morgan's body to the railhead in Benson, and James accompanied it to the family home in Colton, California, where Morgan's wife and parents waited to bury him. The posse guarded Virgil and Allie to Tucson, where they had heard that Frank Stilwell and other Cowboys were waiting to kill Virgil. The next morning, Frank Stilwell's body was found alongside the tracks, riddled with buckshot and gunshot wounds. Wyatt and 5 other federal lawmen were indicted for murdering him, and Tucson Justice of the Peace, Charles Meyer, issued warrants for their arrest.
The Earp posse briefly returned to Tombstone where Sheriff Behan tried to stop them, but was brushed aside. Hairlip Charlie and Warren remained in Tombstone, and the rest set out for Pete Spence's wood camp in the Dragoon Mountains. Spence was absent, but they found and killed Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz. Two days later, they stumbled onto the wood camp of William Brocius, Pony Diehl, and other outlaw Cowboys near Iron Springs in the Whetstone Mountains. According to reports from both sides, the two sides immediately exchanged gunfire. The Earp party withdrew to find protection from the heavy gunfire, except for Wyatt and Texas Jack Vermillion, whose horse was shot.
Curly Bill fired at Wyatt with a shotgun but missed. 18 months earlier, Wyatt had protected Curly Bill against a lynch mob; he also provided testimony that helped spare Curly Bill a murder trial for killing Marshal Fred White. Wyatt returned Curly Bill's gunfire with his own shotgun, hitting him in the chest from about 50 feet (15m) away, causing him to fall into the water's edge of the spring and die. Wyatt then fired his revolver, mortally wounding Johnny Barnes in the chest and wounding Milt Hicks in the arm. Vermillion tried to retrieve his rifle that was wedged in the scabbard under his fallen horse, exposing himself to the Cowboys' gunfire, but Holliday helped him get to cover.
Earp told biographer Stuart Lake that both sides of his long coat were shot through, and another bullet struck his boot heel. Ed Colburn, in a letter published in the Ford County Globe on May 23, 1882, wrote that he'd visited with the brothers Earp in Gunnison, Colorado. He relayed Earp's story about how his overcoat was hit on both sides of his body by a charge of buckshot and that his saddle horn was shot off. John Flood wrote:
Earp was finally able to get on his horse and retreat with the rest of the posse. Some modern researchers have found that most saddlehorns by this time were made of steel, not wood. Earp told several versions of the story in which he had trouble remounting his horse because his cartridge belt had slipped down his legs. He was never wounded in any of his confrontations, which added to his mystique.
The posse left the Cowboys behind and rode north to the Percy Ranch, but they weren't welcomed by Hugh and Jim Percy, who feared the Cowboys; they left around 3:00am on March 27 after a meal and some rest. They arrived near Tombstone and met with supporters, including Hairlip Charlie and Warren Earp. That same day, the posse arrived at the Sierra Bonita Ranch owned by Henry Hooker, a wealthy and prominent rancher. That night, Dan Tipton caught the stagecoach out of Tombstone and headed for Benson, carrying $1,000 from mining owner and Earp supporter E. B. Gage for the posse. Hooker congratulated Earp on killing Curly Bill, and Wyatt told him that he wanted to buy new mounts. Hooker was known for his purebred stallions and ran more than 500 brood mares, which produced horses renowned for their speed, beauty, and temperament. He provided Wyatt and his posse with new mounts but refused to take their money. Behan's posse was then observed in the distance, and Hooker suggested that Earp make his stand there, but Earp moved into the hills about three miles (5km) distant near Reilly Hill. Earp's posse wasn't found by the local posse, led by Cochise County Sheriff John Behan, although Behan's party trailed them for many miles. In the middle of April 1882, the Earp posse left the Arizona Territory and headed east into New Mexico Territory and then into Colorado.
The coroner reports credited the Earp posse with killing Frank Stilwell, Curly Bill, Indian Charlie, and Johnny Barnes in their two-week-long ride. In 1888 Earp gave an interview to California historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, during which he claimed to have killed "over a dozen stage robbers, murderers, and cattle thieves" in his time as a lawman.
Life after Tombstone
The gunfight in Tombstone lasted only 30 seconds, but it ended up defining Earp for the rest of his life. His movements began to receive national press coverage after he killed Frank Stilwell in Tucson, and he left Arizona with his brother Warren, Holliday, McMaster, "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson, and Texas Jack Vermillion. They stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico where they met up with Earp's friend Deputy U.S. Marshal Bat Masterson. Masterson went with them to Trinidad, Colorado, where he opened a faro game in a saloon and later became marshal.
Earp dealt faro at Masterson's saloon for several weeks, then left for Gunnison, Colorado, in May 1882 with McMaster, Vermillion, and Warren Earp. The Earps and Texas Jack set up camp on the outskirts of Gunnison, where they remained quietly at first, rarely going into town for supplies. They reportedly pulled a "gold brick scam" in Gunnison on a German visitor named Ritchie by trying to sell him gold-painted rocks for $2,000. Earp and Holliday had a serious disagreement when Holliday accused him of becoming "a damn Jew-boy", and they parted ways in Albuquerque. Holliday and Earp met again in June 1882 in Gunnison after Earp intervened to keep his friend from being arrested on murder charges which they all had pending against them for killing Frank Stillwell in Tucson. Earp saw Holliday for a final time in the late winter of 1886, where they met in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel. Josephine Marcus described the skeletal Holliday as having a continuous cough and standing on "unsteady legs".
The San Diego Union printed a report from the San Francisco Call on July 9, 1882, that Virgil Earp was in San Francisco (receiving treatment for his shattered arm) and that Wyatt was expected to arrive from Colorado that day. Wyatt took a job managing a horse stable in Santa Rosa. Earp developed a reputation as a sportsman and gambler. He was reputed to own a six-horse stable in San Francisco, although it was learned later that the horses were leased.
Following Wyatt's return to San Francisco, Josephine began using the name "Josephine Earp". Josephine was Earp's common-law wife for 46 years until his death. Wyatt and Josie remained in San Francisco for about nine months until early 1883, when they left for Silverton, Colorado, where silver and gold mining were flourishing. It was the first of many mining camps and boomtowns in which they lived. However, he still owned a house in Tombstone with his former common-law wife Mattie, who had waited for him in Colton, where his parents and Virgil were living. During mid-1882, she sent him a letter saying that she wanted a divorce. She had met a gambler from Arizona and he had asked her to marry him. Earp did not believe in divorce and therefore refused, but she ran away with the gambler anyway. The gambler abandoned her in Arizona, so she moved to Pinal City, Arizona, where she resumed life as a prostitute. She struggled with addictions and committed suicide by opium poisoning on July 3, 1888, at age 37–38.
Earp's friend Luke Short was part owner of the Long Branch saloon in Dodge City, but the mayor tried to run him out of business and out of town during the Dodge City War. Short appealed to Masterson, and Masterson contacted Earp on May 31, 1883. Earp and Josephine went with Masterson, Johnny Millsap, Shotgun John Collins, Texas Jack Vermillion, and Johnny Green to Dodge City to help Short, and they were sworn in as deputies by constable Dave Marrow. Governor George W. Glick arranged a 10-day cooling-off period to allow Short to sell the saloon, but Short, Earp, and the others refused to compromise. Seeking to avoid a confrontation with the deputized gunmen, and under pressure from Governor Glick and the Santa Fe Railroad, which conducted a lot of business in Dodge, the mayor and city council backed down. They allowed the gambling halls, dance halls, and saloons to reopen, including the Long Branch, and the so-called Dodge City War ended without a shot being fired.
Idaho mining venture
Earp arrived in Eagle City, Idaho, in 1884 along with Josephine, his brothers Warren and James, and James's wife Bessie. Eagle City was another new boomtown growing from the discovery of gold, silver, and lead in the Coeur d'Alene area; it is now a ghost town in Shoshone County, Idaho. Earp joined the crowd looking for gold in the Murray-Eagle mining district, and they paid $2,250 for a diameter white circus in which they opened a dance hall and saloon called The White Elephant.
Earp was named deputy sheriff in the area, including newly incorporated Kootenai County, Idaho, which was disputing jurisdiction of Eagle City with Shoshone County. There were a considerable number of disagreements over mining claims and property rights that Earp had a part in. On March 28 a miner named Bill Buzzard was constructing a building when Earp's partner Jack Enright tried to stop him. Enright claimed that the building was on part of his property, and the two men began to argue. Buzzard fired several shots at Enright with his Winchester, then allies of both sides took defensive positions behind snowbanks and began shooting at one another. Earp and his brother James stepped into the middle of the fray and helped peacefully resolve the dispute before anyone was seriously hurt.
Around April 1885, Earp reportedly used his badge to join a band of claim jumpers in Embry Camp, later renamed Chewelah, Washington. Within six months, their substantial stake had run dry, and the Earps left the Murray-Eagle district. About 10 years later, a reporter hunted up Buzzard after the Fitzimmons-Sharkey fight and extracted a story from him that accused Earp of being the brains behind lot-jumping and real-estate fraud, further tarnishing his reputation.
California
The Coeur d'Alene mining venture died out by 1887, so Earp and Josephine went to San Diego, California where the railroad was about to arrive and a real estate boom was underway. They stayed for about four years, living most of the time in the Brooklyn Hotel. Earp speculated in San Diego's booming real estate market, and he bought four saloons and gambling halls between 1887 and around 1896, all in the "respectable" part of town. They offered 21 games, including faro, blackjack, poker, keno, pedro, and monte. At the height of the boom, he made up to $1,000 a night in profit. He also owned the Oyster Bar located in the first granite-faced building in San Diego, the four-story Louis Bank Building at 837 5th Avenue, one of the more popular saloons in the Stingaree district. One of the reasons it drew a good crowd was the Golden Poppy brothel upstairs, owned by Madam Cora. Each room was painted a different color, such as emerald green, summer yellow, or ruby red, and each prostitute was required to dress in matching garments.
Earp had a long-standing interest in boxing and horse racing, and he refereed boxing matches in San Diego, Tijuana, and San Bernardino. In the 1887 San Diego City Directory he was listed as a capitalist or gambler. He won a race horse named Otto Rex in a card game and began investing in race horses, and he also judged prize fights on both sides of the border; he was one of the judges at the county fair horse races held in Escondido, California, in 1889. The boom came to an end as rapidly as it had started, and the population of San Diego fell from a high of 40,000 in 1885 when Earp arrived to only 16,000 in 1890.
The Earps moved back to San Francisco in 1891 so that Josephine could be closer to half-sister Henrietta's family, and Earp developed a reputation as a sportsman and a gambler. He held on to his San Diego properties, but when their value fell, he could not pay the taxes and was forced to sell the lots. He continued to race horses, but he could no longer afford to own them by 1896, so he raced them on behalf of the owner of a horse stable in Santa Rosa which he managed. In Santa Rosa, Earp personally competed in and won a harness race. From 1891 to 1897, the couple lived in at least four different locations in the city: 145 Ellis St., 720 McAllister St., 514A Seventh Ave., and 1004 Golden Gate Ave.
Later relationship with Josephine
Josephine wrote in her memoir that she and Earp were married in 1892 by the captain of multimillionaire Lucky Baldwin's yacht off the California coast. Raymond Nez wrote that his grandparents witnessed their marriage, but no public record has been found for the marriage. Baldwin was a horse breeder and racer who also owned the Santa Anita race track in Los Angeles which Earp frequented.
Earp's relationship with Josephine was tempestuous at times. She gambled to excess and he had adulterous affairs. He knew that she preferred being called "Josephine" and detested "Sadie", but he had a mischievous sense of humor and began calling her Sadie early in their relationship. Earp's good friends in the Welsh family did not appreciate Josephine's gambling habits, and they noted that she received an allowance from her half-sister Rebecca and gambled it away, often leaving her husband hungry.
In the 1920s Earp gave Josephine signed legal papers and filing fees to a claim for an oil lease in Kern County, California. She gambled away the filing fees and lied to him about what happened to the lease, which later turned out to be valuable. He distrusted her ability to manage her finances and made an arrangement with her sister Henrietta Lenhardt. He put oil leases in Henrietta's name with the agreement that the proceeds would benefit Josephine after his death. In February 1926, the oil well was completed and producing 150 barrels a day, but Henrietta's three children refused to keep the agreement after their mother's death and kept the royalties to themselves. Josephine sued her sister's estate in an attempt to collect the royalties.
Josephine later developed a reputation as a shrew who made life difficult for Earp. She frequently griped about his lack of work and financial success and even his character and personality, and he often went on long walks to get away from her. He was furious about her gambling habit, during which she lost considerable sums of money; each may have engaged in extramarital affairs. Josephine could also be controlling, and a relative of Wyatt joked that nobody could convict him of cold-blooded murder because he had lived with her for almost 50 years.
Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight
Earp was a last-minute choice as referee for a boxing match on December 2, 1896, which the promoters billed as the heavyweight championship of the world, when Bob Fitzsimmons was set to fight Tom Sharkey at the Mechanics' Pavilion in San Francisco. Earp had refereed 30 or so matches in earlier days, though not under the Marquess of Queensberry Rules but under the older and more liberal London Prize Ring Rules. The fight may have been the most anticipated fight on American soil that year. Fitzsimmons was favored to win, and the public and even civic officials placed bets on the outcome.
Fitzsimmons dominated Sharkey throughout the fight, and he hit Sharkey with his famed "solar plexus punch" in the eighth round, an uppercut under the heart that could render a man temporarily helpless. Then, at Fitzsimmons' next punch, Sharkey dropped, clutched his groin, and rolled on the canvas screaming foul. Earp stopped the bout, ruling that Fitzsimmons had hit Sharkey below the belt, but no one seemed to have witnessed the punch. Earp awarded the fight to Sharkey, whom attendants carried out "limp as a rag". The 15,000 fans in attendance greeted his decision with loud boos and catcalls. It was widely believed that no foul had occurred and that Earp had bet on Sharkey. Several doctors verified afterward that Sharkey had been hit hard below the belt, but the public had bet heavily on Fitzsimmons and they were livid at the outcome.
Fitzsimmons went to court to overturn Earp's decision, and newspaper accounts and testimony over the next two weeks revealed a conspiracy among the boxing promoters to fix the fight's outcome. Newspapers across the United States republished the stories from the San Francisco papers and looked for local angles. On December 14, 1896, the San Francisco Call quoted a story from the New York Journal by Alfred H. Lewis, who accused the Earp brothers of being "stage robbers", and Earp was parodied in editorial caricatures by newspapers across the country. Stories about the fight and Earp's contested decision were distributed nationwide to a public that knew little of Wyatt Earp prior to that time.
On December 17 Judge Sanderson finally ruled that prize fighting was illegal in San Francisco and the courts would not determine who the winner was. Sharkey retained the purse, but the decision provided no vindication for Earp. Until the fight, Earp had been a minor figure known regionally in California and Arizona; afterward, his name was known from coast to coast. The boxing match left a smear on his public character that followed him until after he died. Eight years later, Dr. B. Brookes Lee was accused of treating Sharkey to make it appear that he had been fouled by Fitzsimmons, and Lee admitted that it was true. "I fixed Sharkey up to look as if he had been fouled," he confessed. "I got $1,000 for my part in the affair."
Klondike Gold Rush
While in Yuma, Wyatt heard of the gold rush in the Alaska Yukon. On August 5, 1897, Wyatt and Sadie left for San Francisco. Earp was reported to have secured the backing of a syndicate of sporting men to open a gambling house there. They intended to catch a ship to Alaska, but their departure was delayed for seven weeks when Wyatt fell while getting off the Market Street streetcar and bruised or broke his hip. Sadie got pregnant too, and she thought she could persuade Earp from heading to Alaska. He was in agreement, but Sadie, who was 37, miscarried soon after. They finally boarded the steamship Rosalie on September 21, 1897. They arrived in Dawson in the Yukon on late September, where Wyatt planned to open a faro game. Wyatt and Josephine spent only a month in Dawson.
When they returned north, Wyatt was offered a job as the marshal in Wrangell, Alaska, but he served for only ten days. Sadie learned she was pregnant again, and they returned to San Francisco on October 11 aboard the steamship City of Seattle. But Sadie miscarried again.
The Earps spent the winter in Wrangell before setting out in the spring for Dawson on board the Governor Pingree via the Yukon River. By the time they reached Rampart on the Yukon River, freeze-up had set in. The Earps rented a cabin from Rex Beach for $100 a month and spent the winter of 1898–1899 there.
In 1898 they got as far as Rampart before the Yukon River froze in place for the winter. Rampart was a friendly place, but far from the real action. They left with the spring thaw and headed for St. Michael, on the Norton Sound, a major gateway to the Alaskan interior via the Yukon River. Wyatt managed a small store during the spring of 1899, selling beer and cigars for the Alaska Commercial Company. But Wyatt's friend Tex Rickard sent him a number of letters belittling Wyatt's steady but small income in St. Michael as "chickenfeed" and persuaded him to relocate to Nome.
At the time of the Earps' arrival, Nome was two blocks wide and five miles long. The best accommodation Wyatt and Sadie could find was a wooden shack a few minutes from the main street, only slightly better than a tent. The river was an open sewer. Typhoid, dysentery and pneumonia were common. In September, Earp and partner Charles E. Hoxie built the Dexter Saloon in Nome, the city's first two-story wooden building and its largest and most luxurious saloon. The second floor had 12 "clubrooms" decorated with fine mirrors, thick carpets, draperies, and sideboards. Trading on Earp's name, the Dexter was a success. It was used for a variety of purposes because it was so large: with ceilings. Earp used the club rooms upstairs as a brothel, another fact that Sadie worked hard to see omitted from stories about him. Sadie justified the services upstairs because the Dexter was a "better class" saloon and served an "important civic purpose".
The Dexter drew anyone famous who visited Nome. Wyatt rubbed elbows with future novelist Rex Beach, writer Jack London, playwright Wilson Mizner, and boxing promoter Tex Rickard, with whom Earp developed a long-lasting relationship. Rickard was a partner in the Northern Saloon and gambling house in Nome. Both the Dexter and the Northern Saloon competed for business with more than sixty other saloons in town serving an estimated 20,000 residents. Wyatt told others he made his money by "mining the miners".
He was arrested twice in Nome for minor offenses, including being drunk and disorderly, although he was not tried. Most members of law enforcement were corrupt or paid no-shows.
In November 1899 Earp left Alaska on the iron steamer Cleveland. The ship was infested with lice and was struck by a storm on the Bering Sea, making for a difficult trip. It took nine days to reach Seattle, Washington.
On July 6, 1900, Wyatt's brother Warren was shot and killed in a saloon in Willcox, Arizona. Wyatt learned about his death soon after, and although some modern researchers believe he went to Arizona to avenge his brother's death, the distance and time required to make the trip made it unlikely, and no contemporary evidence has been found to support that theory.
In 2018 archivists at the Alaska State Library digitized a collection of documents relating to Earp's arrival and stay in Alaska.
Saloon ownership and gambling
Earp arrived in Seattle with a plan to open a saloon and gambling room. On November 25, 1899, the Seattle Star described him as "a man of great reputation among the toughs and criminals, inasmuch as he formerly walked the streets of a rough frontier mining town with big pistols stuck in his belt, spurs on his boots, and a devil-may-care expression upon his official face". The Seattle Daily Times was less full of praise, announcing in a very small article that he had a reputation in Arizona as a "bad man", which in that era was synonymous with "villain" and "desperado".
He faced considerable opposition to his plan from John Considine, who controlled all three gaming operations in town. Although gambling was illegal, Considine had worked out an agreement with Police Chief C. S. Reed. Earp partnered with an established local gambler named Thomas Urguhart, and they opened the Union Club saloon and gambling operation in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The Seattle Star noted two weeks later that Earp's saloon was developing a large following. Considine unsuccessfully tried to intimidate Earp, but his saloon continued to prosper. After the city failed to act, on March 23, 1900, the Washington state attorney general filed charges against several gamblers, including Earp and his partner. The club's furnishings were confiscated and burned. The Earps returned briefly to San Francisco in April 1900, but soon returned to Seattle.
Newspapers in Seattle and San Francisco falsely reported on Wyatt's wealth which prompted a stampede to Nome to seek similar riches. Nome was advertised as an "exotic summer destination" and four ships a day left Seattle with passengers infected with "gold fever".
On June 14, 1900, Wyatt and Sadie boarded the steamer SS Alliance in Seattle, bound for Nome. They brought many luxurious accessories with them to decorate The Dexter. Within weeks Nome had grown to a city of over 20,000. In 1900 the major business there "was not mining, but gambling and saloon trade. There were 100 saloons and gambling houses, with an occasional restaurant." Losses of $10,000 per hand in poker were not extraordinary. Prize fighting became the sport of choice and Wyatt's income soared with side bets. He often refereed bouts himself at The Dexter.
In November 1901, at age 40, Sadie got pregnant again, and she and Wyatt decided to leave Alaska. They sold their interest in the Dexter to their partner, Charlie Hoxie.
Wyatt and Sadie left Alaska on board the SS Roanoke and arrived in Los Angeles at the Hollenbeck Hotel on December 13, 1901. They had an estimated , a relative fortune. Sadie miscarried and lost the baby.
Three months later, in February 1902, they arrived in Tonopah, Nevada, known as the "Queen of the Silver Camps", where silver and gold had been discovered in 1900. When they arrived, they had to endure a two-week blizzard. They soon learned unemployment was high and many residents had already moved on.
Wyatt and Josie persevered and within a few months, he and Al Martin opened the Northern Saloon. Earp hauled ore and supplies for the Tonopah Mining Company to the Carson and Colorado Railroad depots at Sodaville and Candelaria. He was briefly appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal in Tonopah under Marshal J.F. Emmitt but his duties were limited to serving papers to defendants in federal court cases.
Disappointed with future prospects in Tonopah, they sold their interests in summer 1903. They prospected in the desert around Silver Peak, Esmeralda County, and wintered in Los Angeles. They staked three claims in the Palmetto Mountains but never found anything of value. They visited his brother Virgil and his wife in 1905 in Goldfield, Nevada where Virgil had been become an Esmeralda County deputy sheriff. Tex Rickard was also already there and had opened a second Northern Saloon. He briefly hired Wyatt as a pit boss.
Wyatt also staked mining claims just outside Death Valley and elsewhere in the Mojave Desert. In 1906 he discovered several deposits of gold and copper in the Whipple Mountains near the Sonoran Desert town of Vidal, California, on the Colorado River and filed more than 100 mining claims His saloon, oil, and copper mining interests produced some income for a period. While in Los Angeles, they lived in at least nine small Los Angeles rentals as early as 1885 and as late as 1929, mostly during the summer.
Life in Los Angeles
In 1910, when he was 62, the Los Angeles Police Department hired Wyatt and former Los Angeles detective Arthur Moore King at $10.00 per day to carry out various tasks "outside the law" such as retrieving criminals from Mexico, which he did very capably. This led to Wyatt's final armed confrontation. In October 1910 he was asked by former Los Angeles Police Commissioner H. L. Lewis to head up a posse to protect surveyors of the American Trona Company . They were attempting to wrest control of mining claims for vast deposits of potash on the edge of Searles Lake that were held in receivership by the foreclosed California Trona Company.
Wyatt and the group he guarded were considered claim jumpers and were confronted by armed representatives of the other company. King wrote, "It was the nerviest thing he had ever seen." With guns pulled, Wyatt came out of his tent with a Winchester rifle, firing a round at the feet of Federal Receiver Stafford W. Austin. "Back off or I'll blow you apart, or my name is not Wyatt Earp." The owners summoned the U.S. marshal, who arrested Earp and 27 others, serving them with a summons for contempt of court, sending them home. Earp's actions did not resolve the dispute, which eventually escalated into the "Potash Wars" of the Mojave Desert.
On July 23, 1911, Earp was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with attempting to fleece J. Y. Peterson, a realty broker, in a fake faro game. Since money had not changed hands, the charge against Earp was reduced to vagrancy and he was released on $500 bail.
The Earps bought a small cottage in Vidal, the only home they ever owned. Beginning in 1911 and until Wyatt's health began to fail in 1928, Wyatt and Sadie Earp summered in Los Angeles and spent the rest of the year in the desert working their claims. The "Happy Days" mine was located in the Whipple Mountains a few miles north of Vidal. Wyatt had some modest success with the Happy Days gold mine, and they lived on the slim proceeds of income from that and oil wells in Oakland and Kern County.
Around 1923 Charles Welsh, a retired railroad engineer and friend that Earp had known since Dodge City, frequently invited the Earps to visit his family in San Bernardino.
When the Welsh family moved to Los Angeles, the Earps accepted an invitation to stay with them for a while in their top-floor apartment until the Earps found a place to rent. After Earp and Sadie moved into a bungalow nearby, Charlie Welsh's daughter, Grace Spolidora, recalled that Sadie, who had never had many domestic skills, did very little housekeeping or cooking for Wyatt. She and her sister Alma were concerned about the care Sadie gave Wyatt. Though he was at times very ill, Sadie still did not cook for him. Spolidora, her sisters, and her mother brought in meals.
Movie connections
While living in Los Angeles, Earp became an unpaid film consultant for several silent cowboy movies. In 1915, Earp visited the set of director Allan Dwan's movie, The Half-Breed, starring Douglas Fairbanks. In his autobiography, Dwan recalled, "As was the custom in those days, he [Earp] was invited to join the party and mingle with our background action."
Earp became friends with William S. Hart and later Tom Mix, the two most famous movie cowboys of their era. Hart was a stickler for realism in his depictions of Western life, and may have relied on Earp for advice. Earp later frequently visited the sets of movie director John Ford, whose movies starred Harry Carey. Ford's son Patrick later wrote, "My dad was real friendly with Wyatt Earp, and as a little boy I remember him."
In 1916 Earp went with his friend Jack London, whom he knew from Nome, to visit the set of former cowboy, sailor, and movie actor-turned-film director Raoul Walsh, who was shooting at the studio of Mutual Film conglomerate in Edendale, California. Walsh took the two men to dinner at Al Levy's Cafe on Main and Third Street. During the meal, the highest paid entertainer in the world, Charlie Chaplin, dropped by to greet Wyatt Earp. Chaplin was impressed by both men, but particularly the former Tombstone marshal.
In the early 1920s Earp was given the honorary title of deputy sheriff in San Bernardino County, California. On January 25, 1926, Wyatt's brother James died of cerebral apoplexy in San Bernardino, California.
Earp tried to persuade his good friend, well-known cowboy movie star William S. Hart, to help set the record straight about his life and get a movie made. "If the story were exploited on the screen by you," he wrote Hart, "It would do much toward setting me right before a public which has always been fed lies about me." Hart encouraged Earp to first find an author to pen his story.
In 1925 Earp began to collaborate on a biography with his friend and former mining engineer John Flood to get his story told in a way that he approved. Flood volunteered his time and attempted to write an authorized biography of Earp's life, based on Earp's recollections. The two men sat together every Sunday in the kitchen of Earp's modest, rented bungalow. While Wyatt sipped a drink and smoked a cigar, they tried to tell Earp's story, but Josephine was always present. She often interrupted and insisted, "You can't write that! It needs to be clean." She also demanded that they add more "pep" to the manuscript, which in her mind meant including the word "CRACK!" in all capitals. In the chapter about the shootout, the manuscript includes 109 uses of "CRACK". She thought Earp needed to be shown as a hero, and the manuscript includes a chapter titled "Conflagration" in which Earp saves two women, one a cripple, from a Tombstone fire.
Spolidora as a teenager had visited the Earps many times near her family home in Needles, California, and she sometimes went to San Diego with them. In an interview with the San Bernardino historical society in 1990, she attributed the highly exaggerated stories about Wyatt Earp to Josephine. Josephine "would always interfere whenever Wyatt would talk with Stuart Lake. She always interfered! She wanted him to look like a church-going saint and blow things up. Wyatt didn't want that at all!"
Flood's writing was "stilted, corny, and one-dimensional", and the manuscript, completed some time in early 1926, never found a publisher. In February 1927 editor Anne Johnston of Bobbs Merrill wrote back and was highly critical of the "stilted, florid, and diffuse" writing. She wrote, "Now one forgets what it's all about in the clutter of unimportant details that impedes its pace, and the pompous manner of its telling."
Hart tried to help. In February 1926 he wrote The Saturday Evening Post and encouraged them to publish Flood's biography so "that... the rising generation may know the real from the unreal", but Flood was a horrendous writer, and publisher after publisher rejected the manuscript. Several copies were made and sold in 1981, and the original carbon copy of the typed manuscript, found among Josephine Earp's papers, was given by Glenn Boyer to the Ford County Historical Society.
Death
Wyatt Earp was the last surviving Earp brother and the last surviving participant of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral when he died at home in the Earps' small rented bungalow at 4004 W 17th Street, in Los Angeles, of chronic cystitis on January 13, 1929, at the age of 80. The Los Angeles Times reported that he had been ill with liver disease for three years. His brother Newton had died almost a month prior on December 18, 1928. Wyatt was survived by Josephine and sister Adelia Earp Edwards. He had no children. Charlie Welsh's daughter Grace Spolidora and his daughter-in-law Alma were the only witnesses to Wyatt's cremation. Josephine was apparently too grief-stricken to assist.
Hollywood pallbearers
The funeral was held at the Congregational Church on Wilshire Boulevard. Earp's pallbearers were William J. Hunsaker, (Earp's attorney in Tombstone and noted Los Angeles attorney); Jim Mitchell (Los Angeles Examiner reporter and Hollywood screenwriter); George W. Parsons (founding member of Tombstone's "Committee of Vigilance"); Wilson Mizner (a friend of Wyatt's during the Klondike Gold Rush); John Clum (a good friend from his days in Tombstone, former Tombstone mayor, and editor of The Tombstone Epitaph); William S. Hart (good friend and Western actor and silent film star); and Tom Mix (friend and Western film star). Mitchell wrote Wyatt's local obituary. The newspapers reported that Tom Mix cried during his friend's service. When Josephine did not attend Wyatt's funeral, Grace Spolidora was furious. "She didn't go to his funeral, even. She wasn't that upset. She was peculiar. I don't think she was that devastated when he died."
Privately buried
Josephine, who was Jewish, had Earp's body cremated and secretly buried his remains in the Marcus family plot at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California. When she died in 1944, her body was buried alongside his ashes. She had purchased a small white marble headstone which was stolen shortly after her death in 1944. It was discovered in a backyard in Fresno, California. A second flat granite headstone was also stolen.
On July 7, 1957, grave-robbers dug into the Earp's grave in an apparent attempt to steal the urn containing his ashes. Unable to find his cremains, they stole the grave stone. Actor Hugh O'Brian, who was playing Earp in the 1955–1961 television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, offered a reward for the stone's return. It was located for sale in a flea market.
Cemetery officials re-set the stone flush in concrete, but it was stolen again. Actor Kevin Costner, who played Earp in the 1994 movie Wyatt Earp offered to buy a new, larger stone, but the Marcus family thought his offer was self-serving and declined. Descendants of Josie's half-sister Rebecca allowed a Southern California group in 1998-99 to erect the stone currently in place. The earlier stone is on display in the Colma Historical museum.
In 1957 the Tombstone Restoration Commission looked for Wyatt's ashes with the intention of having them re-located to Tombstone. They contacted family members seeking permission and the location of his ashes, but no one could or would tell them where they were buried, not even his closest living relative, George Earp. Arthur King, a deputy to Earp from 1910 to 1912, finally revealed that Josephine had buried Wyatt's ashes in Colma, California. The Marcus family kept the location secret to avoid hordes of visitors from trampling the site. The Tombstone Commission decided it would not seek to relocate Earp's remains. His and Josie's gravesite is the most visited resting place in the Jewish cemetery.
No regrets
Two years before his death, Earp defended his decisions before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and his actions afterward in an interview with Stuart Lake, author of the 1931 largely fictionalized biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal:
Physical description
Tall like his brothers, Wyatt Earp was when the average height was about . He was described in 1887 by the Los Angeles Herald as "quiet, unassuming, broad-shouldered, with a large blonde mustache. He is dignified, self-contained, game and fearless, and no man commands greater respect." He weighed about , was long-armed, and muscular, and was very capable of using his fists instead of his weapon to control those resisting his authority.
At about the same time, The Mirror, a newspaper in Monroe, Iowa, printed a wire story originating in Denver. The anonymous reporter described Wyatt in detail:
In 1926 writer Adela Rogers St. Johns met the elderly Earp for the first time.
Wyatt Earp's reputation
Wyatt Earp's fame and reputation has varied throughout the years. Among his peers near the time of his death, Earp was respected. Earp was often the target of negative newspaper stories that disparaged his and his brothers' reputations. As media accounts of his life have changed over the years, public perception of his life has also varied.
See also
Wyatt Earp in popular culture
Notes
References
Further reading
Barra, Allen. Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998.
Boessenecker, John. Ride the Devil's Herd: Wyatt Earp's Epic Battle Against the West's Biggest Outlaw Gang. New York: Hanover Square Press, 2020.
Boyer, Glenn. I Married Wyatt Earp: The Recollections of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1976.
Chaput, Don. The Earp Papers: In a Brother's Image. Encampment, Wyoming: Affiliated Writers of America, 1994.
DeMattos, Jack. The Earp Decision. College Station, TX: Creative Publishing Company, 1989
Dolph, Jerry and Randall, Arthur. Wyatt Earp and Coeur d' Alene Gold!: Stampede to Idaho Territory. Post Falls, Idaho: Eagle City Publications, 1999.
Earp, Wyatt S. "How Wyatt Earp Routed a Gang of Arizona Outlaws". San Francisco ExaminerSunday, August 2, 1896.
Earp, Wyatt S. "Wyatt Earp Tells Tales of the Shotgun-Messenger Service". San Francisco ExaminerSunday, August 9, 1896.
Earp, Wyatt S. "Wyatt Earp's Tribute to Bat Masterson, the Hero of 'Dobe Walls". San Francisco ExaminerSunday, August 16, 1896.
Erwin, Richard E. The Truth About Wyatt Earp. Carpinteria, CA: The O.K. Press, 1992.
Fattig, Timothy W. Wyatt Earp: The Biography. Honolulu, Hawaii: Talei Publishers, 2005.
Gatto, Steve. The Real Wyatt Earp: A Documentary Biography. Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome Books, 2000
Marks, Paula Mitchell. And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1989.
Masterson, W.B. (Bat). "Famous Gun Fighters of the Western Frontier: Wyatt Earp". Human Life, Vol. 4, No. 5, February 1907.
Palenske, Garner A. Wyatt Earp in San Diego. Santa Ana, CA: Graphic Publishers, 2011.
Reidhead, S. J. Travesty: Frank Waters Earp Agenda Exposed. Roswell, NM: Jinglebob Press, 2005.
Shillingberg, William B. Wyatt Earp & the "Buntline Special" Myth. Tucson, AZ: Blaine Publishing Company, 1976.
Stephens, John Richard. Wyatt Earp Speaks! New York: Fall River Press, 1998.
Tefertiller, Casey. Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Turner, Alford E. "The Lake-Earp Letters". Tombstone Epitaph National Edition, Vol. 4, No 1. May 1977.
Turner, Alford E. The Earps Talk. College Station, TX: Creative Publishing Company, 1980.
Turner, Alford E. The OK Corral Inquest. College Station, TX: Creative Publishing Company, 1981.
External links
Wyatt Earp Rare Original Letters
"This Day in History: April 19, 1876: Wyatt Earp dropped from Wichita police force," (summary biography of Earp), History.net
"Wyatt Earp -- In The News 1870 to 1880", May 12, 2017, The American Cowboy Chronicles, (summary biography of Earp, with newspaper quotes about him, from his era.)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%20Reynaud
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Paul Reynaud
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Paul Reynaud (; 15 October 1878 – 21 September 1966) was a French politician and lawyer prominent in the interwar period, noted for his stances on economic liberalism and militant opposition to Nazi Germany.
Reynaud opposed the Munich Agreement of September 1938, when France and the United Kingdom gave way before Hitler's proposals for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
After the outbreak of World War II Reynaud became the penultimate Prime Minister of the Third Republic in March 1940. He was also vice-president of the Democratic Republican Alliance center-right party. Reynaud was Prime Minister during the German defeat of France in May and June 1940; he persistently refused to support an armistice with Germany, as premier in June 1940, he unsuccessfully attempted to save France from German occupation in World War II, and resigned on 16 June. After unsuccessfully attempting to flee France, he was arrested by Philippe Petain's administration. Surrendering to German custody in 1942, he was imprisoned in Germany and later Austria until liberation in 1945, where he was released after the Battle of Itter Castle in which one of the leaders, German Major Josef Gangl, declared a hero by the Austrian resistance, took a sniper's bullet to save Reynaud.
Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946, he became a prominent figure again in French political life, serving in several cabinet positions. He favoured a United States of Europe, and participated in drafting the constitution for the Fifth Republic, but resigned from government in 1962 after disagreement with President de Gaulle over changes to the electoral system.
Early life and politics
Reynaud was born in Barcelonnette, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the son of Alexandre and Amelie (née Gassier) Reynaud. His father had made a fortune in the textile industry, enabling Reynaud to study law at the Sorbonne. He entered politics and was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies from 1919 to 1924, representing Basses-Alpes, and again from 1928, representing a Paris district. Although he was first elected as part of the conservative "Blue Horizon" bloc in 1919, Reynaud shortly thereafter switched his allegiance to the centre-right Democratic Republican Alliance party, later becoming its vice-president.
In the 1920s, Reynaud developed a reputation for laxity on German reparations, at a time when many in the French government backed harsher terms for Germany. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, particularly after 1933, Reynaud's stance hardened against the Germans at a time when all nations were struggling economically. Reynaud backed a strong alliance with the United Kingdom and, unlike many others on the French Right, better relations with the Soviet Union as a counterweight against the Germans.
Reynaud held several cabinet posts in the early 1930s, but he clashed with members of his party after 1932 over French foreign and defense policy. In June 1934, Reynaud defended in the Chamber of Deputies the need to devalue the French franc, whose belonging to the gold standard was increasingly harmful for the French economy, but in those years French public opinion was opposed to any devaluation.
He was not given another cabinet position until 1938. Like Winston Churchill, Reynaud was a maverick in his party and often alone in his calls for rearmament and resistance to German aggrandizement. Reynaud was a supporter of Charles de Gaulle's theories of mechanized warfare in contrast to the static defense doctrines that were in vogue among many of his countrymen, symbolized by the Maginot Line. He strongly opposed appeasement in the run-up to the Second World War. He also clashed with his party on economic policy, backing the devaluation of the franc as a solution to France's economic woes. Pierre Étienne Flandin, the leader of the Democratic Republican Alliance, agreed with several of Reynaud's key policy stances, particularly on Reynaud's defence of economic liberalism.
The franc was devalued, in a range between 25% and 34%, by the Popular Front government presided by Leon Blum on 1 October 1936.
Return to government
Reynaud returned to the cabinet in 1938 as Minister of Justice under Édouard Daladier. The Sudeten Crisis, which began not long after Reynaud was named Minister of Justice, again revealed the divide between Reynaud and the rest of the Alliance Démocratique; Reynaud adamantly opposed abandoning the Czechs to the Germans, while Flandin felt that allowing Germany to expand eastward would inevitably lead to a conflict with the Soviets that would weaken both. Reynaud publicly made his case, and in response Flandin pamphleted Paris in order to pressure the government to agree to Hitler's demands. Reynaud subsequently left his party to become an independent. However, Reynaud still had the support of Daladier, whose politique de fermeté ("policy of firmness") was very similar to Reynaud's notion of deterrence.
Reynaud, however, had always wanted the Finance ministry. He endorsed radically liberal economic policies in order to draw France's economy out of stagnation, centered on a massive program of deregulation, including the elimination of the forty-hour work week. The notion of deregulation was very popular among France's businessmen, and Reynaud believed that it was the best way for France to regain investors' confidence again and escape the stagnation its economy had fallen into. The collapse of Léon Blum's government in 1938 was a response to Blum's attempt to expand the regulatory powers of the French government; there was therefore considerable support in the French government for an alternative approach like Reynaud's.
Paul Marchandeau, Daladier's first choice for finance minister, offered a limited program of economic reform that was not to Daladier's satisfaction; Reynaud and Marchandeau swapped portfolios, and Reynaud went ahead with his radical liberalization reforms. Reynaud's reforms were implemented, and the government faced down a one-day strike in opposition. Reynaud addressed France's business community, arguing that "We live in a capitalist system. For it to function we must obey its laws. These are the laws of profits, individual risk, free markets, and growth by competition."
With Reynaud as Minister of Finance, the confidence of the investors returned and the French economy recovered.
Reynaud's reforms involved a massive austerity program (although armament measures were not cut). At the outbreak of war, however, Reynaud was not bullish on France's economy; he felt that the massive increase in spending that a war entailed would stamp out France's recovery.
The French Right was ambivalent about the war in late 1939 and early 1940, feeling that the Soviets rather than Nazi Germany were the greater long-term threat. Daladier regarded the war with Germany as the greater priority and so refused to send aid to the Finns, who were under attack from the USSR, then loosely allied to Germany, in the Winter War. News that the Finns had sued for peace in March 1940 prompted Flandin and Pierre Laval to hold secret sessions of the legislature that denounced Daladier's actions; the government fell on 19 March. The government named Reynaud Prime Minister of France two days later.
Prime minister, resignation, and arrest
Appointment
Although Reynaud was increasingly popular, the Chamber of Deputies elected him premier by only a single vote with most of his own party abstaining; over half of the votes for Reynaud came from the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party. With so much support from the left, and opposition from many parties on the right, Reynaud's government was especially unstable; many on the Right demanded that Reynaud attack not Germany, but the Soviet Union. The Chamber also forced Daladier, whom Reynaud held personally responsible for France's weakness, to be Reynaud's Minister of National Defense and War. One of Reynaud's first acts was at a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council held in London on 28 March 1940, whose main outcome was the signing of a declaration with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that neither of the two countries would sign a separate peace. A joint communiqué declared 'Both Governments mutually undertake that during the present war they will neither negotiate nor conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agreement. They undertake to maintain after conclusion of peace a community of action for so long as may be necessary'.
On 15 June 1940 the French cabinet rejected a British proposal, imagined by Jean Monnet and defended by De Gaulle, for the union of both countries.
Reynaud abandoned any notion of a "long war strategy" based on attrition. Aiming at diverting German attentions from France, Reynaud entertained suggestions to expand the war to the Balkans or northern Europe; he was instrumental in launching the allied campaign in Norway, though it ended in failure. Britain's decision to withdraw on 26 April prompted Reynaud to travel to London to lobby the British personally to stand and fight in Norway.
The German breakthrough
The Battle of France began less than two months after Reynaud came to office. France was badly mauled by the initial attack in early May 1940, and Paris was threatened. On 15 May, five days after the invasion began, Reynaud contacted Churchill and famously remarked, "We have been defeated... we are beaten; we have lost the battle.... The front is broken near Sedan." Indeed, such was the situation regarding equipment and morale that Reynaud received a postcard found on the body of an officer who had committed suicide in Le Mans. It stated: "I am killing myself Mr President to let you know that all my men were brave, but one cannot send men to fight tanks with rifles."
On 18 May Reynaud removed commander-in-chief Maurice Gamelin in favour of Maxime Weygand.
On 26 May, around lunchtime, Reynaud attended a meeting in London with Churchill. At 2 pm Churchill reported to the War Cabinet that Reynaud had stated that the French military situation was hopeless, that he had no intention of signing a separate peace with Germany, but that he might be forced to resign and that others in the French government might sign such a treaty. At this stage Churchill told Reynaud that he did not rule out talks with Mussolini altogether (Italy was still neutral). The Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax met Reynaud later in the afternoon, before the latter's return to France. This was the beginning of the British May 1940 War Cabinet Crisis, in which Halifax favoured what was euphemistically described as "the Reynaud Option": approaching the Italians to see if acceptable peace terms could be negotiated, perhaps by giving up some British territory in the Mediterranean. Halifax was eventually overruled by Churchill.
On 28 May Churchill sent a telegram to Reynaud stating that there would be no approach to Mussolini at that time but still leaving the possibility open. Mussolini had rejected an approach by President Roosevelt along the lines suggested by Britain and France. On 28 May, it was learned that Italy was planning to enter the war on Germany's side, which would happen on 10 June.
In early June Charles de Gaulle, whom Reynaud had long supported and one of the few French commanders to have fought the Germans successfully in May 1940, was promoted to brigadier general and named undersecretary of war.
Support for an armistice; Reynaud's resignation
Reynaud vacillated a little on his return from London on 26 May, but otherwise wanted to continue to fight. However, he was unable to persuade enough of his colleagues. Italy entered the war on 10 June; on that same day, Commander-in-Chief General Weygand strode into Reynaud's office and demanded an armistice. At around 11 pm that night Reynaud and de Gaulle left Paris for Tours; the rest of the government followed the next day. De Gaulle was unable to persuade Reynaud to sack Weygand.
At the Anglo-French conference at the Chateau du Muguet, Briare, on 11–12 June, Churchill urged the French to carry on fighting, either in Brittany or in French North Africa, or by guerrilla warfare, meeting strong resistance from Deputy Prime Minister Marshal Pétain. At the Cabinet meeting on the evening of 12 June it was clear that there was a growing movement for an armistice, and it was decided to move to Bordeaux rather than to a fortified Brittany.
At the next Anglo-French conference at Tours on 13 June, Reynaud demanded that France be released from the agreement which he had made with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in March 1940, so that France could seek an armistice. Churchill said that he "understood" the French action but (contrary to later claims that he approved) that he did not agree with it. At the Cabinet meeting that evening (Churchill had returned to London rather than address the French Cabinet as Reynaud had wished) Pétain strongly supported Weygand's demand for an armistice, and said that he himself would remain in France to share the suffering of the French people and to begin the national rebirth. President Albert Lebrun refused Reynaud's resignation on 13 June.
Edward Spears recorded that Reynaud was, from the evening of 13 June, under great stress. Paul Baudouin and Marie-Joseph Paul de Villelume had been leaning on Reynaud to seek an armistice with Germany, as had his mistress, the Comtesse Hélène de Portes, a Fascist sympathizer. On 14 June Villelume and de Portes called on the American diplomat Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. and stated that France had no alternative but to seek an armistice and that they were speaking on behalf of Reynaud, although Biddle did not believe them.
At Cabinet on 15 June, Reynaud urged the Cabinet to adopt the Dutch example, that the Army should lay down its arms so that the fight could be continued from abroad; Pétain was sympathetic. Pétain was sent to speak to General Weygand (who was waiting outside, as he was not a member of the Cabinet). Weygand persuaded him that this would be a shameful surrender. Chautemps then suggested a fudge proposal, an inquiry about terms. The Cabinet voted 13-6 for the Chautemps proposal. Reynaud tried to resign on the spot but Lebrun shouted at him. Admiral Darlan, who had been opposed to an armistice until 15 June, now agreed, provided the French fleet was kept out of German hands. On 15 June, Reynaud threw two glasses of water over de Portes at dinner; a key telegram had been found in her bed after it went missing.
On 16 June de Portes kept putting her head around the door during a meeting and US diplomats testified that she was constantly coming and going from Reynaud's office. President Roosevelt's reply to Reynaud's inquiry, stating that he could do little to help without Congressional approval, was then received on the morning of Sunday 16 June. Churchill's telegram also arrived that morning, agreeing to an armistice provided the French fleet was moved to British ports, a proposal unacceptable to Darlan, who argued that it would leave France defenceless. De Gaulle was in London that afternoon for talks about the planned Franco-British Union, a far-reaching and imaginative proposal which Churchill and his advisers had hastily put together in a desperate effort to support Reynaud against his armistice-minded ministers and keep France - but especially its extensive naval fleet - in the war on the side of Britain. It was De Gaulle who telephoned Reynaud to inform him that the British Cabinet had agreed, reporting that "a sensational declaration" was imminent, amounting to a proposal for no less than the union of the two nations into a single Franco-British government. Time was desperately short, and De Gaulle ended up dictating the "Declaration of Union" to an astonished and gratified Reynaud over the telephone, word for word, so that Reynaud could present it to his Cabinet that very afternoon in a bid to fend off armistice. What Reynaud did not know was that General Weygand had instructed army listeners to tap his phone, and therefore had advance warning of what was coming, robbing Reynaud of the element of surprise. When the French Cabinet met in Bordeaux that afternoon, Reynaud presented the British union plan and - with Georges Mandel - declared his determination to fight on, but events were moving fast and the grand British offer was by then not sufficient to win round the waverers. Contrary to Lebrun's mistaken recollection, no formal vote appears to have been taken at Cabinet on Sunday 16 June. The outcome of the meeting is unclear. Ten ministers wanted to fight on while seven favoured an armistice, though these included the two Deputy Prime Ministers: Pétain and Chautemps. An armistice was also favoured by Weygand. Another eight ministers were undecided, but ultimately swung towards an armistice. This time, Lebrun reluctantly accepted Reynaud's resignation, and the government of France - at this historic and fateful moment - fell into the hands of Petain and those who favoured armistice and, ultimately, collaboration with the German invader. De Gaulle later wrote that Reynaud was "a man of great worth unjustly crushed by events beyond measure".
After resignation
Julian Jackson writes that Reynaud felt guilty for 20 years for having let Pétain into power, and gave ever more convoluted explanations of what had happened: despite his own fighting spirit, apart from a brief vacillation on 26 May, "he had failed to be Clemenceau (France's great war Prime Minister of 1917-18), but missed the chance to be de Gaulle and never forgave himself". Reynaud later claimed that he had hoped Pétain would resign if the armistice terms were too harsh, which if true was wishful thinking in Jackson's view. There were claims that he could have mustered a majority in the Cabinet for fighting on, so he later claimed that he could not have argued against the political weight of the "softs", especially Pétain and Weygand, France's two leading soldiers.
Spears recorded that Reynaud appeared relieved to be rid of his burden. In the immediate aftermath, he appears to have been in denial, hoping still to meet Churchill at Concarneau on 17 June (in fact Churchill, who was at Waterloo Station, had cancelled his travel plans on learning of Reynaud's resignation).
Jules Jeanneney and Édouard Herriot, Presidents respectively of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, urged Lebrun to reappoint Reynaud as Prime Minister (all four men wanted to continue the war from North Africa). Lebrun felt he had little choice but to appoint Pétain, who already had a ministerial team ready, as Prime Minister. Pétain became the leader of the new government (the last one of the Third Republic), and signed the armistice on 22 June. De Gaulle had returned to Bordeaux at around 10pm on 16 June. He visited Reynaud, who still hoped to go to North Africa and declined to come to London. Reynaud still had control of secret government funds until the handover of power the next day, and made money available to de Gaulle. De Gaulle flew to London with Edward Spears at 9 a.m. on 17 June, and the next day made his famous broadcast announcing that he would fight on. It has been suggested that Reynaud had ordered de Gaulle to go to London, but no written evidence has ever been found to confirm this.
Reynaud would later provisionally accept Pétain's offer of the post of French Ambassador to the USA. Lebrun refused to confirm the appointment, apparently as he admired Reynaud and wanted to save him from association with the Pétain government.
Accident and arrest
Reynaud and de Portes left the Hotel Splendid, Bordeaux, driving southeast ahead of the advancing German armies, intending to stop at Reynaud's holiday home at Grès, Hérault, (other sources state they were bound for his daughter's home at Sainte-Maxime) before fleeing to North Africa. On 28 June, with Reynaud at the wheel, their Renault Juvaquatre car inexplicably left the road and hit a plane tree at la Peyrade, near Sète; de Portes was all but decapitated while Reynaud escaped with relatively minor head injuries. While hospitalized at Montpellier, Reynaud allegedly told Bill Bullitt, American ambassador, "I have lost my country, my honour, and my love."
Reynaud was arrested on his discharge on Pétain's orders and imprisoned at Fort du Portalet. Pétain decided against having Reynaud charged during the Riom Trial of 1942, but handed him over to the Germans instead, who removed him firstly to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, thence Itter Castle near Wörgl, Austria, where he remained with other high-profile French prisoners until liberated by Allied troops on 7 May 1945. Major Josef Gangl, a Wehrmacht officer who had gone over to the anti-Nazi Austrian resistance, was killed by a sniper's bullet while trying to move Reynaud out of harm's way during the Battle for Castle Itter on 5 May 1945.
Postwar career
After the war, Reynaud was elected in 1946 as a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He was appointed to several cabinet positions in the post-war period and remained a prominent figure in French politics. His attempts to form governments in 1952 and 1953 in the turbulent politics of the French Fourth Republic were unsuccessful.
Reynaud supported the idea of a United States of Europe, along with a number of prominent contemporaries. He was a member of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe for ten years, from 1949 to 1959, where he worked alongside his old wartime allies Churchill, Spaak and others to build a united Europe as a way of preventing future wars and a recurrence of the Nazi atrocities. Reynaud presided over the consultative committee that drafted the constitution of France's (current) Fifth Republic. In 1962, he denounced his old friend de Gaulle's replacement of the electoral college system by a direct public vote for the Presidency. Reynaud left office the same year.
Appearance and private life
Reynaud was a physically small man, with "the countenance of a samurai who had been educated at Cambridge". His head was set deep between his shoulders, and he had "a sharp, nasal, metallic voice" and "mechanical" bearing.
By his first marriage in 1912 to Jeanne Anne Henri-Robert, he was the father of a daughter, Collette, born in 1914. At some time in the early 1920s, Reynaud was introduced to Hélène Rebuffel by Andre Tardieu, a friend of her father's. Rebuffel's father, however, was displeased at her relationship with a married man, actively seeking other suitors for her, and she was eventually persuaded to marry Comte Henri de Portes. After she had borne him two children, the marriage failed, and when Reynaud and his wife separated in 1938, Hélène de Portes was his mistress until her death in the
road accident at Frontignan in 1940. Reynaud and his first wife were finally divorced in 1949. Reynaud then married Christiane Mabire (one of his former office assistants, who had voluntarily joined him at the Castle Itter in 1943) at Versailles in the same year, at the age of 71. Mabire had already borne him a son, Serge Paul-Reynaud, in 1945; they had two more children, Evelyne, in 1949, and Alexandre in 1954.
Reynaud died on 21 September 1966 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, leaving a number of writings.
Reynaud's government, 21 March – 16 June 1940
Paul Reynaud – President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
Camille Chautemps – Vice President of the Council
Édouard Daladier – Minister of National Defense and War
Raoul Dautry – Minister of Armaments
Henri Roy – Minister of the Interior
Lucien Lamoureux – Minister of Finance
Charles Pomaret – Minister of Labour
Albert Sérol – Minister of Justice
César Campinchi – Minister of Military Marine
Alphonse Rio – Minister of Merchant Marine
Laurent Eynac – Minister of Air
Albert Sarraut – Minister of National Education
Albert Rivière – Minister of Veterans and Pensioners
Paul Thellier – Minister of Agriculture
Henri Queuille – Minister of Supply
Georges Mandel – Minister of Colonies
Anatole de Monzie – Minister of Public Works
Marcel Héraud – Minister of Public Health
Alfred Jules-Julien – Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, Telephones, and Transmissions
Ludovic-Oscar Frossard – Minister of Information
Louis Rollin – Minister of Commerce and Industry
Georges Monnet – Minister of Blockade
Changes
10 May 1940 – Louis Marin and Jean Ybarnegaray enter the Cabinet as Ministers of State
18 May 1940 – Philippe Pétain enters the Cabinet as Minister of State. Reynaud succeeds Daladier as Minister of National Defense and War. Daladier succeeds Reynaud as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Georges Mandel succeeds Roy as Minister of the Interior. Louis Rollin succeeds Mandel as Minister of Colonies. Léon Baréty succeeds Rollin as Minister of Commerce and Industry.
5 June 1940 – Reynaud succeeds Daladier as Minister of Foreign Affairs, remaining also Minister of National Defense and War. Yves Bouthillier succeeds Lamoureux as Minister of Finance. Yvon Delbos succeeds Sarraut as Minister of National Education. Ludovic-Oscar Frossard succeeds Monzie as Minister of Public Works. Jean Prouvost succeeds Frossard as Minister of Information. Georges Pernot succeeds Héraud as Health Minister, with the new title of Minister of French Family. Albert Chichery succeeds Baréty as Minister of Commerce and Industry.
See also
Interwar France
Notes
References
Nicholas Atkin, Pétain, Longman, 1997,
Barber, Noel, The Week France Fell. New York: Stein & Day, 1976.
Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Rebel 1890–1944 (1984; English ed. 1991), 640 pp, W W Norton & Co, London.
Paul Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 1930–1945. London: Simon and Schuster, 1955
Roland de Margerie, Journal, 1939-1940, Paris, Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle, 2010, 416 p.
Roberts, Andrew. The Holy Fox, The Life of Lord Halifax. London: Phoenix, 1991.
Charles Williams, Pétain, Little Brown (Time Warner Book Group UK), London, 2005.
Further reading
Connors, Joseph David. "Paul Reynaud and French national defense, 1933-1939." (PhD Loyola University of Chicago, 1977). online Bibliography, pp 265–83.
de Konkoly Thege, Michel Marie. "Paul Reynaud and the Reform of France's Economic, Military and Diplomatic Policies of the 1930s." (Graduate Liberal Studies Works (MALS/MPhil). Paper 6, 2015). online, bibliography pp 171–76.
Nord, Philip. France 1940: Defending the Republic (Yale UP, 2015).
External links
World at war biography
Spartacus biography(Trotskyite)
1939–45.org biography
Video: Wedding ring "stolen" by German soldier in 1944 returned to familly of Prime Minister Paul Reynaud
1878 births
1966 deaths
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Politicians from Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiger
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Eiger
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The Eiger () is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at , constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its nearly north face of rock and ice, named Eiger-Nordwand, Eigerwand or just Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers over the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the eponymous pass connecting the two valleys.
The first ascent of the Eiger was made by Swiss guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren and Irishman Charles Barrington, who climbed the west flank on August 11, 1858. The north face, the "last problem" of the Alps, considered amongst the most challenging and dangerous ascents, was first climbed in 1938 by an Austrian-German expedition. The Eiger has been highly publicized for the many tragedies involving climbing expeditions. Since 1935, at least 64 climbers have died attempting the north face, earning it the German nickname Mordwand, literally "murder(ous) wall"—a pun on its correct title of Nordwand (North Wall).
Although the summit of the Eiger can be reached by experienced climbers only, a railway tunnel runs inside the mountain, and two internal stations provide easy access to viewing-windows carved into the rock face. They are both part of the Jungfrau Railway line, running from Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, between the Mönch and the Jungfrau, at the highest railway station in Europe. The two stations within the Eiger are Eigerwand (behind the north face) and Eismeer (behind the south face), at around 3,000 metres. The Eigerwand station has not been regularly served since 2016.
Etymology
The first mention of Eiger, appearing as "mons Egere", was found in a property sale document of 1252, but there is no clear indication of how exactly the peak gained its name. The three mountains of the ridge are commonly referred to as the Virgin (German: Jungfrau – translates to "virgin" or "maiden"), the Monk (Mönch), and the Ogre (Eiger; the standard German word for ogre is Oger). The name has been linked to the Latin term acer, meaning "sharp" or "pointed".
Geographic setting and description
The Eiger is located above the Lauterbrunnen Valley to the west and Grindelwald to the north in the Bernese Oberland region of the canton of Bern. It forms a renowned mountain range of the Bernese Alps together with its two companions: the Jungfrau () about southwest of it and the Mönch () about in the middle of them. The nearest settlements are Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen () and Wengen (). The Eiger has three faces: north (or more precisely NNW), east (or more precisely ESE), and west (or more precisely WSW). The northeastern ridge from the summit to the Ostegg (lit.: eastern corner, ), called Mittellegi, is the longest on the Eiger. The north face overlooks the gently rising Alpine meadow between Grindelwald () and Kleine Scheidegg (), a mountain railways junction and a pass, which can be reached from both sides, Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen/Wengen – by foot or train.
Politically, the Eiger (and its summit) belongs to the Bernese municipalities of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen. The Kleine Scheidegg (literally, the small parting corner) connects the Männlichen-Tschuggen range with the western ridge of the Eiger. The Eiger does not properly form part of the main chain of the Bernese Alps, which borders the canton of Valais and forms the watershed between the Rhine and the Rhône, but constitutes a huge limestone buttress, projecting from the crystalline basement of the Mönch across the Eigerjoch. Consequently, all sides of the Eiger feed finally the same river, namely the Lütschine.
Eiger's water is connected through the Weisse Lütschine (the white one) in the Lauterbrunnen Valley on the west side (southwestern face of the Eiger), and through the Schwarze Lütschine (the black one) running through Grindelwald (northwestern face), which meet each other in Zweilütschinen (lit.: the two Lütschinen) where they form the proper Lütschine. The east face is covered by the glacier called Ischmeer, (Bernese German for Ice Sea), which forms one upper part of the fast-retreating Lower Grindelwald Glacier. These glaciers' water forms a short creek, which is also confusingly called the Weisse Lütschine, but enters the black one already in Grindelwald together with the water from the Upper Grindelwald Glacier. Therefore, all the water running down the Eiger converges at the northern foot of the Männlichen () in Zweilütschinen (), about northwest of the summit, where the Lütschine begins its northern course to Lake Brienz and the Aare ().
Although the north face of the Eiger is almost free of ice, significant glaciers lie at the other sides of the mountain. The Eiger Glacier flows on the southwestern side of the Eiger, from the crest connecting it to the Mönch down to , south of Eigergletscher railway station, and feeds the Weisse Lütschine through the Trümmelbach. On the east side, the Ischmeer–well visible from the windows of Eismeer railway station–flows eastwards from the same crest then turns to the north below the impressive wide Fiescherwand, the north face of the Fiescherhörner triple summit () down to about of the Lower Grindelwald Glacier system.
The massive composition of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau constitutes an emblematic sight of the Swiss Alps and is visible from many places on the Swiss Plateau and the Jura Mountains in the northwest. The higher Finsteraarhorn () and Aletschhorn (), which are located about to the south, are generally less visible and situated in the middle of glaciers in less accessible areas. As opposed to the north side, the south and east sides of the range consist of large valley glaciers extending for up to , the largest (beyond the Eiger drainage basin) being those of Grand Aletsch, Fiesch, and Aar Glaciers, and is thus uninhabited. The whole area, the Jungfrau-Aletsch protected area, comprising the highest summits and largest glaciers of the Bernese Alps, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.
In July 2006, a piece of the Eiger, amounting to approximately 700,000 cubic metres of rock, fell from the east face. As it had been noticeably cleaving for several weeks and fell into an uninhabited area, there were no injuries and no buildings were hit.
North face
The Nordwand, German for "north wall" or "north face," is the north face of the Eiger (also known as the Eigernordwand: "Eiger north wall" or Eigerwand). It is one of the three great north faces of the Alps, along with the north faces of the Matterhorn and the Grandes Jorasses (known as 'the Trilogy') and also one of the biggest sheer faces in Europe, between 1,600 m and 1,800 m (over a mile) high. The face overlooks Kleine Scheidegg and the valley of Grindelwald. At 2,866 metres inside the mountain lies the Eigerwand railway station. The station is connected to the north face by a tunnel opening at the face, which has sometimes been used to rescue climbers. The Eiger Trail, at the base of the north face, runs from Eigergletscher to Alpiglen railway stations. The approach hike to the base of the face takes less than an hour from Eigergletscher.
Some of the notable features on the north face are (from the bottom): First Pillar, Eigerwand Station, First Ice-field, Hinterstoisser Traverse, Swallow's Nest, Ice Hose, Second Ice-field, Death Bivouac, Ramp, Traverse of the Gods, Spider and Exit Cracks.
In 1938, Alpine Journal editor Edward Lisle Strutt calls the face "an obsession for the mentally deranged" and "the most imbecile variant since mountaineering first began." In the same year, however, the north face was finally climbed on 24 July by Andreas Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek, a German–Austrian group.
A portion of the upper face is called "The White Spider", as snow-filled cracks radiating from an ice-field resemble the legs of a spider. Harrer used this name for the title of his book about his successful climb, Die Weisse Spinne (translated into English as The White Spider: The Classic Account of the Ascent of the Eiger). During the first successful ascent, the four men were caught in an avalanche as they climbed the Spider, but all had enough strength to resist being swept off the face.
Since then, the north face has been climbed many times. Today it is regarded as a formidable challenge, not only because of its technical difficulties, exceeding those of some of the 8,000 m peaks in the Himalaya and Karakoram, but also because of the increased rockfall and diminishing ice-fields. Climbers are increasingly electing to challenge the Eiger in winter, when the crumbling face is strengthened by ice.
Since 1935, at least sixty-four climbers have died attempting the north face, earning it the German nickname, Mordwand, or "murderous wall", a play on the face's German name Nordwand.
Climbing history
While the summit was reached without much difficulty in 1858 by a complex route on the west flank, the battle to climb the north face has captivated the interest of climbers and non-climbers alike. Before it was successfully climbed, most of the attempts on the face ended tragically and the Bernese authorities even banned climbing it and threatened to fine any party that should attempt it again. But the enthusiasm which animated the young talented climbers from Austria and Germany finally vanquished its reputation of unclimbability when a party of four climbers successfully reached the summit in 1938 by what is known as the "1938" or "Heckmair" route.
The climbers that attempted the north face could be easily watched through the telescopes from the Kleine Scheidegg, a pass between Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, connected by rail. The contrast between the comfort and civilization of the railway station and the agonies of the young men slowly dying a short yet uncrossable distance away led to intensive coverage by the international media.
After World War II, the north face was climbed twice in 1947, first by a party of two French guides, Louis Lachenal and Lionel Terray, then by a Swiss party consisting of H. Germann, with Hans and Karl Schlunegger.
First ascent
In 1857, a first recorded attempt was made by Christian Almer, Christian Kaufmann, Ulrich Kaufmann guiding the Austrian alpinist Sigismund Porges. They did manage the first ascent of neighboring Mönch instead. Porges, however, successfully made the second ascent of the Eiger in July 1861 with the guides Christian Michel, Hans and Peter Baumann.
The first ascent was made by the western flank on August 11, 1858 by Charles Barrington with guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren. On the previous afternoon, the party walked up to the Wengernalp hotel. From there they started the ascent of the Eiger at 3:30 a.m. Barrington describes the route much as it is followed today, staying close to the edge of the north face much of the way. They reached the summit at about noon, planted a flag, stayed for some 10 minutes and descended in about four hours. Barrington describes the reaching of the top, saying, "the two guides kindly gave me the place of first man up." After the descent, the party was escorted to the Kleine Scheidegg hotel, where their ascent was confirmed by observation of the flag left on the summit. The owner of the hotel then fired a cannon to celebrate the first ascent. According to Harrer's The White Spider, Barrington was originally planning to make the first ascent of the Matterhorn, but his finances did not allow him to travel there as he was already staying in the Eiger region.
Mittellegi ridge
Although the Mittellegi ridge had already been descended by climbers (since 1885) with the use of ropes in the difficult sections, it remained unclimbed until 1921. On the 10th of September of that year, Japanese climber Yuko Maki, along with Swiss guides Fritz Amatter, Samuel Brawand and Fritz Steuri made the first successful ascent of the ridge. The previous day, the party approached the ridge from the Eismeer railway station of the Jungfrau Railway and bivouacked for the night. They started the climb at about 6:00 a.m. and reached the summit of the Eiger at about 7:15 p.m., after an over 13 hours gruelling ascent. Shortly after, they descended the west flank. They finally reached Eigergletscher railway station at about 3:00 a.m. the next day.
Attempts on the north face
1935
In 1935, two young German climbers from Bavaria, Karl Mehringer and Max Sedlmeyer, arrived at Grindelwald to attempt the ascent of the north face. After waiting some time for the weather to improve, they set off, reaching the height of the Eigerwand station before stopping for their first bivouac. The following day, facing greater difficulties, they gained little height. On the third day, they made hardly any vertical gain. That night, the weather deteriorated, bringing snow and low cloud that shrouded the mountain from the observers below. Avalanches began to sweep the face. Two days later, the weather briefly cleared, and the two men were glimpsed a little higher and about to bivouac for the fifth night, before clouds descended again. A few days later, the weather finally cleared, revealing a completely white north face. Weeks later, the German World War I ace Ernst Udet went searching for the missing men with his aircraft, eventually spotting one of them frozen to death in what became known as the "Death Bivouac". Sedlmeyer's body was found at the foot of the face the following year by his brothers Heinrich and Martin Meier, who were part of a group looking for the victims of the 1936 climbing disaster. Mehringer's remains were found in 1962 by Swiss climbers below the "Flat Iron" (Bügeleisen) at the lefthand end of the second ice field.
1936
The next year ten young climbers from Austria and Germany came to Grindelwald and camped at the foot of the mountain. Before their attempts started one of them was killed during a training climb, and the weather was so bad during that summer that, after waiting for a change and seeing none on the way, several members of the party gave up. Of the four that remained, two were Bavarians, Andreas Hinterstoisser and Toni Kurz, and two were Austrians, Willy Angerer and Edi Rainer. When the weather improved they made a preliminary exploration of the lowest part of the face. Hinterstoisser fell but was not injured. A few days later the four men finally began the ascent of the face. They climbed quickly, but on the next day, after their first bivouac, the weather changed; clouds came down and hid the group to the observers. They did not resume the climb until the following day, when, during a break, the party was seen descending, but the climbers could be seen only intermittently from the ground. The group had no choice but to retreat, since Angerer had suffered serious injuries from falling rock. The party became stuck on the face when they could not recross the difficult Hinterstoisser Traverse, from which they had taken the rope they had first used to climb it. The weather then deteriorated for two days. They were ultimately swept away by an avalanche, which only Kurz survived, hanging on a rope. Three guides started on an extremely perilous rescue attempt. They failed to reach him but came within shouting distance and learned what had happened. Kurz explained the fate of his companions: one had fallen down the face, another was frozen above him, and the third had fractured his skull in falling and was hanging dead on the rope.
In the morning the three guides came back, traversing the face from a hole near the Eigerwand station and risking their lives under incessant avalanches. Toni Kurz was still alive but almost helpless, with one hand and one arm completely frozen. Kurz hauled himself off the cliff after cutting loose the rope that bound him to his dead teammate below and climbed back onto the face. The guides were not able to pass an unclimbable overhang that separated them from Kurz. They managed to give him a rope long enough to reach them by tying two ropes together. While descending, Kurz could not get the knot to pass through his carabiner. He tried for hours to reach his rescuers who were only a few metres below him. Then he began to lose consciousness. One of the guides, climbing on another's shoulders, was able to touch the tip of Kurz's crampons with his ice-axe but could not reach higher. Kurz was unable to descend further and, completely exhausted, died slowly.
1937
An attempt was made in 1937 by and Ludwig Vörg. Although the attempt was unsuccessful, they were nonetheless the first climbers who returned alive from a serious attempt on the face. They started the climb on 11 August and reached a high point of a few rope lengths above Death Bivouac. A storm then broke and after three days on the wall they had to retreat. This was the first successful withdrawal from a significant height on the wall.
First ascent of the north face
The north face was first climbed on July 24, 1938 by Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek in a German–Austrian party. The party had originally consisted of two independent teams: Harrer (who did not have a pair of crampons on the climb) and Kasparek were joined on the face by Heckmair and Vörg, who had started their ascent a day later and had been helped by the fixed rope that the lead team had left across the Hinterstoisser Traverse. The two groups, led by the experienced Heckmair, decided to join their forces and roped together as a single group of four. Heckmair later wrote: "We, the sons of the older Reich, united with our companions from the Eastern Border to march together to victory."
The expedition was constantly threatened by snow avalanches and climbed as quickly as possible between the falls. On the third day a storm broke and the cold was intense. The four men were caught in an avalanche as they climbed "the Spider," the snow-filled cracks radiating from an ice-field on the upper face, but all possessed sufficient strength to resist being swept off the face. The members successfully reached the summit at four o'clock in the afternoon. They were so exhausted that they only just had the strength to descend by the normal route through a raging blizzard.
Other notable events
1864 (Jul 27): Fourth ascent, and first ascent by a woman, Lucy Walker, who was part of a group of six guides (including Christian Almer and Melchior Anderegg) and five clients, including her brother Horace Walker
1871: First ascent by the southwest ridge, 14 July (Christian Almer, Christian Bohren, and Ulrich Almer guiding W. A. B. Coolidge and Meta Brevoort).
1890: First ascent in winter, Ulrich Kaufmann and Christian Jossi guiding C. W. Mead and G. F. Woodroffe.
1924: First ski ascent and descent via the Eiger glacier by Englishman Arnold Lunn and the Swiss Fritz Amacher, Walter Amstutz and Willy Richardet.
1932: First ascent of the northeast face ("Lauper route") by Hans Lauper, Alfred Zürcher, Alexander Graven and Josef Knubel
1970: First ski descent over the west flank, by Sylvain Saudan.
1986: Welshman Eric Jones becomes the first person to BASE jump from the Eiger.
1988: Original Route (ED2), north face, Eiger (3970m), Alps, Switzerland, first American solo (nine and a half hours) by Mark Wilford.
1991: First ascent, Metanoia Route, North Face, solo, winter, without bolts, Jeff Lowe.
1992 (18 July): Three BMG/UIAGM/IFMGA clients died in a fall down the West Flank: Willie Dunnachie; Douglas Gaines; and Phillip Davies. They had ascended the mountain via the Mittellegi Ridge.
2006 (14 June): François Bon and Antoine Montant make the first speedflying descent of the Eiger.
2006 (15 July): Approximately 700,000 cubic metres (20 million cubic feet) of rock from the east side collapses. No injuries or damage were reported.
2015 (23 July): A team of British Para-Climbers reached the summit via the West Flank Route. The team included John Churcher, the world's first blind climber to summit the Eiger, sight guided by the team leader Mark McGowan. Colin Gourlay enabled the ascent of other team members, including Al Taylor who has multiple sclerosis, and the young autistic climber Jamie Owen from North Wales. The ascent was filmed by the adventure filmmakers Euan Ryan & Willis Morris of Finalcrux Films.
Books and films
The 1959 book The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer describes the first successful ascent of the Eiger north face.
The Climb Up To Hell, 1962, by Jack Olson, an account of the ill-fated 1957 attempted climb of the north face by an Italian four-man team and the dramatic rescue of the sole survivor mounted by an international all-volunteer group of rescuers.
Eiger Direct, 1966, by Dougal Haston and Peter Gillman, London: Collins, also known as Direttissima; the Eiger Assault
The 1971 novel The Ice Mirror by Charles MacHardy describes the second attempted ascent of the Eiger north face by the main character.
The 1972 novel The Eiger Sanction is an action/thriller novel by Rodney William Whitaker (writing under the pseudonym Trevanian), based around the climbing of the Eiger. This was then made into the 1975 film The Eiger Sanction starring Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy. The Eiger Sanction film crew included very experienced mountaineers (e.g., Mike Hoover, Dougal Haston, and Hamish MacInnes, see Summit, 52, Spring 2010) as consultants, to ensure accuracy in the climbing footage, equipment, and techniques.
The Eiger, 1974, by Dougal Haston, London: Cassell
The 1982 book Eiger, Wall of Death by Arthur Roth is a historical account of the first ascents of the North Face.
The 1982 book Traverse of The Gods by Bob Langley is a World War II spy thriller where a group escaping from Nazi Germany is trapped and the only possible exit route is via the Nordwand.
Eiger, 1983, a documentary film by Leo Dickinson of Eric Jones' 1981 solo ascent of the North Face.
Eiger Dreams, 1990, a collection of essays by Jon Krakauer, begins with an account of Krakauer's own attempt to climb the north face.
Eiger: The Vertical Arena (German edition, 1998; English edition, 2000), edited by Daniel Anker, a comprehensive climbing history of the north face authored by 17 climbers, with numerous photographs and illustrations.
The IMAX film The Alps features John Harlin III's climb up the north face in September 2005. Harlin's father, John Harlin II, set out 40 years earlier to attempt a direct route (the direttissima) up the face, the so-called Harlin route. At 1300 m, his rope broke, and he fell to his death. Composer James Swearingen created a piece named Eiger: Journey to the Summit in his memory.
The 2007 docu/drama film The Beckoning Silence featuring mountaineer Joe Simpson, recounting—with filmed reconstructions—the ill-fated 1936 expedition up the north face of the Eiger and how Heinrich Harrer's book The White Spider inspired him to take up climbing. The film followed Simpson's eponymous 2003 book. Those playing the parts of the original climbing team were Swiss mountain guides Roger Schäli (Toni Kurz), Simon Anthamatten (Andreas Hinterstoisser), Dres Abegglen (Willy Angerer) and Cyrille Berthod (Edi Rainer). The documentary won an Emmy Award the subsequent year.
The 2008 German historical fiction film Nordwand is based on the 1936 attempt to climb the Eiger north face. The film is about the two German climbers Toni Kurz and Andreas Hinterstoisser, involved in a competition with an Austrian duo to be the first to scale the north face of Eiger.
The 2010 documentary Eiger: Wall of Death by Steve Robinson.
See also
1936 Eiger climbing disaster
Eigerwand railway station
List of deaths on eight-thousanders
List of mountains of the canton of Bern
List of highest mountains of Switzerland
List of mountains of Switzerland
List of mountains of Switzerland above 3000 m
References
Works cited
External links
The Eiger on Summitpost
- photos
The Eiger on Hikr
The Eiger on Flickr
Live webcam view of the Eiger north face
New and Old Explorations of the Eiger, Photos & Video
Ueli Steck wins inaugural Eiger Award 2008
Are you still here? A bagman's view of climbing the Eigerwand, by Charles Sherwood.
Obituary of Anderl Heckmair, The Independent, Feb. 3, 2005
West face of Eiger
Alpine three-thousanders
Bernese Alps
Great north faces of the Alps
Mountains of the Alps
Mountains of the canton of Bern
Mountains of Switzerland
Three-thousanders of Switzerland
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard%20Daladier
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Édouard Daladier
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Édouard Daladier (; 18 June 1884 – 10 October 1970) was a French Radical-Socialist (centre-left) politician, and the Prime Minister of France who signed the Munich Agreement before the outbreak of World War II.
Daladier was born in Carpentras and began his political career before World War I. During the war, he fought on the Western Front and was decorated for his service. After the war, he became a leading figure in the Radical Party and Prime Minister in 1933 and 1934. Daladier was Minister of Defence from 1936 to 1940 and Prime Minister again in 1938. As head of government, he expanded the French welfare state in 1939.
Along with Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Daladier signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, which gave Nazi Germany control over the Sudetenland. After Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. During the Phoney War, France's failure to aid Finland against the Soviet Union's invasion during the Winter War led to Daladier's resignation on 21 March 1940 and his replacement by Paul Reynaud. Daladier remained Minister of Defence until 19 May, when Reynaud took over the portfolio personally after the French defeat at Sedan.
After the Fall of France, Daladier was tried for treason by the Vichy government during the Riom Trial and imprisoned first in Fort du Portalet, then in Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally in Itter Castle. After the Battle of Castle Itter, Daladier resumed his political career as a member of the French Chamber of Deputies from 1946 to 1958. He died in Paris in 1970.
Early life
Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse, on 18 June 1884, the son of a village baker. He received his formal education at the lycée Duparc in Lyon, where he was first introduced to socialist politics. After his graduation, he became a school teacher and a university lecturer at Nîmes, Grenoble and Marseilles and then at the Lycée Condorcet, in Paris, where he taught history. He began his political career by becoming the mayor of Carpentras, his home town, in 1912. He subsequently sought election to the Paris Chamber of Deputies but lost to a Radical-Socialist Party candidate; he later joined that party.
Daladier had received military training before the war under France's conscription system. In August 1914, he was mobilised at the age of 30 with the French Army's 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment when World War I started with the rank of sergeant. In mid-1915, the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment was destroyed in heavy fighting against the Imperial German Army on the Western Front. The surviving remnant of it was assigned to other units, Daladier being transferred into the 209th Infantry Regiment. In 1916, he fought with the 209th in the Battle of Verdun and was given a field commission as a lieutenant in the midst of the battle in April 1916 having received commendations for gallantry in action. In May 1917, he received the Legion of Honour for gallantry in action and ended the war as a captain leading a company. He had also been awarded the Croix de Guerre.
After his demobilisation, he was elected to the Paris Chamber of Deputies for Orange, Vaucluse, in 1919.
Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck, large shoulders and determined look. However, cynics also quipped that his horns were like those of a snail.
Interwar period
After he entered the Chamber of Deputies, Daladier became a leading member of the Radical-Socialist Party and was responsible for building it into a structured modern political party. For most of the interwar period, he was the chief figure of the party's left wing, supporters of a governmental coalition with the socialist Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO). A government minister in various posts during the coalition governments between 1924 and 1928, Daladier was instrumental in the Radical-Socialists' break with the SFIO in 1926, the first Cartel des gauches with the centre-right Raymond Poincaré in November 1928. In 1930, he unsuccessfully attempted to gain socialist support for a centre-left government in coalition the Radical-Socialist and similar parties. In 1933, despite similar negotiations breaking down, he formed a government of the republican left.
In January 1934, he was considered the most likely candidate of the centre-left to form a government of sufficient honesty to calm public opinion after the revelations of the Stavisky Affair, a major corruption scandal. The government lasted less than a week, however, since it fell in the face of the 6 February 1934 riots. After Daladier fell, the coalition of the left initiated two years of right-wing governments.
After a year of being withdrawn from frontline politics, Daladier returned to public prominence in October 1934 and took a populist line against the banking oligarchy that he believed had taken control of French democracy: the Two Hundred Families. He was made president of the Radical-Socialist Party and brought the party into the Popular Front coalition. Daladier became Minister of National Defence in the Léon Blum government and retained the crucial portfolio for two years.
After the fall of the Blum government, Daladier became head of government again on 10 April 1938, orienting his government towards the centre and ending the Popular Front.
Munich Agreement
Daladier's last government was in power at the time of the negotiations preceding the Munich Agreement during which France pressured Czechoslovakia to hand the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. In April–May 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain strongly but unsuccessfully pressed Daladier to renounce the French-Czechoslovak alliance, which led to Britain becoming involved in the crisis. From the British perspective, the problem was not the Sudetenland but the French-Czechoslovak alliance. British military experts were almost unanimous that Germany would defeat France in a war unless Britain intervened. The British thought that allowing Germany to defeat France would unacceptably alter the balance of power, and so Britain would have no choice but to intervene if a French-German war broke out.
The alliance would have turned any German attack on Czechoslovakia into a French–German war. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax stated at a Cabinet meeting in March 1938, "Whether we liked or not, we had to admit the plain fact that we could not afford to see France overrun."
At the Anglo-French summit on 28–29 April 1938, Chamberlain pressured Daladier to renounce the alliance with Czechoslovakia, only to be firmly informed that France would stand by its obligations, which forced the British to be involved very reluctantly in the Sudetenland Crisis. The summit of 28–29 April 1938 represented a British "surrender" to the French, rather than a French "surrender" to the British since Daladier made it clear France would not renounce its alliance with Czechoslovakia.
Unlike Chamberlain, Daladier had no illusions about Hitler's ultimate goals. In fact, he told the British in a late April 1938 meeting that Hitler's real aim was to eventually secure "a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble".
Daladier went on to say, "Today, it is the turn of Czechoslovakia. Tomorrow, it will be the turn of Poland and Romania. When Germany has obtained the oil and wheat it needs, she will turn on the West. Certainly we must multiply our efforts to avoid war. But that will not be obtained unless Great Britain and France stick together, intervening in Prague for new concessions [i.e. to the Sudeten Germans] but declaring at the same time that they will safeguard the independence of Czechoslovakia. If, on the contrary, the Western Powers capitulate again, they will only precipitate the war they wish to avoid."
Nevertheless, perhaps discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government and traumatised by the bloodbath in World War I that he had personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately chose to pressure Czechoslovakia into concessions. The French economic situation was very worrying since the French franc had been devalued on 4 May 1938 for the third time since October 1936. Daladier wanted to stabilise the franc and so had fixed the exchange rate to 176 francs per pound sterling.
The crisis of 20–22 May 1938 made the franc come under immense financial pressure since many investors did not wish to hold French assets or debts if France went to war. Jacques Rueff, the director of direction générale du mouvement des fonds and special adviser to Finance Minister, Paul Marchandeau, stated in a report that the government must cut defense spending or find more sources of short-term loans, as the French government was running out of money. Marchandeau stated that ordinary charges upon the treasury in 1938 would "exceed" 42 billion francs, and Rueff warned that France would go bankrupt once the legal limits upon short-term loans from the Bank of France was reached. Marchandeau, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, stated that the government had only 30 million francs in its account and 230 million francs available from the Bank of France.
As French government expenditure for the month of May 1938 alone totalled 4,500 million francs, the British historian Martin Thomas wrote, "Daladier's government was utterly reliant upon the success of its devaluation". To provide revenue, the government needed to sell more short-term bonds, but investors were highly reluctant to buy French bonds if Germany was threatening Czechoslovakia and put France on the brink of war. Because the franc was tied to the pound, France needed loans from Britain, which were not forthcoming, and so France was left "with its hands tied". British and American investors were unwilling to buy French bonds as long as the Sudetenland Crisis continued, which caused "severe monetary problems" for the French government in August–September 1938. Only when Daladier moved the "free-market liberal" Paul Reynaud from the Justice Ministry to the Finance Ministry in November 1938 did France regain the confidence of international investors, who resumed buying French bonds.
Reports from the embassy in Warsaw and the legations in Belgrade and Bucharest emphasised that Yugoslavia and Romania would probably do nothing if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, and Poland might very well join in with Germany since the Teschen conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia had made them bitter enemies.
Of France's potential allies in Eastern Europe, only the Soviet Union, which had no border with Czechoslovakia, professed a willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's aid if Germany invaded, but both Poland and Romania were unwilling to extend transit rights for the Red Army, which presented major problems.
On 25 September 1938, at the Bad Godesberg Summit, Hitler rejected Chamberlain's offer to have the Sudetenland join Germany in few months, declared that the timeline was unacceptable and that the Sudetenland had to "go home to the Reich" by 1 October, and stated that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia must also be satisfied by 1 October or Czechoslovakia would be invaded. Upon hearing what Hitler had demanded at the summit, Daladier told his cabinet that France "intended to go to war".
The next day, Daladier told his close friend, US Ambassador William Christian Bullitt Jr., that he would much prefer war to the "humiliation" of the Bad Godesberg terms.
Daladier ordered the French military to mobilise and to put France on a war footing, with a blackout being imposed at night so that German bombers would be not guided to French cities by the lights. On 26 September, Daladier ordered General Maurice Gamelin to London to begin staff talks with the Imperial General Staff. On 27 September, Gamelin, when asked by his chef de cabinet if Daladier was serious about war, replied, "He'll do it, he'll do it".
However, on 29 September 1938, Chamberlain announced to the British House of Commons that he just received a phone call from Benito Mussolini, who said that Hitler had reconsidered his views and was now willing to discuss a compromise solution to the crisis in Munich. Ultimately, Daladier felt that France could not win against Germany without Britain on its side, and Chamberlain's announcement that he would be flying to Munich led him to attend the Munich Conference as well, which was held the next day on 30 September.
The Munich Agreement was a compromise since Hitler abandoned his more extreme demands such as settling the Polish and Hungarian claims by 1 October, but the conference concluded that Czechoslovakia was to turn over the Sudetenland to Germany within ten days in October and would be supervised by an Anglo-Franco-Italo-German commission. Daladier was happy to have avoided war but felt that the agreement he had signed on 30 September in Munich was a shameful treaty that had betrayed Czechoslovakia, France's most loyal ally in Eastern Europe. Although Daladier feared public hostility to the Munich Agreement on his return to Paris, he was acclaimed by the crowd, which cheered the fact that there would not be another war.
Most famously, when he saw the enthusiastic crowds waving at his plane as it landed at Le Bourget Airfield before landing, he turned to his aide Alexis Léger (A.K.A Saint John Perse) and commented: "Ah! les cons! s'ils savaient..." ("Ah! The fools! If only they knew...").
Rearmament
Daladier had been made aware in 1932 by German rivals to Hitler that Krupp manufactured heavy artillery, and the Deuxième Bureau had a grasp of the scale of German military preparations but lacked hard intelligence of hostile intentions.
In October 1938, Daladier opened secret talks with the Americans on how to bypass the Neutrality Acts and to allow the French to buy American aircraft to make up for the underproductive French aircraft industry. Daladier commented in October 1938, "If I had three or four thousand aircraft, Munich would never have happened". He was most anxious to buy American war planes as the only way to strengthen the French Air Force. Major problems in the talks were how the French would pay for the American planes and how to bypass the Neutrality Acts.
In addition, France had defaulted on its World War I debts in 1932 and so fell foul of the 1934 Johnson Act, which banned American loans to nations that had defaulted on their World War I debts. In February 1939, the French offered to cede their possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, together with a lump sum payment of 10 billion francs, in exchange for the unlimited right to buy American aircraft on credit.
After tortuous negotiations, an arrangement was worked out in the spring of 1939 to allow the French to place huge orders with the American aircraft industry, but as most of the aircraft ordered had not arrived in France by 1940, the Americans arranged for French orders to be diverted to the British.
At a rally in Marseille in October 1938, Daladier announced a new policy: J'ai choisi mon chemin: la France en avant! ("I have chosen my path; forward with France!"). He stated that his government's domestic and foreign policies were to be based on "firmness". What that meant, in practice, was the end of the social reforms of the Popular Front government to increase French productivity, especially by ending the 40-hour work week. In a series of decree laws issued on 1 November 1938 by Finance Minister Paul Reynaud, which bypassed the National Assembly, the 40-hour work week was ended, taxes were sharply increased; social spending was slashed, defence spending was increased, the power of unions were restricted and (most controversially) Saturday was once again declared to be a workday. In a radio broadcast on 12 November 1938, Reynaud stated, "We are going blindfold towards an abyss". He also argued that however much pain his reforms might cause, they were absolutely necessary. As part of the effort to put the French economy on a war footing, Reynaud increased the military budget from 29 billion francs to 93 billion francs. In response, the French Communist Party called for a general strike to protest the decrees that ended almost all of the reforms of the Popular Front.
The one-day general strike of 30 November 1938, which pitted the government against unions supported by the Communist Party, proved to be the first test of Daladier's new policy of "firmness". Daladier declared a national emergency in response to the general strike, ordered the military to Paris and other major cities, suspended civil liberties, ordered the police to disperse striking workers with tear gas and to storm factories occupied by the workers and announced that any worker who took part in the strike would be fired immediately with no severance pay. After one day, the strike collapsed.
At the time, Daladier justified his policy of "firmness" under the grounds that if France was to face the German challenge, French production would have to be increased and said that was the price of freedom. At the same time, the energetic Colonial Minister Georges Mandel was set about organising the French Colonial Empire for war. He established armament factories in French Indochina to supply the French garrisons there to deter Japan from invading, increased the number of colonial "coloured" divisions from 6 to 12, built defensive works in Tunisia to deter an Italian invasion from Libya and organised the colonial economies for a "total war".
In France itself, Mandel launched a propaganda campaign emphasising how the French colonial Empire was a source of strength under the slogan "110 million strong, France can stand up to Germany" in reference to the fact that the population of Germany was 80 million and that of France was 40 million, with the extra 70 million credited to France being the population of its colonies.
The 40-hour work week was abolished under Daladier's government, but a more generous system of family allowances was established and set as a percentage of wages: for the first child 5%, for the second child 10% and for each additional child 15%. Also created was a home mother allowance, which had been advocated by natalist and Catholic women's groups since 1929. All mothers who were not professionally employed and whose husbands collected family allowances were eligible for the new benefit. In March 1939, the government added 10% for workers whose wives stayed home to take care of the children. Family allowances were enshrined in the Family Code of July 1939 and, with the exception of the stay-at-home allowance, are still in force. In addition, a decree was issued in May 1938 to allow the establishment of vocational guidance centres. In July 1937, a new law, which was followed by a similar law in May 1946, empowered the Department of Workplace Inspection to order temporary medical interventions.
On 30 November 1938, a major crisis in Franco-Italian relations began with stage-managed "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. On cue, the Italian deputies rose up to shout "Tunis, Corsica, Nice, Savoy!" Mussolini had expected that his "Sudeten methods" would lead to France ceding Tunisia, Corsica, Nice and Savoy to Italy, but Daladier rejected the Italian demands completely. In his annual Christmas radio broadcast to the French people, Daladier gave what the British historian D.C. Watt called "an extremely tough speech" rejecting all of the Italian demands and warned that France would go to war to defend its territory.
The British historian Richard Overy wrote: "The greatest achievement of Daladier in 1939 was to win from the British a firm commitment", the so-called "continental commitment" that every French leader had sought since 1919. Daladier had a low opinion of Britain and told Bullitt in November 1938 that he "fully expected to be betrayed by the British.... he considered Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the King a moron; and the Queen an excessively ambitious woman.... he felt that England had become so feeble and senile that the British would give away every possession of their friends rather than stand up to Germany and Italy". In late 1938 to early 1939, the British embassy was bombarded with rumours from reliable sources within the French government that France would seek an "understanding" with Germany that would resolve all problems in their relations. The fact that French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet was indeed seeking such an understanding lent credence to such rumours.
Daladier let Bonnet pursue his own foreign policy in the hope that it might finally spur the British into making the "continental commitment" since a France aligned with Germany would make the Reich Europe's strongest power and leave Britain with no ally of comparable strength in Europe.
In January 1939, Daladier let the Deuxième Bureau manufacture the "Dutch War Scare". French intelligence fed misinformation to MI6 that Germany was about to invade the Netherlands with the aim of using Dutch air fields to launch a bombing campaign to raze British cities to the ground. As France was the only nation in Western Europe with an army strong enough to save the Netherlands, the "Dutch War Scare" led the British to make anxious inquiries in Paris to ask the French to intervene if the Netherlands were indeed invaded. In response, Daladier stated that if the British wanted the French to do something for their security, it was only fair for the British do something for French security. On 6 February 1939, Chamberlain, in a speech to the House of Commons, finally made the "continental commitment" as he told the House: "The solidarity that unites France and Britain is such that any threat to the vital interests of France must bring about the co-operation of Great Britain". On 13 February 1939, staff talks between the British Imperial General Staff and the French General Staff were opened.
Daladier supported Chamberlain's policy of creating a "peace front" that was meant to deter Germany from aggression but was unhappy with the British "guarantee" of Poland, which Chamberlain had announced to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939. France had been allied to Poland since 1921, but Daladier had been bitter by the German-Polish Nonaggression Pact of 1934 and the Polish annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Like other French leaders, he regarded the Sanation regime ruling Poland as a fickle and unreliable friend of France. The rise in French industrial output and the greater financial stability in 1939 as a result of Reynaud's reforms led Daladier to view the possibility of war with the Reich more favourably than had been the case in 1938. By September 1939, France's aircraft production was equal to Germany's, and 170 American planes were arriving per month.
The Neutrality Acts were still in effect, but the supportive stance of US President Franklin Roosevelt led Daladier to assume that the Americans would maintain a pro-French neutrality and that their tremendous industrial resources would aid France if the Danzig Crisis ended in war.
Daladier was far keener than Chamberlain was to bring the Soviet Union into the "peace front" and believed that only an alliance with the Soviets could deter Hitler from invading Eastern Europe.
Daladier did not want a war with Germany in 1939 but sought to have such an overwhelming array of forces arranged against Germany that Hitler would be deterred from invading Poland. Daladier believed that Polish Guarantee by Britain would encourage Poland to object to having the Soviet Union join the "peace front", which indeed proved to be the case. The Poles refused to grant transit rights to the Red Army, which the Soviets made a precondition for their joining the "peace front". Daladier felt that Chamberlain should not have made guarantee until the Poles had agreed to grant transit rights to the Red Army. He charged that the guarantee made British and French diplomats have more leverage over Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Jozef Beck, who was widely disliked by other diplomats for his stubbornness and haughty manners.
Daladier felt that on economic and military grounds, it was better to have the Soviet Union serve as the "eastern pivot" of the "peace front" than for Poland to do so, as the British preferred. Daladier disliked the Poles and the guarantee but believed in maintaining the alliance with Poland; he believed that France should stand by its commitments.
A public opinion poll in June 1939 showed that 76% of the French believed that France should immediately declare war if Germany tried to seize the Free City of Danzig. For Daladier, the possibility that the Soviet Union might join the "peace front" was a "lifeline" and the best way of stopping another world war. He was deeply frustrated by the Polish refusal to permit transit rights for the Red Army.
On 19 August 1939, Beck, in a telegram to Daladier, stated: "We have not got a military agreement with the USSR. We do not want to have one".
Though the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August ruined Daladier's hopes of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet "peace front", he still believed that France and Britain could stop Germany together. On 27 August 1939, Daladier told Bullitt, "there was no further question of policy to be settled. His sister had put in two bags all the personal keepsakes and belonging he really cared about, and was prepared to leave for a secure spot at any moment. France intended to stand by the Poles, and if Hitler should refuse to negotiate with the Poles over Danzig, and should make war on Poland, France would fight at once".
World War II
After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed, Daladier responded to the public outcry by outlawing the French Communist Party on the basis that it had refused to condemn Joseph Stalin's actions. During the Danzig Crisis, Daladier was greatly influenced by the advice that he received from Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, that Hitler would back down if France made a firm enough stand toward Poland. On 31 August 1939, Daladier read out to the French cabinet a letter he received from Coulondre: "The trial of strength turns to our advantage. It is only necessary to hold, hold, hold!"
After the German invasion of Poland on 1 September, he reluctantly declared war on 3 September and inaugurated the Phoney War. On 6 October, Hitler offered France and Britain a peace proposal. There were more than a few in the French government who were prepared to take Hitler up on his offer, but in a nationwide broadcast the next day, Daladier declared, "We took up arms against aggression. We shall not put them down until we have guarantees for a real peace and security, a security which is not threatened every six months". On 29 January 1940, in a radio address delivered to the people of France, The Nazi's Aim is Slavery, Daladier explicitly stated his opinion of the Germans: "For us, there is more to do than merely win the war. We shall win it, but we must also win a victory far greater than that of arms. In this world of masters and slaves, which those madmen who rule at Berlin are seeking to forge, we must also save liberty and human dignity".
In March 1940, Daladier resigned as prime minister because of his failure to aid Finland's defence during the Winter War, and he was replaced by Paul Reynaud. Daladier remained defence minister, however, and his antipathy to the new prime minister prevented Reynaud from dismissing Maurice Gamelin as Supreme Commander of the French armed forces. As a result of the massive German breakthrough at Sedan, Daladier swapped ministerial offices with Reynaud and became foreign minister while Reynaud became defence minister. Gamelin was finally replaced by Maxime Weygand on 19 May 1940, nine days after the Germans began the Battle of France.
Under the impression that the French government would continue in North Africa, Daladier fled with other members of the government to French Morocco, but he was arrested and tried for treason by the Vichy government during the Riom Trial.
Daladier was interned in Fort du Portalet, in the Pyrenees. He was kept in prison from 1940 to April 1943, when he was handed over to the Germans and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. In May 1943, he was transported to the Itter Castle, in North Tyrol, with other French dignitaries, where he remained until the end of the war. He was freed after the Battle for Castle Itter.
Postwar
After the war ended, Daladier was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946 and acted as a patron to the Radical-Socialist Party's young reforming leader, Pierre Mendès-France. He also was elected as the Mayor of Avignon in 1953. He opposed the transferral of powers to Charles de Gaulle after the May 1958 crisis but, in the subsequent legislative elections of that year, failed to secure re-election. He withdrew from politics after a career of almost 50 years at the age of 74.
Death
Daladier died in Paris on 10 October 1970, at the age of 86. He was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
In visual media
Daladier is portrayed by the English actor David Swift in Countdown to War (1989) and by French actor Stéphane Boucher in Munich – The Edge of War (2021).
The Czech comedy Lost in Munich (2015) is about a 90-year-old parrot who used to live with Daladier and is still repeating his quotes related to the Munich Agreement
Daladier's first ministry, 31 January – 26 October 1933
Édouard Daladier – President of the Council and Minister of War
Eugène Penancier – Vice President of the Council and Minister of Justice
Joseph Paul-Boncour – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Camille Chautemps – Minister of the Interior
Georges Bonnet – Minister of Finance
Lucien Lamoureux – Minister of Budget
François Albert – Minister of Labour and Social Security Provisions
Georges Leygues – Minister of Marine
Eugène Frot – Minister of Merchant Marine
Pierre Cot – Minister of Air
Anatole de Monzie – Minister of National Education
Edmond Miellet – Minister of Pensions
Henri Queuille – Minister of Agriculture
Albert Sarraut – Minister of Colonies
Joseph Paganon – Minister of Public Works
Charles Daniélou – Minister of Public Health
Laurent Eynac – Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones
Louis Serre – Minister of Commerce and Industry
Changes
6 September 1933 – Albert Sarraut succeeds Leygues (d. 2 September) as Minister of Marine. Albert Dalimier succeeds Sarraut as Minister of Colonies.
Daladier's second ministry, 30 January – 9 February 1934
Édouard Daladier – President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs
Eugène Penancier – Vice President of the Council and Minister of Justice
Jean Fabry – Minister of National Defence and War
Eugène Frot – Minister of the Interior
François Piétri – Minister of Finance
Jean Valadier – Minister of Labour and Social Security Provisions
Louis de Chappedelaine – Minister of Military Marine
Guy La Chambre – Minister of Merchant Marine
Pierre Cot – Minister of Air
Aimé Berthod – Minister of National Education
Hippolyte Ducos – Minister of Pensions
Henri Queuille – Minister of Agriculture
Henry de Jouvenel – Minister of Overseas France
Joseph Paganon – Minister of Public Works
Émile Lisbonne – Minister of Public Health
Paul Bernier – Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones
Jean Mistler – Minister of Commerce and Industry
Changes
4 February 1934 – Joseph Paul-Boncour succeeds Fabry as Minister of National Defence and War. Paul Marchandeau succeeds Piétri as Minister of Finance.
Daladier's third ministry, 10 April 1938 – 21 March 1940
Édouard Daladier – President of the Council and Minister of National Defence and War
Camille Chautemps – Vice President of the Council
Georges Bonnet – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Albert Sarraut – Minister of the Interior
Paul Marchandeau – Minister of Finance
Raymond Patenôtre – Minister of National Economy
Paul Ramadier – Minister of Labour
Paul Reynaud – Minister of Justice
César Campinchi – Minister of Military Marine
Louis de Chappedelaine – Minister of Merchant Marine
Guy La Chambre – Minister of Air
Jean Zay – Minister of National Education
Auguste Champetier de Ribes – Minister of Veterans and Pensioners
Henri Queuille – Minister of Agriculture
Georges Mandel – Minister of Colonies
Ludovic-Oscar Frossard – Minister of Public Works
Marc Rucart – Minister of Public Health
Alfred Jules-Julien – Minister of Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones
Fernand Gentin – Minister of Commerce
Changes
23 August 1938 – Charles Pomaret succeeds Ramadier as Minister of Labour. Anatole de Monzie succeeds Frossard as Minister of Public Works.
1 November 1938 – Paul Reynaud succeeds Paul Marchandeau as Minister of Finance. Marchandeau succeeds Reynaud as Minister of Justice.
13 September 1939 – Georges Bonnet succeeds Marchandeau as Minister of Justice. Daladier succeeds Bonnet as Minister of Foreign Affairs, remaining also Minister of National Defence and War. Raymond Patenôtre leaves the Cabinet and the Position of Minister of National Economy is abolished. Alphonse Rio succeeds Chappedelaine as Minister of Merchant Marine. Yvon Delbos succeeds Zay as Minister of National Education. René Besse succeeds Champetier as Minister of Veterans and Pensioners. Raoul Dautry enters the Cabinet as Minister of Armaments. Georges Pernot enters the Cabinet as Minister of Blockade.
See also
Interwar France
French Third Republic
6 February 1934 crisis
References
Sources
External links
In Defence of France a 1939 book by Daladier at archive.org
1884 births
1970 deaths
People from Carpentras
Politicians from Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Radical Party (France) politicians
Prime Ministers of France
French Ministers of War
French Ministers of War and National Defence
Transport ministers of France
French Ministers of Overseas France
Government ministers of France
Members of the 12th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the 13th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the 14th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the 15th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the 16th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic
Members of the Constituent Assembly of France (1946)
Deputies of the 1st National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic
Deputies of the 2nd National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic
Deputies of the 3rd National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic
Mayors of Avignon
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
French people imprisoned abroad
French military personnel of World War I
French people of World War II
Prisoners and detainees of Vichy France
Buchenwald concentration camp survivors
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Grand Crosses of the Order of Saint-Charles
War scare
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi%20Delta
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Mississippi Delta
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The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. The region has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth" ("Southern" in the sense of "characteristic of its region, the American South"), because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history. It is long and across at its widest point, encompassing about , or, almost 7,000 square miles of alluvial floodplain. Originally covered in hardwood forest across the bottomlands, it was developed as one of the richest cotton-growing areas in the nation before the American Civil War (1861–1865). The region attracted many speculators who developed land along the riverfronts for cotton plantations; they became wealthy planters dependent on the labor of slaves, who composed the vast majority of the population in these counties well before the Civil War, often twice the number of whites.
As the riverfront areas were developed first and railroads were slow to be constructed, most of the bottomlands in the Delta were undeveloped, even after the Civil War. Both black and White migrants flowed into Mississippi, using their labor to clear land and sell timber in order to buy land. By the end of the 19th century, black farmers made up two-thirds of the independent farmers in the Mississippi Delta.
In 1890, the white-dominated state legislature passed a new state constitution effectively disenfranchising most blacks in the state. In the next three decades, most blacks lost their lands due to tight credit and political oppression. African Americans had to resort to sharecropping and tenant farming to survive. Their political exclusion was maintained by the whites until after the gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
The majority of residents in several counties in the region are still black, although more than 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century, moving to Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western industrial cities.
As the agricultural economy does not support many jobs or businesses, the region has attempted to diversify. Lumbering is important and new crops such as soybeans have been cultivated in the area by the largest industrial farmers.
At times, the region has suffered heavy flooding from the Mississippi River, notably in 1927 and 2011.
Geography
Despite the name, this region is not the delta of the Mississippi River. The shifting river delta at the mouth of the Mississippi on the Gulf Coast lies some 300 miles south of this area, and is referred to as the Mississippi River Delta. Rather, the Mississippi Delta is part of an alluvial plain, created by regular flooding of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers over thousands of years. The climate is humid subtropical, with short mild winters, and long, hot and wet summers.
The land is flat and contains some of the most fertile soil in the world. It is two hundred miles long and seventy miles across at its widest point, encompassing approximately 4,415,000 acres, or, some 7,000 square miles of alluvial floodplain. On the east, it is bounded by bluffs extending beyond the Yazoo River.
The Delta includes all or part of the following counties: Washington, Western DeSoto, Humphreys, Carroll, Issaquena, Western Panola, Quitman, Bolivar, Coahoma, Leflore, Sunflower, Sharkey, Tate, Tunica, Tallahatchie, Western Holmes, Western Yazoo, Western Grenada, and Warren.
Demographics
In the 21st century, about one-third of Mississippi's African American population resides in the Delta, which has many black-majority state legislative districts. Much of the Delta is included in Mississippi's 2nd congressional district, represented by Democrat Bennie Thompson.
Chinese began settling in Bolivar County and other Delta counties as plantation workers in the 1870s, though most Delta Chinese families migrated to the state between the 1900s and 1930s. Most Chinese immigrants worked to leave the fields, becoming merchants in the small rural towns. As these have declined, along with other Delta residents ethnic Chinese have moved to cities or other states. Their descendants represent most of the ethnic Asian residents of the Delta recorded in censuses. While many Chinese have left the Delta, their population has increased in the state.
Despite its representation as an overwhelmingly rural and African American area of the country, the Mississippi Delta received waves of immigration from three areas which had provided many of America's immigrants: China, Mexico, and Italy. The Italians of the Mississippi Delta brought with them elements of Italian cuisine to the region, and possibly most importantly, elements of Southern Italian music such as the mandolin, which became a part of the music of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Mexican immigrants to the Mississippi Delta greatly influenced the cuisine of the Mississippi Delta, leading to the development of one of Mississippi and the Gulf Coast's most famous culinary inventions, the Delta-style tamale, also known as the hot tamale, formed from syncretism of Mexican and African-American culture and cuisine.
Agriculture and the Delta economy
Plantations
For more than two centuries, agriculture has been the mainstay of the Delta economy. Sugar cane and rice were introduced to the region by European settlers from the Caribbean in the 18th century. Sugar and rice production were centered in southern Louisiana, and later in the Arkansas Delta.
Early agriculture also included limited tobacco production in the Natchez area and indigo in the lower Mississippi. French yeomen settlers, supported by extensive families, had begun the back-breaking process of clearing the land to establish farms. European settlers in the region attempted to enslave local Native Americans for labor, though this proved unsuccessful as they frequently escaped. By the 18th century, the settlers had switched to importing enslaved Africans instead as a source of labor. In the early years of European colonization, enslaved African laborers brought critical knowledge and techniques for the cultivation and processing of both rice and indigo. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were captured, sold and transported as slaves from West Africa to North America.
The invention of the cotton gin in the late 18th century made profitable the cultivation of short-staple cotton. This type could not be grown in the upland areas of the South, leading to the rapid development of King Cotton throughout what became known as the Deep South. The demand for labor drove the domestic slave trade, and more than one million African American slaves were forced by sales into the South, taken in a forced migration from families in the Upper South. After continued European-American settlement in the area, Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 extinguished Native American claims to these lands.
The Five Civilized Tribes and others were mostly removed west of the Mississippi River, and European-American settlement expanded at a rapid rate in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. In the areas of greatest cotton cultivation, whites were far outnumbered by their slaves.
Many slaves were transported to Delta towns by riverboat from slave markets in New Orleans, which became the fourth largest city in the country by 1840. Other slaves were transported downriver from slave markets at Memphis and Louisville. Still others were transported by sea in the coastwise slave trade. By this time, slavery had long been established as a racial caste. African Americans for generations worked the commodity plantations, which they made extremely profitable. In the opinion of Jefferson Davis, typical of that of Mississippian whites of his day, Africans being held in slavery reflected the will of Providence, as it led to their Christianizing and to the improvement of their condition, compared to what it would have been had they remained in Africa. According to Davis, the Africans "increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers."
By the early 19th century, cotton had become the Delta's premier crop, for which there was high international demand. Mills in New England and New York also demanded cotton for their industry, and New York City was closely tied to the cotton trade. Many southern planters traveled so frequently there for business that they had favorite hotels. From 1822 cotton-related exports comprised half of all exports from the port of New York City. In 1861 Democratic mayor Fernando Wood called for secession of New York City because of its close business ties to the South. Eventually the city joined the state in supporting the war, but immigrants resented having to fight when the wealthy could buy their way out of military service.
Comparing cotton's preeminence then to that of oil today, Historian Sven Beckert called the Delta "a kind of Saudi Arabia of the early nineteenth century."
Demand for cotton remained high until well after the American Civil War, even in an era of falling cotton prices. Though cotton planters believed that the alluvial soils of the region would always renew, the agricultural boom from the 1830s to the late 1850s caused extensive soil exhaustion and erosion. Lacking agricultural knowledge, planters continued to raise cotton the same way after the Civil War.
Plantations before the war were generally developed on ridges near the rivers, which were used for transportation of products to market. Most of the territory of Mississippi was still considered wilderness, needing substantial new population. These areas were covered in a heavy dense growth of trees, bushes and vines.
Following the Civil War, 90 percent of the bottomlands in Mississippi were still undeveloped. The state attracted thousands of migrants to its frontier. They could trade their labor in clearing the land to eventually purchase it from their sale of lumber. Tens of thousands of new settlers, both black and white, were drawn to the area. By the end of the century, two-thirds of the independent farmers in the Mississippi Delta were black. But, the extended low price of cotton had caused many to go deeply into debt, and gradually they had to sell off their lands, as they had a harder time getting credit than did white farmers. From 1910 to 1920, the first and second generations of African Americans after slavery lost their stake in the land. They had to resort to sharecropping and tenant farming to survive.
Sharecropping and tenant farming replaced the slave-dependent plantation system. African American families retained some autonomy, rather than working on gangs of laborers. As many were illiterate, they were often taken advantage of by the planters' accounting. The number of lynchings of black men rose in the region at the time of settling accounts, and researchers have also found a correlation of lynchings to years that were poor economically for the region.
The sharecropping and tenant system, with each family making its own decisions, inhibited the use of progressive agricultural techniques in the region. In the late 19th century, the clearing and drainage of wetlands, especially in Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel, increased lands available for tenant farming and sharecropping.
Planters needed workers and recruited Italians and Chinese workers in the 19th century to satisfy demand. They quickly moved out of field labor, saving money as communities in order to establish themselves as merchants, often in the small rural towns.
Mechanization and migration
During the 1920s and 1930s, in the aftermath of the increasing mechanization of Delta farms that reduced the need for labor, displaced whites and African Americans began to leave the land and move to towns and cities. Tens of thousands of black laborers left the Jim Crow south for better opportunities in the Northeast and Midwest in the Great Migration, settling in cities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York City. It was not until the Great Depression years of the 1930s and later that large-scale farm mechanization came to the region. The mechanization of agriculture and the availability of domestic work outside the Delta spurred the migration of Delta residents from the region. Farming was unable to absorb the available labor force, and entire families moved together, many going north on the railroad to Chicago. People from the same towns often settled near each other.
The view that mechanization sparked the Great Migration—both Black and White—has been challenged by two of the most prominent recent chroniclers of the event. Isabel Wilkerson characterizes the migration as a flight for freedom from the political terror of lynchings and the hardening of Jim Crow restrictions on Black freedom: “They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.”
Nicholas Lemann notes the onset of the Great Migration coincided with the passage of immigration restrictions that throttled the supply of immigrants who had been willing to take the worst of the jobs of the industrial North, which was relatively free of the suffocating breadth of Jim Crow. Further, Lemann wrote, "it was undeniable that the economic opportunity [in the North] was vastly greater; that moment in the Black rural South was one of the few in American history when virtually every member of a large class of people was guaranteed an immediate quadrupling of income, at least, by simply relocating to a place that was only a long day’s journey away."
In this view, Southern Blacks were the agents of the Great Migration and not passive objects. Instead, they actively fled oppression and sought freedom, especially in the years between World War I and World War II. A slow mechanization of Delta agriculture during the first phase of the Great Migration was the effect of the migration of a workforce, not its cause. It was not until the mid 1940s that the doctrine of White supremacy demanded that Blacks be displaced. By that time, Lemann writes, Delta Whites feared socio-political changes that might be forced on the Delta by the Roosevelt Democratic coalition and the pressure of returning WWII veterans; the Delta was three-quarters Black, so their voting potential was huge. As Delta native Aaron Henry, who was born in 1922, put it, "They wished we’d go back to Africa, but Chicago was close enough."
From the late 1930s through the 1950s, the Delta enjoyed an agriculture boom, as wartime needs followed by reconstruction in Europe and Japan expanded the demand for the Delta region's farm products. As the mechanization of agriculture continued, women left fieldwork and went into service work, while the men drove tractors and worked on the farms. From the 1960s through the 1990s, thousands of small farms and dwellings in the Delta region were absorbed by large corporate-owned agribusinesses, and the smallest Delta communities have stagnated.
One company that served the agricultural industry in the region was an aerial crop dusting service that eventually became Delta Air Lines, which is currently a major U.S. based passenger air carrier.
Since the late 20th century, lower Delta agriculture has increasingly been dominated by families and nonresident corporate entities that hold large landholdings. Their operations are heavily mechanized with low labor costs. Such farm entities are capital-intensive, where hundreds and thousands of acres are used to produce market-driven crops such as cotton, sugar, rice, and soybeans.
Diversification
Remnants of the region's agrarian heritage are scattered along the highways and byways of the lower Delta. Larger communities have survived by fostering economic development in education, government, and medicine. Other endeavors such as catfish, poultry, rice, corn, and soybean farming have assumed greater importance. Today, the monetary value of these crops rivals that of cotton production in the lower Delta. Shifts away from the river as a main transportation and trading route to railroads and, more significantly, highways, have left the river cities struggling for new roles and businesses.
Due to the growth of the automobile industry in the South, many parts suppliers have opened facilities in the Delta (as well as on the Arkansas Delta side of the Mississippi River, another area of high poverty). The 1990s state legalization of casino gambling in Mississippi has boosted the Delta's economy, particularly in the areas of Tunica and Vicksburg.
A large cultural influence in the region is its history of hunting and fishing. Hunting in the Delta is primarily for game such as whitetail deer, wild turkey, and waterfowl, along with many small game species (squirrel, rabbit, dove, quail, raccoon, etc.) For many years, the hunting and fishing have also attracted visitors in the regional tourism economy. The Delta is one of the top waterfowl destinations in the world because it is in the middle of the Mississippi Flyway (the largest of all the migratory bird routes in America).
Political environment
Delta politics was dominated by pro-slavery Democrats during the post-Civil War era, though areas of resistance from blacks and whites remained throughout the era. Some of these Southern Democrats resorted to using fraud, violence, and intimidation to regain control of the state legislature in the late 19th century. Civic groups such as the Red Shirts in Mississippi were active against Republicans and blacks, sometimes using violence to suppress their voting for state candidates. But many blacks continued to be elected to local offices, and there was a biracial coalition between Republicans and Populists that briefly gained state power in the late 1880s.
To prevent this from happening again, in 1890 the Mississippi state legislature passed a new constitution which effectively disenfranchised most blacks by use of such devices as poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses, which withstood court challenges. If one method was overturned by the courts, the state would come up with another to continue exclusion of blacks from the political system. Unable to vote, they could not participate on juries. The state passed legislation to impose racial segregation and other aspects of Jim Crow.
This system of oppression was maintained with violence and economic boycotts into the years of increasing activism for civil rights, as blacks worked to regain their constitutional rights as citizens. The Delta counties were sites of fierce and violent resistance to change, with blacks murdered for trying to register to vote or to use public facilities. African Americans were not able to exercise their constitutional rights again until well after their successes in the Civil Rights Movement and gaining passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Culture
Music
The Delta is strongly associated as the place where several genres of popular music originated, including Delta blues and rock and roll. The mostly black sharecroppers and tenant farmers had lives marked by poverty and hardship but they expressed their struggles in music that became the beat, rhythm and songs of cities and a nation.
Gussow (2010) examines the conflict between blues musicians and black ministers in the region between 1920 and 1942. The ministers condemned blues music as "devil's music". In response, some blues musicians satirized preachers in their music, as for example in the song, "He Calls That Religion", by the blues group Mississippi Sheiks. The lyrics accused black ministers of engaging in and fomenting sinful behavior. The black residents were poor, and the musicians and ministers competed for their money. The Great Migration to northern cities, beginning before World War I, seriously depleted black communities and churches, but the musicians sparked off each other in the industrial cities, with blues in Chicago and St. Louis.
Festivals
Following is a list of various festivals in the Delta:
February
Mississippi River Marathon (Greenville)
Stafford's Lawn Mower Mardi Gras Parade (Drew)
March
Italian Festival of Mississippi (Cleveland)
April
Rivergate Festival (Tunica)
World Catfish Festival (Belzoni)
Leland Crawfish Festival (Leland)
Crosstie Arts & Jazz Festival (Cleveland)
Juke Joint Festival (Clarksdale)
Riverfest (Vicksburg)
Dragon Boat Festival (Greenville)
May
Deep Delta Festival (Rolling Fork)
River to the Rails Festival (Greenwood)
Mainstream Arts & Crafts Festival (Greenville)
Summerfest (Hollandale)
Showfest (Tunica) As of 2010
Webb Day Festival (Webb)
June
B.B. King Homecoming Festival (Indianola)
Highway 61 Blues Festival (Leland)
Delta Jubilee (Clarksdale)
July
First Friday Jazz Festival (Greenville)
August
Sunflower River Blues Festival (Clarksdale)
September
September Festival (Mound Bayou)
Delta Air and Balloon Festival (Greenwood)
Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival (Greenville)
Charleston Day Reunion (Charleston)
Gateway To The Delta Festival (Charleston)
Delta State University Pig Pickin' (Cleveland)
October
Great Delta Bear Affair
Octoberfest (Cleveland)
The Great Ruleville Roast
The King Biscuit Blues Festival (Helena, AR)
Frog Fest (Leland)
Mighty Mississippi Music Festival (Greenville)
Delta Hot Tamale Festival (Greenville)
Delta Fest (Shaw)
Delta Wings Festival and MS State Duck Calling & Duck Gumbo Championships (Drew)
November
Electroacoustic Juke Joint (Cleveland)
December
Roy Martin Delta Band Festival (Greenwood)
Food
Hot tamales are a Delta-endemic derivation of the tamale. It is up for debate as to their origins, but it is strongly suggested they arrived in the Delta with migrant Mexican laborers in the early twentieth century and are attested to around that time period in blues music centering around the dish. While their most common filling is pork they differ from the traditional tamale in that they are made from corn meal rather than masa and boiled rather than steamed. Today the dish is associated mainly with African American chefs despite originating from different cultural foodways.
Fried Catfish is a staple of the Mississippi Delta. There exist a number of catfish farms throughout the region which supply fresh and local fish to kitchens across the Delta. The meal consists of catfish filets which are breaded and fried. Many sides exist for the dish and are nonessential. One such side, hushpuppies, is common to fried catfish plates in the Delta.
Chow Mein arrived to the Delta as it did in many different parts of the United States, with Chinese immigrants arriving around the turn of the century. Most of the Delta Chinese are also associated with owning and operating the grocery and general stores in the area, primarily catering to African American clientele.
Hoover Sauce is a twist on traditional Cantonese duck sauce introduced by the Hoover family in the mid-20th century. The sauce is usually served with meat such as locally hunted duck or steak. It is unique to the Delta.
Soul Food broadly is found sold and cooked throughout the Delta. The region's large African American population and historical roots make this cuisine of the Delta's truly endemic food traditions. Many dishes such as fried okra, mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, fried chicken, cornbread, and others are associated with soul food in the Delta.
Encompassed towns
Anguilla
Belzoni
Charleston
Clarksdale
Cleveland
Drew
Greenville
Greenwood
Gunnison
Holcomb
Indianola
Itta Bena
Leland
Marks
Mayersville
Moorhead
Mound Bayou
Rolling Fork
Rosedale
Ruleville
Shaw
Shelby
Tippo
Tunica
Vicksburg
Winterville
Yazoo City
Government and infrastructure
The Mississippi Department of Corrections operates the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman, MSP) in unincorporated Sunflower County, within the Mississippi Delta. John Buntin of Governing magazine said that MSP "has long cast its shadow over the Mississippi Delta, including my hometown of Greenville, Mississippi".
Education
Universities
Delta State University
Mississippi Valley State University
Community colleges
Coahoma Community College
Mississippi Delta Community College
Primary and secondary schools
As of 2005, the majority of students in public schools in the Mississippi Delta are black, and the majority of private school students are white. This de facto racial segregation is related in part to economics, as few African American parents in the poor region can pay to send their children to private schools. Suzanne Eckes of The Journal of Negro Education wrote, "Although de facto segregation in schools exists throughout the country, the de facto segregation that exists in the Mississippi Delta region is somewhat unique."
During the years of segregation, public school systems did not know how to classify the minority Chinese students, initially requiring them to attend schools with blacks. Their socioeconomic status affected their classification and, as their parents became merchants and filed legal suits, in some areas they gained entrance for their children to white schools, before the schools were integrated beginning in the late 1960s.
Media and publishing
Newspapers, magazines and journals
Belzoni Banner (published weekly)
Deer Creek Pilot (published weekly)
Delta Magazine (published bi-monthly)
Delta Business Journal (published monthly)
Clarksdale Press Register (published daily)
Cleveland Bolivar Commercial (published daily)
Greenville Delta Democrat Times (published daily)
Greenwood Commonwealth (published daily)
The Leland Progress (published weekly)
The Enterprise-Tocsin (published weekly)
The Tunica Times (published weekly)
Television
WABG (Greenwood)
WFXW (Greenville)
WXVT-LD (Cleveland)
WNBD-LD (Grenada)
The Northern Delta is also served by The Commercial Appeal and The Daily News newspapers based in Memphis, Tennessee, plus several radio and TV stations also based there.
The Clarion-Ledger, based in Jackson, covers events in the Delta.
Transportation
Air transportation
Tunica Municipal Airport (Tunica)
Mid Delta Regional Airport (Greenville)
Greenwood-Leflore Airport (Greenwood)
Cleveland Municipal Airport (Cleveland)
Indianola Municipal Airport (Indianola)
Yazoo County Airport (Yazoo City)
Fletcher Field Airport (Clarksdale)
Ruleville-Drew Airport (Drew and Ruleville)
Highways
U.S. Route 82 runs from Alamogordo, New Mexico to Brunswick, Georgia
U.S. Route 278 runs from Wickes, Arkansas to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
U.S. Route 49 runs from Piggott, Arkansas to Gulfport, Mississippi
U.S. Route 61 runs from Wyoming, Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana
Passenger rail
Amtrak's City of New Orleans route serves three Delta cities, Yazoo City, Greenwood, and Marks.
See also
Delta Regional Authority
Far East Deep South
Finding Cleveland
History of Mississippi
Joseph S. Clark's and Robert F. Kennedy's tour of the Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Alluvial Plain
Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area
Footnotes
Further reading
Brandenfon, Robert L. Cotton Kingdom of the New South: A History of the Yazoo Mississippi Delta from Reconstruction to the Twentieth Century.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Cobb, Charles E. Jr., "Traveling the Blues Highway", National Geographic Magazine, v. 195, no. 4 (April 1999).
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Cosby, A.G. et al. A Social and Economic Portrait of the Mississippi Delta (1992) online (Alternate, Archive)
Currie, James T. Enclave: Vicksburg and Her Plantations, 1863-1870. 1980.
Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937.
Eckes, Suzanne E. "The Perceived Barriers to Integration in the Mississippi Delta," Journal of Negro Education, vol. 74, no. 2 (Spring 2005), pp. 159–173. in JSTOR
Ferris, William. Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Ferris, William and Glenn Hinson. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 14: Folklife Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
Ferris, William; Blues From The Delta. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1988.
Gioia, Ted. Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Gardner, Justin, and Nolan, Tom. "An Agricultural Economist's Perspective on the Mississippi Delta," Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, vol. 40, no. 2 (2009), 40#2 pp 80–89
Giggie, John M. After redemption: Jim Crow and the transformation of African American religion in the Delta, 1875-1915 (2007). [DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304039.001.0001 online]
Greene, Alison Collis. No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Gussow, Adam. "Heaven and Hell Parties: Ministers, Bluesmen, and Black Youth in the Mississippi Delta, 1920–1942," Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies,vol. 41, no. 3 (Dec. 2010), pp. 186–203.
Hamlin, Francoise N. Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta After World War II. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Harris, Sheldon. Blues Who's Who. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1979.
Helferich, Gerry. High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
McCoyer, Michael. "'Rough Men in "the Toughest Places I Ever Seen': The Construction and Ramifications of Black Masculine Identity in the Mississippi Delta's Levee Camps, 1900-1935," International Labor and Working-Class History, Issue 69 (Spring 2006), pp. 57–80.
Morris, Christopher. Becoming Southern: The Evolution of a Way of Life, Warren County and Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1770–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Nelson, Lawrence J. "Welfare Capitalism on a Mississippi Plantation in the Great Depression," Journal of Southern History, vol. 50 (May 1984), pp. 225–250. in JSTOR
Nicholson, Robert. Mississippi Blues Today. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1999.
Null, Elisabeth Higgins. "Fifty Years After Brown: The Fight for Equality in Mississippi’s Delta Schools Continues," Rural Roots. Rural School and Community Trust, Feb. 2004.
Owens, Harry P. Steamboats and the Cotton Economy: River Trade in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. 1990.
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta. New York: Viking Press, 1981.
Percy, William Alexander. Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941.
Powdermaker, Hortense. After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South. New York: Viking Press, 1939.
Ramsey, Frederic. Been Here And Gone. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1960.
Rubin, Richard. Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South. New York: Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2002.
Saikku, Mikko. This Delta, This Land: An Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Floodplain. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005.
Saikku, Mikko. "Bioregional Approach to Southern History: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta", Southern Spaces, Jan. 28, 2010.
Scott Matthews, "Flatlands in the Outlands: Photographs from the Delta and Bayou," Southern Spaces, Dec. 12, 2011.
Willis, John C. Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta After the Civil War (2000)
Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth. American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta. 2003.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. "Mississippi Delta", Southern Spaces, 4 April 2004. http://southernspaces.org/2004/mississippi-delta
Charles Reagan Wilson, William Ferris, Ann J. Adadie; Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Second edition. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Landforms of Mississippi
Mississippi River
Regions of Mississippi
Mississippi River region
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity%20in%20Iran
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Christianity in Iran
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Christianity in Iran dates back to the early years of the religion during the time of Jesus, predating Islam. The Christian faith has always comprised a minority in Iran under its previous state religions; initially Zoroastrianism in historical Persia, followed by Sunni Islam in the Middle Ages after the Arab conquest, and Shia Islam since the Safavid conversion of the 15th century; although it had a much larger representation in the past than it does today. Iranian Christians have played a significant part in the historical Christian mission: currently, there are at least 6000 churches and 100,000–150,000 Christians in Iran.
Major denominations
A number of Christian denominations are represented in Iran. Many members of the larger and older churches belong to minority ethnic groups, with the Armenians and Assyrians having their own distinctive culture and language. The members of the newer and smaller churches are drawn both from the traditionally Christian ethnic minorities and converts from a non-Christian background.
The main Christian churches in Iran are:
Armenian Apostolic Church (between 110,000, 250,000, and 300,000 adherents)
Assyrian Church of the East (about 11,000–20,000 adherents),
Catholic Church (about 21,380 adherents) in three different rites.
Chaldean Catholic Church (3,900 adherents as of 2014)
Armenian Catholic Church and Latin Church
Other particularities and churches include:
Presbyterianism, including the Assyrian Evangelical Church
Pentecostalism, including the Assyrian Pentecostal Church
Jamaʿat-e Rabbani (Iranian Assemblies of God)
Anglican Diocese of Iran
According to Operation World, there are between 7,000 and 15,000 members and adherents of the various Protestant, Evangelical, and other minority Christian denominations in Iran, though these numbers are particularly difficult to verify under the current political circumstances.
In the 2016 census, the Statistical Center of Iran reported there were 117,700 Christians in the country; other reports put the figure at over half a million people.
The "Country Information and Guidance: Christians and Christian Converts, Iran" report published in December 2014 by the U.K. Home Office states that there were 370,000 Christians in Iran.
History
According to the Acts of the Apostles there were Persians, Parthians and Medes among the first new Christian converts at Pentecost. Since then there has been a continuous presence of Christians in Iran.
During the apostolic age Christianity began to establish itself throughout the Mediterranean. However, a quite different Semitic-speaking Christian culture developed on the eastern borders of the Roman Empire and in Persia. Syriac Christianity owed much to preexistent Jewish communities and to the Aramaic language. This language had been spoken by Jesus, and, in various modern Eastern Aramaic forms is still spoken by the ethnic Assyrian Christians in Iran, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey and Iraq today (see Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, and Senaya language).
From Persian-ruled Assyria (Assuristan), missionary activity spread Eastern-Rite Syriac Christianity throughout Assyria and Mesopotamia, and from there into Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, the Caucasus and Central Asia, establishing the Saint Thomas Christians of India and erecting the Nestorian Stele and the Daqin Pagoda in China.
Early Christian communities straddling the Roman-Persian border found themselves in the midst of civil strife. In 313, when Constantine I proclaimed Christianity a tolerated religion in the Roman Empire, the Sassanid rulers of Persia adopted a policy of persecution against Christians, including the double-tax of Shapur II in the 340s. The Sassanids feared the Christians as a subversive and possibly disloyal minority. In the early-5th century official persecution increased once more. However, from the reign of Hormizd III (457–459) serious persecutions grew less frequent and the Persian church began to achieve a recognized status. Through the Battle of Avarayr (451) and the resultant treaty of 484, for example, the Persian Empire's numerous Armenian subjects gained the official right to profess Eastern Christianity freely. Political pressure within Persia and cultural differences with western Christianity were mostly to blame for the Nestorian schism, in the course of which the Roman Empire church hierarchy labelled the Church of the East heretical. The bishop of Ctesiphon (the capital of the Sassanid Empire) acquired the title first of catholicos, and then patriarch, completely independent of any Roman/Byzantine hierarchy.
Some regard Persia as – briefly – officially Christian. Khosrau I, Shahanshah from 531 to 579, married a Christian wife, and his son Nushizad was also a Christian. When the king was taken ill at Edessa a report reached Persia that he was dead, and at once Nushizad seized the crown and made the kingdom Christian ( 550). Very soon the rumour proved false, but persons who appear to have been in the pay of Justinian persuaded Nushizad to endeavour to maintain his position. The actions of his son deeply distressed Khosrau; he had to take prompt measures, and sent the commander, Ram Berzin, against the rebels. In the battle which followed Nushizad was mortally wounded and carried off the field. In his tent he was attended by a Christian bishop, probably Mar Aba I, the Patriarch of the Church of the East from 540 to 552. To this bishop Nushizad confessed his sincere repentance for having taken up arms against his father, an act which, he was convinced, could never win the approval of Heaven. Having professed himself a Christian he died, and the rebellion was quickly put down.
Many old churches remain in Iran from the early days of Christianity. Some historians regard the Assyrian Church of Mart Maryam (St. Mary) in northwestern Iran, for example, as the second-oldest church in Christendom after the Church of Bethlehem in the West Bank. A Chinese princess, who contributed to its reconstruction in 642 AD, has her name engraved on a stone on the church wall. The famous Italian traveller Marco Polo also described the church following his visit.
The Arab Islamic conquest of Persia, in the 7th century, originally benefited Christians as they were a protected minority under Islam. However, from about the 10th century religious tension led to persecution once more. The influence of European Christians placed Near Eastern Christians in peril during the Crusades. From the mid-13th century, Mongol rule was a relief to Persian Christians until the Ilkhanate adopted Islam at the turn of the 14th century. The Christian population gradually declined to a small minority. Christians disengaged from mainstream society and withdrew into ethnic ghettos (mostly Assyrian- Aramaic- and Armenian-speaking). Persecution against Christians revived in the 14th century; when the Muslim warlord of Turco-Mongol descent Timur (Tamerlane) conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor, he ordered large-scale massacres of Christians in Mesopotamia, Persia, Asia Minor and Syria. Most of the victims were indigenous Assyrians and Armenians, members of the Assyrian Church of the East and of Orthodox Churches.
In 1445 a part of the Assyrian Aramaic-speaking Church of the East entered into communion with the Catholic Church (mostly in the Ottoman Empire, but also in Persia). This group had a faltering start but has existed as a separate church since Pope Julius III consecrated Yohannan Sulaqa as Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon in 1553. Most Assyrian Catholics in Iran today are members of the Chaldean Catholic Church. The Aramaic-speaking community that remains independent is the Assyrian Church of the East. Both churches now have much smaller memberships in Iran than the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The number of Christians in Iran was further significantly boosted through various policies of the subsequent kingdoms that ruled from 1501. For example, in 1606 during the Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–18), king Abbas I resettled some 300,000 Armenians deeper within modern-day Iran, as well as establishing their own quarter in the then-capital Isfahan, which is still largely populated by Christian Armenians some four centuries later: the New Julfa district. Other hundreds of thousands of Christian Georgians and Circassians were furthermore deported and resettled during the same Safavid era and in the later Qajar era within Iran, although both communities are exclusively Muslim nowadays.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Protestant missionaries began to evangelize in Persia. They directed their operations towards supporting the extant churches of the country while improving education and health-care. Unlike the older, ethnic churches, these evangelical Protestants began to engage with the ethnic Persian Muslim community. Their printing presses produced much religious material in various languages. Some Persians subsequently converted to Protestantism and their churches still exist within Iran (using the Persian language).
In the early 20th century, once again Iran's stable and extant Christian population was boosted – this time due to the effects of the Assyrian genocide (1914–1924) and the Armenian genocide (1914–1923), as many tens of thousands of refugees poured in. However, both massacres drastically negatively affected Iran's Christian population as well, as Ottoman troops crossed the Iranian border in the later stages of World War I and massacred many tens of thousands of Armenians and Assyrians within Iran's borders as well, especially in West Azerbaijan Province, but also in adjacent provinces. Vibrant, huge and millennia-old native Christian communities in these parts of Iran were virtually shattered by the Ottoman actions, being reduced from formerly composing majorities in some of the regions, to very small – though noticeable – surviving communities. Prior to World War I and the Assyrian genocide, the population of Urmia was 40% to 50% Christian, for example. Nowadays, this number for the same city lies at 1% to 2%.
In 1918, during the Persian Campaign, about half of the Assyrians of Persia died in Turkish and Kurdish massacres and in related outbreaks of starvation and disease. About 80 percent of Assyrian clergy and spiritual leaders perished, threatening the nation's ability to survive as a unit.
Current situation
In 1976, the census reported that the Christian population of Iran holding citizenship there numbered 168,593 people, with most of them being Armenians. Due to the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, almost half of the Armenians migrated to the newly independent Armenia, but one estimate from 1999 placed the number as high as 310,000. Other estimates since 2000 have placed the number of Christians with Iranian citizenship as high as 109,415 in 2006.
Significant immigration of Assyrians from Iraq has been recorded during this period, due to massacres and harassment in post-Saddam Iraq. However, most of those Assyrians in Iran do not have Iranian citizenship, and therefore are not included in the data. In 2008, the central office of the International Union of Assyrians was officially transferred to Iran after being hosted in the United States for more than four decades.
The government guarantees the recognized Christian minorities a number of rights (production and sale of non-halal foods), representation in parliament, special family law etc. According to US-based Barnabas Fund government intrusion, expropriation of property, forced closure and persecution, particularly in the initial years after the Iranian Revolution, have all been documented.
On 2 February 2018, four United Nations human rights experts said that members of the Christian minority in Iran, particularly those who have converted to Christianity, are facing severe discrimination and religious persecution in Iran. They expressed their concerns over treatment of three Iranian Christians imprisoned in Iran.
Iranian Christians tend to be urban, with 50% living in Tehran.
Christianity remains the second-largest non-Muslim minority religion in the country.
A June 2020 online survey found a much smaller percentage of Iranians stating they believe in Islam, with half of those surveyed indicating they had lost their religious faith. The poll, conducted by the Netherlands-based GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran), using online polling to provide greater anonymity for respondents, surveyed 50,000 Iranians and found 1.5% identified as Christians.
Christian converts from Islam
Beginning in the 1970s some Protestant pastors started to hold church services in homes in Persian, rather than in one of the ethnic Christian minority languages such as Armenian or Syriac. One of the key leaders who spearheaded this movement was the Assemblies of God bishop Haik Hovsepian Mehr. Worshiping in homes, rather than in church buildings, and utilizing the national language (Persian) which was spoken by nearly all Iranians, combined with dissatisfaction at violence connected to the Iranian Revolution led to substantial numbers of Iranian Muslims departing Islam and converting to Christianity. This took place both within Iran and abroad, among the Iranian diaspora. It is currently illegal to distribute Christian literature in the official language, Persian.
Muslims who change their faith to Christianity are subject to societal and official pressure which may lead to the death penalty. Although the Civil Code does not provide explicitly for the death penalty – with the crime being punishable by fines, lashing, and prison terms – judges can impose the death penalty if they desire. Iran is number nine on Open Doors’ 2022 World Watch List, an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution.
Pentecostal pastor Hossein Sudmand was charged with apostasy and executed in 1990. Mehdi Dibaj was arrested and imprisoned for more than 10 years before he was sentenced to death in 1993, but after international pressure, he was freed in 1994, although the death sentenced was not lifted. He was murdered the next year. In 2011, Youcef Nadarkhani, an Jammiat-e Rabbani pastor, was allegedly sentenced to death for refusing to recant his faith. More recently the Iranian-American pastor and former Muslim Saeed Abedini, who in 2013 was sentenced to eight years prison, allegedly "Helped to build the country’s underground Christian church network". Satellite TV networks, such as Mohabat TV, Sat7 Pars, and TBN Nejat TV distribute educational and encouraging programs for Christians, especially targeting Persian speakers. Some Christian ex-Muslims emigrate from Iran for educational, political, security or economic reasons.
It is difficult to obtain accurate figures for Protestants of all denominations and Catholics in Iran. Complicating the matter is the mixture of ethnic identity with religious affiliation, and the number of Muslim converts to Christianity, who as discussed above have a strong incentive to conceal themselves. Most informants often referred to "only a few thousand" in estimating the overall numbers of non-ethnic Christians in Iran. According to the data from the mid 1990s, all Protestant churches in Iran claimed an ethnic and Iranian membership of 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 or 15,000. A 2015 study estimated (describing this as a conservative estimate) that there were 100,000 Christian believers from a Muslim background living in Iran, most of them evangelical or Pentecostal Christians. Significant numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity in Iran are estimated to range from 300,000 to 500,000 by various sources. Other estimates put the numbers between 800,000 and 3 million.
According to scholar Ladan Boroumand "Iran today is witnessing the highest rate of Christianization in the world", and according to scholar Shay Khatiri of Johns Hopkins University “Islam is the fastest shrinking religion in there [Iran], while Christianity is growing the fastest”, and in 2018 "up to half a million Iranians are Christian converts from Muslim families, and most of these Christians are evangelicals", and he adds "recent estimates claim that the number might have climbed up to somewhere between 1 million and 3 million".
In May 2019 Iran's Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi expressed concern over Iranian Muslims converting to Christianity and said the Intelligence Ministry have dispatched agents active in "countering the advocates of Christianity" to areas where there is a potential for people to convert.
The Bible in languages of Iran
Armenian and Assyrian Christians use Bibles in their own languages.
Multiple Persian translations and versions of the Bible have been translated in more recent times, although distribution of Christian literature in Persian is currently illegal.
Portions of the Bible are translated into Azeri, Mazanderani, Gilaki, Bakhtiari, Luri, Kurdish (Kurmanji and Sorani).
Freedom of religion
In 2023, the country was scored zero out of 4 for religious freedom.
In the same year, it was ranked as the 8th most difficult place in the world to be a Christian.
See also
Catholic Church in Iran
Christianity in the Safavid Empire
German Speaking Evangelical Congregation in Iran
Christians in the Persian Gulf
Iranian Armenians
Iranian Assyrians
List of religious centers in Tehran#Churches
Religion in Iran
References
Further reading
Gillman, Ian and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
A Brief History of Christianity in Iran by Massoume Price
Moffett, Samuel Hugh, A History of Christianity in Asia: Beginnings to 1500, San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1992.
Statistical Information from: Operation World Website
Christian architecture in Iran
RFE/RL article on Christians in Iran
Bradley, Mark, Iran and Christianity: Historical Identity and Present Relevance Continuum, London, 2008
Jenkins, Philip, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia and How it Died, HarperOne, New York, 2008
External links
FarsiNet Large Iranian Christian internet portal (mostly evangelical)
www. IranChurches.ir The Base of Iranian Historic Churches
Online Kelisa Iranian Virtual Church
www. christforiran.com Iranian Christian resources
A Cry from Iran - an award-winning documentary video (DVD) telling the story of some Iranian Christian martyrs
www. Irankelisa.com Virtual Iranian seminary for Christians residing in Iran.
www. gilakmedia.com Gilak Media - Digital Scripture in Video, Audio and Print form in the Gilaki language.
Christchurch Teheran
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony%20Levin
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Tony Levin
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Anthony Frederick Levin (born June 6, 1946) is an American musician and composer, specializing in electric bass guitars, Chapman Stick and upright bass. He also sings and plays synthesizer. Levin is best known for his work with King Crimson (1981–2021) and Peter Gabriel (since 1977). He is also a member of Liquid Tension Experiment (1997–1999, 2008–2009, 2020–present), Bruford Levin Upper Extremities (1998–2000) and HoBoLeMa (2008–2010). He has led his own band, Stick Men, since 2010.
A prolific session musician since the 1970s, Levin has played on over 500 albums. Some notable sessions include work with John Lennon, Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, Stevie Nicks, Pink Floyd, Robbie Robertson, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Joan Armatrading, Tom Waits, Buddy Rich, The Roches, Todd Rundgren, Seal, Warren Zevon, Bryan Ferry, Laurie Anderson, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Gibonni, and Jean-Pierre Ferland. He has toured with artists including Paul Simon (with whom he appeared in the 1980 film One-Trick Pony), Gary Burton, James Taylor, Herbie Mann, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Peter Frampton, Tim Finn, Richie Sambora, Ivano Fossati, Claudio Baglioni and Lawrence Gowan.
Levin helped to popularize the Chapman Stick and the NS upright bass. He also created "funk fingers", modified drumsticks that attach to the fingers of the player in order to strike the bass strings, adding a distinctive percussive "slap" sound used in funk bass playing. In 2011, Levin ranked # 2 behind John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin in the "20 Most Underrated Bass Guitarists" in Paste magazine. In July 2020, Levin was ranked #42 on the "50 Greatest Bassists of All Time" list by Rolling Stone magazine.
Biography
Early life and education
Anthony Frederick Levin was born on June 6, 1946, in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in the suburb of Brookline. He began playing double bass at 10 years old, primarily studying classical music. In high school, he learned tuba, soloing with the concert band, and also started a barbershop quartet.
After high school, he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York and played in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Also at Eastman, he studied with drummer Steve Gadd. He traded in his Ampeg electric upright "Baby Bass" for a Fender Precision Bass; in the early days his first bass amplifier was an Ampeg Portaflex B-15. Levin's first recording was in 1968, when he and Gadd played on Diana in the Autumn Wind, Gap Mangione's first solo album.
1970s–1980s
In 1970, Levin moved to New York City, joining a band called Aha, the Attack of the Green Slime Beast, with Don Preston of The Mothers of Invention. Soon after, he began working as a session musician, and through the 1970s he played bass on many albums, including Buddy Rich's big band jazz album, The Roar of '74, and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years (1975).
In 1971, John McLaughlin asked Levin to join his new project, the Mahavishnu Orchestra: "My original choice for bass was Tony Levin. But he told me, 'Oh man, I just took a gig with Gary Burton.'"
From 1973 to 1975, Levin and Steve Gadd played in the band of veteran jazz flautist Herbie Mann. Two of Levin's early compositions (“Daffodil” and “Music Is a Game We Play”) were featured on the 1973 Mann album First Light.
In 1976, Levin helped create the lush textures on Andy Pratt's Resolution album, that featured numerous notable musicians including Arif Mardin, Andy Newmark, Hugh McDonald, Luther Vandross and Levin's frequent rhythm section partner Steve Gadd. Allmusic.com and Rolling Stone magazine rated this album as one of the best singer/songwriter albums of the 1970s.
In 1977, Levin joined Peter Gabriel's band. He had met Gabriel through producer Bob Ezrin with whom Levin had recorded Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare and Lou Reed's Berlin. Levin has been Gabriel's bass player of choice ever since. On Peter's first solo album, Levin played tuba as well, and directed and sang with a barbershop quartet on "Excuse Me".
With the exception of John Giblin's fretless bass playing on Peter Gabriel III, and some additional work by Larry Klein on "In Your Eyes" & "Mercy Street", and Bill Laswell on "This is the Picture" (all three tracks from So), Levin has been the bassist on all of Gabriel's studio sessions and on his many tours around the world.
In his years with Gabriel, Levin developed two unique aspects of his playing: further advancement on the Chapman Stick, which he would later utilize heavily in King Crimson, and the development of funk fingers. First used on the song "Big Time", from Gabriel's 1986 So album, funk fingers are chopped off drumsticks used to hammer on the bass strings. Levin credits Gabriel with the concept and his tech at the time (Andy Moore) with actually making them workable.
In 1978, Levin moved to Woodstock, New York, to join the band L'Image, which included his old friend Steve Gadd as well as Mike Mainieri and Warren Bernhardt. The band broke up after a year, though Levin still decided to stay in the area: he currently resides in Kingston, New York. This Ill-fated group would reunite much later in Levin's career. While recording Peter Gabriel's first album, Levin became acquainted with guitarist Robert Fripp, and in 1978 played on Fripp's solo album, Exposure. This would lead Levin to become a member of the 1981–1984 incarnation of King Crimson, along with Fripp, guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew and drummer Bill Bruford. Levin recorded four studio albums as part of King Crimson: Discipline (1981), Beat (1982), Three of a Perfect Pair (1984) and THRAK (1995), all critically acclaimed.
In 1980, Levin participated in the sessions for John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy album.
In 1987, Levin played the bass and Chapman Stick parts on Pink Floyd's first album after the departure of Roger Waters, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
In 1988 Bruford asked Levin to be an "unofficial fifth member" in the Yes related supergroup Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, which consisted of all the members from the classic Yes lineup except bassist Chris Squire, but he only functioned as a session player on ABWH's eponymous album. Due to a severe virus, he was unable to play on some of the final dates of the accompanying tour, being replaced by Jeff Berlin. Levin also plays on the Yes album Union from 1991.
In 1984 Levin released Road Photos, a collection of black and white photos taken during his travels with Crimson, Gabriel, Simon, and others. Another book of photos focusing on King Crimson's travels in the 1980s, The Crimson Chronicles volume 1, was released in 2004. There has been no word yet on the release of volume 2, which will cover the 1990s and possibly 2000s versions of the band. Levin has also written a book of career anecdotes and road stories called Beyond the Bass Clef.
Levin was part of King Crimson again from 1994 to 1997 as part of the "Double Trio" line-up of the band which consisted of Levin, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn, Pat Mastelotto, and Bill Bruford. Fripp then reformed King Crimson as a quartet, without Levin and Bruford. Levin also took part in two of the post-breakup experimental sub-groups, ProjeKct One (1997) and ProjeKct Four (1998). Levin played bass on "Watcher of the Skies" from Steve Hackett's Genesis Revisited album (1996). He was very busy in the late 1990s with his own groups Bruford Levin Upper Extremities, Bozzio Levin Stevens and Liquid Tension Experiment. In 2008, Levin joined King Crimson's 40th Anniversary Tour, in a lineup including Fripp, Belew, and drummers Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree).
1990s–2000s
In 1998, Levin and Bruford formed Bruford Levin Upper Extremities with trumpeter Chris Botti and guitarist David Torn; they released one studio album in 1998 and a live double album in 2000. Torn, Levin, and Bruford had worked with trumpeter Mark Isham, for Torn's album Cloud About Mercury. Former Japan bassist Mick Karn replaced Levin for Isham's tour at the time. Levin also continued recording albums with his own band, consisting of drummer/saxophonist/vocalist Jerry Marotta, guitarist Jesse Gress, synthesizer programmer/player Larry Fast, and Levin's brother, keyboardist Pete Levin. He also regularly played (and occasionally recorded) with the California Guitar Trio when their schedules permitted.
In 1997, Levin teamed up with Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci, members of Dream Theater, as well as future Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess, for a project called Liquid Tension Experiment. The combo released two albums, Liquid Tension Experiment and Liquid Tension Experiment 2 in 1998 and 1999 respectively, as well as playing short tours in 1998 and 2008. There have also been two CDs of material released under the name "Liquid Trio Experiment"; the first composed of studio jams from the LTE2 sessions without Petrucci (Spontaneous Combustion), released for the band's tenth anniversary, and a live recording from a 2008 Chicago show where Rudess's equipment failed and the other three covered for it with a nearly hour-long improvisation (When the Keyboard Breaks). During the COVID-19 global pandemic, the group reconvened and recorded a new album for release in April 2021 call LTE3.
At the end of 2003 Trey Gunn left King Crimson and Levin rejoined as the bassist, although the band was only active for a handful of rehearsals at that time and the aforementioned 40th Anniversary tour in the summer of 2008.
In 2006, Levin released Resonator, The first album to feature Levin as a lyricist and lead vocalist. 2007 saw the release of Stick Man, an album of pieces recorded on the Chapman Stick.
In 2009 Levin reunited with his band from 1978, L'Image, featuring Mike Mainieri, Warren Bernhardt, David Spinozza, and Steve Gadd. The group performed at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City, toured Japan, and released the album L'Image 2.0. In 2010 Levin toured with HoBoLeMa, a group consisting of Allan Holdsworth on guitar, Terry Bozzio on drums, Levin on bass and Pat Mastelotto. All their shows were completely improvised with no written music.
Following on from the Stick Man album, Levin joined up with fellow player Michael Bernier and King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto to form the group Stick Men. The band released its first album Soup in 2010. Bernier left the group shortly after the release of Soup and was replaced by touch guitarist Markus Reuter in 2010. This lineup has continued with a busy touring and recording schedule, releasing the EP Absalom in 2011 and the full albums Open (June 2012), and Deep (Sept 2012).
Levin's brother, Pete Levin, is a New York keyboardist and writer who is known for his work with Gil Evans. In the 1970s, Tony and Pete collaborated with Steve Gadd in the comedy band The Clams. Levin has stated that some of the Clams' material may eventually be released. Levin also played on Jean-Pierre Ferland's Jaune album, which included hits "Le petit roi" and "Le chat du café des artistes".
On September 24, 2013, Levin was officially announced as a member of the 8th incarnation of King Crimson, alongside band founder Robert Fripp, guitarist Jakko Jakszyk, the returning Mel Collins on saxophone, and drummers Pat Mastelotto, Gavin Harrison and new member Bill Rieflin. The group toured the United States in the autumn of 2014 and has continued to tour throughout the world since, including 2019 when King Crimson celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Influence
Many artists have cited Levin as an influence or have expressed their admiration for him, including Les Claypool of Primus, Colin Hodgkinson, Nick Beggs, Al Barrow of Magnum, Dan Briggs of Between the Buried and Me, Zach Cooper of Coheed and Cambria and Jonathan Hischke of Dot Hacker and El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez.
Personal life
Levin met Andi Turco in 1995 when she was promoting Virgin Records in Atlanta. They married three years later. Andi Turco-Levin ran for mayor of Kingston, New York, in 2011, and for Ulster County Legislature in 2019, both campaigns unsuccessful. Turco-Levin is credited with backing vocals on the album Resonator (2006) and for photography on Levin Minnemann Rudess (2013).
Levin has one child, filmmaker Maggie Levin.
In 2003, Levin stated that he is a vegetarian.
Discography
Levin has played on hundreds of recordings as a session musician or a guest artist.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Date
!Artists
!Title
|-
|1995
| rowspan="7" |Tony Levin
|World Diary
|-
|2000
|Waters of Eden
|-
|2002
|Pieces of the Sun
|-
|2002
|Double Espresso
|-
|2006
|Resonator
|-
|2007
|Stick Man
|-
|2019
|The Bucket List
|-
|1974
| rowspan="4" |Herbie Mann
|First Light as The Family of Mann
|-
|1976
|Surprises
|-
|1974 [1976]
|Gagaku & Beyond
|-
|1977
|Brazil: Once Again
|-
|1977
| rowspan="15" |Peter Gabriel
|Peter Gabriel (Car)
|-
|1978
|Peter Gabriel (Scratch)
|-
|1980
|Peter Gabriel (Melt)
|-
|1982
|Peter Gabriel (Security)
|-
|1983
|Plays Live
|-
|1985
|Birdy
|-
|1986
|So
|-
|1992
|Us
|-
|1994
|Secret World Live
|-
|2000
|OVO
|-
|2002
|Up
|-
|2003
|Growing Up Live
|-
|2005
|Still Growing Up: Live & Unwrapped
|-
|2014
|Back to Front: Live in London|-
|2023
|i/o
|-
|1981
| rowspan="25" |King Crimson
|Discipline
|-
|1982
|Beat
|-
|1982
|The Noise: Frejus (VHS) / Neal and Jack and Me (DVD)
|-
|1984
|Three of a Perfect Pair
|-
|1984
|Three of a Perfect Pair: Live in Japan (VHS) / Neal and Jack and Me (DVD)
|-
|1998
|Absent Lovers: Live in Montreal
|-
|1994
|Vrooom
|-
|1995
|THRAK
|-
|1995
|B'Boom: Live in Argentina
|-
|1996
|Thrakattak
|-
|1996
|Live in Japan (VHS) / Déjà Vrooom (DVD) / The Collectable King Crimson Volume Five (Live in Japan 1995 – The Official Edition)
|-
|1999
|Live in Mexico City
|-
|2001
|Vrooom Vrooom
|-
|1999
|The ProjeKcts
|-
|1999
|The Deception of the Thrush: A Beginners' Guide to ProjeKcts
|-
|2012
|Live in Argentina, 1994 (DVD-A)
|-
|2014–2017
|The Elements of King Crimson
|-
|2015
|Live at the Orpheum
|-
|2015
|Live EP 2014 (Vinyl Cyclops Picture Disc)
|-
|2016
|Live In Toronto
|-
|2016
|Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind
|-
|2017
|Heroes – Live In Europe (2016)
|-
|2017
|Live In Chicago (2017 – Chicago Theater)
|-
|2018
|Live in Vienna (2016 – Museumsquartier)
|-
|2018
|Meltdown: Live in Mexico City (2017 – Teatro Metropólitan)
|-
|1989
| rowspan="2" |Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
|Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
|-
|2012
|Live at the NEC
|-
|1991
|Yes
|Union
|-
| rowspan="2" |1997
|Gorn, Levin, Marotta
|From the Caves of the Iron Mountain
|-
| rowspan="2" |Bozzio Levin Stevens
|Black Light Syndrome
|-
|2000
|Situation Dangerous
|-
|1998
|ProjeKct One
|Live at the Jazz Café
|-
|1999
|ProjeKct Four
|West Coast Live
|-
|2007
|Liquid Trio Experiment
|Spontaneous Combustion
|-
|1998
| rowspan="3" |Liquid Tension Experiment
|Liquid Tension Experiment
|-
|1999
|Liquid Tension Experiment 2
|-
|2021
|Liquid Tension Experiment 3
|-
| rowspan="4" |2009
|Liquid Trio Experiment 2
|When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago
|-
| rowspan="3" |Liquid Tension Experiment
|Liquid Tension Experiment Live 2008 – Limited Edition Boxset
|-
|Liquid Tension Experiment Live in NYC
|-
|Liquid Tension Experiment Live in LA
|-
|1998
| rowspan="2" |Bruford Levin Upper Extremities
|Bruford Levin Upper Extremities
|-
|2000
|B.L.U.E. Nights
|-
|2008
| rowspan="2" |Steven Wilson
|Insurgentes (Kscope) on tracks 5 and 6
|-
|2011
|Grace for Drowning (Kscope)
|-
|2009
| rowspan="14" |Stick Men
|Stick Men [A special edition]
|-
|2010
|Soup
|-
| rowspan="3" |2011
|Absalom(EP)
|-
|Live In Montevideo 2011
|-
|Live In Buenos Aires 2011
|-
|2012
|Open
|-
|2013
|Deep
|-
| rowspan="3" |2014
|Power Play
|-
|Unleashed: Live Improvs 2013
|-
|Supercollider: An Anthology 2010–2014
|-
|2015
|Midori: Live In Tokyo (Featuring David Cross)
|-
|2016
|Prog Noir
|-
| rowspan="2" |2017
|Roppongi – Live In Tokyo 2017 (Featuring Mel Collins)
|-
|KONNEKTED
|-
|2011
|Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins (with Levin and Harrison)
|A King Crimson ProjeKct A Scarcity of Miracles
|-
|2011
|Tony Levin, David Torn, Alan White
|Levin Torn White
|-
|2013
|Tony Levin, Marco Minnemann, Jordan Rudess
|Levin Minnemann Rudess
|-
|2015
|Anthony Curtis and Tony Levin
|Book of the Key
|-
|2019
|Keaggy, Marotta, and Levin
|The Bucket List
|}
Jaune (1970) – Jean-Pierre Ferland
Carly Simon (1971) – Carly Simon
Diana in the Autumn Wind (1972) – Gap Mangione (arrangements by Chuck Mangione)
Alive! (1972) – Chuck Mangione Quartet
Don McLean (1972) – Don McLean
Berlin (1973) – Lou Reed
Over the Rainbow (1973) – Livingston Taylor
The Roar of '74 (1973) – Buddy Rich
Playin' Favorites (1973) – Don McLean
Simba (Groove Merchant, 1974) – O'Donel Levy
Still Crazy After All These Years (1975) – Paul Simon
Welcome To My Nightmare (1975) – Alice Cooper
Judith (1975) – Judy Collins
Second Childhood (1976) – Phoebe Snow
Goes to Hell (1976) – Alice Cooper
Main Squeeze (1976) – Chuck Mangione
Lace and Whiskey (1977) – Alice Cooper
Never Letting Go (1977) – Phoebe Snow
Singin'... (1977) – Melissa Manchester
Ringo the 4th (1977) – Ringo Starr
Watermark (1977) – Art Garfunkel
Nested (1978) – Laura Nyro
Blue Montreux (1978) – Arista All-Stars (Brecker Bros, Larry Coryell, etc.)
Boys in the Trees (1978) – Carly Simon
The Roches (1979) – The Roches
Spy (1979) – Carly Simon
Double Fantasy (1980) – John Lennon, Yoko Ono
Me Myself I (1980) – Joan Armatrading
Come Upstairs (1980) – Carly Simon
Walk Under Ladders (1981) – Joan Armatrading
Scissors Cut (1981) – Art Garfunkel
Season of Glass (1981) – Yoko Ono
It's Alright (I See Rainbows) (1982) – Yoko Ono
Keep On Doing (1982) – The Roches
Times of Our Lives (1982) – Judy Collins
Scenario by Al Di Meola also with Phil Collins, Jan Hammer and Bill Bruford - (1983)
The Key (1983) – Joan Armatrading
Hello Big Man (1983) – Carly Simon
Milk and Honey (1984) – John Lennon, Yoko Ono
Boys and Girls (1985) – Bryan Ferry
Starpeace (1985) – Yoko Ono
Strange Animal (1985) – Lawrence Gowan
That's Why I'm Here (1985) – James Taylor
Downtown (1985) – Marshall Crenshaw
Rain Dogs (1985) – Tom Waits
Cloud About Mercury (ECM, 1986) – David Torn
The Big Picture (1986) – Michael W. Smith
Premonition (1986) – Peter Frampton
A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) – Pink Floyd
Robbie Robertson (1987) – Robbie Robertson
Great Dirty World (1987) – Lawrence Gowan
Coming Around Again (1987) – Carly Simon
Cher (1987) – Cher
Sentimental Hygiene (1987) – Warren Zevon
Safety in Numbers (1987) – David Van Tieghem
Julia Fordham (1988) – Julia Fordham
Tommy Page (1988) – Tommy Page
Hide Your Heart (1988) – Bonnie Tyler
Amnesia (1988) – Richard Thompson
The Other Side of the Mirror (1989) – Stevie Nicks
Maria McKee (1989) – Maria McKee
Tim Finn (1989) – Tim Finn
N.Y.C. (1989) – Steps Ahead
The Natural Edge (1989) Pop Out World – David Wilcox
Lost Brotherhood (1990) – Lawrence Gowan
World Gone Strange (1991) – Andy Summers
Stranger in This Town (1991) – Richie Sambora
Discipline (1991) – Desmond Child
New Moon Shine (1991) – James Taylor
Matters of the Heart (1992) – Tracy Chapman
Arkansas Traveler (1992) – Michelle Shocked
Spin 1ne 2wo (1993) – Spin 1ne 2wo
Flyer (1994) – Nanci Griffith
Swamp Ophelia (1994) – Indigo Girls
What's Inside (1995) – Joan Armatrading
Dream Sequence (Psi, 1995–2003 [2003]) – Kenny Wheeler
This Fire (1996) – Paula Cole
Gravity (1996) – Jesse Cook
The Last Dance of Mr. X (1997) – Andy Summers
The Cappuccino Songs (1998) – Tanita Tikaram
By 7:30 (1999) – Vonda Shepard
Amen (1999) – Paula Cole
Snowfall on the Sahara (1999) – Natalie Cole
Aura (2001) – Asia
My Ride's Here (2002) – Warren Zevon
Chinatown (2002) – Vonda Shepard
Heathen (2002) – David Bowie
Afterglow (2003) – Sarah McLachlan
Courage (2007) – Paula Cole
L'Image 2.0 (2009) – L'Image
Ithaca (2010) – Paula Cole
The Next Day (2013) – David Bowie
Raven (2013) – Paula Cole
EVOLUTION (2014) Svjetlana Bukvich
Music From An Expanded Universe (2014) – Leon Alvarado
The Desired Effect (2015) – Brandon Flowers
This Bright Red Feeling (2016) – Paula Cole
Ballad of a Bad Girl (album) (2021) – Kate McDonnell
Troika (2022) - D'Virgilio, Morse, & Jennings
References
External links
Male double-bassists
American session musicians
Art rock musicians
Chapman Stick players
Alice Cooper (band) members
King Crimson members
Peter Gabriel
1946 births
Living people
Entertainers from Brookline, Massachusetts
Narada Productions artists
American bloggers
People from Woodstock, New York
American rock bass guitarists
American jazz double-bassists
American jazz bass guitarists
American male bass guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
21st-century American guitarists
Progressive rock musicians
Progressive rock bass guitarists
Jazz musicians from New York (state)
Bozzio Levin Stevens members
Liquid Tension Experiment members
Bruford Levin Upper Extremities members
Stick Men (prog band) members
Jazz musicians from Massachusetts
American male bloggers
21st-century double-bassists
American male jazz musicians
Steps Ahead members
White Elephant Orchestra members
HoBoLeMa members
American composers
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400297
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County%20Durham
|
County Durham
|
County Durham, officially simply Durham (/ˈdʌrəm/), is a ceremonial county in North East England. The county borders Northumberland and Tyne and Wear to the north, the North Sea to the east, North Yorkshire to the south, and Cumbria to the west. The largest settlement is Darlington, and the county town is the city of Durham.
The county has an area of and a population of 866,846. The latter is concentrated in the east; the south-east is part of the Teesside built-up area, which extends into North Yorkshire. After Darlington (92,363) the largest settlements are Hartlepool (88,855), Stockton-on-Tees (82,729), and Durham (48,069). The county contains three districts — Darlington, Hartlepool, and County Durham — and part of a fourth, Stockton-on-Tees. All four are unitary areas. The county historically included the part of Tyne and Wear south of the River Tyne and excluded the part of County Durham south of the Tees.
The west of the county contains part of the North Pennines, which are an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The hills are the source of the rivers Tees and Wear, which flow west and form the valleys of Teesdale and Weardale respectively. The east of County Durham is flatter, and characterised by rolling hills through which the rivers meander; the Tees forms the boundary with North Yorkshire in its lower reaches, while the Wear exits the county near Chester-le-Street in the north-east. The county's coast is a Site of Special Scientific Interest characterised by tall limestone and dolomite cliffs.
What is now County Durham was on the border of Roman Britain, and contains survivals of this era at sites such as Binchester Roman Fort. In the Anglo-Saxon period the region was part of the Kingdom of Northumbria. In 995 the city of Durham was founded by monks seeking a place safe from Viking raids to house the relics of St Cuthbert. Durham Cathedral was rebuilt after the Norman Conquest, and together with Durham Castle is now a World Heritage Site. By the late Middle Ages the county was governed semi-independently by the bishops of Durham and was also a buffer zone between England and Scotland. County Durham became heavily industrialised in the nineteenth century, when many collieries opened on the Durham coalfield. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, opened in 1825. Most collieries closed during the last quarter of the twentieth century, but the county's coal mining heritage is remembered in the annual Durham Miners' Gala.
Toponymy
The ceremonial county is officially named Durham, but the county has long been commonly known as County Durham and is the only English county name prefixed with "County" in common usage (a practice common in Ireland). Its unusual naming (for an English shire) is explained to some extent by the relationship with the Bishops of Durham, who for centuries governed Durham as a county palatine (the County Palatine of Durham) outside the usual structure of county administration in England.
The situation regarding the formal name in modern local government is less clear:
The 2009 structural change legislation created the present unitary council (that covers a large part – but not all – of the ceremonial county) refers to "the county of County Durham" and names the new unitary district "County Durham" too.
A later amendment to that legislation refers to the "county of Durham" and the amendment allows for the unitary council to name itself "The Durham Council".
The council retains the name as Durham County Council. With either option, the name does not include County Durham.
The former postal county was named "County Durham" to distinguish it from the post town of Durham.
History
Anglian Kingdom of Bernicia
Around AD 547, an Angle named Ida founded the kingdom of Bernicia after spotting the defensive potential of a large rock at Bamburgh, upon which many a fortification was thenceforth built. Ida was able to forge, hold and consolidate the kingdom; although the native British tried to take back their land, the Angles triumphed and the kingdom endured.
Kingdom of Northumbria
In AD 604, Ida's grandson Æthelfrith forcibly merged Bernicia (ruled from Bamburgh) and Deira (ruled from York, which was known as Eforwic at the time) to create the Kingdom of Northumbria. In time, the realm was expanded, primarily through warfare and conquest; at its height, the kingdom stretched from the River Humber (from which the kingdom drew its name) to the Forth. Eventually, factional fighting and the rejuvenated strength of neighbouring kingdoms, most notably Mercia, led to Northumbria's decline. The arrival of the Vikings hastened this decline, and the Scandinavian raiders eventually claimed the Deiran part of the kingdom in AD 867 (which became Jórvík). The land that would become County Durham now sat on the border with the Great Heathen Army, a border which today still forms the boundaries between the historic counties of Yorkshire and County Durham.
Viking settlement petered out at the Tees and the lands north thereof lay outside of the Danelaw. The House of Bamburgh, successors of the Kings of Bernicia and Northumbria, retained control north of the Tyne; between the Tyne and the Tees emerged the Community of St. Cuthbert or Haliwerfolc, successors of the See of Lindisfarne. The House of Wessex absorbed the Kingdom of York into the unified English Kingdom in 954 and claimed sovereignty over Northumbria. However, the lands north of the Tees remained outside the governmental frontiers of the English realm, thus Bamburgh and the Haliwerfolc went on to become contested buffer states between England and Scotland.
City of Durham founded
In AD 995, St Cuthbert's community, who had been transporting Cuthbert's remains around, partly in an attempt to avoid them falling into the hands of Viking raiders, settled at Dunholm (Durham) on a site that was defensively favourable due to the horseshoe-like path of the River Wear. St Cuthbert's remains were placed in a shrine in the White Church, which was originally a wooden structure but was eventually fortified into a stone building.
Once the City of Durham had been founded, the Bishops of Durham gradually acquired the lands that would become County Durham. Bishop Aldhun began this process by procuring land in the Tees and Wear valleys, including Norton, Stockton, Escomb and Aucklandshire in 1018. In 1031, King Canute gave Staindrop to the Bishops. This territory continued to expand, and was eventually given the status of a liberty. Under the control of the Bishops of Durham, the land had various names: the "Liberty of Durham", "Liberty of St Cuthbert's Land" "the lands of St Cuthbert between Tyne and Tees" or "the Liberty of Haliwerfolc" (holy Wear folk).
The bishops' special jurisdiction rested on claims that King Ecgfrith of Northumbria had granted a substantial territory to St Cuthbert on his election to the see of Lindisfarne in 684. In about 883 a cathedral housing the saint's remains was established at Chester-le-Street and Guthfrith, King of York granted the community of St Cuthbert the area between the Tyne and the Wear, before the community reached its final destination in 995, in Durham.
Following the Norman invasion, the administrative machinery of government extended only slowly into northern England. Northumberland's first recorded Sheriff was Gilebert from 1076 until 1080 and a 12th-century record records Durham regarded as within the shire. However the bishops disputed the authority of the sheriff of Northumberland and his officials, despite the second sheriff for example being the reputed slayer of Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots. The crown regarded Durham as falling within Northumberland until the late thirteenth century.
County Palatine of Durham
Matters regarding the bishopric of Durham came to a head in 1293 when the bishop and his steward failed to attend proceedings of quo warranto held by the justices of Northumberland. The bishop's case went before parliament, where he stated that Durham lay outside the bounds of any English shire and that "from time immemorial it had been widely known that the sheriff of Northumberland was not sheriff of Durham nor entered within that liberty as sheriff. . . nor made there proclamations or attachments". The arguments appear to have prevailed, as by the fourteenth century Durham was accepted as a liberty which received royal mandates direct. In effect it was a private shire, with the bishop appointing his own sheriff. The area eventually became known as the "County Palatine of Durham".
Sadberge was a liberty, sometimes referred to as a county, within Northumberland. In 1189 it was purchased for the see but continued with a separate sheriff, coroner and court of pleas. In the 14th century Sadberge was included in Stockton ward and was itself divided into two wards. The division into the four wards of Chester-le-Street, Darlington, Easington and Stockton existed in the 13th century, each ward having its own coroner and a three-weekly court corresponding to the hundred court. The diocese was divided into the archdeaconries of Durham and Northumberland. The former is mentioned in 1072, and in 1291 included the deaneries of Chester-le-Street, Auckland, Lanchester and Darlington.
The term palatinus is applied to the bishop in 1293, and from the 13th century onwards the bishops frequently claimed the same rights in their lands as the king enjoyed in his kingdom.
Early administration
Overview
The historic boundaries of County Durham included a main body covering the catchment of the Pennines in the west, the River Tees in the south, the North Sea in the east and the Rivers Tyne and Derwent in the north. The county palatinate also had a number of liberties: the Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire and Norhamshire exclaves within Northumberland, and the Craikshire exclave within the North Riding of Yorkshire. In 1831 the county covered an area of and had a population of 253,910. These exclaves were included as part of the county for parliamentary electoral purposes until 1832, and for judicial and local-government purposes until the coming into force of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844, which merged most remaining exclaves with their surrounding county. The boundaries of the county proper remained in use for administrative and ceremonial purposes until the 1972 Local Government Act.
Early English and Norman period
Following the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror appointed Copsig as Earl of Northumbria, thereby bringing what would become County Durham under Copsig's control. Copsig was, just a few weeks later, killed in Newburn. Having already being previously offended by the appointment of a non-Northumbrian as Bishop of Durham in 1042, the people of the region became increasingly rebellious. In response, in January 1069, William despatched a large Norman army, under the command of Robert de Comines, to Durham City. The army, believed to consist of 700 cavalry (about one-third of the number of Norman knights who had participated in the Battle of Hastings), entered the city, whereupon they were attacked, and defeated, by a Northumbrian assault force. The Northumbrians wiped out the entire Norman army, including Comines, all except for one survivor, who was allowed to take the news of this defeat back.
Following the Norman slaughter at the hands of the Northumbrians, resistance to Norman rule spread throughout Northern England, including a similar uprising in York. William The Conqueror subsequently (and successfully) attempted to halt the northern rebellions by unleashing the notorious Harrying of the North (1069–1070). Because William's main focus during the harrying was on Yorkshire, County Durham was largely spared the Harrying. The best remains of the Norman period include Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle, and several parish churches, such as St Laurence Church in Pittington. The Early English period has left the eastern portion of the cathedral, the churches of Darlington, Hartlepool, and St Andrew, Auckland, Sedgefield, and portions of a few other churches.
Palatinate
Until the 15th century, the most important administrative officer in the Palatinate was the steward. Other officers included the sheriff, the coroners, the Chamberlain and the chancellor. The palatine exchequer originated in the 12th century. The palatine assembly represented the whole county, and dealt chiefly with fiscal questions. The bishop's council, consisting of the clergy, the sheriff and the barons, regulated judicial affairs, and later produced the Chancery and the courts of Admiralty and Marshalsea.
The prior of Durham ranked first among the bishop's barons. He had his own court, and almost exclusive jurisdiction over his men. A UNESCO site describes the role of the bishops in Durham, the "buffer state between England and Scotland":From 1075, the Bishop of Durham became a Prince-Bishop, with the right to raise an army, mint his own coins, and levy taxes. As long as he remained loyal to the king of England, he could govern as a virtually autonomous ruler, reaping the revenue from his territory, but also remaining mindful of his role of protecting England’s northern frontier.
A report states that the Bishops also had the authority to appoint judges and barons and to offer pardons.
There were ten palatinate barons in the 12th century, most importantly the Hyltons of Hylton Castle, the Bulmers of Brancepeth, the Conyers of Sockburne, the Hansards of Evenwood, and the Lumleys of Lumley Castle. The Nevilles owned large estates in the county. John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby rebuilt Raby Castle, their principal seat, in 1377.
Edward I's quo warranto proceedings of 1293 showed twelve lords enjoying more or less extensive franchises under the bishop. The repeated efforts of the Crown to check the powers of the palatinate bishops culminated in 1536 in the Act of Resumption, which deprived the bishop of the power to pardon offences against the law or to appoint judicial officers. Moreover, indictments and legal processes were in future to run in the name of the king, and offences to be described as against the peace of the king, rather than that of the bishop. In 1596 restrictions were imposed on the powers of the chancery, and in 1646 the palatinate was formally abolished. It was revived, however, after the Restoration, and continued with much the same power until 5 July 1836, when the Durham (County Palatine) Act 1836 provided that the palatine jurisdiction should in future be vested in the Crown.
Wars
During the 15th-century Wars of the Roses, Henry VI passed through Durham. On the outbreak of the Great Rebellion in 1642 Durham inclined to support the cause of Parliament, and in 1640 the high sheriff of the palatinate guaranteed to supply the Scottish army with provisions during their stay in the county. In 1642 the Earl of Newcastle formed the western counties into an association for the King's service, but in 1644 the palatinate was again overrun by a Scottish army, and after the Battle of Marston Moor (2 July 1644) fell entirely into the hands of Parliament.
Parliamentary representation and secular powers
In 1614, a Bill was introduced in Parliament for securing representation to the county and city of Durham and the borough of Barnard Castle. The bishop strongly opposed the proposal as an infringement of his palatinate rights, and the county was first summoned to return members to Parliament in 1654. After the Restoration of 1660 the county and city returned two members each. In the wake of the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned two members for two divisions, and the boroughs of Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland acquired representation. The bishops lost their secular powers in 1836. The boroughs of Darlington, Stockton and Hartlepool returned one member each from 1868 until the Redistribution Act of 1885.
Geography
Urban
The historic county excludes the village of Startforth, the ceremonial county excludes the city of Sunderland and the non-metropolitan county excludes the town of Stockton-on-Tees. The ceremonial county includes the non-metropolitan county with the addition of the boroughs of Darlington, Hartlepool, and Stockton-on-Tees. The historic county's boundaries stretched from the rivers Tyne to Tees and it is covered by the ceremonial county, the city of Sunderland, the boroughs of Gateshead and South Tyneside, while the non-metropolitan county includes part of Yorkshire.
County Durham contains a small area of the North East Green Belt in the county's north; surrounding the city of Durham, Chester-le-Street and other communities along the shared county border with Tyne and Wear, avoiding Wearside's spread west. A smaller green belt separates Urpeth, Ouston, Pelton, and Perkinsville from Birtley in Tyne and Wear. A further small segment by the coast separates Seaham from the Sunderland settlements of Beckwith Green and Ryhope. It was first drawn up in the 1990s.
Geology
County Durham is underlain by Carboniferous rocks in the west. Permian and Triassic strata overlie these older rocks in the east. These sedimentary sequences have been cut by igneous dykes and sills.
The county contains a sizeable area of the North Pennines, designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, primarily west of Tow Law and Barnard Castle. The highest point (county top) of historic County Durham is the trig point (not the summit) of Burnhope Seat, height , between Weardale and Teesdale on the border with historic Cumberland in the far west of the county. The local government reorganisation of 1974 placed the higher Mickle Fell south of Teesdale (the county top of Yorkshire) within the administrative borders of Durham (where it remains within the ceremonial county). However, it is not generally recognised as the highest point in Durham.
The two main dales of County Durham (Teesdale and Weardale) and the surrounding fells, many of which exceed in height, are excellent hillwalking country, although not nearly as popular as the nearby Yorkshire Dales and Lake District national parks. The scenery is rugged and remote, and the high fells have a landscape typical of the Pennines with extensive areas of tussock grass and blanket peat bog in the west, with heather moorland on the lower slopes descending to the east.
Climate
The following climate figures were gathered at the Durham weather station between 1981 and 2010:
Governance
County Durham, as considered a county for lieutenancy purposes by the Lieutenancies Act 1997, is administered as a part of the constituent country of England in the United Kingdom. The area is appointed a lord lieutenant and a high sheriff.
The ceremonial county is divided into four administrative counties (see table below), one of which - Stockon-on-Tees - also extends into North Yorkshire. Technically, for administrative purposes, the County of Durham only consists of the area governed by Durham County Council. The three other areas are counties in their own right.
The county is partially parished. The city of Durham is the most populous settlement in the county to have a parish. Multiple parishes are styled as having town councils: Billingham (in Stockton Borough), Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Chilton, Ferryhill, Great Aycliffe, Newton Aycliffe, Greater Willington, Peterlee, Seaham, Sedgefield, Shildon, Spennymoor, Stanley and Tow Law.
1836 to 1974
The county was aligned to other historic counties of England from 1836 until 1889; multiple acts were passed removing exclaves, splitting the county from the bishopric and reforming its structure.
The ceremonial county and administrative county were created under the Local Government Act 1888 in 1889. Darlington, Gateshead, West Hartlepool (later known as Hartlepool), South Shields and Sunderland became county boroughs during the administrative counties years of administrating; each remained in the ceremonial county while outside of the administrative county.
The ceremonial county remained under the same borders as the historic county until 1968 when the County Borough of Teesside formed. Ceremonial duties of the borough (which were made up of areas from two counties) were in the North Riding of Yorkshire ceremonial county.
1974 to present
From the 1974 until 1996, the ceremonial county was split into eight districts:
Chester-le-Street, including the Lumley, Pelton and Sacriston areas
Derwentside, including Consett and Stanley
City of Durham, including Durham and the surrounding areas
Easington, including Seaham and Peterlee
Borough of Sedgefield, including Spennymoor, Sedgefield and Newton Aycliffe
Teesdale, including Barnard Castle and the villages of Teesdale
Wear Valley, including Bishop Auckland, Crook, Willington, Hunwick, and the villages along Weardale
Borough of Darlington, Darlington along with nearby villages around the town.
A non-metropolitan county replaced the administrative county. The boundaries only deviated from the ceremonial boundaries after 1995 when the Darlington Borough became a unitary authority.
On the 1 April 1996, the county of Cleveland was abolished with its boroughs of Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees (north of the River Tees) becoming a part of the ceremonial county.
The non-metropolitan county was reconstituted on 1 April 2009: the strategic services-providing Durham County Council was re-organised into a single district of the same name, merging with the seven local facility-providing districts in the non-metropolitan county and became structured as a unitary authority. It has 126 councillors. The three pre-existing unitary authorities were unaffected.
Parliament
The county boundaries used for parliamentary constituencies are those used between 1974 and 1996, consisting of the County Durham district and the Darlington Borough. This area elects seven Members of Parliament. As of the 2019 General Election, four of these MPs are Conservatives and three MPs are Labour. The rest of the ceremonial county is included in the Cleveland parliamentary constituency area.
Emergency services
The police and fire services operate according to the 1974-96 ceremonial county boundaries:
Durham Constabulary, Ron Hogg was first elected the Durham Police and Crime Commissioner for the force on 15 November 2012.
Cleveland Police
County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service, it is under supervision of a combined fire authority consisting of 25 local councillors: 21 from Durham County Council and 4 from Darlington Borough Council.
Cleveland Fire Brigade.
The North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust cover North East England and are responsible for providing ambulance services for the NHS. Northumbria Ambulance Service and County Durham Ambulance Service (following historic county borders) merged on 1 April 1999 to become the North East service. In 2005 the area was adapted to the modern North East England regional extent.
Air ambulance services are provided by the Great North Air Ambulance. The charity operates three bases, including one in Eaglecliffe.
Teesdale and Weardale Search and Mountain Rescue Team, are based at Sniperly Farm in Durham City and respond to search and rescue incidents in the county.
Demography
Population
The Office for National Statistics estimated in 2016 that the Durham County Council area had a population of 522,100, the Borough of Darlington a population of 105,600, the Borough of Hartlepool a population of 92,800, and the part of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham (the other part being in North Yorkshire) a population of 137,300. This gives the total estimated population of the ceremonial county at 857,800.
Employment
The proportion of the population working in agriculture fell from around 6% in 1851 to 1% in 1951; currently less than 1% of the population work in agriculture. There were 15,202 people employed in coal mining in 1841, rising to a peak of 157,837 in 1921.
Settlements
County Durham has a mostly rural character, especially in the west. Small population centres scatter between Durham, Crook, Bishop Auckland, Shildon, Newton Aycliffe, Sedgefield and Peterlee. These places were populated by the draw of collieries during the Industrial Revolution. The south east side of the county Between Hartlepool and Darlington form part of Teesside with settlements on the south side of the river. While the north east part of the county (on the border with Tyne and Wear) forms part of Tyneside and Wearside.
Changes
Former non-metropolitan county
At the 2001 Census, Easington and Derwentside districts had the highest proportion (around 99%) in the county council area of resident population who were born in the UK. 13.2% of the county council area's residents rate their health as not good, the highest proportion in England.
96.6% of County Durham's residents are White British, with other white groups making up a further 1.6% of the population. Around 77% of the county's population are Christian whilst 22% have no religion, and around 1% come from other religious communities. These figures exclude around 6% of the population who did not wish to state their religion.
As at 2001, Chester-le-Street district has the lowest number of available jobs per working-age resident (0.38%).
1900s
Since the Local Government Act 1972 historic county boundaries now lie within other administrative counties. These include:
1800s
Throughout the 1800s exclaves, of the historic county, each were given back to surrounding shires and lands they were closer associated with:
Economy
Economic output
The chart and table summarise unadjusted gross value added (GVA) in millions of pounds sterling for County Durham across 3 industries at current basic prices from 1995 to 2004.
Businesses
Phileas Fogg snacks are made by the United Biscuits subsidiary KP Snacks in Consett on the Number One Industrial Estate. Nearby CAV Aerospace make ice protection systems for aircraft. Thomas Swan, an international chemicals company, is in Crookhall. The Explorer Group, who own Elddis, make caravans at Delves. The LG Philips Displays cathode ray tube factory at Carrville, Durham was the second largest employer in the north east after Nissan, before the company went bankrupt in 2006. Northumbrian Water is in Pity Me, Framwellgate Moor. Esh Group is a large construction company based south of Durham in Bowburn. Schmitz Cargobull UK is the UK's biggest trailer manufacturer, notably for refrigerated trailers, and is based at Harelaw near the Pontop Pike mast.
Black & Decker and Electrolux had large factories at Spennymoor, but moved production overseas. Thorn Lighting of the Zumtobel Lighting Group are on the Green Lane Industrial Estate at Spennymoor. Since 2007 RF Micro Devices (RFMD) have made electronic wafers on the Heighington Lane Business Park at Newton Aycliffe, on the site formerly owned by Fujitsu. Slightly to the north, TKA Tallent make automotive axles and chassis components. Husqvarna-Flymo, formerly owned by Electrolux, are on the Aycliffe Industrial Estate, where the world's first hover mower was built in 1965. In West Auckland, Potters Europe make road reflectors. GlaxoSmithKline has a site at Barnard Castle that makes pharmaceuticals.
NSK make ball bearings on the North West Industrial Estate at Peterlee, and GWA International subsidiary Gliderol UK build garage doors. Mecaplast Group UK produce automotive components on the Low Hills Industrial Estate in Easington Village near Peterlee. Reckitt Benckiser make cough syrup and indigestion remedies at Shotton, near Peterlee until 2014. Walkers Crisps have a site north of Peterlee.
Culture
Mining and heavy industry
A substantial number of colliery villages were built throughout the county in the nineteenth century to house the growing workforce, which included large numbers of migrant workers from the rest of the UK. Sometimes the migrants were brought in to augment the local workforce but, in other cases, they were brought in as strike breakers, or "blacklegs". Tens of thousands of people migrated to County Durham from Cornwall (partly due to their previous experience of tin mining) between 1815 and the outbreak of the First World War, so much so that the miners' cottages in east Durham called "Greenhill" were also known locally as "Cornwall", and Easington Colliery still has a Cornish Street. Other migrants included people from Northumberland, Cumberland, South Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Coal mining had a profound effect on trade unionism, public health and housing, as well as creating a related culture, language, folklore and sense of identity that still survives today.
The migrants also were employed in the railway, ship building, iron, steel and roadworking industries, and the pattern of migration continued, to a lesser extent, up until the 1950s and 1960s. Gateshead was once home to the fourth-largest Irish settlement in England, Consett's population was 22% Irish and significant numbers of Irish people moved to Sunderland, resulting in the city hosting numerous events on St. Patrick's Day due to the Irish heritage.
The culture of coal mining found expression in the Durham Miners' Gala, which was first held in 1871, developed around the culture of trade unionism. Coal mining continued to decline and pits closed. The UK miners' strike of 1984/5 caused many miners across the county to strike. Today no deep-coal mines exist in the county and numbers attending the Miners' Gala decreased over the period between the end of the strike and the 21st century. However recent years have seen numbers significantly grow, and more banners return to the Gala each year as former colliery communities restore or replicate former banners to march at the Gala parade.
Art
In 1930, the Spennymoor Settlement (otherwise known as the Pitman's Academy) opened. The settlement, initially funded by the Pilgrim Trust, aimed to encourage people to be neighbourly and participate in voluntary social service. The settlement operated during the Great Depression, when unemployment was widespread and economic deprivation rife; Spennymoor was economically underprivileged. The settlement provided educational and social work, as well as hope; this included providing unemployed miners with on outlet for their creativity, a poor person's lawyer service, the town's first library and the Everyman Theatre. The output included paintings, sewing, socially-significant plays, woodwork and sculptures. Several members went on to win adult scholarships at Oxford University when such a route would normally be closed to the underprivileged. Former members include artists Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness, writer Sid Chaplin OBE and journalist Arnold Hadwin OBE. The Spennymoor Settlement at its home in the Everyman Theatre (Grade 2 listed) is still operating, administered by the current trustees, offering community events and activities, including Youth Theatre Group, an Art Group and various classes, as well as offering community accommodation facilities.
Several Durham miners have been able to turn their former mining careers into careers in art. For example, Tom Lamb, as well as the aforementioned Tom McGuinness and Norman Cornish. Their artworks depict scenes of life underground, from the streets in which they lived and of the people they loved; through them, we can see, understand and experience the mining culture of County Durham.
In 2017, The Mining Art Gallery opened in Bishop Auckland in a building that was once a bank. Part of the Auckland Project, the gallery includes the work of artists from within County Durham and beyond, including such other North-Eastern mining artists as Robert Olley, as well as contributions from outside the region. It features three permanent areas and a temporary exhibition area; the gallery's Gemini Collection includes 420 pieces of mining art.
Much of the artwork was donated, by Dr Robert McManners and Gillian Wales, for example.
In 2019, 100 years after his birth, a permanent tribute to the work of the artist Norman Stansfield Cornish MBE was opened within the Town Hall, and a Cornish Trail around the town was established to include areas of the town depicted in Cornish's artwork.
Music
As with neighbouring Northumberland, County Durham has a rich heritage of Northumbrian music, dating back from the Northumbrian Golden Age of the 7th and 8th centuries. Bede made references to harp-playing, and abundant archeological evidence has been found of wooden flutes, bone flutes, panpipes, wooden drums and lyres (a six-string form of harp). North-East England has a distinctive folk music style that has drawn from many other regions, including southern Scotland, Ireland and the rest of northern England, that has endured stably since the 18th century. Instruments played include, in common with most folk music styles, stringed instruments such as the guitar and fiddle, but also the Northumbrian smallpipe, which is played and promoted by people including the Northumbrian Pipers' Society throughout the North East, including County Durham, with the society having an active group in Sedgefield. Contemporary folk musicians include Jez Lowe and Ged Foley.
In 2018, The Arts Council funded the Stories of Sanctuary project in the city of Durham. The project aims to assist people living in the city to share their stories about seeking sanctuary in the North East through photography, stories, poetry and music. The art is based on a history of sanctuary in Durham, from St Cuthbert's exile, through to the miners' strike of 1984, and to refugees escaping civil war in the Middle East. The music produced as part of the project includes contributions from singer-songwriter Sam Slatcher and viola player Raghad Haddad from the National Syrian Orchestra.
Other notable performers/songwriters who were born or raised in the county include Paddy McAloon, Eric Boswell, Jeremy Spencer, Alan Clark, Martin Brammer, Robert Blamire, Thomas Allen, Zoe Birkett, John O'Neill, Karen Harding and Courtney Hadwin.
Flag
County Durham has its own flag, registered with the Flag Institute on 21 November 2013.
Katie, Holly and James Moffatt designed the flag and entered their design into a competition launched by campaigner Andy Strangeway, who spoke of the flag as "free, public symbol for all to use, especially on 20th March each year, which is not only County Durham Day but also St Cuthbert’s birthday.” [sic - 20th March is actually the date of Cuthbert's death]
The flag consists of St Cuthbert's cross counterchanged with the county's blue and gold colours.
Education
University
Durham University is based in Durham city and is sometimes held to be the third oldest university in England. Teesside University has a campus in Darlington.
Colleges
Bede Sixth Form College, Billingham
Bishop Auckland College
Carmel College Sixth Form, Darlington
Darlington College
Derwentside College, Lanchester
Durham Sixth Form Centre, Durham
East Durham College, Durham and Peterlee
Hartlepool College of Further Education
Hartlepool Sixth Form College
New College Durham, Durham
Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, Darlington
Stockton Sixth Form College
Places of interest
Gallery
See also
List of Lord Lieutenants of Durham
List of Deputy Lieutenants of Durham
Custos Rotulorum of Durham – Keepers of the Rolls
List of High Sheriffs of Durham
County Durham (UK Parliament constituency) – Historical list of MPs for County Durham constituency
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
County Durham Lieutenancy
Visit County Durham
Visit North East England
Images of County Durham at the Historic England Archive
County Durham
Ceremonial counties of England
Counties of England established in antiquity
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilip%20Kumar
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Dilip Kumar
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Dilip Kumar (born Mohammed Yusuf Khan; 11 December 1922 – 7 July 2021) was an Indian actor who worked in Hindi cinema. Credited with pioneering method acting in cinema, he dominated the Indian movie scene from the late 1940s throughout the 1960s, being referred to as Abhinay Samrat (Hindi for "Emperor of Acting") by the audience. Kumar holds the record for most wins for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor (eight, which was later equalled by Shah Rukh Khan) and was also the inaugural recipient of the award. He is also referred to as The First Khan of Hindi Cinema. He holds the most dominant box-office record for a star (male or female) in Hindi cinema with over 80% box-office successes and several long-standing gross records.
In a career spanning over five decades, Kumar worked in less than 60 films in a variety of roles. He debuted as an actor in the film Jwar Bhata (1944), produced by Bombay Talkies. Following a series of unsuccessful ventures, he had his first box office hit in Jugnu (1947). Kumar found further success with the romantic drama (1949), the swashbuckling Aan (1952), the social drama Daag (1952), the actioner Insaniyat (1955), the comical Azaad (1955), the romantic social (1957), the noir mystery Madhumati (1958), the social drama Paigham (1959), the action adventure Kohinoor (1960), the epic historical Mughal-E-Azam (1960), the crime drama Gunga Jumna (1961), and the comedy drama Ram Aur Shyam (1967). All three , Aan and briefly became the highest-grossing Indian films up to that point, a feat later achieved by Mughal-e-Azam, which sustained the record for 15 years.
The 1970s saw Kumar's career take a downturn, marked by three consecutive commercial failures, namely Dastaan (1972), Sagina (1974) and Bairaag (1976). Post-1976, he went on a five-year hiatus from film performances and returned with the revolutionary drama Kranti, which was the highest-grossing Indian film of the year. He continued to play leading roles in films such as Vidhaata (1982), Shakti (1982), Mashaal (1984), Karma (1986), and Saudagar (1991). His last on-screen appearance was in the commercially unsuccessful Qila (1998), which saw him in a dual role. Kumar later served as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's parliament, from 2000 to 2006.
Kumar's personal life was the subject of much media attention, however, he himself had largely avoided media limelight and endorsements. He was in a long-term relationship with actress and frequent co-star Madhubala that ended after the Naya Daur court case in 1957. He married actress Saira Banu in 1966 and resided in Bandra, a suburb of Mumbai, until his death in 2021. For his contributions to film, the Government of India awarded him with the Padma Bhushan in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015, the country's third and second-highest civilian awards respectively. He was also awarded India's highest accolade in the field of cinema, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994. In 1998, the Government of Pakistan conferred Kumar with Nishan-e-Imtiaz, their highest civilian decoration, making him the only Indian to have received the honour. The house that Kumar grew up in, located in Peshawar, was declared a national heritage monument in 2014 by the Pakistani government.
Early life
Dilip Kumar was born as Mohammad Yusuf Khan on 11 December 1922, into a Hindko-speaking Hindkowan Awan Muslim family at his family home in the Qissa Khawani Bazaar neighbourhood of Peshawar, a city in the North-West Frontier Province of British India. He was one of the twelve children of Lala Ghulam Sarwar Ali Khan (1890-1950) and his wife Ayesha Begum (1897-1948). His father was a fruit merchant.
Khan was schooled at the Barnes School in Deolali (now in Maharashtra), where his father owned orchards. He grew up in the same neighbourhood in Peshawar as Raj Kapoor, his childhood friend, and later his colleague in the film industry. In 1940, he moved to Pune and set up a dry fruit supply shop and a canteen. Despite hailing from Peshawar, Khan's family decided to remain in Bombay following the Partition of the India in 1947.
Khan never acted under his birth name, debuting in Jwar Bhata in 1944 under the stage name Dilip Kumar. In his autobiography, Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow, he wrote that the name was a suggestion from Devika Rani, who was one of the producers on Jwar Bhata. In an interview in 1970, he said that he adopted this name out of fear of his father, who never approved of his acting career because of the general poor image of cinema back then.
Career
1940s: First film roles and initial success
Kumar's first film was Jwar Bhata in 1944, which went unnoticed. After two more unsuccessful films, it was his fourth film Jugnu (1947), in which he starred alongside Noor Jehan, that became his first major hit at the box office. His next major hits were the 1948 films Shaheed and Mela. Both Jugnu and Shaheed were the highest grossing Hindi films of their respective year of release.
He got his breakthrough role as an actor in 1949 with Mehboob Khan's , in which he starred alongside Raj Kapoor and Nargis. At the time of its release, was the highest-grossing Indian film ever, until its record was broken by Kapoor's Barsaat that same year. Shabnam was another box office hit that was also released in 1949.
1950s: Breakthrough years
The 1950s was Kumar's most successful and prolific decade with him playing leading roles in several box office hits such as Jogan (1950), Babul (1950), Deedar (1951), Tarana (1951), Daag (1952), Aan (1952), Uran Khatola (1955), Insaniyat (1955), Devdas (1955), (1957), Yahudi (1958), Madhumati (1958) and Paigham (1959).
He formed popular on-screen pairings with many of the top actresses at the time including Vyjayanthimala, Madhubala, Nargis, Nimmi, Meena Kumari and Kamini Kaushal.
Together with fellow contemporaries Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, he dominated the 1950s which is considered a part of the golden era of Hindi cinema. Though the three did not appear in any one film together, Kumar did appear with Raj Kapoor in (1949) and Dev Anand in Insaniyat (1955).
Several of his films established his screen image as the "Tragedy King". Kumar briefly suffered from depression due to portraying many tragic roles and on the advice of his psychiatrist, he also took on light-hearted roles. Mehboob Khan's big-budget 1952 swashbuckling musical Aan featured him in one of his first lighter roles and marked his first film to be shot in technicolor. Aan was the first Indian film to have a wide release across Europe with a lavish premiere in London. Aan was the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time, domestically and overseas. He had further success with lighter roles as a thief in the hit comedy Azaad (1955). In 1957, he appeared in the third segment of the anthology film Musafir, which was the directorial debut of Hrishikesh Mukherjee. He also did playback singing for a song in the film with Lata Mangeshkar.
By this time, he had developed his distinct, signature style of understated acting of mumbling his dialogues while giving myriad expressions and meanings to lines that his characters uttered.
He was the first actor to win the Filmfare Best Actor Award (for Daag) and went on to win it a further seven times. 9 of his 21 films in the 1950s were ranked in the Top 30 highest-grossing films of the decade.
In the 1950s, Kumar became the first Indian actor to charge per film.
1960s: Mughal-e-Azam and venture into production
In 1960, he portrayed Prince Salim in K. Asif's big-budget epic historical film Mughal-e-Azam, which was the highest-grossing film in Indian film history for 15 years until it was surpassed by the 1975 film Sholay.
The film was in the making for over a decade and was originally shot in black and white, with only two songs and the climax scenes shot in colour. 44 years after its original release, it was fully colourised and theatrically re-released in 2004 and was once again a box office success. That same year he played another lighter role in the musical comedy Kohinoor which was also among the highest grossers of the year.
In 1961, Kumar wrote, produced, and starred in the dacoit drama Ganga Jamuna opposite his brother Nasir Khan, playing the title role. Kumar produced the film under his production company Citizens Films and despite it being the highest-grossing film of the year, it would be the only film he produced. Though the directing credit went to the veteran director Nitin Bose, it was rumoured that Kumar had ghost directed the film as well as being involved in every aspect of its production. He chose the shade of saree that his co-star Vyjayanthimala would wear in every scene. The film received the National Film Award for Second Best Feature Film in Hindi, the Paul Revere Silver Bowl at the Boston International Film Festival, the Special Honour Diploma from the Czechoslovak Academy of Arts in Prague, and the Special Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
In 1962, British director David Lean offered him the role of "Sherif Ali" in his film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), but Kumar declined to perform in the movie. The role eventually went to Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor. Kumar commented in his much later released autobiography, "he thought Omar Sharif had played the role far better than he himself could have". Kumar was also being considered for a leading role opposite Elizabeth Taylor in a film that Lean was working on called Taj Mahal, before the project was cancelled.
After a three-year hiatus, he returned with his next film Leader (1964) which underperformed at the box office and ended up being only an average grosser. Kumar was also credited with writing the story of this film. His next film Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), based on Wuthering Heights was Kumar's first box office failure in more than a decade. It was also rumoured that he had ghost directed the film but the final credit was given to Abdul Rashid Kardar. In 1967, Kumar played a dual role of twins separated at birth in the hit film Ram Aur Shyam. In 1968, he starred alongside Manoj Kumar in Aadmi which was an average grosser at the box office. That same year, he starred in Sunghursh which was also a box office failure.
1970s: Career slump
In 1970, Kumar played the title role in Gopi which marked his first pairing with his wife Saira Banu and was a box office success. That same year, he acted opposite Banu again in the Bengali language film Sagina Mahato. This was his only appearance in a Bengali film. In 1972, he once again played dual roles as twin brothers in Dastaan which was a box office flop and began a decline in Kumar's career as a leading man. A Hindi remake of Sagina Mahato, simply titled Sagina was made in 1974 with both Kumar and Banu reprising their roles which also failed to do well at the box office. In 1976, he played triple roles as a father and twin sons in Bairaag. Though his performance in triple roles was acclaimed, the film was his third consecutive failure at the box office. He personally regarded M. G. Ramachandran's performance in Enga Veettu Pillai better than his role in Ram Aur Shyam. He regards his performance in Bairaag much higher than that of Ram Aur Shyam. The rise of actors like Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar led to Kumar losing film offers from 1970 to 1980. He took a five-year hiatus from films from 1976 to 1981.
1980s: Return to success
In 1981, he returned to films, reinventing himself in elderly character roles. His comeback film was the star-studded historical epic Kranti which was the biggest hit of the year. Appearing alongside an ensemble cast including Manoj Kumar, Shashi Kapoor, Hema Malini and Shatrughan Sinha, he played the title role as revolutionary fighting for India's independence from British rule. In the post-Kranti phase, Kumar reinvented himself to play the "Angry Old Man" to great effect in a series of films like Vidhaata (1982), Shakti (1982), Duniya (1984), etc. In 1982, he collaborated with the director Subhash Ghai for the first time with Vidhaata, in which he starred alongside Sanjay Dutt, Sanjeev Kumar and Shammi Kapoor. Vidhaata was the highest-grossing film of the year. Later that year he starred alongside Amitabh Bachchan in Ramesh Sippy's Shakti, which was an average grosser at the box office, but won him critical acclaim and his eighth and final Filmfare Award for Best Actor. In 1984, he starred in Yash Chopra's social crime drama Mashaal opposite Anil Kapoor, which failed at the box office, but his performance was critically acclaimed. He also appeared alongside Rishi Kapoor in Duniya (1984) and Jeetendra in Dharm Adhikari (1986).
His second collaboration with Subhash Ghai came with the 1986 ensemble action film Karma. Karma marked the first film which paired him opposite fellow veteran actress Nutan, although they were paired in an incomplete and unreleased film in the 1950s titled Shikwa. He acted opposite Nutan again in the 1989 action film Kanoon Apna Apna which also reunited him with Sanjay Dutt.
1990s: Directorial debut and final works
In 1990, he co-starred with Govinda in the action thriller Izzatdaar. In 1991, Kumar starred alongside fellow veteran actor Raaj Kumar in Saudagar, his third and last film with director Subhash Ghai. This was his second film with Raaj Kumar after 1959's Paigham. Saudagar was to be Kumar's penultimate film and last box office success. In 1994, he won the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the industry.
In 1991, producer Sudhakar Bokade who had previously worked with Kumar in Izzatdaar announced a film titled Kalinga which would officially mark Kumar's directorial debut after he had allegedly previously ghost-directed Ganga Jamuna (1961) and Dil Diya Dard Liya (1967). Kumar was also set to star in the title role with the cast including Raj Babbar, Raj Kiran, Amitoj Mann and Meenakshi Seshadri. After being delayed for several years Kalinga was eventually shelved in 1996 with 70% filming completed.
In 1998, Kumar made his last film appearance in the box office flop Qila, where he played dual roles as an evil landowner who is murdered and as his twin brother who tries to solve the mystery of his death.
2000s–2021: Shelved projects and political career
In 2001, Kumar was set to appear in a film titled Asar – The Impact alongside Ajay Devgan and Priyanka Chopra, which was shelved due to Kumar's declining health. He was also set to appear in Subhash Ghai's war film Mother Land, alongside Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, but this film was shelved after Khan decided to leave the project.
His classic films Mughal-e-Azam and were fully colourised and re-released in cinemas in 2004 and 2008 respectively. An unreleased film he had shot and completed titled Aag Ka Dariya was set for a theatrical release in 2013 but has not been released to date.
Kumar was a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's parliament, from 2000 to 2006. He was nominated by the Indian National Congress to represent Maharashtra. Kumar utilised a significant portion of his MPLADS fund towards the construction and improvement of the Bandstand Promenade and the gardens at Bandra Fort at Lands End in Bandra.
Personal life
Kumar and Madhubala were drawn to each other during the shooting of Tarana (1951). They remained in a relationship for seven years until the Naya Daur court case, during which Kumar testified against Madhubala and her father, ending their relationship. They never worked together again after Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Kumar later expressed in his autobiography, "Was I in love with Madhubala as the newspapers and magazines reported at that time? As an answer to this oft-repeated question straight from the horse's mouth, I must admit that I was attracted to her both as a fine co-star and as a person who had some of the attributes I hoped to find in a woman at that age and time...She, as I said earlier, was very sprightly and vivacious and, as such, she could draw me out of my shyness and reticence effortlessly." However, Kumar shared in his biography that contrary to popular notion, Madhubala's father Ataullah Khan wasn't opposed to their match but instead, wanted to turn this marriage into a business venture which did not land well with him.
In the late 1950s, Vyjayanthimala was linked by gossip magazines to Kumar, who has acted with her the most compared to any other actress, which resulted in great on-screen chemistry between them. While working for his home production Gunga Jumna (1961), Kumar reportedly handpicked the shade of sari that Vyjayanthimala would wear in every scene.
In 1966, Kumar married actress Saira Banu, who was 22 years younger than him. He later married Hyderabad socialite Asma Rahman, taking her as a second wife in 1981. That marriage ended in January 1983. Banu and he lived in Bandra. They did not have any children. In his autobiography, Dilip Kumar: The Substance and the Shadow, he revealed that Banu had conceived in 1972, but developed complications in the pregnancy, leading to a miscarriage. Following this, they did not try to have children again, believing it to be God's will.
Kumar was fluent in his native Hindko as well as Urdu, Hindi, Pashto, Punjabi, Marathi, English, Bengali, Gujarati, Persian, and the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. He was also a great music enthusiast and also learnt how to play the sitar for a film. He loved cricket and played it often. He led a cricket team against Raj Kapoor in a friendly cricket match held for charity. Both growing up in Peshawar and in Bombay, Dilip Kumar and his family had a close relationship with the Kapoor family.
His younger brother Nasir Khan (1924–1974) was also a noted film actor. Two of his younger brothers named Aslam Khan (1932 - 2020) and Ehsan Khan (1930 - 2020) died after testing positive for COVID-19 in 2020, within a space of two weeks.
Death
Kumar died at Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai, on 7 July 2021 at 7:30 am, aged 98, after a prolonged illness. He had been suffering from several age-related issues and was diagnosed with pleural effusion. The Government of Maharashtra approved his burial with state honours under COVID-19 restrictions at the Juhu Muslim Cemetery that same day.
Expressing their condolences, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in a tweet that Kumar would be remembered as a cinematic legend, while the President, Ram Nath Kovind, stated that "he was loved across the subcontinent". The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, also expressed condolences for his death and remembered his efforts in raising funds for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital in a tweet. The former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, also expressed condolences to Kumar and his family.
Artistry and legacy
Kumar is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema, and cinema in general. Kumar was a pioneer of method acting, predating Hollywood method actors such as Marlon Brando. He inspired many great Indian cinema actors from contemporaries like Balraj Sahni to succeeding generations of artists, including Manoj Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kamal Haasan, Mammootty, Aamir Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Nawazuddin Siddiqui among others. Kumar, who pioneered his own form of method acting without any acting school experience, was described as "the ultimate method actor" by renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray, despite not having worked with him.
Kumar was popularly referred to as "Abhinay Samrat" (Hindi for "Emperor of Acting") by the audience. He was also dubbed in the media as "Tragedy King" because of the acclaimed dramatic roles he took early in his career and is also retrospectively known as "The First Khan" of Bollywood. Other than these, of recent, he is often referred in the media as "The Kohinoor of Indian cinema". Kumar was the biggest Indian star of the 1950s and 1960s era, a national icon and the country's highest paid actor during this period. His prolific period as a leading artist coincides with what retrospectively came to be known as the "Golden Age of Hindi cinema", with him playing a key role in its legacy. Film historian Maithili Rao states, "He towered like a mountain in the middle of Hindi film history, obscuring his predecessors and dwarfing his contemporaries."
He is retrospectively recognised as "The First Superstar of Indian cinema". He became one of the earliest and most revered stars in the history of Indian cinema having legions of fans across the subcontinent and among the South Asian diaspora worldwide. In 2013, on the occasion of the centenary of Indian cinema, he was declared the "Biggest superstar of all time" by Filmfare in its poll of the same title.
As of 2020, he is by far, the most successful Bollywood star of all time with over 80% box-office successes and numerous gross records. Kumar appeared in Box Office Indias "Top Actors" list nineteen times from 1947 to 1965. He topped the list sixteen times (1948-1963) Trade analysts have acknowledged that many of his films were commercially successful despite their heavy theme and non-commercial nature because the masses gathered in cinemas across India only to see him act, a unique feat as anything such hasn't happened with any other actor. This had been particularly apparent in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a period in which he got the title of "Tragedy King" in media outlets. In the review of the last film of his initial phase, the 1976 musical Bairaag, The Hindu, remarked, "For more than 25 years Dilip Kumar was the king at the box office. His name was almost a guarantee of success not only at the time of the release of the film but even in re-runs his films made more money than fresh releases of many of his contemporaries." Renowned director, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, called him "a phenomenon at the time", stating all his films had the hype, "he was absolutely a one-man industry".
In the second phase of his career, which saw him playing mature roles that were the main leads of his films, often driving them to immense success, Box Office India notes, "This was the part of his illustrious career which sets him apart from all other actors as no one else has managed to such success as a character artist." Renowned actor Irrfan Khan, remarked, "Till date, no other actor has had that kind of an impact on people's hearts. The kind of combination he brought along – of an actor and a star – was never seen before him. It started with him, and ended with him. His career, his working style, his personal lifestyle or his choice of films, nothing sets a wrong example. He is a true legend. These days, the word legend is used loosely, but I strongly believe that he is the only one who deserves to be called the legend".
Accolades
Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand together formed "the golden trio" of Indian cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, with the camaraderie between the three contemporary actors, all renowned for their own style. Kumar was the biggest Indian star of this era, a national icon, holding the status of a matinée idol. He was the country's highest-paid actor during this period.
From the independence of India in 1947 to the late 2010s, Kumar held the record of performing in the highest number of highest-grossing films of the year (9 films), until his record was broken by Salman Khan, who performed in 10 such films. However, as per new reports from Box Office India, highest grossing Indian film in 1991 was Kumar's Saudagar (1991) instead of Khan's Saajan (1991), thus perhaps re-establishing his record.
He is the only actor in India to have delivered at least one bonafide "hit" at the box office for 15 years straight, from 1947 to 1961. He also did not give a single flop in a period of 15 years from 1952 to 1965. According to many sources, he is the only Indian actor to have more than one film (3 or 4) among the top 10 highest-grossing films of Indian cinema when adjusted for ticket-price inflation. These films are (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Gunga Jumna (1961), and Kranti (1981).
Over his career, Kumar received eight Filmfare Awards for Best Actor (with 19 total nominations), the most of any actor (and was also its inaugural recipient), and a Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award (1993). He holds the record for most consecutive Filmfare award for Best Actor wins. He also received a Special Recognition Filmfare Award at the 50th Filmfare Awards for being one of the first recipients of Filmfare Awards along with Lata Mangeshkar and Naushad Ali.
Kumar was appointed Sheriff of Mumbai (an honorary position) in 1980. The Government of India honoured Kumar with the Padma Bhushan in 1991, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1994 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2015. The Government of Andhra Pradesh honoured Kumar with NTR National Award in 1997. He was honoured with CNN-IBN's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. The Government of Madhya Pradesh honoured Kumar with Rashtriya Kishore Kumar Samman in 2015.
The Government of Pakistan conferred Kumar with the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, the highest civilian award in Pakistan, in 1998. The ruling political party of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, India, had objected to this award and questioned Kumar's patriotism. However, in 1999, in consultation with the then Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Kumar retained the award. Vajpayee declared, "There is no doubt about film star Dilip Kumar's patriotism and commitment to the nation." Kumar later said in his autobiography that returning it "could have only soured relations further and produced bad vibes between India and Pakistan." Many believe this incident prolonged his wait for Bharat Ratna.
The House of Dilip Kumar in Peshawar, Pakistan, was declared a national heritage monument in 2014 by the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Kumar was voted the "Greatest Indian Actor of All Time" in a Rediff Readers poll in 2011. He holds the Guinness World Record for having received the most awards by an Indian actor. He was honoured by the World Book of Records on his 97th birthday for his "matchless contribution to Indian cinema and promoting social causes".
References
External links
1922 births
2021 deaths
Indian male film actors
Film directors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian male voice actors
Recipients of Nishan-e-Imtiaz
Hindi-language film directors
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Sheriffs of Mumbai
Kumar Dilip
Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients
Indian actor-politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
People from Peshawar
20th-century Indian male actors
Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan in arts
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in arts
Filmfare Awards winners
Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Method actors
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%20Clement%20Danes
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St Clement Danes
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St Clement Danes is an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London. It is situated outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Although the first church on the site was reputedly founded in the 9th century by the Danes, the current building was completed in 1682 by Sir Christopher Wren. Wren's building was gutted by Luftwaffe bombing raids during the Blitz and not restored until 1958, when it was adapted to its current function as the central church of the Royal Air Force.
The church is sometimes claimed to be the one featured in the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons" and the bells do indeed play that tune every day at 9 am, noon, 3pm and 6pm—as reported in 1940 the church's playing of the tune was interrupted during World War II due to Nazi bombing. However, St Clement's Eastcheap, in the City of London, also claims to be the church from the rhyme. St Clement Danes is known as one of the two 'Island Churches', the other being St Mary-le-Strand.
History
Connection to the Danes
There are several possible theories as to the connection between the Danes and the origins of the church. A popular theory is that in the 9th century, the Danes colonized the village of Aldwych on the river between the City of London and the future site of Westminster. This was during the Danelaw and London was on the dividing line between the English and the Danes. The Danes founded a church at Aldwych, hence the final part of its name (in Latin it was known as Ecclesia Clementes Danorum). However; Aldwych is an English name and doesn't seem to have any Danish influence. An alternative view is that after Alfred the Great had driven the Danes out of the City of London and they had been required to accept Christianity, Alfred stipulated the building of the church. In either case, being a seafaring people, the Danes named the church they built after St Clement, patron saint of mariners.
Other possible ideas are that in the 11th century after Siward, Earl of Northumbria, killed the Dane Tosti, Earl of Huntingdon, and his men, the deceased were buried in a field near London and a memorial church was subsequently built to honour the memory of the Danes. Also possible is that the Danish connection was reinforced by a massacre recorded in the Jómsvíkinga saga when a group of unarmed Danes who had gathered for a church service were killed. The 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury wrote that the Danes burnt the church on the site of St Clement Danes before they were later slain in the vicinity. Another possible explanation for the name is that, as King Harold I "Harefoot" is recorded as having been buried in the church in March 1040, the church acquired its name on account of Harold's Danish connections.
Medieval church
The church was first rebuilt by William the Conqueror, and then again later in the Middle Ages.
A new chancel was built over part of the churchyard in 1608, at a cost of more than £1,000, and various repairs and improvements to the tower and other parts of the church cost £496 in 1618.
Shortly after the Great Fire of 1666, further repairs to the steeple were attempted, but these were found impractical, and the whole tower was rebuilt from the foundations. Work was completed in 1669. Soon afterwards it was decided that the rest of the church was in such a poor state that it too should be completely rebuilt. Wren employed Edward Pierce (with whom he worked on many churches) to create the ornate interior.
Seventeenth-century rebuilding
St Clement's was rebuilt between 1680 and 1682 to a design by Sir Christopher Wren, incorporating the existing tower which was reclad. The new church was constructed from Portland Stone, with an apse at the east end.
A steeple was added to the tower in 1719 by James Gibbs.
The interior has galleries on three sides supported by square pillars, continued above gallery level as Corinthian columns, supporting, in turn, a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Wren used the same scheme again at St James's Church, Piccadilly, begun two years later. Above the galleries, each bay has a cross vault, allowing the building to be lit from large round-headed windows on the upper level.
Later history
William Webb Ellis, often credited with the invention of Rugby football in 1823, was once rector of the church and is commemorated by a memorial tablet.
In 1844, St. Clement Danes School was constructed on land on Houghton Road, Holborn which the churchwardens had purchased in 1552. It opened in 1862 and remained there until 1928, then moved to Shepherd's Bush until 1975, when it was finally re-established as a comprehensive school in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire.
The church was almost destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing raids during the Blitz on 10 May 1941. The outer walls, the tower and Gibbs's steeple survived the raids, but the interior was gutted by fire. As a result of the blaze, the church's ten bells fell to the ground. Subsequently, they were placed in storage and were recast after the war.
As the Central Church of the Royal Air Force
Following an appeal for funds by the Royal Air Force, the church was completely restored under the supervision of Sam Lloyd. In 1958, St Clement Danes Church was reconsecrated in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and his Royal Highness Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh as the Central Church of the Royal Air Force.
As part of the rebuilding, the following inscription was added under the restored Royal coat of arms:
which may be translated as: "Christopher Wren built it 1672. The thunderbolts of aerial warfare destroyed it 1941. The Royal Air Force restored it 1958." [Error in the inscription: MDCLXXII should be MDCLXXXII, i.e. 1682 not 1672]
Current worship and services
The church is known for its excellent Anglican choral tradition of Eucharist and Matins (on Sundays, at 1100) At its roots it is Anglican and is also known for its ecumenical representation of the RAF Chaplains Branch. Services are regularly held and open to the public. Special services take place to commemorate prominent occasions of the RAF and its associated organisations. Royal Air Force Music Services provides first class musical support. The King's Colour Squadron, formerly the Queen's Colour Squadron, attends at events and ceremonies charged with the safe-keeping of the King's Colour for the Royal Air Force and other ceremonial duties at the RAF's central church.
Saint Clement is commemorated every April at St Clement Danes, a modern clementine custom/revival. The Reverend William Pennington-Bickford initiated the service in 1919 to celebrate the restoration of the famous church bells and carillon, which he'd had altered to ring out the popular nursery rhyme. This special service for children ends with the distribution of oranges and lemons to the boys and girls. Formerly William Bickford, William Pennington-Bickford (died 1941) was Rector from 1910 to 1941 and he and his wife Louisa became known for their devotion to the welfare of the parish. (He had succeeded his father-in-law in the benefice.)
In 2008, the church was one of the venues where people gathered as part of the Armed Forces Day of Prayer.
In 2013 a short service was held for Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher. The coffin was then transferred to a gun carriage drawn by the King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. The cortège then continued along Fleet Street towards St Paul’s Cathedral.
On the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the RAF, celebrations took place at St Clement Danes.
Community of the Cross of Nails
The Central Church of the RAF is a member of Coventry Cathedral Community of the Cross of Nails. The three guiding principles are Healing the wounds of history, Learning to live with difference and celebrate diversity, and Building a culture of justice and peace. The Community of the Cross of Nails is guided by the words ‘Father Forgive’, and praying the Litany of Reconciliation. "The Cross of Nails is a symbol of hope and friendship in the aftermath of conflict." Archbishop Justin Welby.
The Friends of St Clement Danes
The Friends of St Clement Danes support the work and ministry of the Central Church of the Royal Air Force. The Friend’s Patron-in-Chief is Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and its Patron is Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Wigston Chief of the Air Staff
Resident Chaplains
St Clement Danes, the Central Church of the Royal Air Force is led by a Royal Air Force Chaplain appointed by the Chaplain-in-Chief. In 1958, Gerald Groves became the inaugural Resident Chaplain for the church's re-consecration in the presence of HM Queen Elizabeth II following the destruction caused by WWII.
1958–1959 Gerald Groves
1959–1960 Hugh Rees
1960–1965 Tom Ryder
1965–1969 Leonard Ashton
1969–1971 Walter Pellant
1971–1976 Thomas Thomas
1976–1979 Glyndwr Renowden
1979–1982 Dennis Clark
1982–1984 Raymond Hubble
1984–1987 Roger Kenward
1987–1989 Michael Stokes
1989–1991 William Sirr
1991–1993 Anthony Goode
1993–1995 George McAvoy
1995–1997 Peter Bishop
1997–2002 David Mackenzie
2002–2005 Christopher Long
2005–2009 Thomas Lee
2008–2010 Adrian Gatrill
2010–2022 David Osborn
2022–present Mark Perry
Directors of Music
1958–1992 Martindale Sidwell
1992–2015 Peter Long
2015–present Simon Over
Royal Air Force features
There are features throughout and outside the building commemorating people and units of the RAF.
Statues
Outside the church stand statues of two of the RAF's wartime leaders, Arthur "Bomber" Harris and Hugh Dowding, both by the sculptor Faith Winter.
The erection of the statue of Harris was controversial due to his responsibility for the bombing of Dresden and other bombing campaigns against German cities. Despite protests from Germany, including from the mayors of Dresden and Hamburg as well as some in Britain, the Bomber Harris Trust (an RAF veterans' organisation) erected a statue of him outside the RAF Church of St. Clement Danes in 1992. It was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother who looked surprised when she was jeered by protesters. The line on the statue reads "The Nation owes them all an immense debt". The statue had to be guarded by policemen day and night for some time as it was frequently sprayed with graffiti.
Memorials
The floor of the church, of Welsh slate, is inscribed with the badges of over 800 RAF commands, groups, stations, squadrons and other formations. Near the entrance door is a ring of the badges of Commonwealth air forces, surrounding the badge of the RAF.
A memorial to the Polish airmen and squadrons who fought in the defence of the United Kingdom and the liberation of Europe in the Second World War is positioned on the floor of the north aisle.
Books of Remembrance listing the names of all the RAF personnel who have died in service, as well as those American airmen based in the United Kingdom who died during the Second World War.
Near the altar are plaques listing the names of RAF, Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service, and Commonwealth personnel awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross.
Burials
King Harold Harefoot is recorded as being buried here, although there is no memorial.
There are memorials to several people associated with the RAF whose ashes are buried in St Clement Danes, including
Sir Archibald McIndoe, (1900–1960), plastic surgeon who worked for the RAF during the Second World War
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, (1890–1967)
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, (1893–1969)
Donations and artefacts
In the gallery hang the Queen's Colours and Standards of active RAF squadrons, (these Colours/Standards having been retired and replaced by newer versions), along with standards of several now disbanded squadrons plus the Royal Banner of the Royal Observer Corps, (most standards of disbanded squadrons hang in the rotunda of the RAF College Cranwell).
Pulpits, pews and chairs in the body of the church have been presented by various people, including past chiefs of the Air Staff, Sir Douglas Bader and the Guinea Pig Club. The armorial achievement of Lord Trenchard is displayed above the main entrance at the west end of the church. The lectern was a gift from the Royal Australian Air Force, the Cross from the Air Training Corps, the altar from the Dutch embassy. The church's font was donated by the Royal Norwegian Air Force, and is located in the crypt. The Paschal Candle was given by the Royal Belgian Air Force. Information on the donated organ is to be found in the next section.
The Order of the Garter Banner of MRAF Lord Portal of Hungerford was transferred from St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle to St Clement Danes following his death in 1971.
Rectors of St Clement Danes
John Diprose's history of St Clement Danes gives a list of rectors since 1325.
1540–1557† John Rixman (also Archdeacon of Cornwall)
1557–1559† Ralph Jackson
1559–1589† William Harward
1589–1602† Richard Webster (also Archdeacon of Middlesex)
1602–1617† John Layfield
1617–1634† Roger Bates
1634–1678† Richard Dukeson (sequestered in 1643, his place taken by Daniel Evans, Richard Vines, and George Masterson; Dukeson was restored in 1660)
1678–1708† Gregory Hascard (also Dean of Windsor from 1684)
1708–1719† William Forster
1720–1721 Thomas Blomer
1721–1773† Thomas Blackwell
1773–1786† John Burrows
1786–1795† George Berkeley (son of Bishop Berkeley, husband of Eliza Berkeley)
1795–1807 Henry Garrioch Vernon
1807–1843† William Gurney
1843–1855 William Webb Ellis
1855–1860 Skinner Chart Mason
1860–1869 Richard Henry Killick
1869–1879 Robert James Simpson
1879–1887 John Lindsay
1887–1889 George Sutton Flack
1889–1910† J. J. H. Septimus Pennington (surnamed Sparrow until 1886)
1910–1941† William Pennington Bickford (son-in-law of Septimus Pennington)
† Rector died in post
Organ
The earliest records of an organ are from 1690, when an organ was installed by Bernard Smith. This went through several rebuildings over the next 250 years, but was finally destroyed in the Second World War. A new organ, situated facing the altar in the gallery, was installed by the builder Harrison and Harrison in 1958. This was a gift from the United States Air Force. The case was made as a replica of the Father Smith organ previously destroyed. A specification of the organ can be found on the National Pipe Organ Register.
Organists
Anthony Young 1707–1747
Samuel Howard 1747–1782
Thomas Smart 1782–1803
John Purkis 1804–1849
Frederick Scotson Clark
Edwin Matthew Lott 1860–1864
Charles Edward Stephens 1864–1869
Edmund Barnes 1869–1882
Charles King Hall 1880–1885
F. J. Marchment
C. Borrow
D. Rayner Smith
Schools
The church established both a primary and a secondary school.
The St. Clement Danes CE Primary School (established in 1700) is located nearby on Drury Lane in Covent Garden.
A secondary school was first located in Holborn (1862–1928) near to the church, then moved to Hammersmith as a State School run by the Inner London Education Authority as 'St. Clement Danes Grammar School' (1928–1975). It then relocated to Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, initially as a Comprehensive school (1975–2011), and thereafter as an Academy as 'St Clement Danes School'.
Masonic Lodge
In 1871 a Masonic Lodge was consecrated at the request of several local Freemasons, who wanted to meet in a local Lodge instead of having to travel out of the parish. The petition was accepted by the then Grand Master, the Earl de Grey and Ripon; accordingly the St Clement Danes Lodge was formed and granted a Warrant of Constitution, along with the registration number 1351 on the register of the United Grand Lodge of England. The first meeting of the Lodge was on 4 May 1871 at the King's Head public house at 265 Strand, and the Rector of the Church, the Reverend R J Simpson, was the first Chaplain of the Lodge. The Lodge held meetings at various hotels and restaurants within the parish for many years, before amending its Constitution to allow it to meet at Freemasons' Hall, Great Queen Street, London, where it still meets today.
In fiction
The statue of Dr Samuel Johnson at the eastern end of the church land, comes to life as the character "Dictionary", in Charlie Fletcher's 2006 children's book about unLondon, Stoneheart.
The 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has the protagonist encountering a picture of the church from prior to the war – a building which he has known only as a ruin, never having been rebuilt. (The plot of the book, written in 1948, assumes a Third World War breaking out in the early 1950s, followed by a period of deep crisis and civil war in Britain and the rise of a totalitarian regime banning all religion; thus, no one in this future had any reason to rebuild the church).
Notable people
Harold Harefoot King of England died 1040 AD
Richard Puttenham, the possible author of The Arte of English Poesie and brother of George Puttenham (writer and literary critic), was buried in St Clement Danes on 2 July 1601
John Layfield, one of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible, Rector from 1602 to 1617
Thomas Otway, buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes on 16 April 1685
Pierre Radisson, French fur trader and explorer and a driving force behind the Hudson's Bay Company, was buried in the churchyard in July, 1710.
Anthony Young, organist at the church from 1707 to 1747
Charles Christian Reisen, gem-engraver, born in the parish of St Clement Danes in 1680
James Burton, the pre-eminent property developer of Georgian London, and father of the architect Decimus Burton, married in the church on 1 March 1783.
The Twinings tea family lived and did business in the parish and, consequently, many members of the Twining family were baptised in the church, including the social reformer Louisa Twining in 1820.
James Weddell, discoverer of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, was buried in the churchyard in 1834.
Katherine de Roet, daughter of a Herald, mistress and then third wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, mother of the Beauforts and ancestor of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, married Sir Hugh Swynford here in c.1366
Margaret Thatcher's funeral procession paused here, where her coffin was transferred from the hearse to a gun carriage before being taken to St Paul's Cathedral.
William Ewart Gladstone – the Gladstone Memorial stands in the plaza in front of the church.
See also
List of churches and cathedrals of London
List of Christopher Wren churches in London
References
Further reading
Reg Pellant, "St. Clement Danes: Church of the Royal Air Force", Saint Clement Danes (Royal Air Force) Appeal Fund, 1971.
Eirwen E.C. Nicholson, "The St Clement Danes Altarpiece and the Iconography of post-Revolution England" in Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (eds.), Samuel Johnson in Historical Context (Palgrave, 2002) pp. 55–77.
Richard Sharp, "The Religious and Political Character of the Parish of St Clement Danes" in Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (eds.), Samuel Johnson in Historical Context (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 44–55.
External links
RAF MOD St Clement Danes Church official website
RAF St Clement Danes official website
MOD RAF Chaplains official website
MOD RAF official website
1984 – Analysis at Gradesaver
360° panorama inside RAF St Clement Danes church
Mystery Worshipper Report at the Ship of Fools website
Christopher Wren church buildings in London
Church of England church buildings in the City of Westminster
Rebuilt churches in the United Kingdom
Grade I listed churches in the City of Westminster
Churches completed in 1682
17th-century Church of England church buildings
Clement Danes
English Baroque church buildings
Military chapels
Burial sites of the House of Knýtlinga
Diocese of London
1682 establishments in England
Anglo-Norse England
Strand, London
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB%20flash%20drive
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USB flash drive
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A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive in the US, or a memory stick in the UK & pen drive or pendrive in many countries) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since first appearing on the market in late 2000, as with virtually all other computer memory devices, storage capacities have risen while prices have dropped. , flash drives with anywhere from 8 to 256 gigabytes (GB) were frequently sold, while 512 GB and 1 terabyte (TB) units were less frequent. As of 2023, 2 TB flash drives were the largest currently in production. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of memory chip used, and are thought to physically last between 10 and 100 years under normal circumstances (shelf storage time).
Common uses of USB flash drives are for storage, supplementary back-ups, and transferring of computer files. Compared with floppy disks or CDs, they are smaller, faster, have significantly more capacity, and are more durable due to a lack of moving parts. Additionally, they are less vulnerable to electromagnetic interference than floppy disks, and are unharmed by surface scratches (unlike CDs). However, as with any flash storage, data loss from bit leaking due to prolonged lack of electrical power and the possibility of spontaneous controller failure due to poor manufacturing could make it unsuitable for long-term archiving of data. The ability to retain data is affected by the controller's firmware, internal data redundancy, and error correction algorithms.
Until about 2005, most desktop and laptop computers were supplied with floppy disk drives in addition to USB ports, but floppy disk drives became obsolete after widespread adoption of USB ports and the larger USB drive capacity compared to the "1.44 megabyte" (1440 kilobyte) 3.5-inch floppy disk.
USB flash drives use the USB mass storage device class standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and other Unix-like systems, as well as many BIOS boot ROMs. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can store more data and transfer faster than much larger optical disc drives like CD-RW or DVD-RW drives and can be read by many other systems such as the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, DVD players, automobile entertainment systems, and in a number of handheld devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, though the electronically similar SD card is better suited for those devices, due to their standardized form factor, which allows the card to be housed inside a device without protruding.
A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberized case, which can be carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. Some are equipped with an I/O indication LED that lights up or blinks upon access. The USB connector may be protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing connection with a port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist (e.g. micro-USB and USB-C ports). USB flash drives draw power from the computer via the USB connection. Some devices combine the functionality of a portable media player with USB flash storage; they require a battery only when used to play music on the go.
History
The basis for USB flash drives is flash memory, a type of floating-gate semiconductor memory invented by Fujio Masuoka in the early 1980s. Flash memory uses floating-gate MOSFET transistors as memory cells.
Multiple individuals have staked a claim to having invented the USB flash drive. On April 5, 1999, Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan of M-Systems, an Israeli company, filed a patent application entitled "Architecture for a Universal Serial Bus-Based PC Flash Disk". The patent was subsequently granted on November 14, 2000 and these individuals have often been recognized as the inventors of the USB flash drive. Also in 1999, Shimon Shmueli, an engineer at IBM, submitted an invention disclosure asserting that he had invented the USB flash drive. A Singaporean company named Trek 2000 International is the first company known to have sold a USB flash drive, and has also maintained that it is the original inventor of the device. Finally Pua Khein-Seng, a Malaysian engineer, has also been recognized by some as a possible inventor of the device.
Given these competing inventor claims, patent disputes involving the USB flash drive have arisen over the years. Both Trek 2000 International and Netac Technology have accused others of infringing their patents on the USB flash drive. However, despite these lawsuits, the question of who was the first to invent the USB flash drive has not been definitively settled and multiple claims persist.
Technology improvements
Flash drives are often measured by the rate at which they transfer data. Transfer rates may be given in megabytes per second (MB/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or in optical drive multipliers such as "180X" (180 times 150 KiB/s). File transfer rates vary considerably among devices. Second generation flash drives have claimed to read at up to 30 MB/s and write at about half that rate, which was about 20 times faster than the theoretical transfer rate achievable by the previous model, USB 1.1, which is limited to 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s) with accounted overhead. The effective transfer rate of a device is significantly affected by the data access pattern.
By 2002, USB flash drives had USB 2.0 connectivity, which has 480 Mbit/s as the transfer rate upper bound; after accounting for the protocol overhead That same year, Intel sparked widespread use of second generation USB by including them within its laptops.
By 2010, the maximum available storage capacity for the devices had reached upwards of 128 GB. USB 3.0 was slow to appear in laptops. Through 2010, the majority of laptop models still contained only USB 2.0.
In January 2013, tech company Kingston, released a flash drive with 1 TB of storage. The first USB 3.1 type-C flash drives, with read/write speeds of around 530 MB/s, were announced in March 2015. By July 2016, flash drives with 8 to 256 GB capacity were sold more frequently than those with capacities between 512 GB and 1 TB. In 2017, Kingston Technology announced the release of a 2-TB flash drive. In 2018, SanDisk announced a 1TB USB-C flash drive, the smallest of its kind.
On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single Standard-A USB plug; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB or USB-C plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices.
Technology
On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single USB plug; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices.
Inside the casing is a small printed circuit board, which has some power circuitry and a small number of surface-mounted integrated circuits (ICs). Typically, one of these ICs provides an interface between the USB connector and the onboard memory, while the other is the flash memory. Drives typically use the USB mass storage device class to communicate with the host.
Flash memory
Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with lower cost, lower power consumption and small size made possible by advances in semiconductor device fabrication technology. The memory storage is based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had limited capacity, were slow for both reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could be re-written only after erasing the entire contents of the chip.
Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field, modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re-writing it into the same field. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this.
The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for the memory chips than parallel access, simplifying the manufacture of multi-gigabyte drives.
Computers access flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above.
Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software and a battery to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive, for storing files of any type.
Essential components
There are typically five parts to a flash drive:
USB plug provides a physical interface to the host computer. Some USB flash drives use USB plug that does not protect the contacts, with the possibility of plugging it into the USB port in the wrong orientation, if the connector type is not symmetrical.
USB mass storage controller a small microcontroller with a small amount of on-chip ROM and RAM.
NAND flash memory chip(s) stores data (NAND flash is typically also used in digital cameras).
Crystal oscillator produces the device's main clock signal and controls the device's data output through a phase-locked loop.
Cover typically made of plastic or metal, protecting the electronics against mechanical stress and even possible short circuits.
Additional components
The typical device may also include:
Jumpers and test pins – for testing during the flash drive's manufacturing or loading code into its microcontroller.
LEDs – indicate data transfers or data reads and writes.
Write-protect switches – Enable or disable writing of data into memory.
Unpopulated space – provides space to include a second memory chip. Having this second space allows the manufacturer to use a single printed circuit board for more than one storage size device.
USB connector cover or cap – reduces the risk of damage, prevents the entry of dirt or other contaminants, and improves overall device appearance. Some flash drives use retractable USB connectors instead. Others have a swivel arrangement so that the connector can be protected without removing anything.
Transport aid – the cap or the body often contains a hole suitable for connection to a key chain or lanyard. Connecting the cap, rather than the body, can allow the drive itself to be lost.
Some drives offer expandable storage via an internal memory card slot, much like a memory card reader.
Size and style of packaging
Most USB flash drives weigh less than . While some manufacturers are competing for the smallest size, with the biggest memory, offering drives only a few millimeters larger than the USB plug itself, some manufacturers differentiate their products by using elaborate housings, which are often bulky and make the drive difficult to connect to the USB port. Because the USB port connectors on a computer housing are often closely spaced, plugging a flash drive into a USB port may block an adjacent port. Such devices may carry the USB logo only if sold with a separate extension cable. Such cables are USB-compatible but do not conform to the USB standard.
USB flash drives have been integrated into other commonly carried items, such as watches, pens, laser pointers, and even the Swiss Army Knife; others have been fitted with novelty cases such as toy cars or Lego bricks. USB flash drives with images of dragons, cats or aliens are very popular in Asia. The small size, robustness and cheapness of USB flash drives make them an increasingly popular peripheral for case modding.
File system
Most flash drives ship preformatted with the FAT32, or exFAT file systems. The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system allows the drive to be accessed on virtually any host device with USB support. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e.g., ScanDisk) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data. However, because a flash drive appears as a USB-connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by the host operating system.
Defragmenting
Flash drives can be defragmented. There is a widespread opinion that defragmenting brings little advantage (as there is no mechanical head that moves from fragment to fragment), and that defragmenting shortens the life of the drive by making many unnecessary writes. However, some sources claim that defragmenting a flash drive can improve performance (mostly due to improved caching of the clustered data), and the additional wear on flash drives may not be significant.
Even distribution
Some file systems are designed to distribute usage over an entire memory device without concentrating usage on any part (e.g., for a directory) to prolong the life of simple flash memory devices. Some USB flash drives have this 'wear leveling' feature built into the software controller to prolong device life, while others do not, so it is not necessarily helpful to install one of these file systems.
Hard disk drive
Sectors are 512 bytes long, for compatibility with hard disk drives, and the first sector can contain a master boot record and a partition table. Therefore, USB flash units can be partitioned just like hard disk drives.
Longevity
The memory in flash drives was commonly engineered with multi-level cell (MLC) based memory that is good for around 3,000-5,000 program-erase cycles. Nowadays Triple-level Cell (TLC) is also often used, which has up to 500 write cycles per physical sector, while some high-end flash drives have single-level cell (SLC) based memory that is good for around 30,000 writes. There is virtually no limit to the number of reads from such flash memory, so a well-worn USB drive may be write-protected to help ensure the life of individual cells.
Estimation of flash memory endurance is a challenging subject that depends on the SLC/MLC/TLC memory type, size of the flash memory chips, and actual usage pattern. As a result, a USB flash drive can last from a few days to several hundred years.
Regardless of the endurance of the memory itself, the USB connector hardware is specified to withstand only around 1,500 insert-removal cycles.
Counterfeit products
Counterfeit USB flash drives are sometimes sold with claims of having higher capacities than they actually possess. These are typically low-capacity USB drives with modified flash memory controller firmware that emulates larger capacity drives (for example, a 2 GB drive being marketed as a 64 GB drive). When plugged into a computer, they report being the larger capacity they were sold as, but when data is written to them, either the write fails, the drive freezes up, or it overwrites existing data. Software tools exist to check and detect fake USB drives, and in some cases it is possible to repair these devices to remove the false capacity information and use its real storage limit.
File transfer speeds
Transfer speeds are technically determined by the slowest of three factors: the USB version used, the speed in which the USB controller device can read and write data onto the flash memory, and the speed of the hardware bus, especially in the case of add-on USB ports.
USB flash drives usually specify their read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s); read speed is usually faster. These speeds are for optimal conditions; real-world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than a few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device.
In a typical well-conducted review of a number of high-performance USB 3.0 drives, a drive that could read large files at 68 MB/s and write at 46 MB/s, could only manage 14 MB/s and 0.3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, the drive could read at 92 MB/s and write at 70 MB/s, was 8 MB/s. These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some could write small files 10% faster than for large ones. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes.
Uses
Personal data transport
The most common use of flash drives is to transport and store personal files, such as documents, pictures and videos. Individuals also store medical information on flash drives for emergencies and disaster preparation.
Secure storage of data, application and software files
With wide deployment of flash drives in various environments (secured or otherwise), data and information security remain critical issues. Biometrics and encryption are becoming the norm as data security needs increase; on-the-fly encryption systems are particularly useful in this regard, as they can transparently encrypt large amounts of data. In some cases, a secure USB drive may use a hardware-based encryption mechanism that uses a hardware module instead of software for strongly encrypting data. IEEE 1667 is an attempt to create a generic authentication platform for USB drives. It is supported in Windows 7 and Windows Vista (Service Pack 2 with a hotfix).
Computer forensics and law enforcement
A recent development for the use of a USB Flash Drive as an application carrier is to carry the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) application developed by Microsoft. COFEE is a set of applications designed to search for and extract digital evidence on computers confiscated from suspects. Forensic software is required not to alter in any way the information stored on the computer being examined. Other forensic suites run from CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, but cannot store data on the media they are run from (although they can write to other attached devices, such as external drives or memory sticks).
Updating motherboard firmware
Motherboard firmware (including BIOS and UEFI) can be updated using USB flash drives. Usually, new firmware is downloaded and placed onto a FAT16- or FAT32-formatted USB flash drive connected to a system which is to be updated, and the path to the new firmware image is selected within the update component of system's firmware. Some motherboard manufacturers also allow such updates without the need to enter the system's firmware update component, making it possible to easily recover systems with corrupted firmware.
In addition, HP has introduced a USB floppy drive key, an ordinary USB flash drive with the capacity to emulate floppy drives, allowing it to be used for updating system firmware where direct use of USB flash drives is not supported. The desired mode of operation, regular USB mass storage device or floppy drive emulation, is selected via a sliding a switch on the device's housing.
Booting operating systems
Most current PC firmware permits booting from a USB drive, allowing the launch of an operating system from a bootable flash drive. Such a configuration is known as a Live USB.
Original flash memory designs had very limited estimated lifetimes. The failure mechanism for flash memory cells is analogous to a metal fatigue mode; the device fails by refusing to write new data to specific cells that have been subject to many read-write cycles over the device's lifetime. Premature failure of a "live USB" could be circumvented by using a flash drive with a write-lock switch as a WORM device, identical to a live CD. Originally, this potential failure mode limited the use of "live USB" system to special-purpose applications or temporary tasks, such as:
Loading a minimal, hardened kernel for embedded applications (e.g., network router, firewall).
Bootstrapping an operating system install or disk cloning operation, often across a network.
Maintenance tasks, such as virus scanning or low-level data repair, without the primary host operating system loaded.
, newer flash memory designs have much higher estimated lifetimes. Several manufacturers are now offering warranties of 5 years or more. Such warranties should make the device more attractive for more applications. By reducing the probability of the device's premature failure, flash memory devices can now be considered for use where a magnetic disk would normally have been required. Flash drives have also experienced an exponential growth in their storage capacity over time (following the Moore's Law growth curve). As of 2013, single-packaged devices with capacities of 1 TB are readily available, and devices with 16 GB capacity are very economical. Storage capacities in this range have traditionally been considered to offer adequate space, because they allow enough space for both the operating system software and some free space for the user's data.
Operating system installation media
Installers of some operating systems can be stored to a flash drive instead of a CD or DVD, including various Linux distributions, Windows 7 and newer versions, and macOS. In particular, Mac OS X 10.7 is distributed only online, through the Mac App Store, or on flash drives; for a MacBook Air with Boot Camp and no external optical drive, a flash drive can be used to run installation of Windows or Linux.
However, for installation of Windows 7 and later versions, using USB flash drive with hard disk drive emulation as detected in PC's firmware is recommended in order to boot from it. Transcend is the only manufacturer of USB flash drives containing such a feature.
Furthermore, for installation of Windows XP, using a USB flash drive with a storage limit of at most 2 GB is recommended in order to boot from it.
Windows ReadyBoost
In Windows Vista and later versions, ReadyBoost feature allows flash drives (from 4 GB in case of Windows Vista) to augment operating system memory.
Application carriers
Flash drives are used to carry applications that run on the host computer without requiring installation. While any standalone application can in principle be used this way, many programs store data, configuration information, etc. on the hard drive and registry of the host computer.
The U3 company works with drive makers (parent company SanDisk as well as others) to deliver custom versions of applications designed for Microsoft Windows from a special flash drive; U3-compatible devices are designed to autoload a menu when plugged into a computer running Windows. Applications must be modified for the U3 platform not to leave any data on the host machine. U3 also provides a software framework for independent software vendors interested in their platform.
Ceedo is an alternative product that does not require Windows applications to be modified in order for them to be carried and run on the drive.
Similarly, other application virtualization solutions and portable application creators, such as VMware ThinApp (for Windows) or RUNZ (for Linux) can be used to run software from a flash drive without installation.
In October 2010, Apple Inc. released their newest iteration of the MacBook Air, which had the system's restore files contained on a USB hard drive rather than the traditional install CDs, because the Air did not include an optical drive.
A wide range of portable applications, which are all free of charge, and able to run off a computer running Windows without storing anything on the host computer's drives or registry, can be found in the list of portable software.
Backup
Some value-added resellers are now using a flash drive as part of small-business turnkey solutions (e.g., point-of-sale systems). The drive is used as a backup medium: at the close of business each night, the drive is inserted, and a database backup is saved to the drive. Alternatively, the drive can be left inserted through the business day, and data regularly updated. In either case, the drive is removed at night and taken offsite.
This is simple for the end-user, and more likely to be done.
The drive is small and convenient, and more likely to be carried off-site for safety.
The drives are less fragile mechanically and magnetically than tapes.
The capacity is often large enough for several backup images of critical data.
Flash drives are cheaper than many other backup systems.
Flash drives also have disadvantages. They are easy to lose and facilitate unauthorized backups. A lesser setback for flash drives is that they have only one tenth the capacity of hard drives manufactured around their time of distribution.
Password Reset Disk
Password Reset Disk is a feature of the Windows operating system. If a user sets up a Password Reset Disk, it can be used to reset the password on the computer it was set up on.
Audio players
Many companies make small solid-state digital audio players, essentially producing flash drives with sound output and a simple user interface. Examples include the Creative MuVo, Philips GoGear and the first generation iPod shuffle. Some of these players are true USB flash drives as well as music players; others do not support general-purpose data storage. Other applications requiring storage, such as digital voice or sound recording, can also be combined with flash drive functionality.
Many of the smallest players are powered by a permanently fitted rechargeable battery, charged from the USB interface. Fancier devices that function as a digital audio player have a USB host port (type A female typically).
Media storage and marketing
Digital audio files can be transported from one computer to another like any other file, and played on a compatible media player (with caveats for DRM-locked files). In addition, many home Hi-Fi and car stereo head units are now equipped with a USB port. This allows a USB flash drive containing media files in a variety of formats to be played directly on devices which support the format. Some LCD monitors for consumer HDTV viewing have a dedicated USB port through which music and video files can also be played without use of a personal computer.
Artists have sold or given away USB flash drives, with the first instance believed to be in 2004 when the German punk band Wizo released the Stick EP, only as a USB drive. In addition to five high-bitrate MP3s, it also included a video, pictures, lyrics, and guitar tablature. Subsequently, artists including Nine Inch Nails and Kylie Minogue have released music and promotional material on USB flash drives. The first USB album to be released in the UK was Kiss Does... Rave, a compilation album released by the Kiss Network in April 2007.
Brand and product promotion
The availability of inexpensive flash drives has enabled them to be used for promotional and marketing purposes, particularly within technical and computer-industry circles (e.g., technology trade shows). They may be given away for free, sold at less than wholesale price, or included as a bonus with another purchased product.
Usually, such drives will be custom-stamped with a company's logo, as a form of advertising. The drive may be blank, or preloaded with graphics, documentation, web links, Flash animation or other multimedia, and free or demonstration software. Some preloaded drives are read-only, while others are configured with both read-only and user-writable segments. Such dual-partition drives are more expensive.
Flash drives can be set up to automatically launch stored presentations, websites, articles, and any other software immediately on insertion of the drive using the Microsoft Windows AutoRun feature. Autorunning software this way does not work on all computers, and it is normally disabled by security-conscious users.
Arcades
In the arcade game In the Groove and more commonly In The Groove 2, flash drives are used to transfer high scores, screenshots, dance edits, and combos throughout sessions. As of software revision 21 (R21), players can also store custom songs and play them on any machine on which this feature is enabled. While use of flash drives is common, the drive must be Linux compatible.
In the arcade games Pump it Up NX2 and Pump it Up NXA, a specially produced flash drive is used as a "save file" for unlocked songs, as well as for progressing in the WorldMax and Brain Shower sections of the game.
In the arcade game Dance Dance Revolution X, an exclusive USB flash drive was made by Konami for the purpose of the link feature from its Sony PlayStation 2 counterpart. However, any USB flash drive can be used in this arcade game.
Conveniences
Flash drives use little power, have no fragile moving parts, and for most capacities are small and light. Data stored on flash drives is impervious to mechanical shock, magnetic fields, scratches and dust. These properties make them suitable for transporting data from place to place and keeping the data readily at hand.
Flash drives also store data densely compared to many removable media. In mid-2009, 256 GB drives became available, with the ability to hold many times more data than a DVD (54 DVDs) or even a Blu-ray (10 BDs).
Flash drives implement the USB mass storage device class so that most modern operating systems can read and write to them without installing device drivers. The flash drives present a simple block-structured logical unit to the host operating system, hiding the individual complex implementation details of the various underlying flash memory devices. The operating system can use any file system or block addressing scheme. Some computers can boot up from flash drives.
Specially manufactured flash drives are available that have a tough rubber or metal casing designed to be waterproof and virtually "unbreakable". These flash drives retain their memory after being submerged in water, and even through a machine wash. Leaving such a flash drive out to dry completely before allowing current to run through it has been known to result in a working drive with no future problems. Channel Five's Gadget Show cooked one of these flash drives with propane, froze it with dry ice, submerged it in various acidic liquids, ran over it with a jeep and fired it against a wall with a mortar. A company specializing in recovering lost data from computer drives managed to recover all the data on the drive. All data on the other removable storage devices tested, using optical or magnetic technologies, were destroyed.
Comparison with other portable storage
Tape
The applications of current data tape cartridges hardly overlap those of flash drives: on tape, cost per gigabyte is very low for large volumes, but the individual drives and media are expensive. Media have a very high capacity and very fast transfer speeds, but store data sequentially and are very slow for random access of data. While disk-based backup is now the primary medium of choice for most companies, tape backup is still popular for taking data off-site for worst-case scenarios and for very large volumes (more than a few hundreds of TB). See LTO tapes.
Floppy disk
Floppy disk drives are rarely fitted to modern computers and are obsolete for normal purposes, although internal and external drives can be fitted if required. Floppy disks may be the method of choice for transferring data to and from very old computers without USB or booting from floppy disks, and so they are sometimes used to change the firmware on, for example, BIOS chips. Devices with removable storage like older Yamaha music keyboards are also dependent on floppy disks, which require computers to process them. Newer devices are built with USB flash drive support.
Floppy disk hardware emulators exist which effectively utilize the internal connections and physical attributes of a floppy disk drive to utilize a device where a USB flash drive emulates the storage space of a floppy disk in a solid state form, and can be divided into a number of individual virtual floppy disk images using individual data channels.
Optical media
The various writable and re-writable forms of CD and DVD are portable storage media supported by the vast majority of computers as of 2008. CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R can be written to only once, RW varieties up to about 1,000 erase/write cycles, while modern NAND-based flash drives often last for 500,000 or more erase/write cycles. DVD-RAM discs are the most suitable optical discs for data storage involving much rewriting.
Optical storage devices are among the cheapest methods of mass data storage after the hard drive. They are slower than their flash-based counterparts. Standard 120 mm optical discs are larger than flash drives and more subject to damage. Smaller optical media do exist, such as business card CD-Rs which have the same dimensions as a credit card, and the slightly less convenient but higher capacity 80 mm recordable MiniCD and Mini DVD. The small discs are more expensive than the standard size, and do not work in all drives.
Universal Disk Format (UDF) version 1.50 and above has facilities to support rewritable discs like sparing tables and virtual allocation tables, spreading usage over the entire surface of a disc and maximising life, but many older operating systems do not support this format. Packet-writing utilities such as DirectCD and InCD are available but produce discs that are not universally readable (although based on the UDF standard). The Mount Rainier standard addresses this shortcoming in CD-RW media by running the older file systems on top of it and performing defect management for those standards, but it requires support from both the CD/DVD burner and the operating system. Many drives made today do not support Mount Rainier, and many older operating systems such as Windows XP and below, and Linux kernels older than 2.6.2, do not support it (later versions do). Essentially CDs/DVDs are a good way to record a great deal of information cheaply and have the advantage of being readable by most standalone players, but they are poor at making ongoing small changes to a large collection of information. Flash drives' ability to do this is their major advantage over optical media.
Flash memory cards
Flash memory cards, e.g., Secure Digital cards, are available in various formats and capacities, and are used by many consumer devices. However, while virtually all PCs have USB ports, allowing the use of USB flash drives, memory card readers are not commonly supplied as standard equipment (particularly with desktop computers). Although inexpensive card readers are available that read many common formats, this results in two pieces of portable equipment (card plus reader) rather than one.
Some manufacturers, aiming at a "best of both worlds" solution, have produced card readers that approach the size and form of USB flash drives (e.g., Kingston MobileLite, SanDisk MobileMate) These readers are limited to a specific subset of memory card formats (such as SD, microSD, or Memory Stick), and often completely enclose the card, offering durability and portability approaching, if not quite equal to, that of a flash drive. Although the combined cost of a mini-reader and a memory card is usually slightly higher than a USB flash drive of comparable capacity, the reader + card solution offers additional flexibility of use, and virtually "unlimited" capacity. The ubiquity of SD cards is such that, circa 2011, due to economies of scale, their price is now less than an equivalent-capacity USB flash drive, even with the added cost of a USB SD card reader.
An additional advantage of memory cards is that many consumer devices (e.g., digital cameras, portable music players) cannot make use of USB flash drives (even if the device has a USB port), whereas the memory cards used by the devices can be read by PCs with a card reader.
External hard disk
Particularly with the advent of USB, external hard disks have become widely available and inexpensive. External hard disk drives currently cost less per gigabyte than flash drives and are available in larger capacities. Some hard drives support alternative and faster interfaces than USB 2.0 (e.g., Thunderbolt, FireWire and eSATA). For consecutive sector writes and reads (for example, from an unfragmented file), most hard drives can provide a much higher sustained data rate than current NAND flash memory, though mechanical latencies seriously impact hard drive performance.
Unlike solid-state memory, hard drives are susceptible to damage by shock (e.g., a short fall) and vibration, have limitations on use at high altitude, and although shielded by their casings, are vulnerable when exposed to strong magnetic fields. In terms of overall mass, hard drives are usually larger and heavier than flash drives; however, hard disks sometimes weigh less per unit of storage. Like flash drives, hard disks also suffer from file fragmentation, which can reduce access speed.
Obsolete devices
Audio tape cassettes and high-capacity floppy disks (e.g., Imation SuperDisk), and other forms of drives with removable magnetic media, such as the Iomega Zip drive and Jaz drives, are now largely obsolete and rarely used. There are products in today's market that will emulate these legacy drives for both tape and disk (SCSI1/SCSI2, SASI, Magneto optic, Ricoh ZIP, Jaz, IBM3590/ Fujitsu 3490E and Bernoulli for example) in state-of-the-art Compact Flash storage devices – CF2SCSI.
Encryption and security
As highly portable media, USB flash drives are easily lost or stolen. All USB flash drives can have their contents encrypted using third-party disk encryption software, which can often be run directly from the USB drive without installation (for example, FreeOTFE), although some, such as BitLocker, require the user to have administrative rights on every computer it is run on.
Archiving software can achieve a similar result by creating encrypted ZIP or RAR files.
Some manufacturers have produced USB flash drives which use hardware-based encryption as part of the design, removing the need for third-party encryption software. In limited circumstances these drives have been shown to have security problems, and are typically more expensive than software-based systems, which are available for free.
A minority of flash drives support biometric fingerprinting to confirm the user's identity. As of mid-, this was an expensive alternative to standard password protection offered on many new USB flash storage devices. Most fingerprint scanning drives rely upon the host operating system to validate the fingerprint via a software driver, often restricting the drive to Microsoft Windows computers. However, there are USB drives with fingerprint scanners which use controllers that allow access to protected data without any authentication.
Some manufacturers deploy physical authentication tokens in the form of a flash drive. These are used to control access to a sensitive system by containing encryption keys or, more commonly, communicating with security software on the target machine. The system is designed so the target machine will not operate except when the flash drive device is plugged into it. Some of these "PC lock" devices also function as normal flash drives when plugged into other machines.
Controversies
Criticisms
Failures
Like all flash memory devices, flash drives can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before the drive fails. This should be a consideration when using a flash drive to run application software or an operating system. To address this, as well as space limitations, some developers have produced special versions of operating systems (such as Linux in Live USB) or commonplace applications (such as Mozilla Firefox) designed to run from flash drives. These are typically optimized for size and configured to place temporary or intermediate files in the computer's main RAM rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive.
When used in the same manner as external rotating drives (hard drives, optical drives, or floppy drives), i.e. in ignorance of their technology, USB drives' failure is more likely to be sudden: while rotating drives can fail instantaneously, they more frequently give some indication (noises, slowness) that they are about to fail, often with enough advance warning that data can be removed before total failure. USB drives give little or no advance warning of failure. Furthermore, when internal wear-leveling is applied to prolong life of the flash drive, once failure of even part of the memory occurs it can be difficult or impossible to use the remainder of the drive, which differs from magnetic media, where bad sectors can be marked permanently not to be used.
Most USB flash drives do not include a write protection mechanism. This feature, which gradually became less common, consists of a switch on the housing of the drive itself, that prevents the host computer from writing or modifying data on the drive. For example, write protection makes a device suitable for repairing virus-contaminated host computers without the risk of infecting a USB flash drive itself. In contrast to SD cards, write protection on USB flash drives (when available) is connected to the drive circuitry, and is handled by the drive itself instead of the host (on SD cards handling of the write-protection notch is optional).
A drawback to the small physical size of flash drives is that they are easily misplaced or otherwise lost. This is a particular problem if they contain sensitive data (see data security). As a consequence, some manufacturers have added encryption hardware to their drives, although software encryption systems which can be used in conjunction with any mass storage medium will achieve the same result. Most drives can be attached to keychains or lanyards. The USB plug is usually retractable or fitted with a removable protective cap.
Robustness
Most USB-based flash technology integrates a printed circuit board with a metal tip, which is simply soldered on. As a result, the stress point is where the two pieces join. The quality control of some manufacturers does not ensure a proper solder temperature, further weakening the stress point. Since many flash drives stick out from computers, they are likely to be bumped repeatedly and may break at the stress point. Most of the time, a break at the stress point tears the joint from the printed circuit board and results in permanent damage. However, some manufacturers produce discreet flash drives that do not stick out, and others use a solid metal or plastic uni-body that has no easily discernible stress point. SD cards serve as a good alternative to USB drives since they can be inserted flush.
Security threats
USB killer
In appearance similar to a USB flash drive, a USB killer is a circuit that charges up capacitors to a high voltage using the power supply pins of a USB port then discharges high voltage pulses onto the data pins. This completely standalone device can instantly and permanently damage or destroy any host hardware that it is connected to.
"Flash Drives for Freedom"
The New York-based Human Rights Foundation collaborated with Forum 280 and USB Memory Direct to launch the "Flash Drives for Freedom" program. The program was created in 2016 to smuggle flash drives with American and South Korean movies and television shows, as well as a copy of the Korean Wikipedia, into North Korea to spread pro-Western sentiment.
"Handmade" USB drives
"Handmade" USB drives, containing movies and other related content, have also been reported.
Current and future developments
Semiconductor corporations have worked to reduce the cost of the components in a flash drive by integrating various flash drive functions in a single chip, thereby reducing the part-count and overall package-cost.
Flash drive capacities on the market increase continually. High speed has become a standard for modern flash drives. Capacities exceeding 256 GB were available on the market as early as 2009.
Lexar is attempting to introduce a USB FlashCard, which would be a compact USB flash drive intended to replace various kinds of flash memory cards. Pretec introduced a similar card, which also plugs into any USB port, but is just one quarter the thickness of the Lexar model. Until 2008, SanDisk manufactured a product called SD Plus, which was a SecureDigital card with a USB connector.
SanDisk has also introduced a new technology to allow controlled storage and usage of copyrighted materials on flash drives, primarily for use by students. This technology is termed FlashCP.
See also
Glossary of computer hardware terms
Memristor
Microdrive
Nonvolatile BIOS memory
Portable application
ReadyBoost
Sneakernet
Solid-state drive (SSD)
USB dead drop
USB Flash Drive Alliance
Windows To Go
Disk enclosure
External storage
BadUSB
Notes
References
2000 in computing
2000 in technology
Computer-related introductions in 2000
Solid-state computer storage
Flash drive
Office equipment
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth%20More
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Kenneth More
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Kenneth Gilbert More, CBE (20 September 1914 – 12 July 1982) was an English film and stage actor.
Initially achieving fame in the comedy Genevieve (1953), he appeared in many roles as a carefree, happy-go-lucky gent. Films from this period include Doctor in the House (1954), Raising a Riot (1955), The Admirable Crichton (1957), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) and Next to No Time (1958). He also played more serious roles as a leading man, beginning with The Deep Blue Sea (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), A Night to Remember (1958), North West Frontier (1959), The 39 Steps (1959) and Sink the Bismarck (1960).
Although his career declined in the early 1960s, two of his own favourite films date from this time – The Comedy Man (1964) and The Greengage Summer (1961) with Susannah York, "one of the happiest films on which I have ever worked." He also enjoyed a revival in the much-acclaimed TV adaptation of The Forsyte Saga (1967) and the Father Brown series (1974).
Early life
Kenneth More was born at 'Raeden', Vicarage Way, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the only son of Charles Gilbert More, a Royal Naval Air Service pilot, and Edith Winifred Watkins, the daughter of a Cardiff solicitor. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, having spent part of his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his father was general manager of the Jersey Eastern Railway.
After his graduation, More followed the family tradition by training to become a civil engineer. However, he abandoned his training and worked for a while in Sainsbury's on the Strand.
When More was 17 his father died, and he applied to join the Royal Air Force but failed the medical test for equilibrium. He then travelled to Canada, intending to work as a fur trapper, but was sent back to Britain because he lacked immigration documents.
Windmill Theatre
On his return from Canada, a business associate of his father, Vivian Van Damm, agreed to offer him work as a stagehand at the Windmill Theatre, where his job included shifting scenery and helping to get the nude players off stage during its Revudeville variety shows. After a chance moment on stage helping a comic, he realized that he wanted to act and was soon promoted to playing straight man in the Revudeville comedy routines, appearing in his first sketch in August 1935.
He played there for a year, which then led to regular work in repertory, including Newcastle, performing in plays such as Burke and Hare and Dracula's Daughter. Other stage appearances included Do You Remember? (1937), Stage Hands Never Lie (1937) and Distinguished Gathering (1937).
More continued his theatre work until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. He had an occasional small role in films such as Look Up and Laugh (1935).
Second World War
Before the war More was working as an actor in Wolverhampton at the repertory company and living at 166 Waterloo Road. According to the 1939 register, he was also ambulance driver number 207 in preparation for the outbreak of war. More received a commission as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and saw active service aboard the cruiser and the aircraft carrier .
Resumption of acting career
On demobilisation in 1946 More resumed work at the Wolverhampton repertory company, then appeared on stage in the West End in And No Birds Sing (1946).
More appeared in Paul Vercors' play The Silence of the Sea broadcast on the day British TV recommenced after the war - 7 June 1946, and this was followed by a number of television roles including Badger in an adaptation of Toad of Toad Hall (1946), and a small role in the film School for Secrets (1946). He was seen by Noël Coward playing a small role on stage in Power Without Glory (1947), which led to his casting in Coward's Peace In Our Time (1948) on stage.
More's earliest small roles in films date from before the war, but around this time, he began to appear regularly on the big screen. For a small role in Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, he was paid £500. He thought this film would launch him more than it did and held off from accepting other roles, which resulted in him "nearly starving". He took minor parts in Man on the Run (1949), Now Barabbas (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949).
Stardom
Rising reputation
More achieved a notable stage success in The Way Things Go (1950) with Ronald Squire, from whom More later claimed he learned his stage technique.
He was in demand for minor roles on screen such as Morning Departure (1950) and Chance of a Lifetime (1950). More had a good part as a British agent in The Clouded Yellow (1950) for Ralph Thomas.
He could also be seen in The Franchise Affair (1951) and The Galloping Major (1951). More's first Hollywood-financed film was No Highway in the Sky (1951) where he played a co-pilot. Thomas cast him in another strong support part in Appointment with Venus (1952).
More's name was placed above the title billing for the first time with a low budget comedy, Brandy for the Parson (1952), playing a smuggler.
The Deep Blue Sea
Roland Culver recommended More audition for a part in a new play by Terence Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea (1952); he was successful and achieved tremendous critical acclaim in the role of Freddie. More later wrote " Critics hailed me almost as an overnight discovery, conveniently forgetting I was already thirty-eight, and that I had been working in the theatre for nearly twenty years."
During the play's run he appeared as a worried parent in a thriller, The Yellow Balloon (1953). He was in another Hollywood-financed film, Never Let Me Go (1953), playing a colleague of Clark Gable.
Film stardom: Genevieve and Doctor in the House
Director Henry Cornelius approached More during the run of The Deep Blue Sea and offered him £3,500 to play one of the four leads in a comedy, Genevieve (1953) (a part turned down by Guy Middleton). More said Cornelius never saw him in the play but cast him on the basis of his work in The Galloping Major. More recalls "the shooting of the picture was hell. Everything went wrong, even the weather." The resulting film was a huge success at the British box office.
More next made Our Girl Friday (1953) and Doctor in the House (1954), the latter for Ralph Thomas. Both films were made before the release of Genevieve so More's fee was relatively small; Our Girl Friday was a commercial disappointment but Doctor in the House was the biggest hit at the 1954 British box office and the most successful film in the history of Rank. More received a BAFTA Award as best newcomer.
More appeared in a TV production of The Deep Blue Sea in 1954, which was seen by an audience of 11 million. More signed a five-year contract with Sir Alexander Korda at £10,000 a year. '
He was now established as one of Britain's biggest stars and Korda announced plans to feature him in two films based on true stories, one, The Alcock and Brown Story about the Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown in 1919 also featuring Denholm Elliott, and the other Clifton James, the double for Field Marshal Montgomery. The first film was never made and the second (I Was Monty's Double) with another actor. Korda also wanted More to star in a new version of The Four Feathers, Storm Over the Nile (1956) but he turned it down.
However, More did accept Korda's offer to appear in a film adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea (1955) gaining the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance. The film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment (More felt Vivien Leigh was miscast in the lead) but still widely seen. He also did the narration for Korda's The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955).
When The Alcock and Brown Story was cancelled, More was reassigned to another film for Korda, the domestic comedy Raising a Riot (1955), directed by Wendy Toye. This was the eighth most popular movie at the British box office in 1955, and much of the film's success was attributed to More's appeal.
Reach for the Sky
More received an offer from David Lean to play the lead role in an adaptation of The Wind Cannot Read by Richard Mason. More was unsure about whether the public would accept him in such a straightforwardly romantic part and refused it, a decision he later regarded as "the greatest mistake I ever made professionally". Lean dropped the project and was not involved in the eventual 1958 film version, which starred Dirk Bogarde and was directed by Ralph Thomas.
Instead, More played the Royal Air Force fighter ace, Douglas Bader, in Reach for the Sky (1956), a part refused by Richard Burton. It was the most popular British film of the year. By 1956, More's asking price was £25,000 a film. In October 1956, John Davis, managing director of Rank, announced him as one of the actors under contract to Rank that Davis thought would become an international star.
More received offers to go to Hollywood, but refused them, unsure his persona would be effective there. However, he started working with U.S. co-stars and directors more often. In February 1957, he signed a contract with Daniel M. Angel and was to make ten films over five years, seven which would be distributed by Rank and three by 20th Century Fox. In June of that year, he said:
Hollywood has been hitting two extremes – either a Biblical de Mille spectacular or a Baby Doll. Britain does two other kinds of movie as well as anyone – a certain type of high comedy and a kind of semi-documentary. I believe we (the British film industry) should hit these hard.
His next film, The Admirable Crichton (1957), was a high comedy, based on the play by J. M. Barrie. It was released by Columbia Pictures. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert who also had made Reach for the Sky and who later said:
I was very fond of Kenny as an actor, although he wasn't particularly versatile. What he could do, he did very well. His strengths were his ability to portray charm; basically he was the officer returning from the war and he was superb in that kind of role. The minute that kind of role went out of existence, he began to go down as a box office star.
Regarding his performance in this film, critic David Shipman wrote:
It was not just that he had superb comic timing: one could see absolutely why the family trusted their fates to him. No other British actor had come so close to that dependable, reliable quality of the great Hollywood stars – you would trust him through thick and thin. And he was more humorous than, say, Gary Cooper, more down-to-earth than, say, Cary Grant.
The Admirable Crichton was the third most popular movie at the British box office in 1957.
In 1957, More had announced that he would play the lead role of a captain caught up in the Indian Mutiny in Night Runners of Bengal but the film was never made. More refused an offer from Roy Ward Baker to play a German POW in The One That Got Away (1957), but agreed to play the lead role of Charles Lightoller in the Titanic film for the same director, A Night to Remember (1958). This was the first of a seven-year contract with Rank at a fee of £40,000 a film. It was popular though failed to recover its large cost; it was one of More's most critically acclaimed films.
For his next film, More had an American co-star Betsy Drake, Next to No Time (1958) directed by Cornelius. It was a minor success at the box office.
More then made The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958), a Western spoof originally written for Clifton Webb. He had an American director (Raoul Walsh) and co-star (Jayne Mansfield), although the film was shot in Spain. It was the tenth most-popular movie at the British box office in 1958.
In December 1958 More announced he had a contract with Rank to make seven films in five years at a flat salary (of which the first was Night to Remember), plus three films in five years for Dan Angel and 20th Century Fox of which Sheriff was the first. He also said he would no longer make a film without an American co star.
More said he had been offered a production deal of his own releasing through British Lion but did not want to do it saying “I've got what I want, and I’ve never been lucky in business anyway. I think too many actors also try to be their own administrators these days, and I see them walking around with worried faces. Some people have the flair for it, of course. I don’t.”
More said he would not appear on television. "If I do, it’ll kill the theatre business that night. That’s true of any big actor in Britain today. It was terrible what happened to the theatres the night Laurence Olivier went on. : Nobody went. So people like myself stay off television, though they offer fantastic sums. I was offered £123,000 (about $640,000) to appear in one television series; and most of that money would have been tax-free in one way or another.”
More made another film with Ralph Thomas, a remake of The 39 Steps (1959), with a Hollywood co star (Taina Elg). It was a hit in Britain.
He appeared in a Fox-Rank film set in India, North West Frontier (1959), co-starring Lauren Bacall and directed by J. Lee Thompson. It was another success in Britain but not in the US. He agreed to star in The Angry Silence at a discount fee but pulled out in order to make Sink the Bismarck! (1960), directed by Gilbert, a more lucrative assignment (More's role was played by Richard Attenborough). This film was a hit in Britain and the US.
More was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1959 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the Odeon Cinema, Shepherd's Bush.
Later career
Decline in film popularity
In 1960, Rank's Managing Director John Davis gave permission for More to work outside his contract to appear in The Guns of Navarone (1961). More, however, made the mistake of heckling and swearing at Davis at a BAFTA dinner at the Dorchester, losing the role (which went to David Niven).
More went on to make a comedy, Man In The Moon (1960), which flopped at the box office, "his first real flop" since becoming a star, according to Shipman. He returned to the stage directing The Angry Deep in Brighton in 1960.
More and Gilbert were reunited on The Greengage Summer (1961) which remains one of More's favourite films, although Gilbert felt the star was miscast.
He returned to military roles as one of many stars in The Longest Day (1962) playing Beachmaster Captain Colin Maud, and then he played the lead in a comedy produced by Daniel Angel and directed by Wendy Toyes, We Joined the Navy (1962), which was poorly received.
More says he accepted the lead in the low-budget youth film, Some People (1962), because he had no other offers at the time. The movie was profitable.
Some felt More's popularity declined when he left his second wife to live with Angela Douglas who had been in the cast of Some People. Others argued his appeal was simply becoming out of date. Film writer Andrew Spicer thought that "More's persona was so strongly associated with traditional middle class values that his stardom could not survive the shift towards working class iconoclasts" during that decade. Another writer, Christopher Sandford, felt that "as the sixties began and the star of the ironic, postmodernist school rose, More was derided as a ludicrous old fogey with crinkly hair and a tweed jacket."
He returned to television with the lead in Heart to Heart written by Terence Rattigan. More received an offer to star in The Comedy Man directed by Alvin Rakoff, but the film was not released for two years. More then made Collect Your Hand Luggage (1963) for television directed by Ted Kotcheff.
He was going to star in a film about the Cyprus Emergency called The Cyprus Story, playing an intelligence officer who falls in love with Elsa Martinelli who plays the daughter of an EOKA sympathiser. Pre-production was difficult - director Robert Day quit and was replaced by Roy Baker, however filming, which was to start in June 1963 in Cyprus, did not proceed.
More went back to the stage, appearing in Out of the Crocodile (1963) and Our Man Crichton (1964–65), which ran for six months. He also appeared in a small screen version of Simon Raven's The Scapegoat.
He appeared in a 35-minute prologue to The Collector (1965) at the special request of director William Wyler, but it ended up being removed entirely from the final film.
Revival
More's popularity recovered in the 1960s through West End stage performances and television roles, especially following his success in The Forsyte Saga (1967). Critic David Shipman said More's personal notices for his performance on stage in The Secretary Bird (1968) "must be among the best accorded any light comedian during this century".
On screen More had a small role in Dark of the Sun (1968) and a bigger one in Fräulein Doktor (1969). He was one of many names in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and Battle of Britain (1969). He took the role of the Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooge (1970) and had long stage runs with a revival of The Winslow Boy (1970) and Getting On by Alan Bennett (1971).
He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1970 New Year Honours.
Later career
More's later stage appearances included Signs of the Times (1973) and On Approval (1977). He played the title character in ATV's Father Brown (1974) series.
His later film roles included The Slipper and the Rose (1976), Where Time Began (1977), Leopard in the Snow (1978), An Englishman's Castle (1978) and Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979).
Personal life
More was married three times. His first marriage in 1940 to actress Mary Beryl Johnstone (one daughter, Susan Jane, born 1941) ended in divorce in 1946. He married Mabel Edith "Bill" Barkby in 1952 (one daughter, Sarah, born 1954) but left her in 1968 for Angela Douglas, an actress (born, like More, in Gerrards Cross) 26 years his junior, causing considerable estrangement from family and friends. He was married to Douglas (whom he nicknamed "Shrimp") from 17 March 1968 until his death in 1982.
More wrote two autobiographies, Happy Go Lucky (1959) and More or Less (1978). In the second book, he related how he had since childhood, a recurrent dream of something akin to a huge wasp descending towards him. During the war, he had experienced a German Stuka dive-bomber descending in just such a manner. After that, he claimed never to have had that dream again. Producer Daniel M. Angel successfully sued More for libel in 1980, over comments made in his second autobiography.
Illness and death
More and Douglas separated for several years during the 1970s, but reunited when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. This made it increasingly difficult for him to work, although his last role was a sizeable supporting part in a US TV adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities (1980). In 1980, when he was being sued by producer Danny Angel for comments in his memoirs, he told the court he was retired.
In 1981, he wrote:
Doctors and friends ask me how I feel. How can you define "bloody awful?" My nerves are stretched like a wire; the simplest outing becomes a huge challenge – I have to have Angela's arm to support me most days... my balance or lack of it is probably my biggest problem. My blessings are my memories and we have a few very loyal friends who help us through the bad days... Financially all's well. Thank goodness my wife, who holds nothing of the past over my head, is constantly at my side. Real love never dies. We share a sense of humour which at times is vital. If I have a philosophy it is that life doesn't put everything your way. It takes a little back. I strive to remember the ups rather than the downs. I have a lot of time with my thoughts these days and sometimes they hurt so much I can hardly bear it. However, my friends always associate me with the song: "When You're Smiling..." lt isn't always easy but I'm trying to live up to it.
More died on 12 July 1982, aged 67. It is now believed that he had been suffering from multiple system atrophy (MSA), a belief due in part to the age of onset and the speed at which the condition progressed. He was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium and a plaque erected at the actors' church St Paul's, Covent Garden, following a memorial attended by family, friends and colleagues.
Legacy
The Kenneth More Theatre, named in honour of the actor, was founded in 1975, in Ilford, east London.
A plaque commemorates More at 27 Rumbold Road, Fulham, his home at the time of his death. Another memorial plaque was installed at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End (where More gave his acclaimed performance as Freddie Page in a production of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea).
Filmography
Look Up and Laugh (1935) (bit part, uncredited)
Carry On London (1937) (bit part, uncredited)
The Silence of the Sea (1946, TV movie) as The German
School for Secrets (1946) as Bomb Aimer (uncredited)
Toad of Toad Hall (1946, TV movie) as Mr. Badger
Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as Lt. E.G.R.(Teddy) Evans R.N.
Man on the Run (1949) as Corp. Newman the Blackmailer
Now Barabbas (1949) as Spencer
Stop Press Girl (1949) as Police Sgt. 'Bonzo'
For Them That Trespass – (1949) – Prison Warder
Morning Departure (1950) as Lieut. Cmdr. James
Chance of a Lifetime (1950) as Adam
The Clouded Yellow (1951) as Willy Shepley
The Franchise Affair (1951) as Stanley Peters
The Galloping Major (1951) as Rosedale Film Studio Director
No Highway in the Sky (1951) Dobson, Co-Pilot (uncredited)
Appointment with Venus (1951) as Lionel Fallaize
Brandy for the Parson (1952) as Tony Rackhman
The Yellow Balloon (1953) as Ted
Never Let Me Go (1953) as Steve Quillan
Genevieve (1953) as Ambrose Claverhouse
Our Girl Friday (1953) as Pat Plunkett
Doctor in the House (1954) as Richard Grimsdyke
The Deep Blue Sea (1954, BBC, TV movie) as Freddie Page
The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955) as Narrator
Raising a Riot (1955) as Tony Kent
The Deep Blue Sea (1955) as Freddie Page
Reach for the Sky (1956) as Douglas Bader
The Admirable Crichton (1957) as Bill Crichton
A Night to Remember (1958) as Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller
Next to No Time (1958) as David Webb
The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) as Jonathan Tibbs
The Thirty-Nine Steps (1959) as Richard Hannay
North West Frontier (1959) as Captain Scott
Sink the Bismarck! (1960) as Captain Shepard
Man in the Moon (1960) as William Blood
The Greengage Summer (1961) as Eliot
Heart to Heart (1962, TV movie) as David Mann
Some People (1962) as Mr. Smith
The Longest Day (1962) as Captain Colin Maud
We Joined the Navy (1962) as Lt. Cmdr. Robert Badger
Collect Your Hand Baggage (1963) TV
The Comedy Man (1964) as Chick Byrd
The Scapegoat (1964) - TV
Old Soldiers (1964) - TV
The Collector (1965) (uncredited)
Lord Raingo (1966, TV movie) as Sam Raingo
The Sweet War Man (1966) TV
Final Demand (1966)
The Forsyte Saga (1967, TV series) as 'Young Jolyon' Forsyte
The White Rabbit (1967, TV movie) as Wing Cmdr. Yeo-Thomas
Dark of the Sun, also known as The Mercenaries (1968) as Doctor Wreid
The Secretary Bird (1969) TV
Fräulein Doktor (1969) as Col. Foreman
Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) as Kaiser Wilhelm II
Battle of Britain (1969) as Group Captain Barker
Scrooge (1970) as Ghost of Christmas Present
Father Brown (1974, TV series) as Father Brown
The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976) as Chamberlain
Where Time Began (1977) as Prof. Otto Linderbrock
Leopard in the Snow (1978) as Sir Philip James
An Englishman's Castle (1978, TV movie) as Peter Ingram
The Spaceman and King Arthur (1979) as King Arthur
A Tale of Two Cities (1980, TV movie) as Dr. Jarvis Lorry (final film role)
Unfilmed projects
Adaptation of Nightrunners of Bengal (1957)
The Angry Silence (1960) – turned down role eventually played by Richard Attenborough
Selected theatre credits
Windmill Theatre – 1935
Do You Remember? – Barry O’Brien Touring Company, August–November 1937
Stage Hands Never Lie by Olive Remple – November 1937
Stage Distinguished Gathering by James Parish – Wimbledon Theatre, August 1937
And No Birds Sing by Rev Arthur Platt – Aldwych Theatre, November 1946
Power Without Glory – February–April 1947
Peace In Our Time by Noël Coward – Lyric Theatre, July 1948
The Way Things Go – Phoenix Theatre, May 1950
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan – Duchess Theatre, March 1952
The Angry Deep – Brighton, January 1960 – Brighton – director only
Out of the Crocodile – Phoenix Theatre, October 1963
Our Man Crichton – Shaftesbury Theatre, December 1964 – ran six months
The Secretary Bird – Savoy Theatre, October 1968
The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan – New Theatre, November 1970 – ran nine months
Getting On by Alan Bennett – Queen's Theatre, October 1971 – ran nine months
Signs of the Times by Jeremy Kingston – Vaudeville Theatre, June 1973
Kenneth More Requests the Pleasure of Your Company – Kenneth More Theatre, April 1977 – an evening of poetry, prose and music
On Approval – Vaudeville Theatre, June 1977
Writings
Happy Go Lucky (1959)
Kindly Leave the Stage (1965)
More or Less (1978)
Awards
1953 Nominated as Best British Actor (BAFTA) for Genevieve
1954 Won Best British Actor (BAFTA) for Doctor in the House
1955 Won Best Actor at Venice Film Festival for The Deep Blue Sea
1955 Won Most Promising International Star (Variety Club)
1955 Nominated Best British Actor (BAFTA) for The Deep Blue Sea
1956 Nominated Best British Actor (BAFT) for Reach for the Sky
1956 Won Picturegoer Magazine Best Actor Award for Reach for the Sky
1970 appointed a CBE in the New Year's Honours
1974 Won TV Times Best Actor Award for Father Brown
1975 Recipient of silver heart for 40 Years in Showbusiness (Variety Club)
Box office ranking
British exhibitors regularly voted More one of the most popular stars at the local box office in an annual poll conducted by the Motion Picture Herald:
1954 – 5th most popular British star
1955 – 5th most popular British star
1956 – most popular international star
1957 – 2nd most popular international star (NB another source said he was the most popular)
1958 – 3rd most popular international star
1959 – most popular British star
1960 – most popular international star
1961 – 3rd most popular international star
1962 – 4th most popular international star
See also
Cinema of the United Kingdom
List of British actors
References
Notes
Bibliography
McFarlane, Brian. An Autobiography of British Cinema. London: Methuen, 1997. .
More, Kenneth. More or Less. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978. . Rights owned by the Kenneth More estate from 2019
Pourgourides, Nick. More Please. London: Amazon, 2020. . Authorized biography
Sheridan Morley. "More, Kenneth Gilbert (1914–1982)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Shipman, David.The Great Movie Stars: The International Years. London: Angus & Robertson, 1989, 1st ed 1972. .
Sweet, Matthew.Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema. London: Faber & Faber, 2005. .
External links
Kenneth More at TCM
Kenneth More Theatre
1914 births
1982 deaths
20th-century English male actors
Best British Actor BAFTA Award winners
British male comedy actors
Burials at Putney Vale Cemetery
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Neurological disease deaths in England
Deaths from Parkinson's disease
English male film actors
English male stage actors
English male television actors
English people of Welsh descent
People educated at Victoria College, Jersey
People from Gerrards Cross
Royal Navy officers of World War II
Volpi Cup for Best Actor winners
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbas%20Kiarostami
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Abbas Kiarostami
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Abbas Kiarostami ( ; 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.
Kiarostami had worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director, and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material. He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. He was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and emphasized the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.
Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary-style narrative films, for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films. Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements. The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works.
Early life and background
Kiarostami was born in Tehran. His first artistic experience was painting, which he continued into his late teens, winning a painting competition at the age of 18 shortly before he left home to study at the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts. He majored in painting and graphic design and supported his studies by working as a traffic policeman.
As a painter, designer, and illustrator, Kiarostami worked in advertising in the 1960s, designing posters and creating commercials. Between 1962 and 1966, he shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television. In the late 1960s, he began creating credit titles for films (including Gheysar by Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating children's books.
Film career
1970s
In 1970 when the Iranian New Wave began with Dariush Mehrjui's film Gāv, Kiarostami helped set up a filmmaking department at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun) in Tehran. Its debut production, and Kiarostami's first film, was the twelve-minute The Bread and Alley (1970), a neo-realistic short film about a schoolboy's confrontation with an aggressive dog. Breaktime followed in 1972. The department became one of Iran's most noted film studios, producing not only Kiarostami's films but acclaimed Persian films such as The Runner and Bashu, the Little Stranger.
In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an individualistic style of film making. When discussing his first film, he stated:
Bread and Alley was my first experience in cinema and I must say a very difficult one. I had to work with a very young child, a dog, and an unprofessional crew except for the cinematographer, who was nagging and complaining all the time. Well, the cinematographer, in a sense, was right because I did not follow the conventions of film making that he had become accustomed to.
Following The Experience (1973), Kiarostami released The Traveler (Mossafer) in 1974. The Traveler tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a troubled and troublesome boy from a small Iranian city. Intent on attending a football match in far-off Tehran, he scams his friends and neighbors to raise money, and journeys to the stadium in time for the game, only to meet with an ironic twist of fate. In addressing the boy's determination to reach his goal, alongside his indifference to the effects of his amoral actions, the film examined human behavior and the balance of right and wrong. It furthered Kiarostami's reputation for realism, diegetic simplicity, and stylistic complexity, as well as his fascination with physical and spiritual journeys.
In 1975, Kiarostami directed two short films So Can I and Two Solutions for One Problem. In early 1976, he released Colors, followed by the fifty-four-minute film A Wedding Suit, a story about three teenagers coming into conflict over a suit for a wedding.
Kiarostami then directed Report (1977). With a 112-minute runtime, it was considerably longer than his previous work. The film revolved around the life of a tax collector accused of accepting bribes; suicide was among its themes. In 1979, he produced and directed First Case, Second Case.
1980s
In the early 1980s, Kiarostami directed several short films including Toothache (1980), Orderly or Disorderly (1981), and The Chorus (1982). In 1983, he directed Fellow Citizen. It was not until his release of Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987) that he began to gain recognition outside Iran. These films created the basis of his later productions.
The film tells a simple account of a conscientious eight-year-old schoolboy's quest to return his friend's notebook in a neighboring village lest his friend be expelled from school. The traditional beliefs of Iranian rural people are portrayed. The film has been noted for its poetic use of the Iranian rural landscape and its realism, both important elements of Kiarostami's work. Kiarostami made the film from a child's point of view.
Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On (1992) (also known as Life and Nothing More), and Through the Olive Trees (1994) are described by critics as the Koker trilogy, because all three films feature the village of Koker in northern Iran. The films also relate to the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake, in which 40,000 people died. Kiarostami uses the themes of life, death, change, and continuity to connect the films. The trilogy was successful in France in the 1990s and other Western European countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Finland. But, Kiarostami did not consider the three films to comprise a trilogy. He suggested that the last two titles plus Taste of Cherry (1997) comprise a trilogy, given their common theme of the preciousness of life. In 1987, Kiarostami was involved in the screenwriting of The Key, which he edited but did not direct. In 1989, he released Homework.
1990s
Kiarostami's first film of the decade was Close-Up (1990), which narrates the story of the real-life trial of a man who impersonated film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, conning a family into believing they would star in his new film. The family suspects theft as the motive for this charade, but the impersonator, Hossein Sabzian, argues that his motives were more complex. The part-documentary, part-staged film examines Sabzian's moral justification for usurping Makhmalbaf's identity, questioning his ability to sense his cultural and artistic flair. Ranked No. 42 in British Film Institute's The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, Close-Up received praise from directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nanni Moretti and was released across Europe.
In 1992, Kiarostami directed Life, and Nothing More..., regarded by critics as the second film of the Koker trilogy. The film follows a father and his young son as they drive from Tehran to Koker in search of two young boys who they fear might have perished in the 1990 earthquake. As the father and son travel through the devastated landscape, they meet earthquake survivors forced to carry on with their lives amid disaster.
That year Kiarostami won a Prix Roberto Rossellini, the first professional film award of his career, for his direction of the film. The last film of the so-called Koker trilogy was Through the Olive Trees (1994), which expands a peripheral scene from Life and Nothing More into the central drama.
Critics such as Adrian Martin have called the style of filmmaking in the Koker trilogy as "diagrammatical", linking the zig-zagging patterns in the landscape and the geometry of forces of life and the world. A flashback of the zigzag path in Life and Nothing More... (1992) in turn triggers the spectator's memory of the previous film, Where Is the Friend's Home? from 1987, shot before the earthquake. This symbolically links to the post-earthquake reconstruction in Through the Olive Trees in 1994. In 1995, Miramax Films released Through the Olive Trees in the US theaters.
Kiarostami next wrote the screenplays for The Journey and The White Balloon (1995), for his former assistant Jafar Panahi. Between 1995 and 1996, he was involved in the production of Lumière and Company, a collaboration with 40 other film directors.
Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry. It is the drama of a man, Mr. Badii, determined to commit suicide. The film involved themes such as morality, the legitimacy of the act of suicide, and the meaning of compassion.
Kiarostami directed The Wind Will Carry Us in 1999, which won the Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at the Venice International Film Festival. The film contrasted rural and urban views on the dignity of labor, addressing themes of gender equality and the benefits of progress, by means of a stranger's sojourn in a remote Kurdish village. An unusual feature of the movie is that many of the characters are heard but not seen; at least thirteen to fourteen speaking characters in the film are never seen.
2000s
In 2000, at the San Francisco Film Festival award ceremony, Kiarostami was awarded the Akira Kurosawa Prize for lifetime achievement in directing, but surprised everyone by giving it away to veteran Iranian actor Behrooz Vossoughi for his contribution to Iranian cinema.
In 2001, Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, traveled to Kampala, Uganda at the request of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development, to film a documentary about programs assisting Ugandan orphans. He stayed for ten days and made ABC Africa. The trip was originally intended as research in preparation for the filming, but Kiarostami ended up editing the entire film from the video footage shot there. The high number of orphans in Uganda has resulted from the deaths of parents in the AIDS epidemic.
Time Out editor and National Film Theatre chief programmer, Geoff Andrew, said in referring to the film: "Like his previous four features, this film is not about death but life-and-death: how they're linked, and what attitude we might adopt with regard to their symbiotic inevitability."
The following year, Kiarostami directed Ten, revealing an unusual method of filmmaking and abandoning many scriptwriting conventions. Kiarostami focused on the socio-political landscape of Iran. The images are seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is composed of ten conversations with various passengers, which include her sister, a hitchhiking prostitute, and a jilted bride and her demanding young son. This style of filmmaking was praised by a number of critics.
A. O. Scott in The New York Times wrote that Kiarostami, "in addition to being perhaps the most internationally admired Iranian filmmaker of the past decade, is also among the world masters of automotive cinema...He understands the automobile as a place of reflection, observation and, above all, talk."
In 2003, Kiarostami directed Five, a poetic feature with no dialogue or characterization. It consists of five long shots of nature which are single-take sequences, shot with a hand-held DV camera, along the shores of the Caspian Sea. Although the film lacks a clear storyline, Geoff Andrew argues that the film is "more than just pretty pictures". He adds, "Assembled in order, they comprise a kind of abstract or emotional narrative arc, which moves evocatively from separation and solitude to community, from motion to rest, near-silence to sound and song, light to darkness and back to light again, ending on a note of rebirth and regeneration."He notes the degree of artifice concealed behind the apparent simplicity of the imagery.
In 2005, Kiarostami contributed the central section to Tickets, a portmanteau film set on a train traveling through Italy. The other segments were directed by Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi.
In 2008, Kiarostami directed the feature Shirin, which features close-ups of many notable Iranian actresses and the French actress Juliette Binoche as they watch a film based on a partly mythological Persian romance tale of Khosrow and Shirin, with themes of female self-sacrifice. The film has been described as "a compelling exploration of the relationship between image, sound and female spectatorship."
That summer, he directed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Così fan tutte conducted by Christophe Rousset at Festival d'Aix-en-Provence starring with William Shimell. But the following year's performances at the English National Opera was impossible to direct because of refusal of permission to travel abroad.
2010s
Certified Copy (2010), again starring Juliette Binoche, was made in Tuscany and was Kiarostami's first film to be shot and produced outside Iran. The story of an encounter between a British man and a French woman, it was entered in competition for the Palme d'Or in the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian describes the film as an "intriguing oddity", and said, "Certified Copy is the deconstructed portrait of a marriage, acted with well-intentioned fervour by Juliette Binoche, but persistently baffling, contrived, and often simply bizarre – a highbrow misfire of the most peculiar sort." He concluded that the film is "unmistakably an example of Kiarostami's compositional technique, though not a successful example." Roger Ebert, however, praised the film, noting that "Kiarostami is rather brilliant in the way he creates offscreen spaces." Binoche won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in the film. Kiarostami's penultimate film, Like Someone in Love, set and shot in Japan, received largely positive reviews from critics.
Kiarostami's final film 24 Frames was released posthumously in 2017. An experimental film based on 24 of Kiarostami's still photographs, 24 Frames enjoyed a highly positive critical reception, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92%.
Film festival work
Kiarostami was a jury member at numerous film festivals, most notably the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, 2002 and 2005. He was also the president of the Caméra d'Or Jury in Cannes Film Festival 2005. He was announced as the president of the Cinéfondation and short film sections of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Other representatives include the Venice Film Festival in 1985, the Locarno International Film Festival in 1990, the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1996, the São Paulo International Film Festival in 2004, the Capalbio Cinema Festival in 2007 (in which he was president of the jury), and the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival in 2011. He also made regular appearances at many other film festivals across Europe, including the Estoril Film Festival in Portugal.
Cinematic style
Individualism
Though Kiarostami has been compared to Satyajit Ray, Vittorio De Sica, Éric Rohmer, and Jacques Tati, his films exhibit a singular style, often employing techniques of his own invention.
During the filming of The Bread and Alley in 1970, Kiarostami had major differences with his experienced cinematographer about how to film the boy and the attacking dog. While the cinematographer wanted separate shots of the boy approaching, a close-up of his hand as he enters the house and closes the door, followed by a shot of the dog, Kiarostami believed that if the three scenes could be captured as a whole it would have a more profound impact in creating tension over the situation. That one shot took around forty days to complete until Kiarostami was fully content with the scene. Kiarostami later commented that the breaking of scenes would have disrupted the rhythm and content of the film's structure, preferring to let the scene flow as one.
Unlike other directors, Kiarostami showed no interest in staging extravagant combat scenes or complicated chase scenes in large-scale productions, instead of attempting to mold the medium of film to his own specifications. Kiarostami appeared to have settled on his style with the Koker trilogy, which included a myriad of references to his own film material, connecting common themes and subject matter between each of the films. Stephen Bransford has contended that Kiarostami's films do not contain references to the work of other directors, but are fashioned in such a manner that they are self-referenced. Bransford believes his films are often fashioned into an ongoing dialectic with one film reflecting on and partially demystifying an earlier film.
He continued experimenting with new modes of filming, using different directorial methods and techniques. A case in point is Ten, which was filmed in a moving automobile in which Kiarostami was not present. He gave suggestions to the actors about what to do, and a camera placed on the dashboard filmed them while they drove around Tehran. The camera was allowed to roll, capturing the faces of the people involved during their daily routine, using a series of extreme-close shots. Ten was an experiment that used digital cameras to virtually eliminate the director. This new direction towards a digital micro-cinema is defined as a micro-budget filmmaking practice, allied with a digital production basis.
Kiarostami's cinema offers a different definition of film. According to film professors such as Jamsheed Akrami of William Paterson University, Kiarostami consistently tried to redefine film by forcing the increased involvement of the audience. In his later years, he also progressively trimmed the timespan within his films. Akrami thinks that this reduces filmmaking from a collective endeavor to a purer, more basic form of artistic expression.
Fiction and non-fiction
Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements (docufiction). Kiarostami has stated, "We can never get close to the truth except through lying."
The boundary between fiction and non-fiction is significantly reduced in Kiarostami's cinema. The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, writing about Kiarostami, and in particular Life and Nothing More..., has argued that his films are neither quite fiction nor quite documentary. Life and Nothing More..., he argues, is neither representation nor reportage, but rather "evidence":
[I]t all looks like reporting, but everything underscores (indique à l'évidence) that it is the fiction of a documentary (in fact, Kiarostami shot the film several months after the earthquake), and that it is rather a document about "fiction": not in the sense of imagining the unreal, but in the very specific and precise sense of the technique, of the art of constructing images. For the image by means of which, each time, each opens a world and precedes himself in it (s'y précède) is not pregiven (donnée toute faite) (as are those of dreams, phantasms or bad films): it is to be invented, cut and edited. Thus it is evidence, insofar as, if one day I happen to look at my street on which I walk up and down ten times a day, I construct for an instant a new evidence of my street.
For Jean-Luc Nancy, this notion of cinema as "evidence", rather than as documentary or imagination, is tied to the way Kiarostami deals with life-and-death (cf. the remark by Geoff Andrew on ABC Africa, cited above, to the effect that Kiarostami's films are not about death but about life-and-death):
Existence resists the indifference of life-and-death, it lives beyond mechanical "life," it is always its own mourning, and its own joy. It becomes figure, image. It does not become alienated in images, but it is presented there: the images are the evidence of its existence, the objectivity of its assertion. This thought—which, for me, is the very thought of this film [Life and Nothing More...]—is a difficult thought, perhaps the most difficult. It's a slow thought, always underway, fraying a path so that the path itself becomes thought. It is that which frays images so that images become this thought, so that they become the evidence of this thought—and not to "represent" it.
In other words, wanting to accomplish more than just represent life and death as opposing forces, but rather to illustrate the way in which each element of nature is inextricably linked, Kiarostami devised a cinema that does more than just present the viewer with the documentable "facts," but neither is it simply a matter of artifice. Because "existence" means more than simply life, it is projective, containing an irreducibly fictive element, but in this "being more than" life, it is therefore contaminated by mortality. Nancy is giving a clue, in other words, toward the interpretation of Kiarostami's statement that lying is the only way to truth.
Themes of life and death
The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works. In the Koker trilogy, these themes play a central role. As illustrated in the aftermath of the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake disaster, they also represent the power of human resilience to overcome and defy destruction.
Unlike the Koker films, which convey an instinctual thirst for survival, Taste of Cherry explores the fragility of life and focuses on how precious it is.
Some film critics believe that the assemblage of light versus dark scenes in Kiarostami's film grammar, such as in Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us, suggests the mutual existence of life with its endless possibilities, and death as a factual moment of anyone's life.
Poetry and imagery
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, of the University of Maryland, argues that one aspect of Kiarostami's cinematic style is that he is able to capture the essence of Persian poetry and create poetic imagery within the landscape of his films. In several of his movies such as Where is the Friend's Home and The Wind Will Carry Us, classical Persian poetry is directly quoted in the film, highlighting the artistic link and intimate connection between them. This in turn reflects on the connection between the past and present, between continuity and change.
The characters recite poems mainly from classical Persian poet Omar Khayyám or modern Persian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad. One scene in The Wind Will Carry Us has a long shot of a wheat field with rippling golden crops through which the doctor, accompanied by the filmmaker, is riding his scooter in a twisting road. In response to the comment that the other world is a better place than this one, the doctor recites this poem of Khayyam:
They promise of houries in heaven
But I would say wine is better
Take the present to the promises
A drum sounds melodious from distance
It has been argued that the creative merit of Kiarostami's adaptation of Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad's poems extends the domain of textual transformation. Adaptation is defined as the transformation of a prior to a new text. Sima Daad of the University of Washington contends that Kiarostami's adaptation arrives at the theoretical realm of adaptation by expanding its limit from inter-textual potential to trans-generic potential.
Spirituality
Kiarostami's "complex" sound-images and philosophical approach have caused frequent comparisons with "mystical" filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Robert Bresson. While acknowledging substantial cultural differences, much of Western critical writing about Kiarostami positions him as the Iranian equivalent of such directors, by virtue of a similarly austere, "spiritual" poetics and moral commitment. Some draw parallels between certain imagery in Kiarostami's films with that of Sufi concepts.
While most English-language writers, such as David Sterritt and the Spanish film professor Alberto Elena, interpret Kiarostami's films as spiritual, other critics, including David Walsh and Hamish Ford, have rated the influence of spirituality in his films as lower.
Poetry, art and photography
Kiarostami, along with Jean Cocteau, Satyajit Ray, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Derek Jarman, and Alejandro Jodorowsky, was a filmmaker who expressed himself in other genres, such as poetry, set designs, painting, or photography. They expressed their interpretation of the world and their understanding of our preoccupations and identities.
Kiarostami was a noted photographer and poet. A bilingual collection of more than 200 of his poems, Walking with the Wind, was published by Harvard University Press. His photographic work includes Untitled Photographs, a collection of over thirty photographs, mostly of snow landscapes, taken in his hometown Tehran, between 1978 and 2003. In 1999, he also published a collection of his poems. Kiarostami also produced Mozart's opera Così fan tutte, which premiered in Aix-en-Provence in 2003 before being performed at the English National Opera in London in 2004.
Riccardo Zipoli, from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, has studied the relations and interconnections between Kiarostami's poems and his films. The results of the analysis reveal how Kiarostami's treatment of "uncertain reality" is similar in his poems and films.
Kiarostami's poetry is reminiscent of the later nature poems of the Persian painter-poet Sohrab Sepehri. On the other hand, the succinct allusion to philosophical truths without the need for deliberation, the non-judgmental tone of the poetic voice, and the structure of the poem—absence of personal pronouns, adverbs, or over-reliance on adjectives—as well as the lines containing a kigo (季語, a "season word") gives much of this poetry a haikuesque characteristic.
Kiarostami's three volumes of original verse, plus his selections from classical and contemporary Persian poets, including Nima, Hafez, Rumi and Saadi, were translated into English in 2015 and were published in bilingual (Persian/English) editions by Sticking Place Books in New York.
Personal life
In 1969, Kiarostami married Parvin Amir-Gholi. They had two sons, Ahmad (born 1971) and Bahman (1978). They divorced in 1982.
Kiarostami was one of the few directors who remained in Iran after the 1979 revolution, when many of his peers fled the country. He believes that it was one of the most important decisions of his career. His permanent base in Iran and his national identity have consolidated his ability as a filmmaker:
When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.
Kiarostami frequently wore dark spectacles or sunglasses, which he required because of a sensitivity to light.
Illness and death
In March 2016, Kiarostami was hospitalized due to intestinal bleeding and reportedly went into a coma after undergoing two operations. Sources, including a Ministry of Health and Medical Education spokesman, reported that Kiarostami was suffering from gastrointestinal cancer. On 3 April 2016, Reza Paydar, the director of Kiarostami's medical team, made a statement denying that the filmmaker had cancer. However, in late June he left Iran for treatment in a Paris hospital, where he died on 4 July 2016. The week before his death, Kiarostami had been invited to join the Academy Awards in Hollywood as part of efforts to increase the diversity of its Oscar judges. Ali Ahani, Iran's ambassador to France stated that Kiarostami's body would be transferred to Iran to be buried at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. However, it was later announced that his body would be buried in Lavasan, a resort town about northeast of Tehran, based on his own will, after it was flown back to Tehran from Paris. His body was returned to Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on 8 July 2016, while a crowd of Iranian film directors, actors, actresses and other artists were in Tehran airport to pay their respects.
Mohammad Shirvani, a fellow filmmaker and close friend, quoted Kiarostami on his Facebook wall on 8 June 2016: "I do not believe I could stand and direct any more films. They [the medical team] destroyed it [his digestive system]." After this comment, a campaign was set up by Iranians on both Twitter and Facebook to investigate the possibility of medical error during Kiarostami's procedure. However, Ahmad Kiarostami, his eldest son, denied any medical error in his father's treatment after Shirvani's comment and said that his father's health was no cause for alarm. After Kiarostami's death, Head of the Iranian Medical Council Dr. Alireza Zali sent a letter to his French counterpart, Patrick Bouet, urging him to send Kiarostami's medical file to Iran for further investigation. Nine days after Kiarostami's death, on 13 July 2016, his family issued a formal complaint of medical maltreatment through Kiarostami's personal doctor. Dariush Mehrjui, another famous Iranian cinema director, also criticized the medical team that treated Kiarostami and demanded legal action.
Reactions
Martin Scorsese said he was "deeply shocked and saddened" by the news. Oscar-winning Iranian film-maker Asghar Farhadi – who had been due to fly to Paris to visit his friend – said he was "very sad, in total shock". Mohsen Makhmalbaf echoed the sentiment, saying Iran's cinema owes its global reputation to his fellow director, but that this visibility did not translate into greater visibility for his work in his homeland. "Kiarostami gave the Iranian cinema the international credibility that it has today," he told The Guardian. "But his films were unfortunately not seen as much in Iran. He changed the world's cinema; he freshened it and humanized it in contrast with Hollywood's rough version." Persian mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi's 22nd niece Esin Celebi also expressed her condolences over the demise of Kiarostami in a separate message. Iran's representative office at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO also opened a memorial book for signature to honour Kiarostami.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Twitter that the director's "different and profound attitude towards life and his invitation to peace and friendship" would be a "lasting achievement." Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif also said Kiarostami's death was a loss for international cinema. In a statement, French President François Hollande praised the director for forging "close artistic ties and deep friendships" with France.
Media, such as The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Independent, Associated Press, Euronews and Le Monde also reacted to Kiarostami's death. The New York Times wrote: "Abbas Kiarostami, Acclaimed Iranian Filmmaker, Dies at 76" and Peter Bradshaw paid tribute to Kiarostami: "a sophisticated, self-possessed master of cinematic poetry"
The crowd that had gathered for this service in Paris held a vigil by the River Seine. They then allowed the waves of the Seine to carry away photos of Kiarostami that the crowd had left floating on the river. It was a symbolic moment of saying goodbye to a film director that many Iranians have come to passionately appreciate.
Funeral
Artists, cultural authorities, government officials, and the Iranian people gathered to say goodbye to Kiarostami on 10 July in an emotional funeral, six days after his death in France. The ceremony was held at the Center for the Intellectual Education of Children, where he began his film-making career some 40 years before. Attendees held banners with the titles of his movies and pictures of his most famous posters, as they praised the support Kiarostami contributed to culture, and particularly to filmmaking in Iran. The ceremony was hosted by famous Iranian actor Parviz Parastooie, and included speeches by painter Aidin Aghdashlou and prize-winning film director Asghar Farhadi, who stressed his professional abilities. He was later buried in a private ceremony in the northern Tehran town of Lavasan.
Sexual assault and plagiarism allegations
In August 2020, Mania Akbari, who starred in Ten, accused Kiarostami of plagiarism, stating that he edited private footage shot by Akbari into the film without her permission. In her 2019 short film Letter to My Mother, Amina Maher, daughter of Akbari, who also appeared in Ten, said that her scenes in Ten were filmed without her knowledge. In 2022, Akbari and Maher revealed that they had been asking distributor to halt circulation of the film, to which MK2 has yet to respond. Consequently, the British Film Institute removed Ten from a Kiarostami retrospective.
In 2022, Akbari accused Kiarostami of raping her twice, in Tehran when she was 25 and he was about 60, and in London after Ten had premiered.
Reception and criticism
Kiarostami has received worldwide acclaim for his work from both audiences and critics, and, in 1999, he was voted the most important Iranian film director of the 1990s by two international critics' polls. Four of his films were placed in the top six of Cinematheque Ontario's Best of the '90s poll. He has gained recognition from film theorists, critics, as well as peers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Nanni Moretti, and Chris Marker. Akira Kurosawa said of Kiarostami's films: "Words cannot describe my feelings about them ... When Satyajit Ray passed on, I was very depressed. But after seeing Kiarostami's films, I thanked God for giving us just the right person to take his place."
Critically acclaimed directors such as Martin Scorsese have commented that "Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema." The Austrian director Michael Haneke had admired the work of Abbas Kiarostami as among the best of any living director. In 2006, The Guardians panel of critics ranked Kiarostami as the best contemporary non-American film director.
Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum have argued that "there's no getting around the fact that the movies of Abbas Kiarostami divide audiences—in this country, in his native Iran, and everywhere else they're shown." Rosenbaum argues that disagreements and controversy over Kiarostami's movies have arisen from his style of film-making because what in Hollywood would count as essential narrative information is frequently missing from Kiarostami's films. Camera placement, likewise, often defies standard audience expectations: in the closing sequences of Life and Nothing More and Through the Olive Trees, the audience is forced to imagine the dialogue and circumstances of important scenes. In Homework and Close-Up, parts of the soundtrack are masked or silenced. Critics have argued that the subtlety of Kiarostami's cinematic expression is largely resistant to critical analysis.
While Kiarostami has won significant acclaim in Europe for several of his films, the Iranian government has refused to permit the screening of his films, to which he responded "The government has decided not to show any of my films for the past 10 years... I think they don't understand my films and so prevent them being shown just in case there is a message they don't want to get out".
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Kiarostami was refused a visa to attend the New York Film Festival. The festival director, Richard Peña, who had invited him said, "It's a terrible sign of what's happening in my country today that no one seems to realize or care about the kind of negative signal this sends out to the entire Muslim world". The Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki boycotted the festival in protest. Kiarostami had been invited by the New York Film Festival, as well as Ohio University and Harvard University.
In 2005, London Film School organized a workshop as well as the festival of Kiarostami's work, titled "Abbas Kiarostami: Visions of the Artist". Ben Gibson, Director of the London Film School, said, "Very few people have the creative and intellectual clarity to invent cinema from its most basic elements, from the ground up. We are very lucky to have the chance to see a master like Kiarostami thinking on his feet." He was later made Honorary Associate.
In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 co-organized a festival of the Kiarostami's work titled Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker.
Kiarostami and his cinematic style have been the subject of several books and three films, Opening Day of Close-Up (1996), directed by Nanni Moretti, Abbas Kiarostami: The Art of Living (2003), directed by Fergus Daly, and Abbas Kiarostami: A Report (2014), directed by Bahman Maghsoudlou.
Kiarostami was a member of the advisory board of World Cinema Foundation. Founded by the director Martin Scorsese, its goal is to find and reconstruct world cinema films that have been long neglected.
Selected honors and awards
Kiarostami has won the admiration of audiences and critics worldwide and received at least seventy awards up to the year 2000. Here are some representatives:
Prix Roberto Rossellini (1992)
Prix Cine Decouvertes (1992)
François Truffaut Award (1993)
Pier Paolo Pasolini Award (1995)
Federico Fellini Gold Medal, UNESCO (1997)
Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival (1997)
Honorary Golden Alexander Prize, Thessaloniki International Film Festival (1999)
Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival (1999)
Akira Kurosawa Award (2000)
honorary doctorate, École Normale Supérieure (2003)
Konrad Wolf Prize (2003)
President of the Jury for Caméra d'Or Award, Cannes Festival (2005)
Fellowship of the British Film Institute (2005)
Gold Leopard of Honor, Locarno International Film Festival (2005)
Prix Henri-Langlois Prize (2006)
Honorary doctorate, University of Toulouse (2007)
World's great masters, Kolkata International Film Festival (2007)
Glory to the Filmmaker Award, Venice Film Festival (2008)
Honorary doctorate, University of Paris (2010)
Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to World Cinematography (BIAFF – Batumi International Art-house film Festival, 2010)
Japan's Medal of Honor (2013)
Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2014)
Honorary Golden Orange Prize, International Antalya Film Festival (2014)
Filmography
Feature films
Short films
Books by Kiarostami
Havres : French translation by Tayebeh Hashemi and Jean-Restom Nasser, ÉRÈS (PO&PSY); Bilingual edition (3 June 2010) .
Abbas Kiarostami: Cahiers du Cinéma Livres (24 October 1997) .
Walking with the Wind (Voices and Visions in Film): English translation by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Michael C. Beard, Harvard Film Archive; Bilingual edition (28 February 2002) .
10 (ten): Cahiers du Cinéma Livres (5 September 2002) .
With Nahal Tajadod and Jean-Claude Carrière Avec le vent: P.O.L. (5 May 2002) .
Le vent nous emportera: Cahiers du Cinéma Livres (5 September 2002) .
La Lettre du Cinema: P.O.L. (12 December 1997) .
Kiarostami, Abbas, A Wolf on Watch (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas, With the Wind (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Wind and Leaf (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Wine (poetry by Hafez) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Tears (poetry by Saadi) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Water (poetry by Nima) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Fire (poetry by Rumi) (four volumes) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Night: Poetry from the Contemporary Persian Canon (two volumes) (Persian / English Dual Language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Night: Poetry from the Classical Persian Canon (two volumes) (Persian / English Dual Language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas, In the Shadow of Trees: The Collected Poetry of Abbas Kiarostami, English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas, Lessons with Kiarostami (edited by Paul Cronin), Sticking Place Books (2015)
Mohammed Afkhami, Sussan Babaie, Venetia Porter, Natasha Morris. "Honar: The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art." Phaidon Press, 2017. .
See also
Cinema of Iran
References
Bibliography
Geoff Andrew, Ten (London: BFI Publishing, 2005).
Erice-Kiarostami. Correspondences, 2006, , catalogue of an exhibition together with the Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice
Alberto Elena, The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, Saqi Books 2005,
Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Abbas Kiarostami (Contemporary Film Directors), University of Illinois Press 2003 (paperback),
Julian Rice, Abbas Kiarostami's Cinema of Life, Rowman & Littlefield 2020,
Jean-Luc Nancy, The Evidence of Film – Abbas Kiarostami, Yves Gevaert, Belgium 2001,
Jean-Claude Bernardet, Caminhos de Kiarostami, Melhoramentos; 1 edition (2004),
Marco Dalla Gassa, Abbas Kiarostami, Publisher: Mani (2000)
Youssef Ishaghpour, Le réel, face et pile: Le cinéma d'Abbas Kiarostami, Farrago (2000)
Alberto Barbera and Elisa Resegotti (editors), Kiarostami, Electa (30 April 2004)
Laurent Kretzschmar, "Is Cinema Renewing Itself?", Film-Philosophy. vol. 6 no 15, July 2002.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Lessons from a Master," Chicago Reader, 14 June 1996
Tanya Shilina-Conte, "Abbas Kiarostami's 'Lessons of Darkness:’ Affect, Non-Representation, and Becoming-Imperceptible". Special Issue on "Abbas Kiarostami". Iran Namag, A Quarterly of Iranian Studies 2, no. 4 (Winter 2017/2018), University of Toronto, Canada
Silke von Berswordt-Wallrabe et al. (eds.): Abbas Kiarostami. Images, Still and Moving, exh. cat. Situation Kunst Bochum, Museum Wiesbaden, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012),
Andreas Kramer, Jan Röhnert (ed.), Poetry and Film / Lyrik und Film. Abbas Kiarostami and / und Jim Jarmusch, Frankfurt am Main 2020
External links
1940 births
2016 deaths
Akira Kurosawa Award winners
Directors of Palme d'Or winners
English-language film directors
Fellini Gold Medalists
French-language film directors
Iranian contemporary artists
Iranian documentary filmmakers
Iranian film directors
Iranian graphic designers
Iranian photographers
20th-century Iranian poets
Iranian screenwriters
Italian-language film directors
Recipients of the Legion of Honour
Officers of the Legion of Honour
Film people from Tehran
Persian-language film directors
Recipients of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art
Roberto Rossellini Prize recipients
University of Tehran alumni
Crystal Simorgh for Best Director winners
Deaths from cancer in France
Deaths from gastrointestinal cancer
Postmodernist filmmakers
21st-century Iranian poets
Poets from Tehran
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Shooting%20Star
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The Shooting Star
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The Shooting Star () is the tenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in , Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from October 1941 to May 1942 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin, who travels with his dog Snowy and friend Captain Haddock aboard a scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean on an international race to find a meteorite that has fallen to the Earth.
The Shooting Star was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion; the first Tintin volume to be originally published in the 62-page full-colour format. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with The Secret of the Unicorn, while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. The Shooting Star has received a mixed critical reception and has been one of the more controversial installments in the series due to the perceived antisemitic portrayal of its villain. The story was adapted for both the 1957 Belvision animated series, Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, and for the 1991 animated series The Adventures of Tintin by Ellipse and Nelvana.
Synopsis
A giant meteoroid approaches the Earth, spotted from an observatory by Professor Decimus Phostle; he and a self-proclaimed prophet, Philippulus, predict that the meteoroid will hit Earth and cause the end of the world. The meteoroid misses Earth, but a fragment of it plunges into the Arctic Ocean. Phostle determines that the object is made of a new material which he names Phostlite, and arranges an expedition to find it with a crew of European scientists. Accompanied by Tintin and Snowy, their polar expedition ship, the Aurora, is helmed by Tintin's friend Captain Haddock. Meanwhile, another expedition is funded by the financier Mr. Bohlwinkel, with a team setting out aboard the polar expedition ship Peary; thus, Phostle's expedition becomes part of a race to land on the meteorite.
On the day of the Aurora'''s departure, Bohlwinkel has a henchman plant a stick of dynamite on the ship, but the dynamite is found and eventually thrown overboard. In one of the shipping lanes of the North Sea, the Aurora is almost rammed by another of Bohlwinkel's ships, but Haddock steers out of the way. Further setbacks occur when Aurora has to refuel at Iceland, going to the port of Akureyri, where Haddock is informed that the Golden Oil Company (which is owned by Bohlwinkel's bank and has a fuel monopoly) has no fuel available. He and Tintin then come across an old friend of his, Captain Chester, and Tintin comes up with a plan to trick Golden Oil into providing the fuel they need by secretly running a hose to Aurora from Chester's ship, Sirius. As they are getting closer to the Peary the Aurora receives an indistinct distress call from another ship and the crew agrees to alter their course to help; however, Tintin exposes that the distress signal is a decoy to delay them, and they resume the journey. The Aurora intercepts a cable announcing that the Peary expedition has reached the meteorite but not yet claimed it. While the Peary crew rows to the meteorite, Tintin uses the Auroras seaplane to get to and parachute onto the meteorite and plant the expedition's flag, thus winning the race.
Tintin and Snowy (who followed on the plane) make camp on the meteorite while the Auroras engines are repaired after developing trouble. The next day he finds immense explosive mushrooms, and discovers that Phostlite accelerates growth: his apple core grows into a large tree while a maggot turns into a huge butterfly, and he and Snowy are menaced by a giant spider that escaped from his lunch box, before the seaplane arrives again. A sudden seaquake shakes the meteorite to its core and it starts sinking into the sea. Tintin gets himself, Snowy and a piece of Phostlite to the pilot of the seaplane in the plane's life raft, as the meteorite itself finally disappears into the sea. Thereafter Bohlwinkel learns that he is expected to be tried for his crimes. As the Aurora returns home, Captain Haddock steers the ship toward land to refuel not with oil, but with whisky.
History
Background
Amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, Hergé became the founding editor of Le Soir Jeunesse, a children's supplement in Belgium's leading newspaper, Le Soir. Hergé's previous employer, the Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (which had originated The Adventures of Tintin through its own children's supplement, Le Petit Vingtième) was no longer allowed by the German authorities to continue publishing; Le Soir, in contrast, was allowed to stay open under the administrative control of the occupying military government. Le Soir Jeunesse serialized most of The Shooting Star's immediate predecessor, The Crab with the Golden Claws, but ceased publication due to paper shortages in 1941. The Adventures of Tintin was then moved to Le Soir itself, where The Crab with the Golden Claws was concluded and the subsequent four Adventures (including The Shooting Star) were serialized.
During its initial serialization, The Shooting Star featured the United States as the primary antagonists; explaining this, Hergé asserted that the story revolved around the theme of "the rivalry for progress between Europe and the United States". Although not disliking Americans themselves, he had a strong disdain for American big business, and had exhibited anti-American themes in earlier works, in particular in Tintin in America. During serialisation of The Shooting Star, in December 1941, the U.S. entered the war on the side of the Allies, thus coming into direct conflict with Germany. All of the scientists featured were from Axis, neutral, or occupied countries which might be a reflection of the strip's anti-Allies political slant. Hergé biographer Harry Thompson stated this should not be interpreted as a strong anti-Ally bias, for the only two nation-states in Europe that were part of the Allies at that point were the Soviet Union and United Kingdom, and that the characters of Haddock and Chester were British.
As he had done for other Adventures of Tintin which featured sea travel, Hergé was careful to obtain as much data about ships as possible in order to make his portrayals more realistic. The design of the Aurora was based on the RRS William Scoresby, while that of the Peary was most likely based upon another Antarctic ship, the RRS Discovery. The seaplane on which the expedition travels was based on the German Arado 196-A. Hergé nevertheless later criticised his own efforts in this area, saying that if Aurora had been a real ship, it would probably be unseaworthy.The Shooting Star shared plot similarities with The Chase of the Golden Meteor, a 1908 novel by pioneering French science-fiction writer Jules Verne. As in Hergé's story, Verne's novel features an expedition to the North Atlantic to find a meteorite fragment containing a new element. In both stories, the competing expedition teams were led by an eccentric professor and a Jewish banker, and Verne's novel had a Doktor Schultze to Hergé's Professor Schulze—both from the University of Jena. Hergé denied deliberately copying Verne's story, saying that he had only read one of the French novelist's works; it is possible that the influence from Verne came via Jacques Van Melkebeke, Hergé's friend and assistant, who was a fan of the genre. The Swedish expedition member Eric Björgenskjöld physically resembles a real person: Auguste Piccard, who later became Hergé's inspiration for Professor Calculus.
Antisemitism
Under Nazi control, Le Soir was publishing a variety of antisemitic articles, calling for the Jews to be further excluded from public life and describing them as racial enemies of the Belgian people. Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline noted that there was a "remarkable correlation" between the antisemitic nature of Le Soir editorials and The Shooting Star depiction of Jews. Within months of the story's publication, legislation was passed to collect and deport Jews from Belgium to Nazi concentration camps. Thus, The Shooting Star reflected trends in the Belgian political situation at the time. However, the story was not the first time that Hergé had adopted such a perspective in his work; he had recently provided illustrations for Robert de Vroyland's Fables, a number of which contained antisemitic stereotypes, reflecting the racism in much of de Vroyland's book. Similarly, his depiction of the character of Rastapopoulos, who was introduced in Tintin in America, has been cited as being based upon antisemitic stereotypes.
When The Shooting Star appeared in Le Soir, Hergé featured a gag in which two Jews hear the prophetic news that the end of the world is near. They rub their hands together in eagerness, and one comments: "Did you hear, Isaac? The end of the world! What if it's true?" The other responds: "Hey, hey, it vould be a gut ding, Solomon! I owe my suppliers 50,000 francs, and zis way I von't haf to pay vem!" Hergé omitted this scene from the collected edition.
The character of Blumenstein displays antisemitic stereotypes, such as having a bulbous nose and being an avaricious, manipulative businessman. Hergé later dismissed concerns over this Jewish caricature, saying "That was the style then". In his assessment of Franco-Belgian comics, Matthew Screech expressed the opinion that Blumenstein was an anti-American stereotype rather than an anti-Jewish one. Similarly, reporter and Tintin expert Michael Farr asserted that Blumenstein was "more parodied as a financier than Jew". Conversely, Lofficier and Lofficier asserted that both anti-Americanism and antisemitism were present, and that it is the United States and International Jewry who were the "ruthless opponents" of Tintin. Nazi apologists and revisionists such as French Holocaust denier Olivier Mathieu used The Shooting Star as evidence that Hergé was an antisemite with Nazi sympathies.
To graphic novel specialist Hugo Frey, the competing expeditions are presented as a simplistic race between good and evil, wherein Blumestein displays the stereotypes of Jews held by advocates of the Jewish World Conspiracy presented in works such as the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Frey writes that Blumenstein's "large and bulbous nose ... rounded forehead, receding black hair, and small beady eyes" were stock antisemitic imagery in the 1930s and 1940s, as promoted by those such as journalist Édouard Drumont, whose antisemitic Paris-based newspaper La Libre Parole was influential in Brussels. According to Frey, Blumenstein's depiction as an overweight cigar-smoker reflected the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as being financially powerful, while he suggested that the scene in which Blumenstein learned that he was to be tracked down for his crimes recalled the contemporary roundup of Jews in Nazi Europe. Frey contrasts Hergé's complicity with the antisemites to the actions of other Belgians, such as those who struck against the Nazis at the Université libre de Bruxelles and those who risked their lives to hide Jews.
PublicationThe Shooting Star was serialised daily in from 20 October 1941 to 21 May 1942 in French under the title (The Mysterious Star). Tintin's previous adventure, The Crab with the Golden Claws, had been serialised weekly until the demise of 's children's supplement, , before continuing daily in the main newspaper itself; the earlier serial had ended the day before The Shooting Star began. The Shooting Star was the first Tintin adventure to be serialised daily in its entirety. As with earlier Adventures of Tintin, the story was later serialised in France in the Catholic newspaper Cœurs Vaillants, where it first appeared on 6 June 1943.
On page 20 of the published book, Hergé included a cameo of the characters Thomson and Thompson and Quick & Flupke. The story also introduced Captain Chester, who is mentioned in later adventures, and Professor Cantonneau, who returns in The Seven Crystal Balls.
On 21 May 1942, The Shooting Star concluded serialisation. Less than a week later, the occupied government proclaimed that all Jews in Belgium would have to wear a yellow badge on their clothing, and in July the Gestapo began raids on Jewish premises, followed by deportations of Jews to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, resulting in around 32,000 Belgian Jews being killed. Hergé later recalled: "I saw very few Jews wearing the yellow star, but finally I did see some. They told me that some Jews were gone; that people had come for them and sent them away. I didn't want to believe it".
The earlier Tintin albums reproduced the newspaper strips, which had come to appear weekly in Thursday supplements, two-page allotments of three tiers to a page. War shortages reduced the space for the strip by a third, and later the supplements disappeared completely; the comic appeared daily in the main newspaper as a four-panel strip. For publication in book form, Casterman insisted that Hergé must adhere to a new album format of four sixteen-page signatures, which gave sixty-two pages of story plus a cover page. Though the format reduced the page count, it maintained the same amount of story by reducing the size of the panels reproduced. As The Shooting Star progressed, Hergé cut up and laid out clippings of the strip in an exercise book in preparation for the new layouts. It was the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin to be originally published in the 62-page full-colour format that thereafter was the series standard (as opposed to first being published in a black and white newspaper strip reproduction format that all prior books had done). Casterman published the album in September 1942. Unlike the previous books in the series, because it was printed immediately in colour, it did not need to be totally redrawn. The 177 daily strips from the original serialisation were not enough to fill the 62 pages Casterman had allotted, so Hergé added large panels, such as a half-page panel of a giant telescope on page three. Hergé wanted to include a small gold star inside the "o" of "Étoile" on the cover page, but Casterman refused, deeming it too expensive.
In 1954, Hergé began making various changes to the story for its re-publication. Aware of the controversy surrounding the depiction of Blumenstein, he renamed the character "Bohlwinkel", adopting this name from , a Brussels dialect term for a confectionery store. He later discovered that, by coincidence, Bohlwinkel was also a Jewish name. Trying to tone down the book's anti-American sentiment, he also changed the United States to a fictional South American nation called São Rico, replacing the U.S. flag flown by the Pearys crew with that of the fictional state. In 1959, Hergé made a new list of changes to be made to the artwork in The Shooting Star, which included altering Bohlwinkel's nose, but the changes were postponed and never made.
Adaptations
In 1957, the animation company Belvision Studios produced a string of colour adaptations based on Hergé's original comics, adapting eight of the Adventures into a series of daily five-minute episodes. The Shooting Star was the sixth to be adapted in the second animated series; it was directed by Ray Goossens and written by Greg, a well-known cartoonist who was to become editor-in-chief of Tintin magazine.
In 1991, a second animated series based upon The Adventures of Tintin was produced, this time as a collaboration between the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian animation company Nelvana. The Shooting Star was the eighth story to be adapted and was a single twenty-minute episode. Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, the series has been praised for being "generally faithful" to the original comics, to the extent that the animation was directly adopted from Hergé's original panels. Bohlwinkel was tactfully kept nameless in the adaptation and his arrest is shown.
In 2010, American cartoonist Charles Burns authored X'ed Out, a graphic novel with a variety of allusions to The Adventures of Tintin. In one scene, the protagonist Nitnit discovers a warehouse containing white eggs with red spots, akin to the mushrooms in The Shooting Star, with the cover of Burns' book paying homage to Hergé. In 2015, the original front cover sketch of the book was sold for €2.5 million to a European investor, Marina David of Petits Papiers-Huberty-Breyne, at the Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair.
Critical analysis
Pierre Assouline remarked that Hergé's attention to accuracy lapsed in The Shooting Star. For instance, the meteorite's approach toward Earth caused a heat wave, while the meteorite itself proceeded to float on the surface of the ocean. In reality, no such heat wave would have been caused, while the meteorite would have plunged to the sea floor, causing a tsunami. He noted that the concept of madness was a recurring theme throughout the story, and that there was "an unreality in the whole adventure". Fellow biographer Benoît Peeters asserted that The Shooting Star was "of great power and brilliant construction". Elsewhere, Peeters wrote that the book was "notable for the entry of the fantastic into Hergé's work".
Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier deemed the antisemitism a "sad moment" in the series, awarding the story one out of five stars. Nevertheless, they felt that the "pre-apocalyptic ambiance is stark and believable", and that the giant mushrooms on the meteorite were a "strange anticipation" of the mushroom-clouds produced by the atomic bombings in 1945. Focusing on the characters of Professor Phostle and Philippulus, they asserted that both resembled Sophocles Sarcophagus from Cigars of the Pharaoh and that the former was "in the Jules Verne tradition" of eccentric professors. According to philosopher Pascal Bruckner, Tintin experts find Philippulus a caricature of Marshal of France Philippe Pétain, who demanded the French repent imaginary sins when he took power. Philippe Goddin stated that the strips for this story "kept the reader daily on tenterhooks in a story replete with new twists and humour".
Harry Thompson described The Shooting Star as "the most important of all Hergé's wartime stories", having "an air of bizarre fantasy" that was unlike his prior work. He observed that the character of Professor Phostle was a prototype for Professor Calculus, introduced later in the series. Michael Farr asserted that the apocalyptic setting of the story reflected the wartime mood in Europe. He characterises the opening pages of the story as being "unique in work for the feeling of foreboding they convey", adding that "Hergé daringly eschews the strip cartoonist's recognised means of denoting a dream, deliberately confusing the reader". He felt that the "flow of the narrative is less accomplished" than in other stories, with "spurts and rushes followed by slower passages, upsetting the rhythm and pace".
Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès psychoanalysed The Shooting Star, describing it as "the final attempt of the foundling [i.e. Tintin] to rid himself of the bastard [i.e. Haddock] and to preserve the integrity of his former values", pointing out that the first thirteen pages are devoted purely to the boy reporter. He also argued that Phostle and Philippus represent two-halves of "an ambivalent father figure" within the story, with the former prefiguring Calculus "more than any other previous character". He suggests that when hiding on the Aurora, Philippus can be compared to The Phantom of the Opera, as he steals a stick of dynamite and climbs up the ship's mast before threatening to detonate the weapon. Apostolidès believed that the shooting star itself is "more a religious mystery than a scientific one" and that Tintin is therefore "the perfect one to figure it out in some religious way—that is, unrealistically". Apostolidès analysed the political component of the story in terms of "the incarnation of unregulated capitalism against the spirit of European values", arguing that Hergé was adhering to "a utopian vision that, in 1942, smacks of pro-German propaganda".
Literary critic Tom McCarthy believed that The Shooting Star represents the apex of the "right-wing strain" in Hergé's work. He highlighted the instance in which Tintin impersonates God in order to give commands to Philippus as representing one of various occasions in The Adventures of Tintin where "sacred authority manifests itself largely as a voice, and commanding—or commandeering—that voice is what guarantees power". McCarthy further observes that the image of a giant spider in a ball of fire, which appears near the start of the story, reflects the theme of madness that is again present throughout the series. Discussing the political elements of Hergé's series, McCarthy also noted that in the original publication of the story, the spider which climbed in front of the observatory telescope and was thus magnified greatly was initially termed Aranea Fasciata''; he saw this as an intentional satire of the threat to Europe posed by fascism.
References
Notes
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links
The Shooting Star at the Official Tintin Website
The Shooting Star at Tintinologist.org
1942 graphic novels
Anti-Americanism
Comics set in Iceland
Comics set in the Arctic
Comics set on islands
Impact events in fiction
Literature first published in serial form
Meteorites in culture
Methuen Publishing books
Nautical comics
Race-related controversies in comics
Tintin books
Works originally published in Le Soir
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400451
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-17%20Thor
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PGM-17 Thor
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The PGM-17A Thor was the first operative ballistic missile of the United States Air Force (USAF). It was named after the Norse god of thunder. It was deployed in the United Kingdom between 1959 and September 1963 as an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with thermonuclear warheads. Thor was in height and in diameter.
The first generation of Thor missiles were rushed into service, and design mistakes resulted in a 24% launch failure rate. The competing Jupiter missile saw more use, but both were quickly eclipsed by the Air Force's long range ICBM program, which could be fired from US soil. By 1959, with the Atlas rocket well on its way to operational status, both Thor and Jupiter programs became obsolete as delivery vehicles, yet continued to be built and deployed until 1963 for political reasons and to maintain aerospace industry employment.
The missile's lasting legacy continued as the Thor and later Delta families of space launch vehicles used boosters derived from the initial Thor missile, and continued on into the 21st century.
History
Fearful that the Soviet Union would deploy a long-range ballistic missile before the U.S., in January 1956 the USAF began developing the Thor, a intermediate-range ballistic missile. The program proceeded quickly as a stop-gap measure, and within three years of inception the first of 20 Royal Air Force Thor squadrons became operational in the UK. The UK deployment carried the codename 'Project Emily'. One of the advantages of the design was that, unlike the Jupiter MRBM, the Thor could be carried by the USAF's cargo aircraft of the time, which made its deployment more rapid. The launch facilities were not transportable and had to be built on site. Once the first generation of ICBMs based in the US became operational, Thor missiles were quickly retired. The last of the missiles was withdrawn from operational alert in 1963.
A small number of Thors with "Thrust Augmented Delta" boosters and W-49 Mod 6 warheads remained operational in the anti-satellite missile role as Program 437 until April 1975. These missiles were based on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean and had the ability to destroy satellites in low Earth orbit. With prior warning of an impending launch, they could destroy a Soviet spy satellite soon after orbital insertion.
Initial development
Development of the Thor was initiated by the USAF in 1954. The goal was a missile system that could deliver a nuclear warhead over a distance of with a CEP of . This range would allow Moscow to be attacked from a launch site in the UK. The initial design studies were headed by Cmdr. Robert Truax (US Navy) and Dr. Adolph K. Thiel (Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, formerly of Redstone Arsenal and previously of Nazi Germany). They refined the specifications to an IRBM with:
A range
diameter, long (so it could be carried by Douglas C-124 Globemaster)
A gross takeoff weight of
Propulsion provided by half of the existing Navaho-derived Atlas booster engine
maximum speed during warhead reentry
Inertial guidance system with radio backup (for low susceptibility to enemy disruption)
Thor had vernier engines for roll control flanking the main engine, similar to the Atlas vernier engines on the sides of the propellant tanks.
On 30 November 1955, three companies were given one week to bid on the project: Douglas, Lockheed, and North American Aviation. The missile was to use existing technology, skills, abilities, and techniques to speed entry into service. On 27 December 1955, Douglas was awarded the prime contract for the airframe and integration. The Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation was awarded the engine contract, AC Spark Plug the primary inertial guidance system, Bell Labs the backup radio guidance system, and General Electric the nose cone/reentry vehicle. Douglas' proposal included choosing bolted tank bulkheads (as opposed to the initially suggested welded ones) and a tapered fuel tank for improved aerodynamics.
The engine was a direct descendant of the Atlas MA-3 booster engine, with removal of one thrust chamber and a rerouting of the plumbing to allow the engine to fit within the smaller Thor thrust section.
Engine component tests began in March 1956. The first engineering model engine was available in June, followed by the first flight engine in September. Early Thor engines suffered from foaming turbopump lubricating oil at high altitudes and bearing retention issues, resulting in several launch failures. The initial Thor tests in 1957 used an early version of the Rocketdyne LR-79 engine with a conical nozzle and 135,000 pounds of thrust. By early 1958, this had been replaced by an improved model with a bell-shaped nozzle see and 150,000 pounds of thrust. The fully developed Thor IRBM had 162,000 pounds of thrust.
Phase I test launches
Thor was test launched from LC-17 at Cape Canaveral Missile Annex. The compressed development schedule meant that plans for the Atlas bunker had to be used to allow the completion of the facility in time, with launchpad LC-17B completed just in time for the first test flight.
Missile 101, the first flight-ready Thor, arrived at Cape Canaveral in October 1956. It was erected at LC-17B and underwent several practice propellant loading/unloading exercises, a static firing test, and a month-long delay while a defective relay was replaced. Launch finally took place on 25 January 1957. The engine lost thrust almost immediately after liftoff, and the Thor fell onto the launch pad and exploded. A film of prelaunch preparations showed crews dragging a liquid oxygen (LOX) filler hose through a sandy area, which led to the belief that debris entering the LOX, caused the failure of a valve.
Thor 102 was launched on 20 April. The booster performed normally, but the flight was terminated at 35 seconds after an erroneous console readout caused the Range Safety Officer to believe that the missile was headed inland instead of out to sea. The tracking console was found to be wired in reverse. The short flight raised confidence that Thor could fly successfully.
The third Thor launch (Missile 103) exploded four minutes before the planned launch after a defective valve allowed LOX tank pressure to build up to unsafe levels. The responsible technicians had also failed to pay attention to the tank pressure gauges. LC-17B consequently had to be repaired for the second time in four months.
Missile 104, launched 22 August from the newly opened LC-17A, broke up at T+92 seconds due to a drop in signal strength from the programmer, causing the engine to gimbal hard right. The guidance system tried to compensate, but the resulting structural loads exceeded the strength of the missile tankage.
Thor 105 (20 September) completed the first successful flight, which occurred 21 months after the start of the program. No telemetry equipment was included on this missile, with the resulting mass savings allowing a total range of .
Missile 107 (3 October) fell back onto LC-17A and exploded at launch when a gas generator valve failed to open.
Missile 108 (11 October) exploded around T+140 seconds without prior warning. Engineers were initially unable to determine the cause of the failure. After the first Thor-Able launch failed six months later due to a seized turbopump, it was concluded that a similar failure had occurred on 108. However, 108 did not have sufficient instrumentation to determine the exact nature of the failure.
The final three Thor tests during 1957 were all successful. 1958 began with back-to-back failures. Thor 114 was destroyed by Range Safety 150 seconds into launch when the guidance system lost power and Thor 120's engine shut down slightly under two minutes after liftoff. The telemetry system had experienced a power failure during launch, so the reason for the engine cutoff could not be satisfactorily determined.
On 19 April, Missile 121 dropped back onto LC-17B and exploded, putting the pad out of action for three months. A fuel duct collapse was believed to have been the culprit.
On 22 April, Missile 117, carrying the first Able upper stage, lost thrust and broke up at T+146 seconds due to a turbopump failure.
The Jupiter, Thor, and Atlas missiles all used a variant of the Rocketdyne LR-79 engine and all three suffered launch failures due to a marginal turbopump design. There were two separate problems with the pumps. The first was the discovery during testing at Huntsville that the lubricant oil tended to foam at high altitude as the air pressure decreased. The other was that pump shaft vibration from the nearly 10,000 RPM operating speed would cause the bearings to come out of their sockets, resulting in the pump abruptly seizing up. The Army had suspended Jupiter launches for four months until the turbopump issues could be resolved, and as a result no more pump failures affected that program.
In contrast, the USAF's General Schreiver rejected the idea of sending Thor and Atlas missiles back to the factory so as to not delay the testing program. Instead, in-field modifications to pressurize the turbopump gearboxes and use an oil with a different viscosity that was less prone to foaming were conducted. Modified bearing retainers were not installed. Subsequently, six consecutive Thor and Atlas launches failed during February–April 1958, several due to turbopump problems. The following four months did not include any turbopump failures, but the 17 August launch of the world's first lunar probe on Thor-Able 127 ended in an explosion due to a turbopump failure. A month later, Atlas 6B also suffered a turbopump failure and the Air Force gave in and agreed to replace the turbopumps in all of their missiles, after which there were no more launch failures due to a turbopump problem.
Five successful Thor tests were conducted in June–July 1958, the last one carrying a mouse named Wickie on a biological mission; the capsule sank into the ocean and could not be recovered. Thor 126 (26 July) lost thrust 50 seconds into launch when a LOX valve inadvertently closed. The vehicle pitched down and broke up from aerodynamic loads. On 30 July, six Douglas technicians were severely burned, three fatally, when a LOX valve failed at the Thor static test stand in Sacramento, California.
Phase II launches
Phase II testing with the AC Spark Plug inertial guidance system began 7 December with the first successful flight on 19 December 1957.
The operational variant of the Thor, the DM-18A, began testing in the autumn of 1958, but Missile 138 (5 November) went out of control shortly after liftoff and had to be destroyed. Nonetheless, Thor was declared operational and testing now began at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the West Coast when Missile 151 flew successfully on 16 December. On 30 December, a near repeat performance of the 5 November failure happened when Missile 149 lost control and was destroyed 40 seconds into launch.
After a run of successful launches during the first half of 1959, Missile 191, the first to be launched by a Royal Air Force crew, suffered another control malfunction while being launched from VAFB. This time, the missile's pitch and roll program failed to activate and it continued flying straight up. Launch crews initially did nothing as they reasoned that the Earth's rotation would gradually take it away from land and they wished to continue collecting data as long as possible. Eventually though, they became nervous about it exploding or pitching over, so the destruct command was sent around 50 seconds into launch. High-altitude wind caused debris to land in the town of Orcutt near the base. After Thor 203 repeated the same failure four weeks later, an investigation found that the culprit was a safety wire that had been meant to prevent the control tape in the programmer from inadvertently coming loose during vehicle assembly. The wire would ordinarily be cut after installation of the programmer in the missile, but Douglas technicians had forgotten this important step, thus the tape could not be spooled and the pitch and roll sequence did not activate. Another 23 Thor missile tests were carried out during 1959, with only one failure, when Missile 185 on 16 December, the second RAF launch, broke up due to a control malfunction.
Service rivalry with Jupiter
The Jupiter missile, a joint effort of Chrysler and the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, was originally designed to attack high-value targets like airfields, train switching yards and command and control sites with extremely high accuracy. The Redstone team, under the direction of Wernher von Braun, ultimately delivered an inertial guidance system that was accurate to about .
During development, the US Navy became involved in the Jupiter program, with the objective of arming submarines with a ballistic missile. This led to the Jupiter's squat shape, which allowed it to be stored within the confines of a submarine hull. However, the Navy was always concerned about the extremely risky situation of a liquid-fueled rocket stored in the confines of a submarine. By 1956, the Polaris program was proposed instead, which featured a solid-fueled SLBM that was much lighter and safer to store. The Navy quickly switched to Polaris and dropped Jupiter.
With two IRBMs of nearly identical capabilities, it seemed obvious that only one of the two would ultimately achieve operational status, resulting in a competition between the Army and Air Force. Jupiter's testing program began two months after Thor's and proceeded more smoothly. Accidents such as the explosion of Thor 103 were avoided, and the turbopump issues that plagued early Rocketdyne engines were also resolved in Jupiter much earlier than the Air Force's missiles.
The Jupiter program was more successful due to far better testing and preparation, with each missile given a full duration static firing in Huntsville prior to delivery. Thors were given a PFRF (Pre Flight Readiness Firing) prior to launch; these were between 5–15 seconds only as the launching facilities were not designed for a full duration firing. Missile 107 had not been given a PFRF at all and its launch ended in a pad explosion. A static firing stand for Thor tests was only opened in May 1958, at which point the missile's launch record stood at four successes and nine failures, including four launchpad explosions. For comparison, at the end of May 1958 Jupiter had five successes and three failures with no pad explosions. Thanks to the thorough testing done at Huntsville, Jupiter missiles mostly all arrived at CCAS in flight-ready condition while Thors typically required extensive repairs or modification before launch.
After the Soviet launches of Sputnik 1–2 in late 1957, US Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson announced that both Thor and Jupiter would go into service as his final act before leaving office. This was both out of fear of Soviet capabilities and also to avoid political repercussions from the workplace layoffs that would result at either Douglas or Chrysler if one of the two missiles were canceled.
Deployment
Deployment of the IRBM fleet to Europe proved more difficult than expected, as no NATO members other than the UK accepted the offer to have Thor missiles stationed on their soil. Italy and Turkey both agreed to accept Jupiter missiles. Thor was deployed to the UK starting in August 1958, operated by 20 squadrons of RAF Bomber Command under US-UK dual key control. The first active unit was No. 77 Squadron RAF at RAF Feltwell in 1958, with the remaining units becoming active in 1959. All were deactivated by September 1963.
All 60 of the Thor missiles deployed in the UK were based at above-ground launch sites. The missiles were stored horizontally on transporter-erector trailers and covered by a retractable missile shelter. To fire the weapon, the crew used an electric motor to roll back the missile shelter, essentially a long shed mounted on steel rails, then used a powerful hydraulic launcher-erector to lift the missile to an upright position for launch. Once it was standing on the launch mount, the missile was fueled and could be fired. The entire launch sequence, from starting to roll back the missile shelter through to ignition of the rocket engine and lift-off, took approximately 15 minutes. Main engine burn time was almost 2.5 minutes, boosting the missile to a speed of . Ten minutes into its flight the missile reached an altitude of , close to the apogee of its elliptical flight path. At that point the reentry vehicle separated from the missile fuselage and began its descent toward the target. Total flight time from launch to target impact was approximately 18 minutes.
The Thor was initially deployed with a very blunt conical G.E. Mk 2 'heat sink' re-entry vehicle. They were later converted to the slender G.E. Mk 3 ablative RV. Both RVs contained a W-49 thermonuclear warhead with an explosive yield of 1.44 megatons.
The IRBM program was quickly eclipsed by the Air Force's ICBM program and made redundant. By 1959, with Atlas well on its way to operational status, Thor and Jupiter became obsolete, although both remained in service as missiles until 1963. In retrospect, the IRBM program was a poorly conceived idea as it depended on the cooperation of NATO allies, most of whom were not willing to have nuclear missiles on their soil, and was also surpassed by the ICBM program, yet continued anyway for political reasons and a desire to keep the workforce at their respective assembly plants employed.
Thor's lasting legacy was not as a missile, but its use as the basis for the Thor/Delta space launcher family into the 21st century.
Nuclear-armed test flights
2 June 1962, failed Bluegill flight, tracking lost after launch, Thor and nuclear device destroyed.
19 June 1962, failed Starfish flight, Thor and nuclear device destroyed 59 seconds after launch at altitude.
8 July 1962, Thor missile 195 launched a Mk4 reentry vehicle containing a W49 thermonuclear warhead to an altitude of . The warhead detonated with a yield of 1.45 Mt of TNT (6.07 PJ). This was the Starfish Prime event of nuclear test series Operation Fishbowl.
25 July 1962, failed Bluegill Prime flight, Thor and nuclear device destroyed on launch pad, which was contaminated with plutonium.
1963 mystery cloud
On February 28, 1963, a Thor rocket carrying a spy satellite into orbit was launched from Vandenberg Airforce Base. The rocket went off course and mission control detonated the rocket at an altitude of 44 km before it could reach orbit. The rocket detonation produced a large circular cloud that appeared over the southwestern United States. Due to its mysterious nature, appearing at a very high altitude and being visible for hundreds of miles, the cloud attracted widespread attention and was published by the news media. The cloud was featured on the cover of Science Magazine in April 1963, Weatherwise Magazine in May 1963, and had a full page image published in the May issue of Life Magazine. Prof. James MacDonald at the University of Arizona Institute for Atmospheric Physics investigated the phenomena and linked it to the Thor rocket launch after contacting military personnel at Vandenberg Air Force Base. When the launch records were later declassified, the United States Air Force released a memo explaining that the cloud was "the result of a military operation", but did not clarify.
Launch vehicle
Despite being retired from deployment as a missile a few years after deployment, the Thor rocket found widespread use as a space launch vehicle. It was the first in a large family of space launch vehicles—the Delta rockets. The last remaining direct descendant of the Thor, the Delta II, was retired in 2018, and the Delta IV is based on mostly new technology, unlike the Delta II.
Former operators
United States Air Force
Royal Air Force operated a maximum of 60 missiles, with each squadron controlling 3 missiles
Bomber Command
No. 1 Group
Hemswell Wing
No. 97 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Hemswell, Lincolnshire
No. 104 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Ludford Magna, Lincolnshire
No. 106 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Bardney, Lincolnshire
No. 142 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Coleby Grange, Lincolnshire
No. 269 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Caistor, Lincolnshire
Driffield Wing
No. 98 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Driffield, Yorkshire
No. 102 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Full Sutton, Yorkshire
No. 150 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Carnaby, Yorkshire
No. 226 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Catfoss, Yorkshire
No. 240 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Breighton, Yorkshire
No. 3 Group
Feltwell Wing
No. 77 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Feltwell, Norfolk
No. 82 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Shepherds Grove, Suffolk
No. 107 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Tuddenham, Suffolk
No. 113 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Mepal, Cambridgeshire
No. 220 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF North Pickenham, Norfolk
North Luffenham Wing
No. 144 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF North Luffenham, Rutland
No. 130 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Polebrook, Northamptonshire
No. 223 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Folkingham, Lincolnshire
No. 218 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Harrington, Northamptonshire
No. 254 (Strategic Missile) Squadron – RAF Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire
Specifications (PGM-17A)
Family: Thor IRBM, Thor DM-18 (single stage LV); Thor DM-19 (rocket 1st stage), Thor DM-21 (rocket 1st stage), Thor DSV-2 (suborbital launch vehicle), Thor DSV-2J (anti-ballistic missile), Thor DSV-2U (orbital launch vehicle).
Overall length:
Span:
Weight:
Empty weight:
Core Diameter: 2.44 m
Minimum to Maximum:
Ceiling:
Guidance: Inertial
Maximum speed:
Engines:
Vernier: 2x Rocketdyne LR101-NA; 4.5 kN (1000 lbf) each
Rocketdyne LR79-NA-9 (Model S-3D);
Propellants: LOX/RP-1 Kerosene
Liftoff Thrust (sl): 670 kN (150,000 lbf)
Thrust (vac): 760 kN
Specific Impulse:
Specific Impulse (sea level):
Burn time: 165 s
Mass Engine: 643 kg
Diameter: 2.44 m
Chambers: 1
Chamber Pressure: 4.1 MPa
Area Ratio: 8.00
Thrust to Weight Ratio: 120.32
Warhead
One W49 warhead on Mk. 2 reentry vehicle
warhead mass:
Yield: equivalent to 1.44 Megatons of TNT (6.02 PJ)
CEP:
First Flight: 1958
Last Flight: 1980
Total Number Built: 224
Total Development Built: 64
Total Production Built: 160
Flown: 145.
Development Cost US dollars: $500 million
Recurring Price US dollars: $6.25 million
Flyaway Unit Cost: US$750,000 in 1958 dollars
Launches: 59
Failures: 14
Success Rate: 76.27%
First Launch Date: 25 January 1957
Last Launch Date: 5 November 1975
See also
Project Emily
References
Further reading
Boyes, John. Project Emily: The Thor IRBM and the Royal Air Force 1959–1963. Prospero, Journal of the British Rocketry Oral History Programme (BROHP) No 4, Spring 2007.
Boyes, John. Project Emily: Thor IRBM and the RAF. Tempus Publishing, 2008. .
Boyes, John. The Thor IRBM: The Cuan Missile Crisis and the subsequent run-down of the Thor Force. pub: Royal Air Force Historical Society. Journal 42, May 2008. .
Boyes, John. Thor Ballistic Missile: The United States and United Kingdom in Partnership. Fonthill Media, 2015. .
Forsyth, Kevin S. Delta: The Ultimate Thor. In Roger Launius and Dennis Jenkins (Eds.), To Reach The High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. .
Hartt, Julian. The Mighty Thor: Missile in Readiness. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1961.
Melissen, Jan. "The Thor saga: Anglo‐American nuclear relations, US IRBM development and deployment in Britain, 1955–1959." Journal of Strategic Studies 15#2 (1992): 172-207.
Books referencing RAF use
Jefford, C.G. RAF Squadrons, a Comprehensive record of the Movement and Equipment of all RAF Squadrons and their Antecedents since 1912. Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK: Airlife Publishing, 1988 (second edition 2001). . p. 178.
Wynn, Humphrey. RAF Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Forces, their Origins, Roles and Deployment 1946–69. London: HMSO, 1994. . p. 449.
External links
Thor from Encyclopedia Astronautica
Thor IRBM History site
History of the Delta Launch Vehicle
UK Thor missile launch sites on Secret Bases website
Maxwell Hunter, "Father of the Thor Rocket"
"YouTube contemporary film of Thor missiles at North Pickenham"
1960 in spaceflight
1961 in spaceflight
1963 in spaceflight
Cold War missiles of the United States
Nuclear weapons of the United States
Intermediate-range ballistic missiles of the United States
Theatre ballistic missiles
Military equipment introduced in the 1950s
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal%20%28sports%29
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Goal (sports)
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In sport, a goal may refer to either an instance of scoring, or to the physical structure or area where an attacking team must send the ball or puck in order to score points. The structure of a goal varies from sport to sport, and one is placed at or near each end of the playing field for each team to defend. For many sports, each goal structure usually consists of two vertical posts, called goal posts, supporting a horizontal crossbar. A goal line marked on the playing surface between the goal posts demarcates the goal area. Thus, the objective is to send the ball or puck between the goal posts, under or over the crossbar (depending on the sport), and across the goal line. Other sports may have other types of structures or areas where the ball or puck must pass through, such as the basketball hoop. Sports which feature goal scoring are also commonly known as invasion games.
In several sports, sending the ball or puck into the opponent's goal structure or area is the sole method of scoring, and thus the final score is expressed in the total number of goals scored by each team. In other sports, a goal may be one of several scoring methods, and thus may be worth a different set number of points than the others.
Methods of scoring
In some sports, the goal is the sole method of scoring. In these sports, the final score is expressed as the number of goals scored by each team, with the winner being the team that accumulated more over the specified time period.
In other sports, a goal is not the sole method of scoring. In these sports, the goal is worth a set number of points but there are other methods of scoring which may be worth more, the same, or fewer points. In these sports, the score is expressed as the total number of points earned by each team. In Australian rules football the score is expressed by listing the quantity of each team's "goals" and "behinds" followed by the total number of points.
Structure
The structure of a goal varies from sport to sport. Most often, it is a rectangular structure that is placed at each end of the playing field. Each structure usually consists of two vertical posts, called goal posts (side bar or uprights) supporting a horizontal crossbar. A goal line marked on the playing surface between the goal posts demarcates the goal area.
In some games, such as association football or hockey, the object is to pass the ball between the posts below the crossbar, while in others, such as those based on rugby, the ball must pass over the crossbar instead. In Gaelic football and hurling, in which the goalposts are similar to those used in rugby, the ball can be kicked either under the crossbar for a goal, or over the crossbar between the posts for a point. In Australian rules football, there is no crossbar but four uprights instead. In basketball, netball or korfball, goals are ring-shaped. The structure is often accompanied with an auxiliary net, which stops or slows down the ball when a goal is scored. In netball, a single post at each end of the court supports a horizontal hoop that the ball must fall through. In basketball, the hoop and net used for scoring can be supported on a post or mechanism at each end, or on structures attached directly to the wall.
Goal sports
Goal-only sports
The goal is the only method of scoring in several games. In each of these cases, the winner is the team that scores the most goals within the specified time.
Association football
In association football, the goal is the only method of scoring. It is also used to refer to the scoring structure. An attempt on goal is referred to as a "shot". To score a goal, the ball must pass completely over the goal line between the goal posts and under the crossbar and no rules may be violated on the play (such as touching the ball with the hand or arm). See also offside.
The goal structure is defined as a frame 24 feet (7.32 m) wide by 8 feet (2.44 m) tall. In most organized levels of play a net is attached behind the goal frame to catch the ball and indicate that a goal has been scored; but the Laws of the Game do not mandate the use of a net and only require that any net used not interfere with the goalkeeper.
Bandy
In bandy, which has much of its structure from association football, the only way of scoring is to make a goal and the goal is also used to refer to the scoring structure. If neither of the teams has scored during a match, or if both teams have made the same number of goals, there is a draw. If not otherwise decided in the Bandy Playing Rules set up by the Federation of International Bandy, an approved goal is made when the ball is played in a regular manner and the whole ball has passed the inner definition of the goal line between the two goal posts and the cross-bar. This is stated in section 9 of the Rules. A goal can be made directly from a stroke-off, penalty-shot, a free-stroke, a face-off or a corner stroke. Centered at each short-line of the bandy field is a wide and high goal cage, regulated to size, form, material and other properties in section 1.4 of the Bandy Playing Rules. The cage has a net to stop the ball when it has crossed the goal-line. The cage shall be of an approved model. In front of the goal cage is a half-circular penalty area with a radius. A penalty spot is located in front of the goal and there are two free-stroke spots at the penalty area line, each surrounded by a circle.
Field Hockey
The goal structure in field hockey is wide by tall. Like association football, a goal is scored when the ball passes completely over the goal line under the crossbar and between the goal posts. Nets are required to hold the ball in. A goal is only scored if shot from with a semicircle from the goal.
Handball
A goal in handball is scored when the ball is thrown completely over the goal line, below the crossbar and between the goal posts. The goal structure in team handball is 2 metres high and 3 metres wide. A net is required to catch the ball.
Ice Hockey
In ice hockey, the puck must be put completely over the goal line between the posts and under the bar either off an offensive player's stick or off any part of a defensive player's body. The puck may not be kicked, batted, or thrown into the goal, though a goal may be awarded if the puck is inadvertently deflected off an offensive player's skate or body into the goal. The goal structure is a frame tall and wide with a net attached. In most higher levels of play the goal structure is attached to the ice surface by flexible pegs and will break away for safety when hit by a player. The goal is placed within the playing surface, and players may play the puck behind the goal.
Lacrosse
Lacrosse goals are scored when the ball travels completely past the goal line. Goals can be disallowed if there is an infraction by the offensive team. The goal in lacrosse is tall and wide and a net is used to prevent the ball from reentering the field of play. Lacrosse goals are not positioned on the end boundary line; play often occurs behind the goal.
Netball
In netball, a goal is scored when the ball is shot through a goal ring on a pole.
Polo
In polo, a goal is scored if the ball passes completely between the goal posts, regardless of how far off the ground the ball is. The ball must be between the goal posts or the imaginary lines extending above the inside edges of the posts. A ball passing directly over a goal post does not score a goal.
The goal structure in Polo consists of two poles, at least high and exactly 8 yards apart. There is no crossbar and no net is required. The height at which a goal may be scored is infinite.
Shinty
In shinty, a goal is scored if the ball goes over the goal line and under the crossbar. A goal can only be scored with a stick called a "caman"; no goal is scored if the ball is kicked, carried, or propelled by an attacking player's hand or arm.
Water polo
A goal in water polo is scored when the ball passes completely across the goal line, under the crossbar and between the goal posts. A goal may be scored through contact with any part of the attacker's body except a clenched fist. The goal structure in water polo is dependent upon the depth of the water. The goal mouth measures 3 metres across and is either 0.9 metres above the surface of the water or 2.4 metres above the floor of the pool, whichever is higher. Nets are required.
Games with secondary scoring other than goals
The following games have more than one possible method of scoring where the goal is the primary method, i.e. the method that scores the most points. In most cases the score is shown as the number of goals, plus the number of secondary scores (usually 1 point), plus the total number of points. The side with the higher number of total points is the winner.
Australian rules football
In Australian rules football a goal is scored when the ball is kicked by an attacking player completely between the two tall goal posts. To be awarded a goal, the ball may not contact or pass over the goal post, touch any player on any part of the body other than the foot or lower leg of an attacker. In such cases, the score is a behind (1 point). The ball may be punted, drop kicked, or kicked off the ground (soccered). The ball may cross the goal line at any height from ground level up and may bounce before crossing the line. A goal scores six points. The behind, which scores one point; is awarded if the ball passes between the point posts or is not awarded a goal by the above provisions when passing through the goal posts. The goal structure consists of two posts at least 6 metres in height and spaced 6.4 metres apart. There is no crossbar and no net.
Basketball
The primary object of basketball is to score by shooting (i.e., throwing) the ball into a goal officially called the basket. A basket is scored when the ball passes completely through the basket ring from above; however, the number of points scored with each basket depends on where on the court the ball was shot from, and a team does not necessarily need to score the most baskets to win the game. Basketball scores are expressed in total points.
A basket scored during normal play is called a field goal and is worth two points if shot from within or on the three-point line, and three points if shot from beyond the three-point line. The three-point line's distance from the basket varies by level. Points are also awarded to the shooting team if the defensive team commits goaltending or basket interference while the ball is in flight towards the basket or is directly over it.
A basketball team can also score by free throws, which score one point each. Free throws are awarded to a team after the opponent commits a foul in certain scenarios. The player taking the free throws (usually the player who was fouled) is entitled to take a specified number of shots unopposed with both feet behind the free throw line.
The basket consists of a metal ring in internal diameter, suspended horizontally above the floor such that the center of the ring is equidistant from each sideline and from the end line. The basket ring has a net attached below to briefly check the ball's downward progress and indicate a score. The ring is fastened to a rectangular backboard wide by tall, though in lower levels of play or recreational use the backboard may be smaller and/or fan-shaped. The entire structure is supported from behind and anchored to the floor beyond the end line at higher levels of play; the structure may be anchored to a wall or ceiling at lower levels of play. The ring, net, and the front, top, bottom, and sides of the backboard are all considered inbounds, while the back of the backboard and the support structure – even those parts suspended over inbounds areas of the court – are considered out of bounds.
Gaelic football
In Gaelic football a goal is scored when the ball passes completely beyond the goal line, between the goal posts and under the cross bar. The ball can be played with the hands, but a goal cannot be scored by hand. A ball travelling between the goal posts and over the cross bar is awarded one pointed called an "over". Overs are the most common scoring method with goals heavily defended. A goal is worth three points.
Hurling
In hurling the ball must pass completely beyond the goal line. The ball may be played by any legal method except by the hand of the attacker. A ball in flight may be deflected into the goal off the hand of an attacker. Hurling and Gaelic football use the same goal structure. It is a 6.4 meter wide frame with a net attached. The goal posts are at least 6 meters high, and the crossbar is 2.44 meters above the ground. A goal is scored when the ball crosses below the crossbar and a point is scored when the ball passes above it.
Sports with goals as secondary scoring
At each end of the field in the following games, there is both a marked scoring area and a separate goal post structure. In these games, the term "goal" is only used for the secondary scoring method of putting the ball through the goal post structure.
Gridiron football
In American and Canadian football, there is a scoring area marked at each end of the field called an end zone, and a separate goal post structure.
The primary method of scoring is a touchdown. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the end zone. A touchdown scores 6 points in both versions of the sport. The front line of the end zone is the "goal line", its back line is the "end line", and each corner is marked with a pylon. Each end zone in American football is about wide, while each end zone in Canadian football is about wide. Unlike other sports which require the ball/puck to pass completely over the goal line to count as a score, both Canadian and American football merely need any part of the ball to break the vertical plane of the outer edge of the goal line to count as a touchdown.
A field goal is a secondary method of scoring; it is scored when the ball is place kicked or drop kicked completely over the crossbar and between or directly over the goal posts. A field goal scores 3 points in both versions of the sport. In the American game, the now rarely used fair catch kick, if successfully made, also scores 3 points. A goal kicked during a try following a touchdown is worth one point. These are the only methods of putting the ball through the goal posts that award points to the kicking team; no points are scored if the ball is punted or thrown through the goal posts, or if the ball goes through the goal posts on a kickoff (except, in the latter case, in indoor American football, where some leagues award a single point).
In both sports, the goal structure consists of a horizontal crossbar suspended above the ground and vertical goal posts ("uprights") placed apart and extending at least above the crossbar. In lower levels of play the goal posts may be placed further apart and/or not extend as far above the crossbar; for example, in high school football the posts are apart. NFL and CFL rules mandate that a ribbon be attached to the top of each goal post. Goals are centered on the field, but on different lines: in American football, they lie on the "end line" (far end of the end zone) and in Canadian football, on the "goal line" (beginning of the end zone). A retractable net may be placed behind the goal posts, well beyond the field of play, to prevent the ball from entering spectator areas.
Until the mid-1960s, the goal posts were similar in design to rugby posts, with the crossbar and uprights supported by stanchions installed directly underneath the uprights (in the shape of the letter 'H'). A transitional design from this time retained the twin set of stanchions but placed them behind the crossbar. In this design, the crossbar and uprights were supported by a set of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal stanchions behind each upright. This design was last used professionally in the first Super Bowl in January 1967. The modern goal posts supported by a single "goose-necked" stanchion (in the shape of the letter 'Y') made their debut in the 1966 CFL playoffs and were adopted by all three professional leagues (CFL, NFL, and AFL) the following year, with many (but not all) college teams following suit in the years since. The NFL, which merged with the AFL in , had its crossbar over the goal line until .
In arena football, a field goal also scores three points, unless it is drop kicked, in which case it scores four points. The goal structure in arena football is much smaller than the outdoor game; it consists of a crossbar above the playing surface and wide; this size is also used for most other indoor leagues as well. Uniquely in arena football, the goal posts are attached to nets on either side of the crossbar which are taut to allow the ball to rebound back onto the field of play. The nets are wide and high. These nets do not represent a scoring area, but keep the ball in play and prevent it from entering the crowd.
Canadian football also offers a secondary form of goal, the rouge or single point; it is awarded if a ball enters the end zone by way of any kick (either a missed field goal or a punt) and is not returned by the opposing team; this is not offered in American football (such a play results in a touchback instead).
Rugby football
In both rugby codes, there is a scoring area marked at each end of the field called an in-goal area, and a separate H-shaped goal structure. The primary scoring method is a try, worth 5 points in rugby union and worth 4 points in rugby league. A try is scored by grounding the ball in the in-goal area.
A goal is scored in either rugby code by place kicking or drop kicking a ball over the crossbar and between the uprights of H-shaped goalposts. The goalposts are positioned centrally on the goal line (the front line of the in-goal area). The crossbar is from the ground; the uprights are apart in rugby league and in rugby union.
In the early years of rugby, only goals counted in scoring, and a "try" counted only if "converted" into a goal. The official name "goal from a try" for a converted try persisted until 1979.
Goal celebration
Celebrating the scoring of a goal is common. It is normally performed by the goalscorer, and may involve his or her teammates, the manager or coaching staff and/or the supporters of the team. Whilst referring to the celebration of a goal in general, the term can also be applied to specific actions, such as a player removing his shirt or performing a somersault.
Metaphor
The expression "moving the goalposts", which means to make a set of goals more difficult just as they are being met, is often used in business but is derived from association football. It is commonly used to imply bad faith on the part of those setting goals for others to meet, by arbitrarily making additional demands just as the initial ones are about to be met.
In business, the concept is more abstract, with some performance measure or target being set as a goalpost while achieving the target is often known as achieving a goal.
See also
Goalkeeper
Own goal
Assist (sport)
References
Scoring (sport)
Scoring (association football)
Scoring (basketball)
Scoring (ice hockey)
Terminology used in multiple sports
Association football terminology
Association football equipment
Laws of association football
Bandy equipment
Bandy rules
American football terminology
Australian rules football terminology
Basketball terminology
Field hockey terminology
Gaelic games terminology
Ice hockey terminology
Rugby league terminology
Rugby union terminology
Rules of water polo
Water polo equipment
Water polo terminology
Ball games
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazar%20Kaganovich
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Lazar Kaganovich
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Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, also Kahanovich (; – 25 July 1991), was a Soviet politician and administrator, and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin. He was one of several associates who helped Stalin to seize power.
Born to Jewish parents in modern Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1893, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and became a member of the Bolsheviks, joining the party around 1911. As an organizer, Kaganovich was active in Yuzovka (Donetsk), Saratov and Belarus throughout the 1910s, and led a revolt in Belarus during the 1917 October Revolution. In the early 1920s, he helped consolidate Soviet rule in Turkestan. In 1922, Stalin placed Kaganovich in charge of organizational work within the Communist Party, through which he helped Stalin consolidate his grip of the party bureaucracy. Kaganovich rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a full member of the Central Committee in 1924, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1925, and Secretary of the Central Committee as well as a member of the Politburo in 1930. From the mid-1930s onwards, Kaganovich served as people's commissar for Railways, Heavy Industry and Oil Industry.
During the Second World War, Kaganovich was commissar of the North Caucasian and Transcaucasian Fronts. After the war, apart from serving in various industrial posts, Kaganovich was also made deputy head of the Soviet government. After Stalin's death in 1953 he quickly lost influence. Following an unsuccessful coup attempt against Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, Kaganovich was forced to retire from the Presidium and the Central Committee. In 1961 he was expelled from the party, and lived out his life as a pensioner in Moscow. At his death in 1991, he was the last surviving Old Bolshevik. The Soviet Union itself outlasted him by only five months, dissolving on 26 December 1991.
Early life
Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents
in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (today Dibrova, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine). Although not from a "fanatically observant" family, according to Kaganovich, he spoke Yiddish at home. He was the son of Moisei Benovich Kaganovich (1863–1923) and Genya Iosifovna Dubinskaya (1860–1933). Of the 13 children born to the family, 6 died in infancy. Lazar had four elder brothers, all of whom became members of the Bolshevik party. Several of Lazar's brothers ended up occupying positions of varying significance in the Soviet government. Mikhail Kaganovich (1888–1941) served as People's Commissar of Defence Industry before being appointed Head of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry of the USSR, while Yuli Kaganovich (1892–1962) became the 3rd First Secretary of the Gorky Regional Committee of the CPSU. Israel Kaganovich (1884–1973) was made the head of the Main Directorate for Cattle Harvesting of the Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry. However, Aron Moiseevich Kaganovich (1888–1960s) apparently decided against following his siblings into government, and did not pursue a career in politics. Lazar also had a sister, Rachel Moiseevna Kaganovich (1883–1926), who married Mordechai Ber Lantzman; they lived together in Chernobyl for a period, but she subsequently died in the 1920s and was interred in Kiev.
Lazar Kaganovich left school at 14, to work in shoe factories and cobblers' shops. Around 1911, he joined the Bolshevik party (his older brother Mikhail Kaganovich had become a member in 1905). Early in his political career, in 1915, Kaganovich became a Communist organizer at a shoe factory where he worked. During the same year he was arrested and sent back to Kabany.
Revolution and Civil War
During March and April 1917, he served as the Chairman of the Tanners Union and as the vice-chairman of the Yuzovka Soviet. In May 1917, he became the leader of the military organization of Bolsheviks in Saratov, and in August 1917, he became the leader of the Polessky Committee of the Bolshevik party in Belarus. During the October Revolution of 1917 he led the revolt in Gomel.
In 1918 Kaganovich acted as Commissar of the propaganda department of the Red Army. From May 1918 to August 1919 he was the Chairman of the Ispolkom (Committee) of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. In 1919–1920, he served as governor of the Voronezh Governorate. The years 1920 to 1922 he spent in Turkmenistan as one of the leaders of the Bolshevik struggle against local Muslim rebels (basmachi), and also commanding the succeeding punitive expeditions against local opposition.
Communist functionary
In June 1922, two months after Stalin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Kaganovich was appointed head of the party's Organisation and Instruction Department (Orgotdel), which was expanded a year later by absorbing the Records and Assignment Department, and renamed the Oragnisation-Assignment Department (Orgraspred). This department was responsible for all assignments within the apparatus of the Communist Party. Working there, Kaganovich helped to place Stalin's supporters in important jobs within the Communist Party bureaucracy. In this position he became noted for his great work capacity and for his personal loyalty to Stalin. He stated publicly that he would execute absolutely any order from Stalin, which at that time was a novelty.
In May 1924, Kaganovich became a full member of the Central Committee, after having first been elected as a candidate one year earlier, a member of the Orgburo, and a Secretary of the Central Committee. From 1925 to 1928, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. He was given the task of "ukrainizatsiya" – meaning at that time the building up of Ukrainian communist popular cadres. He also had the duty of implementing collectivization and the policy of economic suppression of the kulaks (wealthier peasants). He opposed the more moderate policy of Nikolai Bukharin, who argued in favor of the "peaceful integration of kulaks into socialism." In 1928, due to numerous protests against Kaganovich's management, Stalin was forced to transfer Kaganovich from Ukraine to Moscow, where he returned to his position as a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a job he held until 1939. As Secretary, he endorsed Stalin's struggle against the so-called Left and Right Oppositions within the Communist Party, in the hope that Stalin would become the sole leader of the country. In 1933 and 1934, he served as the Chairman of the Commission for Vetting of the Party Membership (Tsentralnaya komissiya po proverke partiynykh ryadov) and ensured personally that nobody associated with anti-Stalin opposition would be permitted to remain a Communist Party member. In 1934, at the XVII Congress of the Communist Party, Kaganovich chaired the Counting Committee. He falsified voting for positions in the Central Committee, deleting 290 votes opposing the Stalin candidacy. His actions resulted in Stalin's being re-elected as the General Secretary instead of Sergey Kirov. By the rules, the candidate receiving fewer opposing votes should become the General Secretary. Before Kaganovich's falsification, Stalin received 292 opposing votes and Kirov only three. However, the "official" result (due to the interference of Kaganovich) saw Stalin with just two opposing votes.
In 1930, Kaganovich became a member of the Soviet Politburo and the First Secretary of the Moscow Obkom of the Communist Party (1930–1935). He later headed the Moscow Gorkom of the Communist Party (1931–1934).
He also supervised implementation of many of Stalin's economic policies, including the collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization. During this period, he also supervised destruction of many of the city's oldest monuments, including the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
In 1932, he led the suppression of the workers' strike in Ivanovo-Voznesensk.
Moscow Metro
On June 15, 1931, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), after a report by the first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, Lazar Kaganovich, a decision was made to build the Moscow metro to improve the transport situation in the city and partially relieve tram lines.
In the 1930s, Kaganovich – along with project managers Ivan Kuznetsov and, later Isaac Segal – organized and led the building of the first Soviet underground rapid-transport system, the Moscow Metro, known as Metropoliten imeni L.M. Kaganovicha after him until 1955.
On October 15, 1941, L. M. Kaganovich received an order to close the Moscow Metro, and within three hours to prepare proposals for its destruction, as a strategically important object. The metro was supposed to be destroyed, and the remaining cars and equipment removed. On the morning of October 16, 1941, on the day of the panic in Moscow, the metro was not opened for the first time. It was the only day in the history of the Moscow metro when it did not work. By evening, the order to destroy the metro was canceled.
In 1955, after the death of Stalin, the Moscow Metro was renamed to no longer include Kaganovich's name.
Responsibility for the 1932–1933 famine
Kaganovich (together with Vyacheslav Molotov) participated with the All-Ukrainian Party Conference of 1930 and were given the task of implementation of the collectivization policy that influenced the 1932–33 famine (known as the Holodomor in Ukraine). Similar policies also inflicted enormous suffering on the Kazakh SSR, the Kuban region, Crimea, the lower Volga region, and other parts of the Soviet Union. As an emissary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Kaganovich traveled to Ukraine, the central regions of the USSR, the Northern Caucasus, and Siberia demanding the acceleration of collectivization and repressions against the Kulaks, who were generally blamed for the slow progress of collectivization. Attorney and father of the UN Genocide Convention' Rafael Lemkin in his work Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine described the Holodomor as a genocide of a totalitarian regime.
On 13 January 2010, Kyiv Appellate Court posthumously found Kaganovich, Postyshev, Kosior, Chubar and other Soviet Communist Party functionaries guilty of genocide against Ukrainians during the catastrophic Holodomor famine. Though they were pronounced guilty as criminals, the case was ended immediately according to paragraph 8 of Article 6 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine. By New Year's Day, the Security Service of Ukraine had finished pre-court investigation and transferred its materials to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The materials consist of over 250 volumes of archive documents (from within Ukraine as well as from abroad), interviews with witnesses, and expert analysis of several institutes of National Academies of Sciences. Oleksandr Medvedko, the Prosecutor General, stated that the material proves that a genocide occurred in Ukraine.
Repression of Poltavskaya
Poltavskaya sabotaged and resisted collectivization period of the Soviet Union more than any other area in the Kuban which was perceived by Lazar Kaganovich to be connected to Ukrainian nationalist and Cossack conspiracy. Kaganovich relentlessly pursued the policy of requisition of grain in Poltavskaya and the rest of the Kuban and personally oversaw the purging of local leaders and Cossacks. Kaganovich viewed the resistance of Poltavskaya through Ukrainian lens delivering oration in a mixed Ukrainian language. To justify this Kaganovich cited a letter allegedly written by a stanitsa ataman named Grigorii Omel'chenko advocating Cossack separatism and local reports of resistance to collectivization in association with this figure to substantiate this suspicion of the area. However Kaganocvich did not reveal in speeches throughout the region that many of those targeted by persecution in Poltavskaya had their family members and friends deported or shot including in years before the supposed Omel'chenko crisis even started. Ultimately due to being perceived as the most rebellious area almost all (or 12,000) members of the Poltavskaya stantisa were deported to the north. This coincided with and was a part of a wider deportation of 46,000 cossacks from Kuban. At the same time, Poltavskaya was renamed Krasnoarmeyskaya ().
"Iron Lazar"
From 1935 to 1937, Kaganovich worked as Narkom (Minister) for the railways. Even before the start of the Great Purges, he organized the arrests of thousands of railway administrators and managers accused of sabotage.
From 1937 to 1939, Kaganovich served as Narkom for Heavy Industry. During 1939–1940, he served as Narkom for the Oil Industry.
Each of his assignments was associated with arrests in order to improve discipline and compliance with Stalin's policies.
In all Party conferences of the later 1930s, he made speeches demanding increased efforts in the search for and prosecution of "foreign spies" and "saboteurs." For his ruthlessness in the execution of Stalin's orders, he was nicknamed "Iron Lazar." During the period of the Great Terror, starting in 1936, Kaganovich's signature appears on 188 out of 357 documented execution lists.
One of many who perished during these years was Lazar's brother, Mikhail Kaganovich, who was People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry. On 10 January 1940 Mikhail was demoted to director of aviation plant 124 in Kazan. In February 1941, during the 18th Conference of the Communist Party, Mikhail was warned that if the plant missed its quotas he would be eliminated from the Party. On 1 June 1941 Stalin mentioned to Lazar that he had heard that Mikhail was "associating with the right wing." Lazar reportedly did not speak in the defence of his brother to Stalin, but did notify him by telephone. The same day Mikhail committed suicide.
During his time serving as Railways Commissar, Kaganovich participated in the murder of 36,000 people by signing death lists. Kaganovich had exterminated so many railwaymen that one official called to warn that one line was entirely unmanned.
During World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in the USSR), Kaganovich was Commissar (Member of the Military Council) of the North Caucasian and Transcaucasian Fronts. During 1943–1944, he was again the Narkom for the railways. In 1943, he was presented with the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. From 1944 to 1947, Kaganovich was the Minister for Building Materials.
In 1947, he became the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. From 1948 to 1952, he served as the Chairman of Gossnab (State Committee for Material-Technical Supply, charged with the primary responsibility for the allocation of producer goods to enterprises, a critical state function in the absence of markets), and from 1952 to 1957, as the First Vice-Premier of the Council of Ministers. He was also the first Chairman of Goskomtrud (State Committee for Labour and Wages, charged with introducing the minimum wage, with other wage policy, and with improving the old-age pension system).
Until 1957, Kaganovich was a voting member of the Politburo as well as the Presidium. He was also an early mentor of the eventual First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev, who first became important as Kaganovich's Moscow City deputy during the 1930s. In 1947, when Khrushchev was dismissed as the Party secretary of Ukraine (he remained in the somewhat lesser "chief of government" position), Stalin dispatched Kaganovich to replace him until Khrushchev was reinstated later that year.
Later life
Kaganovich was a doctrinaire Stalinist, and though he remained a member of the Presidium, he quickly lost influence after Stalin's death in March 1953. In 1957, along with fellow devoted Stalinists as well as other opponents of Khrushchev: Molotov, Dmitri Shepilov and Georgy Malenkov (the so-called Anti-Party Group), he participated in an abortive party coup against his former protégé Khrushchev, whose criticism of Stalin had become increasingly harsh during the preceding two years. As a result of the unsuccessful coup, Kaganovich was forced to retire from the Presidium and the Central Committee, and was given the job of director of a small potash works in the Urals. In 1961, Kaganovich was completely expelled from the Party and became a pensioner living in Moscow. His grandchildren reported that after his dismissal from the Central Committee, Kaganovich (who had a reputation for his temperamental and allegedly violent nature) never shouted again and became a devoted grandfather.
In 1984, his re-admission to the Party was considered by the Politburo, alongside that of Molotov. During the last years of life he played dominoes with fellow pensioners and criticized Soviet media attacks on Stalin: "First, Stalin is disowned, now, little by little, it gets to prosecute socialism, the October Revolution, and in no time they will also want to prosecute Lenin and Marx." Shortly before death he suffered a heart attack.
In 1991 Kaganovich was interviewed about the alleged poisoning of Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, in which he suggested Lavrentiy Beria may have been involved with her poisoning and was quoted in 1991 saying “I can’t dismiss that possibility. He might have.” Russian writer Arkady Vaksberg further commented that the fact Kagnanovich had confirmed the poisoning “did actually take place is more important than specifying who ordered it.”
Kaganovich died on July 25, 1991, at the age of 97, just before the events that resulted in the end of the USSR. He is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
The Wolf of the Kremlin
In 1987, American journalist Stuart Kahan published a book entitled The Wolf of the Kremlin: The First Biography of L.M. Kaganovich, the Soviet Union's Architect of Fear (William Morrow & Co). In the book, Kahan made a series of claims about Kaganovich's working relationship with Stalin and his activities during the Ukrainian famine, and claimed to be Kaganovich's long-lost nephew. He also claimed to have interviewed Kaganovich personally and stated that Kaganovich admitted to being partially responsible for the death of Stalin in 1953 (supposedly by poisoning). A number of other unusual claims were made as well, including that Stalin was married to a sister of Kaganovich (supposedly named "Rosa") during the last year of his life and that Kaganovich (who was raised Jewish) was the architect of anti-Jewish pogroms.
After The Wolf of the Kremlin was translated into Russian by Progress Publishers, and a chapter from it printed in the Nedelya (Week) newspaper in 1991, remaining members of Kaganovich's family composed the Statement of the Kaganovich Family in response. The statement disputed all of Kahan's claims.
Rosa Kaganovich, who said that the Statement of the Kaganovich Family was fabricated, was referred to as Stalin's wife in the 1940s and 1950s by Western media including The New York Times, Time and Life. The story of Rosa Kaganovich was mentioned by Trotsky, who alleged that "Stalin married the sister of Kaganovich, thereby presenting the latter with hopes for a promising future."
Personal life
Kaganovich entered the workforce at the age of 13, an event which would shape his aesthetics and preferences through adulthood. Stalin himself confided to Kaganovich that the latter had a much greater fondness and appreciation for the proletariat. As his favorability with Stalin rose, Kaganovich felt compelled to rapidly fill the noticeable gaps in his education and upbringing. Stalin, upon noticing that Kaganovich could not use commas properly, gave Kaganovich three months' leave to undertake a rapid course in grammar.
Kaganovich was married to Maria Markovna Kaganovich (née Privorotskaya) (1894–1961), a fellow assimilated Kievan Jew who was part of the revolutionary effort since 1909. Mrs Kaganovich spent many years as a powerful municipal official, directly ordering the demolition of the Iberian Gate and Chapel and Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The couple had two children: a daughter, named Maya, and an adopted son, Yuri. Much attention has been devoted by historians to Kaganovich's Jewishness, and how it conflicted with Stalin's biases. Kaganovich frequently found it necessary to allow great cruelties to occur to his family to preserve Stalin's trust in him, such as allowing his brother to be coerced into suicide.
The Kaganovich family initially lived, as most high-level Soviet functionaries in the 1930s, a conservative lifestyle in modest conditions. This changed when Stalin entrusted the construction of the Moscow Metro to Kaganovich. The family moved into a luxurious apartment near ground zero (Sokolniki station), located at 3 Pesochniy Pereulok (Sandy Lane). Kaganovich's apartment consisted of two floors (an extreme rarity in the USSR), a private access garage, and a designated space for butlers, security, and drivers.
Decorations and awards
Order of Lenin, four times
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (27 October, 1938)
Hero of Socialist Labour (5 November, 1943)
References
Further reading
Fitzpatrick, S. (1996). Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press.
——. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kotkin, S. (2017). Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. New York: Random House.
Radzinsky, Edvard, (1996) Stalin, Doubleday (English translation edition), 1996.
Rees, E.A. Iron Lazar: A Political Biography of Lazar Kaganovich (Anthem Press; 2012) 373 pages; scholarly biography
Rubenstein, Joshua, The Last Days of Stalin, (Yale University Press: 2016)
External links
Profile at http://www.hrono.ru
1893 births
1991 deaths
Stalinism
Anti-revisionists
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
Expelled members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
First convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
First Secretaries of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union)
Genocide perpetrators
Great Purge perpetrators
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Holodomor
Jewish socialists
Jewish Soviet politicians
Old Bolsheviks
People from Kiev Governorate
Politicians from Kyiv Oblast
People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry
People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union
Members of the Orgburo of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Orgburo of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Orgburo of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Orgburo of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Secretariat of the 13th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Secretariat of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Secretariat of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Secretariat of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Secretariat of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Candidates of the Politburo of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Candidates of the Politburo of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Politburo of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Politburo of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Politburo of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Presidium of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Presidium of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Candidates of the Central Committee of the 12th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 13th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Members of the Central Committee of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Members of the Central Committee of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Anti-Party Group
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members
Soviet people of World War II
Ukrainian communists
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400504
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor%20of%20Education
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Doctor of Education
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The Doctor of Education (Ed.D. or D.Ed.; Latin Educationis Doctor or Doctor Educationis) is (depending on region and university) a research or professional doctoral degree that focuses on the field of education. It prepares the holder for academic, research, administrative, clinical, or professional positions in educational, civil, private organizations, or public institutions. Considerable differences exist in structure, content and aims between regions. In the US, for instance, the EdD usually is a professional doctorate for working or learning professionals and has a large taught component with a smaller thesis (or sometimes no thesis), comparable to for example a DSW or DPH, whereas in the UK and Canada, the Ed.D is a full research doctorate with research and profession related courses but ultimately awarded for the thesis resulting from original research, that way aligning more with a Ph.D.
History
The history and roots of the EdD were in the United States. Other countries or regions have adopted or developed the award, often following different conventions and with different structures. This section, therefore, concerns the United States; for some other regions, information can be found under the regional headings below.
When research universities were established in the late 19th century in the United States, they primarily awarded doctorates in the sciences and later the arts. By the early 20th century, these universities began to offer doctoral degrees in professional fields. The first professional degrees were awarded in medicine and law. Shortly thereafter, in response to the societal demand for expert practitioners, doctorates began to be awarded in education. The first Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in the field of education was granted at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1893. The first Doctor of Education (EdD) degree was granted at Harvard University in 1921. Henry Holmes, an educator at Harvard College, raised funds to establish the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Holmes saw value in increasing Harvard's role in the professional training of educators and established doctorate of education, or Ed.D., for students who had had a successful teaching experience, possessed a "working knowledge of biology, psychology, and the social sciences", and who sought a higher position within the school system. The program of study comprised five areas of education plus the study of social theory in education, history of education, and educational psychology. The dissertation served to teach the student to conduct an independent investigation utilizing existing knowledge and producing a "constructive result of importance and value". The purpose of the Ed.D. was to offer a rigorous course of study that would enhance candidates’ prior knowledge and skills and better prepare them to lead as school practitioners.
The EdD degree was then added by Teachers College in 1934. Between 1925 and 1940 many institutions, including the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan followed the steps of Columbia and Harvard and established schools and colleges of education that offered graduate study and eventually, the two doctoral degrees. Despite this growth, however, these and other schools of education struggled to establish their identity as professional schools and were perpetually engulfed in debate over the purpose of the Ed.D.
The history of the Ed.D. throughout the 20th century was one of confusion. In many graduate schools of education it was a practitioner degree, while in others it was considered education's research doctorate. Several factors contributed to the confusion: First, offering two doctoral degrees resulted in constant conflict between the "demands of theory and those of practice". Second, the advancement of professional training was further complicated as schools of education competed with schools of arts and sciences. Graduate programs in arts and sciences were older and more established. Traditionally arts and science faculty offered doctoral preparation in the form of the Ph.D. Both the school of arts and sciences and its faculty had difficulty relinquishing their expertise in doctoral studies or in acknowledging the need for a professional doctorate degree. Third, from the inception of both doctoral degrees in education, unclear goals and similar programmatic content have confused the degree purposes and plagued professionalization efforts.
The EdD is awarded in several countries (see below).
Australia
In Australia, entry requirements for the EdD are similar to the PhD except that the former requires a number of years professional experience in education or academia.
Canada
In Canada, the Ed.D. tends to be granted by faculties of education at Universities and is a terminal degree in education. Much like the United States and Great Britain, some universities offer the EdD (Simon Fraser University), while others offer a PhD in education (McGill University, Queen's University, University of Toronto, University of Manitoba, University of New Brunswick), and still others offer both (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, The University of Western Ontario, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of British Columbia).
Much like the UK, in Canada, the Ed.D. is a full academic doctorate that can only be granted by AUCC-accredited institutions and shares equal parity with a Ph.D. (Education). The dissertation to be completed as part of an Ed.D. program differs only in focus but not in breadth of study, nor academic rigour required. Ed.D. programs in Canadian institutions must include an original contribution to knowledge which must be chaired (supervised) by an accomplished researcher and orally defended (viva) to internal and external examiners. In many cases, the only salient difference between the Ph.D. and Ed.D. relates to the professional field of practice of the candidate as Ed.D. programs often tend to focus on existing pedagogical problems.
India
PhD in education — a doctorate in philosophy — can be done in any university recognized by U.G.C. If you have cleared NET (Education) exam then you have to choose a Guide enlisted by the university. On other hand if you don't pass NET exam then you have to qualify Exam conducted twice by every university. The NET cleared students of same university are given preference over those not qualified in NET. You have to submit the synopsis within one year of your enrollment as candidate and you must complete coursework from university recognized center followed by written exam. The rules like Non plagiarism and APA formatting are followed strictly.
Ireland
In Ireland, EdD programs have only recently been introduced. They tend to follow the UK model of initial research modules followed by longer research papers and thesis.
Singapore
In Singapore, the National Institute of Education (Nanyang Technological University) is the sole university that awards the EdD degree. The EdD programme has the rigour and expectations of a PhD, but with a professional focus.
South Africa
In South Africa, following a convention of using Latin in academic designations, the doctorate in education is called Doctor Educationis (DEd) and, like other doctoral degrees in that country, it is entirely a research-based qualification.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the EdD is a terminal research degree that is equivalent to the PhD, both which can only be granted by universities with research-degree awarding powers.
The EdD usually involves courses and a dissertation, but as with all doctorates requires at least a dissertation. The EdD thesis may be shorter than that of the PhD, because the EdD normally includes coursework that includes assessed papers, whereas PhD programs of study are focused on undertaking a thesis without such coursework. The EdD thesis differs from a PhD thesis only in length and scope but not in quality. As with PhD candidates, all EdD candidates undergo a viva voce examination (comprehensive oral defence of one's thesis/dissertation).
The EdD is generally presented as an opportunity to prepare for academic, administrative or specialised positions in education, placing the graduates for promotion and leadership responsibilities, or high-level professional positions in a range of locations in the broad Education industry. Both the EdD and PhD are recognised for the purposes of appointment as a lecturer or professor in universities.
In 1991, the Doctor of Education programme at the University of Bristol began and was the first taught doctorate outside of North America. The EdD is delivered through a balance of taught units including research methods, theory, argumentation and evaluation skills as well as a major research thesis that must make an original contribution to knowledge. As with other doctoral candidates, participants of the EdD are encouraged to publish articles and books based on their research. An excellence in doctoral level research is the main aim of the Bristol EdD.
At the Institute of Education in London, the EdD "is for experienced professionals from education and related fields who would like to extend their professional understanding and develop skills in research, evaluation and high-level reflection on practice". Meanwhile, the PhD "is intended to enable [students] to produce [their] own thesis and to develop a range of research and other more generic skills."
The University of Cambridge's Faculty of Education provides a useful comparison between the PhD and EdD programmes for their particular university.
United States
In the United States, the EdD tends to be granted by the school of education of universities and is a terminal degree in education. Majors within the EdD may include: counseling, curriculum and instruction/curriculum and teaching, educational administration, education policy, educational psychology, educational technology, higher education, human resource development, language/linguistics, leadership or technology/innovation in instruction. The EdD is recognized for appointment as a professor or lecturer in a university. It may also be recognized as preparation for administrative positions in education and human development field, such as superintendent of schools, human resource director, or principal.
From the very beginning, there was a formal division between the EdD and the PhD in education, and the growing popularity of the applied doctorates was met by faculty in the arts and sciences questioning their legitimacy. They argued that practical and vocational aims were inappropriate for doctoral study, which they contended should be focused on producing scholarly research and college professors. The EdD and the colleges of education that granted them continued to face criticism through the 1980s. In 2013, Harvard University, the first institution to award the EdD degree, accepted its last EdD cohort and instead now offers both the Doctor of Philosophy in Education and the Doctor of Educational Leadership (EdLD) degrees.
Comparisons of the EdD to the PhD in education in the United States
There are similarities between the EdD and PhD which may cause confusion. In theory, the two degrees are expected to constitute overlapping but distinct categories, where the EdD is a degree that prepares educational practitioners who can solve educational problems using existing knowledge, and the PhD in education is the more theoretical of the two as a traditional social science research degree that prepares students for careers as scholars and academics, often from a particular disciplinary perspective (e.g., sociology of education). In reality, however, distinctions between the two degree programs are generally minimal in both curriculum and dissertation requirements. One study on dissertations submitted between 1950 and 1990 indicated that there were no differences between the two degrees regarding basic versus applied research or the significance of the findings. Nonetheless, that same study indicated that "PhD dissertations contained more multivariate statistics, had wider generalizability, and were more prevalent in certain areas of concentration", whereas "EdD dissertations contained more survey research and were most prevalent in educational administration research." The difference is attributed primarily to which type of degree a particular school offers and if existing research or original research is required in the dissertation.
The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) states that "the professional doctorate in education prepares educators for the application of appropriate and specific practices, the generation of new knowledge, and for the stewardship of the profession." To wit, although the CPED describes the EdD as a professional doctorate, it also states that it prepares students for the generation of new knowledge, and this is corroborated by the fact that both the PhD and EdD degrees are considered research doctoral degrees on the Survey of Earned Doctorates, which is a survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, sponsored by six federal agencies, and solicited, under the National Science Foundation Act, from graduating doctoral students at all accredited institutions.
Colleges and universities in the United States that offer doctorates in education choose to offer only the Doctor of Education (e.g. Webster University), only the Doctor of Philosophy in education (e.g., Stanford University), or both (e.g., UCLA, University of Missouri, and University of Pennsylvania). The distinction between the PhD and the EdD in this last group can take different forms. At the University of Illinois, for example, the PhD in education dissertation requires an original contribution to academic knowledge, whereas the EdD dissertation "is intended to demonstrate the candidate's ability to relate academic knowledge to the problems of professional practice." At Teachers College, Columbia University the PhD is designed for students who wish specifically to pursue an academic career, whereas the EdD is designed for broader aims including educational administration and policy work. In St. Louis University's Educational Studies program, the EdD requires "successful completion of a culminating project dealing with a problem in educational practice" and the PhD requires a dissertation and an "oral defense of the dissertation proposal and [of] the final dissertation. Most Ed.D., Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs require a dissertation and an oral defense while others have a research project leading to publication as an alternative." Finally, some schools frame the EdD specifically in terms of applied research, such as New York University, The University of Texas at Austin, and the University of California, Berkeley.
In addition to educational settings, the EdD degree is designed to address real-world issues including clinical mental health counseling and human resource development.
Criticisms
Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, stated that the lack of distinction between the EdD and the PhD has meant the EdD has come to be seen as little more than "Ph.D.-lite", and the PhD in education has likewise suffered. Moreover, it has resulted in "the danger that we achieve rigorous preparation neither for practice nor for research." Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College, Columbia University, said that the EdD degree is granted to both scholars and administrators and as such makes the degree ambiguously defined, that the programs in educational leadership specifically suffered from low standards, and that "There is absolutely no reason why a school leader needs a doctorate." Barbara K. Townsend, Professor of Higher Education and Associate Dean for Research and Development at the University of Missouri at Columbia, suggests the doctorate of education is most frequently sought for vanity purposes and to improve one's status, citing a 2000 survey of California school superintendents in which they identify the greatest value of the EdD as being its "symbolic value (credibility and respects a basis for leadership)", further adding that there is scant research or evidence to suggest that possession of a doctorate in education improves one's ability to be an effective administrator.
Suggestions for reform
Some scholars in the United States have suggested future reforms for both the EdD and PhD in education by calling for a new doctorate for the professional practice of education, which would be for principals, superintendents, policy coordinators, curriculum specialists, teacher educators, program evaluators, etc.; and the distinction between the PhD in education and the EdD would be analogous to the distinction between the PhD in biomedicine and the MD. This new degree might be called the Professional Practice Doctorate (PPD), or it might retain the old name of EdD but be severed from old associations.
Arthur Levine argued that the current EdD should be retooled into a new professional master's degree, parallel in many ways to the Master of Business Administration (MBA).
David Imig described reforms to the EdD as including more collaborative work involving the analysis of data collected by others. Rather than generating their own data and hypothesis-testing, as PhD students would, a group of EdD students would analyze a specific pool of data from a number of different angles, each writing an individual dissertation on a specific aspect of the data which, when pooled together with the other dissertations, would combine to offer a comprehensive solution to a real-world problem.
The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate is currently working with over 80 institutions to collaboratively redesign the EdD and "to make it a stronger and more relevant degree for the advanced preparation of school practitioners and clinical faculty, academic leaders and professional staff for the nation’s schools and colleges and the learning organizations that support them".
Reforms have already been implemented at some institutions. For example, in 2013 the Harvard University Graduate School of Education enrolled its final EdD cohort. The school now offers the Doctor of Education Leadership (EdLD) and PhD in Education.
Notable doctors of education
Michael Apple – educational theorist, writer, and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Katherine Albrecht – privacy expert and talk-radio host
Deborah Bial – President and Founder of The Posse Foundation, Inc
Jill Biden – First Lady of the United States, Former Second Lady of the United States
Jamaal Bowman – U.S. Congressman for the Bronx and Westchester
Miguel Cardona – U.S. Secretary of Education
Shoshana Chatfield – first female President of the Naval War College
Bill Cosby – stand-up comedian, actor, and author
Linda Darling-Hammond – writer, researcher, education adviser to Barack Obama, and professor at Stanford University
Lisa Delpit – American educator, author, and professor at Florida International University
John Duda – actor and educator
Wayne Dyer – self-help author
E. Gordon Gee – American educator and president of multiple universities
Carol C. Goodheart – American Psychological Association president in 2010
Irwin Hyman – researcher and professor known for research on the negative effects of corporal punishment.
Timothy R. Lannon – president of Creighton University
Ronald Levant – American Psychological Association president in 2005, known for research regarding fatherhood.
Sonia Nieto – author and teacher in the field of multicultural education
Shaquille O'Neal – professional basketball player, analyst, and businessman
Thomas S. Popkewitz – curriculum theorist and professor
Neil Postman – American author, media theorist, and cultural critic
Betty Shabazz – American educator, civil rights advocate and wife of Malcolm X
Chris Spence – Canadian author, former educator, and former Canadian football player
Ruth "Dr. Ruth" Westheimer – German-American sex therapist, professor, talk show host, and author
See also
Certified teacher
Bachelor of Education (BEd)
Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)
Master of Education (MEd, EdM)
Educational Specialist (EdS, or Specialist in Education)
Doctor of Engineering
Doctor of Business Administration
References
Education, Doctor of
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400546
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist%20Party%20of%20Vietnam
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Communist Party of Vietnam
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The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North Vietnam in 1954 and then all of Vietnam after the collapse of the South Vietnamese government following the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Although it nominally exists alongside the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, it maintains a unitary government and has centralized control over the state, military, and media. The supremacy of the CPV is guaranteed by Article 4 of the national constitution. The Vietnamese public generally refer to the CPV as simply "the Party" () or "our Party" ().
The CPV is organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The highest institution of the CPV is the party's National Congress, which elects the Central Committee. The Central Committee is the supreme organ on party affairs in between party congresses. After a party congress, the Central Committee elects the Politburo and Secretariat, and appoints the First Secretary, the highest party office. In between sessions of the Central Committee, the Politburo is the supreme organ on party affairs. However, it can only implement decisions based on the policies which have been approved in advance by either the Central Committee or the party's National Congress. , the 12th Politburo has 19 members. The current party leader is Nguyễn Phú Trọng, who holds the titles of General Secretary of the Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Military Commission.
The CPV is committed to communism and participates in the annual International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. The party is also known for its advocacy of what it calls a "socialist-oriented market economy", as well as Hồ Chí Minh Thought, which combines Marxism–Leninism, Vietnamese philosophy, ideas from the French Revolution, and Hồ Chí Minh's personal beliefs. The CPV implemented a command economy in Vietnam before introducing economic reforms, known as , in 1986. The party aligned with the Soviet Union and its allies during the Cold War.
History
Rise to power (1925–1945)
The Communist Party of Vietnam traces its history back to 1925, when Hồ Chí Minh established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (), commonly shortened to the Youth League (). The Youth League's goal was to end the colonial occupation of Vietnam by France. The group sought political and social objectives—national independence and the redistribution of land to working peasants. The Youth League's purpose was to prepare the masses for a revolutionary armed struggle against the French occupation. His efforts in laying the groundwork for the party was financially supported by the Comintern.
In 1928 the headquarters of the Youth League in Canton (present-day Guangdong), China, were destroyed by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the group was forced underground. This led to a national breakdown within the Youth League, which indirectly led to a split. On 17 June 1929, more than 20 delegates from cells throughout the Tonkin (northern) region held a conference in Hanoi, where they declared the dissolution of Youth League and the establishment of a new organization called the Communist Party of Indochina (). The other faction of the Youth League, based in the Cochinchina (southern) region of the country, held a conference in Saigon and declared themselves the Communist Party of Annam () in late 1929. The two parties spent the rest of 1929 engaged in polemics against one another in an attempt to gain a position of hegemony over the radical Vietnamese liberation movement. A third Vietnamese communist group which did not originate from the Youth League emerged around this time in the Annam (central) region, calling itself the Communist League of Indochina (). The Communist League of Indochina had its roots in another national liberation group which had existed in parallel with the Youth League, and saw itself as a rival to the latter.
The Communist Party of Indochina and Communist Party of Annam, together with individual members of the Communist League of Indochina, merged to form a united communist organization called the Communist Party of Vietnam (), founded by Hồ Chí Minh at a "Unification Conference" held in Wah Yan College in Kowloon, British Hong Kong, from 3–7 February 1930. At a later conference, per the request of the Comintern, the party changed its name to the Indochinese Communist Party (), often abbreviated as ICP. During its first five years of existence, the ICP attained a membership of about 1,500 and had a large contingent of sympathizers. Despite the group's small size, it exerted an influence in a turbulent Vietnamese social climate. Poor harvests in 1929 and 1930 and an onerous burden of debt served to radicalize many peasants. In the industrial city of Vinh, May Day demonstrations were organized by ICP activists, which gained critical mass when the families of the semi-peasant workers joined the demonstrations to express their dissatisfaction with the economic circumstances they faced.
As three May Day marches grew into mass rallies, French colonial authorities moved in to quash what they perceived to be dangerous peasant revolts. Government forces fired upon the crowds, killing dozens and enraging the population. In response, councils were organized in villages in an effort to govern themselves locally. Repression by the colonial authorities began in the autumn of 1931; around 1,300 people were eventually killed by the French and many more were imprisoned or deported as government authority was reasserted and the ICP was effectively wiped out in the region. General Secretary Tran Phu and a number of Central Committee members were arrested or killed. Lê Hồng Phong was assigned by the Comintern to restore the movement. The party was restored in 1935, and Lê Hồng Phong was elected its general secretary. In 1936, Hà Huy Tập was appointed general secretary instead of Lê Hồng Phong, who returned to the country to restore the Central Committee. In the mid 1930s the party was forced publicly to abandon much of its opposition to French colonialism as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin cared more about strengthening a left-inclined government in France. Hồ Chí Minh was also removed from the party leadership in the early 1930s.
The French colonial apparatus in Vietnam was disrupted during World War II. The fall of France to Nazi Germany in June 1940 and the subsequent collaboration of Vichy France with the Axis powers of Germany and Japan served to delegitimize French claims of sovereignty. The European war made colonial governance from France impossible and Indochina was occupied by Japanese forces. As a result, the communists also sought the opportunity to establish a grassroots organization throughout most of the country.
At the beginning of the war, the ICP instructed its members to go into hiding in the countryside. Despite this, more than 2,000 party members, including many of its leaders, were rounded up and arrested. Party activists were particularly hard hit in the southern region of Cochinchina, where the previously strong organization was wiped out by arrests and killings. After an uprising in Cochinchina in 1940, most of the Central Committee, including Nguyễn Văn Cừ (general secretary) and Hà Huy Tập, were arrested and killed, and Lê Hồng Phong was deported to Côn Đảo and later died. A new party leadership, which included Trường Chinh, Phạm Văn Đồng, and Võ Nguyên Giáp emerged. Together with Hồ Chí Minh, these individuals would provide a unified leadership over the next four decades.
Hồ Chí Minh returned to Vietnam in February 1941 and established a military-political front known as the League for the Independence of Vietnam (), commonly known as the Viet Minh (). The Viet Minh was a broad organization that included many political parties, military groups, religious organizations and other factions who sought independence for Vietnam. The Viet Minh was heavily influenced by the leadership of the ICP. It was the most uncompromising fighting force against the Japanese occupation and gained popular recognition and legitimacy in an environment that would become a political vacuum. Despite its position as the core of the Viet Minh, the ICP remained very small throughout the war, with an estimated membership of between 2,000 and 3,000 in 1944.
Left opposition
The party, particularly in the south, was rivalled by other nationalist and left-wing groups, notably Trotskyist organisations. In November 1931, dissidents emerging from within the party formed the October Left Opposition () around the clandestine journal (October). These included Hồ Hữu Tường and Phan Văn Hùm who, protesting a leadership of "Moscow trainees", had formed an Indochinese group within the Communist League (), the French section of the International Left Opposition, in Paris in July 1930. Once considered "the theoretician of the Vietnamese contingent in Moscow", Tường was calling for a new "mass-based" party arising directly "out of the struggle of the real struggle of the proletariat of the cities and countryside". Tường was joined in endorsing Leon Trotsky's doctrines of "proletarian internationalism" and of "permanent revolution" by Tạ Thu Thâu of the Annamite Independence Party (). Rejecting (in the wake of the Shanghai massacre) the Comintern's "Kuomintang line", Thâu argued against a nationalist accommodation with the indigenous bourgeoisie and for immediate "proletarian socialist revolution."
Recognizing the Trotskyists' relative strength in organizing Saigon's factories and waterfront, the ICP cells in the city maintained a unique pact with the Trotskyists for four years in the mid-1930s. The two groups published a common paper, La Lutte ("The Struggle"), and presented joint "workers' lists" for Saigon municipal and colonial-council elections. After they rallied in August 1945 with other non-Communist forces demanding arms against the French, the Trotskyists were systematically hunted down and eliminated by their former party collaborators under the direction of Tran Van Giau, a fate shared by large numbers of Caodaists, independent nationalists and their families.
First Indochina War (1945–1954)
Following the August Revolution, Hồ Chí Minh became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and issued a Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Although he convinced Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country. He repeatedly petitioned American President Harry S. Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, citing the Atlantic Charter, but Truman did not respond. After the successful establishment of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi, Vietnam was taken over by Chinese nationalist forces in the north and the French-British joint forces in the south.
In response to French attempts to sow disunity within the Viet Minh, the ICP was officially dissolved and was downgraded to the "Institute for Studying Marxism in Indochina" (). This symbolic gesture was intended to encourage unity between Vietnamese communists and non-communists in their struggle against the French and their sympathizers. In practice, the Viet Minh became the leading force in the struggle for Vietnamese independence. The ICP was ostensibly dissolved, but its core was still functioning. According to the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), membership in the Viet Minh grew to about 400,000 members by 1950. In 1951, during the war for independence, the officially dissolved Indochinese Communist Party was officially re-established and renamed the Worker's Party of Vietnam (), often abbreviated as the WPV. The Indochinese War against French forces lasted until the Vietnamese victory at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ in 1954.
Vietnam was partitioned following the 1954 Geneva Conference, with the communists ruling the northern half of the country. Almost immediately, the party's Marxist ideologues believed that their party had lost sight of its real Marxist purpose of guiding the working class in a struggle against the bourgeoisie in its efforts of national independence. By 1955, they had launched a significant campaign to promote personnel with a background in class struggle, at the cost of communists whose claims to authority were based on their leadership in the resistance against the French.
Vietnam War (1955–1975)
At the second party congress it was decided that the Communist Party would be split into three; one party for each of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. However, in an official note it said that the "Vietnamese party reserves the right to supervise the activities of its brother parties in Cambodia and Laos". The Khmer People's Revolutionary Party was established in April 1951 and the Lao People's Party was formed four years later on 22 March 1955. The third party congress, held in Hanoi in 1960, formalized the tasks of constructing socialism in what was by then North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), and committed the party to the "liberation" of South Vietnam. In the south, the United States helped establish an anti-communist state, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), in 1955. In 1960 the DRV established a military-political front in the south called the National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam () or NLF for short. American soldiers commonly referred to the NLF as the Viet Cong () or VC for short.
The Vietnam War (or Second Indochina War) broke out between the communists which included the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong), and the anti-communists which included the United States, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and their allies, such as Australia, South Korea, and Thailand. The communists received support from the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The war lasted from 1960 to 1975 and spilled over into Laos and Cambodia. The Cambodian Civil War broke out between the communist Khmer Rouge and GRUNK, and the pro-American Khmer Republic. The Laotian Civil War broke out between the communist Pathet Lao and the pro-American Kingdom of Laos. The Cambodian and Laotian communists received training and support from the DRV and NLF. During the war the Worker's Party of Vietnam also established its sub-branch in the south called the People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam (), which aimed to lead the NLF. After the withdrawal of American troops from Indochina and the collapse of the RVN on 30 April 1975, Vietnam was unified under the leadership of the communists. At the fourth party congress in 1976, the Workers' Party of Vietnam merged with the People's Revolutionary Party of South Vietnam to create the Communist Party of Vietnam (), commonly abbreviated as CPV. The party explained that the merger and name change was made in light of the "strengthened proletariat dictatorship, the development of the leadership of the working class... a worker-peasant alliance".
Ruling party (1976–present)
The fourth party congress comprised 1,008 delegates who represented 1,553,500 party members, an estimated three per cent of the Vietnamese population. A new line for socialist construction was approved at the congress, the Second Five-Year Plan (1976–1980) was approved and several amendments were made to the party's constitution. The party's new line emphasized building socialism domestically and supported socialist expansion internationally. The party's economic goal was to build a strong and prosperous socialist country in 20 years. The economic goals set for the Second Five-Year Plan failed to be implemented, and a heated debate about economic reform took place between the fourth and fifth party congresses. The first was at the sixth Central Committee plenum of the fourth party congress in September 1979, but the most revealing one occurred at the tenth Central Committee plenum of the fourth party congress which lasted from 9 October to 3 November 1981. The plenum adopted a reformist line but was forced to moderate its position when several grassroot party chapters rebelled against its resolution. At the fifth party congress, held in March 1982, General Secretary Lê Duẩn said the party had to strive to reach two goals; to construct socialism and to protect Vietnam from Chinese aggression, but priority was given to socialist construction. The party leadership acknowledged the failures of the Second Five-Year Plan, claiming that their failure to grasp the economic and social conditions aggravated the country's economic problems. The Third Five-Year Plan (1981–1985) emphasized the need to improve living conditions and the need for more industrial construction, but agriculture was given top priority. Other points were to improve the deficiencies in central planning, improve economic trade relations with the COMECON countries, Laos and Kampuchea.
While Lê Duẩn continued to believe in the goals set in the Third Five-Year Plan, leading members within the Communist Party were losing their trust in the system. It was in this mood that the 1985 price reform was introduced—market prices were introduced, which led to a sudden increase in inflation. By 1985, it became apparent that the Third Five-Year Plan had failed miserably. Attacks against the interests of the well-to-do were part of the Communist ideas of class struggle. The majority of the educated came from well-off families, and the middle and upper classes held education and abilities that were critical to the country's prosperity, but the Communist Party's attitude toward those groups has frequently hampered their effective use of their education and skills. As a result, Vietnam's most pressing needs, such as the rebuilding of a shattered economy and the establishment of long-term economic development, had largely gone unfulfilled. The Communist Party's personnel lacked the skills to tackle these issues, and the Communists' monopolization of power made it impossible for those who did have the skills to put them to use in the decade following the war's end. Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world during Lê Duẩn's rule. Lê Duẩn died on 10 July 1986, a few months before the sixth party congress. A Politburo meeting held between 25 and 30 August 1986, paved the way for more radical reforms; the new reform movement was led by Trường Chinh. At the sixth party congress, Nguyễn Văn Linh was elected the new general secretarythis was a victory for the party's old guard reformist wing. The new leadership elected at the Congress would later launch Đổi Mới and establish the framework for the socialist-oriented market economy. The economic reforms were initiated alongside a relaxation of state censorship and freedom of expression. The Chinese Communist Party praised the CPV's economic and political reforms, which continued into the early 2000s.
At the seventh party congress in which Nguyễn Văn Linh retired from politics, he reaffirmed the party's and country's commitment to socialism. Đỗ Mười succeeded Nguyễn Văn Linh as general secretary, Võ Văn Kiệt, the leading reformist communist, was appointed prime minister and Lê Đức Anh, was appointed president. In 1994, four new members were appointed to the seventh Politburo, all of whom opposed radical reform. At the June 1997 Central Committee meeting, both Lê Đức Anh and Võ Văn Kiệt confirmed their resignations to the ninth National Assembly, which was dissolved in September. Phan Văn Khải was approved as Võ Văn Kiệt's successor, and the relatively unknown Trần Đức Lương succeeded Lê Đức Anh as president. At the fourth Central Committee plenum of the eighth party congress, Lê Khả Phiêu was elected general secretary and Đỗ Mười, Lê Đức Anh and Võ Văn Kiệt officially resigned from politics and were elected Advisory Council of the Central Committee. Nông Đức Mạnh succeeded Lê Khả Phiêu in 2001 as general secretary. Nông Đức Mạnh held the top spot until the 11th National Congress in 2011, when he was succeeded by Nguyễn Phú Trọng. Trong is seen as a conservative and closer to China. In 2021, General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, was re-elected for his third term in office, meaning he is Vietnam's most powerful leader in decades.
Organization
National Congress
The National Congress is the party's highest organ, and is held once every five years. Delegates decide the direction of the party and the Government at the National Congress. The Central Committee is elected, delegates vote on policies and candidates are elected to posts within the central party leadership. After decisions taken at the National Congress are ratified, the congress is dissolved. The Central Committee implements the decisions of the National Congress during the five-year period between congresses. When the Central Committee is not in session, the Politburo implements the policies of the National Congress.
Central Committee
The Central Committee is the CPV's most powerful institution. It delegates some of its powers to the Secretariat and the Politburo when it is not in session. When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the Vietnamese leadership, led by Lê Duẩn, began to centralize power. This policy continued until the sixth National Congress, when Nguyễn Văn Linh took power. Linh pursued a policy of economic and political decentralization. The party and state bureaucracy opposed Linh's reform initiatives; because of this, Linh tried to win the support of provincial leaders, causing the powers of the provincial chapters of the CPV to increase in the 1990s. The CPV lost its power to appoint or dismiss provincial-level officials in the 1990s; Võ Văn Kiệt tried to wrestle this power back to the centre during the 1990s without success. These developments led to the provincialization of the Central Committee; for example, increasing numbers of Central Committee members have a background in provincial party work.
Because of these changes, power in Vietnam has become increasingly devolved. The number of Central Committee members with a provincial background increased from 15.6 per cent in 1982 to 41 per cent in 2001. Because of the devolution of power, the powers of the Central Committee have increased substantially; for example, when a two-thirds majority of the Politburo voted in favour of retaining Lê Khả Phiêu as General Secretary, the Central Committee voted against the Politburo's motion and voted unanimously in favour of removing him from his post of General Secretary. The Central Committee did this because most of its members had a provincial background, or were working in the provinces. These members were the first to be affected when the economy began to stagnate during Lê Khả Phiêu's rule. The Central Committee elects the Politburo in the aftermath of the Party Congress.
General Secretary
The General Secretary of the Central Committee is the highest office within the Communist Party, is elected by the Central Committee, and can remain in post for two five-year terms. The general secretary presides over the work of the Central Committee, the Politburo, the Secretariat, is responsible for issues such as defence, security and foreign affairs, and chairs meetings with important leaders. The general secretary holds the post of Secretary of the Central Military Commission, the party's highest military affairs organ.
Politburo
The Politburo is the highest organ of the Communist Party between Central Committee meetings, which are held twice a year. The Politburo can implement policies which have been approved by either the previous Party Congress or the Central Committee. It is the duty of the Politburo to ensure that resolutions of the Party Congress and the Central Committee are implemented nationally. It is also responsible for matters related to organization and personnel, and has the right to prepare and convene a Central Committee plenary session. The Politburo can be overruled by the Central Committee, as happened in 2001 when the Politburo voted in favour of retaining Lê Khả Phiêu as general secretary; the Central Committee overturned the Politburo's decision, dismissed Lê from politics, and forced the Politburo to elect a new general secretary after the ninth National Congress.
The members of the Politburo are elected and given a ranking by the Central Committee immediately after a National Party Congress. According to David Koh, the Politburo ranking from the first plenum of the 10th Central Committee onwards is based upon the number of approval votes by the Central Committee. Lê Hồng Anh, the Minister of Public Security, was ranked second in the 10th Politburo because he received the second-highest number of approval votes. Tô Huy Rứa was ranked lowest because he received the lowest approval vote of the 10th Central Committee when he stood for election to the Politburo. The 11th Politburo was elected by the Central Committee after the 11th National Congress and consists of 16 members. Decisions within the Politburo are made through collective decision-making.
Since 10th Central Committee, the duties and responsibilities of the members of the Politburo and those of the General Secretary, President, Prime Minister, the Chairman of the National Assembly and the Permanent member of the Secretariat have been specified separately.
Secretariat
The Secretariat is headed by the general secretary and decisions within it are made through collective decision-making. The Secretariat is elected and the membership size is decided by the Central Committee immediately after the National Congress. It is responsible for solving organizational problems and implementing the demands of the Central Committee. The Secretariat oversees the work of the Departments of the Central Committee. It is also responsible for inspecting and supervising the implementation of resolutions and directives on fields regarding the party on economic, social, defence, security and foreign affairs, and it is directly responsible for the coordination of a number of party bodies. The Secretariat supervises the preparation for issues raised at Politburo meetings.
Central Military Commission
The Central Military Commission is appointed by the Politburo and includes members from the military. The commission is responsible to the Central Committee and between meetings, the Politburo and the Secretariat. The Secretary of the Central Military Commission is the party's general secretary while the post of deputy secretary is held by the Minister of National Defence. The commission can issue guidelines on military and defence policies, and has leadership in all aspects of the military. The General Political Department is subordinate to the commission.
Central Inspection Commission
The Central Inspection Commission is the party organ responsible for combating corruption, disciplining members and wrongdoing in general. It is the only organ within the party which can sentence or condemn party members. The Commission, and its chairman and deputy chairmen, are elected by the first plenum of the Central Committee after a National Party Congress. Due to the party's policy of democratic centralism, a local inspection commission can only investigate a case if the inspection commission directly superior to it consents to the investigation.
Central Theoretical Council
The Central Theoretical Council was established on 22 October 1996 by a decision of the Central Committee. The 4th Central Theoretical Council was formed on 7 September 2016, and is currently headed by Politburo member Đinh Thế Huynh. It functions as an advisory body to the Central Committee, the Politburo and the Secretariat on conceiving and developing party theory in line with Marxism. It is responsible for studying topics put forth by the Politburo and the Secretariat, and topics set forth by its own members.
Ideology
Vietnam is a socialist republic with a one-party system led by the Communist Party. The CPV espouses Marxism–Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh Thought, the ideologies of the late Hồ Chí Minh. The two ideologies serve as guidance for the activities of the party and state. According to the Constitution, Vietnam is in a period of transition to socialism. Marxism–Leninism was introduced to Vietnam in the 1920s and 1930s, and Vietnamese culture has been led under the banners of patriotism and Marxism–Leninism. Hồ Chí Minh's beliefs were not systematized during his life, nor did this occur quickly following his death. Trường Chinh's 1973 biography of Hồ emphasized his revolutionary policies. The thoughts of Hồ were systematized in 1989 under the leadership of Nguyễn Văn Linh. Hồ Chí Minh Thought and Marxism–Leninism became the official ideologies of the CPV and the state in 1991. The CPV's claim to legitimacy was retained after the collapse of communism elsewhere in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 by its commitment to the thoughts of Hồ Chí Minh, according to Sophie Quinn-Judge. According to Pierre Brocheux, the current state ideology is Hồ Chí Minh Thought, with Marxism–Leninism playing a secondary role. Some claim that Hồ Chí Minh Thought is used as a veil for a party leadership that has stopped believing in communism, but others rule this out on the basis that Hồ Chí Minh was an avid supporter of Lenin and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Still others see Hồ Chí Minh Thought as a political umbrella term whose main function is to introduce non-socialist ideas and policies without challenging socialist legality.
Marxism–Leninism has lost its monopolistic ideological and moral legitimacy since the introduction of a mixed economy in the late 1980s and 1990s. Because of the Đổi Mới reforms, the party could not base its rule on defending only the workers and the peasants, which was officially referred to as the "working class-peasant alliance". In the constitution introduced in 1992, the State represented the "workers, peasants and intellectuals". In recent years, the party has stopped representing a specific class, but instead the "interests of the entire people", which includes entrepreneurs. The final class barrier was removed in 2006, when party members were allowed to engage in private activities. In the face of de-emphasising the role of Marxism–Leninism, the party has acquired a broader ideology, laying more emphasis on nationalism, developmentalism and becoming the protector of tradition. Minh himself stated that what originally attracted him to Communism was not its doctrines, which he did not at that time understand, but the simple fact that the Communists supported the independence of countries like Vietnam.
Transition to socialism
According to Hồ Chí Minh, before it becomes socialist, a society must evolve through national liberation and the construction of a people's democratic regime. While national liberation is the means of taking power, the establishment of a people's democratic regime requires the total destruction of the feudalist, colonialist and imperialist society. Only through this destruction can Vietnam transit to socialism. Lai Quoc Khanh, a journalist in the theoretical Tạp chí Cộng Sản wrote: "The people's democratic regime is an objective necessity in the development course of Vietnamese society". A people's democratic regime, however, is not a socialist regime. For instance, in a people's democratic regime private ownership still exists, while in a communist or socialist stage of development, ownership does not exist. Vietnamese communists consider the distribution of land during Hồ Chí Minh's early rule as an example of people's democracy.
However, this is not the only difference. The logic is that difference in the ownership of productions lead to different modes of production. Hồ Chí Minh said that the basic economic tenets of a people's democratic regime was state ownership of certain segments of production—considered socialist since the state belongs to the people, cooperatives, which were half-socialist in nature but would develop into fully socialist economic entities, and the personal economics of individual handicraft and peasantry, which would later develop into cooperatives, private capitalism and state capitalism, where the state shares capital with capitalists to develop the country further. Since these economic basics relied on different types of ownership, the economy of the people's democratic regime cannot be considered socialist, hence the regime is not socialist. For example, in the socialist-oriented market economy, the state-owned sector will be the dominant sector, hence the socialist character of the economy dominates. The political platform of the second party congress held in 1951 stated: "The people's democratic revolution is neither an old-type capitalist democratic revolution nor socialist revolution, it is a new-type capitalist democratic revolution which will evolve into socialist revolution without experiencing a revolutionary civil war." To be more specific, the people's democratic regime is a substage in capitalist development. While Hồ Chí Minh supported the position that Vietnam had entered the stage of transition to socialism in 1954, he held the belief that Vietnam was still "a democratic regime in which people are the masters" and not socialist. To reach the socialist stage of development, the development of the state sector was of utmost importance—the lack of which according to Hồ Chí Minh would lead to failure. The platform of the 11th National Congress held in January 2011 stated: "This is a profound and thorough revolutionary process and a complicated struggle between the old and the new for qualitative changes in all aspects of social life. It is essential to undergo a long period of transition with several steps of development and several mixed social and economic structures".
According to the party's General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng, during the transition to socialism, socialist factors of development compete with non-socialist factors, which include capitalist factors. Nguyễn said: "Along with positive aspects, there will always be negative aspects and challenges that need to be considered wisely and dealt with timely and effectively. It is a difficult struggle that requires spirit, fresh vision, and creativity. The path to socialism is a process of constantly consolidating and strengthening socialist factors to make them more dominant and irreversible. Success will depend on correct policies, political spirit, leadership capacity, and the fighting strength of the Party".
"Superiority of socialism"
The Communist Party believes that socialism is superior to other ideologies and state systems. According to Marxism–Leninism, socialism is the second-to-last stage of socio-economic development before pure communism. To build a socialist society, communists have to imagine, outline and study society. The party believes that socialism leads to human liberation from every oppressive situation, exploitation and injustice. While the founders of Marxism–Leninism forecasted the main characteristics of a socialist society, the founders are not considered by the party to hold the whole truth. The main outline of this ideology is upheld by the party—that is, a social mode superior and more advanced:
The highest goal of socialism is to liberate the people from every yoke of exploitation and economic slavery of the spirit, enabling comprehensive human development.
The facilities of socialism are the forces generated by modern advanced production.
Socialism is the gradual abolition of private property and capitalism and changes to the means of production.
Socialism creates labour organizations and a new form labourer with high discipline and productivity.
Socialism means the implementation of the principle of each according to his contribution.
State socialism is a new kind of democracy, reflecting the nature of the working class and representing the interests, power and will of the working people.
In a socialist society, the relationship between class and ethnicity will be resolved through a combination of international and class solidarity—nationalism will be replaced by internationalism.
Socialist-oriented market economy
Proponents of the socialist-oriented market economy claim that the system is neither socialist nor capitalist, but that it is "socialist-oriented." The Communist Party rejects the view that a market economy has to be capitalist. According to the party, "a socialist market-oriented economy is a multi-sectoral commodity economy, which operates in accordance with market mechanisms and a socialist orientation". According to Nguyễn Phú Trọng, "[i]t is a new type of market economy in the history of the market economy's development. It is a kind of economic organization which abides by market economy rules but is based on, led by, and governed by the principles and nature of socialism reflected in its three aspectsownership, organization, and distributionfor the goal of a prosperous people in a strong nation characterized by democracy, fairness, and civilization". There are multiple forms of ownership in a socialist-oriented market economy. Economic sectors operate in accordance with the law and are equal under the law in the interest of co-existence, cooperation and healthy competition. Nguyễn Phú Trọng said:
Unlike in capitalist countries, a socialist-oriented market economy does not "wait for the economy to reach a high level of development before implementing social progress and fairness, nor 'sacrifice' social progress and fairness to the pursuit of mere economic growth". Policies are enacted for the sole purpose of improving the people's standard of living.
Role of classical Marxism
Classical Marxist texts still play a prominent role in the Communist Party's ideological development. The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is considered an "immortal work". According to the party, the real value of The Communist Manifesto is not that it can provide answers to present revolutionary problems, but the way it explains the gradual liberation of the working class and labourers. It functions as a basis for the most basic theoretical beliefs upheld by the party. According to Tô Huy Rứa, currently a member of the 11th Politburo: "By participating in the process of globalization complete with its opportunities and challenges, as was predicted by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto, the Vietnamese Communist Party and people will further find guidelines for a precious world outlook and methodologies. Sustainable values of this immortal theoretical work and political platform will remain forever". Trần Bạch Đằng wrote:
Criticism
In spite of Vietnam's 1986 economic reform, many left-wing critics have criticized Vietnam's current ideology. Outspoken dissident leftist Bui Tin said that "the Communist Party [of Vietnam] is full of opportunists and privileged elites. The morality is lost. All is the search for dollars." Critics of the CPV have argued that the socialist-oriented market economy is a re-capitalized system which allows massive capitalist markets, bourgeoisie, and foreign investments while expanding economic inequality and social unrest.
Party-to-party relations
In a resolution of the 10th National Party Congress, it was decided to renovate and strengthen the party's foreign policy. , the Commission for External Relations of the Central Committee has good relations with 222 political parties in 115 countries. According to the party, this is an "important contributions to accelerating the renovation process, industrialization and modernization of Vietnam". The party does not only have foreign relations with communist parties; relations with non-communist parties have been established because their countries are economically important to Vietnam. Relations with other communist and workers' parties are very important and built on "solidarity, friendship, mutual support in the struggle for socialism in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and pure internationalism of the working class". It exchanges views with such parties on theoretical and practical issues regarding socialist construction, party building and current problems. The CPV is active in international communist and workers party gatherings, such as the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties.
The CPV currently maintains relations with over 100 communist and workers' parties. The party has emphasized the importance of relations with the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and the Cambodian People's Party. It also maintains good relations with the Chinese Communist Party, the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Workers' Party of Korea. The CPV sent delegations to the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 2008, the 5th Congress of the Party of Italian Communists in 2008, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of India in 2008, the 9th Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2008, the 18th Congress of Communist Party of Greece in 2009, the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Denmark in 2009, the 18th Congress of the Spanish Communist Party in 2009, the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist–Leninist) in 2009, the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Brazil in 2009 and that of the Peruvian Communist Party in 2010.
The CPV maintains also friendly relations with Latin American left-wing political parties. A delegation from the CPV participated in the 22nd Meeting of Foro de São Paulo in El Salvador in June 2016.
Electoral history
National Assembly elections
See also
Human rights in Vietnam
Politics of Vietnam
National Assembly (Vietnam)
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Books
Smith, R.B., "The Foundation of the Indochinese Communist Party, 1929-1930", Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 4 (October 1998), pp. 769–805. In JSTOR
Journal articles
Reports
News and magazine articles
Websites
External links
Communist Party of Vietnam official website
V
1930 establishments in French Indochina
Parties of one-party systems
Far-left political parties
Political parties in Vietnam
V
Political parties established in 1930
Law of Vietnam
Left-wing nationalist parties
1930 establishments in Vietnam
Vietnam
Communist parties in Vietnam
National liberation movements
Nationalist parties in Vietnam
Organizations of the Vietnam War
International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature%20%28writing%29
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Ligature (writing)
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In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters and used in English and French, in which the letters and are joined for the first ligature and the letters and are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, and are often merged to create (where the tittle on the merges with the hood of the ); the same is true of and to create . The common ampersand () developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters and (spelling , Latin for 'and') were combined.
History
The earliest known script Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieratic both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as the Brahmic abugidas and the Germanic bind rune, figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the proliferation of writing with a stylus, whether on paper or clay, and often for a practical reason: faster handwriting. Merchants especially needed a way to speed up the process of written communication and found that conjoining letters and abbreviating words for lay use was more convenient for record keeping and transaction than the bulky long forms.
Around the 9th and 10th centuries, monasteries became a fountainhead for these type of script modifications. Medieval scribes who wrote in Latin increased their writing speed by combining characters and by introducing notational abbreviations. Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes. For example, in blackletter, letters with right-facing bowls (b, o, and p) and those with left-facing bowls (c, e, o, d, g and q) were written with the facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as h, m, and n had their vertical strokes superimposed. Scribes also used notational abbreviations to avoid having to write a whole character in one stroke. Manuscripts in the fourteenth century employed hundreds of such abbreviations.
In handwriting, a ligature is made by joining two or more characters in an atypical fashion by merging their parts, or by writing one above or inside the other. In printing, a ligature is a group of characters that is typeset as a unit, so the characters do not have to be joined. For example, in some cases the fi ligature prints the letters f and i with a greater separation than when they are typeset as separate letters. When printing with movable type was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, as they were based on handwriting. Ligatures made printing with movable type easier because one block would replace frequent combinations of letters and also allowed more complex and interesting character designs which would otherwise collide with one another.
Because of their complexity, ligatures began to fall out of use in the 20th century. Sans serif typefaces, increasingly used for body text, generally avoid ligatures, though notable exceptions include Gill Sans and Futura. Inexpensive phototypesetting machines in the 1970s (which did not require journeyman knowledge or training to operate) also generally avoid them. A few, however, became characters in their own right, see below the sections about German ß, various Latin accented letters, & et al.
The trend against digraph use was further strengthened by the desktop publishing revolution. Early computer software in particular had no way to allow for ligature substitution (the automatic use of ligatures where appropriate), while most new digital typefaces did not include ligatures. As most of the early PC development was designed for the English language (which already treated ligatures as optional at best) dependence on ligatures did not carry over to digital. Ligature use fell as the number of traditional hand compositors and hot metal typesetting machine operators dropped because of the mass production of the IBM Selectric brand of electric typewriter in 1961. A designer active in the period commented: "some of the world's greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the world's worst fonts."
Ligatures have grown in popularity in the 21st century because of an increasing interest in creating typesetting systems that evoke arcane designs and classical scripts. One of the first computer typesetting programs to take advantage of computer-driven typesetting (and later laser printers) was Donald Knuth's TeX program. Now the standard method of mathematical typesetting, its default fonts are explicitly based on nineteenth-century styles. Many new fonts feature extensive ligature sets; these include FF Scala, Seria and others by Martin Majoor and Hoefler Text by Jonathan Hoefler. Mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko contains a particularly large set to allow designers to create dramatic display text with a feel of antiquity.
A parallel use of ligatures is seen in the creation of script fonts that join letterforms to simulate handwriting effectively. This trend is caused in part by the increased support for other languages and alphabets in modern computing, many of which use ligatures somewhat extensively. This has caused the development of new digital typesetting techniques such as OpenType, and the incorporation of ligature support into the text display systems of macOS, Windows, and applications like Microsoft Office. An increasing modern trend is to use a "Th" ligature which reduces spacing between these letters to make it easier to read, a trait infrequent in metal type.
Today, modern font programming divides ligatures into three groups, which can be activated separately: standard, contextual and historical. Standard ligatures are needed to allow the font to display without errors such as character collision. Designers sometimes find contextual and historic ligatures desirable for creating effects or to evoke an old-fashioned print look.
Latin alphabet
Stylistic ligatures
Many ligatures combine f with the following letter. A particularly prominent example is fi (or fi, rendered with two normal letters). The tittle of the i in many typefaces collides with the hood of the f when placed beside each other in a word, and are combined into a single glyph with the tittle absorbed into the f. Other ligatures with the letter f include fj, fl (fl), ff (ff), ffi (ffi), and ffl (ffl). Ligatures for fa, fe, fo, fr, fs, ft, fb, fh, fu, fy, and for f followed by a full stop, comma, or hyphen are also used, as well as the equivalent set for the doubled ff.
These arose because with the usual type sort for lowercase f, the end of its hood is on a kern, which would be damaged by collision with raised parts of the next letter.
Ligatures crossing the morpheme boundary of a composite word are sometimes considered incorrect, especially in official German orthography as outlined in the Duden. An English example of this would be ff in shelfful; a German example would be ("boat trip"). Some computer programs (such as TeX) provide a setting to disable ligatures for German, while some users have also written macros to identify which ligatures to disable.
Turkish distinguishes dotted and dotless "I". In a ligature with f (in words such as and ), this contrast would be obscured. The fi ligature is therefore not used in Turkish typography, and neither are other ligatures like that for fl, which would be rare anyway because of Turkish phonotactics.
Remnants of the ligatures ſʒ/ſz ("sharp s", ) and tʒ/tz ("sharp t", ) from Fraktur, a family of German blackletter typefaces, originally mandatory in Fraktur but now employed only stylistically, can be seen to this day on street signs for city squares whose name contains or ends in . Instead, the "sz" ligature has merged into a single character, the German ß – see below.
Sometimes, ligatures for st (st), ſt (ſt), ch, ck, ct, Qu and Th are used (e.g. in the typeface Linux Libertine).
Besides conventional ligatures, in the metal type era some newspapers commissioned custom condensed single sorts for the names of common long names that might appear in news headings, such as "Eisenhower", "Chamberlain", and others. In these cases the characters did not appear combined, just more tightly spaced than if printed conventionally.
German ß
The German (also called the , meaning sharp s) ß is an official letter of the alphabet in Germany and Austria. There is no general consensus about its history. Its name (meaning S-Z) suggests a connection of "long s and z" (ſʒ) but the Latin script also knows a ligature of "long s over round s" (ſs). The latter is used as the design principle for the character in most of today's typefaces. Since German was mostly set in blackletter typefaces until the 1940s, and those typefaces were rarely set in uppercase, a capital version of the never came into common use, even though its creation has been discussed since the end of the 19th century. Therefore, the common replacement in uppercase typesetting was originally SZ ( "measure" → , different from "mass" → ) and later SS ( → ). Until 2017, the SS replacement was the only valid spelling according to the official orthography in Germany and Austria. In Switzerland, the ß is omitted altogether in favour of ss. The capital version (ẞ) of the Eszett character was occasionally used since 1905/06, has been part of Unicode since 2008, and has appeared in more and more typefaces. Since the end of 2010, the has suggested the new upper case character for "ß" rather than replacing it with "SS" or "SZ" for geographical names. A new standardized German keyboard layout (DIN 2137-T2) has included the capital ß since 2012. The new character entered the official orthographic rules in June 2017.
Massachusett ꝏ
A prominent feature of the colonial orthography created by John Eliot (later used in the first Bible printed in the Americas, the Massachusett-language , published in 1663) was the use of the double-o ligature to represent the of food as opposed to the of hook (although Eliot himself used and interchangeably). In the orthography in use since 2000 in the Wampanoag communities participating in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP), the ligature was replaced with the numeral , partly because of its ease in typesetting and display as well as its similarity to the o-u ligature used in Abenaki. For example, compare the colonial-era spelling with the modern WLRP spelling .
Letter W
As the letter W is an addition to the Latin alphabet that originated in the seventh century, the phoneme it represents was formerly written in various ways. In Old English, the runic letter wynn (Ƿ) was used, but Norman influence forced wynn out of use. By the 14th century, the "new" letter W, originated as two Vs or Us joined, developed into a legitimate letter with its own position in the alphabet. Because of its relative youth compared to other letters of the alphabet, only a few European languages (English, Dutch, German, Polish, Welsh, Maltese, and Walloon) use the letter in native words.
Æ and Œ
The character Æ (lower case æ; in ancient times named ) when used in the Danish, Norwegian, or Icelandic languages, as well as in the related Old English language, is not a typographic ligature. It is a distinct letter—a vowel—and when alphabetised, is given a different place in the alphabetic order.
In modern English orthography, Æ is not considered an independent letter but a spelling variant, for example: "encyclopædia" versus "encyclopaedia" or "encyclopedia". In this use, Æ comes from Medieval Latin, where it was an optional ligature in some specific words that had been transliterated and borrowed from Ancient Greek, for example, "Æneas". It is still found as a variant in English and French words descended or borrowed from Medieval Latin, but the trend has recently been towards printing the A and E separately. This means that, although both Old English and Modern English have made use of the character, the purposes were different.
Similarly, Œ and œ, while normally printed as ligatures in French, are replaced by component letters if technical restrictions require it.
Umlaut
In German orthography, the umlauted vowels ä, ö, and ü historically arose from ae, oe, ue ligatures (strictly, from superscript e, viz. aͤ, oͤ, uͤ). It is common practice to replace them with ae, oe, ue digraphs when the diacritics are unavailable, for example in electronic conversation. Phone books treat umlauted vowels as equivalent to the relevant digraph (so that a name Müller will appear at the same place as if it were spelled Mueller; German surnames have a strongly fixed orthography, either a name is spelled with ü or with ue); however, the alphabetic order used in other books treats them as equivalent to the simple letters a, o and u. The convention in Scandinavian languages and Finnish is different: there the umlaut vowels are treated as independent letters with positions at the end of the alphabet.
Ring
The ring diacritic used in vowels such as å likewise originated as an o-ligature. Before the replacement of the older "aa" with "å" became a practice, an "a" with another "a" on top (aͣ) could sometimes be used, for example in Johannes Bureus's, Runa: ABC-Boken (1611). The uo ligature ů in particular saw use in Early Modern High German, but it merged in later Germanic languages with u (e.g. MHG , ENHG , Modern German "foot"). It survives in Czech, where it is called .
Tilde and circumflex
The tilde diacritic, used in Spanish as part of the letter ñ, representing the palatal nasal consonant, and in Portuguese for nasalization of a vowel, originated in ligatures where n followed the base letter: → . Similarly, the circumflex in French spelling stems from the ligature of a silent s.
Hwair
The letter hwair (ƕ), used only in transliteration of the Gothic language, resembles a hw ligature. It was introduced by philologists around 1900 to replace the digraph hv formerly used to express the phoneme in question, e.g. by Migne in the 1860s ( vol. 18).
Byzantine Ȣ
The Byzantines had a unique o-u ligature (Ȣ) that, while originally based on the Greek alphabet's ο-υ, carried over into Latin alphabets as well. This ligature is still seen today on icon artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes in graffiti or other forms of informal or decorative writing.
Gha (OI)
Gha (ƣ), a rarely used letter based on Q and G, was misconstrued by the ISO to be an OI ligature because of its appearance, and is thus known (to the ISO and, in turn, Unicode) as "Oi". Historically, it was used in many Latin-based orthographies of Turkic (e.g., Azerbaijani) and other central Asian languages.
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet formerly used ligatures to represent affricate consonants, of which six are encoded in Unicode: and . One fricative consonant is still represented with a ligature: , and the extensions to the IPA contain three more: , and .
Initial Teaching Alphabet
The Initial Teaching Alphabet, a short-lived alphabet intended for young children, used a number of ligatures to represent long vowels: ꜷ, æ, œ, ᵫ, ꭡ, and ligatures for ee, ou and oi that are not encoded in Unicode. Ligatures for consonants also existed, including ligatures of ʃh, ʈh, wh, ʗh, ng and a reversed t with h (neither the reversed t nor any of the consonant ligatures are in Unicode).
Rare ligatures
Rarer ligatures also exist, such as ꜳ; ꜵ; ꜷ; ꜹ; ꜻ (barred av); ꜽ; ꝏ, which is used in medieval Nordic languages for (a long close-mid back rounded vowel), as well as in some orthographies of the Massachusett language to represent (a long close back rounded vowel); ᵺ; ỻ, which was used in Medieval Welsh to represent (the voiceless lateral fricative); ꜩ; ᴂ; ᴔ; and ꭣ have Unicode codepoints (in code block Latin Extended-E for characters used in German dialectology (Teuthonista),, the Anthropos alphabet, Sakha and Americanist usage).
Symbols originating as ligatures
The most common ligature is the ampersand &. This was originally a ligature of E and t, forming the Latin word "et", meaning "and". It has exactly the same use in French and in English. The ampersand comes in many different forms. Because of its ubiquity, it is generally no longer considered a ligature, but a logogram. Like many other ligatures, it has at times been considered a letter (e.g., in early Modern English); in English it is pronounced "and", not "et", except in the case of &c, pronounced "et cetera". In most fonts, it does not immediately resemble the two letters used to form it, although certain typefaces use designs in the form of a ligature (examples include the original versions of Futura and Univers, Trebuchet MS, and Civilité, known in modern times as the italic of Garamond).
Similarly, the number sign # originated as a stylized abbreviation of the Roman term , written as ℔. Over time, the number sign was simplified to how it is seen today, with two horizontal strokes across two slash-like strokes. Now a logogram, the symbol is used mainly to denote (in the US) numbers, and weight in pounds. It has also been used popularly on push-button telephones and as the hashtag indicator.
The at sign @ is potentially a ligature, but there are many different theories about the origin. One theory says that the French word "à", meaning "at", was simplified by scribes who, instead of writing the grave accent, drew an arc around the "a". Another states that it is short for the Latin word for "toward", "ad", with the "d" being represented by the arc. Another says it is short for an abbreviation of the term "each at", with the "e" encasing the "a". Around the 18th century, it started being used in commerce to indicate price per unit, as "15 units @ $1". After the popularization of Email, this fairly unpopular character became widely known, used to tag specific users.
The dollar sign $ possibly originated as a ligature (for "pesos", although there are other theories as well) but is now a logogram. At least once, the United States dollar used a symbol resembling an overlapping U-S ligature, with the right vertical bar of the U intersecting through the middle of the S ( US ) to resemble the modern dollar sign.
The Spanish peseta was sometimes symbolized by a ligature ₧ (from Pts), and the French franc was often symbolized by the ligature ₣ (from Fr).
In astronomy, the planetary symbol for Mercury may be a ligature of Mercury's caduceus and a cross (which was added in the 16th century to Christianize the pagan symbol), though other sources disagree; the symbol for Venus may be a ligature of the Greek letters ϕ (phi) and κ (kappa). The symbol for Jupiter, , descends from a Greek zeta with a horizontal stroke, , as an abbreviation for Zeus.
Saturn's astronomical symbol () has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for (Cronus), the Greek name for the planet. It later came to look like a lower-case Greek eta, with the cross added at the top in the 16th century to Christianize it.
The dwarf planet Pluto is symbolized by a PL ligature, ♇.
A different PL ligature, ⅊, represents the property line in surveying.
In engineering diagrams, a CL ligature, ℄, represents the center line of an object.
The interrobang ‽ is an unconventional punctuation meant to combine the interrogation point (or the question mark) and the bang (printer's slang for exclamation mark) into one symbol, used to denote a sentence which is both a question and is exclaimed. For example, the sentence "Are you really coming over to my house on Friday‽" shows that the speaker is surprised while asking their question.
Alchemy used a set of mostly standardized symbols, many of which were ligatures: 🜇 (AR, for aqua regia); 🜈 (S inside a V, for aqua vitae); 🝫 (MB, for [Mary's bath], a double boiler); 🝬 (VB, for , a steam bath); and 🝛 (aaa with overline, for amalgam).
Digraphs
Digraphs, such as ll in Spanish or Welsh, are not ligatures in the general case as the two letters are displayed as separate glyphs: although written together, when they are joined in handwriting or italic fonts the base form of the letters is not changed and the individual glyphs remain separate. Like some ligatures discussed above, these digraphs may or may not be considered individual letters in their respective languages. Until the 1994 spelling reform, the digraphs ch and ll were considered separate letters in Spanish for collation purposes. Catalan makes a difference between "Spanish ll" or palatalized l, written as in (law), and "French ll" or geminated l, written as in (colleague).
The difference can be illustrated with the French digraph , which is composed of the ligature and the simplex letter .
Dutch IJ
Dutch , however, is somewhat more ambiguous. Depending on the standard used, it can be considered a digraph, a ligature or a letter in itself, and its upper case and lower case forms are often available as a single glyph with a distinctive ligature in several professional fonts (e.g. Zapfino). Sans serif uppercase glyphs, popular in the Netherlands, typically use a ligature resembling a with a broken left-hand stroke. Adding to the confusion, Dutch handwriting can render (which is not found in native Dutch words, but occurs in words borrowed from other languages) as a -glyph without the dots in its lowercase form and the in its uppercase form looking virtually identical (only slightly bigger). When written/typed as two separate letters, both should be capitalized – or both not – to form a correctly spelled word, like or (ice).
Non-Latin alphabets
Ligatures are not limited to Latin script:
The Armenian alphabet has the following ligatures: և (ե+ւ), ﬔ (մ+ե), ﬕ (մ+ի), ﬓ (մ+ն), ﬗ (մ+խ), ﬖ (վ+ն)
The Brahmic abugidas make frequent use of ligatures in consonant clusters. The number of ligatures employed is language-dependent; thus many more ligatures are conventionally used in Devanagari when writing Sanskrit than when writing Hindi. Having 37 consonants in total, the total number of ligatures that can be formed in Devanagari using only two letters is 1369, though few fonts are able to render all of them. In particular, Mangal, which is included with Microsoft Windows' Indic support, does not correctly handle ligatures with consonants attached to the right of the characters द, ट, ठ, ड, and ढ, leaving the virama attached to them and displaying the following consonant in its standard form.
The Georgian script includes უ (uni), which is a combination of ო (oni) and the former letter ჳ (vie).
A number of ligatures have been employed in the Greek alphabet, in particular a combination of omicron (Ο) and upsilon (Υ), which later gave rise to a letter of the Cyrillic script—see Ou (letter). Among the ancient Greek acrophonic numerals, ligatures were common (in fact, the ligature of a short-legged capital pi was a key feature of the acrophonic numeral system).
Cyrillic ligatures: Љ, Њ, Ы, Ѿ. Iotated Cyrillic letters are ligatures of the early Cyrillic decimal I and another vowel: Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ѩ, Ѭ, Ю (sometimes also spelled ЮУ). Two letters of the Bosnian, Macedonian and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets, lje and nje (љ, њ), were developed in the nineteenth century as ligatures of Cyrillic El and En (л, н) with the soft sign (ь). Yae, a ligature of ya (Я) and e also exists: Ԙԙ, as do Dzze (Ꚉꚉ ← Д + З) and Zhwe (Ꚅꚅ ← З + Ж).
Some forms of the Glagolitic script, used from Middle Ages to the 19th century to write some Slavic languages, have a box-like shape that lends itself to more frequent use of ligatures.
In the Hebrew alphabet, the letters aleph () and lamed () can form a ligature, . The ligature appears in some pre-modern texts (mainly religious), or in Judeo-Arabic texts, where that combination is very frequent, since [ʔ] [a]l- (written aleph plus lamed, in the Hebrew script) is the definite article in Arabic. For example, the word Allah () can be written with this ligature: .
In the Arabic alphabet, historically a cursive derived from the Nabataean alphabet, most letters' shapes depend on whether they are followed (word-initial), preceded (word-final) or both (medial) by other letters. For example, Arabic mīm, isolated , tripled (mmm, rendering as initial, medial and final): . Notable are the shapes taken by lām + ʼalif isolated: , and lām + ʼalif medial or final: . Besides the obligatory lām + ʼalif ligature, Arabic script grammar requires numerous stylistic ligatures.
Syriac, a semitic alphabet derived from the Aramaic alphabet, has three different scripts that all use ligatures. Like Arabic, some letters change their form depending on their position in relation to other letters, and this can also change how ligatures look. A popular ligature all three scripts use is Lamadh / + Alap / isolated and final: (Serto) , (Madnhaya) . Another popular one is Taw / + Alap /, resulting in (Serto) , (Madhnhaya) . All three scripts use ligatures, but not in an equal spread or always with the same letters. Serto, being a flexible script, especially has many ligatures. For a wider, but not complete, list of Syriac ligatures, see Contextual forms of letters.
Urdu (one of the main languages of South Asia), which uses a calligraphic version of the Arabic-based Nastaʿlīq script, requires a great number of ligatures in digital typography. InPage, a widely used desktop publishing tool for Urdu, uses Nastaliq fonts with over 20,000 ligatures.
In American Sign Language a ligature of the American manual alphabet is used to sign "I love you", from the English initialism ILY. It consists of the little finger of the letter I plus the thumb and forefinger of the letter L. The letter Y (little finger and thumb) overlaps with the other two letters.
The Japanese language has a number of obsolete kana ligatures. Of these, only two are widely available ones on computers: one for hiragana, ゟ, which is a vertical writing ligature of the characters よ and り; and one for katakana, ヿ, which is a vertical writing ligature of the characters コ and ト.
Lao uses three ligatures, all comprising the letter ຫ (h). As a tonal language, most consonant sounds in Lao are represented by two consonants, which will govern the tone of the syllable. Five consonant sounds are only represented by a single consonant letter (ງ (ŋ), ນ (m), ມ (n), ລ (l), ວ (w)), meaning that one cannot render all the tones for words beginning with these sounds. A silent ຫ indicates that the syllable should be read with the tone rules for ຫ, rather than those of the following consonant. Three consonants can form ligatures with the letter ຫ. ຫ+ນ=ໜ (n), ຫ+ມ=ໝ (m) and ຫ+ລ=ຫຼ (l). ງ (ŋ) and ວ (w) just form clusters: ຫງ (ŋ) and ຫວ (w). ລ (l) can also be used written in a cluster rather than as a ligature: ຫລ (l).
In many runic texts ligatures are common. Such ligatures are known as bind-runes and were optional.
Chinese ligatures
Written Chinese has a long history of creating new characters by merging parts or wholes of other Chinese characters. However, a few of these combinations do not represent morphemes but retain the original multi-character (multiple morpheme) reading and are therefore not considered true characters themselves. In Chinese, these ligatures are called () or (); see polysyllabic Chinese characters for more.
One popular ligature used on decorations used for Chinese Lunar New Year is a combination of the four characters for (), meaning "ushering in wealth and fortune" and used as a popular New Year's greeting.
In 1924, (; 1898–1967) created the ligature from two of the three characters (), meaning "library". Although it does have an assigned pronunciation of and appears in many dictionaries, it is not a morpheme and cannot be used as such in Chinese. Instead, it is usually considered a graphic representation of .
In recent years, a Chinese internet meme, the Grass Mud Horse, has had such a ligature associated with it combining the three relevant Chinese characters , , and ().
Similar to the ligatures were several "two-syllable Chinese characters" () created in the 19th century as Chinese characters for SI units. In Chinese these units are disyllabic and standardly written with two characters, as "centimeter" ( centi-, meter) or "kilowatt". However, in the 19th century these were often written via compound characters, pronounced disyllabically, such as for or for – some of these characters were also used in Japan, where they were pronounced with borrowed European readings instead. These have now fallen out of general use, but are occasionally seen.
Computer typesetting
The OpenType font format includes features for associating multiple glyphs to a single character, used for ligature substitution. Typesetting software may or may not implement this feature, even if it is explicitly present in the font's metadata. XeTeX is a TeX typesetting engine designed to make the most of such advanced features. This type of substitution used to be needed mainly for typesetting Arabic texts, but ligature lookups and substitutions are being put into all kinds of Western Latin OpenType fonts. In OpenType, there are standard liga, historical hlig, contextual clig, discretionary dlig and required rlig ligatures.
TeX
Opinion is divided over whether it is the job of writers or typesetters to decide where to use ligatures. TeX is an example of a computer typesetting system that makes use of ligatures automatically. The Computer Modern Roman typeface provided with TeX includes the five common ligatures ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. When TeX finds these combinations in a text, it substitutes the appropriate ligature, unless overridden by the typesetter.
CSS
CSS3 provides control over these properties using font-feature-settings, though the CSS Fonts Module Level 4 draft standard indicates that authors should prefer several other properties. Those include font-variant-ligatures, common-ligatures, discretionary-ligatures, historical-ligatures, and contextual.
Ligatures in Unicode (Latin alphabets)
This table below shows discrete letter pairs on the left, the corresponding Unicode ligature in the middle column, and the Unicode code point on the right. Provided you are using an operating system and browser that can handle Unicode, and have the correct Unicode fonts installed, some or all of these will display correctly. See also the provided graphic.
Unicode maintains that ligaturing is a presentation issue rather than a character definition issue, and that, for example, "if a modern font is asked to display 'h' followed by 'r', and the font has an 'hr' ligature in it, it can display the ligature." Accordingly, the use of the special Unicode ligature characters is "discouraged", and "no more will be encoded in any circumstances". (Unicode has continued to add ligatures, but only in such cases that the ligatures were used as distinct letters in a language or could be interpreted as standalone symbols. For example, ligatures such as æ and œ are not used to replace arbitrary "ae" or "oe" sequences; it is generally considered incorrect to write "does" as "dœs".)
Microsoft Word disables ligature substitution by default, largely for backward compatibility when editing documents created in earlier versions of Word. Users can enable automatic ligature substitution on the Advanced tab of the Font dialog box.
LibreOffice Writer enables standard ligature substitution by default for OpenType fonts, user can enable or disable any ligature substitution on the Features dialog box, which is accessible via the Features button of the Character dialog box, or alternatively, input a syntax with font name and feature into the Font Name input box, for example: Noto Sans:liga=0.
There are separate code points for the digraph DZ, the Dutch digraph IJ, and for the Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian digraphs DŽ, LJ, and NJ. Although similar, these are digraphs, not ligatures. See Digraphs in Unicode.
Ligatures used only in phonetic transcription
Four "ligature ornaments" are included from U+1F670 to U+1F673 in the Ornamental Dingbats block: regular and bold variants of ℯT (script e and T) and of ɛT (open E and T).
Contemporary art
Typographic ligatures are used in a form of contemporary art, as can be illustrated by Chinese artist Xu Bing's work in which he combines Latin letters to form characters that resemble Chinese. Croatian designer Maja Škripelj also created a ligature that combined Glagolitic letters ⰘⰓ for euro coins.
See also
Scribal abbreviations – Roman and medieval abbreviations used to save space in manuscripts and epigraphs
Notes and references
Notes
References
External links
Examples of CSS ligatures
Palaeography
Typography
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia%20Arquette
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Patricia Arquette
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Patricia Arquette (born April 8, 1968) is an American actress. She made her feature film debut as Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and has since starred in several film and television productions. She has received several awards including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.
She had starring roles in several critically acclaimed films, including True Romance (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Lost Highway (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1998), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). From 2005 to 2011, she starred as a character based on the medium Allison DuBois in the supernatural drama series Medium, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2005.
For playing a single mother in the coming-of-age film Boyhood (2014), which was filmed from 2002 until 2014, Arquette won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Further success came for starring as a prison worker in the miniseries Escape at Dannemora (2018) and as Dee Dee Blanchard in the drama The Act (2019). They both won her Golden Globe Awards in addition to a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for the latter. She has since starred in the Apple TV+ thriller series Severance (2022) and comedy series High Desert (2023).
Early life and family
Arquette was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968 to Lewis Arquette, an actor, and Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (née Nowak), who was involved in the arts and worked as a therapist. Through her father, Patricia is distantly related to explorer Meriwether Lewis. Arquette's father had converted from Catholicism to Islam. Arquette's mother was Jewish, and her ancestors emigrated from Poland and Russia.
Her father's family's surname was originally "Arcouet", and his paternal line was of French-Canadian descent. Her paternal grandfather was comedian Cliff Arquette. Patricia's siblings also became actors: Rosanna, Richmond, Alexis, and David. When she was a child, her parents offered to get her braces for her teeth, but she refused, telling them she wanted to have flaws because it would help her with character acting.
For a time her family lived on a commune in rural Bentonville, Virginia. She has said they became poorer the longer they lived there and she believes that experience enlarged her empathy. Her father was an alcoholic; her mother was violently abusive. When Arquette was seven, the family relocated to Chicago. They later settled in Los Angeles, California. Arquette attended Catholic school, and has said that when she was a teenager, she had wanted to be a nun.
At the age of fourteen, Arquette ran away from home after learning her father was having an affair—she settled with her sister, Rosanna Arquette, in Los Angeles. She has described her father as a working actor for industrial films, commercials and voiceovers – he was best known for his role as J.D. Pickett in the TV series The Waltons. Before pursuing a career in acting, Arquette had wanted to be a midwife.
She put this career prospect aside briefly in an attempt to gain acting jobs and gained success in the industry.
Career
1987–1996: Early career and breakthrough
In 1987, Arquette's first starring roles included pregnant teenager Stacy in the television film Daddy, boarding school student Zero in Pretty Smart, and Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, alongside Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger and Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson. She reprised her role as Kristen in the music video to Dokken's Dream Warriors (1987). She was asked to reprise her role in the sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), but she declined the offer in order to do other projects. She gave up the role of Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn due to her pregnancy with her son Enzo.
In 1988, Arquette played the daughter of Tess Harper in Far North. Her roles in the early 1990s were in low budget and independent films, including Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990) as love interest of Corey Haim's character, The Indian Runner (1991), which was the directorial debut of Sean Penn; and the drama Inside Monkey Zetterland. In 1992, she won a CableACE Award for Best Lead Actress in a Mini-Series for her portrayal of a deaf girl with epilepsy in Wildflower, directed by Diane Keaton and also starring Reese Witherspoon.
In her early career, Arquette received the most recognition for her role as Alabama Whitman, a free-spirited, kind-hearted prostitute in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993). The film was a moderate box office success but became a cultural landmark because of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay, which preceded Pulp Fiction, although some critics were deterred by the graphic violence. In one scene, Arquette puts up a fierce physical struggle in a fight with James Gandolfini (as a viciously sadistic killer) which her character ultimately wins. Arquette's performance received unanimous praise from critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked that Arquette played her role with "surprising sweetness", while Peter Travers remarked that "Arquette delivers sensationally". TV Guide noted that the film blends and recycles elements from the story of Bonnie and Clyde and Terrence Malick's "love on the run" film Badlands (1973). It gave True Romance overall a favourable review for having "enough energy and verve to create something entirely fresh and infectiously entertaining". Richard Corliss of Time Magazine made similar statements and also likened the film to the earlier, seminal Bonnie and Clyde.
Arquette next appeared in the television film Betrayed by Love (1994), and the well-received biopic Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, where she portrayed his girlfriend. Her next role was as Laura Bowman in John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon (1995), which drew mixed critical reviews, but was a success internationally. In France, it was the official selection at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, where it became one of the most popular hits of the event. Although the film had lackluster reviews, Arquette's performance as an American tourist in Burma during the 8888 Uprising was regarded as one of the work's strong points. Michael Sragow, writing for The New Yorker, stated "Arquette gives the kind of mighty physical performance usually delivered by men in existential action classics like "The Wages of Fear," but she suffuses it with something all her own - she's bulletproof yet vulnerable." Hal Hinson of The Washington Post remarked that the film was "odd, brilliant in places, but frustrating all the same," commenting that "Arquette shows real grit when the chips are down".
Arquette appeared in three films in 1996, the first the comedy film Flirting with Disaster (1996), about a young man's cross-country pursuit to find his parents. Critical reception was largely positive, with Todd McCarthy of Variety praising the film and the authenticity of Arquette's performance, highlighting that "Arquette [is] very believably distracted and infuriated". Flirting with Disaster grossed $14 million at the American box office and was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Her second film released that year was the period drama The Secret Agent, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel of the same name. The film received average reviews. Infinity was her third film that year, a biographical drama about the early life of American physicist Richard Feynman. The film received mixed to positive reviews. Although Emmanuel Levy of Variety said that Arquette was "miscast", he stated that she "registers more credibly in the first part of the film, when she plays an adolescent".
1997–2003: Independent film work and critical success
In 1997, Arquette starred in David Lynch's neo-noir psychological thriller Lost Highway, in dual roles as Renee Madison and Alice Wakefield. The film had an ambiguous narrative, which polarized audiences and drew varying critical opinion, but it established a strong cult following. Arquette played an elusive femme fatale in a critically revered performance that enabled her to draw on her sexuality more than any other previous role. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, disliked the film, saying there was "no sense to be made of it" and voiced his distaste over a scene in which Arquette's character is asked to disrobe at gunpoint. Other critics were more favourable: Andy Klein of the Dallas Observer called it a "two-hour plus fever dream", Michael Sragow of The New Yorker called the film a "compelling erotic nightmare", and Edward Guthman of the San Francisco Gate wrote a glowing review praising Arquette's performance, calling it the "strongest, most memorable performance [of the film]" and favourably comparing her double role to Kim Novak's in Vertigo (1958). That same year, Arquette appeared in Nightwatch, a horror-thriller film directed by Ole Bornedal. The film is a remake the Danish film Nattevagten (1994), which was also directed by Bornedal. Nightwatch was not a box office success and received poor reviews by critics, many of whom considered it an unnecessary, inferior retelling of the original film.
In 1998, Arquette performed in two films: Goodbye Lover, a comedic neo-noir directed by Roland Joffé and The Hi-Lo Country, a period Western directed by Stephen Frears. The former received a poor critical reception while the latter received a more appreciative albeit modest response. The Hi-Lo Country was widely cited as a "classic Western" in the press. Stephen Holden of The New York Times said, "In its best moments the movie feels like an epic hybrid of Red River and The Last Picture Show." In 1999, Arquette returned to familiar territory with the genre that began her career, in Stigmata, a horror film, in the lead role. Produced on a budget of $29 million, the film was a box office success, grossing $50,046,268. Internationally the film earned $39,400,000 for a total worldwide gross $89,446,268. Critics were not as receptive of the film as audiences, with Roger Ebert remarking "possibly the funniest movie ever made about Catholicism – from a theological point of view". Arquette then appeared in Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead, based on the novel by Joe Connelly. The film united her with then-husband Nicolas Cage and received highly favourable critical reviews, but was a box office flop. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that "Arquette's quietly credible performance helps center Frank's experiences; one of the film's most honest scenes is one in which they share an ambulance ride without sharing a word".
Her next role was in the light-hearted comedy Little Nicky (2000), alongside Adam Sandler. Despite being a box office hit, the film received negative reviews, although Roger Ebert called it Sandler's best film to date. Following this, she starred in French-American comedy drama Human Nature (2001), written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry. The film was met with mixed reviews and was screened out of competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Roger Ebert, in a three-star (out of a possible four) review, lauded the film's "screwball charm". The following year, she appeared in the small-scale mystery film The Badge, playing the widowed victim of a murdered transsexual woman. In 2003, she portrayed the controversial pornographic film star Linda Lovelace in the little known Deeper than Deep, which was followed with the more family orientated Disney produced Holes, as Kissin' Kate Barlow. Based on the 1998 novel of the same title by Louis Sachar, Holes grossed $16,300,155 in its opening weekend, making #2 at the box office, behind Anger Managements second weekend. Holes would go on to gross a domestic total of $67,406,173 and an additional $4 million in international revenue, totaling $71,406,573 at the box office against a $20 million budget, making the film a moderate financial success. Arquette's next film, Tiptoes, was released straight-to-DVD in the United States, despite a screening at the Sundance Film Festival.
2004–2014: Further acclaim with Medium and Boyhood
After the humdrum reception of Tiptoes, Arquette did not appear in another film until 2006's Fast Food Nation, directed by Richard Linklater. During these three years, she was largely working on Boyhood; it was released eight years later in July 2014. Fast Food Nation marked her second collaboration with Linklater; it is based on the bestselling 2001 non-fiction book of the same name by Eric Schlosser. Fast Food Nation received mixed to positive critical reviews. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone awarded the film three out of four stars and added, "It's less an exposé of junk-food culture than a human drama, sprinkled with sly, provoking wit, about how that culture defines how we live ... The film is brimming with grand ambitions but trips on many of them as some characters aren't given enough screen time to register and others vanish just when you want to learn more about them." A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote "It's a mirror and a portrait, and a movie as necessary and nourishing as your next meal."
In January 2005, Arquette made her first transition to television with NBC's Medium. Her role as (a fictional version of) psychic medium Allison DuBois won her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 2005, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe in 2005, 2006 and 2007, a SAG Award in 2006, 2007 and 2010, and an Emmy Award in 2007. In 2009 NBC cancelled Medium, then CBS picked the series up and it lasted another two seasons. In 2008, she provided voice work for A Single Woman, which was panned. She did not appear in another film until 2012. Girl in Progress, a drama directed by Patricia Riggen, marked her return; it was met with negative reviews. In 2013, she returned to television, appearing on Boardwalk Empire as Sally Wheet. Also in 2013, Arquette filmed the true crime drama Electric Slide.
In 2014, Boyhood was released, a project that Arquette and other actors had shot for 12 years beginning in 2002. The film was directed by Richard Linklater, marking his second collaboration with Arquette. In the film, she plays Olivia Evans, a single mother who raises her two children mostly alone with the sometimes assistance of their father (played by Ethan Hawke). The epic explores a 12-year scope. The film details the progression of her character's son, Mason, from ages 8 to 18. The film has received universal praise, with many critics calling it a "landmark film". Arquette received widespread acclaim for her performance. Critic Katie McDonahugh, writing for Salon, states "the role gave [Arquette] space to be all of these messy things at once, and her performance was a raw, gutsy meditation on those profoundly human contradictions". Margaret Pomeranz, writing for ABC Australia, called Arquette's performance "stunning" and praised the film, further remarking that "the elision from one time to another is subtle and seamless. It's just a fabulous movie experience". Arquette won the Academy Award, BAFTA, Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actress.
2015–present: Continued success and recent roles
In early 2015, Arquette began starring in the CBS series CSI: Cyber, a show about FBI agents who combat Internet-based crimes. On May 12, 2016, CBS canceled the series after two seasons, thus ending the CSI franchise.
Arquette portrayed Tilly Mitchell in the Ben Stiller-directed Showtime miniseries Escape at Dannemora, which premiered on November 18, 2018. For the role, she gained weight, wore prosthetic teeth, and brown contact lenses. For her performance, she received critical acclaim and won the SAG Award, Critics' Choice Television Award, and Golden Globe Award. She also received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.
In 2018, it was announced that Arquette would be starring in the Hulu series The Act. The series premiered in March 2019 to critical acclaim. For her performance, Arquette received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In 2022, Arquette began co-starring in the Apple TV+ thriller series Severance, also directed by Stiller. The series has received critical acclaim.
Personal life
At age 20, Arquette had a relationship with Paul Rossi, a musician. They had a son together, Enzo Rossi, born on January 3, 1989. In April 1995, Arquette married Nicolas Cage (with whom she later co-starred in Bringing Out the Dead in 1999). They separated after nine months, but acted as a couple in public until Cage filed for divorce in February 2000. She briefly dated Mark Rogowski.
Arquette and actor Thomas Jane became engaged in 2002. Their daughter Harlow Olivia Calliope Jane was born on February 20, 2003. Arquette and Jane married on June 25, 2006, at the Palazzo Contarini in Venice, Italy. In January 2009, Arquette filed for divorce from Jane on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, but the couple soon reconciled. Arquette withdrew the divorce petition on July 9, 2009. On August 13, 2010, Jane's representative announced that Arquette and Jane had decided to proceed with a divorce due to "irreconcilable differences". The divorce was finalized on July 1, 2011, and the two agreed to joint custody of their child.
Charity work
After the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Arquette and childhood friend Rosetta Millington-Getty formed GiveLove, a non-profit organization supporting ecological sanitation and composting, community development projects and housing construction in Haiti. She has also worked with Eracism Foundation, Libby Ross Foundation, The Art of Elysium, and The Heart Truth.
In 1997, after her mother died of breast cancer, Arquette worked to raise awareness about the disease. She has run in the annual Race for the Cure. In 1999 she was the spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, which raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and education.
In April 2010, she teamed up with welding students of the Robert Morgan Educational Center in Miami, Florida, to build shelters in Haiti from 20 used shipping containers, to provide housing to people displaced by the earthquake.
Politics
Arquette participated in the 2017 Women's March against President Donald Trump.
Filmography
Film
Television
Music videos
Accolades
References
External links
1968 births
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
Living people
Actresses from Virginia
American film actresses
American people of French-Canadian descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American women film producers
Patricia Arquette
Best Miniseries or Television Movie Actress Golden Globe winners
Best Supporting Actress AACTA International Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners
Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female winners
Jewish American actresses
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Drama Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners
Self-censorship
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank%20McGuinness
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Frank McGuinness
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Professor Frank McGuinness (born 1953) is an Irish writer. As well as his own plays, which include The Factory Girls, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen, Garcia Lorca, and Strindberg to critical acclaim". He has also published six collections of poetry, and two novels. McGuinness was Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin (UCD) from 2007 to 2018.
Biography
McGuinness was born in Buncrana, a town located on the Inishowen Peninsula of County Donegal, Ireland. He was educated locally and at University College Dublin, where he studied Pure English and medieval studies to postgraduate level.
He first came to prominence with his play The Factory Girls, but established his reputation with his play about World War I, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which was staged in Dublin's Abbey Theatre and internationally. The play made a name for him when it was performed at Hampstead Theatre, drawing comments about McGuinness's Irish Catholic background. It won numerous awards including the London Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright for McGuinness and the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. He has also written new versions of classic dramas, including works by Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and Euripides, adapting the literal translations of others. In addition, he wrote the screenplay for the film Dancing at Lughnasa, adapting the stage play by fellow Ulsterman Brian Friel.
McGuinness's first poetry anthology, Booterstown, was published in 1994. Several of his poems have been recorded by Marianne Faithfull, including Electra, After the Ceasefire and The Wedding.
McGuinness previously lectured in Linguistics and Drama at the University of Ulster, Medieval Studies at University College, Dublin and English at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Then he was a writer-in-residence lecturing at University College Dublin before being appointed Professor of Creative Writing in the School of English, Drama and Film there.
Original plays
Frank McGuinness has explained, "My earliest writing was … song writing. I would have loved to have been … Paul McCartney … Joni Mitchell". Desiring to write something "substantial", however, he "tossed a coin" between a play and a novel, and decided to write a play. The Glass God, a one-act play written by McGuinness for the company Platform Group Theatre, was premiered at the Lourdes Hall Theatre in Dublin in 1982. It was one of three one-act plays presented under the collective title of Shrapnel.
McGuinness' first full-length play, The Factory Girls, also premiered in 1982, and dealt with a group of female workers facing redundancy from a small town in Donegal. McGuinness explained that he was inspired by "the women in my family". A critic has highlighted its "Wednesday to Sunday time frame", in a link to Catholic imagery which, surprisingly given its theme, indicates that this is in fact "a passion play". "When I wrote 'The Factory Girls'," McGuiness has explained, "I desperately wanted to bring across the audience a sense that I came from a sophisticated background, [because] I come from a background where language is very dangerous, where language is very layered."
McGuinness' second play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme, was first staged in 1985. The play, about a group of Protestant soldiers in the First World War, was not primarily political in intent, but, according to the playwright, was originally inspired by "a great story". Observe the Sons of Ulster has been described as "a theater of ghosts", a play where "a community is figured as spectral".
The play which followed, Innocence, dealt with the painter Caravaggio. It took its name from one of his paintings, The Sacrifice of Isaak, about the Biblical story of the father whose faith is tested by God's request that he kill his son. In the painting, a sheep watches the sacrifice about to take place, and looks appalled at human cruelty, its innocence shattered. McGuinness was inspired by "this innocent sheep" who, at the end of the story, will be sacrificed instead of the child. "Only Caravaggio would remember the sheep" in the story, McGuinness says.
His next play, Carthaginians, premiered in 1989, was concerned with the Bloody Sunday events in Northern Ireland. In 1972, in Derry, British soldiers shot unarmed civilians who were taking part in a march against internment, and killed 14 people. McGuinness has described Carthaginians as "My play on the Catholic imagination …", stating that "the key word in [the play] is the word 'perhaps'". It has been claimed that Carthaginians should be placed primarily "within a body of translations and adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy in the Irish theatre of the 1980s and 1990s". A number of critics have suggested that Ibsen is the main influence in the plays of McGuinness, something corroborated by the writer himself, who has also explained that "... there is of course another influence, that of Shakespeare...". It was this influence that triggered the composition of Carthaginians and "Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme". In the author's own words: "I decided, right, lets grab the unicorn by the horn, and see what happens". McGuinness has declared that he had "wanted to construct a five-act Shakespearean play", and to use "narrative in a way that I hope no one had done before". He has described the play as "a big brute", adding that, among his works to date, "I suspect 'this play will last'".
Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, first staged in 1992, is a play about the 1986 Lebanon hostage crisis. It is in effect a tragi-comedy which explores the relationship between three hostages, one American, one Irish and one English. Despite their contrasting backgrounds and beliefs the play soon erodes away their differences and brings to the fore the shared humanity that they rely on in order to cope with the horrors and uncertainties of their incarceration. In his introduction to Frank McGuinness: Plays 2 (a collection of plays which included Mary and Lizzie, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, Dolly West's Kitchen and The Bird Sanctuary) McGuinness explains, "At their hearts' core these play centre around rituals and the need to disrupt ritual. […] In their tee-total captivity, Edward, Michael and Adam throw a wild party, somehow knowing that it's a wake. After these engagements nothing will be the same. Comedy thrives on change. I suppose these plays are about change. Are they comedies? When they want to be."
The play Dolly West's Kitchen, premiered in 1999, is set during the Second World War in Buncrana. This time was euphemistically referred to in the Republic of Ireland as "The Emergency". McGuinness has explained that the arrival of US troops into the town of Buncrana was not only an invasion in terms of the military presence, but also an "invasion of sexuality", as the soldiers made quite an impression in the town. But the main theme in the play "… was to do with a gigantic sorrow in my life, which is that my mother died". This was the heart of the story, because, McGuinness explained, when the mother dies, "the children have to grow up".
The play Gates of Gold, premiered in 2002, was commissioned by The Gate Theatre in Dublin to celebrate its anniversary. The theatre was founded by Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards, who were lifelong partners in life and work, and the play is about them. McGuinness, who is himself gay and whose plays often contain gay relationships or explore more traditional family drama from an outsider perspective, has explained that he "wanted to write a play that was a great celebration of homosexual marriage, love, partnership". The playwright has a drawing of MacLiammoir, by Norah McGuinness, in his sitting room, a work "which I bought with the royalties of the Factory Girls", so the actor is literally a constant presence in McGuinness' life. Gates of Gold looks at the dying days of MacLiammoir, because McGuinness wanted to write "something darker and stranger", and less predictable, about these two pioneers of theatre.
Premiered in 2007, There Came a Gipsy Riding asks the question of "how do you survive the greatest loss, the loss of a child...", to conclude that "you don't recover, but you do learn to live with it". A critic summarised this "impressive drama" as "a concentrated piece that intricately dissects a middle-class family at war with itself following the suicide of one of their three children".
The play The Hanging Gardens, premiered in 2007, is concerned with Alzheimer's disease, and the devastating effect it has on its sufferers and the people around them. McGuinness explained that: "I hope the audience laughs. And that they’re shocked. I try to give them something more than they expect." One reviewer declared that the play "holds us, moves us, alarms us."
Adaptation
McGuinness is as well known for his play adaptations as for his original plays. He has adapted classics by Sophocles, Jean Racine, Henrik Ibsen, Molière, Valle-Inclan, Federico García Lorca, as well as short works by Strindberg and Pirandello, a short story by James Joyce, and novels by Stoker and Du Maurier. His ability to distill the raw force from classic Greek drama, in particular, has been noted by critics. He sometimes takes noticeable liberties in his adaptations, in order to strengthen characterisation—for example by making the alienated protagonist of Rebecca into an Anglo-Irish woman from a once privileged family—or to underline the theme of the play—for example in Rebecca "I've invented a scene in which Mrs Danvers confronts Max and says, 'You loved her, but she didn't love you'", or in Barbaric Comedies, a play about a world of amoral grotesquerie, he added a sexual assault scene. Some of these liberties have been controversial. By and large, McGuinness' adaptations have been hailed as reworkings that "breath[e] life" into the originals.
Poetry
Frank McGuinness began his writing career as a poet. As a university student, he has explained, "I sent some poems to the 'Irish Press' and the wonderful [general editor] David Marcus wrote back to me saying [']I’m going to publish them['], and 'You are a writer'. He didn’t know what he was unleashing but that was the beginning really. A terrific thing to say when you’re 20 or 21. And I went from there". 'Booterstown' (1994), is rooted in the town of the same name; 'The Stone Jug' (2003) is a sequence of sixty sonnets; 'Dulse' (2008), takes its name from a Latin word meaning 'sweet', which is also the name of an edible seaweed used in Ireland. Broadly, McGuinness poetic style is characterised by the use of clear solid unrhymed lines designed to echo in the mind of the listener or reader. The poems often seek to organise emotion, and sometimes represent probing psychological sketches. They are concerned with relationships, events, and the significance of the everyday. The poems are snapshots, often inspired by personal experience, but sometimes created to supplement or assist in delineating fictional characters for his plays. One critic has claimed that McGuinness's poetic work is characterised by its "reliance on dramatic monologue and on intense lyricism". The Memorial Garden at University College Dublin, designed in a circular shape, features a carved stone with a short poem written by Frank McGuinness for the site: "This silence is round / So is remembrance, / they say".
Fiction
Frank McGuinness' first novel, Arimathea, was published in 2013. It has been described as "[a] story of salvation". The book is set in a village in Donegal in 1950, registering the effect of the arrival of an Italian painter who "came from out foreign and … spoke wild funny". The story, told from the point of view of various characters, is inspired by a historic Italian artist who was commissioned to paint the Stations of the Cross in the catholic church of Buncrana in the 1900s. McGuinness wrote the book as research for his play The Hanging Gardens, but never thought it would be published as a novel. The story of the play deals with a novelist who contracts Alzheimer’s disease, and progressively loses control of his mind; and in order to understand the character better, McGuinness decided to try to write a novel that that man could have written, and the result was Arimathea. In addition to this piece of work, McGuinness also conducted other research for the play, by interviewing people with experience of elderly parents being affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
While one reviewer claimed that "there is nothing like [this novel] in the history of Irish fiction", another stated that Arimathea is "a distinctively Irish book, and one in which echoes of Joyce vie with those of Máirtín Ó Cadhain". Many commentators pointed out that this choral novel, told in a series of monologues, makes good use of Frank McGuinness' experience in the theatre, including his ability to render individualised voices. His background as a poet may also have been relevant to Arimathea’s investment on suggestion as method and silence as idea. "[T]he final effect" of the novel, as one reviewer put it, "is to lead the reader to consider those voices not yet heard, and the private agonies that are never shared".
Frank McGuinness' second novel, The Woodcutter and His Family, published in September 2017, deals with the last days of James Joyce in Zurich. The novel is made of four sections, monologues from James, his partner Nora, their daughter Lucia, and son Giorgio, who are given the names of characters from Joyce's play Exiles. At the book launch, Joycean scholar professor Anne Fogarty spoke of her surprise at opening the book to meet the voice of Giorgio Joyce, a figure neglected by Joycean scholars. Fogarty said that McGuinness' novel has "liberated" the Joyce family from historiographers and biographers, and described the book as "wise and witty". At the launch, Frank McGuinness explained that he fell under the spell of Joyce as a young man, when he heard Joni Mitchel read out the opening one and a half pages from the novel 'Portrait of the Artist'. McGuinness also said that he was aware, in taking on the project of a novel about the Joyces, that he was "putting my head into a zoo-worth of lions' mouths", but that this would not stop him. The Woodcutter and His Family is notable also because it deliberately changes historical facts. While focusing on the Joyce family, the book also includes a portrait of the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, a friend of the Joyces.
Short fiction
McGuinness has published a number of short stories. The short story "Paprika", from 2014, appeared in a collection of new stories by Irish writers. "Paprika" is a tale of murder, centered on a disgruntled, mentally unstable operatic white tenor, who is currently playing the role of Othello in an opera, wearing blackface. The story is told through "the pompous voice" of the protagonist, "who veers between grandiosity and despair". Structured as a fluid but self-conscious monologue, the piece has various levels of association, including a subversion ─or an update─ of the plot of Shakespeare’s play Othello, an investigation on the performance of identity, and a dissection of the 'logic' of inequality, and employing "[t]he shards of childhood", to "pierce the narrative in an unusual and thought-provoking [way]."
In 2018, McGuinness published his first collection of short fiction, Paprika, consisting of twelve stories. It is published by Brandon, an imprint of The O'Brien Press in Dublin. The stories have been described as "uproarious and outrageous, [tending] to depict insecure, unhinged individuals who find themselves on the wrong side of a comfortable life. A startling collection"
Opera
Frank McGuinness’s first opera libretto was Thebans, produced in 2014 at the English National Opera in London. The opera is a version of the trilogy of plays by Sophocles. He was invited to write the libretto by composer Julian Anderson. Adapting this substantial body of work onto a single story 100 minutes long was a considerable challenge. Recalling his initial conversations with the composer, McGuinness explained: "The first thing I said was: I know it will have to be much, much shorter. We looked at a two-page speech. "I can get this down to six lines," I told him – and then did just that." The Theban trilogy, comprising Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, has been occasionally performed as a chronologically ordered, three-play show. For his version, McGuinness made the decision to change the traditional order in the story. He explained that "I've always thought that putting [the play Antigone] at the end of the evening short-changes it remarkably. Although it's the final part of the trilogy, it never feels like the end; in fact, it almost feels as if it were by a different writer." While some critics did not approve of the switch, they still described the opera as "distinctly impressive".
McGuinness' priority in producing the libretto was to make the original text accessible to a contemporary audience. "I'm trying to make this accessible", McGuinness declared, "and to write as beautiful a text as I can for the singers to sing. And that is what I think they are, these stories that have haunted us: they are something beautiful, something brutal, and the beauty and brutality confound each other." The original trilogy is "revered as a foundational document of western civilisation", and one of the main achievements of this "dazzling new opera", a reviewer pointed out, was that "it blows apart this crippling reverence and presents the drama afresh"
One reviewer underlined the fact that "McGuinness has whittled Sophocles’s plays down to a succession of very short, simple lines that can be easily heard when sung across an auditorium", and that "Anderson’s music fills the emotional space around these lines", to conclude that "[f]or all the antiquity of its roots, Thebans may point to the future of opera". Another reviewer declared that Frank McGuinness "has supplied what seems an eminently settable, elegant condensation of the drama", and that the opera as a whole offers "[t]he superb assurance of the writing metallically intent but underpinned by a novel harmonic richness".
Film and television
McGuinness has written a number of film scripts. His script for Dancing at Lughnasa (Dir. Pat O'Connor, 2005) was an adaptation of the play of the same title by Brian Friel. This film's "most significant transformation of the play", one critic has pointed out, is the shifting of a defining dancing scene from the end of the first Act, to the end of the story, which "reveals the defining principle of the film: it turns memory into ritual". McGuinness was also the author of the original script for "Talk of Angels", the cinema adaptation of Kate O'Brien's banned novel Mary Lavelle, although the script was considerably modified in the final production.
Discussing his childhood, McGuinness has explained that, while there were no books around when he was growing up, in addition to newspapers, they had "television, which is the great subverter, a wonderful wonderful (sic) source of entertainment at the time". His television films include Scout (BBC 1987), directed by Danny Boyle, about the talent scout for the football team Manchester United in Northern Ireland, and A Song for Jenny (BBC 2015), adapted from Julie Nicholson's book of the same title, about the aftermath of the 2005 islamist terrorist bombings in London. McGuinness was also the scriptwriter for the ground-breaking television film "A Short Stay in Switzerland" (BBC 2009), dealing with euthanasia. In addition, McGuinness has scripted a number of documentaries for television, including The Messiah XXI (RTÉ, 2000), commemorating the premiere of Handel's oratorio Messiah in Dublin in 1791, and Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde (RTÉ, 2004), celebrating the Irish writer.
Themes and opinions
Major recurring features of McGuinness's playwriting include the treatment of historical events and the prominent inclusion of gay or bisexual characters.
A writer's task, McGuiness declared in 2015, is "to do something that no one has done before, to discover". In the same interview, he added that: "The enquiring mind, the radical mind, will always be ill at ease about what is said about a particular subject."
Awards and honours
Source for entries 1985-1999:
1985 London Evening Standard "Award for Most Promising Playwright" for Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme
1985 Roony Prize for Irish Literature for Observe the Sons …
1985 Arts Council Bursary for Observe the Sons …
1985 Harvey's Best Play Award for Observe the Sons …
1985 Cheltenham Literary Prize for Observe the Sons …
1986 London Fringe Awards for Best Play and Best Playwright New to the Fringe for Observe the Sons …
1986 Plays and Players Award for Most Promising Playwright for Observe the Sons …
1987 Ewart-Biggs Peace Prize for Observe the Sons …
1990 Prague International Television Awards for The Hen House (BBC2)
1992 New York Drama Critics Circle for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
1992 Writers' Guild Award for Best Play for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
1992 Independent Sunday Best Play of the Year Award for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
1992 Oliver Award nomination for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
1992 Tony Award nomination for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
1992 Ireland Fund Literary Award
1996 Tony Award for Best Revival for A Doll's House
1997 French Order of Arts and Letters
1999 Oliver Award nomination for Best New Play for Dolly West's Kitchen
2010 BAFTA nomination for Best Single Drama for A Short Stay in Switzerland
2014 Irish PEN Award
2019 Tip O’Neill Irish Diaspora Award
2019 UCD Ulysses Medal
List of works
Plays
The Glass God (Platform Theatre Group, Dublin, 1982)
The Factory Girls (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1982)
Borderlands (TEAM Educational Theatre Company, 1984)
Gatherers (TEAM Educational Theatre Company, 1985)
Ladybag (Damer Theatre, Dublin for Dublin Theatre Festival, 1985)
Baglady (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1985)
Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (Abbey, 1985; Hampstead Theatre, London, 1986)
Innocence (Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1986)
Times in It (Peacock stage of Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1988: triple bill consisting of 'Feed the Money and Keep Them Coming'; 'Brides of Ladybag' and 'Flesh and Blood')
Carthaginians (Abbey, 1988; Hampstead, 1989)
Mary and Lizzie ([The Pit] Barbican / RSC, London, 1989)
The Bread Man (The Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1990)
Someone Who'll Watch Over Me—based on Brian Keenan’s 'An Evil Cradling' (1992) (Hampstead, West End and Broadway, 1992)
The Bird Sanctuary (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1993; Pittsbourgh Public Theatre, 2005; )
Mutabilitie (RNT, 1997)
Dolly West's Kitchen (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1999)
Speaking Like Magpies (RSC, The Swan Theatre, Straford-upon-Avon, 2005)
Gates of Gold (Gate Theatre, Dublin, 2002. UK premiere Finborough Theatre, 2004. West End transfer 2006.)
There Came a Gypsy Riding (Almeida Theatre, London, 2007)
The Holy Moley Jesus Story (Greash Theatre, Dublin, 2008)
Greta Garbo Came to Donegal (Tricycle Theatre, London, 2010)
The Match Box (Everyman Playhouse, Liverpool, 2012)
The Hanging Gardens (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2013)
Éamonn Ceannt, in 'Signatories' (Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, 2016)
The Visiting Hour (Gate Theatre, Dublin 2021)
Dinner with Groucho (Civic Theatre, Dublin, 2022)
Adaptations
Dracula, from the novel by Bram Stoker (Druid Theatre, Galway, 1986)
Yerma by Federico García Lorca (Abbey, 1987)
Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen (National Theatre, London—The Cotesloe--, 1987)
The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht (The Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1991)
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (Gate, 1988; RSC and world tour, 1994)
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (Roundabout Theatre, Broadway, 1994)
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Field Day Production on tour, Derry, 1995; Tricycle Theatre, London, 1995)
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht (RNT at the Oliver Theatre, London, 1997)
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (Playhouse Theatre, London, 1996; Belasco Theatre, NY, 1997; Fairfax Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, 1998)
Electra by Sophocles (Minerva Theatre, Chichester, 1997; McCarter Theatre, Princeton, 1998; Ethel Barrimore Theatre, NY, 1998; The Project theatre, Dublin, 2004—directed by Frank McGuinness--; The Old Vic, London, 2014)
Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (Gate and Royal Court, 1990)
The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca (Lyric Theatre, Belfast, 1991)
The Man with the Flower in his Mouth by Luigi Pirandello (The Project Theatre, Dublin 1993—double bill with 'The Stronger')
The Stronger by August Strindberg (The Project Theatre, Dublin 1993—double bill with 'The Man with the Flower...')
The Storm by Alexander Ostrovsky (The Almeida Theatre Company, London, 1998)
Miss Julie by August Strindberg (Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 2000;
Barbaric Comedies by Ramón María del Vallé-Inclán—originally a cycle of three plays under that common title: 'Silver Face', 'Rampant Eagle', and 'Wolve s Romance' (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2000; King's Theatre, Edinburgh, 2000)
Hecuba by Euripides
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen (The Abbey Theatre, Dublin 2003)
Hecuba by Euripides (Donmar Warehouse, London, 2004)
Rebecca, from a novel by Daphne du Maurier (Theatre Royal, Newcastle-upon-Thyne, 2005)
Phaedra by Racine (Donmar Warehouse, London, 2006)
There Came a Gypsy Riding(Almeida Theatre, London, 2007)
Oedipus by Sophocles (Royal National Theatre, 2008)
Helen by Euripides (Shakespeare's Globe, 2008)
John Gabriel Borkman by Henrik Ibsen (Abbey Theatre, 2010)
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen (London Classic Theatre, 2011)
Damned by Despair by Tirso de Molina (English National Theatre, London, 2012)
The Dead, from the short story by James Joyce (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2012)
Tartuffe, by Molière (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 2023)
Screenplays
Scout (BBC2, 1987)
The Hen House (BBC Northern Ireland, 1989)
Dancing at Lughnasa, adaptation of play by Brian Friel) (Dir. Pat O'Connor, 1998)
Talk of Angels, adaptation of the novel Mary Lavelle by Kate O'Brien (novelist). Anne Guedes, and Frank McGuinness (Dir. Nick Hamm, 1998)
A Short Stay in Switzerland (BBC TV, 2009, based on the true story of Dr Anne Turner)
A Song for Jenny (BBC TV, 2015)
Poetry
Booterstown (Gallery Press, 1994)
In Loving Memory (Limerick City Gallery of Art, 1989, with photographs by Amelia Stein)
The Sea with no Ships (Gallery Press, 1999)
The Stone Jug (Gallery Press, 2003)
Dulse (Gallery Press, 2007)
In a Town of Five Thousand People (Gallery Press, 2012)
The Wedding Breakfast (Gallery Press, 2019)
May Twenty-second (Gallery Press, 2022)
Opera
Thebans—Libretto by Frank McGuinness, after Sophocles, set to music by Julian Anderson (London Opera Company, 2014)
Musical
Donegal (Abbey Theatre Dublin, 2016)
Fiction
Arimathea (Brandon, 2013)
The Woodcutter & his Family (O'Brien Press, 2017)
Paprika: Stories (Brandon, 2018)
References
Further reading
Eamonn Jordan The feast of famine: the plays of Frank McGuinness (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997)
Helen Lojek (ed.) The theatre of Frank McGuinness: stages of mutability (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2002)
Hiroko Mikami, Frank McGuinness and his Theatre of Paradox (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2002)
Kenneth Nally, Celebrating Confusion: The Theatre of Frank McGuinness (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009)
Kevin De Ornellas, Ibsen's seminal influence on an Irish playwright: an interview with Frank McGuinness. Irish Studies Review, 20 (2012), pp 77–84.
External links
Complete Information on all of Frank McGuinness's plays
Frank McGuinness on the Faber and Faber website
Publications about, by or mentioning Frank McGuinness
Frank McGuinness Resource
Irish Playography listing for McGuinness
1953 births
Living people
Abbey Theatre
Academics of University College Dublin
Academics of Ulster University
Alumni of University College Dublin
Aosdána members
Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize recipients
Irish gay writers
Irish PEN Award for Literature winners
Irish male dramatists and playwrights
Irish screenwriters
Irish male poets
Irish LGBT dramatists and playwrights
Irish male screenwriters
Academics of St Patrick's College, Maynooth
People from Buncrana
Scholars and academics from County Donegal
20th-century Irish poets
21st-century Irish poets
20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights
20th-century Irish male writers
21st-century Irish dramatists and playwrights
21st-century Irish male writers
Irish LGBT poets
Irish LGBT screenwriters
People educated at Carndonagh Community School
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown%20Jewels%20of%20the%20United%20Kingdom
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Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom
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The Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, originally the Crown Jewels of England, are a collection of royal ceremonial objects kept in the Jewel House at the Tower of London, which include the coronation regalia and vestments worn by British monarchs.
Symbols of over 800 years of monarchy, the coronation regalia are the only working set in Europe and the collection is the most historically complete of any regalia in the world. Objects used to invest and crown British monarchs variously denote their role as head of state of the United Kingdom and other countries of the Commonwealth, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and head of the British armed forces. They feature heraldic devices and national emblems of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Use of regalia by monarchs in England can be traced back to when the country was converted to Christianity in the Early Middle Ages. A permanent set of coronation regalia, once belonging to Edward the Confessor, was established after he was made a saint in the 12th century. These holy relics were kept at Westminster Abbey, the venue of coronations since 1066, and another set of regalia was reserved for religious feasts and State Openings of Parliament. Collectively, these objects came to be known as the Jewels of the Crown. Most of the collection dates from around 350 years ago when Charles II ascended the throne. The medieval and Tudor regalia had been sold or melted down after the monarchy was abolished in 1649 during the English Civil War. Only four original items predate the Restoration: a late 12th-century anointing spoon (the oldest object) and three early 17th-century swords. The regalia continued to be used by British monarchs after the kingdoms of England and Scotland merged in 1707.
The regalia contain 23,578 gemstones, among them Cullinan I (), the largest clear cut diamond in the world, set in the Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross. It was cut from the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, the eponymous Cullinan, discovered in South Africa in 1905 and presented to Edward VII. On the Imperial State Crown are Cullinan II (), the Stuart Sapphire, St Edward's Sapphire, and the Black Prince's Ruby – a large red spinel. The Koh-i-Noor diamond () was acquired by Queen Victoria from the Sikh Empire and has featured on three consort crowns. A small number of historical objects at the Tower are either empty or set with glass and crystal replicas.
At a coronation, the monarch is anointed using holy oil poured from an ampulla into the spoon, invested with robes and ornaments, and crowned with St Edward's Crown. Afterwards, it is exchanged for the lighter Imperial State Crown, which is also usually worn at State Openings of Parliament. Wives of kings, known as queens consort, are invested with a plainer set of regalia. Also regarded as crown jewels are state swords, trumpets, ceremonial maces, church plate, historical regalia, banqueting plate, and royal christening fonts. They are part of the Royal Collection and belong to the institution of monarchy, passing from one sovereign to the next. In the Jewel House they are seen by 2.5 million visitors every year.
History
Prehistory and Romans
The earliest known use of a crown in Britain was discovered by archaeologists in 1988 in Deal, Kent, and dates to between 200 and 150 BCE. A sword, brooch, ceremonial shield, and decorated bronze crown with a single arch, which sat directly on the head of its wearer, were found inside the tomb of the Mill Hill Warrior. At this point, crowns were symbols of authority worn by religious and military leaders. Priests continued to use crowns following the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 CE. A dig in a field at Hockwold cum Wilton, Norfolk, in the 1950s revealed a bronze crown with two arches and depictions of male faces, as well as two bronze diadems with an adjustable headband and repoussé silver embellishments, dating from the Roman period. One diadem features a plaque in the centre depicting a man holding a sphere and an object similar to a shepherd's crook, analogues of the orb and sceptre that evolved later as royal ornaments.
Anglo-Saxons
By the early 5th century, the Romans had withdrawn from Britain, and the Angles and the Saxons settled. A heptarchy of new kingdoms began to emerge. One method used by regional kings to solidify their authority was the use of ceremony and insignia. The tomb of an unknown king – evidence suggests it may be Rædwald of East Anglia () – at Sutton Hoo provides insight into the regalia of a pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon monarch. Inside the early 7th-century tomb, discovered in 1939, was found the ornate Sutton Hoo helmet, consisting of an iron cap, a neck guard, and a face mask decorated with copper alloy images of animals and warriors set with garnets. He was also buried with a decorated sword; a ceremonial shield; and a heavy whetstone sceptre, on top of which is an iron ring surmounted by the figure of a stag.
In 597 CE, a Benedictine monk was sent by Pope Gregory I to start converting Pagan England to Christianity. The monk, Augustine, became the first archbishop of Canterbury. Within two centuries, the ritual of anointing monarchs with holy oil and crowning them (initially with helmets) in a Christian ceremony had been established, and regalia took on a religious identity. There was still no permanent set of coronation regalia; each monarch generally had a new set made, with which they were buried upon death. In 9th-century Europe, gold crowns in the Byzantine tradition were replacing bronze, and gold soon became the standard material for English royal crowns.
King Æthelstan () united the various Anglo-Saxon realms to form the Kingdom of England. In the earliest known depiction of an English king wearing a crown he is shown presenting a copy of Bede's Life of St Cuthbert to the saint himself. Until his reign, kings were portrayed on coins wearing helmets and circlets, or wreath-like diadems in the style of Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Whether they actually wore such an item is not known. Edgar the Peaceful () was the first English king to be crowned with an actual crown, and a sceptre was also introduced for his coronation. After crowns, sceptres were the most potent symbols of royal authority in medieval England.
Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor () is depicted on a throne and wearing a crown while holding a sceptre in the first scene of the Bayeux Tapestry. Edward died without an heir, and William the Conqueror emerged as the first Norman king of England following his victory over the English at the Battle of Hastings. Wearing a crown became an important part of William I's efforts to assert authority over his new territory and subjects. At his death in 1087, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported: "[William] kept great state … He wore his crown three times a year as often as he was in England … He was so stern and relentless … we must not forget the good order he kept in the land". Those crown-wearings were held on the religious festivals of Easter, Whitsun, and Christmas.
In 1161, Edward the Confessor was made a saint, and objects connected with his reign became holy relics. The monks at his burial place, Westminster Abbey, claimed that Edward had asked them to look after his regalia in perpetuity and that they were to be used at the coronations of all future kings. A note to this effect is contained in an inventory of precious relics drawn up by a monk at the abbey in 1450, recording a tunicle, dalmatic, pallium, and other vestments; a gold sceptre, two rods, a gold crown, comb, and spoon; a crown and two rods for the queen's coronation; and a chalice of onyx stone and a paten made of gold for the Holy Communion. Although the Abbey's claim is likely to have been an exercise in self-promotion, and some of the regalia had probably been taken from Edward's grave when he was reinterred there, it became accepted as fact, thereby establishing the first known set of hereditary coronation regalia in Europe. Westminster Abbey is owned by a monarch, and the regalia had always been royal property – the abbots were mere custodians. In the following centuries, some of these objects would fall out of use and the regalia would expand to include many others used or worn by monarchs and queens consort at coronations.
An object referred to as "St Edward's Crown" is first recorded as having been used for the coronation of Henry III () and appears to be the same crown worn by Edward. Being crowned and invested with regalia owned by a previous monarch who was also a saint reinforced the king's legitimacy. It was also wrongly thought to have originally been owned by Alfred the Great () because an inscription on the lid of its box, translated from Latin, read: "This is the chief crown of the two, with which were crowned Kings Alfred, Edward and others". The crown would be used in many subsequent coronations until its eventual destruction 400 years later. Few descriptions survive, although one 17th-century historian noted that it was "ancient Work with Flowers, adorn'd with Stones of somewhat a plain setting", and an inventory described it as "gold wire-work set with slight stones and two little bells", weighing . It had arches and may have been decorated with filigree and cloisonné enamels. Also in the Royal Collection in this period was an item called a state crown, which together with other crowns, rings, and swords, constituted the monarch's state regalia that were mainly kept at royal palaces.
Late medieval period
The handing over of crowns symbolised the transfer of power between rulers. Following the defeat in 1282 of the Welsh prince Llewelyn ap Gruffydd by Edward I (), the Welsh regalia, including the crown of the legendary King Arthur, were surrendered to England. According to the Chronicle of Aberconwy Abbey, "and so the glory of Wales and the Welsh was handed over to the kings of England". After the invasion of Scotland in 1296, the Stone of Scone was sent to the Tower of London "in recognition of a kingdom surrendered and conquered". It was fitted into a wooden chair, which came to be used for the investiture of English kings and known as the Coronation Chair. The Scottish regalia were also taken to London and offered at the shrine of Edward the Confessor; Scotland eventually regained its independence. In the treasury of Edward II () there were no fewer than 10 crowns. When Richard II () was forced to abdicate, he symbolically handed St Edward's Crown over to his successor with the words "I present and give to you this crown … and all the rights dependent on it".
Monarchs often pledged items of state regalia as collateral for loans. Edward III () pawned his magna corona to Baldwin of Luxembourg in 1339 for more than £16,650, . Three crowns and other jewels were held by the Bishop of London and the Earl of Arundel in the 1370s as security for £10,000. One crown was exchanged with the Corporation of London in 1386 for a £4,000 loan. Mayors, knights, peers, bankers, and other wealthy subjects sometimes released objects on a temporary basis for the royal family to use at state occasions. Monarchs also distributed plate and jewels to troops in lieu of money. At some point in the 14th century, all of the state regalia were moved to the White Tower at the Tower of London owing to a series of successful and attempted thefts in Westminster Abbey. The holy relics of the coronation regalia stayed behind intact at the Abbey.
Having fallen out of use in England in the 13th century, two arches topped with a monde and cross reappeared on the state crown during the reign of Henry V (), though arches did not feature on the Great Seal again until 1471. Known as a 'closed' or imperial crown, the arches and cross symbolised the king's pretensions of being an emperor of his own domain, subservient to no one but God, unlike some continental rulers who owed fealty to more powerful kings or to the Holy Roman emperor.
Tudors and early Stuarts
The traditions established in the medieval period continued later. By the mid 15th century, a crown was formally worn on six religious feasts every year: Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Whitsun, All Saints' Day, and one or both feasts of St Edward. A crown was displayed and worn at the annual State Opening of Parliament. Also around this time, three swords – symbols of kingship since ancient times – were being used in the coronation ceremony to represent the king's powers in the administration of justice: the Sword of Spiritual Justice, the Sword of Temporal Justice, and the blunt Sword of Mercy.
An emerging item of regalia was the orb, described in Tudor inventories as a gold ball with a cross, which underlined the monarch's sovereignty. Orbs had been pictorial emblems of royal authority in England since the early Middle Ages, but a real orb was probably not used at any English coronation until Henry VIII (). State regalia increasingly passed from one monarch to the next. The best example of this was the Tudor Crown, probably created at the beginning of the Tudor dynasty. It first appears in a royal inventory during Henry VIII's reign and was one of three used at the coronation of each of his next three successors, the other two being St Edward's Crown and a "rich crown" made specially for the new monarch. After the English Reformation, when England broke away from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England denounced the veneration of medieval relics and downplayed the history of St Edward's regalia.
The concept of hereditary state regalia was enshrined in English law in 1606 when James I (), the first Stuart king to rule England, decreed a list of "Roiall and Princely ornaments and Jewells to be indyvidually and inseparably for ever hereafter annexed to the Kingdome of this Realme". After James died, his son, Charles I () ascended the throne. Desperate for money, one of his first acts was to load 41 masterpieces from the Jewel House onto a ship bound for Amsterdam – the hub of Europe's jewel trade. This hoard of unique treasures, including the Mirror of Great Britain brooch, a 14th-century pendant called the Three Brothers, a gold salt cellar known as the Morris Dance, and much fine Elizabethan plate, was expected to swell the king's coffers by £300,000, but fetched only £70,000.
Charles's many conflicts with Parliament, stemming from his belief in the divine right of kings and the many religious conflicts that pervaded his reign, triggered the English Civil War in 1642. Parliament deemed the regalia "Jewels of the Crown": their ownership was vested in the monarch by virtue of his public role as king and not owned by him personally. To avoid legal risk to his subjects, Charles asked his wife, Henrietta Maria, to smuggle the inalienable property of the Crown abroad and sell it on the Dutch jewellery market. Upon learning of the scheme, the House of Lords and House of Commons both declared anyone involved in trafficking the Crown Jewels to be enemies of the state. Henrietta succeeded in disposing of a small quantity of jewels, albeit at a heavy discount, and shipped guns and ammunition back to England for the royalist cause. Two years later, Parliament seized of rare silver-gilt pieces from the Jewel House and used the proceeds to bankroll its own side of the war.
Interregnum
After six years of war, Charles was defeated and executed, and less than a week later, the Rump Parliament voted to abolish the monarchy. The newly created English Commonwealth found itself short of money. To raise funds, the Act for the Sale of the Goods and Personal Estate of the Late King, Queen and Prince was brought into law, and trustees were appointed to value the Jewels – then regarded by Oliver Cromwell as "symbolic of the detestable rule of kings" and "monuments of superstition and idolatry" – and sell them to the highest bidder. The most valuable object was Henry VIII's Crown, valued at £1,100. Their gemstones and pearls removed, most of the coronation and state regalia were melted down and struck into coins by the Mint.
Two nuptial crowns survived: the Crown of Margaret of York and the Crown of Princess Blanche had been taken out of England centuries before the Civil War when Margaret and Blanche married kings in continental Europe. Both crowns and the 9th-century Alfred Jewel give a sense of the character of royal jewellery in England in the Middle Ages. Another rare survivor is the 600-year-old Crystal Sceptre, a gift from Henry V to the Lord Mayor of London, who still bears it at coronations. Many pieces of English plate that were presented to visiting dignitaries can be seen in museums throughout Europe. Cromwell declined Parliament's invitations to be made king and became Lord Protector. It was marked by a ceremony in Westminster Hall in 1657, where he donned purple robes, sat on the Coronation Chair, and was invested with many traditional symbols of sovereignty, except a crown. A crown—perhaps made of gilded base metal, which was typical of funerary crowns in those days—was placed beside Cromwell at his lying in state in 1660.
Restoration to present
The monarchy was restored after Cromwell's death. For the English coronation of Charles II (), who had been living in exile abroad, new Jewels were made based on records of the lost items. They were supplied by the banker and royal goldsmith, Sir Robert Vyner, at a cost of £12,184 7s 2d – as much as three warships. It was decided to fashion the replicas like the medieval regalia and to use the original names. These 22-carat gold objects, made in 1660 and 1661, form the nucleus of the Crown Jewels: St Edward's Crown, two sceptres, an orb, an ampulla, a pair of spurs, a pair of armills or bracelets, and a staff. A medieval silver-gilt anointing spoon and three early Stuart swords had survived and were returned to the Crown, and the Dutch ambassador arranged the return of extant jewels pawned in Holland. The king also spent £11,800 acquiring of altar and banqueting plate, and he was presented with conciliatory gifts.
In 1669, the Jewels went on public display for the first time in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. The Deputy Keeper of the Jewel House took the regalia out of a cupboard and showed it to visitors for a small fee. This informal arrangement was ended two years later when Thomas Blood, an Irish-born army officer loyal to Parliament, attacked the 77-year-old and stole a crown, a sceptre, and an orb. Blood and his three accomplices were apprehended at the castle perimeter, but the crown had been flattened with a mallet in an attempt to conceal it, and there was a dent in the orb. He was pardoned by the king, who also gave him land and a pension; it has been suggested that Blood was treated leniently because he was a government spy. Ever since, the Jewels have been protected by armed guards.
Since the Restoration, there have been many additions and alterations to the regalia. A new set was commissioned in 1685 for Mary of Modena, the first queen consort to be crowned since the Restoration (Charles II was unmarried when he took the throne). Another, more elaborate set had to be made for Mary II (), who was crowned as joint sovereign with her husband William III (). After England and Scotland were united as one kingdom by the Acts of Union 1707, the Scottish regalia were locked away in a chest, and the English regalia continued to be used by British monarchs. Gemstones were hired for coronations – the fee typically being 4% of their value – and replaced with glass and crystals for display in the Jewel House, a practice that continued until the early 20th century.
As enemy planes targeted London during the Second World War, the Crown Jewels were secretly moved to Windsor Castle. The most valuable gemstones were taken out of their settings by James Mann, Master of the Armouries, and Sir Owen Morshead, the Royal Librarian. They were wrapped in cotton wool, placed in a tall glass preserving-jar, which was then sealed in a biscuit tin, and hidden in the castle's basement. Also placed in the jar was a note from the King, stating that he had personally directed that the gemstones be removed from their settings. As the Crown Jewels were bulky and thus difficult to transport without a vehicle, the idea was that if the Nazis invaded, the historic precious stones could easily be carried on someone's person without drawing suspicion and if necessary buried or sunk.
After the war, the Jewels were kept in a vault at the Bank of England for two years while the Jewel House was repaired; the Tower had been struck by a bomb. In May 2023, St Edward's Crown was placed on the head of Charles III () in the only ceremony of its kind in Europe. Other European monarchies have abandoned coronations in favour of secular ceremonies. The Crown Jewels consist of approximately 140 objects, which are permanently set with 23,578 precious and semi-precious stones and are seen by around 2.5 million visitors every year.
Crowns
Crowns are the main symbols of royal authority. All crowns in the Tower are decorated with alternating crosses pattée and fleurs-de-lis, a pattern which first appears on the great seal of Richard III, and their arches are surmounted with a monde and cross pattée. Most of the crowns also have a red or purple velvet cap and an ermine border.
St Edward's Crown
The centrepiece of the coronation regalia is named after Edward the Confessor and is placed on the monarch's head at the moment of crowning. Made of gold and completed in 1661, St Edward's Crown is embellished with 444 stones, including amethysts, garnets, peridots, rubies, sapphires, topazes, tourmalines and zircons. This coronation crown closely resembles the medieval one, with a heavy gold base and clusters of semi-precious stones, but the disproportionately large arches are a Baroque affectation. It was long assumed to be the original as their weight is almost identical and an invoice produced in 1661 was for the addition of gold to an existing crown. In 2008, new research found that it had actually been made in 1660 and was enhanced the following year when Parliament increased the budget for Charles II's twice-delayed coronation. The crown is tall and at a weight of has been noted to be extremely heavy. After 1689, monarchs chose to be crowned with a lighter, bespoke coronation crown (e.g., that of George IV) or their state crown, while St Edward's Crown rested on the high altar. At Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838 it was entirely absent from the ceremony. The tradition of using St Edward's Crown was revived in 1911 by George V and has continued ever since. In 1953 Elizabeth II opted for a stylised image of this crown to be used on coats of arms, badges, logos and various other insignia in the Commonwealth realms to symbolise her royal authority, replacing the image of a Tudor-style crown adopted in 1901 by Edward VII.
Imperial State Crown
A much lighter crown is worn by the monarch when leaving Westminster Abbey, and at the annual State Opening of Parliament. The current Imperial State Crown was made in 1937 for George VI and is a copy of the one made in 1838 for Queen Victoria, which had fallen into a poor state of repair, and had been made using gems from its own predecessor, the State Crown of George I. In 1953, the crown was resized to fit Elizabeth II, and the arches were lowered by . The gold, silver and platinum crown is decorated with 2,868 diamonds, 273 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and 5 rubies. Among the largest stones are the Cullinan II diamond, also known as the Second Star of Africa, added to the crown in 1909 (the larger Cullinan I is set in the Sovereign's Sceptre). The Black Prince's Ruby, set in the front cross, is not actually a ruby but a large cabochon red spinel. According to legend it was given to Edward the Black Prince by the Spanish king Peter of Castile in 1367 and Henry V wore it at the Battle of Agincourt. How the stone found its way back into the Royal Collection after the Interregnum is unclear, but a substantial "ruby" was acquired for the Crown Jewels in 1661 at a cost of £400, and this may well have been the spinel. On the back of the crown is the cabochon Stuart Sapphire, and in the top cross is St Edward's Sapphire, reputedly taken from the ring of the Confessor when his body was re-interred at the Abbey in 1163. Below the monde hang four pearls, three of which are often said to have belonged to Elizabeth I, but the association is almost certainly erroneous.
Consort crowns
After the Restoration, wives of kings – queens consort – traditionally wore the State Crown of Mary of Modena, who first wore it at her coronation in 1685. Originally set with 561 hired diamonds and 129 pearls, it was re-set with crystals and cultured pearls for display in the Jewel House along with a matching diadem that consorts wore in procession to the Abbey. The diadem once held 177 diamonds, 1 ruby, 1 sapphire, and 1 emerald. By the 19th century, that crown was judged to be too theatrical and in a poor state of repair, so in 1831 the Crown of Queen Adelaide was made for Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen using gemstones from her private jewellery.
Thus began a tradition of each queen consort having a custom-made crown. In 1902 the Crown of Queen Alexandra, a European-style crown – flatter and with eight half-arches instead of the typical four – was made for Alexandra of Denmark to wear at her coronation. Set with over 3,000 diamonds, it was the first consort crown to include the Koh-i-Noor diamond presented to Queen Victoria in 1850 following the British conquest of the Punjab. Originally and set in an armlet, it was cut down to an oval brilliant weighing , which Victoria mounted in a brooch and circlet. The second was the Crown of Queen Mary; also unusual for a British crown owing to its eight half-arches, it was made in 1911 for Mary of Teck. Mary purchased the Art Deco-inspired crown with her own money hoping it would become an heirloom used by future queens consort. Altogether, it is adorned with 2,200 diamonds, and once contained the Cullinan III and Cullinan IV diamonds. Its arches were made detachable in 1914 allowing it to be worn as an open crown or circlet.
After George V's death, Mary continued wearing the crown (without its arches) as a queen mother, so the Crown of Queen Elizabeth was created for Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later known as the Queen Mother, to wear at her coronation in 1937. It is the only British crown made entirely out of platinum, and was modelled on Queen Mary's Crown, but has four half-arches instead of eight. The crown is decorated with about 2,800 diamonds, with the Koh-i-Noor in the middle of the front cross. It also contains a replica of the Lahore Diamond given to Queen Victoria by the East India Company in 1851, and a diamond given to her by Abdülmecid I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, in 1856. The crown was laid on top of the Queen Mother's coffin in 2002 during her lying in state and funeral. The crowns of Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary feature crystal replicas of the Koh-i-Noor, which has been the subject of repeated controversy, with governments of both India and Pakistan claiming to be the diamond's rightful owners and demanding its return ever since gaining independence from the UK.
Queen Camilla was crowned using Queen Mary's Crown at her coronation with Charles III on 6 May 2023. Alterations included re-setting the crown with the original Cullinan diamonds and removing four of its eight half-arches. The Cullinan V brooch took the place of the Koh-i-Noor.
Prince of Wales coronets
A relatively modest gold coronet was made in 1728 for Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of George II. It takes the form laid down in a royal warrant issued by Charles II in 1677, which states "the Son & Heir apparent of the Crown for the time being shall use & bear his coronett composed of crosses & flowers de Lizs with one Arch & in the midst a Ball & Cross". The single arch denotes inferiority to the monarch while showing that the prince outranks other royal children, whose coronets have no arches. Frederick never wore his coronet; instead, it was placed on a cushion in front of him when he first took his seat in the House of Lords. It was subsequently used by George III, George IV, and Edward VII when they were Princes of Wales. Due to its age, a new silver-gilt coronet was made for the future George V to wear at Edward VII's coronation in 1902. In contrast to the earlier coronet, which has a depressed arch, the arch on this one is raised. At George's coronation in 1911 the coronet was worn by his eldest son, Edward, who was invested as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle a month later. The revival of this public ceremony, not performed since the early 17th century, was intended to boost the Royal family's profile in Wales. Princely regalia known as the Honours of Wales were designed for the occasion by Goscombe John, comprising a Welsh gold circlet with pearls, amethysts and engraved daffodils; a rod; a ring; a sword; and a robe with doublet and sash. After he became king in 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the same year and emigrated to France, where the 1902 coronet remained in his possession until his death in 1972. In its absence, a new coronet had to be created in 1969 for the investiture of the future Charles III, which is made from gold and platinum and is set with diamonds and emeralds. Both it and the rod were added to the Jewel House in 2020, joining the 1728 and 1902 coronets.
Non-coronation crowns
In the Jewel House there are two crowns that were never intended to be worn at a coronation. Queen Victoria's Small Diamond Crown is just tall and was made in 1870 using 1,187 diamonds for Victoria to wear on top of her widow's cap. She often wore it at State Openings of Parliament in place of the much heavier Imperial State Crown. After the queen's death in 1901 the crown passed to her daughter-in-law Queen Alexandra and later Queen Mary. When George V attended the Delhi Durbar with Queen Mary in 1911 to be proclaimed (but not crowned) as Emperor of India, he wore the Imperial Crown of India. As the British constitution forbids coronation regalia to leave the United Kingdom, it was not possible for him to wear St Edward's Crown or the Imperial State Crown, so one had to be made specially for the event. It contains 6,170 diamonds, 9 emeralds, 4 rubies and 4 sapphires. The crown has not been used since and is considered a part of the Crown Jewels.
Processional objects
A coronation begins with the procession into Westminster Abbey.
Swords
The swords of state reflect a monarch's role as Head of the British Armed Forces and Defender of the Faith. Three are carried before the monarch into the Abbey: the blunt Sword of Mercy (also known as Curtana), the Sword of Spiritual Justice, and the Sword of Temporal Justice. All are believed to have been supplied at the time of James I between 1610 and 1620, probably by a member of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers, using blades created in the 1580s by Italian bladesmiths Giandonato and Andrea Ferrara. They were deposited with St Edward's regalia at the Abbey by Charles II. Before that point, new swords had been made for each coronation since the 15th century. Sold in the civil war, they were returned at the Restoration, and their use was first recorded at the coronation of James II in 1685.
The two-handed Sword of State, made in 1678, symbolises the monarch's authority and is also carried before the monarch at State Openings of Parliament. Its wooden sheath, made in 1689, is bound in crimson velvet decorated with silver-gilt emblems of England, Scotland and Ireland, fleurs-de-lis, and portcullises. The lion of England and unicorn of Scotland form the cross-piece to the sword's handle. The sword weighs and is long. During a coronation it must be held for much of the service pointing upwards without touching the body by the Lord President of the Privy Council.
Before the investiture, the unwieldly Sword of State is exchanged for the lighter Sword of Offering, which is described as "the one true coronation sword". Commissioned by George IV for his extravagant 1821 coronation, its gilded leather sheath is encrusted with 1,251 diamonds, 16 rubies, 2 sapphires and 2 turquoises. The sword has a partly blued and gilt steel blade, and its handle is set with 2,141 diamonds, 12 emeralds and 4 rubies. The stones are arranged to form roses, thistles, shamrocks, oak leaves and acorns. Two diamond lion heads, one at each end of the cross-piece, have ruby eyes. George paid more than £5,000 for the sword out of his own pocket in a radical change from the austere £2 swords used by his 18th-century predecessors. It remained in the Royal family's personal ownership until 1903 when it was deposited with the Crown Jewels and has been used at every coronation since 1911. A monarch is girded and blessed using the sword, which is returned to the Keeper of the Jewel House by the Abbey for a token sum of £5, and is borne unsheathed for the rest of the ceremony.
The 17th-century Irish Sword of State was held by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (a viceroy) prior to Ireland's independence from the UK in 1922 and has been displayed in the Jewel House since 1959. The handle takes the form of a lion and a unicorn and is decorated with a celtic harp. Each new viceroy was invested with the sword at Dublin Castle where it usually sat across the arms of a throne, representing the king or queen in their absence. It was borne in procession in front of monarchs during their official visits to Dublin. In June 1921 the sword was present at the official opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland by George V. The sword was displayed at Dublin Castle in 2018 as part of the 'Making Majesty' exhibition – the first time it had been to Ireland in 95 years.
St Edward's Staff
St Edward's Staff is a ceremonial gold walking stick made for Charles II in 1661. It has a plain monde and cross at the top and a steel pike at the bottom. This object is almost certainly a copy of the long rod mentioned in the list of royal plate and jewels destroyed in 1649, although the pre-Interregnum version was gold and silver and topped by a dove. The staff's intended role in the coronation has been forgotten since medieval times, and so it is carried into the Abbey by a peer as a holy relic and laid on the altar, where it remains throughout the ceremony.
Trumpets
The Crown Jewels include 16 silver trumpets dating from between 1780 and 1848. Nine are draped with red silk damask banners embroidered with coats of arms in gold, originally made for Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838. They have not been used since the Corps of State Trumpeters was disbanded as a cost-cutting measure in the 19th century. The trumpeters' main job was to sound a fanfare at key points in the coronation, and they also played at the banquet afterwards in Westminster Hall. Today, the Band of the Household Cavalry and the Central Band of the Royal Air Force play their own trumpets at state occasions.
Maces
Beginning as lethal weapons of medieval knights, maces evolved into ceremonial objects carried by sergeants-at-arms that represent a monarch's authority. The House of Commons can only operate lawfully when the royal mace – dating from Charles II's reign – is present at the table. Two other maces dating from the reigns of Charles II and William III are used by the House of Lords, one of which is placed on the Woolsack before the house meets and is absent when a monarch is there in person delivering the King's or Queen's Speech. In the late 17th century there were 16 maces, but only 13 survive, 10 of which are on display at the Tower of London. Two of these are carried in the royal procession at State Openings of Parliament and coronations. Each mace is about long and weighs an average of . They are silver-gilt and were made between 1660 and 1695.
Anointing objects
When a monarch is anointed, the Dean of Westminster first pours holy anointing oil from an ampulla into a spoon.
Ampulla
The Ampulla, tall and weighing , is a hollow gold vessel made in 1661 and shaped like an eagle with outspread wings. Its head unscrews, enabling the vessel to be filled with oil, which exits via a hole in the beak. The original ampulla was a small stone phial, sometimes worn around the neck as a pendant by kings, and otherwise kept inside an eagle-shaped golden reliquary. According to 14th-century legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until 1170, and presented him with a gold eagle and some oil for anointing English kings. This ampulla was first recorded as being used at Henry IV's coronation in 1399 and was deposited for safekeeping with St Edward's regalia at the Abbey by Richard III in 1483. Known as the Holy Oil of St Thomas, the same batch was used to anoint all subsequent kings and queens (except Mary I) until it eventually ran out in 1625. It is unclear why, after the Restoration, the vessel itself came to be reinterpreted as an eagle standing on a domed base. In terms of religious importance, the anointing objects are second only to St Edward's Crown, and in 2013 the ampulla stood beside the crown on the altar of Westminster Abbey at a service marking the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth II's coronation.
Coronation Spoon
The Coronation Spoon, which dates from the late 12th century, is silver-gilt and set with four pearls added in the 17th century. A ridge divides the bowl in half, creating grooves into which the Archbishop of Canterbury dips two fingers and anoints the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Originally, it may have been used for mixing water and wine in a chalice. The spoon is first known to have been used to anoint a monarch at the English coronation of James I in 1603. It is the oldest surviving piece of the Crown Jewels (and the only surviving English royal goldsmith's work from the 1100s), first recorded in the Royal Collection in 1349 as "a spoon of ancient form", and was probably made for Henry II or Richard I. In 1649 the spoon was sold for 16 shillings to Clement Kynnersley, Yeoman of the Removing Wardrobe, who returned it to Charles II upon the restoration of the monarchy.
Robes and ornaments
The anointing is followed by investing with coronations robes and ornaments.
Robes
All the robes have priestly connotations and their form has changed little since the Middle Ages. A tradition of wearing St Edward's robes came to an end in 1547 after the English Reformation, but was revived in 1603 by James I to emphasise his belief in the divine nature of kingship. As well as robes, a monarch also wore cloth-of-gold buskins or sandals, depending on his or her foot size. These holy relics were destroyed along with royal crowns and ornaments in the Civil War. New robes were made for each monarch starting with Charles II, a practice that ended in 1911, when George V reused the 1902 Supertunica (a dalmatic), and the Imperial Mantle (a cope), fashioned for George IV in 1821. They were also worn by his successors George VI, Elizabeth II and Charles III. Together, the gold robes weigh approximately . A new Stole Royal was made in 2023 for Charles III by the Royal School of Needlework, taking inspiration from the 1953 stole of his predecessor, Elizbeth II. It is adorned with emblems of the four countries of the United Kingdom, a dove representing the Holy Spirit, a Tudor-style crown, and a pattern based on the Cosmati Pavement in Westminster Abbey.
Spurs
Prick spurs remade for Charles II are presented to the monarch. They are made of solid gold, richly embossed with floral patterns and scrolls, and have crimson velvet straps embroidered in gold. Both necks terminate in a Tudor rose with a spike at its centre. Also known as St George's Spurs, they are emblems of knighthood and chivalry, and denote the sovereign's role as head of the armed forces. Gold spurs are first known to have been used in 1189 at the coronation of Richard I, though it is likely they were introduced for Henry the Young King in 1170, and this element of the service was probably inspired by the initiation ceremony of knights. A pair of mid 14th-century spurs were added to St Edward's regalia at the Abbey in 1399 and used at all coronations until their destruction in 1649. Historically, spurs were fastened to a monarch's feet, but since the Restoration they are simply presented to the monarch.
Armills
The Armills are gold bracelets of sincerity and wisdom. Like spurs, they were first used at English coronations in the 12th century. By the 17th century, armills were no longer delivered to the monarch, but simply carried at the coronation. A new pair had to be made in 1661; they are wide, in diameter, and champlevé enamelled on the surface with roses, thistles and harps (the national symbols of England, Scotland and Ireland) as well as fleurs-de-lis. For Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953, the tradition of wearing armills was revived, and a new set of plain 22-karat gold armills lined with crimson velvet presented to the Queen on behalf of various Commonwealth governments. Each bracelet is fitted with an invisible hinge and a clasp in the form of a Tudor rose. The hallmark includes a tiny portrait of the Queen, who continued to wear them upon leaving the Abbey and could be seen wearing them later, along with the Imperial State Crown and Sovereign's Ring, at her appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Orbs
An orb, a type of globus cruciger, was first used at an English coronation by Henry VIII in 1509, and then by all subsequent monarchs apart from the early Stuart kings James I and Charles I, who opted for the medieval coronation order. The Tudor orb was deposited with St Edward's regalia at Westminster Abbey in 1625. Since 1661 the Sovereign's Orb is a hollow gold sphere about in diameter and weighing (more than twice as heavy as the original) made for Charles II. A band of gems and pearls runs along the equator and there is a half-band on the top hemisphere. Atop the orb is an amethyst surmounted by a jewelled cross, symbolising the Christian world, with a sapphire on one side and an emerald on the other. Altogether, the orb is decorated with 375 pearls, 365 diamonds, 18 rubies, 9 emeralds, 9 sapphires, 1 amethyst and 1 piece of glass. It is handed to the sovereign during the investiture rite of the coronation, and is borne later in the left hand when leaving Westminster Abbey. A small version, originally set with hired gems, was made in 1689 for Mary II to hold at her coronation as joint sovereign with William III; it was never used again at a coronation and was re-set with imitation gems and cultured pearls. The orb is in diameter and weighs . Both orbs were laid on Queen Victoria's coffin at her state funeral in 1901. Officially, no reason was given for using Mary II's orb, but it may have been intended to reflect Victoria's position as Empress of India.
Rings
The Sovereign's Ring has been worn by monarchs at their coronation since William IV in 1831, with the exceptions of Queen Victoria, whose fingers were too small to retain it, and Charles III, who acknowledged the ring but did not wear it. In the centre is a large octagonal sapphire overlaid with rubies forming a cross, surrounded by 14 brilliant diamonds. The general design is intended to represent the red St George's Cross (England) on the blue background of St Andrew's Cross (Scotland). Rubies symbolise all the kingly virtues – such as humility, good morals, and charity – and have featured on coronation rings since the early Middle Ages. A small copy was made for Victoria, who wrote in a letter: "The Archbishop had (most awkwardly) put the ring on the wrong finger, and the consequence was that I had the greatest difficulty to take it off again, which I at last did with great pain" – her jewellers had measured the wrong finger. In 1919 both rings were deposited at the Tower along with the Queen Consort's Ring, which is similar in design and was made in 1831 for Queen Adelaide.
Before 1831, monarchs generally received a new ring symbolising their "marriage" to the nation, with perhaps two exceptions: Richard II offered Westminster Abbey a "solemn jewel, a gold ring set with a precious stone called a ruby, of no small value" to be worn by his successors. Evidence suggests it was later worn by Henry V. Another was the Stuart Coronation Ring, probably used at the English coronations of Charles I and Charles II, and certainly that of James II, who took it into exile with him in France after the Glorious Revolution in 1688. It was returned to the Kingdom of Great Britain 100 years later and belongs to the Royal Collection of Gems and Jewels. The ring has a large ruby etched with a St George's Cross and bordered by 26 diamonds. Since 1830 it has been on permanent loan from Windsor Castle to Edinburgh Castle where it is displayed with the Honours of Scotland. The coronation ring of Mary II survives in the Portland Collection at Welbeck Abbey.
Sceptres
The sceptre, a symbolic ornamental rod held by the monarch at a coronation, is derived from the shepherd's staff via the crozier of a bishop. Two gold sceptres made in 1661 are part of the coronation regalia. The Sovereign's Sceptre with Cross is a token of his or her temporal power as head of state. The whole object is long, weighs around , and is decorated with 333 diamonds, 31 rubies, 15 emeralds, 7 sapphires, 6 spinels, and 1 composite amethyst. In 1910, it was redesigned to incorporate Cullinan I, also known as the Great Star of Africa, which, at over , is the largest clear cut diamond in the world. It was part of a rough diamond weighing found in South Africa in 1905, and was named after Thomas Cullinan, the chairman of the mining company. The gold clasps holding it can be opened and the stone removed to be worn as a pendant hanging from Cullinan II, which is set in the Imperial State Crown, to form a brooch – Queen Mary often wore it like this. Above the pear-shaped diamond is the amethyst surmounted by a cross pattée encrusted with an emerald and small diamonds.
The Sovereign's Sceptre with Dove, which has also been known as the Rod of Equity and Mercy, is emblematic of their spiritual role. It is slightly longer, at , but weighs about the same as the Sceptre with Cross. The sceptre is decorated with 285 gemstones, including 94 diamonds, 53 rubies, 10 emeralds, 4 sapphires and 3 spinels. Circling the rod are bands of precious stones. At the top is a gold monde set with diamonds and topped by a plain cross, upon which sits a white enamelled dove with its wings outspread, representing the Holy Ghost. A sceptre like this first appeared in the 11th century and was probably based on the German sceptre, which was topped by an Imperial Eagle. The Sceptre with Dove is the penultimate piece of regalia to be delivered. As the monarch holds both sceptres, they are crowned with St Edward's Crown.
The Crown Jewels include two sceptres made for Mary of Modena in 1685: a gold sceptre with a cross known as the Queen Consort's Sceptre with Cross, and another made of ivory topped by a dove known as the Queen Consort's Ivory Rod with Dove. Unlike the sovereign's dove, this one has folded wings and is relatively small. It was last used by Queen Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother, at her husband George VI's coronation in 1937. For the coronation of Mary II, the wife and joint sovereign of William III, a more elaborate gold sceptre with dove was commissioned in 1689. It has not been used since, and went missing for several decades, only to be found in 1814 at the back of a cupboard in the Tower of London.
Altar plate
In the Jewel House there is a collection of chalices, patens, flagons, candlesticks, and dishes – all silver-gilt except five gold communion vessels – that are displayed on the altars at Westminster Abbey during coronations. Some are also used at other times. Although not regalia, such items are considered to be Crown Jewels by virtue of their long association with the Jewel House.
One of the most striking pieces is a large dish across and weighing , in the centre of which is a relief depiction of the Last Supper. Around the edge are four engravings of biblical scenes: the Washing of the Feet, the Walk to Emmaus, the Coming of the Holy Ghost, and Christ's Commission to the Apostles. Made in 1664 for James, Duke of York, and later acquired by Charles II, it stands on the high altar during a coronation ceremony. At each end of the altar stands a tall candlestick made in the 17th century, which is engraved all over with scrolls, leaves and flowers.
An altar dish and flagon were made in 1691 for the royal Church of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. The dish measures across and depicts the Last Supper above the coat of arms of co-regents William III and Mary II. The flagon stands tall. Both pieces are still used in the chapel on Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, and they were first displayed at a coronation in 1821. Another dish still in regular use is the Maundy Dish – one of six used by the King at Royal Maundy for handing out alms to elderly people in recognition of their service to the church and local community. The ceremony, which takes place in a different cathedral every year, entirely replaced the ancient custom of washing the feet of the poor in 1730, and the dish, though it bears the royal cypher of William and Mary, dates from the reign of Charles II. Two purses containing specially minted coins are taken from the dish and presented to each recipient.
Banqueting plate
The last coronation banquet held at Westminster Hall took place in 1821 for George IV. Silverware used at those banquets include the Plymouth Fountain, a wine fountain made around 1640 by a German goldsmith and presented to Charles II by the city of Plymouth. Gilded for George II in 1726, it is tall and decorated with flowers, fruit, dolphins, mermaids and sea monsters. The nautical theme is continued in the silver-gilt Wine Cistern, also known as the Grand Punch Bowl, which is cast as a giant oyster shell. It weighs , is tall, long and wide, and can hold 144 bottles of wine on ice. It was commissioned in 1829 by George IV but not completed until after his death. It is the heaviest surviving piece of English banqueting plate. In 1841, the cistern was re-purposed as a punch bowl, with the addition of a large ivory-stemmed ladle, which has a silver-gilt bowl in the form of a nautilus shell.
The Exeter Salt is a tall salt cellar in the form of a castle on a rocky outcrop. Each of its four main compartments held about of salt, while smaller ones held pepper and other spices. It was made 1630 in Germany and is set with 73 gems probably added later. The Salt was bought in Hamburg in 1657 by the city's British Resident as a peace offering to the Russian court, which had cut all ties with Britain during the Interregnum. He was turned away at the Russian border and eventually took it home to London. In 1660, it was acquired from a private dealer for £700 by the city of Exeter and presented to Charles II.
Eleven smaller salts named after St George were originally made for a St George's Day banquet of the Knights of the Garter in the late 17th century. A twelfth, the Queen Elizabeth Salt, was made in 1572 during the reign of Elizabeth I for a member of the aristocracy; it was later acquired by Charles II. Twelve spoons made for George IV in 1820 complement these salts.
Baptismal plate
Three silver-gilt objects (comprising a total of six parts) associated with royal christenings are displayed in the Jewel House. Charles II's tall font was created in 1661 and stood on a basin to catch any spills. Surmounting the font's domed lid is a figure of Philip the Evangelist baptising the Ethiopian eunuch. While Charles's marriage to Catherine of Braganza produced no heir, the font may have been used to secretly baptise some of his 13 illegitimate children. In 1688, James Francis Edward Stuart, son of James II and Mary of Modena, was the first royal baby to be christened using this object.
A ewer and basin of French design made in 1735 were only used at two christenings. The tall ewer's handle is topped by a figure of Hercules slaying the Hydra, an unlikely motif for baptismal plate, suggesting it originally had an alternate purpose. Indeed, it was first used in 1738 at the impromptu christening of a "very ill" future George III only hours after his birth. His father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was also banished from the royal court and forbidden to use the Charles II font. An inscription on the ewer records its presence at the 1780 christening of George III's youngest son, Prince Alfred.
The Lily Font was made in 1840 for the christening of Victoria, Princess Royal, the first child of Queen Victoria, who declined to use the Charles II font because of its unseemly history. The 1661 font was recycled as a plinth (pictured) and its basin found a new role as an altar dish. The Lily Font stands tall and weighs approximately . It is decorated with water lilies, symbolising purity and new life, and cherubs plucking lyres. The object has been used for the christenings of all of Elizabeth II's children and grandchildren (except Princess Eugenie) with holy water brought from the River Jordan.
Ownership, management and value
The Crown Jewels are part of the Royal Collection. As with Royal palaces, ownership is regarded as inalienable and passes from one monarch to the next in perpetuity. However, a 17th-century ruling by Sir Edward Coke, which states "the ancient jewels of the crown are heirloomes and shall descend to the next successor and are not devisable by testament", contains an exception allowing the monarch to dispose of objects via letters patent during their lifetime under the Great Seal or Privy Seal. In 1995, Iain Sproat, then Secretary of State for National Heritage, confirmed that the disposal of the Royal Collection was "entirely a matter for the Queen". Their potential value is generally not included in estimates of the monarch's wealth because in practice it is unlikely the Crown Jewels will ever be sold, nor are they insured against loss, and are officially described as priceless. Maintenance, alteration and repair falls to the Crown Jeweller, a member of the Royal Household who cleans them after visiting hours at the Tower of London each January and accompanies the regalia and plate whenever they leave the Tower for use at royal ceremonies. Older items have been conserved by experts from the British Museum. The Royal Collection Trust keeps an inventory of the jewels, and Historic Royal Palaces is responsible for their display.
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Royal Collection Trust
The Crown Jewels at Historic Royal Palaces
The Crown Jewels at the website of the British royal family
Videos:
Royal Regalia from The Coronation (2018) with commentary by Anna Keay
The Crown Jewels (1967) by British Pathé
The Crown Jewels (1937) by British Pathé
United Kingdom
National symbols of the United Kingdom
Tower of London
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat%20Nixon
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Pat Nixon
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Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon (; March 16, 1912 – June 22, 1993) was the first lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974 as the wife of President Richard Nixon. She also served as the second lady of the United States from 1953 to 1961 when her husband was vice president.
Born in Ely, Nevada, she grew up with her two brothers in what is now Cerritos, California, graduating from Excelsior Union High School in Norwalk, California in 1929. She attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California. She paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Tricia and Julie. Dubbed the "Nixon team", Richard and Pat Nixon campaigned together in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected vice president in 1952 alongside General Dwight D. Eisenhower, whereupon Pat became Second Lady. Pat Nixon did much to add substance to the role of the vice president's wife, insisting on visiting schools, orphanages, hospitals, and village markets as she undertook many missions of goodwill across the world.
As First Lady, Pat Nixon promoted a number of charitable causes, including volunteerism. She oversaw the collection of more than 600 pieces of historic art and furnishings for the White House, an acquisition larger than that of any other administration. She was the most traveled First Lady in U.S. history, a record unsurpassed until twenty-five years later. She accompanied the President as the first First Lady to visit China and the Soviet Union, and was the first president's wife to be officially designated a representative of the United States on her solo trips to Africa and South America, which gained her recognition as "Madame Ambassador"; she was also the first First Lady to enter a combat zone. Though her husband was re-elected in a landslide victory in 1972, her tenure as First Lady ended two years later, when President Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal.
Her public appearances became increasingly rare later in life. She and her husband settled in San Clemente, California, and later moved to New Jersey. She suffered two strokes, one in 1976 and another in 1983, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1992. She died in 1993, aged 81.
Early life
Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in 1912 in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada. Her father, William M. Ryan Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish ancestry; her mother, Katherine Halberstadt, was a German immigrant. The nickname "Pat" was given to her by her father, because of her birth on the day before Saint Patrick's Day and her Irish ancestry. When she enrolled in college in 1931 she started using the name "Pat" (and occasionally "Patricia") instead of "Thelma" but she did not legally change her name.
After her birth, the Ryan family moved to California, and in 1914 settled on a small truck farm in Artesia (present-day Cerritos). Thelma Ryan's high school yearbook page gives her nickname as "Buddy" and her ambition to run a boarding house.
She worked on the family farm and also at a local bank as a janitor and bookkeeper. Her mother died of cancer in 1924. Pat, who was only 12, assumed all the household duties for her father (who died himself of silicosis 5 years later) and her two older brothers, William Jr. (1910–1997) and Thomas (1911–1992). She also had a half-sister, Neva Bender (1909–1981), and a half-brother, Matthew Bender (1907–1973), from her mother's first marriage; her mother's first husband had died during a flash flood in South Dakota.
Education and career
After graduating from Excelsior High School in 1929, she attended Fullerton College. She paid for her education by working odd jobs, including as a driver, a pharmacy manager, a telephone operator, and a typist. She also earned money sweeping the floors of a local bank, and from 1930 until 1931, she lived in New York City, working as a secretary and also as a radiographer.
Determined "to make something out of myself", she enrolled in 1931 at the University of Southern California (USC), where she majored in merchandising. A former professor noted that she "stood out from the empty-headed, overdressed little sorority girls of that era like a good piece of literature on a shelf of cheap paperbacks". She held part-time jobs on campus, worked as a sales clerk in Bullock's-Wilshire department store, and taught touch typing and shorthand at a high school. She also supplemented her income by working as an extra and bit player in the film industry, for which she took several screen tests. In this capacity, she made brief appearances in films such as Becky Sharp (1935), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and Small Town Girl (1936). In some cases she ended up on the cutting room floor, such as with her spoken lines in Becky Sharp. She told Hollywood columnist Erskine Johnson in 1959 that her time in films was "too fleeting even for recollections embellished by the years" and that "my choice of a career was teaching school and the many jobs I pursued were merely to help with college expenses." During the 1968 presidential campaign, she explained to the writer Gloria Steinem, "I never had time to think about things like... who I wanted to be, or who I admired, or to have ideas. I never had time to dream about being anyone else. I had to work."
In 1937, Pat Ryan graduated cum laude from USC with a Bachelor of Science degree in merchandising, together with a certificate to teach at the high school level, which USC deemed equivalent to a master's degree. Pat accepted a position as a high school teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California.
Marriage and family, early campaigns
While in Whittier, Pat Ryan met Richard Nixon, a young lawyer who had recently graduated from the Duke University School of Law. The two became acquainted at a Little Theater group when they were cast together in The Dark Tower. Known as Dick, he asked Pat to marry him the first night they went out. "I thought he was nuts or something!" she recalled. He courted the redhead he called his "wild Irish Gypsy" for two years, even driving her to and from her dates with other men.
They eventually married on June 21, 1940, at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California. She said that she had been attracted to the young Nixon because he "was going places, he was vital and ambitious ... he was always doing things". Later, referring to Richard Nixon, she said, "Oh but you just don't realize how much fun he is! He's just so much fun!" In a letter to a friend she wrote "He’s not that big but he knows how to satisfy a girl". Following a brief honeymoon in Mexico, the two lived in a small apartment in Whittier. As U.S. involvement in World War II began, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., with Richard taking a position as a lawyer for the Office of Price Administration (OPA); Pat worked as a secretary for the American Red Cross, but also qualified as a price analyst for the OPA. He then joined the United States Navy, and while he was stationed in San Francisco, she resumed work for the OPA as an economic analyst.
Veteran UPI reporter Helen Thomas suggested that in public, the Nixons "moved through life ritualistically", but privately, however, they were "very close". In private, Richard Nixon was described as being "unabashedly sentimental", often praising Pat for her work, remembering anniversaries and surprising her with frequent gifts. During state dinners, he ordered the protocol changed so that Pat could be served first. Pat, in turn, felt that her husband was vulnerable and sought to protect him, although she did have a nickname for him which he despised, so she rarely used it: "Little Dicky". Of his critics, she said that "Lincoln had worse critics. He was big enough not to let it bother him. That's the way my husband is."
Pat campaigned at her husband's side in 1946 when he entered politics and successfully ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. That same year, she gave birth to a daughter and namesake, Patricia, known as Tricia. In 1948, Pat had her second and last child, Julie. When asked about her husband's career, Pat once stated, "The only thing I could do was help him, but [politics] was not a life I would have chosen." Pat participated in the campaign by doing research on his opponent, incumbent Jerry Voorhis. She also wrote and distributed campaign literature. Nixon was elected in his first campaign to represent California's 12th congressional district. During the next six years, Pat saw her husband move from the U.S. House of Representatives to the United States Senate, and then be nominated as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice presidential candidate.
Although Pat Nixon was a Methodist, she and her husband attended whichever Protestant church was nearest to their home, especially after moving to Washington. They attended the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church because it sponsored her daughters' Brownie troop, occasional Baptist services with Billy Graham, and Norman Vincent Peale's Marble Collegiate Church.
Second Lady of the United States, 1953–1961
At the time of her husband coming under consideration for the vice presidential nomination, Pat Nixon was against her husband accepting the selection, as she despised campaigns and had been relieved that as a newly elected senator he would not have another one for six years. She thought she had prevailed in convincing him, until she heard the announcement of the pick from a news bulletin while at the 1952 Republican National Convention. During the Presidential campaign of 1952, Pat Nixon's attitude toward politics changed when her husband was accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions. Pat encouraged him to fight the charges, and he did so by delivering the famed "Checkers speech", so-called for the family's dog, a cocker spaniel given to them by a political supporter. This was Pat's first national television appearance, and she, her daughters, and the dog were featured prominently. Defending himself as a man of the people, Nixon stressed his wife's abilities as a stenographer, then said, "I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she would look good in anything."
Pat Nixon accompanied her husband abroad during his vice presidential years. She traveled to 53 nations, often bypassing luncheons and teas and instead visiting hospitals, orphanages, and even a leper colony in Panama. On a trip to Venezuela, crowds pelted the Nixons' limousine with rocks and spit on the couple for being representatives of the U.S. government.
A November 1, 1958, article in The Seattle Times was typical of the media's favorable coverage of the future First Lady, stating that "Mrs. Nixon is always reported to be gracious and friendly. And she sure is friendly. She greets a stranger as a friend. She doesn't just shake hands but clasps a visitor's hand in both her hands. Her manner is direct ... Mrs. Nixon also upheld her reputation of always looking neat, no matter how long her day has been." A year and a half later, during her husband's campaign for the presidency, The New York Times called her "a paragon of wifely virtues" whose "efficiency makes other women feel slothful and untalented".
Pat Nixon was named Outstanding Homemaker of the Year (1953), Mother of the Year (1955), and the Nation's Ideal Housewife (1957). She once said that, on a rare evening to herself, she pressed all of her husband's suits, adding, "Of course, I didn't have to. But when I don't have work to do, I just think up some new project."
Her husband's campaigns—1960, 1962 and 1968
In the 1960 election, Vice President Nixon ran for president of the United States against Democratic opponent Senator John F. Kennedy. Pat was featured prominently in the effort; an entire advertising campaign was built around the slogan "Pat for First Lady". Nixon conceded the election to Kennedy, although the race was very close and there were allegations of voter fraud. Pat had urged her husband to demand a recount of votes, though Nixon declined. Pat was most upset about the television cameras, which recorded her reaction when her husband lost—"millions of television viewers witnessed her desperate fight to hold a smile upon her lips as her face came apart and the bitter tears flowed from her eyes", as one reporter put it. This permanently dimmed Pat Nixon's view of politics.
In 1962, the Nixons embarked on another campaign, this time for Governor of California. Prior to Richard Nixon's announcement of his candidacy, Pat's brother Tom Ryan said, "Pat told me that if Dick ran for governor she was going to take her shoe to him." She eventually agreed to another run, citing that it meant a great deal to her husband, but Richard Nixon lost the gubernatorial election to Pat Brown.
Six years later, Richard Nixon ran again for the presidency. Pat was reluctant to face another campaign, her eighth since 1946. Her husband was a deeply controversial figure in American politics, and Pat had witnessed and shared the praise and vilification he had received without having established an independent public identity for herself. Although she supported him in his career, she feared another "1960", when Nixon lost to Kennedy. She consented, however, and participated in the campaign by traveling on campaign trips with her husband. Richard Nixon made a political comeback with his narrow presidential victory of 1968 over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey—and the country had a new First Lady.
First Lady of the United States, 1969–1974
Major initiatives
Pat Nixon felt that the First Lady should always set a public example of high virtue as a symbol of dignity, but she refused to revel in the trappings of the position. When considering ideas for a project as First Lady, Pat refused to do (or be) something simply to emulate her predecessor, Lady Bird Johnson. She decided to continue what she called "personal diplomacy", which meant traveling and visiting people in other states or other nations.
One of her major initiatives as First Lady was the promotion of volunteerism, in which she encouraged Americans to address social problems at the local level through volunteering at hospitals, civic organizations, and rehabilitation centers. She stated, "Our success as a nation depends on our willingness to give generously of ourselves for the welfare and enrichment of the lives of others." She undertook a "Vest Pockets for Volunteerism" trip, where she visited ten different volunteer programs. Susan Porter, in charge of the First Lady's scheduling, noted that Pat "saw volunteers as unsung heroes who hadn't been encouraged or given credit for their sacrifices and who needed to be". Her second volunteerism tour—she traveled within the United States—helped to boost the notion that not all students were protesting the Vietnam War. She herself belonged to several volunteer groups, including Women in Community Services and Urban Services League, and was an advocate of the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, a bill that encouraged volunteerism by providing benefits to a number of volunteer organizations. Some reporters viewed her choice of volunteerism as safe and dull compared to the initiatives undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy.
Pat Nixon became involved in the development of recreation areas and parkland, was a member of the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, and lent her support to organizations dedicated to improving the lives of handicapped children. For her first Thanksgiving in the White House, Pat organized a meal for 225 senior citizens who did not have families. The following year, she invited wounded servicemen to a second annual Thanksgiving meal in the White House. Though presidents since George Washington had been issuing Thanksgiving proclamations, Pat became the only First Lady to issue one.
Life in the White House
After her husband was elected president in 1968, Pat Nixon met with the outgoing First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. Together, they toured the private quarters of the White House on December 12. She eventually asked Sarah Jackson Doyle, an interior decorator who had worked for the Nixons since 1965 and who decorated the family's 10-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York with French and English antiques, to serve as a design consultant. She hired Clement Conger from the State Department to be the Executive Mansion's new curator, replacing James Ketchum, who had been hired by Jacqueline Kennedy.
Pat Nixon developed and led a coordinated effort to improve the authenticity of the White House as an historic residence and museum. She added more than 600 paintings, antiques and furnishings to the Executive Mansion and its collections, the largest number of acquisitions by any administration; this greatly, and dramatically, expanded upon Jacqueline Kennedy's more publicized efforts. She created the Map Room and renovated the China room, and refurbished nine other rooms, including the Red Room, Blue Room and Green Room. She worked with engineers to develop an exterior lighting system for the entire White House, making it glow a soft white. She ordered the American flag atop the White House flown day and night, even when the president was not in residence.
She ordered pamphlets describing the rooms of the house for tourists so they could understand everything, and had them translated into Spanish, French, Italian and Russian for foreigners. She had ramps installed for the handicapped and physically disabled. She instructed the police who served as tour guides to attend sessions at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library (to learn how tours were guided "in a real museum"), and arranged for them to wear less menacing uniforms, with their guns hidden underneath. The tour guides were to speak slowly to deaf groups, to help those who lip-read, and Pat ordered that the blind be able to touch the antiques.
The First Lady had long been irritated by the perception that the White House and access to the President and First Lady were exclusively for the wealthy and famous; she routinely came down from the family quarters to greet tourists, shake hands, sign autographs, and pose for photos. Her daughter Julie Eisenhower reflected, "she invited so many groups to the White House to give them recognition, not famous ones, but little-known organizations..."
She invited former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her children Caroline and John Jr. to dine with her family and view the White House's official portraits of her and her husband, the late President Kennedy. It was the first time that the three Kennedys had returned to the White House since the president's assassination eight years earlier. Pat had ordered the visit to be kept secret from the media until after the trip's conclusion in an attempt to maintain privacy for the Kennedys. She also invited President Kennedy's mother Rose Kennedy to see her son's official portrait.
She opened the White House for evening tours so that the public could see the interior design work that had been implemented. The tours that were conducted in December displayed the White House's Christmas decor. In addition, she instituted a series of performances by artists at the White House in varied American traditions, from opera to bluegrass; among the guests were The Carpenters in 1972. These events were described as ranging from "creative to indifferent, to downright embarrassing". When they entered the White House in 1969, the Nixons began inviting families to non-denominational Sunday church services in the East Room of the White House. She also oversaw the White House wedding of her daughter, Tricia, to Edward Ridley Finch Cox in 1971.
In October 1969, she announced her appointment of Constance Stuart as her staff director and press secretary. To the White House residence staff, the Nixons were perceived as more stiff and formal than other first families, but nonetheless kind.
She spoke out in favor of women running for political office and encouraged her husband to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court, saying "woman power is unbeatable; I've seen it all across this country". She was the first of the American First Ladies to publicly support the Equal Rights Amendment, though her views on abortion were mixed. Following the Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, Pat stated she was pro-choice. However, in 1972, she said, "I'm really not for abortion. I think it's a personal thing. I mean abortion on demand—wholesale."
In 1972, she became the first Republican First Lady to address a national convention. Her efforts in the 1972 reelection campaign—traveling across the country and speaking on behalf of her husband—were copied by future candidates' spouses.
Travels
Pat Nixon held the record as the most-traveled First Lady until her mark was surpassed by Hillary Rodham Clinton. In President Nixon's first term, Pat traveled to 39 of 50 states, and in the first year alone, shook hands with a quarter of a million people. She undertook many missions of goodwill to foreign nations as well. Her first foreign trip took in Guam, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Romania, and England. On such trips, Pat refused to be serviced by an entourage, feeling that they were an unnecessary barrier and a burden for taxpayers. Soon after, during a trip to South Vietnam, Pat became the first First Lady to enter a combat zone. She had tea with the wife of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in a palace, visited an orphanage, and lifted off in an open-door helicopter—armed by military guards with machine guns—to witness U.S. troops fighting in a jungle below. She later admitted to experiencing a "moment of fear going into a battle zone", because, as author and historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony noted, "Pat Nixon was literally in a line of fire." She later visited an army hospital, where, for two hours, she walked through the wards and spoke with each wounded patient. The First Lady of South Vietnam, Madame Thieu, said Pat Nixon's trip "intensified our morale".
After hearing about the Great Peruvian earthquake of 1970, which caused an avalanche and additional destruction, Pat initiated a "volunteer American relief drive" and flew to the country, where she aided in taking relief supplies to earthquake victims. She toured damaged regions and embraced homeless townspeople; they trailed her as she climbed up hills of rubble and under fallen beams. Her trip was heralded in newspapers around the world for her acts of compassion and disregard for her personal safety or comfort, and her presence was a direct boost to political relations. One Peruvian official commented: "Her coming here meant more than anything else President Nixon could have done," and an editorial in Peru's Lima Prensa said that Peruvians could never forget Pat Nixon. Fran Lewine of the Associated Press wrote that no First Lady had ever undertaken a "mercy mission" resulting in such "diplomatic side effects". On the trip, the Peruvian government presented her with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun, the highest Peruvian distinction and the oldest such honor in the Americas.
She became the first First Lady to visit Africa in 1972, on a , eight-day journey to Ghana, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast. Upon arrival in Liberia, Pat was honored with a 19-gun salute, a tribute reserved only for heads of government, and she reviewed troops. She later donned a traditional native costume and danced with locals. She was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Most Venerable Order of Knighthood, Liberia's highest honor. In Ghana, she again danced with local residents, and addressed the nation's Parliament. In the Ivory Coast, she was met by a quarter of a million people shouting "Vive Madame Nixon!" She conferred with leaders of all three African nations. Upon her return home, White House staffer Charles Colson sent a memo to the President reading in part, "Mrs. Nixon has now broken through where we have failed ... People—men and women—identify with her, and in return with you."
Another notable journey was the Nixons' historic visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972. While President Nixon was in meetings, Pat toured through Beijing in her red coat. According to Carl Sferrazza Anthony, China was Pat Nixon's "moment", her turning point as an acclaimed First Lady in the United States. She accompanied her husband to the Nixon–Brezhnev summit meetings in the Soviet Union later in the year. Though security constraints left her unable to walk freely through the streets as she did in China, Pat was still able to visit with children and walk arm-in-arm with Soviet First Lady Viktoria Brezhneva. Later, she visited Brazil and Venezuela in 1974 with the unique diplomatic standing of personal representative of the president. The Nixons' last major trip was in June 1974, to Austria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Jordan.
Fashion and style
The traditional role of a First Lady as the nation's hostess puts her personal appearance and style under scrutiny, and the attention to Pat was lively. Women's Wear Daily stated that Pat had a "good figure and good posture", as well as "the best-looking legs of any woman in public life today". Some fashion writers tended to have a lackluster opinion of her well tailored, but nondescript, American-made clothes. "I consider it my duty to use American designers", she said, and favored them because, "they are now using so many materials which are great for traveling because they're non crushable". She preferred to buy readymade garments rather than made-to-order outfits. "I'm a size 10," she told The New York Times. "I can just walk in and buy. I've bought things in various stores in various cities. Only some of my clothes are by designers." She did, however, wear the custom work of some well-known talents, notably Geoffrey Beene, at the suggestion of Clara Treyz, her personal shopper. Many fashion observers concluded that Pat Nixon did not greatly advance the cause of American fashion. Nixon's yellow-satin inaugural gown by Harvey Berin was criticized as "a schoolteacher on her night out", but Treyz defended her wardrobe selections by saying, "Mrs. Nixon must be ladylike."
Nixon did not sport the outrageous fashions of the 1970s, because she was concerned about appearing conservatively dressed, especially as her husband's political star rose. "Always before, it was sort of fun to get some ... thing that was completely different, high-style", she told a reporter. "But this is not appropriate now. I avoid the spectacular."
Watergate
At the time the Watergate scandal broke to the media, Nixon "barely noticed" the reports of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Later, when asked by the press about Watergate, she replied curtly, "I know only what I read in the newspapers." In 1974, when a reporter asked "Is the press the cause of the president's problems?", she shot back, "What problems?" Privately, she felt that the power of her husband's staff was increasing, and President Nixon was becoming more removed from what was occurring in the administration.Pat Nixon did not know of the secret tape recordings her husband had made. Julie Nixon Eisenhower stated that the First Lady would have ordered the tapes destroyed immediately, had she known of their existence. Once she did learn of the tapes, she vigorously opposed making them public, and compared them to "private love letters—for one person alone". Believing in her husband's innocence, she also encouraged him not to resign and instead fight all the impeachment charges that were eventually leveled against him. She said to her friend Helene Drown, "Dick has done so much for the country. Why is this happening?"
After President Nixon told his family he would resign the office of the presidency, she replied "But why?" She contacted White House curator Clement Conger to cancel any further development of a new official china pattern from the Lenox China Company, and began supervising the packing of the family's personal belongings. On August 7, 1974, the family met in the solarium of the White House for their last dinner. Pat sat on the edge of a couch and held her chin high, a sign of tension to her husband. When the president walked in, she threw her arms around him, kissed him, and said, "We're all very proud of you, Daddy." Later Pat Nixon said of the photographs taken that evening, "Our hearts were breaking and there we are smiling."
On the morning of August 9 in the East Room, Nixon gave a televised 20-minute farewell speech to the White House staff, during which time he read from Theodore Roosevelt's biography and praised his own parents. The First Lady could hardly contain her tears; she was most upset about the cameras, because they recorded her anguish, as they had during the 1960 election defeat. The Nixons walked onto the Executive Mansion's South Lawn with Vice President Gerald Ford and Betty Ford. The outgoing president departed from the White House on Marine One. As the family walked towards the helicopter, Pat, with one arm around her husband's waist and one around Betty's, said to Betty "You'll see many of these red carpets, and you'll get so you hate 'em." The helicopter transported them to Andrews Air Force Base; from there they flew to California.
Pat Nixon later told her daughter Julie, "Watergate is the only crisis that ever got me down ... And I know I will never live to see the vindication."
Public perception
Historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony noted that ordinary citizens responded to, and identified with, Pat Nixon. When a group of people from a rural community visited the White House to present a quilt to the First Lady, many were overcome with nervousness; upon hearing their weeping, Pat hugged each individual tightly, and the tension dissipated. When a young boy doubted that the Executive Mansion was her house because he could not see her washing machine, Pat led him through the halls and up an elevator, into the family quarters and the laundry room. She mixed well with people of different races, and made no distinctions on that basis. During the Nixons' trip to China in 1972, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was sufficiently smitten with her so as to give two rare giant pandas to the United States as a gift from China.
Pat Nixon was listed on the Gallup Organization's top-ten list of the most admired women fourteen times, from 1959 to 1962 and 1968 to 1979. She was ranked third in 1969, second in 1970 and 1971, and first in 1972. She remained on the top-ten list until 1979, five years after her husband left office. To many, she was seen as an example of the "American Dream", having risen from a poor background, with her greatest popularity among the "great silent majority" of voters. Mary Brooks, the director of the United States Mint and a long-time friend of Pat's, illustrated some of the cultural divides present at the time when she described the First Lady as "a good example to the women of this country–if they're not part of those Women's Liberation groups". Additionally, it was the view of veteran UPI correspondent Helen Thomas that Pat "was the warmest First Lady I covered and the one who loved people the most. I think newspeople who covered her saw a woman who was sharp, responsive, sensitive."
Press accounts framed Pat Nixon as an embodiment of Cold War domesticity, in stark contrast to the second-wave feminism of the time. Journalists often portrayed her as dutiful and selfless and seeing herself as a wife first and individual second. Time magazine described her as "the perfect wife and mother–pressing [her husband's] pants, making dresses for daughters Tricia and Julie, doing her own housework even as the Vice President's wife". In the early years of her tenure as First Lady she was tagged "Plastic Pat", a derogatory nickname applied because, according to critics, she was always smiling while her face rarely expressed emotion and her body language made her seem reserved, and at times, artificial. Some observers described Pat Nixon as "a paper doll, a Barbie doll–plastic, antiseptic, unalive" and that she "put every bit of the energy and drive of her youth into playing a role, and she may no longer recognize it as such".
As for the criticisms, she said, "I am who I am and I will continue to be." She unguardedly revealed some of her opinions of her own life in a 1968 interview aboard a campaign plane with Gloria Steinem: "Now, I have friends in all the countries of the world. I haven't just sat back and thought of myself or my ideas or what I wanted to do. Oh no, I've stayed interested in people. I've kept working. Right here in the plane I keep this case with me, and the minute I sit down, I write my thank you notes. Nobody gets by without a personal note. I don't have time to worry about who I admire or who I identify with. I've never had it easy. I'm not like all you ... all those people who had it easy."
Despite her largely demure public persona as a traditional wife and homemaker, she was not as self-effacing and timid as her critics often claimed. When a news photographer wanted her to strike yet another pose while wearing an apron, she firmly responded, "I think we've had enough of this kitchen thing, don't you?" Some journalists, such as columnist and White House Correspondent Robert E. Thompson, felt that Pat was an ideal balance for the 1970s; Thompson wrote that she proved that "women can play a vital role in world affairs" while still retaining a "feminine manner". Other journalists felt that Pat represented the failings of the feminine mystique, and portrayed her as being out of step with her times. Those who opposed the Vietnam War identified her with the Nixon administration's policies, and, as a result, occasionally picketed her speaking events. After she had spoken to some of them in one instance in 1970, however, one of the students told the press that "she wanted to listen. I felt like this is a woman who really cares about what we are doing. I was surprised." Veteran CBS correspondent Mike Wallace expressed regret that the one major interview he was never able to conduct was that of Pat Nixon.
Later life
After returning to San Clemente, California, in 1974 and settling into the Nixons' home, La Casa Pacifica, Pat Nixon rarely appeared in public and only granted occasional interviews to the press. In late May 1975, Pat went to her girlhood hometown of Artesia to dedicate the Patricia Nixon Elementary School. In her remarks, she said, "I'm proud to have the school carry my name. I always thought that only those who have gone had schools named after them. I am happy to tell you that I'm not gone—I mean, not really gone." It was Pat's only solo public appearance in five and a half years in California.
On July 7, 1976, at La Casa Pacifica, Nixon suffered a stroke, which resulted in the paralysis of her entire left side. Physical therapy enabled her to eventually regain all movement. She said that her recovery was "the hardest thing I have ever done physically". In 1979, she and her husband moved to a townhouse on East 65th Street in Manhattan, New York. They lived there only briefly and in 1981 moved to a house in Saddle River, New Jersey. This gave the couple additional space, and enabled them to be near their children and grandchildren. Pat, however, sustained another stroke in 1983 and two lung infections the following year.
Appearing "frail and slightly bent", she appeared in public for the opening of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace (now Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum) in Yorba Linda, California, on July 19, 1990. The dedication ceremony included 50,000 friends and well-wishers, as well as former Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Bush and their wives. The library includes a Pat Nixon room, a Pat Nixon amphitheater, and rose gardens planted with the red-black Pat Nixon Rose developed by a French company in 1972, when she was first lady. Pat also attended the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, in November 1991. Former First Lady Barbara Bush reflected, "I loved Pat Nixon, who was a sensational, gracious, and thoughtful First Lady", and at the dedication of the Reagan Library, Bush remembered, "There was one sad thing. Pat Nixon did not look well at all. Through her smile you could see that she was in great pain and having a terrible time getting air into her lungs."
The Nixons moved to a gated complex in Park Ridge, New Jersey, in 1991. Pat's health was failing, and the house was smaller and contained an elevator. A heavy smoker most of her adult life who nevertheless never allowed herself to be seen with a cigarette in public, she eventually endured bouts of oral cancer, emphysema, and ultimately lung cancer, with which she was diagnosed in December 1992 while hospitalized with respiratory problems.
Death and funeral
Pat Nixon died at her Park Ridge, New Jersey, home at 5:45 a.m. on June 22, 1993, the day after her fifty-third wedding anniversary. She was 81 years old. Her daughters and husband were by her side.
The funeral service for Pat Nixon took place on the grounds of the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda on June 26, 1993. Speakers at the ceremony, including California Governor Pete Wilson, Kansas senator Bob Dole, and the Reverend Dr. Billy Graham, eulogized the former First Lady. In addition to her husband and immediate family, former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and their wives, Nancy and Betty, were also in attendance. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton did not attend the funeral and former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush and their wives Rosalynn and Barbara also did not attend. Lady Bird Johnson was unable to attend because she was in the hospital recovering from a stroke, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did not attend either. President Nixon sobbed openly, profusely, and at times uncontrollably during the ceremony. It was a rare display of emotion from the former president, and Helen McCain Smith said that she had never seen him more distraught.
Nixon's tombstone gives her name as "Patricia Ryan Nixon", the name by which she was popularly known. Her husband survived her by ten months, dying on April 22, 1994. He was also 81. Her epitaph reads:
Popular culture impact
In 1994, the Pat Nixon Park was established in Cerritos, California. The site where her girlhood home stood is on the property. The Cerritos City Council voted in April 1996 to erect a statue of the former first lady, one of the few statues created in the image of a first lady.
Pat has been portrayed by Joan Allen in the 1995 film Nixon (for which Allen earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), Patty McCormack in the 2008 film Frost/Nixon and Nicole Sullivan in the 2009 film Black Dynamite. She was sung by soprano Carolann Page in John Adams' opera Nixon in China 1987 world premiere in Houston, Texas; a New York Times critic noted that the performance captured "the First Lady's shy mannerisms" while one from the Los Angeles Times described the subject as the "chronically demure First Lady". The part was later sung by Scottish soprano Janis Kelly in the 2011 Metropolitan Opera premiere in New York. This New York Times critic wrote that Kelly "was wonderful as Pat Nixon. During the affecting Act II scene in which she is guided by Chinese escorts and journalists to a glass factory, a people's commune and a health clinic, she is finally taken to a school. She speaks of coming from a poor family and tells the obliging children that for a while she was a schoolteacher. In Mr. Adams's tender music, as sung by Ms. Kelly, you sense Mrs. Nixon wistfully pondering the much different life she might have had."
Historical assessments
Since 1982 Siena College Research Institute has periodically conducted surveys asking historians to assess American first ladies according to a cumulative score on the independent criteria of their background, value to the country, intelligence, courage, accomplishments, integrity, leadership, being their own women, public image, and value to the president. In terms of cumulative assessment, Nixon has been ranked:
37nd-best of 42 in 1982
18th-best of 37 in 1993
33rd-best of 38 in 2003
35th-best of 38 in 2008
33rd-best of 39 in 2014
In the 2014 survey, Nixon and her husband were ranked the 29th-highest out of 39 first couples in terms of being a "power couple".
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
Richard Nixon Foundation biography of Pat Nixon
White House biography on Pat Nixon
Video of funeral services for Pat Nixon, 1993
Pat Nixon at C-SPAN's First Ladies: Influence & Image''
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400719
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil%20Earp
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Virgil Earp
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Virgil Walter Earp (July 18, 1843 – October 19, 1905) was both deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone, Arizona, City Marshal when he led his younger brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday, in a confrontation with outlaw Cowboys at the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881. They killed brothers Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton. All three Earp brothers had been the target of repeated death threats made by the Cowboys who were upset by the Earps' interference in their illegal activities. All four lawmen were charged with murder by Ike Clanton, who had run from the gunfight. During a month-long preliminary hearing, Judge Wells Spicer exonerated the men, concluding they had been performing their duty.
But two months later on December 28, friends of the slain outlaws retaliated, ambushing Virgil. They shot him in the back, hitting him with three shotgun rounds, shattering his left arm and leaving him permanently maimed. The Cowboys suspected were let off for lack of evidence. His brother Morgan Earp was assassinated in March 1882. Charges against those suspected were dismissed on a technicality. Wyatt Earp, appointed as deputy U.S. Marshal to replace Virgil, concluded he could not rely on civil justice and decided to take matters into his own hands. Wyatt assembled a federal posse that included their brother Warren Earp and set out on a vendetta to kill those they felt were responsible. Virgil left Tombstone to recuperate from his wounds in Colton, California, where his parents lived.
Virgil married before he left to serve in the Union Army during the American Civil War. When he returned, his wife and child had left. He held a variety of other jobs throughout his life, though he primarily worked in law enforcement. His younger brother, Wyatt, who spent most of his life as a gambler, became better known as a lawman because of writer Stuart N. Lake's fictionalized 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal and later portrayals of him in movies and fiction as Old West's "toughest and deadliest gunmen of his day." In 1898, Virgil learned that his first wife Ellen Rysdam and their daughter were living in Oregon and reestablished contact with them. After suffering from pneumonia for six months, Virgil died on October 19, 1905.
Early life
Virgil Earp was born in Hartford, Kentucky, the second son of Nicholas Earp and Virginia Ann Cooksey.
Marriage to Ellen Rysdam
In February 1860, while living in Pella, Iowa, 16-year-old Virgil eloped with 17-year-old Dutch immigrant Magdalena C. "Ellen" Rysdam (October 25, 1842 in Utrecht, Netherlands – May 3, 1910 in Cornelius, Oregon). One report states that they saw each other only occasionally and kept their marriage secret until Ellen was about to deliver their first child. When her parents Gerrit Rysdam and Magdalena Catrina Van Velzen learned of the marriage, they were furious, as they preferred that she marry a man who was also Dutch. Virgil's father thought he was too young to marry. Both parents wanted to get the marriage annulled. One source reports that Rysdam was successful, but another says her father failed because Virgil and Ellen refused to reveal where they had been married. They also claimed they had used false names, which would have made the marriage invalid in any case.
Virgil and Ellen remained together for a year in spite of his and her parents' disapproval. On July 26, 1861, Virgil enlisted at age 18 in the Union Army. Ellen had a daughter named Nellie Jane, born January 7, 1862 or in July 1862. Virgil was mustered in to the Illinois Volunteer Infantry for three years on September 21, 1862.
Civil War Service
Virgil enlisted as a Private in Company C of the 83rd Illinois Infantry on July 26, 1862, and mustered into service on August 21. The 83rd fought at the Battle of Dover and then was primarily on garrison duty in Tennessee. Virgil was court-martialed for a minor offense and docked two weeks pay as punishment.
In the summer of 1863 while Virgil was on active duty, Ellen's father told her that Virgil had been killed in Tennessee. In early 1864, Ellen married a Dutch man named John Van Rossum, and in May of that year they joined a large group who relocated from Pella, Iowa, to the Oregon Territory.
When Virgil was discharged from the military on June 26, 1865, he returned to Iowa but could not find his wife and daughter. He hired on at a local farm and helped operate a grocery store, before leaving for California to join the rest of the Earp family. In 1868, Nicholas Earp took the family east again, eventually settling in Lamar, Missouri. On August 28, 1870, Virgil married Rosella Dragoo (born in France in 1853) in Lamar. His father as justice of the peace married them, but there are no further records of Rosella.
Allie Sullivan
Virgil later met Alvira "Allie" Sullivan from Florence, Nebraska in 1874. She was a waitress at the Planter's House Hotel in Council Bluffs, Iowa. They never married but remained together the rest of his life. During the remainder of his life, Virgil worked at a variety of jobs, including peace officer, farmer, rail construction in Wyoming, stagecoach driver, sawmill sawyer in Prescott, Arizona Territory, mailman, and later in life, prospector. The Earp brothers were close and often moved together, seeking a better life. Virgil spent time in Dodge City, Kansas in 1877 with his younger brother Wyatt. Although there is no record of Virgil ever holding any law enforcement position there, Allie claimed he briefly worked as a deputy town marshal with Wyatt.
Arrival in Arizona
From Dodge City, Virgil and Allie moved to Prescott on the 4th of July 1877, the capital of the Arizona Territory. Virgil first delivered mail between Camp Verde and Prescott, then later owned a saw mill at the base of Thumb Butte, just west of Prescott.
On October 16, 1877, U.S. Marshal Wiley Standifer, Yavapai County Sheriff Edward Franklin Bowers, Prescott Constable Frank Murray, Virgil Earp, and Colonel William Henry McCall attempted to arrest John Tallos and accused murderer George Wilson. While the others rode on horseback or carriages, Virgil ran on foot after the posse that pursued the two men to the edge of town, where a gun fight broke out. Virgil spotted one of the two men under a tree, reloading his pistol. Using a Winchester rifle from a distance, Virgil shot him through the head, killing him.
Virgil was shortly afterwards offered a job as a driver for Patterson, Caldwell & Levally, a local freight company, during which he met John J. Gosper, Secretary of the Arizona Territory. Gosper was acting Governor in the place of Governor John C. Frémont, who was frequently absent. When Crawley Dake was appointed U.S. Marshal, he and Virgil became friends. In 1878, Virgil was appointed as Prescott's night watchman, which paid $75 a month.
In November 1878, he was elected as constable for Prescott, for which he received fees for serving summonses, subpoenas, writs and warrants. While constable, Virgil wrote his brother Wyatt about the opportunities in the silver-mining boomtown of Tombstone. In September 1879, Wyatt resigned as assistant marshal in Dodge City. Accompanied by his common-law wife Mattie Blaylock, his brother Jim and his wife Bessie, they left for Las Vegas in the New Mexico Territory. There they were reconnected with Doc Holliday and his common-law wife Kate Horony, who had been running a gambling business until the territorial legislature banned gambling. Virgil and his wife met the others in Prescott.
Appointed deputy U.S. marshal
Knowing Virgil was moving to Tombstone, and knowing of his peace officer background, U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake appointed Virgil as deputy U.S. marshal for the Tombstone District of Pima County, on November 27, 1879. He was instructed by Dake to help resolve ongoing problems with outlaw Cowboys. But the job didn't pay much. He was mostly on call helping county and city officials.
In an interview after he left Tombstone, Virgil said that "The first stage that went out of Prescott toward Tombstone was robbed. Robberies were frequent and became expensive." Virgil and his brothers Wyatt and Jim and their wives arrived together in Tombstone on December 1, 1879.
Tombstone City Marshal
On October 30, 1880, after town marshal Fred White was accidentally shot and killed by outlaw and gunman "Curly Bill" Brocius, Virgil was appointed acting town marshal of Tombstone. Virgil now held both the more powerful local town marshal position and the prestigious federal law enforcement appointment. As town marshal, Virgil earned a regular salary of $100 a month plus a percentage of city taxes he collected.
But Virgil did not hold the job for long. The city held a special election on November 13, and Tombstone city policemen James Flynn and Ben Sippy competed for the job. But then Flynn dropped out of the race and Sippy beat Virgil for the office, 311 votes to Earp's 259. On January 4, 1881, the city held its first regular election, and Virgil lost to Sippy once again.
However, Sippy was known to be in financial trouble. He requested a two-week leave of absence on June 6, 1881, and never returned. The city council once again appointed Virgil as temporary city marshal. On June 22, the center section of Tombstone was devastated by a fire. Virgil kept looting under control and chased off lot jumpers who tried to take over property. On June 28, it was learned that Sippy had left about $3,000 in bad debt and financial improprieties in his office. Virgil was appointed by Tombstone Mayor John Clum as the permanent city marshal and paid $150.00 per month.
Conflict with Cowboys
To reduce crime in Tombstone, the City Council enacted an ordinance in April 1881 that prohibited anyone from carrying a deadly weapon in town. Everyone was required to deposit their weapons at a livery or saloon soon after entering town. A long-simmering feud between the Earps and some of the Cowboys played a big role in a gunfight that broke out when Virgil decided to enforce the ordinance on Wednesday, October 26, 1881.
Virgil was told by several concerned citizens that several Cowboys, who had been threatening the Earps for several months, were in town and armed in violation of the ordinance. Assisted by his deputy Morgan Earp and temporary deputies Wyatt Earp and John "Doc" Holliday, Virgil went to disarm Frank and Tom McLaury, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Billy Claiborne. That confrontation turned into a shootout now known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Modern media depictions of Wyatt Earp made him into a legend. He is often depicted as the central lawman in the shootout, but Virgil was Tombstone City Marshal and a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Although Wyatt had previously served in Wichita, Kansas, and Dodge City as a lawman, Virgil had three years of Civil War service, and had previously worked in law enforcement as a sheriff, constable, and marshal. Virgil made the decision to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting carrying weapons in town and to disarm the Cowboys. While Wyatt had acted as city marshal the week prior when Virgil was out of town, Wyatt was on that day only a temporary assistant marshal to his brother.
Before the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Virgil and Wyatt had been in only one shootout each, and Morgan had never been in any gun battles. Billy Claiborne had been in one gunfight prior to the shootout and was the only member of the Cowboy faction that had prior gunfighting experience (not counting the Skeleton Canyon massacre, in which the McLaurys and Clantons took part). Doc Holliday, despite his reputation, had not taken part in any gunfights, although he was involved in several drunken brawls involving both guns and knives. Both Tom and Ike had spent the night to the gunfight gambling, drinking heavily, and without sleep. Now they were both outdoors, wounded from having been pistol-whipped by the Earps earlier that morning, and at least Ike was still drunk.
Virgil initially avoided a confrontation with Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton, who had arrived in town early that afternoon and had not yet deposited their weapons at a hotel or stable after their arrival, as required by ordinance#9. Virgil had been offered armed assistance from the town Vigilance committee and the town militia, but he declined the help. Around 1:00 p.m., a miner named Ruben F. Coleman told Virgil that the Cowboys had left the Dunbar and Dexter Stable for the O.K. Corral and were still armed, and Virgil decided he had to disarm them.
Virgil testified after the shootout that he thought he saw Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury buying cartridges at Spangenberg's gun shop beforehand. He went by the Wells Fargo office around the corner on Allen Street and picked up a 10- or 12-gauge short, double-barreled shotgun. It was an unusually cold and windy day in Tombstone, and Virgil was wearing a long overcoat. To avoid alarming Tombstone's public, Virgil hid the shotgun under his overcoat when he returned to Hafford's Saloon.
Virgil, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday confronted the Cowboys in a narrow lot on Fremont Street. Virgil was not expecting a fight. He later testified that when he saw the Cowboys, he immediately commanded them to "Throw up your hands, I want your guns!" But shooting broke out almost immediately. Witnesses were conflicted about who fired first. During the gunfight, Billy Clanton and both McLaury brothers were killed. Virgil was shot through the calf (he thought by Billy Clanton). Three days after the O.K. Corral gunfight, the city council suspended Virgil as city marshal pending outcome of the preliminary hearing. Virgil was eventually exonerated of wrongdoing, but his reputation suffered thereafter.
Assassination attempt
After the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral the Earps relocated their families to the Cosmopolitan Hotel for mutual support and protection. At about 11:30 pm on December 28, 1881, Virgil was ambushed as he walked from the Oriental Saloon to his room. The Sacramento Daily Record-Union reported that "he was fired upon with double-barreled shotguns, loaded with buckshot, by three men concealed in an unfinished building diagonally across on Allen street."
Virgil was hit in the back and left arm by three loads of buckshot from about . The Crystal Palace Saloon and the Eagle Brewery beyond Virgil were struck by nineteen buckshot; three passed through the window and one about a foot over the heads of some men standing by a faro-table. George Parsons wrote that he heard "four shots in quick succession." Critically wounded, Virgil staggered into the hotel.
Earp's upper arm was longitudinally fractured, and Dr. George E. Goodfellow removed of shattered humerus bone and his elbow, leaving his arm permanently crippled. Virgil told his wife Allie, "Never mind, I've got one arm left to hug you with." Virgil was also shot through the back above the hip, and Goodfellow removed twenty buckshot that penetrated his body and lodged near the hip bone above the groin. The Los Angeles Daily Herald reported that the "cow-boys are bent on vengeance for the slaughter of their companeros a few weeks ago." "The doctor says there are four chances in five that he will die."
George W. Parsons, who had been treated by Goodfellow for an injury he received, was staying in Goodfellow's office while he recuperated. He kept a journal, in which he recorded:
Others threatened
Wyatt, assuming that Virgil was dying, telegraphed U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake asking him to name him as Virgil's replacement as deputy U.S. marshal:
Commenting on the telegram received by Dake, the Weekly Arizona Miner wrote about the repeated threats received by the Earps and others.
For some time, the Earps, Doc Holliday, Tom Fitch and others who upheld and defended the Earps in their late trial have received, almost daily, anonymous letters, warning them to leave town or suffer death, supposed to have been written by friends of the Clanton and McLowry boys, three of whom the Earps and Holliday killed and little attention was paid to them as they were believed to be idle boasts but the shooting of Virgil Earp last night shows that the men were in earnest. The Los Angeles Herald reported on December 30 that "the "local authorities are doing nothing to capture the assassins so far as is known ... Judge Spicer, Marshal Williams, Wyatt Earp, Rickabaugh and other are in momentary danger of assassination."
Suspects
The suspected shooters were later identified as Phin Clanton, Ike Clanton, Johnny Barnes, Johnny Ringo, Hank Swilling and Pete Spence. On Tuesday, January 31, 1882, Ike and Phin were brought before Judge William H. Stilwell on suspicion of shooting Virgil. The district attorney asked that bail be set at $5,000, but the judge released both men on $1,500 bond, indicating he thought the prosecution's case was weak.
Although a hat that Wyatt later claimed belonged to Ike Clanton was found near the shooting, the evidence was circumstantial. Sherman McMaster provided the most convincing evidence. He testified that he saw Ike later that night in nearby Charleston. He said he asked Clanton "about the shooting, at which Clanton replied that he 'would have to go back and do the job over.'" On February 2, Clanton's attorney brought in seven witnesses who provided an alibi for Clanton. They all testified that Clanton had been in Charleston at the time of Virgil's shooting. Spicer was compelled to release Clanton.
Morgan Earp murdered
After his shooting, Virgil spent the next three months recuperating. He was just starting to get back on his feet when on Saturday, March 18, 1882, Virgil's younger brother Morgan Earp was killed in another ambush.
On Monday, March 20, Virgil and Allie were escorted by Wyatt and deputies Warren Earp, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster, and "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson to Contention, where they drove two wagons to the Arizona and New Mexico Railroad terminal away in Benson. Wyatt and his deputies had initially planned to travel only as far as Benson. Wyatt reported later that he received word in Contention that Ike Clanton, Frank Stilwell, Hank Swilling, and another cowboy were watching the passenger trains in Tucson with the aim to kill Virgil. Wyatt and the rest of the posse remained with Virgil and Allie through to Tucson.
The men were well armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns. McMaster wore two cartridge belts. Allie wore Virgil's pistol belt during the journey so it would be handy. Virgil told the San Francisco Examiner two months later that upon getting off the train in Tucson, "Almost the first men we met on the platform there were Stilwell and his friends, armed to the teeth." "They fell back into the crowd as soon as they saw I had an escort, and the boys took me to the hotel to supper." Guarded by his brothers and the deputies, Virgil and Allie had dinner at Porter's Hotel in Tucson. Virgil was so weak he had to be carried up the steps of the train. Once they were safely seated, the rest of the guards kept watch for the Cowboys. Virgil and Allie along with James accompanied Morgan's body to the Earp family home in Colton, California.
As Virgil's train was pulling out of Tucson on its way to California, gunfire was heard. Witnesses gave contradictory accounts about the number of men seen near the tracks and numbers of shots fired. Some said the Earps were armed after leaving Porter's Hotel and others said they were not. Witnesses saw men running with weapons but could not identify anyone in the dark. Wyatt said later that he and his deputies spotted Frank Stilwell and another man he believed to be Ike Clanton armed with shotguns lying on a flatcar.
When Wyatt and his men approached, the two men ran. Stilwell may have stumbled or been wounded, allowing Wyatt to reach him. Wyatt later said he shot Stilwell as Stilwell attempted to push the barrel of Earp's shotgun away. Wyatt, quoted in the Denver Republican, said "I ran straight for Stilwell. It was he who killed my brother. What a coward he was! He couldn't shoot when I came near him. He stood there helpless and trembling for his life. As I rushed upon him he put out his hands and clutched at my shotgun. I let go both barrels, and he tumbled down dead and mangled at my feet."
He said Stilwell cried "Morg!" before he was killed. Stilwell's body, riddled with buckshot from two shotgun rounds, one in his leg and the second in his chest with powder burns, and four other bullet wounds, was found the next morning near the tracks. Ike Clanton got away. When the Tucson sheriff learned who was responsible for Stilwell's death, he issued warrants for the lawmen's arrest.
Clanton gave an interview afterward to the newspapers in which he claimed that he and Stilwell had been in Tucson to respond to federal charges about interfering with a U.S. mail carrier, stemming from his alleged involvement in robbing the Sandy Bob line of the Bisbee stage on September 8, 1881. Clanton said that they had heard that the Earps were coming via the train and they had plans to kill Stilwell. According to Clanton, Stilwell disappeared from the hotel before he was found several blocks away, shot dead by the tracks.
Later life and death
After Virgil was ambushed and maimed in Tombstone, he and Allie moved to his parents' home in Colton, California, to recover from his wounds, which took almost two years. He sought treatment for his wounds in San Francisco and was interviewed on the Southern Pacific train by a reporter whose story was printed in the San Francisco Examiner on May 27, 1882. The reporter described Virgil's appearance:
Despite the use of only one arm, Virgil was hired by the Southern Pacific Railroad to guard its tracks in Colton's famous "battle of the crossing". Virgil carried a top break revolver that could be reloaded with one hand. Southern Pacific was attempting to stop the California Southern Railroad, a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, from installing a crossing over the Southern Pacific tracks in Colton to gain access to California, which resulted in the frog war. Governor Waterman deputized a posse from San Bernardino, California and came down in person to enforce construction of the crossing, ending the Southern Pacific's railroad monopoly in Southern California.
In 1884 Earp's father, Nicholas Porter Earp was elected justice of the peace in Colton. Two years later, Virgil Earp opened a private detective agency, which by all accounts he had quit by 1886, when he was elected village constable in July.
When Colton was incorporated as a city, Earp was elected as Colton's first City Marshal on July 11, 1887. He was paid $75 a month and was re-elected to another term in 1888. Among other duties, he was reported to have cleared blocked sewers and kept track of the electric light bulbs. Virgil and Allie Earp's Colton home still stands at 528 West "H" Street.
In 1888 Earp resigned as city marshal and he and Allie left Colton for San Bernardino. Five years later, in 1893, he and his wife moved to the short-lived mining town Vanderbilt, California. He owned and operated the only two-story building in town, Earp's Hall, a saloon and meeting hall used for public gatherings and even the town's church services. His business success in Vanderbilt did not match his success in politics, and he lost the election for town constable in 1894.
In 1895, Virgil and Allie traveled to Cripple Creek, Colorado, where they met Virgil's brother Wyatt. They stayed briefly and soon moved back to Prescott in Yavapai County, Arizona, where Virgil became involved in mining. Virgil started mining in the Hassayampa district in partnership with W.H. Harlon. They leased the Grizzly mine owned by W.C. Hanson. The Prescott Weekly Journal-Miner reported on November 8, 1896, that the day before "a serious accident had occurred at this mine. Virgil Earp and W. H. Harlon were working in a tunnel. The ground caved catching Mr. Earp and pinning him to the ground. He was unconscious for several hours and Dr. Abbott, was called to dress his wounds." The doctor told Earp he had dislocated his right hip. Both his feet and ankles were badly crushed, he had a serious cut on his head and bruises all over his body. The doctor said it would be several weeks before Virgil would be able to move around again, but it took him much longer to recover.
They moved south after that and began ranching in the Kirkland Valley. Virgil was nominated as a candidate for Yavapai County, Arizona sheriff in 1900, but pulled out of the election for health reasons.
Reunites with first wife
In 1898 Earp received a startling letter from a Mrs. Levi Law. At the end of the Civil War, his wife Ellen was told by her family that Virgil had been killed. Her family had been against their marriage. They took her and the baby daughter Nellie to Walla Walla, Washington, where she later married Thomas Eaton. She had four more children. Mrs. Levi Law was Virgil's daughter, Nellie. The next year, encouraged by his wife, Virgil traveled to Portland, Oregon, where he was reunited with Ellen and Nellie Jane Law. On April 22, 1898, The Oregonian reported that Earp "... is now enjoying a very pleasant visit with her and his two grandchildren at her home, which is near that of Mrs. Eaton, in North Portland." He also met three grandchildren he never knew existed. Later that year, according to her letter to The Oregonian, Nellie Jane visited Virgil and Allie Earp at their home in Arizona.
Death in Nevada
Before 1904, Virgil and Allie returned to Colton, where city records show that he along with three others unsuccessfully petitioned the city leaders to repeal a temperance law that allowed only one saloon in town. In 1904, they left California for the last time and moved to the boom town of Goldfield in Esmeralda County, Nevada, where Virgil planned to open a saloon. He quickly discovered there was plenty of competition and realized he didn't have the capital required. Virgil and Allie were down to their last dollar so he took up gambling, at which he had been good. In November 1904 Virgil took a job as a special officer at the National Club. He was responsible for watching over the high stakes gambling tables.
In January 1905 he was hired as a deputy sheriff for Esmeralda County, and he continued his duties at the National Club. Virgil caught pneumonia in February 1905. His brother Wyatt was also living in Goldfield and visited with him. Earp slowly got better and attended an Order of Eagles meeting in May.
The serious injuries he had sustained during the mine cave-in several years earlier had left him debilitated and he never recovered his full health. Earp's recovery from pneumonia did not last and in early October he had a relapse. On October 19, 1905, Earp died at St. Mary's hospital in Goldfield.
In her memoirs, Allie wrote that Virgil's last words were, "Light my cigar, and stay here and hold my hand." His brother Wyatt was the last surviving participant of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Virgil was also survived by his father Nicholas, brothers James and Newton, wife Allie, and daughter Nellie.
At the request of his daughter, Nellie Jane Bohn, Allie sent his body to Portland, Oregon, and he was buried in the River View Cemetery there.
In popular culture
Virgil Earp has been portrayed by several actors.
Rex Bell in the 1942 film Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die.
Tim Holt in the 1946 film My Darling Clementine.
John Hudson in the 1957 film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
John Anderson in five episodes (1960–1961) of the ABC western television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
Ross Elliott in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp during 1958 and 1959.
Victor Carin in the 1966 Doctor Who serial "The Gunfighters".
Frank Converse in the 1967 film Hour of the Gun
Charles Maxwell in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun".
Sam Elliott in the 1993 film Tombstone.
Michael Madsen in the 1994 film Wyatt Earp.
References
External links
Frontier Lawman Virgil Earp
Civil War Pension Index Card for Virgil Earp
1843 births
1905 deaths
Union Army soldiers
American town marshals
Lawmen of the American Old West
United States Marshals
American deputy sheriffs
Burials at River View Cemetery (Portland, Oregon)
People from Hartford, Kentucky
American people of Scotch-Irish descent
American people of English descent
Arizona folklore
Cochise County conflict
Virgil
Gunslingers of the American Old West
Arizona pioneers
People from Tombstone, Arizona
People from Colton, California
People from Lamar, Missouri
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400734
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Ross%20%28Cherokee%20chief%29
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John Ross (Cherokee chief)
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John Ross (; October 3, 1790 – August 1, 1866) was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866; he served longer in that position than any other person. Described as the Moses of his people, Ross influenced the nation through such tumultuous events as the relocation to Indian Territory and the American Civil War.
Ross was the son of a Cherokee mother and a Scottish father. His mother and maternal grandmother were each of mixed Scots-Cherokee ancestry but brought up in Cherokee culture, and his maternal grandfather was a Scottish immigrant. The Cherokee culture was and still is matrilineal, meaning that children born to a Cherokee mother were considered part of her family and clan; they gained their social status from their mother. The Cherokee absorbed mixed-race descendants born to its women. As a result, young John was raised to identify as Cherokee, while also learning about colonial British society; he was bilingual and bicultural. His parents sent him for formal schooling to institutions that served other mixed-race Cherokee. (According to blood quantum policy of modern times, he would be counted as one-eighth Cherokee, but this misses how he identified and was acculturated.)
At the age of twenty, Ross was appointed as a US Indian agent in 1811. During the War of 1812, he served as adjutant of a Cherokee regiment under the command of Andrew Jackson. After the Red Stick War ended, what was effectively a civil war among the Creek, Ross started a tobacco plantation in Tennessee. In 1816, he built a warehouse and trading post on the Tennessee River north of the mouth of Chattanooga Creek, and started a ferry service that carried passengers from the south side of the river (Cherokee Nation) to the north side (USA). His businesses served as the start of a community known as Ross's Landing on the Tennessee River (now Chattanooga, Tennessee). Concurrently, Ross developed a keen interest in Cherokee politics and attracted the attention of the Cherokee elders, especially Principal Chiefs Pathkiller and Charles R. Hicks. Together with Major Ridge, they became his political mentors.
Ross first went to Washington, DC, in 1816 as part of a Cherokee delegation to negotiate issues of national boundaries, land ownership, and white encroachment. As the only delegate fluent in English, Ross became the principal negotiator despite his relative youth. When he returned to the Cherokee Nation in 1817, he was elected to the National Council. He became council president in the following year. The majority of the council were men like Ross: wealthy, educated, English-speaking, and of mixed blood. Even the traditionalist full-blood Cherokee perceived that he had the skills necessary to contest the whites' demands that the Cherokee cede their land and move beyond the Mississippi River. In that position, Ross's first action was to reject an offer of $200,000 from the US Indian agent made for the Cherokee to relocate voluntarily. Thereafter Ross made more trips to Washington, even as white demands intensified. In 1824, Ross boldly petitioned Congress for redress of Cherokee grievances, which made the Cherokee the first tribe ever to do so. Along the way, Ross built political support in the US capital for the Cherokee cause.
Both Pathkiller and Charles R. Hicks died in January 1827. Hicks's brother, William, was appointed interim chief. Ross and Major Ridge shared responsibilities for the affairs of the tribe. Because William did not impress the Cherokee as a leader, they elected Ross as permanent principal chief in October 1828, a position that he held until his death.
The problem of removal split the Cherokee Nation politically. Ross, backed by the vast majority, tried repeatedly to stop white political powers from forcing the nation to move. He led a faction that became known as the National Party. Twenty others, who came to believe that further resistance would be futile, wanted to seek the best settlement they could get and formed the "Treaty Party," or "Ridge Party," led by Major Ridge. Treaty Party negotiated with the United States and signed the Treaty of New Echota on December 29, 1835, which required the Cherokee to leave by 1838. Neither Chief Ross nor the national council ever approved this treaty, but the US government regarded it as valid. Ross and tens of thousands of traditional Cherokee people objected and voted against complying with an invalid treaty, which had been supported by a few hundred mostly assimilated Cherokee.
To enforce the treaty, the US government ordered the US Army to move those who did not depart by 1838; they rounded up all the people from numerous villages and towns and accompanied them to the west. This action has since been known as the "Trail of Tears," both for the loss of their homeland and thousands of lives. Some Cherokee remained in the wilderness to evade the army, and that remnant became the ancestors of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. About one fourth of the Cherokee who were forced to move died along the trail, including Ross's wife, Quatie.
Ross attempted to restore political unity after his people reached Indian Territory. Opponents of removal assassinated the leaders of the Treaty Party; Stand Watie escaped and became Ross's most implacable foe. The issue of slavery soon refueled the old divisions. The Treaty Party became known as the "Southern Party," but the National Party largely became the "Union Party." Ross initially counseled neutrality, since he believed that joining in the "white man's war" would be disastrous for the future unity of their tribe.
After the Union forces abandoned their forts in Indian Territory, Ross reversed himself and signed a treaty with the Confederacy. He later fled to Union-held Kansas, and Stand Watie became the de facto chief. The Confederates lost the war, Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender, and Ross returned to his post as principal chief.
The US required the Five Civilized Tribes to negotiate new peace treaties after the war. Ross made another trip to Washington, DC, for this purpose, and died there on August 1, 1866.
Early life and education
Ross (also known by his Cherokee name, Guwisguwi) was born in Turkeytown (in modern day Alabama), on the Coosa River, to Mollie (née McDonald) and her husband Daniel Ross, an immigrant Scots trader. His siblings who survived to adulthood included Jane Ross Coodey (1787–1844), Elizabeth Grace Ross Ross (1789–1876), Lewis Ross (1796–1870), Andrew 'Tlo-s-ta-ma' Ross (1798–1840), Margaret Ross Hicks (1803–1862), and Maria Ross Mulkey (1806–1838).
Genealogy
Under the matrilineal kinship system of the Cherokee, Ross and his siblings were considered born to his mother's family and Bird Clan. They gained their social status from her people. In such a system, typically the mother's eldest brother had a major role in the children's lives, especially for boys. His mother and grandmother were of mixed race, but also considered part of their mother's Cherokee family and clan, and were brought up primarily in Cherokee culture.
Ross's great-grandmother Ghigooie, a full-blood Cherokee, had married William Shorey, a Scottish interpreter. Their daughter, Anna, married John McDonald, a Scots trader.
Childhood and education
Ross spent his childhood with his parents near Lookout Mountain. Educated in English by white men in a frontier American environment, Ross spoke the Cherokee language poorly. His bi-cultural background and fluency in English enabled him to represent the Cherokee to the United States government. Many full-blood Cherokee frequented his father's trading company, so he encountered tribal members on many levels. As a child, Ross participated in tribal events, such as the Green Corn Festival.
The elder Ross insisted that John also receive a rigorous classical education. After being educated at home, Ross pursued higher studies with the Reverend Gideon Blackburn, who established two schools in southeast Tennessee for Cherokee children. Classes were in English and students were mostly of mixed race, like Ross. The young Ross finished his education at an academy in South West Point, near Kingston, Tennessee.
Anglo Mixed blood background of the Cherokee Moses
Ross's life resembled prominent Anglo-Halfbreeds in the northern United States and Canada. Scots and English fur traders in North America were typically men of social status and financial standing who married high-ranking Native American women. Both sides believed these were strategic alliances, helping both the Native Americans and the traders. They educated their children in bi-cultural and multilingual environments. The mixed-race children often married and rose to positions of stature in society, both in political and economic terms.
Family life
John Ross survived two wives and had several children. He married the widow Elizabeth "Quatie" (Brown) Henley (1791–1839) in 1812 or 1813. She was a Cherokee, born in 1791 and had one child from her marriage. Her late husband, Robert Henley, may have died during the War of 1812. Quatie Ross died in 1839 in Arkansas on the Trail of Tears as discussed below. She was survived by their children James McDonald Ross (1814–1864), William Allen Ross (1817–1891), Jane Ross Meigs-Nave (1821–1894), Silas Dean Ross (1829–1872) and George Washington Ross (1830–1870).
John Ross remarried in 1844, to Mary Stapler (1826–1865), whom he survived by less than a year. Their surviving children were Annie Brian Ross Dobson (1845–1876) and John Ross Jr. (1847–1905).
Careers
Indian agent
At the age of twenty, having completed his education and with bilingual skills, Ross received an appointment as US Indian agent to the western Cherokee and was sent to their territory (in present-day Arkansas). During the War of 1812, he served as an adjutant in a Cherokee regiment. He fought under General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend against the British-allied Upper Creek warriors, known as the Red Sticks. They were traditionalists, who resisted the assimilationist tendencies of the Lower Creek. The latter had lived more closely with European Americans and adopted some of their practices.
Businessman and founder of Chattanooga
Ross began a series of business ventures which made him among the wealthiest of all Cherokee. He derived the majority of his wealth from cultivating tobacco in Tennessee; it was the major commodity crop. He held about 20 enslaved African Americans to cultivate and process this labor-intensive crop.
In 1816 he founded Ross's Landing, served by a ferry crossing. After the Cherokee were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s, European-American settlers changed the name of Ross's Landing to Chattanooga. In addition, Ross had established a trading firm and warehouse. In total, he earned upwards of $1,000 a year ($ in today's terms).
Under pressure from white settlers in Tennessee, many Cherokee migrated into northeast Georgia. In 1827 Ross moved to Rome, Georgia, to be closer to New Echota, the Cherokee capital. In Rome, Ross established a ferry along the headwaters of the Coosa River close to the home of Major Ridge, an older wealthy and influential Cherokee leader. By December 1836, Ross's properties were appraised at $23,665 ($ today). He was ranked as one of the five wealthiest men in the Cherokee Nation.
Political apprenticeship
Between 1811 and 1827, Ross learned how to conduct negotiations with the United States and acquire leadership skills to run a national government. After 1814, Ross's political career as a Cherokee legislator and diplomat progressed with the support of such individuals as the Principal Chief Pathkiller, Assistant Principal Chief Charles R. Hicks, and Casey Holmes, an elder statesman of the Cherokee Nation, as well as the women elders of his clan.
By 1813, as relations with the United States became more complex, older, uneducated chiefs such as Pathkiller could not effectively defend Cherokee interests. Ross's ascent showed that Cherokee leaders recognized the importance of having formally educated, English-speaking leaders to represent them. Both Pathkiller and Hicks trained Ross, who served as their clerk and worked on all financial and political matters of the nation. They also steeped him in Cherokee tradition. In a series of letters to Ross, Hicks outlined known Cherokee traditions.
In 1816, the chief's council named Ross to his first delegation to American leaders in Washington, D.C. The delegation of 1816 was directed to resolve sensitive issues, including national boundaries, land ownership, and white encroachment on Cherokee land, particularly in Georgia. Only Ross was fluent in English, making him a central figure, although Cherokee society traditionally favored older leaders.
In November 1817, the Cherokee formed the National Council. Ross was elected to the thirteen-member body, where each man served two-year terms. The National Council was created to consolidate Cherokee political authority after General Andrew Jackson made two treaties with small cliques of Cherokee representing minority factions. Membership in the National Council placed Ross among the Cherokee ruling elite. The majority of the men were wealthy, of mixed-race, and English-speaking. Most Cherokee still spoke only Cherokee.
President of the National Committee
In November 1818, just before the General Council meeting with U.S. Indian agent Joseph McMinn, who was assigned to deal with the Cherokee, Ross became president of the National Committee, a position he would hold through 1827. The Council selected Ross for that leadership position because they believed he had the diplomatic skills necessary to rebuff American requests to cede Cherokee lands. He soon refused McMinn's offer of $200,000 US, conditioned upon the Cherokee voluntarily removing to the west beyond the Mississippi.
In 1819, the Council sent Ross with a delegation to Washington, D.C. He assumed a larger leadership role. The delegation proposed to clarify the provisions of the Treaty of 1817—both to limit the ceded lands and clarify Cherokee right to the remaining lands. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun pressed Ross to cede large tracts of land in Tennessee and Georgia. Although he refused, the US government pressure continued and intensified. In October 1822, Calhoun requested that the Cherokee relinquish their land claimed by Georgia, in fulfillment of the United States' obligation under the Compact of 1802. Before responding to Calhoun's proposition, Ross first ascertained the sentiment of the Cherokee people. They were unanimously opposed to further cession of land.
In January 1824, Ross traveled to Washington to defend the Cherokee possession of their land. Calhoun offered two solutions to the Cherokee delegation: either relinquish title to their lands and remove west, or accept denationalization and become citizens of the United States. Rather than accept Calhoun's ultimatum, Ross directly petitioned Congress for the Cherokee cause on April 15, 1824. This fundamentally altered the traditional relationship between an Indian nation and the US government.
Never before had an Indian nation petitioned Congress with grievances. In Ross's correspondence, what had previously been the tone of petitions by submissive Indians was replaced by assertive defenders. Ross was able to argue subtle points about legal responsibilities as well as whites.
Some politicians in Washington recognized the change represented by Ross's leadership. Future president John Quincy Adams wrote, "[T]here was less Indian oratory, and more of the common style of white discourse, than in the same chief's speech on their first introduction." Adams specifically noted Ross as "the writer of the delegation" and remarked that "they [had] sustained a written controversy against the Georgia delegation with greate[sic] advantage." Georgia's delegation indirectly acknowledged Ross's skill: an editorial published in The Georgia Journal charged that "the Cherokee delegation's letters were fraudulent" because "too refined to have been written or dictated by an Indian".
Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation
In January 1827, Pathkiller, the Cherokee's principal chief and last hereditary chief, and, two weeks later, Charles R. Hicks, Ross's mentor, both died. Ross, as president of the National Committee, and Major Ridge, as speaker of the National Council, were responsible for the affairs of the tribe. In a letter dated February 23, 1827, to Colonel Hugh Montgomery, the Cherokee agent, Ross wrote that with the death of Hicks, he had assumed responsibility for all public business of The Nation. Charles Hicks's brother William served briefly as interim chief until a permanent chief could be elected. Although believing he was the natural heir to his brother's position, William Hicks had not impressed the tribe with his abilities. A majority of the people knew that during the year Ross, not Hicks, had taken care of all of the regular business of the tribe. On October 17, 1828, the Cherokee elected John Ross as principal chief.
Through the 1820s, the Cherokee Council passed a series of laws creating a bicameral national government, adopting structure from the US government. In 1822 they created the Cherokee Supreme Court, capping the creation of a three-branch government. In May 1827, Ross was elected to the twenty-four member constitutional committee. It drafted a constitution calling for a principal chief, a council of the principal chiefs, and a National Committee, which together would form the General Council of the Cherokee Nation, a constitutional republic. Although the constitution was ratified in October 1827, it did not take effect until October 1828, at which point Ross was elected principal chief. He was repeatedly reelected and held this position until his death in 1866. He was very popular, among both full-bloods, who comprised three-fourths of the population, and mixed-bloods.
The Cherokee had created a constitutional republic with delegated authority capable of formulating a clear, long-range policy to protect national rights.
Supreme Court litigation
Ross found support in Congress from individuals in the National Republican Party, such as senators Henry Clay (Kentucky), Theodore Frelinghuysen, and Daniel Webster (Massachusetts), and representatives Ambrose Spencer and David (Davy) Crockett. Despite this support, in April 1829, John H. Eaton, Secretary of War (1829–1831), informed Ross that President Jackson would support the right of Georgia to extend her laws over the Cherokee people.
On December 8, 1829, President Andrew Jackson made a speech announcing his intention to pass a bill through Congress by the following spring requiring Indian tribes living in the Southeastern states to move west of the Mississippi and cede their land claims in the East.
On December 19, 1829, the Georgia legislature, enacted a series of laws that greatly restricted the Cherokee Nation: they confiscated a large section of Cherokee occupied land, nullified Cherokee law within the confiscated area, banned further meetings of the Cherokee government in Georgia, declared contracts between Indians and whites null and void unless witnessed by two whites, disallowed Indians from testifying against a white person in court, and forbade Cherokee to dig for gold on their own lands. The laws were made effective June 1, 1830. These were calculated to force the Cherokee to move.
In May 1830, Congress endorsed Jackson's policy of removal by passing the Indian Removal Act. Jackson signed the Act on May 23. It authorized the president to set aside lands west of the Mississippi to exchange for the lands of the Indian nations in the Southeast. In the summer of 1830, Jackson urged the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek to sign individual treaties accepting removal from their homelands. The Cherokee refused to attend a meeting in Nashville that Jackson proposed. The other tribes signed off on Jackson's terms.
When Ross and the Cherokee delegation failed in their efforts to protect Cherokee lands through dealings with the executive branch and Congress, Ross took the radical step of defending Cherokee rights through the U.S. courts. In June 1830, at the urging of Senators Webster and Frelinghuysen, the Cherokee delegation selected William Wirt, US Attorney General in the Monroe and Adams administrations, to defend Cherokee rights before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wirt argued two cases on behalf of the Cherokee: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia,''' Chief Justice John Marshall acknowledged that the Cherokee were a sovereign nation, stating,
"[T]he Cherokees as a state, as a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself, has, in the opinion of a majority of the judges, been completely successful."But he did not compel President Jackson to take action that would defend the Cherokee from Georgia's laws, because he did not find that the U.S. Supreme Court had original jurisdiction over a case in which a tribe was a party.
In 1832, the Supreme Court further defined the relation of the federal government and the Cherokee Nation. In Worcester v. Georgia, the Court found that Georgia could not extend its laws to the Cherokee Nation because that was a power of the federal government. Marshall stated that
"the acts of Georgia are repugnant to the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States. They interfere forcibly with the relations established between the United States and the Cherokee nation, the regulation of which, according to the settled principles of our Constitution, are committed exclusively to the government of the Union."The Cherokee were considered sovereign enough to legally resist the government of Georgia, and they were encouraged to do so.
The court maintained that the Cherokee Nation was dependent on the federal government, much like a protectorate state, but still a sovereign entity. But the dispute was made moot when federal legislation in the form of the Indian Removal Act exercised the federal government's legal power to handle the whole affair. The series of decisions embarrassed Jackson politically, as Whigs attempted to use the issue in the 1832 election. They largely supported his earlier opinion that the "Indian Question" was one that was best handled by the federal government, and not local authorities.
Meanwhile, the Cherokee Nation had encountered financial hard times. The U. S. government had stopped paying the agreed-upon $6,000 (~$ in ) annuity for previous land cessions, Georgia had effectively cut off any income from the gold fields in Cherokee lands, and the Cherokee Nation's application for a federal government loan was rejected in February 1831. With great difficulty (and private donations), Ross was able to pay the Cherokee Nation's legal bills.
Ridge Party opposition
In a meeting in May 1832, Supreme Court Justice John McLean spoke with the Cherokee delegation to offer his views on their situation. McLean's advice was to "remove and become a Territory with a patent in fee simple to the nation for all its lands and a delegate in Congress, but reserving to itself the entire right of legislation and selection of all officers." He agreed to send Ross a letter explaining his views. Ross was furious, believing that this was a form of treachery.
McLean's advice precipitated a split within the Cherokee leadership as John Ridge and Elias Boudinot began to doubt Ross's leadership. John Ridge introduced a resolution at the national council meeting in October 1832 to send a delegation to Washington to discuss a removal treaty with President Jackson. The council rejected Ridge's proposal and instead selected Joseph Vann, John Baldridge, Richard Taylor, and John Ross to represent the Cherokee. In February 1833, Ridge wrote to Ross advocating that the delegation dispatched to Washington that month should begin removal negotiations with Jackson. Ridge and Ross did not have irreconcilable worldviews; neither believed that the Cherokee could fend off Georgian usurpation of Cherokee land. However, Ridge was furious that Ross had refused to consider Jackson's offer to pay the Cherokee $3,000,000 for all their lands in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee.
In this environment, Ross led a delegation to Washington in March 1834 to try to negotiate alternatives to removal. Ross made several proposals; however, the Cherokee Nation may not have approved any of Ross's plans, nor was there reasonable expectation that Jackson would settle for any agreement short of removal. These offers, coupled with the lengthy cross-continental trip, indicated that Ross's strategy was to prolong negotiations on removal indefinitely. There was the possibility that the next President might be more favorably inclined.
Ross's strategy was flawed because it was susceptible to the United States' making a treaty with a minority faction. On May 29, 1834, Ross received word from John H. Eaton, that a new delegation, including Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and Ross's younger brother Andrew, collectively called the "Ridge Party" or "Treaty Party", had arrived in Washington with the goal of signing a treaty of removal. The two sides attempted reconciliation, but by October 1834 still had not come to an agreement. In January 1835 the factions were again in Washington. Pressured by the presence of the Ridge Party, Ross agreed on February 25, 1835, to exchange all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi for land west of the Mississippi, asking for $20 million (~$ in ) dollars. He made it contingent on the General Council's accepting the terms.
Treaty of New Echota and Trail of Tears
Secretary of War Lewis Cass believed this was yet another ploy to delay action on removal for an additional year, and threatened to sign the treaty with John Ridge. On November 7, 1835, Ross and his guest, John Howard Payne, were arrested by the Georgia guard at Ross' home in Flint Springs in Bradley County, Tennessee, and taken to Spring Place, Georgia, where they were imprisoned. On December 29, 1835, the Treaty Party signed the Treaty of New Echota with the U.S. Most Cherokee thought the signatories unauthorized. However, Ross could not stop its enforcement. Under orders from President Martin Van Buren, General Winfield Scott and 7,000 Federal troops forced removal of Cherokee who did not emigrate to the Indian Territory by 1838. This forced removal came to be known as the Trail of Tears. Accepting defeat, Ross convinced General Scott to allow him to supervise much of the removal process.
Returning to his home at Head of Coosa late at night, Ross saw a man he did not recognize at his house. He told the man to feed his horse and put him away for the night. Instead, the stranger followed him to the door, identified himself as Stephen Carter and told Ross that he now owned the property and had papers to prove it. Ross then learned agents of Georgia had given Carter possession of the house earlier in the week, after evicting his family. Dispossessed by Georgia (and Carter), Ross was now homeless. The next day, Ross found that family members had given his wife Quatie refuge. Quatie died of pneumonia on February 1, 1839, on the Arkansas River near Little Rock, while aboard a steamboat owned by her husband. According to a popular legend, derived from a letter written by a former soldier named John Burnett, fifty-two years after the fact, Quatie became ill after giving her coat to a child who was crying because of the cold. There is, however, almost no evidence to support the claim. Quatie was originally buried in the Little Rock town cemetery; her remains were later moved to Mt. Holly Cemetery.
Because selling common lands was a capital crime under Cherokee law, treaty opponents assassinated Boudinot, Major Ridge and John Ridge after the migration to Indian Territory. Stand Watie, Boudinot's brother, was also attacked but he survived. The assassins were never publicly identified nor tried in court. General Matthew Arbuckle, commander of Fort Gibson, claimed he knew their identities but never tried to arrest them. Some Cherokee, particularly those tied to the pro-treaty party, claimed that Chief John Ross knew about the assassinations beforehand. Many years later, Chief Ross's son Allen, wrote that this was not so. Allen's letter, is said to be in the possession of the Oklahoma State Historical Society. Afterward, there were years of violence between the two factions.
Given the controversy over the struggle over territory and Ross's personal wealth, a vocal minority of Cherokee and a generation of political leaders in Washington considered Ross to be dictatorial, greedy, and an "aristocratic leader [who] sought to defraud" the Cherokee Nation. Ross also had influential supporters in Washington, including Thomas L. McKenney, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1824–1830). He described Ross as the father of the Cherokee Nation, a Moses who "led...his people in their exodus from the land of their nativity to a new country, and from the savage state to that of civilization."
Remarriage
John Ross was introduced to the Stapler family of Brandywine Springs, Delaware, by Thomas McKenney in 1841. Ross had many common interests with John Stapler, a merchant and widower. His eldest daughter, Sarah, cared for her younger siblings and befriended Ross. However, her younger sister, Mary Brian Stapler, developed a real love for Ross and initiated a romantic attachment in May 1844. As the time came for Ross to return to the Indian Territory, their mutual love ripened. They married in Philadelphia on September 2, 1844.
American Civil War
The Civil War divided the Cherokee people. At first the majority supported the Confederacy, which protected their slaveholdings. Fearing that joining the Confederacy would void the earlier Cherokee treaties with the United States, Ross tried to persuade his people to remain neutral in the conflict, but eventually most chose sides. Full-bloods tended to favor maintaining relations with the United States. This group included over two thousand members of a traditionalist and abolitionist society, the Keetoowah Society. Members of this group were called "Pins" by non-members because they wore an emblem of crossed pins on their shirts.
Ross advocated that the Cherokee Nation remain neutral. It was a losing argument. At a general assembly on August 21, 1861, Ross ended his speech by announcing that in the interests of tribal and inter-Indian unity it was time to agree on an alliance with the Confederate States of America. Many of the well-armed mixed bloods, especially the wealthy led by Stand Watie, supported the Confederacy. Traditionalists and Cherokee who opposed the institution of slavery remained loyal to the Union. However, the majority of Cherokee may not have understood the nature of the new treaty.
After Ross departed to meet with President Lincoln in Washington, traditionalist Cherokee helped maneuver the selection of Ross supporter Thomas Pegg as Acting Principal Chief. Three or four of Ross's own sons fought for the Union. However, Ross's nephew by marriage, John Drew, had organized and served as Colonel of the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles in the Confederate Army. Most of Drew's regiment would later twice desert rather than follow Confederate orders to kill other Indians.Hauptman, Lawrence M. "American Indians and the Civil War". American Indian Places: A Historical Guidebook, p. 378. Frances H. Kennedy, ed.(2008) Houghton Mifflin Co. New York. . Many leaders of the northern faction, still led by Ross, went to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for the duration of the war.
By 1863, the flight of many Cherokee voters to refuge in Kansas and Texas provided the pro-Confederate Treaty Party an opportunity to elect Stand Watie as principal chief without them. Pro-Union National Council members declared the election invalid. Watie that fall raided Ross's home, Rose Cottage. The home was looted and burned. Ross lost all his belongings. Ross's daughter Jane and her husband, Andrew Nave, were living at Rose Cottage at the time. Nave was shot and killed. Only the prior intervention of Watie's wife seems to have prevented the killing of additional Ross relatives. Ross's oldest son, James, who had gone to Park Hill searching for supplies, was captured and sent to prison in the Confederacy, where he died. Ross remained in exile. However, within a week of the burning, the National Council convened and restored Ross as principal chief.
Ross took his wife Mary and the children to Philadelphia so she could see her family. Ross returned to Washington, where he had an inconclusive meeting with President Lincoln and other supporters. When he returned for Mary in 1865, he found her gravely ill with what was diagnosed as "lung congestion" (likely tuberculosis). She could not travel, so he remained with her for more than a month. Mary died of her illness on July 20, 1865. She was buried in her native Delaware. Ross returned to Indian Territory after her funeral.
After the war, the two factions of the Cherokee tried to negotiate separately with the US government Southern Treaty Commission. The commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dennis N. Cooley, was persuaded to believe allegations by Stand Watie and Elias Cornelius Boudinot that Ross was a dictator who did not truly represent the Cherokee people. Even though his health was worsening, Ross left Park Hill, where he was staying with his niece, on November 9, 1865, to meet with President Andrew Johnson. Johnson instructed Cooley to reopen negotiations with the Cherokee and to meet only with the pro-Union faction, headed by John Ross. Ross died on August 1, 1866, in Washington, D.C., while still negotiating a final treaty with the federal government. However, Ross had by then persuaded Johnson to reject a particularly harsh treaty version favored by Cooley.
Death and legacy
Initially, Ross was buried beside his second wife Mary in Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware. A few months later, the Cherokee Nation returned his remains to the Ross Cemetery at Park Hill, Indian Territory (now Cherokee County, Oklahoma) for interment.
John Ross's great-great granddaughter, Mary G. Ross (August 9, 1908 – April 29, 2008) was the first Native American female engineer. She helped propel the world into an era of space travel while becoming of one of the nation's most prominent women scientists of the space age.
Namesake and monuments
The City of Chattanooga named the Market Street Bridge in Ross's honor, and a bust of Ross stands on the north side of the Hamilton County Courthouse lawn.
The city of Rossville, Georgia, located just south of the Tennessee state line, is named for Ross. It contains his former home, the John Ross House, where he lived from 1830 to 1838 until the state seized his lands near the Coosa River. One of the oldest surviving homes in the Chattanooga area, it has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.
The city of Park Hill, Oklahoma, hosts a John Ross museum in a former schoolhouse located west of Ross Cemetery.https://www.travelok.com/listings/view.profile/id.16106 Oklahoma Visitors Guide
National Public Radio correspondent Steve Inskeep suggested that the US $20 bill be modified to carry images of both John Ross and Andrew Jackson, "illustrating our democratic experience."
Stage and Screen
John Ross was portrayed by Johnny Cash in an episode of NET Playhouse titled "Trail of Tears" in 1971.
John Ross's life and the Trail of Tears are dramatized in Episode 3 of the Ric Burns "American Experience" documentary, We Shall Remain (2009), shown and available online on PBS.
John Ross is a character in Unto These Hills, an outdoor drama that has been performed in Cherokee, NC since 1950.
See also
Timeline of Cherokee removal
Indian Removal Act
List of treaties of the Confederate States of America
Notes
References
Further reading
Primary sources
Dale, Edwards Everett. Cherokee Cavaliers; Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondences of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1939.
McKenny, Thomas Loraine. The Indian Tribes of North America with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chief. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972.
Ross, John. The Papers of Chief John Ross. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.
Secondary Sources
Gearing, Fred O. Priests and Warriors: Social Structures for Cherokee Politics in the Eighteenth Century. Menasha, Wisconsin, 1962.
Hicks, Brian. Toward the Setting Sun: John Ross, the Cherokees, and the Trail of Tears. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011.
Inskeep, Steve. Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab. Penguin Press, 2015.
Langguth, A. J. Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War. New York, Simon & Schuster. 2010. .
McLoughlin, William G. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Moulton, Gary E. John Ross Cherokee Chief. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1978.
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians I. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Smith, Daniel Blake. An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears. 2011. Henry Holt and Company. New York. .
Weeks, W. Dale. Cherokee Civil Warrior: Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023) online book review
Williams, David. The Georgia Gold Rush: Twenty-Niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
Woodward, Grace Steele. The Cherokees. University of Oklahoma Press. 1963. .
External links
Ancestry.com John Ross Biography
The Trail of Tears and the Forced Relocation of the Cherokee Nation a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
Walker County GA Attractions, Walker County, GA Chamber of Commerce
Ross, John''; "Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography;" 1900.
1790 births
1866 deaths
American people of Scottish descent
Burials at Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery
Cherokee slave owners
Native Americans in the American Civil War
People from Cherokee County, Alabama
People from Rome, Georgia
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400738
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila%20Kunis
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Mila Kunis
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Milena Markovna "Mila" Kunis (born August 14, 1983) is an American actress. Born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, and raised in Los Angeles, Kunis began playing Jackie Burkhart on the Fox television series That '70s Show (1998–2006) at the age of 14. Since 1999, she has voiced Meg Griffin on the Fox animated series Family Guy.
Kunis's breakout film role was in the 2008 romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. She gained further critical acclaim and accolades for her performance in the psychological thriller Black Swan (2010), receiving nominations for the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other major films include the action films Max Payne (2008) and The Book of Eli (2010), the romantic comedy Friends with Benefits (2011), the fantasy film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) as the Wicked Witch of the West, and the comedies Ted (2012), Bad Moms (2016) and its sequel, A Bad Moms Christmas (2017).
Early life
Milena Markovna Kunis was born into a Ukrainian Jewish family on August 14, 1983, in Chernivtsi, a city in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (now Ukraine). Although Kunis's parents have since retired, previously her mother, Elvira, was a physics teacher who ran a pharmacy, and her father, Mark Kunis, was a mechanical engineer who worked as a cab driver after the family emigrated. Kunis has an elder brother, Michael. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother tongue and the common language within her family is Russian. While participating in Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend Kunis confirmed she does not speak Ukrainian, stating Russian was the main language at the time she was there. Children were not taught Ukrainian in school until they were in second grade which was the time she left to come to the United States. She stated in 2011 that her parents had "amazing jobs", and that she "was very lucky" and the family was "not poor"; they had decided to leave the Soviet Union because they saw "no future" there for Mila and her brother. In 1991, when she was 7 years old, her family moved to Los Angeles, with US$250. "That was all we were allowed to take with us. My parents had given up good jobs and degrees, which were not transferable. We arrived in New York on a Wednesday and by Friday morning my brother and I were at school in L.A."
Kunis has cited antisemitism in the Soviet Union as one of several reasons for her family's move to the United States. She has stated that her parents "raised [her] Jewish as much as they could", although religion was suppressed in the Soviet Union. On her second day in Los Angeles, Kunis was enrolled at Rosewood Elementary School, not knowing a word of English. She later recalled: "I blocked out second grade completely. I have no recollection of it. I always talk to my mom and my grandma about it. It was because I cried every day. I didn't understand the culture. I didn't understand the people. I didn't understand the language. My first sentence of my essay to get into college was like, 'Imagine being blind and deaf at age seven.' And that's kind of what it felt like moving to the States."
In Los Angeles, she attended Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle School. She used an on-set tutor for most of her high school years while filming That '70s Show. She briefly attended Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES), but when that school proved to be insufficiently flexible about her acting commitments, she transferred to Fairfax High School, graduating in 2001. She briefly attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Kunis has said that a genealogical DNA test described her ethnicity as 96% to 98% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Career
1994–2000: Career beginnings and television work
At age nine, Kunis was enrolled by her father in acting classes after school at the Beverly Hills Studios, where she met Susan Curtis, who would become her manager. On her first audition she landed the role for a Barbie commercial. Shortly after, she did a commercial for the Lisa Frank product line. Her first television roles took place in 1994, first appearing on Days of Our Lives, and a few months later doing her first of two appearances on Baywatch. She had a minor role on the television shows 7th Heaven, and Walker, Texas Ranger as well as supporting roles in the films Santa with Muscles, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and the Angelina Jolie film Gia, as the young Gia Carangi.
At the age of 10, Kunis unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of a Russian Jewish girl who moves to America in the film Make a Wish, Molly. Instead, she was cast in the secondary role of a Mexican girl. In 1998, Kunis was cast as Jackie Burkhart in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show. All who auditioned were required to be at least 18 years old; Kunis, who was 14 at the time, told the casting directors she would be 18 but did not say when. Though they eventually figured it out, the producers still thought Kunis was the best fit for the role. That '70s Show ran for eight seasons. She won two consecutive Young Star Awards as Best Young Actress in a Comedy TV Series in 1999 and 2000 for her performances.
In 1999, Kunis replaced Lacey Chabert in the role of Meg Griffin on the animated sitcom Family Guy, created by Seth MacFarlane for Fox. Kunis won the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on That '70s Show. When Kunis auditioned for the role, she was called back by MacFarlane, who instructed her to speak slower. He then told her to come back another time and enunciate more. Once she claimed that she had it under control, MacFarlane hired her. MacFarlane added: "What Mila Kunis brought to it was in a lot of ways, I thought, almost more right for the character. I say that Lacey did a phenomenal job, but there was something about Mila – something very natural about Mila. She was 15 when she started, so you were listening to a 15-year-old. Oftentimes with animation they'll have adult actors doing the voices of teenagers and they always sound like Saturday morning voices. They sound oftentimes very forced. She had a very natural quality to Meg that really made what we did with that character kind of really work." Kunis was nominated for an Annie Award in the category of Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production in 2007. She also voiced Meg in Family Guy Video Game!, released in 2006. Kunis described her character as "the scapegoat."
2001–2008: Transition to film
In 2001, she appeared in Get Over It opposite Kirsten Dunst. She followed that up in 2002, by starring in the straight-to-DVD horror film American Psycho 2 alongside William Shatner, a sequel to the 2000 film American Psycho. American Psycho 2 was poorly reviewed by critics, and later, Kunis herself expressed embarrassment over the film. In 2004, Kunis starred in the film adaptation Tony n' Tina's Wedding. Although the film was shot in 2004, it did not have a theatrical release until 2007. Most critics did not like the film, which mustered a 25% approval from Rotten Tomatoes. DVD talk concluded that "fans would be much better off pretending the movie never happened in the first place".
In 2005, Kunis co-starred with Jon Heder in Moving McAllister, which was not released theatrically until 2007. The film received generally poor reviews and had a limited two-week run in theaters. She followed up with After Sex starring alongside Zoe Saldana, who had also appeared in Get Over It. In October 2006, she began filming Boot Camp (originally titled Straight Edge). The film was not released in theaters in the United States, but was released on DVD on August 25, 2009.
Kunis starred as Rachel Jansen in the 2008 comedy film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, co-produced by Judd Apatow. The role, which she won after unsuccessfully auditioning for Knocked Up, entailed improvisation on her part. The film garnered positive reviews, and was a commercial success, grossing $105 million worldwide. Kunis's performance was well-received; Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal praised her "fresh beauty and focused energy", while James Berardinelli wrote that she is "adept with her performance and understands the concept of comic timing". She was nominated for a Teen Choice Award. In an interview, Kunis credited Apatow with helping her to expand her career from That '70s Show.
Also in 2008, Kunis portrayed Mona Sax, an assassin, alongside Mark Wahlberg in the action film Max Payne, based on the video game of the same name. Kunis underwent training in guns, boxing, and martial arts for her role. Max Payne was relatively successful at the box office, grossing $85 million worldwide but was poorly reviewed by critics, with several reviewers calling Kunis miscast. Travis Estvold of Boise Weekly wrote that she was "horribly miscast as some sort of undersized, warble-voiced crime boss". Director John Moore defended his choice of Kunis saying, "Mila just bowled us over..... She wasn't an obvious choice, but she just wears Mona so well. We needed someone who would not be just a fop or foil to Max; we needed somebody who had to be that character and convey her own agenda. I think Mila just knocked it out of the park." She was nominated for another Teen Choice Award for her role in the film.
2009–2012: Film breakthrough and acclaim
In 2009, she appeared in the comedy film Extract with Ben Affleck and Jason Bateman. The film received mostly positive reviews, and grossed $10.8 million at the box office. Roger Ebert, while critical of the film itself, wrote that Kunis "brings her role to within shouting distance of credibility." Director Mike Judge commented that part of what was surprising to learn about Kunis was her ability to make references to the cult animation film Rejected. Judge said: "As beautiful as Mila is, you could believe that maybe she would cross paths with you in the real world." After seeing Kunis perform in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Judge wanted to cast her in the role of Cindy in Extract: "I just thought, 'Wow, this girl's perfect.' And she really wanted to do it, which was fantastic." Kunis herself stated that "I'm a huge fan of Mike Judge's from Office Space, so I was, like, 'Okay, this is a very easy decision.' I told them I would do anything needed to be in this production– like craft service, or, say, acting."
In 2010, she starred alongside Denzel Washington in the action film The Book of Eli. Although the film received mixed reviews, it performed well at the box office, grossing over $157 million worldwide. Film critic Richard Roeper praised Kunis's performance, calling it a "particularly strong piece of work". Several other reviews were equally positive, including that of Pete Hammond of Boxoffice magazine, who wrote that she's "ideally cast in the key female role". Even reviewers who did not necessarily like the film complimented her performance, such as James Berardinelli, who wrote that "the demands of the role prove to be within her range, which is perhaps surprising considering she has been thus far pigeonholed into more lightweight parts", and Colin Covert of the Star Tribune, who wrote that she "generated a spark and brought a degree of determination to her character, developing an independent female character who's not always in need of rescuing." Other critics, such as Claudia Puig of USA Today felt she was miscast, noting that "she looked as if she dropped in from a Ray-Ban commercial". Kunis received another Teen Choice Award nomination for her performance. Kunis was also cast in a minor role in the 2010 comedy film Date Night, starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell. She garnered several positive reviews for her performance. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune concluded her performance with James Franco helped save the film and gave it "a shot in the arm."
Kunis was nominated for multiple awards, including her first Golden Globe, for the 2010 film Black Swan. She played a rival ballet dancer to the main character, played by Natalie Portman. Director Darren Aronofsky cast Kunis in the film based on her performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and on the recommendation of co-star and close friend Natalie Portman. She underwent a training regimen that included cardiovascular exercise, a 1,200-calorie a day diet (she lost 20 pounds that she regained after filming ended), and ballet classes for four hours a day, seven days a week. During the demanding production, she suffered injuries including a torn ligament and a dislocated shoulder.
Black Swan received widespread acclaim from critics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film grossed over $106.9 million in the United States and Canada while grossing over $329 million worldwide. Reviews of Kunis's performance were positive, with Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter stating, "Kunis makes a perfect alternate to Portman, equally as lithe and dark but a smirk of self-assurance in place of Portman's wide-eyed fearfulness." Guy Lodge of In Contention also praised Kunis, saying, "it's the cool, throaty-voiced Kunis who is the surprise package here, intelligently watching and reflecting her co-star in such a manner that we're as uncertain as Nina of her ingenuousness." Kunis's performance won her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor or Actress at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, and earned her Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. At the 37th annual Saturn Awards, she was also honored with the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance.
Kunis was cast alongside Justin Timberlake in the 2011 romantic comedy Friends with Benefits. Director Will Gluck stated that he wrote the story with Kunis and Timberlake in mind. Friends with Benefits achieved success at the box office, grossing over $149 million worldwide, and received mostly positive reviews with critics praising the chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that "Ms. Kunis is fast proving that she's a gift that keeps giving to mainstream romantic comedy" and "her energy is so invigorating and expansive and her presence so vibrant that she fills the screen".
In 2012, Kunis co-starred with Mark Wahlberg in Ted, her most commercially successful film to date. The film was directed and co-written by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. Kunis played the girlfriend of Wahlberg's character. When MacFarlane first conceived the project, he considered Kunis too young for the role. However, the film remained in development for several years and when it was finally ready to begin production, he ended up casting her. Ted has received generally positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing $549 million worldwide. Drew McWeeny of HitFix wrote that Kunis "brings some lovely subtle grace notes to a role that easily could have just been 'the pushy girlfriend.
2013–present: Comedic roles
In 2013, Kunis played Theodora, the youngest of three witches, opposite James Franco, in the Walt Disney Pictures' prequel, Oz the Great and Powerful. She dedicated her performance in the film to Margaret Hamilton, the original Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film. The film, and Kunis's performance, received mixed reviews from critics. Kim Newman of Empire Magazine wrote that Kunis "walks away with the honours as the wavering witch Theodora, whose heartbreak brings another, less-expected depth to this 3D spectacle". In contrast, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter found Kunis's performance to be uncertain as her character seemed to be in a state of limbo. Oz the Great and Powerful was a commercial success, grossing over $493 million worldwide.
Also in 2013, Kunis co-starred in the crime thriller Blood Ties with Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, and Marion Cotillard. The film premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and had a limited release in the United States in 2014. Blood Ties received mixed reviews. Kunis was also cast in the comedy The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, alongside Robin Williams and Peter Dinklage. The film had a limited theatrical and VOD release and received poor reviews. The Paul Haggis-directed film Third Person co-starring with Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde and James Franco premiered at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival and had a limited release in 2014, but also received mostly negative reviews. Kunis's performance was praised by some critics; Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that her role gives her "enormous room to express her talent" and she "gives her story a shot of raw intensity". In October 2014, it was announced Kunis, along with her partners, had launched a new production company called Orchard Farm Productions. The company has a first-look deal with ABC Studios, where the company is based. Under the agreement, the team will develop and produce TV projects for broadcast and cable. In 2015, Kunis co-starred with Channing Tatum in the science fiction film Jupiter Ascending, directed by the Wachowskis. While the film grossed over $183.9 million on a $176 million budget, it received mostly negative reviews, with a consensus that the production was "narratively befuddled" and a "visually thrilling misfire".
Kunis co-starred with Kristen Bell and Christina Applegate in the comedy Bad Moms, which was released July 29, 2016. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the cast and humor, though did not feel it could "take full advantage of its assets". Chris Nashawaty from Entertainment Weekly wrote that "Kunis manages to be both sympathetic and funny, and she has crack comedic timing". The film went on to earn more than $183.9 million with a budget of $20 million. Following the financial success of Bad Moms, STX Entertainment reunited Kunis with her co-stars Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn for a sequel, A Bad Moms Christmas, which was released on November 1, 2017. It went on to receive mixed reviews and gross over $130 million worldwide with a budget of $28 million.
In 2018, Kunis co-starred with Kate McKinnon in the comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me. The film received mixed reviews and went on to gross over $75 million worldwide with a budget of $40 million. Kunis co-starred with Glenn Close in the film Four Good Days. Principal photography began in September 2019 in Los Angeles, and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2020. The film received mixed reviews but Kunis was praised for her performance, with Pete Hammond from Deadline Hollywood stating Kunis was "a revelation" in the role, while Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times concluded her performance "represents the finest work she has done". In 2021, she co-starred with Allison Janney and Regina Hall in Breaking News in Yuba County, which was filmed in Mississippi. The film was released February 12, 2021, and received negative reviews from critics. On April 30, 2022, it was announced that Kunis would have a guest appearance in the follow-up sitcom, That '90s Show.
In 2022 Kunis produced and starred in a Netflix film adaptation of Luckiest Girl Alive based on the Jessica Knoll novel of the same name. Luckiest Girl Alive was released in select cinemas on September 30, 2022, before its streaming release on October 7, 2022, by Netflix. The film received mixed reviews from critics. However, Kunis received acclaim for her performance with Erick Massoto from Collider stating she delivered a "career best performance" that is "hypnotic and keeps you on the edge of your seat at every turn." Additionally Kunis received a nomination for The Drama Movie Star of 2022 at the 48th People's Choice Awards. In 2023 it was announced Kunis is slated to co-star with Michael Keaton in the comedy film Goodrich. Written and Directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, Kunis will also serve as executive producer.
In the media
In 2007, Kunis participated in a video for the website Funny or Die appearing alongside James Franco. The video was a parody of the MTV show The Hills and was a huge success for the website, with 2.4 million views over the next ten years. Shawn Levy, director of Date Night, stated that part of what made him decide to cast Kunis with James Franco in the film was the chemistry he felt they had in the Funny or Die video. In December 2008, Kunis was featured in Gap's "Shine Your Own Star" Christmas campaign. In 2010, she was featured in the "Women We Love" segment in Esquire with an accompanied video. Kunis was among several female stars photographed by Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams in conjunction with the Calvin Klein Collections for a feature titled American Women 2010, with the proceeds from the photographs donated to the NYC AIDS foundation. During the summer of 2010 Kunis served with Randy Jackson as the Master of Ceremonies for the 9th Annual Chrysalis Foundation Benefit. The Chrysalis Foundation is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization formed to help economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals to become self-sufficient through employment opportunities.
GQ magazine named Kunis the Knockout of the Year for 2011, with Men's Health naming her one of the "100 Hottest Women of All-Time". FHM magazine ranked her number 9 on its 2012 Hot 100 list, but she reached number 1 on their 2013 "100 Sexiest Women in the World" list, which brought to an end a four-year run by British women. Prior to this in 2008 Kunis stated, "You've got to base your career on something other than being FHM's top 100 number one girl. Your looks are going to die out, and then what's going to be left?" Maxim has consistently ranked Kunis on its Hot 100 list, reaching a ranking of number 5 in both 2009 and 2011 and number 3 in 2012. Esquire magazine named her 2012's Sexiest Woman Alive. She ranked No. 2 on AskMen's list of Top 99 Women for 2013, behind only Jennifer Lawrence. In 2013, she responded to those lists: "All I can say is, I feel honored to be considered sexy."
Christian Dior signed Kunis in 2012 to be the face of its Spring fashion campaign. In February 2013, she was named Gemfields global brand ambassador and the face of their advertising campaign. Gemfields is a luxury company that produces emeralds, rubies, and amethysts. She visited Gemfields' mine in Zambia. Kunis appeared wearing Gemfields's Rubies for the world premiere of Jupiter Ascending. In 2013, she appeared in Forbes list of 100 powerful celebrities, ranking #89 on the basis of five criteria (Money, TV/Radio, Press, Social, and Marketability), with her highest ranking as #14 in marketability. She earned $11 million for the year ending in June 2013. In 2014, Kunis appeared in a range of global advertising for Beam, Inc. (makers of Jim Beam bourbon). Her announcement on Conan that she would donate to Planned Parenthood in Vice President Mike Pence's name received praise from supporters of abortion rights; conversely, several anti-abortion advocates criticized her and Beam, Inc. on Twitter, creating the hashtag #BoycottJimBeam.
Kunis was included on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022. Also in 2022 Kunis was included with Matthew McConaughey, Quinta Brunson and Jennifer Hudson on People magazine's annual list of the People of the year.
Personal life
Kunis began dating actor Macaulay Culkin in 2002. During their relationship, there were rumors of the couple getting married, but Kunis denied them. On January 3, 2011, Kunis's publicist confirmed reports that Kunis and Culkin had ended their relationship, saying, "The split was amicable, and they remain close friends."
Kunis began dating her former That '70s Show co-star Ashton Kutcher in 2012. They became engaged in February 2014, and were married in July 2015 in Oak Glen, California. The couple have two children: a daughter born in October 2014 and a son born in November 2016. The family resides in a sustainable farmhouse, designed by the couple and architect Howard Backen, in Beverly Hills.
In January 2011, she revealed her struggle with chronic iritis that had caused temporary blindness in one eye. Some months earlier she went through with the surgery that corrected the problem. Kunis also has heterochromia iridum, a condition in which the irises are different colors. Her left eye is brown, while her right eye is green. On September 14, 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it was investigating the alleged hacking of Kunis's cellphone and email accounts, along with those of other celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson and Vanessa Hudgens. Christopher Chaney from Jacksonville, Florida, later pleaded guilty in federal court to nine counts of computer hacking.
In November 2011, Kunis was escorted by Sgt. Scott Moore to a U.S. Marine Corps Ball in Greenville, North Carolina. She had accepted Moore's invitation in July after he posted it as a YouTube video while serving with the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, in Afghanistan's Helmand province. The event celebrated the Marine Corps' 236th anniversary.
In 2016, Kunis, while pregnant with her second child, undertook the surprise renovation of her parents' condominium, over a six-week period, which was documented for My HouzzTV. She had grown up in the condominium from the age of nine, along with her older brother and her parents. In April 2020, Kunis and Kutcher developed their own wine, named Quarantine Wine, with 100% of the proceeds going to give aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following year they launched Outside Wine, a blend of red wine, whose profits would benefit The Skate Park Project and Thorn.org.
In 2022, Kunis and Kutcher started a GoFundMe page to help two online companies (Airbnb and Flexport) to aid refugees fleeing the violence in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They exceeded their $30 million dollar goal as of March 18, 2022. The couple promised to donate $3 million of their own money to the cause.
In 2023, after the conviction of That 70's Show cast mate, Danny Masterson, for rape, Kunis, along with Ashton Kutcher, wrote letters to the judge in support of Masterson. The letters stated that Masterson was a good person and that he treated people with "decency, equality, and generosity". After the letters were made public, Kunis and Kutcher received immediate backlash and criticism for their support of Masterson, especially due to Kunis and Kutcher's involvement in Thorn, a charity to expose the sexual exploitation of children. After the backlash, Kunis and Kutcher apologized in a video. In the video, the two claimed that the letters were only intended for the judge and not for the public. The apology was similarly criticized as "performative and insincere".
Political views
Kunis is a supporter of the Democratic Party. In a 2012 interview, she criticized the Republican Party, saying: "The way that Republicans attack women is so offensive to me. And the way they talk about religion is offensive. I may not be a practicing Jew, but why do we gotta talk about Jesus all the time?" In 2017, Kunis disclosed that she had been making monthly donations to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence's name.
Acting credits and awards
According to the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, Kunis's most critically successful films are Gia (1998), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Extract (2009), Date Night (2010), Black Swan (2010), Friends with Benefits (2011), Ted (2012), Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) and Bad Moms (2016). Her television projects include FOX sitcom That '70s Show (1998–2006) and animated series Family Guy (1999–present).
Kunis has received one Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress and two Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Outstanding Performance by a Cast for her performance in Black Swan (2010). Kunis was nominated for an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting for her work in Family Guy and has garnered two Critics' Choice Awards nominations for Best Supporting Actress in Black Swan (2010) and Best Actress in a Comedy in Ted (2012) respectively.
Explanatory notes
References
External links
1983 births
Living people
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses
21st-century American Jews
Actors from Chernivtsi
Actresses from Los Angeles
American Ashkenazi Jews
American child actresses
American film actresses
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
American television actresses
American video game actresses
American voice actresses
American women television producers
Bukovina Jews
California Democrats
Jewish American actresses
Marcello Mastroianni Award winners
People with acquired American citizenship
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Soviet Jews
Ukrainian emigrants to the United States
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein-Ali%20Montazeri
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Hussein-Ali Montazeri
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Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri ( ; 24 September 1922 – 19 December 2009) was an Iranian Shia Islamic theologian, Islamic democracy advocate, writer and human rights activist. He was one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution and one of the highest-ranking authorities in Shīʿite Islam. He was once the designated successor to the revolution's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, but they had a falling-out in 1989 over government policies that Montazeri claimed infringed on people's freedom and denied them their rights, especially after the 1988 mass execution of political prisoners. Montazeri spent his later years in Qom and remained politically influential in Iran, but was placed in house arrest in 1997 for questioning "the unaccountable rule exercised by the supreme leader", Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in his stead. He was known as the most knowledgeable senior Islamic scholar in Iran and a grand marja (religious authority) of Shia Islam. Ayatollah Montazeri was said to be one of Khamenei's teachers.
For more than two decades, Hussein-Ali Montazeri was one of the main critics of the Islamic Republic's domestic and foreign policy. He had also been an active advocate of Baháʼí rights, civil rights and women's rights in Iran. Montazeri was a prolific writer of books and articles. He was a staunch proponent of an Islamic state, and he argued that post-revolutionary Iran was not being ruled as an Islamic state.
Early life and public career
Born in 1922, Montazeri was from a peasant family in Najafabad, a city in Isfahan Province, 250 miles south of Tehran.
His early theological education was in Isfahan. After Khomeini was forced into exile by the Shah, Montazeri "sat at the center of the clerical network" which Khomeini had established to oppose Pahlavi rule. He became a teacher at the Faiziyeh Theological School. While there he answered Khomeini's call to protest the White Revolution of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in June 1963 and was active in anti-Shah clerical circles. He was sent to prison in 1974 and released in 1978 in time to be active during the revolution. Montazeri then went to Qom where he studied theology.
Iranian Revolution
Montazeri was known as an Islamic jurist who was made to pay for his liberal-leaning beliefs. He supported a democratic republic as the best form of government; however in his ideal model for government, an Islamic jurist acts as a supervisor and advisor, what he, along with Ayatollah Khomeini, termed as velayat-e faqih. He was the author of Dirasāt fī wilāyah al-faqīh, a scholarly book advocating the supervision of the administration by Islamic jurists. He believed in the independence of the government and did not accept any executive and policy making role for the Islamic jurist. Montazeri asserted that the rule of the jurisprudent should not be an absolute rule; instead, it should be limited to the function of advisor to the rulers, who are elected by the people.
In 1979, following the overthrow of the Shah, he played a pivotal role in instituting Iran's new constitution. He was one of the leaders of the movement to replace the democratic and secular draft constitution proposed for the Islamic Republic with one where the supervision of Islamic jurists was recognized. He distributed "a detailed commentary and alternate draft" for Iran's new constitution. It included proposals to specify that Twelver Shi'ism—and not Islam in general—was the official religion of the state and to state that Islamic jurists should appoint judges with the right of veto over all laws and actions that are against the Islamic principles. Later he served on the Assembly of Experts (Majles-e-Khobregan) that wrote the constitution and that implemented many of his proposals.
During this time, Montazeri also served as Friday prayer leader of Qom, as a member of the Revolutionary Council and as deputy to Supreme Leader Khomeini. Khomeini began "to transfer some of his power" to Montazeri, in 1980. By 1983 "all government offices hung a small picture" of Montazeri next to that of Khomeini. In 1984, Montazeri became a grand ayatollah.
Montazeri initially rejected Khomeini's proposal to make him his successor, insisting that the choice of successor be left to the democratically elected Assembly of Experts. Later, Montazeri relented, and following a session of the Assembly of Experts in November 1985, he was officially appointed Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader.
Some observers believe Khomeini chose him for this role solely because of his support for Khomeini's principle of theocratic rule by Islamic jurists. Khomeini's proposed form of administration called for the most learned, or one of the most learned, Islamic jurists to "rule", and of all those who might be considered a leading Islamic jurist, only Montazeri supported theocracy. In Montazeri's opinion, however the jurist would not act as an absolute ruler, instead, he would act as an advisor and consultant.
Montazeri fell short of the theological requirements of the supreme Faqih. He could not claim descent from the Prophet nor did he possess all the credentials of a revered scholar of Islamic law. His religious followers were few. And he lacked the all-important charisma. His selection had happened for one reason—he was the only one among the candidates for Faqih who totally endorsed Khomeini's vision of Islamic government.
In addition, traditionalists did not approve Montazeri's designation as successor due to several reasons, including his problematic persona in Shiite seminaries during the reign of the Shah and his support for Ali Shariati’s and for Nematollah Salehi Najaf Abadi's works. Montazeri's leadership qualifications were further hurt by not being a seyyed, or descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, traditionally wearing the black turban in Shiite Islam, like Khomeini and Khomeini's successor Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the early years of the revolution, he was not as popular as he was in the last two decades of his life. The middle class and elites would mock him in those early years.
Dispute with Khomeini and demotion
Montazeri was one of Ayatollah Khomeini's two favorite pupils. Khomeini trusted Montazeri with important responsibilities and referred to him as "the fruit of his life". Likewise, Montazeri respected and admired Khomeini's "sheer determination and unshakable faith."
Mehdi Karrubi claims that the tensions between Montazeri and Khomeini began in around October 1986 when Montazeri sent a letter to the latter, criticising and questioning the foundation of the state. Montazeri's troubles became further evident due to his association with Mehdi Hashemi who ran an organization out of Montazeri's office which sought to export the Islamic revolution. Hashemi is thought to have embarrassed Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by leaking information of his connection with the Iran-Contra affair. Subsequently Hashemi was arrested, convicted and executed in September 1987 on charges of counterrevolutionary activities.
In November 1987, Montazeri created more controversy when he called for the legalization of political parties, though under strict regulation. He followed this by calling for "an open assessment of failures" of the Revolution and an end to the export of revolution, saying that Iran should inspire by example, not train and arm allied groups. Khomeini responded the next February by criticizing Montazeri and a month later called for a meeting of the Assembly of Experts to "discuss him."
Things came to a head following the mass execution of political prisoners in late summer and early autumn 1988, when Montazeri gave a series of lectures in which he indicated support for a "far more open" policy. In an interview published in Keyhan in early 1989, he criticized Khomeini in language that is said to have sealed "his political fate":
The denial of people's rights, injustice and disregard for the revolution's true values have delivered the most severe blows against the revolution. Before any reconstruction [takes place], there must first be a political and ideological reconstruction... This is something that the people expect of a leader.
Still worse for him were the publication abroad and broadcast on the BBC of his letters condemning the post-war wave of executions in March 1989. Montazeri also criticized Khomeini's fatwa ordering the assassination of author Salman Rushdie saying: "People in the world are getting the idea that our business in Iran is just murdering people."
On 26 March 1989, Khomeini strongly denounced Montazeri's actions, and two days later announced that Montazeri had resigned his post. Montazeri did not protest, issuing a message concluding, "I ask all brothers and sisters not to utter a word in my support."
In addition to losing his position as designated heir, Montazeri's title of Grand Ayatollah was withdrawn, publication of his lectures in the
Kayhan newspaper and references to him on the state radio were stopped, his portraits were ordered by the then Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi to be removed from offices and mosques, and his security guards were withdrawn. Articles and editorials appeared in various newspapers aimed at "dismantling" Montazeri's "impeccable" revolutionary credentials.
According to numerous sources, the amendment to Iran's constitution removing the requirement that the Supreme Leader be a Marja was instituted to deal with the problem of the lack of any remaining Grand Ayatollahs willing to accept "illimitable velayat-e faqih". However, others said the reason marjas were not elected was because of their lack of votes in the Assembly of Experts. For example, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Golpaygani had the backing of only thirteen members of the assembly. Furthermore, there were other marjas present who accepted "illimitable velayat-e faqih".
Later dissent and house arrest
Khomeini died in June 1989 and another cleric, Seyed Ali Khamene'i, was selected by the Assembly of Experts to be the new Supreme Leader. Khamenei had been a high-ranking Hojatoleslam before Montazeri's removal. His promotion was accepted by many Shi'a, among the exceptions being Montazeri.
In December 1989, Montazeri's supporters in Qom distributed "night letters" questioning Khamenei's qualifications to be a Marja e Taqlid ("Source of Emulation"), or in other words, an Ayatollah. In retaliation Revolutionary Guards "detained and humiliated" Montazeri, "forcing him to wear his nightcap rather than his white turban."
In October 1997, after openly criticizing the authority of Khamenei, Montazeri was placed under house arrest under the pretext of protecting him from hardliners. He was freed from house arrest in 2003 after more than 100 Iranian legislators called on President Khatami to free him. Some thought that the government lifted the house arrest to avoid the possibility of a popular backlash if the ailing Montazeri died while in custody.
Criticism of the government
During the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, Montazeri wrote to Khomeini saying "at least order to spare women who have children ... the execution of several thousand prisoners in a few days will not reflect positively and will not be mistake-free ... A large number of prisoners have been killed under torture by interrogators ... in some prisons of the Islamic Republic young girls are being raped ... As a result of unruly torture, many prisoners have become deaf or paralysed or afflicted with chronic disease."
On 22 January 2007, Montazeri criticized former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his nuclear and economic policies.
While agreeing Iran had the right to develop nuclear energy, he called Ahmadinejad's approach to the issue aggressive, saying, "One has to deal with the enemy with wisdom, not provoke it, ... his (provocation) only creates problems for the country" and asked, "Don't we have other rights too?", referring to individual and human rights. Montazeri also criticized the economic performance of Ahmadinejad's administration's, noting the rate of inflation—including a 50% increase in housing costs—arguing that a country cannot be run on "slogans".
Montazeri, in a 2008 interview with Voice of America concerning the 29th anniversary of the revolution, stated that the revolution had given Islam a bad name, arguing "Unfortunately, it is only by name that the revolution remains Islamic. Its content has changed, and what is taking place in the name of Islam gives a bad image of the religion. This is the religion of kindness and tolerance." He also issued a statement in 2008 in support of the rights of the persecuted Baháʼís in the Islamic Republic, saying that though Baháʼís were not People of the Book like Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, nonetheless: "they are the citizens of this country, they have the right of citizenship and to live in this country. Furthermore, they must benefit from the Islamic compassion which is stressed in Quran and by the religious authorities."
Montazeri again spoke out against Ahmadinejad on 16 June 2009 during the protests against his reelection. Ahmadinejad was controversially reelected as president after a closely contested and disputed election, which involved many candidates, but whose leading vote-getters were Ahmadinejad and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. The government reported that Ahmadinejad had won the election with 62 percent of the vote. Montazeri stated that "No one in their right mind can believe" the results were fairly counted. Montazeri called for three days of public mourning for the death of Neda Agha-Soltan and others killed during 20 June protests. He further declared that the then current ruling government was neither Islamic nor a republic, but military. In November 2009, on the day before the 30th anniversary celebration of the Iran hostage crisis, Montazeri said that the occupation of the American embassy in 1979 had been a mistake.
Human rights and gender
While Ayatollah Montazeri has been celebrated as a champion of the rights of political prisoners, and human rights associated with the public sphere, in an interview conducted in 2003 in Qom with the Iranian feminist academic Golbarg Bashi he said that while men and women enjoy the same dignity and respect in the eyes of God, women's rights must remain strictly under the domain of Shi'i fiqh rather than international human rights conventions such as CEDAW.
In response to Golbarg Bashi, Ayatollah Montazeri said:
When Bashi informed him that currently (2003) in Iranian universities, "some 60% of students are women" and asked him "so in future generations, when the number of professors, physicians, high-ranking experts, etc, will be mostly women, will Islam be able to have an ijtihad and modify these unjust laws because they no longer correspond with reality?"
Ayatollah Montazeri responded: "Those aspects of the Islamic law that are based on the very letter of the Qur'an, the answer is no. But certain other things yes, you can, and they can be subject to changing times. But those that are from the very letter of the Qur'an, no they cannot, and those have certain wisdom and subtleties in them."
Reputation
According to journalist Christopher de Bellaigue, Montazeri was regarded as "brilliant" by his allies, and even his opponents; de Bellaigue added that Montazeri "lives plainly, and equates Islam with social justice". Montazeri's detractors portrayed him as stubborn and naïve in his insistence that the Islamic republic find reconciliation with the "hypocrites" and "liberals" who are its "internal enemies."
Public image
In late 1960s, Montazeri gained influence and popularity in Isfahan Province after his speeches criticizing the Shah, moving SAVAK to banish and subsequently imprison him.
In 1980s, Montazeri was known by the pejorative nickname Gorbeh Nareh (, the masculine cat) after the Cat, a character in the Pinocchio animated series. According to Elaine Sciolino, this was due to his "poor public speaking skills, squeaky voice, round face and grizzled beard".
Personal life
On 4 September 1942, he married Mah-Sultan Rabbani (1926 – 26 March 2010) and had seven children, four daughters and three sons. One of his sons, Mohammad Montazeri, died in a bomb blast at Islamic Republican Party headquarters in 1981 which was carried out by the People's Mujahedin of Iran; another, Saeed Montazeri, lost an eye in the Iran-Iraq war in 1985. Another son, Ahmad Montazeri, is a cleric in Qom; during the 1970s Ahmad underwent military training in Fatah camps in Lebanon. The brother of Montazeri's son-in-law, Mehdi Hashemi, was sentenced to death and executed after the 1979 revolution due to his alleged involvement in the murder of Ayatollah Abul Hassan Shams Abadi, who had been a critic of Montazeri, in Isfahan.
He was described by Ayatollah Mohammad Guilani as "meticulous about, if not obsessed by, cleanliness."
Death
On 19 December 2009, Montazeri died in his sleep of heart failure at his home in Qom, at the age of 87. The Islamic Republic News Agency, the official news agency of Iran, did not use the Ayatollah title in its initial reports of his death and referred to him as the "clerical figure of rioters". The state television and radio broadcasters were similar, showing the tension between the government and its opponents.
Funeral and protests
Montazeri's funeral was said to have marked "a new phase" in Iran's 2009 uprising.
21 December
On 21 December, hundreds of thousands of mourners and the Green Movement supporters from across Iran turned out in Montazeri's funeral and turned the funeral to a massive protest against the Iranian government. The funeral service for him began at his house and funeral prayers were held at the Grand Mosque in Qom. After the special prayers by Ayatollah Mousa Shabiri Zanjani, his body was laid to rest in the Fatima Masumeh Shrine. He was buried alongside his son, Mohammad Montazeri.
The protesters chanted opposition slogans, including "Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader", and “Dictator, this is your last message: the people of Iran are rising!”
Although the police mostly stayed clear of the funeral, there were some skirmishes between protesters and the Basij militia. Also on 21 December, inside the Qom shrine where Montazeri’s body was laid to rest, opposition activists gathered and chanted “Death to the dictator.” When one group of pro-government basiji militiamen came toward them, chanting “Death to the hypocrites,” the crowd changed to an anti-basiji slogan. Then they took out money, offering it to the basiji, and chanted that they were acting as paid mercenaries of the government: “Where is the oil money? Spent on the Basiji,” and “Basij’s great pride, rape in prison.” On the same day, Mir-Hossein Mousavi stepped out from the compound of Grand Ayatollah Saanei, a fellow reformist, to cross the street to Montazeri’s house in Qom. At that moment, a group of 30 bearded men, holding Montazeri pictures to blend into the crowd, dropped the portraits, started attacking Mousavi and shouted “death to the hypocrite.” The former candidate had to be hustled quickly into the Montazeri compound. The same thing happened when cleric Mehdi Karroubi stepped into the street. This time, groups of reformists were ready and pushed back the vigilantes, so that Karroubi could pass.
As the funeral procession ended, security forces poured into the city, blocking roads to the Ayatollah's house and tearing down posters of the Ayatollah. Mourners were reported to have thrown stones at police who tried to stop them chanting pro-Montazeri slogans. Mourners responded defiantly when ordered by loudspeaker not to chant, breaking into shouts of "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein" in support of Mir Hossein Mousavi. When a crowd of pro-government supporters chanted back: "I will give my life for the supreme leader," they were booed by mourners, a witness said. The security forces prevented the Ayatollah's family from holding a planned memorial ceremony in the grand mosque of Qom following the funeral.
According to the reformist website Kalameh, men on motorbikes, believed to be Ahmadinejad supporters, attacked the car carrying Mir Hossein Mousavi back from Qom to Tehran. They insulted Mousavi, smashed the back window and injured one of his aides.
There were also protests in Najafabad, birthplace of Ayatollah Montazeri. Internet videos showed protesters waving green banners and chanting, “Dictator, dictator, Montazeri is alive!” and “Oh Montazeri, your path will be followed even if the dictator shoots us all!”
22 and 23 December
On 22 December, Ahmadinejad continued his quest to strip his opponents of their last vestiges of political power. He interrupted a visit to Shiraz to return to Tehran and remove Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main opposition leader he defeated in the presidential election, as head of the state Academy of Arts and Culture- a post he had held for ten years. Hardliners also want Mousavi arrested for his role in inciting unrest since the disputed June election.
On 23 December, Iranian security forces clashed with tens of thousands of opposition supporters in the city of Isfahan, according to opposition website reports. Activists said police used tear gas, pepper spray and batons to disperse people gathering to commemorate Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in the Seyed mosque. People had gathered at the main mosque for the memorial service, but when they arrived the doors were closed and security forces told them to leave. Afterwards, security forces began beating people, including women and children with batons, chains and stones, used tear gas and pepper spray and arrested at least 50 people, including four journalists and a cleric, Masoud Abid, who was to deliver the sermon. Many were also injured. One witness said, "They took people in the shops and beat them up mostly out of public vision although some beatings happened outside on the streets." Security forces also sealed off the home of Ayatollah Jalal Al-Din Taheri, who organised the service and used to lead Friday prayers in Isfahan until he resigned in 2002 in protest at the government’s growing authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, footage sent to the BBC from Najafabad showed crowds chanting "Criminals, rapists, death to the leadership" and "We're not afraid, we're not afraid" as security men watched from rooftops.
Police severely attacked mourners and protesters in several cities, with many wounded and arrested. The government also announced that banknotes with anti-government annotation, which recently spread across the country, will be forbidden starting from 8 January.
24 December
On 24 December, opposition web sites reported that police in Tehran and the northwestern city of Zanjan clashed with protesters defying an order by the Iranian government banning memorial services for Montazeri. Protesters marched in Imam Khomeini Square in southern Tehran in a sign of mourning for Montazeri. The protesters chanted, "Today is a mourning day; the green nation of Iran is mourning today"—a reference to the trademark color of the opposition. The police attacked the protesters with clubs and tear gas. Older women tried to prevent the arrest of young men by throwing themselves on them, and were severely beaten by officers who intended to drag the young men away.
Meanwhile, the police in Zanjan, a city of mostly Turkish speakers, tried to prevent a mourning ceremony for Montazeri by locking the mosque where the ceremony was to be held and attacking mourners who chanted outside it. It was mentioned that: “The police beat people with such violence that many suffered from broken legs, arms and noses.” There were also many arrests.
26 December
Witnesses and opposition websites reported the following incidents:
There were protests in several areas of the capital, including the poorer areas of south Tehran, and government forces were using tear gas to try to disperse demonstrators.
Clashes were reported in northern Tehran near Jamaran mosque (where Khomeini used to address people), between thousands of opposition supporters (who shouted anti-government slogans) and riot police. Reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami had been due to speak at the mosque to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashura. However, security officials cancelled the Ashura speech to be given by Khatami and also surrounded the mosque. A reformist website reported about 50 plainclothes forces breaking into Jamaran mosque and attacking people. Riot police also fired tear gas during the incident. Protesters shouted, "death to this dictatorship" and "if Khomeini was alive, he would sure be with us," according to witnesses. A witness also said, "Police told them they have five minutes to leave and, when they were still shouting slogans and persisted, policemen on motorbikes drove through the crowds and fired teargas." Riot police and members of the Basij also chased demonstrators into the nearby bustling Niavaran street and fired paintballs at them. The security forces also arrested several protesters. Clashes were also reported between police and protesters near another north Tehran mosque, Dar al-Zahra, which is known to host reformist clerics.
Opposition supporters had gathered in groups along a stretch of a main Tehran city centre route several kilometres long, but police were out in force and were not letting them join each other. Earlier, there were clashes at several points along Enghelab Street, a main thoroughfare where months earlier hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters had staged protest marches after Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election. Police also stopped and arrested the passengers of a bus near Enghelab Square because they were chanting pro-opposition slogans. Some protesters were reported to have chanted: "The dictator must know that he will soon be overthrown."
Tension was running high at rallies in which protesters were chanting anti-government slogans in three areas of central Tehran. Government forces, including soldiers of the elite Revolutionary Guard and the paramilitary Basiji, are said to have reacted aggressively—beating protesters with batons, firing warning shots into the air to disperse demonstrators, using teargas and pepper spray and smashing the windscreens of cars that were hooting in protest, as well as making numerous arrests.
Security forces chased protesters into a building housing the offices of the ISNA news agency, where some demonstrators had sought shelter during the clashes, ISNA said, adding one of its reporters had been injured when security forces had attacked the building. An eyewitness said at least two people were injured when police chased after protesters into the building. “They fractured the skull of one ISNA person and badly beat up another employee,” the witness said. ISNA's news service appeared to be working normally and it later issued a report on the incident, saying one of its reporters had been injured without specifying who was to blame.
An elderly woman travelling on a city bus in the area was heard urging passengers to chant slogans such as "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein" in support of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, a witness said. The witness said passengers on the packed bus also chanted "Our Neda is not dead, it is the government which is dead," referring to protester Neda Agha Soltan, who bled to death during a 20 June protest in shocking scenes caught on video and viewed by millions around the world.
Witnesses said riot police fired warning shots in several areas of Tehran to deter demonstrators, many of whom chanted slogans increasingly against the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, rather than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Clashes were reported in cities including Isfahan, Kermanshah and Shiraz, as opposition supporters used the Tasua and Ashura ceremonies to take to the streets.
Later events
In 2010, the office of Montazeri that had been run by his son Ahmad was closed on the orders of Ali Khamenei.
See also
Ruhollah Khomeini
Seyed Reza Bahaadini
References
Further reading
External links
Office of Ayatollah Montazeri, Qom
"Leadership & legitimacy: The controversy among the clergy over who should lead the Islamic state"—The Iranian
"Iran's fatwa for freedom"—Washington Times
Grand Ayatollah Montazeri: "The System Has No Religious Merit"
"The Good Ayatollah" by Prof. Abbas Milani, Foreign Policy
1922 births
2009 deaths
Iranian democracy activists
Iranian dissidents
Iranian grand ayatollahs
Iranian religious leaders
Iranian revolutionaries
Iranian women's rights activists
Iranian writers
Islamic democracy activists
Muslim reformers
People from Najafabad
People of the Iranian Revolution
Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom members
Speakers of the Assembly of Experts
People who have been placed under house arrest in Iran
Members of the Assembly of Experts for Constitution
Inmates of Evin Prison
20th-century Iranian philosophers
Burials at Fatima Masumeh Shrine
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Ifẹ
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Ifẹ̀ (, also Ilé-Ifẹ̀) is an ancient Yoruba city in south-western Nigeria, recent in-depth archeologically estimates suggest Ife's founding to be between the 10th century BC and 6th century BC and is widely agreed upon by historians to be the oldest amongst the classical and post-classical Yoruba city-states. The city is located in present-day Osun State. Ifẹ̀ is about 218 kilometers northeast of Lagos with a population of over 500,000 people, which is the highest in Osun State according to population census of 2006.
According to the traditions of the Yoruba religion, Ilé-Ifẹ̀ was founded by the order of the Supreme God Olódùmarè by Obatala. It then fell into the hands of his brother Oduduwa, which created enmity between the two. Oduduwa created a dynasty there, and sons and daughters of this dynasty became rulers of many other kingdoms in Yorubaland. The first Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀ is a descendant of Oduduwa, which was the 401st Orisha. The present ruler since 2015 is Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀ who is also a Nigerian accountant. Named as the city of 401 deities, Ifẹ̀ is home to many worshippers of these deities and is where they are routinely celebrated through festivals.
Ilé-Ifẹ̀ is famous worldwide for its ancient and naturalistic bronze, stone and terracotta sculptures, dating back to between 1200 and 1400 CE.
History
Origin of Ife: Creation of the world
According to Yoruba religion, Olodumare, the Supreme God, ordered Obatala to create the earth, however on his way he got drunk on palm wine. Therefore, a contemporary Orisha to the former, Oduduwa, took the items of creation from him, descended from the abode of the Orisha using a chain and threw the handful of earth on the primordial ocean. The earth rose and became a mound called Oke Ora. He then put a five toed cockerel on this primordial mound so that it would scatter the earth around, thus creating the land on which Ile Ife, the first city would be built. Oduduwa planted a palm nut in a hole in the newly formed land and from there sprang a great tree with sixteen branches, a symbolic representation of the 16 clans of the early Ife pre-urban confederation; Elu Merindinlogun, (Thirteen initial and 3 later ones). The usurpation of creation by Oduduwa, gave rise to an ever-lasting conflict between him and his contemporaneous rival Orisha, Obatala. This symbolic rivalry is still re-enacted in the modern era by the votary groups of the two divinities during the Itapa New Year festival. On account of his creation of the world, Oduduwa became the ancestor of the first divine king of the Yoruba, while Obatala is believed to have created the first Yoruba people out of clay. The meaning of the word "ife" in Yoruba is "expansion"; "Ile-Ife" is therefore in reference to the myth of origin as "The Land of Expansion" (the word, Ile, as pronounced in modern Yoruba language, means house or home, which would make the name of the city mean "The Home of Expansion").
Origin of the regional states: Dispersal from the holy city
Oduduwa had sons, daughters, and grandchildren, who went on to found their own kingdoms and empires, namely; Ila Orangun, Owu, Ketu, Sabe, Egba, Popo and Oyo. Oranmiyan, Oduduwa's last born, was one of his father's principal ministers and overseer of the nascent Edo kingdom after Oduduwa granted the plea of the Edo people for his governance. When Oranmiyan decided to go back to Ile Ife, after a period of service and exile in Benin, he left behind a child named Eweka that he had in the interim with an indigenous princess of Benin, Erinmwinde, daughter of the King (Ogie) of Egor, a neighbouring settlement to nascent Benin. The young boy went on to become the first widely accepted ruler and Oba of the second Edo dynasty that has ruled what is now Benin from that day to this. Oranmiyan later migrated northwestwards into the savanna plains to found the Oyo. Oyo later became an empire that stretched at its height from the western or right bank of the Niger River to the eastern or left banks of the Volta River. It would become known as one of the most powerful of Africa's medieval states, prior to its collapse in the mid 19th century.
Traditional setting
The King (Ooni of Ile-Ife)
The Oòni (or king) of Ife is a descendant of the godking Oduduwa, and is counted first among the Yoruba kings. He is traditionally considered the 401st spirit (Orisha), the only one that speaks. In fact, the royal dynasty of Ife traces its origin back to the founding of the city more than ten thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The present ruler is Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi (Ojaja II). The Ooni ascended his throne in 2015. Following the formation of the Yoruba Orisha Congress in 1986, the Ooni acquired an international status the likes of which the holders of his title hadn't had since the city's colonisation by the British. Nationally he had always been prominent amongst the Federal Republic of Nigeria's company of royal Obas, being regarded as the chief priest and custodian of the holy city of all the Yorubas. In former times, the palace of the Ooni of Ife was a structure built of authentic enameled bricks, decorated with artistic porcelain tiles and all sorts of ornaments. At present, it is a more modern series of buildings. The current Ooni, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, Ooni of Ife, (born October 17, 1974) is a Nigerian accountant and the 51st Ooni of Ife. He succeeded the late Oba Okunade Sijuwade(Olubuse II) who was the 50th ooni of Ife, and who had died on July 28, 2015.
Cults of Divinities
Ife is well known as the city of 401 deities (also known as irumole or orishas). It is said that every day of the year the traditional worshippers celebrate a festival of one of these deities. Often the festivals extend over more than one day and they involve both priestly activities in the palace and theatrical dramatisations in the rest of the kingdom. Historically the King only appeared in public during the annual Olojo festival (celebration of the new dawn); other important festivals here include the Itapa festival for Obatala and Obameri, the Edi festival for Moremi Ajasoro and the Ugbo with their Igare (Oluyare) masqueraders.
Kings and gods were often depicted with large heads because the artists believed that the Ase was held in the head, the Ase being the inner power and energy of a person. Both historic figures of Ife and the offices associated with them are represented. One of the best documented among this is the early king Obalufon II who is said to have invented bronze casting and is honored in the form of a naturalistic copper life-size mask.
The city was a settlement of substantial size between the 12th and 14th centuries, with houses featuring potsherd pavements. Ilé-Ifè is known worldwide for its ancient and naturalistic bronze, stone and terracotta sculptures, which reached their peak of artistic expression between 1200 and 1400 CE In the period around 1300 CE the artists at Ife developed a refined and naturalistic sculptural tradition in terracotta, stone and copper alloy—copper, brass, and bronze—many of which appear to have been created under the patronage of King Obalufon II, the man who today is identified as the Yoruba patron deity of brass casting, weaving and regalia. After this period, production declined as political and economic power shifted to the nearby kingdom of Benin which, like the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, developed into a major empire.
Bronze and terracotta art created by this civilization are significant examples of naturalism in pre-colonial African art and are distinguished by their variations in regalia, facial marking patterns, and body proportions. Ancient Ife also was famous for its glass beads which have been found at sites as far away as Mali, Mauritania, and Ghana.
Shrines, altars, and temples
Igbo Olokun: Igbo Olokun used to be a forested, sacred grove (igbo) that housed shrines at which the goddess Olokun was worshipped. Igbo Olokun in the city of Ile-Ife, in south-western Nigeria, was said to have a history of glass makers with unique manufacturing techniques in West Africa. The recovery of glass beads and associated production materials were found there during excavation. Analysis of the composition of the artefacts and preliminary dating of the site, which puts the main timing of glass-working between the 11th and 15th centuries AD. The results of these studies suggest that glass bead manufacture at this site was largely independent of glass-making traditions documented farther afield, and that Igbo Olokun may represent one of the earliest known glass-production workshops in West Africa. The location is not divulged except on request and permission of the keepers of the shrine because it is a sacred grove.
Oduduwa Shrine and Grove: The shrine of the progenitor of the Yoruba race. Worshippers and initiates flood the place seeking blessings and pay obeisance to the originator of their civilization.
Agbonniregun Temple: The grove of Ọrunmila an Orisha. He is the Orisha of wisdom, knowledge, and divination. This source of knowledge is believed to have a keen understanding of the human form and of purity, and is therefore praised as often being more effective than other remedies.
Archaeology
Burnt pipes (or tuyere), stone tools, broken calabash, decorated potsherds, and pottery (e.g., rimsherd, plane-sherd body, broken, and washed pottery) were excavated at Iyekere. Iron smelting, charcoal utilized in the process of smelting, and iron slags involved in pitting were also discovered.
Iron smelting occurred in the Ife region. The yield and efficiency were quite high as the iron smelting process yielded ore grade near 80 percent iron oxide, lean slag possessed less than 60 percent iron oxide, and no greater than the required amount of iron oxide in the slag was left for slag formation. While more excavation is needed to produce a more accurate estimate for the age of the smelting site, it can be approximated to likely being precolonial, during the Late Iron Age.
Igbo Olokun, also known as Olokun Grove, may be one of the earliest workshops for producing glass in West Africa. Glass production may have begun during, if not before, the 11th century. The 11th - 15th century were the peak of glass production. High lime, high alumina (HLHA) and low lime, high alumina (LLHA) glass are distinct compositions that were developed using locally sourced recipes, raw materials, and pyrotechnology. The presence of HLHA glass beads discovered throughout West Africa (e.g., Igbo-Ukwu in southern Nigeria, Gao and Essouk in Mali, and Kissi in Burkina Faso), after the ninth century CE, reveals the broader importance of this glass industry in the region and shows its participation in regional trade networks (e.g., trans-Saharan trade, trans-Atlantic trade). Glass beads served as “the currency for negotiating political power, economic relations, and cultural/spiritual values” for “Yoruba, West Africans, and the African diaspora.”
In Osun Grove, the distinct glassmaking technology produced by the Yoruba persisted into the seventeenth century.
Government
The main city of Ife is divided into two local government areas: Ife East, headquartered at Oke-ogbo and Ife central at Ajebandele area of the city. Both local governments are composed of a total of 21 political wards. The city has an estimated population of 355,813 people.
Geography
Latitudes 7°28′N and 7°45′N and longitudes 4°30′E and 4°34′E. Ile-Ife is a rural area with settlements where agriculture is occupied by most. Ife has an undulating terrain underlain by metamorphic rocks and characterized by two types of soils, deep clay soils on the upper slopes and sandy soils on the lower parts. Within the tropical savanna climate zone of West Africa. It has average rainfall of usually from March to October and a mean relative humidity of 75% to 100%. Ife is east of the city of Ibadan and connected to it through the Ife-Ibadan highway; Ife is also from Osogbo and has road networks to other cities such as Ede, Ondo and Ilesha. There is the Opa river and reservoir, that serves as a water treatment facility for OAU college.
Climate
In Ifé, the dry season is muggy and partially cloudy, and the temperature is high all year round. The wet season is oppressive and overcast. The average annual temperature ranges from 66 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit, rarely falling below 60 or rising over 98.
Temperature
From January 22 to April 4, the hot season, with an average daily high temperature exceeding 91°F, lasts for 2.4 months. In Ifé, March is the hottest month of the year, with an average high of 92°F and low of 73°F. From June 14 to October 6, the cool season, which has an average daily high temperature below 84°F, lasts for 3.8 months.
August is the coldest month of the year in Ifé, with an average low temperature of 71°F and high temperature of 82°F.
Cloud cover
The average proportion of sky covered by clouds at Ife varies significantly seasonally throughout the year.
Ile-Ife experiences 2.9 months of clearer weather, which starts about November 17 and ends around February 13. December is the clearest month of the year, with a 50% average percentage of clear, mostly clear, or partly overcast skies.
Around February 13 of each year, the cloudier period starts, lasts for 9.1 months, and ends around November 17. April is the month with the most cloud cover; on average, 86% of the town has overcast or mainly cloudy skies during this month.
Precipitation
A day is considered to be wet if there has been at least 0.04 inches of liquid or liquid-equivalent precipitation. In Ifé, the likelihood of rainy days varies a great deal from season to season.
The 6.6-month wetter season, which runs from April 7 to October 27, has a more than 45% chance of precipitation on any one day. In Ifé, September has an average of 25.4 days with at least 0.04 inches of precipitation, making it the month with the most rainy days.
From late October to early April, a period of about 5.4 months, is the dry season. December has an average of 1.4 days with at least 0.04 inches of precipitation, making it the month with the fewest wet days in Ifé. With an average of 25.4 days, September is the month in Ifé with the most rainy days. According to this classification, rain alone has the highest probability of all types of precipitation, peaking at 86% on September 22.
Economy
Ife contains attractions like the Natural History Museum of Nigeria. Ife is home to a regional agricultural center with an area that produces vegetables, grain cocoa, tobacco, and cotton. Ife has a few open markets, such as Oja Titun or Odo-gbe market with about 1,500 shops.
In terms of development, the Ife central area of Ilé Ifè is more developed. The areas include Parakin, Eleyele, Modomo, Damico, and Crown Estate Area. These areas are characterized by modern houses, good road network, constant electricity and security.
Education
Ife has several universities that are well-known both in Nigeria and internationally; such as the Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly University of Ife), and Oduduwa University.
It is also home to the Seventh Day Adventist Grammar School, Ile-Ife
Notable people
Tunde Odunlade (born 1954), artist and musician
Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi; (Ọjájá II) (born 1974), 51st Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀
Femi Fani-Kayode (born 1960), Nigerian politician, essayist, poet and lawyer
Iyiola Omisore (born 1957), Nigerian businessman, engineer and politician
Chief Remi Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode, Q.C., SAN, CON
Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse II (1930–2015), 50th Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀
See also
Ife Empire
History of the Yoruba people
Legends of Africa
List of rulers of Ife
Notes
References
Akinjogbin, I. A. (Hg.): The Cradle of a Race: Ife from the Beginning to 1980, Lagos 1992. The book also has chapters on the present religious situation in the town.
Bascom, William: The Yoruba of south-western Nigeria, New York 1969. The book mainly deals with Ife.
Bascom, William "The Olojo festival at Ife, 1937", in: A. Falassi (ed.), Time out of Time: Essays on the Festival, Albuquerque, 1987, 62–73.
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity c.1300, Cambridge University Press 2015. .
Blier, Suzanne Preston. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/blier/files/blier.pdf "Art in Ancient Ife Birthplace of the Yoruba"]. African Arts 2012
Frobenius, Leo, The Voice of Africa, London 1913 (Frobenius stayed for nearly two months in Ife, in 1910-11).
Johnson, Samuel: History of the Yorubas, London 1921.
Lange, Dierk: "The dying and the rising God in the New Year Festival of Ife", in: Lange, Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa, Dettelbach 2004, pp. 343–376.
Lange, Dierk: "Preservation of Canaanite creation culture in Ife", in: H.-P. Hahn and G. Spittler (eds.), Between Resistance and Expansion, Münster 2004, 125–158.
Lange, Dierk: "Origin of the Yoruba and 'Lost Tribes of Israel'", Anthropos, 106, 2011, 579–595.
Olubunmi, A. O. The Rise and Fall of the Yoruba Race 10,000 BC–1960 AD, The 199 Publishing Palace
Olubunmi, A. O. On Ijesa Racial Purity, The 199 Publishing Palace
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince), The Oral Traditions in Ile-Ife, , Academica Press, 2009, Palo Alto, USA.
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince): The Aura of Yoruba Philosophy, Religion and Literature, , Diaspora Press of America, 2003, Boston, USA.
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince): Introduction to Yoruba Philosophy, Religion and Literature, , Athelia Henrietta Press, 1998, New York, USA.
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince): The Covenant of the Earth--Yoruba Religious & Philosophical Narratives, , Athelia Henrietta Press, 1998, New York, USA.
Olupona, Jacob K.: City of 201 Gods: Ile-Ife in Time, Space and Imagination, Berkeley 2011.
Stride, G. T. and C. Ifeka: "Peoples and Empires of West Africa: West Africa in History 1000–1800", New York 1971.
Walsh, M. J., "The Edi festival at Ile Ife", African Affairs, 47 (1948), 231–8.
Willett, Frank: Ife in the History of West African Sculpture, London, 1967. The book also deals with some oral traditions of Ile-Ife.
Wyndham, John: "The creation", Man, 19 (1919), 107–8.
External links
Ife - World History Encyclopedia
Homepage of the Ooni of Ife
The Story of Africa: Ife and Benin BBC page on Ife
Yoruba Myths Por Ulli Beie
Archaeological sites in Nigeria
Cities in Nigeria
Cities in Yorubaland
Holy cities
Populated places in Osun State
Sacred sites in traditional African religions
Yoruba history
Yoruba religion
Archaeological sites of Western Africa
Articles containing video clips
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda%20of%20the%20deed
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Propaganda of the deed
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Propaganda of the deed (or propaganda by the deed, from the French ) is specific political direct action meant to be exemplary to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution.
It is primarily associated with acts of violence perpetrated by proponents of insurrectionary anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th century, including bombings and assassinations aimed at the State, the alleged ruling class, and Church arsons targeting religious groups, even though propaganda of the deed also had non-violent applications. These acts of terrorism were intended to ignite a "spirit of revolt" by demonstrating the state, the middle and upper classes, and religious organizations were not omnipotent and also to provoke the State to become escalatingly repressive in its response. In 1881, the International Anarchist Congress of London gave the tactic its approval.
Anarchist origins
Various definitions
One of the first individuals to conceptualise propaganda by the deed was the Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane (1818–1857), who wrote in his "Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around." Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), in his "Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870) stated that "we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda." The concept, in a broader setting, has a rich heritage, as the words of Francis of Assisi reveal: "Let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: 'let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda." It was not advocacy for mass murder, but a call for targeted killings of the representatives of capitalism and government at a time when such action might garner sympathy from the population, such as during periods of government repression or labor conflicts, although Most himself once claimed that "the existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion." In 1885, he published The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, a technical manual for acquiring and detonating explosives based on the knowledge he acquired by working at an explosives factory in New Jersey. Most was an early influence on American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Berkman attempted propaganda by the deed when he tried in 1892 to kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick following the deaths by shooting of several striking workers.
Beverly Gage, professor of U.S. history at Yale University, elaborates on what the concept meant to outsiders and those within the anarchist movement:
By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda of the deed" had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to refer to individual bombings, regicides and tyrannicides. In 1881, "propaganda by the deed" was formally adopted as a strategy by the anarchist London Congress. In 1886, French anarchist Clément Duval achieved a form of propaganda of the deed, stealing 15,000 francs from the mansion of a Parisian socialite, before accidentally setting the house on fire. Caught two weeks later, he was dragged from the court crying "Long live anarchy!", and condemned to death. Duval's sentence was later commuted to hard labor on Devil's Island, French Guiana. In the anarchist paper Révolte, Duval famously declared that, "Theft exists only through the exploitation of man by man... when Society refuses you the right to exist, you must take it... the policeman arrested me in the name of the Law, I struck him in the name of Liberty".
As early as 1887, a few important figures in the anarchist movement had begun to distance themselves from individual acts of violence. Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in Le Révolté that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite". A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the trade union movement. The anarcho-syndicalist, Fernand Pelloutier, argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual dynamiter."
State repression (including the infamous 1894 French lois scélérates) of the anarchist and labor movements following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have contributed to the abandonment of these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally state repression, in the first place, may have played a role in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French socialist movement, into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, the execution and exile of many communards to penal colonies, favored individualist political expression and acts.
Anarchist historian Max Nettlau provided a more complex concept of propaganda when he said that,
Later anarchist authors advocating "propaganda of the deed" included the German anarchist Gustav Landauer, and the Italians Errico Malatesta and Luigi Galleani. For Gustav Landauer, "propaganda of the deed" meant the creation of libertarian social forms and communities that would inspire others to transform society. In "Weak Statesmen, Weaker People," he wrote that the state is not something "that one can smash in order to destroy. The state is a relationship between human beings... one destroys it by entering into other relationships." Errico Malatesta described "propaganda by the deed" as violent communal insurrections that were meant to ignite the imminent revolution. Though in the last analysis Malatesta considered violence a necessity, he considered it an anarchist's duty to warn of its dangers, writing:
At the other extreme, the anarchist Luigi Galleani, perhaps the most vocal proponent of "propaganda by the deed" from the turn of the century through the end of the First World War, took undisguised pride in describing himself as a subversive, a revolutionary propagandist and advocate of the violent overthrow of established government and institutions through the use of 'direct action', i.e., bombings and assassinations. Galleani heartily embraced physical violence and terrorism, not only against symbols of the government and the capitalist system, such as courthouses and factories, but also through direct assassination of 'enemies of the people': capitalists, industrialists, politicians, judges, and policemen. He had a particular interest in the use of bombs, going so far as to include a formula for the explosive nitroglycerine in one of his pamphlets advertised through his monthly magazine, Cronaca Sovversiva. By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely effective speaker and advocate of his policy of violent action, attracting a number of devoted Italian-American anarchist followers who called themselves Galleanists. Carlo Buda, the brother of Galleanist bombmaker Mario Buda, said of him, "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw".
Illegalism
Propaganda of the deed is also related to illegalism, an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 20th century as an outgrowth of anarchist individualism. The illegalists openly embraced criminality as a lifestyle. Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's concept of "egoism", the illegalists broke from anarchists like Clément Duval and Marius Jacob who justified theft with a theory of individual reclamation. Instead, the illegalists argued that their actions required no moral basis – illegal acts were taken not in the name of a higher ideal, but in pursuit of one's own desires. France's Bonnot Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
Relationship to revolution
Propaganda of the deed thus included stealing (in particular bank robberies – named "expropriations" or "revolutionary expropriations" to finance the organization), rioting and general strikes which aimed at creating the conditions of an insurrection or even a revolution. These acts were justified as the necessary counterpart to state repression. As early as 1911, Leon Trotsky condemned individual acts of violence by anarchists as useful for little more than providing an excuse for state repression. "The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda by the deed' can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses," he wrote in 1911, "Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise." Vladimir Lenin largely agreed, viewing individual anarchist acts of terrorism as an ineffective substitute for coordinated action by disciplined cadres of the masses. Both Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged the necessity of violent rebellion and assassination to serve as a catalyst for revolution, but they distinguished between the ad hoc bombings and assassinations carried out by proponents of the propaganda of the deed, and organized violence coordinated by a professional revolutionary vanguard utilized for that specific end.
Sociologist Max Weber wrote that the state has a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force", and, in Karl Marx's words, the state was only the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois class. Propaganda by the deed, including assassinations (sometimes involving bombs, named in French "machines infernales" – "hellish machines", usually made with bombs, sometimes only several guns assembled together), were thus legitimized by part of the anarchist movement and the First International as a valid means to be used in class struggle. The predictable state responses to these actions were supposed to display to the people the inherently repressive nature of the bourgeois state, delegitimizing it (legitimacy being key). This would in turn bolster the revolutionary spirit of the people, leading to the overthrow of the state. This is the basic formula of the cycle protests-repression-protests, which in specific conditions may lead to an effective state of insurrection.
This cycle has been observed during the 1905 Russian Revolution or in Paris in May 1968. However, it failed to achieve its revolutionary objective on the vast majority of occasions, thus leading to the abandonment by the vast majority of the anarchist movement of such bombings. However, the state never failed in its repressive response, enforcing various which usually involved tough clampdowns on the whole of the labor movement. These harsh laws, sometimes accompanied by the proclamation of the state of exception, progressively led to increased criticism among the anarchist movement of assassinations. The role of several and the use of deliberate strategies of tension by governments, using such false flag terrorist actions as the Spanish La Mano Negra, work to discredit this violent tactic in the eyes of most socialist libertarians. John Filiss and Jim Bell are two of the best known modern advocates, with the latter developing the concept of an assassination marketa market system for anonymously hiring and compensating political assassination.
Notable actions
April 4, 1866 – Dmitry Karakozov makes an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II of Russia at the gates of the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg. As the Tsar leaves the Summer Garden, Dmitry rushes forward to fire his weapon. However, the attempt is thwarted by Osip Komissarov, a peasant-born hatter's apprentice, who jostles Karakozov's elbow just before he fires his shot.
May 11, 1878 – Max Hödel attempts to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany. He is apprehended and executed by beheading on August 15.
August 4, 1878 – Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky stabs to death General Nikolai Mezentsov, head of the Tsar's secret police, in response to the execution of Ivan Kovalsky.
November 17, 1878 – Giovanni Passannante attempts to assassinate King Umberto I of Italy with a dagger. It is the first attempted murder against the monarch and the first in the history of House of Savoy. Passannante is sentenced to death but his penalty is commuted to prison for life. While in jail, he goes insane and is taken to the asylum.
February 1879 – Grigori Goldenberg shoots Prince Dmitri Kropotkin, the Governor of Kharkov in the Russian Empire, to death.
April 20, 1879 – Alexander Soloviev attempts to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The monarch spots the weapon in his hands and flees, but Soloviev still fires five shots, all of which miss. He is captured and hanged on May 28.
February 17, 1880 – Stepan Khalturin successfully blows up part of the Winter Palace in an attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Although the Tsar escapes unharmed, eight soldiers are killed and 45 wounded. Referring to the 1862 invention of dynamite, historian Benedict Anderson observes that "Nobel's invention had now arrived politically." Khalturin is hanged on the orders of Alexander's son and successor, Alexander III, in 1882 after the assassination of a police official.
March 1 (Julian calendar) 1881 – Tsar Alexander II of Russia is killed in a bomb blast by Narodnaya Volya.
July 23, 1892 – Alexander Berkman tries to kill American industrialist Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for the hiring of Pinkerton detectives to break up the Homestead Strike, resulting in the deaths of seven striking members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Although badly wounded, Frick survives, and Berkman is arrested and eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison.
November 7, 1893 – The Spanish anarchist Santiago Salvador throws two Orsini bombs into the orchestra pit of the Liceu Theater in Barcelona during the second act of the opera Guillaume Tell, killing some twenty people and injuring scores of others.
December 9, 1893 – Auguste Vaillant throws a nail bomb in the French National Assembly, killing nobody and injuring one. He is then sentenced to death and executed by the guillotine on February 4, 1894, shouting "Death to bourgeois society and long live anarchy!" (A mort la société bourgeoise et vive l'anarchie!). During his trial, Vaillant declares that he had not intended to kill anybody, but only to injure several deputies in retaliation against the execution of Ravachol, who was executed for four bombings.
February 12, 1894 – Émile Henry, intending to avenge Auguste Vaillant, sets off a bomb in Café Terminus (a café near the Gare Saint-Lazare train station in Paris), killing one and injuring twenty. During his trial, when asked why he wanted to harm so many innocent people, he declares, "There is no innocent bourgeois." This act is one of the rare exceptions to the rule that propaganda of the deed targets only specific powerful individuals. Henry is convicted and executed by guillotine on May 21.
February 15, 1894 – A chemical explosive carried by Martial Bourdin prematurely detonates outside the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in Greenwich Park, killing him.
June 24, 1894 – Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio, seeking revenge for Auguste Vaillant and Émile Henry, stabs Sadi Carnot, the President of France, to death. Caserio is executed by guillotine on August 15.
June 7, 1896 – Anarchist bombing of a Feast of Corpus Christi procession in Barcelona. Three people were killed instantly and another nine died from their injuries over the following days. The victims, however, were overwhelmingly poor and working class people attending religious worship, which caused some anarchists to denounce and disown the bombing.
November 3, 1896 – In the Greek city of Patras, Dimitris Matsalis, an anarchist shoemaker, attacks local banker Dionysios Fragkopoulos and merchant Andreas Kollas with a knife. Fragkopoulos is killed on the spot; Kollas is seriously wounded.
April 22, 1897 – Pietro Acciarito tries to stab King Umberto of Italy. He is sentenced to life imprisonment.
August 8, 1897 – Michele Angiolillo shoots dead Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo at a thermal bath resort, seeking vengeance for the imprisonment and torture of alleged revolutionaries in the Montjuïc trial. Angiolillo is executed by garotte on August 20.
September 10, 1898 – Luigi Lucheni stabs to death Empress Elisabeth, the consort of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, with a needle file in Geneva, Switzerland. Lucheni is sentenced to life in prison and eventually commits suicide in his cell.
July 29, 1900 – Gaetano Bresci shoots dead King Umberto, in revenge for the Bava Beccaris massacre in Milan. Due to the abolition of capital punishment in Italy, Bresci is sentenced to penal servitude for life on Santo Stefano Island, where he is found dead less than a year later.
September 6, 1901 – Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. President William McKinley at point-blank range at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies on September 14, and Czolgosz is executed by electric chair on October 29. Czolgosz's anarchist views have been debated.
April 23, 1902 – Luigi Galleani speaks to striking silk workers at a factory in Paterson, New Jersey, urging all American workers to declare a general strike and overthrow Capitalism in the U.S. Galleani, who is wounded in the face when police open fire on the striking workers, is later indicted for inciting a riot. He flees to Canada, where he is apprehended and returned to the US by Canadian authorities.
November 15, 1902 – Gennaro Rubino attempts to murder King Leopold II of Belgium as he returns in a procession from a Requiem Mass for his recently deceased wife, Queen Marie Henriette. All three of Rubino's shots miss the monarch's carriage, and he is quickly subdued by the crowd and taken into police custody. He is sentenced to life imprisonment and dies in prison in 1918.
February 17, 1905 – Ivan Kalyayev of the SR Combat Organisation kills Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia with a bomb. Despite efforts to spare him from the death penalty by the victim's widow, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, Kalyayev was hanged on May 23, 1905.
July 21, 1905 – Members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation launch an attempt on the life of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, but the bomb missed its target, instead killing 26 members of the Sultan's service. One of the conspirators, the Armenian anarchist Christapor Mikaelian, was killed during the planning stages. The Belgian anarchist Edward Joris was also among those arrested and convicted for their part in the plot.
May 31, 1906 – Catalan anarchist Mateu Morral tries to kill King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Victoria Eugenie immediately after their wedding by throwing a bomb into the procession. The King and Queen are unhurt, but 24 bystanders and horses are killed and over 100 persons injured. Morral is apprehended two days later and commits suicide while being transferred to prison.
February 1, 1908 – Manuel Buíça and Alfredo Costa shoot to death King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Crown Prince Luis Filipe, respectively, in the Lisbon Regicide. Both Buiça and Costa, who are sympathetic to a republican movement in Portugal that includes anarchist elements, are shot dead by police officers.
February 23, 1908 – Sicilian anarchist Giuseppe Alia fatally shoots Fr. Leo Heinrichs, a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order, in front of a church filled with witnesses during Mass at St Elizabeth of Hungary Church in Denver, Colorado. Alia was arrested while attempting to flee the scene, convicted of first degree murder after four different alienists ruled him sane, and executed by hanging.
March 28, 1908 – Anarchist Selig Cohen aka Selig Silverstein tries to throw a bomb in New York City's Union Square. A premature explosion kills a bystander named Ignatz Hildebrand and mortally wounds Cohen, who dies a month later. Several contemporary pictures taken after the explosion show the mortally wounded Silverstein with his victim next to him.
November 14, 1909 – Argentine anarchist militant Simón Radowitzky assassinates Buenos Aires chief of police, Lieutenant Ramón Falcón by a throwing a bomb at his carriage while Falcón was returning from a deceased fellow officer's funeral. The assassination prompted President José Figueroa Alcorta to declare a state of siege and pass the Social Defense Law, which allowed the deportation of anarchist "agitators".
June 15, 1910 – The Bosnian anarchist Bogdan Žerajić attempts to assassinate the Governor of Bosnia and Herzegovian Marijan Varešanin, but failed and subsequently committed suicide.
September 14, 1911 – Dmitri Bogrov shoots Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin at the Kiev Opera House in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and two of his daughters, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana. Stolypin dies four days later, and Bogrov is hanged on September 28.
November 12, 1912 – Anarchist Manuel Pardiñas shoots Spanish Prime Minister José Canalejas dead in front of a Madrid bookstore. Pardiñas then immediately turns the gun on himself and commits suicide.
February 9, 1913 – The farmers Mulatilo Virgilio, Fermin Perez and Fabian Graciano assassinate Salvadoran President Manuel Enrique Araujo with machetes.
March 18, 1913 – Alexandros Schinas shoots dead King George I of Greece while the monarch is on a walk near the White Tower of Thessaloniki. Schinas is captured and tortured; he commits suicide on May 6 by jumping out the window of the gendarmerie, although there is speculation that he could have been thrown to his death.
June 28, 1914 – Members of Young Bosnia organize the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The attempt of the Bosnian anarcho-syndicalist Nedeljko Čabrinović failed, but the attempt by Gavrilo Princip was successful, killing both the Archduke and his wife Sophie.
July 4, 1914 – A bomb being prepared for use at John D. Rockefeller's home at Tarrytown, New York explodes prematurely, killing three anarchists, Arthur Caron, Carl Hansen and Charles Berg, and an innocent woman, Mary Chavez
October 13 and November 14, 1914 – Galleanists – radical followers of Luigi Galleani – explode two bombs in New York City after police forcibly disperse a protest by anarchists and communists at John D. Rockefeller's home in Tarrytown.
1914 – Marie Ganz threatens to shoot John D. Rockefeller as she arrives with a crowd and a loaded pistol in front of the Standard Oil Building in Manhattan. He is not in.
July 22, 1916 – San Francisco Preparedness Day Bombing. 10 persons killed, 40 injured.
November 24, 1917 – 9 policemen and a bystander in Milwaukee, Wisconsin killed when a time bomb left at a Catholic church by Galleanists was taken to a police station, where it exploded.
April to June 1919 – 1919 United States anarchist bombings:
April 28 – Mayor Ole Hanson of Seattle, Washington, receives a Galleanist mail bomb (defused)
April 29 – A Galleanist mail bomb intended for U.S. Senator Thomas W. Hardwick explodes, burning a servant and blowing off her hands.
June 2 – Galleanist Carlo Valdinoci killed when his bomb (intended for the Washington DC home of U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer) explodes prematurely.
June 3 – New York City night watchman William Boehner killed by a Galleanist bomb placed at a judge's house.
September 25, 1919 – The Explosion in Leontievsky Lane kills 12 and injures 55 in Moscow, Russia.
September 16, 1920 – The Wall Street bombing kills 38 and wounds 400 in the Manhattan Financial District. Galleanists are believed responsible, particularly Mario Buda, the group's principal bombmaker, although the crime remains officially unsolved.
March 8, 1921 – Three anarchists on a motorcycle shoot dead Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato Iradier in Puerta de Alcalá, Madrid.
July 14, 1922 – Gustave Bouvet attempts to kill French president Alexandre Millerand.
May 25, 1926 – Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, head of the government-in-exile of the Ukrainian People's Republic, in Paris. After an eight-day trial, he is acquitted by the jury, which was convinced of Schwartzbard's just cause: the core of his defense was that he was avenging the deaths of victims of pogroms by Petlura's forces. French prosecutors, on the other hand, had argued that Petliura opposed Pogroms, that Schwatzbard was an operative of the Soviet NKVD, and that the assassination of Petliura had been ordered by the Soviet Government. While debates continue over how much responsibility Petliura bore for Pogroms by his forces, since the opening of the Soviet archives, the prosecution has been proven correct in at least one regard. Schwartzbard was an NKVD operative carrying out a political assassination on French soil under orders from the Soviet State.
October 31, 1926 – Anteo Zamboni (11 April 1911 – 31 October 1926) was a 15-year-old anarchist who tried to assassinate Benito Mussolini in Bologna, by shooting at him during the parade celebrating the March on Rome. Zamboni, whose shot missed Mussolini, was immediately attacked and lynched by nearby squadristi (fascist squads).
1926–1928 – Several bombings in Argentina organized by the Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni, in the frame of the international campaign supporting Sacco and Vanzetti and against Fascist Italy's interests in Argentina. Bombings of the US embassy, of the Buenos Aires offices of City Bank of New York and Bank of Boston, and of the Italian consulate on May 23, 1928.
May 1931 Allegedly in retaliation for overhearing the former Monarchist national anthem playing on a record player, Far Left supporters of the Second Spanish Republic launch systematic and nationwide arson attacks against the Catholic Church in Spain, which leave more than one hundred churches, Catholic schools, monasteries, and convents completely destroyed. Whether to intervene to stop the nationwide Church arsons is both urged and discussed in a Cabinet meeting, where the motion is overruled by the Prime Minister of the Republic, Manuel Azaña.
September 27, 1932 – A dynamite-filled package bomb left by Galleanists destroys Judge Webster Thayer's home in Worcester, Massachusetts, injuring his wife and a housekeeper. Judge Thayer had presided over the trials of Galleanists Sacco and Vanzetti.
February 15, 1933 – Giuseppe Zangara attempts to kill US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
May 1968 – Riots in Paris. The New-York based group "Black Mask" becomes Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and carry out artistic propaganda of the deed.
October 8, 1969 – The U.S. group Weatherman's first event is to blow up a statue in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to the Chicago Police Department casualties of the bomb thrown into the 1886 Haymarket Riot. The "Days of Rage" riots then occur in Chicago during four days. 287 Weatherman members are arrested, and one of them killed.
December 6, 1969 – Several Chicago Police Department squad cars in a Precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago, are bombed. The Weather Underground Organization (WUO) later stated in their book Prairie Fire that they had perpetrated the explosion to protest the shooting deaths of the Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark two days earlier, officially while resisting arrest by CPD officers.
1970–1972 – The British Angry Brigade group carries out at least 25 bombings (police numbers). Almost all property damage, although one person was slightly injured.
September 12, 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD scientist, break out and escape from the California Men's Colony prison.
October 8, 1970 – Bombing of Marin County (California, US) Courthouse in retaliation for the deaths of Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain.
October 10, 1970 – The Queens Courthouse is bombed to express support for the New York prison riots.
October 14, 1970 – The Harvard Center for International Affairs is bombed to protest the war in Vietnam.
September 28, 1973 – The ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy are bombed in response to ITT's role in the September 11, 1973 Chilean coup.
November 6, 1973 – The U.S. group Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) assassinates Oakland, California superintendent of schools Dr. Marcus Foster and badly wounds his deputy, Robert Blackburn.
December 20, 1973 – Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco was assassinated in Madrid as his car drove over a bomb planted by the Basque separatist group ETA.
September 11, 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation) in retribution for Anaconda's involvement in Pinochet's coup exactly a year before.
December 1975 – Greek organization Revolutionary Organization 17 November allegedly responsible of the assassination of CIA station chief in Athens Richard Welch. According to a December 2005 article by Kleanthis Grivas, journalist in Proto Thema, Sheepskin, Gladio's branch in Greece, was in fact behind the killing. US State Department denied Grivas' allegations in January 2006.
January 28, 1975 – Bombing of the U.S. State Department by Weather Underground in response to escalation in Vietnam.
April 21, 1975 – The remaining members of the SLA rob the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California and kill Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer, in the process.
September 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation in retribution for Kennecott's involvement in the Chilean coup two years prior.
May 1, 1979 – French group Action Directe carries out a machine gun attack on the employers' federation headquarters.
May 30, 1982 – The Canadian group Direct Action (aka "Squamish Five") set off a large bomb at an electricity transmission project. Four transformers were wrecked beyond repair, but no one was injured.
November 18, 1982 – Wanganui Computer Centre bombing, New Zealand
1984 – Bomb-attacks of the Dutch organisation RaRa (Radical Anti-Racist Action) against the Van Heutsz monument (Van Heutsz was the Dutch commander during the Aceh War).
1985–1987 – Dutch RaRa is responsible of several bomb-attacks on the Makro wholesale stores, which was active in South Africa.
1985 – Action Directe assassinates René Audran, in charge of the state's arms-dealing.
1986 – Georges Besse, CEO of Renault but before leader of Eurodif nuclear consortium (in which Iran had a 10 percent stake), is allegedly assassinated by Action Directe (although this thesis would be questioned, in particular by investigative journalist Dominique Lorentz).
June 28, 1988 – US naval and defense attachée in Greece William Nordeen's assassination is reinvidicated by the Revolutionary Organization 17 November.
September 26, 1989 – Assassination of Pavlos Bakoyannis, parliamentary leader of the centre-right New Democracy political party, by Greek paramilitary group Revolutionary Organization 17 November.
November 13, 1991 – Dutch RaRa blow up the house of state secretary of justice Aad Kosto.
June 30, 1993 – Dutch RaRa are responsible of bomb-attacks on the Dutch ministry of social affairs and employment.
November 30, 1999 – Black blocs destroy the storefronts of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multi-nationals with retail locations in downtown Seattle during the anti-WTO demonstrations.
June 8, 2000 – Assassination of British military attache Stephen Saunders in Greece. Members of 17N are arrested. In December 2005, Kleanthis Grivas, journalist in Proto Thema, claims that Sheepskin, Gladio's branch in Greece, was in fact behind the killing, along with the first violent act of 17N, Richard Welch CIA station chief's assassination in 1975. US State Department denied Grivas' allegations in January 2006.
July 13, 2019 – Anarchist Willem Van Spronsen attempts to ignite a propane tank in an attack on an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, USA and is killed in the ensuing police response.
Armed propaganda
Armed propaganda is a type of propaganda used by revolutionary organizations that uses destructive, but ideally not lethal violence to make a political point known to the public and eventually gain supporters for its cause. The term was used in the United States by the Weather Underground and the Black Panther Party to describe some of their bombings. Although armed propaganda can use guns or bombs, its proponents argue that its goal is debatably different from that of pure terrorism.
United States
Dan Berger, in his book about the Weatherman organization, Outlaws in America, describes the planning section for a townhouse bombing by the group, describing the action as "armed propaganda".
Latin America
The term has been applied to guerillas in Latin America in their revolutionary literature.
Iran
Bizhan Jazani used a translation of the term to describe armed struggle in Iran, particularly the Fadai guerrillas.
See also
Artivism
Civil disobedience
V (comics)
References
Bibliography
Hansen, Ann, Direct Action: Memoirs Of An Urban Guerrilla, AK Press, 2001
Turgenev, Ivan, Fathers and Sons, 1862, paints the portrait of Russian nihilists.
Anarchist theory
History of anarchism
Social anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Propaganda techniques
Terrorism tactics
Urban guerrilla warfare tactics
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20states%20with%20nuclear%20weapons
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List of states with nuclear weapons
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Eight sovereign states have publicly announced successful detonation of nuclear weapons. Five are considered to be nuclear-weapon states (NWS) under the terms of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). In order of acquisition of nuclear weapons, these are the United States, Russia (the successor of the former Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and China. Of these, the three NATO members, the UK, US, and France, are sometimes termed the P3.
Other states that possess nuclear weapons are India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Since the NPT entered into force in 1970, these three states were not parties to the Treaty and have conducted overt nuclear tests. North Korea had been a party to the NPT but withdrew in 2003.
Israel is also generally understood to have nuclear weapons, but does not acknowledge it, maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Israel is estimated to possess somewhere between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads. One possible motivation for nuclear ambiguity is deterrence with minimum political cost.
States that formerly possessed nuclear weapons are South Africa (developed nuclear weapons but then disassembled its arsenal before joining the NPT) and the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, whose weapons were transferred to Russia.
According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the worldwide total inventory of nuclear weapons as of 2021 stood at 13,080. Around 30% of these are deployed with operational forces, and more than 90% are owned by either Russia or the United States.
In its recent research, SIPRI estimated the total number of nuclear warheads acquired by nuclear states reached 12,512 in January 2023.
Approximately 9,576 are kept with military stockpiles. About 3,844 warheads are deployed with missiles. Two thousand warheads which are primarily from Russia and United States are maintained for high operational alerts.
Statistics and force configuration
The following is a list of states that have admitted the possession of nuclear weapons or are presumed to possess them, the approximate number of warheads under their control, and the year they tested their first weapon and their force configuration. This list is informally known in global politics as the "Nuclear Club". With the exception of Russia and the United States (which have subjected their nuclear forces to independent verification under various treaties) these figures are estimates, in some cases quite unreliable estimates. In particular, under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty thousands of Russian and U.S. nuclear warheads are inactive in stockpiles awaiting processing. The fissile material contained in the warheads can then be recycled for use in nuclear reactors.
From a high of 70,300 active weapons in 1986, there are approximately 3,750 active nuclear warheads and 13,890 total nuclear warheads in the world. Many of the decommissioned weapons were simply stored or partially dismantled, not destroyed.
It is also noteworthy that since the dawn of the Atomic Age, the delivery methods of most states with nuclear weapons have evolved—with some achieving a nuclear triad, while others have consolidated away from land and air deterrents to submarine-based forces.
Recognized nuclear-weapon states
These five states are known to have detonated a nuclear explosive before 1 January 1967 and are thus nuclear weapons states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. They also happen to be the UN Security Council's (UNSC) permanent members with veto power on UNSC resolutions.
United States
The United States developed the first nuclear weapons during World War II in cooperation with the United Kingdom and Canada as part of the Manhattan Project, out of the fear that Nazi Germany would develop them first. It tested the first nuclear weapon on 16 July 1945 ("Trinity") at 5:30 am, and remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, devastating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The project expenditure through 1 October 1945 was reportedly $1.845–$2 billion, in nominal terms, roughly 0.8 percent of the US GDP in 1945 and equivalent to about $29 billion in 2020 money.
It was the first nation to develop the hydrogen bomb, testing an experimental prototype in 1952 ("Ivy Mike") and a deployable weapon in 1954 ("Castle Bravo"). Throughout the Cold War it continued to modernize and enlarge its nuclear arsenal, but from 1992 on has been involved primarily in a program of stockpile stewardship. The U.S. nuclear arsenal contained 31,175 warheads at its Cold War height (in 1966). During the Cold War, the United States built approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads, more than all other nuclear-weapon states combined.
Russia (successor to the Soviet Union)
The Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon ("RDS-1") in 1949. This crash project was developed partially with information obtained via espionage during and after World War II. The Soviet Union was the second nation to have developed and tested a nuclear weapon. The direct motivation for Soviet weapons development was to achieve a balance of power during the Cold War. It tested its first megaton-range hydrogen bomb ("RDS-37") in 1955. The Soviet Union also tested the most powerful explosive ever detonated by humans, ("Tsar Bomba"), with a theoretical yield of 100 megatons, intentionally reduced to 50 when detonated. After its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet weapons entered officially into the possession of the Russian Federation. The Soviet nuclear arsenal contained some 45,000 warheads at its peak (in 1986); the Soviet Union built about 55,000 nuclear warheads since 1949.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom tested its first nuclear weapon ("Hurricane") in 1952. The UK had provided considerable impetus and initial research for the early conception of the atomic bomb, aided by Austrian, German and Polish physicists working at British universities who had either fled or decided not to return to Nazi Germany or Nazi-controlled territories. The UK collaborated closely with the United States and Canada during the Manhattan Project, but had to develop its own method for manufacturing and detonating a bomb as U.S. secrecy grew after 1945. The United Kingdom was the third country in the world, after the United States and the Soviet Union, to develop and test a nuclear weapon. Its programme was motivated to have an independent deterrent against the Soviet Union, while also maintaining its status as a great power. It tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1957 (Operation Grapple), making it the third country to do so after the United States and Soviet Union.
The British Armed Forces maintained a fleet of V bomber strategic bombers and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) equipped with nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The Royal Navy currently maintains a fleet of four ballistic missile submarines equipped with Trident II missiles. In 2016, the UK House of Commons voted to renew the British nuclear weapons system with the , without setting a date for the commencement of service of a replacement to the current system.
France
France tested its first nuclear weapon in 1960 ("Gerboise Bleue"), based mostly on its own research. It was motivated by the Suez Crisis diplomatic tension in relation to both the Soviet Union and its allies, the United States and United Kingdom. It was also relevant to retain great power status, alongside the United Kingdom, during the post-colonial Cold War (see: Force de frappe). France tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1968 ("Opération Canopus"). After the Cold War, France has disarmed 175 warheads with the reduction and modernization of its arsenal that has now evolved to a dual system based on submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and medium-range air-to-surface missiles (Rafale fighter-bombers). However, new nuclear weapons are in development and reformed nuclear squadrons were trained during Enduring Freedom operations in Afghanistan.
France acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992. In January 2006, President Jacques Chirac stated a terrorist act or the use of weapons of mass destruction against France would result in a nuclear counterattack. In February 2015, President François Hollande stressed the need for a nuclear deterrent in "a dangerous world". He also detailed the French deterrent as "fewer than 300" nuclear warheads, three sets of 16 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 54 medium-range air-to-surface missiles and urged other states to show similar transparency.
China
China tested its first nuclear weapon device ("596") in 1964 at the Lop Nur test site. The weapon was developed as a deterrent against both the United States and the Soviet Union. Two years later, China had a fission bomb capable of being put onto a nuclear missile. It tested its first hydrogen bomb ("Test No. 6") in 1967, 32 months after testing its first nuclear weapon (the shortest fission-to-fusion development known in history). China is the only NPT nuclear-weapon state to give an unqualified negative security assurance with its "no first use" policy. China acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992. As of 2016, China fielded SLBMs onboard its JL-2 submarines. As of May 2021, China had an estimated total inventory of 350 warheads.
The Yearbook published by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in 2023 revealed that China's nuclear warheads stockpile increased by 17% in 2022, reaching 410 warheads.
U.S. Department of Defense officials estimate that the Chinese had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May 2023, and it was on track to exceed some previous projections.
States declaring possession of nuclear weapons
India
India is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Indian officials rejected the NPT in the 1960s on the grounds that it created a world of nuclear "haves" and "have-nots", arguing that it unnecessarily restricted "peaceful activity" (including "peaceful nuclear explosives"), and that India would not accede to international control of their nuclear facilities unless all other countries engaged in unilateral disarmament of their own nuclear weapons. The Indian position has also asserted that the NPT is in many ways a neo-colonial regime designed to deny security to post-colonial powers.
The country tested what is called a "peaceful nuclear explosive" in 1974 (which became known as "Smiling Buddha"). The test was the first test developed after the creation of the NPT, and created new questions about how civilian nuclear technology could be diverted secretly to weapons purposes (dual-use technology). India's secret development caused great concern and anger particularly from nations that had supplied its nuclear reactors for peaceful and power generating needs, such as Canada. After its 1974 test, India maintained that its nuclear capability was primarily "peaceful", but between 1988 and 1990 it apparently weaponized two dozen nuclear weapons for delivery by air. In 1998 India tested weaponized nuclear warheads ("Operation Shakti"), including a thermonuclear device. India adopted a "no first use" policy in 1998.
In July 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a civil nuclear cooperation initiative that included plans to conclude an Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement. This initiative came to fruition through a series of steps that included India's announced plan to separate its civil and military nuclear programs in March 2006, the passage of the India–United States Civil Nuclear Agreement by the U.S. Congress in December 2006, the conclusion of a U.S.–India nuclear cooperation agreement in July 2007, approval by the IAEA of an India-specific safeguards agreement, agreement by the Nuclear Suppliers Group to a waiver of export restrictions for India, approval by the U.S. Congress and culminating in the signature of U.S.–India agreement for civil nuclear cooperation in October 2008. The U.S. State Department said it made it "very clear that we will not recognize India as a nuclear-weapon state". The United States is bound by the Hyde Act with India and may cease all cooperation with India if India detonates a nuclear explosive device. The US had further said it is not its intention to assist India in the design, construction or operation of sensitive nuclear technologies through the transfer of dual-use items. In establishing an exemption for India, the Nuclear Suppliers Group reserved the right to consult on any future issues which might trouble it. As of January 2023, India was estimated to have a stockpile of around 164 warheads.
Pakistan
Pakistan is also not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan covertly developed nuclear weapons over decades, beginning in the late 1970s. Pakistan first delved into nuclear power after the establishment of its first nuclear power plant near Karachi with equipment and materials supplied mainly by western nations in the early 1970s. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto promised in 1971 that if India could build nuclear weapons then Pakistan would too, according to him: "We will develop Nuclear stockpiles, even if we have to eat grass."
It is believed that Pakistan has possessed nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s. The United States continued to certify that Pakistan did not possess such weapons until 1990, when sanctions were imposed under the Pressler Amendment, requiring a cutoff of U.S. economic and military assistance to Pakistan. In 1998, Pakistan conducted its first six nuclear tests at the Ras Koh Hills in response to the five tests conducted by India a few weeks before.
In 2004, the Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, a key figure in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, confessed to heading an international black market ring involved in selling nuclear weapons technology. In particular, Khan had been selling gas centrifuge technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Khan denied complicity by the Pakistani government or Army, but this has been called into question by journalists and IAEA officials, and was later contradicted by statements from Khan himself.
As of early 2013, Pakistan was estimated to have had a stockpile of around 140 warheads, and in November 2014 it was projected that by 2020 Pakistan would have enough fissile material for 200 warheads.
North Korea
North Korea was a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but announced a withdrawal on 10 January 2003, after the United States accused it of having a secret uranium enrichment program and cut off energy assistance under the 1994 Agreed Framework. In February 2005, North Korea claimed to possess functional nuclear weapons, though their lack of a test at the time led many experts to doubt the claim. In October 2006, North Korea stated that, in response to growing intimidation by the United States, it would conduct a nuclear test to confirm its nuclear status. North Korea reported a successful nuclear test on 9 October 2006 (see 2006 North Korean nuclear test). Most U.S. intelligence officials believed that the test was probably only partially successful with a yield of less than a kiloton. North Korea conducted a second, higher-yield test on 25 May 2009 (see 2009 North Korean nuclear test) and a third test with still-higher yield on 12 February 2013 (see 2013 North Korean nuclear test).
North Korea claimed to have conducted its first hydrogen-bomb test on 5 January 2016, though measurements of seismic disturbances indicate that the detonation was not consistent with a hydrogen bomb. On 3 September 2017, North Korea detonated a device, which caused a magnitude 6.1 tremor, consistent with a low-powered thermonuclear detonation; NORSAR estimates the yield at 250 kilotons of TNT. In 2018, North Korea announced a halt in nuclear weapons tests and made a conditional commitment to denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula; however, in December 2019, it indicated it no longer considered itself bound by the moratorium.
Kim Jong-un officially declared North Korea a nuclear weapons state during a speech on 9 September 2022, the country's foundation day.
States indicated to possess nuclear weapons
Israel
Israel is widely believed to have been the sixth country in the world to develop nuclear weapons, but it has not acknowledged its nuclear forces. It had "rudimentary, but deliverable," nuclear weapons available as early as 1966. Israel is not a party to the NPT. Israel engages in strategic ambiguity, saying it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the region, but refusing to otherwise confirm or deny a nuclear weapons program or arsenal. This policy of "nuclear opacity" has been interpreted as an attempt to get the benefits of deterrence with a minimal political cost. Due to a US ban on funding countries that have weapons of mass destruction, Israel would lose around $2 billion a year in military and other aid from the US if it admitted to possessing nuclear weapons.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Federation of American Scientists, Israel likely possesses around 80–400 nuclear weapons. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Israel has approximately 80 intact nuclear weapons, of which 50 are for delivery by Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles and 30 are gravity bombs for delivery by aircraft. SIPRI also reports that there was renewed speculation in 2012 that Israel may also have developed nuclear-capable submarine-launched cruise missiles.
Launch authority
The decision to use nuclear weapons is always restricted to a single person or small group of people. The United States and France require their respective presidents to approve the use of nuclear weapons. In the US, the Presidential Emergency Satchel is always handled by a nearby aide unless the President is near a command center. The decision rests with the Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. Information from China is unclear, but "the launch of nuclear weapons is commonly believed to rest with the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party." Russia grants such power to the President but may also require approval from the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff. The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces has authority in North Korea. India, Pakistan and Israel have committees for such a decision.
Some countries are known to have delegated launch authority to military personnel in the event that the usual launch authority is incapacitated; whether or not the 'pre-delegated' authority exists at any particular time is kept secret. In the United States, some military commanders have been delegated authority to launch nuclear weapons "when the urgency of time and circumstances clearly does not permit a specific decision by the President." Russia has a semi automated Dead Hand system which may allow military commanders to act based on certain pre-defined criteria. British nuclear-armed submarine commanders are issued with "Letters of last resort" written by the Prime Minister containing secret instructions which may or may not give them delegated launch authority.
Nuclear weapons sharing
Nuclear weapons shared by the United States
Under NATO nuclear weapons sharing, the United States has provided nuclear weapons for Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey to deploy and store. This involves pilots and other staff of the "non-nuclear" NATO states practicing, handling, and delivering the U.S. nuclear bombs, and adapting non-U.S. warplanes to deliver U.S. nuclear bombs. However, since all U.S. nuclear weapons are protected with Permissive Action Links, the host states cannot easily arm the bombs without authorization codes from the U.S. Department of Defense. Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga acknowledged the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Italy. U.S. nuclear weapons were also deployed in Canada as well as Greece from 1963 to 1984. However, Canada withdrew three of the four nuclear-capable weapons systems by 1972. The single system retained, the AIR-2 Genie, had a yield of 1.5 kilotons, was designed to strike enemy aircraft as opposed to ground targets, and might not have qualified as a weapon of mass destruction given its limited yield. , the United States maintained around 150 nuclear weapons in Europe, as reflected in the accompanying table.
Nuclear weapons shared by Russia
, the leaders of Russia and Belarus have claimed that a "number of" nuclear weapons are located on Belarusian territory while remaining in Russian possession. Sources hostile to these countries have confirmed that nuclear warheads have been delivered to Belarus, but claim that the first transfers were instead made in August 2023. Russia's stated intention is to provide Belarus with two delivery systems: dual-capable Iskander-M missile systems and necessary training and modifications for Belarusian Su-25 aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.
The deployment of Russian weapons to Belarus was framed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as being equivalent to the deployments of American nuclear weapons to NATO Allies in Europe under international law.
Criticism of nuclear weapons sharing
Members of the Non-Aligned Movement have called on all countries to "refrain from nuclear sharing for military purposes under any kind of security arrangements." The Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) has criticized the arrangement for allegedly violating Articles I and II of the NPT, arguing that "these Articles do not permit the NWS to delegate the control of their nuclear weapons directly or indirectly to others." NATO has argued that the weapons' sharing is compliant with the NPT because "the U.S. nuclear weapons based in Europe are in the sole possession and under constant and complete custody and control of the United States."
States formerly possessing nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons have been present in many nations, often as staging grounds under control of other powers. However, in only one instance has a nation given up nuclear weapons after being in full control of them. The fall of the Soviet Union left several former Soviet republics in physical possession of nuclear weapons, although not operational control which was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system. Of these, Kazakhstan and Ukraine continue to have neither their own nuclear weapons nor another state's nuclear weapons stationed in their territory whereas Belarus does again claim to have Russian-owned nuclear weapons stationed on its territory since 2023.
South Africa
South Africa produced six nuclear weapons in the 1980s, but dismantled them in the early 1990s.
In 1979, there was a detection of a putative covert nuclear test in the Indian Ocean, called the Vela incident. It has long been speculated that it was a test by Israel, in collaboration with and with the support of South Africa, though this has never been confirmed. South Africa could not have constructed such a nuclear bomb until November 1979, two months after the "double flash" incident.
South Africa acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991.
Former Soviet republics
Kazakhstan had 1,400 Soviet-era nuclear weapons on its territory and transferred them all to Russia by 1995, after Kazakhstan acceded to the NPT.
Ukraine had as many as 3,000 nuclear weapons deployed on its territory when it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, equivalent to the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. At the time Ukraine acceded to the NPT in December 1994, Ukraine had agreed to dispose of all nuclear weapons within its territory. The warheads were removed from Ukraine by 1996 and disassembled in Russia. Despite Russia's subsequent and internationally disputed annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine reaffirmed its 1994 decision to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state.
Belarus, which since 2023 has resumed hosting Russian nuclear weapons, also had single warhead missiles stationed on its territory into the 1990s while a constituent of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 81 single warhead missiles were stationed on newly Belarusian territory, but were all transferred to Russia by 1996. Belarus was a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from May 1992 through February 2022, when it held a constitutional referendum resulting in the cessation of its non-nuclear status.
In connection with their accession to the NPT, all three countries received assurances that their sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity would be respected, as stated in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. This agreement has been violated by Russia since the Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014, during which Russia annexed Crimea, occupied Eastern Ukraine, and in 2022, invaded the remainder of the country with no direct response.
Stationed countries
Up until the 1990s the U.S. had stationed nuclear weapons outside of its territories and sharing countries.
South Korea
Taiwan
Taiwan was developing capacities to construct nuclear weapons up until the 1970s. During that time the United States stationed some of its arsenal in Taiwan.
Japan
After World War II the U.S. had nuclear weapons stationed in Japan until the 1970s.
See also
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Doomsday Clock
Historical nuclear weapons stockpiles and nuclear tests by country
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
No first use
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear latency
Nuclear power
Nuclear program of Iran
Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear terrorism
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear-weapon-free zone
Notes
References
Bibliography
.
Philipp C. Bleek, “When Did (and Didn’t) States Proliferate? Chronicling the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” Discussion Paper (Cambridge, MA: Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, June 2017).
External links
The Nuclear Weapon Archive
Nuclear Notebook from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe: A review of post-Cold War policy, force levels, and war planning NRDC, February 2005
Tracking Nuclear Proliferation Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's data on world nuclear forces
Nuclear Proliferation International History Project For more on the history of nuclear proliferation see the Woodrow Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project website.
Proliferation Watch: US Intelligence Assessments of Potential Nuclear Powers, 1977–2001
Cold War
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons policy
Nuclear proliferation
Nuclear technology-related lists
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%20of%20the%20Soviet%20Union
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Hero of the Soviet Union
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The title Hero of the Soviet Union () was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for heroic feats in service to the Soviet state and society.
Overview
The award was established on 16 April 1934, by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. The first recipients of the title originally received only the Order of Lenin, the highest Soviet award, along with a certificate (грамота, gramota) describing the heroic deed from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Because the Order of Lenin could be awarded for deeds not qualifying for the title of hero, and to distinguish heroes from other Order of Lenin holders, the Gold Star medal was introduced on 1 August 1939. Earlier heroes were retroactively eligible for these items.
A hero could be awarded the title again for a subsequent heroic feat with an additional Gold Star medal and certificate. The practice of awarding additional Orders of Lenin when the title was awarded multiple times was abolished by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1988 during perestroika.
Forty-four foreign citizens were awarded the title.
The title was also awarded posthumously, though often without the actual Gold Star medal presented.
The title could be revoked only by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
Privileges
Individuals who received the award were entitled to special privileges, including:
A pension with survivor benefits in the event of the death of the title holder.
Priority on the housing list with 50% rent reduction, tax exempt and an additional in living space.
Annual round-trip first class airline ticket
Free local public transportation
Free annual visit to sanatorium or rest home
Medical benefits
Entertainment benefits
History
In total, during the existence of the USSR, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to 12,777 people (excluding 72 stripped of the title for defamatory acts and 13 awards annulled as unwarranted), including 154 people who received the award twice (nine posthumously), three who received it three times, and two who received it four times. Ninety-five women were awarded the title. Among the Heroes of the Soviet Union, 44 people are citizens of foreign states. The great majority of them received it during World War II (11,635 Heroes of the Soviet Union, 101 twice Heroes, three thrice Heroes, and two four-time Heroes). Eighty-five people (28 posthumously) were awarded the title for actions related to the Soviet-Afghan War, which lasted from 1979 until 1989.
The first recipients of the award were the pilots Anatoly Liapidevsky (certificate number one), Sigizmund Levanevsky, Vasily Molokov, Mavriky Slepnyov, Nikolai Kamanin, Ivan Doronin, and Mikhail Vodopianov, who participated in the successful aerial search and rescue of the crew of the steamship Cheliuskin, which sank in Arctic waters, crushed by ice fields, on 13 February 1934. Valery Chkalov, who made the first-ever Trans-polar flight, was awarded the title on 24 July 1936. Valentina Grizodubova, a female pilot, was the first woman to become a Hero of the Soviet Union (2 November 1938) for her international women's record for a straight-line distance flight. Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a Soviet partisan, was the first woman to become a Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II (February 16, 1942), posthumously.
In addition, over 100 people received the award twice. A second Hero title, either Hero of the Soviet Union or Hero of Socialist Labour entitled the recipient to have a bronze bust of his or her likeness with a commemorative inscription erected in his or her hometown.
Fighter pilots Aleksandr Pokryshkin and Ivan Kozhedub were three times Heroes of the Soviet Union. A third award entitled the recipient to have their bronze bust erected on a columnar pedestal in Moscow, near the Palace of the Soviets, but the palace was never built.
After his release from serving a 20-year sentence in a Mexican prison for the assassination of Leon Trotsky, Ramón Mercader moved to the Soviet Union in 1961 and as Ramon Lopez was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Hero of the Soviet Union medal "for the special deed" by KGB head Alexander Shelepin.
The only individuals to receive the title four times were Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Leonid Brezhnev. The original statute of the Hero of the Soviet Union, however, did not provide for a fourth title; its provisions allowed for a maximum of three awards regardless of later deeds. Both Zhukov and Brezhnev received their fourth titles under controversial circumstances. Namely, Zhukov was awarded a fourth title in direct violation of the statute. He was awarded the fourth time "for his large accomplishments" on the occasion of his 60th birthday on December 1, 1956. There is some speculation that Zhukov's fourth Hero medal was for his participation in the arrest of Lavrentiy Beria in 1953, but this was not entered in the records. Brezhnev's four awards further eroded the prestige of the award because they were all birthday gifts, on the occasions of his 60th, 70th, 72nd and 75th birthdays. Such practices halted in 1988 due to a decision of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which formally ended it. By the 1970s, the award had been somewhat devalued. Important political and military persons had been awarded it on the occasions of their birthdays rather than for any immediate heroic activity. All Soviet cosmonauts, starting from Yuri Gagarin, as well as foreign citizens from non-capitalist countries who participated in the Soviet space program as cosmonauts, received Hero award for each flight, but no more than twice.
Apart from individuals, the title was also awarded to twelve cities (Hero City) as well as the fortress of Brest (Hero-Fortress) for collective heroism during the War.
Later recipients
The last recipient of the title "Hero of the Soviet Union" was a Soviet diver, Captain of the 3rd rank Leonid Mikhailovich Solodkov on 24 December 1991 for his leadership and participation in a series of unprecedented extreme depth diving experiments. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this title was succeeded in Russia by the title "Hero of the Russian Federation", in Ukraine by "Hero of Ukraine" and in Belarus by "Hero of Belarus". Azerbaijan's successor order is that of National Hero of Azerbaijan and Armenia's own hero medal is that of National Hero of Armenia, both modeled on the Soviet one.
Heraldry
Philately
Notable recipients
Single award
Hamazasp Babadzhanian – future Chief Marshal of the Tank and Armored Troops, for actions near Stanislav
Oleg Babak – last posthumous recipient to die in the line of duty.
Mikhail Devyataev – escaped from a forced-labor camp at Peenemünde with crucial intelligence on German rocket programs.
Andrei Durnovtsev – pilot who dropped the Tsar Bomba
Yuri Gagarin – first human to fly in space.
Pavel Grachev – division commander in Afghanistan.
Ivan Kharchenko – neutralized more than 50,000 explosive items during and after World War II.
Viktor Kibenok – First responding firefighter to the Chernobyl Disaster. Later died of radiation sickness.
Valentin Kotyk – Youngest recipient (age 14). Posthumously awarded after being killed in combat during the Great Patriotic War
Vladimir Konovalov – submarine commander; sank the German ship Goya.
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – the first woman awarded the title during World War II.
Alexander Krivets – participant in the Soviet partisan movement during World War II, commander of the Shchors partisan detachment.
Matvey Kuzmin – oldest recipient; led a Nazi division to an ambush in Malkino.
Nikolai Kuznetsov – intelligence officer responsible for the kidnappings and assassinations of several high-ranking Nazis.
Lydia Litvyak – World War II fighter pilot and the world's top female ace.
Alexander Marinesko – the most successful Soviet submarine commander in terms of gross register tonnage (GRT) sunk.
Alexander Matrosov – posthumously awarded for blocking an enemy machine-gun with his own body.
Nikolai Melnik – Soviet pilot known for placing radiation sensors at the Chernobyl's Nuclear Power Plant, Reactor 4, during the 1986 explosion.
Aliya Moldagulova – sniper who led her brigade after suffering high casualties
Pore Mosulishvili – Soviet Soldier and member of the Italian resistance.
Ivan Panfilov – Soviet general. Killed in action during the Battle of Moscow. The 8th Guards Rifle Division of the Red Army was named in his honor.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko – highest scoring female sniper.
Yakov Pavlov – commanded the defenders of the building named after him in Stalingrad.
Vladimir Pravik – Firefighter that responded to the Chernobyl Disaster, and later died of radiation sickness.
Nikolay Pukhov – Colonel General in World War II and the first commander of the 8th Tank Army.
Endel Puusepp – Soviet World War II bomber pilot.
Otto Schmidt – scientist and explorer of the Arctic.
Ivan Sidorenko – One of the top snipers of World War II, with over 500 kills.
Richard Sorge – Soviet spy, reported from Japanese information the exact date that Operation Barbarossa would begin.
Joseph Stalin – General Secretary of the Communist Party (1922–1953) and Head of Government as Prime Minister of the USSR (1941–1953).
Leonid Telyatnikov – Head of the fire department at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Valentina Tereshkova – first woman to fly in space.
Michael Tsiselsky – Soviet naval pilot during World War II.
Zhambyl Tulaev – soviet sniper, killed 313 German soldiers.
Dmitriy Ustinov – Marshal of the Soviet Union and Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death in 1984.
Vasily Zaytsev – sniper who killed 225 at the Battle of Stalingrad; his achievements are dramatized in the film Enemy at the Gates.
Viktor Zholudev – posthumously awarded for leadership during Operation Bagration
Dmitry Komar, Vladimir Usov, and Ilya Krichevsky – Posthumously awarded for being killed while attempting to block IFVs from reaching the White House during the August Coup
Leonid Solodkov – Last recipient of the award before it was succeeded by the Hero of the Russian Federation award
Two times awarded
Ivan Konev – Marshal of the Soviet Union and Commander of the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Front during World War II.
Ivan Bagramyan – Marshal of the Soviet Union
Konstantin Rokossovsky – Marshal of the Soviet Union and Commander of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Front during World War II.
Hazi Aslanov – Major General of armored troops during World War II.
Talgat Bigeldinov – Il-2 during World War II and the only Kazakh who was twice awarded the title.
Vasily Chuikov – General largely responsible for the victory at Stalingrad and attacking Berlin.
Oleksiy Fedorov – organized underground resistance in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.
Dmitry Glinka – flying ace with over 50 shootdowns
Aleksei Leonov – cosmonaut who made the world's first spacewalk in 1965.
Vasily Petrov – Major who lost both hands during the second World War.
Pyotr Klimuk – Cosmonaut, former head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Vladimir Kokkinaki – Famous test pilot and record breaker.
Vladimir Komarov – Cosmonaut, second award posthumous after his death onboard Soyuz 1.
Sydir Kovpak – partisan leader in Ukraine.
Boris Safonov – World War II naval pilot and flying ace
Nelson Stepanyan – World War II ground-attack pilot.
Vladimir Solovyov – Cosmonaut, former director of Mir and last man on Salyut 7.
Amet-khan Sultan – World War II fighter ace and test pilot.
Semyon Timoshenko – military commander and senior professional officer of the Red Army, Marshal of the Soviet Union and People's Commissar of State for National Defense.
Aleksandr Vasilevsky – Marshal of the Soviet Union
Three times awarded
Semyon Budyonny – Military Commander, 1st Cavalry Army in the Civil War and later of the Army Cavalry Commands, also Marshal of the Soviet Union and from 1937 to 1940, Commanding Officer, Moscow Military District.
Ivan Kozhedub – highest-scoring Soviet fighter pilot
Alexander Pokryshkin – World War II fighter pilot
Four times awarded
Leonid Brezhnev – First Secretary, later General Secretary, of the CPSU (1964–82), and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1964–82), also awarded one Hero of Socialist Labour; this last feat was the subject of numerous Russian jokes. Also Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Georgy Zhukov – Military commander and politician credited with many of the most significant Soviet victories of World War II, Commander of the First Belorussian Front and Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Foreign recipients (all single awards)
Abdul Ahad Momand – first Afghan cosmonaut
Ahmed Ben Bella – first president of Algeria
Zachari Zachariev – International Brigades pilot under pseudonym Turk Halil Ekrem, awarded 30 December 1936
Georgi Ivanov – first Bulgarian cosmonaut
Todor Zhivkov – Communist president of Bulgaria
Aleksandr Panayotov Aleksandrov – second Bulgarian cosmonaut
Vladimir Zaimov – Soviet spy in Bulgaria, awarded on the 30th anniversary of his death in 1972
Fidel Castro – leader of the Cuban communist government
Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez – first African descendant and Cuban cosmonaut
Josef Buršík – for heroism during the liberation of Kyiv, awarded on 21 December 1943, after the occupation of Czechoslovakia he gave the award back
Otakar Jaroš – for heroism in the Battle of Sokolovo, posthumously awarded on 17 April 1943 as the first foreign soldier
Ján Nálepka (Slovak) – awarded in memoriam on 2 May 1945
Vladimír Remek – first Czech in space and first cosmonaut who wasn't a citizen of the Soviet Union or United States
Antonín Sochor – for heroism during the liberation of Kyiv, awarded on 21 December 1943
Ludvík Svoboda – communist president of Czechoslovakia and army general, commander of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps
Gustáv Husák (Slovak) – communist president of Czechoslovakia
Stěpan Vajda (Rusyn) – for heroism during the liberation of Poland, awarded in memoriam on 10 August 1945
Richard Tesařík – for heroism during the liberation of Kyiv, awarded 21 December 1943
Abdel Hakim Amer – Egyptian military officer, and member of the Free Officers movement
Gamal Abdel Nasser – One of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and President of Egypt (1956–1970)
Jean-Loup Chrétien – first French cosmonaut (later served as a NASA astronaut)
Marcel Albert – decorated World War II fighter pilot (Normandie-Niemen)
Jacques André – decorated World War II fighter pilot (Normandie-Niemen)
Roland de la Poype – decorated World War II fighter pilot (Normandie-Niemen)
Marcel Lefèvre – decorated World War II fighter pilot (Normandie-Niemen)
Sigmund Jähn – the first German cosmonaut
Walter Ulbricht – East German leader
Erich Honecker – East German leader
Erich Mielke – East German head of the Stasi
Fritz Schmenkel – German communist who deserted to Soviet troops in November 1941 and became a partisan, killed 22 February 1944, posthumously awarded 1964
Bertalan Farkas – first Hungarian cosmonaut
János Kádár – Hungarian politician
Rakesh Sharma – first Indian cosmonaut
Primo Gibelli – Italian communist and Spanish Republican Air Force aviator, posthumous
Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa – first Mongolian cosmonaut
Władysław Wysocki – Polish officer from the battle of Lenino
Juliusz Hibner – Polish communist and officer from the battle of Lenino
Aniela Krzywoń – Polish soldier
Mirosław Hermaszewski – first citizen of Poland to travel into space
Dumitru Prunariu – first Romanian cosmonaut
Ramón Mercader – assassinated Leon Trotsky in 1940
Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri – son of the Spanish communist leader Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, killed in the Battle of Stalingrad while fighting for the Red Army
Muhammed Faris – first Syrian cosmonaut
Phạm Tuân – first Vietnamese cosmonaut
See also
Awards of the Soviet Union
Hero of Socialist Labor
Hero of the Russian Federation
Hero of Belarus
Hero of Ukraine
Hero of the Republic of Cuba
Hero of the People's Armed Forces
Order of Lenin
Medal of Honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Space Medal of Honor
Notes
References
External links
Website dedicated to Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russia
Hero of the Soviet Union – an article on the title
Alley of Heroes of the Soviet Union in Volgograd – history and photos
Legal Library of the USSR
Honorary titles of the Soviet Union
Awards established in 1934
Awards disestablished in 1991
1991 disestablishments in the Soviet Union
Civil awards and decorations of the Soviet Union
Military awards and decorations of the Soviet Union
Courage awards
1934 establishments in the Soviet Union
Hero (title)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referee
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Referee
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A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titles depending on the sport, including umpire, judge, arbiter (chess), commissaire, or technical official (by the International Olympic Committee). Referees may be assisted by umpires, linesmen, timekeepers, touch judges, or video review officials.
Football (association)
Originally team captains would consult each other in order to resolve any dispute on the pitch. Eventually this role was delegated to an umpire. Each team would bring their own partisan umpire allowing the team captains to concentrate on the game. Later, the referee, a third "neutral" official was added; this referee would be "referred to" if the umpires could not resolve a dispute. The referee did not take his place on the pitch until 1891, when the umpires became linesmen (now assistant referees). Today, in many amateur football matches, each side will still supply their own partisan assistant referees (still commonly called club linesmen) to assist the neutral referee appointed by the governing football association if one or both assistant referees are not provided. In this case, the role of the linesmen is limited to indicating out of play and cannot decide off side.
An association football (soccer) match is presided over by a referee, whom the Laws of the Game give "full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed" (Law 5). The referee is oftentimes assisted by two assistant referees, and sometimes by a fourth official.
Rugby
In 1892, the International Rugby Board was created as a result of a disputed try that the captains could not agree on whether it had been scored. The rugby laws were changed to require one referee and two touch judges at each game to make the arbitration easier and more consistent.
Football (American and Canadian)
An American football (or Canadian football) referee is responsible for the general supervision of the game and has the final authority on all rulings. The referee is assisted by up to six other officials on the field. These officials are commonly referred to as "referees" but each has a title based on position and responsibilities during the game: referee, head linesman ("down judge" in the NFL), line judge, umpire, back judge, side judge, and field judge. In the modern XFL, an additional "ball judge", who wears a red hat, is on the field, but does not have the power to call penalties.
Football (Gaelic)
There are usually 7 officials in Gaelic football. A main referee follows the play around the field and has the final authority on decisions such as fouls, throws and card-issuing, un-disputable by players. The main play referee is assisted by two linesmen, who make decisions on who gains possession when the ball goes out of the field of play, and can also advise the referee on off-the-ball events such as a fight or an illegal tackle. As well as the referee and two linesmen, there are two umpires at each end of the field of play who stand on either side of the goal post and raise a white flag for a point, or a green flag for a goal respectively, also calling wides and square-balls. An umpire can also advise the referee on off-the-ball incidents, but does not hold as much authority as a linesman. In recent times, technology called 'Hawk-eye' can be used if both the umpires and referee are unsure of whether a point has been scored or not, though this technology is not widely available.
Bandy
A game of bandy is officiated by a referee, the authority and enforcer of the rules, whose decisions are final. The referee may be assisted by one or two assistant referees.
Basketball
In international basketball and in college basketball, the referee is the lead official in a game, and is assisted by either one or two umpires. In the National Basketball Association, the lead official is referred to by the term crew chief and the two other officials are the referee and umpire. All of the officials in a basketball game are generally accepted to have the same authority as the lead official and therefore they are collectively known as the officials or referees.
Boxing
In boxing a referee is the person who enforces the rules during the fight. He gives instructions to the fighters, starts and stops the count when a competitor is down, and makes the determination to stop a fight when a competitor cannot continue without endangering his health.
Cue sports
In cue sports, such as billiards and snooker, matches are presided over by a referee. The referee will determine all matters of fact relating to the rules, maintain fair playing conditions, call fouls, and take other action as required by these rules.
Floorball
A floorball game is controlled by two referees with equal power.
Handball
According to the International Handball Association, team handball games are officiated by two referees with equal authority who are in charge of each match. They are assisted by a timekeeper and a scorekeeper. In professional competitions, one or more delegates assist the referees by overseeing that rules are followed and the behaviour in the technical area. (Source: International Handball Association, Rules of the Game, 1 August 2005).
Hurling
There are usually 7 officials in hurling. A main referee follows the play around the field and has the final authority on decisions such as fouls, throws and card-issuing, un-disputable by players. The main play referee is assisted by two linesmen, who make decisions on who gains possession when the ball goes out of the field of play, and can also advise the referee on off-the-ball events such as a fight or an illegal tackle. As well as the referee and two linesmen, there are two umpires at each end of the field of play who stand on either side of the goal post and raise a white flag for a point, or a green flag for a goal respectively, also calling wides. Any umpire can also advise the referee on off-the-ball incidents, but does not hold as much authority as a linesman. At inter-county senior games and other important matches, an eighth official, the "Sideline Official", receive substitution notes and holds up the number of substituted players and the amount of additional time, similar to a soccer fourth official. In recent times, technology called Hawk-Eye can be used if both the umpires and referee are unsure of whether a point has been scored or not, although this technology is not widely available.
Ice hockey
Ice hockey games are presided over by on-ice referees, who are generally assisted by on-ice linesmen. The combination of referees and linesmen varies from league to league. Some leagues use the title "assistant referee", giving those officials greater powers to call certain penalties. In addition, off-ice officials administer to specific functions such as goal judge, penalty timekeeper, game timekeeper, statistician, official scorer and, at the highest professional levels, instant replay official.
Korfball
In korfball, it is the referee's responsibility to control the game and its environment, to enforce the rules and to take action against misbehaviour. He is assisted by an assistant referee, who alerts the referee to out balls and fouls and may have other tasks determined by the referee, and where possible by a timekeeper and scorer.
Lacrosse
A lacrosse match is presided over by a crew of either two, three, or in some cases four on-field officials. In two-man crew, a Referee and an Umpire are utilized. In a three-man crew, a Referee, Umpire, and Field Judge are utilized. The Referee shall always have the final ruling on any and all matters. For games of significance a four-man crew can be used which includes a three-man crew plus a Chief Bench Official who has jurisdiction over the bench area including the timekeeper. The professional outdoor league in the United States utilizes four on-field officials in order to be able to better keep up with the increased pace of play.
Mixed martial arts
Rules in mixed martial arts (MMA) bouts are enforced by a referee who can give warnings and disqualifications should the rules be broken. The referee is also in charge of stopping fights when a fighter "cannot intelligently defend himself" in order to prevent him from incurring further damage, as well as making sure that submissions are released following a tapout and to pull fighters off an unconscious opponent. The referee is advised by a doctor and assistant referee who sit ringside.
The primary concern and job of an MMA referee is the safety of the fighters.
Roller derby
The game of roller derby is governed by a team of up to seven skating referees. (Only three are required due to the grass-roots nature of the sport, though the full seven are used whenever possible). The required referees are a head referee, who oversees the running of the entire game and has final say in any disputes, and who doubles as an inside pack referee, following alongside the main pack of skaters from inside the track and issuing and enforcing penalties for fouls or infringements of the rules; and two jammer referees who follow the two point-scoring players known as jammers. Additional referees fill the roles of a second inside pack ref and up to three outside pack refs, who perform similar duties to the inside pack refs, but from the outside of the track, and who rotate active duty in a relay-race style to avoid fatigue caused by the extra speed needed to keep pace with the pack from the outside. Non-skating officials complete the team by recording and communicating points and penalties and ensuring skaters serve their time accordingly. Only the team captains may engage in discussions with the referees by way of the head referee, over calls made. Referees are also responsible for ensuring the skaters are correctly wearing all regulation safety equipment.
Underwater hockey
An Octopush or underwater hockey match is presided over by two or three water referees in the pool, a chief referee on deck, and at least one timekeeper and one scorekeeper. Additional timekeepers can be used to track penalty times in highly contested matches. A tournament referee will arbitrate for chief referees, whilst protests will be adjudicated by at least three independent referees.
Volleyball
A volleyball match is presided over by a first referee, who observes action from a stand, providing a clear view of action above the net and looking down into the court. The second referee, is at floor level on the opposite side of the net—and in front of the scorers' table. They are often referred to informally as the "up referee" and "down referee," respectively. While the first referee watches over actions involving the ball (and thus the attacking team), the second referee usually judges errors committed by the defending team, like touching the net. The first referee assumes a supervisory control over the match at all times while creating a cooperative environment with the second referee, line judges, and scorers. The second referee's duties are multi-faceted and include on-court responsibilities during play, working with the scorers, interacting with coaches and bench personnel, and in some collegiate volleyball competitions, handling challenge reviews.
Wrestling (amateur)
The international styles of amateur wrestling use a three-official system in which a referee conducts the action in the center of the mat while a judge and a mat chairman remain seated and evaluate the action from their stationary vantage points.
Collegiate wrestling uses a single referee in the center of the mat, or a head referee and an assistant.
Wrestling (professional)
In professional wrestling, the referee's on-stage purpose is similar to that of referees in combat sports such as boxing or mixed martial arts. However, in reality referees are participants in executing a match in accordance with its pre-determined outcome as well as any other events that are scripted to take place during the match. They also function as a conduit for communication between the wrestlers and backstage officials during matches.
Fencing
The first regularized fencing competition was held at the inaugural Grand Military Tournament and Assault at Arms in 1880, held at the Royal Agricultural Hall, in Islington in June. The Tournament featured a series of competitions between army officers and soldiers. Each bout was fought for five hits and the foils were pointed with black to aid the judges.
A fencing match is presided over by a referee. The referee must award a point to the fencer with right of way during the final action in the event of a double touch in foil and saber. A typical bout has one head referee and a video referee and at the request of a fencer can also have two visual referees.
Figure skating
A referee in figure skating sits in the middle of the judges panel and manages and has full control over the entire event. The referee represents the International Skating Union at international events. Referees for international events are trained by the International Skating Union. There are two levels of referee, International Referee and ISU Referee, with ISU Referees ranking higher.
In Synchronized Ice Skating, there are two Referees. One, sits with the Judges as with ordinary competition and operates a touch screen computer, inputting deductions and marking the skaters. The other, known as the Assistant Referee — Ice, stands by the barrier where the teams enter the ice. The ARI monitors ice conditions, communicates with the event Referee and supervises teams.
Sumo
A sumo match is overseen by a in the ring and five seated around the ring. All dress in traditional Japanese clothing, with higher-ranked referees wearing elaborate silk outfits. The referee oversees the pre-match rituals and the bout itself, including ruling on the winner of the bout and the winning technique used. If one of the umpires disagrees, then all the umpires confer to determine the winner of the bout.
Tradition holds that if one of the two top ranked gyōji has his decision overturned, he is expected to tender his resignation, although the Chairman of the Japan Sumo Association usually rejects the resignation.
Other terms
Umpire
An umpire is an official in several sports such as baseball and cricket. A few sports such as American and Canadian football (see above) have both a referee and an umpire.
Commisssaire (cycling)
A commissaire is an official in competitive cycling.
Marshal (motorsport)
Aside the race control who are responsible for the start, running and timekeeping of the race, each section of the circuit is presided by a team of marshals led by an observer, who also report incidents and technical mishap of the race.
Range officer (shooting)
In practical shooting competitions within the IPSC, Range Officers enforce the rules. The International Range Officers Association is the part of IPSC with the responsibility to train and certify range officials in order to ensure that matches are run safely, fair and according to the rules. The Range Officer (RO) is the lowest ranking referee, and the one issuing range commands and following the competitor during the Course of Fire. The Chief Range Officer (CRO) oversees the Range Officer, and has primary authority over the particular course. The overall authority for all officials in the entire match is held by the Range Master (RM).
If an athlete disagree with a call made by a Range Officer, he may consult the Chief Range Officer to challenge the call. If the call is still upheld, the matter may be brought to the Range Master. Finally, if the call is upheld by the Range Master, the athlete may lodge a formal protest to the Arbitration Committee. However, some referee calls may not be challenged by the athlete, particularly those regarding safe firearms handling.
Gamemaster (role-playing games)
A gamemaster acts as an organizer, officiant for regarding rules, arbitrator, and moderator for a multiplayer role-playing game. They are more common in co-operative games in which players work together than in competitive games in which players oppose each other.
Judge (Hebrew language)
The Biblical Book of Judges revolves around a succession of leaders (judges). The same word is also used in modern Hebrew for referees in any kind of contest and in particular in sport. To distinguish them from judicial judges and from each other, the kind of the contest is added after the word "shofet" in the Construct state (e.g. "shofet kaduregel" שופט כדורגל, literally "judge of soccer").
References
External links
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